Category: English

The scholarship student my parents sponsored led the charge in bullying me. She locked me in a bathroom stall, dumped freezing dirty water over my head, and took degrading photos of me stripped down to my underwear. When I knelt crying on the floor, clutching my medical report and an audio recording, begging my parents to call the police, they confiscated my phone. They did it for the sake of their laughable public image. “Audrey, Riley comes from a dirt-poor family. This is just kids messing around. If we involve the cops, the press will say the District Attorney is throwing his weight around, destroying a disadvantaged kid’s future.” “You are our daughter. You need to look at the bigger picture. To avoid any conflict of interest, we are settling this privately. You are going to sign a formal statement of forgiveness.” I stared at that piece of paper, filled with words about grace and maturity, in absolute disbelief. “She ruined me, and you’re afraid of ruining her?” “Is she your real daughter?” Later, I saw a post on Riley’s Instagram. The picture showed my parents treating her to a massive seafood feast I had been begging to go to for months. The caption read: “My godparents say some entitled brats just need to be put in their place.” In that exact moment, my heart turned to ash. 1 “Smile for the camera, Audrey! Aren’t your parents big-shot lawyers?” “Call them! Let’s see if the almighty DA saves his precious daughter, or if he protects his favorite charity case.” The stall door was kicked open. A bucket of ice water, reeking of cigarette ash and bleach, washed over my head. I curled up next to the toilet. My clothes clung to my shivering skin. Riley shoved her phone right into my face. The camera flash blinded me, burning into my retinas. I bit down on my lip so hard that the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. That night, I knelt on the cold marble floor of our living room. I held my medical report in one hand and a voice recorder in the other. “Dad, Mom, I need to file a police report. Riley took photos of me in my underwear…” “Shut your mouth.” Victoria sat perfectly upright in her tailored designer suit. She held a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea, not even bothering to look up. “Go change your clothes. You smell like a dumpster. Look at the state of you.” I jerked my head up. The hard floor was grinding into my kneecaps, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the shock. “Mom, this is proof! She held my head near the bowl! She’s threatening to post the pictures online…” My dad sat in the center of the plush leather sofa, rolling an unlit cigar between his fingers. He finally looked at me. His eyes were like dead stones. “Audrey. Hand me the phone.” My hands shook violently as I offered it to him. Without missing a beat, he powered it down, popped the SIM card out, and tossed it right into the heavy crystal ashtray on the coffee table. “As of today, your phone is confiscated. You are grounded. Stay in your room and reflect on your behavior.” I shot to my feet. “Are you insane? I am the victim! Dad, just listen to the tape! Listen to what she said to me…” “I said, shut your mouth!” Richard slammed his fist onto the coffee table. The teacups rattled. He stood up, towering over me. “Call the cops? Do you have any idea what that means?” “How do you think the media will spin it? The arrogant daughter of the District Attorney bullies a poor scholarship girl and ruins her future.” “Riley’s family has nothing. Her father is paralyzed. She is the city’s poster child for overcoming adversity.” “Do you want to throw away everything we’ve built just because your feelings got hurt?” My jaw dropped. My throat felt like sandpaper. No words would come out. My feelings got hurt? I was stripped, photographed, and humiliated. And to him, it was just a minor inconvenience. My mother set her tea down and walked over. “Audrey, be reasonable. We are public figures. Thousands of eyes are watching our every move.” “Riley has had a hard life. Maybe she acted a bit aggressively, but she’s just crying out for attention.” “You are older. You need to show some grace. To keep our hands clean, this gets buried. Tonight.” She pulled a crisp sheet of paper from her leather briefcase and slid it onto the table. Statement of Forgiveness. Party A: Audrey. Party B: Riley. Terms: An acknowledgment of roughhousing between classmates. I agree to drop the matter and waive all rights to pursue legal action. Dad handed me his Montblanc fountain pen. “Sign it. Don’t make us force your hand.” I stared at the pen. I had saved up for months to buy it for him when he got promoted to Chief DA. “And if I don’t?” Dad let out a short, cold laugh. “If you don’t? I will pull you out of school and ship you off to your grandfather’s cabin upstate.” “As long as I run this district, no precinct will touch your case. No one will cross me.” These were my parents. To protect their pristine political feathers, to maintain their fake philanthropy, they were willing to feed their own flesh and blood to the wolves. My fingers trembled as I took the pen. The nib scratched harshly against the paper. I signed my name. Mom smiled, clearly satisfied. She folded the paper neatly. “That’s my girl. I knew you’d understand. You must be starving. Let me go fix dinner.” “Don’t bother.” I pushed myself off the floor. My legs were numb. Back in my room, I dug out an old backup iPad from the bottom of a drawer. Half an hour later, an Instagram notification popped up. It was from Riley. A photo carousel. Massive Alaskan king crab legs. Maine lobster tails. Two hands clinking champagne glasses. One hand wore my mother’s signature diamond ring. The other wore my father’s Rolex. Location tag: The Oceanaire Room. Caption: “My godparents treating me to calm my nerves. Some entitled brats just need to be put in their place. Thank you Mom and Dad! Love you!” I stared at the screen. My stomach did a violent flip. Mom didn’t go to the kitchen to fix dinner. She had a reservation booked the entire time. They were throwing a victory dinner for my abuser. I bolted to my bathroom and threw up until my ribs ached. The girl in the mirror was pale as a ghost, a bruise already blooming on her jawline. And on the screen, the three of them looked like a perfect, happy family. If they loved their little charity case so much. Then I guess they didn’t need a real daughter anymore. 2 The sky was barely gray when I woke up. I dragged my dusty suitcase from under the bed and unzipped it. My closet was stuffed with designer labels. Prada, Gucci, Chanel. All bought by my mother to make me look like a proper DA’s kid. I didn’t touch a single piece. I packed a few faded vintage tees and two pairs of worn-out denim jeans. I smashed my porcelain piggy bank with a heavy book. It held about three hundred dollars in crumpled bills and coins. When I lugged the suitcase downstairs, the smell of fresh coffee and bacon filled the air. Mom was untying her apron. She frowned the second she saw me. “What are you doing dragging that thing around at six in the morning? The noise is unbearable.” Dad was reading the morning paper at the island counter. He didn’t look up. “Put the bag away and eat your breakfast. Riley is coming over this afternoon. Don’t ruin the mood with that miserable look on your face.” Riley. He practically said her name with affection. I left my suitcase by the front door and stood in the entryway. “I’m not eating. And I am never looking at her face again.” Mom slammed a plate onto the granite counter. “Audrey! What kind of tantrum is this? We settled this last night.” “Riley apologized. You signed the paper. We are turning the page.” “Why are you being so vindictive?” “Vindictive?” I tapped my temple with my index finger. “Mom. I have a mild concussion.” “She has pictures of me stripped down on her phone, and you two bought her lobster.” “Is this your idea of the bigger picture?” Dad slammed his newspaper down. His face turned an ugly shade of red. “You’re stalking our social media now?” “She posted it on a public feed. That’s the whole point.” “Enough!” Dad stood up, pointing a thick finger at the front door. “You want to walk out? Fine! Let’s see how far you get!” “If you walk through that door, you stay gone. I will act like I never had a daughter.” “Leave the credit cards, the keys, and whatever cash you have on you.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out the heavy brass house key, and tossed it onto the shoe cabinet. It made a sharp, metallic clink. “You took my phone last night.” “I don’t have your plastic. It’s in my desk.” “As for this house…” I took one last look at the crystal chandeliers and the imported rugs. “Give my room to Riley. She’s clearly cut from the same rotten cloth as you two.” “You ungrateful little bitch!” Mom snatched her hot coffee mug and hurled it at my head. It shattered against the doorframe. Boiling coffee splashed my jacket, and a sharp shard of ceramic sliced across my cheek. A warm line of blood trickled down my jaw. “And one more thing. Stop pretending you do anything for my sake.” “The only things you love are yourselves and your fake public image.” I grabbed the handle of my suitcase, pushed the heavy oak door open, and stepped into the cold morning air. Dad’s roar echoed behind me. “Get out! Let her freeze! Give her three days, and she’ll be crawling back on her knees!” I didn’t look back. Three days? I wouldn’t beg them for a drop of water if I were dying of thirst. I found a cramped, illegal basement apartment in the rundown east side of the city. I had just dropped my bag onto the concrete floor when my iPad buzzed. An incoming FaceTime call from an unknown email. I hesitated, then swiped to accept. Riley’s smug face filled the screen. The background was my living room. She was lounging on my custom velvet beanbag chair, the one nobody else was allowed to sit on. She was spinning my limited-edition anime figure in her hands. “Hey there, big sis. Heard you ran away from home?” Her voice was dripping with fake sweetness. “Mom says you threw a massive fit. Told me to just ignore your drama.” “This little toy is pretty cute though. Mom said I could keep it. You don’t mind, do you?” Snap. She twisted her hands, violently snapping the figure’s head off. She covered her mouth in mock horror. “Oops. My hand slipped. You’re not mad, are you?” My mother’s voice drifted in from the background. “Riley, honey, leave that garbage alone. Throw it in the trash. I’ll buy you a better one.” My knuckles turned white as I gripped the edges of the iPad. I saved up my allowance for six months to buy that figure. It was the only thing in that suffocating house that brought me any joy. I took a deep breath and forced a dead, chilling smile. “I don’t mind at all.” “Trash belongs with trash. It suits you.” “Oh, and by the way. I used to let a stray dog sleep on that beanbag. It pissed all over the filling.” Riley’s face warped into disgust. She vaulted off the chair like it was on fire. “You’re lying! They don’t even own a dog!” “Believe what you want.” I cut the call. Staring at my black reflection on the screen, I slid down the dirty wall until I hit the floor. My stomach growled fiercely. The real nightmare was just beginning. 3 I filed for a temporary leave of absence at the university. My academic advisor took one look at my bruised face and my medical report, sighed heavily, and processed the paperwork without asking questions. Without a degree, my options were trash. I took a graveyard shift at a sketchy gas station convenience store and spent my days doing cheap freelance translation online. By the third day, the fever hit. I needed antibiotics, but my bank account had exactly thirty dollars left. I chugged tap water and forced down some expired cold medicine I found in my jacket pocket. As long as I kept breathing, I was going to stick around to watch their empire burn. Half a month later, I had to go back to campus to pick up some administrative paperwork. My backpack held my beat-up laptop and my ID documents. I had barely reached the steps of the main library when a group surrounded me. “Well, well. If it isn’t the disgraced DA’s daughter.” Riley stood at the top of the concrete steps, looking down at me like I was a rat. She was wrapped in a cream-colored cashmere coat. I recognized it. My mother bought it in Paris last month. “What are you wearing? Did you fish those jeans out of a dumpster?” Riley trotted down the steps and pinched the sleeve of my faded hoodie. “This is so pathetic. Mom told me you were whoring yourself out on the streets, but I didn’t believe her.” “I guess it’s true. You can’t even afford decent clothes.” A crowd of students started gathering, whispering and pointing. I slapped her hand away and glared at her. “Did you steal that coat, or did you beg for it?” Riley’s face twitched, but she immediately cranked up the volume. “What are you talking about! Mom lent this to me!” “I’m representing the university at the State Debate Championship. She didn’t want me catching a cold.” Her eyes darted around. Suddenly, she lunged forward and grabbed the straps of my backpack. “Wait a minute! I just realized I’m missing a hundred-dollar bill!” “You stole it! You’re broke and desperate, and you were lurking right next to me!” “Search her! Check her bag!” Her little groupies instantly closed in. I hugged my backpack to my chest. “Back off! I didn’t take your damn money!” In the scuffle, Riley’s manicured acrylic nails dragged hard across the back of my hand. The skin split open. Blood welled up instantly. “What is going on here!” The Dean of Students pushed through the crowd, looking panicked. And walking right behind him, carrying thermal soup containers, were my parents. They had come to bring their pet project a hot lunch. Mom shoved past me, practically knocking me over, and pulled Riley into a protective hug. “Riley, sweetie, what happened? Are you hurt?” Dad marched right up to me. “Audrey! How long are you going to humiliate this family?” “Sneaking onto campus to steal money? You are a complete disgrace!” I held up my bleeding hand. “Mr. District Attorney. Which eye did you use to see me steal anything?” “I thought your job required evidence. Or do you just skip right to the conviction without a trial?” Dad’s face flushed dark purple. “Then why would Riley single you out? Out of everyone here, she pointed at you.” “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You’ve clearly hit rock bottom.” Riley buried her face in my mother’s expensive blouse, faking a sob. “Dad, maybe I misplaced it… but Audrey was acting so aggressive…” “It’s okay, honey. I’ll handle this.” Mom glared at me with absolute venom. “Open the bag, Audrey. Let everyone see what’s inside. Prove your innocence.” “If you didn’t take it, you apologize to Riley for causing a scene, and we’ll let this go.” Looking at my parents acting like benevolent gods, my stomach churned. I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed the zipper of my backpack, ripped it open, and flipped the whole bag upside down. Crash. Notebooks, chargers, cheap pens, and my old sticker-covered laptop spilled onto the concrete. My frayed wallet hit the ground. A few crumpled one-dollar bills fluttered out. “Look at it! Where is the hundred dollars?” My eyes burned with rage as I pointed at the mess. “Search it! Isn’t that what you wanted? Search me!” The crowd went dead silent. Riley shrank back, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Then… maybe I left it in the lecture hall.” “You ‘left it’?” I took a step toward her. “You publicly accused me of theft, incited a mob to search my property, and physically assaulted me. Isn’t that harassment?” “Enough!” Dad barked out the order. He noticed the growing ring of students holding up their smartphones. His jaw tightened. He marched over and clamped his hand around my wrist like a vice. “Stop acting like a lunatic and get in the car.” He dropped his voice to a menacing hiss. “We will talk about this at home. Stop putting on a show for these peasants.” Mom caught on quickly. She plastered a fake, polished smile on her face for the crowd. “Teenage rebellion, you know how it is. Nothing to see here, kids. Let’s clear the area.” They flanked me, grabbing both my arms, trying to physically drag me toward the black Audi A6 idling by the gates. I dug my heels in and grabbed onto a metal handrail. “I’m not going anywhere! Let go of me!” Dad leaned in, his breath hot against my ear. “If you don’t stop making a scene, I will have you committed to a psychiatric ward before the sun goes down.” A psych ward. To protect his reputation, he was perfectly willing to lock his own daughter in a mental asylum. I let out a dry, cracked laugh. “You care about your optics?” I sucked in a massive breath and screamed at the top of my lungs. “Help! Someone help me! The District Attorney is trying to kill me! My parents are trying to silence me!” Every single person froze. The campus security guards popped out of their booths, looking terrified. Dad’s face drained of all color. He instinctively let go of my arm like it was on fire. “Are you insane!” He roared, veins popping on his forehead. Mom panicked, her perfect political wife mask completely shattering. “Audrey, stop lying! When have we ever hurt you?” I didn’t give her a second to recover. I pointed straight at the Audi. “You’re dragging me to the car so you can lock me away and threaten me where no one can hear!” “Just like the night you forced me to sign that NDA!” “You covered up Riley’s abuse to save your own political careers! You forced me to kneel and apologize to my own bully!” “And now that I’ve escaped, you hunt me down at school to frame me for stealing?” The crowd erupted. “Wait, what NDA?” “The abuse rumors were real?” “Did she just say her parents covered it up?” Hundreds of judging eyes locked onto Richard and Victoria. Dad’s hands were shaking. He wanted to strangle me, but the sea of glowing camera lenses held him back. He stared at me, his eyes filled with pure hatred. “Audrey. If you don’t get in that car right now, I will freeze every asset tied to your name. You will never set foot in a classroom again.” I smirked, reaching into my hoodie pocket. I pulled out my cheap folding boxcutter. Click. “Don’t take another step.” I pressed the blade lightly against my own neck. The crowd gasped in horror. Mom shrieked. “Audrey! What are you doing! Put that down!” “Are you scared?” “You’re not scared I’ll die. You’re scared I’ll bleed out right here and ruin your shiny election campaign.” “Richard. Victoria. Listen very carefully.” “As of this exact second, I have no parents.” “Whatever debt I owed you for bringing me into this world, I paid in full the night you forced me to sign away my dignity.” “Now take your fake charity daughter, and get the hell out of my sight.” I pressed the blade just a millimeter deeper. The skin broke. A single drop of crimson blood rolled down my collarbone.

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Lexi, my absolute best friend, had just set me up on a blind date. “Listen to me, Monica. This guy is basically untouchable. He practically runs the city’s business sector, and get this, he fell for you at first sight! One look and he was absolutely hooked!” I couldn’t believe my luck. But right as she spoke, floating text boxes suddenly popped up in my field of vision, scrolling past like a live stream chat: [It’s real! There actually is a guy like that! It’s the corporate god himself, Victor Harrison!] [He saw our girl at a banquet and it was totally love at first sight!] [The thing is, Victor is a bit older and notoriously reserved. You just need to make the first move, show him you match his freak, and he’ll take the lead from there!] Seeing those floating comments, I immediately took action. I managed to get his contact info and started bombarding him with sweet good morning and good night texts, aggressively trying to lock down weekend dates. Despite all my efforts, Victor’s responses remained ice-cold. Frustrated, I finally complained to my best friend. “Did Victor really fall for me at first sight? Who acts this cold to someone they supposedly fell for?” Lexi just stared at me, completely lost. “Who the hell is Victor?” “The guy you set me up with. Obviously.” “Monica, the guy I set you up with isn’t named Victor.” 01 I froze. The world seemed to stop spinning. Not Victor? I had been sending borderline unhinged, flirty texts to this man for a solid month, and now you’re telling me I was flirting with the wrong guy? Lexi tapped her chin, trying to remember. “He’s a buddy of my cousin Tyler. I think his last name is Grant.” Grant? I just sat there looking absolutely stupid. I instinctively pulled out my phone and checked my pinned contacts. The name at the top was simply ‘Victor’. That had absolutely zero connection to anyone named Grant. The floating chat in my vision was equally entirely utterly panicked: [Not Victor? Wait, it’s not our CEO Harrison?] [An untouchable corporate god who already met our girl at a banquet… I literally can’t think of anyone else but Victor Harrison!] [Hold up… Lexi never actually said the guy was a corporate god. She just said he was successful…] [Holy crap. Have we been hyping up the completely wrong guy this whole time?!] The color drained from my face, shifting through about five different shades of horror. “But this Victor guy you mentioned,” Lexi muttered, her eyes widening. “I swear I’ve heard that name before.” Before I could even process my own impending doom, Lexi sharply sucked in a breath. “Oh my god. Are you talking about the CEO of Harrison Corp?” She grabbed my arm, her nails digging in. “How on earth did you get tangled up with him? Word is that man is completely ruthless and a total germaphobe when it comes to romance. Every single person who has tried to throw themselves at him has been utterly destroyed!” My vision literally went black at the edges. My savings, my future, my dad’s company. I could practically hear them all whispering their final goodbyes. Right as I was spiraling into pure despair, my phone buzzed. It was a message from Victor. 02 It started with a picture. It was a sleek, velvet gift box. Followed by three simple words: [You bought this?] I tapped the photo and zoomed in. It was a luxury men’s watch I had painstakingly picked out a few days ago, intending to give it to Victor as a one-month talking-stage milestone gift. In the month we had been texting, this was the first time I had ever sent him something genuinely expensive. I thought he would be pleasantly surprised. Now, I realized I was just lucky he hadn’t called security. Before I could even type out an excuse, Victor sent another text: [Don’t do this again.] My heart sank straight to the bottom of my stomach. My fingers flew across the screen. [I am so sorry! It won’t happen again. Just return to sender.] Victor seemed to pause. [Return it?] I was practically crying in the middle of the coffee shop. [Or just throw it in the trash! Seriously, my bad. I’ll never send anything again!] There was a long silence. The little ‘typing’ bubble appeared and disappeared for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he sent one word: [Whatever.] What did ‘whatever’ even mean? I genuinely could not read this man’s vibe. [Victor is probably only tolerating this because he’s doing business with Monica’s dad.] [Yeah, the big boss is definitely giving our girl a pass this one time.] [But Monica, take the hint! The man is dangerous. Run. Pack your bags and run.] Reading the chat just made me want to scream. Now they tell me to run? Where was this energy when they were gaslighting me into being aggressive?! I thought back to how confident the chat had been, making it seem like Victor being head over heels for me was an absolute fact. I had literally begged my dad for Victor’s private number based on their hype. Within days of adding him, I was trying to force him to call me ‘babe’. I had even sent him a dozen of those obnoxious ‘I know you’re obsessed with me’ reaction memes. Thinking about it now made me want to spontaneously combust. Lexi noticed my blank, traumatized expression. “Monica? You good?” Lexi was a veteran in the dating scene. She could handle any romantic crisis. I stared at her for two solid seconds, took a deep breath, and began. “So, I have this friend…” 03 I invented a fictional friend and spilled the entire agonizing story. When I finished, Lexi just grabbed my hands with a look of profound pity. “I highly advise you, I mean, your friend, to block him, delete his number, and leave the country.” “The only reason Victor is putting up with your… I mean, your friend’s dad having a business partnership with him, is for the money. That is his absolute limit.” “But you know how the saying goes. A quiet man is either plotting a murder or building an empire. Do you really think Victor Harrison is the type to just quietly take a loss?” Obviously not! He was the type to make other people take the loss. Usually a fatal one. I took a deep breath, stood up, and grabbed my purse. “Goodbye, Lexi. I’m moving to the Southern Hemisphere for the summer.” I hadn’t even made it out of the coffee shop, let alone checked flight prices, when my phone rang. It was my dad. His company, Croft Industries, was wrapping up a massive project with Harrison Corp, and they were throwing a celebration banquet next week. “Victor is definitely going to be there,” my dad added, his voice dripping with parental plotting. “Make sure you play your cards right.” Play my cards right? I was about to be played off the table! “Also,” my dad continued, completely oblivious to my internal screaming. “I need you to drop some files off at Victor’s office tomorrow. See how much I look out for you?” I choked on my own spit. Gee, thanks, Dad. The chat tried to comfort me: [Don’t panic, Monica! The project isn’t finalized yet. He won’t nuke your dad’s company before the ink dries!] [Exactly. Just be on your absolute best behavior tomorrow. Drop the files and sprint!] [Right! Just don’t provoke him. Even if he wants to snap, he won’t have a reason if you’re perfectly professional!] 04 Okay, valid points. So the next morning, I completely overhauled my usual wardrobe. I ditched the backless tops and the cute mini skirts. Instead, I pulled out the most modest, innocent-looking white sundress I owned and headed straight to Harrison Corp. The receptionist recognized me immediately and reached for her phone to call Victor’s assistant for the private elevator code. “No, no, please,” I stopped her quickly. “The regular elevator is perfectly fine.” I walked over to the main elevator banks like a totally normal, non-delusional employee. While waiting, I took a deep breath, trying to psych myself up. Keep your head down. Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing. Just survive this week! But as the metal doors closed and the numbers ticked higher, my stomach tied itself into knots. Would Victor think I was here to harass him again? Was he currently adding another strike to my file in his mental burn book? Ding. The doors slid open. My heart jumped into my throat. Standing right there in the hallway, looking flawless in a tailored charcoal suit, was the man himself. All the courage I had spent the last ten minutes building instantly evaporated. “Monica?” Victor’s deep voice echoed in the quiet hall. He looked genuinely surprised to see me popping out of the employee lift. “What are you doing here?” I let out a shaky breath and plastered on my most polite, emotionally distant corporate smile. “Just delivering some documents for you, Mr. Harrison.” Victor visibly froze for a fraction of a second. Then, his dark brows pulled together into a deep frown. 05 Oh my god, why was he frowning? Panic flared in my chest. I practically shoved the manila folder into his hands. “I’m seriously just here to deliver these! You can call my dad and check!” Victor stayed quiet for a moment. He didn’t take the folder. Instead, his dark eyes locked onto mine. “Did you just call me Mr. Harrison?” I blinked, totally confused by the question. “What else am I supposed to call you?” Another beat of heavy silence passed. He shifted his stance. “Why didn’t you take the private elevator? Did my assistant not come down for you?” I waved my hands frantically. “No need to bother your assistant! The regular elevator is perfectly fine for me from now on.” That is, if there even is a ‘from now on’. Victor’s expression grew even more unreadable. He looked almost completely thrown off by my sudden burst of professionalism. [Victor probably didn’t expect our girl to suddenly gain self-awareness and boundaries.] [He was definitely ready to give you another strike, but you didn’t leave him an opening.] [The CEO is officially buffering. Keep it up, Monica!] Reading the room, I let out a tiny sigh of relief and pushed the folder closer to him, ready to make my grand escape. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll just be taking off…” “Do you want to wait in my office…” We both spoke at the exact same time. And then we both immediately shut up. Victor looked down at me, the intensity in his gaze making my skin prickle. “You aren’t going to come sit in my office?” In the past, whenever I came to Harrison Corp, I would invent the most ridiculous excuses to trap him alone in his office. I once even faked a low blood sugar episode just so I could take a nap on his private lounge sofa. But now? I would rather walk into traffic. I shook my head vigorously. “No, no, I’m good. I actually have somewhere to be.” Victor, uncharacteristically, pressed the issue. “Where?” I choked. “Just… meeting a friend.” His frown deepened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp ding echoed behind us. It was the private elevator. I turned around, genuinely startled. I was standing next to the CEO, and I definitely wasn’t using it. Who else had top-tier clearance? 06 The polished metal doors slid open, and a woman stepped out. She was wearing a stunning, body-hugging red dress, her lips painted a bold crimson. The moment she saw Victor, her face lit up with a brilliant smile. “Victor! Were you waiting out here just for me?” She walked straight toward him, acting like I was completely invisible. “Let’s grab lunch. I found this amazing new fusion place that you’ll absolutely love.” Victor didn’t reply to her. Instead, his hand caught my elbow, subtly pulling me half a step closer to him. His voice dropped lower, directed entirely at me. “Go wait in my office.” The woman in red finally seemed to notice I existed. Her eyes dragged over my plain white dress. “And who is this?” Victor opened his mouth to introduce me, but my survival instincts kicked in and I beat him to it. “I’m just a business partner.” I gave Victor a crisp, totally professional nod. “Mr. Harrison, I really must be going. I hope the project goes smooth…” “Stop.” Victor cut me off. His face had gone completely blank, his jaw ticking slightly. He jerked his chin toward the heavy oak doors down the hall. “Go wait in there.” It was a direct order to his private office. I hesitated, terrified of pushing him over the edge, and ultimately decided to obey. The heavy doors clicked shut behind me, completely soundproofing the room from whatever conversation was happening in the hallway. I sat down on the edge of his expensive leather sofa, feeling like a kid in the principal’s office. My eyes darted nervously around the immaculate, minimalist room. And then, my gaze locked onto something. Wait. Why did that little Capybara mystery box figurine sitting on his mahogany desk look so familiar? That was the exact one I had unboxed a few weeks ago! I had thought it was ugly and forced it into Victor’s hands as a joke. I was entirely convinced he had thrown it straight into the garbage. But here it was, proudly displayed on the desk of a multi-million dollar corporation, looking absolutely absurd next to his sleek silver pens and leather folders. [Why does this feel like he’s keeping it as a warning? Like a king keeping the skull of his enemy…] [He’s definitely staring at that little rodent every day to remind himself to never let his guard down against crazy women.] [Victor is a man who holds a grudge…] Was it really that deep? Was he using my discarded plastic toy as a psychological anchor for revenge? The more I read the chat, the colder my blood ran. Finally, I decided I couldn’t take the risk. I stood up, tiptoed over to his desk, and reached out to steal the evidence. Click. The office door swung open. Victor’s voice hit the back of my neck like a physical weight. “What are you doing?”

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1 I built an empire from the ground up right alongside Henry. But just weeks before our wedding, he looked me in the eyes and confessed he had fallen in love with my younger sister. I agreed to break off the engagement, but on one condition: he had to help me seduce his biggest corporate rival, Collin Sterling. “Are you insane? You spent ten years chasing me, and now you are pulling this stunt just to get revenge?” Henry’s handsome face twisted in disbelief. I lifted my chin, speaking out of pure, spiteful spite. “Collin is taller than you, and he is better looking. I stopped loving you a long time ago. Now, I want him!” Henry scoffed, looking at me like a toad trying to swallow a swan. “Everyone knows Collin Sterling is totally untouchable. No woman has ever managed to catch his eye.” “That is exactly why you need to figure out a way to make it happen! If you help me get him, I will sign a legal agreement waiving all of my inheritance rights. I will hand over the multi-billion dollar family empire to you and my sister on a silver platter.” I spun around, pretending to be utterly detached and cool. But the second my back was turned to him, hot tears flooded my eyes. Of course I knew my chances of actually landing Collin Sterling were absolute zero. I was just using this mutually assured destruction tactic to vent the agonizing, suffocating love I still felt for Henry. But I never, in a million years, expected Collin Sterling to step forward in front of a massive crowd, take my hand, and ask me, “What day are we getting married?” … “This is my former fiancée, Cathy. She has a massive crush on you, Mr. Sterling.” “She loves your movie-star looks. She loves your ruthless, decisive charm in the boardroom. She is deeply captivated by the mature elegance you have cultivated over the years…” Henry’s jaw was clenched tight, his handsome face dark and stiff as he read the embarrassing love letter addressed to Collin. Henry had written the letter for me. The massive diamond necklace and designer gown I was wearing were all paid for with his black Amex. He had actually bailed on a multi-national board meeting just to drive me to the most exclusive, expensive restaurant in the city. He personally arranged this extravagant candlelight dinner, all to help me confess my “love” to Collin Sterling. Collin let out a low, icy laugh. “Is this some kind of April Fools’ joke?” Henry’s jaw muscle twitched. He tried his hardest to look completely unfazed. “I assure you, I am not joking. Cathy is genuinely interested in you, and I am simply acting as the middleman to help her.” “You can leave now. Stop ruining my private evening with Collin.” I dismissed Henry with a cold, dismissive wave of my hand, watching him turn and walk out into the pouring rain. His silhouette was lean, broad-shouldered, and striking. He looked even more mature and captivating than the day I met him ten years ago. Back then, he was just a broke college freshman working a summer internship at my father’s conglomerate. He wore faded blue dress shirts. His eyes were clear, bright, and fiercely stubborn, and he worked harder than anyone else in the building. I saw his brilliant potential and his impeccable character. I personally pulled him out of the mud, guiding him step-by-step until that broke intern became the youngest Vice President in the company’s history. “He says you are into me, but the way you are looking at him right now… it is painfully obvious you still love him,” Collin commented, his voice flat and detached. His face was flawlessly handsome, his eyes impossibly deep and unreadable. He sat behind a thin veil of smoke rising from a burning stick of agarwood, looking like an untouchable god observing the mortal world. Right at that moment, through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw Henry stop on the sidewalk below and look back up at our table. Without caring about my dignity or boundaries, I immediately stood up, walked around the table, and dropped directly onto Collin’s lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him close so that from the street, it looked like we were intimately whispering against each other’s lips. “I am so sorry, Collin. I had to lie and tell him I wanted to date you, because that was the only way I could get you in a room alone. My actual intention is purely business. I am begging you to drop Henry’s project and invest your capital in me.” I didn’t know if it was just my imagination, but for a split second, a flash of deep disappointment seemed to cross Collin’s eyes. “You do realize I am scheduled to sign a fifty-million-dollar investment deal with Henry’s division next week, right?” Of course I knew! I was completely out of time. I frantically pulled a sleek leather binder from my bag and started rapid-firing my pitch, breaking down the stealth startup I had been building in secret. “…I have partnered directly with top PhD researchers at the university. Our proprietary tech is leagues ahead of whatever Henry’s team is pitching. We have a one hundred percent viability rate for commercial scaling…” Collin slowly flipped through the pages, a faint, amused smirk touching the corner of his lips. “Everyone in the industry says you are a brainless girl obsessed with love. But this company you have built… it is incredibly solid.” I let out a bitter, exhausted laugh. “My father is a massive misogynist. He doesn’t have a son, and he would rather hand his entire empire over to his nephew than let me sit in the big chair.” “Originally, I poured all my time and resources into grooming Henry. I honestly believed that once we got married, we would run the conglomerate together as a power couple. But then he had to go and fall in love with Claire. My father’s bastard daughter from his mistress!” Collin looked at me, his expression perfectly calm. “The mistress you are referring to is now legally your father’s wife. Claire is currently the beloved, golden child of your family. If Henry marries her, he gets the exact same keys to the kingdom.” And that was the exact thing that made my blood boil with sheer, unadulterated rage! I poured my absolute heart and soul into building Henry up, and in the end, I was basically just polishing the crown for Claire. Years ago, Claire and her home-wrecking mother had aggressively barged into our lives. The stress and humiliation had triggered a massive heart attack that killed my mother. I hated them with every fiber of my being! Henry falling in love with Claire was the most vicious, agonizing betrayal I could possibly imagine. “I am going to destroy them. And right now, you are the only person on earth who can help me do it. Drop Henry. Invest in me.” I stared at Collin, my eyes burning with desperate intensity. But his gaze remained chillingly detached. He firmly grabbed my waist and effortlessly lifted me off his lap, placing me onto the chair next to him. “I absolutely despise people who mix emotions with business. Come find me when you actually have your head on straight.” 2 Collin stood up and gracefully exited the restaurant. I stumbled out of the private dining room and chased after him, only to be completely stunned to see Henry still standing in the freezing rain by the entrance. “I watched you literally throw yourself onto his lap, Cathy. I never realized you were this incredibly desperate and cheap!” His eyes looked like they were literally on fire. I let out a cold, sharp laugh. “What? Are you jealous? You stood down here freezing in the rain for an hour just to wait for me so you could insult me?” Before he could even open his mouth to reply, Claire’s sickeningly sweet, high-pitched voice drifted out from the VIP club across the street. “Oh, Cathy, you are so confused! Henry was waiting for me. He wasn’t waiting for you.” She was wearing a skin-tight, sequined mini dress that highlighted every curve of her body, looking like a total knockout compared to my stiff, conservative business suit. Henry looked at her, his voice instantly softening into pure, sickening devotion. “Baby, aren’t you freezing?” He quickly stripped off his expensive tailored overcoat and draped it over her bare shoulders. She pouted, leaning into him. “It isn’t enough! I need my big strong Henry to warm up my hands.” Henry immediately grabbed her hands, bringing them to his lips and gently blowing hot breath over her fingers. Once, while crying hysterically, I had begged him to explain why he fell for her instead of me. His answer? He said I was always so obsessed with working and grinding that I acted like a bitter, exhausted old man. He said that only a delicate, dramatic, high-maintenance girl like Claire could actually make him feel like he was in love. “I had a little too much champagne. Henry, you have to drive me home.” Claire happily slid into the passenger seat of the bright red Ferrari idling by the curb. I flared with anger. “Get out of that car! Henry drove that car here to drop me off for my date with Collin, which means he is responsible for driving me home! And for the record, I was the one who bought that car for him years ago!” “Let Henry choose who he wants to drive,” Claire pouted. As she leaned past me to close the door, she dropped her voice to a vicious, venomous whisper. “You lose again, you pathetic tomboy. You can throw all the money in the world at Henry, but you can’t buy his love. And honestly? Even if you stripped naked and threw yourself at Collin Sterling, he still wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.” And just like she predicted, Henry chose her. He slid into the driver’s seat, revved the engine, and peeled out into the night. Right at that exact second, three massive, heavily tattooed bouncers burst out of the club across the street. They grabbed me roughly by the hair and demanded payment for a massive bar tab. “Your little sister skipped out on her bill! She told us to come find you! Pay up right now, or else…” They flashed disgusting, predatory smiles, their filthy, heavy hands violently gripping my arms and shoulders. I immediately started screaming. “Let go of me! Henry! Help!” Henry’s Ferrari hadn’t made it very far down the street. I knew for an absolute fact that he could clearly see me being assaulted in his rearview mirror. But he didn’t hit the brakes. He slowed down for a fraction of a second, and then aggressively stomped on the gas and disappeared. It was exactly like our relationship. He abandoned me without a second of hesitation. He chose Claire, my absolute worst enemy in the world, leaving me to cry myself to sleep and become the laughingstock of everyone who hated me. “Stop screaming. Why don’t you come inside and play with us for a bit…” The bouncer’s breath smelled like stale beer and vomit. He leaned his repulsive face aggressively close to mine, his greasy hands refusing to let go of my suit jacket. My patience completely shattered. I reached into my designer tote bag, pulled out the heavy, hard-cover leather binder holding my business plans, and started violently smashing it into their faces. The sharp edges of the heavy paper sliced into their skin. My sudden, explosive burst of adrenaline and pure rage forced them to stumble backward. When I finally turned around, panting and shaking, I saw Collin’s matte black Rolls-Royce parked silently at the end of the block. The exact second I fought the bouncers off, the Rolls-Royce quietly pulled away and merged into traffic. He had sat there and watched the entire thing happen, and he actively chose to do absolutely nothing. A crushing wave of exhaustion and total defeat swallowed me whole. I finally accepted the brutal reality. I simply did not possess the kind of charm required to make a man like him fall for me. But I still desperately needed to use this fake “crush” as a Trojan horse to secure his venture capital. If I could just convince him to drop Henry and back my stealth startup, I could violently flip the board. I could crush Henry, crush Claire, and step directly on my father’s neck. But I never expected my violent street brawl with the bouncers to be caught on camera by a bystander. The video was uploaded to Twitter, and within hours, it was trending at number one. #BillionaireHeiressGoesRabid, Allegedly Dumped By Fiancé# The tabloids were absolutely tearing into my history with Henry. They wrote dramatic articles about how the wealthy princess groomed the poor boy, only for the poor boy to strike it rich and dump her because she was a boring, washed-up hag… Smack! Henry slammed a massive stack of printed tabloid articles onto my desk. “The front pages, the trending hashtags, every single outlet is calling me a heartless, gold-digging bastard! Cathy, you know we are in the middle of a massive funding round to take the company public! Did you seriously pay PR firms to launch a smear campaign against me?!” I let out a loud, mocking laugh. “If you don’t want people to call you a monster, maybe don’t act like one. The tabloids are spot on. I bled myself dry for ten years to build you up. What exactly did you give me in return?” Henry knew he was entirely in the wrong, but his face remained perfectly cold and arrogant. “You asked me to help you seduce Collin, and I agreed. But he isn’t interested in you. What exactly do you want me to do about it?” “It means you aren’t trying hard enough! You need to step it up.” I grabbed him by his expensive silk tie, aggressively pulling him down to my level. “At the spring charity auction tomorrow, I am going to buy him a gift. If I see something I want, I don’t care if you have to bankrupt yourself bidding against the entire room, you are going to win it for me.” 3 The charity auction was packed with the city’s absolute elite. And Collin Sterling was there. He was seated high above the crowd, occupying the center VIP box on the second floor. I was sitting in the very front row, flanked by Henry and Claire. Because of my prime seat, I had a perfect view of the stage. And when the very first item was brought out, I completely froze. It was a piece of jewelry designed by my mother thirty years ago. “…The late Mrs. Cathy Senior was an internationally renowned master jeweler. Her early pieces are fiercely hoarded by global collectors. Tonight, we are incredibly honored to auction a vintage pair of her butterfly earrings…” I started bidding like an absolute madwoman. But every single time I raised my paddle, Claire instantly threw out a higher number, clearly doing it just to antagonize me. “Help me!” I shot a desperate glare at Henry. “You promised! You said you would bid until the room burned down to get me what I wanted!” Henry glanced nervously at Claire, who was looking at the earrings with greedy, obsessive eyes. He lowered his voice, rejecting me. “I promised to help you buy a gift for Collin. Do you really think Collin is going to wear vintage diamond earrings? Stop being ridiculous.” I was burning with anxiety. Every single drop of liquid cash I had was tied up in running my secret startup. I didn’t have the personal funds to survive a bidding war. In the end, Claire won the auction and took home my mother’s masterpiece. “Ugh, the wings on this butterfly are way too big. I hate it.” Claire pulled a pair of tiny cuticle scissors from her designer purse. Without a second of hesitation, she violently snipped the delicate, hollowed gold filigree. Two massive, flawless diamonds snapped off and rolled across the carpet. I jumped up, horrified. “Are you out of your mind?! That is a museum-quality piece! Why the hell did you destroy it?!” “I bought it with my own money. I can do whatever the hell I want with it.” Claire giggled maliciously. She grabbed the remaining pieces of the earrings, violently bent the gold out of shape, and tossed the mangled metal onto the floor like garbage. Quiet, mocking laughter rippled through the surrounding rows. “Claire is doing that on purpose to put Cathy in her place.” “Exactly. Cathy’s mother stubbornly refused to divorce the old man, forcing Claire to grow up as a bastard child. Her mother was a notorious home-wrecker.” “Well, Claire is the one on top now. Ask anyone in the city who the favorite daughter is, and they will tell you it’s Claire. Word on the street is Henry is obsessed with her too. The second they get married, Cathy is going to be kicked out of the family empire permanently.” “Cathy is so pathetic. She doesn’t even have the cash to bid, so she just has to sit there and watch her dead mother’s jewelry get turned into scrap…” My heart was bleeding out. I sat there, completely paralyzed, watching the masterpiece my mother had spent countless sleepless nights hand-crafting be reduced to absolute trash. Up on the stage, the auctioneer brought out a new item. “An early nineteenth-century Breguet tourbillon pocket watch. Bidding starts at one million…” From the second-floor VIP box, Collin threw out the very first bid, instantly raising the price to three million. It was obvious he actually wanted the watch. I immediately raised my paddle. Collin and I went back and forth, driving the price all the way up to twenty million. Sitting next to me, Henry’s face was turning black with rage. Claire, completely oblivious to the arrangement, sneered at me. “Stop pretending to be a big shot. Do you even have the money to pay for that?” Just as Collin casually threw out a bid for thirty million, I stood up and screamed at the top of my lungs: “Whatever he bids, I will double it!” The entire ballroom erupted into chaotic gasps. No one could believe I had the kind of financial firepower to aggressively outbid Collin Sterling, the wealthiest man in the city. My next sentence pushed the absolute insanity of the room into overdrive. “Put it on Henry’s tab. I am buying this watch for Collin.” Jaws literally hit the floor. The entire crowd watched in stunned silence as I pulled Henry’s matte black Amex from my purse, swiped it for the watch, and commanded the auction staff to hand-deliver it to Collin’s VIP box on the second floor, along with a massive bouquet of red roses. By sunset, the story of me using Henry’s money to aggressively court Collin Sterling had completely nuked the high society gossip channels. That evening, I was dressed to kill. But the second I stepped into the sprawling, marble-floored garage, Henry lunged out from the shadows and blocked my path. “Do you have any idea what people are calling me right now?! They are calling me the ultimate, pathetic cuckold! They say I am literally funding my fiancée’s affair!” I gave him a slow, sideways glance. “It’s still a massive upgrade from being called a heartless bastard. I just took the heat off you by making the entire city think I am the one cheating. Shouldn’t you be on your knees thanking me?” Henry ground his teeth together, forcing out a cold, venomous sneer. “You spent thirty million dollars of my money. Did it actually work? Is he happy?” I unlocked my phone screen and lazily waved it in front of his face. “Take a look. Ten minutes ago, Collin sent me a text. ‘Tonight. 8:00 PM. The Presidential Suite at the Grand Plaza Hotel.’” All the color violently drained from Henry’s face. He looked like a corpse. I reached out and arrogantly patted him on the cheek. “What are you standing around for? Get in the driver’s seat. You have to drop me off for my date with Collin.” 4 I was absolutely convinced that Collin had been moved by my grand, thirty-million-dollar gesture. I had spent the afternoon putting together an incredibly aggressive, highly detailed business prospectus. I was going to convince him to fund my startup tonight. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Henry kept violently shifting his eyes to the rearview mirror to glare at me. Suddenly, he snapped, “Why the hell did he pick the Grand Plaza Hotel?” I froze for a second. Then it hit me. The Grand Plaza was the exact hotel where Henry and I were supposed to hold our wedding reception. Our wedding date was scheduled for next Thursday. The invitations had already been mailed out. I had spent hundreds of thousands on artisan wedding favors and dropped over a million dollars customizing the ballroom decor. And right now, the groom was driving me to that exact hotel so I could sleep with another man. I let out a cold, empty laugh. “Why do you even care? The beach right under this overpass is where we had our first real date. Five years ago, I almost drowned trying to save those two kids who got pulled out by the riptide.” “The paramedics literally pronounced me dead on the sand. But you refused to accept it. You did CPR and chest compressions until your hands were bleeding, and I actually came back to life.” “When I opened my eyes, the very first thing I saw was you sobbing. I swore to myself right then and there that I would love you until the day I died…” Back then, Henry and I had literally survived death together. But talking about it now just left a disgusting, rotting taste in my mouth. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore. You forgot about it years ago. The rock we used to sit on has probably eroded into the ocean by now anyway.” Henry had been dead silent. Suddenly, he violently slammed his foot onto the gas pedal. He whipped the steering wheel, launching the sports car off the highway exit and speeding directly toward the beach underneath the overpass. I panicked. “Are you insane?! I am going to be late! Take me to the hotel!” Henry’s dark eyes were wild and unhinged. “Didn’t you just say you wanted to visit the beach and take a walk down memory lane? If you didn’t want to go, why the hell did you bring it up?!” The radio was blaring emergency weather alerts. A massive Category 4 hurricane was scheduled to make landfall in less than an hour. The authorities were begging people to stay off the roads. I screamed at him. I told him he was a complete psychopath for driving to the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. He drifted the car onto the wet sand, slammed it into park, and violently dragged me out of the passenger seat, demanding that we go look for the rock where we fell in love. The sky above the ocean was a suffocating, bruised purple. Massive, terrifying waves were crashing onto the shore. The hurricane sirens in the distance began to wail. “You’re right! I am a psychopath! Why are you pulling these disgusting, twisted games just to trigger me?! When you told me to help you seduce Collin, I wanted to take a knife and gut him!” he roared over the sound of the wind. I sneered at him, my voice dripping with venom. “Stop acting! The only reason you agreed to help me is because I promised to sign away my inheritance rights!” “Your ultimate fantasy is for me to get permanently exiled from the family empire. You are just waiting for my father to drop dead so you and Claire can swallow the entire conglomerate…” “Shut up!” Henry’s eyes were practically bulging out of his skull. He grabbed my face with both hands, pulling me so close I could feel his frantic, desperate breath on my lips. It felt like pure agony mixed with terrifying obsession. “You don’t understand me at all. The truth is, I… I actually…” “You actually what?” For some reason, my heart started to race. Right at that exact second, his phone started ringing. The name Claire-Pad flashed brightly across the screen. Henry hesitated for barely a second before he answered the call. The heavy, intense, suffocating tension between us instantly evaporated into the freezing wind. I knew it. I knew this was exactly how it was going to play out. And the next thirty seconds were painfully predictable. Claire was crying, saying she was absolutely terrified of the thunder, demanding that Henry come over immediately to hold her. “You can’t. Your job right now is to drop me off at Collin’s hotel.” I spoke loudly, making sure she could hear me. The second Claire heard my voice, she started sobbing hysterically. “Henry, I am so scared! Oh my god, I just fell down! I think my leg is broken! Henry, you have to come take me to the emergency room, please…” Her acting was offensively terrible. But Henry bought it instantly. He turned toward the car, preparing to speed off to her apartment. “What about me?! Collin is waiting! How the hell am I supposed to catch a cab out here in a literal hurricane?!” I screamed at him, furious. Henry stopped and looked me dead in the eyes. His voice was completely serious. “I am done playing this pathetic game with you, Cathy. You are never going to get Collin.” “The women who throw themselves at him are A-list celebrities, Miss Universe winners, foreign royalty… Cathy, you don’t stand a chance in hell. You are a complete zero to him.” “Besides, the only reason you are doing this is to make me angry, right? Congratulations, you did it. Now drop it. I am absolutely not letting you see Collin tonight.” He gave me one final, dark look. And then, he actually abandoned me on the beach. He got into the Ferrari and sped off to save Claire’s “broken leg.” The hurricane was moving in incredibly fast. The freezing wind sliced through my thin silk dress, chilling me to the bone. My heart turned to pure, dead ash. From this moment forward, the only emotion I would ever feel for Henry was absolute, unadulterated hatred. The wind was deafening. If I stayed on the beach, I was going to die. But the gale-force winds were so strong I couldn’t even stand up straight. I couldn’t move a single inch. Just as I accepted that I was going to freeze to death on the sand, a massive, black helicopter cut through the storm, flying aggressively against the hurricane-force winds directly toward me. It looked like a tiny, violently shaking boat in a massive tsunami. Terrifying, but incredibly resolute. The side door slid open. A man leaned out and extended his hand toward me. The violent wind whipped his hair around, but I could clearly see his striking, elegant features and piercing eyes. It was Collin Sterling. He looked down at me and said, “I accept your offer. Now get in.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “450046”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 Three years after being brought back to the Sinclair estate, I remained the ghost of the family. For three years, I hadn’t spoken a single word. When the fake daughter, Bella, stood on stage to receive her awards, I sat in the darkest corner of the banquet hall, staring into space. The relatives would whisper, mocking me as the mute country bumpkin they couldn’t dare show off in public. My biological parents’ initial joy and guilt had slowly curdled into bitter disappointment. “Rowan, if you would just call me Mom, we wouldn’t feel so heartbroken,” my mother would say. Even the fake daughter’s early paranoia had morphed into a condescending pity. “I’m sorry,” she would whisper to me, “but even though you’re back, I’m still the apple of their eye.” That was the status quo. Until a distant uncle showed up with a forged equity transfer agreement, threatening to liquidate the Sinclair company to pay off his debts. Bella collapsed to the floor in terror. My parents nearly gave themselves heart attacks. I set down the old newspaper I was reading, walked up to that gang of extortionists, and calmly spoke a single sentence. … The day Bella brought home her latest trophy was a Friday. My mother, Eleanor, hurried down the sweeping staircase. Right in front of the maids, she pulled Bella into a tight, loving embrace, kissing her cheek. “My sweet girl. I’ll have the driver book that French place you love. We’ll rent out the whole dining room. Invite whoever you want.” Bella’s eyes sparkled. She clung to Eleanor’s arm, her voice dripping with sugar. “Mom, can I invite my girlfriends too?” “Of course. Invite them all. Put it on my card tonight.” The two of them walked into the grand living room, laughing and chatting. I sat at the very edge of the dining table, quietly eating a bowl of oatmeal. That seat was right next to the kitchen door. The closest chair to the trash can. In three years, my seat had never changed. As she walked past me, Eleanor’s footsteps faltered. She turned her head and looked at me for three full seconds. I saw what was swimming in her eyes. It wasn’t anger. It was something far worse than anger. It was total disappointment. Then she looked away, followed Bella into the living room, and her voice brightened once more. “Tell me, sweetie, what did the judges say about your performance?” The laughter from the living room built an invisible wall, shutting me out. I put down my spoon, stood up, and walked away. My name is Rowan. The eldest daughter of the Sinclair family, lost for twenty-three years. The DNA reports were printed in stark black and white. They ran the test four times. A perfect match every time. Before I was brought back, I grew up in a place called Oakhaven, a rural farm town in the Midwest. My days were spent helping my adoptive parents harvest corn, feed chickens, and run a stall at the local farmers’ market. After I was brought back, I didn’t speak a single word. I wasn’t a mute. In my past life, I was a corporate litigator for twenty years. Trials, negotiations, mediations. I talked from dawn until dusk, wearing my jaw out for clients. Ultimately, I died of a massive heart attack on the floor of my own corner office, dying before the ambulance even arrived. When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting in the back of a luxury SUV sent by the Sinclairs. Next to me was a thick stack of DNA reports, and sitting across from me was a middle-aged woman crying her eyes out. I figured it out right then and there. God threw me back into the world, so I might as well catch my breath. All I wanted in this life was to sit quietly, keep my mouth shut, stay out of trouble, and catch up on the decades of sleep I had missed. But the Sinclair household was no place for peace and quiet. The fake daughter, Bella, had lived in this house for twenty-three years. She had the emotional ties. She knew all their habits. She had the pretty face they had pampered since infancy. In every way that mattered, she felt more like their daughter than I did. When I first arrived, she treated me like a ticking time bomb. She was dripping with insecurity. When Grandpa’s antique porcelain vase shattered, she casually mentioned seeing me near his study. When the jade bracelet my grandmother left for Eleanor went missing, it miraculously turned up in my nightstand. When the company’s charity donation records were tampered with, the IP address traced back to my laptop. I never explained myself. It wasn’t that I couldn’t. I was just too lazy to bother. Grandpa stared at me for a long time after that last incident. He sighed, waved his hand, and told everyone to drop it. Eleanor didn’t say anything either, but from that day on, the fresh fruit bowl outside my bedroom door disappeared. Later, my father, Arthur, tried to integrate me into the family business. At a corporate dinner, after a few rounds of drinks, a major client turned his gaze to me. “So this is Arthur’s eldest daughter? What division of the group are you heading up?” Every eye at the table zeroed in on my face. I looked back at him. I said nothing. Three seconds passed. Five seconds. The smile on the client’s face began to crack. Under the table, Arthur gently nudged my hand. I still didn’t speak. By the eighth second of silence, the atmosphere in the private room had frozen solid. Right at that moment, Bella leaned over from her seat next to me, a flawless, radiant smile on her face. She seamlessly picked up the conversation. “Oh, my sister has a bit of a condition. She can’t speak.” “I can walk you through the operational side of things, Mr. Sterling.” Her voice was soft, her pacing immaculate. It flowed as naturally as a river. “Since you asked about the business, my sister actually shadows our father on overall strategy. Oh, by the way, I read your company’s annual report last week. Your layout for the Midwest logistics hubs is incredibly visionary. I actually had a preliminary idea I wanted to pick your brain about.” She hijacked the conversation without leaving a single trace. The client’s eyes lit up. The partnership was finalized before dessert. For the rest of the dinner, Arthur didn’t say a word to me. Eleanor turned her head toward me. Her voice was a hushed whisper, but she bit out every single syllable. “Rowan, it was one sentence. Could you really not manage a single sentence?” I didn’t move. She turned back around and never looked at me again. That night, Bella knocked on my bedroom door. She was holding two mugs of warm milk, smiling a gentle, nurturing smile. “Rowan, Mom warmed some milk for us. Want some?” I didn’t take the mug, but I didn’t close the door either. She placed one of the mugs on the hallway console table, gently blowing on the steam. Her voice grew even softer. “Hey, don’t let tonight get to you.” “Big crowds can be intimidating. It’s totally fine.” She paused. “After all, you grew up on a farm. Being thrown into a high-society dinner is scary. Anyone would freeze up. We all understand.” “Right?” “Oh, right. This is my new gold medal for the piano competition. If you want one, I can beg Mom and Dad to buy a fake trophy so you have something to put on your shelf.” I looked into her eyes for one second. Then I gently closed the door. The moment the latch clicked into place, I heard a soft giggle from the hallway. It was the laugh of a house cat watching a stray bird fly into the wrong cage. A laugh full of pity, laced with absolute arrogance. Bella’s actions weren’t entirely baseless. To try and get me to speak, Eleanor had exhausted every method. At first, she tried to coax me. She decorated my room like a princess suite, replacing all the curtains and bedding. She piled my vanity with luxury skincare, claiming she wanted to make up for the twenty-three years she missed. Later, she tried appealing to my emotions. She would sit on the edge of my bed, hold my hand, and recount the day I was lost over and over again. She would talk until she sobbed, until her voice went hoarse. I would sit there and listen. When she was done, I would nod and slide under the covers. She would stare at me for a long time, then stand up, take a deep breath, and leave. Arthur was much more direct. “Rowan, what exactly is your endgame here?” “You get whatever money you want, whatever clothes you want. Are you actually deaf and dumb?” Finally, he ground out a sentence through clenched teeth. “If I knew this was how you were going to act, I would have never brought you back!” He turned on his heel and strode into his study. The sound of the door shutting wasn’t a violent slam. It was a heavy, controlled click. That calculated restraint hurt worse than a slammed door. It meant he was so thoroughly exhausted by me that he couldn’t even muster the energy to be properly angry. I sat in my chair, staring at the closed door. I knew Eleanor had heard him. But she didn’t come out to defend me. She just walked away on her tiptoes. The only person in this house I found tolerable was Grandpa Winston. He was seventy-three this year. In his youth, he hauled cement and drove delivery trucks, dragging the Sinclair legacy out of the mud with his bare hands. The day I was finally brought home, the whole family swarmed me. They cried, they laughed, they made a massive fuss. Only Grandpa sat in his armchair, quietly watching me for a long time. Then he stood up, pulled me out of the suffocating crowd, and gave me a personal tour of the estate. He showed me who lived in which room, what was kept in which cabinet, where the spare kitchen keys hung, and the passcode to the backup safe. When we were done, he pressed a keyring into my palm. “These are the keys to my study.” “If you ever get sick of the people in this house, come sit in my office.” “You don’t have to say a word. Just sit.” I looked down at the keys in my hand in silence. He patted my shoulder, turned, and walked away. I remembered that gesture for three years. Whenever the family held executive meetings at the house, Arthur would get irritated by my silence and eventually just barred me from entering the conference room. Grandpa never argued with him. But after every single meeting, he had his assistant deliver a copy of the meeting minutes straight to my bedroom. I flipped through them a few times. They were always annotated versions, filled with dense, handwritten notes in his distinct script. He didn’t talk much, but his eyes missed nothing. Last month, I was sunbathing on the patio. He pulled up a chair next to me and sat in silence for a good half hour. Then he spoke one sentence. “Rowan, you aren’t stupid.” “I’ve lived a long time. I know the difference between a fool and someone playing the fool.” I looked over at him. His lips twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it carried a weight I couldn’t fully read. “Whatever it is you’re waiting for, just know your old man has your back.” He stood up, patted his knees, and went back inside. I buried those words in the bottom of my heart, turning them over and over in my mind for days. Tonight, Eleanor returned from Bella’s celebratory dinner and pushed my bedroom door open once again. She was carrying a small slice of cake. “Rowan, I know you feel wronged.” “You are my flesh and blood. If you would just open your mouth and say one word to me, I’ll forget everything that’s happened.” I stared at her bloodshot eyes for a long time. The words I had swallowed for three years felt like they were crawling up my throat on their own. I was one breath away from speaking. Crash. A violent noise erupted from the ground floor. 2 “Eleanor! Get down here! The debt your family owes is getting settled today!” It was an unfamiliar male voice. Gruff, booming, and thick with reckless arrogance. I frowned. I walked out to the second-floor balcony and looked down. Seven or eight men had crowded into the grand foyer. I recognized the man leading the pack. He was Eleanor’s distant cousin, Uncle Marcus. He was in his fifties, wearing a cheap, shiny leather jacket, his hair slicked back with enough grease to reflect the chandelier. Word was he made some decent cash in construction back in the day, but a string of bad investments left him drowning in debt. For the past two years, he had been circling the extended family, demanding “favors” and cash. Today, he brought a prop. He slammed a thick stack of legal documents onto the mahogany coffee table, making the teacups rattle in their saucers. “Arthur, this is the equity transfer agreement you signed with your own hand.” “Thirty-five percent of the Sinclair Group’s shares. That was the collateral we agreed on for the capital I fronted you back then.” “It’s in black and white. Are you going to honor it, or are we going to have a problem?” Arthur’s face was a mask of cold fury. He sat frozen on the sofa. Eleanor’s voice cracked into a shrill panic. “Marcus! Have you lost your mind? What agreement? What shares?” “Hey now, don’t get hysterical, Ellie,” Marcus chuckled. His smile was greasy and foul. “Ask Arthur. He knows exactly what happened back then.” “I had a handwriting analyst verify the signature, and it’s backed by a public notary. If you want to play dumb, we can settle this in court.” “But if you want to talk it out right now, I’m a reasonable guy. We can negotiate a buyout price.” Eleanor clutched her chest. The color drained entirely from her face. She stumbled backward. Bella lunged forward to catch her, but wasn’t fast enough, and the two of them went crashing down onto the Persian rug. “Mom! Mom, are you okay?!” Bella’s voice shrieked. Arthur shot up from the sofa, slamming his knee into the corner of the coffee table. Hot tea spilled everywhere. But no one was looking at them. Because sitting in the armchair in the far corner of the room, Grandpa Winston was gripping the armrests. His face was a sickly ash gray, his chest heaving in rapid, violent gasps. “Call an ambulance!” The living room descended into absolute chaos. Marcus stood his ground, taking in the panic without a flinch. Instead, he leaned back against a chair, pulled a piece of hard candy from his pocket, and lazily peeled off the wrapper. “Nobody panic. Save the old man first.” “But my boys and I aren’t leaving this house until we get a number we like.” He crumpled the plastic wrapper and tossed it casually onto the polished hardwood floor. Out of a room full of people, no one dared to breathe a word against him. I stood on the second-floor balcony, still holding the folded newspaper in my hand. I looked down at the circus playing out below. Three years. I hadn’t spoken a single word in three years. But today, I was done biting my tongue. I folded the newspaper neatly and rapped it against the wooden banister. Smack. It wasn’t a deafening sound. But it cut through the room like a blade of cold steel, instantly silencing every throat in the grand hall. 3 I walked down the stairs. Step by step. No rush. Marcus hadn’t noticed me yet. He had one leg propped up, half-chewing his candy, bragging to the thugs flanking him. Eleanor saw me first. The blood rushed from her face. She stood up and took a half-step toward me, then froze. She waved her hand at me in short, frantic, dismissive gestures, like she was trying to shoo away a stray dog. Her message was clear. Go back upstairs. Don’t come out. Don’t embarrass us in front of them. Bella stood next to Eleanor. Her eyes swept over my face, and she rolled her eyes in undisguised contempt. It was a look that screamed, know your place. Arthur was back on the sofa, clutching his chest, looking terrible. He turned his head when he heard footsteps, a flicker of hope in his eyes. When he realized it was me, the hope died instantly, replaced by a bone-deep, resigned exhaustion. I reached the bottom step and stopped. Marcus finally noticed the extra body in the room. He shot me a sideways glance. “Well, look what we have here. Who’s this?” No one answered him. He turned back to Arthur, jerking his chin in my direction. “Arthur, this your eldest?” “The one you dragged out of some hick town?” Arthur remained silent. Marcus flipped a heavy silver lighter in his hand, a look of twisted amusement on his face. “Man, Arthur, are you sure you grabbed the right kid?” The two thugs next to him let out a crude, booming laugh. “She’s standing there like a wooden post. Blank stare. Is she brain-damaged or something?” Eleanor gripped her phone so tightly her knuckles turned white. Bella looked down, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth to hide a subtle, trembling smirk. The thugs laughed louder. Marcus felt emboldened. He stood up, circled the coffee table, and swaggered over to me, stopping just inches away. He looked down his nose at me. “Hey, mute.” Just those two words. Tossed out casually, like he was calling a dog that didn’t know how to bark. “I’m talking to you.” “Are you deaf too?” He snapped his thick fingers right in front of my eyes. “She really is broken,” he sneered, his voice laced with genuine pity. “You’re better off keeping Bella around. At least when this family goes under, someone will know how to cry at your funeral. Hahaha!” “Marcus.” Just his name. Not too loud, not too soft. Calm and measured. But the moment those two syllables left my mouth, it was like someone had pulled the main breaker on the entire house. Marcus nearly choked on his hard candy. He coughed violently, straightening up, his eyes locking onto mine in shock. The smirk froze on Bella’s face like it was cast in resin. The phone in Eleanor’s hand slipped and hit the rug with a soft thud. She covered her mouth. Her shoulders began to shake. Arthur snapped his head around so fast his neck popped. His eyes instantly went red. His lips trembled. “You… you can speak?” I ignored him. I kept my eyes locked on Marcus. “That equity transfer agreement. Do you mind if I take a look?” “Take a look?” Marcus scoffed, a nervous edge creeping into his voice. He snatched the thick stack of papers from his briefcase and slapped it back onto the coffee table. It landed with a sharp crack. “Be my guest.” “Black ink on white paper. Signed by your dad, stamped by a notary. You think you’re gonna find a typo?” I picked up the document. I flipped open the first page. “The execution date on this contract is September 3rd, 2021.” “Yeah. So?” “From September 1st to September 7th, 2021, my father was in Boston attending the East Coast Corporate Summit.” I dropped the document back onto the table and looked up at him. “He was staying at the Four Seasons. Hotel records will show that on the morning of the 3rd, he attended the keynote panel. In the afternoon, he sat in on breakout sessions. That evening, he hosted three major clients at the hotel restaurant.” “My father was in Boston. This contract bears the seal of a notary public based in Chicago.” “Tell me, Marcus. Did my father split himself in two?” The living room went dead silent. A muscle in Marcus’s jaw twitched. The silver lighter in his hand stopped spinning. “W-well, maybe he signed it beforehand.” “A pre-signed contract submitted for notarization? A notary public wouldn’t verify the signatory’s physical presence and ID?” I flipped to the second page. “Furthermore, the notary whose stamp is on this document is named David Sterling.” “David Sterling had his license suspended on August 31st, 2021, for professional misconduct. A three-month suspension.” “On September 3rd, he had zero legal authority to stamp a grocery receipt, let alone a corporate equity transfer.” “This seal is a forgery.” The smug arrogance peeled off Marcus’s face layer by layer. The two thugs flanking him exchanged a nervous glance and slowly began inching toward the front door. “W-where did you get that kind of info…” “Public records. You can google it.” I closed the folder and pushed it to the center of the table. “Marcus. Forging a corporate contract. Forging a notary seal. Trespassing on private property, and extortion.” “Any one of those three is enough to put you away for a long time.” “You have two options right now.” “Option one: You take this trash off our table, walk out that door, and we pretend tonight never happened.” “Option two.” I paused, letting the silence hang. “I call my lawyer right now.” Marcus violently pushed himself off the chair, the legs screeching against the hardwood floor. He pointed a shaking finger at my face. “You little farm trash bitch, who the hell do you think you’re…” “Marcus.” I cut him off. My voice was still flat and icy. “I grew up on a farm, yes. But I went to Columbia Law.” “The very first case I worked as a clerk was a corporate contract fraud.” “The defendant got seven years in federal prison.” Marcus’s pointing finger slowly lowered. A heavy silence suffocated the room for five brutal seconds. Then, his legs started to shake. Not a nervous twitch. It was the physical collapse of a man who realized he was completely trapped. He took a half-step back, his knees buckled, and he dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. Someone in the living room let out a sharp gasp. Marcus knelt there, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving violently. A guttural, raspy sob tore from his throat. It didn’t sound like crying. It sounded like a cornered animal realizing the trap had just snapped shut on its leg. “I… I didn’t have a choice.” “I owe a lot of bad people a lot of money. They’re parked outside my house every day. My wife and kids are terrified.” “I just figured, the Sinclairs are loaded. Arthur is family. I thought he could bail me out.” “I wasn’t actually going to sue. I just… I just wanted to scare you guys into cutting a check.” “Please, cut me a break. Please! I’ll work like a dog for you for the rest of my life!” “Enough.” I cut him off. He looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot, snot and tears smearing his face. I stared him down. “You got yourself into debt. That is your problem.” “But you brought a forged document into this house and nearly gave an old man a fatal heart attack.” “That’s not desperation.” “That’s bullying.” “Get the hell out of my house,” Arthur finally barked, his voice thick with rage. Marcus and his thugs scrambled to their feet and practically tripped over themselves running out the front door. The living room fell into a hollow silence. I turned around. Eleanor was standing two steps away from me. She had both hands clamped over her mouth. Tears streamed freely down her face. She was staring at me like she was seeing me for the very first time. I looked at her. I looked at her for a long time. “Mom.” Just one word. Eleanor’s body gave a violent shudder. The floodgates opened. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t form a single word, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. “Get Grandpa to the hospital.” Eleanor froze for a split second, then nodded furiously. She didn’t even bother wiping her tears as she sprinted toward the coat rack to grab her purse. When she reached the door, she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder at me. That look held everything. Guilt. Heartbreak. And a fragile, desperate kind of relief. Then she turned around, pushed the door open, and ran out. Only Bella and I were left in the living room. She stood frozen next to the sofa. I didn’t look at her. I looked down, neatly stacked the remaining files on the coffee table, and slid them to the corner. “You can talk.” She finally spoke. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement ground out between her teeth, the realization dawning on her after running the math in her head a hundred times. I didn’t answer. “Three years.” Her voice was faint, like she was talking to herself in a trance. “Three entire years, and you didn’t say a single word.” “We thought you were…” She paused. “You lied to us for three years.” I smoothed out the last page of the file and stood up. “Lied?” I turned my head and looked at her. “When did I ever say I couldn’t speak?” Bella’s lips parted, but nothing came out. Exactly. She had nothing to say. Because I had never actually claimed to be mute. I walked toward the staircase. As I passed her, she suddenly reached out and grabbed my wrist. Her grip was tight. Desperate. I looked down at her hand, but didn’t pull away. “What do you want?” Bella looked up. Something was burning behind her eyes. It wasn’t tears. It was the raw, uncontainable panic of a gambler whose bluff had just been called. “Rowan, what exactly was your goal today?” “Did you want Mom and Dad to look at you like a hero?” “Did you want them to feel guilty?” “Or…” Her voice dropped an octave, laced with a tremor she couldn’t hide. “Or are you trying to kick me out of this house?” I looked at her. I let three seconds pass. “Bella.” “That man brought a forged contract.” “If he had actually walked away with what he wanted, do you think you’d still be standing in this mansion right now?” Bella’s grip loosened a fraction. Just a fraction, before she tightened it again. “I didn’t do it for you, and I didn’t do it for them.” I pulled my wrist out of her grasp. “Grandpa is on his way to the hospital.” “I didn’t want him to die.” “Do you think just because you opened your mouth and played lawyer, this house belongs to you now?” Her voice started to shake, but she was forcing the bravado. “Mom and Dad raised me for twenty-three years.” “Twenty-three years.” “You’ve been here for three, acting like a ghost. You speak a few sentences today, and you think you can just—” “I don’t think anything.” I cut her off. “I told you. I just didn’t want Grandpa to get hurt.” She glared at me, her chest heaving. “If you could talk this whole time, why didn’t you?” “What were you waiting for?” “What are you waiting for?!” She practically screamed the last sentence. Her voice cracked, echoing off the high ceiling. I didn’t say a word. I just watched her. I watched as the polished, perfect facade melted off her face piece by piece. Anger. Panic. And buried at the very bottom, absolute terror. She had lived in this house for twenty-three years. She knew better than anyone that this house never truly belonged to her. She only got to stay because the real owner hadn’t come to collect. And now, the owner was speaking. I turned and walked up the stairs. When I reached the third step, she spoke to my back. Her voice had dropped back down, eerily calm, stripping away all emotion. It didn’t even sound like her. “Rowan.” I didn’t stop. “Do you really think a few clever words are enough?” I kept walking. Her voice drifted up from behind me, growing fainter, like a poison whispered into the wind. “This isn’t your house to run yet.” I reached the second floor and walked into my room. I gently closed the door. I sat by the window, watching the streetlights flicker on the driveway below. Not my house to run? I had waited three years. I wasn’t in a rush.

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Three years after being institutionalized, my psychiatrist husband Chad finally brought me home—only to find Mary and their son living there. “When are you telling her about the divorce?” Mary asked. “Not yet. I don’t want to trigger a relapse,” Chad muttered, avoiding my gaze as he hugged her. Hidden in the hall, I listened until numbness set in. Entering the master bedroom, I found unfamiliar furniture and a huge family portrait above the bed. A bitter laugh escaped me. From beneath the overturned oak wardrobe came faint whimpers. A tiny, bloodied hand clawed through the gap. I threw my weight against the wardrobe, but it wouldn’t move. “Chad! Your son’s trapped!” I screamed, grabbing his arm. Mary shoved me back, eyes blazing. “My son’s safely locked in the playroom! Stay away from him!” She slammed the bedroom door shut, locking it. Chad sighed, offering two small white pills. “Take these, Harper. They’ll stop the hallucinations.” Staring at the pills, cold confusion washed over me. Was the blood real? Was I imagining everything? “I just hope you don’t regret this,” I whispered. 1 “Chad! I told you not to bring this psycho back into our house!” Mary was screaming hysterically, violently smashing vases and picture frames across the living room floor. “Are you trying to drive our entire family insane?!” My eyes were totally empty as I stood on the second-floor landing, staring down at Chad’s exhausted profile. He lowered his voice, trying to soothe her. “Mary, please stop. Harper has nowhere else to go. This is technically her house too.” Mary let out a shrill, mocking laugh. “This is the home of our family of three!” “Did you forget how she grabbed a knife and plunged it into her own stomach, butchering her own baby?!” “Harper is a complete lunatic! If you let her stay, she is going to murder our son one day!” I froze. My hands curled into tight fists, my fingernails biting so deeply into my palms that they broke the skin. Baby? My baby… A violent surge of adrenaline exploded in my chest. I rushed down the stairs, lunged forward, and slapped Mary entirely across the face. I glared at her, my eyes filled with absolute, murderous rage. “Ahhhh!!!” “Harper, you psycho! Are you trying to kill me?!” Mary clutched her swelling, bright red cheek and scrambled behind Chad, cowering like a terrified animal. “It was you.” I stared dead into Mary’s eyes. “It was you. You were the one who drove that knife into my stomach!” I whipped my head toward Chad. “You saw it too! Didn’t you?!” The air in the room froze solid. Both Chad and Mary completely stiffened. A second later, Mary’s face twisted into an ugly, panicked snarl, like a cat whose tail had just been stomped on. “You hear that?! She isn’t cured at all! She is exactly the same crazy b*tch she was three years ago!” Mary pointed a shaking finger directly at my face. “You are a monster! You butchered your own child, and now you are trying to frame me for it!” My emotions spiraled entirely out of control. I screamed back at her, my voice raw and tearing. “I didn’t! I never hurt my baby!” That tiny life I had never even gotten to meet. The baby I still dreamed about every single night. Mary had taken a knife and butchered it while I watched. All the blood drained from Mary’s face, but then it flushed crimson with anger. “Chad, look at her! She is having another psychotic break! I told you she wasn’t fixed!” “If you let her stay in this house, I am packing up our son and leaving!” Chad wrapped his arms tightly around Mary, gently rubbing her back to calm her down. Then, he turned and looked at me. His brow furrowed deeply, his eyes swirling with a complicated mix of pity and exhaustion. “Harper, you suffered a severe dissociative psychotic episode that day. You were the one who…” He reached into his pocket, pulled out two fresh pills, and gently patted the top of my head like I was a sick dog. “Just take the medicine. It’s all in the past now.” “Don’t blame yourself. You were sick. But you definitely can’t blame Mary either.” I started to laugh. I laughed so hard that tears spilled over my eyelashes and burned my cheeks. I looked at the pills in his palm and pushed his hand away. “You literally gave me my medication five minutes ago.” I wasn’t crazy. I remembered that day with absolute, terrifying clarity. Mary, Chad’s clinical assistant, had gripped the handle of that knife. She had stroked her own flat stomach, looking down at me with a sickening, triumphant smirk. “I’m pregnant with Chad’s baby.” 2 “Harper, you must be exhausted. I had a room set up for you.” Chad guided me down the hall and pushed open the door to a tiny guest room. “I didn’t touch any of your things. Everything is right here.” He looked at me, his expression suddenly stern. “You need to behave. If you cause trouble, I will have no choice but to send you back to the ward.” Without waiting for a response, he quickly stepped out of the room and closed the door. He was probably rushing back downstairs to comfort Mary. I looked around the tiny space. It used to be a storage closet. It was so small it could barely fit a twin bed, and there wasn’t a single window to let the sunlight in. All of my belongings were shoved into a single, massive cardboard box in the corner. It was taped shut so tightly it looked like a coffin. I ripped the tape open. Inside were all the things I had bought when I was pregnant. Parenting books. Fairy tale collections. The tiny onesies and little shoes Chad and I had picked out together. And right at the bottom, tossed aside and buried under a thick layer of dust, was our framed wedding photo. Tears fell off my chin, splashing onto the glass and blurring our smiling faces. Through my tears, I couldn’t stop laughing. Chad. We weren’t even officially divorced yet, but you were already living with another woman like husband and wife. You even raised a son with her. Were me and my dead baby just a sick joke to you? I carried a genetic predisposition for severe mental illness. When I was in college, the psychological torment became too much for my mother, and she took her own life. It was Chad who grabbed my hand and pulled me out of that suffocating darkness. He literally changed his major and studied psychiatry specifically to save me. He promised he would stay by my side forever. He promised he would protect me from ever having an episode. And he promised that even if I did get sick, he wouldn’t be afraid. He would cure me. We fell in love. We got married. And then, I got pregnant. During my pregnancy, my hormones wrecked my emotional stability. I started experiencing minor, terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. Chad’s private practice was booming, and he couldn’t stay home with me. So, he brought his clinical assistant, Mary, to live in our house and take care of me. Slowly, I started noticing things. The lingering glances. The flirty, hushed conversations. The undeniable, sickening intimacy between them. The heavy psychiatric medication Chad prescribed made me chronically drowsy. But one night, I woke up early. I walked out to the living room and saw Mary sitting squarely on Chad’s lap. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, and she was giggling uncontrollably. “What the hell are you doing?!” Chad scrambled up, terrified. He rushed over and wrapped me in a tight hug. “Harper, relax! Mary was just giving me a clinical update. Don’t let your paranoia take over.” “There is a hickey on her collarbone.” He pinched my cheek, offering a helpless, patient smile. “You silly girl. You are hallucinating again.” I violently shoved him away, my emotions spiraling. “Chad, I am looking right at you! You are constantly holding her, constantly flirting with her! Do you think I am completely blind?!” A cold needle pierced my arm as Mary pushed a heavy sedative into my vein. Her voice was sickeningly soft. “Harper, Dr. Montgomery and I are just colleagues.” My tongue felt thick. “Really?” “Yes. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. You will feel better when you wake up.” After that night, my “symptoms” escalated rapidly. I saw Mary dumping white powder into my nightly glass of milk. Chad swore it was just a prenatal calcium supplement. I heard a baby crying in the empty nursery in the middle of the night. Chad told me it was just the neighbor’s cat in the alley. And then came the night I supposedly grabbed a kitchen knife, walked into Mary’s bedroom, and nearly plunged it into her heart. “Harper, you were sleepwalking again.” Chad was carefully bandaging a deep cut on my hand, his eyes incredibly tired. “Last night, you stood over Mary’s bed holding a butcher knife. You absolutely terrified her.” “Your condition is deteriorating rapidly.” He gently stroked my hair. “We need to increase your dosage, okay?” I stared into his bloodshot eyes, suddenly unable to tell who was actually sick. Was it me? Or was the entire world losing its mind? The agonizing inability to separate reality from hallucination absolutely shattered me. I started self-harming. I took razor blades and sliced into my own arms, just to feel something real. Because the physical pain was so much easier to process than the psychological torture. Chad started looking at me with undisguised exhaustion. Until the day Mary walked into the living room and explicitly told me she was pregnant with Chad’s baby. My eyes were totally hollow. I backed away, whispering frantically. “No. No, it isn’t real. You are a hallucination. Get away from me!” Mary stepped forward, backing me into a corner. Her cold, venomous voice drilled directly into my skull. “Chad stopped loving you a long time ago.” “Look at yourself, Harper. Your hair is falling out. You look like a corpse. You are constantly screaming about conspiracies. What kind of man could possibly tolerate a freak like you?” “You should do everyone a favor and kill yourself, just like your crazy mother did!” Every single word she said precisely snapped the fragile, terrified strings holding my sanity together. I lunged forward, desperate to tear her face off. Mary smiled a triumphant, evil smile. She violently shoved the handle of a kitchen knife into my hand. Before I could process what was happening, she forced my own hand backward. The blade tore through my skin, sinking deep into my pregnant belly. Hot, thick blood poured out of me, soaking my clothes. The physical connection between a mother and child is absolute. The agony ripped my soul apart. I looked toward the crack in the study door. I saw a pair of eyes watching me. I begged for help. The excruciating pain swallowed me whole. My knees buckled, and the world violently spun out of control. Through the haze, I swear I saw my baby grow tiny wings, crying softly as it floated up toward the ceiling. Mary started screaming at the top of her lungs. “Harper, no! Stop hurting yourself! Your baby is in there!” “Harper!” Chad threw open the study door and sprinted into the room. He scooped my bleeding body into his arms, a look of pure, horrified devastation on his face. Mary dropped to her knees, sobbing hysterically. “Chad, I tried to stop her! She just grabbed the knife and stabbed herself…” “She… she has completely lost her mind.” When I finally woke up, I was strapped to a bed in a psychiatric ward. My stomach was totally flat. That “treatment” lasted for three excruciating years. 3 “Bang!” Just as my fingers brushed against a rusted key inside the cardboard box, the door to my tiny room was violently kicked open. Mary lunged inside. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and brutally dragged me out of the room and toward the stairs. “Harper, you psychotic b*tch! How dare you hurt my son?!” A tearing agony ripped across my scalp. I lost one of my slippers, my bare foot violently slamming against the wooden stairs, leaving dark purple bruises across my skin. Chad was sitting in the living room, reviewing patient files. Hearing the screaming, he snapped his head up. His face went totally pale. “Mary! What the hell are you doing?!” Mary threw me onto the hardwood floor and shoved her phone directly into Chad’s face. “Look! Look at what this psycho did to our son!” On the screen was a photo of a terrified little boy. There was a glaring, red handprint across his cheek, and his tiny arms and legs were covered in jagged, bloody scratches. Chad sucked in a sharp breath. He slowly turned his head to look at me, his face turning black with fury. “It wasn’t me!” I pushed myself up onto my elbows, desperate. “I swear! I just saw a child pinned under the wardrobe! His little hand was reaching out, trying to scratch at the wood. His fingernails were completely peeled off…” “Stop lying!” Mary shrieked. “You disgusting freak! You smashed the lock, broke into his playroom, and tortured my son!” “I am going to kill you!” Mary raised her hand and slapped me across the face again. This time, Chad didn’t even try to stop her. My cheek burned like fire. A high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears. “Harper! I bring you back to this house out of pity, and you are trying to drive us all insane?!” The very last trace of warmth in Chad’s eyes completely vanished. Mary collapsed against the sofa, sobbing violently. “Chad, this time she just tortured him. What about next time?” “Next time, she is going to murder all three of us in our sleep!” “This is exactly what psychopaths do! You are a doctor, you know this better than anyone!” Chad closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath. When he opened them again, there was nothing left but overwhelming disgust and total exhaustion. “You need to go back to the hospital. You can’t stay here.” “I am telling you the truth!” I lunged forward and grabbed his forearm. “Go upstairs and look in the master bedroom! Go look under the wardrobe! That poor baby…” “Enough!” Chad violently threw my arm off of him. The force sent me crashing backward into the glass coffee table. The table shattered into pieces. Jagged shards of glass sliced into the palms of my hands. Thick drops of blood fell onto the floor. Drip. Drip. “I am done.” Chad stared at my bleeding hands. A microscopic flash of guilt crossed his eyes, but it was immediately swallowed by sheer exhaustion. “You are never going to get better. And I… I am so incredibly tired, Harper.” His voice dropped to a cold, dead whisper. “Maybe the path your mother took is the only way you will ever find peace.” Boom. It felt like a bomb went off inside my skull. All the blood drained from my face. It felt like every single bone in my body had just been crushed into powder. Then, like a complete lunatic, I started to laugh. “You don’t have to call them. I will leave myself.” The man who promised to spend the rest of his life protecting me, the man who swore he would never let me end up like my mother—he was dead. No. He had been dead for years. I was just too pathetic to realize it. I dragged myself off the floor, walked back to the tiny storage room, and picked up the rusted key. It was the key to my late mother’s apartment. I wasn’t completely homeless, despite what Chad wanted to believe. Then, I reached into the box, pulled out the yellowing divorce agreement Chad had drafted a year ago, and signed my name. I dragged the final stroke of the pen out long and hard, severing every last tie to my past. When I walked back downstairs, Chad was standing at the bottom of the steps, watching me. We stared at each other in total, suffocating silence. Neither of us said a word. Outside, a taxi honked its horn impatiently. It was time to go. As I walked out the front door, he followed me all the way to the cab. “Harper…” Chad’s eyes were a chaotic storm of emotion. Conflict. Guilt. Exhaustion. “I can drive you.” “No.” I turned around and took one final look at the house we had shared for years. A single tear slipped down my cheek. “Here is the key to your house. And the divorce papers are signed.” “From this second forward, we owe each other absolutely nothing.” Chad stared at the key and the papers in my hand. He didn’t take them. His voice was thick and raspy. “Just focus on getting your treatment. Once you are stabilized, we can talk about the divorce.” “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Just go back to the ward and let them help you.” In that exact moment, a strange, suffocating sense of panic suddenly gripped Chad’s chest. “I am done with treatment.” I smiled softly. “If I am crazy, then I am crazy.” “But you really should go check on the kid pinned under the wardrobe in the master bedroom.” “I know the hospital director told you I was stabilized, but consider it peace of mind.” Chad’s entire body went rigid. The panic in his chest spiked, and he instinctively looked up toward the window of the master bedroom. I turned around, opened the door of the cab, and slid into the back seat. As the car slowly pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, I didn’t look back once. “Ahhhhhhh!!!!!” An agonizing, blood-curdling scream erupted from the second floor of the house. Mary burst through the doors onto the second-floor balcony, stumbling and collapsing against the railing. Clutched in her arms was the crushed, lifeless, brutally mangled body of a small child. “My baby… my baby… she murdered our baby!!!” “Chad! Stop her! Harper is a murderer!”

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The System required me to win the heart of the male lead, a boy born with telepathy who would grow up to be a ruthless, cold-blooded, and brooding psychopath. I pondered for a moment and chose to enter the world when the male lead was exactly one year old. The System: [?] “Starting today, I will be his legal guardian. I will teach him to obey the law, respect women, stay optimistic, and be a decent human being,” I said without batting an eye. “A truly excellent romance strategy should start with a proper education.” The System was convinced: [You make a valid point.] So, on a day with heavy snow, I picked up the one-year-old male lead, Robin Winter, who had been abandoned at the hospital. Six years later, at the children’s home I opened, he asked me in his sweet, childish voice, “Miss Ellie, what does it mean to win someone’s heart?” I gently patted his head. “It means I want you to feel all the care and love this world has to offer.” Seven-year-old Robin’s eyes sparkled, and he spun around in pure joy. “I love you too, Miss Ellie!” Around him, the male lead’s future subordinates, business partners, mortal enemies, and childhood sweethearts all swarmed around me, chirping, “We love Miss Ellie the most!” The System: [The male lead’s affection meter is maxed out. Host’s mission is complete… Wait, you can do it like this?!] 01 After dying from severe overwork, I was forced to bind with a System and accept a romance mission. The System transmitted the original plot to me. I looked at the files showing a handsome but utterly apathetic teenage boy and fell into deep thought. He was being trampled underfoot, covered in bruises and cuts. His eyes were filled with an inorganic, dead gray, so indifferent that he looked entirely detached from the world. The System spoke in a rigid, mechanical tone: [Once you enter the world, you can take him home. Right now, he is working odd jobs on the streets and suffering endless bullying. He might not trust you at first, so you will need to melt his frozen heart with love. Also, he has a childhood sweetheart, his first love. According to our projections, after he reunites with her, the two of you will have a massive misunderstanding…] I interrupted it. “How old is he? He looks like a young teenager.” It paused for a second. [This is a photo of him at fourteen.] “Then why is he working on the streets?” I frowned. “At that age, he should be in middle school.” The System: […He has no money. He dropped out.] “Public education is free and mandatory through high school. The foster system should also be covering his basic needs,” I pointed out the glaring issue. “The group home he was placed in is clearly non-compliant and violating regulations.” The System was baffled by my logic. [Is… is that how it works?] “It seems the child welfare system in this region is severely flawed,” I mused for a moment. “Just send me into this world. I already know exactly what I need to do.” The System perked up. [Great! So which timeline would you like to drop into? When he’s fourteen and being humiliated by customers? Or when he’s eighteen and unconscious in a dark alley? Or maybe when he’s twenty-three…] I said, “When he is one year old, obviously.” The System: [?] When Robin Winter was born, he was sickly and frail. His father was unknown, and his mother died in childbirth. When he was just a year old, his distant relatives abandoned him at the entrance of a local hospital. It was the dead of winter, with a massive blizzard howling. Robin spiked a dangerously high fever and permanently lost a portion of his hearing. Yet, as the male lead, he possessed a unique protagonist perk—telepathy. From that day on, even though his physical world grew muted and quiet, the malicious thoughts of everyone around him constantly screamed in his head. I stood at the hospital entrance, looking down at the baby sleeping soundly in my arms, and said bluntly, “Since you expect me to complete a mission, you need to give me a cheat code. Like unlimited funds, for example. Otherwise, your male lead is going to starve to death.” [Is this really allowed?] The System sounded incredibly anxious after unlocking the funds for me, asking for the thirteenth time, [Should I just fast-forward you ten years into the future?] “Let’s not be a predator,” I wagged my finger. “I am twenty-two years old. When it comes to a romance mission, raising a one-year-old is acceptable. Hitting on an eighteen-year-old is not. Sixteen is absolutely out of the question, and eleven is just criminal.” The System: […] Bathing in the radiant light of my morality and respect for the law, it fell into a daze, utterly speechless. “Let’s go,” I said. “We have a lot of work to do.” For starters, I needed to look up the licensing requirements and qualifications needed to take over an orphanage. The Haven Children’s Home, where Robin was originally supposed to end up, was horribly mismanaged. But that didn’t matter. I could overhaul it myself. I wrapped the baby’s blanket a little tighter and carried him into the hospital. “Hopefully we’re not too late, and his hearing can still be saved.” 02 The System forged all the necessary legal identification for me. First, I got Robin fully treated at the hospital. Then, I officially took over the dilapidated Haven Children’s Home. The facility had been bankrupt and effectively abandoned for years. There were no children and no staff. It was only temporarily seized by the county this year, leaving everything in complete chaos and desperate need of rebuilding. My previous job in the real world had been at a foster facility, so I was incredibly familiar with the protocols—especially with the System helping me cut through the red tape. Robin was an abandoned infant. After the hospital handed his case to the police, I pulled some strings, officially fostered him, and brought him into Haven Children’s Home as its very first and only child. It was the exact same trajectory as the original plot, but the difference was that this time, the director of the orphanage was me. While caring for Robin, I simultaneously reconstructed the entire facility, systematically upgrading the infrastructure and living conditions. Everything progressed incredibly smoothly, which left the System in a state of profound shock. Because Robin’s affection meter toward me was skyrocketing. It was already at eighty. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. For a toddler, the person they love the most is obviously the one who feeds and cuddles them every single day. Even though Robin didn’t understand the complex concept of “love” yet, he had already learned to reach his chubby little arms out whenever I approached, flashing me a goofy, toothy smile. Whenever this happened, the System would mutter to itself: [How is this happening? You can do it like this? I didn’t know you could do it like this…] I ignored its existential crisis, looking up at the beautifully renovated children’s home. “The efficiency is great. Now I just need to figure out if there are decent educational facilities nearby.” I had reviewed the local zoning laws. A children’s home was legally permitted to operate its own on-site school, but Haven currently didn’t meet the strict educational standards. I was going to have to work harder. The System: […] It didn’t understand human zoning laws, so it chose to remain silent. Because I got him to the hospital in time and took meticulous care of him, Robin grew up to be exceptionally healthy. By the time he was three, he was running and jumping everywhere, calling me “Miss Ellie” in his sweet, milky voice. Little Robin looked up at me and asked, “Miss Ellie, what does my name mean?” I picked him up and told him that on the day he came into this world, it was snowing. And his mother happened to love robins, the little birds that brave the winter. He was still too young to grasp the permanence of death and separation, but I didn’t want to erase the beautiful origin of his name just to protect him. Robin nodded, half-understanding. “My name means the bird mommy liked. And mommy liked me too.” “Yes,” I gently stroked his hair. “She loved you very much.” He beamed, flashing that same goofy, adorable smile. On the day I taught Robin how to write his own name, I asked the System, “Are there different types of Systems out there?” [Umm…] The System was stumped by my question and thought about it seriously. [I don’t know for sure, but we are all Romance Systems.] “You guys,” I caught the nuance in its phrasing. “You have coworkers?” [Yes, but I don’t have a name.] “Do they have names?” [They all picked names for themselves,] the System said blankly. [My friends are named Clemency, Justice, Medic, and Scholar…] I asked, “Why don’t you give yourself a name like they did?” The System hesitated for a few seconds. [Because some of the older Systems said they were slacking off. They said that once you pick a name, you end up getting distracted by other things instead of the mission.] “You can do other things too. Like helping me run this children’s home,” I said. “I’m still technically doing the romance mission, so it’s not slacking off.” [Really?] The System sounded suddenly excited. [I can pick my own name too?] “Yes,” I said warmly. “What do you want to be called?” [Then… I want to run this home with you,] it said. [I want to be called Felix. It means lucky and happy.] I smiled. “Felix. I like it.” It went quiet for a long time, but I guessed it had probably run off to share the good news with its friends. 03 On the day Haven Children’s Home officially reopened its doors to the public, I brought Robin with me to welcome the new kids. I had read the files. Likely due to the gravitational pull of the original plot, Robin’s former childhood sweetheart and future white moonlight, Chloe Bennett, was among the new arrivals. Her parents had both died in a tragic car accident, after which she was sent to the orphanage. In the original timeline, when she was eight, her adoptive parents took her and immigrated overseas. The plot didn’t dwell much on that period, but for Chloe to go from a sweet, innocent little girl to a classic, vicious antagonist later on, her time overseas must have been utterly miserable. I carefully reviewed her file and realized that the couple who originally adopted her hadn’t actually met the strict legal requirements for adoption at all. It was another failure of the welfare system’s lack of oversight. So, looking at the timid, trembling little girl in front of me, I crouched down and gently rubbed her head. “Don’t be scared, Chloe. This is your home now.” She looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. Perhaps because my gaze was entirely patient, and sensitive children could easily detect the absence of malice, she cautiously reached out her chubby little hand and grasped my finger. The adorable little girl still had tear tracks on her pale cheeks, but as I held her in my arms and gave her a piece of candy, she showed her very first smile of the day, softly mirroring the others and calling me, “Miss Ellie.” Robin, meanwhile, kept a very serious, tight expression on his face, nervously but proudly leading the new kids on a tour of the facility. I had officially assigned this task to him. He took his responsibility very seriously, acting like a true senior resident, weaving in and out among the crowd of new children. I watched him comfort one crying toddler, hand a piece of candy to another, and pump his little fist, swearing that this was the absolute best home in the world. I couldn’t help but laugh. That afternoon, I put the kids down for their naps. Robin was clearly too excited to sleep. He even leaned in and whispered to me, “Miss Ellie, out of all the new kids today, I like Caleb the most. He’s so cool!” Me: “Oh? Is that so?” The name Caleb Thorne… why did it sound so familiar? I looked at the birthmark on the little boy named Caleb’s face and finally remembered: Wasn’t this Robin’s future mortal enemy, the terrifying mob boss Caleb Thorne?! Me: Looks like I need to move the legal and ethics classes up the schedule. Right now, Caleb was incredibly timid. He kept his head down and rarely spoke. Because of the large birthmark on his face and some minor developmental delays, his biological parents had abandoned him. Abandonment is a felony. Seeing the deep insecurity and sadness in Caleb’s eyes, I pulled Robin aside. He must have heard my internal thoughts, because his face crumpled into a sad expression. He said gloomily, “Miss Ellie, did Caleb’s mommy and daddy really not want him?” Robin, with his telepathy, never hid anything from me. But we had pinky-promised that his ability was our special secret. So I answered him seriously. “What his mommy and daddy did was very wrong. They broke the law, and they will be punished.” Robin looked confused but nodded. “I want to be his friend.” “Then take him out to the garden to play,” I suggested. “Didn’t you tell me yesterday that you wanted a friend to go on the seesaw with you?” Robin’s eyes lit up, but then he wilted again. “But it’s nap time right now.” “That’s okay, today is a special exception,” I ruffled his hair. “Robin, from now on, we are Caleb’s family. I want Caleb to be happy. Can you help me do that?” Robin puffed his chest out, full of energy. “I can!” I unlocked the garden doors, waved them out, and watched the two tiny silhouettes cheer quietly as they ran toward the seesaw in the sunlight. I walked back into the dormitory. Sure enough, a bunch of little heads quickly ducked back under their blankets. I stifled a laugh. “Can’t anyone sleep?” Dead silence. Only Chloe peeked her head out, pointing a tiny finger toward the garden window. “I want to play with Miss Ellie too,” she said in a babyish voice. “Then let’s all go out to the garden,” I smiled warmly. “But just remember, it’s nap time. This is a one-time exception, okay?” “Okay!” The previously anxious and rigid kids instantly lit up, responding in unison. Like a flock of happy little birds, they rushed out into the garden. I strolled leisurely behind them, chatting with Felix. [Why is their affection for you so high, Host? I’ve never seen a mission progress this fast…] “Have you ever heard a certain story?” I thought for a moment. “A demon sealed in a bottle once promised that whoever freed him would be granted infinite power and wealth. But when a fisherman finally found him centuries later, the demon had grown resentful. He decided to punish the fisherman because he had taken too long to arrive.” [That story is in my database.] “Love works the same way,” I said calmly. “Winning someone’s heart is essentially an exchange. You give love, you receive love. But if someone goes their entire childhood starved of affection, do you really think some calculated, impure affection later in life will win them over? If I had shown up when Robin was fifteen or sixteen, there is absolutely no way I could have ever competed with Chloe, who would have grown up beside him.” [So you chose the one-year-old timeline purely to guarantee the mission’s success?] “Not entirely.” I smiled, scooping up a little girl who ran toward me, gently patting her head. “I just wanted to teach you something.” [What is it?] “The word ‘romance’ or ‘capture’ is far too narrow,” I said. “There are so many different kinds of love in this world. Teaching them what true love looks like—that counts as winning their hearts, too.” [Host, you really are different from anyone else I’ve ever met.] “How many people have you actually met? To me, you’re just a kid too,” I sat on a swing, holding the little girl in my lap. “Maybe in your System’s background check, they saw that ‘nurturing’ was my actual profession—and that’s why you chose me.” [Wait, what did you do for a living before?] Felix sounded confused. [But so many people loved you in your old world, Host.] “Did they?” I paused, letting out a very soft laugh. “I used to work in special education.” I was the undeniable black sheep of the Vance family. All my siblings had grand ambitions; they either took over corporate empires or became shining stars in the art world. I was the only one who buried myself in a tiny, rural town, volunteered as a teacher for years, then transferred to a special-needs school, and finally just opened my own foster home. Most orphans are not perfectly healthy children. They often carry various physical or psychological traumas. At first, when my family came to visit me, they would be horrified by the occasional bruises or scratches on my arms. They asked me more than once, “Eleanor Vance, have you completely lost your mind?” Outsiders understood it even less. The Vance children were raised in the lap of luxury. Why did Eleanor turn out so thoroughly devoid of aristocratic grace? But in a person’s life, there are always one or two defining moments that completely change who they are. I had no intention of judging what was “noble” or “low-class,” nor did I want to use grandiose words to prove how “transcendent” I was. In truth, I was just an incredibly ordinary person among the masses who happened to choose this specific path. So, I brushed off their doubts and mockery with a simple smile. “Just like the rest of you, I’m just doing what I want to do.” Felix asked me, [So, what was the event that completely changed you?] “Who knows,” I said. “My childhood memories are pretty blurry now. But there must have been something like that.” Actually, I did remember. I remembered when my elite private school held a charity event. We dressed up in our fancy little dresses and tailored suits and went to the special education school next door to hand out gifts. But we didn’t actually meet a single student that day. I overheard their teachers saying they were worried the kids might hurt us, so they locked them all in their dormitories. We just placed books and clothes on their empty desks, took some PR photos, and prepared to leave. I saw a book sitting on one of the desks. It was a fairy tale book, and scrawled on the cover in crooked handwriting was a single line: Timmy asked, what do stars look like? I want to know too. Do they taste like candy? In that fairy tale, the stars in the sky were all made of candy. Could Timmy not see the stars? And what about the owner of the book—had he never tasted candy? I looked down at my pristine, expensive dress, reached into my pocket, and struggled to pull out a single piece of candy. I quietly slipped it inside the pages of the book. Before we left, I glanced back at the dormitory building. I saw a few smudged, dirty little faces pressed against the windows, watching us. I suddenly felt incredibly sad. I had only brought one piece of candy, and I had only left one. I could only let one child taste the stars. 04 I spent the next week working non-stop. The arrival of the new kids brought life and vitality to this small patch of land, but it also brought a mountain of new responsibilities. From things as small as choosing the brand of milk the kids drank, to things as massive as hiring new teachers—as a one-woman management team, I had to handle everything personally. Thankfully, I had the ultimate cheat code, Felix. He helped me monitor the children’s status to prevent any accidents. Otherwise, even if I split myself into three people, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Our home wasn’t huge. I had already hired cooks, cleaners, nurses, and care aides. But the role of academic educators was crucial, especially since I planned to set up actual classes soon. I needed people who were absolutely reliable. After several rounds of interviews, I finally found someone who perfectly matched what I was looking for. She was a girl who, based purely on looks, could have been a movie star. She was young, with a neat bob cut, bright eyes, a gentle personality, and a small red mole near the corner of her eye. Honestly, I could tell her family was probably quite wealthy. From her elegant speech to her natural grace, she gave off the aura of a girl who had been cherished her entire life. Yet, her skin was tanned, and her cheeks carried the distinct, rosy flush of someone who had spent a lot of time working outdoors under the harsh sun. “My name is Clara Hayes,” the girl said, her eyes shining like stars. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Miss Vance.” I reached out and shook her hand. “Welcome aboard, Clara.” Clara’s hiring freed up a lot of my time to focus on getting the kids’ education sorted out. Well-funded orphanages usually had their own on-site classrooms, while smaller ones sent the kids to local public schools. Considering the special needs of several of our children, I decided to set up separate, in-house classes for them. After finalizing the paperwork, Clara and I hired a few more subject teachers and officially launched the in-house curriculum. Since we didn’t have that many kids, we only formed one main class. We held a democratic vote for the name, and the kids loved the word “Seedlings.” And just like that, Haven Children’s Home’s very first class, the Seedlings Class, was born. I was highly experienced in this field, and Clara had clearly done extensive homework, so the classes ran incredibly smoothly. In early childhood development, the priority isn’t just cramming facts; it’s about building good habits and forming healthy personalities. I set up a Storytime class, reading them a new fairy tale every single day. In the world of fairy tales, the storm always passes, the villains always lose, the princess meets her prince, the ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan, and the little animals you save always return to repay your kindness. Life is obviously more than just fairy tales. Maybe when they grow up, they’ll realize the world isn’t exactly like the stories. But I still wanted them to believe in the magic of those tales for now. However, right after my Storytime, Clara would come in to teach Safety Education. While you shouldn’t harbor malicious intent toward others, you must always stay guarded. I could teach them to be kind to the world, but someone also needed to teach them that not everyone is kind. They needed to learn to be vigilant and know how to protect themselves. I appointed Robin as the Class President of the Seedlings Class. The little boy immediately awakened to a fierce sense of “civic duty,” dedicating every day to maintaining peace and harmony in the classroom. The little president was usually brimming with fighting spirit, but occasionally, he faced setbacks. Like today. “Miss Ellie, Caleb cried today,” he said, resting his chin gloomily on my knee. “I heard him thinking about why his mommy and daddy didn’t want him.” Ever since Caleb moved into the home, he had become much more cheerful, but sometimes, in the late afternoons, he would still cry secretly. Robin couldn’t solve his friend’s emotional distress, so he came to me for advice. When I told Robin his story, I said his mother loved him very much. Because of that, Robin couldn’t comprehend why Caleb’s parents would abandon their own child. I rubbed Robin’s head gently. “Robin, people are all different. Some parents… just don’t love their children.” Robin pursed his lips. “Then why did they have him?” “There are many reasons, and we can’t always know them. But what I want to tell you is that Caleb’s parents abandoning him is a crime,” I said. “There are a lot of abandoned children in this world. Caleb is lucky to have a friend like you to care about him, but many other kids don’t even have friends.” Robin’s dark eyes went wide. “Really?” “Yes,” I offered him a suggestion. “When you get a little older, you and Caleb can work together to protect all the kids out there who are just like him.” Robin listened intently, stood up, and his little feet pitter-pattered toward the door. “I’m going to tell Caleb! Bye, Miss Ellie!” I smiled warmly. “Go on, Robin.” In truth, in the original novel, Caleb was fiercely protective of his people. The subordinates in his mafia syndicate were mostly street orphans—kids without parents. I didn’t believe that was a coincidence. Even though the photos from the plot files showed a terrifying man with a birthmark and eyes devoid of emotion, perhaps, in his own lonely childhood, he had desperately craved that exact kind of protection. They say that the things people do as adults are often ways to overcompensate for their childhood traumas. I thought to myself: At the very least, Caleb definitely isn’t going to become a mob boss this time around.

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When I opened my eyes and realized I had been reborn right before the start of spring break, the very first thing I did was decisively quit the research lab I had poured years of my life into. Because I knew exactly what was coming. In just a few days, Wyatt, the golden boy junior researcher, would flagrantly violate safety protocols and cross-contaminate our most critical biological samples. In my past life, out of the goodness of my heart, I rushed back to the lab to clean up his mess and painstakingly rerun the control experiments. Against all odds, I successfully saved the multi-million dollar federal project. But when the oversight board came looking for someone to blame, Wyatt completely twisted the truth and framed me. “It was Nathan! He was messing with the calibration on the equipment and almost destroyed all of our experimental results!” Professor Sylvia and the rest of the lab swallowed his lies without a second thought, condemning me on the spot. I had absolutely nowhere to turn. My hard-earned reputation was violently shredded, and I became an academic outcast hunted by public outrage. Every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears I had poured into my entire life evaporated into thin air. Driven into a state of absolute mental collapse, I lost my footing on the roof of the science building and plunged to my death. Now that the universe has given me a second chance, I am cutting the cord. I am walking away from their toxic, venomous web before it can drag me under again. 1 When I handed the transfer request to Professor Sylvia, her beautifully shaped eyebrows twitched in surprise. “Nathan,” she said, her tone dripping with disbelief. “Do you have any idea what you are doing?” My expression didn’t change. I was as calm as a frozen lake. “I do. This is a decision I made after very careful consideration.” Sylvia looked me up and down, a mocking smirk curling her lips. “This is about Wyatt, isn’t it?” I blinked, genuinely confused for a second. Sylvia leaned back in her plush leather chair and sighed as if she were dealing with a petulant child. “Wyatt joined the lab after you did. I know that. But his natural talent for research is miles ahead of yours, and frankly, he is much better at working with people.” “You are just jealous of him, and that’s why you are throwing this little tantrum and trying to leave.” Hearing her absurd accusation, I didn’t even get mad. I just gave a tired, dry chuckle. The core bottlenecks of this project? The agonizingly complex control experiments? I was the one who stayed up for five straight days, fueled entirely by black coffee and sheer willpower, to crack them. I was the first to admit I wasn’t some once-in-a-generation genius. But Wyatt? Please. Both my actual talent and my insane dedication to this lab were lightyears beyond anything he could ever manage. The only thing Wyatt excelled at was playing the charming golden boy. He knew exactly how to suck up to people, and both the other lab members and our professor absolutely adored him. Every single time I broke my back compiling flawless data sets or designing a brilliant new testing protocol, Wyatt would swoop in, slap his name on it, and take all the credit. It wasn’t like I had never fought back. But whenever I did, Wyatt would just widen his eyes and play the innocent victim. And Sylvia would immediately turn on me, her voice sharp with disappointment. “Nathan, why do you always have to be so glory-hungry?” “Are you really not going to be satisfied until you steal every single ounce of credit for yourself?” Because of that, I stopped defending myself. I just became quieter, swallowing the injustice to keep the peace. It took dying once for me to finally wake up. They didn’t believe me because they had already decided I was the villain from day one. So no matter how loudly I screamed the truth, it was totally useless. “Yep, you are totally right. You nailed it,” I said, leaning against her desk and shrugging indifferently. Seeing that I was totally unfazed by her scolding, Sylvia sneered. She grabbed her expensive fountain pen, slashed her signature across the transfer form, and slammed her official stamp onto the paper. As I turned to leave, she called out to me, her tone condescending. “Nathan, since I have been your mentor for so long, I will give you one last bit of grace.” “I will give you exactly three days. If you realize what a massive mistake you are making, you can come back and withdraw this application.” “I won’t,” I replied without a second of hesitation. Right at that moment, a head popped through the doorway. It was Wyatt. His eyes were gleaming with obvious excitement, but he immediately forced his face into a mask of tragic heartbreak. “Oh no, Nathan! Why are you leaving? Did I do something to upset you?” I completely ignored him. I reached into my leather satchel and pulled out a thick stack of manila folders, my fingers lightly brushing over the heavy paper. This massive, state-of-the-art laboratory was currently housing a top-tier, federally funded research initiative. Sylvia had basically bet her entire academic reputation and pulled every shady string she had to secure this grant. If this project went down in flames, every single person in this lab would watch their academic careers turn to ash. Their evaluations, their funding, their chances at top Ph.D. programs—gone. But the person who would suffer the most was the lead researcher: Sylvia herself. If the project crashed, the federal oversight committee would descend like vultures. Not only would she be stripped of her research credentials for life, but there was a massive chance she would end up behind bars for academic fraud and gross negligence. In my past life, I knew exactly how devastating the fallout would be. I knew no one in the lab could survive it. So, like an absolute fool, I sacrificed my hard-earned vacation and rushed back to fix the mess. I stayed awake for nearly a week straight, violently dragging the doomed project back from the brink of total annihilation. And my reward? They completely destroyed my reputation and drove me to my death. Now that I had a second chance, I would rather die again than lift a single finger to save these vultures. Wyatt had already walked up to me, still yapping about how sad he was. I kept ignoring him. I kept my face dead blank as I meticulously laid the folders out on Sylvia’s desk. Inside those folders was every single piece of experimental data I had handled over the past few years. The raw data. The backup footage. The logbooks. Every single page was clearly dated and signed by the person who actually performed the work. Wyatt stared at the folders, looking a bit confused. He didn’t have high-level clearance. He wasn’t even qualified to turn on half the multi-million-dollar machines in this room. I was the only one who had executed the high-risk protocol runs. I had spent weeks carefully backing up and categorizing every piece of proof. Every number, every signature, every single comma in those files was ironclad evidence. It was my ultimate insurance policy. 2 “Professor,” I said, tapping my finger on the top document—the official data handover receipt. “Please review everything. Once you confirm the files are complete, unaltered, and fully accounted for, sign the receipt for the official record.” This piece of paper was my shield. It proved that my exit from the lab was one hundred percent compliant with federal regulations. Clear boundaries. Clear accountability. Once I walked out that door, if this lab exploded or a single sample was compromised, it would have absolutely nothing to do with me. They would never be able to dump their dirty water on my head again. Sylvia looked down at the exhaustively detailed logs. Her brows furrowed, and a strange, uneasy look flickered in her eyes. Beside her, Wyatt’s fake smile stiffened. A cold prickle of anxiety suddenly crawled up his spine. Sylvia hesitated for a long time. Finally, she picked up her pen, signed her full name on the handover receipt, pressed her thumbprint over the ink, and stamped both copies. “Fine. Since you are so damn stubborn, I agree. It is better to have the liability lines clearly drawn anyway.” I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. I picked up my copy of the receipt, carefully sliding it into a protective sleeve in my bag. With my insurance secured, I dropped the polite facade. I turned to walk away, my tone freezing cold. “Good. From this second forward, I have absolutely nothing to do with any of you.” Wyatt finally snapped out of his daze and reached out, grabbing my forearm. “Nathan, you are being so impulsive!” “Aren’t you happy? Haven’t you been trying to get rid of me this whole time?” I violently ripped my arm out of his grip. Wyatt’s smile vanished. His face flushed with anger, and he glared at me with pure venom. Then, he quickly turned to Sylvia, lifting his chin with a look of overwhelming arrogance. “Don’t worry, Professor. We will be fine without Nathan. From now on, I will personally shoulder the responsibility of pushing the project forward.” He puffed out his chest, trying to look like the brilliant hero stepping up to save the day. Deep down, Wyatt was absolutely thrilled that I was leaving. It meant my spot was empty. It meant that every single future breakthrough and all the project glory would land directly in his lap. I actually laughed out loud. Sylvia was always busy attending conferences and rubbing shoulders with donors. I was the one who had practically spoon-fed Wyatt every ounce of knowledge he had in this lab. Did this idiot honestly believe he could run the project on his own? Sylvia nodded, looking incredibly touched. “Good. I am glad you have that kind of dedication. Try not to be like some people who run away the second things get a little difficult.” She threw a disgusted glance in my direction. In her eyes, I was as boring and tasteless as a glass of lukewarm water. I was nowhere near as clever or charming as Wyatt. She had always hated looking at me, so my voluntary exit was a total blessing for her. I took in both of their reactions and just smiled. Yep. That was exactly what this team was. They were so blinded by Wyatt’s sweet, innocent act that they were completely blind to the fact that I was the one keeping this lab from collapsing. If I even tried to defend myself, they would call me selfish. I was done wasting my breath on them. I shoved past Wyatt and walked out the door. As I walked down the hall, a few other lab members saw me carrying my things. They laughed and waved. “Wow, Nathan, you are actually bailing?” “Yeah, the project is basically in the final stages. Don’t you think it’s a massive waste to run away now?” “Are you just throwing a tantrum because the Professor likes the new kid more than you?” I focused entirely on packing up the rest of my desk, refusing to even look at them. In my past life, these exact people had enthusiastically helped push me off the ledge. But the twisted part was, before Wyatt joined the lab, these guys had genuinely looked out for me. Maybe it was because I was the youngest guy in the room at the time, but they used to treat me like a little brother. But slowly, over time, everything turned toxic. Once my box was packed, I grabbed it and headed for the exit. The moment my foot crossed the threshold of the building, a massive, suffocating weight vanished from my chest. I felt like I could finally breathe. But I didn’t even make it across the courtyard before two armed campus security officers stepped into my path. “Hold it right there!” I frowned, genuinely confused. But a second later, I knew exactly what was going on. 3 Wyatt strolled out from behind the officers, a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on his face. “Nathan, you know this is a federally funded, highly classified project. The security protocols are extremely strict.” He paused, letting his eyes drop pointedly to the cardboard box in my arms. Then, he dramatically raised his voice, ensuring that every researcher and student walking through the courtyard stopped to watch. “Nathan, you are leaving so suddenly. I am just really worried you might accidentally take some classified documents with you. Please cooperate with security and let them search your things.” He didn’t even try to sugarcoat it. He was dragging me out into the town square and lighting the fire under my feet. He was publicly accusing me of corporate espionage. My grip on the cardboard box tightened, my eyes turning to ice. “There were at least a dozen people watching me pack my desk. I didn’t have the opportunity to steal a single paperclip, let alone classified data.” I swept my gaze over the crowd of my former lab mates standing nearby. Every single one of them immediately looked away, completely silent. I didn’t get mad. I already knew these cowards wouldn’t say a word to defend me. I looked up and saw Sylvia hurrying over, drawn by the commotion. “Professor,” I called out loudly. “Twenty minutes ago, while sitting directly in front of you, I completed a full handover of every single piece of data and equipment I was responsible for.” “The raw data logs and the federal compliance records were perfectly accounted for. You personally signed and stamped the receipt confirming I left nothing behind and took nothing with me.” “And now, with absolutely zero evidence, you are demanding a public search of my personal belongings? I have every right to believe this is targeted harassment.” My mind was working at lightning speed. Since I had already died once because of this lab, I took federal security protocols more seriously than God himself. I had to ensure my reputation remained absolutely spotless. I couldn’t give them a single thread to pull. If I simply bowed my head and let them humiliate me by ripping through my private belongings in the middle of a crowd, the rumor mill would destroy my career regardless of what they found. Sylvia choked on her words. Her face hardened into an ugly scowl. “Enough, Nathan! Your junior colleague has reasonable suspicions. What is the big deal if you just cooperate?” I stared at Wyatt for a long time. Seeing the smug, untouchable arrogance radiating from his eyes, I let out a sharp laugh. “Wyatt does not have security clearance to authorize an audit. Ordering armed guards to detain a researcher who has already completed a legally binding handover is a massive abuse of power and targeted harassment.” The moment I said that, the crowd’s energy shifted. People started looking at Wyatt differently. Wyatt’s face turned bright red. He waved his hands frantically, playing the victim. “Nathan, no! I swear I didn’t mean it like that! I was just terrified something bad would happen! I only did it because I care so much about the project…” I was completely exhausted by his pathetic acting. I took a step forward, holding my box out toward the head security officer. “I will comply with the search. But I have two demands.” “First, the entire search must be recorded on bodycam. Second, when you inevitably find absolutely zero classified material in my possession, you are required to report this incident directly to the Federal Security Bureau and the University’s Academic Integrity Board.” Wyatt froze completely, sheer panic flashing across his eyes. I looked up, making sure the entire crowd heard me loud and clear. “If we really care about preventing data leaks, the board should be investigating the lab’s internal handover procedures and security authorization logs. Not digging through my gym clothes.” Wyatt was just a junior researcher with basic clearance. For him to illegally summon armed guards to detain a colleague was a massive breach of protocol. The only reason the guards actually listened to him was because he had clearly invoked Sylvia’s name to give his orders weight. But if this actually went to the federal board, things would get extremely ugly. There was no physical way Wyatt could have secured an official written mandate from Sylvia in the ten minutes since I left her office. Which meant Wyatt had flagrantly impersonated a lead researcher and abused federal security resources. And me? I had officially surrendered my clearance and handed over all materials twenty minutes ago. Legally, I was totally untouchable. If this got kicked up to the feds, Wyatt would be absolutely butchered. He might even get permanently expelled and blacklisted. 4 The crowd’s whispers grew louder, the stares aimed at Wyatt turning incredibly suspicious. Some people actually started speaking up for me. “Honestly, Nathan doesn’t seem like the type to steal classified data.” “Yeah. If his handover paperwork is legally sound, what the hell are they even suspecting him of?” “Why is this Wyatt kid going after Nathan so hard? Does he actually have proof, or is this just malicious bullying?” All the color drained from Wyatt’s face. He looked like a ghost. He shot a desperate, terrified look at Sylvia. “Professor, I swear I didn’t mean anything malicious! I was just trying to protect…” He was still trying to play the innocent card, but I wasn’t going to let him. Before Sylvia could open her mouth to yell at me again, I placed my cardboard box squarely on the concrete. Right in front of dozens of people, I pulled my things out one by one and handed them to the armed officers. A water bottle. A gym towel. A few extra T-shirts. My electric razor. It was just a pathetic pile of totally normal, boring things. After about ten minutes of thorough searching, the officers looked at each other and shook their heads. The lead officer turned to me, looking deeply embarrassed. “I apologize. Wyatt told us Professor Sylvia had declared a code-red emergency.” “We reacted to the perceived threat without waiting for the official authorization paperwork. That was our failure.” He gave me a stiff, respectful nod. I nodded back. Then, the officer turned slowly to face Wyatt. His voice was like a block of ice. “We have completed the search. Per protocol, we will now be escalating this incident to the Federal Security Bureau exactly as Nathan requested.” The courtyard went dead silent. Hundreds of eyes locked onto Wyatt. It was painfully obvious to everyone now. This wasn’t about security. This was a targeted, malicious hit job. Wyatt’s face burned a humiliating crimson. The look he shot me was so full of venom it was practically glowing. Sylvia looked absolutely humiliated. She glared at me like she wanted me dead, then turned on her heel and stormed away. I packed my boring things back into the box, picked it up, and didn’t spare Wyatt a second glance as I walked away. Everyone in that courtyard thought I was throwing my life away by quitting the lab. They all thought I was destined to fail, that I would never land a decent research project again. They were eagerly waiting to watch me burn. Later that night, Wyatt actually had the nerve to tag me in the massive university group chat. “Nathan, if you ever struggle to find work, just let me know.” “Since we used to be in the same lab, I wouldn’t mind doing you a favor and helping you out.” I raised an eyebrow and let my thumbs fly across the keyboard. “You should probably focus on surviving the federal disciplinary hearing for impersonating a lead researcher and abusing armed security first.” I hit send. The massive group chat instantly died. Half the people in there had no idea what went down in the courtyard. I wasn’t in a rush to explain. A second later, Wyatt’s private messages flooded my screen. He was completely unhinged. “What the hell are you so arrogant about?! As long as Sylvia has my back, nothing is going to happen to me!” “You are just a pathetic loser running away with your tail between your legs! You have absolutely no right to talk down to me!” “Look at how miserable your life is. Even though I joined the lab after you, the second I say you are bullying me, every single person takes my side.” I lowered my eyes, staring at the screen. I honestly couldn’t comprehend why he hated me so much. When he first joined, I did everything in my power to take care of him. We were the only two guys our age in Sylvia’s entire lab. I thought we were a team. I practically held his hand through his first six months. Wyatt clearly sensed my silence, and another message popped up. “Nathan, I absolutely despise that stupid, calm look on your face. I hate how you act like nothing bothers you.” “More importantly, I demand that all the attention in the room be on me. I am supposed to be the golden boy. You were just in my way.” I didn’t reply. I just locked my phone. A strange sense of peace washed over me. So that was it. I didn’t waste another second thinking about him. Since I suddenly had a ton of free time, I booked a flight to Bali for a mini-vacation. Halfway through my trip, I logged into the university portal and saw a massive, campus-wide disciplinary notice. [Wyatt violated federal security protocols. He bypassed the authorization board, invoked a lead researcher’s name to illegally deploy armed security, and maliciously defamed a colleague in public.] Wyatt was stripped of all academic awards and stipends for the current year and the next two years. He was also ordered to submit a ten-thousand-word public apology letter. The moment the notice hit the server, the entire university went into an uproar. I smiled, taking a slow sip of my cocktail while staring at the crystal blue ocean. I let out a long, satisfied breath. Just then, my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I answered it. “Nathan, hello. This is Professor Evelyn.” “I have spent the last few days reviewing your publication history and raw data logs. Your work is absolutely brilliant.” “My lab is currently desperate for someone with your specific skillset to lead our core experimental division. Would you be interested in joining us?” My heart slammed against my ribs. Professor Evelyn was an absolute god in our field. Her lab was the undeniable gold standard across the entire country. I had never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that someone of her caliber would personally extend an olive branch to me. In my past life, I was so blinded by my stupid loyalty to Sylvia’s toxic lab that I completely missed out on opportunities like this. I fought to keep my voice steady. “Thank you so much for the opportunity, Professor Evelyn. I would be incredibly honored to join your team.” But before I could even finish celebrating, my phone started ringing again. It was Wyatt. His voice was completely frantic, bordering on hysterical. “Nathan! Something went wrong! You have to come back to the lab right now!”

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My lover has paranoia. He imagines that I am his nemesis, his mortal enemy, the person he despises most in this world. Day after day, I play along with his delusions. Until one day, I couldn’t play the part anymore. I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. 1 The house was pitch-black when I got home. I set my bag down, kicked off my shoes, and trailed my hand along the wall, slowly feeling my way through the dark. The moment my fingers brushed the light switch, a ceramic plate came flying at my head. I tilted my head, dodging it just in time. The lights flickered on. A man stood on the staircase, staring down at me with an entirely expressionless face. “So you still know how to come back.” “…” I smiled, walking toward him. I reached out and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Can you stop acting like a bitter, neglected housewife, Ethan?” He smelled faintly of floral soap, a scent I specifically picked out for him. I always hoped it would somehow neutralize the freezing aura he radiated. But it never did. The way he looked at me was still full of absolute disgust. 2 The crystal chandelier cast fragmented, glittering light across the room. Yet, the brightly lit living room felt agonizingly cold, and the man sitting right beside me offered no warmth at all. I rested the iPad on my lap, swiping through the pages to show him. “Look at this for our wedding. Should I wear this one?” “The skirt is a mermaid design.” “It’s so pretty, like liquid light slipping right over the fabric.” “Oh, and I love this one too. The veil has a starry night design, just like the time you took me to see the—” A sharp scoff cut off my words. He lifted his gaze, his dark, pitch-black eyes staring dead into mine. “Did we even have a past?” I wanted so desperately to tell the man in front of me that yes, we did. We had so many beautiful, wonderful memories together. But the man in front of me only saw me as an unforgivable, heinous villain. He gripped my chin, his thumb pressing into my skin, and landed a kiss at the corner of my lips. His cold voice carried a ripple of deliberate, elegant seduction. “Be a good girl. Give me the medicine.” 3 The only reason Ethan Hayes listened to me at all was that I held the one thing he desperately craved. If he ever bothered to look through the Seattle Police Department’s internal reports from a few years ago, he would be shocked to find his own name listed under both “Narcotics Commendations” and “Injured in the Line of Duty.” Ethan got hooked on drugs while working deep undercover. And after his undercover days ended, he developed severe paranoid psychosis. Delusional disorder. He categorized almost everyone around him as the enemy—including me. Including the woman he once said he loved the most, the woman he swore to protect with his life. That gentle man was long gone, dragged down into a living hell. His eyes, when he looked at me, were like thousand-year-old ice caves. The bedroom light was dim. I gripped his collar. Even though I had him pinned beneath me, his gaze remained entirely unfazed. Even tainted by addiction, he still looked as pure and untouchable as a god looking down from above. Just the slight curve of his lips was mesmerizing. I leaned down, wanting to kiss him, but with a sudden, practiced twist of his hips, he flipped me over and pinned me to the mattress. He dug into my chest pocket for a moment and pulled out the syringe. With practiced ease, he injected it right into his right arm. … To him, that syringe was his heroin. But it wasn’t. It was a specially formulated psychiatric medication laced with heavy sedatives. You can’t cure a severe addiction overnight; you have to slowly taper the dosage. Lying there, I suddenly understood exactly why he hated me so much. Because, in his eyes… I wasn’t his devoted lover. I was the monster who got him hooked on drugs, the dealer who kept him on a leash by dangling a pathetic little fix in front of him every single day… Just a villain. 4 I had a dream. I dreamed of a few years ago, back when Ethan was still deep undercover. I went to see him on Christmas Eve. We navigated through the thick holiday crowd, only able to truly look at each other while hiding behind the cover of a newspaper. He had both hands shoved in his pockets, leaning lazily against the railing like he didn’t have a bone in his body. Ethan was a gorgeous man. Even a slight smirk made him look dangerously handsome, drawing the eyes of two young women nearby. Right in front of me, he whistled at the two girls. I kicked him in the shin. He let out a dramatic “Ow!” and lowered his voice, leaning in. “Honey, I gotta play the part, right?” He was already starting to carry the grimy, dangerous aura of the criminal underworld, but his eyes were still so clear. The sound of Jingle Bells drifted through the air. He tilted his head back, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Just one more year, they always say. Then another, then another.” It was a line reminiscent of our favorite mob movies. He turned his head, our eyes meeting only through our reflections in the glass pane beside us. “When am I finally going to be able to marry you, Claire?” … I lowered the newspaper and walked past him, our shoulders just barely brushing. “Finish the job. I’m waiting for you.” … He finished the job, but I never got to marry him. When I woke up the next morning, the space next to me in bed was cold and empty. I knew he hated me, that he despised sharing a bed with me. But when I hurried downstairs and couldn’t find him anywhere, a blind panic set in. I tore through every room in the house. He was gone. I tried calling a friend, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone. He was nowhere. I squatted on the floor, clutching my head. Lately, I had been getting these splitting headaches whenever I tried to focus or think too hard. The throbbing pain made my vision blur, but the agonizing anxiety of losing him was far worse. I frantically typed out a text, on the verge of begging my old colleagues at the precinct to run a search. My heart hammered against my ribs, burning hotter and hotter—until a pair of white sneakers stepped into my line of sight. “What are you doing?” The voice was steady, as cold and indifferent as ever. Ethan wasn’t Ethan anymore, yet he was still Ethan. It was just that this detached, icy man standing in front of me could never be reconciled with the sunny, teasing boy in my memories. I stood up and threw my arms around him. I don’t know why, but I loved hugging him. It felt like, if I just held him tightly enough, I could transfer my body heat to him—even if he never hugged me back. “I thought you left, Ethan.” He took a step back, smoothly peeling my arms off him. “I was just out in the back watering the plants.” “…” I smiled, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “What do you want for dinner tonight? I’ll make you—” “Drop the fake act. You don’t even let me out the front door.” He cut me off, snatched a book off the dining table, and walked upstairs. I didn’t let Ethan leave the house because I was terrified of cartel remnants coming after him for revenge. But the more I protected him… The more he felt like a white dove trapped in a cage. And the more he hated me. 5 I went to the hospital for a full-body scan. The headaches had been getting significantly worse over the last few days. I was never someone who liked hospitals, but ever since Ethan’s incident, I had become hyper-vigilant about my health. I was terrified that if I died, there would be no one left to take care of him. He would be left to suffer in his personal hell all alone. At least while I was here, I could sit in the flames with him. Ethan lived in hell. When he was first diagnosed with his delusions, his psychiatrist pulled me aside. He told me that the reason Ethan constantly pushed me away was because, deep in his subconscious, he believed that as a junkie, he was no longer worthy of me. The cartel boss had forced him to test the product. Forced him to shoot up. He had no choice. A decorated cop, turned into a heroin addict. That was Ethan’s personal hell. I couldn’t drag him out of it, but I could stay in the dark with him. The test results wouldn’t be ready for a while, so on my way home, aside from picking up groceries, I bought a bouquet of baby’s breath. When Ethan was undercover, he used to send me flowers all the time. He couldn’t send them to my real address, so he sent them to our secret spot. Ethan’s handwriting was terrible, but he tirelessly wrote little notes on the cards anyway. Short, sweet little love letters. “I’m no poet, Claire, otherwise I’d write you the moon.” “Watched the sunset today. It wasn’t a fraction as pretty as it is when you’re here.” “The wind blew off the lake, and the wind told me I miss you.” “Claire, seriously, I miss you so damn much.” “…” I could perfectly picture the scene. Him, stuck in some damp, miserable trap house under the cartel’s thumb. Tilting his head, leaning against a dirty windowsill, writing out these incredibly sappy lines. And then smiling to himself as he tucked them into the bright, blooming flowers. 6 Lately, even our home had stopped being a safe haven. Several luxury cars were parked outside my house. Holding the bouquet of baby’s breath, my heart plummeted like a stone the moment I saw the front door wide open. I kept telling myself to breathe, but a sudden, blunt force of pain slammed into my skull, forcing me to grip the doorframe to stay upright. Three men in black suits and sunglasses stood in the entryway. Sitting gracefully on my living room sofa was a woman. “Detective Vance. Even if you’re a cop, trespassing is still a crime.” I slowly set the flowers down on the entryway console and spoke to the woman on the couch. She tilted her head and offered a slow, deliberate smile. “Illegal imprisonment is also a crime. And you’re not a cop anymore, Claire.” “…” I was accusing her of breaking in; she was accusing me of locking Ethan up and restricting his freedom. Victoria Vance. The sole, precious daughter of the Seattle Police Commissioner, and my… rival. She loved Ethan, too. “I’m taking Ethan with me.” She raised her chin, looking down to casually inspect her flawless manicure. “Not happening.” I leaned heavily on the coffee table, glaring at her. “Why isn’t it happening? The department universally agrees that you are no longer capable of managing Ethan’s treatment. He’s been with you all this time, and he hasn’t improved at all.” “I have the best medical resources. The absolute best psychiatrists. Only with me can he get the care he—” “I am his fiancée.” I cut her off. The woman finally looked up at me, pure disdain reflecting beneath her immaculate makeup. “Says who? He didn’t marry you. Ethan never married you.” “He said he would.” “But now he hates you. Watch.” Victoria pulled a pocketknife from her coat and pressed it directly against my throat. She turned me to face the staircase. There, Ethan was slowly walking down. The man watched with a completely blank expression as Victoria held a blade to my neck. “See? Even if I killed you right here, he wouldn’t even blink.” It felt like she was choking me, whispering, Look. You gave him everything, and he threw it to the dogs. How good had I been to Ethan? I had practically carved out my own heart and handed it to him. Yet when my life was threatened, he didn’t even spare me a second glance. It felt like no matter how hard I tried, it was all useless. Then… I guess I just have to try harder. That was our promise. Ethan and I had promised we would never give up on each other. No matter what. Slowly, I brought my bare hand up and gripped the sharp edge of the blade. Victoria obviously didn’t really want to stab me; she visibly flinched and paused. “I am not letting you take Ethan.” In the silent, tense standoff, she suddenly laughed. “Fine. Then let’s play fair.” “Let Ethan choose. Whoever he chooses, he goes with.” “How about it?” … Ethan wasn’t an object. He wasn’t a prize to be won. After they finally left, I sat alone on the sofa. The lighting in the living room really was too dim. I needed to remember to buy new bulbs. I kept my head down until a shadow fell over me. He stood in front of me, his voice entirely flat and monotone. “They didn’t break in. I opened the door and let them inside.” “When she put that knife to your throat, I really didn’t feel a thing.” “…” Ethan knew exactly how to twist the knife into my heart. I looked up at him. Reflected in his pitch-black eyes, I saw just how utterly broken I looked. I asked him softly. “So you want to leave with her? Is that it?” “…” He didn’t answer. …Makes sense. To Ethan, leaving with Victoria was just trading one cage for another. What he didn’t know was that he himself was the cage. Dark, sunless, and full of endless torment.

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1 At yet another Montgomery family dinner, Chris’s new female assistant sat right in the chair that belonged to me. I looked at my husband. “She is sitting in the seat meant for the lady of the house. Do you have absolutely nothing to say about this?” Chris rolled his eyes, his voice dripping with his usual annoyance. “If you can’t be bothered to show up on time, don’t cry about losing your seat. Sit in one of the empty chairs. If you don’t want to sit, then get the hell out.” I opened my mouth to argue, but Chris’s inner voice flooded my mind before I could speak. [Come on, get mad. Tell me you need me. Tell them you belong right next to me. Prove you love me. That is the only way I feel safe.] This time, I refused to satisfy his twisted cravings. I just lowered my head and slowly slipped the diamond wedding band off my finger. “Since there isn’t even a place left for the lady of the house, I guess I am no longer needed here.” “Let’s get a divorce.” The heavy ring hit the mahogany table with a sharp, crisp clink. Chris’s face drained of color. Even his parents, who had been quietly enjoying the drama, suddenly looked panicked. Six years. I had lived like this for six solid years. Every single time Chris used his words like poisoned blades to cut me down, I never needed him to coax me back. All I had to do was listen to his desperate, begging inner thoughts, and I would foolishly run right back into his arms to make peace. Over time, his family grew completely used to this toxic dance. His mother would even laugh and joke about it. She would say that an awkward, stubborn man just needed a wife who wouldn’t run away no matter how hard he yelled. So the moment I took off the ring, Mrs. Montgomery practically leaped out of her seat. “Sundra… what is wrong? Are you just in a bad mood today? You are normally never this petty.” Mr. Montgomery slammed his fork down, looking stern. “This is a family dinner. Even if you are throwing a tantrum, you do not joke about divorce. Put the ring back on.” I let out a soft, dry laugh. “Oh, you know it is a family dinner? So when exactly did Assistant Lily become a member of the family?” The older couple instantly choked on their words. Chris stood up abruptly. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle twitched. “Sundra, are you done being dramatic?” “You want a divorce? Fine! Then get the hell out of my sight right now! This house doesn’t welcome an ungrateful stray dog like you!” Beneath those sharp, familiar words, his inner voice was a bleeding mess. [Sundra, why? Why do you want a divorce? Are you throwing me away? Didn’t you promise you would love me forever?] [This is a sick joke, right? As long as I lose my temper, you will rush over and hug me. You always do.] I had swallowed these agonizing, two-faced emotions for an entire decade. When I first met Chris, he suffered from severe emotional trauma and a crushing inability to express affection. He literally could not voice his true feelings. He used the cruelest, most sarcastic words as a shield to attack anyone who tried to get close. And I, like a fool, became the lucky girl who could hear his true thoughts. Whenever he screamed at me to get out, his inner voice would be on its knees, begging: [Don’t leave. I need you.] Because my heart broke for him, I slowly fell in love with him. Four years of dating. Six years of marriage. Because I stayed by his side, he finally opened his locked-up heart. He stopped needing medication to function like a normal human being. But over the past six years, a sick pattern emerged. He was gentle and polite to every stranger he met. Yet to me, his wife, he offered nothing but coldness and biting insults. It was not like I never felt wronged. I cried. I hurt. But his mother would always pat my hand and say that Chris was sick in the head. She told me he wasn’t normal, that I needed to give him grace. She insisted his cruelty was just a front and that his heart belonged entirely to me. Because I could hear his thoughts, I believed her. Until his assistant, Lily, showed up. Chris, a man who didn’t possess a single romantic bone in his body, rented out an entire amusement park for Lily’s birthday. I had been admiring a certain diamond necklace for six months. He bought it without blinking and fastened it around Lily’s neck. He even brought her to our private family dinners. His inner voice would chant over and over that he loved me, desperately craving my jealousy to soothe his deep-seated insecurities. But as I looked at my seat, the seat I had earned through ten years of blood and tears, happily occupied by another woman while I was shoved into a corner… I suddenly woke up. I had been lying to myself this whole time. Where a man puts his tenderness, that is where his love truly lies. 2 Looking at Chris’s trembling lips, my face remained perfectly calm. “Okay. I am leaving.” Ignoring his parents’ urgent shouts, I turned and walked straight toward the foyer. Just as my hand touched the door handle, a brutal grip clamped around my wrist, jerking me backward. [Sundra, are you actually mad? I am so scared. Are you throwing me away?] [If you leave me, I will die!] [Please don’t throw me away!] The frantic, screaming thoughts swarmed my brain, wrapping tightly around my chest. Shocked, I looked back at Chris. The rims of his eyes were a glaring, bloodshot red. For a second, my heart wavered. Then, his icy voice smashed into me. “You can leave, but take off the shoes on your feet! I bought those for you!” My entire body went rigid. I looked down at the faded, well-worn flats on my feet. He bought them for me right after we got married. He had simply dropped the box in the living room without saying a single word. But his thoughts had leaked out from the bedroom. [Wife, did you see them? Come ask me about them. Ask me if I bought them just for you.] [I had them custom-made. Come praise me, wife!] [I want you to be the happiest bride in the whole world.] For six years, I cherished these shoes. I wore them everywhere. Not just because Chris bought them, but because they represented the fierce, burning love he couldn’t say out loud. But now. I squatted down, my fingers numb, and slowly slipped the shoes off. “Fine. They are yours.” Chris’s face turned even darker. The red in his eyes looked like suppressed rage. His mother hurried over, trying to run interference. “Sundra, you have been with Chris for ten years. You know he never means what he says. How could he actually let you walk out of here barefoot? He is just using this as an excuse to make you stay.” The moment the words left her mouth, Chris grabbed the shoes from the floor and tossed them straight into the roaring fireplace. “You wore them for six years. I find them disgusting now.” His tone was incredibly light, but the words hit my chest like a sledgehammer. Watching the flames swallow the leather, a suffocating pain seized my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. So the shoes I had carefully protected and cleaned for six long years meant absolutely nothing to him. They were just trash to be burned. Catching sight of my tear-filled eyes, Chris’s inner voice went into a frenzy. [Wife, are you sad? You still care about me, right?] [Just admit you were wrong. Just tell me this was all a joke. I will fill your entire closet with new shoes right now!] [I will buy you so many beautiful shoes!] I listened to his frantic thoughts with total numbness. My heart did not flutter. It did not ache anymore. No matter how beautiful the new shoes were, they would never be the first pair. My relationship with Chris had finally reached the end of its rope. Just like that fire, it had burned until nothing remained but dirty, gray ash. I walked out of the house barefoot. Not a single person chased after me. The only thing I heard was Lily’s gloating voice drifting from the dining room. “Are you really not going to chase your wife? She looked pretty heartbroken.” “Chase her for what?” Chris scoffed. “Let her go. Give it half an hour, and she will come crawling back to apologize.” He didn’t know I was actually leaving for good. My company had offered a highly coveted position at the overseas branch. I took one of the spots. My flight was booked for tomorrow. 3 By the time I got back to our townhouse, the soles of my feet were covered in tiny, bleeding cuts from the pavement. I sat on the edge of the tub, mechanically pouring rubbing alcohol over the wounds. As the sting subsided, I looked around. This used to be our warm, private sanctuary. Now, without me even realizing it, the house was stuffed with Lily’s belongings. “Sundra, Lily gave me this plush bunny. Put it on the sofa. I want to see it every day.” “Sundra, Lily picked out this tie. Does it look good?” “This is the diffuser Lily told me to use in the living room. She said it smells exactly like her.” Whenever I lost my mind and screamed at him over these things, the smirk on his face would only grow deeper. He loved watching me choke on jealousy. It was as if my pain was the only metric he used to measure my love. And his response was always exactly the same. “Sundra, Lily and I just have a professional relationship. Stop being so pathetic and petty.” Day after day, ground down by this endless torture, I gave him exactly what he wanted. I stopped being petty. I was even ready to hand over my title as his wife. After wrapping my feet in bandages, I pulled out a suitcase and began packing what little clothing I had left. Just as I was zipping up the bag, Chris walked in. He reeked of expensive whiskey, his arm slung heavily over Lily’s shoulder. The moment he saw me, he instinctively dropped his arm and opened his mouth to explain. But then his eyes landed on the suitcase beside my leg, and his pupils dilated in shock. At the exact same time, his inner voice roared. [Wife, why are you packing? Are you seriously throwing me away?] [I messed up. I shouldn’t have brought Lily to the family dinner. I just wanted to make you jealous.] [Don’t leave. I absolutely forbid you from leaving!] His face was ghostly pale. His mind was screaming with endless, desperate love, but the words that left his lips were colder than ice. “Sundra, I suggest you think very carefully about what you are doing. If you walk out that door, there are a million women lining up to marry me. But if you leave me, who the hell is going to marry damaged goods like you?” His arrogant, condescending tone blew away the very last speck of hope in my soul. I gave him a tired smile. “Okay. Then go find those other women.” Chris’s hands balled into tight fists. Suddenly, right in front of my face, he wrapped his arm around Lily’s waist and pulled her flush against his chest. “Maybe I will just marry Lily then.” “She is sweet, gentle, and way more competent than you. More importantly, unlike you, she actually has a working body. Six years and your stomach is still completely flat. She has plenty of time to give me an heir.” His provocative words made my breath shudder. Everyone knew children were my ultimate forbidden topic. Six years ago, Chris suffered a massive mental breakdown and ran off into a blizzard. While searching for him, I fell through the ice of a frozen lake. The damage to my body was permanent. Getting pregnant became an impossible dream. But I still wanted a baby. Desperately. To get pregnant, I drank horrible herbal brews every single night. I went through five agonizing rounds of IVF. Chris knew this better than anyone on earth, yet he still chose to use a child as a weapon to gut me. My eyes burned with tears. “Chris, you are a monster.” Seeing my tears, a flash of panic crossed Chris’s eyes. He took a subconscious step forward. But Lily suddenly clamped her hands onto his arm, pressing her chest against him. Her voice was sickeningly sweet. “But Sundra, Chris is just stating facts, right?” “It has been six years, and you haven’t produced a single thing.” “Any other man would have kicked you to the curb years ago. Chris put up with it for six whole years!” “He hasn’t even said he is tired of you yet, and here you are throwing around the word divorce and packing your bags. Aren’t you being a little too selfish? You have zero appreciation for how much Chris tolerates you.” Chris froze in his tracks. The panic in his eyes was rapidly replaced by a chilling detachment. He agreed with Lily. He actually thought I was being selfish and ungrateful. “Sundra, it seems I really have been too nice to you.” His gaze swept over my suitcase. Before I could even react, he lunged forward, violently snatching the bag from my grip. He yanked it so hard the zipper busted open. My clothes scattered all over the hardwood floor. He stepped directly onto my clean shirts with his leather shoes. Then, with terrifying precision, he reached into the bottom of the broken suitcase and pulled out a velvet box. Inside was a vintage emerald bracelet. It was my late mother’s heirloom. He looked down at me from his towering height. “Sundra, do I need to remind you? I spent five million dollars getting this bracelet back from the auction house.” All the blood drained from my face. 4 When my family went bankrupt, my mother had to sell her only family heirloom to pay off debts. When she passed away, getting that emerald bracelet back became her dying wish. When Chris found out, he pulled every string he had and spent a massive fortune to win it back for me. Back then, I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I told him I had no idea how I could ever repay him. His voice was calm, but his eyes were overflowing with pure devotion. “Then just pay me back with yourself.” “Sundra, I want to marry you.” Using that emerald bracelet in place of a ring, he slipped my mother’s legacy onto my wrist. And now, he looked at me and said, “The only reason I gave this to you was because I was going to marry you. Now you want a divorce. You are no longer going to be my wife, so what right do you have to take it with you?” “You don’t seriously think a woman like you is worth five million dollars, do you?” His brutal words smashed my pride into a million jagged pieces. I swallowed the heavy, agonizing lump in my throat. “Five million. I will find a way to get the money and pay you back…” “I don’t need your money!” Chris roared, cutting me off. “Sundra, do you think I give a damn about the money?” “…You are the one who is throwing this family away. You are throwing everything away. So I am going to save this bracelet for a woman who actually wants to be my wife.” He grabbed Lily’s wrist and brutally shoved the emerald bracelet onto her arm. Just like he did when he asked me to marry him six years ago. Lily turned her head slightly. Where Chris couldn’t see, she looked me dead in the eye and mouthed the words: [Dead people’s jewelry. Gross.] A violent surge of adrenaline exploded in my chest. I lunged forward, desperately clawing at her arm to get it back. “If you think it’s gross, then give it back to me!” The second my fingers grazed Lily’s skin, she let out an ear-piercing shriek and threw herself backward onto the marble tiles. Her wrist slammed against the hard floor. The fragile, century-old emerald hit the stone and shattered into several jagged pieces. My mind went completely blank. Chris froze, just as stunned. Lily held up her slightly scraped arm, sobbing hysterically. “Chris… it hurts so much…” Chris snapped out of his daze and violently shoved me backward. “Sundra, you are insane! That was your mother’s dying wish, and you destroyed it just because you wanted to hurt Lily!” I crashed heavily onto the floor. The violent impact sent a bizarre, sharp cramp tearing through my lower abdomen. Trembling, I fought through the pain to explain. “I didn’t push her. Lily threw herself backward on purpose to break the bracelet…” “Shut up!” The veins in Chris’s neck bulged. “You act like a lunatic, and then you try to frame Lily. If you hadn’t attacked her like a rabid dog, the bracelet wouldn’t be…” A flash of pure terror crossed his eyes. At the same moment, his thoughts crashed into my head. [What do I do? The only thing my wife cared about is broken.] [I don’t have a single way to make her stay anymore.] [No… I refuse to just stand here and watch my wife walk away.] Before I could process his thoughts, Chris grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me off the floor. I was completely disoriented. He hauled me down the hall and violently shoved me into the dark, windowless wine cellar. “You hurt Lily, and you are clearly out of your mind. You are going to stay locked in here for a day until you calm down.” The cramping in my stomach suddenly escalated into an excruciating, twisting agony. I felt a warm stream of blood seeping between my thighs. Pure, unadulterated panic swallowed me whole.

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I Loved the Boy Next Door for Ten Years, and He Loathed Me for Ten. Finally, I Slept With Him and Left Him a $200 Tip. My childhood best friend felt deeply humiliated and relentlessly “hunted” me down everywhere. But he couldn’t find me. I hid from him for three years, until my father passed away and I became an orphan. His parents told me, “From now on, our home is your home. That boy is your older brother.” I looked at his face, which contorted with humiliation and rage the second he saw me, and cheerfully called out, “Hi, big brother!” 01 I hid from Holden for exactly three years. The reason I remember it so clearly is because the night I slept with him was New Year’s Eve during my freshman year winter break. That night, there were fireworks going off everywhere outside. And today is New Year’s Eve of my senior year winter break. I was dragging my suitcase, wanting to buy some fruit before heading up to the apartment. Unexpectedly, I bumped right into Holden. He hadn’t changed much. Hood pulled up, hands shoved in his pockets, radiating that lazy, effortless bad-boy vibe. —You couldn’t tell he was a bastard at all. A beautiful bastard. The moment he walked into the convenience store, I instinctively turned my back and pulled my baseball cap down low. “Holden, back for some fruit?” The female owner was young, and her eyes lit up the moment she saw him. “The new batch of grapefruits is great, take a couple back for your parents to try.” Holden said, “I don’t eat sour things.” “How about cherries? Guaranteed sweet.” “I hate sweet things even more.” …I wanted to smack him. Eat it if you want, if not, get lost. But the owner’s enthusiasm didn’t wane. When he was paying, she even forced a few apples into his bag. This was Holden’s special treatment. With that handsome face, he was the local prince wherever he went. When he was ten, Holden would walk down the street empty-handed and come back with his pockets stuffed full of snacks from the neighbors. It used to make me cry out of jealousy. Now, at twenty, the people giving him snacks had changed generation after generation. But he was still the prince. The owner asked, “Holden, heading home alone this year?” “Yeah.” “I heard from the neighbors you were planning to bring a girlfriend back this year.” Holden has a girlfriend? My ears instinctively perked up. 02 Holden gave a soft chuckle. When he laughed, he had this slight nasal tone that tickled your ears. Three years ago on New Year’s Eve, I heard it up close. It didn’t just tickle my ears; after hearing it enough, it tickled my heart. “It’s a rumor,” he said. Owner: “I knew a guy like you would have high standards. It’s hard to find the right girl. What type do you like? I have a younger sister, she’s super sweet…” “I hate sweet, cutesy girls.” Yeah, I could almost picture the exact expression on Holden’s face when he said that. On my sixteenth birthday, I got a lacy dress. I wore it to show Holden. He used that exact disgusted tone and said, “Maggie, I hate cutesy girls.” The owner chuckled awkwardly. “Well, you should still find a girlfriend soon to give your parents some peace of mind.” “Don’t worry, I have a girlfriend.” Holden drawled lazily: “I just haven’t decided which girlfriend to bring back.” Owner: … Somehow, coming from this bastard’s mouth, such an outrageous statement actually sounded perfectly reasonable. After a while, the store fell quiet. I figured Holden must have left. I reached for the last melon on the display. A long, slender hand suddenly shot out and intercepted the melon mid-air. “Sorry, I grabbed it first.” That lazy voice echoed right above my head. He said sorry, but I couldn’t sense a single ounce of guilt. “But I might consider letting you have it.” Holden’s clear, piercing voice struck my eardrums— “If you just turn around.” 03 My cursed history with Holden goes back twelve years. My dad took me from our small rural town and moved us to Chicago. He and Holden’s dad were army buddies. After they got discharged, their lives went in completely opposite directions. My dad got the short end of the stick. The city was expensive. He drove a city bus, barely making enough to scrape by. As for why we had to live in the city, my dad said the schools were better here, so I could get into a good college. Rent in the city was brutal. Thank God for Holden’s dad, who let us stay in a small adjacent apartment they owned. Holden’s parents were amazing to me. My dad was out driving a lot, so after school, I’d just go to Holden’s house for dinner. I basically ate with Holden, lived near Holden, and went to school with Holden. But, he didn’t like me. Holden’s friends were mostly good-looking or came from wealthy families. I was a chubby, tanned little country bumpkin. I stubbornly followed him everywhere, which annoyed the hell out of him. Once, he intentionally ditched me at a local carnival, almost causing me to get lost. Holden got the beating of a lifetime for that. He probably still has the scars on his ass. He hated me even more after that, constantly thinking of ways to prank me. But I was so silly back then. I always felt Holden was different from the boys back in my hometown. He was so good-looking, his skin so pale. When he smiled, he seemed to glow. No matter how he pranked me, I stubbornly trailed behind him. This blind worship eventually blossomed into a teenage crush during puberty. Looking back now, Holden’s annoyance with me was completely undisguised. One spring, all the flowers at school were blooming. Holden’s friends asked him what his favorite flower was. Holden said, “I don’t have a favorite, only a least favorite. I absolutely hate magnolias. They’re too sweet, too cloying, they smell awful.” As he said it, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. My name is Magnolia, Maggie for short. He said that entirely on purpose for me to hear. But I was dense. I still followed him around every single day, practically driving him crazy. Finally, the year we graduated high school, a minor incident occurred. I asked Holden, “Where are you applying for college?” Holden thought about it. “New York.” I eagerly applied to schools in New York. It wasn’t until the acceptance letters arrived that I found out. Holden was going to Boston. He lied to me, just to get away from me. What a cruel reality. 04 During the first semester of freshman year, if I didn’t reach out, Holden wouldn’t contact me either. He had his own life, his own social circle. He was brilliant, top of his major, and famously known as the hottest guy on campus. There were always beautiful girls in his group photos. I went to Boston to visit him once. His friends asked, “Holden, who’s the chick?” Holden said, “My dad’s friend’s daughter.” I froze right then and there. We had known each other for ten years, and in the end, I wasn’t even considered a regular friend. I felt a sudden, crushing disappointment. But I refused to just give up like that. I plotted for a long time, and on New Year’s Eve during winter break, I slept with Holden. We both had some drinks that night. Holden was a lightweight and got drunk fast. I, however, was exceptionally sober. When I got close, he said, “Maggie, do you even know what you’re doing?” I asked him back, “Holden, do you even know how long I’ve liked you?” Holden fell silent. I reached out to unbutton his shirt. He grabbed my wrist, and it hurt a little. I hissed in pain, tears welling up in my eyes. Holden instantly let go. A flash of guilt crossed his eyes, but maybe I imagined it. Because immediately after, he said something like a true bastard: “Maggie, you look really ugly when you cry.” “It’s fine, you’ll be crying in a minute too.” My bold words didn’t exactly pan out. I was the one crying in the end. But Holden was very gentle that night. Afterward, he held me and whispered, “I’m sorry I lied to you about college.” I ignored him. He twirled my long hair around his finger and sighed helplessly, “Stop crying, Mags. I’ll go to grad school in New York, okay?” What did that have to do with me? I had already decided to let go. Tonight was just about giving myself some closure. After all, I had been an idiot for so many years. It felt like a loss if I didn’t get him at least once. Now that I had him, I wouldn’t obsess over him anymore. Early the next morning, before Holden woke up, I bolted. Oh, right. He had paid for the motel room. I didn’t want to owe him, so I left a $200 tip for my half of the bill. But this action seemed to cause a bit of a misunderstanding… I deleted all of Holden’s contact info and cut him off completely. I heard from my high school best friend that Holden felt immensely humiliated and was relentlessly “hunting” me down everywhere. He even showed up at my campus. He came several times but never caught me. The most memorable instance was May of my sophomore year. My roommate recounted it to me later: Holden looked like an erupting volcano that day, ready to catch me and tear me to shreds. He stopped my roommate and demanded fiercely, “Where the hell did Maggie go now?!” My roommate said, “Oh, didn’t you know? Today is Valentine’s Day.” “—She went out to celebrate with her boyfriend.” In that moment. It was like a torrential downpour instantly extinguishing the volcano. Holden stood frozen in place, not moving an inch for a very, very long time. 05 To clarify, the dating part was true. I didn’t like Holden anymore, so what’s wrong with dating? Not only did I date, I dated several guys over time. And Holden knew about every single one of my exes. My best friend kept him updated. Holden never stopped holding his grudge against me. He had been on a pedestal for twenty years, only to be “humiliated” by the little sidekick he used to look down on. I’d be pissed too. I heard he even stormed back to my rural hometown. Unfortunately, that was the year my dad went to New York for medical treatment, so I didn’t go home. He couldn’t catch anyone, acting like a bitter, abandoned ex. This game of cat and mouse played out for three years. And today, it was finally coming to an end. Because moving forward, I was going to spend my holidays at Holden’s house. My dad passed away last winter. I didn’t have a home anymore. Holden was currently standing right behind me, way too close. He tapped his finger against the melon, tap, tap. “Turn around. I’ll buy this melon for you.” I didn’t move a muscle. He quickly got bored. “Don’t turn around then. Just kidding. I’m out.” That was Holden. His interest in anything never lasted more than three minutes. This time, he really left. Even though in ten minutes, we were going to reunite in his living room anyway. Even though we used to be inseparable. Even though he hated my guts right now. We still had to sit down and eat New Year’s dinner together. I carried the pile of fruit to the register. The owner gave me a few extra looks. “Young lady, you look a little familiar.” “I have a generic face.” “Oh, please. As pretty as you are, there’s no way you have a generic face,” she tsked, saying confidently. “I’ve definitely seen you somewhere. Especially those dimples.” It was normal that she didn’t recognize me. I had changed a lot. After puberty, I lost a ton of weight, and after spending years in the city staying out of the sun, my skin cleared up and brightened. I was no longer that dark, chubby little country girl. In a recent campus poll, I even won the title of “Communications Department Sweetheart.” Oh, right. Holden actually showed up in that poll thread. He commented: “Bullshit sweetheart. Are everyone’s eyes in the Communications department broken??” The only reason I recognized him was because his username was “ImTheKing.” After paying, I grabbed the fruit and left. The moment I pushed the door open, an icy stare landed on my back. “Buying all this, where exactly are you heading?” Holden hadn’t left. He was leaning against the wall, looking like he’d been waiting for me for a while. I ignored him and sped up. He quickly caught up, taking a long stride to block my path. He snatched the baseball cap right off my head. “Did you have fun playing me, Maggie?” 06 Yeah, it was fun. I wanted to say that, but obviously, I couldn’t. Holden scoffed. “Three years and you’ve gone mute?” I looked up at him with a sweet, innocent smile. “Hi Holden. Long time no see.” Since I couldn’t avoid him anyway, I might as well face him bravely. But Holden wasn’t smiling. He just stared at me, like he wanted to burn a hole through my skull. His expression was too calm. Terrifyingly calm. Only his slightly red eyes and trembling hands gave him away. I don’t know how long we stood there. Long enough that people walking by were staring at us. Finally, Holden looked down and took my suitcase. Neither of us spoke on the way back. Holden walked fast, with absolutely no intention of waiting for me. I had to jog just to keep up. He seemed to have grown even taller. He looked to be at least 6’2″. He walked faster and faster, and I couldn’t help but speak up. “Holden, slow down.” Holden stiffened. —It was exactly like before. He’d walk in front, and I’d follow behind, chattering away, calling out, “Holden, Holden!” It had been a long time since we felt this dynamic. Holden sounded impatient. “Are your legs just short?” But his pace noticeably slowed down. “Your legs are long, you have the longest legs,” I fired back without hesitation. “Too bad you didn’t grow in the places that actually matter.” The words slipped out. The double entendre was instantly established. I meant his emotional intelligence and his narrow perspective. But… Holden had already snapped his head around, his lips pressed tightly together, his face a mix of humiliation and pure disbelief. “Is that why you left without saying goodbye?!” Me: … This was bad. Holden the Bastard—I mean, Holden the Prince—had a huge ego. And I had just shattered it in one blow. He dragged me into the stairwell, relentlessly demanding that I break down what I just said and explain it in detail. I threw my hands up. “There’s nothing to explain. I meant exactly what I said.” “You must be remembering it wrong. You drank too much that night.” “Whatever, it’s not important.” “It’s incredibly important!” Holden’s cheeks flushed, probably out of anger. “No, I have to prove myself.” I was just about to ask, how exactly are you going to prove it, when I saw Holden put his hands on his belt buckle. I froze. “You’ve gotta be kidding me…” What kind of childhood friend drops their pants on the first day of their reunion? Holden’s expression told me he was dead serious. He was betting his dignity on this. Before I knew it. He had already unbuckled his belt. 07 Right at that exact moment, Holden’s dad pushed the apartment door open. “Is Maggie here yet?” Holden froze. I dodged in front of him, blocking him from view. “Hi, Mr. Brooks! I just got here!” “Did you run into Holden? The kid said he was going downstairs to buy fruit. It’s been over an hour and he wouldn’t come up. Said he was waiting for you.” I paused for a second. When I looked back, Holden’s pants were securely fastened. He awkwardly averted his gaze. “I was just taking a walk.” Once we were inside, Mr. Brooks casually asked, “What were you two dawdling about outside just now?” Both Holden and I went dead silent. Mrs. Brooks chimed in, “The kids haven’t seen each other in so long. They were probably just catching up.” “Exactly.” I nodded vigorously. “It’s been way too long since I saw my big brother.” Holden: “Who’s your brother? Stop calling me that.” As soon as the words left his mouth, his mom smacked the back of his head. “From now on, our house is Maggie’s house. You are her older brother. You have to protect her.” Holden was stunned. “I don’t want to be her brother!” “Then you can be her younger brother. We don’t mind.” “Mom! That’s not what I mean. I’m actually Maggie’s—” Mrs. Brooks cut him off. “Stop whining. I’m going to go cook.” But I was a little curious. What was Holden trying to say? He’s actually my… what? Over the past three years, it felt like we had zero relationship whatsoever. He couldn’t possibly be planning to tell his parents about what happened three years ago, right?! No, I had to stop him. I looked up and met Holden’s dangerous gaze. I smiled sweetly. “Hi, big brother.” Holden: …

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