Category: English

I killed my cheating husband Adam and sealed him into the wall during our home renovation. The police came three times and found nothing. Until the fourth year, when my son Bridges learned to draw. He drew a family portrait. In the background, there was a hand reaching out from the wall, wrapped around my waist. I asked him what he had drawn. He smiled and said, “That’s Dad. He’s been standing in the wall, watching me grow up.” “Kelly, happy eighth anniversary.” Adam smiled as he pulled out a velvet box from behind his back and pushed it in front of me. I opened the box. It was a necklace. “I was poor when I married you, couldn’t give you anything. I’ve remembered all these years. Making it up to you now.” He reached over and took my hand. “Kelly, marrying you was the greatest fortune of my life. I swear, I’ll treat you even better from now on.” I lowered my head and let him fasten the necklace around my neck. “Thank you, Adam.” I looked up and smiled at him. “Go ahead and eat, everything’s your favorite. I spent all afternoon making this fish. Try it.” He ate with gusto, rubbing his belly and praising my cooking. I watched him and smiled. Three hours earlier, I had gone to the hospital and found out I was pregnant. I went to his office to tell him the good news. Instead, I walked in on him having an affair with his mistress in his office. I stood outside the door and watched for a full three minutes. Later, I went home and prepared the fish I’d just bought for our celebration, cooking it exactly the way he loved it. “Adam.” I called his name softly. “When you proposed to me, you said something.” His eyes widened as he looked at me. “You said you’d only love me for the rest of your life. No separation in life, only parting in death.” He paused for a moment, then smiled. “Of course. I meant every word.” I nodded. He suddenly clutched his stomach. The smile on his face froze. “Kelly…” He looked down at his hands, then up at me. Terror slowly filled his eyes. “What… what did you feed me?” I didn’t move. I just watched him. Adam slid off his chair and collapsed on the floor, convulsing. Blood started seeping from the corners of his mouth. He reached out desperately, trying to grab my foot. “Save… save me…” I looked down at him. “When we got married, you said we’d have no separation in life, only parting in death.” After struggling for a while, he stopped moving. I went to the balcony and got cement and bricks. We’d bought this house the year we got married. It was a resale property. During the renovation, I’d built an extra wall behind the storage room. At the time, he said it wasn’t necessary. I said the storage room was too messy and a partition would look better. Now, behind that wall, there was one more person. Three days later, the wall had dried, and the police came. People at his company couldn’t reach him and reported him missing. I told them with red-rimmed eyes that he’d had an affair, taken the money, and run away. I was looking for him too. The police looked around the house, looked at the newly built wall, and left. The second time they came was half a month later. Seeing how thin I’d become, they didn’t ask anything. The third time was three months later, a final confirmation before closing the case. I stood in front of that wall and saw them out, smiling and thanking them for their hard work. After the door closed, I stood against the wall for a long time. Nothing happened. I thought this would stay buried with me until the end of my days. Until four years later, when Bridges turned four. That day he came home from kindergarten, holding up a drawing to show me. “Mom, the teacher asked us to draw our family!” On the paper were three people: him, me, and a grayish-white hand. That hand was reaching out from the wall, wrapped around my waist. I froze in place. “What is this?” He tilted his head and smiled. “That’s Dad. He’s been standing in the wall, watching me grow up.” That night, I couldn’t sleep. I pressed my ear against the wall and listened for a long time. There was nothing. I told myself it was just a child’s vivid imagination. But the next day, Bridges pointed at that wall and said, “Mom, Dad talked to me last night.”

I asked Bridges what Dad had said. He sat at the dining table swinging his legs. “Dad said it’s really dark in the wall. He asked if it was light outside. I said it was. He said he’d wait a little longer.” My fingers dug into my palm. “Wait for what?” “Wait for me to grow up a little more. He said then he’ll be able to come out.” I stared at that wall. The surface was smooth, without a trace of anything. Early the next morning, I pulled Bridges out of bed and looked into his eyes. “Tell me, how do you know there’s someone in the wall?” He blinked. “Dad told me.” “When did Dad tell you?” “Every night. He calls me over, and I go. He talks to me.” My palms started sweating. The year Adam died, Bridges hadn’t even been born yet. Except for me, no one knew Adam was hidden in the wall. Four years old was the age of curiosity. I dropped Bridges off at kindergarten, then immediately called his teacher. “Mrs. Betty, sorry to bother you. I wanted to ask—have you shown any special films in class recently? Or has anyone claiming to be Bridges’ family come looking for him?” The teacher thought for a long time. “No, Bridges’ mom. Our kindergarten is closed-campus. Except for drop-off and pick-up, we don’t let parents in at other times.” After hanging up, I opened the children’s watch location app on my phone. Bridges’ daily activity pattern was simple: home—kindergarten—home. Occasionally he’d go to the playground in our complex, but always within my sight. The timeline was complete. Every single minute accounted for. So how did Bridges know? I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits. During dinner, Bridges put down his fork and tilted his head, as if listening to something. “Mom, Dad’s asking if you ever ate that fish. He said he didn’t have the heart to finish it that day. He wanted to save it for you.” The bowl nearly slipped from my hands. That’s right—Adam had eaten the fish and been poisoned to death. In my panic, I thought of someone. Adam’s mother, my former mother-in-law, Ramos. The year Adam disappeared, she’d made a scene. She pointed at my nose and called me a murderer, said I’d killed Adam. She hung banners at the entrance to our complex, wailed at the bottom of our building, blocked me every day going to and from work. Later the police took her away a few times, and she finally quieted down. After that, she moved to a nursing home. I never saw her again. Could it be her? After all these years, was she still watching me? I immediately drove to the nursing home. The caregiver said Mrs. Ramos had passed away last month. “Passed away?” The caregiver’s eyes flickered. “Sudden heart attack. They couldn’t save her at the hospital.” I froze. “Did she… leave anything behind?” The caregiver shook her head. I turned to leave, but she suddenly called out to me. “Actually, in the days before she died, she kept repeating one thing.” “What?” “She said, ‘My son is calling me from the wall. It’s too cold. I need to go keep him company.’”

A chill ran down my spine. I gripped the steering wheel tightly. When I got back to the complex, I didn’t go home right away. I sat in the car, staring at my apartment window for a long time. When I finally got home, Bridges was sitting at the dining table drawing. I walked over, wanting to see what he was drawing. He looked up and smiled at me. “Mom, Dad says thank you for visiting Grandma today.” “Dad says Grandma finally came to keep him company. He’s not as cold anymore.” I stood frozen in place. “Dad also said—” Bridges lowered his head and continued drawing. “He said Grandma walked away that day, and he went to get her.” “What else did Dad say?” Bridges’ dark eyes rolled around. “Dad said there’s no parting in death, and no separation. He’ll always stay with us.” I stared at him for a long time. A four-year-old child, but his tone sounded like he was reciting something. “Bridges.” I crouched down and gripped his shoulders. “Tell me, how does Dad talk to you? In dreams, or when you’re awake?” He tilted his head and thought. “When I’m awake. At night when I’m sleeping, Dad calls me. Then I get up, walk to the wall, and he talks to me.” “What does he… call you?” “He calls me Bridges.” Bridges blinked. “He says Bridges is a good boy. He tells Mom not to be scared, that he won’t hurt Mom.” My hands were trembling. “He also says Mom is a good person, just angry that’s why she did that. He says he doesn’t blame Mom.” I let go and stood up, stepping back two paces. My back hit the dining table. It hurt, but I didn’t move. That night, I installed another camera in the living room. The lens pointed at that wall, night vision mode on. I lay in bed hugging my phone, staring at the screen. At 2:23 AM, something moved on the screen. It wasn’t the wall moving. It was Bridges. He was wearing pajamas, barefoot, walking out of his room. He walked to the wall and stood still. Then he raised his hand and gently pressed it against the wall, as if touching someone’s face. He stood like that for a long time. Very soft sounds came through the phone—Bridges was talking. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I could only see his lips moving. Suddenly, he stopped and tilted his head, as if listening to something. Then he nodded and walked back to his room. I stared at the screen, waiting all night. The wall didn’t move again. Bridges didn’t come out again. The next morning, I carried Bridges to the sofa, opened my phone, and showed him the video. “Bridges, what were you doing last night?” He looked at himself on the screen and blinked. “Talking to Dad.” “What did Dad say?” Bridges thought for a moment. “Dad said his leg went numb. He asked if I could help move the bricks a little.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Did you… did you move them?” “No.” Bridges shook his head. “I’m not strong enough. I can’t move them. Dad said it’s okay, when I grow up a little more I can help him.” I gripped my phone tightly. “He also said he’s been in there for four years. Sometimes it’s stuffy, sometimes it’s not. When you and Mom talk to him, it’s not stuffy.”

That night, I didn’t sleep at all. After Bridges fell asleep, I sat in the living room staring at that wall. The surveillance feed was open on my phone. The night vision lens turned the entire living room a sickly green. There was no sound, but I kept feeling like that wall was watching me. Early the next morning, I took Bridges to a child psychology clinic. Bridges sat in the waiting area swinging his legs, drawing with crayons. I leaned over to look. He’d drawn a house with two people inside, one big and one small, holding hands. There was no one in the wall. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Ms. Kelly, you’re up.” I took Bridges’ hand and walked in. A woman doctor in her thirties sat in the consultation room, wearing glasses. She had a warm smile. She crouched down to greet Bridges. Bridges wasn’t shy and shook her hand. “Such a good boy.” She looked up at me. “I’ll spend some time alone with the child first. Please wait outside.” I nodded and stepped out, sitting in a chair by the door. Thirty minutes later, the door opened. Bridges bounced out, now holding a lollipop. “Mom, the doctor gave me candy!” I patted Bridges’ head and looked at the female doctor in the doorway. She stood at the door, her smile still in place, but her eyes looked wrong. “Ms. Kelly, the child has no problems.” She said. “He’s very smart, expresses himself well, has a rich imagination. That’s all.” I opened my mouth, wanting to say something. She looked at me, opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Is there a problem?” I asked. She shook her head. “Nothing. Please come in for a moment. I’d like to discuss the child’s daily care with you.” I left Bridges outside playing with blocks and followed her inside. The door closed. She sat across from me and stared at me for several seconds. “Ms. Kelly,” she began, “have we… met somewhere before?” I froze. “I don’t think so. I’ve never been here.” She frowned, examining my face carefully. Her gaze moved from my eyes to the corners of my mouth, then back to my eyes. “I might be mistaken.” She said, though her tone didn’t sound certain. “How has your sleep been lately?” I gripped my bag strap. “Okay.” “Any nightmares?” “No.” “Have you heard any sounds, or seen anything… that others can’t see?” I stared at her. She stared at me. “What are you trying to ask?” I said. She was silent for a few seconds, then pulled out a business card from her drawer and pushed it toward me. “This is my private number. If you need help, you can call me anytime.” I looked down at the card. White, very plain, just a name and a string of numbers. “I don’t need help.” I fled from the clinic. When I walked out of the clinic, the sun was bright, so dazzling I couldn’t open my eyes. Bridges held my hand, bouncing along. “Mom, that doctor was so weird.” “She kept asking what you do at home. I said you cook, clean, and play with me. Then she asked what you do at night. I said you don’t sleep, you just sit in the living room.” My steps stopped. “What else did you say?” “Nothing else. She just kept nodding and writing things down.” When we got home, I settled Bridges in, then sat on the sofa in a daze. That business card was pressed under the coffee table. The white corner peeked out, like it was staring at me. That night, I bathed Bridges, read him a story, and tucked him in. At midnight, I lay in bed with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. My mind was full of the past few days’ events. Bridges’ drawings, what he’d said, the psychologist’s hesitant look. She said we’d met before. But I’d never seen her. She said the child had no problems. But how could a child with no problems talk to a dead person? At 2:17 AM, I heard a very soft sound. Like fingernails scraping across brick. I sat bolt upright, staring at that wall. The sound stopped. I held my breath and waited for a long time. Nothing happened. I was about to lie back down— Creak. Like someone in the wall had shifted slightly. I rolled out of bed and walked barefoot to the wall, pressing my ear against it. Nothing. I stepped back and stared at the wall. Four years. This wall had stood in my home for four years. It had never moved, never made a sound, never made me afraid. But now, I was afraid. Not afraid of ghosts—afraid that there was nothing in this wall at all. I rushed to the balcony and grabbed a hammer. Bricks fell one by one. Dust choked me until I couldn’t open my eyes. I smashed frantically, breaking through a hole, half the wall, until my arms ached, until the hammer slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor. Then I stopped. The wall was empty inside. No corpse. No bones. Nothing at all. Just a puddle of four-year-old bloodstains, dried and blackened, seeped into the cement. I knelt on the floor, staring at that empty hole in the wall. A hand reached from behind me and gently touched my shoulder. “Mom.” Bridges stood behind me in his pajamas, barefoot. “Dad says he went out to get some air. He says you should stop looking.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “375264”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster

The young girl at the front desk of the Starlight Indoor Playground checked her system, looked up, and smiled. “There are two kids registered under this membership card. Should I page both of them to the front?” I froze. I only have one son. “Two?” “Yep,” she said brightly. “A two-and-a-half-year-old boy named Leo Davis, and a three-year-old girl named Chloe Vance.” She swiped the tablet to turn the screen toward me. The registered guardian for the little girl was listed as: Sarah Davis. The emergency contact was: Mark Vance. I had no idea who this Mark guy was. But I absolutely recognized the check-in photo in the top right corner of the screen. It was my wife. She was holding a little girl, and a man with short hair was standing right beside her. All three of them were smiling at the camera. They looked exactly like a happy, picture-perfect family. The timestamp on the photo: Last Saturday. Last Saturday was the day my wife told me Leo went absolutely crazy in the ball pit and was sweating through his clothes. Leo is two and a half. That little girl was three. Which meant that before my wife even gave birth to my son, that girl was already born. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned completely white. I raised it and took a clear photo of the screen. … “Sir? Sir?” The girl at the front desk was still trying to get my attention. “Which child would you like me to page for you?” I forced the corners of my mouth up into a tight, mechanical smile. “Never mind. I gave you the wrong phone number.” As I turned and walked out the glass doors of the playground, the afternoon sun was so bright it stung my eyes. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of kids playing—screams of joy and laughter all blended together. I didn’t know who Leo was currently playing with in there. And I didn’t know which child Sarah was standing next to right now. On my phone screen, I zoomed in on the photo I had just taken. I zoomed in again and again. The little girl’s facial features… they looked just like Sarah’s. Especially her eyes. Leo has those exact same eyes. I sat in a coffee shop directly across the street from the playground for forty minutes. At the forty-first minute, Sarah walked out the front doors holding Leo’s hand. Just Leo. She buckled him into his car seat and started the engine. I dialed her number. It rang twice before she answered. “Hey honey, we just finished playing. Leo was sweating like crazy, so I’m going to take him to get cleaned up first. We’ll be home a little later.” “Okay.” I hung up the phone. Her SUV didn’t turn north, toward our house. It turned south. I flagged down a taxi and pointed. “Follow that white SUV.” The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror but didn’t ask any questions. The white SUV eventually pulled up to the security gates of a high-end, gated townhouse community on the south side of the city. The Emerald Estates. We lived in a modest suburb on the north side. I watched as Sarah carried Leo, swiped an access card at the pedestrian gate, and walked right in. She did it with the effortless muscle memory of someone walking into her own home. I memorized the name of the community. She finally brought Leo home at 8:00 PM. He had clearly been given a bath, and he was wearing clean clothes. But it wasn’t the spare outfit I had packed in his diaper bag. It was a little blue hoodie with a cartoon race car embroidered on the chest. I had never seen it before in my life. “Where did Leo get this hoodie?” I asked. Sarah kicked off her shoes into the entryway closet. “Oh, I just grabbed it from a boutique next to the playground. His other shirt was completely soaked in sweat.” “How much was it?” “I don’t remember. Like thirty bucks, maybe?” When she walked away, I checked the tag on the collar. Jacadi. A premium European children’s brand. The retail price for their hoodies is usually around $120. I didn’t say a word. I warmed up a bottle of milk for Leo and rocked him to sleep. Later, Sarah was lounging on the living room sofa, scrolling through her phone. I watched her through the crack in the bedroom door. She was smiling. Smiling warmly at whatever was on her screen. When she talked to me these days, she almost never smiled like that. After she finally went to bed and fell asleep, I didn’t try to touch her phone. I knew she had a complex passcode, and if I got locked out, it would only alert her that I was suspicious. Instead, I opened my laptop and logged into the county’s public property tax records database. I typed in Sarah’s Social Security Number. I work as a financial controller; I have all our sensitive information memorized. When the search results loaded, a loud, high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Registered Owner: Sarah Davis. Date of Purchase: Three and a half years ago. Three and a half years ago. We had only been married for six months. Which meant that before the honeymoon phase of our marriage was even over, she had bought a luxury townhouse on the south side of the city. And I knew absolutely nothing about it. Monday morning, I dropped Leo off at daycare, but I didn’t go straight to the office. I drove south to the Emerald Estates. It was a newly developed community, beautifully landscaped. There was an Amazon Hub locker right outside the main gates. I parked across the street and waited for half an hour. At 9:10 AM, a man in a black trench coat pushed a high-end stroller out of the pedestrian gate. Sitting inside was a little girl, maybe three years old. She was eating a banana, smearing it all over her face. The man stopped, leaned down, and gently wiped her mouth with a tissue. His profile was perfectly visible. It was the man from the playground check-in photo. Mark Vance. He walked over to the Amazon Hub and retrieved two packages. One large, one small. The large one was a heavy cardboard box with the logo of an expensive organic toddler formula brand printed on the side. The small one was a padded envelope. He ripped it open, glanced at whatever was inside, frowned slightly, and shoved it into his pocket. I snapped several clear photos from my car, but I didn’t approach him. I put the car in drive and headed to work. During my lunch break that day, I cleared all the search history from my personal phone. Then, I used my secure work computer to access the county’s deed and mortgage registry to look up Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Paid in cash. $650,000. Three and a half years ago, Sarah and I had a combined total savings of barely $200,000. She grew up in a working-class family; her parents were blue-collar workers with zero generational wealth. That $200,000 was mostly money my parents had given us when we got married as a down payment for our future, plus the savings I had scraped together since I started working. I genuinely believed that money was still sitting safely in our joint high-yield savings account. That afternoon, I logged into our joint bank app. Available Balance: $6,150. I stared at that number until my eyes burned. $200,000. She had drained it down to six grand. Where did the other $450,000 to buy the townhouse come from? I ran a soft credit check on her, looking for credit cards or personal loans. Nothing significant showed up. But with my background in corporate finance, I knew that if someone paid $650,000 in cash for a property, and only $200,000 came from our savings, there were only a few ways to source the remaining $450,000. An untraceable private loan, a massive withdrawal from a retirement account, or— Someone else paid for it. That night, Sarah came home very late. She walked through the door at 11 PM, reeking of alcohol. She collapsed onto the sofa, muttering something about having one too many drinks at a client dinner. I poured a glass of ice water and set it on the coffee table next to her. “Sarah.” “Mhm?” “How’s your mom doing lately?” She rolled over, burying her face in the cushions. “She’s fine. Same old, same old.” “Do you want to take Leo to visit his grandma this weekend?” “We’ll see.” She let out a massive yawn and passed out almost immediately. I picked up her discarded coat and went through the pockets. No secret secondary phone. But my fingers brushed against a thick plastic card. A parking garage access pass for the Emerald Estates. Status: VIP Resident / Auto-Renew. The second Saturday. Sarah stuck to her routine and prepared to take Leo out for the day. “Try to be home a little early today,” I said, wiping down the kitchen counter. “I’m making short ribs.” “Sounds good.” As she bent down to tie Leo’s tiny sneakers, her sleeve hiked up, and I saw a watch on her wrist. It wasn’t the practical Citizen watch I had bought her for our anniversary. It was a Cartier. I had never seen it before. After they left, I drove straight back to the Emerald Estates. This time, I didn’t wait outside on the street. I walked right down the entrance ramp into the underground resident parking garage. I found her white SUV parked on the second subterranean level and snapped a photo of its location. Reserved Spot: B2-073. On the concrete wall next to the spot, a notice from the HOA was taped up: Please ensure all monthly parking and HOA fees are paid by the 15th. I found the elevator bank and rode it up to the 14th floor. Outside unit 1403, there was a small woven welcome mat. Resting on it were two pairs of adult slippers, one pair of toddler sandals, and— I recognized them instantly. A pair of orthopedic walking shoes. They belonged to my mother-in-law, Mary. She always complained about her bad knees and claimed this specific, ugly brand was the only shoe she could comfortably wear. I stood in the quiet, carpeted hallway for exactly three minutes. Through the heavy oak door, I could hear laughter. A little girl’s laughter, Leo’s infectious giggles, and the familiar, grating voice of an older woman: “Chloe, slow down, sweetie! Don’t steal your brother’s snacks.” Brother. She was calling Leo her “brother.” Then came Mark’s voice: “Mom, Leo really loves your baked ziti. You’ll have to teach me the recipe next time.” Mom. He was calling my mother-in-law “Mom.” A wave of icy dread washed over my spine, freezing my blood. I turned around and walked back to the elevator. I didn’t knock. It wasn’t because I was afraid. It was because I couldn’t afford to. I was completely unprepared. If I knocked on that door right now and blew this wide open, all they would do is coordinate their lies, delete digital evidence, and immediately start hiding assets. When the dust settled, I would be left with absolutely nothing, not even the right to cry about it. Driving home, I passed by a sleek, modern law firm. I parked the car and stood on the sidewalk outside for five minutes. In the end, I didn’t walk in. Not because I was hesitating. But because I was still missing the most crucial piece of the puzzle. Where did that $450,000 come from? At 4:00 PM, my mother-in-law, Mary, called me. “Hey, Arthur! Is Sarah home?” “No, Mary. She took Leo to the indoor playground.” “Oh, okay.” She paused for two seconds. “Are you guys free to drive up and visit us in the suburbs this weekend? Your father-in-law’s tomato garden is doing great this year.” “I’ll have to check with Sarah and see what her schedule is like.” “Sure, sure. I know you both work so hard. Don’t exhaust yourselves!” Her voice was so warm. Her tone so caring. Like the perfect, loving mother-in-law. Just thirty minutes ago, she was making baked ziti for another man in a luxury townhouse. Calling another man’s daughter “Chloe,” and calling my son “brother.” When the call ended, my hands were shaking violently against the steering wheel. Not from fear. From pure, unadulterated rage. On Wednesday night, my mother-in-law came over to our house for dinner. She claimed she had taken the commuter train all the way from their house in the suburbs to bring us fresh vegetables. I knew for a fact she didn’t come from the suburbs. She came straight from the Emerald Estates. I could easily prove it by checking her transit card history. Of course, I didn’t say a word. At the dinner table, she bounced Leo on her knee, smiling so hard her eyes crinkled. “Leo is such a good boy. He looks just like his mom did at this age.” “Actually, Mary, I think Leo looks a lot more like me.” “Boys should look like their dads! It’s better that way,” she said smoothly, dropping a piece of short rib into my bowl. “Arthur, you and Sarah really need to start thinking about having a second one.” Here we go again. In the three years we’ve been married, she had brought this up no less than twenty times. “You guys are still young! Have a little girl! Give Leo a sister to play with.” It felt like a golf ball was lodged in my throat. She already had a granddaughter. A three-year-old, chubby, happy little granddaughter. A child who called her “Grandma,” and who called Mark “Daddy.” And here she was, sitting at my dining table, eating the short ribs I spent three hours slow-cooking, pressuring me and Sarah to give her another granddaughter. “We’ll see, Mary. Work has been insanely stressful lately.” “Work isn’t as important as family! A man can be the best CEO in the world, but nothing beats having a sweet little daughter to come home to…” Sarah quietly picked at her food, keeping her eyes glued to her plate. I looked at her. She didn’t look back. That night, after putting my mother-in-law in an Uber, I sat alone on our small apartment balcony. Looking down, I could see the community courtyard. Under the dim, orange glow of a streetlight, a young couple was huddled together on a park bench. The year Sarah and I got married, we sat on that exact same bench. She had looked at me and said: “We’re going to build a beautiful life together. I promise.” That was three years ago. I pulled out my phone and opened our joint banking app again. Every month, Sarah’s $8,000 salary was supposedly deposited here. Our monthly living expenses were roughly $4,000. Logically, over three years, we should have accumulated around $144,000 in savings, just from her income alone. But the balance was $6,150. Where did the money go? I requested a full, itemized three-year transaction history. Every single month, a scheduled transfer of $2,500 went out to an unknown account. Account Holder: Mark Vance. Three years. Thirty-six transactions. Totaling $90,000. Then came the massive, lump-sum withdrawals: Down payment wire to the title company: $200,000. Contractor payments for renovations: $75,000. High-end furniture and appliances: $40,000. Miscellaneous Venmo and Zelle transfers to Mark: $60,000. Combined with the monthly “allowance” she was sending Mark… The grand total: $465,000. Every single dime of the savings we had built since our wedding, plus the $100,000 wedding gift from my parents—completely wiped out. The “salary” Sarah brought home every month was just a smokescreen to cover the basic household bills here. The real money, the serious wealth, was all being funneled directly into her second life. And I was the one who managed the household budget for three years. I cooked the meals, I took care of our son, I worked my stressful corporate job until 8 PM every night. She stole almost half a million dollars to fund a secret family. And I didn’t even know who bought the Cartier watch on her wrist. My temples were throbbing violently. I took a deep, shuddering breath. Enough. I had found everything I needed to find. Now, I needed a ruthless lawyer. During my lunch break the next day, I walked into the law firm I had hesitated outside of last week. The attorney who took my consultation was a woman named Jessica Hayes. She looked to be in her early forties, wore sharp glasses, and had an intimidating wall of legal volumes behind her desk. I laid every single piece of evidence out on her desk. The property tax records. The bank statements. The wire transfer receipts. The photo of the playground membership screen. The 401k early withdrawal penalties I found on our joint tax return. The hidden credit cards I uncovered using a deep-dive credit monitoring service. Jessica flipped through the documents for fifteen solid minutes before pushing her glasses up her nose. “Arthur, you work in corporate finance, don’t you?” “I’m a controller.” “Makes sense. I’ve been practicing family law for fifteen years, and I have never seen a client walk in with a paper trail this airtight.” She closed the heavy manila folder. “What’s your objective?” “Divorce.” “What are we fighting for?” “Full physical and legal custody of my son. And aggressive restitution for the marital assets she fraudulently transferred.” Jessica nodded slowly. “The townhouse in the Emerald Estates was purchased during the marriage. Regardless of whose name is on the deed, it is legally considered marital property in this state. The fact that she used joint marital funds to purchase a home for a paramour is textbook ‘dissipation of marital assets.’ Under the law, we can petition the court to award you the entirety of that equity, or force a sale to recoup your stolen funds.” “How long will the process take?” “If she fights it? Six to eight months. If this evidence is as bulletproof as it looks, and she realizes she’ll be slaughtered in court… three months, if we’re fast.” “I have one non-negotiable condition.” “Name it.” “I do not want her to have a single second of warning to liquidate or hide any remaining assets.” Jessica looked at me, her eyes narrowing in professional respect. “When do you plan on confronting her?” “When the trap is fully set.” For the next two weeks, I acted like absolutely nothing was wrong. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I warmed up Leo’s milk. On Saturday, Sarah took Leo to the playground, just like always. I didn’t follow her. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need any more evidence. I just needed the perfect execution. Jessica drafted a brutal, unyielding divorce petition. She also prepared a massive ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order on all assets. The moment I signed it and she filed it with the clerk, a judge would freeze every single piece of real estate and bank account tied to Sarah’s Social Security Number. Including the townhouse in the Emerald Estates. But I told Jessica to hold the filing. Because I had thought of a much, much better way to play this. I wasn’t just going to take my money back. I was going to make sure they all knew exactly what it felt like to have their lives completely destroyed by a lie.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399947”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

After my rebirth, I intentionally kept missing my fiancé at every turn. If he left work through the front doors of the command building, I took the back exit. When he took his first love out to the movies, I stayed home alone, quietly organizing my case files. All because in my past life, I forced him to marry me, perfectly aware that his heart belonged to another woman. But after we married, he left me to sleep in an empty bed for the rest of my life. We became the most notoriously miserable couple on the military base. He hated me for pulling strings to get his first love transferred to a remote, desolate border outpost. And I hated him for marrying me but never showing me an ounce of affection. Over ten years of marriage, we tore each other to pieces in countless, bitter arguments. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer that he finally started treating me with gentleness and taking care of me. I foolishly thought he had finally learned to love me. But when my last round of chemo failed, right as I was about to close my eyes for the final time, he whispered: “I’ve repaid the debt I owed your father.” “In the next life, don’t marry me. I won’t need you or your father to save me. Let’s just spare each other.” When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the military was assigning cross-base transfers. I marched straight into the Chief of Staff’s office. “My military background makes me a much better fit for the remote outpost in Alaska.” Liam, I thought to myself. In this life, I’m leaving your true love right by your side. I’m giving you your freedom back. Colonel Reynolds looked up from his stack of paperwork, his brows furrowing. “You submitted three separate transfer requests last month, explicitly pulling strings so you could stay here at Base Command with your fiancé. That’s the only reason we put Sarah on the deployment roster instead.” “We finally got the orders finalized, and now you want to change it again?” I slid the application form across the desk, standing perfectly at attention. “Sir, I’ve thought it through. I am volunteering for the remote outpost in Alaska.” Colonel Reynolds stared at me for a long time before finally waving his hand dismissively. “Suit yourself. But let me remind you, that base is isolated in the mountains, sitting at sub-zero temperatures with brutal conditions. The last officer we sent up there had a boyfriend waiting for her for two years… she ended up leaving him for a civilian contractor.” I saluted him, turned on my heel, and walked out. Out in the hallway, my colleagues were clustered around the bulletin board. Sarah Jenkins’ name was at the very top of the deployment list. Her head was bowed, her eyes rimmed with red. A few other officers were whispering consolations to her. “You got straight A’s on your psychological operations evaluations. If it weren’t for someone relying on nepotism…” “Seriously. You and Colonel Hayes were practically engaged, and then this happened…” The whispering abruptly ceased the moment I appeared. A dozen pairs of eyes stabbed into me like knives. I walked straight through the crowd, my expression completely blank. In everyone’s eyes, I was the despicable villain who stole Sarah’s man. But it didn’t matter. I would be giving Liam Hayes back to her very soon. In my past life, when Liam was leading a special ops team on a border mission, his unit was ambushed. My father, a General, defied direct orders and led a rescue team to extract him. My father took a fatal bullet and died a hero. I had weaponized that suffocating guilt to force Liam into marrying me. I knew he was deeply in love with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah, so I manipulated the system to deploy her to the frozen wasteland of Alaska. I used to think that as long as I gave enough of myself, I could eventually win his heart. So, I woke up two hours early every day to organize his training schedules. I stayed up all night helping him run tactical simulations. I stocked every drawer in our quarters with his ulcer medication and frostbite ointment. Slowly, he began to tolerate me straightening his uniform collar. He stopped pulling his hand away when I reached for it. He even started accompanying me to midnight movie premieres. I honestly thought he was finally falling for me. Until the night I suddenly collapsed during a joint-forces training exercise. Liam rushed me to the hospital and paced outside the operating room all night. Because of that, he missed an emergency SOS transmission from Sarah. The next morning, the devastating news arrived: Sarah’s recon unit had been ambushed in a blizzard, and she had died covering her team’s retreat. After that, Liam went to Arlington National Cemetery and stood silently in front of her headstone for an entire day. He never spoke her name again. Shortly after my surgery, I was diagnosed with bone cancer. Liam requested a transfer out of his combat unit and spent the next five years exclusively taking care of me. To any outsider, he was the absolute perfect, flawless husband. But I was the only one who knew the truth. When he looked at me, there was never any tenderness in his eyes. There was only a suffocating, mandatory debt that had to be repaid. A wave of bitter acidity washed over my heart. I took a deep breath, forcing down the turbulent emotions. This time, I was going to let them have their happy ending. And I was going to set myself free. After work, Liam came down to the administrative building to pick me up, as usual. The walk to his truck was dead silent. I knew he had already seen the updated deployment roster. I opened my mouth to explain, but he cut me off: “Sarah is deploying to Alaska next month. A few of the guys from our old unit are getting together tonight for a farewell dinner.” “You stole her spot here at Command. Morally speaking, you need to be there.” I didn’t say another word. I just followed him into the private room of the restaurant. Sarah was sitting in the center of the table, her eyes still red from crying. Someone had deliberately left the seat next to her empty for Liam. He sat down naturally. Without caring, I walked over to the furthest empty seat near the door. As soon as we sat down, Sarah raised her glass of whiskey. “Liam, thank you for always looking out for me all these years. This one’s for you.” Out of sheer muscle memory, I reached out to stop him. “He has a bad stomach ulcer. He can’t drink.” In my past life, I tagged along to every single one of his dinners just to intercept drinks for him. But this time, Liam completely ignored me. He picked up his glass and downed the whiskey in one shot. Sarah smiled softly. “See? Liam can drink just fine.” A guy sitting next to them chimed in, “Major Carter, you clearly don’t understand our Commander. Whether he can drink or not depends entirely on who he’s drinking with.” A chorus of knowing, muffled laughter echoed around the table. Liam didn’t say a word to defend me. The conversation quickly shifted to their shared past—surviving boot camp together, coming home for the holidays from West Point… Every single memory was a timeline I could never be a part of. I ate my food in silence. In my past life, I fought so desperately to force my way into his world, completely forgetting that to him, I was nothing but an unwanted burden. When dinner ended, someone suggested going to the movies. Liam looked at me. “Take an Uber home yourself.” With that, he walked out the door with Sarah and the others. When I got back to the base housing, my phone rang. It was Mrs. Henderson—a Gold Star mother who had reached out for help last week. Ever since her son was killed in action, her survivor housing benefits had been stalled in bureaucratic limbo. I had spent the last few days running around base, compiling all the necessary documentation for her. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Henderson. I’ll go coordinate with the housing office first thing tomorrow morning.” After hanging up, I went into the home office to grab the blue folder containing her files. It was gone. I waited until 9:30 PM when Liam finally returned. I immediately asked him: “Have you seen the housing documents for Mrs. Henderson?” Liam hung his patrol cap on the rack, his tone perfectly flat. “I gave them to Sarah.” “I already spoke to your department head. That case has been transferred to her.” I froze for a second, then marched straight toward the front door. “No. I’m going to go get them back.” Liam grabbed my arm, his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. “It’s just a routine housing allowance. The stipends add up to a few hundred bucks at most. Why are you being so petty?” “I promised Mrs. Henderson I would handle it personally.” “Sarah is deploying to Alaska soon. When the end-of-year evaluations come around, handling a high-profile veteran’s case like this will look great on her record. She needs this more than you do.” I was just about to tell him that I was the one deploying to Alaska, when Liam’s phone buzzed. It was Sarah. She had questions about the paperwork. Liam turned and walked into the study, his voice instantly softening. “Under the Military Survivor Benefits Act, Section 28… yeah, read that part first.” “For cases like this, you can reference the precedent from the Western Command last year. I’ll email you the file.” I stood frozen in the hallway. I remembered my past life, when I had just transferred to the Family Programs department. I was dealing with a massively complex military dependent dispute, and I went to ask him for advice, since he was an experienced Special Forces Commander. He had merely glanced at the file. “These are basic policy issues. Don’t you know how to look up the regulations yourself?” I tried to explain: “I did look them up, but the criteria for combat-related disability ratings is vague…” He had cut me off instantly. “I don’t have time for this. I have a training sim tomorrow.” I had stayed up for three consecutive nights untangling that bureaucratic mess myself. The day the issue was finally resolved, I excitedly told him about it. He just gave a dismissive “Mhm.” I always thought it was because he was too busy, because my work was too trivial. Now I finally understood the truth—he just didn’t want to waste a single second of his time on me. The phone call in the study lasted for over an hour. I turned and walked back to the master bedroom. My phone vibrated—a photo from Liam’s buddy, Marcus. In the dim lighting of the movie theater, Sarah had her arm looped tightly through Liam’s. He wasn’t pushing her away. Right beneath the photo was a text: [Some things just can’t be forced.] I stared at the picture and let out a self-deprecating laugh. I opened my chat history with Marcus and scrolled up. The entire log was filled with messages I had sent in the past: “Marcus, Liam’s birthday is coming up. Do you guys know what he’s been wanting lately?” “Last time you mentioned your kid likes model jets, I had a friend track down a limited edition one for him…” Every single text I sent reeked of careful, desperate people-pleasing. And every single reply from Marcus was polite, short, and completely dismissive. I had degraded myself to such pathetic depths just for a one-sided love. I tapped Marcus’s profile and permanently deleted him. I turned off the lamp and lay down. There was no phantom, agonizing ache from the bone cancer, and there was no suffocating anxiety over whether Liam loved me. For the first time since my rebirth, I slept incredibly deeply. The next morning, I went to the base hospital for a full physical. In my past life, the oncologist had told me that if my cancer had been caught earlier, the survival rate would have been significantly higher. In this life, a healthy body was my most valuable asset. Just as I checked in at 8:30 AM, Liam called me. “Come to my office right now. It’s an emergency.” “I’m at the hospital getting a physical.” “Your physical can wait,” his voice was dictatorial and unquestionable. “I just got emergency orders to attend a joint-command seminar. You need to take my Spec Ops cadets to their tactical simulation. You already know the entire curriculum.” In my past life, demands like this were a daily occurrence. I edited his cadets’ training reports, coordinated simulation resources, and even drove sick cadets to the ER in the middle of the night. When he’d get back and I’d brief him on everything I did, he would just toss out a casual, “Thanks for the hard work.” As if I was his personal, unpaid assistant. “Those are your cadets. Make your own arrangements,” I replied coldly. The line went dead silent for two seconds before Liam’s voice dropped into a dark growl. “I do not have the time right now—” I hung up on him. My test results came back quickly. The military doctor pointed at my CT scans. “There are no signs of malignant tumors right now. But a few of your blood markers are slightly elevated. I’m prescribing some preventative meds. We’ll need you to come in for regular checkups.” I took the lab results, my fingers trembling slightly. The massive boulder crushing my chest was finally lifted. As I walked out of the hospital, an Instagram notification popped up on my phone. One of Liam’s cadets had posted a video story. In the video, Sarah was at the tactical simulation center leading the cadets. The camera panned, capturing Liam rushing into the room. In the background, the cadets could be heard saying: “Lieutenant Jenkins’ commands were flawless today!” “Commander Hayes and Lieutenant Jenkins look so perfect standing next to each other!” In the final few seconds of the video, Liam suddenly swayed. He clutched his stomach, his face draining of all color, and collapsed to the floor. “Liam!” Sarah screamed in horror. The video cut off. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t reminded him to take his ulcer medication for two days. My phone rang. It was Sarah, her voice thick with tears. “Evelyn, get to the base ER right now! Liam has a bleeding ulcer, he’s in emergency surgery! I don’t have his military ID or his insurance card, they won’t let me process the paperwork!” When I arrived at the hospital, the red light above the operating room was still on. Sarah and several of the cadets were huddled outside the doors. A male cadet spotted me and immediately glared. “You know Commander Hayes has a terrible stomach condition. Why didn’t you remind him to take his meds?” A female cadet chimed in quietly, “If you had just helped cover the simulation like he asked, he wouldn’t have had to rush back in such a panic.” Sarah pulled the girl’s sleeve gently. “Stop it. The most important thing right now is that Liam pulls through.” I ignored all of them, walking straight to the nurses’ station. I used my military ID to process all of his admission paperwork. An hour later, the operating room doors swung open. The surgeon walked straight toward Sarah. “Family?” “I am,” Sarah lied smoothly. “How is he?” “Acute gastric hemorrhage. We’ve stopped the bleeding. Moving forward, he needs a strict diet and has to take his medication exactly on schedule.” As the surgeon gave his instructions, Sarah nodded repeatedly, and the cadets listened with rapt attention. No one noticed me standing in the corner. I waited until the surgeon finished speaking. I walked over, shoved the payment receipts and medical chart into Sarah’s hands, and said: “I’m leaving.” As I turned and walked down the hallway, the sound of their voices faded away behind me. Over the next few days, I buried myself in my remaining paperwork and drafted my formal handover reports. A week later, I came home to the base housing. The moment I pushed the door open, I froze. Liam was sitting on the living room sofa, his face still pale. Sarah was sitting right next to him, peeling an apple for him. Liam’s parents were also there. His mother shot me a cold glance. “You finally decided to come home?” I nodded as a greeting and turned to head to my bedroom. His father barked, “Stop right there! Liam was in the hospital for days, and you didn’t show your face once. Now that he’s home, you’re not even going to ask how he is?!” His mother piled on. “You were the one who practically begged for the joint-assignment paperwork to get him! Now that you’ve trapped him, this is how little you care?!” I turned back around. “Actually, I—” “Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, please don’t be angry,” Sarah interrupted with her soft, gentle voice. “Evelyn has been incredibly busy at work. I’m sure she feels terrible inside.” Liam’s mother’s face instantly softened. She patted Sarah’s hand affectionately. “At least you understand how to treat people.” Liam glanced at me, but ultimately said nothing. The four of them went back to chatting in low voices. The atmosphere was so warm and harmonious, they looked like the perfect family. Whatever. Explaining myself would be a waste of breath. I quietly walked into my room and shut the door. On my final day at Division Headquarters, I cleared out my office bright and early. I gave my potted plants to a colleague next door, archived all my classified files, and emptied my desk drawers. My entire life fit into a single camouflage tactical duffel bag. Just as I stepped out of the command building, a mob of people suddenly swarmed me. Several of them had heavy news cameras perched on their shoulders. “Major Carter! Do you have an explanation for the missing VA benefit files for Mrs. Henderson?!” “As the commanding officer in charge of her case, do you admit to gross negligence?!” Microphones were practically shoved into my eyeballs. I was pushed backward by the aggressive crowd. The sharp plastic edge of a camera lens slammed into my forehead, sending a dull throb of pain through my skull. Realizing things were escalating, I quickly turned around and retreated back into the secure building. The armed guards at the entrance immediately stepped up, blocking the reporters from entering. My heart was pounding wildly. My phone was vibrating non-stop. A colleague sent me a news link: [Military Officer Loses Critical Documents; Gold Star Mother’s Survivor Benefits Delayed for Six Months!] The article claimed that Mrs. Henderson’s son had been killed in action during a border operation. The survivor benefits she was legally entitled to had been stalled because her paperwork was “lost.” Worse, her husband was severely ill and desperately needed that money for life-saving surgery. At the bottom of the article was a leaked screenshot of the internal department task log. Under the “Lead Officer” column, it clearly stated: Evelyn Carter. My colleague sent another text: [Wait, wasn’t Sarah handling this case? When did it get transferred to you?] I frantically opened the internal department server and checked the logs. Two days ago, the name assigned to Mrs. Henderson’s file had somehow been manually changed from “Sarah Jenkins” to “Evelyn Carter.” A chill washed over my entire body. I immediately texted my Department Director: [Sir, why am I listed as the lead on Mrs. Henderson’s case? I have never touched those files.] I received an almost instant reply: [Sarah told me two days ago that she had already officially handed the case over to you, and that you agreed to process it. Why are you suddenly claiming ignorance now that it’s blown up in the press?] I found Sarah’s number and called her. The line was busy. I called her over a dozen times. Still unreachable. It wasn’t until the sky grew dark and the mob outside the building finally dispersed that Sarah answered her phone. I suppressed the boiling rage in my chest. “Where are you? We need to talk face-to-face.” From the other end of the line, I heard the clinking of bowls and spoons. Then came Sarah’s cheerful, smiling voice: “I’m over at your house! Liam just got discharged from the hospital and needs someone to look after him. I knew you were busy with work, so I came over to help cook dinner.” I hung up the phone. I sprinted back to the base housing and threw the front door open. Sarah was sitting right next to Liam, holding a bowl of soup. Seeing me walk in, she stood up. “Evelyn, you’re back! I made some—” I took a massive step forward and slapped her directly across the face. SMACK! The porcelain bowl shattered on the hardwood floor, hot soup splashing everywhere. Sarah clutched her cheek, her eyes wide with theatrical, absolute disbelief. Liam shot up from the sofa and grabbed my wrist. “Are you insane?!” I violently wrenched my arm free and glared at Sarah. “Where did you put the original case files? You are coming with me to the Director’s office right now to confess what you did.” Sarah’s eyes instantly filled with tears, spilling over her cheeks. “Evelyn, I’m so sorry… I was at the hospital taking care of Liam those few days, and I made a careless mistake at work… I’ll go explain it right now!” Liam grabbed her by the shoulders, stopping her. “No. If you step forward now, it will only make the media circus worse. They’ll put a permanent black mark of gross negligence on your record. You might even be dishonorably discharged.” He turned to look at me. “We’ll have Sarah admit there was a minor miscommunication during the handover. You will write the formal incident report and take the primary responsibility. That’s the only way to minimize the damage to the unit.” I let out a cold laugh. “So I’m just supposed to be the scapegoat? I am not taking the fall for her.” Liam stared at me in silence for a few seconds. He stepped closer, lowering his voice into a dark, terrifying whisper. “If you don’t take the fall for this, I will dig up the combat reports from the mission where your father died. I will expose his tactical command failures.” My entire body went rigid. I stared at him, looking at him like he was an alien creature. During that border mission, my father had defied direct orders specifically to save Liam’s trapped unit. He died taking a bullet meant for him. And now, Liam was weaponizing my father’s sacrifice to blackmail me. The living room was terrifyingly quiet. A long time passed before I finally spoke. My voice was completely raw. “I agree.” That night, a formal incident report bearing my name was published across the military’s internal intranet. The comment boards refreshed endlessly, every single message dripping with venom. People cursed me, saying I “didn’t deserve to wear the uniform.” Some doxxed my base housing address. Others took my official military portrait and photoshopped it with a black memorial ribbon. I shut my laptop, but the vicious words continued echoing in my skull. At 4:00 AM, I booted up my encrypted military terminal. I began compiling every single document related to Mrs. Henderson—the initial application logs, the scanned death certificates, the hospital diagnostic records. By the time the sun came up, I had encrypted and archived everything, saving three separate backups. The next morning at 9:00 AM, the doorbell rang. Sarah stood outside, holding an official military body-cam and a small tripod. Her tone was sickeningly sincere. “Evelyn, the Inspector General’s office asked me to record a quick video statement from you regarding the incident.” Liam had already left early for the training grounds. The red recording light blinked on. I sat down in front of the lens. “I am Major Evelyn Carter from Family Programs. Regarding the lost VA paperwork for Gold Star mother Mrs. Henderson, I sincerely apologize…” Just then, loud, chaotic noises erupted from the hallway outside my door. The shouting grew louder. “This is the unit! Evelyn Carter, get out here!” Fists started pounding violently against my front door, accompanied by furious screaming. I sensed something was horribly wrong. I instinctively looked over at Sarah. She was looking down at the screen of the body-cam. Her finger swiped quickly across the glass, a malicious smirk forming on her lips that she didn’t have time to hide. I lunged forward and snatched the device out of her hands. The screen wasn’t recording a private video file. It was an active Instagram Live stream. The viewer count read 178,000 and was climbing by the second. The live chat was scrolling at a blinding speed: [I knew it was her! She doesn’t give a damn about Gold Star families!] [Look at how robotic her apology is. Who is she trying to fool?] [How is trash like this allowed to be an officer?!] I looked up at Sarah. She offered a provocative, triumphant smile. “Evelyn, a live-streamed apology feels so much more sincere, don’t you think?” The pounding on the front door was getting louder, the wood beginning to splinter. I turned around, walked into the kitchen, and grabbed my heavy-duty tactical multi-tool—the one Liam used to use for wilderness survival training. I tapped my smartwatch and sent an emergency SOS alert to the Base Military Police. I walked back to the front door, took a deep breath, and violently ripped it open. I held up Sarah’s live-streaming device, pointing the camera directly at the faces of the people leading the mob: “Trespassing in a restricted military housing zone, right? Come on, let’s get you all on camera clearly. Building 7, Unit 3. I’ve already dispatched the Military Police.” In my other hand, I gripped the tactical knife, the heavy blade pointed toward the floor. The angry mob instantly went dead silent. The man leading the charge froze, glancing nervously over my shoulder at Sarah. She had long since retreated to the back of the living room, her face pale as a sheet. “H-hey! Don’t do anything crazy!” The man took a half-step back. I pointed the camera lens at my heavily dented door lock. “I am standing my ground. The MPs will be here in less than two minutes. Trespassing on a federal military installation is a felony. That’ll get you all locked up for a very long time.” People in the back of the crowd started quietly backing away. “Are you leaving or not?” I took one step forward. Half the mob instantly scattered. Five minutes later, the Military Police arrived and arrested the remaining stragglers. After giving my official statement and filling out the reports, I shut my broken door. I walked into my bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out my tactical deployment duffel bag. I only packed my military ID, my driver’s license, my debit cards, a few sets of OCP uniforms, and my medical records. Everything else—the photos, the souvenirs, the expensive military watch Liam had gifted me—I didn’t touch a single one. Half an hour later, I carried my duffel bag downstairs. I waited at the gate for twenty minutes before catching a military transport shuttle heading to the joint-forces airfield. The driver was a veteran contractor in his late forties. “Heading to Alaska?” The veteran glanced at my heavy duffel in the rearview mirror. “Rushing home for the holidays?” I froze for a second. “It’s New Year’s Eve, Major,” the veteran said as he put the shuttle into gear. “Didn’t your family call to rush you home?” Outside the window, the sky was growing dark. In the distance, the scattered lights of the base glowed against the snow, and faint fireworks from a nearby town burst into the sky. “Yeah. I’m going home,” I said quietly. The shuttle drove out of the city and merged onto the desolate highway. The streetlights grew sparse, replaced by barren, frozen mountains on either side. Three hours later, the shuttle pulled up outside the military airfield. The massive engines of the C-17 transport plane roared against the freezing, biting wind. Standing in the dim, yellow light of the cargo bay, a profound, crystal-clear realization washed over me for the first time: This time, I was truly leaving Liam Hayes behind forever.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399964”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I had just posted a vacation photo with my boyfriend on Instagram when a “Loyalty Tester” slid into my DMs. “Babe, your boyfriend looks like a player. Send me his handle. I’ll run a loyalty test on him for free, how about it?” “Are homewreckers really this bold and self-righteous nowadays?” I replied. After I rejected her, she immediately took a screenshot of our chat, posted it on TikTok, and played the victim. Within hours, thousands of netizens flooded my DMs, cursing me out. To keep the peace, I swallowed my pride and posted a public apology, stating I just wanted a quiet, normal life. But she and her followers decided my apology was proof of a guilty conscience. They insisted I was terrified, and she boldly declared she was going to test him anyway to “save” me. A few days later, the Loyalty Tester smugly posted a screenshot showing she had successfully added my boyfriend on Snapchat. The caption read: “Easy catch. Your man isn’t exactly a saint, babe~” I looked at the post, but all I felt was pity for her. Her new post went viral. Within an hour, it hit ten thousand likes. I stared at the two screenshots in the post. The first was her friend request: “Hey handsome, this is me in the pic. Add me?” The second was a chat interface. She had blurred his username, but I recognized the profile picture instantly. It was a photo of me, taken during our vacation just a few days ago, smiling radiantly at the camera. The comment section was an absolute bloodbath. Hordes of netizens rushed in to mock me. “@Chloe, come look at this! Do you recognize the guy flirting in someone else’s chat?” “Where is that clown who was defending him? No wonder she got so defensive over a free loyalty test. Her precious Prince Charming belongs to the streets.” “Stop hiding, pick-me girl. Come out and beg the tester for an apology.” As the internet demanded, I was tagged in the top pinned comment, right beneath the Loyalty Tester’s smirking emoji. Watching the comments grow increasingly vile, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I posted a response: “I appreciate everyone’s concern for my relationship. However, my boyfriend and I have known each other since high school. We’ve weathered a lot of storms together. I know his character, and I have absolute faith in our relationship. If things ever fall apart, I won’t hesitate to walk away. But until then, I will not subject him to some twisted psychological test, and I do not welcome anyone trying to interfere in our relationship.” Seeing a wave of rational users upvoting my response, I breathed a sigh of relief, praying the mob would disperse. But the Loyalty Tester immediately replied with a crying video: “Babe, I don’t want to ruin your relationship! I’m just terrified of seeing a sweet girl get manipulated by a toxic man. I just wanted to help!” The moment she spoke, her army of followers descended, and the narrative violently shifted again. They decided I was just a desperate, pathetic “doormat” who couldn’t bear to let go of a cheater. They started mocking my post, turning it into a copypasta template, laughing and calling it a “masterclass in delusion.” Even the few comments wishing us a long, happy relationship were downvoted to oblivion. Staring at the vicious, stinging words, my chest tightened. Finally, I just turned off my phone. That evening, I came home exhausted from work. The moment I walked through the door, I saw Mason leaning back on the sofa, staring at his phone with a faint, handsome smirk on his face. Hearing my keys, he instinctively flinched. He quickly placed his phone face-down on the cushions and coughed awkwardly. “Chloe, you’re home early today?” “Yeah. Were you chatting with someone?” “Just one of the bros.” My heart sank. He was lying. Mason had a specific tell—every time he lied, he blinked rapidly. I forced myself to rationalize it. We were adults; everyone is entitled to their privacy. I pretended not to notice. I sat down and started complaining about the drama at my corporate job, just like I usually did. Mason listened quietly, just like he usually did. But his eyes kept darting back to his phone. After talking for ten minutes without getting a single response, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me. Remembering the internet circus from earlier, I couldn’t help but test the waters. “Mason, did anyone… weird try to add you online today?” He smiled casually. “Nope.” Hearing that single word, my heart plummeted into the abyss. I subconsciously gripped the hem of my shirt, desperately trying to shake the paranoid thoughts from my head. Mason and I had been through a lot. It wasn’t like other girls hadn’t tried to shoot their shot before—college underclassmen, flirty coworkers—but he had brutally rejected every single one of them. Why would a random internet troll suddenly destroy what we had? Besides, I knew exactly what kind of man Mason was. Comforting myself with that thought, I let out a breath and went to the bedroom to rest. But the moment I opened Instagram, I saw the Loyalty Tester had just dropped a new update. “You poor, naive girl. My heart breaks for you.” I was instantly drawn to the cover photo. It was a screenshot of her chat with Mason. At first, it was just her awkwardly trying to make conversation. But once she “discovered” that Mason loved playing Valorant, they instantly hit it off. He even invited her to a duo queue. After the match, the chat showed him praising her gaming skills, saying she was way better than his “clueless girlfriend” who didn’t know how to play. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. It was true. Mason was an incredible gamer, and I was absolute garbage at it. Whenever we played together, I dragged him down, and he had to constantly save me while reassuring me it was fine. Knowing I was a liability, I eventually just stopped playing with him altogether. The internet mob arrived on cue. “Oh my god, she’s still not dumping him?!” The comments aggressively tagged my handle. “She’s the ultimate pick-me. What do you expect? She’s perfectly happy eating garbage.” “Poor OP, having to force herself to flirt with such a disgusting guy just to prove a point.” The Loyalty Tester replied sweetly: “Babes, it’s not hard work. I just want to help my sisters see men for who they truly are.” The internet erupted in applause, showering her with digital hugs. “The OP is a literal angel. Too bad the pathetic girlfriend is too blind to appreciate it.” “It’s okay,” the tester replied. “Some girls are smart, and some girls are just a little slow. We need to be patient. I’ll keep working hard until she finally wakes up.” She attached a cute finger-heart emoji. Moved by her “heroic” mission, her follower count skyrocketed overnight. I clicked on her profile. Her entire grid was dedicated to exposing other people’s boyfriends. Every cover photo had the words “CERTIFIED TRASH” stamped across it in bold red letters. The comment sections were filled with cheers and women thanking her for saving their lives. So, was it my turn now? Just then, I heard the bedroom door open. I looked at Mason as he walked in. The lighting cast shadows across my face. I asked him one more time: “Mason, I can trust you, right?” Mason tilted his head in confusion, then smiled, walking over and pulling me into a warm hug. He affectionately nuzzled his forehead against mine. “Of course you can.” “Okay. I trust you.” I put my phone down and turned off the lamp. For the next few days, I stayed off social media, and Mason didn’t show any strange behavior. I figured that once the internet found a new target to bully, the mob would naturally disperse. But a few days later, while I was taking a coffee break after a client meeting downtown, I spotted a familiar back across the outdoor promenade. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a sleek black leather jacket. He stood out in the crowd. And standing out just as much was the stunning woman beside him. She was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress, smiling radiantly as she clung to his arm. It was the Loyalty Tester. I gripped my handbag tightly and marched forward. Just as I got close, the Loyalty Tester suddenly let go of his arm and scurried away, as if trying to avoid suspicion. Mason turned around. He looked at me, a mix of shock and panic flashing across his face. “Chloe? What are you doing here?” My gaze shifted from him to the retreating figure of the woman, my voice freezing cold. “Who was that?” He avoided my eyes. “Just an aggressive street promoter. She wouldn’t stop trying to sell me cologne.” “Then what are you doing all the way out here?” Mason owned a high-end automotive tuning club. He was usually at his shop all day. Today, he had driven an hour across the city. He smiled softly. “I heard you had a client meeting in this area. I was waiting for you to finish so I could take you to dinner.” He pulled out his phone to show me a reservation at a wildly expensive, incredibly romantic restaurant. Even though the overly dramatic, candlelit decor wasn’t really my style, I appreciated the gesture and agreed to go. The food was actually fantastic. By the end of the meal, my mood had significantly improved. Bored, I pulled out my phone to check if the internet drama had finally died down. The very first thing on my feed was a new post from the Loyalty Tester. “Babe, you ate my food.” The photo attached showed me sitting happily at the romantic restaurant, chatting with Mason. Mason happened to have his head turned away from the camera. From that specific angle, his back looked somehow lonely and distracted. I whipped my head around to look at the spot where she must have taken the photo, but the area was already empty. My good mood instantly evaporated. A wave of suffocating irritation washed over me. I accidentally glanced at the comment section, reading the sarcastic, mocking quotes from her followers. A lump of pure, unadulterated rage lodged in my chest, completely trapped. Right on cue, the Loyalty Tester sent me a DM. Her tone was still dripping with that fake, patronizing pity. “Babe, I assume you saw it. I bet that trashy man told you I was just a promoter, didn’t he?” The fire in my chest exploded. My typing was aggressive: “I am warning you for the last time. I do not need your so-called loyalty tests. Stay the hell away from me and my boyfriend!” The Loyalty Tester replied with breezy arrogance: “Every woman acts exactly like you when forced to face reality. But it’s fine. I know that in a few days, you’ll be on your knees thanking me.” “Enough. Let me make this clear: intentionally inserting yourself into someone else’s relationship, regardless of your pathetic excuses, makes you a homewrecker.” She replied with a melodramatic sigh: “Fine. I’ll just help you test him a little longer.” She vanished offline. I was so furious I wanted to throw my phone across the restaurant. I looked up. Mason had just checked a message on his phone. He looked at me apologetically. “Chloe, work just blew up. I’m really sorry, but I have to go.” He threw cash on the table and rushed out. I looked out the restaurant window. I watched him get into his sports car in the valet lane. Just as he pulled up to the curb, a woman slipped into the passenger seat. The angle obscured her face, but she was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress. I sat alone at the table for a long time before finally remembering I needed to head back to the corporate office. When I walked in, the pitch deck I had assigned to my team that morning was still sitting half-finished on a desk. “What is the meaning of this? I assigned this at 9 AM, and it’s still not done?!” I slammed the folder onto the desk. A few junior employees lowered their heads in silence. But in the corner, Leo, the new Gen-Z intern, was scrolling on his phone and let out a loud, mocking snicker. “What’s so funny?” He lazily lifted his eyes and turned his phone screen toward me. It was the Loyalty Tester’s newest post. The algorithm was pushing it so hard that everyone in my office had seen it. “Supervisor Chloe,” Leo drawled, a smirk playing on his lips. “You’re getting publicly humiliated and cheated on for the whole internet to see, and you’re coming in here to take your anger out on us?” The other employees didn’t look the least bit sympathetic. Their eyes were dancing with suppressed laughter. Just then, the department director pushed the door open. Seeing the absolute chaos and the untouched pitch deck, he lost his mind and screamed at all of us—but aimed the brunt of his fury at me. I kept my head down and took the verbal beating, not daring to defend myself. Behind me, the intern was secretly snapping photos of me getting yelled at. When he was finally done screaming, the director pointed a lethal finger at my face. “Chloe, I am warning you! Your pathetic personal drama is severely damaging the company’s image. Clean up your mess in one week, or you’re fired!” He slammed the door and left. I tried to reassign the tasks. My team listened half-heartedly before sluggishly returning to their desks. But the second I stepped out for a breather, I saw that they had already leaked the photo of me getting screamed at to a gossip forum, laughing about it in the comments. That night, I dragged my exhausted, heavy body home. When I opened the door, the apartment was pitch black. I flicked on the lights. Sitting on the coffee table was a handwritten note. “Chloe, I had to head out of town for an emergency. Take care of yourself. I’ll bring you back a present.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. It went straight to voicemail. My iMessages were left on Delivered. I sat on the sofa for a moment, then subconsciously opened Instagram. Sure enough, pinned to the very top of the Loyalty Tester’s profile was a brand new update. “Invited by a certain gentleman to go on a trip for a few days! I’ll be doing a paid, exclusive live stream of the final loyalty test results for all my sisters!” Attached was a selfie of her holding a first-class boarding pass. The internet lost its collective mind. Even when they realized they had to pay to access the live stream, thousands of people eagerly bought tickets, declaring they would gladly pay for front-row seats to this drama. A mob flooded my comment section, demanding to know if I was finally going to dump him. I held my ground, pinning a stern message directed at the Loyalty Tester: “I know exactly what kind of man my boyfriend is. I am asking you to stop harassing us. I am telling you this for your own good.” Unlike before, the mockery shifted into a wave of condescending pity. Armchair psychologists began dissecting my entire digital footprint, psychoanalyzing me. Some claimed I was a victim of childhood neglect, which is why I was desperately clinging to a toxic man. They urged parents to love their daughters so they wouldn’t end up like me. Others said I was just pathologically stubborn, terrified of losing face, and willing to swallow poison just to prove the internet wrong. I was too exhausted to argue. I closed the app. Suddenly, a friend request popped up from an anonymous account. As soon as I accepted it, they sent me a stealth photo of Mason, followed by a GPS pin. “He’s here.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399948”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I am the girlfriend of a serial killer. I am also completely brain-dead. At least, that’s what I want him to believe. My boyfriend, Elias Vance, loves me with a terrifying intensity. He adores me precisely because I remain in an endless sleep, unlike the ninety-nine “players” who came before me, always poking around, trying to unearth his dark secrets. The last fool who dared to venture into the basement in search of clues found himself dissolved in high-grade acid and flushed down the sewer pipes that very same night. Every evening, Elias presses his heavy body against mine, his breath ragged in my ear. “I miss you so much. Please wake up, just for me, okay?” I am usually so paralyzed with primal terror that I almost squeeze him back in reflex. I must maintain the charade; I must remain the perfect vegetable. If the graphic details of how he dismembers his victims are any indication, my fate would be infinitely worse if he discovered the truth. I’ve been trapped inside this horrific, simulated horror game for two endless years. Playing dead is my only lifeline. Until today, when the new caregiver arrived. Taking advantage of the moment we were alone, she leaned in and whispered directly into my ear: “Stop faking it. I know you’re wide awake.” … Caregiver Maya’s fingers dug ruthlessly into the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. “Speak to me!” I gave absolutely zero response. The EKG monitor continued its steady, maddening beep… beep… beep… “My System interface shows your brainwave activity spiked at 180. You are absolutely not a vegetable.” Maya increased the pressure, her sharp fingernails almost puncturing my skin. “Don’t imagine for a single second you can fool the System! Those ninety-nine players before me are all dead, and you think you’re the one who gets to survive to the end by lying here like a coward?” “I’m a player too.” “And I have a primary objective.” “The moment I expose your charade, I earn ten thousand points.” “That is my ticket out of this living hellscape!” She leaned in closer, her voice thick with suppressed, desperate madness. I remained perfectly still, my eyes closed, the rhythm of my shallow breathing unchanging. Maya recoiled half a step with a look of pure disgust, finally loosening her murderous grip. “What an actress.” “You miserable coward, using ‘playing dead’ as a survival strategy? Are you even human?” She reached into the pocket of her pristine white lab coat and pulled out a long, silver needle. “System-issued item,” she boasted. “Amplifies physical pain by a factor of ten, leaving zero trace of the puncture.” She raised the needle high, targeting my fingertips, poised to thrust it downward with brutal force. BANG. “I’m home, baby!” The heavy, reinforced security door was violently thrown open. Maya’s hand jerked violently in surprise, and the silver needle went wide, stabbing into the cotton bedsheet instead. She instantly retracted the needle, wiped the malice from her expression, and replaced it with a mask of quiet, submissive professionalism as she retreated to the side of my hospital bed. A thick, metallic stench of fresh blood saturated the room long before Elias himself crossed the threshold. Elias strode into the room. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt, the hem saturated with dried blood that had turned a sickening dark brown. He was casually carrying a pink, cardboard bakery box that was still dripping fresh red liquid onto the hardwood floor. Elias walked directly to my bedside, tossing the bakery box onto my nightstand without a second thought. The impact caused the box to spring open, and a severed human head rolled out onto the wood surface. The hazy, grayish-white eyes were frozen wide open in terror, and the neck was a gory mess of red veins, raw muscle, and shattered cartilage. “Look, my darling.” Elias sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, reaching out a hand to stroke my bloodless cheek. His fingertips were rough, covered in thick calluses earned from years of gripping various sharp butcher knives. “This belonged to that neighbor who was so eager to call the authorities.” “The one who claimed he was going to expose the secrets in my basement to the Bureau.” “The one who was going to send a SWAT team to raid our home.” Elias let out a low chuckle. It was a pleasant, rich sound on the surface, but it contained an undercurrent that made my blood run cold. “So, I made him watch as his own body was put through a massive industrial meat grinder, piece by piece.” I remained perfectly still, my eyes closed, giving absolutely zero reaction to the gory trophy resting just inches from my face. Maya, standing in the dark corner of the room, clapped her hands over her mouth too late, letting out a violent, dry heave. “Gag!” The motion of Elias’s hand stroking my cheek instantly froze. He slowly turned his head to the corner, focusing on Maya. “A new hire?” Maya’s face went chalk-white, her legs shaking so violently that she collapsed onto her knees with a loud thud. “Mr…. Mr. Vance…” “No manners.” Elias casually raised his hand. A flash of silver light flew from his sleeve with terrifying speed. A scalpel, honed to a razor edge, transfixed Maya’s left shoulder, the massive force of the throw driving her backward and pinning her mercilessly to the pristine white plaster wall. A blood-curdling shriek shattered the dead silence of the room. Elias didn’t even grant her a second glance as he turned back to me. Using that same blood-stained hand, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his smartphone, and tapped on a video link. He held the glowing screen directly in front of my closed eyelids. The audio exploded from the speakers: the high-pitched, terrifying whine of a chainsaw tearing through solid bone, mixed with a man’s final, guttural screams of utter despair. “Just listen to that sound, my sweet. Isn’t it exquisite?” “You know, the neighbor was begging for his life right up until the very end.” “He claimed he had a wife and children waiting for him.” “But why should I care about any of that?” “My world begins and ends with you.” “Anyone who tries to interfere with us, anyone who tries to disturb our peace… they must die.” I continued to lie there in perfect silence, zero micro-movements of my eyes beneath my lids. Maya was struggling violently, unable to dislodge the blade, fresh blood saturating the wall. [System! Why can’t I trigger a primary objective completion confirmation?! I know she’s faking!] She was screaming inside her head to her System interface. I couldn’t see the visual interface she was looking at, but I could imagine her sheer desperation at that moment. Elias switched off his phone and casually wiped the blood from his fingers onto the clean sleeve of my hospital gown. “Did you like it?” I was as silent and still as a fresh corpse. The corner of Elias’s mouth curled into a look of pure, twisted fascination. “So perfectly obedient.” “You are the only one who will never betray me, right?” He stood up from the bed, strolled over to where Maya was pinned, and casually ripped the scalpel from her shoulder with one violent yank. Fresh blood sprayed across the room. Maya collapsed onto the floor, clutching her shoulder, her eyes wide with a horrific cocktail of terror and pure hatred. Elias slapped the flat of the bloody blade against Maya’s cheek several times, a sickeningly casual gesture. “Don’t imagine for a single second I don’t see through the games of you ‘players’.” “You’re all looking for clues, hoping to find my weaknesses.” “But none of you are useful. You aren’t even worthy of being preserved as taxidermy specimens in my collection.” “I don’t care who planted you as her caregiver.” “But if you fail to take perfect care of her, the next time this blade leaves my hand, it gets pinned into your brain.” Maya spent the next three days recovering from her injury. During that time, she didn’t dare lift a hand against me. She just sat on the chair by my bedside, a nervous wreck, whispering under her breath over and over again. “Points… redeem… System items…” She was exchanging her earned points for an item. I remained perfectly still, maintaining my breathing at a constant twelve breaths per minute. Elias wasn’t home. Due to the recent string of high-profile serial murders in the city, the Bureau was cracking down hard, and he had a lot of “loose ends” to process. Maya stood up from the chair. She was holding a syringe filled with a terrifying, neon pink liquid. “A customized cocktail of neuro-stimulants and a systemic truth serum,” she sneered, looking down at me like I was an insect. “I spent five hundred points on this premium System item.” “Once this enters your system, even a fresh corpse would sit up and recite Pi to the hundredth decimal place.” She aggressively purged the air from the syringe, and a nauseating, chemical odor instantly drifted into my nose. “Go ahead and take it. When this is over, you’ll finally be free.” She roughly grabbed my arm, slamming the needle mercilessly into my vein. I felt the freezing liquid being forced into my bloodstream. Maya let go of my arm, took two steps back, and a horrific, fanatical grin spread across her face. She pulled out a miniature high-definition video camera and aimed the lens directly at my face. “Answer me! Are you faking this?!” “Tell the camera who you really are!” The liquid burned like gasoline as it coursed through my veins. My nerve endings started misfiring, sending random signals, and my muscles began to twitch uncontrollably, desperate to spasm. An intense, overwhelming compulsion to speak, to confess everything, hammered at my brain like a physical force. Maya shoved the camera right against my mouth. “Say it! Tell the lens the truth!” I felt my Adam’s apple bob violently. “Blech!” I violently threw my head to the side. A massive stream of acidic stomach fluid and bile exploded from my mouth, splashing directly onto her designer sneakers. Maya froze in sheer disbelief. “Impossible! A System-issued serum cannot fail!” “Tell me! Tell me who you are!” Panicking, she grabbed my shoulders, violently shaking me back and forth. My mouth opened again, a reflexive action beyond my control. “Blergh!” Even more vomit sprayed from my stomach, saturating the bottom half of her pants. Maya let out a piercing shriek, jumping back in disgust. “Damn it! My limited edition Jordans!” She raised her leg high, aiming a brutal stomp directly at my exposed stomach. “Don’t you dare.” A voice as cold as absolute zero drifted from the bedroom doorway. Elias stood there, casually holding a massive firefighter’s axe that was dripping fresh blood onto the hardwood floor. He glanced at the disgusting mess on the floor, then at the vomit covering Maya’s expensive clothes. His brows knotted together in deep revulsion. “What is this?” He gestured with the bloody axe toward the acidic pool on the floor that was saturating the air with a horrific, pungent stench. Maya froze in primal terror, retracting her leg instantly, frantically trying to hide the miniature camera behind her back. “Mr…. Mr. Vance, this is… it’s just a liquid nutritional supplement I was trying to feed her.” “Supplement?” Elias took several strides toward us. His custom dress shoes made an agonizingly heavy clack… clack… sound against the wood. “Funny. It smells exactly like an emetic drug.” He walked directly to my bedside, reaching out a cold hand to feel my forehead. No fever. “Did my baby throw up?” I remained perfectly still, my eyes closed, a trace of bile on the corner of my mouth, giving zero reaction. Elias turned his head, staring dead at Maya’s shoes. The camera lens hadn’t been hidden properly, and the light from the overhead lamp glinted off the glass, exposing it. “What is that?” Maya’s face went instantly chalk-white, a cold sweat saturating her back. “This… this is…” Elias delivered a brutal swing with the axe. The blade completely cleaved through the front tip of Maya’s limited edition shoe and smashed the camera into unrecognizable pieces. Plastic shards and splinters of bone flew across the room. “AGHHHH—!” Maya collapsed onto the floor, clutching her bloody, mutilated foot, rolling and screaming in agony. “I utterly despise spies and hidden surveillance,” Elias announced coldly, letting the heavy axe fall to the floor with a dull thud. “Drag her away. Sever the hand that was holding that camera.” “If she dares to use a device like that against her, this hand is useless to her.” The iron door to the basement was thrown open, and several massive, vicious guard dogs that Elias kept in the basement lunged out, dragging Maya down the stairs by her legs. The shrieks of terror turned into desperate gurgles, before being completely silenced by the heavy, reinforced metal door clicking shut. Elias filled a basin with warm water and grabbed a clean white towel. His movements were heartbreakingly gentle as he meticulously wiped the bile from the corner of my mouth. “Baby, you mustn’t eat anything anyone gives you from now on.” “It’s dirty.” Maya didn’t die. She spent three thousand of her accumulated points to buy a System-issued item called “Limb Regeneration Fluid.” The very next day, she appeared in the living room with both hands completely intact. However, her face was even paler than usual, and the look she directed at me was no longer just malice—it was the look of someone staring at a specimen about to be dissected. Elias displayed zero surprise at her miraculous recovery. In this simulated horror game world, he had witnessed plenty of bizarre and supernatural events. Regenerating limbs was just a standard “player perk.” As long as that perk didn’t threaten his dominance, he could tolerate it. He actually seemed to view her recovery as an amusing magic trick. “That medicine of yours is actually more effective than anything the local hospitals carry.” Elias was lounging on the designer sofa, idly spinning a perfectly honed scalpel between his fingers. Maya was kneeling on the floor, her body trembling with terror. “This… it’s an ancient family recipe, passed down for generations.” “An ancient family recipe? Then hand it over.” Elias said it casually, but the tip of the scalpel dug into the glass surface of the coffee table, creating a grating screech. Maya gritted her teeth, a flash of ruthless intent crossing her eyes. “The primary ingredient… it requires a living human heart.” “Specifically… the brain of someone in a deep coma!” She violently snapped her head up, pointing a trembling finger directly at me as I lay on my hospital bed. “Mr. Vance, she’s never going to wake up. She is the ultimate catalyst!” “If you allow me to harvest her brain, I can synthesize the ultimate potion for you: the elixir of Omniscience and Omnipotence!” She dropped the act entirely. She wanted me dead. Omniscience and Omnipotence. That was the ultimate endgame for every Big BOSS inside this entire horror game universe. The motion of Elias’s hand spinning the scalpel stopped instantly. He jammed the scalpel deep into the gap of the coffee table. He tilted his head, subjecting my lifeless expression to a cold, calculating analysis. I continued to lie there in perfect silence, the heart monitor producing a flat, unwavering wave. “Omniscience and Omnipotence?” Elias ripped the scalpel out of the table and casually blew the glass dust from the honed blade. “All I want in this entire world is for her to stay by my side forever. Why would I want to be omniscient?” “Knowing too many secrets and watching the universe slowly rot? That sounds like absolute torture.” He stood up from the sofa and strolled to my bedside. Maya refused to give up, her voice screaming in desperation. “Mr. Vance! Keeping this vegetable alive is a complete waste of expensive medical resources! It would be much better to…” “Shut up.” Elias cut her off, his voice absolute zero. He casually raised both hands, placing them securely around my throat. He applied sudden, brutal force, completely cutting off my supply of oxygen. As my lungs were aggressively robbed of air, my body’s natural survival reflex began to scream in protest. But I maintained my perfect role as a living doll. Zero struggle. Zero furrowing of my brow. Zero movement of my eyelids. The EKG monitor began producing a frantic, piercing alarm. The wave patterns on the display screen became utterly chaotic. Elias stared dead into my eyes, watching as my pale face turned red, then a bruised purple, and finally a sickening, breathless blue. One minute. Two minutes. Right at the very final second before I would have descended into irreversible asphyxia and shock, Elias released his grip. Fresh oxygen aggressively flooded into my lungs, but I forced my muscles not to convulse in a gasp. I continued to lie perfectly still, relying entirely on the mechanical ventilator to slowly stabilize my breathing rhythm. Elias’s expression transformed into one of pure, twisted fascination at my zero reaction. “She is my girlfriend. She is my exclusive property.” “Whether I kill her or not depends entirely on my mood.” He turned his back on the bed, looking down at the kneeling Maya. “You want to kill her?” Maya’s body gave a violent shiver, and she dropped her head to the floor, terrified to speak. “Plenty of people have wanted to kill her.” Elias cracked a grin, but there was zero warmth in his eyes. “Last month, that player who claimed to be ‘high-ranking’ also wanted to kill her, saying she was the primary objective of his level-clearance task.” “Later, I flayed him alive and turned him into the custom rug in the living room.” Elias walked directly to Maya, using the spine of the bloody scalpel to casually slap against her cheek. “Would you like to try your luck?” Maya’s System interface was flashing frantically. She collapsed onto the floor, saturated in cold sweat. “I… I wouldn’t dare.” Elias let out a cold snort and retracted the scalpel. “Tonight is the standard monthly convergence at the Crimson Moon Club. The Big BOSSes from all the districts will be attending.” “Get her cleaned up.” “Put her in that black formal gown.” “After all, this is going to be her final public appearance.” He said the final part with a soft whisper. But I heard it clearly. Elias wants to kill me? Maya heard it too. The terror in her eyes evaporated instantly, replaced by a fanatical, greedy fire. She scrambled up from the floor, marched to my bedside, and violently ripped the blankets off my body. Her sharp fingernails dug into my flesh again as she pretended to adjust my clothes. This time, she lowered her voice and let out a rich, malicious giggle. “Did you hear that, you useless trash?” “Tonight is your execution date.” “That brain of yours is officially mine.” The Crimson Moon Club’s convergence was hosted inside a massive, retrofitted underground fallout shelter. The facility was blindingly bright, and heavy industrial metal music was deafening. I was strapped tightly into my specialized wheelchair and pushed to the absolute center of the grand main hall. Elias was lounging on the opulent leather sofa beside me, wearing a blood-red designer suit, his powerful aura completely dominating everyone else in attendance. I was trapped in a pristine black evening gown, my neck locked into place by a specialized brace. I had to act like a perfect plastic mannequin, staring vacantly forward. Maya stood behind my wheelchair, holding a goblet filled with a thick, crimson-red liquid. Her eyes were constantly darting to the center of the room, focusing on a man holding a massive industrial chainsaw. That was her backup plan. If she failed to complete her objective through Elias, she was going to try and conquer the Chainsaw Killer. “Elias, I’ve heard rumors that you’ve been bored lately.” The Chainsaw Killer stood up from his chair, raising his glass. His voice sounded like rusty metal scraping together. “Is bringing a vegetable to a party your idea of entertainment?” Every single eye in the grand hall instantly snapped to me. I saw expressions of cruel mockery, gleeful anticipation, and brutal calculation. Everyone in this simulated universe knew Elias Vance, the most psychotic of them all, kept a completely insensate piece of trash by his side. Elias casually peeled a dark purple grape. The juice stained his naturally pale fingertips a violent red, looking exactly like blood. “What I choose to bring to my own convergence is none of your damn business.” He casually popped the grape into his mouth, crunching through the skin and seeds with deliberate force. “As long as she remains perfectly obedient by my side, that is all that matters.” The Chainsaw Killer let out a piercing, roaring laugh. “Perfectly obedient? Then she is no different than the dead pigs hanging in a slaughterhouse!” “Elias, you’re the Big BOSS of District A, and you keep a dead pig as a pet?” The room erupted into high-pitched, mocking laughter. These psychopaths, who were usually terrified by Elias’s dominance, were taking advantage of the alcohol to vent their frustration. Elias didn’t get angry. He simply tilted his head, subjecting my bloodless face to a heartbreakingly affectionate gaze. “Baby, they are calling you a pig.” I stared forward with wide, empty eyes, giving zero reaction. A small stream of drool slowly dripped from the corner of my mouth, staining the front of my expensive black gown. Elias smiled. He reached out an incredibly gentle hand to stroke my hair. “So good.” And then, Maya moved. She suddenly stepped forward and dropped to her knees in the center of the grand hall. “Bosses! Mr. Vance!” “She isn’t a vegetable at all! She is… hiding her true nature!” The deafening industrial metal music was cut off instantly. The massive hall descended into a terrifying, dead silence. Elias’s hand froze on my head, his fingers clenching into a tight fist. He grabbed a fistful of my hair tightly. “Oh?” The Chainsaw Killer looked intrigued, stepping forward with his heavy weapon. “How, exactly, is she hiding?” Maya threw her head up, staring dead into my eyes with a look of pure, poisonous malice. “She has been faking this entire time. Her intellect is incalculable; she is actually manipulating everything from the shadows.” “I saw the anomalies on the EKG monitor with my own eyes. She is utilizing her brainwave frequencies to leave… an encoded SOS signal.” Encoded SOS signal. Those words caused the atmosphere in the room to turn completely frigid. Inside the horror game world, trying to contact the outside for help was the ultimate taboo. Elias’s grip on my head violently yanked backward. Head-splitting, tearing agony ripped across my scalp. I was forced to tilt my head back, locking eyes with his, which were now bloodshot and utterly lethally cold. “An SOS signal?” Elias’s voice was soft, but it sent a violent shiver down the spines of everyone in the room. “Bring it here.” Maya pulled a thermal-paper printout of an EKG graph from her lab coat. She had utilized the System to forcefully forge the evidence. The paper clearly displayed an irregular pattern of wave spikes, with the deciphered Morse code annotated next to it. [HELP. I AM IN THE BASEMENT.] This was a simulated death trap. Elias casually took the paper. He subjected it to a cold, contemptuous glance. Then, he slammed it down onto the table directly in front of my face. Furthermore, he reached into his bag and pulled out a solid silver lighter. Click. A ghostly blue flame flickered to life. He grabbed a bottle of high-proof imported vodka from the table and aggressively poured it directly over the front of my formal gown. The pungent, suffocating stench of pure alcohol saturated the air. He held the lighter flame right at my chest, just one centimeter from the soaked fabric. “Baby.” Elias’s voice was vibrating with a sick, psychotic tremor. “Did you leave this signal?” Maya knelt on the ground, screaming hoarsely. “Stop pretending! Confess! As soon as you admit it, the System will pull you out of the game!” She was trying to force my hand. Elias’s patience was dropping rapidly. The flame inched closer to my body. “Three.” “Two.” The flame licked the edge of the gown.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399965”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Three years into my marriage with Tristan Vance, everyone around us still firmly believed his carefully crafted “single and available” persona. At the company’s annual success gala, his personal assistant sang a love song dedicated entirely to him. She even got down on one knee, delivering a deeply passionate confession of her love. I thought, surely, this was the moment he would finally announce our relationship to everyone. But instead, faced with the roaring encouragement of our colleagues, he simply offered a helpless, indulgent smile, nodded, and accepted Chloe’s confession. The cheers erupted like a tidal wave, each wave louder than the last. I stood in the shadows, my entire body trembling with a cold so deep it chilled my bones. Tristan’s gaze met mine across the room. His eyes carried a sharp, unmistakable warning. But this time, I didn’t pull him aside to demand an explanation like I usually did. I just stood there and clapped along with the rest of them. “Congratulations, Director Vance. Congratulations, Chloe.” “Such a happy occasion! Doesn’t this mean the Director owes everyone here a round of drinks on his tab?” … The moment the words left my mouth, the crowd’s cheering grew even more frantic. Tristan’s brows knotted together. He shot me a covert, furious glare. But, trapped by the sheer enthusiasm of the crowd, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and pull out his black card, paying for a massive round of expensive champagne for everyone. When he finally made his way over to me, he waited until no one was looking, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into the breakroom. “Why are you joining in and making a scene? Do you have any idea how much money I just dropped buying drinks for this entire department?” “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” He genuinely believed my comments out there were just me being petty. I forced a bitter smile. I wanted to speak, but it felt like something was suffocating me, blocking my throat. I couldn’t force a single word out. I just let out a heavy sigh. “Tristan, we’ve been married for three years. You promised me.” “You promised that once your career stabilized, we would make our relationship public. What exactly are you doing right now? Are you cheating on me?” Tristan’s eyes had been darting toward the breakroom window, nervously checking if anyone was listening. Hearing my accusation, his head snapped back to me. “What kind of nonsense are you spewing?!” Realizing his voice had spiked, he forcibly swallowed his anger. “Harper, yes, I made a promise.” “But have you stopped to think about your mother? If I hadn’t been financially supporting her treatments, do you really think she’d still be alive today?” “I have to climb higher. I have to make more money. Otherwise, how many months of her medical bills do you think your pathetic little salary could cover?” Every single word he spat out hit my eardrums like a physical blow. “So you accept Chloe’s confession right in front of my face? What am I to you? I am your wife!” I growled, keeping my voice low but fierce. This only made Tristan angrier. “Can’t you be a little understanding?! If it weren’t for me these past few years, your mother would be dead and buried by now!” I had heard these exact words countless times over the years, but they had never ripped my heart apart quite like this. In Tristan’s eyes, our marriage, our home, our entire future… They would always, always be secondary to his ambition. And all of this was simply because Chloe was the CEO’s daughter. That was why he desperately maintained his single persona, while brazenly flirting with Chloe in front of the entire company. He was affectionate with her right in front of my eyes, yet he demanded that I be “understanding.” From the day we started dating to the day we got married, he had always been this intensely ambitious. After we got married, he even took control of all my bank accounts, insisting he manage our finances. As he worked harder and harder, and the money piled up, his heart grew colder and colder. Whenever we had an argument, he always, without fail, weaponized my terminally ill mother’s life against me. “Then give me back my bank cards. From today on, my mother doesn’t need a single cent from you…” My words were cut off by the sound of the breakroom door being pushed open. Chloe leaned against the doorframe, looking at Tristan and me with a surprised expression. Tristan immediately took a huge step away from me, acting as if nothing had just happened. “Oh, Manager Harper, you’re here too. I was looking everywhere for you guys. I thought something was wrong.” Chloe beamed a massive smile, walking over and naturally intertwining her fingers with Tristan’s. She affectionately pressed her cheek against his. “I’ve already told my parents about us. They want to meet you.” I could clearly see the flash of absolute ecstasy in Tristan’s eyes. He instinctively shot me a glance, then tightened his grip on Chloe’s hand. “Of course. I’m available whenever they are.” My hands, hanging loosely at my sides, clenched into tight fists. My nails dug deep into my palms; only the sharp, stinging pain kept me grounded in reality. Chloe walked over to me and shoved a thick, bulging envelope into my hands. She flashed a radiant, triumphant smile. “Manager Harper, you work so closely with Tristan and handle so much. Consider this a little bonus for all your hard work.” As soon as she finished speaking, Tristan gently pulled her away. Before he walked out the door, he didn’t even spare me a single glance. I was left completely alone in the breakroom. Outside, the celebration continued to rage. The notifications in the company group chat were exploding with congratulatory messages for the new couple. I looked down at the hidden photo album on my phone. It was a scan of our official marriage certificate photo. He had forbidden me from using it as my lock screen, so I could only hide it deep in my camera roll. Every time I looked at it, I somehow convinced myself I could hold on a little longer. I stared at that photo with its bright red background for a very long time. Then, I uploaded it directly to the company’s internal message board. I had endured this for three years. I had absolutely no strength left to keep pretending. It took exactly one day for that photo to circulate to every single screen in the building. When I walked into the office, the way my coworkers looked at me was entirely different. The relentless, hushed whispers drifted into my ears from every direction. [What the hell is going on? Manager Harper and Director Vance are married?] [Then what was all that yesterday? Chloe is the other woman…?] Some of the bolder employees walked right up to my desk and asked me directly. “Manager Harper, you never mentioned you were married. Is that photo photoshopped?” Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Tristan summoned me into his private office. The moment the door clicked shut. A splash of scalding hot water was thrown directly into my face. Tristan’s face was twisted with absolute fury. He violently smashed the glass mug onto the floor right at my feet. The flying shards of glass sliced a shallow cut near the corner of my eye. Drops of blood hit the floor. “Harper, are you intentionally trying to ruin me?!” “Didn’t I explicitly tell you that absolutely no one could know about our marriage?! The entire company is gossiping about it right now!” “Did you even stop for one second to think about how this would affect Chloe?! Everyone out there is calling her a homewrecker!” I wiped my face. The skin where the boiling water had hit was searing red. “I just posted the truth. Is telling the truth a crime?” I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong. “Are you afraid of losing face, or are you just terrified of ruining your perfect image in Chloe’s eyes?” “Does the CEO’s precious daughter know she’s sleeping with a married man?” Tristan’s lips parted, a flash of undeniable guilt crossing his eyes. He aggressively rubbed his temples, then, predictably, brought up my mother. “Don’t you dare forget that your half-dead mother is currently laying in the most expensive VIP suite at that care facility, being kept alive by the most expensive imported drugs.” “If I get suspended over this scandal, how the hell are you going to pay her medical bills?!” I let out a dry, exhausted chuckle. The fatigue weighing on my soul felt infinitely heavy. Always this. It’s always this. “Give me my bank cards back. I can pay my mother’s medical bills myself.” Tristan looked at me in shock, which was quickly replaced by utter contempt. He let out a mocking scoff. He marched over to his safe, pulled out a thick, heavy stack of hospital bills, and slammed them onto his desk. “You want to settle accounts with me? Fine! Let’s go through it line by line. Let’s see exactly how much money you and your mother have bled from me!” He stabbed his finger at the stack of bills, speaking through gritted teeth. Only then did I realize that from the day we got married until this exact moment, he had meticulously tracked every single penny he had spent on me. Three years ago, when he asked me to marry him, he had looked me in the eye and said: Your mother treated me like her own son. She saved my life once. I will give everything I have to help her. He did keep his word. But Tristan turned that help into a weapon to control me. Every time. Every single time. Whenever I did the slightest thing that displeased him, he weaponized my mother’s life against me, forcing me to surrender over and over again. He climbed higher and higher, eventually becoming the highly respected Director Vance everyone admired. And then he told me: “Harper, my career is on a massive upward trajectory right now. I can’t let the executives know we’re married. It’ll ruin my image as a fully dedicated company man.” “You have to understand. Mom’s life is more important than anything else right now.” I believed him. I watched him meticulously build his “single, eligible bachelor” persona, while simultaneously getting closer and closer to his new assistant, Chloe. Whenever I confronted him about it, he would look at me with sheer impatience and say: “Chloe is the CEO’s daughter. She is going to inherit this entire corporation one day.” “I’m just trying to climb the ladder and secure our financial future. What exactly am I doing wrong?” The office door was violently shoved open. Chloe burst into the room, her eyes completely bloodshot. She held up her phone, the screen displaying our marriage photo, and screamed at Tristan. “Tristan Vance! You lied to me?! Are you two actually married?!” Tristan didn’t miss a beat. He shook his head with absolute conviction. “No, I have always been single. Harper has already admitted she made a terrible mistake. She’s going to issue a public clarification right now.” His expression didn’t change as he pulled out his phone and opened a live security feed. The camera was pointed directly at my mother’s hospital bed. He lowered his voice into a vicious, lethal whisper. “The private nurse at the hospital works for me. If you don’t go out there and clarify this right now, I will order him to pull her oxygen tube.” My pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated terror. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Tristan?! Have you lost your fucking mind?!” Tristan raised his hand, counting down on his fingers. “Three. Two…” “Fine.” I clenched my fists so tightly my nails drew blood. The agonizing, tearing pain in my chest was the only thing reminding me I was still alive. I stood in the center of the bullpen, facing the entire company, and confessed. “I photoshopped that image. Director Vance and I have absolutely no romantic relationship whatsoever.” Because of my “confession,” Tristan was immediately reinstated and cleared of all suspicion, while I was indefinitely suspended pending an investigation. As I packed up my desk into a cardboard box, I could feel the malicious stares piercing my skin like needles. The hushed whispers had escalated into open, blatant verbal abuse. “I knew Harper was shady. She’s been acting so desperate for a sugar daddy lately.” “Exactly. Director Vance always said he was single. How could he possibly be married to someone like her? She was clearly trying to force his hand and be the other woman.” “She’s so disgusting.” I bore the brunt of their malice, fleeing the corporate building like a cornered rat. When I finally got back to our apartment, my phone buzzed with a text from Tristan. [Harper, no matter what happens, we are still husband and wife. Once my promotion to VP is finalized, I’ll fix all of this, and I’ll cut ties with Chloe completely.] [Just wait a little longer. You have my word.] Staring at those empty promises, I realized I didn’t believe a single syllable anymore. I don’t know who did it, but someone had recorded a video of my forced confession and leaked it onto the internet. Overnight, I became the city’s biggest laughingstock. “Tarnishing the company’s reputation.” My suspension was quickly converted to a termination for cause. I didn’t even receive a severance package. The internet mob relentlessly attacked me, flooding my social media with vile, degrading insults. Some deranged vigilantes even tracked down my address and splashed red paint all over my front door. I was terrified to step outside. Every single day, people would gather outside my door and scream abuse. “You desperate, homewrecking slut! If you want money so badly, go find an old creep to pay you!” “People like you are the absolute scum of society!” No matter how I tried to defend myself, no one was willing to listen to the truth. I sat on the couch, completely hollowed out, scrolling mindlessly through Tristan’s Instagram. He had just posted a new carousel of photos. Aside from a series of romantic couples’ portraits with Chloe… There was a close-up shot of two hands, both wearing matching Cartier diamond rings. The diamonds caught the light flawlessly. The caption read: [The love of my life.] I covered my face with my hands, hot tears pouring through my fingers. I grabbed my heavy glass water bottle and hurled it violently at the massive framed wedding portrait hanging on the wall. The glass shattered, raining down in a thousand pieces. I took a deep, shuddering breath and dialed the number of a lawyer friend. “Draft divorce papers for me and Tristan Vance. I want to completely maximize my financial settlement.” “He committed adultery. I have irrefutable proof.” During the days I spent finalizing the divorce strategy, Tristan never came home. He never even called. A week later, it was company payday. When I was terminated, HR had assured me that my final month’s base salary would be paid out normally. But when I checked my bank account, the only deposit was a pathetic $200 attendance bonus. At the exact same time, my former colleagues in the departmental group chat were throwing a digital party, celebrating Chloe for single-handedly closing a massive, highly lucrative corporate contract. I stared at the signature on the finalized project brief. A deafening ringing filled my ears. That was the contract I had literally drank myself into a stomach hemorrhage to secure during a brutal negotiation dinner. I was the one who had built the relationship with that client from the ground up. If that commission had paid out to me, I would have had enough money to cover my mother’s bills. I wouldn’t have needed Tristan’s money anymore. My hands shook violently as I tried to message the client, confused as to why they had signed early without me. But the message bounced back. The client had blocked my number. I called Tristan. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until my nineteenth call that the line finally connected. Before I could even speak, the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing came through the speaker. Chloe’s voice, thick with annoyance, snapped at me. “Harper, you’ve been fired. Could you stop harassing my boyfriend?” “Can’t you take a hint?” I instinctively slammed the ‘End Call’ button. But those repulsive, wet sounds kept echoing in my brain. The hand holding my phone was trembling uncontrollably. A sharp, piercing agony radiated from my heart, spreading through my entire body like venom. But reality didn’t give me a single second to catch my breath. My phone rang again. This time, the caller ID showed the hospital. It rang relentlessly, sending me into a blind panic. “Hello…” “Ms. Harper, there has been a critical incident regarding your mother.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399949”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I was in the middle of a business trip when my husband suddenly called. He told me he was selling the restaurant my late father had left behind. “Harper, I’ve already decided to transfer the restaurant to someone else. One point eight million.” I froze for two seconds, demanding to know why he hadn’t discussed something this massive with me first. He answered with absolute self-righteousness, “My name is on the LLC as the managing member. I have the right to make the call.” “That’s exactly what your dad said when he was alive.” “A point eight million is a lot of money. I think it’s a good deal, so I’m selling it. Is that a problem?” With that, he hung up the phone. When I tried to call him back, it went straight to voicemail. His phone was off. I was shaking with rage. I sent him a single text. “Nolan, if you actually sell that restaurant.” “We are getting a divorce.” …… I canceled all my meetings and booked the very next flight home. I landed at 5:00 PM and took a cab straight to our condo complex. Just as I was walking up to the building, I saw a sleek black Mercedes idling by the entrance. Nolan was sitting in the passenger seat, laughing and chatting with the person behind the wheel. I quickly stepped back and hid behind a row of delivery lockers. The driver was a woman I didn’t recognize, probably in her early thirties. She rested her arm on the open window, smiling. “So, it’s a done deal?” Nolan nodded. “Don’t worry. Harper is out of state on a business trip. She won’t be back for another week.” “Are you sure she won’t try to blow this up? It was her dad’s place, after all.” Nolan scoffed. “I’m the sole signatory on the LLC. I can sell it if I want to, and nobody can stop me.” “Besides, when her dad was alive, he explicitly said the restaurant was mine to manage.” “She’s constantly traveling for her corporate job anyway. What is she going to say?” “Worst case scenario, we just get a divorce.” The woman smiled. “Good.” Nolan smiled back, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. The woman reached out, wrapped an arm around his neck, and they started passionately making out right there in the car. I gripped the handle of my suitcase so hard my knuckles turned white. They murmured a few more things to each other before the woman drove off. Nolan grabbed his briefcase and strolled into the building, his leather dress shoes clicking cheerfully against the pavement. I stepped out from behind the lockers and stood in the courtyard, lighting a cigarette. The early March wind was biting. The ash blew off the tip of my cigarette and landed on my shoes. I stared down at the gray ash, remembering my dad lying in his hospital bed right before he passed. He had held my hand and said: “Harper, sweetie, I’m leaving the restaurant in your husband’s hands. Don’t overthink it.” “Your job keeps you too busy to run it. He’s got ambition, and he’s always wanted to be involved in the management side. I don’t want you two fighting over this.” I had told him I understood. He wheezed for a long time before adding, “It’s good for a husband to have drive. But you have to remember… that restaurant is the roots of our family.” I nodded. Three days later, he was gone. I stayed awake all night at the funeral home. Nolan stayed right by my side, crying harder than anyone else in the room. At the time, I actually thought my dad had been right to trust him. Looking back now, it was a sick joke. I dragged my suitcase out of the complex and found a small, dimly lit tavern down the street. I ordered a steak and a bottle of bourbon. The bartender came over to pour me a glass, glanced at my suitcase, but didn’t ask questions. When the food arrived, I didn’t touch a single bite. I just downed my first glass of bourbon straight. The cheap liquor burned the back of my throat, making my eyes sting. My mom walked out on us when I was three. My dad never remarried. He started from absolute scratch, waking up at 3:00 AM every single day to push a food cart to the wholesale markets to buy fresh ingredients. In the winters, the cold cracked the skin on his hands until they bled. In the summers, the sun peeled the skin right off his back. He worked that cart for eight years until he finally saved enough to rent his first brick-and-mortar diner. He worked another ten years to finally buy the entire three-story commercial building. He had no other hobbies in life. He just loved standing behind that grill. When I was a kid, I would go straight to the restaurant after school and do my homework in the back booth while he flipped burgers and seared steaks. The grease and smoke always made his eyes red, but he would just chuckle and say he was used to it. Later, when I got a corporate job and started traveling constantly, I always made sure to visit the restaurant the second I got back into town. He would personally cook my favorite meals, sit across from me, watch me eat, and ask me about my life. The last time I visited the restaurant was a week before he was hospitalized. He had been standing by the front doors smoking a cigarette, watching the customers come and go, his eyes full of a deep, profound reluctance to let it all go. At the time, I thought to myself, Give me a few more years. Once I’m not so busy, I’ll quit and come back to help him run the place. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see that day. I poured my second glass of bourbon and pulled out my phone. I texted Jessica, my childhood best friend who now ran her own CPA firm. “I need you to run a license plate for me. I’ll send you the number.” She replied instantly: “What’s going on?” I sent her the plate number. “A Mercedes. Why do you need this? Whose car is it?” “A woman. I don’t know her.” There were a few seconds of silence before my phone rang. “Harper, talk to me. What exactly is going on?” I gave her the short version. She cursed loudly on the other end of the line. “Where are you right now?” “Drinking.” “Stay there. I’m coming over.” “No need. Just find out exactly who this woman is.” She cursed a few more times before hanging up. I went back to my drink. Half a bottle of bourbon later, the steak remained untouched. The bartender came over with the check, glancing at the bottle, looking like she wanted to say something but deciding against it. I paid the bill, stood up, and walked out. When I got home, Nolan was lounging on the sofa watching TV. Seeing me walk in, he froze, his brows instantly furrowing. “Why are you back?” “My trip got canceled.” He let out an “Oh,” his eyes shifting back to the TV. “Did you eat? There are leftovers in the fridge.” Looking at his profile, I suddenly felt like I was looking at a complete stranger. In seven years of marriage, I had to travel out of state dozens of times a year. Every time I came back, he would eagerly ask me what I wanted to eat and rush into the kitchen to cook it. Even if I got home at midnight, there was always a hot meal waiting on the stove. Now, he was telling me there were leftovers in the fridge. I didn’t say a word. I dragged my suitcase into the bedroom and dropped it on the floor. When I came back out, he was still watching TV. He had just shifted his position, resting his legs on the coffee table. “I want to talk about the restaurant again,” I said, standing in the middle of the living room. He turned his head, looking deeply annoyed. “What is there to talk about? I’ve already negotiated the deal. We’re signing the contract tomorrow.” “1.8 million. Don’t you think that’s way too low?” “They ran an appraisal. That’s what it’s worth. Besides, the restaurant industry is brutal right now. We need to offload it while we still have a buyer.” “But that was my father’s life’s work!” He stood up, his voice rising. “It’s always your dad! Your dad! If I hadn’t been managing that place, it would have gone under months ago!” “Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a business right now? Do you know how exhausting it is dealing with entitled customers and shady vendors every single day?” “You don’t know anything! All you do is go to work and travel!” I stared at him, enunciating every word. “That still doesn’t give you the right to sell it without even discussing it with me.” “Discuss what? I’m the owner on paper. I have the right to decide.” “Did you see the text I sent you? I told you, if you sell it, we’re getting a divorce.” Nolan froze for a second, then let out an incredibly condescending laugh. “Harper, are you a child?” He crossed his arms and tilted his head at me. “You want a divorce just because I’m selling a restaurant? Do you think marriage is a game?” I pressed my lips tightly together. “It’s not just a normal restaurant!” “How is it not normal? It’s just a building, some booths, and a few tables.” “Yeah, your dad worked his whole life for it, but that was his life. What does that have to do with me?” “I married you. I didn’t marry a building.” I frowned. “That’s not what you used to say.” “What I used to say?” He scoffed. “You said it yourself—that was the past. In the past, I humored you because I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to ruin our marriage.” “But now I’ve thought it through. I can’t spend the rest of my life chained to a greasy diner, serving drunks who throw tantrums over their steaks.” “I have my own ambitions. I don’t want to manage a kitchen anymore. I want a better, more relaxed life. Is that a crime?” After a long silence, I asked him, “Who are you selling it to?” “I’m selling it to Victoria Sterling. An old high school friend of mine,” he said. “Honestly, thank God she’s a friend, or I wouldn’t even be getting this much for it.” I looked at him, saying nothing. My stare made him uncomfortable. He looked away. “Why are you looking at me like that?” “I had the property appraised a while ago,” I said slowly. “With the brand recognition my dad built over decades, plus the monthly revenue, there is absolutely no way it’s only worth 1.8 million.” He flinched, then quickly frowned. “Who did your appraisal? They were lying to you. Do you even know the current market for hospitality?” “I know perfectly well.” I nodded. “And deep down, so do you.” “What do I know?!” He stood up defensively. “Victoria gave me a very fair price! Do you think selling a commercial restaurant is easy right now?” “I had to negotiate with her for a long time before she finally agreed to take it off my hands!” “Negotiated for a long time? Since when?” He opened his mouth but no words came out. “Since I’ve been on this business trip?” I pressed. “Or earlier?” “What are you implying?” He glared at me. “Harper, if you have something to say, just say it. Stop acting so passive-aggressive.” “I’m not implying anything.” My face remained perfectly calm. “I just want to know when exactly you decided to sell, and how you negotiated it.” “We talked about it last year. Victoria is building a restaurant franchise. She liked our location and wanted to acquire it to rebrand it.” I continued my interrogation. “The 1.8 million—did you pitch that number, or did she?” His eyes flickered. “Does it make a difference?” “Yes,” I said. “If she pitched it, then she’s taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know the market.” “If you pitched it, then you’re actively selling my father’s legacy for pennies.” His face changed. “Harper! Watch your mouth! Who’s selling it for pennies?!” “I’ve been breaking my back running that place for the last two years! I know exactly how much it’s worth better than anyone!” “Then tell me. How much is it worth?” He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. I looked at him, waiting for an answer. “Whatever. The contract is basically signed.” He turned his head away. “There’s no point in arguing about this.” “Signed?” “I’m signing it tomorrow,” he said. “The Letter of Intent is already signed.” I didn’t say anything else. He waited a moment, and seeing that I wasn’t going to speak, he added, “Harper, I know you feel attached because your dad left it behind.” “But think about it. What’s the point of keeping it?” “You don’t manage it, and I’m done managing it. We have a buyer willing to pay a good price. Why not just sell it and be done with it?” “You think 1.8 million is a good price?” “Maybe not to you, but it is to me.” His tone grew agitated. “I’ve been with you for all these years, and what have you ever given me?” “You travel constantly. Do you ever take care of the house? Do you ever help with the restaurant?” “Now that I want to sell it, suddenly you care.” I shot back, “So you’re selling the restaurant because I travel too much?” “Don’t flatter yourself.” He sneered. “I’m selling the restaurant because I don’t want to serve people anymore. I want an easy life. Is that a crime?” “No.” “Great.” He stood up. “I’m signing the contract tomorrow. When the money clears, we split it fifty-fifty. If you want a divorce after that, fine by me.” I stared right into his eyes. “Are you serious?” “Dead serious.” I nodded. “Alright. Don’t regret this.” He let out a scoff, turned around, and walked into the master bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to shake the walls. I stood in the living room for a moment before grabbing a blanket from the guest room and lying down on the sofa. I couldn’t sleep. My phone vibrated. I picked it up. It was a message from Jessica. “Harper, I ran the plates. The car is registered to a Victoria Sterling. She runs a hospitality group.” “This chick is bad news!” She attached several PDF files. After reading through them carefully, I replied: “Do you have time tomorrow? Come with me to the restaurant.” “Absolutely.” I put the phone down and closed my eyes. I don’t know how much time passed. I was just drifting off to sleep when my phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. I answered it. Before I could even say hello, she started screaming through the receiver: “Harper! What is wrong with you?! You want to divorce Nolan?!” “What did he ever do to wrong you?! He manages this entire household and runs that massive restaurant all by himself! Do you think that’s easy?!” “Now you’re threatening him with a divorce? What kind of monster are you?!” I listened without making a sound. “Let me tell you right now, if you divorce him, I am going to make your life a living hell!” “Don’t think our family is easy to push around! Nolan has been with you for seven years. What have you ever given him?!” “He broke his back running that rundown diner your dad left behind. And now that he wants to sell it, you’re throwing a fit?!” “Is it even yours?! His name is on the LLC! He can sell it whenever he wants, and you have no say in it!” I finally spoke. “Are you done?” She paused, clearly caught off guard. “What did you say?” “If you’re done, I’m hanging up.” “Don’t you dare! You need to explain yourself right now!” I hung up the phone and powered it off completely. The living room was pitch black. I sat up and lit another cigarette. The smoke drifted upward, dispersing against the ceiling. I thought back to my dad’s funeral, when Nolan had hugged me and wept. He had sworn through his tears that we would build a beautiful life together. He promised he would manage the restaurant perfectly so my dad could rest in peace. At first, he went to the restaurant every single day. He worked with the chefs on new menu items, held meetings with the waitstaff, and diligently balanced the books at the end of every month. But over time, he started going less and less. I asked him about it a few times, and he claimed he was just exhausted and wanted to hire a general manager. I agreed. Eventually, he stopped checking the books altogether. Whatever the GM reported, he just blindly accepted. He couldn’t be bothered. I assumed he was just burned out, so I didn’t push him. Looking back now, that must have been when he started planning to sell it. When my cigarette burned out, I lay back down. I drifted into a restless sleep. When I opened my eyes again, the sun was up. The next morning, Jessica and I arrived at the restaurant. It was right before the lunch rush. The servers were setting the tables, and the rhythmic sound of chopping echoed from the kitchen. Seeing me walk through the door, a few veteran employees paused in surprise before quickly greeting me. I smiled and replied to them. They looked at me with hesitant expressions, clearly wanting to say something but holding back. Someone opened their mouth, but ultimately stayed quiet. Jessica followed close behind me, whispering, “Harper, the vibe in here is weird.” I didn’t respond. When we reached the kitchen doors, Chef Marcus was prepping ingredients. He looked up, saw me, and his knife stopped. “Harper?” He set the knife down, wiped his hands on his apron, and walked out. “You’re back in town? Why didn’t you tell me?” “It was a last-minute decision,” I replied. He glanced at Jessica behind me, then looked back at me, pulling me into the adjacent stairwell. “Tell me the truth. Is your husband trying to sell the restaurant?” I looked at him. He had worked here for twenty-three years. He had been with my dad since the very beginning, working his way up from a dishwasher to Head Chef. He had watched me grow up. “Yes, Chef.” I gave a bitter smile. His face dropped. He was silent for a few seconds before asking, “Is he really going through with it?” “He’s already in negotiations.” “Then you…” “Don’t worry, Chef,” I interrupted him. “This restaurant is not being sold.” He stared at me for a long time, then nodded heavily. “Good.” “No matter what happens, the crew and I are on your side.” My chest felt warm. “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Your dad treated me like family. This restaurant was his life’s work. I won’t let anyone destroy it.” He turned to leave, but stopped. “By the way. Yesterday, your husband brought people in to tour the place. A woman driving a Mercedes, and a few of your in-laws.” “They walked around the whole building, pointing at things and whispering.” “I know.” “Alright. Just making sure you’re aware.” He patted my shoulder and walked away. Jessica and I sat down at a booth in the main dining area and asked for two glasses of water. At 11:30 AM, a black Mercedes pulled up to the front entrance. Victoria got out, walked around to the passenger side, and opened the door. Nolan stepped out, linked arms with her, and they walked toward the doors. A white Buick pulled up right behind them. Four people got out. My mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and Nolan’s cousin. When they walked through the doors and saw me, they didn’t look surprised at all. My mother-in-law actually smirked—a smug, theatrical smirk, like she was ready for a show. Victoria walked right up to me and extended her hand. “Harper, right? I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Victoria Sterling.” I stared at her outstretched hand and didn’t move a muscle. Her hand hung in the air awkwardly for a second before she pulled it back, completely unbothered, and smiled. “Nolan told me you were away on business. I didn’t expect you back so soon. Perfect timing, actually. We can chat.” “Chat about what?” “About the acquisition, of course,” she smiled sweetly. “Nolan and I have already finalized the details. We’re signing the contract today. After this, the restaurant will be mine.” “Yours?” “Exactly. 1.8 million. It’s an incredibly fair price. I plan to rebrand this place and turn it into the flagship location for my new hospitality chain.” I looked at her, saying nothing. Nolan walked over, dropping his briefcase onto the table. He pulled out a thick stack of documents. “Victoria, I brought the contracts,” he said. “You can sign them now.” My mother-in-law pushed her way to the front, glaring at me, instantly issuing a warning. “Harper, I’m telling you right now, do not cause a scene.” “Nolan is the owner on paper. He makes the decisions here. You don’t have a say.” I ignored her completely and looked at Nolan. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Are you really selling it?” “Of course he is!” my mother-in-law barked. “Why else would we be here? You think we don’t have better things to do?” The rest of his family immediately chimed in: “Exactly. Victoria is a major CEO. Her wanting to buy this dump is doing you a favor. Don’t be ungrateful.” “Nolan’s been with you for seven years, and what have you done for him? Now he’s giving you half the money from the sale, and you’re still complaining?” My brother-in-law’s son was standing in the back, holding up his phone recording a video, muttering: “Let’s post this on TikTok so everyone can see what a stingy bitch my sister-in-law is.” Jessica stood up instantly, pointing a lethal finger at him. “What the hell are you filming? Put the phone down right now.” He flinched and took a step back, but his mouth kept running: “Who the hell are you? Mind your own business!” Nolan slid the contract across the table to Victoria. “Victoria, ignore them. Just sign it.” Victoria took the contract and pulled a designer pen from her blazer pocket. “Harper, don’t worry. The restaurant will be in much better hands with me. You’re welcome to come back and eat anytime. It’s on the house.” She uncapped the pen. “Hold on.” I reached out and blocked the contract with my hand. Victoria looked up, her pen hovering in the air. Nolan frowned deeply. “Harper, what are you doing?” My mother-in-law immediately screeched, “I knew she was going to cause a scene! Victoria, ignore her! Just sign it!” My sister-in-law stepped in front of me defensively. “Harper, I’m warning you, don’t push your luck!” I ignored all of them. My eyes were locked entirely on Nolan. “Don’t be in such a rush. Wait until you read these documents. Then you can decide if you still want to sell it to her.” I took a thick manila envelope from Jessica and slammed it onto the table. Nolan froze. “What is this?” “Read it and find out.” He looked at me suspiciously, picked up the envelope, and pulled out the stack of papers inside. He only had to look at the very first page before his pupils violently shrank.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399966”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

In front of the classified cleanroom doors, my manager was throwing an absolute fit, pointing a trembling finger right at my nose and screaming at me. I had missed his voice memo because I didn’t have my phone on me. “Do you have a single brain cell in your head?! I sent you a message, and you dare to ignore me?!” I pointed at the red-lettered warning sign bolted to the wall: ABSOLUTELY NO COMMUNICATION DEVICES PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. Then, I pointed to the young woman standing right next to him. It was the Plant Director’s niece, Chloe, who was currently holding her iPhone up on a ring light, aggressively live-streaming the assembly line. “Manager, company policy strictly forbids phones in the cleanroom.” The manager violently slapped my hand down. “Chloe is executing a corporate culture marketing campaign! Who the hell do you think you are to compare yourself to her? One of her videos gets tens of thousands of likes! What is a day of your manual labor worth?!” Chloe shoved her camera right into my face, her voice sickeningly sweet and dramatic. “Look at this, chat! This is exactly the kind of stubborn, rigid boomer that ruins companies. No wonder she’ll be tightening screws for the rest of her miserable life.” Desperate to kiss up to Chloe, the manager made a split-second decision. “Fine! Since you love the rules so much, you can go home and follow them all you want. Effective immediately, this facility no longer requires your services. You’re fired.” I unclipped my company ID badge and grabbed the notebook that was propping up the wobbly leg of the supervisor’s desk. It was the only handwritten, master calibration log for the entire factory. As I sat down on the city bus heading home, a piercing, deafening alarm suddenly erupted from the massive, antique German CNC machine back at the plant—the machine that I was the only person in the state qualified to calibrate. “Get the hell out! If I ever see your face in this industrial park again, I’ll call the cops!” A senior technician with ten years of seniority, fired on the spot for missing a text message. I didn’t look back. The cleanroom was blindingly bright. Two massive, high-wattage ring lights were pointed directly at people’s eyes. “Did you guys see that, chat?” Chloe squeaked into the microphone, pitching her voice up an octave. “She actually picked up that trash pile of scrap paper like it was some kind of treasure. Some people are just born to be garbage collectors, I swear.” I stepped over the yellow hazard line. My steel-toed boots clicked heavily against the epoxy floor. As I walked past the German 5-axis CNC machining center, I stopped. The machine was humming, but the frequency was wrong. That machine had insanely strict voltage requirements. Right now, Chloe’s live-streaming setup, her two massive ring lights, and two phone chargers were all plugged directly into the machine’s dedicated, isolated power supply. That specific circuit was meant exclusively for micro-millimeter precision calibration. My right thumb twitched. I instinctively reached out to check the hydraulic pressure dial. “What the hell are you looking at?!” Manager Davis lunged forward, physically blocking the machine. “Trying to sabotage company property?! Evelyn, you are terminated! If you touch this machine one more time, I am calling the police and having you thrown in a cell!” “Good luck, Manager Davis.” “GET OUT!” He shoved me hard in the shoulder. I used the momentum to turn around and walk straight toward the loading dock doors. Behind me, the low hum of the machine began to mix with the distinct, grinding sound of metal-on-metal gears. The lubrication supply was failing. To my trained ears, that sound was deafening. I walked out of the facility and down to the bus stop at the edge of the industrial park. A city bus, belching black exhaust, pulled up to the curb. I stepped on and tapped my transit card. The exact second the card reader beeped, a shrill, catastrophic siren erupted from the factory behind me. It was a Level 3 Critical Failure alarm. I sat down by the window. Through the glass, I saw the security guards sprint out of their booth. The workers inside the plant were running around in pure panic. The German CNC machine had completely shut down. Red warning strobes were flashing violently across the exterior walls of the factory. An abnormal shutdown meant the core spindle had automatically locked down. Besides the 16-digit hex code written in my notebook, absolutely no one on earth knew how to bypass that lock. The bus had barely driven a hundred yards. In the side mirror, a security golf cart came flying out of the gates. Manager Davis had the throttle pinned to the max, waving frantically at the bus driver, his mouth open in a desperate scream. The bus slammed on its brakes. I jerked forward in my seat. “STOP! STOP THE BUS!” Manager Davis violently pounded on the folding doors. The driver opened the doors. Davis charged up the steps and grabbed my arm. “Get off!” His face was completely twisted in rage. “You sabotaged the machine before you left, didn’t you?! The machine is dead! You aren’t going anywhere today!” Davis clamped his hand around my wrist and violently dragged me off the bus. His grip was brutal. He wasn’t treating me like a human being. The bus driver took one look at Davis’s gold “Manager” badge, quickly shut the doors, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. It was shift change. A massive crowd of workers was bottlenecked at the factory gates. Even people from the neighboring factories were poking their heads out to watch the drama. “Search her bag!” Davis pointed at me, screaming at the security booth. The guards didn’t move. Old Frank, the head of security, glanced at the crowd. “Manager Davis, searching an employee’s personal belongings without a warrant is illegal.” “I AM THE LAW AROUND HERE!” Davis kicked Old Frank hard in the shin. “That machine costs millions of dollars! If it’s broken, are you going to pay for it?! She definitely stole a microchip or slashed a wire! If you don’t search her, you’re all fired!” Old Frank took a step back and fell silent. A few younger guards hesitantly stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Evelyn.” I tightened my grip on the strap of my canvas tote bag. Before the guards could even reach me, Davis violently snatched the bag from my shoulder, ripped the zipper open, turned it upside down, and shook it violently over the pavement. Everything crashed onto the asphalt. My glass water bottle shattered. A half-empty pack of tissues scattered in the wind. Two pink, wrapped tampons landed right on top of the pile. A few wolf-whistles echoed from the crowd of male workers. The sound of hushed, mocking whispers drilled into my ears. I stared at my belongings on the ground, keeping my spine perfectly straight. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Chloe squeezed through the crowd, shoving her selfie stick right into my face. “Look at this, chat! This is what happens when you try to sabotage a company. Her bag is literally just full of garbage.” She aimed the camera lens directly at the tampons on the ground. “Bringing this kind of gross, private stuff into a sterile cleanroom? So disgusting.” The comments on her live stream were scrolling at lightning speed. Davis didn’t find any stolen microchips or wire cutters. The only thing he saw was the notebook. It had landed splayed open on the wet asphalt. “Is this what you stole?!” Davis snatched the notebook off the ground and flipped through a few pages. “Looks like alien chicken-scratch.” He couldn’t understand a single word of it. But he noticed that I had been fiercely protecting it earlier. “Give it back,” I said, holding out my hand. The sky had darkened ominously. Thunder rolled overhead, and the rain suddenly began pouring down in sheets. Davis raised his arm high. He violently chucked the notebook into a muddy puddle by the curb. He stepped directly onto it, grinding the sole of his leather dress shoe into the pages. Black mud soaked instantly into the paper. The fountain pen ink was completely destroyed by the rainwater. The meticulously recorded calibration data turned into a massive, illegible blur of black ink. “Garbage belongs in the garbage dump.” Davis spat on the ground. The rain was coming down hard now. The crowd of onlookers retreated under the security awning. No one said a word. I crouched down. Rainwater blurred my eyelashes. My fingers dug into the wet, mushy pages. I picked it up and tried to wipe it with my sleeve. It only smeared the black ink further. “Stop wiping it.” Davis opened an umbrella, holding it over Chloe, while his own shoulder got soaked in the rain. “Evelyn. The machine is flashing completely red. You are coming back inside to fix it right now. If you can’t fix it, that’s millions of dollars in damages. You couldn’t afford to pay that off if you sold both your kidneys.” I stopped wiping the book. I stood up straight. Rainwater dripped steadily from my chin. “I have already been terminated, Manager Davis.” I stared him dead in the eye. “Since it’s garbage, you can fix it yourself.” I turned around. Behind me, the piercing shriek of the machine’s alarm cut right through the torrential rain. His phone was violently vibrating in his pocket. It was the client, screaming for their order. “You ungrateful bitch!” Davis threw the umbrella aside and frantically waved at the guards. “Arrest her! Lock her in the security booth! Until that machine is fixed, nobody is leaving this property!” Two guards grabbed me by the arms. I didn’t fight back. Even if he locked me in a cage, there wasn’t a single person on this earth besides me who could fix that machine. The security booth had nothing but a cheap wooden desk and a folding chair. The roar of the rain pounding against the window was deafening. My uniform was completely soaked, clinging heavily to my back. I curled up in the folding chair, pressing my elbows into my knees, tightly clutching the dripping, mud-soaked notebook to my chest. When the 5-axis CNC center goes into a voltage-anomaly lockdown, if the system isn’t bypassed and reset within twenty minutes, the hydraulic pressure system suffers a catastrophic overload. The machine being destroyed was the least of their problems. Clamped inside that machine was a three-million-dollar piece of aerospace-grade aluminum. The minute hand on the wall clock ticked forward. The door violently slammed open, hitting the wall with a loud crack. Davis burst into the room. His tie was ripped loose, and the collar of his dress shirt was soaked in nervous sweat. Behind him trailed a group of junior technicians who usually walked around with their noses in the air. Right now, they were all shrinking into themselves, staring intensely at their own shoes. “THE PASSWORD!” Davis slammed both hands brutally onto the wooden desk, making the metal thermos jump. “WHAT IS THE RESET PASSWORD FOR THAT STUPID PIECE OF JUNK?!” I hugged the notebook even tighter. “There is no password.” It was a hardcoded, base-level logic bypass code. There was no simple “6-digit pin.” “BULLSHIT!” Davis pointed a shaking finger at the technicians cowering behind him. “They tried everything! The system is hard-locked! It requires a master-level override command! You are the only person who has it!” The technicians shrank back even further. They were perfectly happy swapping out drill bits and refilling coolant, but the second it came to complex system calibration—the actual dirty, exhausting work—they ran faster than anyone else. “Chloe is still live-streaming!” Davis paced the tiny room in frantic circles, his wet shoes squeaking aggressively against the linoleum. “The machine won’t stop screaming! It’s so loud she can’t even sing for her viewers! The client called asking why the background noise is a literal emergency siren! How the hell am I supposed to explain that?!” “That is the equipment overload warning.” “In exactly ten minutes, the pressure valves are going to rupture.” I looked up at him. “When that happens, it won’t just be loud. People are going to die.” The fat on Davis’s face violently trembled. He yanked his phone out of his pocket, pulled up a video, and shoved the screen inches from my face. On the screen, a blonde, blue-eyed German executive was slamming his fist on a boardroom table, screaming in broken English about triggering the 3x penalty clause for breach of contract. Five million dollars. “Did you hear that?!” “Evelyn! If the company has to pay this fine, I am going to the cops and pressing charges against you for premeditated sabotage and destroying industrial infrastructure!” From the hallway outside, Chloe’s voice echoed loudly. She was holding her phone high in the air. “Listen to this, chat! Do you hear how evil this woman is? She got fired, so she’s trying to drag the entire factory down to hell with her! She’s just jealous because I’m young and pretty, and because my uncle is the Plant Director!” She squeezed into the tiny security booth and latched onto Davis’s arm. “Dave, stop wasting time talking to her. Just call the cops.” Davis didn’t say a word. If he called the cops, the first thing they would do is investigate the electrical load failure, and the entire blame would fall squarely, 100% on his shoulders. His eyes darted around the room before he suddenly bent over, bringing his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Evelyn. I’m going to give you one chance.” “Director Vance is on his way right now.” “You are going to walk out there, fix the machine, drop to your knees on Chloe’s live stream, and publicly confess that you deliberately sabotaged the equipment.” “If you do that, I won’t press charges.” He lowered his voice to a venomous whisper. “Otherwise, I will make sure you rot in federal prison for the rest of your life.” A wave of stale cigarette breath hit my face. I glanced at Chloe, who was currently pouting her lips at her front-facing camera, and calmly wiped the muddy water from my notebook onto my sleeve. “Sure.” I looked directly at Davis. “Then we’ll wait for Director Vance to get here.” Before the words even finished leaving my mouth. BOOM! A deafening, explosive boom detonated from the direction of the cleanroom. The glass windows of the security booth rattled violently. Davis’s legs instantly gave out. He collapsed hard onto the floor. The technicians behind him turned the color of wet cement. The pressure valve had ruptured. Davis scrambled up from the floor like he had been electrocuted. “Did… did it explode?!” He stumbled backward, trembling uncontrollably. I glanced out the window at the thick plume of white steam billowing out of the factory roof. “Not yet. That was the primary release valve. There’s still a secondary backup.” Davis lunged forward, grabbing me by the collar of my uniform, his knuckles digging painfully into my throat. “FIX IT! IF YOU WANT TO DIE, DON’T DRAG ME DOWN WITH YOU!” He violently hauled me out of the booth. I stumbled after him, struggling to keep my balance. The cleanroom was completely engulfed in blinding white steam. The air was thick and suffocating with the acrid stench of atomized hydraulic fluid. Chloe had retreated to the far wall by the main breaker box, her phone still held high in the air. Seeing me get dragged in, she instantly shoved the camera lens toward me. “Chat! We caught the terrorist!” She pointed dramatically at the hissing, screaming machine. “Look! This is all her fault!” Davis violently shoved me toward the main control console. “Do it! Now! Director Vance is going to be here any second! If he walks in and this machine isn’t fixed, I will literally kill you!” The massive steel loading dock doors began to roll upward. A black Audi A6 came tearing into the warehouse, slamming on the brakes, the tires shrieking as they left thick black skid marks on the polished epoxy floor. The driver’s side door flew open, and Robert Vance, the Plant Director, vaulted out of the car. He slipped on the wet floor and nearly face-planted onto the concrete. His white dress shirt was completely soaked by the rain, clinging tightly to his stomach. Several Chief Engineers sprinted in right behind him. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” Vance’s roar completely overpowered the shrieking alarms. He stared in absolute horror at the machine, which was now flashing blood-red emergency strobes, his eyes bulging out of his skull. “Uncle Robert!” Chloe threw herself at him, tears streaming down her face with perfect, dramatic timing. “I was so scared! It’s all Evelyn’s fault!” She pointed a vicious finger at me. “She was mad that she got fired, so she sabotaged the machine! She almost blew me up! Look at my dress, it’s ruined!” Davis wiped the rain and sweat off his face and scurried over to Vance. “Director! I tried everything! Evelyn holds a grudge against the company, refused to run the maintenance protocols, and actively tried to destroy the facility!” Vance was panting heavily. His furious gaze swept over the screaming machine, over Chloe, over Davis. And finally, it locked onto the dedicated, isolated power supply outlet on the wall. Plugged directly into that highly sensitive circuit were the two massive, thousand-watt ring lights, with thick, heavy extension cords trailing all across the wet floor. The veins on Vance’s neck looked ready to burst. Chloe tugged on Vance’s wet sleeve. “Uncle Robert, tell the security guards to arrest her! I’m going to sue her for…” SMACK! Vance swung his arm with everything he had and delivered a brutal, open-handed slap directly across Chloe’s face. Chloe spun 180 degrees from the impact and collapsed hard onto the floor. Her phone flew out of her hand and smashed onto the concrete, the screen instantly shattering into a spiderweb of cracks. Davis stood there with his mouth hanging open, entirely speechless. Chloe clutched her burning cheek. “Uncle… you hit me?” Vance pointed a trembling finger at the power outlet. “Live-streaming inside a classified, restricted-access cleanroom?! Plugging commercial ring lights into a micro-voltage industrial outlet?!” “ARE YOU TRYING TO BLOW THIS ENTIRE BUILDING OFF THE MAP?!” Vance turned around and slowly looked at me. He bent at the waist, bowing a full, perfect ninety degrees. “Evelyn. I am begging you. Save us.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399950”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

A month ago, my son offered to pay me $700 a month to help out after his wife gave birth. A month later, my daughter-in-law handed me an itemized bill claiming I actually owed them $300. I didn’t say a single word. I packed my bags and went straight to a domestic staffing agency downtown. The young agent looked at my age and hesitated. “Sir, clients these days are picky. They want younger people, and they want certified professionals. You’re 62… it’s going to be a tough sell.” I didn’t argue. I just pulled a stack of certificates out of my pocket. I had secretly earned them over the past six months while the baby was sleeping. Advanced Infant Care Certification, a Nutritionist License, and even a Pediatric Massage Certificate. Originally, I just wanted to learn how to take better care of my grandson so my daughter-in-law, Chloe, would have less to complain about. Now, they were my golden ticket. “I’m a hard worker, I take initiative, and I don’t need days off. As long as room and board are covered, I expect market rate for my salary,” I said, staring her dead in the eye, my voice firm. The agent’s eyes lit up. “Sir, these are some serious credentials! Actually, I have an urgent request. The client’s previous housekeeper had a family emergency and left suddenly. She desperately needs someone who can cook and clean. The only thing is, the client’s temper is a bit… intense. Are you willing to give it a try?” “I’ll take it.” Nothing could possibly be more terrifying than the house that had been slowly eating me alive. The address was in ‘The Palisades,’ a gated community of massive, multi-million dollar estates on the east side of the city. The client’s name was Ms. Sterling. She was a female entrepreneur in her fifties, divorced, and living alone. When I walked in, the house looked like it had been ransacked. Takeout containers were piled high on the dining table, the expensive rugs were covered in dog hair, and Ms. Sterling was curled up on the sofa aggressively typing emails, not even bothering to look up when I entered. Still wearing her stilettos, looking utterly exhausted, she pointed a finger toward the kitchen. “Three rules. First, dinner must be a protein, two vegetables, and a soup—healthy and light. Second, clean up the backyard; I hate weeds. Third, keep the dog out of my office. Can you handle it? If not, leave right now.” I set my bag down. Without a word, I rolled up my sleeves and marched into the kitchen. The fridge was fully stocked, but most of the ingredients were on the verge of rotting. I salvaged what was fresh and got to work. Forty minutes later. Steamed sea bass with ginger and scallions, garlic roasted broccoli, sweet corn and pork rib soup, and a side of braised sea cucumber were set on the table. While things were simmering, I had run the vacuum over the living room, neatly arranged her discarded heels by the door, and steamed the wrinkles out of the blazer she had thrown over a chair. Ms. Sterling walked out of her home office. The smell of the food made her stop in her tracks. She took a sip of the rib soup, and the deep crease between her eyebrows instantly vanished. “Wow. You really know your way around a kitchen.” I nodded, didn’t say much, and went out the back door to start tackling the overgrown garden. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw Ms. Sterling watching me. The look in her eyes had changed. “You’re on a three-day trial,” she called out. “Three hundred a day. If you do a good job, we’ll sign a long-term contract.” I was about to nod when my phone started vibrating in my pocket. It was my son, Mark. I didn’t answer. I hit decline. He called again. I hit decline again. Immediately after, a notification popped up on WhatsApp. It was a voice memo from my daughter-in-law, Chloe. I tapped play, not bothering to hide it from Ms. Sterling. Chloe’s shrill, nasty voice exploded into the quiet, luxurious living room: “Arthur Davis! Where the hell did you go?! There’s no dinner, the baby is screaming, and the house looks like a pigsty! Get your ass back here right now! Are you trying to starve your own grandson?! I’m telling you right now, if you don’t come back and get on your knees to apologize, you will never see this child again!” When the audio message finished, the air was dead silent. Ms. Sterling raised an eyebrow, looking at me with a mix of amusement and sharp calculation. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of drama at home.” My heart sank. Is she going to fire me? I took a deep breath. Right in front of Ms. Sterling, I held down the record button and replied with perfect, crystal-clear enunciation: “The child is yours, not mine. If he starves, that’s child neglect on your part. As for getting on my knees to apologize? Keep dreaming. I’m busy making real money now. I don’t have time to wait on giant adult toddlers.” I hit send, immediately blocked her number, and powered off my phone. I looked up, meeting Ms. Sterling’s visibly impressed gaze. “I like your style,” the corner of her mouth curled into a smirk. “You work fast, and you cut ties clean. You’re hired. As long as you keep my house running smoothly, you never have to go back to that one.” My nose stung. I gave her a firm, heavy nod. “Thank you, Ms. Sterling.” In this strange, sprawling mansion, facing a complete stranger, I somehow felt a sense of dignity I hadn’t experienced in years. Living in the Sterling house for a month felt like being reborn. Ms. Sterling wasn’t short on money. As long as the house was spotless and the food was excellent, she never micromanaged or nitpicked. Her daughter occasionally came home from college. She had a bit of a rebellious streak, but she was soft-hearted. After I made her late-night snacks a few times, she started calling me “Arthur,” and would share expensive imported treats she brought back from her trips. Here, there were no itemized bills claiming “AC left on too long: Deduct $50.” There was no one kicking my door open at 3 AM demanding I change a diaper. There were no eye-rolls or sarcastic comments about how I was useless. Every night after I finished my work, I could sit in my spacious private suite, listen to audiobooks, soak my feet, and scroll through TikTok in peace. I actually felt like losing the seventy thousand dollars I had given my son was worth it. I lost seventy grand, but I saw the true colors of two ungrateful parasites, and I bought back the rest of my life. 2 That weekend, Ms. Sterling was hosting a dinner party for a few business partners. She handed me four hundred dollars cash and told me to go to the high-end organic supermarket nearby to pick up some specialty ingredients. I was pushing my cart through the imported fruit section, picking out premium Shine Muscat grapes. Talk about bad luck. “Well, well. If it isn’t the runaway grandpa.” A grating, sarcastic voice came from behind me. I turned around. My son, Mark, and my daughter-in-law, Chloe, were standing a few feet away, pushing a stroller. In just a month, the two of them looked visibly destroyed. Mark’s face was gray with exhaustion, his shirt collar completely wrinkled. Chloe had dark circles under her eyes so heavy she looked like a raccoon. The baby in the stroller was screaming his lungs out, his diaper so full it was sagging down to his knees. Clearly, without their “free live-in servant,” life wasn’t going so great. Chloe’s eyes practically bulged out of her head when she saw the expensive grapes in my hand. “Arthur Davis! Where did you get the money to buy fruit like that?! Did you steal cash before you left?! I knew we were missing three hundred dollars from the joint account! It was you, you old thief!” She lunged forward, trying to grab my shopping cart, her voice so loud that people in the aisles started staring. “Hand the money over! That was money for the baby’s formula! How can you be so shameless, stealing milk money from your own grandson?!” Mark stepped up, his face dark, and grabbed my arm roughly. “Dad, are you done throwing your tantrum? We’ve been eating garbage takeout for a month, and the baby has diarrhea! And here you are, living it up with stolen money?! Get back to the house right now!” I violently shook off Mark’s hand, glaring at them coldly. “Watch your mouth. This is the grocery budget my employer gave me. As for your missing money? That’s because you two are financially illiterate. It has absolutely nothing to do with me.” “Your employer?” Chloe scoffed, looking me up and down, taking in my clean, utilitarian Uniqlo work clothes. “You? What are you doing, scrubbing toilets? Making what, minimum wage? Is that even enough to cover your blood pressure meds?” She was getting worked up, her old sense of superiority flaring up again. “Listen, I’ll give you a way out. Come back with us right now. Clean the house, do the laundry, and I’ll forgive a hundred and fifty of your ‘debt.’ As long as you keep your head down and do what you’re told, I’ll let you back through the front door.” Mark chimed in, playing the good cop. “Yeah, Dad. It’s tough out there. Come home, help with the kid, and we’ll take care of you in your old age. Isn’t that better than serving strangers?” Take care of me in my old age? Looking at their hypocritical, twisted faces, I just felt profoundly nauseous. “Sorry. I’m busy.” I tried to push my cart past them, but Chloe aggressively blocked my path, kicking the wheel of my cart so hard it almost tipped over. “Don’t push your luck, old man! Believe it or not, I will go find your ’employer’ and make a scene! I’ll tell them you’re a thief with sticky fingers! You won’t even be able to scrub toilets when I’m done with you!” While she was screaming, a young chauffeur in a sharp suit jogged into the supermarket, spotting me and bowing respectfully. “Arthur, Ms. Sterling sent me to help. She was worried the groceries might be too heavy for you. The car is right out front.” Mark froze. Chloe froze. They recognized the chauffeur because they recognized the car parked outside the glass doors. It was a Bentley, a notoriously expensive luxury car often seen in this affluent area. I adjusted my collar and handed the shopping cart to the chauffeur. Then, I reached into my pocket, pulled out my freshly signed employment contract, and slapped it right against Mark’s stunned chest. “Read it and weep.” “Ms. Sterling hired me as her live-in Estate Manager.” “My salary is eight thousand dollars a month. Six days on, one day off. A double-salary holiday bonus. Room, board, and full health insurance included.” I looked at Mark’s face, which had turned the color of chalk, and Chloe’s expression, which looked like she had just swallowed a live fly. I delivered the final, fatal blow: “I make more than the two of you combined.” “You want me to come back and serve you? Fine.” “My rate is market value, plus triple time for overtime. If you can’t afford it, get out of my face.” With that, I turned around and, under the envious gazes of the onlookers, slid into the back of a luxury car they couldn’t afford in ten lifetimes. In the rearview mirror, the baby in Mark’s arms was still screaming. The couple stood frozen in the aisle, looking like two utterly pathetic clowns nobody cared about. And my good life had just begun. Sitting in the Bentley heading back to the Palisades, the anger in my chest mostly dissipated, replaced by a cold, clear detachment. Ms. Sterling was a sharp woman. She didn’t pry during the ride, simply saying, “Arthur, in the future, if trash like that approaches you, just have security throw them out.” I nodded, my spine straightening a little more. 3 In the days that followed, I worked even harder. I managed the Sterling estate’s landscaping, organization, and meal planning flawlessly. Ms. Sterling’s daughter was a picky eater, so I researched trendy, healthy recipes, modifying them to fit her taste profile. The young girl was so happy with the food that she started chatting with me more, even teaching me how to edit and post videos on TikTok. Payday happened to fall on the day Ms. Sterling hosted a lavish birthday party for her daughter. In front of a house full of wealthy guests, Ms. Sterling handed me a thick envelope. “Arthur, this is your bonus for the month. You’ve really taken a huge weight off my shoulders.” I was about to politely decline when the doorbell started ringing frantically, like rapid-fire explosions. The junior maid, Sarah, went to open it, only to be violently shoved backward. “Arthur Davis! Get your ass out here!” Chloe’s shrill screech instantly drowned out the background music. She was dragging a pale, dead-looking Mark behind her. The entire room of high-society guests froze, their champagne glasses halted in mid-air. My heart gave a violent lurch. I almost dropped the tray of hors d’oeuvres I was holding. These two psychopaths actually tracked me down to my employer’s house. “Who let you in?” I set the tray down, took long, purposeful strides across the room, and positioned myself squarely between them and Ms. Sterling’s family. Seeing me in my tailored, professional uniform, Chloe’s eyes turned red—partly from jealousy, but mostly from humiliating rage. “Oh, this is rich! Everyone, listen to this! This old man abandons his own flesh-and-blood grandson to come play dog for strangers! My son is in the ER with a 104-degree fever, our house is a disaster zone, and he’s hiding out here living the high life!” She wailed dramatically while violently yanking on Mark’s sleeve. “Mark, say something! This is your father! Are you just going to let him serve other people and embarrass the Davis family name?!” Being violently jerked seemed to snap Mark back to reality. He puffed out his chest and yelled at me: “Dad! Have you lost your mind?! Your grandson is sick! He’s in the emergency room, and we don’t have the money for the copay! Get your things and come with us right now! And ask for an advance on your salary to pay his medical bills!” The guests began whispering among themselves, casting strange, judging looks in my direction. Ms. Sterling’s face darkened. She was about to speak, but I raised my hand to stop her. “Chloe,” I looked at this woman, who I could barely recognize as the daughter-in-law I once knew. “Your child is sick. You are his mother. And your first instinct wasn’t to take care of him at the hospital, but to track me down to cause a scene and demand money?” “We don’t have money! Everything is tied up in the mortgage and the car payments! You are the grandfather! It is your absolute duty to pay for him!” Chloe screamed, utterly convinced of her own twisted logic. I let out a harsh laugh. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened the photo of the “Itemized Penalty Bill” Mark had sent me a month ago, and held it up high for the entire room to see. “Ladies and gentlemen, take a look. These are the ‘house rules’ my son imposed on me.” “Not only was I providing full-time, unpaid childcare, but I was being actively penalized. ‘Left the AC on too long: Deduct $50.’ ‘Cooked a meal that took over an hour: Deduct $200.’ When I finally left, not only was I unpaid, I supposedly ‘owed’ them three hundred dollars.” I shoved the phone screen directly into Mark’s face. “Is this what you call my ‘absolute duty’?” The whispers among the guests turned into audible gasps, and the looks they gave the young couple were now filled with absolute disgust. “They didn’t want a father, they wanted a slave.” “How shameless. They’re literal financial vampires.” Mark’s face cycled through shades of red and white. He reached out to snatch my phone. “You crazy old man! Have you never heard that dirty laundry stays in the family?!” SMACK! I backhanded him across the face. The sound was crisp and echoing. “So you know it’s dirty?” “That slap is to teach you how to be a human being. You don’t have money for your kid’s medical bills? That’s because you are incompetent parents! I have to survive too. Every cent I earn is for my own retirement. It has absolutely zero to do with you!” “Security!” Ms. Sterling’s voice cut through the room like ice. “Throw these two lunatics out. Add their faces to the gate’s permanent blacklist. They are never to step foot in the Palisades again.” Several massive, broad-shouldered security guards rushed in and dragged the two of them out by their arms, like they were hauling away garbage. Mark was still struggling. “Dad! You can’t be this ruthless! That is your own grandson!” I turned my back. I didn’t look at them again. “Ruthless? You two wrote the book on it.” After that chaotic scene, my heart hardened into steel. Ms. Sterling not only didn’t blame me, she actually gave me a raise, saying I handled the situation perfectly and didn’t let her lose face in front of her guests. But I knew those two parasites wouldn’t just give up. Sure enough, two days later, my extended family’s group chat exploded. My younger brother, my aunt, my older brother—relatives who hadn’t spoken to me in years—were suddenly blowing up my phone. “Arthur, you’re really in the wrong here. What kind of grandfather abandons his grandson?” “I heard you’re working as a servant for rich people now? Sigh, how is Mark supposed to show his face in public with that kind of shame?” “Your daughter-in-law is crying in the group chat. She said you stole tens of thousands of dollars and ran off, leaving the baby to die. That’s just evil.” I opened the group chat. Chloe had posted several massive paragraphs, playing the victim perfectly. She claimed I hated her, that I abandoned my family to chase after wealthy employers, and she even started a rumor that I was having an affair. Mark was playing dead in the chat, occasionally posting a single “Sigh” to manipulate the narrative. I looked at the blind accusations from relatives who knew nothing about the truth. My finger hovered over the screen for a long time. Then, I let out a cold laugh.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399967”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

“Does it mean that your foster sister, Lily Vance, told you exactly why your father, Mark Sterling, only bought things for her and not for you?” Detective Evans stared at me intently, her expression strictly professional. She had her hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. I met her scrutinizing gaze, swallowed hard, and gave a heavy nod. “Yes. And it wasn’t just once.” From the moment I woke up in the school nurse’s office, I had been immediately transferred to the local police precinct. I looked up at the ceiling of the interrogation room, wiped a tear from the corner of my eye, and let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “Did she know how cruel it was to show off like that in front of me?” I held up my hand toward Detective Evans, spreading my fingers. “Five,” I said. “My daily allowance for food was five dollars.” “Chloe, I’ve done the math. You’re a girl, you don’t eat that much. Five dollars a day is plenty for your meals.” “Look, if you eat breakfast at home, it’s healthy and nutritious. And you can cook for me and your sister at the same time.” Under the dim, yellow light of our cramped kitchen, my father wore a gentle, reasonable smile. He spoke to me as if I were an adult, as if we were having a rational conversation between equals. I stared at the tips of my worn-out sneakers, finally gathering the courage to speak up. “But Dad, I have to get to school. I’ll be late.” “If you’re going to be late, then wake up earlier!” His voice suddenly spiked, sharp and aggressive. I flinched, shrinking back from him. His eyes widened drastically, the whites showing, looking like they might pop out of his skull. But just as quickly, the manic look vanished, replaced once again by that gentle, reasonable smile. He said, “Chloe, I know you’re a good girl. Now that your sister has moved in, we have another mouth to feed. Dad has a lot of financial pressure. You’re going to help Dad out, right?” “Detective Evans, do you know what my sister’s daily allowance was?” I pulled myself back from the memory and looked at the detective. “Mark, I really want to go to Olive Garden,” the memory of Lily Vance echoed in my mind. Her long hair cascaded down her back, her pale face looking incredibly wronged, her eyes misty with unshed tears. She looked so pitiful. She bit her lower lip. “My mom used to take me there every week.” My dad’s heart broke instantly. He panicked, rushing to comfort her. “Okay, okay. I’ll take you.” “Really?” Lily burst into a radiant smile through her tears. “Thank you, Mark! You’re so good to me. You’re such a good man.” I thought they would at least take me with them. But Lily’s eyes grew red again. “But Mark… my mom only ever took me.” So I watched them drive off together, and I watched them come back loaded with shopping bags. Lily’s face was flushed with excitement. “Mark, you don’t think I’m spending too much of your money, do you?” My dad waved his hands frantically. “Silly girl, what are you talking about? You’re just so mature. Spending my money means you treat me like family! From now on, whatever you want, you just tell me. I’ll make sure you get it.” “Thank you, Mark. No… thank you, Dad. You’re the best.” In the interrogation room, I looked at Detective Evans and said, “There was no limit.” “My father, Mark Sterling, placed zero limits on his foster daughter Lily’s spending.” My lips trembled. The tears I had forced back countless times finally broke free, streaming down my face. I abruptly stood up and slammed both my fists onto the metal table. “I am his biological daughter, and I got five dollars a day! I was starving every single day! I had no snacks, no new clothes! I had to buy groceries, cook the meals, do the laundry, and wait on them hand and foot! And all I got was five dollars!” “But her? She had everything! She ate at Olive Garden until she was sick of it, and she would rather throw the leftovers in the trash than let me have a single bite! Why?! Why was it like that?!” The officers beside me and my homeroom teacher, who was sitting in on the interview, quickly rushed forward to calm me down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Detective Evans’s jaw tighten. She gestured to a colleague, they whispered, and the colleague quickly stepped out of the room. “Chloe,” Detective Evans closed her notebook and looked at me. “We will investigate everything you’ve said. You need to understand that you are responsible for the statements you make. Do you understand?” She turned the computer monitor toward me. It displayed the transcript of our entire conversation, typed out verbatim. I sneered and swatted the monitor away. “You think I hate her, that I resent her, so I’m framing her and making up lies. Is that it?” I looked around the room at the adults. “That’s what all of you think, right?” I clenched my fists and raised my voice. “Yes! I hate her! I despise her! Why shouldn’t I?! She stole my father! She stole everything that was supposed to be mine!” “Detective Evans, Mrs. Miller… my dad loves her. He doesn’t love me. I am his actual flesh and blood, and he doesn’t love me.” My emotions were spiraling completely out of control. “Lily’s mom abandoned her and ran off. My dad felt sorry for her because she didn’t have a mother. But Mrs. Miller… my mom died! I don’t have a mother either! I’m the one who doesn’t have a mother!” “But my dad didn’t feel sorry for me. He didn’t love me.” “He only loved Lily.” “He only loved my sister! He only loved her!” I broke down completely, becoming hysterical, crying so hard I almost dry-heaved. Mrs. Miller, my teacher, pulled me into a tight, heartbroken hug. “Chloe, don’t cry. Your mom is looking down from heaven, and she’d be so sad to see this.” Mrs. Miller’s eyes were red. “If your mom saw you like this, it would break her heart.” I forced myself to repeat the agonizing truth. “My dad loved her. But later on… I started noticing something was wrong. My dad would stare at Lily’s back when she walked away. He would get lost in thought… he would… he would brush his hand against her arm…” “Then, one night, I got up to use the bathroom, and I heard my dad… I heard him moaning Lily’s name in his bedroom.” “Lily… Lily… In that moment, I finally understood why my dad treated her so well.” “My dad was in love with her.” Huge, heavy tears rolled down my cheeks. I clutched my chest. “So no matter how much I hated her, I didn’t want to hurt her. After all…” I fell silent for a moment before continuing. “After all, she was exactly my age. She was just a kid back then.” “Back then, she used to ask me, confused, ‘Why?’ She couldn’t understand why my dad treated her so amazingly well.” “But… but… I knew why.” “I just didn’t know how to tell her. She was only sixteen. She was a minor.” I looked at Detective Evans, my voice trembling, thick with nasal congestion, on the verge of breaking completely. “Detective Evans, please. Help me. But… help her too. She was only sixteen.” “My dad loved her.” “The way a man loves a woman.” “She was only sixteen years old. She was a child.” “Honestly, everything that happened today… Lily and I planned it. We couldn’t think of any other way to ask for help.” My voice floated softly through the interrogation room, drifting up and circling the space, before settling heavily into the hearts of everyone present. At that exact moment, in an interrogation room at the other end of the hallway… My father, Mark Sterling, sat with a look of utter confusion on his face. “Why was I brought to the police station to give a statement?” Meanwhile, Lily Vance was just walking out of the forensic medical examination center, escorted by her homeroom teacher and a police officer. She was pale as a ghost as she got into the back of a squad car. I walked out of my interrogation room and sat on a bench in the main lobby, waiting for Lily to arrive. When the clock on the wall read 10:35 AM, Lily walked through the front doors. I immediately stood up, rushed to her side, and announced loudly: “Lily, don’t be scared! I told the police everything!” As I pulled her into a hug, I whispered clearly into her ear: “Lily, I told them we planned this whole thing. So, tell me… do you want to say you were dating my dad? Or do you want to say he was just creeping on you one-sidedly?” When I pulled back, I gripped her hands tightly, giving her a half-smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Actually, you’ve been seducing him this whole time, haven’t you… stepmom?” She stared at me, her face completely drained of blood, like she was looking at a demon. “You…” “Aren’t you scared?” I cut her off before she could speak. “Go on. Tell them the truth. Tell them how innocent you are.” I watched Lily walk into the interrogation room. I watched her take step after step into the destiny I had meticulously woven for her. Back then, hiding in the shadows, I had watched them laugh together. They looked so genuinely happy. I knew that Lily’s “happy life” had begun. Expensive watches, expensive bags, expensive phones, expensive times. While I wore my dead mother’s oversized, faded t-shirts. An empty stomach, endless household chores, late-night studying, and a childhood stolen from me. My life had been miserable for entirely too long. So, Lily, your happy life is over now. This time, it’s my turn to be happy. That’s fair, right? The police investigation moved faster than I expected, and Lily’s ability to read the room and adapt was exactly as I had predicted. She mixed truths with lies. She used the truth to build a fortress of lies. But who could blame her? My dad “loved” his foster daughter so, so much. The thousand-dollar iPhone, the two-thousand-dollar bag, the three-thousand-dollar necklace, the four-thousand-dollar watch, the weekly trips to Olive Garden—all sharply contrasting with the severely malnourished biological daughter. “After my mom left, he took me in. I was so grateful to him.” “Why did he treat me so well?” “It was him. He came into my room at night.” “He said he’d buy me things. Whatever I wanted.” “He gave me his debit card. He said we were a family.” “I spent his money because I wanted to punish him.” “He is a monster.” Under Lily’s testimony, my father transformed from the “Neighborhood Saint” into a vile, predatory monster. Even without hard physical evidence. The medical examiner could only confirm that Lily was no longer a virgin; they couldn’t scientifically prove that the person responsible was my father, Mark Sterling. But Lily said it was him, so it was him. Stack after stack of bank statements proved that Lily and my father had a financial relationship. They couldn’t prove it was hush money, but Lily said it was, so it was. Interviews with the staff at Olive Garden confirmed that Lily and Mark came in together frequently. They couldn’t prove it was a date. But Lily said it was, and she said she was “forced” to go. So they were forced dates. “He said my mom left, so he didn’t have a wife anymore, and I had to make it up to him.” Lily spoke through her tears. Her statement, documented in black and white, and her blurred-out interview footage, took the local news by storm. With that, her foster father—my biological father—was nailed firmly to the cross of public opinion. The day the police issued the official press release, our small, working-class city exploded. Overnight, it was all anyone could talk about. The local newspaper published a front-page exposé using pseudonyms for the key figures, detailing the entire sickening case. On the local news channels, legal analysts fiercely debated whether “the absence of physical evidence is sufficient to secure a conviction,” turning it into a prime example for true crime shows. Online, people claiming to be “insiders” or “friends of the victim” crawled out of the woodwork, trying to piece together a version of the truth that fit their own twisted imaginations. In every coffee shop and on every street corner, everyone was talking about it. My father, Mark Sterling, was a predator. A villain. A disgusting piece of trash. Back at the old apartment complex, the neighbors were busy condemning the “sick bastard.” The old man from the sixth floor sat in his wheelchair and spat aggressively on the ground. “A hypocrite! A shameless, sick bastard!” Meanwhile, I was staying at Mrs. Miller’s house. The ceiling fan spun in slow, lazy circles. Mrs. Miller handed me a slice of watermelon, her eyes full of concern. “Chloe, don’t pay any attention to what’s happening out there. The most important thing right now is to focus on yourself. Your grades have always been top of the class. Don’t worry, the school is already fast-tracking your full-ride scholarship applications. You just stay here with me and focus on your future.” “Thank you, Mrs. Miller.” I took a bite of the watermelon and looked at her. “Mrs. Miller, when I leave for college, I’m never coming back here.” Mrs. Miller patted my head gently. “I understand.” The day before my high school graduation, my father was officially indicted. Legally, when establishing a conviction for statutory rape, the prosecution must consider a totality of evidence. Yes, the victim’s testimony is critical, but a conviction rarely rests on testimony alone. There needs to be corroborating evidence—signs of a struggle, a disrupted crime scene. Physical evidence is key—DNA, fluids, torn clothing. Witness testimony is also crucial if anyone else was present. Only when these pieces form a complete, unbroken chain proving a crime occurred can a guilty verdict and sentence be handed down. If it’s solely a ‘he said, she said’ situation with zero corroborating evidence, securing a conviction is incredibly difficult. But my father just loved his foster daughter way, way too much. Every single piece of evidence from their past corroborated his “malicious intent.” All the preferential treatment he showered on her, the things that were carved into my soul, the memories that repeated on a loop in my nightmares—they were finally dragged out into the daylight. Documented in black and white in police reports, they became the final straws that broke his back. His own biological daughter testified that he “loved” his foster daughter. Because Lily was a minor at the time, my father was sentenced to a heavy term: 7 years in state prison. In the courtroom, Lily pointed a shaking finger at the defendant’s table where my father—her foster father—sat, crying hysterically. “It was him! It was him!” “He came into my room late at night and touched my legs!” I couldn’t help it. I let out a sharp, genuine laugh. She had told the lie so many times, she actually believed it herself now. Lily’s mother, Sarah Vance, had also resurfaced for the trial. She was even more dramatic. Taking advantage of a distracted bailiff, she actually charged the defendant’s table and lunged at Mark Sterling. “You bastard! You sick animal! How could you do this to my daughter?! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” Wow. She looked exactly like a devastated, fiercely protective mother. Assuming, of course, you ignored the fact that she had viciously slapped Lily across the face in the hallway when she found out there wouldn’t be a massive civil settlement payout. “I didn’t! I didn’t!” In the courtroom, my dad denied it over and over again. “I just treated her like a daughter!” “I was just trying to be a good person!” “I was just trying to be a good person!” He kept repeating it, right up until the prosecution started presenting the mountain of corroborating evidence. Security footage from Olive Garden: the two of them sitting across from each other. The most prominent thing on the table wasn’t the pizza, but a massive bouquet of red roses. “Yes, they came in almost every week, always requested the same booth. I remember them clearly,” the restaurant manager testified. “When he bought the watch, they came in together,” the jewelry store clerk testified smoothly. “Mark doted on that girl. He gave her the best of everything, while completely neglecting his own biological daughter. As neighbors, we saw it, but we were too afraid to say anything,” the old man from the sixth floor testified as the neighborhood representative. … I watched as piece after piece of evidence was presented. Every single one was a snapshot of their happy, loving past as “father and daughter.” And my father, Mark Sterling, sat frozen in horror at the defendant’s table as his own displays of affection were weaponized against him. As if sensing my gaze, his head snapped toward the back row of the gallery, looking directly at me. I was genuinely curious. In that moment, was he shocked by the sheer volume of “evidence,” or did he finally realize the monumental debt he owed me? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I could never forget that my mother worked herself into an early grave. She was driven to her death by this “Saint” of a man. I lost my mother when I was very, very young. “Yes, I saw my father go into Lily’s bedroom late at night,” I stated calmly from the witness stand. His face turned ashen and dead, looking exactly like my mother did when she used to come home from her grueling shifts, sitting on the front steps. Ashen, dead, and utterly consumed by despair. “Yes. I plead guilty.” He finally broke. He whispered the words, followed immediately by the heavy, definitive slam of the judge’s gavel. My father, Mark Sterling, was sentenced to 7 years. My foster sister, Lily Vance, became known around town as “the girl who got abused by her dad.” Before I left town for college, I saw Lily one last time in the stairwell of the old apartment building. She was wearing an incredibly revealing outfit, looking me up and down. “Chloe, you’re heading off to college, huh?” “These days, a college degree is useless. You’ll max out at a generic office job making four grand a month. What’s the point?” She kept rambling, and I just listened quietly. Then, I asked her a question. “You’re actually incredibly jealous of me, aren’t you?” Her expression froze. But a second later, she burst into a loud, exaggerated, theatrical laugh, acting like I had just told the funniest joke in the world. I laughed along with her. “Jealous of you? Jealous that you’re poor? Jealous that you don’t have a mom?” I pulled my mother’s framed funeral portrait out of my backpack and looked at her. “Of course you’re jealous of me. Before my mom died, she hid away enough money to pay for my entire college tuition. And she left me the deed to this apartment. What did your mom leave you?” My mother went to heaven. But Lily’s mother was going to drag her straight down to hell. After the trial, Sarah didn’t take Lily away to start fresh in a new city. Instead, she abandoned her right back where she started. Lily had no source of income. She had nowhere to go. With her back against the wall, she had no choice but to return to the old apartment building. And so, under the shocked gazes of the neighbors, she transitioned from a tragic victim to a willing, cheap commodity. She tried to explain, over and over, that she was a victim of circumstance. But the looks she received grew increasingly predatory and vile. She didn’t realize that you can’t just brush off vicious rumors. She didn’t realize that once you validate the premise, it stops being a rumor and becomes an accepted fact. The moment she pointed the finger at her foster father, she became the other half of that dirty, sensational headline. When she walked by, there were hushed, dirty whispers. When she stopped, men would call out her name and laugh lewdly. She stopped leaving the apartment. She locked herself inside. But the door would be knocked on late at night. Men would stand outside her window, calling out to her. “Open up, Lily! Come out and play!” Sometimes it was one guy sneaking around; sometimes it was a whole group of them. She had no income. She couldn’t support herself. She didn’t have a mother to protect her. Her “rich girl” persona was entirely shattered, so she was too terrified to show her face at school, even though the district would have provided her with emergency housing and a bed. A parasitic vine cannot survive a storm. But she wasn’t born a parasite; her mother just never taught her how to be a tree that could stand on its own. How incredibly tragic. Finally, one day, she opened the door. “You really had no idea, did you?” I pulled the strap of her cheap tank top back up her shoulder, my voice a low whisper. “Your mom really did abandon you and run off.” In her slowly dilating, horrified pupils, I saw the reflection of my own faint smile. “All it took was one afternoon. I waited until the neighborhood gossips were sitting in the courtyard, went to the corner bodega to buy a soda, and ‘accidentally’ let slip a massive, top-secret piece of information.” My mind drifted back to that day. “Hey, Mr. Johnson, give me three Cokes. Don’t open them, I’m taking them to a friend’s house.” The gossips nearby chimed in. “Oh, you have a friend over there?” “Yeah! And their family is super important, so I can’t show up empty-handed.” “Important? What does your friend’s family do?” I pretended to think hard. “I don’t know exactly… but they work at the city zoning office. The department that decides which neighborhoods get demolished and bought out by developers.” “Oh! Well, ask them if our complex is getting bought out!” I acted shy. “I can’t ask that! I’m just a kid.” One of the nosy women got annoyed. “This kid doesn’t know how to network at all. How is she going to survive in the real world?” I grabbed my Cokes and stormed off, pretending to be angry. Then I spent the entire afternoon sitting in front of my mother’s grave. A few days later, I found a beat-up, abandoned sofa on the street and dragged it back to the apartment. The noise of me hauling it up the stairs made everyone poke their heads out their doors. “Chloe, why are you hauling that junk up here? When the developers buy us out, you won’t be able to take it with you anyway.” I flashed a brilliant smile and announced loudly, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Smith! My friend told me I can live here comfortably for a long, long time. Our complex isn’t getting bought out! The real estate boom is over. The real money now is in tech stocks and crypto, not buying up old land!” That day, the rumor that the buyout was canceled spread like wildfire, half-believed but heavily discussed. Sarah came knocking to verify. “Chloe, is what your friend said true?” I had never shown Sarah or her daughter an ounce of respect, so I gave my usual annoyed response. “Believe whatever you want. If you don’t believe me, go down to City Hall and ask them yourself.” “City Hall? Like they’d let regular people like us in there,” she muttered as she walked away, heading straight for Lily’s room. I was absolutely certain she had bought it, and was going to discuss her exit strategy with her daughter. If I had been polite to her, she would have suspected a trap. Sure enough, a few days later, Sarah packed her bags and vanished. “Your mom thought the massive developer payout was a bust, so she ran. She ditched her dead weight—you—to go find her next mark,” I told Lily, enunciating every word. “Did your mom tell you she was just going to go make some quick cash and come back for you? Don’t believe it. She lied to you.” “She abandoned you.” “Oh, and by the way, I should probably tell you… this complex is actually getting bought out by a developer next month. They’re tearing it down. You’re about to be homeless.” “How tragic. A true dead weight.” Then, I gently pulled her apartment door shut. As I walked down the stairs, I heard an agonizing, bloodcurdling scream echo from behind the closed door.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399951”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel