Category: English

If you asked anyone in Manhattan, they’d tell you Troy Locke worshipped the ground I walked on. Why else would the city’s most ruthless, undefeated defense attorney agree to represent my brother, a man accused of a brutal sexual assault? And not just any victim—the accuser was Mia Jenkins, Troy’s own protégé, the golden girl he had mentored for years. The press had a field day. Everyone assumed Troy would pull his usual legal magic and get my brother acquitted. Troy never lost. But he did lose. In just two months, the trial and the subsequent appeal ended in total, catastrophic failure. Worse than that. The initial sentence was three years. After the appeal, the charges were escalated to federal kidnapping and aggravated assault. The new sentence? Life without the possibility of parole in a maximum-security prison. A guaranteed death sentence for someone like my brother. When the news broke, the media camped out, waiting for me to lose my mind. Waiting for Grace Croft, the fiery actress who had just wrapped a closed-set shoot in Europe and stormed the courthouse steps during the first trial, to put on a hysterical show. But on the day of the final sentencing, the vultures outside the courthouse waited in vain. I wasn’t screaming. I was standing in a quiet, sterile bathroom down the hall, calmly holding a phone to my ear. “Declan,” I said, my voice eerily steady. “I’ll marry you. Just get your legal team to file a motion for a retrial for my brother.” Silence hummed on the line for two seconds. “I have faster ways to handle this, Grace. The appellate courts are a nightmare. Sam will be locked up for a long time while we fight it.” “It won’t be a hard fight.” I lowered my eyes, tracing the grout lines on the floor. “When we were in the foster system, Sam was in a terrible accident. He doesn’t have male anatomy. It is biologically impossible for him to have raped anyone.” 1 “We grew up in the worst parts of the city. Sam is deaf and mute. To find work, to protect me, he took so many beatings. After one of those brutal attacks, he underwent emergency surgery. Everything was removed.” I gripped the edge of the sink. “If the men in that prison find out what he is… it will be a fate worse than death. I swore I would take that secret to my grave.” A long beat of silence. “Does Troy know?” Declan asked. I didn’t answer. Once Declan agreed to send his team, I hung up and pushed the bathroom door open. I caught my reflection in the mirror—pale, hollowed out, a ghost of the woman I was yesterday. I forced the corners of my mouth up in a dark, bitter mimicry of a smile. Troy didn’t know. But until today, I genuinely thought he did. It had been a month since the initial guilty verdict. Troy was Sam’s defense attorney. He had unlimited access. All he had to do was ask Sam, and Sam, desperate to clear his name, would have found a way to tell him. When I flew back from Europe in a panic, Troy had taken my face in his hands and apologized. He blamed a biased jury. He promised me he would win the appeal. For two weeks, I barely saw him. He was supposedly working back channels, meeting with judges, pulling every string. I was running myself ragged gathering security footage that proved Sam wasn’t even there. I thought we were in the trenches together. But an hour ago, in that courtroom, Troy had stood before the judge and offered practically no defense against Mia’s lawyers. Worse, the flash drive containing the security footage I had painstakingly tracked down—the footage showing Sam leaving the building immediately after arguing with Mia—was mysteriously “lost” from Troy’s briefcase. “Grace!” My assistant, Bella, jogged down the corridor, her face flushed with anxiety. “There you are. We need to go out the loading dock. The press is swarming the front.” She touched my arm gently. “Troy did his best. Mia hired Judge Davis’s old firm. Nobody beats them.” She hesitated, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Though, I heard Judge Davis retired from private practice years ago. I have no idea how Mia got him to take her case…” My footsteps faltered. I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. “Yeah,” I whispered. “How could Mia possibly get him?” Mia couldn’t. But Troy could. Judge Davis was Troy’s old mentor. The man was like a father to him. Years ago, the Judge had despised me, viewing me as a D-list actress gold-digger. He forbade Troy from marrying me. Troy stood in the pouring rain outside the Judge’s estate for twenty-four hours to prove his devotion to me. The Judge never opened the door. Troy chose me, and the two hadn’t spoken since. If it weren’t for this trial, I would have forgotten the old man’s face entirely. And if it weren’t for this trial, I never would have realized that the person Troy truly wanted to save wasn’t me. Right before the hearing began, Troy had gently told me to wait outside, claiming my emotional state might prejudice the judge. But when the gavel fell, sealing Sam’s fate, I couldn’t breathe. I had run to the bathroom to muffle my sobs. And that was when I heard it. Through the thin walls, from the adjacent corridor. Mia’s voice. “Troy,” she was crying, her voice thick with relief. “Thank you. Getting Judge Davis to represent me… destroying that security footage… If you hadn’t been with me every single night this past month, I would have killed myself.” It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. My blood stopped moving in my veins. Then came Troy’s voice. It was the same cool, authoritative tone he always used, but laced with a tender indulgence I hadn’t heard in years. “He hurt you, Mia. Professionally and personally, I was never going to let him get away with it.” They talked for a long time. And standing in that bathroom stall, everything finally clicked into agonizing clarity. From Sam’s arrest, to the indictment, to today. Two months. Troy was the defense attorney, and he hadn’t visited Sam in jail a single time. He didn’t “lose” my evidence. He threw it in the trash. He insisted on taking Sam’s case, isolating me from the process, purely to guarantee I didn’t hire a competent lawyer. He engineered the entire defense to ensure the man who supposedly hurt his precious protégé was locked away forever. And why had Mia framed Sam? Because a week before the arrest, Sam had confronted her, signing furiously, warning her to stop trying to destroy my marriage. I closed my eyes, a wave of nausea rolling over me. I remembered casually complaining to Sam that Mia was too clingy with Troy, that it made me anxious. I remembered the day I flew back, my brain short-circuiting at the news of Sam’s arrest. I had been a hysterical mess, screaming, “Sam couldn’t do this! Mia is lying! She belongs in a cell!” “I’m going to her apartment! I’m going to make her tell the truth!” But Troy had caught me by the shoulders, his gaze steady and reassuring. “Don’t go near her, Grace. I know Sam isn’t that kind of man. I’ll win the appeal. You just need to trust me. Let me handle it.” And I did. God, I trusted him. But the “win” he was working for was Mia’s. The “trust” he spoke of was his blind, unquestioning faith in Mia’s lies. If he had done the bare minimum of his job—if he had bothered to interview his own client—he would have known Sam couldn’t have raped anyone. Bella was still urging me forward. I walked mechanically until I rounded the corner and nearly collided with Troy. He was still in his bespoke suit, his tie perfectly knotted. He radiated that untouchable, elite aura that owned every room he walked into. His eyes flicked over my pale face, pausing for a fraction of a second before settling back into cool composure. “Where did you go?” he asked. “The clerk needs a family member to sign the acknowledgment of the sentence.” I looked down at the paperwork in his hand. The words swam, stinging my eyes. I didn’t take the paper. I just looked up at the man standing in front of me. Five years. I had loved that face for five years. I met him when he was just starting to make a name for himself. We were at a gala, and a group of predatory executives were trying to drink him under the table. He took every shot without complaining, though his jaw was tight with strain. I thought it was charming. I stepped in and took three shots of whiskey for him. Later, he asked me why I did it. “Because you remind me of my brother,” I had said. “You’re at your breaking point, but you refuse to let anyone see you bend.” Later, he won the lawsuit that freed me from a toxic management contract. He became my husband. I will never let you down, Grace, he had sworn. I stared at him in the quiet of the courthouse corridor. Troy’s brow furrowed slightly under my scrutiny. Finally, I opened my mouth. My voice was completely, terrifyingly calm. “Troy. I want a divorce.” 2 Troy’s frown deepened by a millimeter. “A divorce?” His tone was flat, dismissive. “This isn’t the time for one of your tantrums, Grace.” A passing court official—one of the prosecutors—paused, giving me a patronizing sigh. “Ms. Croft, Troy’s reputation has already taken a massive hit just by representing your brother. Mia Jenkins has an airtight evidence chain, and she had Judge Davis. An appeal was a pipe dream. Just sign the acknowledgment. If he goes to maximum security, Troy might still be able to pull strings to get him into a safer block.” My hands balled into fists. Sam was deaf. He was mute. He had survived the horrors of the foster system, survived the streets, survived unimaginable pain, and now he was being sent to a place where he would be slaughtered. And these men were telling me to stop throwing a tantrum. I took a slow, deep breath, my fingernails biting into my palms until the skin nearly broke. I wanted to scream the truth. I wanted to tell the whole damn courthouse that Sam was biologically incapable of this crime. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Troy had deliberately tanked this case. He had thrown my brother to the wolves for Mia. I had no idea how deep their twisted relationship went, or how far Troy would go to protect her. If I played my hand now, Troy would just bury the medical records. He would find another way to crush Sam. I didn’t even know if Sam was being threatened in holding right now. I couldn’t afford to be impulsive. I couldn’t fight Troy on his home turf while I was utterly isolated. I needed to tear this self-righteous, untouchable lawyer down to his very foundations. Taking my silence for submission, Troy reached out and wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Let’s go home. We’ll discuss the next steps later.” As we pushed through the heavy doors toward the private parking garage, Troy’s cell phone rang. Through the earpiece, I could hear Mia’s voice, trembling and thick with tears. Troy’s face softened instantly. “Don’t panic,” he murmured. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up and looked at me, a flicker of hesitation in his eyes. “Mia got ambushed by the paparazzi at the front entrance. She’s having a panic attack. I need to go handle it. Have my driver take you home.” I didn’t say a word. Troy studied me. I was being too quiet. But he didn’t have time to dissect my mood. He signaled his driver, turned on his heel, and strode away. Bella and I followed the driver to Troy’s black Porsche Cayenne. The driver pulled the passenger door open for me. As I bent to slide in, my peripheral vision caught something in the footwell of the passenger seat. A scrap of black lace. A pair of women’s underwear. Bella followed my gaze, her face flushing crimson. “What… what the hell is that?!” The driver froze, stammering. “It… it might be a rag? Ms. Jenkins leaves things in the car sometimes when Troy gives her a lift to work.” “A rag?!” Bella’s voice went up an octave. “Do you think we’re stupid?” Before anyone could say another word, the sound of shouting erupted behind us. A rogue group of protesters and paparazzi had breached the garage. “Have some shame! Defending a rapist!” Suddenly, something wet and heavy hit the side of my head. Rotting vegetables and cracked eggs rained down on us. “Your brother ruined that poor girl’s life! How dare you get in that car!” “You’re dragging Troy Locke’s name through the mud! Do him a favor and leave him alone!” Bella threw her arms around me, using her body as a shield. Slime dripped from my hair, the stench of sulfur running down my cheek. I didn’t flinch. I just looked at the lace underwear sitting in my husband’s car. A quiet, hollow laugh slipped past my lips. I turned around and walked out of the garage, leaving the car behind. 3 When I got back to the penthouse, I stood under the scalding water of the shower for an hour. I stepped out just as Troy unlocked the front door. He wasn’t alone. Mia was tucked safely behind him, her face streaked with delicate tears. Troy’s eyes flicked to the pile of my soiled, egg-stained clothes on the floor, but he didn’t ask what happened. Mia shrank back, pressing herself against Troy’s shoulder as if my mere presence terrified her. Troy shifted his weight, subtly blocking her from my view. His tone was perfectly level. “Mia is highly traumatized right now. The press overwhelmed her. I brought her here to calm down.” I stared at them. I saw the way Mia’s fingers curled into the fabric of his suit. I saw the fleeting, venomous smirk that flashed in her eyes before she buried her face in his back. “Get out,” I rasped, my stomach violently churning. Troy’s brow instantly pinched in displeasure. Suddenly, Mia lunged forward, collapsing to her knees on the hardwood floor right in front of me. “Grace, I am so sorry!” she wailed. “It’s all my fault! I never should have gone to the police!” “Troy has mentored me for years, and now I’ve ruined your marriage! Please, hit me! Punish me!” She crawled forward on her knees. But as she got closer, the sobbing stopped. Her lips barely moved, her voice dropping to a vicious, microscopic whisper meant only for me. “Those protesters in the garage? Troy had security tip them off. He needed a distraction so he could sneak me out the front.” My entire body went rigid. Mia’s voice grew even softer, practically a purr. “Your freak of a brother cried like a baby when they dragged him away. But who can he blame? Who told him to play the hero and threaten me? Who the hell is he to tell me to stay away from Troy?” She paused, a sickening smile touching her lips. “Grace, Troy trusts me so implicitly. He personally made the calls. Skipped standard procedure and sent your mute brother straight to hell.” A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears. Without a single thought, I raised my hand and swung. My wrist was caught mid-air. Troy held my arm. His grip wasn’t bruising, but it was absolute rock. He looked down at me, his face devoid of emotion—the hallmark of his rising anger. “Grace.” He used to say my name like that when I worked too many hours on set, or when he missed me. I stared back at him. My eyes were entirely devoid of warmth. I was looking at a stranger. My gaze was so dead, so freezing cold, that Troy actually flinched. He opened his mouth to say something, but Mia suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream. “No! Stay away from me!” She curled into a fetal position on the rug, violently shaking, her eyes locked onto a framed photograph on the console table. It was the first picture Sam and I took together after leaving the foster system. We were grinning, faces pressed together. “He’s looking at me! He’s going to hurt me again!” Mia babbled incoherently. Troy instantly released my wrist and dropped to one knee, pulling Mia into his chest. “Make it go away! Please, Troy, make it stop…” she sobbed into his shirt. Troy reached up and laid the photo frame face down. “I’ll put it in storage,” he told me, his tone leaving no room for argument. But Mia shrieked louder. She scrambled out of his arms, grabbed the heavy silver frame, and smashed it against the edge of the table. Glass shattered across the floor. My heart felt like it fractured with it. I dropped to my knees, frantically trying to gather the pieces of the photo. Troy frowned. “Grace, stop, I have the digital backups—” But Mia was already moving. She went through the living room like a hurricane, grabbing every single photo that had Sam in it and hurling them to the floor. Troy didn’t stop her. He actually reached up to the high mantle to hand her a frame she couldn’t reach. She kept going until she pointed a shaking finger at a massive canvas on the wall. It was our wedding photo. “She looks just like him!” Mia shuddered, pointing at my face. “I’m terrified…” This time, Troy’s hand stopped in mid-air. In the photo, I was wearing a Vera Wang gown, smiling so brightly it hurt to look at. Troy reached out and gently covered Mia’s eyes. “Then don’t look,” he said softly. “I’m taking you out of here.” I let out a harsh, broken laugh. “Get out.” I stood up, walked over to the wall, ripped our wedding canvas off the hook, and threw it onto the pile of shattered glass. Troy’s jaw tightened. “There is no need to be vindictive to a victim of trauma, Grace.” “Get the fuck out!” I screamed, my whole body vibrating. “Both of you, get out of my house!” Troy scooped Mia up in his arms and walked out the door without looking back. I collapsed onto the ruined floor. My mind drifted to the first case he ever won for me. I was a nobody, trapped in a predatory contract. He went to war for me, making his name in the process. At the victory party, slightly drunk, he kissed my forehead in front of everyone. From now on, Grace, I protect you. No one in this world is allowed to bully you. I touched the cold glass on the floor, let out a dry breath, and walked into my study. 4 The next morning, I walked straight into Troy’s law firm. I pushed open the heavy oak doors to his private office. Mia was sitting on Troy’s lap, their lips locked together. Troy broke away instantly, his eyes snapping to mine. He hurriedly shifted Mia off his lap. “She’s having a panic attack. She was hyperventilating. It was grounding technique,” he said. For the first time in his life, Troy Locke sounded flustered. I didn’t care. I felt nothing. I walked to his mahogany desk and dropped a manila folder in front of him. Troy felt a sudden, suffocating wave of panic. In the past, if Mia even touched his arm, I would have thrown a fit. I would have demanded answers. Now? I didn’t even blink. “Sign it,” I said. “It’s the termination of your legal representation for my brother.” He looked down at the folder, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You want to file for a retrial? Grace, without new, exculpatory evidence, an appellate judge won’t even look at it.” I stared at him, the ghost of a smile pulling at my lips. “I had evidence. But you threw it in the trash.” Mia instantly started weeping. “Grace, why are you doing this?! Please don’t forge evidence just to make Troy’s life harder…” “Your brother destroyed me! Doesn’t he have to pay for what he did?” She clutched her chest, performing a flawless hyperventilation act. Troy gently rubbed circles into her back, but his eyes were locked on my dead, unyielding stare. He hesitated, then picked up his Montblanc pen and scrawled his signature across the documents. “I signed it. Now please leave. You’re triggering her.” He didn’t even read the pages underneath. He didn’t notice that the second document in the stack was a petition for divorce. The most meticulous, paranoid defense attorney in New York lost every ounce of his intellect the second Mia shed a tear. How pathetic. I turned on my heel and walked out. It was mid-April, but as I stepped onto the Manhattan pavement, snow had begun to fall. Unseasonal, bitter snow. I looked up at the grey sky. Maybe the universe felt the injustice, too. Snowflakes landed on my cheeks, melting and mixing with the hot tears I hadn’t realized I was crying. I wiped my face violently. I met Declan’s high-powered legal team at the federal courthouse. We submitted the backup files of the security footage and the sealed medical records proving Sam’s biological reality. “We’ll file the motion for retrial and push for emergency visitation,” the lead attorney told me. “Just wait for our call.” I submitted the signed divorce papers to the clerk. When I returned to the penthouse, I started packing. But after staring at my closet for ten minutes, I realized I didn’t want a single thing from this life. I slid the diamond ring off my finger, placed it exactly in the center of the coffee table, and walked toward the front door. I yanked it open, only to slam directly into a solid chest. Troy. His eyes were bloodshot, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. He grabbed my arm and practically dragged me into the elevator, hauling me out to his car and driving straight to the hospital. “Are you insane, Grace?!” he roared as he drove. “Do you have to torture her? Why are you so damn malicious? Why would you send those photos?!” “What photos?” I asked, my voice numb. “Mia received printed photos of the assault! Graphic, humiliating photos of her trauma. Who else would do that but you?” I shook my head. “I didn’t—” A piercing shriek echoed from the hospital room at the end of the hall as we stepped off the elevator. Troy dropped my arm and sprinted inside. Mia was huddled in the corner of the hospital bed. The second she saw me in the doorway, she scrambled backward like a cornered animal. “No! Keep her away from me!” Before anyone could react, she grabbed a silver fruit knife from her lunch tray and pressed the blade against her own throat. “Please stop torturing me, Grace! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Troy froze, his hands raised, his legendary composure shattering. “Mia. Put the knife down. Please.” Mia’s eyes were wild, locked onto my face. “Her face looks exactly like his! He’s the one who raped me! I can’t look at her! I want to die!” She pressed the blade harder. A thin line of blood welled up on her neck. Troy squeezed his eyes shut. A second later, his eyes snapped open. He looked at the two burly orderlies standing by the door. “Hold my wife down,” he ordered.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “460701”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

This year, as one of the nation’s leading neurosurgeons, I was flown in for a high-risk consult at a regional hospital out of state. Twenty years ago, I walked into this exact operating room. My father had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. The attending surgeon’s scalpel slipped by just half a centimeter. My father didn’t make it. It was my college sweetheart, Grace, who held my hand and pulled me out of the dark. It wasn’t until years later that I learned the truth. The attending of record was her mother, the hospital’s famous chief of neurosurgery. But the hands on the scalpel belonged to Grace—a mere resident at the time. She and Philip had planned it all along, using my father’s emergency surgery as a trial run to pad her surgical log. When it went south, Philip used his influence as the hospital CEO’s son to sweep the entire disaster under the rug. From that day on, I walked away from my fast-tracked academic program. I rebuilt my entire life from the ground up: MCATs, medical school, residency, fellowship. I spent twenty long years turning myself into a man who doesn’t make mistakes. I did it so that one day, no other family would have to live through my father’s tragedy. Today, my assistant slid a patient’s chart across the desk. Brainstem tumor. Late-stage. Extremely high-risk. The face in the file was weathered, lined with age. But I recognized her instantly. I handed the file back to my assistant and slipped off my white coat. “I can’t perform this surgery.” … 1 “Dr. Peterson, what do you mean?” My assistant, Laura, stood frozen in the center of the room. I had already begun packing my briefcase. “Exactly what I said, Laura. Change my flight back to Chicago to tonight.” “But… there isn’t another neurosurgeon in the state who can resect a brainstem tumor of this complexity. If you walk away, the patient is basically—” “I know. But I can’t take the case.” I pulled open the heavy oak door and walked out of the conference room. Dr. Diane Henderson, Mercy General’s chief of neurosurgery, hurried down the corridor, a tight, practiced smile stretched across her face. “Dr. Peterson, I’m Diane Henderson. We spoke on the phone.” She extended a hand. I didn’t take it. She withdrew it awkwardly, smoothing down the front of her white coat. “We’ve been preparing for this resection for three months. It wasn’t easy getting a specialist of your caliber to fly out from Chicago on such short notice. The family—” “Dr. Henderson,” I interrupted, my voice flat. “I will submit a formal conflict-of-interest waiver in writing.” She blinked, caught off guard, then took a step closer, lowering her voice. “Alan, you might not fully grasp the politics here. The patient’s daughter is our Chief Medical Officer, Grace Miles. Her husband, Philip Caldwell, is the son of our former CEO. If you just walk out, I’m the one who has to answer for it.” “That’s your administrative problem, Diane. Not mine.” I brushed past her and kept walking down the brightly lit hallway. Behind me, Henderson’s heels clicked rapidly against the linoleum as she scrambled to keep pace, her tone growing desperate. “Dr. Peterson, at least give me a reason I can bring to the family. Is it our surgical plan? Is there something wrong with our OR setup? The equipment, the surgical team, the post-op ICU care—name it, and we will make it happen!” “Your facilities are perfectly fine. The procedure is technically feasible. But you need another surgeon.” “Is it the consulting fee? The family made it clear that money is no object. Name your price.” “It’s not about the money.” Before she could speak again, I cut her off. “My decision is final, Diane.” As the elevator doors slid shut, I saw Henderson finally snap out of her daze, frantically pulling out her phone. Laura followed me down, jogging to keep up all the way to the parking garage. “Dr. Peterson, what is going on?” She blocked my driver’s side door, her forehead slick with sweat. “This isn’t like you. You’ve taken on cases far more dangerous than this without blinking. But today, one look at a chart and you’re running?” “Laura.” I looked at her, and the word hung between us until she went quiet. “You’ve been with me for four years. Have you ever seen my hands shake in an OR?” “Never.” “What if I told you that if I stand over that table, I know for a fact my hands will shake?” Laura knit her brows, her mouth opening, then closing again. “Neurosurgery doesn’t afford us half a millimeter of grace.” Twenty years. I had spent two decades turning my body into a machine of absolute precision. Even twelve hours deep into a grueling resection, my hands wouldn’t drift by more than a fraction of a millimeter. My peers talked about me as if I were a piece of calibrated engineering, devoid of human frailty. But today, seeing that name and that face, the cold machinery inside me shattered. Twenty years ago, a slip of half a centimeter was all it took to leave my father cold on a steel table. My phone buzzed in my pocket. An unrecognized number. “Dr. Peterson, I am representing the patient’s family. We were informed you declined the surgery. Could we meet briefly to discuss?” I didn’t know who sent it, but I knew Grace’s shadow was behind every word. I didn’t reply. A minute later, a second text arrived: “As physicians, our greatest fear shouldn’t be failing a patient, but choosing to let them die.” “Dr. Peterson, please, just wait!” Dr. Henderson was suddenly there, physically blocking my car bumper, looking utterly desperate. “The former CEO’s son insists on meeting you. He’s on his way!” “Philip Caldwell?” “You know him?” Of course I did. Grace’s husband, the golden boy of Mercy General. Twenty years ago, he was a medical student who treated the hospital corridors like his personal inheritance, courtesy of his mother. “I’ve heard the name,” I said flatly. Henderson sighed, checking her watch. “The patient’s daughter, Grace, is Philip’s wife. She’s also… well, our associate chief of neurosurgery here.” She chose her words with extreme care, watching my expression. “Dr. Peterson, I’m sure you have your reasons. But if this blows up, it’s going to make waves that neither of us wants to deal with. Please, just give them ten minutes. Let them explain.” “There is nothing to explain.” “Alan!” Henderson pleaded, leaning in close to my open window. “Please, listen to me. The Caldwells and the Miless run this town. Whatever reservations you have, whatever demands—they will meet them. If I let you walk away without a word, the administrative blowback is going to hit both of us. Hard. Do this as a favor to me. Just sit down with Philip and Grace. Ten minutes.” “Diane, if I officially recuse myself, you can report it to the State Medical Board. They can expedite another specialist. That would be faster anyway.” She let out a dry, humorless laugh. “You’re the top consultant in the region for this specific pathology, Alan. If you walk away, the second-tier surgeons will be too terrified to touch her.” Before I could respond, my phone rang. I slid the bar to answer. “Hello?” “Is this Alan Peterson?” A smooth, slightly arrogant baritone. I didn’t need an introduction to know who it was. “I’m Philip Caldwell, Dr. Miles’s husband. I understand you’ve declined my mother-in-law’s case. I’d like to speak with you face-to-face. Tomorrow morning?” I forced my breath to remain steady, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing my anger. Sensing my silence, his tone sharpened. “Look, whatever issues you have, flying in only to walk away without a formal consult doesn’t look good for your reputation. Let’s talk.” “I am preparing a formal written brief to explain my decision.” “A conversation is faster than paperwork, Doctor. Unless there’s something you’re uncomfortable saying to my face?” There was a bite of irritation in his voice now. He was used to getting his way, and he clearly thought I was just playing hardball for a higher fee. “Fine,” I said, my voice dropping into a quiet, cold calm. Some accounts, it seemed, were finally ready to be settled. “I’ll be at the hospital tomorrow morning.” “Good. My wife, Dr. Miles, and I will meet you in the executive boardroom.” “I’ll be there.” Henderson let out a visible breath of relief. “Thank you, Alan. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She stepped back, giving me space to pull out. I shifted into drive, glancing at Laura in the passenger seat. “Cancel the flight. We’re staying.” The next morning, I was sitting in the cold, sterile light of the executive boardroom when the doors swung open. Philip Caldwell walked in first, his designer wool overcoat unbuttoned, carrying the unmistakable aura of institutional privilege. Behind him came Grace. Her posture was exactly as I remembered—composed, quiet, holding herself with a delicate elegance that twenty years hadn’t managed to erode. I had played our reunion in my mind a thousand times over the years, drafting cold scripts of clinical detachment. But seeing her in the flesh, a dark, hot surge of anger flared in my chest, threatening to break through my carefully constructed composure. “Dr. Peterson?” Philip walked straight up to me, extending a hand that I ignored. He didn’t recognize me. To him, the broken twenty-year-old boy who had collapsed in tears outside the ICU doors bore no resemblance to the celebrated neurosurgeon who had just published his sixth landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine. “What exactly is the issue here, Dr. Peterson? You just decide to walk away? We cleared our OR schedule, calibrated our surgical navigation systems, and finalized the post-op protocol with your team three days ago. Now you’re pulling the plug?” “Mr. Caldwell, as I told Dr. Henderson, I will be submitting a formal recusal.” “A recusal?” He let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “You’ve successfully resected tumors twice this size. Are you telling me a standard brainstem glioma has Chicago’s star surgeon running scared?” Grace stepped forward, her voice soft, trying to de-escalate. “Dr. Peterson, I’m Grace Miles, the patient’s daughter. I understand you might have professional reservations, but my mother’s condition is critical. If this is about compensation, we can easily adjust the consulting terms—” “It’s not about the money, Dr. Miles.” “Then what is it?” Philip slammed his leather briefcase onto the mahogany table. “Is Mercy General not prestigious enough for you?” Henderson hovered nearby, trying to play peacemaker. “Philip, please, let’s keep this professional. Dr. Peterson might have a valid clinical concern—” “A clinical concern? A world-class neurosurgeon looks at a dying patient and turns his back?” He leaned over the table, his eyes narrowing. “Let me tell you something, Peterson. My mother sits on the State Medical Board’s advisory panel. One phone call from her and I can make your credentials in this state—” “Philip,” Grace muttered, grabbing his forearm, her voice tight. “Calm down.” She turned to me, offering a polite, apologetic smile. It was the exact same smile she had worn twenty years ago outside the morgue when she held my hands and whispered, “Alan, you have to stay strong.” The same smile she wore right before she got engaged to Philip, while my official complaints regarding my father’s death were mysteriously lost in the hospital’s bureaucratic machine. “Dr. Peterson,” Grace said, her tone dripping with professional sincerity. “I don’t know what your personal hesitation is. But as a fellow surgeon, I trust your ethics. My mother is a pioneer in our field—” I couldn’t listen to her voice anymore. “Dr. Miles, my decision stands. No amount of persuasion will change it.” Philip’s face darkened, veins showing at his temples. “Fine. You think you’re untouchable because of your reputation. We’ll see how that holds up tomorrow. The hospital Peer Review Board is convening to review your refusal. I hope you keep that same arrogant attitude in front of them.” He grabbed his briefcase and turned toward the door, throwing one last sneer over his shoulder. “I despise prima donnas who think their talent exempts them from their duty. You took an oath to save lives, Peterson. It’s not a buffet where you get to pick and choose.” His heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor. Grace paused, looking at me with a lingering, calculating gaze. “I apologize for my husband’s temper, Dr. Peterson. Please, sleep on it. You have my number if you change your mind.” Henderson stood frozen until Grace’s footsteps faded. She let out a long sigh. “Alan, why push them like this? If there’s a clinical concern, we could have worked through it…” “Diane, I have my reasons. I cannot perform this surgery.” “Well… prepare yourself for tomorrow’s board hearing. Philip isn’t the type to let this go.” I nodded, signaling Laura to gather our things. I didn’t care what Philip Caldwell had planned. Because tomorrow, I wasn’t planning on letting it go either. “Dr. Peterson, what exactly is your medical justification for refusing this procedure?” The question came from Regina Ross, a senior director from the State Department of Health. It was the next morning, and the conference room was packed. In addition to Mercy General’s chief physicians and administrators, the state had sent two official representatives to oversee the hearing. “I cannot guarantee the cognitive and emotional focus required for a successful outcome,” I replied. “What does that mean, practically speaking?” Ross flipped through a thick binder of my records. “Dr. Peterson, according to your credentials, you’ve performed forty-seven high-risk resections over the last three years with a perfect clinical outcome. Why would you lose your confidence now?” “On this specific case, yes. I do not have it.” “Why?” I didn’t answer right away. The second state representative leaned forward. “Dr. Peterson, we respect a surgeon’s clinical autonomy. But this is a highly unique case. The patient’s neurological window is closing fast. If you refuse to operate, her survival rate is essentially zero.” “My refusal doesn’t mean there are no other options. You can coordinate with other neurosurgical teams.” Ross cleared her throat. “We’ve contacted the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo. None of them have an available specialist who can fly in within the necessary timeframe. You are her only viable option.” “I cannot do it.” “There is a vast difference between ‘cannot’ and ‘will not,’ Dr. Peterson.” The boardroom doors swung open. Philip walked in, followed by Grace and an elderly woman leaning heavily on a brass-headed cane. She looked to be in her late seventies, her skin sallow and paper-thin, but her spine was as straight as a steel rod. “Dr. Caldwell,” Henderson gasped, rising quickly from her chair. Dr. Evelyn Caldwell was her former boss and the hospital’s legendary retired Chief of Staff. “Helen is my oldest friend,” Evelyn said, her voice thin but sharp. “I wasn’t going to sit by and watch this happen.” She made her way to the head of the table, pulling out a chair and casting a heavy, assessing gaze in my direction. “Dr. Peterson,” Evelyn said, coughing softly. “I ran this hospital for forty years. Helen Miles was my partner, my colleague, and my friend. Her illness won’t wait for bureaucratic posturing.” “Dr. Caldwell, I understand your concern, but—” “Let me finish,” she interrupted, raising a frail hand to silence me. “I know you are the brilliant specialist from Chicago. I know your time is expensive and your hands are highly sought after. But in this profession, technical skill isn’t everything.” She stared at me, her clouded eyes suddenly piercing. “The most important asset a surgeon has is a conscience.” Philip stood behind his mother, his expression smug and unyielding. Beside him, Grace maintained her look of quiet, somber grief. “I am refusing this surgery,” I said, looking Evelyn dead in the eye, “precisely because of my conscience.” “Explain that.” “Microsurgery on the brainstem requires flawless emotional detachment. Any internal tremor, any psychological distraction, can be fatal. I have evaluated my mental state regarding this patient, and I cannot guarantee the absolute calm required.” “Are you suggesting you have a personal bias against my mother?” Grace asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Dr. Peterson, to my knowledge, we have never met before this week.” I looked at her. Her gaze was entirely open, untroubled by any shadow of guilt. She didn’t recognize me. To her, I was a stranger. But I had carried her name in my chest like a shard of glass for twenty years. “Whether we have met is irrelevant,” I said, taking a slow sip of water. “The reality is that once I pick up that scalpel, I cannot guarantee absolute focus. On that basis alone, I have an ethical obligation to step away.” Ross tapped her pen impatiently against the table. “Dr. Peterson, let’s be frank. No medical regulation allows a physician to arbitrarily decline a life-saving procedure without a documented conflict of interest. If you cannot provide a concrete reason for recusal, this is a violation of your professional duties.” “Director Ross, the medical bylaws clearly state—” “Don’t cite bylaws to me,” she interrupted, tossing her pen onto her notes. “Let me tell you what the reality looks like. By tomorrow, the regional medical press will have hold of this story. A world-class neurosurgeon flies in from Chicago, looks at a chart, and immediately walks away. How do you think that looks for your career?” I remained silent. Philip took a step forward, his voice softening into a patronizing plea. “Dr. Peterson, if I was overly harsh yesterday, I apologize. But consider your career. If the story gets out that you let a patient die out of sheer stubbornness, how do you expect to recover from that?” Grace stood up, bowing her head slightly in an appeal of deep humility. “Dr. Peterson, if there is anything my mother or our family has done to offend you, I offer my deepest apologies. I understand you have concerns. We will double your consulting fee. If it helps ease your mind, I will personally handle all pre-op preparations—” “Dr. Miles,” I said, cutting her off. “Can you answer one question for me?” She paused, then gave a slight nod. “Of course.” “Your mother practiced medicine for forty years. How many surgeries did she perform?” “Thousands. She practically built the neurosurgery department in this state,” Grace said, her shoulders squaring with pride. “Out of those thousands, how many of them failed?” The air in the boardroom turned ice-cold. Grace’s gaze didn’t waver, but a shadow of hesitation crossed her eyes. “Every surgery carries risk. No doctor has a perfect record.” “And the families of the patients who didn’t survive… what happened to them?” “Dr. Peterson, that has absolutely nothing to do with this case.” “Doesn’t it?” I stood up, picking up my leather briefcase. “Then my reasons for declining have nothing to do with this case either. Excuse me, everyone.” Behind me, Philip’s voice rose in a venomous hiss. “Walk out then! But don’t expect to have a career when you get back to Chicago. I’ll make sure every hospital board in the country knows that the great Dr. Alan Peterson is a coward who lets patients die on a whim!” I pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. Laura hurried after me, whispering frantically. “Dr. Peterson, please… just tell me the truth. Why are you really refusing this case?” I looked down at her. Three years ago, she was a struggling resident who had been rejected by dozens of competitive fellowships before I took her onto my clinical team. She trusted me completely, and she knew me better than anyone in the field. But I had never shared the weight of my past with her. “Laura,” I said quietly. “Yes, Doctor?” “Twenty years ago, a fatal medical error occurred in this hospital’s neurosurgery department. The patient’s name was William Peterson.” Her breath caught, her eyes widening as the pieces fell into place. “William Peterson… he was your…?” “My father.” Laura stared at me, her mouth slightly open, completely speechless. “The attending of record was Dr. Helen Miles. The very woman lying in that ICU bed, waiting for me to save her.” She stood there frozen, the clinical reality colliding with the human tragedy. “Draft a formal conflict-of-interest recusal,” I said calmly. “I will present it to the Peer Review Committee myself tomorrow.” As we reached the glass doors of the lobby, Laura called out softly behind me. “Dr. Peterson… would your hands really shake?” I slowly curled my fingers into a tight fist, feeling the muscle memory of twenty years of precision. Then, I let out a long, heavy breath. “If I look down at her face on that table… I won’t be able to stop them.”

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The day my mother conceived me, I became aware of the world outside. My parents were happy, or at least they seemed to be. I also had an older sister, Hannah. She was my father’s daughter from his first marriage. The day they found out about my existence, Hannah tore her bedroom apart. “You already have me!” she screamed, her voice muffled but sharp through the walls of the womb. “Why do you need another one? You have to choose right now—it’s either her or me!” My mother didn’t answer her. She only whispered to herself that a baby was a gift, a twist of fate meant to be. But to Hannah, it was a betrayal. She began to act out, constantly searching for ways to claw back their attention. It escalated until the day she emptied an entire bottle of concentrated weed killer into my mother’s prenatal herbal teas. When my father discovered what she had done, his fury was unlike anything the house had ever known. For the first time in her life, he hit her. Hannah didn’t cry. She only stared at my mother’s swollen belly with a cold, burning hatred. The day I was brought home from the hospital, she walked over to my bassinet. She reached in and poked my cheek, her finger hard and cold. “You’re their real daughter,” she whispered, her voice dangerously quiet. “With you here, they’ll never love me again.” “There’s only room for one of us, but I don’t want to lose my mom and dad.” “So… could you just leave?” 1 Before I could even register her words, Hannah’s hands found my neck. She squeezed. Slowly, deliberately. The air left me. The world began to dim into a terrible, bruised purple. I wanted to cry, but Hannah was the one who wept first. Her warm tears fell, splashing against my cold cheeks. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” she sobbed. Suddenly, the suffocating pressure vanished. There was a sickening crack, and I watched Hannah fly backward, crashing heavily against the hardwood floor. “Are you out of your mind, Hannah?!” my father roared, his eyes bloodshot as he stood over her. “She’s your sister! How could you do that to a baby?” He kicked her, hard, twice in the ribs, before gently scooping me into his arms. “She’s not my sister!” Hannah choked out, curling into a ball on the floor and clutching her stomach. “She’s yours and Laura’s! But I… I am…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. It was true. I belonged to both of them. But Hannah belonged to my father and a woman who had abandoned them years ago. It was a truth she couldn’t bear to voice. “You are completely insane!” my father yelled. “First you try to poison your mother, and now you try to strangle your sister? How did I raise such a monster?” On the nearby sofa, my mother, still weak from labor, struggled to her feet. She rushed over, panic written across her pale face. “My sweet girl, are you okay?” The moment my mother saw the angry red handprints bruising my tiny neck, her face contorted with grief. She marched over to Hannah and slapped her across the face. Hard. The sound cracked through the room. Hannah’s head snapped to the side. She looked up, her eyes wide with utter shock. “You… you dared to hit me?” My mother’s hands were shaking violently. “Since the day I married your father, I have treated you like my own flesh and blood. I gave you the best of everything. I let it go when you tried to hurt me, but today you tried to murder my baby!” “How am I supposed to ignore this? How? I carried her for nine months, Hannah!” My mother collapsed onto her knees, sobbing hysterically. But Hannah scrambled backward, her face flushed with rage. “Liar! You hit me because I’m not yours! You never would have touched me before she was born!” “It’s because of her! You hate me because of her! The moment a stepmother gets her own kid, the father turns into a stranger too!” She screamed the words, her voice cracking with hysteria. “Shut your mouth!” my father bellowed. “You’re going to terrify the baby!” With tears still drying on my eyelashes, I stared blankly at Hannah. Deep down, I knew she wasn’t entirely wrong. Ever since my parents had found out about me, their eyes had rarely drifted to her. When Hannah had a fever a few weeks ago, they had simply told her to take some aspirin and drink water. The night she ran away, they hadn’t even noticed she was gone until she crept back through the front door, crying. A heavy, instinctive guilt settled in my tiny chest. I forced my crying to stop. I looked at Hannah, stretched out my small, fragile hands, and tried to offer her a smile. “S… Sis…” The syllable was clumsy and slurred, but in the quiet room, it was unmistakable. My parents froze in surprise. Even Hannah went still, staring at me. “Did you hear that, Hannah?” my father whispered, stepping closer to her and holding me out slightly. “Your sister is calling for you. Look at her. Even after what you did, she’s smiling at you!” “See? Don’t be so petty. You’re the older sister.” Seeing Hannah’s bewildered expression, I smiled wider. I wanted her to know that my birth didn’t mean she would lose their love. It just meant there was one more person in the world to love her. But in the next heartbeat, Hannah lunged forward. Her fingers wrapped around my throat again, squeezing with terrifying strength. “Are you mocking me?! You think you’ve won because they love you more?!” 2 Before my parents could react, the front door flew open. My Grandma Ruth, who had been waiting outside, rushed in and violently dragged Hannah away from me. My father stumbled backward, cradling me against his chest, murmuring frantic comforts. “You ungrateful brat!” Grandma Ruth screamed, slapping Hannah across the face. “She is a baby! Her very first word was ‘sister,’ and you still tried to kill her?” My mother covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking. “What do I want?” Hannah shrieked, clutching her burning cheek. “I want her dead!” Slap! Another strike cut her off. I had already lost count of how many times she had been hit today. Grandma Ruth and several other relatives who had come to help with the baby stood blockading the doorway, glaring down at Hannah with pure disgust. “Hannah, you are nothing but a parasite,” Grandma Ruth spat, her eyes red with anger on behalf of her daughter. “Your real mother abandoned you like trash. Laura took you in, raised you, made sure you never felt second-best.” “And how do you repay her? By trying to poison her, and now trying to strangle her newborn? Is your heart made of stone?” My Aunt Rachel crossed her arms, looking at Hannah with deep aversion. “Exactly. Your father came into this marriage with baggage—you. Laura raised you like her own. You should be kissing the ground she walks on, not acting like a psychopath.” “I…” Hannah’s face burned a deep, painful red, but no words came out. From the corner of the room, my Grandpa George let out a heavy, tired sigh. “If we had known it would turn out like this, we never would have fought so hard for custody. We should have let you go with your gambling mother. At least then you wouldn’t be here, ruining this family.” A ruin. Hannah flinched as if she had been struck by lightning. She slowly raised her head, looking at the grandfather who used to buy her ice cream, then at the aunts and uncles, and finally at my parents. “Is that… is that what you all think of me?” The room fell into a suffocating silence. My mother looked away first. My father lowered his gaze, tightening his grip on me. Their silence was the loudest answer of all. But it hadn’t always been this way. Before they knew I existed, I knew they loved Hannah. My father used to lift her high above his head when he came home from work, laughing. “That’s my smart girl! Straight A’s again! I’m so proud of you, Hannah.” My mother used to sit her down every morning, gently braiding her hair with colorful ribbons before walking her to school. That warmth had been real. I had felt it through the quiet thrum of the house. I had looked forward to joining a family that possessed so much love. Until they found me. As my mother’s belly grew, she no longer had the energy to wake up early and braid Hannah’s hair. My father’s attention shifted entirely to nursery color swatches and baby monitors. He even made Hannah move into the smaller guest room so her bedroom could be converted into my nursery. And then there was the school field day. They had promised they would be there. Hannah had waited by the school gates from morning until dusk, but they never showed up. All because that afternoon, I had kicked my mother’s stomach. Just a tiny, fluttery kick. But it was enough for them to panic, rush to the doctor, and completely forget about the daughter waiting in the schoolyard. When Hannah had finally walked through the door that night, she was shaking with rage and heartbreak. “You promised!” she had screamed, throwing her backpack at the wall. “Why didn’t you come? Do you have any idea how long I—” “It was just a field day,” my father had snapped, interrupting her. “You’ve had dozens of them. Your sister kicked your mother’s stomach today. We had to make sure she was safe. None of your school games are more important than your sister’s life.” Hannah had stood there, frozen, as if trying to translate a foreign language. And then, she had flipped the dining table. “You already have me! Why do you need another one? You have to choose right now—it’s either her or me!” But they hadn’t answered. They had only looked at her as if she were throwing a childish tantrum, too busy worrying about me. 3 Hannah’s crying and screaming went on for what felt like hours. Finally, Grandma Ruth lost all patience. She grabbed Hannah by the arm and began dragging her toward the door. “That’s enough! Your mother just gave birth. She’s weak, and you’re here howling like a banshee. Do you want to kill her? You’re coming with me.” But Hannah didn’t care about the physical pain. She dug her heels into the floor, desperately grabbing onto the doorframe. “Dad! Mom! Answer me!” she pleaded, her eyes searching theirs. “I’m not a ruin, right? Tell me I’m not!” My father opened his mouth, a flicker of hesitation crossing his face, but Grandma Ruth yanked her out before he could speak. The heavy front door clicked shut. The apartment fell into a profound, hollow quiet. My mother looked down at me, forcing a tired smile. “At least our little Gracie is good. Look at her, so quiet and sweet. Such a good baby.” She let out a long sigh. “If only your sister had half your temperament. They’re raised in the same house, so how can they be so different?” My father walked over, his fingers gently tracing the red marks on my neck. “That little psycho,” he muttered, his voice darkening. “She actually tried to hurt a baby. Why couldn’t she take it out on me? Why does she have to be so vicious?” His anger simmered, hardening into resentment. “When she comes back, I’m going to teach her a lesson she won’t forget. We’ve spoiled her. She’s starting to act exactly like her mother—wild, selfish, and unstable.” Vicious. Just like her mother. Even inside my blanket, my tiny heart flinched at his words. I was glad Hannah had been taken away. I was glad she hadn’t heard that. I squirmed in my swaddle, making soft cooing sounds, trying to tell them that Hannah wasn’t bad. She was just terrified of being erased. But I couldn’t speak. I could only make meaningless baby noises. My mother smiled, completely misinterpreting my efforts. “Look at Gracie, trying to make her mommy feel better.” Five days later, my mother was discharged, and we returned home. The moment we walked through the door, Hannah was there waiting. My parents instantly stepped in front of me, shielding me from her view. But Hannah only let out a hollow, dry laugh. She slowly rolled up her sleeves. Her arms were covered in angry, overlapping welts—some red and fresh, others dark purple and scabbing over. “Grandma ‘educated’ me,” Hannah said, her eyes fixed on my parents. “I won’t be jealous of the baby anymore. So… you’ll still love me like you used to, right?” She stared at them, begging for reassurance. But my parents only looked at each other, letting out a collective sigh of relief. My father stepped forward and patted her head. “Of course, Hannah. You’ll always be our sweet girl.” They were so happy that she had finally “learned her lesson” that neither of them asked a single question about the horrific marks on her arms. Hannah lowered her head, slowly pulling her sleeves back down. I remembered how, just a few months ago, if Hannah so much as scraped her knee, my parents would hover over her, kissing the scratch and comforting her until she smiled. Now, she was covered in bruises, and they chose to look right past them. Hannah seemed to have truly changed. She helped my father carry the heavy stroller, and she even washed my baby bottles without being asked. Standing in the kitchen, my father whispered to my mother, “I guess letting your mother handle her was the right call. She’s actually behaving now.” Hannah’s hands froze in the soapy water. Then, she slowly resumed scrubbing. So, my parents had authorized the beating. That was why they didn’t ask. Hannah dried her hands, turned around, and looked at my father. “I’m finished,” she said quietly. “I really won’t hurt Gracie again. I understand now.” My father took the clean bottle. “I’m glad you understand. Your mother and I won’t stop loving you just because of the baby. You’re both our children.” My mother smiled warmly from the living room. In my bassinet, I let out a soft gurgle. I thought that, despite everything, our family was finally going to be okay. I promised myself that when I grew up, I would explain everything to our parents so they would never misunderstand Hannah again. 4 Later that afternoon, my parents went into the nursery to organize my clothes, leaving Hannah and me alone in the living room. I wiggled, reaching my tiny hands out toward her, making soft “Sis, sis” sounds. Hannah walked over to the bassinet, her expression guarded and complex. “You don’t hate me? After what I did to you?” I shook my head as best as my little body could, continuing to reach for her, begging for a hug. Hannah froze. “You… you want me to hold you?” I blinked, letting out a happy coo. She hesitated, her bruised fingers trembling as she slowly reached down toward me. But just as her hand was about to touch my blanket, a heavy slipper flew across the room, striking her squarely in the face. Hannah stumbled backward, gasping as her head snapped to the side. “You liar!” my father screamed, rushing into the room. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her! I knew you were pretending! Were you trying to choke her again?!” “I wasn’t!” Hannah shrieked, her voice cracking as she collapsed into tears. “She was reaching for me! She wanted me to hold her! I was just trying to hold her!” “Don’t lie to me!” My father didn’t listen. He snatched me out of the bassinet, shielding me behind his back. “She’s a newborn! She doesn’t know how to ask for hugs! You almost killed her last time, and now you’re trying to finish the job!” His chest heaved, his lips trembling with rage. My mother emerged from the nursery. She didn’t yell. She just stood there, looking at Hannah with a profound, quiet disappointment. But that silent disappointment was far more lethal than any slap. I panicked. Why couldn’t they see? I began to squirm violently, crying out to stop them from hurting her. But my father only held me tighter. “Did she scare you, my sweet girl? Daddy’s here. You’re safe.” “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t hurt her!” Hannah screamed, taking a desperate step forward to explain. But my father instinctively took a step back, shielding me further. Just half a step. But it was enough to freeze Hannah in her tracks. The frantic energy drained from her body, leaving her completely hollow. “You don’t believe me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “You never believed me… All those promises about still loving me… they were all lies.” She turned and bolted out the front door. “Hannah! Don’t you dare walk out that door!” my father roared after her. But she was already gone, her footsteps echoing down the stairwell. My mother made a move toward the door, but my father grabbed her arm. “Don’t go after her. She has nowhere else to go. She’ll be back when she gets hungry.” But a week passed, and Hannah never came home. And my parents never went to look for her. “It’s been over a week,” my mother murmured one evening, staring blankly at the dinner table. “Do you think she’s okay?” My father didn’t lift his head, expertly taping a fresh diaper onto me. “What could happen to her? She’s probably throwing a tantrum at your mother’s place. She’s got a wild streak; nobody’s going to mess with her.” My mother didn’t reply. “I should call my mom just to check.” Before she could reach for her phone, the doorbell rang. My father smiled, picking me up. “See? What did I tell you? She ran out of steam and came back on her own. We worried for nothing.” My mother let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for days and rushed to open the door. But it wasn’t Hannah. Grandma Ruth stood on the doormat, holding a plastic bag filled with baby rattles and stuffed animals. “I came to see my little angel!” she smiled, stepping inside. “My, she’s grown so much in just a few days.” Then, her face turned serious. “Oh, by the way, you two need to lock your doors. The neighborhood watch said there’s a predator wandering around the West District—some sick monster targeting young kids. Keep Gracie close.” My father waved his hand dismissively. “We’re with Gracie twenty-four hours a day. No one is getting near her.” My mother, however, was still looking past Grandma Ruth into the empty hallway. “Mom… where’s Hannah? Didn’t she come with you?” Grandma Ruth frowned. “What do you mean? Why would she be with me?” The color drained from my mother’s face. “Hannah ran away a week ago… we thought she was staying with you.” Grandma Ruth sighed, shaking her head. “She’s run away before. She’s probably at one of her aunts’ houses. Just text the family group chat and ask. She’s just trying to scare you.” My mother’s hands shook as she unlocked her phone. But before she could open her messages, the phone began to ring. It was an unknown local number. My mother pressed answer, her voice trembling. “Hello?” “Hello, is this the family of Hannah Lynn? This is the precinct detective’s office. We have recovered the body of a young female matching her description. We need you to come in for an identification.”

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Charles brought his pregnant assistant into my Manhattan bridal boutique to try on custom wedding gowns. In the VIP lounge, his friends lounged on the leather sofas, placing bets on how many dresses it would take for me to lose my mind. But even when Amelia stepped out in the final, breathtaking showstopper, my hands remained steady. I kept the measuring tape aligned, quietly recording her numbers. “Charles, man, your wife is literally fitting your mistress,” Max laughed, throwing his head back against the sofa. Charles tapped his cigarette, letting the ash drift onto my wool rug. “She can’t even get pregnant. I pay for every single thing in this place anyway. Consider this her training wheels for playing stepmom. She needs to learn how to serve my son properly.” I rolled up my tape and handed over the invoice. “Congratulations. The fit is perfect. The deposit is two million.” Charles didn’t even blink. He slid a post-nuptial asset division agreement across the glass desk. “Sign it. Amelia’s hormones are all over the place. She wants the title of wife before she feels safe enough to carry to term. Walk away with nothing for now—it’s just a show for her. Once the baby is born, I’ll bring you back.” I picked up the pen, signed my name without a single word of protest, and then took his two-million-dollar check and tore it into tiny pieces. 1 Charles’s posture went rigid. He stared at the white scraps fluttering to the floor, his casual smirk hardening into something ugly. Max scoffed from his armchair, crossing his legs. “Still playing the martyr, Gemma? That’s a cheap trick. Charles is giving you a way out, and you’re acting like you have leverage. Look at yourself. You have nothing without him.” Charles stepped forward, his designer loafers grinding the torn paper into the floor. He grabbed my chin, his fingers digging deep into my skin. “I gave you a life, Gemma. Every single brick of this boutique was paid for with my money. Don’t play the saint with me.” I looked into his raging eyes, my face entirely blank. He hated this the most—my silence, my refusal to scream. With a sudden, violent turn, Charles pointed at the racks of couture gowns lining the showroom. “Smash it. All of it.” Four bodyguards immediately moved into the room. Heavy steel rods shattered the massive crystal display in the center of the showroom. Shards of glass rained down like ice. Gowns that had taken me three years to sew by hand were ripped from their hangers and thrown to the ground. The guards stomped on the delicate white silk, tearing the lace with their hands. The sound of ripping fabric filled the room, followed by the quiet patter of thousands of hand-sewn pearls rolling across the floor. Charles stood directly in front of me, watching my face. “Amelia says these older styles smell like dust. Since you want to be stubborn, let’s use these rags to make some noise for the baby in her belly.” A bodyguard raised his metal rod, aiming for a small glass display case in the corner. Inside sat a pair of inexpensive silver bands. They were worthless to anyone else—just thirty-dollar rings Charles had bought me at a street market when we were broke college students, our first promise of forever. Suddenly, Charles moved. He lunged forward, throwing his body in front of the cabinet. A stray shard of glass sliced through his designer suit, leaving a thin, bleeding line across the back of his hand. The bodyguard froze. Charles turned, staring at the untouched rings, his chest heaving. He pointed a trembling, bloody finger at the guard. “Watch where you’re aiming! Don’t bring your mess near me!” I stood in the middle of the ruined boutique, watching his bizarre display of sentimentality. Once, I would have softened. I would have believed he still loved me. Now, I only found it pathetic. Charles marched back to me, gripping my jaw again so hard his nails sunk into my flesh. He pulled out his phone, aiming the camera at my face. “Look at the screen. Record a message for Amelia. Tell her you’re stepping down voluntarily, that you welcome the baby, and that you wish us a happy life.” He forced my head down, forcing me to stare into the lens. His shoe was grinding directly into a large diamond that had fallen from the bodice of my favorite gown—the one he had bid on desperately at an auction years ago, swearing only I deserved to wear it. Now, he was stepping on it while forcing me to yield to his mistress. I didn’t fight him. I looked at my pale reflection in the screen and spoke clearly. “I, Gemma, am voluntarily stepping aside. I welcome Amelia’s child, and I wish you both a lifetime of happiness.” Charles stopped the recording, a flicker of irritation crossing his eyes. He let go of my jaw and casually forwarded the video to our social circle’s group chat. Max and the others cheered. “That’s how you handle her, Charles. Amelia is going to love this.” Charles wiped a drop of blood from his hand, pulling a cigarette from his silver case. “I’m going out for a smoke. Watch her. Make sure she cleans up every single piece of this garbage before she leaves.” As they walked out, I turned toward my private office at the end of the hall. I needed to get my passport and the design portfolio that contained my entry for the international competition. I pushed the half-open door and stopped. Scattered across the leather sofa were several medical reports. The top one bore Amelia’s name and the words Intrauterine Pregnancy. Next to the papers lay a black tablet Charles had left behind a few days ago. The screen was unlocked, playing a video on a loop. The background was our master bedroom in the Westchester estate. Amelia was wearing my silk pajamas, curled up in Charles’s arms. She pointed coyly at my design sketches on the nightstand. “Charles, this bed is too firm. And those sketches on the table are an eyesore. The whole house smells like her. It makes me sick.” Charles leaned down, kissing her hair, his hand resting on her stomach. “Then we’ll burn everything that has her scent on it. Including those stupid drawings. Once she signs the papers, we’ll use them to start a fire to keep you warm. We’ll only keep her around to help clean up during your recovery.” The coldness in his voice was absolute. I didn’t cry. I walked over, picked up Amelia’s prenatal report, and pulled a stack of yellowed letters from the desk drawer—letters Charles had written to me by hand during our university days. I walked to the shredder in the corner and pressed the power button. The machine roared to life. I fed the prenatal papers and the love letters into the slot together. The sharp blades devoured the paper, reducing our history to neat, meaningless strips of gray dust. I reached into the hidden compartment of my closet and pulled out a black suitcase. I zipped my passport and ID into the inner pocket, then carefully packed my secret design portfolio—the one that would give me a fresh start. Finally, I folded the unfinished gown I had spent six months draping, a piece named Phoenix, and placed it inside. I zipped the suitcase shut, sealing away five years of wasted youth and foolishness. When I walked back into the main showroom, the place looked like a war zone. I navigated around the broken glass, heading straight for the exit. Outside, the autumn wind was cold. I pulled out my phone to call a ride, but four of Charles’s bodyguards immediately blocked my path, forming a wall of black suits. Max stepped out from behind them. “Where do you think you’re going with that suitcase, Gemma? Charles didn’t say you could leave.” Charles walked back toward the door, his cigarette half-burned. His eyes drifted from my face down to the suitcase, and his expression instantly darkened. He took a slow drag, blowing the smoke directly into my face. “Open the suitcase,” he said, his voice quiet but commanding. I gripped the handle tighter. “These are my personal belongings, Charles. We’ve already signed the division of assets.” Charles let out a harsh laugh. “Getting a little too into character for a clean break, aren’t we? What are you trying to steal from my shop? The needles?” He gave a slight nod. Two guards stepped forward, shoving me aside. They grabbed the suitcase and laid it flat on the glass-strewn steps. Using a metal rod, they pried open the locks. The zipper burst. The portfolio slid out, its pages scattering in the wind. And then, the pure white silk of the Phoenix gown spilled onto the pavement, its subtle jacquard patterns catching the gray afternoon light. Just then, a luxury SUV pulled up to the curb. Amelia stepped out, supported carefully by two assistants. She walked over, resting her hand on Charles’s arm. “Charles, I couldn’t find my tablet. Did I leave it here?” Her eyes fell on the Phoenix gown lying on the ground. They lit up instantly. She let go of Charles and walked over, nudging the hem with the toe of her designer shoe. “Charles, this one is so much prettier than the ones we measured earlier. And the waist is loose—it would look beautiful over my bump.” Without hesitation, Charles bent down and picked up the gown that represented my rebirth. He patted the dust off it and draped it over Amelia’s shoulders. But Amelia was broader than me; the gown, tailored precisely to my measurements, wouldn’t close. Charles tugged at the fabric, the seams groaning under the strain. He frowned in disgust. “A cheap, narrow design. It can’t even accommodate a baby.” He grabbed the hem with both hands and ripped it down the middle. The sound of tearing silk pierced the quiet air. The silk train I had stitched by hand, stitch by stitch, was torn in half. But as the fabric parted, his hands seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, carefully avoiding the inner collar where my initials, G.L., were embroidered. Amelia pouted. “Charles, you ruined it. I wanted to take it home and use it as a throw blanket.” Charles threw the ruined silk onto the wet pavement. “You don’t need to wear rags like this.” Staring at the torn pieces of Phoenix, my mind went completely blank. That was my ticket to Paris. He had once promised he would be there to watch me win. Now, he was grinding it into the dirt. I lunged forward like a madwoman, trying to gather the scattered design sheets from the wet ground. “Let go of me!” My fingers had just touched the edge of the paper when Charles grabbed my shoulder, throwing me back with brute force. “What is wrong with you!” I lost my balance and fell backward, my back hitting the sharp metal corner of a shattered glass table. A sharp, tearing pain bloomed in my lower abdomen, radiating through my entire body. I collapsed onto the shards of glass, gasping for air. Warm blood began to pool beneath me, staining my light-colored dress and spreading across the white stone tile. The mockery on Charles’s face froze. He stared at the crimson pool widening beneath me. My purse had fallen, spilling its contents. Tucked inside my passport, a medical report slid out, landing right by Charles’s shoe. It was the report I had received only this morning. I had planned to give it to him tonight as an anniversary surprise. I wasn’t barren. I was carrying his child. Charles’s gaze drifted from the blood to the paper. He bent down to pick it up. As he read the words, a flash of pure panic crossed his eyes, his fingers trembling against the paper. Amelia saw the report from where she stood. Her face twisted into a mask of jealousy. She immediately clutched her stomach, letting out a sharp cry. “Oh… Charles, my stomach hurts so much! She screamed at me… she frightened the baby!” Hearing Amelia’s cry, Charles’s panic hardened into cold, defensive cruelty. He tore my medical report in half and threw the pieces at my face. “You’d go this far to keep me, Gemma? A fake pregnancy report?” The sharp edge of the paper cut my cheek, leaving a thin red line. He pointed at the blood on the floor. “Even if you were pregnant, a toxic woman like you doesn’t deserve to carry a child. Consider this a blessing for Amelia’s baby.” He turned, lifting Amelia into his arms, and strode toward the waiting SUV. Before stepping inside, he looked back at me, lying in the blood. “You need a lesson you’ll never forget,” he told the guards. “Pull the security shutters down. Lock them.” “And don’t call an ambulance. Let her sit here and think about what she’s done.” A guard grabbed my phone from where it had fallen and threw it into the street trash can. The heavy steel shutters groaned as the motor engaged, slowly descending. The last thing I saw through the narrowing gap of light was Charles carrying Amelia into the car. With a heavy thud, the shutter hit the ground and locked. The boutique fell into near-total darkness, saved only by the faint light slipping through the cracks. Lying in the ruins of my own creations, the cold began to seep into my bones. The pain made it hard to breathe. I bit my lip, picked up a sharp piece of glass from the floor, and sliced it across my arm. The sharp sting of pain cleared my fading consciousness. I dragged my heavy body across the floor, leaving a long smear of red behind me. My fingers finally reached the counter where the old landline phone sat. With trembling, bloody fingers, I pressed 911. The dispatcher’s voice crackled through the receiver. My vision was turning red, my grip slipping. Just as the phone slipped from my hand, a terrified scream echoed from the street outside. It was Max. “Charles! Turn the car around! Stop!” “Her report wasn’t fake! The hospital just called—she’s O-negative! If she’s locked in there, she’ll bleed to death!” The roar of the car engine cut out. Then came a desperate, animalistic roar, followed by the sound of someone frantically throwing themselves against the steel shutters.

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The day of our engagement party, the bride’s entire family failed to show up. I stood in the lobby of the crowded restaurant, sweat pooling at my collar, dialing my fiancée’s number over and over. When she finally answered, her voice was light, airy, and completely devoid of warmth. “Sorry, babe,” she said, sounding as though she were discussing a change in dinner plans. “Your bride just got hijacked.” I froze, the noise of the banquet hall fading into a low hum. “What are you talking about, Tiffany?” She actually chuckled. “It means someone else is throwing me an engagement party right now.” I couldn’t breathe. “The other guy put down three hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars cash,” she continued, her voice sharpening. “One hundred grand more than your family’s pathetic offer. What did you expect me to do? Your cheap family was holding me back. Honestly, stop embarrassing yourself. I have three words for you: lose my number.” The line went dead. That afternoon, my family was utterly humiliated, transformed into the local laughingstock. But I didn’t stay down. Later, I came back with eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars to play her own game. I was going to hijack her back. I’d make her fall for me all over again, and then I’d drop her on her face. Some people believe in taking the high road. I don’t. 01 The banquet hall was dead silent. Even though Tiffany had hung up, her final words seemed to vibrate in the air. When the phone had rung, I’d put it on speaker, naive enough to believe she’d have a logical explanation for being late. I wanted my parents and the relatives to hear that everything was fine. Instead, she had taken my dignity, thrown it on the floor, and stomped on it. My face burned with a toxic mix of shame and rage. My father’s face went entirely white. He was a man who lived and died by his reputation, and Tiffany’s words were the equivalent of a public slapping. Beside him, my mother looked even worse. She collapsed back into her chair, her eyes wide and blank. She was a simple woman who spent her life cooking, playing neighborhood cards, and bragging about her family. To her, Tiffany had been an angel sent from heaven. The whiplash of this betrayal was so violent I thought she might faint. Then, the silence broke, and the room erupted. “This is disgusting!” my aunt shouted, slamming her napkin onto the table. “I’ve lived sixty years and I’ve never seen such shameless trash! Planning a wedding with us while secretly taking bids from another man?” “If she wanted out, she should have said so,” my cousin chimed in, red-faced. “This was designed to humiliate us.” My uncle walked over and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Wyatt, look at me. A girl who can be bought for an extra hundred grand is a curse, not a wife. You’d have been miserable. This isn’t an engagement party anymore. We’re celebrating your narrow escape.” “He’s right, Wyatt. You’re better off.” “Forget her, man.” But their kind words did nothing to clear the fog in my head. Tiffany and I had met through a mutual acquaintance. During our three months of dating, she had been the epitome of sweet, gentle, and understanding. Once we decided to get serious, her family—who lived in a small, traditional town upstate—presented us with an endless list of financial demands. There were engagement tributes, maternal compensation fees, luxury jewelry gifts, and a massive cash down payment on a house in her parents’ name. It totaled nearly seven hundred thousand dollars. My father had sat in silence for a long time when he saw the list, but eventually, he nodded. If she’s the one you want, we’ll make it work, he’d said. My mother had quietly expressed her worries to me, but she still emptied her life savings to help cover it, all while continuing to paint Tiffany as the perfect future daughter-in-law to our neighbors. And what did I think back then? I believed Tiffany when she told me she hated all these transactional traditions, but that her family’s social standing in their hometown depended on them. I didn’t want to make things hard for her, so I agreed. I had a good degree and a corporate salary of fifteen thousand a month; I figured I could earn the money back. But the voice on the phone today belonged to a stranger. I looked around the room. A few relatives looked genuinely concerned, but many of them were biting their lips, struggling to hide their amusement. The embarrassment was a physical weight. After today, our family would be the subject of hushed whispers and mocking smiles for years. I couldn’t take it. I bolted from the hall, ignoring the voices calling after me. “Wyatt, wait!” “Don’t do anything stupid!” “Wyatt!” 02 It only took a two-hundred-dollar Venmo transfer to get the address of Tiffany’s other engagement party from one of her bridesmaids, Courtney. The ultimate insult? The venue was a luxury hotel just a block away from where my family sat waiting. I marched into the lobby, and through the glass doors of the grand ballroom, I saw her immediately. She was wearing a stunning crimson cocktail dress, her arm looped tightly around a man in his early thirties. He had a prominent beer belly and a thick gold chain hanging over his collar. I pushed past the double doors. Tiffany noticed me first. Her smile vanished, replaced by an icy, dismissive glare. “What are you doing here, Wyatt?” “What do you think I’m doing?” I demanded, my chest heaving. “Is this how your family operates? Standing us up without a single word of warning? I came for an explanation.” The beer-bellied man looked me up and down, a smug smirk spreading across his face. “Babe, who’s the kid?” Tiffany let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Just some guy who couldn’t afford me but keeps calling.” “Couldn’t afford you?” I laughed, the sound dry and bitter. “We agreed to every single one of your demands. The cash was sitting in our banquet hall today. And instead of showing up, you and your family sneaked over here to sell you to the highest bidder. If you wanted out, you could have told me. But treating my parents like garbage? I won’t let you get away with this. I’ll ruin this party before I let you walk out of here.” By the end of my rant, I was shouting. Guests began to turn, whispers rippling through the crowd. “You broke loser, shut your mouth!” A loud, shrill voice cut through the room. It was Glenda, Tiffany’s mother. Caked in heavy makeup and dripping in cheap rhinestones, she stepped between us, her eyes flashing with pure malice. “Let me tell you something, Wyatt. We didn’t tell you because we wanted to spare your feelings. You couldn’t afford our Tiffany, and any real man would have taken the hint and slunk away. Do we really need to spell it out for you? You’re too poor for my daughter.” She pulled Tiffany close, patting her shoulder like she was showing off a prize heifer. “Look at her. She’s a masterpiece. You thought you could have her for peanuts? Don’t make me laugh.” She pointed proudly at the man beside Tiffany. “This is Trent. He runs a massive logistics firm. When we asked for three hundred and eighty-eight thousand, he didn’t even blink. He’s got real money. Who would you choose in our shoes?” Trent puffed out his chest, sliding a possessive hand onto Tiffany’s waist. She didn’t flinch; she leaned into him. “Just go, Wyatt,” Tiffany said, her eyes filled with mock pity. “Don’t embarrass your parents any more than you already have. You and Trent are in different leagues. Standing here is just sad.” Trent shook his head, looking bored. “Look, buddy, her mom laid it out for you. It’s a free market. You didn’t have the capital, I did, and she came with me. Cry about it somewhere else. Security! Get this clown out of my venue.” Two burly guards appeared, grabbing my arms and dragging me toward the exit. I thrashed against them, but it was useless. Behind me, the jeers of their guests followed me out. “If you don’t have the cash, don’t play the game…” “Our Tiffany is the prettiest girl from our town, did he really think he could get her on a discount?” “Good riddance.” When they threw me out the front doors, I saw my parents standing by our car, having followed me there. I tried to push back inside, but my mother caught my arm. Her eyes were red, her face wet with tears. “Wyatt, please, just let it go. For me. Please,” she whispered, her voice breaking. The fight drained out of me. Looking at her, I finally stopped. I squeezed her hand tightly. “Okay, Mom. Let’s go home.” 03 In the weeks that followed, our house was suffocatingly quiet. The lively sound of my mother chatting with her friends on the phone disappeared. She stopped going to her weekly card games, claiming her back was acting up, and skipped her community dance classes because of her knees. Instead, she spent hours in the kitchen, washing the same vegetables over and over, staring blankly out the window. Her pride—the joy she took in showing off her family—had been completely shattered. She only left the house for groceries, terrified of running into neighbors who might ask about the wedding. My father’s quiet retreat was even harder to watch. He was a senior manager at his firm, a man who used to stand tall and speak proudly of his son’s future. Now, he came home, went straight to his study, and barely ate. At my own office, the whispers followed me everywhere. The story of the groom who got replaced on his wedding day had circulated online locally, turning us into a joke. I went through cycles of rage, numbness, and profound regret. But eventually, a single, sharp focus emerged from the depression. I wanted revenge. The thought took hold of me, growing stronger every time I saw my parents’ defeated faces. Tiffany, you and your family love money more than life itself, I thought. If you can be bought once, you can be bought again. And I am going to destroy you. 04 Three days later, I met Courtney at a quiet diner. “One thousand dollars,” I said, sliding a envelope across the table. “I need your help with Tiffany.” Courtney didn’t even hesitate. “Two thousand. I’m not risking my neck for cheap.” I smiled. “Fifteen hundred. Your friendship with her isn’t worth a cent more.” She snapped her fingers. “Deal.” That night, Courtney managed to lure Tiffany out to a high-end restaurant under the pretense of a girls’ night. When Tiffany saw me sitting at the table, her face hardened immediately. “Wyatt? What is this? Courtney, what’s going on?” She stood up to leave. Courtney smiled warmly and pulled her back down. “Sit down, babe. Don’t worry. Wyatt has a surprise for you.” Out of courtesy for Courtney, Tiffany reluctantly sat back, crossing her arms and legs, looking thoroughly annoyed. “Make it quick.” I stared at her, putting on my best performance of a broken, desperate lover. “Tiffany, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have caused a scene at your wedding. I was hurt, but I understand now. You had to make the best choice for your future. What girl wouldn’t want financial security?” Tiffany’s posture relaxed, a smug, self-satisfied look settling onto her face. I reached out to touch her hand, but she pulled away. I offered a sheepish, vulnerable smile. “I haven’t slept since that day, Tiffany. I keep dreaming about you. I… I still love you. I can’t let you go.” She let out a harsh laugh. “Love me? With what, Wyatt? Your middle-class salary? Trent has over five million in liquid assets. You can’t compete with that.” This was the exact opening I needed. I unlocked my phone, opened my banking app, and turned the screen toward her. The balance showed exactly $888,000. “I have the money now, Tiffany,” I whispered, my voice trembling with practiced emotion. “Eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand. That’s my new offer. I was stupid before, but I’ve corrected my mistake. Please, just give me one more chance.” Tiffany stared at the screen, her eyes widening slightly before she let out another scoff. “Are you joking, Wyatt? You put your parents’ entire retirement on one debit card to impress me? Or did you take out a massive predatory loan? You’re ridiculous.” She was sharp when it came to money. She had guessed the truth; the funds had indeed been pulled together from every resource my family had. I kept quiet, giving Courtney the cue. Courtney wrapped her arm around Tiffany’s shoulders, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Tiffany, you’ve got it all wrong. Wyatt’s not telling you everything.” Tiffany frowned. “What?” “You didn’t hear?” Courtney murmured, loud enough for me to hear but quiet enough to sound like a secret. “His family owned those two commercial lots in the South District. They just got rezoned for a massive retail development. My aunt works at the city planning office, and she saw the acquisition list. They’re getting a payout of over ten million dollars.” Tiffany froze. Courtney pressed on. “Ten million, Tiffany. Wyatt’s actually wealthy now. He’s not lying to you.” If this information had come from my mouth, Tiffany would have laughed in my face. But coming from her closest confidante, it was gospel. When Tiffany looked back at me, the coldness in her eyes was gone, replaced by a warm, familiar hunger. “Wyatt…” she murmured, her voice turning sweet. “Is Courtney telling the truth?”

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My influencer roommate thought that by destroying my lab samples, she could steal my spot in the prestigious Broad Institute fellowship. She poured nine months of my engineered bacterial culture straight down the drain. And she livestreamed the whole thing. “Hey guys, my roommate keeps her rotten yogurt in our room. It’s so gross.” … 1 During the final review meeting, I quietly slid my phone across the polished table to Dean Crane. On the screen, my roommate, Gina, was holding up my glass beaker. She smirked directly at the camera. “See? This is the little pet project she treats like gold. She never lets anyone touch it, acting all mysterious.” Her voice was laced with easy disdain as she complained to her followers on the other side of the screen. “I think it’s time we see what’s actually in here.” Then, against a rolling tide of laughing emojis in the live chat, she tilted the beaker. Without a second thought, she poured the milky-white culture directly into the dorm sink. The harsh, rushing sound of the water came through the phone’s speaker, sharp and grating. She tapped her long, red-manicured fingernails against the empty glass. “Nothing special. Just smells sour. Completely worthless.” The video paused. Dean Crane’s face had gone rigid, his jaw clenched tight as he looked up from the screen. His voice was thick with suppressed anger. “What exactly was in that beaker?” “An L7-strain engineered culture,” I said, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. “It was the core of my synthetic bio-fermentation project. And according to the Broad Institute’s final defense requirements, it was the mandatory live specimen I had to submit today.” Beside him, Professor Davies, who had always mentored my research, stood up so fast his chair legs shrieked against the linoleum. “The live culture is gone? Laurel, do you have a backup?” I looked down at the mahogany table, my eyes burning. “No, Professor Davies. That was the final batch. It was also the one with the highest yield.” Nine months. Two hundred and seventy days and nights. I had screened exactly one hundred and seven colonies, burned out three shaking incubators, and tossed out six ruined batches of growth media. Every failed attempt meant thousands of dollars of grant money vanishing into thin air. I had practically lived in the lab just to get the yield above the required threshold. If I passed the defense today, I was supposed to secure the single doctoral fellowship spot at the Broad Institute. My advisor had already made the introductions. It was the only spot in the entire department. Now, the beaker was empty. The culture was gone. The path I had spent nine agonizing months paving had just been washed down the sewer lines. Dean Crane’s composure cracked, his eyes dark with fury. “Who did this?” I looked past him, through the glass wall of the conference room and out into the hallway. Gina was standing at the far end of the corridor. She was wearing a brand-new white eyelet dress, looking like a picture-perfect garden party guest, waiting around just to watch my defense fall apart. When she caught me looking, she smiled through the glass—a tiny, mocking tilt of her lips. I turned back to the dean. “My roommate, Gina.” When they called Gina into the room, she strolled in with an air of complete indifference. She gave me a brief, dismissive glance before turning a soft, innocent face toward Dean Crane. “Dean Crane, Professor Davies, thank you for seeing me,” she said, her voice dropping into a gentle, sweet register. “I really had no idea that was an important experiment. Laurel is always keeping random jars and bottles in our room.” She knit her brow, looking like a child trying hard to remember. “The beaker was just sitting on the edge of the desk. It smelled incredibly sour, so I honestly thought it was a spoiled drink.” A cold laugh nearly bubbled up in my throat. A spoiled drink? That wasn’t what she’d told her stream. Besides, the beaker had three separate layers of waterproof lab tape wrapped around it, labeled in thick, red Sharpie. L7 EXPERIMENTAL SAMPLE. DO NOT TOUCH. LIVE CULTURE. To say she didn’t see it was a lie so bold it was almost impressive. Dean Crane tapped his pen against the desk, his tone cutting. “Then why did you feel the need to livestream yourself throwing it away?” Gina bit her lower lip. “I… I was just sharing my daily dorm life. I’m a beauty and lifestyle creator. My followers love seeing the raw, behind-the-scenes stuff. I really didn’t notice what was written on the glass.” I couldn’t listen to her spin it anymore. “You held the camera on the beaker for fifteen seconds,” I said, my voice cutting through her performance. “And you read the label out loud. You said, ‘Do not touch? How pretentious.’” Gina’s expression didn’t even flicker. She turned on me, entirely defensive. “I was joking with my chat! That’s just the humor of the stream. And honestly, don’t you have some responsibility here? Who keeps biohazardous materials in a shared dorm room anyway?” “The entire biology building had a scheduled power outage starting at eleven last night,” I replied, keeping my voice level. “I logged an emergency request with the department and posted the approval in our floor group. I told you three times face-to-face that I had to keep the incubator in our room for twelve hours.” Gina rolled her eyes. “I had my AirPods in. I didn’t hear a word. Besides, I’m not your research advisor or your lab tech. Why is it my job to guard your stuff?” In the silence of the room, the professors exchanged troubled looks. It was so incredibly familiar. Last semester, when she stole my preliminary thesis presentation slides and slapped her own name on them for a state-level grant application, she had used the exact same defense. We live together, everything is shared, it was just an accident. And back then, everyone had told me to let it go for the sake of roommate harmony. Now, she had flushed my future down the drain. Professor Davies set his pen down on the table, his eyes heavy with sympathy. “Laurel, I’m sorry. We’ll have to pause your defense. The physical sample is a non-negotiable requirement. You’ll have to submit a new live culture.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I understand, Professor.” “How long to regrow it to this yield?” another committee member asked softly. I let out a slow, quiet breath. “Four months. At least.” Dean Crane sighed. “Then the Broad fellowship… we can’t hold the slot.” I didn’t say anything. The fellowship deadline was this Friday. It wouldn’t wait four minutes, let alone four months. Gina piped up, her voice light and accommodating. “Laurel, I’ll cover the costs. Just send me an invoice for the glass beaker and whatever yeast you used.” I looked at her. She was offering to pay for a few dollars of borosilicate glass and media powder, as if that could replace my master’s thesis and my doctoral career. I picked up my phone, backed up the screen recording to my cloud drive, and stood up. “Sure,” I said, matching her casual tone. “Let’s start with the cost of a PhD admission.” The meeting ended in a quiet, frustrating stalemate. I didn’t go back to the dorm, nor did I head to my bench. Instead, I walked straight to the campus security office. The technician on duty listened to my explanation and pulled up the hallway footage from the third floor of our residence hall. The digital timestamp read 1:16 AM. The footage showed me walking down the corridor, cradling the small portable incubator like a newborn child. Inside the room, Gina was sitting at her desk, the ring light reflecting in the window glass as she chatted to her phone. I walked in, set the incubator down, and spent nearly a minute speaking directly to her. Gina didn’t even look up; she just waved a hand dismissively, her mouth moving in a quick, annoyed, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” At 1:47 AM, the camera caught me leaving the room to go down to the basement ice machine to get extra cooling packs. I was gone for exactly three minutes. The moment the door clicked shut behind me, Gina got up. There was no hesitation in her stride. She walked over to my desk, picked up the beaker, turned the labeled side directly to her phone camera, and unscrewed the cap with practiced ease. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a perfectly timed execution. I copied the footage onto a flash drive and uploaded it to three separate cloud servers. As I stepped out of the security office, my phone buzzed in my hand. It was Dr. Collins, the head of admissions for the Broad Joint Program. My chest tightened. I took a breath and answered. “Hello, Dr. Collins.” “Laurel, hi,” her voice was warm but professional. “We just received a note from your department indicating there might be a delay with your final defense submission?” I leaned against the concrete wall of the stairwell, my head spinning. “Yes, Dr. Collins. We had an unexpected incident with the specimen, but I’m prepared to restart the culture immediately.” There was a long pause on the other line—a silence that felt like a slow, heavy door closing. “Laurel, you know how these joint fellowships work. The funding is tied directly to the department’s institutional recommendation.” Her voice carried a trace of genuine regret. “The board requires us to submit the finalized cohort list by Friday afternoon. If your defense isn’t signed off by then, the slot automatically goes to the next alternate on the list.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I understand. Thank you, Dr. Collins.” When the line went dead, my hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone. The next alternate. In our entire graduating class, there was only one other student in the molecular biology track who had applied for the Broad fellowship. Gina. She had switched her research focus to match mine only last semester, and the preliminary data she’d submitted with her application was a chaotic mess of poorly plotted charts. But lately, she’d been bragging at department mixers about her “creative vision” and how much the selection committee loved her “modern approach.” I had assumed it was just her usual self-promotion. But looking at the timeline now, the pieces clicked together with terrifying precision. It was too perfect. She had timed it down to the hour, waiting for the exact moment when she could ruin my submission and automatically step into the vacancy. I turned around and walked straight back to our dorm. Gina was lounging in my desk chair, her legs crossed, humming a pop song as she wiped off her makeup. When she saw me walk in, she let out a long, theatrical sigh. “Laurel, seriously, are you still throwing a tantrum?” she asked, tossing a dirty cotton pad toward the trash. “It was a jar of bacteria. You got me chewed out by the dean. Isn’t that enough?” I didn’t say a word. I reached behind me, closed the heavy oak door, and turned the deadbolt with a sharp, echoing click. “You knew exactly what was in that beaker.” She gave me a look that suggested I was completely hysterical. “I already told you, I didn’t. Are you deaf?” “Then why did you do it last night? Right before my defense?” Her eyes flicked to the side, a split-second tell, before her face hardened back into its usual mask of righteous indignation. “You’re paranoid. I don’t keep track of your schedule, Laurel. I have a life.” Instead of arguing, I walked over to her desk. Sitting right beside her makeup mirror was a freshly printed packet. The Broad Institute Joint Fellowship Program – Supplementary Proposal. Applicant: Gina Vance. The final speck of doubt I had—the tiny, naive hope that she was just incredibly careless—evaporated. Gina saw where I was looking. She didn’t try to hide the paper. Instead, she leaned back in the chair, a slow, ugly smile spreading across her face. “Oh. You saw.” She stood up, brushing a speck of dust off her skirt. “Yeah. If you can’t finish your project, the spot opens up. It would be a waste to let it go to another department, wouldn’t it?” I stared at her, watching the smug satisfaction warp her features. “So you did it on purpose.” She picked up a bottle of toner, turning it over in her hands. “Let’s not use such ugly words. Opportunities go to people who are ready to take them. You should have kept a closer eye on your things.” She stepped closer to me, her eyes scanning my faded jeans and the cheap, worn sneakers I’d bought at a thrift store freshman year. “Honestly, Laurel, you really thought you had this in the bag? A girl from some dead-end farming town living on state grants.” She let out a soft, mocking laugh. “You actually thought writing a few good papers made you special?” She was on a roll now, venting some deep, hidden resentment. “That’s your biggest flaw. You just put your head down and work like a dog. But nobody cares about that. The professors, the board—they remember people who know how to talk, how to present, how to navigate a room. The university wants to fund people who can build a brand. What were you going to do with your little jars of bacteria? Hide in a basement lab forever?” She patted my shoulder, her fingers cold. “You were always just going to clear the path for me.” I looked at her, and for the first time in days, the tightness in my chest loosened. I actually smiled. “Gina, you’re forgetting one thing.” She paused. “You poured out my culture while you were live on camera.” Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second, but she quickly recovered. “An eight-second clip? Please. Out of context, poorly edited—I can spin that a hundred different ways. Who’s going to believe you over me?” She pulled her pink iPhone from her pocket, waving it in front of my face. “And unfortunately for you, the second my stream ended, I deleted the broadcast and the archive from the platform. Your little screen recording doesn’t prove anything about what happened before or after.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a low, venomous whisper. “Without that live specimen, you are absolutely nothing. I did it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

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Eight years. Eight years of building a life together, and for the first time, my fiancé left me entirely alone on our anniversary. All because his new assistant had called him in tears, claiming she had gotten lost on her way home. But that was also the night I realized I was somehow sharing a physical connection with the Wesley of ten years ago. I stared into the vanity mirror, my eyes still swollen and rimmed with red. A dull, heavy ache swelled in my chest, rolling over me in waves. Just as I bent over the sink to splash cold water on my face, my reflection rippled like disturbed water. When it settled, it wasn’t my face staring back. It was a face I knew, yet hadn’t seen in a decade. It was Wesley. But he was eighteen. My breath caught. He was clutching his chest, his shirt bunched in his fist, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. Instantly, the old name slipped from my lips. “Wes? What’s wrong?” The boy in the glass jerked his head up. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, thin and ragged. “Felicity? Are you… are you hurting?” He gasped, his shoulders trembling. “If you aren’t, why does my heart feel like it’s being ripped apart?” … I stared blankly at the glass. I had owned this vanity mirror for five years; I knew every feature—the LED backlight, the anti-fog heater, the smart screen. But it was never supposed to show me a ghost from the past. Perhaps the shock on my face was too obvious, because the teenage Wesley spoke again. “Felicity, please, just calm down and listen to me.” He rubbed a hand through his messy hair—a nervous habit I knew better than my own reflection. “I begged an old man at a street market. He did something… a ritual, I guess, to connect my senses with yours, ten years in the future. He told me if you hurt a little, I’d feel it tenfold.” The pain in his chest seemed to ease slightly, and he let out a long, shaky breath. “I just… I wanted to know if you were happy in the future. I wanted to know if we made it. But it seems like I walked right into a disaster.” My throat felt tight, clogged with a lifetime of words. I opened my mouth, but only a whisper escaped. “You proposed. We’ve been together for eight years.” His face lit up, his eyes bright as stars. “I knew it! I knew we’d make it. We’re going to be happy forever.” I let my next words fall right over his excitement, cold and sharp. “But you’re sleeping with someone else.” He froze. His face flushed crimson with a mix of shock and indignation, his voice cracking. “Bullshit! I would never!” Instead of arguing, I looked down at my phone. A few minutes ago, I had received a series of messages from Lacey, his new assistant. The first was a photo. She and Wesley were sitting side-by-side at the impossibly exclusive omakase spot I had been begging him to take me to for months. On the table between them was a custom cake from a bakery with a six-month waiting list. Lacey was leaning against his shoulder, smiling radiantly. Beneath the photo was a short video. In it, Lacey looked up at him with wide, feigned-innocent eyes. “Wes, if Felicity finds out we’re here, won’t she be mad?” Hearing my name, Wesley’s brow furrowed slightly. I couldn’t tell if it was irritation or guilt. The next second, he dismissed it with a careless shrug. “Why would she be mad? Everything she has, I gave her. If it weren’t for me, she’d still be stuck in some backwater trailer park, pumping out kids for some older man who treats her like livestock. There wouldn’t be a Felicity. Just a miserable, broken girl named Patience.” My fingers trembled as I closed the video, but the name Patience lingered in the bathroom air, echoing in my ears. A sharp, stabbing sensation flared in my chest. I looked up and saw the boy in the mirror double over again, clutching his ribs. “Now do you believe me?” My voice was flat, hollowed out of all life. “Wes, we loved each other for eight years. But it only took you six months to turn into a monster.” Tears dripped onto the marble countertop. “I don’t care what kind of magic you used to get here. But don’t come back. I don’t want to look at your teenage self and feel a single shred of hope for the man you became.” I walked out of the bathroom without looking back at the boy who had once, truly, loved me. The next morning, a raging fever woke me. Whether it was the emotional shock of the previous night or some bizarre side effect of the sensory connection, my temperature had spiked to 103 degrees. My joints ached, and my vision swam. Without thinking, I called Wesley. He answered on the second ring, but his voice was like ice. “I’m in a meeting. Don’t call unless it’s an emergency.” Even through the fog in my mind, I felt a bitter twinge of irony. When a person stops loving you, even their greeting changes. The old Wesley would always answer with a laugh, asking, Miss me already? Now, I was just an interruption. “I have a fever, Wes. I need—” “Fine. I’ll have the driver pick you up.” Before the line went dead, I heard Lacey’s soft, giggling laugh in the background. She sounded so happy, so secure, as if she had already claimed everything that used to be mine. I didn’t wait for his driver. I dragged myself out of bed, threw on a coat, and stumbled to the hospital on my own. As the cold IV fluid finally began to drip into my vein, easing the fire under my skin, I opened my phone and saw Lacey’s latest Instagram post. It was a nine-photo grid. In every single shot, Wesley was by her side—holding her bags, opening her car door, looking at her with the attentiveness that used to belong to me. After the IV bag was empty, I took an Uber back to the empty apartment. I took a hot shower, trying to wash away the smell of the hospital, and when I stepped out, I found the eighteen-year-old Wesley waiting in the mirror. His face looked even worse than mine, pale and drawn. But he still managed a weak, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I can’t control when I appear.” I kept my eyes down, wrapping my towel tighter, and remained silent. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to feel the warmth of his gaze. As I turned to leave, he called out. “Felicity!” I stopped. He didn’t look at my face; instead, his eyes traveled down to my exposed shoulder blade, his finger hovering near the glass. “Does it still hurt?” My hand went to my shoulder. Beneath my fingers was a long, jagged scar. My father had given me that scar when I was twelve, throwing a heavy garden spade at me. Back then, my name was still Patience. I had been crying, begging my parents to let me stay in school instead of dropping out to raise my newborn brother. I didn’t remember the exact trajectory of the spade. I only remembered the dirt porch, the feeling of my own blood soaking through my shirt, and the sudden arrival of the West family. They had been visiting the rural town to see their ancestral estate. Twelve-year-old Wesley had lunged forward like a feral little animal, throwing himself between me and my father. Later, his family took me with them back to the city. Years later, Wesley helped me legally change my name. I remembered him sitting under the sweet-scented osmanthus tree in his backyard, dappled sunlight warming his face. Patience is a terrible name, he had said. It sounds like you were only born to wait on someone else. You deserve your own name. A new life. Felicity. It means happiness. And last night, that same boy, now a man, had used my old name like a weapon to mock my pain to another woman. The boy in the mirror was bent double now, shivering from the phantom pain of my fever and my heartache. Yet, seeing me look at him, he forced another reassuring smile. “I’m sorry, Felicity,” he whispered. “I didn’t think I’d grow up to be so cruel. To make you hurt like this.” I turned my face away, shaking my head. Before I could speak, the apartment doorbell rang, loud and demanding. I didn’t expect it to be Lacey. The moment I opened the door, she stepped inside, casually kicked off her shoes, and slid into a pair of guest slippers. She looked at me with a soft, sweet smile. “Hi, Felicity. Long time no see. Wes sent me to grab some files from the study.” Without waiting for a response, she walked straight past me into the bedroom. I stood in the living room, too exhausted to fight, too drained to stand up for my own space. When she came out, my eyes locked onto her hand. On her ring finger was a delicate diamond ring. It was the custom piece Wesley had designed for me, the one he was supposed to use for our proposal. Lacey noticed my gaze. She raised her hand, stretching her fingers in the light, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. “Oh!” she gasped, feigning panic. “Felicity, please don’t get the wrong idea. Wes gave me this as a bonus for working late. It doesn’t mean anything.” She stepped closer, her eyes welling with tears. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll take it off right now. I’ll never wear it again.” Before she could touch the ring, my phone rang. It was Wesley. His voice was entirely devoid of the tenderness he had spent eight years building. It was cold enough to freeze the blood in my veins. “Felicity, don’t give Lacey a hard time. Let her leave. I need those files immediately.” I knew what he was doing. He was watching us through the home security cameras. When he first installed them, he told me he wanted to be able to look at me during a stressful workday to “recharge.” Now, he was using them to make sure I didn’t lay a finger on his mistress. The line went dead. The silence in the apartment returned, heavy and suffocating. Lacey looked at me, the fake tears vanishing instantly, replaced by a cold, victorious smile. She didn’t leave immediately. Instead, she unzipped her designer handbag just enough for me to see a box of condoms tucked inside. “Honestly, the files were just an excuse,” she murmured, leaning in close to pat my cheek. “Wes said these are his favorite. He was in such a hurry for them. I really don’t understand how a woman can let herself become as pathetic as you are, Felicity.” Something inside me snapped. I grabbed her arm, my grip tight and unyielding. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, Lacey. I promise you.” My grip left a dark red mark on her pale wrist. She shrieked, “Are you crazy? Let go of me!” In her struggle to pull away, she shoved me hard. My lower back collided violently with the sharp wooden corner of the coffee table. A white-hot pain flared through my spine. I collapsed onto the floor, curling into a ball as cold sweat broke out across my forehead. Lacey stood over me, looking down with utter disgust. “Look at you. A miserable charity case, actually thinking you could compete with me.” She turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her. By evening, the fever had returned with a vengeance. When Wesley finally came home hours later, I was still semi-conscious on the living room floor, shivering in the dark. Even through the delirium of the fever, his voice cut through the fog. “Are you still playing this dramatic game, Felicity? Lacey came by to help me pick up some files, and you put on this pathetic, tragic show.” He knelt down, his fingers pinching my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “A bad apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? You’re acting exactly like your white-trash mother back in the hills.” I tried to whisper that I hadn’t done anything, but my vision swam, and the world went completely black. I woke up in a private hospital room. The sky outside the window was pitch black, and the room was entirely silent. The dull ache in my back remained, and a tear slipped down into my hair. I thought of the eighteen-year-old Wesley. If I was in this much pain, he must be suffering terribly. I reached out and found a small compact mirror on the bedside table. He was there. But he was crying. In my memory, the Wesley of that age was fierce, proud, and stubborn. I had never seen him shed a single tear. But now, his eyes were red, and tears were streaming silently down his cheeks. “Do you need to see a doctor?” I whispered. He flinched, startled by my voice. He quickly wiped his face, trying to hide the dampness on his cheeks. “No,” he muttered, his voice thick. “I don’t have any physical injuries. The hospital can’t fix this. It’s just… a phantom pain.” He forced a weak, trembling smile. “Once you stop hurting, I will too.” I looked at his tear-stained face, but before I could speak, he interrupted me, his voice rising in panic. “But I’m not crying because of the pain, Felicity! I’m crying because of you.” He pointed to his chest. “Your back hurts, your head hurts… but this is where it hurts the most. And I’m the one who did this to you. I did this.” He looked around, finally realizing I was in a hospital bed. His eyes widened, and he grabbed his jacket, scrambling to his feet. “Why are you in the hospital? Stay there, I’m coming to—” He froze. His hands dropped to his sides, limp and useless. In that quiet moment, the harsh truth settled over him. He was only a shadow from the past, separated from me by a mirror and ten long years. He could feel every ounce of the misery his future self inflicted on me, but he could do absolutely nothing to stop it. We fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. The quiet was shattered when the door clicked open. The present-day Wesley walked in, holding Lacey’s hand. “You’re awake,” Wesley said, his voice slightly softer than before. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were actually sick.” I turned my head toward the wall, refusing to look at them. “Felicity,” Lacey said, her voice dripping with artificial sweet sympathy. “Wes and I came here today because we have some news. I’m pregnant.” Wesley took a step closer to the bed. “Lacey’s baby deserves a proper, stable family. We aren’t married yet, Felicity, and I won’t leave you empty-handed after all these years. Name your price.” I slowly turned my head back, staring at him. “What did you just say?” “I said, name your price. A condo, a trust fund, a ticket out of the city. Whatever it takes for you to move on and stop showing up in our lives.” My voice shook. “Is that all these eight years were to you, Wesley? A transaction?” Lacey began to sob softly, hiding her face against his shoulder, playing the victim perfectly. Wesley’s brow furrowed, his eyes hardening as he looked at me like I was a difficult child. “You’re too emotional right now,” he said, wrapping an arm around Lacey. “You’re going to stress her out. We’re going home. Call me when you’ve calmed down and are ready to talk like an adult.” They left, the door clicking shut behind them. In the quiet room, the boy in the mirror spoke. “Don’t call him.” I lifted the compact mirror. He was biting his lower lip so hard it was nearly bleeding. “I shouldn’t have loved you,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that the man I become doesn’t deserve you.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Two years from now, I won’t ask you out. I won’t let us happen. Felicity, remember this: I gave you your name, but your path is your own. Even without me, you will still be Felicity. You won’t ever have to be Patience again.” As he finished speaking, the surface of the mirror began to ripple violently, like water caught in a storm. When the glass cleared, there was only my own reflection staring back. The eighteen-year-old Wesley was gone.

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On my birthday, my husband presented me with a rare antique vase—the very piece he knew I coveted above all else. The moment his back was turned, I slipped three wax-sealed sulfuric acid capsules inside. I did it because I had died once before. And this time, I had returned. In my past life, I cherished this vase. I touched it every single day, mesmerized by its smooth glaze and elegant form. But as the days passed, my health began to fail, leaving me bedridden and weak. Eventually, the doctors ran out of answers, and there was no cure left to try. What I never expected was that after exactly forty-nine days, a woman with a perfectly sculpted face would step out of the porcelain vessel. She took over my body, slept with my husband in our marriage bed, and left my soul trapped in the cold, dark ceramic forever. From the dark depths of the vase, I was forced to listen to them whispering in the dark. “Don’t worry, she’s never getting out,” Daphne whispered to him, her voice dripping with malice. “The vessel has bound her soul. I have her body now. Gradually, my own face, my own figure, my youth will settle into this flesh. We’ll just tell everyone I had some extensive plastic surgery. No one will ever suspect a thing.” “Letting you have her body is the only useful thing she’s ever done,” Christian replied, kissing her. “What was she going to do with a failing health anyway? She’s better off dead. Now, the Mercer fortune is ours.” “Do you think she’d die if the vase broke?” Daphne mused. “Why don’t we find out?” Christian sneered. Daphne tossed the vase onto the marble floor. And my soul shattered into a million pieces… Reborn into this life, I couldn’t help but smile. That vase of yours is so good at containing things, isn’t it? Let’s see how much it can hold. 1 The rustling of the sycamore leaves outside the window woke me. I bolted upright from the massive, plush waterbed, my heart clenched by an invisible fist. The phantom pain was so excruciating I could barely breathe. Cold sweat soaked through my silk nightgown. It wasn’t a dream. I stared at my hands—pale, smooth, unwrinkled. I was alive. I had returned. Three months before it all ended. I was back in the bedroom where the nightmare began, on the very day Christian was supposed to bring that lethal vase into our home. “Ma’am? Are you alright?” My personal assistant and bodyguard, Maeve, rushed in, holding my schedule for the day, her face pale with concern. I tried to speak, but my throat was parched, unable to make a sound. The memories flooded back. In my past life, I had kept that vase on my nightstand, lovingly wiping it down every morning. By the forty-ninth night, my soul was violently ripped from my chest and shoved into that icy clay. Daphne, the parasitic spirit bound to the vessel, stole my life, my husband, and my family fortune. And when she grew tired of looking at the vase, she shattered it, leaving me with nothing—not even a ghost of a physical form. “Ma’am, you’re so pale. Did you have a nightmare?” Maeve handed me a glass of warm water. I took the glass, my fingers trembling against the cool glass. In the vanity mirror, I saw my reflection: young, vibrant, untouched by death. Bianca Mercer. The reigning matriarch of the Mercer Group. In this life, I wasn’t a trapped ghost yet. “Maeve,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “Where is Christian?” “He said he’s on his way back. He mentioned he has a grand birthday surprise for you.” I clenched my fists. A grand surprise indeed. Just then, footsteps echoed down the hallway—steady, arrogant, carrying the weight of a man who believed he owned the world. Christian was back. He wore a tailored Italian suit, but instead of a gift box, he carefully carried an object draped in heavy red velvet. A small entourage of eager house staff followed closely behind him. “Bianca, darling, how are you feeling?” Christian walked to the edge of the bed, his voice slick with a greasy warmth that made my stomach turn. “The maids said you screamed. Are you unwell?” Unwell? I was scared to death by the two of you. I dug my fingernails into my palms, using the physical pain to keep myself grounded. I couldn’t drop my guard yet. “I’m fine, sweetie,” I said, forcing the obedient, gentle smile I had spent a lifetime perfecting. “Just a silly nightmare.” Christian paused, a flicker of cunning crossing his eyes before he smoothed it over with a practiced look of adoration. “Silly girl,” he cooed, placing the velvet-draped object on my nightstand. “That’s why I found this for you. A protective treasure. Your birthday is tomorrow, and since you adore fine porcelain, I knew this would suit you better than any diamond.” He slowly pulled back the red velvet. The morning light caught the object. It was a rare, exquisite Qing Dynasty underglaze red and gold-traced oil-hammer vase. It had an extremely narrow neck, a long slender throat, and a dangerously swollen, rounded belly. The deep red glaze looked ominous, and the gold leaf trace lines shimmered like veins under the bedroom chandelier. “Oh, my God, it’s gorgeous!” Daisy, a young maid known for her loose tongue, gasped from the doorway. “It really is,” Martha, the cook, chimed in with a sycophantic grin. “Sir is so devoted to you, ma’am! It looks like a museum piece. Having this in your room will surely bring good energy and ward off any illness!” “Absolutely,” Walter, the head housekeeper, applauded. “Sir went to great lengths to acquire this. Ma’am, you must touch it, feel the craftsmanship.” The servants kept prattling on, their faces filled with envy, completely unaware that this beautiful object was a beautifully packaged death warrant. Every blessing they uttered felt like another nail driven into my coffin. I looked at Christian. He looked smug, clearly pleased by the servants’ reactions. He was using their presence to pressure me. If I refused the gift now, I would look ungrateful and superstitious. In my past life, I had fallen for this exact trap. I had polished it daily, believing his lies about its protective energy. But that swollen belly and narrow neck weren’t meant to collect wealth—they were meant to trap a soul. Exactly forty-nine days of “nourishment” was all it took. “Do you like it?” Christian asked, watching my expression closely. “Underglaze red is the hardest to fire. Look at that depth.” I reached out, stopping just a millimeter before my fingers touched the cold glaze. I pressed my hand to my mouth, playing the part of a deeply moved, slightly superstitious wife. “Oh, honey, it’s beautiful. But… I’ve heard that highly valuable antiques carry a certain heavy energy. It… it won’t bring bad luck, will it?” “Of course not,” Christian said quickly. He grabbed my hand and pressed it firmly against the bulging ceramic belly. The icy touch sent a shiver down my spine. “I had it blessed by a spiritual master. He said that if you personally tend to it and keep it by your bedside for exactly forty-nine days, it will protect you. But remember, darling—you must be the only one to handle it. No one else.” Forty-nine days. Personally tend to it. Hearing the familiar script made my blood boil, but I kept my smile bright. If you want me to feed it, Christian, I’ll feed it well. “If it’s our guardian treasure,” I said, eyes sparkling with fake adoration, “I will place it in the most important spot in our room.” The moment Christian left the room, I summoned Maeve. “Ma’am, what are your orders?” she asked, her eyes sharp. “I need you to find an esoteric priest. Get me a set of protective garments—something I can wear under my clothes, woven with protective wards and blessed scriptures.” Maeve paused, then nodded. “Right away, ma’am.” Half an hour later, Maeve returned with a set of custom-made, silk-blend undergarments, lined with protective symbols. “This might get quite warm to wear constantly, ma’am,” Maeve noted quietly. “Being warm is better than being dead,” I replied, smoothing down the fabric. “I want Daphne to realize that the body she intends to steal won’t be so easily taken.” Now, it was time to feed the vase. I whispered a few instructions to Maeve. “Ma’am, are you sure?” Maeve hesitated. “This is an incredibly rare artifact…” “Did I ask for your opinion, Maeve? Just do it.” Maeve bowed her head and slipped out. Soon, she returned with a bouquet of fresh, thorny red roses, and… a small bucket of highly concentrated, fermented organic manure. I had her pour the liquefied manure straight into the neck of the pristine vase, then stuffed the long, thorn-heavy stems of the roses deep inside. The thorns scraped against the delicate interior walls with a faint, satisfying screech. The putrid stench of the manure immediately filled the room, making us gag. “Perfect,” I whispered, covering my nose. “Now it’s serving its true purpose.” The witching hour arrived. I hid in the darkest corner beneath the bed, holding my breath, staring up at the vase on the nightstand. The red glaze began to glow with an eerie, unnatural light, casting long shadows across the ceiling. In my past life, I would have been asleep, my soul slowly drifting into the porcelain. But tonight, I wore the blessed garments. The red light swept over my hiding spot, but it hit an invisible shield and bounced back. Then, the door creaked open. Christian slipped inside. He didn’t look at the bed. He looked straight at the figure emerging from the vase—Daphne’s spirit, manifesting in a translucent, flickering form. “Daphne, my love,” he whispered, throwing himself into her arms. They immediately began their shameful tryst on my bed. Beneath the bed, my fingernails dug deep into the carpet. But the real show was about to start. Just as they reached the height of their passion, Daphne let out a blood-curdling shriek. “Ahhh!!!” Christian froze. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” “It hurts… it hurts so much!” Daphne gasped, her spiritual form violently shuddering. “There’s something sharp inside me! It’s tearing me apart!” Of course it did. The thorny roses stuffed inside the vase were physically and spiritually tearing at her essence from the inside out. “Just bear with it…” Christian muttered, though he, too, was beginning to grimace.

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My husband’s best friend has zero concept of boundaries. She would routinely drink from his water glass, claiming “real friends don’t care about germs.” She would knock on our bedroom door at two in the morning wearing nothing but a slip, claiming she needed her “bestie’s strong shoulder” to soothe her anxiety. But the most absurd part? Every time my husband and I wanted some intimacy, it felt like we had to submit a formal request and wait for her to sign off on it. I cried, I fought, I screamed. But every time, Zach would just smile with that easy, infuriating patience of his. “Tori saved my life, Gill. She’s family. We’re a package deal.” That was until the night his parents were kidnapped. I had to call him twenty times before I finally reached him at Tori’s birthday party. And when I did, he was completely out of patience. “Can you please stop making up these ridiculous stories to ruin the mood? I told you, it’s Tori’s birthday and I’m staying out with her tonight. Why do you always have to be so suffocating?” Through the receiver, amidst the loud music and laughter, Tori snatched the phone and giggled, “Hey Gill, our friendship isn’t something your little tears can break. Grow up and have some self-respect, okay?” As the line went dead, I stared at the phone, laughing until tears ran down my face. You want boundaries? Fine. I’ll give you all the boundaries you want. 1 Zach’s voice dropped, laced with that familiar, heavy exhaustion. “Gill, can you please stop throwing a tantrum?” “I told you, it’s Tori’s birthday. I’m staying out with her tonight. It’s barely eleven. You’re always paranoid, and frankly, everyone is exhausted.” Through the pounding bass of the music, I heard Tori’s voice filter through. “Is your wife checking your leash again, dummy?” My voice was shaking so violently I could barely speak, the sobs clawing their way up my throat. “It’s real… they cut off a finger, Zach. You have to come home! Send the money! The kidnappers said we have until morning to get the cash, or they’ll kill them!” “And it’s twenty million! They only want twenty million!” Five minutes ago, I had found a burner phone at our doorstep, next to a small, blood-soaked ziplock bag containing a severed finger. For Zach, twenty million was a sum he could authorize in seconds. I was screaming into the receiver, my voice cracking under the weight of the terror. There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, Zach let out a sharp, irritated sigh, his tone dripping with disgust. “Gill,” he said, using my full name. “Have you lost your mind? Where is your sense of boundaries?” “You’re always trying to wedge yourself between me and Tori, but using my parents to play these sick mind games? This is too far. You’re—” Before he could finish, Tori grabbed the phone, giggling loudly. “Hey Gill! We played this game already! Remember three months ago when you said you had ‘life-threatening emergency surgery’ and were practically on your deathbed? Zach rushed home in a panic, only to find you sitting on the couch eating chips and watching reality TV!” Roars of laughter erupted in the background. “Oh my god, she actually did that?” “Zach, your wife is a psycho!” My chest tightened. The “deathbed” emergency she was referring to was three months ago when my appendix had actually ruptured. I had been in so much pain I couldn’t stand, but Zach had walked out the door because Tori called crying about a bad day. In the end, it was his mom, Helen, who rushed over and got me to the ER. Zach didn’t come home until two days later, finding me recovering on the couch. But this wasn’t the time to explain. “Zach! It’s real! Please! Just trust me this once—” “Enough.” Realizing he was about to hang up, I shrieked into the phone. “Ten seconds! Give me ten seconds to prove it!” “The kidnapper is going to call this phone in ten seconds to check on the transfer. I’ll put him on speaker so you can hear him yourself! Please!” Ten seconds later, the burner phone rang. With trembling, sweaty hands, I pressed speaker. The kidnapper’s disguised, metallic voice echoed in the quiet room. “Ten million to bring your parents home. Is the money ready?” The line on Zach’s phone went quiet for a beat, followed by an even louder burst of laughter. “Oh my god! A voice changer? Gill went all out this time! Where did she hire these actors?” Zach scoffed. “Gill, you are truly beyond help…” Tori, laughing hysterically, snatched the phone again. “Zach, you are way too nice to your wife. Let me handle this.” She screamed into the receiver: “Hey, you absolute dumbass! Nice acting! If you’re going to kill them, just do it already! Do it clean! How much did my buddy’s wife pay you to put on this little show? Huh? Go to hell!” “Everyone knows Zach’s parents turn off their phones and go to sleep by nine! Kidnapped? In your dreams! Get a life!” Then she turned her voice back to me, her tone dripping with smug satisfaction. “Gill, our friendship isn’t something your little tears can break. Grow up and have some self-respect, okay? Stop bothering us!” The line went dead. For a few seconds, my mind went completely blank. Then, from the burner phone, came the kidnapper’s enraged roar, followed by a series of agonizing, blood-curdling screams. Helen’s weeping voice broke through. “Thomas! Thomas, please don’t! Oh god!” “Please! I beg you!” I fell to my knees, screaming into the burner phone, my words slurring together in panic. “They’re drunk! They didn’t mean it! I apologize for them! Please believe me, I will get the money! Just don’t hurt them! Please!” I begged and pleaded until the sounds of the beating finally stopped. The cold, disguised voice returned. “Fine. But I am highly pissed off now. Two new rules.” “One, the ransom is now thirty million.” “Two, your time is cut. You have exactly three hours to wire it to this account. One cent short, or one second late, and you can come collect their corpses.” 2 “Lastly, do not call the cops, or you won’t like what happens next.” The line clicked shut. I scrambled on the floor, frantically dialing Zach’s number again. “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is currently unavailable…” I tried texting him, sending photo after photo of the severed finger. But every message bounced back with a red exclamation mark. They had blocked me. Completely. The tears finally spilled over, hot and heavy. Zach’s disgusted sigh, Tori’s shrill laughter, the mocking jeers of their friends… it all swirled in my head. Is it worth it, Gill? The thought flickered for a brief second. But then I remembered Helen. Just two days ago, when I mentioned my stomach was acting up, she had driven through a snowstorm to bring me homemade chicken soup. And Thomas, a quiet, gentle man. Every time Zach and I had a fight and I sat in silence, he would clumsily pull out old photo albums of Zach’s childhood to try and make me laugh. He would slip me a credit card when Zach wasn’t looking. “Sweetheart, if you’re feeling down, go buy yourself something nice. Don’t let him get to you.” These were two living human beings who had given me nothing but warmth and kindness. I wiped my tears and called Greg, the CFO of Zach’s company. “Greg! It’s an emergency! I need to wire thirty million dollars from the company accounts immediately! I’ll take full responsibility!” Greg gasped. “Gill… it’s not that I don’t want to help. But Zach transferred the CFO position to Tori a year ago. She holds the secure keys. No transactions can be approved without her personal confirmation.” The shock of that betrayal didn’t even register. I begged him to contact Tori. Time ticked away, heavy and agonizing. Thirty minutes later, Greg called back, his voice thick with awkwardness. “I reached Tori… but she told me to play this voice memo for you.” Tori’s voice filled the speaker. “Gill, are you sick in the head? When will these pathetic stunts end?” “Let me tell you something. Zach’s money is my money. You’re just a paranoid, weeping housewife trying to stick your hands into my buddy’s corporate accounts. Do you have any concept of boundaries?” And the final sentence crushed my soul: “What Tori says goes.” It was Zach’s voice. Only two hours and twenty minutes left. Then my mom called, her voice trembling with anxiety. “Gill, your dad and I managed to report it to the police through a contact.” “The police are tracking them, but this is an experienced crew. It won’t be easy. But they think the kidnappers just want the money. They are coordinating an emergency wire with the bank to ensure a large transfer can go through instantly. But since the kidnappers threatened you not to involve the police, they have to remain undercover. The safest bet is still for you to find Zach and get him to authorize the funds.” “Sweetheart, we did everything we could. We scraped together two million dollars. It’s already in your account.” My parents, lifelong schoolteachers who hated asking for favors, had spent the last hour begging everyone they knew. My throat tightened, but I swallowed my tears. “Mom, I’m going to find Zach.” No matter what, I would save them. And then, I would divorce him. The address Greg gave me was Zach’s family cabin in the woods on the edge of the city. A one-hour drive up the mountain, plus thirty minutes for the transfer. It was enough. I didn’t even put on shoes. I ran straight to the garage. An hour later, I burst into the cabin. But the lights were off. The house was cold and empty. I stood frozen, the silence pressing in on me. I realized with a sickening dread that I had been played. Zach had lied to me. He gave me a fake address to teach me a lesson about “crashing his parties.” Before I could run back out, someone pushed me from behind, shoving me into a guest room. A housekeeper locked the door from the outside, her voice apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Robert. This was Mr. Robert and Ms. Tori’s instruction. They said you need to calm down and stop crashing their party. You’ll be safe here. Someone will let you out at seven tomorrow morning.” “No! Let me out! Zach’s parents are going to die!” I slammed against the door, hysterical. Then the burner phone rang. “Time’s up, Mrs. Robert. Where’s the money?” I grabbed a wooden chair and began smashing it against the window, screaming into the receiver. “Please! Give me more time! Just one hour! No, thirty minutes! I will get the money!” The kidnapper let out a cruel, soft chuckle. “Fine. In thirty minutes, go to the abandoned chemical plant on the west side. Tell your idiot husband to come collect the bodies.” A brief, horrifying shriek cut through the line, followed by Helen’s choked sob, abruptly silenced. The line went dead. I fell to my knees, the broken shards of glass cutting into my bare feet. The silence was deafening. They were dead. 3 I managed to climb out the broken window. By the time I reached the chemical plant, the flashing lights of ambulances illuminated the rusted metal structures. Thomas was already gone. Helen, using the last ounce of her strength, gripped my wrist, coughing up blood. “The money… our money… the house… the savings… all yours. Don’t give… don’t give that monster a single cent… He doesn’t deserve it…” With those final words, her grip went slack. Both of them lay there, eyes wide, staring at nothing. I sat between the two cold bodies, screaming until my chest felt like it would burst. When I finally got back to our apartment, the sun was high in the sky. I walked through the front door and immediately ran into Tori. She was wearing one of Zach’s button-down shirts, her bare legs peeking out as she stepped out of the master bedroom. She arched an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re back?” “Go make some hangover soup. We had a wild night, and Zach’s head is splitting.” I stood frozen. Looking at this grotesque scene, I felt absolutely nothing. The pain had burned itself out, leaving only ash. Zach, smelling of stale liquor and rubbing his temples, stepped out of the bedroom. Seeing my swollen eyes and disheveled clothes, he frowned. “Are you seriously still throwing a fit over being locked in for one night? Look at yourself.” “Gill, I’m tired of the paranoia and the crying. No man can put up with this. You brought this on yourself by trying to crash our party last night.” Tori leaned against the doorframe, smirking. “Why do you even bother talking to her, babe? Women know women. She’s just doing this for attention.” “Trust me. Ignore her a few times, let her learn her lesson, and she’ll fall in line.” I didn’t answer. I walked over to the sofa and sat down in silence. I was simply too exhausted. Zach, unsettled by my quietness, looked around. “Where’s Mom? She said she was coming over first thing this morning to make chicken and dumplings. I’m starving, and I could really use her cooking right now.” A sharp sting hit my nose, and my dry eyes welled with tears again. “She’s… not coming.” Zach blinked. “What do you mean?” I looked up, my voice like gravel. “Zach, your mother is dead. Your father is dead too. They were murdered by the kidnappers last night.” “Their bodies are in the hospital morgue. You should go see them before they put them in the freezer.” For one second, the room was dead silent. Slap! The hangover evaporated from Zach’s face, replaced by pure, blinding rage. He lunged forward and struck me across the face. “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” he roared, his chest heaving. “How dare you curse my parents like that?! Just because you’re mad about last night, you say something this sick? Do you even have a soul?!” “Those are my parents! The only people who actually care about me!” Tori gasped, covering her mouth, though a flicker of satisfaction danced in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Zach’s neck, rubbing his chest. “Calm down, babe. Don’t let her get to you. I told you she was psycho.” She sneered at me. “Gill, you’ve really outdone yourself. Everyone knows how close Zach is with his parents. Using them for your little revenge plot is incredibly low.” Her words poured gasoline on the fire. The veins in Zach’s temples bulged. He snatched his jacket from the couch, threw his arm around Tori’s shoulder, and stormed out, slamming the door. “Come on, Tori. We’re going to my parents’ place for breakfast. Let’s leave this crazy bitch alone.” 4 That morning, they drove to his parents’ house and waited. The house was empty, and their phones were off. Naturally, they assumed I was playing along with his parents to teach him a lesson. Furious, Zach unblocked me on his phone and sent a barrage of angry voice notes. “Unbelievable, Gill! Real mature! You always manage to get my parents on your side to manipulate me. Well, it’s not going to work!” “Come on, Tori. Didn’t you want to go to that mountain resort? It’s only thirty grand. Consider it bought. Let’s go have some fun!” “Seriously? Oh my god, you’re the best!” Tori’s squeal of delight echoed in the message, followed by the wet sound of a kiss against his cheek. And then, he blocked me again. Over the next few days, Tori frequently updated her social media. Photos of steaming hot springs, gourmet dinners, the two of them wrapped in robes, clinking glasses. Caption: When you’re with someone who truly gets you, even the air feels lighter. So good to get away from all that suffocating negativity~ Zach was the first to like it. Agreed. Nothing beats relaxing with your bestie. Their entire friend group chimed in under the comments. Living the life, man! Tori to the rescue, saving our boy from the marriage grave! Isn’t the wife going to lose her mind? Exactly. Bros over hoes. Wives never understand. I saw none of this. I was too busy arranging the funeral services alone. Three days later, Zach and Tori finally returned, looking sun-kissed and relaxed. The moment they stepped through the door, Tori shrieked. “Gill! What the hell is wrong with you?!” The living room was filled with funeral wreaths. On a makeshift altar, two empty black-and-white picture frames sat quietly. “Gill!” Zach’s anger exploded like a volcano. “What the fuck are you doing?! What is all this garbage? Making the house look like a graveyard! Have you completely lost your mind?!” “Where are my parents?! Where are you hiding them?! Tell them to get out here! Have they gone senile, letting you pull a stunt like this?!” “I’ll help you clear this out, babe!” Tori yelled, rushing forward to sweep the altar table to the floor. “Stop!” I lunged to block her, but Zach shoved me hard. “Get away from her!” I crashed against the corner of the table, pain flaring in my lower back. Crash! The offerings scattered, the incense urn shattered, and the candles flickered out on the floor. The custom-made picture frames hit the hardwood, spiderweb cracks spreading across the glass. The room fell into a frustrating, frozen silence. I stared at the ruins. Even in death, their peace had been shattered by their own son. The final thread of my sanity snapped. Slap! I don’t know where the strength came from, but I stood up and struck Zach across the face with everything I had. The sound echoed in the quiet room. I stared into his stunned eyes. “You are going to regret this, Zach.” Before he could respond, I reached into my bag, pulled out the divorce papers I had drafted, and slammed them onto the table. “Sign it.” “I admit it. I have no boundaries. I shouldn’t have gotten in the way of your precious friendship with Tori. We are done.” A flicker of panic crossed Zach’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tori cut him off, her face flushed with excitement. “Sign it, dummy! Do it! You’ve been wanting to rid yourself of this psycho for years! She’s nothing but a drag on our group. Who do you want, her or me?” “Fine! Gill, don’t you dare come crawling back!” Zach snatched the pen and scrawled his signature across the page. I felt a sudden, profound wash of relief. And then, from the street below, the somber, heavy wail of a funeral march began to play. Zach and Tori instinctively looked out the window. A formal funeral procession was marching toward the building, carrying two heavy, temperature-controlled glass caskets. At the front of the line, a man held up two large black-and-white portraits. Through the cracked glass of the frames, Thomas and Helen looked straight up at him.

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I was browsing a popular lifestyle app, looking up private maternity clinics, when a highly upvoted post caught my eye. “My boyfriend wants me to give birth at the exact same hospital as his wife. He said we should swap the babies when they’re born so our son can grow up inheriting everything and living the best life. Should I agree?” The thread was flooded with over a hundred thousand outraged comments, but the original poster was completely unbothered. She had even pinned her own response at the top of the comment section: “I don’t see what’s so wrong with this. She took my spot in his life, so my son will take her son’s spot in the family. It’s only fair. What goes around comes around!” “You can scream all you want, but you’re just jealous. To make sure I never get caught, he even changed his office security code to my birthday. Die mad about it, sweeties.” I stood outside my husband’s office door, the quiet of the corridor pressing in on me. Slowly, I reached out and typed in the passcode—the one that had always been set to my own birthday. Two harsh, high-pitched beeps chimed. Access Denied. Incorrect Passcode. A second later, my phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Gavin. [In a meeting. Don’t just barge in.] Almost immediately, the girl’s profile refreshed. It was a selfie of her lounging on the custom leather sofa inside my husband’s office. “She gets the house, but I get the office. The old hag is locked out and probably about to throw a tantrum. Poor baby, my sweet boss has to deal with so much.” I raised an eyebrow, a cold, hollow numbness settling over me. Without shedding a single tear, I opened my medical app and booked an abortion. Then, I dialed my parents. I was done with the parasitic husband my family had built up. He wanted a plaything; he could have her. But he wasn’t going to touch another cent of the Webster fortune ever again. … 1 After making the calls, I walked down the hall to an empty conference room, sat down, and began scrolling through her profile from the very beginning. Her earliest post was from a year ago. She had posted a picture of her new employee ID, her caption bursting with naive excitement. “Late on my very first day! I accidentally ran into the private executive elevator, but the CEO is so handsome and sweet. He didn’t even get mad—he actually gave me an exclusive keycard!” Two months later, she posted her promotion. Her new title: Executive Assistant to the CEO. “Promotion and a massive raise! Financial freedom is just around the corner. Too bad my personal freedom is gone, because he told me he wants to keep me by his side forever.” After that, her feed became a gallery of luxury handbags, designer dresses, and jewelry. Right up until six months ago. Six months ago, I had successfully secured our expansion into the European market. I flew back to surprise Gavin at the office, bringing high-end pastries for the entire staff. The entire office had crowded around, eager to catch a glimpse of the real heiress who funded the company. “My world is ending. The old hag is back to mark her territory. Thank god he got rid of her quickly, or I swear I would’ve burst into tears right there.” I remembered that day vividly. Gavin had looked at me with such performative tenderness, insisting I must be exhausted from the flight, and ordered his driver to take me home immediately. I had gone home feeling so loved, thinking he was finally learning how to care for me. Now I knew the truth. He was just managing his mistress’s insecurities. Two months ago, she posted another complaint. “Damn him, damn him, damn him! He promised he’d never touch her, but the old hag just posted a positive pregnancy test. Gavin, you jerk, I’m never speaking to you again!” In the quiet of the conference room, I opened my personal social media and scrolled back to that day. I had struggled with fertility for years. When the test finally turned positive, I was so overcome with joy that I shared it with my close friends. Within minutes, Gavin had called, his voice tight and strangely angry as he told me to delete it. He claimed it was bad luck, that early announcements put too much pressure on the baby. It wasn’t about the baby at all. It was about sparing his mistress’s feelings. The very next day, Amber posted a selfie from a luxury hotel bed. “He promised to make it up to me by giving me a baby of our own. We spent the whole day in bed. My back is literally sore.” That was the day I had experienced spotting and minor cramping. I had called Gavin repeatedly, but he never picked up. When he finally came home, he fell to his knees, begging for forgiveness, claiming he had been blacked out at a client dinner and his phone had suffered water damage. And like a fool, I had believed him. Shortly after, Amber posted her own positive test. “As a reward for getting pregnant, my favorite guy is taking me on a trip around the world!” Around that time, my family’s restructuring was hitting its most critical phase, and I was working eighteen-hour days. Out of nowhere, Gavin allegedly got into a car accident and suffered temporary amnesia. His “doctor” recommended he avoid all stress and take a relaxing trip to recover his memory. I booked first-class tickets and five-star resorts for him, while I stayed behind, heavily pregnant, managing a multi-million-dollar transition alone. Two months later, he returned, weeping as he told me his memory had finally returned and that he would devote himself entirely to me. There was no memory loss. It was just a pathetic, elaborate lie to spend a two-month honeymoon with his pregnant mistress. A profound, chilling cold spread through my chest as I kept reading. “While the old hag is away, my CEO brought me to their master bedroom for some fun. Her stupid cat scratched me, so I kicked it to death. Oops, teehee.” My breath caught. My beloved cat, Barnaby, who had supposedly “slipped out the door and run away” while I was overseas. I had cried for weeks, putting up flyers in the rain. He hadn’t run away. They had murdered him. “To make sure we give birth at the exact same time, my CEO is secretly giving her medication to slow down her baby’s development. I asked if it would hurt the kid, and he said it didn’t matter. After all, her baby is going to be swapped into my hands anyway, to do with as I please. He’s so bad, and I’m so in love.” Goosebumps broke out over my arms as I pictured the “prenatal vitamins” Gavin hand-delivered to me with a glass of warm water every single night. Right then, the heavy glass door of the conference room swung open. Amber stood there, her Executive Assistant badge dangling against her chest, offering me a sweet, practiced smile. “Mrs. Webster… oh, sorry, ma’am. Mr. Webster is finished with his meeting. He asked me to escort you to his office.” I offered a thin, calm smile, stood up, and walked over to her. I raised my hand. She flinched, covering her face and shrinking back, but I merely redirected my hand and ripped the keycard badge right off her collar. “Amber, is it? As of this second, you are fired.” Amber frozen, her wide, doe-like eyes instantly filling with tears. “I am Gavin’s personal assistant. Even if you are his wife, you don’t have the authority to bypass him and fire me.” I looked at her trembling lips, raised my hand again, and this time, the slap connected with her cheek, sharp and echoing. Amber stumbled back, clutching her face, her eyes practically bulging out of her head. “You hit me! How dare you!” I looked down at her with pure disgust and laughed. Gavin was nothing but a charity case my family had set up in business. This entire firm was built from the crumbs of my family’s empire, handed to him so he could play at being a CEO. Everything in this building belonged to me. There was nothing I couldn’t dare to do. “Go on. Call your protector. I want you to watch how quickly Gavin grovels at my feet like a well-trained dog.” Before the words even left my mouth, Gavin came storming down the hallway. I waited for the usual performance—the stammering apologies, the frantic pleading. But to my surprise, Gavin pulled Amber straight into his chest, shielding her from me. “Apologize to her,” he barked. I stared at him, genuinely stunned. In the past, Gavin had been acutely aware of his place. He was the kept husband; he was always deferential, always eager to please, putting my needs above everything else. Had he lived the high life for so long that he had actually lost his mind? Seeing my disbelief, Gavin reached out, caught the back of my neck with a brutal grip, and forced my head down, forcing me to bow to Amber. The moment he let go, I whipped around and slapped him twice, hard enough to leave angry red marks on his jaw. “Gavin! Have you lost your mind?” Gavin didn’t flinch. Instead, he looked at me with a smirk, a slow, ugly confidence spreading across his face. “Ella, do you honestly still think you’re the untouchable heiress of the Webster empire? Don’t play dumb. I know your family’s holding company has been liquidated and delisted. You are completely broke, Ella. You have nothing.” “Since you’re taking your anger out on Amber, you clearly know about us. So let’s lay it out. You can keep your title as my wife. You can live in luxury. But you will raise Amber’s child as your own, and you will treat him like royalty.” He stood there, smug and superior, waiting for me to break and accept his terms. But we hadn’t gone bankrupt. We had merely pulled our capital out of the domestic market to consolidate our multi-billion-dollar European merger. During his supposed “amnesia trip,” I hadn’t bothered to explain the complex financial restructuring to him, wanting to protect his “frail recovery.” And because of his own ignorance, he assumed my family had fallen. He waited until I was three months pregnant to show his true, parasitic colors. In a strange way, a wave of relief washed over me. If not for this misunderstanding, I would have spent my entire life in the dark, happily raising a mistress’s child while being poisoned by the man I trusted. “I want a divorce.” I wasn’t going to waste my breath. I turned to walk away, but Amber grabbed my wrist. Her face was a mask of innocence, but her eyes gleamed with malice. “Ella, please don’t be mad at Gavin. He’s just protective. He doesn’t want you hurting my baby.” Staring at the mocking glint in her eyes, I didn’t hesitate. I slapped her twice more, hard. “And what if I do? What are you going to do about it?” Tears welled in Amber’s eyes instantly. She gasped, clutching her stomach with a theatrical groan. Gavin lost his mind. With a low growl, he shoved me back. I was completely off-balance. My lower back slammed violently against the sharp edge of the mahogany conference table. A searing, white-hot pain flared through my abdomen, and the world dissolved into blackness.

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