Category: English

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My sister officially recognized a bionic experiment as her brother in front of a swarm of flashing cameras, declaring she would leave her entire estate to him. She did it for one reason: to flush me out of hiding. She had already filed a lawsuit against me over a heart transplant, claiming I’d defrauded her by swapping her ten-million-dollar mechanical heart for a defective biological one. But when the court date arrived, I was a no-show. Desperate and furious, she tracked down my last known place of employment—a sprawling, grease-stained graveyard of a factory on the industrial outskirts of the city. She grabbed the first person she saw and demanded to know where I was. the floor manager looked at her, his face a mask of bewilderment. “You mean Emmett? Lady, Emmett died three years ago. Sudden cardiac arrest.” He paused, a grimace flickering across his features. “It was a mess. He got pulled right into the intake of one of the heavy presses. There wasn’t enough left of him to bury.” All of this happened in the seventh year since I had “exchanged” hearts with my sister’s prized bionic project. For seven years, the experiments had been failing due to rejection issues. And for seven years, my sister had laid every ounce of blame at my feet, cursing me for “hiding” the fact that my own heart was diseased from the start. 1 Vicky froze for a split second, then waved her hand dismissively, her face twisting into a mask of impatient scorn. “If you’re going to lie to me, at least make it logical,” she snapped. “I personally designed that mechanical heart. With regular maintenance and charging, it’s built to beat for over a hundred years. It doesn’t just ‘stop.’” She let out a sharp, cold laugh, her eyes sharp with disbelief. “Emmett is such a drama queen. Faking a job in a dump like this to play the victim is one thing, but hiring an actor to tell me he’s dead? That’s low, even for him.” The manager shifted uncomfortably, rubbing his grease-stained hands together. “Ma’am, I’m not joking. Emmett is gone. I don’t know what he was to you—did the kid owe you money or something?” He hesitated, then added in a hushed tone, “A few debt collectors came by a while back, looking to squeeze him for cash. But once they saw the police report, even they had to give it up.” Vicky’s brow furrowed when she heard him call me a “kid,” but the second half of his sentence set her temper ablaze. “What exactly are you implying? That he was into loan sharks?” Her face darkened instantly. “I wired him nearly a million dollars a month for living expenses. How could he possibly burn through that and end up owing collectors?!” She spun around, shouting at the empty, echoing rafters of the factory. “Emmett! Get out here right now! Did you pick up some disgusting habit? Is that why you’re hiding? A son of the Stanley family, hunted for debts—don’t you have any shame?” When only the rhythmic clanking of machinery answered her, she lunged forward, grabbing the manager by his collar. Her eyes were feral. “Stop the act. I’m his sister. Tell him to get out here this second!” “The heart he gave Sam is failing. It’s causing Sam constant pain. He needs to answer for what he did in court, right now!” The manager gasped for air, his face turning a mottled purple. “Ma’am… please… let go… I’m telling you the truth. Emmett is dead!” Vicky shoved him away with a disgusted grunt. “Enough. Take me to where he stayed. I want to see exactly how long he thinks he can keep this charade up.” Resigned, the manager led her deeper into the bowels of the plant. They moved past deafening workstations and rows of dilapidated employee housing that looked more like shipping containers than homes. Vicky held a silk handkerchief to her nose, her eyes scanning the squalor with elitist disdain. “Hiding in a hole like this just to avoid a deposition… you’ve really grown a spine since I last saw you, Emmett,” she muttered under her breath. Finally, they stopped near a literal heap of scrap metal and refuse. The manager pointed to a few dust-covered cardboard boxes tucked into a corner. “There. That’s everything he left behind. Nobody ever came to claim it, so we just piled it here.” Inside the boxes were a few faded t-shirts, a pair of sneakers with soles peeling off like dead skin, and some rusted tin lunchboxes. Vicky looked at my meager belongings, a smirk playing on her lips. “The commitment to the bit is impressive. You even got the props right.” She kicked one of the boxes over. “Do you really take me for a fool? As a Stanley, he had insurance on every hair on his head by the time he was five. You expect me to believe he’d touch this trash?” The old clothes spilled into the dirt. A sneaker rolled into a muddy puddle. A lunchbox clattered across the concrete, its lid popping open to reveal a few crawling beetles. Vicky’s jaw tightened. “Emmett, if you don’t show yourself in the next ten seconds, don’t bother calling me your sister ever again!” She screamed into the void, but the only response was the indifferent roar of the machines. Just then, a gust of wind swirled through the alleyway, carrying the faint, sweet scent of sandalwood incense. Vicky paused, her nostrils flaring. She followed the scent, her heels clicking sharply against the cracked pavement, until she reached a tiny, sagging shack behind the dormitories. She pushed the door open. The space was barely six feet wide. There was a cot made of plywood and a scarred wooden desk. On the desk sat a black-and-white photograph in a simple frame. In the picture, a young man was smiling—a peaceful, gentle expression I hadn’t worn in years. It was my funeral portrait. 2 Vicky stared at the photo, her gaze turning icy. She snatched the frame and slammed it onto the floor with a violent crash. “Are you serious, Emmett? This is pathetic. You screw up, you give Sam a defective heart, and now you stage this morbid little theater piece to guilt-trip me?” She spat the words out. “Photoshopping your own memorial photo? Do you have any idea how cursed that is?” No one answered. The flame of the small prayer candle on the desk flickered in the draft. Infuriated by the silence, Vicky stomped on the frame. The glass shattered into a thousand glittering diamonds, and the photo slid out. She leaned down, picked up the black-and-white image with a look of pure loathing, and tossed it into the small brass charcoal burner nearby. The paper caught instantly. The edges curled and blackened, the fire licking across the bridge of my nose, erasing my smile. Suddenly, there was a noise behind her. Vicky spun around, a cold, triumphant smirk forming. “So, you finally found your conscience. Step out.” The door burst open. An elderly woman, white-haired and clutching a heavy kitchen cleaver, charged in. She looked like a cornered animal. “You heartless monster! How dare you come back here for my Emmett!” The blade flashed. Vicky ducked, her reflexes sharp. she grabbed the old woman’s wrist and twisted, sending the cleaver clattering to the floor. “Who the hell are you? Do you have any idea who I am?” Vicky barked. I drifted in the air above them, frantic, my spirit vibrating with a useless energy. Mrs. Henderson! Please! Stop! Don’t provoke her! But they couldn’t hear me. Vicky shoved the old woman away, looking down at her with chilling arrogance. “You’re the one who’s been hiding him, aren’t you, you old bat?” She brushed the dust off her sleeve, her eyes dripping with contempt. “Tell him to come out and face the music. If he leaves for the courthouse now, I might consider dropping the fraud charges for this little ‘death’ stunt.” Mrs. Henderson stumbled, catching herself against the wall. Her eyes were bloodshot, weeping with a rage so deep it looked like grief. “How can you be this cruel? Emmett has been dead for seven years! You stole his heart, and now you want to drag his ghost into a courtroom for the sake of that… that thing you built?” Vicky’s face went pale with anger. “Stop saying he’s dead. None of you are allowed to say that.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous hiss. “And let’s get one thing straight. He gave that heart willingly. He donated a sub-standard organ on purpose, leaving Sam in agony for years. He’s a saboteur, and he’s going to pay.” Mrs. Henderson trembled so hard her teeth chattered. She reached for the cleaver again. Vicky kicked it across the room and then, without a hint of hesitation, landed a sharp kick to the old woman’s ribs. Mrs. Henderson collapsed, groaning in pain. “Grandma! Grandma, I’m coming!” A younger woman burst through the door. Her eyes were wide and vacant, her movements uncoordinated. She threw herself over Mrs. Henderson, shielding her. Then, like a wild thing, she lunged at Vicky, sinking her teeth into Vicky’s forearm. “Get away from Grandma! Leave Emmett alone! Bad person! Hurting Emmett!” Vicky let out a cry of pain and fury. She grabbed the woman by her hair, yanking her back. The woman fought, her teeth locked tight until Vicky delivered a stinging slap across her face. The girl fell to the floor, stunned and silent. I screamed, diving toward them, trying to catch Vicky’s hand, but my fingers passed through her like smoke. Stop it! Don’t hurt Lila! Please, Vicky, stop! Vicky looked down at the girl, a cruel chuckle escaping her throat. “Oh, I see. She’s a half-wit.” She surveyed the cramped, miserable shack one last time, her eyes landing on the dazed girl. “Emmett… in a few years, you’ve managed to find yourself a new sister. A broken, useless one. Are you really that desperate for a family?” When I still didn’t appear, she shouted at the walls. “I know you’re watching! If you care about this freak and this old hag, then you’d better show yourself, or things are about to get very ugly.” Two of Vicky’s security guards stepped into the room. At her nod, they began to kick and punch the two women on the floor. Lila didn’t say a word; she just curled her body around Mrs. Henderson, taking every blow. Mrs. Henderson looked up, her face a mask of bloody defiance. “You’re a fool…” she wheezed, the words forced through gritted teeth. “My poor, sweet Emmett… how did he end up with a monster like you for a sister?” Vicky’s face turned livid. “Hit them harder! What am I paying you for?” The guards intensified their assault. Lila looked up from the floor, her eyes fixed on the empty air where I was floating. A strange, knowing look crossed her face. “Don’t worry, Emmett,” she whispered, blood trickling from her lip. “He’s gone to the other world. You’ll never find him. Not in a thousand years.” Vicky sneered. She knelt down, gripping Lila’s chin in a painful hold. “Since you’re so convinced he’s dead, where’s the body?” “If he’s dead, show me the corpse!” 3 Mrs. Henderson’s clouded eyes seemed to bleed with sorrow. “He was… he was caught in the machine! He was torn apart… there was nothing left to bury!” Vicky stood up, brushing her hands together as if she’d just finished a chore. “A convenient excuse. No body, no death. You’re all just very dedicated actors in his little play.” She turned her back on them, bored. Just then, her phone chimed. A soft, melodic voice came through the speaker—a voice that sounded exactly like mine used to, but with an artificial sweetness that made my skin crawl. “Vicky? Is Emmett still refusing to come home? My chest… it hurts so much today. I think the heart is stopping.” The transformation in Vicky was instant. Her face softened into a mask of frantic maternal worry. “Sam, don’t be scared. I’m coming back right now. Just hold on.” She hurried toward the door, pausing only to bark an order at her guards. “Watch them. Don’t let them leave this property.” I followed her as she sped back to her sprawling glass-and-steel mansion. Sam was sitting on a designer velvet sofa, looking pale and fragile. When Vicky walked in, his eyes—perfectly calibrated bionic lenses—welled with tears. “Did you find him?” he asked, his voice trembling. Vicky shook her head, her heart breaking for the machine. Sam began to weep. The tears were chemically identical to human salt water, leaking from his mechanical ducts. “I gave Emmett my hundred-year heart so he could live,” Sam sobbed, playing the martyr. “And he gave me this… this broken thing on purpose. I don’t know what I did wrong, Vicky. Why does he hate me?” Vicky pulled him into a hug, her voice thick with guilt. “Don’t worry. I’ll find him, even if I have to scour the earth. He’s the one who betrayed us. I’ll make him get on his knees and beg for your forgiveness.” I stood beside them, watching the display with a hollow, bitter irony. My heart had been perfectly fine. I remembered the day Sam said he “wanted to feel the warmth of a human pulse.” Vicky hadn’t asked me; she had commanded me. I was the “defective” biological brother, and Sam was the “perfected” version. I was conscious when they took it. I watched, paralyzed by anesthesia, as my own heart was lifted from my chest and placed into the cold, titanium cavity of a machine. I hadn’t sabotaged anything. Vicky’s voice snapped me back to the present. She was pacing, her frustration mounting. “He even convinced those people to lie for him. Saying the mechanical heart was ‘scrapped.’ I wired him a fortune every month to keep it charged, and he has the nerve to say it failed?” Her anger flared again. “The manager said he was in debt. He probably spent all that money on that ‘sister’ of his. This time, I’m not just suing him—I’m going to make sure he pays back every cent of that allowance.” Sam leaned his head on her shoulder, a flicker of something cold and calculating passing through his eyes. “You were so good to him, Vicky. How could he choose them over you?” The phone rang again. It was the guard at the factory. “Ma’am, the two women… they’re doing something strange.” Vicky stood up abruptly. “Finally. Emmett is showing himself, isn’t he?” I followed her back to the factory. In the distance, I saw them. Mrs. Henderson and Lila were on their knees in the dirt, performing a grueling ritual of penance. Every few steps, they bowed until their foreheads hit the stone, leaving smears of blood. Lila held something high above her head, her expression one of pure, holy devotion. The sun caught the object, creating a blinding flash of white light. It was my silver bracelet. The one I’d worn since I was a child. Vicky charged forward, snatching the bracelet from Lila’s hands. But Lila gripped it with surprising strength. “It’s Emmett’s! Not for you! You’re the bad one!” Vicky tugged, her face darkening. She stared into Lila’s vacant eyes. “Emmett, I know you’re lurking somewhere nearby. Are you really going to let this poor girl suffer for you?” 4 Vicky raised her boot and brought it down hard on Lila’s leg. A sickening crack echoed through the alley. Lila screamed, a sound of pure agony, but her fingers remained locked around the silver bracelet. I screamed in the sky, a silent roar of fury. I threw myself at Vicky, trying to shove her, trying to break her balance, but I was nothing but a ripple in the air. Lila’s leg was twisted at a grotesque angle. She looked up at the space where I was floating, her eyes shimmering with tears, but her gaze was strangely direct. It was as if she could finally see me. “Emmett… see? I’m holding it. I didn’t let her take it.” My heart—the spirit of it—broke. In a moment of absolute desperation, I did something forbidden. I ignited half of my soul, burning my spiritual essence to create a surge of energy. I focused everything on that mechanical heart miles away. Just for one second. One pulse. That was enough. A moment later, Vicky’s lead guard checked his tablet. “Ma’am! We just picked up a ping from the mechanical heart’s GPS!” “It’s beating! The signal is coming from right nearby… and it’s moving!” Vicky looked at the red dot on her screen and let out a triumphant laugh. “I knew it. I knew he was faking. Let’s go. I’ve got you now, Emmett.” As she turned to run to her car, Lila’s voice drifted after her. “Emmett… where are you going?” Vicky paused. She looked back and saw Lila staring into the empty air, reaching out with a trembling hand as if trying to grab someone’s sleeve. “Emmett! Emmett! Wait for me!” Vicky’s face twisted in disgust. “Useless freak. Stop playing games.” She walked back and stomped on Lila’s other leg. Another crack. Another scream. I collapsed in the air, my vision blurring. Igniting my soul had drained me of everything. My form was fading, becoming translucent, as a strange, cold vacuum began to pull me away. I don’t know how much time passed before Vicky reached the coordinates. She found herself in a dusty vacant lot where a group of neighborhood kids were kicking something around in the dirt. Her breath hitched. The red dot on her screen was right on top of her. As she approached the children, the dot stopped moving. “Hey!” she shouted. “Give me that!” She grabbed the “ball” from the kids. A light rain began to fall, washing away the grime and mud from the object. Familiar brushed-metal housing emerged. A cold, sickening dread washed over her. She pressed the manual override switch on the side of the heart. This time, there was no pulse. No whirring of gears. Only silence.

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When my consciousness finally clawed its way out of the fog, I found myself in the body of a broke college student about to sign her life away as a billionaire’s kept woman. My supposed best friend was currently standing flush in front of me, her chest heaving with righteous indignation as she glared at the man across the table. She declared loudly that even if the Sinclair family went entirely bankrupt, Megan would never stoop so low as to become his trophy pet. The man sitting opposite us possessed a dark, volatile energy. A cynical smirk played on his lips as he picked up the sugar-baby contract, his long fingers gripping the heavy parchment, ready to tear it to shreds. I stared at his face. It was a face etched into the deepest marrow of my bones. A suffocating wave of grievance crashed over me. My vision immediately blurred with hot tears. Before anyone in the opulent VIP room could process what was happening, I lunged across the mahogany table and desperately tore at his tailored shirt. “Where did you go? I’ve been starving to death!” I wailed, my voice cracking. In my past life, I was one of the infected. The walking dead. A monster. Yet, I had kept a human as a pet. During the day, he would brave the apocalyptic wasteland to scavenge for supplies. At night, he would wash himself spotless, climb into bed, and obediently let me pin him down to drink his blood. Then, one day, he just vanished. I starved until I was nothing but a husk. Driven by the agonizing hollow in my gut, I finally gathered the courage to push open the heavy apartment door and search for him. But the second I stepped out, a voice screamed: “That human traitor was harboring a monster! Kill it!” I wanted to explain that they had it backwards. I was the one harboring the human. But when I opened my mouth, the only sound that scraped from my dead throat was a guttural, wet groan. Before I could articulate my defense, a bullet tore through my skull. … 1 A suffocating, eerie silence descended upon the VIP room. Gideon violently snapped out of his shock and shoved me away. A deeply mocking sneer twisted his handsome features. “Just a minute ago, you were playing the tragic martyr, ready to die before submitting. What happened? Decided to just throw yourself at me instead?” Beside me, the original owner’s so-called best friend, Valerie, let out an ear-piercing shriek. Her eyes bulged as she stared at me. “Megan Sinclair! How could you degrade yourself like this? You’re actually agreeing to be Gideon Mercer’s kept woman?” “No! I forbid it! You are leaving with me right now.” She grabbed my arm, attempting to drag me out of the suite. I stumbled a few steps, then violently wrenched my arm free. I spun around, threw my arms around Gideon’s waist, and locked my grip, refusing to let go. I glared at Valerie, thoroughly annoyed. Was this girl out of her mind? I had finally—finally—found my pet human. I hadn’t even taken a single bite yet. Why the hell would I leave? “I’m hungry!” I announced loudly. A low, dark chuckle rumbled from the chest pressed against my cheek. Gideon clapped his hands. The heavy mahogany doors swung open, and a line of servers filed in, carrying silver platters of Michelin-starred cuisine. The room filled with the rich aromas of truffles and seared Wagyu, but I didn’t spare the feast a single glance. My eyes remained locked, utterly fixated, on Gideon. “I don’t eat that.” Gideon’s brow twitched with impatience. “Then what do you want? Pretty demanding for a girl who just sold herself—” “I want to eat you,” I said, pointing a finger squarely at his chest. Gideon choked on his own breath, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief. Beside us, Valerie practically vaulted into the air. She stomped her foot, her face flushed with fury. “Megan! You were an honors student! Did you leave your brain in the gutter? How can you say something so utterly shameless?” “If your parents knew you were whoring yourself out for money like this, they’d jump off a building out of sheer humiliation!” My patience was fraying. Before the original Megan had left the house today, her parents had explicitly instructed her to do whatever it took to please Gideon Mercer. Valerie knew perfectly well that offending Gideon would mean the final, crushing nail in the Sinclair family’s coffin. She also knew the original Megan was fiercely prideful. She was saying these things on purpose, trying to trigger a reaction. Even with a brain that had once been rotting inside a zombie’s skull, I could tell this girl was bad news. I ignored her completely. Instead, I reached my arms up toward Gideon, demanding to be held. “I’m tired. Take me home.” Back in that cramped, apocalyptic apartment, Gideon used to carry me around on his back all the time. He was my human. Bossing him around was my absolute right. Gideon stared at me, uncomprehending for a second. When my demand finally registered, a vein throbbed visibly at his temple. He shrugged off my grip, adjusting his ruined cuffs. “Keep up, then.” I bared my teeth at his retreating back. Just as I thought. Humans needed to be disciplined daily. Leave them outside for too long, and they go completely feral. My stomach gave a violent, hollow rumble. Seeing that Gideon had absolutely no intention of stopping to carry me, I swallowed my pride and trailed after him. I had barely taken two steps when Valerie lunged forward and seized my wrist. Her face was a mask of exaggerated, frantic concern. “Megan, I can’t let you be alone with a man like him. We’re best friends. Don’t worry, I will protect you.” She positioned herself slightly in front of me, a tragic heroine protecting the weak, and lifted her chin defiantly at Gideon. “I am moving into the mansion with Megan. Otherwise, you aren’t taking her anywhere.” Gideon’s dark, predatory gaze swept over the two of us. A slow, enigmatic smile curved his lips. “Fine.” 2 The new house was a sprawling, gated estate—exponentially more magnificent than our old, dingy hundred-square-foot apartment. I nodded in deep satisfaction. The moment we stepped into my assigned bedroom, Valerie’s mask of concern morphed into a severe interrogation. “Megan, you were just putting on an act today to pacify him, right? Someone as proud as you would never willingly be his little toy.” I stared at her, blinking slowly. Toy? Captive? My tongue darted out to lick the corner of my mouth. Whatever it was called, it sounded delicious. I nodded firmly. “I’m doing it.” Valerie looked like she might actually pass out from the sheer audacity. She dug her manicured nails into my shoulders, her eyes burning with a manic intensity. “Are you insane? I’ve told you the rumors! Gideon Mercer is a psychopath—” She dropped her voice to a theatrical, trembling whisper. “He drinks raw blood. He eats raw meat.” I swallowed audibly. A phantom drop of drool practically pooled at the corner of my mouth. I hadn’t tasted blood in three months. Shortly after the apocalypse began, I had found Gideon and hoarded him for myself. Because of him, I never had to roam the dangerous streets hunting humans. I had a steady, warm supply of fresh blood. But ever since he vanished, I hadn’t had a single drop. Now, I had finally found him, but it seemed he had entirely forgotten his place as my pet. Feeling a profound sense of melancholy, I gave Valerie a dismissive wave. “Don’t kink-shame, Valerie. We should respect other people’s dietary preferences.” Valerie’s jaw practically unhinged. “I’m going to sleep. Get out,” I said, shoving her out the door and locking it. When I stepped out of the en-suite bathroom, enveloped in a cloud of steam, I found Gideon lounging on my bed, smoking a cigar. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, his dark, brooding features partially obscured by the curling gray smoke. Seeing me frozen in the doorway, he exhaled a slow plume of smoke, his eyes glinting with dark amusement. “Didn’t you say you wanted to be my devoted little captive? What are you standing there for? Come here and entertain me.” I wrinkled my nose, my expression instantly souring. “Throw it away.” Gideon’s hand stalled mid-air. He looked at me, a dangerous edge sharpening his gaze. “Are you giving me orders in my own house?” I marched over, leaned over him, and pressed my nose to his neck, taking a deep inhale. Just as I suspected. That intoxicating, mouth-watering scent was completely buried under the stench of ash. My scowl deepened. I grabbed his arm and began dragging him toward the bathroom. “Go wash yourself right now. How am I supposed to take a bite out of you when you smell like this?” Gideon’s intimidating aura shattered into sheer bewilderment. Before he could process what was happening, I had shoved him into the master bathroom. A few moments later, the sound of the shower echoed through the door. I stood right outside, waiting with the agonizing anticipation of a starving dog. The second the door clicked open, I pounced. I practically tackled him, tearing at the lapels of his plush bathrobe. I aimed straight for the firm expanse of his chest and sank my teeth in. “Hiss!” Gideon flinched in pain and violently shoved me off him. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, his voice thick with anger. I couldn’t tell if it was from the steam of the shower or the shock, but the tips of his ears, hidden beneath his damp hair, were burning red. I looked up at him with total self-righteousness. “I’m entertaining you.” In our past life, Gideon always took the initiative to strip down and lie on the bed waiting for me. Now, I was the one doing all the heavy lifting to undress him. How was that not entertaining him? Gideon let out a harsh, incredulous laugh at my twisted logic. But when his eyes dropped to the faint smear of crimson at the corner of my mouth, his gaze suddenly darkened, shifting into something entirely unfathomable. He snatched the discarded bathrobe from the floor, threw it over my head to cover my face, and spoke in a voice that was suddenly tight and gravelly. “Wipe your face.” By the time I frantically wrestled the heavy terrycloth off my head, Gideon was already under the covers, lying as far away from me as possible, wrapped up tighter than a mummy. He was firmly refusing to be my dinner. Brimming with absolute grievance, I curled up on the opposite edge of the mattress, pulled out the new phone he had given me, and angrily typed into an anonymous forum: [What do you do when the human you keep as a pet goes on strike and refuses to let you drink his blood?] 3 The comment section immediately flooded with replies: [Damn, you guys play rough.] [Roleplay level: Expert.] Furious, I tossed the phone aside. As I lay there staring at the ceiling, my consciousness began to drift, and I felt a long-forgotten sensation: sleepiness. Hovering in the liminal space between waking and dreaming, a memory from my past life violently pierced my mind. I had just finished my nightly feeding. I was sitting by the cracked window of our apartment, bathing in the moonlight to absorb the night’s energy. (Mostly because zombies didn’t need to sleep, and I literally had nothing else to do with my time). As I sat there with my eyes closed, Gideon, who was sitting quietly beside me, suddenly spoke. “Little Fang, I wish I could just turn into one of the infected. That way, we could be together forever.” I opened my eyes and looked at him, completely baffled. He smiled, that soft, sad smile of his, and reached out to ruffle my messy hair. “But if I turned, what would happen to you? Who would take care of you then?” I bared my teeth at him in absolute outrage. The sheer audacity! My pet human thought he was the one taking care of me? To prove my dominance, I had immediately tackled him and bitten his chest again. Gideon had been so obedient then. He hadn’t dared to dodge. He just lay there, perfectly still, letting me take what I wanted. I slowly opened my eyes in the dark bedroom. The corners of my eyes felt strangely damp. After staring blankly into space for a moment, I scrambled across the massive mattress and crept right up to Gideon’s ear. His eyes snapped open instantly. He stared at me with hyper-vigilance, his hand instinctively flying up to grip the collar of his pajamas. “Gideon,” I whispered conspicuously, “do you like drinking blood now too?” In a fraction of a second, the last dregs of sleep vanished from his eyes. The vigilance on his face melted away, replaced by a terrifying, volatile darkness. His hand shot out, his long fingers wrapping tightly around my throat. The air supply cut off instantly. Heat rushed to my face as I choked. “What are you doing?!” I slapped at his hand, glaring at him with maximum intensity. “Let me go!” A visible twitch spasmed across Gideon’s brow. He clearly hadn’t expected me to look at him with such utter lack of fear while he was literally strangling me. Subconsciously, his grip loosened. I shoved his hand away, coughing violently for a few seconds before puffing my cheeks in irritation. “You’re so stingy. I was just asking if we share the same dietary preferences now. It’s not like I’m going to steal your food.” Gideon froze completely. For a long, suffocating moment, he just stared at me. Then, he doubled over, letting out a raw, manic laugh that bordered on unhinged. “God, Megan, you truly are a piece of work.” He looked at me, his eyes dripping with pure venom and mockery. “The lengths you’ll go to secure your place here. The lies you’ll spin to cater to my… reputation.” “Did you honestly think that pretending to share my madness would make me fall in love with you?” Looking at his twisted, self-deprecating smile, a surge of profound irritation flared in my chest. He was the one who had literally said he wanted to be a monster with me. I didn’t bother arguing. I just flipped over, pinned him to the mattress, and ripped his silk pajama shirt open, exposing the faint red crescent of teeth marks on his chest. I swallowed the heavy pool of saliva in my mouth, my eyes practically glowing green with hunger in the dark. “If you don’t believe me,” I whispered, “let me take one more bite.” Faced with the naked, primal hunger in my eyes, Gideon fell dead silent. After a heavy pause, he abruptly flipped us over, dumping me onto the mattress. Without a word, he pulled his shirt tightly shut. “Go to sleep.” His voice was harsh, defensive. “If you say one more insane thing, or try to pull another stunt like this, I will have my men throw you out onto the street.” Suitably chastised, I retreated to my side of the bed, pulled out my phone, and typed: [My pet human is trying to stage a coup. He won’t let me strip his clothes off anymore. Help! Emergency!] The same degenerates from earlier replied instantly. [If he won’t let you take off his shirt, it’s obviously a psychological block. Try taking off his pants instead. He’ll definitely surrender.] I locked the screen, deeply in thought. 4 When I woke up the next morning, Gideon’s side of the bed was cold. The moment I wandered down the grand staircase, the estate’s impeccably dressed head butler greeted me. With a warm, practiced smile and a respectful bow, he said, “Miss Sinclair, before Mr. Mercer departed this morning, he arranged for several boutiques to send over their latest collections for your selection.” He clapped his hands gently. A line of estate staff marched into the grand foyer, carrying velvet trays and garment bags. Brooches, diamond earrings, heavy sapphire necklaces, tennis bracelets. The sheer brilliance of the jewels in the morning light was almost blinding. Following the jewelry came rolling racks of haute couture and limited-edition handbags that practically swallowed the massive living room. Just then, Valerie stepped out of her guest room. The moment her eyes landed on the display of wealth, her face twisted into something ugly. “Gideon gave you all this?” she asked, her voice cracking up an octave. The butler offered her a deeply unimpressed, fleeting glance. Valerie struggled to forcibly mold her raw jealousy into a mask of sisterly outrage. She pointed a trembling finger at the racks. “Megan, he is deliberately humiliating you! You absolutely cannot accept these things, or you will never be able to hold your head up in polite society again!” I couldn’t help but slowly tilt my head, stretching my neck as I looked at her like she was an alien. The butler dropped his polite smile entirely. His tone laced with polite poison, he said, “Miss Valerie, Mr. Mercer only permitted you to stay on these grounds out of respect for Miss Sinclair. If you continue to make highly inappropriate remarks, I will be forced to have security escort you off the premises.” Valerie snapped her mouth shut, her eyes burning with resentment. She waited until the butler stepped away before sidling up to me. Leaning in close, her voice tight with a sick, eager anticipation, she whispered: “Did Gideon have an episode last night?” I used my previously-rotted zombie brain to process the question. In my past life, I opened my apartment door and caught a bullet to the brain instantly. The lesson was clear: in this life, I had to guard the secret of my true nature with my life. And since Gideon had clearly developed the same hunger, he was my kind now. I had to protect him, too. I looked her dead in the eye and shook my head with absolute solemnity. “No.” Valerie’s face immediately fell in deep disappointment. “How is that possible?” she muttered to herself, turning away in bitter frustration. For a zombie who had spent three years locked inside a hundred-square-foot apartment without taking a single step outside, this sprawling estate was a paradise. I wandered the gardens, explored the massive library, and tested the bounce of every sofa. The day passed in a blissful blur. That evening, Gideon returned to the estate. I was just about to run over and greet my food source when Valerie beat me to it. Carrying a heavy, covered silver cloche, she intercepted Gideon in the grand hallway, a secretive, malicious gleam in her eyes. My nose twitched. The heavy, metallic tang of fresh blood hit the air. Gideon, whose steps had been light, stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes locked onto the silver tray in Valerie’s hands. With a sickeningly sweet smile, Valerie lifted the lid. Sitting on the pristine silver platter was a massive cut of raw, bloody beef, practically swimming in its own juices. Next to it sat a crystal tumbler filled to the brim with fresh, dark venison blood. Staring at that glass of blood, the whites of Gideon’s eyes slowly bled red. His classically handsome face contorted into something vicious and terrifying. “Get out!” He suddenly snapped, violently backhanding a priceless Ming vase off a nearby pedestal. It shattered into a thousand pieces. “Everyone, get the fuck out!” I was still busy drooling at the sight of the venison blood when Gideon’s sudden violent outburst made me jump. Before I could react, Valerie grabbed my arm and practically dragged me out of the room. But instead of fleeing the house, she pulled me toward the veranda, pressing me against the French doors and leaving a tiny crack open so we could see inside. “See?” she whispered frantically, her voice trembling with morbid triumph. “I didn’t lie to you. He is a literal monster.” Inside the room, Gideon was staring at the glass of blood, his eyes locked in a violent war between desperate craving and agonizing self-loathing. I could see his throat working as he swallowed heavily. Suddenly, he snatched a steak knife from the tray and viciously drove it into his own forearm. Blood sprayed across the marble floor. The intense physical pain seemed to momentarily ground him, bringing a desperate clarity to his eyes. But it didn’t last. Within seconds, his breathing turned ragged and heavy. Unable to fight the overwhelming compulsion any longer, he dropped the knife, grabbed the raw, bloody slab of meat with his bare hands, and began tearing into it with a ravenous, animalistic desperation. “Oh my god!” Valerie shrieked, stumbling back. Even though she had orchestrated the entire scene, witnessing the sheer, grotesque reality of it broke her nerve. She let out a scream of pure terror. Gideon’s head snapped up. His eyes, devoid of any human warmth, locked dead onto my face through the glass. Valerie’s grip on my wrist tightened painfully as she yanked me toward the front gates. “Run!” “Stop them.” The chilling, dead voice drifted out from the house. Instantly, a wall of heavily armed security guards materialized, blocking our path. A moment later, Gideon stood before me. The dark, manic energy radiating from him was suffocating. His cold, bloodstained hand slowly reached up to wrap around my throat. A fractured, psychotic smile stretched across his face. “You lied to me. You want to leave me too, don’t you?”

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When the Vice President kicked my office door open, I was clutching an X-Acto knife, my hands shaking uncontrollably. He shoved his phone inches from my face. In the grainy security footage, a figure was rifling through files in the server room. The silhouette, the posture, the tan trench coat—it was unmistakably me. “You backstabbing bitch! We caught you red-handed on camera. Get ready to rot in a cell!” His roar hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. I stared at the screen, watching my “ghost” skulk around, and then, inexplicably, I started to laugh. A sharp, jagged sound that cut through the tension. So, for the last half hour, I’d supposedly been playing corporate spy. That meant the person who had just wired $200 million of the firm’s capital into a fraudulent, frozen account definitely wasn’t me. The X-Acto knife hit the floor with a metallic clatter. My heart, which had been lodged in my throat for the last ten minutes, finally dropped back into my chest. The notification for the frozen funds was still flashing on my monitor, but suddenly, that didn’t seem like my problem anymore. 1 Bill Henderson looked at the knife on the floor and let out a cold, jagged laugh. “What? Scared now?” “If you’re smart, you’ll make this easy for both of us.” He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out a formal memo, slamming it onto my desk. The header was bold and unforgiving: Termination of Employment – Chief Financial Officer, Summer Beckett. The grounds for firing were laid out in black and white: Suspected theft of core trade secrets, gross violation of non-disclosure agreements, and breach of conduct. He kept one hand pressed firmly on the document while the other signaled toward the hallway. Two security guards filed in, flanking my desk like pillars of stone. “Hand over the corporate keys and your digital signature token,” Bill said, curling his fingers in a ‘give it here’ gesture. A crowd had already gathered at the door. People who, just this morning, were calling me “Ms. Beckett” with practiced smiles were now wearing masks of disgust. “I knew something was off with her,” someone whispered loud enough for me to hear. “Always staying until midnight. Now we know what she was actually doing.” “No wonder we lost that last bidding war. We had a mole in the C-suite.” “She deserves whatever’s coming to her.” I ignored them. My eyes were fixed on the timestamp of the security still on Bill’s phone. 14:15. The figure in the tan trench coat—my tan trench coat—had slipped into the server room then. I thought back to 14:10. Maya, Bill’s niece who was currently “interning” in the marketing department, had walked into my office with two lattes. “Summer, I thought you could use a caffeine boost,” she’d said, her voice sweet and syrupy. Then, she “tripped.” An entire cup of scorching latte drenched the trench coat I had draped over the back of my chair. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry! Summer, don’t be mad—let me take it to the dry cleaner’s downstairs right now!” She’d scooped up the coat and ran out before I could even process the mess. At the time, I thought she was just a clumsy, well-meaning kid. Now I realized that five minutes later, that coat was on someone else’s back. And while that “someone” was in the server room from 14:15 to 14:25, I was sitting right here at my desk, authorizing a wire transfer of $200 million into a dead end. Bill had spent weeks digging a grave to bury me in. He just didn’t realize that the ground beneath us had already opened up into a much deeper abyss. That $200 million? That was the company’s lifeline. We’d liquidated assets and mortgaged the factory to get that bridge funding from our VCs. Now, it was sitting in a court-ordered frozen account. To get it back through legal channels would take eighteen months, minimum. The company had two months of runway, tops. According to the clawback clauses and the fiduciary responsibility agreement I’d signed, every cent of that loss would be pinned on me. My house, my savings, the fund I’d spent three years building for my mother’s dialysis—all of it would be gone. But by trying to frame me for a petty theft at the exact moment the money vanished, Bill hadn’t pushed me into the pit. He had accidentally built a wall between me and the crime. I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Bill saw the flicker in my eyes and mistook it for surrender. “Finally realized there’s no way out, haven’t you?” He slowly pulled another stack of papers from his bag. 2 Two documents sat on my desk now. The first was a Voluntary Waiver of All Stock Options and Performance Bonuses. The second was a Confession of Trade Secret Theft. It was written with clinical coldness: I, Summer Beckett, admit that between 14:15 and 14:25 today, I left my workstation and entered the core server room to steal confidential bidding documents. Bill slid a pen toward me. He sighed, putting on his best “disappointed mentor” face. “Summer, I watched you climb the ladder from a junior accountant. Honestly, it breaks my heart to see it end like this.” He shook his head, the picture of grief. “But you did this. If I don’t handle this, how do I explain it to the Board? How do I look at the hundred employees whose livelihoods you put at risk?” He was a phenomenal actor. If I didn’t know for a fact that he was the reason we lost the bidding war last month, I might have even felt a twinge of guilt. “Look, Summer,” he leaned in, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “I know how much your mom’s hospital bills are. You go to prison, who’s going to take care of her? They’ll pull her off that machine within three days.” My knuckles turned white as I gripped the edge of the desk. He straightened up, resuming his role as the benevolent leader. He patted my shoulder in front of everyone. “Sign the papers, walk away quietly, and I’ll convince the CEO not to call the police. We’ll call it a wash—your years of service in exchange for your freedom. I’ll even personally cut you a check for $5,000 to help with your mother’s transition.” A murmur of admiration went through the crowd in the hallway. “Bill is being way too generous.” “Anyone else would’ve had her in handcuffs by now.” “She’s lucky she has a boss like him.” I didn’t say a word. I let the silence stretch for a few agonizing seconds until Bill tipped his head toward the door. “Luke, come in here.” My heart skipped a beat. Luke. My cousin. Three years ago, I’d found him rotting in a dive bar in our hometown. No degree, no skills, no future. I brought him to the city, paid his rent, and got him a job in the IT department. When he needed $10,000 for his wedding because his fiancée’s family was threatening to call it off, I took it out of my mother’s medical fund and handed it to him. He’d hugged me with tears in his eyes and told me I was the only real family he had. Now, Luke stood behind Bill, chest out, chin up. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Summer, just admit it,” he said, his voice forced. “Don’t make me choose between my family and the truth.” He took a deep breath, addressing the room. “I saw her. At 2:10 PM, she locked her screen and headed toward the server room. Her desk was empty for at least fifteen minutes.” The office went graveyard quiet. Then the whispers turned into a dull roar. “Even her own cousin can’t lie for her!” “It’s over!” “Just sign the damn papers!” Luke finished his speech and moved half a step closer to Bill’s side. He looked like a dog waiting for a treat after successfully fetching a kill. I stared at him for a long time. Long enough for him to start fidgeting with his fingers. Then, I looked down. Fine. Every debt of blood and gratitude we had? It was settled today. 3 “I won’t admit to something I didn’t do!” I screamed. “I was at my desk the entire time! I was processing wires! I never left!” My eyes were red, my body shaking. I played the part perfectly: a woman pushed into a corner by a lie, hysterical and desperate. It was exactly what they wanted to see. Bill actually chuckled. “Still stubborn? We have you on video. We have an eyewitness. How are you going to argue with that?” I didn’t answer him with words. I spun around and ripped the hardware security key—the U-key—out of my computer’s USB port. “This!” I held it up like a holy relic. “The high-value transfer system requires this physical key to operate. Every single payment requires a fingerprint confirmation on this device! It has biometric logs! It records the exact second of every interaction!” I was hyperventilating now. “This key will prove that between 2:15 and 2:25 PM, the finger pressed against this sensor belonged to me, Summer Beckett! I was here! I couldn’t have been in the server room!” Before they could react, I grabbed a thick stack of printed authorization forms from my desk and clutched them to my chest. “And these! Every one of these wire approvals has my physical signature and the corporate seal from ten minutes ago! The ink is still wet! A forensics test could prove exactly when these were signed!” “Call the police!” I shrieked. “Call the FBI! Let them check the fingerprints on the U-key! Let them check the timestamps on these papers! See what happens when you try to frame me!” I was a mess. A pathetic, drowning rat. But inside, I was cold. I knew those logs would prove I was at my desk. But they would also prove that I was the one who sent the $200 million into the void. The U-key and the papers weren’t my lifelines. They were the poison I was feeding to Bill. I knew that the more I acted like these were my “proof of innocence,” the more Bill would fear them. Because if the authorities got involved and verified my prints, not only would his body-double-in-a-trench-coat trick fail, but his entire narrative would collapse. He couldn’t let that evidence stay in this office. Sure enough, Bill’s smile vanished. His eyes turned dark and predatory. He looked at the U-key in my hand, then at the papers I was “protecting.” He looked at Luke and gave a slight jerk of his head. “Since Ms. Beckett has clearly lost her mind, help her clean up her desk. We wouldn’t want her hurting herself.” 4 Luke didn’t hesitate. He stepped toward me with a grim sense of purpose. “Summer, just let it go,” he said, reaching for the U-key. I scrambled back, but he was stronger. He pried my fingers open and snatched the small black device. “No! Please! That’s the only thing that proves I was here!” I screamed, struggling against him. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar. Luke held the U-key and looked at Bill. Bill gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod. Then, Luke dropped the U-key on the hardwood floor. He lifted his heavy boot and slammed it down. Crackle. The internal chip snapped. The plastic casing shattered into a dozen pieces. Components scattered across the floor like digital dust. I collapsed into my chair, staring at the wreckage. My face was a mask of pure despair. But in my head, I was counting the wins. He didn’t just destroy my “innocence.” He destroyed the only evidence that could link me to the $200 million crime.

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I have always possessed a heart made of spun glass. The slightest tremor, the quietest rejection, and the fractures would spiderweb through my chest until I simply didn’t want to exist anymore. Once, when I caught my boyfriend with the girl I called my best friend, the betrayal shattered me so thoroughly that I decided we should all just leave this earth together. When my mother, suffocating and controlling, secretly logged in and changed my college applications to suit her own desires, the despair was so heavy I simply walked up to the roof and stepped into the open air. When my father, a man made of debts and empty promises, accused me of stealing the grocery money he had actually gambled away, the injustice of it burned so hot that I threw myself headfirst into the drywall. That was the pattern. Over the years, I had racked up a staggering tally: one hundred and eight attempts to end it all. One hundred and eight times I should have died. And then, one day, the wealthiest man in the country—a man I’d only ever seen on the covers of financial magazines—kicked down my door and begged to marry me. On my first day living in his estate, his socialite ex-girlfriend stormed in, painting her lips crimson and pointing a manicured finger at my face, calling me a homewrecker. The familiar sting of injustice flared. My chest tightened. Almost on autopilot, I reached for the silver fruit knife resting on the mahogany table, ready to drag it across my wrist. The billionaire didn’t hesitate. He lunged across the room, slapping the woman’s hand away with a fury that made the windows rattle. “If anyone so much as looks at her wrong,” he roared, his voice trembling with a terrifying rage, “I will dismantle their entire life.” Then, he turned to me. The most powerful man in the city dropped to his knees, his expensive suit pooling on the hardwood. He wrapped his arms around my legs, burying his face in my skirt. “Christ, Cheryl,” he choked out, sounding utterly broken. “You’ve died a hundred and eight times already. Please, I am begging you. Just let me keep you alive.” 1 I was born with a fatal flaw in my psychological wiring. Whenever the world pushed back, even slightly, my instinct was to pull the ripcord. To fade out. To die. It started small. When I was a little girl, a neighbor offhandedly mentioned that I was “such a solemn, unsmiling child.” My fragile little ego fractured. I ran home, hid beneath my quilt, and genuinely lay in the dark calculating how to slip away without it hurting. In middle school, an older girl got jealous that my essay won the district competition instead of hers. She cornered me in the alley behind the gymnasium, shoving me against the brick. I cried hot, humiliating tears and shoved the certificate into her chest. Walking home, the shame fermented into a dark, heavy sludge. I stared at the rushing traffic, thinking how easy it would be to just step off the curb. But the real breaking point came during my freshman year of high school. My father, a degenerate gambler, stole my mother’s emergency cash and blamed it on me. My glass heart didn’t just crack that day; it pulverized. I turned and rammed my head into the living room wall with everything I had. But the strange thing was—while the drywall dented, peeling away in chalky white flakes, and the room spun dizzily, I was perfectly fine. Not a drop of blood. Not a concussion. Once you realize you can survive the impossible, the barrier to trying again drops drastically. When a teacher humiliated me in front of the entire class, I went on a hunger strike. Five days without a drop of water, yet I woke up on the sixth day feeling energized and completely hydrated. When I bombed my SATs, I filled the bathtub, submerged myself, and waited for the dark. Hours later, I woke up beneath the water, having simply taken a peaceful nap. Not a single drop had entered my lungs. Then came the college application disaster. My mother altered my choices, forcing me into a teaching program I despised. I sobbed until my throat bled, tuned out her suffocating lectures, ran up the stairwell of our apartment building, and threw myself off the twentieth floor. I didn’t turn into a smear on the pavement. I didn’t even cough up blood. I just stood up, dusted off my jeans, and walked away. Pills, carbon monoxide, leaping—nothing worked. I was entirely, frustratingly immortal. My one hundred and ninth attempt was catalyzed by catching Charles, my college boyfriend, tangled in the sheets with my supposed best friend. I didn’t say a word. I just walked to the kitchen, grabbed the sharpest paring knife I could find, and charged back into the bedroom, my vision tunneled in red. Just as the tip of the blade was about to graze Charles’s bare chest, the apartment door exploded inward. I whipped around to see Berton Sinclair. The Berton Sinclair. Tech mogul, billionaire, a man whose face I’d seen on billboards in Times Square. He was sprinting down the narrow hallway of my cheap apartment, trailing a team of frantic paramedics in white coats. When Berton saw the knife in my fist, the blood drained from his face. He stumbled toward me, his hands raised in surrender. “Cheryl, please. Stop. Just put the knife down,” he pleaded, his voice cracking. “Think about your parents. If you die, think of what it would do to them.” I paused for exactly two seconds. I thought about my father, shaking me down for casino money. I thought about my mother, checking my phone logs and dictating my breathing. The memory made the knife feel lighter. I adjusted my grip. Seeing the shift in my eyes, the billionaire looked like he was about to weep. He threw out a lifeline, desperate and frantic. “Whatever you want,” Berton gasped out. “As long as it’s legal, I will give it to you. A penthouse, sports cars, blank checks. I don’t care. Just… please don’t kill yourself.” I stared at him, my mind short-circuiting. Was he just so obscenely wealthy that he played vigilante savior for fun? Sensing my hesitation, Berton doubled down. “Money solves ninety-nine percent of the world’s problems, Cheryl. Stay alive, and I swear on my life, you will never want for anything again. Hell, if you want to work at my company with your boyfriend, or just sit on the payroll and collect a massive salary, it’s yours.” That last sentence was a mistake. I glared at Berton, the betrayal twisting tight in my gut. He was in on it. He was friends with my cheating scum of a boyfriend. Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, I turned the blade inward and drove it straight into my own chest. Hot blood rushed over my fingers, blooming instantly across my shirt. Pain, sharp and blinding, ripped through me. The world tilted, and I collapsed against the cheap linoleum. As the darkness swallowed me, I heard Berton’s voice, thick with agony and absolute despair: “A hundred and eight times… wasn’t that enough? Why do you want to die so badly?!” 2 When I opened my eyes, I was drowning in the softest Egyptian cotton sheets I had ever felt. For a brief, euphoric moment, I thought the afterlife had excellent thread counts. Then, my eyes focused on Berton Sinclair’s exhausted, furious face. Seeing me awake, he rolled his eyes toward the vaulted ceiling, but the irritation quickly melted into a hyper-vigilant stare. He watched my hands, my breathing, as if terrified I might spontaneously combust. The disappointment settled heavy in my bones. I was still alive. I ignored his glare, overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion and self-loathing. What kind of cosmic joke was I? I had plunged a knife directly into my heart, and the universe had just spit me back out. The harder it was to die, the more the obsession clawed at me. I scanned the luxurious bedroom. No sharp objects. No glass vases. Berton followed my gaze, his jaw ticking. “What are you looking for? Are you hungry?” he demanded, his voice tight. “Tell me what you want. I’ll have the private chef make it right now.” I didn’t want to talk to this bizarre, intrusive billionaire. I just wanted to find a solid surface, shatter my skull, and leave this miserable, disappointing world behind. I threw off the covers, planted my feet, and sprinted full-force toward the pristine white wall. Thud. The impact didn’t feel like drywall. It was warm. It smelled of cedar and expensive cologne. And it let out a sharp, winded gasp. Had Berton’s house come alive? I opened my eyes in a panic, only to realize something far worse. I hadn’t hit the wall. I had rammed headfirst into Berton’s chest. No wonder it hadn’t cracked my skull open. But Berton looked like he was in agony. Tears actually pricked the corners of his eyes. Mortified, I rubbed my nose and tried to step back. He wasn’t having it. His hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist with an iron grip. When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I gave a weak tug, but he wouldn’t let go. Defeated, my shoulders slumped. “I want to die.” The words seemed to ignite something volatile inside him. “You are in your twenties! Why is your first instinct always to end it? Do you have any idea what this does to your parents? What it does to… to the people who care about you?” I looked up at him, genuinely bewildered. Why was he weaponizing the people who broke me? My father didn’t care about me; he cared about his next hand of blackjack. The dull ache in my ribs on rainy days was a permanent reminder of the time he kicked me for refusing to hand over my paycheck. And my mother? She controlled me like a puppet. Growing up, I was only allowed to speak to children with high GPAs. In college, she demanded my passwords to read my texts. When I finally graduated, she threatened to swallow pills if I didn’t move back home, take a mundane office job, and marry a man of her choosing. When I didn’t answer, Berton’s anger seemed to evaporate. He leaned in, his eyes scanning my pale face with an intensity that made my breath hitch. I took a defensive step back. I didn’t know this man. Why did he care? “Because I… I have more money than I know what to do with, and I want to play savior. Is that a crime?” I blinked, realizing I had spoken my thoughts out loud. Too much money and wants to play savior. What an utterly bizarre, detached reality the one percent lived in. Seeing my lingering suspicion, Berton sighed, reached into the inner pocket of his tailored suit, and pulled out a card. It was sleek, heavy, and matte black. My eyes locked onto it. Was that an actual, no-limit Centurion card? Berton let out a breath, looking almost relieved. Thank God she still cares about money, his eyes seemed to say. He pressed the cold metal into my palm. “It’s yours. Buy whatever you want. Max it out. I don’t care.” My heart gave a violent, pathetic flutter. Damn it. Was this the corrupting power of capitalism? It was incredibly tempting. Maybe dying could wait until the weekend? I immediately pulled out my phone, opened the voice memo app, and shoved it toward his face, looking at him with bright, expectant eyes. Berton coughed, suddenly looking very awkward. He raised a brow. “What? You want my number?” “No,” I said, entirely serious. “I need you to repeat what you just said on the record. Otherwise, you’re going to claim it was a loan and sue me for the balance later.” Berton’s face darkened with a mixture of disbelief and offense, but he grumbled into the microphone, repeating his offer. Satisfied, I slipped the phone into my pocket and followed him downstairs to the dining room. Over the next few days, Berton went full Mother Teresa on me. He handled the fallout with my ex, broke my lease, and absolutely refused to let me return to my cramped apartment. He insisted I stay in his sprawling, quiet estate. Between the exhaustion of fighting him, the undeniable comfort of the mansion, and the fact that it was a much shorter commute to my job, I gave in. For almost a week, the quiet luxury of the house worked like a balm. The urge to fade away dialed down to a low hum. Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, my boss called me into his glass-walled office. For two grueling hours, he stood over my desk, screaming at me, waving a pitch deck I had revised thirty-six times. He tore my work apart, calling me incompetent, lazy, and a waste of payroll. The kicker? The client ended up choosing my very first draft. How was that my fault? I had lost sleep, skipped meals, and bled over those revisions because he told me to. I hadn’t even raised my voice, and here he was, humiliating me in front of the entire bullpen, accusing me of wasting his time. The injustice of it felt like shards of glass in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take it anymore. When the clock struck five, I walked out of the office, took the elevator up to the roof, and stepped off the ledge. 3 I woke up in Berton’s guest room. Again. I threw a pillow across the room and screamed at the ceiling, “I hate corporate America! They treat us like absolute livestock!” From the dark corner of the room, a low, moody voice replied, “So, you want to be the boss.” I jumped, clutching the duvet to my chest. Berton stepped out of the shadows. He looked exhausted, his handsome face tight with frustration. “I gave you an unlimited credit card, Cheryl,” he said, pacing toward the foot of the bed. “If you want to be the boss, buy a damn company. If someone yells at you, yell back. You have me backing you, and you’re still letting these mid-level managers walk all over you? Have you never learned how to throw your weight around?” I paused. He made a fair point. Then, my shoulders slumped. “Forget it. I don’t know the first thing about running a business. And I couldn’t be ruthless. If I can’t be a cutthroat capitalist, I’d just ruin the market.” Berton let out an exasperated sigh, pulled out his phone, fired off a rapid series of texts, and shoved it back into his pocket. He caught me staring and scowled. “Go to sleep. Now.” I flinched, stuttering slightly. “I… I can’t sleep with you standing there.” Usually, Berton was the picture of refined elegance, treating everyone from board members to the housekeeping staff with polite detachment. Right now, he looked like a powder keg about to blow, glaring at me with zero gentlemanly restraint. “I am not moving from this chair,” he snapped. “I am staying right here so you don’t decide to fling yourself out a window over some microscopic inconvenience at 3 A.M.” My throat tightened. A familiar prickle of tears burned my eyes. It wasn’t like I enjoyed wanting to die. It was just that the world always felt too heavy, too loud, too cruel. Nothing ever went the way it was supposed to. Seeing my eyes well up, the powder keg instantly deflated. Berton scrubbed a hand over his face, walked over, and half-knelt beside the bed. His voice dropped to a low, desperate murmur. “Cheryl… please. Stop overthinking. Just close your eyes. When you wake up, I’m going to take you to get your revenge.” Revenge? My curiosity spiked. I wanted to ask what he meant, to tell him I wasn’t tired, but one look at the sheer exhaustion lining his eyes made me swallow the words. I lay down and squeezed my eyes shut. Oddly enough, within minutes, a heavy, dreamless sleep pulled me under. When I woke up, the sunlight was streaming in, and Berton was gone. I padded down to the dining room. He was sitting at the head of the long table, sipping black coffee. He slid a thick manila folder toward my plate. “Sign,” he said simply. I frowned, opening the cover. My eyes went wide. It was an acquisition contract for the marketing firm I worked for. Berton made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, looking at me like I was a feral cat he’d just brought indoors. “Sign the paper, Cheryl. The company becomes yours. When you walk in there today, your boss will have to bow to you. I shouldn’t have to teach you how to make his life miserable, right?” I tried to refuse, stammering about the cost, but his glare grew so intensely impatient that I finally picked up the Montblanc pen and scribbled my name, my hand shaking. But as the ink dried, I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from ticking upward. News travels fast. By the time I walked through the glass doors of my former purgatory, the atmosphere was electric with panic. My boss—my former tormentor—was practically sweating through his suit. He bowed, ushering me into the conference room and pouring me a cup of his prized, ridiculously expensive loose-leaf tea. The other employees watched through the blinds, their eyes wide with envy and shock. I took a sip of the bitter tea. It tasted like absolute victory. Being a cutthroat capitalist? Maybe not so bad after all. When I finally left the building, Berton was idling by the curb in his sleek black SUV to pick me up. My phone buzzed. I pulled it out. The company group chat, which I hadn’t been removed from yet, had over 99 unread messages. Thinking I was gone, they were tearing me apart. Did you see her? Definitely a sugar baby. Slept her way to the top, obviously. Someone had even posted screenshots of Charles’s Instagram story. My ex was claiming that my “sudden wealth” was the reason I had coldly abandoned him after years of dating. The air rushed out of my lungs. That absolute bastard. He cheated on me, and now he was playing the victim to make me look like a gold digger? The rage blinded me. Without a second thought, I turned toward the concrete wall of the parking garage and launched myself forward. Through my peripheral vision, I saw Berton leap out of the SUV, his face twisted in horror. As my skull connected with the concrete, the world didn’t go black for me. Instead, I saw Berton clutch his forehead, his knees buckling as he collapsed limply onto the pavement. 4 When I opened my eyes next, I was back in Berton’s bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, scrolling through his phone. There was a stark white gauze bandage taped over his forehead. He looked up, catching me awake, and shot me a glare. But beneath the anger, there was a profound, aching resentment in his eyes. I shrank back. Why was he looking at me like I had just broken his heart? The memory of the group chat flooded back, and that familiar, suffocating weight settled on my chest. I wanted to disappear again. Berton let out a breath that sounded more like a groan. He leaned over, gently catching my chin in his hand, forcing me to look at him. “Alright. Let’s hear it. Who pissed you off this time and made you want to die?” The warmth of his fingers made my eyes well up. I looked at the bandage on his head. “What happened to your forehead? Did you trip trying to catch me?” Berton’s expression darkened. He lifted a finger and flicked me sharply on the forehead. “You have a lot of nerve asking me that!” I winced, rubbing my head, feeling guilty but also strangely… cared for. I spilled the entire story—the group chat, the rumors, Charles’s pathetic Instagram posts. Berton sat in silence for a long time, his jaw working as he processed it. Just when I thought he might lecture me again, a slow, dark smile spread across his face. It was completely out of character. “Perfect timing,” he murmured. “Your ex-boyfriend interviewed at my company a few days ago. He’s up for a final round. You want to ruin his day?” Berton Sinclair rarely smiled. When he did, it was usually the polite, polished curve of a CEO navigating a gala. But this—this was wicked, vengeful, and devastatingly attractive. I couldn’t look away. Knowing Berton was actively handing me the weapon to exact my own revenge sparked a fire in me I hadn’t felt in years. For the first time, the will to survive overshadowed the urge to die. I stopped sighing around the house. I even asked for seconds at dinner. A few days later, Sinclair Enterprises held their final executive interviews. From the security feeds in the lobby, I watched Charles stride in, his chest puffed out, an arrogant smirk on his face. He looked like a man who believed the world owed him a favor. When he finally walked into the boardroom, I was already seated at the center of the interview panel. I wore a dark blazer, a low-brimmed cap, and kept my head down, pretending to review his file. He didn’t even look at me. He just launched into his rehearsed, self-aggrandizing speech about his “visionary marketing strategies.” When he finally paused for breath, I slowly lifted my head. The color drained from his face so fast it was comical. I leaned back in the leather ergonomic chair, a sweet, venomous smile on my lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Charles,” I said, my voice dripping with faux regret. “But you simply do not meet the standards of this company.”

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The package room in the lobby of our corporate headquarters was dead empty. It was only then that my supervisor—who had just returned from a business trip—finally remembered the existence of the employee whose phone number he had blocked. When I picked up the office line, his voice was frantic, a man whose world was actively catching fire. He demanded to know where the five cases of premium liquor were for tonight’s executive dinner—the one meant to seal a ten-million-dollar contract. He practically screamed into the receiver, accusing me of hiding the shipment. The irony was thick enough to choke on. This whole disaster had started exactly three days ago. Claiming his corporate cards were maxed out, he had ordered me to front nearly ten thousand dollars of my own money to purchase five cases of reserve vintage Scotch and a custom corporate embosser. He told me it was a life-or-death emergency for a signing event the following week. I had bitten my lip, drained my savings, and paid for it. The next morning, when I bumped into him in the breakroom, he brushed me off, promising to authorize the reimbursement by the end of the day. The day after that, he claimed he was dizzy from back-to-back meetings. Just wait one more day, Paige, he had said. On the third day, he crossed the line. He left on a business trip without a word, ignored all my messages, and sent my calls straight to voicemail. So, sitting in the stairwell with the cold, automated tone of a blocked call ringing in my ear, I had made a singular, split-second decision. I opened the shipping app, intercepted the packages, and canceled the entire order. 1 “Paige, are you allergic to your notifications?” The sharp rap of knuckles against my desk startled me. I pulled my eyes away from the architectural blueprints scattered across my workspace and looked up. Bradley, my direct supervisor, was staring down at me. His tone was perfectly mild, his face arranged into a mask of corporate friendliness, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. For the past half hour, the messaging icon on my monitor had been flashing relentlessly. I had ignored it, knowing from a year of bitter experience that Bradley reaching out directly never meant anything good. I had simply kept my head down, burying myself deeper into the CAD files. I just hadn’t expected him to actually walk out of his glass-walled sanctuary to confront me. Without waiting for an invitation, he leaned over my shoulder, the overpowering scent of his designer cologne invading my space. He took my mouse, jiggling it to wake the screen, and clicked open the chat window I had been so desperately trying to ignore. “I need you to cover this invoice for me, Paige,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s all stuff for the big signing next week. My limits are totally frozen right now.” He said it with such breathtaking entitlement. If he had known my passcode, I’m half-convinced he would have processed the payment himself right then and there. I couldn’t even count how many times we had played this exact game. During my very first week as a junior designer, he had forwarded me a cart containing three boxes of premium binder clips. It was thirty bucks. I was eager to please, terrified of making a bad impression, so I paid it without a second thought. I didn’t realize that in doing so, I had bled in shark-infested waters. A few days later, it was a hundred-dollar order. Mostly random, disparate office supplies. Back then, I had tried to maintain my professional boundaries, offering a polite, tentative refusal. “Brad, does the company actually reimburse us for these kinds of individual orders?” I had asked. “I’m still waiting on the money for those binder clips from last week.” He had frozen, a flash of genuine annoyance crossing his features. “Paige, these are essentials for our department,” he had snapped, his voice carrying just enough for the surrounding desks to hear. “It’s practically pennies. Why are you being so difficult about this? Just fill out an expense report, bring it to accounting, and I’ll sign off on it. Easy.” With that, he had turned on his heel, effectively ending the conversation. As he walked away, I distinctly heard him mutter, “So damn emotional.” I had swallowed my pride, quietly canceled the sweetgreen salad I had scheduled for lunch, and bought a stale sandwich from the lobby vending machine instead. My checking account barely had enough to cover his “pennies.” Yes, the company technically reimbursed us. But the bureaucratic red tape was a nightmare. The money always took weeks, sometimes over a month, to hit my account. Bradley’s demands had only grown more frequent, the amounts steadily climbing, and I was drowning under the weight of it. So today, when I saw his name flashing on my screen, a knot of dread had formed in my stomach. But nothing could have prepared me for the number staring back at me now. Nine thousand, five hundred dollars. I stared at the screen, my vision tunneling. A custom corporate embosser. And… Scotch? Five entire cases of limited-edition, twenty-year reserve Macallan? When I didn’t immediately speak, Bradley sighed, a harsh, impatient sound. “Paige, I told you, this is for the signing next week. You know exactly what’s at stake here. This is a ten-million-dollar contract. If we land this, the bonuses for our department are going to be astronomical. This is a drop in the bucket, and you’ll get it all back through Concur anyway.” A drop in the bucket? I almost laughed out loud. I was a junior employee barely making rent. Nine and a half thousand dollars was everything I had to my name. It was my safety net. It was my mother’s medical fund. Bradley stamped his foot, an ugly flash of panic in his eyes. “Look, I just need you to float it! If you can’t wait for the corporate reimbursement cycle, I will personally wire you the cash tomorrow morning. Do you want me to pause the entire workflow and have the whole floor pitch in like a bake sale?” It was rare to hear actual desperation in his voice. We were in the eleventh hour of a massive push, and the tension on the floor was palpable. A few of my colleagues, exhausted and running on fumes, looked up from their monitors. “Just do it, Paige. Don’t be the bottleneck,” Kevin, a senior architect, muttered loudly, shooting me a glare. A murmur of agreement rippled through the pod. Surrounded by the heavy, judgmental stares of my team, and looking at Bradley’s dead-serious expression, the fight drained out of me. My hands shook as I picked up my phone. I double-clicked the side button. FaceID authenticated. Payment Successful. The moment the green checkmark appeared, Bradley practically sprinted back to his office. But as I watched his retreating back, a cold, sickening weight settled deep in my bones. 2 I survived the next workday entirely on nervous adrenaline. I sat rigidly at my desk, my eyes darting toward Bradley’s office every few minutes. He never showed up. His lights remained off, the glass doors securely shut. Just as the panic began to curdle in my throat, just as I was drafting a carefully worded text to demand my money, I bumped into him by the espresso machine in the breakroom. Before I could even open my mouth, he went on the offensive. “Hey, Paige, I’m glad I caught you,” he said smoothly, pouring a double shot. “My schedule is completely insane today. I have to head to corporate HQ in twenty minutes, and I won’t have time to deal with the bank. My transfer limit is still locked up.” He offered me a reassuring, easy smile. “Don’t stress. I’ll come find you first thing tomorrow, and I’ll wire you the funds directly. I promise.” He had brought it up first. He looked me in the eye and swore he’d handle it. It was just enough to quiet the screaming alarm bells in my head. I forced myself to breathe, walked back to my desk, and threw myself into my drafts. But Thursday came and went, and Bradley never approached my desk. His office door was wide open. I saw him pacing, taking calls, laughing with the senior partners. Several times, we made direct eye contact through the glass. Every time, his gaze slid right past me, frictionless, as if I were part of the drywall. By 5:00 PM, the nausea was unbearable. I walked up to his door and knocked twice. “Brad, about that invoice—” He rubbed his temples, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders. He let out a long, theatrical sigh and waved a hand at me. “I’ve been in meetings for eight hours, Paige. I can barely see straight. We’ll handle it tomorrow.” He looked so deeply inconvenienced by my existence that I just backed away. Tomorrow is Friday, I told myself. I will not leave this building without that money. I needed it. Desperately. Because Friday night, right after work, I had an appointment with the billing department at my mother’s oncology ward to settle her monthly copays. But when I arrived at the office on Friday morning, Bradley’s office was dark. His door was locked. I asked around, trying to keep my voice casual, only to have Kevin casually mention that Bradley was out of town. Not a sudden emergency. A scheduled, multi-day trip he had known about all week. My phone buzzed in my pocket. A sterile, automated text from the hospital reminding me of my outstanding balance. Something inside me snapped. I retreated to the quiet hum of the fire stairwell and opened my messages. I typed out a firm, urgent demand for the transfer. I waited ten minutes. Sent another. Over the next hour, I sent ten messages. Nothing. Total silence. The read receipts were glaring. At one point, the little typing bubbles appeared, dancing on the screen for three agonizing minutes, only to vanish into nothingness. My legendary patience evaporated. I hit the call button. It rang through the full cycle. Voicemail. Fine. I can do this all day. I hit redial. I was prepared to blow up his phone until the sheer annoyance forced him to answer. But on the third try, there was no ringing. Just a sharp, single beep, followed immediately by the automated operator. The number you have reached is unavailable… I lowered the phone. The air in the stairwell suddenly felt freezing. He had blocked me. I sank down onto the concrete steps, hugging my knees to my chest. My mind raced, piecing together the breadcrumbs I had been too naive, or too intimidated, to see. Did top-tier liquor even qualify for standard corporate reimbursement? Looking back at the months of random receipts, the pattern was glaringly obvious. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was expensing items that blatantly violated company policy, using me as a buffer, an untraceable middleman. When it was twenty bucks here, fifty bucks there, I had swallowed it. Even when it hit a few hundred, and he held my upcoming performance review over my head, I wrote it off as the unspoken cost of surviving in a cutthroat firm. But this was nearly ten thousand dollars. My lifeline. I stared at the red exclamation point next to my final, undelivered text message. The panic was gone, replaced by something much colder. Much sharper. 3 I opened the shipping app. The order status read: In Transit – Arriving at Local Sorting Facility. Because it was high-value freight, it required multiple checkpoints and signatures. I hit the customer service icon, bypassed the chatbot, and got a live agent on the phone. I explained there was a critical error with the billing and requested an immediate, hard intercept on the shipment. Since the pallets hadn’t yet been loaded onto the local delivery trucks, the intercept was approved. Twenty minutes later, my phone vibrated in my palm. Refund processed. $9,500.00 has been credited to your account. I stared at the numbers. The relief was so intense my knees went weak. I felt like I could finally draw a full breath into my lungs. When I pushed open the heavy stairwell door and walked back onto the floor, I felt invincible. I tore through my remaining revisions with a kind of manic clarity, finishing my entire weekly workload an hour before the clock hit five. Leaning back in my ergonomic chair, I let the quiet satisfaction wash over me. I should have drawn this boundary months ago. But late was better than never. By the time I packed my bag, there were still zero notifications from Bradley. With my bank account safely restored, I decided we deserved a victory. On the way to the hospital, I stopped at an upscale grocer. I bought a crate of Rainier cherries—the obscenely expensive ones—and a pound of thick-cut, artisan roast beef. That night, sitting in the quiet, sterile glow of my mother’s hospital room, we ate like queens. The entire weekend passed in absolute bliss. Bradley didn’t try to reach me. Monday and Tuesday at the office were a revelation. Without him prowling the aisles, no one was timing our bathroom breaks. No one was breathing down our necks, demanding performative overtime just to show “hustle.” The air in the studio literally felt lighter. But the peace shattered on Wednesday evening. I was pulling my coat off the back of my chair when my cell rang. A frantic, blocked number. I answered, and Bradley’s voice exploded through the speaker. “Paige! Where the hell are you? I’m standing downstairs at the loading dock!” He was breathing heavily, panic bleeding into every syllable. “Where did you stash the delivery? The executive dinner starts in three hours!” I actually had to admire the sheer audacity of the man. When I needed my money to keep my mother in care, he played dumb and blocked my number. But now that he was staring down the barrel of a ruined VIP event, I was suddenly his best friend. I let out a soft, dry laugh. “What delivery?” His voice spiked an octave. “The order from last week! The Scotch! The tracking said it shipped days ago. Did the freight guy not call you?” I let a beat of total silence hang on the line. Then, I spoke, keeping my voice perfectly, terribly calm. “Oh, that. I canceled the order.” The silence on his end was absolute. For three long seconds, I wondered if he had dropped his phone. Then, a sound clawed out of his throat—half-gasp, half-shriek. “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” “I don’t know what to tell you, Brad—” “I told you exactly what that was for!” he screamed. Behind him, I could hear the muted chaos of a hotel lobby. “This is a ten-million-dollar deal! Ten million! The entire executive board is going to be there!” He tried to say something else, but a voice in the background cut him off, urgently telling him they needed to leave. He didn’t even hang up. I just listened to the rustle of fabric as someone dragged him away. By the time I unlocked my apartment door, my screen was drowning in notifications. Paige, I don’t care if you have to go to every high-end liquor store in the tri-state area. Find me twenty-year-old reserve right now and bring it to this address! Forget five cases. Bring one. Just bring me two bottles! God damn it, answer me! When I left him on read, the desperation curdled into pure venom. The texts dissolved into an unhinged string of profanity. I scrolled to the very bottom. The final message sat there, heavy and menacing: You killed the project. Enjoy getting sued by corporate, you stupid bitch. 4 I stared at the chaotic mix of voice memos and unhinged texts. Even through the screen, I could vividly picture him unraveling in real-time. His later messages barely even made sense, riddled with typos and frantic autocorrects. I had no idea what kind of disaster was unfolding in that private dining room, but the fallout hit our department’s group chat like a bomb. Kevin was the first to strike, tagging me directly in the main channel. Kevin: What the hell is wrong with you, Paige? You just tanked months of everyone’s hard work because you wanted to throw a tantrum? Kevin was Bradley’s golden boy. I imagined Bradley had just called him, weeping in a bathroom stall somewhere, spinning a wild narrative of my betrayal. Then Lauren, another senior associate, chimed in. Lauren: Wait, the deal fell through? How is that even possible? Kevin took the opening and ran with it, painting a picture of a catastrophic dinner ruined entirely by my insubordination. He made it perfectly clear: if I hadn’t gone rogue, the ink on that ten-million-dollar contract would be drying right now. No one else in the chat said a word. They were either too terrified to intervene or quietly enjoying the bloodshed. I locked my phone and went to sleep. The next morning, I walked into the office exactly at 8:55 AM. The moment my foot crossed the threshold, the low hum of office chatter vanished. The silence was deafening. Everyone was staring at me. Kevin and Lauren didn’t even try to hide their disgust, looking at me like I had tracked dog shit onto their carpets. I considered defending myself, but standing in the middle of the floor screaming about expense fraud felt a little unhinged. So, I walked to my desk, sat down, and opened AutoCAD. My utter lack of visible guilt pushed Kevin over the edge. He stormed across the aisle, slammed his hands down on my desk, and swept a stack of my printed schematics onto the floor. “How do you even have the nerve to show your face here?” he hissed. I looked up at him, my expression blank. “What exactly did I do, Kevin?” His face flushed a dark, furious red. “You sabotaged the executive dinner! Because of you, the clients walked. All of our late nights, all of our overtime—wiped out because you wanted to be petty!” He was trembling with rage. For a second, he raised a hand, looking like he might actually take a swing at me. A few people gasped, but no one stepped in to pull him back. Before things could escalate, a sharp, authoritative voice cut through the air. “Who is Paige?” Kevin froze. Standing in the doorway was Victor Caldwell, the Managing Director from corporate HQ. His face was carved out of granite, and his tone was absolute zero. The entire floor pointed at me in terrified unison. Kevin practically shoved me forward, stepping back with a smug, vindictive smirk, eager to watch my execution. I followed Mr. Caldwell into the main conference room. The moment I stepped inside, I saw Bradley. He looked awful—sweaty, pale, and desperate. The second he saw me, he pointed a trembling finger. “That’s her! That’s the one!” he practically yelled, turning to the panel of executives seated at the table. “I laid everything out for her perfectly last week. I sourced the vendor, I approved the vintage, all she had to do was process the payment. And she deliberately canceled the order behind my back!” He was hyperventilating, entirely off script. “The whole floor can back me up! I streamlined the entire logistical process for her. What kind of psychopath does something like this? Ask anyone out there—they all know she’s the reason we lost the client!” Bradley was a cornered animal, using volume to mask his terror. The executives at the table—four very expensive suits from headquarters—stared at me with cold, open hostility. The collective weight of their glares was meant to crush me. Standing alone in the center of that room, I felt physically small. Bradley noticed my rigid posture. A tiny, triumphant sneer tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Paige, your actions have resulted in catastrophic consequences for this firm.” It was Mr. Caldwell who spoke, sitting at the head of the table. He didn’t ask for my side of the story. He delivered the verdict as a statement of fact. “This was a ten-million-dollar acquisition,” Caldwell continued, his voice echoing off the glass walls. “A junior employee does not have the authority, nor the capacity, to make decisions of this magnitude.” Every word was a nail in my coffin. It wasn’t my job. It was never my responsibility. But Bradley had spun a brilliant, desperate lie, turning me into a rogue employee who had maliciously destroyed a corporate merger. “Given the severity of your interference, we are preparing to take immediate legal action against you for damages.” It was over. They had made up their minds before I even walked in the door. Caldwell closed his folder and stood up, signaling the end of the tribunal. Bradley exhaled, a long, shuddering breath of relief, and hurried to open the door for the executives. But as Caldwell reached for the handle, I found my voice. I had been quiet my whole life. I hated conflict. I hated being perceived. But I looked at Bradley’s smug face, and a strange, cold fire lit up in my chest. “Mr. Caldwell,” I said, my voice ringing out, clear and steady. Everyone stopped. “I just have one question. For a dinner with two client representatives… did you really need thirty bottles of vintage Scotch?”

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