Category: English

Bella lived up in Vermont, so I was used to making the long drive north to see her. But whenever I asked my fiancé to come with me, his face would ice over and he’d flat-out refuse. He claimed he hated the state, swore he’d never step foot in it again, yet he never once gave me a reason why. Until the week of our wedding, when a car accident took my pregnancy. The very next day, I got a frantic text from Bella saying she was being harassed. Ignoring the searing pain in my abdomen, I braved a blinding snowstorm and drove four hours north. But when I pulled up to her apartment building, I didn’t find her alone. I found a tall, lean man gripping her tightly in his arms. “Let me go! Are you out of your mind? You’re getting married, what the hell are you doing here?!” Bella’s familiar, raspy voice carried through the frigid air. “When I dumped you six years ago, you should have stayed gone. You were never supposed to show up again!” A memory violently surfaced: Bella, a few drinks in, constantly talking about the first love she hadn’t been able to shake for six long years. The man’s voice was completely wrecked. “Yeah, I’m out of my mind. I’m crazy enough to leave my fiancé bleeding from a miscarriage just to come save you! I’m crazy enough to buy a wedding ring in your size, to set the wedding date on your birthday… How could you be so cruel? How could you just walk away? She was only ever a placeholder for you.” Bella let out a sharp, self-deprecating laugh. “A placeholder? You’re pretty dedicated to the bit, considering you knocked her up.” “That was an accident. And she lost the baby today.” The man framed her face with his hands, his tone turning fiercely possessive. “I am not letting you run away from me again.” Then, he turned slightly. I saw his profile. I froze. Every drop of blood in my veins felt like it turned to ice alongside the falling snow. The man holding my best friend was my fiancé, Calvin. 1 My fingers tightened around the canister of pepper spray I had brought to protect her. My brain refused to process what my eyes were seeing. Just a few hours ago, he had been sitting by my hospital bed, gently wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “Helen, I’m gonna go home and make that corn and rib soup you love so much, okay?” He had kissed the corner of my mouth. He said he’d be right back. So, it had to be a lookalike. It had to be a cruel trick of the light. Hiding behind a snow-capped streetlamp, my numb fingers fumbled with my phone to text him: [Calvin, where are you?] A minute passed. No reply. He had never, not once in our entire relationship, failed to text me back instantly. Under the sickly yellow glow of the streetlamp, Bella shoved the man away. “Get the hell away from me!” The light hit his face perfectly. The slope of his nose. The faint, pale scar right between his brows. The scar he got from a fistfight, protecting me. It was Calvin. My knuckles turned white around my phone. His voice was terrifyingly cold. A stranger’s voice. “Don’t flatter yourself, Bella.” “Telling me to get away? Who just threw herself into my arms crying that she was scared? Six years go by, and the second you’re in trouble, I’m still the first person you call. Is that the best you can do?” Bella looked up, her eyes rimmed with red. “I’m flattering myself?” “Then why are you here? Calvin, why did you abandon your fiancé who just had a miscarriage to rush up here?!” She started to laugh, tears streaking her makeup. “Does it make you happy seeing me this pathetic? Does it stroke your ego? Do you think I’m finally getting exactly what I deserve for everything I did to you?!” Calvin’s jaw clenched so hard I thought it might shatter. He didn’t answer. Bella wiped her face and turned to walk away. Calvin shot his hand out, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. “Let go.” He didn’t budge. “Calvin, I said let go!” He yanked her back, pulling her flush against his chest. She thrashed, hitting his shoulders, kicking at his shins, but he stood like a stone wall. “That’s not why I came.” Eventually, the fight drained out of her. She buried her face in his coat, her shoulders shaking violently. “Do you think I wanted to call you?” “Do you know that when that guy cornered me, the only thing playing in my head was you? You used to never let anyone lay a finger on me.” “Did you really think I’ve had a good life these past six years without you?” He bowed his head, resting his chin on the crown of her hair. “If you hadn’t left, we would have had a kid by now. That was the plan.” “Why did you have to come back now?” The street went dead quiet. The icy wind sliced down the collar of my coat, turning my fingers and toes completely numb. My phone screen stayed lit in my hand. That text to Calvin remained unread. 2 My legs gave out. I slumped against the freezing metal of the streetlamp. My chest felt like it was being crushed in a vice; the pain was so sharp I couldn’t draw a breath. Bella’s epic first love. The one that got away. It was Calvin. The phantom she drank to. The ghost she couldn’t exorcise. She had told me the stories on loop—how clumsily devoted he was, how he wrote her a letter every single day, how he gave up a full ride to a college overseas just to stay near her. “Then why did you break up?” I had asked her once. She had been slumped over my kitchen island, eyes bloodshot. “I was terrified of being poor. His mother offered me a check for five hundred grand, and I took the money and ran. He kneeled in the pouring rain outside my dorm for two days begging me, and I didn’t even flinch.” “Love doesn’t pay the rent. I’m just an ugly, selfish person, Helen.” The first time I introduced them, the tension had been thick enough to choke on. They couldn’t even look at each other. After that, they managed to avoid ever being in the same room again. I never, in a million years, would have guessed the violent, burning history between them. I was only seventeen when I met Calvin. My teenage years weren’t filled with prom drama or SAT prep. They were consumed by the terror of my stepfather knocking on my bedroom door late at night. One evening, he got drunk and started trying to kick the door down. I climbed out my window and ran. I walked into a dive bar, curled up in a corner booth, hugged my knees, and shook. “You shouldn’t be in here.” I looked up. Calvin was standing over me, his dark eyes taking in my scuffed sneakers and oversized hoodie. I stared at the older man in front of me and whispered, “What does ‘should’ even mean? Why are you in here?” He slid into the booth across from me and pushed a glass of warm water across the table. “Got dumped. Let’s leave it at that.” “We promised each other forever, and she just tossed it in the trash.” We talked for hours. After that, meeting at that bar every Wednesday became our unspoken ritual. The day my stepfather finally picked the lock to my room, Calvin was the one who kicked the front door off its hinges. He stripped off his jacket, wrapped it tightly around my trembling shoulders, and tackled my stepfather to the floor. He hit him, again and again, until his knuckles were slick with blood. Everyone in my family told me to keep quiet. He was the man of the house. My mother swore that if I called the cops, I was dead to her. But Calvin was there. He told me I never had to be afraid again. That he would handle it. He hired a lawyer. He put my stepfather in a cell. He moved me into his apartment and made sure I had a quiet place to study for my college exams. It was the first time in my life I realized what it felt like to be protected. My freshman year of college, I finally gathered the courage to ask him. “Calvin, will you let me love you?” He froze. After a long time, he looked away. “What if, one day, someone else matters more to you?” I got up on my tiptoes and kissed him. “You are the most important thing in the world.” We fell together. And he was so, so good to me. Anything I didn’t know, he taught me with endless patience. The parts of the world I had never seen, he held my hand and showed me. He used to say, “Helen, don’t ever feel less than. You have a heart most people couldn’t even comprehend. Whatever you don’t know, I’ll teach you. We have time.” He knew about my night terrors, so he stayed on the phone with me every single night until I fell asleep. He knew I loved roasted chestnuts, so he would drive across the city in the dead of winter just to find the one cart that sold them. I truly believed no one on this earth would ever love me the way he did. I thought we were going to build a quiet, beautiful life together. But now. He was standing right there. He had abandoned me in a hospital bed. And he was desperately holding onto my best friend. He had taught me so much. How to study, how to defend myself, how to be careful with who I trusted. But he never taught me this. He never taught me what to do when I found out I had been sharing his heart with a ghost. 3 My mind was a chaotic mess of static. One second, I saw him standing in my kitchen making me soup. The next, I saw his arms wrapped around her waist. I heard his gentle, “I’ll be right back,” colliding violently with his bitter, “Why did you have to come back now?” I gripped my phone. I had to give our six years a chance. What if. What if he just needed closure? What if he was still my Calvin, the boy who would bleed for me? I hit his contact. It rang three times before he answered. “Helen? What’s wrong?” I opened my mouth, but my throat felt like sandpaper. “Calvin. Where are you?” A one-second pause on the line. “Something urgent came up at work. I had to leave in a rush. I had the nanny finish the soup and bring it to the hospital. You need to eat, okay?” I stared at the man standing thirty feet away. His back was to me. His shoulders were dusted with fresh snow. He had his phone pressed to his ear. “I can’t eat it without you here.” His voice softened, adopting that tender, placating tone I knew so well. “Sweetheart. I’ll be back the second I’m done. How are you feeling? Does it still hurt?” “Helen, when things settle down, I’m taking you on a trip. You’ve always wanted to see the California coast, right? We’ll get a house in Big Sur for a few weeks. I just want to take care of you.” As he said those words into the phone, Bella lifted her head from his chest, her eyes bright red. He raised his free hand and gently brushed a snowflake from her hair. “Calvin,” I breathed. “Yeah?” “Where exactly… did you have to travel for this work emergency?” Bella suddenly wrenched herself out of his grip, limping backward. He reached for her, panic bleeding into his voice on the phone. “Helen, I’ve got a crisis I need to handle here. I’ll call you right back, okay?” The moment my screen went dark, he grabbed Bella’s wrist again. She stared up at him, devastated. “You’re playing the doting fiancé on the phone while holding my hand?” “How do you stomach doing both at the same time?” Yeah. Calvin. How do you tell me you love me on the phone, then turn around and hold her? Bella shoved him hard and tried to walk away on her injured leg. He lunged forward and swept her entirely off her feet, cradling her against his chest. “Your ankle is messed up. I’m taking you to the ER.” She gasped, then started fighting him. “Put me down, Calvin, put me down—” He ignored her, striding toward his parked car. “You’re holding me, but you’re wearing her ring! It’s a literal flashing sign that you’re marrying someone else!” “How am I supposed to just accept you taking care of me?!” He stopped dead in his tracks. He looked down at his left hand. The day he proposed, he had been down on one knee, holding that ring, his hands shaking violently. “Helen.” “I am only going to do this once in my life. Because I am only ever going to love one person.” On those cliffs overlooking the ocean, his sincerity had completely undone me. I said yes. He slid the ring onto my finger, his eyes welling with tears. “Never take it off.” “No matter what happens, you never take this off.” It was the first time I had ever seen him cry. And he had kept his promise. He never took his off. Not once. Until now. He lowered his head, clamped his teeth around the platinum band on his left ring finger, and slid it off. “Stop fighting me, okay?” he whispered. She stopped struggling, letting him gently place her into the passenger seat. I stood rooted to the pavement. I couldn’t move a single muscle. The car slowly pulled out. As it drove past, he was barely six feet away from me. If he had just turned his head. He would have seen his fiancé, who had just lost their baby, standing behind a streetlamp in a blizzard, shaking uncontrollably. He would have seen the tears freezing on my cheeks, my blue lips, the phone crushed in my grip with his unread text still glowing on the screen. He never turned his head. I looked down at my own left hand. My ring was still there. An identical platinum band. With the same initials engraved inside. Calvin. For the last six years, was I really just a stand-in? A warm body you used to fill the gaping hole she left behind? Did you ever actually love me? 4 A vicious cramp tore through my stomach, a heavy, dragging weight pulling me down. I collapsed to my knees in the snow, staring at the empty street where his car had disappeared. I knelt there for a long, long time. My phone buzzed. It was Bella. [Helen, I made it to the ER. Don’t worry about me.] [I’m getting back together with him.] [After all these years, I was so sure he’d hate me. But he doesn’t. The second I was in trouble, he dropped everything. When I saw him pin that guy to the ground, I realized he’s still crazy enough to do anything for me.] Tears hit my screen, blurring the text bubbles. [He told me he waited six years for me.] [Helen, I’m so happy.] [You’ll be happy for us, right?] I have no memory of how I managed to drive to the hospital. My hands were locked onto the steering wheel, trembling violently the entire way. The fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor were blindingly white. Through the small glass window of the hospital room door, I saw them. Bella was propped up in bed, looking pale, her ankle heavily bandaged. Calvin was sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding a small bowl of chicken broth. “You need to eat,” he murmured. She turned her head away. “Bella.” Her voice was muffled and bratty. “It’s all grease. The calories are insane.” “I’m a model. If I gain weight, I lose my job. Who’s gonna pay my bills then?” He sighed, bringing the spoon closer to her lips. “Haven’t I booked enough campaigns for you? Still not enough? You can go back to hustling once you’re healed.” The year Bella decided she wanted to model, I practically begged Calvin to pull some strings for her. He hadn’t even looked up from his laptop. “She doesn’t have the look for it. Why bother?” But he still made the calls. He took her from local catalog shoots to international runways. Back then, I thought: He is so amazing. He cares about the people I care about. Now, the reality slapped me in the face. Was he doing it for me? Or was it because he could never let her go? I had rarely seen Calvin act so submissive. Eventually, Bella leaned forward and took a sip of the broth from his hand. “Remember that specific brand of oatmeal you used to eat in high school? After you left, I scoured every grocery store for it, only to find out the company went bankrupt.” He offered her another spoonful. “But I bought the manufacturing plant. They’ll start making it again soon.” Tears welled up in Bella’s eyes. Her voice shook. “Calvin… why are you being so good to me?” He didn’t answer. Then, she raised her hand and smacked the bowl out of his grip. The hot broth splashed everywhere. The ceramic shattered, pieces scattering across his shoes. “Bella, what the hell is wrong with you?!” “Calvin, do you have any idea how little I deserve this?!” she screamed. “Helen’s car accident… the miscarriage… I paid someone to do it!” A bomb went off in my skull. A high-pitched ringing drowned out the world. I braced my hands against the wall, my fingernails digging into the grout between the tiles. The nightmare that destroyed my baby wasn’t an accident. The voices through the door continued. “She’s my best friend, but I still did it.” “Because I knew! I knew if it came down to a choice between her and me, I had to force your hand! I love you! I couldn’t stand seeing you with her!” “I abandoned you six years ago, and now I killed your baby. I am a monster. Are you still going to be good to me now?” Bella’s sobs were ragged and ugly. He didn’t say a word. The silence stretched out. It went on for so long that I waited for the explosion. I waited for him to scream at her. I waited for him to demand justice for me, and for the child we lost. Instead, he raised his hand and used his thumb to wipe away her tears. “Stop crying.” She froze. “Calvin, are you deaf? I said I planned it! I hired the guy who hit her—” “I heard you.” “Then why are you—” “You were exactly like this before I fell in love with you, weren’t you?” Calvin pulled her firmly into his chest. She stopped fighting him. She collapsed against his heart, quietly weeping into his shirt. And through that glass pane, I watched the whole thing.

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The moment of the crash is a blur of screeching metal and the smell of burning rubber. In that split second, to protect his first love, Sean Vane jerked the steering wheel toward himself, violently throwing my side of the car into the path of the oncoming semi-truck. Later, outside the ER, he prioritized her comfort over my survival. He pulled the strings of his influence to cancel my priority status for a corneal transplant, handing my chance at sight to her instead. I woke up to a world that was half-dark, permanently blind in my right eye. I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I simply waited until the nurses were gone, ripped out my IV, and vanished from the city, carrying my scars into the shadows. Two years later, Sean has become a god of the venture capital world. Tonight, he’s at the city’s most exclusive private club, playing the part of the doting protector to his precious Izzy. And I? I’m standing here in a stiff waiter’s tuxedo, serving them vintage champagne. Sean looks at my fallen state, his eyes mocking and cold. “Nicole, if you had just been obedient back then, would you really have ended up like this? So pathetic that anyone can trample on you?” He leans in, his voice a low, condescending drawl. “Drop the pride. Bow your head, and I might find a place for you in one of my private care facilities. I’ll see to it that you’re looked after for the rest of your life.” Pathetic? In need of charity? He has no idea. Tonight isn’t just the gala for Cillian Blackwell—the heir to the Blackwell empire—to take over the family throne. It’s the night he tells the world that I am the woman ruling it by his side. 1 “Nicole, if you had just been obedient back then, would you really have ended up like this?” Sean looks down at me from his pedestal of wealth. Izzy Montgomery is nestled in his arms, her eyes wide and faux-innocent. “Just apologize,” he continues. “My private clinic can provide you with lifelong care. You wouldn’t have to live like this.” I keep my spine perfectly straight, the silver eye patch over my right eye catching the dim light of the lounge. “Mr. Vane’s charity has too high a price. A ‘broken’ woman like me wouldn’t want to overstep.” I place the tray firmly on the marble tabletop and turn to leave. “Stay right there.” Sean’s voice drops an octave, turning icy. The circle of trust-fund vultures in the booth stop their laughing. Their eyes lock onto me. “Is this her, Bash? The high-and-mighty ex?” A guy with bleached hair and a Rolex that cost more than a house let out a sharp whistle. “Man, she’s a mess. Does this club really hire cripples with one eye now?” Izzy tugs at Sean’s sleeve, her brow furrowed in a practiced display of concern. “Sean, don’t be so hard on her. I’m sure she had her reasons for running away.” She turns to me, her eyes gleaming with a triumph she can’t quite hide. “Nicole, if you’re really struggling for money, I can ask Sean to find you a job as a janitor at the firm. It’s better than carrying trays and taking insults from strangers.” I look at them—the predator and the parasite—and feel nothing but a hollow sense of absurdity. “Save your pity for the stray dogs, Izzy. I don’t need it.” Sean slams his glass onto the table with a deafening crack. “Nicole Sinclair, two years and you’re still as stubborn as a damn rock.” He stands up, closing the distance between us until I can smell his expensive cologne—the same scent I used to associate with home, now the scent of my nightmare. “Do you think this ‘pure and tragic’ act makes me feel sorry for you? Without me, you couldn’t even find a real job. You’re nothing but a glorified servant.” I meet his gaze with my one good eye. It’s calm. Dead calm. “If I’m so beneath you, Mr. Vane, why are you so desperate to talk to me? Aren’t you afraid my ‘lowly’ status might rub off on you?” He snaps. He lunges forward, grabbing my jaw in a vice-like grip, forcing my head up. “Don’t push your luck. Tonight is Cillian Blackwell’s night. The only reason you’re even allowed to breathe the air in this room is because people like me hold the tickets. You’d never set foot in a place like this if I hadn’t opened the door for you.” I let out a soft, jagged laugh. “Is that so? Then I suppose I should thank you for your ‘blessings,’ Mr. Vane.” Izzy rushes over, her hand fluttering over Sean’s wrist. “Sean, you’re hurting her! Let go!” She slides between us, artfully pushing him back while holding out a glass brimmed with dark liquor. “Nicole, since you’re the server here, why don’t you do your job? Drink this. Consider it an apology to Sean for your disrespect.” I look at the amber liquid, nearly spilling over the rim. I don’t move. “Club policy. Staff are forbidden from drinking on shift.” Sean scoffs, snatching the glass from Izzy. “Rules are for people who don’t own the room. In here, I am the rule.” He holds the glass to my face, his eyes dark with a cruel intent. “Drink it. Or I’ll call the manager right now, have him strip that uniform off you, and throw you out into the street.” The air in the VIP booth turns frigid. Bleach-hair cheers from the side. “Drink up! It’s a gift from the king! Get on your knees and say thank you!” I reach up and slowly straighten the lapel of my tuxedo. “Sean,” I say quietly. “Do you really think that if you throw me a few scraps of your life, I’ll crawl on the floor and lick your boots?” Sean’s face turns a violent shade of red. “You’re asking for it, Nicole!” Suddenly, Izzy lets out a sharp gasp. The glass in her other hand tilts, seemingly by accident, drenching the front of my white shirt and vest. “Oh my god! Nicole, I’m so sorry! My hand slipped!” She covers her mouth, her eyes dancing with malice. “That uniform looks so expensive… can you even afford the cleaning fee?” 2 I pull a spare towel from my pocket and begin dabbing the stain on my chest. Sean watches me, a flicker of sadistic satisfaction in his eyes. “She apologized to you. Are you deaf?” He snatches the towel from my hand and hurls it to the floor. “A blind girl who can’t even catch a drink… what’s the point of even keeping that left eye?” At the word blind, my hand pauses for a fraction of a second. Izzy immediately pivots back to her “guilt-ridden” persona, her eyes brimming with tears. “Sean, don’t blame her. She can’t see on the right side; it’s natural for her to have blind spots. If she hadn’t given her cornea to me, she wouldn’t be like this.” Sean pulls her behind him protectively. “She owed you! The crash happened because she tried to grab the wheel. Giving you that eye was the only way she could ever begin to pay you back!” I look up. My left eye fixes on Sean’s arrogant, self-righteous face. “Sean, let’s talk about that night on the mountain road. Who was it that actually yanked the wheel to the left, sacrificing the passenger seat to save themselves?” His eyes flicker with a momentary shadow of guilt, but it’s instantly swallowed by his ego. “If you hadn’t been screaming at Izzy, I wouldn’t have been distracted! Besides, Izzy is a ballerina. Her eyes are her life. You? You were just a lab rat. Why did you need perfect vision to look through a microscope?” The sheer, distorted logic of it makes me want to laugh. “So, that gave you the right to use your connections at the hospital to bump me off the transplant list? To watch the nerves in my eye die while I begged for help?” Sean speaks as if he’s explaining something to a child. “It was your own fault. If you hadn’t been so stubborn—if you’d just signed the divorce papers and the settlement—I wouldn’t have cut off your medical fund.” He points to the puddle of red wine on the floor. “Now. Get down. Clean that up with your tongue, and I’ll pay for your suit.” Bleach-hair bangs on the table, howling with laughter. “That’s genius! Do it! That’s a five-thousand-dollar bottle of Burgundy! You’ll never taste anything that expensive again in your life!” I don’t move. I just stare at Sean. “Are you sure you want me to kneel?” Sean, sensing my “fear,” lets a cruel smirk pull at his lips. “What? Realizing how small you are now? Too late.” He steps forward, attempting to grind his shoe into the hem of my trousers. “You left with such drama two years ago. I thought you had spine. Turns out you’re just another gutter rat willing to bend for a dollar.” I step back, avoiding his touch. “Sean, you are going to regret every word you’ve said tonight.” Izzy stomps her foot with a delicate whine. “Nicole, why are you still acting so tough? Sean is the new titan of the city. If you offend him, you won’t even be able to wash dishes in this town.” Her eyes suddenly lock onto something pinned to my chest—a subtle, black iris lapel pin with dark, shimmering accents. “Oh, look at that pin. How… unique. Is that some knock-off you bought at a flea market to look fancy?” That pin was placed there by Cillian Blackwell himself. It is the crest of the Blackwell matriarch. Sean follows her gaze. His eyes narrow. He reaches out and violently rips the pin from my lapel. The sharp needle grazes my collarbone, drawing a thin line of blood. “Trash like this doesn’t belong in a Blackwell venue.” He drops the pin and grinds it into the carpet with his heel. “Nicole, you must be desperate, wearing high-end fakes to try and fit in.” I look at the mangled black iris on the floor. My heart goes cold. “That belongs to the Blackwell family.” Sean explodes into laughter. “The Blackwells? You?” He points a finger at my face, his voice dripping with disdain. “Are you delusional? Do you even know who Cillian Blackwell is? He’s the King of this city. You aren’t even fit to shine his shoes!” Izzy giggles, leaning into him. “Nicole, even if you want to climb the social ladder, don’t tell such ridiculous lies. If the Blackwells heard you, they’d have you blacklisted from the planet.” Suddenly, the heavy doors of the VIP suite swing open. The club manager, Mr. Miller, rushes in with a squad of security guards. He’s sweating through his suit. “Mr. Vane! What’s going on? Who caused this disturbance?” 3 Mr. Miller is pale, bowing and scraping before Sean. Sean points to the wine stain and the crushed pin on the floor, his posture radiating unearned authority. “Miller, the standards of this club are slipping. You let a dishonest, clumsy cripple in here to insult my guests?” Miller turns to me, his face hardening instantly. Tonight is the most important night in the club’s history; he can’t afford a single mistake. “Nicole! What have you done? Apologize to Mr. Vane and Miss Montgomery right now!” I look at the manager, this man who barks like a dog for anyone with a black Amex. “I did nothing wrong. Miss Montgomery tipped the glass herself.” Izzy immediately shrinks behind Sean, letting out a soft, trembling sob. “Nicole… you ruined my dress, and now you’re lying about it?” Sean pulls her closer. “Miller, you hear that? Are you really keeping someone with such a disgusting character on your payroll?” Miller wipes his brow and snarls at me. “Nicole Sinclair, you are fired! Effective immediately! Get on your knees and apologize to Mr. Vane!” “Or what?” I ask. “You’ll blackball me from the ‘hospitality industry’?” Miller is incensed. He slams his hand on the table. “You think you’re someone? I’m the General Manager! I can wipe you out with a phone call!” Izzy peeks out from behind Sean, her voice sweet as poison. “Mr. Miller, her uniform is ruined too. That’s a custom club suit, isn’t it? Since she’s fired, she shouldn’t be allowed to wear it. Why don’t you have her take it off before she leaves? It would be a good lesson for her.” The “friends” in the booth erupt into crude laughter. “Great idea, Izzy! Let’s see what the blind girl is hiding under that suit!” Sean doesn’t stop them. He crosses his arms, waiting. “You heard them. Take it off. Do it yourself, Nicole, and maybe I’ll let this go.” Miller, desperate to please Sean, signals the guards. “Don’t just stand there! Help her out of the clothes!” Four guards close in, trapping me in the corner of the booth. I reach into my pocket. My fingers brush against a small, sleek transmitter—the direct link to the building’s core security system. “Sean,” I say, my voice steady. “You’ve really lost every ounce of your humanity for the sake of a girl who plays you like a violin, haven’t you?” Sean’s face twists. “Still talking back! Strip her! I want to see how much pride she has left when she’s standing there in her underwear!” The guards reach for my collar. I sidestep the first one, driving my elbow into his ribs. He grunts, stumbling back. The other three pull out their batons. “You’re fighting back?” Miller screams. “Pin her down!” Izzy pulls out her phone, aiming the camera at me. “Nicole, don’t move too much. It would be a shame if you got a scar on your face; that’s the only asset you have left.” Sean watches the chaos with a look of pure, vengeful ecstasy. “Nicole, beg me. Just get on your knees, tell me you were wrong, tell me you’re nothing compared to Izzy, and I’ll make them stop.” I let out a cold laugh, my thumb hovering over the button. “Sean, you’ll be waiting for that day until the sun burns out.” Just as a guard’s baton swings toward my shoulder— Beep—Beep—Beep— A deafening, high-pitched alarm echoes through the entire club. A Level Red lockdown.

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Back in the day, my father was the most notorious social climber in the city’s elite circles—a man whose only real talent was being breathtakingly handsome and professionally charming. Eventually, my mother, a billionaire tech mogul with a spine of titanium, “bought” him. She brought him into the family like a prize stallion, making him sign a prenuptial agreement so restrictive it was practically a bill of sale. When I decided to follow in her footsteps by choosing Parker, my childhood sweetheart, to be my “trophy husband,” my father locked himself in his study and refused to give his blessing. I was standing outside his door, ready to tear into him for his hypocrisy, when a flicker of light blurred my vision. Floating in mid-air, glowing like neon signage, were lines of digital text—a live feed of comments only I could see. [Parker is your father’s secret son! His mother was Arthur’s “One That Got Away”!] My blood ran cold. I turned my gaze toward Brooks, another man I’d considered a backup option. The “bullet comments” scrolled faster: [Brooks is a no-go, too! His mother was the “forbidden fruit” your dad spent the 90s chasing. He’s your half-brother!] I took a sharp breath, my eyes darting toward the third candidate, Zack. The comments exploded: [Don’t even bother. His mom was your dad’s favorite mistress back in the day!] [Right now, those three women are inside your father’s study, plotting how to bleed your mother’s estate dry!] [Disgusting! They’re actually making out. A four-way tryst in his own house? This man is a menace!] A chill settled in my marrow, turning into a sharp, icy resolve. A four-way? Why settle for four when I could invite the whole neighborhood? I pulled out my phone and sent a mass text to a group chat I’d hoped I’d never have to use: “Uncles, there’s been a change of plans regarding the merger and the marriage. My father is waiting in his study to discuss the details with you personally. Right now.” … 1 My name is Callie Wickham, the sole heiress to the Wickham empire. In our world, a daughter like me doesn’t just marry; she acquires. Every major family in the city was desperate to marry a son into our line. The moment I hit send, the fathers of Parker, Brooks, and Zack replied almost instantly. The first to arrive was Parker’s father, Mr. Montgomery. A titan in the entertainment industry, he was married to Vanessa—a woman my father had spent his youth pining for. Mr. Montgomery happened to be nearby at a gala. When he heard “merger talk,” he arrived with his usual entourage and a pack of hungry reporters trailing him, smelling a PR scoop. I had my staff lead them straight to the third floor. He looked at the four of us—me and the three “candidates”—standing outside the heavy oak doors. “Callie? Why are you all out here? Arthur said he wanted to talk business. Where is he?” I let my eyes well up with practiced, heartbreaking tears. “Mr. Montgomery… Dad is being impossible. He knows how much Parker and I mean to each other, but he’s refusing to sign the blessing. He won’t listen to anyone. You’re his oldest friend—please, try to talk sense into him.” Mr. Montgomery’s face darkened. He had the press waiting at the gates, expecting a wedding announcement. If this fell through, the Montgomerys would be the laughingstock of the season. He and my father had been “brothers” since prep school. They’d drank, gambled, and apparently shared the same women for decades. He thought he knew Arthur. He thought Arthur was just being stubborn. He stepped forward and hammered on the door. “Arthur! Open up! We need to talk!” “If this is about the past, about Vanessa, let it go, man! Don’t take it out on the kids!” From inside the room, I heard the sharp clink of a glass shattering. A few seconds later, my father’s voice drifted through the wood, sounding eerily composed. “Not now, Monty. I’m not feeling well. I’ll come to your office in a few days to apologize in person.” To an outsider, he sounded tired. To me, he sounded like a man scrambling to zip up his pants. The comments on my HUD were losing it: [LMAO! The husband shows up and the “Alpha” immediately loses his nerve!] [Callie is a genius. Bringing the cuckolds directly to the crime scene.] [Vanessa just dropped her glass in panic. She’s barely breathing.] [Arthur is such a dog. He’s literally whispering in her ear right now, asking if she finds the risk “thrilling.”] Thrilling? I smiled thinly. Just wait, Dad. The ride hasn’t even started. 2 The study was a fortress. The doors were custom-made, reinforced steel with a mahogany veneer. Once locked from the inside, you’d need a SWAT team to breach them. My father relied on that. But he forgot one thing: I was the one who updated the house’s smart-tech last year. The locks were electronic. In the event of a total power failure, the failsafe would trigger. Once the backup battery drained, the magnets would release. I signaled the butler to cut the main breaker to the West Wing. I hadn’t told my mother about the “comments.” It was too insane to explain. Besides, she loved Arthur in her own way—a deep, tragic loyalty that only a total, public humiliation could break. She needed to see the rot for herself. I stepped closer to the door, raising my voice so the occupants inside couldn’t miss a word. “Dad, I’m not giving up! If you won’t give us your blessing, Parker will stay on his knees out here until you do!” Parker, sensing a moment for drama, dropped to his knees immediately. “Mr. Wickham! You’ve always treated me like a son. Please, let us be together!” Mr. Montgomery joined in, his voice booming. “Arthur, the boy is begging! Don’t make me get down there with him! Just open the damn door!” Silence followed. Mr. Montgomery’s patience snapped. He began to kick the door. “Arthur! What the hell is wrong with you? Just because you married into money doesn’t mean you can look down on your brothers! Get out here and face me!” I looked at the feed: [Vanessa is freaking out. She just pinched Arthur so hard he almost screamed. If she makes a sound, she’s toast.] [This is a pressure cooker. If he doesn’t open the door, the Montgomery-Wickham bridge is burned forever.] [Wait, Margot is moving toward the window!] [Callie! Get someone below the balcony! They’re trying to climb down from the third floor!] The window? By my calculations, the “window cleaners” I’d hired should be right on time. My father was cautious. He pulled Margot—the “Cinnabar Mole” mistress—aside and peeked through a crack in the heavy curtains. Seeing no one on the lawn below, he let out a sigh of relief and yanked the curtains open to let some air into the sweltering, un-airconditioned room. He turned to grab his lovers’ hands to lead them to the balcony, but he froze. Three safety ropes dropped into view. Three men in high-vis vests and helmets, holding squeegees and buckets, descended from the roof like paratroopers. They stopped right at the glass, staring directly at my father and his three scantily-clad companions. My father’s face went from pale to purple. He slammed the curtains shut. “Callie! Who the hell are those people outside the window? Get them out of here!” I kept my voice sweet and innocent. “Oh, sorry, Dad! I forgot to tell you. I scheduled a deep-clean of the exterior glass. I told them you like things spotless. I told them to spend at least three hours on your study windows until they can see their reflections in them!” A long pause. Then, through gritted teeth: “Fine. Tell them to keep… scrubbing.” Mr. Montgomery was livid now. “Arthur! I come here to talk about our families, and you’re worrying about the windows? You’re ignoring me? If you don’t open this door, we are through!” I looked at Mr. Montgomery with genuine pity. My father had been sleeping with his wife for twenty years while “Monty” called him his best friend. Suddenly, a heavy thud echoed from inside the room. The comments cheered: [Hahaha! Margot just fainted from heatstroke!] [Who wears a velvet cat-suit for a secret tryst in July? She’s literally steaming.] [Callie’s power cut is doing the work. It’s 95 degrees in there and rising. They’re sweating out their secrets.] [Open the door or get baked alive. What’s it gonna be, Arthur?] 3 Suddenly, Parker scrambled to his feet. He was clutching his phone, his face ghost-white. He shot a panicked look at me, then turned to my mother, who had just walked down the hall. His voice was trembling. “Mrs. Wickham… I can’t do this. I’m not marrying Callie.” “Your family clearly looks down on us. This is an insult! Dad, we’re leaving. I don’t need to marry into this circus!” He grabbed Mr. Montgomery’s arm, trying to drag him toward the stairs. The comments warned me: [The jig is up! Vanessa just texted Parker. She told him he’s Arthur’s son and they’re trapped in the study. She told him to cause a distraction so they can escape!] I didn’t blink. If Parker left, I still had Brooks and Zack. And their fathers were just arriving. The more, the merrier. Seeing Parker “forfeit,” Zack immediately stepped into the vacuum. “Callie, if Parker’s too weak, I’ll do it. I’ve always loved you. I’ll sign whatever prenup your mother wants. Your dad likes me best anyway—he’ll agree if it’s me.” Brooks sneered at him, stepping forward with his smooth, calculated charm. “Callie, I’m the more stable choice. I’ll take care of you and the company. You won’t regret picking me.” Take care of the company? You mean liquidate it, I thought. I looked at them with “tears” of gratitude. “I’m so moved. Dad! I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want Parker. I want Brooks!” Inside the room, the silence was broken by a roar. “No! Absolutely not!” My father’s voice sounded like it was tearing his throat. I didn’t stop. “If Brooks is a no, then I’ll take Zack! They both want to join the family, Dad! You can pick whichever one you like!” My father let out a scream that cracked his voice. “Not Brooks! And definitely not Zack!” I let a note of suspicion creep into my tone. “Dad, why are you being like this? You don’t like Parker, you don’t like Brooks, you don’t like Zack… do you have some kind of secret grudge against their fathers? Mr. Blackwood? Mr. Callahan?” My father’s voice was distorted with rage. “I! Do! Not!” “They are fine young men! Too fine for you! Callie, you don’t deserve them!” The hallway went dead silent. My mother’s face hardened into a mask of cold fury. Before she could speak, I touched her hand, signaling her to wait. I could see the other two fathers, Mr. Blackwood and Mr. Callahan, standing at the end of the corridor. They had heard everything. 4 Mr. Callahan, Zack’s father, strode forward. He was a rugged, broad-shouldered man who had been my mother’s high school sweetheart. He’d never quite gotten over her, and he’d spent the last twenty years hating my father for “winning” her. “Arthur, you son of a bitch,” Callahan growled. “What did you just say about Callie? She’s twice the person you are. My son would be lucky to have her!” My father had always been jealous of Callahan. But that hadn’t stopped him from seducing Callahan’s wife. Mr. Blackwood, Brooks’ father, was the calm one—the corporate lawyer type. He placed a hand on Callahan’s shoulder. “Arthur, let’s be civil. We’re here to talk about a merger of families. Open the door. Let’s not let things get ugly.” A few minutes of agonizing silence passed. Then, another thud from inside. “Callie!” my father shrieked. “The power! You did this, didn’t you?” The feed was a blur of text: [Arthur’s face is literally green. He knows all three husbands are standing outside.] [First mistress down, second mistress is hyperventilating. The third is trying to hide in the closet.] [This is peak cinema.] I called out to the door, sounding worried. “Dad, I’m so sorry! I think I accidentally tripped the main breaker while looking for my engagement ring. The staff is working on it! Is it too hot in there? Maybe you should just open the door and get some air?” Another thud. “Dad? Dad! Are you fainting? Oh my god, someone call 911! Tell the fire department we need a forced entry for a medical emergency!” Zack and Brooks turned pale. They shouted in unison: “No!” “Don’t call them!” Zack yelled. “I… I don’t want to marry her anymore!” They looked at each other, the realization of their mothers’ secret messages finally sinking in. Their faces turned a sickly shade of gray. Zack stepped in front of the door, shielding it. “Callie, you’re insane! You’re trying to kill your own father! I wouldn’t marry a monster like you if you were the last woman on earth!” Brooks joined him, shaking his head. “I thought you were just spoiled, Callie. But this? Disrespecting your father like this? I’m out. The deal is off.” My mother’s eyes were like chips of ice. To the world, it looked like her daughter was being rejected and insulted by three “suitors” at once. It was a public execution of the Wickham reputation. Mr. Callahan, seeing my mother’s pain, lost it. He grabbed Zack by the collar and threw him aside. “You shut your mouth! If Arthur won’t come out, I’ll bring him out!” He began to kick the door with the force of a sledgehammer. Mr. Montgomery, fueled by decades of repressed suspicion, grabbed a heavy bronze bust from a pedestal and began to ram the lock. Even the stoic Mr. Blackwood joined in, throwing his weight against the wood. The three sons scrambled to stop them, resulting in a chaotic, six-man brawl in the hallway. Punches were thrown, shirts were torn, but the door held. Until my father’s voice rang out one last time, high and desperate. “Callie! You ungrateful brat! Tell them to leave now, or I swear I will disown you! I will leave this family and you’ll never see me again!” My mother’s face went bloodless. Everyone stopped. They all turned to look at me. In that hollow, ringing silence, a soft click echoed. The backup battery had finally died. The door swung slowly open…

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The day before our wedding, Benjamin looked me in the eye and told me he’d fallen for someone else. He gave me a choice, as if he were presenting a business merger: we could call it off right now, and he’d handle the humiliating task of apologizing to our families; or, I could go through with it, become Mrs. Benjamin Thorne, and look the other way while he kept his mistress on the side. We had been childhood sweethearts for twenty years. I told myself it was just a mid-life crisis, a flicker of cold feet before the “forever” started. I chose to stay. I didn’t realize that after the wedding, Benjamin would turn into a hollowed-out “payment machine.” He paraded his mistress through the city’s most expensive galas, using wire transfers to buy my silence every time I dared to question him. When our son needed a bone marrow transplant, Benjamin backed out at the last minute because his mistress, Jade, told him she “liked her men strong and untainted by hospital wards.” He even had the audacity to corner Jade in the funeral home’s private lounge during my mother’s wake. I caught them, the air still thick with the scent of lilies and grief, and he just looked at me with bored, glassy eyes. “Is ten million enough this time?” he sneered, adjusting his tie. “Stop being so relentless, June. It’s exhausting.” I didn’t scream. I didn’t even cry then. I simply turned and walked away. I knelt by my mother’s fresh grave until my tear ducts ran dry and the earth under my fingernails turned to mud. As the sun began to crawl over the horizon, I pulled out my phone and sent Benjamin a single text: One hundred million. Wire it now. That payment would be our final goodbye. 1 My phone rang almost instantly. Before I could even say hello, Benjamin’s roar vibrated against my ear. “Have I spoiled you that much, June? A hundred million? Who the hell do you think you are—the IRS?!” “Your mother is already dead,” he continued, his voice dropping into a cruel, jagged edge. “What I do in a lounge at a funeral home doesn’t change that. You think a quick roll in the hay is worth that kind of payout? You’re delusional.” He hung up. Was I? Maybe. But even a hundred billion wouldn’t buy back my mother’s dignity or the life she lost. Especially since she died because of him. The wind at the cemetery howled, sharp enough to pierce through my coat and settle in my ribs. I looked at the photo of my mother on the headstone and reached out to stroke the cold marble. I could still hear the state trooper’s voice at the scene of the accident: “She was waiting at the red light, ma’am. Then, it was like she saw something—something that made her lose her mind. She just charged out into traffic… right on New Year’s Day. It’s a tragedy.” A tragedy. That was one word for it. She had seen Benjamin and Jade kissing in his car across the intersection. Why did she run? Why couldn’t she just let it go? I had told her I was going to leave him, that we were done. But her love for me was a fierce, protective thing. In that split second, she didn’t see a car; she saw a man destroying her daughter, and she wanted justice. Before the funeral, Benjamin had the nerve to bring Jade around. “Jade and I just got swept up in the moment,” he told me, as if he were discussing a weather pattern. “It’s not our fault your mother ran into the street. You can’t pin that on us.” “We’ll stick to the usual arrangement,” he added, his voice dripping with condescension. “Don’t make a scene. I’ll just send the transfer.” Every word was a scalpel, flaying me alive. I collapsed against the headstone, sobbing until the world went gray. “Mom… I’m so sorry… I should have listened to you and Dad. I never should have married him…” I cried until my body gave out. I fainted right there in the dirt. It wasn’t until a groundskeeper found me on his rounds that I was rushed to the ER. I was burning up with a 104-degree fever. The hospital couldn’t reach my next of kin, so they called the police. When the officers finally got Benjamin on the line, he didn’t even let them finish. “Cut the crap,” he snapped. “Eighty million. Not a cent more. Whether she’s sick or just throwing another tantrum, don’t call me again!” The nurses looked at each other, their faces filled with pity. I closed my eyes, the exhaustion pulling me under like an anchor. Fine. Eighty million. Let that be the price of my exit. 2 Two days later, I messaged him. I accepted the eighty million. He was suddenly jubilant, his tone through the phone almost lighthearted. “See? That’s my girl. We’re husband and wife, June. There’s no need to be so petty. You’re finally learning how the world works.” “No other wife gets the treatment you do,” he boasted. “Most women would kill for your bank account. If you keep being this obedient, maybe I’ll actually make it home for dinner once in a while.” It was breathtakingly shameful. If the seventeen-year-old Benjamin could hear himself now, he would have punched his future self in the face. Back then, he followed me around for five years, proposing a dozen times before I finally said yes. Under the Fourth of July fireworks years ago, he had whispered into my hair: “June, I love you. It’s only ever been you. I’ll never change.” I suppose the fireworks were too bright; they burnt out his heart, leaving nothing but smoke and ash where his promises used to be. I was done chasing the ghost of the boy I used to know. It wasn’t worth the cost of my soul anymore. But the universe wasn’t finished with me. The day after my mother’s funeral, my son, Jamie—who had been fighting leukemia for a year—passed away after a sudden, violent relapse. I ignored the doctors and burst into the morgue, clutching his small, cold body. “Jamie… baby, I’m so sorry!” “If your father wasn’t such a monster… if he had just given you what you needed…” I moved like a ghost through the next few days, handling the cremation and the paperwork alone. I came home carrying the small, hand-carved mahogany urn that held my son’s ashes, ready to pack my things and vanish. But Jade was already there. She had used her thumbprint to unlock my front door, and she stood in the foyer, eyeing me with a smirk. A year ago, I would have slapped her. Now, I just felt a profound, hollow numbness. Seeing no reaction, she pulled her silk strap down, revealing a fresh bite mark on her shoulder. “Benjamin wanted me here while you were out,” she purred. “He says a woman like me belongs in a house like this. He says you’ve become… well, a bit of a ‘downgrade.’ A bit of a drag.” A downgrade. I supposed I was. I didn’t know how to be a mistress in my own marriage. “Move,” I said, my voice flat. Jade blinked, then laughed. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Everyone you love is dead, June. You’re a charity case living on Benjamin’s mercy. You should be kissing my feet. If I get bored of you, you’ll be on the street by morning.” “Honestly,” she continued, stepping closer, “I think your mother died just to get away from you. She probably jumped in front of that car to get a payday. Like mother, like daughter—just a couple of gold-diggers—” Slap. I hit her with every ounce of grief and rage left in my body. “Say one more word about my mother,” I hissed, “and I will end you.” Jade touched her cheek, her eyes wide with shock. Then, with a screech, she lunged at me, clawing at my hair. We tumbled to the floor, a mess of silk and mourning black. That’s when Benjamin walked in. Jade immediately scrambled up and threw herself into his arms, sobbing hysterically. “Benjamin! She’s crazy! She tried to kill me! She said she was going to send me to join her mother!” Benjamin’s face went dark. He looked at me, bruised and disheveled on the floor, but his eyes held no concern. Only fury. “June, apologize to Jade. Right now.” I crawled to my feet, tilting my chin up. “Never.” The vein in Benjamin’s temple throbbed. He kicked out, his shoe connecting sharply with my shoulder, sending me stumbling back against the side table where I’d placed the urn. He snatched the mahogany box off the table. “No—!” My scream tore through the house. Benjamin didn’t hesitate. He raised his knee and slammed the box down against it. The wood splintered with a sickening crack, snapping in two. It felt like he had reached into my chest and snapped my heart in the exact same way. 3 I stared at the shards on the floor, my vision blurring into a haze of red. In my mind, I could hear my mother’s voice from the last few years, a constant, gentle warning: “June, stop holding on. Leave him. You don’t fit in his world anymore…” She was right. Why had I been so stubborn? Why had I traded decades of my life for this? The tears had dried up long ago. I knelt on the floor, numbly picking up the pieces of the urn, cradling them to my chest. But Benjamin wasn’t done. He ripped a shard from my hand and threw it across the room, grinding his heel into the remaining wood. “Get out!” I shrieked, lunging at him. He pushed me back, his foot catching me in the ribs. I coughed, the taste of copper filling my mouth, but my eyes were fixed on him with a pure, unadulterated hatred. “Don’t touch him! Get away from him!” Benjamin didn’t look guilty. He actually let out a low, mocking chuckle. “For God’s sake, June, stop the theatrics. It’s a box. A piece of wood. Do you really have to go this insane over a prop?” Jade leaned into him, pouting. “It’s so unfair. This psycho gets millions of dollars and gets to hit me? My face still hurts, Benjamin!” Benjamin wrapped an arm around her, kissing her temple. “You’re right. It’t not fair at all.” “She should be punished,” Jade whispered. “She should have to feel what I feel.” Benjamin looked down at me, his expression cold and predatory. “You heard her. Do you want to do it yourself, or do I have to help you?” I looked up at him, a single tear finally escaping. He leaned down, his smile a jagged line of mockery. “Don’t cry. I’ll pay you for the box, too. How much do you want this time?” My heart convulsed. A payment. Always a payment. That word had defined the last thousand days of my life. To him, there was no grief so deep, no insult so foul, and no trauma so scarring that it couldn’t be settled with a wire transfer. The humiliation of the day before our wedding flooded back. Back then, I didn’t understand. I fought him, I screamed, I begged. He didn’t care. He left me to face a hundred guests alone while he took Jade on a “vacation” to the Maldives. He stepped on my dignity and expected me to thank him for the designer shoes he bought me afterward. He sounded exactly the same now as he did then: “Stop making a scene, June. Tell me the number. I’m not the broke kid I used to be. You can’t enjoy the penthouse and the black card and then complain that I’m not ‘loyal’ enough for your fairy tale.” Why was I the one being “unreasonable” for expecting him to keep his word? I wiped my face and looked him dead in the eye. “One hundred million.” Benjamin burst out laughing. “Greed has to have a limit, June. A broken box? A hundred million? Is it made of human souls?” I gripped the splintered wood so hard the edges sliced into my palms. Blood dripped onto the floor. Jade chimed in with a giggle. “You’re not getting a hundred million, June. Benjamin just promised that money to me. We’re buying that estate in the Hamptons. The one that costs exactly a hundred million.” The last string of my sanity snapped. I threw myself at Jade. Benjamin grabbed my wrist and flung me away. My head slammed into the glass display case in the hallway. Shards rained down on me, and blood began to mask my vision. He didn’t even check to see if I was breathing. He just pulled Jade into a protective embrace. “Are you okay, baby? Did she touch you? The doctor said you’re most likely to conceive this month—I’m counting on you to give me a healthy heir.” I froze. I looked at them, the world spinning. Jade hid behind him, her voice trembling with fake fear. “Oh, Benjamin, she knows we’re trying for a baby because we don’t want a sick one like hers. She’s going to try to hurt me!” Benjamin turned to me, his eyes full of lethal warning. “I’ll give you your hundred million, June. On one condition: you stay the hell away from Jade.” So that was it. For Jade, he wouldn’t even haggle. I started to laugh. It was a hollow, jagged sound. Benjamin Thorne and his money—I didn’t want a single cent of it ever again. 4 My silence seemed to agitate him. “Don’t test my patience,” Benjamin snapped. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours to think about it. Think about the medical bills your son still has!” Your son. The irony was a physical weight. I laughed until I choked. I dragged myself up, gathered the broken pieces of the urn into a silk scarf, and pulled my suitcase toward the door. As the door clicked shut, I remembered the first time he’d walked me into this house. “June, this is our home. This is where we’ll grow old together. This house will be the witness to my eternal love for you.” Eternal was such a short time. I went back to the small apartment my mother had lived in. The moment I stepped inside, someone shoved me from behind. Three masked men carrying bats stormed in. They pinned me down before I could scream. “Mr. Thorne said you have two days to think,” one of them growled. “He doesn’t want you harassing Miss Jade in the meantime. We’re here to make sure you stay put.” “And,” another added, “if you don’t apologize in forty-eight hours, we’re authorized to ‘resolve’ the situation.” I screamed, but the blows fell like rain. For two days and two nights, I was treated like an animal. Beaten, mocked, degraded. Every time I tried to speak, they found a new way to punish me. I felt myself slipping away, and for the first time, I felt a strange, blissful sense of relief. If I died, maybe I could see the people who actually loved me again. Finally, the front door opened. A bucket of ice water was thrown onto my face, forcing me back to consciousness. Benjamin stood over me, looking down like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. “Well?” he asked, his voice cold. “Do we have a deal?” I nodded slowly, my neck stiff. He smirked, satisfied. “One hundred million is the final price. After this, I won’t give you another dime for anything involving Jade. If you act out again, I’ll—” “I don’t need a hundred million,” I rasped, cutting him off. He froze. “What?” “I said a thousand dollars is enough. Give me back the tuition money I spent to send you to college ten years ago. Give me that, and I will never mention Jade’s name again.” Benjamin’s face went ashen. His lip twitched. Enraged, he pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and hurled them at my face. “Fine! Take it! Take more than you asked for!” He signaled his men, kicked the door open, and stormed out. I picked up the bills one by one. I rolled them into a tight cylinder, struck a lighter, and watched them burn. I tossed the flaming paper into the air. It was beautiful. Much more beautiful than the fireworks we’d watched so long ago. I didn’t contact him for days. Slowly, Benjamin grew restless. Eventually, his ego couldn’t take the silence, and he went to the hospital to find me, certain I’d be at Jamie’s bedside. He found Jamie’s primary oncologist. “Is June in there with my son?” The doctor stared at him like he was a madman. “Mr. Thorne… your son passed away days ago. How could you not know?”

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I was sitting in the waiting room at the clinic, mindlessly scrolling through a viral Reddit thread titled: What is the most catastrophic mistake you’ve ever made at work? The top comment, pinned and glowing with tens of thousands of upvotes, was from a woman claiming to be the executive assistant to a tech CEO. “The day my boss went to the courthouse to get married, I accidentally submitted my own details on the marriage license instead of his fiancée’s. He was so terrified of making me feel bad for the screw-up that he just went with it. We’re legally married.” The replies were a bloodbath. People were accusing her of being a homewrecker, of orchestrating the whole thing to steal another woman’s life. She responded by posting a blurred photo of the official county marriage certificate. “The paperwork is as real as it gets. If anything, his ‘wife’ is the mistress! If I hadn’t been so worried about his paralyzed mother having no one to care for her, the other woman wouldn’t even have a place in his house. Now, my boss is so worried about me ruining my body with pregnancy that he’s making her go through the hell of IVF. When the baby is born, it’s going to call me Mom.” “Getting a free, live-in nurse and a literal human incubator just for the price of a fake ceremonial certificate? I’d say we won.” My blood turned to ice. I clicked on the photo, zooming in on the blurred edges. My pupils dilated. The man in the photo, partially obscured but unmistakable in his custom Tom Ford suit, was Chris. My husband. The man I had supposedly married just months ago. Before I could even draw a breath, the clerk at the records window slid my documents back across the counter. “Ma’am, it’s a federal offense to present forged legal documents. Are you absolutely certain this is the certificate you meant to hand me?” … 1 I walked through my front door, the fake ceremonial certificate clutched in my trembling hand, my mind a hollow, echoing chamber. Chris’s mother lay in the makeshift hospital bed we’d set up in the guest room. Since her massive stroke left her bedridden and nonverbal, the room had taken on a permanent, suffocating odor of stale air and bodily decay. Normally, I would have immediately rolled up my sleeves, drawn a basin of warm water, and gently cleaned her. But today, I was paralyzed. I stood in the doorway, glued to the hardwood floor, unable to pull myself back into the present. The scene at the county clerk’s office played on a loop behind my eyes. I had pressed my hands against the glass partition, begging the woman to run it through the system one more time. “…A fake? I got this at a courthouse. How could it possibly be a fake?” “Can you just check again? Maybe there’s a glitch—” The clerk had cut me off, her patience entirely depleted. She pointed a manicured finger at the embossed seal. “Mrs. Hayes—excuse me, Ms. Joanna. The notary seal on this is crooked. It’s a novelty stamp. It holds zero legal weight. You can buy a pack of these blanks online for ten bucks. Please, take this home and look for your real paperwork. You’re holding up the line.” I leaned heavily against the hallway wall, staring down at the thick, textured paper. There were a hundred ways bureaucratic paperwork could get messed up, but taking the wrong document wasn’t one of them. The day we got married, I had placed this certificate in our fireproof safe like it was the Holy Grail. It hadn’t seen the light of day until this morning. Driven by a frantic, suffocating panic, I drove straight to Chris’s corporate headquarters. I didn’t even make it past the lobby security gates. “Ma’am, do you have an appointment? You can’t just walk in,” the guard barked, stepping in front of the turnstiles. I scrambled to pull out my ID, my voice cracking as I told him I was Chris’s wife. I expected him to nod and swipe his keycard. Instead, his lips curled into a cruel, mocking sneer. “You? The CEO’s wife? Have you looked in a mirror lately, lady?” He looked me up and down—taking in my practical sneakers, my exhausted, makeup-free face, my oversized sweater stained faintly with bleach. Then, he pointed across the sprawling, glass-walled atrium toward the private elevators. “Everyone in this building knows the boss and his wife. They’re a power couple. Inseparable.” I followed his finger. In the distance, waiting for the elevator, were two figures standing so close the air between them seemed to crackle. The taut string holding my sanity together snapped. The woman leaning her head against Chris’s shoulder wasn’t just anybody. It was his executive assistant, Mia. My fingers shook so violently I could barely unlock my phone. I pulled up the Reddit thread again. The comment section was a war zone of insults directed at her, but her replies were chillingly serene. “You guys are just bitter. He’s been tired of her for years. Why do you think he rigged that audit to get her fired so I could take her job?” “He tried a labor-simulation machine with me once and immediately decided I was never going to endure childbirth. That’s why he took her to the fertility clinic instead.” “Love is about actions. She’s too busy scrubbing toilets and playing house to realize she’s sharing a bed with a king. She brought this on herself.” A violent wave of nausea hit me. My stomach violently rebelled, and the coldness spreading from my chest reached the tips of my fingers. So, my sudden termination from the firm wasn’t a tragic misunderstanding. And Chris changing his mind about being child-free wasn’t some beautiful evolution of our love. It was all for her. His shiny, new assistant. All the puzzle pieces that had kept me up at night suddenly clicked into a horrifying, grotesque picture. But the tragedy was… I wasn’t always just the woman scrubbing the toilets. 2 When Chris and I first met, I was the golden girl of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Chris was a notorious playboy, a trust-fund kid who treated life like a casino. Yet, it was this man who followed me around campus, practically begging for my attention for six solid years. When I finally said yes, he treated me like a deity. He knew I loved venture capital, so he built a boutique investment wing at his firm just for me to run. I had always been physically fragile, prone to severe bouts of illness, so he was the one who suggested we remain child-free. He couldn’t bear the thought of putting my body through the trauma. Back then, we were atmospheric. We breathed the same air, shared the same relentless ambition. Until his mother had the stroke. She woke up trapped in her own body. To save Chris the emotional agony of strangers bathing his mother, I stepped up. I became the part-time nurse. I ran the VC division by day. On my lunch breaks, I drove home at breakneck speed to feed her pureed food. At night, I rushed back to sponge-bathe her. Sometimes, at two in the morning, I was awake changing soiled sheets. My conversations with Chris dwindled to logistical updates. And then came the day I was fired. The board claimed I had made a catastrophic error on a multi-million-dollar risk assessment. Chris came home, looking absolutely wrecked, and told me his hands were tied. He had to let me go to save the company. I was devastated, but I believed him. I loved him. Later, I heard through the grapevine that a bright, bubbly intern had taken over my office. People said she reminded them of a younger me. But I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to dwell on it. Keeping Chris’s mother alive consumed every ounce of my humanity. Gradually, my world shrank to the size of a kitchen and a sickroom. The sharp, brilliant edges of my mind were dulled by laundry detergent and exhaustion. Chris stopped coming home for anniversaries. He was always “closing a deal.” Then, a few months ago, he suddenly said he wanted a baby. I was thrilled, yet deeply confused. I had no surviving family of my own, so the idea of creating a blood relative was an ache I had long suppressed. But given his previous terror regarding my health, why the sudden change of heart? I pushed the doubts away. Seeing the desperate, hopeful look in his eyes, I agreed to start IVF. Through the endless, agonizing rounds of hormone injections, the brutal egg retrievals, the cramping, and the invasive procedures, he was never there. He always had a sudden, unavoidable crisis at the office. I never understood how a CEO could be so busy that he couldn’t spare a single hour for his wife. Now, staring at the screen, the truth was a physical blow. He was busy. He was busy building a beautiful, vibrant life in a home that didn’t include me. Loving him had cost me my career, my identity, and my pride. And now, I realized the child growing inside me wasn’t even meant to be mine. I was just the surrogate. A sharp cramp ripped through my lower abdomen. I stumbled into the lobby restroom, locked myself in a stall, and dry-heaved over the toilet until I tasted bile. My phone lit up on the tiles. The Reddit user had posted a new update. “Oops, guys, I think I messed up. I was trying to change my boss’s desktop wallpaper and accidentally leaked a folder of photos and videos to the company-wide server. It’s a bunch of really intimate pictures of that woman.” My breath hitched. I opened Twitter. My face. My body. Splashed across the screen. The trending hashtag was already climbing: #ChrisCEO Leaked Scandal. Panic seized me. I went to dial Chris’s number, to beg him to take it down, but before I could press call, his company’s official PR account released a statement. “The rumors circulating online regarding our CEO are entirely fabricated. The explicit images in question are AI-generated deepfakes created by a Ms. Joanna as a delusion. Our legal department has issued cease-and-desist letters. Any further distribution will be met with severe legal action.” AI-generated delusions. My eyes burned so fiercely they blurred. Those photos were real. They were taken in our bedroom. He had coaxed me into taking them, whispering about how beautiful I was. On the Reddit thread, Mia posted two new photos. “The boss just bought me two limited-edition Birkins to make up for the stress! Don’t worry about me, guys.” In the corner of the photo, you could clearly see their hands tightly intertwined. A bitter, broken laugh scraped its way out of my throat. I opened my medical app, navigated to the clinic’s page, and booked an appointment for a surgical abortion. We’re done, Chris. We end here. 3 When Chris finally came home, I was standing in the bedroom, zipping up a suitcase. Mia was right beside him, draped in his oversized charcoal blazer, tucked safely under his arm. Chris surveyed the chaotic state of the house, his brow furrowing in irritation. “What is that smell?” he demanded. “What have you been doing all day? You can’t even keep the house decent?” I looked past him to the bedroom wall, where a pile of his mother’s soiled, yellowing sheets sat waiting for the wash. My chest felt hollow. I used to do the horrific, degrading work that professional nurses quit over because I loved him. Now, looking at my cracked, calloused hands, and then at Mia’s flawless, manicured fingers, I just wanted to scream. Why? He got to play the dashing billionaire with her, sipping champagne in high-rises, while I was left to rot in the mud, my light slowly being snuffed out. Mia gave Chris’s sleeve a tiny, calculated tug. Immediately, the harsh lines of his face softened. That micro-interaction—the invisible tether between them—made me feel like a homeless person who had accidentally wandered into their pristine living room. Mia stepped forward, her face a mask of perfectly calibrated remorse. “Joanna, I am so, so sorry,” she said, her voice dripping with fake empathy. “Chris missed your doctor’s appointment today because he was protecting me. Please, don’t be mad at him. Blame me.” She sighed, touching her collarbone. “I ran into a total creep on the way home. He was taking non-consensual photos of women. Thank God Chris was there to stop him, otherwise, if those pictures got out, I’d just die of embarrassment.” She paused, letting the silence stretch before gasping softly. “Oh… I’m so sorry. I forgot about your photos…” Chris gave a dismissive, easy laugh and walked over, trying to take my arm. “She’s new. She doesn’t know when to stop talking. Don’t take it out on her,” he murmured. “The photo leak was an accident. Legal is handling it. The internet has a short memory; everyone will forget about it in a week.” There was no horror in his voice. No rage that his wife was being subjected to a mass digital violation. He was just running damage control for Mia. I stared at him, my eyes dead. “Who leaked them, Chris? Have you found the IP address?” He flinched. Just for a microsecond. “Some idiot in IT probably got on my laptop by mistake. Why are you being so hysterical about this? Everyone is stressed.” I let out a harsh, metallic laugh and shifted my gaze to Mia. “Is that so? Well, I am a hysterical woman. I won’t be able to sleep until the police investigate. Mia just said she’d die if her privacy was violated. Why am I expected to just swallow it?” Chris shifted his weight, smoothly stepping between Mia and me, his eyes darkening with warning. “Joanna, stop being difficult. Mia is different. And frankly, don’t you bear some responsibility for those pictures getting out in the first place?” A physical pain lanced through my chest, sharp and breathless. “You took those pictures! You begged me to—” “Yes, I took them,” he snapped, his voice turning cold. “But if you had an ounce of self-respect, you never would have let me.” I stared into his eyes—eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon. Now, there was nothing but glacial contempt. When he wanted them, it was romance. Now that he needed to protect Mia, I was just a shameless whore. Perhaps it was a blessing he hadn’t shown up at the clinic today. It made cutting the cord so much easier. He finally noticed the luggage at my feet. His frown deepened. “Where are you going?” I looked away, staring blankly at the wall. “To the hospital. I need to stay for a few days.” A flash of genuine panic crossed his face. He suddenly realized what he’d been saying to a pregnant woman. “Is it the baby? Is something wrong?” he asked, stepping toward me, his voice frantic. “I didn’t mean to miss today, Jo. I swear. The board has been breathing down my neck. Once the new product launch is done tomorrow, I am all yours. I’ll take a month off.” I didn’t want to hear another syllable of his lies. I snapped the handle of the suitcase up. “The baby is fine.” It’s just us that’s dead. 4 Driven by a sudden, desperate guilt, Chris grabbed the handle of my suitcase. “Jo, let me take this. I promise, I’ll be right by your side for this.” I opened my mouth to tell him not to touch my things, but he was already out the door, carrying my bag down the stairs and shoving it into the trunk of his Mercedes. Mia stepped into my space, her hand gripping my forearm with surprising, painful strength. “Yeah, Jo. He cares about you so much. Stop being a bitch and let him make it up to you,” she whispered, her sweet voice dropping into a venomous hiss. I watched Chris disappear down the stairwell. I pulled my arm out of her grip and started to walk past her. Before my foot could hit the first step, she violently shoved me between the shoulder blades. I didn’t even have time to scream. I hit the concrete landing hard, my knees and shoulder taking the brutal impact. Pain exploded in my lower back, radiating through my pelvis. The color drained from the world. A heavy, suffocating weight dropped onto me. A massive man, reeking of stale cigarettes, straddled my legs. He was holding up a smartphone, the recording light blinking red. “Photos are boring,” he grunted, his meaty hands grabbing the collar of my sweater. “A live video is gonna fetch way more money. Gotta hand it to Ms. Mia, she knows exactly what the internet wants.” Years ago, I used to kickbox. I might have fought him off. But the fall had triggered something agonizing in my abdomen. My uterus was cramping so violently I was gasping for air, the pain rendering my limbs entirely useless. He yanked at my clothes, the sound of tearing fabric echoing in the stairwell. “Help…” I wheezed. The stairwell was pitch black. Through the narrow, dirty window, I could see the street below. A thunderstorm had rolled in. Chris was standing by his car, holding an umbrella, looking impatiently up at our building. A surge of adrenaline hit my system. I opened my mouth to scream his name. Then I saw the lobby doors open. Mia ran out into the rain and threw herself into Chris’s arms. He didn’t hesitate. He dropped his umbrella, tilted her chin up, and kissed her deeply, hungrily, against the hood of the car. The roaring thunder drowned out the sound of my clothes ripping. As the man dragged me by my hair toward the darker corner of the landing, I blindly jammed my thumb against the power button of my phone, triggering the emergency SOS shortcut. It was programmed to call Chris. The line connected. “Help… Chris, please—” I gagged as the man’s hand clamped over my mouth. Through the speaker, Chris’s voice was thick, husky. In the background, I could hear the wet, unmistakable sound of skin slapping skin, and a woman’s breathless moans. “Jo, I… I got pulled into an emergency,” Chris panted into the phone. “Just take an Uber to the hospital. I’ll come the second I’m done. I promise.” There was a pause, followed by a sharp intake of breath and a muffled squeal from Mia. I bit down on the man’s hand as hard as I could, screaming into the phone, “Chris! Help me! He’s—” “Jesus, Jo, I said I’m busy!” Chris snapped. “I’m hanging up. I’ll call you later.” Click. He was busy. He was so incredibly busy. The man slammed my head against the concrete. Warm blood trickled down my temple, pooling in my ear. The cold stairwell air hit my exposed skin as my sweater was ripped away entirely. The physical pain was blinding, but it was nothing compared to the absolute, hollow void opening up inside my chest. When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at the harsh, fluorescent ceiling of a hospital room. My phone, cracked but functioning, lit up on the bedside table. A notification from Reddit. A photo of a rumpled hotel bed. A woman’s bare shoulder, a man’s muscular arm, their hands intertwined. It was undeniable. “See? I just have to snap my fingers, and he drops everything—even his pregnant wife—to be with me. His massive product launch is tomorrow. Once it goes live, our names will be etched into the company’s history together. It’s his anniversary gift to me.” I screenshotted the post. I opened my email and attached it to a thread, along with the IP logs I had hired a private investigator to pull weeks ago, and sent it all to the chairman of Chris’s board of directors, the lead investors, and the top five tech journalists in the city. Once this hit the wire, tomorrow’s product launch would be a massacre. Chris’s career would be reduced to ash, and Mia would face federal corporate espionage charges. I hit Send. I didn’t feel a flicker of hesitation. Then, I buzzed the nurse. I asked her to help me arrange a courier. I put the fake novelty marriage certificate into a heavy envelope. And beside it, secured in a sterile medical specimen jar, I placed the remains of the embryo I had lost on the concrete stairs. I sent it all to Chris’s office. I discharged myself against medical advice. I had no luggage. I walked out into the cold Chicago air and got into a cab headed for O’Hare. I rolled down the window and tossed my SIM card onto the highway, watching it vanish into the slipstream. As the city skyline shrank in the rearview mirror, a profound, terrifying stillness settled over me. I hope you love your gift, Chris.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “416041”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The night we were both poisoned, the first dose of the antidote went up for auction at an underground gala. In a move of reckless devotion, Cassie Beaumont placed a “blank-check bid”—the kind of high-stakes power move that signaled to everyone in the room that she would pay any price to win. Everyone whispered that she did it for me. “Obviously, she’s saving Ben,” they murmured. “She worships the ground he walks on.” But under the cold glare of the chandeliers, Cassie didn’t even look my way. Instead, she took the vial, tilted back Damian Cole’s head, and pressed her lips to his, forcing the medicine into his mouth with a lingering, desperate kiss. When the second item—an ancient signet ring rumored to have neutralizing properties—appeared on the block, Cassie did it again. She outbid everyone, her eyes hard and focused. But when she spoke, she didn’t call my name. She announced to the stunned crowd that the ring was her engagement gift to Damian. The third and final hope was the Beaumont Covenant—an ancient family ledger. According to legend, if a name was inscribed upon its first page with the blood of the lineage, the family’s luck—and health—would be shared. I was coughing, my vision blurring with internal hemorrhaging, and I begged her to use her influence to secure it for me. Cassie checked her accounts. She looked at me with a mixture of boredom and irritation. “Ben, I’ve got exactly one dollar left in the liquid assets account. It’s not enough to play the hero for you tonight.” “Cassie, I’m dying,” I wheezed, blood staining my teeth. “This toxin isn’t fatal, Ben. Stop being so dramatic. You’re embarrassing yourself.” She used that final dollar to secure the Beaumont Covenant in a symbolic closing bid. Then she walked away with Damian, leaving me on the cold floor of the auction house. As the lights flickered out and the room emptied, a voice echoed in my head—the “System,” the strange entity that had plucked me out of my life six months ago and dropped me into this nightmare future. A ring—the very one Cassie had bought for Damian—clattered onto the floor in front of me, stolen back by the entity. “Ben,” the voice hissed. “You chose to jump ahead to see how your ‘perfect’ love story ended. Are you finally ready to give up and go back?” I wiped the blood from my chin, my hand trembling as I reached for the ring. “No,” I whispered, my voice raspy but certain. “I’m not going back to the past.” “Then what?” “Where is your Master? The girl you said I was destined for? Tell her I’ll marry her.” 1 The System’s voice erupted in a jubilant shout. “Hold on tight, Ben! I’m going back six months to tell her to start the wedding preparations!” And then, the presence vanished. The moment I slid the signet ring onto my finger, a cool wave washed through my veins. The agonizing fire of the poison began to recede, leaving behind a dull, manageable ache. I sat alone in the hollowed-out silence of the auction house and laughed—a bitter, hollow sound. Before this “glitch” in time, I had been like everyone else: I believed Cassie Beaumont would never love another man. I thought we were endgame. But six months in the future, everything had rotted. I managed to stumble out of the building, my body still weak. I was heading for my car when the screech of tires tore through the night. A black SUV barreled around the corner, aiming straight for me. The impact was a blur of steel and glass, throwing me into the darkness. I don’t know how long I was out. When I finally forced my eyes open, I realized my hand—the one wearing the ring—was pinned under the SUV’s tire. The driver was slowly oscillating the car, crushing my fingers, rolling over the bone again and again. The ring was gone. Two men stood a few feet away, leaning against the hood and smoking. “Does the boss actually love this guy or what?” one asked, flicking ash. “She told us to make sure he hurts, but warned us not to break a single bone. That’s some high-level mental gymnastics.” “Eh, don’t overthink it. Six months ago, she was obsessed with him. Then Damian Cole showed up.” I had jumped straight from six months ago to this moment, leaving a half-year gap in my memory. But as they spoke, the missing pieces began to flood my brain like a dark tide. Half a year ago, Damian had been hired as Cassie’s personal assistant. Cassie, famous for her icy professionalism and singular devotion to me, suddenly couldn’t be without him. I remembered his first challenge. It was at a private club, a celebration for a major merger. Damian had gotten “drunk” and stripped his shirt off in front of the board members, sprawling on a velvet sofa and declaring he’d have Cassie by the end of the night. “Hey, Ben,” he’d smirked at me. “If we both stood naked in front of her right now, who do you think she’d touch first?” I had ignored him, confident in our five-year history. Cassie had looked at him, her face dark with feigned anger. “Damian, if you were the last man on earth, I wouldn’t be interested. Get dressed or you’re fired.” The room had roared with laughter. They laughed at his audacity; they laughed because they knew Cassie loved me “to death.” But no one noticed that later that night, Cassie’s designer coat was draped over Damian’s bare shoulders because he “refused” to put his shirt back on. And no one noticed that when I shivered because the AC was too low, Cassie didn’t even glance my way. Looking back now, I realized I had lost that night. Even if I went back to the past, I couldn’t change a heart that had already started to stray. Why go back and suffer through the slow rot twice? I tried to pull my hand out from under the tire. The movement caught their attention. “Easy there, Mr. Mercer. Don’t struggle. This little love tap won’t kill you.” The ring needed three days to fully neutralize the toxin. I looked at them, my voice cold. “Where is the ring?” One of them tapped his phone screen. “Boss has it. She’s at the family estate right now, using it to propose to Damian in front of the whole Beaumont clan.” Five years. Every time I had asked to meet her parents, Cassie had an excuse. The timing wasn’t right. Her father was too traditional. Her mother was ill. Damian had been around for six months, and she had already brought him home. I stared at the screen, at the blurry image of the Beaumont Manor. I recognized that place. I had been there before. 2 The men’s phone buzzed. It was Cassie. Her voice came through the speaker, sounding languid and satisfied—the voice of a woman who had just stepped out of a very active bedroom. “The proposal is done. Take Ben to the ER. And make sure there’s no permanent damage to his hand. I don’t want him scarred.” As they drove me to the hospital, the two thugs couldn’t stop gossiping. “I swear, the Boss is a total psycho,” one muttered. “Total internal conflict.” “The guys guarding the penthouse said she had them run out for protection seven times tonight. Seven. They said the bed sounded like it was going to collapse. The noise was insane.” “Hey, Mr. Mercer,” the driver called out, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Rumor was the Boss never looked at another guy because she only wanted you. But my boys said she never once asked for protection when she was with you. You got some kind of problem downstairs?” I sat in the back, my hands bound, and let out a soft, dry laugh. Cassie always told me she liked “structure.” She said our love was too pure for animalistic urges. I had suppressed every desire, followed her “rules,” thinking I was being the perfect partner. But the memories were still flooding back. I remembered the night after the club incident. The Cassie who said she wouldn’t touch Damian if he were the last man on earth had “accidentally” gotten drunk and knocked on his hotel room door. In my memory, I was standing in the hallway, listening to her breathless cries through the door—the sounds of a woman begging for more, while Damian whispered for her to try a different position. I finally understood. Cassie liked “rules.” But she craved Damian’s wreckage. Tears soaked my collar. The man in the passenger seat turned around. “Damn, Mr. Mercer. You crying? We didn’t even hit you that hard. It was just a little pressure on the hand.” They did a hack job at the hospital—dabbed some antiseptic on my crushed hand, wrapped it in a thick, bulky bandage, and dumped me at the “marital home.” It was a house Cassie had chosen and I had decorated. It was supposed to be our sanctuary. But as I walked in, Cassie stepped out of the master bedroom, pressing a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she whispered. “He’s sleeping.” The heart I thought was already broken shattered into even smaller pieces. “My mother likes Damian,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact as she walked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. “She wouldn’t approve of us.” “So you’re marrying him?” my voice was a ghost of itself. “It’s a strategy, Ben. I marry him, we have a kid, my mother gets her heir and stops breathing down my neck. But the role of ‘Beaumont Son-in-Law’… that will always belong to you in my heart.” She didn’t even look at my bandaged arm. She had said these things a dozen times in the last six months of the timeline I was now remembering. I had gone from shock to screaming to numbness. I had even tried to break up with her. And the night I tried to leave, Damian had poisoned my drink. I remembered stumbling to the auction to find the cure, only to see Damian backstage, swallowing a vial of the same poison with a smirk. He had leaned his head on Cassie’s shoulder, whining like a child. “Now I’m sick too, Cassie-baby. Who are you going to save?” And Cassie had pulled him into her arms, kissing his forehead. “You, you idiot. Always you.” Her assistant had whispered, “Ma’am, there are three doses. You can save both.” Cassie had glared at him. “No. I won’t risk Damian’s recovery. Give him all three.” The memory was a jagged blade. Cassie turned back to me now, her expression softening into that fake pity I had come to loathe. “Ben, the poisoning… Damian didn’t mean it. He’s just impulsive. He’s so insecure about us that he does stupid things. Don’t hold it against him, okay? As an apology, I’m not going to let you break up with me.” She pointed to the Beaumont Covenant lying open on the table. “Our names will be on that ledger eventually. Want to see? After the wedding with Damian, I’ll find a way to write yours in next to mine.” I walked over and glanced at the ledger. I froze for a second. I didn’t need to wait. My name was already on the first page. 3 The Beaumont Covenant was a relic—a heavy, leather-bound volume worth more than the house we were standing in. They say the couple whose names are inscribed together on the first page are bound by soul and fate. Damian had orchestrated the auction to flaunt Cassie’s choice. He thought he had won. I closed the book and handed it back to her. I walked to the guest room, grabbed my passport and my birth certificate, and headed for the door. Cassie caught my arm, her voice laced with genuine confusion. “Ben, stop this. I’m not saying I won’t marry you eventually. I just need to give my parents what they want first. Stay. You’re still my fiancé. You’re always complaining that I never take you to the family estate—well, I’m taking you there in a few days for the gala. Isn’t that what you wanted?” She tightened her grip. “But if you walk out that door now, you’re nothing. You’ll never set foot in the Beaumont world again. Think carefully.” I didn’t think. I just walked. If I stayed a second longer, I would have vomited. For five years, she’d kept me in the shadows. “The estate is too suffocating, Ben,” she’d say. “My parents are building a custom wing for us. We’ll go when it’s ready.” It took Damian four months to dismantle that lie. I remembered the day at the office when Damian was handing out gift cards and expensive champagne to the staff. Someone asked how a “simple assistant” could afford it. Damian had looked directly at my office door and shouted, “The Beaumonts gave me a huge welcome-to-the-family bonus! They even let me move into the new wing they built for the ‘future son-in-law.’ They’re so sweet, I just had to share the love!” The entire floor went silent. Later, I heard him whispering in the breakroom to a group of gossiping interns. “The rules aren’t that bad,” he’d giggled. “The new wing is huge, but I got scared the first night, so Cassie stayed and slept with me for three days. She’s very… respectful of my needs.” He had walked into my office later with a coffee, leaning over my desk so I could see the dark, purple bruises on his neck. “Ben, the Beaumont estate is massive. I screamed so loud in that new bed and no one heard a thing.” He smirked. “Cassie said next time she’ll take me to every room in the house. She likes the variety. Oh, wait—you’ve never been there, have you? You probably don’t even know how to make her vocalize like that. Want me to record it for you?” I had stood up, picked up the hot coffee, and poured the entire cup over his head. “No need for a recording, Damian. Let’s hear you scream right now.” The ice and heat sent him into a screeching fit. I knew the noise would bring Cassie. I just didn’t expect what happened next. She had kicked the door open, seen Damian dripping in coffee, and didn’t ask a single question. She grabbed him by the waist, comforted him, and then looked at her security team. “Take Ben to the executive washroom,” she’d said, her voice like dry ice. “Hold his head under the water until he cools off. He clearly needs to wake up.” They had held me under for four hours. 4 That night, she had apologized. She claimed she didn’t know the guards would be “so rough” and fired them as a show of good faith. But from that day on, she stopped hiding Damian. On my birthday, she was at a theme park with him. Photos of them kissing on the Ferris wheel went viral. On our anniversary, she was teaching him how to swim. I waited at a restaurant for six hours while Damian posted a photo of them wrapped in a single towel. “My girl, my coach. Guess what I learned today?” Then came the text: “Ben, make sure they change the water in the pool. We couldn’t help ourselves. We didn’t leave the water all afternoon.” I had sent the screenshot to Cassie, demanding an explanation. Her reply? “Damian is just looking out for you. He knows you like the water clean.” A cold breeze snapped me back to the present. I shook the memories out of my head. The next morning, I woke up in a hotel. A courier delivered an invitation: a gala at the Beaumont estate. My name had been handwritten over a white-out smudge. I laughed and tossed it in the trash. I was going to that gala, but I didn’t need her invitation. I would be entering as someone else entirely. I cut my hair, changed my style, and ditched the soft, pastel shirts Cassie liked. I was halfway to the estate when the black SUV appeared again. The same two men looked at me grimly. “Sorry, Mr. Mercer. Boss’s orders. Again.” “Why now?” “Damian’s having a ‘relapse.’ The toxin is acting up. She says you need to come and apologize for ‘stealing’ the ring at the auction.” When the car pulled up to the Beaumont Manor, I didn’t fight. I looked at the towering stone pillars and smiled. Before I could even take a breath of the air, Cassie grabbed me by the collar and dragged me toward the drawing room. She threw me onto the floor at Damian’s feet. “You coward!” she screamed. “You took the ring! If Damian suffers because you stole his medicine, I will ruin you! Get on your knees and apologize!” The impact with the floor caused a sickening crack in my wrist. A lightning bolt of agony shot up my arm, but I didn’t make a sound. I bit my lip until it bled. Damian, meanwhile, was holding a pair of desk scissors to his own throat, wailing like a sacrificial lamb. “Kill me, Cassie! It hurts so much! I can’t take the pain!” Cassie’s eyes went red with panic. She snatched the scissors from him and, in a fit of mindless rage, flung them toward me. I ducked, but the blade sliced deep into my forearm. Blood sprayed across the white rug. Seeing my blood, Damian suddenly calmed down. A glint of triumph flashed in his eyes. He looked up at Cassie, pouting. “Cassie-baby… I just remembered. Doesn’t your family have that magic ledger? If we write our names in it, the legend says my pain will vanish and we’ll be bonded forever.” Cassie hesitated. She hadn’t written his name in the Covenant yet. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she couldn’t. The ledger only accepted those of the bloodline or their officially sanctioned spouses. But she was desperate. “Tonight is the family gala anyway,” she declared. “I’ll announce our engagement and we’ll perform the blood-oath on the Covenant.” Damian couldn’t wait. Before the patriarch of the family—the legendary Alistair Beaumont—even arrived, Cassie stood before the gathered elite. She loudly announced that she had broken up with me months ago, that I was fired from the company, and that Damian Cole was her future husband. I stood in the corner, clutching my bleeding arm, watching the circus. Cassie gave me one last look of disgust, then took Damian’s hand. Together, they flipped open the Beaumont Covenant. But the moment the page turned, Cassie’s eyes went wide. She stared at the first page, her face draining of all color. She looked at me, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Before she could speak, the heavy oak doors swung open. Alistair Beaumont entered. The old man marched onto the stage, and without a word, delivered two thunderous slaps to Cassie’s face. “You disgraceful girl!” he roared, his voice trembling with fury. He pointed a shaking finger at me. “Do you have any idea who he is?”

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After Margot’s affair came to light and she crawled back to our marriage, I gave her three chances. Three opportunities to meet with that boy and cut the cord for good. She made the most of every second. She took him to dinners, spent hours at his side in pottery classes, and stayed overnight at the hospital when he claimed he was ill. When she finally returned for the last time, she purged every trace of him—every gift, every photo—and reached for my hand with a look of practiced sincerity. “Trust me, Nick,” she whispered. “I’ll never betray you again.” I almost believed her. Until the night my car collided with his. As I sat dazed behind the wheel, the boy—sobbing and frantic—called for help. I didn’t hear his voice; I heard Margot’s best friend through the car’s Bluetooth speakers. “Margot, don’t go,” her friend warned. “You’ve used up all three of your passes. If you go to him now, Nick is definitely going to file for divorce.” Then came Margot’s voice, cold and brimming with a terrifying sense of security. “Nick was a foster kid. He spent his whole life with no one to love him, no one to care if he lived or died. He’s more afraid of being alone than he is of me. He won’t leave.” She paused, her tone dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Just keep this between us. I know what I’m doing. This is the last time. I promise.” I lay back against the seat, blood trickling down my face, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the winter air. The crying boy in the other car, the one she was so desperately trying to protect, was the very same ghost I thought she’d exorcised. Twenty minutes later, Margot—the woman who had sworn her life to our home—raced into the emergency room like her world was ending. 1 Through the thin fabric of the hospital curtain, I heard Margot’s voice, a jagged mix of heartbreak and fury. “Why didn’t you call me immediately? Do you think the number I gave you is just for show?” Toby, the boy, propped himself up, his face a mask of calculated innocence. “You said your husband only gave you three chances. I was scared…” “Three chances? To hell with that!” Margot’s voice rose, thick with emotion. “If you need me, you call me. Do you have any idea what I’d do if something happened to you?” I listened in the silence of the adjacent bay, my vision blurring. When the crash happened, I was the one who was conscious. I was the one who called her first. I called twenty-six times. She didn’t pick up once. Toby called once, and she answered within seconds. She knew I had no one. She assumed I would simply wait, as I always did, for the crumbs of her attention. The nurse walked in to change my dressings, pulling back the curtain. The white-hot rage on Margot’s face—directed at the “other driver”—froze the moment she saw me. She blinked, her brain struggling to catch up. But the first words out of her mouth weren’t Are you okay? or Thank God you’re alive. “Did you stalk him?” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “Did you crash into him on purpose just to see if I’d show up?” I stared at her. Ever since I’d discovered the affair, she had guarded Toby’s identity like a state secret. “His family is struggling,” she’d said. “If you drag him into our mess, it’ll ruin his life.” Yet, she had no problem broadcasted my history as a lonely orphan to everyone in her social circle. She wanted the world to know how much I “needed” her, how much of a charity case our marriage truly was. I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat and forced a hollow laugh. “That’s four, Margot. You broke the deal.” When I had first demanded a divorce, she had stood on the balcony of our penthouse, threatening to jump. “If you leave me, I’m done! You’re the only person I’ve ever loved!” I had softened. I had been weak. I gave her those three chances to wrap up her “affair.” I had been naive enough to think I was winning the war for my own marriage. Today, the world had decided to slap me awake. “Does it really matter if it’s three or four?” Margot hissed, leaning in so Toby wouldn’t hear. “He was in an accident. Are you really so heartless that you’d expect me to just leave him here?” I looked at her. What was there left to say? Should I tell her that Toby had walked away with a scraped knee, while my shoulder required ten stitches? Should I tell her I was the one who called the ambulance for both of us? Toby called out from the other side of the curtain. “Margot? Is the police report okay? Am I going to have to pay for the damage?” She rushed back to his side, her voice instantly turning into a soothing coo. “Don’t worry about it, honey. The other driver is fine. Just focus on resting.” The other driver. I lay there and smiled. My shoulder burned, but it was nothing compared to the slow, agonizing death of my heart. Margot’s only act of “mercy” was signing a stack of hospital forms on my bedside table while I drifted in and out of a feverish sleep. If she had bothered to look—truly look—at what she was signing, she would have seen the document tucked between the bills. My signature was already on it. The petition for divorce. 2 That night, my wound became infected. My fever spiked to 104 degrees. I pulled myself out of bed, shivering and delirious, to find a nurse and settle the bill. As I stood at the station, I heard the staff whispering. “The guy in the VIP suite only has a few bruises, but his girlfriend is acting like he’s dying. Meanwhile, the guy who actually got hurt is wandering around alone.” I gave them a grim, self-deprecating smile and turned to leave, only to run straight into Margot. Slap. My head snapped to the side. “Nick, you’ve gone too far!” she yelled. “Why did you use my secondary card to pay your bill? Toby’s going to see the name on the transaction! He’ll figure out who you are!” She stepped closer, her voice a frantic whisper. “I told you, I’m ending it. I just need time. I’ve done everything you asked—what more do you want from me?” My body swayed. The handprint on my face burned, a stark contrast to the deathly pallor of my skin. Margot’s expression suddenly shifted to something resembling pity. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “You know you’re the only one I truly love, Nick. You have to feel that.” “If you just wait, I’ll be back home for good. I promise.” Years ago, as an unwanted orphan, I thought marrying Margot was the greatest stroke of luck in human history. People in our circle used to say, “What did you do in a past life to deserve a woman as devoted as Margot?” I had drowned in that “devotion.” Until… Toby. When Toby was bored, Margot would show him old videos of me being bullied in foster care just to make him laugh. She let her friends mock me as a “gold-digger” while she stood by and smirked. Once, she left me stranded in the middle of a hiking trail in the Adirondacks because Toby called saying he had a nightmare. I had to walk ten miles in the dark, barely escaping the local wildlife. It got worse. She let Toby call me in the middle of the night just so I could hear the sounds of them together in bed. When the stress landed me in the hospital back then, she told me I was “weak” and “dramatic” for not being able to handle a little competition. Sweat poured down my face. Margot pressed my car keys into my palm. “You being here is making Toby anxious. He can’t recover with you lurking around. I need you to discharge yourself and go home. Now.” My vision was tunneling into black spots. I just nodded. Margot’s eyes flickered with a brief moment of confusion at my compliance, but then my phone buzzed. It was the director of the Saint Jude’s Home, the woman who had raised me—Mrs. Gable. She’d had a massive heart attack. I stumbled toward the elevator, dragging my leaden limbs to the cardiac wing. I found Mrs. Gable gasping for air, her face a terrifying shade of purple. The doctor, mid-resuscitation, looked at me grimly. “A young man was in here screaming at her just a few minutes ago. They got into a physical altercation. He said some horrible things.” My heart stopped. Mrs. Gable was the only mother I had ever known. I turned around, and there was Toby, throwing himself into Margot’s arms, weeping. “That old woman called me a home-wrecker! I was just trying to talk to her, and she fell down to try and frame me! She’s trying to sue me, Margot!” Furry boiled over my fever. “You’re lying!” Toby glanced at me over Margot’s shoulder, pulling back his sleeve to show a few faint, “clumsy” scratches. He wailed louder. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gable’s arms were covered in deep bruises and jagged scratches from where he had clearly grabbed her. Seeing his smug, mocking smirk hidden from Margot’s view, I lost it. I stepped forward and slapped him—harder than Margot had slapped me. But a second later, a much heavier blow sent me reeling. 3 The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth instantly. Margot stood over me, her hand trembling, a flash of guilt crossing her eyes before it was replaced by cold defiance. “How dare you lay a hand on him? Your ‘family’ started this. Is this the ‘upbringing’ you’re so proud of? Violence?” I blinked back tears, unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth. People always assumed orphans were feral, uneducated animals. Years ago, Margot was the one who smashed a wine bottle over a man’s head for calling me a “stray.” She was the one who promised to be my shield. Seeing me tear up, Margot’s expression softened for a fraction of a second, but Toby buried his face in her neck, shaking. “Margot… if you hadn’t come, they would have killed me together…” Margot’s pity for me vanished, replaced by pure disgust. “Tomorrow night at the Benefit Gala, you are going to stand up and publicly apologize to Toby. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re planning. If you don’t clear his name, Mrs. Gable will spend the rest of her life telling people he’s a villain.” I shook my head, helpless. “And if I don’t?” “If you don’t apologize, I’m pulling the funding for the Saint Jude’s renovation. And the card you use for Mrs. Gable’s private nursing? Canceled.” She leaned in, her voice like a knife. “Think carefully, Nick. On your own, how long will it take you to find her a heart donor match? Hmm?” I looked at the woman in the bed, the woman who had taught me how to tie my shoes and how to believe I was worth something. I broke. “Fine,” I whispered. The next night at the Gala, Margot handed me a script. Toby walked up to me while Margot was talking to donors, digging his nails into the fresh stitches in my shoulder. He smiled for the cameras. “Nick, an apology requires sincerity.” Before I could react, he kicked the back of my knee. I buckled, falling onto the marble floor in front of the city’s elite. Like a broken marionette, I read from the paper. “I apologize to Toby Miller for the misunderstanding involving Mrs. Gable. I acted out of turn, and I will be covering all his medical expenses…” The room erupted into whispers. “I guess you can’t take the gutter out of the boy. No wonder Margot is looking elsewhere.” “Like mother, like son. Even if she didn’t give birth to him, they’re both trash.” “Toby looks like a true gentleman. I think Nick’s time is up.” The shame burned hotter than my fever. Toby looked down at me with the eyes of a conqueror. I tried to stand, but my head throbbed. Margot took a step toward me, her brow furrowing. “Are you okay? You look gray.” I shoved her hand away. She cleared her throat, regaining her composure. “Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t want you making a mess at this event.” Toby made a show of helping me up, leaning into my ear. “Take care of yourself, Nick. But I just heard a rumor… the heart donor for your precious Mrs. Gable? They backed out. Changed their mind. Looks like she’ll have to wait another ten years.” He grinned. “If she even has ten minutes left.” The world turned red. I lunged, my hands finding his throat. “You played with her life? You monster!” Margot didn’t hesitate. She shoved me back with everything she had. “Nick, have you lost your mind?” I tumbled down the steps of the stage, my bones screaming as they hit the hard floor. Toby didn’t stop smiling. Behind Margot’s back, he was laughing. I scrambled up, ready to tear him apart, when my phone rang. It was the hospital. “Mr. Steven? Mrs. Gable… she’s gone. Someone took her from her room!” 4 My heart went cold. I looked up and saw Toby’s smirk widen. Ignoring the crowd, I stumbled toward him, my eyes bloodshot. “She’s the only family I have left. What did you do with her?” My voice cracked. The guests were recording on their phones. Margot, humiliated beyond repair, shoved me again. “Nick, enough!” I fell into a pyramid of champagne flutes. Shards of glass sliced into my palms and back. Margot took a step forward, but Toby beat her to it, leaning over me as if to help. “You’re so smart, Nick,” he whispered. “You figured out I took the old bat. But do you want to guess how I’m going to make her suffer?” Panic seized me. Before I knew it, I was pinning him to the floor, my fingers digging into his neck. “I will kill you if you hurt her!” A massive force—Margot—yanked me off him and delivered a stinging slap. “I have been more than patient with you! Toby has done nothing but try to be civil, and look at you! You’re a savage!” In her eyes, I was a madman. A spectacle. But I could only think of Mrs. Gable. I grabbed a steak knife from a passing waiter’s tray and lunged at Toby. “Help! Margot, help!” Toby screamed. Margot threw herself in front of him. The blade caught her in the shoulder, drawing blood. She didn’t even flinch. She turned to the security guards, her face a mask of cold fury. “My husband has had a psychotic break. Make him apologize. One hundred bows. Force him to his knees until he regains his senses.” The guards slammed me onto the floor. They forced my head down again and again until my forehead was a bloody mess. During one of those forced bows, I saw Toby tilt his phone toward me. On the screen, a live feed showed the old Saint Jude’s building. Smoke was billowing from the attic. I could hear a muffled scream—Mrs. Gable’s voice. “Let me go! Margot, please, let me go!” I fought against the guards, but Margot knelt down and gripped my face. “You aren’t leaving this room until you show some goddamn remorse.” I stopped fighting. I dropped to my knees and started bowing on my own, faster and faster, blood blurring my vision. I didn’t care about the dignity. I didn’t care about the people laughing. Margot looked startled, reaching out to stop me, but I shoved her away with a strength born of pure terror. I turned and sprinted out of the ballroom. When I reached the orphanage, the fire had already swallowed the upper floors. I charged into the heat, the skin on my arms blistering. I found her in the attic, tied to a chair. I fumbled with the ropes, my hands shaking. She looked at me, a small, tired smile on her face. And then, her head slumped. I froze. My soul didn’t just break; it vanished. A second later—BOOM. The explosion threw me into the darkness. Margot, as the lead donor for the gala, was escorted by a fleet of reporters to the orphanage for a “surprise” late-night visit. But as she stepped out of her limo, the wall of flame reflecting in her eyes made her stop dead in her tracks.

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In my past life, my brother Simon had a “pet”—a fragile, wide-eyed girl named Isabella who claimed she wanted to see a meteor shower. To satisfy her whim, Simon took every single one of our family’s security detail and drove out to the countryside to curate a “private celestial event” just for her. He didn’t care that he’d spent the last year ruthlessly dismantling a rival firm, leaving a trail of desperate, vengeful enemies in his wake. One of those enemies saw the opening. They broke into our estate, intent on a massacre. My mother died protecting me. She took the blade meant for my heart, her life slipping away in my arms while I frantically called Simon. When he finally deigned to return with the guards, it was too late. The killers were caught, but then came the “tragedy” from the hills. Isabella had vanished, leaving behind a tear-stained suicide note. In that letter, she blamed me. She claimed I had orchestrated the security withdrawal to “bully” her, that I had lured the killers to the house to spite her, and that she couldn’t live with the guilt. Simon didn’t cry for Mom. Instead, he coldly burned the letter and told me not to “overthink it.” He waited. He played the grieving son until my father, blinded by the loss of his wife, promised to hand the family empire to me. Then, on the night of my celebration gala, Simon walked into my bedroom. He didn’t say a word as he ended my life. His face was a mask of ice. “A monster like you deserves to stay dead,” he’d whispered as the light faded from my eyes. “The inheritance was always meant for me.” I died with my eyes wide open. And then, I woke up. The sound of the heavy iron gates being rammed open echoed through the halls of the estate. 1. The thunderous crash of the front gates being forced open jolted me out of the suffocating sensation of dying. I lunged forward, grabbing my mother just as she was about to rush into the hallway to investigate. “Maddy, what’s going on?” she gasped, her eyes wide with a terror she couldn’t quite hide. She didn’t know yet. She didn’t know that Simon had stripped the house bare of protection for the sake of his “precious” Isabella. “Mom, Simon took the security. All of them. It’s just us,” I hissed, dragging her into my bedroom and slamming the door. I turned the deadbolt, my lungs burning as I shoved the heavy mahogany dresser against the door. “What? That’s impossible,” she stammered, her voice trembling. “Simon is sensible. He wouldn’t leave us defenseless.” She didn’t want to believe it. In her eyes, the Sterling—no, the Victor—legacy was built on safety and order. But she saw my face, pale as a ghost, and the way my hands shook as I strained against the furniture. The dresser screeched against the hardwood, leaving deep, ugly gouges. “Call him! Tell him to get back here now!” Mom urged. I didn’t answer. I just stared at the door. My fingers flew across my phone screen, dialing 911. I gave the operator our address and a frantic summary of the situation. I couldn’t rely on Simon. In my last life, he came back just late enough for Mom to bleed out. My heart sank. A heavy blizzard had closed the mountain passes. We were in a secluded estate on the ridge; the nearest precinct was miles away through the snow. Bang! The bedroom door shuddered under a massive blow. I threw my body weight against the dresser, the tide of memories threatening to drown me. That was when Mom’s call to Simon finally connected. “Simon! You have to come home! There are people in the house—they’re breaking in!” she screamed into the phone. His voice came through the speaker, drawling and irritated. “Mom, stop the drama. I’m in the middle of Isabella’s birthday dinner. I’ll be back tomorrow.” “I’m not lying! They’re at the door! Simon, if you don’t come back, you’ll find us in body bags!” His tone turned frigid. “I know you hate Isabella, but this is pathetic. Don’t use fake threats to ruin her night. And tell Maddy to stop her little games. I’m not falling for it this time.” The line went dead. My blood turned to ice. He remembered. Simon was reborn too. But in his twisted mind, the massacre of our past life was a “trick” I had played to gain favor. He truly believed I had faked the attack. The footsteps outside the door grew heavier. A rhythmic, mocking thud hit the wood, and the dresser began to slide inward. “Found you,” a raspy voice laughed from the hallway. I pushed Mom toward the bed, my palms sweating. I looked at the widening crack in the doorframe. We were unarmed. We were cornered. The door was finally forced ajar, the dresser screeching like a dying animal as it was shoved aside. A pair of mud-caked tactical boots stepped into the room. “Thought a little furniture would stop us?” The man smirked, his eyes yellowed and predatory. He flicked open a switchblade, the steel glinting in the dim light. His gaze crawled over me. “Well, well. Didn’t expect the little heiress to be such a prize.” Mom let out a piercing scream. “Don’t touch her!” I gritted my teeth, leaning close to her ear. “Mom, no matter what happens, stay out of it. Get to the window. There’s a safety trampoline in the garden below—jump. The snow will cushion the rest. Run to the neighbors. Find Nathaniel. Tell him to bring help.” “Maddy, I can’t leave you!” I gripped her wrist hard. “Go! If you stay, we both die. If you live, there’s a chance.” The man lunged. Mom didn’t jump. Instead, she threw herself at him, her fingers clawing at his arms, trying to drag him away from me. “Run, Maddy! Run!” “Mom, no!” I screamed. I watched, paralyzed, as the man raised his hand. The blade buried itself into her back with sickening ease. The world turned red. My mother gasped, her grip on the man’s waist tightening even as her strength failed. “Jump!” she choked out. “Maddy, jump now!” 2. The adrenaline hit like an electric shock. I knew I couldn’t win a physical fight against three of them. I scrambled onto the windowsill and threw myself into the dark, freezing air. I hit the garden trampoline with a bone-jarring thud. A sharp, white-hot pain exploded in my ankle, radiating up my leg. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I forced myself upright and began a frantic, limping sprint toward the neighboring estate. The snow was waist-deep in some places, grinding against my bare, frozen feet until they were raw and bleeding. The neighbor’s house was nearly a mile away. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass. When I finally collapsed against Nathaniel’s front gate, I pounded on the iron bars with the last of my strength. “Nathaniel! Open the door! Please! Someone’s killing my mother!” The gate buzzed and groaned open. Nathaniel stood in the entryway, wrapped in a plush cashmere coat, looking down at me with an expression of profound boredom. “Maddy,” he said, his voice dripping with condescension. “Your acting has certainly improved lately.” “Nathaniel, I’m not joking! My mother has been stabbed! Please, send your security—” He looked at my shredded feet and the blood on my nightgown, but his lip just curled in a sneer. “Simon called me. He told me you’d try some elaborate ‘home invasion’ stunt because you were jealous of the attention he was giving Isabella. I have to admit, the commitment to the bit is impressive.” “Forget Simon! Look at me!” I roared, my vision swimming. “I called the police! They’re on their way, but they won’t make it in time! My mom is dying!” He didn’t move. He leaned against the doorframe, checking his watch. “Calling the cops as part of the play? That’s bold. A bit too much, don’t you think? Simon warned me not to let you manipulate me tonight.” “Nathaniel, you’re insane! It’s real!” I tried to show him my phone, the outgoing 911 call, but he just turned away. “Nathaniel, please! If you don’t go now, she’ll die! We grew up together! Don’t you have any soul left?” He stopped and looked back, his eyes like flint. “Simon was specific, Maddy. He told me to let you ‘simmer’ in your own drama. He’s tired of your thirst for power.” The cruelty of it shattered something inside me. Before Isabella appeared, Nathaniel had been my rock. We were engaged. He had promised to protect me. But since Simon brought that girl home, everyone had changed. It was like they were all under a spell, blinded by her “purity” and Simon’s ego. Simon had even destroyed a whole company because their CEO’s dog shared a name with Isabella’s pet. That was why the killers were in our house tonight. I prostrated myself in the snow, sobbing, my forehead hitting the frozen ground. “I’ll do anything. I’ll break the engagement. Just go. Please.” Nathaniel’s butler, an older man who had known me since I was a child, stepped forward, looking pained. “Sir, perhaps we should check. Miss Maddy isn’t one for lying about blood.” Nathaniel hesitated for a second. I seized the moment, banging my head against the stones. “Please. Please. Save her.” “Fine,” Nathaniel sighed. “I’ll take a few men over. But Maddy, if this is a lie, I’m done. I’ll make sure you regret wasting my time.” He ordered his men to the cars. As we moved, his phone rang. It was Simon. Nathaniel put it on speaker. “Nathaniel? Maddy hasn’t crawled over to you yet, has she?” Simon’s voice was light, amused. “The lunatic actually used Mom’s phone to call me and pretend there were killers in the house. It’s hilarious. She’s getting desperate.” I felt the world tilt. My own brother was laughing while our mother’s life leaked onto the bedroom floor. “Simon, you’re a monster!” I screamed at the phone. “I saw her get stabbed! You saw it all before—how can you do this again?!” He let out a dry, cold laugh. “Ah, still sticking to the script. I checked with Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper. She said the house is quiet. Give it up, Maddy. You’re the one who’s dangerous. If anything happens to Mom, it’ll be your fault for playing these games.” The line went dead. Mrs. Higgins had been on vacation for a week. Simon didn’t even care enough to know who was in the house. Nathaniel’s face hardened. He looked at me with pure disgust. “You orchestrated this. You even lied about the housekeeper. I’m done. Guards, break her legs. Let’s see how well she ‘runs’ for help then.” The guards hesitated. They knew my father. “I said do it!” Nathaniel snapped. He grabbed a golf club from the umbrella stand near the door. He walked toward me, the “charming” fiancé I once loved replaced by a cruel stranger. “If they won’t teach you a lesson, I will.” I tried to crawl away, but he was faster. He swung. The metal cracked against my already injured left leg. “AGH!” The scream was ripped from my throat. I collapsed, the pain so intense I nearly blacked out. “That’s for the lie,” he said coldly. Suddenly, his phone chimed. He frowned, picking it up. It was a call from a local precinct. “Hello? Is this Nathaniel Victor? We’re looking for Madeline. We just arrived at the Sterling estate. The suspects fled after a shootout. We found a woman, Catherine Victor, in critical condition. She’s lost a massive amount of blood. We need family on site immediately.”

