Category: English

1 It was my seventh year sick and I was flat broke, unable to afford tomorrow’s painkillers. My best friend, Poppy, returned to VIP clubs, auctioning herself to the highest bidder. When I arrived, muffled sounds leaked from the lounge. “Wilson, we can’t. If Five finds out—” Then his low breathing. “Something was slipped into your drink. How else do you purge it?” My nails bit into my palms until my vision blacked. Poppy later shoved crumpled bills at my bedside. “Enough for your meds.” Wilson stared at her scraped knees and bruised wrists, his eyes reddening. He turned to me, his gaze no longer loving but exhausted, resentful. “Haze, why won’t you just die? How much longer will you drag us down?” Yet after screaming, he used his blood plasma donation money to buy me soup and pills, sat gnawing a stale bagel, and draped a blanket over Poppy like she was fragile treasure. A sharp pain spread through my chest, like blades scraping bone. Tears soaked my pillow. It was okay. I was dying soon. Very soon, I’d stop being their burden. … After Wilson shouted those words, the apartment stayed quiet for a long, long time. Quiet enough for Wilson to finish choking down that stale half-bagel. He brought the hot soup over to my bed, his voice choking up as he apologized. “I am so sorry, Five. I am just… so tired.” I did not have the courage to look at him. I just kept my eyes squeezed shut, pretending to be asleep. Right before dawn, Poppy sat up on the worn-out sofa. She poked a straw into a carton of sweetened almond milk and pressed it into my hand. “Here, Five. Less sugar.” “You can’t have things too sweet right now.” Her routine was as natural and practiced as always. But when I glanced down and saw the dark purple bruises circling her wrists, my fingertips could not help but tremble. The almond milk was sweet enough. Yet it burned going down, leaving a bitter, agonizing taste in my throat. Wilson was prying the lid off the takeout soup. His hands used to be breathtaking, like they belonged to a sculptor. They were hands made for playing the piano. He used to promise me that when I finally got better, he would play a song for me with his own two hands at our wedding. But now, those hands were clumsy even just opening a plastic lid. His palms were covered in thick, yellowish calluses from blisters that had burst and healed a dozen times over at the construction site. When Wilson handed the soup to me, he blew on it out of pure habit. But a second later, as if in a complete daze, he shifted his hand and brought the plastic spoon right to Poppy’s lips. The air in the room went so still it was suffocating. All the color drained from Poppy’s face. Wilson snapped out of it. His wrist jerked, nearly spilling the broth everywhere. He awkwardly redirected the spoon back to me. I took it from him and lowered my head to take a sip. The soup was scalding. It burned the tip of my tongue. But I did not flinch. Because compared to the words Wilson had thrown at me last night. This little bit of physical pain was absolutely nothing. The three of us huddled around the tiny folding table for breakfast. Just like we had done a thousand times before. Except our breakfasts used to be loud and full of life. Poppy would try to steal the bacon off Wilson’s plate. Wilson would put on a cold face and swat her fork away. I would sit right between them, laughing so hard it triggered a coughing fit. And then Poppy would instantly snap at Wilson. “Stop making her laugh! You know her lungs can’t take it.” Back then, I always thought I was the luckiest girl in the entire world. My absolute best friend sat across from me. The love of my life sat right beside me. One on the left, one on the right. They shielded me from everything dark in the world. But now, it was the exact same table. The exact same three people. Poppy refused to look at Wilson. Wilson refused to look at her. Yet their eyes would inevitably collide in the spaces between seconds. And then they would instantly, guiltily tear their gazes apart. My throat suddenly felt tight and dry. Not because of my failing lungs. But because the fog had finally cleared, and I could see the truth. It wasn’t that they didn’t love me anymore. It was that they had fallen in love with each other. And this love had taken root and blossomed in the absolute filth of trying to buy my medicine, trying to raise my money, trying to keep me breathing. I did not even feel like I had the right to blame them. A sudden, sharp metallic taste surged up the back of my throat. I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper, forcing myself not to cough up blood right in front of them. After we finished eating, Poppy stood up to clear the empty containers. As she leaned over, her collar shifted, revealing a fresh, dark hickey right beneath her collarbone. Wilson saw it. His expression shifted instantly. He took a subconscious step toward her. But he forcefully rooted himself to the spot. I pretended to be deeply engrossed in my phone, staring blankly at the screen. On the display was the hospice care DNR agreement I had signed digitally last night. Once I stopped taking the medication. My body would not last more than three days. It felt like thousands of fire ants were chewing on my bones. I was constantly in so much pain that I had to curl myself into a tight, trembling ball. When she finished cleaning, Poppy came over and sat beside me. “Five.” “When you are feeling a little better, the three of us should go get a real portrait taken.” My mind drifted back to a memory from many years ago. We had taken a picture together once. Poppy insisted on standing dead center, declaring she was the older sister and needed to protect me and Wilson. Wilson refused to accept it. He shamelessly squeezed himself right next to me. Just before the shutter clicked, he secretly laced his fingers through mine behind my back. When the photo was printed, I stared at it and smiled for days. I thought I held the whole world in my hands. Now, I looked at the two exhausted, hollowed-out faces in front of me and managed a weak smile. “When I feel better, we will go.” Tears instantly spilled from Poppy’s eyes. She quickly ducked her head to wipe them away. “It is a promise then.” I lowered my head and swallowed the last spoonful of cold soup. Inside, my heart was completely quiet. I am not going to get better. And we are not going to take that photo. Because very soon, I am going to disappear from their world entirely. When that happens. I will give them their freedom back. And I will finally release myself from this humiliating, suffocating love. That night, I woke up to the sound of fighting in the living room. Poppy sounded like she was crying. “Years ago, Five went to work at that chemical processing plant just to pay for our tuition!” “She got pulmonary fibrosis because of us! We cannot betray her like this!” A second later, I heard the rustling of clothes being roughly pulled. Wilson’s breathing grew heavy. “I know we owe her a debt we can never repay. But can you look me in the eye and say you don’t love me?” “This has nothing to do with her. This is about us.” Poppy choked out a sob. “I don’t love you.” “Listen to me, Wilson, I don’t love you!” “I don’t feel anything for… mm!” The next second, all her desperate denials were swallowed up. I lay frozen in the dark, my eyes wide open. The ceiling blurred into a shadow above me. I listened to them kissing in the living room. I listened to Poppy crying, her hands weakly pushing against his chest. And I listened as her struggles eventually faded into nothing. In that exact moment, I finally understood. Some betrayals do not start with the body. They start with pity. With one moment of weakness, one desperate urge to protect. One uncontrollable gravitational pull toward someone who understands your pain. Until slowly, you cross a line you can never come back from. A violent wave of nausea suddenly turned my stomach inside out. My chest constricted with a crushing, suffocating agony. It felt like an invisible hand had reached inside my ribcage, twisting my lungs like a wet rag. I tried to suppress it. But this illness had ravaged my body for far too long. A split second later, hot, coppery liquid erupted into my throat. I panicked, reaching out wildly to grab the tissues on the nightstand, but my limbs went completely slack, and I crashed heavily onto the hard wooden floor. The noises in the living room stopped dead. Wilson and Poppy bolted into the bedroom at the exact same time. Poppy’s hair was a mess. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and the collar of her shirt was pulled down, hanging loosely off her shoulder. When they saw me collapsed on the floor, all the blood drained from their faces. “Five!” Poppy lunged forward to hold me up. The sweet scent of her nightclub perfume mixed with the stale, cheap tobacco clinging to Wilson’s clothes. It made the nausea violently churn in my stomach again. Wilson dropped to his knees, trying to scoop me into his arms. “Five, where does it hurt?” “I am calling an ambulance. Let’s go to the hospital.” I shook my head, using every last ounce of energy I had left to force out three words. “I’m fine. Sleep.” The next morning, Poppy’s eyes were horribly swollen. She carefully took my fragile hand into hers. “Five.” “Let’s go take that photo today.” “You promised me yesterday.” Hearing this, Wilson frowned deeply. “She coughed up blood last night. Do not drag her outside today.” Poppy’s eyes immediately filled with fresh tears. “I just want one good picture of the three of us.” “Just in case…” Her voice cracked and died in her throat. I forced a faint smile. “Let’s go then.” It would be the perfect photo to use for my funeral. They both stared at me. I pretended I could not see the crushing guilt swimming in their eyes. Poppy picked the photography studio. The photographer positioned us in front of a clean, neutral backdrop. Wilson stood on my left, Poppy on my right. But the photographer looked through the lens for a few seconds, then lowered the camera with a bright smile. “Could the couple step a bit closer to each other?” He was talking about Wilson and Poppy. The oxygen instantly vanished from the room. The fake smile on Poppy’s face shattered. Wilson instinctively denied it. “We are not together.” His denial came out fast. Too fast. And the moment the words left his mouth, his eyes did not dart to me. They darted to Poppy. As if he was terrified she would be hurt by his rejection. Standing right between them, I smiled warmly and broke the silence. “It is okay. The three of us are family.” When the word ‘family’ left my lips, Poppy’s eyes instantly flooded with red. Wilson went completely rigid. But my smile was flawless. Natural. As if I truly had not noticed the overflowing, desperate love they were trying to hide from me. In the final printed photo, I stood directly in the center. Wilson and Poppy flanked my sides. But their shoulders were subconsciously angled inward, tilting toward each other. I was the only one standing perfectly straight. Looking exactly like someone who had finally learned how to bow out with grace. I slipped the photo into my bag. Right then, my phone vibrated in my pocket. An email notification popped up from the Hospice Care Center. “Miss Hazel, your application to terminate life-sustaining treatment has been confirmed.” Wilson leaned over, trying to see what I was looking at. My thumb fumbled. I could not lock the screen fast enough. But before his eyes could focus on the words, Poppy suddenly covered her mouth and let out a violent, wretched gag. Wilson’s attention snapped away from me instantly. “Poppy?” Poppy leaned against the studio wall, dry-heaving, her face the color of chalk. I stared at her pale, sweaty forehead, and a sudden thought pierced through the fog in my brain. She had not bought tampons in a very long time. An absurd, terrifying realization began to float up from the darkest corner of my mind. But before I could even process the thought, a catastrophic, tearing pain ripped through my chest. I doubled over, vomiting a massive puddle of dark red blood onto the white studio floor. Wilson whipped his head around. For a fraction of a second, absolute panic flashed in his eyes. But Poppy let out another agonizing gag, her knees buckling as she collapsed weakly into his chest. Wilson’s hands froze in mid-air. On one side, I was choking on my own blood, seconds away from passing out. On the other side, Poppy was pale, trembling, and entirely possibly carrying his child. Poppy gripped his shirt sleeve like a lifeline, sobbing hysterically. “Wilson, take Five to the hospital right now!” “Her lungs are failing!” My consciousness was already fraying at the edges. A high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears. But I still saw Wilson squeeze his eyes shut, his face twisting in absolute mental collapse. Suddenly, he opened his red-rimmed eyes and screamed at me. “Haze, why won’t you just fucking die?” “If you were dead, we wouldn’t have to be drowning in this misery anymore!” “Poppy wouldn’t have to suffer like this! Why won’t you just die!” Those words were a rusty knife, plunging repeatedly into my bleeding heart. I opened my mouth to speak, but only more blood spilled out over my chin. So this is it. The person who loved me most in the world. Was finally begging for me to die. Poppy slapped her hand over his mouth, sobbing uncontrollably. “Wilson, are you out of your mind?!” “How could you say that to her?” Wilson looked like he had just shocked himself. He stared down at me, profound agony and terror rapidly pooling in his eyes. But a second later, Poppy went completely limp against him. Wilson finally made his choice. He bent down and scooped Poppy into his arms. His voice was terrifyingly hoarse. It sounded like he was trying to justify it to me, but mostly trying to justify it to himself. “Five. Just this once.” “I have to take care of Poppy first.” “Just this once.” I lay crumpled on the cold floor, the world around me melting into a dark blur. All I could hear was the frantic sound of Wilson’s footsteps running toward the exit. Just before the darkness took me completely, I heard his trembling voice echo down the hall. “Poppy, that night three months ago…” “I gave you the cash. Didn’t you go to the clinic for the pill?” Poppy was crying so hard she could barely breathe. “Five was so weak after her chemo that day.” “I took that clinic money… and I bought her two hot meatball subs.” The tears finally broke free and slid down my bloody cheeks. So even this child. Was my fault. The agonizing pain in my organs crashed over me like a tidal wave, drowning me from the inside out. I lay on the freezing tile, watching their blurry silhouettes disappear. Suddenly, a thought echoed in my fading mind. Haze. Look at you. You really are the root of every horrible thing that has ever happened to them. I thrashed on the floor for a long time, waves of hot blood endlessly bubbling up my throat. At first, I tried to cover my mouth. Eventually, I did not even have the strength to lift my arm. The blood ran down my chin, pooling onto the studio floor, slowly blooming into a dark, terrifying crimson stain. The freshly printed photo slipped out of my pocket. In the picture, all three of us were smiling. But looking closely through my half-closed eyes, I could see Wilson and Poppy’s hands, secretly locked together behind my back. Just like how Wilson had locked his fingers with mine, all those years ago. I coughed up another mouthful of blood. This time, my breathing became incredibly shallow. So faint, it felt like the very next breath would simply refuse to come. The most beautiful memories of my life began to flash behind my eyelids. Back when we were stuck in the foster home, the summer nights were so brutally hot we couldn’t sleep. Poppy would sit next to my bed, fanning me with a piece of stiff cardboard. She would fan me and scold me at the same time. “Five, why are you always so damn fragile?” “When your big sister gets rich, I’m going to buy you ten air conditioners.” Wilson would sit by the open window, practicing. He didn’t have a piano, so he drew black and white keys on a long strip of paper. His fingertips struck the paper silently, over and over again. He said, “When I finally make it to the biggest concert hall in the city…” “The dead-center seat in the front row belongs to Five.” Poppy immediately kicked his shin. “What about me?” Wilson kept a straight face and replied, “You can stand by the door and tear the tickets.” We laughed until our stomachs hurt. Back then, I really believed it. I believed the bitter days would eventually end. And I believed the three of us would never, ever be torn apart. But later, to scrape together the tuition money to send them to college, I took that night-shift job at the toxic demolition site. The hazard pay was massive. Enough to cover both their tuitions in cash. I was so happy. Because ever since we were kids, Wilson and Poppy were always so much brighter, so much smarter than me. I willingly became the stepping stone. I hoisted them up toward a better life. And then, one medical report shattered every beautiful dream we had. They dropped out of college. They started working themselves into the ground. Love and ambition were aggressively ground into dust by an endless mountain of hospital bills. Suddenly, my body felt weightless. So light, as if all the agonizing pain, the IV needles, the crushing guilt of the last seven years… Had finally detached from my soul. My life was actually very short. Too short to ever put on a wedding dress. Too short to see Wilson walk onto a grand stage. Too short to see Poppy buy those ten air conditioners. But it was also so incredibly long. Long enough that the torture after every chemo session felt like walking through hell with no exit. Long enough to watch the two people who loved me most drag themselves into the gutter just to keep me breathing. They used to be so good. They really were good people. It was just that fate was too cruel. It squeezed us until we morphed into monsters we didn’t even recognize. I remembered the day the three of us went to get our legal IDs. I was supposed to be named Hazel, but the social worker messed up the paperwork and wrote Haze. Poppy was furious. She almost threw a chair at the worker, screaming that ‘Haze’ sounded like fading away, like disappearing into nothing. Wilson just smiled, gently rubbing the top of my head. “Then I’ll be the wind,” he said. “I’ll always be there to clear the sky for our little Haze.” What a sick joke fate played. He couldn’t clear the sky for me, and he ultimately lost himself in the dark, too. Looking back on it now, my life really was just like a patch of fog. Nobody asked for it to be there, and everyone was just waiting for it to finally dissipate. How fitting. As the very last drop of energy left my broken body, I closed my eyes for a long, long time. … Wilson carried Poppy all the way back to their cramped apartment. The second he kicked the door shut, Poppy finally broke down and sobbed loudly. “Tomorrow morning, I am going to the clinic. I’m getting rid of it.” “From now on, we dedicate everything to Five. We can never, ever cross that line again…” Wilson’s eyes were bloodshot. It looked like he couldn’t physically handle hearing another word. He violently yanked her by the waist and crashed his lips onto hers. He shoved every apology, every ounce of self-hatred, right back down her throat. Tears were still streaming down Poppy’s cheeks. But the hands she used to push against his chest slowly, inevitably, wrapped around his neck. The heavy, tangled sounds of their breathing entirely drowned out the quiet buzz of a cell phone on the table. Neither of them saw the text message lighting up the screen. “Are you the registered family member of Haze?” “Please come to City General Hospital immediately to sign the remains release forms.”

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1 At Monday’s meeting, my boss announced in front of everyone that I was fired for drinking my coffee without sugar. The excuse was ridiculous and everyone knew the truth. Victor Crane had decided his wife’s brother, Kyle Turner, had fully mastered my core technology. I was now a disposable pawn he was eager to remove. The room went silent. Only Kyle, now VP, failed to hide his smirk. I had spent six years in R&D. First year, I was the only engineer, sleeping in the server room for forty-five hundred a month. Third year, when the system collapsed, I stayed up three days rewriting code. Victor was so moved he promised to take care of me for life. Fifth year, with over a million users, I led endless maintenance on twelve thousand a month. Before the holidays, Victor brought in Kyle, who barely finished middle school, as an intern and asked me to explain the core logic. Now Victor believed Kyle had mastered the sacred art of copy and paste. I, the person who actually understood the technology, had become too hard to manage. He tapped the table, saying the company needed to get younger and my tech was outdated. He seemed to have forgotten something important. The platform’s underlying encryption algorithm was my personal invention patent. I had never transferred it. All this time, I had merely allowed the company to use it for free. I watched Kyle fiddle with my computer, the corner of my mouth lifting slightly. “All right,” I said. “I wish the company a bright future.” I set down my badge and turned to leave. I looked at the two of them. Victor leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie. Beside him, Kyle wore a loose T-shirt and spun a signing pen between his fingers. Victor turned to Kyle. “Are you sure you’ve learned how to maintain the core system?” Kyle slapped the pen onto the table, leaned back, and propped one ankle on the edge. “Victor, relax.” His voice was loud. “I’ve gone through that code a million times. The logic is simple. She deliberately made it complicated to cheat the company out of funding, adding useless encryption layers everywhere.” He tapped the table. “I’ve mastered it. I could rewrite it with my eyes closed.” Victor slapped his thigh and pointed at my nose. “Nora Lane, did you hear that? That’s the difference.” He stood up. “We’ve kept you for six years and paid you such a high salary, only to find out you made simple work complicated just to scam us? Now Kyle can do it. What do we need you for? Pack up and leave.” I didn’t argue. Talking law with someone who didn’t understand law, and technology with a scoundrel, was one of the biggest wastes of time in the world. “Fine.” I picked up my laptop and walked out of the meeting room. Behind me came Kyle’s laughter. Back at my desk, I pulled out a cardboard box and started packing. The colleagues around me all lowered their heads and typed. No one looked my way. Kyle followed me out and leaned against the cubicle divider. “Everyone, keep an eye on her.” He pointed at me. “Don’t let her take company secrets. The stuff on that hard drive is my work. If even one byte is missing, I’ll call the police.” A few interns looked up. I opened the server backend mount interface and found the module tucked away in the corner. Nora Lane Authorization. It was the electronic key to my personal patent authorization. Three years ago, when the company suffered a data leak, I had mounted it in an emergency. No authorization agreement was signed. They had used it free for three years. Now that I was a burden, I clicked Log Out. A popup appeared on the screen. Removing core authorization will cause algorithm failure. Continue? I clicked Yes. The progress bar finished. The small green lock in the system tray disappeared. I reached behind the host machine, unplugged a black encryption dongle, and dropped it into my box. Kyle stared at the screen without speaking. I shook the dongle in my hand. “Since you’ve learned everything, I’ll take this burden with me.” Kyle waved me off. “Get out already. Treating some crappy USB like treasure. What’s on it, selfies? I’d call it trash even if you left it here.” I picked up the box. “As you wish.” As I walked out of the building, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Messages from headhunters and HR reps flooded in. Every interview I had scheduled was canceled. Ms. Lane, apologies. We no longer have an opening. Engineer Lane, we heard you were fired for leaking data. Cooperation terminated. Nora, the industry is small. Behave yourself. I opened the industry group chat. Kyle was spamming it. Warning! Nora Lane lacks the technical skills for her role and was fired for suspected sale of core data! Hiring her means going against CraneTech! She has character issues. If my brother-in-law were less kind, she would already be in police custody! Victor followed with a heartbroken emoji. A few people echoed him. The previously polite industry contacts said nothing. I looked back at the office tower, put my phone away, and tightened my arms around the box. If they wanted to blacklist me, then I no longer needed to leave them any dignity. Let’s see if they could still laugh once that lock came down. Three days after I left, my usual headhunter sent me a voice message. “Engineer Lane, Victor Crane is talking in the industry. He says you faked your technical ability and stole confidential data. Several companies that were interested have paused at the background check stage.” I stood by the road and looked at the rejection notice that had just popped up on my phone. Victor didn’t only want to drive me out. He wanted to cut off my livelihood. Inside CraneTech’s R&D department, Kyle had his feet propped on the desk and a cup of milk tea in his hand. His screen was full of code, but he used only one set of shortcuts. In the Find field, he entered my name. In the Replace field, he entered his own. Then he clicked Replace All. The screen flashed. A prompt appeared. 358 replacements completed. Kyle whistled and selected the patent reference statement at the top of the code. Then he pressed Delete. At three in the afternoon, Victor walked into R&D. “Got the hang of it?” Kyle immediately lowered his legs. The mouse wheel flew, scrolling rapidly through code. “Victor, look. I stayed up last night rewriting all of Nora’s garbage code. Runtime efficiency doubled.” Victor stared at the dense “Author: Kyle Turner” labels on the screen and slapped Kyle’s shoulder hard. “Family is still reliable. That woman fooled us for years. You can do this better.” Kyle switched the page to the website of a tech giant. “Victor, this algorithm is mine now. Why don’t we apply for software copyright and package it as self-developed cutting-edge tech?” He pointed at AtlasCore Technologies on the screen. “AtlasCore is looking for a security partner. If we win this deal, we can go public.” “Go public?” Victor’s eyes lit up. He paced around the office twice, then slapped the desk. “Good. Apply for the copyright immediately. Contact AtlasCore.” He pulled out his phone. “But first, we need to warn Nora so she doesn’t talk nonsense.” In a coffee shop, I was organizing patent documents. My phone vibrated. Victor had sent a text. Still unemployed, I assume? Stop wasting your effort. Just letting you know, Kyle has already developed the second-generation product. The copyright belongs to the company. You’d better watch your mouth. If you dare ride our publicity or leak anything, I’ll make sure you can’t stay in this city. Second-generation product? Changing the name was now a second-generation product. They had deleted the patent statement and dared to use my work to deceive AtlasCore. AtlasCore’s CEO, Samuel Ward, was a technical founder. I closed the text, opened AtlasCore’s official website, and clicked Security Technology Partner Recruitment. I dragged in my resume, uploaded a scanned patent certificate stamped by the national patent office, and clicked Send. At the AtlasCore building, Victor stood in front of the revolving doors in a custom suit. He had used too much hair gel. Kyle followed behind him, clutching a freshly printed white paper titled CraneTech Self-Developed Core Technology. “Victor, we’ve got this.” Kyle tugged his tie and lowered his voice. “I asked around. AtlasCore needs exactly this logic.” Victor flicked nonexistent dust from his cuff. “Of course. When you meet Mr. Ward later, talk more about the technical details. Don’t stutter.” “Relax. I memorized the PowerPoint.” They registered at reception and sat in the waiting area. The side elevator doors opened. I walked out holding a clear document folder, lowering my head to confirm my phone calendar. “Well, isn’t this Engineer Lane?” Kyle’s voice was loud. I looked over. Kyle stood and looked me up and down. “Blacklisted and still managed to sneak in? Are you delivering food or applying to clean bathrooms?” Victor also stood and walked over. “Nora, for a company like AtlasCore, even I had to schedule this meeting half a month in advance.” He pointed toward security in the distance. “What is this? Are they letting anyone in now? Who takes responsibility if something goes missing?” Several passing employees glanced over. I put away my phone. “I’m here for business.” “Business?” Kyle shoved the thick white paper almost into my face. “You’re worthy of discussing business? Look carefully. We’re about to sign a contract. A deal worth tens of millions, using my self-developed technology.” He emphasized the words. “That old system is obsolete. Back then, we asked you to improve it, and you refused. Now you see us rising and want to come beg?” Victor glanced at his watch. “Nora, recognize reality. You and us are no longer on the same level. Leave before you embarrass yourself.” The sound of heels approached. A female secretary came over. The two men immediately bent forward with smiles. “Mr. Crane, Mr. Turner, Mr. Ward and the legal team are waiting in the conference room. This way, please.” Victor lifted his chin at me. “See that? This is the difference. Go home and reflect.” They followed the secretary toward the conference room. As Kyle passed me, he deliberately slammed his shoulder into mine. Watching their backs disappear around the corner, I brushed off the place he hit. He was right. There was a difference in levels. I walked toward another elevator with card access. The doors opened. AtlasCore’s legal counsel, Ms. Keller, held the door-open button. “Engineer Lane, did you bring all the documents?” I lifted the clear folder in my hand. Inside were the original patent certificate and the forensic appraisal report. “All here.” I stepped into the elevator and pressed the conference room floor. Inside the conference room, cold air blew from the central AC. On one side of the long redwood table sat Samuel Ward and AtlasCore’s executives. On the other side, Victor and Kyle sat with their backs perfectly straight. The projector light hit the screen. The PowerPoint page read: Exclusive Patent. Self-Developed. Kyle stood at the screen holding a clicker. “Ladies and gentlemen, this algorithm was independently developed by me over three years. It uses dynamic key logic, with security far exceeding similar products.” AtlasCore’s technical director twirled his pen and nodded. “The logic is excellent. The underlying encryption lock design is creative. This is exactly the kind of technology we need.” Victor clenched his fist and stared at the contract. Once financing came in, the company could go public. Samuel opened the draft contract and looked up. “Since evaluation is complete, let’s sign.” An assistant pushed the contract in front of Victor. Victor twisted open his gold pen. The tip touched the paper. The door opened. Ms. Keller walked in first. I followed behind her with my laptop. Victor’s hand shook, and the pen left a streak of ink across the contract. He shoved his chair back and stood, pointing toward the door. “Nora Lane? Who let you in? Where’s security? Mr. Ward, this person was fired by me. She’s here to cause trouble.” Kyle shouted too. “Get out! This isn’t a place for you to make a scene.” I walked around the table toward the projector. Kyle reached out to block me. I sidestepped, pulled the HDMI cable from his computer, and connected mine. The screen went black. Then my laptop interface appeared. “Mr. Crane, Mr. Turner, before signing, we need to finish the ownership verification process.” I stood beside the projection screen and looked at Kyle, whose head was already sweating. “If you claim you wrote this algorithm, then explain why the underlying logic lock requires my biometric fingerprint to open.” Whispers rose in the conference room. Samuel leaned back in his chair and stared at the contract on the table. Kyle opened his mouth for a long time but said nothing. He only looked at Victor. I pressed Enter. The screen lit up. The black terminal interface with red text stopped scrolling, and a red dialog box appeared in the center. It was the official backend interface of the national patent office, synchronized in real time. Core Patent Name: NL Dynamic Encryption Logic Algorithm Patent Owner: Nora Lane [sole owner] Current Status: Authorization withdrawn. Commercial use strictly prohibited. The gold pen slipped from Victor’s hand and rolled under the table. He stared at the screen, then looked at Kyle. Kyle’s knees weakened, and he collapsed into the chair. I pushed my computer to the center of the table. “Mr. Crane, you may have forgotten something. This patent is mine personally. When it was used at the company, I lent it to you.” I looked at him and continued. “Now that I’ve been fired, the word lend no longer applies.” Then I turned to Samuel. “Mr. Ward, using a stolen patent to obtain financing worth tens of millions constitutes commercial fraud.”

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1 After the car crash scrambled my husband’s brain, he lost the ability to speak. Well, almost. He was left with exactly two words in his vocabulary: “Yes” and “No.” But the real kicker? Every time he answered a question, he physically could not tell a lie. It felt like a twisted gift from the universe. I sat across from him one morning and asked, “Are you sleeping with my best friend?” The color drained from his face. His jaw trembled, but his mouth moved entirely against his will. “Yes.” “Have you been hiding money in secret accounts?” “Yes.” “Is your bank pin your high school sweetheart’s birthday?” “Yes.” Armed with his bizarre new condition, I ruthlessly dismantled his life. I sent his mistress packing, secured every last penny of his assets, and watched him sit there, completely incapable of even cursing me out. Life was perfectly peaceful. Until this afternoon. A ridiculously attractive food delivery guy dropped off my lunch and brazenly asked for my number. I flirted back, deliberately glancing over at my husband, who was staring blankly at the wall like a wooden doll. “Are you even my husband?” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “Another guy is hitting on me right in front of you and you don’t even care?” Without missing a beat, he blurted out, “No.” My smile vanished. I froze, my eyes locking onto his dull, vacant pupils. The silence in the room stretched out until it felt suffocating. Finally, I whispered, “Then is my husband, Nolan, dead?” “Yes and no.” A violent chill shot down my spine. I leaned in, staring into his eyes with absolute focus, and asked again. “Are you Nolan?” The man sitting in front of me maintained a perfectly serene expression. “No.” My lips started to tremble. “Then who are you?” He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The rules of his brain damage dictated he could only answer yes or no questions. And now, apparently, “Yes and no.” I grabbed his face, examining every single inch of skin. It was Nolan’s face. It was identical. I traced the jagged scar near his temple. Three years ago, some idiot dropped a glass bottle from a high rise. Nolan had shoved me out of the way and taken the glancing blow to the head. It took seven stitches to close. This was Nolan’s scar. There was no mistaking it. I sat back, my mind racing in total chaos. Since the accident, this man had been a living crystal ball. He had answered every question with one hundred percent accuracy, even things completely unrelated to his life. He accurately predicted the exact scores of soccer matches. He confirmed insane celebrity scandals before they leaked. I had made a small fortune betting on his answers, and I trusted his “Yes” or “No” with my life. I knew for a fact that if I asked him, “Is an earthquake going to hit in five minutes?” and he said “Yes,” I would grab my emergency bag and sprint out the door without a second thought. But just now, he told me he wasn’t Nolan. And when I asked if Nolan was dead, he gave me a paradoxical answer. The cold terror in my chest began to spread. If this man wasn’t Nolan, then who the hell had I been living with for the past three months? Where was the real Nolan? How could someone be “Yes and no” dead? Was he in a coma somewhere? I was seriously debating whether to tie him to a chair and interrogate him when a sharp, aggressive knocking rattled the front door. I walked over and pulled it open. Two police officers were standing on my porch. “Riley? We’re with the City Police Department. What we’re about to tell you might be a shock, so please try to stay calm.” The older detective pulled out a notepad. “At 9:30 this morning, we received a call. A highly decomposed body was pulled from the riverbed. We found an ID on the remains belonging to your husband, Nolan. We’re here to ask if you know anything about this.” My knees went weak. I grabbed the doorframe. “That’s impossible!” The two officers exchanged a sharp, vigilant look. “Why is it impossible?” I dug my fingernails into my palms, forcing myself to breathe. “Because Nolan isn’t dead. He’s sitting right there.” I pointed toward the living room couch. The man who looked exactly like Nolan was sitting there, his head bowed, completely silent. The officers froze. The older one stepped past me, walking straight into the living room. He pulled out the recovered ID card and held it up to the man’s face. Seeing the exact same features staring back at him, the detective fell dead silent. I hurried over, waving my hands. “My husband is incredibly careless. He loses his wallet all the time. Someone must have stolen his ID and ended up in the river. It’s just a horrible coincidence.” The detective ignored me. He leaned down and looked the man in the eyes. “Excuse me. Are you Nolan?” The man blinked slowly and muttered, “No.” The air in the living room turned to lead. The way the officers looked at me instantly shifted from sympathetic to deeply suspicious. I panicked and scrambled to grab the medical files from the coffee table. “Please, let me explain! Three months ago, my husband was in a severe car crash. His hippocampus was destroyed. He lost his memory, and his speech center is permanently damaged. He can only say ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ Watch, I’ll prove it.” I stepped in front of the man. “Nolan, do you love eating garbage?” “No.” “Nolan, are these police officers bad guys?” “No.” “Nolan, are you Nolan?” “No.” I turned to the cops with a helpless, exhausted smile. “See? His cognitive function is basically that of a seven year old. You can’t take anything he says literally.” The two officers exchanged another look. They carefully reviewed the official medical reports from the neurology department and stepped outside to make a verification call. When they came back, their shoulders had dropped a fraction. “It seems this might just be a massive misunderstanding,” the older detective said. “But we still need you to come down to the station to give a formal statement.” I asked if I needed to bring Nolan. The detective thought about it. “Bring him. You probably don’t want to leave him home alone in his condition anyway.” So, I brought the man with me to the precinct. Back at the house, I had played a calculated game. I purposefully asked three questions that required a “No” answer. The second question proved the cops were good people, which meant I wasn’t in any immediate danger. But just as I finished signing my statement and prepared to leave the station, the interrogation room door swung open. A female detective walked in, her face like a sheet of ice. “Hold on. I have a few questions.” She signaled the younger cop to leave the room, then sat down directly across from me. “I think you’re lying.” My fingernails dug into my palms again. “What is that supposed to mean?” The female detective stared right through me. She reached over and clicked off the recording camera. Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “Didn’t recognize me, Riley? It’s Harper.” I flinched. I honestly hadn’t recognized her. Harper. We went to high school together. The girl who had been desperately, obsessively in love with Nolan. We used to hate each other. She chased him for years. After Nolan finally rejected her, she dropped off the map. I had no idea she became a cop. “The DNA results from the corpse aren’t back yet,” Harper said coldly. “We can’t confirm if the body is Nolan, which means the man sitting next to you could easily be a hired actor.” She shifted her gaze to the man beside me. Her tone instantly softened. “Nolan? Do you remember me?” He glanced at her for a split second before dropping his head back down. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but a flash of deep pain crossed Harper’s eyes. I spoke up immediately. “His brain is fried. He can’t answer anything outside of a yes or no.” Harper tapped her pen against the metal desk, her eyes narrowed in thought. “Tell me, Riley. Why was Nolan in a car crash to begin with?” My body tensed. The memories flooded back. When I first found out Nolan was cheating, I completely lost my mind. He had started getting sloppy about a year ago. A smudge of lipstick on his passenger seat. A long strand of unfamiliar hair tangled in his coat button. The endless excuses about working late, followed by nights where he just never came home. The signs were blaring like sirens. But he was smart. He physically ripped the dashcam out of his car. He wiped his phone clean every single day. I couldn’t find a shred of hard evidence. When I hysterically confronted him, all I got was his impatient, vicious yelling. “Enough! Do you have any idea how psychotic you look right now?” “You want to check my phone? Check it! But when you find absolutely nothing, you’re going to get on your knees and beg for my forgiveness!” I was completely dead inside. I had the divorce papers drafted. And then, the crash happened. He fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into an oncoming freight truck on a mountain road. I let out a bitter sigh. “Should I thank God for the karma? He crashed his car on his way to see his little mistress and turned himself into an idiot. Go pull the traffic reports. The accident is entirely documented.” Harper nodded slowly. She typed something into her phone. A moment later, a message popped up on her screen. She read it, and her face grew completely rigid. “Everything you just said checks out. But it still doesn’t prove the man sitting next to you is Nolan.” I finally snapped. “Are you insane? Look at his face! You’ve stared at him enough in high school to know what he looks like.” Harper cut me off. “Riley, I think you murdered Nolan.” I let out a harsh, incredulous laugh. “If you keep talking like this, I’m filing a formal complaint against you.” “A body gets pulled out of a river, bloated and rotting, and you’re claiming it’s Nolan just because you found his wallet nearby?” “It’s not just the wallet,” Harper said. “The height and weight of the corpse perfectly match Nolan’s last physical exam.” Her voice suddenly dropped to a fragile whisper. “And there’s a tattoo.” “The face might be decayed, but the tattoo on the inner wrist is pristine. It’s totally unique.” She swallowed hard, closing her eyes. “Because I inked it on him myself.” The interrogation room fell completely silent. The man beside me hadn’t made a sound. But the second Harper mentioned the tattoo, his fingers twitched. Without hesitation, I grabbed his arm and violently shoved his sleeve up to his elbow. Right there, on his inner wrist, was an incredibly ugly, amateur tattoo of a small dog. Harper’s face lost all its color. “Don’t tell me you gave that exact same tattoo to two different people,” I sneered. “I always wondered why a guy like him had such a pathetic piece of ink. Now I know it was your handiwork.” “Does your face hurt yet, Harper? Still want to accuse me? What is my motive for killing him?” Her brows knitted together tightly. “A tattoo can be copied…” I cut her off aggressively. “Copied? So you’re telling me I found a guy who looks identical to my husband, matches his exact physical build, and then forced him to get a matching tattoo? Why would I go through that kind of psychotic effort?” “He cheated on me, and karma turned him into a drooling idiot who relies entirely on me. If I play the role of the devoted, heartbroken wife, his wealthy parents treat me like royalty. I have total control over every cent he owns.” “If he dies, his parents swoop in and freeze his assets for probate. What exactly do I gain from him being dead?” The older detective suddenly opened the door and stepped in, coughing loudly. “Detective, watch your line of questioning. Stick to protocol.” I leaned back in my metal chair, crossing my arms with a cold smile. I wasn’t worried. Because I had never killed anyone. No matter how deep they dug, my hands were clean. What terrified me was why the dead guy had Nolan’s ID. And who the hell the dead guy actually was. I had to protect the secret of this man’s “Yes/No” truth-telling ability. If the cops found out he was a human lie detector, things would spiral out of control. Harper grilled me for another hour, but she got nowhere. Based on the estimated time of death of the river corpse, the security cameras around my house proved I had a rock-solid alibi. When Harper and the older detective stepped out to check on the DNA rush order, I leaned in close to the man beside me. “Is the real Nolan dead?” He stayed silent for a second, then whispered, “Yes and no.” “Everything you say is a hundred percent true, right?” “Yes.” My racing heart finally settled. I couldn’t help but mock him. “Nolan, you really are a piece of work. Cheating with some random girl, and keeping your pathetic high school stalker hung up on you for years.” “Wait. If the real Nolan is ‘Yes and no’ dead… is he a vegetable?” He thought about it. “No.” I frowned, but decided to drop it. The only thing that mattered right now was getting out of this police station. Harper walked back in. Her eyes were burning with deep, bitter frustration. “The DNA results are back. The body in the river is not Nolan. We’re running it through the national database now.” I smirked. “Great. Then we’re leaving.” She threw her arm out, blocking the door. “The dead guy isn’t Nolan, but the guy standing next to you is even weirder.” “My gut tells me he isn’t Nolan. I think you’ve hidden Nolan somewhere, and this guy is a body double.” I stared her down. “Your gut? Is this how you conduct police work, Harper? Making up conspiracy theories?” “Just a gut feeling,” she muttered with a bitter smile. “Forget it. You’re free to go.” I grabbed the man’s hand and started walking toward the exit, my heels clicking sharply against the tile. Just as we reached the hallway, Harper called out. “Wait. You said earlier he can only answer yes or no questions. Right?” A sudden, sharp spike of dread pierced my chest. Before I could react, Harper sprinted forward and grabbed the man by the wrist. “Did Riley kill the real Nolan?” I froze. And then, the man standing next to me opened his mouth, his voice crystal clear.

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1 “Grace, I’ll have to trouble you again this time.” Monica Shaw’s voice drifted over, casual and entitled. I closed the handoff log in my hands and turned to meet her eyes. “What do you mean?” “I got into next week’s marathon. I talked it over with Dr. Harding, and we both think it’s best if you stay.” She smiled as she flattered me. “You’re the best nurse in our department. If you’re here, I feel much more at ease.” There were seven or eight people at the nurses’ station. Not one of them said a word. Five years. I had almost never adjusted shifts for time off. The hospital was already too busy to breathe. To support Monica’s dream, nearly every nurse at our station had covered shifts for her. I had covered the most. This year, my fiancé insisted I take a few days off no matter what so we could shoot our wedding photos. For those three days, I had worked ahead for a whole month, bought milk tea for the entire department to swap shifts, and even gotten Dr. Harding’s signature. But just as I was about to leave, Monica came over with an announcement, telling me to stay and cover for her. “I can’t cover it.” I pushed the handoff book aside. My volume didn’t change, but every word was clear. Monica froze. She clearly hadn’t expected the department’s easiest pushover to suddenly grow a spine. “Monica, can you skip this marathon?” I tried to keep my tone negotiable. “My wedding shoot already has a five-thousand-dollar deposit. We booked it half a year ago. My fiancé even pushed back a project for these few days. The photographer’s schedule is nearly impossible to adjust.” Monica tossed the IV labels in her hand onto the desk. “Grace, honestly, you have no sense of commitment.” She turned around, her face impatient. “The marathon was set a year ago. The sponsors have already printed my jersey. You suddenly insist on taking wedding photos now? Aren’t you deliberately making things hard for me?” Making things hard for her? I was so angry I almost laughed. In five years, I had gone from intern to backbone of the department. The most difficult patients, the pickiest doctors, in the end they all came to me. Most of the thank-you banners hanging on the nurses’ station wall had my name written on them. Over eighteen hundred days, I had never taken a full holiday. And Monica? She entered the hospital the same year as I did, but she still often missed veins when starting an IV. Yet thanks to running marathons everywhere, she had built herself a sunny-goddess image. For two years straight, the Excellent Nurse award had gone to her. Paula, the head nurse, saw I was about to speak again and hurriedly tugged me aside. “Grace, come out with me.” “Grace, how about this?” Paula tried to coax me. “You cover one day for her, and I’ll cover another. We’re colleagues. Don’t make things ugly.” Looking at Paula, I felt fire trapped in my chest. “Paula, you know better than anyone. For this break, I practically lived in the department last month.” “And all the messes Monica caused lately, wasn’t I the one cleaning them up? Bathing patients, turning them, calming families.” Paula sounded like she was defending herself. “I had already arranged your shift. But Dr. Harding personally called. He said the nurses’ station should overcome the difficulty internally.” All my hard work meant nothing in front of Monica’s so-called honor. I looked at her and asked one last time, my face cold, “Why me again?” Paula said, “It’s already at this point. Don’t make it unpleasant.” “I asked around. You’re not married yet, and your skills are solid. Help me this once. I’ll definitely make it up to you later.” Because I wasn’t married, my time wasn’t worth anything. Because I was good at my job, I had to be the one who endured. I didn’t argue with Paula anymore. I picked up the schedule and turned toward Dr. Harding’s office. Just as I reached his door, my phone vibrated twice in my pocket. I stopped outside and opened the screen. In the department group chat, Monica had sent a message. Marathon schedule confirmed. Thank you, Nurse Grace Bennett, for putting the bigger picture first. I’ll bring another medal back for everyone! Underneath was a photo of her holding last year’s trophy beside Dr. Harding. One of the pharmacy nurses privately messaged me. Grace, just endure it. She’s tight with the director. No need to clash with them. I put my phone away, knocked, and walked in. The right wall of Dr. Harding’s office was covered with Monica’s “achievements” from the past few years. “Grace, what brings you here?” Dr. Harding looked up. He was still holding the marathon promotional brief. I walked over and spread five years of attendance records across his desk. He glanced at them but didn’t touch them. “Grace, you’re usually sensible. Why are you being so stubborn today?” He leaned back in his chair. “You’re the pillar of the department. Everyone recognizes your ability. Just suffer a little this once.” “Dr. Harding, my wedding shoot deposit is five thousand dollars. The photographer can’t reschedule.” Dr. Harding gave a short laugh, then spoke as if lecturing a child. “Young people today are so dramatic. In our day, one photo was enough to get married. Call your boyfriend over. I’ll talk to him.” I looked at him. That face full of the word sacrifice made me want to vomit. “Dr. Harding, in these five years, I’ve covered Monica’s shifts twenty-seven times.” I pointed at the attendance sheet. “Nights, holidays, weekends. All me. More than half of the marathons she’s run were possible because I was covering her shifts. But this time, I really can’t.” “Why can’t you? Young people should prioritize the bigger picture.” Dr. Harding cut me off. “I’ll be honest with you. This shift change was my decision.” “After Monica came to me, I first considered Nurse Young, but she’s too inexperienced and careless. Professor Warren doesn’t like her.” “Then I thought about Paula, but you know she’s the head nurse. Her overtime pay is three times yours. The department budget is tight right now. We can’t move the funds around.” “Paula will retire in a couple of years. You’re skilled. Work a little more. Look further ahead. Don’t fixate on such a small thing.” “What?” I stared at him in disbelief. So because I was cheaper, because I was obedient, I deserved to be bullied. And he dared say it straight to my face. “If we’re a hospital and the budget is tight, why are we reimbursing Monica’s travel expenses?” I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Monica is competing to bring honor to our hospital. If you throw a tantrum at a time like this, aren’t you embarrassing us? You don’t even have that much awareness?” “Dr. Harding, if Monica is going to run the marathon, shouldn’t the online schedule be changed officially? You’re just announcing it in the group chat?” Dr. Harding’s smile vanished. He set his thermos heavily on the desk. “You’ve reminded me. I’ll handle the procedural issue and make sure there are no loopholes.” “I’ll have Paula redo the schedule. You don’t need to worry.” He stood, walked around the desk, and patted my shoulder. “I’ll talk to Monica about the later arrangements when I have time. Go back to work. The ward can’t run without you.” “The hospital will consider the schedule as a whole. I hope you cooperate.” Dr. Harding picked up the attendance sheet and ushered me out of his office. I stopped in the hallway, my chest tight with anger. “Hello, Monica.” Dr. Harding’s voice floated through the door. “She came to make a fuss just now. It’s fine. Run with peace of mind. Don’t worry about the schedule. I’ll have Paula arrange it.” After a brief pause, he laughed. “What’s one little nurse? They’re everywhere. Do I not know her family situation? What can she do?” Mortgage to pay. Elderly family members to treat. That was their leverage over me. I looked down at the schedule in my hand. So in their eyes, I was that cheap. When Monica saw me coming back down the hallway, she smiled and leaned close. “Grace, Dr. Harding told me everything. Thank you for putting the bigger picture first. I’ll buy you milk tea when I’m back.” I stopped and looked at her. At her well-maintained face. The smile on Monica’s face stalled. She instinctively shrank back. I said nothing. I pulled out my chair and sat down. Then I opened my phone and tapped into the pinned chat. Honey, the wedding shoot might have to be postponed. I’m sorry. At the top of the chat box, it kept showing that he was typing. It lasted two full minutes. Finally, two words appeared on the screen. It’s okay. I stared at those two words. In the reflection of the computer monitor, tears fell without warning onto the back of my hand. Paula pushed the door open and beckoned me into the duty room. She sighed first. “My mother-in-law was admitted last night too, and my younger one still has tutoring.” Paula rubbed her temples. “Grace, I really can’t manage the schedule right now. Dr. Harding already gave the order. Just treat it as helping me once. Just this once.” “Why am I always the one who has to be wronged?” The duty room went silent. Paula lowered her head and looked at the tips of her shoes. She didn’t answer. I stood and walked out. “I’ll take that as a yes, okay?” Paula called behind me. I didn’t stop. As soon as I returned to the nurses’ station, Paula posted the new electronic schedule in the department group chat. Dr. Harding followed with a notice, then specifically tagged me. Grace Bennett, reply when received. Everyone should learn from Monica Shaw’s fighting spirit in bringing honor to the department. Monica replied immediately with “Received,” followed by three fist-pump emojis. Then a line of “Received” responses filled the group chat. That parade of compliance felt like a string of slaps landing on my face. Monica passed the nurses’ station and tapped the counter with her fingers. “Oh, haven’t checked your phone yet? Dr. Harding specifically tagged you. Hurry and reply. Don’t keep him waiting.” I ignored her and continued sorting the orders in my hands. When Dr. Harding passed by on rounds, he didn’t look at the chart. Instead, he reached out and pressed his hand on my shoulder. “Grace, work hard. For the year-end excellence award, I’ll prioritize you. That’s your reward. Understand?” His eyes swept over my still-lit phone screen. His tone cooled. “Reply to the group message. Don’t make hospital leadership think our department lacks unity. This is not only scheduling. It’s political awareness.” I looked up at him. He didn’t wait for my answer. He had already led a group of interns down the corridor. I took my phone to the restroom stall and called the photography studio. They couldn’t change the date. Postponing would count as breach of contract. The penalty was thirty-eight hundred dollars. Their voice was polite and businesslike. “All right.” I hung up. Thirty-eight hundred. More than half a month’s salary. Gone. After work, I went to the parking lot. Aaron was leaning against the car door waiting for me. He stared at my eyes for two seconds. “Why were you crying?” He straightened and started toward the outpatient building. “I’m going to find that marathon champion.” I grabbed his arm. “You don’t have to endure this,” Aaron turned back. “Quit and come home. I’ll support you.” I held onto him and said, “I’m not enduring it. I’m waiting.” Late that night, I sat in front of my computer and opened my phone album. One by one, I imported screenshots of Monica’s shift swaps from the past five years into the computer and began building a timeline. “Grace, what scheme are you cooking up instead of sleeping?” Professor Warren poked his head over to look at the screen. The old man was famously difficult. When his temper flared, he dared scold even the hospital president. But he was relatively polite to me. Because my skills were solid, and I never dropped the ball. “Just organizing some materials, Professor.” “The department is quiet now. Go nap for a while.” The old man shook his head and left. I looked at the growing list in the document and pressed Save. The weekend nurses’ station was chaos. Monica had dumped a pile of unfinished work and run off. The families of Beds 104 and 107 had already slammed the desk three times. I could only check the orders one by one. Every time I finished something, I entered it into the system and took a photo of the work record with my phone. During the brief gap when I shoveled down food, Nurse Liu pushed her phone toward me. On the screen, Monica flashed peace signs at the camera. “Even with certain colleagues failing to understand me, I still stood at the starting line.” “Life is not only the grind in front of us. It is also marathons and distant horizons.” Comments rolled past. Queen energy. So inspiring. I swallowed cold takeout and pushed Nurse Liu’s phone back. Monica won first place in the women’s division of the Harbor City Marathon. The local TV interview video was forwarded in the department group chat eight hundred times. On camera, she held up the medal with reddened eyes and said the medal belonged to herself for insisting on her dream, and she thanked the hospital for its tolerance. Although certain colleagues did not support her, she thanked the leadership for prioritizing the bigger picture. Dr. Harding stood in the middle of the nurses’ station, glowing with pride. “Our department needs exactly this kind of spirit, striving to bring honor to the hospital.” His gaze swept over the top of my head. “Don’t always stare at your own tiny patch of land. That’s petty.” Morning meeting ended. Monica came over with two Starbucks cups and placed one on my desk. “Grace, my legs are so sore I can barely get downstairs.” She rubbed her calves. “I’ll have to trouble you to cover for me for the next two days too. Once I recover, I’ll treat you to a big meal.” The day after tomorrow was the final deadline for changing the wedding shoot. I took the coffee but didn’t respond. Monica took that as compromise. “Oh, I know you’ve worked hard. I’ll remember this favor personally.” She patted my shoulder and turned toward the locker room. On the computer screen, Wednesday’s schedule was clean and neat. Day nurse: Monica Shaw. Night nurse: Monica Shaw. Doctor on duty: Professor Warren Price. The hospital president’s mentor. The strictest academic authority in the hospital. Five minutes before my shift ended, I opened the electronic handoff system and pulled up the file for Bed 105. Margaret Hargrove. Pulmonary infection. The most important line: penicillin allergy. Mrs. Hargrove happened to be Dr. Harding’s mother-in-law. She had been transferred into our department yesterday. I typed the final line into the handoff record. Bed 105 patient’s recent medication plan must be strictly reviewed. Responsible nurse: Monica Shaw. Please ensure proper handoff. Click. Upload. The system light turned green. The timestamp was generated and locked automatically. This record synchronized across the entire network. When I walked out of the outpatient building, Aaron’s car was parked by the road. There were two cups of milk tea on the passenger seat. “Let’s go.” Aaron hit the gas. “The photographer said the outdoor location is empty today. We can shoot extra sets.” I stuck in the straw and took a big sip. Behind me, the nurses’ station sign glowed. I had left behind a handoff record. And on it, the responsible nurse was Monica Shaw.

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1 On our fifth wedding anniversary, I suddenly developed a bizarre ability. I could see exactly how many times people had slept together. I looked just above Tristan’s head. A dense, hovering cluster of crimson threads floated in the air. One thread equaled one time. My face flushed hot as I carefully counted them. Ninety-nine threads. They were all one-way, pointing exclusively to me. I was sitting in a local cafe waiting for my best friend, planning to tell her all about this crazy hallucination. But my phone suddenly vibrated, blowing up with a barrage of texts. “Who are you out with? A guy or a girl?” “Why did you wear sandals out of the house?” … “It’s been five minutes. Why aren’t you replying?” “Hello?” Blair leaned over the table, catching a glimpse of the screen. She scoffed, her face twisting with indignation. “It’s been five years, Rose. He literally dictates what you wear on your feet. How do you put up with this?” “If you ask me, you should just divorce him and stay with me.” She stared at me with big, pleading eyes. Out of pure habit, I immediately defended Tristan. “You love controlling me just as much. When I got married, you literally held a pair of scissors to your own throat, crying and begging me not to leave you.” “Besides, I can actually see it now. His heart and his body belong entirely to me.” Before I could even finish my sentence, a single, glowing red thread suddenly sprouted from the top of Blair’s head. Blair, who claimed to have never dated anyone in her life. I froze. I followed the glowing line across the room. It connected straight to Tristan, who was walking through the cafe doors with a dark, stormy expression on his face. … I rubbed my eyes hard, convinced I was losing my mind. But no matter how many times I blinked, that brilliant red line remained suspended in the air, firmly connecting Blair and Tristan. “Why didn’t you check in with me?” Tristan’s cold voice snapped me back to reality. He knelt right in front of me, taking off my sandals and replacing them with a pair of enclosed leather flats he had brought with him. “The reception is bad in here. The video I took of the cafe wouldn’t send.” The explanation spilled out of my mouth as a pure conditioned reflex. Tristan accepted the excuse with a slight nod and sat down next to me. He draped his arm over the back of my chair and pulled me firmly against his side, marking his territory. Blair rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to stick to her like glue, why don’t you just shrink her down and keep her in your pocket?” Tristan didn’t argue. He just raised an eyebrow and smoothly grabbed the latte sitting in front of me. He took one sip and frowned. “Didn’t I tell you to cut out sugar?” Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed a shot of plain espresso from the side and dumped it straight into my cup. “Are you blind? Rose has a massive sweet tooth.” Blair fired back, instantly grabbing a sugar packet and dumping the whole thing into the mug. “She can’t have sugar.” “Yes she can!” They went back and forth, entirely ignoring my presence, never once asking what I actually wanted to drink. They were always fighting over me. It applied to everything. From screening the friends I was allowed to make, all the way down to picking my major in college. They orchestrated my entire life. But this time, I noticed something sickeningly different. They were arguing loudly. But under the table, the tip of Blair’s foot was sliding smoothly up Tristan’s inner thigh. And Tristan, while gripping my hand tightly with his left hand, was using his right hand to catch her ankle, gently caressing her skin. A sudden, dizzying wave of nausea hit me. Before that ruined cup of coffee could spill over the rim, I abruptly stood up and grabbed my bag. They were too busy arguing, faces flushed, to even notice me walking out the door. I went straight home, locked myself in the bathroom, and splashed freezing water on my face. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looked deathly pale. When Tristan finally came home, I watched them from the second-story window. Just an hour ago, they looked ready to rip each other’s throats out at the cafe. Yet here they were, pulling into the driveway in the exact same car. As Blair stepped out of the passenger side, her legs seemingly gave out. Tristan caught her effortlessly, sweeping her up into a bridal carry. Blair had bought the house right across the street from ours just to be closer to me. When they walked up the steps and saw me standing perfectly still in the doorway, they both froze. Tristan recovered instantly. “It’s getting dark. I couldn’t let a woman walk home alone, so I just gave her a ride.” Blair pouted, her eyes wide and innocent. “Rose, why did you run off so fast? You didn’t even wait for me.” “Tomorrow is your birthday. Let me plan the whole day for you, okay?” I quietly stared at the second, brand-new red thread that had just materialized above their heads. I offered a soft smile. “Okay.” Tristan quickly swatted Blair’s hands away from me. “Alright, that’s enough. Rose needs to rest.” “You’re just terrified I’m going to steal her away from you, aren’t you?” Blair glared at him playfully. Tristan simply shut our front door right in her face. He picked me up, carried me to the living room sofa, and wrapped his arms around me. He pressed soft kisses to my ankles. He had always possessed this strange, obsessive quirk. Whenever he wanted to be affectionate, he loved playing with my feet. Normally, I would lean into his touch. But then I smelled it. The faint, undeniable scent of freesia on his collar. It was incredibly familiar. It was the exact matching perfume Blair and I had bought together. But I wasn’t wearing any perfume today. It could only belong to Blair. My stomach violently churned. I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm, “Tristan, what do you actually think of Blair?” His answer was the same rehearsed line he had used for years. “I wish you would cut her off. She consumes way too much of your time. You belong solely to me.” Blair had told me the exact same thing about him. Yet these two people, who supposedly fought tooth and nail over me, had secretly pushed me out of the picture to sleep together. I shoved Tristan off my lap and flicked off the living room light. “I’m tired.” It was the very first time I had ever rejected Tristan. Unsurprisingly, it ignited his temper. For the first time in five years, he didn’t wake me up to demand a kiss before leaving for the office. But he still laid out my clothes and breakfast just like a strict schedule. The exact same oatmeal and eggs I had eaten every single day for a week. He claimed it was a nutritionist-approved diet. He said it was good for me. But I was absolutely sick of it. The clothes were a long, ankle-length dress. I didn’t want to wear a dress today. I pulled open my closet, only to find that every single piece of clothing had a neat little label pinned to the hanger, dictating exactly which day of the month I was allowed to wear it. It wasn’t just my clothes. Every breath I took was strictly controlled. It had been this way since the day Tristan became my financial sponsor. I grew up in the foster system. I had nothing. Initially, I didn’t hate Tristan’s possessiveness. On the contrary, it gave a terrified, abandoned girl a desperate sense of security. But his control slowly derailed into madness. At first, he just made me a daily schedule. Then, he demanded real-time location tracking. Every month, he would confiscate my phone, auditing my text messages and every single social media account. He quietly blocked and deleted every single male contact on my list. When it was time to pick my college major, he logged into the portal behind my back and changed my applications. “Going to school out East is too far. Just go to the local state college. Being a nurse is a nice, quiet job for a girl.” With grades high enough for the Ivy League, I was forced into a mediocre local program. Once I started college, his paranoia only amplified. I would be sitting in the middle of a lecture hall when my phone would ring. “Go back to your dorm and change. That pink sweater is too bright. It attracts too much attention.” I had snapped my head around, staring wildly at the crowded lecture hall. I was terrified. I was suffocating. I couldn’t tell which of the students or professors was secretly on Tristan’s payroll, watching my every move. People used to whisper about us, calling Tristan a control freak. They couldn’t understand why I stayed with him. But Tristan was my only light in the dark. Back when I was starving, working three jobs just to afford textbooks, he was the one who pulled me out of the gutter. Yes, he monitored me, but when I caught a bad flu during midterms, he abandoned a multi-million-dollar tech deal overseas. He flew eight hours straight just to get to my dorm. When campus security wouldn’t let him in past curfew, he stood out in the freezing rain from midnight until dawn, just to hand me a bag of medicine and check my temperature. A ringing phone yanked me out of my memories. “Rose, Mr. Tristan is throwing a huge birthday gala for you tonight, but his phone is going straight to voicemail.” “Is he with you? Can you ask him what flavor the cake should be? And does he want the dress to be silk or heavy embroidery?” It was my birthday. They were my friends on the planning committee. Yet their first instinct was to bypass me entirely and ask for Tristan’s approval. I told them Tristan was at the office, but the girl on the phone begged me to go find him, terrified to make a decision without his green light. I finally gave in. I put on the pre-selected dress and took a cab to his corporate headquarters. The receptionist blocked my path in the lobby. “I’m sorry, you can’t go up without an appointment.” I had been locked in my house for so long, I had practically severed all ties with the outside world. I hadn’t worked a single day since I got pregnant the first time. At the hospital where I worked, there was an unspoken, toxic rule that nurses had to schedule their pregnancies to avoid staffing shortages. Tristan deliberately poked a hole in the condom. The moment the test came back positive, he secretly called the hospital board and reported my pregnancy. I was immediately fired. I still remember the look on the face of the girl competing against me for the Head Nurse promotion. She smiled so hard her cheeks almost split. “I really thought you had me beat, Rose. I didn’t realize you were such an angel, getting knocked up just to hand me the promotion.” I frowned at the receptionist. “How do I make an appointment?” “You need to clear it with his executive secretary, Blair.” Blair? Since when did Blair become Tristan’s secretary? Right at that moment, Tristan’s personal driver walked through the lobby doors. He looked shocked to see me. “Mrs. Rose? What are you doing here?” He shot a glare at the receptionist. “This is the CEO’s wife. Are you blind?” The receptionist instantly turned a sickly shade of gray. She panicked, stepping in front of the elevator banks, desperately trying to block my path. “But Mr. Tristan is in the middle of something highly confidential right now!” My eyes turned freezing cold. I shoved her aside. I marched into the elevator, hit the button for the top floor, and navigated the sleek hallways straight to the CEO’s suite. Just as my hand touched the brass handle, I heard Tristan’s voice bleeding through the heavy wood. “Are you trying to kill me?” “I wish you were dead. That way, Rose would only have me.” The receptionist hadn’t been fast enough to warn them. I slammed the heavy door open. The two figures on the leather sofa jumped violently, instantly freezing in place. Tristan panicked, frantically pulling his dress shirt over his chest. “Rose, it’s not what it looks like!” Blair, however, took her sweet time. She didn’t even bother covering her bare chest as she strolled right up to me. “See? Men are all pigs.” “Rose, leave him. He doesn’t deserve you.” “Isn’t having me enough for you?” She looked back at Tristan with a sickeningly triumphant, competitive smirk. I looked up at the space above their heads. A third red thread had materialized. “So, this is the birthday present you guys prepared for me.” Tristan’s voice was physically shaking. “Rose, this was just a stupid mistake.” “When did this start?” I cut him off completely. “Was it that time I came back from my business trip down South, and I was completely wasted?” “Or was it May 8th? The day I lost my baby.” I accurately pinpointed the dates based on the sudden shifts in their behavior. “Neither of you is drunk today, but here we are.” Tristan fell dead silent. Blair, however, furrowed her brows in deep annoyance. “Rose, are you seriously going to ruin our friendship over some stupid guy?” “Just like how you deliberately pushed me toward that abusive foster family when we were kids, just so you could keep Tristan all to yourself later?” Blair and I grew up in the same group home. We met when we were three. We were inseparable, two halves of the same soul. But when we were kids, a wealthy couple came to adopt. They only wanted one girl. The night before the meeting, I swallowed a bucket of crushed ice and sat in a freezing bathtub for hours. When the prospective parents saw me shivering and sickly, they thought I was a burden. I did it on purpose. I made sure they picked Blair. But nobody knew the husband of that family was a violent, abusive monster. When Blair finally ran away and found her way back to the group home, her tiny body was covered in black and purple bruises. Because of that, I had carried a crushing, unbearable guilt my entire life. It dictated everything I did. Even in high school. Blair had cornered my new best friend in the locker room, stripped off her clothes, and poured bleach all over her belongings to humiliate her. When I found them, Blair fell into my arms, sobbing hysterically. “I was just so jealous! Why does she get to hang out with you? I’m supposed to be your only best friend!” I protected her. I took the fall for the bullying. I was completely ostracized by the entire school. People wrote “psycho bitch” in sharpie on my locker. Nobody dared to come near me. And just like she wanted, Blair became the only friend I had left. And all this time, she believed I had manipulated that adoption so I could get sponsored by a billionaire, while I spent those years working three grueling shifts a day just to keep a roof over my head. “I let you have Tristan back then. Honestly, I didn’t care, because you’re my best friend.” “If I can sacrifice that much for you, why can’t you do the same for me?” Tristan joined the interrogation, stepping closer. “Rose, who are you going to choose?” I stared at the two of them. The two most important people in my entire world. The same two people who had systematically isolated me, destroyed my social life, and stripped away my independence until I had literally no one else to choose. A suffocating wave of grief hit my chest. I tilted my head back, trying to stop the tears, but they spilled over my cheeks anyway. Seeing me cry sent them both into an instant panic. “Rose, please don’t cry! It breaks my heart when you cry!” “I swear to God, from now on, I am entirely yours. I messed up.” They stood in front of me, swearing on their lives that it would never happen again. Right in front of me, they deleted each other’s contact information. Blair even handed in her resignation on the spot. They promised me the world. But as the days went on, I watched a new red thread appear above Tristan’s head every single day. The threads stretched across the street, leading directly into the house across from ours. Until May 8th rolled around again. On that day, the glowing red threads between Tristan and Blair officially outnumbered the ones pointing to me. Blair kicked our front door open, waving an ultrasound picture in the air, screaming at the top of her lungs. “I’m pregnant!” My foot froze mid-step in the hallway. Then, I heard Blair drop her voice into an annoyed whisper. “This is all your fault. If you hadn’t messed with the pills, Rose’s baby would have been born, and my kid and her kid could have been best friends just like us.” Tristan snapped back. “Rose was completely obsessed with that baby. I couldn’t just stand there and watch her heart be divided.” “Besides, you’re the one who crushed the abortion pill and dropped it into her water glass. I just handed the cup to her.” Blair suddenly remembered, letting out a bright, airy laugh. “Oh, right! Rose only needs me anyway. A kid just gets in the way.” “Exactly. She has us. That’s all she needs.” They spoke with such casual, horrifying entitlement. It hit me like a bullet to the chest. It wasn’t my weak body that had failed my baby. They murdered my child. For weeks after the miscarriage, I walked around like a ghost. I spent nights curled up on the bathroom floor, clutching the tiny, blood-stained clothes I had bought, completely broken. They had held me while I cried. They had acted even more devastated than I was. It was all a sick, twisted performance. I leaned heavily against the hallway wall, trying to keep my legs from collapsing. My fingernails dug into the drywall, leaving bloody crescent marks. My heart felt like a sponge soaked in acid. With one tight squeeze, all the bitter rot poured out. When Blair finally walked into the living room and shoved the ultrasound into my hands, she was vibrating with excitement. “Rose, I’m carrying Tristan’s baby! You’re going to be a godmother!” “But don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you in public.” “I’ll just hire some random guy to play the dad. No one will ever know the baby actually belongs to your husband.” Tristan didn’t say a word. He just stared down at the ultrasound picture, a look of absolute fascination and pride on his face. They were so completely drowned in their sick joy that neither of them noticed the dead, hollow look in my eyes. Blair moved fast. A few weeks later, she paraded a man into my living room. The poor guy looked blissfully happy. I just felt a deep, overwhelming pity for him. He was rubbing Blair’s swollen belly, genuinely believing he was the father. “Rose, you’re going to get me an amazing gift for the wedding, right?” I forced the corners of my mouth to twitch upward. “Of course.” I had prepared her gift the exact second I realized they were my baby’s murderers. On the day of the wedding, Tristan looked happier than the actual groom. His wedding gift was an absurdly expensive collection of imported baby gear from France. When it was my turn, Blair looked at me with glowing anticipation. I just stared at the dense, horrific web of red threads floating above their heads. There were three new threads today alone. Over three hundred more than when this all started. I looked at Tristan with dead eyes. “Do you have any idea how many times you two have slept together?” On the other side of the room, Blair had eagerly ripped the wrapping paper off my gift box. When she pulled the contents out, the entire ballroom gasped in collective, horrified silence.

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1 After my cool, untouchable stepbrother lost his memory, I coaxed him into being my devoted little dog for half a year. The moment I heard he had gotten his memories back, I packed cash overnight and ran. I traveled the world. Somewhere along the way, I also had a baby. Years later, I was on a beach with my son, playing the part of a devastatingly gorgeous hot mom, when my brother appeared out of nowhere with a storm-dark face. The second he saw the child, his usual icy composure shattered. “Summer Pierce,” Dorian Blackwell said hoarsely. “How dare you?” My stomach dropped. I thought he had figured out the child was his. Then I heard him grit out, “Where is the boy’s father?” “I kept you beside me since you were little. I was so afraid some useless pretty boy would trick you that I barely let you hold a boy’s hand. And that bastard dared to make you suffer this much?” Before I could speak, his hand moved toward the gun at his waist. “Forget it. I don’t want to hear it. This is my fault for not protecting you. That bastard can die.” Wait. So he had forgotten everything I did to him back then? The day Dorian recovered his memory had come without warning. I had no time to react. The night before, he had taken too long helping me clean up in the bath. My waist still ached, my legs were still weak, and I still had to run to the study and drag out a suitcase full of cash. I couldn’t use cards. Dorian would find me in minutes. A man that spotless, that cold, that proud, had been coaxed by me into acting like my devoted pet for half a year. With his temper, even if he couldn’t bear to kill me, he would peel off a layer of my skin. At first, he hadn’t wanted to go along with it. In the hospital bed, Dorian had looked like a blank sheet of paper. His eyes were damp and confused. “Miss,” he asked softly, “who am I? And who are you?” Miss? What a ridiculous reversal. After years of pretending to be the obedient little sister, I took a deep breath and, for the first time in my life, felt wicked. I smiled at him in my white dress. “You? You’re my puppy.” He turned his face away. That cold, distant face of his flushed with an unnatural red. “I’m a person,” he said. “Not a puppy.” Oh? So even without his memories, shame was still there. That wouldn’t do. I stepped closer, lifted his chin with my fingers, and coaxed him gently. “Dorian, when I call you my puppy, I’m not treating you like a toy.” “It means that from this moment on, you can depend on me completely. And you’ll have all of my love.” His clear eyes stared at me without blinking. None of his usual coldness or severity remained. That newly built pool really had done a number on him. One fall, and it had washed his memory clean. I smiled. “You don’t want all of my love?” He didn’t answer. But a soft, damp kiss landed on the fingertip beneath his chin. The feeling shot straight up my spine. I pushed my luck. My fingers pressed between his lips, coaxing the answer out of him. His voice, usually so clean and cold, came out blurred. “I do.” He tilted his head back instinctively, meeting me halfway, his beautiful brows faintly drawn together. I was satisfied. I climbed onto his hospital bed and curled myself into his arms. He hesitated for only a second before wrapping himself around me. The familiar scent of mint mingled with disinfectant. Someone’s heartbeat thundered so loudly that I didn’t even hear the knock. Mr. Reed, Dorian’s most trusted assistant, came in holding a medical report. “Sir, the doctor said…” The warm body around me tightened at once. I didn’t think much of it. A person with amnesia would naturally be frightened by strangers. I only patted Dorian’s back and glanced at Mr. Reed. “Wait outside for me, please.” The boss was the boss. But the little boss was still a boss. Mr. Reed’s gaze flicked quickly from Dorian to me. Then he understood. “Yes, Miss Pierce. I’ll wait outside.” Dorian’s accident had happened that morning, when he went alone to inspect the hotel’s newly built pool. The surveillance footage showed him slipping into the deep end. His head hit the steps, and he lost consciousness. He nearly drowned. Honestly, the Blackwell ancestors must have been burning incense in heaven. Losing his memory was already the lightest possible outcome. I used the accident to make Mr. Reed temporarily take over company affairs. Anything that required Dorian’s signature would come to me first. Mr. Reed looked troubled. I lifted one finger. “Should the boss have been inspecting that pool alone?” “No.” “And now that something has happened to him, shouldn’t someone be responsible?” “Yes, but…” “And since responsibility must be taken, and since the boss is physically unwell, shouldn’t you help share his workload?” Mr. Reed opened his mouth to argue. Then his eyes accidentally shifted into the hospital room, and his whole body shuddered. I wondered what he had seen. When I turned around, I only saw Dorian sitting obediently on the bed. Like a puppy quietly wagging his tail. My heart almost melted. “Yes, Miss Pierce,” Mr. Reed said. I brought Dorian back to the old house where we had grown up. After his father passed the company to him, he took my mother and traveled the world. Even when they came back, they stayed at the seaside villa, rarely at the old mansion. That was perfect. If no one was around, I could be far less restrained. Dorian was six years older than me. Elegant, tall, and impeccably disciplined. He had never neglected his body. When I lifted the hem of his shirt, veins stood out against the taut, pale muscle of his abdomen, making my mouth go dry. To be honest, I used to be afraid of him. He was always putting me in time-out. When we were children, his father and my mother were both busy. Sometimes we wouldn’t see them for a whole week. Dorian, still a child himself, had to be both parent and older brother to me. The first time I took an exam in first grade, I scored a zero in math. It needed a guardian’s signature. I brought it to Dorian. Without a word, he locked me in the study and told me to reflect. Reflect on what? On how the turtle I drew on the test paper wasn’t as good as the one in my notebook? I didn’t understand. The second time, I learned my lesson. My deskmate told me he had scored one hundred, and when he got home, both his parents kissed him. I thought, if one hundred got that kind of treatment, then I might as well add a one before my zero and a bunch more zeros after it. When I brought it home, Dorian fell silent. No matter how hard I howled in the study that night, he didn’t let me out. Until I finally ran out of tricks and softened my voice. “Dorian…” The study door opened a crack. Dorian said he was punishing me, but he was always waiting outside the door. Once I realized that, I began to act sweet. When thunder rolled, one call of “Dorian” let me crawl into his mint-scented bed. When I was picky and greedy, one call of “Dorian” made him cook whatever I wanted. When I didn’t want to go to school, one call of “Dorian” let me sleep at home all day. Then adolescence came, and my feelings for Dorian changed. Living under the same roof as that face made it very hard not to fall. One boy in class bet me that if he dyed his hair yellow, he would look better than my brother. I rolled my eyes. To prove him violently wrong, I skipped school with him and climbed over the wall to a salon. One yellow head and one pink head were born. And the first person we ran into was Dorian, home early from college. He had one hand on the steering wheel, his face dark, his eyes fixed on me. I rarely heard him call my full name. “Summer Pierce. Get in the car.” Sure enough, even angry, my brother was gorgeous. Before I died, I still elbowed the yellow-haired boy beside me. “See? You’re still not as handsome as my brother.” His voice trembled. “Y-yeah, but I think your brother is about to kill me… Oh no, he’s getting out.” After I went to college, Dorian entered the family company. His temperament grew steadier, his methods sharper. Only with me did he remain indulgent without limit. The year I graduated, my family began choosing suitable marriage prospects for me. I refused and used Dorian as an excuse. “Dorian hasn’t even married yet. Why am I in such a hurry?” My mother took a sip of tea. “Once we find the right girl from the right family, your brother’s marriage will be settled too.” “In marriages like ours, interests come first. If affection grows later, that’s a bonus. Your brother understands life better than you do.” A sour, vicious feeling rose inside me until I almost drowned in it. I suddenly realized all the tenderness he gave me would be given to another woman too. Maybe even more. He would marry her. Let her invade his private space. Sleep beside him. He would take off his crisp suit and cook for her to suit her tastes. He would hold her close. Let her explore him further. And I would not allow it. So now, while Dorian had no memories, I pushed him onto the desk in the study and asked him again and again, “Are you my puppy?” Dorian had never had a girlfriend. His romantic history was blank. So was the rest of him. He tried to retreat, overwhelmed. The question was too intimate. It sounded like I was asking, Can I bully you? And his silence was the invitation he handed me himself. My terrible temper had all been spoiled into me by Dorian. To outsiders, I was just a pampered rich girl. Only in his eyes was I terribly obedient. Unfortunately, after I grew up, I saw the way Dorian handled business. No matter how much he indulged me, a rebellion like this, devouring him whole while standing beneath him in name, was something I never would have dared to do. Thank God he remembered nothing. He fell into my trap only because of instinctive familiarity and trust. Dorian was smart. He learned many things quickly. Including intimacy. Even after I ran, I dreamed of it several times. Thankfully, I was open-minded. If I had slept with the person I liked, that was enough. I had food, clothes, and money. Going back meant either a business marriage or death. Only an idiot would walk into death. I wanted freedom. By the time I reached the third country, I found out I was pregnant. I was afraid of pain and afraid of dying. Giving birth cost me half a suitcase of cash. Luckily, little Ari had been sensible since the womb. Even in a foreign country, he didn’t make me suffer much. When he was just over two, I resumed my trip around the world. The beaches of Croatia were perfect for photos. I held Ari’s hand and played the world’s hottest mom. A handsome model who was clearly also from back home happened to be working nearby. Shamelessly, I borrowed his photographer. Unexpectedly, the handsome man was even more generous. He lent me himself too. With Ari in one arm and my other hand resting on the model’s abs, I smiled so hard my face hurt. Only Ari kept pouting. So young, yet so old at heart. Exactly like his father. Before the model left, he added me and said he would send me the photos. I held Ari’s hand and walked along the sand a little longer. Then I noticed fewer and fewer people around us. Someone was gesturing, ushering them away. I realized something was wrong. I scooped Ari up and was about to run. Then Dorian appeared, his face dark as a storm. The moment he saw the child, his icy expression cracked completely. His beautiful eyes flushed red. “Summer Pierce,” he said. “How dare you?” The more I looked at father and son, the more alike they seemed. Guilty, I instinctively hid Ari behind me. Dorian clenched his jaw. “Where is the boy’s father?” “I kept you beside me since you were little. I was so afraid some useless pretty boy would trick you that I barely let you hold a boy’s hand. And that bastard dared to make you suffer this much?” Before I could speak, his hand moved toward the gun at his waist. “Forget it. I don’t want to hear it. This is my fault for not protecting you. That bastard can die.” Wait. He really had forgotten everything I had done to him? I followed Dorian back home. Mr. Reed told me Dorian had recovered all his memories, except for that half year. It was gone clean. Over the years, he had tried every treatment. Machines, therapy, even electric stimulation. Nothing worked. His treatment logs filled several thick books. I frowned when I heard that. “If he can’t remember, then let it go. Why force himself like that?” Mr. Reed shook his head. “Probably because the emotional control he was so proud of suddenly collapsed, and he didn’t even know why.” Before he could finish, my tablet was taken from my hands. Dorian’s voice was cold. “Mr. Reed. Are you very free?” The other end went silent. Then Dorian’s suspicious gaze landed on me. He was like a man surrounded by alarms. “Summer Pierce. Didn’t I tell you not to think about running?” I sighed helplessly. “My dear brother, does chatting count as running?” To prevent me from seeing the imaginary man he had invented in his head, Dorian imprisoned me in the old house where I had once imprisoned him. What goes around really does come around. The ankle-chain hooks I had specially installed for him back then were now all used on me. The old house was at least an hour from the company. Dorian simply moved his work back to the mansion. After years outside, suddenly returning to a life where meals appeared, clothes appeared, and someone helped take care of the child felt amazing. I ate and slept in the old house every day. Dorian still didn’t trust me. He thought this was my delaying tactic. He brought me to the study and, in front of me, opened a hidden room. It was airtight. I had never seen it before. Dorian frightened me on purpose. He said he had spent three years building it. The walls were made of special sound-absorbing material. Even if I screamed my throat raw, no one would find me. If I dared run, he would lock me inside forever. “Summer, don’t even dream of going back to that man.” He said it while anger reddened the corners of his eyes. I couldn’t help teasing him. “Then can I only look for you?” Dorian answered without thinking, “Of course.” I laughed so hard I couldn’t stand and fell onto the soft carpet. This carpet had been laid overnight after Dorian discovered I was always walking barefoot around the old house. Through his dress pants, I touched his calf. Wherever my fingers brushed, he trembled. “Summer,” he said, voice tight. “Let go. I’m your brother.” I smiled wickedly and lifted my eyes to him. “You drove my husband away. Shouldn’t you compensate me with yourself?” The air went silent. The man I had been teasing a moment ago was suddenly wrapped in danger. His eyes narrowed. Half warning, half threat, he said, “Summer Pierce, if you dare say that again, I’ll throw you into international waters for the sharks.” “I’m your brother.” The last sentence came low and restrained, as if he was saying it to me and to himself. I was still a little afraid of him. So I scrambled up from the floor, patted myself off, and muttered meekly, “Fine. I won’t say it. Who’s scared?” Dorian stayed beside Ari and me almost twenty-four hours a day. Even during meetings, the two of us had to be within fifteen feet of his line of sight. Thankfully, Ari liked him very much. When we both appeared, he only wanted Dorian to hold him, not me. Ungrateful little brat. Fine. Letting your mother rest counts as filial piety. During a morning video meeting, Dorian wore a perfect suit from the waist up, while below the desk, Ari crawled everywhere and nearly tugged his trousers off. I laughed quietly nearby. One moment of inattention, and Ari hugged Dorian’s knee and climbed straight up. A little watery-eyed head appeared on the video call. I rushed over to pick him up, only to discover that everyone else had already left the meeting except Mr. Reed. Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, Mr. Reed asked in delight, “Sir, whose baby is that? He looks quite a bit like you.” The words struck like thunder. I froze. Dorian lifted his head and looked at me suspiciously. Damn it.

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1 After our reconciliation, I became the perfect, docile partner. No jealousy, no tracking his location, no probing his private life. When I found a strange man’s tie draped across our bed, I didn’t blink. I simply folded it neatly on his nightstand. McDonald, reviewing documents against the headboard, went rigid. Color drained from his face. In the suffocating silence, he pinched his nose, exhausted. “Last night’s gala,” he explained. “I borrowed Silas’s tie for my suit. Forgot to return it before coming home.” He looked away. “No outsiders were in our bedroom.” A lie. I’d chosen every scent in this house. Last night, before he entered, a heavy wave of unfamiliar cologne had hit me. I retched, throwing open windows until I could breathe again. For years, I’d endured this. Whenever he spent hours locked with Silas, that scent clung to him, leaving me vomiting through the night. Disgust, jealousy, humiliation—it all festered. But confronting him only earned cold rebukes about being unreasonable. We’d broken up over Silas countless times, yet he remained by McDonald’s side. It didn’t matter anymore. I lowered my eyes. I was leaving soon anyway. My silence only made the air in the room heavier. McDonald let out a heavy sigh, offering a rare, unsolicited explanation. “How many times do I have to say this before you get it through your head? Silas is my uncle’s stepson. Our families were close back in the day, and we practically grew up together. That’s the only reason I look out for him at work.” “Other than that, there is absolutely nothing going on between us.” I had heard this excuse a thousand times. In the past, I would have lost my mind, screaming and dripping with sarcasm about his perfectly crafted corporate excuses. This time, I just gave a slight nod. “Okay. I believe you.” I was agreeing with him, yet he looked as if I had just punched him in the gut. His expression darkened. “You really don’t care?” Before I could nod again, his phone rang. It was a custom ringtone Silas had recorded on McDonald’s phone himself. A soft, acoustic hum of a sugary pop song, sung in Silas’s clear, bright voice. No matter how you listened to it, it dripped with an unmistakable, teasing seduction. I had gotten into physical screaming matches with McDonald over that ringtone at least five times. Now, looking at his tense, furrowed brow, I spoke with total calm. “Answer it. Don’t keep him waiting.” McDonald froze. He hesitated for a long moment before swiping to answer. I didn’t care what they were talking about. I turned to walk out of the room, but his hand shot out and caught my wrist. Whatever the person on the other end said, McDonald murmured a few gentle agreements, his brow softening. He hung up and looked at me. “Let’s go to The Zenith in a few days. You know, that starlight restaurant you’ve been wanting to try.” When I just stared at him blankly, a rare smile broke across his face. “I promised you, didn’t I? I told you I’d never neglect you again.” “Don’t worry. For our sixth anniversary this time, I’m going to make it perfect for you.” I stood rooted to the spot. It wasn’t until he changed his clothes and left the house that the strength vanished from my legs. I collapsed onto the floor and started laughing. It was absolutely hilarious. The very first anniversary we were actually going to celebrate properly was already our sixth. Did he honestly believe that a fancy dinner could compensate for five years of neglect? A shattered mirror can never be put back together. 2 I really should have noticed the rot much earlier. The cracks in this miserable, twisted relationship showed their ugly faces during our very first year together. We were fresh out of college back then. His startup was just beginning to find its footing. I wanted to share his burden, so I spent nights studying business management and operations, hoping to surprise him. I hid my identity and secretly submitted my resume to his HR department. But on the day of my interview, the HR manager apologized to me. They said a new executive assistant had just been appointed directly by the CEO, so the position was closed. Before leaving the building, I stood at a distance and looked through the glass walls of McDonald’s office. A handsome, bright-eyed young man was leaning closely against McDonald’s side, his head tilted down, laughing at something McDonald had said. The air inside that office was thick with a rising, undeniable intimacy. From that day on, the unfamiliar scent of men’s cologne on McDonald’s clothes never faded. My hatred probably took root right in that exact moment. We were all adults. I refused to believe McDonald was completely blind to Silas’s deliberate flirting and blatant seduction. But you can never wake a man who is only pretending to be asleep. For the next three solid years, I collected everything. Photos of their secret dinners, auction house receipts for jewelry, hotel check-in records. When I threw all the evidence onto the table in front of McDonald, my reward was a stinging, merciless slap across the face. “You’re stalking me?” I was completely broken. “What exactly is going on between you and Silas! Does a boss and an assistant really need to go to these extremes?” McDonald was furious. “You’re insane. How many times do I have to tell you? It’s strictly business. How far are you going to take this psychotic behavior?” “If you seriously think there’s something going on between us, then I have nothing left to say to you.” “Suit yourself.” No comfort. No guilt. No explanations. He slammed the door and left. That same night, I saw a post on social media from Noah, the HR manager I had added years ago. [Oh my god. The boss just booked a thousand drones and set off fireworks for Silas’s birthday. Talk about dedication!] I stared numbly out the window. Sure enough, the distant night sky was exploding in a breathtaking shower of silver and gold sparks. And right there, bathed in that brilliant, distant light, my heart finally and completely died. I suddenly remembered complaining to my friends back when McDonald and I first started dating. I told them he was just too cold, too pragmatic, completely incapable of romance. My friends had comforted me, saying it was just his nature and that I needed to be more forgiving. Looking back on it now, it wasn’t that he didn’t understand romance. He just hadn’t met the person he wanted to put the effort in for. 3 We plunged into a bitter cold war. I refused to accept defeat. I staked out McDonald’s corporate building every single day, desperate to corner Silas and talk to him face-to-face. But McDonald protected him flawlessly. I waited in the cold for five days and didn’t even catch a glimpse of Silas’s shadow. Just as I was contemplating a different approach, reality hit me from a blind spot. One of McDonald’s aggressive business rivals had men tailing me. While I was walking home alone, they dragged me into a pitch-black alleyway. I was terrified to the point of sobbing. I fought back with every ounce of strength in my body, managing to rip my arm free just long enough to dial McDonald’s number. The steady, rhythmic dial tone felt like the final countdown to my death. They grabbed me again. This time, they didn’t leave any openings. They raised a heavy metal baseball bat and brought it crashing down. If a clerk from a nearby convenience store hadn’t called the cops, I genuinely would have died on that dirty concrete floor. When I finally woke up in a hospital bed, wrapped in stiff gauze, a police officer was standing beside me, frowning deeply at my cracked phone. He looked at me, confused. “Why is your emergency contact completely unreachable?” “You have him saved as ‘My Love.’ You two must be close, right?” He dialed it a few more times, shaking his head when the call was repeatedly killed. Finally, he used his own phone to dial the number. McDonald answered on the first ring. Before the officer could even speak, McDonald’s voice dripped with icy irritation over the speaker. “What is it now? What kind of stunt are you pulling this time? I told you I’m slammed at work. Do you have to be this relentlessly clingy?” The officer’s face shifted into an uncomfortable grimace as he explained the bloody reality of the situation. McDonald just let out a cold scoff. “How much did he pay you to play this little role? Tell him to cut the crap. I don’t believe a single word coming out of his mouth.” I bit my pale lip, leaning back against the sterile hospital pillows, drowning in an ocean of absolute humiliation. I eventually took my phone back, thanked the officer, and paid back the medical fees the precinct had fronted for me. I couldn’t bear to stay in that room another second. Ignoring the doctor’s loud protests, I signed myself out and left. When I dragged my battered, bruised body back into our apartment, McDonald was already sitting on the couch. It was the very first time we saw each other without screaming, without demanding answers, without even exchanging a single word. McDonald just stared at the fresh blood slowly seeping through the white bandages wrapped around my head and arm. His lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. With his wealth and connections, finding out the truth was effortless. Not to mention, that police officer had been so disgusted by McDonald’s reaction that he had requested a copy of the alleyway security footage and emailed it directly to McDonald’s office. He undoubtedly knew exactly what had happened to me. But I had nothing left. My energy, my physical strength, my soul were utterly depleted. I didn’t have a single drop of fight left to give him. I slept incredibly deeply that night. Brushing shoulders with death hadn’t just taken away my obsession. It had taken away my resentment. For the first time in years, I slept in peace. The next morning, his private doctor was waiting in the living room. I knew this was McDonald’s silent white flag. I didn’t reject the care. First, I was seriously injured. Second, I needed a buffer period to get my affairs in order. And so, during the year following our reconciliation, I began to slowly dismantle my attachment to him. I systematically lowered my expectations to zero. Humans aren’t machines. You can’t just flip a switch and turn off love. But time proved to be a ruthless, effective cure. I went from faking my forgiveness to genuinely not caring. I went from pretending to be unbothered to actually feeling nothing at all. Until three days ago. I woke up, looked at his empty side of the bed, and realized I hadn’t even noticed he didn’t come home the night before. I smiled. A deep, satisfied smile. I knew it then. It was time to go. I didn’t breathe a word of my plans to McDonald. Lately, he seemed oddly on edge about my complete lack of interest in his life. But I wasn’t delusional enough to think he actually cared about my feelings. He probably just realized I was becoming useless to him. In the past, I would cook elaborate hot meals for him. Now, I couldn’t even be bothered to order his delivery. On the exact night I finalized my flight out of the country, McDonald came home unusually early. Out of nowhere, he pulled me into a tight embrace, burying his face in my shoulder. His voice came out muffled. “You didn’t take that bracelet. Why didn’t you defend yourself?” I blinked, taking a moment to process his words. He was talking about an incident from two days ago. He had complained of severe stomach pains, so I grabbed some soup from a deli on my way to the visa office and dropped it off at his firm. Before I could even reach the elevator to leave, security surrounded me. Silas was in tears, claiming his family’s heirloom jade bracelet was missing, and I was the only outsider who had stepped foot in the executive suite. Surrounded by the sneers of the employees, McDonald’s furious demands for an explanation, and Silas’s perfectly timed sobs, I just stood there. It felt like watching a bizarre, poorly written comedy. I couldn’t believe my very first face-to-face meeting with Silas was under such pathetic circumstances. Nobody wanted to hear my side of the story. Eventually, the drama only ended when I took off the million-dollar jade bracelet and ring set McDonald had won for me at an auction years ago, handing them over as compensation. I had cherished that set. It was the only genuine, thoughtful gift McDonald had ever given me. My heart pinched for exactly one second before I slid the cold stone off my wrist and dropped it into Silas’s waiting hands. Maybe McDonald and I were just destined to be entirely incompatible. Whatever. It was fine. This was the perfect way to cement us as complete strangers. Listening to McDonald mumble into my shoulder now, I learned that the cleaning crew had found Silas’s “stolen” bracelet shoved deep under the cushions of the office sofa. Exactly as if someone had deliberately hidden it there. His voice carried a slight tremor he didn’t even seem to notice. But I just patted his back, comforting him in a hollow voice. “I’m sure Silas just misplaced it. Don’t overthink it.” 4 That night, he held me in bed and talked endlessly about our past. About the good old days. I offered vague, noncommittal hums. Beneath the blanket, my phone screen lit up with an automated alert. Less than ten hours until my flight departed. I would be completely free. Before leaving for work the next morning, McDonald turned around at the door and pulled me into another tight hug. “Karl, don’t forget our anniversary dinner tonight.” He looked at me with a strange hesitation in his eyes. In previous years, I would have been dropping hints for months. Today, I was so quiet it seemed like I had forgotten the date entirely. I nodded, letting a soft smile touch my lips. The second the door clicked shut behind him, I walked into the spare room, grabbed my packed suitcase, and ordered a cab to the airport. McDonald, these six years were a catastrophic mistake. Since you threw away the first five years, we really don’t need a sixth, a seventh, or any year after that. I hope we never cross paths again, not in this lifetime, not in the next. [Hidden Ending] McDonald only noticed something was wrong right before the workday ended. He had intentionally cleared his entire afternoon schedule just to get to The Zenith early and oversee the private room decorations. Before leaving his office, he habitually checked his phone to see if Karl was on his way. The chat log was dead silent. The location pin and reservation details he had sent hours ago remained unread. A sudden, inexplicable wave of anxiety clawed at McDonald’s chest. He had never changed Karl’s contact name. It was still the same sickeningly sweet pet name from their college days. But as McDonald scrolled up through their chat history, his thumb suddenly froze over the screen. The last time Karl had initiated a conversation was nine days ago. Before that, eleven days. He had to scroll up violently, spinning the screen for a long time, before he hit the era of Karl’s overwhelming desire to share his life. A stray cat on the sidewalk. A new billboard outside his office. A dumb joke he found online. Random, sappy paragraphs sent at 2 AM saying how much he missed him. Every tiny, insignificant detail of his day, offered up like treasure. McDonald had barely replied to any of them. Karl would send seven or eight messages in a row, and McDonald would reply with a single word: “Busy.” Karl would ask what time he was coming home for dinner, and McDonald would reply the next morning: “Worked late.” Going back even further, there were the times Karl threw tantrums over the radio silence. Long strings of crying emojis, missed calls, soft, trembling voice notes asking if McDonald had stopped loving him. McDonald used to find it so incredibly suffocating. He thought Karl was too needy, too sensitive, too paranoid. But now, staring at a chat history that had been surgically clean for nearly half a year, McDonald suddenly realized something terrifying. He actually missed the relentless bombardment of messages he used to despise. His phone buzzed in his hand. He practically snapped his neck looking down. It was a breaking news alert. Not Karl. McDonald scowled, slamming the phone face-down on his oak desk. He stood up and paced to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Chicago skyline was bathed in a brilliant gold sunset. He lit a cigarette, but with every drag, the hollow panic in his chest only expanded. He forced himself to rationalize. Karl just forgot his phone. Karl was stuck in traffic. Or maybe… Karl was setting up a surprise. After all, every past anniversary, Karl had spent weeks preparing. Hand-written cards, elaborately baked cakes, hand-strung fairy lights. McDonald had just never shown up for a single one of them. A knock on the door pulled him from his thoughts. Silas pushed the glass door open, holding a stack of folders. He smiled, his tone soft and inviting. “McDonald, the marketing team is going out for drinks tonight. Everyone’s heading over. You should come.” McDonald didn’t even turn his head. “No.” Silas took a few steps closer. “But I already told them you might drop by, and since everyone is…” “I said I’m not going.” McDonald finally turned around. His voice wasn’t loud, but the weight behind it was crushing. Silas finally registered the look on his boss’s face. It was a heavy, volatile mix of dread and agitation he had never seen before. Silas tightened his grip on the folders. His eyes grew slightly red, but he forced a sympathetic smile. “Is it because of your anniversary?” McDonald remained silent. “But you always came out with us on your anniversary,” Silas murmured, his voice dropping into a register of subtle grievance. “Last year, the year before, the year before that. You always spent it with us. I thought this year would be the same…” McDonald’s pupils contracted sharply. He had spent every single anniversary with Silas and the team. Last year’s departmental dinner. The year before that was Silas’s birthday party. The year before that was a project milestone celebration. Every single time, Karl had confirmed the date months in advance. McDonald had promised he would be there, but when the day arrived, there was always something “more important” to do. He suddenly remembered one specific year. Karl had waited up the entire night, cooking a massive feast. Around midnight, Karl sent a text: “The food got cold. I microwaved it three times, but you still aren’t here. I’m going to eat first.” Attached was a selfie. Karl was smiling brightly at the camera, but his eyes were swollen and bloodshot. McDonald had been sitting in a VIP club booth, surrounded by coworkers doing shots. Silas had been pressed against his side, singing a sweet love song into a microphone. McDonald had glanced at the photo, typed “Sorry, tied up here,” and locked his screen. After that night, Karl never cooked a massive dinner for him again. “McDonald?” Silas’s voice yanked him back to the present. McDonald lowered his eyes, his voice turning deadly flat. “Not tonight. Tell the team the drinks are on me, but I won’t be there.” Silas parted his lips, but swallowed whatever he was about to say. He turned and walked out. But the split second before the heavy door clicked shut, that usually sweet, innocent face twisted into an ugly, unmasked scowl of pure jealousy. McDonald grabbed his phone again. Still nothing. He crushed his cigarette into the ashtray, grabbed his keys, and walked out of the building. 5 The Starlight Room at The Zenith was nestled on the top floor of a high-rise, boasting a panoramic view of the sparkling city grid below. It was the place Karl had mentioned a hundred times over the years. McDonald had secured the best table by the glass. He had instructed the staff to arrange a massive bouquet of white roses—Karl’s favorite—and placed a velvet box containing a pair of diamond cufflinks on the pristine tablecloth. He sat down and sent his second text of the day. “I’m here. Drive safe.” No reply. McDonald began checking his phone compulsively. Unlock. Swipe. Lock. Unlock again. He opened a tracking app to check Karl’s location, only to find the signal completely dead. Karl’s phone was turned off. A hard knot formed in his jaw. He dialed the number. Straight to voicemail. He dialed again. Voicemail. The coiled anxiety in McDonald’s gut finally snapped into outright panic. He was just about to call his building’s concierge to check the apartment when a loud burst of laughter echoed from the restaurant entrance. Silas walked in, trailing seven or eight employees from the firm. He stopped dead, feigning perfect, wide-eyed surprise. “McDonald? What are you doing here?” McDonald narrowed his eyes, saying nothing. “Wow, what are the odds we booked the exact same place?” Silas laughed, turning to wave the hesitant employees forward. “Come on guys, since we’re all here, let’s just grab a table near the boss.” The employees exchanged nervous glances, but Silas was already boldly pulling out a chair at the table right next to McDonald’s. They awkwardly shuffled into their seats. McDonald’s voice was ice. “I have plans tonight.” “Oh, no worries at all. We’ll just be right here. We won’t bother you,” Silas smiled innocently. “Who are you waiting for? Karl? When is he getting here?” McDonald ignored him entirely, staring down at his screen as he dialed for the fifth time. Still voicemail. The waiters began bringing out appetizers for the group. Silas enthusiastically poured wine, quickly warming up the atmosphere. A few employees awkwardly walked over to toast McDonald. After rejecting them twice with a hard glare, Silas himself walked over, holding a crystal glass, his tone soft and pleading. “Come on, McDonald. It’s rare we all get to unwind. Just have one drink with us. It won’t stop you from waiting.” McDonald stared at him in heavy silence, then snatched the glass from his hand and downed it. One glass. Two glasses. Three glasses. Silas was an expert at pouring drinks. He always found the most irrefutable excuses to toast. A successful quarter, a junior staffer’s workiversary, even the clear weather outside. McDonald could hold his liquor, but the rapid-fire shots, combined with the suffocating dread boiling in his chest, began to blur his vision. The room started to spin slightly. McDonald stood up abruptly, needing to splash cold water on his face in the restroom, and needing an excuse to call Karl again away from the noise. As he squeezed past the table, his gaze accidentally swept over Noah, the HR manager. Noah was staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the social media posting page. McDonald had already looked away when his brain suddenly registered what he had just seen. He violently snapped his head back. The photo on Noah’s screen. It was of him and Silas. The angle of the shot was dangerously intimate. Silas was leaning heavily against McDonald’s shoulder, and McDonald’s arm appeared to be wrapped firmly around Silas’s waist. They looked exactly like a deeply in love couple. McDonald remembered that exact moment clearly. It was from the company holiday party a year ago. Everyone was grouping up for a massive team photo. Out of nowhere, Silas had shoved his way to McDonald’s side. Someone yelled to look at the camera, and Silas practically threw his weight against him. McDonald had been too drunk to push him away in time. But that wasn’t what made the blood freeze in McDonald’s veins. The horror was right below the photo. Under the privacy settings for the post, a specific tag was highlighted in bright green. Visible only to: Karl. McDonald’s mind went completely blank. The next second, he lunged forward and snatched the phone directly out of Noah’s hands. Noah flinched so hard his chair scraped against the floor. The color drained from the HR manager’s face in an instant. “M-Mr. McDonald…” McDonald didn’t even look at him. His thumb swiped rapidly up the screen, tearing through Noah’s post history. Photo after photo. It was a gallery of him and Silas at various events. A perfectly angled shot in a glass boardroom. A cropped photo from a late-night dinner that made them look alone. Creepily taken candid photos where their proximity looked vulgar and illicit. And under every single photo, the exact same tag glared back at him. Visible only to: Karl. The oldest post was from three years ago. Three. Years. The phone began to shake violently in McDonald’s grip. He slowly looked up, his eyes locking onto Noah. His voice sounded like metal grinding against bone. “Who told you to post these?” Noah’s lips trembled uncontrollably. He was so terrified he couldn’t form a coherent word. “I… I…” Silas’s face had turned ash white. He hurried over, reaching out to grab the phone back. “Noah, did you forget to change your group settings? This is such a stupid mistake. McDonald, please don’t be mad, I’ll make him delete it right now. Noah, pack your desk tomorrow. You’re fired.” “No, no, no! Mr. McDonald, please don’t fire me! I just got married, I have a mortgage…” Noah broke down completely, tears streaming down his face. McDonald didn’t speak. He just slowly turned his dead, terrifying gaze onto Silas. Silas shrank back under that stare, offering a stiff, panicked smile. “McDonald, it’s totally unacceptable for staff to make mistakes like this. I’ll thoroughly discipline the department tomorrow…” “Mistakes?” McDonald’s voice was a whisper, but it sliced through the restaurant, silencing the entire room. “Three years. Dozens of staged photos. Every single one specifically targeted to be seen only by Karl. You call that a mistake?” The dam broke. Knowing his career was already dead, Noah sobbed hysterically, spilling everything. “Mr. McDonald, I didn’t want to do it! Silas forced me! He told me if I posted these for him, he’d give me a bonus and secure my promotion! I swear I didn’t want to…” “Noah shut your mouth!” Silas’s voice shrieked, instantly losing its polished veneer. But Noah was already drowning and intent on dragging his killer down with him. He wiped his face aggressively. “And that’s not all! The jade bracelet from the other day! Silas handed it to me and ordered me to shove it under your sofa cushions! He said it was the perfect way to make you hate Karl! I tried to say no, but he threatened to destroy my career…” The air in the room completely solidified. McDonald stood frozen. Everything he had dismissed. Everything he had rolled his eyes at. Everything he had labeled as Karl’s psychotic paranoia suddenly came crashing down on him like an avalanche of broken glass. Karl screaming in the living room, begging for the truth. Karl slamming printed photos and hotel receipts onto the table. Karl sobbing until he threw up, asking, “What exactly do you want from me?” And Karl’s eyes. Over the years, McDonald had watched them shift from burning with love, to desperate expectation, to crushing disappointment, and finally… to the dead, hollow abyss of absolute despair. And every single time, McDonald had chosen to protect Silas. “McDonald, I swear I don’t know what he’s talking about! He’s just lying to get back at me for firing him…” Silas’s voice trembled. His eyes filled with large, glistening tears, looking exactly like a fragile flower battered by a storm. McDonald slowly turned his head to look at him. Looking at that face, he suddenly remembered the little boy trailing behind him at his uncle’s house all those years ago. A violent wave of pure nausea hit him. The disgust clawing up his throat was a thousand times more potent than the alcohol burning in his stomach. He had allowed himself to be manipulated by this pathetic creature’s tears for years. He had ripped Karl’s heart to shreds to protect this monster’s “feelings.” He had let a cheap actor perform a three-year-long tragedy right inside his own home. McDonald shoved past him without a single word, striding out of the restaurant as if the devil himself were at his heels. “McDonald!” Silas cried out behind him, his voice cracking. McDonald didn’t look back. He threw himself into his car and tore down the highway, his foot heavy on the gas.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “466674”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 Everyone knew Ronan Blake and I had loved each other down to the bone. To save me, he once left the only vial of antivenom in my hands and waited for death himself. To protect him, I once used my body to block a kidnapper’s knife and took a fatal blow meant for him. Everyone believed we would spend our lives together. But the day after he proposed, I broke up with him without warning and married Derek Langford, the man who had been pursuing me for years. Even after I betrayed him, Ronan never hated me. He still loved me like before. Later, when my daughter was in a car accident, he broke one of his own legs to save her. Derek had once despised Ronan to the bone, yet even he was eventually moved by Ronan’s love for me and became close friends with him. After Ronan was accidentally diagnosed with a terminal illness, Derek insisted on donating a kidney to him. But when I heard the news, I turned cold at once. “Derek Langford, if you insist on giving one of your kidneys to Ronan Blake, then we’re getting divorced immediately.” Derek told me not to worry about him. My daughter cried and begged me to save Uncle Ronan. But I looked straight into Ronan’s affectionate eyes and laughed coldly. “What I want is for Ronan Blake to die with no grave to lie in.” “If you dare give him even half a kidney, I’ll leave you completely, even if it means giving up custody of Ella.” “Save him or choose me. Decide for yourself.” The hospital room went deathly silent. Derek stared at Ronan, then at me. “Audrey, this isn’t the time to make a scene.” “I know you’re afraid I’ll misunderstand your relationship with him. I admit I used to think the worst.” “But he broke a leg saving our daughter. If we stand by and let him die, that’s too cold-blooded.” The elderly woman in the same ward nodded and looked at me reproachfully. “Exactly.” “Ms. Vale, we’ve all seen how good Mr. Blake has been to you.” “Even if you married someone else and no longer love him, you don’t need to be this cruel and cut off his last chance.” After I said those harsh words in the ward, I drove straight home. The moment I walked in, I saw my parents and Derek’s parents sitting in the living room, their expressions grave. When my mother saw me, she was about to speak, but Derek’s mother stopped her. She sighed and looked at me helplessly. “Audrey, we all know about Ronan.” “Are you refusing to let Derek help him because you’re worried we’ll think something happened between you and Ronan?” “If that’s the reason, don’t overthink it.” “We watched Ronan grow up too. Even though you two were together before, we won’t misunderstand.” “Derek doesn’t mind, so why are you so against it?” Looking at her open-minded expression, I said nothing and turned to leave. But my mother rushed over and grabbed my arm, her face darker than a storm cloud. “Audrey, how did you become so heartless?” “Back then, you dumped Ronan without warning and married Derek less than a month later. Any other man would’ve hated you to death.” “But Ronan not only didn’t hate you, he’s treated you and Derek well all these years. Where else can you find such a good man?” “Do you know both you and Derek are compatible kidney donors for Ronan? But he refused to use yours no matter what.” “Even if you don’t love him anymore, for the sake of everything he’s done for you, you shouldn’t cut off his way to live.” I pushed my mother’s hand away and smiled at her anxious face. “So what? Did I force him to be good to me?” “Because of him, Derek and I have fought countless times over the years. Ronan knows that better than anyone.” “A curse like him can die for all I care. Once he’s dead, my life will finally be quiet.” “You want me to save him? Dream on.” The moment I finished, my mother slapped me hard. Her eyes were red as she pointed at me, trembling with fury. “You animal. You heartless animal.” “How did I give birth to such an ungrateful daughter? You don’t appreciate someone’s kindness, and now you want to kill the person who helped you.” I held my cheek, forcing down the sting in my nose. Before I could argue, Derek’s mother pulled me aside to calm things down. She sighed, comforting my mother while advising me. “Audrey, I’ve watched you grow up. I know you’re a good girl.” “Tell me honestly. Are you hiding something? Or did Ronan hurt you by being with another woman, and that’s why you’re being so cruel?” I glanced at her and sneered. “I can’t speak for anything else. But when Ronan and I were together, he never touched another woman.” Derek’s mother looked confused. “Then why do you hate him so much? He lost a leg saving Ella, and you still won’t forgive him?” I forced down the emotions surging in my chest. “Forget losing a leg. Even if he had died for Ella, that would still have been what he owed.” “As for the kidney donation, my position is clear.” “If Derek donates to him, I will divorce him.” “If any of you helps Ronan find a compatible kidney, I’ll retaliate to the end.” “If you don’t mind making an enemy of me, go ahead and try.” Then I left. After all, the Vale family was now under my control. No matter how much my parents disagreed, they would not truly dare fall out with me completely. As for the Langfords, several of their major deals were in my hands. They wouldn’t dare act rashly either. When I got into the car, my young assistant finally could not hold back. “Ms. Vale, I really am curious. Why are you so determined?” “From what I saw before, you and Mr. Blake really seemed to have deep feelings. And Mr. Langford doesn’t even mind, so why are you so…” I looked at her and said word by word, “Because I once truly loved Ronan Blake. That is exactly why I have to watch him die.” My assistant was stunned. “Did Mr. Blake do something to betray you?” I froze suddenly, as if something had struck me. My chest ached with a hollow pain. After a long while, I lowered my head and laughed at myself. “No. Ronan loved me deeply. He never betrayed me.” “When I accepted his proposal, I truly wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.” But now, everything had changed. Now, I only wanted Ronan Blake to die. It was late at night when I returned home alone. But the moment I stepped into the bedroom, my smile froze. Derek sat on the bed, looking at me quietly. Everything in the room had changed. On the desk were books Ronan liked to read. The flowers in the vase had been replaced with wild roses, Ronan’s favorite. And in front of Derek was an empty medicine bottle. I stayed silent, but Derek did not let me ignore it. “Audrey, have you really forgotten all these things?” “Even if you forgot everything else, you wouldn’t forget this, would you?” He tapped the medicine bottle and sighed, his expression grave. “I really hated Ronan before, especially when we first got married.” “It’s ridiculous now, but back then, I misunderstood your relationship and even challenged him to a fight.” “No matter how I hit him, he didn’t fight back. In the end, he showed me this.” “Only then did I learn that when the two of you went exploring in the rainforest, you were both bitten by venomous snakes, but there was only one vial of antivenom.” “He gave it to you and nearly died from the venom himself.” “After that, I understood that he truly loved you. No matter what I did, I couldn’t compare to him.” “But I also knew that without him, you wouldn’t be here now. So to me, he really is a benefactor.” He stood and wrapped his arms around my waist, sighing beside my ear. “Audrey, I don’t know why you broke up with him so abruptly back then. But believe me, I’m willing to save him.” “I swear I won’t do anything during surgery to harm him.” “You don’t have to worry that he’ll ruin our marriage. You don’t have to worry I’ll hurt him either.” “Let’s help him, okay?” Derek sounded so sincere that I almost felt moved. But I only stayed silent, staring at that little medicine bottle until tears nearly fell. I had never forgotten. Back then, when I thought I was going to die and saw Ronan leave the chance to live to me, I had loved him and hurt for him all at once. So I did not hide it. “Derek, I admit that even now, I haven’t completely forgotten Ronan.” “I remember how good he was to me. I remember every moment we shared.” “You could say I still love him.” But the next second, I shoved Derek away and said coldly, “And that is exactly why I must send him to his death.” “Only when he dies can my life return to normal. Only then can our marriage continue.” Derek looked at me with a complicated expression. After a long while, he said slowly, “Audrey Vale, to cover your guilty conscience, you want someone who loves you to die.” “I’ve lived with you for five or six years. How did I never realize your heart was this vicious?” “If I block your path one day, will you treat me like this too?” I could not be bothered with him and was about to leave. But my four-year-old daughter, Ella, suddenly pushed open the door. Her eyes were red as she rushed into my arms. “Mommy, please save Uncle Ronan, okay?” “Uncle Ronan was hurt so badly because he saved me. I don’t want Uncle Ronan to die.” I looked at the daughter I had once loved most and smiled coldly. “Is that so?” “Too bad. Your Uncle Ronan is going to hell soon.” I turned to leave, but as I brushed past Ella, I accidentally knocked into her. She fell to the floor and immediately cried in pain. Derek picked her up at once, glaring at me. “Audrey, Ella is just a child. Why would you say something so cruel to her?” “Ronan and I were both blind. How did we ever fall for a woman like you?” “You don’t deserve to be Ella’s mother.” Ella curled in Derek’s arms, crying like her heart was breaking. The way she looked at me became rejecting and hateful. “Mommy is bad. Ella doesn’t want bad Mommy.” “Uncle Ronan is ten thousand times better than Mommy. Ella wants Uncle Ronan.” Listening to that sharp, piercing childish voice, I suddenly felt every bit of irritation I had suppressed rush up. I turned and said harshly to Ella, “Fine. You can go to him right now.” “Once I freeze all your bank cards, you can go starve with your Uncle Ronan.” Ella immediately went quiet. But her red eyes still glared at me fiercely. Derek looked utterly disappointed. “Audrey, do you have any humanity left?” “You’re this cruel even to your own daughter?” I laughed coldly, unmoved. “I said whoever stands on Ronan’s side is my enemy. Ella is no exception.” “Derek, are you addicted to wearing a green hat? You’d rather fall out with your own wife just to save the man who pursued me.” “Or do you have some filthy little kink?” Derek’s face changed instantly. A flicker of guilt also passed through Ella’s eyes. I ignored them and went straight to a hotel. On the way, my assistant told me that the last of the Blake family’s assets had been swallowed by Vale Group. Seeing my unrestrained smile, she still looked confused. “Ms. Vale, do you really have no feelings for Ronan Blake anymore?” I shook my head. “No. From beginning to end, the only person I have ever loved is Ronan.” My assistant was even more confused. “Then why won’t you let Mr. Langford donate his kidney to Mr. Blake?” “The damage would be to Mr. Langford’s body, not yours. Why do you care so much?” My gaze turned sharp and cruel. “Loving Ronan and wanting him dead do not conflict.” “Now all of the Blake family’s assets are under my name.” “It’s time to reveal this grand performance.”

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1 For my sake, Marcus, a brilliant and renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, turned down a prestigious fellowship abroad. He had taken my hand in front of the entire hospital staff, declaring to everyone that I was the only woman he would ever love. Back then, everyone whispered that an unremarkable resident like me had somehow managed to capture the heart of the youngest Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Apex Medical Center. That night, he held a bouquet of white roses and proposed to me on the hospital rooftop, with a sky full of fireworks exploding behind him. But when I woke up, everything changed. I had suddenly traveled three years into the future. The thirty-one-year-old Marcus stood before me, tossing a reassignment notice stamped by the HR department onto the desk. “Sienna, stop slitting your wrists just to beg for my sympathy. I stopped feeling anything for you a long time ago.” “This transfer to the ER to do grunt work is entirely your own doing.” The man standing in front of me wore a pristine, spotless white lab coat. His eyes were cold, completely devoid of the tenderness that had once filled them on that rooftop. A sharp ache hit the back of my throat, and my eyes stung. “Marcus, are you snapping at me?” Marcus froze. The next second, his brow furrowed even deeper. I could not wrap my head around this. Just last night, he had been on one knee on the hospital rooftop, handing me those white roses. “Sienna, let’s get married.” He was such a proud, ambitious man, yet he had turned down a spot at Harvard just to stay by my side. He had even stayed up for three consecutive nights to help me edit my research paper so it could be published sooner. I still remembered the dark circles under his eyes. How could a single night turn the man who once cherished me into someone who looked at me with nothing but sheer disgust? Marcus obviously had no patience for my confusion. He stared at me, his lip curling slightly. “Time travel? Sienna, you’re a medical professional. Do you honestly expect me to believe that ridiculous excuse?” He scoffed, yanking off his surgical mask. Unwilling to spare me another glance, he turned on his heel and walked out. Panic seized me. Without thinking, I rushed after him, reaching out to grab his sleeve. “Mar—” Suddenly, Marcus stopped dead in his tracks. Caught completely off guard, my nose slammed hard against his solid back. The sharp pain made me gasp, and tears instantly flooded my eyes. But Marcus did not seem to hear me, let alone care to turn around. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his vibrating phone. He answered it. A soft, melodic female voice slipped through the receiver, clear enough for me to hear every word. “Hey, Marcus. I just emailed you the final draft of the new review. Don’t forget to take a look when you have a moment.” Marcus offered a quiet, gentle hum. His voice softened into a tone I had not heard all morning. “Got it. I’ll review it tonight.” I stood frozen in place, staring at him in disbelief. “Who is she?” The voice sounded incredibly familiar, but my mind was in such a chaotic mess that I could not place it. “Have you had enough of this drama?” Marcus slid his phone back into his pocket, his brief moment of tenderness vanishing instantly. “Be grateful, Sienna. If I hadn’t vouched for you in front of the Chief of Medicine, you wouldn’t even have a job as a clerk.” His gaze flicked to my red, swollen nose, his expression icy. “You are no longer the promising doctor I once thought was worth mentoring.” The heavy thud of the door closing shook me out of my daze. I fumbled with my phone, scrolled to the very top of my contact list, and pressed dial. The line rang for what felt like an eternity before a voice finally picked up. “Sienna?” My best friend, Jenna, sounded hesitant, as if receiving a call from me was the last thing she expected. But I was too overwhelmed to notice her strange tone. The moment I heard her voice, the tears I had been holding back finally spilled over. Jenna remained quiet, listening to my frantic, rambling explanation. After a long pause, her voice spiked in disbelief. “Are you telling me Marcus proposed to you on the rooftop yesterday?” I squeezed the reassignment notice tightly in my hand. “Yes. But now he’s transferring me to the ER to do grunt work.” I sniffled, my voice trembling. “Jenna, can you come pick me up?” Another long silence stretched over the line before she softly replied, “Okay. I’m on my way.” Inside the quiet cafe, Jenna stared at my face for a long time, as if trying to find a stranger hidden beneath my features. “So, you’re saying you fell asleep, woke up, and three years had passed? You don’t remember anything that happened during this time?” I did not know whether to nod or shake my head. “Sienna, to be honest, this isn’t the first time Marcus has tried to push you out.” Jenna spoke slowly, choosing her words with extreme caution. “And frankly, you and I haven’t spoken in a very long time.” I stared at her, stunned. Jenna let out a long sigh before explaining the nightmare my life had become over the last three years. Less than six months after that grand, romantic rooftop proposal, Marcus began to change. My eyes widened. “He fell in love with someone else?” “Yes. It started about two years ago,” Jenna said, taking a sip of her coffee and watching me closely. “It was Brooke, the junior resident you used to mentor.” According to Jenna, once I found out about the affair, I completely lost my mind. I began doing desperate, reckless things. “You crashed the National Cardiothoracic Conference. In front of the entire medical community, you screamed that Brooke had plagiarized your research data, causing a massive scene. Later, you broke into her office and smashed her newly won award. Marcus called security on you himself and even had the psychiatry department come down to evaluate you.” Jenna took another slow sip. “I couldn’t watch you destroy yourself like that, so I tried to convince you to let him go. But you were hysterical, and you ended up shoving me down a flight of stairs.” After that, everyone turned their backs on me. The once-promising resident who had captured the heart of Apex Medical’s star surgeon had become the biggest laughingstock in the entire city. “I accused her of stealing my paper, and Marcus just decided I was insane?” Jenna remained silent, but she gave a slow, somber nod. I looked down, smoothing out the crumpled transfer notice on the table. In a way, Marcus had been merciful. Even though he despised me to this extent, he had not officially requested the board to terminate my contract. He had simply relegated me to the chaos of the emergency room. I pulled a pen from my bag, ready to sign the document. “Are you actually going through with this?” Jenna’s hand shot out, gripping my wrist. Deep concern swam in her eyes. “You’ve pretended to agree to transfers before, only to turn around and storm the administration office to cause another scene.” I looked at her, utterly bewildered. Had the future version of me really become so pathetic? “Sienna,” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Do you really not love him anymore?” My fingers tensed around the pen. Love? A flood of memories rushed into my mind. The truth was, Marcus had been right about one thing. It was his recommendation that had allowed me to secure a permanent residency at Apex. It was his guidance that had given me access to top-tier research resources. But three years ago, he had promised to help me refine my research paper so I could submit it to a prestigious international journal. Yet shortly after, Brooke had published a paper with almost identical data. When I confronted him, Marcus had smoothed it over, claiming that Brooke’s research direction had simply overlapped with mine. He told me that with my skills, I could easily write a better one. He told me he loved me, so I worked twice as hard, desperately trying to be someone worthy of standing by his side. I had agreed to climb to the peak of the medical field with him, believing we were partners. But now, he had chosen someone else to walk that path with him. The debt of gratitude I owed him for his mentorship had been paid in full with my broken heart. Wasn’t it time for me to reclaim my own life and chase my own dreams? Jenna’s eyes welled with tears, her voice cracking. “Sienna, I am so, so glad to hear you say that.” Standing before the towering building of Apex Medical Center, I looked up. The grand, modern glass facade remained unchanged. Yet, it felt completely different from the place I remembered. “Isn’t that the crazy girl from Cardiothoracic?” “Why is she back? Didn’t she embarrass herself enough last time?” “Shh, keep your voice down. Last week, a nurse tried to talk to her, and she nearly scratched his eyes out.” The hushed whispers of passing staff drifted into my ears. I pulled my gaze away, tightening my grip on the signed transfer form. Before coming here, I had tried calling Marcus. It rang once before he hung up. When I tried again, the call went straight to voicemail. He had blocked me. Since I was leaving the department anyway, there was no point in dragging this out. I wanted to hand the paperwork directly to him and close this chapter. Jenna had tried to stop me before we parted ways. “I have a court hearing this afternoon, are you absolutely sure you can handle this alone?” She was a busy corporate lawyer now. She clearly did not believe I was fully sane yet, thinking I was just using the paperwork as an excuse to cause another scene. But seeing my quiet determination, she had finally relented, looking back at me with worry as she walked away. Clearly, she was not the only one who expected the worst. The moment I stepped into the Cardiothoracic wing, the nurse at the front desk was so startled she knocked over a bottle of disinfectant. Several residents nearby instantly went on high alert, surrounding the desk as if a threat had entered the room. I could not blame them. Jenna had told me that during my worst breakdown, I had completely trashed the Chief’s office, a scene that someone had filmed and posted online. Marcus had used that incident to suspend several colleagues who had dared to speak up for me. I understood their hostility. I looked at the nurse, forcing a polite, calm smile. “I’m here to see Chief Marcus. I need to hand in my transfer slip.” The nurse hesitated, looking highly uncomfortable. “Dr. Sienna, Dr. Brooke left strict instructions. Non-department personnel are not allowed in the administrative offices.” Dr. Brooke. My former junior, who was now Marcus’s golden child. “The transfer paperwork requires the Chief’s personal signature,” I said smoothly, stepping past her. The nurse panicked, and two residents moved forward to block my path. Suddenly, a commotion broke out near the entrance of the wing. A crowd of doctors was walking in. Before I could turn around to see what was happening, someone shoved me hard from behind. Losing my balance, I stumbled forward, my forehead slamming violently against the sharp metal corner of a supply cart. A sharp gasp of pain escaped my lips. Clutching my throbbing forehead, I spun around, only to meet Brooke’s wide, innocent eyes. “Oh! Dr. Sienna, it’s you! I am so, so sorry. I didn’t see you standing there.” I rubbed the blooming bruise on my forehead, my voice dropping to a cool, dangerous register. “Your eyesight is remarkably poor for a surgeon, Dr. Brooke. No wonder you mistake other people’s research papers for your own.” Ignoring her gasp, I turned toward the Chief’s office, but she stepped in front of me, blocking the door. “Sienna,” Brooke said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness, though her words cut deep. “You don’t belong to Cardiothoracic anymore. Prowling around our offices is highly inappropriate, don’t you think?” I tilted my head, studying her. Jenna had mentioned that the surgical techniques I pioneered had helped put this department on the map, nearly earning me a major national award. But Brooke had swept in and claimed all of my research as her own. “Until the transfer paperwork is finalized, I am still legally a doctor in this department. Who do you think you are to stop me?” I stared directly into her eyes. “A thief who builds her career on stolen data?” Her face paled, and tears immediately welled in her eyes. “Sienna, I know you’re bitter about the transfer, but you can’t just throw wild accusations at me.” She stepped closer, leaning into my space as if begging me to strike her. The whispers around us grew louder, the onlookers’ expressions turning from caution to outright disgust. “This is ridiculous. She has no talent of her own, so she resorts to slandering Brooke.” “Brooke works herself to the bone every single night. How could she possibly plagiarize?” “Exactly. Chief Marcus is incredibly strict. If there were any issues with her paper, do you think he would have let her publish it?” Looking at her pathetic, victimized act made my stomach churn. I stepped back, revulsion clear on my face. “Get out of my face. You make me sick.” That single sentence seemed to detonate a bomb. Brooke covered her face, sobbing hysterically. “What did I ever do to deserve this, Sienna? Why do you hate me so much?” “That is enough!” A thunderous voice boomed from the end of the corridor. Marcus was walking back from rounds, flanked by a dozen doctors. He strode forward, immediately wrapping a protective arm around Brooke’s trembling shoulders. When he looked up at me, his face was flushed with fury. “Sienna, what kind of psychotic episode are you having now?” Before I could speak, Brooke clutched his coat, her voice shaking. “Marcus, please don’t yell at her. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have argued with her.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You are far too kind for your own good, which is why she thinks she can walk all over you.” Marcus gently wiped her tears, then glared at me, his eyes burning with disgust. “Sienna! Is this what you came here for today? Do you find this amusing?” He looked at me as if I were a piece of trash. “Stop playing these desperate games. It won’t work.” I realized then what he was thinking. In his eyes, my presence today was just another pathetic stunt to get his attention and delay the transfer. He truly believed I was willing to humiliate myself just to stay near him. “You’re right. It isn’t amusing at all,” I said, a calm smile spreading across my lips as I pulled the paper from my folder. “That’s why I came to finalize the paperwork.” Marcus froze. He stared at my face, then down at the paper in my hand. His eyes locked onto the signature block at the bottom, narrowing in confusion. With a sudden, violent sweep of his hand, he knocked the paper out of my grip, sending it fluttering to the floor. “Are you mocking me?” he hissed, his voice rising dangerously as the veins in his temples pulsed. “Are you really so desperate that you’d resort to this kind of reverse psychology just to cling to me?” Slap. The sharp crack echoed down the sterile hallway. Marcus’s head snapped to the side, his words cut short by the sheer force of my palm against his cheek. Ignoring the gasps of the surrounding staff and his murderous glare, I calmly knelt down and picked up the paper. “Take a good look, Marcus.” He ground his teeth, staring at me with pure venom for several seconds before taking a sharp, angry breath and snatching the paper. He looked at the signature line. There was no frantic “I refuse to sign,” nor was it a blank space designed to buy time. Written in clear, elegant print was my signature. Directly above it was a single sentence: I consent to the transfer to the Emergency Department. He stood completely frozen.

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Everyone in Manhattan society knows Grant Tyler adores me. The icy aristocrat makes a grueling annual pilgrimage to a frozen Himalayan peak just to pray for my health. I thought I was the luckiest woman alive. Then I saw Ruby’s video. My best friend stood on a snowy trail, giggling about a five-year-old hike where she and her lover got carried away. A man’s hand reached in, adjusting her scarf with practiced tenderness. On his wrist was the crimson prayer cord I had braided for Grant with my own hands. Blood turned to ice in my heated living room. Moments later, my doctor walked in. She told me I was two months pregnant. Tears already streaming, I looked up dazed. Please, I choked out, help me schedule an abortion immediately. 1 The doctor froze, her eyes widening in shock. “Hazel, are you absolutely sure?” she asked gently. “Mr. Tyler loves you so much. And given your medical history, this pregnancy is an absolute miracle.” She was trying to talk me out of it. After all, the entire city knew the lore of our romance. Grant once took nineteen stab wounds to protect me from an attacker. When I was critically ill, he abandoned a billion-dollar merger and flew to the Himalayas, kneeling on the jagged rocks with every step he took, begging for my life. His love was a grand, theatrical spectacle that made everyone envious. But sitting there in the clinic, I could not even string a complete sentence together. My throat felt like it was packed with broken glass. My heart hurt so badly I could barely keep myself upright. Seeing my completely devastated state, the doctor finally stopped pushing. She let out a heavy sigh. “I will go make the arrangements.” Once the door clicked shut, I tapped the screen to replay that video. My fingers were shaking so violently I could hardly hold the phone. I opened the comment section. Someone had asked, “How old is your little boy? He is adorable!” Ruby had replied almost immediately. “He just turned five!” I stared at that number. A deafening ringing filled my ears. Five years ago, I was in a horrific car accident. The doctors issued multiple critical condition notices. I was not supposed to make it. Grant, a man of absolute pride and logic, lost his mind. He rushed to the mountains, his palms cracking from the frostbite, his forehead bleeding from kneeling on the ice, praying for me to survive. Eventually, I woke up. Everyone said Grant’s absolute devotion had moved the heavens. I believed them. But the truth was, while he was kneeling in the freezing snow supposedly praying for my life, he was tumbling into the sheets with my best friend. They even made a child out of it. The agonizing pain in my chest threatened to swallow me whole. As my phone screen dimmed, a message notification from Ruby popped up. The last text she sent me was from last night. “Hazel, I am so jealous of you. Grant is such a gentleman. He always looks so restrained and gentle.” “Unlike my husband. I don’t know what has gotten into him lately.” “He goes completely wild every night. He leaves my legs shaking and my back aching, and he absolutely refuses to stop when I beg him.” “I feel like he is going to break me in half.” She followed it up with a few blushing, giggling emojis. Reading those words now made my stomach churn violently. The mysterious husband she had been bragging about was Grant. I gripped the phone tightly, black spots dancing in my vision. In all our years of marriage, Grant was always overly cautious in bed. He was restrained to the point of being entirely vanilla. Once, I bought a very sheer, daring lingerie set. I clumsily practiced some poses I saw online. That night, blushing furiously, I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered that he could be a little rougher with me. Grant simply frowned and gently pulled my hands away. “Hazel, your health is too fragile,” he murmured. “I am terrified of hurting you.” I used to think that was ultimate cherishing. I thought he loved me too much to lose control. But I was completely wrong. He took all of his loss of control, all his rough passion, and all his heavy breathing. He gave every bit of it to Ruby. A hollow laugh escaped my lips. I laughed until thick tears splattered against my phone screen. A few minutes later, the doctor returned. “Hazel, the surgery is scheduled. Three days from now, at nine in the morning.” 2 After leaving the clinic, my assistant texted to remind me about a charity gala being hosted in my name that evening. I rushed to the venue. As I walked past the VIP lounges, a familiar voice drifted into the hallway. A group of men were laughing and teasing someone. “Grant, how did you finally bear to bring Ruby back to the city?” one of them joked. “Aren’t you worried Hazel will find out?” My feet glued themselves to the plush carpet. I peered through the slight crack in the door. Grant had his arm wrapped casually around Ruby’s shoulders. He chuckled. “Hazel would never in her wildest dreams imagine me stepping out on her.” Another friend leaned forward. “So what exactly is the deal with you and Ruby? The kid is already five. You can’t just keep her hidden in the shadows forever.” Ruby lowered her head, her eyes rimmed with red. Grant glanced at her, his voice softening entirely. “That is why I am planning a private wedding for Ruby.” Ruby’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, looking like a woman who had suffered in silence for years. Grant reached out and gently held her hand. “I already gave Hazel the public title. Everyone in high society knows she is Mrs. Tyler.” “But the actual wedding ceremony, and the real marriage certificate, I am giving to Ruby.” Ruby leaned into his chest, her voice sweet and fragile. “Grant, I don’t want to break Hazel’s heart. Maybe we should just forget the wedding.” Grant pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. “You waited in the shadows for five years. I owe you this.” Someone in the room laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “You really have it all figured out, Grant. One is the official wife for the cameras, and the other is your true love hidden in the mountains.” Grant simply smiled. “I will still be there for Hazel. Her health is poor, and she relies on me emotionally.” “Out of twelve months in a year, I will take one month to be with Ruby and our son. The other eleven months, I will be right by Hazel’s side.” “She will never, ever find out Ruby had my child.” The moment those words hung in the air, a broken smile crossed my face. I had never once questioned his devotion. Only in this exact second did I realize how utterly worthless a man’s heart could be. The same Grant who willingly took a knife for me had just driven a blade straight through my chest with his own hands. 3 I could not listen to another word. My chest felt blocked by concrete, the acid in my throat making every breath burn. I did not push the door open. I simply used the wall to support my weight and walked out of the gala without looking back. When I got back to our penthouse, I started packing up every single thing Grant had ever given me. With every item I tossed into the box, a tiny, invisible cut sliced into my heart. All the grand gestures I once viewed as undeniable proof of his love were nothing but a massive, humiliating joke. I taped the cardboard box shut and prepared to drag it out to the trash chute. Suddenly, the front door clicked unlocked. Grant was home. He walked in carrying a small velvet box, his eyes crinkling with that signature gentle warmth. “Hazel.” “I was walking past the boutique and saw this necklace. I immediately knew you would love it.” He stepped closer, reaching out to pull me into an embrace just like he always did. But as he leaned in, a wave of sweet gardenia perfume hit my nose. It was Ruby’s signature scent. A split second later, I noticed the faint, reddish bruise tucked just beneath his collar. My stomach violently rebelled. I shoved him away with all my strength. Grant stumbled back, looking genuinely confused. “Hazel, what is wrong?” I refused to speak. I spun around and walked into the kitchen, desperate for a glass of ice water to suppress my nausea. But when I pulled the refrigerator door open, I froze completely. My favorite jasmine tea was gone. In its place sat rows of coconut water, low-sugar yogurt, and green grapes. Everything Ruby loved. I gripped the handle of the fridge, a suffocating wave of sorrow crashing over me. It wasn’t just Grant’s heart that Ruby had invaded. She had slowly, methodically colonized every corner of my home. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced down. Ruby had just posted a new photo on her social media. The picture showed a massive table covered in glowing velvet jewelry boxes, the diamonds sparkling aggressively under the lights. The caption read: “Hubby spoiled me rotten tonight. He bought every single piece of jewelry at the auction just for me. The organizers saw how much he spent and threw in a bunch of little freebies too!” I stared at the screen, my fingers turning to ice. I zoomed in on the photo. There, sitting neglected in the corner of the table, was a delicate necklace. It was the exact same necklace Grant had just handed me. His thoughtful little gift, the one he claimed he bought just for me, was literally a piece of trash Ruby did not want. Before I could even lock my phone, the comment section refreshed with a new reply from Ruby. She posted a blushing emoji. “I just bought a very special little outfit. Hubby has been begging me to wear it for weeks. Getting ready to reward him properly tonight.” I stared at the words, the overwhelming urge to vomit returning in full force. Grant walked up behind me. He must have noticed my rigid posture, his voice dropping into that soothing, gentle register. “Hazel, are you just exhausted from the gala?” “Let me carry you to bed, alright?” He reached out to support my waist, his touch as gentle as it had been a thousand times before. If I had not seen the hickey, the coconut water, and the pathetic discarded necklace, I probably would have melted into his arms, believing I was the most cherished woman on earth. Before I could say a word, Grant’s phone lit up on the counter. He instinctively glanced down. From my peripheral vision, I saw the photo flash on his screen. It was Ruby, wearing practically nothing but a few scraps of red lace, a teasing slope of her pale shoulder in full view. It was an invitation that required zero explanation. Grant’s hand twitched. He quickly pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. “Hazel, something urgent just came up at the company.” “I have to head out for a bit.” I suddenly reached out, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. My voice was incredibly frail, completely stripped of its usual warmth. “Grant. Please don’t go.” “Just stay here with me tonight. Please.” He looked down at me, a flicker of genuine hesitation crossing his eyes. For one pathetic, agonizing second, I actually thought he might choose me. But then his phone buzzed again. Ruby’s text popped up. “Hubby, I am fresh out of the shower and waiting for you. We can do your favorite position tonight.” Grant closed his eyes briefly, sealing his decision. He gently, meticulously pried my fingers off his wrist. “Be good, Hazel. It is a genuine emergency. I will come right back to you as soon as I handle it.” I watched my hand slip from his grip, my chest throbbing with a dull, sickening ache. Seeing my desolate expression, Grant tried to sweeten the blow, lowering his voice to coax me. “I will make it up to you tomorrow, I promise.” “Haven’t you always wanted to go to the amusement park? I will rent out the entire park tomorrow. Just the two of us all day.” I stared at him blankly. Three years ago, I had mentioned wanting to go to Disneyland. Ruby had gone for a three-day weekend and posted endless grids of photos. In one picture, a man’s muscular forearm was visible, holding a bunch of Mickey balloons for her. Her caption read: “Someone treats me like an absolute princess.” Back then, feeling a little jealous, I had turned to Grant and asked, “When work slows down, can we go to the park too?” He had stroked my hair, his tone endlessly patient. “Of course.” “Once you are fully recovered, I will rent the place out just for you.” I waited. I waited through the spring, and I waited through the summer. I waited so long that the theme park went through three different renovations. Grant never took me. Whenever I brought it up, he would kiss my forehead. “Next time, darling. When I am not so swamped. There are too many crowds, I don’t want you getting exhausted.” It turned out he wasn’t worried about the crowds. He wasn’t worried about my stamina. He simply had no desire to look at castles and fireworks when he had already experienced it all with another woman. My dream was just a convenient “next time” he could push back infinitely. And now, he finally remembered. He used it as a bargaining chip on the very night he was rushing off to sleep with Ruby. Realizing that, a bizarre sense of absolute calm washed over me. All the suffocating bitterness, the nausea, and the sharp pain sank to the bottom of a dark ocean. I looked up at Grant. I looked at the man I honestly believed I would spend the rest of my life with. And I slowly lowered my hand. “Go on.” 4 Once Grant left the penthouse, I dragged the heavy cardboard box out into the hallway. I threw everything down the garbage chute, piece by piece. When I reached the wooden prayer beads, my hands paused. It was the first gift Grant brought back from the Himalayas after I woke up from my coma. His hands had been raw and bleeding from the cold. He had knelt by my hospital bed, his voice completely wrecked. “Hazel, I fought the heavens and won you back.” “I swear to God, I will never let you suffer another day in your life.” I had hugged him and sobbed, genuinely believing this man had wrestled my soul back from the afterlife. I wore those beads against my skin for five solid years. Looking back now, it was utterly laughable. If the heavens were truly watching, they would have known that when he was kneeling in the snow, his heart was already split in two. Grant returned the next morning as the sun was coming up. The cloying scent of Ruby’s perfume was practically baked into his clothes. He walked into the bedroom, stopping dead when he noticed the closet was half empty. “Hazel, where are your things?” I looked at him, parting my lips to answer. His phone started ringing. Ruby’s name flashed brightly across the screen. Grant instinctively hit ignore. Noticing my pale complexion, he reached out to check my temperature. “Are you feeling sick again?” Before his fingers could even brush my forehead, the phone rang again. This time, it was a FaceTime call. Grant hesitated for two agonizing seconds, then turned away from me to answer it. He didn’t close the bathroom door all the way. Through the gap, I saw Ruby standing in front of a mirror, wearing a breathtaking white wedding gown. Her eyes were puffy. “Grant, do I look okay?” she asked nervously. “It feels a little tight around the waist.” Grant’s entire demeanor instantly melted into a puddle of devotion. “You look absolutely perfect. Don’t let them alter it.” “You look stunning in everything you wear. Tonight, I want you waiting in bed wearing nothing but that dress…” When the call finally ended, I slid a manila folder across the nightstand. It contained the signed divorce papers. “Grant, I need to tell you—” Grant snapped out of his daze, realizing I was still sitting right there. He reached out and stroked my cheek. “Hazel, once I wrap up this massive project, I promise we will go to the theme park.” I looked at him and let out a soft, airy laugh. “There is no need.” Grant didn’t understand what I meant. And he didn’t have the time to figure it out. Because Ruby sent him a voice memo. This time, a sweet, childish voice echoed from the speaker. “Daddy, when are you coming? Mommy said we are taking family photos today!” Grant’s body went entirely rigid. He looked up at me in absolute panic, terror flashing in his eyes. But he quickly forced it down, masking it with a frantic business tone. “Hazel, I really need to run out again.” I sat in silence as he practically sprinted to grab his jacket. I watched him rush out the door without ever glancing down at the divorce papers resting on the table. The moment the front door slammed shut, I grabbed the papers and shoved them into my purse. There was no point leaving them here anymore. On the third morning, exactly at nine o’clock, I walked into the operating room. Just as the anesthesia began to make my vision swim, my phone buzzed on the tray beside me. It was a text from Ruby. “Hazel, my hubby was completely feral last night.” “When things got really intense, he used that little braided charm you made him to spice things up. It completely pushed him over the edge. He lost his mind.” She attached a photo. It was a messy hotel suite, expensive lingerie scattered across the carpet. The crimson prayer cord was tossed carelessly onto the edge of the mattress. The intricate knots were completely stretched and ruined, the silk threads stained with cloudy, dried fluids. It was the cord I had spent weeks braiding for him, my fingers cramping as I recovered in my hospital bed. I stared at the photo, a single tear slipping from the corner of my eye. Right before the drugs dragged me into darkness, a final thought drifted through my mind. My devotion, my prayers, my desperate hopes for his safety. To them, it was just a cheap, dirty prop to get them off. As the cold liquid pushed through my IV, I rested my hand flat against my lower stomach. Soon, it would be entirely empty. Just like the space in my heart that Grant used to occupy. At three in the afternoon, I boarded a flight out of the country. Because I left in such a rush, my medical files and post-op paperwork were left sitting on the clinic counter. When the nurse realized I was gone, she dialed the emergency contact listed on my intake form. The line connected. The background noise on the other end was incredibly loud. The nurse hesitated, but spoke up anyway. “Hello, is this Mr. Grant Tyler?” “Miss Hazel just finished her abortion surgery. She left some important medical files behind. Could you please come pick them up?”

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