Category: English

Five years of marriage, and I finally had the piece of paper that proved I was enough. A normal sperm count. My heart hammered a frantic, joyful rhythm against my ribs as I calculated exactly how I was going to surprise my wife. Giselle was a surgical attending; I was pediatric, but today, the long corridors of the hospital felt entirely like mine. I had spent half a decade swallowing bitter pills, enduring humiliating exams, and weathering the quiet, suffocating disappointment in her eyes. Today, everything changed. Just as I rounded the corner toward the surgical wing, my phone buzzed in my scrub pocket. A text from Giselle. Hey baby. You must be exhausted after a full day in peds. Go home and get some rest. Then, a second bubble popped up. I’ve got an emergency op tonight, so don’t wait up for me. I smiled, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard to type back a playful refusal. But as I glanced up, the movement at the end of the hall caught my eye. Giselle. She wasn’t prepping for an emergency. She was grabbing a young surgical intern by the collar of his scrubs and yanking him into Operating Room 3. The lab report slipped from my fingers. It hit the linoleum with a soft, pathetic slap. My entire body went rigid. Through the heavy double doors, which hadn’t fully clicked shut, the muffled but unmistakable sound of a woman’s breathless groan bled into the hallway. “In the middle of the day? Can’t you just hold on?” It was Giselle’s voice, laced with a breathless urgency. “My tenure review is coming up. What if someone catches us?” Then came the boy’s voice, raspy and demanding. “I don’t care! Last time, you had me pressed against the instrument tray before you’d even finished suturing the patient. You want it now, so you do what I say.” A wave of pure, unadulterated nausea crashed over me, so violently I thought my knees would buckle. I stared at the metal doors. The woman I had worshipped, the family I was so desperately trying to build, shattered into a million jagged pieces right there in the sterile hallway. The grief lasted exactly three seconds. Then, a cold, surgical anger took over. I pulled out my phone, bypassed our private messages, and opened the hospital-wide staff channel. My fingers flew across the screen. Code Security. Someone is actively stealing surgical equipment in OR 3. Need all available staff and security immediately. Stop the thieves. Replies flooded in instantly. On my way! I knew it! We’ve been missing inventory all month, even the new ultrasound probe covers! I locked my screen and let out a hollow laugh. If they wanted the thrill of a forbidden rush, I was going to give them a blockbuster audience. … 1. The staff chat was blowing up, notifications pinging like a heart monitor going into tachycardia. Inside the OR, Giselle’s muffled moans were suddenly interrupted. I could hear the intern—Dylan, that was his name—speak up, his voice tinged with confusion. “Giselle, why are our phones going crazy?” “Check it. Maybe it’s an emergency.” Giselle’s response dripped with the heavy irritation of being interrupted mid-climax. “Are you seriously thinking about that right now? Ignore it!” she snapped. “It’s probably just the Chief of Staff calling another pointless administrative meeting. She’s obsessed with the upcoming hospital accreditation. The old bitch won’t let anyone breathe.” The old bitch. She was talking about my mother. The CEO and Chief of Staff of this hospital. The woman who had dedicated her entire life to saving people. Good. Perfect. I pulled up my contacts and found my in-laws. Gary and Donna had texted me earlier; they were downstairs in the lobby, bringing a Tupperware of Donna’s heavy homemade stew. They were five minutes away. I fired off a text: Gary, Donna! Emergency! Giselle collapsed in the OR! Get up here right now! While the filthy, wet sounds of their betrayal resumed behind the door, I turned and walked calmly toward the nurses’ station. “Send a copy of the security feed for OR 3 to my tablet, please,” I said, my voice eerily level. The charge nurse grimaced, tapping her pen against the maintenance log. “Dr. Foster, the camera in OR 3 has been down since last week. Facilities hasn’t gotten around to it yet.” She lowered her voice, leaning in with the practiced intimacy of hospital gossip. “Haven’t you noticed? We’ve been diverting all non-critical surgeries to the other rooms. But Dr. Giselle keeps specifically requesting OR 3. She says she doesn’t want to monopolize the good rooms. Such a team player, your wife.” I see. That was why she was so brazen. Why she felt untouchable in there. The sound of heavy boots and jingling keys echoed down the corridor. I turned slowly, watching the cavalry arrive. Giselle, I thought, you care about your reputation and your tenure more than breathing. Let’s get you the spotlight you deserve. The head of hospital security rounded the corner, flanked by four guards and a trail of nosy nurses. “Where’s the breach? Which room?” I pointed a steady finger at the heavy doors. “OR 3. I walked by and heard a struggle. Sounded like equipment being knocked over. Could be multiple suspects.” The VP of Medical Affairs, Dr. Aris, happened to be walking by. His face flushed with administrative rage. “Block the exits! Breach the door! We are not losing another dime of hospital property!” Two burly security guards exchanged a nod and threw their weight against the double doors. With a deafening crash, the doors burst open. And there was Giselle. Scrub top half-unbuttoned, bra exposed, practically throwing herself in front of the lead guard. “What the hell is wrong with you people?!” she shrieked, her voice cracking. “I am trying to take a nap! Are you insane?” But there was no hiding the chaotic flush of her skin, or the violent, blossoming purple hickeys scattered across her collarbone. She caught my eye over the shoulders of the guards, the color draining from her face as she frantically clawed at her scrub top, trying to cover herself. 2. Dr. Aris let out a heavy sigh of relief, though his eyes darted uncomfortably around the room. “What on earth is going on? We got a Code Security. A theft.” The head of security stood there, red-faced and awkwardly lowering his radio. Behind him, the nurses began to whisper, a few of them stifling nervous laughter. “God, Dr. Giselle, you nearly gave us a heart attack.” “Look at her neck… Looks like Dr. Foster was trying to get lucky on his lunch break and she locked him out, so he called a fake code to get back at her!” A couple of the braver surgical techs tried to peek around Giselle’s defensive stance. “Damn, Giselle, that must have been one hell of a nap,” one joked. “You look like you went twelve rounds. Is Cam hiding under the surgical table?” Giselle’s expression morphed from panic to sheer, desperate fury. She planted her feet, using her body to physically block the sightline into the room. “This is completely inappropriate!” she yelled, her voice vibrating with panic. “This is a sterile environment! Everyone get back to work immediately!” She shoved forward, pushing a young scrub nurse so hard the girl stumbled and fell hard onto the tile. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The playful mood vanished, replaced by a sudden, sharp tension. I stood at the edge of the crowd, watching her unravel. The quiet moments in a tragedy are always the most telling. The way her hands shook. The way she couldn’t look me in the eye. I stepped forward, my voice cutting through the silence like a scalpel. “Giselle,” I said, the syllables tasting foreign on my tongue. “Why are you so frantic?” I paused, letting the silence stretch. “Is there something… or someone… hiding in there that you don’t want us to see?” My voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. Every pair of eyes in the hallway snapped to Giselle’s rapidly paling face. She lunged forward, grabbing my forearm, her nails digging into my skin. “Cam, stop it. Just stop,” she hissed, her eyes pleading. “Make them leave. I’ll go home tonight and explain everything.” I looked down at her hand on my arm. It felt like a contaminant. I ripped my arm away, stepping back as if she were infectious. Before she could reach for me again, the frantic ding of the elevator echoed down the hall. “Giselle! Oh my god, my baby!” My mother-in-law, Donna, came sprinting down the hall, practically dragging Gary behind her. She threw herself at Giselle, patting her down, her face twisted in theatrical agony. “Cam texted us! He said you collapsed! Look at how pale you are!” Gary flanked her, breathless. “Giselle, what happened? Is it your heart?” Giselle looked like she wanted the floor to swallow her whole. “Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?” She shot me a look of pure, venomous hatred. “I’m fine! I didn’t collapse!” I met her glare with dead, hollow eyes. Yes. I called them. Once Donna realized her daughter wasn’t dying, the matriarchal concern instantly calcified into rage. She rounded on me, jabbing a finger into my chest. “What is wrong with you, Cam?! Texting us garbage like that! You nearly gave Gary a heart attack!” “Exactly,” Gary grunted, adjusting his belt. “She’s perfectly fine. Why the hell are you cursing my daughter, saying she passed out?” 3. The murmurs among the hospital staff grew louder, the whispers turning into outright speculation. “Why is she guarding the room like that?” “Do you think she actually is the one stealing the equipment? Is she fencing it?” Gary and Donna grabbed Giselle’s arms, trying to pull her away from the door. “Come on, let’s go. We brought you lunch,” Gary muttered. But Giselle planted her feet, immovable. Her eyes darted wildly around the room behind her. “No. Mom, Dad, go home. I have… I have administrative things to finish here.” Donna yanked harder. “What is more important than your health? Get away from these gawkers and come eat!” “I am not leaving!” Giselle screamed, her voice echoing off the linoleum, sharp and hysterical. The entire corridor went dead silent. Even Donna stepped back, stunned. Everyone knew, in that exact moment, that something was horribly wrong. And then, the crowd parted. My mother, Dr. Evelyn Foster, Chief of Staff, walked through the corridor. She moved with the quiet, devastating authority of a woman who held hundreds of careers in the palm of her hand. “Why is my surgical wing blocked?” she asked, her tone conversational but laced with absolute zero chill. “Has everyone forgotten we have patients?” Giselle seemed to shrink three inches. “Dr… Dr. Foster.” My mother ignored her entirely, turning her sharp gaze to Dr. Aris. “Report.” Aris quickly and quietly summarized the security code, the broken door, and Giselle’s erratic behavior. As he spoke, my mother’s expression darkened, the planes of her face settling into something glacial. She turned to Giselle. Every word she spoke was a meticulously placed strike. “Giselle,” my mother said softly. “Look me in the eye and tell me there isn’t someone hiding in my operating room.” A bead of sweat tracked down the side of Giselle’s face. She let out a strained, unnatural laugh. “Evelyn, please. That’s ridiculous. I was just… I was exhausted. I took twenty minutes between surgeries to close my eyes.” Donna, ever the defensive bulldog, stepped between them. “Now listen here, Evelyn. Don’t you go listening to whatever crazy lies Cam is spinning. You know how hard my Giselle works! She’s saving lives every day, she’s so tired she barely comes home to your son! Is it a crime to take a nap?” Donna shot me a desperate, heavy-lidded glare, practically begging me to play along and de-escalate. My mother didn’t blink. “If the room is empty, then step aside. Let security clear it. The safety of hospital inventory is non-negotiable.” It wasn’t a request. Giselle looked at me. For the first time in five years, the superiority in her eyes was gone, replaced by a naked, pathetic plea. She mouthed the word: Please, Cam. I didn’t hesitate. I shoved past her and kicked the already-broken door wide open. The OR was a disaster zone. I stared at the wreckage, my voice echoing off the sterile tiles. “You took off your underwear to take a nap?” I asked, pointing to the lacy scrap of fabric kicked beneath a surgical stool. “You put your scrubs on inside out? And you took a nap surrounded by… what exactly is this?” The staff crowded the doorway. Gasps rang out. Scattered across the floor were half a dozen torn wrappers for ultrasound probe covers. Mixed in with them were crumpled wads of sterile gauze, soaked in fluids that didn’t come from a surgery. Giselle shuffled forward, her face the color of ash, trying to kick a wrapper under a cart. “This… this is just medical waste from the last procedure. The janitorial staff hasn’t come yet.” I ignored her pathetic lie. My eyes locked onto the massive, stainless steel sterile supply cabinet in the corner. It was big enough to hold a person. As I walked toward it, Giselle lunged at me, grabbing my waist. “Cam, stop! What are you doing?!” she screamed. “Those are imported sterile instruments! If you open that door, you contaminate everything! You can’t take that responsibility!” The more frantic she became, the colder I felt. “Do whatever you need to do, Camden,” my mother’s voice rang out from the doorway, steady as a rock. “I will handle the fallout.” I grabbed a heavy IV pole and swung it like a baseball bat directly into the glass doors of the sterile cabinet. The glass shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Trays of expensive surgical instruments crashed to the floor with a deafening metallic clatter. The cabinet was empty. Instantly, Giselle’s posture shifted. The terror vanished, replaced by a surge of indignant, righteous fury. “I told you!” she shrieked, pointing at the wreckage. “I told you I was just sleeping! But you have to be a paranoid psychopath! You just destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment! Are you happy now?” Donna immediately piled on. “Look at the son you raised, Evelyn! Throwing a psychotic tantrum in public!” Gary puffed up his chest, stepping toward me aggressively. “Giselle breaks her back every day, and instead of taking care of her, you throw dirt on her name? How is she supposed to show her face in this hospital after her own husband humiliated her like this?” 4. Doubt began to ripple through the crowd at the door. “Maybe Dr. Foster really did jump to conclusions?” “I mean, she could have just been a really messy sleeper…” “But what about all those wrappers on the floor?” Hearing the tide of opinion shift, Giselle walked over to my mother, her face arranged in an expression of long-suffering martyrdom. “Evelyn, you see what I have to deal with. Cam has been under so much pressure lately. I think he’s having a psychotic break. We should suspend him. Let him rest at home. I will personally pay for the contaminated equipment out of my own pocket so the hospital doesn’t suffer. Let’s just clear the hall and forget this happened.” My mother looked past her, her eyes locking onto mine. “Camden. Are you certain there is someone else in this room?” I didn’t answer. I just looked around. The cabinet was empty. Where the hell could he be? Then, I noticed the way Giselle was standing. She was talking to my mother, but her body was rigidly angled, subtly shielding the corner of the room. Shielding the biohazard waste compactor. It was a new piece of machinery the hospital had installed last month. A heavy-duty hydraulic press designed to compress medical waste into dense, sanitized disks before disposal. You hit the green button, and a steel plate inside crushed whatever was in the chamber with thousands of pounds of force. I let out a low, dark chuckle. Giselle really was brilliant. A masterful misdirection. I walked right past her, making a beeline for the compactor. A fresh layer of cold sweat broke out across Giselle’s forehead. “What are you doing now?!” I looked at her, my face a mask of absolute calm. “Since the janitors haven’t cleaned up your ‘medical waste,’ and the room is a mess, I’m just going to run the compactor. It’s protocol to compress and sanitize the waste, right?” I reached out, my finger hovering over the heavy green start button. Giselle lunged, grabbing my wrist with a grip like a vice. “No!” she roared, the sound tearing from her throat like a wounded animal. “Giselle! Release him!” my mother barked, her voice echoing like a gunshot. “Have you lost your mind?!” Giselle’s legs were physically shaking. But behind her, Gary let out an exasperated groan. “Oh for God’s sake, it’s just a damn trash machine! Press the button if it makes him feel better!” Before anyone could react, Gary shoved past his daughter. “My daughter has nothing to hide! Run the damn machine so we can go home and eat the soup your mother spent all night making!” Giselle hit the floor hard. She scrambled toward her father, screaming, “Dad, NO!” But Gary’s hand had already slammed down on the green button. Donna, annoyed by the delay, reached over and slapped the yellow ‘Accelerate/Compress’ button right next to it. “There! Are you done throwing your tantrum, Cam? Now we—” Donna didn’t get to finish her sentence. Because over the mechanical hum of the hydraulic press, a sound erupted from inside the machine. A piercing, agonized, inhuman scream.

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The Sydney sun was a warm, heavy blanket on my shoulders, the kind of heat that seeps into your bones and makes you forget the cold. My phone suddenly erupted on the table, the screen lighting up with a barrage of voicemails. They were all from my ex-wife. When I finally played one, her voice trembled violently against the static. She was frantic, saying she and her perfect first love had run into a wall at the County Clerk’s office while trying to get their marriage license. The clerk had taken one look at the system and informed her that her golden boy was already married in Australia. With two kids. Listening to her panic, I couldn’t help but let out a soft, dark laugh. She had no idea. She had spent all this time worshipping her long-lost love, completely blind to the kind of life he’d actually been living abroad all these years. Just three days ago, when we finalized our divorce, she had signed those papers with dizzying speed. She had sneered at me, calling me a spineless doormat, spitting out that she was suffocating and couldn’t take another second of my mediocrity. I hadn’t said a single word in my defense. I just walked out, went straight to the airport, and boarded a first-class flight to Australia. 01 The phone shattered the quiet of the late night, the screen illuminating the dark room with a name I thought I wouldn’t have to look at for a long time: Bernice. I answered. Instantly, a hysterical shriek tore through the speaker, so sharp I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Chase! Is this your doing? Why the hell are you Photoshopping garbage to frame Wes?!” Her voice shook with a volatile mix of rage and an undeniable, suppressed sob. I leaned against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my Sydney penthouse, looking down at the glittering, serpentine lights of the city below. My tone was as casual as if we were discussing the weather. “Which photo?” “Don’t play dumb with me! The one you sent! The one of Wes and his so-called family!” she practically roared. “Oh. You mean the family portrait,” I replied, my voice cool and flat. “That’s not Photoshopped, Bernice.” Dead silence fell over the line. I could hear nothing but her ragged, heavy breathing. I could picture her face perfectly in that moment. It would be a fascinating sequence of emotions: absolute denial, twisting into fury, and finally settling into a cold, creeping dread. “You’re lying! Wes already explained it to me! That’s his distant cousin! God, Chase, you are so pathetic. We’re divorced. Why do you have to use these disgusting, underhanded tricks to ruin my life?” Her words were razor-sharp, but the foundation beneath them was crumbling. She didn’t sound nearly as confident as she had a minute ago. I let out a low chuckle. “Three years of marriage, Bernice, and do you really know me at all?” I asked softly. “Did you honestly think I was still that pathetic doormat who was too afraid to raise his voice around you?” “You—” She choked on the word, entirely lost for a rebuttal. I picked up the tumbler of whiskey from the side table and took a slow sip. The ice clinked against the crystal, a sharp, ringing sound over the line. “I’ve known for a long time,” I said. “When you shoved those divorce papers in my face, holding a torch for him, I already knew he was a con artist.” “Bullshit! Wes loves me! He’s not like you. He’s romantic, he actually sees me, he flew all the way back from Australia just for me!” She hissed, defensive and cornered. “Did he?” I asked, letting the silence stretch for a beat. “Did he happen to mention the name of his wife in Sydney?” The breathing on the other end stopped completely. I could visualize the exact moment her pupils dilated in shock. That single sentence was the key, turning the lock on the deepest, darkest box of paranoia she had been trying to keep shut. “Let me do you a favor,” I murmured. “Her name is Emily. She’s an Australian local. And they have a beautiful four-year-old daughter.” Before she could piece together a single word of defense, I pulled the phone away. Click. I hung up. The world rushed back into a beautiful, immaculate silence. Opening my photo gallery, I found the picture I had so carefully sourced. It was a pristine, sun-drenched shot: Wesley holding his little girl, his wife Emily clinging affectionately to his arm. They were standing on a manicured lawn, smiling with the kind of blinding, effortless happiness that makes your stomach turn. It was a sincere, agonizingly real smile. I attached the image to a message and hit send. Watching the “Delivered” receipt pop up beneath it, the corners of my mouth curled into a slow, satisfied smile. This is just the prologue, Bernice. That perfect, fairy-tale romance you thought you had? I am going to tear it apart with my bare hands. You wanted to play games with my life, and now, the bill has come due. The curtain was just rising. 02 A minute later, the voice memos from Bernice started pouring in, a relentless barrage of panicked, furious vitriol. “You are out of your mind, Chase! Are you addicted to ruining things?” “You’re sick! You’re just jealous that I finally found someone who actually knows how to love me!” Beneath her screaming, in the muffled background, I could hear Wesley’s smooth, placating baritone. “Baby, don’t get worked up. Don’t let someone so irrelevant ruin our night.” “You know the photo is fake, right? You trust me, don’t you?” “Come here. I told you, that’s just my cousin’s family. He’s just trying to get inside your head.” It was a performance so amateur and transparent it was almost insulting. I didn’t reply to a single message. I just swiped left, deleting the voice notes one by one like clearing out junk mail. Arguing with a fool drunk on the illusion of love is the most spectacular waste of time. I needed a sharper angle of attack. A wedge that would make her self-deception impossible to maintain. My mind went to Paige. Bernice’s best friend. Paige was grounded, analytical, and notably, the only person who had tried to talk Bernice off the ledge when she impulsively filed for divorce. I walked over to my laptop and let my fingers fly across the keyboard. A few minutes later, a PDF stamped with official government watermarks materialized on my desktop. It was a document from the Australian Department of Home Affairs—a marriage registry record unequivocally confirming the legal union of Wesley and Emily. Date of registration: exactly four years ago. Location: New South Wales, Sydney. It was ironclad. Bulletproof. Instead of using my personal account, I routed the PDF through an encrypted, anonymous email server and sent it straight to Paige’s inbox. The subject line was empty. The body of the email contained a single sentence: For your friend’s own good. Make her wake up. Closing the laptop, I stepped out onto the terrace and lit a cigarette. The cool night air of the harbor washed over me, carrying the smoke out into the dark. I knew how this would play out. The seed was planted. It would take root in the soil of their seemingly unbreakable friendship, growing into something toxic and undeniable. Sure enough, by the following afternoon, my phone vibrated with a text from Paige. Chase. Was this you? I replied with a single question mark. Her response came typing through instantly. Bernice and I just had a screaming match. I showed her the document, and you know what she said? She accused me of being paid off by you. That we were conspiring against her. She’s lost her mind, Chase. Over this guy, she has completely lost her grip on reality. I could read the exhaustion and betrayal in the pixels of her text. A second message popped up. She actually said Wes already ‘explained’ it. That he only had a green-card marriage with a local to secure his business assets in Australia and that they haven’t spoken in years. And she swallowed it! Every word! I stared at the screen, a quiet laugh rumbling in my chest. Wesley’s lies were meticulously tailored to exploit Bernice’s blind spots. And she, terrified of admitting she had thrown her life away for a fraud, chose to close her eyes and swallow the poison. A match made in heaven. I texted Paige back: Let it go. Some people have to touch the fire to believe it burns. Setting the phone face down, I let the silence of the apartment envelop me. I could perfectly envision Bernice right now. Having “uncovered” the betrayal of her closest friend, she would be wrapping herself in the martyr’s cloak, convinced she and Wesley were a tragic, misunderstood couple fighting against a jealous world. That crushing sense of isolation would drive her right into his arms. She would cling to him tighter than ever. And that was exactly the architecture of my plan. Because when a drowning woman puts all her weight onto a single, rotting piece of driftwood, the snap of the wood is what finally pulls her under. The first hairline fracture in her trust had already formed. She would deny it to her dying breath, but the seed of doubt was a parasite. She would start watching him. She would start analyzing his offhand comments, looking for the seams in his story. And a liar juggling that many stories always drops a ball eventually. Tick tock, Wesley. 03 Paige’s interference clearly set off Wesley’s internal alarms. A grifter’s survival instinct is sharp. Feeling the heat, he decided to hit the accelerator. I watched it happen in real-time through the keyloggers and network taps I had quietly installed on his devices. His search history was a chaotic map of desperation: Australian real estate ROI, offshore asset relocation, expedited investor visas. Simultaneously, he was polishing a slick, corporate-looking pitch deck. It highlighted a “luxury oceanfront condo development” supposedly breaking ground on the Gold Coast. He was pushing Bernice relentlessly, urging her to pull $3 million from her father’s corporate accounts to sink into this absurdly high-yield “exclusive” opportunity. He sold it as the bedrock of their glamorous future together. And Bernice was biting. Through her digital footprint, I saw her laying the groundwork with her father, her messages laced with worship for Wesley’s brilliant business acumen and starry-eyed fantasies of generational wealth. It was tragic in its stupidity. The “development firm” was a hollow shell company. Its registered address traced back to a boarded-up coffee shop in Queensland. The moment that $3 million cleared, it would be fragmented into a dozen anonymous offshore accounts within twenty-four hours, vanishing like smoke in a windstorm. And Wesley would be on the first flight out, a ghost with a heavy wallet. But I didn’t pull the fire alarm. Stopping him now would be letting him off too easy. What I needed was for Bernice to climb all the way to the peak of her euphoric delusion, so she could feel every jagged rock on the way down. Digging deeper into the encrypted partitions of Wesley’s hard drive, I stumbled onto something that made my stomach turn. The man wasn’t just working Bernice; he was running a full-scale operation. He was simultaneously maintaining deep, emotionally manipulative cyber-relationships with three other women across the States. The chat logs were nauseating. He recycled the exact same poetry, the same promises of a white-picket-fence future, the same declarations that they were his “one true soulmate.” He even used the exact same Gold Coast real estate deck to try and bleed their savings dry. Scrolling through the explicit flirtations and the predatory lies, a wave of profound, visceral disgust washed over me. He was a monument to human greed, stripping these women of their dignity and their futures without a second thought. I meticulously curated a selection of screenshots from the archives. Conversations where he was sweet-talking the other women, discussing their hypothetical children, and delving into highly specific, intimate details. I scrubbed the images clean. I redacted the women’s avatars, their names, and any identifying markers. They were innocent collateral; I had no desire to drag them into the mud. My crosshairs were locked solely on Bernice. I wanted to introduce her to a new kind of hell: the slow, maddening burn of paranoia. She would see the texts. She would see his words. But she wouldn’t know who the ghosts on the other end of the screen were. She would confront him, screaming, and Wesley would do what he always did—he would weave a new, intricate lie to pacify her. But the ambiguity, the inability to ever truly prove or disprove his fidelity, would act as a serrated blade, sawing away at her sanity day by day. Once again, using the ghost server, I fired the curated package to Bernice’s email. The subject line read: How many women are financing your fairy tale? Message Sent. I leaned back in my ergonomic leather chair and closed my eyes, letting the quiet hum of the servers soothe me. I could feel the shockwave from across the Pacific. The moment she clicked that email, the tectonic plates of her reality would violently shift. Her perfect golden boy, her savior from my ‘mediocrity’, was shedding his skin. Chaos. Agony. Suspicion. Enjoy the feast I prepared for you, Bernice. It’s a dish meant to break the heart.

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After the holidays, I took on an unusual gig. For fifteen thousand dollars, I was hired to play the role of a doting boyfriend to a wealthy heiress. The job was simple: accompany her to her family’s estate and survive one night. The moment I stepped through the grand double doors of the house, her twin sister made her disdain violently clear. Her eyes, cold and sharp, dragged over me from head to toe. “He’s completely out of his depth,” she said. “He’s clearly here for the money.” “He is absolutely not good enough for my sister.” Her words were like glass shards, but I kept my head down, swallowing the sting, offering no defense. It wasn’t until the sister explicitly demanded that we break up right then and there that the heiress I was hired to protect finally snapped. “Catherine, that is enough,” she snapped back. “You’ve known him for five minutes. You’re acting like you’re his ex-girlfriend or something.” At those words, her sister slowly lifted her gaze, her eyes locking directly onto mine. My fake girlfriend didn’t know it, but her flippant, sarcastic remark had hit dead center. Years ago, Catherine and I had been together. We dated for three years. She just never let me see the light of day. 1 The air in the drawing room turned to ice. Crystal, my “girlfriend,” waited for a response to her outburst, but none came. When she looked up, she saw her sister, Catherine, frozen in place. “Cathy?” Crystal leaned forward, her brow furrowing. “Wait, do you actually know him?” Catherine had just flown back from Europe today, and the Griffith estate was packed with extended family. At Crystal’s question, several heads turned our way, curiosity sparking in their eyes. Catherine twisted the Cartier ring on her index finger. She didn’t say a word. It was their mother, Diana Griffith, who broke the silence with a soft, dismissive laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Crystal.” She adjusted her cashmere wrap, her voice smooth and dripping with old-money condescension. “Your sister isn’t like you. She’s always had impeccable taste. She wouldn’t look twice at an ordinary man.” The subtext wasn’t subtle. On paper, I didn’t even meet the financial requirements to stand on the Griffiths’ front porch. Everyone in the room understood the insult. Everyone except Crystal, who played her part flawlessly. “What do you mean, ordinary?” Crystal frowned, her fingers interlacing with mine. She squeezed my hand, her voice ringing out clear and defiant. “Camden is incredible. Mom, I’m going to marry him.” The words hung in the air. Suddenly, Catherine, who had been completely silent, seemed to snap back into her body. Her dark eyes dropped to our intertwined hands. She let out a hollow, mocking laugh. “Incredible?” Catherine’s voice was laced with pure venom. “Is that what we’re calling thieves and liars these days?” 2 Those two sentences dropped like bombs, suffocating the sprawling room in a dead silence. Every eye turned to me. Crystal had been reining in her temper since we walked through the door. This was the match in the powder keg. She stood up, voices raising as she and Catherine plunged into a bitter, shouting argument. The room dissolved into chaos. I took a slow sip of my club soda, the icy liquid tracking down my throat. The moment I had walked in and seen Catherine standing by the fireplace, I knew this weekend was going to be a disaster. But this was just a job. We were playing a part. Catherine dragging my name through the mud with ancient history shouldn’t hurt me anymore. Using the screaming match as cover, I slipped out of the room and retreated to a first-floor guest bathroom. I locked the door, leaning against the marble sink, trying to ground myself in why I was here. Crystal was really dating a guy from a working-class background, and her mother was doing everything in her power to destroy it. So, Crystal hired me—a guy with an even bleaker financial resume—to parade around the estate as a decoy to shock her family. Survive the weekend, piss off the Griffiths, take my fifteen grand, and leave. Catherine’s viciousness was actually helping me earn my paycheck. I turned on the faucet, letting the cold water run over my wrists. Looking at my reflection, I put the pieces together. Crystal and Catherine didn’t look identical—fraternal twins—but there was an undeniable echo in the slope of their cheekbones, the shape of their eyes. The Griffith family. For three years, that was the name Catherine had scrubbed from her existence when she was with me. I stayed in the bathroom for a while, letting the silence settle my racing heart, guessing the argument outside had burned itself out. But the moment I opened the door, I walked straight into Catherine. She was standing in the middle of the quiet hallway, perfectly still, her eyes locked on me. They were pitch black, unreadable, and terrifyingly familiar. She used to look at me exactly like this whenever some other girl hit on me at a bar. A possessive, suffocating darkness. I suddenly realized that when I walked in, her demand that Crystal and I “break up” hadn’t been an act of sisterly protection. I broke eye contact and started walking past her, pretending she was made of glass. I only made it two steps. “Three months, Cam,” Catherine said softly. A chilling, humorless scoff escaped her lips. “I’ve been waiting for you to come crawling back. I didn’t realize you’d already found my replacement.” 3 The club soda churned in my stomach. I didn’t stop walking, but my mind was violently pulled back in time. Catherine had never talked about her family. It wasn’t until our first month together that I realized she wasn’t just well-off; she was untouchable. I had been working entry-level at a corporate firm, and a senior manager had blatantly stolen credit for a project I’d bled over for a month. I came home exhausted and vented to her over cheap takeout. The very next morning, the project, the credit, and the bonus were officially back in my name. The senior manager actually came to my cubicle to apologize, sweating through his shirt. I stood in my boss’s office in a daze, listening to her tell me with a nervous smile that if I ever needed anything, I should bypass her and go straight to “the top.” The top. I didn’t know exactly what strings had been pulled, but I knew Catherine’s hands were on them. When I brought it up that night, Catherine just smiled, tracing the rim of her wine glass. I remember staring at her, realizing she possessed a kind of wealth I couldn’t even conceptualize. Slowly, the reality of our dynamic set in. She never claimed me in public. She never introduced me to a single friend. Once, we were having dinner at a quiet, upscale bistro. Halfway through the meal, she got a text. She abruptly stood up, had her driver pack up our food, and sent me home in the back of her SUV. I ate my cold steak alone in my apartment. I found out later that her socialite friends happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to grab a drink. “Am I a secret?” I asked her later that night, the humiliation hot in my chest. “Are you ashamed of me?” Her fingertips had felt so cold as she wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye. She whispered that she wasn’t. After that night, she finally took me to meet her inner circle. That was the night I found out about Brooks Harrington. Her childhood best friend. Old money, devastatingly arrogant, and looking at Catherine like he owned her. Dinner was agonizingly quiet. I was a ghost at the table. Just before we left, I accidentally glanced down and saw Brooks’s phone light up with a text in their group chat. Must be tough for you, having to rent out the entire restaurant just to hide him. Let’s not do this again. A drop of hot tea spilled onto my fingers. I flinched, snapping back to the present. 4 Back then, Catherine swore she was just keeping a low profile because the board of directors was watching her personal life closely. But after that dinner, we didn’t go out together for a long time. A few days before my birthday, I noticed a new dress hanging in her closet. It was a striking, unmistakable emerald green. On the night of my birthday, she never came home. I sat curled up on the sofa, a movie playing on mute, watching my phone screen stay dark. She wasn’t answering. Instead, I got an unexpected text from Brooks Harrington, asking me to come down to the lobby of my building. When I walked out, the first thing I noticed was his tie. It was an unmistakable, striking emerald green. Perfectly matched to the dress I’d seen in her closet. My brain short-circuited for a second. Brooks and I weren’t friends. I had no idea how he even knew it was my birthday, but he held out a beautifully wrapped, obscenely expensive watch box. “I didn’t have anything prepared when we met last time,” Brooks said, his smile perfectly polite, perfectly cruel. “Happy birthday.” I didn’t take it. He didn’t push. He casually lowered his hand and looked around. “Is she not keeping you company tonight?” I shook my head. “She’s working late.” Brooks just smiled. He didn’t say another word. Our brief, agonizing exchange ended. When I stepped out of the awning, it had started to snow. I checked my phone. Two notifications: a news alert and a spam email. Nothing from her. The snow was coming down harder, the Chicago streets slick and quiet. I looked up just in time to see Brooks crossing the avenue and climbing into the back of an idling black Bentley. The car roared to life, disappearing into the flurry of white. I stood in the freezing wind, blinking slowly. I recognized that Bentley. It sat in Catherine’s private garage. She strictly used it for VIPs. In three years, she had never once let me sit in it. 5 I stood in the snow until my limbs went completely numb. Catherine didn’t come home until the next morning. She told me there had been an emergency at the firm. “But I saw Brooks getting into your car last night,” I said quietly. Catherine smiled smoothly. “You saw Brooks?” I didn’t answer. Her smile widened just a fraction. “I was tied up with work, Cam. I just drove back into the city this morning.” She even pulled out her phone, swiping through timestamped photos of a corporate retreat in the suburbs. The times and locations lined up perfectly with her story. But I just looked at her. I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. She gave me so little of her actual life. Everything I knew about her was strictly what she allowed me to know. If she wanted to hide something, she had the resources to bury it so deep I’d never find it. For my birthday, she gave me a vintage Rolex. She fastened it around my wrist, kissed me softly, and murmured that I should stay away from Brooks. A month later, I found out why. I was forced to attend a charity gala as her “plus one”—though we arrived separately. Halfway through the night, Brooks stood in the center of the ballroom and loudly accused me of stealing his watch. That was the night I fully grasped who Brooks Harrington was. Heir to a real estate empire, worth hundreds of millions. When he spoke, the room listened. And everyone immediately took his side. “Funny how you both went to the coat check at the same time, and right after his goes missing, you suddenly have the exact same model?” one of his friends sneered. “Yours? Where’s the receipt, Camden? With your salary, you couldn’t afford the clasp on that watch if you worked for a decade.” The judgmental stares of Chicago’s elite pinned me to the floor. I stood in the center of the hostile circle, looking at Brooks like I was seeing a monster for the first time. It took me a long time to find my voice. “I didn’t buy it. My girlfriend gave it to me,” I said, my voice trembling but loud enough for the room to hear. I looked dead at Brooks. “You know exactly who she is, Brooks.” Brooks tilted his head, feigning innocence. “Do I? What’s her name?” “Tori,” I said. “Tori Ellis.” Brooks’s eyes lit up. He had laid the trap, and I had walked right into it. He repeated the name slowly, tasting it, before letting out a loud, echoing laugh. “Tori Ellis,” he chuckled, looking around at the wealthy crowd. “I know a lot of people in this city, Camden. I have never, in my entire life, met a Tori Ellis.” I froze. A physical blow to the chest wouldn’t have hurt more. The blood drained from my face. A coworker who had sneaked me a plus-one ticket rushed over, whispering frantically for me to call her. To prove I wasn’t crazy. To prove I wasn’t a thief. My fingers were ice-cold as I fumbled with my phone and dialed her number. It rang. And rang. And rang. The hollow tone echoed from my phone speaker into the silent, waiting ballroom. She didn’t pick up. My coworker panicked, asking if I knew where she lived, if we could drive there right now to get her. Her frantic voice mixed with the relentless ringing of the phone, piercing my eardrums. I was so cold. A deep, bone-rattling chill was spreading through my veins. Standing in the middle of that glittering, hostile room, the horrifying truth crashed over me. I knew nothing about her. Other than that apartment and this phone number, I had absolutely no way to reach the woman I loved. I stood there like a ghost as one of Brooks’s security men stepped forward and forcibly unlatched the Rolex from my wrist. “Mr. Harrington is a generous man. He’s not going to press charges,” the man said smoothly. “But next time you want to invent a sugar mommy to cover your tracks, pick a better fake name. The Griffiths are close friends of the Harringtons. They have two daughters. Neither of them is named Tori Ellis.” I was shoved backward, my hip slamming hard into the corner of a cocktail table. Through the haze of pain and humiliation, a memory surfaced. All those times I had sat quietly at dinners with her friends. Not a single one of them had ever called her “Tori.” 6 She didn’t call me back until I had left the gala and was walking numbly down an empty street. “I want to see you,” I whispered into the receiver. She was silent for a few seconds. Then, she sent a black car to pick me up. It didn’t take me to our apartment. It took me to a sprawling, glass-walled penthouse downtown that I had never seen before. That was when I realized she owned dozens of properties like this. The apartment I cherished as our “home” was just one of her many empty boxes. When I arrived, a team of assistants and executives were filtering out of the penthouse. She looked like she had just wrapped up a boardroom meeting. We stood in the cavernous, hyper-modern living room, just looking at each other. Catherine was endlessly patient. When I didn’t speak, she just watched me, perfectly composed. Finally, my voice cracked the silence. “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself? What’s your real name?” Her brow twitched. A microscopic frown. And in that moment, my heart plummeted into my stomach. On the ride over, I had a hundred burning questions. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask why she lied. Why she approached me just to keep me in the dark. I wanted to ask when this “right time to go public” she always talked about was actually going to happen. I wanted to know if, in three years of lying to my face, she ever felt an ounce of guilt. But looking at her cold, perfect face, only one question clawed its way out of my throat. “Was it a lie from the very beginning? When you said we’d get married… you never meant it, did you?” She looked genuinely surprised that I was asking. She let the silence stretch out, heavy and suffocating. Then she said, “I thought you understood.” I stared at her. “Understood what?” “Do I really have to spell it out?” She looked at me, the silence in her eyes shifting into a quiet, crushing pity. “This is how my world works, Cam. Your background, your financial standing… you were never going to be my husband on paper.” The penthouse was dead silent. Then, a broken sound tore out of me. A laugh that choked on a sob before it could fully form. I closed my eyes. A single, heavy tear broke free, splashing hot against the back of my hand. … When I walked out of the lobby of her building, Brooks was waiting. He leaned against the marble pillar, taking in my shattered, hollow expression with the grace of a king looking at a peasant. He offered me the truth like it was charity. He filled in the blanks. The text message that ruined our dinner months ago? That was him. The only reason she finally introduced me to her friends wasn’t because she felt bad about my tears; it was because Brooks had found out about me and demanded to see her little pet. On my birthday, she really was in the Bentley with him. And tonight, at the gala? She ignored my calls on purpose. Because she was never going to walk into a ballroom filled with her peers to claim a charity case. Every little detail wove together into a suffocating net, pulling tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe. My entire body ached. “She didn’t even give you her real name,” Brooks said softly, buttoning his cashmere coat. “But that’s the price of being a secret, Camden. You have to swallow the indignity and keep your mouth shut.” 7 I went back to the apartment that I thought was ours. It took me exactly one hour to pack three years of my life into a single suitcase. When I opened the front door to leave, Catherine was standing on the other side. “Where are you going?” she asked. I didn’t answer. I gripped the handle of my suitcase and tried to push past her, but she slammed her hand against the doorframe, blocking me. “Cam, this is your home. The lease is in your name,” she said, her voice dropping an octave. “Where do you think you’re going to go?” A wave of pure, visceral nausea hit me. I violently shoved her shoulder, trying to break free, but she caught my wrist in a vice grip. “The only reason you have a career right now is because I made a phone call,” she said, her tone dripping with dark authority. “I gave you that life, Cam. And I can take it away just as easily.” She yanked me closer, her fingers digging painfully into my skin. “You will never find anyone better than me. And you can’t survive without me.” … The memories flashed through my mind like a fever dream. I pulled myself back to the present, standing in the opulent hallway of the Griffith estate. All that was left echoing in my skull were the final, venomous words she had thrown at me the night I left: You’ll come begging back to me, Camden. 8 “You look like hell. What’s wrong?” When I made it back to the living room, the crowd had thinned out. Crystal was looking at me, her arms crossed. “Don’t let my sister get into your head. She’s been acting like a rabid dog for the last few months.” She paused, then muttered, “I’m adding an emotional distress bonus to your paycheck.” The tension in my chest eased slightly. By nightfall, the sky broke open, and heavy rain began to batter the windows. Most of the extended family had gone home. Catherine picked up her trench coat, preparing to leave. “Oh, by the way, Mom,” Crystal called out casually from the sofa. “I forgot to tell you. Cam is staying in my wing tonight.” Catherine froze halfway to the door. She turned around, her dark eyes drifting slowly over to Crystal. “Crystal,” she said, a tight, terrifying smile playing on her lips. “I told you, he is beneath you. Stop playing these childish games.” Crystal stared back, momentarily taken aback by the sheer hostility. She clearly wanted to say something sharp, but settled for a defiant, “Mind your own business, Cathy.” Catherine’s smile vanished. Without a word, she dropped her coat onto a chair and sat back down in the parlor. Crystal blinked. “Didn’t you have a board meeting tonight?” “I canceled it,” Catherine said softly, her eyes locked on me. It was Crystal’s turn to go quiet. She looked at her sister, her eyes narrowing slightly, gears turning in her head. Late that night, the storm worsened. The rain lashed violently against the glass of my guest bedroom. I was lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, when I heard the footsteps. Soft. Deliberate. Moving down the hallway. They got closer and closer, until they stopped dead outside my door. I held my breath, every muscle in my body tensing. I watched the brass handle of the door begin to slowly, agonizingly turn. Suddenly, a voice echoed from down the hall. “Cathy?” It was Crystal. “What the hell are you doing standing outside my boyfriend’s door?”

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In the five years I’d been with Caroline, she had bailed on me exactly thirty-six times. Twenty of those times, she looked me dead in the eye and swore, “This is the very last time.” On the morning of our wedding, she hung up her phone, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of her silk robe. “Colin, there’s an emergency at the hospital. I…” She trailed off, the lie catching in her throat. I didn’t let her finish. “Go,” I said, my voice shockingly level. “I get it. They need you.” She blinked, clearly caught off guard by how easy I was making it. “Please don’t be mad. I’ll take care of this and come right back. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” I offered a faint, hollow smile. “I’m not mad. Your work is important.” She hesitated at the door, guilt flickering in her eyes. “I’ll be back the second I’m done! I swear to God, Colin, this is the last time.” I didn’t answer her. As the door clicked shut, I realized she was actually right about one thing. It really was the last time. Because after today, there wouldn’t be a next time. 1 When my best man, Nelson, found out she was gone, he practically vibrated with rage in the groom’s suite. “She stood you up at the rehearsal dinner. She completely ghosted your thirtieth birthday,” he paced, raking a hand through his hair. “And now, on your actual wedding day, she…” “Cancel it,” I said quietly. Nelson stopped dead. His eyes went wide. “Are you serious right now?” I nodded. I spent the next hour standing in front of our friends and family, bowing my head in apology, promising to return every single wedding gift, every check, every registry blender. They murmured polite, sympathetic things, looking at me with the kind of profound pity usually reserved for funerals. When the hall was finally empty, I pulled out my phone and dialed Dr. Evans, the Chief of Surgery at my hospital. “Dr. Evans. I want to take that fellowship in Switzerland.” He sounded thrilled. “Colin, that’s fantastic news. I’ll get the paperwork fast-tracked. You’ll fly out next Monday.” He paused. “But wait, you just got married today. Is Dr. Reid on board with this?” “Yeah,” I said simply, and hung up. Caroline and I worked at the same trauma center. She was the star attending surgeon—brilliant, relentless, always burdened with endless procedures and critical patients. Over the last five years, I had molded myself into a waiting room. I was entirely accustomed to her shifting priorities. But today was our wedding day. She had requested this time off a year in advance. The hospital wouldn’t dare schedule her. Which meant she hadn’t left for work. She had left for him. My phone buzzed. A notification from the one account I had on a secret, muted watch-list. It was a photo: a woman’s slender hand gently pressing against a man’s bare shoulder. The caption read: Dislocated my shoulder on a morning run. Good thing my favorite attending is always here to save my life. I didn’t need to guess whose hand that was. I recognized the diamond engagement ring. I had spent three months’ salary on it. Six months ago, her department got a new surgical intern named Tristan. At first, I didn’t think much of him. Caroline used to complain about how clumsy he was, how he lacked the sharp instincts required for trauma. But slowly, her complaints morphed into compliments. He was earnest. He was eager to learn. He was pure-hearted. I watched the gravitational pull happen in real time. She broke hospital protocol to let him scrub in on complex cases. She covered his charting errors. she rearranged her shifts to align with his. The breaking point was a few months ago. Tristan had twisted his ankle during a hospital charity run. Right there in the crowded medical tent, Caroline dropped to her knees in the dirt, her fingers lightly probing his ankle. I had been standing ten feet away. I saw the way she looked up at him—soft, breathless, completely utterly consumed. My stomach dropped into my shoes. Because five years ago, that was exactly how she used to look at me. That night, I became a man I despised. I lay awake in the dark, scrolling through her phone while she slept. There was nothing explicitly incriminating. The texts were clean. But something visceral told me otherwise, and like a masochist, I turned on post notifications for Tristan’s Instagram. I became a digital voyeur, piecing together the timeline of my own heartbreak through his cryptic, sweet captions. I felt pathetic. Sitting in the empty venue, I finally blocked his account. I turned off my phone. I drove back to the house Caroline and I had just bought together. Pushing the front door open, I was greeted by a sea of white and gold balloons. A velvet “Just Married” banner hung across the mantle. Framed engagement photos lined the hallway, smiling back at me like ghosts. I had spent the last month decorating this place, meticulously planning for the beautiful life we were about to start. I never imagined I’d be crossing the threshold alone. 2 I drew a scalding hot bath, letting the heat seep into my bones, and went to bed early. Sometime in the middle of the night, the faint click of the front door pulled me from sleep. Caroline was home. In the past, I would have been asleep on the living room sofa, waiting up for her. The second she walked in, I would have thrown my arms around her, burying my face in her neck to smell the sterile hospital soap mixed with her perfume. But tonight, I was just so impossibly tired. The bedroom door creaked open, spilling a sliver of hallway light across the duvet. I kept my eyes heavy, squinting as she moved to the edge of the mattress. She leaned down, her lips brushing my forehead. “You didn’t wait up?” she whispered. “Were you that exhausted?” I gave a vague, sleepy nod. I felt her warm breath against my neck. “I really did have a massive emergency today, Colin. A patient was bleeding out. It was critical. I had to be there.” “Mhm,” I murmured. I rolled over, putting my back to her. I didn’t want to hear another syllable. The room went dead silent. The air grew thick. When she finally spoke, her voice was clipped, defensive. “Colin, you shouldn’t be acting like this.” A flare of irritation sparked in my chest. I shouldn’t be acting like this? How was I supposed to act? Like I used to? Was I supposed to sit up, eyes red and stinging, and demand to know why she abandoned me at the altar to hold the hand of an intern? Was I supposed to cry and beg her to tell me if she still loved me? Was I supposed to let her shut me down with her favorite line—Tristan and I are completely platonic—and just swallow the humiliation? Was that the only “normal” reaction? Over the last six months, we had fought until our throats were raw. But tonight? Tonight, the fight was gone. My eyelids felt like lead. I didn’t have the energy to argue, to explain, or to even look at her. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me. When I woke up the next morning, I realized I had slept deeply for the first time in months. The knot of anxiety that permanently lived beneath my ribs was gone. I got up, went to the kitchen, and out of sheer muscle memory, I started making breakfast for two. Just as I set the plates on the island, the bathroom door opened. Caroline walked out. The dark circles under her eyes were bruised and heavy; she looked awful. She glanced at the eggs and toast. “Don’t bother,” she said tightly. “I really want an almond croissant from that French bakery downtown. I’ll go get it myself.” I looked at her. In five years, she had never once craved almond croissants. I knew exactly who did. She paused, her eyes sweeping over the balloons clustered in the corner of the living room. “You have the day off today. You should take down all this stuff. It’s childish.” I took a slow sip of my coffee. “Okay,” I said evenly. “I’ll clean it up.” Caroline froze. She clearly hadn’t expected me to agree so easily. She stood rooted to the hardwood floor, a slow, hot anger flushing her cheeks. “Are you punishing me with the silent treatment, Colin?” she demanded. “I told you, I had a valid reason yesterday. I—” “I’m not punishing you,” I cut in softly. “I understand.” She stared at me, her mouth parting as if to argue, but the words died in her throat. My absolute lack of resistance had totally disarmed her. She let out a frustrated scoff, grabbed her keys, and slammed the door behind her. 3 After breakfast, my phone rang. It was Dr. Evans. “Colin, I need your physical signature on the fellowship release forms. Can you swing by?” I threw on a jacket and drove to the hospital. As I walked past the surgical department lounge, the sound of bright, familiar laughter drifted through the cracked door. “Dr. Reid, seriously, thank you for bringing me breakfast,” a male voice said. “I owe you a coffee at the very least.” I glanced through the gap in the door. Caroline was sitting at the lounge table, a soft, indulgent smile playing on her lips. One of the nurses walked by and teased her. “Dr. Reid! You just got married yesterday. No wonder you look so exhausted—long night, huh?” Caroline just smiled, letting the implication hang in the air. Tristan’s face suddenly dropped in a theatrical display of guilt. “Oh my god, Dr. Reid, I’m so sorry. Because my shoulder flared up yesterday, I totally ruined your wedding day. Is your husband going to kill me? I swear I didn’t mean to pull you away.” Caroline’s tone was breezy, effortless. “Don’t worry about it. He won’t.” I didn’t linger. I kept walking, straight to the administrative offices. I signed every page, double-checked my flight details, and finalized the exit protocol. I was officially leaving. On my way out, I bumped into Caroline in the main corridor. She stopped, visibly startled. “What are you doing here?” “Just had to sign some paperwork,” I said. She cleared her throat, shifting her weight awkwardly. “Listen, I… I have plans with a friend for lunch today. I won’t be able to eat with you.” I nodded. She hesitated, her brow furrowing at my total lack of pushback. “Let’s do dinner, okay? I’ll make sure to be home early.” I looked at her for a long moment. “Alright. I have something I need to tell you anyway.” She seemed to exhale a breath she’d been holding. “Okay. Go home and rest.” I nodded again, turned, and walked away. Back at the house, I started tearing down the decorations. The foil balloons deflated with sad, wheezing sounds. I scraped the window decals off the glass. Scraps of gold confetti clung to the rug like the remnants of a very bad joke. As I was wiping down the dining table, my elbow clipped a coffee mug. Crack. The ceramic shattered across the floor. It was a custom mug we had painted together at a pottery class three years ago. We had glazed the words Forever and Always onto the side. Now, the piece with Forever lay under the chair, and Always was near the baseboard. She was on the left; I was on the right. It felt poetic. Maybe we were always meant to be broken apart. At five o’clock, I started cooking. Caroline had a notoriously weak stomach, so for years, I had trained myself to cook bland, easily digestible meals—steamed fish, plain rice, bone broths. Tonight, I made a massive spread of my favorite, unapologetically spicy Szechuan dishes. At six o’clock, I texted her: When are you coming home? Her reply was instant. On my way. It was the exact same lie she always told. I sat down, ate my fiery dinner in complete silence, and then scraped every last leftover into the trash can. Just as I finished washing the pan, my phone buzzed. It was Nelson. Dude, did you and Caroline completely break up? I’m over by the harbor, and she’s here watching the firework show with that intern guy. He attached a photo. Against the inky night sky, brilliant bursts of fireworks lit up the water. In the foreground, Caroline and Tristan stood shoulder-to-shoulder. They were looking at each other, smiling like newlyweds. I typed back: Yeah. We’re done. I’m leaving for Switzerland next week. Nelson’s reply came a minute later. Good. Getting out of the country is exactly what you need. You’ve bled yourself dry for her. 4 I dragged my suitcase out of the closet and started packing. Looking at my wardrobe, I realized it was a sea of muted pastels and beige. She had once mentioned that I looked “professional and handsome” in business casual, so for five years, I had dressed like a corporate mannequin. Digging all the way to the back, I found a crisp, unstructured white linen shirt I hadn’t worn since med school. I put it on, staring at myself in the mirror. For a second, the old Colin—the one who was bright and ambitious and alive—looked back at me. The front door unlocked. Caroline walked in, bringing the chill of the night air with her. She stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, her eyes landing on me. For a second, a look of genuine surprise, almost admiration, flashed across her face. Then she looked down at the open suitcase on the bed. “The sun in Fiji is brutal,” she said casually. “Make sure you pack extra SPF.” It took me a second to process what she was talking about. Right. The honeymoon. I had begged her for months to go to Fiji. She kept pushing it back until she finally caved and booked it for next Monday. “Yeah,” I murmured, turning back to my packing. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a velvet box. “For you.” It was an apology gift. Over the last five years, I had amassed a small fortune in apology watches, cufflinks, and fountain pens. It was her preferred method of sweeping our fights under the rug. I took the box and set it on the nightstand without looking at it. She tensed. “You’re not going to open it?” I kept folding my jeans. “I’m in the middle of packing. I’ll look at it later.” The room grew agonizingly quiet. I could feel her staring at the back of my head. “Colin, you’ve been acting so weird lately,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “I didn’t come home last night, and you didn’t even call. I blew off our lunch today, and you didn’t ask why.” Her breath hitched. “Do you… do you even love me anymore?” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. I stopped folding. I turned to look at her, my face perfectly calm. I opened my mouth to speak, but before the words could come out— Her phone rang. She answered it immediately. Tristan’s panicked, weeping voice bled through the receiver. Caroline’s demeanor flipped instantly from vulnerable to commanding. “Hey, breathe. I’m on my way back right now. Don’t touch anything, let me handle it.” She hung up, looking at me with frantic, guilty eyes. “Tristan had a complication on the table. I have to go.” I nodded, picking up another shirt. “Go. Work comes first.” She didn’t move. She stood frozen in the doorway, agonizing over my complete lack of resistance. “Colin, please don’t overthink this. He and I are just—” “I know,” I interrupted softly. “You’re just friends. It’s strictly professional.” Hearing me parrot her own excuses didn’t soothe her; it seemed to terrify her. Her brow furrowed deeply. “Colin, I know you’re furious, but this is a life-or-death situation. I swear to you, I will be back tomorrow.” I had no idea how she was reading fury in my behavior. “I’m not mad.” She let out a shaky breath, stepping forward to wrap her arms around my shoulders. She pressed a desperate kiss to my cheek. “I will be back tomorrow,” she whispered fiercely. “We’ll go to the airport together. Just wait for me. I love you. You’re the only one.” She pulled away, grabbed her coat, and ran out the door. I looked at the empty space she left behind and let out a dry, humorless laugh. I finished packing. Thankfully, since we had just moved into this house, I didn’t have much to take. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I opened my banking app and systematically refunded every single Venmo, Zelle, and wire transfer our friends had sent for the wedding. I texted them individually, apologizing and saying goodbye. No one asked questions. They just told me to take care of myself. We were all adults; the unspoken truth was loud enough. By 6:00 AM the next morning, Caroline still wasn’t home. I ordered an Uber to the airport and boarded a direct flight to Zurich. When I finally opened my eyes, the plane was descending over the snow-capped Swiss Alps. I turned my phone off airplane mode. Instantly, my screen lit up with dozens of missed calls and frantic text messages. Every single one was from Caroline.

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They say I’m a bottom-feeding defense attorney, a parasite who specializes in losing cases. But the strange thing is, I’ve never received a single bad review. I remember the day it all shifted, standing in a sterile courtroom during a horrific murder and dismemberment trial. The defendant took one look at me and let his arrogance off the leash. He jutted his chin out, his voice dripping with venomous privilege. “You have absolutely zero evidence. You can’t touch me!” Then, he pointed a manicured finger right at my chest and burst into a jagged fit of laughter. “Hiring a garbage lawyer like this? What, is the prosecution trying to get me acquitted?” I didn’t flush. I didn’t yell. I just offered a calm, slow shake of my head and turned to address the room. “He’s right. As it stands, the evidence is purely circumstantial.” The gallery exploded. The air in the courtroom grew thick with outrage, a chorus of voices branding me a failure, a sellout, a waste of breath. I waved a hand, letting their vitriol wash over me, entirely unbothered. I turned back to the defendant, letting a slow, knowing smile stretch across my face. “But I’m entirely too tired to argue the minutiae of the law with you today,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise like glass. “So.” “I’d like to call the victim of this case to the stand, so she can say a few words herself.” The defendant’s smirk vanished. He stared at me, completely paralyzed. 1 My name is Simon. Simon Carmichael. I am a highly renowned attorney in my specific… circle. Though, looking at me, my new client clearly had his doubts. “Mr. Carmichael… why is your office door covered in paint?” I didn’t look up from the file. “Oh, a former client threw that on there. He was wishing my business a booming, fiery success.” “The paint is pitch black.” “Darkness absorbs the most heat,” I replied smoothly. “It’s a metaphor.” The client stared at me, hopelessly lost. He hesitated for a long, agonizing moment, the silence thick with his grief. Then, he gritted his teeth and slid the envelope of cash—his retainer—across my desk. “I don’t care,” he whispered, his voice cracking at the edges. “You are the only lawyer in the city who hasn’t slammed the door in my face. I have to believe in you.” I stared down at the meager stack of bills, plunging into a rare moment of introspection. The client shifted nervously. “Is there a problem?” I shook my head, snapping back to reality. “I’m just going to put this out there right now: my final bill is going to be significantly higher than this retainer.” He looked down, doing some silent mental math, before his jaw set in a hard line. “If it means making that animal pay for what he did, I don’t care what it costs. I’ll give you everything I have.” Just then, my phone buzzed against the wood of the desk. A text from an old colleague. You’re really taking the Trent Montgomery case? Are you out of your mind? You know what his family does to people who cross them. My client saw the notification light up on the screen. He lifted his head, a profound, hollow sadness settling into his eyes. “Mr. Carmichael…” I waved a dismissive hand, trying to inject some levity into the heavy air. “Relax, Thomas. Don’t worry about it. These billionaire types, their revenge tactics are so predictable. Bribes, threats, maybe a little extortion. Besides, my entire family is already dead and gone. If they want to kill me, they can get in line.” Thomas just stared at me. 2 “Trent Montgomery. Twenty-seven years old. Only son of the Chairman of Apex Enterprises. Former high school classmate of the victim, Sophie.” I read his list of sins with an utterly blank expression, letting the sterile legal jargon clash against the horror of his actions. “On the night of November 7th, the defendant, Trent Montgomery, stalked the victim, Sophie, to her residence. He assaulted her, and in an effort to cover his tracks, he murdered her, dismembered the body, and disposed of the remains in a municipal landfill…” Trent slouched in his chair, wearing a bespoke suit that cost more than my life. He raised a hand, looking thoroughly bored. “Objection, Your Honor. They don’t have a single shred of evidence proving I was the one who did that.” I didn’t miss a beat. “The victim’s phone contained a photograph of you two together, alongside other individuals, time-stamped on the day of the incident. Care to explain?” “Yeah. Like you just said, we went to high school together.” He rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. “We ran into each other at a reunion thing, snapped a pic. Is taking a photo a crime now?” I let out a low, cold laugh. “Then perhaps the defendant can tell the court exactly what he was doing between the hours of 10:00 PM on November 7th and 3:00 AM the following morning? Do you have an alibi? A witness?” Trent picked at a stray thread on his cuff, pretending to think about it. “After the reunion, I went home. Slept like a baby until the sun came up. And no, obviously I don’t have a witness. I like sleeping alone. Though, if you’re offering to join me, counselor, I’m pretty open-minded.” I fired off a few more pieces of circumstantial evidence. Every single one was effortlessly batted away by Trent’s high-priced defense attorney, Hughes. But it was the exchange that followed that truly shattered the fragile air in the room. Trent leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the defense table. The malice in his eyes was bright and venomous. “What’s the point of all this talking?” he sneered, looking directly at me. “Let me ask you one simple question: do you have any actual proof that I killed her? Hmm?” Beside me, Thomas’s face drained of color, turning the shade of old ash. He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles went white, his entire body trembling violently. Trent could afford to be arrogant. He could afford to be cruel. Because his father’s money had ensured that every tangible piece of evidence had been scrubbed clean from the earth. 3 I requested a recess. Hours of relentless verbal sparring hadn’t so much as chipped Trent’s psychological armor, nor had we produced a single smoking gun. Next to me, Thomas looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to collapse into the abyss. But honestly, the most pressing issue was the gallery. The spectators had already begun rummaging through their bags, fully prepared to hurl whatever rotten garbage they had brought. They didn’t throw anything while court was in session, but the moment I stepped out into the hallway, an entire row of people synchronized their disgust, spitting at my shoes. Thomas watched, entirely bewildered. “Why do they hate you so much?” “If you were them,” I said, wiping my shoe on the carpet, “and you watched a lawyer lose case after case, yet keep showing up with absolute confidence only to lose again, you’d hate me too.” “But… aren’t you a famous attorney?” I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a small, rolled-up pennant that an angry mob had crowdfunded for me last year. I unrolled it. It read: BOYCOTT THE SCUMBAG. “I am famous,” I corrected him. “I am the industry’s most renowned, one-hundred-percent-loss-rate attorney.” Thomas just blinked. 4 As soon as Thomas returned to his empty house, he found an anonymous package waiting on his porch. Inside was a thinly veiled death threat. I had no choice. I packed him into my beat-up sedan and drove him to my place. Thomas sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window for a long time. Finally, the silence broke. “Mr. Carmichael… I know I don’t have the kind of money the Montgomery family has. If you need to drop my case to save yourself, I understand. I won’t hold it against you. But you don’t need to drive me out to the middle of nowhere to murder me to keep me quiet.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Who’s murdering anyone? I’m just bringing you to my place to crash for a few days.” Thomas looked out the windshield, profoundly horrified. “Wait. This… this underpass is your house?” “…” I coughed, a little embarrassed. “Underpasses are great real estate. Keeps you cool in the summer, freezing in the winter. Very open-concept.” Thomas tried to be polite. “Mr. Carmichael, if things are tough, you could just sleep on the couch at your law firm.” I waved him off. “I was secretly renting that office space. The landlord finally caught me yesterday, so I can’t sleep there anymore.” Thomas stood perfectly still under the concrete bridge for a long time before he finally sighed and walked in. I gave him the cot tucked against the farthest concrete pillar and took a seat near the edge of the shadows, watching the moonlight bleed through the smog. Around 2:00 AM, the quiet of the night was broken. It was a small, fractured sound. The muffled, suffocating weeping of a father whose heart had been entirely hollowed out. “Sophie… God, Sophie, I’m so useless.” “If I had just stayed home… If I hadn’t gone to the hospital that night…” I leaned my head back against the concrete and let out a long, quiet sigh. That night had been Sophie’s birthday. Thomas had spiked a severe fever, and a neighbor had rushed him to the ER. Sophie had just gotten off her shift at a local diner, walking her usual route home, when she was intercepted by some old high school “friends” who dragged her to their reunion. That was where Trent Montgomery locked eyes with her. She had screamed for help. But there was no one left to hear her. The neighbor was gone. Her father was gone. Thomas had passed Trent on the street that night, brushing shoulders with the monster in the dark. But he couldn’t prove it. When the police asked around, every single business owner on that street repeated the exact same, heavily compensated line. “The security cameras were broken.” 5 When the tears finally stopped and Thomas’s breathing leveled out into exhausted hitches, I walked over and placed a hand on his trembling shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. Thomas’s eyes were swollen, red, and raw. He shook his head frantically. “Mr. Carmichael, I know you tried. You gave it your all. Every other lawyer laughed me out of their office. You were the only one who tried. I’m grateful.” I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Thomas, I’ve never won a single case in my entire career, yet I have a flawless five-star rating online. Do you want to know why?” “Why?” I didn’t answer him directly. I just gently wiped a smudge off the corner of the photograph he was clutching to his chest—a picture of Sophie, smiling and radiant. “I’ll show you when we go back to court. But for the next few days, you cannot leave this spot under any circumstances. Can you promise me that?” He hesitated, just for a second, before nodding with fierce determination. “Okay.” As soon as I secured his promise, I turned and left into the night. It took me about thirty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. I walked into an abandoned auto-shop, dropping to my knees right on the grease-stained concrete. “Walter. I need you. My twisted little heart is having a crisis of faith.” Walter, an old man who looked like he’d been dragged backward through a hedge, shuffled out from the back office, stifling a yawn. He didn’t say a word, just kicked me squarely in the shin. “What did you do this time? Help an old lady cross the street?” “No,” I rubbed my leg. “She tried to fake an injury to sue me, so I threw myself on the ground first and extorted her for cash.” Walter narrowed his eyes. “Did you give money to a homeless guy?” “I felt bad for him, so I used his brand-new smartphone to take out a fifty-thousand-dollar loan in his name.” “Only fifty?” “It’s from a loan shark. The interest compounds by fifteen percent daily.” Walter seemed to accept this, looking down at me with mild approval. “Alright then. What’s this crisis of faith you’re whining about?” I pressed my lips together. “This time… I actually want to help someone win their case.” “…” 6 Walter didn’t look thrilled. “Just handle it off the books like you always do. A life for a life. Blood for blood. It’s much cleaner.” I stayed on the floor, slowly walking him through every grueling detail of Thomas and Sophie’s tragedy. When I finished, Walter didn’t say a word. He just pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his flannel pocket, lit one, took a drag, and immediately lit a second one off the cherry of the first. “Kid.” “Yeah, Walter?” His voice was rough, like gravel scraping over rusted iron. “If your dark little heart breaks… let it break.” I asked the question that had been eating at me. “Can I still practice the craft if I do this?” Walter looked at me like I was an idiot. “Why wouldn’t you be able to?” “Because you explicitly told me that our lineage practices the art of the ‘Scumbag.’ You said if I ever showed genuine moral integrity, I’d lose all my abilities instantly.” Walter didn’t even blink. “I lied.” “?” I stared at him, absolutely incredulous. “Why the hell would you lie about that?” “One,” he ticked a finger, “because I’m a scumbag and I enjoy lying. Two, because I have zero moral compass, and I wanted to make damn sure my apprentice had even less of one than I do.” “…” I ground my teeth together. “Walter, do me a favor and take a trip out to the Mojave Desert.” “Why would I go there?” “Because it’s empty, desolate, and isolated. Just you and the dirt, right where you belong.” “…” 7 When I returned to my cozy little concrete bridge, I was practically buzzing with the good news I had for Thomas. But one glance at the shadows told me everything I needed to know. Thomas wasn’t there. I frowned, pressing two fingers against my temple, tapping into the tether I’d subtly placed on him. Damn it. He hadn’t left on his own. He’d been taken. Meanwhile, eight miles away, on the top floor of a private, members-only club owned by Apex Enterprises, a raucous celebration was in full swing. “Trent, my man, you are a legend. Slipping right through the cracks again!” Trent stood in the center of the room, casually swinging a bottle of expensive champagne, a wicked, jagged grin on his face. “What can I say? It pays to have a father who owns the city.” One of his buddies took a long drag from a cigar, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “Gotta admit though, isn’t it kind of a shame? You were obsessed with Sophie for years, and you only got to play with her once.” Trent’s smile slowly decayed. A dark, ugly shadow crossed his features as a memory flickered behind his eyes. “It’s her own fault for not knowing her place.” The buddy laughed nervously, desperately trying to change the subject. Trent shoved the bottle into a bucket of ice and headed for the private restroom down the hall. As he stepped out of the loud, thumping bass of the club, he paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “Why the hell is it so freezing out here?” A pair of long, impossibly pale hands draped over his shoulders. The voice that whispered in his ear was flat, devoid of any human warmth. “Trent.” “Who the hell—” Trent spun around, annoyed, throwing a blind kick that connected with absolutely nothing but empty air. A second later, his pupils dilated to the size of saucers. “Sophie?! You… you… how the hell are you here?!” Sophie tilted her head, offering him a sweet, terrible smile. “I’m dead, Trent. You strangled me with your own hands. Did you forget?” 8 “Ahhhhh—!!!” Trent scrambled backward, losing his footing and crashing onto the expensive carpet. His blood-curdling scream pierced through the heavy oak doors. His buddy rushed out into the hall, looking frantic, and hauled Trent up by the armpits. “Bro, what is wrong with you? How much did you pre-game?” The buddy looked down and wrinkled his nose. There was a sharp, distinct smell of urine. Trent was completely unhinged. He grabbed his friend by the lapels, shaking him violently. “It’s Sophie! It’s her! She came back!” The friend panicked, slapping a hand over Trent’s mouth. “Dude, shut up! You’re hammered. Do not say that name out loud here. Let’s just get you inside.” “She was right there! Right in front of my face! Didn’t you see her?!” His friend looked up and down the opulent hallway. Nothing. Not even a waiter. “Trent, you’re having a bad trip, man. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have brought her up.” Trent’s eyes were completely unfocused, darting frantically around the empty corridor. He muttered, his voice trembling. “Her hands were like ice… She’s back. She came back to drag me to hell…” “It was her! I swear to God, you have to believe me!” The buddy nodded frantically, just trying to placate him. “I believe you, man, I believe you. You’re just exhausted. The trial took it out of you. Let’s get you home.” As he practically dragged Trent toward the private elevator, he was already typing furiously on his phone, calling Trent’s private concierge doctor. As the ping of the elevator faded into silence, I stepped out from the blind spot of the security cameras. I looked at the empty air beside me, my voice low. “I didn’t pull your soul back across the veil just so you could play haunted house, Sophie.” 9 Sophie materialized, looking down at her translucent hands, suddenly looking very small. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just… I saw him, and I couldn’t control it.” I didn’t reprimand her further. Instead, I bypassed the elevators and slipped into the emergency stairwell, descending deep into the bowels of the building. After a few minutes of navigating the damp, concrete labyrinth, I found what I was looking for: a heavy, reinforced steel door. I didn’t hesitate. “Sophie. Phase through. Tell me what’s on the other side.” She melted right through the solid steel. When she phased back out seconds later, her ethereal face was twisted in genuine horror. “There’s so many of them…” “What?” I frowned. “So many of what?” “Kids! There are so many kids down there!” I immediately pulled a small, ash-colored talisman from my pocket, slapping it against the doorframe to mute any sound. I took a deep breath, channeled a surge of kinetic force into my palm, and blew the heavy steel door off its hinges. The scene inside was sickening. On the left side of the cavernous basement, about a dozen children were huddled together, terrified and dirty. On the right side, tied to a chair, was a single adult. It was Thomas. His hands and feet were bound with zip-ties, and a greasy rag was shoved deep into his mouth. When he saw me step through the ruined doorway, he began thrashing wildly. I crossed the room in three strides and yanked the rag out. I rubbed my temples, exhaling a long, exhausted breath. “Thomas. I specifically told you not to leave the bridge.” Thomas looked up at me, his eyes brimming with desperate apology. “I know, Mr. Carmichael, I’m so sorry. I just… I kept thinking about Sophie being all alone in the dark. I just wanted to go home and burn some of her favorite things so she’d have them on the other side. But when I got there…” When he got there, the Montgomery family’s fixers had been waiting. I shook my head, my gaze drifting over to the huddled mass of children. “Where did you all come from?” The kids looked at each other in sheer terror. Finally, the oldest—a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve—found her voice. “We’re… we’re from Saint Jude’s Foster Home.” Thomas spoke up, his voice hoarse. “Mr. Carmichael… I heard the guards talking. They’re running an auction down here tonight. They’re going to sell them. Please, you have to—” I shot him a withering look. “Do I look like a superhero to you? How the hell am I supposed to smuggle fourteen people out of a billionaire’s fortress?” Thomas shrank back, looking thoroughly defeated. Thirty minutes later. Walter slowly opened his eyes from his nap, blinking against the harsh light of the auto-shop, to find a baker’s dozen of traumatized children staring at him. Walter stared back. The silence stretched. “Kid.” “Yeah, Walter?” “I taught you how to lie, cheat, and steal. At no point in your curriculum did we cover human trafficking.” “Sue me,” I replied flatly, dropping a bag of convenience store sandwiches on the table. “…” 10 Once Thomas was safely stashed away in Walter’s back office, I forced him to set up a new social media account. Leaving out the parts that involved the supernatural or things that would get us killed instantly, I had him record a video detailing exactly what Trent Montgomery had done, laying out the timeline, the destroyed evidence, and the intimidation tactics. Sophie hovered near the ceiling, slowly shaking her head. Her voice was an echo. “Apex Enterprises controls everything. The moment he posts that, they’ll have it scrubbed from the internet.” I looked up from my work, my face a mask of righteous indignation. “No, they won’t. I believe that justice always finds a way in this world.” Sophie stared at me. “Okay. Then what exactly are you doing right now?” I didn’t stop chanting under my breath. “Weaving a digital-metaphysical warding hex into the server architecture to block their IP scrubbers.” “?” The hashtag about the only son of Apex Enterprises murdering a girl and laughing in court caught fire almost instantly. It was a digital wildfire. [This animal needs to be locked under the jail!] [That poor girl. She was so young. Is the justice system really this broken?] But soon, the PR machine woke up. The comments supporting Thomas began to vanish, replaced by a flood of highly coordinated skepticism. [Fake news. Look at who he hired. Simon Carmichael? This whole thing is a grift for clout.] [Wait, who is Simon Carmichael?] [He’s the lawyer who is so bad, he once turned his own client from the plaintiff into the defendant, and turned a parking ticket into a life sentence.] [The first one is funny, the second one takes actual talent.] [Wait, he turned a parking ticket into a life sentence?] [?] From that moment on, the entire internet’s focus aggressively derailed, entirely fascinated by my catastrophic legal track record. Apex Enterprises deployed their million-dollar bot farms, and they barely made a ripple against the sheer meme-power of my incompetence. Sophie floated down, looking genuinely awestruck. “You’re sacrificing your entire professional reputation to protect my dad’s video. Aren’t you worried you’ll never get another client?” Walter, who was lighting his fourth Lucky Strike of the hour, overheard her. He let out a bark of laughter. “Why would he care? He litigates for dead people, too.” “?” 11 The day court reconvened, the media circus had reached a fever pitch. Due to the overwhelming public pressure and internet virality, the judge had allowed the trial to be live-streamed. [Here for the legend. I just want to see how this Carmichael guy manages to lose this one.] [I hate rich kids as much as the next guy, but let’s be real. If Carmichael is on the case, this whole thing is probably a scam.] At the defense table, Trent looked exhausted, the bags under his eyes dark and bruised, but his arrogant sneer was still firmly in place. “You don’t have evidence,” Trent said to the camera, his voice dripping with condescension. “You can accuse me a million times, and it won’t change a thing.” Next to him, his attorney, Hughes, offered a cold, satisfied smile. After all, during the last session, I had been completely helpless against him. I stood at the plaintiff’s table, resting my hands on the wood. I let a long, heavy silence build in the room. “It’s true,” I said finally, my voice echoing in the microphone. “I have no further earthly evidence to present.” The courtroom erupted. Someone in the back row completely abandoned decorum, screaming out, “You absolute failure! My dog could argue a better case!” “Whoever hired Simon Carmichael is cursed!” Thomas sat beside me, his head bowed, completely silent. Even the live-stream chat was giving up. [Is this guy a comedian or a lawyer?] [I am fully convinced Carmichael took a bribe from the defense.] [How do I report a lawyer to the bar association? Watching him makes my blood boil.] But just as the judge reached for his gavel to restore order, I raised my voice, cutting through the chaos like a knife. “But I do have one question for you, Trent. Are you willing to swear an oath? Right here, right now. Swear to God that you did not kill Sophie.”

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The blue light from the laptop screen was the only thing illuminating the dark bedroom. My fingertips trembled as I typed my husband’s name into the county property records database. When the first result popped up, I managed to keep my breathing steady—it was our current home, the one we’d shared for five years. But the second entry hit me like a physical blow, the red text searing into my retinas. Unit 1103, Building 17, Riverview Estates. Registered date: three years ago. The autumn before our wedding. This wasn’t a mistake. That luxury condo in the city’s top-tier school district—the one I’d practically begged him to look at for years—had been in his name all along. My mind raced back to two hours ago, to the envelope that had slipped out of a pile of junk mail. It was addressed to Mark, and a faint pencil notation of a property address in the corner had made my stomach drop. “We don’t own a place there, do we?” I had asked, handing it to him. I watched his Adam’s apple bob twice as he swallowed hard. His hand shook as he reached for the paper, but his voice was breezy, dismissive. “Just some real estate spam, honey. I’ll toss it.” Now, looking at the screen, I realized how many lies were packed into his frequent sighs about “not having enough for a down payment.” From the very beginning, he never intended for this house—for us—to be his only destination. In the hallway, our daughter, Sophie, whispered, “Mommy, why are you crying?” I bit my lip until I tasted copper, unable to find my voice. This man had taken the future that belonged to us and tucked it away under another name. … I waited until he was dead to the world before I slipped into the home office. The desk drawer was locked. I tried his birthday as the passcode. Click. The envelope was at the very bottom, already torn open. “Notice of Eligibility Verification for 2026 Primary School Enrollment.” I stared at the words until they blurred. Every time he saw me looking wistfully at listings in that neighborhood, what had been going through his head? I picked up his phone. I entered his usual PIN. Incorrect. I tried his thumbprint while he slept? No, he’d wake up. When had he even changed his passcode? I realized with a sickening jolt that I didn’t know the man sleeping thirty feet away. I tried the condo number: 171103. Ding. Unlocked. Mark was meticulous. He had scrubbed his texts and call logs clean. I found nothing until I dug back through years of Venmo transactions. A single payment of $1,314—I love you forever in digital code—sent to an obscure, unlinked account led me to a private Instagram page. April 12, 2020. Barely a month after our wedding. The photo was of a man’s bare back. I’d know that mole on his shoulder blade anywhere. “Been sleeping with Big M for months now. He’s a total beast in bed.” January 2, 2021. The night of my first miscarriage. I had spent the night alone in a hospital bed, weeping until my eyes were swollen shut. Mark told me he had to stay late for a client. The photo was of the nursery we’d just finished, the handmade quilt I’d spent weeks sewing draped over the crib. “The thrill is unbelievable. His wife is at the hospital losing her kid, and we’re doing it in the nursery. We got her precious quilt soaking wet.” August 9, 2022. I was in the throes of postpartum depression, barely hanging on to my sanity. The photo was of our master bedroom. “First time doing it at his place while she’s actually in the house. He’s such a risk-taker. Best high ever.” I gasped for air, my lungs seizing. I clutched my hair, pulling until it hurt, trying to distract myself from the phantom needles stabbing at my heart. I wanted to scream, but I choked it back. Suddenly, a memory surfaced. Our downstairs neighbor had complained once: “Tell your wife to keep it down at night, it’s embarrassing!” I had been confused. Mark and I hadn’t been intimate in months, and I was always asleep by ten. Mark had brushed it off, calling the neighbor a “crazy, low-class prick.” Now, I had my answer. I stood up and looked around the room—this space that felt like a stranger’s house. Details I’d ignored started screaming at me. The smart speaker was always playing lo-fi beats I hated, even after I reset my preferences. The towels in the bathroom were folded into thirds, not halves like I did. The thermostat was always set to 68 degrees, a few degrees colder than I liked. The evidence was everywhere. This woman didn’t just have a secret home with my husband. She had been in my home. Sleeping in my bed. Leaving her scent on my things. It was a performance. A territorial marking. A cheap thrill. And I had been the oblivious fool. I bit my lip so hard the blood finally ran. I sat in that office until the sun came up. That afternoon, a text popped up on my phone. “Dinner at my mom’s tonight. Be there by six.” “Okay,” I replied. I’ve always been a woman of dignity. Even if this was the end, I didn’t want it to be ugly. But when I walked into my mother-in-law’s house, I froze. Mark and his mother both looked like they’d seen a ghost. But the woman on the sofa—a woman Mark was currently hand-feeding a slice of peach—just looked me up and down. She scanned me like I was a piece of trash she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. She wasn’t satisfied with secret trysts anymore. She wanted the main stage. “What are you doing here?” Mark asked, his smile turning into a grimace. “You texted me to come,” I said. Looking at the panic in his eyes, I realized the truth. She had sent that text from his phone without him knowing. She wanted this confrontation. “Oh… right. I… I forgot. Yeah,” Mark stammered, his face turning a blotchy red. There were three place settings on the table. None of them were for me. A lump formed in my throat, bitter and thick. My mother-in-law looked at me with nothing but disdain. “You should have called before dropping in.” “I… I’m sorry,” I managed, though I didn’t know why I was apologizing. “Anyway, this is Melanie,” Mark said, his eyes darting toward the floor. “A friend. She just came by to see Mom.” “Yes, Melanie is such a sweetheart,” his mother added, flashing a smile at the woman on the couch. “She even bought me this gold tennis bracelet.” Melanie didn’t look at me. She didn’t acknowledge my existence. She sat there like she already owned the place. Looking at my mother-in-law, all I could see was the Instagram photo of the nursery. I felt a wave of nausea so strong I had to bolt for the bathroom. I dry-heaved over the toilet, nothing coming up but bile. As I splashed water on my face, I heard their voices through the door. Mark’s tone was playfully scolding. “You little brat, why didn’t you tell me you invited her? You’re trouble.” “I just wanted to see her pathetic face when she realized she wasn’t invited,” Melanie purred. “And remember, you’re not allowed to touch her tonight.” “Please. Touching her is like touching a cold statue. She’s got nothing on you, you little wildcat.” My world fractured. The “late nights” at the office. The “stress” that meant he couldn’t be intimate with me. It wasn’t work. It was a promise to her. I looked at my face in the mirror—the tired eyes, the skin that hadn’t seen a spa in years because we were “saving money.” I felt like a bomb was about to go off in my chest. But I couldn’t lose control. Not yet. Melanie wanted me to go crazy. She wanted the drama, the screaming, the loss of my “class.” That would be her victory lap. I wouldn’t give it to her. I dried my face, took a breath, and walked out. “Something came up. I have to go,” I said. The door slammed behind me—heavy and final. I sat in my car and buried my face in my hands, tears finally leaking through my fingers. All those years. All that sacrifice. For what? Mark announced the next morning that he had another “business trip.” I didn’t help him pack this time. I knew I had to move. I needed leverage before the house of cards collapsed completely. As soon as his car pulled out of the driveway, I drove to his office. He’d always told me it was too far, that he was too busy for “lunch dates,” so I’d never been. “Is Mark in?” I asked the receptionist. “Oh, no, he’s out for the day. He took a personal day to take his son to that regional piano competition,” she said casually. Then, she turned to the girl next to her. “Honestly, Mark is such a girl-dad—wait, no, he has a son, right? Anyway, he’s a total family man. He’s always showing us photos of his ‘wife’ and the boy’s trophies. He’s so attentive when she visits the office.” The blood rushed to my head so fast I felt dizzy. Sophie had begged for piano lessons last week. Mark had snapped at her, telling her it was a “waste of money” and that “girls don’t need to be pampered with expensive hobbies.” And yet, he was at a competition for a son I didn’t know existed. “Are you okay?” the receptionist asked. “Who did you say you were with?” “I’m his wife,” I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from underwater. “We have a daughter. She’s in preschool.” I don’t know what her face looked like as I walked away. I probably looked like a lunatic. I went home in a trance. The smell of Melanie’s perfume seemed to linger on every surface. I went to Mark’s computer again. I found a hidden folder. I scrolled through the photos, and with every click, I felt like I was sinking deeper into a frozen lake. While I was recovering from childbirth alone, she was at a five-star postpartum wellness retreat. My daughter wore hand-me-downs from neighbors; her son was dressed in designer labels. While Sophie was hospitalized with a 104-degree fever, Mark was “at a conference” in Cabo with Melanie and the boy. I checked our joint savings account—the one he managed because he was “the finance guy.” Balance: $0.42. He wasn’t “investing” our future. He was liquidating it to build a life for another woman. I shook so hard I couldn’t stand. The sacrifice had only been mine. The suffering had only been Sophie’s. I looked at our wedding photo on the wall. I smashed it. I looked at the laptop. I smashed it. I went to the closet and took a pair of shears to every single one of his custom-tailored suits. I threw his toothbrush in the trash. I called a locksmith. And then, I went to the one place I knew I could find them. I waited outside the elementary school. When Melanie walked out, holding a young boy’s hand, she spotted me instantly. She tried to turn away, but I blocked her path. She immediately went on the offensive, her voice shrill and loud. “You crazy bitch! Get away from us! Stop stalking my husband!” Parents began to circle. Melanie’s eyes turned red, and she pulled the boy into a protective hug, looking like the victim of a deranged predator. “This woman is obsessed with my husband!” she cried out to the crowd. “She’s been harassing us for weeks! She’s trying to kidnap my son!” I was floored by the sheer audacity. She was spending my money, sleeping with my husband, and calling me the intruder. “You’re a liar!” I shouted back. “You’re the mistress! You’re the one who destroyed my marriage!” Melanie sobbed harder, her whole body shaking. “You’re insane! Everyone here knows Mark. He’s at every PTA meeting. He’s my husband!” A woman from the crowd stepped forward. “She’s right. This boy is in my son’s class. Mark is a great father. We see him here all the time.” The crowd turned on me. The whispers were like venom. “She’s clearly off her meds.” “Look at her, she’s a wreck. No wonder he wouldn’t want her.” “Get out of here before we call the cops, you psycho!” Melanie’s son stepped forward and kicked me hard in the shin. “Leave my daddy alone, you ugly lady!” I stood there, surrounded by people pointing fingers and hurling insults. “She’s the one who’s cheating! That kid is a bastard!” I screamed, but no one was listening. In this world, the most shameless person wins. I was the wife, the one who had played by the rules, and I was being branded a criminal. Then Mark’s car pulled up. He jumped out, and for a split second, a tiny, pathetic part of me hoped he would say something. Anything. “Stop, she’s my wife.” Just a shred of truth to make the last few years feel like they weren’t a total hallucination. But he didn’t. He threw his arms around Melanie, shielding her. “Are you okay? I’m here. Don’t be scared,” he whispered—a tenderness he hadn’t shown me in years. Then he turned to me, his face a mask of pure hatred. He shoved me back. “What is wrong with you? Get the hell out of here! I told you it’s over! I love Melanie! Stop harassing my family!” The way he looked at me… it was like he wanted me dead. He ushered them toward the car. Melanie looked back over her shoulder and gave me a small, victorious smile. The crowd’s jeering continued. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “I have the marriage certificate,” I muttered. The noise dropped an octave. I reached into my bag and pulled out the legal document. “She really is the wife,” someone whispered. “Wait, so Melanie was lying the whole time?” “God, what a piece of work. Both of them.” Mark’s face turned feral. He lunged forward, snatched the certificate from my hands, and ripped it into confetti. “It’s a fake! She’s a stalker with a printer!” He leaned into my ear, his voice a low, terrifying hiss. “Play nice, and maybe I’ll let you keep the house. If you don’t, remember that my best friend is the head of the psychiatry department at the city hospital. I’ll have you committed so fast your head will spin. And I won’t spend a single dime or a single second on Sophie. I’ll let her rot in foster care.” He shoved me to the ground. He turned around, put his arm around Melanie, and drove away without looking back. My knees were scraped and bleeding, but I didn’t feel it. My heart was already in pieces. The daughter I cherished was nothing more than a bargaining chip to him—a piece of “trash” he was willing to discard. I thought that even if he didn’t love me, he’d love his own blood. I was wrong. He wasn’t a man; he was a predator. I wiped the blood from my knee and pulled out my phone. I dialed a number. “Attorney Paige? I’m sending you the recordings and the documents now. I want to file for bigamy and embezzlement. I want everything.”

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Fifteen years ago, my mother was dying. To scrape together the fifty thousand dollars for her emergency surgery, I did the unthinkable: I sold a piece of myself. I sold my kidney. The moment that blood money—the price of my future health—hit my account, my husband swept it clean. He didn’t use it for the surgery. He used it to buy a three-carat diamond ring for his brother’s widow, a woman he’d been sleeping with behind my back for years. Because I couldn’t pay the hospital, my mother passed away that very night. While I was drowning in grief, my husband showed up at the hospital with his sister-in-law on his arm, coldly demanding a divorce. My father’s heart couldn’t take the shock; he collapsed right there, and even the trauma nurses were screaming at my husband, calling him a subhuman monster. I didn’t scream. I didn’t fight. With a terrifying, hollowed-out calm, I signed the papers and walked away with nothing. My father disowned me for my “weakness,” and my relatives branded me a spineless traitor who let her mother’s killer walk free. For fifteen years, I let them whisper. I never defended myself. Not once. Until yesterday. I found out through the grapevine that my ex-husband’s son—the boy he raised with that woman—just got accepted into the State Police Academy. I picked up the phone and dialed the Background Investigation Unit. I’ve waited fifteen years. My moment has finally arrived. … 1 “Background Investigation Unit, Sergeant Miller speaking. How can I help you?” The voice was crisp, professional. I pressed my hand against my racing heart, my voice thin and trembling. “I’m calling to report a candidate.” The line went sharp. “A report? Ma’am, please state the name of the individual and the nature of the information.” I took a shaky breath. “I’m reporting a recruit in this year’s class. Tyler Vance. His father is a man of documented moral turpitude—a man who committed financial fraud and abandoned his family during a medical crisis. There are outstanding debts and a history of extreme ethical violations.” The sergeant sounded surprised. “Are you certain about these allegations? This call is being recorded for the official record. You will be held responsible for the veracity of your statement.” “I am certain,” I whispered, the words tasting like iron. “I stake my life on it.” How could I not be certain? I’d rehearsed this speech in the dark for over five thousand nights. I’d polished every syllable until it was sharp enough to draw blood. “Stay on the line, Ma’am. I’m bringing my commanding officer into this conversation. One moment.” I waited, listening to the muffled sounds of a busy office. “What? A formal complaint against Vance?” “Yes, Lieutenant. She’s on the line now.” “Damn. Vance is at the top of the class. His PT scores were off the charts…” “The whistleblower is waiting.” “Fine. Patch her through to me.” I picked at the peeling wallpaper of my cramped apartment. The cheap drywall crumbled under my fingernails, leaving a fine white dust on my skin—a pale shroud for a life that had been covered in ash for fifteen years. “Hello, Ma’am. This is Lieutenant Rodriguez. Can you identify your relationship to the candidate’s family?” I pulled my lips into a bitter line. “I was Tyler’s father’s first wife. The woman he robbed to fund his life with Tyler’s mother.” There was a heavy silence on the other end. “Go ahead. Tell me everything.” I closed my eyes, the ghost of a phantom pain radiating from the scar on my side. I let the memories drag me under. “Fifteen years ago, my mother was diagnosed with acute liver failure.” We were a typical middle-class family. My father and I were blindsided by the cost of the transplant. We begged, we borrowed, we took out predatory loans, but it was a drop in the bucket. In those weeks, it felt like my father and I had cried ourselves dry. I learned that when you hit the bottom of despair, the tears stop. You just become a machine. We sat in that hospital hallway, night after night, watching the light fade from my mother’s eyes. One night, I saw my father hitting his head against the brick wall of the hospital, sobbing that he was useless. That was the moment I made my choice. I went through a series of shaded contacts until I found a broker for the underground organ trade. He was a cold man who looked at me like a piece of USDA Choice beef. He offered me fifty thousand for a kidney. Fifty thousand. Exactly what we needed for the down payment on the surgery. I lay down on a rusted operating table in a basement clinic. I will never forget the smell of stale bleach or the way the cheap anesthetic failed halfway through. I bit my tongue until it bled to keep from screaming as they took a part of me. I crawled out of that clinic, clutching my side, and staggered to the hospital to pay the bill. But when I got to the cashier, the card was declined. Panic seized me. I called the bank. The teller told me the entire balance had been transferred out two hours after the deposit. The recipient? My husband, Rick. I couldn’t breathe. I called Rick over and over. On the twentieth try, someone finally picked up. It wasn’t Rick. It was Lydia, his brother’s widow. 2 “Oh, it’s you,” Lydia said, her voice dripping with a smug, honeyed cruelty. “Why are you calling? Rick is busy helping me pick out jewelry. He doesn’t have time for your drama.” My blood turned to ice. I’d suspected something was going on between them. Rick and I had been fighting for months, and I’d even brought up divorce, but then my mother got sick. I’d been so focused on the hospital that I hadn’t realized they’d stopped even trying to hide it. “Put Rick on the phone! That money—that’s for my mother! It’s her life!” Lydia let out a light, airy laugh. “What ‘life’? Rick said that money was just sitting there, rotting. He thought we should use it for something beautiful, something permanent. I’m looking at a three-carat princess cut right now. It’s exactly fifty thousand.” “It’s fate, really,” she continued. “Your mother was going to die anyway. Why waste good money on a lost cause when you can invest in our future? Rick always promised me a real ring. Consider it a gift for our engagement.” In the background, I heard Rick’s impatient voice. “Stop talking to her, babe. The jeweler’s waiting for the wire to clear. Let’s get the ring and head back to the hotel.” Lydia giggled, a sound that made my skin crawl. “Don’t be so impatient, you naughty boy.” Then, she hung up. I called until my battery died. I called every friend we had. I finally found out they’d flown to Chicago that morning for a ‘romantic getaway.’ It was a six-hour flight. My mother didn’t have six hours. I don’t remember walking back to her room. I just remember my father’s face, bright with hope. “Maggie! Did you get it? The doctor says if we pay now, they can prep the OR!” I looked at him. I looked at the frail, yellowed woman in the bed. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The physical trauma of the surgery combined with the crushing weight of the betrayal was too much. I collapsed on the hospital floor. When I woke up, my father was sitting by my bed. He looked like he’d aged a decade in a single night. “She’s gone, Maggie.” Because of the delay, my mother never woke up. My father had to watch her slip away while I was unconscious in the next ward. He asked me, “You said you had the money. What happened?” I told him everything, except the part about the kidney. I told him Rick took the money. My father’s face went from pale to a ghostly, translucent white. I struggled out of bed, trailing my IV stand, desperate to see her one last time. But when I reached the morgue entrance, I saw the last people on earth I expected. Rick and Lydia were there. They hadn’t come to mourn. They hadn’t come to apologize. They stood there, arms entwined, looking down at me like I was something they’d stepped in. On Lydia’s finger, the diamond caught the harsh fluorescent light, mocking me with its brilliance. Rick looked at my mother’s body through the glass and scoffed. “Well, she’s dead now. At least you don’t have to worry about the bills. Anyway, I brought the papers. I want a divorce. I’m marrying Lydia.” My father started shaking. He pointed a finger at Rick’s chest. “You animal! You stole her life! How dare you show your face here—” He couldn’t finish. He clutched his chest, his face turning a terrifying shade of purple, and he hit the floor. “Dad! Dad!” I screamed, throwing myself over him. The hospital staff swarmed in. A nurse who knew our situation recognized Rick and Lydia. She turned on them, her voice shaking with rage. “Get out! You stole that woman’s surgery money for a ring? You’re not even human! Get out before I call security!” In the chaos, as they carted my father away to the ICU, I looked at my husband’s cold, indifferent eyes and Lydia’s triumphant smile. Something inside me snapped. The pain vanished, replaced by a cold, hard vacuum. I stood up, wiped the tears from my face, and looked Rick in the eye. “Fine. I’ll sign.” Rick blinked, surprised by my sudden compliance. “Good. Smart girl. But don’t think you’re getting a dime of that fifty thousand back. It’s gone.” “I don’t want it,” I said, my voice dead. “I’ll walk away with nothing. No alimony, no assets. Just give me the papers.” “Maggie, are you crazy?!” My father had regained consciousness as the medics stabilized him. He looked at me with pure horror. “Your mother isn’t even cold yet! You’re just going to let him go? You coward! I don’t even know who you are anymore. Get out! If you won’t fight for her, you aren’t my daughter!” The relatives who had gathered in the hall looked at me with disgust. I heard them whispering. Weak. Pathetic. She’s so obsessed with him she’ll let him kill her mother and still crawl back for more. Lydia leaned into Rick, smirking. I didn’t explain. I didn’t tell them I was too weak to fight because I was literally missing an organ. I just signed the name ‘Maggie Vance’ for the last time. My father disowned me on the spot. Rick and Lydia walked out like they’d won the lottery. I was escorted out of the hospital by the very people who had tried to save my mother. I left that city like a ghost. I moved to a different state, rented a windowless basement, and started a life of silence. That was fifteen years ago. 3 Life hasn’t been kind. Without a kidney and with a heart full of lead, I couldn’t hold down a high-stress job. I worked temp roles, lived in the shadows of the city, and spent my nights in a bed that felt like a coffin. I never blocked Rick on social media. Maybe it was because I’d made the divorce so easy for him that he never felt the need to hide his “happiness.” For fifteen years, I’ve been a silent witness to their life. They got married in a lavish ceremony months after I left. They had a son—Tyler. Rick’s profile was a shrine to the boy. Every trophy, every honor roll, every football win was documented. Rick was so proud. Yesterday, I saw the post that changed everything. It was a gallery of photos. In the center was a young man in a crisp uniform, his jaw set with pride. Rick’s caption read: “So proud of my son, Tyler! Passed the physical and the interview for the State Police Academy! Top 10% in the state. He’s going to be a hero. The Vance legacy starts here. Our ancestors are smiling down on us!” I stared at that screen all night. When the sun finally began to peek through my basement window, I started to laugh. It wasn’t a normal laugh. It was a jagged, hysterical sound that tore through the silence of fifteen years. I hadn’t cried since the night my father kicked me out. I’d let the world believe I was a spineless “love-brain” who didn’t care about her mother’s death. I’d let my own father die in his heart thinking I was a traitor. I didn’t care. I had waited fifteen years for this specific moment. “That’s the whole story,” I said into the phone. My throat felt like it was filled with glass. I hadn’t spoken this many words in a decade. I lived like an insect in the dark, fueled only by the singular goal of survival. Lieutenant Rodriguez was silent for a long time. I almost thought the line had dropped. Finally, he spoke. “Ma’am, we have recorded your statement. Can you swear that everything you’ve told me is the truth, and are you willing to testify to these facts?” “I am,” I said, my voice like iron. “Thank you for coming forward. We will be launching an immediate internal investigation. Until the veracity of these claims is determined, Tyler Vance’s enrollment will be suspended indefinitely.” I hung up and collapsed onto the floor. The strength I’d been hoarding for fifteen years evaporated in an instant. Fifteen years. I’d been a bug under their boots. But even a bug can trip a giant if it waits for the right moment. Mom, can you see me? The bug found her stiletto. Now, I’m becoming the monster they deserve.

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Ten years. That’s how long I’d been living in this world. I was lost in my usual mid-morning fog when it happened—the text appeared. Without warning, glowing words began to drift across my vision like a live comment feed on a streaming site. [The ‘Bad Boy vs. Sweet Girl’ trope is such a classic. Totally here for it.] Another one scrolled past: [Iconic scene incoming! The Male Lead is about to use his ‘toxic charm’ to get the girl’s attention.] Right on cue, my pathetic excuse for a childhood friend opened his mouth. His tone was laced with that specific brand of arrogance that made my skin crawl. He looked at the new girl, a transfer student who looked like she’d been carved out of porcelain, and sneered. “Well, look what we have here. The little homecoming queen from the rival school. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Did you run out of boys to play with over there, so you came here for some fresh meat?” A wave of sycophantic laughter erupted around the classroom. At the front of the room, the girl—Sophie Bennett—looked like she’d been struck. Her eyes welled up, rimmed with a painful, sudden red. The screen in my mind flickered again: [Ugh, look at Sophie’s face. My heart is breaking. She’s so precious.] [I bet the ‘Mean Girl’ is losing it right now. Her childhood crush is flirting with someone else right in front of her.] [Oh, for sure. She’s probably brewing some psycho plan to destroy Sophie as we speak.] I stared at the floating text, a dry, sharp laugh bubbling up in my chest. Why was the script always the same? Why did the “other woman” always have to be the villain? I didn’t think. I just acted. I stood up, walked over to Carl Ridgeway, and delivered a slap so loud it echoed against the chalkboard. … 1 [Wait, what just happened?] [Why did the Villainess hit the Male Lead? Has she lost her mind?] The comments were flying now, a blur of confusion. In the back of my mind, a mechanical voice—the “System”—started screaming. “Host! What are you doing? You can’t hit the Male Lead!” “Why not?” I retorted silently. “Your mission is to disrupt their romance, but there are rules—” “You said I needed to break them up,” I interrupted. “You never said how. I’m the villainess, right? Bullies don’t discriminate. I’ll bully whoever I want.” The System went dead silent, stumped by my logic. Carl was staring at me, his cheek blooming into a violent shade of crimson. He looked utterly bewildered. “Maddy? What the hell was that for?” “For being a prick,” I said, my voice cold and level. I looked down at him with a flick of pure disdain. “If you can’t open your mouth without trash falling out, maybe you should just sew it shut. Spreading rumors about a girl you don’t even know? Have some dignity, Carl. It’s pathetic.” Carl’s face went from pale to a mottled, angry purple. The veins in his neck were pulsing. Around us, the whispers started. “Did Madeline Sinclair just defend the new girl?” “This doesn’t make sense. She’s been obsessed with Carl since they were in diapers.” “She’s clearly jealous! It’s a move. She’s acting out to get his attention.” Hearing that, Carl’s posture relaxed slightly. A smug, knowing smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Oh, I get it. You’re jealous, Maddy.” He stood up, leaning into my space with that insufferable confidence. “If you wanted me to notice you, you could have just said so. This whole ‘tough girl’ act? It’s a little desperate, don’t you think? Women and their envy… it’s a terrifying thing.” I wanted to laugh. I really did. But he wasn’t done. He turned toward the front of the room and let out a sharp whistle at Sophie. “Hear that, Sophie? My girl’s a bit territorial. Consider yourself lucky—I’ll stop teasing you for today. Why don’t you come over here and thank me?” Sophie gripped the hem of her cardigan, her knuckles white. She bit her lip so hard I thought it might bleed. [Aaaaah, he’s so smooth!] [He says he’ll stop, but he can’t help teasing her. He’s already obsessed!] [The Villainess must be fuming! He still prefers Sophie!] I took a long, deep breath. I really tried to hold it back. I failed. SMACK! The second slap was even harder than the first. Carl actually staggered back, clutching his face. I didn’t even give him a second glance. I walked up to Sophie, grabbed her wrist, and led her toward the empty seat next to mine. “Sit here,” I told her. “Ignore him. He’s a glitch in the system.” Sophie looked at me, her eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears. She looked like a deer caught in high beams. “Madeline!” Carl roared, his face contorted. “That’s twice! You hit me twice!” I didn’t turn around. “Open your mouth again, and I’ll make it a hat-trick.” Carl’s chest heaved, his face a mask of humiliated rage, but he didn’t say another word. He spent the rest of the afternoon stewing in a silent, radioactive temper. It stayed quiet. Until school let out. Then, the feed exploded. [Here it is! The iconic scene!] [The Male Lead hired some guys to corner her in the alley. Sophie’s going to be so scared and adorable!] [I can’t wait! She gets bullied, and then he swoops in to play the hero! Classic Knight in Shining Armor move!] My stomach turned. I grabbed my bag and sprinted toward the shortcut behind the gym. I rounded the corner and saw them. Carl was crouching behind a dumpster with a few of his cronies, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. In the center of the alley, Sophie was surrounded by four massive guys. She was trembling, backed against the brick wall. I didn’t hesitate. I dropped my bag and charged. The first guy didn’t even see me coming. I planted a side-kick into his ribs that sent him sprawling. Then I moved—fluid, fast, and rhythmic. One by one, I put them on the pavement. As the “thugs” groaned on the ground, the comments went haywire. [What the hell? This wasn’t in the script! Where is Carl?] [Is the Villainess glitching? Why is she in the alley?] [Am I the only one wondering how Madeline Sinclair just took down four guys who weigh two hundred pounds each?] I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and smirked at the text. They clearly hadn’t done their homework. In my life before I woke up in this story, I was a high-performance combat instructor. These guys were nothing compared to a room full of marines. “Madeline!” A scream of pure fury erupted behind me. Carl stormed out from behind the dumpster, looking at his hired help on the ground. His face was a sickly shade of green. “What is wrong with you?! Who told you to interfere?!” I turned slowly, watching his temper tantrum with a bored expression. “Oh, good. You’re here.” Before he could process the words, I lunged forward and kicked the back of his knee. He let out a strangled yelp as he hit the concrete, his kneecaps cracking against the pavement. I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him over to Sophie. “Apologize,” I commanded. “What?” Carl gasped, his eyes bulging. “You want me to apologize to her?” “You hired people to terrify a classmate so you could play hero. Yeah, I think an apology is the bare minimum.” Carl’s jaw set. “I can do whatever I want. I’m not apologizing to some nobody.” I looked at him, a cold smile touching my lips, and landed a sharp kick to his side. “Are you going to apologize?” “Ow! Stop! Madeline, you’ve lost your damn mind! I’m telling you, I will never—” I kicked him again. And again. I didn’t say a word; I just kept a steady, punishing rhythm. [God, is she trying to kill him?] [I don’t understand her at all. Doesn’t she love him? This is brutal.] [Love? She’s about to put him in a body bag!] “Okay! Okay, stop!” Carl finally broke. He collapsed into a heap, gasping for air. “I’ll do it! Just stop!” He looked up at Sophie, who was huddled in the corner. His face was a mask of pure humiliation. “I’m… I’m sorry.” Sophie stared at him, then at me. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out. I was about to give Carl one last “parting gift” with my boot when I felt a small hand tugging at my sleeve. “Please… don’t,” Sophie whispered. Her voice was thin. “If you… if you keep going, you’ll get in trouble. You might hurt him too badly.” She looked at me, her eyes searching mine. “Thank you. For today in class, too. Thank you for speaking up for me.” She paused, her voice softening. “You’re a really good person, Madeline.” I felt a sudden, uncomfortable heat rise in my cheeks. I looked away, pulling my arm back. “I didn’t do it for you.” I was the villainess. I wasn’t supposed to be “good.” I just… hated seeing a prick pull a girl’s pigtails and call it romance. “Why are you thanking her?” Carl had managed to haul himself up against the wall. He let out a raspy, bitter laugh. “I’m telling you, Sophie, she’s only doing this because she’s obsessed with me. She’s trying to look like the ‘bigger person’ to get my attention.” He turned his gaze to Sophie, his expression shifting into something he probably thought was soulful. “Look, Sophie. I said those things because I like you. I arranged this whole thing because I wanted to be the one to save you.” His voice dropped an octave, dripping with manufactured sincerity. “From the moment I saw you, I knew. Just say you’ll be mine, and I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.” [Aww, so romantic! He confessed so early!] [It’s all because the Villainess kept messing things up. She must be dying inside right now!] [Sophie, say yes! He only bullied you because he’s crazy about you!] I watched the screen, feeling a genuine wave of nausea. Bullying as a love language? If that’s love, I’d rather have the plague. Sophie shrank back behind me. “If I say no… will he hit me?” she asked in a tiny voice. I froze. According to the “rules” of these stories, shouldn’t the heroine be moved to tears by his grand gesture? Why was she asking that? But I answered her anyway. “If he touches you, I’ll end him.” Sophie’s eyes brightened instantly. “You’re so brave, Madeline.” She turned back to Carl, her voice clear and steady. “I understand what you’re saying. But the answer is no. I don’t like you. In fact, I find you quite repulsive. Please stay away from me.” Then, she took my hand and pulled me away, leaving Carl standing in the dark alley, frozen in shock. [The Lead got rejected? How is that possible?] [And why is she holding the Villainess’s hand? What is happening to the plot?] [Don’t worry, the story will fix itself. He’ll chase her, and they’ll end up together. They always do.] The System’s voice chimed in my head. “Host, that was… unconventional. But effective. You’ve successfully tanked his favorability rating. However, he’s going to get desperate now. What’s the plan?” I smiled. “Let him try.” But even I underestimated how delusional he was. The next morning, I walked onto campus to the sound of the PA system crackling to life. “Attention, students. This is Carl Ridgeway.” The courtyard went silent. “I have a special announcement. I’ve written a letter for a very special girl in our class… Sophie Bennett.” The school exploded into gossip instantly. “A love letter? No way, Carl is actually serious about her?” “She’s so lucky. Imagine having a guy like that fall for you.” “She probably seduced him. Look at her, she looks like a total homewrecker.” The whispers grew louder, sharper. Thousands of judgmental eyes latched onto Sophie. She looked like she wanted to melt into the floor. “Madeline…” she whispered, her eyes brimming with red. SLAM. I stood up, nearly flipping my desk, and bolted for the door. I burst into the AV room. Carl was leaning over the microphone, looking smugly satisfied with himself. When he saw me, his eyes lit up with that same “I’ve got you” look. “Jealous again?” He turned off the mic and leaned back in the chair. “Look, I know you’ve got a thing for me, Maddy. But you need to learn some self-control. Tell you what—help me get Sophie, and when I’m bored with her, maybe I’ll give you a shot—” “I’d rather eat glass,” I spat, stepping aside to reveal the people behind me. Three police officers filed into the cramped room, looking grim. “Carl Ridgeway?” the lead officer asked. “We’ve received a report of targeted harassment and stalking. You’re coming with us to the station.” Carl’s face went white. He whipped his head toward me. “You called the cops?” I tilted my head, giving him a sweet, innocent smile. Then I turned to the officers, my voice trembling just enough. “Officers, please. He’s been relentless. We’re just two girls trying to get an education, and we’re both so… so scared.” The officer looked at me, then at Sophie—who was doing her best impression of a shivering leaf in the doorway—and his expression hardened. “Don’t worry, kids. We’ll handle this.” As they led Carl away in handcuffs, he looked like his brain had short-circuited. He was shouting something through the window of the squad car, but I couldn’t hear him. The feed was going nuclear. [The Male Lead got arrested? The plot is dead!] [Actually… if you think about it, he was being a total stalker…] [I’ve been saying this! That ‘bullying as love’ crap is so toxic. This is actually satisfying.] I nodded inwardly. Finally, some common sense. Carl was gone for a few days, reportedly getting a very stern lesson in “consent” and “harassment.” Life for Sophie returned to a peaceful hum. No more rumors, no more “love letters,” no more thugs in alleys. The System informed me that Sophie’s affection for Carl was now in the negatives. The romance was dead. Mission accomplished. I felt lighter than I had in years. I thought maybe he’d learned his lesson. I thought he’d stay away. I was wrong. The day he got out, I woke up in a dark room, my wrists and ankles bound tight with nylon rope. Carl’s lackey was hovering over me, a greasy grin on his face. “Morning, Princess. Don’t worry, we won’t touch you. You’re just here to watch the show.” [Quick, Madeline! Sophie’s been lured into a trap!] [He’s going to drug her and make it look like she lost her ‘purity’ so he can ‘save’ her reputation by marrying her!] [Everyone will judge her, and he’ll be the only one who ‘accepts’ her. She’ll be so grateful!] I stared at the text, my blood turning to ice. Outside the room, I could hear the distant thud of music. The school’s Winter Ball. Through a small crack in the boarded-up window, I could see the gym lights. Suddenly, the music stopped. “Where’s Sophie? Has anyone seen Sophie Bennett?” The panic started to spread. “I saw her leaving with some guys earlier! What if something happened?” The crowd began to move, searching. Eventually, they stopped in front of a heavy, oak door in the basement of the theater building. Muffled, suggestive sounds were coming from behind the door. The crowd went dead silent. “Is that… is that Sophie?” “We have to help her! Break it down!” A group of guys threw themselves against the door, bursting it open. But the scene inside wasn’t what anyone expected. The room froze. “What are you all doing here?” Sophie’s voice came from the hallway behind them. I was standing right next to her, looking over the heads of the crowd, my hand over my mouth in mock horror. “Oh my god,” I gasped. “Carl? What… what is he doing?”

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When I opened my eyes, the first thing I smelled wasn’t the sterile, cold scent of a hospital room. It was high-octane fuel and burnt rubber. I was back. Back to the day the official race circuit was announced. In my past life, the supercar I had spent three years meticulously engineering was a carbon copy of Beau Montgomery’s. Even though I’d released a time-lapse of the entire build to prove my innocence, all it took was one tearful video from Beau. He’d looked into the camera, playing the martyr, and told his millions of followers, “Just let Jamie have the design. He clearly needs it more than I do. I’ll just have to rely on my raw talent to win.” That one sentence branded me a thief in the eyes of the world. The next day, as I turned the ignition, a rigged component turned my masterpiece into a bomb. I didn’t die—not then. I spent years in a persistent vegetative state, a “locked-in” ghost watching the world through a haze. I watched Beau’s fans celebrate my “divine retribution.” I watched my career, my reputation, and my fiancée all slide into Beau’s pocket as if they had always belonged to him. Then, my fiancée pulled the plug. But this time? This time, I wasn’t going to play his game. Twenty-four hours before the qualifiers, I stood in my garage, watched my life’s work go up in flames, and announced my withdrawal from the season. The internet exploded. My fan club dissolved in hours. The casual observers turned into a lynch mob. And Beau, my “sole rival,” posted a status dripping with fake sympathy: “Without him, the summit feels a little cold. Whatever happened, I hope Jamie finds his way back to the track. I was looking forward to proving who the better man really is.” I stared at my phone and felt a cold, sharp laugh bubble up in my chest. 1 “Test run number fifty. We’re still clocking the fastest lap in the country, Jamie!” Coop slapped me on the back, the force of it nearly sending me stumbling forward. My legs moved. My spine didn’t scream in phantom pain. I wasn’t a paralyzed shell in a bed. I was alive. “You earned this, man,” Coop cheered, oblivious to the fact that I was vibrating with the shock of a second chance. He gestured toward the paddock. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we show the world.” “Wait!” I barked, my voice raspy. “Don’t submit the telemetry data yet. I need to check the car one last time.” I sprinted toward the garage, my heart hammering against my ribs. As I ran, I pulled up Beau Montgomery’s social media feed. He had just posted his preliminary specs. In my first life, our cars had been identical, but I hadn’t noticed until it was too late. I assumed we had just followed the same logic of physics. But as I reached my car, my screen refreshed. “Jamie! What the hell?” Coop ran in after me, his face pale as he stared at his own tablet. “Beau just updated his public specs. They’re… they’re a mirror image of ours. Every decimal point. Every gear ratio.” I felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. “The submission window closes at midnight,” I said, my voice deathly calm. “We have time.” In my previous life, Beau had “accidentally” leaked both sets of data simultaneously, framing me as the one who had hacked his servers. The harassment had been instantaneous. When I posted my build videos, his fans swarmed: “Deepfakes are getting scary. Nice try, Jamie.” “Everyone knows Beau is a visionary. Why don’t you just steal his DNA while you’re at it?” “Beau is betting his entire legacy on this race, and Jamie is trying to bury him with his father’s money. Disgusting.” My team had been harassed out of their homes. My parents were doxxed. And I, stubborn and proud, thought I could prove them wrong on the track. I thought the car would speak for itself. It did. It spoke in fire. Even the forensic investigators couldn’t find a reason for the explosion. The narrative was perfect: I had committed a sin against the sport, and the universe had punished me for it. I deserved to die. I laid in that hospital bed for years while my parents spiraled into a depression that ended with them jumping from the fourteenth floor of their apartment building. I couldn’t even attend their funeral. And then there was Ivy. Ivy St. Claire, my fiancée of eight years. She had walked into my room, hand-in-hand with Beau, pretending to be a grieving fan as she reached for the oxygen line. “Jamie would want this,” she had whispered to the nurses. “He can’t live with the guilt of what he did.” I died with my eyes wide open, unable to blink, unable to scream. But the universe made a mistake. It let me back in. And this time, the guilty would be the ones to burn. 2 “This race only happens once a decade, Jamie! You’ve spent your whole life waiting for this. You can’t just quit because Beau is a lying prick!” Coop tried to grab my phone, but I shoved him back and locked myself in the basement workshop with the car. I gritted my teeth, inspecting every inch of the chassis. Even if there was a mole in my team, even if someone leaked the blueprints, a car is more than a drawing. If a single bolt is tightened a fraction too much, the data changes. How could Beau have identical telemetry? And more importantly, if the cars were the same, why did mine explode while his took the checkered flag? I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remember the day of the crash. Beau was a master of the “pouty influencer” look, always surrounded by a phalanx of fans and cameras. He never got near my car. But his “plus one” that day… It was Ivy. My heart felt like it was being crushed by a cold, iron fist. Eight years. I thought we were building a life; she was just scouting the target. I didn’t have time for the heartache. I stood up, grabbing a wrench. I began to strip the car. I had spent three years on these parts. I loved them like they were my own flesh and blood. But as I looked at the sleek carbon fiber, all I saw was the image of my parents’ bodies on the pavement. My hands moved faster. Once the “perfect” version was dismantled, I dragged a crate out from the back of the warehouse—the original prototype. It was raw. It was brutal. It was the design I’d dreamt up before I started overthinking, before I tried to make it “marketable.” It was a beast of a machine, devoid of the delicate refinements Beau had stolen. In two hours, I had it rebuilt. It wasn’t as polished, but its output was terrifying. It was a predator, crouched and ready to kill. I sent the new data to Coop. Beau couldn’t have this. Nobody had seen this version except me in the middle of a fever dream three years ago. I finally let myself breathe. Then Coop walked back in. He didn’t look happy. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Jamie… Beau just posted his ‘early concept’ thoughts on his vlog. The data… it’s a match. Again.” “That’s impossible!” I snatched the phone. On the screen, Beau was looking wistfully at a sunset. “Honestly,” he said to the camera, “I almost went with my first draft. It was perfect, in its own rugged way. But someone broke into my trailer and stole the primary drive. I had to pivot to the new design just to stay in the race.” I refreshed the official site. Beau’s specs had changed. They were identical to the prototype I had just finished twenty minutes ago. My blood ran cold. The parts I used for this version weren’t even on the market anymore. I’d salvaged them from an old junkyard in the Midwest and spent months hand-polishing them. One specific gear had been weathered by rainwater in a way that made it fit the housing with a unique, imperfect seal. It was a one-in-a-billion fluke of physics. And Beau had the exact same specs. I opened the hood and pulled that gear out. It was still warm from the test fit. Was this it? The source of the fire? I remembered the years of silence in the hospital. The sound of Ivy’s laughter as she told Beau how easy it was to fool me. I walked over to the industrial furnace we used for heat. Under the confused gaze of my mechanics, I threw the gear into the flames. I wasn’t going to play fair. I was going to survive. 3 Coop watched the metal melt, tears pricking his eyes. I had just destroyed the only two viable setups we had. “What now, Jamie?” I looked at my phone. The comment section on my page was a war zone. Beau’s fans were emboldened. “If you’re so great, why are you hiding your data? Just admit you’re a fraud and quit.” “I used to think Jamie was a legend. Turns out he’s just a copycat who realized he can’t keep up.” Then, a message popped up from Ivy. She hadn’t spoken to me in three days. “Stop playing with those greasy parts. Come out and have a drink with me tonight. You need to relax.” I hadn’t told her I was in the garage. She knew I stayed in total isolation before a race. She had never asked me to go out the night before a qualifier in eight years. Then came another text. A voice note. Her voice was trembling, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “Jamie, please. Just give it up. If you keep going like this, you’re going to die.” I locked the phone and looked at Coop. “There’s still time,” I said. “I’m building one more.” I put the phone on Do Not Disturb. I sat at the bench and started from scratch—no blueprints, no memories of old designs. I designed a “Rich Kid’s Entry Level” car. It looked like something a trust-fund brat would buy for a weekend track day. It took me two hours. It looked mediocre on paper. But I changed one fundamental thing: I used a high-risk, high-reward cooling bypass I’d spent ten years “theorizing” while I was paralyzed in that hospital bed. It was a design that looked like a mistake to any normal engineer, but at top speeds, it turned the car into a rocket. Beau hadn’t spent a decade in a mental prison dreaming of fluid dynamics. He wouldn’t see it. But the moment I hit “upload” to send the data to the organizers, Beau’s team posted a “Fan Special.” “We know some of you want to get into racing like Beau! So, he designed this ‘Beginner’s Build’ just for the fans. Check it out!” My hands started to shake. I didn’t even want to look. I clicked the link. The cooling bypass. The “amateur” frame. The exact weight distribution. Everything. It was a perfect mirror. How? I had been alone. No cameras. No microphones. Then I saw the official race website. The leaderboard for telemetry was flickering. Suddenly, it went black. “UNDER MAINTENANCE,” the screen read. Coop punched the wall, his knuckles bleeding. “That son of a bitch! He’s got the organizers in his pocket! They’re letting him see your uploads in real-time and then back-dating his posts!” I looked up from the scrap metal on the floor. “No,” I whispered. “It’s bigger than that. And I’m going to go talk to the organizers myself.” 4 10:24 PM. I had ninety-six minutes to fix this and register, or I was disqualified. I needed to prove Beau was stealing my life. I needed to see the man behind the curtain. But I knew the race wouldn’t wait for “justice.” I sat in the driver’s seat of the “beginner” car and turned the key. I had to test one thing. I had to know if the “fire” was already in this car, too. I slammed the pedal down. The car roared, flying out of the garage like a bullet. Something was wrong. I knew this machine. I knew every vibration. The car was pulling left—only a few millimeters, but at these speeds, that was a death sentence. It was dragging toward the driver’s side. I looked out the side mirror. Sparks were flying from the front left wheel, even though the tire pressure was perfect. “Damn it!” I didn’t hesitate. I kicked the door open and threw myself out of the cockpit, rolling across the asphalt as the car drifted. The moment my weight left the seat, a deafening explosion rocked the air. A wall of heat slammed into my back, tossing me another ten feet. I tumbled, skin tearing against the road, until I came to a halt. I gasped for air, looking back through the smoke. The car was a fireball. 5 It took me a long time to stand up. My left side was a mess of road rash and blood, the pain searing into my nerves. But then I saw it. The fire died down as quickly as it had started. And there, sitting on the pavement, was the car. Intact. Not a scratch on the paint. Only the open door proved I had ever been inside. My heart hammered. Ivy’s voice echoed in my head: “You’re going to die.” This wasn’t just corporate espionage. This was something supernatural. Something impossible. I called Coop to patch me up, then ignored his pleas to go to the hospital. I limped toward the hotel where the race officials were staying. 10:50 PM. The lights were on in the official suite. I could hear the sound of laughter and the clinking of glasses. Beau was in there. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. Nothing. I pulled out my phone and went straight to Beau’s latest post. I commented: “Hey Beau. Your data has changed three times in four hours. Which sponsor is paying the tech team to let you cheat? Or should we just give you the trophy now?” The internet went nuclear. Even as his mods deleted the comment, screenshots were already flying. “Aww, is Jamie having a breakdown? Poor baby can’t handle the competition.” “Look at this clown trying to stay relevant. Beau doesn’t even know you’re alive, dude.” The door finally opened. The lead official, a man with a greasy smile, looked at me. “Beau’s data was submitted once, Jamie. On day one. You’re the one who hasn’t submitted a final build. Maybe you’ve just run out of ideas? It happens to the best of us. Go home, kid.” He was recording me. Beau was behind him, holding a phone, live-streaming the encounter. “Jamie,” Beau said, his voice dripping with faux concern. “You look… rough. Is the pressure getting to you? Attacking me won’t make you faster.” I looked at the official’s screen. The website was back up. There was only one entry for Beau Montgomery. And the timestamp said it was from three days ago. But the data… the data was my latest “beginner” build. My stomach dropped. I looked at the live stream. The comments were a blur of hate. “He looks like a crackhead. Is that blood?” “Jamie has lost it. Ban him for life.” I looked the official in the eye. “What is Beau giving you? To kill the site, to rewrite the timestamps? People want a fair race.” Beau stepped forward, smiling for his fans. “If it makes you feel better, Jamie, why don’t we just wait for the site to finish its ‘update’? Let the fans see the truth.” I didn’t trust him. But I didn’t have a choice. “Done!” a tech shouted from the back, turning a laptop around. Beau’s data was there. It was my latest version. The timestamp? Three days ago. 6 “Look at it!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “He changed it three times tonight!” The official looked at me with pity. “Jamie, do you even know the rules? Each driver can only submit one car. Beau has had his locked in since Monday.” The comments section turned into a firing squad. Beau’s smile was razor-sharp now. The official signaled Beau to kill the stream. Once the “cameras” were off, the official leaned in close to me. “You saw the contract, Jamie. A driver of your ‘stature’ can’t withdraw without paying a massive liquidated damages fee. You’re on that track tomorrow. Whether you have a car or not.” I didn’t say a word. I turned and walked away. I knew how this worked. The organizers didn’t care about the sport; they cared about the “Golden Boy” narrative. Beau was their cash cow. I lit a cigarette, my hands finally steady. Coop called. “I’m out,” I told him. “And I’m getting a new car.” Before Coop could respond, a shadow fell over me. A woman threw her arms around my neck, sobbing. “Jamie! No! You have to race! You can’t withdraw!” “Ivy?” I detached her arms, my eyes cold. “What are you doing here?” She looked at me, her eyes red, her face a mask of desperation. “Jamie, we’re supposed to get married. I just want you to be safe.” I looked at her, and for a split second, I saw the truth in her eyes. She remembered, too. She was a “regressor,” just like me. But she wasn’t on my side. I had given her everything. I had delayed our wedding for two years because she said she was “worried about the stress.” I had been a perfect partner. And she had killed me. I shoved her away. She scrambled back, grabbing my sleeve. “Jamie, you can’t destroy that car! You have to use it!” I lost it. I swung my hand and slapped her, the crack of it echoing in the empty hallway. She gasped, clutching her cheek, shock written all over her face. “You told me to stop,” I hissed. “Then you told me I had to race. Which is it, Ivy? What game are you and Beau playing?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I ran back to the garage and slammed the heavy iron doors shut. Ivy hammered on the metal from the outside. “Jamie! Open the door! You don’t understand!” I ignored her. I stood in the darkness of the garage and pulled out my lighter.

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When I opened my eyes again, the world was saturated in a terrifyingly familiar light. I was back. Back to the very day that had dismantled my existence—the day my husband confessed his love for his student. In my previous life, we had spent thirty years side by side. I thought our foundation was made of granite, something weathered and indestructible. But when I turned fifty, he hit me with a truth that felt like a lightning strike: he was in love with a girl half his age, a girl who sat in the front row of his lectures. I had been stubborn then. I refused to sign the divorce papers, convinced he was just going through a mid-life fever dream. I thought if I held on tight enough, the storm would pass. It didn’t. When the girl realized she couldn’t officially take my place, she moved abroad and married a tech mogul within the year. On the day of her wedding, my husband—shattered and hollow—lost control of his car. He survived, but he spent the next fifteen years as a paraplegic. I stayed. I nursed him, bathed him, and loved him through the bitterness. But on his deathbed, he gripped my hand, his voice a jagged whisper: “The biggest regret of my life was marrying you. If there’s a next life, I’ll be braver… I’ll choose her.” His death didn’t bring peace. My children, whom I had sacrificed everything for, turned their grief into a weapon against me. When I eventually suffered a stroke and became paralyzed myself, they—one a CEO, the other a high-flying academic—dumped me in the cheapest, most neglected nursing home they could find. After I died, they didn’t even give me a grave. They scattered my ashes into a literal sewer trench. I remember the look of pure, vindictive satisfaction on my son’s face: “If it wasn’t for you, Dad and Chloe would have been happy. You’re a wicked woman, Mom. You don’t deserve a happy ending.” 1 At six in the morning, I was already in the kitchen. I had sourced the ingredients, seasoned the fillings, and hand-kneaded the dough. I spent the entire day on my feet, my lower back throbbing with a dull, insistent ache. My husband, Richard, spent the day either “prepping for a seminar” in his study or fussing over the succulents on the patio. Our son, Brandon, arrived first. He handed his father a box of vintage scotch and several cartons of premium cigars. Then, he turned to me and tossed a plastic grocery bag onto the counter. Inside were a few pieces of blackened, overripe fruit. “Megan was going to throw these out,” Brandon said with a casual shrug. “She said they were too far gone for her smoothies, so I figured I’d bring them to you.” He said it with a smile, as if he were doing me a favor. I didn’t say a word. I just tucked the rotting fruit into the pantry. A few hours later, my daughter, Cassidy, arrived. The house smelled of braised sea bass and sunlight. My children sat around their father in the living room, laughing and sharing stories of their successful lives. I watched them through the kitchen doorway—a framed picture of a perfect family that I wasn’t invited to be a part of. Dinner was served. Brandon raised his glass first. “To Dad! If it wasn’t for the example you set, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You aren’t just my father; you’re my greatest mentor.” Cassidy stood up next, her eyes shining. “To Dad. You’ve given us everything. This life, this family… it’s all because of you. Cheers.” They drank. Cassidy took a bite of the fish and immediately wrinkled her nose. “Mom, this is a little salty, don’t you think?” They seemed to have completely forgotten that the entire reason for this dinner was my fiftieth birthday. “I’d like to say something, too.” Richard finished his third glass of wine and slammed it onto the table. There was a strange, frantic determination in his eyes. “Joanna, I have to be honest with you. I’ve fallen in love with someone else. She’s one of my graduate students.” The room went silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator. “We’ve been together for a while now,” he continued, his voice gaining strength. “She’s young, she’s fragile, and she needs security. I want to… I want to give her my name.” I gripped my silverware until my knuckles turned white. Before I could even process the words, Brandon let out an exhaled breath. “Dad, finally! Honestly, it takes so much courage to speak your truth like that. Whatever happens, I’m behind you a hundred percent.” Cassidy actually started clapping. “Congratulations, Dad! Welcome to your second act. Let’s toast to a love that defies age and convention!” The three of them raised their glasses again. I sat there, a ghost at my own table. “Mom, don’t be a buzzkill,” Brandon said, noticing my silence. “Yeah, Dad found his soulmate. Shouldn’t you be happy for him?” Cassidy added, her tone sharp with judgment. I looked at the food I had spent ten hours preparing—now growing cold and congealed on the plates. I let out a short, dry laugh. Then, I reached into my apron pocket and pulled out a crumpled set of papers. “Fine,” I said. “I’m letting you go.” 2 The air in the dining room turned brittle. Richard hadn’t expected me to be this easy. He looked at the papers, his excitement barely contained. “Joanna? You’re serious?” I pushed the divorce agreement toward him. My silence was my answer. Richard picked up the document and smoothed it out on the table. I could see his eyes scanning the property division. I had made it simple: the house was mine (it was a pre-marital asset from my parents), but I waived all rights to his future pension and half the savings. I just wanted him gone. I didn’t want to haggle over the price of my soul. He hesitated for a fraction of a second when he saw my signature already there, dark and final. Then, he grabbed a pen and signed his name so fast the ink nearly smeared. He was terrified I’d change my mind. Only then did Brandon bother to pour me a glass of wine—the first of the day. “See, Mom? This is the right move. Everyone has a right to chase their happiness.” Cassidy was already whispering to her father, asking when they could meet the new woman. “Dad, I heard Jade loves seafood. Let’s do a big dinner at that place on the pier. Mom, you should probably help me pick out the menu…” I cut her off, my voice flat. “It’s late. You all need to leave.” I emphasized the word all. Brandon’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. Cassidy’s smile froze. 3 After they left, I opened the bottle of expensive wine Richard had been saving. I poured a glass, sat at the messy table, and ate the best parts of the meal myself. I didn’t clear the dishes. I didn’t wipe the counters. I went to the master bedroom and lay down. For the first time in three decades, there was no snoring, no one getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, no heavy presence taking up space. I slept like a woman who had finally been granted a pardon. The next morning, I woke up naturally at 8:00 AM. I put on my workout gear and walked through the local park, feeling the crisp morning air fill my lungs. When I got back, I took my time. I toasted a slice of sourdough, fried two perfect eggs, and brewed a cup of black coffee. In my last life, my mornings started at 5:00 AM. I’d spend hours feeding a paralyzed Richard, changing his adult diapers, wiping his body down, massaging his atrophied limbs. Then I’d rush out to pick up my grandson from school, then head to Cassidy’s apartment to clean her kitchen and prep her meals because she was “too busy” with her career. I lived in a loop of service that never ended. Now, the silence was a luxury. I opened the closet and began packing Richard’s things into boxes. When I was done, the wardrobe was nearly empty, save for a few of my own pieces—mostly old, faded, and out of style. I remembered Richard’s voice from years ago: “Joanna, I’m a professor. We have to set an example of modesty. We should live simply.” I had worn the same winter coat for fifteen years and the same pair of jeans for eight. Meanwhile, I later found out he had given Jade a “startup gift” of over a hundred thousand dollars when they got engaged. I hauled the boxes to the shipping center and then drove straight to the high-end mall downtown. I was done depriving myself. 4 I didn’t expect to run into Jade there. Or Brandon and Cassidy. When they saw me, their smiles faltered, replaced by a flicker of awkwardness. It was Jade who spoke first, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Oh, look, it’s Richard’s ex. Are you here alone?” She turned to the kids, stroking Brandon’s arm. “I told these two they didn’t need to take me shopping, but they simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. Brandon has been so generous today.” I looked at the bags Brandon was carrying. All designer labels. I thought of the bag of rotting fruit he’d brought me yesterday, and a cold, sharp irony settled in my chest. Jade walked over to a rack and pulled out a silk slip dress I had been eyeing. “This color is stunning. How much? I’ll take it!” “I was looking at that first,” I said, my voice low but steady. “Mom, honestly,” Brandon sighed. “That dress is wasted on you. Let Jade have it. She actually has the figure for it.” “Exactly,” Cassidy added, her eyes darting over my old clothes. “At your age, wearing something like that is just… desperate. Have some dignity.” Jade pretended to play the peacemaker. “Now, now, everyone wants to feel beautiful. But really, Joanna, I just don’t think this is your style. Clerk? Wrap this up.” “Wait,” I said. I had given up my husband. I had practically disowned my children in my heart. But this dress—this silly, expensive piece of fabric—felt like a stand. It was about the life I was reclaiming. But as I reached for my credit card, Cassidy stepped forward and shoved me. Hard. I wasn’t prepared for it. I stumbled back, crashing into a row of heavy metal clothing racks. I’d had back surgery years ago, and a white-hot spike of pain shot through my spine. While I was on the floor, Brandon leaned over and paid for Jade’s dress. He turned back to me, a brief flash of guilt in his eyes that was quickly swallowed by annoyance. “Don’t blame us, Mom. You brought this on yourself by trying to compete with someone like her.” They walked away, a tight-knit trio, leaving me on the floor. A young shop assistant rushed over to help me up, asking if I needed an ambulance. I saw the pity in her eyes and felt a wave of nausea. “I’m fine,” I whispered, though my back felt like it was on fire. 5 Outside the mall, I saw them waiting for their car at the valet. Brandon and Cassidy stood like bodyguards around Jade. I ignored them, limping toward the curb to hail a cab. “Joanna! Brandon called a car service, we can give you a lift,” Jade called out, smiling like a cat. “No thanks.” “Don’t be like that…” Jade stepped closer, leaning in so only I could hear. Her voice was a venomous whisper. “Did you know the kids already started calling me ‘Mom’ behind your back? You really are a failure, aren’t you? You couldn’t keep your husband, and your own children can’t stand you. If I were you, I’d be too ashamed to stay alive.” I looked at her young, porcelain face and felt a primal urge to strike. All those years I had welcomed her into our home, fed her, even helped her with her student loans because I felt sorry for her “struggling” background. This was the thanks I got. I raised my hand, but before I could swing, Brandon grabbed my wrist. His grip was so tight I felt the bones groan. “You crazy old woman! I knew you were looking for trouble!” “Brandon,” I gasped, looking him in the eye. “Do you know what she just said to me? She said you’ve been calling her ‘Mom.’ She called me a failure.” Brandon froze for a second, a complicated shadow crossing his face. Then, his expression hardened into ice. “Was she wrong?” The words hit me harder than the shove in the store. “Jade is a brilliant PhD, she’s beautiful, she’s successful,” he continued. “You? You’re just a maid who knows how to cook and do laundry. You don’t even belong in the same room as her.” Even though I thought I was done with them, hearing my son say those words out loud felt like a physical blow to the heart. Just then, the screech of tires echoed through the air. A massive delivery truck had lost its brakes and was careening toward the valet stand. In that split second, my maternal instinct took over. I lunged forward, trying to push Brandon out of the way. But Brandon and Cassidy didn’t see me as a savior. They saw me as an obstacle. Thinking I was attacking Jade again, they both shoved me away with everything they had—straight into the path of the oncoming traffic. The last thing I heard before the world went black was their horrified scream: “MOM!” … As my consciousness drifted, fragments of my life flickered like a broken film strip. I remembered shortly after Brandon was born, Richard moved his things into the study, claiming he needed to “prepare lectures.” Back then, he was just a struggling instructor. To help him get his tenure, I quit my own burgeoning career to raise the kids alone. I remembered when Brandon was ten and got into a fight that nearly blinded another boy. I knelt on the cold pavement in front of the other parents, begging for their forgiveness. I let them scream at me, let them vent their rage, just so they wouldn’t press charges. I walked away with three broken ribs that day, but Brandon’s future was saved. I remembered Cassidy’s kidney failure when she was twelve. Richard’s first reaction was to walk away, saying it wasn’t “practical” to bankrupt the family for a girl. I didn’t hesitate. I gave her my own kidney. They used to love me. They used to need me. But somewhere along the way, their loyalty shifted toward their “successful” father. I remembered overhearing a conversation between them and Richard a few months ago. “Dad, I don’t know how you’ve put up with that miserable, stay-at-home face for so many years,” Brandon had said. “If you want a divorce, Dad, we’re with you,” Cassidy added. “Though, honestly, where else are we going to find a free maid who works this hard? Nannies are expensive these days…” A coldness settled in my soul that had nothing to do with the accident. I had been their sacrifice. And they had viewed it as their birthright. 6 I woke up in a hospital bed. A young nurse was changing my IV drip, muttering under her breath. “Unbelievable. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.” She looked at me, realizing I was awake. “Your ‘family’ is out in the hall. They tried to get the doctors to leave your bedside to go check on that younger woman first. She has a scratch on her arm, and they’re acting like she’s in critical condition. Meanwhile, you were actually under the wheels.” I gave her a weak, hollow smile. “It’s okay. You’re right.” She paused, stunned by my lack of defense for them. Even a stranger could see the truth I had been ignoring for thirty years. … A week later, I discharged myself. As I stood at the hospital entrance waiting for a car, my phone buzzed. It was Brandon. “Mom, Megan says you haven’t picked up our daughter from daycare in a week,” he barked, his voice thick with unearned anger. “Megan has to work. The house is a mess. You’re out here ‘recovering’ and being lazy while we’re drowning. You have two hours to get to the house, or there will be consequences.” He hung up. Then a text from Cassidy popped up: Mom, how much longer are you going to play the victim? My apartment looks like a pigsty. Come over and clean it. And I want that ginger chicken soup you make. I stood in the cold wind, looking at the screen. I didn’t cry. Instead, I dialed a number I hadn’t called in decades. The line picked up on the second ring. A man’s voice, deep and slightly weathered, answered with a hint of tremor. “Joanna? I’ve been waiting for this call for so long.” My throat tightened. “Sebastian… I’ve made up my mind. Can you come get me?” “Give me the address. I’m on my way.” Ten minutes later, a black armored SUV pulled up to the curb. A driver in a crisp uniform stepped out and opened the door for me. Inside sat a man who looked both familiar and like a stranger. I looked at him and finally let out a sob. “Sebastian…” “It’s okay,” he said, patting my hand. His voice was low and dangerous. “Now that you’ve made the choice, you can’t go soft on them again. Do you understand?” I nodded, wiping my eyes. “I won’t. Never again.”

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