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My wife, Hedy, was the Chief of Surgery, but she handed the scalpel to a first-year resident to operate on my mother. Why? Because the resident was the only living child of her late mentor. “Spencer needs this case to prove himself,” she had said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “I’m giving your mother’s surgery to him.” When I refused, Hedy treated my objection like a personal attack. “Before Dr. Evans passed away, I promised him I would look out for Spencer. Can’t you just try to understand me for once?” she demanded, every word dripping with an urgent, defensive need to protect the boy. I looked at the woman standing before me, and suddenly, an overwhelming, bone-deep exhaustion washed over me. Whenever Spencer was involved, I was the one expected to yield. Always. When I was in a car wreck and the hospital issued three critical condition warnings, she was out celebrating Spencer’s birthday. When my mother had her first health scare, Hedy was taking Spencer on a vacation to “help him decompress.” Even the house we bought as our marital home had a bedroom permanently reserved for him. For ten agonizing years, Spencer had been the ghost haunting the halls of our marriage. I raised my eyes to hers. My voice was raspy, hollowed out. “So this time, you’re choosing him again. Is that right?” … 1 The air in Hedy’s corner office was stifling. My words hung between us, crystal clear. She frowned, looking at me as though I were the one being completely unreasonable. “Corey, how many times do I have to explain this to you?” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Spencer is Dr. Evans’ son. Dr. Evans made my career. I owe him everything. I am not going to turn my back on his boy.” She tapped a manicured finger against the surgical consent form lying on her mahogany desk. Her tone was absolute. “Sign the paperwork. Let Spencer do the surgery.” I stood perfectly still, my hands loosely curled into fists at my sides. “Just to prove to the board that Spencer isn’t a nepotism hire, you’re willing to gamble with my mother’s life? By what right?” My voice started to climb, a hot, suffocating anger building in my chest. “If something goes wrong in that OR, how are either of you going to pay for it?” Hedy didn’t even flinch. Her face remained a mask of clinical detachment. “I am personally vouching for him,” she said quietly. “If anything goes wrong, I will resign.” The casual weight of that sentence made my head snap up. Hedy was a fiercely ambitious woman. I knew that better than anyone. In all our years of marriage, her career had always eclipsed our relationship, our home, our life together. But for Spencer, she was willing to throw it all away. A bitter, broken laugh escaped my throat. “How about we just get a divorce right now? Let me be the good guy and step out of the way,” I spat out. “You dress it up in all this noble gratitude, but the only thing you two haven’t done is sleep in the same—” I didn’t get to finish the sentence. Hedy’s palm cracked across my cheek with a blinding force. The sharp, metallic tang of blood instantly flooded my mouth. My ears were ringing. For a second, the room spun, and I couldn’t quite process what had just happened. Then, the heavy oak door of the office swung open. Spencer leaned against the doorframe. He took in the sight of my rapidly swelling cheek, and a fleeting, triumphant smirk flashed through his eyes before he quickly rearranged his features into a mask of innocent concern. “Corey, how could you say something like that to Hedy?” he asked, stepping into the room. “I know you don’t trust me, but your mom’s condition is critical. Can’t you put your temper tantrums aside for her sake?” He sounded so terribly smug. He was twenty-eight now, but he still acted like the spoiled, untouchable child Hedy had spent a decade coddling. “Besides,” Spencer continued, shrugging lightly, “I might be a resident, but I’m more than qualified to do this procedure. And honestly, if something does happen, it just means her body was too weak to—” I didn’t think. I just reacted. A decade of suffocating resentment propelled me forward. I grabbed the collar of his scrubs and drove my fist squarely into his cheekbone. That single punch was all it took for Hedy’s icy composure to shatter. She shoved me backward, rushing to examine Spencer’s face with frantic, trembling hands. When she turned back to me, her eyes were absolute zero. “If you’re angry, take it out on me! What the hell gives you the right to hit him?” she screamed. “Apologize to him right now. If you don’t, I won’t just cancel the surgery—I’ll have your mother discharged from this hospital today!” Her words pierced my eardrums like needles. Spencer, clutching his bruising eye, stumbled upright and looked at Hedy with pathetic, watery eyes. “Hedy, please, don’t be too hard on him. I know he hates me. But once I finish the surgery and save his mom, he’ll finally understand.” The blood drained from my face. “I didn’t consent to this!” But my refusal had never mattered to Hedy. If Spencer wanted a toy, she bought it. If he wanted a surgery, she gave it to him. Without sparing me another glance, Hedy gently guided Spencer out of the office. “I’ve already had the OR prepped,” she murmured to him. “You can scrub in right now.” Spencer shot me a wide, teeth-baring smile over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow in pure mockery. I lunged forward to go after them, but Hedy blocked the doorway, planting her hands firmly on my chest. Her jaw was set. “Corey, I am the Chief of Surgery. I asked you to sign that form as a courtesy,” she hissed. “You can refuse to let Spencer operate. But if you do, I won’t do it either. And I will make sure not a single surgeon in this building touches her.” She stepped back, her expression terrifyingly blank. “Do you want your mother to die on the table?” she asked. “If you storm into that OR right now and something happens to her, it is on you.” 2 I watched the heavy double doors of the surgical wing swing shut. Hedy’s words echoed in my skull, looping endlessly. Ten years ago, on the day Hedy and I were supposed to say our vows, Spencer’s parents were speeding down the highway to make it to the ceremony. A tire blew out. The car flipped. A day of celebration turned into a nightmare. When Hedy got the call, she didn’t even bother to take off her wedding dress before rushing to the county morgue. When the coroner unzipped the body bags, Spencer broke. He was eighteen, entirely unable to process the horrific reality. He screamed, fought the orderlies, and threw himself toward the second-story window of the waiting room, trying to jump. I tackled him. We crashed through the glass together and plummeted onto the awning below. As I lay there bleeding, Hedy pressed her hands against my torn shoulder, crying over my wounds. “How could you risk your life like that?” she had sobbed. “Dr. Evans’ death was an accident. Spencer is just a kid. He just needs time.” To help him heal, Hedy moved Spencer into our new home. “Corey, he’s a flight risk right now. I can only sleep if I know he’s down the hall,” she begged. “I already lost Dr. Evans. I can’t lose Spencer, too.” I agreed. Dr. Evans had been her saving grace. He pulled her out of poverty, paid for her med school, and fast-tracked her career. I felt a profound pity for the orphaned boy. I thought letting him stay was an act of grace. But soon, the lines began to blur in sickening ways. A few months in, while doing the laundry, I found one of Hedy’s lace bras stuffed under Spencer’s pillow. When I confronted him, his face turned bright red, and he immediately played the victim, accusing me of having a filthy mind. “Nothing is going on between me and Hedy!” he had screamed, tears streaming down his face. “I just lost my parents! I don’t feel safe anywhere! I can’t sleep, and it just… it brings me comfort! But fine, I know you’ve hated me since day one. I’ll leave!” He bolted out the front door into a torrential downpour. When Hedy found out, we had the most explosive fight of our marriage. Without even grabbing an umbrella, she ran out into the storm and spent twenty-four hours searching the city for him. When she finally dragged him back, shivering and soaked, she refused to leave his side. That was the first time I looked into her eyes and felt a bone-deep chill. “I am exhausted, Corey,” she had snapped at me. “I asked you to help me look after him, not interrogate him until he ran away! If Dr. Evans saw how you treated his son, do you think he could rest in peace?” “He’s hiding your underwear in his bed today!” I yelled, desperate for her to see reason. “What’s he going to do tomorrow? Crawl into yours? We are married, Hedy!” My words only deepened her disgust. She pointed toward the front door. “He is severely traumatized, and you’re projecting your own insecurities onto a grieving teenager,” she said coldly. “If you can’t handle it, you can leave. We won’t stop you.” That was the turning point. From that day on, Hedy’s trust in Spencer was absolute. Her indulgence, bottomless. When my car hydroplaned on the interstate and a piece of rebar pierced my chest, the hospital called her ten times. No answer. She was at a steakhouse, celebrating Spencer’s twenty-first birthday. When my mother was first diagnosed and desperately needed a consultation, Hedy was in Europe, taking Spencer on a backpacking trip to “broaden his horizons.” … I sat on the hard plastic chair in the waiting room for six hours. Finally, the surgical lights flicked off. The attending nurse told me my mother was out of the woods. They wheeled her into a standard recovery room, leaving her there like an afterthought. But the monitors told a different story. Her vitals were erratic. Her heart rate was spiking. Hedy walked into the room, checked the chart, and frowned. Then, she reached out and gently squeezed Spencer’s arm. “Post-op inflammation is perfectly normal,” she said briskly. “I’ll have the nurses push some broad-spectrum antibiotics. She’ll be fine in a few days.” She turned to look at me, her eyes hard. “You should be thanking Spencer for saving her.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked out, Spencer trailing right behind her like a devoted shadow. I stared at their retreating backs. For ten years, I had stood tall, trying to hold my ground. But in that moment, sitting beside my mother’s fragile, sleeping body, my spine finally curved. Time and time again, she chose him. And I was never, ever on her ballot. 3 I didn’t trust the hospital staff. I stayed by my mother’s bedside for a full week, sleeping in a chair, until I absolutely had to go home for a change of clothes. When I pulled up to our apartment, I remembered that neither Hedy nor Spencer was scheduled for rounds today. I pushed the front door open—it hadn’t been latched properly—and froze in the entryway. There, on our living room sofa, they were wrapped in a tight embrace. Spencer’s lips were pressed firmly against Hedy’s. Neither of them heard the door open. Hedy suddenly pushed him back, her breathing ragged, and then she saw me. Her lips parted, stammering, searching for an excuse. If this had happened five years ago, I would have torn the room apart. I would have shattered. But now? Now, I just felt a terrifying, hollow calm. I had simply grown used to the rot. I pulled my gaze away from her swollen, flushed lips. I had no energy to engage in whatever sick, twisted drama they were playing out. Before I could even take a step toward the bedroom, Spencer jumped up from the couch and marched over, blocking my path. “Corey, don’t overreact. We were just messing around. It’s always been like this with us,” he said, his voice dripping with an artificial sweetness. “Even when I was younger, Hedy used to—” He paused, letting the implication hang in the air, before shifting seamlessly back into the victim. “Please don’t let me ruin your marriage. She really does love you, you know. Not like me. She’s all I have left in the world…” He rambled on, his eyes misting over with calculated tears. I felt absolutely nothing. No rage. No jealousy. Just a desperate desire to get my clothes and leave. “Got it,” I said flatly. “Are you done? I need to pack.” Spencer stood there, stunned by my apathy. Hedy’s excuses died in her throat. She stared at me, her brow furrowing in confusion. “It wasn’t what it looked like,” she forced out, her voice unnaturally stiff as she pivoted to a safer topic. “How is your mother?” I stopped walking. I thought about the woman lying in that sterile room, her consciousness slipping further away each day, and a dark, bitter smile touched my lips. “Thanks to the two of you, she still hasn’t woken up.” I brushed past Spencer, heading for the hallway. But my total lack of visible pain seemed to infuriate him. He couldn’t stand not being the center of the drama. He lunged sideways, blocking me again. This time, his eyes were genuinely red with anger. “You are her husband, and I have always respected you! But why do you constantly treat me like dirt?” he spat. “Your mother was practically a corpse! If I hadn’t stepped up to do that surgery, she’d be in a coffin right now! Keeping someone that sick in a bed is just a waste of hospital resources anyway—” He never finished the sentence. My body moved before my brain could stop it. The sickening crunch of bone under my knuckles echoed in the quiet apartment. When the red haze cleared, Spencer was on the floor, the side of his face rapidly purpling in the exact shape of my fist. Hedy gasped, a sound of pure agony, as if I had struck her instead. She dropped to her knees, throwing her arms around him to shield him from me, glaring up at me with absolute venom. My knuckles throbbed. I slowly lowered my hand to my side. “Apologize,” she hissed, her voice trembling with rage. “You’ve hit him twice now. Apologize right this second.” “Corey, you are a deeply ungrateful man. He saved your mother’s life. You doubted him, you assaulted him, and you can’t even manage a simple ‘thank you’? Where is your basic human decency?” Every syllable she weaponized against me drove a spike straight into my chest. It hurt. God, it hurt so much my lungs physically ached. For ten years, she had tilted the axis of our world to favor him. She always claimed it was for Dr. Evans. But the way she looked at him just now—the desperate, terrified devotion in her eyes—told me everything I needed to know. I looked down at the palm of my hand. There, fading into the skin, was a jagged white scar. I would never forget the night I got it. My car crushed on the interstate. The steel rebar tearing through my flesh. Three critical condition notices. No one there to sign them. Where was Hedy? Buying Spencer his first legal drink. Ignoring ten frantic calls from her own hospital. I used to tell myself that one day, Spencer would grow up. He would gain his independence, move out, and Hedy and I would get our life back. I never, in my wildest nightmares, imagined that my wife had actually fallen in love with him. Meeting her furious glare, the last, pathetic ember of hope in my heart finally burned out. “Wasn’t it his job as a doctor to perform the surgery?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. Hedy flinched. “Or does the hospital not pay him?” I continued, the sarcasm dripping like acid. “Is every patient supposed to fall to their knees and worship him? I never signed that consent form, Hedy. Did either of you ever treat her life like it actually mattered?” My words hit their mark. The color drained from her face, leaving her pale and shaking. She let out a harsh, clipped laugh and pulled her phone from her pocket. “Fine. You want to play hardball?” she sneered. “If you don’t apologize to him right now, I’ll make sure you learn your lesson. In the ten years we’ve been married, you know exactly how many favors I’ve pulled for your mother’s care.” She tapped a number on her screen. “I’m having her room cleared right now. She’s leeched off my hospital’s resources long enough!” 4 I never thought she would actually go through with it. I never thought she could be so ruthlessly cruel as to use my dying mother as leverage in an argument. “She just had brain surgery, Hedy! She can’t be moved, it will kill her!” I yelled, panic finally breaking through my numb exterior. But Hedy’s face was carved from stone. She was determined to break me. Before her call could even connect, my own phone started ringing in my pocket. “Mr. Davis,” the frantic voice of a floor nurse crackled through the speaker. “Your mother’s vitals just tanked. You need to get here right now.” A deafening roar filled my ears. I didn’t even look at Hedy. I dropped my bags and sprinted out the door. When I burst into the surgical recovery wing, my mother wasn’t in her room. I found her out in the brightly lit, chaotic hallway. They had parked her bed against the wall. “What the hell are you doing?!” I screamed, shoving past an orderly. “She’s critical! Why is she in the hallway?!” She was thrashing weakly against the guardrails, her skin a terrifying shade of bluish-gray, thick, dark blood bubbling up from her lips and spilling down her chin. The attending nurse looked at me, her face pale with distress. “Chief’s orders,” she stammered. “Dr. Hedy ordered the transfer. We have a bed shortage, and she said other patients needed the monitor more…” My knees buckled. I grabbed the railing to keep myself from collapsing, pointing a shaking finger at my mother, who was drowning in her own blood. “My mother is dying, and you’re talking to me about protocol?!” I roared. The commotion drew stares from visitors and other patients. I saw pity in their eyes, and horror, but no one stepped forward. No one challenged the Chief of Surgery’s orders. A senior attending physician jogged down the hall, looking panicked. “Corey, thank God you’re here. I can’t reach Hedy,” he said rapidly. “You need to call your wife right now. We suspect a massive intracranial infection. She needs an emergency craniotomy, and Hedy is the only one who can do the revision.” I nodded blindly, the petty argument at the apartment completely forgotten. I dropped to my knees beside the bed, holding my mother’s frail, trembling hand, wiping the blood from her mouth with my sleeve as I dialed Hedy’s number. It rang, and rang, and rang. I called her thirty times. On the thirty-first attempt, she finally picked up. “Have you thought it through?” her voice floated through the speaker, cool and triumphant. “Are you ready to apologize to Spencer?” “Hedy, she’s crashing,” I choked out, tears finally spilling hot down my face. “You need to get to the OR right now, you’re the only one who can fix this—” She cut me off, her tone dripping with exasperation. “Oh, stop being so dramatic. The surgery was a complete success. You can’t just fabricate complications because you have a vendetta against Spencer.” I watched my mother’s chest heave as she fought for a single breath. I broke. I completely shattered. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed into the phone, pressing my forehead against the metal railing of the bed. “I’m so sorry, Hedy. Everything today was my fault. I will get on my knees and beg Spencer for forgiveness in front of the whole hospital. Just please, please come save her.” “An apology is the bare minimum,” she replied coldly. “But I don’t have time right now. Spencer is very upset, and I need to comfort him. Figure it out yourself.” Click. The line went dead. The dial tone buzzed in my ear like a swarm of hornets. I looked up at the attending physician through blurred eyes. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. “She’s… she’s not coming,” I whispered brokenly. “Please. You have to do something. Save her. I’m begging you.” They rushed her into the OR. An hour is a strange measurement of time. Sometime it feels like a lifetime; sometimes it vanishes in a breath. When the doors finally opened, the surgeon walked out, pulled off his cap, and shook his head. “Corey, I am so sorry,” he said softly. “A surgical sponge was left behind in her cranial cavity during the initial operation. The swelling caused irreversible neurological compression. We did everything we could.” “My condolences.” I stood perfectly still beside the gurney, staring down at the crisp white sheet pulled over my mother’s face. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an Instagram notification. Hedy had just posted a new photo. It was a selfie of her and Spencer. She was wearing her old wedding dress. Spencer was adjusting her veil, looking at her with absolute adoration. The caption read: The kid said he wanted to see what I looked like as a bride. I guess I have to spoil him sometimes. A dry, cracked sound escaped my throat. I stared at the photo of my wife in the dress she wore the day she promised to love me, catering to the boy who had just killed my mother. I hit the share button and reposted it to my own feed. [Wishing the other man all the happiness in the world, I typed. The divorce papers are signed.]

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My boss secretly gave me a project that earned me $500,000. My wife said, “Just give me 80,000; any more will be too much.” I couldn’t argue with her, so I did as she said. My boss took the money but never gave me another project. Later, the money ran out, my mother couldn’t afford medical treatment, and my wife left me. I stood on the rooftop, looking down… Then I opened my eyes and was back that night. Reborn, the first thing I did was take 400,000 and knock on my boss’s door… 1. The money was sitting right there, staring back at me. Half a million dollars. Cold, hard cash. I pulled the stacks out of the heavy black duffel bag and lined them up on the dining table, one by one. They were crisp, the ink still smelling fresh, the bank bands still tight around the middle. Rachel’s eyes went wide. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she stroked the bills like they were made of fine silk. She traced the edges, whispering under her breath, “Half a million… It’s really half a million.” “It was a side project Jim Garrity handed me,” I said, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears. “An off-the-books subcontract.” She snapped her head up, her eyes gleaming with a predatory light. “So, this is all ours?” “Technically…” I paused, feeling the familiar weight of her expectations pressing down on my chest. “Technically, I need to give Jim his cut.” “His cut?” Her voice sharpened instantly. “How much?” “Four… four hundred thousand. It’s the first one, Rachel.” I felt the sweat prickling at my hairline. I knew the rules of the game, even if she didn’t. “That’s how this works. He gave me the lead, he handled the internal politics. Without him, I’m nothing.” “You’re out of your mind!” She slammed her hand onto the table, making the stacks of cash jump. “Four hundred thousand? For what? You did the work, Mark! You’re telling me Jim Garrity gets nearly the whole pot just for opening his mouth? Have you lost your damn mind?” I knew this was coming. I had lived this argument a thousand times in my head, and once before in reality. “Rachel, listen to me—” I tried to explain how the corporate world really turned. I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t just a payment; it was an investment in a future. It was the price of admission to the inner circle. But she wasn’t listening. She never did. “Mark, I am telling you right now, you are not giving that man a cent more than necessary!” She stood up, hands on her hips, her face flushed. “Do you have any idea what this money could do for us? Toby’s private prep school is twenty grand a year. His club soccer, the elite coaching, the math tutors—that’s another fifteen. Your mother’s medical bills, her insulin, the private nursing—that’s two thousand a month. The mortgage, the car payments… do you ever actually look at the spreadsheet? You bring home ten grand a month and it vanishes before the second week is over!” I knew. God, I knew every cent. But I knew something else, too. Something far more terrifying. “Rachel, just let me finish—” “No!” Her eyes welled up, her voice cracking into that practiced sob that used to break my heart. “I’ve been with you for eight years, Mark. Eight years! We lived in that cramped studio for three years just to save for this down payment. I haven’t bought a dress over fifty dollars in three years. We finally get a break, a real chance to breathe, and you want to just hand it away? Do you even care about us?” She started to cry. It started as a soft whimper, then escalated into a full-blown sob as she collapsed onto the sofa. “I’m so cursed… I married a man who doesn’t know how to take care of his family… giving our life away to some rich executive…” I stood by the table, looking at the money, then at the woman I had once loved more than life itself. I felt a profound, soul-deep exhaustion. It wasn’t the kind of tired that sleep could fix; it was the kind that had settled into my marrow over years of compromise. When we married eight years ago, she wasn’t like this. She worked the cosmetic counter at the mall, making peanuts, but she was happy. She used to say we’d make it together. Then she got pregnant, the morning sickness was brutal, and I told her to stay home. I told her I’d take care of everything. And slowly, the woman I knew disappeared. Maybe it was the pressure of the suburban dream, or the social media feeds filled with friends in the Hamptons and new Range Rovers. Somewhere along the line, she changed. And so did I. I became the man who walked on eggshells, the man who traded his backbone for a quiet house. “Fine,” I heard myself say. “How much do we give him?” The sobbing stopped instantly. She looked up, her eyes still wet but sharp with calculation. “Fifty thousand. Max.” “That’s an insult, Rachel. He’ll see right through it.” “Eighty, then.” She grit her teeth. “Not a penny more. You tell him it’s a ‘token of appreciation.’ If he has any heart at all, he’ll understand that we have a family to feed.” I wanted to scream. Why would Jim Garrity care about my family? He gave me the project so I could make him rich, not so I could pay for Toby’s soccer camp. But the words died in my throat. I knew the script. If I insisted on the four hundred thousand, she’d scream, she’d take Toby to her mother’s, she’d call my mother and tell her I was throwing away our future. I’d hold out for three days, then I’d fold. It had been eight years of folding. “Fine,” I said. “Eighty thousand it is.” It was the worst mistake of my life. 2. I went to the bank and withdrew the eighty thousand in a thick manila envelope. It felt heavy in my hand, but it was the weight of a coffin lid. I picked a Tuesday night, circling the block of Jim’s gated community three times before I had the nerve to pull into his driveway. My palms were slick against the steering wheel. I was terrified of being seen, but more terrified of what was about to happen. Standing at his front door, I heard voices inside. I heard Jim laughing—a warm, genuine sound I never heard in the boardroom. The other voice belonged to Pete Hoffman, a guy from my department, just a couple of years older than me. He’d been promoted to Director last year. “Jim, about that project… I can’t thank you enough.” “Forget it, Pete. You’re one of us. Just keep up the good work.” The door opened. Pete stepped out, freezing when he saw me. He gave me a knowing, almost pitying smirk and a nod. On the hallway table behind him sat a manila envelope. It was three times as thick as mine. My heart plummeted. “Mark, come on in,” Jim said, his voice dropping into a neutral, professional tone the moment he saw me. I didn’t sit. I couldn’t. I placed my envelope on his mahogany desk. My hand shook. “Jim, I just… I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity. This is a small token of my gratitude.” He looked at the envelope, then up at me. I will never forget that look. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even disappointment. It was total, chilling indifference. “Mark,” he said. “What is this?” “Just… an appreciation for the lead.” He chuckled, a dry, hollow sound. He picked up the envelope and tossed it onto the floor by his feet, next to the trash can. Then he patted my shoulder. “Sure. I get it. Get back to work, Mark.” That was it. I stood there, waiting for a cue that never came. He turned back to his laptop, dismissing me as if I were a delivery boy who’d forgotten the napkins. “I’ll… I’ll head out then, Jim.” “Mm-hmm.” I walked out. The night air was cold, and the silence of the suburbs felt like a funeral shroud. I could hear my heart thumping—a slow, rhythmic tolling of a bell. The days that followed were a slow-motion car crash. The projects didn’t stop, but the good ones did. I was back to the grind—the internal stuff, the audited stuff, the projects where every bonus was capped and every hour was logged. Pete Hoffman, meanwhile, was in Jim’s office every other day. Rumor had it Pete just cleared a seven-figure commission on an offshore deal. I didn’t ask. I didn’t dare. I became a ghost in my own office. A “solid” employee who was going nowhere. The half-million dollars lasted exactly two years. Rachel’s spending was a fever. Toby’s soccer went from local clubs to regional travel teams with private coaches. The tutors multiplied. Rachel’s “self-care” expanded to a luxury gym membership, designer handbags, the latest iPhone every six months, and a Botox habit she thought I didn’t notice. “He’s an investment!” she’d snap whenever I questioned the bills. “You want him to grow up to be a loser like you? If you’re worried about money, go earn more!” I tried. But the doors were closed. Jim wouldn’t look at me, and in that world, if the king doesn’t look at you, no one does. Then came my mother. The day her kidney failure spiked, I’d just gotten my paycheck. Twelve thousand dollars. With the twenty in our savings, I was still short for the specialized surgery. I called Rachel. “We don’t have it,” she said, her voice flat. “I just paid the tuition for the spring semester. I’ve got maybe three thousand in the checking account.” “Can we borrow it? Put it on the cards?” “Borrow? From who? Mark, your mother is eighty. I am not going into debt for a woman who won’t even be here in five years when Toby needs college money.” I hung up. I scrambled. I begged friends, took out a predatory personal loan, and scraped together the fifty thousand. But the delay cost us. The surgery happened three days too late. My mother survived, but she never really came back. She became a shadow, requiring 24-hour care we couldn’t afford. Then, the mortgage. By the third month of arrears, the foreclosure notice was taped to the door. I sat in the living room with the yellow paper in my hand. Rachel sat across from me. Toby was in his room, probably playing a video game we couldn’t afford. “We have to sell,” I said. “And go where? An apartment?” She sneered. “I spent three years in a rat hole for this house. I am not going back.” “Then what’s the plan, Rachel? There is no money.” She didn’t answer. The next day, I came home to an empty house. Her clothes were gone. Toby’s room was stripped. There was a note on the kitchen island: Don’t look for us. You can’t afford a family. Just like that. I stood in the silence of a house that was no longer mine. I owed over a million on the mortgage and loans. My mother was in a state-run facility. My job was on the line—layoffs were coming, and as a “marginal” performer, I was top of the list. I called Rachel. Phone disconnected. I tried to message her. Blocked. I walked out of the house, hailed a cab, and went to the tallest building in the city. Twenty-eight floors up. I stood on the roof, the wind whipping my cheap suit jacket. Below, the cars looked like toys, the people like ants. I thought, If I jump, it’s over in four seconds. No more debt. No more failure. Memories flashed like a slide show. Me at twenty-two, eating ramen in a basement, believing I’d be a CEO by thirty. Rachel laughing at the makeup counter. The way Toby smelled like baby powder when I first held him. And then, the quiet moments. The way I’d let myself be carved away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a shell that paid bills. I thought of Jim’s look. The way he tossed eighty thousand dollars onto the floor like it was trash. The wind picked up. I took a step toward the ledge. One more step and the noise would stop. Then, my phone buzzed. I looked at the screen. It was the nursing home. My mother. If she knew I was standing here, she’d break. She had worked two jobs to put me through school. She’d saved every penny for my wedding. She hadn’t had a vacation in forty years, and now she was dying alone because I was too weak to stand up to my wife. And Toby. He was eight. What kind of man would he become if his father’s final act was a leap into the dark? I stepped back from the ledge. It wasn’t a moment of triumph. It was a moment of agonizing realization. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. It was a tether, pulling me back from the brink. I went to the hospital. My mother was awake, her voice a papery thin whisper. “You look tired, Mark. Are you eating?” “I’m fine, Mom. Just a long day at the office.” “Don’t work too hard,” she said. “Life is short.” I wanted to howl, but I just nodded. The rest was a blur of misery. The bank took the house. The company let me go. My mother passed away a month later in a room shared with three other people. I moved into a studio apartment, spending my days throwing resumes into the void. I saw Rachel one last time, months later. She was in a photo on a mutual friend’s Facebook. She was standing next to a guy who owned a chain of car washes—a guy with a Rolex and an ego to match. The caption said: Rachel is finally living her best life. That night, I lay on my thin mattress, staring at the ceiling. I asked the universe: If I could go back, what would I change? Would I have given Jim the four hundred thousand? Would I have fought her? Would I have left her then? But there are no do-overs. There is only the dark. 3. That night, I dreamt of the rooftop. I felt the wind. I took the step. But instead of falling, I felt a strange, violent sensation of being pulled upward, through the clouds, through the stars, through the very fabric of time. I woke up gasping. The sun was blinding. My phone was buzzing on the nightstand. I grabbed it, my heart hammering against my ribs. June 15, 2024. 7:23 AM. June 15th? I scrambled through my phone. Messages, bank balances, call logs. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the device. Is this a stroke? Am I dying? I scrolled up. A message from Jim Garrity: “Mark, you free for dinner tonight? Let’s talk about that side hustle.” The dinner. The night he offered me the project. The night everything began. June 15th. It was today. I hadn’t given the money away yet. I hadn’t even received it yet. I threw off the covers and bolted out of bed. Rachel was in the kitchen, her voice floating down the hall. “You’re up? Breakfast is on the table—” I didn’t answer. I flew out the door. The bank opened at nine. I was the first one in line. “How can I help you, sir?” the teller asked. “I need to make a withdrawal,” I said, my voice steady for the first time in a decade. “Four hundred thousand dollars.” The cash was heavy. Four thick, beautiful bricks of hundreds. I walked out into the morning heat. The sun was fierce, but I didn’t blink. I stood on the sidewalk and took a breath that felt like it reached the very bottom of my lungs. This time, the script was changing.

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