Category: English

I suffered every imaginable torment in that foreign penitentiary, waiting for a justice that never came. When the embassy finally contacted Chloe to claim my body, she laughed. She told the magistrate it was a sick prank, a silicone dummy I’d commissioned just to torture her. “That piece of trash violated me,” she sneered through the phone, her voice dripping with a cruelty that used to break my heart. “Even if his rotting corpse gets flushed down a storm drain, I wouldn’t waste a single breath looking at him.” What she didn’t know was that I wasn’t hiding. I was really, truly dead. Three years ago, after she was assaulted on that yacht, her trauma fractured her reality. She became hysterical, pointing a trembling finger at me, accusing me of being the monster who ruined her. Both of our families knew the truth. They knew the real culprit was inextricably tied to Brady—the golden boy, the untouchable center of her universe. Yet, they all looked away. They fed me to the wolves to satisfy her need for vengeance. They left me to rot in a sun-baked hellhole halfway across the world. And while I was bleeding on concrete floors, Chloe liquidated the tech company I had built from nothing, using my money to bury the evidence and keep her true love out of prison. I often wondered what she would do when she realized the truth. I imagined her holding my skeletal remains, laughing in manic triumph. I imagined her laughing so hard that eventually, the laughter would break, and the tears wouldn’t stop falling. 1. My remains were extradited back to the States. My wife, Chloe, received the formal notice to identify the body. She walked down the stark, fluorescent-lit hallway of the county morgue. As they approached the heavy metal doors, the faint, unmistakable stench of decay leaked into the air. She hesitated. Her stunning features twisted into a mask of pure revulsion. “Does he really think this is going to work?” she muttered, her heels clicking aggressively against the linoleum. “He fakes his death to guilt-trip me into forgiving a rapist? In his dreams.” In the end, she only made it through the doors because Brady had his arms wrapped securely around her waist. My soul drifted silently behind them. I watched, numb, as Chloe playfully bit Brady’s neck, right there in the morgue, as if she were trying to purge the sterile air from her lungs. Then, realizing she might have bitten too hard, she soothed the red mark with her tongue, letting out a soft, breathy giggle. A phantom pressure seized my chest. I couldn’t breathe, even though I had no lungs left to fill. She was flirting with her lover mere feet from my corpse. The medical examiner shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat to enforce some semblance of respect. Chloe pulled away from Brady, rolling her eyes. She spat a curse under her breath and finally yanked back the white sheet covering the steel table. Just one look. My nonexistent breath hitched. It wasn’t just that I was dead. It was that I had died with zero dignity. My remains were grotesque. “A rotting silicone dummy, Holden. Really?” Chloe’s voice was sharp, bouncing off the tiled walls. “You think you’ve fooled everyone, don’t you? You’re probably hiding in some pathetic little motel right now, laughing at my family. Laughing at the woman you brutalized. You make me sick!” “You might fool the embassy, Holden, but you can’t fool me!” she screamed at the mutilated flesh. “I wish you were dead. I wish you died so thoroughly that your soul wouldn’t even dare cross the border back into this country!” No, Chloe! I’m not lying to you! I surged forward, desperate, reaching out to grab her shoulders. But my translucent hands passed right through the expensive wool of her coat. She turned away from the table and buried her face in Brady’s chest, pressing a lingering kiss to his collarbone. “Let him play dead,” she whispered. “At least now we don’t have to hide anymore.” Brady carried her into the morgue, and he carried her out. The entire walk back to the administrative desk, she stroked his jaw, his neck, kissing him repeatedly as if demanding compensation for having to look at my face. At the front desk, the clerk handed them a thick manila envelope containing my autopsy reports and biometric data. Dozens of pages of irrefutable DNA matches and dental records. If she had bothered to look at even the first page, she would have known the body couldn’t be faked. Instead, Chloe shoved the envelope into her designer tote like it was garbage. Brady stroked her hair, his eyes heavy with practiced sorrow. “Three years ago, Holden almost dragged me down with him. If it weren’t for you fighting for me, exhausting yourself to clear my name… I would have been ruined. I owe you everything.” Chloe shook her head, her gaze softening. “Don’t say that. It wasn’t a big deal. I just spent a little money… liquidated a few of Holden’s start-ups. It didn’t cost my family a dime.” The tech firm I had bled for. The company I worked hundred-hour weeks to build from a garage to a high-rise office—gone in an afternoon. Sold off by my wife to buy the freedom of another man. The dead aren’t supposed to feel anything. So why did it hurt so much? Why did the sheer memory of her voice feel like glass in my veins? Forget it, I told myself. I built that company to afford the experimental treatments for her severe respiratory condition anyway. At least the money was used. “Holden owed me,” Chloe gritted her teeth, her eyes darkening. “Selling off his little vanity projects was letting him off easy.” Brady glanced back down the hallway toward the cold storage rooms. “Are you sure you don’t want to take one last look? Once you sign the release, they’ll bury him. Whatever he did, he was your husband once. He loved you in his own way.” Brady sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “Man to man… I almost pity him.” Chloe spat on the ground, her face contorting with disgust. “God, Brady, you’re too kind for your own good. Why are you defending a monster who tried to destroy us? He forced himself on me! Marital rape is still rape!” Her voice trembled, pitching up with genuine, manufactured trauma. “You fought him off. You saved me, and you almost went to prison for assault because of it! He doesn’t even deserve to have his name spoken.” The heavy doors of the morgue slowly swung shut. The clerk slid a clipboard across the counter. “Ma’am, I just need your signature on the release forms.” Chloe picked up the pen. Then, suddenly, her hand froze. She slammed the pen down and backed away. “I am not tying my name to that man.” “Excuse me?” the clerk asked. “Even if he is dead—which he isn’t—I will not put my name on a document as his wife. I have nothing to do with him!” She spun on her heel and stormed out. The clerk looked bewildered and chased after her. “Ma’am! You are legally married. By state law, the spouse must claim the remains—” Chloe paused at the automatic doors. She didn’t look back. “I don’t have a husband. Let his body rot in there. Let the rats eat him. It’s exactly what he deserves.” She threw open the door of her Porsche 911, slammed it shut, and peeled out of the parking lot, the engine roaring in defiance. In the passenger seat, Brady’s phone began to ring incessantly. The police. The morgue. Chloe glanced at the caller ID and shook her head sharply. “Ignore it. Just thinking about him makes my skin crawl. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on the deck of that yacht, crying, begging him to stop, and he just… he didn’t care. I could kill him myself.” My spirit trembled. Watching the absolute, venomous hatred radiate from her eyes, listening to her rewrite history until it justified grinding my bones to dust—it was a bitter, suffocating pill to swallow. Chloe was my wife, yet she had convinced the world, and herself, that I was a rapist. But I wasn’t. It happened shortly after our wedding, on a luxury cruise through a lawless stretch of international waters in the Caribbean. Armed mercenaries boarded the ship. Chloe was dragged up to the upper deck. By the time I tore through the ship like a madman and finally found her, it was over. She was catatonic, bleeding heavily onto the teakwood floor. The ship’s doctor later told me the trauma had been so severe, the internal damage so catastrophic, that she would never be able to carry a child. I was consumed by a blinding, agonizing guilt. I wanted to rip my own heart out and give it to her if it would make her whole again. But when Chloe finally woke up in the hospital, her mind had snapped. She screamed the moment she saw me. She threw things. She clawed at her own face, demanding that I die to atone for what I had done to her. Her trauma had completely rewritten her memories. She truly believed I was the one who had attacked her. I closed my ghostly eyes, letting the memory wash over me. To give her peace, I let her and her influential family lock me away in a brutal offshore prison. It was a cage built for the worst of humanity. Cartel enforcers, murderers, monsters. And in a place like that, a convicted rapist is the lowest link on the food chain. For three years, I was subjected to torture that defied human comprehension. And on the very night I was finally scheduled to be released, I was given my final release. I died in unimaginable agony. My body was beaten until it was no longer recognizable as human. … Brady drove like a maniac, eventually pulling up to the driveway of my sprawling estate in the suburbs. As Chloe stepped out into the freezing rain, he pulled her flush against his chest, kissing her deeply, hungrily. “It’s okay. Shhh, it’s over now. You’re safe,” he murmured. They held each other tightly in the downpour. I remembered my final moments on earth. I had begged a sympathetic guard to let me make one last phone call. Please… I had choked out into the receiver, blood bubbling in my lungs. Please, just pick up. I’m dying. This is my last chance, Chloe. My last chance to hear your voice… If she had answered. Even if she had picked up just to tell me how much she hated me. Even if she called me pathetic, manipulative, a coward trying to play the victim! If I had just heard her voice, I would have fought. I would have clawed my way back to life just to breathe the same air as her. But the phone just kept ringing. I died in absolute, suffocating despair. I died one day before my sentence was up. Now, I was a wandering ghost. An exile, tethered to the woman who put me in the ground. 2. My soul followed Chloe into the house. I stood in the corners of my own home, watching her and Brady live as husband and wife. They shared coffee in the mornings. They tangled their limbs together at night. Once, I watched Brady carry a heavily intoxicated Chloe through the front door. A visceral, territorial jealousy flared up inside me, and I glared at him, wishing I could tear him apart. But then I remembered Chloe’s sharp slap to my face years ago, her voice ringing in my ears: “Brady and I are just childhood friends! Only someone with a filthy mind would see something dirty in that!” But… do friends sleep in the same bed? Do friends kiss each other with that kind of desperate hunger when no one else is looking? Under the warm glow of the living room lamps, Chloe meticulously ironed Brady’s suit for the next day, folding it neatly over the back of the sofa. She looked like the perfect, devoted wife. That used to be my job. Before every gala, every board meeting, I would lay out her dresses. I would curate her jewelry, making sure every diamond and pearl perfectly complemented her mood. Chloe had always dismissed my efforts with a scoff. “You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but he still acts like the help,” she used to mock me to her friends. “He calls himself a Montgomery, but he has the soul of a butler.” Yet here she was, doing the exact same ‘servant’s work’ for Brady, and looking at him like he hung the moon. I guess that was the difference between being tolerated and being loved. Brady took her hands, bringing her knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss. Chloe closed her eyes, letting out a contented sigh. “Brady, I’m coming with you to the Montgomery estate tomorrow,” she whispered fiercely. “You are the true son of that family. No one is going to take that from you anymore. I’ll stand by you while you take back everything that belongs to you.” Watching her declare her absolute loyalty, I caught a fleeting, calculating shadow cross Brady’s face. I suddenly remembered how it all started. For twenty-something years, Brady was the pampered, adored heir to the Montgomery fortune. Until the day I was found in a dusty Appalachian town and brought back to the sprawling Boston estate. I remembered the look of profound disappointment in my biological parents’ eyes when they saw me in my faded flannel and scuffed boots. They couldn’t believe this rough, quiet mechanic was their actual flesh and blood. That afternoon, Brady had dramatically packed his bags, standing in the foyer with tears in his eyes. “I know we don’t share the same blood,” he had told my parents, his voice breaking perfectly. “But I’ve been a Montgomery my whole life. Even if you cast me out, I will always pray for your health and happiness.” We had been switched at birth. The rundown farmhouse I grew up in—the one with the leaky roof and the endless chores—was where Brady truly belonged. Tom and Mary O’Connor were his parents. But when the Montgomerys looked at me, their eyes begging me to be the bigger person, I caved. “If you want him to stay, let him stay,” I had said, shifting uncomfortably in my cheap sneakers. “Having two sons to take care of you isn’t a bad thing.” I meant it back then. But I regretted it almost immediately. Because Brady became a ghost that haunted my life, a shadow I could never escape, especially when it came to Chloe. At every high-society event, every charity gala, the moment Brady walked into the room, Chloe’s eyes would lock onto him like a magnet. Standing beside her, I—the actual heir to the Montgomery dynasty—faded into a pathetic, invisible joke. Chloe opened her eyes, her gaze practically overflowing with adoration. “It was always supposed to be you,” she told Brady, her voice thick with emotion. “We grew up together. You were the one I was supposed to marry. If that redneck hadn’t shown up and ruined everything, we would be married by now. We would have kids.” Her face hardened. “He stole my future. But it’s not too late. I’m going to divorce him, Brady. I’ll drag him out of hiding and force him to sign the papers, and then we can finally be together.” They stared into each other’s eyes, the air between them growing thick and heavy. Soon, the quiet whispers turned into heavy breathing. Watching them tear at each other’s clothes on the rug of my living room, I closed my eyes and let out a bitter, silent laugh. I always knew she didn’t love me. Her marriage contract was forged with the Montgomery heir. When my identity was revealed, she was legally bound to me. She was Boston royalty—cold, brilliant, and breathtakingly beautiful. I was a grease monkey who didn’t know which fork to use at dinner. How could I ever expect her to love me? I was so naive. I used to tell myself that if I just loved her hard enough, if I was patient and kind, year after year, maybe, just maybe, she would eventually look at me and smile. I was so incredibly wrong. When Chloe was assaulted, her parents had come to me. The aristocratic, untouchable Lynn family had fallen to their knees on my hardwood floor, weeping. “Please, Holden,” her father had begged. “Chloe is too proud. Her mind is shattered. If she knows she was taken by random thugs, she’ll kill herself. She has completely blocked out the real attackers!” “If you just confess,” her mother sobbed, clutching my pant leg. “If you let her believe it was you… her anger will keep her alive. She’ll have someone to hate. Please… it’s the only way she survives this.” Human nature is inherently selfish. If I confessed to a crime I didn’t commit, my life was over. I would be a pariah, a monster in the eyes of the world. I told them no. But I underestimated the depths of my own family’s betrayal. When I went to the Montgomery estate for help, my father locked himself in his study and refused to look at me. My mother threw herself on the floor, weeping hysterically, before swallowing a handful of sleeping pills right in front of me. As she was being pumped full of charcoal in the ER, she confessed the sickening truth. The attack on the yacht hadn’t been random. Brady had gambling debts. He had made a deal with the mercenaries, giving them the security codes to the yacht. It was his fault the pirates boarded. “I raised Brady,” my mother wept, clutching my hands with a desperate, bruising grip. “I love him more than my own life. If he goes to federal prison for this, Holden… I will kill myself. I swear to God, I will die.” Cornered by the people who brought me into the world, suffocated by the tears of the family I had married into, I broke. I took the plea deal. I “confessed.” And I died for it. I paid for their sins with my blood, dying alone in a country where I didn’t even speak the language. If my body hadn’t been deported by a bureaucratic technicality, my soul would have been lost in the dark forever. I tried to find comfort in the finality of it. I’m dead, I told myself. The truth is buried with me. Chloe will never know, and so she will never have to bear the pain of reality. But the phantom knife in my chest kept twisting. After the “incident,” Chloe had developed a severe psychological block. Her doctors called it trauma-induced delusion. Her subconscious had actively rewritten the narrative, turning me into the ultimate villain so she didn’t have to face the chaotic, senseless horror of what actually happened. Her parents enabled the delusion. My parents endorsed it. I did nothing wrong. I loved her perfectly. But the world decided that sacrificing Holden O’Connor was the easiest way to keep everyone else’s lives immaculate. During the private hearings, Chloe hired a ruthless legal team to crucify me. But the American judges weren’t blind. The evidence was circumstantial, the forensics didn’t match, and her case was thrown out repeatedly. Frustrated by the law, the two families pooled their vast resources. They used offshore connections, pulled political strings, and had me illegally extradited and thrown into that South American hellhole. My parents personally flew down to see me handed over to the guards. On that final day, my mother touched my face, her eyes brimming with sorrow. “Just hold on, sweet boy. Three years. We’ll bring you home, and you’ll go back to being a Montgomery.” My father patted my shoulder awkwardly. “Adversity builds character, son. I took my lumps building the empire. A few years roughing it won’t kill you.” As the heavy iron gates slammed shut, I saw Brady standing by the black SUV, waiting for them. He turned his head and looked at me. It was just one look. But it was entirely composed of arrogant, sneering triumph. He had stolen my parents. He had stolen my wife. And he left me to be devoured by the monsters in the dark. And everyone lived happily ever after. Because the right person had been sacrificed. 3. For weeks, my soul drifted aimlessly behind Chloe. I watched her move through the house I had meticulously designed for her, sleeping in the bed I had picked out, laughing with another man. Every corner of the house, right down to the ornate bronze oil diffuser in the hallway, had been placed there by me. Brady stepped out of the shower one evening, toweling his hair. As he walked past, his foot shot out, casually kicking the heavy bronze diffuser. It clattered against the wall, the glass reservoir shattering across the hardwood. “What happened?” Chloe called out, stepping out of the bedroom. Brady looked down at the mess, his expression the picture of innocent dismay. “Oh, damn. This was one of Holden’s little projects, wasn’t it? Supposed to be romantic or something. My bad, Chloe. Total accident.” Chloe stared at the broken glass for a moment. Then, she let out a dismissive scoff. “Typical Holden. Always wasting his time on useless, flashy garbage just so he could play the martyr. He loved putting on a show to prove how much he ‘suffered’ for me. Never once stopped to ask if I actually wanted his help.” My spectral hands curled into fists. The ache in my chest was a physical, pulsing thing. I just loved putting on a show? Chloe had severe, chronic asthma, complicated by a rare allergy. Whenever the seasons changed, or when the stress of running her company peaked, she would spend nights gasping for air, her face pale, terrifyingly close to suffocation. I hated seeing her in pain. I scoured the country for holistic specialists, finally tracking down a retired herbalist in the Pacific Northwest who formulated a customized, eucalyptus-based medicinal wax. Every night, I would set it in that diffuser, letting the slow heat fill the room with a vapor that opened her lungs. Once, after a brutal business trip, she collapsed from a severe respiratory attack, burning with a high fever. I lit the diffuser and sat by her bed, trying to keep the vapor near her face. But she was delirious, thrashing wildly, cursing my name, refusing to let me near her. Terrified she would knock the scalding oil onto her face, I took the medicinal wax, smeared it directly onto my own forearm, and held it over the open candle flame, letting the heat vaporize the medicine from my skin. I sat there like that all night, breathing with her. The hot wax and the open flame blistered my arm terribly. But I would have set myself on fire if it meant Chloe could breathe. When she woke up the next morning, her lungs were clear. My arm, however, was covered in weeping, agonized burns. I didn’t complain. A husband is supposed to protect his wife. You don’t hand the woman you love an invoice for your sacrifices. But when Chloe saw my bandaged arm, she simply rolled her eyes, told me I was clumsy, and walked out of the room. Now, I watched Chloe nudge a piece of the broken glass with her slipper. “Sweep it up and throw it out,” she told the maid coldly. “Holden is trash, everything he touched is trash. It all belongs in the dumpster.” She turned and curled into Brady’s chest, smiling up at him. “He’s such a coward. He doesn’t even have the guts to face me. Going through all the trouble to fake a corpse, just because he knows the second I see him, I’m shoving divorce papers down his throat.” “He knows his entire status in Boston rests on his marriage to me. His parents tolerate him because he’s tied to the Lynn family. If I dump him, he’s back to being nobody.” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “But he’s an idiot if he thinks hiding in some rat-infested motel will save him. I’ll drag him back by his hair if I have to.” I listened to her speech with a tired, hollow smile. I gave her my soul, and in return, she saw me as a pathetic, gold-digging coward clinging to her coattails. Brady’s eyes flickered, calculating. “Have your private investigators found anything yet? Chloe… is it possible the body was real? What if he actually is…” “Impossible!” Chloe snapped, suddenly stepping away from him, her body rigid. “If it weren’t for him, I never would have endured what I went through! Dying is too easy for him! He doesn’t get to just die!” She paced the room, her chest heaving. “That thing in the morgue was a prop. It’s a sick joke. He’s probably watching from somewhere, getting off on my reaction.” Suddenly, she spun around, throwing her arms around Brady’s neck and pressing her lips aggressively against his. “Distract me, Brady. Wash the thought of him out of my head. He makes me sick.” Brady let out a low laugh, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her toward the bedroom. “Happy to oblige.” They crashed onto the mattress, tearing at each other with a frantic, desperate energy. Chloe’s screams of pleasure echoed off the vaulted ceiling. I stood by the doorway, gripping the frame. I thought I had run out of tears. I thought ghosts couldn’t cry. But the agony tearing through me was so absolute, it felt like I was dying all over again. 4. Chloe’s private investigators turned up nothing. Naturally. My body was still lying in the cold storage drawer at the county morgue. The precinct captain and the medical examiner called her constantly, pleading with her to sign the paperwork so I could be laid to rest. But Chloe lived in a reality of her own making. She was fundamentally convinced the corpse was a fake, and that I was playing a cruel game of hide-and-seek. After hanging up on the police for the fourth time that week, Chloe threw a crystal vase at the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. My parents, Richard and Patricia Montgomery, visited the house shortly after. They had no idea I was dead. They assumed I had been quietly released from the offshore prison and was just laying low. They believed that because I loved Chloe so much—because I was willing to go to jail for her—I would inevitably come crawling back. But Brady handled their visit beautifully. He poured their tea, he reminisced about his childhood in their home, and he spun a masterful web of casual lies. “You know how Holden is,” Brady chuckled warmly. “He probably needed to blow off steam after everything. He’s out in Europe somewhere, spending money, enjoying the beaches. He’ll come home when he gets bored.” My mother smiled, completely reassured. “Well, he always was a bit… wild. Growing up in that rural environment, he never really learned responsibility. Let him get it out of his system. It’s good that he’s exploring the world.” My spirit froze. For three years, I was beaten with lead pipes. I was starved. I froze in the winters and baked in the summers. I lived a reality so horrifying it stripped away my humanity. And in my mother’s mind, I was just a wild kid backpacking through Saint-Tropez. “We’re getting older,” my mother continued, reaching out to pat Brady’s hand. “Honestly, having you here to take care of us is a blessing, Brady. You understand tradition. You understand duty. You’ll be the one to look after us when we’re gone.” My parents left the estate in good spirits. They never mentioned my name again. But Chloe was unraveling. Every day her investigators came back empty-handed, she grew more frantic. By day, she screamed at her staff. By night, she dragged Brady into her bed, demanding a physical intensity that was bordering on violent. You could see the exhaustion settling into Brady’s bones. She even posted a bounty on her social media. Ten thousand dollars to anyone with a confirmed sighting of Holden O’Connor. 5. After a particularly aggressive session in the bedroom, Brady collapsed back against the pillows, gasping for air. He pulled Chloe to his chest. “Chloe… I don’t think he’s hiding from you on purpose. What if he’s in trouble? Maybe he owes money to the wrong people abroad? Maybe he’s too scared to come back?” “Bullshit!” Chloe shrieked, shoving him away and sitting up violently. “If he needed money, he’d crawl back here! It’s not like the Montgomerys would let him starve. And if they did, he’d beg me for it!” She dug her nails into her palms. “He loves me! He’s obsessed with me! The only reason he’s staying away is because he knows I’ll divorce him the second I see his face. He’s dragging this out!” Her eyes darted around the room, manic and bright. “Fine. If he won’t come out, I’ll start burning down everything he cares about. He still has those hillbilly adoptive parents, doesn’t he? Go get them. Lock them in the basement. Let’s see how long he stays hidden when they start starving.” Brady stared at her, a flicker of genuine unease in his eyes. “Chloe, are you… are you starting to care about him? Is this about getting a divorce, or are you just desperate for him to look at you again?” I held my breath. For a split second, a pathetic, dying ember of hope flared in my chest. “Are you insane?!” Chloe roared, her face flushing with pure rage. “I just want this over! I want the divorce finalized so I never have to look at his disgusting face again! I want to be entirely clean of him!” Brady reached out, cupping her cheek, playing the wounded lover to perfection. “You’ve been acting so erratic lately. If… if you really still have feelings for him, Chloe, just tell me. I’ll pack my things. I’ll walk away and let you two fix your marriage.” “I am not married to him! Who in their right mind would love a piece of white trash like that?!” She caught herself, taking a deep breath to rein in her hysteria. She leaned down and kissed Brady’s forehead. “I’ll prove it to you, Brady. I’ll prove exactly how much I hate him.” I found out very quickly how she planned to prove it. That night, Tom and Mary O’Connor—the gentle, quiet people who had raised me—were dragged out of a black van, black hoods pulled over their heads. They were thrown onto the marble floor of Chloe’s living room like sacks of garbage. “D… daughter-in-law?” my mother stammered, her voice shaking violently as the hood was yanked off. She had lived a quiet life in rural Ohio. She was terrified. “Don’t call me that!” Chloe snatched a heavy crystal tumbler off the table and hurled it. It shattered against my mother’s forehead, drawing a sharp line of blood. My father let out a raw, guttural cry and threw himself over his wife, using his broad shoulders to shield her head. Chloe sneered, her eyes locking onto my father’s hands—hands that were permanently calloused and stained with engine grease and soil from working three jobs to keep me fed. “Filthy,” she muttered in disgust. She crossed her arms, looking down at them like insects. “Your pathetic son is hiding from me because he refuses to sign the divorce papers. Since he clearly has no spine, I’m holding you responsible. You’re not leaving this house until he shows his face.” My father looked up, his weathered face tight with indignation. “Holden is a good boy! He spent his whole life breaking his back to help us put food on the table! You don’t get to talk about my son that way!” Chloe’s eyes went dead. “Holden is a rapist. He violated me. It cost me millions in legal fees just to get him locked in a foreign cage where he belonged! His three years are up. He should be on his knees outside my door, begging for my mercy. But he’s too much of a coward to even face me. Calling him half a man is giving him too much credit!” “No! You’re lying! My boy would never do that! I don’t believe you!” My father, a man who had never raised his voice in his life, suddenly surged forward, his face red with protective fury. Chloe stumbled back, startled. But her security team reacted instantly. Three massive bodyguards tackled my aging father to the ground, slamming his face into the marble. Brady hurried down the stairs, tying his robe. “Chloe, what’s going on? Should we really be doing this? They’re old…” Chloe’s voice was ice. “Trash breeds trash. Break his legs.” “Chloe, wait—” Brady started. “If you raise a monster, you pay the price,” she barked at the guards. “Do it! It’s a public service!” No! Don’t touch them! Leave them alone! Rage, hot and blinding, erupted in my chest. My vision went entirely red. I threw myself at the guards, swinging wildly, screaming at the top of my lungs. But my fists just passed through empty air. I was forced to stand there and watch as they took a baton to my father’s knees. The crack of his bones echoed through the cavernous room. He didn’t scream. He just bit down on his lip until it bled. The jagged white edge of a fractured bone pierced through the fabric of his jeans. My mother began to scream—a high, piercing wail of absolute agony—before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed, coughing up blood. Chloe watched the entire scene with dead, bored eyes. She even gestured for her assistant to pull out a phone and start recording. The anger inside me was so absolute it felt like it was tearing my soul apart. How could I have ever loved this woman? How could I have ever thought there was a heart buried beneath that ice? Suddenly, the front door exploded inward. “Police! Nobody move!” A SWAT team flooded the foyer, assault rifles raised. “Chloe Lynn! We received a tip about a kidnapping at this residence. Drop the phone and put your hands behind your back!” Paramedics rushed in behind the cops, immediately swarming my parents. My father had passed out from the shock. My mother regained consciousness as they loa

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There are three men in my life who blush with delightful ease. First, there is my husband, Declan—a man of strict upbringing, rigid routines, and a stoicism so thick it feels like a physical wall. Then, there are our two sons, who inherited his exact brand of solemn, miniature-adult seriousness. Teasing the three of them—watching the tips of their ears burn a violent shade of pink while they desperately try to maintain their composure—is the absolute greatest joy of my life. Especially during our nightly bedtime routine. Every evening, without fail, my boys and my husband wait with flushed anticipation for my goodnight kiss. But tonight was different. Tonight, as I leaned over to press my lips to my youngest son’s forehead, my vision suddenly fractured. A flood of glowing, scrolling text—like a live comment feed from some bizarre, phantom social media app—projected itself directly into my mind’s eye, floating in the air between me and my family. The Comments told me that my parents had found their biological daughter. That they had reunited a month ago, and I was the only one kept entirely in the dark. The scrolling text gleefully predicted that once I met this “true daughter,” I would spiral into a villainous rage, frame her for theft, and ultimately be publicly exposed by my own husband—who would then have me committed to a psychiatric ward. Someone in the Feed was even typing out strings of laughing emojis, mocking the way I would eventually escape the asylum only to be dragged back, claiming they had re-watched that specific downfall five times because it was just that satisfying. My lips, still puckered for a kiss, froze. A slight, involuntary twitch pulled at the corner of my mouth. Right in front of me, three expectant faces were still waiting for their affection. I swallowed the sudden, metallic taste of panic in my mouth. I silently turned my back on them, climbed into the center of the sprawling mattress, and pulled the Egyptian cotton duvet up over my nose until only my eyes were visible. Then, my voice muffled by the down feathers, I announced that effective immediately, goodnight kisses were canceled. 1 Three faces shared a singular, identical expression: a slight, perplexed furrowing of the brows. Declan and my eldest son, Benedict, just stared at me, their faces completely unreadable, silent in their disapproval. It was my youngest, Blake, who broke first. His lower lip wobbled. “Mommy, why no kisses?” I rolled over, turning my back to them entirely. “Everyone out. I need to sleep.” Silence hung thick in the room for several seconds before Declan’s voice cut through it. Low. Measured. Restrained. “Benedict, take your brother to your room. It’s time for sleep.” The sound of their footsteps receded. The heavy bedroom door didn’t latch all the way, and the muffled whispers of my two little boys drifted in from the hallway. “Benedict, why doesn’t Mom want to kiss us anymore?” “I don’t know.” “Is it because we cover her mouth when she says inappropriate things?” “No.” “Then… did Dad make her mad?” My older boy paused, clearly turning the logistics over in his logical little brain. “That is a strong possibility.” Blake suddenly whisper-shouted, “Then Dad shouldn’t get a kiss either! It has to be fair for all three of us!” A laugh bubbled up in my throat, but I bit down hard on the inside of my lip to kill it. Because right then, the Feed in my vision started scrolling frantically again: [Did the female lead get possessed? Usually during bedtime, she’s practically glued to the three of them, saying the most shameless, teasing things.] [Poor little stoic baby, being harassed by his mom and still making excuses for her. You can tell he’s used to coddling her.] [It’s fine! The True Daughter outshines this fake in every way. Give it a few days, and those boys will be calling the True Daughter ‘Mom.’] I squeezed my eyes shut. My heart physically ached, squeezing tight in my chest like a bruised fist. The bedroom door clicked open again. The mattress dipped beside me, the weight familiar and grounding. Declan’s hand reached out, resting lightly on the curve of my waist. It was a rare moment of initiation for him. His fingers brushed against the cool silk of my slip, tracing a slow, almost hesitant circle. “Why are you wearing this one again?” he asked, his voice rougher than usual. I turned my head and glared at his handsome, impossibly repressed face. Three years of marriage, and the man’s repertoire in bed was something you could count on one hand. He didn’t like changing positions. He refused to do it anywhere outside the bedroom. Whenever I pushed him to the edge with my teasing, his only defense mechanism was to go take a freezing cold shower. Even the two kids I bore him shared his exact, maddening temperament. A sudden, fierce irritation flared in my chest. I yanked the duvet tightly around myself. “I didn’t put it on for you,” I snapped, puffing out my cheeks. “Get out.” Declan’s hand froze mid-air. Normally, this was the part where he would sigh, gently haul me out from under the covers, pin me against the headboard, and lecture me on propriety. Then I would barrage him with filthy whispers until his self-control shattered, leading to a long, breathless night. But tonight, he just sat there in silence for a few long, agonizing seconds. He reached out, carefully tucked in the edge of the duvet I had kicked loose, and stood up. He walked out. The door clicked shut. The Feed erupted in a digital cheer. [SO SATISFYING. The male lead is finally freezing her out. He’s keeping himself pure for the True Daughter.] [I mean, I’ve always said it. A classless orphan like her never deserved to marry into the Wright family anyway. If she hadn’t taken the wrong glass that night, accidentally drugged herself, crawled into his bed, and conveniently gotten pregnant with twins, he never would have married her.] [Exactly. Genetics don’t lie. No matter how hard she plays the part, she’ll never be the real heiress. She needs to pack her bags and crawl back to the orphanage while she still has her miserable life.] 2 I watched the phantom text scroll past, a heavy, suffocating weight pressing down on my chest. The truth was, I already knew I wasn’t my parents’ biological child. I found out during a routine medical exam my freshman year of college. My blood type was A. But both my parents were type O. Two type O parents cannot produce a type A child. It is a biological impossibility. I had quietly hired a private investigator to look into my origins. I learned I was an orphan, dropped at a group home from birth, parents unknown, before eventually being adopted by the wealthy Wentworth family. I remember sitting in front of my laptop in my dorm room, staring at the investigator’s email until the sun came up. When morning broke, I deleted every file, cleared my cache, and pretended absolutely nothing had happened. I did it because my parents loved me. They loved me so completely, so fiercely, that I convinced myself blood didn’t matter. I used to have nightmares that they would find their missing biological daughter and stop loving me. But I never, not even in my darkest anxieties, imagined they would find her and purposely hide her from me. When I finally opened my eyes, the room was bathed in morning light. I washed up and went downstairs to the dining room. The three men of the house were already seated. Benedict and Blake sat with their backs ramrod straight, their hands folded, waiting obediently for me. Declan was scanning the Wall Street Journal. He glanced up at the sound of my heels, then dropped his eyes back to the page. I pulled out my chair, sat down, picked up my fork, and began to eat. Instantly, three pairs of eyes snapped toward me. I calmly speared a piece of asparagus and chewed it, ignoring them. The Feed began to drift across my vision: [Wait, she’s acting so weird. Doesn’t she usually go around the table and kiss everyone?] [Yeah, she usually leaves the two little stoics covered in lipstick while they look like they want to cry. They secretly hate it.] [No goodnight kiss yesterday, no good morning kiss today. I bet she’s brewing some toxic scheme.] [(+1)] Reading the conspiracy theories floating in the air, I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. Then, out of my peripheral vision, I noticed Blake taking tiny, hesitant bites of his oatmeal, his big eyes darting toward me every few seconds. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed his small porcelain plate slightly toward me. “Mommy. A shrimp dumpling.” I looked down. Two perfectly plump dim sum dumplings sat on his plate. On any normal day, I would have cooed, Let Mommy feed you, baby! just to watch him blush and declare, I can feed myself, Mother. But today, the well was dry. I pushed the plate back. “Eat it yourself.” Blake froze. He turned his head, shooting a desperate, pleading look at his older brother. Benedict maintained his serious little scowl. He didn’t intervene, but his spoon remained hovering over his bowl, entirely forgotten. At the head of the table, Declan lowered his newspaper. He leveled a look at me. It was a silent question: What is going on with you? I pretended to be deeply engrossed in my breakfast. The Feed flared up again: [She’s terrifyingly quiet today. Doesn’t she usually spend breakfast sexually harassing her husband and babying her kids? She usually talks so much trash I want to mute her.] [What about under the table? She loves rubbing her foot up the male lead’s leg. I bet fifty cents she’s doing it right now!] [Reporting in: I checked. She’s not. She’s sitting there rigid as a board.] The phantom voices couldn’t figure me out. And strangely, that felt incredibly empowering. I calmly dabbed my mouth with a linen napkin and stood up to head upstairs. “Wait,” Declan’s voice stopped me. “There’s a gala tonight. You need to get ready.” I paused on the bottom step, feigning total ignorance. “What gala?” He hesitated for a fraction of a second. His tone was perfectly flat. “Your parents found their long-lost daughter. They’re hosting a welcome-home reception for her.” I slowly turned to look at him. He stood by the mahogany table, the morning light catching the sharp angle of his jaw, hiding his eyes in shadow. My sons tilted their little faces up at me, their expressions laced with a sudden, palpable nervous energy. Ah. So they all knew. The big one, and the little ones. My fingers tightened around the oak banister until my knuckles turned white. A slow, sharp smile curved my lips. “Understood.” The Feed practically shrieked: [HOLY SHIT. Look at that sinister smile. That is the textbook evil-step-sister smirk. Terrifying.] [I mean, she’s the fake. She stole someone else’s life for twenty-something years. She’s rotten to the core.] [I cannot WAIT to see her lose her mind with jealousy tonight. Let the husband and kids see her true, ugly colors so he can finally file for divorce!] [In the True vs. Fake Daughter trope, I am always team True Daughter. The fake deserves to burn!] I pulled my gaze away from the empty air and continued up the stairs. Jealousy? Rage? No. I just wanted to see her. I wanted to see the sister my parents had hidden away for an entire month. I wanted to see what she looked like. I wanted to see if she looked like the ghost in my nightmares. That was all. 3 I chose a black couture gown. The tailoring was aggressive and architectural, the plunging V-neckline holding to my curves with weaponized precision. When I descended the grand staircase, my boys and my husband were already waiting in the foyer. Declan looked up. Instantly, a deep crease formed between his brows. The two little stoics were dressed in matching, immaculate white miniature tuxedos. When they saw me, their eyes lit up like stars. The Feed, however, was vicious: [Is she insane? Why is she dressed like she’s walking a red carpet?] [Oh, I get it. She knows the True Daughter grew up poor in the country and probably dresses plain. She’s trying to upstage her. Shameless bitch.] [Even the husband and kids are frowning. They know she looks too slutty for a family event.] Declan’s eyes swept over me, taking in every inch of the dress. He stepped toward me, his voice a low, vibrating murmur. “That dress isn’t appropriate. Change.” I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. “What’s inappropriate about it?” “It’s too formal,” he said flatly. I let out a soft, breathy laugh. “Is a welcome-home gala not a formal occasion?” Without waiting for his answer, I swept past him toward the door. Declan stood frozen in the foyer. The boys immediately broke ranks, their little dress shoes pitter-pattering across the marble floor as they scrambled to flank me, each grabbing one of my hands. Benedict, who almost never offered unprompted praise, looked up at me with profound seriousness. “Mother, you look very beautiful today.” Blake nodded furiously in agreement, his round cheeks suddenly flushing pink. I squeezed their tiny, warm hands. “Let’s go, boys.” Once we were in the back of the Maybach, I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window, watching the city blur by. The three of them sat opposite me, stealing glances at me every few minutes. In the past, no matter where we were, I couldn’t resist poking at them. I loved watching them get flustered while trying to maintain their dignified facades. But after reading the venom in the Feed, a quiet, insidious doubt had crept into my mind. Was my behavior actually bad for the kids? Was I overwhelming them? The silence in the car was so absolute I could hear the rhythmic ticking of Declan’s Patek Philippe watch. “Mommy.” Blake’s voice was barely a whisper. I gave a soft, lazy hmm? “Are you feeling sick?” Before I could even process the question, Declan leaned across the space between us. The cool back of his hand pressed firmly against my forehead. I flinched, instinctively pulling my head back to break the contact. “I’m fine,” I said. Benedict was staring at me too. “But Mother, you’ve been holding your chest the whole ride.” I looked down. My left hand was pressed tightly, unconsciously, over my heart. I slowly lowered my hand to my lap, forcing my voice to stay gentle. “I promise, I’m okay.” Then I turned my face back to the window. In the reflection of the glass, I could see all three of them still watching me. Their expressions were tight, laced with a strange, heavy concern. The Feed drifted by, dripping with sarcasm: [Wow, the little stoics actually care about her. Giving birth to two good kids is the only good karma she has.] [Um… is it just me, or does the male lead look really worried too? The kid said one thing, and he immediately jumped across the car.] [Worried? Please. Those three are geniuses. They know she’s putting on an act and they’re just playing along to humor her.] I closed my eyes and let the darkness take the words away. 4 The reception was held on the top floor penthouse of the St. Regis. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcased the glittering sprawl of the city skyline, a sea of lights stretching to the horizon like a silent, breathless celebration. Half of the city’s elite were in attendance. I linked my arm through Declan’s as we walked through the double doors, the boys trailing perfectly at our sides. As we navigated the room, I felt the weight of a hundred stares sticking to my skin. The whispers rustled through the crowd like wind through dry leaves. After all, the circumstances of my marriage weren’t exactly a closely guarded secret among the upper crust. There were those who envied me, and those who despised me. I was used to the scrutiny. I kept my spine straight and my face impassive. My parents were standing by the head table, greeting a minor tech CEO. When my mother saw me, her polished, practiced smile faltered for a fraction of a second. She recovered instantly. “Jocelyn, darling. You made it.” I nodded, my gaze sliding past her to rest on the girl standing slightly behind her. The girl was wearing a plain, starkly conservative white dress. The fabric hung a bit awkwardly; it clearly wasn’t custom, or even designer. Standing next to me in my architectural black silk, the contrast was violently stark. A sudden wave of awkwardness washed over me. The Feed was losing its mind: [Oh my God, the contrast is brutal. My heart breaks for the True Daughter. She’s the main character, and she’s being totally eclipsed by this fake!] [The female lead is such a bitch. Dressing like that to sabotage her big night? Does she want everyone to know how manipulative she is?] [Don’t even call her the female lead anymore. She doesn’t deserve the title.] I lowered my eyes, a bitter, hollow laugh threatening to bubble up in my throat. How was I supposed to know she would be dressed like that? I had assumed my parents—with their endless wealth and obsession with appearances—would have commissioned a bespoke gown for her. I assumed they would want her to shine like a diamond. The dress I was wearing was from a three-year-old runway collection. By high-society standards, it was practically vintage. After a beat of heavy silence, my mother reached out, took the girl’s hand, and pulled her forward to introduce her to Declan and me. “This is your sister. Sabrina.” Sabrina looked at me, a bright, open smile spreading across her face. “Jocelyn!” She stepped forward, opening her arms for an embrace. But my mother quickly lifted a hand, blocking her path. “Sabrina, darling, you have to give your speech soon. Let’s not ruin your hair.” Sabrina dropped her arms awkwardly. She reached up, nervously touching a curl near her cheek, and offered me a sheepish, apologetic smile. My own hand was caught in no-man’s-land—halfway up to return the hug, not sure how to retreat. Feeling incredibly foolish, I mirrored her movement, reaching up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I gave her a warm, tentative smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Sabrina.” I turned to look at Declan, and my breath caught in my throat. Declan was staring at Sabrina. His eyes were wide, fixed on her with a look of profound, undisguised shock. And he kept looking. For a long, long time. 5 “Father.” Blake’s little voice, soft and sweet, broke the spell. It snapped Declan out of his trance. Declan blinked, his mask slamming back into place, and he pulled a small, black velvet Cartier box from his inner jacket pocket. “A small token,” Declan said, his voice smooth and professional. “From Jocelyn and myself.” Sabrina looked at my parents, clearly overwhelmed. My mother beamed and nodded encouragingly. Sabrina took the box and clicked it open. Inside lay a breathtaking vintage diamond and emerald necklace. The clarity was flawless. The Comments immediately flooded with jealousy: [Whoa, the male lead is dropping serious cash. Is he trying to apologize for his wife’s terrible behavior?] [Apologize? No, he’s trying to make a good impression on the True Daughter. After all, she’s the real heiress now.] [Keep cooking! The male lead is officially ignoring the fake wife. The romance arc with the True Daughter begins now!] Sabrina’s eyes suddenly dropped, landing on the two little boys standing by my skirt. She crouched down until she was eye-level with them. “Hi there,” she said softly. “I’m your Aunt Sabrina.” Benedict kept his face perfectly impassive, but his manners were ingrained. “Hello, Aunt Sabrina.” Blake looked up at me, his big eyes searching my face for permission. I gently stroked the back of his little head. “Alright, boys. Tonight is Aunt Sabrina’s big night. Let’s go sit down and give her some space.” My mother opened her mouth, looking as though she wanted to say something to me. I just smiled at her, took my boys by the hands, and walked toward our assigned table. Almost the second Declan sat down next to me, a venture capitalist swooped in to talk mergers. I was annoyed, and the noise of the room was giving me a headache. Declan noticed. He leaned close to my ear. “I need to step away for a moment.” I rested my elbow on the linen tablecloth and made a dismissive shooing motion with my hand under the table. Declan caught my hand beneath the linen. He squeezed my fingertips tightly for three seconds, then let go and walked away. The moment he was gone, my youngest son’s hand shot out and grabbed mine. He looked at his older brother, a triumphant grin on his face. “I got Mom’s hand first!” I looked over at Benedict. His little eyebrows were pulled tightly together. “Do you want to hold a hand too, Benedict?” I asked softly. He turned his face away, looking fiercely at the centerpiece. “No.” But a second later, the corners of his mouth betrayed him, pressing into a tiny, secret smile. I laughed quietly, reached across the table, and gently wrapped my fingers around his. “That’s a shame,” I teased. “Because Mommy really wanted to hold your hand.” Benedict’s hand went stiff for a second, and the tips of his ears burned a bright, glowing pink. I drank three glasses of sparkling water before Declan finally returned to the table. He had barely sat down and spoken two words to me when his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and a subtle frown deepened the lines around his mouth. I was just about to ask who it was when the Feed lit up with frantic energy: [Is it the True Daughter calling?] [Omg, when did they exchange numbers?!] Driven by the phantom text, the words spilled out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Who is it?” He looked at me. “Sabrina.” That invisible string inside my chest pulled taut, sharp as a razor. But I kept my face smooth, perfectly bored. “Oh? And how exactly did you get her number?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “424250”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Even though Belinda and I were identical twins, no one ever put us in the same category. She practically lived on a diet of fried chicken and soda, yet her body remained as slender and willowy as a runway model, her legs growing longer by the day. I counted every single calorie, starved myself on wilted lettuce, and yet my body bloated like a waterlogged balloon. She baked under the harsh summer sun without a drop of SPF, yet her skin stayed as luminous and flawless as freshly poured cream. I hid from the daylight, slathered myself in sunscreen year-round, yet my complexion grew dull, broken, and bruised. She skipped class daily to get high with bleach-blonde dropouts behind the bleachers, yet she consistently pulled straight As and ranked first in the district. I slept three hours a night, my textbooks highlighted until the pages tore, and I still managed to fail every math exam handed to me. Eventually, I contracted a horrific, unspeakable disease. My skin blistered, weeping and rotting from the inside out. I died utterly alone on a sterile hospital bed. But after I died, my soul didn’t disperse. I lingered, floating in the cold, antiseptic air of the room. That was when I watched Belinda suddenly change. She stopped binge-eating junk food. She blocked the numbers of her dropout boyfriends. She began living a quiet, meticulously clean, and disciplined life. It was only then, suspended in the ether of the afterlife, that the horrifying truth clicked into place. The reason I had lived like a grotesque, suffering monster was entirely because of her. So, I spent my afterlife clawing through the dark, bargaining with whatever forces govern the dead, saving up enough karmic currency for one thing: a second chance. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day Belinda sat in front of her ring light, binge-eating for thousands of viewers. 1 I pushed open the bedroom door and saw Belinda mid-livestream. Every agonizing memory from my past life slammed into my skull—the weeping, rotting sores, the nights I spent screaming into my pillow from the pain, the thousands of comments online calling me a disgusting freak, telling me I deserved it. A loud, piercing ring echoed in my ears. I lunged toward the dining table, grabbed a paring knife from the fruit bowl, and brought it down hard across my own cheek. Blood welled up instantly, a hot, dark red line tracking down my jaw and dripping onto the floorboards. I didn’t care about the pain. I kept my chin high, staring dead into Belinda’s eyes. A flicker of mild surprise crossed her flawless face. “Whoa, why are you being so dramatic? Why would you do that to yourself? Go to the ER or something.” Without missing a beat, she turned her bright, camera-ready smile back to her phone. She picked up a massive, grease-dripping slice of pepperoni pizza. “Sorry about that, guys! Anyway, let’s keep going!” I stood frozen. Drops of my blood patterned the floor. I felt utterly, hollowly cold. Why? Why didn’t the gash on my face appear on hers? Was the transfer strictly one-way? No. In my previous life, there was a brief window where my body had actually started to heal. The transfer wasn’t a one-way mirror. There had to be a mechanism, a set of rules governing this sick magic. I was going to figure out how it worked. I refused to die as a sacrificial lamb again. Just then, our mother, Diane, stepped out of the hallway. She took one look at my face and let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Are you out of your mind?! Why would you do this to your face?!” She was screaming at me, but her hands were trembling violently. She frantically grabbed a clean dish towel and pressed it hard against my bleeding cheek. “Does it hurt? Shh, it’s okay, Mom’s here. We’re going to the hospital right now.” She practically dragged me to the ER. They cleaned the wound. Ten stitches. Through the entire procedure, Diane stood in the corner, crying into her hands as the doctor spoke. When we left the hospital, she drove straight to a high-end department store. She bought the most expensive scar-fading serums on the market and dragged me to a luxury beauty counter to color-match an array of heavy concealers. “With these, you won’t even be able to tell,” she whispered, her voice tight. Then, we went to an organic grocery store, loading the cart with lean proteins and dark greens. “Don’t worry, honey. Mom is going to diet right alongside you!” Later that night, I lay in my bed, the rhythmic throbbing of my stitches syncing with my heartbeat. Inside, my chest was a cavern of ice. I had been dead wrong. I thought hurting myself would finally make Belinda feel the pain. But I had ten black threads holding my face together, and she hadn’t so much as winced. The damage I inflicted on myself didn’t magically bounce onto her. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to sift through every microscopic detail of my past life. 2 In my previous life, I remembered a man visiting our house. He looked like one of those hollow-eyed street psychics—a drifter who claimed to read auras. Ever since the day he walked through our front door, the gravity in our house shifted. Belinda suddenly started doing “mukbang” livestreams, rebranding herself as an internet personality. On camera, she would tear into buckets of fried chicken, chug two-liter bottles of soda, and inhale entire frosted cakes in minutes. The more she ate, the less she studied. Her backpack gathered dust in the corner of her room. Her channel was called “The Honor Roll Glutton.” Her comments were flooded with people obsessing over how she could be so impossibly gorgeous, eat like a linebacker, and still be the smartest girl in school. But I knew the truth. She hadn’t opened a book in months. One evening, I watched her pull open a greasy cardboard box holding another massive pizza. I couldn’t help myself. “You really shouldn’t eat that. It’s garbage. And finals are coming up—you can’t just stream every night. You need to study.” Belinda looked up at me, a slow, mocking smirk stretching across her lips. “Why are you so obsessed with what I do? I’m naturally gifted. I can pass without even trying.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and turned back to her phone, her voice instantly dropping an octave into that sweet, breathy influencer tone. “Okay besties, time for the family-sized bucket challenge!” I bit my tongue and retreated to my room. But the moment I sat down at my desk, my stomach seized. A violent wave of nausea hit me. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving until I threw up bitter, burning bile. From that day forward, my weight skyrocketed. I could breathe in the vicinity of a carb and put on three pounds. My face erupted in deep, painful cystic acne that sat under my skin like angry red bruises. Diane dragged me to every specialist in the county. Every doctor gave us the exact same speech: My diet was terrible, I was consuming too much sugar and oil, and my hormones were severely imbalanced. They prescribed a pharmacy’s worth of pills and handed me strict, joyless meal plans. Diane hyper-fixated on my recovery. She spent hours in the kitchen prepping my “clean eats.” Boiled, unseasoned chicken breast. Sad, limp broccoli. Salads dressed in nothing but a squeeze of lemon. She maxed out her credit cards on skincare. My vanity was buried under glass droppers and frosted jars. “My friend at the med-spa said this is the holy grail,” she’d tell me, carefully lining them up. “Acne-clearing, brightening, cell-renewing. It has everything.” I looked at the price tags left on the bottles and felt a sickening knot of guilt in my stomach. “Mom, how much did all this cost? It’s too much.” “Don’t say that!” Diane snapped, though her eyes were shining with tears. “If it fixes you, I’d sell this house. You know that.” I swallowed the guilt and became a militant soldier for my own health. I kept a dedicated journal. I tracked every ounce of my weight, every fraction of an inch on my waist. I documented whether the swelling of my acne had gone down or flared up. But no miracle ever came. My weight didn’t just plateau; it climbed relentlessly, expanding me like a balloon hooked to a helium tank. Across the hall, Belinda strutted around in denim cut-offs, her skin taut and glowing, her legs perfectly straight and devoid of a single flaw. I stood in front of my mirror, staring at my heavy, swollen body, trailing my fingers over the bumpy, inflamed terrain of my cheeks. A violent concoction of grief and rage bubbled up in my throat. “I’m so jealous of you,” I muttered to her once. “You eat whatever you want, and your skin is perfect.” Belinda just smiled at me. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Good genetics, I guess. You can’t force what Mom and Dad didn’t give you. I mean, sure, we’re twins… but at the end of the day, some people are just built different. Right?” 3 My weight continued its terrifying, uncontrollable ascent. Diane was frantic. She pulled strings to get me into an exclusive endocrinologist. The specialist stared at my bloodwork and my painstakingly detailed food logs, his brow deeply furrowed. “Are you absolutely certain you’ve adhered to this diet and exercise regimen?” “Yes! Doctor, we follow it like it’s the Bible!” Diane’s voice pitched up in desperation. She pulled out her phone, aggressively swiping through a photo album documenting every single miserable meal I had eaten, alongside screenshots of my Apple Watch fitness rings. The doctor scrolled through the evidence, looking profoundly disturbed. “This doesn’t make physiological sense. Even with severe metabolic resistance, under this caloric deficit and cardiovascular strain, her weight should have stabilized. It certainly shouldn’t be climbing like this.” He looked up at me, his eyes entirely blank with confusion. “Your regimen is flawless. Scientifically, this outcome should be impossible.” I felt like I was drowning in wet concrete. Even the experts didn’t know what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I lose a single pound? Why was I living in a state of constant, grueling deprivation for absolutely nothing? And then there was Belinda. Screaming at her camera while shoving fistfuls of frosted cake into her mouth. She never moved faster than a slow walk. She didn’t even take the stairs if she could avoid it. Yet she looked airbrushed in real life. Glowing. Perfect. A dark, deeply unsettling thought wormed its way into my brain. Was it possible… that the “health” I was starving myself for, and the “results” of the grueling workouts I put my body through… were being transferred? Siphoned off, straight into Belinda? I shook my head violently, trying to rattle the insane theory out of my skull. It was ridiculous. I was just looking for a scapegoat for my own broken biology. But something in me snapped. I was done. If I was going to look like a monster anyway, I might as well stop torturing myself. That night at dinner, I shoved the plate of boiled, pale vegetables away. “I’m not eating this. Don’t cook it for me anymore.” Diane froze, her fork suspended in mid-air. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t just give up!” “I eat this garbage and I get fatter! I work out and I get uglier! What is the point?!” I yelled. “Paige, don’t do this.” The voice came from across the table. Belinda. She was staring at me, her voice laced with a frantic, desperate urgency I had never heard before. “You just have to keep going. It’s going to work. Look how hard Mom is trying for you.” I stared at my sister. Her shoulders were rigid. There was real, undeniable panic in her eyes. Belinda never looked at me. She treated me like furniture. Why on earth did she suddenly care if I ate my broccoli? She was overreacting. It wasn’t natural. She was hiding something. I swallowed the suspicion rising in my throat and forced my shoulders to drop, faking defeat. “Fine. You’re right. I’ll keep trying.” Diane let out a massive sigh of relief, and the visible tension completely drained from Belinda’s posture. But from that moment on, I lived a double life. When Diane brought me my diet food, I waited until she turned her back and flushed it down the toilet. Then I’d sneak out the fire escape, buy a massive bag of fast food, and eat it in the dark of my closet. During the hours I was supposed to be doing HIIT workouts in my room, I lay flat on my back, scrolling on my phone. I did this for four days. When weigh-in day arrived, I stepped onto the scale. I hadn’t gained a pound. In fact, I had dropped weight. As I stared at the digital numbers in shock, a furious shriek echoed from the living room. “Mom! Why the hell am I up two pounds?! And what is this massive zit on my chin?!” 4 I spent an entire week living like a total slob, and I dropped twenty pounds. Belinda was the first to realize something was wrong. “You haven’t been eating Mom’s food, have you? And you’re skipping your workouts.” I didn’t answer her. She immediately shot a sharp, panicked look at Diane. Diane practically lunged at me, gripping my upper arms tightly. “Paige, you can’t do this to me! We are so close to a breakthrough, you just have to push through the plateau!” I ignored her. So, Diane became my warden. She shadowed me. She watched me swallow every single bite of unseasoned spinach. She stood in the corner of my room, counting aloud while I jumped rope until my lungs burned. Two days later, I stepped on the scale. The twenty pounds were back. Belinda, meanwhile, walked out of her bedroom with glass-like skin, looking radiant and utterly refreshed. Word around the house was that she had connected with a “top donator” from her livestream—some rich older guy she was calling her Sugar Daddy—and she had started spending most of her nights out. Simultaneously, my body started failing again. My skin blistered and wept. A searing, agonizing itch spread across my most private areas. Diane rushed me to the clinic. When the lab results came back, the diagnosis hit me like a physical blow: an STD. Inside the small examination room, the way the doctor and the attending nurse looked at me made my skin crawl. It was a mix of clinical pity and profound, undisguised disgust. I sat on the paper-covered table, staring at my swollen, scabbed hands, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. When we got home, Diane placed the orange prescription bottle on the kitchen island. “You probably picked it up from a public restroom or something, honey. I know you’re a good girl. Just take the pills.” I swallowed the heavy antibiotics, but they didn’t do a damn thing. The itching grew worse, the festering sores spreading further across my thighs. That evening, Belinda actually graced us with her presence for dinner. Diane served her a bowl of rich, savory stew. As I watched Belinda lift the spoon to her perfect lips, a dark, intrusive thought bloomed in my mind and took root. When she got up to check her phone, I grabbed the heavy antibiotic pills the doctor had given me, crushed them into a fine white powder, and dumped them straight into her leftover broth. The next morning, I woke up, and the maddening, skin-crawling itch was practically gone. But that night, a video of me crushing the pills went live on Belinda’s social media. Diane had installed a nanny cam in the kitchen to make sure I wasn’t cheating on my diet. It had caught my exact, calculated movements. The video went viral within hours. The internet tore me to shreds. “Ugly on the outside, evil on the inside. She caught a nasty disease and tried to poison her sister with it!” “Looking like a literal troll and acting like a psycho.” “Belinda is an angel. Imagine living with a monster like that, praying for her.” “We love you, Belinda! Stay safe!” Diane watched the video and didn’t offer a single word in my defense. Belinda’s follower count exploded overnight. She hosted a livestream, sobbing beautifully into the camera, dabbing at her dry eyes. “I just… I never thought my own flesh and blood would try to hurt me like this.” Donations, super-chats, and digital gifts rained down across the screen. She trended on Twitter. #ProtectBelinda. #MukbangQueen. Talent agencies started sliding into her DMs, offering her brand deals and reality TV spots. The timeline was flooded with photos of her looking fragile, gorgeous, and “brave.” And I was the grotesque villain in her origin story. My face was photoshopped into horrifying, demonic caricatures, placed side-by-side with her angelic selfies. After that night, the last thread of my compliance snapped. Fuck the diet. Fuck the medication. Fuck the jumping rope. Diane cried. She begged. She screamed. She even slapped me across the face. “Are you trying to kill yourself?! Why can’t you just be good?!” I didn’t care. I barricaded myself in my room. I ordered greasy takeout, I refused to move, and I threw the medication in the trash. And, like clockwork, the numbers on my scale began to drop. The weeping sores on my skin finally began to scab over and heal. 5 When Diane realized I was fully refusing to eat her boiled garbage, she lost her mind. She went out to the garage and came back with a thin, flexible fiberglass rod used for tomato plants. “You are going to eat!” she screamed. “You are not leaving this table until that plate is clean!” I clenched my jaw and shook my head. She swung it. The rod sliced through the air and struck my arm right through my thin pajama shirt. It burned like a line of liquid fire. Tears streamed down my face from the shock of the pain. Sobbing, I grabbed handfuls of the cold, wet lettuce and shoved them into my mouth, chewing through my own tears. She stood over me until I swallowed every bite, then pointed to the jump rope. “Jump! One thousand times! If you stop before a thousand, I will beat you until you can’t stand!” I jumped. My heavy body shook with every landing, the tears blinding me. Every time I slowed down, the rod snapped against my back. But I didn’t lose weight. I only gained it back, heavier than before. I couldn’t take it anymore. While they were taking a nap the next afternoon, I slipped out the front door and sprinted all the way to the local police precinct. The desk sergeant looked over the counter at me, bewildered. “Can I help you, miss?” “I need to report an assault!” I gasped, out of breath. “My mother and my sister! They’re abusing me! She hit me with a fiberglass whip and forces me to exercise until I pass out!” The officer’s face hardened. “Do you have proof? Where are the injuries?” “Right here!” I violently shoved my sleeves up, then yanked up the legs of my sweatpants. “Look! She hit me so hard, I swear!” I looked down. My arms and legs were covered in soft, heavy flesh. The skin was completely clear. Not a single red mark. Not a single bruise. The officer frowned deeply. Before I could speak, the precinct doors burst open. Diane and Belinda rushed in. The second Diane saw me, she burst into theatrical, heartbroken tears, running over to wrap her arms around me. “Officer, I am so, so sorry! Please excuse this!” she wept, sounding entirely devastated. “My daughter… she’s very sick. She’s refusing her treatments. I’m just at my wit’s end!” She pulled her phone out, aggressively swiping to show the officer her meticulously curated photo album of my “health food,” along with a thick stack of printed medical records. “The doctors told her if she keeps gaining weight, her heart is going to give out! But if I don’t force her, she just lays in bed eating herself to death! What is a mother supposed to do?!” The officer looked through the medical files. His stern expression melted into sympathetic understanding. He turned to me, his voice taking on a firm, patronizing tone. “Listen to me, young lady. Your mother is trying to save your life. You need to cooperate. Put down the junk food, get some exercise, and get healthy.” Belinda stepped forward, placing a gentle, perfectly manicured hand on my shoulder. She looked at the officer, then at the small crowd of onlookers in the lobby. “Don’t worry, Officer. We’re going to get her the help she needs. Paige, please don’t give up. We’re family. We love you.” The bystanders nodded approvingly. “That poor mother.” “She’s lucky to have a sister who cares that much.” “Kids these days have no idea how good they have it.” Belinda’s face was the picture of sorrowful concern, but as she looked at me, the extreme corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk. To punish me for my little stunt, Belinda kicked her lifestyle into overdrive. 6 Belinda’s streams became unhinged. She booked a flight to a developing country on a whim. She went live while wading waist-deep into a highly polluted, trash-filled river, eating greasy street food with unwashed hands. When she got thirsty, she cupped her hands and drank the brown, murky river water right on camera. Her chat went nuclear. “OMG is she insane??” “Bro that water is toxic waste!” “She’s got a stomach of iron, absolute legend.” “Instant follow.” The shock value worked. She hit a million concurrent viewers. She stood dripping wet on the riverbank, proudly showing off her impossibly flat stomach and glowing, untouchable skin. Ten minutes after she ended her stream, I was sitting in my bedroom when my stomach cramped so violently I fell out of my chair. I crawled to the bathroom, gripping the toilet bowl, and vomited. It wasn’t food. It was pitch-black, rancid sludge that smelled like decaying meat. I collapsed onto the bathroom tiles, gasping for air. As my vision cleared, I looked into the bowl. Tiny, pale white parasites were writhing in the dark water. Something inside me shattered. I bolted out of the apartment. I didn’t know where I was going, I just ran until my lungs burned, blindly forcing open the roof access door of our apartment building. The wind hit my face. I stepped up onto the ledge. Just as I shifted my weight forward, a hand—bony but incredibly strong—clamped around my bicep and yanked me backward. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, child?!” I hit the gravel roof, curling into a ball, sobbing hysterically. It was Alma, an older woman who sometimes stayed with our neighbor, Martha. She was deeply spiritual, an old-school holistic healer who practiced out of a small apothecary downtown. Without asking, she dropped to her knees, grabbed my wrist, and pressed her fingers hard into my pulse points. Her silver eyebrows knitted together. “What have you done to yourself, girl?” she demanded, her voice sharp with authority. “Your pulse is a chaotic mess. It’s weak, completely hollowed out. This is the pulse of someone who has been ingesting literal filth and entirely depleted their life force! And the infections—are you living on the streets? Have you no self-respect?” “No! No, I haven’t!” I screamed, grabbing the hem of her cardigan like a lifeline, my voice cracking. “Please believe me! I swear! I only eat boiled vegetables! I’ve never even held a boy’s hand!” “What on earth is going on up here?” Martha, our neighbor, stepped out onto the roof, her eyes widening when she saw me on the ground. She listened to Alma’s harsh assessment, then looked down at me. Martha hesitated for a second before softening. “Alma, I’ve watched this girl grow up. She was always the quiet, sweet one. She’s not out there living wild. If she says it’s the truth, I believe her.” After all these years. Finally. Someone said they believed me. The dam broke. The years of gaslighting, the physical torture, the crushing isolation—it all flooded out. I wailed, my body shaking so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, the last remaining threads of my sanity snapping. Alma’s stern face softened. She pressed her fingers back to my pulse, muttering to herself. “It makes no sense. You carry all this weight, but your energy is entirely drained, like a hollow shell. A body this size shouldn’t be starving to death from the inside. Something here is deeply unnatural.” Martha gently helped me to my feet. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re coming to my place.” Inside Martha’s apartment, it felt like stepping into a different universe. She set a steaming bowl of rich, savory beef stew in front of me, alongside a plate of buttered rolls. I hadn’t tasted real salt or fat in so long. The first bite made me weep silently into the bowl. When I finished, she pulled a cold, perfectly ripe peach from the fridge and placed it in my hands. “I remember you used to love these when you were little.” I held the fuzzy skin against my palm. I did love them. But years ago, Diane suddenly declared I was deathly allergic to peaches and forbade me from ever eating one again. I took a massive bite of the sweet fruit. With my other hand, I pulled out my phone and tapped into Belinda’s livestream.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “424266”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On the night of our third wedding anniversary, something strange happened. Colin was leaning against the headboard, reading through some corporate files. The lines of his profile were as sharp and unyielding as ever. I was just pulling the duvet back to get into bed when I suddenly saw a line of translucent white text hovering right above his head. It glided from left to right, like closed captions on a muted television. [Why isn’t she asleep yet? God, it’s annoying.] The text practically echoed in my head with his exact tone of voice, but his lips hadn’t moved. I rubbed my eyes hard. The words vanished. Thinking my mind was playing tricks on me, I tested the waters. I shifted closer and gently looped my arm through his. “Honey, would you come shopping with me tomorrow?” I asked softly. Instantly, another line of text materialized above his dark hair: [Clinging to me every single day. Doesn’t she ever get exhausted?] Yet, out loud, his actual words were: “We’ll see.” My hand, entirely on its own accord, slipped away from his arm. 01 My name is Summer Davis. I’ve been married to Colin Montgomery for three years and four months. That was the first time the subtitles appeared above his head. It was also the first time I realized that his trademark phrase, “We’ll see,” never actually meant we would see about it later. It meant, Leave me alone. I didn’t try to touch him again that night. Colin flipped a page of his document, and another line of text drifted through the air. [Finally, some peace and quiet.] Those five words cut deeper than anything he could have actually said out loud. I lay on the far edge of my side of the mattress, pulling the covers all the way up to my chin. My heart felt like it was being slowly pinched between someone’s fingernails. The next morning, I woke up at six a.m., just like always. I spent forty minutes in the kitchen making slow-simmered steel-cut oats with caramelized apples and pecans, pairing it with his favorite hand-ground espresso. Colin came downstairs, impeccable in his tailored suit, and sat at the kitchen island. A line of text floated above his head. [Oatmeal again. Could she have any less imagination?] Out loud, he didn’t say a word. I slid the ceramic bowl in front of him. “Colin, I let the oats simmer a bit longer today. The texture should be creamier than yesterday.” He gave a noncommittal hum. Above his head: [Who cares.] I stared at the bowl of oats, suddenly nauseous. Three years. Every single day, waking up at six to make sure he had a warm, homemade breakfast. Cinnamon oats, avocado toast with perfectly poached eggs, freshly baked scones—I rotated them constantly. Three years. Over a thousand mornings. And he had never cared about a single one of them. At ten o’clock, my mother-in-law arrived. Constance Montgomery swept into the foyer wearing a gray cashmere coat, carrying two expensive jars of imported Manuka honey. “Where is Colin?” “At the office, Constance.” I took the honey with a practiced smile and turned to put the kettle on for her tea. A line of text drifted above Constance’s perfectly coiffed hair. [Calling me by my first name. As if she belongs here.] My footsteps faltered for a fraction of a second. Constance settled into the living room sofa, her sharp eyes sweeping the space. “Summer, the water in that crystal vase needs changing. It’s looking cloudy.” “Of course. I’ll change it right now.” [All she does is buzz around Colin all day, completely oblivious to how out of her depth she is. If her father hadn’t saved my husband’s life in that wreck, there is zero chance my son would have ever married someone like her.] The paragraph of text scrolled past, dense and suffocating. I stood at the kitchen sink, holding the heavy crystal vase. The faucet was running, the water spilling over the rim and rushing over my fingers. It was freezing. So, this marriage was just a debt being paid. When Colin’s father was in a horrific car accident years ago, it was my dad—a passing driver—who pulled him from the wreckage and rushed him to the ER. I had always foolishly believed the Montgomerys were kind to me out of genuine affection, out of gratitude. Now I knew. Their “kindness” was simply an obligation. They endured me. I arranged the fresh water and flowers, placing the vase back on the glass coffee table. Constance glanced at me. [Well, at least she’s obedient. It’s a shame that’s her only use.] I sat across from her and poured her a cup of Earl Grey. My smile was identical to the one I wore yesterday. The only difference was that starting today, I knew my smile was entirely hollow. That afternoon, Colin’s executive assistant called. “Mrs. Montgomery, Mr. Montgomery asked me to let you know he has a client dinner tonight. He won’t be home.” I said okay. I hung up the phone and sat alone at the long dining table. In front of me was a perfectly roasted chicken, garlic butter asparagus, and roasted fingerling potatoes. All his favorites. I cut a piece of chicken and chewed it for a long time. For some reason, I couldn’t taste a thing. 02 By the third day, the subtitles had become crystal clear. It was as if someone had installed an invisible AR screen over my eyes. Anyone who stepped within fifteen feet of me had their inner thoughts broadcast above their heads. The Whole Foods cashier: [Why is it so packed today? I hate this.] The neighborhood security guard: [This poor woman is always buying groceries and cooking, while her hotshot husband is never home.] Even the security guard saw it. But it took me three years to open my eyes. On Saturday, by some miracle, Colin was actually home. He was in his home office answering emails. I brewed a cup of black coffee—just the way he liked it—and carried it in. “Colin? Black coffee.” He took the mug without looking up from his screen. Above his head: [Here she goes again. Can’t I just get ten minutes of peace without her barging in?] I gave a small smile, stepped backward out of the room, and quietly pulled the door shut. The moment the door clicked into the frame, I felt something inside my chest click shut along with it. At two in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. I opened it to find a woman standing on the porch. She wore a flawless white crepe dress, her makeup immaculate. Draped over her arm was a signature Tiffany blue shopping bag. Doris. Colin’s college classmate, and the Creative Director at Montgomery Holdings. She was also the woman everyone in our social circle whispered about as Colin’s “golden girl”—the one that got away. “Summer! It’s been ages!” Her smile was blindingly sweet. The subtitles above her head painted a completely different picture. [Three years, and you’re still clinging to this house like a parasite?] I kept my polite smile pinned in place. “Doris. Come on in.” She swapped her heels for guest slippers and walked in, her gaze sweeping over the grand living room. [The interior design is stunning. Such a waste that it’s occupied by someone so unremarkable.] “I brought Colin an early birthday present. A silk tie I picked up while I was in Milan for fashion week.” She handed the Tiffany bag to me. [Let’s see what pathetic little gift you can afford to get him.] I took the bag by the handles. “Thank you, Doris. His birthday isn’t until next month, but it’s so sweet of you to remember.” She covered her mouth as she laughed lightly. “Well, we’ve known each other for twelve years, after all.” [Which is a hell of a lot longer than he’s known you.] Hearing the voices in the foyer, Colin emerged from his office. His facial expression didn’t change at the sight of Doris, but the text immediately gave him away. [She’s here. That dress looks incredible on her.] He had never once commented on my clothes. Whenever I asked him, “Does this look okay?” his answer was universally, “It’s fine.” The three of us sat in the living room with coffee. Doris and Colin immediately launched into a discussion about a new corporate initiative. When she brought up a specific design strategy, Colin actually engaged, offering a rare, lengthy response. Doris’s subtitles were scrolling at rapid speed. [Do you see this, Summer? I’m the only one who can talk to him on his level. What are you? A maid?] [Once I close the licensing deal with the Whalefall IP, let’s see if you still have the nerve to sit in that chair.] Whalefall. The word struck a nerve, sliding like a cold needle into my brain. “Whalefall” was the pseudonym of an anonymous contemporary artist and illustrator. Over the last two years, the Whalefall IP had exploded. Global brand collaborations, sold-out print runs, massive cultural cachet. Montgomery Holdings had been desperately trying to secure exclusive licensing rights, but the artist was notoriously reclusive, communicating strictly through an agent. Doris was spearheading the acquisition project. What she didn’t know was this: The artist behind Whalefall was me. I picked up my porcelain teacup and took a slow sip. Neither of them noticed the slight tremor in my fingers. It wasn’t fear. It was a dark, boiling mass of something entirely unnameable churning in my chest. When I married Colin three years ago, I put my paintbrushes in a box and shoved them in the back of a closet. Because he had said one sentence to me: “We don’t need the money. You don’t need to work.” I had thought it was an act of love. Protection. Provision. The subtitles told me the truth. He just thought my art was a pointless little hobby, completely beneath his notice. My agent, Roxy, had kept my secret faithfully. She managed the “Whalefall” persona, handled the staggering influx of emails, and negotiated every lucrative deal. Over the last three years, the value of a Whalefall original had skyrocketed from a few thousand dollars to over half a million. The licensing deals had generated over three million dollars. All of that money was sitting quietly in an LLC account Roxy had set up for me. Colin didn’t know. Doris didn’t know. No one knew that the dull, accommodating housewife currently refilling their coffee cups was the elusive genius they had been chasing for eight months. When Doris finally left, she paused at the front door to look back at me. [Enjoy your final days in this house, Summer.] I gave her a little wave. “Drive safe, Doris.” I closed the heavy oak door and leaned my back against the cool wall of the foyer. I closed my eyes. I was done. The era of the desperate, clinging wife ended today. 03 The shift began the very next morning. At 6:15 a.m., my alarm went off. I rolled over, hit the button, and went back to sleep. When Colin came downstairs at seven, the kitchen island was bare. No espresso. No oats. No perfectly poached eggs. He stopped in his tracks for two seconds. Above his head: [No breakfast today? Well, at least it saves me the routine.] He grabbed his car keys and walked out the door. He didn’t even ask if I was feeling okay. I stood by the second-floor window, watching his sleek black Audi pull out of the driveway. Usually, I would run out to the porch in my robe to wave and tell him to drive safely. Today, I stayed behind the glass. He didn’t look back. At noon, I didn’t send him a text. I used to send at least five texts a day. Did you eat lunch? Are you slammed today? I miss you. Looking back, his replies were always identical: Yeah. Fine. Busy. I unlocked my phone and sent a message to Roxy instead. “Roxy. Call Craig at the Mercer Gallery. Let’s talk about the solo exhibition.” Three seconds later, Roxy replied with a wall of exclamation points. “SUMMER! You finally woke up!! Craig has been waiting on standby for eight months for this!!!” I smiled. A real smile. Not the plastic one I wore for Colin. That afternoon, I drove across the river to the West End. I wasn’t grocery shopping. I wasn’t running errands for the house. I walked into a commercial real estate office. “Hi, I’m looking for a loft or a studio space in the Arts District. Just a wide-open room with good light.” The young agent was eager. “What’s your budget, ma’am?” “Under three thousand a month.” “I’ve got the perfect keys right here. Let’s go look.” When I walked out of the agency an hour later, the afternoon sun hit my face. The March wind was still carrying a late-winter chill, but as I breathed it in, I realized it was the most comfortable afternoon I’d had in three years. Colin came home that evening at seven-thirty, earlier than usual. He took off his shoes and walked into the living room. The dining table was empty. The kitchen was dark and cold. “Summer?” I walked out of the bedroom, holding a paperback novel. “Yeah?” He glanced at the empty table. [No dinner? What kind of tantrum is this?] “You didn’t cook?” he asked. “No. I was a bit tired today. Didn’t have the energy,” I said, my tone incredibly flat. “There’s some frozen ravioli in the freezer. You can boil it yourself.” Colin stared at me. [Whatever. If she wants to be lazy for a day, let her be lazy.] He walked into the kitchen. I heard the faucet turn on, then off. The metallic clatter of a pot hitting the stove grate. For the first time in three years, he was boiling his own dinner. I turned a page of my book. I felt no pity. No guilt. I only felt that I should have done this a thousand days ago. 04 A week passed. I didn’t wake up at six. I didn’t send the five daily texts. I didn’t rush to the door to take his briefcase, pour his water, and present a plate of sliced fruit the second he walked in. I stopped asking if he was tired, or what he wanted for dinner. The change in our dynamic was massive. But Colin’s reaction was minimal. For the first three days, his subtitles read: [Finally, some quiet.] [It’s actually nice that she’s not hovering.] [Did she read some dumb magazine article about ‘giving men space’? Whatever. I don’t care.] He actually seemed relieved. I watched those subtitles drift through the air and a cold smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth. Fine. Enjoy the quiet. On Wednesday evening, my mother-in-law arrived again. And this time, she didn’t bring honey. She brought Doris. “Summer! Doris said she was craving your famous beef bourguignon, so I just had to bring her over,” Constance beamed, making herself entirely at home. [Doris and Colin are the ones who actually belong together. If it weren’t for that ridiculous debt to her father, Doris would be the lady of this house.] Doris took off her coat and strolled in, looking as comfortable as if her name was on the deed. [I am going to make sure Colin sees exactly why I am superior to Summer tonight.] In the past, a sudden ambush like this would send me into a panic. I would have scurried into the kitchen, desperately throwing together a gourmet meal while wearing a permanent, accommodating smile, terrified of offending either of them. Not tonight. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Constance. I haven’t been to the grocery store this week. The fridge is pretty bare. How about we just order something in?” Constance froze. [Excuse me? Every other time I’ve walked through that door, there’s been a feast waiting. What kind of stunt is this?] “Order in?” Constance’s brow furrowed heavily. “You have a chef’s kitchen right there. Ordering delivery is tacky.” I smiled politely. “Well, I can get catering from that French bistro downtown. What are you in the mood for?” “Catering?” Constance’s face darkened completely. [Has she lost her mind? Guests arrive and she wants to order takeout? What kind of wife is she?] Doris chimed in with flawless timing. “Oh, Mrs. Montgomery, please don’t be upset! Why don’t I cook? I just learned this incredible seared scallop recipe. I’d love for you to try it.” She was already walking toward the kitchen. The scowl on Constance’s face instantly dissolved into a radiant smile. “Doris, you are simply too sweet.” [Look at Doris. A true catch. And then look at Summer.] I sat comfortably on the sofa, watching in absolute silence as Doris rummaged through my kitchen, opening cabinets and looking for spices. I used to get so jealous. I used to feel so utterly inadequate. I used to hide in the master bathroom and cry silently into a towel. I didn’t feel anything anymore. Because her subtitles were broadcasting her entire strategy. [Her apron is in the second drawer, but I refuse to wear it. I’m going to drink water out of Colin’s favorite glass, just so she has to sit there and watch me do it.] When she finally served the meal, she purposely plated it on my favorite set of hand-painted ceramics. [These plates are gorgeous. When I move in, I’m taking all of them.] Colin walked through the front door just as she set the table. Seeing Doris standing in his kitchen, laughing, his footsteps paused. [What is Doris doing here?] Followed immediately by: [She looks really good in this setting.] Then, his eyes shifted to me. [Why is Summer just sitting there? That’s not like her.] “You’re home,” I said. Just those two words. No “honey.” No bright smile. I didn’t even stand up. Colin frowned slightly. [What’s wrong with her?] But he didn’t ask. He never asked. The four of us sat around the dining table. Doris had managed four beautiful dishes. Constance took a bite of a scallop and practically swooned. “Doris, this is divine. Better than a Michelin restaurant.” [If Doris were my daughter-in-law, I would wake up laughing every single day.] Doris offered a graceful, humble smile. “You’re too kind, Mrs. Montgomery.” [Keep complimenting me. Make sure Colin hears every word of it.] I kept my head down and ate my food. Slowly. Quietly. Normally, I would jump in and say, “Constance, I’ll definitely have to get the recipe from Doris so I can make it for you.” Tonight, I was a ghost. Constance noticed. “Summer, you’re awfully quiet tonight.” “Just enjoying the meal, Constance.” She let out a harsh scoff. [Giving us attitude now? If you don’t like it, you should have cooked the damn dinner yourself.] After the meal, Doris insisted on doing the dishes. I sat in the living room, sipping sparkling water. Constance walked over and lowered her voice to a vicious whisper. “Summer. Let me give you some advice. This little attitude of yours lately needs to stop.” “What attitude?” “What attitude? Look at you! Ice cold, barely speaking, refusing to cook. You married into the Montgomery family to be a wife. You are not here to play a pampered princess.” [Know your place. If it weren’t for your father dying on that highway, you wouldn’t even be fit to shine Colin’s shoes.] I looked straight at her. In the old days, a lecture like this would make my eyes sting with tears. I would look at the floor and whisper, “I’m sorry, Constance. I understand.” Today, I just nodded slowly. “I understand, Constance.” My tone sounded exactly the same. But deep down, I knew that this “I understand” meant something radically different than all the times I’d said it before. Before, it meant submission. Today, it meant I was done playing the game. Day ten. The changes had finally compounded to the point where Colin could no longer ignore them. It started with an Instagram post. Historically, my grid was a shrine to him. Dinner made by my amazing husband, so blessed! — I had actually cooked it. The flowers he sent me, so romantic! — I had bought them myself, arranged them, and staged the photo. So thankful for you. — Accompanied by a selfie where I was beaming, and he looked like he was attending a funeral. Pathetic, right? On the tenth day, I posted something new. It was a photo of a watercolor I had secretly painted: a massive whale breaching the surface of a midnight ocean, its back blooming with vibrant, impossible flowers. The caption was just one word: Whalefall.

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Boris Montgomery was the secret I kept buried under my skin for years. He never knew that the man who orchestrated his family’s ruin, the one who pulled the rug out from under their empire, was my father. Before he fled the country five years ago, the last words he threw at me were like shards of poisoned glass: “Sylvia, you’re just like your father. You make me sick.” Thinking about it now still makes my chest tighten, a phantom pain that never quite dulls. In the hollow years that followed, I started hunting for traces of him in a revolving door of strangers. I looked for his jawline, his gait, the way he’d tilt his head when he was thinking. Wyatt Beckett was the one who came the closest. I gave Wyatt everything. Every resource, every luxury, every piece of myself I could spare. To the world, I was the devoted girlfriend; to myself, I was just curating a masterpiece in Boris’s image. Wyatt, blinded by his own sudden fame, used to smirk at me and ask, “Sylvia, are you honestly this obsessed with me?” Sometimes he’d push further, testing the leash. “If I ever walked away, would you just crumble? Would you cry your eyes out for me?” I would just smile, a quiet, practiced thing. I never said a word. Because we both knew—or at least I did—that the game was only fun until the original came home. And then, the news broke: Boris Montgomery was back. 1 When the headline about Wyatt’s latest scandal hit the tabloids, I was in the middle of closing a massive brand deal for him. The CEO of the company was Howard, an old friend of my father’s. He’d known me since I was a child; he was the one who taught me how to hold a fountain pen when I was six. We were at a private dinner—steaks and expensive red wine—when I asked if he’d consider making the star of my agency the face of his new luxury line. He agreed almost too easily. “Howard, please,” I said, sliding the dossier across the mahogany table with a soft smile. “Don’t just do this because we’re family friends. Look at the data first.” I pointed to the highlighted sections. “His commercial value, the social media engagement, the projected ROI… I’ve mapped it all out. I want this to be a win for your brand, not a charity case for me.” Howard blinked, clearly surprised by my preparation. He chuckled and turned to his teenage grandson, who was sitting at the end of the table. “Logan, take notes,” Howard said. “You see how Sylvia works? She’s built a powerhouse from the ground up. Out of all the kids in our circle, she’s the one who’s actually made something of herself.” I offered a modest smile, but kept my thoughts to myself. Howard didn’t know that my “powerhouse” agency only had one client: Wyatt Beckett. Or, to be more precise, I had only built the agency because of Wyatt. The data was undeniable. Wyatt’s numbers were staggering; he was the “It Boy” of the moment, with a fanbase that would buy anything he touched. Howard liked what he saw. To show his support, he had his legal team bring over the finalized contract before dessert was even served. The terms were more generous than I had dared to ask for. Before I could even start my polite refusals, my father leaned back and smiled. “Go on, Sylvia. Go take care of your business,” he said. “I’ll settle up with Howard here. Consider it a favor I’ll owe him.” I knew they had things to discuss that didn’t involve me. I thanked Howard, took the contract, and headed back to my suite. I pulled out my phone to tell Wyatt the good news, but my screen was already flooded. My friend Lexi had sent a dozen screenshots of the trending topics an hour ago. Below them was a link to a video. And then, her usual unfiltered commentary: Seriously, Sylvia? What is Wyatt doing? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. You’re out there grinding for his career, and he’s out there making you look like a fool? Is this a PR stunt or is he actually this stupid? I’m telling you, you can’t spoil men like this. He needs to remember he’s a project, not a god. Don’t let him disrespect you like this… I scrolled past her rant and clicked the link. It was classic paparazzi footage—grainy, long-lens, but the two people in the frame were clear as day. It looked like a scene from a high-budget romance. The evening breeze was catching the hem of Tinsley Hart’s white silk dress. She was laughing, her hands full with a latte and a stick of cotton candy. When the wind blew a bit too hard, Wyatt was there in a heartbeat, his hand reaching out to press the fabric of her skirt back down against her thigh. They were bent over, laughing together. The camera zoomed in. Tinsley pointed toward the lens, whispering something to Wyatt, and a second later, Wyatt looked directly at the camera. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he draped an arm over Tinsley’s shoulder, pulled her close, and threw a mocking, defiant smirk at the photographer. I didn’t even need to check Twitter to know it was a bloodbath. #WyattBeckettTinsleyHart #WyattDefiesPaps #SummerGardenTryst #JustFriends? The threads were a war zone between fans trying to “clear the search terms” and shippers going wild. They were both rising stars, young and beautiful. The fans didn’t want a dating scandal to ruin their “clean” images, but the chemistry was undeniable. Still, the video wasn’t “incriminating” in a legal sense. No kissing, no disappearing into a hotel room for six hours. It was deniable. Wyatt’s PR team—the one I paid for—could handle it in their sleep. I closed the app, unfazed. I took a photo of the contract and sent it to Wyatt. Just landed you the luxury line deal. The contract is signed. When do you have a minute to go over the details? His reply came hours later. It was curt, dripping with the arrogance of someone who thought they were untouchable. Busy. Bring it to the set tomorrow. I stared at the screen for a long beat before typing a single word back. Okay. 2 Wyatt had grown comfortable giving me orders. He treated me like a glorified assistant, someone he could beckon with a snap of his fingers, rather than the woman who had built his throne. He had forgotten I was his girlfriend, and more importantly, he had forgotten I was his boss. I suppose it was my fault. I had been too good to him. Back in college, I was famous for two things: my family’s quiet wealth and the speed at which I cycled through boyfriends. I had a “type,” but no one could figure out the pattern. I dated guys with beautiful hands, guys with gentle eyes, guys with a specific, sharp profile. I once dated a guy for two weeks just because he had a tiny mole on the left side of his nose. I’d fall fast, or at least pretend to, and then end things just as abruptly. There were threads on the campus forum about me, claiming I was “collecting” parts of people, like a scavenger hunt with no prize. But despite the turnover, no one had a bad word to say about me. I was generous, I was kind, and I never made a scene. Then came Wyatt Beckett. He was the jackpot. He had every single feature I had been hunting for. Long, elegant fingers with prominent knuckles. Amber eyes that looked cold until he smiled. The perfect height. And there, on the bridge of his nose, the exact same mole. I dove into “loving” him like a woman possessed. I became the girl who would do anything for him. To be fair, Wyatt was a challenge. He was colder than the others, more guarded. He held the record for the longest I’d ever pursued someone without success. The first time I introduced myself, he frowned and told me flat-out: “Look, rich girl, I’m not interested in being your flavor of the month. Go find someone else to play with.” I remember looking into his eyes—those amber eyes—and feeling a chill go down my spine. “You’re special, Wyatt,” I whispered. “You’re not like the others.” He wavered then. After that, the “collection” stopped. I didn’t look at another man. I stayed by his side, but I didn’t crowd him. I played the long game. I showed up at group dinners as a friend. I kept a respectful distance. I gave him birthday gifts that weren’t expensive, but were exactly what he needed. When he ended up in the hospital during junior year, I was the one who cleared my schedule to stay with him. He didn’t want to worry his parents, and his roommates had finals. I hired the best private nurses, but I sat in the corner of the room every single day. One afternoon, while he was napping, the room was bathed in the amber glow of the setting sun. I sat there for hours, just watching his silhouette against the pillow. For a split second, I let myself believe the ghost had finally come home. When Wyatt woke up and saw me still there, his expression shifted. “Sylvia,” he said, his voice raspy. “Do you actually love me this much?” He’d seen how I treated my exes—the casual indifference, the easy goodbyes. With him, I was different. I was devoted. I blinked, coming out of my trance. He was looking at me with a mix of confusion and something that looked like guilt. “Sylvia,” he said, his tone sharpening. “Love isn’t a debt. You can’t force it with kindness. If this is just a game to you, pick a different target.” I almost laughed. I looked at him softly and said, “Don’t worry, Wyatt. I’m not asking for anything.” He looked away, his ears turning a deep shade of red. As I stood up to leave, he spoke to the wall, his voice muffled like a stubborn child admitting defeat. “If you’re serious… then fine. Let’s try it. Let’s be together.” And that was it. The campus forums went wild, taking bets on how long we’d last. Three months? Six? A year? But as the months turned into years, everyone eventually decided I had finally found “The One.” The truth was, we did have good moments. Wyatt had a streak of stubborn pride that I admired. In the beginning, he never let me pay for anything. He’d put his hand over mine when I reached for my phone at a restaurant and say, “I’ve got it,” with a finality that brooked no argument. Once we were official, he took his role seriously. He went everywhere I wanted to go. He wore the clothes I picked out for him. He replied to my texts within five minutes, every single time. Eventually, we fell into the rhythm of a normal couple. We studied together, ate together. I learned to hide price tags so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I started memorizing his specific likes and dislikes—the things that were actually him, not just the man he reminded me of. I’m a creature of habit. I don’t like change. If things had stayed stable, I probably would have stayed with him forever. But then, he met Tinsley Hart. 3 In a cruel twist of fate, I was the one who introduced them. It was senior year. Wyatt had been scouted by an agent. He had the face for it, but he was green. He fell into a trap—a predatory contract with a bottom-tier agency that specialized in “influencer houses” and shady livestreams. By the time I found out, Wyatt was drowning in debt, trying to find a way to pay a massive kill-fee for a contract he’d barely read. His roommate told me the truth: “Wyatt didn’t want you to know. He’s humiliated. But Sylvia, he’s in over his head. They’re trying to force him into these… weird ‘fan meetups’ and scripted ‘dating’ streams.” I fixed it. The problem that had been crushing his spirit was solved with one phone call from my father’s legal team. I tried to be discreet, but Wyatt wasn’t stupid. He saw the shift in the agency’s attitude. The predatory manager suddenly became a groveling assistant, handing over the release papers with a trembling hand and even offering a “settlement” for the trouble. When he got home that night, he didn’t look happy. He looked small. “Was it you, Sylvia?” he asked. I hesitated. “Would you have preferred I did nothing?” He didn’t answer. The silence was heavy. I wanted to tell him that if he chose to be with me, he had to accept the reality of who I was—and what I could do. He needed to get used to the power imbalance. But the words felt too cruel. Instead, I kept it light. “Do you really want to be in this industry? Because if you do, I’ll just start a company for you. We’ll do it right.” He looked at me and laughed, a bitter, mocking sound. “I guess I’d be a fool to turn down a silver platter, wouldn’t I?” “Think of it as an investment,” I said. “We’ll sign a real contract. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one making me rich in five years.” That seemed to soothe his ego. His face softened. “Does it really pay that fast? The entertainment business?” I didn’t answer. He let out a self-deprecating snort. “Right. Even ‘fast’ isn’t your kind of fast. Your trust fund probably grows by a house every minute.” His debut project was a high-end indie romance. I made sure he was the male lead. And I chose Tinsley Hart to be his co-star. Tinsley was the “National Sweetheart.” She was talented, she had a massive following, and everyone loved her. I thought her star power would rub off on Wyatt. I went to the set on the first day of filming. The cast and crew were gathered for the kickoff. Wyatt stood next to Tinsley, looking striking in the morning light. His amber eyes caught the sun, and for a moment, he was so beautiful it hurt to look at him. He completely outshone the veteran actors around him. I didn’t expect him to become a superstar overnight. It was a small film. But when it was released, Wyatt was the only thing anyone talked about. He became the internet’s new obsession. The “shippers” started editing videos of him and Tinsley, crying over their “tragic” onscreen chemistry. And that leads us to now: their second project together. A project I explicitly told him not to take. A project he signed onto behind my back. Our first real fight was about that script. “The fans want this, Sylvia,” Wyatt had argued, his confusion genuine. “Why wouldn’t I give them what they want? The buzz is already insane.” It wasn’t just that the script was a repetitive teen drama. I had worked my connections to get him an audition for a major director’s new feature. If he did the show with Tinsley, he’d have to pass on the movie. It was the difference between being a flash-in-the-pan idol and a serious actor. I tried to explain the long-term strategy. Wyatt just laughed coldly. “You’re just jealous of Tinsley, aren’t you?” I froze. Jealousy was an emotion I didn’t know how to process. I didn’t like Tinsley, that much was true. The first time I met her on set as Wyatt’s manager, she had looked at me with this long, searching expression. Then she turned to Wyatt and said, “I know you were a ‘civilian’ before this, so having a girlfriend makes sense. But why are you letting a girl who knows nothing about the industry handle your career?” “Wyatt,” she had continued, “some girls just want to cling to someone famous to feel important. They’re afraid you’ll outgrow them. You have so much potential; you don’t need an anchor dragging you down.” The “National Sweetheart” wasn’t so sweet when the cameras were off. She looked like a classic mean girl. But I could see why she was confused. I kept a low profile. Most people thought Wyatt had built his own studio with his own money. Everyone assumed he was some “Secret Billionaire’s Son” playing at being an actor. Wyatt had started to explain who I was, but I cut him off. “Miss Hart,” I said coolly, “your acting in real life is much more convincing than your acting in the script.” Tinsley glared at me, then turned back to Wyatt, grabbing his arm and whining in a playful, sugary voice, calling him by his character’s name. “Liam, look at her… she’s so mean to me!” Wyatt didn’t pull away. He looked at me, frowning. “Enough, Sylvia. She’s just blunt. She’s a ‘free spirit.’ Don’t be a bully.” I looked at his hand on her arm, then up at his face. I wondered if he was lost in the role or if he was just losing his mind. They were “method” during filming, which meant a lot of flirting off-camera. It was blurring the lines of what was acceptable for a man in a relationship, but there was never any “proof” of an affair. I had tried to be the “cool girlfriend.” I tolerated it. But I didn’t like it. I told him as much. I suggested he keep a professional distance. Wyatt’s response was a cold sneer. “Sylvia, I’m not your property. Why don’t you just buy a leash and lock me in your basement?” “Is this because you love me so much? Or are you just that possessive?” “If I ever left you,” he said, mocking me, “would you actually die of a broken heart?” He thought he’d found my weakness. He thought he could use my “devotion” to buy his freedom. “If you don’t want me to leave, Sylvia,” he said, “then stop trying to control me.” I looked at him—at the makeup, the stylized hair, the arrogance in his eyes—and I realized he looked less and less like the man I was trying to remember every day. 4 I drove to the set to deliver the contract myself. When I arrived, Wyatt and Tinsley were rehearsing a scene. The set was a chaotic mess of grips and PAs, so no one noticed me. I stood in a corner, watching them. Wyatt was leaning down, tilting his head to catch Tinsley’s lines. She was looking up at him, radiant and glowing. The midday sun was brutal, and I noticed Wyatt shielding her with his script, creating a patch of shade for her. It was a small, thoughtful gesture. It was a level of tenderness he hadn’t shown me in months. They looked perfect together. A matched set. For a second, I felt like laughing. Wyatt must have felt my gaze, because he suddenly looked over. He didn’t look guilty. He looked expectant. He said something to Tinsley, she glanced at me, and then he started walking toward me. We went to his luxury trailer. I handed him the contract. As he flipped to the final page, his eyes widened. He knew what this meant. Howard’s brand was a household name. They didn’t need “influencers.” Getting this deal was a massive coup for Wyatt’s prestige. A smug smile touched his lips. But then, he looked at me and asked, “Sylvia, can we turn this into a joint endorsement? For me and Tinsley?” He asked it casually, but the air in the trailer shifted. I stared at him. He was wearing colored contacts for his role—dark, flat brown. The amber was gone. I let out a short, sharp laugh. “What did you just say?” If he were smart, he would have dropped it. But he doubled down. “I want to do this with Tinsley. Our ‘couple’ brand is at an all-time high. It’s better for the company if we do it together.” He paused, then added the ultimatum: “If it’s not a joint deal, I’m not signing.” The smile stayed on my face, but the light in my eyes went out. I looked at him for a long time—or maybe it was only a few seconds—and then I set the contract down on the table. I stood up and walked to the door. I gripped the handle and looked back at him. I had never used this tone with him before—polite, distant, and utterly final. “Wyatt,” I said, nodding toward the paper. “That contract isn’t a career move. It’s a parting gift. You’ve been a decent distraction these past few years, and I wanted to settle the bill. Whether you sign it or not is entirely up to you.” I watched the color drain from his face. “There is no third option,” I said.

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One hundred days. That’s how long I’d been rotting in this digital graveyard—a forced-labor compound hidden in the lawless jungles of Southeast Asia. And today, in the middle of the humid, suffocating heat, I realized I was carrying the devil’s child. The “devil” was the man running this hellhole. Things had gone from bad to worse. My sales numbers had been at the bottom of the leaderboard for three days straight. As punishment, they’d used the whips, then the cattle prods, and finally, they’d tossed me into the “Grave”—the water cell—like a piece of discarded trash, waiting for the organ harvesters to come collect the remains. The filthy, ice-cold water reached my waist. I drifted into a feverish sleep, fueled by exhaustion and pain, and there he was: my father. He’d been dead for three years, but in the dream, he looked as real as the scars on my back. “Sweetie, don’t be afraid,” he whispered, his voice a ghost of a lullaby. “The drainage grate on the left is loose. Pull it open tonight, and you can run. You can go home.” I jerked awake, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was still submerged in the dark, stagnant water of the cell. Panic flared, but I reached out, my fingers trembling as they searched the slimy stone wall to my left. My breath hitched. There it was. The metal grate wobbled under my touch. I was just about to wrench it open when a tiny, high-pitched voice echoed through the silence of the dark. It wasn’t in the room; it was inside my head. “Mommy! Don’t listen to him! That’s just a restless spirit trying to pull you into the abyss with him!” … The voice—childlike, innocent, yet terrifyingly sharp—rang out again. “Mommy, if you crawl through that grate, you’ll end up right under the executive dorms. You’ll be walking straight into the lion’s den.” “Wait. Just wait until next month. When the compound closes a major scam deal, they’ll throw a party. Everyone will be drunk. You can slip out the back gate in the chaos.” My hand froze under the water, my fingertips hooked into the rusted edge of the grate. I checked the room, then my own sanity, before the absurd truth settled in: this was the heart of the child in my womb. My baby was telling me to stay. My dead father was begging me to go. I didn’t know who to trust. Suddenly, footsteps thudded above. A flashlight beam sliced through the ceiling vent, tracing a jagged white line across the murky water. I sucked in a breath and pressed myself into the shadows of the corner, praying the silt and darkness would swallow me whole. The guard’s eyes, cold and predatory, scanned the cell from above. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. It felt like an eternity before the heavy thud of his boots faded into the distance. But the water was rising. It was at my chest now, a slow, relentless theft of my body heat. My limbs were turning to lead. I knew that if I didn’t leave tonight, I wouldn’t leave at all. Tomorrow, they’d drag me out for another round of “re-education.” I’d seen what happened to the last girl who spent three days in the Grave. When they hauled her out, she was purple and breathless, her eyes wide with a terror that hadn’t faded even in death. I didn’t have three days. I gripped the grate again, gritting my teeth as I pulled. The rusted metal sliced into the raw sores on my palms. It was a searing, white-hot pain, but I didn’t make a sound. With one final, desperate heave, the grate gave way. The sudden release sent a massive splash echoing through the cavernous cell. Heavy footsteps immediately sprinted back toward the vent. I collapsed against the wall, pretending to be unconscious, using my body to shield the open hole. The guard descended the ladder into the cell. I felt the heat of the flashlight beam move across my eyelids. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Finally, the splashing of his boots moved away. I thought he was gone. I started to open my eyes, but the voice screamed in my mind: “Mommy! Don’t move! He’s right behind you!” I froze. A few seconds later, I felt a hot, foul breath against the nape of my neck. A low grunt followed. “Heh. Looks like another one’s biting the dust tonight.” The guard waded out, and I heard the heavy iron door of the upper chamber slam shut. “Mommy, he’s gone now.” I let out a ragged gasp, my heart nearly leaping out of my throat. If I had opened my eyes, I’d be dead. Beneath the waterline, the dark mouth of the pipe beckoned—just wide enough for someone as wasted away as I was to squeeze through. It was a black void leading to God-knows-where. My “baby” was still frantically pleading with me not to go inside. As I hesitated, my vision blurred. I was pulled back into that gray mist. My father appeared again, wearing his favorite old flannel shirt, his face etched with frantic concern. “Run, June. Just swim through. It’s a two-minute stretch, and you’re out. Your daddy would never hurt you.” The mist evaporated. Outside the cell, I heard the muffled voices of the guards changing shifts. This was my window. “No!” the baby’s voice turned shrill, more desperate than I’d ever heard it. “That pipe takes way longer than two minutes! You’ll drown in the dark!” Two minutes or three? The difference was life or death. I pictured myself stuck in that lightless tube, water filling my nose and lungs, my consciousness flickering out in a cold, lonely suffocation. No one would ever find me. I’d just be another missing person in a file folder back in the States. But if I stayed? Tomorrow was the cattle prod. The day after was the whip. How much longer could I survive the torment? The shift change ended. The new patrol was starting. I took one massive, lung-bursting breath, dived under, and shoved myself into the black pipe. It was narrower than I’d imagined. The metal walls scraped against my shoulders, and every inch forward required every ounce of my remaining strength. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. My lungs began to burn. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press. In the absolute darkness, the only sound was the frantic drumming of my heart in my ears. My throat convulsed, my body screaming for oxygen. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, clawing at the slimy joints of the pipe to drag myself forward. My vision began to spark with white stars. Just as I prepared to let the water in, the pipe angled upward. Using the last of my strength, I scrambled up the incline. There was a tiny gap of air—less than four inches—between the water and the top of the pipe. I broke the surface, gasping, greedily inhaling the foul, metallic air as if it were the finest perfume. I kept moving, crawling through sections that were fully submerged and others that offered a sliver of breath. Finally, a faint, grayish light appeared ahead. I burst through the drainage exit and collapsed onto the muddy earth, gasping like a fish hauled onto a deck. The night air hit my soaked clothes, sending a violent shiver through my frame. I tried to stand. Ahead of me was a twelve-foot concrete wall topped with jagged concertina wire. I reached for a handhold, but my muscles turned to jelly. I fell back, hard. Suddenly, the compound behind me erupted in red light. A siren wailed—a high, piercing shriek that cut through the jungle. They knew I was gone. I forced myself up, staggering along the base of the wall, searching for an exit that didn’t exist. I was trapped in a corner. I didn’t have the strength to climb. “Mommy!” the baby’s voice echoed. “Go into that building! Third floor, the room on the far left. There’s a space under the bed!” I didn’t argue. I sprinted toward the nearby barracks. The stairwell was a tomb. I found the room on the third floor; the door was slightly ajar. I scrambled inside and threw myself under the bed, tucking my limbs in tight. Seconds later, the sound of heavy boots and shouting filled the hallway. “Search it! Every damn room!” “She couldn’t have gotten far!” The footsteps stopped at my door. The handle turned. A flashlight beam swept across the floor, the light dancing inches from my face. I buried my nose in my arm, stopping my breath. The beam lingered on the foot of the bed. My heart stopped. Luckily, a pile of discarded laundry and trash blocked his line of sight. He didn’t linger. “Clear! Next door!” The door slammed. I lay there, drenched in a fresh coat of cold sweat. The shouting outside continued for a long time before fading into a dull hum. “Mommy, stay here. Give it a day or two for the heat to die down. I’ll find us a way out.” I started to nod, but the world went black again. I was pulled back into the fog. My father was there. He wasn’t gentle this time. He was terrified. “Run! You can’t stay here!” he yelled. “There’s a gap in the fence behind this building. A crawlspace. That’s your only way out!” He saw the doubt on my face and his voice cracked. “Do you forget whose child that is? Do you really think that… thing… wants to help you? It’s a monster’s seed, June!” I flinched. The child belonged to Killian Varga, the compound’s second-in-command. I’d met him online, fell for his charm, and spent a year in a whirlwind romance before he lured me on a “vacation” that ended in a cage. “Dad, I…” Before I could finish, a new set of footsteps jolted me awake. They were doing a second sweep, and this time, they were being thorough. “Mommy! Quick! The storage closet next to the bed!” I looked. There was a small door. But there were no windows in there. If they found me, I’d be cornered. The doorknob turned. In that split second, I had to choose: the closet or the window behind me. I rolled out and slipped into the closet, pulling the door shut just as the bedroom door kicked open. Three sets of boots entered. Their first move was to rush to the window. I watched through the crack in the door, a wave of nausea hitting me. If I’d jumped, they would have seen me instantly. “The sheets are damp!” one shouted. “She was just here! Search everything!” Furniture was tossed. Drawers were ripped out. The footsteps moved toward the closet. “Mommy! There’s a loose ventilation panel in the ceiling! Use the shelves!” I scrambled up the metal racking in the dark. My elbow clipped a cardboard box, and it started to slide. I caught it mid-air, heart hammering, and eased it back. I shoved the ceiling tile aside and hauled myself into the crawlspace just as the closet door was ripped open. Flashlights probed the floor and the shelves. I laid flat in the dust, suppressing even the sound of my heartbeat. Eventually, they left. My back was soaked, and my knees were raw where the metal edges of the duct had sliced into me. “Turn left, then straight. It leads to the fourth floor,” the baby whispered. “They won’t search there again.” I followed the instructions, shimmying through the tight space until I reached another vent. I eased it open and looked down. It was an office, plush and carpeted, with a desk lamp glowing softly. I dropped down and saw a photo on the desk. Killian. This was his private quarters. The hair on my neck stood up. The baby’s voice was quick to soothe me: “He’s not here. He’s downstairs leading the search. You can hide here until nightfall. Look in the left drawer. There’s a black keycard. It opens the back gate.” I pulled the drawer open. The card was there. But as my fingers brushed the plastic, the mist returned. My father stood before me, his expression grim. “It’s lying to you. It brought you here so Killian would find you, so he’d know about the pregnancy. It wants to be his heir, June. It wants his life, not yours.” He pointed to the window. “Climb out. Use the A/C units as steps. There’s a gap in the perimeter fence at the bottom. That is your only path to freedom.” I snapped back to reality. “Don’t listen to him!” the baby hissed. “The patrol will see you on the wall! The back gate is the only safe way!” I walked to the window. Below, flashlight beams moved like searching fingers, but there were gaps—rhythmic intervals of darkness. The A/C units were bolted to the wall, forming a precarious ladder down to the second-floor terrace. The keycard felt cold in my hand. I looked at the gate, then the fence. I took a breath and pushed the window open. I climbed out, my boots slipping on the metal casings of the A/C units. Every time I stepped, the brackets groaned, threatening to pull out of the stucco. I reached the terrace and slid down a drainpipe, hitting the ground hard. The gap my father mentioned was there—a dark, jagged hole at the base of the fence. I dropped to my stomach and crawled, my nails digging into the dirt. As soon as I squeezed through to the other side, a light hit me. “Over there! Someone’s by the fence!” I didn’t look back. I ran. The jungle outside the compound was a wall of thorns and shadows. I plunged in, branches whipping my face, drawing blood. The baby had gone silent—angry, perhaps. I didn’t care. I just needed to move. The shouting grew closer. Then came the sound that chilled my blood: the baying of hounds. “Let the dogs loose! Don’t let her reach the road!” The barking tore through the night. My lungs felt like they were bursting, but the mud and roots kept tripping me up. Two Dobermans burst through the brush, their green eyes glowing with predatory hunger. I grabbed a heavy branch and swung. I caught one across the nose, and it backed off with a whimper, but the other lunged, its teeth sinking into my calf. I screamed. I jammed the branch into the dog’s eye until it let go, leaving my leg a mangled, bloody mess. I limped forward, every step a serrated knife in my skin. Finally, the trees thinned. A paved road stretched out before me, shimmering under the distant moon. I went to lunge for it, but a black SUV roared out of the shadows, its high beams blinding me. Three men jumped out. At the head was Mick, one of Killian’s lead enforcers. He held a stun baton, a cruel smirk plastered on his face. “Run all you want, sweetheart. You’re not going anywhere.” I turned to go back into the woods, but more lights appeared. They had me boxed in. Mick stepped closer, the baton crackling with blue electricity. I backed away, my heel catching on the edge of a sheer drop-off. I didn’t know how deep the ravine was. Suddenly, another set of lights appeared on the road. A local police cruiser was heading our way. The baby’s voice screamed: “Mommy! Run to the police! They’ll save you!” I took a step, but then my father’s voice boomed in my skull, clearer than ever. “Jump, June! The police are on his payroll! If you get in that car, you’re a dead woman! Jump! There’s a pool of water at the bottom! You’ll survive!”

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When I opened my eyes again, the sterile scent of floor wax and the hum of the hospital’s HVAC system hit me like a physical blow. I was back. Right in front of me, Bonnie was clutching her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white. Her eyes were wide, brimming with that carefully practiced desperation, searching mine for a lifeline. She told me, with a voice that trembled perfectly, that if only someone would buy her cottage, she might finally have the money to survive. I knew what came next. In a few days, she’d be diagnosed with terminal stage-four cancer. Or so the charts would say. In my previous life, I was the fool. To save her, to give her the chance at the surgery she supposedly couldn’t afford, I offered to buy her place at a premium. But within days of me moving in, a “miracle” occurred. Bonnie’s cancer vanished—utterly, impossibly cured—while I was the one suddenly staring at a terminal diagnosis. I had tried to be the bigger person. Through the agonizing pain, I squeezed out a smile to congratulate her on her recovery. And how did she repay me? She filed a formal complaint with the Board of Ethics. She accused me of forging her medical records to scam her out of her property. She stood in the hospital lobby and shrieked, asking if I wasn’t afraid of divine retribution for preyed on a dying woman. I fought back. I pulled every chart, every bank transfer, every scrap of evidence to prove I had acted out of mercy. She just sneered. She told the board that everyone knew a good con artist plays the long game. She asked the room, “If I really had terminal cancer, how could I be standing here perfectly healthy?” Even Scott, my boyfriend of three years, turned on me. He looked at me with such profound disgust it felt like a knife to the ribs. He claimed I had nearly destroyed a family for a piece of real estate. He told the board he’d checked the accounts—that the money I claimed to have paid Bonnie never actually reached her. I was blacklisted. Fired. The families of former patients threw stones at my windows, screaming for “justice” for their loved ones. Scott took every penny of my savings, claiming it was “restitution” for Bonnie’s suffering. In the end, the cancer ate me alive. I died in a puddle of my own cold sweat in a cramped studio apartment, forgotten and hated. This time, I’m not playing the martyr. 1 Listening to Bonnie’s thinly veiled hints, the realization that I had been given a second chance settled into my bones like ice. In the old life, I fell for it. I offered her twenty percent over market value for that house. She had dropped to her knees, sobbing her thanks, calling me her “guardian angel.” Then, forty-eight hours after the keys changed hands, she was at the administration office, tearing me apart. “The second she got the deed, the Chief told me there was nothing wrong with me,” she had told the investigators. “Isn’t that convenient? Scott always told me how badly Claire wanted a house she couldn’t afford. She just waited for me to be vulnerable.” I died a pariah. And I never understood how a healthy thirty-year-old woman like me suddenly developed a late-stage malignancy overnight. Not this time. I didn’t bite. I shoved my hands into my lab coat pockets and offered a tight, professional smile. “If things are that dire, Bonnie, have you considered a GoFundMe? Or maybe listing the house on Zillow? If the price is right, I’m sure a developer would snap it up in a heartbeat.” Bonnie’s smile faltered. She stood up abruptly, a flash of genuine indignation crossing her face. “Dr. Whitfield… Claire. I’m trying to sell my home, not beg for scraps on the internet. I have some dignity left.” “I’m just a doctor,” I said, my voice flat. “But if you’re that sick, you don’t have time to be picky about where the money comes from, do you?” She bit her lip, her eyes darting toward the door. “Scott’s girlfriend is supposed to be my friend. We have history. I thought you’d want to help me out of this hole. I thought maybe…” She trailed off, waiting for me to fill the silence with an offer. Instead, I pulled a drawer open and slid a stack of business cards for local real estate agents across the desk. “These guys are the best in the city. Fast closings, aggressive marketing. List with them today, and you’ll have your surgery money by the end of the month.” Bonnie looked like she’d swallowed a wasp. “Are you serious? You’re throwing me to the sharks? These agents will take a massive commission. How am I supposed to pay for treatment if I’m giving six percent to some guy in a suit?” She leaned in, her voice sharpening. “I’m saying, if you buy it, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that.” “Find another way,” I said, leaning back. “I’m broke.” Her face darkened instantly. She reached out, grabbing my wrist with a grip that was entirely too strong for a “dying” woman. “You have the money, Claire. Don’t lie to me. It’s only seven hundred thousand. You can swing that. Let’s go to the title company. Right now.” I looked down at her hand, a cold laugh bubbling in my chest. She wasn’t asking; she was demanding. I wrenched my arm back. Bonnie’s eyes welled with tears instantly. “I know you think I’m pathetic because I’m sick, but the house is fine! Please, don’t make me list it. I can’t wait for a buyer. I need the surgery now!” Before I could respond, the door burst open. Scott Bennett stormed in, looking every bit the white knight. He moved to Bonnie’s side, supporting her as she “wavered” on her feet. “Claire, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “She’s just trying to survive. Why are you being so heartless?” 2 I kept my expression stone-cold, the picture of professional detachment. “As her attending physician, my job is to treat her. I am under no ethical or legal obligation to fund her lifestyle or her real estate transactions.” Scott waved a hand dismissively, as if my career-long commitment to ethics was just a minor personality flaw. “You want a house. She needs to sell. It’s a win-win. Why do you have to be so difficult? Why drag a middleman into this?” He sighed, shaking his head at me. “You’re so petty, Claire. Always looking for an angle, even with family.” Watching him, I felt a wave of nausea. This was the man I thought I’d grow old with. In the last life, when Bonnie accused me, he had used that same “disappointed” tone. ‘I’ve known Bonnie for fifteen years, Claire. She doesn’t lie. Just apologize. Give her the house back and let her keep the money. It’s a small price to pay for your reputation.’ He never believed me. Not for a second. The urge to scream was almost overwhelming. “Scott, we’re through—” But he cut me off, pulling a set of keys from his pocket with a triumphant flourish. “Luckily, Bonnie wanted to surprise you. She already signed the deed over to me to give to you. Your ‘dream home’ isn’t going anywhere.” He tossed the keys onto my desk. They hit the wood with a sharp clack. He didn’t even look at me; he was too busy checking his watch. “Now, quit the drama and transfer the funds to Bonnie. She needs to be in pre-op by tomorrow.” The blood drained from my face. My breath hitched in my throat. “You… you bought her house?” Scott shrugged. “I put it in your name. We’re getting married eventually; it’s our future home. Consider it a favor to a friend. Now, pay her. Don’t be cheap.” I picked up the keys and threw them back at his chest. “I don’t want the house. You want to be a hero? You keep it. You live in it.” Scott’s face turned a mottled purple. “We’re a team, Claire! This is for us! And more importantly, it’s for Bonnie’s life. Stop being a selfish brat and send the money!” I said nothing. Bonnie suddenly collapsed to her knees, her voice rising to a theatrical wail that carried into the hallway. “Dr. Whitfield, please! I’m begging you! I just want to live! You can hate the house, but don’t kill me because of a deed! I need that money for the operation!” Scott jumped in, his voice loud enough for the patients in the waiting area to hear. “She’s a fraud, isn’t she? You gave her your word and now you’re backing out when her life is on the line?” I could hear the murmurs from the hallway. “I wouldn’t want a doctor like that,” a woman whispered loudly. “Who knows if she’d hold back my meds if she didn’t like my attitude?” “Unbelievable,” another man added. “She’s probably overcharging us just to pay for her vacations while her friend dies.” The noise grew. People were calling for the Chief. Bonnie looked up at me, a tiny, smug glint in her tear-filled eyes. She held up her phone, the Venmo QR code ready, her chin lifted in a silent challenge. I straightened my coat, took a breath, and pulled out my phone. But I didn’t open a banking app. I tapped a recording I’d started the moment she walked in. “From the start of this conversation,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise, “I have never agreed to buy your property. In fact, I’ve repeatedly advised you to seek professional real estate counsel. Are we really suggesting that because a person is poor or sick, they have the right to commit identity theft and financial coercion?” The hallway went dead silent. 3 Bonnie’s eyes darted around, her lip trembling. “Claire… I know you’re worried about setting a precedent, but you have the keys. You can’t deny it now!” Scott stepped forward, his jaw set. He looked like he wanted to be proud of himself, convinced that if he just pushed hard enough, I’d fold like I always did. “In your dreams,” I spat. Scott’s composure broke. He lunged forward and slapped me—hard. The crack of his hand against my cheek echoed in the small office. “Claire, the money is gone anyway! Quit being a bitch! You’re taking this house, and you’re paying for it. Bonnie already put it in your name. You have no choice!” I clutched my stinging cheek, staring at them. They were so desperate to tie me to that house. Why? In my last life, my cancer was stage four by the time it was found. My mentor, Dr. Sutherland, had been devastated. He said if we’d caught it even a month earlier, I might have stood a chance. But I’d had no symptoms. None. Is it possible to go from perfectly healthy to terminal in a week? My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Dr. Sutherland with my routine physical results. Claire, you’re healthy as a horse. I think you’re just burnt out. Stop imagining symptoms and take a vacation. See you Monday. The weight in my chest evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. If I wasn’t sick now… then what happened last time? I looked at Scott, forced a shaky breath, and feigned a look of defeat. “Fine. If you’re going to force my hand… I’ll take the house.” Their faces softened instantly. Relief washed over Bonnie’s features. “But,” I added, “the title goes in Scott’s name. Since it’s ‘for our future’ and he’s the one so eager to help, it’s only fair he holds the deed.” Scott froze. His eyes shifted. “The loan… it’s already tied to your credit, Claire. We can’t change the paperwork now.” His voice lost its humility, turning sharp and demanding again. “We’re going to be family. My debt is your debt. Just pay her and let’s move on!” ‘I’m doing this to atone for your sins,’ he had told me in the other life as he emptied my bank accounts. ‘You owe Bonnie everything. This money is nothing compared to her life.’ The rage finally broke through. I didn’t scream. I kicked—hard—landing a blow right on Scott’s kneecap. He buckled with a groan. “You used my identity to take out a loan for your mistress’s house? You want to talk about ‘good deeds’? Take the loan yourself, Scott. Either the house goes in your name, or…” I turned to Bonnie, giving her a terrifyingly sweet smile. “You return every cent of that ‘sale’ money to the bank immediately. I don’t care if you die on the sidewalk.” Scott looked away, silent. Bonnie began to sob hysterically. “Claire, you’re just saying my house is ‘dirty’ because of me! I’m sick, but my house isn’t! If I have to die to make you happy, fine! I’ll do it!” Before anyone could move, Bonnie scrambled toward the window. She threw it open and hauled herself onto the ledge, staring down at the concrete five stories below. 4 The hallway erupted. Screams of “Don’t do it!” and “Look what you did!” pelted me from all sides. “It’s just a loan!” a nurse shouted. “You’re going to be married! Why are you killing her over a credit score?” “She’s trying to prove her house is clean!” a patient yelled. “You should be ashamed!” Scott scrambled up, gasping in pain, and tackled Bonnie away from the ledge, pulling her back into the safety of the room. He held her shaking body and glared at me with pure, unadulterated hatred. “This house is her legacy, Claire. You’re losing a bit of money; she’s losing her life! Even if you don’t want it, you don’t drive a dying woman to suicide! Just sell it yourself later if you hate it so much!” Bonnie’s wails intensified. She clung to Scott’s shirt. “No! I won’t let her sell it to a stranger! It has to be Claire. Only Claire. I don’t have much time left… please, let this be my final wish.” I looked around the room. Every eye was a judge. Every mouth was a weapon. If Bonnie was this insistent on me living in that house… there had to be a reason. Something she couldn’t risk a stranger finding. “Fine,” I said, my voice steady. “I’ll move in.” Bonnie’s crying stopped as if a switch had been flipped. She blinked, her face lighting up with an eerie, manic glow. “You won’t regret it, Claire. But… I want to see you there. I want to know you’re settled.” Scott nodded quickly, speaking for me. “Whatever you want, Bonnie. Claire will do it.” “I want you to send me videos,” Bonnie whispered, her voice honey-sweet now. “Every day. I want to see you living there. I want to see you sleeping in that bedroom. It’ll make me feel like I’m still part of the world.” She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And I want Scott to stay there with you. To make sure you’re… safe. But you take the bed. Scott can sleep on the floor. I want to know you’re comfortable.” I agreed, the hair on my arms standing up. Within hours, they were “helping” me move. Bonnie was practically vibrating with excitement as Scott hauled my suitcases into the master bedroom. She spent the whole time fussing over the furniture. “That bed was a fortune, Claire. Best sleep of your life, I promise. Don’t you dare replace it.” She patted the mattress with a strange, reverent intensity. “The mattress is custom-fitted. Don’t move it. Don’t even flip it. Just… rest.” I nodded absently, watching her. As she stood by the door to leave, her face looked gaunt, almost grey in the hallway light. “Watch your health, Claire. Cancer is a sneaky thing. It would be a tragedy if you ended up like me because you waited too long to get checked.” A cold shiver raced down my spine. How does she know? Once they were gone, I stood in the center of the silent house. Everything was fresh, newly renovated, smelling faintly of paint and expensive wood. But there was something else—a metallic, ozone-heavy scent that didn’t belong. I called a professional to test for formaldehyde and lead. Nothing. The house was “clean.” I tore through the closets, checked the vents, looked for hidden cameras. Nothing. I sat on the edge of the bed, my mind racing. ‘Sleeping on a patient’s bed… aren’t you afraid of the bad juju?’ a friend had joked once. I looked down at the mattress. ‘Don’t move it. Don’t flip it.’ I stood up, gripped the edge of the heavy custom mattress, and heaved it off the frame. When I saw what was taped to the slats underneath, a jagged, terrifying laugh escaped my throat. I finally understood how Bonnie’s terminal cancer had “disappeared.”

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After I posted my retirement announcement, everyone applauded. Only Simons, my girlfriend Julia’s rumored boyfriend and rising creative genius, objected. In front of numerous reporters, he put on a show. “It’s all a misunderstanding. Anthony is an indispensable talent. I sincerely hope he can return to the entertainment industry.” I turned off my phone, ignoring his proclamation. In my past life, my work was identical to his original single. Online users accused me of plagiarism and wished death upon my entire family. Unwilling to accept this, I posted all my creative process, but it couldn’t overcome the final publication time of the work. His new song was published ten minutes earlier than mine. Because of those ten minutes, netizens created death photo edits of me, and some even came to my house to throw paint. Over several years, constant cyberbullying gave me depression. My parents spent their entire fortune trying to clear my name, but were burned to death by crazed fans. Finally, on the day his original song won an award, I leaped from a high-rise building. Unexpectedly, when I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn on the day the new song was published.

“Your new song will be released on time at noon today.” “Don’t be nervous. With the quality of this song, you’ll definitely win Best Creator at this year’s Music Awards!” My agent Johnston patted my shoulder, and I gasped for air as if waking from a nightmare. Looking at the familiar living room and the bewildered Johnston in front of me, I finally realized I had been reborn on the day of the new song’s release. “You’ve worked hard staying up late to write songs these past few days. I won’t schedule any announcements for you. Get some good rest.” “Wait!” I called out to Johnston, who had reached the door, my eyes fixed on the wall clock. The second hand ticked forward. When the minute hand pointed to 10, I opened my phone and found Simons’ Twitter. Just like in my previous life, he posted a music website link with the caption: “Original solo single ‘Sunshine in the Ruins’ awaiting your listening.” Opening the link, a male voice flowed from my phone. “What’s going on? Isn’t this your new song!” Johnston stepped forward and grabbed my phone. “The melody, the lyrics—they’re all the same. This is your original work. How could Simons publish it early!” “Could it be someone from the recording studio who stole the song? Wait, I’ll have someone investigate right now!” I stopped Johnston. “Cancel the new song release with the company!” In my past life, because I released the exact same single as Simons, I was branded a plagiarist. To clear my name, I posted my creative process, but no one cared. “Plagiarism is plagiarism—doing it but not daring to admit it!” “Now you’re even faking the process to prove yourself. That must have been exhausting to write, huh?” “Plagiarists deserve to have their whole families die! Support Simons in defending his rights. Sue him until he’s bankrupt!” My agent Johnston and the recording studio teachers spoke up for me, but they were also cursed out by netizens. At that time, my girlfriend Julia, who had won Best Actress, went live. During the livestream, my girlfriend who had always refused to make our relationship public openly declared her love for Simons and strongly condemned my plagiarism. In an instant, I was utterly devastated! I had clearly played my new song for her in advance. To protect Simons, she actually backstabbed me, her legitimate boyfriend! Following her lead, the fans’ anger surged. They flooded my social media, cursing me endlessly. Singers and actors I had worked with avoided me like the plague, eager to distance themselves from me. If anyone didn’t publicly condemn me, they would be attacked by masses of fans. As they wished, I was blacklisted from the industry, expelled from the professional association, and even my previous awards were revoked. Under public pressure, my management company terminated my contract. From that point on, whenever Simons released a song, I would be dragged out and viciously cursed. Netizens sent me funeral wreaths and created death photo edits. Some even came to my house to throw paint. Years of cyberbullying gave me depression. My parents spent their entire fortune trying to clear my name, but were burned to death by crazed fans. On the day Simons’ original song won the Music Award, I leaped from a high-rise building. What I never expected was that when I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn. Heaven gave me a chance to start over. This time, I had to figure out what was really going on.

“The company spent a fortune on this single. You can’t just cancel it like that. I won’t be able to explain this to the higher-ups!” “How about this—I’ll investigate the song theft, and you quickly write another song to turn in.” After Johnston left, I sat alone on the sofa thinking for a long time. Simons was my girlfriend’s childhood friend. They grew up together and had always been very close. After graduating from a music academy abroad, Simons entered the entertainment industry through Julia’s connections. With the seasoned Julia as his backer, he signed directly with SKY Entertainment, the largest entertainment company in the country. Right from his debut, he sang the theme song for an international director’s film. These were all privileges I, the legitimate boyfriend, had never enjoyed. Because Julia treated him so well, I was always jealous and resentful. But Julia said her family and Simons’ family were old friends, and it would look bad if she didn’t help him. Not wanting to make things difficult for her, I turned a blind eye. Little did I know that Simons had always been the one she desired but couldn’t have in her youth. My hands kept moving as I continued searching through Simons’ Twitter for clues. Finally, I discovered something suspicious in a post from a month ago. On August 26th, Simons posted a photo with the caption: Creative inspiration flowing. I enlarged the photo and examined it carefully. Suddenly, my head buzzed! The draft paper on his desk showed the same creative thought process as mine. Even the lyrics I had deleted were identical, word for word! I wrote the lyrics based on my personal experiences. There was absolutely no possibility of plagiarism or borrowing. Could it be that Simons, like me, had experienced that earthquake? No, impossible! Simons and Julia were both from the north. How could they have been living on that southern island? But how else could I explain our identical manuscripts? While I was racking my brain unable to figure this out, Johnston called again. Unsurprisingly, there were no leads on the song theft. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Johnston was right. The company had spent big money promoting this new song. Besides Twitter trending topics, there were LED screen advertisements in major shopping districts. The upfront investment was at least several million. To minimize the company’s losses, I could only work harder to create another new song. Rushing into my studio and picking up my long-absent guitar, my hands trembled involuntarily. This time, let me become Nemesis and write about the injustice I suffered in my past life. I didn’t believe Simons could have the same rebirth experience as me! In two days, I finally finished writing the lyrics and melody for the new song after staying up all night. Using another spare phone, I recorded a simple demo and immediately sent it to Johnston. After listening, Johnston excitedly sent five emojis. “Rock? Anthony, you’re a musical genius! How many more surprises do you have that I don’t know about?” Before I could reply, Johnston sent a voice message: “I’ve booked the recording studio. I’ll pick you up in an hour.” When we left the recording studio, the sky was gradually brightening. Johnston loosened his shoulders. “Christmas break is coming up soon. Your song will probably be released around January 3rd. What do you think?” I didn’t rush to reply to Johnston. Instead, I asked about Simons’ recent situation. “I have a friend at SKY Entertainment. He said Simons hasn’t been to the company lately. No one knows what he’s up to.” After releasing a new song, he should have been touring the country for promotions, but there wasn’t any activity from him. It was too strange. To avoid any more accidents, it was good to observe ahead of time. I took a deep breath and agreed to the company’s proposal to delay the release. After returning home, I finally got the most restful sleep since my rebirth. I was awakened again by Johnston’s knocking. “Anthony, this is bad!” “Simons released another song, and it’s… identical to the new song you recorded early this morning!”

Johnston’s words were like a heavy blow, crushing all the courage I had built up since my rebirth. Why couldn’t I change any of this even with a second chance! Did this mean I could never make music again? Would I have to live forever in Simons’ shadow? To avoid unnecessary trouble, this time I had left my regular phone on the balcony and hadn’t used the computer to arrange the music. How did Simons know about my original song! On Twitter, Simons, who had released two original singles in succession, trended for three consecutive days. The top two spots on all major music charts were Simons’ singles. His popularity even overshadowed a superstar whose secret marriage had been exposed. Some fans asked him in the comments under the new song link why he had changed his style. “My previous new song was plagiarized by someone. Fortunately, I changed the timing and released it early, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to clear my name even if I was right. This new song is a warning to those who steal other people’s work. Talent is a creative artist’s foundation, and I’m someone you’ll never be able to catch up to!” His domineering declaration caused an uproar on social media. Following the company’s previous new song announcement, some people found my Twitter and kept posting comments. “Simons’ plagiarist must be you, right? Didn’t you say you were releasing a song? It’s been so long—where’s your new song?” “And you call yourself an excellent creative artist. Your previous albums must have been ghostwritten too, right?” In this life, I hadn’t released a song, yet I was still branded a plagiarist by Simons. But without solid evidence, my fans weren’t pushovers. How could they let me be slandered? They argued fiercely with those clamoring netizens in the comments section. Simons was a newly debuted artist with mostly casual fans and very few loyal followers. During this controversy, Simons’ reputation fell instead of rising. At this point, Julia couldn’t sit still. “You must come to Simons’ celebration party tomorrow!” Julia’s tone was harsh. I laughed bitterly. “Why should I!” “You have the nerve to ask why! Your fans are cyberbullying Simons. He’s been drowning himself in alcohol these past two days!” “If you still want to be my boyfriend, you must come to the celebration party tomorrow to dispel the rumors!” Simons plagiarized my songs and still wanted me to celebrate with him. Even with ten thousand grievances, I could only grit my teeth and endure. Because I still needed to uncover the secret about Simons. On the day of the celebration party, Julia held Simons’ arm, surrounded by people. “Simons’ two originals broke records directly. They’ve been at number one for a week already!” “Our Simons’ ballads bring people to tears. Who would have thought his rock could be so soul-stirring? He’s truly a creative genius!” The staff around him glanced at me. “Unlike some people who carry the title of genius but engage in theft.” I looked down and smiled. “Simons really is a rare talent. Since that’s the case, can you tell us why you used a minor key for your first original?” Simons didn’t rush to answer. Instead, he exchanged a glance with Julia. “Anthony, that’s enough! Simons graciously invited you to his celebration party, not for you to cause trouble!” Julia’s face flushed red as she defended Simons. In that instant, I had an epiphany—she must know the truth too. “Aren’t you supposed to be a creative genius? Why can’t you even explain the reason!” Simons pushed Julia aside: “There’s nothing I can’t say. Major keys are cheerful, minor keys are sad and gentle. If you play ‘Sunshine in the Ruins’ at 0.75 speed, you’ll discover this isn’t actually a cheerful song at all. Of course a minor key better fits the song’s true meaning.” My heart pounded wildly. Simons’ songwriting thoughts were identical to mine. Especially the 0.75 speed playback—this was a hidden easter egg I had placed in the song. How could he even know about this? I felt darkness before my eyes. “Thank you for the explanation. I have something to attend to. I’m leaving.” As soon as I walked out of the private room, Julia chased after me. “What was the point of that! In front of all those people, did you have to embarrass Simons?” I was thoroughly disappointed in Julia and didn’t want to get entangled with her anymore. “Let’s break up!” “I’m retiring from the industry and going back home. I wish you and Simons all the best!” “What are you doing now! If you go home, what can you do? Move bricks with your incompetent father?” Julia sneered. “Can your father afford your contract termination fee?” I smiled indifferently and left decisively. Julia didn’t know I was a genuine second-generation rich kid. My dad was indeed a contractor over a decade ago, but he caught the right timing and was now a nationally renowned real estate developer. The astronomical termination fee was nothing more than selling a few fewer properties to my dad. Without making music, I could still go home and inherit the family business. I wanted to see how Simons could continue being a rising creative genius without me creating anything!

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I’m an actress, and my boyfriend—who’s also my agent—told me to gain twenty pounds to land a role. But when I arrived on set, the director looked at me with regret and sighed. “Your acting is solid, but you’re too heavy. Didn’t your agent tell you this role requires someone slimmer?” I was about to ask my boyfriend what was going on. But then I saw him smiling as he congratulated my rival, Natasha. Turns out Natasha got the role. When our eyes met, his expression was weary. “She needs this role more than you do. Your acting is too good—to keep you from getting cast, I had to trick you into gaining weight.” “You’ve been pestering me about marriage, right? Perfect timing—now that you’ve gained weight and can’t get any roles, let’s hurry up and get married.” In that moment, I realized that in five years, he’d never forgotten Natasha. I let out a bitter laugh and removed the simple ring engraved with his initials from my finger. “No. We’re breaking up.” The ring rolled under the sofa. Cameron’s expression darkened. “You want me to beg you to stay in front of her, to prove how important you are to me, is that it?” I opened my mouth. “No…” Before I could finish, he raised his hand, impatience in his eyes. “Don’t explain. Whatever. Just don’t come crying to me drunk later, begging to get back together.” I clutched the hem of my clothes, my cheeks burning. It was more humiliating than being slapped in public. Natasha tugged at his sleeve. “I told you not to talk to girls like that… He’s just blunt, he doesn’t mean any harm, don’t take it personally…” Cameron pulled her away. “Don’t waste your breath on her. Don’t you still need to pick out your costume?” The two of them left without hesitation. Their interaction was almost identical to the romantic clips that circulated online years ago—so in sync, as if they’d never broken up at all. Someone caught this moment on camera and posted it online from a burner account. And once again, my figure became negative news. [Oh my God, her body is seriously ugly. Does she even know she’s an actress? Is she planning to play a pig with that weight?] [I can’t believe this. She just gains weight whenever she wants—does she have any professional standards? Can’t she control her eating? Look at Natasha!] I’ve had the kind of body that gains weight from drinking water since I was a kid. The first time I was mass-ridiculed online for looking heavy on camera, I developed depression and had to take hormones to control it. My weight skyrocketed again. Directors rejected me. I was on the verge of giving up my acting dreams. That’s when Cameron pushed through the crowd of people mocking me and took me away. Looking at my tear-streaked makeup, he said, “Everyone already looks down on you—are you going to bully yourself too?” From that moment on, I saw him as my guiding light. I followed him silently, and I fell for him. He knew how hard my journey had been. He knew how much I trusted him. And now, he’d shattered that trust with his own hands. My phone chimed. It wasn’t a message from him—it was several loyal fans privately messaging me on social media, telling me to fire my agent. From the first time I worked with Cameron and got cyberbullied over styling and unflattering roles, they’d been telling me to drop him. But I always believed that as long as my acting was solid, I could play any role well, no matter how thankless. But now, the labels of “most vicious” and “most foolish supporting character” had been nailed to me, even seeping into my real life.

Only now did I realize how laughable my confidence was in the face of the contrast he deliberately created. My assistant sighed. “Stop reading that. I signed you up for a weight loss program.” I took a deep breath, staring out at the rainy weather. “Don’t bother. Doesn’t the company want me to go international? Director Andrew’s project—let’s take it.” My assistant looked at me in shock. “If you take that project, you’ll be working in Europe for two years. What about you and Cameron?” I cut her off calmly. “It doesn’t matter. From now on, my business has nothing to do with him.” When my manager found out I’d agreed to change my development path, he was thrilled. To build momentum for me, he didn’t pull down the online rumors. At least I wasn’t as psychologically fragile as I used to be. But as I was filling out the overseas assignment form, Cameron stormed into the office in a rage. “I told you when I got here not to create rumors about Natasha. Now the internet is full of people calling her manipulative…” He hadn’t expected me to be there. His anger stopped abruptly, replaced by a trace of embarrassment. Rumor had it that after he and Natasha broke up, the company spent a fortune to poach him and agreed to many unfair terms. I just hadn’t expected one of those terms to be about Natasha. Looking back, when he was supposedly trying to make me famous, he ignored positive PR about my professionalism and kindness. Instead, he churned out rumors about me for free—about my looks, my body, my personality, one after another, sometimes trending all day. When crazed fans stalked me, he never showed an ounce of concern or anger. Just like now—both situations involved rumors, but his eyes only held Natasha. I let out an inexplicable laugh. His expression turned ugly. “I knew it. The manager promised me he wouldn’t go after her, so it was you, wasn’t it?” “You’re upset that I lied to you and gave her the role, so you got your fans to call her manipulative, to say she’s using me to suppress and smear you and your roles?” I frowned slightly, about to explain, when Cameron’s phone rang. Seeing the caller ID labeled “Natasha,” he answered in seconds. It was treatment I’d never received in five years—not even when stalker fans chased my car and I called him for help. “Cameron, someone leaked photos of you and Priscilla on a date. Now everyone’s saying Natasha is a homewrecker who came between you two.” “She’s crying uncontrollably, threatening to jump off a building to prove her innocence!” In that moment, he panicked so badly his legs went weak. The look he gave me was full of resentment. “You’re ruthless. To destroy her, you’ll even flip over your own meal ticket!” He didn’t give me a chance to speak. He stumbled away. The manager looked at me helplessly. “We didn’t buy those photos. Should I…” I forced a smile. “Don’t bother. Let him think whatever he wants. I’m leaving anyway.” The manager sighed and took the form from my hands. Not even three minutes after I left the office, my phone buzzed with a special notification from social media. I opened it to see Cameron had reposted the most-viewed dating photo. [Not in a relationship. Just colleagues. Natasha and I never broke up. All marketing involving Priscilla was work-related. There is no homewrecking situation.] My heart felt like it was being crushed by an invisible hand. When he was first poached by the company to manage me, Natasha’s fans said I’d stolen him away, that I was the catalyst for their breakup. After paparazzi photos of us together surfaced, it confirmed everything. I endured a full year of cyberbullying. At its worst, the company suggested we officially announce our relationship to clear things up.

But he always used the excuse that I needed to focus on my career, refusing again and again, watching me get cursed at in public. And now he’d given the official announcement that should’ve been mine to his ex. He still let the “homewrecker” label follow me. Only now did I understand—true love has no obstacles. The only obstacle was that he never loved me. The company couldn’t do anything about him, so they assigned me a new agent and rushed to officially clear up the relationship. But when it came time to transfer responsibilities, he refused. “I’ve managed her for so many years—no one knows better than me how she should develop!” His sudden change in attitude was laughable, and it only confirmed my role as a stepping stone, a foil. I looked at him quietly, my eyes filled with unfathomable numbness and sorrow. “No. I know what’s best for myself.” He stiffened, as if he’d never expected me to talk to him this way. In the past, the company had also suggested changing agents. But he never even had to object—I’d refuse on my own, wanting any excuse to spend more time with him. But now that I was standing firm, he was completely powerless. As the tension peaked, the manager pulled out my overseas assignment form. “Actually, it’s because Priscilla is leaving…” Cameron frowned, reaching for the document. I moved in front of him immediately. “I decide my own career path. If not me, then the company will. If you won’t transfer your duties, I’ll do it myself.” With that, I folded the form and handed it to the manager, shaking my head gently. As I turned to leave, Cameron reached out to grab my wrist, but I dodged him. After the unpleasant confrontation, I went home and started packing. As I was organizing, my phone buzzed with a rare message from him. [She’s psychologically fragile. I was just comforting her. Don’t overthink it.] This was the first time in a month he’d voluntarily talked to me about something unrelated to work—and it was still about Natasha. But when I’d acted cute, asked for support, complained, or sought comfort, his most common response was [Be strong.] I didn’t call him immediately like I used to, acting cute and vulnerable, expressing my relationship needs and asking him to care more about me. After all, what was the point? Soon, the password lock at my door beeped with several failed attempts. My heart jumped. I opened the security camera to see him at the door. My heart settled, and along with it, my expectations of him. A simple anniversary password—in five years, he’d never successfully opened this door. But the social media login password he hadn’t used in two years, the one based on Natasha’s birthday, took him less than a minute to remember this afternoon. I put down what I was holding and let him in. His eyes held a trace of concern. “Why didn’t you open the door? I thought something happened to you.” I found it ridiculous. “What could happen? I have a very strong mental state.” He frowned slightly. The guilt in his eyes disappeared. “The rumors and gossip were released by her own company. I didn’t get the full story before I verbally attacked you—that’s my fault.” “But you don’t need to be so passive-aggressive about her. She and I only broke up because of the company. There’s nothing between us.” “That statement was also posted from my account by her. By the time I noticed, there was no way to clarify. I already told you we can get married right now. You don’t need to keep harping on this.” Seeing the barely concealed impatience in his eyes,

I suddenly spoke up. “So if you two hadn’t broken up, would you talk to her like this too? Demanding she marry you without even proposing?” He looked irritated. “That’s not important. Right now you’re in the rising phase of your career, you can’t…” My heart clenched suddenly. Before he could finish, I slapped him across the face, my voice terrifyingly calm. “You know I’m in my rising phase, but you still tricked me into gaining weight!” “Yes, none of it matters. Whether your excuses were for my good or because you can’t forget her—none of it matters. What matters is we’ve already broken up.” “Now get out of my house immediately! I don’t want to see you!” His eyes reddened with anger and a trace of shock at being kicked out for the first time. He slammed the door on his way out, leaving behind a vicious parting shot. “You’ll regret this!” In five years, I’d always accommodated him. We’d never had this kind of hostile atmosphere. So when he realized I was no longer easy to control, no longer compliant, he pulled out all the dirty tricks he’d kept hidden. My new agent, Livingston, said there was a charity gala to attend that evening. But when I arrived, I discovered it was a low-end commercial drinking party. Cameron and Natasha sat on either side of the boss. Livingston gently pushed me inside. “Your resources have been downgraded and you’re not making money. Cameron said if you can help Natasha handle this event, he’ll get the director to give you a good role.” When I was a newcomer working with Cameron, I couldn’t land good roles or get paid, which dragged down his performance bonuses and evaluations. To avoid being a burden to him, I secretly accepted a commercial dinner reception. At first it was just drinking. Then several people started forcing drinks on me. I tried to run, but the door was locked. They groped me lewdly all over. Just as I was losing hope, Cameron kicked the door open, holding an axe, and split the round table in half. His eyes bloodshot, he pulled me into his arms protectively. He took me back and scolded me the whole way, saying I had no brains. He said these drinking parties almost always ended in sleeping with clients. By the end of his lecture, I’d gone silent, blood flowing from my mouth like water. That time, his face showed a panic I’d never seen before. After that, I almost never attended events that required drinking. Seeing me frozen in place, Natasha walked over with a smile. “It’s my fault. I said I couldn’t drink much but didn’t want to refuse the investor’s goodwill, so he said you could drink and called you over.” “You don’t mind, right? After all, we’re just trying to get you roles.” Seeing the triumph mixed with provocation in her eyes, I was surprisingly calm. Fine. I’d drink tonight. After tomorrow, all grudges would end. I raised my glass, meeting his surprised and slightly nervous gaze. “Thank you all for this opportunity.” The cheap alcohol burned down my esophagus into my stomach. I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and poured another glass. “But this time…” Before I could finish, Cameron frowned and snatched the glass from my hand. His voice was low. “If you can’t drink, don’t! Do you have to be so stubborn? Is it that hard to give in?” I smiled. Just as I was about to speak, a clattering sound came from overhead. Before we could look up, the room began shaking violently.

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Evelyn lay in the hospital, struggling through a life-threatening childbirth, while Adrian Caldwell set off a spectacular fireworks display worth 7.45 million for his first love, Claire Sullivan. That very night, a video of the billionaire heir passionately kissing his first love beneath the fireworks flooded the internet. The next day, Claire sent Evelyn a photo. In it, Adrian held her close, her body covered in marks of his kisses. She said, “Now that the real one is back, when will you, the stand-in, fuck off?” Evelyn let out a bitter smile. Claire was right. After three years as a substitute, risking her life to give birth to his child, she had finally completed her role. She could leave now. “Evelyn, here’s the five million dollar check I promised you, and a plane ticket to Paris for two weeks from today.” Evelyn Sterling took the envelope and bowed slightly to Adrian Caldwell’s father, Charles. “Thank you for taking care of me these past three years, Mr. Caldwell.” Charles sighed. “Evelyn, you just gave birth. Do you really have to leave so soon?” A bitter smile crossed Evelyn’s face. “Adrian doesn’t have feelings for me. Now that his first love, Miss Sullivan, has returned, I’ve been put back in my place.” Charles let out a long sigh. “Evelyn, I have a heart. That’s your own flesh and blood. I know we signed a contract, but I’ve seen who you really are. You can come back and see the child anytime.” Evelyn waved her hand dismissively. “Mr. Caldwell, holding onto ties that are already broken only leads to endless pain.” It wasn’t that Evelyn didn’t love her child. She knew she was never meant to be the real lady of the Caldwell household. That place belonged to Claire Sullivan, Adrian’s first love. Claire and Adrian both came from wealthy families. They had known each other since childhood, so it was natural for them to be together. Unexpectedly, Claire suddenly went abroad and disappeared without a trace. When Adrian finally heard from her again, there was already another tall, handsome man by her side. The abrupt breakup combined with her immediate new relationship sent Adrian into severe depression. Seeing his son in such a state, Charles found Evelyn, who resembled Claire. Charles covered all of Evelyn’s mother’s medical expenses and promised to take care of all her future educational needs. But the condition was that Evelyn had to help Adrian get over his heartbreak and give him a grandson. From that day on, a persistent shadow appeared behind Adrian Caldwell. When he worked until he fainted from stomach pain, Evelyn always appeared in time to drive him home, even washing his clothes and placing warm porridge on his nightstand before he woke up. When he had business difficulties, Evelyn stepped in to help smooth over relationships. Everyone at the company greeted Evelyn warmly the moment they saw her. No one disliked Evelyn, except Adrian Caldwell. It wasn’t until Adrian got drunk at a celebration party and slept with Evelyn that he reluctantly gave her a title. Later, Evelyn learned that the reason he got drunk was because Claire was getting engaged. Even knowing she was Claire’s replacement, Evelyn never showed any dissatisfaction. She followed the contract and took care of the Caldwell household inside and out with dedication. After marriage, her relationship with Adrian slowly improved. She even got pregnant quickly. For a while, Evelyn mistakenly thought Adrian had truly fallen in love with her and that life would go on like this forever. Then Claire divorced her foreign husband and returned to the country to see Adrian. The day Claire came back, Evelyn was thirty-two weeks pregnant, in her third trimester. That evening, to celebrate Claire’s return, Adrian threw a lavish banquet in the city center, booking an entire hotel to make her happy. He even set off seven million four hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of brilliant fireworks on the golden beach of the East Coast waterfront for Claire. That night, when Evelyn heard the news, she suddenly went into contractions and had to be admitted to the hospital. Following Charles’s orders, Evelyn couldn’t have a C-section. She had to give birth naturally without anesthesia. When her contractions made it feel like someone was tearing at her internal organs, she finally heard a familiar voice. Outside the door, Charles asked Adrian, “Your wife is giving birth, why are you only arriving now!” Adrian explained somewhat sheepishly, “Dad, I got held up with some work matters. I’m doing this for our family, aren’t I?” Even though Evelyn’s love for Adrian began with a contract, after three years together, her heart had long been filled with him. She even began to fantasize about whether her existence had gained some significance to Adrian. Suddenly, the nurse turned up the volume on the fetal heart monitor, and Evelyn heard Claire’s voice from outside the door. “Adrian, I had no choice but to go abroad back then. I just needed treatment…” The heart rate instantly spiked to one hundred and eighty. Evelyn bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood, just to keep herself from crying out loud. So even when she was giving birth to Adrian’s child, she still couldn’t catch his eye as a mere replacement. Adrian’s love had been fully invested in Claire from the very beginning. He came to the hospital not for her. Only for his biological son. Evelyn covered her mouth to keep from crying out. But she let tears flow freely down her cheeks. As the baby let out its first cry, Evelyn shed tears for Adrian for the last time. Fourteen more days, and we’ll have nothing to do with each other.

When Evelyn returned to the company, Claire was already sitting at her desk. “Miss Sterling, hasn’t Adrian told you that he’s given me the Executive Director position?” Evelyn frowned. “I haven’t even done a handover. What gives you the right to say that so confidently?” Claire smiled and twirled her hair, her tone full of mockery. “If your abilities can’t keep you in this position, don’t blame others for taking it. If you’re just taking up space, you deserve it.” Claire’s words clearly had a double meaning. As everyone around watched the drama unfold, Adrian heard the commotion and came out, frowning as he beckoned to Evelyn. “Come in for a moment.” Without complaint, Evelyn obediently entered the CEO’s office. “Adrian, I’m not objecting to what you did. I’m just curious why my position was taken by someone else the moment I came back from maternity leave after giving birth?” Even though Evelyn was about to leave, seeing Adrian let this woman take her place so quickly still sent a dense, needle-like pain through her heart. Hearing this, Adrian was the one who got upset first. His expression darkened. “Evelyn, you talk too much. Don’t forget who you are and who gave you all this!” Evelyn froze for a moment. She opened her mouth but couldn’t say a word. What could she say? She was Adrian’s woman now. Even though everyone knew how hard she worked, Adrian’s gaze had never lingered on her for a moment. “This isn’t my fault either.” Seeing Evelyn’s silence, Adrian spoke indifferently, like giving a slap followed by a sweet treat. “Evelyn, you were gone for so long having the baby. What would happen to your position if no one filled it?” “You can’t expect the whole company to wait for you, can you?” “Besides, it wasn’t just the months you spent having the baby. You stayed in the hospital for so long after giving birth. For the company, that’s all money!” Evelyn felt like her heart was bleeding. She had given Adrian a child, but all Adrian cared about was the company. He was even counting every moment of her maternity leave. “I know you’re resentful. How about this? Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it for you.” Hearing this, Evelyn found it all so ironic. She pulled out a document from her bag. It was her divorce agreement with Adrian. “Then sign this. Let’s get divorced. The child stays with you. I won’t take a penny from you.” But Adrian at this moment seemed not to hear Evelyn’s words at all. His eyes held a smile as his gaze remained fixed on Claire outside the door. Claire was waving at him, apparently wanting to meet with him later. Without even looking, Adrian quickly signed his name on the divorce papers. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Happy now? Okay, Evelyn, don’t bother me anymore. I have a lunch meeting with a client.” Smiling, he grabbed his jacket and left with Claire without looking back. Evelyn watched his retreating figure and waved as well. Goodbye. Let’s never see each other again.

Ten days countdown. Evelyn got up early. Adrian never came home last night. But none of that had anything to do with her anymore. Her ex-husband’s affairs were none of her business. After packing her things, Evelyn arrived at the university campus. As soon as she reached the entrance, the department chair walked over with a smile. “Oh, Evelyn! Long time no see. How have you been lately?” The department chair pointed to a building still under construction in the distance and said with a smile. “The million dollars you donated last time has already been put into our educational programs! From now on, our school will have more support and resources for art students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is all thanks to you. If it weren’t for you, we definitely couldn’t have done this!” Evelyn had been a fortunate art student from a disadvantaged background. Being able to study at this school was her luck, and now she wanted to pass that luck on to others. Hearing the department chair’s words, she waved her hand with a smile. “This is what I should do.” The department chair sighed. “What a shame. Your artistic talent is so high. If you had continued, you might have become nationally renowned. But why did you choose to become some director for the Caldwell family… to go into finance!” Evelyn didn’t want to hear Adrian’s name anymore. She explained. “Please don’t say that, department chair. I’m free now and ready to pursue my own dreams. I’m going to Paris soon.” The department chair immediately became alert. “At this particular time? But if you really go to Paris now, aren’t you afraid that everything you have will be taken by someone else?” The Caldwell family situation was an open secret. Evelyn and Claire were constantly compared by everyone. Hearing the department chair’s words, Evelyn just smiled faintly. The department chair saw this and fell silent for a long while. “Alright. If that’s your decision, then I wish you a safe journey.” Just after leaving the school, someone from the company suddenly called Evelyn. Without any preamble, they started berating her. “When are you going to give us the latest proposal? You still haven’t submitted it?” Evelyn saw it was one of her subordinates calling. She had been mentoring her subordinates for years, but now that she’d been demoted, her subordinates were ordering her around. Ordering her to do work that was the Executive Director’s responsibility. Evelyn didn’t want to be taken advantage of anymore. Hearing the colleague ask this, she replied coldly. “Claire is in that position now. Ask her for whatever proposals you need. What does it have to do with me?” Evelyn had always been well-liked at the company. On one hand, she had a good temper and never got angry. On the other hand, her professional abilities were outstanding. But now that Evelyn was being so assertive, her colleagues were stunned. Evelyn had no intention of continuing to listen. Just as she was about to hang up, she heard Adrian say, “Is that Evelyn? Wait, don’t hang up.” His voice grew from soft to loud as he apparently took the phone. “Evelyn, when you get home, can you let Claire in? She just came back to the country and doesn’t have a place to stay. Claire will be staying at our house for now.”

A bitter smile tugged at Evelyn’s lips. She hadn’t even left yet, and Adrian couldn’t wait to bring Claire home?! Everyone held their breath, not daring to make a sound. Seeing that Evelyn didn’t immediately agree, Adrian frowned. “Evelyn, what does your silence mean?” “How many times do I have to tell you? Claire and I are just friends, and now we have a work relationship.” “She doesn’t have a place to stay. What’s wrong with her resting at our house tonight? Can you stop being so petty?” Evelyn remained quiet, not saying a single unnecessary word. Adrian’s frown deepened, then he changed his tone. “Claire never cares about what I do outside or how late I work. In my eyes, that’s what a virtuous wife and good mother should be like.” A virtuous wife and good mother? Then I wish you both a hundred years of happiness and many children. Evelyn grumbled internally, then said flatly, “Then open the door for her yourself. If you like her so much, you do it. I have to go to the hospital later. I don’t have time.” Besides, she wasn’t Adrian’s servant. Though in Adrian’s mind right now, that’s probably exactly what he thought of her. Adrian froze. This was the first time in all these years that Evelyn had refused him. Normally, how would Evelyn dare speak to him like this? Even when her period made her feel terrible, she would immediately fulfill whatever he wanted. Adrian’s voice was tinged with anger. “Evelyn, do you think having a child gives you a voice now? Let me tell you, I’m still the one in charge of this house! You’ll do what I tell you to do!” After hearing this, Evelyn replied coolly, “Oh, my stomach hurts, honey. I need to go to the hospital for a checkup. If you think it’s better for a woman who just gave birth with stomach pain to skip the hospital and go home to open the door for someone, then I can do what you say.” Evelyn’s words were particularly cutting. Adrian was a bit stunned. When did she get such a sharp tongue? Though Adrian suspected Evelyn was faking illness, his mind remained rational and courteous. “Fine, then go to the hospital. I’ll come see you there later too.” Evelyn didn’t plan to hear what he’d say next. She hung up and went to the hospital to see the baby. After all, this was her own flesh and blood. Who knew if she’d ever see him again? Looking at her child in the hospital room, gazing at that tender, adorable face, Evelyn felt a wave of grief. Her child had just been born, yet she would never see him again. Suddenly, she heard a nurse’s voice from outside. “Oh my, Mr. Caldwell, is this your wife? Are you both here to see the baby together?”

Though Claire’s every movement embodied the bearing of a wealthy heiress, and the brand-name clothes she wore formed a stark contrast with Evelyn’s understated style. Standing beside Adrian now, the two of them looked like a perfect match made in heaven. They looked so much like a real couple that even seasoned onlookers couldn’t tell they weren’t actually married. Evelyn turned to look outside. She saw Claire just lower her head and smile shyly. Adrian wasn’t in a hurry to respond either. Instead, he asked, “How’s my son’s health lately?” The nurse nodded quickly. “Good! Of course he’s good. He has a great appetite. Oh my, it must be because you two clearly have such good physiques, so he is naturally very healthy too.” She smiled at Claire and continued praising. “Ma’am, you’re so beautiful, and Mr. Caldwell, you’re so handsome. When he grows up, he’ll definitely be incredibly handsome! I even think he could start being a child model right now!” Evelyn’s expression remained blank as she simply looked away. She had no intention of getting angry. Or rather, she was angry for just a moment before putting it all behind her. For what? What was the point of being angry now? Adrian was legally her ex-husband now. Whoever her ex-husband was with was his freedom. Seemingly noticing Evelyn, Claire suddenly called out to Adrian. “Hey, your collar is a bit messy. Let me straighten it out. We don’t want the baby to see us looking disheveled.” Claire gave Adrian her brightest smile, her eyes completely drawn to him. She gently placed her hand on Adrian’s collar and carefully folded it properly. “Adrian, thank you for helping me with the work situation. If it weren’t for you, I don’t know how many years I’d have to struggle.” She just had to let Evelyn know in front of her that Adrian had orchestrated this whole thing. She wanted Evelyn to know that even if she had a son, so what? After Claire came back, wasn’t she still the first to benefit from everything Adrian had? After straightening his clothes, Claire smiled and stepped back. Suddenly she lost her balance and fell backward. Adrian instinctively caught her waist. People around them looked at the couple’s intimate display with envious glances. This was the newborn area. For a couple who just had a baby to still have this kind of romance. Everyone was quite envious. Looking at Adrian so close to her, Claire lifted her head and kissed him forcefully on the lips. Wolf whistles came from the crowd, but Evelyn found the scene too glaring to watch. Back when Adrian was faithful, no matter how many times she begged, he never accepted her. Evelyn once thought he had some problem in that area. Now it seemed it wasn’t that area that was the problem, but the person. With Claire, he was always ready to go. Evelyn turned her lips down and headed straight for the fire escape exit. Seeing Evelyn’s retreating figure, Adrian quickly steadied Claire. “Was that Evelyn who just walked by?” Claire of course knew it was Evelyn, but she still played dumb. “I don’t know. So what if it was? We were just kissing, we didn’t do anything else. Just friends with benefits.” But Adrian pushed her away and chased after Evelyn’s departing direction. “Evelyn!”

Adrian grabbed Evelyn’s arm, a flash of panic in his eyes. But he didn’t speak, his deep eyes quietly watching Evelyn. Their relationship was always like this. If Evelyn didn’t speak first, he could go a whole day at home without saying a word. “Can I go now?” Evelyn pulled away the arm that was being gripped a bit too tightly. Adrian quickly spoke up. “Evelyn, are you angry? What you just saw, I can explain it all.” Explain? What was there to explain? Everything he’d done these days was real. Him scolding her was real. Even the kiss just now was real. Besides, they would soon have nothing to do with each other. “Okay, I’m not angry. So can I go now? You came to see the baby too, right? You two go see him.” Adrian’s pupils contracted. He had never seen Evelyn look so cold. For a moment, he felt his heart skip a beat. Watching Evelyn’s back, Adrian didn’t quite understand. Why could Evelyn be so magnanimous seeing him with another woman? Had he always thought of her as too petty? After returning home from the hospital, Adrian noticed Evelyn had already gone to her room. “Are you asleep?” Evelyn came out of the room in her pajamas. As soon as she opened the door, she saw Claire clinging to Adrian. “What is it?” Evelyn said coldly. Adrian was about to say something when Claire interrupted directly. “I just wanted to ask if you have any extra pajamas. I didn’t bring many clothes back from abroad.” “If you don’t have your pajamas, you can give me Adrian’s. My frame is just right to fit in his, it’ll cover everything.” She spoke as if she were the lady of the house. Evelyn didn’t want to deal with it and simply returned to her room. But even if she didn’t want to deal with it, she couldn’t sleep peacefully. The knocking continued. “Evelyn, Claire can’t find a towel in the bathroom. Can you get one for her?” “Evelyn, Claire says she wants to change the comforter. Can you find one for her?” “Evelyn…” And so, during the countdown to her departure, Evelyn lived in this twisted arrangement with Claire and Adrian. Even going to the hospital to see the baby, all three went together. Over time, people at the hospital started spreading gossip, saying Evelyn might be a surrogate mother hired by the Caldwell family. Though the baby was healthy, doctors detected he was allergic to pollen. Evelyn called in the gardeners and had them cut down all the rose bushes Adrian had planted in the backyard. When Claire heard the news, she rushed back anxiously. “Evelyn, what are you doing?!”

Looking at the mess in the garden, Claire pointed at Evelyn angrily. “Do you know that Adrian carefully planted all these flowers for me?!” “Even if you resent Adrian for falling in love with me, you can’t take it out on these flowers!” Hearing Claire’s words, Evelyn smiled faintly. “Miss Sullivan, you really are narcissistic.” “I don’t know who Adrian planted these flowers for, and whoever he loves has nothing to do with me.” “My son is allergic to pollen. I can’t keep these roses!” Claire pouted, looking indifferent. “So what if the baby is allergic to pollen?!” “He’ll stay in his room anyway. He won’t be brought out!” “You’re getting rid of these flowers now and still saying you don’t hate me. You’re already so vicious, you know that?!” Then, without caring about anything else, looking at the remaining roses, she started fighting with the gardeners for the pruning shears. “Everyone put down what you’re holding!” Evelyn grabbed Claire. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re scheming. You know Adrian cares a lot about my son, so you want to use this method to make something happen to him, don’t you?!” Claire seemed like her little scheme had been exposed and froze in place. “No… I didn’t!” If Claire was treating her like this when she was still here, what would happen when she wasn’t? Adrian rushed back anxiously. Seeing the messy backyard and the two women standing together, his anger flared up. “Evelyn, what are you freaking out about! The backyard was fine, why did you have to do this? If you have a problem, tell me directly. Take it out on me. There’s no need to vent on these innocent flowers and Claire!” Innocent? Evelyn blurted out. “Innocent? Don’t you know the baby is allergic to pollen! Would you keep such a huge safety hazard at home?!” After hearing this, Adrian said dismissively, “You’ll be taking care of the child anyway. Why worry about it so much?” Why worry about it so much? Evelyn looked at Adrian in disbelief, tears falling unconsciously. “Adrian, no matter what, you can’t treat our child like this. That’s your own flesh and blood.” Adrian had never seen Evelyn cry. A struggle flashed in his eyes. “You…” The vicious words had already risen to Adrian’s throat, but when he met Evelyn’s red, cold eyes, he couldn’t speak them. This Evelyn was too unfamiliar. He was silent for a long time, finally only managing to say, “Evelyn, don’t be impulsive.” Evelyn threw the scissors to the ground and looked at Adrian coldly. “Flowers can be replanted. Buy her whatever she likes. But when it comes to the child, I absolutely cannot back down even half a step, because…” Because that was the child she carried for ten months and gave birth to! That was the only thing she had left from all these years with Adrian! “The child cannot be harmed.”

Though Claire made things difficult in every way, in the end Adrian and the gardeners silently cleared all the roses from the garden. Claire was furious, her tone becoming sharp and bitter. “This is ridiculous. They’re just flowers. The kid won’t always be at home when he comes back. Why did you have to get rid of all these flowers?” Evelyn looked at Claire coolly. “They’re just a few flowers. What, are the dead flowers going to kill you?” Evelyn speaking so harshly left Claire stunned for quite a while. Was this still the Claire who used to be so accommodating to her? Why had she become so assertive? After Evelyn dealt with the biggest threat to the baby, she returned to her room alone. There were 8 hours left until she left this heartbreaking place. Just then, Charles sent a message asking her to come to his evening banquet. “Your new identity documents are ready. Do you have time to come get them?” After Evelyn replied “yes,” she drove straight to the banquet hall entrance. Unexpectedly, she saw a familiar car there. It was Adrian’s car. She didn’t need to think to know that Adrian must have brought Claire to this banquet. At the Caldwell family banquet, Evelyn, as the CEO’s wife, couldn’t attend, yet Claire, who had no official status, appeared on the guest list. Evelyn took a deep breath. She didn’t plan to get angry, but calmly went through the staff entrance toward where Charles was. After just a few steps, she heard people discussing the Caldwell family. “Did you hear? Adrian might be proposing to Claire at this banquet!” “I heard the two of them have been promised to each other since childhood. Later, this perfect couple was torn apart by Evelyn!” “That Evelyn is really awful. What she did to Adrian and Claire is disgusting. People like her don’t deserve to exist!” “I agree. How is Evelyn still showing up at the Caldwell family? She should have the sense to leave this family!” Evelyn acted as if she couldn’t hear them and pushed past. “Excuse me.” As soon as she reached the center of the banquet, Evelyn indeed saw the grand proposal setup in the hall. A joyous atmosphere pervaded every corner. Back then, her own wedding had been quite shabby. Adrian said he didn’t want to waste time on such things. He said his time was precious, worth millions per minute. Actually, Evelyn didn’t occupy much space in Adrian’s heart. Didn’t people always say that a man’s love is where his time is, where his money is? Adrian didn’t lack money, so whoever he gave his time to was who he loved. He didn’t love Evelyn.Thinking back on this, Evelyn looked away. She was about to leave anyway. Why linger on these feelings? When she was just a few steps away from Charles’s room, Claire suddenly appeared with a group of socialites. “Evelyn, I don’t remember you being invited to tonight’s banquet. Why did you have the nerve to come? Don’t you feel ashamed?” “Not like me. I didn’t want to come, but Adrian insisted on bringing me to introduce me to everyone. He insisted I come.” Evelyn simply stepped aside. “Let me through.” Claire noticed Charles’s room behind her and immediately understood. “You’re going to complain to Charles, aren’t you? Evelyn, you’re shameless!” Evelyn could no longer hold back. She didn’t think she deserved to endure baseless criticism, so she pushed Claire aside. “You’ve provoked me again and again. Do you really think I’m a pushover?” Claire didn’t expect Evelyn to finally bite back, and immediately called over the women behind her. “Teach her a good lesson!” Evelyn looked at the people surrounding her and directly smashed the wine glass in her hand. She pointed the broken shard at them. “I’d like to see who dares come closer!” Hearing the commotion, Charles came out. Claire quickly left with the others, but before leaving, she warned Evelyn. “You know who’s in charge of the Caldwell family now, right?” “Adrian only has eyes for me. So if you want to live peacefully in the Caldwell family, you’d better keep your mouth shut!” When Charles walked over, he only saw Evelyn looking disheveled, his eyes full of heartache. “What happened? Evelyn? Were you bullied?” Evelyn glanced at the time and waved her hand. “It’s nothing, Mr. Caldwell. My flight leaves in two hours. After I get my identity documents, I’ll be leaving. In the future, please take care of yourself.”

In his heart, Charles genuinely liked Evelyn. He never imagined he could find such a wonderful daughter-in-law. At this moment, Charles opened his mouth, the words of reluctant goodbye already on his lips. But Evelyn interrupted him. “Mr. Caldwell, I know what you’re thinking. But I’ve completely given up on Adrian. Or rather, it’s not giving up. Our relationship should never have been like this from the start.” Evelyn smiled self-deprecatingly. “I just wanted him to love me.” “But no matter how hard I tried, his eyes never had room for me.” “Mr. Caldwell, I’ve completely let go.” Evelyn bowed deeply to Charles. “I know you’ve truly taken care of me all these years. My flight is about to leave, but I know this place doesn’t belong to me. Staying here would only add to my troubles.” Evelyn was too rational. So rational that even though Charles wanted to make her stay, he didn’t know what to say. After a long silence, Charles took out the documents Evelyn needed, along with a bank card containing an extra ten million dollars. “Take the money in the card. This is my gift to you. Evelyn, take good care of yourself out there. Now we must truly part ways.” Evelyn knew that even if she refused, Charles had the ability to get this money to her, so she didn’t decline again. “Thank you, Mr. Caldwell. Then, I’m leaving.” After seeing Evelyn off, Charles walked back and happened to see Claire and Adrian standing not far away. As soon as Claire saw Charles, she fell directly into Adrian’s arms. “Adrian, do you know how mean Evelyn was to me just now! Why did she treat me like that? I didn’t do anything wrong!” Adrian smiled at her, though his eyes swept over Charles. “Dad.” He knew Charles cared deeply about inappropriate relationships between men and women. Unexpectedly, Charles just looked away, gave a slight nod, and left. Seeing this, Claire thought she had gained Charles’s approval and clung even more eagerly to Adrian. “Adrian, it looks like Dad has accepted me too.” Hearing this, Adrian just nodded slightly. Though he should have been happy, somehow he couldn’t feel any joy. When he returned home, he found Evelyn wasn’t there. For some reason, panic surged in his heart. Claire smiled and hooked her arm around Adrian’s neck, walking toward their bedroom upstairs. “Adrian, can I sleep in your room tonight?” Hearing this, Adrian frowned, forcibly suppressing the panic in his heart, and pushed her away. “Claire, you’re crossing the line.” As the words fell, Claire opened the bedroom door. Adrian was horrified to discover that his and Evelyn’s bedroom was completely empty. All of Evelyn’s things were gone!

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