Category: English

My roommate catfished Zach Cole by pretending to be me. When he finally figured it out, she cornered me in our room, sobbing and begging me not to expose her. She claimed her family was in a financial crisis due to her grandmother’s terminal illness, and that she had only lied to Zach to accept his massive bank transfers—money she could never afford to pay back. In my past life, I let my pity get the better of me. I went along with the lie, stepped into her shoes, and forced myself to be with Zach. But years later, long after Janelle Miller had married a wealthy older man, Zach lost his mind. He turned his resentment on me, torturing me emotionally in our quiet home. “Did you honestly think I loved your face?” he had screamed, his eyes wild with regret. “Your looks are nothing compared to Janelle’s soul. Give her back to me!” Now, time has rewound to our senior year of college. Zach corners me at the bottom of the dorm steps. He waves his phone, displaying our supposed intimate chat history, and leans in close with a smug, familiar smirk. “Hey, baby. Why are you acting like you don’t know me?” I look at him with cold, dead eyes. “Get the fuck away from me.” 1 Zach’s expression shifted instantly into something amused and mocking. He looked down at the photo on his screen, his eyes moving back and forth to compare it to my face. “Interesting,” he murmured, a slow grin spreading across his lips. “One second you’re calling me your husband, and the next you’re telling me to screw off. Isn’t that a bit harsh, Ro?” His dark eyes gleamed with a practiced, flirtatious warmth. The casual, intimate cadence of his voice was loud enough to make several passing students turn their heads to look at us. I kept my face entirely blank. “You have the wrong person. Move.” Zach let out a sharp, disbelief-filled laugh. But he quickly softened his tone, taking a half-step closer. “Look, baby, I’m sorry. I know you said you weren’t ready to meet in person yet. But I love you too much to keep waiting. I couldn’t help myself.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone again. “Don’t be mad. Let me transfer you five thousand dollars right now. Go buy yourself something nice, and let me take you out to a proper dinner. How does that sound?” Having lived through the years of his cold indifference and eventual cruelty, seeing him act like a desperate, lovesick puppy was almost comical. “Do you even know my name?” I asked. Zach’s thumb hovered over his screen, a flicker of confusion crossing his face. “Rowan?” I let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Did you bother looking at the name on the bank transfers? Because it isn’t mine.” Zach reached out, intending to pat my head, but I stepped back, letting his hand hang awkwardly in the air. His fingers curled slowly into a fist before he forced his smile back. “Stop playing, Rowan. You’re the one who told me you were using your parents’ joint account and didn’t want them seeing the transactions, so you had me wire the money to your roommate’s account instead.” I stared at him, exhausted by his density. “You’ve been talking to this girl for months. Did you ever once FaceTime her?” Zach hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “So you’ve never actually seen her face, and yet based on a few photos, you assumed the girl behind the screen was me,” I said, my voice cutting through the humid afternoon air. “You wired her over a hundred thousand dollars without a second thought. Did they skip basic internet safety during your freshman orientation? You’re the victim of a textbook romance scam. I suggest you call the police.” Zach still couldn’t wrap his head around it. Convinced I was simply throwing a tantrum because he had showed up unannounced, his expression turned pleading. “Baby, please stop. We have something real. Meeting in person was always the end goal. Besides…” He lowered his voice, a hint of entitlement creeping in. “You sent me those private photos. I couldn’t just sit around anymore. But I swear, I won’t touch you until you say it’s okay.” My chest tightened, a cold chill running down my spine. “What photos?” Zach turned his phone toward me. On the screen was a photo of a woman’s silhouette, taken through a frosted glass shower door while she was changing. It was unmistakably my back. “Come on, that’s clearly you,” Zach said, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “Who else could have taken something that private? Stop teasing me.” I didn’t answer him. Instead, I swiped his screen upward to look at the chat log. Janelle had sent the photo under my name, adding a pouty emoji: [Babe, finding an internship is exhausting. Look how much weight I’ve lost.] Zach’s reply had been nearly instantaneous, followed by a transaction confirmation for twenty thousand dollars: [I can take care of you, baby. My dad just bought me a townhouse downtown with a pool. Why don’t we just move in together?] Janelle’s response: [Oh, I know exactly what you boys are after! I’m not ready yet. Let’s wait until graduation.] I let out a quiet, bitter laugh. In my past life, I had never actually looked at their chat history. I had always assumed Janelle took public photos from my social media accounts to fool him. I never realized she had been secretly photographing me in our shared space. Without another word, I took out my own phone, snapped a photo of Zach’s screen, and drafted an email to the Dean of Students. Dean Avery, a student has taken non-consensual, private photos of me in my dormitory and distributed them to third parties. I am requesting an immediate investigation. If the university cannot handle this, I will be contacting the police. 2 When I returned to the room, Janelle was pacing near the balcony, her face pale and anxious. I ignored her, setting my bag down on my desk as if nothing had happened. After a few minutes of agonizing silence, Janelle crept over to my side, her voice trembling. “Rowan… who was that guy you were talking to downstairs?” “Just some idiot who got scammed online,” I said casually. “I told him to call the police.” Janelle froze. Almost immediately, her phone began to buzz in her pocket—vibrating again and again with incoming notifications. She stared at her pocket, too terrified to pull the device out. After what felt like an eternity, she cleared her throat, her voice dry. “Rowan… we’re still best friends, right?” “Of course,” I said, turning to look at her with a gentle, empty smile. In my past life, I truly had considered her a sister. I had pitied her because of her dysfunctional family and her grandmother’s failing health. That pity was the only reason I had agreed to cover for her when Zach confronted us. Only later did I learn the truth. Janelle’s grandmother had indeed been sick, but Janelle hadn’t spent a single dollar of Zach’s money on her medical bills. Instead, she used those funds to pay for extensive plastic surgery and a master’s program abroad. By the time she returned to the country, she was entirely unrecognizable—polished, sophisticated, and beautiful. By then, my relationship with Zach was already falling apart. He constantly complained that I was too cold, too reserved, and lacked the playful warmth of the girl he had fallen in love with online. At a college reunion, surrounded by our former classmates, Zach had drunkenly scoffed at me. “Rowan’s just a trophy,” he had said, swirling his whiskey. “She’s beautiful, sure, but she has the personality of a brick. She’s nothing like the girl I talked to back in college.” I had sat there in burning humiliation. That was when Janelle, elegant and dripping in designer jewelry, had laughed softly and raised her glass. “Well, that’s because the girl you were talking to wasn’t Rowan,” Janelle had said with a conspiratorial wink. “Our Rowan is gorgeous, but she’s terribly shy. I had to act as her Cyrano to help her land you. Zach, you owe me a seat at the head table when you two finally get married.” With a few lighthearted sentences, she had rewritten her fraud as a sweet, sisterly favor. But Zach had stared at Janelle for the rest of the night, his eyes vacant and intense. When we got home, I finally confessed the entire truth to him. I thought he would understand the sacrifice I had made to protect a friend. Instead, Zach gripped my shoulders, his eyes wild with anger. “So the person I fell in love with all those nights was Janelle? Why did you lie to me, Rowan?” “You came to school demanding to see me,” I had cried, trying to pull away. “Janelle couldn’t pay back the money. If I hadn’t stepped in, she would have gone to prison—” “I fell in love with the soul behind those messages!” Zach roared, shaking me. “Not this empty shell! Do you think you’re so special just because of your face? How do you know I wouldn’t have accepted Janelle just the way she was? Her personality made you look entirely worthless.” From that night on, Zach attended every social gathering where Janelle was present. Once, when I was burning with a high fever and begged to stay home, Zach had physically dragged me out of bed and forced me into his car. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” he had sneered as we sped down the highway. “You’re trying to keep me from seeing Janelle. Why are you so desperately jealous? She literally built this relationship for you.” “I told you, I never asked her to talk to you!” I screamed through my tears, shivering from the fever. “She scammed you! She stole your money!” “Then I wish she had kept lying to me forever!” Zach snapped. I spent that dinner in a feverish daze, watching the two of them laugh and talk. By then, Janelle was far too ambitious to settle for a trust-fund kid like Zach; she had returned to the country to marry a wealthy, divorced tech executive. I realized then how pathetic I had been. I decided to leave Zach once and for all. But he couldn’t handle the rejection. On the drive back from Janelle’s wedding, blind with rage and liquor, he jerked the steering wheel and slammed the passenger side of the car directly into the highway guardrail. 3 “Rowan, my grandmother has cancer, and the hospital is threatening to stop her treatment. I was completely out of options…” I leaned my elbow on the desk, listening to Janelle spin the exact same web of lies she had woven in our previous life. Before she could finish, the door to our dorm room was pushed open. Dean Avery walked in, her expression grim. “Is everyone present?” she asked, looking around. “Who’s missing? Give me their names so I can call them back immediately.” Aside from Janelle and me, we had two other roommates. Sarah was currently cramming for the LSAT, practically living in the law library. Lily had already moved out to work on a tech startup with her boyfriend. Once the Dean called them, neither dared to delay; they both hurried back to the room within fifteen minutes. Janelle, still oblivious to the email I had sent, asked in a small, anxious voice, “Dean Avery, is something wrong?” The Dean closed the door behind her and turned to face us. “An incident has occurred. Someone in this room took a non-consensual, private photo of Rowan and distributed it online. If the person responsible steps forward now, we can handle this quietly. Otherwise, this becomes a police matter, and it will not end well for anyone involved.” Janelle’s fingers tightened around her phone so hard her knuckles turned white. Based on the layout of the bathroom shown in the photo, we quickly narrowed down the timeline to the previous weekend. Sarah immediately raised her hand. “I was at the library study room for forty-eight hours straight. I have the security swipe logs and security footage to prove I never set foot in the dorm.” Lily shook her head. “I was out of state visiting my boyfriend’s parents. I have my flight receipts.” All eyes slowly fell on Janelle. Janelle forced a fragile, nervous laugh. “Rowan, are you sure you didn’t get confused? Last weekend, you asked me to take a photo of your back so you could send it to your online boyfriend. Did he leak it?” The room fell silent. Sarah and Lily exchanged uncomfortable glances. Dean Avery looked at me, her brow furrowed in disappointment. “Rowan, is this true? The internet is a dangerous place, and sending private images to strangers is highly risky. I hope you’ve learned from this.” I let out a quiet, cold laugh. “Dean Avery, I never asked Janelle to take any photos of me. And I don’t have an online boyfriend. I have no idea why she would say that.” Janelle’s eyes widened in panic. “Rowan, you’ve been talking to Zach Cole from the neighboring campus ever since the basketball mixer! You were too shy to approach him, so I offered to help you chat with him. Have you forgotten?” I remembered that mixer. Janelle had asked me which player I thought was the most attractive, and I had casually pointed to Zach. At the time, she had laughed and pointed to Gavin Mercer, our department’s top student. “Sure, Gavin is brilliant, but Zach’s family is loaded. Look at his shoes—they cost more than my tuition. Compared to him, Gavin’s practically a charity case.” I had thought it was just typical college banter. I never expected her to weaponize that moment to cover her own crimes. I looked Janelle dead in the eye. “So, let me get this straight. Because you thought I had a mild interest in a guy, you felt entitled to secretly photograph me while I was changing, send it to him without my knowledge, pretend to be me, and solicit over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from him?” The color drained entirely from Janelle’s face. 4 In the Dean’s office, Janelle dissolved into hysterical tears. “Rowan, please, you have to forgive me,” she sobbed, clutching at my sleeve. “In the beginning, I really did just want to help you. But before I could tell you, my grandmother got sick. You know my parents don’t care if she lives or dies, but she’s the only person in the world who ever loved me. Zach has so much money… I only used those transfers to pay her hospital bills. I’m so sorry…” Her crying was so desperate that even Dean Avery looked slightly swayed. The Dean sighed, rubbing her temples, and looked at me. “Rowan, if that photo was only sent to Zach and hasn’t been leaked publicly, maybe we should bring him in to discuss this. He’s a major party in this situation. If we can resolve this privately, it might be best for everyone.” I looked at Janelle. She hadn’t yet received the funds to go abroad or get the cosmetic procedures that would alter her square jaw and plain features. Even with her makeup, her face looked stressed and unremarkable. In my past life, Zach had sworn up and down that he would have chosen Janelle regardless of her looks because of their “soul connection.” I wondered if he would make the same choice looking at her now. I nodded at the Dean. “Let’s bring him in.” Within twenty minutes, Zach arrived. He burst into the office and rushed straight to my side, his face tense with anxiety. “Baby! What did your Dean mean on the phone? What do you mean we’re both victims? Is your roommate trying to steal the money I sent you?” He whirled around, glaring at Janelle with pure disgust. “Hey! Are you shameless? That money was for Rowan. Who the hell do you think you are, keeping it?” Hearing Zach’s harsh words, Janelle’s tears froze on her cheeks. Her throat tightened, and she felt as if the floor were tilting beneath her. For months, they had stayed up until the early hours of the morning, exchanging sweet, intimate words. [Kiss me, baby.] [I love you so much.] [It doesn’t matter if you aren’t as beautiful as your photos. I’m not that shallow.] [We are soulmates, Ro. I could never be angry with you.] Those tender words had convinced Janelle that Zach truly loved her mind. She believed his affection transcended the empty beauty of the photos she had sent. But now, he was calling her shameless in front of everyone. I watched the subtle shift in Janelle’s expression. Even while crying, she instinctively tilted her head to what she thought was her best angle, looking up at Zach with big, pleading eyes. “I’m sorry, Zach,” she whispered. “The truth is… the person you’ve been talking to this whole time isn’t Rowan. It was me. I wanted to bring you two together, but…” Zach stared at her, completely dumbfounded. Then, he let out an aggressive, defensive shout. “Don’t talk absolute garbage! Who would ever want to talk to you? Do you think I have that much free time? If you hadn’t uploaded Rowan’s student ID to the profile, I wouldn’t have given you a second of my day!” I kept my eyes fixed on Zach. He was practically vibrating with panic, desperate to distance himself from her. He looked exactly the same as he did in my past life when he was trying to shift blame—selfish, defensive, and furious that his own stupidity had been exposed. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss her, Zach,” I said, my voice smooth and deliberate. “You two spoke for months. You must have realized how compatible your personalities are. Surely you aren’t so shallow that you only care about a face? Why don’t you two just date for real?” Zach looked like he was about to blow a fuse. “Are you kidding me? She looks like a square box! Who would date that? I’d be the laughingstock of my entire family! Janelle, you are a sick, twisted freak. You used Rowan’s face because no actual guy would ever look at you. You’re going to return every single cent, or I’m suing you.” “Zach, my grandmother is dying…” Janelle whimpered. “What does your grandmother have to do with me?” Zach spat, cutting her off ruthlessly. “Does her being sick give you the right to play with my feelings? You scammed my emotions, and you scammed my money. I’m not letting this go. You pay me back, and you write a formal apology, or I will make sure you spend graduation in a jail cell!” Janelle’s face completely shattered. She took a deep breath, turning to the Dean. “Dean Avery, can Rowan step out for a moment? I want to discuss the details of the transfers with Zach privately. It’s… a very large sum, and I want to explain things clearly.” 5 I waited in the hallway for about fifteen minutes. When Zach finally stepped out of the office, his eyes lit up the moment he saw me leaning against the window sill. “Rowan! Hey, can I get your actual phone number?” I looked at him, my expression dripping with disdain. “Your ‘baby’ is in that room, Zach. Don’t go calling random girls that. It makes you look incredibly cheap.” Zach winced, looking genuinely hurt. “Rowan, I only have feelings for you. I was confused.” “Really?” I smiled coldly. “But you fell in love with Janelle’s ‘soul’ over text, didn’t you? Or were all those sweet words just a lie because you were shallowly obsessed with my face?” Zach shifted his weight, looking cornered. “Janelle told me… she said you actually had a crush on me. She said this was all just a misunderstanding. Rowan, can we just start over? Give me a real chance.” I looked at him as if he were a specimen in a biology lab. “You believe everything she tells you? Zach, is there a genuine cognitive deficit I should be aware of? Why would you assume I’d have feelings for someone who can’t even tell who he’s dating? Do I look like a charity worker to you?” Zach’s face flushed red with embarrassment, but he forced himself to maintain his polite composure. “I just got stupid because I liked you so much. Rowan, trust me, I’m a better guy than you think.” “I’m not interested,” I said, turning away. “I already like someone else. Whatever you decide to do with Janelle is your business, but I reserve the right to take legal action regarding my privacy. Now, move.” Zach’s eyes widened, panic flaring in his expression. “That’s impossible. Who could you possibly like? No one on this campus is more successful, better looking, or more devoted to you than I am.” “Gavin Mercer,” I said clearly. “Who?” “I said, the person I like is Gavin Mercer.” The moment the words left my mouth, a tall figure rounded the corner of the hallway. Gavin was carrying a thick stack of research binders, his posture straight and disciplined. Hearing his name, he stopped, his clean, calm gaze falling on my face. His eyes lingered on me for a fraction of a second before he turned to the office door, knocking politely. “Dean Avery, I’m Gavin Mercer. You asked to see me about the department seminar?” I watched his back as he stepped into the room, my heart aching with a sudden, sharp grief. In my past life, when Zach had crashed our car and fled the scene to save his own skin, Gavin’s car had been right behind us. The vehicle had caught fire, and I was trapped inside, unconscious. Gavin had thrown himself into the flames, burning his hands to the bone as he desperately pried open the twisted metal of the passenger door, screaming my name over and over. “Rowan, wake up! Please, don’t close your eyes! I’m getting you out!” His hot tears had fallen on my face, the only cold sensation in a world of burning heat. At that point in his life, Gavin was a highly successful entrepreneur whose tech company was about to go public. He had everything to live for. I had never understood why he would risk his life for me. Perhaps in this life, I would finally find out.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543126”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When I finally found Vicky, she was leaning against the cold iron railing of the harbor bridge, her dark hair whipped wildly across her face by the autumn wind. A cluster of empty beer bottles lay clinking softly at her feet. I pulled my coat tighter and sighed. “The doctor was very clear, Vicky. You can’t be drinking.” She didn’t look at me. Her eyes, bloodshot and heavy with liquor, stayed fixed on the dark, shimmering water below. “I went to Adrian’s office today,” she said, her voice barely carrying over the wind. “He was holding his new assistant against the mahogany desk, kissing her.” She let out a ragged breath that turned to mist. “There was a box of Durex sitting right next to his laptop. The funny thing is… I’m the one who bought them for him.” A small, broken laugh escaped her throat. I stood beside her in silence for a long time, the chill of the iron railing seeping through my gloves. “Vicky,” I said softly, “let him go.” She turned her head slowly to look at me. “And what about you, Nora?” I froze. “Marcus almost drove you to a nervous breakdown over Gemma,” she whispered, her eyes sharp despite the drunkenness. “Are you really going to stay married to him?” 1 Vicky always hated funerals. So we kept it small—no fanfare, no grand speeches, just a handful of people who actually cared under a grey, bruised sky. I stood beside her headstone long after the others had drifted away. When I finally turned to leave, I saw Marcus. He was leaning against the hood of his black SUV near the cemetery gates, his eyes fixed on me. “What are you doing here?” I asked, stopping a few feet away. “Your assistant said you took the morning off,” he said, his voice quiet. “I guessed you’d be here with Vicky. I had a break between meetings, so I came to drive you back.” I climbed into the passenger seat without a word. When he leaned across the console to pull my seatbelt down, I raised my hand, blocking his chest. “I’ve got it.” Marcus stilled. His dark eyes searched my face for a fraction of a second before he drew back, returning to his side of the car. He started the engine. “You were gone before I woke up this morning. Why so early?” I stared out the window at the passing rows of wet headstones. I didn’t answer. He let the silence stretch for a block before trying again. “I can assign a full-time driver to you. You’ve been leaving early and coming home late all week. I don’t like you commuting alone.” When the quiet between us stretched too thin, he suddenly reached over and gripped my forearm. His grip was tight, heavy with an edge of command. “Nora. Are you even listening to me?” I turned my head to face him. “I submitted my resignation this morning,” I said evenly. “The HR file should hit your desk by this afternoon. Just sign off on it when it gets there.” He went rigid. The SUV swerved slightly before he hit the brakes, pulling the heavy car hard to the curb. “Why?” he demanded, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. “Is this still about what happened last month?” 2 Six weeks ago, I slapped Gemma across the face. In response, Marcus suspended me from my role at the firm and locked me out of our brownstone. It was ten at night when I tried to go home to get my things, only to be stopped at the wrought-iron gate by our housekeeper, Mrs. Gable. She looked pained, her hands wringing her apron. “Mr. Callahan said… he said this is his private property, ma’am. He instructed me not to let you in.” Through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows of the parlor, I could see Marcus’s broad, unyielding silhouette standing near the fireplace, his back to the street. A cold, sickening shame coiled in my gut, making me tremble from head to toe. But I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I turned on my heel and walked away into the dark. Earlier that afternoon, Gemma had walked into Marcus’s executive suite wearing a bone-white silk midi dress. It was a piece from a limited runway collection that I had casually pointed out to Marcus months ago, telling him how much I loved it. I had tried through three different personal shoppers to track it down, to no avail. Yet there it was, draped over Gemma. Gemma was a former scholarship recipient Marcus had sponsored through college—our shared alma mater. Over the past year, her name had bled out of his corporate philanthropy files and into our actual lives. She didn’t need an appointment to see him. Everyone in the executive suite knew her name. When I brought Marcus a box of pastries from a bakery across town, he would offhandedly remark, “Gemma likes these, too. Tell my assistant to leave a slice for her.” When she complained that her campus apartment was too noisy to study for finals, Marcus instructed his team to secure a quiet, luxury studio for her nearby. When I confronted him back then, exhausted after months of silent displacement, he had simply pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperated. “Why do you keep fixating on her, Nora? She’s just a kid from a rough background with no family. Once you offer someone a hand, you see it through.” “I am sick to death of hearing about her,” I had whispered. And now, he had taken the effort to hunt down the exact dress I wanted, only to give it to her. Gemma had stood in his office that afternoon, her eyes downcast, her voice small and trembling. “Nora… Mr. Callahan was just being kind. He felt sorry for me. It doesn’t mean anything else.” “Kind?” I had laughed, the sound sharp and metallic. “Does his kindness extend to funding your entire wardrobe? Are you a beggar? Is there anything you won’t accept from him? Even street beggars have more pride than you!” “Nora, that’s enough!” Marcus had barked, stepping forcefully between us. His eyes were dark with anger as he leaned down, his voice a lethal whisper meant only for me. “Look at yourself,” he spat. “The clothes on your back, the jewelry you wear, the lifestyle you live—can you afford a single bit of it on your current salary? Even your position at my firm was something I handed to you. What right do you have to judge Gemma?” I had stared at him, the air completely knocked out of my lungs. 3 After Mrs. Gable turned me away at the gate that night, I walked down the dim residential streets with nowhere to go. The early autumn air cut straight through my thin coat. Marcus and I were childhood sweethearts. We grew up in the same country clubs, attended the same private galas. When my father’s real estate empire collapsed into a messy, humiliating bankruptcy years ago, everyone whispered that Marcus would break off our engagement. Instead, on my twenty-fourth birthday, he rented out the top floor of the city’s premier skyscraper. Surrounding us with our oldest friends, he got down on one knee. “Nora,” he had promised, holding my shaking hands, “no matter what happens, I will always be your shield. I will love you forever.” Now, standing in front of another woman, he had looked at me and asked what gave me the right to speak, when everything I had was merely his charity. My vision blurred. I reached up to wipe my cheeks, but the tears just kept coming, hot and fast. Then I heard the heavy, uneven footsteps behind me. I stiffened, realizing a man was tracking me down the quiet avenue. I quickened my pace, heading toward a brighter commercial street, but the footsteps broke into a run. Panic surged. I bolted, but in the dark, my heel caught on a crack in the pavement. I slammed hard onto the concrete. I scrambled back just as a glint of metal caught the streetlight. A man lunged at me with a pocketknife. Desperate, I grabbed a handful of loose asphalt gravel and hurled it into his face. The blade missed my ribs, slicing clean through my sleeve and deeply into my forearm instead. Someone shouted from across the street, headlight beams cut through the alley, and the attacker took off. The stranger called the police. At the station, bleeding and shivering under a thin blanket, I used the officer’s phone to dial Marcus’s private number. He answered on the third ring. His voice was cold, clipped, and devoid of warmth. “Nora, I am only interested in hearing this call if you are ready to apologize to Gemma. Otherwise, I have nothing to say to you.” I sat in the harsh fluorescent light of the precinct, the metallic smell of my own blood in the air. “I understand,” I whispered softly, and hung up. I turned to the officer. “My family isn’t available. I’ll… I’ll take care of myself.” After leaving the station, I went to a small boutique hotel nearby. I handed the clerk my credit card. He ran it, paused, and shook his head gently. I handed him another. Then another. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the clerk said, his eyes shifting from professional to pitying. “None of these are going through.” Marcus had frozen all my accounts. A terrible, hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest. He was right, wasn’t he? Without him, I was nothing. Just another person relying on his mercy. The next morning, I walked into a luxury consignment shop and sold the designer handbag off my shoulder for two hundred dollars cash. I went to an urgent care clinic to get six stitches in my forearm—the nurse warned me it would leave a faint, silver scar—and then checked into a shabby, eighty-dollar-a-night motel at the edge of the city. I walked into the small room, shut the door, and lay down on the thin mattress, staring at the water-stained ceiling. 4 I stayed in that tiny, decaying room for ten days. Except for popping down to the corner bodega to buy bread and bottled water, I never left. No money. No polished life. No prestige. No Marcus. On the eleventh morning, heavy, frantic footsteps echoed down the exterior corridor. Someone banged furiously on the hollow wooden door. “Nora! Nora, are you in there?!” The door swung open. The motel manager stood outside with a master key, and behind him stood Marcus. He looked disheveled, his expensive suit wrinkled, his jaw rough with stubble. He rushed in and threw his arms around me where I sat quietly on the edge of the unmade bed, pulling me into a grip so tight it hurt. “Why was your phone off?!” he breathed, his voice raw, buried in my neck. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you? Why are you so damn stubborn… You’d rather rot in a place like this than just bend your head to me?” He pulled back, his hands framing my face, his eyes wild with panic. “Do you know what went through my head when I finally found out you were mugged? Jesus, Nora… I’m sorry, okay? It’s my fault. Just come home.” I slowly turned my head, looking past his shoulder into the dusty mirror above the dresser. There was Marcus Callahan, immaculate and desperate. And there was Nora Hayes, pale, hollowed-out, and completely still. The nurse had been right about the scar on my arm. It was going to stay. The flashback dissolved as Marcus’s car idling at the curb brought me back to the present. I gently untangled my hand from his grip. “I just want to take some time off,” I said, my voice flat, devoid of any edge. “I need to handle Vicky’s estate.” Marcus studied my face for a long moment, searching for a spark of anger, a hint of leverage. Finding none, his throat worked silently before he rasped, “Okay.” 5 Back at the corporate tower, I took my signed resignation form and knocked on his office door. “Come in,” he called out. When he saw me, he paused. “Since when do you knock on my door, Nora?” I didn’t engage. I walked forward and set the document on his mahogany desk. As I did, my gaze caught on the ceramic mug sitting beside his laptop. It had a hand-painted sketch of a ballerina on it—Gemma’s prize from a university dance showcase, which she had gifted to Marcus as a token of “gratitude.” There had been a matching pen, too. The first time I saw it on his desk weeks ago, I had thrown it directly into the trash. We had fought viciously that night. “Are you ever going to stop this?!” Marcus had shouted, slamming his hand on the counter. “It’s a harmless gift from a young girl! Must you be so pathological? She looks up to me as a benefactor, Nora. Is your own mind so filthy that you see filth in everyone else?!” I remembered how the air had left my lungs that night, how I felt like I was drowning in shallow water. After he slammed the front door and drove off, I had slumped against the hallway wall, sobbing until my ribs ached. Noticing where I was looking, Marcus frowned quickly, his hand moving to cover the mug. “My assistant must have grabbed the wrong cup from the breakroom…” “It’s cute,” I said suddenly. Marcus blinked, stunned. “What?” “The mug. It’s cute.” I retracted my hand and pushed the paper a fraction closer to him. “Please sign.” He stared at me, his mouth set in a tight, uneasy line. Slowly, he picked up a pen and executed his signature. “My assistant told me something,” Marcus said casually, though his eyes never left mine. “The black card I gave you after… after I brought you back. You haven’t spent a dime of it. The balance hasn’t moved.” That day he brought me home from the motel, his fingers had lingered softly over the fresh stitches on my arm. He told me he had unfrozen all my personal accounts and handed me a new, unrestricted black card, promising he would never touch my finances again. I had held the heavy metal card between two fingers, looked at it for a moment, and tossed it into the back of a nightstand drawer. I looked at him now. “I didn’t have anything I needed to buy.” His jaw tightened, a dark shadow passing over his features. “I’ll drive you home after work,” he said abruptly. Ever since the motel, he had developed an almost obsessive need to keep tabs on me. If I was out of his line of sight for more than a few hours, his calls would start. It was as if he believed that the moment he turned his back, I would vanish into thin air again. I touched the faint silver line under my sweater sleeve. “Fine.” He dropped me off at the house, explaining he had an executive dinner with prospective arts foundation donors and wouldn’t be staying. I waved him off without looking back and walked inside. Mrs. Gable mentioned that Marcus had requested a heavy, comforting beef stew for my dinner. I looked at the steaming pot on the stove, said nothing, and simply pulled a pre-packaged turkey sandwich from the fridge. I heated it in the microwave, walked up to my room, and shut the door. Before turning off the lights, I opened my phone and scrolled through social media. Gemma had posted an update ten minutes prior: So grateful to the person who is always clearing the path ahead for me. The attached photo showed a candlelit table at an elite steakhouse. In the corner of the frame was a man’s forearm, a crystal whiskey glass held in a long-fingered hand wearing a distinctive platinum watch. It was Marcus. Gemma was graduating in a few months. She wanted Marcus to leverage his connections to secure her a principal dancer spot at the nation’s top ballet theater. Tonight’s dinner was clearly with the theater’s board chairman. I remembered when my father’s company was falling apart years ago. My father had desperately asked Marcus to introduce him to the CEO of a global investment firm, hoping for a restructuring loan. Marcus had refused him, cold and direct. “Your father’s business model is outdated, Nora. Using my personal capital or reputation to force a meeting won’t yield a return. It’s a bad investment.” My proud, dignified father had stood there, his face flushing with a terrible, crushed humiliation, stuttering, “Ah… of course, Marcus. You’re right. Business is business.” I had almost screamed at Marcus that night. But as we walked out, my father grabbed my arm, whispering, “Don’t fight with him, Nora. Marcus doesn’t like pulling favors for people. Besides… he’s right. It wouldn’t have saved us.” A few weeks later, my family filed for Chapter 11. And now? Because Gemma expressed a wish, Marcus was investing millions into an entertainment sector he had never previously touched, throwing private dinners just to hand a mediocre college dancer a golden ticket. I closed the app, locked my phone, and tossed it onto the nightstand. An hour later, the bedroom door opened. Marcus walked in, reeking of expensive scotch. He leaned against the doorframe, his dark eyes fixated on me with an unsettling, intense focus. I pulled the duvet up, preparing to sleep. In two quick strides, he was beside the bed, his fingers clamping down around my wrist. I turned my head. “What is it?” “Nora…” his voice was thick with alcohol, raspy and low. “You used to always have a hot tonic waiting for me when I came home late after drinking.” I gave a slight pull against his grip. “I forgot. There’s hangover medication in the vanity drawer downstairs. Go grab some if your head hurts.” He didn’t move. His grip tightened until the bone pressed against bone. When I winced and muttered that he was hurting me, he released me instantly, as if burned. He straightened up, smoothing his jacket with trembling fingers. “Go to sleep,” he said softly, his voice strained. “Tomorrow is the university alumni gala. We’re going together.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543142”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 The moment I stepped through the wrought-iron gates of the university after years living abroad, a wall of bodies blocked my path. The girl leading the pack held herself with a razor-thin, aggressive arrogance, surrounded by a court of sycophants who addressed her with sickening deference as “Miss Hayes.” Her eyes locked onto the limited-edition leather handbag on my arm, her lip curling into a sneer. “So you’re the cheap little thing using your face to seduce my brother? You really had the nerve to intercept the bag I ordered?” The ring of lackeys instantly took their cue, closing in like vultures. “Gold-diggers these days—they’ll do anything for cash!” “Trying to claw your way into the Hayes family is one thing, but stealing from Nina? Do you have any idea who she is? She’s the Hayes heiress!” “Hand over the bag and get on your knees to apologize, or we’ll make sure you’re expelled before the semester even starts!” Listening to them shower the girl at the center with relentless, rehearsed flattery, a cold laugh bubbled up in my chest. She’s the Hayes heiress? Then who on earth am I? I pulled out my phone, my fingers flying across the screen as I shot a message to my brother, Harrison. When did Mom and Dad have a third child? How come I didn’t know I had a little sister? Harrison’s reply came back almost instantly. Did jet lag completely fry your brain? Mom and Dad only have the two of us. Where the hell would a third kid come from? I glanced up from the screen, surveying the girl in front of me. Her makeup was meticulously applied, designed to project an aura of unapproachable wealth, yet there wasn’t a single shred of family resemblance in her features or her posture. A vague suspicion began to take shape in my mind, but I typed out another text to Harrison anyway. Well, if there isn’t a third child, why am I currently cornered at the campus gate by a ‘Miss Hayes’ and her personal mob? The chat bubble bounced with “Harrison is typing…” for a long, agonizing moment before a wall of frantic text flooded my screen. Miss Hayes? You didn’t run into Nina Frost, did you? Jesus Christ, I am so sick of her! She’s doing the heiress act again? Just because Mom and Dad took pity on her and paid her tuition for a few years, she actually convinced herself she’s a Hayes! It’s all because Mom has a soft heart. Every time Nina pulls out the waterworks and plays the tragic orphan, Mom melts and lets her get away with using our family name to strut around town. Audrey, ignore her. If she steps out of line or tries to get in your face, just put her in her place! That’s what I always do. I had known about the underprivileged student my parents were sponsoring. Back then, I was living in London, taking care of our aging grandparents, while Harrison was constantly traveling for work. We were both worried our parents would feel lonely in an empty house, so we encouraged the idea, thinking it would be nice for them to have a young person around to keep them company. I had assumed the girl would be quiet, modest, and at least somewhat grateful. I certainly hadn’t expected her to use the Hayes reputation to terrorize people on campus. Reading Harrison’s breathless tirade, it was clear his patience with Nina Frost had run out long ago. The image of my usually untouchable brother being exasperated by a fake heiress was almost absurd enough to be funny. Seeing me staring down at my phone instead of cowering, Nina’s eyes flashed with anger. She snapped her fingers at one of her followers. The girl caught the signal immediately, lunging forward with her hand raised, aiming a hard slap at my face. I took a sharp step back, dodging the blow effortlessly, and raised an eyebrow at Nina. “What’s the rush? Don’t you want to check your phone first?” Before Nina could snap back, the cell phone in her coat pocket broke into a sharp, loud ring. Her gaze dropped to the screen, and for a fraction of a second, her face froze. But she recovered quickly, smoothing her expression into a triumphant, self-assured smirk. She tapped the screen and brought the phone to her ear, taking the offensive before the caller could utter a word. “Harrison! You won’t believe how rude that new girlfriend of yours is being to me! She’s acting like this already, so imagine how unbearable she’ll be once she thinks she’s established! Are you calling because she ran to you with some fake sob story?” Her calculated performance was cut short by my brother’s furious voice booming through the speaker, loud enough for half the crowd to hear. “Nina, what kind of delusional garbage is coming out of your mouth?! Do you have any idea who Audrey is?! Apologize to her right now!” Nina hadn’t anticipated that her carefully constructed narrative would be met with total rage. Her face turned pale, her tone instantly shifting to a pathetic, wounded whine. “Harrison, I’m saying this for your own good! She’s just a gold-digger! Why can’t you see through her? Just because our family has money doesn’t mean we should let a woman like her throw it around! You should be making her apologize to me and hand over that bag! If you don’t, I’m calling Mom right now to tell her everything, and I’m never speaking to you again!” 2 In the past, whenever Nina and Harrison bumped heads, she would run straight to our mother, weeping and playing the helpless victim until my mother forced Harrison to apologize. Because it had worked every single time, Nina was utterly convinced that invoking our mother’s name was her ultimate trump card. Hearing her bring up our mother again lit a fuse inside Harrison. “Nina, have you completely lost your mind?” he spat into the receiver. “Go ahead. Call Mom. I’d love to see if she takes your side this time!” The line went dead with a harsh click. The silence that followed was suffocating. Seeing Harrison’s furious reaction, the followers standing around Nina began to shift uncomfortably. Harrison Hayes was the publicly acknowledged heir to the Hayes empire. Even if Nina was the prized daughter of the family, none of them wanted to risk standing on the wrong side of the future CEO. Nina’s eyes brimmed with tears of humiliation and rage. Looking at her hesitant, cowering lackeys, she gritted her teeth and stomped her heel against the pavement. Realizing she had lost her leverage for the moment, she glared at me with pure venom and turned on her heel to leave. “Wait,” I called out, my voice cutting through the quiet. “Your name is Nina Frost, right?” I paused, letting my gaze drift over her. “If you’re the great Hayes heiress… why isn’t your last name Hayes?” A flicker of panic crossed her face, but she forced her chin up, adopting a sneer of supreme superiority. “What would someone like you know about high society? I took my mother’s maiden name!” “My parents are deeply in love,” she added smoothly, regaining her footing. “They decided long ago that one child would take my father’s surname, and the other would take my mother’s.” It took everything in me not to laugh out loud. My parents were deeply in love, but they certainly never made an agreement like that. My father’s name was Richard Hayes, and my mother’s name was Eleanor Hayes. Whether a child took the father’s name or the mother’s, the result was precisely the same. Nina was clearly banking on the fact that my mother preferred to stay out of the public eye, assuming almost no one on campus knew her full maiden name, allowing her to spin whatever ridiculous narrative she pleased. I forced down the amusement threatening to break through and tilted my head in mock confusion. “Is that so? That’s funny—I could have sworn the matriarch of the Hayes family wasn’t named Frost. Did I remember it wrong?” Hearing me reference her benefactor’s real background, Nina’s composure cracked for a split second. But then she seemed to remind herself that a girl like me—someone she had already categorized as a middle-class climber—couldn’t possibly have access to the inner circles of the elite. She bolstered her courage, leaning in close with a harsh glare. “I am the daughter of the Hayes family. Do you really think you know my mother’s name better than I do? Who are you to question me?” “Let me tell you something,” she hissed. “As long as I say no, you will never, ever step foot through the doors of the Hayes estate!” Fearful that I might call Harrison back and expose her further, she spat out her warning and swept away, her followers trailing nervously behind her. I didn’t bother stopping her. At the end of the day, Nina Frost was nothing more than a student my family funded out of charity. Once I got home and laid out the afternoon’s antics in front of my mother, Nina’s true colors would be laid bare. Once the funding was cut, she would fade back into obscurity, never crossing paths with my family again. When I returned to the family estate after my afternoon classes, our long-time housekeeper, Martha, informed me that my mother was surprisingly tied up at the corporate headquarters, managing a rare late-night board meeting. My father, on the other hand, had returned early. The moment he saw me walk into the foyer, he beamed and hustled me straight into his study. “Audrey! Harrison told me everything. You’re back for good this time, right?” He pulled out the leather armchair behind his massive oak desk, ushering me into it with frantic enthusiasm. “This is fantastic. Now that you’re finishing your degree locally, you can start taking over the company operations step by step! Once you can handle the board on your own, I can finally retire and take it easy.” He patted my shoulder briskly. “Sit, sit! Look over these quarterlies, sweetheart. Dad’s going to fetch you some fresh fruit.” I looked down at the mountain of financial audits and corporate filings stacked neatly on the desk, feeling an affectionate, exasperated sigh build in my throat. He was practically vibrating with excitement at the prospect of dumping his entire workload onto his daughter. Resigned, I sat down and began leafing through the balance sheets. When my father returned carrying a crystal bowl of freshly cut fruit, his smile widened into a warm, doting grin at the sight of me immersed in the files. 3 He set the bowl down beside my elbow, immediately stepping behind my chair to work out the knots in my shoulders before dropping down to rub my calves. “Oh, my hard-working Audrey,” he coaxed gently. “Reviewing financial statements is exhausting. Come on, let Dad feed you a bite of melon.” I leaned back, turning my head to take the piece of fruit he was holding out, when a faint, metallic click echoed from the doorway. Snap. My head jerked toward the noise just in time to see a flash of a phone camera and a dark silhouette sprinting away down the corridor. It was Nina. I frowned, watching the empty doorway, before turning to my father. “Is Nina Frost living here?” My father nodded, completely unbothered as he picked up another slice of fruit. “The girl mentioned that staying here made her commute to the university easier. Your mother was feeling a bit lonely with the house so quiet, so she agreed to let her use the guest wing.” I gave a silent nod, letting the matter rest for the moment. The decision to support Nina had been my mother’s; it was only right that I discuss her behavior with my mother directly. When my mother finally returned late that evening, she wrapped me in a suffocating embrace the second she walked through the door. She spent the next two hours fussing over my health, asking about my flight, and plying me with tea, completely overwhelming me with maternal fussing until the topic of Nina slid right out of my mind. It wasn’t until the following afternoon, when I ran into Nina on campus, that the situation flared back up. I had assumed that after Harrison’s sharp rebuke the day before, Nina would have the sense to keep her distance. Instead, she cornered me right outside the lecture hall, creating a scene in front of dozens of gathering students. “You shameless little parasite!” she shrieked, her voice echoing down the corridor. “I knew you were after my family’s money! How can anyone be so disgusting? It wasn’t enough for you to crawl around my brother—now you’re going after my father?!” She pointed a trembling, manic finger at my face. “I thought if Harrison really fell for you, I’d swallow my pride and tolerate you! But you actually had the nerve to lay a trap for my dad! If I don’t put you in your place today on behalf of my mother, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself!” Her outburst caused an instant stir. Even the classmates standing beside her exchanged bewildered glances. “Nina, are you serious?” one of her friends whispered loudly. “It’s one thing to go after Harrison, but Mr. Richard Hayes? He’s old enough to be her father! Why would she…” A dark, vicious spark glinted in Nina’s eyes. She let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “Why wouldn’t she? You don’t know what these gold-diggers are capable of when there’s a fortune on the line! They have zero shame!” “You think I’m making this up?” she bellowed, her voice reaching a crescendo as she ripped an envelope from her bag and slung a stack of glossy photographs into the air. “I saw it with my own eyes! I have proof!” The photo prints scattered across the floor. I glanced down at the one that landed near my shoe. It was the shot she had snuck from the doorway of my father’s study. Taken from a low, angled perspective through the cracked door, the framing was maliciously deceptive: it made it look as though I was lounging in my father’s lap while he tenderly fed me fruit. The surrounding students scrambled to pick up the pictures, and as they took in the images, the looks thrown in my direction shifted from curiosity to sharp, disgust-laden judgment. “Gross… she must be completely desperate for money.” “She’s got a pretty face, but she’s using it to pull something this vile? Seducing the son wasn’t enough, so she moved on to the father?” “Does she think Mrs. Hayes is dead or something? She’s not going to wind up rich; she’s going to wind up in prison.” Listening to the whispers spiral into increasingly absurd accusations, my jaw tightened. I opened my mouth, intent on ending the delusion by declaring my actual identity. Before I could speak, a blur of motion lunged from my side. PAK! A sharp, stinging blow cracked across my left cheek, forcing my head to the side. I froze, the sting radiating across my skin. In my entire life, protected and cherished by a family that adored me, no one had ever laid a finger on me. The shock lasted half a second before raw, blinding rage swept through my veins. Abandoning any thought of diplomatic explanations, I surged forward, grabbing Nina by the collar of her jacket and shoving her back with enough force to send her crashing against the row of lockers. Her lackeys snapped out of their stupor and rushed forward, their hands grabbing at my arms, trying to pin me down. But having spent my formative years riding horses and training with private instructors in Europe, I wasn’t about to be manhandled by a group of entitled college bullies. Ignoring the stray scratches and blows landing on my shoulders, I twisted out of their grip, reached over, grabbed Nina by the hair, and landed a hard, solid right hook square across her face. The hallway dissolved into chaos. Screams, gasps, and the scraping of metal lockers echoed off the walls. The professor standing at the podium tried to yell over the din, but seeing that the fight was rapidly escalating out of control, he scrambled for his phone and dialed the Academic Dean. The Dean arrived within minutes, shouting for everyone to stop, but the crowd was too dense and chaotic for his voice to carry weight. Panicked, he pulled out his phone and dialed the emergency contact listed on Nina’s primary file—my mother. The moment the call connected, Nina, her face bruised and her hair a tangled mess, threw herself toward the phone and let out a blood-curdling wail. “Mom! You have to come right now! I caught Dad’s mistress on campus, and she’s trying to kill me!” 4 My mother, of course, didn’t believe for a second that my father was having an affair. But hearing the Dean’s panicked, vague summary that Nina had gotten into a violent physical altercation with another female student, she immediately dropped everything and rushed to the campus. By the time she arrived, the faculty had managed to pull us apart. The Dean stood between us, his brow furrowed deep with frustration as he tried to piece together the situation. Nina, tears streaming down her bruised cheeks, launched into her grievance with tragic theatricality. “Dean Campbell! I didn’t start this fight—she drove me to it!” she sobbed, clutching her chest. “Any daughter who sees a home-wrecker flaunting herself in front of her family would lose control!” She snatched one of the scattered photographs off the floor and thrust it under the Dean’s nose. “Look at this! Look at what she was doing with my father!” Dean Campbell took the photo, glancing down at the image. His brows pulled together tighter, a look of profound discomfort crossing his features. He turned to me, his breath drawing in as if preparing to deliver a stern reprimand. “Dean Campbell,” I interrupted, my tone icy cold as I met his eyes. “Before you say anything, I suggest you pull up my university enrollment profile.” The Dean hesitated, catching the absolute authority in my voice. Dubious, he pulled his tablet from under his arm, logged into the administrative portal, and brought up my student file. He skimmed the first few lines. Then his eyes widened. He looked at the digital file—listing my full legal name, Audrey Hayes, and my parents, Richard and Eleanor Hayes—and then looked back up at Nina, his face instantly draining of color. His posture shifted from irritation to absolute fury as he turned on Nina. “What is the meaning of this spectacle?! You know nothing, yet you’re standing in a university hallway publicly fabricating filthy lies about another student! Do you realize this is defamation? Do you realize you can be prosecuted?!” Nina staggered back, stunned by the sudden turn of hostility from the administration. “Dean Campbell! What are you talking about?! Have you lost your mind?!” “She is destroying my family!” Nina screamed, her voice cracking with desperation. “How can you stand there and accuse me of lying?! I saw her with my own eyes! Is she paying you off?! Did she bribe you, or are you just too terrified of my father to punish his little side-piece?!” Dean Campbell, having just confirmed my identity, knew with absolute certainty that I was no mistress—I was the legitimate, blood heiress of the Hayes family. In the past, whenever Nina paraded around campus calling herself “Miss Hayes,” the administration had assumed it was a private family matter regarding a distant relative or an unacknowledged branch, choosing not to pry into the personal lives of their primary benefactors. Now, looking at the real heiress standing bruised in front of him, the hideous truth was painfully obvious. The fake heiress had walked right up to the real one and attacked her in broad daylight. Yet Nina remained entirely blind to the reality crashing down around her, her arrogance driving her deeper into the trap. “Don’t you know who I am?!” Nina shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the Dean. “I am the daughter of Richard Hayes! You’re just a dean! Do you really think my father is going to break up our family for a woman like her?” “I’m telling you, the second my father throws her out, your career at this university is over! Just wait until my mother gets here—let’s see how bold you are then!” Dean Campbell actually let out a short, incredulous laugh. The sheer audacity was so absurd he didn’t even know where to begin dressing her down. To Nina, however, his sudden silence looked like terrified submission. Feeling emboldened, she turned back to her group of followers, motioning for them to close in on me once more. “What are you waiting for? Teach this trash a lesson!” Before the girls could move, and before the Dean could intervene, the heavy double doors at the end of the hallway burst open. My mother, accompanied by two personal aides, hurried down the corridor. Nina’s face lit up with immediate relief. Casting aside any lingering fear of the Dean, she sprinted forward and threw herself into my mother’s arms, weeping hysterically. “Mom! You came!” “Look at her, Mom!” Nina sobbed, gesturing wildly over her shoulder. “She seduced Harrison, she stole my bag, she made Harrison scream at me yesterday, and now she’s trying to steal Dad! You have to stop her!” My mother’s eyes followed Nina’s shaking finger, landing on me—standing in the center of the crowd, my hair disheveled, my jacket torn, and a visible bruise blooming across my left cheekbone. A look of total, paralyzed shock washed over my mother’s face. Nina, completely oblivious to the sudden chill in the air, reached into her pocket, pulled out one of the photos, and slapped it into my mother’s palm like a trophy. “Look, Mom! I caught them! I saw her sitting in Dad’s lap, letting him feed her fruit in his study! You have to punish her! You can’t let a parasite like this ruin our family!” The utter madness of her words broke through my mother’s usually gentle demeanor. A sharp, violent fury flushed through my mother’s features. She grabbed Nina by the shoulders and shoved her back with shocking force. “Nina Frost, what insane nonsense are you spewing?!” my mother roared, her voice trembling with rage. “She is my daughter!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543127”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 The day I went to the hospital for my follow-up, the nurse called a name through the hallway intercom: Ethan Hayes. I lifted my head from my charts and saw him stepping out of the maternity wing. In his arms, he held a bundle wrapped in a soft blue-and-pink receiving blanket. Clinging to his arm was a young woman, laughing, her head resting on his shoulder as she called him babe. When Ethan’s eyes met mine, the smile on his face froze into stone. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just felt a sudden, deafening ringing in my ears, like a flashbang had gone off inside my skull. Behind me, my cousin Giselle grabbed my wrist, her fingernails digging deep into my skin. “I told you not to come to St. Jude’s,” she hissed under her breath. I turned my head slowly to look at her. “You knew?” Giselle took a sharp breath, her face twisting into a look of sheer, unbothered annoyance. “Everyone knows. Ethan talked to the whole family weeks ago. He said he was terrified you’d have another breakdown, that he was waiting for the right time to tell you.” She let go of my wrist with a harsh flick. “Look at yourself, Nora. You can’t carry a child anyway. Did you honestly expect the Hayes family line to die with you?” My throat closed up as if a pair of hands were choking the life out of me. Two years ago, during that head-on collision at the intersection, I threw my body across the center console to shield Ethan. A ruptured spleen. A perforated uterus. Twenty-seven days in the ICU, hooked to life support while my body slowly leaked blood. The surgeon told him that a total hysterectomy was the only way to keep me alive. The man who signed the consent form to hollow out my body was Ethan. When my mother arrived at the hospital that night, her eyes were bloodshot. She didn’t hold me; she fell to her knees beside my bed, grabbing my cold fingers. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she had wept. “But your father’s cardiac stent surgery… we still owe the Hayes family over a hundred thousand dollars for his care. That girl gave Ethan’s family an heir. Just close your eyes and pretend you didn’t see it, okay? For your father’s sake.” I looked down at my flat stomach beneath my thin sweater. Underneath my clothes was a five-inch jagged scar. Ethan had given me that scar, yet my entire family expected me to spend the rest of my life bleeding gratitude. I stood up, folded my lab results into neat quarters, and slipped them into my coat pocket. “Don’t worry,” I said quietly, my voice remarkably steady. “I won’t make a scene.” I finally understood the truth: I was never the one in debt. “Nora, please, just let me explain!” The front door slammed open, the sound rattling the framed prints along the foyer wall. Ethan didn’t even bother taking off his shoes. He strode wildly into the living room, a box from my favorite bakery—the one that sold salted caramel mousse tarts—clutched in his trembling hand. Sweat beaded at his temples, his breathing heavy and ragged. He had chased me all the way home. I sat motionless on the sofa, holding the crumpled hospital report in my fist. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. My voice was eerily calm. Ethan stopped in his tracks, startled. He was so accustomed to my gentle, understanding nature that my icy distance seemed to throw him completely off balance. He set the bakery box on the coffee table, dropped to his knees in front of me, and tried to take my hand. “That’s Sienna,” he stammered, his eyes brimming with a rehearsed mix of fatigue and innocence. “She’s a distant relative on my mother’s side. She came to the city alone, got herself pregnant by some deadbeat who ran off the second he found out. Mom took pity on her and asked me to help her navigate the hospital visits.” I stared down at him. I looked at the face I had loved for seven years. He was still so handsome. Even when he lied, he looked like the picture of an honorable, burdened man. “So,” I pulled my hand out of his grip, “her wrapping her arms around you and calling you her husband… was that your mother’s arrangement, too?” Ethan’s fingers twitched. He quickly smoothed his expression, leaning closer, his voice dropping into that soft, intoxicating register he always used when he wanted me to yield. “She’s emotionally unstable, Nora. The trauma of the abandonment broke her—she mistook me for him in a delusion. You have to believe me.” He reached up, trying to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the only woman in my heart. You suffered so much to save my life… how could I ever betray you?” He had whispered those exact words beside my hospital bed two years ago. Back then, I believed him. Hearing them now made a knot of nausea rise in my throat. “If she mistook you for her husband,” I stared directly into his dark eyes, “why does my entire family know about the baby, while I was the only one kept in the dark?” Ethan’s breath hitched. The air vanished from his lungs; he clearly hadn’t anticipated that Giselle had already laid out all the cards. Before he could answer, rapid footsteps echoed down the hallway. My mother barged through the unlatched door, gasping for air. “Nora! What is wrong with you?” She didn’t glance at my deathly pale face for a single second. She marched over, grabbed Ethan by the shoulders, and pulled him up from the floor. “Ethan works so hard to provide for you!” she snapped, turning her fury on me. “And you’re throwing a tantrum over nothing?” I looked at my mother. Blood relation felt like a sick joke written at my expense. “Nothing?” I let out a dry, bitter laugh. “He has a child with another woman, Mom. You call that nothing?” My mother’s posture stiffened. Avoidance flashed across her face before she lowered her voice into a harsh whisper. “Your body is broken! You can’t give the Hayes family an heir, and they deserve a legacy. Sienna already agreed—once the child is born, she’ll sign over full parental rights to you. You get a son without having to ruin your body further. What more could you possibly want?” I felt an absurd urge to laugh out loud. This was my birth mother. For a hundred thousand dollars of debt, she had wrapped me up in a bow and handed me over to be stripped of my dignity. Ethan frowned, looking uncomfortable. My mother’s bluntness was threatening to tear away the civilized facade he so desperately tried to maintain. “Mom, that’s enough,” he murmured, before turning back to me with an agonizing tenderness. “Nora, the baby was an accident. I promise you, Sienna won’t interfere with our lives. She’ll move out soon. You will always be my only wife.” He emphasized the word only, as if he were bestowing a grand royal decree upon a peasant. I looked down at the bakery box on the table. A sweet, hollow indulgence meant to buy my silence. “Ethan,” I said slowly. “I got my lab results back today. The doctor said my abdominal adhesions have infected my pelvic lining.” A crack finally appeared in Ethan’s composed mask. Panic flickered in his eyes— Then his phone vibrated loudly in his pocket. The screen lit up with a caller ID: Sienna. Ethan instinctively swiped to decline the call, but a second later, a voice note automatically played over his Bluetooth speaker. “Babe, the baby won’t stop crying… when are you coming home?” The sweet, needy voice echoed through the quiet living room. My mother cleared her throat awkwardly, looking at the ceiling. Ethan scrambled frantically, his fingers clumsy as he tried to kill the audio. Watching him fumble in sheer panic, I suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. “Go on,” I stood up and walked toward the bedroom. “Don’t keep your baby waiting.” 2 The next morning, I was woken by the piercing wails of an infant coming from the living room. When I opened the bedroom door, a wall of sour formula milk and soiled diapers hit me instantly. Sienna Brooks was sitting in the middle of my favorited ivory wool rug, cradling the blue-and-pink bundle. Ethan was at the kitchen island, measuring scoops of formula into a glass bottle. My mother and my mother-in-law, Helen Hayes, were hovering over the baby, beaming with pride. “Oh, look at that darling little nose,” Helen cooed, her face radiating a warmth she had never once directed at me. “He’s the spitting image of Ethan when he was a baby.” My mother chimed in eagerly. “Isn’t he, though? This is what real bloodline looks like.” The moment my bedroom door latched open, the laughter in the room evaporated. Every eye turned to me. Sienna lifted her head. She had a soft, harmless face with wide, innocent eyes. She stood up awkwardly, biting her lower lip as if she were terrified of my very presence. “Nora…” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry to disturb you. The water heater at my place broke last night, and the baby was freezing. Ethan didn’t want him catching cold, so he let us stay here for a few days.” I looked at her innocent posture, then at Ethan stepping out of the kitchen with the warm bottle in his hand, looking intensely embarrassed. “Nora,” he said softly, walking over to me. “It’s just until the plumber fixes the pipes. A day or two, I promise.” I didn’t answer him. I walked past them to the water dispenser, pouring myself a glass of warm water. The dull, gnawing pain in my lower abdomen pulsed with every step. “Do whatever you want,” I said, taking a slow sip. Sienna seemed caught off guard by my utter lack of explosive emotion. A flicker of something sharper—disappointment, perhaps—flashed through her eyes before she masked it. She cradled the baby closer and took a step toward me. “Nora, look at him,” she said sweetly, tilting the blanket so I could see the infant’s red, scrunched-up face. “His skin is so soft. Ethan told me you’ll be his mother now. Would you like to hold him?” I looked at the tiny face, but all I could see was the sterile white ceiling of the ICU two years ago, and the cold, unfeeling voice of the doctor delivering my sentence: Mrs. Hayes, to save your life, we had to perform a full hysterectomy. I took a step backward. “I don’t like children.” Sienna’s hands froze in mid-air. Her eyes welled with tears in an instant. “Are… are you repulsed by me?” She sniffled, big tears rolling down her cheeks. “I know I shouldn’t be here, but the baby is innocent! He has Ethan’s blood… why can’t you find it in your heart to accept him?” Ethan instantly set the bottle down, stepped up beside Sienna, and pulled her and the child into his arms. “Sienna, don’t cry, it’s bad for your recovery,” he murmured, gently patting her shoulder. Then he turned to me, his brow furrowed in disapproval. “Nora, she just gave birth. She’s emotionally fragile right now. Even if you’re upset with me, you shouldn’t take it out on a newborn.” My mother jumped up from the sofa. “Nora! How can you be so heartless? She’s offering you her child out of the goodness of her heart, and you give her that icy face?” I looked at the four of them standing together like a picture-perfect family portrait. I was the intruder. I was the villain. “I said, I don’t like children.” I set my glass down on the counter and turned toward the bedroom. “Stop right there!” Helen Hayes stepped into my path, her face hardened into a mask of cold contempt. “Nora Barrett, don’t you dare act so high and mighty. You can’t even lay an egg, yet we’ve let you keep the title of Mrs. Hayes out of charity. Now that Sienna has preserved our family line, you think you have the right to play the victim?” I took a slow breath, turning my eyes back to Ethan. “Is this what you think, too?” Ethan avoided my gaze, looking at the floor. “Mom is just thinking about the future of this family, Nora. Just… try to accept the baby. Do it for me.” Looking at his handsome, miserable face, I felt a wave of profound disgust. “Fine,” I smiled faintly. “Since we’re one big happy family now, I assume Miss Brooks will be paying half of the monthly mortgage on this condo?” The room went dead quiet. Ethan’s face turned instantly dark. “Nora,” he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous warning. “Do you really have to bring up money right now?” 3 The air in the apartment felt thick enough to choke on. This condo was purchased shortly after our wedding. Ethan had put down a portion of the down payment, but when his startup ran into cash flow issues, I liquidated my entire inheritance to cover the rest. Since then, the mortgage payments had been automatically debited from my salary account every single month. Ethan was a man who prized his reputation above all else. Bringing up finances in front of his mother and mine was equivalent to slapping him in the face. Sienna pulled timidly at Ethan’s sleeve. “Ethan… I don’t think Nora wants me here. I should just go. I can find a cheap basement apartment…” She made a move toward her luggage, but Ethan grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “You’re not going anywhere,” he snapped. He turned his glare back onto me, his eyes full of cold disappointment. “Nora, I give you a generous monthly allowance. Are you really going to nickel-and-dime me over a mortgage payment?” I met his glare with an unbothered stare. “The allowance you give me goes straight into paying off my mother’s casino debts and your father’s physical therapy bills. Ethan, I don’t even have three hundred dollars left in my checking account.” My mother reacted as if she’d stepped on a live wire. “You ungrateful brat! What casino debts?!” She rushed forward, trying to cover my mouth with her hand. “You married into a wealthy family! Giving your mother a little spending cash is your duty!” Helen sneered from the side. “Exactly. As if we haven’t spent enough pulling your family out of the gutter.” I brushed my mother’s hand away without a word, walked into the bedroom, pulled my suitcase out from the closet, and laid it open on the bed. If they wanted a family reunion, I was happy to clear the space. Ethan followed me in. He slammed his palm down on the open suitcase, stopping me from packing. “What kind of game are you playing now?” He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling heavily to soften his voice. “Nora, I’m sorry if I lost my temper out there. But Sienna is only staying temporarily. Once she’s healed, I’ll rent an apartment for her.” I nudged his hand off my suitcase and continued folding a sweater. “You don’t need to put on an act anymore, Ethan,” I said smoothly. “You want to give your child a proper family. I’m stepping aside so you can.” Ethan’s expression warped into something terrifying. He lunged forward, grabbing my wrists with brutal force. “I told you, you are my only wife!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “That child is just a tool to keep my parents off my back! You can’t give me an heir—did you expect me to let my bloodline die out? I am trying to fix this for us! Why can’t you just understand that?!” A sharp pain shot up my arm, triggering a spike of agony in my lower abdomen. I gasped, my vision blurring for a fraction of a second. “Fixing this for us?” I lifted my head, locking my eyes with his. “Then why didn’t you fix things during the car crash two years ago? Why did you brace yourself and pull me in front of you when you saw that truck coming?” Ethan’s pupils contracted violently. It was the dark, unspoken secret between us. Publicly, he had told everyone that I had courageously thrown myself across him to shield his body. But we both knew the truth: in that split second of terror, his instinct had been to grab my shoulder and pull me into the line of impact. “You…” His grip loosened. A flash of raw panic crossed his eyes. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t bother arguing. At that moment, a loud crash echoed from the balcony, followed by Sienna’s high-pitched gasp. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” I walked out of the bedroom. Sienna was standing on the balcony next to a shattered ceramic pot. It was a rare purple orchid—the plant I had bought and tended after coming home from the hospital. In those long, agonizing nights when the pain kept me awake, watching that orchid bloom had been the only thing tethering me to sanity. Now, the pot was smashed into pieces. The delicate roots were crushed under Sienna’s shoe, buried in scattered soil. “Nora, I’m so sorry,” Sienna looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “The baby was crying, and I rushed past… I didn’t mean to knock it over. It’s just a plant, though… you’re not mad, are you?” Ethan walked up behind me, glancing indifferently at the ruined orchid. “It’s just a houseplant, Nora,” he said casually. “I’ll have my assistant order ten higher-grade ones from the nursery tomorrow. Sienna didn’t do it on purpose. Drop it.” I looked at Ethan, then down at the crushed flower bleeding its sap into the dirt. Suddenly, I felt so tired that I couldn’t even muster the strength to finish packing my bag. “Don’t bother,” I said softly, turning back toward the bedroom. “No matter how many you buy, it won’t be that one.” Behind me, Ethan’s voice rose in exasperation. “Nora! Do you always have to be such a buzzkill?” 4 For the next three days, I became a ghost in my own home. Sienna took over every inch of the condo. She lounged on my sofa, drank from my favorite mugs, and reorganised the kitchen. Every evening when Ethan returned from work, his first priority was to hold the baby. Their laughter drifted through the thin bedroom door, sharp and cruel. I kept myself locked in my room. The gnawing pain in my stomach was getting worse, accompanied by a fever that made my skin hot and clammy. My lab report was crystal clear: Severe pelvic adhesions with secondary internal infection. Immediate surgical intervention required. If I didn’t get exploratory surgery soon, sepsis was a real possibility. But I didn’t even have fifty dollars left to buy high-dose painkillers, let alone pay for an inpatient operation. On the fourth morning, the apartment was buzzing with activity. Today was the baby’s welcome party—a lavish, hundred-guest event Helen Hayes had booked at the city’s premier hotel ballroom. I sat at my small vanity, finishing the final document. It was a simple divorce agreement. I waived all rights to joint property, spousal support, and assets. My signature was already dried at the bottom. The door pushed open. Ethan stepped in, wearing a bespoke tailored tuxedo with a deep red rose pinned to his lapel. He looked radiant, successful, and thoroughly triumphant. “Nora,” he stood at the threshold, making no move to step inside. “We’re leaving for the venue now. It’s chilly outside, and given your health, you should stay home and rest.” He phrased it like a gesture of care, but we both knew the truth: he didn’t want a barren, pale wife ruining his perfect family debut. “Okay,” I said faintly, resting my back against the chair. My mother squeezed past him, her face split in a wide grin. “Nora, honey,” she rasped, shuffling toward my bed. “The Hayes family is hosting a big event today. Your mother-in-law said we need to put a substantial cash gift in the red envelope to show our respect. Do you have any money? Give me three thousand dollars.” I looked at my mother. I watched her swallow her daughter’s blood just to buy favor with a family that despised her. I pulled open my desk drawer and tossed my payroll debit card onto the mattress. “My paycheck cleared yesterday. There’s about four thousand in there,” I said evenly. “The PIN is my birthday.” My mother’s eyes lit up. She snatched the card off the bed like a hawk catching a field mouse. “Oh, you’re such a good daughter!” She didn’t even look at my gray, sunken face as she turned and ran out the door. “We’re leaving now! Order yourself some takeout if you get hungry!” Ethan lingered for a second, looking at me with a strange, fleeting unease. He seemed uncomfortable with how quiet I was today. But he didn’t ask a single question. “I’ll be back tonight,” he said, closing the door behind him. The lock engaged. The apartment fell into an absolute, suffocating silence. I pulled myself up from the chair. A searing wave of abdominal pain almost brought me to my knees, but I braced against the wall, taking slow, ragged breaths until the dizziness passed. I walked into the living room. Sienna’s half-empty glass of milk was still sitting on the dining table. I placed the signed divorce agreement on the center of the coffee table. Then, I unclasped my diamond wedding ring and set it gently on top of the paper. I took one last look around. This place had once been my dream home. I had picked out every tile, every curtain, every shade of paint. Now, the air smelled entirely of another woman’s perfume and baby powder. I didn’t take anything that belonged to him. I packed only a small duffel bag with a few old clothes and my thick folder of medical records. As I pulled my duffel bag across the threshold and opened the front door, my phone chimed in my pocket. It was a text from Ethan: Nora, Sienna feels awful about how things have been. I’ll bring home that salted caramel mousse tart tonight so she can apologize properly. I stared at the glowing screen. A bitter, quiet smile touched my lips. I didn’t reply. I tapped his name, selected Block Contact, and deleted the thread. I closed the door behind me and walked down the quiet hallway, my footsteps echoing in the empty space. Enjoy your happy family, Ethan. I’m done.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543143”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 The party was already in full swing, though a few people had yet to arrive. The private dining room of the upscale downtown bistro hummed with the clinking of wine glasses and the low, gossiping murmur of old high school classmates. “Is it true? Are Ethan Hayes and Isla Mercer really getting engaged?” “Oh, absolutely. I heard Ethan recognized her as his childhood savior specifically because of that unique red birthmark near the corner of her eye.” The speaker suddenly turned toward me, their eyes scanning my face with casual curiosity. “Hey, Audrey, didn’t you use to have a mark just like that? Right near your eye?” “Yeah, but hers was on the wrong side. No luck in that one anyway. Good thing you had it lasered off.” My fingers instinctively drifted to the outer corner of my left eye, touching the smooth, slightly sensitive skin. Before I flew back to the States, my father had called me. He reminded me that Isla was a rising social media influencer now, a public figure. “You two look eighty percent alike,” he had said, his voice flat and unyielding over the transatlantic line. “We can’t have you walking around with the exact same mark. It’ll cause confusion. Get it removed before you board the plane.” I had always preferred quiet compliance to endless, exhausting arguments. So, I went to a clinic in Lisbon and had it burned away. Suddenly, someone near the door gasped. “Isla’s here!” The chatter died down instantly, replaced by a collective rustle of heads turning toward the entrance. Isla Mercer walked in, her hand slipped elegantly through Ethan Hayes’s arm. She hadn’t changed at all. She still possessed that rare, effortless magnetism that commanded every eye in the room the moment she stepped across a threshold. Ethan stood beside her, tall and striking in a tailored charcoal suit. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his features were sharp, his gaze cool and composed. He looked far more grounded and formidable than he had three years ago. When his eyes swept across the room, my body reacted before my mind did, and I lowered my head. Only after a second did I realize how foolish that was. We had dated online for an entire year, but he had never once seen my face. To him, I was just a ghost in a locked drawer. Isla let go of Ethan’s arm and glided toward me, her heels clicking softly on the hardwood floor. Before I could move, she threw her arms around me, wrapping me in a suffocating cloud of expensive floral perfume. “Audrey! Oh my god, when did you get back?” I gently but firmly pulled my arm out of her grasp. “Just landed a couple of days ago.” The lighting in the private room was dim, but Isla’s eyes locked onto the corner of my left eye. She stared at the faint, pinkish mark for two long seconds before a satisfied smile curved her lips. “By the way, Audrey,” she said, leaning in as if sharing a precious secret, “Ethan and I are getting engaged next month.” “Congratulations,” I said quietly. “Dad was saying it wouldn’t look right for the younger sister to marry first while the older one is still single,” she continued, her voice dripping with performative concern. “So he asked me to keep an eye out for you. And honestly, Ethan and Dad found someone perfect.” She tilted her head, her eyes sparkling. “He’s an Ivy League grad, comes from a wonderful family. He was a little hesitant at first because of your… well, your overpriced, one-year master’s from Europe. But I used some of my connections to convince him to give you a chance.” I didn’t tell her that the “overpriced degree” was a fully funded master’s from one of the top business schools in Europe, or that I had already signed a lucrative contract with a top-tier consulting firm in the city. I didn’t say anything at all. I simply unlocked my phone and began reviewing a spreadsheet my supervisor had sent over. Isla’s smile faltered, her brow furrowing into a look of delicate distress. “Audrey, please don’t let your stubborn pride make things difficult for the family. You don’t want people whispering about how hard it is to marry you off, do you?” I nodded slowly, not looking up from my screen. “Whatever you say, Isla.” She froze, clearly caught off guard by my lack of resistance. Before she could press further, Ethan approached from behind, his hand settling naturally on her waist. He didn’t bother looking at me. “Let’s not waste our evening on irrelevant people, Isla,” he said, his tone smooth but dismissive. “Come on, everyone’s waiting for us.” I kept my eyes on my phone, my fingertips tightening against the glass screen until they turned white. We all took our seats around the long mahogany table. The wine flowed, the laughter grew louder, and the room warmed with nostalgia and easy camaraderie. Ethan didn’t speak much. Most of the time, he simply sat back, his arm draped over the back of Isla’s chair, his thumb occasionally tracing the small, crimson birthmark at the corner of her right eye. It was an intimate, practiced gesture. At one point, a classmate across the table mentioned that they were planning to marry someone they had met on a dating app. The table erupted into playful teasing. Isla seemed to think of something. She turned her head, looking at me with a sweet, speculative expression. “Speaking of online dating… Audrey, didn’t you have a serious online relationship back in high school?” She tapped her chin, her eyes wide. “I remember you mentioning he went to Oakhaven High, too.” The glass in Ethan’s hand paused mid-air. He slowly looked over, his sharp, dark eyes fixing on me with genuine attention for the very first time. Isla blinked innocently, her voice carrying over the din of the room. “Whatever happened to him anyway? Why did you guys break up?” 2 Honestly, the details of that final day had become somewhat blurred over the years. I only remembered the agonizing anxiety of the night before we were supposed to meet. I had been a knot of teenage insecurity, terrified that the real-world version of me—the quiet, bruised girl who hid in the back of the library—would disappoint him. And then, my phone had lit up with a notification. It was a photo of Isla, smiling brilliantly under the streetlights. My breath had caught in my throat. For a wild, terrifying second, I thought he had somehow connected the dots and discovered who I was. I clutched my skirt, my heart hammering against my ribs. But the next message was a notification for a wire transfer. One hundred thousand dollars. Don’t contact me again, he had written. I don’t want her to know you exist. This money is for your trouble, and for your silence. He wrote that he had finally found his savior—the girl with the red birthmark near her eye. I had one too. But mine was on the left. I didn’t argue. I didn’t try to explain that Isla’s birthmark was on her right eye, or that she had never set foot in the neighborhood where he had been hurt. I simply accepted the transfer, logged out of the account, and put the old phone in a box at the bottom of my closet. Until the very end, he never knew that the girl who had spent a year listening to his darkest fears, the girl who had pulled him back from the edge of his own teenage despair, was the quiet outcast sitting three rows behind him in study hall. To this day, I still couldn’t comprehend how Isla had convinced him she was his savior. Isla, who had spent two years ensuring my high school experience was a living hell, was somehow his angel. Shortly after we broke up, Ethan’s name was everywhere. He graduated at the top of our class, went to an Ivy League university, and eventually built a tech empire that made him one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. During a high-profile media interview, he had publicly declared his devotion to Isla, crediting her with saving his life when they were teenagers. I had turned off my phone that day and never searched his name again. I used to think Ethan’s departure would be a permanent rainstorm in my life—a damp, cold ache I could never escape. But then I took that hundred thousand dollars and moved to Portugal. In Lisbon, the sun was generous. It shone for over three hundred days a year, warming even the coldest winters. I spent my days studying, drinking cheap espresso on cobblestone streets, and slowly untangling myself from my family. I forgot the sound of Ethan’s voice. I became the top student in my department. I truly believed that three years of endless sunshine had dried out the old wounds. But sitting in this dim room, feeling the weight of his gaze, I realized some dampness settles deep in the marrow. At the first sign of rain, it starts to seep back out. 3 Ethan’s gaze remained fixed on me, intense and searching. “Oakhaven High?” The silence stretched between us, so tense I could hear the hum of the air conditioner. For a fleeting, terrifying moment, I wondered if he was finally putting the pieces together. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, his expression returning to its usual cool composure. “What was his username? Maybe I know him.” I forced a small, indifferent smile and took a sip of my water. “I don’t even remember. It was just an online thing. No real feelings involved.” He nodded slowly, his posture relaxing. “Right. Just an online thing.” The classmates around us lost interest, disappointed by the lack of drama, and began chatting about other things. But someone else turned back to Ethan. “Hey, Ethan, didn’t you have an online phase too? Come on, tell us the story!” Isla puffed out her cheeks in a mock pout, nudging his shoulder. Ethan let out a soft laugh, his eyes softening as he looked down at her. “Yeah, I did. Briefly.” He reached up, his fingers gently brushing the hair away from her right temple, his thumb settling on her birthmark. “But it didn’t mean anything. I spent years looking for Isla, and when I couldn’t find her, I got lonely. It was a compromise. Just settling.” “And what happened?” someone asked. His expression darkened slightly, a shadow crossing his eyes. “Eventually, I realized that settling is just a waste of time. Luckily, I found the person I was actually looking for.” My throat felt tight, dry. “Oh my god, that is so romantic,” a classmate squealed. “Ethan, you are literally a saint. And Isla, you are so lucky! I saw on social media that you were just named the national ambassador for the anti-bullying foundation. Even our high school alumni page posted a congratulatory banner for you!” Isla waved her hands quickly, her cheeks flushing with a perfect, humble pink. “Oh, stop, it’s really nothing. The foundation just wanted someone who could raise awareness.” Ethan’s tech firm was the talk of the city, and Isla was his beautiful, philanthropic fiancée. I knew all of this from the news. But hearing it in person made me feel entirely hollow. I leaned slightly toward the girl sitting next to me. “Is that… is that real? The anti-bullying thing?” She looked at me as if I had asked if the earth was flat. “Of course it’s real. It’s been trending on Twitter all week. Isla’s been getting endorsement deals left and right because of her clean image. Ethan’s supposedly planning a massive public proposal at the foundation’s annual gala next week.” I lowered my gaze, staring at the faint scar on the palm of my hand. I had physical scars on my shoulders, my ankles, and my lower back. And then there were the ones etched so deeply into my mind that no amount of Portuguese sunshine could ever fade them. I could still hear the sound of the metal bucket scraping against the concrete floor of the high school bathroom stall. I could still feel the freezing water soaking through my thin cotton shirt as I shivered on the tiles, listening to their laughter outside. I remembered going to my father, crying, showing him the bruises on my arms. He had sat at the kitchen table, refusing to meet my eyes. “You’re the reason your mother is dead, Audrey,” he had whispered, his voice heavy and dead. “If Isla needs to blow off some steam, just let her. Is it really necessary to run to your teachers and make a scene?” Isla and I weren’t twins, but we shared a birth week, and my father always insisted on celebrating only hers. One year, I had wanted my own cake. My mother had driven out in a storm to get it for me. She never made it back. That night, my father lost his wife, and Isla lost her mother. And I became the murderer. For the next three years, Isla made sure I paid for it. And now, she was the national face of anti-bullying. 4 As the dinner ended and people began to say their goodbyes, Isla walked over to me, a sweet, pitying smile on her face. “Audrey, let us give you a ride. It’s late, and you probably don’t have a car yet.” I stared at the remaining fruit platter on the table, the alcohol from earlier settling into a dull, throbbing headache behind my eyes. I felt incredibly tired. Ethan stepped up behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder as he looked down at me with cold indifference. “Don’t bother, Isla. Some people will never appreciate your kindness, no matter how hard you try.” I didn’t bother correcting him. Once the group dispersed onto the sidewalk, the class president, Lucas, noticed how pale I looked and offered to drive me home. I thanked him quietly, too exhausted to make polite conversation during the ride. My rented apartment was dark and quiet when I let myself in. I lay on the sofa for a long time, staring at the ceiling, before I finally stood up and walked over to the bedroom chest of drawers. Deep in the back, behind a stack of winter sweaters, was a small, dusty box. Inside lay the cheap smartphone I had used in high school. It was the phone that held all my conversations with Ethan. Back then, he was the only one who knew what I was going through, even though I had never told him the bully was my own sister. He had spent hours messaging me, repeating the same words over and over: “Bullying is bullying, Audrey. It doesn’t become a joke just because she shares your DNA.” His words had given me the courage to start secretly recording the incidents. I had saved dozens of audio files and videos. But in the end, I had remembered my mother’s final text to me: Take care of your sister. I had kept the files locked away, never showing them to anyone. I plugged the old phone into a charger and waited for the screen to light up. I scrolled through the old files until I found one labeled June 12th. I pressed play. My teenage voice, raw and choked with tears, filled the quiet room. “I didn’t know Mom would crash. She was my mother too! Do you think I don’t miss her?” Then came Isla’s sharp, cruel laugh. “Shut up. A murderer doesn’t get to call her Mom. Grab her hair, girls. Keep her down. Just don’t leave any marks where Dad can see them.” I hit the stop button, my chest heaving, my throat tight. I remembered telling Ethan back then that I didn’t want to expose her, expecting him to call me weak or foolish. But he had only sent a long paragraph: “That’s okay. Nobody has the right to force you to be a hero. If your mother were here, she would just want you to be safe.” But keeping quiet now felt like a betrayal of the girl who had shivered on that bathroom floor. I sat at my desk, opened a secondary social media account, and uploaded a single screenshot of the audio file’s wave format along with a fifteen-second clip of Isla’s voice. I wrote one sentence: How can a bully be an anti-bullying ambassador? Then, I hit post.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543128”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 “I am announcing today that Harper’s trial has concluded in failure. The Hayes Group will officially transition its leadership to Sloane.” The words echoed from the glowing screen of the CNBC broadcast mounted at the front of the city bus. The man on the television was dressed in a bespoke Tom Ford suit, his silver hair perfectly coiffed, standing beneath the blinding glare of flashbulbs at a press conference. I stared at the screen. The two dollar-slice pizzas I’d just bought slipped from my hands, hitting the rubber floor of the bus. That man was my father. The same father who, just last week, had coughed into the phone and said, “Hey kiddo, Dad’s pulling double shifts at the auto plant. I’ll wire your grocery money a few days late this month.” The same father who wore oil-stained Carhartt jackets, whose skin was weathered by the sun, who came home once every three months smelling of cheap diner coffee and bringing a wrinkled bag of gas-station gummy bears. My hand plunged into my coat pocket, my fingers closing convulsively around a thick paper envelope. It was my acceptance letter to Stanford University. Full tuition, English Literature. I had ranked in the top one percent of the state. And I had spent all of last night taping it back together, piece by piece, after tearing it in half. I gave it up. The summer I turned eighteen, I gave it all up. My parents had sat me down at our wobbly kitchen table, eyes red, and told me they were drowning in debt. They couldn’t afford to keep both me and my younger sister in school. Sloane’s grades were better, they said. She had more potential. As the older sister, I needed to step aside. I didn’t fight them. Instead, I went out and landed a job as a bottle service waitress at a high-end downtown lounge. The manager told me I was pretty enough that with tips, I could easily clear five thousand a month. I had almost cried from relief. Five grand. I could send four thousand home every single month, keep just enough to rent a tiny room and buy ramen, and in three years, I could drag my family out of debt. I was rushing home on this bus to tell my mother the good news. And then I looked up and saw my father. Richard Hayes. The billionaire CEO and founder of Hayes Global, a colossal private equity empire. And he was handing the keys to the kingdom to Sloane. 2 Sloane. My little sister. The sister who had always been “fragile,” who the whole family sacrificed for. The one who got my bedroom converted into her personal study space while I slept on a pull-out couch. She never had to worry about Stanford; she went to a private prep school. Her cello lessons were three hundred dollars an hour, while I couldn’t even bring myself to add chicken to my six-dollar dining hall salads. Memories began popping off in my head like flashbulbs, illuminating the shadows I had willfully ignored. My father’s work clothes. He only ever owned two sets of coveralls, and yet, whenever he came home, there was never a speck of grease under his fingernails. He complained about the brutal manual labor, but the palms of his hands were as smooth as polished stone. My mother. She always looked exhausted, wearing the same faded Target cardigans for a decade. But the heavy glass jars of moisturizer on her nightstand had French labels I couldn’t pronounce. Every night, she would lock her bedroom door, claiming she needed an hour for “prayer.” “Harper, honey,” my mother would sigh, rubbing her temples. “Things are just so hard right now. You need to be the responsible one.” And I was. God, I was so responsible. I was responsible enough to tear up a Stanford acceptance letter. Responsible enough to smile about serving overpriced vodka to sleazebags. Responsible enough to spend eighteen years never once questioning the narrative. Why did Sloane get a cello while I couldn’t afford a used paperback? Why did my parents look at Sloane with beaming pride, but look at me with… guilt? Guilt. Yes. That’s what it was. I finally understood the translation of that look. The robotic voice of the bus automated stop-announcement jolted me back to reality. I stumbled off the bus, my legs feeling like they belonged to someone else. I walked down the cracked pavement of the neighborhood I had lived in for eighteen years. Every step felt like walking through deep water. The front door of our duplex was wide open. I stood in the doorway. Sitting on our thrift-store sofa was a woman I barely recognized. She was wearing a cream-colored Loro Piana cashmere sweater, her hair swept up into an immaculate, salon-perfect twist, exposing the elegant line of her neck. On her wrist sat a vintage Cartier Tank watch, catching the afternoon light. Beside her on the coffee table rested a fine bone-china teacup, steam curling lazily into the air. She looked immaculate. She looked like a billionaire’s wife stepping out of the pages of Town & Country. She raised her eyes and looked at me. I recognized the eyes. The woman who had spent eighteen years in frayed sweatpants, haggling over fifty cents at the local farmer’s market—she had those exact same eyes. “Harper,” her voice was perfectly modulated, calm, as if she had rehearsed this moment in front of a mirror a thousand times. “You failed the trial.” “You disappointed us.” 3 My body felt like it had been nailed to the floorboards. The trial. She called it a trial. So the poverty, the humiliation, the sacrificed dreams of the last eighteen years—it was all a test? I gave up Stanford. I signed up to dodge groping hands at a nightclub. I lived like a glorified maid in this house, without even a bedroom with a door—and this was a trial? And she sat there, with the grace of royalty, using the most serene tone imaginable to tell me I was a disappointment. I opened my mouth, but my throat was sealed shut. It felt like I was swallowing glass. I looked down at myself. Faded thrift-store jeans. Scuffed Converse sneakers. Hair dull and brittle from a diet of cheap carbs and anxiety. Then I looked at her. Cashmere. Cartier. Bone china. The distance between us wasn’t the ten feet of worn carpet in the living room. It was eighteen years of a meticulously crafted lie. “Why?” The word finally scraped its way out of my throat. My mother—no, this woman—set her teacup down. The gesture was so poised, it was as if she had finally wrapped filming on an eighteen-year indie movie. She looked at me with a detached, clinical scrutiny. Like a quality control inspector evaluating a defective product. “It is the tradition of the Hayes family,” she said smoothly. “Every generation, there can only be one heir. You and Sloane were entered into the trial from the moment you were born. You were placed in diametrically opposed environments to grow up in. Ultimately, the board evaluates who possesses the true instinct to rule the empire.” “Sloane was given the elite track. Her vision, her network, her business acumen—she operates on a level most adults couldn’t comprehend. And you—” She paused, tilting her head slightly. “You were placed in the world of the ordinary. We gave you the worst resources, the harshest conditions. If you could rise above that, if you could shatter the ceiling of your environment, it would prove you had transcendent genius. It would prove you were a wolf, worthy of the Hayes legacy.” “But you didn’t.” She stood up. She was taller than me, her posture impeccable. She looked down at me, and in her eyes, I saw disappointment, a sickening kind of pity, and something else I couldn’t quite name. “A Stanford acceptance letter? That means nothing to us. The Hayes family doesn’t need someone who knows how to pass a test. We need a survivor who can flip the board when backed into a corner. You only know how to color inside the lines. You only know how to work for a paycheck to pay off a debt. Your mind is trapped in a poverty mentality. You never once thought to break the rules. You never once questioned the absurdity of your situation.” “You were too compliant, Harper. You played by the rules. And it was incredibly disappointing.” I stood frozen, a high-pitched ringing starting in my ears. I was too compliant. Starving myself to save money was compliant. Bleeding for my family was compliant. Giving up the Ivy League was compliant. Trusting my parents unconditionally was compliant. With one word, she had taken my eighteen years of devotion, of pure, agonizing love, and reduced it to a character flaw. 4 “So what was the right answer?” My voice trembled, but I locked my eyes onto hers, refusing to blink. “Was I supposed to lie? To steal? To step on your throats? I had to become a monster to prove I could break your rules?” Her brow furrowed slightly, as if my question was adorably naive. “Look at Sloane,” she said. “At ten, she took her allowance and angel-invested in a classmate’s tech startup. At twelve, she drafted her first leveraged buyout proposal. At fifteen, she tripled her trust fund in the stock market. At seventeen, she independently orchestrated a corporate merger. Yes, she was given immense resources. But resources are just tools. She used the tools to create an empire.” “And you? You got a ticket to Stanford, and what was your immediate instinct? To throw it in the trash and go pour vodka for minimum wage. That is the absolute limit of your vision. You only ever see the square right in front of your feet. You cannot see the whole chessboard.” She let out a soft, elegant sigh. “Harper, it’s not that you aren’t smart. It’s that you aren’t ruthless. You lack the killer instinct—toward others, and toward yourself. Someone like you could never steer a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.” With that, she turned and walked back to the sofa, picking up her tea. It was a dismissal. She was bored. “The family lawyers will be here tomorrow morning,” she said, not looking at me. “As compensation for the last eighteen years, the trust is establishing a severance fund for you. It’s a substantial amount. You can use it to start a quiet, comfortable life.” A severance fund. Eighteen years of psychological warfare, paid off with a severance check. A laugh bubbled up in my chest. It started low, vibrating against my ribs, and then it clawed its way out of my throat, carrying every ounce of bitterness, grief, and rage I possessed. I laughed until my eyes watered, until my shoulders shook violently. “Mom,” I choked out, using the word for the very last time. “Eighteen years pretending to be poor. Were you exhausted?” Her hand flinched. A tiny wave rippled across the surface of her tea. “You planted me in toxic dirt, poured acid on the roots, and then stood around criticizing me for not blooming fast enough.” “You blindfolded me and put me on a racetrack, then laughed when I couldn’t outrun the girl driving a Ferrari.” “You spent nearly two decades engineering an unwinnable game, just so you could stand there and say—you lose, you disappointed us.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelope. The Stanford letter. Taped together, the jagged seams catching the light like scars on a battered face. “Do you know,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper, “when I taped this together last night, I used the cheap glue sticks from my high school library. Because I couldn’t justify spending three dollars on a roll of Scotch tape.” I walked over to the coffee table and dropped the envelope right next to her bone-china cup. “Keep it. I don’t want it.” “And keep your damn severance money, too.” I turned on my heel and walked out the door.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543144”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 The day of my final background verification for the London transfer, the clerk called me into a small, windowless office. She stared at me across the desk, her expression tight. “Naomi, why didn’t you disclose your marriage and child?” I froze. The fluorescent light hummed overhead, suddenly too loud. “I’m sorry?” I asked, assuming I’d misheard. “I’m twenty-eight. I’m single. I’ve never been married, and I certainly don’t have a child.” The clerk didn’t look convinced. She turned her computer monitor toward me, tapping a manicured finger against the glass. There it was, spelled out in the state database. Marital Status: Married. Spouse: Marcus Brody. Registered three years ago in Clearriver County. Dependents: Milo Brody. Male, age two. Mother of record: Naomi Pendleton. My chest tightened. I stared at my social security number, my date of birth, my childhood address in Clearriver, Ohio. Everything matched. “Are you sure you didn’t just fail to report this?” the clerk asked, her tone shifting from professional to suspicious. A bitter laugh escaped my throat. “Fail to report a husband and a child? How does someone forget a family, ma’am? There’s been a massive mistake.” But bureaucracy doesn’t care about shock. My international transfer was scheduled for next month. My visa, my apartment lease in London, my entire career trajectory—it was all riding on this background check. If they flagged me for falsifying family records, the visa would be denied, and my firm would rescind the offer. I left the immigration office on legs that felt like lead. I called my parents on the drive home. The line crackled. When I demanded to know what was going on, the silence on the other end was deafening. Finally, my mother spoke, her voice low and strained. “Naomi, don’t dig into this. It’s fine. It won’t affect your transfer. We’ll handle it.” “Handle what?” I yelled over the steering wheel. “Mom, there is a child registered under my name!” In the background, I heard my younger sister Audrey’s soft, mocking giggle. “Come on, Naomi. Maybe you just forgot? You always were a little spacey.” I hung up, my hands shaking so hard I almost lost control of the car. I didn’t go back to my apartment. I drove straight through the night to Clearriver, pulling up to the county clerk’s office just as the doors opened. It took me thirty minutes and a fifty-dollar fee to get copies of the marriage file. When the clerk handed me the manila envelope, my fingers were damp with sweat. I pulled out the documents. The marriage application, the photocopy of the driver’s license, the utility bills used for verification. And there, stapled to the corner, was the official marriage photo. The woman in the photo wore a crisp white button-down. Her hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. She had my nose, my high cheekbones, my exact smile. At first glance, even I felt a sickening jolt of recognition. But I kept looking. When I was seven, I fell off a tire swing and ended up with a jagged scar behind my right ear. It’s mostly hidden by my hair, but if I pull it back into a ponytail, it’s visible from a few feet away. The woman in the photo had perfectly smooth, unblemished skin behind her ear. My heart did a slow, heavy roll in my chest. She was pretending to be me. I flipped to the signature page. Naomi Pendleton. The handwriting was heavy, the loops of the letters dragged out, an almost perfect imitation of my cursive. But I’ve always written the letter ‘P’ with a distinct, disconnected gap at the bottom. The person who signed this paper didn’t know that. I turned the page. My old driver’s license number. My high school graduation photo, lifted from an old yearbook. My mother’s cell phone listed as the emergency contact. A cold sweat broke out across my neck. This wasn’t just identity theft. The call had come from inside the house. I drove to my parents’ home. My mother was standing at the kitchen island, chopping celery for a roast. When I slammed the manila folder onto the granite countertop, the knife slipped, clattering against the wood. “What is this, Mom?” I asked, my voice dangerously quiet. She looked at the paperwork, then looked away, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Naomi, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s probably a database error. You know how county systems are. I’ll call someone next week and get it sorted.” “A database error?” I pointed at the photo. “That is a photo of a woman who looks exactly like me, wearing my clothes, using my social security number. Who is she, Mom?” Her face went rigid, her voice rising to that sharp, defensive pitch I had heard my entire life whenever I pushed too hard. “Why do you have to be so stubborn? You’re going to London. Focus on your move and stop obsessing over administrative mistakes!” I stared at her. My mother had always been high-strung, but there was something else in her eyes now. Panic. And a deep, suffocating guilt. 2 The next morning, I drove to Clearriver Community Hospital. According to the birth certificate, Milo Brody had been delivered there two years ago. The records department was located in the basement, behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass. I stood there, feeling like a ghost in my own life. Legally, I was the mother of this child. Yet, I had to present my ID and sign three different consent forms just to look at my own supposed medical records. The clerk behind the desk clacked away on her keyboard. “Alright, I see the delivery file from October of 2021.” She printed a two-page summary and slid it under the glass. Patient Name: Naomi Pendleton. Age: 26. Admission: Active labor. Next of Kin present: Frances Pendleton (Mother). Frances. My mother’s name stared back at me in black ink. The room seemed to tilt. My own mother had sat in that recovery room, watching another woman give birth under my name, and had signed her own signature as the grandmother of record. “Is something wrong, sweetie?” the clerk asked, noticing my pale face. “I need the full medical chart,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “The nursing notes, the physical descriptions. Everything.” “I can’t release the full clinical notes without a court order or a formal legal dispute,” she said, her expression softening with pity. I pulled out the letter from the immigration office, the one threatening to revoke my visa application due to fraudulent declarations. “My identity was stolen,” I told her, holding the paper against the glass. “If you don’t give me those files, my attorney will subpoena this entire hospital by Monday morning.” Twenty minutes later, I had a copy of the intake chart. I flipped past the vitals, the epidural dosage, the APGAR scores. On the third page, under the nurse’s shift notes, a small hand-written line caught my eye: Patient has a distinct, three-inch faded burn scar on the inner left wrist from childhood. I dropped the paper onto my lap and lifted my left arm. My wrist was smooth, white, and completely unscarred. But I knew that scar. I had seen it a thousand times. A summer afternoon when we were kids. A boiling kettle sliding off the stove. The sound of screaming, and my mother holding her favorite child, rocking her back and forth on the kitchen floor. Audrey. My stomach churned with a sudden, violent wave of nausea. It was my sister. My phone buzzed in my hand. It was my mother. “Naomi,” she said, her voice frantic, whispering as if someone might hear her. “Are you at the hospital?” I leaned my head against the steering wheel, the vinyl cold against my forehead. “Why, Mom? Did you think the records wouldn’t show your name?” Silence stretched over the line, heavy and suffocating. “Audrey is home,” my mother said, her voice dropping all pretense. “She wants to see you. She’s missed you, Naomi. Please. Just come home and let’s talk about this as a family.” My sister, the golden child. The girl who could do no wrong, who had spent her entire life being shielded from the consequences of her own chaos while I paid the bills. I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white. “I’m not coming home, Mom.” 3 I didn’t go back to my parents’ house. Instead, I drove to the address listed on Milo’s birth certificate. It was a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac on the wealthier side of town. The townhouses were new, with manicured lawns and double-car garages. A sleek black SUV was parked in the driveway. I sat in my car for thirty minutes, watching the front door. Eventually, a man walked out. He was in his mid-thirties, wearing a designer grey jacket and a heavy gold watch that caught the afternoon sun. He carried a little boy on his hip. I got out of my car and closed the door. The man stopped when he saw me. He didn’t look startled. Instead, a slow, mocking smile spread across his face. “Naomi,” he said, adjusting the toddler on his hip. “You got here faster than I thought you would.” “Marcus Brody?” I asked. “The one and only,” he said smoothly. He set the boy down on the grass, letting him play with a small toy truck. “The marriage license,” I said, stepping closer. “The birth certificate. How did you pull this off?” Marcus leaned back against the hood of his SUV, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, taking a slow drag before blowing the smoke over my head. “The paperwork is real. The signatures are notarized. If you want to argue with the state database, be my guest. But right now, on paper, you’re my wife. And that’s my son.” “I wasn’t even in the country when that license was signed,” I spat. “Then go prove that to your immigration officers,” he sneered. “Go tell them your whole family is a bunch of liars. See how fast they cancel your visa. I don’t care. But I’ll make you a deal. You want to go to London? Great. Sponsor my visa. Take us with you. Or, if you want me to disappear, pay me. I know what they’re paying you over there. You can afford it.” I had never felt such a pure, visceral disgust for another human being. “You are completely delusional.” Marcus’s smile vanished, his eyes turning cold. “Don’t get cute with me, Naomi. Your sister—” He caught himself, stopping mid-sentence. “My sister what?” I demanded. The two-year-old boy on the grass suddenly looked up. He had Audrey’s wide, doe-like eyes and a head of soft brown curls. He stared at me for a long moment, then toddled over, reaching his small, dirt-stained hands toward my jeans. “Mommy,” he chirped. “Mommy, hold.” The word felt like a physical blow. I flinched, stepping back. “Don’t—don’t call me that.” The boy’s face puckered, his lower lip trembling. Marcus laughed, a dry, ugly sound. “See? Even the kid knows his mother. Who is a judge going to believe? You, or your own son?” “We’re doing a DNA test,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What?” “We’re going to a clinic. Right now,” I pointed at the boy. “If he isn’t mine, you’re going to sign whatever paperwork my lawyer drafts to clear my name, and then you’re going to rot in a cell.” He stared at me for a few seconds, measuring my resolve. Then, he shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Three days later, I was back at the county testing center. I had barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that little boy’s face, calling me a name I had never earned. Marcus was already in the waiting room, holding Milo, who was fast asleep against his shoulder. He looked entirely unbothered. The technician called my name and handed me the sealed envelope. I tore it open, my chest aching with tension. My eyes skipped down to the final bolded line of the report. The biological relationship between the tested parties, Naomi Pendleton and Milo Brody, is confirmed. My vision blurred. The room spun. No. No, no, no. This is impossible. Marcus leaned over my shoulder, catching sight of the paper. He let out a low, satisfied whistle. “Well, look at that. Mother of the year.” 4 My hands were shaking so violently I almost dropped the papers. But as I clutched the envelope, a loose sheet of pink paper slid out from behind the main report. It was a supplementary lab note. My eyes scrambled across the text, landing on a paragraph near the bottom. Addendum: Genetic analysis indicates a first-degree familial relationship consistent with an aunt-nephew or sibling-sibling match. Testing does not support a direct maternal-offspring relationship. The air rushed back into my lungs. Marcus saw my face change. His smug grin faltered. “What? What does it say?” He snatched the paper from my hands, his eyes darting across the lines. His face turned a sickly, mottled grey. “This is bullshit. What does this mean?” The lab technician, who had been watching us from behind the counter, spoke up gently. “It means that while you share a significant amount of DNA with the child, you are not his mother, Ms. Pendleton. Biologically, you are likely his aunt.” An aunt. Audrey’s child. I stared at the wall, the pieces finally locking into place. The white shirt. The burn scar. My mother’s desperation. My father’s silence. They had stolen my name to hide Audrey’s pregnancy, allowing her to keep her perfect, unblemished life while using me as a shield. Marcus tried to pull the boy away and head for the exit, but I stepped in front of him, blocking the door. “You knew,” I whispered. “You knew the whole time.” “Get out of my way, Naomi,” he growled. “Is she the one who paid you? My sister?” Marcus didn’t answer, but the muscle jumping in his jaw was all the confirmation I needed. I drove back to my parents’ house in a daze of cold fury. When I pushed the front door open, the house was quiet. In the living room, Audrey was standing in front of a full-length mirror, draped in a delicate blush-pink silk dress. It was her engagement gown. Next month, she was marrying Garrett Lindon, a young, ambitious attorney from a wealthy local family. Her Instagram had been a non-stop parade of engagement photos, diamond rings, and captions about “finding her forever.” She saw me in the mirror and froze. her smile faltered, but she quickly tried to recover. “Naomi! You’re finally home. Look at this dress, isn’t the lace beautiful?” “Whose baby is Milo, Audrey?” The room went dead silent. The earring she had been trying to put in slipped from her fingers, clinking softly against the hardwood floor. My mother burst out of the kitchen, her face pale. “Naomi! Stop this! What is wrong with you?” I threw the DNA report onto the glass coffee table. It landed with a sharp slap. “The baby has my DNA, but he isn’t mine. There’s only one other person in this family who could have had him.” No one spoke. My father, Arthur, was sitting in his armchair in the corner. He slowly put down the television remote, his face aging ten years in an instant. Audrey’s eyes filled with tears. She took a step toward me, her hands trembling. “Naomi… please. Don’t do this.” A wave of pure disgust washed over me. It was always this face. The tearful, helpless younger sister. When she crashed my car in college, she cried, and my parents blamed me for lending it to her. When she stole money from my purse, she cried, and they told me I was being greedy. And now, she had stolen my legal identity to hide a secret child, and she was still asking me not to “do this.” “Three years ago,” I said, my voice echoing in the quiet room. “Did you sign my name on that marriage certificate?” She shook her head, tears spilling over her cheeks. “I didn’t want to. I swear, Naomi, I didn’t want to.” I let out a harsh, dry laugh. “Then who wore my shirt? Who went to the hospital under my name? Who gave birth to a child and let them write Naomi Pendleton on the birth certificate?” My mother lunged toward the table, her hands reaching for the DNA report, her fingers clawing at the paper to rip it up. I grabbed her wrist, stopping her mid-air. “Don’t,” I said. My mother gasped, staring at me as if I were a stranger. I had never laid a hand on her, never spoken to her with such cold authority. My father finally spoke, his voice heavy. “Naomi, it’s done. It happened three years ago. Bringing it all up now… it doesn’t help anyone.” “Who does it help, Dad?” I asked, turning to him. “Does it help me? Or does it just keep her safe?” He couldn’t look me in the eye. My mother broke down, weeping against the back of the sofa. “Audrey was so young! She was just starting her life. If she had a child out of wedlock with a man like Marcus, her career would have been over before it started. She would have never met Garrett. You… you were already established. You were living in Chicago. We didn’t think anyone would ever find out!” “So you gave her my life,” I said. “You let her use me as a shield.” “We thought it was just temporary,” my mother sobbed. “We thought you were far away. It wasn’t supposed to affect you.” “Where was I when you registered that marriage?” I asked. Audrey looked down, silent. “I was in Singapore,” I said. “On a three-week corporate audit. I have the passport stamps. I have the hotel receipts. And the day Milo was born? I was on a high-security clearance project at my firm’s headquarters. I have security badge logs proving I didn’t leave the building for sixteen days.” My dad stood up, his face tight with panic. “Naomi, what are you trying to say?” “I’m saying,” I said, picking up the DNA report and sliding it back into my bag, “that I am going to the police. And I am going to clear my name.” Audrey fell to her knees, grabbing the hem of my jeans. “Naomi, please! Garrett’s family is so traditional. If they find out about Milo, the wedding is off! I’ll lose everything!” I looked down at her, my heart entirely cold. “Then you should have thought about that before you stole my name.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543129”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 Right before we were supposed to head to City Hall to get our marriage license for the ninth time, my best friend offered to touch up my makeup. But a second later, her wrist gave a violent jerk. The sharp edge of the dermaplaning blade sliced right across my cheek, leaving a long, stinging gash in its wake. “Oh my god, Audrey, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to!” Sienna’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with a frantic, theatrical panic. But beneath her trembling facade, a sudden, icy realization began to pool in my stomach. Over the past two years, every single time we had an appointment at the County Clerk’s office, some bizarre accident would derail us. The first time, Sienna “accidentally” packed my driver’s license in her own luggage right before a weekend trip, leaving me without ID. The second time, she insisted on driving us to the municipal building herself, only to rear-end a delivery truck on the way. For two years, nine appointments, nine inexplicable failures. In the past, I would always force a smile, squeeze her hand, and tell her it was okay. But this time, I sat in the makeup chair, perfectly still. I didn’t say a word. Sienna was a veteran, high-end makeup artist. She had hands steady enough to do winged eyeliner on a moving train. She didn’t just slip. Blood welled up, warm and stark against my foundation. I pressed a tissue to my cheek, grabbed my purse, and hurried downstairs to hail a cab to the ER. But halfway down the block, I realized I’d left my insurance card on the vanity. I doubled back. When I pushed the front door open, I froze. Sienna was standing in the center of the living room, directly facing my fiancé, Nolan. “We broke up five years ago, Nolan. Haven’t we punished each other enough?” Sienna was crying, the tears streaming down her flawless face like rain on glass. “I haven’t had enough!” she sobbed, her voice cracking. “I did it on purpose. I sliced her face because I can’t stand the thought of you marrying her!” I stood in the entryway, the shadows swallowing me whole, as a thousand fragmented memories suddenly snapped into a brutal, cohesive picture. Sienna was always talking about the elusive “ex-boyfriend” she could never quite get over. Nolan was always making excuses for her clumsiness. None of it had ever been an accident. I looked down at my phone. On the screen was the digital wedding invitation I had been revising, the date pushed back yet again, ready to be sent to our families. The screen blurred as a cold, hollow sensation hollowed out my chest. With a single tap, I hit Delete. This wedding was over. 2 The sound of Sienna’s muffled sobs echoed through the living room. She was curled into the corner of the sofa, tears spilling over her lashes in perfect, tragic drops. Whatever anger had been on Nolan’s face slowly dissolved. I watched from the shadows of the hallway as his jaw unclenched, the harsh words he might have spoken dying in his throat. He crouched down in front of her, his gaze dropping to a tiny, barely visible nick on Sienna’s own finger. “Does it still hurt?” he asked softly. When he looked up at her, his eyes were brimming with a raw, unmistakable ache. A quiet, bitter laugh caught in the back of my throat. Just twenty minutes ago, when my cheek was sliced open and bleeding down my neck, Nolan had barely glanced at me. “Can you get to urgent care by yourself?” he had asked, checking his watch. “I’m swamped with these quarterly reports.” I had always known Nolan was a workaholic. I had accepted it. But seeing him now, completely abandoning his supposedly critical reports to kneel on the hardwood floor and meticulously apply a band-aid to Sienna’s manicured finger—it felt as though the blade had just dragged across my cheek a second time, cutting much, much deeper. I backed out the door silently, making it down to the street and into a cab before the tears finally broke. I clamped a hand over my mouth, the stifled sobs vibrating in my chest. The cab driver glanced in the rearview mirror and handed a box of tissues over the center console. “Must hurt a lot, huh?” he said gently. “Hang in there, sweetheart. We’re almost at the hospital.” It did hurt. God, it hurt. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. How could Nolan Hayes—the man Sienna constantly complained was an emotionally stunted iceberg who never understood her feelings—be her mysterious ex? Sienna used to vent to me for hours about how cold her ex was, how his indifference made her feel like she was losing her mind. But Nolan wasn’t cold. Not to me. Whenever I was overwhelmed at the station, he would hold me until my breathing slowed, validating my feelings before offering solutions. He was the man who would wait up for me after a midnight broadcast, who brought me iced coffees in July and roasted chestnuts in December. A man who once drove forty miles in a blizzard because I was craving a specific slice of red velvet cake. How could he possibly be the callous villain of Sienna’s stories? When Nolan was drunk, he used to talk about his ex-girlfriend, too. He said she was high-maintenance, deeply self-centered, throwing massive tantrums if the universe didn’t revolve entirely around her. But Sienna had never raised her voice at me. If I accidentally knocked over her expensive setting powder, she was apologizing before I could even say sorry. I thought back to our first attempt at City Hall. When we realized my ID was missing, Sienna had practically hyperventilated with guilt. The next day, she drove three hundred miles round-trip to buy me a limited-edition vinyl record I’d been wanting, just to make it up to me. She had stood in my doorway, out of breath, sweating. I hadn’t second-guessed her for a moment. I forgave her instantly. The second time, when she crashed her car on the way to the clerk’s office, she got a concussion, yet she still insisted on giving blood when I needed a transfusion. My last memory before the anesthesia pulled me under was the sound of Sienna weeping, begging the doctors to save me. The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time… I had seriously started to believe I was just cursed. It never once crossed my mind to suspect my best friend. But it was all by design. Every single act of extreme kindness, and every single “accident,” existed purely because I occupied the space next to Nolan. The weight of this role—the oblivious placeholder, the buffer between two toxic, star-crossed lovers—suddenly felt crushing. I didn’t want to carry it anymore. 3 I went to the ER alone, got the cut cleaned, and took four stitches to the cheek. By the time I paid the co-pay and walked out into the cool evening air, the municipal offices were long closed. My phone buzzed. It was a message in our trio’s group chat, sent by Nolan three hours ago. “Sienna is really shaken up by the blood. She shouldn’t be alone right now. Let’s table the marriage license thing for another day.” I scrolled up, staring blankly at the endless stream of messages. Nolan loved communicating in this group chat. Whenever I asked him why he didn’t just text me privately, he would shrug, entirely nonchalant. “It was just the first thread that popped up. Sienna’s your best friend, right? Who cares if she sees we’re grabbing takeout?” Looking at it now, the truth was glaringly obvious. Every casual update, every photo of our dinners, wasn’t for my benefit. It was a twisted, passive-aggressive way of reporting his life to her. The deeper the love, the deeper the resentment. The echoes of their past complaints about each other rang in my ears. I let out a dry, exhausted chuckle. I had zero interest in being the third point in their twisted little love triangle. I stood on the sidewalk, typed out a message, and hit send. “There won’t be another day. We’re done, Nolan.” On the Uber ride back, I texted my real estate agent, telling her I wanted to list my condo immediately. Then, I asked the driver to pull over at a Target so I could buy two large suitcases. By the time I unlocked the front door of the apartment, an hour had passed since I sent the breakup text. The group chat had remained dead silent. I took a deep breath, thinking I had mentally prepared myself for whatever was on the other side of that door. But seeing Sienna curled up against Nolan’s chest on the sofa still made my heart stutter. When they heard the door click, they looked up. The moment Sienna made eye contact with me, massive, glistening tears spilled down her cheeks, soaking right into the fabric of the expensive linen shirt I had bought Nolan last week. “Audrey, I am so, so sorry,” she gasped, her voice trembling. “I just… I couldn’t control my hand…” Nolan didn’t push her away. Instead, he reached up and gently, reverently, wiped the tears from her cheek with his thumb. He stood up, his movements careful so as not to jostle her, and walked over to me. He grabbed my elbow, pulling me toward the balcony, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “You heard us earlier, didn’t you?” I looked at him, my expression perfectly flat, and nodded. There wasn’t a trace of guilt in his eyes. Instead, he looked deeply, profoundly annoyed. “Then stop making this harder than it has to be,” he snapped. “Can’t you just give Sienna a little time to adjust? She’s just having a hard time processing the fact that we’re getting married. She didn’t mean any harm.” His words slid from his throat like jagged glass, tearing into whatever residual affection I had left for him. “She didn’t mean any harm?” I repeated, my voice eerily calm. “And what about you? What was your excuse for buying your ‘ex’ ten-thousand-dollar Cartier bracelets? What about the monthly charges for flights to Aspen and Miami? I thought you were at sales conferences, Nolan. I thought you were working.” Nolan’s jaw tightened, a dark flush creeping up his neck. “You’ve been auditing my bank statements?” My throat tightened. It physically hurt to speak. In five years of being together, I had trusted him implicitly. I never demanded his passwords, never tracked his location, never asked him to report his every move. And this was the reward. The tenderness he showed Sienna was a language he had never spoken with me. Yet, instead of apologizing, Nolan was looking at me like I was the villain. “Could you stop being so completely irrational?” he demanded, running a hand through his hair. “Sienna and I are ancient history. I agreed to marry you, didn’t I? What more do you want from me?” He wasn’t lying. He had given me the grand gestures. The sweeping proposal on a rooftop, the three-carat diamond, the custom Vera Wang gown, the meticulous involvement in picking out our catering menu. But all I ever wanted was a heart that belonged entirely to me. “Nolan, you—” Before I could finish, a choked gasp erupted from the living room. Nolan sprinted back inside. Sienna had collapsed onto the rug, her hands clawing desperately at her throat, her face contorted in agony. “Hold on, I’m getting your inhaler!” Nolan’s face went completely white. His hands shook as he started ripping open the console drawers. Sienna had severe asthma. But as I looked at her, noting the very distinct, healthy flush in her cheeks and the lack of a true wheeze, my eyes narrowed. Before I could process the performance, Sienna suddenly scrambled across the floor, throwing herself at my feet and clutching my ankles. “Audrey, I know I messed up! I’m sorry!” she choked out, looking up at me with wide, terrified eyes. “Please… please just give me my medicine back!” 4 I stared down at her, utterly stunned. Sienna was gripping my legs like a drowning woman, her eyes pleading for a mercy I supposedly withheld. “Are you out of your mind?” I demanded, trying to shake her off. The setup was glaringly obvious. As much as I despised her right now, I would never hide someone’s medication. I wouldn’t play games with a human life. But Nolan believed her. Of course he did. He bought her pathetic, amateur-hour acting without a second thought. He shoved past me, storming directly into my bedroom. I heard the sound of hangers scraping aggressively against the rod. He was tearing apart my closet. I wrenched my legs free from Sienna’s grip and marched into the bedroom. My silk blouses and skirts were strewn across the floor, trampled under his shoes. “Why the hell would I take her inhaler? She’s clearly—” “Found it!” Nolan interrupted, pulling a small, plastic albuterol inhaler out of the pocket of his own trench coat, which had been hanging on the back of the door. He turned around, his face pale with a rage I had never seen directed at me. He closed the distance between us in two massive strides. As he brushed past me, he threw his arm out and shoved me hard. I wasn’t bracing for it. My heels slipped on the scattered silk blouses, and I went crashing backward. My hip slammed brutally into the corner of the heavy oak dresser. A sharp, breathless cry escaped my lips. Nolan didn’t even flinch. It was as if I made no sound at all. He dropped to his knees beside Sienna, holding her up, placing the inhaler between her lips with trembling hands. “Deep breath. That’s it. Are you okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?” he whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears. He was shaking. He was so deeply, entirely terrified of losing her. Without waiting for her to answer, he scooped her up bridal style. He walked right past me, carrying her out the front door, not sparing me a single glance. Watching the door click shut behind them, a strange, hollow laugh bubbled up in my chest. Five years. Five years of building a life, and there was absolutely no foundation of trust. We were just living in a house of cards, and Sienna had simply opened a window to let the breeze in. I dragged myself up, ignoring the throbbing pain in my hip, and pulled out the suitcases. I packed with surgical precision. Only my clothes. Only my books. Only the things I had bought for myself. The matching coffee mugs, the custom-engraved keychains, the framed photos—they all went straight into the trash can. Two hours later, the apartment was scrubbed clean of my personal footprint. I was zipping up the second suitcase when my phone buzzed. It was Nolan. “You crossed a massive line today, Audrey.” “You need to come to the hospital and apologize to Sienna right now. If you don’t… the wedding is postponed indefinitely.” This was the first time he had texted me outside the group chat in weeks, and it was to demand an apology for his ex-girlfriend. He was so profoundly arrogant, so entirely convinced that I would fold. He thought my love for him was a leash he could yank whenever he pleased. He was wrong. Before I loved him, I loved myself. “Whatever,” I typed back. I dropped the phone into my bag, took a deep breath, and headed to the TV station. In the dressing room, a young, nervous makeup assistant approached me. “Sienna called in sick. I’ll be doing your makeup and hair for the evening broadcast today, Ms. Evans.” “That’s fine,” I said softly, taking a seat in my usual chair. Looking at my reflection in the lighted mirror, my mind involuntarily conjured an image of Sienna. Two years into my relationship with Nolan, Sienna had miraculously landed a job at the network, assigned directly as my personal makeup artist. She had an uncanny ability to know exactly what shades complemented me. We liked the same indie movies, drank the same obscure oat-milk lattes. It felt like kismet. We were destined to be best friends. I remembered introducing them. I remembered doing all the talking, completely oblivious to the microscopic shift in Nolan’s eyes when he looked at her. Staring at the bandage on my cheek, the only thing I felt was a deep, burning regret for being so blind. “Use a heavier foundation,” I told the assistant. “Make sure the bandage isn’t too obvious.” This was the prime-time evening news. I couldn’t let a personal disaster tank my professional credibility. I took a long, grounding breath, put on my anchor smile, and walked onto the set. The countdown began, and the red light on the main camera blinked on. I looked into the lens, my cadence smooth and steady. But halfway through the opening segment, an ear-splitting burst of static erupted in my IFB earpiece. The piercing electronic whine felt like an icepick to the eardrum. I tightened my core, keeping my expression perfectly neutral, assuming it was just a control room glitch. But a few seconds later, the static cleared, replaced by a voice. Sienna’s voice. “I’m so sorry, Audrey. I’m sorry I ruined things between you and Nolan.” My heart slammed against my ribs. It was the first time in my entire career that a flash of genuine panic crossed my face on live television. “I was just so bitter,” her voice wept directly into my ear, loud and echoing. “I haven’t moved on. But I genuinely wanted to be your friend. Can you ever forgive me?” I glanced at the floor director, signaling wildly with my eyes to cut my audio feed, but forced my mouth into a serene smile for the camera. Sienna was practically sobbing into the microphone. It was a calculated, vicious attempt to break my concentration and ruin my broadcast. 5 My mind blanked for three agonizing seconds. I stumbled over the teleprompter script. A noticeable stutter, followed by mispronouncing a key diplomat’s name. “Audrey! You are a veteran anchor! What the hell was that out there?” The moment the broadcast ended, the executive producer cornered me in the hallway, his face purple with rage. I was exhausted, humiliated, and entirely out of patience. I refused to take the fall for this. “Someone hijacked my IFB feed. They were talking into my ear the entire time,” I said, my voice diamond-hard. “Who?! Find them! Now!” I didn’t need to look hard. I grabbed my coat and drove straight back to the condo I had vacated hours earlier. When I pushed the door open, I found Sienna sitting at the kitchen island, eyes red and puffy, sipping tea. Without breaking stride, I walked right up to her, raised my hand, and slapped her across the face. The crack echoed off the high ceilings. Sienna stumbled off the barstool, crashing onto the hardwood floor. She let out a pathetic whimper, clutching her cheek. It didn’t satisfy me. I stepped forward, raising my hand again. But before I could swing, my wrist was caught in a vice grip. I whipped my head around. Nolan was glaring down at me, his face a mask of absolute fury. “Have you lost your mind?!” he roared, his voice bouncing off the walls. “She just wanted to apologize to you! What did she do to deserve this?” “She hacked the control room intercom during a live broadcast!” I yelled back, wrenching my arm out of his grasp. “You want to talk about what she deserves? You come with me to the station right now and explain to my producers that this catastrophic broadcast was your ex-girlfriend’s fault!” I lunged toward Sienna again, but Nolan stepped squarely in front of her, acting as a human shield. “You always blame everyone else when you fold under pressure,” Nolan sneered, looking at me with pure disgust. “If you can’t handle the stress of being an anchor, maybe you should just quit.” Before I could tear into him, Sienna reached out and tugged gently on the hem of his sweater. “Don’t talk to her like that, Nolan. It really is my fault,” she whimpered, her eyes wide and innocent. “You guys are getting married. Please don’t let me make the bride angry.” Nolan and I both froze. The bride. She had never called me that before. It was a deliberate, perfectly timed wedge, isolating me into the role of the hysterical, nagging wife. The protective instinct in Nolan’s eyes practically overflowed. He leaned down, his voice dropping an octave, gentle and reassuring. “Don’t worry about the wedding. That’s a conversation for another time.” I wanted to laugh, but my phone rang. It was Station Director Davis. “Audrey, my office. Now.” When I walked into the executive suite, Mr. Davis looked up from his desk, his expression unreadable. “Audrey, I reviewed the tapes. That broadcast error wasn’t your fault,” he said, folding his hands. “Actually, you handled the disruption beautifully. Your composure under fire is exactly why I want to send you to the national affiliate network in Chicago. Are you interested in the promotion?” I sat there, momentarily paralyzed. Two years ago, this exact offer had been laid on the table. And I had turned it down without a second thought. I had told management my life was here, my home was here, my fiancé was here. But now? Now, the sand had completely slipped through my fingers. I had absolutely no reason to stay. “I’ll take it, Mr. Davis. Thank you,” I said firmly. “But if I leave, who takes the evening slot?” Mr. Davis sighed, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Your makeup artist, Sienna, has been lobbying the producers for a shot in front of the camera. I initially shot it down. But Nolan Hayes personally vouched for her. He called in some major favors with our advertisers, practically guaranteeing her success. So, we’re giving her a trial run on the late-night entertainment segment.” Hearing Nolan’s name made my pulse skip a beat. Nolan, the man who constantly preached about the integrity of hard work, who despised nepotism and corporate backdoor deals. He was cashing in his integrity to buy Sienna a vanity project. I touched the bandage on my cheek. A slow, chilling smile touched my lips. “I have two months before I need to report to Chicago,” I said smoothly. “I’d love to spend that time giving back to the network. Sienna doesn’t have any anchoring experience.” “I’ll train her.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “543145”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On our wedding anniversary, I personally went to the hotel penthouse to catch my husband cheating. Dominic Vance was leaning back on the sofa, his arm wrapped around his young mistress, casually lighting a cigarette. “Elena, you’re five years older than me. You should have known you couldn’t keep me forever. Aren’t you tired of trying to control me all these years?” The young girl snuggled into his chest, giggling. “Elena, sweetie, an old woman should know when to give up. Men just prefer younger, fresher girls.” As soon as she finished, the room erupted into laughter. I smiled too. For five years, I fought his family to secure his inheritance and put him in the CEO chair. But he dumped all the company’s burdens on me, traveling the world with one fresh young face after another. Every time I caught him, his excuse was always the same: “I’m still young, I haven’t had enough fun yet.” Over the years, I didn’t know how many of his messes I cleaned up, or how many scandalous headlines I buried. Everyone said I was hopelessly in love with Dominic, to tolerate him to this extent. But they didn’t know that my absolute tolerance for him came entirely from his face—he looked exactly like his older brother, my late first love. I spent five years weaving a dream for myself. But now, it was time to wake up.

Seeing the smile on my face, the laughter in the room stopped. Dominic put away his smug grin, frowning as he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “How many bodyguards did you bring this time? It’s always the same trick, Elena. It’s getting boring.” On the way to the hotel, I had actually planned on that. I even brought a dozen security guards. But right now, I just felt exhausted. “If you’ve had your fun, tone it down. I’m only here to warn you: don’t push it too far.” I took the photos out of my bag and threw them at him. They were all intimate pictures of him and Chloe Sinclair. “Today is our wedding anniversary. Remember to come home tonight.” Dominic glanced at the photos, a flash of embarrassment crossing his face. The next second, he pulled Chloe closer by her waist, lifted her chin, and kissed her deeply. His voice was low and gravelly. “Got it, wife. Chloe and I still have some business to finish. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” The spoiled rich heirs in the room cheered and clapped. I walked out of the noisy room with cold indifference. At 8 PM, I dragged my exhausted body back to our mansion in the Hamptons. A candlelight dinner was ready. To create a romantic atmosphere, my assistant had even prepared a heart-shaped cake. No matter how wild Dominic acted outside, he always made sure to come home for dinner on our anniversary. Not because he loved me, but because we had to take photos to post on Snapchat and Instagram, pretending we were deeply in love to quiet the media rumors. But tonight, I waited until 10 PM, and Dominic still wasn’t home. Just as I was about to call him, Chloe sent a message using Dominic’s Snapchat account. [Chloe: Dominic is watching the city lights with me. He’s not coming home tonight, sweetie.] Next was a video. The lighting was dim and the quality was blurry, only showing two tangled bodies. But their heavy breathing was crystal clear. The girl’s voice was sickeningly sweet. “Dominic, today is your anniversary. Won’t your wife be angry?” Dominic let out a low, breathless laugh. “She’s a thirty-year-old woman. Does she really think she owns me?” Over the past five years, I had received too many provocations like this. Dominic always allowed his mistresses to use his phone to torment me. But missing our wedding anniversary for a mistress—this was a first. If this were the past, I would have immediately sent men to drag him back. But this time, I set my phone down and quietly finished my cold steak. Halfway through, my phone suddenly buzzed wildly. Instagram was blowing up. Paparazzi had caught Dominic and Chloe kissing passionately on a luxury yacht on the Hudson River. Usually at this time, the trending topics would be about our anniversary and how perfect we were. But tonight, it was about Dominic’s blatant affair on our wedding anniversary. The city lights of Manhattan reflected on the dark water. Dominic held Chloe’s face, kissing her with deep emotion. Everyone was waiting to see me humiliate myself. Some internet trolls even tagged my account. My assistant, Sarah, called me in a panic. “Elena, should we take down the trending topics?” In the past, I would have already contacted the PR team to make the news vanish. Today, I hesitated. I stared at the looping video of them kissing on my screen, and said calmly, “No need.” A sudden wave of nausea hit my stomach. I covered my mouth, ran to the bathroom, and threw up. When I looked up, my face in the mirror was as pale as paper. I pulled a pregnancy test report from my bag, tore it into pieces, and threw it in the trash. This baby was a complete accident. I couldn’t keep it, and I didn’t want to. Cold tears slid down my face. I clutched my flat stomach and cried silently in the empty, massive house. Since marrying into the Vance family, I rarely cried. I couldn’t afford to. In everyone’s eyes, Elena Sterling was a ruthless, powerful businesswoman who controlled the Vance empire. But I felt pain, too. And because of one person, I had nearly lost my mind trying to fulfill his dying wish. Now, my promise to him was fulfilled. I had no reason to stay.

The scandal stayed online all night, making our crumbling marriage the talk of the town. When Dominic finally returned, I was just about to leave for the office. He grabbed my wrist with terrifying force. “Elena, why didn’t you bury the news yesterday?” His voice was filled with rage. “Chloe was called a homewrecker all night! People are blocking her door, and she can’t even leave her house!” I shook off his grip and rubbed my sore wrist. “I warned you yesterday not to go too far. You didn’t listen.” Dominic looked at me in disbelief. “Elena, since when did you become so jealous? You were never like this.” Yes. In the past, I always cleaned up his messes behind his back. It made him believe that my tolerance was a given. I glanced at my watch. “The board meeting is at ten. You have two hours. Don’t be late.” I turned to walk toward the door. But before I could take a step, Dominic slammed me against the wall, pinning my wrists. His breath was heavy, his eyes burning with an emotion I couldn’t read. “Elena,” he muttered. I froze. For years, he only called me by my full name when he was angry. The only other time he called me so softly was when he was drunk, kissing me while whispering how much he hated me. “Don’t be greedy, Elena. Since you chose the Vance empire, don’t expect to ever have my heart!” He let go of my wrists and warned me coldly, “Don’t touch Chloe. You have no right to control me.” Dominic turned and walked upstairs. He didn’t see me leaning against the wall behind him, dry-heaving in pain. Looking at his tall, straight back, sometimes I really couldn’t tell dream from reality. The first time I met Dominic was on a rainy day. Julian Vance had just died. The greedy uncles of the Vance family had kicked nineteen-year-old Dominic out of the family estate to steal his inheritance. The teenager stood in the pouring rain, holding his brother’s urn, letting the rain soak him completely. I watched him from my car for ten minutes. The moment I pushed the car door open, he turned around, and our eyes met. Time seemed to stop. I stared at his face, my heart beating frantically. They looked so much alike. He looked exactly like Julian did when he was young, as if Julian had crossed ten years of time to stand before me again. “Dominic Vance, right?” I reached my hand out of the car. “Get in.” The boy clutched the urn tighter, stepping back defensively. “Who are you?” “A friend of your brother’s.” His eyes were red as he stared at me, his voice raw. “Why should I trust you?” “I can help you take back your family’s empire,” I said, leaning forward to grab his cold hand. “On one condition. Marry me.” I needed the title of Mrs. Vance to help Julian protect his family’s legacy.

I brought Dominic back to the Sterling estate and announced our marriage to my family. My father was so furious he smashed his glass. “If you marry him, you are dead to this family!” But I didn’t hesitate. I took Dominic’s hand and walked out the door. At that time, the Vance family was a sinking ship, about to be devoured by other elite families. I voluntarily married down to help Vance Group survive. The only condition was returning Dominic’s rightful share of the inheritance. Two months later, Dominic and I had our wedding. Not a single member of the Sterling family showed up. All of high society mocked me for marrying a charity case. The next day, I brought Dominic into Vance Group. At first, we kept a respectful distance. I treated Dominic like a younger brother, teaching him how to run a business. He would call me “boss” or “Elena,” blushing whenever I got too close. His personality was completely different from Julian’s. But that face was eighty percent identical. I often found myself dazed just staring at him. Under my management, the near-bankrupt Vance Group was brought back to life, though it made us many enemies. Whenever trouble arose, I always shielded Dominic. The most dangerous time, kidnappers threw him into the ocean. Without hesitation, I dove into the freezing water to save him. When we dragged ourselves onto the shore, my forehead hit a jagged rock. My face was covered in blood. To protect Dominic, I was truly willing to give up my life. In the hospital, Dominic held my hand, crying until his eyes were swollen and red. But I just smiled and wiped his tears away. On my birthday, Dominic rented a luxury yacht and set off a city-wide fireworks display. “Elena, I love you. Let’s be a real husband and wife, okay?” He held a bouquet of roses, looking at me nervously, his eyes shining like stars. I closed my eyes and kissed him. And in that kiss, I kissed the boy who would never return. Once we were together, Dominic became incredibly clingy. At the office, he would steal kisses whenever no one was looking. At home, he wrapped himself around me, burning with passion. If I pushed him away even slightly, he would whisper my name in that deep, seductive voice until my heart melted. But I didn’t like him calling me “boss” or “Elena” during those intimate times. I always made him call me “Nia.” To please me, Dominic began wearing only black and white shirts and suits. He even started wearing glasses, even though his vision was perfect. My gaze on him grew more and more intense. It was as if Julian had truly returned to me. But the good times didn’t last. During a business trip, Dominic got into a horrific car accident and was put on life support. That day happened to be the annual shareholder meeting to officially name him CEO. Hearing about his accident, the board immediately conspired to replace him. I hesitated, but in the end, I left the hospital and drove straight to the board meeting. After a fierce battle, using my own influence and reputation built over the years, I took the CEO chair myself. At the same time, I exposed the dirty laundry of Dominic’s corrupt uncles, sending them straight to prison. When Dominic finally woke up, I rushed to his hospital room. His face was pale, but his eyes were ice-cold. “Elena, is the family business more important than my life?” I knew he would blame me, but I had no choice. Before I could explain, he let out a bitter laugh, which turned into tears. “I never understood why you helped me for no reason. It turns out, all you wanted was the Vance empire.” “Dominic, that’s not true…” I tried to explain, but he cut me off. His voice was cold and detached. “You won, Elena. The company is yours. Don’t come near me until I’m discharged.” After leaving the hospital, Dominic officially took the President title but dumped all the actual work on me. He began staying out all night, drinking and bringing different women to hotels. Sometimes, he even brought them back to our mansion, messing around in our bed. I had to catch him over and over, burying his scandals time and again. At first, my heart broke. Eventually, I just felt numb. Dominic hated me, and this was his way of punishing me. But because of my guilt, I tolerated everything. We went from a loving couple to toxic spouses, torturing each other under the same roof. Now, I finally see clearly. He is nothing like Julian. It’s time to wake up from this five-year dream. On my way to the office, I booked a one-way ticket out of New York.

Because of yesterday’s scandal, Dominic behaved himself today and showed up to the board meeting on time. After the meeting, we walked back to the executive suite together. The moment we opened the door, Chloe threw herself into Dominic’s arms, sobbing hysterically. “Dominic, I’m pregnant. I don’t know what to do…” Dominic turned to look at me, and I couldn’t hide the shock in my eyes. He took the pregnancy report, his face darkening. Chloe whimpered, “If you don’t want it, I’ll get an abortion…” “Keep it,” Dominic said, pulling her tightly against him. His voice was firm. “Move into the mansion. I’ll hire the best nannies to take care of you.” “But…” Chloe peeked at me timidly. “Is that really okay? What about Elena?” “Ignore her,” Dominic said with a sneer. “Elena, you can’t have kids anyway. You wouldn’t want the Vance bloodline to end with us, would you?” I instinctively clutched my stomach, my hands tightening into fists. Dominic looked at my stomach with disgust. “What? Unhappy because I said you’re barren? In the past five years, how many times did you actually let me touch you?” He took Chloe’s hand, lacing his fingers through hers, and walked out. Everyone in the hallway stared at me. I pretended not to see. My phone lit up. Marcus, my lawyer friend, had sent an email with the divorce papers. Dominic moved fast. When I got home, Chloe’s things were already piled high in the living room. “The master bedroom is for Chloe. You move to the guest room.” Dominic followed me into our bedroom. My blankets and clothes had been thrown onto the floor. I didn’t make a scene. I quietly packed my clothes, picked up my blanket, and walked to the guest room. “Elena, you’re so generous, just giving up without a fight?” Dominic blocked me at the guest room door, gritting his teeth. “If you just cry and beg me, maybe I won’t keep this child.” I pushed him out of the room and smiled faintly. “Congratulations on the baby.” The next second, Dominic slammed the door and stormed off, leaving the massive villa in dead silence again. The next day, Dominic suddenly called an emergency board meeting. He wanted to transfer twenty percent of the company’s shares to Chloe and her unborn child, and proposed removing me from the board entirely. Dominic sat at the head of the table, his eyes full of malice. “Elena, this company belongs to the Vances. An outsider like you shouldn’t have her hands on it anyway.” Several old board members immediately chimed in. “Elena has held this position for too long. It’s time to step down.” “Mr. Vance is fully capable now. Elena should go home and rest.” “Why should an outsider run our company?” Everyone waited to see how I would fight back, but I simply nodded. In truth, I didn’t want this seat anymore anyway. “I resign,” I said, looking at Dominic. I couldn’t help but warn him one last time, “But regarding the shares, I suggest you think it over carefully.” “Jealous?” Dominic sneered. “Elena, money and power are the only things you ever care about.” “Go home and rest. Don’t come back to the office.” He was using the exact corporate strategies I taught him to destroy me.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “467157”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster

My husband was away on a business trip, and after I recovered from my injuries, I secretly went behind his back to driving school to learn how to drive. A young female student accidentally hit me, and she looked at me with disgust. “You’re already this old, and your eyesight is this bad. Why are you still trying to learn how to drive?” The girl was beautiful, and she was the first to make a big deal out of it, so the instructor and the other students all took her side. My two toes were shattered in a crush fracture, and I was in unbearable pain, so I insisted on calling the police. The girl’s mother rushed over and slapped a card into my hand. “Isn’t this just about money?” “Is ten grand enough?” “Take it as charity! My monthly allowance is over a million, and I can’t be bothered to argue with someone like you.” There was a time when I would not have cared about this little bit of money. But after my car accident injury and the revocation of my driver’s license, I had been resting at home all this time. The company collapsed during that period, and my husband alone was responsible for the family’s expenses and debts, while there was no telling where my daughter’s college tuition would come from. I gritted my teeth and reached down to pick up the card from the ground, but the girl’s mother stepped on my hand. “If you want the money, apologize to my daughter first, and promise you’ll never show up in front of her again and bother her.” I was so humiliated I didn’t know how to answer. Just then, another figure hurried over to the girl. “Mia, who’s trying to scam you?” “Dad’s got your back!” The man followed the girl’s gaze and looked at me. The next second, the cold rage on his face drained away, leaving him deathly pale. My humiliating gaze turned to shock. How had my husband, who was supposed to be on a business trip out of town, suddenly come back and become someone else’s father?

I couldn’t feel the pain in my shattered toes anymore, and I struggled to my feet. “Ryan?” “Didn’t you say your manager was bullying you and sent you away on a month-long business trip?” A week ago, when he left the house, he was wearing a faded suit and driving a used car that had been flooded. Now, he was wearing an expensive custom-tailored suit. A black business Mercedes was parked in front of the driving school. The girl’s mother pouted and clung to his arm. “Ryan, who is this woman? Do you know her?” “She tried to extort money from Mia. I gave her ten grand, and she took it.” “I was just waiting for her to apologize to Mia.” Ryan avoided my gaze and turned to the woman beside him, handing over a beautifully wrapped gift in his hand. “I’m pretty familiar with her.” “Summer, take our daughter to the car first. I’ll handle this.” “Be good and don’t make a scene.” “I promise, once our daughter gets her license, I’ll take you both to Hawaii, okay?” He coaxed her and kissed her again, and only then did the woman take the girl and leave. I stared at them in a daze, my teeth clenched, my whole body cold to the bone. How could I still not understand? My husband of twenty years had had a child with another woman! I felt sorry for him working so hard that I couldn’t even bear to take painkillers, yet he gave another woman a million dollars a month as spending money! I trembled and tried to say something, but my throat felt like it had been tightly gripped, and not a single sound came out. “Fine.” “Since this has already happened, I admit I did something that wronged you.” Ryan had already calmed down, and his face carried a trace of relief and release. “But your company really did go bankrupt before. In these past few years, I built everything back up on my own, and the assets are under my parents’ names, so it has nothing to do with you.” “If you want a divorce, you won’t get a single cent.” “If you don’t want to divorce and keep living with me, I can make sure you and our daughter have a comfortable life.” At the end, he took my hand and let out a soft sigh. “Grace, at our age, there are a lot of things we really don’t need to overthink.” I looked at the husband in front of me in disbelief. I couldn’t believe that the man who had insisted on wiping me down, washing my feet, and taking care of me when I was injured, making me think he was the one who loved me most in the world, could actually face me so calmly and so coldly after I found out he was cheating on me. I wiped away the tears that had somehow spilled onto my face and suddenly laughed. “Ryan, you can’t even be bothered to lie to me a little, can you?”

The black business Mercedes in front of the driving school rolled down its window, and the girl said she was hungry, urging Ryan impatiently. Ryan picked up the card from the ground and stuffed it into my pocket. “Go to the hospital and get checked out first, and calm down while you’re at it. Think it over carefully.” “When I get home tonight, I’ll explain everything to you and make it up to you.” With that, he waved happily toward the other side. The vivid look on his face was like a child who had just gotten the toy he wanted. My past, my whole life up to that point, came crashing down all at once…… “Grace, I found that woman’s name and address……” Three hours later, my best friend gave me a name, Summer Reed. And an address for a housing complex. I took a taxi there, and along the way, I seemed to have gone crazy, replaying my past with Ryan over and over in my mind. We met at nineteen, and by twenty we were already married. My family was well-off, and Ryan was capable. The two of us quickly found an opportunity, got rich, and started a company. We lived a happy, ordinary life. Until four years ago, on my thirty-sixth birthday, everything changed. I was at a gathering with family and friends when I got a call from the company secretary and learned that Ryan had gotten into trouble, gotten into a fight with someone at a bar, and been beaten up. I was so anxious that I immediately drove over. But because I was too emotional, I ended up in a car accident on the way. My driver’s license was revoked, and I lay in bed for four years before my injuries healed. And during those four years, the company went bankrupt, and Ryan was forced to take odd jobs, coming home late every day and working himself to exhaustion. Even so, he still took careful care of me. I couldn’t get out of bed, and he fed me, washed my feet, and wiped me down, day after day without change. I felt so sorry for him. So once I recovered, I immediately went to get my driver’s license, thinking that even driving for a rideshare app would help ease some of Ryan’s pressure. But how had he suddenly ended up with a daughter? He had already turned things around, so why was he still watching me and our daughter suffer? I wanted all of this to be a nightmare, but even when I pressed hard on my shattered toes, the pain still didn’t wake me up. I didn’t understand! If he didn’t love me, why did he need to keep up this act with me for so long? “We’re here—” The driver pulled over, and I looked at the upscale housing complex in the city center. Very quickly, I noticed that right across from the complex was a bar that looked extremely familiar. It was clearly the exact place the secretary had sent me the location for four years ago! I went mad looking for people to ask what had happened in that bar on the night of my thirty-sixth birthday. It wasn’t until nightfall that I learned that when I drove there to find Ryan, he was fighting over Summer and got beaten up. After learning the truth, I felt like a joke! I don’t know how I made it to eleven o’clock. When Ryan came back, I was sitting dazed on the flower bed downstairs, my eyes completely numb. “Grace, are you crazy?” When he saw me, he panicked and rushed over to grab me. “Your foot is injured this badly. Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” I shook my head blankly. “Ryan, I don’t hurt.” “That car accident four years ago made me stop being afraid of any injury.” He looked away guiltily. “Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?” “I didn’t tell you to come find me. You were the one who got into the car accident, which caused problems with the company’s business and eventually made it go bankrupt.” “And I still took care of you for four years. Isn’t that enough?” I smiled dazedly. “Ryan, aren’t you the one who’s mixed up?” “I’m your wife, not some mistress who can’t be shown in public!”

“You think taking care of me isn’t something you should do?” As I laughed, I bit down hard on my teeth. “Or did you change your heart, feel like I’m not good enough, and think that taking care of me is your way of making up for me so you can feel like you still have a conscience?” He laughed once, then suddenly let go of my hand. “Grace, Mia is twenty-one.” I was struck like I’d been hit by lightning. Twenty-one? Three years older than my daughter? That meant…… “She was already born before you married me?” Ryan lit a cigarette. “Yes, I never changed my heart. The person I’ve always loved has been Summer.” “That year, she got sick, and we were broke. If we didn’t have money, neither she nor the child would have survived.” “Just then I noticed you were interested in me, and your family was well-off, so I married you and saved their lives.” “So the reason I took care of you wasn’t to make up for anything. It was to repay you for saving their lives.” “The money I made over the past two years was only enough for them to use, so I couldn’t spare any, which was why I pretended to be poor.” “Now my business is starting to recover again, and it’s enough for you and our daughter to go back to the life you had four years ago—” I couldn’t bear to listen anymore. It felt like icy needles were stabbing every pore in my body, and the pain tore me apart! I completely broke down and grabbed his collar. “What am I then?” “So all these years, you’ve just been acting with me? Am I just a tool in your eyes?” “Ryan, how could you……” “How could you do this to me!” My sorrowful roar made him frown tightly. He held me like he was trying to comfort me, but his words were cold and harsh. “I haven’t done anything wrong to you.” “These years, I’ve fulfilled the responsibilities of a husband. In the future, I’ll keep playing the role of your husband and the role of Lily’s father.” “You’re already forty, and your health is not good. Be rational.” “Pretending not to know anything is the best choice for you.” My body stiffened. I no longer felt anger toward him. All that was left was deep fear! I shoved him away and felt like I no longer knew him. He was so strange that the hair all over my body stood on end! “No!” “Ryan, you are not my husband.” “Divorce!” “I’m divorcing you—” “Ring ring ring—” The sudden ringtone cut off my words. It was my daughter, Emily Miller, calling. I stepped back several paces, putting a wide distance between myself and Ryan before I dared to answer. My daughter’s cheerful laugh came from the other end. “Mom, I’m off work!” “I got last month’s paycheck. It’s three thousand bucks! I’ll take you out to eat tomorrow!” I suddenly couldn’t breathe through the bitter ache in my chest. My daughter was eighteen this year, and after getting into college, she found a summer job because our family wasn’t well-off, working overtime every night until eleven or twelve. But Ava, the daughter of Ryan and Summer, had clothes on her body that cost enough to cover my daughter’s tuition for four years. I dug my nails into my palm until it bled before I finally forced out a shaky “Okay” and hung up. Ryan, who had just put out his cigarette, walked toward me. “Grace, be rational. After the divorce, can you afford Lily’s life?” “You’re like this already, and you can’t even take care of yourself. How are you going to take care of her?”

I stared blankly at Ryan. There was so much I wanted to say, but when the words reached my lips, all that came out was a bitter laugh. “Ryan, do you really think of her as your daughter?” “Do you even care about her?” Ryan had developed anemia caused by bone marrow failure, and every six months he needed a stem cell transplant from our daughter. That kind of pain, worse than death, had already been endured by our daughter several times. Yet she had never once complained. What she got in return was Ryan’s deception, and him not caring at all! In the first month after she started working, our daughter was bullied by customers and cried so hard she nearly broke down. The restaurant owner didn’t care. I couldn’t get out of bed. When I called Ryan, he only gave a perfunctory reply that he was busy. But when Ava had hit me and was unharmed herself, Ryan rushed over in a panic at the very first moment. Facing my question now, there wasn’t even a trace of guilt in his eyes, and his voice was flat. “Of course I care about her. From now on, I’ll cover her tuition. Whatever Mia has, she’ll have too.” “Of course, the premise is that you need to behave.” “You know what should be told to her and what shouldn’t.” With that, he turned and went upstairs. I was left standing there, nearly numb, unable even to move my feet. I didn’t know what I should do anymore. I had nothing now, and my foot was injured. How was I supposed to make money and take care of Lily? I could get a divorce. I could endure a hard life. But Lily could have a better life. What right did I have to drag her through suffering with me? I couldn’t breathe again. In my despair, my best friend called again. “Grace, everything’s been checked.” “That bastard Ryan got together with Summer when they were freshmen! But that daughter of his doesn’t seem to be their biological child.” “I found some of Ava’s hospital records, and her blood type doesn’t match that pair of scum……..” My best friend had known me since childhood. She came from a very good family, and she was the only person I could trust right now. She would never lie to me. Which meant Ava was not Ryan’s biological daughter? Just as that thought surfaced, I saw my daughter’s tired figure. She was still wearing her restaurant uniform, too exhausted to even stand up straight. But after seeing me, she forced herself to perk up because she was afraid I would worry. Then when she noticed the injury on my foot, her eyes went red with panic. “Mom, why is there so much blood on your shoe?” I didn’t even have time to care about my own injury. I forced myself to stay strong and took my daughter’s hand as we went upstairs. “Lily, I have something very important to tell you.” “Let’s go home first and see your dad.” I couldn’t pretend to know nothing and keep staying with Ryan. I had to tell Ryan that Lily was his only daughter. That way, even if I divorced him, he wouldn’t abandon Lily and would give her a better life. That was the best solution I could think of. But when we got home, before I could even say anything, Ryan was already going to take our daughter to the hospital. “Lily, my bone marrow problem is getting worse. In the future, I may need a stem cell transplant every three months, so you need to be mentally prepared.” My daughter didn’t refuse, but she said somewhat awkwardly, “Dad, can we go to the hospital in a few days? I’m sick lately. I feel awful, and I’m a little too weak.” Ryan was still smiling, but his brows had already begun to knit together slightly. “Be good, Lily. Dad has to keep traveling tomorrow, and I might not be back for a month. We can’t delay it.” I could not bear to listen any longer, so I grabbed Ryan and took him back into the bedroom, locking the door behind us. “Do you even have a heart?” “You’re not going on a business trip. You’re taking Summer and her daughter to Hawaii! Can’t this wait a few days?” “Lily said she’s sick. Don’t you know how painful stem cell transplants are?” Ryan’s face was full of impatience. “She’s my daughter. What’s the big deal if she suffers a little for me?” “Mia’s body is weak. Only Lily can help me.” “I’ll give her enough compensation.” At that, my whole body began shaking violently on its own, and my mind buzzed. So Ryan wanted to keep Lily not out of fatherly love, but simply because he needed her stem cells! He had no feelings for us at all, and even the fact that Lily was his only daughter would not change that! Hatred surged to the extreme in my heart, and instead I calmed down. “Okay, Lily can go with you to the hospital.” “But it’s too late today. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” After Ryan reluctantly agreed, he went to bed and rest. I couldn’t lie down next to him, so I went to my daughter’s room. Then I explained everything to her through the night, packed our things, and took her away from this house. The next morning, Ryan called. “Grace, did you take Lily away?” “If you keep causing trouble like this, aren’t you afraid you’ll use up all my patience and end up with nothing?” Looking at my daughter beside me, who had cried until her eyes were swollen and still had not come out of the grief, my voice was left with only bone-deep coldness. “Ryan, from now on, my daughter and I have nothing to do with you anymore, and we won’t do anything for you ever again.” He let out a cold laugh on the other end. “You’re threatening me?” “Grace, you know Lily isn’t my only daughter.” “I don’t need her to ease my bone marrow disease, but without me, you two won’t even have a place to live!” Is that so? Then we’ll see. I looked at the bright morning sun on the horizon and hung up decisively.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “467158”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster