Category: English

After our wedding, Arthur was recruited by Columbia University with a multi-million dollar tenure-track package. I gave up everything to move to New York with him. But three years passed, and I still hadn’t even received my temporary resident card. Meanwhile, the female assistant who had relocated to the US with us had already secured her Green Card through Arthur’s connections. Furious, I demanded to return home to Toronto. For the first time ever, the always-calm Professor Arthur Vance had red, teary eyes. He held my hand, begging me to stay. “I’m providing for you, so there’s no rush for these documents. Besides, immigration is a formal process. My status is highly scrutinized right now, and I have to avoid any conflicts of interest.” “As for Chloe, she left her hometown to follow me to New York for work. Helping her settle down first is what a good boss should do.” My heart softened, and I ultimately let go of my suitcase. That was until the day I went to the bank to handle some business. When I pulled out my marriage certificate for verification, the teller told me: “Ma’am, the federal system shows that you are not legally registered as Mr. Vance’s spouse. Please verify your documents.” I froze on the spot. From the very beginning, I was never his legal wife. So how could there ever be a spousal visa sponsorship or a job arrangement for me? Without a word, I packed up all my belongings and quietly booked the fastest flight back to Toronto. Some farewells don’t require saying goodbye. … When I returned to the apartment, I tried the fingerprint lock three times. Each time, it beeped: “Verification Failed.” That was when I finally snapped out of my shock. I double-checked the door. I hadn’t gone to the wrong apartment. It was just that the smart lock was no longer the one Arthur and I had installed together when we first moved to New York three years ago. I called Arthur. “What’s wrong?” He answered quickly. “Why was the door lock changed?” It was perfectly fine when I left the house this morning. The other end of the line was silent for two seconds. “Oh, this afternoon Chloe said the lock on her apartment broke. She said she was used to the model we have, and ordering a new one online would take too long. So I took ours off and installed it on her door for now.” “I bought a new lock for our place, but I haven’t had time to register your fingerprint yet.” “Just find a hotel for tonight. I’m working late, so I won’t be coming home.” Chloe’s lock broke? So he uninstalled our front door lock and gave it to her… And told me, the lady of the house, to go stay in a hotel? I thought I had misheard him. I instinctively wanted to argue. But when the words reached my lips, all that came out was a single, “Okay.” What else was there to say? It was supposed to be our home, yet it held the fingerprint of an outsider like Chloe Bennett. Didn’t he say that when she moved to New York, he even kept a spare bedroom for her in our apartment just in case? Wasn’t it only natural that she was “used to” our lock? I hung up the phone. I booked a room at a cheap motel down the street from our luxury complex. It was $150 a night. When I swiped my card, the balance was almost empty. When we first moved to New York, Arthur had given me an unlimited American Express card. Later, Chloe started handling a lot of his personal shopping. His suits, his watches, even the insulated coffee mug on his desk—they were all bought by her. Gradually, he handed the Amex over to her. Instead, Arthur would deposit a $2,000 allowance into my debit account every month. He said she was better at shopping than I was, that she had a better eye for fashion and coordination. She claimed she was simply fulfilling her duties as an executive assistant. I didn’t feel like I had the right to argue. That was until our third anniversary. Arthur and I were having a romantic candlelit dinner at home. Just as the mood was getting intimate, the doorbell rang. Arthur went to open it. Chloe stood outside, panting slightly as she handed him a box of ultra-thin condoms. “Professor Vance, it’s your special night! I specifically went out to buy these!” She glanced past him at me, smiling naturally. “You always say this brand feels the best. Aren’t I thoughtful? Don’t I deserve a reward?” Arthur took the box, muttering an awkward “Yeah.” She waved and left. The door closed. He walked back to the dining table holding the box and casually tossed it aside. I stared at the box. I didn’t say a word. I never knew which brand he preferred… Because we had been trying for a baby, so we rarely used protection. That candlelit dinner felt like pure torture. Finally, he said he had something to handle at the university, grabbed his coat, and left. The moment the door shut, I suddenly understood. I hadn’t realized an assistant’s duties could be that intimate. That night, I dreamt of my first day arriving in New York. I had walked out of JFK airport dragging two massive suitcases. Arthur was waiting for me right at the arrivals gate. Back then, he was still the man who would tear up with guilt because I had given up everything to run to him. He was the man who would carry my luggage and let me lean on his shoulder when I was exhausted. But then Chloe arrived. Arthur said she had left her entire life behind to follow him, so he had to help her out. So he helped her get her Green Card. He helped her secure a cushy job at the university. I just never expected that, in the end, he would even help her take the lock off my front door… Early the next morning, I went to book my ticket back to Toronto. As I stood at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, my phone rang. It was a friend back in Canada. “Eleanor, about that background check you asked me to run…” She paused, her voice hesitant. “I pulled some strings, but I could only see the basic registration info. The privacy laws down there are strict, so I can’t get the full file.” “It’s fine,” I said. “Just tell me what you found.” The other end of the line was dead silent for two seconds. “Arthur’s legally registered wife in the US… her last name is Bennett.” I gripped my phone, speechless. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” I whispered. “Thank you.” I hung up. The light turned green. The crowd surged past me, and a new wave of people stopped beside me. I stood frozen in place, staring at the glass facade of the building across the street. The sunlight stung my eyes, making them water. Bennett. Chloe Bennett. It turned out his real family had been by his side this entire time. Standing on the bustling New York street, I suddenly let out a laugh. For the past three years, I had exhausted myself trying to prove my worth, desperate not to be just a housewife, that I had ignored so many glaring details. Like how every weekend, he claimed he had “university business” and would disappear for the entire day. When I asked what it was, he would always brush me off: “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.” Or the time he forgot his documents, and I brought them to his faculty apartment, only to see two toothbrushes on the bathroom sink—one blue, one pink. But I had never dared to think too deeply about it. … Pulling my thoughts back, I continued walking. I crossed two streets, turned three corners, and arrived at the airline ticketing office. As I stood in line, I remembered how long the customs line was when I first landed in New York three years ago. Because I was about to see the man I loved, I was acting like a lovesick fool. I didn’t feel tired at all. When Arthur picked me up, he spun me around in his arms. Until a young woman waved at him from nearby: “Professor Vance! What a coincidence, Eleanor and I were on the same flight!” It was Chloe Bennett. Arthur smiled, taking her suitcase, and explained to me: “I forgot to mention, Chloe is coming over to continue being my assistant. It’s tough for a young girl to move to a new country all by herself.” Chloe smiled sweetly. “Eleanor, I look forward to your guidance.” My smile stiffened slightly, but I nodded politely. On the ride to the apartment, I quietly watched them chat. When she spoke, Arthur would turn his head and listen intently. When she pointed at the skyline, he would follow the direction of her finger. That unwavering focus, which used to belong solely to me, was quietly being shared with her. I felt a sting of jealousy. But I was also happy for him. Good assistants were hard to find, and having someone he trusted by his side would make his transition at Columbia much smoother. During my first few months in New York, I tried to find a job. But because my major was incredibly niche, I couldn’t find anything in my field. Hundreds of resumes either vanished into the void or were met with automated rejections. Growing up, I was an honors student. My path had always been smooth. I had never tasted the bitterness of rejection. During that time, I tossed and turned every night, wondering if I just wasn’t good enough. Eventually, out of desperation, I asked Arthur for help. After dinner one night, I sat down next to him. I stuttered, “Um… could you maybe… ask around at Columbia for me?” “Since you have that spousal sponsorship quota… I was hoping, maybe they could arrange a position for me…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I had never asked anyone to pull strings for me in my entire life. Even though employment assistance was a standard perk in his multi-million dollar recruitment package for spouses, my face burned with shame when I asked. It felt like I was doing something dirty. “Yeah,” he kept his head down, flipping through a research paper. “If you want to work, I’ll ask around when I have time.” I felt a wave of relief. But I waited for three months. When I asked him again, he said he was too busy and told me to wait a little longer. Yet, from what I knew, Chloe had been officially hired by Columbia ages ago. An administrative role, weekends off, excellent benefits. Arthur explained it was just standard recruitment. And I believed him. Looking back now, her degree and experience were nowhere near mine. She wasn’t fluent in foreign languages, and she even stumbled over basic local professional jargon. Why was it that I, who had submitted the exact same resume to the university, didn’t even get a single interview? The answer had been right in front of me all along. I just didn’t want to see it… The line moved forward a step. It was my turn. I handed my passport to the agent. The staff member typed on her keyboard, her brow furrowing. “Ma’am, the system won’t let me issue your ticket.” “Why not?” She turned her monitor slightly toward me. “The federal system shows you have overstayed your visa.” I froze. “Overstayed?” “Did your recent extension application get denied?” She glanced at me. “There is no valid legal status for you in the system.” I stood at the counter, completely silent. Three years. I had lived in New York for three years, and I didn’t even have valid legal status? “Then what do I do now?” “You need to go to USCIS to process the paperwork, pay the penalty fine, and obtain a departure clearance waiver before you can buy a ticket.” She slid my passport back to me. “Next in line, please.” I stepped aside, making room. The person behind me pushed forward, quickly filling the space. I stood there, staring at my Canadian passport. It turned out I wasn’t even legally allowed to be here. Then what were these past three years? Outside the ticketing office, I called the immigration consultant we used. “Mrs. Davis, I wanted to ask, for a case like mine, why has my visa extension never been approved? Now they’re telling me I have to pay a massive penalty.” Mrs. Davis’s voice was as cheerful as ever: “Mrs. Vance! Well, about your situation… logically, it shouldn’t be an issue. Your husband is a tenured professor at Columbia. Spousal dependent visas are usually rubber-stamped. Did your husband file the sponsorship paperwork?” “He did.” “Then that doesn’t make sense…” She paused. “Give me a moment, let me check the system.” The other end of the line went quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was much lower: “Mrs. Vance, forgive me for overstepping, but when your husband sponsored you… did he apply through the spousal family-reunification channel?” I gripped my phone, silent. “The system shows…” she weighed her words carefully, “that the individual approved under your husband’s spousal quota is a Ms. Bennett.” “He did sponsor you, but not as his wife. He used a different, secondary channel.” “However, that specific secondary channel was suspended over a year ago by the government. That’s why your status was never approved.” I took a breath. “I understand. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.” I hung up. Standing on the sidewalk, a lot of details started flooding back. When we first arrived in New York three years ago, Arthur said he was going to handle my paperwork and took all my identification documents. Later, he told me it was all sorted out, so I never asked again. It turned out that the move I thought was for love had just turned me into an undocumented immigrant… I stood on the street corner for a long time. I went to every federal office I could. Finally, I discovered there was only one way to resolve this. My former sponsor—Arthur—had to sign a sworn declaration. He had to state that he failed to inform me of the sponsorship channel change, proving that my visa overstay was not intentional. Only then could I pay the fine, apply for a short-term exit waiver, and legally leave the country. It was simple. It just required one signature from him. But how could I ask? Say, “Since you gave your spousal quota to someone else, can you sign this so I can leave?” If I did that, wouldn’t we have to settle the score for the past three years as well?

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I watched my husband’s award ceremony on a tablet propped up in the kitchen, chopping pork ribs with a heavy cleaver. The host asked him who he wanted to thank the most at this pinnacle of his career. He pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, his voice smooth and gentle: “I want to thank my late wife, Evelyn. She was the one who taught me the true soul of literature.” The cleaver slipped in my hand, nearly taking off my finger. A splash of bloody water from the cutting board hit my apron, blooming like a rotting red flower. Eight years. I am his legally wedded wife. I am the 24/7, live-in caregiver for his paralyzed mother. But in his acceptance speech, I am nothing but thin air. Chapter 1 At seven o’clock that evening, Arthur Sterling returned home with his star students and a few colleagues. The heat in the house was turned up high. They took off their heavy winter coats, revealing elegant suits and sleek cocktail dresses. Arthur’s mother was in good spirits today. She sat in her wheelchair in the center of the living room, graciously accepting the students’ greetings. “Your mother looks wonderful, Professor Sterling. You take such meticulous care of her.” “Seriously. Your first wife passed away so young, and you’ve had to balance academia with caring for your elderly mother all by yourself. It’s truly inspiring.” Everyone was marveling at Arthur’s deep devotion and resilience. I walked out of the kitchen carrying a heavy pot of slow-simmered beef bourguignon that had been on the stove for three hours. The steam billowed up, the rich aroma drifting into everyone’s noses. A young female student turned her head and flashed me a sweet smile: “Excuse me, ma’am? Could you grab two more sets of silverware and some extra napkins?” The living room fell dead silent for two seconds. No one corrected her. Arthur was pouring tea for another student and didn’t even lift his eyelids. “Go get them. And be quick about it.” In that exact moment, I felt like an unevolved primate that had accidentally stumbled into a gathering of civilized humans. I looked down at the faded, oversized sweatpants I was wearing, and the cheap plastic slippers stained with cooking grease. I really did look like the hired help. Worse than the hired help, actually. A housekeeper gets paid by the hour. I only got a fixed monthly “allowance” of five hundred dollars to cover groceries. I turned back to the kitchen. The bitterness rising in my throat tasted like sour dishwater. When I came back out with the silverware, Arthur was standing in the doorway of his study, lighting a memorial candle in front of Evelyn’s portrait. In the photograph, Evelyn wore a black evening gown, sitting gracefully at a Steinway piano like a beautiful swan. I walked over to set the plates down on the adjacent table. When Arthur turned around, he bumped right into me. Crash. A bowl of scalding hot stew tipped over, spilling perfectly onto the edge of the memorial table. I knew how fiercely he guarded this space, so my first instinct was to block the spill with my bare hands. The hot liquid splattered everywhere, but a few drops still managed to hit the bottom edge of Evelyn’s picture frame. “What the hell are you doing?!” Arthur reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. He violently shoved me back. I stumbled, my shoulder slamming hard into the doorframe. The back of my hand was searing red, blistered from the boiling stew. But Arthur didn’t spare me a single glance. Looking panicked, he pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and began carefully wiping the picture frame, his movements as tender as if he were caressing a lover’s face. “You’re so incredibly clumsy. Can you do anything right?” He shot me a vicious glare over his shoulder, his eyes looking like they wanted to swallow me alive. “Today is a huge milestone for me. Did you purposely decide to ruin it?” My scalded hand was burning in agony, but my heart turned entirely to ice. The students exchanged awkward glances. The girl who had called me ‘ma’am’ whispered, “The Professor loved his first wife so much. He can’t even bear to see her photograph get dirty.” “Yeah. It’s true, undying love.” The room once again erupted into quiet murmurs praising his earth-shattering romance. I stood in the shadows of the corner, clutching my red, swollen hand. I looked at the man I had served hand and foot for eight years, pouring all his devotion into a photograph of a dead woman. I looked at the highly educated elites who treated a living, breathing human being like an invisible piece of furniture. Suddenly, I realized that my life for the past eight years had been nothing but a pathetic joke. I was the Sterling family’s live-in maid. I was his mother’s personal nurse. I was everything except Arthur Sterling’s wife. The string that I had kept pulled taut for eight years finally snapped. I’m done serving them. Chapter 2 I didn’t eat dinner. I went straight to my bedroom. I call it a bedroom, but it was actually a storage closet that had been converted into a guest room. Arthur slept in the master bedroom alone—or rather, he slept there with his “memories” of Evelyn. He only came to my room when he had physical needs. When he required me to fulfill my obligations as a wife. I looked at myself in the mirror. My complexion was sallow, the corners of my eyes were lined with wrinkles, and my hair was as dry and brittle as straw. I didn’t look thirty-five. If someone said I was fifty, they’d believe it. The girl who used to be the prettiest in her small hometown had withered into a dying weed. I remembered the first time I came to the Sterling house. It was messy, smelled awful, and Arthur was standing there, handsome but utterly helpless. After his mother had a stroke and became paralyzed, her temper turned vicious. She verbally and physically abused the nurses; no one lasted more than three days. Then I arrived. I became the exception. Because I felt sorry for him. Because when I tried to quit, his face was full of desperate pleading. And because, when I finally agreed to stay, the unmistakable joy in his eyes hooked me. Later, my family called, demanding I come back to my hometown to settle down and marry a local guy. I handed in my resignation again. Arthur said, “Marrying a stranger off some app is a gamble with your life. You know this house, and you know me. I’ll marry you.” Thinking of the deep, devoted way he looked at his late wife, something possessed me to say yes. Because I wanted him to look at me that way, too. I thought if I waited long enough, I would get it. The noise outside slowly died down. The guests had left. Arthur pushed my door open, holding a plastic package in his hand. “Here.” He casually tossed the item onto my bed. It was a pair of compression knee sleeves. Thick, wool-lined ones. My heart did a sudden leap. Was it because he saw me scald my hand and felt guilty? Or was it because today was our wedding anniversary? He had never remembered it before, but maybe, subconsciously, he wanted to do something nice for me? For a split second, that pathetic, desperate, feminine delusion bubbled up again. I reached out to touch the knee sleeves, opening my mouth to say something soft. Arthur loosened his tie, his tone deadpan: “Mom’s arthritis flares up whenever the weather gets like this. These sleeves are good quality. Put them on her before she goes to sleep.” “Also, get up more often during the night. Don’t let her wet the bedsheets again, the house is starting to smell.” My outstretched hand froze in mid-air. I felt like a clown who had just been publicly slapped across the face. It wasn’t for me. It was a tool for his mother. And I was just the tool responsible for applying it. “One more thing,” Arthur said, turning toward the door without even looking at me. “That stew spilled earlier. Make sure you mop the hardwood floors again first thing tomorrow morning. Don’t leave a lingering smell. And from now on, you are strictly forbidden from touching Evelyn’s memorial table.” I wanted to laugh, but all I could manage was an expression far uglier than crying. “Arthur.” I called out to him. He stopped, looking back with a frown. “What now?” “I want a divorce.” Four words. I said them quietly, but with absolute clarity. Arthur paused for a second, then let out a cynical scoff. Looking at me like I was a child throwing an unreasonable tantrum, he pulled a stack of cash from his wallet. It was about two or three hundred dollars. Smack. He slapped it onto the nightstand. “Are you throwing a fit because the students embarrassed you earlier? Fine. Take this, go buy yourself a couple of new dresses. I’m exhausted. Don’t start drama over nothing.” With that, he walked out without looking back. I followed him out into the hall. He didn’t go to the master bedroom. He went to his study. The study door was left slightly ajar. I never went in there alone. Even when I cleaned it, I had to watch his mood carefully. Through the crack in the door, I saw Arthur sitting at that Steinway piano. It was Evelyn’s favorite instrument when she was alive. His long, elegant fingers gently traced the keys. His eyes were so tender they looked like they were melting, as if he were caressing the skin of the woman he loved. In eight years, I had never received a look like that. Not even for a single second. He spoke to the empty air, murmuring softly: “Evelyn… I won the award today. If you were here, it would be perfect…” I pushed the door open and walked in. Arthur snapped his head around. The tenderness instantly shattered into jagged ice. “Who told you you could come in here? Get out!” I looked at the gleaming black piano, and then at the man who was supposed to be my husband. “I’m serious. I want a divorce.” This time, Arthur couldn’t even be bothered to turn his head. He pressed down on a single piano key. A crisp ding echoed through the room. “Clara, I transferred your monthly allowance to you yesterday. If you need a raise, just say so. Don’t use these cheap manipulation tactics. It’s beneath you.” In his eyes, every emotion I ever felt could ultimately be converted into a dollar amount. I looked at his handsome, refined face. A wave of intense nausea rolled over me. It was more repulsive than looking at his mother’s soiled bedsheets. “I’m deadly serious. The divorce is happening tomorrow.” I turned, walked out, and closed the door, locking the man drowning in the memories of his dead wife inside his own personal graveyard. Chapter 3 At 2:00 AM. A dull thud echoed from his mother’s bedroom. I shot out of bed purely on muscle memory and sprinted into the room next door. I yelled for Arthur. His bedroom was completely empty. He had probably driven out to the cemetery in the middle of the night to visit his beloved ex-wife again. His mother was having a seizure. Her entire body convulsed like a fish out of water, white foam bubbling at the corners of her mouth, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Turn her on her side. Clear her airway. Prevent her from biting her tongue. Apply pressure to her philtrum. I had performed this exact routine for eight years. It was carved into my bones. Once she stabilized slightly, I hoisted the 130-pound elderly woman onto my back. I weigh 95 pounds. But I gritted my teeth and carried her down three flights of stairs, even as my calves shook violently with the effort. I hailed a cab and rushed straight to the ER. I tried calling Arthur from the backseat. No answer. I had to settle for sending him a text. At the ER, I handled the registration, tracked down the attending doctor, and wheeled her in for a CT scan. I was still in my pajamas. My feet were crammed into my plastic slippers. My hair was a tangled mess, and my shirt was stained with the vomit his mother had coughed up earlier. This was my everyday reality. “Where is the family? Someone needs to pay the cashier,” the doctor said, eyeing my disheveled appearance with hesitation. “Are you… the hired nurse? Can you contact her immediate family?” “I am…” “I’m her son!” Rushed footsteps echoed behind me. Arthur had finally arrived. He was wearing a perfectly tailored wool overcoat, his hair styled immaculately. I could even smell his cologne. It was a scent called “Chance.” Reportedly, it was Evelyn’s absolute favorite. Noble, elegant Arthur, and pathetic, filthy me. We looked like two entirely different species. The doctor immediately switched to a bright, respectful smile: “Ah, Professor Sterling! You’re such a devoted son, rushing over in the middle of the night.” Arthur offered a humble, modest smile. He played the part of the refined intellectual flawlessly. As soon as the doctor walked away, Arthur turned his head and finally noticed me. His smile vanished instantly, replaced by his habitual look of reprimand. “What happened? Why did she have a seizure? Did you feed her something wrong at dinner? How are you watching her?!” His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried perfectly through the quiet ER hallway. This was his logic. If she got sick, it was my fault. If she got better, it was because of his filial devotion. I didn’t say a word. I just silently lifted his mother from the gurney onto the hospital bed, adjusted her pillows, and tucked her in. Arthur just stood there, watching. Since the day I moved in, he hadn’t lifted a single finger to do a chore. He had never even poured his own mother a glass of water. Because, as he said, that was my job. A middle-aged woman in the neighboring bed couldn’t help but chime in: “Oh my, this lady is so capable. Her hands are so quick! You must be the family’s hired maid, right? You’re so professional. I wish I could hire someone like you.” My hands, which had been wiping his mother’s mouth, froze. Arthur stiffened slightly. I just looked at him. All he had to do was say, “This is my wife,” or even just mumble a vague agreement to brush it off. But instead, after three seconds of agonizing silence. Arthur nodded and said flatly: “Yes. She is very professional.” Boom. The very last thread of sanity holding my mind together completely snapped. Those three seconds of silence were ten thousand times more venomous than him actively screaming at me. It murdered the absolute last shred of delusional hope I had left for him. It murdered every single sacrifice I had made over the last eight years. I took the wet towel in my hand and threw it directly at his chest. “I officially resign. You can serve her yourself!” I turned around and walked out. Arthur hissed furiously behind me: “Clara! Are you insane?! We are in a hospital!” I didn’t look back. My pace only got faster. When I walked out the hospital doors, the freezing night wind hit my face, and I realized my cheeks were soaked with tears. But inside, my heart felt an unprecedented, absolute thrill of liberation. Chapter 4 I went back to that so-called “home” and started packing my things. There wasn’t much to pack. Aside from a few changes of cheap clothes, there was almost nothing in this house that truly belonged to me. In his study, hidden at the very bottom of a locked drawer, I found our original “marriage agreement.” It wasn’t a prenuptial agreement; it was a literal employment contract. It was written in black and white: Party B (me) is responsible for all daily care and living requirements of Party A (Arthur’s mother). Party A (Arthur) will pay Party B a monthly living stipend. During the duration of the marriage, Party B shall not interfere with Party A’s private personal space… I ripped it into a hundred pieces. Next to it was a small leather ledger. It was a meticulous accounting of his expenses over the last eight years. He was a man of habit; he recorded every single transaction. I had never paid attention to it before, but opening it now was like taking a knife to my own chest. April 2018. Landscaping for Evelyn’s grave. Memo: Dedicated fund for my beloved wife. $500. June 2018. Clara’s dental appointment. Memo: Labor maintenance expenses. $80. … So that was it. In his eyes, I was no different than a washing machine that occasionally needed a repairman. Staring at those entries, one by one. My blood ran completely cold. My stomach churned violently, and I rushed to the bathroom, dry-heaving over the toilet for ten minutes. I took off the heavy winter coat I was wearing, threw it on the floor, and stomped on it twice. Because embroidered on the inner lining of the coat was the letter E. Evelyn. I took everything he had designated in his ledger as “Labor Supplies” and left them behind. Including the paper-thin, two-gram gold wedding band. When we got married, he bought it, claiming he didn’t like ostentatious displays of wealth and preferred things simple. It turned out he didn’t dislike ostentatious displays; he just disliked spending money on me. When I finished packing, all I had was a single, battered canvas duffel bag. This was the sum total of my eight years. The front door unlocked. Arthur was back. Seeing the chaotic mess in the apartment, he furrowed his brow, his eyes filled with extreme displeasure. “Clara, are you done throwing your tantrum? Mom is still lying in a hospital bed! What are you doing running back here? Pack a bag and get back to the hospital!” I was still wearing my cheap thrift-store clothes, but this time, my spine was ramrod straight. I took the slightly warped gold ring and placed it on the glass coffee table with a sharp clink. And then, I smiled. It was the first time in eight years I had smiled so freely, so recklessly in this house. “Professor Sterling, your unpaid maid, Clara Hayes, is officially off the clock.” “Oh, and I threw that coat in the trash. Wearing a dead woman’s clothes is bad luck. It was making me sick.” Arthur’s face changed drastically, as if he had just been slapped brutally across the face. “What did you just say?” “I said, I’ll see you at the county courthouse at 8:00 AM tomorrow for the divorce papers. Also, since I am a professional maid, remember to wire my eight years of back wages to my bank account. Don’t try to stiff me, or I’ll really look down on you.” With that, I ignored him, picked up my duffel bag, and stepped over the dried stain of the spilled stew, walking out the door.

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My husband, Silas Thorne, was having an affair. To get back at him, I spent six months making the nightlife scene my permanent address, partying at clubs every single night. Silas couldn’t care less. He just kept throwing money at me to shut me up. The day I finally asked him for a divorce, I got another incoming wire transfer notification for two hundred thousand dollars. Then, a text: “Mrs. Thorne, the little thing is quite demanding tonight. I won’t be home.” I stared at the screen calmly, then made a U-turn and headed to the exclusive club where I knew he’d be. Stepping up to the private room, I heard one of his friends joking inside: “Silas, man, how many is this now? Aren’t you afraid of pushing Rylee too far? She might actually run off with one of those boytoys she’s been seeing at the clubs.” Silas fiddled with the cigar between his fingers, giving a careless, arrogant smirk. “Rylee loves money. As long as I compensate her well enough, she’ll never let go of the title of Mrs. Thorne.” The room erupted in laughter. As I pushed the door open and walked in, Silas immediately reached out to wrap an arm around me. “What, two hundred grand wasn’t enough? You had to chase me down here for more? Rylee, playing hard to get has its limits.” I dodged his touch and held out the manila envelope containing the divorce papers. “The girl outside is making a scene. You need to sign this right now so I can give her an answer.” … As soon as I spoke, the VIP room fell completely silent. Silas’s smirk vanished inch by inch. He leaned back into the plush leather sofa, staring at me coldly. “Rylee, I didn’t care how hard you played on the outside before. But this act today? It’s a bit over the line, don’t you think?” “Or did those club kids develop a bigger appetite, forcing you to come back to me for an upgrade?” A round of snickers went around the room among his friends, their eyes raking over me with crude curiosity. Everyone in this circle knew how wild I had gone over the past six months to retaliate against Silas’s infidelity. I wasn’t just hitting the most expensive clubs every night; I was spending money like water, surrounded by attractive men. Silas never lifted a finger to stop me. He just thought I was throwing a tantrum, using this method to fight for his attention. I calmly pushed the envelope forward on the low table. “I’m serious. Sign, Mr. Thorne.” Just then, a head popped out from behind Silas. It was a girl with a short bob haircut, a lollipop dangling from her mouth. She looked incredibly young, maybe barely twenty-one. “So this is the wife? She looks so uptight and refined. How’d she get such a explosive temper?” She spoke casually, leaning her entire body weight onto Silas like she had no bones. “Si, I told you you can’t spoil women, right?” “See? You spoil them, and they develop issues. Threatening divorce the second they don’t get their way.” Her name was Chloe Davis. She was the “little thing” Silas was currently infatuated with. She wasn’t the glamorous, seductive type I had expected, nor a weeping willows type. But Silas was clearly eating up her act. “Hear that?” Silas said, glancing at Chloe. “Even the kid knows you’re just being unreasonable. Come on, Rylee. Just say it. How much more do you want?” Chloe giggled, took the lollipop out of her mouth, and shoved it directly into Silas’s. “Have some candy, Si. Cool down.” “The wife is probably just on her period. Hormonal imbalance.” Silas frowned slightly at the shared candy, but he didn’t spit it out. Instead, he kept it in his mouth, looking at me with a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Rylee, take your garbage papers and get out.” “I’ll pretend tonight never happened. Don’t make me say it twice.” Watching this scene play out, a wave of revulsion washed over me. “If you won’t sign, fine. I’ll file the papers and we’ll go to court.” With that, I turned on my heel to leave. Behind me, I heard the crash of a heavy crystal glass shattering against the floor. “Rylee Croft! If you push this too far, there’s no coming back. Think long and hard before you walk out that door.” I didn’t even pause. My hand was just settling on the brass door handle when I heard Chloe’s exaggerated, high-pitched gasp: “Oh my god, Si, don’t be mad! The wife is just way too stiff. Unlike me—I just want to make you happy.” “Tell you what, you should stop giving her money. Cut off her credit cards for two months, let’s see if she still dares to be so arrogant with you.” Silas gave a cold laugh. “You’re right. Some people do need a little discipline to learn their place.” I had barely walked out of the club when my phone started vibrating incessantly. Notifications from various credit card companies were popping up one after another, informing me that my accounts had been frozen. Yet, my heart remained surprisingly calm. Just as I stepped onto the sidewalk, a familiar Ferrari roared to a halt right in front of me. The passenger window rolled down. Chloe blew a bubble with her gum, then popped it, jerking her chin at me with a smirk. “Hey, Mrs. Thorne. No ride home? Want us to give you a lift?” “Though this car only has two seats. Guess you’ll have to crouch in the trunk, huh?” Her shrill laughter filled the quiet street. Silas gave me a cold, indifferent look from the driver’s seat. “Rylee, it’s not too late to admit you were wrong.” “Just apologize for ruining everyone’s night back there, and I’ll take you home.” 2 I tightened my trench coat around me. “No thanks. I don’t want to get dirty.” Chloe gasped dramatically, slapping the leather steering wheel. “Si, look at her! I was being nice, trying to offer her a ride, and she calls me dirty!” “I don’t care, I’m upset. Does your wife think it’s embarrassing that I’m friends with you?” Silas chuckled and ran a hand through Chloe’s short hair. “Rylee, I’ve really cleaned up my act since the last time you made a scene.” “I’m just taking care of the kid because she’s spunky and naive. She’s like a little sister. We haven’t slept together!” Right, they hadn’t slept together. But they had done everything but that in public. Five years ago, when I first caught Silas cheating, I had thrown a massive fit. I even forced the woman to get an abortion. He hadn’t gotten angry at me back then. He let me scream, let me hit him. He promised he would never sleep with another woman again. The very next month, I caught him getting intimate with his female secretary. That was when I became truly cold toward him. That was when I started my six-month bender, drowning my sorrows in clubs and other men. He thought I was just copying him, trying to get revenge, forcing him to come back to me. But this time, he was dead wrong. Seeing my silence, Silas turned to one of his bodyguards who had followed us out. “Since Mrs. Thorne thinks my car is dirty, she can walk back.” “Watch her. Make sure nobody gives her a ride.” With a roar of the engine, the Ferrari sped off. The bodyguards immediately flanked me, motioning away a few curious onlookers. I sighed, took off my high heels, and started walking home barefoot in the chilly night air. I walked for nearly three hours. By the time I reached our gated community, my feet were covered in blisters, each step causing a sharp, stinging pain. The sky was already turning gray with the coming dawn when I pushed open the front door. Chloe was lying sprawled out on the sofa in the living room, wearing my expensive silk robe, resting her head on Silas’s lap. “Look who it is! The wife’s back,” Chloe chirped. “Nice endurance. Are you training for a marathon?” Silas looked down at my feet, which were covered in dirt and dried blood. He looked stunned for a second. “Do you know your mistake now?” He gestured to the coffee table. “There’s a bowl of oatmeal there. The kid made it special for you.” “Eat it, and we’ll put this behind us.” I looked at the living room. The bowl of oatmeal on the table was a disgusting mess, mixed with cigar ash, spilled whiskey, and the half-eaten lollipop Chloe had been sucking on earlier. I ignored them both and headed straight for the stairs. Silas’s voice went instantly cold. “I said, eat it!” Chloe jumped up from the sofa, bare feet padding on the hardwood floor. “Hey, I made this with my own two hands! I don’t usually go in the kitchen, but I wanted to be nice.” She was giggling as she shoved the bowl toward my face. The sour, rancid smell hit my nose immediately. I jerked my head away to avoid it. Chloe’s hand twisted, and she dumped the entire bowl over my head and trench coat! “Oops! Oh my god, I’m such a clutz. My hands must be sore from taking care of Si earlier. He just wouldn’t let me go.” “Si, it’s your fault. You took so long earlier. Come blow on my poor hands!” Silas strode over, shoving me hard. I was already unsteady on my painful feet, and I went crashing into the foyer cabinet behind me. He didn’t even glance at me. Instead, he actually started gently blowing on Chloe’s hands with a tender expression. “Rylee Croft, the kid left food for you out of the goodness of her heart. If you don’t want to show gratitude, fine. But who are you trying to depress with that dead look on your face?” “Apologize. Right now.” 3 I looked at him calmly. “I’ll apologize, as soon as you sign the divorce papers.” Silas was pushed completely over the edge. “Rylee! Are you giving me face and refusing it?” “Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a damn nobody from the middle of nowhere. Without Silas Thorne, what the hell are you worth?” Chloe hid behind him, making a face at me, her mouth forming silent words: “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. Die mad about it.” I smiled, casually peeling off the filth-covered trench coat and dropping it directly into the trash can next to the foyer. “If you hate looking at me so much, sign the paper. You think I want to look at the two of you?” A resounding slap landed squarely on my face. One side went completely numb instantly. Silas withdrew his hand, pulled a crumpled, signed envelope out of his pocket—the one I had given him at the club—and threw it directly into my face. “You’ve been trying to control me for too long. Did you really think I had no temper left?” Chloe was bouncing up and down with excitement. “Whoa! Go Si! Hardcore! A true man’s man!” Ignoring the throbbing in my cheek, I bent down and picked the divorce envelope up off the floor. Since he had actually signed it, the slap was worth it. I dragged my painful, blistered feet out of that house and never looked back. I had no money on me, no ID, nothing but the phone in my hand. I debated calling him. He would probably lose control, come over here, and tear Silas Thorne to pieces. Before I could decide, Chloe’s malicious call came through. “Hey, Rylee. Si was so angry after you left. He actually threw that fluffy ragdoll cat of yours into the alligator pond.” “Oh my god, the sound… it was so bloody. I was terrified. I actually cried.” My hand started to shake violently, and the phone almost slipped from my grasp. “What did you say!” 4 That Ragdoll cat was named Marshmallow. It had been my mother’s absolute favorite. On her deathbed, she had entrusted it to me, saying that looking at it was like looking at her. For seven years, Marshmallow had been my constant companion through countless lonely nights. To me, it wasn’t just a pet; it was family. On the other end of the line came Chloe’s heartless giggle, and I could even hear faint, sharp animal shrieks in the background. Then, Silas’s cold voice came through: “Rylee Croft, Marshmallow is just the beginning. Tomorrow is Chloe’s birthday bash. If you don’t get your ass back here and beg for forgiveness…” “The next thing going into the alligator pond will be your grandmother, the vegetable in the nursing home.” My entire body was shaking. “Silas Thorne! The divorce is final! Why won’t you let me go!” But the line had already gone dead. I scrambled to the nursing home, heart hammering in my chest. When I burst into the room, it was empty. Medical equipment lay overturned on the floor, IV tubes were ripped out, and there were shocking smears of blood on the ground. A nurse was cowering in a corner, terrified. “Miss Croft, Mr. Thorne sent men here. They said they were transferring her to a different facility.” “We couldn’t stop them… they had guns…” Everything went black, and I almost fainted. She was my only remaining family, my life! By the time I rushed back to the estate, the sound of laughter and cheering filled the air. A group of rich, young socialites were gathered around something, cheering. Seeing me enter, Chloe clapped her hands with excitement. “Look, Si! I told you this trick would work, right? Didn’t she come rolling right back here to admit her mistake?” Grandma was tied into a wheelchair, which had been pushed right to the edge of the alligator pond in the backyard. The protective iron railing had been lowered. I was shaking from head to toe. “Silas Thorne, what do you want? Come at me! Leave them alone!” Silas lazily raised his eyelids, looking at me with total indifference. “Rylee, your attitude last night made me very unhappy.” “Want to save her? Then from right there, get down on your hands and knees. Crawl all the way to everyone’s feet, kowtow to the ground, and beg for forgiveness.” The group around us immediately erupted in jeers. “Silas, man, Rylee pushed you to sign the divorce papers. Did she really have someone else on the outside?” “She’s been sleeping around. Don’t let her bring some dirty disease back here. Forget her, Silas. Chloe’s great. Why not make her the new Mrs. Thorne?” But Silas stepped forward and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me close. “A little woman throwing a tantrum, that’s all. Rylee, as long as you admit your mistake, we’ll go remarry first thing tomorrow morning.” “But if you don’t know what’s good for you…” The bodyguard standing by the alligator pond gave the wheelchair a violent kick. The wheelchair instantly rolled toward the water’s edge, half of one tire already hanging in the air over the snapping reptiles! “No!” I screamed, my voice raw. My legs gave out, and I dropped directly onto my knees on the pavement. Silas gave a satisfied smile. “Good girl. Everyone’s watching, Rylee. You’ve held my face under water for so long; I need to regain some pride.” “If you don’t like Chloe, after you admit your mistake, I’ll let you slash her face myself to make you feel better.” As he spoke, Silas planted his foot onto my back, pressing down, forcing me to bow my head to the ground. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream. I wanted to take a knife and murder every single one of these animals. But in the distance, the wheelchair wobbled again. All my rage instantly turned into absolute despair. “Fine. I’ll kowtow. I’ll admit my mistake.” The group cheered with excitement, some even pulling out their phones to film it. “Holy shit, Silas! You’re a beast! Masterclass in wife-taming! No woman is too tough for you!” “Rylee, hurry up and kowtow! Make sure we can film it clearly!” Just as I was about to touch my forehead to the dirt, there was a deafening crash as the front gates of the estate were rammed open. A booming voice filled the yard: “You Thorne piece of trash. You’ve got a lot of nerve.” “Touching my wife?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “396433”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

For eight long years, I loved Wyatt Hayes. Yet, we never wed. Our Western Frontier has a sacred tradition: a couple wishing to marry must climb the snowy peaks to seek a blessing from the Mountain Oracle. Usually, it takes a couple only a try or two before the Oracle grants them a Winter Rose, a rare bloom symbolizing divine favor. But for eight years straight, Wyatt came back empty-handed. I became the laughingstock of the Frontier’s ruling family, but Wyatt never left my side, treating me with doubled devotion. This time, I secretly followed him up the mountain. I decided that if the Oracle refused to bless us again, I would give up my title as the Governor’s daughter and elope with him. When I saw a Winter Rose finally placed into his hands, I was so ecstatic I nearly fainted. But Wyatt’s expression was agonizingly cold and indifferent. “It is you I love,” he whispered, “but I cannot betray Hazel after her eight years of companionship.” Then, the man who had looked at me with tender devotion only this morning took the sacred flower and forced himself upon the Oracle! The petals were crushed under his rough movements, the crimson juice of the rose staining the Oracle’s snow-white skin. “This is our last time…” he groaned. “Once you are sent to the Eastern Coalition as a treaty bride, I will cut my ties and marry her.” It turned out, he hadn’t delayed marrying me for eight years because of a curse. He was simply addicted to his once-a-year tryst with the Oracle. Numb and hollow, I stumbled back to the grand estate and knelt before my father. “The Frontier cannot survive a day without its Oracle. I will take her place as the treaty bride. Let me marry the Eastern Heir.” 1. Beatrice, the sister who always hated me, was the first to laugh out loud. “Have you lost your mind, sister? Your engagement to General Hayes is already the biggest joke in the family!” “If we send an unwanted old maid to the East, aren’t you afraid they’ll see it as an insult?” A bitter, humiliating emotion rushed up my chest, suffocating me so much I couldn’t speak. Once, I was hailed as the brightest pearl of the Western Frontier. But after Wyatt failed to get the Oracle’s blessing for eight consecutive years, I became the embodiment of bad luck and disaster. Thinking of how Wyatt had unhesitatingly crushed that Winter Rose—the flower I had dreamed of—against the Oracle’s skin, I bowed my head deeply to my father again. “I am not destined for General Hayes. Let me serve our land through this marriage and secure peace for the Frontier.” My aging father looked toward my older brother, Arthur, the man slated to be the next Governor. “Arthur, what do you think?” My heart clenched tightly. Arthur had always doted on me. If he refused to let me go… “I think this is an excellent idea, Father.” The moment my brother spoke, the blood in my veins froze. Before I could recover from the massive wave of shock, my brother continued, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. “The Oracle is the guiding star of our Frontier. How could my sister ever compare to her?” “Besides, she is a jinx who couldn’t secure a marriage for eight years. Sending her to the Easterners might just bring a curse upon them!” Large tears rolled from my eyes. I trembled so violently I could barely sit up straight. Was this still the brother who protected me at every turn, who never allowed anyone to mock me? First Wyatt, then Arthur. Why was all this happening? My father’s eyes grew dark. He dismissed everyone else, leaving only me in the room. “Although you are a more suitable bride for the East than the Oracle, I do not feel safe leaving her here in the West.” I looked up, stunned, as my father brought up a chilly early spring from eight years ago. Wyatt and I had privately pledged ourselves to each other. Arthur, who had always been close friends with him, was furious and attacked him. In Arthur’s eyes, the best man in the world wasn’t good enough for me. The two men brawled on the plains, fists striking flesh. Just then, the Oracle came down from the mountain. Dressed in her pure white ceremonial robes, she used her fragile body to stand between them. Without saying a word, her expression calm and merciful, she bandaged their wounds. Then she drifted away, returning to the untouched snows to be the immaculate Oracle. But that beautiful silhouette had permanently rooted itself in the hearts of both my brother and Wyatt. It turned out, the signs were always there. Since that was the case, I would ride alone to the East and let them have exactly what they wanted. 2. Seeing me emerge from my father’s study, Arthur quickly came to meet me. “Did Father agree to let you go…” I interrupted him coldly, “Arthur, did you really want me to leave that badly?” Or was it just that he couldn’t bear to part with the snow lily in his heart? A flash of panic crossed Arthur’s eyes before he regained his composure. “Didn’t you want to go? I only said those things to Father to help you get your wish.” Ridiculous. He threw me to the wolves to shield his sweetheart, and he had the nerve to say he was helping me. If that was how he wanted to play it, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I shook my head. “Father said no.” Right then, Wyatt came galloping toward us from a distance, unconcealable guilt plastered across his face. “I’m sorry… I still couldn’t get the Winter Rose.” “Next year…” I stared blankly at the blue sky and the circling falcons. “There’s no need.” By this time next year, I would probably already be living in the Eastern Capital. Wyatt let his hand drop in a daze, a fleeting look of deep regret in his eyes. “Don’t say such foolish things. Next year… I will definitely get it.” The Winter Rose was granted every single year. It was just my weight in his heart that grew lighter with each passing season. This double betrayal was like a raging fire, burning all the hope and expectation in my heart to ashes. That night, I was helping Arthur prepare the ceremonial items for the annual Harvest Moon Festival. I watched him stare vacantly at the Oracle’s ceremonial robes. I finally couldn’t hold back my mockery. “Arthur, the Oracle you’re so obsessed with has already been claimed by Wyatt.” “I saw it with my own eyes today. He crushed the Winter Rose against her thigh…” Before I could finish, a powerful arrow whistled past my cheek. After a sharp pain, bright red blood flowed down my neck and into my collar. “You can’t get the blessing because of your own lacking morals, and yet you dare invent such filthy lies to defile the Oracle!” “If there is a next time, I will shoot your head clean off.” Arthur’s eyes held a furious, boiling hatred I had never seen before. He slung his bow over his shoulder and left, dropping one final sentence. “Why couldn’t the one being sent to the East be a useless waste like you!” I covered my bleeding face and laughed at myself, laughing until the tears streamed down. I finally understood completely. In the hearts of Wyatt and Arthur, the Oracle would always be holy and beautiful. She was their faith, and their deepest, darkest desire. And compared to her, I was just the most insignificant grain of sand. Wyatt found me and brought me back to my tent. He touched my arrow-grazed cheek, looking utterly heartbroken. “Who did this!?” Looking at his seemingly genuine distress and deep affection, my heart felt like it was being pierced by thousands of needles. Everything today was his fault. What was he pretending to be so deeply in love for now? Years ago, he saved me from the jaws of a wild wolf, and I fell in love with him at first sight. From then on, the proud daughter who never bowed to anyone began to chase him relentlessly. He was the bravest general on the Frontier, so I learned martial arts from scratch. My palms bled, my skin tore from falling, but I never backed down. But now, looking at his hypocritical face, I suddenly realized I couldn’t love him anymore. I looked quietly into his eyes. “Wyatt, let’s call off the engagement.” 3. Wyatt’s face instantly froze. He stared intensely into my eyes, as if trying to find a shred of reluctance on my face. I looked back at him calmly. “The Oracle hasn’t granted us a flower in eight years. I suppose we truly aren’t meant to be.” Since that was the case, it was better to part ways and find our own happiness. Wyatt grabbed my hand, his tone tinged with guilt. “Hazel, don’t worry. Next year, I promise I’ll get the Oracle’s blessing.” I closed my eyes wearily. Marrying him had once been my biggest dream. And now, if I just pretended nothing had happened, he could smoothly marry me once the Oracle was sent away to the East. I opened my mouth. “I…” From outside the tent came the shout of Wyatt’s lieutenant. “General, the sacred artifacts for the Harvest Moon Festival have arrived!” Wyatt’s expression hardened. Without sparing me another glance, he ran out. I gave a self-deprecating smile, which instantly turned into tears. He was willing to ruin my reputation just to indulge in his taboo, once-a-year affair. How could he ever truly settle down and spend the rest of his life peacefully with me? It wasn’t that we didn’t get the Oracle’s blessing; it was just that I had bet on the wrong man’s heart. That was all. Wyatt returned quickly, gripping my hand tightly. “Hazel, the Harvest Moon is almost here. Let’s do the bloodletting quickly this year.” “The heavens will be moved by our sincerity, and next year we can marry!” To pray for good fortune, I would donate my blood every time he failed to get the flower. But now that the truth was out, doubts sprouted wildly in my mind. If seeking the blessing was a lie, why was he in such a rush to get my blood? I drew my dagger and unhesitatingly slashed my left wrist. Bright red blood dripped steadily into a white porcelain bowl. The guilt on Wyatt’s face deepened. “Thank you for this… Just wait one more year, and we can be together forever.” The very last ounce of affection I had for him drained away with that blood. I desperately wanted to tell him that there would be no ‘forever’ for us. After Wyatt left, I quietly followed him. And then I watched helplessly as he submerged the sacred artifacts into my blood! I remembered the legend: only the blood of a virgin could nourish the holy relics. The Oracle had lost her purity to him long ago. So, his refusal to touch me all these years wasn’t out of chivalry—he just needed me as a blood bank for the Oracle! The world spun around me. My riddled heart was pierced by a sharp blade once again. The night wind of the plains chilled me to the bone, much like these past eight years that had turned me from a vibrant girl into a lifeless shadow. I returned to my quarters like a wandering ghost and packed my bags for the East. Aside from my clothes, I only took the silver locket my mother left me. Then, I gathered everything related to Wyatt from all these years and threw it into the fire. The flames illuminated my tear-streaked face, burning away the absolute last trace of hesitation in my heart. I turned and walked out toward the plains. The old woman who helped raise my hunting falcon ran toward me. “Miss Hazel… Young Master Arthur is trying to take your falcon!” I frowned and rushed to the mews, arriving just in time to see the Oracle, dressed in her pure white robes, bowing gracefully to my brother. “I have nothing left tying me here as I leave for the East. I simply cannot bear to see my own falcon sacrificed tomorrow.” “Thank you, Young Master, for swapping the birds… I will remember this kindness.” My falcon had been hunting and riding with me since I was eight. I absolutely refused to lose it. Storming into the mews, ignoring the shocked looks of everyone around, I drew my bow and shot an arrow right through the chains holding my falcon! The bird circled me reluctantly, then let out a piercing cry and bolted into the dark night sky. As Arthur pinned me to the ground in a rage, I looked up at the sky and laughed until I cried. “Every single one of you hurts me just for the Oracle. But why can’t you win a single war?” “If you hadn’t been beaten back by the Easterners time and time again, you wouldn’t need to send the Oracle away as a bride!” This decaying, absurdly rotten Frontier was no longer my beautiful homeland. Then I would go over the mountains and find a way to save this country myself! 4. Arthur locked me in an empty barn. In the distance, the sound of war drums echoed. The current Oracle was completing her final sacrifice. Servants walked past me in twos and threes, making no effort to hide their contempt and hatred. “Why wasn’t this useless girl the one sent to the East? The heavens are blind!” “The Oracle ruined her health praying for the Frontier. What if she dies on the journey…” I closed my eyes, blocking out the tidal wave of malice. After a shrill, agonizing scream, the Oracle’s falcon was sacrificed. Wyatt rushed to the front of the barn, his eyes full of disappointment and fury. “Why did you purposely release your falcon last night!? The Oracle is about to leave, she just wanted to preserve a memory, and you couldn’t even grant her that?” Looking at his face, twisted with anger, I suddenly looked forward to seeing his expression when he realized I was the one going to the East. “What about me? She wanted to keep a memory, but do my feelings not matter?” His beloved was about to leave, and he couldn’t even bother pretending anymore. Wyatt’s chest heaved violently. “You haven’t hunted in years. What use do you have for a falcon?” He must have forgotten that I used to be the greatest huntress on the Frontier. I only stopped killing because our marriage was never blessed, and I thought sparing lives would earn us favor. I looked at the complete stranger standing before me and suddenly smiled softly. “Wyatt, you all will get your wish very soon.” Wyatt looked confused, but was suddenly pulled away by one of Arthur’s men. “The ritual failed! Something happened to the Oracle!” The Oracle had to be a pure virgin. Since she had slept with Wyatt just that morning, how could the heavens not punish them? It was getting late, and the guards were distracted. It was time to leave. After Wyatt left, I easily climbed out of the barn and snuck back to my tent to grab my luggage. But my most important possession, the silver locket, was gone! That was my mother’s heirloom, meant to keep me safe! My hands shook with panic, until I overheard the servants whispering. “The Young Master really cares for the Oracle. For this trip, he prepared seven or eight protective amulets for her.” By the time I snapped out of it, my face was covered in tears. I knew the Oracle was precious to him, but I never imagined he would strip me of my mother’s only heirloom! He felt my selfishness had killed the Oracle’s falcon, so he took half my life to compensate her. But from start to finish, I was the only one losing everything! The guards had discovered my escape. I had no time left. I threw on a red riding cloak and let out a sharp whistle. My falcon dove down from the sky and landed on my shoulder. My warhorse broke its tether, jumped the fence, and lowered its head to me. Dressed in crimson, a falcon on my left shoulder, I grabbed the reins with my right hand and galloped furiously toward the Capital! If there was no road left for me here, I would forge my own path in the wider world! This time, I didn’t look back. Meanwhile, on the Frontier, crowds fell to their knees around the altar, surrounding the Oracle, who was spitting blood with an agonized expression. “The heavens are furious! This is a disaster!” “Tens of thousands of cattle froze last winter, we are losing the war with the East…” “The Oracle represents the Frontier… Could it be the Oracle… Ah!” Arthur shot an arrow straight through the throat of the man who spoke. For a moment, everyone was dead silent. Wyatt’s face was so dark it looked like it could drip ink. “For centuries, the West has been protected by generations of Oracles.” “Anyone who dares slander her purity will be killed on the spot!” But the crowd wasn’t suppressed; they boiled over even more violently. “Then who angered the gods? We must cut them to pieces and burn them alive to calm the spirits’ wrath!” “Exactly! Give us peace!” Arthur and Wyatt knew better than anyone that they needed a scapegoat to bear the people’s fury. They looked at each other simultaneously and closed their eyes in pain. “Go bring Hazel.” Less than fifteen minutes later, my aging father, draped in a heavy coat, stood in the center of the crowd. “Hazel volunteered to go to the East as the treaty bride. She left the Frontier thirty miles ago.” 5. As soon as my father’s words fell, Wyatt lunged forward, his handsome face twisted in pure disbelief. “Impossible! Why would Hazel actually go? She explicitly promised she would only ever marry me.” Arthur’s fists clenched tightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His voice was frantic yet insistent. “Father must be lying to us. No matter how angry she is, she wouldn’t joke about the rest of her life.” They exchanged a look, both finding the same stubborn denial in each other’s eyes. They practically ran off the altar, Wyatt still muttering to himself. “She’s just punishing me. She’s saying this to scare us.” Arthur nodded in agreement, though his feet moved faster and faster. “Let’s check her room. She’s probably hiding inside, crying.” But when they burst into my quarters, they found only an empty bed and cold ashes in the hearth. Everything related to Wyatt had been burned to dust, scattered across the floor. Arthur’s heart plummeted. He turned and sprinted toward the grassy ridge I loved. “She loves watching the falcons from there. She has to be there!” Wyatt followed closely, clinging to a thread of hope. He remembered how I used to rest on his shoulder, my eyes shining as I said: “Wyatt, when we get the Winter Rose next year, we’ll have the grandest wedding.” Those words were still echoing in his ears. How could I just leave? They ran to every place I frequented. The valley of bluebells where I taught him to weave crowns; the clear stream where we sailed paper boats; the old oak tree where I hid my love letters to him. But at every spot, there was only the wind. No sign of me. “Where is she? Where did she go!?” Arthur’s voice started to shake, his composed facade entirely shattered. Wyatt’s face grew paler and paler. His fists were clenched so tight his fingertips were freezing. “Impossible. She couldn’t have left. We’re getting married next year.” This was his obsession, his unwavering certainty. Why would I suddenly give up? Just then, my father’s personal guard hurried over, carrying a wooden lockbox. “General, Young Master. This is the letter breaking the engagement that Hazel left behind, along with the silver ring the General gave her years ago.” The box was opened. The handwriting on the letter was neat but absolute. The ring still gleamed, carrying the faint warmth of having been worn by me for years. Wyatt shuddered violently, as if struck by lightning, and stumbled backward. “Breaking the engagement? She really wants to break it off?” He muttered to himself, his heart feeling as though it was being crushed by an invisible hand, hurting so much he couldn’t breathe. Arthur snatched the letter. After one glance, his eyes went entirely red: “She really left… She really went to the East…” Father stood behind them without them noticing, his eyes deep and unreadable. “The bridal escort left early. They will meet up with her tomorrow and head straight for the Capital.” “She prepared for this long ago. You two… simply hurt her too deeply.” Arthur suddenly spun around, staring at Wyatt with bloodshot eyes, his suppressed emotions exploding. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t failed to get that flower for eight years, she wouldn’t have been mocked! If you hadn’t treated her terribly, she wouldn’t have been so determined to leave!” 6. He grabbed Wyatt by the collar, pulling his fist back to strike. “We depended on each other since we were kids. How could she leave on such a massive journey without telling me? She must hate you!” Wyatt was stunned by the yelling, a flash of panic crossing his face before he, too, grew furious. “Blame me? How are you any better? For the Oracle, you said those vicious things to her, and you shot an arrow at her face!” He shoved Arthur away, his voice dripping with accusation. “You’re her actual brother, yet you were crueler than a stranger!” With weapons almost drawn, right as they were about to tear into each other, a figure in pure white quietly appeared. The Oracle stood between them, maintaining her sorrowful, merciful expression, and gently pulled at their sleeves. “Please, do not fight because of me. I bandaged your wounds years ago, and I don’t want to see you turn on each other today.” Her voice was soft, as if their fierce argument was entirely about her. Arthur and Wyatt both froze. Looking at the Oracle’s holy face, their expressions grew incredibly complicated. Wyatt took a deep breath, his tone freezing over: “Our fight has nothing to do with you.” Arthur shook off the Oracle’s hand, his eyes filled with exhaustion and deep regret. “We are talking about Hazel. We are talking about my sister.” The Oracle’s face stiffened. She clearly hadn’t expected this response. She stood frozen, looking at the suffocating anxiety and remorse rolling between the two men, suddenly at a loss for words. Arthur turned back to Wyatt, his gaze sharp as a knife. “Hazel loved you since she was a girl. For you, she learned to fight, and never complained no matter how much she suffered.” “She wouldn’t inexplicably abandon you and go to the East.” He stared intensely into Wyatt’s eyes. “Did you do something unforgivable to her?” All the color drained from Wyatt’s face. His eyes darted away, afraid to meet Arthur’s gaze. On the snowy mountain that morning, he had crushed the flower and told the Oracle that I was just a temporary companion. He used my virgin blood to nourish the artifacts. When I asked to cancel the engagement, he had just brushed me off. All these memories collided, leaving him entirely unable to defend himself. Seeing him like this, Arthur knew the answer, and his rage ignited once more. “I knew it! You bastard! What exactly did you do to her?” He drove his fist into Wyatt’s face, knocking him into the dirt. “She loved you so much, how could you bear to hurt her?” Wyatt didn’t fight back. He let Arthur’s fists rain down on his body. The physical pain was a fraction of the agony tearing apart his chest. He covered his face, letting out a stifled sob from his throat as the tears finally broke free. “I was wrong… I shouldn’t have lied to her… I shouldn’t have used her…” He regretted it. He truly, deeply regretted it. The two men brawled in the dirt, kicking up dust, until all their energy was spent and they collapsed on the ground. Arthur gasped for air, looking into the distance, his voice hoarse: “We can’t let her go to the East. Absolutely not!” Wyatt pushed himself up, his eyes hardening with resolve: “We’ll ride after her. We’ll bring her back.” The Oracle walked over and spoke softly. “This was originally my duty. Since this happened because of me, I am willing to go with you to take her place and bring Hazel back.” Her tone was incredibly righteous, as if she were saving the world. Arthur and Wyatt exchanged a look and didn’t refuse. Right now, as long as they could bring me back, they would do anything. The three immediately mounted their horses, took a squad of elite cavalry, and galloped frantically toward the Capital.

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When I resigned, a coworker set his sights on the Apple Pro Display XDR I had bought with my own money. I ignored him and packed it up to leave. The next day, that same coworker reported me for embezzling company property. My manager immediately called the police on behalf of the company: “Ethan, the company has nurtured you for years. How could you do something so illegal? Hand the monitor over right now, and we can handle this internally without putting a felony on your criminal record.” I calmly pulled a stack of documents from my briefcase and slid them across the table to the mediating police officer. “Here are the official Apple store purchase records, the digital receipts, and my personal credit card statements for the Pro Display XDR and the Pro Stand. The total comes to exactly $6,998.” Later, during the company’s multi-million dollar Series A funding press conference, I legally revoked the core algorithm patent I had previously allowed them to use for free. A project worth hundreds of millions of dollars completely collapsed because of it. 1 Friday at 3:00 PM. I pressed Enter, sending the final handover documentation to the department’s shared email. A “Sent Successfully” notification popped up on the screen. I took off my glasses and massaged the bridge of my nose, preparing to pack up the 32-inch Pro Display XDR sitting on my desk. Two years ago, I couldn’t stand the terrible color accuracy of the cheap monitors the company provided. It was ruining my design rendering work, so I spent $6,998 of my own money to buy this one. Now that I was leaving, I was naturally taking it with me. Click. I unplugged the Thunderbolt 4 cable from the back, and the screen instantly went dark. Suddenly, a thick-knuckled hand slammed down on the edge of my desk. “Packing up, Ethan?” Brad Miller leaned in, his eyes glued greedily to my monitor. “Yeah,” I replied flatly, not looking up. I continued to untangle the messy cables on my desk, tying them neatly with velcro straps. “Ethan, this monitor…” Brad swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I didn’t see it on the handover inventory list. Didn’t Manager Davis say all equipment from departing employees has to go back to IT to be reallocated?” He deliberately emphasized the word reallocated. The entire open-plan office instantly went dead silent. The clatter of keyboards from the surrounding cubicles ceased. I could feel several pairs of eyes peering through the gaps between their computer screens, quietly watching the drama unfold. Brad’s desk was usually covered in cheap, plastic anime figures. He used the standard, heavily color-distorted, hundred-dollar monitor the company bought in bulk. He had been coveting my equipment for a long time. Over the past six months, he had made countless excuses to “sync up” or “align our deliverables,” just to hover by my desk and drool over this screen. “It’s not on the company’s asset list,” I said, picking up a microfiber cloth to meticulously wipe down the aluminum bezel. “Not on the list?” Brad’s voice jumped an octave, sounding like a rat whose tail had just been stepped on. “Come on, Ethan, don’t be like that. We’re all wage slaves here. You’re leaving, but if you leave the equipment, the rest of the team can still use it. Taking everything with you isn’t exactly a class act, is it?” He turned his head, throwing his hands up to address the rest of the office loudly: “Everyone, be the judge here! The company spent big money to get this top-tier equipment, and now that he’s quitting, he’s trying to swipe it. Isn’t that stealing from the company?” A few muffled snickers drifted over from the corner. I stopped what I was doing, turned around, and looked at him coldly. “Brad.” My voice wasn’t loud, but in the silent office, it was crystal clear. “First, on my very first day here, I bought this monitor with my own money because the company equipment was trash. Second, keep your eyes off my property.” Brad’s face stiffened, then flushed a bright, angry red. He stuck his neck out and argued back, “Just because you say you bought it means you bought it? Everyone knows this thing costs thousands of dollars! Like a regular employee would drop that kind of cash. Besides, you’ve had it plugged into the company’s wall, using the company’s electricity every single day. That makes it public property!” His bottom-feeder logic was truly breathtaking. I couldn’t be bothered to waste another breath on him. Reasoning with a fool is a waste of a life. From under my desk, I pulled out a custom aluminum flight case I had prepared in advance. I detached the heavy Pro Stand and nestled it securely into the foam groove. Then, I lifted the monitor panel. Before sliding it into the case, I ran my long fingers lightly over the bottom right corner of the back panel. Right there, completely hidden from plain sight, was a tiny holographic security sticker. Printed on it was an independent serial number that only I knew. Clack. I closed the case, the metal latches snapping shut with a crisp sound. Brad stared at the silver case, his eyes a toxic mix of greed and resentment. He pulled out his phone, his thumbs flying furiously across the screen. I didn’t even need to look to know he was in the department Slack channel, dramatically exaggerating my “crimes” of stealing company assets. I picked up the heavy case, grabbed my tailored briefcase, and walked straight toward the elevators. Behind me, Manager Davis’s signature, nasal cough echoed as he stepped out of his private office. “What’s going on? What’s all this noise?” Davis asked, holding his Yeti thermos. “Manager Davis! Ethan just took that seven-thousand-dollar monitor! That’s the most expensive piece of hardware our department owns!” Brad yelled, tattling like he had just caught a bank robber. The elevator doors slowly slid shut. Through the narrowing gap, I saw Manager Davis’s chubby face twist in outrage, and the malicious gleam shining in Brad’s eyes. 2 Saturday, 9:00 AM. Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a warm glow on the Persian rug in my living room. Compared to the formaldehyde-scented, backstabbing cubicles of my former employer, the air here felt incredibly free. Buzz—Buzz— My phone vibrated aggressively. An unfamiliar local landline number flashed on the screen. I swiped to answer. “Hello, is this Ethan Hayes?” A stern male voice came through the receiver. In the background, I could hear the clatter of keyboards and chaotic chatter. “Speaking.” “This is the local police precinct. We received a report from your former employer claiming you are suspected of corporate embezzlement and the illegal misappropriation of high-value company assets. We need you to bring the item in question to the precinct immediately for an investigation.” The officer’s tone was strictly business, entirely devoid of emotion. I picked up my coffee and took a sip. The bitter liquid slid down my throat, making my mind instantly razor-sharp. They actually called the cops? I originally thought Brad’s greed and ignorance were just loud barking, and that Manager Davis’s corporate posturing was just a way to flex his authority in front of the team. But I had underestimated the sheer insanity of low-level opportunists. To claim something that wasn’t theirs, they were willing to easily cross legal boundaries. “Understood, Officer. I’ll be right there.” I walked into my walk-in closet and changed into a perfectly tailored, dark gray suit. Then, I opened my safe and pulled out a manila envelope. Inside was the complete set of purchase records for the monitor, the shipping invoices, and a printed copy of the “Declaration of Personal Work Equipment” email I had sent to HR on my first week. I grabbed the heavy aluminum flight case and headed down to the underground garage. “Attorney Sterling,” I said as the Bluetooth connected in my car. “Good morning, Ethan. What can I do for you?” Robert Sterling’s voice was as steady and professional as always. “I’m heading to the local precinct. My former employer just reported me for corporate embezzlement.” I watched the red light countdown at the intersection, my tone completely flat. There was a second of silence on the other end, followed by a light chuckle. “That has to be a joke. Do you need me to come down there?” “Not yet. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” I said, tapping my fingers rhythmically against the steering wheel. “But I need you to draft two documents. First, a cease and desist and a defamation lawsuit against an individual named Brad Miller. The second…” I paused, my eyes turning ice-cold. “Draft a legal notice to revoke a patent license. Yes, the core image-rendering algorithm they are currently using for their flagship project. I licensed it to them for free back then to speed up the development timeline. Now that I’ve resigned, that authorization is officially revoked.” “Understood. I’ll have them in your inbox in thirty minutes.” I hung up. The light turned green. The Porsche Panamera let out a low, guttural roar, shooting forward like a waking black panther toward the police station. 3 Local Precinct. Mediation Room. The air smelled faintly of bleach and old paper. When I pushed the door open, Manager Davis and Brad were already sitting across the long table. Brad had deliberately worn a slightly cleaner polo shirt today. He was sitting up straight, but his shifty eyes betrayed his nervous excitement. The moment he saw me walk in carrying the silver flight case, his eyes lit up like a vulture spotting rotting meat. Manager Davis sat back in his chair, clutching his chipped thermos, looking like a man who had already won. Officer Chen, the mediator, pointed to the empty chair in front of me. “Have a seat. Mr. Hayes, your former company is accusing you of embezzling a professional monitor worth around seven thousand dollars. What do you have to say for yourself?” “Officer, why are you even asking him? The stolen property is right there in that box!” Brad jumped up eagerly, pointing at the case by my feet. “That’s the stolen goods! He secretly packed up equipment our company purchased. If that’s not theft, what is?” Manager Davis coughed and pressed a hand down in the air, signaling Brad to sit. He put on a look of deep, theatrical disappointment. “Ethan, your performance at work was always solid, and the company valued you. But you can’t let your emotions about resigning push you to do something this foolish. As long as you return the property to the company and apologize right now, I’ll personally beg the CEO to handle this internally. We won’t press criminal charges. After all, if this goes to trial, your life is ruined.” What a masterful display of manipulative blackmail. Looking at Manager Davis’s hypocritical face, I suddenly felt a bit nauseous. I ignored them completely. Instead, I placed the manila envelope on the table and unwound the string closure. “Officer Chen, I purchased this Apple Pro Display XDR entirely with my own funds two years ago when I first joined the company, because the hardware they provided could not meet my professional color-calibration needs.” “Bullshit!” Brad slammed his hand on the table, rattling Davis’s thermos. “Seven thousand dollars! Do you even know what your monthly salary is? You couldn’t afford that! That monitor was specifically approved through a special procurement process for that massive project last year! Manager Davis signed off on it himself!” Brad turned to Davis for backup. Davis nodded without blinking. “That’s right, Officer. This equipment is absolutely fixed corporate property. Because the project was an emergency, IT didn’t have time to put an asset tag on it, so it was placed directly on Ethan’s desk.” “Oh? Is that so?” I sneered. From the envelope, I pulled out a copy of an invoice bearing an official red stamp and slid it over to Officer Chen. “This is a printed copy of the official Apple digital receipt. Purchaser: Ethan Hayes. Date of purchase: April 15th, two years ago.” Next, I pulled out a bank statement. “This is the billing statement from my personal Chase credit card. The charge is exactly $6,998. Merchant: Apple Inc.” Officer Chen picked up the documents, carefully matching the names and dates. He frowned slightly. Brad’s face dropped. He shot up from his chair, leaning over the table trying to look at the papers. “Impossible! He forged those! You can use Photoshop to fake anything these days!” “Forging financial documents and bank statements is a federal crime, Brad. Do you know anything about the law?” I stared at him coldly. “If you think they’re fake, you can call the IRS and report me right now.” Brad shrank back under my icy glare, but he still wasn’t willing to give up. He turned to Davis in a panic. “Manager, you… you said the company bought this!” Fine beads of sweat began to form on Manager Davis’s forehead. He set his thermos down, his fingers nervously tapping the table as he scrambled for an excuse. “This… perhaps I misremembered. But Officer, even if he bought the machine, he used it at the office for two years! What about the desk space? The electricity? This is a blending of personal and corporate resources, the boundaries are completely blurred!” “The boundaries are blurred?” I pulled the final document from the envelope. “This is a printed copy of an email I sent to the HR department and Manager Davis on my third day of work. The subject line is: ‘Declaration of Personal Work Equipment for Office Use.’ The attachment clearly lists the model and serial number of this exact monitor. Furthermore, HR replied to this email stating: ‘Approved for record.’” I slammed the piece of paper heavily onto the table. The sharp smack echoed in the room. “Manager Davis, do you need me to log into my email and show it to you live in front of the officer?” The mediation room fell into a deathly silence. Brad collapsed into his chair like a deflated balloon, his face ashen. Manager Davis stared wide-eyed at the printed email, his lips trembling, unable to form a single word. Officer Chen closed the case file, his expression turning severe. “Manager Davis, Brad Miller. Do you realize what the consequences are for filing a false police report and wasting police resources?” Davis shot up, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. “A misunderstanding! Officer, this is an absolute misunderstanding! It was a failure in our internal communication, a mistake in our asset inventory. We are so sorry. We withdraw the complaint immediately.” “Withdraw the complaint?” A mocking smile crept onto my lips. “You think the law is a revolving door you can just walk in and out of whenever you please?” I stood up, looking down at them from across the table. “Officer Chen, I’m done presenting my evidence. Now, I want to file a report.” I pointed directly at Manager Davis and Brad. “First, citing an ‘incomplete handover process,’ my former employer has illegally confiscated three Montblanc fountain pens, an Hermes tie, and several private design drafts that were in my desk drawer. The total value exceeds $15,000. That is the illegal embezzlement of private property.” “Second, without verifying any facts, Brad Miller publicly fabricated lies in a 150-person company Slack channel, defaming me as a thief. This has caused severe, malicious damage to my personal reputation. I have already had the chat logs notarized.” I looked into Brad’s suddenly terrified eyes and enunciated every word clearly: “Brad, expect a letter from my lawyer. I’ll see you in court.” 4 Monday, 10:00 AM. Former Company HQ, Conference Room 1. Today was the critical day my former employer was supposed to sign a Series A funding agreement with Sequoia Capital, one of the top venture capital firms in the country. As long as the agreement was signed, the company’s valuation would double, and Manager Davis would finally be able to cash out his long-awaited stock options. At the front of the conference room, a massive LED screen was running the company’s pride and joy—an AI-based dynamic image rendering engine. The VC representatives sat in leather swivel chairs, nodding frequently, clearly impressed by the engine’s rendering speed and color accuracy. Manager Davis stood by the screen in a sharp suit, his face glowing red with excitement. He was rambling endlessly about the company’s “technological moats” and “future blueprints.” Brad, acting as one of the department’s “key players,” stood in the corner, tasked with clicking through the PowerPoint slides. Even though he had been terrified out of his mind at the police station over the weekend, today, in this setting, he had regained his arrogant, sycophantic swagger. “Investors, what you are seeing now is our company’s proprietary, in-house rendering algorithm. This algorithm leads the industry in…” Before Davis could finish his sentence, the giant LED screen behind him flickered violently. Instantly, the smoothly running, high-definition 3D model froze, and the image tore apart into thousands of pixelated, mosaic blocks. “What’s going on? Brad! Switch the screen!” The smile froze on Davis’s face as he hissed under his breath. Sweating profusely, Brad mashed the keyboard and furiously clicked the mouse. “M-Manager, I can’t switch it! The system is throwing an error!” The screen went completely black. A few seconds later, a cold, white line of code appeared in the center of the display: Error: License Expired or Revoked. Auth Key Invalid. The air in the conference room instantly solidified. The investors looked at each other, their previously admiring gazes turning into suspicion and scrutiny. “Tech department! Get the CTO in here right now!” Davis panicked completely, screaming at an assistant by the door. Three minutes later, the CTO ran into the conference room, sweating bullets, carrying a laptop. He took one look at the error code on the screen, and his face turned whiter than a sheet of paper. “Mr. Davis…” The CTO’s voice was shaking. Davis grabbed the CTO by his collar. “What the hell is going on? Did the servers crash? Reboot them, now!” The CTO swallowed hard and closed his eyes in despair. “It… it’s not a server issue.” “The license for the base algorithm has been revoked. Our core rendering module… the underlying architecture calls an API from Ethan Hayes’s personal patented code.” “What did you just say?!” Davis looked like he had been struck by lightning. He abruptly let go of the CTO’s collar. “Back then, to meet the project deadline, the company didn’t have time to develop the base logic from scratch. Ethan let us use an image processing patent he registered in college for free. The licensing agreement clearly stated that the authorization automatically terminates the moment he resigns. Unless…” “Unless what?!” “Unless the company buys it out, or he agrees to renew it. Five minutes ago, I received an official letter from Ethan’s lawyer. He has unilaterally revoked all patent authorizations and demanded we cease usage immediately, or he will sue us for intellectual property infringement.” Clatter! The laser pointer in Manager Davis’s hand dropped to the floor, shattering into pieces. The lead representative from Sequoia Capital stood up. He adjusted his suit jacket, his tone freezing cold. “Mr. Davis, it appears your ‘proprietary technology’ and ‘tech moats’ have severe legal flaws. Until these intellectual property issues are resolved, today’s signing ceremony is canceled.” Without another word, the investors turned and walked out of the conference room without a shred of hesitation. “It’s over… It’s all over…” Davis collapsed into his chair, his eyes glazed over. That was tens of millions of dollars in funding! All because of a monitor. Because of one stupid, petty scheme, the entire future of the company went up in smoke. He violently whipped his head around, glaring murderously at Brad, who was shivering in the corner. “This is all because of you, you absolute moron! Out of everything in the world, you just had to covet his damn monitor! Now look! You killed the entire company!” Davis charged forward like a rabid boar and slapped Brad across the face with all his might. Smack! The sharp sound of the slap echoed through the empty conference room. Brad clutched his face, too terrified to even breathe.

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The notification from the Van Cleef & Arpels customer service app popped up on my phone. “Your Alhambra jewelry set has been serviced and is ready for pickup at our South Lake Avenue boutique.” I read the message three times. The Alhambra set was a family heirloom left to me by my mother. It was currently locked inside the safe in my house. I certainly hadn’t sent it in for servicing. And I had never set foot in the South Lake Avenue boutique in my life. I picked up my phone and called the store. “Hello, could you tell me who dropped off this set for servicing?” The associate checked the system. “Ma’am, it was dropped off by a Ms. Chloe Davis last Thursday.” Chloe Davis. I didn’t know anyone named Chloe Davis. But my jewelry was in her possession. 1. I didn’t rush home to check the safe. Instead, I drove straight to the South Lake Avenue boutique. The Van Cleef & Arpels sales associate was very polite and pulled up the service record for me. “This is the client,” she said, showing me the registration details. Chloe Davis. I didn’t recognize the phone number. The last four digits of her Social Security Number were listed on the intake form. “She mentioned her boyfriend gifted it to her and asked us to do a deep clean,” the associate added with a smile. “Boyfriend?” “Yes, she said her boyfriend spoils her rotten, buying her the entire matching set.” I nodded slowly. “Is the set currently here in the store?” “Yes, it’s all polished and ready for pickup anytime.” I stared into the display case where they kept serviced items. There it was—the Alhambra set I knew intimately: the necklace, earrings, bracelet, and ring. My mother had bought it at their flagship store in New York back in 2015. The original receipt was sitting in a drawer at my house. “I won’t pick it up today,” I told her. “I’ll let Ms. Davis come get it.” After leaving the boutique, I sat in my car for ten minutes. Then, I opened my phone and started scrolling through my husband’s Instagram and Facebook feeds. Mark’s social media had always looked perfectly clean. But he utilized custom friend lists and privacy settings. In the posts hidden from my view, was there a woman named Chloe Davis? I didn’t snoop through his phone. I did something much more effective. I opened the Chase banking app to check the statement for his secondary credit card. He had voluntarily given me this authorized user card years ago to help me track household expenses. He had probably forgotten that as an authorized user, I could also view the transaction history of the primary cardholder. I started scrolling back. One month ago. Two months ago. Three months ago. Line by line. Florist—Every Friday, the exact same shop, $188. Hotels—At least twice a month, always the same luxury boutique hotel, always on the weekends he claimed he was traveling for “business.” Women’s Apparel—Max Mara, Sandro, Self-Portrait. None of them were my size. I wore a Medium. Every purchase on the statement was a Size Small. Then, the most glaring transaction hit me: Three months ago, at a custom jewelry atelier: $6,800. The memo read: Engraving service. He had never gotten anything engraved for me. In our ten years of marriage, the most expensive gift he ever bought me was a two-thousand-dollar handbag. His exact words had been: “You’re not really into dressing up anyway, why spend so much on luxury stuff?” I closed the app. My hands weren’t shaking. My heart was racing, but my mind was terrifyingly clear. Mark, how long have you been lying to me? I reopened the statement and scrolled further back. Six months. A year. A year and a half. The weekly florist charges started exactly a year and a half ago. Every single Friday. Like clockwork. For eighteen months. I took a deep breath. Okay. Now I knew. 2. I didn’t confront Mark. Instead, I did something else—I started investigating Chloe Davis. The method was simple. Every Friday night, Mark “worked late.” This Friday, I took the afternoon off. At 5:30 PM, I parked across the street from his office building. At 5:50 PM, he walked out. He was holding a bouquet of flowers. Pink roses. He got into his car and headed toward the South Lake district. I tailed him from a safe distance. He pulled up to the gated entrance of a luxury condo complex. South Lake Gardens. A woman in a white sundress hurried out to meet him. She was young. Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. She smiled brightly, took the flowers, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. Mark wrapped his arm around her waist, and the two of them walked through the lobby doors together. I sat in my car, watching them disappear into the building. Around the woman’s neck hung a necklace. From sixty feet away, I couldn’t make out the exact design. But I recognized the distinct luster of the chain. It was the unmistakable gleam of platinum. I waited for an hour. They didn’t come back out. I pulled out my phone and took a photo of the complex entrance. South Lake Gardens, Building B. Then, I looked up the phone number for the property management office. The next day, under the guise of a “misdelivered package,” I tried to fish for resident information in Building B. Property management refused to give me any details. So, I tried a different approach—I staked out the front gate for two days. On the afternoon of the second day, I saw the woman come out to pick up a package from a delivery driver. I managed to catch a glimpse of the shipping label: Chloe Davis. The address: South Lake Gardens, Building B, Unit 1502. Chloe Davis. The woman who had taken my jewelry to Van Cleef & Arpels for servicing. I got back into my car and searched her name online. I didn’t find much. But I did run a public property records search for Unit 1502 in Building B of South Lake Gardens. The registered owner: Mark Sterling. Date of purchase: 2023. We got married in 2014. He had bought this condo during our marriage. Where did the money come from? I checked the credit card statements again. There were no massive withdrawals or down payment charges. He hadn’t used his credit cards to buy the condo. So where did the cash come from? I opened another app—our joint high-yield savings account. I scrolled back. Late 2022, a massive outbound transfer: $120,000. Transfer destination: Mark Sterling’s personal checking account. Memo: Investment. I had asked him about it at the time. He had told me, “It’s a buddy’s startup project. Very low risk. We’ll see a return in six months.” Six months later, I asked about the ROI. He said, “It’s still scaling up. Needs more time.” I hadn’t brought it up again. $120,000. Combined with a standard mortgage, it was more than enough for a down payment on a two-bedroom condo at South Lake Gardens. I sat in the driver’s seat and let out a dark laugh. Mark. You used our money to buy a condo for your mistress. You stole my jewelry to let your mistress flaunt it around town. And you had the nerve to tell me, “You’re not into dressing up.” Alright. Perfect. I started the engine. I didn’t go home. I drove straight to the law firm of my best friend, Rachel. 3. Rachel was my college roommate. She had been a high-powered divorce and family law attorney for eight years. I laid all the evidence out on her desk. The credit card statements. The property records. The joint account transfer logs. The screenshots from the Van Cleef & Arpels app. She reviewed the documents in silence for ten minutes. Then, she looked up at me. “The jewelry from your dowry—do you have an itemized inventory?” “Yes.” “What about proof of purchase?” “It’s all in my mother’s safe deposit box. Original receipts, certificates of authenticity, everything.” “Did your mother ever have it legally notarized as a gift?” I paused, stunned for a second. “She did.” It suddenly came rushing back to me. My mother was an incredibly meticulous woman. Before she got sick, she had a lawyer draft a notarized deed of gift—explicitly stating that these pieces of jewelry were gifted to me as my sole and separate property prior to marriage, completely exempt from any future marital or community property claims. At the time, I thought she was being overly paranoid. Now, I understood. She saw much further down the road than I ever could. Rachel nodded approvingly. “Do you have the notarized documents?” “Yes. They are filed with the receipts.” “Then this just became very straightforward,” Rachel said, her eyes sharp. “That jewelry is your premarital, separate property. You have the notarized deed, the receipts, and the certificates of authenticity. Mark took them without your consent and gave them to a third party. Under the law, this isn’t ‘mismanagement of marital assets.’ This is grand larceny.” “Grand larceny?” “Exactly.” Rachel leaned forward. “The value exceeds half a million dollars. That’s a massive felony. He’s looking at three to ten years in state prison.” I stared at her, processing the weight of it. “I’m not calling the cops just yet.” Rachel raised an eyebrow. “I need to confirm one thing first.” “What is it?” “Whether the rest of the jewelry is still in the safe at home.” Rachel instantly understood. “You think he swapped them out?” I nodded. “My mother left me twelve pieces in total. We know the four-piece Alhambra set is currently in that woman’s possession. As for the other eight…” I trailed off. Rachel slid a business card across the desk. “David Chen. Certified master gemologist and appraiser. Take whatever is left in your safe to him. He’ll tell you if they’re authentic.” I pocketed the card. “One more thing,” Rachel warned me. “When you go home tonight, act completely normal. Don’t say a word. Don’t ask any questions.” “I know.” “Make him believe you are completely oblivious.” “I know.” “Once we have all the evidence secured, we drop the hammer.” Drop the hammer. Those words gave me a profound sense of grim satisfaction. 4. When I got home, Mark was lounging on the sofa, watching TV. “Working late today?” he asked casually. “Yeah, pulling extra hours.” I walked into the master bedroom and locked the door behind me. I stood in front of the heavy steel safe in the closet. We had bought this safe during our second year of marriage. My mother had told me, “Your jewelry is highly valuable. You need to keep it secure.” The original passcode was my birthday. Later, Mark insisted that wasn’t secure enough and changed it to his birthday. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Looking back, he was already plotting his heist the day he changed that code. I punched in his birthday and pulled the heavy door open. The velvet jewelry boxes were all there. Not a single one was missing. The jade bangle. The diamond tennis necklace. The ruby drop earrings. The Mikimoto pearl set. … At first glance, everything was accounted for. But I didn’t touch them. I took out my phone and meticulously photographed every single piece in its box. The next day, while Mark was at work, I packed every piece from the safe into a discreet tote bag and drove to David Chen’s office. David was a man in his late fifties. Wearing a jeweler’s loupe, he examined each piece, one by one. The first item: the jade bangle. He examined it under harsh lighting for two minutes. He set it down. He looked up at me. “This is a replica.” My stomach dropped. “It’s Grade A treated jade, very well-crafted, but it’s not natural untreated jadeite. The color distribution on an authentic piece of this caliber wouldn’t be this unnaturally uniform.” The second item: the diamond necklace. He examined it for barely a minute. “Moissanite. Not diamonds.” The third item. The fourth. The fifth. Every single time he set a piece down, he shook his head. Out of the twelve pieces of jewelry, subtracting the four Alhambra pieces currently held by Chloe Davis… Eight pieces remained. All eight were counterfeits. Not a single genuine piece was left in the safe. I sat in the appraisal office, staring at the row of worthless fakes lined up on the velvet tray. David drafted the official appraisal reports for me. Eight separate reports. Every single one concluded: Non-natural / Replica / Counterfeit. My mother’s jade bangle. She had sold her childhood home in the suburbs to buy it for me. It had cost fifty-eight thousand dollars. She had told me, “This is your safety net. No matter what happens in your marriage, as long as you have this bangle, you have a way out.” She wore it for twenty years before taking it off her wrist and placing it on mine right before she passed away. Now, I had no idea where the real one was. Sitting in my safe was a cheap, mass-produced fake worth maybe a few hundred bucks. I carefully folded the appraisal reports and placed them in my bag. I didn’t shed a single tear. When I walked out of the appraisal office, the afternoon sun was blindingly bright. I stood on the sidewalk and texted Rachel: “Eight pieces. All fake.” Rachel replied instantly: “We have enough evidence. Next step: audit his company.”

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It all started because my billionaire father smiled during a prime-time interview and said, “Honestly, the road to success has been incredibly smooth for me.” Those words hunted him down. A man twisted by extreme hatred for the rich broke into our home and beheaded him. He violated my mother, too. Hiding in the closet, I watched her emerald ring soaking in a pool of blood. I didn’t dare let a single tear fall. It was my boyfriend, Caleb Vance, who also happened to be my therapist, who pulled me out of that suffocating shadow. Until a movie hit the theaters, based entirely on my family’s tragedy. In this adaptation, my father was twisted into a corrupt, heartless capitalist. My mother was depicted as a homewrecking mistress. And I? I was portrayed as a vicious bully. The brutal, cold-blooded killer was whitewashed into a poor victim of circumstance, driven to desperate measures by poverty. On the night of the movie premiere, I went. I never expected to find out that the screenwriter was Caleb’s childhood sweetheart, Elara Vance. She smiled as she clung to Caleb’s arm, introducing him to the crowd: “This is the city’s finest psychologist, and the inspirational muse behind my film. He provided the incredible, raw material that allowed me to complete this masterpiece.” The theater erupted in thunderous applause. Ignoring Caleb’s look of absolute horror, I slowly raised my hand. “I have a question for this ‘muse’.” … Caleb’s face went completely rigid. He obviously hadn’t expected me to show up. I recognized the panic swirling in his eyes instantly. Two days ago, we had agreed to take a trip to a tropical island. The day before we were supposed to leave, he claimed an urgent crisis had come up at work. He apologized with such tenderness: “Rylee, just give me one day. One day.” “You go ahead. I’ll handle this and meet you there immediately.” I believed him. Until my best friend sent me a video link. There were Caleb and Elara, appearing together at the movie premiere. Striking an intimate pose, looking like lovers. Forgetting about the trip, I rushed here, only to watch a movie where my family was twisted into villains. Then, the realization hit me like a physical blow. He wasn’t busy. He just needed me out of town. Caleb’s eyes locked with mine. He immediately ripped his gaze away, not daring to look at me. So, he was capable of fear. Fear of me knowing. Fear of facing my fury. Yet he did it anyway. For Elara. I curled my lips in a bitter smile. “Dr. Vance, I’m just purely curious. As a psychologist, where exactly did you get the ‘real-life subject material’ you provided to Ms. Vance for this screenplay?” I wanted to hear his explanation. I was giving him one last chance. Caleb’s mind seemed to go blank for a second. The next moment, his voice was flat. “Just an experience of an old friend.” I stunned for a few seconds, then let out a low, bitter laugh. Caleb, I’m always the soft-hearted one, but thank God, you are far more ruthless than me. I was such a fool. I already knew the answer, yet I still wanted to hear how he would lie to me. Caleb saw my eyes turning red, and a note of worry crept into his voice. “I…” Suddenly, Elara’s slightly shrill voice cut him off. “What a wonderful question! It seems you are a deep admirer of our film. Why don’t I share the story of Caleb and I’s creative journey?” She started talking, completely self-absorbed. “The story in the movie was so heavy, I was stuck for the longest time, unable to put pen to paper.” “Until I met Caleb.” She turned her gaze to him, the adoration in her eyes thick and unmistakable. “As a top psychologist, he analyzed the raw, inner world of those suffering from PTSD for me. We explored the complexities of human nature, the boundaries of crime and punishment.” “He stayed up with me through countless late nights. Honestly, without him, this movie wouldn’t have a soul.” When she finished, she looked at Caleb with deep affection. Caleb glanced at me, then immediately pulled away as if burned, not daring to meet my eyes. Yet, he still nodded stiffly, playing along with Elara. The audience erupted in applause, mixed with envious whispers. “Oh my god, they’re soulmates!” I quietly stared at that face and laughed at myself. Six years of knowing Caleb, four years of being in love. Now, I was just an “old friend.” The scars I had once revealed to him in total trust had been served up to Elara. He used my wounds to please another woman. Chapter 2 When the applause died down, I forced myself to calm down. “Exploring human nature, analyzing psychology. That sounds so profound.” “But Dr. Vance, as a professional psychologist, using your patient’s private life as material for someone else—” I paused, my voice turning to ice. “Is that, perhaps, a violation of your professional ethics?!” As the words fell, the faces of the audience members, who had just been gushing over the “romance,” shifted. That’s right. Leaking a patient’s privacy was an absolute taboo for a therapist! The reporters reacted instantly, turning their cameras and microphones toward Caleb on the stage. “Dr. Vance, is what this young lady saying true?” “Did you really leak a patient’s private sessions to Ms. Vance to use as screenplay material?” Caleb panicked, frantically waving his hands, his voice pitching up. “No! No, that’s not right! Everyone is misunderstanding. This isn’t a patient’s private life!” Elara immediately chimed in, putting on a victim act. “This movie is adapted from actual social events. How could it be a patient’s private life? This young lady must be confused about something.” “Oh? Adapted from actual events?” I smiled. “Then can Ms. Vance tell everyone how you learned about these ‘actual events’?” Years ago, due to a massive error by the investigators, the killer almost got away. Because of that, the case was completely buried and never reported. Aside from Caleb as the source, Elara couldn’t have known. Elara froze, falling silent. She couldn’t say she heard it from Caleb, because that would confirm he leaked the information. She could only glare at me with venom. The air solidified. Elara looked to Caleb with a pleading expression. He took a deep look at me, seemingly having made some kind of decision. “The person involved was an old friend of mine. She didn’t want to be mentioned again, so I didn’t want to say much.” “Since this young lady is so persistent, I will clear this up.” My heart dropped. By instinct, he still chose to protect Elara. I had lost completely. “My old friend was deeply aware of the mistakes her parents had made. For years, she carried a massive moral burden, which led to severe depression.” “She came to me to pour everything out and begged me to find a way to make this matter public, to serve as a warning to the world. It was her way of seeking atonement for the victims.” He paused, pitching his voice up a bit, carrying an air of righteous indignation. “So, this was not a leak.” “Elara and I were simply helping a tragic girl achieve her self-redemption.” I stared at Caleb, dumbfounded. A sharp pain shot through my heart. I was so hurt I could barely breathe. After my parents’ brutal murder, I got sick. Depression. Living was more painful than dying. I swallowed sleeping pills, slit my wrists, and looked down from rooftops countless times. Every time, I was pulled back. Until one time, after getting my stomach pumped, the doctor couldn’t take it anymore and brought in Caleb. He told me, “You are a survivor, not a sinner.” Some people in life are like gifts. With his companionship, I was slowly healed. And now, his face had become just as repulsive as the killer’s from that day. I held back my tears, my voice shaking. “Caleb Vance, you truly have no soul.” “So righteous, aren’t you? Casting yourself as the big hero.” I let out an abrupt laugh, asking him with a raspy voice: “But you twist the truth and reverse black and white. When you’re asleep at night, does your conscience really never trouble you?!” Chapter 3 The crowd grew noisy. “What does she mean by that? Is she saying the movie is maliciously whitewashing a criminal?” “The depiction of the criminal in the movie did make me feel uncomfortable.” “Yeah, and the victims were so stereotypical, it felt like victim-blaming…” Hearing the whispers, Elara’s face flashed with panic, her grip on Caleb’s arm tightening slightly. Seeing this, Caleb’s eyes darkened. “Rylee Croft! Do you have to cause a scene out here?” “What happened to your parents was years ago. Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you insist on not letting them rest in peace!” I snapped my head up to look at him. The look in his eyes was one of disappointment, anger, and even a slight tinge of blame. There was not a single trace of the tenderness and heartbreak he once had. I was stunned. All those years, I thought of him as my salvation. In his most缱绻 (tender) voice, he had told me over and over again: “Rylee, don’t be afraid. You have me.” “Rylee, look. The sun is out. Let’s go out and get some sun, and I’ll read you poetry.” I blankly raised my hand and touched my face. The bitterness I had held back for too long had now coalesced into tears, crawling all over my face. Caleb saw my tears. He froze for a few seconds, and a look of pain flashed across his face. He instinctively raised his hand, as if wanting to wipe away the tears as he had countless times in the past. But he realized we were too far apart. He was on the stage, the center of attention. I was down here, isolated and helpless. He awkwardly dropped his hand. Across the noisy crowd, his lips moved, and though I couldn’t hear him, I understood clearly: Rylee, don’t make a scene. Let’s go home and talk. Hah. After he and Elara had pinned my entire family to a pillar of shame. Was there any “home” left between us? I curled my lips in a mocking smile, walked up onto the stage step by step, and faced Caleb. “My parents have been slandered as criminals who deserved to die. You are the ones not letting them rest in peace!” “Caleb Vance, if it were you, could you let it go?” His mouth opened, his Adam’s apple moving with difficulty. His voice was raspy. “Rylee, I’m doing this for your own good. What happened to your parents needs more attention. A truth is needed eventually.” Absurd. A short, sharp laugh escaped my throat. “The truth?” “Is the truth beautifying the crime and the killer while attacking the victims?” “Or is the truth slandering my parents, making my father a sweatshop boss, my mother a homewrecking mistress, and me a vicious bully who abused her classmates?” My voice suddenly went high. “Caleb Vance, does it taste good? Living off the blood of the dead?” The atmosphere around us solidified. Caleb’s shaking voice rang out. “Rylee, that’s not what I meant. I just got anxious earlier.” His eyes turned red, as if he truly was repenting. But the next second, he said urgently, “But this movie is very important to Elara. Nothing can go wrong. Rylee, just step back this once, okay?” “After this, we’ll get married.” I slowly looked up at him, burning tears slipping from the corner of my eyes. But I was laughing so hard my whole body was shaking. “Step back? How do you expect me to step back! You know how painful the last six years have been for me. You know!” Caleb heard my laughter, and his tone became impatient. “Then what exactly do you want?” “Do you want to destroy my career, destroy Elara’s most important work, before you’re satisfied?” His eyes were full of disappointment. “When did you become so unreasonable?” I froze on the spot. Looking at that face that once gave me so much peace, I suddenly found it frighteningly alien. “In your heart, her slandering my entire life is called ‘work’?” “And I, the victim you’ve trampled under your feet and sucked dry, I become the sinner?” My interrogation made his face even uglier. He avoided my gaze, not daring to look into my eyes again. Seeing this, Elara frowned, her tone full of disdain. “Ms. Croft, why are you speaking so harshly? Caleb and I are giving this matter more discussion, recording it through film.” The venom in her eyes flashed by. “You are so hopelessly disruptive. Anyone who didn’t know better would think you are that daughter who bullied her classmate and caused them to jump off a building.” So, Elara knew everything. She just wanted me to admit my identity and humiliate me publicly. Chapter 4 I had always hated Elara Vance. And she hated me. In front of my face, she would tell Caleb pointedly, “Caleb, pity isn’t love. Don’t be fooled by a patient.” I was already insecure, and she made it so I could never find peace. I had to confirm with Caleb over and over again: “Do you only pity me?” “Caleb Vance, will you one day abandon me?” Caleb would pull me into his arms with helpless adoration. “You silly girl, what are you imagining? How could I ever bring myself to leave you.” Now, he was standing against me, protecting another woman. So, it wasn’t that he couldn’t bring himself to leave. It was just that the person he couldn’t leave was not me. I met Elara’s malicious gaze and smiled. “Yes, I am that person. The daughter in the movie.” Her grin froze. She hadn’t expected me to admit it so easily. Immediately, she smiled again, faking surprise. “Oh dear, so Ms. Croft really is that bully.” The venue exploded. “Ms. Croft, was your father really a cold-blooded capitalist? Was your mother really a mistress?” “Ms. Croft, was your family’s tragedy retribution for you bullying others?” The reporters were incredibly excited. But they weren’t trying to find the truth. They wanted a gimmick, a shocking headline. The crowd surged forward. I was pushed down to the ground with massive force, my head hitting the floor hard. Buzz! The world instantly went silent. As the room spun, twisted, magnified faces blurred before my eyes, merging with the face of the demon from deep in my memory. I was back in that blood-colored afternoon, pinned inside the closet by my parents. Through that narrow crack in the door, I saw— My father on the ground, his head a bloody mess. My mother pushed to the ground, her skirt violently torn open, the demon’s face turning depraved. When her eyes met mine, they instantly filled with resolve. She actively thrust the knife in the crazed robber’s hand into her own heart. Then, step by step, she dragged herself through the blood covering the floor, crawling to the closet. Using her body to block that crack in the door, blocking the demon’s searching gaze. Blood seeped in, inch by inch, warm, thick… “Ah!” I clutched my head and let out a scream, my body shaking uncontrollably. That suffocating feeling of being close to death returned. The crowd was terrified by my reaction. They stopped pushing forward and backed away with strange looks on their faces. I finally got some breathing room. “Rylee!” Caleb noticed something was wrong. His face changed dramatically, and he tried to rush over to help me. “Don’t touch me!” I violently took a step back to avoid him. His hand froze in mid-air, his face full of hurt and disbelief. I raised my head, staring at him with blood-red eyes. “Is it fun? Turning everything I told you into gossip to tell her?” Caleb’s face turned slightly red, looking as if he were embarrassed or angry. “Rylee Croft!” “Not everyone is like you, always twisting every ounce of goodwill into malice.” I dully dragged myself up and said to him, one word at a time: “Caleb Vance, is it that hard to treat people with the same sincerity you started with?” “How did the old me not realize you were actually this disgusting.” His eyes began to dodge mine. This reaction fell into the eyes of the crowd, looking meaningful. “Now it really does look like Ms. Croft is the one being bled dry.” “I knew this movie was wrong. That’s a murdering demon; why are they whitewashing him?” “Exactly. And putting him right in the middle of the promotional poster. Their intentions are way too obvious.” The whispers of doubt grew louder. Elara completely panicked. Her voice went sharp as she screamed, “Don’t believe her! She’s crazy!” “She’s a patient of Caleb’s. She has a delusional obsession with him, and now she’s fabricating all this to destroy us!” The crowd frowned, barely able to keep up with the reversals. Elara shook Caleb’s arm urgently. “Caleb, don’t play along with her. You’ve done more than enough. She’s trying to destroy us!” “Don’t you have her medical records for her delusions? Stop being soft-hearted! Tell everyone the truth, everything I said is true!” In an instant, everyone’s gaze concentrated on Caleb Vance. After a long silence, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, all emotion had faded, leaving only indifference. He looked at me and said quietly: “Yes. She… is suffering from severe delusions. She is one of my patients.” “She has been obsessively harassing me…”

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A year ago, he threw out a casual, “I don’t think we’re a good fit,” and walked away without looking back. There were two coffees on the table. He hadn’t touched his. He left me the bill. A year later, he was standing at my office door. His face was ghost-white. His hands were shaking. “Ms…. Ms. Miller?” I looked at him and smiled. “Come in. And close the door.” Chapter 1 The story has to start with a blind date a year ago. My mom had been nagging me on the phone for three months straight. “You’re twenty-seven, Chloe! If you don’t start dating seriously now, all the good ones will be taken!” “Mom, I’m busy with work—” “Busy, busy, busy. You’ll know what ‘busy’ really means when you’re thirty and dying alone!” I couldn’t win against her. So, I went. His name was Brad Hudson, twenty-eight, a sales supervisor at a tech firm. My mom’s exact words were: “He’s a top-tier university grad, makes over six figures, and he’s sharp-looking. Put your best foot forward.” I arrived five minutes early. Ordered two coffees and sat waiting. I waited ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. Just as I was about to get up and leave, he walked in. Suit, dress shoes, a Longines watch on his wrist. He scanned the restaurant upon entering, then spotted me. I noticed his expression. It was brief, maybe half a second. But I saw it clearly. Disappointment. That “you don’t look like your profile picture” kind of disappointment. Actually, the photo was me. Five-foot-two, slightly chubby, wearing glasses, average skin. But on dating apps, who doesn’t touch up their photos a bit? He obviously felt I had touched mine up too much. He sat down, offering no apology for being late. “Are you Chloe Miller?” “Yes, hi.” “Hmm.” He picked up the menu, flipped through it twice, then put it back down. “What do you do?” “Project management.” “Which company?” “A tech firm, Nexus Digital.” He thought about it. “Never heard of it. Big company?” “It’s alright.” “What’s your salary?” I paused, stunned. Seriously? This direct? “It’s enough to get by.” “I mean a specific number.” He leaned back in his chair. “Don’t mind me, I just want to understand the situation. We’re both adults; discussing terms is normal.” “A little over fifty thousand.” I was talking about my base salary. I didn’t count bonuses, project dividends, and stock options. But he didn’t need to know that. “A little over fifty…” He nodded, a look I was all too familiar with. That’s it? “Education?” “Bachelor’s.” “Where from?” “State University.” “Just a state school?” “Yes.” He nodded again. A silence stretched for about five seconds. Then his phone rang. He picked up. “Hey? Oh, right. Okay, I’m on my way.” He hung up, looking at me. “Sorry, some urgent business came up at the office.” He stood up. “I don’t think we’re a very good fit. Don’t take it personally.” He grabbed his car keys off the table. “You can have the coffee. I didn’t touch mine.” And then he left. From the time he sat down to the time he left was a total of eight minutes. I sat there, watching his back disappear through the doorway. Two coffees on the table. The bill was twelve dollars. He didn’t pay. I called the waiter over. “Check, please.” Walking out of the coffee shop, I wasn’t actually that sad. It was a setup; it’s normal not to click. But one thing happened that made me truly angry. It was three days later. My mom called me. Her voice was trembling. “Chloe… that guy you met… did you offend him somehow?” “What’s wrong?” “Aunt Sarah sent me a screenshot…” My mom forwarded the screenshot to me. It was an iMessage group chat. The group was named “The Boys’ Night Out.” Brad had posted a photo. It was my photo. A sneaky picture he took the moment he walked in, while I was sitting in the coffee shop waiting for him. Below the photo was a paragraph of text: “Look at who my mom set me up with, I’m dying laughing. Barely five-foot-two, fat, wearing glasses like a high schooler, state school grad, making fifty grand. With these conditions, she still comes out on dates? I sat for eight minutes and ran, Hahahahaha.” A row of replies followed: “Hahahahaha, your mom really isn’t picky.” “Bro, you suffered.” “If this photo gets out, she won’t come looking for you, will she?” “What’s there to be afraid of? She doesn’t know us.” I stared at the screen. My fingers went cold. Not out of sadness. But out of rage. He could dislike me. But he had no right to take my photo to amuse a bunch of guys. My mom was crying on the other end of the phone. “Chloe, Mom is so sorry, I shouldn’t have made you go…” “Mom, it’s fine.” My voice was flat. “What was his name again? Brad? Brad what?” “Brad Hudson…” “Which company?” “He said something called… Apex or something…” “Got it.” I hung up the phone. I opened my laptop and searched for “Brad Hudson.” He was on LinkedIn. Apex Technology, Midwest Regional Sales Supervisor. I searched for Apex Technology. I saw a piece of information. And smiled. Apex Technology is a subsidiary under the Sterling Group umbrella. And Sterling Group’s fully-owned technology subsidiary is called Nexus Digital. The exact “never heard of it” little company I worked for. I shut down my laptop. No rush. We will meet eventually. Chapter 2 A year later. I stood at the entrance of Apex Technology’s Midwest branch. My reflection showed on the glass doors. Still five-foot-two. But I’d lost fifteen pounds. Contacts replaced the glasses. My hair was cut short, just reaching my shoulders. I was wearing a black blazer over a crisp white shirt. Carrying a laptop bag in my hand. My corporate badge read: Sterling Group · Project Management Department · Director · Chloe Miller. A year ago, Brad Hudson asked me my salary, and I said a little over fifty thousand. That was the base salary. Adding bonuses, project dividends, and year-end payouts, I took home nearly two hundred thousand last year. Earlier this year, the corporate group underwent an organizational restructuring. I was promoted to Director of Project Management, responsible for overseeing project operations for all subsidiaries in the Midwest region. Including Apex Technology. The transfer order came down last month. Signed personally by the Group VP. “Several Midwest subsidiaries have anomalies in their business data. Go investigate. Clean house if you need to, replace people if you need to.” I said okay. Then I looked at Apex Technology’s Midwest branch employee roster. Sales Team 2 Supervisor: Brad Hudson. I stared at the computer screen for three seconds. Then I closed it and moved on to the next file. No rush. See you on Monday. Monday morning, 9:00 AM. Apex Technology Midwest branch, third-floor conference room. The Regional Director, Gary Vance, led me in. He was in his early fifties, with a beer belly and a loud, booming voice. “Everyone, let me introduce someone. This is Ms. Chloe Miller sent from corporate headquarters. She will be responsible for our project management and operational oversight here in the Midwest from now on.” He glanced at me, a look I was all too familiar with. Skepticism. What could a twenty-eight-year-old girl manage? I didn’t care. “Everyone cooperate fully with Ms. Miller. If you need anything, just speak up.” Gary finished and smiled at me. “Ms. Miller, want to say a few words to everyone?” I stood up, scanning the conference room. Over twenty people. When my gaze swept to the third row by the window, it paused for a moment. Brad Hudson. He was also looking at me. But he obviously hadn’t recognized me yet. A year apart, I had changed quite a bit. He, on the other hand, hadn’t changed much at all. Still that arrogant, confident look, dressed sharply in a suit, that Longines watch still on his wrist. “Hi everyone, I’m Chloe Miller.” My voice wasn’t loud, but the conference room was dead silent. “For the next little while, I will be based here in the Midwest, primarily responsible for analyzing and optimizing project operations. I look forward to your cooperation.” Brief. I don’t like wasting words. After the meeting adjourned, Brad walked right past me. He took an extra look at me. Walked two steps, then turned his head to look again. I didn’t look at him. He probably felt I looked a bit familiar. But he couldn’t remember where he’d seen me. It didn’t matter. He would remember. In the afternoon. I was in my office organizing the project reports for the Midwest from the last six months. There was a knock on the door. “Ms. Miller, I’m Brad Hudson from Sales Team 2.” He pushed the door open and entered, wearing a standard corporate smile. “Mr. Vance asked me to come coordinate Team 2’s business data with you.” He placed the file on my desk. I took it, flipping through two pages. “Sit.” He sat down. I continued looking at the file, not speaking. He waited for a while. “Ms. Miller, you look… quite familiar.” I flipped a page. “Oh?” “Have we met somewhere before?” I lifted my head, looking at him. He studied me carefully for a few seconds. Then his expression changed. From “social curiosity” to “I might have seen her somewhere.” Then to “She looks a bit like—” And finally froze on “No way.” “You…” His voice got stuck in his throat. “Are you…” “Supervisor Hudson, the Q3 collections data in this report doesn’t match the system.” I lowered my head, pointing at a number on the document. “Verify this for me.” He was stunned for two seconds. “O… Okay.” He stood up, taking the document. When he reached the door, he looked back at me. I didn’t lift my head. He went out. The door closed. I heard him standing in the hallway for a long time. Before his footsteps finally walked away. Chapter 3 That night. I guessed Brad was definitely scrolling through his phone. Scrolling through his blind date history from a year ago. Scrolling through the chat logs in “The Boys’ Night Out” group. Scrolling to that photo he secretly took of me. And then comparing it to the person sitting in the director’s office today. Sure enough. First thing the next morning, he came to find me. His face didn’t look good. “Ms. Miller…” He stood at the door, hesitating. “Are you… last year… did we…” “What?” I looked at him. He swallowed hard. “Nothing, I verified the report. The data was entered incorrectly. I’ve already fixed it.” He put the file down and almost fled from the room. I watched his retreating back. Exactly the same as a year ago. Never looking back. Except a year ago, he walked away in disgust. Today, he ran away in fear. After Brad recognized me, his attitude completely shifted. He became exceptionally attentive. Every morning, he was the first in the office, brewing tea for me. At noon, he proactively asked if I wanted him to pick up lunch for me. When reporting his work, he was deferential and respectful. But I noticed something else. While he was being attentive to me, he was doing something else too. For example—getting much closer to Gary Vance. On my third day at Apex, Brad took Gary out for a fancy dinner. I knew, because the next day Gary said something to me. “Ms. Miller, Brad is a good kid. Very capable. He’s our sales benchmark in the Midwest. If you have any questions looking at the data, don’t jump to conclusions. You can always ask me first.” I smiled. “Understood, Mr. Vance.” He still didn’t know why I was really here. During the first week, I didn’t make any big moves. I just looked at data. Reviewing it file by file. Apex Technology Midwest branch: four sales teams, totaling over forty people. The first thing I looked at was Brad’s Sales Team 2. Not because of a personal grudge. But because Team 2’s data was indeed the “prettiest.” Ranked number one in performance for three consecutive quarters. Brad personally held the title of top sales rep for two years running. It was too pretty. Pretty to the point of being abnormal. I pulled up Team 2’s client ledgers for the past year and reviewed them one by one. I saw some very interesting things. There was a girl on Team 2 named Mia Jenkins. She’d been here two years, and her performance was always at the bottom. But three clients she followed up on last year were all “transferred” to Brad right before the contracts were signed. The system record showed: “Client proactively requested a change of representative.” Three clients, all with the exact same reason. Too coincidental. I checked others. Another Team 2 member, Tom Weaver, a veteran who had been here for five years and had a lot of legacy clients. Last year, eight of his legacy clients renewed their contracts. For three of those renewals, the “Sales Representative” on the contract had changed to Brad Hudson. Notes: Resource consolidation. I flipped through Brad’s performance evaluation forms. Gary Vance’s signature was on them. “Brad Hudson exhibits outstanding business capabilities and excels at resource consolidation. He is an exemplary sales representative for the Midwest region.” Resource consolidation. What a nice way to phrase it.

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When Declan Pierce and I exchanged wedding rings, he had adult toys in his pocket meant for his young stepmother. To get back at him, I slept with his best friend on our wedding night. I deliberately left marks on my body. But when Declan saw the hickeys on my neck, he just casually dialed his best friend’s number: “Declan, your wife is incredible,” his friend laughed. “I’m already addicted.” Declan sounded completely indifferent: “You like her? How about sleeping with her again tonight?” Like a madwoman, I smashed his phone to pieces. For the next five years, we became the most notorious, hate-filled couple in high society. That was until he drove my family’s company into bankruptcy. My dad went to prison, my brother died in a car crash, and my mother, who used to dote on me, went insane overnight, hating me to the bone: “This is all your fault! If you hadn’t picked fights with Declan, the Kensington family would never have ended up like this!” “Why don’t you just die?!” That night, Declan pinned me under him, kissing the corner of my mouth fiercely: “Harper, whatever other tricks you have up your sleeve, bring them on.” My heart had finally turned to ash. The bottle of sleeping pills under my pillow pressed uncomfortably against my head. I was done fighting. This time, I planned to listen to my mother… …and go die. 01 My tears fell onto the pillow, but Declan didn’t notice at all. He roughly unbuttoned my pajama top: “Harper, you’ve been throwing tantrums for five years. It’s about time you learned to be obedient.” Obedient… My eyes shifted slightly. If it were the past, I would have shoved him away like a madwoman, slapped him twice, and told him I’d never give him a day of peace for the rest of his life. But now, just like he said, I had quieted down. I lay on the bed like a dead fish, letting him do whatever he wanted. Seeing my lack of reaction, Declan unusually stopped his movements. He frowned, a flash of surprise in his eyes. “Since when did you become so boring?” “You were pretty loud when you were in Rowan’s bed back then, weren’t you?” He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him, but his fingers met a patch of wetness. Declan’s fingers paused: “Why are you crying?” The scent of Vanessa’s perfume on him made me nauseous. I let my gaze fall on him. From his disheveled clothes to his bobbing Adam’s apple, to the lips that had just kissed me so aggressively, and finally, his eyes. Our eyes met, and I immediately looked away. I opened my mouth: “If you want to get off, hurry up. I want to go to sleep.” The hand pinching my cheek suddenly tightened. The teasing look in his eyes instantly darkened. “What did you say?” He was angry… But my throat felt tight. What is he angry about? Wasn’t I quieting down, exactly like he wanted? Declan stared at me darkly for a long time. The pressure on my face loosened as the seconds ticked by in silence. Finally, he sneered: “Harper, you really are full of tricks. You even learned how to play hard to get.” He got up and started fixing his clothes. A square box bulged in his pants pocket. Declan’s fingers paused, then he tossed the box in front of me, looking down from above: “Since you’re my wife in name, I suppose I owe you a little compensation for bankrupting your family.” “Harper, as long as you behave, the position of Mrs. Pierce is still yours.” When the gift box landed, its sharp corner hit my shoulder. It hurt a little. But I still didn’t move. I didn’t even look at it. Declan stared at me for a moment and scoffed coldly: “You brought this upon your family yourself, so you have to endure it. Stop giving me that dead-fish look.” “As for the gift, take it or leave it.” He grabbed his suit jacket and turned to leave. A long time after he was gone, I pulled the bottle of sleeping pills from under my pillow and stared at it blankly. When should I take them? Tomorrow night, I guess… Tomorrow is Mom’s birthday. I’ll go see her one last time. 02 The next day, I carried a cake to the psychiatric hospital. When I saw my mom, I forced a smile for her. “Mom, I came to see you.” Mom’s back stiffened on the bed. She ignored me. Holding back the bitter ache in my heart, I opened the cake box: “Mom, I came to celebrate your birthday today. The cake is strawberry flavored. It used to be your favorite.” “Get up and have a bite.” I spent four hours making it. Just one bite is fine, Mom. This is the last time, Mom… But before I could finish speaking, the back of my head felt heavy. The next second, my entire face was shoved into the cake. “Get lost!” Mom shoved me toward the door frantically. “Go die! Go join Leo in hell!” The thick cream smeared all over my face, sticky and suffocating, making it hard to even breathe. I opened my mouth to say something. “Mom…” I stumbled, shoved so hard by her that I crashed into the doorframe. Mom screamed hysterically: “Declan is sleeping with Vanessa! Couldn’t you have just pretended you didn’t know?! Why did you have to throw a tantrum and fight with him?!” “How did I give birth to such an ungrateful, worthless thing?!” “Harper, go die! Hurry up and die!” Tears finally fell uncontrollably. My hands were trembling. In the past, she loved me the most. She used to say… no matter what I wanted to do, the Kensington family would always have my back. But now, she hated me to the point of madness. She hated me enough to tell me to die. Was everything I did over these years really completely wrong…? I lowered my head, looking away, and it took a long time before I could speak: “Okay.” I’ll listen to you. I’ll go die. Perhaps the aura of death in my eyes was too heavy, because she actually quieted down for a second. The next second, with a loud bang, she slammed the door in my face. I stood stiffly outside the door for a long time before I found my strength again. Then, step by step, I dragged myself to the restroom to wash the frosting off my face. As the icy water splashed against my skin, I slowly regained some clarity. I stared at my face in the mirror, speechless for a long time. Maybe my decision to marry Declan all those years ago was a mistake to begin with. So now, this mistake should finally come to an end. It ends tonight. When I left the psychiatric hospital, it had started raining. I didn’t have an umbrella, and I couldn’t be bothered to call a cab. I walked alone in a daze for I don’t know how long. Just as I was completely soaked and feeling cold, a figure suddenly appeared in front of me. The rain instantly stopped hitting me. I looked up and saw Declan holding an umbrella, staring at me with dark, unreadable eyes. Through the glass window of the building beside us, I could see Vanessa, Rowan, and several of his close friends. 03 Declan pulled me into their private booth at the bar. “What, the great heiress Harper is bankrupt and can’t even afford an umbrella?” Rowan looked at me with a mocking smirk. “How about you sleep with me again, and I’ll buy you one?” Roars of laughter erupted around the booth. Someone nudged Rowan with their elbow, teasing: “Come on, man. Just how wild was Harper five years ago that you’re still obsessing over her?” “Declan, since you don’t care about her anyway, why don’t you let Harper entertain all of us? It’s not like we won’t pay.” The explicit, piercing insults came one after another. Declan sat in the booth, silent. After a long while, the corner of his mouth twitched: “Do whatever you want.” As soon as he said that, a chorus of hoots and jeers broke out. The smug smile on Vanessa’s face grew even more radiant, though she feigned glaring at them: “Alright, boys, enough. What kind of men bully a little girl?” She leaned close to Declan. “Speaking of which, I’m technically your mother-in-law. You’ve been married to Declan for five years, and I never gave you a welcoming gift.” As soon as she said that, Declan’s expression changed, his eyes even showing a hint of jealousy as he looked at Vanessa. If it were before, I would have definitely caused a massive, crazy scene in a situation like this. But now, all my fiery hatred and pride had burned out. I just wanted to end all of this quickly. I turned to leave, but Vanessa, who had stood up, grabbed my wrist. “Since we ran into each other today, I’ll give you the Pierce family’s heirloom jade bracelet.” With that, she slipped the bracelet off her wrist and pulled my hand to put it on me. The next second, the jade bracelet crashed to the floor and shattered! Vanessa stumbled back a few steps, stepped on nothing, and fell directly into Declan’s arms. The tears came right on cue: “Harper, I’m technically your mother-in-law in name. Even if you hate me, you shouldn’t have shoved me, let alone smash the family heirloom…” Her voice choked with sobs: “Declan, I think I sprained my ankle.” This trick again. Over the past five years, I don’t know how many times Vanessa had framed me like this. Her acting was clumsy, her excuses sloppy. But Declan always believed her. Unsurprisingly, this time was no different. Declan grabbed my wrist, his face dark. “Harper, are my methods still not harsh enough? Are you still completely unrepentant after everything?” “Apologize to Vanessa.” I lowered my eyes, my gaze falling on the hand he was using to grip me. “Okay.” I looked up at him: “How do you want me to apologize?” “Kneel? Grovel? Or service these guys…” I used to have sky-high pride, but now I felt that all these humiliations were nothing compared to dying. I continued, looking at his friends in the booth. “If you want me to service them, please make it quick. I want to go home before dark.” “Harper!” Declan violently threw my hand away. The atmosphere instantly fell into a dead silence. A long time passed before someone muttered: “Damn, she’s hardcore.” The voice wasn’t loud, but it was crystal clear in the quiet booth. “Enough.” Declan shot the man a dark, murderous glare. “Watch your damn mouth.” He stared at me for a long time, until Vanessa tugged at his shirt, crying: “Declan, my ankle hurts so much.” Declan finally snapped out of it, picked her up, and walked toward the exit. “I’ll take you to the hospital first.” Before leaving, he turned back to look at me for the first time after walking away, his eyes filled with obscure emotions. Not long after, a text message popped up on my phone. Declan: [Wait for me at home tonight. About today… I’ll listen to your explanation.] I gave a hollow smile. Declan, you want me to explain, but tonight… I’m destined not to wait for you. 04 Once Declan left, the others tactfully cleared out as well. I was the only one left in the booth. I stared at that text message for a while, then silently deleted it along with Declan’s contact info. Then I went home alone to organize my belongings. Piece by piece… When I reached the very bottom of a box, my hands suddenly stopped. It was a thick stack of old, un-sent love letters. I had written them to Declan when I was a teenager. Although Declan and I had an arranged marriage, no one knew that I had secretly loved him for many years. Even during the long, messy, and toxic period of our marriage, I hadn’t let him go. But now, looking at the bold, arrogant line on one of the letters: [Declan Pierce, just wait until I make you mine], it felt like a lifetime ago. Waste paper. Expressionless, I was about to throw them all into the trash can when a sudden force snatched them away. Rowan looked at the stack of love letters with a meaningful smirk. I was too exhausted to ask when he had entered the house. I just held out my hand blankly: “Give them back.” His eyes swept over the letters, his lips curling into a sneer: “You want them?” “Harper, so the reason you’ve been fighting tooth and nail with Declan all these years was because you harbored these dirty little feelings. But don’t worry… in Declan’s heart, you’re probably worth less than a dog.” His words sounded familiar. I suddenly remembered the year we got married, during a fight, the icy look in Declan’s eyes as he looked at me: “Harper, throwing all these tantrums, aren’t you just trying to get me to look at you more?” “But do you deserve it? To me, you’re just a dog wagging its tail, begging for pity…” I remained silent for a second. When I spoke again, my voice was as calm as stagnant water. “What exactly do you want?” Rowan reeked of alcohol. He smiled maliciously. “Harper… sleep with me one more time.” As he spoke, he opened the video recording app on his phone: “Look at the camera, let’s do it again.” Rowan forcefully pushed me onto the bed, speaking frivolously: “Actually, I’ve always regretted something. You moaned so well that first time, why didn’t I record it?” I felt completely numb and didn’t resist, but my hand gripped the bottle of sleeping pills under the pillow tightly. …… When Declan returned to his villa, he saw that I hadn’t replied to his text. There wasn’t even a routine curse word from me. He frowned: [Harper, I’m home.] [I told you the position of Mrs. Pierce is still yours. Don’t throw your heiress tantrums next time.] But the only response he got was the red exclamation mark showing he had been deleted. “Harper!” The next second, the pool of blood by the doorway violently pierced his eyes. Declan’s pupils shrank abruptly. He violently kicked open the bedroom door—

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At 11:59 PM, fighting down the annoyance of being woken up by my phone, I pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of the VIP lounge. “Excuse me, everyone. So sorry to interrupt. I’m just here to pick up my husband.” The next second, the entire room’s New Year’s countdown died in their throats. Dozens of eyes belonging to the city’s corporate elite snapped toward me, pinning me to the spot. Sitting dead center in the VIP booth was a man in a razor-sharp bespoke suit, his features striking and cold, slowly turning a crystal whiskey glass in his hand. “…Maya Evans?” Someone finally broke the dead silence. “Tonight is an Ivy League alumni New Year’s mixer, not a shelter for community college dropouts.” The room erupted in mocking laughter. “Wait, isn’t she the girl from the ‘Manifest Destiny’ scandal? The one where the valedictorian intentionally tanked his entire AP History final just to prove a point to the teacher and make her smile?” “I heard she spent years manipulating her way into her stepbrother’s bed and trapped him into marriage. Why else would he marry an academic failure like her? Now that he’s with Chloe, who actually has a Ph.D. from Oxford, they’re a true power couple. How does she even have the nerve to show her face here?” The stares from across the table felt like thousands of tiny needles. They would never know the truth. Julian Vance used to be dead last in our high school class. He worked himself to the bone, grinding his way to the top of the academic ladder, entirely for me. But the past didn’t matter anymore. Meeting their hostile gazes, I didn’t show the humiliation they were expecting. I just offered a slight, tight smile and said calmly: “I’m not here to ring in the New Year with you elites. I’m here to pick up my husband and take him home.” Julian finally lifted his eyes, his gaze dark and heavy. “Maya, we’ve been divorced for three years.” I let the corners of my mouth curve up into a perfectly polite, practiced smile. “I know.” “Which is why I never said I was here to pick you up, Mr. Vance.” 1 “Have you no shame? You’re divorced, and you’re still trying to leech off Julian.” A few suppressed snickers echoed through the lounge. Carter struck a match, lit his cigarette, and looked at me with lazy disdain. “This is the first time I’ve seen someone actually volunteer to be the other woman.” Carter was Julian and I’s best friend in high school. He used to be the second-best person to me in the entire world. But when Julian and I were going through our vicious divorce, he didn’t hesitate for a second to take Julian’s side. Because the girl Carter had been in love with for years was the exact same woman who had destroyed my marriage. And he had been helping Julian hide their affair the entire time. I was the only one kept in the dark, playing the fool from start to finish. “Carter, enough,” Julian snapped, his lips pressed into a thin line. Carter refused to back down, aggressively putting out his cigarette. “Why shouldn’t I say it? An idiot like Maya Evans can’t even begin to compare to a brilliant woman like Chloe.” “You were the only one blind enough to look twice at a moron like her, letting her drag you down for all those years.” Julian met my eyes, his voice low. “Maya isn’t a moron.” Maya isn’t a moron. Hearing that from a certified genius like Julian. It actually sounded completely ridiculous. But back when I was sixteen, I believed those words with my whole heart. The summer before freshman year of high school, my mom married Julian’s dad. Julian and I were the same age, so we ended up at the same public high school. We were even placed in the same homeroom. He was ranked dead last; I was comfortably in the middle. Julian hated me, so he completely ignored my existence. I constantly saw him getting into fights and ending up in the principal’s office. Immediately following those fights, my mom would be called in, forced to bow her head and swallow insults from furious parents and administrators. One night, I got up to get a glass of water and saw my mom sitting alone in the dark living room, wiping away tears. “Maya, what do I have to do to make Julian accept me?” I didn’t know the answer. I only knew that after that night. The fragile, distant peace between Julian and me evaporated into open warfare. I put hot sauce in his Gatorade, dumped muddy water into his backpack, and spiked his lunch with laxatives. Julian laid down the law, his voice dripping with venom. “Is that all you’ve got? Let me tell you something, Maya. If you don’t break me, I’m going to break your mother!” We stayed locked in that toxic standoff for half a year. I thought I would hate Julian Vance for the rest of my life. But in the end, he became the only person in this world who still loved me. 2 Julian and I’s war ended abruptly after a brutal incident of domestic violence. Julian’s dad beat my mom so badly she had to be hospitalized. When they were loading her into the ambulance, his dad was still screaming abuse. “I chased you for two years! You’re nothing but a pretty face! You’re completely useless!” My mom was almost forty. She had been spoiled rotten by my biological father for the first half of her life, so naturally, she lacked basic survival skills. When Julian heard his dad screaming those words, his cold, hostile demeanor completely shattered. He looked at me in shock, muttering to himself. “It wasn’t your mom who seduced my dad…” Julian hated my mom because he always believed she was the homewrecker who had driven his own mother away. None of that mattered anymore. Because after that day. I didn’t have a mother, either. When I carried my mom’s favorite white gerbera daisies to the hospital, I found out she had bolted. She didn’t take a single thing with her. And she didn’t take me. Maya Evans no longer had a home. I had nowhere to go. I was wandering the freezing streets in the middle of the night when Julian finally found me. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked incredibly angry. Terrified he was going to hit me, I curled myself into a tight ball on the sidewalk. Amidst my panic, his warm arms wrapped tightly around me. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak so gently. “Maya, come home with me.” “From now on, I’ll be your whole world.” I took his outstretched hand and held on tight. So, starting from the year I was sixteen. Maya Evans’s entire world consisted solely of Julian Vance. 3 After my mom left, Julian’s dad’s temper grew even more violent. Terrified that I would get hurt, Julian took me and moved us out into a tiny, rundown apartment. Our lives continued, but everything was different. I stopped playing practical jokes, and Julian’s harsh edges softened. He started spending more and more time reading and studying. I couldn’t help but ask him one day. “You used to hate reading. You hated going to class.” He looked at me with intense seriousness, then helplessly pinched my cheek, his voice soft. “Maya, I want to give you a better life.” Looking at the tips of his ears turning red, I nodded emphatically. Maya Evans absolutely refused to drag Julian down. So I threw myself into my studies with everything I had. But when Julian skyrocketed from dead last to valedictorian… I was still barely hovering in the middle of the pack. Julian would stay up until midnight tutoring me. I stared at the calculus problems on the page and just shook my head. He said, “Maya, you really are a bit of an idiot.” “But, I love it when you’re a little dumb. It’s incredibly cute.” Exhaustion crashed over me, and the pen slipped from my limp fingers. I mumbled sleepily. “Julian, can you please slow down? I’m not going to be able to catch up to you.” Julian said: I would never have to chase him. He would wait for me, forever. He didn’t keep that promise. Because later, he absolutely despised how “dumb” I was. I became a nuisance. 4 “She’s not dumb? You busted your ass tutoring her, and she still only managed to scrape into some no-name state school.” Carter flicked his lighter, keeping the insults coming. I scanned the lounge but didn’t see my husband, Liam Thorne, anywhere. Liam had gone to the same university as Julian, but he was in the business school. They wouldn’t naturally run in the same circles. I figured he must have texted me the wrong address. I was too exhausted to dredge up the past. “Excuse me,” I said, turning on my heel to leave. I texted Liam, but he didn’t reply. My calls went straight to voicemail. I decided to just head home. Just as I reached for the handle of the lounge door, a hand shot out and gripped my wrist tight. “Maya, please forgive me.” Julian stared down at me, his eyes swirling with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. Hearing him use my name like that… It used to make me blush. It used to be the perfect, intimate way to flirt with someone as rigid as Julian. But later, those exact same words were the ones that destroyed me. “Julian, are you addicted to acting?” I shook off his hand, my face blank. “I don’t know you.” As the tension in the room thickened, a soft scoff broke the awkward silence. “Maya Evans. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Chloe walked over in her designer heels, as arrogant and aggressive as ever. In the past, I would have been intimidated by her presence. I would have been envious, looking up to her, and inevitably feeling a deep sense of inferiority. But now, after agonizing over that toxic past a million times, all that was left was a dead, flat calm. “Maya, why don’t you come home with Julian and me? Your mother misses you so much.” Even I was surprised by how calmly I could respond to that after three years. “I don’t have a mother.” My supposed family. They had all chosen Chloe. And I… had long since decided I didn’t need them either. Chloe grabbed my wrist, “accidentally” displaying the vintage emerald bracelet on her arm. It was the heirloom Julian’s mother had left him. I had worn that bracelet for ten years. My relationship with Julian had only lasted ten years. 5 Carter was right. I really was an idiot. Even with Julian pouring every ounce of his energy into tutoring me, I still only managed to get into a mediocre state college. Julian, however, secured the highest SAT score in the state and went straight to the Ivy League. We were both in the Northeast, so the distance wasn’t terrible. Even though we couldn’t be together every day, our time was sweet and intensely close. It was the simplest kind of happiness, and it remains a memory I will never be able to fully erase. Julian was handsome, brilliant, and constantly pursued. But he gave me absolute, unwavering security. During college, I often visited him on his campus. He was too famous. Every little thing he did drew everyone’s attention. Gradually, rumors started spreading on the campus forums that I wasn’t good enough for him. They said I had nothing but a pretty face. No skills, no background, just a total idiot who didn’t deserve to stand next to a god like him. Julian had already made our relationship completely public. When he saw the comments, he was furious. He said they just didn’t understand how wonderful I was. So, on his final exam for AP European History. He intentionally answered every single question about “Manifest Destiny” incorrectly, twisting the historical facts into a bizarre, romanticized essay dedicated to me. He nearly failed the class and was officially reprimanded by the department head for being “obsessed with a high school romance.” The incident sent shockwaves through the entire campus. Julian wanted to make absolutely certain that everyone knew I was his girlfriend. But when it came time to get married, he said: “Maya, let’s keep the marriage quiet for now.” “Just give me a few more years. When I’ve made it to the top, I’ll give you the grandest wedding imaginable.” I agreed. By our fourth anniversary, Julian had already built a highly successful tech firm. I never got the grand wedding I was dreaming of. Instead, I got his infidelity. 6 On our fourth anniversary, Julian exploded in a terrifying rage. Because I had lost the emerald bracelet he gave me. He stormed out of the house, furious. It was the first time in his life he had ever spoken to me so cruelly. It was pouring rain that night. I searched every single place we had been to. I suddenly remembered the tiny, rundown apartment we had shared during high school. Julian had bought that apartment years ago. Because the walls inside were covered with thousands of photos of us from those three years. The moment I pushed the door open. I saw Julian pinning another woman to the bed. Thrusting into her with primal intensity. In that exact moment, my scalp went numb, and I lost the ability to scream. I knew who she was. Chloe. Julian had mentioned her to me, but rarely. At first, he told me Chloe’s dad had forced her onto his corporate board, and he thought she was just going to be a massive headache. But later, he said Chloe was actually incredibly competent. Brilliant, even. And it was right around that time that Julian started treating me like I was stupid. Our shared interests dwindled to nothing, and Julian would constantly say: “Can you just stop asking? Even if I explain it, you won’t understand.” “Maya, you really are an idiot.” But I was genuinely happy that he had found a business partner who matched his intellect. Yet now, Chloe was wearing that emerald bracelet, her eyes filled with blatant, triumphant mockery. I had been tortured by guilt, crawling on my hands and knees like a dog, searching everywhere for that bracelet. It turned out I hadn’t lost it. Julian had simply taken it and placed it on someone else’s wrist. She slowly, elegantly sat up, leaning back against Julian’s chest. “What are you so shocked about?” “In your bed at the penthouse, in the shower, against the floor-to-ceiling windows… we’ve done it everywhere.” “Tonight, we just wanted to see what it felt like to do it in the place where you two had your first time.” A deafening roar filled my ears, and all the strength instantly drained from my body. Operating on pure, visceral instinct, I grabbed a framed photo from the nightstand and hurled it at them. Julian shielded her with his body, his eyes blazing with fury. “Maya, have you lost your fucking mind?!” The man who had once promised to be my entire world. Shoved me violently to the floor. My hands were covered in bloody shards of glass from the shattered photo frame. It was the very first photo Julian and I had ever taken together. He had his arms wrapped around me, looking incredibly smug, like he was showing off a prize. But now, it was shattered. And the eyes of the man standing in front of me held nothing but absolute disgust. Before I could even process what was happening, another bombshell detonated in my ears. “Maya, can you stop throwing a tantrum? You are completely suffocating. No wonder your own mother abandoned you!” It turned out my mother had remarried years ago. She had married Chloe’s father. For ten years, she had showered Chloe with all the love and affection I had desperately craved. My decade of fantasies… had officially become a living nightmare. Later, when Julian demanded a divorce. I refused to give them what they wanted, but I was completely powerless against them. Every single person I loved had turned their weapons on me. My husband. My best friend. And my mother.

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