Category: English

At the bonfire party, my friends started teasing Maeve, asking when she was finally going to marry me. Her expression turned dead serious. “Did you all lose your minds after living in the city for a few years?” she asked, her voice carrying over the crackle of the flames. “In the Ridge, men don’t take wives, and women don’t take husbands. We only keep the Walk.” The crowd laughed and chimed in, and I forced a smile to match theirs. But a quiet, gnawing anxiety settled deep in my chest, heavy and cold. Maeve and I had been on the Walk for six years. Every single night, I climbed up the wooden ladder to her loft window. For all intents and purposes, we had been living as husband and wife. But lately, with the valley opening up to tourism, the pressure to get a legal marriage license and buy property was staring us in the face. I had finally broken down and asked her a few days ago, “Maybe we should just get a license? Sign the papers?” Maeve had fallen silent for a beat. Then, she reached into her bag, pulled out a small, navy-blue folder, and slid it across the table toward me. “Actually, Micah… I signed the papers with Brody this morning.” She paused, watching my face. “He’s an out-of-towner, a college kid. He needs local residency to buy land for the development project. Without a legal spouse, his hands are tied.” Sitting quietly in the corner, Brody gave me a timid, apologetic smile. Maeve reached out and squeezed my hand reassuringly. “We don’t care about a piece of paper anyway. You don’t need it. But I had to help him.” A log in the bonfire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the dark night. The laughter died instantly. Everyone went quiet. As I sat there, numb, my gran’s old words drifted back to me from the depths of my childhood. “The Walk is built on freedom, Micah. You come and go as you please.” If she could marry someone else, I could climb through another window. … The atmosphere around the bonfire turned instantly awkward. My friends exchanged uneasy glances, shifting in their camp chairs. Sitting in the corner, Brody seemed unable to shoulder the sudden weight of the silence. He stood up, looking small. “Micah, I’m sorry… I just really wanted to stay in the valley. If this makes you miserable, I’ll file for divorce tomorrow, I swear.” Maeve’s hand was still resting on the back of mine. “Micah, Brody came all this way to handle the tourism development. As the community liaison, I’m responsible for him. You understand that, right?” I remained silent, staring at the table. Seeing the tension escalate, a friend tried to smooth things over. “Haha, Maeve’s always looking out for people! Yeah, it’s just a piece of paper. Only city folks care about that stuff anyway.” I couldn’t hear the chatter around me. My eyes were locked entirely on Brody’s wrist. He was wearing the hand-beaten silver cuff. The one I had given Maeve. “Why is he wearing your silver cuff?” My voice was raw, barely a whisper. Maeve glanced at his wrist, her tone dismissive. “Oh. We got caught in a torrential downpour in the mountains this morning. He was shivering and terrified. I just gave him my silver cuff to wear for a bit—you know how the old folks say it wards off bad luck.” I froze. She knew better than anyone. On the Ridge, if a walking partner let another man wear their personal silver, it meant the bond was severed. She had stood beneath the ancient oak tree, holding my hand, and sworn to the prayer ribbons that no other man would ever touch that cuff. A cold seeped into my bones. I stood up, claiming I didn’t feel well and needed to head back. But a friend grabbed my arm, pulling me back down. “Come on, Micah, don’t run off. It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll sort it out!” He grabbed an empty whiskey bottle from the table and spun it. “Look, since we’re all fired up tonight, let’s play Truth or Dare! If you don’t want to play, you take a shot of the rye!” The crowd, desperate to break the suffocating silence, cheered and leaned in. The bottle spun on the rough wooden table, slowing down until it pointed straight at Brody. “Truth or Dare, Brody?” someone asked, grinning. Brody hesitated, looking at the floor. “I… I’ll just take the shot.” He reached for the jar of homemade rye. Maeve stopped his hand. “Brody’s had too much to drink tonight. I’ll take the truth for him. Go ahead, ask me.” The group exchanged quiet, uneasy glances, shooting looks at me. One of the guys, emboldened by the alcohol, asked the lethal question. “Alright, Maeve. Real talk. What’s the most scandalous thing you and Brody have done behind Micah’s back?” All eyes landed on Maeve. She was flushed, half-tipsy, and completely unbothered. “Last month, when we were mapping the trail up the snowy peaks, we got trapped by a blizzard in the survival cabin. To keep him from hypothermia, we had to strip down and get into the same sleeping bag.” She smiled faintly, a trace of reminiscence in her voice. “To be honest… it was actually really beautiful. He was pressed against me. I couldn’t help but feel a spark.” Brody’s face turned bright red. “Maeve, please… you shouldn’t say things like that.” Maeve shrugged, utterly justified. “Why not? It was an emergency. Besides, Micah has always been sensible. He’s not going to make a fuss over something like that.” A wave of nausea hit me. While she was in that cabin, I had nearly died. I had gone mad with worry, dragging myself through freezing slush with the rescue team. Ice water had filled my boots, freezing my toes until they were raw, infected, and entirely numb. I only let them carry me down the mountain after I heard she was safe. A collective gasp went around the table. People looked at me, holding their breath. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw a fist. I just stood up. “It’s getting late. I really need to go get some rest.” Maeve frowned, reaching out to pull me back. “Micah, I’m being honest with you because I have nothing to hide. It’s just a game. You’re not actually mad, are you?” I pulled my hand from her grip, inch by inch. “I’m not mad,” I said quietly. “I’m just… tired.” I turned and walked away into the dark. I had barely cleared the trees when the silence behind me dissolved into drunken, rowdy cheers. “Maeve! It’s your turn again! No more truth, it’s dare time!” “How about you kiss your new groom?” Brody’s shy voice carried through the cold air. “Don’t… Maeve and I, we’re just married on paper. It’s not real…” Then, the noise abruptly cut out. “Holy shit! Maeve, are you crazy? You actually did it?!” “Come on, guys, shut up! Micah hasn’t even cleared the clearing yet!” Someone tried to smooth it over. “Hey, Maeve’s clearly wasted. The rye is talking…” “Yeah, she’s out of her mind. Stop egging her on!” I didn’t look back. I just kept walking. Later that night, Maeve returned to her loft cabin. The lofts were the private spaces of the Ridge’s women. No outsider was ever allowed to set foot inside except for their walking partner. For six years, I would knock three times beneath her window, and she would push open the shutters to let me climb in. There had never been an exception. But tonight, for the first time, I saw that the heavy wooden latch was firmly down. Swallowing the bitterness in my throat, I stood below, wanting to talk to her one last time. “Maeve, open the window.” No answer. I knocked again. “Maeve, are you angry?” Silence. Suddenly, her phone rang inside. Through the thin wooden walls, Brody’s sobbing voice leaked out into the quiet night. “Maeve, my mom heard about the marriage… she wants to see my wife. Please help me. Her heart is weak. If she finds out it’s a sham, it’ll kill her.” After a long pause, Maeve sighed. “Okay. Wait for me.” She finally pushed the window open. “Micah, you need to head back tonight. I have to see this through. Wait for me, I’ll be back soon.” She climbed down and rushed into the darkness. I stare at the empty window, feeling a profound sense of absurdity. The Walk demanded absolute, one-on-one devotion. For a walking woman to enter another man’s cabin at night was the ultimate betrayal. She didn’t return that night. I walked back to my own cabin, and in the dark, I dropped the heavy wooden latch on my own window. When a man of the Ridge decides to sever the Walk, he doesn’t make a scene. This window is closed. And I am completely done with Maeve. The next morning, I walked out of my room and looked toward the highest ridge. My gran’s old hand-hewn cabin sat on the hill overlooking the lake. It was where I grew up. With the new tourism laws, the county only recognized “legally married couples” for property ownership of historic homes. Since I had no marriage certificate, I couldn’t claim her cabin. Maeve knew this. Yet she had given that certificate to someone else. At dawn, the screech of construction machinery woke me. It was coming from Gran’s cabin. I ran up the hill. A small excavator was parked in the yard. Maeve was standing nearby, talking on her cell phone. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Landry. Brody is doing great here. We bought the house by the lake—the air is wonderful, the view is beautiful. I’ll take good care of him.” I froze. My eyes drifted to the blueprints and deed resting on the stone table. The address was Gran’s cabin. My head spun. “Maeve, what is this?” She hung up quickly. “Micah, you know the county won’t let you keep this land without a marriage certificate. You couldn’t buy it. I had to secure it under Brody’s and my name first.” I started to shake. “So you bought my grandmother’s house to use as your marital home?” Maeve frowned, looking at me like I was a difficult child. “Brody’s health isn’t great. He can’t stay in those damp worker dorms forever. Once the new house is built next year, he’ll move out. Then I’ll divorce him and register with you.” She waved her hand to the workers. A couple of men walked inside carrying heavy sledgehammers, heading straight for the stone hearth. “What are you doing?!” I tried to rush in, but Maeve grabbed my arm. “The old hearth is a fire hazard, and Brody hates the smell of woodsmoke. I’m having them tear it down to install modern underfloor heating.” I stared at her, horrified. For six years, I had told her what that hearth meant to me. It was where Gran sat every winter night, spinning stories by the crackle of the wood. And now, she was smashing it because Brody “hated the smell of smoke.” “Don’t touch it!” I broke free from her grip, throwing myself in front of the hearth, blocking the workers. Behind me, a weak cough broke the air. “Micah, stop it. Let them tear it down.” My ailing grandfather stood there, leaning heavily on my uncle’s shoulder. My uncle walked over, pulling me away from the stone with a heavy heart. The sledgehammer swung down. “Gran—!” I screamed, watching the stones crumble. The dust choked my throat, and the last physical piece of my grandmother turned to rubble. My knees buckled, and everything went black. I woke up in my own bed. Grandpa was sitting beside me, his weathered hand resting on my forehead. “Micah, you’re awake.” Tears streamed down my face. “Grandpa, why did you let them…” He sighed, wiping my tears with a trembling thumb. “My boy, if something isn’t meant to be kept, it’s better to cut it clean.” He looked at me, never mentioning Maeve’s name, and limps out of the room. Left alone, I stared at the ceiling. That evening, as the wind shook the prayer ribbons by the lake, I sent word through my uncle to the community: “Micah has severed his old Walk. If there is someone who wants a true, faithful partnership, someone who believes in keeping the window unlatched for only one person, I will seek her light tonight beneath her loft.” The news spread like wildfire. People thought I was just acting out because my feelings were hurt. When Maeve heard of it, she only laughed. “Everyone in the valley knows Micah belongs to me. Even if he stands out there all night with a lantern, what woman would dare take him? He’s just trying to make me jealous.” In her mind, I loved her too much to ever leave. But as night fell, I quietly packed her things. Six years of memories. A straw-woven grasshopper she had made. A few jackets in my closet. I tossed them into a trash bag, carried them to my hearth, and lit a match. Watching them burn, I felt an incredible, unexpected lightness. I walked down the path to the lofts. Just as I was about to turn away, thinking no one would answer, three soft knocks sounded from a window above. Maeve had spent the evening looking at property lots with Brody and having a celebratory dinner. She was tipsy. When she dropped him off, Brody grabbed her sleeve. “Maeve, you’re drunk… why don’t you stay tonight?” A spark of heat flared in her chest. But then she remembered the rumor about my “severance.” She pictured me standing beneath her window in the cold, filled with regret, knocking. She pushed Brody’s hand away, bought a package of my favorite maple fudge, and hurried back. She reached my cabin and knocked. “Micah, stop being stubborn. Open up. Let me apologize.” She waited. No answer. Panicking, she knocked harder. “Micah, I bought the maple fudge. Stop playing games, let me in!” Finally, the latch slides back. The door creaked open. Maeve sighed with relief. “I knew you couldn’t stay mad—” She stopped dead. In the moonlight stands another woman. “Can I help you with my partner?” The maple fudge dropped to the dirt, shattering. All the alcohol drained from Maeve’s system instantly.

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Ten years. Three thousand six hundred days of loving Lance Harrison. Today was the day his parents were scheduled to inspect our corporate headquarters, and I had personally taken charge of the entire preparation. From the minute-by-minute itinerary of the tour down to the sugar-free pastries tailored for his parents’ dietary restrictions, I had stayed up until three in the morning, revising the thirty-page reception proposal eight times. But on the morning of their arrival, Lance sent a last-minute text: “The new intern, Mia, is going to handle the walk-through. Let her run with your plan.” Mia took my proposal and executed it to perfection, keeping his parents charmed and comfortable every step of the way. At the end of the tour, Lance’s mother openly asked him, “Is this lovely girl the one you’ve been dating for nearly a decade? So sharp, so thoughtful. She even made sure our desserts were made with xylitol. No wonder you adore her.” Lance just smiled. He didn’t correct her. Later, in his office, I confronted him, tears burning my eyes. “Why?” He looked at me, cold and indifferent. “We aren’t even engaged yet, Natalie. And you’re already this desperate to parade yourself in front of my parents? Are you really that eager to force my hand?” I froze. The sheer cruelty of his words left me breathless. He brushed past my shoulder, pausing just enough to whisper, “Don’t make a scene. It’s unflattering.” I didn’t argue. Ten years. On what would have been our anniversary, he would block my bridal car: “You said you’d marry me! Why are you marrying someone else?!” And I would smile: “You told me not to make a scene, Lance. But I’ve always preferred a clean break.” … Lance left after his warning, leaving me alone in his silent office. By the time I composed myself and walked out, his father and mother had finished their speeches. Mia was standing right beside them. His mother looked at Mia with pure, doting affection. “My dear, we didn’t bring much for our first meeting. But I want you to have this.” She slipped off a heavy, vintage gold heirloom bracelet—the one passed down to the daughters-in-law of the Harrison family. My heart squeezed. That bracelet was only supposed to be given to the woman marrying into the family. And his mother was giving it to Mia? Just like that? Mia waved her hands, feigning modesty. “Oh, no, Mrs. Harrison! It’s too beautiful. I couldn’t possibly accept this!” “Still calling me Mrs. Harrison?” his mother teased, beaming. Mia blushed deeply. “But…” “Take it, sweetheart,” his mother insisted, taking her wrist. “You’re family now. Don’t be shy with your own mother.” Mia’s blush deepened. She cast a timid, searching look at Lance. I stood in the crowd, my hands trembling inside my pockets. Lance’s gaze swept over the room, pausing briefly on my face. He offered a faint, easy smile. “If my mother wants you to have it, Mia, take it.” Mia looked up, her eyes wide with bashful delight. His father laughed. “She’s shy, Lance. Put it on her yourself.” Lance didn’t hesitate. He took the gold bracelet and slipped it over Mia’s wrist. She looked down, offering no resistance. Someone popped a confetti cannon. The room erupted into cheers. “Congratulations, Mr. Harrison and Mia!” “Mia, you sly dog! We had no idea you were dating the boss!” “Right? We all thought it was Natalie!” “Yeah, with the way Natalie’s been hovering over him, trying so hard to impress his parents today… who wouldn’t have guessed wrong?” I turned and quietly left the lobby. Everything was still running on my schedule. Today was actually his mother’s birthday. I had planned a surprise celebration after the inspection. Now, under his mother’s direction, it had morphed into an impromptu engagement party. A tiered cake was rolled out. I watched from afar as the crowd pushed Lance to Mia’s side. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Mia’s ears were bright red. Lance looked entirely unbothered, calm and collected. He picked up the cake knife and looked at her. “Do you prefer sweet or savory?” “Whatever you cut for me… I’ll love it,” she murmured. Cue the teasing, suggestive sighs from the staff. His mother laughed heartily. “Look at these two. So sweet.” Lance cut a slice with a strawberry on top. “I know you love strawberries. This one’s for you.” As he said it, his eyes drifted toward my corner. I looked away, walking back to the conference room to pack up my things. While I was organizing the files, the door clicked open. Mia walked in, humming a tune. When she saw me, her smile stiffened. “Na… Natalie.” I didn’t say a word, just continued stacking folders. “Natalie, wait!” She rushed over and grabbed my arm. “I didn’t expect things to go this way! I was put on the spot, I couldn’t say no! Look… I’ll give you the bracelet right now!” She began tugging at the gold band on her wrist. But even though the bracelet was clearly loose, she struggled, wincing as if it were stuck fast. “Stop acting,” I said quietly. “Keep it.” “Natalie!” She grabbed me again. “I really didn’t mean to. Just give me a second, I can get it off—” “What is going on here?” Mrs. Harrison pushed the door open, her face hardening the moment she saw us struggling. “Are you the difficult marketing director I’ve heard about? The one who constantly bullies Mia?” I froze. “Bullying?” Is that how she saw me? I looked at Mia, who immediately averted her eyes. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces fell into place. “I’ve heard about you, Natalie,” Mrs. Harrison said coldly. “They say you run your department like a tyrant. Tell me, do you think you own this company? Or do you actually believe you’re going to marry my son?” The air left my lungs. How could she have heard these things on her first day here? Unless… I clenched my fists. Was it Lance? Had he been painting me as a bitter, overbearing tyrant to his family? The door opened wider, and Lance stepped in. “What’s happening?” His mother turned to him. “You really need to clean house, Lance. This woman actually tried to steal the heirloom I just gave Mia.” Lance looked at me. “I didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. Mia finally managed to slip the bracelet off. She grabbed my hand, trying to force it onto my wrist. “Please don’t be angry, Natalie. I’m returning it to you.” Mrs. Harrison gasped. “Mia! Why are you giving away my gift?” Mia’s eyes welled with tears. “But… Natalie has loved Lance for so long.” “Just because she wants him doesn’t mean she gets to rob you! If she bullies you at work, that’s one thing, but you cannot let her walk all over you like this!” Mrs. Harrison pulled Mia protectively into her side. “Don’t worry. Lance and I have your back.” “But… I’m just an intern. I don’t deserve this bracelet…” “Who says you don’t?” Suddenly, Lance grabbed my wrist. His grip was firm as he easily unclasped the bracelet from my arm and handed it back to Mia. “If I say you deserve it, you do.” Then, he looked at me. “As of right now, Natalie, you are relieved of your duties. Mia will be taking over as Director.” I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. He frowned, a brief flicker of hesitation passing through his eyes before his expression hardened again. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Natalie.” His mother beamed. “There. Now she answers to you, Mia.” Mia looked at the gold bracelet back on her wrist. She gave me a look—a subtle, fleeting smirk of triumph that quickly vanished behind a shy nod. Watching the three of them play their parts, I felt a sudden, sharp urge to laugh at my own stupidity. I looked at Lance. “Fine, Mr. Harrison. Honestly, I was getting tired of that seat anyway.” I walked past him without another word. Down in the parking garage, just as I unlocked my car, a hand grabbed my wrist from behind. “In a few weeks, I’ll promote you to VP under me,” Lance said, his voice softer now, almost pleading. “Mia will still report to you. Don’t take this to heart. My mother loves her, and I couldn’t embarrass her in public.” It was always like this. After every fight, he would explain, throw me a bone, and expect me to forgive him. I gritted my teeth and threw his hand off. Before he could react, I got into my car and drove away, leaving him standing in the exhaust fumes. By the time I got home, my phone was buzzing with over a dozen texts from him. The first few were the usual excuses. But the last message was a screenshot of a booking confirmation. Cape Cod. A cottage by the ocean. “Natalie, don’t worry. While you’re on administrative leave, I’m taking time off too. The trip to the coast you’ve been begging for? We’re going. Let’s call it our early honeymoon.” I stared at the screen. If he had sent this a year ago, my heart would have skipped a beat. Now? I felt nothing but a dull ache. I typed back a simple reply: “Don’t bother.” He replied almost instantly: “Be good. Stop being angry. I booked the tickets for 8 AM tomorrow. I’m staying late at the office tonight to clear my schedule so I can be fully yours. Don’t wait up for dinner.” He added a heart emoji. I set the phone down. Whatever. I would wait for him to get home and lay it all out. My family had set me up on a blind date, and I had agreed to go. This ten-year relationship was over. But I waited all night. It wasn’t until dawn that the front door unlocked. Lance walked in, smelling of expensive gin and late-night smoke, his steps slightly unsteady. It was long past 8 AM. “I thought we had an 8 AM flight to Cape Cod?” I asked. He blinked, rubbing his temples as if trying to recall. Then he let out a dry laugh. “Oh. I cancelled the tickets. I’m taking Mia instead.” I went numb. “You’ve seen the ocean a dozen times, Natalie,” he said, collapsing onto the sofa, clearly exhausted from pulling an all-nighter. “I was planning to come home and pack last night, but the team threw a promotion party for Mia. I had a few too many drinks. She mentioned she’d never seen the ocean. So, I switched the names on the booking.” Even though I had already checked out emotionally, the casual cruelty still stung. “You promised.” The alcohol slowed his reaction. He smiled—the kind of dismissive, tired smile reserved for a nagging wife. “Natalie, we’ve been together for ten years. We’re basically an old married couple. Why are you keeping score over something so trivial? Besides, you’ve planned beach trips three times already. Don’t be greedy.” He closed his eyes and leaned back. I stared at him, a heavy weight pressing down on my chest. Yes, I had planned three beach trips. And I had never made it to a single one. The first time, Lance had caught a severe fever the night before. I cancelled on my best friend and nursed him for three days. The second time, he was facing a crucial bidding war. I cancelled my flight and stayed up for forty-eight hours revising his pitch deck. The third time, his schedule clashed with an important client meeting, and there was no one else to host. I threw my luggage back in the closet, slipped on my Louboutins, and went to the dinner in his place. Three times. I had never actually seen the water. But he only remembered the bookings. I nudged his shoulder. “Then I’ll go with someone else.” “Mmh,” he mumbled, eyes closed. “Go with Zoe.” “It’s not Zoe.” His breathing grew slow and even. He was asleep. I didn’t wake him. I picked up my phone and texted my blind date, confirming our trip for the following day. Before leaving, I had to hand over some transition documents to my team. But the moment I stepped into the office, Mia was waiting for me, wearing a sharp designer suit that used to be my style. “Oh, Natalie! You’re here,” she chirped. “Perfect timing. I need these documents printed—two copies of each. Put them on my desk when you’re done. You know where it is, right? Your old office.” I looked at the massive stack of papers she was thrusting toward my chest. I shook my head. “I’m here to drop off my files, not to do your admin work.” Mia’s smile turned patronizing. “Natalie, Lance made it clear. I’m the Director now. Have you forgotten?” “I am on leave.” “And did I approve that leave?” She crossed her arms, suddenly carrying herself with the unearned confidence of someone who had been in charge for years. “As your direct supervisor, I need to sign off on any PTO. Did you submit a request?” I looked her up and down. “Do you honestly think I need your permission?” Her brow furrowed. I let out a soft, humorless laugh, ignored the papers, and turned on my heel. “Natalie.” Lance stepped out of the executive suite, having witnessed the entire exchange. Mia quickly scooped up the heavy stack of files. “It’s fine, Lance. Natalie used to be my boss, it’s natural she doesn’t want to take orders from me. I’ll print them myself.” She lifted the heavy stack, wincing as if she were carrying the weight of the world. Lance’s voice was cold. “If she’s too good for it, are you, the Director, supposed to do grunt work?” A wave of irritation washed over me. “It’s really fine, Lance, I can manage…” Mia took a step, stumbled dramatically, and fell, sending the papers flying across the floor. Lance rushed forward, catching her by the arm. “Careful!” “I’m okay, really…” Mia clutched her ankle, looking up at me with tears pooling in her eyes. Lance’s gaze snapped to me, hard and unforgiving. “Natalie. You aren’t the Director anymore. If you want to throw a temper tantrum, do it somewhere else. If you don’t want to work, fine.” He stood up, adjusting his cuffs. “Go to HR and collect your severance. We don’t need you here.” The office fell dead silent. Everyone was watching. I looked at him, slightly surprised but mostly relieved. “Go on,” Lance said, his tone casual, indifferent. I didn’t argue. He had saved me the trouble of drafting a resignation letter. “Thank you, Mr. Harrison,” I said, offering a polite, empty smile before turning around. I saw his eyes twitch, a shadow of unease crossing his face. The moment I got to my car, my phone lit up with a text from him: “Don’t worry, I won’t let them actually fire you. Mia is new to the role and needs to establish authority. You embarrassed her in front of the whole staff; I had to react. Once you get back from your trip with Zoe, I’ll announce your promotion to VP. And…” Another message arrived—a photo of a velvet box containing two platinum engagement bands. Engraved inside were our initials. “I’ll finally make us public.” I didn’t reply. On the day of my flight, I ran into Lance at the airport. He was with Mia. I was alone. My blind date and I were flying from different cities, planning to meet at our destination: Lake Tahoe. “Wait for me a second,” Lance told Mia before walking over to me. “Why are you alone?” he asked, looking at my single suitcase. “We’re meeting there,” I said. He scanned me from head to toe, then took off his designer coat and draped it over my shoulders. “Don’t worry about the Cape Cod trip. There are other people joining us, it’s not just Mia and me.” I nodded. “Okay.” “Natalie,” he said, his eyes softening with a rare touch of vulnerability. “Be safe. Call me if you need anything.” “Thanks.” “When we get back, it’ll be our tenth anniversary.” He looked at me searchingly. “Let’s get married then.” I thought about it, then smiled. “That day is indeed a perfect day for a wedding.” His face lit up. “Then we’ll have double the reason to celebrate.” “Yes.” Our flights were boarding at the same time. He and Mia headed toward one gate; I went toward another. Lance waved. “See you when we get back.” I nodded, letting the coat slide off my shoulders onto a nearby terminal chair. I never said the man I was marrying was him.

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After the miscarriage, a quiet, corrosive paranoia took hold of me. Every single day, I texted Christian, asking him the exact same question: “Do you love me?” For the first ninety-nine times, his replies were patient, almost sweet—a digital reassurance to keep my fragile mind at bay. But on the hundredth time, his patience finally snapped. He fired back three sharp sentences that left me breathless. [Nora, don’t you have anything better to do?] [The baby is gone. You don’t have to suffer through the pregnancy anymore, so now you’ve decided to torture me instead?] [If you have this much time to overthink, go look in the mirror. See that hollow, lifeless ghost staring back at you.] I froze, the phone heavy in my trembling hand. A second later, the messages vanished—unsent. A voice note popped up in their place, his tone smooth and composed. “Sorry about that, Nora. My assistant had my phone and sent those by mistake. Don’t take it to heart.” Whether it was a mistake didn’t matter anymore. The truth had already slipped through the cracks. In that quiet, sterile hospital room, I realized something cold and absolute: our marriage was over. … I discharged myself from the clinic, ignoring the dull, throbbing ache in my lower abdomen. I didn’t go straight home. Instead, I made a detour to my attorney’s office to pick up the divorce papers, the folder heavy and cold in my hands. By the time I finally unlocked the front door of our brownstone, night had swallowed the city. The living room lights were blazing. Christian was sitting on the leather sofa, bathed in the sharp glow. At the sound of the door closing, he looked up, his brow instantly furrowing. “I went to the clinic and they said you’d already checked out. Where the hell have you been? You haven’t answered a single call or text.” He stood up, his voice tight with irritation. “Do you not understand you just had a miscarriage? Your body is weak. You’re supposed to be resting, not wandering the streets.” I didn’t answer. I slid off my shoes, walked into the kitchen, and poured myself a glass of water. My hands were perfectly steady. He followed me, his gaze lingering on my face for a few seconds before he spoke again, his tone softening slightly. “Today was a mix-up, Nora. I told you, my assistant grabbed the wrong phone. She already apologized, and I gave her a piece of my mind. I promise it won’t happen again.” An assistant? Grabbing her boss’s highly encrypted personal phone and typing out paragraphs? I let out a soft, humorless laugh and set my glass down, turning to look at him. Christian was undeniably beautiful. I had known that from the moment I first laid eyes on him. Even now, at thirty-three, he possessed a sharp, magnetic elegance that outshone most men his age. Sitting there in his casual loungewear, he looked like he had been pulled straight from the pages of a high-end editorial. I used to love looking at him. I used to think I could spend a lifetime doing nothing else. But tonight, it hit me with the force of a sudden downpour: his beauty had absolutely nothing to do with me. He was like an exquisite designer coat behind a glass display. You stand in the cold, staring at it for so long that you begin to believe it’s yours. But you’ve never actually held it. You’ve never felt its warmth. “Christian,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected. “What was her name again? Your new assistant.” He hesitated. “Maisie. Why?” “How long has she been with you?” “Six months,” he said, before quickly adding, “Why are you asking this? I told you, it was a mistake. Why do you have to pick at every little thing? Can’t you just let it go?” Four defensive questions, lined up like a shield. Instead of arguing, I kept my tone level. “I remember when she first started. You mentioned her once. You said she was clumsy, that she lacked the sharp, cutthroat attitude you usually look for in an assistant. Then you stopped bringing her up. I assumed you’d let her go.” “But not only is she still here, I’ve noticed that over the last six months, your late nights at the office have doubled. Your business trips have become a weekly routine.” Christian’s face darkened. “Nora, what are you trying to say?” I offered him a faint smile. “I’m just stating facts.” His impatience flared, his voice dropping into that familiar, condescending register. “Nora, I know you’re emotional right now because of the miscarriage. I get it. But you can’t let a few misplaced texts turn you into a paranoid wreck. It’s not good for you, and it’s certainly not going to help when we try for another baby.” “The baby.” That word was a silver needle, sliding deep under my skin, piercing my heart with agonizing precision. How long had we been married? Four years. When I was twenty-two, I had run away from my family’s protective shadow in New York, looking for a thrill. At a mutual friend’s dinner party in Chicago, I fell head over heels for Christian. I chased him relentlessly. At first, he dismissed me, saying I was too young, too naive. But I was stubborn, dragging my heart out into the open and laying it at his feet. I showered him with attention, bought him expensive gifts, and eventually, I was the one who proposed. People whispered behind my back, calling me desperate, unladylike. I didn’t care. I thought love meant being brave enough to lose your pride. We dated for a year, then married. And for four years, I was the only one pouring water into a leaking bucket. Every time he offered even a drop of warmth, I felt like the sun had risen just for me. When I got pregnant, he seemed genuinely happy. He was more attentive than he had ever been. But then came the accident. A slip on the stairs, a sudden, blinding pain, and just like that, our four-month-old baby was gone. Christian hadn’t cried, but the silence between us grew heavier. He withdrew into himself, speaking even less than before. Fear clawed at my chest—a desperate, clawing terror that he was slipping away, that he would seek comfort in someone else. That was why I kept asking if he loved me. I was begging for a lifeline. He never actually said the words “I love you”, but his replies—”I’ll be home early tonight”—had been enough to keep me breathing. Until today. Until a personal phone I was never allowed to touch was used by another woman to humiliate me. The illusion was shattered. He had never truly cared. But it was okay. It was over. I had run out of love to give. Seeing my silence, he probably thought I was giving in. He stepped closer, leaning down to wrap his arms around me. “Alright, let’s not overthink this. I had the housekeeper make some soup for you. Drink some, get some sleep, and tomorrow we can go out—” “Christian, I want a divorce.” The words were barely a whisper, yet they cut through the room like glass. He froze. His arms remained suspended in mid-air, a half-formed embrace that would never close. The only sound in the living room was the rhythmic, clinical ticking of the grandfather clock. One. Two. Three. Slowly, he straightened up, looking down at me with a harsh, incredulous laugh. “What did you just say?” I met his gaze, my voice unwavering. “I said, I want a divorce. I’m so tired, Christian.” “Tired of loving you.” Christian let out a mocking sneer. “Are you out of your mind?” I kept my lips curved in a sad, gentle smile. “No.” “Nora.” His voice lost all its warmth, turning razor-thin. “You’re divorcing me over three stupid text messages sent by mistake?” “Yes.” He laughed, a sound sharp with disbelief and anger. “I told you, it was an accident! Are you deaf? Besides, you love me too much to ever leave. You wouldn’t dare.” I smiled softly. “You think it was an accident, but I know better. And as for loving you… I don’t anymore.” For a fraction of a second, his composure cracked. Then his face hardened into a cold sneer. “Are you really going to throw a tantrum over this?” “I’m not throwing a tantrum.” I looked up, meeting his eyes. “I’m serious, Christian. Let’s end this. It’s better for both of us.” His fists clenched. Silence stretched between us, thick and volatile. Just when I thought he would resort to his usual silent treatment, his hand shot out, gripping my jaw tightly. His eyes flared with a sudden, dark fury. “Nora! What the hell do you want from me? I told you I didn’t send those messages! Why won’t you just drop it?” “You wanted to know if I love you, right? Fine. I love you. Happy now?” “If you’re feeling so damn insecure, we can go upstairs right now. I’ll touch you until you feel safe again. Is that what you want?” Before I could speak, he slammed his mouth against mine. In five years of being together, he had never initiated a kiss. Every intimate moment we shared had been driven by my longing, my reaching. I used to dream of him wanting me like this. But now, his touch made my skin crawl. It felt cheap. Dirty. I bit down on his lip, hard. He hissed in pain, flinching back and releasing me. I glared at him, my eyes burning with hot, unshed tears. “If you want someone so badly, go find someone else. I’m sure your little assistant is practically begging for it.” Christian stared at me, dumbfounded. “What?” “I said, go screw whoever you want!” I yelled, the dam finally breaking. “Just keep your hands off me. You disgust me, Christian. You make my stomach turn.” He stared at me, his gaze so intense it felt like he wanted to pierce right through me. After a long, suffocating silence, a cruel smirk spread across his lips. “Fine. If you’re going to be this generous, I won’t stop you.” “Just don’t regret it. And don’t come crying back to me when you realize what you’ve thrown away.” He turned on his heel and slammed the front door behind him, the sound echoing through the empty brownstone. Then, absolute silence. I stared at the heavy oak door, and the tears finally spilled over. I sank to the floor, sobbing so hard my chest ached. It was a purging of five years of quiet humiliation, of begging for crumbs of affection from a man who treated me like an ornament. “I won’t regret this, Christian. I will never beg for you again.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand, pulled out my phone, and dialed a number I hadn’t called in years. “Nick,” I said, my voice hoarse but steady. “Pull the funding from Christian’s firm. All of it.” He didn’t come home that night. It was Saturday, so he didn’t have to go to the office. I wanted to hand him the divorce papers, but I had no idea where he was. Suddenly, my phone buzzed with a video link, followed by a barrage of frantic voice notes from my best friend, Becca. “Nora! Oh my god, isn’t this your high-and-mighty husband?” “I was shopping at Oak Street and I saw him with some girl! He literally knelt down on the sidewalk to tie her shoe!” “You just lost your baby, and he’s already out flaunting his little side piece? That absolute bastard! I swear to God, I’m going to murder them both!” I clicked the video. In the frame, the man who always carried himself with such cold, untouchable dignity in my presence was kneeling on the pavement. The girl beside him was giggling, whispering something, and he simply smiled—a soft, indulgent look I had never once received—as he tied her shoelace. She pulled out her phone to take a video of him, and he just shook his head with fond amusement. A sharp, physical pain flared in my chest. I had asked him to do small, affectionate things like that so many times. But he had always looked down his nose at me, treating my requests as childish nonsense, leaving me to swallow my embarrassment alone. I typed back a brief reply: “We’re getting a divorce.” Seconds after I hit send, an unknown number called my phone. “Hello, is this Nora? Your husband and his companion were involved in an altercation. We need you to come down to the precinct right away.” Becca was always hot-headed, but I hadn’t expected her to move this fast. I threw on a coat and hailed a cab. When I walked into the police station, the shouting was already echoing down the hallway. “You piece of trash!” Becca was screaming, held back by an officer. “How could you do this to Nora? She just had a miscarriage, and you’re out buying jewelry for your mistress? Kneeling on the street like a loyal dog? You make me sick! Nora loved you more than her own life—” “Did I ask her to?” Christian’s voice cut through the air, icy and sharp. I froze near the doorway, my boots sticking to the linoleum floor. “Did I force her to love me?” Christian continued, his face a mask of cold arrogance. “She was the one who threw herself at me. She’s the one who practically begged to get into my bed, who jumped at the chance to marry me the second I showed her a sliver of attention. Why is her devotion my problem? I don’t love her, and I’m not obligated to play the doting husband just because she managed to get herself pregnant.” Becca looked ready to tear him apart. “You ungrateful bastard! If it weren’t for Nora, your company would have gone under years ago, and you’d be—” “Becca, stop,” I said quietly, stepping into the room. The room went quiet. I walked past them and addressed the officer. “I’m here to take my friend home.” Before the officer could speak, Christian’s voice dropped, thick with malice. “She assaulted someone. She doesn’t just get to walk out of here.” I looked at the young woman hiding behind him, her eyes red and swollen as she clutched his arm. Then I looked at Christian. “What do you want?” Christian’s eyes narrowed. “Your friend slapped Maisie. I want an apology, and I want her to pay for what she did.” Becca scoffed. “You want me to apologize to that—” “I didn’t say you were the one paying,” Christian interrupted, keeping his eyes locked onto my face. “Nora, your friend did this on your behalf. It’s only fair that you take the fall for her.” “Are you out of your mind?” Becca lunged forward, but I stepped in front of her. “Fine,” I said. Becca stared at me, shocked. “Nora, no! He’s the one who cheated! He’s the one who’s wrong here!” I ignored her, walking right up to Christian and Maisie. “Go ahead.” Maisie shrank back slightly, playing the victim. “Christian, let’s just go. Don’t make a scene with your wife…” Before she could finish, Christian grabbed her hand, lifted it, and brought it down hard across my cheek. “Slap.” A sharp, burning pain erupted across my face. I didn’t flinch. I just stood there, waiting. “Can we go now?” I asked, my voice completely devoid of emotion. “Did I say we were done?” Christian’s voice was like ice. “She struck Maisie once. I want it returned tenfold.” He raised her hand again. I didn’t move. I didn’t even blink as the blows fell, one after the other. “Slap. Slap. Slap.” With every strike, the remaining fragments of my love for him disintegrated. It wasn’t pain I felt; it was a profound, hollow emptiness. By the tenth slap, the physical sensation had faded into a dull vibration. A thin trickle of copper-tasting blood ran down the corner of my mouth. Nobody in the precinct intervened. Christian’s influence in Chicago’s business circles was immense; no one wanted to cross him over a domestic dispute. When it was over, Christian gently rubbed Maisie’s hand, checking her knuckles for any soreness. He spared me one last, contemptuous glance. “Keep your friend on a leash. If she acts like a feral dog again, I won’t be this lenient.” He turned to lead Maisie out. “Christian,” I called out, my voice raspy but clear. I pulled the folded divorce papers from my purse and held them out. “Sign them.” He stared at the papers for a long moment, a humorless laugh escaping his lips. “Still playing games, Nora? How long are you going to keep up this little act?” I wiped the blood from my lip, my expression deadpan. “It’s not an act.” His face darkened. He snatched the papers, pulled a pen from his breast pocket, and scribbled his signature with vicious strokes. Then he slapped the folder against my chest, letting it flutter to the floor. “Fine. Let’s see how long you last. Without me, you’re nothing, Nora. When you come crawling back to my door begging for forgiveness, don’t expect me to even look at you.”

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Everyone in the industry knows there is one golden boy you absolutely do not cross. I was simply standing in the back of the VIP lounge at the Aethelgard launch party, quietly sipping an iced Americano, trying to blend into the shadows. I hadn’t spoken to a soul. But the moment Tim Cross turned away from his vanity mirror and caught sight of me, his eyes instantly welled with tears. “I’m not trying to target anyone,” he said, his voice carrying clearly across the room, “but that black tailored suit you’re wearing is making me incredibly uncomfortable.” I stared at him and calmly told him I wasn’t changing. Right then and there, his face contorted. He pulled out his phone, switched it to speaker, and made four consecutive calls: to Cora Michell, the powerhouse CEO of Michell Media; Fiona Fletcher, the Sundance-winning director; Rae Crawford, the editor-in-chief of the country’s most influential lifestyle syndicate; and Victoria Coleman, the head of the city’s most ruthless litigation firm. All four of them picked up on the first ring, their voices dripping with an almost frantic deference. The onlookers in the room began exchanging pitying glances. A few whispered for me to get on my knees, apologize, and stop trying to play David against an entire empire. I just kept the straw between my teeth and let out a quiet, dry laugh. Cora was my former assistant—the one who, three years ago, couldn’t format a slide deck without crying, whom I had personally mentored. Fiona’s breakout indie film was financed entirely through my personal connections. Rae was my ex-girlfriend—the one who had wept on my porch when I walked away, to whom I had gifted my entire media network as a parting gesture. And Victoria? She is my younger sister, the girl I had practically raised and shielded from our family’s wreckage. I had only been out of the industry for two years. In my absence, this group of women had taken the keys to my kingdom and used my legacy to breed a pampered, arrogant little lapdog. And now, they were trying to blacklist me using the very resources I had handed them. … At the backstage launch of Aethelgard’s new line, I stood in a corner near the catering table. I didn’t want any trouble. The brand’s CEO had personally called me three times over the weekend, begging me to attend. He had offered a private VIP suite, a separate entrance, and a dedicated styling team. I had turned down every single offer. When you leave the spotlight, you do it for the silence. But a promise to an old friend is a promise, so I showed up. I figured I would stand in the back, keep a low profile, and slip out early without causing a scene. But then Tim Cross turned around from his lighted makeup mirror. The moment his eyes landed on me, he froze. He stared at me for five long seconds. I looked back at him, feeling a faint, ironic amusement. To be fair, the resemblance was hard to deny. He had the same sharp jawline, the same slight curve of the brow. It was a watered-down, softer version of my own face. It made sense why they had chosen him to fill the void I left behind. But Tim clearly didn’t view our shared features as a flattering coincidence. His gaze drifted from my face down to my suit, and I watched his pupils contract. The suit I wore was a bespoke, midnight-black piece Aethelgard had custom-tailored for me. It hadn’t even been announced to the public yet; it was a true one-of-one. Tim was wearing the brand’s current-season flagship piece. It was the same color palette and the same general silhouette, but the cut, the drape of the fabric, and the hand-stitched detailing on mine were obviously a tier above his. Tim’s expression soured instantly. His eyes reddened, and he spoke in a soft, trembling voice designed to sound fragile. “I’m not trying to be difficult… but you did this on purpose, didn’t you? Standing there, looking exactly like me, dressed like that. It’s making me really uncomfortable.” His assistant immediately stepped into my space, glaring. “Are you blind? Tim told you to change.” Another assistant chimed in, her voice dripping with venom. “That suit is obviously a cheap knockoff. Tim’s wearing the official, unreleased line. How embarrassing to show up in a counterfeit just to clout-chase. And trying to copy his face? Pathetic.” I looked at her, then back at Tim. I had promised my friend I wouldn’t make a scene. “I’m just standing here with a coffee. How exactly am I in your way?” A tear escaped Tim’s eye and rolled down his cheek. “You see? Everyone thinks they can just walk over me…” I didn’t have the energy for this. I turned on my heel, intending to find a quieter corner of the venue. “Stop right there,” Tim called out behind me. I paused. “You aren’t leaving this room until you take that suit off.” I turned my head slightly. “No.” The greenroom went dead silent. Tim blinked, surprised by the resistance, then let out a sharp, mocking laugh. He pulled out his phone, set the volume to maximum, and dialed. The first call went to Cora Michell. She answered within three seconds. “Who is it, Tim? Give me a name. I’ll make sure they never find work in this city again.” The second call went to Fiona Fletcher. “Don’t cry, sweetie. Who’s bothering you? I’ll recast his role in my next feature by tonight.” The third call went to Rae Crawford. “Send me a photo of him. I’ll have the tabloids run the story as a front-page warning tomorrow morning.” The fourth call went to Victoria Coleman. “Don’t worry, Tim. We can hit them with copyright infringement, defamation, and emotional distress. My team will handle it.” Four calls. Four powerful women, treating him like a fragile glass doll. Tim hung up, tilting his chin up to look down his nose at me. “Now, are you going to change, or do we need to make this harder for you?” I kept my straw between my lips, barely able to contain my laughter. Cora? Three years ago, she was a nervous intern who couldn’t organize a digital file system without hyperventilating. I had built her career piece by piece. Fiona? The film that put her on the map was a script I spent weeks rewriting in a cabin upstate, using my own capital to secure her distribution when the studio threatened to pull the plug. Rae? My ex-girlfriend. When we broke up, she begged me to stay, and I ended up leaving her my entire public relations network as a cushion so she wouldn’t have to rebuild her career from scratch. And Victoria? My own little sister. I was the one who paid her law school tuition and helped her study by flashlight. I had been gone for two short years, and they had taken everything I left behind to raise a spoiled child as their personal king. And now, they were using my own tools to bury me. I took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll find another room. I don’t want to ruin the evening.” I began to walk toward the exit, but Tim wasn’t finished. “Who said you could leave?” His security guards immediately stepped in front of the door, blocking my path. “Tim told you to take off the suit,” his manager, a sharp-faced woman named Tamara, said as she walked over. She eyed me up and down with deep disdain. “This brand’s premier line doesn’t debut until tonight, and Tim is the sole global ambassador. What you’re wearing is either a cheap replica or it was stolen. You’re not just changing; you’re going to apologize.” The assistant smirked. “Make him get on his knees and apologize, Tim. People like this need to be put in their place.” Tim didn’t say anything, but the smug satisfaction on his face was answer enough. He just stood there, waiting for me to break. I remained still. “I’m not kneeling.” Tim’s smile faded. “Are you sure about that?” “Quite.” He gave a slight nod to the guards. The next second, two heavy hands gripped my shoulders, forcing me downward. I wrenched my body to the side, trying to break their grip, but the sheer weight of the two men pushed me toward the floor. In the scuffle, my leather shoulder bag was ripped from my arm, spilling my belongings across the polished concrete. My phone, my keys, my wallet—and an old, faded plastic security pass. The pass slid across the floor, stopping near the public relations director, a man named Franklin, who had just entered the room. He glanced down at the plastic card, and his face instantly lost all color. “Next Media Group?” he whispered. Tim frowned. “What is that?” Franklin’s voice was trembling. “Next Media… the shadow agency. They practically built the modern entertainment landscape. Our brand’s entire celebrity network was established because Next pulled the strings…” The whispers in the room shifted instantly. “Didn’t the CEO say a legendary executive was arriving tonight? Someone who demanded no special treatment?” “Could it be him?” The guards’ grip on my arms loosened slightly. Tamara, sensing the shift in the room, quickly pulled out her phone, her fingers flying across the screen. “Don’t let him fool you!” she cried, holding up her screen. “I just ran the business registration. The ultimate beneficial owner of Next Media is listed as ‘C. Coleman’—a woman! He’s just a guy carrying a dead executive’s old badge. He’s a fraud.” The tension in the room broke. The guards tightened their grip again, shoving me down. Tim let out a sigh of relief and smiled. “I knew it. A guy in a fake suit playing pretend.” He walked over, looked at the badge on the floor, and brought his heavy boot down on it, cracking the plastic. “Probably just some executive’s kept man, using a stolen pass to act tough.” With that single step, the entire room fell back into line behind Tim. “Imagine pretending to be a media mogul,” someone laughed. “No wonder he’s wearing a fake suit. The desperation is real.” “You’re too soft on him, Tim. People like this need a lesson.” The assistant turned to the guards. “He doesn’t want to kneel? Force him.” The guards shoved me down hard. My knees hit the cold floor with a dull thud, a sharp pain radiating up my legs. I let out a quiet grunt. Tim crouched down, bringing his face level with mine, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Hey, big shot. I thought you were some kind of industry legend. Why are you on your knees?” “Now, apologize, say ‘I’m a fraud,’ and maybe I’ll let you leave.” I grit my teeth and remained silent. I wasn’t afraid; I was holding back. This was my friend’s launch event, and I didn’t want to burn it to the ground. But Tim took my silence as submission. “Still quiet?” He stood up and glanced at Tamara. “Help him find his voice.” Tamara stepped forward. Before I could move, her hand whipped across my face. The sharp crack of the slap echoed through the dressing room. My head snapped to the side. Before I could recover, another blow landed on the other cheek. The heat radiated across my face, and I tasted the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. Something inside me snapped. I wrenched my arm free from the guard’s grip, driving my elbow back into Tamara’s ribs. As I scrambled to my feet to retaliate, the room erupted into chaos. In the scuffle, someone collided with Tim. He lost his footing, stumbled backward, and went over the edge of the decorative indoor water feature. A loud splash echoed through the room. When Tim dragged himself out of the shallow pool, soaking wet and shivering, a jagged piece of slate from the border had caught his cheek. A thin line of crimson was beginning to bead along his skin. The room fell into a terrified silence. Then, the screams started. “Tim’s face!” “He cut Tim’s face!” Tim touched his cheek, his fingers coming away red. The tears this time were real, born of pure panic. “My face… my face!” Tamara rushed forward, grabbing me by the collar and shoving me back down onto the floor. “Are you insane? Do you have any idea how much his face is insured for?” The assistant lunged in, landing two more heavy slaps across my face. “You are finished. Just wait until the directors get here. You’re going to lose everything.” I lay there on the cold floor, the taste of blood thick in my mouth, my left cheek swelling rapidly. But as I looked up at them, I couldn’t help but smile. “You really think you’re safe when those four women get here?” I whispered. Tamara let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “Safe? You’ve got it backward, sweetie. You think anyone cares about a nobody like you? Last year, a co-star accidentally scratched Tim’s neck during an action scene. Cora had him blacklisted from every major network within twelve hours.” She leaned down, her breath hot against my face. “When they see what you did to him, they won’t just sue you. They will destroy you.” Tim sat shivering by the water feature, a towel wrapped around his shoulders, his eyes filled with malice. “Just wait… you’re going to regret ever being born.” I rested my forehead against the cool concrete, watching the droplets of blood smear against the grey surface. I didn’t bother responding. Because through the heavy doors of the greenroom, I could already hear the sound of hurried, chaotic footsteps. They were here. The double doors were flung open, and the four of them rushed into the room. Cora hadn’t even finished putting on her coat; she was in a silk camisole, her forehead damp with sweat. Fiona’s signature scarf was askew, her heels clicking rapidly against the floor. Rae’s hair was a mess, her lipstick slightly smudged, clutching her car keys like a weapon. Victoria looked sharp in her tailored suit, but her silver brooch was pinned crookedly—a sure sign she had run from her office. The moment Tim saw them, his crying redoubled. He threw off the towel and ran toward them, presenting his bloody cheek. “Cora… Fiona… look what he did to me… he ruined my face…” Tamara rushed to support him. “Ms. Michell, Ms. Fletcher, this fraud broke into the VIP lounge using a fake Next badge. When we tried to remove him, he threw a tantrum and pushed Tim into the stone fountain!” The four women fixed their eyes on the thin red line on Tim’s cheek. Cora’s expression turned murderous. “Who did this?” Tamara pointed a finger directly at me. “Him.” Their gazes shifted slowly to where I lay on the floor, my face bruised, my collar torn, my hair falling over my eyes. Cora stepped forward, her voice freezing the air in the room. “Lift your head.” I didn’t move. Fiona joined her, her eyes cold. “Do you have any idea what his career is worth? Do you know what you’ve ruined?” Rae stood silently behind them, her gaze cold enough to kill. Victoria knelt down, her tone clinical and lethal. “I can draft the civil suit right now. You’ll be paying for this for the rest of your life. And I’ll make sure the criminal charges stick.” Tim sniffled behind them. “He said you’d all kneel to him… he’s a lunatic…” Cora’s jaw tightened. “I said, look at me.” Slowly, I pushed myself up and raised my head, letting the harsh vanity lights fall across my swollen, bloodied face. The four of them froze. It was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Cora’s eyes widened in sheer terror. Fiona’s hand remained suspended in mid-air. Rae’s fingers clamped so tightly around her car keys that her knuckles turned stark white. Victoria stayed frozen in her crouch, forgetting to stand. I looked at them through my swollen left eye and let out a soft, wet laugh. “Hey, Cora,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Fi. Rae. Hey, kiddo.” Four names. Names that had not been uttered in this industry for two long years. Cora’s face went entirely, horribly white.

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By the third year of my marriage to Christian, I had become the most reliable emotional specimen in his private psychiatric clinic. Three psychological evaluations a week. One deep hypnosis session a month. Christian told me it was all to cure my chronic insomnia. And I believed him. Without a single doubt. Until yesterday, when I woke up early from my trance and heard his voice drifting through the thin walls of the adjoining observation room. “Keep pushing her.” “The more authentic her breakdown, the better the desensitization therapy works for Callie.” The therapist hesitated, his voice tight. “But your wife is already showing signs of self-harm, Christian. If we keep going, she might not survive it.” There was a heavy, suffocating silence. Then, Christian spoke, his tone casual, almost detached. “Gwen is my wife.” “Helping me save the person I want to save is exactly what she’s supposed to do.” It was in that silent, freezing moment that the truth finally shattered me. All my agony, my sleepless nights, my panic attacks, my complete psychological collapses over the past three years— They were nothing but clinical data points. Harvested to cure his fragile, glass-doll childhood sweetheart. 1 When the doctor pushed the door open, I had already shut my eyes, forcing my breathing to remain slow and even. Christian must have assumed I was still deeply under. His footsteps on the linoleum floor were light, almost ghost-like. The cold, metallic electrode pads were pressed against my temples once more, their icy contact making me shudder inwardly. “Mr. Ward, perhaps we should stop here for today?” the doctor whispered, a tremor of hesitation in his voice. “Your wife’s wrist wound from last night hasn’t even begun to heal.” Through the slightly ajar door, Christian’s voice cut through the sterile air, cool and sharp. “She didn’t die, did she?” “Proceed with the schedule.” The doctor tried to advocate for me one last time. “But she lost a lot of blood last night, and the sedatives haven’t fully cleared her system. At least let her rest for a day.” I heard the dry rustle of paper as Christian flipped through my medical chart. His tone remained perfectly flat. “She’s survived much worse than this before.” “Gwen isn’t fragile.” “Gwen isn’t fragile.” That used to be his favorite way to praise me. When my stomach ulcers flared up so badly that I curled into a ball on the kitchen tile, he told me I wasn’t fragile. When I spent the entire night of my parents’ death anniversary staring at the ceiling, shaking with silent grief, he said I wasn’t fragile. Even when the deep hypnosis sessions left me dry-heaving over the toilet until my throat burned with bile, he still looked at me with that calm approval and whispered that I wasn’t fragile. But when Callie so much as winced during a routine blood draw, Christian would hold her hand, whispering softly, “Cry if it hurts, sweetie. Don’t hold it in. You don’t have to be strong for me.” Only now did I realize that “not fragile” wasn’t a compliment. It was his license to let me suffer. The room fell into a heavy silence. Lying back in the leather reclining chair, my fingers curled slowly into my palms, my short nails digging into my skin. The doctor, obeying his employer, finally flipped the switch. Through the noise-canceling headphones, the audio file I dreaded most began to play. The screeching of tires. The horrific tear of twisting metal. And then, my own hysterical, ragged screams. It was the recording of the car crash from three years ago. The crash that killed both of my parents. Christian had always known how deeply that night had scarred me. When I had my first severe panic attack on a stormy night during our first year together, I had locked myself in the closet, shaking uncontrollably. He had canceled an entire board meeting, pried open the closet door, pulled me into his arms, and kissed my forehead over and over. “Gwen, hold onto me if you’re scared,” he had whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I will never take your pain lightly. I’m going to help you heal. We’ll get through this together.” I didn’t know then that his way of “helping me heal” was to drag me back into that living nightmare day after day. Only to record my raw panic and slice it into therapy modules for Callie. My chest tightened, a suffocating pressure crushing my lungs as the heart rate monitor began to beep in sharp, frantic bursts. The doctor panicked. “Mr. Ward, your wife’s vitals are spiking! We have to stop!” The door to the observation room swung open. Christian stepped up to the side of my chair, looking down at me with cold, analytical eyes. His hand gripped my shoulder, firm and completely unyielding. “Gwen, breathe,” he commanded, his voice steady to the point of cruelty. “Don’t lose control.” “Don’t lose control.” His words to me were always commands. But then, a soft, dry cough echoed from the hallway outside. In an instant, his entire demeanor shifted. “Callie?” He spun around and rushed out of the room, completely ignoring how his abrupt movement tore one of the monitoring leads clean off my chest. “Are you alright? Did the alarm scare you?” A few moments later, he guided Callie into my room. She wore an oversized hospital gown that made her look even tinier, her face pale, her delicate fingers clutching at the sleeve of his designer suit. Christian leaned down, his voice dropping to a tender, soothing register. “Don’t worry, it was just the machine making noise. You’re safe. No one is going to force you to do anything.” Those words pierced my ears like a poisoned needle. Because ten minutes ago, he had looked at the doctor and said: “If Gwen refuses to cooperate, increase the dosage. Restrain her if necessary.” No one would ever force Callie. But I could be strapped down to a chair, plunged back into the worst day of my life, screaming until my vocal cords bled, only to be reduced to a sterile clinical annotation: “Subject’s panic response is highly authentic. High utility for modeling.” 2 When I opened my eyes, my tears had already soaked into my hair at my temples. Christian frowned slightly, pulling a tissue from the box to wipe my face. The gesture was practiced and gentle, but his voice was entirely hollow. “Another nightmare?” he asked. “You’re fine. The doctor is right here.” Suddenly, memory of last night flashed in my mind. After I sliced my wrist, blood had pooled across the bathroom floor. When Christian rushed home, his first instinct wasn’t to check the depth of my wound. Instead, he had looked up at the doctor standing by my side. “Did she have another episode? Did you manage to record the physiological onset?” The doctor’s silence had been painful to witness. Only then did Christian seem to remember I was a human being, leaning down to brush a stray lock of hair from my cheek. “Gwen, stop making a scene,” he whispered. “You’re going to frighten Callie.” And yet, when Callie sent him a single text in the middle of the night, he had abandoned my bedside instantly, throwing on his coat to rush to her. He had even grabbed the soothing chamomile and lavender herbal broth I had spent all evening brewing for myself. “Callie’s immune system is weak,” Christian had said as he walked out the door. “You can make another batch tomorrow.” The next morning, I saw that very thermos on Callie’s Instagram feed. Her caption read: “He said no matter how dark the night gets, he’ll always be the one to guide me home.” I stared up at Christian now, a sudden wave of physical nausea hitting me. How could he push me into the abyss with his own hands, and then, without missing a beat, ask if I was okay? Seeing me awake, Callie’s eyes immediately pooled with tears. “Gwen, I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, her voice trembling. “Is it because of me that you had to go through this again today?” Her tears spilled over, beautiful and delicate. Christian’s brow furrowed slightly as he reached out to steady her shoulder. “Don’t say that.” I stared at his hand resting on her arm. The very same hand that had just wiped away my tears. But his grip on her was so light, so protective, as if terrified she might break under his touch. “Christian,” I rasped, my throat raw. “Why does curing her illness require exploiting my pain?” His hand froze. Callie’s face drained of color instantly. “Gwen, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. Christian told me your biometric data was crucial for my therapy, but I really don’t want you to suffer because of me…” She apologized, yet her fingers tightened their grip on his sleeve, pulling him closer. Christian frowned at me, his eyes darkening. “Callie is already feeling incredibly guilty about this, Gwen. Don’t look at her like that.” The doctor lowered his gaze, his eyes flashing with a fleeting look of pity for me. Christian remained silent for a few seconds, as if weighing whether to keep up the lie. Ultimately, he chose clinical pragmatism. “Callie’s trauma triggers are nearly identical to yours,” he said calmly. “Your psychological responses provide the exact modeling data her treatment plan needs.” “Gwen, this isn’t abuse. It’s therapy.” I let out a dry, hollow laugh that tore at my throat. “Then what about me?” “Who is going to cure me?” Christian’s frown deepened, a flicker of genuine irritation crossing his face. “You’re already much more stable than she is.” “You have a family. You have our marriage. You have me.” “Callie has absolutely nothing. Why do you have to be so incredibly hostile?” Callie immediately grabbed his sleeve, weeping and shaking her head. “Christian, please, don’t argue with Gwen because of me. I really don’t mind. If Gwen doesn’t want to do this, I can stop the treatment. I don’t need to get better…” Christian pulled her behind him protectively. “No one is stopping your treatment,” he said, his voice dropping to a firm, unyielding register. When he turned back to me, his patience was completely gone. “Gwen, stop being childish.” “You’re just participating in a study. Nothing actual is going to happen to you.” “Callie has been ill for years, and we’re finally seeing a breakthrough. I won’t let you ruin her progress right now.” I stared at him, forcing out every syllable. “So my panic attacks, my sleepless nights, my bleeding wrists… to you, it’s all just ‘participation’?” He didn’t deny it. At that moment, the final shred of hope in my chest went completely cold. I reached down and ripped the IV needle straight out of the back of my hand. A bead of dark red blood welled up and trickled down my fingers. The doctor instinctively moved to help me, but I flinched away. Christian’s expression darkened. “Where do you think you’re going?” I held onto the edge of the treatment chair to steady myself, my voice as faint as a passing breeze. “Home.” “To pack my papers for the divorce.” My brother had already booked my flight. In three days, I would have my signed divorce papers in hand, and I would be flying to Boston. 3 Christian looked at me as if I had just told a particularly ridiculous joke. “Gwen, stop using divorce to threaten me.” “We both know you can’t survive without me.” And for a long time, I had believed that too. After my parents died, he was the one who carried me out of the psychiatric ward. When I was terrified of the dark, he kept every light in the house burning through the night. When the sound of screeching tires made me hyperventilate, he would cup his hands over my ears and whisper, “I’m here. I’m right here.” Back then, I truly believed he was my savior. It took me three years to realize that the lifeline he threw me could easily be twisted into a noose around my neck. I looked up at him and offered a quiet, peaceful smile. “Then consider it a threat.” Christian’s face hardened. He had likely never seen me like this before. In the past, whenever my panic attacks struck in the dead of night, I would cling to his sleeve and beg him not to leave. If he so much as knit his brow, I would immediately let go, terrified of being a burden. I had been so afraid of losing him. So afraid that I didn’t even dare to scream when I was in pain. But now, the only thing I felt was a desperate urge to get away. I dragged myself along the corridor, leaning against the wall for support. Just as I reached the exit, Callie’s soft, breathless voice echoed from behind. “Christian… my chest is so tight… I can’t breathe…” Christian spun around instantly. He strode past me, bending down to lift her into his arms. The movement was so practiced, so fluid, he must have done it a thousand times. I stood frozen, watching him carry Callie past me. The hem of her gown brushed against my skirt—a quiet, triumphant sweep. As Christian walked by, he didn’t even look at me. He only threw a single line over his shoulder. “Go home and calm down.” “And don’t ever let me hear you mention divorce again.” I watched his retreating back. A memory from six months ago flashed in my mind. I had suffered a severe seizure during a hypnosis session and crashed off the high treatment chair onto the floor. The panicked nurse had dialed his number, sobbing. When he finally arrived, his first words weren’t of concern. “Why wasn’t anyone watching her?” That day, I had split my forehead open, blood covering half my face. He hadn’t carried me. Instead, he had simply instructed the orderly to wheel me back to my room. Because Callie was scheduled for her first evaluation that afternoon, and he didn’t want her to be traumatized by the sight of blood. It turned out he knew exactly how to hold someone. It was just that no matter how hard I fell, I was never worth bending down for. I returned to the empty house alone. He had chosen this estate himself, nestled in the quiet of the hills because he knew I couldn’t stand loud noises. He had promised me that once I healed, we would plant a row of white camellias in the courtyard. But when I pushed the heavy iron gates open, the white camellias were gone. In their place stood rows of bright, towering sunflowers. Our housekeeper froze when she saw me standing in the driveway. “Ma’am… I didn’t expect you back so soon.” I stared at the blinding, aggressive yellow filling the yard, my voice barely a whisper. “Who ordered this?” The housekeeper lowered her head, avoiding my eyes. “Miss Callie mentioned that she’s spent too much time in sterile hospital rooms, and that sunflowers always cheer her up.” “Mr. Ward had the gardeners dig up the camellias yesterday.” A laugh bubbled up in my chest, bitter and hollow. I remembered standing before those young camellia bushes months ago, smiling as I asked Christian: “Do you think by the time they bloom, I’ll finally be okay?” He had stroked my hair gently and replied, “You will.” Now, the flowers hadn’t even had the chance to bloom before they were ripped out by the roots. I walked upstairs to gather my documents. But the moment I opened our bedroom door, my feet glued to the floor. Sitting on the nightstand was a strange, unfamiliar pill bottle. And right next to it was Callie’s soft cashmere scarf. The cloying, sweet scent of her perfume had already seeped deep into our sheets. I pulled open my closet, reaching for the small safe where I kept my papers. The security lockbox was gone. My passport, our marriage certificate, the heirloom my parents left me, and the visa documents I had prepared for Boston—all gone. I turned and ran back downstairs, confronting the housekeeper. “Where is my lockbox?” The woman’s face turned even paler. “Mr. Ward… Mr. Ward took it.” “He said… he was worried you’ve been emotionally unstable lately, and he didn’t want you doing anything reckless.” Standing in the foyer, a sudden, violent chill washed over me. He had blocked my exit before I even knew I wanted to run. My phone buzzed in my hand. It was Christian. His voice came through the receiver, calm and measured, as if we had spent the morning discussing nothing more than the weather. “Are you home?” I stared at the empty space in the closet. “Where are my documents, Christian?” A brief, heavy silence stretched over the line. “You’re not in the right headspace right now, Gwen. I’m keeping them safe for you temporarily.” “I won’t let you make a decision you’ll regret while you’re highly emotional.” My vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges. “Leaving you is the only decision I will never regret.” I heard him sigh, a sound of patronizing patience, as if dealing with a petulant child. “Stop this now.” “Callie had a rough afternoon, and I need to stay at the clinic with her tonight.” “Take your medication and go to sleep. I’ll come home tomorrow and we can talk like adults.” I ended the call and let my knees buckle, sinking slowly onto the cold hardwood floor. My stomach churned violently, and the bandage on my wrist began to bloom with fresh crimson. The housekeeper cried out, reaching for her phone to call an ambulance, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t.” I unlocked my phone and typed out a message to my brother, Declan. “Christian took my passport and documents.” “I need replacements.” Declan’s call came through almost instantly. His voice was cold as steel, vibrating with a quiet, lethal anger. “Gwen, don’t panic.” “I’m coming to get you tomorrow morning.” 4 Early the next morning, the electronic lock on the front door beeped. I expected Christian. But the person who walked in was Callie. She was wearing his black wool coat, her slender shoulders swallowed up by the heavy fabric. She was carrying a cardboard box. “Gwen.” “Christian asked me to come by and grab a few changes of clothes for him.” My eyes locked onto the coat she wore. It was a custom piece I had commissioned for Christian’s birthday last year. Inside the left cuff, I had personally embroidered a tiny, elegant “G.” He had held me close that night and whispered that having my initial right against his wrist made him feel like I was holding his hand all day. Now, it hung loosely off Callie’s frail frame. “Take what you need and leave,” I said, my voice dead. Callie walked into the walk-in closet, moving with an ease that suggested this was far from her first time here. She slid open the second drawer of the vanity, confidently retrieving the luxury watch Christian wore most often. Then she picked out a few of his tailored dress shirts. “How do you know where everything is?” I asked suddenly. Her hand paused over the drawer. She looked down, a small, subtle smile playing on her lips. “Christian told me.” “He said he hates it when people touch his things, but that I don’t count as ‘people.’” As if realizing she had crossed a line, she gasped softly and turned to look at me, wide-eyed. “Gwen, I didn’t mean it like that. Please don’t be angry.” I didn’t say a word. Her eyes drifted to the nightstand. Resting there was the only thing I had left of my parents—my father’s old pocket watch. I lunged forward, slamming my hand down over hers. “Don’t touch that.” Callie flinched back violently, tears welling up in her eyes in an instant. “I… I just saw it looked dusty and wanted to help you clean it…” “I said, do not touch it.” She bit her lower lip, her voice shrinking to a pathetic whisper. “Gwen, do you hate me that much?” “I really never wanted to take Christian away from you.” “He’s the one who said you could never survive without him. He said you’re just throwing a tantrum.” “He said once you calm down, you’ll come crawling right back to him anyway.” Every single word was like a needle. Tiny, but piercing straight into my heart. Before I could even open my mouth, she took a dramatic step backward. Her hip caught the edge of the nightstand. With a sharp clatter, the pocket watch was swept off the table and crashed onto the hardwood floor. “Crack.” The delicate glass casing, already fractured from the accident years ago, shattered completely. My mind went entirely blank. That pocket watch was the last physical connection I had to my father. On the night of the crash, his hand had been clamped around it. When the rescue team finally handed his personal effects to me, the metal casing was still stained with his dried blood. I fell to my knees, desperate to gather the pieces. But before my fingertips could touch the shattered glass, Callie burst into loud, hysterical tears. “I’m so sorry, Gwen! I didn’t mean to! I swear I didn’t mean to…” Urgent footsteps echoed from the hallway. Christian was back. He burst through the door, his eyes immediately landing on Callie, who was sobbing against the wall. Only then did his gaze drop to me, kneeling on the floor, bleeding from where my fingers had pressed into the broken glass of the watch. “What did you do to her this time?” The exact same accusation. The exact same script. I slowly lifted my head, my eyes locking onto his. “She broke my father’s watch.” Christian frowned, his eyes flicking to the shattered pieces on the floor for a fraction of a second. “It’s just an old watch.” “Callie didn’t do it on purpose. Stop terrifying her.” “It’s just an old watch.” I suddenly remembered the day of my father’s funeral. Christian had knelt beside me in the pouring rain, gently wiping the dirt off the metal casing of this very watch. He had looked into my eyes and promised: “Gwen, from now on, I will protect the things they left behind. I won’t let anyone touch them.” Now, the girl who broke it was cowering behind his back. And he called it “just an old watch.” I let out a soft laugh. But not a single tear fell. Callie whimpered, her hands clutching at him. “Christian, I really just wanted to help Gwen organize her things… She suddenly rushed at me, and I got so scared…” Christian pulled her close, his voice cold as ice. “Gwen, apologize to her.” “She suffers from severe trauma triggers. You shouldn’t be provoking her.” I looked up at him. My chest felt completely hollowed out, as if a vital organ had been ripped from my ribcage. So Callie’s triggers required the entire world to bend to her will. But my grief, my nightmares, my parents’ last memory—they were nothing but minor inconveniences in her treatment plan. I looked down at the shards in my hand. The sharp glass had sliced into my palm, dark red blood dripping onto the floorboards. But I didn’t let go. “Christian,” I whispered. “Is it true that as long as she cries, I am always the one in the wrong?” His eyes flickered, a sudden, fleeting moment of hesitation crossing his face. But Callie let out a fragile cough, and his focus snapped right back to her. “Stop being unreasonable.” I nodded slowly. And stood up. “Fine.” “I apologize.” A brief spark of triumph flashed in Callie’s eyes before she quickly lowered her head again. I walked over to her. I reached out and placed the shattered halves of the pocket watch into her open palm. “I’m sorry,” I said, enunciating every single word. “It’s too old anyway. I wouldn’t want it to dirty your hands.” Christian stared at me, his jaw clenched, as if he wanted to say something more. But Callie suddenly gasped, clutching her chest, and slumped limply into his arms. “Christian… I can’t… I can’t breathe…” His expression turned to pure panic. He swept her up into his arms in one motion. Before rushing out the door, he threw one last freezing glare at me. “Reflect on what you’ve done today, Gwen.” The heavy bedroom door slammed shut. The house finally fell into silence. Thirty minutes later, Declan arrived. When he saw the dried blood on my hand and my deathly pale face, his eyes went red with fury. But he didn’t ask a single question. He simply took off his heavy winter coat, wrapped it around my shoulders, and held me tight. “Gwen,” he whispered. “Let’s go home.” The car sped toward the private airfield. Before boarding, I turned back to look at the skyline of the city one last time. The city where I had spent three years of marriage, slowly allowing myself to be disassembled piece by piece. The cabin door slid shut. As the private jet taxied into the night sky, I finally closed my eyes. From this moment on, Christian could never trap me again.

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On the day of the career fair, I hired a divorced single mother. But the second she cleared her ninety-day probation, she slapped a maternity leave request on my desk. I stared at that crumpled piece of paper, my ears ringing. “During your interview, you told me you were divorced and just wanted a stable job to support your kid,” I said, my voice tight. “You said you had no plans to date or start a family anytime soon. Why did you lie to me?” She just rolled her eyes. “When opportunity knocks, you don’t ignore it. It’s not my fault. Besides, not everyone wants to be a lonely, single career-obsessed dog like you.” During the argument that followed, she shoved me down the stairwell. I ended up with a shattered leg. She didn’t even look back. She just walked away and immediately took her maternity leave. Her parting words? “If you don’t approve it, I’ll see you at the Department of Labor.” What she didn’t know was that I had already found out her divorce decree was a total forgery. Since she decided to play dirty, I was going to make sure she paid for every single cent she took from me. … The heat at the convention center that day was brutal. The air was a suffocating mix of body odor, cheap cologne, and the hot, metallic scent of freshly printed resumes. My head was pounding. After three hours of sitting at a cramped folding table, I had collected dozens of resumes. They fell into two categories: fresh college grads who thought they deserved a six-figure salary for showing up, or seasoned slackers who just wanted to punch a clock and coast. I was packing up my banner, ready to call it a day, when a quiet, hesitant voice spoke up behind me. “Excuse me… are you still hiring?” I turned around. Standing there was a woman in her mid-thirties. She looked polished, her makeup done with careful precision, holding a rolled-up resume in her hand. She wore a faded light-blue button-down shirt, neat jeans, and had her hair pulled back into a sensible bun. Her skin had a warm, healthy glow, and her eyes were bright. She looked sharp, capable. I gestured to the empty chair. “We are. Have a seat. Let me see your resume.” Her name was Meredith. Thirty-five. She had spent the last eight years managing client relations for a local building supply distributor. I flipped through her pages. “Why did you leave your last job?” She gave a soft, gentle smile, the faint crinkles at the corners of her eyes making her look incredibly approachable. “They relocated their operations out of state. I couldn’t move with them.” “Oh? Tied down here? Parents to look after?” “No,” she paused, reaching into her purse. She pulled out a document and slid it across the table. “I’m divorced. I have a seven-year-old boy. He’s in school here, and I’m his primary caregiver. I can’t just uproot him.” I glanced at the copy of her divorce decree. The photo on her ID attached to it showed a slightly thinner, less happy version of the woman sitting in front of me. My chest tightened with a sudden spark of hope. For a boutique agency like mine, our biggest fear was hiring young newlyweds who would inevitably go on maternity leave six months in. We simply didn’t have the budget or the staffing to absorb that kind of disruption. A divorced mother with a school-aged kid felt like the perfect solution. They were usually stable, motivated, and practical. I decided to lay my cards on the table. “Meredith, I’ll be honest with you. We’re a small firm, and every single person here has to carry their own weight. There’s no room for dead weight. What are your long-term plans? Are you looking to remarry, or maybe start a family again anytime soon?” She shook her head immediately, her expression earnest. “Monica, I completely understand. Honestly, with my situation and a young son, dating is the last thing on my mind. I just want a stable, nine-to-five job where I can do good work, earn enough to support the two of us, and be home in time for dinner. I promise you, my personal life won’t interfere with this job.” It was music to my ears. The position required constant client interaction. Consistency was everything. I couldn’t afford someone who needed a personal day every other week. Meredith seemed like an absolute godsend. I asked her a few technical questions about account management. Her answers were solid, her past campaign results impressive. She clearly knew her stuff. I made the decision right then and there. “Tell you what. We do a ninety-day probationary period at thirty-five hundred a month. Once you’re permanent, it bumps to forty-five hundred plus commission, with health insurance and a 401(k). If that works for you, you can start next Monday.” Her eyes lit up. She stood up, grasping my hand in a warm, firm grip. “Thank you so much, Monica. You won’t regret this. I won’t let you down.” Walking away from the convention center, I felt a warm glow of satisfaction. I felt like I’d done a good deed—helping a struggling single mom while securing a stellar employee. How could I have known I wasn’t hiring an asset? I was inviting a parasite into my business. And she was going to put me in a hospital bed. For the first month and a half, Meredith was flawless. She was the first one in and the last one out. Her assignments were completed ahead of schedule, requiring zero oversight. Our major clients raved about her responsiveness and warm demeanor. I congratulated myself daily on my keen eye for talent. Even Chelsea, our office manager, mentioned her in passing. “Meredith never goes out for lunch. She always brings a Tupperware from home and heats it up in the breakroom. She told me she’s saving up for her son’s soccer club.” Hearing that made me feel even more protective of her. When her three-month review came up, I officially brought her on board and voluntarily added an extra five hundred dollars to her base salary. “I want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself,” I told her. “Don’t burn the candle at both ends.” She looked deeply moved, her eyes shining with tears as she thanked me profusely, calling me her savior and promising her lifelong loyalty. But on her third day as a permanent employee, everything shattered. I was on my way out to pitch a major prospect when she intercepted me in the quiet back stairwell, shoving a piece of paper into my hand. I looked down at it. My brain went completely blank. It was a formal maternity leave request. She was four months pregnant. She was requesting one hundred and fifty-eight days of paid family leave, starting the following month. I stared at the crumpled paper, my fingers trembling slightly. I looked up at her, momentarily speechless. She stood there, perfectly composed, her hands lightly cradling her stomach. A faint, almost imperceptible smirk played on her lips. “Meredith… what is this?” My voice sounded hollow, distant. “What do you mean?” she asked casually. “During your interview, you told me you were a single mom. You said you had no plans to remarry or have more kids. It’s only been three months, and now you’re telling me you’re pregnant?” She shrugged, letting out a soft sigh. “Well, Monica, when the universe brings someone into your life, you can’t fight it. My new husband doesn’t care about my past. We got married recently, and well, this baby was a surprise. I can’t exactly undo it, can I?” “Then why didn’t you mention this during your onboarding?” My voice rose, the anger bubbling up. “You completely blindsided me! This role handles our three biggest accounts. If you go on leave next month, who is supposed to manage them? Do you have any idea what this does to a business our size?” “I didn’t know back then,” she lied, her tone suddenly shifting. The warm, gentle woman I thought I knew vanished, replaced by someone cold and combative. She rolled her eyes. “Besides, getting married and having a baby is completely legal. The law says you have to protect pregnant employees. Not everyone wants to spend their whole life single, lonely, and married to their job like you, Monica.” The sheer malice of her words knocked the breath out of me. I was nearing thirty. I had sacrificed my twenties, my social life, and my relationships to build this agency from scratch. To have my personal life weaponized against me by someone I had tried to help was a knife to the chest. I swallowed my anger, trying to maintain a professional boundary. “Meredith, even with legal protections, this is bad faith. You knew you were pregnant when you took this job. You lied to get hired.” “I didn’t lie about anything,” she snapped, stepping closer, her voice echoing in the concrete stairwell. “Prove it. You can’t. And let me tell you something, Monica—don’t even think about trying to push me out. I am a pregnant woman. You touch my job, and I’ll have the Department of Labor on your ass so fast your head will spin. You run a business; surely you’re smart enough to know the law.” I was shaking, my blood boiling. “You planned this. You calculated the exact days to clear probation so the company would be on the hook for your maternity leave and health insurance. Didn’t you?” “Think whatever you want. I did my job. I earned my pay,” she sneered. “Don’t touch me. I’m pregnant!” With a sudden, aggressive motion, she shoved her hands against my shoulders. I was wearing heels. My foot caught on the edge of the top step. I lost my balance and tumbled backward down the concrete flight of stairs. When I finally stopped rolling at the landing below, a blinding, white-hot pain shot through my left leg. I gasped, unable to draw air into my lungs. I looked up through the metal railings. The landing above was empty. Meredith was already gone. It was Tara, our receptionist, who found me ten minutes later, crying out in horror before dialing 911. The diagnosis at the ER was a clean tibia fracture. I needed surgery, a metal plate, and at least a month of strict bed rest. Lying in that sterile hospital bed, as the morphine began to wear off, the throbbing pain in my leg kept me wide awake. I was consumed by a cold, burning rage. I had tried to do the right thing. I had tried to support another woman, a single mother. In return, she had broken my leg, stolen my resources, and threatened me with a federal investigation. On the second day of my hospital stay, Chelsea came by with a stack of urgent documents for me to sign. Among them was a certified letter from Meredith. It was a fresh copy of her maternity leave request, sent via registered mail to create a paper trail. She was making her move. Sign it, or I’ll sue. Chelsea’s face was flushed with anger. “Monica, this is insane. We have to fight this. She lied to us, she hurt you, we can’t let her get away with this!” I looked at the crisp, clean paper in my hands. And then, slowly, I started to laugh. I had already filed a police report for assault the night before. But the stairwell was a notorious blind spot for our building’s security cameras. There were no witnesses to the actual push. Meredith had already told the officers it was a tragic accident—that I had simply tripped and fallen, and she had run to get help. Because she was pregnant, the police were hesitant to press charges without hard evidence. Chelsea looked at me, bewildered. “Monica? Are you okay? Did they give you too many painkillers?” “I’m perfectly fine,” I said, my voice dead calm. I picked up a pen and, without hesitation, signed my approval on the maternity leave line. “Give her the leave,” I told Chelsea. “Tell HR to process her full maternity benefits. Don’t skip a single penny.” “But why?” Chelsea looked horrified. “Why are we enabling her?” “Because,” I murmured, reaching under my pillow to pull out a manila folder. I slid a photocopied document toward her. “I want you to look at this.” Chelsea took it, her eyes widening as she scanned the page. “Is this… Meredith’s divorce decree? What about it?” When I first reviewed her onboarding paperwork, I had noticed something slightly off about the physical copy of the decree she provided. The paper stock was cheap, and the court’s raised seal looked incredibly flat, almost printed on. At the time, I had ignored it. I figured she had lost her original copy during a messy split and used a high-quality reproduction. I didn’t want to make a struggling mom’s life harder, so I just quietly kept a copy in my private files and let it go. Now, I realized she hadn’t lost her original decree. She had never divorced her husband in the first place. And luckily for me, I had kept the evidence. “And look at this,” I said, pulling up a text chain on my phone. “My friend runs a boutique employment law firm. Meredith actually consulted him a few months ago under a fake name, asking if a company could fire a woman who hid her pregnancy during hiring, and what kind of benefits she could legally squeeze out of them.” Chelsea’s hands started to shake. “This is premeditated. She planned the entire thing.” “Exactly,” I cold-smiled. “I had a private investigator look into her home address yesterday. She and her husband are very much together. They wanted a second child, but her previous company didn’t offer paid family leave. So, she came up with this scheme: fake a divorce to look like a safe, long-term hire, hide the pregnancy until she cleared probation, and let a new company foot the bill for her delivery and recovery. It had nothing to do with ‘destiny’ or a ‘new husband.’ It was a calculated corporate scam.” She had targeted a small business because she knew we lacked a massive legal department to fight back. She assumed the threat of a Department of Labor investigation would scare me into submission. But she made one critical mistake. She assumed I was stupid. “What’s the plan, Monica?” Chelsea asked, her voice dropping to a whisper, a spark of anticipation in her eyes. “Do we go straight to the police with the forgery?” I adjusted the heavy cast on my leg, grimacing slightly at the dull ache. “No. Not yet. Let her think she won. If we move too fast, she’ll play the victim to the local media, and our agency’s reputation will take the hit. We wait until she’s fully committed. We let her take the leave first.” I needed to secure our assets. “Go back to the office,” I instructed Chelsea. “Reassign her three major accounts to Hannah immediately. Tell them Meredith had a sudden medical emergency. Lock Meredith out of the shared drive. Change the passwords. I want her completely cut off from our data before she realizes what’s happening.” “Got it,” Chelsea nodded. “What about her personal desk? It’s locked.” I smiled. “Call a locksmith. Tell them we need to reclaim company property. Pack up her personal things, catalog them carefully, and ship them to her house. If she complains, tell her I authorized it. She can come talk to me in my hospital bed if she has a problem.” Chelsea grinned, a look of pure satisfaction on her face, and left to execute the plan. Over the next two weeks, while resting in my hospital room, I quietly built my case. I obtained certified records from the county clerk confirming Meredith’s marriage was fully intact. I spoke with her former employer. It turned out she had tried the same exact stunt with them. When they discovered her pregnancy, they offered her a choice: take a demotion to a non-client-facing role with a pay cut, or resign. She chose to resign and took her forged paperwork to me. I looked at the complete dossier of evidence on my bedside table and smiled. Meredith’s little house of cards was about to come crashing down.

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Five years of keeping our relationship a secret, and it all came down to my left foot stepping across the threshold first. Jackie had shut down again. He slammed the door in my face, leaving me standing in the driveway, breathing in the acrid scent of his Porsche’s exhaust fumes. I let out a tired sigh, pulled out my phone, and added a new entry to my Notes app: [Never step out with the left foot first. A notification flashed at the top of the screen: [Notes storage limit reached. I scrolled down. It was an endless, suffocating wall of text—thousands of entries, all of them Jackie’s “rules.” He was on the spectrum, diagnosed with Asperger’s years ago. He didn’t know how to communicate, let alone express his emotions. His only language was cold, stony silence, leaving me to guess exactly what had triggered his displeasure this time. By the time I rushed into the office parking lot, breathless and disheveled, I saw them. Amber, his newly hired secretary, was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. They were laughing, batting playfully at each other. My heart seized, a panic-driven alarm blaring in my chest as I watched them. Flirting in the company parking lot? Forbidden. Eating in Jackie’s car? Forbidden. Spraying perfume inside his vehicle? An absolute crime. I waited, heart in my throat, expecting Jackie to snap at her, to hand down one of his clinical, devastating reprimands. Then, she opened the door and hopped down. Her left foot hit the pavement first. Instead of flinching, Jackie reached out, his face softening into a look of pure, undivided adoration as he caught her hand. Somewhere deep inside me, a quiet, vital structure collapsed. It turned out his diagnosis wasn’t a cage that kept the world out. It was a cage he built only for me. I was the only one trapped in it. … Right after HR approved my sudden request for a personal day, my phone buzzed. Predictably, it was a text from Jackie. [?] It took me less than a second to translate it. He was demanding to know why I wasn’t at my desk. In the past, a text like that would have sent me into a tailspin. I would have frantically typed out a ten-paragraph essay explaining whatever unavoidable emergency had kept me away, begging for his understanding. But now, the image of him holding Amber as if she were made of spun gold flashed behind my eyelids. A profound, bone-deep exhaustion settled over me. I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to explain. [I don’t feel like going.] A heavy, eerie silence followed. He didn’t reply. I sat in a quiet coffee shop downtown, aimlessly stirring my latte. My mind drifted back to the office, imagining Jackie’s current state. If I failed to deliver his morning iced Americano—exactly three pumps of syrup, no milk—by 8:00 AM, he would punish me with a day of absolute silence, forcing me to play a guessing game of what I’d done wrong. It wouldn’t end until I humbled myself, apologizing repeatedly for my incompetence. Or if his coffee mug was placed even slightly off-center on his mahogany desk, he would stare at it, rigid as a marble statue, until I adjusted it to the millimeter. Only then would he begin his workday. He had a million silent ways to torment me, keeping me in a constant state of hypervigilant anxiety. The alternative was an endless, freezing cold war that eroded my sanity. My phone lit up with a text from a coworker, looking for office gossip. Where are you today?] I typed a brief reply: [Handling some personal things.] Seconds later, she sent over a video file. You need to see this. Mr. Keller and the new secretary are practically glowing. Everyone on the floor is betting they’re sleeping together!] I tapped the video. Amber was sitting directly on Jackie’s immaculate mahogany desk, her legs swinging carelessly. She wasn’t doing any work; instead, she was casually touching up her makeup. Jackie was holding a compact mirror for her, his expression a mix of mock exasperation and tender indulgence. “Does this blush look better, or the lighter one?” she asked, tilting her head. “The lighter one,” he murmured. “What about the lipstick? This nude or the brighter coral?” “The coral suits you better.” On the desk, a spilled coffee was slowly seeping into a stack of quarterly reports. The Jackie I knew would have had an absolute breakdown over a single stray drop of liquid. But now, he didn’t even glance at it. His eyes were locked on her, as if she were the only thing in his universe. My chest tightened. The sensation was bitter, far worse than the cold brew sitting untouched in front of me. I remembered trying to tease him once, years ago, holding up two lipstick shades. He had immediately soured, his face hardening with irritation. “Why do you insist on testing me? You know my diagnosis makes it difficult to process subtle color variations. It’s exhausting.” Then he added, with cold detachment, “And honestly, Natalie, beautiful people look good in anything. If someone isn’t naturally striking, makeup isn’t going to save them.” I had stared at my plain, ordinary reflection in the mirror, burning with humiliation. I never asked him about colors again. It turned out he didn’t have trouble seeing the difference. He just didn’t care to see it on me. The video ended, leaving my hollow expression reflected in the dark screen. Lost in thought, I typed out a reply without thinking: [They look sweet together. Amber and Jackie make a good match.] Within seconds, my phone began vibrating violently. A barrage of question marks flooded the screen. [?] [Natalie, what are you talking about?] [Delete that right now! Did you mean to send that to a private chat?] My heart sank. I had posted the reply in the main company Slack channel instead of my private message with my coworker. Before my trembling fingers could hit “delete,” Amber sent a voice note, her voice trembling with soft, performative tears. “Natalie, I don’t appreciate you twisting my professional relationship with Mr. Keller like this. Our employee handbook strictly prohibits office romances. I would never do something so inappropriate!” I let out a dry, bitter laugh. Her words were a thinly veiled jab at my own five-year secret relationship with Jackie. For five years, Jackie had insisted that a public relationship between a CEO and an administrative assistant would ruin the company’s reputation. So, we stayed hidden. I worked a quiet, low-level desk job, though he frequently summoned me to his top-floor office. Once or twice, a colleague had walked in on a lingering touch or a shared glance, but Jackie would quickly and silently pull away. Rumors swirled, of course, but I never confirmed them. Jackie ignored the gossip, and the office settled into a quiet, unspoken understanding. Until Amber arrived. Three weeks ago, she had burst into his office without knocking, catching Jackie with his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. It was the first time in five years I saw him panic. He pushed me away so violently that I slipped and fell onto the hardwood floor. Looking at the startled young girl, he stammered, “There’s nothing between us. It’s not what it looks like.” Amber had fled the room like a frightened rabbit. From that day on, Jackie never called me to his office again. The very next morning, he promoted Amber—who had only been an intern for three days—to be his personal executive assistant. He even had HR release a company-wide memo clarifying that he and I shared no personal ties whatsoever. Looking back, that was the moment his heart had shifted. I didn’t try to defend myself on Slack. I simply typed: [I’m sorry.] A second later, Jackie—who had never once posted in the general company channel—replied, tagging her. [@Amber Don’t worry. You are my exception.] The channel erupted. The virtual chatter was deafening. [Is this an official announcement?] [Oh my god, this is literally a romance novel come to life.] [The ice-king CEO falling for the clumsy intern? I’m screaming.] I quietly closed the application, a profound sadness settling deep in my bones. All of Jackie’s rigid, unbendable rules could be shattered for the right person. That person just wasn’t me. I opened my personal email and searched for an old message buried in my archive. It was an offer letter from a prestigious design firm in London, sent six months ago. At the time, my entire existence had revolved around Jackie, so I had politely declined, holding onto the hope of a future with him. Now, I read through the terms, took a deep breath, and hit reply. I accepted the position. [Jackie, I am officially opting out of your double standards.] To ensure a clean break, I spent the next few days working late, wrapping up my remaining projects. It was 3:00 AM when I finally closed my laptop and stretched my aching back, only to find Jackie standing in the doorway of my cubicle, his face cast in shadow. I packed my bag, intending to brush past him, but he stepped sideways, blocking my path. He kept his eyes lowered, a familiar tell that he was harboring a deep, silent anger. I knew exactly what he wanted to ask. “It was an accident,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “I meant to send it to a coworker, not the general channel.” His jaw tightened, disbelief rolling off him in waves. “That’s all you have to say?” The realization hit me slowly, a cold splash of water. He wasn’t here because he was worried about me. He was here to defend his new muse. I glanced past his shoulder toward the glass doors of the lobby. Down in the driveway, his black Porsche was idling. Amber was sitting in the passenger seat, her eyes red and puffy, looking like a victim in need of saving. I had never experienced that kind of protective instinct from him. On our first anniversary, after weeks of begging, he had finally agreed to take me to an upscale French bistro downtown. While idling at a red light, he spotted someone who looked like an assistant manager from our firm crossing the street. Without a word, he grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down onto the floorboards, pinning me there until the light turned green. By the time he let me up, I was gasping for air, my face flushed purple. [“Just deal with it,” he had snapped, straightening his tie. “What would people think if they saw us? I have a reputation to protect.”] Yet, for Amber, that precious reputation was discarded without a second thought. I stared down at the tips of my shoes, letting out a soft sigh. “What do you want from me, Jackie? I said you two make a good match. That’s hardly an insult.” It was a cruel irony. She had stepped into my relationship, and yet I was the one forced to offer blessings. I knew better than to expect Jackie to care about my hurt. A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes, gone as quickly as it came. He cleared his throat. “You need to apologize to Amber. You embarrassed her.” Before I could reply, Amber fluttered into the room like a delicate butterfly, wrapping her arm around his. “It’s my fault, Jackie,” she whimpered, her voice sweet and tremulous. “I shouldn’t have confronted Natalie in the channel. I know my own heart is pure, so I shouldn’t let these things get to me.” Her lips formed a small, apologetic pout, but her eyes gleamed with pure triumph. Jackie pulled her behind him protectively, his tone instantly shifting to soft reassurance. “Don’t apologize, Amber. She owes you one. She’s just bitter because she can’t stand seeing you succeed.” He glared back at me, his voice hardening. “To project your own pathetic insecurities onto an innocent girl… it’s disgusting, Natalie.” Each word felt like a clinical diagnosis of my moral failings, spoken as if I were a common criminal. The sheer exhaustion of the late hour and the humiliation bled together into a dull ache in my temples. I couldn’t fight anymore. I nodded, offering a hollow, mechanical apology. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, bowing my head slightly. “My hand slipped.” As I bent forward, a single, hot tear escaped, blurring my vision. Five years of devotion, reduced to this humiliating display. Jackie stood with his arms crossed, watching me closely before finally sighing. “I’ll let it slide this once. But if you disrupt the workplace again, you’ll be suspended.” I gave a quiet nod. Jackie blinked, clearly taken aback by my compliance. It was a stark departure from the woman I used to be—the one who would cry, scream, and beg for a scrap of affection whenever she felt him slipping away. He wasn’t prepared for this silent, calm version of me, standing by as he openly championed another woman. His throat worked, as if he wanted to say something more, but Amber pulled at his sleeve. “Jackie, we’re going to be late! You promised you’d take me to that gallery opening downtown!” The tension left his face instantly, replaced by a soft smile. “Right. Let’s go.” I watched them walk away, hand in hand. I walked home alone in the humid Seattle night, the sticky air clinging to my skin. But inside, I felt entirely hollow, cold as a tomb. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an Instagram notification. Amber had posted a photo carousel and tagged me. The photos showed the two of them at the exhibition. Jackie, usually so stoic and unresponsive, was leaning close to her, gesturing toward a painting with animated interest. They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking like a perfect, stylized couple in a high-fashion magazine. The caption read: [No matter how much negativity comes my way, I’m keeping my head high! So lucky to have a boss who always has my back.] Jackie had liked the post instantly, leaving a row of supportive emojis. I let out a dry laugh and left a comment of my own: [Great attitude. Incredible audacity, too.] Almost immediately, a text from Jackie popped up. [Clearly, you haven’t learned your lesson. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. Stay home and think about your behavior.] I didn’t bother replying. Instead, I opened an airline app and booked a one-way ticket to London for three days later. When the confirmation screen appeared, a massive weight lifted from my chest. [Jackie, I’m never coming back to that office. And I won’t be standing in the way of your precious Amber ever again.] Jackie didn’t come home that night. I was grateful for the quiet. I spent the evening packing my life into three large suitcases. Around midnight, a former colleague sent me a link to a TikTok account, urging me to look. The handle was @Insomniac_Amber. It was a dedicated couple’s vlog documenting a “secret office romance.” The videos were filled with snippets of daily life with her “CEO boyfriend.” Though his face was kept out of frame, I immediately recognized the broad shoulders, the tailored suits, and the small dark mole on the back of his neck. It was Jackie. The comments section was flooded with envious followers. One user asked how she managed to land a literal CEO. Amber had pinned her reply: [Honestly, I liked him from day one! He had this super plain administrative girl always hanging around him back then, but she wasn’t even in my league, so I just went for it!] Another comment read: [He told me they were just strictly professional, even after I saw them together once. But honestly? If I want something, I take it.] There was no denying who she was talking about. Every sweet, romantic gesture Jackie performed in those videos—the gentle hand-holding, the surprise gifts—were things he had denied me for five years, claiming they triggered his sensory issues. My colleague messaged me: [So you and Jackie were actually together! She literally stole him from under your nose. This is sick.] I typed back calmly: [It’s fine. It’s in the past now. Let them have each other.] The next afternoon, I walked into the HR office to submit my resignation. The HR director stared at the document, her mouth falling open. “Natalie, you’re resigning? Does Jackie know about this? Let me give him a call.” “No, wait—” I started, but she was already dialing. “Jackie, hi. I have Natalie in my office submitting her resignation, and I wanted to check if you had authorized—” Before she could finish, Jackie’s voice cut through the speaker, sharp and impatient. “She’s suspended. Whatever she does from now on is none of my concern. Let her go.”] In the background, I heard Amber’s soft, giggling voice before the line went dead. The HR director looked at me with deep embarrassment. I simply smiled and shrugged. It didn’t matter what he thought. As long as I was free, his indifference was a blessing. With the paperwork finalized, a profound sense of relief washed over me. I went back to my desk to pack up my personal belongings. The office was quiet, though I could feel the weight of a dozen pitying stares. Whispers traveled across the cubicles about Amber’s viral videos and how she was already landing brand sponsorships. “Poor Natalie,” someone whispered near the water cooler. “She lost her man, her job, and her dignity all at once.” I ignored them, snapping my storage box shut. Just as I was about to leave, my phone buzzed with a text from Jackie. [Pick up that brand of lavender diffuser oil from the boutique downtown and bring it to the apartment. I need it.] A dry chuckle escaped my lips. It was a chore he had assigned me a thousand times before. Whenever Amber wanted to go shopping, he would claim he needed to “clear his mind” and send me on errands. When she wanted to visit a museum, he would call it a “research trip.” When they traveled, he called it “business.” And like a fool, I had believed him every single time. Now, the transparent nature of his lies was glaring. I decided to buy the oil, wanting to leave with absolutely no loose ends. By the time I unlocked the door to our shared apartment, exhaustion settling deep in my bones, I froze. Jackie and Amber were wrapped around each other in the living room, Amber wearing nothing but one of Jackie’s oversized white shirts. Jackie pushed her away instantly, his posture stiffening as he scrambled for an explanation. “It’s not what you think. Amber’s feet were sore from walking all day. I brought her here to run a bath and help her relax.” I didn’t say a word. I simply placed the diffuser oil on the entryway table and took a step back, signaling that my duty was done. Amber, however, put on a helpless pout. “Natalie, could you be a dear and light it for me? I’m absolutely terrified of lighters.” I suppressed a sigh, picked up the matches from the console table, and struck one. I leaned forward to light the wick. In the flickering glow, I saw the cold, calculated look in Amber’s eyes. Before I could pull away, she reached out, feigning a sudden start, and knocked the lit match and the highly flammable alcohol-based oil directly into my face. The liquid caught instantly. Pain exploded across my cheek, and the smell of burning hair filled the room. “Help me!” I screamed, thrashing wildly as I tried to smother the flames on my face and shoulder. “Jackie, help!” But Jackie didn’t move toward me. Instead, his first instinct was to pull Amber into his arms, covering her eyes. “Don’t look, Amber. I’ve got you. Let’s get out of here.” He scooped her up and rushed out the front door toward the elevator, leaving me alone in the burning room. As the heavy door swung shut, his muffled voice echoed through the hallway: “Just wait for me, Natalie! I’ll be right back. Amber has trauma related to fire…” [Wait for me.] It was the phrase that had defined my last five years, and once again, he didn’t look back. Through the open door, I watched the elevator indicator lights count down. In sheer desperation, I dragged myself into the bathroom and plunged my head and shoulders into the filled bathtub. When I finally broke the surface, gasping for air, the apartment was thick with black smoke. My phone, sitting on the counter, buzzed. [Amber is severely shaken up. I’m taking her to the ER. Clean up the mess.] A hollow, broken laugh escaped my throat. I should have known. In Jackie’s clinical, orderly world, there was only room for Amber now. The room began to spin, the smoke filling my lungs until my vision faded into black. When I finally opened my eyes, the sterile, blinding whiteness of a hospital room made me wince. I tried to move, but a sharp pain flared across my face and arm. “Oh, thank god, Natalie. You’re awake. You gave us a terrible scare!” I turned my head slowly to see Mr. Hogan, our building’s property manager, sitting by my bedside, his face etched with worry. “Did… did you bring me here?” my voice was raspy, barely a whisper. “Yes,” he said, patting my hand gently. “The fire caught the living room curtains, and the smoke detectors went off. I banged on your door, but when there was no answer, I had to call 911. The firefighters had to break the door down. You were nearly gone, Natalie.” A cold shudder ran through me. If Mr. Hogan hadn’t acted quickly, I would have died in that apartment. “The doctors said you had severe smoke inhalation and minor burns,” he continued quietly. “They needed a family signature for an emergency procedure. I tried calling Jackie repeatedly, but he kept declining the calls. In the end, I had to sign the paperwork myself as the building representative.” Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. “Thank you. I… I don’t know how to repay you.” A near-stranger had saved my life and stayed by my side, while the man I loved for five years had actively ignored my life-threatening emergency. Mr. Hogan’s phone rang, cutting through the quiet room. He answered it quickly, putting it on speaker. “What is it now?” Jackie’s voice was sharp, dripping with annoyance. “Jackie, I finally got through,” Mr. Hogan said urgently. “Natalie was rushed to the hospital. She was unconscious from smoke inhalation. You need to get down here.” There was a long pause on the other end, followed by a heavy, irritated sigh. “Natalie, is this your idea of a joke? I took Amber to the clinic because she was traumatized. Is your jealousy so pathetic that you have to pay the property manager to lie to me?” “Jackie, this is serious—” “There was barely a spark when I left,” Jackie interrupted coldly. “I’ll be home in a few hours. Stop throwing tantrums.” The line went dead. Mr. Hogan stared at his phone, his face red with embarrassment. “It’s fine,” I said, offering him a weak, reassuring smile. “He’s not coming. I’ll handle the discharge papers myself once the doctors clear me.” He gave me a sympathetic look, checked on my vitals, and quietly excused himself. Left alone, I scrolled through my phone. An algorithm-driven notification popped up. It was Amber’s TikTok. Her latest video, captioned Late-night clinic run with my protective CEO, had already gained over a million likes. The comments were filled with adoration. [He literally carried her in his arms!] [This is the sweetest thing ever.] In the comments, sleuths had already uncovered his identity. Wait, isn’t that Jackie Keller, the tech mogul from Seattle?] The internet was in a frenzy. A local business blog had managed to catch Jackie outside his office that morning, asking about the viral rumors. In the video clip, Jackie actually smiled at the camera—a rare, relaxed expression. “We’re just focused on keeping her happy,” he said smoothly. “She likes sharing her life, and I’m happy to support her.” The fan accounts were losing their minds. My heart is melting! They are end-game.] I stared at the screen, a cold detachment washing over me. I left a simple, three-word comment under the video: [Is that so?] Within minutes, my phone vibrated with a text from Jackie. [What is wrong with you, Natalie? Are you trying to invite a hate mob to Amber’s page? She’s fragile right now after what happened with the fire. Stop trying to ruin her happiness with your petty games.] I let out a dry, silent laugh. She was “fragile” from seeing a match lit, while I was lying in a hospital bed with second-degree burns and damaged lungs. I didn’t reply. I had nothing left to say to him. When several hours passed without a response from me, his tone shifted to a desperate, impatient compromise. [Look, I apologize if I was harsh. Stop ignoring me. I’ll come by the apartment tonight and we can figure out how to explain this online.] [Amber is just trying to build her brand to help pay off some family debt. She asked me to play along for her vlog. It’s just content. We aren’t actually together. If you can just cooperate and be sensible, we can go back to how things were.] I actually laughed out loud this time, coughing slightly as my damaged lungs protested. He truly believed he was doing me a favor, that I would gladly accept being his secret, obedient shadow while another woman claimed him in public. I typed two words: [No thanks.] Then, I blocked his number. If they loved attention so much, it was time to give them exactly what they wanted. Once I was discharged, I returned to the empty apartment, packed my laptop, and spent the night compiling a meticulous Google Slides deck. It contained timestamps, texts, flight records, and photos spanning five years. I created an undeniable timeline of our relationship, showing exactly when Amber had entered the picture. I sent the entire file to a couple of major internet culture reporters and drama channels, checked in for my flight, and walked away without looking back.

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My parents drove three hours to spend Thanksgiving with us. I welcomed them at the door, my heart full of warmth, only for my wife, Beth, to greet them with a polite, distant, “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Shepard.” My parents’ joyful smiles instantly froze. I couldn’t even count how many times we had stood in this exact, suffocating silence. We had been married for five years, and in all that time, she had only called them “Mom” and “Dad” once. That was during our wedding vows, when the cameras were rolling and the pressure was on. After that, she either avoided addressing them altogether or fell back on those stiff, formal titles. Beth offered a weak, apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, Jackie. It’s just a habit. I keep forgetting to adjust.” My smile faded. She had called her ex-husband’s parents “Mom” and “Dad” for three years. We had been married for five, and she still couldn’t accept my family. For the past three years, she had continued to look after her ex-husband’s parents. She visited them, called them her real family, and treated them with a warmth she never showed my parents. She constantly “forgot” my parents’ dietary restrictions, buying them expensive seafood dinners they couldn’t eat because of their allergies. And whenever she gave my parents gifts, they were always cheap, thoughtless afterthoughts—often duplicates of the high-end presents she carefully curated for her ex’s family. My mother swallowed her disappointment, trying to rescue the heavy atmosphere. She lifted an insulated carrier. “It’s okay, sweetie. Look, I made your favorite homemade pumpkin rolls and kept them warm the whole drive. I made sure to bring the flavors both of you love.” I reached out and gently took my mother’s hand. No. I wasn’t going to let it go this time. … Beth assumed the tension would blow over, just like it always did. She relaxed, turning on her heel to head to the living room to watch TV. I stepped in front of her, blocking her path. I needed an answer. “Is it really that hard for you to call them Mom and Dad?” I asked, my voice flat. Beth’s brows knit together. Perhaps she wanted to avoid a scene in front of my parents, or perhaps she felt a fleeting pang of guilt. With agonizing effort, she looked at my parents and forced out, “Mom… Dad.” It sounded hollow. Empty. When you haven’t actually accepted someone into your heart, calling them your parents feels like a performance. It makes you feel like a fraud. Seeing the look on my face, Beth softened her tone. “Jackie, I honestly just didn’t think. It was a slip of the tongue.” An endless cycle of apologies, with zero change. What was the point of an apology like that? My mind drifted back to our wedding day. During the family reception, when it was time to toast our parents, Beth had suddenly gone rigid. I didn’t know what she was thinking then. I only remembered how eagerly I had knelt before her parents, handing them their glasses and calling them Mom and Dad with a genuine smile. But when Beth held the glass out to my parents, she hesitated for what felt like an eternity. When she finally spoke, the words were a barely audible whisper. Even then, she had to fight herself to say it. She had never truly accepted my parents as her family. To this day, her phone didn’t even have them saved under names—just their bare phone numbers. Whenever my mother called her, Beth never picked up. If I asked, she was always “too busy.” If I pressed further, she claimed she thought it was a spam call. They say a daughter-in-law is supposed to be like a second daughter. But to Beth, my parents ranked lower than the local delivery guy. My family had a massive group chat on iMessage. It was a typical close-knit family thread where we shared daily updates, planned holidays, and kept in touch. I had invited her to join dozens of times. She always found a way to ignore the invite. “Oh, I forgot. Send it again, Jackie,” she would say. But when I sent it again, she would let the invitation expire. Sometimes my aunts and uncles would ask me, “Why isn’t Beth in the family chat?” I never knew what to say. I would swallow my embarrassment and lie, telling them she was buried under work and would join next time. But the truth was simple. She didn’t want to be a part of my family. She had already chosen her family long ago, and she had no intention of severing those ties, even after her divorce. A sudden, sharp sting pricked the corners of my eyes. Some things should have been obvious to me a long time ago. My parents stayed for barely an hour before quietly making their excuses to leave, squeezing my shoulder and telling me to take care of myself. After they left, I sent Beth one more invitation to the family group chat. Twenty-four hours went by. The invitation remained pending. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I watched her phone screen light up on the nightstand. I picked it up and bypassed the lock screen. Pinned to the top of her messages were three group chats. One was with her own parents. The other was with her ex-husband, Derek, and his parents. The messages in that chat jumped constantly, filled with inside jokes, photos, and casual updates. They bantered and laughed as if they were still a perfect, unbroken family. I lay awake in the dark for the rest of the night. Two weeks later, we attended a family dinner at her parents’ house. The moment I saw her mother and father, I smiled politely and said, “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Lawson.” I watched the color drain from Beth’s face, inch by inch. The moment we stepped out of her parents’ house and got into the car, she exploded. “Did you really have to do that?” she yelled, her chest heaving with rage. “I made a simple mistake with your parents, and you retaliated by humiliating mine? Did you even consider how they would feel?” I wrenched my hands free from her grip, my skin red where she had grabbed me. “Yes, I had to! If you’re so worried about your parents’ feelings, what about mine? What about my parents? I gave you five years, Beth. Five years. Not five days, not five weeks, not five months.” Those excuses of hers were a joke, and she was the only one buying them. She wasn’t stupid. Nobody “forgets” who their in-laws are for half a decade. In the middle of our shouting match, Beth’s phone rang loudly. Instantly, her expression transformed. The anger vanished, replaced by an urgent, tender concern. She swiped the screen and answered with practiced warmth. “Mom? What’s wrong?” The voice on the other end didn’t belong to her mother. It was Derek’s mother. Beth nodded rapidly, her face pale. “Don’t worry, I’m coming right now. No, it’s no trouble at all. Your emergencies are my emergencies.” Without a single glance at me, completely ignoring the fight we were in the middle of, she turned and walked away to hail a cab. I stood under the streetlights, my fingernails biting deep into my palms. Beth always put them first. Our holidays were constantly interrupted, our plans canceled, our lives put on hold for whatever minor crisis Derek’s family was having. Even during our most intimate moments, she would ruin it. Once, right in the middle of making love, she had abruptly pulled away and sat up. “I have to go. Mom and Dad need me. Something happened.” I had sat there in our dark bedroom, naked and frozen, assuming she meant her own parents. I had told her to go, telling her I understood. Only later did I find out that the “Mom and Dad” she rushed to rescue were Derek’s parents. The bitterness in my chest bloomed into a dull, throbbing ache. Just last month, when my own mother was hospitalized, I had to go out of town on an urgent business trip. I had begged Beth to look after her. Beth had promised she would. But when I called the hospital, my mother sounded incredibly lonely. Later, when I returned and checked the hospital’s security footage, I discovered Beth had stayed for less than ten minutes. During those ten minutes, she had stared at her phone, barely acknowledging my mother. My mother, weak and pale in her hospital bed, had desperately tried to start a conversation. “Beth, would you like some fruit?” “Beth, are you very busy at work?” Beth hadn’t even noticed when my mother’s IV bag ran empty. It was my mother who had to painfully stretch her arm across the bed to press the call button herself. That night, when I visited, my mother had looked at me with silent, tearful eyes. Parents can always sense when they are despised. My mother didn’t understand what she had done to deserve her daughter-in-law’s coldness. She blamed herself, worrying she was a burden to our marriage. No matter how much I asked, she never uttered a single word of complaint to me. It was my fault. I was weak. I had allowed my parents to endure five years of quiet humiliation and neglect. When Derek left the country to chase his artistic dreams in Europe, Beth had stepped in to act as his proxy, taking care of his parents as if she were their dutiful daughter-in-law. It was laughable. What about me? What about my family? I looked down at the organic root extracts and Epsom salts sitting on our kitchen counter. Her father had chronic back pain, and her mother suffered from severe joint inflammation. For five years, whenever they came over, they dumped these raw ingredients on me. “You’re young and strong, Jackie. You can grind these down easily. We’re too old for this.” “We don’t trust store-bought rubs. It’s better when you hand-mix them. We know we can trust you to do it right.” Beth had watched me work, offering a patronizing smirk. “Well, at least you’re getting good at it.” My eyes filled with tears as I looked at the rough calluses on my palms, the dry skin that always snagged on the threads of my clothes. She poured all her energy into taking care of her ex’s parents, while shifting the burden of her own parents’ care onto my shoulders. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. It was a voice message from my mother. The background noise in the audio was deafening—sirens, shouting, horns honking. I had to press the phone tight against my ear to hear her trembling voice. “Jackie… I got into a car accident. A woman backed into me, and now she’s screaming at me, making a huge scene…” Forgetting about Beth, forgetting about the herbs, I grabbed my keys and ran out the door. When I arrived at the scene, I immediately pushed through the crowd and shielded my mother behind my back. The woman standing opposite her had a face I recognized all too well. She had her hands on her hips, her eyes rimmed with red. “She’s the one who hit me!” the woman wailed, pointing a shaking finger at my mother. “You’re only bullying me because my son is in Europe! I was just walking across the parking lot, and she ran right into me!” Seeing that another shouting match was about to start, the police officers stepped in and escorted everyone to the local precinct. Half an hour later, the heavy glass doors of the station flew open. Beth’s frantic voice echoed through the lobby. “Mom!” My mother turned around, thinking her daughter-in-law had come to support her, and instinctively took a step forward. But Beth ran straight past her. She threw her arms around Derek’s mother, checking her frantically from head to toe. “Mom, are you hurt? Tell me where it hurts. I want to see who dared to touch you.” My mother froze, her hand still half-raised in the air. Beth didn’t even notice. When she finally looked up and saw us sitting across the room, a flicker of panic crossed her eyes, but she quickly masked it. We were brought into the mediation room. Looking at Beth, my mother seemed to finally understand why her daughter-in-law had never been able to call her “Mom.” Her fingers began to tremble. For five years, she had swallowed her pride, treating Beth like her own daughter, thinking she just needed time. Now, the brutal truth was laid bare. The officers showed us the security footage. The angle was awkward, and it was hard to tell who was at fault in the crowded parking lot. My mother looked exhausted and deeply shaken. I wanted nothing more than to get her out of that toxic room, so I agreed to a mutual settlement and signed the paperwork. Beth tried to say something to me, but Derek’s mother pulled her away, and Beth chose to go with her. “Mom, let’s get you to a doctor to make sure you’re okay,” Beth whispered tenderly as they walked out. The only thing left for my mother and me was the smell of exhaust fumes in the cold air. I wrapped my arms around my mother, my tears spilling onto her shoulder. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I was so stupid.” I had been so naive. When we got married, I had hidden the depth of Beth’s attachment to her ex-husband from my parents. I knew they would worry, that their old-school values would make them skeptical of a marriage with so much baggage. But I had thrown myself into the fire for love. I had trusted Beth. I believed she was different. I should have listened to my parents. My father, who had arrived late, stood in the corner of the room. He let out a long, heavy sigh. “You foolish boy,” he said quietly. “How could you keep something like this from us?” But when they saw the state I was in, my parents didn’t scold me further. They stood by me, united. “Get a divorce,” my father said, his voice firm. “This isn’t a marriage. You need to end this.” Sometimes, the wrong choices in life simply have to be corrected. I was planning to go find Beth to hand her the papers, but she came to our house first. Before I could even speak, she barged through the door. She looked at my mother, her mouth opening and closing, still unable to utter the word “Mom.” “Did… did either of you pick up an antique gold locket at the police station?” Beth demanded, her voice breathless with anxiety. “It was a family heirloom Derek gave her. Mrs. Howard is losing her mind. She can’t lose that locket.” My mother’s face flushed with anger. “No! If we had found it, we would have handed it to the police. Why didn’t she mention it while we were at the station?” Beth ignored the explanation. “She says it went missing right after the accident. Jackie, you can be mad at me all you want, but you can’t let your parents take out their anger on an innocent old lady.” Take out their anger. Steal. She had already branded my parents as thieves in her mind. I stepped forward and violently shoved Beth back. “Enough! You have zero proof, and you’re coming into my house accusing my mother of theft? Have you completely lost your mind, Beth? My mother didn’t even know who that woman was when the accident happened!” But Beth was blinded by her desperate need to please her ex’s family. “Mrs. Howard saw your mother’s hand brushing against her purse! Jackie… I know your parents come from a small town and aren’t used to nice things, but please, just don’t keep what isn’t yours.” The ugly truth finally slipped out. She had always looked down on us. She thought of herself as a sophisticated city girl, secretly harboring contempt for my working-class, small-town parents. It was pathetic. My mother stood up straight, her spine rigid. She marched over to the entryway, grabbed her purse from the hook, and dumped its contents onto the floor. “I didn’t take a damn thing!” she cried, her voice cracking with humiliation. “If you think I stole it, call the police and have them drag me to jail!” Beth immediately dropped to her knees, frantically searching through the spilled contents. At that moment, her phone rang. It was Derek, calling from Europe. His voice leaked through the speaker, frantic and tearful. “Beth, that locket was the last thing my father bought for my mother before he passed. Please, I beg you, help her find it.” Beth’s expression turned fierce. “I’ll find it, Derek. I promise.” She hung up and glared at my parents. Finally, those words she had withheld for five years came spilling out of her mouth like a weapon. “Dad! Mom! Just give it back! Stop hiding it, or I’m going to start tearing this house apart to find it!” My mother gasped, clutching her chest, nearly fainting from the sheer shock of the accusation. My father’s hands shook with rage. “Beth Lawson,” my father growled. “You’ve looked down on our family from the day you met us, and we stayed quiet for Jackie’s sake. But we will not let you drag our names through the dirt. We don’t want her cheap jewelry!” I grabbed Beth by the arm, pulling her back. “What do you think you’re doing? We told you, we don’t have it!” But Beth ignored me. She pulled out her phone and made a call. Within ten minutes, three of her friends showed up at our door. “Help me search,” Beth commanded them. “Check every room. Don’t leave a single corner untouched.” She had completely lost her mind. This house was my home. Every corner of it was filled with the quiet, happy memories I had tried so hard to build. Beth had no right to do this. She had no right to violate my sanctuary. I tried to block her friends from entering the hallway. “Get out! This is my house, Beth! You have no right to do this!” She grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides. “Jackie, please. I promise I’ll put everything back exactly how it was. This locket is everything to Derek. Either you tell your parents to hand it over, or I find it myself.” I stared at her, my chest burning with a rage so hot it choked me. “Who do you think we are? Who would steal a cheap locket? We told you, we didn’t take it!” But Beth completely stripped us of our dignity. Her friends began tearing the house apart, dumping drawers, throwing couch cushions, and ransacking our bedrooms. My parents stood in the corner, paralyzed with humiliation. Suddenly, one of Beth’s friends pulled a velvet jewelry box from my mother’s dresser. He opened it and snorted. “Wow. Look at this garbage. Every single piece in here is a cheap knockoff.” My heart stopped. I looked at the box. It contained the jewelry Beth had gifted my mother for birthdays and holidays over the years. They were fakes. Cheap, plastic costume jewelry. Yet every single holiday, I had spent thousands of dollars buying genuine designer pieces for her parents. Her utter contempt for my family was laid bare in that velvet box. With a surge of adrenaline, I ripped myself out of Beth’s grip. I stepped forward and slapped her across the face. “You’re going to pay for this, Beth,” I whispered. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. “Yes, hello. I’d like to report a home invasion and illegal search.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “514676”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

It was only on my deathbed that I learned the truth: my wife hadn’t perished in that tragic shipwreck after all. Instead, she had slipped away across the ocean, living a golden life in a foreign land and growing old with the only man she had ever truly loved—her high school sweetheart. And the boy I had raised as my own, spending every penny of my meager savings to put him through school? While I lay there hooked up to a squeaking monitor, wasting away, he quietly opened our front door and welcomed his mother and her “first love” inside. When I gathered the last of my strength to demand an explanation, my son turned on me with cold indifference. “I’ve always known Mom was alive,” he sneered. “Honestly, you were just suffocating to live with. If you hadn’t forced her to marry you back then, she wouldn’t have had to fake her own death to escape you.” Chloe looked down at me, her eyes holding nothing but a cool, detached pity. She reached into her handbag and pressed a yellowed, folded piece of paper into my trembling palm. It was the frantic cry for help she had written to me decades ago. “Drew, Brody wrote this on your desk as a stupid prank,” she said softly. “I never actually expected you to be foolish enough to throw away your SATs and your scholarship just to come rescue me.” She sighed, a small, weary sound. “But I made it up to you. I married you, didn’t I? I even let you keep Toby with you. Even though he isn’t your biological child, I always believed you were too good of a man to care about that.” With those words, she turned and took Brody’s hand, her fingers sliding effortlessly into his. “If you hadn’t been so self-righteous back then, Brody and I wouldn’t have had to suffer through three years of separation before we could finally be together. If there is a next life, Drew… I hope you have the sense not to pick up that letter.” The sheer, suffocating betrayal stopped my breath. My heart gave out right there in that sterile hospital room, drowning in my own silent rage. But when I opened my eyes again, the smell of antiseptic was gone, replaced by the scent of old floor wax and cheap pencil lead. I was sitting at my old high school desk. It was the afternoon before the big scholarship exam. Staring down at the wrinkled envelope resting on the worn wood, I didn’t hesitate. I picked it up and threw it straight into the metal trash can at the front of the classroom. Chloe didn’t know the truth. Brody hadn’t been playing a harmless joke. He had actually hired those local thugs to corner her in that alleyway and ruin her exams. But this time, I wasn’t going to be the martyr. Without me playing the fool, I wanted to see exactly what kind of fairytale she would build out of the wreckage. … “What’s wrong, Drew? Zoning out? Didn’t you see the letter on your desk?” Brody’s smug, mocking voice broke through my thoughts. My eyes snapped fully open. The afternoon sun was spilling across the linoleum floor of our senior homeroom. It was indeed the day before the state scholarship exams. Sitting on my desk was the envelope with Chloe’s name scrawled across the front. In my previous life, under Brody’s watchful, sneering gaze, I hadn’t hesitated to tear it open. Inside had been a frantic, tear-stained note from Chloe. She wrote that Brody was planning to corner her in the alley behind the old diner on the morning of the exam, threatening to ruin her reputation and strip her of her dignity. Before I could even process the words back then, Brody had leaned over my shoulder, flashing a cruel grin. “Hey, Drew. Your family is so dirt-poor you probably share a single pair of jeans. You always act so high and mighty just because you get top marks. Let’s see what you care about more—the girl you’re obsessed with, or your precious future.” He had chuckled, tapping his knuckles on my desk. “Tomorrow morning, I’ve got a dozen guys waiting for her in the alley. If you don’t show up to play hero, Chloe’s going to have a very, very rough morning.” In my past life, those words had sent me into a blind rage. I had lunged across the aisle, throwing punches directly into Brody’s face. But before I could land a decisive blow, Chloe had rushed through the classroom door. Shielding Brody, she had pulled me back, allowing him to land several heavy hits. I had ended up black and blue on the classroom floor. Once Brody swaggered out, Chloe had offered me nothing but a brief, annoyed apology. I had thrust the letter into her hands, pleading, “Chloe, we have to go to the police. With this note and your statement, we can stop him before tomorrow.” Chloe’s face had gone rigid. When I practically dragged her to the steps of the local precinct, she had yanked her arm away, her eyes brimming with tears. “Drew, no! If we go to the police, everyone will find out. My reputation will be ruined before I even finish high school. Besides, the exam is tomorrow. I need to go home and study.” She had fled before I could stop her. Back then, I thought she was just terrified of Brody’s rich, influential family. So the next morning, when I saw Brody and his crew actually cornering her in that damp alleyway, I had swallowed my fear and thrown myself into the fight. I took the brunt of the blows, shielding her with my body while screaming, “Chloe! Run! Get help! Call the school!” She was trembling, but she didn’t look back. She just ran. I took a brutal beating for over an hour, waiting for the police or the school principal to arrive. No one came. Brody eventually broke my arm and my leg, leaving me bleeding on the gravel. He had spat on me and laughed. “You really thought she went to get help? She’s already in the exam hall, taking her test.” He left me there, broken and discarded like a stray dog. It wasn’t until the testing blocks were completely over that my uncle found me and took me to the emergency room. Chloe showed up hours later, offering tears and excuses. She claimed she was too paralyzed by fear, and she simply couldn’t bear the thought of missing the test that was her only ticket out of this town. Stupidly, I forgave her. But I pressed charges against Brody anyway. His father’s connections couldn’t fully bury the blatant assault, and he was sentenced to three years in a state penitentiary. The day his sentence was handed down, Chloe asked me to be her boyfriend. I thought it was love. I spent the next decade working double shifts to pay for her college tuition, eventually raising the baby she brought home. It took me a lifetime, lying on a sterile hospital mattress, to realize the agonizing truth. Chloe had known Brody’s plan all along. She had willingly played her part, viewing me as a pawn Brody used to crush my academic dreams. What she hadn’t realized was that Brody’s malice spared no one. He envied my academic brilliance, but he also resented her. He wanted both of our futures ruined. When Brody went to prison, Chloe married me under the guise of “making amends,” turning me into her personal ATM and a surrogate father for Brody’s child. And when Brody was finally released, she staged her own disappearance at sea, slipping away to rejoin him. Not this time. In this life, I stared Brody dead in the eye, took the letter that had once destroyed me, and dropped it into the trash can. Brody’s brow furrowed, his cocky expression faltering. He knew how hopelessly in love with Chloe I was—or at least, how much I used to be. She was supposed to be my Achilles’ heel. “What’s the matter, Drew?” Brody taunted, stepping closer. “You’re just going to let her get ruined? Or do you prefer your girls a little damaged?” I didn’t let the bait take. I kept my face blank, calmly sliding my exam prep books into my backpack. In my previous life, missing that exam had been a phantom limb that ached every single day. I had kept those old study guides, staring at the practice questions late at night in our cramped apartment, wondering what could have been. I had dreamed of going back to school, but I had always sacrificed my ambitions to support Chloe and Toby. Never again. Nobody’s drama was going to stand between me and my future. I looked up, meeting Brody’s gaze with absolute coldness. “Whatever you do to her is your business. It has nothing to do with me.” His eyes flashed with pure malice. Realizing his leverage was gone, he grabbed a heavy wooden chair, swinging it directly toward my arm. He wanted to break my hand so I couldn’t write the exam. Adrenaline surged through me. I dodged the swing, lunged forward, and tackled him to the floor. I pinned him down, raising my fist to strike, when the sharp whistle of rushing air cut through the room. A heavy blow crashed against the back of my skull. Warm, sticky blood immediately began to pour down my neck. I whipped my head around, my vision swimming in red, to see Chloe standing there, panting heavily, a broken wooden chair leg in her hands. She shoved me off Brody, instantly kneeling beside him to check his face for bruises, completely ignoring my bleeding head. When she finally looked up at me, her eyes were filled with disgust. “Drew, what the hell is wrong with you? Why are you hurting him?” I wiped the blood from my brow, pointing a finger at Brody. “He swung first.” A brief flicker of guilt crossed Chloe’s face when she saw the blood dripping down my cheek, but her brow quickly furrowed again. She scanned the messy classroom, her voice tightening. “Where is the letter?” I froze, studying her face. The defensive posture, the panic in her eyes… It hit me. She had returned too. And the very first thing she wanted to do was reclaim her evidence. A bitter laugh bubbled up in my chest. I pointed toward the trash can in the corner. She stared at the bin, disbelief washing over her features. But then relief took over. She fished the crumpled paper out and tore it into tiny, irreparable pieces. When she looked back at me, her expression was laced with that familiar, patronizing pity. “Drew, this letter was never meant for you anyway. It was just a joke Brody was playing. Don’t go making a big deal out of nothing and ruin our lives.” I let out a dry chuckle. “The only person ruining your life is standing right next to you. But as long as you’re willing to pay the price, I won’t interfere.” Chloe mistook my warning for jealousy. She tilted her chin up, adopting that high-and-mighty tone I had endured for decades. “Drew, I know you have feelings for me. But you and I are from different worlds. I only love Brody.” Without waiting for my reply, she helped Brody to his feet and guided him out of the room. Before they crossed the threshold, Brody threw a smug, triumphant grin over his shoulder. He didn’t realize that his taunts had lost all their power. Back at my tiny, rented apartment, I was sitting at the kitchen table, pressing a damp towel to my head, when the front door was kicked open. Brody swaggered in, with Chloe trailing right behind him. Seeing the open textbooks on the table, Chloe’s eyes flickered with a brief hesitation. But she quickly straightened, speaking with absolute entitlement. “Drew. You can’t take the exam tomorrow. In fact, you shouldn’t take it for the next two years.” A chill ran down my spine. Did she know I had returned? “No way,” I said, my voice hard. She waved her hand dismissively, as if my consent didn’t matter. “Brody doesn’t want you taking the test. He has weak lungs, and stress makes him sick. Just do this for me. Skip the exams.” Then, she added, like she was offering a grand prize, “If you do this, I’ll let you keep taking me out. Even when Brody and I are officially together, you can still be in my life.” Brody’s grin widened. “Yeah, Drew. You’re obsessed with her, aren’t you? Prove it. Throw away the exam for her.” I let out a cold, sharp laugh. “Chloe, what makes you think your presence in my life is worth my entire future?” Chloe sighed, looking at me with disappointment. “Drew, in our last life, you got Brody sent to prison for three years. His health was ruined in there. You owe him this.” She said it so casually, laying bare the truth of our past timeline. My chest tightened. But I quickly masked my shock with raw anger. “I don’t know what kind of delusional garbage you’re talking about,” I growled, pushing Brody toward the door. “Get the hell out of my apartment. I don’t owe him a damn thing!” Brody resisted my shove, his sneer turning vicious. “You’re just a parentless piece of trash, Drew. You belong in the gutter. You honestly think you’re going to use some test to climb out of it?” The red mist descended. I lunged, slamming my fist into his jaw. Brody went down, his face twisting with fury. “You worthless bastard!” he screamed, spitting blood onto the linoleum. “You think Chloe actually respects you? She’s nothing but my pet. I’m going to make sure you get thrown in a cell, just like your deadbeat father. You’ll die in some federal penitentiary, just like him!” That was the breaking point. I threw myself onto him, raining punches down. Suddenly, a stinging slap caught me across the face. Chloe threw her weight into me, shoving me back. As I went to lunge forward again, she reached into her bag and pulled out a small pocket knife, holding it tremblingly in front of her. “Drew, stop it!” she screamed. “Everything Brody said is true! You don’t have parents. Your father died in a federal prison because he was a criminal!” I froze, the air leaving my lungs. I stared at her, utterly shattered. She known my father had been set up. When they dragged him away years ago, Chloe had been the only one who held my hand, whispering that she believed in his innocence. That was the exact reason I had fallen for her. That was the reason I had once been willing to destroy my own life to save hers. Taking advantage of my shock, she pulled Brody up, shielding him behind her. She caught the look of absolute betrayal in my eyes, and for a fraction of a second, her hand shook. But she hardened her heart. “I’m doing this for your own good, Drew. Even if you take the exam, a kid like you isn’t going to get into a good school. You’re better off giving up now. My uncle can get you a shift hauling crates down at the shipping docks. It’s stable work.” I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached. In my past life, when she “died” at sea and left me with Toby, I had ruined my spine working those exact docks, hauling heavy cargo for twelve hours a day just to pay for her son’s formula. I had destroyed my health for her. And she had known all along. She simply believed that the docks were exactly where I belonged. With blood in my eyes, I pointed toward the open door. “Get out.” Chloe scoffed, tucking the knife away. “Don’t come crying to me when you fail.” I let out a harsh, dry laugh. “The only one who’s going to regret this, Chloe, is you.” After they left, the quiet of the apartment felt heavy. I stared down at my math formulas, unable to focus. Then, I heard a metallic rattle from the other side of the front door. I sprang up and rushed to the entryway, rattling the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. Peering through the narrow gap in the doorframe, I saw Brody’s grinning face. He was wrapping a heavy chain around the handle, securing it with a padlock. “I’m not letting you get to that test site, Drew,” Brody sneered through the metal. “You want to know why?” I gritted my teeth. When we first started high school, Brody had ignored me. It wasn’t until our senior year that his bullying turned obsessive and cruel. Before I could demand an answer, he whispered, his voice dripping with venom: “Your dad found out about some of my father’s business deals. So I made a little phone call, had him locked up on federal charges. He died in that cell, and you’re going to rot right here. I’m never letting you rise above us.” My breath caught. A violent shudder went through my chest. My father’s arrest, his disgrace, his lonely death—it had all been Brody’s doing. He chuckled, enjoying my muffled gasp of horror. “And Chloe knew. Why do you think she was so nice to you after he got sent away? She pity-patronized you because she knew my family ruined yours. It was hilarious.” I slammed my fists against the wood, my knuckles screaming in pain. I wanted to tear through the door and rip him apart with my bare hands. Every single tragedy in my life—the loss of my father, my broken dreams, my wasted decades—had been orchestrated by Brody. And Chloe, the girl I had worshipped, had been his silent accomplice from the very beginning. I pounded on the heavy oak door, screaming until my throat was raw, while Brody’s laughter faded down the stairwell. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I used every tool I had—a butter knife, a screwdriver, my own shoulders—trying to break the heavy padlock. As the first grey light of dawn filtered through the hallway window, I saw Chloe’s shadow through the peephole. She stood there for a long moment, staring at the chained door with a conflicted expression, before turning and walking away. She wanted me trapped. She wanted me ruined so she could play the saint who rescued me later. With a final, desperate surge of adrenaline, I threw my entire weight against the old doorframe. The wood splintered, and the latch finally gave way with a loud crack. Grabbing my registration ticket, I bolted down the stairs and sprinted toward the high school. As I cut through the alleyway behind the local diner, I ran straight into them. Brody and half a dozen thugs had Chloe cornered against the brick wall. Brody’s eyes widened in sheer shock when he saw me free. Reacting instantly, he grabbed Chloe by the throat, pulling her flush against his chest. “Drew!” he yelled, panic creeping into his voice. “You take one step toward that school, and you know exactly what my boys are going to do to her!” Chloe’s eyes stretched wide with terror as she looked at Brody, finally realizing this wasn’t a game. The thugs around them sneered, their eyes lingering greedily on her legs. In my past life, I knew that stepping away meant leaving her to a horrific fate. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. Brody smirked, gesturing for one of his guys to grab me. But I didn’t move toward them. Instead, I gripped my registration ticket tighter, turned on my heel, and sprinted toward the school gates. This time, I was running for my life. I was never letting anyone hold me back again. Chloe watched my retreating figure, a sudden, cold hollow opening in her chest. She looked up at Brody, her voice trembling. “Brody… let me go. It didn’t work. He’s not coming back.” Brody didn’t release his grip. He stared at the empty alley, his expression twisting into something ugly and feral. He shoved Chloe hard into the arms of the waiting thugs. “If I can’t break him,” he snarled, “destroying you works just as well.” A sharp tear cut through the quiet as one of the guys ripped her dress. She gasped, staring at Brody in utter horror as he snatched her registration ticket from her fingers and tore it to shreds. But before they could drag her any further into the shadows, a loud siren wailed, and heavy footsteps echoed from the mouth of the alley. “Police! Step away from her and put your hands on your head!”

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I think I was born with a target on my back. Some people inherit blue eyes or a soft jaw; I inherited a severe, unrelenting paranoia. No historical despot had anything on my suspicions. When I was an infant, I refused to drink from any bottle unless it was warmed and tasted by my mother, terrified that anyone else would scald me. In elementary school, I spent entire semesters staring at the humming ceiling fan, certain the rusty bolt would give way and decapitate me. I ended up sitting on the floor beneath my desk, taking notes in the shadows. By middle school, the front door became my obsession. I was so convinced we’d be robbed that I would walk back from the bus stop six times every morning to check the deadbolt, arriving late to homeroom every single day. When the college application season finally ended, my parents sat me down in our sun-drenched living room. “The scores are in, the submissions are finalized,” my father said, letting out a sigh that sounded more like a plea. “Can you finally breathe now, Nicole?” But my chest was still tight. “The housekeeper’s daughter is the same age as me,” I told them, my voice flat. “Her scores are three hundred points lower. She’s going to hack my portal and change my choices.” For eighteen years, my parents had been patient. But that afternoon, the masks of gentle tolerance slipped. Martha, our housekeeper of a decade, burst into thick, ragged tears. “If Miss Nicole doesn’t trust us, we’ll pack our things and go,” she sobbed, clutching her apron. “I thought ten years of devotion meant we were family. I guess a servant is always just a servant. We might be poor, Robert, but we aren’t criminals!” My parents spent an hour soothing Martha, begging her to stay. I watched them, utterly cold. I was not moved. … Exactly sixty seconds before the application portal closed, I logged in. And there it was. My first-choice application to Princeton had been changed to Pinecrest Online—a non-accredited digital degree mill. With my heart hammering a steady, familiar rhythm, I spent the final thirty seconds changing it back to Princeton, saving the confirmation, and shutting the screen. For eighteen years, I had rehearsed my own demise. Walking down the street, I calculated the falling velocity of billboards and mapped out exits in every restaurant. When someone handed me a drink, my mind automatically cataloged the tasteless toxins that could fit in a dropper. Before bed, I checked the deadbolts, the window latches, and the stove’s gas valves. Under my nightstand sat a heavy emergency hammer and a roll of heavy-duty medical tape. They called it a sickness. I called it emergency preparedness. And today, the protocol had saved me. In the living room, my parents were laughing with Martha. They were watching a sitcom, the blue light of the television washing over them. Martha’s daughter, Charlotte, sat on the edge of the sofa, staring down at her phone. There was a faint, smug curve to her lips that she couldn’t quite hide. “Mom. Dad,” I said. My voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the room like a cold draft. The laughter died. My father turned, his face still holding the remnants of a smile. “What is it, Nicole? Still anxious about the acceptance letters?” I walked over and stood directly in front of the television, blocking their view. My eyes locked onto Charlotte. “My application was altered.” The air in the room instantly curdled. My father’s smile froze. “What… what do you mean?” “I mean exactly what I said. And the person responsible knows exactly who they are.” I let the words hang, my gaze scraping across Charlotte’s face. Charlotte’s head snapped up. Her cheeks flushed with a mix of anger and performative shock. “Nicole, what is your problem?” she cried, her voice cracking. “Your application got messed up and you’re looking at me? Are you seriously accusing me?” “Who else would it be?” I snapped back. “You!” Charlotte stood up, her eyes immediately welling with tears. “I know you’ve hated me since the day I got here. You made me sleep in the basement room because you said my presence was bad luck for your exams. I did it. I didn’t complain because I knew you were stressed. But your college future? How could you think I’d do something so horrible?” She bit her lip, lowering her head. “Just because my scores aren’t as good as yours doesn’t mean I’m a monster. You have no idea how much I’ve admired you, Nicole. You have this beautiful house, parents who adore you, a perfect future…” It was a masterclass in pity. And right on cue, my mother’s face softened. She stepped forward, taking Charlotte’s hands in hers. “Charlotte, sweetie, don’t cry. Nicole… she just gets these ideas in her head. Don’t take it to heart.” My father’s face went from pale to a deep, furious crimson. He slammed his hand down on the coffee table, rattling the porcelain teacups. “Nicole Max! Have you lost your mind? Is this your paranoia talking again?” “I am completely sane.” “Sane?!” His voice shook with rage as he pointed a finger at me. “Martha has been with this family since you were in diapers! She practically raised you—she’s been more of a mother to you than anyone! And Charlotte has been nothing but polite and sweet since she came to stay with us. Why would she hurt you? What is wrong with your head?!” Martha hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with quiet, miserable sobs. “Mr. Max, Mrs. Max, it’s my fault,” she whimpered. “I shouldn’t have brought Charlotte here. I didn’t realize how much Nicole disliked us. We should just go.” She wiped her eyes, pulling Charlotte by the arm. “Come on, Charlotte. We’re leaving. We can’t stay here and cause any more trouble for this family…” My mother sighed, turning to me with a look of profound exhaustion and disappointment. “Nicole, Martha has been a part of this household for ten years. They are not those kinds of people. Please, just stop this.” Ten years. A decade is a heavy weight. Martha had transformed from a quiet maid into an indispensable fixture of our lives. She was diligent, warm, and loyal. So when she asked a month ago if Charlotte could stay with us to study for her finals, my parents hadn’t hesitated. I was the only one who fought it. I didn’t want a stranger under our roof. It violated my security. On the day Charlotte arrived, I blocked the doorway and told her she wasn’t welcome. It wasn’t until Martha called my father in tears, and he roared at me over the phone, that I let her in. I demanded she be moved to the basement guest room on her very first night, claiming her energy would disrupt my exam focus. My mother called me cruel. I simply stayed silent. Now, looking at the three of them acting like a unified family unit while I stood on the outside, I felt a grim amusement. “Why should I apologize?” I asked. “I wouldn’t sabotage myself. My parents wouldn’t sabotage me. That leaves only one variable.” “Enough!” my father erupted. “You are locked in your room starting now. No phone, no computer. You will stay in there until you’ve cleared your head and learned how to apologize!” He grabbed my arm, shoved me into my bedroom, and slammed the door. The sound of the deadbolt clicking shut echoed through the hallway. Behind the wood, I could hear his muffled shouts, my mother’s soft sighs, and the fading whimpers of Martha and Charlotte. I leaned against the door. The room was dim, illuminated only by a single overhead light. Did they really think this would break me? Did they think taking my primary phone and laptop left me defenseless? How naive. A true paranoid never relies on a single line of defense. We don’t trust hearts, and we certainly don’t trust blood. I looked up. The lens of a micro-camera stared down from the top of my bookshelf, aimed perfectly at the door. Inside the hollow base of my desk lamp, a tiny digital recorder was capturing every vibration from the living room. Behind the grill of the air vent, another lens kept watch. Martha and her daughter thought they had played a flawless hand. They had no idea that I had wired this entire house years ago. There was an eye in every corner, watching them sleep, watching them scheme. I walked to my desk, pulled out the bottom drawer, and tapped the hidden panel at the back. It popped open to reveal a backup burner phone and a set of locksmith tools. I powered the phone on. Full signal. I didn’t call the police. Not yet. Right now, everyone thought I was the madwoman. I needed to wait for the perfect moment to rip away their masks. The days of my confinement were quiet. The calm before the storm. My parents truly kept me isolated. At mealtimes, my mother would bring a tray to my door, watching me closely to ensure I ate, likely fearing a hunger strike. I was completely cooperative. I ate everything she brought, as long as I saw her open the packaging or scoop it directly from the pot. But one afternoon, Martha appeared at the door holding a bowl of slow-simmered, expensive imported bird’s nest supplement, a sweet, maternal smile plastered on her face. “Nicole, sweetheart, don’t be angry with your parents,” she cooed. “I made this broth especially for you. Drink some, okay?” The smell of the broth made my stomach churn. “Take it away,” I said. Martha’s smile faltered. “Nicole, what’s wrong? Are you still upset with me?” “Take. It. Away,” I repeated, my voice devoid of warmth. “I don’t know what you put in it.” Martha’s face turned a violent, blotchy red. Her hands trembled so hard the broth spilled over the rim. My mother walked in just in time to see this. Her lips trembled with rage. “Nicole! You are absolutely impossible!” She snatched the bowl from Martha’s hand and slammed it onto the floor. “Fine! We’re all trying to poison you! Are you happy now?” She dragged a weeping Martha away. I watched the puddle of broth seep into the hardwood without a shred of guilt. In my world, there was no such thing as overreacting. There was only survival. To them, my behavior was proof that my illness had worsened. Their pity for Martha and Charlotte grew, and with it, a desperate need to make amends. That guilt found its outlet soon enough. Charlotte received her acceptance letter from a local state college. To make up for the “abuse” she had suffered under our roof, my parents decided to throw her a lavish graduation party on our lawn. On the day of the party, my mother dragged me out of my room and forced me into a brand-new white silk dress. “We have guests coming,” she warned, her grip tight on my wrist. “You will not embarrass this family. Do you understand?” I looked at my blank reflection in the mirror and nodded. Of course I wouldn’t embarrass them. The real show was about to start. The lawn was packed with local socialites, family friends, and distant relatives. Everyone gathered around Charlotte, who was wearing a designer gown my mother had bought her—the exact dress I had asked for on my last birthday. She floated through the crowd like a peacock, drinking in the compliments. “The housekeeper’s girl seems so much more grounded than Nicole,” I heard a neighbor whisper. “I know. I heard Nicole is completely unhinged now. Thinks everyone is out to get her.” “Shh, her parents are right there. Though honestly, they seem to prefer Charlotte anyway.” I sat in the shadow of the veranda, sipping ice water and watching the spectacle. Before long, Charlotte detached herself from a group of guests and walked toward me, holding two glasses of Cabernet. “Nicole,” she said, stopping in front of my chair. Her smile was sharp, victorious. “Thank you for coming to my party. I know this must be hard for you, but sometimes we just have to move on, right?” She offered me one of the glasses, holding herself like a queen showing mercy to a peasant. “A toast? To show there’s no hard feelings.” I didn’t reach for the glass. Her smile tightened as the surrounding guests began to quiet down, sensing the tension. “What’s the matter, Nicole? Can’t even raise a glass for me?” she asked, her voice dropping into a fragile, wounded register.

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