Category: English

It was April Fool’s Day when my boyfriend’s female best friend shoved a piece of paper into my hands, daring me to read it aloud for the livestream. In my past life, to keep the peace, I swallowed my pride and read the vicious words: I, Harriet, will lose my hair, my skin will rot, and I will become a monster. My little sister will be dragged into an alley and violated. My parents’ bistro will serve poisoned food, killing a customer and ruining our family. That very night, every single one of Bernice’s sick, twisted curses came true. My sister was assaulted in a dark alley. She jumped off her high school roof. My parents’ viral farm-to-table bistro was shut down after a man died from eating their food. They were thrown in prison. My face broke out in weeping, rotting sores, making me the target of relentless internet bullying. Meanwhile, Bernice won a ten-million-dollar lottery. She took over my influencer account with its millions of followers. She married my boyfriend. I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, choking on a grief too heavy for one lifetime. Then I opened my eyes. The blinding ring light. The camera. The exact same April Fool’s Day. Bernice was staring at me, a sickeningly sweet smile plastered across her face. “Harriet! Come on, don’t be a buzzkill. Are you brave enough to play the prank stream or not?” I let out a low, breathy laugh. “Oh, I’ll play. I’m just worried you don’t have the stomach for it.” … 1 “Here! Read this!” Bernice’s smile didn’t reach her eyes as she thrust the folded slip of paper toward me. I didn’t take it. I just sat back, letting the silence stretch, smiling right back at her. “If it’s a game, it’s no fun if I’m the only one playing,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Let me write a slip for you, too. We’ll read them to each other. You know, for the engagement metrics.” Bernice blinked, her hand faltering. She let out a dry, nervous laugh. “Oh, let’s just stick to you. Today is about pranking you, I’m just the host…” I mirrored her usual passive-aggressive, baby-voice cadence. “Bernice, don’t tell me you’re scared? Our fearless internet bad-girl, suddenly backing down?” A few of Corey’s frat brothers were lounging on the sofa behind us. One of them snorted, tossing a beer cap onto the table. “Damn, Harriet, chill out. Bernice’s practically one of the guys. There’s nothing she won’t do for a laugh.” My boyfriend, Corey, flushed a deep crimson. He kicked his friend’s shin under the table, hissing, “Watch your mouth on the livestream, man.” Yet, his body language told a different story. He shifted entirely, angling his broad shoulders to physically shield Bernice from me. “Just play the game, Harriet. What are you so afraid of?” he coaxed, though his eyes were hard. Then he glanced back at Bernice, his voice softening. “Don’t worry, B. I’ve got your back.” With Corey defending her, Bernice’s spine stiffened. She puffed out her chest, suddenly emboldened. “Who’s scared? You first, Harriet. Read it!” In those few minutes of tension, the viewer count on my livestream had skyrocketed to two hundred thousand. The chat was a blur of rapid-fire text, demanding action. I looked down, slowly unfolding the paper in my hands. The blood roared in my ears. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision. It was the exact same wording. When I didn’t speak, Bernice sneered. “Read it, Harriet. What, did you freeze? If you can’t take a joke, you have to get on your knees and call me ‘Mommy’ on camera.” The peanut gallery on the sofa erupted into hoots and applause. “Read it! Read it!” “Call her Mommy!” Corey nudged my arm, irritated. “Harriet, stop stalling. Just read the damn thing. You’re ruining the vibe.” The chat was a relentless wave of peer pressure: [Is the host a sore loser?] [If u can’t play, log off.] [Just read it omg so annoying.] I curled my hands into fists under the table, my manicured nails biting half-moons into my palms. I forced the blinding, suffocating hatred down into my chest, locking it away. I held the paper up to the camera and read it. Word by agonizing word. “I, Harriet, will lose my hair, my skin will rot, and I will become a monster. My little sister will be dragged into an alley and violated. My parents’ bistro will serve poisoned food, killing a customer and ruining our family.” The living room went dead silent for two agonizing seconds. Then, one of the guys slow-clapped. “Holy shit. That is brutal! Bernice, your brain is a dark place. Top-tier content right there.” Corey laughed. He actually laughed. He reached over and playfully snapped the bra strap visible beneath Bernice’s oversized flannel. “You’re toxic as hell for that one,” he joked. Bernice covered her mouth, giggling uncontrollably. “Wow, Harriet, I can’t believe you actually read it! Aren’t you worried putting that out into the universe will make it come true?” Anyone else would have flipped the table. I kept my breathing steady. I grabbed a sticky note, grabbed a Sharpie, and scrawled a single sentence. I slid it across the glass coffee table, stopping right in front of Bernice. “My turn is over. Yours now. Read it.” The smug smile slid right off Bernice’s face. She tucked her hands into her sleeves, refusing to touch the bright yellow square. Her eyes darted around the room, and suddenly, she swayed in her chair. “Ugh. God. I’m so dizzy. My blood sugar is crashing again.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Let’s just wrap the stream here. We’ll do part two another day.” Her visceral panic confirmed everything. In my past life, I had agonized over how a few mean words on a piece of paper could destroy my entire world. Later, I realized Bernice was obsessed with dark web occultism and twisted manifestation rituals. She believed that by making me speak the curses aloud, she was legally transferring my good karma to herself and cementing my doom. She reached for the mouse to end the broadcast. I clamped my hand over her wrist. “You’re the one who begged to play,” I said, my voice carrying cleanly over the microphone. “And now your blood sugar is low? Two hundred thousand people are watching.” I leaned in, amplifying my voice for maximum humiliation. “You’ve been trying to build your own channel for months. If you back out of a dare on a live feed, how are you ever going to make it in this industry? Nobody likes a flake.” 2 Bernice whipped her head around, glaring at me with pure, unadulterated venom. I had hit her deepest insecurity. I had the effortless aesthetic, the wealthy background, the million followers who loved my lifestyle vlogs. Bernice spent her days photobombing my posts, desperate for a crumb of clout, barely scraping together a fraction of my audience. Now, I was calling her out in front of half a million eyeballs. She was practically vibrating with rage. One of the frat boys jumped to her defense. “Harriet, you’re being a bitch. She said she feels sick. Why are you forcing it? It’s just a game, drop it.” Another chimed in, eager to earn points with Corey. “Seriously. Zero empathy. No wonder Corey says you’re exhausting to date.” Bolstered by her audience, Bernice let her legs give out. She collapsed neatly against Corey’s chest, letting out a frail sigh. “Corey, my head is spinning. I can’t breathe. Can you help me up?” Corey immediately wrapped a protective arm around her waist. He turned his head, his face a thundercloud of resentment, and barked at me. “So you have some internet followers, who cares? Stop acting like you’re better than everyone!” He stood up, hoisting Bernice with him. “I’m taking Bernice home. Sit here and think about how you’re acting.” He began half-carrying her toward the door. I stood up, taking one massive stride to block the entryway. I held the yellow sticky note right at Bernice’s eye level. My voice was ice. “It’s one sentence. Read it, and you can walk out that door.” I paused, letting my eyes bore into hers. “Otherwise, I have every reason to believe you’re using this ‘prank’ as a cover to actually wish death upon my family.” Everyone in the room stared at me like I belonged in a psych ward. The loudest of Corey’s friends pointed a finger in my face. “Are you psychotic? There’s a limit to being a jealous girlfriend! Cursing your family? What is this, a CW teen drama?” I stood in the doorway, an immovable object. Seeing I wasn’t going to budge, the guys started groaning. “Bernice, just read the damn thing so we can leave. Placate the crazy lady.” I had backed her into a corner. If she didn’t read it, she proved she was terrified of the words. She shot me a look of pure hatred, snatched the sticky note, and scanned it. The color drained from her face, leaving her a sickly, ashen gray. Her hand trembled violently, though she tried to mask it with an exaggerated scoff. “Jesus, Harriet, your handwriting is atrocious. I’m too dizzy to even focus on this. I’m not reading it.” She moved to crumple it up. I grabbed my phone from the tripod and shoved the camera lens inches from her face. “Can’t read it? Want me to have two hundred thousand people decipher it for you? Bernice, if you don’t read this right now, the second anything happens to my family, the police will be knocking on your door. And my entire comment section will be the witnesses.” The live chat was moving so fast it was a blur, thousands of voices calling her out for being fake, dramatic, and suspicious. Bernice ground her teeth. Her jaw locked. She took a shallow, shaky breath, and read the words with the enthusiasm of someone walking to the gallows. “Whatever misfortune befalls Harriet’s family, it will rebound onto me, ten times worse.” The room erupted. Corey’s friends exploded, yelling over each other. “Harriet, you are a toxic, vindictive bitch!” “Wishing karma on her? That is so dark. What the fuck is wrong with you?” A sharp, humorless laugh tore its way out of my throat. “Five minutes ago, she wished rape and death on my family, and you all sat there clapping like seals!” I swept my gaze over the room of hypocrites, letting it land squarely on Corey. “But when I simply hand the exact same energy back to her, suddenly I’m the dark, vindictive one?” I clicked my tongue. “The double standards in this room are suffocating.” Corey’s face went dark. He stepped forward and shoved me hard in the chest. “Enough, Harriet! I never realized how utterly ugly you are on the inside.” My back slammed against the entryway console table. Pain shot up my spine. I touched the wood to steady myself, a cold smile pulling at my lips. “You just realized? Perfect.” I stared him dead in the eye. Every ounce of love I had ever held for this man had evaporated in my previous life. “We’re done. We’re breaking up.” 3 The air was sucked out of the room. No one expected me—the girl who had compromised and accommodated Corey for two years—to end it over what they considered a minor spat. Bernice’s head snapped up. A flash of wild, uncontainable triumph sparked in her eyes, though she quickly arranged her face into a mask of distress. “Oh my god, stop! This is my fault. You guys are talking about getting engaged. Don’t break up over me!” I rolled my eyes. “Save the acting, Bernice. Your lips are about to tear from smiling so hard.” “Harriet! Watch your tone! What did Bernice ever do to you?” Corey reached out to grab my arm. I slapped his hand away with a resounding smack. I walked out and slammed the door behind me. I practically sprinted through the parking garage. I threw myself into the driver’s seat of my SUV, my heart hammering against my ribs. There was no room for heartbreak. I needed to move. My mind kept replaying Bernice’s terrified expression when she read the rebound clause. The dread in her eyes wasn’t an act. That meant that in this lifetime, if the tragedy struck, the catastrophic blowback would hit her. I let out a long, shaky exhale. But I wasn’t leaving my family’s survival up to mystical karma. I fumbled for my phone and dialed my younger sister, Sophie. She was a sophomore at a prestigious boarding school on the edge of the city. It rang forever. Finally, a hushed voice answered. “Harriet? I’m in study hall.” The moment I heard her voice, the dam broke. Hot tears pricked my eyes. I gripped the steering wheel, forcing the tremor out of my voice. “Soph. Listen to me very carefully. No matter what happens today, you are not to step foot off campus. Do you understand me? You don’t leave the gates.” She was startled by my intensity. “Why? It’s the weekend. I don’t have afternoon classes.” “Don’t ask questions!” I snapped, harsher than I meant to. “I don’t have time to explain, but I would never hurt you. Stay on campus. Do not go anywhere!” Sophie was a good kid. Sensing the sheer panic radiating through the phone, she promised me, swearing she wouldn’t leave her dorm. Half the weight lifted from my chest. I threw the car into drive and hit the gas. Fifteen minutes of aggressive city driving later, I pulled up to my parents’ trendy downtown bistro. It was the peak of the lunch rush. There was a line out the door. I stormed past the hostess stand, grabbed the microphone from the manager, and hit the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am so sorry! We have an emergency situation. We are closing immediately. Please evacuate the dining room.” The customers stared at me, forks suspended in mid-air. Then, the uproar began. “Are you kidding me? We waited an hour for a table!” “What kind of management is this?” My parents rushed out of the kitchen, their faces pale with shock. They grabbed my arms. “Harriet, have you lost your mind? It’s the lunch rush! Do you know how much money we’re losing?” my dad hissed. Looking at my parents—vibrant, healthy, alive—the back of my throat burned. The image of them in orange jumpsuits, hollowed out and weeping behind reinforced glass, crashed over me. My knees gave out. I dropped to the floor right there in the entryway. “Mom. Dad. I’m not crazy. I’m begging you. Close the doors right now.” Terrified, they dropped to their knees beside me, trying to pull me up. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Talk to us.” I pulled them close, dropping my voice to an urgent whisper. “Dad, I got a tip. The health department is doing unannounced sting operations today. They’re looking for any excuse to shut places down, arresting owners on the spot for code violations…” In the restaurant industry, the FDA and local health boards are the ultimate boogeymen. My dad’s face tightened. I gripped his wrists. “Close the restaurant. We need to scrub this place top to bottom. But more importantly—the walk-in freezer. Every single piece of inventory in the back alley needs to go into the dumpster. Do not save a single ounce.” Our sourcing was impeccable. We had never had a health violation. But in my past life, someone had eaten something toxic and died. I wasn’t taking a single gamble. My parents exchanged a long, stressed look. It was thousands of dollars in premium ingredients. But seeing me pale, shaking, and on the verge of a breakdown, they caved. “Okay. Okay, Harriet. We’ll lock up.” For the next two hours, I was a woman possessed. I stood by the loading dock, personally overseeing the kitchen staff as they hurled every side of beef, every crate of organic produce, every tub of prep into the industrial trash compactor. When the metal jaws crushed the last of it, the stone sitting on my chest finally dissolved. My mom untied her apron, wiping sweat from her brow. She gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Take a breath, honey. Par for the course when you own a business.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, her tired face breaking into a radiant smile. “You know, your sister is really growing up. Mother’s Day was weeks ago, but she insisted on getting me a late present.” I froze. I stretched my neck to look at the screen. It was a photo of Sophie. She was holding a little pink bakery box, standing at the entrance of a dark, graffiti-lined alley. Smiling. The blood in my veins turned to ice. I grabbed my mom’s forearm, my fingers digging into her skin. My voice cracked. “When did she post this?!” My mom jumped, startled by my aggression. “Just… just now. Maybe ten minutes ago?” The world tilted on its axis. My body was seized by violent, uncontrollable tremors. This was the alley. The exact alley where, in my past life, a group of men had cornered her. I snatched the phone from my mom’s hand, my fingers shaking so badly I dropped it twice. Suddenly, my own phone began to ring. It was Sophie’s dorm mother. I hit speakerphone, my breath caught in my throat. “Harriet? It’s Sophie. You need to get to the school. Right now.” 4 I blew through every red light. Before the tires even stopped screeching against the asphalt of the school parking lot, I kicked the door open and bolted. My parents were right behind me, sprinting toward the main academic building. There was a crowd of students and faculty gathered on the lawn, pointing up in horror. On the rooftop, Sophie was standing on the ledge. She looked like a ghost—swaying in the wind, entirely hollowed out. I threw open the fire doors, taking the stairs three at a time until I burst onto the roof. “Soph! I’m here! Step down, baby, please!” Hearing my voice, Sophie turned her head in agonizing slow motion. When I saw her face, my heart physically stopped. One side of her cheek was swollen and purple. Her lip was split. Dark, violent bruises bloomed across her collarbones where her uniform shirt was torn open. She looked at me, and a devastating, guttural sob tore from her throat. “I’m sorry… Harriet, I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have left.” She was clutching the crushed pink bakery box to her chest, shivering violently despite the afternoon sun. “I just… I just wanted to get Mom her favorite strawberry cake.” Her voice broke. “The alley was so dark… They put a hand over my mouth. I couldn’t scream…” Behind me, my mother let out an inhuman wail. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed onto the concrete, unconscious. My dad dropped to his knees, his face buried in his hands, screaming until his vocal cords shredded. “My baby! Daddy’s begging you, step away from the edge!” I swallowed the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I took one agonizingly slow step forward. “Soph, look at me. This is not your fault. Come to me. Let me take you home.” My voice was fierce, vibrating with a desperate promise. “I swear to God, I will hunt them down. I will ruin them.” Sophie flinched, taking a half-step backward. Her heel hovered over nothing but empty air. “Don’t come closer!” she shrieked, shaking her head frantically. The light had completely died in her eyes. It was just a vast, empty wasteland. “I’m dirty now, Harriet… I can’t live like this.” She set the crushed pink box gently on the ledge. She looked down at our unconscious mother. “Happy Mother’s Day,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and leaned back. “NO!” I lunged across the concrete, my fingers grazing the edge of her pleated skirt before she slipped through my grasp. A sickening, heavy thud echoed from the courtyard below. Then, the deafening screams of the crowd. In that moment, the entire world went completely, terrifyingly silent. I knelt on the edge of the roof, staring down at the pavement, the tears falling silently onto my hands. I had done everything right. I had warned her. I had rushed against the clock. Why? Why did the tragedy still happen? The ambulance came. My parents were sedated and taken to the hospital. My phone was vibrating relentlessly in my jacket pocket. Numbly, I pulled it out and opened my messages. In our mutual friend group chat, Corey had just dropped a news link. Headline: Tragic Accident: Local Prep School Student Falls from Roof After Assault. His text below it was dripping with malicious glee. See? Harriet’s sister actually died. I told you Bernice had a gift for manifestation. She was just trying to warn Harriet on the livestream. But Harriet had to be a psycho about it. Karma’s a bitch. A chorus of sycophants immediately chimed in. Bernice’s literally a prophet. Hey B, manifest some lottery numbers for me! Then, Bernice tagged me. So, Harriet. Don’t you think you owe me a thank you? My thumb trembled as I held down the audio record button. I let out a feral, jagged scream into the mic. “Go to hell! You vultures are feeding on my sister’s corpse. I swear to god, I will make you pay!” I deleted the chat and threw the phone back in my pocket. I wandered aimlessly through the school courtyard. As I walked, students backing away from me, gasping, covering their mouths in horror. A cold realization washed over me. I reached into my bag and pulled out my compact mirror. I stopped dead in my tracks. Vast chunks of my hair had fallen out at the roots. My cheeks were covered in weeping, blistered red lesions, spreading like wildfire across my skin. A deep, bone-chilling dread crawled up my spine. Every single thing on Bernice’s list had come true. But why? I refused to accept that magic had killed my sister. In a daze of grief and rage, I pulled up the archive of the April Fool’s livestream. I watched it frame by frame. I stared at the screen, my eyes burning, scanning every pixel. Then, I hit pause. Right before the game started, Bernice had handed me an open bottle of water. I had taken a long drink before reading the note. My pupils dilated. The truth hit me like a freight train.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “414018”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Maxwell Prescott’s memory resets every ninety days. Every three months, he returns to the day he hated me most. Like clockwork, he’d break my spirit—and sometimes my bones—to avenge his ward’s honor. Then, after a hundred nights of penance, he would propose to me under a canopy of fireflies, only for the cycle to restart the next morning. I lived through the loop, over and over, waiting for the day his memory would finally hold. I believed my love was a tether that would eventually pull him back to reality. Until I heard him through the cracked door of a private lounge at the club. “Max, how long are you going to keep this up?” It was one of his inner circle laughing. “The ‘memory reset’ thing? Only a delusional girl like Daisy would buy it. Every time, she’s on her knees begging us to help her ‘remind’ you of your love, desperate to marry you.” “Three days until the next ‘reset,’ right? Which round is this?” “The ninth,” Maxwell’s voice replied. It was deep, cool, and devastatingly clear. “Daisy’s pathetic little catering mistake poisoned Maisie and ruined her debutante ball. This is just the interest on the debt she owes.” I heard the soft rustle of fabric—him ruffling Maisie’s hair. “Nobody messes with my girl,” he added, his voice dropping into a register of tenderness he had never once used with me without the shroud of ‘amnesia.’ The betrayal was a physical blade between my ribs. My “devotion” was nothing more than the punchline to a cruel, year-long prank. I wiped my face, the salt of my tears stinging my chapped skin, and summoned the Interface in my mind. Negotiations are over, I told the cold, mechanical voice. In three days, when the mission fails, wipe every trace of Maxwell Prescott from my mind. … [Host, are you certain?] Before I could answer, the voices in the lounge drifted out again. “I heard if Daisy’s hand gets broken one more time, she’ll never be able to hold a paintbrush again.” The speaker sounded hesitant. “Max, isn’t the punishment… enough?” The clink of a wine glass stopped. I pictured Maxwell’s lips thinning into that hard, aristocratic line. Maisie lowered her head, her fingers tracing the custom diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. “Uncle Max, I love this birthday gift. The debutante ball was just a formality… it doesn’t matter that it was ruined.” Her voice was soft, performatively sweet. Every word was designed to sound like a grace note while hitting like a hammer. Maxwell’s temper flared instantly. I heard the thud of a boot hitting a chair. “Since when do you tell me how to handle my business?” He took Maisie’s hand in his, treating her like a piece of priceless Ming porcelain. “Even if Daisy loses her hand, it wouldn’t compensate for what you lost. A street-food cook thinking she can be a fine artist? It’s pathetic. She’s a moth reaching for a star she doesn’t deserve.” A sharp, mocking huff escaped his nose. It felt like a thousand needles piercing my heart. I remembered when I lost that scholarship competition. I wanted to give up on my dreams, but he was the one who held me. He told me I was a “Sunflower”—that no matter how dark it got, I had to keep my head up and face the light. But the light was a lie. In his eyes, I wasn’t a sunflower. I was a nuisance. Laughter erupted in the room. “She’s got some talent, though,” someone joked. “If Max hadn’t called the judges beforehand, she actually would’ve taken first place.” The world went silent. My fingers began to shake uncontrollably. I had poured my soul into that competition. It was my one ticket out of poverty, my one chance to stand beside him as an equal. And he had crushed it with a single phone call. Are the dreams of the poor really that cheap? Just something for the elite to stomp on for sport? I clenched my fists so hard my nails drew blood. [Host, I ask again: do you wish to proceed with the memory wipe?] the Interface chimed. [You previously traded ten years of your lifespan to extend this mission. Are you truly giving up?] A bitter laugh bubbled up in my throat. A month ago, I was terrified of losing him. I had begged the System for more time, desperate to save the man I thought was trapped in a cycle of trauma. What a joke. I closed my eyes, letting the hot tears spill over. I’m sure. Delete it all. Right then, my phone buzzed violently in my pocket. “Daisy, it’s your mom. There’s been an accident!” Kidney failure. The words on the medical report blurred. I looked at my mother, pale and fragile on the hospital bed. I had been so obsessed with “saving” Maxwell that I hadn’t noticed the shadow of death creeping over her face. Guilt crashed over me like a tidal wave. At the billing counter, my vision was swollen and red. I looked at the balance in my bank account—a number I could count on one hand. The nurse sighed, her gaze flickering with pity and impatience. “Ms. Mona, we need the deposit now.” “Can I just…” I started, my voice cracking. Then, the elevator dinned. Maxwell appeared, walking with that effortless, powerful stride. He was slightly out of breath. “Daisy, I heard about your mother…” Seeing my ruined face, he pulled my cold body into his chest. “It’s okay. I’m here.” The warmth. The scent of expensive cologne and cedarwood. He always did this. He always appeared at my lowest moments—car accidents, legal scares, every crisis. It was as if he had a sixth sense for my pain. I grew up without a father. I was starved for a protector. That was why, even after he broke my hand the first time, I forgave him. Because he knelt and apologized with such “sincerity.” Because he stayed by my side for weeks, enduring my anger without a word. I fell for a man twelve years my senior because his “warmth” was like top-shelf whiskey. One sip, and I was too drunk to find the exit. “Uncle Max!” Maisie’s voice cut through the air. Maxwell pushed me away instantly. The sudden coldness snapped me back to reality. I felt like a fool. I was still craving the comfort of a man who was actively destroying me. Maisie glanced at my phone screen, seeing the pathetic balance. She gasped, loud enough for the waiting room to turn their heads. “Daisy, is that all you have left? Doesn’t Uncle Max give you enough of an allowance?” The whispers started. To the strangers in the lobby, I was just a cheap mistress being scolded by the “real” family. Maxwell frowned, but he didn’t correct her. Instead, he leaned in and whispered, “Maisie didn’t mean it that way. I’ll talk to her at home. She’s sensitive, I can’t embarrass her in public.” So, for her pride, I had to wear the scarlet letter. Of course. How could a “sinner” like me compare to his precious ward? I looked at him, my eyes dead. “Give me five hundred thousand dollars.” Maxwell froze. I had never asked him for a dime in three years. But if I was going to be labeled a mistress, I might as well get the market rate. My mother needed that surgery. His expression darkened. “What did you say?” “The bags, the jewelry you bought to ‘apologize’ over the months… I never kept them. They’re worth more than half a million. Give me the cash.” Maxwell’s jaw tightened. “That’s different.” It was. Gifts to a pet are an act of mercy. A pet demanding payment is an act of rebellion. Maisie patted his arm, and he settled instantly, like a lion being tamed by a child. She smiled at me—a smile dripping with pure, unadulterated contempt. “Daisy, Uncle Max didn’t bring his cards in a hurry. I have five thousand in cash here. Take it for now.” She pulled a stack of bills from her designer bag and reached for my hand. But as she pressed the money into my palm, her sharp, manicured nails dug deep into my skin, drawing blood. I flinched, shoving her hand away. Maisie let out a theatrical shriek and collapsed onto the floor. The cash scattered like autumn leaves. “Daisy!” she sobbed, looking up with big, watery eyes. “Why did you push me? I just wanted to help. I didn’t mean to insult you!” Maxwell’s gaze turned to ice. “Is this how you ask for help, Daisy?” “She stabbed me—” I started, but he cut me off with a raised hand. “I know what you’re going to say. ‘She tripped herself.’ Spare me.” I closed my mouth. I was done explaining. I was done believing he’d ever choose the truth over her. I knelt on the dirty hospital floor, numbly picking up the bills one by one. This was my mother’s life. Suddenly, a heavy boot stepped on my hand, crushing it into the tile. Maxwell looked down at me from his height. “Apologize to Maisie.” The rubber sole of his shoe ground into my knuckles, crushing the last of my dignity. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Say it like you mean it.” I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I let my knees hit the floor with a heavy thud. “I am sorry.” I looked up at him, my face a mask of indifference. “Are we done?” His chest heaved. He sighed, a sound of weary disappointment, and knelt to help me pick up the rest of the money. “I know you’re stressed about your mother, but that’s no excuse to take it out on Maisie. Don’t let it happen again.” “It won’t,” I said softly. Because there wouldn’t be a next time. Maxwell used some of the cash to pay the immediate hospital fees and shoved the rest into my hand. “Take me to see her.” My mother hated Maxwell. Even with his billions, she saw him for what he was—a broken, dangerous man. She never gave him a kind word. But today, she was different. She held his hand and talked for a long time. I knew why. She was trying to entrust me to him. She was afraid that after she was gone, I’d be alone in this world. A suffocating bitterness rose in my throat. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the man she was pleading with was the wolf at our door. I didn’t break character. I needed his money for the treatment, and I needed his connections to find a donor. That night, he found a match. A kidney was being flown in. If it arrived by tomorrow, my mother would live. The next day, I waited. From dawn until dusk, I sat by her bed. But Maxwell never showed. The orange glow of the sunset hit my sleeping mother, making her look like a ghost already fading away. With trembling hands, I dialed his number for the hundredth time. Finally, someone picked up. It wasn’t Maxwell; it was his friend. “Oh, Daisy? Yeah, Max is busy. Maisie had a sudden migraine, and she was crying for him. He’s at the villa taking care of her.” He was with Maisie. And he had the transport documents for the kidney. I flew to his villa like a madwoman. I didn’t even look at the two of them on the bed—intertwined, mid-kiss. I grabbed the medical cooler tossed in the corner and bolted for the door. I had thirty minutes. If I could get to the hospital in thirty minutes, the organ would still be viable. But as I hailed a cab, Maxwell’s security team swarmed me. They dragged me back to the rooftop of the villa. Maisie was standing on the ledge, weeping beautifully. Maxwell, his face dark with rage, grabbed me by the collar and shoved me toward her. “Because you burst in like that, Maisie is traumatized! She thinks you’ve misunderstood everything, and now she’s suicidal!” he roared. “Tell her! Tell her you didn’t see anything!” I let out a jagged, hysterical laugh. “Misunderstood? Misunderstood that you’re two deviants masquerading as ‘family’ while you’re sleeping together?” Slap. The force of his hand sent my head spinning. “Shut your mouth!” Maxwell hissed, his voice shaking with fury. “If Maisie doesn’t step down from that ledge, you can forget about that kidney. And you can forget about any surgeon in this city touching your mother.” I stared at him, seeing the absolute coldness in his eyes. He meant it. He would let my mother die to soothe Maisie’s ego. My mother was waiting for me. “I didn’t see anything!” I screamed at the girl on the ledge. “You’re innocent! You’re a perfect, loving family! Just get down!” Maisie’s eyes glinted with triumph. She took her sweet time, lingering for several more minutes before finally stepping down. I sprinted back to the hospital, heart hammering against my ribs. But when I arrived, the surgeon looked at me with a heavy shake of his head. “It’s too late. The tissue is degraded. We missed the window by ten minutes.” I collapsed, the screams tearing out of my throat until I had no breath left. Later that night, a courier delivered a familiar, exquisite gift box. Then, Maxwell called. “Maisie is my best friend’s daughter. I couldn’t just let her jump, Daisy. We’ll find another donor…” I said nothing. He sighed, changing the subject. “You got the dress, right? Wear it tomorrow night. Meet me at our usual spot. I have something important to say.” I remembered then. Tomorrow was his ninth “proposal.” He still wanted to play the game. But Maxwell, I’m done playing. The next night, I didn’t go. The couture gown went into the trash. As I was signing the discharge papers to take my mother home for hospice, Maxwell’s friend appeared and forced me into a car. “Max has been waiting for hours! What’s wrong with you? This might be the time his memory actually stays—don’t throw it away now!” The field was filled with fireflies. I had seen this eight times before, and every time, I had cried with joy. I used to think I was his ultimate choice. Now I knew I was just his favorite victim. The lights weren’t magical anymore. They were blinding. I watched Maxwell, in the same suit, reciting the same vows. When he held out the diamond ring, I reached out and slapped it into the dirt. Maxwell froze. “Daisy? What… don’t you want to marry me?” “Maxwell,” I said, my voice like dry ice. “Stop acting—” Suddenly, his friend ran up, staring at his phone. He whispered something to Maxwell, and they both glanced at me. Maxwell tried to shove him away. “Not now! Can’t you see I’m busy? Get out!” A serpent of dread coiled in my gut. I snatched the phone from the friend’s hand. My heart stopped. It was a live stream. My mother was standing on the hospital rooftop. I ran. I flagged a taxi, my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone. I spammed the chat in the live stream. Mom, please get down. I’m coming! The streamer, a young kid looking for clout, saw my comments and laughed into the camera. “Oh, you’re the daughter? Your mom is jumping because of you! She found out her daughter is a high-end hooker for some billionaire. She’s too ashamed to live!” The blood in my veins turned to slush. Then, my mother’s voice came through the speaker. She was talking to a nurse. “My Daisy… she’s a good girl. She shouldn’t have to sell her soul to pay for my life. Tell her… tell her she’s free now.” I gripped the phone, a scream of pure agony trapped in my chest. I reached the hospital just in time to hear the crowd below shouting. “Just jump already! Having a daughter like that is a failure anyway!” Then… Thud. A sickening, heavy sound. My mother bloomed like a red flower on the pavement right before my eyes. “No!” I threw myself onto her broken body, cradling her. My tears mixed with the blood on her face. I looked at the crowd, my mouth open, but no sound came out. Please. Help her. Somebody help her. [Host, the mission window has closed. You have failed.] [Beginning the wipe of all memories related to Maxwell Prescott…] … Maxwell intended to follow Daisy to the hospital, but Maisie called. Another headache. He hesitated, then turned the car around. He stayed with her through the night, eventually falling into a deep sleep by her bedside. When he woke up at noon, his group chat was blowing up. “Max, are you starting the ‘Reset’ act today? Round nine?” Maxwell stared at the screen for a long time. Beside him, Maisie stirred. He typed one word: Yeah. After showering, he sent his usual instructions to his security team: Go find Daisy. Break her hand. But an uneasy feeling was gnawing at him. Two hours later, the lead guard called back. “Sir… Ms. Mona is gone.”

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It took me ten years to claw my way out of the subterranean black site where they’d been running their augment experiments. Ten years to finally break free. Only to find that while I was buried in the dark, the world above had ended. The outbreak had swallowed everything. And my best friend—the only anchor I had left in my fractured mind—was currently being backed into a corner by her husband’s survival crew, ordered to surrender her meager rations. “Everyone else chipped in, Rachel. Why are you being so selfish? You’re really hoarding a couple of candy bars?” Rachel’s voice was small, defensive. “I wanted to save them for Tommy.” A teenage girl standing nearby let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Oh, come on. Every time you want a sugar fix, you use the kid as an excuse. It’s pathetic.” Under the judgmental glare of the entire scavenging party, I unslung the heavy canvas backpack from my shoulder and hurled it. It caught the sneering teenager squarely in the back of the head. “Is that enough?” My voice came out flat, stripped of whatever inflection normal humans used. “Say one more word to her, and I’ll kill every single one of you.” 1 I hadn’t zipped the bag all the way. Dozens of foil-wrapped chocolate bars spilled out, scattering across the cracked asphalt like glittering debris. “What the hell?! Who do you think you’re talking to?” The teenage girl spun around, her voice shrill with shock and rage. Nobody answered her. Every pair of eyes in the vicinity was glued to the dirt. The collective sound of dry swallows echoed in the dead air. “Chocolate… that’s a whole fucking bag of chocolate…” “I’m sweeping it with my kinetics. It’s real. It’s not a mirage.” They surged forward. A desperate, scrambling frenzy broke out as hands clawed at the dirt. Nobody cared about the teenager’s bruised ego. She bit her lip, grabbing the arm of the tall, broad-shouldered man beside her, shaking it. “David, look at them!” The man furrowed his brow, his voice dropping into a low, authoritative rumble. “Stand down. Don’t touch it.” He looked over the group. “All scavenged supplies go to Kelsey’s tether. She inventories and rations. Did you all suddenly forget how this crew operates?” The scrambling stopped. The survivors froze, hands hovering over the candy. The girl, Kelsey, giggled. She strutted forward, confiscating the chocolate from their unresisting hands. A faint, pale blue light pulsed against her palms. A spatial tether. A pocket dimension. Through the entire chaotic display, Rachel—her face ashen, stripped of all color—hadn’t even glanced at the food. She was just staring at me. Her voice trembled, thick with a disbelief that seemed to crack her chest wide open. “Margo? Is that you? You’re alive?” 2 She slammed into me. I stood there, slightly paralyzed by the sudden impact. My arms felt heavy, but some deeply buried, vestigial instinct forced my hand up to awkwardly pat her back. “Is that… my name? Margo?” “You don’t remember?” She pulled back, her hands frantically roaming over my shoulders, my arms, checking for broken bones, crying and laughing all at once. “The director at the group home said you got adopted. I begged him to tell me by who, but he wouldn’t say a word. I spent years looking for you, Mags. I searched everywhere…” I let her rapid-fire words wash over me in absolute silence. Of course she couldn’t find me. For a decade, I had been locked inside a classified, subterranean labyrinth, subjected to extreme human-limit augmentation trials. I couldn’t even count how many times they had cracked open my skull, how many microchips were threaded into my cerebral cortex, how many synthetic serums had burned through my veins. My memories and emotions were a blurred, static-filled wasteland. I didn’t even remember my own name. I only had one fragile, lingering fragmented image from the “Before.” I had a friend. Her name was Rachel. And she… loved me. 3 “Who are you? And where the hell did you get high-tier rations?” Rachel was still running her hands over me, checking my pulse, my temperature. The tall man—David—stepped forward. His eyes were cold, sweeping over me with practiced, paranoid scrutiny. I accessed my limited social-response protocols. “I passed through the city. Picked it up on the way.” David’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You just picked it up? Do you have any idea what’s out there right now—” Before he could finish the sentence, Rachel stepped between us. She spread her arms, shielding me with her own body. “David, this is her. This is my best friend. The one I told you about. The most important person in the world to me.” She turned back to me, her eyes wet. “Mags, this is David. We got married five years ago.” She looked back at him, her voice desperate but firm. “She’s coming with us.” David didn’t say a word. Behind him, Kelsey, the spatial-tether girl, stepped up, crossing her arms. “Look, Rachel, no offense, but we’re an elite runner crew. We’re already dragging you around, and you’re a Baseline. No augments, no nothing. You’re dead weight.” “If we drag your stray friend along too, we might as well just give up on reaching the Portland Safe Zone.” Rachel’s face hardened. Her voice dropped an octave. “Kelsey, if you’re not taking her, then empty your pockets. Give her back her food.” “Excuse me?!” Kelsey’s face flushed an ugly, mottled red. She immediately turned to David, her tone shifting into a whining drawl. “David, are you hearing her? Why is she taking a stranger’s side over her own crew?” “Enough. Both of you.” David delivered the final verdict. “She surrendered a massive haul to the communal pool. That buys her our protection. Rachel, your friend walks with us. That’s the end of it. I don’t want to hear another word.” Rachel’s eyes curved into a brilliant, relieved smile. Beside her, Kelsey’s face went stone-cold. She shot me a venomous glare, rolling her eyes. I let my kinetic senses bleed out, sweeping over Kelsey’s body. Her internal energy signature was pathetic. Less than three cubic meters of spatial capacity. The most rudimentary, entry-level tether I had ever seen. I could snap her neck with a single thought. But I looked down at Rachel, who was still holding onto my sleeve like I might vanish. …I’d let her live. For now. 4 We walked for two days before making camp in a gutted suburban town. Just like when we were kids, Rachel couldn’t stand the silence. As we walked, she filled in the ten-year gap. After my “adoption,” she got into college, started dating David her sophomore year, and married him right after graduation. Two months ago, the contagion hit globally. David woke up with a rare Ferrokinesis augment—he could manipulate metal to tear through the infected. Kelsey, I learned, was David’s stepsister. No blood relation. “They’re incredibly close. Honestly, sometimes I was jealous of how much they had each other’s backs. Especially after you left. I was always just… alone.” Rachel let out a soft, tired sigh. “I have a son, Mags. Tommy. He just turned four. The day the outbreak hit, he was at a summer camp down in San Diego. I begged David to go get him, but it was pure chaos. He couldn’t find him. We finally got a radio signal from the camp counselors later—they evacuated early and flew the kids up to the Portland Safe Zone.” “That’s why we’re heading there. It’s a massive military quarantine zone. Once we get inside, you can meet him.” Rachel rested her chin in her hands, looking at me with that same warm, bright expression from our childhood. “He knows all about you, you know. I always told him his mom had the bravest, best friend in the world named Margo. I told him how much you loved paper cranes when we were in the foster home. He folded hundreds of them. He said he’s saving them to give to Auntie Margo.” I stared at her smile. Deep inside my skull, behind the titanium plating and the synthetic neural webbing, something shifted. Like a glacier that had been frozen in darkness for a decade, just barely beginning to weep water at its edges. “Okay.” I opened my palm. Sitting in the center were three untouched chocolate bars. Rachel’s eyes went wide. I tried to mimic her smile. “For Tommy.” 5 That night, we camped in the rusted shell of an old auto factory. Rachel sneaked over to me, clutching two stale dinner rolls against her chest. “Here. You need to eat.” After countless surgical modifications, my biological shell barely required caloric intake to function. But looking at the fierce, protective gleam in her eyes, I took the bread. Rachel bumped her shoulder against mine, taking a bite of her own roll. “Where were you, Mags? These last ten years… where did you go? How did you suddenly find me?” I sat in silence, staring at the slightly warm, squishy bread in my hands. The sterile, blinding white of the underground lab flashed behind my eyes. The hum of surgical machinery. The endless parade of white coats blurring past the reinforced glass. “Inject Subject 09 with the latest serum compound!” “Increase the neural-chip current!” “Code Red! She’s breaching! Subject 09 is breaching!” The deafening roar of shattering glass. My kinetic output had been so massive it atomized the containment tank. When the red haze of my rage finally cleared, the sector was dead quiet. The pristine white floors were painted crimson, littered with severed limbs and broken bodies. I had grabbed a discarded lab coat, stepping barefoot over the corpses, staring blankly at the metal blast doors. “Rachel… I need to find Rachel…” … “I was in a… specialized facility. I wasn’t allowed to contact the outside world.” It was the most sanitized version of the truth I could offer. “When I finally got out, I just wanted to see you. So I tracked you down.” “Oh, Mags.” Rachel threw her arms around my neck, burying her face in my shoulder. “I knew it. I knew you still loved me. David kept saying you probably got adopted by some rich family and forgot all about the trashy group home kids. But I never believed him. I told him he just didn’t understand us.” She was right. Who could possibly understand? For ten years, not even the world’s most brilliant neuroscientists understood. The sheer volume of neuro-stimulants they pumped into my spine should have killed a human being purely from the pain. But I survived hundreds of injections. Out of the one hundred children brought to that black site, I was the only one left breathing. Through the one-way glass, I used to hear them whisper: “Subject 09 is a gift from God.” There was no God down there. There was only a faded memory of a little girl holding my hand, saying: “Mags, we’re gonna be best friends until we’re a hundred years old.” I had to live to be a hundred. I couldn’t break my promise. 6 Sometime after midnight, Rachel fell asleep, her head resting heavy on my shoulder. I carefully shifted my weight, easing her into a more comfortable position against a duffel bag, and stood up. Across the dark factory floor, David was awake. His eyes were locked on me, heavy with suspicion. He started walking toward me. In the palm of his hand, I could sense the sharp, deadly hum of kinetic energy molding a spike of solid iron. A second later, a shrieking siren shattered the dead silence of the night. “INCOMING! WE GOT A HORDE!” The rusted iron doors of the factory, barricaded by two abandoned sedans, groaned and gave way. A tidal wave of infected bodies poured through the breach, rotting limbs scrambling over one another. The crew snapped awake, instantly deploying their augments. There were six “gifted” in the crew, but aside from David’s mid-tier ferrokinesis, the rest were pathetic, entry-level parlor tricks. Within minutes, their stamina gauges hit zero. The defensive line collapsed. Three infected broke through, their jaws snapping wildly as they lunged toward where Rachel and Kelsey were huddled. “DAVID!!” “David, help!” Over the chaotic screaming, David didn’t even hesitate. The iron spike in his hand flew across the room, impaling the zombie leaping at Kelsey, pinning it to the concrete. Only then did his head snap toward Rachel, realizing he had left his wife exposed. He turned just in time to see it. Squelch. The heavy steel rebar in my hands pierced flawlessly through the eye sockets of both infected attacking Rachel. I pulled it back in a smooth, sickening arc, and they dropped like heavy sacks of meat. Rachel was gripping the hem of my jacket, her face ghostly white. “Mags, are you hurt? Did they scratch you?!” “I’m fine.” I reached up, wiping a smear of black blood from my cheek with my thumb, my eyes scanning the perimeter. More thermal signatures were swarming the breach. “Get in the vehicles. I’ll hold the rear.” David gritted his teeth, his voice straining. “Move out! Get the engines running, now!” 7 For hours the next day, Rachel didn’t say a word. We had managed to outrun the horde at dawn, barricading ourselves inside an abandoned suburban house to catch our breath. Rachel sat on the floor, obsessively picking at the fraying thread on her sleeve. I reached out, gently covering her trembling hands with mine. I looked her dead in the eye. “I will protect you.” She looked up at me. The image from the factory was burned into both our retinas. In the split second where both his wife and his stepsister were about to be ripped apart, David had made his choice. “All our food and meds are in Kelsey’s tether. Tactically, she’s the VIP. I know that. I understand the logic, I do. But…” Rachel choked back a sob, tears finally spilling over. “Does that make me a horrible, selfish person, Mags?” I shook my head. “You’re the best person I know.” And she was. To me, Rachel was the only good thing left in the world. My biological parents dumped me at the steps of the group home when I was four because I didn’t speak. The state doctors stamped “Severe Autism” on my file. In the system, I was easy prey. The older kids used me as a punching bag. Until Rachel, three years older and half their size, charged at them with a literal cinderblock, chasing them across the yard. “Don’t you touch her! You leave her alone!” When I was nine, the home’s director called me into his office late at night. He said a special doctor was there to give me a checkup. I went. There were two strange men in the room. They told me to take off my dress. The director stood in the corner, laughing softly. “She doesn’t talk. It’s perfectly safe.” That was the exact moment the heavy oak door to the office was kicked off its hinges. Rachel came screaming into the room, wielding a rusted iron spade from the gardening shed, swinging it like a battleaxe at the director and the two men. “Get away from her! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you!” Over their screams, the spade connected, splitting open scalps. The fallout was massive. The cops came. The director and the men were taken away in handcuffs. That night, shivering in the dark, Rachel held my hand, her fingers constantly smoothing down my messy hair. She whispered, “Don’t be scared, Mags. If the bad things come back… you just scream my name.” … Sitting in the dusty living room of the safe house, I clumsily tried to mimic her cadence from all those years ago. “Don’t be scared, Rachel. If the bad things come… you just call my name.” She stared at me, stunned. Her lower lip began to tremble violently. “Mags…” Before she could say another word, the light from the hallway was blocked out. I looked up. David, flanked by the rest of the crew, had us boxed into the corner. Rachel immediately stood up, stepping in front of me. “What is this?” Kelsey stepped out from behind her brother. “Rachel, I get that you want to blindly trust your childhood bestie, but are you really that dense? Have you not noticed anything wrong with this picture?” Rachel frowned, her muscles tensing. “What the hell are you talking about?” Kelsey gave David a loaded look. David remained silent, but his hand flexed. A vicious, serrated blade of solid iron materialized in his grip. Beside him, a wiry man with a rat-like face spoke up. “Think about it, Rachel. The world’s gone to shit. Finding a rusted can of beans is a miracle. And your ‘friend’ here wanders out of the wasteland, untouched, carrying a twenty-pound bag of pristine chocolate? Surviving solo for two months in the red zones? Claiming she’s just a normal Baseline girl? It’s bullshit.” Rachel gripped my hand tighter. “Make your point.” David took a slow step forward, his voice a low, dangerous gravel. “Rachel, I know what she means to you. But we can’t afford blind spots. We’ve been moving for a month. Sticking to the backroads. We barely saw a single roamer.” “Yesterday, she joins us. And twelve hours later, a massive horde magically zeroes in on our exact location.” “The military broadcasts have been warning us. The virus is mutating. There are Variants out there that look perfectly human. Alphas. Things that can mind-control the swarms.” He raised the iron blade, pointing the jagged tip directly at the space between my eyes. “I think your friend is an Alpha.”

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On my wedding day, the company was hit with a massive tax evasion scandal. To save our future—to save him—I stepped forward. I confessed to crimes I didn’t commit and took the fall for Bennett Sterling. I went to prison so he could stay free. Ten years later, I walked out of those gates a free woman, only to find that Bennett had built a life without me. He had a home, a wife, and a brood of children. When I confronted him, trembling with a decade’s worth of suppressed rage, asking him how he could betray me so completely, he didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “I needed an heir,” he said, as if he were discussing a business merger. “I needed to carry on the family name.” The world blurred. My eyes burned with hot, stinging tears as the shouting match began. But I wasn’t just fighting him; I was fighting a wall of indifference. My in-laws tried to “soothe” me with poison. “Even if Bennett had children with someone else, you’re still the mistress of the Sterling estate. Just be graceful about it. A comfortable life is better than pride, isn’t it?” Even my own parents, the people who were supposed to be my sanctuary, turned their backs. “Nora, Bennett took care of us while you were behind bars. The Sterling line is old and prestigious; he couldn’t just let the bloodline end while waiting for you.” “Besides,” my mother added, her voice dropping to a cold, clinical whisper, “you’re a felon now. You have a record. You should be grateful Bennett isn’t divorcing you outright.” I clenched my fists so hard my nails drew blood, biting my lip to keep from sobbing. “And how exactly do you see this working, Bennett? What is our ‘relationship’ supposed to be?” Bennett took a slow, nonchalant sip of his tea. “As long as you stay in your lane and don’t cause a scene, I won’t divorce you. But the Sterling empire? That goes to Hunter and his five siblings. They’ll take care of you when you’re old. Consider them your own.” The last flicker of hope in my chest died then. A single tear escaped, tracing a cold path down my cheek. I was done. “I don’t need them,” I said, my voice finally finding a terrifying, quiet clarity. “Bennett, I want a divorce.” I turned on my heel and left. The first call I made was to the woman I’d met in the yard—the woman who ran the cell block and, as it turned out, half the city’s underground. … 1 “Divorce?! Absolutely not!” My father was the one who erupted first. Before I could react, his hand lashed out, catching me across the face. The sting was sharp, but the shock was deeper. “How did I raise such a petty, selfish brat?” “Bennett is a man of status,” he sneered. “In another era, he’d have a dozen wives and no one would blink. He’s offering to keep you, despite your shame, and you’re throwing a tantrum over a few kids?” My brother, Tyler, jumped up from the sofa, his face flushed with greed. “Nora, what the hell is wrong with you? My house, my car, the down payment for my wedding—it all came from Bennett. So what if there are kids? It’s not a big deal!” “If it bothers you so much, just have one of your own with him. It’s not like he can’t afford another mouth to feed.” Blood is thicker than water, they say. But in the face of a direct deposit, my family was more than happy to let mine spill. Bennett, who hadn’t looked me in the eye since I’d been processed out, finally looked up. A flicker of something—maybe panic, maybe just annoyance—crossed his face. “Nora, don’t be dramatic. You’re my wife. That hasn’t changed.” A chill settled into my bones. I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Do you even remember what you said to me? Right before I walked into that courtroom to lie for you?” Bennett froze. He looked at me for a long beat, his expression shifting from confusion to a defensive, ugly scowl. “Are you really going to hold that over me now?” he snapped. “I spent ten years taking care of your family, playing the dutiful son-in-law. I don’t expect a ‘thank you,’ but my parents are getting old. They wanted grandkids. I wanted to give them that. So… Hunter and the others happened. Can’t you show a little compassion? A little understanding?” He spoke of his “sacrifices” as if he were the one who had spent a decade staring at a grey concrete ceiling. He listed my faults as if I were the one who had broken a vow. I tilted my head back, forcing the tears back into their ducts. I grew up in a house where I was always second-best to my brother. Bennett had been my escape. He’d pursued me with a frantic, desperate passion, telling me I was the only thing that mattered. I’d fallen for it. I’d walked away from a high-paying career to build his dream from the dirt up. He told me he hated the “fake” corporate world, so I became the face of the company. I did the dirty work, the late-night networking, the high-stakes negotiations. I drank until my stomach bled to land contracts. I miscarried twice because I couldn’t afford to stop moving. Three years of blood and sweat, and the company finally hit the big leagues. We got married. And then, on the day we were supposed to start our lives, the IRS came knocking. His parents had knelt at my feet. “Nora, Bennett can’t go to prison. He’s the only son. A felony would destroy the family legacy. You helped build the company—just say the decisions were yours. You’re a woman; people will be more lenient. We won’t judge you. Just save him. Please.” Bennett had grabbed my hands, his eyes wet with tears as he shouted at his parents. “Don’t pressure her! She’s my everything! I’ll respect whatever she chooses!” Then he looked at me, his voice a broken whisper. “Honey, if you do this for me, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. If I ever break this vow, may I lose everything I hold dear.” I believed the performance. I took the fall. For ten years, the thought of our “happily ever after” was the only thing that kept me from breaking. And now, the promise was just a ghost, and bringing it up was treated like a crime. I had walked through fire for love, only to realize I was the only one burning. “Pay them off,” I said, my voice cold. “Get them out of our lives, or I’m filing for divorce.” The room went dead silent. My in-laws’ faces twisted with sudden, sharp malice. “Absolutely not!” my mother-in-law shrieked. “We finally have our grandsons! Why should a barren woman like you get to kick them out?” I kept my eyes on Bennett. This was ten years of obsession speaking. I wanted to give him one last chance to be the man he promised he was—and give myself one last reason to stay. He looked miserable, his brow furrowed in a tight knot of frustration. “Nora, does it have to be like this? On the day we’re finally back together, you’re really going to tear this marriage apart with your own hands?” 2 When I didn’t flinch, his tone shifted to something patronizing. “You just got out. You’re overwhelmed. You aren’t thinking straight.” “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that nonsense. I’ll give you time to adjust, but Nora, my patience isn’t infinite.” A laugh bubbled up in my throat, sharp and hysterical. He was the one who cheated. He was the one asking me to pay for his sins. And yet, he was the one “granting” me a chance? I didn’t bother arguing. I turned and walked out the door. If this wasn’t a home anymore, I wasn’t going to haunt it like a ghost. As I reached the curb, a black Rolls-Royce pulled up. The window rolled down to reveal Roxy. We’d met in the yard; she was a powerhouse who’d ended up inside after “protecting her interests” a little too aggressively. She’d been released the day before me. “Hey, girl! I went to the gate to pick you up, but you’d already vanished!” Roxy hopped out, her eyes scanning my face and seeing the wreckage underneath. “I figured you’d be here at the Sterling place. Listen, I did some digging. That husband of yours? He’s not the pining widower you thought he was. While you were doing time, he was busy playing house with some gold-digger. Six kids, Nora. They’ve been busier than a farm in spring.” Roxy, who had been stabbed in the back by her own ex-husband, was vibrating with indignant fury. She pulled a thick manila folder from the backseat. “This prick? If we were back in the day, he’d be at the bottom of a lake.” I took the file. My heart hammered against my ribs. Inside were records of Bennett accompanying a woman named Melanie to prenatal checkups. Six kids in ten years. The oldest was eleven. I did the math, and the world tilted. He’d been with her before we even got married. There were insurance policies worth millions for each of them. Seven villas. Transfer records that could fund a small country. And at the back, a photo of a wedding—Bennett and Melanie, looking radiant. A family of eight, with my parents and his parents in the background, all of them smiling. I had traded my freedom for a lie. I had carried his shame so they could play house. I closed the folder. The fire in my heart went out, replaced by a cold, hard stone. “Roxy,” I said, my voice steady. “Help me get my case reopened. I’m going to clear my name.” “And after that… I’m coming with you. Let’s see what we can build in the private sector.” Roxy was a shark who’d been trying to recruit me since my third year inside. She grinned, a predatory, beautiful thing. “About damn time. Men—especially the trashy ones—are just overhead we don’t need.” The day of my brother’s wedding arrived. To no one’s surprise, Melanie and her six children were the guests of honor. She was wearing a sleek, crimson designer gown that hugged a figure that showed no signs of six pregnancies. The kids were dressed in miniature tuxedos and matching silk dresses. The boys were clones of Bennett; the girls had Melanie’s sharp, hungry eyes. Bennett was in a deep navy suit that perfectly complemented Melanie’s dress. I felt a bitter pang of irony. Bennett used to tell me he hated matching outfits—said they were tacky. It turns out he just didn’t want to match with me. My in-laws were hovering over the children, doting and frantic. They were sweating through their clothes, chasing toddlers, but they looked happier than I’d ever seen them. Melanie handed my brother an envelope. “A little something for the honeymoon. A hundred thousand to get you started.” My mother’s eyes practically turned into dollar signs as she snatched it. “So generous! It’s no wonder the Sterlings are so blessed with children!” She threw a sideways glance at me. “Unlike some people. Family, my foot. A ‘felon’s discount’ gift of eight hundred bucks? Talk about a cheapskate.” Tyler took my red envelope, pulled out the cash, and dropped the paper on the floor, grinding it into the carpet with his heel. “Pocket change. Who does she think she’s impressing?” I watched them, a profound sense of nausea rising. That money was all I had. I’d earned it cents at a time, working the laundry and the kitchen in prison, saving every scrap for years. I had less than a hundred dollars left to my name. I said nothing. The oldest boy, Hunter, walked up to me. He stared at me for a long minute before letting out a sharp, practiced sneer. “Are you the woman from jail?” “You’re ugly. And you’re trying to steal my daddy. You have no shame.” He turned to the other kids, waving them over. “Look, guys! It’s the bad lady who makes everyone say we’re ‘illegitimate’!” Melanie rushed over, putting a hand over Hunter’s mouth with a dramatic sigh. “Hunter! That’s enough! Tell the lady you’re sorry.” She scolded him, but her eyes were dancing with triumph. It was a performance designed to trigger my in-laws’ protective instincts—and it worked. They immediately began coddling the boy and glaring at me. Bennett heard the commotion and walked over. He ruffled Hunter’s hair, his face softening with a fatherly concern I’d never seen. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s Daddy’s fault for letting people whisper.” Then he looked at me, his voice firm. “But from now on, legally, Nora will be your mother. No one will ever call you that word again.” 3 The next oldest boy, Parker, burst into tears. My mother-in-law immediately scooped him up. “What’s wrong, my angel? What’s hurting you?” Parker pointed a trembling finger at me, his face red and blotchy. “My teacher said people in jail are bad! I don’t want a bad lady to be my mommy! I want my real mommy!” That set off a chain reaction. Within seconds, the room was filled with the wails of six children. It was a symphony of chaos. “Don’t cry, sweetheart! The bad lady isn’t going to be your mommy, Grandpa and Grandma promise!” Hunter, the eldest, shot me a look of pure, calculated malice before squeezing out a few crocodile tears. “Grandma, you can’t promise that. I heard people say Mom can’t be the real Mrs. Sterling because Daddy won’t let her.” My in-laws spun around to face Bennett. “Bennett! Say something! If my grandson cries himself hoarse, I’ll never forgive you!” Bennett looked at me, then at the crying children. He looked caught, performative, and finally, resolute. “Stop crying,” he said, his voice carrying over the din. “I’ll give you the result you want. A man doesn’t cry; he takes care of his family. You have to be a role model for your siblings.” The crying stopped instantly. Melanie’s eyes welled up with “emotional” tears. “Bennett… do you mean it? Is this real?” Bennett remained silent, but he wouldn’t look at me. Suddenly, Parker—who was barely nine but easily weighed a solid 150 pounds—charged at me. “Get away from my daddy! Die, you bad lady! Die!” He was a heavy kid, and he was coming at me like a freight train. Instinct took over. I stepped to the side. He overbalanced, missing me entirely, and slammed face-first into the wainscoting of the wall. His nose erupted in blood, and a second later, a scream ripped through the room that sounded like a siren. “My baby!” Melanie shrieked, rushing to him. Then she turned on me, her face a mask of fury. “Ms. Shen, I know it’s been hard for you, watching me take your place all these years. If you have a problem, take it out on me! Parker is a child! How could you be so cruel?” I was speechless at the sheer audacity. Before I could get a word out—CRACK. Bennett’s hand moved faster than I could see. My head snapped to the side, the world spinning as the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. “I thought you just needed time to adjust,” Bennett hissed, his eyes cold and murderous. “But you’re actually laying hands on a child?” He had hit me with everything he had. My cheek felt like it was on fire. “I told you,” he snarled, “these children are the future of the Sterling name. They are the masters of this house. And you? You’re a leech. You’re a convicted felon whose parents live off my charity. Who the hell do you think you are?” Three-year-old Mia toddled over, hugging Bennett’s leg. “Don’t be sad, Daddy. I’ll help you hit the bad lady.” She balled up her tiny fist and shook it at me. Bennett picked her up, kissing her cheek. “My little angel. A princess shouldn’t have to do dirty work like that.” He gestured for Melanie to take the kids, and the eight of them began to walk toward the exit. My in-laws followed like obedient dogs, pausing only to spit toward me. “Pathetic, ungrateful bitch!” Once they were gone, my parents’ faces turned black with rage. “You ruined the wedding!” my father yelled. “You should have stayed in that cell for the rest of your life!” Tyler was even worse. The “humiliation” of his ruined day had pushed him over the edge. He rolled up his sleeves and lunged at me, his fists raining down on my head and shoulders. “You bitch! Why won’t you just die?” He grabbed me by the hair and began dragging me toward the door. The strength difference was too much; the more I fought, the more he tore at me. Bennett and the others stopped to watch. The kids clapped their hands, cheering. “Look, Daddy! The bad lady is losing!” “Uncle Tyler is a superhero!” My in-laws nodded approvingly. “See, babies? That’s what happens to bad people.” My head was ringing. My body was a map of blooming bruises. Everyone was watching the show, and Bennett’s cold, detached gaze was the sharpest blade of all. As Tyler raised his hand for another blow, I curled into a ball, closing my eyes and waiting for the end. Hate, hot and thick as tar, began to flood my heart. And then, the heavy oak doors of the ballroom swung open. A familiar, raspy voice boomed through the hall. “Who the hell gave you permission to touch her?”

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It was New Year’s Eve, and my little sister was begging me to play hide-and-seek. The second I covered my eyes and started counting to thirty, that eraser in my brain started moving again. It’s a strange, smooth sensation—the feeling of a chalkboard being wiped clean while the chalk is still writing. I stood there for a few seconds, staring into the blackness of my palms. Then, I simply turned around, walked back into the house, and started watching the New Year’s countdown on TV. An hour later, my mother was kneeling in front of me, her hands gripping my shoulders. “Elena, where’s your sister?” Sister? I blinked, the flickering light of the television reflecting in my eyes. “I don’t have a sister.” The look on my mother’s face shifted instantly. It wasn’t just worry; it was a flash of pure, unadulterated horror. Nobody stayed for the New Year’s dinner. They abandoned the roast and the wine, charging out into the driving blizzard. But no matter how loud they screamed her name, Sophie didn’t appear. My mother’s hand flew up, catching me across the face with a sickening crack. Her eyes were rimmed with a violent red. “Did I not tell you to watch her? Did I not tell you to stay by her side every single second?” “Where is she, Elena? Which way did she go? Answer me!” She shoved me, and I tumbled backward, sinking into the freezing slush outside the porch. “Why couldn’t it have been you?” she wailed, her voice breaking over the wind. “Why couldn’t the idiot be the one who got lost? You don’t remember anything anyway!” “You forgot your sister today. What’s next? Me? Your father? Are we just going to disappear from your head too?” She lunged at me again, but my father caught her, pulling her back. They were both sobbing now, their grief a physical weight in the air. I felt a hollow ache in my chest. She was right. Why couldn’t it have been me? 1 My father held my mother’s wrist tight, stopping her hand just inches from my cheek. “Enough!” his voice was a jagged rasp. “She’s sick, Diane. You know she’s sick.” “Because she’s sick is exactly why I told her not to leave the house!” My mother wrenched her hand free, though she didn’t come near me again. She just stood there, staring at me with those bloodshot eyes. “She’s only four… it’s freezing out there. Where could she go?” Four? I tried to speak, but no sound came out. Was the sister four years old? My mind was a blank slate. Beyond the muffled sounds of the TV and the swirling white flakes falling from the sky, there was nothing. No memories of a little girl, no echoes of laughter. The neighbors started arriving, drawn by the commotion. “Check the nearby houses,” someone shouted. “A kid can’t get far in this. Maybe she’s at a friend’s?” My father pulled my mother up from the snow. “What are we doing sitting here? Move! We have to find her! Talking to Elena is a waste of time—she doesn’t understand!” My mother’s eyes cleared for a second, sharpened by a desperate mission. “Right. I have to find my Sunny…” She didn’t look at me again. She grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight and vanished into the white veil of the storm. I stood there alone, the crowd’s shouts fading as they called out for “Sunny.” “Sunny… isn’t that my name?” A fragment of a memory flickered—I was three years old, and my parents were calling me Sunny. “Elena! What are you doing just standing there? Get moving and help find your sister!” Elena. When did my name change again? I couldn’t wrap my head around it, so I stopped trying. As I stood up, a cry erupted from the distance. “Found her! She’s here!” Everyone rushed toward the old oak tree at the edge of the property. There was a shallow depression there, a hollow in the earth now partially filled with snow. Sophie was inside it. Her face was a terrifying shade of blue-purple, her golden hair matted with icicles. My mother let out a harrowing scream and threw herself into the pit. “Sunny… my baby!” As if sensing the heat, Sophie’s eyes fluttered open. But she didn’t look at our mother. She looked straight at me. “Laney… why didn’t you come find me?” She began to cry, a weak, thin sound. “You promised you’d count to thirty and find me. I hid so well. I was waiting for you…” My mother’s head snapped toward me. She placed Sophie down gently and walked toward me with a terrifying, slow gait. Slap. The blow landed this time. My left ear rang instantly, a high-pitched whine that drowned out the wind. “Are you happy now?” My mother’s voice trembled with a lethal rage. “Are you satisfied seeing her nearly freeze to death?” “How did I give birth to a monster like you?” “This disease… this goddamn disease! You forget your sister, you forget us—I bet you’re just waiting for the day you can forget yourself!” The tears finally spilled over her cheeks. “Or maybe… maybe you’re faking it? Maybe you did this on purpose? Pretending to forget just so she’d die out here alone in the cold?” “That’s enough.” My father finally spoke, but he didn’t look at me. He was busy wrapping Sophie in his coat. “Get her inside. Get her warm. The paramedics are on their way.” No one said a word in my defense. I didn’t know how to argue anyway. It was my fault. My mother gave me one last look of pure loathing. “You stay out here. Stay right here and feel exactly how cold and scared your sister was.” They turned their backs on me. The neighbors, sensing the family’s private collapse, whispered among themselves and retreated to their own warm homes. 2 The snow began to fall harder, heavy and silent. I slowly crouched down, mimicking Sophie’s posture, and curled myself into that same shallow pit. The biting cold soaked through my clothes instantly. So, this is what it felt like. I was a horrible person. How could I have forgotten something so important? But I was just sick. The doctors called it a rare form of early-onset progressive memory impairment. They said my hippocampus was being eaten away, bit by bit. New memories couldn’t take root, and the old ones were being erased. My mom called it the “Eraser.” I didn’t know why there was an eraser in my head. I only knew that things I remembered in the morning became blurry by noon. My mom said I was an idiot. Maybe she was right. The sky grew darker. In the distance, the lights of the town twinkled one by one, and I heard the faint pop of early fireworks. I should go home. I tried to move my stiff legs. As I stood up, that familiar, dizzying sensation washed over me again. I blinked, looking around. The trees were white. The road was white. I turned in a circle. What… what was I supposed to be doing? Home. Right. Go home. But where was home? My heart started thumping against my ribs. I pressed my hand to my chest, gasping for air. Think. Today is New Year’s Eve. Sophie wanted to play hide-and-seek. Mom hit me… And then what? I couldn’t remember. It’s okay. I’ll just wait. They’ll realize I haven’t come back. They’ll come looking for me. Just like they looked for Sophie. I hugged my knees in the pit, counting the distant firecrackers. One, two… by the time I got to seventeen, I forgot what came before. I waited until the midnight bells chimed. Fireworks exploded in the sky, lighting up the world in bursts of neon green and crimson. It was beautiful. Once, my dad used to set off fireworks for me. He’d tell me to make a wish. What did I wish for? I forgot that, too. I curled up tighter. Strangely, the cold began to fade. I started feeling hot—unbearably hot. I pulled off my heavy coat. Then I pulled off my sweater. But the heat was still there, pulsing under my skin. By the time I was down to my thin thermal undershirt, I felt light. Weightless. Like I was floating. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was back in the house. The TV was still on. My mom was on the sofa, cradling Sophie, feeding her ginger tea with a small spoon. “Drink up, Sunny. Just a little more. It’ll get the chill out of your bones.” Sophie’s cheeks were rosy again. She was wrapped in a thick wool blanket, her eyes peeking out. “Where’s Laney?” Sophie asked suddenly. My mother’s hand stiffened. “Don’t talk about her.” “But she’s not back yet…” “She deserves it! She needs to know what it feels like to freeze. She’s nearly an adult, and she can’t even look after a child.” I wanted to walk over and say I was sorry, but as I moved, I drifted right through the coffee table. I froze. “Elena isn’t back,” my father said, standing by the window, staring into the white abyss. “The storm is getting worse.” “Oh, now you’re worried?” My mother didn’t even look up. “What if something had really happened to Sunny tonight? What then?” My father was silent. “She did it on purpose,” my mother hissed. “She’s jealous of her sister, so she fakes the memory loss. That disease… who knows if it’s even real? Even the specialist said he’d never seen a case progress like this.” “The doctor said it was organic brain damage, Diane,” my father whispered. “Organic brain damage that only makes her forget her sister but lets her remember to watch TV?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “She hates that we had another child! She hates that we gave Sunny the love she thinks she’s entitled to!” Sophie whimpered, shrinking into her mother’s arms. Diane immediately softened her tone, patting the girl’s back. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy isn’t mad at you. My sweet, sweet Sunny…” My father stood there for a long time before finally turning away from the window. “When she gets back, I need to have a talk with her.” “Talk about what? How she almost killed her sister?” My mother let out a cold laugh. “If you ask me, we should just put her in a facility. She doesn’t remember anything anyway. What difference does it make where she lives?” My father didn’t answer. I stood beside them, opening my mouth. “I…” No sound. I reached out to touch my mother’s shoulder, but my hand passed straight through her body like smoke through a screen. I realized then. I was dead. Maybe it was for the best. At least now, I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting anymore. 3 My father sat up all night, but I never walked through the door. When my mother came out of the bedroom the next morning, her face was gaunt. “Is that brat still not back?” My father sat at the kitchen table, an ashtray full of cigarette butts in front of him. “I went to the neighbors this morning. No one’s seen her.” “She’s probably hiding in some corner, trying to make us feel guilty.” My mother slammed a pile of dirty laundry onto the floor. “That’s her favorite trick. Screw up, then play dumb and act like a victim so we’ll go easy on her.” “Well, not this time. Not after what she did to Sunny. When she shows her face, I’m going to make sure she never forgets this lesson.” Sophie was sitting on a small stool, playing with blocks. She looked up. “Mommy, don’t hit Laney.” “Sweetie,” my mother said, her voice instantly turning to honey. “Laney was very bad. She almost let you freeze. When people do bad things, they have to be punished. Do you understand?” Sophie nodded vaguely and went back to her blocks. My father sighed, crushing out his cigarette. “This town isn’t that big. Where could she go? She probably spent the night at a friend’s because she felt slighted.” Before he could finish, a neighbor’s voice boomed from the yard. “Hey, Rob! Time to head to the Old Oak for the New Year’s bonfire!” My father stood up. “Everyone in town will be there for the ceremony. If she shows up there, God help her.” My mother untied her apron. Her eyes fell on a tattered rag doll sitting on the sofa—my doll. She had given it to me years ago. A few days ago, Sophie had ripped its arm off, and the stuffing was leaking out. Mom had promised to fix it. Suddenly, my mother stepped forward and grabbed the doll. Rrrrrip. The fragile fabric gave way completely. Stuffing exploded from the wound, scattering across the rug. I flinched, trying to stop her, but I was just a shadow in the room. I watched as she tossed the ruined pieces into the trash. “She’s too old for this crap anyway! Spending all day acting like a child, caring more about a doll than her own sister!” One of the doll’s button eyes popped off, rolling across the floor until it stopped at Sophie’s feet. Sophie picked it up and squeezed it in her tiny palm. “Let’s go,” my father said. “She’s probably at the tree already, watching the crowd.” “Good. I’m not letting her off easy this time. She loves to forget? I’ll give her a memory she’ll never lose.” They locked the door and led Sophie toward the edge of the woods. “Elena’s still not back?” a neighbor asked as they joined the group. “She’s spoiled rotten!” my mother replied instantly. “I scolded her yesterday, and she ran off to sulk. Seventeen years old and not a lick of sense.” “You have no idea… that ‘illness’ of hers… who knows? She remembers what she wants and forgets the rest. Last time I disciplined her, she turned around a minute later and asked what was for dinner with a smile on her face. Can you believe that?” “Well, the girl is sick, Diane. Maybe have some patience…” “Patience?” My mother’s voice went sharp. “If I give her any more patience, she’ll burn the house down! This time, she learns.” I followed them silently, tears I couldn’t feel prickling at my non-existent eyes. So that was what she really thought of me. A crowd had gathered under the Old Oak. Ribbons were tied to the branches, fluttering in the morning light. A table of offerings had been set up, and the scent of pine and woodsmoke filled the air. My mother’s eyes scanned the faces, her expression growing darker with every passing second. “She’s not here.” “Maybe she’s hiding,” my father muttered. “We’ll search house to house after the ceremony. She can’t have vanished into thin air.” I looked at them. Mom, Dad… I’m right here. I’m in the pit behind the tree. 4 The ceremony began. The town elder said a few words of blessing, and people stepped forward to light candles. My mother bowed her head, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. When the town prepared to light the traditional New Year’s firecrackers in the clearing, my mother suddenly shouted, “Wait!” Everyone turned to her. “My daughter isn’t here yet,” she said, her voice sounding thin. “The whole family needs to be here for the blessing.” I squinted. Maybe she did still care, just a little. “She’s probably watching from the bushes,” someone said. “Let’s light it. We can’t miss the auspicious hour.” “But—” “Mommy.” Sophie tugged on her mother’s coat, pointing her small hand toward the shallow pit partially hidden by the snow. “Was Laney… was she there yesterday?” My mother followed her finger. There was something at the bottom of the pit. My father saw it too. He frowned and walked over, brushing away a layer of fresh powder. It was my sweater and my coat. They were frozen solid, stiff as boards. My father’s hand stopped mid-air. My mother walked up behind him. She stared at the pile of clothes for a long time, then looked around at the vast, empty white field. Sophie squeezed the button eye in her hand and whispered, “If Laney took off her clothes… isn’t she cold?” My father picked up the sweater. He didn’t move. “What is this girl playing at? Leaving her clothes here like some kind of dramatic stunt?” My mother snatched the sweater from him and shook it. Ice crystals fell like salt. “She thinks if she leaves these here, we’ll get scared? We’ll come crawling to find her? Dream on! If she freezes, it’s her own fault! She’s so incredibly selfish!” My father’s face went pale. “Did she… did she stay out here all night?” My mother’s hands faltered, but then she threw the sweater back into the snow with more force. “A stunt! It’s a total stunt! She wants us to worry. She wants us to regret yelling at her. I bet she’s sitting in someone’s warm kitchen right now, laughing at us!” Sophie let go of her mother’s hand and ran to the edge of the pit. She started digging with her small hands, just like Dad had. Suddenly, she pulled something small out of the snow. It was my hair tie. Sophie held the hair tie and the button eye together in her tiny, freezing hand. She looked up at her parents. “These are Laney’s.” My mother grabbed the hair tie, her knuckles turning white. The neighbors sensed the shift in the air and began to gather around. “She left her clothes and disappeared? She didn’t come home last night?” “In this weather? With only an undershirt on? Where could she go? Unless…” “Don’t you dare say it!” my mother snapped. “She’s fine! She’s doing this on purpose!” But I saw it. Her hand was shaking. My father didn’t say anything. He began to circle the tree, searching. The neighbors joined in, their festive mood evaporated. Sophie, still held in her mother’s grip, looked up and asked quietly, “Is Laney hiding? Like I was yesterday? Is she in the pit?” My mother froze. She looked down into the hollow. “Elena… stop scaring me. If I find out you’re lying, I swear I’ll kill you!” Even as she said the words, she let go of Sophie and knelt by the pit. She began to claw at the snow. “If you’re playing a joke on us, I’m done! I’ll forget you entirely! I’ll—” Her words cut off as a flash of pink thermal fabric appeared. And then… she saw my face.

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Brianna Harrington, my obscenely wealthy roommate and the undisputed queen bee of our campus, loved nothing more than tormenting her boyfriend, Rae. To the rest of the world, Rae Caldwell was just a penniless, crippled charity case. And once again, Brianna had ordered me to tip his wheelchair over and kick him into the freezing, bone-chilling waters of the campus lake. But as I raised my hands to do it, a stream of glowing, translucent text suddenly scrolled across my field of vision, hovering in the winter air like a glitch in reality. [The spoiled heiress FMC and the secretly-a-billionaire-heir MMC… this is my favorite toxic trope!] [The worse our female lead treats him now, the harder the spicy groveling scenes will be later. It’s just a shame about that pretty little extra. Doesn’t she know the MMC is going to take out all his repressed rage on her? She’s going to die a gruesome death.] [Hey, it’s her own fault for being greedy and doing the villain’s dirty work for cash. She deserves what’s coming to her.] [This is the turning point! He almost drowns here, finally gives up his ‘poor and crippled’ act—which was just a test to see if the FMC would love him at his worst—and reclaims his empire to force her into a dark romance.] My hands froze mid-air. The icy wind bit at my cheeks. I looked at the dark, churning water, then at Rae’s rigid, shivering form. I didn’t want to be the disposable extra. I wanted to be the main character. Without a second thought, I threw myself into the freezing lake, hauled Rae’s thrashing body to the surface, and dragged him all the way back to my dirt-cheap basement apartment. 1 Rae was unconscious for a long time. When he finally opened his eyes, I was boiling tap water in a battered, salvaged pot to dissolve a cheap fever reducer. A cockroach scuttled across the concrete floor near his foot. The leg that was supposedly paralyzed gave an involuntary twitch. He nearly performed a medical miracle and jumped right out of the bed. I pretended I didn’t see a thing. I brought the mug of dissolved medicine to his lips, my expression a mask of nervous guilt. “Your fever is really high. Please, drink this.” Rae’s face was flushed an unnatural, feverish red, but it didn’t stop him from swatting the mug away. It shattered against the wall. He opened his cracked lips to snarl something, but I beat him to the punch. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry I pushed you into the lake.” My eyes were bloodshot, but I forced a fragile, trembling smile. “I know a simple apology doesn’t make up for what I did. But please… just let me take care of you until this fever breaks. Let me try to make amends.” My hands were shaking violently. Rae’s dark, calculating eyes swept over the damp, dimly lit basement, finally settling on my flushed cheeks. “You’re burning up too,” he noted, his voice a hoarse rasp. I widened my eyes in feigned surprise, then shook my head. “That was the last fever pill I had. You need it more.” “Drop the act.” Rae let out a cold, breathless scoff. “Every time you help Brianna humiliate me, she pays you. You’ve racked up quite a bit of cash by now. Don’t tell me you can’t afford a bottle of Tylenol.” My spine stiffened. Of course he knew. He was the sole heir to the Caldwell empire, the most ruthless family in the corporate world. Tracking the few hundred bucks Brianna threw at me was child’s play for him. Looking at the sneer forming in his eyes, I remembered the floating text. After this incident, Rae was supposed to shed his disguise and ascend his throne. Once he was back in his penthouse, a girl like me would never get within a mile of him. This was my one and only window. I lowered my head, staring at my frayed sneakers. “That money… it has to go somewhere more important.” Rae rolled his eyes, his patience exhausted. He braced his arms against the mattress, preparing to stand up and walk right out the door. But a second later, his arms gave out. He collapsed back onto the cheap sheets, half-conscious. He blinked, fighting to stay awake, but his body refused to obey. I watched him slip under, giving a satisfied little nod. Then, I pulled an empty syringe from my pocket, snapped the needle, and tossed it into the trash. He was right. Brianna’s money did have more important uses. Like buying a heavy-duty muscle relaxant on the black market. As I struggled to carry Rae’s dead weight on my back, hauling him out of the basement and toward the nearest hospital, I made sure to cry hysterically, begging him to stay with me. The glowing text above my head was having a meltdown. [Is this extra insane?! She pushed him in and then pulled him out, and now she’s made him completely miss his family’s extraction team! He can’t get his identity back right now! How is he supposed to do the dark romance trope with our FMC?] [She’s literally broke. What’s the point of dragging him to a hospital? She’s going to accidentally kill him!] I didn’t have money, true. But I had blood. I dropped to my knees in the ER lobby, Rae’s scorching body sliding off my back. I grabbed the triage doctor’s coat, rolling up my sleeve to reveal a map of faded puncture marks. “I’m due to donate! Take my blood!” I sobbed, my voice cracking. “Do whatever you have to do, just please save him. I can’t lose him. I can’t.” The doctor looked utterly conflicted. “June, you’re already severely malnourished. You donate plasma every month just to keep your mother’s life support running. You finally paid this month’s installment early, you don’t need to do this… why do this for a stranger?” “It’s what I owe him,” I cut him off, my voice dropping to a desperate whisper. The doctor sighed a heavy, defeated sigh and called for the nurses. I endured the dizzying, nauseating pull of the blood leaving my veins. Afterward, weak and shivering, I sat by Rae’s hospital bed. I held his face in my hands, my thumbs brushing his jawline. “You have to get better, Rae,” I whispered into the quiet room. “As long as you wake up, I don’t care if they drain me dry.” Eventually, the sheer exhaustion and blood loss pulled me under. I collapsed with my head resting on the edge of his mattress. When I woke up, the room was pitch black, save for the glow of the streetlights outside. I blinked sluggishly, realizing someone had draped a heavy jacket over my shoulders. Rae was sitting up, leaning against the pillows, scrolling through his phone. He lowered the device, his gaze pinning me to the spot—dark, unreadable, and heavy. Instinctively, I reached out to press the back of my hand against his forehead. His skin was cool. The fever had broken. I let out a massive breath of relief. “Are you hungry? I’ll go find the cafeteria,” I said, scrambling to stand. A wave of vertigo hit me hard. I stumbled. A strong, calloused hand clamped around my wrist, steadying me. He didn’t let go. “You almost drowned me, and then you almost killed yourself to save me.” His voice was low, vibrating with suspicion. “What exactly is your endgame here, June?” 2 I cast my eyes downward, searching for the right words, but a knock at the door interrupted me. “June?” The doctor stood in the doorway, his expression soft. “Your mother just woke up. She’s asking for you.” The breath caught in my throat. I tore my hand from Rae’s grip and bolted out the door. When I reached her ward, my heart shattered all over again. My mother lay there, her body reduced to little more than a skeleton beneath the hospital blankets. Her sunken eyes darted around the room in a blind panic until they found me. My vision blurred. I dropped to my knees beside her bed, taking her frail, paper-thin hand and pressing it to my cheek. “Mom. I’m here. I’m right here,” I coaxed, my voice trembling. “Are you in pain? Tell me what hurts. I’ll fix it. I promise I’ll fix it.” Her dry, cracked lips parted. It took her several agonizing seconds to push the words past her vocal cords. “June… let me… go.” Her voice was a ghostly rasp. “No more… treatments.” “Mom, don’t—” “Go back to school,” she wheezed, a single tear slipping down her hollow cheek. “Just… live your life, baby.” It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my ribs. The tears I’d been fighting spilled over, hot and fast. I wiped them away violently. I couldn’t let her see me break. “Mom, I have a plan,” I lied, my voice painfully bright. “You’re all I have left in this world. You have to stay alive so I have a reason to stay alive.” “June… you’re so young. The bills… how are you supposed to…” I gently dabbed the moisture from the corners of her eyes and gave her a watery smile. “Don’t worry about the money. I found a way. You always said I was a terrible liar, right? So you know I’m telling the truth.” I stayed with her, murmuring sweet, empty promises until the exhaustion pulled her back into unconsciousness. I stared at the deep creases between her brows for a long, quiet moment. Finally, gripping the bedrail, I forced my stiff legs to stand. When I stepped out into the quiet corridor, Rae was waiting. He was sitting in his wheelchair, shrouded in the dim hallway light. I had no idea how long he had been sitting there. I rushed over, instantly grabbing his hands. They were freezing. I stripped the scarf from my neck and wrapped it tightly around him, crouching down so we were eye-level. “Why are you out here? The draft is freezing. What if your fever comes back?” I fussed, brushing a stray piece of lint from his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I made you wait. I’ll go get food right now.” “The money Brianna gave you,” Rae said suddenly, his eyes locking onto mine like heat-seeking missiles. “You used every cent of it for her hospital bills?” My eyelashes fluttered. I wrung my hands together, suddenly hyper-aware of how pathetic I looked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have helped Brianna hurt you just for a paycheck. But I was backed into a corner. I couldn’t just stand by and watch my mom die.” “Then why did you spend what little you had left to save me?” Rae reached out, his long fingers gripping my chin, forcing me to look at him. His brows were pulled tight. He was a man who understood spreadsheets, leverage, and power dynamics. He couldn’t compute this. Tears welled in my eyes, unbidden this time. “I… I used to have an older brother.” The fingers holding my chin flinched. I pretended not to notice. “He wanted to pay for my college tuition. He wanted to pay for Mom’s meds. So he took a sketchy job down by the docks in the middle of a storm. He drowned in the river.” The tears spilled over, splashing silently onto the back of Rae’s hand. I stared up at him, my heart laid entirely bare. “In every nightmare I have, I see his eyes when they pulled him out of the water. They were wide open. He died terrified. And when they pried his hands open, he was clutching a cheap little hair clip he bought for me.” My breath hitched. “So, Rae… I couldn’t let you drown. I couldn’t let you die because of me. My nightmares can’t take another pair of dead eyes.” I leaned forward, resting my wet cheek fully into the palm of his hand. I looked up at him with total surrender. “I regret everything I did to you. Please, Rae. Give me a chance to make it right. I’ll do anything. I swear.” He didn’t speak. The hallway was dead silent, save for the distant beep of heart monitors. Slowly, his thumb moved, tracing the curve of my cheekbone, wiping away a tear. It was a silent concession. I stood up, gripping the handles of his chair, and wheeled him back to his room. [The sky is falling! The MMC just texted his family’s extraction team to stand down! If he doesn’t go back to the Caldwell estate, when am I going to get my spicy dark romance plot?!] [What is this extra playing at? Is she trying to seduce him to climb the social ladder? What a slut.] [Hey, back off. The extra doesn’t even know he’s secretly a billionaire. From her POV, this is just two broken kids finding solace in each other. Honestly, the mom dying, the brother drowning… it’s tragic. I’m kind of rooting for her.] [I only read for the official canon couple! I’m reporting this to the system admins. We need a plot correction.] The glowing text was fighting with itself, scrolling furiously. I ignored the vitriol, focusing entirely on that last comment. Plot correction. That made my stomach twist, but I shoved the fear down. Back in the room, I carefully fed Rae a bowl of warm oatmeal. Once he was finished, I brought in a basin of warm soapy water. “I know you got a change of clothes, but you fell into a dirty lake. You must feel gross. Let me give you a sponge bath.” Rae arched a dark eyebrow. “You’re volunteering to bathe me?” “Don’t worry,” I said smoothly. “I have to bathe my mom all the time. I know your legs don’t work, but I can handle the heavy lifting.” With pure, clinical determination, I began stripping off his shirt and sweatpants. That’s when my clinical detachment evaporated. Rae was built like a Greek god. Every inch of his torso was sculpted, tight, and perfect. My face caught fire. I let out an awkward cough, wrung out the sponge, and began wiping him down. I kept my eyes focused on the washcloth, completely professional, until I brushed past his waistline and noticed a very sudden, very obvious physical reaction. I froze, my eyes darting up to his face. “Um… does this part… work?” Rae, who had been aggressively staring at his phone to feign indifference, had a vein popping in his forehead. In one fluid motion, he grabbed my shoulder, pulled me forward, and pinned me flush against his bare chest. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “Why don’t you try it and find out?” he murmured, his voice a dark, lethal purr. “Didn’t you just say you’d do anything to make it up to me?” “I…” “So? Is this included?” A shiver violently ripped down my spine. My whole body burned. I looked into his deep, predatory eyes, bit my lip, and leaned in, pressing my mouth to his. The rest of the night was a blur of chaotic, breathless heat. Rae loved weaponizing his “paralyzed” legs, demanding I straddle him, letting him dictate the rhythm with his hands on my hips. We stayed in that hospital for five days. Rae ran me ragged. During the day, he acted like a spoiled prince—making me massage his calves, feed him sliced apples, and fetch him coffee. At night, he was insatiable. I also discovered his surprisingly boyish side; after getting a blood draw, he sulked until I hugged him and gave him a dozen kisses to “make it better.” By the end of the week, his guard was completely obliterated. He followed me around the room with his eyes, calling me “June-bug,” a far cry from the brooding, toxic billionaire the floating text obsessed over. When he was finally cleared, I signed his discharge papers and wheeled him back to the edge of campus. I crouched down in front of him, pulling his jacket tighter. “If you feel dizzy at all, call me. I’ll come get you. I bought ribs for dinner. You just recovered, so make sure you come back to the apartment to eat, okay?” He caught the slight waver in my voice. His eyes narrowed. “What about you? You don’t have classes today?” I looked away, staring at the pavement. “Yeah. No classes.” Before I could say another word, a sharp, manicured voice sliced through the air. “June Evans! You actually have the nerve to show your face here? Did you forget you’re not a student at this university anymore?” Brianna strutted over, her designer bag swinging on her arm, looking at us like we were gum on her shoe. “God, the stench of poverty is making me nauseous. You two losers really are made for each other. Rae, the only trash willing to take you is June. If you ever thought you had a shot with me, you were dreaming.” Rae’s eyes went dead. For the first time, he didn’t play the submissive victim for Brianna. He ignored her completely, his gaze fixed on me. “Don’t lie to me, June. Why were you expelled?” I kept my head down, swallowing the lump in my throat. Brianna laughed, a cruel, ringing sound. “I told her what would happen if she disobeyed me. She decided to play the hero and pull you out of the lake, making me look like an idiot. So, I made a few calls. The Dean expelled her this morning.” Rae’s hands gripped the armrests of his chair, his knuckles turning stark white. I quickly reached out, covering his hands with mine. “It’s fine, really! Now I have more time to pick up extra shifts. I can pay for Mom’s meds, and I can help cover your tuition.” [I’M BACK FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE! Who cares if the extra slept with him? The canon couple MUST be together! Plot correction incoming!] 3 The words caught in my throat as I read the glowing text. A sudden, suffocating wave of dread crashed over me. I gripped Rae’s hands tighter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fleet of matte-black SUVs pull up to the curb. A dozen men in immaculate tailored suits stepped out, moving in perfect unison toward Rae. The lead bodyguard bowed deeply. “Young Master Caldwell. The Patriarch requests that you end your… vacation. It is time to come home.” “Rae…?” I breathed, my voice barely a whisper. I stared at him. The vulnerable, needy boy from the hospital was gone. In his place sat a man with an aura so chilling, so inherently arrogant, he felt like a stranger. Rae let out an annoyed click of his tongue. Without a word of explanation, he casually stood up from the wheelchair he’d been confined to for months. He smoothed the front of his jacket and walked toward the waiting cars. The wind carried his indifferent voice back to me. “The old man has perfect timing. I was just starting to have fun with my new toy.” The car doors slammed shut. The SUVs peeled away, leaving me standing alone on the sidewalk, frozen in shock, next to an equally horrified Brianna. “He’s not a cripple?!” Brianna shrieked, her eyes bulging. “Why did they call him Young Master? What the hell is going on?!” I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. I was too busy staring at the floating text, which was currently throwing a massive celebration. [Yesss! He’s going back to inherit the Caldwell Empire!] [The first thing Rae is going to do is announce his arranged marriage to Brianna! Then our arrogant little FMC is going to fall from grace, and the beautiful, twisted dark romance can finally begin!] [Can the extra just go die now? Stop ruining the aesthetic of the plot!] My heart pounded against my ribs. I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and my fingers brushed against cold metal. It was a simple, unadorned silver ring. Rae had worn it on his pinky every single day. He must have slipped it into my pocket when he hugged me goodbye. The panic in my chest evaporated, replaced by a fierce, grounding calm. I shook off Brianna, who was clawing at my sleeve demanding answers. “I have no idea,” I said coldly, and walked away. Once I was out of sight, I pulled the ring out with trembling fingers. A smile ghosted across my lips. I had bet my life, and I had won. Over the next few days, Rae’s devastatingly handsome face was plastered on every billboard and financial news channel in the city. “Power transfer complete at Caldwell Group. Rae Caldwell becomes the youngest CEO in the dynasty’s history.” [Wait… that silver ring is his late mother’s heirloom. He’s only supposed to give it to his future wife! Why does the extra have it?!] Seeing that comment was the final validation I needed. I practically flew to the hospital, crying and laughing as I sat by my mother’s sleeping form. “Mom, I did it. We’re going to be okay. I can save you.” I sat in the quiet room, waiting for the fruits of my desperate gamble to arrive. But when the hospital door burst open at midnight, it wasn’t Rae. It was Brianna, her face twisted into an ugly mask of pure rage. She snapped her fingers, and two massive bodyguards lunged into the room. Before I could scream, they pinned me to the floor. A sharp crack rang out—Brianna had slapped me so hard the room spun, a high-pitched ringing echoing in my ears. Brianna rubbed her stinging palm, looking down at me like I was a cockroach. “Did you know who he was the whole time?” she hissed. “Did you plan this? Seducing him to steal him from me?” I spat out a mouthful of blood, my eyes watering from the pain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just wanted to help him.” “Bullshit!” Brianna screamed. She crouched down, grabbing a fistful of my hair. “He gave you his mother’s ring!” My breath hitched. “You thought you could outsmart me? Make a fool out of me?” Brianna’s eyes gleamed with a manic, unhinged light. “Those glowing words… they told me everything. Why couldn’t you just accept your place as the pathetic extra? The only person worthy of standing next to Rae Caldwell is me. I am the Female Lead.” My blood ran cold. She could see the text too. “The words told me the plot has been corrected,” Brianna sneered, her breath hot against my face. “Don’t bother waiting for Rae. He isn’t coming.” She pulled a thick, embossed document from her designer bag and threw it in my face. It was a drafted marriage alliance between the Caldwells and the Harringtons. Their names were printed side-by-side, a perfect corporate fairytale. My pupils dilated. The text… the system… it had actually manipulated reality. “Now,” Brianna drawled, standing back up. “Are you going to hand over that ring, or are my guys going to unplug your mother’s ventilator? Your choice.” One of the bodyguards clamped his massive hand over my mother’s life support machine. “NO!” I shrieked, trashing against the men holding me down. “Don’t touch her!” Hot tears streamed down my face. I broke. “Take it. Just take it! Please, don’t hurt her.” With shaking hands, I pulled the silver ring—still warm from my body heat—out of my pocket and placed it in Brianna’s outstretched, perfectly manicured palm. I felt like I was suffocating. Brianna inspected the ring, a cruel smirk spreading across her face. Then, she pulled out her phone and hit record. “You got your filthy hands all over my property,” she said coldly. “I think I’m owed some compensation.” She looked at her bodyguards. “Have fun. Just don’t kill her.” The men grinned, a sickening, predatory look in their eyes. I screamed, thrashing wildly. I managed to grab a fruit knife from a nearby tray and slashed blindly, but one of the men casually twisted my wrist, disarming me, and tossed the knife into the trash. He ripped the sleeve off my shirt, his heavy weight crushing my chest, pinning me down. “Just lie still, sweetheart. You might actually enjoy it,” he grunted. [This is exactly what the extra deserves. Anyone who stands in the way of the Main Characters should be ground into dust.] I stared at the ceiling, silent tears tracking into my hair. The absolute despair of knowing that I had fought a literal universe, only to lose. Just as the man’s hands moved to tear my jeans, the heavy hospital door was kicked off its hinges. “Who the fuck is touching my wife?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “414021”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When my best friend broke his leg and moved into our guest room, a fresh bouquet of flowers began appearing on our front porch every single afternoon. Chad would lean heavily on his crutches, a smirk playing on his lips as he nudged my shoulder. “Ten years of marriage and you guys are still this obsessed with each other. I’m jealous, man.” I forced a smile, but my stomach tightened. I knew the truth. In a decade of marriage, my wife had never bought me a single flower. She wasn’t the romantic type, she always said. Pragmatic to a fault. Until the afternoon she finally returned from a two-week business trip in Chicago. She’d called me from the Uber, her voice light and breathless, saying she brought back presents. I thought, foolishly, that maybe something had finally clicked. That maybe she missed me. I practically sprinted home from the grocery store, my heart hammering a hopeful rhythm against my ribs. I unlocked the front door just in time to see her handing an enormous, sprawling arrangement of hydrangeas and a pair of limited-edition Jordans to Chad. “You got all the other deliveries, right?” Lena asked, her voice softer, sweeter than I’d heard it in years. “Since today is a holiday, I made sure to pick out something massive. Happy holidays, Chad. Here’s to a speedy recovery.” I stood frozen in the entryway, the heavy plastic grocery bags biting into my palms. I watched the two of them—the way she hovered close to him, the way he beamed down at her. Looking at them, you would think they were the married couple, and I was just the hired help returning from the market. The butler. The caretaker. 1 Sensing my presence, Lena turned. The warmth in her eyes instantly dialed down to a tepid baseline, but she picked up a cardboard box from the console table and walked over to me. “I got you something, too.” I put the groceries down and opened the box. It was a high-end Vitamix blender. “You mentioned the old blender was dying,” she said, already turning back toward the living room. “I figured you could use a new one to make Chad those protein smoothies he likes for his recovery.” Our blender had died a month ago. I had reminded her to order a new one at least four times, but it always slipped her mind. Now that Chad was living under our roof, it was suddenly a priority. I didn’t say a word. I took the box into the kitchen, unpacked the groceries, and stood at the stove, mechanically stirring a pot of chicken and wild rice soup. I don’t know how long I stood there, lost in the gray fog of my own thoughts, but the acrid smell of burning rice eventually snapped me back. My hand jerked. The wooden spoon slipped. I swatted at the heavy cast-iron pot, knocking it completely off the burner. It hit the tile floor with a deafening crash, splattering boiling liquid everywhere. “What happened?!” Lena rushed into the kitchen, freezing when she saw the mess. She looked at the ruined dinner, then at me, her brow furrowing in irritation. “You’re a grown man, Mark. Why are you so clumsy? Clean this up and start another batch quickly. Chad needs to eat.” She didn’t see my foot. She didn’t see the angry, blistering red patch of skin where the boiling soup had soaked through my sock. She was only worried about whether Chad’s feeding schedule would be delayed. Without a word, I turned on my heel, walked into our bedroom, and crawled into bed, pulling the heavy duvet over my head like a shroud. A few minutes later, the door swung open. “What are you doing?” Lena’s voice was sharp. “The kitchen is still a disaster, and dinner isn’t made.” I slowly pulled the duvet down. “Do I owe you something, Lena? Do I owe either of you?” She crossed her arms. “What are you talking about? Why are you acting crazy out of nowhere?” I threw the covers off, my burnt foot throbbing in time with my pulse, and walked right past her, out the front door, and into the biting evening air. I walked to the pharmacy three blocks away, bought a tube of burn ointment, and sat on a cold, damp park bench to apply it. I sat there for hours, watching the traffic lights change from green to yellow to red. My phone remained silent. Not a single text. Not a missed call. The silence was a weapon, designed to make me feel like I was the one being unreasonable. And God help me, I almost believed it. I would have believed it, if it weren’t for a revelation I’d stumbled upon three days ago. By pure accident, I discovered that my wife’s college sweetheart—her great, tragic first love, the one who got away—was Chad. My best friend. When the truth hit me, the few mutual friends who knew had cornered me, begging me to let it go. It’s ancient history, Mark, they said. It happened way before you two even met. Even my father, Arthur, had tried to talk me off the ledge. “They’ve been over for a decade, son. Lena has been a good mother. She hasn’t crossed any lines since you’ve been married. You have Noah to think about. You have to look forward, not backward.” I had listened to them. I had swallowed the bile in my throat and chosen not to confront her. But I never imagined she would bring a broken, vulnerable Chad into our home. I never imagined she would dote on him like a queen tending to a wounded knight, while treating me like the hired help. The neighborhood grew quiet as the streetlights hummed and flickered out one by one. I finally stood up and began the long walk home. Part of me wanted to keep walking. To disappear into the night and never come back. But I couldn’t. I had our eight-year-old son, Noah, to think about. His dinner hadn’t been made. His homework hadn’t been checked. His bath hadn’t been drawn. If I didn’t go back, none of it would happen. When I pushed the front door open, the sound of laughter spilled from the living room. Lena had ordered artisanal pizza. She, Chad, and Noah were sitting around the coffee table, a comedy playing on the iPad propped up in front of them. They were eating, laughing, leaning into each other. A perfect, happy little family. None of them greeted me. No one asked where I had been, or if I had eaten. Lena merely glanced up, fixing me with a look of cool condescension. Her eyes said it all: Throw your little tantrum. You always come crawling back anyway. 2 My heart turned to absolute ice in my chest. Before turning the doorknob, some pathetic, lingering part of me had still held onto a sliver of hope. But looking at her now, all that remained was a vast, hollow disappointment. If my patience and compromise were rewarded only with deceit and eye rolls, then why the hell was I still breaking my own back? That night, I dragged a blanket into Noah’s room and slept on the floor. Through the thin walls, I could hear Lena’s phone chiming. She was messaging the neighborhood Facebook group, desperate for a recommendation for a late-night cleaning service. Over a spilled pot of soup. She would rather pay a stranger a premium than lift a mop herself. Around 2:00 AM, the door to Noah’s room creaked open. Lena stepped in, her shadow falling over me. She nudged my shoulder with her toe. “Chad is ready for bed,” she whispered. “Go help him shower.” I picked up my phone. The harsh glare of the screen illuminated the time. Chad was a night owl, and apparently, that meant I was expected to be on-call until the early hours of the morning just to scrub his back? The man had a broken femur. His hands worked perfectly fine. “Get out,” I said, my voice dangerously low. I pulled the blanket over my head, shutting out the world. She stood there for a long, heavy moment, let out a dramatic sigh, and walked out. The next morning, I woke up before the sun and began packing a duffel bag. Noah rubbed his sleepy eyes from the bed. “Daddy, where are you going?” I sat on the edge of his mattress and smoothed his messy hair. “Grandpa isn’t feeling well. I need to go stay with him for a few days to help him out. You need to be a good boy for Mom while I’m gone, okay?” Lena, hearing my voice, appeared in the doorway, her brow pulled into a tight knot. “You can’t leave,” she demanded. “If you leave, who is going to take care of Chad? Who is going to take care of Noah?” I looked up at her, my expression dead flat. “Are your arms broken?” Her eyes widened in indignation. “Excuse me? Mark, let’s get one thing straight. Chad is your best friend, not mine.” “Then tell him to leave.” I stood up, zipping the duffel bag with a sharp, aggressive sound. “I’ll go tell him right now.” “No!” Lena lunged forward, grabbing my forearm. Her grip was desperate. “He’s been your closest friend for years. How could you just kick him out when he’s hurt?” I let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “Is he really just my friend, Lena? Because from where I’m standing, you seem a hell of a lot more worried about him than I am.” She flinched. Her eyes darted away, unable to meet my gaze. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve always treated your friends like they were my own.” “Then you shouldn’t have any problem taking care of him.” I pulled my arm out of her grasp, picked up my bag, and walked out of the house without looking back. My dad, Arthur, had been diagnosed with an inguinal hernia the week before. He had undergone surgery yesterday. Lena had known about this for weeks, but she hadn’t bothered to make a single phone call to check on him. I stayed with my dad at his apartment for seven days. When he was finally cleared to move around a bit more, I planned to just stay there and keep nursing him back to health. But then Noah’s second-grade teacher called me. She said Noah had been falling asleep in class. He hadn’t turned in a single homework assignment all week. His grades, usually stellar, were plummeting. “I asked him what was going on,” his teacher said gently, “and he told me his mom said homework was optional. That he could just play video games if he didn’t feel like doing it.” A high-pitched ringing started in my ears. The blood rushed straight to my head. “Mr. Davis, there’s something else,” she hesitated. “Noah’s hygiene… hasn’t been great this week. His hair is matted. He hasn’t brushed his teeth, and he’s been wearing the same stained shirt for three days. The other kids are starting to avoid him. They say he smells.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting the sting of tears, and apologized profusely. I told her there was a family emergency, that things had fallen through the cracks, and that I would never let it happen again. When I hung up, a suffocating realization settled over me. We had made this child together, but I was the only one tethered to him. I was the only one who actually did the work of parenting. I packed my dad’s things and brought him home with me. The moment we walked through the door, Lena grabbed my sleeve and dragged me into our bedroom, her face pale with fury. “Are you out of your mind, Mark? Chad needs peace and quiet to heal. Why would you bring your father here?” “He just had surgery. He needs someone to look after him.” “Hire a home health aide!” “He has a son. Why would he need to hire a stranger?” I shot back, stepping into her space. “Why don’t you hire an aide for Chad?” Lena crossed her arms defensively. “Chad is a victim of a terrible accident. He has no family in this city. How could you be so heartless as to abandon him to some random nurse?” A victim? A thirty-eight-year-old victim? The absolute absurdity of her logic made my stomach churn. I felt physically sick. “Let me remind you of something, Lena,” I said, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “When we bought this house, my father paid for half the down payment.” It had been his life savings. Every penny he had, he gave to us to build our life. Since the day we married, he had treated Lena like his own flesh and blood. And now, when he just needed a quiet bed to recover in for a few days, she was treating him like an infestation. Lena dropped her gaze, her mouth pressing into a thin, hard line. She didn’t say another word. I gave her one last look of utter disgust, turned, and walked back out to the hallway. As I approached the guest room where I’d settled my dad, I heard Chad’s voice drifting through the cracked door. “Look, Arthur, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m just gonna be honest with you. No young couple actually wants to live with an old person.” 3 “I know, I know. You’re absolutely right,” my dad’s voice trembled with a quiet, heartbreaking resignation. “I didn’t want to intrude. Mark practically dragged me here.” “Well, no offense, but you should have put your foot down,” Chad replied, his tone dripping with arrogant authority. “Now they’re fighting because of you. This house was perfectly peaceful until you showed up and ruined the vibe.” I pushed the door open to see my dad struggling to stand up, his face etched with deep shame. “It’s my fault,” Dad murmured. “I’m just a burden to these kids. I’ll pack my things right now.” “Nobody is leaving,” I said, stepping fully into the room. “The man of this house isn’t dead yet.” Chad jumped, fumbling awkwardly for his crutches, his face draining of color. My dad reached out, gripping my wrist with a weak, trembling hand. “Mark, please, just let me go back to my apartment. I’ll figure out how to take care of myself, I promise. It’s okay.” I glared at Chad, my eyes burning holes through him. “Who stays and who leaves isn’t up to a houseguest who’s overstayed his welcome.” Chad’s jaw tightened. “I was just trying to look out for your marriage, man. I’m your best friend. Nobody wants to see you and Lena happy more than I do.” “If you’re really my best friend, then remember your place. Stop crossing boundaries.” I gently pushed my dad back down onto the mattress. “You stay right here, Dad. This is your house, too. As long as I’m breathing, nobody is going to disrespect you under my roof.” Chad’s face hardened. He let out a bitter little scoff. “No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.” Lena didn’t come out of our bedroom for the rest of the day. But as evening approached, she suddenly left the house, returning an hour later laden with bags of fresh groceries. She rarely cooked—that was my domain—but today, she moved around the kitchen with a frantic, theatrical energy. The exhaust fan roared for over an hour. Eventually, the rich, savory smell of roasted meat and garlic filled the house. She brought four elaborate dishes and a pot of soup to the dining table. Against my better judgment, my chest softened just a fraction. Maybe she wasn’t entirely cold. Maybe she realized she had crossed a line and this was her olive branch. Lena arranged the silverware, not bothering to look up. “Chad! Noah! Dinner is ready!” I froze. My eyes locked onto the table. She had only set three plates. A few feet away, my dad had just shuffled out of his room. He stopped dead in his tracks in the hallway, looking at the table, unsure if he was allowed to take another step. He didn’t say a word. He just clutched his stomach, hunched over his surgical wounds, and slowly, painfully, turned around and limped back into his bedroom. It felt like someone had driven a spike through my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I was an idiot. How could I have been so naive? A person’s fundamental nature doesn’t change just because you want it to. I walked over to the table, picked up a bowl, and began aggressively piling it high with food. Lena shot me a venomous glare. I ignored her entirely. Once the bowl was overflowing, I grabbed a second bowl, filled it with hot soup, and carried both to my dad’s room. He refused to eat. He just sat on the edge of the bed, repeating over and over that he needed to leave. “You and Lena are already having issues. I can’t throw gasoline on the fire,” he pleaded, his voice breaking. He grabbed my hand. “Please, Mark, listen to me. Chad is your friend. He’s already here. Don’t cause a scene and try to kick him out. He’ll heal, and he’ll leave. For the sake of your family, for Noah’s sake, just swallow your pride and endure it for a little while.” For the sake of Noah. For the sake of the family. Why was I always the only one required to suffer for the sake of the family? Did I create this child by myself? What had my endless stream of compromises ever actually bought me? “Dad,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “If you leave tonight, I will never have an ounce of dignity in this house again.” If he walked out that door, it would only prove to Lena that she could treat me and the people I loved like garbage, and I would always fold. “But…” Dad sighed, a heavy, rattling sound, his face deeply lined with worry. I looked down at my hands, my knuckles white, my mind a violent storm of grief and rage. The next morning at 7:00 AM, I got out of bed, splashed cold water on my face, and walked out to make breakfast. When I reached the kitchen, I stopped dead. My dad had already cooked a full breakfast. Not only that, but he had vacuumed the living room. The wet clothes I had left in the washing machine last night were neatly folded and draped over the drying rack. His incisions hadn’t healed. He couldn’t even stand up straight. I couldn’t let myself imagine the sheer, agonizing physical pain he must have been in while pushing a vacuum cleaner around. The bedroom door clicked open, and Lena walked out. Instantly, my dad plastered on a wide, eager smile. “Good morning, Lena! Breakfast is ready. I made all your favorites!” 4 Lena’s face remained a mask of stone. She didn’t so much as glance in his direction. She walked straight to the entryway, grabbed her trench coat, and walked out. SLAM. The front door shook in its frame. Something inside me snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. I lunged toward the door, ready to chase her down into the driveway and scream until my lungs gave out, but my dad grabbed the back of my shirt, pulling me back with surprising strength. “Mark, stop. Just listen to me!” he begged, forcing me to sit down on the sofa. “Lena isn’t a bad person,” he reasoned, his voice trembling. “She’s just a little stubborn. It doesn’t bother me, honestly! I don’t mind.” I dropped my head into my hands, rubbing my temples as a profound, exhausting sorrow washed over me. Noah padded out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes. “Daddy? Are you sick?” I reached out and pulled him into my arms, holding him tight. “Noah… if Mommy and Daddy get a divorce, who do you want to live with?” “Good lord, Mark, you can’t say things like that to a child!” my dad gasped, terrified. He immediately ushered Noah back toward his bedroom. “Grandpa’s sorry, buddy. Your dad is just making a silly joke. Nobody is getting a divorce!” Dad came back and sat beside me, spending the entire morning trying to talk me off the ledge. He pleaded with me to erase the word ‘divorce’ from my vocabulary. “Your mother passed away so young,” he said softly. “You grew up without a complete family. Do you really want to put Noah through that? And think about it practically—you don’t have a job right now. If you leave her, how are you going to fight for custody? How will you feed him?” I kept my head bowed, staring at the floorboards, completely mute. Years ago, when Lena’s career started taking off, I had impulsively quit my job to be a stay-at-home dad and support her. It was, without a doubt, the single greatest mistake of my life. My dad quietly stood up and began packing his bags. “If my being here breaks up your marriage, I’ll never forgive myself,” he whispered. “Just let me go, Mark. I can’t sleep in this house anyway.” The acid in my throat burned. I couldn’t force him to stay. It was selfish of me to use him as a pawn in my cold war with Lena when being here was clearly causing him emotional and physical agony. “Okay, Dad,” I said, my voice hollow. “I’m coming with you.” No matter what, I was going to take care of him until he was fully healed. We had just zipped up the last suitcase when the door swung open and Chad hobbled into the room on his crutches. “Hey Arthur, I’m missing a watch. Do you mind if I look around in here for it?” My jaw locked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” “It doesn’t mean anything,” Chad said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “It’s just a really important piece to me, and I want to find it.” I stood up, blocking his path. “Your watch isn’t in here. Go look somewhere else.” “I’ve looked literally everywhere else,” Chad insisted. “This is the only room left.” He planted himself in the doorway, refusing to budge. He looked perfectly willing to stand there all day until he got his way. My dad pulled me back by the sleeve, shooting me a pleading look. “Chad, I promise you I haven’t seen any watch, but if it gives you peace of mind to look around, go right ahead.” It was classic Arthur. Terrified of conflict. Always willing to lie down and let people walk all over him just to keep the peace. Chad nodded briskly, hobbled straight over to the bed, and reached down to unzip my dad’s suitcase. “What the fuck are you doing?” I shoved past my dad and grabbed Chad’s wrist. “You have zero proof. What gives you the right to search his personal belongings?” Chad scowled, trying to yank his arm away. “I didn’t say you stole it! Why are you acting so defensive?” “Am I being defensive, or are you being an entitled prick?” I shoved my shoulder into his chest, using my free hand to zip the suitcase shut. But Chad refused to pull his hand out of the bag. “What is your problem, Mark?!” he yelled in my face. “I told you, that watch means everything to me!” “That doesn’t give you the right to do whatever you want!” We were practically chest to chest, grappling awkwardly over the luggage, neither of us willing to yield an inch. “Boys, please, stop!” My dad rushed forward, trying to wedge himself between us. “Let’s just talk about this! Don’t ruin your friendship over this!” In the chaotic push and pull, Chad’s crutch caught on the leg of a chair behind him. He lost his balance, his arms flailing, and he went down hard on the hardwood floor with a heavy thud. “What the hell is going on in here?!” Lena’s voice cracked like a whip from the doorway. Chad seized the moment. He sat on the floor, clutching his broken leg, his face contorted in a mask of pale agony. “I just came in to look for my missing watch, and they…” He let out a pathetic groan. “Lena, that watch was the gift you gave me. The one from when we first got together!” I froze. The room went dead silent. The missing watch. The deeply meaningful piece of jewelry. It was a romantic keepsake from his first love. From her. Before my brain could even process the humiliation, Lena stormed into the room. She bypassed Chad entirely, lunged at the open suitcase, grabbed a fistful of my clothes, and hurled them directly at my face. “You are a disgusting, petty little man, Mark! I am so sick of you!” Her face was twisted into an ugly, unrecognizable mask of pure hatred. She grabbed another shirt, then a pair of jeans, throwing them at me as hard as she could. Ten years. A decade of marriage, and this was the first time she had ever laid her hands on me in anger. And she was doing it for Chad. I stood perfectly still, my jaw clamped so tight I thought my teeth might shatter. When she ran out of clothes to throw, she shot me a look of absolute revulsion and knelt on the floor to cradle Chad’s head. I tilted my head back, squeezing my eyes shut. I took one long, shuddering breath, pulling the cold air deep into my lungs. When I opened my eyes, the rage was gone. All that was left was a terrifying, crystalline clarity. “Lena,” I said, my voice dead and quiet. “I want a divorce.”

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I was the only nepotism hire in my mother’s department, but I wasn’t there to be pampered. I was the target she used to sharpen her reputation. To prove to the firm that she was beyond reproach, she turned me into a martyr for her ambition. When others left at five, I stayed until midnight. When the team had weekends off, I pulled all-nighters. When I told her my chest felt like it was being crushed by a vice, she tore me down in front of the entire open-plan office. “If you want to be lazy, just say it, Cassie! Don’t use your health as a shield. You’re an embarrassment to my name!” On the morning of my thirty-second birthday, after seven straight days of graveyard shifts, my heart simply stopped. I collapsed at my desk, my face hitting the keyboard. When the paramedics wheeled me out, she didn’t even look up from her monitor. She thought I was staging a scene for sympathy. She even posted in the department’s Slack channel: “Stop the theatrics. Get back here and finish the migration. These four projects go live tonight, no exceptions.” Eight hours after the coroner officially declared me dead, Katherine—my mother, the Senior VP—was still trying to avoid any appearance of favoritism. She added me to a new project group and sent three rapid-fire voice notes: “How long are you going to milk this? If you’re not actually in a casket, get your ass back to work! Don’t make us a laughingstock in front of the partners!” But Mom, I can’t come back. 1 I’m hovering in the stale air of the office, watching her. No—at the office, I’m not allowed to call her Mom. I have to call her Ms. Bishop. “Ms. Bishop, about Cassie…” Becca, the intern, starts typing in the group chat, but she’s cut off before she can finish. An image notification pings on everyone’s phone. It’s a disciplinary notice. My name is right there at the top: Cassandra Bishop. Violation: Unexcused absence. Penalty: Forfeiture of monthly bonus and performance pay. Formal reprimand issued. “Let this be a lesson,” Katherine’s voice rings out through a new voice note. “In my department, nobody gets special treatment. I don’t care who you are. Disappearing to avoid a deadline is a breach of discipline I will not tolerate. This entitlement ends now.” A waterfall of “Understood, Ms. Bishop” responses floods the screen. Watching that notice, I almost want to laugh. Mom, I’m dead. How are you going to garnish the wages of a ghost? I drift over to my cubicle. It’s a graveyard of my last week alive—empty espresso cans, crumpled sugar-free Red Bull tins, and stacks of data sheets. “Maintenance, clear this trash out,” Katherine says, stepping out of her glass-walled office. She points a manicured finger at my desk. “It looks like a pigsty. It’s ruining the aesthetic of the floor. Throw it all away.” The cleaning lady hesitates, clutching her heavy-duty trash bag. “Ms. Bishop, these are Cassie’s personal things. Maybe we should box them up for her…” “Throw. It. Away!” Katherine snaps. “If she wants to walk out on this team, she can find her desk in the dumpster. Deactivate her keycard and lock her out of every server. I need her to realize the world doesn’t stop turning just because she has a tantrum.” The woman doesn’t argue again. She begins sweeping my life into a black plastic bag. My lumbar pillow—a birthday gift I bought for myself last year. My bottles of aspirin and the heart medication I was never supposed to skip. And then, there’s the photo in the corner. The only photo of the two of us. Clink. The frame hits the bottom of the bag, and the sound of shattering glass echoes through the quiet office. I reach out instinctively, trying to catch it, but my fingers pass through the plastic, through the air, through nothing. Is this what being dead is? The ultimate powerlessness? Katherine stands there, arms crossed, watching them erase me. She pulls out her phone, snaps a photo of the empty desk, and posts it to her LinkedIn. The caption reads: “Leadership requires hard choices. Even family must be held to the highest standard. To succeed in this industry, you have to kill the ‘delicate’ instinct. My conscience is clear.” In less than a minute, the likes and sycophantic comments start rolling in. “A true leader!” “Total boss move, Katherine. Cassie needed this wake-up call.” I float behind her, reading the screen. My heart doesn’t hurt anymore. I suppose that’s the one perk of it not beating. You got what you wanted, Mom. You proved you’re untouchable. You finally won. 2 8:00 PM. The project went live exactly on schedule, just hours after my body was moved to the morgue. The data was clean, the servers were humming—the result of my seven days of sleeplessness. Zero bugs. To celebrate, Katherine took the entire senior team to an upscale steakhouse downtown. The private room is glowing with warm light, the smell of expensive Cabernet and aged ribeye filling the air. “A toast to Katherine!” Robert, the assistant manager, raises his glass. “The launch was flawless. Your direction in the final stretch was masterclass.” Katherine, looking sharp in her charcoal blazer, her cheeks slightly flushed from the wine, smiles and waves him off. “It was a team effort. Mostly.” She takes a sip. “Unlike some people who flake when the pressure gets real. I had to monitor the final nodes myself.” The table erupts in polite, knowing chuckles. “Cassie’s always been a bit… coddled,” Robert adds, eager to please. “She seemed reliable, but I guess she just lacks that grit. You’re doing her a favor by being tough, Katherine. She’ll thank you one day.” “If she has the brains to understand it,” Katherine says, setting her glass down with a sharp thud. “Young people today… they have no stamina. Physical or mental. When I was pregnant with her, I was on job sites in the middle of July. I didn’t take a single day off. She catches a cold and thinks the world owes her a sabbatical.” I’m perched on the chandelier, looking down at her. Mom, you were tough. I know. But you forgot that I inherited your stubbornness. If I hadn’t been fading into a blur of gray pain, do you really think I would have let myself fall before the finish line? Suddenly, her phone vibrates in her Chanel bag. She pulls it out, glancing at the screen. It’s a local landline. Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe she just wants to show off how “on call” she is, but she hits speaker and drops the phone on the white tablecloth. “Katherine Bishop,” she says regally. “Hello, is this the next of kin for Cassandra Bishop? This is the administrator at the County Morgue…” Katherine freezes for a split second, then lets out a harsh, mocking laugh. “The morgue? Really? Is that the best you can do? Scammers are getting creative these days, using death threats to get a call back.” The voice on the other end hesitates. “Ma’am, I’m serious. The deceased was brought in this afternoon at—” “Enough!” Katherine barks. “My daughter is hiding at home pretending to be sick. If she thinks she can use a prank call to make me back down, tell her it’s not working. In fact, tell her she’s fired.” She hangs up and immediately blocks the number. “Disgusting,” she says, draining her glass in one go. “The girl is becoming unhinged. Hiring someone to play a coroner just to scare me? It’s pathetic.” “Unbelievable,” a colleague chimes in. “That’s a new low. Don’t let it ruin the night, Katherine. You’ve earned this.” The room settles back into its rhythm of clinking silverware and laughter. They talk about bonuses and Q4 projections while eating lobster tail and drinking fifty-dollar pours of bourbon. And my body is lying in a steel drawer, waiting for a mother who isn’t coming. As the dinner ends, Katherine looks at the leftover risotto on her plate. On her way out, she spots a stray dog near the valet stand. She tips the container of expensive food into the dirt for the dog. “Go on,” she says, patting the dog’s head with a rare, soft smile. “At least a dog knows how to show a little gratitude. Sometimes, children aren’t worth the investment.” 3 When Katherine opens the front door, the house is a tomb. Pitch black. Usually, no matter how late she stayed out, I’d leave a lamp on. I’d have a pot of tea or some ginger soup waiting to help her settle. But tonight, there is only the hum of the refrigerator. The silence grates on her nerves. She tosses her bag onto the leather sofa and shouts into the darkness. “Cassie! Where the hell are you? You see me walk in and you can’t even get me a glass of water?” Only the ticking of the grandfather clock answers her. “Fine. You want to play the silent treatment? Let’s play.” She storms down the hallway to my room and kicks the door open. “Stop acting like a martyr! Get up!” The room is empty. The bed is made with military precision—the way I left it a week ago before the crunch started. The desk, however, is a mess of protein bar wrappers and empty Keurig pods. Katherine scoffs. “A pigsty. Absolutely disgusting. No wonder you’re still single.” She starts swiping the clutter off the desk in a fit of pique, but her hand stops. Tucked between a stack of invoices is a small, elegantly wrapped box with a sticky note on top. Mom, Happy Birthday. I bought this with the bonus from my first solo project. It’s that silk scarf you’ve been eyeing. Don’t work too hard. Take care of yourself. Today was my birthday. It was also the day I died. I knew she wouldn’t remember the date—she only remembered it as “Launch Day.” I had planned to bring the gift home, cook her dinner, and tell her… I was quitting. Katherine picks up the box and tears the paper. A beautiful, peony-patterned silk scarf slides out. For a second, her expression falters. But then the fire returns. “You have money for this trash, but you can’t put your head down and work?” She throws the scarf onto the floor and grinds her heel into the silk. “You think a gift buys my forgiveness for walking out? Dream on, Cassie. I’m not that easy.” She pulls out her phone, takes a photo of the soiled scarf on the floor, and sends it to my WhatsApp. Then, she records a long, biting voice note. “I don’t want your fake sentiment. If you aren’t in that office at 8:00 AM sharp tomorrow, don’t bother coming back ever. You’re done.” Still fuming, she starts rifling through my drawers. “I know you’re hiding somewhere. Where are the keys to the lake house?” She pulls out a crumpled piece of paper buried at the bottom. It’s a medical report from six months ago. She skims it, her eyes landing on the summary. Severe arrhythmia. Myocardial ischemia. Immediate hospitalization recommended. Avoid high-stress environments and physical exhaustion. I remember showing her that report. I wanted to take a week off for follow-up tests. She was on a conference call at the time and barely glanced at it. “Doctors just say that stuff to bill the insurance,” she’d said then. “You’re thirty. You don’t have a heart condition; you have a laziness condition. If that proposal isn’t done by morning, you’re sleeping at the office.” Katherine looks at the report now and let’s out a cold snort. “Still using this fake note?” She tears the paper in half, crumbles it into a ball, and chucks it at the bin. “Six months and you’re still clinging to the same excuse. Get a new script, Cassie.” She sits on the edge of my bed, breathing hard, her chest heaving with indignation. Suddenly, a muffled buzzing comes from her bag. She frowns, reaches in, and pulls out my iPad. The admin had found it at my desk and tucked it into Katherine’s bag before she left. The screen is glowing with a recurring alarm: 11:55 PM — Heat up milk for Mom. Katherine’s finger trembles slightly as she looks at the notification. She swipes to unlock it. There’s no passcode. The code has always been her birthday. The screen opens to a draft message in our chat. 4 The draft is only one line. No excuses. No pleading. No anger. It just says: Mom, it really, really hurts. Can I just sleep for a little while this time? Just a little while… The words pierce her, but she shoves the feeling down. “Hurts too much to work, but not too much to text?” She stares at the screen, her eyes rimmed with red, her teeth clenched. “Even your messages are designed to make me feel guilty. You’re pathetic, Cassie.” She tosses the iPad onto the bed and walks out, slamming the door. “Fine. Stay gone. Die for all I care. At least I’d finally have some peace.” She shuts her own door. I float by the bedside, watching the screen of the iPad slowly dim and go black. You win, Mom. I’m finally sleeping. And this time, I won’t wake up to your shouting. The next morning, the sun is barely up when Katherine’s phone explodes. As a VP, she’s used to being reachable 24/7, but this isn’t a client. It’s the Head of HR. “Katherine… check the company-wide Slack. Now.” The man’s voice is shaking. “Something has happened. Something terrible.” Katherine rubs her temples, clicking into the app. The “General” channel, which has five hundred employees, is moving so fast the messages are a blur. At the top of the feed is a leaked image. It’s a morgue intake form. Name: Cassandra Bishop. Age: 32. Time of Intake: Yesterday, 4:30 PM. Cause of Death: Sudden Cardiac Arrest. The silence in the chat is deafening, followed by a volcanic eruption of messages. “Oh my god, she was actually…” “Katherine was screaming at her in the chat while she was in a body bag.” “This is horrific. She worked herself to death.” Katherine stares at the image for five full minutes. Her hand begins to shake—not with grief, but with a blind, incandescent rage. “Good… very clever, Cassie.” She draws a jagged breath, a cold smirk touching her lips. “Special effects? Makeup? You’re really going this far to humiliate me?” She can’t believe it. Or rather, her ego won’t let her. If this is real, she’s a monster. Therefore, it cannot be real. She records a voice note for the entire five hundred-person group. “Everyone stop! This is a hoax. This is a malicious prank by Cassandra to avoid her responsibilities and sabotage this firm. I am going to the morgue right now to expose this lie!” She doesn’t even wash her face. She grabs her keys and bolts. On the way, she calls the HR manager. “Meet me there. Bring the termination papers. I’m firing that girl to her face!” Her car screams down the highway. I sit in the passenger seat, watching her white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Mom, slow down. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right there waiting for you. The lobby of the funeral home is hushed, the air smelling of lilies and floor wax. Katherine’s heels clack aggressively against the marble. She storms up to the desk and slams her ID down. “Bring Cassandra Bishop out here!” she demands. “Stop the play-acting! I know this is a setup. Tell her to get out here right now!” The young woman behind the desk looks up, startled, then her expression shifts to one of profound pity and horror. “Ma’am, please keep your voice down. Ms. Bishop was brought in yesterday. We’ve been trying to reach you…” “The body?” Katherine sneers. “Sure. Let’s see it. I want to see exactly how much she spent on a prosthetic corpse.” The HR manager arrives, looking like he wants to melt into the floor. Even he is starting to doubt Katherine’s “prank” theory. The attendant sighs, realizes there’s no arguing with a woman in this state, and leads them back. The hallway is long and frigid. Katherine walks fast, her chin high, a mocking smile plastered on her face. “Keep it up, Cassie. I’m almost impressed. Let’s see the grand finale…” “We’re here.” The attendant stops at a heavy stainless steel door. He hits a switch. The cold hits like a physical wall. Rows of steel drawers line the room. He checks a tag and pulls a handle. Rumble. The drawer slides out. A draped white sheet covers a human form. It is perfectly still. No rise and fall of a chest. Katherine’s lip twitches, but she holds the mask. She steps forward, her finger hovering inches from the sheet before she stops. Her eyes lock onto a hand peeking out from under the fabric. The hand is blue-grey, bloodless. On the wrist is a cheap, red woven string bracelet. It was a freebie from a mall kiosk years ago. Katherine had tossed it at me during a shopping trip because she didn’t want it. She’d said, “Here, take this junk. Maybe it’ll keep you from being so clumsy.” I’d worn it for three years. Katherine’s pupils contract. “Get… get up.” Her voice is a thin, rattling thread. Her body begins to vibrate. “Stop it, Cassie. I’m not mad anymore. Just get up.” Silence, save for the hum of the refrigeration units. “I told you to get up!” She grabs the corner of the sheet and rips it back.

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On the night of my eighteenth birthday gala, I was drugged. In a haze of heat and confusion, I pulled my bodyguard of eight years, Carl Vaughn, into my bed. I had never seen him as just a bodyguard. We knew each other’s souls. I was only waiting to become a legal adult so I could finally confess our love to my parents. But the next morning, the number one trending topic on the internet was a six-hour, unedited, high-definition video of us in that bed. I thought a corporate rival had framed us. That was, until I overheard him on the phone with a friend: “My sister went to work for their family, and they drove her to her death. Eight years she’s been missing. I just recorded a little video. Honestly, I think I went too easy on them.” There were no corporate rivals. It was all him. It was all revenge. My father, blindingly furious, lunged to strike him. Carl simply kicked him away. My father hit his head against the marble floor and slipped into a permanent coma. The Astor family empire collapsed, buried under tens of millions in debt. My mother worked herself to the bone, juggling jobs until she collapsed and died of exhaustion on a rainy night. To pay for my father’s life support, I sold myself to an underground syndicate compound in Central America. Two years later, I connected with Carl on a video call. He recognized my voice instantly. A cruel scoff filtered through the speaker. “Well, look at the little Astor heiress, running scams now?” “I can give you your sales quota,” he purred. “Let’s see if you can swallow it. Now, take your clothes off.” … 1 “Take them off. What, are you feeling shy now?” The video feed snapped into focus. Carl’s devastatingly familiar face filled the screen, twisted into a mocking sneer. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, using the metallic taste of blood to force the suffocating ache back down into my chest. When I lifted my eyes again, the mask was perfectly in place. I offered him a practiced, sultry smile. “Where would the boss like me to start?” I hooked a finger under my strap, sliding it agonizingly slow down my shoulder. Then, I stood up, angling myself toward the webcam, and began to pull the hem of my silk dress upward. Pale thighs and the curve of my chest were practically spilling into the frame. Just as my fingers moved to drag the neckline lower— “Enough!” The vein at Carl’s temple throbbed. His voice cracked like a whip. “Bonnie Astor, is this how you usually close your deals? Stripping for men online?” “Do you have a single shred of human dignity left in you? You make me sick.” His words were jagged glass, twisting directly into my heart. My eyes burned with a sudden, acidic sting. When you’re starving and fighting just to draw your next breath… what the hell is dignity? Swallowing the lump in my throat, I leaned closer to the lens, letting my voice drop to a husky whisper. “Is the boss not satisfied? Or were you hoping for something a little more… hardcore—” The screen went black. He hung up. A second later, my phone pinged. A wire transfer notification. Fifty thousand dollars. Attached was a single message: Even talking to you makes me feel dirty. The last thread of adrenaline snapped. I collapsed onto the concrete floor, the cold seeping into my bones. Three years ago, this was the man who knelt beside my legs, looking up at me like I was the only star in his sky. “You are the brightest, most untouchable thing I’ve ever seen,” he had whispered, his hands trembling as he held mine. “Please don’t ever leave me behind. Okay?” But in the end, the hands that pushed me into the dirt, the voice that called me filthy… belonged to him. I took a shaky breath, pulling myself up to hand the transfer confirmation to the floor supervisor. This fifty grand was my quota for the day. It bought me a twenty-four-hour reprieve from the cattle prods and the beatings. More importantly, it covered another month of my father’s life support. The supervisor’s face split into a greasy grin. He shoved me toward the locker room. “We’ve got VIPs hitting the casino floor tonight. You’ve been hitting your numbers lately, so I’m giving you a shot at the high-roller table.” He grabbed my chin, his grip bruising. “Don’t screw this up, Bonnie. Or your old man’s plug gets pulled.” I nodded frantically. I remembered the day the debt collectors breached the nursing home back in the States. They had nearly beaten me to death right there in the sterile hallway. They had their hands on my father’s oxygen tube. It was this supervisor who had stopped them. “Come work for us,” he had offered. “What you earn pays off the debt, and keeps the machine breathing for your daddy.” I said yes. I would do anything to survive. In the locker room, I expertly applied heavy concealer over the fresh, angry welts and the burn marks from the stun guns. When I stepped onto the plush carpet of the VIP room, my breath caught. Carl was sitting dead center at the baccarat table. He was in a bespoke charcoal suit, radiating an untouchable, arrogant wealth that was even more suffocating in person than on a screen. “Gentlemen, this is our dealer for the evening, Bonnie.” The supervisor bowed obsequiously. The men at the table looked me up and down, their eyes leaving a trail of slime over my skin. Someone let out a low whistle. “Goddamn. She’s a live wire.” “With a dealer looking like that, I don’t even care if I lose.” Their leering gazes stuck to me like venom. I forced my lips into a breathtaking curve, slipping smoothly into the empty chair beside them. Beneath the table, I let my knee brush lightly against the leg of the man to my right. “With me here, I promise the bosses will only have a winning streak,” I purred. The man practically melted. He pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills and shoved them directly into the cleavage of my uniform. I giggled, thanking him sweetly as I tucked the cash deeper against my skin. Carl let out a dark, hollow laugh. When I looked up, his eyes were burning with a terrifying, destructive fire. “Has this dealer been washed?” he demanded, his voice dropping the temperature in the room. The supervisor froze. “Uh… well, of course, Mr. Vaughn. All our girls are impeccably clean.” Carl stood up slowly, towering over the table, his gaze pinning me to my seat. “Tell us, Bonnie. Are you clean?” The other men exchanged bewildered looks, unsure why the billionaire was suddenly turning the room into an interrogation chamber. His relentless, suffocating pressure made my chest physically ache. When I didn’t answer, a cruel smirk twisted his lips. “Actually, I heard the little Astor heiress was starring in amateur porn before she was even legally allowed to drink.” Carl leaned forward, bracing his hands on the velvet table. “Six hours. High-def. Uncensored. Seems she likes to play rough.” Recognition dawned on one of the other men. “Holy shit, no wonder she looked familiar! That’s the Astor girl. The one whose sex tape leaked at her debutante ball and sent her parents to an early grave.” The man turned to the supervisor, his eyes turning predatory. “Hey, if she’s that kind of trash, she’s not just here to deal cards, right? How about…” The implication hung heavy and vile in the air. Under the table, Carl’s polished leather shoe hooked the hem of my skirt, dragging it up an inch. “Since you’re already this filthy,” Carl whispered, his voice dripping with venom, “why are you still wearing clothes? Didn’t you hear what the bosses want? Do your job, sweetheart.” 2 The way Carl looked at me… it was as if he were scraping dog shit off his shoe. But he wasn’t always like this. I was ten years old when eighteen-year-old Carl Vaughn first stepped in front of me. He had dropped to one knee, looking at me with absolute reverence. “Miss Astor, from today onward, your safety is my life. As long as I am breathing, no one in this world will ever harm a hair on your head.” For the next eight years, he was a man of his word. He absorbed the blows of the world so I wouldn’t have to. Every time I stumbled, his strong arms were there, catching me before I ever hit the ground. “Careful, Bonnie.” He was always my shadow, indulging my every reckless whim with a quiet, devastating fondness. When I wanted to climb the ancient oak tree on the estate, he laced his hands together and offered his shoulders as my stepping stone. When I wanted to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over the bay, he smuggled me out past the security gates at midnight, hoisting me onto his shoulders so I had the best view in the world. Whenever I cheered in delight, a rare, beautiful smile would break across his face. “Let’s keep this our little secret from your father, okay?” Even the time an unhinged rival tried to kidnap me, Carl literally tore through them. Bleeding, battered, he carried me out of that warehouse without letting a single drop of my blood spill. I had cried, reaching out with my small, trembling hands to wipe the blood from his cheek. But Carl caught my wrists. His grip was fiercely protective, yet painfully restrained. “I’ll get you dirty. Don’t touch me.” My heart had seized in my chest. It pounded like a war drum. I had grabbed him by the lapels of his ruined suit and kissed him. “You’re not dirty. You’re never dirty to me…” Tears mixed with the copper taste of his blood. That was my eighteenth-year awakening. The name Carl Vaughn had been the absolute center of my entire adolescence. “Strip. What are you waiting for?” Carl’s voice snapped me back to the nightmare. “You want money?” He grabbed a handful of heavy casino chips and hurled them violently into my face. Clack. The sharp plastic hit my cheekbone like a slap. “Is that enough?” he sneered. I blinked, forcing myself back into my shell. I stretched my lips into a sickeningly sweet smile. “More than enough. Thank you so much, Mr. Vaughn~” “I promise to take very, very good care of you gentlemen tonight.” I dropped to my knees, crawling over the carpet to gather the scattered chips, deliberately tucking them into the lace tops of my thigh-high stockings. Then, I slipped the straps of my dress off my shoulders. The heavy air-conditioning of the casino hit my bare skin, making my teeth chatter, though whether from the cold or the terror, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t dare look into his eyes. I couldn’t bear to confirm the absolute disgust I knew was swimming in them. “Ooh, the little rich girl wears some naughty lingerie,” one of the men laughed, his eyes roaming over me like a starving wolf. They looked to Carl. “Hey, Mr. Vaughn, if you aren’t interested in partaking…” Carl took a slow sip of his bourbon. A violent storm was brewing in his dark eyes, but his voice was terrifyingly flat. “Do whatever you want. I have no interest in riding the town bicycle.” The town bicycle. I forced a laugh, my fingernails biting so hard into my palms they drew blood. I was suffocating on my own tears. The humiliation was a physical weight crushing my throat, but I kept the smile plastered on my face. “Well, practice makes perfect, right? I know all the tricks…” The game resumed. As the men drew their cards, their hands constantly wandered beneath the table. My stockings were torn. The fabric of my corset was pulled and stretched until the seams popped. Carl sat at the head of the table the entire night. He didn’t say a single word. By the time the game ended, my skin was mottled with purple bruises, pinch marks, and bites. I swallowed the agony, kneeling on the floor to gather the crumpled bills and fallen chips. “You are truly pathetic, Bonnie.” Carl watched me, a humorless, tight smile on his face. “Do you really love money this much?” I didn’t hesitate. I nodded. Money was oxygen for my father. Money could buy a headstone for my mother. “Fine.” He ground the word out through clenched teeth, his eyes flashing red. “Since you love money so damn much, I’m going to give you the ultimate opportunity to make it.” 3 Carl paid off my remaining debt to the syndicate. He dragged me out of the compound and flew us to an elite resort on the coast of Belize. When he burst into my hotel room, I hadn’t even finished changing. His eyes locked onto the angry red and purple marks littering my body. His brow furrowed deeply. “How did you get these?” Before I could formulate a lie, his gaze dropped to the open suitcase on the bed, spilling over with cheap, scandalous lingerie. He let out a dark, cynical laugh. “Right. In your line of work, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by a few battle scars.” It felt as though someone was systematically driving long needles into my chest. The pain was quiet, but infinite. I didn’t argue. Instead, I walked over to him, lightly draping my arms around his neck. “And what about you? Sneaking into my room at this hour… are you looking for—” I leaned in to whisper against his ear, but before I could finish, he shoved me backward. The veins in his neck popped. A dark flush spread from his collar to his jaw—whether from rage or something else, I couldn’t tell. “Don’t touch me. You’re filthy.” Even though I had spent years getting used to this version of him, the words still made my heart bleed. “Be in the lobby in thirty minutes.” “Five clients. As long as you keep them happy, they’re paying three million a head.” With that, he threw his suit jacket at me and walked out without looking back. Five men. Fifteen million dollars. That was more than enough to clear the lingering debts back home. I could finally go back to my father. A few minutes later, a hotel attendant knocked, handing me a small tube of scar-fading ointment. “Mr. Vaughn sent this.” I stared at the half-used tube of ointment, my mind going entirely blank. Back in the day, Carl wasn’t just my shadow. My father often sent him on dangerous acquisition and security missions. He frequently returned bruised, battered, and bleeding. He had a jagged knife scar running from his abdomen all the way up to his chest. I had spent an exorbitant amount of my allowance at a private auction to buy a medically advanced scar-fading serum. But when I gave it to him, he just smiled gently. “Miss Astor, you shouldn’t waste this kind of money on a servant like me.” I had refused to listen. I clamped one hand over his mouth and stubbornly applied the ointment to his chest with the other. The tube the attendant just handed me… was the exact same tube from years ago. Why did he still have it? Before I could unravel the knot in my stomach, the thirty minutes were up. When I stepped into the dim, velvet-draped lobby, several men wearing Venetian masks turned to stare at me with hungry eyes. “Carl, my man, thanks for taking care of our wives tonight.” “Your little girlfriend looks like a wildcat. First time at a swingers club, huh?” Carl was leaning back on a leather sofa, two half-naked women draped over him. He smirked over the rim of his glass. “Who knows how many times she’s done this.” A bomb went off in my skull. The ringing was deafening. I thought he wanted me to pour drinks. Or deal cards. I never, in my darkest nightmares, imagined he brought me here to trade me at an underground swingers club. The sheer humiliation and betrayal crashed over me like a tidal wave. It was the middle of summer in the tropics, but I was shivering violently. He looked up at me lazily. “What? Are you backing out?” He raised three fingers. Three million. That money was the only rope that could pull me out of the abyss I’d been drowning in for years. I bit my tongue until I tasted copper, forcing my trembling limbs into submission. “Why would I back out? It’s my absolute honor to serve these gentlemen.” Carl’s face instantly darkened into a thunderous scowl. He sat there, perfectly still, watching me pour their drinks. Watching me feed them fruit from the platter. Suddenly, one of the masked men yanked me up by my arm. “I can’t wait anymore. I’m taking her up to the room!” He scooped me up over his shoulder and marched toward the elevators. Instinct took over, and I thrashed against him. Smack. He backhanded me across the face so hard my vision blurred. “Shut the fuck up. Vaughn literally handed you over, why are you playing the virgin?” My ears were screaming. I opened my mouth, silently mouthing Carl’s name. But from the moment I was carried away, Carl never once looked in my direction. The heavy oak door slammed shut. I was thrown violently onto the mattress. The stench of the man’s cologne and sweat made my stomach heave. Carl always smelled like crisp cedarwood and snow. Whenever he came back from a mission, he brought me something. Sometimes it was a necklace he bought with his entire month’s salary. Sometimes it was just a perfectly preserved autumn leaf he found on the road. But now, I had nothing. Riiiiiiip. The sound of my dress tearing filled the quiet room. Pure, unadulterated terror seized my throat. I clenched my fists around the tiny tube of scar ointment and squeezed my eyes shut. Just endure it. Endure it, and it will be over. As long as Dad gets his medicine. As long as he lives. Nothing else matters. … Down in the lobby. Carl downed glass after glass of amber liquor. But the burning in his throat did nothing to quell the vicious, clawing anxiety tearing at his chest. “What’s wrong, Carl? Getting possessive over your little toy?” One of the women traced a manicured finger down his chest. He shoved her off with brutal force. “Possessive? Over her? You could hand her to me on a silver platter and I’d still throw up.” But the moment he heard Bonnie’s muffled, agonizing scream echo down the hallway… His knuckles turned bone-white around his glass. He told himself this was justice. This was payback for what the Astors did to his sister. To his family. He was right. But he realized, with a sickening drop in his stomach, that he simply could not endure the sound of Bonnie breaking. He surged to his feet, storming out to the hotel terrace to light a cigarette. The lighter had barely flared when a voice cut through the humid night air. “Carl?!” He froze. When he turned around and saw the face of Michelle Vaughn standing under the patio lights, his entire universe short-circuited. “Maddie…” Michelle’s eyes were red. She offered him a trembling smile. “It really is you… God, look how much you’ve grown, Carl.” “Carl, back then… it was such an emergency. I had to flee the country with my husband. We didn’t even have time to contact you, I’m so sorry.” “But we’ve been living a good life overseas! Look, this is my son, Sammy.” She gently pushed a twelve-year-old boy forward. “Sammy, say hi to your Uncle Carl.” The boy politely mumbled a greeting. Carl stood there, paralyzed, the cigarette dropping from his numb fingers. “Wait. So… all these years. You’ve been perfectly fine?” Michelle looked confused. “Of course? Why wouldn’t I be?” Her casual, innocent confusion drove a spike directly into his brain. Then what the hell was my revenge for? The leaked tape. The ruin. The absolute hell I dragged Bonnie into… what was it all for?! The color drained entirely from Carl’s face, leaving him looking like a corpse. Like a madman, he shoved past them, sprinting back into the hotel, tearing down the hallway until he reached the heavy oak door. He raised his leg and kicked the door right off its hinges. “Bonnie!”

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My brother and I are boy-girl twins, but growing up, there was only ever one birthday cake. And my name was never on it. I asked my mother about it once. I was eight years old. She pulled me into a hug that felt more like a restraint, her voice dripping with that soft, practiced sweetness. “Because you’re the older sister, Hazel,” she whispered into my hair. “The good things have to go to your brother first. You’ll understand when you’re older.” I am exactly four minutes older than him. The year we took our SATs, I scored in the top tier of our county. My brother, Chester, completely bombed his. I remember my father sitting on the porch steps of our rusted-out trailer, peeling the wrapper off a cheap butterscotch candy. He handed it to me, then crouched down so we were eye-to-eye. “Listen to me, girl,” he said, his voice carrying a gravelly, manufactured grief. “I know you’re smart. But on my salary, we can’t cosign loans for two kids. Your brother is a man. He’s the one who’s gonna have to carry the family name, provide for a household. You… you gotta understand where I’m coming from, okay?” He made his voice sound thick, broken. As if he were the one being sacrificed. As if he were the victim of circumstance, and not the executioner of my future. Chester went to a private prep school on my father’s borrowed dime, and eventually, off to college. I went to work at the auto-parts factory on the edge of town. I spent ten hours a day on an assembly line tightening valves until the joints in my fingers swelled so badly I couldn’t hold a fork at dinner. When I came home for the holidays that first year, my mother held my bruised, calloused hands in hers. She stroked them for a long time, her eyes welling with strategic tears. “You’ve always been our low-maintenance one,” she sighed. “So mature. So understanding.” Understanding. She wielded that word like a scalpel for eighteen years, carving me hollow with it, demanding that I bleed and then smile and tell her it didn’t hurt. … 1 My mother flipped my hands over, palms facing the ceiling. She pried open my curled, stiff fingers to inspect the thick yellow calluses and cracked skin. She let out a heavy sigh. “Hazel, honey… how much are you managing to put away from the factory every month?” “About three thousand,” I said. Her eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before she ducked her head, slipping effortlessly into that tormented, back-against-the-wall expression I’d seen my entire life. “Your brother found himself a girl,” she murmured. “A girl from the city. She comes from a good family, Hazel. Money.” “Okay.” “The girl’s family laid down an ultimatum. If Chester wants to marry her, he needs to buy a house in the suburbs. Paid in full. No mortgage. Otherwise, the wedding is off.” I stared at the chipped linoleum floor. I said nothing. She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Your dad and I ran the numbers. Between what we have and the money you’ve been sending home these past few years, we’re still short. You must have some savings stashed away, right?” I kept my mouth shut. The silence made her frantic, her words spilling out faster. “Don’t look at me like that, Hazel. If your brother loses this girl because he can’t afford a house, how are we supposed to show our faces in town? You’re his sister. Helping your brother out is just… it’s the natural order of things. It’s what family does.” The natural order of things. I pulled my hands out of her grasp. That evening, Chester brought his girlfriend, Madison, home to our cramped house. Madison walked across our uneven, patched-up floors with a permanent crease between her eyebrows. Chester fluttered around her like a moth, pulling out her chair, pouring her sweet tea, laughing too loud at things that weren’t funny. Dinner was a massive spread—pot roast, glazed ham, roasted vegetables. I had bought every single ingredient with my holiday bonus. Chester piled Madison’s paper plate high. She picked at a piece of ham for a few seconds before setting her plastic fork down. “Mr. and Mrs. Miller,” Madison said, her tone perfectly polite and utterly chilling. “Chester mentioned that you’re already finalizing the arrangements for the house?” My mother nodded so hard I thought her neck would snap. “Oh, yes, yes. It’s all being taken care of. Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart.” Madison’s gaze flicked to me for exactly two seconds before sliding away. I knew that look. I had seen it my entire life from people who looked right through me, people who decided I was part of the furniture. After dinner, I was at the kitchen sink scrubbing plates. My mother slipped in and quietly shut the door behind her. She reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, smoothing it out on the counter. Written on it were two names: Hazel Miller and Earl Jenkins. “Now, just hear me out before you get upset,” my mother started. “You know the Jenkins family over by the county line? The ones who own the massive auto-salvage yard? Well, their oldest boy, Earl. He’s thirty-seven. Never settled down. He sent someone over to ask about you. He’s offering thirty thousand dollars. Cash.” Thirty thousand dollars. I stared at the piece of paper. My name was spelled wrong. “Thirty-seven?” My own voice sounded hollow, like it belonged to a ghost. “Older men know how to treat a woman right,” my mother said quickly, looking down, wiping her hands on her apron over and over. “He runs a massive business. You’d never have to worry about bills again. Besides, how long can you really work the assembly line? You have to get married eventually.” I knew who Earl Jenkins was. The whole county knew Earl. He had rotting teeth, walked with a heavy limp, and smelled like stale beer and chewing tobacco. His last fiancée ran away in the middle of the night. The one before that he put in the ICU with a broken jaw. My mother knew all of this. “The things people say about him—” I started. “It’s just small-town gossip,” she snapped, cutting me off. “People are jealous because he’s got money. They’ll say anything.” The kitchen door creaked open. My father stepped in, a lit cigarette hanging from his lips. He leaned against the doorframe, coughing into his fist. “Girl, I’m not trying to sell you. Don’t go putting it in your head like that,” he rasped. “The Jenkins family has deep pockets. You wouldn’t have to work manual labor another day in your life. And with the… financial arrangement… well, you know the situation with your brother.” He flicked his ash onto the floor. His voice took on that exact same gravelly, wounded tone he used when he forced me to give up college. “I’m out of options here. You gotta understand where I’m coming from, okay?” Eighteen years. It was always the exact same script. 2 Madison was suddenly standing in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame. She wiped her manicured hands on a paper towel, not looking up. “Honestly, it’s a pretty smart move,” she offered casually. “Marrying someone with actual assets beats spending the rest of your life screwing caps on in a factory.” She paused, finally raising her eyes to meet mine. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Hazel, but for a factory girl to pull a guy who owns his own business? You’re marrying up.” Chester stood right behind her. He was smiling. He didn’t defend me. My parents didn’t say a word. I slowly set down the soapy sponge. I dried my hands on a towel. “I’m not marrying him.” I looked at my mother. “And I want my money back.” The kitchen fell dead silent for two agonizing seconds. “What money?” my mother asked, her voice tight. “The money I’ve sent home every month for the last six years. I kept the receipts. I kept a ledger. It totals exactly eighteen thousand dollars.” My father pushed off the doorframe. He took his cigarette and ground it out directly against the painted drywall. “The money you sent home? That was your contribution to the roof over your head. You don’t get to ask for that back.” “And did you ask me before you took my ‘contribution’ to buy Chester a house?” Chester stepped out from behind Madison, a smug, arrogant smirk plastered across his face. “Come on, Hazel, stop throwing a tantrum. You have a high school diploma. What the hell else are you gonna do with your life? Marry the rich guy, enjoy the easy life. Hell, when you get married, I’ll even throw two hundred bucks in a card for you.” Two hundred bucks. I hadn’t bought a piece of clothing that cost more than fifty dollars in six years. Chester blew through my monthly remittances in a weekend. And that was his exact valuation of my entire existence. Two hundred bucks. “Chester’s right. Stop being so bitter, making it sound like we’re holding a gun to your head,” my father barked, his voice rising. “It’s supposed to be a happy night. Wipe that miserable look off your face. What is Madison gonna think of this family?” My mother immediately chimed in. “Exactly! Your brother finally brings home a decent girl, and you’re trying to ruin it. If you scare her off, are you going to take responsibility for ruining his life?” Chester wrapped his arm around Madison’s waist and let out a booming laugh. “Yeah, Hazel. Let’s just drop it until tomorrow. Don’t kill the vibe.” They stood there, a united front, perfectly calibrated in their emotional warfare. I looked at them, rotating through their roles of aggressor, pacifier, and victim. It was almost comical. Six years away, and their choreography had only gotten better. “I said what I said. I am not marrying him. And you are going to give me my money back.” My father’s face hardened into a scowl. “You think you’re grown now? You think you run things?” “It’s not about who runs things. It’s about the fact that you do not own me, and you do not get to sell me.” Chester threw his hands up in theatrical annoyance. “Jesus, Hazel, could you stop being so dramatic? You’re a factory worker. You don’t get to make demands. You are literally the only person in this family who causes problems.” “I cause problems?” I locked eyes with him. “How many classes did you fail in your four years of college, Chester? How did you actually graduate?” His smile slipped. “Every finals week, crying to Mom on the phone that you were broke, that you needed to ‘bribe’ your professors by taking them out to expensive dinners to pass. Where do you think that money came from?” Chester’s face flushed scarlet. “It came out of my bleeding fingers,” I whispered. “You’re full of shit!” Chester yelled. My father lunged forward, jabbing a thick, calloused finger hard against my forehead. “You shut your damn mouth! Is that how you speak to your brother? Have you got no respect?” “Where was his respect for me?” My father’s face turned a mottled, furious purple. He kicked the wooden stool by my feet, sending it crashing into the cabinets. “You disrespectful little bitch!” As the stool clattered against the wood, my mother started screeching. “Ungrateful! You ungrateful brat! We raised you, put food in your mouth, and for what? For nothing!” Chester, his smugness fully restored, guided Madison back toward the living room. He tossed a look over his shoulder. “If you don’t wanna marry him, fine. Earl’s gonna be here in ten minutes. You can tell him to his face.” I froze. “What?” My mother refused to look at me. My father lit another cigarette and stared at the floor. Three minutes later, the gravel driveway crunched beneath the heavy tires of a pickup truck. Earl Jenkins had arrived. He stood in the doorway holding a cheap bottle of bourbon and a wilted bouquet from a gas station. He smiled, his lips pulling back over a row of yellowed, rotting teeth. My mother’s face instantly transformed. She beamed, practically shoving past me to welcome him inside, her voice dripping with honey. My father stood up, clapping Earl on the back like an old war buddy. My mother grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin, and shoved me down onto the sagging living room sofa. She forced me to sit right next to Earl. He smelled like stale sweat, motor oil, and cheap tobacco. It made my stomach churn. He turned his head slowly, his bloodshot eyes dragging down my face, lingering deliberately on my chest. Sitting across from us, my mother smiled sweetly at Earl. Then, reaching around the back of the sofa, she grabbed a fistful of the flesh on my lower back and twisted violently. “Smile,” she hissed through her teeth, her voice so low only I could hear. “If you say one wrong word to him, I swear to God I will break your legs.” 3 Watching my parents bow and scrape, offering Earl cigarettes and negotiating the price of my life like I was a used car, a flood of memories suddenly broke through the dam in my mind. During my first year at the factory, the other girls on the line asked me about my family. I told them my parents loved me, that they were holding onto my savings to build me a nest egg for my future. It was the biggest lie I had ever told. I didn’t even own a blanket that was just mine. Growing up, I slept under Chester’s hand-me-downs—stiff, matted comforters that had lost their stuffing. In the dead of winter, I would shiver so violently I spent the whole night curled into a tight, aching ball. My mother always said girls were naturally tougher against the cold. Chester was “delicate.” He needed the new down comforter. Chester was built like a linebacker. He had never done a day of manual labor in his life. When my parents bought fruit, Chester always picked first. He’d take a single bite out of the best apple, decide he didn’t want it, and leave it on the counter. I was only allowed to eat the bruised, soft ones at the bottom of the bag. Once, my aunt came to visit and bought a premium box of Honeycrisp apples, specifically handing them to me. The second her car pulled out of the driveway, my mother picked up the box and carried it straight into Chester’s bedroom. When I went to get one, Chester shoved me out of his door. “Mom said these are mine.” I went to my mother. She didn’t even look up from the TV. “Your aunt was just being polite. Chester needs the brain food for his exams. You’re not testing for anything, what do you need them for?” The winter I turned fourteen, our washing machine broke. I spent three hours outside washing the family’s laundry in a plastic tub of freezing water. My hands swelled up like balloons. That night, the skin across my knuckles split open. Blood seeped out, staining the cuffs of my sweater. My mother took one look, went to the shed, and brought back a handful of axle grease. “Rub this in. It’ll stop the bleeding.” Meanwhile, Chester was in the living room playing Xbox, his hands soft, unblemished, and perfectly warm. When I got my first period, I was terrified. I woke up to blood soaked through my pajama pants. I didn’t have pads, and I was too scared to ask for them. I tore up an old undershirt and stuffed it in my underwear. It didn’t hold. By noon at school, it had bled completely through my jeans. We were out on the playground. One of Chester’s friends pointed at the red stain on my pants and started yelling. Chester was standing right there in the crowd. He didn’t take off his jacket to tie it around my waist. He didn’t defend me. He pointed at me, threw his head back, and laughed louder than anyone else. “My sister is so freaking gross!” he shouted. That night, I snuck out to the pharmacy and spent my only five dollars—money I had saved for two months—on a box of tampons. When my mother found out, she screamed at me for wasting money. Her punishment was making me stand on the back porch for an hour. It was December. I was wearing a thin t-shirt. Chester popped the screen out of his bedroom window and leaned out. “Hazel, are you stupid? Just apologize to her and come inside.” I didn’t apologize. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand straight, my teeth clattering together in my skull, but I didn’t say the words. Because I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. Later, I scored high enough to get a full-ride academic scholarship to a pre-med program. I thought it was my ticket out. I thought it would finally change things. I brought the acceptance letter home and laid it on the kitchen table. My father looked at it, took a drag of his cigarette, and told me they couldn’t afford the room and board, and they wouldn’t cosign any student loans. “A boy needs to be the one to carry the family,” he had said. Chester hadn’t even met the minimum requirements for the local community college. But my father went to the bank, took out a second mortgage, and handed a private academy twenty thousand dollars in “donations” to secure Chester a spot. Twenty thousand dollars. More than I could save in three years on the assembly line. “Your brother struggles. He needs the extra support,” my father had reasoned. “You’re smart. You’ll survive anywhere.” My mother had walked into the room and handed me a folded blue uniform from the auto-parts factory. That was the day the illusion shattered. My intelligence wasn’t a gift to be nurtured; it was a resource to be exploited. Because I was strong enough to survive the cold, I was expected to freeze. I sat on the sagging sofa. Earl Jenkins lifted his heavy, grease-stained hand and rested it heavily on my bare thigh. 4 I moved purely on instinct. I grabbed the tall glass of ice water off the coffee table and hurled it directly into Earl’s face. He recoiled, sputtering and roaring, “You! You crazy bi—” Before he could finish, I had snatched the heavy iron fireplace poker from the hearth. “Get out.” The room froze. My mother was the first to shriek. “Have you lost your mind?! Put that down!” “I said, get out of this house.” Earl wiped the water from his eyes, his face twisting into an ugly sneer. He took a heavy step forward, reaching out to grab my wrist. I didn’t flinch. I leveled the heavy iron tip of the poker directly at his chest. He stopped. Chester lunged at me from the side, trying to wrest the iron bar from my grip. “Are you psycho?! Earl is a guest in this house! Look how you’re acting!” The second his hand grazed my arm, I grabbed a heavy ceramic coaster off the table with my left hand and smashed it directly against his knuckles. Chester recoiled, his face scrunching up in agony, cradling his hand to his chest. “Hazel, you’re a psycho bitch!” My mother came at me from behind, grabbing my left arm and twisting it violently up my back. Her fingernails bit deep into my skin. “Drop it! You’re gonna ruin this family! Drop it right now!” “Get him out of here first,” I gritted out. “Who do you think you are making the rules?! You don’t get a say in this house!” From the corner of my eye, I saw my father grab the heavy hickory handle of a broken yard broom—the exact same piece of wood he had used to beat me throughout my childhood. He swung it down with terrifying force. It connected cleanly with my left shoulder. I heard a sickening crack. The pain blinded me. My grip faltered, and the iron poker clattered to the floor. My mother instantly threw her weight against me, tackling me back onto the sofa and pinning me down. “You sit down and shut up!” she screamed in my face. Chester, still clutching his hand, hurriedly ushered Earl back to a chair, practically bowing in apology. My father rushed over, offering Earl a fresh cigarette. “Earl, I am so sorry. The girl doesn’t know her place yet. Please, don’t hold this against us,” my father pleaded. He turned back to me, gripping the hickory stick tight, his eyes wild. “You make one more sound, and I swear to Christ, I will break both your legs tonight.” My mother leaned down, her hot breath on my ear. “You’re marrying him. Willingly or not, you are marrying him. Your brother’s future is more important than your tantrum.” She said it with absolute, unshakeable conviction. In the corner of the room, Madison stood with her arms crossed. Her expression was entirely blank. She didn’t look horrified. She didn’t think any of this was abnormal. Neither did Chester. He was currently pouring Earl a glass of bourbon, laughing nervously. “Sorry about that, Earl. She’s been working at the factory too long. Breathed in too many chemicals. Her brain’s a little fried.” My twin brother. The boy who shared a womb with me. He was auctioning me off to a monster, and he didn’t feel a single ounce of hesitation. A low, dark laugh bubbled up from my throat. My mother pressed her knee harder into my hip. “What the hell is so funny?” “I’m laughing at the fact that you have the nerve to bring up my brain.” The room went dead quiet. “When my acceptance letter for the pre-med program came in the mail, Chester stole it. He took it to school and showed it off to his friends, claiming it was his. When someone noticed the name ‘Hazel’ on it and called him out, he ripped it to shreds.” Chester’s nervous smile vanished. “And what did you two do when you found out?” I looked at my parents. “You beat me with a belt. You told me it was my fault for leaving the letter on the counter where it would ‘tempt’ him.” My father raised the hickory stick over his head, roaring, “Shut your mouth!” “I wanted to be a doctor! Do you understand what that means? It means I could be in a residency right now, saving lives, instead of bleeding out on an assembly line!” The hickory stick came down, crashing heavily against my back. I locked my knees and braced my core. I didn’t try to dodge. “Hit me,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Beat me all you want. When you’re done, my answer is the exact same. Eighteen thousand dollars. Every single penny. Give it back.” “I’ll give it back when I’m dead in the ground!” my father bellowed, chest heaving. “Fine. Then I’ll dig it out from under your corpse.” My mother let go of my arms and started slapping me wildly. My father swung the stick again and again. Chester stepped in, kicking at my shins. Earl sat in his armchair, sipping his bourbon, watching the show. Madison finally sighed, stepping forward to pull gently on Chester’s sleeve. “Babe, that’s enough, okay? It’s getting late, and we have the appointment with the realtor tomorrow morning.” The world felt muffled, as if I were underwater. My left collarbone felt wrong, shifted out of place. My entire left arm was entirely numb. But my legs worked. I shoved off the sofa, stumbling backward, absorbing the blows until I backed through the doorway into the kitchen. My right hand fumbled against the counter. I bypassed the knife block. I reached for the giant plastic jug of cheap, yellow frying oil my mother bought in bulk. My mother chased me to the threshold but stopped dead in her tracks. I unscrewed the cap with my teeth. I tipped the heavy jug upside down over my own head. A gallon of thick, greasy oil poured over my hair, down my face, soaking into my clothes, pooling on the cheap linoleum floor. The oil dripped into my eyes, blurring my vision. With my free right hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cheap plastic lighter. I flicked my thumb. The small flame illuminated the dark kitchen. “Diane. Wayne.” I said their first names. Perfectly steady. “You want to sell me for thirty grand? Let’s see how much Earl pays for a pile of ash.” My father stopped in his tracks, his hands trembling as he lowered the hickory stick. “Hazel… put the lighter down.” “Do it! If you’re so tough, do it!” my mother shrieked, popping her head out from behind my father’s shoulder, her face twisted in terror. “You’ve been throwing tantrums since you were a kid! You don’t have the guts! Do it!” I leaned my back against the stack of dry firewood stacked next to the old wood-burning stove. The lighter was still burning in my grip. The oil from my sleeve smeared against the dry bark of the logs…

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