Category: English

My brother-in-arms borrowed fifteen thousand dollars from me and vanished for a decade. I’d long since let it go, burying the betrayal deep in my chest. I told myself I’d just fed the money to a stray dog. Today, I walked into the bank to close the account I’d used for that wire transfer, wanting to permanently turn the page on that chapter of my life. The teller finished typing, but instead of handing me my receipt, she looked up, her brow furrowed. “Sir, the memo line on this account’s final transfer… are you sure you don’t want to read it?” I froze. A wire transfer from ten years ago—how could there be a memo? 01 “All set, sir. The account is officially closed.” The young woman behind the bulletproof glass slid a snipped debit card across the counter. I gave a curt nod, picking up the ruined plastic, fully intending to drop it into the lobby trash can on my way out. Ten years of a knot sitting heavy in my gut. Today, I was finally cutting it loose. My name is Carter Brooks. I’m thirty-five, and I run a mid-sized private security firm in the city. A decade ago, the best friend I ever had in the Army Rangers, Daniel Vance—wait, let’s go with Daniel Foster—borrowed fifteen grand from me. It was every dime I had to my name back then. He told me it was an absolute emergency. I didn’t ask a single question; I just wired the funds. And then, he evaporated. Calls went straight to voicemail. Texts were left on read, then eventually stopped delivering. Even in our tight-knit circles of veterans, it was like Daniel had been wiped from the earth. My initial panic warped into worry, then mutated into a slow-burning, toxic rage. And finally, into total, suffocating disappointment. Fifteen thousand dollars. That was the exact price of the brotherhood we’d forged in blood and sand. It was the price of my capacity to ever trust the word “brother” again. “Sir?” The teller’s voice snapped me out of the past. I frowned, the impatience bubbling just beneath the surface. “Is there a problem?” She pointed a manicured finger at her monitor, looking hesitant. “It’s just… this last transfer. The fifteen thousand. There’s a memo attached to the electronic receipt.” I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “A memo? It was a counter wire from ten years ago. You’re mistaken.” I remembered that day with photographic clarity. I stood in this exact lobby. I never filled out a memo line. The girl shrank back slightly at my tone, but held her ground. “It’s right here in the system mainframe, sir. Printed on the legacy receipt. Do you… really not want to see it? It might be important.” Important? Could it bring back my life savings? Could it erase ten years of feeling like an absolute fool? My chest tight with an old, familiar aggravation, I just wanted to get out of the sterile air of the bank. I wanted to scrub the name Daniel Foster from my hard drive for good. “No need. It doesn’t matter anymore.” I turned on my heel. “It’s four words,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “‘Save my daughter. —Daniel.’” My boots anchored to the linoleum. The blood in my veins stopped dead. I whipped around, staring at her through the glass. “What did you just say?” My voice was so hoarse I barely recognized it. Startled by my intensity, she quickly spun her monitor around so I could see it. There it was. Standard Arial font, glowing coldly in the digital receipt box. Memo: Save my daughter. —Daniel. My brain short-circuited. How was that possible? Daniel’s daughter, Mia. Ten years ago, she was a tiny, vibrant thing with pigtails who used to chase my own son around the backyard, covered in mud and laughing. She was a perfectly healthy kid. Why would he use “save my daughter” as a reason? And why sign it? I was the one making the transfer. Was he leaving a breadcrumb for me to find? A sudden, suffocating wave of dread wrapped its fingers around my throat. Over the last ten years, I’d spun a hundred theories about why he took the money and ran. Did he gamble it away? Did a business venture go under? Did he get mixed up with the wrong crowd? Not once—not once—did I consider that there was a truth hidden beneath the surface, a truth I was entirely blind to. “Print it out. Please. Hurry.” I stepped up to the glass, my hands visibly shaking. The teller hurriedly hit print. I snatched the warm paper from the tray. Those four words were like a branding iron pressed directly into my retinas. The dam of resentment I had meticulously built over ten years suddenly cracked, giving way to a pressure I couldn’t ignore. I pushed through the bank’s glass doors. The midday sun stung my eyes. Leaning heavy against the door of my truck, I fished my phone out of my pocket. Operating purely on muscle memory, my trembling thumb dialed the number I had sworn to God I would never dial again. “We’re sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected…” The automated female voice looped in my ear, cold and detached. In the past, that voice only fueled my cynical rage. Today, it sent a spike of absolute, primal terror straight into my heart. Ten years. I had hated him for a decade. What if… what if I was wrong? The thought sprouted, then rapidly metastasized like poison ivy over my rationality. No. I had to find him. I had to rip the truth out of him myself. The bitterness of the debt was gone, replaced instantly by a mystery so vast it made my head spin. This wasn’t about the fifteen grand anymore. This was for my own sanity. This was for the ghost of the brotherhood I had despised for a decade. I was going to find the truth. 02 I started the engine and drove aimlessly, letting the rhythmic hum of the tires ground me. My mind was a Rolodex spinning out of control. When Daniel got out of the service, he moved back to his hometown—a rusted-out, working-class borough in Pennsylvania, about three hundred miles away. His disappearance coincided exactly with that move. Pulling over into a diner parking lot, I put the truck in park and started scrolling through my contacts. I hit the dial button for an old Ranger buddy who was still active duty. “Hey, Smitty. It’s Carter.” “Carter Brooks? Holy hell, man. Long time no hear. What’s going on?” “Need some intel on a ghost. Daniel Foster. You got any current coordinates for him?” The line went quiet for a beat. “Danny? Man, don’t even get me started. Guy punched his ticket home and just… dropped off the grid. Couple years back we tried putting together a reunion, nobody could track him. Rumor mill said he struck it rich and cut ties with us grunts. Others said he hit rock bottom and was too proud to show his face. Who knows?” My gut plummeted. “You remember the town?” “Let me think… somewhere up near Pine Ridge, PA. Don’t know the exact neighborhood. Been ten years, man. He’s probably long gone.” I hung up, but I wasn’t stopping. I dialed four more guys from our old platoon. The answers were an echo chamber of Smitty’s. AWOL. Complete radio silence. My last shot was our old Platoon Sergeant, retired now and spending his days restoring classic cars in Ohio. When I brought up Daniel, the old man sighed heavily. “Carter, you and Danny were thicker than thieves. If you can’t find him, what makes you think the rest of us can?” “Sarge, it’s life or death. I need anything you’ve got. Any scrap of a lead,” I pleaded, my voice tight. He paused, the sound of a wrench clanking in the background. “Wait. His wife. Diane. I think I’ve still got an old cell number for her in my files. Don’t know if it’s active.” My heart gave a violent kick. I scribbled the number down on a napkin. But I didn’t call. Instinct—the kind beaten into you in the military—told me that a direct approach would only spook the target. Using the name of the town and some contacts in private security, I ran a deep background check. It took twenty minutes to pull Daniel’s last registered address from a decade ago. Pine Ridge, PA. Redwood Apartments. Building 3, Unit 401. Without a second thought, I threw the truck into drive and merged onto the interstate. Three hours later, I was standing in the parking lot of Redwood Apartments. It was a decaying, brutalist relic. Peeling paint, blown-out hallway lights, and the heavy scent of stale smoke and damp rot lingering in the air. My stomach was a knot of conflicting emotions as I climbed the concrete stairs to the fourth floor. I had played this reunion out in my head a thousand times. Sometimes it was on a busy street—I’d grab him by the collar, slam him against a wall, and demand to know why. Sometimes it was in a dive bar, him drunk and crying, begging for my forgiveness. I never pictured this. Showing up to a rundown housing project like a repo man. I stood in front of 401. The dark brown paint on the door was chipping away, revealing cheap particle board underneath. I raised my knuckles, hesitated, lowered them, and finally knocked. Thump. Thump. Thump. I heard the dragging shuffle of footsteps. The door creaked open, just a few inches. The security chain was engaged. A middle-aged woman peered through the gap. Her eyes were hard, suspicious, and immediately defensive. “Yeah? Who are you?” Her face morphed and clicked into the memory I had of Diane, but weathered by time and etched with deep, bitter lines. “Hi, I’m Carter Brooks. Served with Daniel. I need to see him.” The second the name “Carter” left my mouth, Diane’s entire demeanor shifted. The baseline suspicion instantly ignited into unfiltered, venomous hostility. “Don’t know you! Danny doesn’t know you!” She tried to slam the door. I shoved the toe of my boot into the gap. The decade of resentment, mixed with the adrenaline of the last four hours, made it impossible for me to stay polite. “Ten years ago, I gave your husband fifteen thousand dollars. Don’t stand there and tell me you don’t remember.” Her reaction was explosive. A hundred times more volatile than I expected. Like a cat backed into a corner, she shrieked. “What fifteen thousand?! You’re out of your mind! We never took a dime from you! You’re one of those scammers, aren’t you? Get the hell away from my door before I call the cops!” Her voice was shrill, echoing down the hall. A neighbor poked their head out of a door down the corridor. Fighting to keep my temper in check, I pulled the folded bank receipt from my jacket pocket. “I’m not making this up. Here’s the wire transfer record. It has his memo on it!” I held it up, pointing to the words: Save my daughter. —Daniel. Diane’s eyes darted to the paper. All the color drained from her face—just for a fraction of a second. But I saw it. She recovered instantly, doubling down on her frantic denial. “Fake! You faked that! I don’t know anything about a memo! You’re completely psychotic!” “I want to see Daniel! Let him tell me to my face!” I pushed my weight against the door, trying to see past her. The apartment behind her was dark, the curtains drawn tight. She blocked the gap with her body, feral and desperate. “He’s sick! He’s been sick for years! He doesn’t see anybody! He can’t handle people like you stressing him out!” “You leave right now or I’m dialing 911! I’ll tell them you’re trespassing and trying to extort me!” SLAM. She threw her entire weight against the door, engaging the deadbolt. My nose was inches from the wood. Through the thin door, I could hear her pacing and muttering. “Freaks… ten years later and they’re still coming around like vultures…” I stood in the dim hallway, the blood roaring in my ears. Her reaction was entirely wrong. If this was just a case of someone dodging an old debt, she would have been evasive, guilty, or dismissive. This wasn’t that. This was terror. This was a frantic, desperate attempt to keep a lid on a pressure cooker. She said Daniel was sick. Sick for ten years? Too sick to make a single phone call? Too sick to see a guy who took a bullet for him? And the flash of sheer panic in her eyes when she read that memo… that wasn’t acting. Something was deeply, profoundly wrong here. I didn’t leave the complex. I walked downstairs, got back into my truck, and backed it into a spot directly across from building 3, giving me a clear view of unit 401’s windows. I killed the engine. Reaching into the center console, I grabbed my pack of cigarettes. I lit one, the ember glowing orange in the cab. Through the haze of smoke, I locked my eyes on those heavily draped windows. I was going to figure out exactly what kind of hell was hiding behind that cheap wooden door. Ten years of anger had pivoted on a dime. All my hatred, all my disgust, was now squarely aimed at the woman named Diane. 03 I sat in the truck for the entire afternoon. Chain-smoking. The window cracked an inch, the ashtray filling up fast. I played Diane’s facial expressions on a loop in my head. Every twitch, every dilated pupil. She was lying. And it was a massive, structural lie. One she’d been carrying for a decade. What the hell happened to Daniel? And what did Save my daughter actually mean? The mystery was a tangled mass of barbed wire in my brain, pulling tighter the more I tried to unravel it. The sun dipped below the tree line, painting the rust-belt sky in bruised shades of purple and gray. Streetlights flickered on, casting sickly yellow pools across the cracked asphalt. My stomach was hollow, growling in protest, but I didn’t move an inch. The stubbornness drilled into me by the military kept me glued to the leather seat. I wasn’t leaving until I knew. Just as my patience was beginning to fray, the heavy metal door to Building 3 groaned open. A young woman stepped out. She was carrying a black trash bag, walking slowly toward the dumpsters at the edge of the lot. As she stepped under a streetlight, my breath caught. Mia. Daniel’s daughter. Ten years had transformed her from the little tomboy who used to follow me around into a quiet, striking young woman. She was wearing blue scrubs—maybe a nursing student—and carried a weight in her shoulders that made her look far older than her early twenties. As she tossed the bag into the dumpster, her eyes darted nervously toward the shadows where my black truck was parked. She was fidgeting. Restless. My pulse spiked. Did she recognize me? Or did she know I was coming? Instead of walking back to the building, she altered her path, drifting slowly along the curb, inching closer to my side of the lot. My heart hammered against my ribs. She moved cautiously, her hands buried in her scrub pockets, scanning the parking lot like she expected an ambush. Just as she passed the passenger side of my truck, she suddenly crouched down, pretending to tie her shoe. In one lightning-fast, practiced motion, she slipped a tiny, tightly folded square of paper through the one-inch crack in my window. Before I could even lean over, she was up and sprinting back to the building, disappearing through the heavy doors like a frightened deer. The whole exchange took less than five seconds. It took me another three to process what just happened. My fingers trembling, I reached over and plucked the paper from the weather-stripping. I flicked on the overhead cab light and unfolded it. The handwriting was neat, but the pen strokes were jagged with anxiety. Carter. Please don’t leave. My mom is watching from the window. Alley behind the dumpsters. 10:00 PM. Please. I need help. That small square of paper was a lightning bolt, instantly incinerating the fog in my brain. Daniel was in trouble. Diane was the warden. And his daughter, Mia, was risking everything to send up a flare. The decade of bitterness and perceived betrayal evaporated, instantly replaced by a crushing, absolute sense of duty. I wasn’t a debt collector anymore. I was on a rescue mission. I was here to save my brother.

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In my last life, my best friend—the sole heiress to a billionaire’s empire—stole my husband. They mocked me, degraded me, and eventually, they pushed me down a flight of stairs, leaving me to bleed out on the cold marble floor. Given a second chance, I set my sights on a different prize: her wealthy, silver-fox of a father. He had no biological heirs, only his adopted daughter. She thought her father’s empire made her invincible, giving her the right to play God with my life. But she didn’t know about my family’s secret. I possessed a rare, genetic predisposition for extreme fertility. Soon enough, I’d be slipping into his bed, carrying his quadruplets. In this life, I’m going to make you drop to your knees and call me “Mother.” …… 1 I feigned a hazy disorientation, stumbling my way toward the master suite on the second floor of the mansion. Richard Kerwin stood there in a plush robe, silver-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. When he saw me burst in, surprise flashed across his face, quickly followed by a cold, guarded mask. I played the part of the innocent, drunken guest perfectly, bumping into his solid chest and letting out a soft, incoherent murmur. At this point in my timeline, my body hadn’t yet been ravaged by the grueling rounds of IVF hormone injections. I was still in my prime—radiant, vibrant, and undeniably alluring. Silky strands of my hair brushed against his fingers. A delicate, intoxicating perfume drifted into the air between us, sinking right into his veins. The man’s eyes darkened instantly. Every single detail of this moment—the precise length of my slip dress, the plunge of the neckline, the slit at my thigh, even the breathy cadence of my voice—had been meticulously calculated. Because I knew that if I missed this window, I might never get close to him again. I watched his Adam’s apple bob. The icy restraint in his gaze was rapidly melting, replaced by a raw, primal heat. Suddenly, his arms came around me, pulling me flush against him. I could feel the searing heat radiating from his skin and the frantic, heavy thud of his heartbeat. He leaned down, his voice a low, gravelly whisper against my ear. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing right now?” In that split second, the sheer weight of his hunger washed over me. I smiled inwardly. Checkmate. The next morning, a piercing shriek shattered the silence. “Helen! What the hell are you doing?! That is my father!” Bernice stood paralyzed in the doorway. Behind her, a small crowd of guests from her birthday party the night before lingered in the hall, their faces a canvas of shock and morbid curiosity. I blinked up at her with wide, innocent eyes, pulling the duvet tightly up to my collarbone, deliberately cutting off whatever explanation Richard was about to offer. “I… I was just so drunk last night,” I stammered, my voice trembling perfectly. “We just laid here and talked under the covers. Nothing happened, I swear.” I knew how the game was played. A ruthless, highly respected titan of Wall Street was never going to let himself become the punchline of a society scandal. Especially not with half of New York’s elite standing in his hallway. Bernice’s face morphed from sheer shock to a violent, trembling rage. She ground her teeth, her eyes practically vibrating with hatred. “Do you… do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” She lunged forward, hands raised to strike me. “Enough!” Richard’s voice cracked through the room like a whip. Bernice froze. “Did you not hear what she just said?” Richard demanded, his tone brokering no argument. “It was a misunderstanding. An accident.” Bernice stared at him, utterly betrayed, her mouth opening and closing as she desperately searched for a rebuttal. I leaned forward, closing the distance between us until my lips were inches from her ear. “You’d better play along with my story,” I whispered, so low only she could hear. “Because if your dad decides he actually does have a taste for me… you’re going to have to start calling me Mom.” Her pupils dilated in pure horror. A flicker of profound hesitation crossed her face. Finally, she shot me a look of pure, venomous hatred, then whipped around to face her guests, forcing a sickeningly sweet, plastic smile onto her face. “Everyone, please, let’s not jump to conclusions. They… they really just stayed up talking.” The guests exchanged awkward, knowing glances, muttering polite excuses as they quickly dispersed down the hall. Before Bernice walked away, she turned and glared at me one last time. It was the exact same look she had given me in my past life, right before she shoved me to my death. I was born in an isolated, forgotten valley deep in the mountains—a place locals whispered about in folklore. The women from my hometown were famously beautiful, but more importantly, we were known for a fierce, generational vitality. We were built to bear children, effortlessly and abundantly. Because of that trait, I was nearly trafficked three times as a toddler, eventually ending up in the foster care system, which is where I first met Bernice. 2 Back in the foster home, while the other kids were sickly and hollow-cheeked, I was thriving—radiant and healthy. The system wasn’t some magical sanctuary. It was a brutal competition for survival, and amid all that ugliness, Bernice was the only one who looked out for me. There were always families who wanted to adopt me, but somehow, at the very last second, the paperwork would always fall through. Not long after, Bernice hit the jackpot. She was taken in by Richard Kerwin, the legendary corporate shark. I had been genuinely happy for her. I truly believed she was my sister, the most important person in my life. I believed it so deeply that in my previous life, when Bernice stood in my living room, caressing her swelling belly and telling me she was carrying my husband’s baby, my brain simply couldn’t process it. They stood there together, laughing at me. They called me a barren, useless husk. And when I finally snapped, threatening to take my husband for every penny he had in the divorce, they dragged me to the staircase. When I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back before the blood, before the betrayal. Realizing that the two people you trusted most in the world were the architects of your destruction… it’s a suffocating, paralyzing kind of agony. An agony so deep that in my last life, I died before I could even scream the truth at them: The problem wasn’t me! The one who was medically sterile was my husband! My bloodline practically guaranteed fertility. I had spent years burying the truth, silently taking the blame and enduring endless pity just to protect his fragile male ego. Well, no more. Bernice thought she could play with human lives just because she had a billionaire daddy backing her up. She loved my useless, sterile husband so much? Fine. She could keep the trash. I, on the other hand, thought her father was quite the catch. Wealthy, devastatingly handsome, and completely alone, save for one adopted daughter. Let’s see how much he remembers you, Bernice, once I give him a biological child of his own blood. In this life, you will drop to your knees and call me Mother. By the time Richard and I were dressed and making our way downstairs, Bernice was already sitting stiffly on the living room sofa, radiating fury. “Dad… Helen… Now that the guests are gone, do you two have absolutely no sense of shame?” Shame? Hilarious. I doubt the word crossed her mind when she was climbing into my husband’s bed in our past life. Swallowing the urge to laugh in her face, I buried my face in my hands and let out a soft, pathetic sob. “I don’t even know what happened,” I cried, my voice thick with tears. “I just drank that one cocktail you handed me last night, Bernice, and then everything went blurry…” Bernice’s righteous anger immediately dissolved into panic. “What?! Are you trying to say I drugged you?!” I looked up at her, my eyes swimming with wounded vulnerability. “No, of course not! You’re my best friend, I would never suspect you. But… those people you hang out with… they don’t seem like good people. What if one of them slipped something into my glass behind your back?” Bernice was turning purple. The elite circles of New York had always quietly shunned her for being an adopted outsider. Getting those socialites to attend her birthday had been a monumental task. “You bitch,” she hissed. “If you want to sleep with my dad, just say it! Stop making up lies!” “That’s enough,” Richard interrupted, his voice dropping an octave. He looked at Bernice. “She was clearly not in her right mind last night.” He rubbed his temples. “I thought I raised you better than this. I know what kind of person you are, but I also know I’ve spoiled you rotten. You’ve been running around with a degenerate crowd. Your black card is cut off. You’re grounded. You will stay in this house and think about your actions.” “Dad—!” “My decision is final.” Bernice let out a scream of frustration and stormed out of the room. The heavy oak doors clicked shut, leaving just Richard and me in the cavernous, quiet room. I took a shaky breath, speaking before he could. “Richard… Mr. Kerwin. Last night was a mistake. I only came here to celebrate Bernice’s birthday. I never imagined things would spiral out of control like this.” I let a small, choked gasp escape my lips. “But I need you to forget this ever happened.” The request caught him completely off guard. He was a billionaire; he was no stranger to women trying to manipulate their way into his bed. But he remembered last night. He remembered that I really was delirious, that I had even tried to push him away a few times. And then he remembered that his own daughter’s party guests were likely the cause of it. A rare flicker of guilt crossed his sharp features. His jaw tightened. “Whatever compensation you want,” he said quietly. “Name it. It’s yours.” I shook my head, offering him a sad, fragile smile. “You’re a victim in this too.” I paused, looking down at my hands. “The truth is… I’m a married woman. But I don’t think I can live with this guilt. I’ve betrayed my husband, and I need to ask him for a divorce.” I looked back up, letting a single tear slip down my cheek. “But we built our company together. If he finds out why I’m leaving him, he’ll destroy everything I’ve worked for. My life’s work will be gone.” Richard stared at me, his expression softening into something entirely new. He reached out, his large, warm hand tentatively resting on my shoulder. “I understand,” he said softly. “Don’t worry about the company. What belongs to you will stay yours.” I widened my eyes, looking up at him with pure, unadulterated admiration. “Thank you, Richard. You really are a good man.” I could see the gears turning in his head. To him, I was entirely different from the predatory socialites he was used to. He was the one who had taken advantage of me in my compromised state, yet here I was, thanking him. He walked me to the front doors and instructed his private driver to take me home. As I stepped out into the crisp morning air, I paused, pretending to remember something. I turned back, ‘accidentally’ bumping softly against his chest, just as I had the night before. Instinctively, his arm came around my waist to steady me. I stepped back quickly, putting a polite distance between us, and carefully handed him my business card. 3 “Mr. Kerwin,” I said, my voice steady now. “I hope we can start over and reintroduce ourselves properly. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other in the boardroom.” As the town car pulled away from the estate, I could feel the weight of his lingering stare on the back of my neck. I didn’t look back. Since Richard had promised to ensure my divorce went smoothly, I didn’t have to waste a single ounce of energy worrying about asset division. I made one phone call and had a team of movers pack up every single thing I owned from the townhouse. I also left a very clear warning for my husband—no, my ex-husband. I told him I already had an ironclad file of evidence proving his affair with Bernice, and if he ever showed his face near me again, I’d ruin him. In my past life, I had convinced myself that his infidelity was my fault—a byproduct of my supposed inability to give him a child after years of marriage. But when I woke up in this timeline and hired an investigator, the truth made me sick to my stomach. He and Bernice had been sleeping together since the very beginning. They had played me for a fool for years. You both wanted to play dirty? Fine. Welcome to the mud. Sitting in the quiet of my new apartment, I rested a hand over my flat stomach. I could already feel it. One shot was all it took. A new life was already taking root inside me, waiting for the perfect moment to bloom. For the next month, despite having my card, Richard didn’t reach out. I wasn’t worried. With Bernice hovering around, she was doing everything in her power to keep her father away from me. But I was supremely confident that Richard couldn’t just erase me from his mind. The memory of that night was hammered into his brain like a silver nail, impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, I threw myself into my work. I was the CEO of my firm, and by pure, beautiful coincidence, our upcoming project involved a direct partnership with Kerwin Enterprises. Up until now, all our correspondence had been digital. By the time the in-person summit rolled around, my baby would be exactly six weeks along. I ruthlessly polished the project proposals, settling for nothing less than absolute perfection. Leaning back in my ergonomic office chair, I let out a long exhale, quietly thanking the universe for the timing of this rebirth. I was at the absolute peak of my life—young, sharp, and radiant. I hadn’t been bullied into quitting my career to focus on IVF. I hadn’t spent my days acting as a live-in maid for my horrid mother-in-law. I wasn’t bloated, exhausted, and practically gray from the stress of it all. The day of the negotiation, I walked into the Kerwin boardroom wearing a tailored, powder-blue power suit, a thick stack of flawless dossiers in my arms. Richard was seated at the head of the long glass table. His eyes were sharp and unyielding, but the second he saw me, a micro-expression of shock cracked his facade. I treated him like a complete stranger. I offered a polite, professional smile as I slid the documents across the table toward him. As he reached for the file, his fingertips brushed against mine. I felt the sudden, electric jolt of his body heat, and my heart gave a calculated little flutter. Our eyes locked, and the air in the boardroom suddenly felt incredibly thick. I led the presentation. Derek, my ex-husband, was technically still a partner on paper, but he sat beside me looking like a deer in headlights, muttering useless filler words while I dominated the room. It only served to make my brilliance shine brighter. I yielded no ground during the negotiations. After an hour of intense, exhilarating back-and-forth, we reached a highly lucrative agreement. The room erupted into polite applause and cheerful corporate pleasantries. As I was packing up my briefcase, preparing to escort them out, Bernice suddenly appeared from the hallway. She grabbed my arm, dragging me into a quiet alcove, her eyes blazing. “Don’t think I didn’t see you making eyes at my dad in there,” she hissed. “Are you still delusional enough to think you’re going to be my stepmother?” I smoothed down the lapel of my jacket, my expression perfectly serene. “Whatever do you mean? I was just doing my job. Honestly, instead of obsessing over my love life, you should worry about your own. I’ve already divorced Derek… so why hasn’t he put a ring on your finger yet?” Her face drained of color. She stammered, “How… how did you know? I mean—what kind of crazy nonsense are you talking about?” “You were right about one thing, though,” I said, letting a slow, venomous smile spread across my face. “I really, really want to hear you call me Mom.” I paused, leaning in close. “I’m pregnant,” I mouthed the next words so only she could read my lips: With your dad’s baby. Bernice’s face contorted in sheer, unadulterated madness. She lost her mind. Screaming a string of obscenities, she lunged at me, her manicured hands clawing wildly. I let her push me. I hit the hardwood floor hard, a sharp jolt of pain radiating up my spine. The hallway descended into chaos. Executives shouted. Richard pushed through the crowd, his face pale with panic, and violently yanked Bernice off of me. “What the hell is going on here?!” Richard roared. I looked up at him, letting the tears spill over my lashes in a torrential flood. “I don’t know!” I sobbed, clutching my stomach. “I thought Bernice just wanted to catch up, and then she just attacked me!” Bernice pointed a shaking finger at me, hyperventilating. “She’s lying! My dad would never—he only wants me! He’s not having any more kids! Tell them you’re lying about being pregnant!” Before she could finish the sentence, Richard’s hand connected with Bernice’s cheek. The sharp crack of the slap echoed through the dead-silent hallway. Bernice stumbled back, holding her face in disbelief. “You… you hit me? For her?” Richard’s jaw was clenched so tight I thought it might shatter. “Enough! Not another word. The truth is, Helen and I… we’ve been seeing each other since her divorce.” Suddenly, one of my assistants gasped, pointing at the floor. “Oh my god, she’s bleeding!” I looked down. A small pool of crimson was seeping into the fabric of my skirt.

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The day I found out my husband was cheating on me, I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I picked up my phone and called my sister-in-law, who was currently living five thousand miles away in Moscow. A week later, on a pristine, sun-drenched Tuesday afternoon, my sister-in-law and I were strolling through a high-end designer boutique when we spotted my husband. He was buying a ridiculous leather handbag for the woman draped over his arm—the ghost of his past, the golden girl he never quite got over. I let my eyes well up with perfect, cinematic tears. I opened my mouth to speak, but my sister-in-law didn’t wait. With a flick of her wrist, she and the two hulking bodyguards flanking her descended upon them like a force of nature. Ten minutes later, my husband had four fractured ribs, two dislocated shoulders, and a face so swollen he looked like a bruised plum. His golden girl was lying on the marble floor, a warm puddle of urine soaking into her designer skirt, weakly sobbing for someone to call the police. I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled to keep from laughing. What the rest of the Harrington family didn’t know—what they had never bothered to notice—was that since we were little girls, my sister-in-law had been fiercely, unapologetically in love with me. 1 I was lounging on a chaise on the terrace, letting the late-morning sun warm my skin, when my assistant, Carter, crouched down beside me. “Boss. Mr. Harrington has been busy,” he said, his voice a low, professional murmur as he handed me his iPad. I opened my eyes, squinting against the glare, and looked at the screen. The paparazzi—or whoever Carter had hired—knew how to frame a shot. Every image dripped with undeniable, suffocating intimacy. There they were, embracing at the JFK arrivals terminal. There they were in a dimly lit booth at Le Bernardin, him reaching across the white tablecloth to gently wipe the corner of her mouth. There they were, slipping through the wrought-iron gates of a secluded Hamptons estate. I zoomed in on the woman’s face. Bella Crawford. Peter’s ultimate “what if.” She was back. No wonder Peter hadn’t slept at home in a month. I tossed the iPad back onto the cushion just as my phone began to buzz. Peter’s name flashed across the screen. Right on cue. “Diana,” his voice crackled through the speaker, clipped and impatient. “Go out to the family compound in Connecticut by yourself today. Things blew up at the firm. I’m tied up.” I frowned, keeping my voice perfectly even. “Peter, we agreed. We do the monthly family dinner together.” A heavy sigh echoed through the receiver. “What does it matter if you go alone? You just sit there and make polite conversation with my parents. You can handle it. I have a crisis here. I’m hanging up.” The line went dead. It was mid-afternoon by the time my driver pulled up to the sprawling, ivy-covered Harrington estate. “Margaret,” I said, keeping my voice respectfully neutral as I walked into the grand living room. My mother-in-law was lounging on a velvet sofa. The moment she turned her head and saw I was alone, her eyes hardened. Without a word of warning, she snatched the heavy, beaded throw pillow next to her and hurled it at my face. I flinched, but not fast enough. The sharp metal detailing of a decorative zipper caught the edge of my forehead. A thin, hot line of blood immediately began to trickle down my pale skin. Neither Margaret nor my father-in-law, who was sitting in the armchair opposite her, even blinked. In fact, Margaret let out a short, derisive scoff. “Peter isn’t with you?” she sneered. “I suppose you’ll just have to stop using my son as your personal meat shield.” I kept my head bowed. I let a single drop of blood fall, sinking into the priceless Persian rug beneath my feet. Richard Harrington peered over his reading glasses, his eyes flicking from the Wall Street Journal to my bleeding face. He looked mildly annoyed, as if I had tracked mud into the house. He gestured vaguely to a maid to fetch the first-aid kit. While the maid dabbed at my forehead with trembling hands, Margaret’s voice echoed through the cavernous room, sharp as broken glass. “I don’t know why the Kensingtons bothered raising such a useless daughter. You can’t keep your husband’s attention, you can’t manage to get pregnant, and you drain my son’s bank accounts. You provide absolutely nothing to this family. Nothing.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “And your pathetic father. Always trying to ride Harrington Holdings’ coattails. Have you seen the cut he took on the waterfront development? Cheap materials, shoddy workmanship. If his incompetence damages the Harrington name, I’ll sue him into the ground myself.” I sat there, the picture of docile submission. The maid wiping my forehead shot me a look of profound, silent pity. “Enough, Margaret. What’s the point of barking at her? She’s not exactly playing in our league,” Richard interrupted, his voice laced with absolute boredom. “The girls are coming over for bridge in an hour. You’ll stay in the corner and serve the drinks,” Margaret ordered, dismissing me with a wave of her manicured hand. For the next four hours, the sunroom was suffocating. The air was thick with the smell of expensive gin, heavy perfume, and Virginia Slims. Four society matriarchs in immaculate Chanel, blowing smoke like industrial chimneys. It made me want to vomit. “Oh, dear. I think I just ashed on my shoe,” Mrs. Davenport, the mother of a tech billionaire, purred, looking pointedly at Margaret. “Don’t worry about it, darling,” Margaret smiled sweetly, before her gaze snapped to me. “Diana. Get down there and clean Mrs. Davenport’s shoe.” She commanded me with the exact same tone she used for her purebred Dobermans. I didn’t argue. I walked over, knelt on the hardwood floor, and took a cloth to the cherry-red patent leather stilettos. You’re pushing seventy, I thought distantly, and you’re wearing fire-engine red pumps. I glanced down at my own sensible black flats. Mrs. Davenport looked down at me from her perch, practically vibrating with the thrill of dominance. Every few seconds, she’d subtly shift her foot, letting the sharp toe of her stiletto kick against the fabric of my skirt. “You really do have the best daughter-in-law, Margaret,” Mrs. Davenport cooed. “So obedient. Not like my Chloe. That girl is spoiled rotten. Doesn’t listen to a word I say.” Margaret let out a bell-like laugh. “Oh, please. You can’t compare them. Chloe is a Harvard law graduate. Ours? Ours is completely useless.” I was still kneeling beside the table when Margaret casually reached for her silver insulated teapot. With a flick of her wrist, she tipped it. Boiling water cascaded directly onto the back of my hand. I gasped, shooting up from the floor, shaking my hand frantically. The skin was instantly an angry, blistering crimson. The pain was blinding, a sharp, searing heat that radiated up to my elbow. “Oh! My goodness. Clumsy me,” Margaret said. Her voice was flat. There wasn’t a drop of remorse in her eyes; they were dancing with cruel amusement. “You’d better go run that under the tap.” I rushed to the kitchen, shoving my hand under the freezing water, biting my lip so hard I tasted copper, just to keep the scream trapped in my throat. By the time I left the estate that evening, I felt hollowed out. I had played the servant all day. I hadn’t been offered a single bite of food. When Carter saw me walking down the driveway, my hand wrapped in a makeshift gauze bandage, he practically ripped the car door open, his jaw clenched tight as he helped me into the back seat. “Boss,” Carter said, his eyes dark in the rearview mirror. “How much longer are we playing this game?” I leaned my head against the cool leather of the headrest. A slow, terrifying smile curved across my lips. “Not long,” I whispered. “I just need to make sure I have every single piece on the board exactly where I want it.” 2 Peter wasn’t answering his phone, so the next morning, I went straight to the Harrington Holdings headquarters. When the elevator doors opened to the executive penthouse, I wasn’t expecting a party. But there they were. Peter’s inner circle. The boys’ club. Spencer and Nate. These were the men I had spent my college years with. We had crammed for finals together, drank cheap beer on fire escapes together. I had given them my genuine, unfiltered loyalty. I was just about to push the glass door open, a soft smile forming on my face, when a woman’s voice drifted through the gap. “You guys, stop it. Peter, tell them to stop teasing me.” It was Bella. Then came Spencer’s voice, booming and jovial. “Come on, future Mrs. Harrington! Don’t be shy. The whole city knows Peter’s basically built a shrine to you.” Bella was sitting on the edge of Peter’s mahogany desk, swinging her legs, the absolute center of gravity in the room. She ducked her head, offering a practiced, blushing smile. Peter reached out and affectionately tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Nate chuckled, leaning back in his leather chair. “You’ve been back in the States for a month, Bella. I don’t think Peter’s even seen his own house since you landed.” Bella covered her mouth, giggling. “I haven’t kidnapped him! He’s the one who refuses to leave my apartment. And please, you guys have to stop calling me that. I don’t have the luxury of being his wife.” She let her gaze drop to the floor, the picture of tragic longing. Spencer immediately jumped in to soothe her. “Don’t sell yourself short, Bells. If you hadn’t moved to Paris, there is zero chance that ice-queen Diana would be sitting in the Harrington wife slot right now.” I stood frozen in the hallway. My perfectly manicured nails dug into the leather of my handbag until my fingers ached. There was a hollow, echoing pain in the center of my chest. Three years ago, Spencer’s startup had been on the verge of total bankruptcy. He came begging Peter for a five-million-dollar bridge loan. Peter had laughed in his face, telling me in private that Spencer’s company was garbage and wasn’t worth his spare change. He was going to let him drown. It was me. I was the one who begged Peter to remember their years of brotherhood. I was the one who personally signed a guarantee, promising Peter that if Spencer defaulted, I would liquidate my own private trust to cover the loss. My kindness. My loyalty. It was all just a punchline to them now. And Nate. Nate, whose father had abandoned him and his mother for a younger woman and a secret second family. Nate’s mother had broken her back working double shifts to give him a life, eventually building a multimillion-dollar bakery franchise from scratch. Nate always spoke of his mother with a fierce, protective pride. He openly despised his father for his infidelity. Yet here they were. Both of them. Forming a protective shield around their buddy’s affair. Bowing at the altar of the other woman. I didn’t understand how men could be so exceptionally hollow. How they could experience the fallout of betrayal, yet so easily inflict it on someone else. Through the crack in the door, Bella’s eyes suddenly met mine. The brief flash of shock in her gaze was immediately swallowed by a sickeningly sweet, triumphant smirk. The sheer audacity of it made the air leave my lungs. I wanted to run. Bella turned back to Peter, casually wrapping her arms around his neck. “Peter, I’m craving Italian. Let’s go to that place in SoHo. My treat.” Spencer and Nate immediately cheered, agreeing that whatever “the golden girl” wanted, she got. Once upon a time, they had called me by my first name. They used to swear they didn’t hang out with me just because I was dating Peter. They said we were a family. I believed them. God, I was naive. It takes the absolute worst moments of your life to strip the mask off the people around you. They were all exactly the same. They were all trash. 3 I turned on my heel and left. By the time I reached the lobby, I was on the phone with my private wealth manager, initiating the quietest, deadliest divorce prep New York had ever seen. Carter had also emailed me the Q3 projections for my shadow portfolio. Looking at the staggering numbers, a genuine, terrifying smile broke across my face. That was exactly how Peter found me when he finally walked through the front door of our townhouse that evening—staring at my phone and smiling. He dropped his briefcase, walked over, and draped himself over the back of the sofa, pressing a kiss to my hair. “Hey, beautiful. What’s got you so happy?” The moment I had heard his key in the lock, I had swiped away from my financial spreadsheets and opened a gossip blog. My face was a mask of utter serenity. “Just reading some ridiculous celebrity drama.” He leaned in, trying to catch my lips for a kiss. I turned my head just enough so his mouth grazed my cheek. I gave him a gentle but firm push backward. His face instantly clouded over. “You reek of garlic and cigar smoke,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Did you go out for Italian?” Peter stiffened. A flicker of panic crossed his eyes before he smoothed it over. “Uh… yeah. Grabbed dinner with Spencer and the guys. I’m gonna go take a shower.” I watched him walk up the stairs, my eyes cold. By the time he got out of the shower, I had already turned my back to his side of the bed and feigned a deep, heavy sleep. The next morning, Peter was putting on an absolute clinic in husbandly devotion. He was sitting at the breakfast island, pushing a mug of perfectly frothed matcha and a warm croissant toward me. “You aren’t rushing to the office today?” I asked, taking a sip. “I’m too busy? Never too busy for my wife,” he grinned smoothly. “So, how was it? Did my mother give you a hard time at the estate the other day?” I set the mug down and looked at him, letting a small, humorless laugh escape. “What do you think?” Peter saw the smile and assumed the coast was clear. “Come on, Diana. You know how she is. It’s just family dynamics—” I reached across the marble counter and yanked back the silk cuff of my blouse. The burn took up the entire back of my hand. The skin was an angry, mottled purple. A massive blister had popped in the night, leaving the dead skin wrinkled and peeling over raw, weeping tissue. It looked like something out of a horror movie. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Your mother poured boiling water on me.” Peter’s eyes bulged. He stared at the mangled flesh of my pale hand, the color draining from his face. His eyes immediately went red. He reached out, his hands hovering over mine, terrified to touch it. He fell to his knees beside my barstool, wrapping his arms around my waist, burying his face in my stomach. “God, Diana. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry she put you through that.” Put me through that. I stared down at the top of his perfectly styled hair. Not I’m going to kill her. Not I’m going to burn that house down. Just a passive acknowledgment of my suffering. My utter lack of reaction seemed to unnerve him. He pulled back, looking up at me, his guilt rapidly souring into defensive anger. “Well, what do you want me to do, Diana?!” he snapped, his voice rising. “You want me to drive over there and beat up an old woman? She’s my mother! What am I supposed to do? Why can’t you just learn to stroke her ego a little bit? Play the game!” I looked at him. The disappointment was a physical weight in my chest. There was a time, years ago, when this man actually gave a damn about me. When we were engaged, Margaret had made a snide comment about my weight. Peter had flipped a dining table. He refused to speak to his mother for six months, and the freeze-out only ended because his father begged him to come to a board meeting. After that, whenever Peter was in the room, Margaret treated me like glass. But it had been too long. Peter stopped caring, stopped showing up, and Margaret, like a rabid dog returning to its vomit, reverted to her true nature. Crushing my dignity was her favorite parlor game. The Harringtons were rotten all the way down to the studs. Peter played the doting husband for exactly three days before he vanished again. He didn’t come home for the rest of the week. I didn’t care. It gave me the silence I needed. My empire was on the precipice of something massive. Everything rode on the next few weeks. Bella was a D-list influencer before she moved away. Now that she was back, Peter was funneling Harrington Holdings’ marketing budget into reviving her career. I was scrolling through my phone while drinking coffee when an algorithm pushed one of her posts onto my feed. I clicked it. The blood in my veins turned to ice. The caption read: “Thank you to my angel for the necklace. I’ve loved this piece for years, and after so much time, it finally found its way to where it belongs.” Attached was a photo of her delicate collarbone. Resting against her skin was a massive, pear-cut blue diamond, surrounded by a halo of flawless white diamonds. It was the Tear of Artemis. The necklace my grandmother had secured around my neck on her deathbed. A ringing sound started in my ears. So that was why Peter had played house for three days. He wasn’t guilty about my burned hand. He was waiting for me to leave the house so he could crack the safe in my dressing room, steal my grandmother’s legacy, and strap it around his mistress’s neck. My hands were shaking so violently I dropped the phone twice before I managed to dial his number. He answered on the second ring. He sounded completely unfazed, as if he’d been waiting for the call. “Diana. I know why you’re calling. Listen, let’s just say I bought it from you. I’ll wire five million into your personal account today. Is that enough?” “Peter,” I breathed, my voice vibrating with a rage so profound it scared me. “Are you out of your absolute mind? You broke into my safe. You stole from me. I am giving you until midnight tonight to bring that necklace back to this house, or I will ruin you.” “Jesus, Diana, calm down. It’s just a piece of jewelry. Haven’t I bought you enough diamonds over the years? I’m not stealing it, I’m compensating you for it. The wire transfer is already pending.” I cut him off. “Men who play God eventually have to face the devil, Peter. I hope you’re ready for the fallout.” I hung up. I immediately dialed Carter. “Accelerate the timeline,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I want the IPO launched within seven days.” There was a brief pause on the line. Then, Carter’s voice, hard and absolute. “Consider it done.” I hung up. I stood in the middle of my silent, immaculate kitchen, trembling with adrenaline. Then, I pulled up my contacts and dialed a number with a +7 country code. Moscow. “Sabrina,” I whispered when the line connected. “I need you.” 4 When I met Sabrina at JFK, I barely recognized her. She was a vision in a sharply tailored, blood-red leather trench coat. She had grown at least two inches taller than me, her hair chopped into a sleek, ruthless bob that framed a face carved out of marble. People in the arrivals terminal were literally stopping to stare at her. If it weren’t for the ten towering, heavily armed Russian private security contractors forming a wedge around her, a dozen men would have tried to hit on her. I ran to her, tears spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. She caught me, wrapping me in a crushing, desperate hug. “Diana. I missed you so much,” she breathed into my hair. “Sabrina…” I sobbed, the sound tearing out of my chest. “Hey, hey. Look at me.” Sabrina pulled back, taking my face in her black-leather-gloved hands, her thumbs gently swiping away my tears. “You’re a titan, Diana. You run an empire from the shadows. Why are you crying? Did my brother do this?” I looked up, stunned. She knew. She knew about my company. Not even my own father knew about my business. It was an entity I had built from the ground up using my grandmother’s inheritance while I was supposedly “just studying” abroad in London for ten years. It had grown into an apex predator in the venture capital world. Sabrina pulled me back against her chest, her hand stroking the back of my head. It was the safest I had felt in years. The cavalry wasn’t just coming. The cavalry was here. I moved Sabrina into one of my private penthouses in Tribeca. I refused to go back to the townhouse I shared with Peter. The next afternoon, Carter sent me a ping with a location. I grabbed Sabrina, telling her I wanted to take her shopping. She just smiled softly, saying she didn’t need anything, but let me drag her out the door. We were strolling arm-in-arm through the most exclusive luxury department store on Fifth Avenue, a discreet phalanx of Russian muscle trailing thirty feet behind us. Sabrina stepped away to use the restroom. I was idly browsing a rack of silk blouses when a voice sliced through the quiet ambiance like a rusted knife. “Oh my god! Peter, look, it’s Diana!” I turned slowly. Bella was clinging to Peter’s bicep like a barnacle. Peter looked momentarily panicked, shifting his weight uneasily, before attempting a mask of authority. “Diana? What are you doing here?” I stared at him deadpan. “I’m in a Bergdorf’s. What do you think I’m doing? Ordering a pizza?” Bella stepped forward, her voice dripping with sickly-sweet concern. “Diana, I heard you and Peter had a fight. Was it over this?” She reached up, her manicured fingers brushing against her collarbone. Resting there, mocking me, was the Tear of Artemis. Something inside me snapped. The world went terrifyingly quiet. I didn’t think. I lunged. I grabbed the heavy platinum chain and ripped it downward with all my body weight. The clasp snapped. Bella let out a blood-curdling shriek. “Ah! Are you crazy?! It cut me!” I gripped the cold diamonds in my fist, a massive wave of relief crashing over me. Carter was right. He had profiled her perfectly. The woman was too vain, too desperate to prove she had won; she would never take it off. She’d wear it in public like a trophy. Peter practically tackled Bella to check on her. A thin, angry red welt was rising on the back of her neck. He spun around, his face contorted with rage. “Diana, how dare you put your hands on her! I told you I bought that from you! I’m wiring you five million dollars! If you want more money, name your price, but you do not assault her like a feral animal! Apologize to Bella right now!” “Assault?” I stepped right into his space, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “You broke into my home and stole from me. You’re nothing but a common thief in a Tom Ford suit.” I looked him dead in the eye. “I’m filing for divorce, Peter.” Peter froze. Next to him, a flash of pure, euphoric victory sparked in Bella’s eyes. But she was a professional victim. She immediately grabbed Peter’s arm, her voice trembling. “Diana, please, you can’t do that! Peter loves you! If this is a misunderstanding, I’ll explain everything. Please don’t throw your marriage away because of me!” I let out a sharp, barking laugh. “Are you seriously that delusional, Bella? You’re older than I am, stop playing the naive little girl. My mother died a long time ago, she never gave me a sister. I’m divorcing Peter because he repulses me. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. You are nothing.” Peter’s face flushed a deep, ugly crimson. As I turned to walk away, he lunged, grabbing my arm and slamming my back against a mirrored pillar. His hand clamped around my jaw, his fingers digging brutally into the soft skin beneath my chin. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” he spat, his breath hot against my face. “You don’t get to file for divorce. Your family begged for this union! The Kensingtons survive off the scraps from my table! I call the shots, Diana. You have no power here.” I thrashed against him, tears of pain pricking my eyes as his grip bruised my jawline. Bella stood three feet away, watching with a small, satisfied smirk. I was just starting to wonder what was taking Sabrina so long. I didn’t even see the blur. I just felt the sudden rush of displaced air. Before I could blink, Peter was violently ripped away from me. He didn’t just fall—he went airborne, crashing backward into a glass display case with a deafening shatter.

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Once upon a time, I had a sudden, terrifying moment of clarity. I realized I was nothing but a disposable background character in the sweeping, dramatic romance of someone else’s life. So, I pivoted. I became the golden boy’s best friend, married the affluent, tragically heartbroken second female lead, and gave the main couple their happily ever after. But a decade later, he’s back. He just announced his newly single status and dropped two messages into a college alumni group chat that had been dead for years. [I’m back stateside. Let’s all get together soon.] [@Madeline, you’ll be there, right?] The group thread instantly exploded. Everyone remembered how Tristan Crawford, the arrogant, untamable Ivy League prince, had walked away from the ice-queen valedictorian who had spent four years chasing him. To this day, it was the great, unresolved tragedy of our social circle. I stared at the glowing screen, then shifted my gaze to Madeline sleeping soundly beside me. I raised an eyebrow in the dark. I had some unresolved business, too. After all, her assets didn’t entirely belong to me yet. 1. [Madeline has to go, right? She waited for Tristan for ten years. What guy could resist that kind of devotion!] [Seriously! She’s been married, but come on, we all know who owns her heart. The ultimate tragic romance!] [I could feed off this drama forever. It’s too good.] I stared at the messages cascading down the screen. My fingers tightened unconsciously around the edges of my phone, but my eyes drifted back to Madeline. She slept so peacefully. Her breathing was a steady, quiet rhythm, her elegant profile softened by the warm glow of the nightlight. Fifteen years. It had been fifteen long years since my senior year of high school, the year I “woke up” and realized I was just an extra in this narrative—a guy whose name people barely remembered. When I got to college, the first thing I did was gravitate toward Tristan Crawford. He was the protagonist. The sun around which everyone else orbited. Relying on my uncanny intuition for how his story was supposed to go, I showed up exactly when he needed a wingman. I said exactly what he needed to hear when his ego took a hit. Seamlessly, inevitably, I became his best friend. Everyone used to say, Cameron Wright, you’re so lucky to be Tristan’s brother-in-arms. Only I knew the truth. I was just basking in the residual glow of his main-character energy, using his light to carve out a slightly smoother path for my own life. For four years of undergrad, I shadowed Tristan to every exclusive fraternity mixer and hamptons weekend, infiltrating his elite circle. That was how I met Madeline Sinclair. She came from old money. She had a razor-sharp intellect, top-of-her-class grades, and eyes that saw absolutely no one but Tristan. Until graduation year. That was when Tristan chose Bernice Kensington, the stunning, equally wealthy campus darling, and moved to London with her. Right before he left, Tristan threw an arm around my shoulder, flashing that signature, blinding smile. “Cameron, Madeline is an incredible woman. You guys should get together. It would give me peace of mind.” I looked at his bright, oblivious smile, knowing the truth better than anyone. Madeline’s heart belonged entirely to him. I also knew that, according to the unwritten script of this world, Tristan would return a decade later, and Madeline would pack up our child and run straight back into his arms. But so what? Madeline’s pedigree, her education, her family’s capital—they were stepping stones a guy from my middle-class background couldn’t reach in three lifetimes. Marrying her meant I could climb. I could access a higher echelon, network with the right investors, and build my own empire. As for love? I never expected it. So, when Tristan played matchmaker, I didn’t hesitate to say yes to Madeline. I was as cold and calculating as a corporate raider executing a merger. I had every step mapped out. I would use her family’s connections to launch my tech startup. I would build my own wealth. And in ten years, when Tristan inevitably returned and Madeline inevitably cheated, I would file for a very public, very justified divorce, take half of everything, and secure my absolute freedom. I calculated every variable. Except one. I didn’t factor in how a human heart can soften under the quiet, steady weight of a shared life. In our third year of marriage, my company finally gained traction. Madeline, without ever asking for credit, quietly fed me high-level industry contacts. In our fifth year, our daughter, Sophie, was born. Madeline was incredibly clumsy at first, but she learned to be a mother with an exhausting, fiercely tender devotion. In our eighth year, my firm hit a massive cash-flow crisis. Without a word, she liquidated her personal trust to help me weather the storm. Ten years. Everyone told me, Cameron, you married a truly good woman. And I almost fooled myself into believing it. I almost believed that living like this, for the rest of our lives, wouldn’t be so bad. But now, Tristan was back. The narrative was violently course-correcting. I looked at the endless notifications lighting up the group chat, and the last lingering traces of hesitation in my chest were ruthlessly crushed by logic. Fine. This would be my final test for her. If, this time, she chose me—if she chose this home we built—I would bury my grand plan. I would pretend I never saw the messages. I would stay in this marriage forever. But if she chose Tristan… Then it was time to close the net. 2. The next morning, sunlight slipped through the gap in the blackout curtains. Madeline was already awake, lying on her side, watching me. Her voice carried the raspy, intimate weight of sleep. “You’re up?” “Yeah,” I murmured. I stretched, pretending the thought had just casually crossed my mind. “By the way, the alumni chat blew up last night. Tristan is back from London. He’s putting together a get-together this weekend. You going?” Madeline’s movements stalled for a fraction of a second. Then she rolled onto her back, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her tone was flat. “No.” “Why not?” I propped myself up on one elbow to look at her. “Back in the day, you guys…” She cut me off, turning her head to meet my eyes. Her gaze was eerily calm. “There’s no point.” “It’s all in the past. Besides, it’s just a bunch of people who barely know each other anymore, pretending to be close and stroking each other’s egos. It sounds exhausting.” I didn’t say a word. I just waited. She shifted closer, burying her face against my chest. Her voice was muffled against my skin. “You shouldn’t go either.” “Sophie has her ballet grading exam this weekend. One of us needs to be there. If you go, who’s going to take care of her?” I held her in the quiet room. I breathed in the familiar, expensive scent of her shampoo. I let the silence stretch for several long seconds before I spoke softly. “You’re right. I’ll skip it.” Friday evening, Madeline came home earlier than usual. During dinner, she casually placed a piece of roasted chicken onto my plate, her voice the picture of domestic warmth. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have to pull some overtime this weekend. We have a massive project launching, and I need to push the timeline.” My fork hovered in the air. I looked up at her. “Both days?” “Yeah, I’ll probably be at the office pretty late,” she nodded, quickly adding, “I’ll drop Sophie off at my parents’ place tomorrow morning. They can take her for the weekend. You should just rest. You’ve been working so hard with the kid lately.” I looked at her gentle, flawless expression. I smiled and nodded. But deep in my chest, that final, pathetic ember of hope went ice cold. “Alright. Just don’t overwork yourself. Take care of your health.” Madeline looked at me, her eyes pooling with affection. “You’re always the sweetest husband.” Saturday morning, Madeline slipped out of bed with practiced stealth. I kept my eyes shut, feigning heavy sleep. I felt her lean over, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead. I felt her tuck the duvet securely around my shoulders. Then, the soft padding of her footsteps retreating. When the front door clicked shut, my eyes snapped open. Ten minutes later, I was dressed in dark clothes, a baseball cap pulled low, and a surgical mask covering my face. I hailed a cab and told the driver to follow her Audi. She didn’t head toward the financial district where her firm was located. Instead, her car glided toward the East Side, into the heart of the city’s most exclusive private club district. She pulled up to the valet stand of a members-only lounge. I had the cab driver pull over half a block away. Through the smudged glass of the taxi window, I watched her step out. And then, I saw Tristan. He was draped in designer clothes, his hair styled to that effortless, messy perfection. He stood by the entrance, wearing that same, radiant, arrogant smile. Ten years had passed, but he hadn’t changed a bit. He was still the untouchable golden boy. Madeline walked toward him. Tristan stepped forward to close the distance, wrapping an arm naturally around her shoulders. He leaned down, whispering something in her ear, laughing. Madeline tilted her head up to listen. The curve of her jawline was the same gentle silhouette I had kissed a thousand times. Then, Tristan let his arm drop, turned fully toward her, and pulled her into a deep embrace. Madeline went rigid for a second. But she didn’t push him away. They held each other in front of the club, looking exactly like two star-crossed lovers reuniting against all odds. I sat in the back of the cab, watching them. And I felt… nothing. Just a vast, hollow calm. That ridiculous, lingering hope was finally, permanently dead. I pulled out my phone, zoomed in on the embracing couple, framed the shot perfectly, and tapped the shutter button. “Driver. Take me to the financial district. I need a law firm.” 3. The air conditioning in the conference room of the law firm was aggressively cold. I slid my phone across the polished mahogany table. The screen displayed the crisp photo of Madeline and Tristan locked in their embrace. The attorney sitting across from me, David Pierce, was a man in his late forties, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and an aura of expensive competence. He adjusted his glasses, scrutinized the photo, and then looked up at me. His tone was clinical. “Mr. Wright, a single photograph of an embrace in a public setting is insufficient to definitively prove infidelity in a court of law. Judges require a much higher burden of proof—explicit photographs, hotel receipts, incriminating text threads, or unexplained financial transfers.” I smiled faintly and pulled the phone back. “The proof is coming. David, I need you to draft the divorce settlement. My terms are very straightforward: she gets full custody of our daughter, and I walk away with every single cent of the marital assets I am legally entitled to.” David raised an eyebrow, clearly taken aback by my lack of emotional distress, but his professionalism quickly masked it. “Understood. I’ll begin drafting the initial paperwork. However, I must advise you that if you can procure concrete evidence of marital misconduct, it will grant us significantly more leverage during the asset division phase.” “I’m aware.” I stood up, buttoning my jacket. “Email the draft to me when it’s ready. I’ll be waiting to sign.” By the time I left the firm, it was early afternoon. I didn’t go home. I wandered through a high-end department store, bought myself a tailored jacket I didn’t need, and spent an hour getting a deep-tissue massage. At four o’clock, I walked into my house carrying shopping bags. It was dead quiet. Predictably, Madeline wasn’t home. I boiled some water and made myself a simple bowl of pasta. Just as I finished eating, my phone buzzed on the counter. An MMS message from an unknown number. I tapped the notification. It was a ten-second video file. The lighting was dim, clearly a private VIP booth. Madeline was pressed against Tristan’s chest, her head tilted back, kissing him with a desperate, almost religious fervor. The resolution was high. You could clearly see the flush on Madeline’s cheeks and the slight flutter of her eyelashes as she kept her eyes tightly shut. As soon as the video ended, a text message popped up from the same number. [Cameron, a marriage only survives when a woman is actually in love with her husband. Don’t you agree?] I saved the video to a secure cloud folder. I took a screenshot of the text thread. Saved that, too. At seven o’clock, my phone rang. Madeline. “Hey honey, I have a client dinner tonight that’s going to run late. Don’t wait up for me, just go to sleep.” Her voice floated through the speaker. The background was entirely silent—far too quiet for a bustling restaurant or a corporate event. “Got it,” I said, keeping my voice utterly level. “Don’t drink too much.” I hung up, walked over to the living room couch, and turned on the TV, putting on a mindless action movie. The movie was terrible. I fell asleep halfway through. Sometime in the middle of the night, in the hazy space between sleep and waking, I felt the mattress dip. Someone was slipping under the covers, moving with agonizing slowness. The faint, sweet stench of alcohol drifted through the dark. Madeline pressed her body against my back, wrapping her arms around my waist. She buried her face between my shoulder blades and whispered, so quietly it was almost a breath: “I’m sorry…” I didn’t move a muscle. I kept my breathing deep and even, playing the sleeping husband to perfection. But in my head, I was laughing. A cold, hollow sound. What was this? A sudden flash of Catholic guilt after sleeping with another man? Or did she just feel pathetic, and decided to throw a crumb of counterfeit affection to the husband she was destroying? Madeline held onto me for a while until her breathing evened out and she slipped into a deep sleep. I opened my eyes, staring into the dark room, watching the moonlight pool on the floorboards. My heart was a block of ice. 4. Over the next few weeks, Madeline’s “overtime” escalated aggressively. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. She always found a pristine excuse to stay out past ten. “The project deadline was moved up.” “Entertaining a prospective client.” “Department team-building.” The excuses rotated, but the outcome was identical—she wasn’t home. And Sophie, who used to spend only one night a week at her grandparents’ house, was now being shipped off for three nights a week. Worse, every time Sophie came home, the way she looked at me grew a little colder, a little more disdainful. “Daddy, why are you always in a bad mood? You look crazy.” “Daddy, why are you never home? Is it because you don’t love me?” “I hate you! You’re the bad guy! Go away, I don’t want you here!” I knew exactly what was happening. Tristan was already weaving his way into my daughter’s life. The plot was unfolding flawlessly, just like the original script. Madeline would pack up our child and run off into the sunset with Tristan. And me? The supporting character was finally being written out of the story. But before I exited stage left, I was going to take every single thing I was owed. I quietly hired a forensic accountant to audit Madeline’s personal and corporate assets. What I found was staggering. Over the past month, the deeds to three of our investment properties, her equity in two shell companies, and the bulk of her liquid savings had been quietly drained into an offshore account. The beneficiary of that offshore account? Tristan Crawford. But the detail that truly made my blood run cold was the corporate ledger. Madeline had embezzled three million dollars directly from her firm’s operational accounts and wired it straight to Tristan. I photographed every wire transfer, every doctored equity transfer, every forged property deed. I compiled it all into a meticulous, encrypted dossier. And I sent it to David Pierce. Half an hour later, David called me. His normally calm voice was vibrating with urgency. “Cameron, what your wife is doing constitutes gross dissipation of marital assets. But more importantly, the corporate embezzlement is a severe federal felony. With this evidence, not only will she walk away from the divorce with absolutely nothing, but she is looking at serious prison time.” “My advice is to file the divorce petition immediately and request an emergency freeze on all remaining assets.” “I know.” I stared at the spreadsheets illuminating my dark office. My voice was eerily calm. “David, get the filings ready. I’ll let you know the exact day to drop the hammer.” “When are you planning to proceed?” I thought about it. An old memory from the “script” surfaced in my mind. Tristan’s birthday was approaching. He was going to throw a massive, opulent gala. And according to the narrative, it was at this party that he and Madeline would be overcome by passion, sleeping together in one of the estate’s private VIP rooms. In the original story, this party was the turning point. It was the night Tristan publicly announced his divorce, his return to high society, and his rekindled romance with Madeline. “Give me a few days,” I said. “Right after his birthday party.” I hung up, opened my desk calendar, and stared at the date circled in red ink. Three days away. I traced the red circle with my fingertip, a razor-thin smile touching my lips. Tristan, I really hope you like the gift I’m bringing.

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I used to be a deep-sea recovery specialist. That was before I was convicted of murder—accused of cutting my dive partner’s oxygen line out of sheer greed—and handed a life sentence. After rotting in a cell for eight years, I was granted early parole. Now, my entire world had shrunk to the size of a wet, foul-smelling stall at the local harbor market, where I spent my days gutting fish. Until today. My family tracked me down like a pack of rabid dogs. My parents fell to their knees right there on the concrete, indifferent to the blood and fish viscera soaking into their designer clothes. “Carter,” my mother sobbed, her voice echoing off the corrugated metal roof. “Your brother went diving in the sound two hours ago. He hasn’t surfaced. Something’s wrong.” “You were the best commercial diver on the coast,” my father demanded, his face red. “Get in the water and save him!” Then came Yvonne. My ex-wife. She stepped forward, her hands trembling as she pulled out the diamond wedding band she’d kept all these years. She grabbed my calloused, scarred hand and forced the ring onto my finger. “I promise you,” she choked out, tears ruining her immaculate makeup. “If you go down there and bring Porter back, I will remarry you. We can start over.” I didn’t say a word. I just reached up, my fingers instinctively brushing the hard plastic of the hearing aid tucked behind my right ear. Had they genuinely forgotten? Eight years ago, we found a sunken wreck loaded with illicit gold bars. It was Porter—the golden boy, the adopted son—who fought with our crewmate underwater to keep the gold for himself. When the dust settled and the police circled, Yvonne forced me to sign a confession to protect him. My father had sealed the deal by backhanding me so hard across the side of the head that he ruptured my eardrum, leaving me half-deaf. With the state of my inner ear now, if I attempted a deep-sea dive, the barometric pressure would cause my cerebral blood vessels to burst. I would drop dead before I even reached the ocean floor. … 1 “Don’t be an ungrateful prick, Carter.” Bill, the market manager, stepped into my stall. His tone was venomous. He’d spent the last year treating me like dirt, but now he was practically bowing to Yvonne and my parents—the city’s top taxpayers. He turned his sneer on me. “They’re handing you a fortune and a chance to clear your name. You think you’re too good for it? You think this rotting fish stand is a palace?” A crowd of onlookers had started to gather, their whispers carrying over the smell of brine and ice. “What kind of monster just stands there?” a woman muttered. “That’s his brother.” “Probably trying to extort them for more money,” a man sneered. “Looks decent enough, but he’s got a heart of stone.” Every word was a needle slipping beneath my skin. I was the victim. I was the one who took the fall for Porter’s greed. My entire life had been incinerated, yet here I was, nearly a decade later, still being painted as the villain. I pulled the diamond ring off my finger and shoved it back into Yvonne’s chest. Then, I pointed to my hearing aid and shook my head. “It’s not that I won’t,” I said, my voice hoarse from disuse. “My ear is ruined. If I go down there, the pressure will kill me.” My mother, Helen, froze. Then, with a theatrical wail, she threw herself onto the filthy, scale-covered ground, beating her fists against the wet concrete. “Carter Pierce! Eight years in a cell and you’re still a cold-blooded sociopath!” she screamed. “You’d curse yourself with a fake disability just to avoid taking responsibility? That is Porter! He is your brother!” My father, Richard, pointed a trembling finger at my face. His eyes were wide with a sickening cocktail of disgust and fury. “How did I raise such an abomination? You’d watch him die and spin lies to justify it. You are garbage.” Yvonne’s eyes were bloodshot. She dug frantically into her pristine leather handbag, pulling out a sleek black debit card and shoving it into my apron pocket. “Please, Carter,” she begged, her voice cracking. “There’s five million dollars on that card. It’s enough for the rest of your life. Just bring him up. I’ll give you whatever you want.” Hot tears spilled from her eyes and landed on the back of my hand. They burned. In eight years of prison, she hadn’t visited me once. Not a single letter. Now, we were finally face to face, and she was humiliating me with money, begging me to risk my life for the very man she’d chosen over me. I was suffocating. I couldn’t do this anymore. With shaking hands, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the folded, creased medical certificate detailing my severe tympanic membrane perforation. But Yvonne didn’t even look at it. She slapped the paper out of my hand. “Are you seriously waving a piece of paper around right now?!” she shrieked hysterically. “Is this a negotiation? I gave you the money! Porter is running out of air!” That was the cue for Bill. The market manager lunged forward, grabbing the edge of my folding table and flipping it. Ice, dead fish, and bloody water crashed over my boots. “Get the hell out of here, you murderer!” Bill roared. “Don’t bring your bad karma into my market! If you don’t go save him, you’re never working on these docks again!” The crowd surged, feeding off the hostility. An old man spat at my feet. “Get out, killer!” “Doesn’t even deserve to breathe our air!” I looked down at my medical records, now soaking in a puddle of bloody fish water. A quiet, hollow absurdity settled in my chest. All I wanted was to be a ghost. To exist quietly in a dark corner of the world. Why was even that too much to ask? Did they really want me dead that badly? 2 The sheer weight of their collective hatred broke something inside me. Without another word, I turned and ran. I don’t remember the walk back to my rundown apartment. I just remember the slurs shouted from car windows and the pounding of my own heart. Before I could even catch my breath, my phone started vibrating violently on the kitchen counter. Notifications flooded the screen. Local news alerts. Viral TikTok tags. #KillerBrotherLetsSiblingDrown #PierceFamilyTragedy: Adopted Son Fights for Life, Biological Son Refuses to Help #CEOYvonnePierce Offers Millions to Save the Man She Loves I tapped a notification and found myself staring at a livestream. It was Yvonne’s account. On screen, my mother was weeping, her face pale and tragic. “I am so sorry… I’m sorry to take up public resources,” she trembled into the camera. “But as a mother, I am out of options. We failed in raising our eldest son. Eight years ago, that animal killed a man for gold. I thought prison would rehabilitate him, but… he is rotten to his core. His brother is dying underwater right now, and Carter just ran away.” My father stepped into the frame, wrapping a supportive arm around her shaking shoulders. He bowed deeply to the camera. “We are begging the public for help. If anyone can locate my son, Carter Pierce, we are offering a one-million-dollar bounty.” The live chat was a waterfall of digital venom. Doxx him! Someone find this psycho! I know where he works! He lives in the slums by the old rail yard! Any Seattle boys in the chat? Let’s go pay him a visit! Grab your bats. This guy needs to learn a lesson. Less than five minutes later, the violent pounding began. Before I could even reach the deadbolt, the cheap wooden door was kicked off its hinges. My landlord stormed in, flanked by a dozen strangers. Phone flashlights blinded me. Cameras were shoved into my face. “Thought you could hide, didn’t you, killer?” the landlord spat. The mob rushed the room, smashing my plates, kicking over my chairs. I tried to push my way to the door, but two massive guys grabbed me, slamming my face down onto the cheap linoleum. “Stay down!” one of them barked. “Apologize to the stream! Tell them you’re a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live!” Humiliation crashed over me like a tidal wave. They grabbed me by the hair, forcing my face toward the glowing lenses. I couldn’t move. Then, the crowd suddenly parted. My parents stood in the doorway. For a fleeting, pathetic second, the little boy inside me thought they had come to stop the violence. Instead, my father’s face was an emotionless mask. He reached behind his back and handed the closest vigilante a thick coil of heavy marine rope. He pointed at me, his jaw clenched tight. “Tie him up. If he won’t walk to the boat, we will drag him.” I yanked my head up, my voice tearing from my throat in pure disbelief. “Dad?! Do you even hear yourself? I told you I can’t go down there! It will kill me!” I looked at my mother. “Mom… doesn’t my life mean anything to you? You’re going to murder your own flesh and blood for an adopted son?” Helen’s eyes flickered with a microsecond of guilt before her face hardened into absolute conviction. “Shut your mouth! Porter might not share our blood, but his soul is a thousand times purer than yours! While you were eating off the taxpayer’s dime in a cell, Porter was taking care of us. He was the one holding this family together! Now he’s dying, and you won’t even lift a finger? Where is your conscience?!” My heart had been calloused by years of abuse, but in that moment, it shattered all over again. Blood meant nothing. I was just a stain on their perfect lives. Expendable. “I won’t go,” I thrashed against the men holding me down. “I never killed anyone! You never even looked at the evidence! Why didn’t you ever believe me?!” No one listens to a convicted murderer. Just as my strength started to give out, Yvonne stepped into the apartment. She looked immaculate, save for the heavy, black high-voltage stun gun gripped tight in her right hand. “Don’t make me do this, Carter,” she whispered, her eyes dark. “I will do whatever it takes to save Porter.” She didn’t hesitate. She drove the prongs directly into my spine and pulled the trigger. Electricity ripped through my nervous system. Everything seized, and the world went pitch black. 3 When I opened my eyes, I was lying like a dead dog on the steel deck of a ship. The roar of the ocean surrounded me. We were miles offshore, the waves slamming violently against the hull. Yvonne was standing over me, her arms crossed, her foot tapping anxiously. “Stop playing dead, Carter. Get up. You’re going in the water.” When I didn’t move, she crouched down, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “I told you, bring him up, and I’ll consider letting you come back to me. You’ll never have to gut another fish again. You won’t have to be a peasant.” A peasant. The word made my stomach turn. Six months ago, right after my release, I had walked to their sprawling lakeside estate, clinging to the pathetic hope that maybe, just maybe, I could find my family again. I stood in the snow, looking through their massive floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, the fireplace was roaring. My parents and Yvonne were gathered around the dining table with Porter, laughing, raising their wine glasses in a toast. From the outside, looking in at that warmth, I realized something fundamental: I was just an ex-con, freezing in the dark, half-deaf and entirely broken. They had built their heaven on the foundation of my hell. I was the interloper. My focus snapped back to the present, landing on a crumpled photograph gripped in Yvonne’s hand. It was a candid shot from a beach volleyball tournament years ago. Porter was shirtless, standing out among the other divers. But what caught my eye—what made the breath catch in my throat—was the jagged scar on his right shoulder. Seeing that scar was like being struck by lightning. Ten years ago. I was the dive captain. Yvonne and Porter were rookies on my crew. A freak storm hit, and a severe undertow caught us off guard. I signaled for an emergency ascent. In the chaos, I fought the current, using every ounce of my strength to physically shove Yvonne and Porter into the safety netting of the boat. In doing so, my muscles gave out. The undertow dragged me down. By some miracle, I washed up on a remote stretch of coastline. I was in a coma for three days before a passing trawler found me. When I finally made it back home, Porter tackled me in tears. “Carter! You’re alive! It’s my fault… if I had just been stronger… I only had the strength to pull Yvonne onto the boat. I had to watch you get swept away!” The pieces finally clicked into place. The realization made me physically nauseous. No wonder my wife fought so hard to protect him. No wonder she forced me to take the fall for his murder. For ten years, she thought Porter was the one who saved her life! During the three days I was presumed dead, Porter had spun a narrative where he was the knight in shining armor. He took credit for the rescue. He used the scar he got from scraping against the boat’s hull as proof of his heroism. And I was cast as the reckless captain who almost got them all killed. It was the sickest joke in the world. My throat was raw, but I pushed myself up onto my elbows and screamed over the wind. “I told you! I cannot dive! My eardrum will rupture! The pressure will cause a cerebral hemorrhage! Are you trying to execute me?!” Yvonne’s gaze wavered. A flicker of genuine panic crossed her face. But my father didn’t miss a beat. He stepped forward and delivered a brutal kick to my ribs, sending me sprawling back onto the wet deck. “Stop acting!” Richard roared. “You are rotten to the core! You’ll fake a medical emergency just to let your brother die?!” Nearby, my mother slumped against the railing, crying hysterically into her hands. “God… Porter is such a good boy. He’s so dutiful. If he dies down there, how am I supposed to go on living?” 4 The captain of the salvage ship walked over, tapping his diver’s watch with a grim expression. “Ms. Pierce, we are right above his last known coordinates,” he said. “Based on the time he’s been down, his oxygen supply will last exactly thirty more minutes.” That sentence snapped the last thread of Yvonne’s sanity. Her beautiful face twisted into something ugly and frantic. She whirled on me, pointing a trembling finger. “Did you hear him?! What are you waiting for?! Suit him up!” I stared at her. The last embers of hope I had for any of them finally burned out, leaving nothing but cold ash. “Fine,” I croaked. “I’ll do it.” I coughed, tasting blood. “But I have one condition. I need your top-tier atmospheric diving suit.” If they were forcing me into an execution, I had to fight for the one-in-a-million chance I had to survive. A hard-shell pressure suit was the only way I could withstand the deep-water compression without my brain bleeding out. Yvonne’s shoulders sagged with immense relief. She rushed forward, grabbing my hands, her eyes shining with manic gratitude. “I knew it. I knew you still loved me. I knew you wouldn’t let him die.” But a second later, she bit her lip, gesturing awkwardly to a pile of gear in the corner. “We… we don’t have that. We chartered this boat in a rush. They only have standard wet suits and some old commercial gear.” She forced a bright, patronizing smile. “But you were the best in the business, Carter. You can overcome a little equipment issue, right?” I followed her gaze. Lying on the deck was an outdated neoprene suit with visible dry rot and a rusted regulator valve. It was obsolete garbage. A death trap even for a healthy diver. Cold terror spiked through my veins. I ripped my hands out of hers and scrambled backward. “Are you insane?!” I yelled. “You used to dive! You know damn well that putting me in that gear is a death sentence!” The boat captain shuffled his feet, looking intensely uncomfortable. “Ms. Pierce, the gear is compromised. Sending a man down in that… the risk of catastrophic failure is—” “We don’t have time for this!” Yvonne snapped, cutting him off with lethal authority. “Restrain him! Get the suit on him!” Four of her private security guards descended on me. They slammed me into the deck. In the struggle, someone’s heavy combat boot came down squarely on the side of my head. I heard the sickening crunch of my hearing aid shattering into plastic splinters. They forced my limbs into the decaying rubber suit. To ensure I wouldn’t try to swim away, Yvonne personally dragged over a thirty-pound iron anchor chain and commanded the guards to padlock it around my waist. I was dragged to the edge of the ship, bound and weighted like a sacrifice. In my final moments of sunlight, I looked back at the people who were supposed to be my family. My father stood with his arms crossed, watching me with dead eyes. He looked like a man watching a minor annoyance being dealt with. My mother had her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clasped in fervent prayer. “Please, God… please bring Porter back to me safely.” At the edge of death, she was praying for the man who ruined my life. It was so utterly absurd, I almost laughed. Then came the hard shove against my chest. As gravity took me, Yvonne’s voice cut through the rushing wind one last time: “Bring him back, Carter, and we’ll get married again! I’ll be waiting right here!” The freezing black water swallowed me whole. The heavy iron chain dragged me down into the abyss at a terrifying speed. Within seconds, the oceanic pressure slammed against my skull like a sledgehammer. My already weakened right eardrum gave way with a muffled, sickening tear. It felt like a balloon popping inside the center of my brain. The pain was biblical. My body convulsed violently. I opened my mouth to scream, but freezing saltwater flooded my lungs. The pressure crushed my chest like a vice, and my vision bled out into a wash of crimson red. My consciousness was fading. Just as I surrendered to the suffocating dark, giving up my last biological instinct to survive… a pair of soft, incredibly strong hands reached out of the blackness and grabbed me.

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A week before our wedding, Beryl went on a last-minute business trip. When she finally got back, she melted into my arms, resting her chin against my chest, and out of nowhere, she murmured, “Did you shrink?” I froze. A microscopic tightening of my muscles. I forced a laugh, keeping my tone light. “What, did you spend your trip hugging guys taller than me?” Beryl’s body went rigid. Instead of answering, she shoved me backward onto the mattress, her mouth crashing down on mine, shutting down the conversation. After we made love, she wrapped herself in a towel and headed to the en-suite bathroom to shower, just like she always did. Everything felt perfectly, painstakingly normal. But I knew it wasn’t. Thirteen years. We had been each other’s entire world for thirteen years, and not once had she ever made a comment about my height. I lay there in the tangled sheets, staring at the ceiling. I took a slow, jagged breath, marshaling my courage, and reached for her phone on the nightstand. I scoured it. Texts, emails, hidden folders. Nothing. Not a single red flag. When Beryl stepped out of the bathroom, steam billowing around her, she noticed my silence. She climbed into bed, curling into my side with a soft, exasperated laugh. “Are you mad? Just because I said you felt a little shorter? Baby, we haven’t seen each other in a week. My spatial awareness is just out of whack.” I gave a curt nod. I didn’t say a word. I just let her tuck herself against my chest, the silence stretching out between us, heavy and suffocating. The next morning, I stepped out onto the terrace and called my parents. “Beryl might be cheating on me,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “I’m calling off the wedding.” 1. My parents urged me not to be rash, to find concrete proof first. So, I grabbed my keys and drove straight to Beryl’s corporate headquarters. It was a Saturday. She had promised me weeks ago that today would be our date day, a break from the wedding planning, but she’d canceled at the last minute, claiming a sudden “overtime crisis.” Sitting in my car in the parking garage, I pulled out my phone to call her, only to see a notification light up my screen. It was a message from Beryl on our personal iMessage thread. We both had separate phones for work, but for the last four thousand days—over a decade—we had never missed sending a good morning text. We even had a Snapchat streak that had been going since high school. Her text looked completely standard: “Did you eat lunch yet, baby?” But I stared at the screen, my brain short-circuiting. Beryl hated flashy, cutesy tech features. When Apple rolled out all those message effects and custom avatars, I’d asked if she wanted to match, and she had scoffed, calling it childish. But right now, her Memoji avatar—the one attached to her contact profile—had been changed to a pink bunny with hearts floating around its head. I typed back a single question mark. Immediately, the read receipt appeared. A second later, her avatar flickered and reverted to her standard, professional headshot. Her next text popped up: “Apple must be glitching. What was that bunny thing? I didn’t even touch my settings.” A glitch? My jaw tightened. I opened TikTok, my thumb flying across the search bar. It took me less than three minutes of searching trending couples’ aesthetics to find it. The “Pink Bunny and Bear” matching profile trend. My fiancé had matching couple profiles with someone else. I tapped into the top videos under the audio trend. A video posted barely ten minutes ago by an account named CEO’s Boy Toy featured a screenshot of a text conversation. The texts were mundane—Do you love me? Always.—but the problem was the profile picture of the person on the other end. It was Beryl. Specifically, a candid photo I had taken of her in Cabo, her hair windblown as she peeled shrimp for me at a beachside table. My breathing grew shallow, the air in the car suddenly too thin. The truth was violently clawing its way to the surface. I scrolled through the account. It was a goldmine of digital humiliation. Vlogs titled “Day in the Life of a Sugar Baby,”showing glimpses of expensive coffees, a luxury office, and the manicured hand of a woman passing him a credit card. I knew that hand. I bought the engagement ring currently sitting on its fourth finger. My phone buzzed. Beryl was sending me the profile link herself. A barrage of frantic voice memos followed. “Baby, please don’t ignore me. Okay, I admit it, I changed the avatar. I did it to help out the new marketing assistant. We’re shooting some viral POV videos to boost the company’s social media presence.” “He just turned twenty-one, he’s fresh out of college and full of Gen-Z ideas. He said this kind of ‘CEO and intern’ romance bait is super popular on TikTok right now and it’ll help us recruit younger talent.” I left her on read. I killed the engine, got out of the car, and walked straight to the private elevator, swiping my keycard for the penthouse floor. I really wanted to see what kind of twenty-one-year-old visionary thought pretending to date his boss was a solid corporate recruitment strategy. 2. I expected the office to be a ghost town, but the bullpen was actually buzzing. People really were working overtime. I exhaled a fraction of the tension in my chest. At least she hadn’t lied about the overtime. But a second later, my heart slammed into my throat. I was staring straight at her corner office. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls were completely obscured. The automated blackout blinds were drawn tight. Beryl hated closed blinds. Since the day she took over as CEO, she had never once lowered them. Even when I came to visit her for lunch, she loved leaving them open, never caring if her employees saw us kissing or being affectionate. So why were they down now? What exactly was happening in there that the rest of the floor couldn’t see? I took a step toward her door, but a senior project manager practically threw herself in my path. Her smile was tight, her voice a pitch too high. “Mr. Wright! What a surprise. What brings you to the office today?” she babbled. “With the wedding next weekend, I figured you’d be up to your neck in seating charts!” Before I started taking time off to handle the wedding, everyone in this building knew exactly how ruthless I could be. I was the silent majority shareholder; they feared me more than they feared Beryl. No one casually made small talk with me. My face went entirely blank. I stepped neatly around the woman, gripped the heavy brass handle of the office door, and shoved it open. Beryl was instantly there, her smile overly bright as she threw her arms around my waist. “You weren’t answering my texts! Were you planning a surprise visit?” I didn’t look at her. My eyes were fixed on the kid standing rigidly by the mahogany desk. He was huge. Easily six-foot-five. Definitely taller than me. He caught my gaze, a slow, insolent smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth as he gave a slight nod. “Afternoon, sir.” It was a micro-expression, gone in a flash, but it was dripping with unfiltered malice and triumph. I slowly reached down and peeled Beryl’s arms off my waist. I walked toward the boy, stopping just inches from him. I raised my hand and lightly, almost affectionately, patted his cheek. “What’s your name?” I asked. The kid’s smirk vanished. He refused to look at me, instead casting large, pleading puppy-dog eyes toward Beryl. He stayed silent. I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “I took a leave of absence right before you got hired, so maybe no one briefed you. I own the lion’s share of this building.” I tilted my head. “Am I no longer entitled to know the names of the people on my payroll?” I didn’t try to hide the sheer, unadulterated arrogance in my voice. Instantly, the kid’s eyes welled with tears. He shrank back, the perfect picture of a bullied victim. Beryl hurried over, grabbing my wrist and pulling my hand away. She stepped between us, shielding him. Her voice held a sharp edge of reprimand. “His name is Jaxon. He’s my new assistant. He’s barely out of school, Camden. Why are you talking to him like he’s trash?” I looked down at Beryl, meeting her defensive glare. A cold smile touched my lips. “What’s the matter? Does it hurt your heart to see him scared?” Beryl’s face flushed with anger. “Camden! We are in a place of business. You’ve always been the one to keep personal and professional lives separate. Why are you throwing a temper tantrum right now? Do you want to become the office laughingstock?” Thirteen years. Thirteen years, and this was the first time Beryl had ever raised her voice at me over my personality. In our social circle, plenty of people despised me. They thought I was an arrogant, privileged rich kid with a god complex. But Beryl never did. She used to stand in front of my critics, her chin held high, and say, “Camden has the background and the brilliance to back up his attitude. If you don’t cross him, he won’t burn you. Maybe look in the mirror before you judge him.” But now, she was tearing me down. Without hesitation, without knowing the full story, she was berating me to protect a twenty-one-year-old assistant. I slowly shook my head. “No. I don’t.” I pulled my arm free from her grasp. I pulled out my phone, pulled up the TikTok profile, and shoved the screen inches from Jaxon’s face. My voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “Jaxon, was it? Care to explain this account to me? I must have missed the memo that my fiancé was keeping a sugar baby on the company dime.” 3. A fat tear spilled over Jaxon’s lashes. He didn’t look at the phone; he kept his eyes locked on Beryl, waiting for his knight in shining armor to slay the dragon. But Beryl just stared at me. Her face had gone completely bloodless. She didn’t say a word. Realizing he wasn’t getting backup, the kid panicked. He was too young to handle a real confrontation. He shoved past me, yanked the door open, and sprinted out of the office. The employees outside, who had been blatantly eavesdropping, suddenly found their spreadsheets very interesting. I let out a harsh exhale and looked around the office. Really looked at it. Now that the adrenaline was fading, the clues were screaming at me. The framed painting I had done in high school—the one that had hung on her wall for five years—was gone. In its place was a framed print of Jaxon’s TikTok avatar. Her elegant espresso machine had been replaced by a neon-pink mini-fridge stocked with iced matcha and sugary energy drinks. Beryl despised sweet drinks. Even the $15,000 Italian leather sofa I had bought her for her promotion was covered in a cheap, fluffy cream-colored throw blanket. Everything was tainted. The evidence of a ghost living in her space. Beryl saw me taking it all in. Her expression darkened. She grabbed my hand and practically dragged me out of the building. We got into her car. She didn’t say a word as she slammed her foot on the gas, blowing through three red lights on the way back to our townhouse. The second the front door clicked shut, she grabbed my collar, shoved me against the wall, and kissed me. It wasn’t romantic; it was desperate, frantic. Her hands were everywhere, pulling at my clothes. I felt absolutely nothing. My blood was ice. I caught her wrists and held them in a vice grip. “Beryl, are you out of your mind?” She winced slightly at my grip but didn’t stop. She dropped to her knees, her hands going for my belt. “I think you’re the one who’s out of his mind, Camden. Going after a kid like that? Really?” Her voice was breathless, manic. “What, are you getting cold feet? Feeling insecure? Let me make you feel secure right now.” She leaned in, but I didn’t push her away. I just stared down at the crown of her head. My voice was eerily calm. “Is this the post-infidelity guilt trip?” That one sentence paralyzed her. She let go of my belt. Her face burned a dark, ugly red. She stood up in silence, turned her back on me, and walked out to the balcony. She lit a cigarette. Then another. Ten minutes passed, and she didn’t come back inside. I changed out of my suit, pulled on a sweater, and walked out to join her. I glanced at the pack sitting on the patio table, and a fresh wave of nausea hit me. Beryl had started smoking at eighteen. For seven years, she had exclusively smoked Capri slim menthols. The exact brand I had bought her when she had her first panic attack in college. Even right before her business trip, she had whined playfully, “Other guys buy their girls flowers; I just want you to buy my vapes and my cigarettes, baby.” But the pack on the table wasn’t hers. It was a pack of Marlboro Reds. Heavy, unfiltered, cheap tobacco. A frat boy’s cigarette. I paused, pulled one out, and lit it. I took a deep drag. It burned my throat. It tasted like ash and cheap chemicals. Zero mint. Zero sweetness. It was the exact flavor Beryl had always sworn made her sick to her stomach. I stood there, smoking the entire cigarette in silence. When the cherry finally burned down to the filter, Beryl turned to look at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, begging. “Stop this, baby. Please?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I know you have anxiety about the wedding. But we’ve been together for thirteen years. You know my soul. How could I ever cheat on you?” “Jaxon is just an assistant. I swear on my life.” “If you hate him that much, I’ll fire him right now. I’ll delete the TikTok account. Just… please. Let it go.” I looked down at the city lights bleeding into the twilight, the neon blurring as a lump formed in my throat so large I could barely swallow. “Your business trip,” I said quietly. “Did you go alone?” She didn’t miss a beat. “Yes.” “You can check the hotel logs. Only my name was on the reservation.” If she was bold enough to offer the logs, there was no point in checking. They’d be clean. After a long, suffocating silence, I gave a slow nod. “Okay.” “I don’t want to see his face tomorrow.” The next day, Jaxon was terminated. Word on the grapevine was that he was escorted out by security, looking like a kicked puppy. I told myself that maybe she hadn’t physically crossed the line. Maybe, in the grand scheme of a thirteen-year relationship, she had just gotten bored and indulged in a two-day ego trip with a starry-eyed kid. With the wedding days away, I couldn’t find the strength to throw away over a decade of my life for what might have been a fleeting emotional affair. I loved her too much. It was a pathetic realization, but it was true. For the next few days, life course-corrected. She smelled like her usual Tom Ford perfume again. The office returned to its sterile, elegant state. The TikTok account vanished. Our Snapchat streak ticked up to 4,005 days. I thought we had survived it. Until the day before the wedding. My phone rang. It was the Chief Financial Officer—a proxy I had personally installed at Beryl’s company years ago. “Mr. Wright. I apologize for bothering you before the big day,” he said, his voice tense. “A few days ago, Ms. Kensington authorized a hire. The kid didn’t do any actual work, but his compensation package is causing a near-mutiny in HR. Ms. Kensington isn’t answering her phone, so I have to bring this to you.” 4. The CFO forwarded the documents to my encrypted email. I opened the PDF. It was a guaranteed one-year contract for Jaxon, paid upfront. Ten thousand dollars a month as a base salary, plus a guaranteed five-thousand-dollar performance bonus. For an “intern” whose only job was allegedly photocopying spreadsheets. A second email chimed. It contained photos of a matte-black Maserati, alongside a lease agreement for a luxury penthouse in the city center—a property reserved for C-suite executives. Jaxon’s name was on the lease. And the Maserati? That was the car Beryl had bought for me on my twenty-third birthday. I knew the VIN by heart. It felt like someone had reached into my chest, gently lifted my heart, and then spiked it onto concrete. It shattered, the pain so blindingly sharp I had to grip the edge of the kitchen counter just to stay on my feet. I couldn’t breathe. My phone kept buzzing. The CFO was venting now, explaining that Jaxon had come into the office for exactly five days, picked fights with five senior employees, and Beryl had fired all five of them the next morning. Never in my life did I think Beryl—the woman who used to look at me like I hung the moon—would become a sugar mama to a frat boy. Right under my nose. Using my car. I stood there for a long time, staring blindly at the marble countertop. Finally, I wiped the cold wetness from my cheeks and typed my reply. “Freeze the assets. Initiate a clawback lawsuit for corporate embezzlement. The board did not approve this hire, which means the compensation is fraudulent. Retrieve every cent.” “As for the rest, stand down. I’ll handle it.” The moment I hit send, my phone rang again. My parents. “Camden,” my dad’s voice was heavy. “Your mother and I have been talking. If you feel in your gut that she’s cheating, there’s a reason for it. Let’s call off the wedding. To hell with the Kensingtons, we don’t need their business.” I cleared my throat, forcing my voice into a casual, breezy register. “It’s nothing, Dad.” “I was just being paranoid. The wedding is on. I’ll see you both tomorrow.” I don’t know how long I sat in the dark after that call. By the time I finally drove back to the townhouse, it was pitch black outside. Beryl was in the kitchen, her phone to her ear, about to call me. When she saw me walk in, her face lit up. “Where have you been? You’re so late! Come here, we need to celebrate. It’s our last night as single people!” She had cooked a massive feast. Candles were lit. Wine was poured. I stared at the domestic perfection and forced the corners of my mouth to lift. “Smells great.” Beryl was buzzing with manic energy. She drank three glasses of Pinot Noir in rapid succession, a heavy flush spreading across her cheeks. She leaned across the table, her eyes glassy and adoring. “I can’t believe we’re actually getting married tomorrow,” she slurred softly. “I’ve waited for this for so long. It feels like a dream.” “We grew up together. We went to the same college. We’ve never been apart, Camden. And we never will be.” I watched her over the rim of my glass. “Are you bored of me?” The question cut through her romantic monologue like a knife. Beryl blinked, the alcohol seeming to clear from her system for a split second. She looked at me, her expression dead serious, and slowly shook her head. “Never.” “Growing old with you… that was a promise I made to myself the first time I saw you when I was twelve years old.” “I love you, Camden.” Hearing those beautiful, poetic lies, I felt the familiar burn at the back of my throat. My eyes stung. She wasn’t lying about the past. She had chased me since we were twelve. We officially started dating at eighteen. Now we were twenty-five. Half of my entire existence on this earth had been spent by her side. I used to believe we were bulletproof. That we would never let each other go. But reality had just delivered a fatal blow. I couldn’t endure this “minor detour” in our marathon. I wasn’t built to share. I smiled, raised my glass, and downed the rest of my bourbon. I stood up, completely ignoring her declaration of love. “You’re drunk,” I said softly. “Get some sleep. Goodnight.” Tradition dictated we sleep apart the night before the wedding. Beryl had cried, begging me to stay in the master suite, but I locked myself in the guest room. Through the thin drywall, I heard the distinct click-hiss of her lighter. Over and over again. I didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning, we drove to the venue in separate cars. The wedding was straight out of a Pinterest board. A sprawling estate, acres of manicured lawns, hundreds of A-list guests dripping in designer clothes. Everything was perfect. Except for the bride and groom. I stood at the altar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jaxon sitting in the back row. He was glaring at us, his eyes burning holes into Beryl’s back. She didn’t spare him a single glance. The officiant signaled the string quartet. The opening notes of the bridal chorus floated over the crowd. Behind us, massive LED screens were supposed to play a montage of our engagement photos. Instead, the screens went pitch black. The chatter in the crowd died down. Hundreds of eyes snapped to the displays. A second later, the screens exploded with light. A collective gasp ripped through the audience. It wasn’t our engagement photos. It was a slideshow. Beryl and Jaxon on her “solo” business trip. Selfies of them in bed. Screenshots of their explicit text messages. Security footage of them making out against her office door. And finally, a crystal-clear photograph taken last night. Beryl, sneaking out of our townhouse at 2 AM, kissing a crying Jaxon under a streetlamp. “Beryl Kensington!” My dad’s voice shattered the stunned silence, roaring like thunder. “My son gave you his entire soul, and this is how you repay him?!”

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One minute, Vicky was posting a glowing tribute to me on Instagram. The next, she was quietly driving my custom-ordered, limited-edition hypercar right off the dealership lot. An hour later, her male assistant posted a photo from the driver’s seat to his Story. Caption: Blessed to have a female boss who takes such good care of her team. The wind just hits different today. She knew I lived and breathed cars. It was an obsession. Yet she had the nerve to take mine behind my back and hand the keys to him. That night, I had my team transport every single vintage and top-tier sports car from my private garage, lining them up perfectly in the driveway. I told her she could pick whichever one she wanted to give away next. And then, I made a call to my father in New York. I told him I’d accept the arranged date with the heiress of the city’s biggest real estate dynasty. I had the looks, the money, and the pedigree. There was absolutely no reason to waste another second of my life on someone who no longer loved me. 1 Dusk was settling over Seattle as I stood on the balcony of our waterfront estate. A deep, arrogant roar of an engine shattered the quiet of the neighborhood. A matte-black-and-gold hypercar pulled up to our driveway. Spencer walked around the aerodynamic hood, his steps light, and opened the passenger door with exaggerated gentleness. A silver stiletto stepped out onto the pavement. Vicky emerged, looking immaculate in a tailored white power suit, her fingers gripping a white Birkin. But it wasn’t her outfit that caught my attention. It was her eyes. They were locked onto Spencer—the man who had just opened her door—and there was a predatory, lingering warmth in her gaze that I hadn’t seen directed at me in years. They exchanged a few words, and a radiant, unguarded smile broke across her face. My phone buzzed. A notification from Twitter. Spencer had just tweeted a photo. It was a shot taken from the passenger seat—the “girlfriend POV.” Long, artistic fingers resting casually on the steering wheel, his jawline angled perfectly, a smirk playing on his lips. Driving the boss home in the car she gifted me. Life is sweet. In that single, crystalline moment, the floor dropped out from under me. When the dealership had texted me earlier that afternoon, I genuinely thought Vicky was trying to surprise me. I had spent three hours in my walk-in closet, meticulously picking out an outfit for our celebratory dinner. I had waited, starving and excited, until I opened my phone and saw Spencer’s posts. At first, I tried to rationalize it. Maybe Spencer was just posing for clout. Maybe Vicky didn’t know. But seeing that tweet confirmed it. She had actually taken the car I had been anticipating for over six months, bypassed me entirely, and gifted it to another man. I walked down the stairs and stepped out the front door, stopping right in front of her. Spencer immediately took two long strides forward, physically placing himself between Vicky and me. “Good evening, Mr. Sterling,” he said, his tone dripping with fake politeness. “Vicky and I just grabbed a bite to eat after closing a deal. We’re a little late. Please don’t be mad at her.” I looked at him, the coldness behind my eyes sharpening into something lethal. It was almost laughable. Who the hell did he think he was, telling me how to treat my own girlfriend? “I haven’t said a word yet, but you’re awfully quick to play the white knight,” I said, my voice dangerously even. Spencer’s eyes flickered, the color draining slightly from his perfectly manicured face. I let a slow, mocking smile touch my lips. “How’s the handling on the car? Smooth?” We were all adults here. We all knew how the game was played. A three-million-dollar hypercar wasn’t something a marketing director with no trust fund like Vicky could just buy on a whim. If Spencer had the audacity to accept it, he absolutely knew who paid for it. Spencer let out a stiff, barely audible, “Yeah.” Vicky stepped around him, putting herself in front of him, and lightly tugged at my sleeve. “Come on, Clark,” she murmured, her tone placating. “Spencer drives me to and from work every single day. I just remembered you had that car coming in, so I picked it up for him as a bonus. You have a whole fleet of sports cars. You can’t possibly care about one little car, right?” I slipped my hands into my pockets. The corners of my mouth curled up, but my eyes remained dead. “No. I do care.” “I waited over half a year for that car. No one touches it. Not even you, Vicky.” She recoiled, clearly not expecting me to strip away the polite veneer so abruptly. Her face darkened. The driveway went dead silent. Spencer pressed his lips together, saying nothing. As a man, he knew exactly why the air had turned toxic. There isn’t a man alive who can stomach watching the woman he loves take his money to buy lavish gifts for another guy. Even if she justified it as an “investment in her assistant.” “Mr. Sterling, this is on me. I shouldn’t have accepted the bonus from Vicky,” Spencer said, playing the martyr flawlessly. “I’ll go to the DMV tomorrow, cancel the registration, and return it to the dealership.” Listen to him. Crafting the narrative to make me look like a petty tyrant. “Spencer, was it? It’s just a car. I can afford to lose it,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, carrying the effortless weight of generational wealth. “I’ve got a dozen supercars in the garage right now. Go ahead. Pick one. Consider it a gift from me.” He looked up, genuine shock breaking through his composed mask. I stared him down, letting the silence crush him. “Vicky and I have been together for nine years. She’s used to this kind of money, so she doesn’t think handing over a hypercar is a big deal,” I continued, my words slow and deliberate. “But as an assistant, you need to learn your place. You need to know what you are allowed to accept, and what you are not.” Spencer took a step back, totally outmaneuvered. He stammered out an apology. “You’re right, Mr. Sterling. It’s my fault. Please, don’t blame Vic.” Vic? Since when were they on a first-name nickname basis? Vicky stepped into her stilettos, shielding Spencer entirely with her body, and wrapped her arms around my waist. She dug into her Birkin and pulled out a bottle of cologne, flashing me a sickeningly sweet, coaxing smile. “Okay, Your Highness,” she teased. “I bought you that limited-edition cologne you used to look at. Don’t be mad anymore, okay?” I stared down at the glass bottle in her hands, and the weight of the last nine years pressed heavy on my chest. Vicky and I had been together since our freshman year of college. Back then, she was the untouchable ice queen of the campus. Guys lined up to humiliate themselves for her attention, but she rejected them all, choosing to stand by my side. I remember nights tangled in the sheets, her whispering fiercely against my collarbone that I was the only man she would ever love. That I was her lifeline. But looking at her now, the fracture was undeniable. In her eyes, I had just seen genuine admiration—and a fierce, protective instinct—directed at another man. I had seen her laugh for him in a way she hadn’t for me in months. And the cologne in her hand? It was a brand I had stopped wearing four years ago. Her voice, a mix of scolding and sweet-talking, pulled me out of my memories. “I know you’re only acting like this because you love me and you’re jealous,” she said smoothly. “But to anyone else, it just looks like you’re bullying a junior employee.” Bullying. He wasn’t even worth the effort of bullying. I narrowed my eyes and turned toward the front door. “The way Spencer looks at you isn’t the way an employee looks at a boss,” I said coldly, pausing on the steps. “You’re a marketing director. Your entire career is built on reading people. You’re telling me you don’t see it?” “You gifted a multi-million-dollar car to a man who is clearly obsessed with you. Vicky…” She frowned, her tone taking on a defensive, dramatic edge. “Oh, stop it! There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Spencer. Not now, not ever.” I studied her face. I let the silence stretch out before I nodded, accepting her hollow reassurance for the night. I had loved this woman for nearly a decade. We had built a life together. Throwing a massive tantrum over a mildly attractive assistant felt beneath me. I had made my point, and I was getting my car back. There was no point in burning the house down tonight. Especially since I didn’t have hard proof of their emotional affair. Yet. 2 Vicky grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs toward our master bathroom, her eyes slightly red, playing the part of the devoted, distressed girlfriend perfectly. “The housekeeper is off today. Why don’t you take a shower, and I’ll go downstairs and sear you a steak?” she offered softly. I nodded, watching her walk away. I turned to my dresser to grab some fresh clothes and pulled open my underwear drawer. I froze. “Oh, by the way!” Vicky called out from the hallway. “The housekeeper said your boxers were getting a little worn out, so she threw the old ones away. Just grab a fresh pair from the bottom row.” I bent down and slid the bottom drawer open. I am incredibly particular about my things. My housekeeper knows I have a strict organizational system; everything must be perfectly aligned. She checks it meticulously every day. But right in the middle of the drawer, a brand-new box of my imported silk boxers was missing. A memory hit me like a physical blow. Two days ago, Spencer had posted one of those curated, “aesthetic lifestyle” photo dumps on Instagram. In the third slide, sitting casually on his coffee table next to an espresso, was a brand-new box of that exact, hyper-specific brand of luxury underwear. A suffocating, white-hot rage hijacked my nervous system. Vicky took my underwear from our home and gave it to her assistant? I didn’t want to admit it, but in that moment, I was consumed by a visceral, humiliating jealousy. In nine years, I had never felt this kind of blinding fury over another man. I wanted to storm down the stairs, corner her in the kitchen, and scream at her. Did she have any idea what it meant for a woman to buy a man underwear? I gripped the edge of the marble counter, fighting to regulate my breathing. Just as I managed to unclench my jaw, the bathroom door swung open. Vicky walked in, her heels clicking against the tile. “Clark, Spencer just brought the car back to the dealership. But the title transfer requires me to be there in person,” she said briskly, already checking her reflection in the mirror. “You’ll have to figure out dinner yourself.” The embers of my anger instantly flared back into a roaring fire. “It can’t wait until tomorrow?” I demanded. “You have to leave the house now, in the middle of the night?” Vicky paused, her brow furrowing as if I were the one being unreasonable. “You’re the one who loves this car so much. I’m rushing to get the paperwork done for you.” The heat in my chest instantly vanished, replaced by an expansive, hollow ice. “You took my car without my permission,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I merely reclaimed what was already mine.” “It’s late. It’s dark. You can go tomorrow.” She let out a long, heavy sigh, looking at me with undisguised disappointment. “You publicly humiliated Spencer by forcing him to return my gift. Now you’ve got him waiting around at the dealership wasting his night.” “Clark, you can’t just think about yourself all the time.” “When you act like this, it’s like I don’t even know you.” I stared at her. The absurdity of her words echoed in the tiled room. I’m thinking about myself? I’m the stranger? “Do you hear yourself right now, Vicky?” I asked quietly. A flash of impatience crossed her face, but she forced her tone into a patronizing patience. “Maybe I phrased that harshly. But you need to understand—Spencer is the only man at the company right now who can actually carry the weight of this workload with me. You stripped him of his dignity tonight. I can’t just abandon him there.” When I didn’t respond, she sighed again, a deeply tired sound. “Clark, you come from old money. Your family has everything. You don’t get what it’s like for normal people like me.” “If I want a future with you, I have to be ruthless. I have to build an empire. Sure, you can throw a childish tantrum tonight and demand I stay home. But if I alienate the one partner who is in the trenches fighting beside me… that’s a cost I’m not willing to pay.” A ringing sound filled my ears. The one partner in the trenches with her. So that was it. Deep down, Vicky had always felt our backgrounds made us incompatible. And now, she saw Spencer as her true equal. Her comrade in arms. I see. The last thread holding my heart together snapped. “Go,” I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. Without a single second of hesitation, she turned on her heel and walked out. The heavy oak door clicked shut, leaving nothing behind but the fading scent of her gardenia perfume. There was a time when I admired Vicky’s cold, calculating rationality above all else. And she used to say she loved my innate pride, the unyielding backbone I was born with. But everything had rotted. I looked up at the ceiling and let out a long, shuddering breath. When a woman’s heart leaves the room, there is no point in blocking the door. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed a New York area code. “Dad,” I said when the line clicked. “Tell the heiress I’ll take the meeting.” Five years ago, after graduation, my father demanded I return to Manhattan to take over the family’s investment firm. I refused to leave Vicky behind, so I stayed in Seattle. For five years, I stripped away the “trust fund kid” label and built something from the ground up. Whatever Vicky wanted to do, I backed her financially and emotionally. We stumbled, we bled, and eventually, we built the largest apparel conglomerate in the Pacific Northwest. We were pulling in over a billion dollars in annual revenue. And my reward was her telling me we weren’t “in the trenches” together. Leaving all this behind to go back to New York… it stung. But I was done. My screen lit up. A text from Vicky. The title is transferred. Car is at the dealership. Spencer and I are heading back to the office to pull an all-nighter. Won’t be home. I lay down on our king-sized bed in the dark, my eyes wide open until the sun came up. 3 The next morning, I walked into the executive suite with a hollow stomach. To my surprise, there was a takeout bag from a luxury bakery sitting on my desk. Spencer and I are meeting a few distributors. We’ll grab lunch out. —V The handwriting on the sticky note was Vicky’s. But inside the bag was a trendy matcha chia pudding. The one thing in the world I absolutely despised eating. It was painfully obvious she hadn’t bought this for me. I handed the bag to my assistant and asked him to run down and get me a black coffee and a plain bagel. A rotting relationship is exactly like food you hate. There’s no point in forcing yourself to swallow it. By 1:00 PM, I had cleared my inbox. There was no sign of Vicky. My assistant knocked and walked in, casually mentioning, “Hey boss, looks like Vic and her assistant are out at that new oyster bar on the pier. What do you want me to order you for lunch?” I paused, my pen hovering over a document. I frowned. “Where did you see that?” He waved his phone at me, looking slightly awkward. “Instagram. Spencer posted a story thanking Vic for treating him to a seafood feast.” I leaned back, pulled a cigarette from my desk drawer, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Any lingering guilt I felt about drunkenly agreeing to the arranged date last night evaporated completely. At 3:00 PM, Vicky pushed open my office door, her heels sinking into the plush carpet. Spencer trailed right behind her like a shadow. “Clark, I’m so sorry. The meetings ran long so we couldn’t make it back. We just grabbed a quick bite. Did you eat?” she asked, dropping a stack of files on my desk. I barely glanced at her, offering a monotone, “Yeah.” She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down, rubbing her temples. “Clark, I don’t know how the rumor about the sports car leaked, but the whole office is gossiping about Spencer. Considering we just locked in three massive contracts today, do you think you could step up and make an executive statement to clear his name?” My hand, which was about to sign a ledger, froze. I slowly raised my eyes. “You gave him a car. He accepted it. And you want me—the bystander whose car was stolen—to clean up the mess?” Vicky’s beautiful, icy features twisted into a scowl. “Clark, you’re the CEO. It would literally take you one sentence to shut this down.” I leaned back in my leather chair and let out a dark, abrasive laugh. “You want me to abuse my corporate authority to forcibly silence the staff?” “A boss buys her assistant a hypercar. You think people aren’t going to talk? If he has the audacity to take it, and the ego to brag about it on social media, he should have the spine to handle the fallout.” Look at her. Going to war to protect him. And demanding that I swallow my pride to protect him with her. Nine years, Vicky. Do you even have a soul left? Spencer stepped forward, interrupting my thoughts. “It’s okay, Vic. A few rumors won’t break me,” he said softly, playing the wounded soldier. “Mr. Sterling is incredibly busy. We shouldn’t bother him with trivial matters.” Vicky shot out of her chair, her brow furrowed in fierce defense. “How is this trivial? You travel with me constantly. You work yourself to the bone. I will not let these people drag your name through the mud!” I slammed the leather portfolio onto the desk. The sharp crack made them both jump. “First of all,” I said, my voice dropping to a lethal quiet. “If there’s nothing going on, there’s nothing to hide. If you were strictly professional, Vicky, and you wanted to reward him for generating unprecedented revenue, a car is fine.” “But the reality is, the margins on those contracts don’t come close to justifying a three-million-dollar bonus.” “I don’t care if you genuinely miscalculated his value to the firm, or if your heart just bleeds for him because he drives you around. This company pays him a highly competitive salary. If he wants a raise, he can formally request one. What you don’t do is steal my property to compensate him under the table.” “This is a mess of your own making. Do not expect me to use my title to shield either of you.” The room fell dead silent. Spencer recovered faster than Vicky. He bowed his head, his voice trembling with perfectly calibrated remorse. “I am so sorry, Clark. I was careless. I’ll handle the rumors myself. Please, don’t be angry with Vic.” Vic. Overnight, he had dropped the professional title entirely. The boundaries were already gone. Vicky slammed her hand onto my desk, her eyes blazing with fury. “Fine. We’ll handle it ourselves. We don’t need you.” She grabbed Spencer by the wrist, yanked my office door open, and stormed out without looking back. Right before 5:00 PM, an automated notification popped up on my screen. A joint business trip approval request for Vicky and Spencer. I clicked Approve. That night, I met up with Cole, my business partner and oldest friend, at a dimly lit speakeasy downtown. Over bourbon, he told me I should have cut her loose months ago. “You poured nine years of your life into her, man. You gave her the world, and she treats it like a burden,” Cole said, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “Deep down, she resents you. She knows no matter how hard she grinds, she’ll never touch a fraction of your family’s wealth. And her pride won’t let her just enjoy it. It’s a classic complex.” I downed my drink, letting the burn slide down my throat. I didn’t say anything. Cole was wrong. When two people truly belong to each other, love isn’t a burden. It’s only when the love dies that people start calculating the math. Whatever. She wasn’t mine anymore. “So, when is this dinner with the New York heiress?” Cole asked, leaning forward. “You’re seriously leaving Seattle?” “Next week,” I said quietly. “I’ll transfer my voting rights to you, and then I’m gone.” 4 Vicky and I had built this apparel empire together. We split the equity fifty-fifty. If I was cutting the cord, I needed everything legally severed. I spent the entire next week locked in meetings with corporate lawyers, finalizing the transfer. Since our fight in my office, Vicky had blocked my number and my socials. But Spencer’s Instagram was public. Every single day, he posted a breadcrumb trail of their life together. A photo of the two of them watching the sunset on a beach after a client dinner. A shot of room service breakfast for two. A 3:00 AM photo of two iced Americanos on a desk, captioned about the grind. At first, a dull ache throbbed in my chest. But as the days passed, it hardened into total numbness. Until Thursday, when my assistant walked into my office, looking like he was about to be sick. He slid an iPad across my desk. “Boss… the algorithm pushed this to my feed. I think you need to see it.” I stared at the screen for a long time. It was Spencer’s latest post. A dimly lit photo of Vicky, fast asleep, her head resting intimately on a man’s chest. His chest. I scrolled to the comments. [Omg! From unrequited love to official boyfriend! Congrats!] [I’ve been following your sad boy aesthetic for four years, I’m so glad you guys finally made it official!] [Proof that if you wait long enough, you get the girl!] I felt absolutely nothing. No anger, no grief. Just the hollow click of a lock snapping shut. I handed the iPad back, a faint, indifferent smile on my face. “Send out a company-wide memo. Mandatory all-hands meeting at 3:00 PM.” This pathetic, suffocating love triangle was over. At exactly 3:00 PM, Cole and I walked into the main glass-walled conference room. “Effective immediately, I am stepping down as CEO,” I announced to the packed room. “Full operational control of the company will be transferred to Cole and Vicky.” The room erupted into gasps and chaotic murmurs. I didn’t offer an explanation. I stepped off the podium and walked out. The next morning, a luxury real estate broker came by to photograph the house. I sat in the back of my town car, watching the Seattle skyline blur as we headed to Sea-Tac airport. The terminal was a sea of people. I was dragging my carry-on toward the TSA PreCheck line when I heard the frantic clicking of heels. Vicky and Spencer had rushed straight from their flight. Across the sea of travelers, our eyes met. I had already asked my lawyer to text her a formal breakup message yesterday. I didn’t break my stride. I didn’t even look at them as I went to walk past. But Vicky lunged forward, grabbing my forearm in a vice grip. “Clark, what the hell kind of tantrum is this?” she demanded, her voice tight. I looked down at her hand, my brow furrowing in disgust. “Let go. You’re dirty.” She didn’t let go. Instead, her grip tightened, and her voice took on a pleading, desperate edge. “I know you’re mad. I’ll apologize, okay? I’m sorry. But Spencer and I haven’t done anything wrong! You’re selling your shares, you’re breaking up with me over a text…” The intercom chimed, announcing the final boarding call for my flight to JFK. I had zero interest in dragging this out. I pulled out my phone, opened Instagram, and shoved Spencer’s account directly in her face. “The evidence is right here. Did you really need me to drag all your filthy secrets into the light before you’d let me leave in peace?” She stared at the screen. Her lips parted, all the color draining from her face. Absolute, unadulterated shock. I didn’t care if it was real or an act. I shoved my phone in my pocket and pushed past her. Behind me, the illusion shattered. Vicky spun around, her voice echoing violently across the terminal. “What the fuck is this?! When was I ever in bed with you?!”

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Cameron and I officially started dating on April Fool’s Day. So, when he called me with a manufactured sense of sheer panic on the eve of our sixth anniversary, begging me to meet him at the exact spot of our first date, I thought the moment had finally arrived. I thought he was finally going to propose. I spent hours getting ready. I got a blowout, had my nails done in a soft bridal blush, and meticulously applied that effortless, no-makeup makeup look. On the cab ride over, I practiced my reaction in a compact mirror—the right balance of surprise, the perfect angle of my smile, the exact pitch of “I do.” I even had the Instagram announcement drafted and sitting in my notes app. But when I pushed open the heavy oak doors of the private room, my heart soaring, a heavy, sickeningly sweet mass of vanilla buttercream was violently smashed into my face. The room erupted. Above the din, a girl’s boisterous, triumphant laugh rang out. “I told you she’d come! Pay up, Cam, you lost!” Cameron stepped forward, using his thumb to gently wipe the frosting from my cheek, just as tenderly as he always did. “You dressed up so beautifully, too,” he murmured, a hint of pity in his voice. “Shame about the outfit.” He chuckled, entirely missing the ice freezing over my veins. “I made a bet with the guys. I bet you wouldn’t drop everything and come out tonight. I figured if I won, I’d propose tomorrow. Since I lost… looks like I’m pushing the proposal to next year.” I just looked at him. Quietly. Steadily. “So you do know what tomorrow is,” I said, my voice eerily calm. He smiled, utterly unbothered. “Of course I do. It’s our anniversary. How could I forget?” In that singular, crystallizing moment, I felt the absolute exhaustion of the last six years wash over me. The charade was entirely devoid of meaning. Our anniversary would never be as important as an April Fool’s joke. Just like I would never be as important as his “one of the guys” best girl friend. I reached down, grasped the simple promise ring I had worn for six years, and pulled it off my finger. “Then let’s break up.” 1. The sharp, metallic ping of the ring hitting the hardwood floor silenced the entire room. Cameron’s brow furrowed in irritation. “Harper, stop. Don’t cause a scene. It’s just a little frosting. I’ll help you wash it off when we get home. You know Lexi—she used to pull way worse pranks than this. She actually held back for you.” He lowered his voice, his tone shifting into a subtle warning. “It took a lot to get you out here. Don’t make the guys think my girlfriend can’t take a joke.” Lexi collapsed onto the leather sofa, her face twisting into a theatrical pout. “God, Harper, it was just a joke. If you hate it that much, we’ll stop, okay? You don’t have to throw around the word breakup over a little cake.” She looked around at the guys, her eyes wide and victimized. “I told you she couldn’t handle it, Cam, but you insisted she come. Look what happened.” The collective gaze of the room shifted toward me, their eyes turning cold and judgmental. Lexi was the only girl in their tight-knit fraternity of friends. She was the mascot, the untouchable center of their universe. If Lexi was unhappy, the whole group scrambled to fix it. Cameron was no exception. I remembered the first time I met her. She had organized a brutal game of Truth or Dare. While the guys were dared to do goofy, harmless things outside, my dare from Lexi was to fake an orgasm in front of a room full of strangers. When I quietly declined, stating I wasn’t comfortable with that kind of humiliation, Lexi immediately burst into tears and ran out of the bar. The entire pack of guys chased after her. Cameron did, too. The night that was supposed to be my welcome party ended with me sitting alone in a booth, waiting. Cameron never brought it up afterward, but from then on, unless Lexi explicitly gave the green light, I was never invited to their gatherings again. Cameron stared at me now, a deep crease between his eyes. “Harper, apologize to Lexi.” Years ago, desperate to fit in, terrified of embarrassing Cameron in front of his friends, I would have swallowed my pride. I would have stammered out an apology before he even had to ask. But standing there now, realizing that my breaking point meant less to him than Lexi’s manufactured pout, a profound clarity settled over me. From the very beginning, this relationship, my feelings, my dignity—none of it held a candle to his loyalty to the boys’ club and their favorite girl. I bent down and picked up my designer coat and the handbag I had meticulously saved up for, specifically to impress his parents. I met their judgmental stares head-on. “Cameron, we’re done. And I mean it.” I turned on my heel and walked out, my frosting-splattered heels clicking unevenly against the floorboards. As the door clicked shut behind me, Lexi’s teasing voice drifted through the wood. “You’re not gonna chase after your little lovesick puppy?” Cameron scoffed, the sound sharp and dismissive. “She’s just throwing a tantrum. If I chase her, who’s gonna comfort you? Besides, she doesn’t have anyone else to lean on. She’ll come around. She always does.” My heart, laid bare and bleeding, was sliced open by his words. The cold wind outside felt like a mercy compared to the chill spreading in my chest. 2. Six years ago, on these exact front steps, Cameron had confessed his love to me, vowing that I was the only woman he would ever want. He had to work hard to break down my walls. When I was fifteen, both of my parents remarried and started new families. I became the awkward, leftover baggage neither of them wanted to claim. Because of that, I was terrified of romance. I was terrified of building a home, only to have it ripped away. I rejected Cameron five times. The turning point came when I was walking back to my lonely apartment and was followed by a mugger. Cameron appeared out of nowhere, tackling the guy to the ground. He took a knife to the arm in the process and ended up in the ER. After the nurse finished wrapping his stitches, his eyes had grown red and wet. “Harper, why do you always have to be so tough?” he had whispered. “Why won’t you just let me protect you?” In that instant, the impenetrable fortress around my heart crumbled. I thought that maybe, just maybe, loving someone this reliable, this fiercely protective, wouldn’t be a mistake. That night, he brought me to this venue. When I finally said yes, the usually stoic, sophisticated man scooped me up and spun me around like an oversized kid until we were both dizzy, collapsing onto the grass. He held me tight against his chest, shielding me from the impact. Sitting on those steps, he looked up at the moon and swore that as long as he was alive, I would never be lonely. I would never be abandoned again. Yet tonight, the old wounds I had finally allowed to heal under his care were ripped open by his own hands. I let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh. Standing on the sidewalk, I opened my email and found the corporate transfer offer to the New York headquarters—an offer set to expire in five days. Accept. It turned out, pressing that button wasn’t so hard after all. I looked up at the moon, partially obscured by thin, wispy clouds. I am not easy to win back, Cameron. And I will never need you to try again. My train to New York was booked for the afternoon of the 2nd. Time was running out. The second I got back to our shared apartment, I scrubbed the sticky, humiliating frosting from my skin and began packing. My presence in his home had always been surprisingly minimal; it only took one large suitcase and a carry-on to pack away six years of my life. At 3:00 AM, having booked a hotel for the night, I was zipping up my coat to leave when the front door swung open. Cameron stumbled in, reeking of stale beer. He dropped a blackout-drunk Lexi onto our living room sofa, then turned and shoved a plastic bag of pears into my hands. “Good, you’re still up. She drank way too much. Go make some hangover soup, otherwise she’s gonna be puking all night.” I stood perfectly still, letting the bag of fruit drop to the floor. When we first moved in together, Cameron came home trashed from a frat reunion, throwing up endlessly. My heart had ached for him, so I got up at 2:00 AM to boil him soup. But the cheap ceramic pot cracked under the heat and exploded. Boiling broth and shattered clay splattered all over my legs. The sight of my burns sobered him up instantly. He was wrecked with guilt. From that day on, he forbade me from cooking. Even when he had the flu and craved soup, he ordered takeout rather than let me near the stove. I hadn’t cooked a meal in years; he even washed and sliced my fruit for me. On the kitchen door, there still hung a small, hand-painted wooden sign he had made: Danger Zone. Harper Keep Out. A bitter smile touched my lips. I walked over, unhooked the sign, and dropped it straight into the garbage can. “I’m not obligated to take care of her. If she needs soup, order Postmates.” I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and moved toward the door. He lunged forward, grabbing my wrist and pinning me back against the heavy wooden door. “Alright, Harper, enough. Saying it was one thing, but actually packing your bags? I told you, it was an April Fool’s joke. Stop overreacting.” His breath, heavy with alcohol, brushed against my neck. “I know you want to get married. I want to, too. Next year. I promise we’ll get married next year, okay?” Once upon a time, those soft, placating words would have worked like magic. Tonight, I shoved my hands against his chest, broke his grip, and slapped him hard across the face. “Listen to me, Cameron. We are broken up. I am never marrying you.” 3. The sharp crack of the slap didn’t just stun Cameron; it jolted Lexi awake on the sofa. She scrambled up, stumbling drunkenly across the rug, and threw her hand out, slapping my cheek with staggering force. “Who the hell do you think you are?!” she shrieked. “Nobody touches Cam! You want to break up? Fine! There are a million girls better than you… you’re nothing but a placeholder!” A blistering heat radiated across my cheek. Seeing red, I raised my hand to strike her back. But Cameron’s hands clamped down on my wrists like iron vises. He shoved me backward to protect her. The small of my back slammed into the sharp brass doorknob, sending a sickening jolt of pain up my spine. He shielded Lexi with his body, looking at me with exhausted annoyance. “She’s blackout drunk, Harper. Why are you picking a fight with a drunk girl?” He sighed, rubbing his temples. “Look, just… go take a walk. Cool off. We’ll talk about this tomorrow when you’re being rational.” I stared at him in utter disbelief. He was so incredibly detached, looking at me like I was some random, bothersome stranger. He didn’t check to see if I was hurt. He turned his back to me, wrapping his arms around a sobbing Lexi, whispering soft, gentle reassurances into her hair. He saved all his tenderness for her. My fingernails bit into my palms until they bled. I grabbed my suitcase and walked out into the night. I checked into the nearest Marriott and didn’t close my eyes until dawn. When I finally woke up, my phone was paralyzed by an avalanche of notifications. Aside from the group chat blowing up with prank videos, there were dozens of messages from coworkers and friends asking why I wasn’t at work, fishing for gossip about a proposal. My chest tightened. I typed out a quick, blanket reply—We broke up—feeling an immense, hollow fatigue settling into my bones. The pings didn’t stop. Some thought I was pulling my own April Fool’s joke. Others told me to stop throwing a tantrum just because I didn’t get a ring. In their eyes, Cameron was the gold standard—steady, gentle, a man who would always provide a safety net. But they didn’t know the reality of that man. They didn’t know that for our fourth anniversary, he had set up a romantic, candlelit proposal setting just to lower my guard so Lexi could jump out and throw a live snake on me. They didn’t know that for our fifth anniversary, he got down on one knee with a rigged gag-ring Lexi had bought online, which clamped down on my finger so hard I spent the night in the ER with the fire department trying to cut it off before I lost circulation. He was a safety net, alright. Just not for me. For years, I had gaslit myself. I suppressed the humiliation, repeating the mantra that aside from Lexi, he treated me like a queen. But the fog had cleared. A relationship built on this kind of foundation wouldn’t survive a marriage anyway. Smiling through the ache in my chest, I opened Instagram. Past the sea of corporate April Fool’s posts, Lexi’s new photo dump sat at the top of my feed. It was Cameron. Winning her a stuffed bear at an arcade. Eating popcorn next to her at a matinee. Playing air hockey, throwing his head back in laughter. He used to tell me that arcades and movies were “juvenile” and a waste of time. He told me he preferred mature, meaningful evenings—making pottery, drinking wine at home. I thought it was a sign of his sophisticated nature, so I buried all my silly, youthful desires to match his pace. Looking at the unbridled joy on his face in those photos, I finally understood. It wasn’t that those activities were boring to him. It was that doing them with me was boring. The comments were a chorus of “You guys are so cute together!” Our mutual friends had all liked the post. It had more engagement than our official dating announcement ever did. Just as I went to force-close the app, a text dropped down from the banner. It was Cameron. [Don’t misunderstand the photos. I just took her out to detox. Come back to the apartment when you have a minute. She says she wants to apologize to you.] My brow furrowed. I typed out a quick No need, ready to hit send, when another notification popped up. It was a FedEx delivery confirmation for his anniversary gift—a vintage watch I had spent months tracking down. It had just been delivered to his building. I paused. I needed to get the watch back. And I still had his spare keys. It was time to sever this cleanly. I threw on some clothes and caught an Uber back to the apartment. But the moment I unlocked the door and stepped inside, a bucket of freezing liquid was thrown directly into my face. A sharp, chemical stench flooded my nostrils, followed instantly by a terrifying, burning agony across my cheeks. “Surprise! April Fool’s!” 4. Before I could even pry my stinging eyes open, Lexi was in front of me. She grabbed a rough makeup wipe and began scrubbing my face aggressively. The burning sensation exploded. It felt like acid was eating through my skin, accompanied by a frantic, suffocating itch. The friction of the wipe felt like sandpaper tearing my flesh off. I shoved her away with everything I had. I reached up to touch my cheek, but the slightest contact sent a blinding spike of pain through my skull. “Cough… God, my face… it burns! What was in that?!” I gasped, my throat closing up. Cameron sprinted into the hallway, grabbing my wrists to stop me from clawing at my own skin. His voice was laced with genuine panic. “Lexi, you said it was just micellar water! Why is her skin blistering?!” Lexi’s face flushed a deep, guilty red. “I… I don’t know! I just grabbed a bottle from under the sink! And anyway, she’s always doing that stupid natural-makeup thing to look better than me! I hate it! You’re the one who agreed her makeup was annoying, that’s why you let me prank her!” My body began to convulse. My limbs went numb, and drawing a breath felt like inhaling glass. “I knew… I knew you wouldn’t actually make her apologize,” I wheezed, my vision tunneling. “Cameron… you don’t even know what human decency is.” I pulled out of his grip, stumbling blindly toward the bathroom to flush my skin with cold water. But after one step, the world tilted violently on its axis, and everything went black. “Harper! Harper, hey, look at me!” When I finally regained consciousness, the room was bathed in the dull orange glow of twilight. The throbbing heat in my face was still there, but muted. Through the lingering fog of anaphylaxis, I vaguely remembered the ER doctor mentioning chemical burns and a gash on my chin that required stitches from where I had collapsed against the tile. I shifted on the stark hospital bed. The rustle of the sheets woke Cameron, who was slumped in the plastic chair beside me. “Harper, thank God. You’re awake. You terrified me,” he breathed, his voice trembling. “The doctor said you had an anaphylactic reaction to some heavy-duty industrial cleaner under the sink. You went into shock.” He leaned in, his eyes pleading. “She really did want to apologize today. You know how proud she is. She took it too far, but she didn’t do it on purpose. Please don’t be mad at her, okay?” I stared up at the sterile ceiling. In all his frantic rambling, not once did he ask how I felt. Not once did he acknowledge the fact that I might be permanently scarred, or how traumatizing it was to wake up with stitches in my face. His only instinct was to act as Lexi’s defense attorney. I looked at the man I had loved for six years, and saw an absolute stranger. A single tear slipped down my temple, stinging the raw skin of my cheek. “I’m not mad,” I whispered. “I’m just entirely full of regret. I never should have said yes to you.” Cameron froze. He opened his mouth to speak, but his phone illuminated the dark room. The caller ID flashed: Lexi. He immediately masked his panic with a calm, businesslike expression. “I need to take this. Just rest. I’ll be right back.” He practically sprinted out of the room. Driven by an intuition I couldn’t suppress, I peeled the blankets back. My legs shook, but I forced myself out of bed and crept down the hallway. I found them near the heavy fire doors of the emergency stairwell. They were sitting on the steps, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Hey, stop crying. It’s okay. She’s not gonna be mad,” Cameron soothed. “She always gets over it.” Lexi punched him lightly in the arm, sniffling. “If she can’t even handle this, imagine if she knew the truth! If she found out that you only asked her out because you lost a bet to us, and that you specifically picked April Fool’s Day to do it as a joke… she would literally lose her mind!” Time stopped. The air vanished from the stairwell. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, drowning out the hum of the hospital. Through the crack in the door, I saw Cameron slap his hand over Lexi’s mouth, looking around frantically. “Shut up! Are you insane? That was six years ago. You take that to your grave, do you hear me?” My knees buckled. I slumped against the cold plaster wall, entirely boneless. Suddenly, every agonizing contradiction of the last six years snapped into terrifying focus. Why I could never compete with Lexi. Why a man who claimed to love me could stand by and watch me be humiliated over and over again. I had been so hopelessly naive. I thought his loyalty to his friends was just a flaw in his character. I never realized that every single thing he had given me was counterfeit. The beautiful, cinematic rescue I thought was my salvation was built on a punchline. To them, I was never Cameron’s beloved girlfriend. I was a prop. A six-year-long inside joke. A clown performing for an audience that despised me. Every shred of my dignity was incinerated in that stairwell. I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle the sob violently tearing up my throat. I had to get out. I had to escape this suffocating, psychopathic lie. I managed to sneak back, rip the IV from my arm, and discharge myself against medical advice. I caught a cab to my hotel, grabbed my luggage, and went straight to Penn Station. I paid the penalty fee to change my ticket to the earliest possible Amtrak heading for New York. As I sat on the hard plastic benches waiting to board, my phone buzzed. [The doctor says they need to observe you overnight. Don’t wander off. Where are you? I’m coming to find you.] Staring at that manufactured, hypocritical concern, I actually laughed out loud, the sound mingling with my tears. I didn’t reply. I went into my settings, blocked his number, deleted his contact, and did the exact same for every single one of his friends. Cameron. I resign from your little April Fool’s game.

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My daughter was in the operating room fighting for her life, and I made fifty phone calls. Ethan Foster didn’t answer a single one. When someone finally picked up, his first love’s saccharine voice came through: “Mr. Foster is cutting cake for my dog right now. Call back later.” In the background, I heard Ethan’s gentle voice coaxing: “Good boy. Eat this piece of meat, and then let daddy hold you.” He played father to a dog, but refused to spare a single glance for his own daughter. When my daughter’s eyes closed for the last time, her little hand still clutched the card she’d drawn for her father. I calmly signed the papers and burned that card to ash. Ethan Foster, we’re done. Lila Hart POV I sat in the hospital corridor until dawn broke. White walls, white lights—everything so blindingly white. The thin piece of paper in my hand was Nina’s death certificate. I’d gripped the edges so hard they’d frayed, just like my heart being torn apart. I mechanically dialed the fiftieth call. This time, it finally connected. But the voice that came through wasn’t my husband Ethan Foster’s. It was his first love, Mandy White, her tone cloying with a hint of irritation at being disturbed. “Mr. Foster is cutting cake for my Fluffy right now, Lila. Whatever it is, talk to him later.” Fluffy was Mandy’s dog. Before she’d even finished speaking, Ethan’s familiar yet foreign gentle voice came through in the background. He was coaxing a golden retriever. “Fluffy, be good. Eat this meat, and then let daddy hold you.” Daddy… He played father to a dog, but refused to look at his own flesh and blood one last time. When Nina closed her eyes, her tiny hand still clutched the card she’d spent all afternoon drawing—a crayon family portrait of the three of us, wobbly and imperfect. I don’t know how I signed those documents, how I walked out of that building that had swallowed my daughter, or how I made it back to this villa we called “home.” I slid the key into the lock and turned it. The door clicked open with a “click,” and a wave of warmth rushed out—mixed scents of cream, expensive aromatherapy, and pet shampoo. That warm, pleasant smell clashed violently with the cold disinfectant that had soaked into my clothes. The living room blazed with light. Ethan’s tall figure crouched on the expensive handwoven carpet, holding an imported silent hair dryer, patiently blow-drying that golden retriever called “Fluffy.” Beside him, Mandy wore nothing but his loose white dress shirt. Her bare legs swung back and forth, making my eyes hurt. When she saw me, Mandy immediately pulled the collar tighter and put on that pitiful expression I’d seen a thousand times. “Lila, you’re back… I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault for not watching Fluffy properly. He accidentally fell in the pool and got so scared. Ethan was worried about him, so he rushed back.” Playing the victim. What a performance. I ignored her. My eyes locked onto Ethan. Those hands—long-fingered, clean, elegant. Once upon a time, I’d imagined those hands holding our daughter gently. But from birth to death, the most intimate contact Nina ever got from him was the occasional touch. Now, those same hands rubbed the dog’s head with infinite care and tenderness. My throat felt like it had been scraped raw with sandpaper. Each word came out bloody. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Ethan finally deigned to lift his head. He turned off the dryer, and the room fell silent. That handsome face showed undisguised disgust and impatience. He smirked like he’d heard the joke of the year. “Lila, to trick me into coming back, you’d even lie about our daughter being critically ill? Can’t you come up with something classier?” His gaze swept over my wrinkled clothes, stained with god-knows-what. His nose wrinkled in displeasure, and he actually took half a step back. “You reek of disinfectant. It’s nauseating.” He waved his hand like shooing away a disgusting fly. “Stay away from Fluffy.” Disinfectant? I looked down numbly and finally saw the dried, dark red trace on my sleeve. Nina’s blood. But to him, it was just an unpleasant smell that might bother his precious dog.

Lila Hart POV My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand, then slowly submerged in ice water. The cold spread to my limbs, freezing everything. On the dining table sat a thermal container I’d brought before leaving. Inside was chicken soup I’d simmered for three hours, hoping Nina could have something warm after her surgery. Ethan noticed it too. He stood up, his long legs carrying him straight over. “Click.” The container opened. Rich aroma instantly filled the space. “Smells good,” he commented. A ridiculous hope flickered in my heart. Perhaps… The next second, he picked up the container and tilted it. That soup I’d so carefully prepared for my daughter—soup she never got to taste—he poured every last drop into the golden retriever’s gleaming steel bowl without hesitation. The thick broth hit the bottom with a muffled “plop.” “Fluffy got scared today. He deserves something good.” Ethan’s tone was casual. The golden retriever wagged its tail excitedly and immediately buried its head in the bowl, making happy gulping sounds. That sound was like a dull knife, sawing back and forth across my already shredded heart. The world went completely silent. From my worn bag, I pulled out the divorce agreement I’d printed but never touched since. I gently placed it on the coffee table in front of him. Ethan’s gaze shifted from the bowl to the papers. He sneered. “You’re throwing another tantrum? Lila, can’t you give it a rest for one day?” He seemed to find my very existence unbearable. He waved his hand dismissively, about to sweep those pages to the floor. But his hand struck something I’d been clutching in my palm. The card warmed by my daughter’s hand. The card flew out lightly, landing directly in Fluffy’s water bowl nearby. I could clearly see Nina’s red crayon heart—drawn with all her strength—instantly blur and fade upon touching the water, dissolving into a dirty smudge along with the crooked words “Daddy I love you.” That was the last tangible trace Nina left in this world. Ethan knew nothing of what he’d done. He didn’t even glance down, still looking at me with that superior attitude, probably waiting for me to break down crying and begging pitifully like I’d done countless times before. But I didn’t. I didn’t cry. I didn’t make a scene. I just slowly, step by step, walked to that water bowl. Under the golden retriever’s puzzled gaze, I bent down and solemnly fished out that soaked, ruined piece of paper from the cold water. Then, right in front of him, I carefully folded that wet scrap and placed it in my breast pocket. Ethan Foster, from this moment on. You and I—we’re mortal enemies.

Lila Hart POV The bathroom. I pressed the flush button. The roar of water swept away the glaring red in the toilet bowl, as if draining the last bit of strength from my body. When the water stopped, Ethan and Mandy’s flirtatious laughter outside the door came through with needle-sharp clarity. I steadied myself against the cold wall and stood up, grabbed some tissue, and mechanically wiped the blood from my mouth. The woman in the mirror had a deathly pale face, but lips stained an eerie red with blood—like crushed roses in snow. I pulled the door open and walked out. The fever made cold seep through my bones. Each step felt like walking on cotton. In the living room, Ethan held a glass of red wine. Mandy nestled against him like a delicate bird. They were admiring a newly hung painting on the wall. That used to be my favorite spot, where Nina’s three-year-old family portrait had hung. Now it had been replaced by an expensive piece of modern art. My footsteps startled them. Ethan turned around. When he saw me, his faint smile vanished instantly. He set down his wine glass, walked over to me, his interrogating tone devoid of warmth. “Where did you hide Nina?” I said nothing. My throat felt stuffed with fire, burning so I couldn’t speak a single word. He seemed accustomed to my silence. He walked past me, heading straight upstairs. Soon, Nina’s bedroom door was shoved open roughly, banging against the wall with a dull thud. Then came his angry footsteps thundering down the stairs, each one heavier than the last, trampling my heart. “Where is she?” He grabbed my wrist, his grip painfully tight. “Lila, you think hiding the kid means I can’t do anything about it?” He yanked me so hard I stumbled and fell onto the cold carpet. Looking up at him, the fever blurred my vision into light and shadow. His face twisted in that light, grotesque and unfamiliar. This was the man I’d loved for ten years. My continued silence completely ignited his rage. He roughly released my hand, pulled out his phone, and right in front of me, called his assistant. His voice was cold and heartless. “It’s me. Freeze all of Lila Hart’s cards.” The person on the other end said something. He listened, then added with a cold laugh, “Also, all of Nina Foster’s medical insurance and trust accounts. Yes, freeze them all.” His voice was crystal clear. My fingers curled involuntarily at my sides. Nina’s medical account still held the few thousand dollars I’d scraped together through extreme frugality. I’d wanted to use it to buy Nina a burial plot that got sunlight. But now, he wouldn’t even give me that chance. My phone screen lit up. “Ding ding”—a string of messages flooded in. [Dear customer, your account ending in xxxx has been frozen.] [Your linked medical bank account has been terminated. Current balance: $0.00.] … I stared at that glaring string of zeros on the screen, suddenly finding this whole absurd situation laughably grotesque. A strange sound escaped my throat, and then I actually laughed. My laughter grew louder—dry, ugly, like a broken bellows. Ethan probably hadn’t expected this reaction. He bent down and grabbed my chin with those hands that had just signed hundred-million-dollar contracts. “Playing crazy for sympathy? Lila, I’m sick of these tricks.” He released me like he’d touched something filthy, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his fingers, then condescendingly kicked my shin. “Before I change my mind, you’d better bring Nina back.” Just then, a woman’s scream rang out from upstairs, accompanied by the crash of breaking porcelain. It was Mandy. “Ahhh—!”

Lila Hart POV Ethan’s expression changed. He immediately turned and rushed upstairs. Moments later, he came down cradling the “frightened” Mandy. Her eyes were red, pitifully leaning against him, still holding a porcelain shard. “Ethan, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to,” she sobbed, her eyes flashing with viciousness aimed straight at me. “I wanted to help clean up the living room, but… but Lila kept looking at me that way. I got scared and dropped your favorite antique vase…” The thief crying thief. What a performance. Ethan’s patience completely ran out. “Lila, get on your knees and apologize to Mandy.” I pushed myself up from the sofa, swaying unsteadily, looking at him and the woman in his arms putting on such a convincing act. “And if I don’t?” “Don’t?” Ethan laughed, though his eyes were ice cold. “You’re a parasite who can’t survive without me. What gives you the right to defy me? Without the Foster family, you can’t even afford Nina’s medication next month!” Medication? Right. Nina’s medication. I looked at him, very calmly, and told him, word by word, with perfect clarity. “Ethan Foster, Nina doesn’t need medication anymore.” My tone was so calm it was eerie. Ethan froze. He stared at me for several seconds, then a flash of triumphant satisfaction crossed his eyes. He probably thought I’d finally broken down and was compromising. He released me and leisurely adjusted his cuffs. “Finally seeing sense? Then start by washing Mandy’s clothes. By hand. Don’t use the washing machine.” With that, he pulled Mandy close and put on a show of tender affection right in front of me. “Still scared? Don’t worry, it’s just an object. Doesn’t matter if it broke.” “But it was Lila’s…” “Don’t mention her. Bad luck.” Their public display of affection—I couldn’t hear a single word anymore. I turned around and walked step by step back to my room. The only place in this house that still belonged to me. I ignored the clothes they’d thrown messily across the bed and went straight to the closet, opening the bottom drawer. Inside lay a signed divorce agreement. Beside the agreement was a small, plain box. I reached out and gently stroked that box, as if caressing Nina’s cold cheek. Ethan Foster. It’s time for us to end this. I pulled my suitcase out of the room. That cheap case was bought years ago. The wheels had worn out, making an especially grating “rumble… rumble…” noise across the mirror-smooth marble floor. Each sound was like a death knell tolling in this lifeless house. I clutched that small, cold wooden box tightly to my chest, walking step by step toward the door as if treading on knife points. The crystal chandelier in the living room blazed brilliantly. Ethan and Mandy were intimately nestled on the sofa. His slender fingers held a small fork, lifting a piece of watermelon to Mandy’s lips with such tender care. They didn’t spare me a single glance, as if I were invisible air in this villa. Not until the suitcase wheel caught at the entrance with a dull thud did Ethan finally deign to lift those aristocratic eyes. He saw the suitcase at my feet. He paused, then that handsome face showed a mocking sneer, as if this outcome was exactly what he’d expected. His gaze eventually landed on the box in my arms like a poisoned nail, piercing deep. “Lila, where do you think you’re going?” Mandy spoke first. She sat up straight from Ethan’s embrace, her face showing innocent surprise, but those eyes were like two slithering snakes, coiling around the box I held. “What you’re holding… that looks like company property, doesn’t it?” She tilted her head, her tone deliberately uncertain. “I remember that wooden box—Ethan uses it specifically for core design blueprints… Ethan, those are vital to the company’s next quarter. You’d better check!”

Lila Hart POV That sentence was like a match, precisely thrown into the powder keg of suspicion in Ethan’s heart. BOOM— He shot to his feet, his expensive suit pants showing not a single wrinkle. In a few strides he stood before me, his towering figure creating an oppressive presence that engulfed me completely in his shadow. “Hand it over.” He extended his hand, voice cold as ice, tone filled with the arrogance of someone accustomed to giving orders. Like a startled hedgehog, I instinctively clutched the box even tighter to my chest, my body trembling uncontrollably from enormous fear and rage. “There’s nothing of yours in here.” My voice was hoarse and dry. “Nothing?” He acted like he’d heard the world’s biggest joke, his patience evaporating instantly. He grabbed my wrist, the force feeling like it would crush my bones. “Lila, what game are you playing now? Playing hard to get? Hmm?” “Let go! Ethan Foster, let go of me!” I struggled like a madwoman, my other hand beating wildly at his arm. But my strength, weakened from long illness, was nothing against him—like a fluttering moth, laughable and powerless. He easily pried my fingers open, snatched that small wooden box from my arms, and held it high above his head. In that moment, I felt like half my soul had been ripped away. “Lila, you’ll stop at nothing to get attention, won’t you?” He shook the box in his hand, looking at me with eyes full of contempt and bottomless disgust. “Tell me, what new prop for your little act is in here? Or are you trying to steal company secrets to force me to compromise?” My legs gave out. I collapsed pathetically onto the cold floor. I looked up at him, at the box in his hand that contained everything that was left of my daughter. The tears I’d been holding back finally broke free, flooding down. Like a lunatic, I crawled forward on my knees, making dull thuds. “Ethan, please, give it back to me… give it back…” “That’s Nina… that’s Nina…” My voice shattered, tasting of blood. “Nina?” The mockery on Ethan’s face instantly froze, replaced by a kind of offended, violent malice. “You’re vicious enough to use a dead child in your act? Or are you trying to curse me with her name?” In his eyes, I was exactly that kind of woman—snake-hearted, stopping at nothing to achieve my goals. My pleas, my tears, my everything—all just a carefully orchestrated performance. He let go. “CRACK—” That small wooden box traced a desperate arc before my eyes and smashed hard onto the floor. Shattered into pieces. White ash, fine as frost, mixed with black wooden fragments, scattered everywhere across the floor. Time seemed to hit mute in that moment. I couldn’t hear Mandy’s shocked cries, couldn’t see Ethan’s cold face. My world contained only that mess of pale powder. That was my Nina. The little girl who would act spoiled in my arms, call me “Mommy” in her sweet baby voice, secretly slip candy into my pocket. This was all that remained after she’d been cremated for three days and nights. Seconds later, an inhuman, piercing wail tore from my throat. “AHHHHH—!” I threw myself forward like a madwoman, trying to scoop it up, to gather those ashes now mixed with floor dust. “My Nina… my daughter… Mommy’s so sorry…” My nails scraped across the hard floor, leaving bloody trails. Wooden splinters embedded in my fingertips. Blood quickly seeped out, staining a small patch of gray-white powder into dirty brown. But I felt no pain. All the pain in the world couldn’t compare to one ten-thousandth of this. “Ew! So disgusting!” Mandy shrieked, retreating two steps in revulsion, delicately hiding in Ethan’s arms. “Ethan, look at Lila. Has she gone insane… she’s making such a mess of the floor…” Ethan frowned, watching me writhe on the ground like a maggot. The disgust on his face deepened. He pulled out his phone and made an internal call, his voice utterly flat. “Housekeeper Brown, bring the vacuum to the living room. Clean up this filth on the floor.” Vacuum… He was going to treat my daughter’s ashes like garbage and vacuum them away.

Lila Hart POV I desperately shielded that small pile of gray-white powder in front of me, my nails embedded so deeply into the floor cracks from excessive force that they drew streaming blood. I slowly raised my head. My bloodshot eyes, like those of a demon from hell, locked onto him with deadly intensity. Ethan Foster, you will regret this. I swore it with every ounce of my being. Housekeeper Brown soon arrived with the vacuum, freezing in place when she saw the scene before her, at a loss. “Sir…” “What are you waiting for? Clean it up!” Ethan snapped impatiently. The vacuum made a “whirr—” of preparation, that sound like death’s summons. I closed my eyes in despair. Just then— “BANG!” The villa door was kicked open from outside. A tall figure charged in wrapped in frigid air—it was Adrian Cloud! Adrian Cloud was my former classmate. After learning about my daughter’s condition, he’d often come to help me. His eyes immediately found me kneeling on the floor, covered in blood, and the glaring gray-white powder at my feet. Adrian’s eyes instantly turned red. He crossed to Ethan in two strides and without a word of warning, drove his fist hard into Ethan’s face! “Ethan Foster, are you even human?!” Ethan staggered from the blow, blood immediately appearing at his mouth. He clutched his face, but before he could get angry, a piece of paper slapped across his face. “Open your damn eyes and look! What is this!” It was a death certificate. The name read “Nina Foster.” The time of death was frozen at the exact moment he’d been celebrating Mandy’s dog’s birthday. Ethan’s body went rigid. He picked up the paper in disbelief, his fingers trembling. “It’s fake… this has to be fake!” He roared at me like a madman. “Lila! You conspired with outsiders to trick me?!” I watched his frantic state and suddenly smiled. I swayed unsteadily to my feet, and with my bleeding hands, I carefully scooped up a handful of ash mixed with blood and dust. I walked toward him. Ethan was momentarily stunned by my appearance, actually forgetting to move. I raised my hand and gently, inch by inch, smeared that ash across his flawlessly handsome face. My tone was so gentle it was bone-chilling. “Ethan Foster, don’t you want to see your daughter?” “Smell it. This is what your daughter smells like.” “Isn’t it lovely?” “This is her. The one you smashed with your own hands.” Ethan stood as if struck by lightning, his entire body shaking violently, all color draining from his face. He tried to speak but couldn’t utter a single word. I withdrew my hand and without sparing him another glance, turned to Adrian. “Take me away.” “Lila!” Ethan finally snapped out of it, roaring as he tried to grab me. I whirled around and with the last shred of strength in my body, slapped him hard across the face! “CRACK!” Clear and loud. The entire living room fell silent. I leaned close to his ear and in a voice only we two could hear, pronounced clearly, word by word: “Ethan Foster, I will make you, your precious first love, and that dog all pay with your lives for my daughter.”

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While negotiating with an important client, I had my phone on silent all day. Who knew that when I got back, I’d be stopped by my fiancée Livia’s male secretary, Parker: “You didn’t reply ‘received’ in the work group chat today. That’s a five-thousand-dollar fine!” I assumed he didn’t know about my work schedule and paid him no mind. The next day, Livia actually kicked me out of the company, with Parker fanning the flames on the side. “The company has long had a rule that you must reply to work messages within two minutes. You’re using your high position to break the law yourself—isn’t that setting a bad example?” Livia actually spoke up for him too: “You’re showing contempt for the rules! You’re suspended. You’ll stay suspended until you pay up!” I looked down at the materials I’d worked so hard on for the bidding project and laughed. Then I called my eldest sister, Porter. “I’ve got a fifty-million-dollar winning bid project to give you. Also, I’m accepting that job offer you made before. I’ll start at your company in three days.”

“What’s this? You’ve finally come around? Didn’t you refuse to come back even when I offered you a million-dollar annual salary?” Porter’s tone was full of teasing. Thinking of how Livia had made me leave the company because of Parker, I couldn’t help but smile bitterly. “Don’t even mention it. As long as your company doesn’t have rules like ‘get fined if you don’t reply received in the work group within five minutes,’ that’s good enough. I’ll report to your place in three days.” “Then it’s settled. You can’t back out this time!” Not long after I finished talking with Porter, Livia called me. “I left the bidding documents in my car. Come get them for me.” Parker’s deliberately amplified voice came through. “Ms. Livia, these tasks are what I, as an assistant, should do. How can we have Mr. Joseph do them? Mr. Joseph already resents me after being fined today. Let me go instead…” That stern female voice didn’t even think twice before comforting him. “It’s so hot out, and you have a weak constitution—you’re not suited for running back and forth. Besides, he showed contempt for company rules. You were just doing your duty by giving him a friendly reminder.” “Joseph, I’m only giving you ten minutes. If I don’t see those documents, pack up your things and leave the company!” The call was hung up mercilessly. I stood there stunned for a long time, then laughed at myself mockingly. My fiancée had scolded me without question for the sake of another man. She’d even made me take over what should have been someone else’s task because she felt sorry for him. I still went to get the documents—after all, I still needed to hand things over for my resignation. Livia took the documents. I was about to bring up resigning when, without even looking at me, she handed the documents directly to Parker. “I’m announcing something now. Because Joseph showed contempt for company rules, I’ve decided to demote him.” “From now on, Parker will take over Joseph’s position. Joseph will be demoted to assistant to support his work.” Parker looked at her with flattered surprise. “I… Ms. Livia, you’re so good to me!” “It’s just a bit hard on Joseph. But you’ve been Vice President for several years now and had enough leisure time. You should work as an assistant for a while to get some proper training.” Listening to Livia heap praise on him, my heart felt as if it were being strangled by a pair of hands—for a moment, the pain left me unable to breathe. Everyone at the company knew I was Livia’s fiancé, but under her management, I’d never received any special treatment because of that relationship. On the contrary, she was even stricter with me than with ordinary employees. I started from the bottom, drank until I ended up in the hospital, secured countless projects—all just to make it to Vice President. She always said, “I don’t want you to be treated differently because you’re my fiancé. This is how I’m tempering you.” But when it came to Parker, her principles could bend again and again. Parker’s face was full of smugness as he pulled out several reimbursement forms. “Joseph, when you’re in a position, you do the work. So I’ll have to enforce the rules. These are receipts from the hotels you stayed at on previous business trips.” “The company has long said we need to cut costs, yet you still stayed at five-star hotels. You’re just an assistant now—these expenses can’t be reimbursed.” Livia snorted coldly and praised him. “You’ve just taken over and already know how to create profits for the company. My judgment really is excellent.” My fingertips dug deep into my palms as I forced myself to stay calm. “You can give the Vice President position to whoever you want, but I won’t accept this assistant position.” “I came here specifically to resign. And Livia, let’s cancel our engagement.”

[Your onboarding procedures are all set. Just come report for duty the day after tomorrow.] I received Porter’s message while I was packing my luggage, preparing to leave what had once been our wedding home. Livia came back with Parker. Seeing me at home, she frowned. “Why are you here?” My hands paused in their movement. I couldn’t help but reply sarcastically. “You must have forgotten—this is my home too.” She seemed not to have expected this attitude from me, who had always been so compliant. After a moment of surprise, she softened her tone. “Parker’s neighborhood has had security issues lately. He’s now the company’s Vice President with significant authority. As his superior, I should naturally show concern.” “So I’ve decided to let him stay at our place for the time being, until he’s saved enough money to move out.” This was clearly an announcement, not a request for my agreement. Parker stepped forward with fake sincerity. “Joseph, I don’t want to intrude on your and Ms. Livia’s life either, but Ms. Livia was so worried about me being alone that she insisted I stay here.” “She even said that you’re older and more tolerant, so you wouldn’t mind these things.” Over these years, I’d heard countless provocative remarks like this, but this time my heart was already unmoved. I picked up my luggage and said coldly. “Do as you please. I already said the engagement is cancelled. Who you want to bring into this room has nothing to do with me.” Near the entryway, Livia suddenly grabbed my hand, saying with displeasure. “A whole night has passed and you still haven’t calmed down? Yesterday you embarrassed me in front of so many people and I didn’t even make an issue of it. What exactly are you trying to pull?” “Pull?” I laughed mockingly, pressing down all the questions I wanted to ask her and Parker. Looking at this carefully decorated wedding home, I suddenly felt pathetically foolish. In this house, she had once knelt on one knee to propose to me. “Joseph, I promise you—I’ll never let you suffer even a little bit ever again.” In the past, whenever we had even the slightest conflict, she would immediately put down her work to comfort me. But now, knowing full well that I was upset, she dealt with it by giving me the cold shoulder for a night to “calm down on my own.” I shook off her hand and said flatly. “I’m serious about cancelling the engagement. I’ll have you submit my resignation letter for me.” Parker suddenly rushed forward to block me, bowing and apologizing profusely. “Joseph! This is all my fault! I shouldn’t have come here and made you think I was taking your place!” “I’ll resign right now and never appear in front of Ms. Livia again!” With those words, he rushed out the door. Livia clenched her fists tight, pushed me away hard, and roared furiously. “Joseph! Won’t you be happy until you’ve driven Parker to his death?! The whole company has been talking about him because of yesterday’s incident. He only fined you to set an example for everyone else!” “If he doesn’t live and travel with me, he’ll be ostracized by everyone at the company! This is me atoning for your sins! There’s nothing between Parker and me—can you please put away those filthy thoughts of yours!” I crashed into the cabinet by the door, my lumbar vertebrae nearly breaking. And she left with a slam of the door, not even looking back once.

I prepared my onboarding documents to go to Porter Group, but just before leaving, Livia’s secretary called me. “Mr. Joseph, Mr. Parker hasn’t approved your resignation letter. He wants you to come to the company in person. This is also Ms. Livia’s instruction.” Ms. Livia’s instruction—this was clearly forcing me to go back. Without the resignation procedures completed, the bidding project would still be with Livia’s company. That project was something I’d negotiated by humbling myself countless times. Now that it had finally won the bid, I had to take it with me. Parker looked down at me condescendingly and threw the resignation letter on the ground. “Sorry about that, Joseph. You were Vice President for so many years and you still can’t write a proper resignation letter? You didn’t even clearly write out the project handover. I can’t approve this.” Looking at the resignation letter that had been revised dozens of times on the floor, I clenched my fists and laughed mockingly. “Deliberately targeting me? Parker, I just don’t bother competing with you. Otherwise, with your qualifications, how would you even deserve to sit in the Vice President’s seat?” I picked up the letter and looked at him coldly. “Speaking of which, you did remind me. The projects I’ve worked on over the years all involve the company’s lifeblood. It really isn’t your place to approve them.” Parker arrogantly blocked my way and stuffed a lacy lingerie nightgown into my hands. “Oh, you’re going to see Ms. Livia? Perfect. Help me return this nightgown to Ms. Livia. Last night, Ms. Livia saw I was in a bad mood and insisted on wearing this to cheer me up.” “Let me tell you, never mind firing you for not replying to a message. Even if I said you entered the company with your left foot first and that was wrong, Ms. Livia would listen to me and tell you to get lost!” “Oh, I almost forgot—this outfit got dirty last night when we both got a bit excited. Joseph, wash it for me before you return it. You’ve done plenty of laundry and cooking anyway.” Rage surged from my feet to my head. I could no longer hold back and swung my fist at his face. “Parker, you’re actually proud of being a homewrecker?!” The force clearly wasn’t that great, yet he fell to the ground with a thud, covering his face and crying out in admission of fault. “Joseph, I was wrong, but the resignation letter must follow proper procedures! Hitting me won’t help—anyone would have to follow this process!” Following his words came an aggressive sound of the door being kicked open. Livia looked at him on the ground and, without a moment’s thought, raised her hand and slapped my face. “Joseph! You actually dared to hit Parker!” A burning pain spread across my face. Looking at Livia’s bone-chillingly cold eyes, it took me a while to realize what had happened. “Apologize.” She spoke icily, looking at me with eyes like ten-thousand-year-old ice, piercing me until my whole body went cold. “Won’t you even ask what happened?!” My eyes reddened. I felt my head splitting with pain. I could barely stand steady. “You hit Parker and you still think it’s Parker’s fault?! You’re being completely unreasonable now. Get out of my way! I need to take Parker to the hospital!” She pushed me aside impatiently. With my ears ringing and head dizzy, her push actually made me fall to the ground. She paused while holding Parker’s hand, about to come help me up, when Parker suddenly cried out. “Livia, what do I do? My head feels so dizzy. I don’t know if Joseph’s punch just now injured my brain!” Anxiety filled Livia’s eyes. She looked at me, then at Parker, and finally let go of me. Before losing consciousness, what echoed in my mind was still that deafening slap. And that hard-to-believe yet unavoidable truth. The woman who used to make me breakfast every day had actually raised her hand against me for another man’s sake.

When I woke up, I found myself carried to Livia’s office, lying on the cold floor. Parker was lying on the couch while Livia tenderly disinfected the minor scratches on his face. Hearing me regain consciousness, she turned around, her tone unfriendly. “The doctor already came by. Your punch almost gave Parker internal injuries. Parker is kindhearted—he’s waiving the medical fees.” “You should apologize to Parker.” Parker’s eyes were full of smugness. “Joseph, I really can’t speak up for you this time. The whole company knows you hit me. If there’s no response, how can I establish my authority in the future?” “I’m not asking you to do much—just apologize. Tomorrow I’ll post the video of your apology to the employee group chat, and we’ll consider this matter closed.” I struggled to get up and handed the resignation letter to Livia. “You really don’t need to humiliate me like this. I won’t apologize. Sign it.” She glanced disdainfully at the resignation letter and sneered. “Still trying to use this tactic to threaten me? Where could you possibly go after leaving my company? Don’t think I don’t know—you just don’t want to apologize, so you’re using resignation to scare me.” “Joseph, this is your last chance. If I really sign this, you’ll regret it when it’s too late.” “Apologize!” Anger had already colored her face, but my attitude remained firm. My hand holding out the resignation letter hung frozen in midair. She suddenly laughed coldly twice and snatched the resignation letter, signing it. “Fine! Let’s see where you’ll find another place that lets you live such a life of luxury after leaving me!” “Get out!” Under the watchful eyes of everyone at Livia’s company, I packed up my things and left without looking back.

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