Category: English

Things with Lionel got intense. So intense that he slammed his head against the nightstand and passed out cold. When he woke up, something was… off. He stopped clinging to me, treating me like a cat he suddenly discovered he was allergic to. A few words from me and his ears would turn crimson before he’d bristle and bolt. After two weeks of being sexually ghosted, I was sure he’d found someone new. I decided to end our contract early. But before I even reached his study, I heard him on the phone. “I went to sleep eighteen and woke up twenty-seven. That’s one hell of a long nap.” “I know I sound crazy, but the girl I was secretly in love with is suddenly my girlfriend. She asks me every night if I want to sleep with her. How is a guy supposed to handle that?” The girl he was in love with? Was he talking about me? I thought this was just a transaction. I stared down at the contract in my hands, my mind reeling. 1 Lionel had been acting strange lately. It started a week ago, the night he got back from a business trip. In the middle of a rather… enthusiastic reunion, his head connected with the solid oak of the nightstand, and he went out like a light. For a horrifying second, I thought he’d died of pleasure. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out it was just a concussion. But what followed was even stranger. It was like a completely different person woke up in that hospital bed. The moment he was conscious, I rushed over with a thermos of his favorite simple broth. But as I lifted the spoon to his lips, he flinched so hard he rolled right off the bed. The IV line ripped from his arm, his face flushed a furious red, and he just lay there, a tangled mess of limbs and sheets. It was chaos. A moment later, his assistant, Mr. Wright, stepped out of the room. “Miss Meryl,” he said, “Mr. Thorne would like you to go home. He’ll be back later.” Clutching the now-tepid thermos, I peeked into the room. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second before Lionel violently snapped his head away. A pained yelp was followed by a nurse’s shriek. “Sir, did you just sprain your neck again?!” I was worried about Lionel. More specifically, I was worried about Lionel’s… performance. This was my job, after all. If my benefactor wasn’t up to the task, my purpose here was pretty much nonexistent. The job market was a nightmare, and a benefactor as handsome, wealthy, and low-maintenance as Lionel was a rare find. So, I went home and put on my A-game. I pulled out all the stops, making myself look absolutely irresistible. But for two days, there was no sign of him. My calls went straight to voicemail. A knot of anxiety tightened in my stomach. Damn it, am I about to be unemployed? I switched tactics and called Mr. Wright. Bless that man. He patched me through to Lionel without a second thought. “Work’s been busy the last couple of days, I…” Before he could finish, I let a soft, shaky sob escape my lips. “I just wanted to see the wound on your head. I was so worried about you.” Silence on the other end. My damsel-in-distress act had never failed me with him. That evening, Lionel came home. But from the moment he walked in, his face was a stone mask. He’d always been a bit cold, but usually, there was a warmth in his eyes you couldn’t miss. Now, he just looked… tense. Deliberately so. “You must be exhausted from work,” I began, breaking the strange silence as I walked toward him, my hand outstretched. “Your head just healed, you shouldn’t overdo it…” Before my fingers could even brush his sleeve, he sidestepped me with flawless precision. I stumbled forward, my hand closing on empty air. I stood there for a moment, stunned, the feeling in my empty palm slowly turning to a cold dread in my gut. Our relationship was built on a transaction, yes, but his obsession and affection for me had always made me feel like the one in charge. The man used to be like velcro the second he saw me. He wouldn’t just let me touch him; he’d practically wanted me surgically attached to his hip to satisfy his insatiable appetite. And now… Alarm bells screamed in my head. It was over. My charm had worn off. Lionel looked deeply uncomfortable. “The wound’s almost healed,” he stammered. “Let’s… let’s eat first.” 2 I placed a freshly shucked oyster on Lionel’s plate. His hand trembled as he picked up the small fork. I watched him, my expression unreadable. His head was bowed, his focus entirely on the task of lifting the oyster. The fork slipped. The oyster fell back onto the plate. After two more failed attempts, the tips of his ears were burning a shade of crimson. Finally, with a shaky hand, he managed to get it into his mouth. A small sigh of relief escaped me. Okay, he’s still willing to eat what I give him. I haven’t been completely cast aside. But the rest of the meal was suffocating. Whatever I put on his plate, he ate, his eyes never leaving it. It wasn’t until the platters were nearly empty that I realized he was so full he looked like he was about to be sick. After dinner, I sent the housekeeper home. Taking a deep breath, I slipped into the sheer lavender nightgown. It was his favorite, the one I reserved for moments when I wanted a new designer bag. Tonight, I needed to know if he was still functional. Good news: He was. Bad news: He took one look at me, got a massive nosebleed, and ran away with a very obvious problem in his pants. I sat on the edge of the bed like a useless husband, listening to the roar of his sports car fading into the distance. Just moments ago, I’d emerged from the closet as he was walking into the bedroom. Our eyes met. His gaze was glued to my body; mine was glued to his crotch. Then, a line of crimson trickled from his nose. Our eyes widened in unison. “Lionel…” I scrambled for a tissue, but he was already in a full-blown panic. He clamped one hand over his nose and held the other up at me like a traffic cop. “Don’t come any closer!” His sudden shout made me freeze. He stumbled backward, still clutching his nose. “I just remembered I have something urgent at the office,” he said, his voice muffled. “You… you go to sleep.” 3 The sound of the car disappeared completely. I slumped, defeated, and peeled off the nightgown. As much as I hated to admit it, the truth was staring me in the face. Lionel had lost interest. Otherwise, knowing him, we’d be shaking the damn headboard off the bed by now. I pulled out my phone and opened a job search app. The first listing I saw was for three thousand a month, with no benefits. My vision went black for a second. Just as I was resigning myself to the fact that my life in a gilded cage was about to be traded for the rat race, Lionel came back. It was noon the next day. I’d given up and slept in until eleven. When I came downstairs, he was already sitting at the dining table. He looked up. I froze, my hair a certifiable bird’s nest. My brain short-circuited. I spun around and bolted back up the stairs. Damn it! He always gave me a heads-up before. In two years, I had never let him see me like this. It was always full makeup, perfect hair, my best self. And now, not only had I lost his favor, but he’d seen me at my absolute worst. I gave up, did a half-hearted tidy-up, and went back down. Lionel was still there. “Meryl. Good morning,” he said, his voice halting. I was too dejected to care anymore. I slumped into the chair beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at my eyes carefully. “I didn’t mean to just leave like that last night. Have you been crying?” I touched my eyelids, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It was my new “peach blossom” makeup, a soft, pinkish hue at the corners of my eyes meant to look alluringly fragile. He thought I’d cried my eyes out. I almost laughed out loud. Has he been replaced by an idiot? The real Lionel would never ask such a dumb question. When I didn’t answer, he produced a massive designer bag from behind his back. “Don’t be angry. This is for you.” My eyes lit up. I opened the bag and almost gasped. So many purses. Why was he being so generous? It wasn’t that he was usually cheap—he’d given me a supplementary credit card, after all—but he usually just wired me the money and let me buy things myself. I lovingly picked up each bag, one by one. Then, a wave of horror washed over the excitement. Was this… a golden parachute? A severance package? The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. The beautiful leather in my hands suddenly felt cold. Lionel watched my face. “You don’t like them?” he asked, his voice laced with caution. I forced a smile. “No, of course not. Are you… coming home to sleep tonight?” The question dropped the temperature in the room back to freezing. Lionel’s gaze darted away. “The office is really busy right now. I’ll probably have to stay there for a while…” My heart turned to ice. It was such a flimsy excuse, the kind of polite refusal adults use to soften the blow. So it was true. These ridiculously expensive bags were my goodbye present. For the next few days, Lionel made a point to come home for dinner. But that was it. Just dinner. Every time I tried to initiate any kind of physical contact, he would jump back like a spooked cat, his whole body on high alert. Staying the night was completely out of the question. After several failed attempts, I opened the job app again. I’d just managed to negotiate that soul-crushing three-thousand-a-month job up to thirty-two hundred when Lionel showed up again. I put my phone down, deciding to give it one last shot. If he pushed me away this time, I was done. “Do you like them?” He’d brought a bouquet of brilliant yellow roses. Yellow roses. A symbol of parting and goodbyes. I sighed. I didn’t even have the energy to take off my coat and reveal the lingerie I was wearing underneath. He was practically screaming at me to get the hint and leave. What was I even fighting for? Lionel had a huge appetite. For the past two years, I’d woken up nearly every morning with my legs feeling like jelly as he carried me to the shower. But he hadn’t touched me in weeks, yet he looked more vibrant than ever, like he’d shed ten years. He must be getting his fill elsewhere. He’d found a new canary, one he liked more, one he was obsessed with. That’s why he wouldn’t touch me, why he was dropping all these hints for me to leave. I took the flowers, managing a weak smile. “I love them.” Then I turned, mumbled something about changing, and went to my room. I took off the tempting lingerie and pulled our contract from the nightstand drawer. We’d signed it two years ago, renewable annually. It was set to expire next month. I’d planned on renewing it after his trip, but now… there was no point. A bitter smile touched my lips as I unfolded the document. Honestly, I was going to miss this. I had no real feelings for Lionel, but a man that handsome who was also a walking ATM, great in bed, and completely discreet? He was a unicorn. I took a deep breath and walked toward the study with the contract in hand. I may have sold my time and my body, but I still had my pride. The contract was clear: if either party wanted to end the relationship or found another partner, the agreement was void. I was ending it. Time to start my new life at thirty-two hundred a month. Lionel wasn’t in the living room. I checked the driveway from the window; his car was still there. Where could he be? Just as I was wondering, I heard his voice, tinged with frustration, coming from around the corner, from the study. “How’s it going with that neurosurgeon in Europe? Did you get me an appointment?” “I know he’s hard to book, but you can’t just let your friend live like this, completely out of his mind, can you?” I went to sleep eighteen and woke up twenty-seven. All the memories in between are just… gone. Wiped clean.” “The company stuff is the least of my worries. I can figure out the paperwork if I try hard enough. The real problem is my girlfriend.” My hand, the one holding the contract, trembled. A woman’s intuition is never wrong. Especially a beautiful woman’s intuition. Lionel really did have a new girlfriend. But what did he mean, eighteen to twenty-seven? Before I could puzzle it out, I heard my own name. “When did I start dating her? Haven’t I told you? It’s Meryl. Yeah, Meryl. I probably kept it from you because I was afraid you’d try to steal her.” He sighed. “Now my girlfriend asks me every night if I want to sleep with her.” “I know, it should be a dream come true. The girl I’ve been secretly in love with is my girlfriend. But I’m terrified I’ll blow my cover. I’m so wound up I feel like I’m going to explode, but I don’t dare touch her.” I was completely bewildered. Secretly in love? With me? What was he talking about? I couldn’t make sense of any of it. He was still complaining, his voice thick with misery. “You think I’m crazy too, right? I do. You have no idea what it’s like, watching her walk around all day, looking so damn cute. She even gets all dolled up just to seduce me. I can’t take it. That’s why I can’t even come home most nights.” “I’m just telling you, don’t you dare picture it.” I stared at the contract in my hand, a wild thought taking root. Wait a second. If what Lionel was saying was true… Then I wasn’t about to be unemployed. I was about to get a promotion. “You have to find a way. I need to get my memory back, fast. If Meryl finds out and breaks up with me, I’ll hang myself from your front door the next day.” The call ended. His footsteps grew closer. I clutched the contract and scurried back to my room. Once inside, I shoved the contract back into the drawer, my thoughts a tangled mess. Lionel and I had never met before our arrangement, at least not in my memory. The first time was at a café where my boss was tearing into me for dropping a tray of glasses. Lionel appeared out of nowhere, his broad back shielding me from the verbal assault, and pulled me out of that miserable life. When he offered to cover all of my dog’s vet bills, I didn’t hesitate. I went online and printed out a standard sugar-baby contract template. He barely blinked before signing his name. My dog, my only family, didn’t make it in the end. But my arrangement with Lionel continued, undefined and strange. Sometimes, when he’d take me to galas, other women would tell me with envy in their eyes how much he clearly adored me. I never believed them. I always thought he was just infatuated with my body. But now… I opened my closet, his words echoing in my head. An eighteen-year-old Lionel, in love with me. What would he like? I decided to test his story myself. My eyes landed on a schoolgirl outfit. I thought back to my own eighteenth year and pulled my hair into a high, neat ponytail. “Meryl, lunch is ready…” Just as I finished changing, Lionel’s voice came from outside the door. I glanced in the mirror. My face was bare, and the uniform made me look like I’d stepped back in time. My heart hammered against my ribs. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

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Five months pregnant, I was pushed from the third floor. Dr. Schrute saved me, but the baby, like the previous seven, was gone. Desperate for a last glimpse, I overheard my husband Vincent and Dr. Schrute in a corner. “Why harm your own child?” the doctor asked. Vincent replied coldly, “Elara has her needs. This was foolproof.” The truth about my lost children shattered me. My loving husband was the culprit. Behind closed doors, Vincent demanded, “Perform a hysterectomy before Jane wakes up.” Shocked, Dr. Schrute warned, “You’ll have no heir!” “Elara just had my child,” Vincent said. “I’m leaving everything to them. Jane’s uterus is a threat.” “But your child will bear another man’s name,” the doctor pleaded. “Is it worth it? Jane’s chance of conceiving is already low.” Vincent’s voice turned tender yet bitter. “I love Elara. I’ll give her everything I have.” “But…” Vincent frowned. “No ‘buts’! Do as I say!” Vincent was about to stand up when his phone rang. He accidentally pressed speakerphone. “Vincent, I got the money, hehe. Next time, find me for such a good job. I’ve done it seven times now, I know the ropes. And next time, I’ve already thought about it: I’m going to pretend to be a kidnapper and target Mrs. Halpert’s belly…” “There won’t be a next time. Take your money and get out of the city.” Footsteps sounded from within. I stumbled back to my room. Before I could lie down, Vincent walked in. “Jane, when did you wake up?” I was drenched in sweat, my body trembling as I forced myself to appear calm. “Just woke up. I didn’t see you, so I was about to go look for you.” Vincent’s gaze was fixed on me, with a hint of scrutiny. My heart was pounding with anxiety. Just as I thought he had found me out, he gently lifted me onto the bed. “Why are you so careless with yourself? We’ve already lost our baby; you can’t afford to have anything else happen.” He still had the nerve to mention it. Thinking of the child he had deliberately killed, I desperately clutched my chest, tears welling up uncontrollably. It turned out that all those car accidents, robberies, and falls I had experienced were never accidents. They were my husband, putting me in mortal danger again and again for his lover. “The doctor just said your uterus hasn’t been fully cleaned out and requires another surgery.” “Jane, don’t be scared… we’ll definitely have a beautiful baby. He’ll have your eyes, my nose and mouth. Then we’ll treat him even better and make up for all our regrets.” Vincent offered me a glass of milk. As he turned away, I saw him add something to it. He held me in his arms, coaxing me gently, his eyes full of tenderness. But I knew this was just a facade to lull me into a false sense of security. “Do I have to drink it…? Can I not?” Vincent, you’ve already killed seven of my children. Are you going to strip me of my right to be a mother as well? He didn’t hesitate, stroking my head, smiling dotingly. “Such a grown woman, yet still acting like a baby. What if you don’t have the surgery and your body can’t recover? Do you want your husband to die of heartache? Come, I’ll feed you.” He brought the milk to my lips, giving me no chance to refuse. I squeezed my eyes shut, as if what I was swallowing wasn’t milk, but barbed razor blades. My consciousness slowly faded. In a daze, I saw the doctor, complicit with Vincent, walk in. “Proceed with the surgery now. Also…” Vincent’s voice hesitated for a few seconds. “Find a way to paralyze her lower limbs with anesthesia.” “Mr. Halpert, is that really necessary? Isn’t that too cruel?” “Do as I say!” I knew Vincent was always cautious and suspicious, but I never expected him to be so ruthless just because he saw I woke up early. My children, my chance to be a mother, and now he was even going to take away my ability to stand. Vincent, are you trying to carve out my heart? I screamed in despair, struggling to sit up, but plunged into a deeper coma. As the anesthesia began to wear off, I vaguely heard the doctor say, “Mr. Halpert, Mrs. Halpert’s uterus has been removed. Also… she will never be able to stand again.” Vincent was immensely relieved, repeating twice, “Good! Good!” When I fully awoke, his tears fell onto my hand, a genuine expression of pain. “Jane, the doctor says your uterus has become too damaged to ever bear children.” I ignored him, frantically trying to move my legs. But, no feeling… I broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, trembling as I questioned, “Vincent, what have you done to my legs?” His tears fell in large drops, choking him several times until he couldn’t speak. “There was an accident during the anesthesia, and your lower body is paralyzed.” “Jane, don’t be afraid… no matter what you become, I will never leave you… I will always love you.” I had never imagined Vincent’s acting was so superb. He dismissed the nurse and personally fed me porridge, wiped my body, and even took care of my postpartum bleeding. He was busy until evening, then he kissed my forehead tenderly. “Jane, you’ve suffered so much hardship with these pregnancies for me. I’ll make it up to you doubly in the future.” I looked at his tired face, coldly averting my gaze. “If you’re tired, rest for a while.” “Alright, your husband will watch over you here. Just call me if you need anything.” After he fell asleep, I picked up his other phone. I had always known Vincent had another phone, but it was his work phone, so I had never checked it. I tried only once, and it unlocked successfully. The password was Elara’s birthday. The moment the lock screen opened, a wedding photo of him and Elara immediately caught my eye. A wedding photo… He actually took wedding photos with Elara. The white dress stung my eyes. Trembling, I opened his messaging app. Vincent intimately called her “Baby.” The endless chat history was increasingly disturbing. It turned out every one of his business trips was just an excuse to be with Elara. I had been silently upset countless times, resenting that he never accompanied me to the hospital. How many times did the doctor ask about the baby’s father, and I could only give an embarrassed smile and say he was very busy. He would always reply after a long delay: “I’m trying to earn money for our baby’s formula. Besides, a check-up isn’t a big deal. My being there wouldn’t help much and would waste time. You can do things on your own.” But he had accompanied Elara through her pregnancies, attending every prenatal check-up, never missing one, no matter how busy he was. He said he was incredibly excited for their baby’s birth, saying their mother and child were the most precious things in his life. Reading further, my heart was viciously wrenched, in agonizing pain. Every time I was pregnant, they were discussing how to kill my child. Even the car accident I had a year ago, when I was pregnant, was orchestrated by Elara herself. She said she wanted to experience the thrill of hitting someone, and Vincent readily agreed. He simply cautioned her, “Go easy.” They casually discussed how to harm me and how to kill my child, as if discussing the weather. My fingertips dug deep into my palm, blood dripping onto my hand. I opened his photo album. Tens of thousands of photos, every single one featuring Elara—joint photos, candid shots, waking up together, walking together, going home together. Vincent thoughtfully prepared nutritious meals for her during pregnancy… And there were over 99 videos. I switched to them, and in an instant, it was as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over me, chilling me to the core. There were countless videos of them intertwined, naked, seemingly deliberately documenting every moment of their intimacy. There was even roleplay, Vincent dressed as a maid, kneeling on the floor… I desperately pressed on my stomach, too nauseated to speak. Besides those videos, there were six more, labeled from the first to the sixth. Realizing what they were, my blood surged, and a metallic taste rose in my throat. I fiercely bit my lip and clicked on—the sixth time. Vincent and Elara were laughing and talking. In front of them was… The knife felt like it was cutting into me, my heart felt like it was being torn into a thousand pieces. The pain caused my stomach to cramp. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and retched violently at the bedside. Sleepless through the night, my clothes were soaked with tears. The next morning, Vincent, as usual, specially bought me an elaborate breakfast. A rich variety, both Eastern and Western: soy milk, fried dough sticks, bread, egg tarts… I used to think this was his doting affection for me, but now I knew it was just indifferent perfunctory behavior. Recalling the video from last night, I retched again. Seeing I was uncomfortable, Vincent was deeply concerned: “Why are you still feeling unwell? It’s all my fault for making you suffer, my dear.” “It’s nothing. I want to go home.” Vincent’s expression froze for a moment. “You’ve miscarried again. Mom isn’t very happy. Going back now would be walking into her anger. It’s better to wait a while before returning, so you don’t have to endure her wrath.” I didn’t speak. From his expression, I roughly guessed what had happened. In the afternoon, he was out. I packed my things and, in my wheelchair, made my way home. As soon as I entered the house, I saw Elara sitting in Vincent’s lap, both of them playing with a child. My mother-in-law came out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of bird’s nest soup, and personally fed Elara spoonful by spoonful. The three of them were laughing and chatting, looking very much like a family. Seeing me enter, my mother-in-law’s eyes sharpened. “Bad omen! You actually have the nerve to come back? My son serves you delicious food and drinks all day, how do you repay us? A jinx like you should just die outside!” “You clearly knew you were pregnant, yet you were jumping around all day. How many lives in our Halpert family have you killed? Why didn’t you just fall to your death, you wretched thing!” “I’m telling you, from today on, Elara is the only daughter-in-law I recognize. Get out of my house right now. You’re staining our floors.” Elara looked over, following my mother-in-law’s gaze, her eyes full of triumph. “Auntie, don’t talk like that. What if Jane gets jealous and spreads rumors that I’m seducing Vincent?” “I dare her to!” I knew my mother-in-law never liked me. She thought I was too capable and difficult to control, and that I would lord over Vincent after marriage. Elara, on the other hand, was beautiful and sweet-talked everyone, always putting Vincent and herself at the center of everything. So, my mother-in-law was determined to have Elara as her daughter-in-law. It was only later that Elara married a wealthy man, and I willingly gave up my career to focus on family. Only then did she reluctantly accept me. Over the years, I had never given birth to a child for the Halpert family, and her dissatisfaction with me had reached its peak. Now that Elara was back and had given Vincent a son, she naturally had no inhibitions and vented all her displeasure on me. But she didn’t know that my seven miscarriages were all orchestrated by her son. Every one of her grandchildren had been… by Elara, her cherished daughter-in-law. Before, Vincent would mediate, but now, holding the child Elara had given him, he acted as if he heard nothing. Elara nestled into his arms, her voice feigning grievance. “Vincent, you’re only paying attention to our son. I feel overshadowed by him. If you keep this up, I’ll be upset.” Vincent dotingly pinched her cheek, his eyes full of tenderness. “Always so jealous, aren’t you? Look what that is.” I followed Elara’s gaze, and the bold words “STOCK TRANSFER AGREEMENT” pierced my eyes. “Wow! Vincent, you’re so good to me.” She happily kissed Vincent on the corner of his lips, her eyes proudly looking at me. I gave her a cold smile. Enjoy your triumph. Soon enough, you and your Vincent will be crying and begging me to come back. “But if you do this, won’t Jane be angry? After all, this is your entire fortune.” Vincent paused, as if just realizing I was present, and quickly said, “Jane, don’t misunderstand. Mom and I discussed adopting Elara’s child as our godson, which is why I’m transferring shares to her.” “This is a last resort. Since your uterus is damaged and you can’t have children, the Halpert family can’t be without an heir. I can only place all my hopes on Little Vincent.” “You understand, don’t you?” My ears buzzed. I looked at Vincent in disbelief. “What’s his name?”

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The rich kid my cousin was dating, Trevor, suddenly showed up at my store with a high-end replica handbag, trying to get a refund for the authentic one he’d bought three days earlier. When the front desk called me, I was surprised, but I didn’t reveal who I was. I just told them to handle it by the book. I figured it was just another one of the countless little dramas that played out daily across my chain of luxury resale stores and promptly forgot about it. Until Christmas Eve, at the family dinner table, when my cousin Liz, with Trevor’s arm wrapped around her, slapped an identical replica bag down on the table. The sound wasn’t loud, but it was like a crack of thunder, instantly silencing the festive chaos of the room. “Look what Trevor got me for Christmas! It’s a limited-edition Chanel. There are only a handful of them in the world.” In an instant, the table erupted in a chorus of flattery and awe. My own mother nudged me discreetly. “You’re so clueless all the time. A girl’s best bet is still to marry a rich man.” I just smiled. A bag of that quality? A “clueless” girl like me would normally just toss it in the trash. Only they would treat it like a treasure. 1 Liz’s voice was dripping with a poorly suppressed smugness. Her eyes scanned every relative at the table before finally landing on me, a faint glint of challenge in them. My mom immediately leaned in, picking up the bag and examining it from every angle. “Wow, this leather, this shine! You can just tell it’s expensive,” she marveled. “Liz, you are so lucky! Trevor treats you so well!” My aunt, Liz’s mother, was beaming. She clapped Trevor on the shoulder. “Of course, he does. Our Liz deserves the best! Trevor, you’re a good man. Capable and doting.” Trevor feigned modesty, waving a hand dismissively while pulling Liz closer by the waist, his chin held high. “She deserves it. As long as Liz is happy. It wasn’t that much, only about thirty-two thousand. The real trouble was getting a friend to source it from overseas.” Thirty-two thousand dollars. The number hung in the air, followed by a collective intake of breath around the table. My other aunt dropped her fork. “Thirty-two thousand? My god, that’s a down payment on a house back home! Trevor, you’re really going places!” “Liz, you better hold on to him! A catch like that is one in a million!” “Exactly! Not like my layabout son who just plays video games all day. It drives me crazy!” The praise swelled, wave after wave, and the triumphant looks on Trevor and Liz’s faces were practically spilling over. My mom, basking in the reflected glory of her niece’s boyfriend, turned her educational lecture back to me. “Did you hear that, Anna? Your cousin is a year younger than you, and she’s already found such a wonderful future. And you? All you do is slave away at that little junk shop of yours. How much can that possibly make? No matter how successful a woman’s career is, it’s nothing compared to marrying well.” My so-called “little junk shop” is the leading nationwide trading platform for pre-owned luxury goods. We just closed our Series C funding last year with a valuation in the billions. Of course, I’d never told my family any of this. In their eyes, I ran a small second-hand store in another city, barely scraping by. I couldn’t be bothered to explain, so I just gave a noncommittal “Mm.” My lukewarm response clearly annoyed my mother; she felt I had embarrassed her in front of everyone. “What do you mean, ‘Mm’? I’m talking to you! You’re not getting any younger, and you don’t care at all about your personal life. Look at your cousin, then look at you! And what are you wearing? It’s so old and drab. Can’t you even afford to buy yourself a new outfit?” The seemingly plain cashmere sweater I was wearing was from Loro Piana. It cost six figures. But in their world, no big logo meant it was from a discount bin. Seeing my mom scolding me, Liz offered a phony attempt at peacemaking, though the glee in her eyes was impossible to hide. “Oh, Auntie, don’t be so hard on Anna. It’s not easy for her, trying to make it on her own. She’s probably saving up for a down payment on a house.” As she spoke, she deliberately flashed the massive diamond ring on her finger. “Anna, if you’re short on cash, just let me know. I can have Trevor set you up with some easy job, you know, ten or fifteen thousand a month. It’s got to be better than what you’re doing now.” Trevor immediately jumped in, his tone dripping with condescension. “Yeah, Anna, we’re family. Don’t be a stranger. My dad’s company needs an administrative assistant. If you’re interested, you can start after the holidays.” I almost laughed out loud. What kind of charity case did they take me for? Before I could speak, my aunt jumped in to express my “eternal gratitude” for me. “Oh, thank you so much, Trevor! Anna, did you hear that? What are you waiting for? Thank your cousin’s fiancé! This is a golden opportunity, a gift from heaven! You are so lucky!” Everyone at the table stared at me, waiting for me to burst into tears of gratitude and accept this magnificent “blessing.” I looked at the sickeningly smug faces of Liz and Trevor and slowly put down my fork. “Liz, that bag of yours is certainly… ‘limited,’” I said, putting a slight emphasis on the word. Liz, thinking I was complimenting her, grinned even wider. “Of course, it’s…” I cut her off, my gaze shifting to Trevor. I asked with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes, “Mr. Kirby, where did you buy this bag? Would you mind sharing your source? I’d love to get one for my mom, make her happy too.” Trevor’s eyes flickered for a fraction of a second. “Oh, just a friend of mine in Europe who sources things for me,” he said vaguely. “If you want one, I can ask him to keep an eye out for you.” “Is that so?” I drew out the words, picking up the fake bag from the table. My fingertip traced the logo lightly. “Because for some reason, this bag looks a little familiar, don’t you think?” 2 My words hung in the air, instantly freezing the atmosphere at the table. The smile on Liz’s face was frozen solid. “Anna, what are you trying to say? You’re not suggesting my bag is a fake, are you?” Her voice shot up, her expression one of utter insult. “I know what this is. You’re just jealous I found a great boyfriend! My mom was right, you can’t stand to see me happy! You’re just taking out your own failures on me!” My aunt immediately jumped to her defense, jabbing a finger in my direction. “Anna, what is wrong with you? Are you trying to cause trouble? Your cousin’s fiancé was kind enough to offer you a job, and this is how you repay him, by trying to ruin their happiness? What are your intentions?” My own mother’s face went pale with anger. She pinched my arm, hard. “Are you crazy? What nonsense are you spouting? Apologize to your cousin and her fiancé right now!” Trevor’s expression had turned thunderous. He stared at me coldly. “Anna, you can eat whatever you want, but you can’t say whatever you want. I may not be a billionaire, but I can certainly afford a thirty-thousand-dollar bag. Are you questioning my integrity?” He sounded so righteous, as if he were the victim of a terrible injustice. The relatives all turned on me. “Yeah, Anna’s being so immature!” “Just because she’s never seen anything nice, she assumes everyone else’s things are fake. What a petty mindset.” “Just apologize. It’s Christmas, don’t ruin it for everyone.” I looked at this room full of so-called family. Without a second thought, simply because Trevor looked rich, they had all decided I was the malicious one, the troublemaker. A chill went through me, but my face remained calm. “Whether I’m talking nonsense or not, I think Mr. Kirby knows best.” I met Trevor’s gaze and spoke, enunciating each word. “Three days ago, on December twenty-second, at 3:15 in the afternoon, a man wearing a black down jacket, khaki pants, and gold-rimmed glasses brought this exact bag into the flagship store of ‘The Vault’ downtown.” With every detail I revealed, another shade of color drained from Trevor’s face. “He claimed he’d bought the bag in the store three days prior for thirty-two thousand dollars and demanded a full refund because his girlfriend had changed her mind.” “Our in-house authenticator immediately identified it as a top-tier replica, what’s commonly known as a ‘superfake,’ and refused his request for a return.” “Mr. Kirby,” I said with a small, cold smile, “none of this sounds unfamiliar to you, does it?” The dining room fell into a dead silence. Every eye in the room darted between me and Trevor, their expressions shifting from accusation to stunned disbelief. Beads of sweat had formed on Trevor’s forehead. He tried to sound indignant, his voice cracking. “That’s a lie! I’ve never even heard of ‘The Vault’! I was in a meeting at my office that afternoon. My entire company can vouch for me!” “Is that so?” I calmly took out my phone and opened a security feed app. “Unfortunately for you, my store has high-definition cameras in every corner. With audio.” I turned the screen towards him. The image was crystal clear, showing Trevor’s face, etched with greed and anxiety. In the video, he was arguing animatedly with my sales associate. “…I don’t care! I bought it here! Here’s the receipt! You have to give me my money back today, or I’m calling the cops and reporting you for ripping me off!” “Sir, we have no record of your purchase in our system. And this receipt… it’s also a forgery.” “Bullshit! You’re just trying to get out of it! Get me your owner!” The voices from the video echoed clearly in the silent room, each word like a sharp slap across Trevor and Liz’s faces. All the blood had drained from Liz’s face. She stared at Trevor in disbelief, her lips trembling, unable to form a single word. My aunt was dumbstruck, her mouth hanging open. My mom was just as stunned, staring blankly from the phone in my hand to my face, her eyes filled with a look of utter confusion, as if seeing a stranger. 3 “Now, do you need me to play the rest of the video?” I asked softly, turning off the screen. Trevor’s composure completely shattered. He slumped into his chair with a thud, his face ashen. The con exposed, he couldn’t muster a single word of defense. Liz, after a moment of stunned silence, let out a piercing scream. “Trevor! You liar!” She snatched the fake bag from the table and brought it crashing down on his head. “You told me you were the son of some corporate giant! You said you loved me! And you used a fake bag to fool me? What do you take me for?” Trevor grunted from the blow, his own shame turning to fury. “I fooled you? Liz, you think you’re some kind of saint? You only liked me for my money! If I didn’t have any, would you have even given me the time of day? Stop pretending to be so innocent!” “You…” Liz was shaking with rage. She lunged at him, and the two of them began to brawl. The dinner table descended into chaos. Plates and glasses shattered on the floor. Relatives scrambled to pull them apart. Shouts, curses, and sobs filled the air. A perfect Christmas Eve dinner had become a complete and utter farce. My aunt watched her daughter and her “golden goose” tear each other apart, looking like she was about to have a heart attack. She pointed a trembling finger at me. “Anna! This is all your fault! You and your big mouth! If you hadn’t said anything, none of this would have happened! You’ve ruined your cousin’s life! Are you happy now?” I almost laughed at her twisted logic. “Auntie, are you saying I should have just watched my cousin get scammed by a con artist and applauded from the sidelines?” “What does it matter if he’s a con artist? He was good to Liz!” she shrieked, beyond reason. “So the bag was fake, his feelings for Liz were real! And now you’ve ruined everything!” My mom, having recovered from her shock, didn’t blame me outright, but her eyes were full of reproach. She tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “Anna, your aunt… she has a point. Look at this mess. How is your cousin supposed to face anyone after this?” I looked at my mother, and a profound sense of weariness washed over me. In their world, truth and dignity were worth far less than a man who seemed rich. Even if that man was a liar and a cheat. “Mom, Auntie, you’re missing the point,” I said, my voice as cold as ice. “I didn’t ruin her life. She chose this liar herself. And I’m afraid she’s not the only one who’s been deceived.” I paused, my gaze sweeping over Trevor and Liz, who had stopped fighting but were still glaring daggers at each other. “Mr. Kirby, this trick of swapping a fake bag for a real one… this wasn’t your first time, was it? I checked our industry’s internal alert system. In the last six months, in this city alone, at least five other luxury goods stores have been hit with the exact same scam, with total losses in the millions. And the suspect caught on every security camera looks an awful lot like you.” Trevor’s face went white, his eyes filled with terror. “Who… who are you?” he stammered. I didn’t answer him. I just turned to my mother and said calmly, “Mom, call the police. This man is a professional con artist.” 4 The police arrived quickly. As Trevor was being handcuffed, he looked like a marionette with its strings cut, all his earlier arrogance gone. Liz was collapsed on the floor, sobbing hysterically as if her world had ended. My aunt held her, weeping and cursing me, calling me cruel-hearted and jealous of their family’s good fortune. The Christmas dinner ended with a call to the police. All the relatives, feeling the evening was cursed, quickly made their excuses and left. Soon, it was just my parents and me, along with my distraught aunt and cousin. My mom sighed as she cleaned up the wreckage. My dad just sat in the corner, smoking silently. After a long while, my mom came over to me, her expression a mix of emotions. “Anna, that place, ‘The Vault’… is it really yours?” I nodded. “The one on your phone… it’s really a national chain?” “Yes.” “Then… then how much money do you actually have?” she asked, getting to the heart of the matter. I was quiet for a moment. “Enough for you and Dad to live comfortably for the rest of your lives, without ever having to answer to anyone.” My mother’s eyes lit up for a second, then dimmed again. She glanced at Liz, who was still weeping on the sofa, and seemed hesitant to speak. I had a good idea of what she wanted to say. Sure enough, once my aunt had cried herself out, she dragged Liz over to me and dropped to her knees with a thud. “Anna! I’m begging you! Please, save your cousin!” I was startled and quickly tried to pull her up. “Auntie, what are you doing? Get up!” “I won’t get up until you agree!” she wailed, clinging to my leg. “Trevor is a con artist, we get it! We were fools! But your cousin’s reputation is ruined! How will she ever get married now? You’re the successful one, you have connections! You have to help her!” Liz looked up, her eyes swollen and red, a pitiful expression on her face. “Anna… I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have looked down on you, I shouldn’t have shown off… Please, forgive me this one time? We’re family. You can’t just leave me to suffer…” They played their parts perfectly, a good cop/bad cop routine. My mom chimed in from the side. “She’s right, Anna. You’re family, blood is thicker than water. Your cousin is a victim in all this, she just suffered from being naive. You’re successful now, it’s only right that you give her a hand.” I looked at the three of them, and the irony was almost too much to bear. When they were mocking me, forcing me to apologize to a con man, not a single one of them stood up for me. Now that my value had been proven, they changed their tune completely, demanding that I “give them a hand” as if it were my duty. “How am I supposed to help?” I asked coldly. “Introduce her to a real rich heir so she can continue her dream of marrying into wealth?” “Anna, how can you say that about your cousin!” my aunt bristled. “She just wants a better life! What’s wrong with that?” “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a better life. But wanting to get it without working for it, using a man as a stepping stone to change your fate, that is fundamentally wrong,” I said, looking directly at Liz. “Cousin, you chose this path. Instead of sitting here crying and begging me, you should be thinking about how you’re going to live your life from now on.” “You…” Liz was stunned by my bluntness, her face flushing with anger. “So what if you have a little money? What’s so great about that? If you won’t help me, I can make it on my own!” With that, she pushed my aunt aside and ran out of the house in tears. My aunt, after a moment of shock, ran after her, shouting insults at me over her shoulder, calling me an ungrateful wolf. The living room was quiet again, just the three of us. My mom looked at me and sighed deeply. “Anna, was that really necessary? How are we ever going to face your aunt and cousin again?” “Mom,” I said, leaning back on the sofa, exhausted. “For years, you’ve valued keeping the peace with relatives, always letting them have their way. And what did it get us? Did they ever respect our family? Deep down, they’ve always looked down on us.” “I didn’t have the power to do anything about it before, so I endured it. But I’m not going to endure it anymore.” My dad, who had been silent this whole time, stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder, his voice a little hoarse. “My daughter did the right thing. We don’t owe them anything.” In that moment, a lump formed in my throat, and I had to fight back tears. For the first time in all these years, my father was standing firmly on my side.

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1 At the awards ceremony for the parasports competition, my ex-girlfriend Seraphina and I stood facing each other in silence. As I accepted the trophy, her eyes fixed on my hand with its six remaining fingers. Her voice was laced with panic. “Rick, what happened to you?” She couldn’t imagine it. The former star student of the top university, now without even a whole body. “Why didn’t you call me when you got out early? Why didn’t you come home?” Her assistant chimed in, indignant. “The day you were released, Ms. Vance waited for you at the prison gates all morning, in her wedding dress! She loves you so deeply, and you just hid away in this backwater town, humiliating her!” Hearing this, I could only laugh. She wouldn’t marry anyone but me? If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have been forced into a marriage with that psycho mob boss’s daughter, wouldn’t have had my kidney torn out, my fingers and legs severed. And I certainly wouldn’t have been framed for murder and spent five years rotting in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. … Seraphina finally tore her eyes away from my disfigured face, her voice rising in anger. “No matter how angry you are, you can’t just abandon your family.” “Come on. We’re going home.” She angrily threw my crutch aside and bent down to help me up. Without the support, my body crashed heavily to the ground. The stump of my amputated leg, already swollen and throbbing from weeks of intense training, exploded in agony from the impact. The pain bleached all the color from my face. Seraphina stared at the empty, crumpled fabric of my pant leg, her hands frozen in mid-air. “Your leg… where’s your leg?” Just then, a man walked in, holding the hand of a five or six-year-old boy. Seeing the face that was once mine, it took me a moment to realize it was Finn. Seraphina had made me get plastic surgery to look like Finn. To protect him, she’d naturally had him altered to look like me. He glanced at Seraphina. “Seraphina, you practically turned this whole city upside down looking for him.” The little boy ran to Seraphina. “Mommy, I missed you so much.” Seraphina scooped him up effortlessly. “Mommy missed you too, Ian.” My voice was ice. “She was so busy looking for me, she still had time to have a kid with you?” Seraphina’s expression stiffened. I ignored her, propping myself up on my remaining crutch to stand. She saw me struggling and put the child down to help. “Let me help you.” I swung the crutch, knocking her hand away. “Get lost.” Seraphina’s face darkened. I struggled to my feet. Finn came over, holding the boy. “Ian, hurry up and say hi to your uncle.” “Rick, take off that mask. Let us see you.” Before I could stop him, my grotesque, scarred face was exposed to everyone. “Ah! Mommy, a monster! I’m scared!” The little boy buried his face in Finn’s chest, wailing and begging to go home. My mother’s voice was a harsh command. “Cover up that hideous face, now!” My father threw a wad of cash at my chest. “Take this and get surgery. Don’t you dare scare my grandson again.” “Refusing to come home, and now you’re in this pathetic competition? Are you trying to make us the laughingstock of the town on purpose?” The sharp edge of a new bill sliced across a scar, drawing a thin line of blood. The money scattered at my feet. My trembling, pale knuckles betrayed the rage I was barely containing. I bowed to them, a smile plastered on my face. “Thank you. You’re all such good people. I wish you a long, long life.” My father heard the sarcasm in my voice. Seeing that I hadn’t even called them ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad,’ he gritted his teeth and spat, “Ungrateful bastard.” My mother told me to get my act together, then left with Finn and the crying child. I leaned on my crutch and bent to pick up the money. Seraphina, as if she couldn’t bear to watch, pressed her hand on mine. “What happened back then… I owe you.” “I’ll marry you. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.” 2 My hand paused, a storm of hatred brewing in my eyes. “Fine. Just as soon as I’m done with a few things.” Seraphina wanted to come with me to my place to pack, but just then, Finn called her. “Seraphina, Ian won’t stop crying. He wants you.” I smirked. “Go on. I don’t have any legs. It’s not like I can run very far.” Seraphina left her number, telling me to call anytime. The second she was gone, I blocked her and called a ride-share. I got in touch with an old cellmate and crashed at his rental. When I heard no news of Seraphina looking for me, I finally started to relax. I found a spot in a corner of the local market, shining shoes, hemming pants, and fixing zippers. Just as I was about to rent my own place and settle down, Seraphina found me. “Come on, be good. Come home with me.” When I refused, she turned to the market vendors for help. “Could you please help me convince him? I really want to marry him, to take care of him for the rest of his life!” Many of them had seen her pull up in a Rolls-Royce. They all started trying to persuade me. “You’ve got a girlfriend that beautiful and rich, what are you shining shoes for?” “She doesn’t mind your face or that you’re missing fingers and a leg. What are you throwing a tantrum for?” “Stop being difficult! Just go back with her!” I gritted my teeth in fury but tried not to show it. I made an excuse to say goodbye to my friend and, with his help, I slipped away again. This time, it took me five days of travel to reach a small southern town, two thousand kilometers away. Because of my missing fingers and leg, it took me forever to find a job as a butcher’s assistant. But before I could even enjoy a moment of peace, Seraphina found me again. “Rick, you can’t run from me.” The butcher’s voice was dripping with envy. “You’ve got a rich girlfriend who wants to marry and take care of you. Why are you out here suffering? Go home and enjoy the good life!” I shot a mocking look at Seraphina. “The good life?” Days of exhaustion and a deep-seated hatred finally made my control snap. “Seraphina, why are you haunting me? You’ve already turned me into this… this thing, not quite human, not quite a ghost. Can’t you just leave me alone?” Seraphina’s face hardened, her eyes filled with confusion. “Marrying you is what you need most right now. It’s also the promise I made to you. I’m trying to help you!” I laughed bitterly. “Help me? By getting my fingers and legs cut off? By sending me to prison? It was Finn who pissed off that psycho, but you killed our child with your own hands, you plotted to have our faces swapped, and you threw me to her, letting her chop off my fingers and legs and frame me for a crime that sent me to prison for five years. In all that time, did either of you ever have a single nightmare?” Seraphina sighed, her face a mask of pain. “What’s done is done. There’s no point in dwelling on it. I already said, I will marry you.” I shot back, a cold sneer on my lips, “You’ll marry me? What about Finn? What about your son?” A flicker of guilt crossed her eyes. “Ian was an accident. As for Finn, I’ll compensate him in other ways.” Seeing her certainty, my voice dripped with scorn. “And what’s your compensation plan? I get you Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he gets Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays?” Her guilty expression told me I’d hit the nail on the head. A wave of nausea washed over me. “Seraphina, in your dreams!” Seraphina’s patience wore thin. Her voice was sharp. “Rick, a marriage certificate is the most dignity I can offer you.” I refused coldly. “I don’t need that dignity. Give it to him. All I want is for you to stay the hell away from me.” I turned to leave on my crutch. Seraphina’s voice was a chilling warning from behind me. “Rick, if you keep fighting me on this, those old prison buddies of yours might find their quiet lives aren’t so quiet anymore.” I froze. Gritting my teeth, I turned to face her. “Seraphina, you are utterly disgusting.” 3 The journey to the small town took me five days by bus. The flight back to the city took only five hours. I arrived home just in time for the welcome party my family was throwing for me. Finn, dressed in a tailored suit, looked like a groom, or rather, the man of the house. My father snorted. “Ungrateful bastard. You finally decided to come back.” My mother sighed. “Thank god Ian isn’t related to you by blood. This would have affected his future prospects.” Then, “Go step over the fire pit. Don’t bring your bad luck and filth into this house.” Neighbors saw me, masked and on a crutch, and started whispering. “Why did they even bring him back? Isn’t he embarrassing enough?” “I heard that while he was with Seraphina, he cheated on her with some psycho gangster woman. He got plastic surgery for her and even forced Seraphina to have an abortion.” “If you ask me, getting his fingers and legs chopped off, his face slashed, his kidney taken, and going to prison… he deserved all of it.” Finn interrupted them. “Rick made a terrible mistake, but he’s already served five years. Not every dog refuses to change its ways. We believe Rick will never make the same mistakes again.” I looked at this kangaroo court, custom-designed just for me, and felt nothing but a cold, sickening disgust. Just then, Finn brought over the fire pit. He added fresh charcoal. “The stronger the fire, the stronger your future.” The new coals sparked and hissed, the heat palpable even from meters away. He looked at me with a provocative, wicked smile. “Cross it, and you can start a new life.” Before I could move, he grabbed me and dragged me toward the flames. I don’t know who did it, but a firm shove to my lower back sent me stumbling, my body pitching forward directly into the fire pit. I reacted instantly, pushing the basin away, but the overturned, glowing coals still scattered onto my clothes, the synthetic fabric catching fire immediately. “Ah!” I screamed for help, but no one dared to come near me. Finally, as Seraphina started ripping the burning fabric from my skin, Finn doused me with a bucket of cold water. My mask fell off. My hair was a mess, my clothes were torn, and the network of scars on my back was exposed for all to see. The grotesque scars on my face made everyone gasp. My father pointed at my half-naked form and yelled, “How long are you going to keep embarrassing us? Get back to your room!” Finn saw Seraphina about to fetch some clothes and shot me a cold smile. He quickly pulled a dirty blanket from under the dog in its kennel and threw it over me. “Cover yourself with this for now.” I tried to struggle, but Finn held me down firmly. I stopped fighting and just smiled. A custom-made humiliation party. This is what they wanted, wasn’t it? To see me debased. Only when I was sufficiently shamed would they leave me alone. I looked at Seraphina and asked with a smile, “Are you satisfied now?” Seraphina glanced at Finn, her eyes flickering. “A dog blanket is better than being stared at by everyone.” A triumphant look crossed Finn’s eyes as he pretended to help me up. I shook him off. “Don’t touch me with your filthy hands.” Ignoring my parents’ curses and the strange looks from the neighbors, I made my way inside on my crutch. Finn’s voice followed me. “Mom and Dad said any good room would be tainted by your bad luck. You’ll be staying… in the attic.” I struggled up the stairs. As I closed the door, my eyes burned with tears I refused to shed. I threw off the dog blanket. The mirror reflected a body covered in a web of scars and blistering, red burns. Wounds from that psycho woman, wounds from prison, every single one carved deep into my flesh. I hadn’t forgotten a single one. I was just waiting for my chance to pay them all back. That night, Seraphina knocked on my door. I didn’t open it. In the dead of night, I heard noises from the balcony below. “You bastard. You said tonight was our wedding night?” “Mmm. Did you like my groom’s suit today?” “I did. The first time I saw you, I wanted you to do this to me.” The sounds that followed were the unmistakable, intimate moans of a man and a woman… Only then did I understand. The festive red decorations all over the house weren’t to welcome me home. They were for their wedding. 4 The next morning, I came down for breakfast without my mask. Ian burst into tears at the sight of me. “You’re a monster! Get out of my house! Grandma, I’m scared.” My mother soothed the child, then roughly snatched the bowl and chopsticks from my hands. “From now on, you eat in your room. Don’t come out here and scare my grandson!” My father roared, “Get back to the attic!” The child shrieked at me, calling me a monster. My parents venomously told me to get lost. No one cared about the fresh burns on my body. No one asked about my five years of wrongful imprisonment. Even the child my cheating ex-girlfriend had with another man was treated like a treasure, while I, their own son, was told to die. The rage that had been simmering for over five years erupted. “Why?!” I roared. “What makes him your grandson? Whose blood runs in his veins?!” My voice shook with fury. “Why the hell would I get plastic surgery to look like another man and get rid of my own child to be with some psycho? Why would you believe two outsiders over your own son? Did it ever occur to you that I was framed?” My parents were stunned into silence. Even Ian stopped crying, startled by my outburst. My eyes burned, and I looked at them with utter despair. “Did you ever once think that maybe I was drugged, that I was tricked into surgery, that I was set up…” Just then, I heard two sets of footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Finn knelt to comfort the child, deliberately showing me the dense pattern of love bites on his neck and collarbone. “Ian, did you upset your uncle again?” Seraphina came to my side, her hand on my shoulder a silent, heavy warning. “What were you all talking about? Rick, your eyes are all red.” My father shot me a hateful glare. “Five years in prison didn’t teach him a thing. He’s still blaming everyone but himself! How did I raise such a spineless coward who can’t even own up to his mistakes?” My mother cradled Ian, patting his back. “If you ever try to drive a wedge between us and Seraphina’s family again, I’ll rip your mouth off!” Seraphina and Finn exchanged a look, both visibly relieved. Finn pretended to scold his son. “Ian, he’s your uncle. This is his home too.” The child wailed, “This is our home, not the monster’s home! Go away, monster! Get out of my house!” I watched this picture of a happy family and felt like the biggest joke in the world. Before coming back, I’d held onto a sliver of hope that my parents still had some love for me. Now I knew. There was no place for me in this home anymore. I skipped breakfast and went back to my room. Perhaps out of guilt, my mother knocked on my door later, saying we were all going shopping to buy me some new clothes. Finn helpfully pushed a wheelchair over. “This will be easier for you.” I saw the malicious glint in his eye and had a bad feeling. But the mall was crowded, so I let my guard down. My mother bought me a lot of clothes. But they were all styles that Finn had tried on first. All things he liked. I paid his provocations no mind. At the elevator, Finn pushed my wheelchair inside. Just as my mother was about to step in, Finn suddenly feigned remembrance. “Mom, I think I forgot something. Can you come with me to get it?” He repeatedly jabbed the ‘close door’ button, hissing with a vicious smile, “Go to hell!” By the time I realized it was a trap, it was too late. The elevator buttons went dead, and the car plummeted into the shaft below. Before I could even recover from the shock, a bag was thrown over my head and a rag was shoved into my mouth. “You piece of trash. We finally got you!” I was dragged into a van. Fists, feet, and curses rained down on me. Just like in prison, I curled into a ball, instinctively protecting my head. I didn’t cry or scream. Crying only made them hit harder. Half an hour later, I was kicked out of the van and dragged into a dilapidated factory. A group of burly men surrounded me, closing in. “You’re not getting out of here alive! Just in time for us to get some practice in!” Their fists hammered into me. I fought back desperately, but I was no match for their brute force. Giving up, I slammed my head against a nearby wall. Blood trickled into my eyes, blurring my vision. Just before darkness consumed me, a slender arm caught my collapsing body.

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I rescued a little cat who could turn into a boy. To thank me, he offered to set me up with his uncle. Things heated up, and one thing led to another. As the passion peaked, he whispered in my ear. “A leopard’s… equipped with barbs. Tell me if it hurts.” Lost in the haze of desire, I heard those words and violently shoved him off me. “What leopard? Aren’t you a cute little kitty?” Professor Streep, now sprawled rather ungracefully on the floor, picked himself up. His brow was furrowed, his expression one you’d give a complete idiot. “Nora, you can’t tell the difference between a house cat and a leopard?” 1 “Miss, are you going to send me to a lab to be cut open?” I stared down at the little boy, my expression grave. “Please don’t send me away. Pip’s scared of pain. Pip doesn’t want to be a science experiment.” Before I could even respond, the boy, a fluffy tail swishing behind him, burst into tears. He looked so utterly pathetic that my heart melted on the spot. There was no room for hesitation now. I scooped him into my arms. “I’m not thinking that at all. Don’t cry, don’t cry. I was just wondering what exactly you… are.” The words died on my lips. That didn’t sound right. But I was genuinely at a loss. What kind of creature was he? A little cat-boy, with actual ears and a tail? “No, no, I’m not sending you to any lab,” I soothed. “But you have to tell me… what’s the deal with…” I gestured toward the tail behind his back and the furry ears atop his head. “Is this for some kindergarten play or something?” Though, I knew no costume prop could ever be this realistic. When I’d accidentally brushed against it earlier, I could have sworn I felt the warmth of his tail. Sniffling, the little cat-boy pulled away from my hug. 2 Though his face was streaked with tears, he managed to reach up and touch his ears and tail. “These?” “Yes.” “Everyone in my family has them! Don’t you, miss? Oh, wait. A grown-up like you should be able to hide your tail really well.” He added, “Mommy says I’m still little, so my control is not so good.” My brain short-circuited. Everyone in his family… so… He wasn’t the only cat-person out there? Had the world gone mad? Or was it me? Before I could fully process this new reality, Pip patted his small stomach. “Miss, I’m hungry.” I sighed. Fine. Human or cat, a hungry belly was a hungry belly. I wasn’t sure what Pip could eat in human form, so I avoided anything that might upset a feline stomach. Watching the little cat-boy happily munching away, I felt a wave of helplessness wash over me. What was I even doing? I’d found Pip in a back alley. I was just passing by when the heavens opened up, a torrential downpour. A strange noise from the alley had caught my attention, and when I went to investigate, I saw Pip, his little cat ears and tail peeking out. So how was I supposed to contact his family now? Surely his kind had a way of finding each other, right? “Miss, are you single?” Pip suddenly leaned in close, his beautiful eyes fixed on me. “S-single, yes. Why?” “To repay you for saving my life, I want to introduce you to my uncle! What do you think?” “Huh?” Kid, you can’t even fend for yourself right now, and you’re already worried about your uncle’s love life? 3 I placed a hand on Pip’s forehead and gently pushed him back. “You just focus on your dinner. I’ll figure out how to get you home later.” “Oh, okay. But my uncle is really handsome.” “Right.” “And he’s rich! Not stingy at all! He’s the most generous person in our whole family!” “Zip it.” “You really don’t want to meet him?” “Tuck your tail in.” He finally quieted down, and I could think. Just as I swatted away Pip’s tail from my ankle for what felt like the tenth time, the doorbell rang. I had no idea who was outside, but one thing was certain: no one could see Pip like this. I wouldn’t turn him over to a lab, but that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t. I grabbed a blanket and draped it over Pip from behind, completely hiding him from view. “Be a good boy. Don’t take this off, or I’ll be very cross.” “Okay!” Once he was hidden, I went to answer the door. The moment I opened it, I was completely intimidated by the man standing there. He was imposingly tall; I had to crane my neck just to look at the buttons on his chest. His gaze was unnerving. He had the aura of… my old high school principal. I instinctively took a step back, putting some distance between us. “Hello, can I help you?” The man’s gaze swept over me, cold and indifferent, before landing on the spot right behind me. His voice was firm, a statement, not a question. “You found a child today.” His tone made me feel guilty, as if I’d stolen the kid instead of rescuing him. But I quickly composed myself. 4 “Who are you?” His eyes returned to me. He wore a khaki trench coat over a neatly pressed white shirt and dress pants. A look that was formal yet with a touch of casualness. But the longer I looked, the more my own confidence seemed to shrink. “That’s none of your concern.” Hey! What did he mean, ‘none of my concern’? I was the one who found the kid. I couldn’t just hand him over to some stranger without knowing who he was. What if something happened? It would be my responsibility. I stepped forward, blocking his path. “If you don’t explain yourself, I’m calling the police.” The man seemed surprised by my assertiveness. He glanced at his wristwatch, a flicker of impatience on his face. “Pip Lowell. If you don’t come out now, you can forget about ever leaving the house by yourself again.” Before I could make sense of his words, a small figure scurried past me, clinging to my leg and looking up at the man. “Uncle!” Un… cle? My astonished gaze shot to the man’s face, but he only gave me a fleeting, dismissive glance. Then he knelt down to the little cat-boy’s level. He ruffled the blanket-covered head without trying to look underneath. His tone was a mixture of sternness, threat, and a strange hint of gloating. “You got caught, didn’t you? When we get back, your mother is going to ground you for a month.” Pip’s face fell instantly. He pouted. “Can’t you not tell Mommy, Uncle?” “And what’s in it for me if I don’t?” Pip, still clutching my hand, darted his eyes around before they landed on me. He tugged excitedly at the man’s coat. “Uncle! I found you a wife!” The boy’s declaration plunged the hallway into a sudden, icy silence. The man on the floor slowly rose to his feet. His perpetually frosty expression finally cracked, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “My wife?” 5 I held the little cat-boy’s hand, grinding my back teeth. If his guardian weren’t standing right here, I’d be giving this kid a serious talking-to. And him! What was he smiling about? Was this funny to him? So what if he was handsome? “Haha, he’s just kidding. I’m not.” The man, whose name I still didn’t know, just nodded, his expression unreadable. “Alistair Streep. I’m Pip’s uncle.” I nodded back. “Nora Hayes. I’m…” The words “your wife” almost slipped out. Thankfully, I caught myself in time. But I had a sneaking suspicion Alistair knew exactly what I was about to say. Well, if he didn’t call me out on it, it meant he didn’t know. Yep. He definitely didn’t know. “I found Pip in an alley near the university. Don’t worry, no one else saw him. You can take him home now.” I gently nudged Pip toward Alistair, then ruffled his little head. Even though we’d only known each other for an hour, I’d grown quite fond of the little guy. But given our circumstances, this was probably the last time we’d ever see each other. Alistair took Pip’s hand but didn’t leave. Instead, he turned his gaze back to me. “If you have a moment, I’d like to discuss what happened with Pip. I hope I’m not imposing.” It clicked. I understood what he wanted to talk about. It had to be about keeping their secret. I stepped aside, holding the door open. “Come in. Don’t worry about your shoes. It’ll only take a minute.” I saw Alistair hesitate for a second. 6 In the end, he decided to take my advice and walked in with his shoes on. I gestured for the two of them to sit on the sofa. My apartment wasn’t very big, and suddenly having two extra people in it felt a bit strange. The sofa was now completely occupied. Fortunately, I didn’t mind. I pulled up a chair and sat opposite them. “Don’t worry. About Pip,” I glanced at Alistair, “and your family’s situation, I’ll keep it a complete secret. I promise I won’t tell a soul.” Hearing this, Alistair pinched Pip’s cheek. “You told her?” Pip gave a sheepish, guilty little smile. “Nora’s a good person! I knew she wouldn’t tell. And Uncle, please don’t tell Mommy.” Alistair ignored Pip’s plea, tapping him on the head. “No negotiation. Do you have any idea how serious this was? Go home and accept your punishment.” Watching them interact, I suddenly felt that Alistair wasn’t as unapproachable as he’d seemed at first. A small smile touched my lips. The next second, my eyes met Alistair’s. I quickly wiped the smile off my face. “I do trust you, Miss Hayes. But as you can imagine, a family like ours has… a great deal to worry about. Forgive me for asking, but did you happen to take any photos of Pip?” I shook my head. As shocking as the whole thing was, I never once considered telling anyone. So, taking pictures had never crossed my mind. Fearing he wouldn’t believe me, I unlocked my phone and opened my photo gallery, placing it in front of him. “You can check for yourself.” Alistair didn’t even glance at it, pushing the phone back to me. 7 “If you say you didn’t take any, then you didn’t. I believe you.” I nodded and put my phone away. So, what now? Alistair didn’t seem inclined to speak, so I hesitated for a moment before asking, “Can I ask you a few questions? They might be a bit… personal.” Alistair nodded. “You can ask. If it’s something I can’t answer, I simply won’t.” I was a bit taken aback. Professor Streep was certainly direct. But direct was good; it made communication easier. I pointed at Pip. “So, people like you… non-humans… I guess that’s the right term? Can you live among regular humans?” Alistair rested his hands on his knees, his posture impeccably elegant. He made my cheap sofa look like a luxury item. “There are more of us in this world than you might think. You just don’t know it. We all hide our true nature when living in human society. We also have our own governing bodies. If there’s an accident, or if someone uses their abilities to harm a human, they are punished. So you have nothing to worry about.” I felt like my brain was overloading with new information. But then again, it’s a wide, weird world. It was plausible. But… if Pip said his whole family was like him, then… My gaze drifted to the top of Alistair’s head. So, was Alistair a kitty-cat too? Did his tail wag when he was happy, just like Pip’s? Just picturing it, with Alistair’s stern face, I knew I had to stop. Any further and I’d turn into a total creep. “Oh, I see.” 8 “Do you age like humans?” “Yes. Our lifespans are similar to humans. We get sick, and we die. Aside from occasionally reverting to our true forms and retaining some of our original traits, there’s no difference.” Hearing him say that, my curiosity spiked. I hadn’t noticed any feline characteristics on him. Was he secretly obsessed with catnip? Did he love having his hair stroked? “So what are your traits?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. The next moment, I felt like I was falling into the world of his eyes. They were stunning, sparkling with light. His true form must be a beautiful cat. Suddenly, a teasing glint appeared in their depths. “If they’re hidden traits, then naturally, I can’t just tell anyone.” I felt a pang of disappointment. “Oh. Okay.” “But I hope one day you’ll be the one to discover them.” I highly doubted that. What were the chances of running into so many non-humans in one lifetime? Still, I nodded. “We’ll see.” After a few more minutes of conversation, Alistair’s phone rang. He got up, ready to take Pip home. As they were leaving, he tried to give me back the blanket from Pip’s head. I stopped him. “Let him keep it on. My neighborhood is pretty busy.” Alistair gave me a long, deep look, then nodded. I watched him carry Pip toward the elevator, about to head back inside. But before I took a step, I heard Pip’s loud voice echo down the hall. “Uncle, you didn’t get your wife’s number! How are you going to talk to her later if you don’t get her number? Go back and get it!” At his words, I turned my head and met Alistair’s slightly embarrassed gaze. Then I watched, stunned, as the man walked back to me and held out his phone. “Shall we? We shouldn’t let the kid’s efforts go to waste.” “…Okay.” 9 It was only after he’d left that I realized how foolish I’d just been. And Alistair’s words… they sounded a bit ambiguous, didn’t they? The kid’s efforts. Looking at the new contact on my phone, I had to admit, it was all thanks to the little cat-boy’s efforts. Next time I saw him, I’d have to thank him properly. Though, I figured the chances of anything happening between me and Alistair were slim to none. We weren’t even the same species! After tidying up, I fell into bed. I thought I’d be too wired to sleep, but I was out like a light. After that day, I heard nothing from Pip or Alistair. Although we had each other’s contact information, it didn’t seem to matter much. I didn’t dare to text him first, and he never texted me. It was like we were both playing a game of chicken, too reserved to make the first move. So much for the handsome mystery man. Life, however, had to go on. My company recently started a collaboration with a professor from the local university. “Heard you’re going to meet Professor Streep?” I was packing my bag, getting ready to head out, when my colleague, Sarah, sidled up to my desk. I’d known her long enough to recognize that tone. She was up to something. I checked the time. It was still early, so I sat back down. “Yeah. What’s up?” “Nothing with me. But you’re about to have something up.” “Is he a nightmare to work with?” “Nope. He’s ridiculously handsome. I bet you’ll see him and fall in love at first sight.” I scoffed. I’d seen my fair share of handsome men over the years. 10 Love at first sight? Not likely. That’s what I thought before I met him. After I met him, I had to admit, sometimes Sarah was spot on. Because the professor we were collaborating with was none other than Alistair Streep. He was a university professor! No wonder. No wonder when I first saw him, he reminded me of my high school principal. It all made sense now. “What a coincidence, Miss Hayes.” I managed a tight smile. “It really is. I never expected the person my company was working with would be you.” Alistair poured me a glass of water and gestured for me to sit. He wasn’t as icy as our first meeting, but he still had an intimidating presence. Clutching the glass, my mind raced, desperately searching for something to talk about. What should I say? “Pip was just talking about you the other day.” “Oh? Really? Well, you can bring him over to play sometime.” Alistair took off the glasses perched on his nose. “That might not be possible for a while.” “Huh?” “My sister has him grounded. He’s not allowed out to play. I trust you understand?” I thought back to our last encounter and nodded vigorously. I got it. I thought the punishment was just an empty threat, but it was real. Their family must be very strict. “By the way, Miss Hayes…” “Please, call me Nora. Miss Hayes sounds so formal.” A flicker of surprise crossed Alistair’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. “Alright, Nora. I was wondering if you’re free sometime soon. My sister would like to treat you to dinner, to thank you in person for what you did for Pip.” I hadn’t expected his sister to be so formal about it. I quickly waved my hands. 11 “Oh, no, that’s not necessary. I really didn’t do much.” Alistair didn’t say anything, just looked at me. But from his gaze, I could read a clear message: refusal was not an option. But having dinner with Alistair’s sister? I really wasn’t up for it. My social anxiety was already kicking in. So I pivoted, changing the subject back to work. “Professor Streep, if you really want to thank me, then I hope we can have a perfect collaboration. How does that sound?” Alistair smiled. “Even if you hadn’t said that, I would have cooperated fully. But since you’d rather not, I won’t insist. Perhaps some other time.” I breathed a sigh of relief. But I couldn’t help but think to myself, what, am I suddenly going to be an extrovert in the future? Whatever. I’d dodged it for now. My meeting with Alistair went smoothly. He was brilliant, and it was clear he’d done his homework on our company’s new product. There were virtually no gaps in his knowledge. Occasionally, one of his students would come in to see him. When they saw the two of us, they all had a strange look in their eyes. Having been a student myself, I knew that look. I knew exactly what they were thinking. I tried to step back, to create some distance between me and Alistair. But I hadn’t noticed the chair behind me. I lost my footing and started to fall backward. Alistair saw and lunged to catch me, but my momentum pulled him down with me. The result was an awkward, heart-stoppingly intimate pose. He was hovering over me, his hands braced on the chair next to my head, his gaze locked onto mine. “Professor Streep, I…” A knock came from the door. A student’s voice called out, only to die in his throat the moment he saw us. Awkward. So, so awkward. 12 “Sorry, sorry, Professor! I’ll come back later.” He even pulled the door shut on his way out. Oh, thank you so much for that. Alistair pushed himself up, his expression as calm and unruffled as ever. “Professor Streep, I think we’ve covered enough for today. I should get going. Goodbye.” I grabbed my things and practically fled. If I stayed a second longer, I was going to combust. After that day, the scene replayed itself in my dreams over and over. Because of it, I was almost afraid to contact Alistair. Every message was strictly professional. I avoided going to see him unless it was absolutely necessary. But this collaboration required me to see him. The next time I went to the university, the weather was not on my side. Just as I reached his office building, the sky opened up. It wasn’t just rain; it was a full-blown tempest. Damn it. I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I could only hope the storm would pass by the time I was done. I was running a little late, and the building was mostly empty, save for a few students I didn’t recognize. When I got to Alistair’s office, I knocked, but there was no answer. I tentatively tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I knew it was probably bad form, but waiting out here could take forever. I slowly pushed the door open just a crack. Peeking inside, I was suddenly yanked into the room. The door slammed shut, and I was pinned against it by a man’s body. The searing heat radiating from him told me something was terribly wrong. “Alistair… Professor Streep?” “It’s me.” Alistair seemed to be in agony, unable to support his own weight. He leaned heavily against me, his forehead resting on my shoulder. His breath, even through the fabric of my clothes, was scorching hot. And then came the final, fatal blow. I felt it. The same sensation as Pip’s tail. Only this time, it wasn’t at my ankle. It was higher, above my knee. A soft, furry tail coiled around my thigh. “Help me… I’m burning up.”

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Every Christmas since we married, Declan booked three international plane tickets. They were for him, his daughter Daisy, and his ex-wife. It was a tradition that started before I came into his life, and it continued year after year. When his phone rang with the special tone he had set for them, he answered right away. Daisy wanted to go to Switzerland this year, to the place where he and her mother once planned to marry. “She keeps asking what I would look like in a wedding dress there,” his ex said, her voice bright and amused. Declan did not hesitate. He began making arrangements for a bridal gown fitting for Daisy. His ex-wife paused, then asked, “But what about Vivian?” “Vivian understands,” Declan replied, not lowering his voice even though I was sitting beside him. “She would not be upset with a child. I promised Daisy she would be my only child. It is only a dress. Her happiness comes first.” My hand closed around the ultrasound report in my pocket. I smoothed the paper gently, then released it. All right, Declan. If your promise is to have only one child, then my child and I will help you keep that promise. 1 Declan flew back to Boston right on our wedding anniversary. The moment he walked through the door, he pulled a signature orange designer box from behind his back. But before he could even hand it to me, that familiar music box melody chimed again. He froze for a second, then answered it anyway. “I am busy right now.” On the other end of the line, his ex-wife Vanessa spoke through thick, theatrical sobs. “I know you are busy. But Daisy just got home and she has been crying hysterically for you.” Declan’s posture instantly went rigid. “Did you tell her I didn’t want her again?” He hung up the phone and looked at me, his eyes swimming with genuine guilt. He lowered his voice, adopting that soft, placating tone I knew too well. “You have been mentioning how much you love this bag. Look, I really need to check on Daisy. Vanessa cannot handle her alone…” Before I could say a word, he turned around and walked right back out the door. I was already used to it. As long as his ex-wife and daughter needed something, I would forever be second place. By ten o’clock that night, Declan still had not returned. My phone vibrated on the nightstand. Declan’s voice sounded heavy with exhaustion. “I won’t be able to come home for the next couple of days.” “Vanessa’s mother has terminal cancer. We have been keeping our divorce a secret from her so she doesn’t lose hope. I need to go back to their hometown with them and stay for a few days…” Listening to the hum of the highway tires through the receiver, a hollow laugh escaped my lips. “So your perfect family of three is already on the road, and you are only telling me now?” My chest felt incredibly tight. I pressed end before he could utter another excuse. 2 Declan returned to the city three days later. The very first thing he did was rush to his office to put out corporate fires. By the time he finally got home, the sun was setting. I was just walking through the front door myself. He reached out tentatively, trying to pull me into a hug. Even his embrace felt drained and obligatory. “Thank you for holding the fort these past few days, honey.” I shifted the heavy bags of groceries in my hands, forcing a faint smile. “I have something to tell you. But you look dead on your feet. Go get some sleep first.” Seeing that I wasn’t throwing a tantrum, his shoulders finally dropped. He slipped off his jacket and collapsed into the sofa. “Okay. Whatever my wife is cooking, I am eating every last bite.” He was fast asleep before he even finished the sentence. Playing the devoted son-in-law to a dying woman while taking care of his ex-wife and child must have been truly exhausting. I stood there in the quiet living room, gripping my medical report. I squeezed the paper several times, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to wake him. The next day was Saturday. I had lost all appetite for cooking, so I told Declan to take me out. Knowing he was in the wrong, he canceled a string of morning meetings, kept his phone on silent, and spent the entire car ride carefully making small talk. I picked a quiet, upscale sushi lounge. As I set the menu aside, he slid a velvet jewelry box across the table. Inside was a stunning, custom engraved gold bangle. The exact one I had liked on Instagram just yesterday. I snapped the box shut and looked up at him. He didn’t say anything. He just watched me with a soft, indulgent smile. The warm amber lighting of the restaurant softened the sharp angles of his face, making him look incredibly tender. For a fleeting second, my anger began to melt. Maybe it was time to tell him. I pulled my lips into a small smile. “So, I wanted to tell you…” Before the words fully left my mouth, Declan’s eyes darted to his phone screen lighting up on the table. The tenderness vanished, replaced by a flash of annoyance, quickly followed by deep anxiety. “Vanessa has called twenty times. I am worried something happened to Daisy. Let me just step outside and call her back, okay?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He grabbed his phone, pushed his chair back, and hurried out of the private dining room. When he returned, he wore an expression I had memorized by heart. A thin layer of guilt masking a total mental absence. I looked at him standing there, struggling to find the right excuse. I suddenly felt so incredibly tired. “Declan. If you walk out of here today, I promise you will regret it.” “Vivian.” His tone dropped, laced with clear displeasure. “Don’t do this right now. Daisy had a severe allergic reaction and is in the emergency room. Vanessa simply cannot handle this by herself.” A bitter scoff clawed its way out of my throat. “She has no friends? No family? She can’t afford to hire a private nurse?” The guilt in Declan’s eyes evaporated, replaced entirely by cold anger. “I am Daisy’s father! You…” He turned around and walked out to get his coat. He didn’t finish his sentence, but I heard it loud and clear in my head. [She isn’t your kid, so of course your heart doesn’t ache for her.] There was a hierarchy to emergencies in his life. And my matters would never, ever reach the top of his list. A few moments later, the waitress gently opened the sliding door. Seeing that I was completely alone, she pressed her lips together and asked softly, “Miss, would you like boxes for the rest of this? Are you about finished?” I looked up at her. I couldn’t tell if my vision was blurred from the steam of the green tea or the tears welling in my eyes. I gave a slow nod. “Yes. I am about finished.” 3 Later that evening, I called Declan’s number. His ex-wife answered the phone. “Her dad just fell asleep next to Daisy. I will go wake him up.” “Don’t bother. It isn’t important.” Vanessa ignored my dismissal, continuing in a sickeningly sweet tone. “Her dad is just like this. He promised Daisy she would be the only child he ever has, so he spoils her rotten.” Listening to her gloat, my fingers dug into the edge of my pregnancy report. If Daisy was his only child, then what the hell was growing inside my stomach? The very next afternoon, Vanessa showed up at my front door. When I opened it, she gave me a polite, practiced nod. But her eyes immediately darted over my shoulder, critically assessing the house. It was a beautiful two-story brick colonial we had purchased after our wedding. I had designed and decorated every single inch of it myself. Clearly, it wasn’t to her taste. But right now, the only thing I found distasteful was her uninvited presence. “Can I help you?” She pulled her gaze back and offered a thin, calculated smile. “Daisy’s dad is going to wait until her fever breaks before coming home. I came to pack a few changes of clothes for him.” I didn’t blink. I turned my head and called out to my housekeeper. “Martha. Please grab the black duffel bag from his side of the walk-in closet.” When Martha brought it down, I pushed the heavy bag toward Vanessa. “There is enough in there to last him a while.” Vanessa took the handles, eyeing Martha before looking back at me with a complicated expression. “Right.” I reached out to shut the door, but she quickly wedged her hand against the frame. She bit her lower lip, forcing out a quiet, hesitant sentence. “You know, back when we first got married, he promised to build me a little garden just like the one you have out front.” I had no idea why she was telling me this. Did she honestly think I, the woman who met Declan two full years after their divorce, would feel guilty? Martha stepped forward, her face stern. “Mrs. Wright needs to rest now.” Without another word, Martha firmly shut the door in Vanessa’s face. I let out a tired laugh. “Martha, have you been watching too many soap operas? Since when do you call me Mrs. Wright?” Martha had been working for me since before I even got married. She looked at me with deep, protective frustration. “Vivian, you are just too soft! His ex-wife comes marching up to your doorstep. Do you really not see what she is trying to do?” I offered a bitter smile. Of course I saw it. Vanessa using her daughter’s health to blur the boundaries and hint at a reconciliation wasn’t anything new. She had done it dozens of times. “The problem isn’t her.” The problem was Declan. Martha poured me a glass of warm milk. Her eyes drifted down to my flat stomach. She looked completely heartbroken. “You still haven’t told Mr. Wright?” I shook my head. “You stubborn girl.” That night, Declan finally called to ask if I was asleep. “Where are you right now?” I asked quietly. “I am at a hotel near Vanessa’s place. Work has been a nightmare lately, and every time Daisy wakes up and doesn’t see me, she starts crying. I really can’t pull myself away.” His exhausted voice was laced with a desperate need for me to yield. “I know I was in the wrong at the restaurant the other day. I am so sorry. Did you see the transfer I sent you?” I had. That afternoon, a massive sum of money had hit my bank account. It was his classic playbook for buying forgiveness. A lump formed in my throat, choking off my air. “Declan, can you please just come home? I…” He cut me off. His tone was gentle, but the underlying impatience was impossible to miss. “You have always been the understanding one. Just give me a few more days, alright? Go to sleep.” The dial tone echoed in my ear. He had chosen someone else. Again. From the day we started dating, I had been constantly forced to be “understanding.” That single word was a physical weight crushing the breath out of my lungs. To the outside world, Declan was the ultimate catch. Even as a divorced man, he was wealthy, handsome, and fiercely responsible to his child. To me, he was generous and attentive. Our life looked absolutely flawless on paper. Only I knew that beneath the beautiful facade, this marriage was riddled with bullet holes. 4 Declan finally came home at dawn, two days later. I had been working brutal overtime hours, so I took the morning off to catch up on sleep. When I opened my eyes, I found him kneeling beside the bed. One of his hands was wrapped tightly around my wrist, his forehead resting against the mattress. The moment I tried to pull my hand away, he woke up. Declan gently pressed me back down, brushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His voice was thick with sleep. “You’re awake? Are you feeling sick? What do you want to eat?” I didn’t want to talk to him. I just wanted to get out of bed. He let out a heavy sigh. He stayed on his knees, shifting closer to press a soft kiss to the back of my hand. His eyes were rimmed with red, though I couldn’t tell if it was from exhaustion or crying. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Martha must have lost her patience and told him herself. “I only found out recently myself. Let me up.” He quickly stood to help me sit up against the headboard, his hands lingering carefully on my shoulders. “What are you craving? Martha cooks a bit too salty, so I already hired a specialized maternity nutritionist. Martha will stay on just to keep you company. I also hired a landscaping crew so you don’t have to bend over to prune your flowers anymore. Your job is too stressful. Why don’t you quit and come work at my company?” He kept rambling, listing off arrangements. The crushing fatigue of the past few days seemed completely washed away by the news. He was genuinely happy. But every single arrangement he made was flawlessly efficient. Practiced. Because this wasn’t his first time doing this. A sharp, acidic bitterness pooled in my stomach. Sensing my dark mood, Declan stopped talking. He leaned in, trying to kiss me. When I turned my face away, he grabbed my hand tighter. He placed his other, perfectly warm palm flat against my lower abdomen. His eyes were filled with desperate sincerity. “I know I made you miserable these past few days. But I swear to you…” “I will treat this baby just as well as I treat Daisy.” There was a rare, pleading vulnerability in his gaze. “Please don’t be angry anymore, okay? It isn’t good for your body. You can punish me however you want. Anything you ask, I will do it.” I slowly pulled my hand out of his grip and looked him dead in the eye. “So, are you going to tell Vanessa and Daisy?” The light in his eyes instantly dimmed. His heavy hesitation gave me all the answers I needed. The bitterness in my heart bled into a mocking, frozen smile on my lips. “What? Is our child a dirty secret? Or do you expect me to keep being ‘understanding’?” “Understanding that you will only ever acknowledge Daisy as your child in public?” He panicked, cutting me off. “What do you mean, a secret? The entire company has known you are my wife since the day we got engaged!” I shoved his hand away. He had to grip my shoulders to force me to look at him. “Just wait until the baby is a little older. Maybe one or two years old. When Daisy actually sees her little brother or sister, she will naturally accept them.” My nails dug so hard into my palms they drew blood. I finally screamed at him. “Why the hell should they have to wait?!” Why does a child, born perfectly legally into our marriage, have to wait in the shadows for someone else’s permission to exist? Why do I, a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong, have to constantly pay the emotional tax for his failed marriage? Declan’s eyes turned cold. He tightened his grip on my shoulders, using the same commanding stare he used to subjugate board members at his company. Then, he finally said the words I knew he had been holding in his chest for years. “You knew exactly what my situation was before you married me, Vivian. I never lied to you.” 5 That screaming match ended with us sleeping in separate rooms. It marked the beginning of a suffocating, icy cold war. Between the crushing fatigue of my first trimester and my high-pressure job, I was passing out the second my head hit the pillow every night. But at midnight, the ringtone echoing from the guest room down the hall still woke me up. Even with my door shut tight and the blankets pulled over my head, Vanessa’s drunken, sobbing voice slithered through the cracks. I was used to this too. On my birthday, our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or Thanksgiving, she always, without fail, found a reason to stage a crisis. I was just about to pull the duvet back over my head when my bedroom door slowly clicked open. Declan stepped quietly into the room, clearly checking to see if I was awake. I sat straight up and stared at him. By some sick coincidence, we were both wearing the matching silk pajamas we bought on our honeymoon. Staring at each other in the dark room, it felt unbelievably pathetic. “Vanessa drank too much again,” he said, breaking the heavy silence. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Daisy is home alone with her. I need to go check on them. I will be back soon.” I looked at the heavy wool coat already draped over his arm. “You know this is going to make me angry, right?” He pressed his lips into a hard line. The days of cold war had left him looking absolutely drained, yet his attitude remained gentle but unyielding. “Don’t overthink this. Daisy is just a little kid. I will be back before you know it. You are pregnant. Just get some rest.” I walked out to the second-floor landing. I gripped the wooden railing and watched the little glass suncatcher hanging by the front door sway gently as he closed the heavy oak door behind him. We had bought that suncatcher on our very first vacation together. Under a sky full of fireworks, he had smiled at me and promised that every single day of our future would be filled with sunlight. But the sun wasn’t going to shine anymore. The next time we stood face to face, I was going to ask for a divorce. 6 Two days later, I finally saw Declan again. Inside a hospital room. And Vanessa was there too. My hospital visit wasn’t a major crisis. I had been rear-ended on my way to work. The doctor simply recommended I stay for a 48-hour observation due to the pregnancy. When Declan burst into my hospital room, the sheer, frantic terror on his face and the explosive rage he unleashed on the poor driver who hit me almost made me forget we were in the middle of a cold war. “I am so sorry.” The driver stood there, looking completely miserable. “I just zoned out for a second. I will cover all the medical bills.” “Who gives a damn about your money?!” Declan practically snarled, cutting the man off. He stared at me with agonizing relief before whipping his head back to the driver. “If anything happens to my wife or my baby, I will destroy your life.” Seeing him play the fiercely protective husband was a jarring, ironic contrast to the sight of his back walking out on me two nights ago. I let out a soft laugh and told the driver he could leave. “The doctor said I am perfectly fine. Besides… Mr. Wright is a very busy man. Who disturbed you enough to bring you all the way down here?” My sarcastic jab made the veins in the back of his hand bulge. “Your dashcam is linked to my cloud account. Vivian, can we please stop fighting?” He opened the thermos of warm soup he had brought with him, pushing it toward me with a pleading look. “You practically scared me to death today.” I was just about to answer when someone knocked on the door. The knock and the door swinging open happened almost simultaneously. It was Vanessa. She also had access to Declan’s vehicle tracking. Because Daisy was “used to her father’s car,” Vanessa borrowed his spare SUV all the time. “Phew, I tracked your car’s GPS all the way here. I had to ask four different nurses to find the right room.” Vanessa panted slightly, pushing the door shut behind her. “Vivian, are you feeling any better?” Declan frowned. He instinctively stepped in front of my bed, shielding me. “What are you doing here?” Vanessa immediately slipped into the tone of a complaining, exasperated wife. “What do you think? You weren’t answering your phone, so I had to track you down. Daisy’s parent-teacher conference is in an hour. You promised her you would go. Did you completely forget?” Realization dawned on Declan’s face. He subconsciously glanced back at me. I let out a sharp, mocking laugh. Hearing that, he pulled back his gaze and shook his head slightly at Vanessa. “You go this time.” Vanessa’s friendly smile vanished. She shot me a dirty look, and her eyes instantly filled with tears of betrayal. “Excuse me? Declan, just because you have a new baby on the way, you are completely abandoning Daisy?!” Before Declan could even open his mouth to defend himself, she steamrolled right over him, playing the fierce protector of her child. “Daisy talks about how much she loves Auntie Vivian every single day! And this is how you two repay her? By pushing her aside like garbage?!” “That is enough!” Declan’s brow furrowed deeply. “My wife was just in a car accident and is under medical observation. Can’t you handle one school meeting by yourself?” “I don’t care!” Vanessa glared at me, her voice breaking into a dramatic sob. “Daisy still doesn’t know you are having a new baby. If you don’t show up today, I am telling her the truth. It is exactly like they say. A stepmother makes a stepfather.” “Get out.” I cut her off with a voice made of pure ice. I clutched my stomach, fighting back a wave of nausea. “Get out of my room.” Vanessa froze. She clearly hadn’t expected me to drop all pretense of politeness. She immediately looked at Declan for backup. Seeing that Declan was already reaching for the nurse call button to have her removed, Vanessa’s face flushed with fury. “Fine! I am leaving. Enjoy your precious bed rest.” The door slammed shut with a deafening crack. I closed my eyes, my voice hollow. “If you want to go with her, go.” Declan grabbed my shoulders, his eyes searching my face desperately. “I will only be gone for two hours, max. If anything hurts, anything at all, you call me immediately. Okay?” He pushed the bowl of soup aside. “This is already cold. I will have them make a fresh batch. Wait for me.” The door clicked shut again. The exact second Declan’s shadow disappeared from the frosted glass window, my phone buzzed. A text message popped up on the screen. [Your appointment for the medical termination has been confirmed.] Declan. This time, no one is going to wait for you.

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1 To save me from terminal cancer, my best friend Sophie and I bound ourselves to the Twin-Destiny System. We successfully captured the hearts of the two Sinclair brothers, becoming the envy of high society. But seven years later, I was left discarded and despised by both my husband and my own son. Meanwhile, Sophie was sent to prison simply for ‘bullying’ her husband’s precious childhood sweetheart. On the day of her release, she looked at me with hollow eyes. “Take care of yourself, Diana.” Then, she sprinted directly into the chaotic traffic. In a heartbeat, a speeding freight truck crushed her delicate frame into a million pieces. … Sophie left this world without a single hesitation. The sheer weight of the agony shattered my mind. The moment I saw her body torn apart on the asphalt, my heart seized, and the world went black. When I finally opened my eyes, the man sitting beside my hospital bed was my workaholic husband. Alexander Sinclair, the untouchable CEO of the Sinclair Empire. It was the first time I had seen him in two months. He shot me a cold, emotionless glance. “You’re awake.” I ignored him entirely, ripping the IV from my arm and stumbling toward the door. In the hallway lounge, his younger brother Sebastian was gently holding a photograph of his childhood sweetheart, his adopted sister Bella. A sickeningly tender smile graced his lips. Seeing their nauseating display of affection brought Sophie’s despair-filled eyes flashing back into my mind. In that instant, every ounce of my rationality burned to ash. I charged forward like a wild animal, lunging at Sebastian and slapping him across the face with everything I had. Bella screamed, jumping to her feet. “Diana! What gives you the right to hit Sebastian?” I answered by driving my palm into her cheek, sending her tumbling onto the leather sofa. “Don’t worry, you little bitch. Your turn is next.” Bella looked up at Sebastian with tear-filled eyes. Her porcelain face was twisted into a mask of pure, pitiful grievance. She whimpered softly. “Sebastian…” Sebastian instantly stepped in front of her, glaring at me. “Diana, have you completely lost your mind? I get it. This is Sophie’s doing. That toxic woman must have poisoned your head with lies again!” That bastard. Protecting his mistress was one thing, but using this moment to trample on Sophie’s name was unforgivable. I swung at him again, landing blow after blow as I screamed, “You drove her to her death, and you still have the nerve to blame her? You murderer! Sophie’s only mistake was not dragging you two vile pieces of trash to hell with her!” Sebastian froze, his face draining of color. “What… what did you just say? Sophie is dead?” Of course. They didn’t know yet. Today was supposed to be the day she left prison, signed the divorce papers, and started a brand new life far away from the Sinclairs. But Bella had deliberately gone to the prison gates to torment her, pushing Sophie into taking that final, fatal step. Alexander grabbed my wrist from behind, his brows knitting in sharp displeasure. “Diana, stop this! Are you insane?” I twisted out of his grip and slapped him squarely across the jaw. In his shocked eyes, I saw the reflection of my own deranged, tear-streaked face. “What? I hit your precious brother, and suddenly you know how to intervene? Where were you when they were teaming up to torture my Sophie? Were you deaf, or just dead?” Alexander’s expression turned glacial. “If she hadn’t used underhanded tactics to drug Sebastian and force him into bed, he never would have looked twice at her. She calculated every step just to climb the social ladder into the Sinclair family. Now that she finally secured her spot as a Sinclair wife, why would she ever kill herself? Diana, stop letting her manipulate you.” Bella chimed in from the sofa. “He’s right. I even heard someone say they saw Sophie walking down the street earlier today. Diana, she’s playing you. You care about her so much, but she’s just using you to tear our family apart. Her intentions are malicious.” A flicker of relief passed through Sebastian’s eyes as he readily swallowed their lies. His anger returned in full force. “I never realized just how deeply manipulative Sophie truly is. Diana, you tell her this for me. If she tries to drive another wedge between us, I will divorce her for real!” Looking at the absolute hypocrisy of these three, a roaring fire consumed my chest. Yes, Sophie had taken advantage of a chaotic situation to accelerate the marriage. But she wasn’t the one who drugged him that night. She offered herself to Sebastian solely to complete the System’s mission faster, desperate to save my life. She only cared about keeping me breathing. She never gave a damn about the Sinclair fortune. But the foolish girl had accidentally fallen in love with a monster. I remembered her blushing face as she once told me, “Diana, marrying Sebastian is the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m going to give him a house full of kids and love him until our hair turns gray!” And in the end? All she got was a heartless betrayal and hair matted with her own blood on the pavement. The pain in my chest was so sharp I could barely breathe. I slapped Alexander one more time, my voice trembling with raw hatred. “If you insult Sophie one more time, I will kill you.” Before the words fully left my mouth, a small shadow launched itself at me like a cannonball, knocking me hard against the floor. It was my seven-year-old son, Oliver. He glared at me with pure venom. “Don’t you dare hit my dad! Get out! We don’t want you here!” 2 Seeing Oliver look at me with the fierce hatred of an enemy felt like a sledgehammer crushing my ribs. Truthfully, Alexander and I never had a grand, sweeping romance. From the very beginning, I knew he didn’t marry me out of love. He only used me to rebel against his controlling mother. And I willingly became his pawn just to secure the life points I needed to survive my cancer. But before we had a child, we actually shared a quiet, respectful life. There were moments of genuine warmth. I had foolishly believed we might grow old together like a normal couple. Everything changed the day Oliver was born. Alexander’s mother took my baby away from me. She claimed a woman of my background was unfit to raise a Sinclair heir. She moved Oliver into the main estate and hired an elite live-in nanny. I was only allowed to visit my own son during strictly scheduled appointments. I begged Alexander, crying until my voice broke, asking him to bring Oliver home. His family only mocked me. I thought my husband would stand up for me. Instead, he looked at me with cold incomprehension. “Do you honestly believe you can provide a better upbringing for him than my parents can?” In his eyes, his son was destined to be molded into a corporate titan, a flawless machine just like him. He never felt that a child needed a mother’s warmth. Nor did he care that a mother needed her child. That was the exact day whatever small affection I had for Alexander Sinclair was completely extinguished. Oliver’s growing coldness and disgust toward me finally erased any reason I had left to stay in this house. If it weren’t for staying close to Sophie, I would have escaped this gilded cage years ago. And now, she was gone. It was time for me to leave the Sinclairs and this house full of monsters behind. Once my mind was made up, I cut all contact with the family. I went straight to the funeral home to handle Sophie’s arrangements. Her body was too shattered to be pieced completely back together. Thankfully, this foolish girl who always loved looking pretty had managed to keep her face relatively intact. After the mortician’s careful work, she looked beautiful and peaceful once again. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks as I stood by her casket. “I’m so sorry, Sophie. If you didn’t have to keep me alive, you never would have married that bastard… Dammit… it should have been me!” That same afternoon, Sophie was moved to the incinerator. I paid the staff extra to let me stay and watch her final moments in this world. I thought I had accepted her death. But watching the roaring flames consume her, a visceral, tearing pain ripped through my soul. Thirty years of memories flashed before my eyes. I saw her smiling face. I heard her sweet, teasing voice. “You’re going to be my best friend forever, right, Diana?” In a split second, something completely snapped inside me. I stood up, stepping toward the raging fire. “I’m right here, Sophie. I’ll come with you.” I lunged toward the incinerator doors, but a strong pair of arms yanked me backward. It was an older staff member. He held me back with a desperate grip. “Don’t do it, kid! Your friend wouldn’t want you throwing your life away like this!” The shock of his voice pulled me back to reality. I raised my hand and slapped myself hard across the face. What the hell was I doing? Sophie’s murderers were still living comfortably. How could I die before making them pay? An hour later, I walked numbly through the corridors of the funeral home, clutching Sophie’s urn to my chest. Suddenly, a sickeningly familiar, melodramatic crying echoed from down the hall. I turned my head and saw Alexander, Sebastian, and Bella standing in a mourning parlor right next to Sophie’s. Bella was weeping hysterically. Sebastian had his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, whispering sweet comforts into her ear. So they finally believed Sophie was dead. But to bring his mistress to the funeral home? Did Sebastian want Sophie’s soul to know no peace? I stormed into the parlor, my voice trembling with rage. “Sebastian, you brought this whore here? Do you have no conscience left?” But as I stepped closer, the words died in my throat. They weren’t here for Sophie. In the center of the parlor, surrounded by lavish white flowers, was a framed photograph of a small pet turtle. Bella was cradling a tiny, custom-made urn, crying as if her world had ended. She looked like a fragile, heartbroken victim. Alexander stepped forward, his voice a low, warning growl. “Diana, what kind of psychotic episode are you having now?” His eyes dropped to the black urn pressed tightly against my chest. His brow furrowed. “Why are you here? And what… what is that in your hands?” I let out a bitter, hollow laugh. “What does it look like? Your mother’s ashes?” Alexander was stunned by the venom in my voice. Before he could snap back, Bella sniffled and looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “Diana, why are you doing this? Don’t tell me you’re still trying to push that lie about Sophie being dead. Nobody here is going to believe you. Just leave. I don’t want strangers ruining Tommy the Turtle’s funeral.” Sebastian immediately chimed in. “She’s right. Diana, get out.” 3 A blinding rage overtook me. I surged forward, slapping the tiny urn right out of Bella’s hands. It shattered on the marble floor. “Your actual wife dies, and you don’t even bat an eye! You mock her! But a damn turtle dies, and you book a luxury parlor and mourn it like it’s your flesh and blood? Sebastian, you make me sick!” Bella let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Ah! Tommy! My Tommy! Diana, why are you so evil?!” I sneered. “I’m evil? Your turtle dying is karma! The ones who deserve to be in these urns are you two!” To my shock, Oliver charged at me, his small face flushed with anger. “You bad woman! Don’t you dare yell at my uncle and Bella! She loves her turtle like family because she has a kind heart! You have no right to be mean to her!” I ground my teeth together. “Shut your mouth, you foolish little brat! Aunt Sophie loved you! She treated you like gold! And you repay her by defending these monsters? You’re just as blind and ungrateful as the rest of this rotten family!” Bella immediately stepped in, playing the saint. “Diana, please, don’t yell at Oliver. I know you hate me. But you can’t help who you fall in love with!” She suddenly stepped closer, grabbing my forearm in a desperate, pleading grip. “I know you resent me, but please, leave us alone! The baby in my womb is innocent. Stop this… I’ll leave Sebastian. I’ll disappear forever.” Alarm bells rang in my head. I tried to yank my arm away, but before I could even apply force, Bella threw herself backward, putting on a pathetic display of being violently shoved. Sebastian’s face went white. He dove forward, catching her before she hit the floor. “Bella!” he screamed in panic. Alexander erupted. He lunged at me, his fingers digging painfully into my arm. “Don’t touch me!” I thrashed against him. Seeing me protect the urn, Alexander’s eyes narrowed in disgust. He forcefully ripped the black box from my grasp. “Even now, you’re still putting on this sick play!” My heart stopped. Before I could scream, I watched helplessly as Alexander hurled Sophie’s urn against the hard floor. The ceramic shattered. The gray ashes spilled across the polished marble. “Alexander, I’ll kill you!” I shrieked, my voice tearing my throat. I dropped to my knees, frantically trying to scoop the dust into my hands. But Oliver ran over and viciously kicked the broken pieces of the urn, scattering Sophie’s ashes even further across the room. All logic vanished. I lunged at the boy, my fingers wrapping tightly around his throat. He stared up at me, his eyes wide with genuine terror as he saw the murderous hatred on my face. Alexander grabbed my wrists, twisting them painfully until I let go. He hauled me up from the floor by my collar. His dark eyes boiled with a lethal fury. “Diana, you laid hands on your own son. You really have gone completely insane. Today, I am going to teach you a lesson you will never forget.” He dragged me forcefully out of the room and shoved me into the dark, silent parlor next door. But as he stepped inside and looked at the empty, shadowy room, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. His grip on my shoulder was bone-crushing. My arm felt like it was being ripped from the socket. Alexander looked at me like I was the most vile creature on earth, pinning me against the wall to force an apology for Bella. “This is your last warning, Diana. If you don’t apologize to Bella right now, I am filing for divorce.” A second later, Sebastian walked into the parlor, carrying a weeping Bella in his arms. He looked down at me like a god showing mercy to a peasant. “Diana, no matter what twisted games Sophie played, she is still technically my wife. If you just get on your knees and sincerely apologize to Bella…” My body shook with absolute fury. I leaned forward and sank my teeth deeply into Alexander’s wrist. He grunted in pain and released me. I darted toward the altar table at the front of the room. I grabbed the black cloth covering the center frame and ripped it away. With a scream, I threw the heavy wooden portrait directly at Sebastian’s face. “You all deserve to die! Every single one of you!” The portrait struck Sebastian hard. “You think I’m lying? Open your damn eyes and look at whose funeral this is!” Blood immediately began to trickle down Sebastian’s forehead. The portrait clattered to the floor, landing face up. Staring back at them was the beautiful, tragic face of Sophie. 4 Sebastian stood frozen, looking as if he had been struck by lightning. His trembling hands slowly reached down to pick up the photograph. “No… no, it’s impossible. How could she be dead? She was only sentenced to three months… I just wanted to teach her a lesson…” Alexander’s expression shifted into profound shock and regret. He looked at me, his mouth opening, but no words came out. Suddenly, Sebastian’s eyes snapped toward the hallway. Pure horror contorted his features. “The urn… the ashes…” I pushed past them, dropping to the floor in the hallway, painstakingly scooping the scattered gray dust back into the broken remnants of the box. Sebastian rushed over, dropping to his knees to help me. I shoved him backward with all my strength. “Get off! You have no right to touch her!” Sebastian stayed kneeling on the marble floor, tears finally spilling down his cheeks. “I’m sorry… God, I’m so sorry…” Just then, Bella clutched her stomach, her face twisting in agony. “Sebastian… my stomach hurts so much… The baby… I think something is wrong with the baby.” Sebastian froze. He looked at me, torn. But after only a second of hesitation, he stood up and lifted Bella into his arms. Look at that. Even knowing Sophie had been burned to ash, he still chose Bella. Bella sobbed against his chest, playing the understanding martyr. “Sebastian, just call an ambulance… I can go to the hospital alone. You… you should stay here with Sophie.” “No,” Sebastian said, his voice tight with worry. “Right now, you are the most important thing.” He shot me a deeply guilty look. “Diana, I’ll take her to the emergency room and come right back.” I didn’t even lift my head. My eyes remained dead and vacant as I continued sweeping the dust into my hands. But as I heard his footsteps fading down the hall, a bitter sorrow washed over me. Sophie gave everything for this man. This was the man she loved. A moment later, Alexander marched Oliver back into the hallway. He forced the boy to his knees in front of me. Oliver seemed to finally realize the gravity of what he had done. He kneeled quietly, his head bowed. I didn’t want to look at either of them. Alexander frowned, his voice stiff and awkward. “I… I didn’t know Sophie was actually… But if she hadn’t tormented Bella in the past, we wouldn’t have assumed she was lying.” I looked up at him. This man, whom time and wealth had treated so kindly, was the same man who once made my heart race. Now, he looked as repulsive as a rat crawling out of a sewer. My voice was dead calm. “Let’s get a divorce.” Alexander flinched. “Are you crazy?” I let out a dry laugh. “You’re the crazy one. What makes you think I’d stay married to you after watching you desecrate Sophie’s remains?” He gestured toward the boy on the floor. “What about Oliver? He’s your son. I thought all you ever wanted was to bring him home and raise him yourself.” I stared at Oliver with absolute disgust. “I don’t want him anymore. He’s nothing but the toxic byproduct of Sinclair genetics.” The cemetery staff finally arrived. I ignored Alexander entirely and followed them to the burial grounds. After Sophie’s plot was sealed, I stood there tracing the outline of her photograph on the cold stone. Remembering the thirty years of laughter we shared, the grief finally swallowed me whole. As I walked out of the cemetery gates, Alexander’s car pulled up. He looked exhausted. He stared at me, his brow heavily furrowed. There was a trace of pity in his eyes, but his words remained clinical. “I understand you are grieving. But Sophie chose to end her own life. You shouldn’t take your anger out on an innocent child. And you shoved Bella. She almost suffered a miscarriage. She’s in the hospital right now trying to save the pregnancy.” I looked at him with ice in my veins. “Did you rush all the way out here just to demand justice for her?” Alexander looked genuinely stung by my tone. “Do you have to speak to me like that? Do you have any idea what my mother would do to you if I hadn’t stepped in to protect you?” Of course. The entire Sinclair family adored Bella. She was the daughter of his mother’s late best friend, the adopted golden child of the estate. And now she was carrying a Sinclair heir. “Are you done?” I asked coldly. “If you’re done, get the hell out of my sight.” I walked past him. He grabbed my arm, pulling me forcefully against his chest. His eyes softened with frustration and helplessness. “Diana, please stop this tantrum. Come home. “I know losing Sophie hurts. But the living are more important than the dead. Don’t you realize I haven’t slept a wink since you left? Oliver regrets what he did. He’s been crying, asking for his mother. “Come home. We will stay by your side. We can heal from this together.” Hearing those words, I actually laughed out loud. I laughed until the tears started falling again. I shoved him away with violent force. “Alexander, what gave you the arrogant delusion that you and your son could ever compare to my Sophie? “Let me tell you the truth. I only married you to stay alive. I never loved you. I certainly don’t love your son. Everything about the Sinclair family makes me physically sick!” Alexander stared at me, completely paralyzed. “What… what did you say?” I turned away. “Go tell your pathetic brother to wait. When his precious baby is finally born, I’ll be sure to deliver a spectacular gift.”

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A few days before All Souls’ Day, I was lying in bed binge-watching a show when my roommate suddenly lost her mind and bolted for the door. Terrified that something was wrong, I scrambled after her. “Trust me. Just follow me!” I barely caught up to her in the hallway. Before I could even ask what was going on, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me all the way out of the campus. My stomach was tied in knots of confusion. We crashed at a rundown motel on the edge of town for the night. The next morning, the university’s online forum exploded. [Hall 6 Girls’ Dorm. Everyone is dead!] [Rumor has it… two girls from Room 304 snuck out last night. They might be the only survivors…] My heart slammed against my ribs. My phone slipped from my trembling fingers and clattered onto the cheap carpet. I lived in Room 304. 1 I had been entirely absorbed in my show when Sandra suddenly scrambled out of the room like a maniac. It was past eleven at night. The dorm monitors had already locked the main gates. Where the hell was she going? I couldn’t just let her go alone, so I chased her down. “Sandra, what is going on?” When she turned to me, her face was completely drained of color. I had never seen such pure, unadulterated terror in her eyes. She gripped my hand so hard her nails dug into my skin. “If you trust me, you need to leave with me right now.” “What about the others? We’re just going to leave them?” She let out a guttural whisper. “If we worry about them, we die!” My eyes went wide. The rest of my words were snatched away by the chilling night wind. Sandra practically hauled me across the campus grounds. We ran so fast my lungs burned, gasping for air as I blindly followed her off the school premises. Just as we crossed the campus boundary, I started to turn my head to look back at the iron gates. “Don’t look back!” she screamed. She kept her eyes locked dead ahead. In the dim streetlights, her profile looked as cold as stone. “From this exact second forward, no matter what you hear or what you feel, you do not look back. If you do, I will leave you behind.” The sheer intensity of her threat sent a shiver down my spine. I nodded frantically. “Okay. I won’t look.” We found a cheap, cash-only motel near the edge of town and huddled together for the night. Whatever sleepiness I had back at the dorm was entirely gone. I lay there staring at the water-stained ceiling, my mind racing. After hesitating for what felt like hours, I finally whispered into the dark. “Sandra. What happened tonight?” Why did we have to run? And why couldn’t I look back? Her voice drifted over from the other bed, thick with dread. “Harper… we are hiding from It.” My chest tightened. “Who is… It?” “It is unnamable. Unseeable. Unspeakable.” Before I could press further, Sandra cut me off. “Stop asking questions. Try to sleep. We have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.” I opened my mouth to argue but eventually swallowed my words. A heavy, suffocating anxiety settled over me. Maybe my brain was overloaded, because the moment I finally drifted off, the nightmares began. In the dream, a grotesque, raspy voice kept whispering in my ear, urging me to return. “Go back to campus. Go back. Do not head west.” A blurred face materialized in the darkness. I stepped forward, curious, but just as the features were about to sharpen into focus, someone slapped my shoulder. I jolted awake. Sandra’s pale, exhausted face hovered over me. “Harper, get up. We need to leave. Now.” I threw on my clothes. I had nothing else to pack except my phone. “What’s wrong? Why the rush?” I asked. Sandra slung her backpack over her shoulder, not even glancing my way. “Something happened. We have to get out of Northwood immediately.” Before I could ask what happened, she was dragging me out the door, heading dead west. She rented a heavily modified motorcycle from a shady garage nearby. She revved the engine, and we tore down the highway at terrifying speeds. In just three hours, we reached the county line. She pulled over at a rundown gas station to buy some cheap snacks. Taking advantage of the break, I finally pulled out my phone and connected to the internet. The moment the university forum loaded, the blood in my veins turned to ice. [Hall 6 Girls’ Dorm. Everyone is dead!] [Rumor has it… two girls from Room 304 snuck out last night. They might be the only survivors…] I lived in Room 304. 2 I stood completely paralyzed, the screen glaring back at me. A delayed wave of sheer horror washed over my body. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what would have happened if I had stayed in my bed last night. I scrolled through the thread with trembling fingers. The comment section was a mess of wild theories. Serial killer, gas leak, a cult ritual… Hall 6 had six floors. Eight rooms per floor. Four girls to a room. Last night, over a hundred girls died. The sheer magnitude of the number crushed the air out of my lungs. I was drowning in a sickening mix of terror and grief. I didn’t even notice Sandra walking back until she tapped my head. “Why are you spacing out?” she frowned, looking at my frozen posture. I slowly turned the phone toward her, playing a video someone had uploaded to the forum. The footage was shaky. Hall 6 was surrounded by layers of yellow police tape. Medics and heavily armed police officers were rushing in and out, while crowds of sobbing students and staff stood on the periphery. As Sandra processed the headline and the video, her face went totally blank. It took a long time before she finally blinked. “We need to move. We have to find a place to lay low before the sun sets.” “Sandra… you knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” I asked, my voice shaking uncontrollably. She gave a stiff nod. Her face remained a mask of chalky white. “And if I did? Could I have stopped it?” I shook my head, desperately wanting to say she was wrong. “We could have called the police. They didn’t have to die for nothing.” A bitter, broken smile touched her lips. “The police? Do you think bullets work on It? Calling them would have just dragged us down into the slaughter. Stop being naive, Harper. We are running for our lives. You have no idea what is hunting us. We couldn’t save them. We can only try to save ourselves.” My shoulders shook as the tears finally spilled over. “Why is this happening? Everything was completely normal yesterday.” She pulled me into a tight hug, gently resting her chin on my head. “We aren’t saviors, Harper. Sometimes, you have to be selfish just to survive.” For the past three years, Sandra wasn’t just my roommate; she was my absolute best friend. When she watched that video, the agony in her eyes was just as intense as mine, but she buried it under a layer of cold survival instinct. After a brief, heavy silence, she pulled back and looked me in the eye. “We have to reach Westbridge as fast as humanly possible. It’s the only place we might actually stand a chance.” “Do you trust me? Are you coming with me?” I wiped my eyes and nodded. “I trust you.” I shoved my swirling questions to the back of my mind. Just as we were about to get back on the bike, my phone started buzzing. Unknown caller. Sandra snatched it from my hand and answered it. She didn’t say a single word. She just listened to whatever was on the other end. A moment later, she ended the call. Her expression had darkened considerably. I watched her take a deep, steadying breath. “Let’s go. We can’t afford to stop anymore.” I nodded, reaching for my phone, but she pulled it away. Right in front of my eyes, she popped the SIM cards out of both our phones, snapped them in half, and hurled the devices deep into the overgrown ditch by the road. She didn’t even look at me as she explained, anticipating my panic. “Phones carry our traces. It uses them to pinpoint our location. And we’re going to have to lose a lot more than just our phones.” Her words made sense an hour later. We stopped at an independent thrift store miles away from Northwood. We bought entirely new outfits and tossed our old clothes directly into a dumpster behind a diner. Shoes, jackets, backpacks, everything was replaced. Sandra even ditched her leather wallet, stuffing the loose cash into her new pockets. I climbed back onto the motorcycle, wrapping my arms around her waist. “If we change our stuff, will It lose our scent?” I yelled over the engine. “For a little while,” she shouted back. “We broke out of Its domain. It can’t track us perfectly outside of it.” I understood what she wasn’t saying. This blind spot wouldn’t last forever. Every second It spent searching for us was precious time we had to use to cover ground. Time was bleeding away. We were locked in a literal race against death. 3 I still had no idea what this Entity actually was. But anything that could wipe out an entire dormitory in a single night and force us into a desperate cross-country run had to be something out of a nightmare. I remembered what Sandra had said. Unnamable. Unseeable. Unspeakable. My heart skipped a beat. Just as the thought crossed my mind, that disgusting, raspy voice from my dream hissed right into my ear. “Come back. Do not go west. Come back. Come back right now…” It felt like needles driving into my brain. I buried my face into the back of Sandra’s jacket, clamping my eyes shut and trying to drown out the noise. I lost track of time. It wasn’t until Sandra finally killed the engine that the whispers slowly dissolved into the wind. She grabbed her new bag and turned to me. “We’re on foot from here on out.” I looked around. We were standing on the edge of an abandoned industrial refinery. Ahead of us was a murky creek, flanked by thick, overgrown wildgrass. I didn’t argue. Any questions I had would have to wait until we were safe. I trudged behind Sandra for what felt like miles. We only stopped once to choke down some dry granola bars and gulp warm water. Thank god I used to jog every morning before classes. If I didn’t have that stamina, I would have collapsed in the dirt hours ago. The further we walked, the sparser the vegetation became. Nestled against a cluster of jagged boulders, I spotted a crude, makeshift shelter built out of dried sagebrush and woven branches. It was primitive, but it was our safe house for the night. The moment we stepped inside, the rigid tension in Sandra’s shoulders finally dropped. A thin layer of cold sweat coated her forehead. I handed her a tissue to wipe her face as I inspected the hut. There were no beds, just piles of dried straw on the dirt floor. To me, it looked like a five-star hotel. I collapsed onto the straw, chewed on a piece of stale bread, and finally asked, “Sandra, what exactly are we running from?” A shadow of pure terror flickered in her eyes at the mention of It. She took a tiny bite of her food, chewing slowly, buying time. “It’s not something bound by the laws of science or nature.” I nodded, urging her to keep going. “This shelter… the herbs used to weave these walls were brought in from Westbridge. They mask our presence. Harper, I can’t give you a scientific breakdown of what It is.” “All you need to know is that we cannot look back. We cannot actively think about It. We cannot describe It. If we do, we establish a connection. We act as a beacon.” I swallowed hard, my throat sandpaper-dry. “Then… how did It kill all those girls?” “Because It possesses a domain,” Sandra said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “Once Its domain is cast, everything inside belongs to It. That’s why we had to run. Harper, inside Its domain, It is a god. Snuffing out a hundred lives is as easy as breathing.” A domain. I stared into the dark. The way she described it… It sounded like some ancient, eldritch deity. A heavy sigh broke the silence. “I don’t know who on the sixth floor summoned It. By the time I felt the shift in the air, the only thing I could do was grab you and run. Harper, It had already descended. The dorm became Its feeding ground. We are just human. We had no choice but to run. Please, stop blaming yourself.” She was trying to comfort me, knowing that the guilt of leaving the others behind was eating me alive. Her words managed to soothe the ache a little. I squeezed her hand. “I know. Thank you.” If Sandra hadn’t dragged me out of that room, I would be a corpse on a stretcher right now. But my mind kept spinning. How did Sandra know so much about It? Just as I opened my mouth to ask, a bizarre, sickeningly sweet voice echoed from right outside the woven walls. “Sandra? Harper? Come out, it’s time for class.” It was the voice of the girl who lived next door to us. Sandra’s hand turned instantly to ice. 4 We both stopped breathing. A million invisible spiders crawled up my spine. I forced down the scream building in my throat and locked eyes with Sandra. She gave me a microscopic shake of her head. Do not make a sound. The voice outside continued, upbeat and terribly normal. “Guys, seriously, why aren’t you coming out? We’re going to be late! The professor is going to dock our grades!” That girl was dead. I knew she was dead. So what the hell was standing on the other side of that door? But the voice wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that the crude wooden door of the shelter was slowly creaking open. An unnatural, freezing wind pushed against the wood. I sat completely paralyzed as the crack widened… and widened… The door was fully open. I could almost see the silhouette of the “student” standing in the gloom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the silhouette’s mouth stretching into a horribly wide, impossible smile. Smack! Right before I could look directly at the thing, Sandra slammed her hand against the side of my head, forcing my face down. She breathed into my ear, “Do not look up. Do not look at It.” My heart felt like it was going to explode. How did It find us so fast? Because we didn’t answer, the thing outside shifted tactics. The voice warped, melting into the whiny, playful tone of a freshman who lived below us. “Harper, can I borrow your black dress? I really, really love it.” “Harper, why are you ignoring me? I brought you cupcakes. Come out and get them.” “Harper, let’s go downtown to take photos! Just look up at me. Just look at me!” Line after line. It was wearing the voices of my dead friends like cheap Halloween masks, trying to bait me into acknowledging it. Every word It spoke only solidified the horrific reality that my friends had been slaughtered. I clamped my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut. I only had one thought left in my head. I have to live. I have to survive this. The voices kept going for hours, but for some reason, the thing never crossed the threshold. It was as if an invisible barrier kept It at bay. It wasn’t until dawn, when the first slivers of morning light pierced the shelter, that the voices finally evaporated. We had stayed awake all night. When I finally spoke, my voice was cracked and raw. “It’s… gone.” Sandra lifted her head. Her exhausted eyes were fixed on the bottom frame of the doorway. Over the course of a single night, the woven herbs at the threshold had completely rotted away, turned to black ash. “The ward is broken. It’s useless now,” Sandra said, scrambling to her feet. “We have to leave. Right now.” Our safe house had lasted less than twelve hours. We moved with practiced efficiency. Within minutes, we were back on the road. We had barely covered a few miles when a massive explosion ripped through the air behind us. I instinctively threw myself into the dirt. Sandra dropped beside me, her whole body shaking violently. Through chattering teeth, she whispered, “They… they’re here too.” I looked back. The shelter we had just slept in was nothing but a crater of roaring flames and thick black smoke. Besides the Entity, there was another group hunting us? My brain scrambled to put the pieces together, but survival overrode logic. “Run!” We screamed it at the exact same time and scrambled to our feet, sprinting wildly into the brush. We broke through the tall grass and found ourselves staring at an abandoned, rusted oil pipeline cutting through the landscape. “Follow me. Stay close to the pipe,” Sandra commanded. She took the lead, and I trailed closely behind, scanning our surroundings. If we took a bus or a train from Northwood to Westbridge, it would be a two-day trip at most. On foot, through the wilderness, it would take at least a week. And that was assuming we barely slept. I tried to visualize the map in my head. If we followed this pipeline and crossed the rolling hills ahead, we would hit the Westbridge county line. While I was doing the math, an unnatural screeching wind filled my ears. Ahead of me, Sandra’s jacket whipped violently in the gale. My survival instinct flared. “Sandra, get down!” A terrifying gust of wind roared up from behind us. We flattened ourselves against the cold steel of the pipeline, feeling an immense, crushing pressure wash over our bodies.

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I was reported by parents in a joint complaint, saying I assigned too much homework. So I simply canceled all homework and evening study sessions, strictly implementing “happy education.” When the monthly exam results came out, the parents exploded. They blocked the school gates, crying and begging me to restart the tutoring classes. I was called to the principal’s office before dawn had fully broken. The cold air of a winter morning cut across my face like a knife. “Miss Harper, take a look at this first.” Principal Anderson’s face was ashen as he pushed his phone toward me, his voice suppressing barely controlled fury. On the phone screen was the city’s most popular education forum. A bolded, red-highlighted post stabbed into my eyes. High School Teacher Forces Supplementary Classes, “Honors Class” Becomes “Student Torture Chamber” Followed by a red “TRENDING” badge. My heart sank sharply. The post’s content was an “anonymous” plea for help, eloquently written and highly inflammatory. “We’re not learning machines. We have flesh and blood too. We long for the sunlight outside the window and a moment to breathe. But here, all we have are endless ‘enrichment worksheets’ and our nights and weekends—time that should belong to us—ruthlessly taken away. Miss Harper says the SAT is a war, and we can rest after we win. But we haven’t even reached the battlefield yet, and we’re already collapsing in the darkness before dawn…” “We’re so tired. We want to cry. Watching students in other classes participate in club activities, reading books they enjoy during study hall—we’re so envious. It’s not that we don’t work hard. We just… don’t want to exhaust all our passion for the future in this suffocating ‘student torture chamber’…” The letter also included several maliciously edited audio recordings. My statement “Suffering a bit now gives you more choices in the future” was cut down to just the cold phrase “suffer a bit.” My encouragement “Once you cross the SAT hurdle, the world opens up—everyone just hang in there” was reduced to an impatient “cross it.” The image of a cold, obsessive “demon teacher” who only pursued grades and disregarded students’ lives leaped off the page. The comment section had completely exploded. 【Oh my God! Which school is this? Terrifying! Still doing this kind of cramming education!】 【Support the kids! Gen Z should speak up bravely! Someone expose this teacher!】 【’Honors Class’? More like ‘Hell Class’! Doesn’t the Department of Education care?】 【My heart breaks for these kids. Hugs. This teacher doesn’t deserve to educate anyone! Should be fired!】 【I’m from the class next door at this school, can confirm they study until after 10pm every day. So intense!】 【Need insider students to come forward! Let’s see how twisted this Miss Harper really is!】 【@CityDepartmentofEducation come do your job!】 … Holding the cold phone, a chill crept up from between my vertebrae. Not anger, but a tremendous sense of absurdity at being betrayed. Those “enrichment worksheets” I stayed up nights organizing, selected from over a thousand practice sets—in their mouths, they became the straw that broke their backs. The personal time I sacrificed to supervise their evening study sessions, always available to answer questions—that became “ruthless occupation.” Showing them the most difficult but most effective path to top universities—that made me the “chief architect of student torture”? The phone buzzed on the office desk. Principal Anderson’s voice trembled slightly: “Miss Harper, the Department of Education is calling. They say they’ve received numerous complaints and are demanding we investigate immediately and give the public an explanation!”

I walked out of the principal’s office. The hallway was empty, yet it felt like eyes were watching from everywhere. A strange atmosphere permeated the air. Class 11-1, this so-called “Honors Class,” was my labor of love since I started teaching them in ninth grade. From initial student selection to creating each semester’s teaching plan, to crafting customized preparation strategies for students at different levels—I could say with confidence I’d never slacked off for a moment. I firmly believed that for these kids without privileged backgrounds, the SAT was one of the few truly fair battlefields in their lives. And my responsibility was to forge them the sharpest weapons. So I sacrificed nearly all my holidays, organizing materials from tens of thousands of practice tests into what they called “devil enrichment worksheets.” Every single problem targeted an SAT difficulty point. So I turned down all social engagements to supervise their evening study sessions. As long as they didn’t understand any concept, I would explain until they got it. I believed this was being responsible for their futures—with high scores, you can choose the city you want, study the major you love, have the confidence to say no… This matters far more than empty “happiness slogans” and superficial “enrichment activities.” But now, this had become ironclad evidence of “student torture,” the reason for nationwide condemnation. Passing other classroom doors, I could hear whispered conversations inside. “Did you hear? Miss Harper from Class 1 got called out online.” “Serves her right. Why does she have to be so intense, making the pressure high for us too.” “Exactly. Someone should’ve dealt with her ages ago.” I pushed open my own classroom door. The previously noisy morning reading session came to an abrupt halt the moment I appeared. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned toward me in unison—panic, evasion, curiosity, schadenfreude… emotions intertwined. Then, like startled birds, they instantly lowered their heads, pretending to read aloud. My gaze swept slowly across the room, finally settling on a seat by the window. Melissa. A transfer student from out of state last semester. Above-average grades, very well-behaved, sweet-talking. At this moment, she kept her head down, long lashes covering her eyelids, shoulders trembling slightly—the picture of a frightened deer. I recalled last week’s composition class. Melissa had used almost identical metaphors in her essay to describe “the pain of not being understood.” At the time, I’d thought this girl had delicate writing skills and a sensitive mind. Now, those words from the post overlapped perfectly with the face before me. I could almost certainly conclude that aside from Melissa, it couldn’t be anyone else. I also remembered a parent in the group chat named Marcus Bennett. His own child had mediocre grades, yet he always loved to pontificate in the group, playing the “thought leader.” “Kids today suffer too much. We should give them a happy childhood!” “Grades aren’t everything! Mental and physical health matter most!” “I support reducing academic burden! Firmly against sea-of-questions tactics!” At the time, I’d only thought he was talking without understanding the stakes, and hadn’t dwelt on it. Now, those high-minded words overlapped seamlessly with the angry comments online. Could it really be that I was wrong? Did I push too hard, making them feel this was all torture, to the point where they could justifiably strike back? I laughed bitterly at myself. My phone rang again. The academic director. “Miss Harper, get over here now! Major trouble! The Department of Education investigation team is already at the school gates!” The voice on the other end was panicked beyond recognition. I took a deep breath, suppressing the disappointment surging in my chest. “I understand.” Fine. Since you so desperately crave this so-called “happiness,” so thoroughly detest this narrow path covered in thorns. Then I’ll return to you that broad, flower-strewn avenue. I addressed the entire class calmly: “This afternoon, fourth period, emergency parent meeting. Everyone must notify their parents.”

The parent meeting was set for 4:30 PM. The auditorium was packed. An unusual atmosphere churned through the air. Anger, doubt, spectators eager for drama, and a barely detectable smugness. Marcus Bennett sat front and center, surrounded by several parents, gesticulating as he spoke. When he saw me enter, he immediately stopped talking, replacing his expression with one of righteous indignation, like a judge about to sentence a criminal. Melissa’s mother sat beside him, eyes red-rimmed, clutching a tissue, looking both haggard and aggrieved. I ignored the gazes that seemed ready to devour me and walked straight to the podium. “Miss Harper, you’re finally here.” Marcus spoke first, voice not loud but enough for the entire room to hear. His tone carried a condescending sort of “concern.” “We’re here today not to accuse you. We just want to communicate with you. The children are under too much pressure. I’m sure you saw that online post. The children’s voices are the most genuine. As parents, we can’t ignore this!” He looked around as if seeking support. “That’s right, Miss Harper, this can’t continue!” “My child has been suffering from insomnia lately, always complaining of headaches!” “The SAT is important, but our children’s lives are more important!” Echoes rose one after another. Just then, Melissa’s mother burst into tears with a wail, her voice shrill and full of accusation. “Miss Harper! I’m begging you! Please let my daughter go! She’s only seventeen! Two nights ago she had nightmares, crying about ‘worksheets, endless worksheets’! Her hair is falling out in clumps! If this continues, you’ll drive her insane!” As she cried, she stared at me with those bloodshot eyes. “We don’t ask for her to get into some top university! We just want her healthy! Happy! Living like a normal kid! Is that too much to ask?!” Her tearful accusation was like gasoline poured on an already smoldering fire. The entire auditorium’s emotions ignited completely. “This is too much! Practically abuse!” “We need answers!” Just as the situation was about to spiral out of control, the back door of the classroom opened. Principal Anderson entered with two stern-looking men. “I’m from the Department of Education investigation team, surname Li.” The lead man got straight to the point. “We’ve received numerous formal complaints alleging that Miss Harper has engaged in unauthorized supplementary classes and excessive student workload. We’re here today to investigate on-site. The Department of Education’s position is clear: students’ mental and physical health always comes first!” Investigator Li’s words were like a final judgment, giving all the “denouncing” parents a shot of confidence. The smugness on Marcus Bennett’s face was barely concealed. I stood on the podium, looking at those faces with their various expressions. My gaze passed through the crowd, landing on a corner. That was Lily’s father. A quiet, taciturn middle-aged man. Last semester, Lily had acute appendicitis requiring immediate surgery. He was on a business trip at the time, beside himself with worry. It was me who, without hesitation, advanced all the medical expenses, signed the forms, and stayed at the hospital all night until he rushed back. At the time, he had gripped my hands, eyes red-rimmed, words incoherent, bowing repeatedly. And now, this man, as Marcus delivered his passionate speech, as Melissa’s mother wept bitterly—he simply nodded in agreement. That nod felt like a red-hot steel needle piercing my heart. More than the vicious online curses, more than Marcus’s public confrontation, more than Melissa’s mother’s tearful accusations—it made me feel bone-deep cold. So the devoted help I thought I’d given, the teacher-student bond I thought existed, was so worthless in the face of so-called “public opinion.” I closed my eyes, forcibly suppressing the surge of blood and qi. When I opened them again, all emotion had drained from my eyes, leaving only deathly calm.

“Miss Harper,” Marcus continued pressing, “you see, the Department of Education leadership is here. Surely you should give us some kind of response now?” “A response?” I spoke coldly, voice not loud, yet instantly silencing the entire room. I turned to Investigator Li, turned to all the parents, and bowed slightly. “I understand everyone’s meaning. ‘Public opinion’ cannot be defied. The children’s ‘happiness’ matters most.” “I will implement reforms immediately.” My gaze swept across Marcus, across Melissa’s mother, finally settling on those dozens of scrutinizing eyes below the podium. “Tomorrow morning, I will announce my reform plan.” My voice was calm, yet carried a determination they couldn’t comprehend. “A plan… that conforms to ‘public opinion.’” The next morning, the school’s morning exercises were temporarily canceled. In their place was an impromptu all-school assembly. A massive white screen slowly descended. A notice titled “Regarding Teaching Method Adjustments for Class 11-1” was projected before everyone’s eyes. Simultaneously, this notice was pushed to every Class 11-1 parent’s phone. I held the microphone, face calm. Principal Anderson and Investigator Li from the Department of Education stood behind me, expressions complex. The notice’s first paragraph was a “profound self-criticism.” “…In my past teaching work, my thinking was rigid, my methods outdated. I overemphasized test-taking techniques and scores while neglecting humanistic care and well-rounded student development. This caused enormous psychological pressure for students and drew criticism from all sectors of society. For this, I offer my most sincere apologies…” Below the stage, students whispered among themselves. In the Class 1 section, Melissa and several close friends wore victorious smiles. In the parent group, Marcus immediately took a screenshot, adding a “sweet justice” emoji. Then I began reading the core content of the notice. “After profound reflection, and with approval from the school and supervising authorities, the following adjustments will be made to Class 11-1’s teaching model:” “Article One: Effective immediately, all ‘enrichment worksheets,’ ‘practice tests,’ and supplementary materials are canceled. Daily homework will strictly follow the national Department of Education curriculum standards, absolutely no exceeding standards, absolutely no additions.” Below, barely suppressed cheers nearly broke through the ceiling. “Article Two: Effective immediately, all evening study sessions, weekend classes, and any form of group tutoring are canceled. Evening study time will be fully adjusted to ‘student free activity time,’ which may be used for club activities, extracurricular reading, or independent rest. The schedule will be strictly observed, with dismissal promptly at 5 PM, absolutely no overtime.” The cheers grew louder. Some students even excitedly whistled. Melissa proudly straightened her chest, basking in the grateful looks from surrounding classmates. “Article Three: Effective immediately, this class’s teaching focus will comprehensively shift from ‘test-oriented education’ to ‘well-rounded education.’ Classes will incorporate research projects, art appreciation, and other elements, aiming to cultivate students’ comprehensive qualities and innovative abilities, ultimately achieving ‘happy learning, comprehensive development.’” In the auditorium, thunderous applause erupted. These three provisions were like three pardons, completely liberating the students who’d been “oppressed” for so long. They’d won. A great victory, initiated “from the bottom up” by students and parents working together. Only the few top students in the front rows had faces pale as death, eyes filled with shock. But their voices were already drowned in the “victorious” celebration. Marcus spammed the parent group frantically: “See that! This is the power of public opinion! We fought for our children’s happiness!” The group filled with “Marcus is awesome,” “Thank you Marcus for speaking up for us.” Just as I was about to say “assembly dismissed”— Principal Anderson behind me swayed violently. He stared at his phone, all color draining from his face. He tried to rush forward and grab my microphone, but it was too late. An email just received was projected onto that massive white screen. Every teacher and student in the school could see it clearly. From: New York University Office of Admissions Subject: [URGENT] Notice of Revocation of Joint Recommendation Qualification for “Elite Seedling Program” Preview: Dear Principal Anderson and School Leadership: We are shocked to learn of major adjustments to your school’s “Honors Class” teaching approach, particularly the cancellation of all advanced-level courses and intensive tutoring led by Miss Harper. Our “Elite Seedling Program” aims to identify and secure top-tier students who excel in precisely these types of advanced courses. Given your school’s current educational reforms, you no longer meet the “Elite Seedling Program” student cultivation standards. Following urgent deliberation by our admissions committee, we formally notify you: Your school’s “Elite Seedling Program” joint recommendation slots for this academic year are hereby revoked, effective immediately.

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Elias is the Alpha of the Dubois pack, and I’ve had a crush on him for years. The year we both turned eighteen, neither of us had found our mates yet, so I worked up the courage to confess my feelings to him. But I discovered he’d been drugged with an aphrodisiac. Without hesitation, I had sex with him to counteract the drug’s effects. Our sex was intense. During the process, he marked me, and I became his mate. When he came to his senses, he looked at me with utter disgust. I thought that given enough time together, he would eventually fall in love with me. But on our wedding night, I felt a soul-tearing pain. I realized Elias was cheating on me. I went to find him, only to discover him having sex with my sister Vivian. That’s when I learned he’d been in love with my sister all along. After I caught them, Elias didn’t even panic. He wrapped his arm around Vivian and burned me alive in a fire. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Elias was drugged with the aphrodisiac. Looking at Elias with his flushed face and labored breathing, I called for Vivian.

Elias opened his eyes with difficulty. A flash of disgust crossed his pupils as he said hoarsely, “Get away from me.” When he saw clearly who the woman before him was, he suddenly froze. “Vivian, why is it you?” He looked around and spotted me coming over to check on the situation. In my past life, I was the first to throw myself at him, having sex with Elias without hesitation to counteract the drug. But the first thing he did after coming to his senses was push me away, his eyes filled with revulsion. He showered for two hours straight, as if he’d just touched something filthy. But now… “Elias, I’m so glad you’re okay. I…” Vivian’s body was covered in intimate marks, her expression a mix of concern and coy embarrassment. She hesitated, deliberately covering her lips with her hand. Elias understood. He said nothing. He left with Vivian in his arms, not sparing me another glance. I knew Elias had been secretly drugged with an aphrodisiac, which caused him to lose control. In my previous life, he quickly found the culprit, so there was no need for me to remind him unnecessarily. The night wind was biting cold. I developed a fever that same evening. “Knock, knock.” My mind was fuzzy when I opened the door to see Elias. I instantly snapped awake. “…Why are you here?” Elias leaned lazily against the doorframe, giving me a casual glance. “Clara, what game are you playing now?” I looked at him in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Elias let out a cold snort. “In front of all those people, you deliberately called Vivian to have sex with me. Doesn’t her reputation matter? How can you be so selfish?” I felt a tightness in my chest. I wanted to ask him what exactly he expected me to do. If I saved him, that was wrong. If I called for his beloved, that was also wrong. I should have just left him there to fend for himself. “Think whatever you want.” I sniffled, speaking slowly. “If there’s nothing else, I’d like to rest now. I’m not feeling well.” Elias probably thought I was putting on an act to gain his sympathy. He smiled with a curl of his lip. “Playing hard to get? Clara, you’re getting more and more tricks up your sleeve.” “If you’re not feeling well, take medicine. I’m not a doctor.” Watching his retreating figure, I let out a long sigh. Everyone in the Dubois pack knew I liked Elias—liked him in a way that was both humble and stubborn. He said long hair was gentle, so from childhood to now, I’d always kept my hair long, never changing my hairstyle. He also said light-colored clothes looked nice, so dark colors disappeared from my wardrobe entirely. He liked quiet, elegant girls, so I turned down party after party to practice piano and violin at home. It took the painful lesson of my previous life to understand. Vivian met all the conditions he mentioned, simply because she was the one he loved. And no matter how hard I tried or what I became standing before him, I didn’t deserve even a passing glance from him. Soon, news spread that Vivian had sex with Elias to counteract the drug. When something happened to him, the entire territory was in turmoil. Several people in security uniforms found me. “Miss Clara, please cooperate with the investigation.” They said that because I was the first to discover Elias had been drugged, I was the prime suspect. I didn’t understand. “But I saved him.” The security guard looked apologetic. “Elias says we can’t rule out the possibility that you orchestrated this whole thing to claim credit for saving him.” I froze. Claiming credit? So that’s what Elias thought of me. They forcibly took me to a storage room in the territory and locked me in, even though I warned them this was illegal. The only response I got was: “Elias will take full responsibility.” “He said not to let you out until the truth is uncovered.”

A day and a night later, they finally released me. After I got out, I heard Elias had already dealt with the drugging incident. After the banquet ended, he personally escorted Vivian home. When I arrived, I heard Elias saying, “Vivian saved me. I’ve already marked her. She will be the Luna of the Dubois pack, and I will hold a wedding ceremony with her.” My footsteps halted. Even though I’d already resolved to give up on Elias completely in this life, hearing those words still caused a sharp pain in my heart. He believed Vivian saved him and wanted to marry her. But if I had been the one to do it, he would only think I was throwing myself at him shamelessly. In my previous life, the gossip in our social circle became so intense that it reached my father’s ears. My father was the Beta of the Dubois pack. He personally asked Elias, and only then did Elias reluctantly agree to marry me. In this life, Elias couldn’t wait to marry Vivian. When Vivian saw me at home, she put on a conflicted expression. “That’s not right, Dad. Clara likes Elias. People can say what they want about me, but Clara would be so hurt.” My father hadn’t even spoken yet. Elias’s tall figure blocked my way through the door. “Since you’ve already heard, I might as well make things clear.” “Clara, I don’t like you. No matter how much effort you put in, it’s all wasted. You’d better accept it sooner rather than later. It’s better for both of us.” I replied softly, “Yes, don’t worry.” “I won’t bother you and Vivian anymore. I wish you both happiness.” Elias narrowed his eyes, studying me intently. Behind me came my father’s sigh. “Girl, you should have figured this out earlier. You’re eighteen now. Focus on finding your mate from now on.” I tried my best to ignore Elias’s penetrating gaze and nodded with a smile. “Okay.” After getting engaged to Vivian, Elias began frequenting our house. Before, seeing him even once was like reaching for the sky. I had to ask his friends about his whereabouts and endure being mocked as a simp without getting angry. Now, in the past two weeks, I’d seen him more times than the entire previous year combined. Yet I felt no happiness at all. Vivian always pretended to be kind while actually showing off. “Clara, these are the roses Elias sent. Want me to give you one?” “This is a jewelry necklace Elias specially ordered from Europe. Want to borrow it? He’s sent me so many things, I can’t even wear them all.” Yet in my previous life, even our wedding rings were ones I bought for Elias. While I was lost in thought, Vivian suddenly broke the necklace. The lustrous pearls scattered across the floor, rolling to a pair of black leather shoes. “Elias!” She threw herself at him pitifully, glancing at me. “Clara must have done it accidentally. Please don’t blame her. It’s my fault for not protecting the things you gave me…” Elias’s face darkened. “Clara, you act so understanding in front of your father, but the moment he goes on a business trip, your true colors show, don’t they?” “You’ve loved bullying Vivian since childhood. Haven’t you had enough yet?” A bitter taste spread through my throat. I said word by word, “I didn’t do it.” Vivian immediately lowered her head. “Elias, it’s all my fault. I’m the one to blame.” Elias shielded her behind him, his tone carrying an obvious warning. “Before, your family affairs weren’t my business, but now Vivian is my mate.” “For the time being, I’ll move in here until your father returns.” In the past, I would have been overjoyed to live under the same roof as him. Seeing my silence, Elias paused, then reminded me, “Behave yourself. Keep your distance from me so Vivian doesn’t get the wrong idea.” That night, Vivian acted coquettishly, asking Elias to blow-dry her hair. She deliberately made enough noise to ensure I’d notice. When I walked past, I didn’t slow my steps for even a moment. Elias had no reaction either. But the next day, when he saw I’d suddenly cut my hair short, he wore a knowing smile. “Did you cut it specifically for me to see?”

“No, you’re reading too much into it.” Even without last night’s scene, I’d already scheduled this haircut for today. Elias clearly didn’t believe me. He looked me up and down. “You should know I don’t like women with short hair. Using this trick to get my attention is rather foolish.” I ignored him and went straight to my room, changing into a red dress I hadn’t worn in a long time. The vivid color was particularly eye-catching. Elias stood at the railing, casting an indifferent glance my way, but the hand resting on the banister was gripping it tightly. Prominent veins appeared on the back of his hand. Just then, Vivian hugged him from behind. “Elias, Clara has changed so much lately. Is she still upset about us getting married? Has she not forgiven us?” Elias withdrew his gaze. “Let her make a scene.” “Once she realizes this approach doesn’t work, she’ll stop trying to seduce me.” I left without looking back, meeting the blind date my father had arranged for me at a café. This should have been our first meeting, yet it felt like we were old friends. We had a wonderful conversation and got along very well. That evening when I came home, I was humming a tune happily. But I was surprised to see Elias sitting on the living room sofa, bent forward slightly, looking very uncomfortable. In my previous life, he was my mate after all. I’d spent time with him and knew he had some heart problems. He probably didn’t want to worry Vivian, so he was sitting here forcing himself to endure it. I hadn’t intended to care, but I was in a good mood today. Plus, I didn’t want him to have an incident at my house that could negatively affect my father. After hesitating, I spoke up. “The medicine cabinet is in the second drawer of the white cabinet.” Elias looked up, and our eyes met. He probably expected me to get it for him. He sat there without moving, just a light sneer at the corner of his lips. “What, Clara, are you trying to use this opportunity to claim credit for saving me again?” Before he even finished speaking, I turned around and went back to my room. So I didn’t notice the man’s smile freezing slightly, or the gradually deepening look in his eyes. Things remained peaceful for a few days. Until Elias suddenly threw a lace bra in my face, his face full of rage. “Clara, how can you be so shameless?” I had no idea what was happening. I stood there stunned, instinctively catching it and looking—it really was my bra… A wave of humiliation washed over me. “Wh-what do you mean?” Elias sneered. “I almost believed you’d really given up on me. Turns out you’re just playing hard to get.” “On the surface, you act like you don’t care about me anymore, but behind the scenes, you secretly put your underwear on my bed to seduce me. Are you really that desperate, that starved for a man’s attention?” I hastily explained, “There must be some misunderstanding. I didn’t…” “Stop making excuses, Clara. You truly disgust me.” Elias looked at me with disappointment. He took Vivian’s hand and strode out. “I’m taking Vivian back to my place. Next time we meet, I’ll be your brother-in-law.” Their wedding ceremony was officially scheduled. Vivian had no friends in the territory, so my father asked me to be her bridesmaid. He returned on the day of the ceremony, taking my hand and speaking earnestly. “Vivian is getting married. Now it’s just you left.” I touched the couple’s bracelet on my right wrist, my cheeks warming slightly. “Well… I’ve met my mate too.” My father looked surprised. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you ever mention it to me?” I hadn’t expected to meet my mate so quickly after being reborn either. We’d just confirmed our relationship and didn’t know each other very well yet. I was too shy to introduce him. But in Elias’s eyes, this looked like a guilty conscience. He curled his lip mockingly, probably not taking it seriously, thinking I was lying. But seeing how certain I was, his brow furrowed slightly, and he seemed inexplicably irritated. When no one was around, he cornered me at the restroom exit, leaning close to my ear and saying in a low voice: “As long as you’re sensible and don’t harbor unrealistic fantasies, I’ll still treat you like a sister, like before. I’ll make time to keep you company.” I said seriously, “I have a boyfriend now. I definitely won’t cling to you anymore.” Elias scoffed. “Wasn’t it you who deliberately put your lace underwear on my bed to seduce me?” “No!” In the distance, Vivian watched this scene jealously, resentment flashing in her eyes. Before the wedding began, chaos suddenly erupted backstage. Vivian was crying, saying several werewolves had taken advantage of the confusion to break in and try to rape her. She’d fought desperately and barely escaped. When everyone gathered around to comfort her… Her gaze locked directly on me. “Clara, I know you’ve liked Elias for nearly ten years, but you can’t blame me just because you can’t have him.” “Elias is already my mate. Why did you have to pay those werewolves to ruin the wedding I’ve been looking forward to?” The crowd erupted in shocked murmurs. I’d once pursued Elias so publicly and dramatically—I was indeed the most likely person to do such a thing. When Elias arrived after hearing the news, Vivian buried her face in his chest, sobbing. “Elias, maybe I should just give you back to Clara. Otherwise, I can’t imagine what crazy things she might do in the future…” Slap! A heavy slap landed on my face. This wasn’t the first time Elias had humiliated me publicly, but it was the first time he’d been pushed far enough to physically strike me. I looked at his furious expression, my eyes growing dim. “Alpha Elias, are you ever willing to believe me? Even once?” “Do you even deserve that?” He looked down at me coldly as I fell to the ground, cruel and merciless. “Since you don’t know your place, don’t blame me for not showing you any courtesy.” “I’ll explain things to your father myself. Someone, do it.” He had those werewolf brothers cut up my dress and use lipstick to write “SLUT” on my face. He said he wanted to use the same methods I’d supposedly used to bully Vivian to properly punish me. I kept crying and struggling. Until someone coldly shouted, “Stop!” A pair of familiar hands picked me up. I buried my face desperately in the man’s chest. I faintly heard Elias’s voice suddenly deepen, seemingly tinged with displeasure as he demanded: “Who are you? What’s your relationship with Clara?”

My dress had been cut to shreds, practically to the point of indecent exposure. Leo tenderly took off his suit jacket to cover me, using his tie to wipe the lipstick from my face. Only then did he spare a glance for Elias. “Do you really need to ask?” “Can’t you tell? I’m Clara’s boyfriend.” Elias clenched his fists, his gaze fixed intently on Leo’s hand around my waist. On his wrist was a bracelet similar to mine—matching couple’s bracelets. Two seconds later, he suddenly relaxed his tense nerves. He wore an expression as if he’d seen through everything. “Clara, you’re quite something. You even know to hire someone to help you put on a show.” “Where did you find this actor? He’s pretty convincing, I’ll give you that.” Seeing Elias’s attention had been diverted, Vivian started crying plaintively again. “Clara, if you have a boyfriend, you should let go of your feelings for Elias even sooner. Why make such a big scene?” “Even if you’ve ruined my wedding today, do you really think you’ll have a chance to marry Elias yourself someday?” Elias sneered. “She’s delusional!” My father must have received word and came from the front hall. He still didn’t understand what had happened. He only saw me being held in Leo’s arms, their posture intimate. He asked in bewilderment: “Alpha Leo… what’s going on between you and Clara?” As his words fell… Elias froze, his expression changing. He muttered to himself, “Alpha Leo of the Ashclaw pack…” He finally recognized Leo’s identity. An inexplicable sense of unease rose in his heart. But he still maintained his surface composure, chin slightly raised. A cold laugh escaped him. “I didn’t realize the Alpha of the Ashclaw pack had so much free time.” “Coming all this way just to play house with a little girl in a pretend couple’s game?” Leo completely ignored him, answering my father’s question instead. “I’ll explain the details about Clara and me to you later.” “Right now, the priority is dealing with the current problem.” At this point, my father also noticed Vivian hiding behind Elias, her eyes red and teary. “Vivian, why are you crying?” “What happened? Did someone bully you?” “Tell me, and I’ll make it right for you!” Vivian choked up twice, looking at me fearfully. “No… no one bullied me.” She clearly looked like someone swallowing grievances despite being wronged. “Vivian is kind by nature and doesn’t want to put you in a difficult position.” Elias spoke matter-of-factly. “I’ll be direct—Clara paid several werewolves to rape Vivian out of jealousy. Her intentions were truly vicious.” “So I gave her a small punishment.” Hearing him speak with such certainty, my father looked at me in disbelief. “Is this true? Clara, didn’t you promise me you didn’t like Elias anymore? Why would you do such a thing?” “Speak, Clara! Don’t avoid responsibility! If you did it, admit it. If you didn’t, explain yourself clearly!” My tears soaked Leo’s shirt. I could feel the arms holding me tighten. Being misunderstood by Elias just made me angry and aggrieved. But if even my father didn’t trust me, I was truly heartbroken. I lifted my face. When he saw the lipstick marks not completely wiped from my face and the faintly visible writing, he gasped. “Dad, I didn’t do it.” “They’re framing me. They didn’t give me any chance to explain.” My father’s furious gaze returned to Elias, his voice shaking with rage. “So without solid evidence, you decided it was Clara and dared to treat her like this!” “This is what you call a ‘small punishment’?!” Elias met his gaze without fear. “Those werewolves got away.” “Clara is the most likely suspect. It couldn’t have been anyone else.” “They got away?” Leo suddenly raised an eyebrow. “How convenient. My Beta warriors happen to be excellent at finding people.” Vivian’s face instantly went pale.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “376911”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster