Category: English

1 The night Gavin’s parents were taken, he was walking out the door—not to save them, but to go camping with her. I didn’t stop him. I just called 911. In my last life, I begged him to stay. He saved his parents, but Lily was killed by a wild animal on her trip. After that, he never spoke to me again. On the day I was due to give birth, he drove me into the wilderness and left me there. “If it weren’t for you,” he said coldly, “Lily would still be alive.” He watched as beasts tore me apart. I woke up screaming, soaked in cold sweat, my body aching with phantom pain. Trembling, I checked my phone. The date confirmed it: I was back. Reborn on the day his parents were kidnapped. In a few moments, the phone would ring. The kidnappers would demand five million dollars in cash, to be delivered in thirty minutes. Any delay, and they’d kill them. Gavin and I were a story written by our parents. Childhood friends, a match made by our families before we even knew what it meant. Whether it was for the sake of our family empires or for the sake of my own foolish heart, I was always meant to be his wife. I knew about his ex, Lily. Their relationship was a passionate flame his parents had worked hard to extinguish. Before our wedding, I’d looked him in the eyes and asked him if this was what he truly wanted. If he was marrying me because he loved me. He said yes. To both. So I walked down the aisle with a heart full of hope. After the wedding, he was a ghost in our home—distant, cold, his texts and calls with her a constant, secret hum in the background. I chose to be blind and deaf to it all, swallowing my pain in silence. I loved him. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, of watching my marriage crumble. A choice that cost me my life, and the life of my unborn child. But this time would be different. This time, I wouldn’t make the same mistake. I watched him jog down the stairs, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I slowly pushed myself up from the sofa. Our eyes met, and his gaze was like ice. “I’m not coming home tonight,” he said, the words clipped and final. I didn’t answer. My eyes were fixed on the landline phone on the end table. Right on cue, it began to ring. I snatched it up and hit the speakerphone button. A distorted voice crackled through the line. “We have Richard and Helen Thorne. Five million in cash. Thirty minutes. Westwood Plaza. You call the cops, they’re dead.” Gavin heard every word. He merely frowned, a flicker of annoyance crossing his handsome features, before letting out a short, derisive laugh. “Really, Elara? Is this fun for you?” he sneered. “Getting my parents to play along with this pathetic little drama?” I looked at his face, the same face that had watched me die, and the love I’d nurtured for over a decade turned to ash. “You heard the call, Gavin. What you do next is your decision. I’m staying out of it,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “If you want to believe it’s a performance, fine. But I’m telling you, this isn’t a game.” Perhaps the sheer lack of emotion in my voice gave him pause. He hesitated for a heartbeat. But only a heartbeat. Then he turned and strode out the door without another word. Last time, he’d reacted the same way, convinced it was a ploy to keep him home. But I knew it was real, and I had thrown myself in his path, screaming and crying until he’d finally relented. He’d joined the search, and his parents were saved. But by the time he returned, it was with the news of Lily’s death. And all the blame landed squarely on my shoulders. The moment the front door clicked shut, I dialed 911. Five million in cash wasn’t something I could produce in half an hour. Besides, there was no guarantee they’d release his parents even if I paid. This was a job for professionals. The dispatcher said a car was on its way from the local precinct. But before they arrived, my cell phone rang. It was an old friend of Gavin’s from the police academy. “Elara? It’s Mark. You and Gavin having a fight?” I frowned. “What’s this about, Mark?” “Look, I just got the dispatch. We’re buddies and all, but filing a false report is a big deal. I get you’re fighting with Gavin, but you can’t pull stunts like this. He and Lily are just friends. You keep this up, you’re just making him a laughingstock.” It took me a second to process what he was saying. “What are you talking about? Did Gavin tell you I filed a false report?” Silence on the other end. I let out a cold, sharp laugh. “Mark, I’m giving you one chance. Get your ass over here and do your job, or my next call is to Internal Affairs to report an officer obstructing a kidnapping investigation.” He scoffed. “Don’t treat everyone like they’re Gavin, Elara, ready to jump at your command. I’m not your family’s private security.” His voice dripped with contempt. “You’re not worth a single strand of Lily’s hair.” I hung up. Then I dialed 911 again, reported the kidnapping a second time, and formally filed a complaint against Officer Mark for dereliction of duty. A different pair of officers arrived fifteen minutes later. They were professional, their faces grim as I explained the situation and played the recording of the first call. They immediately ran a trace on the number, but it came back as a burner, already disconnected. All we could do was wait for the kidnappers to call again. While the police set up, I was on the phone with my financial advisor. “How much liquid cash can I access right now?” “Two-point-three million? Get it ready. All of it.” Next, I called Gavin’s uncle, David. The moment I mentioned the kidnapping, he gasped. “Who would do such a thing? Is Gavin there?” “He’s gone camping with Lily,” I said flatly. “Uncle David, they’re demanding five million. I can’t cover it all myself. Can you help me? I’ll pay you back within a week.” “Don’t be ridiculous, child, this is for my brother! We’re family. How much are you short?” “Two-point-seven million.” “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.” The thirty minutes evaporated in a haze of adrenaline and fear. The phone rang again. I answered, a tech expert beside me trying desperately to get a location trace. He quickly shook his head. No luck. My stomach plummeted. The voice on the other end was sharp, impatient. “Time’s up. Where’s the money?” “I don’t have it all yet,” I pleaded. “Please, just give me a little more time. My husband isn’t here, I don’t have access to that much cash on my own.” “I told you what would happen if the money wasn’t there!” “Please, don’t hurt them! You want money, right? Killing them won’t get you paid. It’s a lose-lose. Give me another half hour. I swear I’ll have the money.” As soon as I finished speaking, a muffled, gut-wrenching scream echoed through the phone—my mother-in-law. The kidnapper’s voice returned, laced with chilling amusement. “Half an hour. For every minute you’re late, I take a finger. You want to stall? Be my guest.” The line went dead. Just then, a pale-faced Officer Mark appeared in the doorway. He’d clearly overheard the call. “Gavin called me…” he stammered, avoiding my eyes. “He said… he said his parents were just helping you with an act to keep him home…” I was too drained to even respond. One of the other officers spoke up. “Call him back. Now. Tell him what you just heard.” Mark nodded, fumbling for his phone. He dialed, but after a moment, shook his head. “Busy.” I thought of my mother-in-law, Helen. She was so delicate; a paper cut was a major incident. I couldn’t imagine the agony she was in. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I tried calling David again. His line was also busy. A minute later, he called me back. But before I could ask about the money, he sighed heavily. “Elara, child, it’s not right of you to play with an old man’s heart like this. I know my brother and his wife spoil you, but this is too much. I just spoke to Gavin. Thank God he told me the truth before I had a heart attack.” The world tilted on its axis. My blood ran cold. “Gavin told you it was an act?” I asked, my voice hollow. “Uncle, I don’t care if you don’t believe me, but can you reach my in-laws right now? Can you? Because the police are standing right here in my living room.” He just sighed again. “Gavin has someone else in his heart. Child, maybe it’s time to let him go. Just divorce him. It would be a release for you both.” He hung up. At the same time, Mark finally got through to Gavin. “Gavin, man, you need to get back here,” Mark said urgently. “I think… I think your parents might really have been kidnapped.” The voice that answered wasn’t Gavin’s. It was the syrupy-sweet voice of Lily. “Oh, Mark! You’re playing along with Elara’s little game too? How sweet. Gavin’s just grilling some steaks, let me get him for you.” We heard her muffled voice relaying the message. Gavin never even took the phone. His reply was distant but clear. “Just hang up. That psycho will do anything for attention.” The call ended. Mark looked at me, his brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and dawning horror. I let out a bitter, shaky laugh. “I have no idea what to do,” I admitted to the officers, my gaze empty. “But they want the money at Westwood Plaza. It’s not the full amount, but I have to go. If I act as bait… does that increase your chances of catching them?” A female officer stepped forward. “Ma’am, let me go in your place.” I managed a weak smile. “What if they know what I look like? Your presence would blow the whole operation. I’ll be the one to deliver it. You can all provide cover from the outside.” With no other leads, they agreed to my plan. When the kidnapper called again, I lied, telling them I had the full amount. “Just tell me where to bring it. We can do the exchange. My money for my in-laws.” The man on the other end let out a cold laugh. “Sure,” he said, his tone making the hairs on my arm stand up. A wave of dread washed over me. “Wait,” I said quickly before he could hang up. “I want to hear their voices. I need to know they’re okay.” “Why the rush, Mrs. Thorne? You’ll be seeing them very soon.” He disconnected. My financial advisor delivered the cash. I dragged the heavy suitcase to the designated spot in the plaza. My phone rang again. A new location. “Go to the underground parking garage. They’re waiting for you there.” I didn’t care about the money anymore; I knew the police had it covered. I just ran. I sprinted toward the parking garage, my heart hammering against my ribs. I found my mother-in-law’s sedan. The driver’s side door was hanging open like a broken jaw. Their throats had been cut. Blood, so much blood, was still pooling on the leather seats, spilling onto the concrete floor. A choked sob escaped my lips as I stumbled forward, my legs threatening to give out. I fumbled for my phone, my fingers slick with sweat, and dialed 911. “Westwood Plaza… underground parking… two people… their throats…” I grabbed their hands. They were so cold. “Mom, Dad, hold on. Please, just hold on. The ambulance is coming.” My voice was a frantic whisper. “I’m calling Gavin. I’ll get him here right now.” They both looked at me, their eyes fading, and weakly shook their heads. “Elara…” Helen rasped, a bloody bubble forming on her lips. “After we’re gone… divorce him. Our shares… the house… the funds… it’s all yours… I’m so sorry…” “No,” I choked out, tears blurring my vision. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s my fault. I didn’t get the money fast enough…” “It’s not… your fault…” Richard whispered, his breath shallow. “They never… intended to let us live.” I kept dialing Gavin’s number, over and over. It rang and rang, unanswered. I sent him a text. Gavin, Mom and Dad are hurt. Badly. Get back here. Now. The message sat there, unread. Stone-cold silence. I kept calling. Kept texting. I didn’t stop until I watched the last spark of life leave their eyes. The paramedics arrived, but it was too late. There was nothing to save. I tried to stand, but the world spun violently and went black. I grabbed the car door to steady myself, and a firm hand took my arm. It was one of the officers. “Mrs. Thorne,” she said, her voice gentle but strained. “They didn’t take the money. We had a team move in on the pickup man, but he fell from a height during the pursuit. He’s in critical condition, unconscious.” She paused, her grip tightening slightly. “I am so, so sorry for your loss.” We spent the rest of the night at the station. Everyone was on edge. After I gave my statement, the forensics team began their work. They knew there was more than one kidnapper, and with only one in custody—and in a coma at that—the pressure was immense. This was a brutal, high-profile case, and they were determined to bring the killers to justice. As the first light of dawn broke, I finally left the station and called the funeral home.

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Before I married Grant Covington, his mother put me through a pre-nuptial obedience test. She made me kneel and serve champagne to the entire family. I knelt. She made me walk barefoot across the estate’s jagged gravel driveway to prove I had “grit.” I walked. She made me sign an iron-clad prenuptial agreement, stating that in the event of a divorce, I would leave with nothing. I signed. Grant stood by and watched it all, his face a mask of indifference. “It’s not a big deal, Chloe,” he’d said, his voice low. “Just get through it. These are just family traditions.” I smiled and nodded, a single tear betraying me as it traced a path down my cheek. The final part of the test came without warning: a sharp, stinging slap across my face from his mother, Eleanor. “If you want to marry into this family,” she hissed, “you need to learn your place.” I didn’t move. But upstairs, in his home office in the middle of a video conference with his board, Grant Covington suddenly coughed, spraying a fine mist of blood across his monitor. He clutched his own cheek, his eyes wide with a terror he didn’t understand, staring at me through the open doorway. [SYSTEM INITIATED: Empathic Link with Grant Covington is now active. All physical and emotional trauma inflicted upon the host will be experienced by the target at 100% intensity.] 1 The sting on my face hadn’t even begun to fade when Grant’s body went rigid, and he collapsed backward like a marionette with its strings cut. His handsome face, a face that had always been a canvas for arrogance and cool dismissal, was now twisted in a mask of pure, unadulterated shock. “Grant!” “Mr. Covington!” The Covington living room erupted. The symphony of chaos was immediate—screams, the frantic scrape of chairs, a table overturning with a crash. I stood frozen in the center of it all, watching as they scrambled to get Grant onto a stretcher, his body limp. The one who had started it all, his mother, Eleanor, stared for a single, stunned moment before her eyes found me. She pointed a trembling finger. “You!” she shrieked, her voice cracking. “You’re a curse! A goddamn black widow! My son is perfectly healthy, and the moment you’re in this house, he collapses!” I said nothing. I just lifted a hand to my own face, gently touching the raised, swollen flesh of my left cheek. It burned with a heat that felt strangely similar to the dying fire in my heart. The diagnosis from the hospital came back quickly: acute concussion with associated soft tissue damage to the face. Cause unknown. When Grant woke up, I was the only one in the room. He saw the perfect, five-fingered print blooming on my cheek—an exact mirror of the phantom impact he remembered—and the confusion in his eyes hardened into a familiar, chilling resentment. “Chloe, what did you do to me?” His voice was a raw rasp, thick with accusation. I looked at him, my expression unreadable. “I didn’t do anything. Your mother slapped me, and you collapsed.” “Absurd,” he scoffed, the sound sharp with contempt. “My mother hits you, and I start bleeding? Chloe, I knew you were desperate for my sympathy, but this is a new low. Are you really making up this kind of garbage now?” “It’s not garbage,” I said, my voice steady, each word a carefully placed stone. “A moment ago, we were bound by something called an Empathic Link. From now on, any pain I feel—physical or emotional—you will feel it, too. Perfectly.” Grant stared at me, his disgust a palpable thing in the sterile room. “Is this your new gimmick? I have to hand it to you, Chloe. The lengths you’ll go to just to get my attention… it’s almost impressive.” “You don’t believe me?” I asked. “I believe you’re insane,” he bit out. A small, broken laugh escaped my lips, followed by another traitorous tear. I wiped it away angrily. I looked at this man—the man I had loved with a fierce, unwavering devotion for ten years, a man whose heart remained a fortress of ice—and spoke in a tone so cold it startled even me. “Let’s make a bet, Grant.” “A bet about what?” He arched an eyebrow, looking at me like I was a particularly pathetic insect. “I bet,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper, “that I’m going to make you understand, in every nerve of your body, exactly how much this last decade has hurt.” He didn’t answer. He just turned his head away and buzzed for the nurse, his dismissal more eloquent than any insult. He found my very presence nauseating. I looked out the window at the inky black sky. “You’ll believe me,” I whispered to the glass. “You will.” 2 When I returned to the Covington estate, Eleanor was waiting for me, her face a mask of rage. “You have the nerve to show your face here? You gold-digging witch! My Grant has never had so much as a paper cut his entire life, and the day he marries you, he ends up in the hospital! You’re bad luck!” As she screamed, she ordered a maid to take down the decorative riding crop that hung on the wall of the study. It was braided black leather, oiled to a dark sheen. My heart seized as I looked at it. I remembered when I first met Grant. He was just like that crop—proud, wild, and untamable. I’d spent years chasing after him, believing that if I just ran fast enough, loved hard enough, one day I’d be able to stand beside him. Now, I was just another object in his house he permitted to be beaten. The large television in the living room was on, tuned to an entertainment news channel. “Tech mogul Grant Covington was rushed to the hospital today,” the polished anchorwoman said. “His high school sweetheart, beloved pop star Isabelle Vance, was seen rushing to his side. Sources say she hasn’t left him for a moment, fueling speculation that rumors of his recent marriage to a mysterious nobody were greatly exaggerated…” On the screen, Isabelle was tenderly tucking the corner of a blanket around Grant’s shoulder. And the way Grant looked at her… it was with a softness, a warmth, I had never once seen directed at me. So he wasn’t a man made of stone. He was just reserving all his warmth for someone else. And I couldn’t even earn a shred of his trust. A wave of grief so profound it felt like drowning washed over me. Crack. The first lash of the riding crop across my back was electric. The pain was so sharp, so immediate, that my knees buckled. It felt like my skin had split open. “I’ll teach you to seduce my son, you little tramp! I’ll beat the ambition out of you!” Eleanor was in a frenzy, bringing the crop down again and again. Just then, my phone rang. It was Grant. With a trembling hand, I managed to answer it. “Chloe!” His voice was a furious, pained roar through the phone. “What is this, some kind of self-harm stunt to get my attention now? I’m telling you, stop it! Whatever you’re doing, it’s pathetic, and it’s only making me hate you more!” His voice was loud enough for Eleanor to hear. She thought I was tattling on her. Her expression curdled into something even more monstrous. “You dare call him? You think he’ll save you?” She raised her arm high, putting the full force of her body into one final, brutal swing. “Aaargh!” The sound that ripped through the phone was not Grant’s angry shout, but a raw, piercing scream of agony. It was a sound of unimaginable pain, a sound that bypassed the ears and shot straight into the spine. Eleanor froze. On the other end of the line, Grant’s screams dissolved into tortured groans, each one more desperate than the last. Panic finally broke through her rage. She dropped the riding crop and snatched the phone from my hand. “Grant? Grant, honey, what’s wrong? Talk to Mommy, what’s happening?” His voice came back, choked and ragged. “Mom… my back… It feels like it’s on fire… God, it hurts…” “Your back?” Eleanor’s face was a canvas of confusion. She glanced down at me, collapsed on the floor, my back a mess of bleeding welts. “Don’t you worry, baby, I’m coming right now!” she said into the phone. “It must be that witch. She’s putting a curse on you!” She hung up and ran out of the house. At the hospital, Grant was drenched in a cold sweat, the pain in his back so intense he could barely breathe. He grabbed his mother’s hand the moment she rushed in. “Mom,” he gasped, his eyes filled with a terrifying new suspicion. “Did you… did you just hit Chloe?” Eleanor’s eyes darted away for a second. “No! Of course not! Why would I do that? She was throwing a fit at the house, crying and screaming. I just scolded her a bit, that’s all.” Isabelle, who had been sitting quietly by his side, immediately chimed in, her voice dripping with counterfeit concern. “That’s right, Grant. Eleanor has been so worried about Chloe. But Chloe… she was saying some very strange things on the phone. I think she really upset your mother.” She gently rubbed Eleanor’s arm as if to comfort her. Grant looked at his “wronged” mother and the “kind-hearted” Isabelle. Then he thought of my dead silence on the phone. The flicker of suspicion was extinguished, replaced by a wave of disgust. Even if this Empathic Link thing was real, he thought, she was clearly hurting herself just to manipulate him. The woman’s deviousness knew no bounds. 3 Grant was discharged the next day. Isabelle came back to the estate with him, under the guise of “taking care of him.” Eleanor was, of course, delighted. While Grant was in his office taking calls, Eleanor and Isabelle summoned me downstairs. A pile of shattered porcelain—what looked like an antique vase—was swept into the middle of the floor. “The floor is dirty,” Eleanor said, her arms crossed. “Kneel and clean it up.” Isabelle stood beside her, feigning sympathy. “Chloe, just do as she says. Eleanor is just trying to teach you how things are done here. Grant doesn’t like women who don’t know their place.” My knees were already a canvas of deep purple bruises from the riding crop. Kneeling on the sharp, jagged pieces of porcelain sent spears of agony shooting up my legs. Every tiny movement was like having needles driven into my bones. Upstairs, Grant leaned back in his leather chair, his eyes closed. Suddenly, a searing, drilling pain exploded in his knees. It was so intense he cried out, his eyes flying open. That feeling… it was exactly like the pain in his back. His heart hammered in his chest. He shoved his chair back and ran from the room, taking the stairs two at a time. He reached the landing just in time to see Isabelle holding a bucket of water. “Oh my!” she cried, pretending to trip. The entire bucket of ice-cold water sluiced down over my head. The shock of the cold made me gasp, and the water stung the open cuts on my knees, making me dizzy with pain. Seeing Grant, Isabelle immediately ran to him, burying her face in his chest, her body trembling with sobs. “Grant, darling, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! Chloe just stood up so suddenly, I lost my balance… Do you think she was going to use a piece of the porcelain to… to hurt herself and blame us?” Eleanor jumped in immediately. “That’s exactly what she was doing! This woman is poison, Grant! You can’t let her stay here, she’ll destroy our family!” Grant looked at my drenched, pathetic form, then at Isabelle, sobbing in his arms. The doubt in his eyes vanished, replaced once again by that familiar wall of contempt. “Tie her to a chair,” he commanded to the maids in a voice of ice. “Let’s see her try to hurt herself now.” Two maids grabbed me roughly, dragged me to a dining chair, and bound my arms and legs with thick rope, pulling it so tight it bit into my skin. I couldn’t move an inch. Grant shot me one last, cold look before turning and leading Isabelle upstairs. Back in his office, as soon as he sat down, a strange, suffocating pressure enveloped his entire body. His bones, his muscles, every joint felt as if it were being crushed by invisible ropes, making it hard to breathe. He understood instantly. Chloe was tied up, so he felt tied up. That ridiculous “Empathic Link”… could it actually be real? A terrifying thought began to form in his mind. He stood up abruptly. “Isabelle,” he said to her as she peeled an apple for him, “why don’t you and Mom go on a shopping trip? Get out of the house for a bit. I need some time alone.” To his mother, he added, “Go relax, Mom. Use my card.” They were thrilled at the prospect and left almost immediately. The moment the front door clicked shut, the suffocating pressure around Grant’s body vanished. He stood motionless, his face a storm of conflicting emotions. After a long moment, he walked slowly down the stairs and stood before me, still bound to the chair. I was soaked to the bone, water dripping from my hair and tracing paths down my face. It was impossible to tell if they were from the bucket or from my own eyes. He watched me in silence. For the first time, his gaze was free of that cold, cutting disgust. He crouched down in front of me, his voice rough with a vulnerability he himself didn’t recognize. “Did they… did someone actually hurt you?” 4 My lips parted. The words, a tidal wave of every injustice, every heartbreak, every shard of despair, were about to pour out of me. But at that exact moment, the front door clicked open. Eleanor and Isabelle were back. “Oh, we forgot the new limited-edition handbag that just came in!” Isabelle chirped as she walked in. She saw Grant crouched in front of me, and her smile froze. “Grant… what are you doing?” Eleanor saw it too. Her face hardened. She strode over and yanked Grant away from me. “What could you possibly have to say to this curse?” she spat, pointing at me. “Look at her, playing the victim! It’s all an act to manipulate you, my son. Don’t you fall for it! A woman like that has a heart as black as tar.” Grant stood up. The flicker of doubt that had been in his eyes was extinguished by their words, crushed under the weight of his lifelong loyalties. His gaze, when it met mine again, was as cold and impatient as ever. Without another word, he turned and went back upstairs. The tiny ember of hope that had sparked within me was doused with ice water. I watched his retreating back, and my heart, piece by piece, turned to stone. That evening, Grant had to leave for an emergency at the office. The moment his car was gone, the jealousy and hatred in Isabelle’s eyes were finally unleashed. She sidled up to Eleanor. “Eleanor, the way Grant was looking at her today… he’s going soft. We can’t let this go on. We have to teach her a lesson she will never, ever forget.” Eleanor nodded grimly. They exchanged a look, a silent, vicious agreement, and then they came for me. They untied the ropes, and before I could even process what was happening, they each grabbed an arm and dragged me up the stairs and into the second-floor bathroom. “You want to seduce my son? I’ll give you a taste of what you deserve!” Eleanor’s face was a grotesque mask of fury. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and, with all her strength, shoved my head into the toilet bowl. The icy, foul water filled my nose and mouth instantly. I thrashed, my hands clawing wildly, but Isabelle pinned them behind my back. The feeling of suffocation was absolute. My lungs burned, screaming for air. My mind went fuzzy as black spots danced in my vision. Just as I thought I was going to die, Eleanor yanked my head back up. I gasped greedily for air, coughing and sputtering, tears and snot and filth covering my face. “Please…” I begged, my voice a weak croak. “Please stop…” “Begging?” Isabelle sneered. She picked up the toilet brush and scraped its filthy bristles against my cheek. “Maybe a good scrub with toilet water will wash away your delusions. You think you’re worthy of a man like Grant?” Eleanor gave me no time to recover. She grabbed my hair again and plunged my head back into the water. The world dissolved into a maelstrom of cold, darkness, and pain. My lungs felt like they were ripping apart. My consciousness began to fray, the edges of my vision dissolving into a black tunnel. My struggles grew weaker. The shadow of death felt cold and real. As the last flicker of my consciousness was about to be extinguished, the bathroom door exploded inward, kicked off its hinges with a tremendous crash. I was yanked out of the water and dropped onto the floor, where I lay heaving and retching like a dying fish, coughing up water until my throat was raw. Through my blurred vision, I saw Grant. He stood in the doorway, his face a mask of a terror and fury I had never seen before. He shoved his mother so hard she stumbled and fell, then pulled me away from the toilet. His eyes were bloodshot, and when he spoke, his voice trembled with an uncontrollable rage, the voice of a demon clawing its way out of hell. “Mom! Isabelle! What the hell are you doing?! Were you trying to drown her?!” 5 Eleanor, sprawled on the floor, looked up at her son in disbelief. “Grant, you pushed me? For her?” Isabelle, snapping out of her shock, ran to him, bursting into theatrical tears. “Grant, you don’t understand! It was Chloe! She went crazy, screaming that she didn’t want to live anymore! She was trying to drown herself in the toilet, we were trying to save her!” “Yes! She was trying to kill herself!” Eleanor scrambled to her feet, latching onto the lie. “We were trying to stop her, and then you came in and…” She clutched her chest, pretending she was about to faint. Grant looked at the absurd scene, a migraine pounding behind his eyes. On one side, his hysterical mother and his sobbing first love. On the other, me, half-dead on the bathroom floor. He made his choice. He scooped me into his arms, carried me quickly into the master bedroom, and laid me on the floor. Then he walked out, and I heard the click of the lock from the outside. “Chloe, you stay in here,” his voice came through the door, exhausted and commanding. “Don’t go anywhere.” It wasn’t protection. It was imprisonment. I lay on the cold floor, listening to the muffled sounds of his family’s arguments and reconciliations, listening to Grant’s gentle voice as he soothed his mother and Isabelle. My heart died. It didn’t break; it simply ceased to beat with any warmth. I had thought he might apologize, that he might finally protect me. It was all a fantasy. In this house, I would always be the one who could be sacrificed. Despair, cold and absolute, washed over me. But this time, I didn’t cry. I pulled myself up from the floor and walked to the large mahogany desk. I opened a drawer. Inside was the pen Grant always used, a German-made Montblanc with a custom iridium nib, incredibly sharp. I gripped the pen. I looked at the pale, soft skin of my own left forearm. And without a moment’s hesitation, I dragged the nib across my flesh. I didn’t need a protector anymore. From this day forward, I would be my own weapon. A sharp, wet sound sliced through the silence of the room. Blood, dark and rich, welled up instantly, eager to escape. At that exact moment, in the top-floor boardroom of Covington Corp. Grant, having just placated his mother, was now attempting to salvage an important international video conference he had abruptly abandoned. He was addressing the foreign directors, his voice smooth and confident, when a sudden, razor-sharp pain shot through his left arm. He glanced down. A dark red stain was blooming on the sleeve of his expensive bespoke suit, spreading with impossible speed. The blood was pouring out of him as if from an invisible wound. “Ah!” In front of dozens of his top executives and the stunned faces of the international board members on the screen, their CEO let out a guttural, animalistic scream of pain. I looked at the deep, gaping wound on my arm, at the blood that flowed freely from it, and I smiled. Our bet, Grant, I thought. It’s just getting started. And now, I make the rules.

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I woke up with a five-year-old son I didn’t know. And a husband of six years, who, just yesterday, had been trembling as he told me he loved me for the first time. Before I could even begin to process what was happening, my phone rang. It was him. Caleb. His voice was cold, a stranger’s voice. “I’m with Stella for her birthday. Don’t call again. I don’t care if you beat Noah bloody, I’m not coming home.” He hung up. “Get your pathetic little tricks under control,” he’d said, just before the line went dead. “Behave.” A moment later, the boy—my son, Noah—shuffled into the room, his small body a canvas of faint bruises. He was trembling as he held out a thin, leather riding crop. “Mommy,” he whispered, his eyes fixed on the floor. “You can hit me now. I won’t cry.” A slow, cold smile spread across my face. I took the crop from his shaking hand. “Noah,” I said, my voice smooth as glass. “Do you know where those two are?” 1 “Well, Caleb. You look like you’re having the time of your life.” The riding crop was coiled in my hand. The heels of my stilettos clicked against the gleaming white marble, each sharp tap a countdown to the end of his good fortune. There he was. The boyish blush I remembered was gone, replaced by the hard, confident lines of a man in a bespoke suit. He was a universe away from the young man who had nervously confessed his love to me only yesterday. Caleb’s face tightened when he saw me. A flicker of annoyance in his eyes. “Ava. What the hell are you doing here? Get out.” Beside him, a woman in a perfect cocktail dress looped her arm through his. It was a gesture of pure provocation, draped in a costume of grace. “Ava, honey,” she said, her voice syrupy sweet. “Since you’re already here, why don’t you stay for my party?” She turned her wide, innocent eyes to Caleb. “Don’t be rude to our guest, Cal. Even if she wasn’t invited.” Her tone was all sugar, but her eyes, when they met mine, were glittering with triumph. Caleb’s expression softened as he looked at her, pinching her cheek playfully. “Alright, Stella. It’s your birthday. Whatever you say goes.” His gaze snapped back to me, hard and cold. “Stella’s a good person. She’s willing to forgive you. That doesn’t mean I am.” He took a step forward, lowering his voice to a menacing growl. “If you’re going to stay, you’d better stay quiet. You make a scene, Ava, and I swear you’ll regret it.” The whispers started around us, a venomous little tide. “God, that psycho’s here. Is she going to drag the poor boy out again to beg Caleb to come home?” “Having a mother like that has to be the worst luck in the world. If I were Caleb, I’d have divorced her ages ago, just to give the kid a shot at a normal life.” “Did you hear what happened last time? Caleb had a late dinner with a client, and she accused him of cheating. Beat the kid half to death just to force him to come back. I wonder if the poor thing is even okay.” “She’s a menace. A complete disaster. I just hope she doesn’t fly off the handle tonight.” Hearing the whispers, Stella seemed to grow taller, her spine straightening with self-satisfaction. She addressed the crowd with performative sympathy. “Please, everyone, don’t say that. Ava is Noah’s mother, after all. She wouldn’t really hurt her own child… ah!” Her sentence ended in a sharp scream. The riding crop had sliced through the air, the crack echoing like a gunshot. In an instant, Stella was clutching her face, a fiery red welt blooming on her cheek. She howled in pain. The smile on my lips only widened. “You little tramp,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to keep your mouth shut?” Rage erupted on Caleb’s face. He lunged toward me. “Ava, how dare you touch her! I’ll—!” CRACK. The crop swung again. Caleb’s thin, gold-rimmed glasses flew from his face, skittering across the marble. A bloody line appeared on his handsome cheek. “Caleb,” I purred, stepping closer. “Did I ever tell you what happens when you cross me?” When he’d confessed his love, I’d told him. I’d warned him. If you ever, ever cross a line with me, I will destroy you. He had simply smiled, his eyes full of devotion. “Ava,” he’d said, his voice thick with emotion. “If I ever do anything to deserve it, you can punish me however you want. I won’t say a word. I swear.” For me, waking up in this nightmare, that promise was made yesterday. But for this Caleb, six years had passed. And promises, I was learning, could fade to nothing. “You’re insane,” he hissed, his face contorted. “Completely insane! Security! Get this crazy woman out of here!” I let out a soft laugh. “Caleb,” I whispered. “Do you want to see what a real crazy woman looks like?” 2 “It’s not going to work, Ava! You can’t use the boy to threaten him anymore, so now you’re trying this?” Stella shrieked, the initial shock giving way to her usual arrogance. “You’re wasting your time! Caleb is sick of you! He loves me!” “Is that so?” I smiled, grabbing a fistful of her perfectly styled hair and shoving her face-first into the enormous birthday cake. Her screams became muffled, gurgling sounds as her head disappeared into layers of cream and sponge. “Ava, let her go!” Caleb roared, his voice trembling with fury. “Let her go, or I swear to God I will end you!” He reached for me, trying to pull me away, to save his precious Stella. I met his furious eyes with a look of pure scorn. In one smooth motion, I pulled a small, wicked-looking paring knife from my purse and drove it straight through the back of his outstretched hand. A raw, guttural scream tore from his throat. I watched the color drain from his face, his expression a mask of agony and disbelief. I twisted the knife slightly, just to be sure. A laugh bubbled up from my chest. “What’s wrong, Caleb? I thought you were so happy. Where’s that beautiful smile you save just for her?” Just moments ago, when I walked in, he’d been standing by her side as she blew out her candles, his dark eyes filled with the same adoration he once reserved for me. His eyes had been full of love. A genuine love. “You’re a psycho,” he gasped, his voice shaking. “Let… go…” His eyes burned with a hatred so pure it was almost beautiful. “Mommy…” A tiny, trembling voice cut through the chaos. Noah. He was standing near the entrance, frozen. I clicked my tongue in annoyance. With a sharp tug, I yanked the knife from Caleb’s hand. Then, as if discarding a piece of trash, I flung the sputtering, cake-covered Stella to the floor. She landed in a heap, her eyes, nose, and mouth clogged with sticky frosting, gasping for air like a dying fish. Caleb clutched his bleeding hand, his body wracked with pain and shock. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, the veins in his neck standing out. He wanted to help her, but he was useless. I ignored the murderous look he was giving me and arched an eyebrow at my son. “Noah. How did you enjoy the show? I expect a five-hundred-word report when we get home.” “Ava! He’s five years old!” Caleb bellowed, trying to stand on the moral high ground while his hand dripped blood onto the marble. “You drag him here to watch this… this madness? Have you lost your mind? Do you have any idea what this will do to him?” I scoffed. In front of everyone, I announced coolly, “Only the strong get to be my son.” My eyes narrowed. “The weak… they’re just your son, Caleb.” Noah’s small frame trembled. He looked at me, his eyes filled with a new confusion, but the raw fear he’d shown me earlier was gone. “This is absurd!” Caleb spat, his voice laced with venom. “Someone like you… you don’t deserve to be a mother! A psycho like you belongs in a goddamn asylum!” I started to laugh, a genuine, delighted sound that echoed in the silent room. “If that’s the case,” I said, my smile widening. “Then let’s go to hell together.” After all, neither of us is an angel. 3 On the drive over, memories had flooded my scrambled brain—a highlight reel from a life I hadn’t lived. I learned that Caleb’s first betrayal happened when I was pregnant. Stella had shown up at our door, the faint bruises of passion on her neck, to inform me that Caleb was in love with her. She told me to step aside gracefully. Blinded by rage, I lunged at her. In the scuffle, I fell down the stairs. The fall induced premature labor. And just like that, Caleb’s affair was public knowledge. He stopped hiding it. He started taking Stella everywhere, to galas, to dinners, to board meetings. I screamed. I cried. I begged. He just looked at me with the detached pity one might reserve for a deranged animal. “Ava, look at yourself,” he’d said, his voice flat. “Just look in a mirror. Ever since you got pregnant, you’ve let yourself go completely. What man would want… this?” He started staying out all night. He let Stella send me pictures of them together, taunting me. The baby—Noah—cried constantly. Between the betrayal and the exhaustion, I felt my mind begin to fray. The pressure cracked me open and I became the psycho he’d accused me of being. Eventually, I learned the only way to get Caleb to even look at me was to hurt our son. Only by threatening Noah could I trigger the tiny, dusty scrap of fatherly love buried deep inside him. Now, as Caleb’s face cycled through shades of white and purple, a cheerful waltz began to play over the event hall’s sound system. It felt like an ovation for my performance. “Watch closely, Noah,” I announced, my voice ringing with manic energy. “Lesson number one. This is how you drag the people who betray you down to hell!” I laughed, a wild, liberating sound, and seized a chair. With all my strength, I hurled it into a long table laden with exquisite food and crystal glasses. Glass shattered everywhere. The guests shrieked, their screams a discordant harmony with the soaring waltz. Anything that could be smashed, I smashed. Anything that could be thrown, I threw. A beautiful, elegant birthday party was reduced to a war zone in minutes. “Enough!” Caleb finally roared, his composure completely shattered. “You’re fucking insane! If this is what you want, then fine! Fine! I want a divorce!” He still didn’t get it. He was still trying to command me from a position of power. I saw the resolve in his eyes, the finality of his decision. And I heard myself laugh again, a low, bubbling chuckle. “A divorce?” I purred. “Caleb, darling. Do you really think you have that right?” When I first met Caleb, he was the charity case my parents had taken under their wing. A scholarship kid from some forgotten rural town. When my father’s driver brought him to our estate, he was all sharp angles and jutting bones, swimming in clothes that didn’t fit. The slightest sound made him flinch. Back then, he called me Miss Ava. “He has every right!” Stella, her face now a grotesque mask of frosting and rage, slowly pushed herself up. Her hand went to her flat stomach. “Caleb isn’t the boy you picked up off the street anymore. He doesn’t need your family’s charity.” She smiled, a truly vicious sight. “And besides, you’re not the only one who can give him a child. I’m pregnant. Caleb and I are going to have a new family.” The pure, unadulterated bliss in her eyes told me one thing. My previous lesson had been far too gentle. A delighted laugh escaped my lips. I lunged, grabbing her by the hair again. The knife in my hand was a silver blur. I plunged it deep into her lower abdomen. “Lesson number two, sweetie,” I whispered, my voice a sing-song. “How to eliminate a threat before it takes root.”

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I was Cole Anderson, heir to a New York real estate empire. Then, in the time it took for a champagne toast, I was nobody. It happened at my own engagement party. My fiancée, Ava Sterling, stood before our world and announced that the Anderson Group—my family’s legacy, my life’s work—would be gifted, in its entirety, to a man named Leo. “The Anderson Group,” I said, my voice dangerously low amidst the stunned silence, “is not yours to give.” Ava just smiled, a cool, placid expression she had perfected. From her clutch, she produced a single, yellowed sheet of paper. An IOU. “Twenty years ago, my grandmother saved your family from a fire that would have wiped you all out,” she said, her voice carrying across the ballroom. “Your father signed this in gratitude. It’s a life debt. He promised to honor any request, no questions asked. This is my request.” She paused, letting the weight of her words settle. “As for us, nothing changes. I’ll still marry you, of course.” I knew the part she didn’t say aloud. If I wanted to be her husband, the price was my entire world, handed over to this stranger, Leo, as some sort of consolation prize. As a final flourish, Ava tossed a single quarter onto the table in front of me. Her idea of a dowry. “We grew up together, Cole. You know how I feel about you,” she said, her voice softening into a practiced caress. “A wedding is just a formality for everyone else. We can keep it simple.” She didn’t wait for my answer. She didn’t have to. Ava was certain that to become a part of the Sterling dynasty, I would swallow any price, any humiliation. And in a way, she was right. I did become a Sterling son-in-law. What she didn’t know was that she wasn’t the only Sterling daughter I could marry. 1 At the party, the press descended like vultures, shoving microphones in our faces, desperate for the bloody details. I put a hand on my father’s arm, stopping the furious words I knew were about to erupt, and managed a tight, respectable smile for the cameras. The moment we were home, the façade shattered. My mother wrapped her arms around me, her body trembling. “Forget us, Cole. That company… all the blood and sweat you poured into it. How could she? How dare she just give it away?” My mother’s voice was choked with tears. “We agreed to this arrangement because we trusted her grandmother. We thought she was a woman of honor, of integrity.” She pulled back, her eyes flashing with a pain that mirrored my own. “We never imagined her granddaughter would be a viper.” My father said nothing. He just stood by the window, his back to us, his fists clenching and unclenching. He looked smaller, older, as if twenty years had been piled onto his shoulders in a single evening. New York and Los Angeles might as well be different countries, but the distance had never mattered to our families. We were bicoastal, a unit. Our lives were a constant migration—winters building forts in the snow at their Aspen estate, summers chasing fireflies at our place in the Hamptons. We were debate partners in high school, and we launched our first startup from a dorm room at Stanford. The business world saw us as a package deal. The Anderson-Sterling merger wasn’t just a marriage; it was the dawn of a commercial dynasty that would dominate both coasts. Until tonight. When Ava, with a casual wave of her hand, signed it all away to a man I’d never even seen before. The rumors spread through the city like a contagion. “Cole Anderson? He always cared more about the money than the girl. Probably pushed her too far with the prenup.” “I heard he’s a total player. A friend of a friend saw multiple women leaving his penthouse in one night.” “Ugh, a gold-digging philanderer. If I were her, I wouldn’t even let him in the door.” Just last week, after a minor surgery, my father had been holding court in our living room, the entire house overflowing with flowers and well-wishers. You couldn’t take a step without bumping into a friend or a business partner. Now, days passed in suffocating silence. Not a single visitor. Not one call. Even my closest friends, the guys I’d grown up with, had quietly ghosted me. My fingers were still trembling when I pushed open the door to Ava’s office. The scene inside froze me in place. Leo was sprawled on the guest sofa, his eyes glued to the large projection screen on the wall. And Ava… Ava was sitting beside him, delicately lifting a single potato chip to his lips. The irony was a physical blow. Her voice echoed in my memory, from a time I’d tried to surprise her with lunch. “The office is for work, Cole. Let’s not bring our personal lives in here.” Eventually, she’d made an exception, allowing me snacks during late-night work sessions. I was so naive, I actually thought it was a privilege, a special rule bent just for me. When she saw me, Ava stood up, her movements fluid and unbothered. She even opened her arms, expecting an embrace. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she murmured, her voice laced with that familiar, patronizing warmth. “Leo is like a little brother to me.” She let her arms drop. “In my heart, you’ll always be the only one.” She continued, as if discussing the weather, “You’re an only child, Cole. So what if Leo plays with your family’s assets for a while? Once we’re married, the Sterling Corporation will be more than enough to keep you busy.” All those dreams I’d shared with her, the business plans we’d mapped out on napkins at 2 a.m., they all curdled into a bitter joke. I opened my mouth, but what was there to say? When someone can so casually dismiss the very core of who you are, words become meaningless. So I didn’t argue. I just delivered the verdict. “Ava, the engagement is off.” 2 Ava’s pupils contracted, a flicker of shock in her serene gray eyes. After a beat of stunned silence, a low laugh escaped her lips. “Cole, you have nothing,” she said, the amusement in her voice sharp as glass. “If you want to maintain the life you’re accustomed to, what other choice do you have besides marrying me?” She stepped closer, her tone softening into practiced condescension. “Stop being dramatic. I know you’re just spooked by all that anti-marriage talk online. I promise, I will make you the undisputed power in the Sterling family.” She could see the agony in my eyes, could read the tremor of betrayal in my hands. And yet, all she could offer was a dismissive, “Stop making a scene.” From my bag, I took out the small, polished mahogany box I had carried for years. “The Sterling emerald. It belongs to your family.” I held it out to her. “It should be returned. After all, I’m no longer your future husband.” For the first time, her composure cracked. “You’ve worn this for ten years, Cole. You don’t just give it back.” Her voice was tight. “Who else would be my husband, if not you?” I pulled my hand back from her grasp, my jaw set. In the clumsy push and pull, the emerald pendant slipped from my fingers. It hit the marble floor with a sickening crack, splintering into a dozen green shards. The sound of it breaking seemed to snap the last thread of her patience. She looked down at the shattered heirloom, then up at me, her gaze imperious and cold. “If you don’t like it, we can get another one. There’s no need to take your anger out on a thing.” A hollow laugh escaped me. “You see? Even your family’s legacy is broken. We’re done, Ava.” As I turned to leave, I saw it in my periphery—her hand instinctively reaching out for me, just like it always did after every fight we ever had. But then, Leo’s smooth voice cut in. “Ava, honey, the guy’s on edge. Chasing after him now will only make it worse.” He patted the seat next to him. “Give him some space. He’ll come around when he realizes nobody on earth will ever treat him better than you do.” Ava’s hand froze in mid-air. Then, slowly, it fell to her side. I walked out without looking back. The moment the elevator doors slid shut, the strength I’d been feigning crumbled. Hot tears streamed down my face, silent and searing. The girl from my memory, the one who would hold my face in her hands after the smallest disagreement and whisper, “I love you the most, don’t you dare upset yourself,” would never have let me leave in tears. Now, she couldn’t even be bothered to take a single step after me. My phone screen lit up, a series of texts from her, one after another. The transfer of the company shares to Leo is already in motion. But don’t worry, you can keep the townhouse. Stop being sad. It’s not good for you. I’ve had legal draw up the papers. Be here at 10 a.m. tomorrow to sign. I stared at the words, a suffocating weight pressing down on my chest. How can you claim to love someone and stand by while they are stripped of everything? Not only did she humiliate me, but she had the audacity to frame it as an act of charity. The most laughable part? She was juggling a clandestine affair with Leo while discussing wedding dates with me, and never once did her mask of affection slip. Back at the townhouse, I was packing the last of my belongings into a box when the front door was kicked open with brutal force. Leo strolled in, flanked by two imposing men in dark suits. He gave me a theatrical shrug. “Don’t be mad, buddy. Ava insisted I come. She said she wanted her things back.” 3 My gaze swept over the uninvited guests, cold and hard. “There’s nothing of Ava’s here.” “Oh, I think there is,” Leo purred, pulling a folded list from his jacket pocket. “The antique jade statues, the emerald centerpiece, and oh, that Ming dynasty vase…” He let the list unroll. “Ava said these were all part of her dowry. She’d like them back now.” My eyes landed on the delicate porcelain vase. Ava had given it to me for my eighteenth birthday. She’d knelt on the floor of my parents’ living room and presented it to me with both hands. She’d written me a marriage promise that day, saying this was just a trinket, that she wished she could give me her own heart. I was so moved, I signed over fifteen percent of the Anderson Group’s preliminary shares to her as a betrothal gift. Now, those vows were just ash in my mouth. “Leo,” I said, my voice steady, “Ava and I are still technically engaged. Are you sure you want me as an enemy?” He feigned a look of innocent distress. “Don’t get me wrong, Cole. I didn’t want to do this. I know the old saying, ‘Never break up a happy home.’ I argued with her for three whole days. But she insisted. What could I do?” Even as he spoke, his greedy eyes were cataloging the art and antiques around the room. I saw it all. But the sharpest pain wasn’t his pathetic act. It was that Ava, the girl who once said, “A single tear from you would break my heart for months,” had sent her new lover to confiscate every memory, every token of our shared past. Love, I was learning, could be honed into a weapon for flaying a person alive. Leo flicked the list with his finger, a smug, triumphant smile playing on his lips. “Why don’t you just make this easy, man? The great Cole Anderson isn’t going to be petty about a few material possessions, is he?” I clenched my fists. “Stop the act. If Ava wants something, tell her to come get it herself.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper in my ear. “You still think you’re Cole Anderson?” Then, his voice shot up, loud enough for the gathering crowd of neighbors outside to hear. “I thought the Andersons were all about honor! A family of their stature, clinging to a few trinkets? How pathetic!” The murmurs from outside grew louder. “I heard they didn’t donate a cent to the flood relief fund this year.” “They probably pocketed the money!” “Look at him. He’s got guilty written all over his face.” A flicker of dark satisfaction crossed Leo’s face. In the split second I was distracted, he let out a theatrical gasp and stumbled backward. “Cole! What are you doing?” The two men in suits burst through the door. One of them grabbed me by the neck, slamming my face toward the floor. Boots crushed my back, and I heard the sickening crack of a rib. Someone yanked me up by my hair only to drive a knee into my stomach. Through a haze of pain, I saw that the front door had been shut. Leo knew I had no way to call for help. He was smiling. By the time Ava arrived, I was using the coffee table to haul myself to my feet. She rushed to my side, dropping to one knee to meet my gaze. “Cole…” Her eyes, the ones that had always looked at me with such adoration, were swimming with what looked like regret and pain. For a moment, she was the girl I remembered. I wiped a smear of blood from my lip with the back of my hand, forcing myself to stand straight despite the fire in my side. “There’s no audience here, Ava. Who are you putting this show on for?” She reached for me, her fingers just about to touch my bruised face, when a pained groan came from behind her. “What happened?” Ava spun around. Leo glanced at me, his eyes wide with feigned fear. “I think… I think Cole was just a little upset. When he pushed me, he didn’t realize his own strength. It’s okay. It was my fault for being clumsy.” Ava’s hand froze inches from my cheek. I saw the conflict warring in her eyes. She chose him. She turned her back on me and walked to Leo. “Cole, just because I love you doesn’t mean you can act like a monster.” Her voice was cold, laced with disappointment. “There is a limit to my patience. What did Leo ever do to you? Why do you have to humiliate him like this?” I laughed. A raw, broken sound. She was right. Leo had done nothing wrong. I was the fool. I was the one who believed twenty years of history was indestructible. Amidst the wreckage of my home, Leo draped an arm around Ava, his voice dripping with false magnanimity. “It’s fine, Ava. Let him keep this junk.” He looked at me, his eyes gleaming. “After all, it’s all he has left.” The wail of an ambulance grew closer. I stared at the half-packed boxes, at the life I was supposed to leave behind, and a strange, chilling clarity washed over me. The Anderson Group could be the payment for the life debt. So be it. Everything happening to me now, every cut, every bruise, every humiliation—I would use it all. It would be the fuel for my return. 4 My parents rushed to the hospital, my mother’s voice raw as she demanded Ava be brought there to answer for what she’d done. I forced a smile. “Mom, Dad, don’t. It’s a good thing. Seeing someone’s true colors, even if it’s late… it’s a gift.” The words felt like swallowing sand, and my fingernails dug into my palms until they drew blood. That night, I stared at the ceiling, sleepless. An apology? That was far too easy a price for Ava to pay. The next morning, the internet exploded. #AndersonHeirDumpsFiancee and #AvaSterlingCheatingScandal were trending worldwide. Lying in my hospital bed, I watched the Sterling Corporation’s stock price plummet in a sheer, vertical drop. For the first time in days, I felt a grim sliver of satisfaction. My phone buzzed incessantly. Ava. I turned it off. But someone else found me. When the door to my room opened, I assumed it was another one of Ava’s minions. I looked up and met a pair of calm, gentle eyes. It was Claire. We’d been inseparable for nine years, sharing a desk through middle and high school. We told each other everything. Then Ava’s jealousy became a suffocating presence, and to keep the peace, I let Claire go. She stood at the door, hesitating. “Can I come in?” she asked softly. I didn’t answer right away. She didn’t press, just waited patiently. After a long moment, I gave a slight nod. She walked in, but she didn’t mention the scandal, didn’t mention Ava. Her first words were simple, direct, and they shattered the dam I’d built inside myself. “You’ve been through hell.” That was it. Just those five words, and my eyes burned with unshed tears. Claire talked for an hour, distracting me with stories of her own failures. The venture capitalist who stood her up. The first big pitch where her presentation file was corrupted. The time she was so exhausted she fell asleep during a contract signing. Listening to her, I felt the knots in my shoulders begin to loosen for the first time in a week. Only at the very end did she mention it, almost as an afterthought. “I started a company. AI-driven medical tech. It’s still early days.” She paused, then looked me straight in the eye. “I’m short a partner with market experience. Are you interested?” It’s easy to find friends in triumph, but true allies appear in the trenches. Every resume I’d sent out had vanished into a black hole. Partners who had once clapped me on the back and called me a boy genius now averted their eyes. I was at the absolute bottom, and here was Claire, extending her hand. I didn’t have to think twice. On my last night in the townhouse, I watched the city lights glitter and the endless river of traffic flow below. Nothing out there had changed. But for me, everything had. A chapter of my life, a painful, all-consuming one, was finally over. I felt a hundred different emotions, but the strongest, surprisingly, was relief. I was finally free. The next morning, I dragged my suitcase to the front door and pulled it open.

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I never thought it was possible to travel through time, to leap ten years into the future. But here I am. Thirty years old, stripped of all dignity in the dead of night, clinging to my husband’s body like some shameless woman, begging him to make love to me. “Curtis, please… just give me a child.” He shoved me away, his voice cold and distant. “Not tonight, Jena. Ava is only twenty. She’s sick, and I promised her brother I’d take care of her.” The thirty-year-old me might have accepted this. But the twenty-year-old me? Never. I threw the divorce papers at him. “Let’s get a divorce. You like them young? Fine. But you don’t deserve me.” 1 The moment Curtis pushed me away, my soul was ripped from its thirty-year-old vessel and then violently shoved back in. I was twenty again, trapped in a thirty-year-old’s body. There were fine lines around my eyes, but the eyes themselves burned with the clear, bright fire of my youth. He was about to leave. My voice, as cold as ice, stopped him. “Wait.” Curtis paused, his impatience a palpable thing in the room. “Jena, are you done? Ava’s brother died for me. She’s just a kid, and she’s running a 102-degree fever. You think I shouldn’t go?” He scoffed. “There’s a limit to your jealousy, you know.” “I’m not stopping you,” I said, my voice flat and emotionless. “But let’s get a divorce.” The words came out before I could even think. I didn’t know how I’d time-traveled, but the twenty-year-old me would never tolerate a husband with such blurred boundaries. I wouldn’t swallow my pride and suffer in silence. The thirty-year-old me might have been weighed down by a decade of compromises, but the twenty-year-old me had nothing to lose and all the courage in the world to start over. Curtis’s hand, which had been adjusting his shirt, froze. A look of disbelief, then amusement, crossed his face. “Jena, have you lost your mind?” I frowned. “Why do you assume I’m throwing a tantrum? He saved your life, yes. If you feel you owe him, then pay that debt with your own life, but don’t you dare drag me into it.” He sneered. “So, just because I won’t sleep with you tonight, you want a divorce? Jena, don’t be so ungrateful.” “Ungrateful?” I stood up straighter, my voice firm and serious. “It’s precisely because I’m not content. You can’t fulfill the basic needs of a partner, so what’s wrong with me wanting a divorce?” For the twenty-year-old me, even granting him this much of an explanation was a monumental effort. The thirty-year-old Curtis demanded far too much. “A divorce?” He still didn’t believe me. “Jena, can you please be reasonable for once? Now you’re resorting to threats? I don’t want to hear this kind of talk from you ever again.” As if on cue, his phone rang again. He answered it, his voice instantly melting into a gentle murmur, a stark contrast to the harsh tone he used with me. “Ava, I’m on my way.” “You’re not going anywhere,” I said, stepping in front of him, blocking his path. “We haven’t finished talking.” The thirty-year-old me loved this man. But the twenty-year-old me? I didn’t know him at all. He glared at me, a silent warning in his eyes. “Don’t push me, Jena. If anything happens to Ava because of this delay, I swear, you and I are finished.” I met his gaze without flinching. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to her. But you’re not going to delay me, either. If you have no objections, my lawyer will be in touch tomorrow.” “Do whatever you want,” he spat, slamming the door behind him. He was so certain I wouldn’t go through with it. He thought he had clipped my wings so thoroughly that I wouldn’t dare to fly. This time, he was wrong. After he left, I stumbled to the bathroom, still reeling from the impossible reality of time travel. The woman in the mirror was both familiar and a stranger. It was me, but not me. The corners of her eyes were etched with the passage of time, her skin no longer holding the tight, radiant glow of my twenties. A thirty-year-old woman. No job. No identity of her own. Pathetically hoping a child could solidify her position and hold onto a man whose heart had long since strayed. It was laughable. Utterly, tragically laughable. 2 Ten years of memories flooded my soul, a salty, bitter torrent of pain. At twenty, Jena had just won the national collegiate photography award, the golden trophy gleaming in her hands. An offer from the Paris College of Art sat on her desk. Back then, I stood in the spotlight, radiant and confident. Curtis was just one of many admirers in the crowd. After my graduation ceremony at twenty-two, a runaway truck had barreled towards me. It was Curtis who shoved me out of the way, without a thought for his own safety. His love felt so immense, so selfless. At twenty-two, I thought I had found my salvation. I believed, for the first time, that someone in this world truly loved me. I made peace with the world, with my past. I clipped my own wings, gave up my dream of studying abroad, and at twenty-four, I became Mrs. Thorne. For the first two years of our marriage, Curtis had treated me like a precious treasure, convincing me with a thousand sweet reasons to give up my career. But slowly, that love had soured. Just as the thirty-year-old Jena had betrayed the twenty-year-old me. But when did it all change? Was it after my third miscarriage, when he brought a young woman named Ava home, introducing her as the sister of the man who had died saving him? A man who hadn’t saved him at all, but one of his close friends. With that as his excuse, he began a flirtatious, ambiguous relationship with her, and the thirty-year-old Jena was expected to just accept it. “What a joke,” I muttered, my fingers scrolling uncontrollably through the phone. My bank account balance was pitifully low; Curtis only gave me a basic living allowance. The chat history with my parents was filled with their requests for money. But what shocked me the most was the memo app, filled with pathetic little notes: “Remember Curtis hates cilantro.” “Pick up suit from dry cleaner’s.” “Mother-in-law’s birthday, prepare gift.” … Smack! I slammed my hand against the mirror. A web of cracks radiated from the point of impact, shattering the reflection of the thirty-year-old Jena into a thousand pieces. In every shard, the twenty-year-old me glared back in fury. “How could you let yourself become this?” The tears finally broke free. At twenty, I had sworn in my diary to become one of the world’s greatest architects and photographers. And now? My camera was collecting dust, my dreams were molding in a dark corner, and my self-respect was being trampled under Curtis’s feet. The thirty-year-old me had become the very person I had always despised. My heart ached for her, but I hated her even more for betraying all my hard work, all my ambition. This was not the life I was meant to live. 3 After pulling myself together, I started organizing. One pile of documents for the divorce lawyer, another for reviving my dreams. My phone screen lit up. A message from Ava. “Mrs. Thorne, looks like your husband loves me more. I win.” The twenty-year-old me had no use for the title “Mrs. Thorne.” I was all thorns and sharp edges. I would never tolerate such a provocation. I would return it, doubled. I took a screenshot and sent it directly to Curtis’s work group chat. The twenty-year-old me didn’t care about propriety. I didn’t care about consequences. I just did what I felt I had to do. As expected, the group chat exploded. The notification sounds chimed relentlessly. I watched the screen with cold eyes as new messages popped up one after another: “What’s… going on?” “Has Ms. Vance lost her mind?” “Maybe we shouldn’t get involved in Mr. Thorne’s private affairs…” Every message was hesitant, dripping with shock and gossip, but no one dared to say anything outright, all too afraid of Curtis. A few brave souls sent a facepalm emoji, then quickly retracted it. Suddenly, my phone began to vibrate violently. The name “Curtis Thorne” glared from the screen. I held down the power button and shut it off. The world went silent. Ten years ago, when Curtis was pursuing me, he would have done anything I asked. But now, he had ways of getting what he wanted. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before my mother showed up at the door. 4 “Jena, did you have a fight with Curtis?” I ignored her. The thirty-year-old me might have made peace with this woman, but the twenty-year-old me hadn’t. My mother frowned. “Listen to me. No matter what happened, you need to apologize to Curtis first.” I looked at her, my voice arctic. “What’s the matter? Afraid he’ll stop giving you money?” The color drained from her face. Her fingers nervously twisted the strap of her handbag. “How can you talk to your mother like that? I’m only trying to help you…” “Help me?” I let out a cold, bitter laugh. “Is that what you said when you and Dad divorced and dumped me at my uncle’s house?” The memories flooded back, a suffocating tide. When my parents divorced, my mother, out of love, took my older sister. My father took my younger brother, his heir. I was five years old, and I was a burden. I clung to their clothes, but they pushed me away without a second thought. “We can only take one each. We’re sorry. But don’t worry, as soon as we’re back on our feet, we’ll come for you.” I waited from the age of five until I was an adult. They never came. My sister’s words were cruel. “Jena, you’re just like your name. A wild thing nobody wants.” My brother echoed her. “Yeah, you’re as common as a weed. You’re just extra.” My childhood was filled with the harsh face of my aunt. “You useless freeloader, eating our food. Your own parents don’t want you. Why don’t you just go die?” My cousin would rip up my homework. I had to wash the whole family’s clothes in the freezing winter, my hands covered in chilblains. Back then, I envied my sister and brother. They were with our parents, eating what they wanted, getting what they wanted. I endured endless hunger. I had parents, a sister, a brother, but it was as if they were all dead. “Things were tough back then,” my mother’s voice trailed off. “I couldn’t support two children on my own.” “Tough?” I shot up from my seat. “Then where did the money for my sister’s study abroad program come from? Who bought my brother’s car? When I was at my uncle’s, so poor I couldn’t even afford sanitary pads, where were you?” Tears welled up in my mother’s eyes. “Your sister is having a hard time now. Her husband’s business failed…” “What does that have to do with me?” Her marriage failed? What about the thirty-year-old me? Was I supposed to sacrifice my dignity for this hollow semblance of family? I grabbed her purse and hurled it at the door. “Get out!” The contents spilled across the floor. A few receipts for designer handbags caught my eye. I picked one up. It was from the day before. They didn’t want me back. They just wanted my rich husband’s money to satisfy their own greed. My mother scrambled to grab the receipts. “No, that’s not…” she stammered. “Jena, Mom will make it up to you in the future.” “Take your things and get out.” The five-year-old Jena, digging through trash cans, needed a mother’s love. The twenty-year-old me had long since outgrown that need. I knew the only person who could save me was myself. Never anyone else. I tore the receipts to shreds. “From now on, whether you live or die has nothing to do with me.” Less than half an hour after my mother left, my father called. I stared at the word “Father” flashing on the screen, a knot tightening in my stomach. “Honey, your brother’s getting married. We’re still short 800,000 for the bride price…” I laughed out loud. “What? Your precious son can’t afford a wife?” “What kind of attitude is that!” he yelled. “Curtis Thorne is loaded. 800,000 is nothing to him.” “If he can’t even afford the bride price, maybe he doesn’t deserve to carry on the family name. If he’s destined to be the end of the line, why force it?” I hung up and blocked his number. The world was quiet, but the war between the twenty-year-old me and the thirty-year-old Jena raged on. I had worked so hard, pushed myself so relentlessly, never bowing my head to anyone, all to escape this life and build a better one. And the thirty-year-old her had sunk right back into the mire. How could you betray all those years of my effort? Marriage hadn’t been my salvation. It was a cage, more suffocating than the one I had escaped.

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The little girl from the house at the end of the lane went missing. The killer was apprehended swiftly. But the mastermind behind it all was a man of immense power. Not only did he walk free, but he began to threaten the old couple who were the girl’s grandparents. In his despair, the old man knocked on the door of my flower shop. The next day, the police came for me. One of the masterminds, the young master of the Thorne family, was now just a severed head, carelessly discarded at the entrance of the police station. 01 I was changing the water for the flowers when the police knocked on the door of my shop. These blooms were delicate things; a moment of neglect and they would wilt completely. I plucked a browning leaf from a stem and motioned for the officers to come in. I recognized the woman in the lead. Detective Olivia Reed, if I remembered correctly. She was the one in charge of the case that had been causing such a stir recently. I had to admit, Detective Reed had a certain professional grace. She stood quietly to one side, waiting patiently for me to finish my work. “Welcome to The Acacia. A bouquet of golden acacias, Detective?” I offered an apologetic smile for my delayed hospitality, holding up the bundle of brilliant, sun-colored flowers in my hands. The golden acacias were in perfect, vibrant bloom, yet they seemed to make Detective Reed frown for some reason. Composing herself, she fixed me with an inquisitive gaze. “No need to be nervous, sir. We’re just conducting a routine inquiry. I was wondering what you know about the Baker family at the end of the lane.” The image of a bright, lively little girl flashed in my mind. She was so innocent, so full of life. There’s a mirror in the shop. So I could clearly see my own lips curl slowly into a smile, and then, just as slowly, fall. I heard my own voice, sharp with a hostility that surprised even me. “I thought the case was closed. What are you still asking questions for?” 02 A few months ago, the little girl from the house at the end of the lane went missing. Her name was Lily. Her family was poor, which had made Lily remarkably sensible for her age, yet she had miraculously held on to that vibrant, childlike energy. All the residents of Acacia Lane loved to dote on her, and adults were always pressing little treats and snacks into her hands. Each time, Lily would blush crimson, thank them politely, and then skip away, hopping with joy in a corner where she thought no one could see. In this poor, grimy lane, a place perpetually shrouded in despair and anxiety, the little girl was a rare patch of pure, untainted ground in everyone’s heart. So when we learned she was missing, everyone searched for her, anxiously and tirelessly, combing through nearly every corner of the neighborhood. At first, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Her teacher told us Lily had left school with her friends, and she had them point out the last place they saw her. There was a small noodle shop nearby, and its security camera was pointed directly at the spot. The camera had done its job. The footage clearly showed a black car pulling up. It showed them taking Lily. The license plate was perfectly visible. With the police involved, the clues unraveled quickly. When the enraged neighbors and police officers stormed the opulent suburban villa, the scene inside was enough to turn anyone’s stomach. Drunken trust-fund brats were sprawled everywhere, some muttering incoherently in their stupor. Their faces were grotesque, yet they were dressed in designer clothes, as if the beasts they suppressed in their daily lives had just been unleashed. It was sickening. And Lily… she was lying on a massive, square dining table. Her body was a canvas of purple bruises, and a foul, unidentifiable fluid trickled down her skin onto the tabletop. Lily was dead. And before she died, she had suffered inhuman torture. Everyone present saw red. The police, bound by their code, didn’t resort to vigilante justice, but the way they dragged those men from the floor to the patrol cars was anything but gentle. What followed was what everyone had hoped for. The media reported it. Society was in an uproar. Countless voices screamed for these demons to be put to death. The case was handed over to the city’s highest court, prosecuted by the state. The chain of evidence was ironclad: witnesses, physical evidence, and even the DNA of at least three individuals extracted from the residue found in Lily’s body. The verdict of the first trial: death penalty for all involved. People mourned. People cheered. They grieved for the loss of a young life but celebrated the fact that the law had prevailed. Lily had been abandoned by her parents as a baby and lived with her elderly grandparents. After the tragedy, a man in a sharp suit visited the old Bakers at the end of the lane. He offered them a huge sum of money in exchange for a letter of forgiveness. It was a fortune, enough to ensure the old couple would never have to worry again. But the old man refused without a moment’s hesitation. The old woman chased the man out of the house with a broom. Someone from a neighboring house “accidentally” splashed a bucket of dirty water; someone else “accidentally” dropped an egg. That well-dressed lawyer left the lane looking like a wreck, his expensive suit stained and filthy, yet he was still shouting threats, promising he’d make them pay. No one took him seriously. Until everything turned on a dime. 03 “What do you mean, the footage is gone?” Old Mr. Baker was well past seventy, his hair and beard completely white. He was trembling with a rage that shook his entire body. The owner of the noodle shop, a middle-aged man, nervously wiped his greasy hands on his apron, unable to meet the old man’s eyes. Mrs. Baker raised a trembling hand to strike him, but she was stopped by a police officer with an apologetic look on her face. “The security system was broken that week. All the recordings were lost…” the noodle shop owner mumbled, hiding behind the officer. Detective Reed’s face was etched with disgust. The police had no respect for people like him, but professional duty required them to stand between him and the grieving couple. Without the security footage, a crucial link in the chain of evidence was gone. And a cold feeling told them this was only the beginning. The life seemed to drain from the old couple’s faces. They gripped Detective Reed’s arm, their hold surprisingly strong in their agitation, as if desperately seeking an anchor. “Officer, those monsters… they will be punished, won’t they?” Detective Reed didn’t know how to answer. She just nodded silently, though it was unclear if she was trying to convince them or herself. But if she wouldn’t say it, someone else would. The noodle shop owner bit his lip and spoke hesitantly. “You have no idea what kind of monsters you’re dealing with. Let it go. Lily’s gone, but you’re still alive. You need to think about yourselves.” Anyone could see the man wasn’t malicious, that he was just trying to give them some well-meaning advice, but it was impossible not to glare at him with contempt. The Bakers, however, had no intention of taking his advice. They insisted on appealing, determined to get justice for Lily even if it cost them their lives. Things began to spiral downward. The physical evidence vanished. Witnesses changed their stories. The once-unbreakable chain of evidence was blurred and erased, piece by piece. Security cameras from other locations were also mysteriously damaged or lost. The black car used to abduct Lily was found as a burned-out wreck in the suburbs. The children who had walked home with Lily were silenced by their parents, too terrified to say a word. Her teacher also changed her story, now claiming Lily had left school alone, smearing her name by saying she was a “promiscuous liar who was always trying to get boys’ attention.” Overnight, public opinion was twisted. The same online warriors who had fought for the Bakers were now swayed by this so-called “truth,” led astray by a massive army of paid trolls and concern-trolling devils’ advocates. They turned on the victims with vicious vitriol. “Princesses are born, not made. Age is just a number.” “Told you all not to jump to conclusions. Look at you now, a bunch of clowns.” “Disgusting. Good thing she’s dead.” Many people in the lane received warnings. The residents of Acacia Lane were poor; losing a job was a fate worse than death. So, one by one, they began to shun the old couple, avoiding them like they were beggars or carriers of some infectious disease. Their eyes held a mixture of pity and revulsion. The final blow was a court ruling. The High Court closed the case. The second verdict: two sentenced to life, three to ten years in prison. The rest were acquitted. Among the acquitted were the men whose DNA had been found. They were the true masterminds, yet they had escaped the law’s grasp. Even those who received sentences could be released early for “good behavior,” returning to their lives of luxury and debauchery once the scandal died down. A giant, unseen hand was toying with the old couple. When the lawyer had threatened and bribed them, Mr. Baker hadn’t wavered. When the noodle shop owner had pleaded with him, he hadn’t wavered. But now, as his friends and neighbors were threatened and hurt, forced to distance themselves with looks of helpless sympathy, he began to break. Mrs. Baker received one threat after another. A car nearly ran her down on her way home from the market, leaving her in a coma. Their windows were smashed, their door was splashed with red paint, and their phone rang off the hook with harassing, abusive calls. The police were trying to help, but arresting the low-level thugs was useless. It couldn’t touch the powerful families behind it all. Mr. Baker was afraid. But he was not resigned. The old man, who had lived a simple, honest life, couldn’t understand why the wicked were not punished. “God is blind,” he said. But the mastermind, Caleb Thorne, just looked down on him with arrogant disdain, like a giant staring at a worthless ant. “She was just a little bitch. So she’s dead. Who cares? How dare you sue me?” “And it’s not just them. I’m going to crush everyone around you, one by one, until you’re on your knees, begging me for mercy.” 04 He was so close. Honestly, Mr. Baker was on the verge of giving up. But someone told him: Go to the flower shop at the entrance of the lane. Ask for a bouquet of golden acacias. Someone there will help you. And so, the old man, his hair as white as snow, stepped into a flower shop for the first time in his life. Not to buy a rose for a sweetheart. But to seek justice for a victim. I smiled and handed him the brilliant, sun-colored bouquet. Like passing a torch in the dead of night, its flame was small but steady. The next day, a piece of news sent shockwaves through the entire city. Caleb Thorne was dead. The all-powerful young master of the Thorne family, the demonic bully, the mastermind of the case—was dead. His head had been severed, wrapped in a black plastic bag, and carelessly tossed at the entrance of the police station. A sanitation worker, thinking it was trash, had tried to pick it up. The strange shape and feel of the bag made him stumble backward in fright. The bag fell, and the head rolled out. Caleb Thorne’s grotesque, wide-open eyes stared directly at the police station doors. The mouth that had spouted lies and twisted the truth at press conferences, the mouth that had viciously cursed and threatened an old couple, was now slightly agape, as if in a final, silent plea for mercy. As for the body, the police still hadn’t found it. Such a gruesome death immediately screamed of a revenge killing. And everyone knew who his greatest enemy was—old Mr. Baker from the end of the lane. And I was the only person Mr. Baker had been in contact with the day before Caleb Thorne’s death. That’s why the police came for me. But I was just a humble flower shop owner. All I did was ask an old man if he wanted a bouquet of golden acacias. What could I possibly know? I feigned confusion, a faint, unreadable smile playing on my lips as I looked at Detective Reed. “So, Detective, you suspect I killed him?” She and her partner froze for a second, seemingly taken aback by my directness. “No, of course not. We’re just required to ask some routine questions,” she replied smoothly. They had no evidence pointing to me, so their tone was, for the most part, friendly. I nodded and answered all their questions with calm composure. The shop has security cameras. They proved I was in the store the entire time Caleb Thorne was killed. So, the little interruption ended quickly. Detective Reed and her partner left. But just as she was about to leave, she seemed to sense something. She spun around, her eyes meeting mine just as I broke into a brilliant smile. After a moment’s hesitation, she spoke. “If you think of anything that might be related, please, you must tell us.” I nodded, my smile widening. “Of course.” 05 Caleb Thorne was dead, and the Thorne family was incandescent with rage. The bejeweled Mrs. Thorne stood in the police station, screaming obscenities, her well-maintained face twisted into a mask of fury. “So what if some little tramp died? Is she comparable to my son? If you can’t find the killer, you can all start looking for new jobs!” No one dared to argue with her. For a behemoth like the Thorne family, getting a low-level employee fired was child’s play, even if they worked for the justice system. In the face of people like them, the so-called law, the so-called rules, were nothing but pieces of paper, things to be trampled on and ignored at will. I saw a young officer in the corner clench his fists. I gently patted Mr. Baker’s trembling hand, trying to soothe him. It was hard to tell if he was shaking from the news of Caleb’s death or from the rage ignited by Mrs. Thorne’s words. His expression was a complex mixture of emotions. After a long moment, he let out a heavy sigh. However, two other people had a far more extreme reaction than either the Thornes or Mr. Baker. Blake Harrison and Spencer Drake, the other two masterminds. Ever since Caleb’s head was found, the two had been on the verge of a complete breakdown, even showing signs of mental illness. The two young masters were crying and begging their families to put more pressure on the police, making life a living hell for Detective Reed and her team. A few days later, she showed up at my shop with dark circles under her eyes. The usually sharp and capable woman looked haggard and worn out. She claimed she was just “browsing,” but her eyes were scanning every inch of the shop. I knew she had never let go of her suspicion of me. She was like a hunting dog that had caught the scent of blood, circling her prey, feigning nonchalance. After a while, she seemed to deflated. She started making small talk, subtly steering the conversation back to the case and the old man, complaining about the pressure the powerful families were putting on her. “We were just about to have a breakthrough, and now they’re on our backs 24/7. That’s why I look like this.” As she spoke, she was secretly watching me, not missing the slightest flicker of expression on my face. I saw right through her little act but didn’t call her out on it. I just smiled and poured her a cup of herbal tea. Flower petals swirled in the water, creating ripples as the cup trembled slightly in her hand. “This isn’t poisoned, is it?” she asked suddenly, then took a large gulp without waiting for an answer. I shook my head, putting on the face of a timid, law-abiding citizen. “I wouldn’t dare. Poison a police officer?” A half-smile played on her lips. “You wouldn’t dare touch a cop, but you’d dare to go after those rich degenerates?” It was posed as a joke, but it felt like a test. “Detective Reed,” I said, changing the subject, “do you know why this place is called Acacia Lane?” I didn’t answer her question, instead looking directly into her tired eyes. Seeing no crack in my facade, a look of disappointment crossed her face, and she lost interest in my question. Just then, her phone rang. With an apologetic glance at me, she answered and hurried away. I stood at the doorway of my shop, watching her go. A strange feeling rose in my chest. Like watching a struggling animal in a trap. Or pitying a wailing child.

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The livestream battle against his childhood sweetheart was a disaster. I was losing, badly. Then, Guy Bray stormed the stream, unleashing twenty “Galaxies” in a row, single-handedly turning the tide for her. The chat exploded. “See, Chloe? I told you! The CEO only has eyes for you. Let’s see what kind of tricks that bitch Faye can pull now!” “Exactly! You should stop giving him the silent treatment. Worst case, just make him beg on his knees when he gets home!” My hand went to my pocket, to the birthday gift I’d been so excited to give him. I was about to call him. But then, Guy, who was supposed to be halfway across the world, appeared on camera. He stepped into the frame and pulled Chloe into a deep, passionate French kiss for everyone to see. Her popularity meter shot through the roof, a supernova of support that annihilated mine. I was K.O.’d. Utterly defeated. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just sent him a single text. “A week of silence means we’re done. Does that still stand?” 1 The glaring red exclamation mark next to my message felt like a punch to the gut. It was a sight I hadn’t seen in a decade. In the ten years we’d been together, Guy and I had fought, we’d screamed, we’d threatened to break up. But we always had an unspoken rule, a final lifeline to pull each other back. “Promise me,” he’d said, his pinky locked with mine. “No matter how bad a fight gets, we never delete or block each other. Cross your heart, hope to die.” A childish oath, sealed with a press of our thumbs, but it was the magic that had mended us time and time again. This time, he was the one who broke it. My finger hovered, then swiped. The contact, saved as “A_MyOneAndOnly,” vanished from my list. My assistant, Nina, slammed her hand on the table, her voice shaking with rage on my behalf. “What the hell is Chloe’s problem?! Using the CEO for a publicity stunt?! This round doesn’t count. We demand a rematch!” Nina shot nervous glances at me, ready to physically restrain me if I, as I usually would, made a move to confront Chloe. But to her surprise, I just picked up my glass of wine and downed it in one go. “A loss is a loss,” I said, my voice steady. “Let this be my parting glass, a thank you to everyone for all your years of support. Cheers.” “Faye, no! You can’t, you’re allergic to alcohol—” Her words were cut short as a bitter, burning wave surged up my throat. I clapped a hand over my mouth and ran for the restroom. Behind me, the whispers started, sharp and cruel. “So what if she had the title of Mrs. Bray? The moment the real queen came back, she was knocked right back down. What a pathetic loss.” “Totally. Guy even gave Chloe his A-team, a top-tier crew. All the company resources are flowing her way. It couldn’t be more obvious who he loves and who he doesn’t.” Tears I refused to shed in front of them now fell, hot and traitorous, onto the simple, plain band on my ring finger. It made me think of a time when his devotion was mine and mine alone. When everyone shot down my passion project, he stood against them all, a fierce defender of my dream. He even sold his family’s old summer house and pressed the money into my hands. “Faye,” he’d said, his eyes shining, “go for it. I will always, always be your rock.” When I pulled all-nighters, he’d be right there beside me, digging through research papers. When I was sick in the hospital, he stayed awake all night, holding my hand until the sun came up. But that was seven years ago. Today, all that fierce devotion belonged to his childhood sweetheart. I looked at the faint, worn inscription inside my ring—J&F—and then at the picture Chloe had just posted on her feed: a pair of million-dollar, diamond-encrusted rings on her and Guy’s hands. My simple band seemed to dim, a pale ghost of a promise. With a bitter, self-mocking laugh, I pulled the ring from my finger and tossed it into the trash can. Just then, Guy’s custom ringtone blared from someone’s phone in the hall. Normally, I’d have answered within three seconds. This time, I leaned against the cool tile of the wall, slowly pushing the door open. “Faye, it’s the boss! He’s calling to apologize, I bet…” One of the gossiping onlookers, hungry for more drama, hit the speakerphone button. “Chloe, you were amazing! That dance with Guy was so hot! You’re the only one who deserves to be by his side, not like… some people.” “I know, right? And she actually thought she could win a battle against you. She just humiliated herself. Guy totally set this whole thing up…” The taunts hung in the air, followed by a sudden, dead silence. I forced my heart to stop its frantic hammering and was about to speak. But then, Guy’s voice, raw with anger, erupted from the phone. “Who the hell told you to spread those rumors? Let me make one thing crystal clear: I have only one wife, and her name is Faye Sterling! Every single one of you who said otherwise can pack your desks and be gone by morning!” A wave of bitterness washed over me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In public, he always gave me the respect and face befitting the CEO’s wife. But in private, he repeatedly crossed every line for Chloe. “Faye, come on. You’re already mine, what’s a Director position to you? Just think of it as a training opportunity for the kid.” “It’s just one multi-million dollar contract. You’re the CEO’s wife, you need to be more magnanimous.” I tried. I tried to accept it, to be “magnanimous.” But my acceptance only fueled Chloe’s audacity. She’d alter data in my project proposals without my consent and leave me to take the fall. She’d reassign my team members behind my back, then cripple me with no resources while demanding my department meet 80% of the company’s KPIs. I’d fought him on it, screamed at him, but Guy would always brush it off with a placating murmur. “Chloe’s new to the role, she needs to establish her authority. Just be patient, I’ll have a talk with her.” But I knew he never would. Even this time, I had made it perfectly clear. If I lose this PK battle, I’m leaving. And still, when it came down to it, he chose her. The memory solidified my resolve. I cut through his frantic “Honey, are you okay?” “Guy,” I said, my voice flat. “Come home tonight. We need to talk.” 2 “That’s right, Guy, you should go home and be with Faye. I’m fine… ah!” A sharp cry of pain stabbed through the phone, and Guy’s voice instantly became distant, muffled. “Look at you, why are you even in a competition when you’re sick? Are you trying to kill yourself? I’m taking you to the hospital…” This was the seventh time this month she’d “fallen ill,” each time with surgical precision, right when I needed to talk to Guy about something important. I knew the drill. As I moved to hang up, Guy’s hurried, breathless voice came back on the line. “Look, Chloe’s having terrible cramps. I need you to bring over a warm, sweet drink. Oh, and a blanket. A new one.” His tone was clipped, commanding, as if I were Chloe’s personal assistant. Which, in a way, I had become. Chloe loved the way I cooked sea bass, so Guy would wake me in the middle of the night, regardless of the hour, to make it for her. “Sorry, babe,” he’d say, trying to placate me. “Just humor her, she’s like a kid.” I’d look at the dark circles under his eyes, the stress lines etched on his face, and my heart would soften every time. But not tonight. Tonight, I was done softening. “Sorry,” I said, the word feeling foreign. “I’m exhausted. I don’t have time.” The line went dead. A second later, a chorus of notifications pinged from the phones around me. “What the—? Why did he just dock our performance bonuses? He’s always docking our pay! Does he even want us to make a living?” A sea of resentful eyes turned on me, their expressions a mixture of pity and blame. I was the cause of their misery, another casualty in our marital war. Of course. After all these years, Guy knew exactly how to twist the knife. He knew my team was my weakness. I tried calling him back, only to find I’d been blocked. Left with no choice, I sent a message to Chloe. “Tell Guy I’ll bring what he asked for. I’m on my way.” The stomach pains I’d been ignoring for hours suddenly flared, a sharp, stabbing cramp. I fumbled through my purse, my fingers searching for my medication. Instead, they closed around a bottle of multivitamins. He must have packed them by mistake. I remembered it then. He was putting my pills in my bag when he’d gotten a call from Chloe. He’d talked to her for an hour, a soft, bashful smile on his face that I hadn’t seen since the first year we were dating. A bitter jealousy had coiled in my gut, and I’d kicked him out of the room. I assumed, like always, he’d be back within 24 hours to apologize. Instead, I got 24 hours of non-stop updates on Chloe’s social media feed. “Ice cream dates, snowball fights, watching the sunrise… everything is perfect when you’re with the right person!” I had stubbornly refused to give in, to be the first to break the silence. But now, on the seventh day, I had been about to crumble. Because of the rule he himself had made. “A week of silence means we’re done.” But now, something had shifted. I wasn’t crumbling. I was letting go. I went home and packed a bag. Then, I went to the kitchen and began preparing the sea bass. One last time. After this, our debts would be settled. It was late by the time I finished. Getting out of the car in a rush, I tripped on the curb and went down hard. “Guy, it hurts,” I cried out instinctively into the empty night. But there was no one. Only the biting wind. The man who had sworn he would never let me walk a dark street alone was gone. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I limped my way to the urgent care clinic. And there he was. In the brightly lit infusion room, Guy was holding Chloe, gently spoon-feeding her a warm drink. The look in his eyes as he gazed at her was pure, undiluted adoration, a sweetness so thick it was suffocating. I backed away, wanting to be invisible. But my injured knee buckled and I stumbled, knocking it against a chair. A fresh wave of pain shot up my leg, and I saw blood seeping through my pants. His head snapped up, and his eyes, cold and sharp, found me. “Faye,” he said, his voice laced with scorn. “I thought you were busy. What, did you have time to make a business trip to the hospital?” His gaze fell to my bleeding knee, and for a split second, I saw something flicker in his eyes—a muscle in his jaw twitched. He started to rise, but Chloe’s arm snaked around his neck, pulling him back. “Guy, I feel so dizzy…” she murmured, then her eyes met mine, a triumphant glint in them. “Oh, Faye, you’re here! Perfect timing. I just finished the drink. Thank you so much for bringing it…” I saw the malice hiding behind her saccharine smile. I knew she was setting a trap, crafting another lie where I would be the villain. I thought of all the other times, of how Guy always took her side without question, and a profound weariness washed over me. I forced myself to stand straight, placed the thermos on a nearby chair, and turned to leave. “Mr. Bray, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be heading home now.” “Wait.” He gently settled Chloe back against the pillows, then strode over to me. He pulled a crisp hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and pressed it into my hand. “Here,” he said, his voice devoid of warmth. “A little tip for your trouble.” The sharp edge of the bill cut into my palm. I took a steadying breath and finally met his gaze. “Mr. Bray,” I said, my voice quiet but clear. “If you really want to thank me, could you do me a small favor?” 3 His response was to grab my arm and drag me violently into an empty examination room. He slammed me against the wall, pinning my wrists above my head. His eyes, dark and stormy, bored into mine. “Faye, do you have to be so goddamn difficult?” he seethed, his voice low and dangerous. “Do you have any idea that I haven’t slept in three days, rushing to close that overseas deal just so I could get back to you?” “I know I didn’t handle the livestream situation right. I should have told you. But this is business. As long as it boosts the company’s numbers, the methods don’t matter—” “So, would you sleep with her for the company?” I cut him off, my voice hollow. I stared at the face I had loved for a decade, the question hanging in the sterile air between us. Just moments before, Chloe had sent me a picture. The two of them, tangled together in a heated embrace, their bodies flush against each other. I needed to hear the answer from his lips. The color drained from Guy’s face. His eyes darted away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Don’t listen to the gossip at the office,” he stammered. “There’s nothing going on between Chloe and me.” He took a shaky breath. “Besides, you know… I have issues. With my stress levels… I can’t perform.” So that was it. In his world, a “platonic” relationship involved sharing drinks from the same cup, wearing matching million-dollar rings, and walking hand-in-hand at public events. And I, his wife, had personally seen him finding release to a picture of Chloe on his phone. Now I understood. His “inability to perform” was only with me. A laugh escaped my lips, a broken, hysterical sound that quickly turned into tears. To him, it was just more drama. “Faye, that’s enough,” he snapped, his patience gone. “Just stop it. The company is already driving me insane. I don’t have the energy to deal with your theatrics.” He reached into his pocket, his hand fumbling, and pulled out a delicate, glittering bracelet. It seemed to spark a memory, and his expression softened. He bent down, picked it up from where it had fallen, and fastened it around my wrist. “I bought this for you on my trip,” he said, his voice softer now. “I thought it would suit you… and it does. It’s beautiful on you.” The fire of the diamonds reflected in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth lifted into a genuine smile. But I knew he wasn’t seeing me. He was seeing her. I was just the mannequin. How many times had I been his model for gifts meant for her? Lingerie, shoes, jewelry. But this time, he’d been so careless. He’d grabbed the wrong one. Because engraved on the inside of the clasp, in elegant French script, were the words: Pour Chloé, mon seul amour. For Chloe, my only love. I yanked my hand back. The sharp edge of the clasp broke my skin, and a drop of blood welled up, staining the pristine metal. Guy’s brow furrowed in annoyance. He roughly unclasped the bracelet and began frantically wiping the blood off with his handkerchief. “Damn it, why are you so clumsy? Blood is bad luck…” Of course. His goddess hated the sight of blood. She just enjoyed seeing mine spilled. “My apologies,” I said numbly. From my pocket, I pulled out the folded document I’d prepared earlier. The Divorce Agreement. “You still haven’t signed the final papers for the B-Corp partnership,” I said, keeping my voice level. “This is a work matter, right?” “You must be mistaken. I signed those last week,” he said without even looking up, his focus entirely on cleaning the bracelet. Of course. He remembered every detail of his life, except those that involved me. I was trying to think of another excuse when he finally took the papers from my hand. “Sign it and go home,” he ordered. “And stop causing trouble.” He just wanted me gone. So he could get back to her. A familiar bitterness rose in my throat, but I just nodded. “Mm-hmm.” My lack of fight must have seemed strange to him. He stopped writing, his pen hovering over the paper. He gripped my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “Faye,” he said, his voice earnest. “You will always be number one in my heart. As soon as this crazy period is over, I’ll take you on a trip, just the two of us.” He used his thumb to push up the corner of my mouth. “Come on, give me a smile. You’re most beautiful when you smile.” I managed a weak, painful twitch of my lips. I’d been fed this empty promise a hundred times. I couldn’t chew it, couldn’t swallow it. But he seemed completely satisfied. Predictably, his phone rang. He was needed. “Don’t worry,” he cooed into the receiver. “I’m on my way.” I glanced at the agreement. He’d only signed his first name. Guy. I sighed. Suddenly, a small, colorful object appeared in my line of sight. A cartoon band-aid. A young nurse was smiling warmly at me. “Your husband asked me to give this to you,” she said, noticing my confused expression. Seeing my hesitation, she tore open the wrapper and gently applied it to the cut on my hand. “He’s so sweet and thoughtful. And he has a fun side, too, buying cartoon band-aids…” My nails dug into my palms. I couldn’t tell her that he only carried them because they were Chloe’s favorite. I was just the lucky recipient of a leftover scrap of his affection. My phone buzzed. A message from my real estate agent. Ms. Sterling, we have an offer on the house you listed, but it’s only for 70% of the asking price. Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider…? I glanced at the cartoon character smiling up at me from my wounded hand and typed back without a second’s hesitation. Sell it. Please handle the closing for me. Before my finger even left the screen, a hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Faye,” Guy’s voice was a low growl behind me. “You just had to make a scene, didn’t you? You just couldn’t let it go. Fine. You want a war? You’ve got one.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “393869”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

A week before the wedding, my fiancé, Dan, abruptly changed the venue to the beach. His best friend, Leo, was teasing him about it. “You’re seriously changing the venue to the beach because Chloe likes it? And you didn’t even tell your fiancée? What if her whole family shows up at the wrong place?” “Besides,” Leo added, “will Elara even agree? I heard she was the one who insisted on the Aspen Ridge wedding.” Dan just shrugged, his voice laced with a casual indifference. “It’s fine. She’s so in love with me, she literally went blind for me. When has she ever not done what I wanted?” “She’s obsessed with this wedding,” he continued, “so she’ll check the details a hundred times. When she sees I changed the location, she’ll be the one to notify her family.” I stood frozen in the doorway, listening. After a long moment, I turned and walked away, pretending I’d heard nothing at all. On the morning of the wedding, Dan called me, his voice frantic. “Elara, where are you? The ceremony is about to start!” I gazed out the window at the soft, drifting snowflakes. “I’m already here,” I said. 1 The Aspen Ridge wedding was my idea from the very beginning. That place held a sacred meaning for Dan and me. But I never imagined he would discard it all on a whim, just for Chloe. My hand trembled as I stood in the doorway, afraid to make a sound. Leo frowned, clearly confused. “A wedding is about two people, man. You have to at least tell Elara, right? How is she supposed to prepare otherwise?” Dan waved a dismissive hand. “What’s there to prepare? Aspen Ridge is freezing. The beach is so much more comfortable.” “But this is a huge deal. To not even mention it to her… isn’t that a little disrespectful?” A flicker of irritation crossed Dan’s face. “If she knew, she’d ask a million questions, probably throw a fit, and then I’d have to waste time calming her down. It’s a hassle.” “Besides,” he said with a confident smirk, “she loves me. She’ll agree. I mean, come on, she lost her sight for me. Changing the wedding venue is nothing compared to that.” Another one of his friends chimed in with a sly grin. “We know what’s really going on. This is all for Chloe… I mean, a woman that beautiful? Who could say no?” “Haha, we all thought you’d marry Chloe back in the day. She’s gorgeous, and her family’s loaded.” At that, Dan’s expression darkened. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear that again. If Elara finds out and makes a scene, I’ll hold you all responsible.” The group just laughed. “Alright, alright, we’ll drop it. You’ve got it made. Elara would do anything for you.” Suddenly, Dan’s phone rang. The screen lit up with Chloe’s name. A wave of knowing smirks went around the room. “Speak of the devil, the real bride is calling.” Dan didn’t bother to correct them. His voice softened as he answered the phone. A playful, feminine laugh echoed from the other end. “Dan, you really ordered that gown for me? I heard there’s a six-month waiting list!” “Mmmhmm, I had a friend pull some strings and have it flown in from Milan. It’ll be here next week.” “But… wasn’t it terribly expensive?” “Only fifty thousand. If you like it, it’s worth it.” Chloe’s voice was thick with emotion. “You’re too good to me. I’ll be sure to wear it for you on the wedding day!” A gentle smile played on Dan’s lips. “Good. I’ll be waiting.” As soon as he hung up, his friends erupted in cheers. “Trying to upstage the bride, are we? Seriously, Dan, who are you marrying here, Elara or Chloe?” Dan just chuckled. “Elara and I are practically an old married couple already. It doesn’t matter what she wears… Chloe is different. She deserves something special.” I stood in the doorway, a bitter smile on my face. My wedding dress was bought off the rack, right here in the city. The day I tried it on, my vision was still blurry. I’d asked Dan to be my eyes. After the third dress, he’d sighed impatiently. “They all look fine. Just pick this one. It’s not like you can see the details anyway.” He rushed to pay. The receipt read $200. So, he was capable of planning thoughtful surprises. Just not for me. On the way home, I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, but the tears came anyway. Five years. For five whole years, I had naively believed that he understood me. When I first told him I wanted to get married at Aspen Ridge, he’d smiled and ruffled my hair. “Of course,” he’d said. In that moment, my heart had swelled. He remembers, I thought. He must remember. He had to remember that it was where we first met. Where I’d fallen and bled for him. Where I’d gripped his hand in a blizzard and whispered, “Don’t be afraid.” But he didn’t remember. Or maybe, it had never mattered to him at all. My doctor’s warning echoed in my mind: Emotional distress can hinder the recovery of your optic nerve. I tilted my head back, trying to force the tears back in, but a raw sob escaped my throat. Dan called. The background was a cacophony of loud music and shouting. “Elara, the guys are throwing me a bachelor party tonight. I won’t be home.” I paused for a beat. “Okay.” This “bachelor party” had been going on for three days now. At one in the morning, sleep was impossible. I scrolled through my social media feed. Leo had posted a nine-photo collage with the caption: One last night of freedom for the brother. The center photo was of Chloe, cheeks flushed, leaning drunkenly against Dan’s chest. His hand rested lightly on the small of her back. The comments were a flood of predictable remarks: “They look so good together. Such a shame.” “They were childhood sweethearts, you guys. Don’t be weird.” “@DanVance Better be careful, man! Don’t want Elara to get angry!” Dan himself had replied. “Elara won’t mind. If she makes a scene over something this small, we shouldn’t get married anyway.” I quietly liked his comment, turned off my phone, and went to bed. He was so certain I would tolerate it. Just like I tolerated him changing the wedding venue, tolerated the fifty-thousand-dollar dress for another woman, tolerated every single, “She’s just a friend.” But this time, I didn’t want to tolerate it anymore. I went to my follow-up appointment at the hospital alone. “I told you last time, your vision is still unstable. You need someone to accompany you,” the doctor chided gently. I offered a small smile. “I can manage.” As I left the hospital, a sudden downpour began. Through the rain-streaked window of a café, I saw them. Dan was holding up his phone, and Chloe was leaning against his shoulder, making a peace sign, their cheeks pressed together for a selfie. The designer bag sitting next to her was the one Dan had claimed last week was a “gift for a client.” I let out a humorless laugh and walked home through the storm. When Dan got back, I was just changing out of my soaked clothes. He looked up, startled. “What happened to you? You’re drenched.” “My follow-up appointment.” His expression froze. “That was today?” I laughed softly. “Yes. The third time I reminded you.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I’ve just been so busy, I forgot. Anyway, your vision is better now, right? It’s not a big deal if you miss one.” I just stared at him. “The doctor said my optic nerve is still atrophying.” He was silent for a moment. When he looked up again, his eyes were hard. “Are you trying to remind me again that you went blind for my sake?” So that was it. My injury, the sacrifice I’d made, had become a tool of manipulation in his eyes. Seeing my silence, he suddenly flew into a rage. “There you go with that look again! So I forgot one time! Why do you always have to get upset over every little thing?” My gaze dropped to his collar. “You have blueberry jam on you,” I said softly. He instinctively reached up to wipe it, then froze. “You…” “Chloe’s new bag is nice,” I added, my voice calm. His face flushed a deep, angry red. He pointed a trembling finger at me. “Were you following me? Seriously? She was just having a bad day and needed someone to talk to!” “You know what her family situation is like! She only has me!” “Elara, can’t you just be a little more generous? This constant scorekeeping is getting old!” I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “What a coincidence. At my doctor’s appointment today, I ‘only had me’ too.” He flinched as if I’d struck him, then stammered, “It’s different… You have people who care about you…” Just then, his phone rang. It was Chloe again. He answered immediately. Her choked sobs came through the speaker. “Dan, I fell… It hurts so much…” “Don’t worry, I’m on my way!” He hung up and threw open the door. He paused, then glanced back at me. “You should take some time to reflect on your attitude. I’ll take you to the gift shop tomorrow to pick out the wedding favors.” He hesitated for a second longer. “And stop following me. It makes you look like a clown.” He was gone, but his words hung in the air. A clown? He was right. The only question was why it took me so long to see it. It seemed my blindness had started long before the accident. The drive to the gift shop was thick with an unbearable silence. I put in my earbuds and closed my eyes. Dan’s fingers tapped restlessly on the steering wheel. “The weather’s been great for the beach lately…” he said, his eyes darting in my direction. When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and spoke louder. “I heard the hotel at Golden Shores is really popular right now. A lot of celebrities have their weddings there.” I kept my eyes closed, offering only a noncommittal hum. He frowned, his voice taking on an impatient edge. “Elara, are you even listening to me?” I opened my eyes slightly. “I’m listening. So?” He was immediately at a loss for words. “…Nothing. Just making conversation.” A cool breeze drifted through the open window, clearing my head a little. “Dan,” I began, turning to face him. “About the wedding… is there anything you need to tell me?” It was the only time I would ask. And the last. He avoided my gaze, forcing a laugh. “I’m leaving it all to you. I trust your judgment.” I lowered my eyes, a wave of sadness washing over me. He was still acting. Even now, if he would just be honest, maybe I could still… No. It was too late. I clenched my fists. So this is what he did with my trust. He trampled all over it. Dan’s unease was palpable. I could practically hear his thoughts. She definitely knows. She’s just being difficult. I’ll smooth things over later. Inside the shop, I saw the mock-up for the custom pastries I’d ordered. The delicate, snow-capped mountain design was perfect. As I was about to sample one, a familiar voice chirped from behind me. “Dan? Did you come to buy me my favorite almond crisps?” I gritted my teeth. Her again? Chloe feigned surprise when she saw me, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh, Elara! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there…” “Oh, are you two picking out wedding favors? The almond crisps here are to die for. Dan brings me here all the time!” My fingers tightened. He brought her here, many times. I had only found out about this place from my best friend. Chloe picked up a new item from the display. “Elara, you should try this one! It’s perfect for a beach setting, amazing with champagne!” I took a small step back. “No, thank you. I’ve already made my choice. You two enjoy yourselves.” Chloe looked taken aback, her expression shifting to one of wounded innocence. “Are you… upset because I’m here? I-I can leave.” Dan immediately grabbed her wrist. “Elara didn’t mean that. You don’t have to go.” He turned to me, his gaze intense. “Elara, Chloe is going to be your bridesmaid. Don’t be so harsh, you’ll scare her.” I blinked. When was that decided? Weren’t bridesmaids something the bride was supposed to choose? But then again, if he could change the entire wedding venue without my consent, why would he bother asking me about this? “This is who I am,” I replied, my voice flat. “Take it or leave it.” They both stared at me, clearly shocked by my bluntness. Chloe’s eyes welled up with tears. “It’s okay, I should just go. I don’t want to be in the way.” But Dan held onto her hand, his fingers now intertwined with hers. “Elara, you’re about to be a married woman. Can you stop being so childish?” “Ever since we set the date, you’ve been nothing but moody. What’s the point?” Chloe leaned closer to him, whispering, “Dan, don’t…” But he was on a roll. “Don’t try to stop me! I’ve had enough!” He glared at me, his voice rising. “Go on, Elara, just keep acting out! Don’t blame me if you cry yourself blind again!” The shop fell into a dead silence. The staff stared at the floor, mortified. An icy dread settled in my heart. So that’s what he thought. My blindness… was just me “crying myself blind” out of jealousy. And I had actually hoped he would remember the meaning of our Aspen Ridge wedding. How many times had this happened? Chloe would call with a “headache” or “low blood sugar,” and Dan would drop everything to be by her side. I once had a 102-degree fever, but he was busy shopping with Chloe. All I got was a text: Drink lots of water. I’ll check on you later. He never showed up. Whenever I complained, it was always the same response. “Why are you so immature? Chloe really needs me!” For our anniversary, he promised we would go see the sunrise over the mountains. I spent weeks planning the perfect gift. He forgot the date entirely. “It’s just a day. Why do you have to be so dramatic about it?” But for Chloe’s birthday, he booked a restaurant a month in advance, bought her extravagant gifts, and posted a photo of them together with the caption: “Happy birthday to the most important person in my life.” All those memories, coupled with the scene in front of me now… I was done. I should have walked away a long time ago. As I turned to leave, Dan’s voice followed me. “She’s probably just got pre-wedding jitters. Don’t mind her, she’s not well…” How kind of him to make excuses for me. Through the glass window, I saw him take Chloe’s hand and feed her an almond crisp. They were the ones who looked like the happy couple. That evening, I received a voice message from Dan. “Elara, stop being angry.” “I’m so busy with work, and I have to take care of both of you. Can’t you be more understanding?” “We’re going to be married soon. I need you to be more mature.” He was slightly drunk, rambling on and on. I didn’t bother listening to the rest. He had it so hard. So I decided to make it easy for him. I would remove the burden completely. 2 The day before the wedding, Dan finally broke. “Elara,” he said over the phone, his voice tight with anxiety, “you’ve… confirmed all the final arrangements, right?” I made a soft sound of agreement as I packed my suitcase for the trip to Aspen Ridge. “Yes, I’ve gone over everything.” He let out a sigh of relief. “Good… that’s good…” “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.” The next morning, I put on my wedding dress. It wasn’t the one Dan had picked. I heard a car pull up outside, and then my phone rang. “Elara,” Dan said, his words rushed. “Chloe twisted her ankle. I’m taking her to the hospital now, so I can’t pick you up.” “You go on ahead to the venue. It’s just a formality, anyway. I’ll meet you there later.” “Okay,” I replied calmly. He paused, as if sensing something was wrong. “You’re… not angry, are you?” “No. You do what you need to do.” After I hung up, Dan let out a relieved breath and turned to Chloe in the passenger seat. “Does it hurt a lot? Just hold on, we’re almost there.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, making you late to pick up your bride…” He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Don’t say that. You’re hurt. Of course I’m going to take care of you.” But a seed of doubt had been planted in his mind. My calm acceptance felt… wrong. Maybe she’s finally come around, he thought. She knows she’s the one I’m marrying. I’ll make it up to her on the honeymoon. At the Golden Shores Resort, Dan’s family and friends had all arrived. But the bride’s side of the venue was completely empty. Dan arrived with Chloe on his arm. A knot of panic tightened in his stomach. No… she couldn’t have missed the change of address, could she? The thought was terrifying. He dialed my number, but it went straight to voicemail. He checked his watch again and again, his face growing paler by the minute. Finally, I picked up. “Elara, where are you?” he yelled, his voice frayed with panic. “The guests are all waiting!” I looked out the window at the swirling snow. “I’m already here.” The wedding march began to play in the chapel, signaling my entrance. Dan froze. “Where are you? I don’t see you.” I held the phone up. “Listen.” The soaring notes of the wedding hymn drifted through the line, mingled with the sound of the wind. He went rigid, his voice trembling. “You’re… you’re at Aspen Ridge?” “Are you crazy? I changed the venue!” A small smile touched my lips. “I know.” He was stunned into silence. “What do you mean, you know? You knew and you went there anyway? Why are you being so stubborn? This is our wedding, Elara! You didn’t even tell me!” “Did you tell me when you changed it?” My question left him speechless. “The beach is so romantic! I wanted it to be a surprise! Why can’t you appreciate what I was trying to do for you?” I smiled. In the distance, a man was waiting for me. “I don’t understand. And I don’t need to anymore.” “I’m getting married, Dan. Goodbye.” I hung up and handed the phone to my best friend, Tessa. Dan called again and again, but the line would never connect. A suffocating tightness gripped his chest, and tears burned his eyes. Getting married? To who? He finally understood. This time, I was truly done. His parents walked over, their faces etched with confusion. “What’s going on? Where’s Elara? Didn’t you go get her?” Tears swam in Dan’s eyes. He didn’t know how to explain. Leo, standing beside him as his best man, finally put the pieces together. “I told you not to push it this far, but you wouldn’t listen…” “It’s a wedding, man. You can’t just change the venue and not tell her. You can’t blame her for not showing up.” He paused, a look of dawning horror on his face. “I think… I saw her at a bridal shop with another guy a while back. I thought I was seeing things. But… I think she just married someone else.” Dan’s parents stared at him in disbelief, then grabbed his arm. “You foolish boy! What are you standing here for? Go get your wife back!” Dan’s eyes were red as he turned to Chloe. “Chloe, come with me to Aspen Ridge! Now!” She pulled her hand away, her expression wounded. “But my ankle still hurts… and what’s the point? She’s already…” “She’s my bride!” Dan roared. “I won’t let her marry anyone else!” “You have to be there! You have to explain to her that there’s nothing between us!”

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On my husband’s 60th suicide attempt, he succeeded—after Isabelle sneered, “You’re revolting.” He jumped from the 33rd floor, demanding his ashes be buried beneath her window to watch her forever. I, his wife, inherited only debts and blame. “Clara, this is your fault!” His family smashed my head against the wall at the wake, forgetting it was me who dragged him from the burning wreckage, me who ruined my health reconstructing his face. Then my heart gave out. I woke up on the day of the crash. This time, when Isabelle provoked him, I didn’t intervene. I turned off my phone and entered the OR. Let them reap what they sowed. 1. “Dr. Wright. Your gloves.” My apprentice, Leo, held the sterile gloves with both hands, his eyes downcast, unable to hide the hesitation flickering within them. It was the twentieth time he’d snuck a glance at my face. I held out my hand, letting him carefully smooth the latex over my fingers. “What is it you’re trying to say?” His hand trembled, nearly knocking over a tray of instruments. “I’m sorry, Doctor. But I saw the message from your husband.” My fingers paused inside the glove. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I grew up near there. Blackwood Ridge… it’s a treacherous place. There are accidents all the time.” The operating room fell into a terrifying silence. I could feel the gazes of every assistant fixed on me, all of them holding their breath, waiting for my reaction. “He’s a famous actor. His agency has him surrounded by more bodyguards than you can imagine,” I said, pointing to the anesthetized patient on the table. “Instead of worrying about him, you should be worrying about us.” “Today, our task is to reconstruct an entirely new neural pathway inside her brain.” On the table, the young woman’s head was secured in a frame. Through the cranial window, we could see the gentle pulse of her cerebral cortex. “If we succeed, not only will she be able to play Chopin’s most difficult pieces again, but we will have proven the possibility of plastic reconstruction in the human brain. This will be a milestone in neurosurgical history.” “But if she dies on this table, every single one of us in this room can say goodbye to ever touching a scalpel again.” A fine sheen of sweat broke out on Leo’s forehead. The other assistants lowered their heads. My voice was cool and even. “If you can’t maintain your focus, you can all leave now.” At my words, every spine in the room straightened. Their gazes became sharp and focused. “Let’s begin.” The roar of an engine on Blackwood Ridge had nothing to do with me. I knew they were all worried I’d abandon the surgery and race to Gordon’s side. After all, he loved to make bets with his friends, summoning me at a moment’s notice, and I never once lost my temper. When it came to him, I would crawl, broken and bleeding, as long as I had a breath left in my body. Everyone thought I loved him to the bone. On our wedding day, he never even showed up. But I had stubbornly walked down the aisle alone, completed the ceremony alone. The socialites had a name for me after that: “The Devoted Saint.” The surgery lasted seventy-two hours straight. When I snipped the final suture, my fingers were spasming so badly they wouldn’t straighten. The moment I stepped out of the OR, the world went dark and I collapsed. I was dead to the world, buried in a deep, dreamless sleep until a thunderous pounding on my door woke me. “Clara Wright, you get out here right now!” My mother-in-law’s shrill voice pierced the door, mingling with the nurses’ attempts to placate her. “Ma’am, Dr. Wright just finished a three-day surgery. She needs to rest…” “Rest? My son is fighting for his life, and she has the nerve to rest?!” “So this is where she was hiding! Does she have any sense of duty as a wife?!” Annoyed, I got up and pulled open the door to my on-call room, only to be met with the blur of an incoming hand. SLAP! A fiery pain exploded across my left cheek. I staggered back, my body crashing into a metal locker. Stars burst behind my eyes. “Gordon’s condition is critical, and you’re in here sleeping!” my mother-in-law shrieked, her meticulously maintained face twisted into a grotesque mask. I could finally see the bodyguards standing behind her, blocking the nurses who were trying to intervene. “You’re a curse! It’s because he married you that my son got hurt!” The taste of blood bloomed on my tongue, and with it came a chilling clarity. I had truly been reborn. “Are you smiling?” Her roar made my eardrums ache. “If your family hadn’t forced this marriage on us with that old contract, I…” “Who forced whom?” I interrupted, my voice hoarse but clear. “It was the Vance family who begged me to marry him. Have you forgotten? When your company’s stock was in freefall, who was it that came knocking with a marriage contract, begging for a bailout?” Her hand froze in mid-air. Humiliation turned to rage, and she raised her hand to strike again. I caught her wrist, my smile widening. “You’re right,” I said. “I should go see Gordon.” Not to save him. But to watch, with my own two eyes, as the man who had destroyed my life once before finally destroyed himself. The VIP room reeked of antiseptic and burnt flesh. Gordon was wrapped so tightly in gauze he looked like an unfinished mummy. It seemed his injuries were far worse this time. My mother-in-law threw herself onto the bed, her cries like a funeral wail. “My boy! My Gordon! What will you do, burned like this? You’re a star!” “Not only is his face burned, but he’s lost an eye.” She whipped her head around, her nails digging into my arm. “Are you made of stone? He went street racing, and you didn’t stop him! Don’t you dare let me find out who talked him into it! I’ll make sure they have no place to be buried!” The same scene, the same lines. Last time, my mother-in-law had been just as hysterical. I had dragged Gordon from the burning tanker, suffering severe injuries myself. But from his hospital bed, he had pointed at me and said, “I wanted a divorce, but Clara refused. She lost control and crashed the car.” “I got these burns trying to save her.” His mother had lost her mind, grabbing my hair and slamming my head against the wall. “You curse! You were born and your parents died! Your grandfather takes you in and he drops dead two years later! And now you’re trying to kill my son!” She had shrieked, her hands around my neck. “You bringer of ruin! I regret the day my son ever married you!” Back then, her words had sent me into a trembling shock. The truth was that Isabelle had sent me a positive pregnancy test to taunt me. I had driven to find them, only to witness their sports car slam into the fuel tanker. I had tried to speak, but no sound came out. And then, Gordon had spoken up. “Mom, don’t be like this with her.” He had reached for me, his bandaged hand gently taking my fingertips. In that instant, all my grievances had dissolved into tears. “Clara, I’m sorry,” he’d whispered. “I just can’t accept what I’ve become…” I had squeezed his hand back, clinging to that fleeting moment of warmth, even knowing it would vanish, knowing he would be cold and distant again in the next breath. “I understand,” I had promised solemnly. “I’ll always be here for you.” I had willingly stepped back into the cycle: hurt, forgiveness, and more hurt. I convinced myself that he needed me. Until the day he snuck out to see Isabelle. He returned a hollowed-out shell of a man. “She said I’m disgusting… that the sight of me makes her sick…” From that day on, he started his cycle of suicide attempts. One moment, he’d be clinging to me, whispering, “You’re all I have.” The next, he’d have his hands around my throat, screaming, “Why wasn’t it you who was disfigured?” The hospital gave me an ultimatum: return to work or resign. I chose the latter. To fix his face, I worked day and night. I tested formulas on myself until my stomach bled, practiced new techniques on my own hands until I suffered nerve damage in my right. The day I could no longer hold a pen, Gordon had smiled, a genuine, happy smile. “Good,” he’d said. “Now we’re the same.” The last time, he slipped sleeping pills into my drink. When I woke up, he had already jumped from the rooftop, killing five pedestrians on the pavement below. The police handed me his will. It left everything he owned to Isabelle and demanded I transfer all of my company shares to her as well. Just then, on the hospital bed, Gordon’s eyes opened. A faint groan escaped from beneath the gauze. He struggled to move his right hand. His mother immediately grabbed it. “Gordon! Gordon, you’re awake? What are you trying to say?” Suddenly, the heart monitor began to shriek, his heart rate soaring to 130. “My son… my poor son…” His mother’s trembling hand hovered over him, afraid to touch the bandaged body. Gordon didn’t answer. “AHHH!” A bloodcurdling scream ripped through the room as his body began to convulse violently on the bed. A yellowish-red fluid of pus and blood seeped through the gauze. A raw, guttural moan was forced from his throat. “It hurts! It hurts so much!” His mother stumbled back and collapsed to the floor in terror. The door was thrown open and his father rushed in. “The pain! It’s too much!” Gordon screamed. “Kill me! Just kill me!” “It hurts… AHHH!” His body thrashed wildly against the restraints. His father slapped his own thighs in helpless panic. “Of course it hurts when you’re burned, son. Just try to bear with it…” Gordon forced the words through his clenched teeth. “Get… a doctor…” His father scrambled out of the room. But his mother, her face streaked with tears, suddenly glared at me, her eyes venomous. “Clara Wright! You’re a doctor! Are you just going to stand there and watch your husband suffer?” I calmly watched his heart rate spike to 140 on the monitor and took a silent step back. “I’m a neurosurgeon. The burn specialists will be here shortly.” Some pain, you just have to experience for yourself. The frantic footsteps of nurses echoed in the hallway. As the painkillers began to take effect, Gordon’s ragged breaths finally steadied. He lay limp on the bed, the bandages rising and falling faintly with his breathing. His mother held his hand, tears splashing onto the sheets. “This is a nightmare. Burned so badly… what will you do now? What will…” “Then I won’t be an actor anymore,” Gordon cut her off, his voice raspy. “Of course you can’t!” she sobbed harder. “You even hurt your eye…” “What?!” Gordon’s one good eye shot open. “That’s impossible! It was just supposed to be my face!” His father gripped the bed rail, his voice trembling. “How could it be just your face when you were in so much pain? The doctor said you have extensive burns all over your body. Son, what were you doing on Blackwood Ridge?” Gordon froze. “What happened? Who took you there?” his father pressed, shaking the rail. He began to struggle again. I slowly reached for the phone in my pocket, ready to expose the evidence of him and Isabelle street racing the moment he tried to frame me like he did last time. But Gordon closed his eye. “Stop talking. I want to be alone.” My hand froze. He didn’t blame me. He didn’t scream hysterically that it was all my fault, didn’t shift all the blame onto me. The phone slid back into my pocket, but my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. He had been reborn, too. “Mom, Dad, get the doctor to prescribe me some more painkillers,” Gordon said weakly, his voice laced with a feigned agony. His mother shot me a glare, as if blaming me for not thinking of such a simple thing. The moment the door closed, the look in Gordon’s eye changed. “I had a dream,” he said, his voice cold and sinister. “In the dream, I was in a car crash too. My face was ruined. And Isabelle… she found me disgusting.” “I tried to kill myself many times, but you… you fixed my face.” “Unfortunately, by the time I was presentable again, Isabelle had already married someone else.” My heart skipped a beat. That wasn’t a dream. It was exactly what had happened in our previous life. “I’m going to make up for the regrets in my dream. I love Isabelle. So what if she isn’t the Wright family heiress?” His expression grew more feverish. “Whether you agree to a divorce or not, I will be with her! I would die for her!” “So what if you’re the real heiress? I never loved you!” “The two old fools who arranged our marriage are dead! Why should I have to put up with the disgust of being with you any longer?” “It’s time for you to step aside,” Gordon commanded, his tone dripping with condescension, as if he were bestowing charity on a pathetic, unloved creature. “Fix my face. I know you can do it. Once my face is healed, Isabelle won’t find me disgusting anymore.” I stared at the man for whom I had once ripped out my own heart. There wasn’t a shred of guilt in his eyes, only a naked, ugly threat. “If you dare refuse, I’ll tell everyone that I was disfigured trying to save you.” “You know how crazy my fans are.” “And you’ve seen what my parents are capable of.” “No one will believe you. Just like before, everyone loved Isabelle. It’s the same now.”

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After my parents found a hundred different ways to kill me, I woke up with every single memory of my past lives intact. The last time, as they left me to die in a fire, I had screamed at them, asking why. Their eyes were filled with pity, but their words were a blade to the heart. “The more you suffer, Lily, the faster Aurora’s illness will fade. You won’t really die, after all. We have no other choice. Just bear with it a little longer.” Aurora was the girl they adopted after I went missing, the golden child who took my place. In terror, I dragged my broken body to my fiancé, begging him to help me escape. He agreed without hesitation, only to lead me to the ocean and watch as I was torn apart by sharks. “Can’t you stop being so selfish for once?” he’d pleaded. “Only you can save Aurora. Once she’s well, I promise I’ll make it all up to you.” They had all made a deal with the System, trading my agony for Aurora’s health. But they didn’t know that I had made a deal with the System, too. 1. “We’ve finally done it ninety-nine times. Just one more, we just have to kill Lily one more time, and our darling Aurora will be free from her sickness forever!” “Our little girl can finally have a normal life! After this is done, we have to throw a huge party for her to celebrate!” I jolted awake, the phantom sensation of drowning still clinging to me, only to hear the excited chatter of my own parents just outside my door. They were already planning a future that had no place for me in it. “Mommy, Daddy… if you keep hurting Lily, won’t she hate you when she finds out the truth? I mean… she’s your real daughter, after all.” Aurora’s voice, sweet and cloying. My fists clenched. I waited, desperate to hear my parents’ reply. After all the pain they’d put me through for her, was there even a shred of remorse? “Aurora, sweetheart, that’s not for you to worry about,” my father’s voice was a cold, smooth stone. “You just need to be happy and healthy. Your sister… even if she knew, she’d be happy to do this for you. Besides, it’s not like she really dies.” He then cooed, telling Aurora not to worry her pretty little head. His words were like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. They never once asked me what I wanted. Even though my memories were wiped each time, the agony of my body being tortured to death, over and over, was terrifyingly real. I remembered when they first found me after I’d been missing for years. My parents had clutched me, sobbing so hard they could barely breathe. They promised me a happy home. They promised I would never suffer again. They broke every single promise, all for their adopted daughter, Aurora. If Aurora shed a single tear, it was my fault. Her pathetic, clumsy acting was enough to make my parents scream at me, to lock me in the storage closet for three days and nights, to ignore me when I was burning up with a 104-degree fever. Tears soaked my pillow, hot and silent. The next moment, the door creaked open and my parents walked in. A flicker of guilt crossed their faces before being replaced by practiced, loving smiles. “I made you some soup. You need to get your strength back after… falling in the water,” my mother said. “Aurora’s birthday party is in a few days. She really wants you to be there. You know how she gets when she’s upset. That girl is impossible to soothe.” The mention of Aurora brought a wave of adoration to my mother’s eyes. She would indulge her every whim, while I was always expected to be the understanding one. “What about my birthday?” I asked, my voice small. Aurora and I were born on the same day, in the same month, of the same year. Her birthday was my birthday, too. 2. My mother froze. It was true; I’d never had a real party. She looked at me with a sigh of weary resignation. “Oh, look at my memory. I’m so sorry, Lily, darling. Your mother has just been so busy. Of course, we’ll celebrate your birthday too. It’s just… it’s too late to have a gown custom-made. You’re about Aurora’s size, so you’ll just have to make do with one of her old ones for now. I’ll make it up to you later, I promise.” I’ll make it up to you. I’d heard those words a hundred times. The hope I once felt had curdled into a numb acceptance. I just nodded. My mother, relieved, brought the bowl of soup to my lips. My eyes burned as I drank it down, spoonful by spoonful. This simple act of maternal care was a scene I had replayed in my head a thousand times, and now, finally, it was real. I was about to ask them, to beg them not to kill me again, when a violent cramp seized my stomach. The world blurred. In agony, I tumbled from the bed, my body convulsing on the floor as foam frothed at my lips. Through the haze of pain, I heard my mother’s worried voice. “The poison in this soup… it seems so potent. Are you sure Lily’s body can handle it?” She looked conflicted, reaching for me, but my father pulled her hand back. “She has to die a hundredth time sooner or later,” he explained patiently. “Don’t you want Aurora to be fully recovered before her birthday? The more she suffers now, the healthier Aurora becomes.” They had reached an agreement. My mother’s face hardened. She gave me one last look before turning away. “Lily,” she said, her voice distant. “Once Aurora is well, you’ll be the hero of this family. Mom and Dad will make it all up to you.” Moments after they left, I heard Aurora’s cheerful giggles as she cuddled between them. A happy family, their joy complete now that I was gone. In the encroaching darkness, my tears ran dry. My heart was a dead, empty thing as I called out to the System. After I’d recovered my memories, it had offered me one compensation for its error. “System,” I thought, my voice a faint echo in my mind. “You said that after I died one hundred times, you would help me fake my death and escape. Does that offer still stand?” “Of course,” its disembodied voice replied. “Allowing you to regain your memories was my failure.” With that confirmation, I closed my eyes and waited for the end. But it didn’t come. The housekeeper, passing by my room, found me unconscious and called for an ambulance. My parents were furious that their plan had been disrupted, but they couldn’t risk their public image as loving, doting parents. So I woke up in a hospital, my parents standing beside my bed with red-rimmed eyes, tearfully telling a news reporter how they had failed as parents. When my mother saw I was awake, she pulled me into a tight, heart-wrenching hug. I froze. She had never held me like this. I had spent my childhood watching her embrace Aurora with that fierce, protective love, my own heart aching with a jealousy so sharp it was a physical pain. Even knowing this warmth was a lie, I desperately wanted to hold on. But the shrill ring of her phone shattered the illusion. She answered, her face immediately clouding with anxiety. Without a backward glance, she and my father rushed out of the room. “There’s an emergency at the company,” she called over her shoulder. “You be a good girl and wait here, Lily.” I was left alone with the awkward reporter. Of course, I’d overheard the call. It wasn’t the company. Aurora had twisted her ankle walking down the stairs at home and was throwing a tantrum, refusing to let anyone treat it. That was their “emergency.” A few minutes later, my phone lit up. It was a new post from Aurora, a picture of my parents kneeling at her feet, carefully tending to her ankle. The caption read: “My little tantrums can only be soothed by Mom and Dad! And thank you for the priceless necklace you gave me to cheer me up. I love it so much, especially since its meaning is ‘my one and only treasure.’” She had tagged me. A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I turned off my phone. 3. I was in the hospital for only a day before the family butler was sent to forcibly discharge me. I returned home, pale and weak, to find Aurora standing in the living room, preening in a magnificent gown as my parents showered her with praise. I had almost forgotten. Today was our birthday. “Aurora, darling,” my father began, “today isn’t just your birthday, it’s also…” Had they finally remembered me? A foolish flicker of hope ignited in my chest, only to be instantly extinguished. “…it’s also the day you become healthy forever! Your mother and I have waited so long for this. You’ve suffered so much because of your illness, but that’s all over now.” “That’s right,” my mother added, her eyes shining. “We’ve arranged everything. As soon as Lily dies one more time, you’ll be cured for good.” The three of them embraced, a portrait of familial bliss, while I, their flesh and blood, stood in the shadows, a ghost at their feast. So this was why I couldn’t miss the party. It was the stage for my hundredth death. The butler hustled me forward. Aurora shot me a triumphant smile. “Sister, the party’s about to start. Mommy forgot to get you a new dress, so you’ll just have to wear one of mine.” Two maids dragged me into a room, roughly stripping my clothes off, their nails deliberately scratching my skin, drawing blood. I met their contemptuous gazes and knew this was Aurora’s doing. They ignored my struggles, forcing me into an ill-fitting dress. A thousand sharp, stinging pains erupted across my body. I reached down and touched the fabric. My fingers came away dotted with blood. Hundreds of needles had been sewn into the lining. “The young miss picked this dress for you herself,” one of the maids sneered. “It’s either this, or you go downstairs naked.” They laughed, then hauled me into the grand hall. It was already filled with guests. Their curious, malicious stares felt like insects crawling on my skin. Across the room, I saw Aurora, holding my parents’ hands, surrounded by a circle of well-wishers. Did anyone here even know it was my birthday, too? Aurora’s lips curled into a smirk. With all the pain I had endured recently, her cheeks were rosier than ever, her health blooming at my expense. “Happy birthday…” A familiar voice from behind me. It was my fiancé, Ethan, his face a mask of gentle concern. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My desperate stare finally caught his attention. He saw me, and his brow furrowed in disgust. He took a deliberate step away, as if looking at something vile. He walked right past me to Aurora’s side, carefully fastening a multi-million-dollar bracelet onto her wrist. I remembered when we first got engaged. His eyes had been full of only me. He had promised to take care of me for the rest of my life. But after Aurora’s endless stream of lies and accusations, his affection had soured into revulsion. It didn’t matter anymore. After the hundredth death, I would finally be out of their way for good. As I stood there, lost in thought, one of the maids shoved me hard from behind. I stumbled, and at that exact moment, the massive crystal chandelier directly above me came crashing down. The impact was immense, but the pain was so blinding I couldn’t even scream. I looked down at my body, my limbs twisted at unnatural, horrifying angles. Blood pooled beneath me, a rapidly expanding stain on the marble floor. The guests recoiled, their faces masks of disgust. With my last ounce of strength, I lifted my head. I saw my parents and my fiancé shielding Aurora, terrified that my blood might splatter on her, that the grotesque sight of my broken body might frighten her. They were cooing at her, telling her not to look. Aurora just stuck out her tongue playfully. I could feel my consciousness fading. This, I thought, would be the last time I ever felt pain. 4. “Lily! Someone call an ambulance! Why aren’t you helping her?” As I lay dying, I heard a familiar voice cry out. But who would want to save me? It must be another hallucination. Then, a pair of hands pressed down on my wounds, and I realized it wasn’t a hallucination. I forced my blood-matted eyelids open. It took a long moment for the figures to come into focus. It was my adoptive parents. The kind, simple couple who had found me when I was lost and raised me as their own. If not for them, I wouldn’t have survived past the age of five. When my biological family found me, they were heartbroken to let me go, but happy that I would no longer have to live in poverty with them. What would they think, seeing me like this now? In their plain, worn clothes, they were starkly out of place among the wealthy guests, their frantic, desperate cries sounding almost comical in the opulent hall. My parents and Ethan glanced at my suffering form, a flicker of pity in their eyes. But then they remembered—I wouldn’t really die. Their brief concern vanished. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to save me; it was that for Aurora’s sake, they couldn’t. Terrified my adoptive parents would ruin their plan, my father ordered the security guards to throw them out. But they were stubborn. They clung to me, their bodies becoming soaked in my blood, refusing to let go. They screamed at my parents, their voices raw with disbelief. “Lily is your own daughter! Why won’t you save her? When you took her from us, you promised you would cherish her for the rest of her life! We thought she would finally be happy, and you do this to her?” My adoptive mother’s heartbroken sobs made my parents flinch with guilt. To prevent a bigger scene, my father barked at the guards. “What are you waiting for? Get them out! If they won’t leave, break their legs and throw them out. The family can afford the settlement!” “No…” I choked out, tears streaming down my face. “Please… Mom, Dad, I’m begging you… leave them alone.” I stretched a trembling hand toward them, desperate for them to look at me. My adoptive parents weren’t in good health. If their legs were broken, how would they survive? But no one listens to the pleas of a dying girl. I watched in horror as the guards took iron batons and shattered the bones in my adoptive parents’ arms and legs. Then they dragged them out and threw them into the street like trash. Of course. My parents didn’t care about me. Why would they care about the people I loved? Under their cold, indifferent gazes, I finally bled out, my last breath a shuddering gasp. The tears and blood mingled on the floor, a chilling testament to their cruelty. And then, they got the confirmation from the System. Aurora’s illness was gone. For good. They wiped away tears of joy and had my body carried up to my room. After all, for the last ninety-nine times, I had always woken up, my memory wiped clean. But not this time. This time, the torture was finally over.

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