Category: English

My cheating husband got his brain scrambled in a car accident. Now, the only words he can utter are “yes” and “no.” Nothing else. Not a single other word. And the kicker? He can only tell the absolute truth. Talk about poetic justice. I asked him, “Is the woman you’re sleeping with my best friend?” His face went paper-white, but his lips moved against his will: “Yes.” “Did you transfer our marital assets?” “Yes.” “Is your bank passcode your high school sweetheart’s birthday?” “Yes.” Armed with this bizarre condition of his, I easily sent his mistress to prison and clawed back every single dime of his fortune. He couldn’t even manage to yell at me for it. Until today. A cute delivery guy flirted with me at the door. I turned back to look at my husband, sitting there with his usual blank, vacant stare. “Are you really my husband? You don’t even care?” I teased. But the words slipped right out of him: “No.” I froze. I stared straight into his eyes. It took me a long, agonizing moment to find my voice. “Then is my husband, Dylan… is he dead?” “Yes and no.” … 1 A cold shiver ran down my spine. I stared deeply into his eyes and asked him again, slower this time. “Are you really Dylan?” The man sitting before me looked entirely calm. “No.” My lips trembled. “Then… who are you?” He couldn’t answer that. He was bound by the rules of his condition—only straight yes-or-no questions would work. Well, that and the strange “yes and no” he had just uttered for the first time. I studied the face in front of me. It was Dylan’s face, line for line. The faint scar near his temple was from three years ago, when someone dropped a heavy glass bottle from a high-rise balcony. He had shoved me out of the way, taking the blow himself. It took seven stitches to close. The scar was real. It was Dylan’s. I fell silent, my mind spinning into a dark, chaotic spiral. Up until now, this man had been a hundred percent accurate. It didn’t even matter if the questions had nothing to do with his life; he could predict World Cup scores with terrifying precision, or tell me which celebrity rumors were true. I had made a small fortune relying on his answers. I trusted his word implicitly. If I asked him if an earthquake was going to hit in five minutes and he said “yes,” I would have packed my bags and run without a second thought. But now, he was telling me he wasn’t Dylan. And when I asked if Dylan was dead, he said, yes and no. An icy dread settled deep in my bones. If he wasn’t Dylan, then who had I been living with for the past three months? And where was my actual husband? Is it really possible for a person to be both dead and alive? As I was debating whether to tie him to a chair and drag the truth out of him question by question, a sudden, heavy knock rattled the front door. I went over and pulled it open. Two police officers stood on the porch, their expressions grim. “Are you Flora? We’re with the city police department. We have some news, and we need you to try to remain calm.” “At approximately 9:30 this morning, we recovered a severely decomposed body from the riverbank. We found an ID card in the victim’s pocket belonging to your husband, Dylan. We’re here to ask if you have any knowledge of this.” I nearly collapsed. “That’s impossible!” The two officers exchanged a quick, guarded look. “Why is it impossible?” I dug my fingernails into my palms, forcing myself to stay grounded. “Dylan can’t be dead. He’s right here.” I pointed toward the living room, where Dylan sat on the sofa, his head bowed, completely silent. The officers blinked, then walked past me into the living room. One of them pulled out the ID card and compared the photo to the man on the couch. Seeing the identical features, they fell into a tense silence. I scrambled to explain. “My husband is incredibly clumsy. He loses things constantly. Someone must have found his lost ID and then met with an accident. It’s just a bizarre coincidence…” The older officer cut me off, turning directly to the couch. “Sir, are you Dylan?” The man answered in a quiet, flat tone. “No.” The room went dead silent. The way the officers looked at me changed instantly. I quickly reached into my bag and pulled out the medical files. “Please, let me explain. My husband was in a severe car accident three months ago. His hippocampus was badly damaged. Aside from losing a large portion of his memory, his language center was compromised. He can only say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Here, I’ll show you.” I stepped closer to the couch. “Dylan, do you like eating garbage?” “No.” “Dylan, are these two police officers bad people?” “No.” “Dylan, are you Dylan?” “No.” I let out a weak, desperate laugh. “You see? His mental capacity is currently comparable to a seven-year-old. You can’t take his words literally.” The officers exchanged another look. They carefully inspected the official medical reports I handed them and made a quick call to the hospital to verify the details. Once they confirmed I was telling the truth, the tension in their shoulders eased slightly. “It looks like this might just be a strange misunderstanding. But we’ll still need you to come down to the station with us to make a formal statement.” I asked if we should bring Dylan along. The older officer thought about it. “Bring him. You wouldn’t feel easy leaving him home alone, would you?” So, I took Dylan and followed them to the station. Earlier, I’d been clever. I deliberately asked him three questions in a row where the answer could only be “no.” The second question confirmed the officers weren’t bad people, which meant they probably wouldn’t make things too hard for me. But just as we finished the statement and were getting ready to leave… A female officer suddenly pushed the door open, her face grim. “Wait. I have some questions.” She caught the eye of the younger officer, giving him a brief nod, and sat down directly across from me. “I think you’re lying.” My fingernails dug hard into my palms. “Excuse me?” She stared deeply at me, reaching over to click off the recording device. Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “Flora, don’t you recognize me? It’s Lisa.” A cold shiver ran down my spine. At first, I honestly hadn’t recognized her. Lisa, my old high school classmate. A girl who once harbored a massive crush on Dylan. We had never gotten along, and she spent years chasing him. After Dylan rejected her, she vanished from my life. I had no idea she’d joined the force. “The DNA results for the body aren’t back yet, so we can’t confirm if it’s Dylan. For all we know, you hired an actor to take his place.” She glanced sideways at Dylan, her tone softening just a fraction. “Dylan, do you remember me?” Dylan flicked his eyes up to her, then quickly looked back down at the floor. I didn’t know if it was just my imagination, but a fleeting flash of pain seemed to ripple through Lisa’s eyes. I spoke up immediately. “His brain is damaged. He literally cannot answer anything that isn’t a straight yes-or-no question.” Lisa tapped her ballpoint pen against the desk, looking lost in thought. “Flora, let me ask you. Why did Dylan get into that accident in the first place?” My body went rigid as the memories flooded back. When I first found out Dylan was cheating on me, I had completely spiraled. He had started lying to me about a year ago, getting incredibly good at it. It began with a stray lipstick left on the passenger seat, then a long, unfamiliar strand of hair tangled in his coat buttons, followed by endless nights “working late” at the office. Every sign pointed to an affair. But he had ripped out the dashcam, wiped his phone clean, and left me with zero hard evidence. My hysterical confrontations were met with nothing but his impatient, defensive screams. “Enough! Do you have any idea how crazy you look right now? Like a hysterical nag!” “You want to go through my phone? Go ahead! Search it! And when you find absolutely nothing, you’re getting on your knees to apologize to me!” I had finally given up, fully prepared to file for divorce, when the crash happened. He’d been driving fatigued, wrapping his car around a semi-truck halfway up a mountain road. I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Should I say there’s a God after all? He crashed on his way to meet his mistress and ended up a vegetable. You can look it up; the accident report is on file right here at your station.” Lisa nodded, tapping out a quick message on her phone. A moment later, a reply chimed. As she read it, her expression grew increasingly heavy. “What you’re saying is true. But it still doesn’t prove that this man sitting next to you is actually Dylan.” My patience snapped. “Are you insane? Can you not see his face? He is Dylan!” “Back in high school when you were learning how to sketch, didn’t you secretly draw hundreds of portraits of him…” Lisa cut me off. “Flora, I suspect you murdered Dylan.” I laughed out loud, utterly bewildered. “Lisa, if you keep making accusations like that, I will file a formal complaint.” “A severely decomposed corpse. Tell me, how on earth did you decide that was Dylan? Based on a single ID card?” “Not just the ID. The height and weight of the corpse perfectly match Dylan’s medical records.” Lisa’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “And then there’s the tattoo.” “The face was ruined by the water, yes. But the tattoo on his wrist is entirely unique. It was…” She hesitated, closing her eyes for a brief second. “…it was something I tattooed on him with my own hands.” The interrogation room fell into a dead silence. Beside me, Dylan remained completely motionless, not saying a word. But at the mention of the tattoo, his hand twitched. In the next second, I grabbed Dylan’s arm and yanked his sleeve up. On the inside of his wrist, a poorly drawn, ugly little dog tattoo came into view. Lisa’s face went entirely pale. “Don’t tell me you gave the same tattoo to two different guys!” I scoffed. “I always wondered why he had such a bizarre, ugly tattoo. Now I know it was your doing.” “Lisa, does your face burn yet? Still suspecting me? You think I killed Dylan? What would even be my motive?” She furrowed her brow, fighting back. “Tattoos can be copied…” I cut her off. “Copied? So you’re telling me I found someone who looks exactly like him, matches every single physical feature, just to pull off a duplicate? Why would I even bother?” “Dylan cheated on me and ended up half-braindead. He only recognizes me. As long as I play the loyal, doting wife, his parents are practically weeping with gratitude. I have free rein over all his money. Why would I want him dead?” “If he actually died, his parents would swoop in to claim their share of the estate. What do I stand to gain?” The older officer let out a sharp, warning cough. “Watch your language. Keep your speculation to yourself.” I shut my mouth, shaking my head with a cold smirk. Truth was, I wasn’t worried at all. Because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I hadn’t killed anyone.

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My best friend asked me to help her plan the perfect confession to the love of her life. I spent weeks drafting her texts, picking out her outfits, and curating the perfect playlists. It was only on the night of the confession that I realized the man she loved was Chase—my childhood best friend, the boy I’d secretly loved for ten years. They kissed right in front of me, under the amber glow of the streetlights. When they got married, I wore the champagne-colored bridesmaid dress, smiling until my cheeks ached. When she was caught in a high-end escort raid, she claimed she was taking the fall for me. When she stole and sold his family’s priceless antique heirloom, she swore it was to pay off my non-existent gambling debts. And finally, when she framed me for embezzling two million dollars from his family’s firm, I was sentenced to fifteen years. I died a cold, lonely death in a prison cell. But then, I opened my eyes. I was back. Back to the exact day her affair was exposed. … Whenever Tori sneaked out to hook up with her assistant, Zack, she’d tell Chase she was with me, helping me handle some crisis. This time, as Chase’s name flashed across my vibrating phone, I hesitated for a long second before sliding the screen to answer. I didn’t sound like my usual submissive, eager-to-please self. My voice was flat, hollowed out of any warmth. “What is it?” “Isabel, are you seriously doing this again?” Chase’s voice boomed through the receiver, sharp and dripping with irritation. “What is it this time? Did you get dumped, or did your dad get into another car accident? What’s your excuse for keeping Tori out late tonight?” He sighed, a heavy, performative sound. “You make an absolute mess of your own life, so you just have to drag everyone else down with you, don’t you?” “Do you even remember last month? When the police raided that wellness spa and you almost got arrested for soliciting? Tori literally took the fall for you to save your reputation! Do you have any idea how much drama that caused for us as a married couple?” “Isabel, you’re Tori’s best friend, which is the only reason I’ve turned a blind eye to your trashy habits and your gambling debts. But if you don’t show some goddamn gratitude and keep harassing my wife, don’t expect me to remember our childhood. I will ruin you. Now tell Tori to get her ass home right now!” If it weren’t for this phone call, I wouldn’t have known just how wretched my reputation was in his mind. Among close friends, covering for each other is common. But the moment I died in that prison cell, knowing Tori had put me there, our friendship died too. In this life, I was only living for myself. I had absolutely no intention of warning her. Instead, I kept my voice cool and detached. “You’ve got it wrong. I have no idea where Tori is. Why don’t you ask Zack? He’s her assistant. He practically lives in her pocket. He’d know her schedule better than anyone.” I hung up before he could respond. Tori was a gold-digger, pure and simple. For a prominent family like Chase’s, a wife cheating with her subordinate was a cardinal, unforgivable sin. The thought of her perfect world shattering brought a rare smile to my face. I walked to the kitchen and popped open a cold can of beer, taking a long, satisfying sip. But Chase’s hatred for me ran deeper than I had calculated. Barely ten minutes later, my front door shook. Chase didn’t just show up—he brought the company’s security guards with him. They burst into my apartment, grabbing my arms and pinning me like a common criminal. One of the guards kicked my bedroom door open, but the room was empty. “Isabel! Where the hell is Tori?” Chase stared at me, his eyes burning with pure disgust. Once, we had been inseparable. We had shared whispered secrets in treehouses and stayed up late talking about our futures. Now, in his eyes, I was a cheap delinquent, a gambler, a parasite on society. Meanwhile, Tori had carefully painted herself as the long-suffering, saintly best friend who carried my crosses. There’s a word for that, isn’t there? Contrast. It was time Chase saw the real contrast. “I told you,” I said, wincing as the guard tightened his grip on my wrist. “If you want Tori, ask Zack. They’re always together.” He sneered, stepping closer. “You think playing these petty mind games is going to make me angry, Isabel? I know my wife. I know her heart. I wouldn’t believe a single lie that comes out of your mouth.” “Honestly, I feel sick just thinking about how much she protects you. How did she ever end up with a piece of trash like you?” “I’m giving you one last chance. Where is Tori? Why isn’t she picking up her phone?” In Chase’s mind, Tori was flawless. Because she spoke in sweet, soft tones and carried herself with grace, her narrative was the only one that mattered. He truly believed I was trying to poison his marriage. With a curt nod, he gestured to the guards. “Make her talk.” The punches came fast. I was thrown to the floor, boots and fists raining down on me until my vision blurred and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. My face throbbed, swelling instantly. But beneath the blinding pain, a cold, dark spark of satisfaction flared. Let them hit me. The anger was a physical weight, burning away the lingering weakness of my past life. It fed the desire to see Tori burn. “You’re nothing but a gutter rat, Isabel,” Chase spat, looking down at me as I lay curled on the hardwood floor. “And the gutter is exactly where you belong.” “I told Tori a thousand times to cut you off. But she insisted you were her sister. She kept giving you jobs, paying off your debts, lying to your parents to keep your squeaky-clean image alive!” “And this is how you repay her? Stabbing her in the back? You think if you keep your mouth shut, I can’t touch you?” Chase pulled out his phone, his face twisting into a cruel grin. “You’ve always been such a dutiful little daughter, haven’t you? Let’s see how your parents feel when they find out what a degenerate you really are.” My parents had worked for Chase’s father for decades at the family firm. They had practically raised Chase alongside me, and they still looked at him like the golden boy who would one day inherit everything. Of course he had my mother’s number. He pressed dial and put it on speaker. My mother’s fragile, aging voice echoed in the quiet room. “Chase? Sweetheart, is everything okay? Why are you calling this late?” “Mrs. Peterson,” Chase said, his tone instantly shifting to a polite, albeit stern, register. “I’m calling because we need to talk about your daughter.” “Oh? What about Isabel? Is she having trouble at work?” Chase let out a cold, sharp laugh. “I wish it was just work. Mrs. Peterson, did you know your daughter was arrested at a sketchy massage parlor last week for soliciting sex?” “What? No… no, that can’t be right. Not my Isabel. She would never do something like that!” My mother’s voice trembled, breaking into a sob. An electric jolt of rage went through me. I lunged forward, trying to grab the phone, but the guard slammed me back down, pinning his knee into my back and crushing his heavy hand over my mouth. I could only make muffled, desperate noises. “Tori saw it with her own eyes, Mrs. Peterson,” Chase continued, mercilessly. “Tori went there to find her, and the police raided the place. Isabel ran, leaving Tori to take the fall and protect her name. Do you really think Tori would lie about something like that?” I glared at Chase, my eyes burning with a silent, venomous promise. You blind fool. She’s going to ruin you, and you’re going to deserve every second of it. “And it’s not just that. She’s got a massive gambling problem. She owes millions to loan sharks. Tori even had to pawn one of our family heirlooms just to keep those thugs from breaking Isabel’s legs! Drugs, gambling, prostitution—she’s practically running the gamut. I’m telling you this because you need to rein her in before she drags my wife down to hell with her.” He ended the call. Seeing my bloodshot, furious eyes, his chest swelled with triumph. “Look at you. Your poor parents have no idea. They still think you’re the straight-A student they sent off to college.” “I honestly don’t get why Tori tolerates you. What do you even bring to her life besides filth?” “She even bought you a townhome, Isabel. You are the definition of an ungrateful leech.” I froze, the blood in my ears suddenly roaring. I managed to spit out the hand covering my mouth. “What did you just say? Tori bought me a townhome?” “Oh, cut the act.” Chase scoffed. “Tori bought you that place near the harbor as a thank-you for setting us up back in college. She didn’t want me to tell anyone to spare your pathetic pride. But looking at you now, it’s clear you don’t have any.” A manic, dark humor bubbled up in my chest. Tori hadn’t bought that townhome for me. She had bought it for Zack. And right now, they were probably in it. I spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the floor and looked up at him. “I didn’t receive any townhome, Chase. I swear, your brain is so rotted by love that you’d believe her if she told you the sky was pink.” “I know the address, Isabel. Don’t play dumb.” I nodded, a slow, dangerous smile stretching across my swollen lips. “Fine. If you’re so sure, take me there. Or are you just like Tori—all bark and no bite?” “You really want to play this out?” Chase’s eyes darkened. “You do realize she bought that place with my family’s money, right? Since you’re going to keep lying, I might as well reclaim what’s mine.” He pointed at the guards. “Throw her in the car. Keep her locked down. Tonight, she loses everything she never deserved.”

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When I prepared to deactivate our TikTok account—the one with over a million followers—the comments section was a frenzy of pleas. “Please don’t go! We’re still waiting for your travel documentary series!” I stared at the screen, gave a quiet, humorless laugh, and tapped confirm. My boyfriend was the editor. We’d made a pact to document every city we visited together on the platform. For three years, my lens was trained entirely on him. But in the final cuts he exported, I was nowhere to be found. Until last week, when I was helping him clean up his external drive. Tucked away in the deepest subfolder was a directory named Elena. I clicked it. It was another girl. She was standing on a backlit beach, the setting sun painting her hair a warm, spun-gold. The footage was in slow motion, edited to the exact indie ballad we called “our song.” Every single frame had been meticulously color-graded and retouched. Meanwhile, in the hundreds of videos we’d published, I had only ever appeared once. I was a blurry, out-of-focus shape in the background. In the overlay comments, he’d actually typed: “Who let this random extra into the shot?” It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to edit me. It was that I was never worthy of being in his frame. As I was packing my things, my phone buzzed with an urgent text from him, demanding to know why the account was gone. I didn’t reply. Since he never wanted me in his frame, I would simply walk out of his shot entirely. 1 I opened my airline app and booked a one-way ticket back home to Maine for three nights from now. When the confirmation popped up, my thumb hovered over the screen. It felt like finally waking up from a three-year-long dream. It was just past one in the morning when the front door unlocked. The bedroom lights flickered on, harsh and blinding. I winced, shielding my eyes. Tim stood by the edge of the bed, his voice tight with impatience. “What the hell happened to the account?” “Do you have any idea how important tomorrow is? Elena has a brand sponsor reviewing our metrics. You deleting the account just killed her deal.” “Regina, do you ever think before you act?” I opened my eyes but said nothing. He waited a beat, his temper flaring hotter. “A million followers, just gone? Three years of my editing work, down the drain?” “What kind of crazy episode are you having right now?” I propped myself up against the headboard, keeping my voice quiet. “Tim, I want to break up.” He stiffened, then let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “This again?” “Aren’t you tired of threatening to leave every time you’re unhappy? I was just putting together a portfolio for Elena so she could sign a contract.” “You’re a grown woman, Regina. Is it not exhausting to be this jealous over nothing?” I didn’t take the bait. He sighed, his posture slumping slightly as his tone softened. “Look, I get it. You’ve been in a bad mood lately. But did you really have to blow things up like this? Now I have to spend tomorrow explaining this to the sponsors. Do you think I don’t have enough on my plate?” I watched him pour a glass of water, drink it down, and explain his rationalizations. A profound, bone-deep exhaustion washed over me. In his entire tirade, there was room for Elena’s brand deals, the value of the account, and his three years of wasted labor. There was just no room for me. I pulled the duvet back over my shoulders and turned my back to him. Tim lingered for a moment, his voice dropping an octave. “Just sleep. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Soon, the rush of the shower filled the apartment. I kept my eyes wide, staring at the blank wall. In the quiet of the dark, my mind drifted back to three years ago. The night we hit a hundred thousand followers. We’d been sitting on the hardwood floor of our cramped studio apartment, eating cheap instant ramen. Tim had held up his phone, his eyes reflecting the blue light of the screen with absolute wonder. “Regina,” he had said, “from now on, you capture the most beautiful frames. And I’ll edit you into the most beautiful story. I promise.” The hum of the water continued in the bathroom. My eyes stung with a sudden, sharp ache. When I woke up the next morning, he was already gone. I made myself a quick bowl of oatmeal, the rising steam blurring my vision. I pulled out my phone and texted my mother. “Mom, I’m coming home in a couple of days to stay for a bit.” It took a long time for her to reply. “Really? You aren’t too busy?” followed by, “Your dad had his checkup last month. The doctor says his recovery is on track, but he keeps asking when you’ll visit.” I stared at her words—You aren’t too busy?—and felt a lump rise in my throat. During our first year, over the holidays, Tim had insisted we stay to finish a holiday campaign. “If you leave, who’s going to assist me?” During our second year, when my dad underwent coronary bypass surgery, Tim had told me, “Going back won’t help him heal. It’s better to finish the sponsor shoot so we can send them money. That’s more practical.” By the third year, when Elena returned from living abroad, he didn’t even bother making up a good excuse. He just shrugged and said, “We can’t walk away right now.” I typed out a long, rambling paragraph. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell her how much I had missed them, how utterly exhausted I was. But in the end, I deleted it character by character. I simply wrote: “I’ll call you when I land. Don’t worry Dad about it.” Around four in the afternoon, Tim returned. A few minutes later, the clatter of pots and pans drifted from the kitchen. I froze. Tim was cooking. In our three years together, I could count the number of times he’d cooked on one hand—and it was always just scrambled eggs or instant noodles. Today, there were three different dishes and a pot of soup simmering on the stove. He was looking at a recipe video on his phone, awkwardly tossing vegetables in the pan. I stood in the doorway. “Who is all this for?” He didn’t look up from his phone. “Elena’s coming over for dinner. She’s on a strict diet, and takeout is too greasy. It’s healthier to cook at home.” I mumbled a quiet “Oh” and went back to the bedroom. I remembered the weeks I’d worked late nights, stumbling through the front door at midnight, asking if he could at least boil some pasta for me. His response had always been the same: “Are your hands broken? Do I have to wait on you hand and foot?” Now, he was cutting fruit, simmering bone broth, and remembering that Elena didn’t eat spicy food and preferred room-temperature water. Meanwhile, I had told him a thousand times that I couldn’t stand cilantro, yet a thick layer of it floated on top of the soup he was brewing. The savory scent of the kitchen drifted into the bedroom, and my stomach betrayingly growled. I opened a food delivery app and ordered a simple bowl of soup. Just as I finished eating, the doorbell rang. Elena had arrived. She brought a bottle of red wine, her laughter ringing out as she stepped inside. “Tim! Since when do you know how to cook? This is amazing.” Tim sounded almost bashful. “Just picked it up last week. It’s nothing special.” At the dining table, Elena offered me a fork with a bright smile. “Regina, you should try some of this.” I shook my head. “I already ate.” Tim frowned, setting down his glass. “When did you eat?” “I ordered delivery.” His face darkened immediately. “I cooked a whole table of food and you went and ordered takeout? What is your problem, Regina? Do you have to act so childish in front of Elena?” I looked at him, the sting of humiliation rising in my throat. But I refused to let him see me cry. I turned and walked back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me. “Enjoy your dinner.” Through the thin wall, I could hear Elena’s bright, melodic laughter and Tim’s murmuring responses. His voice was low, laced with a gentle patience I hadn’t heard directed at me in three years. The next morning, Tim came into the kitchen and immediately asked, “Did you make breakfast?” “I forgot,” I said quietly. He took a deep, irritated breath. “I literally asked you last night. How do you forget that? Regina, what is wrong with you lately? You used to never be like this.” “You can make it yourself,” I replied. “Since you’re such a good cook now.” He stared at me for a long beat, letting out a cold scoff. “Fine. Keep playing these games. Let’s see who breaks first.” I said nothing. He slumped onto the sofa and opened his laptop to edit. After a while, he spoke up without looking at me. “Oh, by the way, the Iceland sponsorship is locked.” My thumb froze over my phone screen. Tim’s voice was casual. “The brand wants an aurora-themed travel shoot. We fly out early next month. Seven days.” I remained silent. He seemed to recall something, adding, “I know I promised we’d go together. But the brand specifically requested someone with a chic, editorial look. Elena fits that aesthetic better.” He paused, then tossed out a careless reassurance. “I’ll take you some other time. It’s not like Iceland is going anywhere.” Iceland wasn’t going anywhere. But I had been waiting for three years. The night we hit a million followers, eating cheap ramen in our tiny apartment, Tim had promised: “Once things settle down, I’m taking you to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. I know it’s your dream.” I had brought it up so many times after that. Each time, he claimed we didn’t have the budget, or our schedule was too packed, or that we should focus on domestic trips first. Now the budget was there. The schedule was open. He was finally going to Iceland. But he was taking Elena. I gave him a quiet murmur of agreement. He visibly relaxed, likely assuming I was finally falling back into my usual submissive role. I stood up and went to take a shower. Once the water started running, I slid down the tiled wall and sat on the floor, letting the hot spray wash over me. My tears mingled with the water, completely indistinguishable. When I came out, Tim was browsing a camera retailer on his laptop. The screen showed a high-end camera body—worth over five thousand dollars. He didn’t look up. “Elena’s birthday is next month. I want to get her this. Her phone’s video quality is terrible. You’re the gear expert, take a look for me.” I stared at the screen. My birthday had been last month. He had completely forgotten it. I hadn’t reminded him. I had just ordered a lonely bowl of takeout at the studio. Three days later, he’d sent a brief text: “Forgot your birthday. I’ll make it up to you.” He never did. “Whatever,” I muttered. Tim scowled. “What do you mean, ‘whatever’? I’m trying to have a normal conversation with you. Can you at least act like a human being?” I looked at him. Three years. Over sixty cities. A career I’d abandoned. A family I’d neglected. A birthday spent eating cold takeout alone. And now, I was the one who wasn’t “acting like a human being.” The words choked me, pooling in my throat until only a flat response remained. “Do whatever makes you happy.” I walked into the bedroom. Before the door clicked shut, I heard him mutter, “Unbelievable,” followed by the sound of heavy keystrokes. He bought the camera. He paid for it using our joint business account. Half of that money was mine. He left again in the afternoon. I pulled my suitcase from the top shelf of the closet. A few sweaters, my documents, my old storyboarding notebooks, a pair of gold earrings. That was it. I stared at the small pile, stunned by how little there was. Three years of my life, shrunk down to fit into half a suitcase. My phone rang. It was Tim. “Elena’s shoot is short-handed this afternoon. We need someone to hold the reflector. Can you come over?” “I’m busy.” He scoffed. “You’re just sitting at home. What’s the big deal?” “No.” The line went quiet for a beat. Then, Elena’s sweet, melodic voice chimed in near the receiver. “Regina! Hey, it’s Elena. Please don’t worry about it, I can easily find a friend to help. Tim, don’t badger Regina, let her rest at home.” She giggled. “Oh, by the way, Regina, Tim was just telling me how thin you’ve gotten lately. Make sure you eat a good dinner, okay?” I gripped the phone tightly. It turned out even his minor displays of concern had to be filtered through Elena before they reached me. “Got it,” I said, and hung up. I went back to folding my sweaters, my chest aching with a dull, throbbing weight. The package arrived that evening. It was the camera. Tim unboxed it with extreme care, handling it like a fragile treasure. “The sensor is gorgeous,” he murmured. “Elena’s going to love this.” His mother’s name lit up his phone screen. He swiped to answer and put it on speaker. “How are things, sweetie? Is that lovely girl, Elena, still filming with you?” Tim smiled. “Yeah, Mom. It’s going great.” “I saw the video you posted. She is just stunning, and she has such class.” Tim chuckled. “Stop, Mom, you’re going to give her a big head.” His mother continued, “Make sure you bring Elena over for Christmas dinner. Your dad really wants to meet her.” I sat on the edge of the sofa, my hands and feet turning ice-cold. There was a brief pause on the line before his mother seemed to remember my existence. “Oh… and how is Regina? I feel like I haven’t heard her name in a while. Are you two doing okay?” Tim glanced at me. “We’re fine, Mom. Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t ask if I wanted to say hello. For three years, I had bought his parents Christmas gifts, called them on their birthdays, and sent weekly check-in texts. Yet to his mother, I had become an afterthought—a name that had faded from conversation. He ended the call and placed the camera into a decorative gift box. I stood up. “Where are you going?” he asked. “To bed.” My final day arrived. Before leaving that morning, Tim called out, “I have a full day of shooting. I’ll probably be back late.” “Okay,” I replied. Once the front door clicked shut, a heavy silence settled over the apartment. This was my last day in this space. I pulled my suitcase out from behind the wardrobe. Documents, the gold earrings, my notebooks, a few outfits, my chargers. Everything fit into a single carry-on bag. I looked around. Almost everything in this apartment had been bought by me. I left all of it behind. In the kitchen, the spice jars still bore the neat labels I’d printed. A sticky note remained on the refrigerator door in my handwriting: Need eggs. Almost out of olive oil. Before I moved in, Tim’s fridge was always empty. I was the one who had turned this cold apartment into a home. In the living room, I had picked out the sofa, ordered the curtains, and replaced the throw pillow covers three times. The packing foam from his new camera was still piled on the coffee table, waiting for someone to clean it up. In the study, the high-end editing monitor and PC had been purchased with my savings—nearly twenty thousand dollars. At the time, Tim had told me, “Once the channel takes off, I’ll pay you back tenfold.” It had been three years. He had never paid me back, nor had he ever brought it up. On the corner of the monitor screen, a cute little panda sticker that belonged to Elena was pasted, a silent reminder that the space already belonged to someone else. I rolled my suitcase to the entryway and took one last look. Inside the elevator, I dialed my mother. “Mom, I’m landing today.” Her voice instantly brightened, pitching higher. “Really? Should we come pick you up at the airport? Your dad went to the market early this morning—what do you want to eat?” Listening to her voice, a sudden wave of warmth flooded my chest, and my eyes swelled. “Anything is fine, Mom.” During the cab ride to the airport, I scrolled through my social feed and saw Tim’s latest post. A nine-image grid. Every single photo was of Elena. Elena holding her new camera, Elena laughing into the lens, Elena leaning in close to Tim to look at the monitor. The caption read: New journeys, new partnerships. Stay tuned. I scrolled back through his profile. In three years, there wasn’t a single mention of me. No couple photos, no birthday wishes, no trips. The only time I had ever appeared was in a sponsored post from two years ago. He had written: Thanks to the team. I was the entire team. Scrolling further down, I saw his mother had shared the post, commenting: My son found the perfect partner. Bigger and better things ahead! I closed the app. I opened my phone’s photo library, selected the remaining fourteen photos of Tim and me, and hit delete. I arrived at the airport, checked in, and went through security. The terminal was buzzing with travelers. My phone vibrated in my palm. It was a voice message from Tim—the first time in three days he had actually reached out with his own voice. I tapped play. His voice was slightly low. “Regina, are you still mad at me? You’ve been so quiet these past few days. I’ve been thinking, and maybe… maybe there were some things I overlooked.” I held the phone, a small, involuntary ache flaring in my chest. Another message popped up immediately. “But you have to understand me, too. It’s been insanely busy. Elena’s just starting out, and she relies on me for almost everything. Once she’s established, I promise I’ll make time for you. You’ve worked in media; you know how this goes.” “About the account… think about it again. Losing a million followers is a massive waste. I can help you rebuild your own brand if you want. It’s hard to start from scratch, but we can make it work.” Finally, a text message followed: Don’t be mad. It’s really not that big of a deal. Not that big of a deal. I stared at those words. Three years of quiet humiliation, the deleted frames, being labeled a random extra, the broken promises of Iceland. To him, it was just a minor inconvenience. I began typing a long response. I wanted to tell him how long I had waited, how deeply it had hurt. I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t incapable of love—he was just incapable of loving me. But midway through, I deleted the entire block of text. I scrolled back through three years of chat history to the very first message he had ever sent me: From now on, you capture the most beautiful frames, and I’ll edit you into the most beautiful story. I stared at it for a few seconds. Then, I replied with just five words: This is where we end.

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I was adjusting my bow tie in the dressing room of our engagement party when Ruth brought that impoverished junior from her college inside. “Troy got his suit dirty,” she said, her voice breezy, as if she were asking to borrow a pen. “Let him wear yours for a bit.” I froze, my fingers still tangled in the silk. She offered a small, dismissive shrug. “Everyone knows you’re the groom today anyway, Christopher. It doesn’t matter what you wear.” Troy stood hovering near the doorway. His canvas sneakers were scrubbed raw, practically fraying at the seams, and he looked down at his feet, offering a quiet, nervous, “Hey, Christopher.” Wayne stepped in front of me, his chest rising. “This is Christopher’s engagement party, Ruth. He went to thirty different shops to find this bespoke Italian suit. He’s been waiting months for it!” Ruth didn’t look at Wayne. She looked at me. It was a look I knew too well. For five years, whenever her eyes softened into that silent, pleading pressure, I was the one who stepped back. I was always the one who surrendered. I placed a hand on Wayne’s arm, gently pushing him down, and slowly unfastened my silver cufflinks. “Let him have it,” I said. Ruth smiled, a small, satisfied curve of her lips, and patted my cheek. “I knew you’d understand. I promise we’ll get you the absolute best custom suit for the wedding.” When Troy changed into my suit, Ruth leaned in, her fingers smoothing the lapels and adjusting the shoulders. “You look so handsome, Troy,” she murmured softly. I watched her, a cold knot tightening in my chest. I remembered that exact gesture. During our wedding photoshoot, the photographer had asked her to do the same for me, but she had brushed it off, calling it too cheesy for public display. I reached down and slid the engagement ring off my finger. This time, I was done being understanding. … “Who is this young man? He looks so sharp.” Ruth’s aunt was standing by the neighboring table, holding Troy’s hand and looking him up and down with an approving smile. Troy kept his head low, a faint, self-conscious smile touching his lips. Before he could speak, Ruth slid into the conversation. “He’s my junior from school,” she said smoothly. “His family has had a rough time lately. His clothes got ruined in an accident, and Christopher felt bad for him, so he insisted Troy wear his suit.” Her aunt nodded, her gaze drifting over to where I stood in my plain, off-the-rack gray blazer. “But why is Christopher dressed like that? For an engagement party, it’s… a bit casual, isn’t it?” “Christopher doesn’t care about things like that,” Ruth replied quickly, her hand reaching out to find my arm. “He’s the most generous man I know.” As her fingers brushed my sleeve, I took a half-step sideways. Her hand fell through the empty air. She blinked, startled. “What’s wrong?” I kept my eyes on the floor. “Nothing.” Wayne grabbed my elbow from behind and pulled me into the quiet shadow of the hallway corner. “Are you seriously just going to let this slide?” he hissed. “What do you want me to do, Wayne?” “Go out there! Tell everyone that’s your suit, that he’s a nobody, and that you’re the one she’s marrying!” I looked at his flushed face, the raw frustration in his eyes. “You’re more upset than I am, man.” “Of course I am!” Wayne’s voice cracked. “Do you have any idea what they’re saying at her table?” He pulled out his phone, tapping frantically before turning the screen toward me. It was an Instagram story posted by one of Ruth’s college friends. In the frame, Troy stood in my bespoke suit on Ruth’s right, her hand resting comfortably on his shoulder. In the background, someone was teasing, “The groom looks so handsome!” Troy merely blushed, keeping his eyes down, offering no correction. Ruth didn’t deny it either; she just laughed and waved a hand at the camera. Underneath the post, a comment read: Ruth’s fiancé is so sweet and innocent. It already had thirty likes. No one had corrected them. I swallowed the dry bitterness in my throat, handed the phone back to Wayne, and turned off the screen. From the banquet hall, another wave of laughter drifted out. Troy was being pulled into a toast. He handled the crowd gracefully, tilting his glass slightly as he leaned in to speak. I had taught him that. Just last month, he had confessed how terrified he was of formal business dinners. I had spent an entire afternoon showing him how to hold a glass, how to stand, how to navigate a room. “Call me an Uber, Wayne.” “You’re not going back in?” “There’s nothing left for me in there.” I walked over to the guest registry table. The silver engagement band felt heavy in my palm as I set it down next to the guestbook. The wood was slightly dusty, and the ring settled with a tiny, sharp clink. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an Instagram notification. Ruth had posted. “Thank you to everyone who made tonight so special.” There were three photos. The first was a wide shot of the glittering hall; the second was her laughing with her bridesmaids; and the third… Troy, smiling brilliantly in my suit. She had tagged him. The caption read: Huge thanks to Troy for keeping things running tonight. Couldn’t have done it without you. My name wasn’t in the post. I wasn’t in any of the photos. I turned the screen off and pushed through the heavy glass doors of the hotel. When I crossed the street, the warm, golden light of the banquet hall was still burning. Even from the far curb, the music and the muffled laughter reached me through the damp night air. Before opening the cab door, I looked back one last time. Ruth was standing on the hotel steps, her head bent over her phone. Troy stepped out from behind her, gently draping his dark coat over her bare shoulders. She pulled the collar tight around her neck. It was a natural, fluid gesture. It looked like a habit. “Christopher, you left your ring on the registry table.” It was two in the morning when Ruth’s call came through. Her voice was steady, free of any real alarm. “I know.” “Well, I went ahead and kept it for you. I’ll put it back on your finger tomorrow.” She paused, her tone softening into that gentle, placating register she used when she wanted to smooth things over. “I know today was hard on you. Troy’s suit really was an emergency, but everyone saw how mature and understanding you were.” “Ruth, let’s break up.” The line went dead silent for three long seconds. Then, a soft, breathy laugh came through the speaker. “Christopher, come on. I know you’re hurt about the suit, but a breakup? Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?” “I’m serious.” “You always throw the word ‘breakup’ around when you’re sulking,” she said, her patience returning like a mother dealing with a stubborn child. “Fine. When you’re done being angry, call me. I’ll come over.” “Ruth—” “Be good, Christopher. Tomorrow I’ll take you to that sushi place uptown. The one you’ve been begging to go to.” I didn’t answer. After a quiet moment, her voice dropped, turning cool and sharp. “Christopher, it’s been five years. When have you ever actually had the courage to leave me?” The question hung in the quiet room. I didn’t have an answer for her. She truly believed I would never go. I ended the call. Wayne walked out of his kitchen, carrying a mug of warm water, and sat on the opposite end of the sofa. “What did she say?” “She said she’s coming to find me.” “Are you going to see her?” “No.” He opened his mouth to speak, took one look at my face, and quietly closed it. I stared down at the dark screen of my phone. Her contact name was still saved as Ruth with a tiny sun emoji beside it, a detail I’d put there five years ago. We had just started dating then. She had waited for me outside my dorm in the middle of a brutal November freeze, clutching a small, cheap plastic hand warmer to her chest to keep it warm. Her cheeks had been bright pink from the wind. Your roommate told me your hands get so stiff from drawing in the cold, she had said, her voice shaking slightly from the chill. I had told her she didn’t need to worry, that I was fine, that guys didn’t need things like hand warmers. But she had laughed, forcing the warm plastic into my palms and wrapping her small, frozen fingers around mine. With me, you don’t have to pretend to be tough. If you’re cold or tired, you tell me. Back then, her eyes had been so bright, so full of a fierce, protective warmth that made me feel entirely safe. Wayne broke the silence. “Do you remember when she actually started to change?” I thought about it for a long long time, tracing the memories back through the years. “I don’t,” I whispered. Maybe it was the afternoon Troy first showed up at her office, red-eyed and trembling because he couldn’t afford his tuition. Or maybe it was the first time she looked at me and said, “Just let him have this, Christopher. You have so much more than he does.” The shift had been glacial. A fraction of an inch every day, so small it was impossible to measure, until one day I woke up and realized there was nothing left of the woman I loved. Wayne stood up and tossed a thick blanket over my lap. “Don’t go back to your place tonight. Just crash here.” “Thanks.” At three in the morning, the phone lit up again. It rang three times before going dark. She didn’t call back. She believed one night of silence would be enough to cure my anger. She believed that when the sun came up, I would pack my bags and come home, just like I always did. I flipped the phone face down. For the first time in five years, I let the silence stay. “Wayne, let me in.” The next evening, Ruth was standing on Wayne’s porch, a small white bakery box dangling from her finger. Wayne stood firmly in the doorway, his arm blocking the frame. “He doesn’t want to see you, Ruth.” “I know he’s upset,” she said, giving him a tight, polite smile. “Just let me talk to him for five minutes. I’ll leave right after.” “Talk about what? About how you couldn’t even manage to type his name in your post yesterday?” Ruth’s smile faltered, her jaw tightening. “Wayne, this is between Christopher and me. Don’t interfere.” “Don’t call him Christopher. You don’t get to use that name anymore.” I walked over to the door and gently tapped Wayne’s shoulder. “It’s fine, Wayne. Let her in. I want to say this to her face.” Wayne slowly stepped aside, his eyes cold as he watched her brush past him. She kicked off her heels and set the bakery box on the coffee table. “I brought that tiramisu you love. I didn’t get a chance to give it to you yesterday.” I didn’t touch the box. She sat down on the armchair opposite me, smoothing her skirt. “Christopher, what exactly do you want me to do?” “I already told you. I want to break up.” Her brow furrowed, a trace of genuine irritation slipping into her voice. “You want to throw away five years over a suit?” “It was never about the suit, Ruth.” “Then what is it?” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands—the exact pose she assumed whenever we had a disagreement, her eyes wide with that patient, patronizing look that said she was ready to let me vent until I got over myself. “Last year on your birthday,” I said, my voice quiet, “I spent two months trying to get a reservation at that French place downtown. Right before we were supposed to leave, Troy called to say his stomach was cramping. You took the car keys and drove straight to his apartment.” “He was completely alone in the city, Christopher. What if his appendix had burst?” “He had eaten too much takeout, Ruth. That was it. And instead of coming back, you stayed there and watched TV with him until midnight while I sat at that table alone until the kitchen closed.” She hesitated, her eyes flickering. “I apologized for that. I bought you that designer watch to make up for it.” “And then you bought Troy the exact same one two weeks later.” “He was going through a rough patch—” “He’s always going through a rough patch,” I said, the words falling flat and heavy between us. “Tell me, Ruth, when is he ever actually fine?” She remained silent. “Last month, when I had that flight to Seattle, you told me to take an Uber because you had to help Troy move his things into his new apartment.” “He had so many heavy boxes—” “You gave him the wool blanket my mother knit for us. The one she sent from home.” “It was getting old and frayed,” Ruth said, her voice rising slightly. “I was planning to buy you a cashmere one to replace it.” “It was mine!” My voice didn’t rise, but the sheer weight of it made her flinch. “My mother sat in her armchair with her reading glasses on for an entire week to make that. She wrapped it in three layers of paper so the stitching wouldn’t get crushed in the mail. It wasn’t yours to give away.” The room fell into a suffocating quiet. Wayne stood near the kitchen doorway, his knuckles white against the frame. In the past, I would have kept pushing. I would have screamed, demanded to know why I wasn’t enough, and then I would have wept and forgiven her the moment she muttered a soft apology. But looking at her now, I felt nothing but a profound, exhausting emptiness. “Christopher,” Ruth said, her voice dropping into a cold, disappointed register. “I always thought you were different from the rest.” “The rest?” “People who keep score,” she said, looking at me with a genuine, baffling sincerity. “I thought you understood. Troy has absolutely no one in this city. You have me, you have a great family, you have a career… you don’t lack anything. Is it really so terrible that I give him a little extra support?” She spoke with such absolute conviction, as if her logic were entirely flawless. “You have everything,” she whispered. “Why can’t you just yield to someone who has nothing?” I looked at her. Really looked at her. There was a faint flicker of expectation in her eyes, a belief that if she just explained it one more time, I would nod, apologize for being selfish, and let it go. But among all those things she claimed I had, there was one thing named Ruth. And she had been slowly, quietly giving herself away to someone else, piece by piece, while wondering why I felt so empty. “You’re right, Ruth,” I said softly. “I have everything.” She let out a tiny, relieved breath. “So,” I continued, “I don’t need you anymore.” The relief vanished from her face. “Christopher.” “You used to be so soft,” she whispered. I didn’t answer. She stood up, grabbed her coat, and walked out, the front door clicking shut behind her. My eyes fell on the bakery box on the table. Tiramisu. She didn’t even remember. I had stopped liking tiramisu a year ago. The tuxedo fit me perfectly in the mirror. My mother stood behind me, her gentle hands smoothing the collar of my shirt, the fine lines around her eyes deepening into a warm smile. “When is Ruth getting here? I feel like I haven’t seen her in six months.” I looked down at my phone. Ten minutes ago, a text had arrived from Ruth. Troy’s graduation thesis data got corrupted. He’s in his advisor’s office crying his eyes out. I have to go help him sort it. Try on the suit without me, and explain things to your mom—she’s always so sweet, she’ll understand. I’ll book that Italian place she loves tonight to make it up to her. My mother had undergone minor heart surgery just last month. I hadn’t told her a single thing about the cracks forming between Ruth and me. I clicked the screen off and turned to her with a smile. “She had an emergency meeting at the office, Mom. She won’t be able to make it.” My mother’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, but she quickly patted my hand. “Work is important, sweetheart. It’s wonderful that she’s so dedicated to her career. You look so handsome. Come on, let me take a few pictures of you.” Click. In the photo, I stood tall in my tailored suit, a perfect smile plastered on my face, but my eyes were entirely hollow. After watching my mother board her train back home, I drove straight to Wayne’s apartment. Sitting on his worn leather sofa, I dialed the wedding coordinator’s number. “Hi, this is Christopher. I need to cancel the reservation for Clearwater Chapel.” There was a long pause on the other end. “Mr. Hayden, that venue has an eight-month waiting list, and your ten-thousand-dollar deposit is completely non-refundable. Are you absolutely sure?” “I’m sure.” “But you came out here so many times,” the coordinator said, her voice filled with genuine confusion. “Our designer said you were incredibly meticulous about every single detail…” “Just cancel it. Thank you.” I hung up. Wayne sat on the opposite end of the couch, watching me. “Are you really sure about this, Christopher?” “Yeah.” That chapel was forty miles out of the city. There was no direct train; you had to take two buses and walk another twenty minutes through a gravel path. I had chosen it because of the lake. Five years ago, on our very first weekend trip, we had found that lake. I had spent the entire afternoon taking photos of her against the water. She had laughed, wrapping her arms around my neck, and told me it was our secret place. I had built the entire wedding design with the coordinator, draft after draft. I chose white magnolias for the tables because her mother loved simple, classic flowers. The processional music was the exact acoustic track that had been playing in the background of the coffee shop on our very first date. I had drawn the seating chart myself, color-coding it with colored pencils—pink for her family, blue for mine. I had placed her college roommate, who suffered from severe vertigo, on the ground floor near the French doors so she wouldn’t feel trapped. Ruth had never asked about any of it. “Christopher,” Wayne said softly. “If you need to break down, just do it. I’m not going to judge you.” I shook my head. I didn’t have any tears left to cry. Wayne was in the middle of a design review at his office when his phone rang. It was Ruth. “Christopher’s phone is off,” she said, her tone light and casual, as if she were asking to borrow a lawnmower. “Can you tell him something for me?” Wayne set his stylus down. “What is it, Ruth?” “Troy’s shooting his graduation photos next month and wants somewhere unique. I remembered that lakeside chapel Christopher booked. The view is gorgeous. Can you ask Christopher to call the venue and let Troy borrow it for the afternoon?” Wayne’s fingers tightened around his phone, his knuckles turning white. “Ruth,” he said, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet register. “That venue has been cancelled.”

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On our eighth anniversary, I didn’t prepare a single thing. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and drafted a divorce agreement with my own hands. When I walked into the house, Elliott had his little mistress pinned against our headboard, taking her with a desperate, frantic hunger on our wedding bed. The girl turned her face toward the door, her lips curving into a smug little smile when she saw me. “Hazel… you’re home?” she gasped, her voice dripping with mock innocence. “Should I… should I get up?” Elliott didn’t even pause. He patted her hip, his tone warm and teasing, the way someone might comfort a pet. “Why get up?” he said. “She doesn’t exactly inspire passion.” He finally looked up, cutting his eyes toward me before gesturing toward the hallway with his chin. “Be a good wife, close the door,” he added casually. “She’s shy.” He expected me to do what I always did—to turn around in silence, walk out, and give them whatever space they needed to ruin my life. Instead, I walked into the bedroom, set the divorce papers on the nightstand, and said quietly, “Elliott, let’s get a divorce.” … His movements faltered. He looked down at the girl beneath him, then slowly pulled away. “Hazel, do you really think I have the time for your little tantrums right now?” Amber tilted her head, her eyes flashing with a mix of surprise and irritation at being interrupted. “Hazel, a man has needs,” she purred, adjusting her hair. “If you’re too old and faded to satisfy Elliott, you have to let me do it, right?” I ignored her and pushed the papers closer to him. “Sign it, and I’ll leave right now.” Elliott grabbed a cigarette from the nightstand, lighting it with one hand while keeping the other casually draped over her waist. “Are we really doing this?” he asked, exhaling. “I’m not throwing a tantrum.” “Not throwing a tantrum?” He let out a slow plume of smoke, the gray haze blurring the sharp lines of his face. “Every single time you pull this stunt, you end up tearing up the papers yourself. Stop playing hard to get, Hazel. It doesn’t work on me.” Amber shifted, letting out a soft, delicate sigh. “Elliott, baby… don’t be so mean to her. She did give you a child, after all. Even if… well, even if she had to trick you into it.” Elliott blew out another breath of smoke, his lips twisting into a mocking sneer. “Hazel, you drugged my drink and crawled into my bed eight years ago just to get this ring on your finger, didn’t you? As long as you stay in your lane, the title of Mrs. Mercer is yours. Don’t push your luck.” He truly believed I would keep playing the obedient, understanding wife, guarding the empty shell of our marriage while I waited for him to look at me. But he didn’t know that my heart had already rotted from crying. I didn’t even have the strength left to pretend it didn’t hurt. I was done. I couldn’t do it anymore. “Elliott, I mean it,” I said, my voice shockingly steady. “I’m sick of playing the perfect wife. I’m exhausted. I don’t want it anymore.” He let out a dry laugh. Reaching out, he pinched Amber’s chin, forcing her to look up. “Amber, tell her. How long have you been with me?” Amber’s voice was soft, breathless. “Almost… almost three years…” “She isn’t complaining about being tired,” Elliott said, letting go of her chin to look back at me. “And yet you’re the one crying about it? What right do you have to be tired?” He picked up the divorce papers and shoved them back into my hands. “Take your papers and close the door. Or what? Are you lonely? Want to join us?” He was always like this. Treating my sincerity like a comedy, my exhaustion like a petty bid for attention. He truly believed everything I did was a desperate plea for him to look at me. I felt so tired. Too tired to even argue. I turned and walked out, the sounds of their passion picking up again behind the closed door. I sat on the living room sofa. A draft from the window fluttered the edge of the papers resting on my knees. I buried my face in my hands, sitting there in the quiet for a long time, but my palms remained completely dry. When you cry too much, you eventually run out of tears. My daughter’s photo sat in a silver frame on the coffee table. She was wearing a little white sundress, her eyes crinkled into perfect, happy crescents. I closed my eyes, and the memories—the ones that had already decayed into my bones—flooded back. Elliott and I had been together for eight years. The first three years were genuinely beautiful. So beautiful that I thought he was my forever. Then came the night he was drugged at a party, and I ended up pregnant. I remember spinning around in his arms, crying, “Let’s get married, Elliott!” But his first words to me were: “Hazel, you really are calculating, aren’t you?” From that day on, the women in his life never stopped. The day our daughter was born, he was out shopping with some swimsuit model. I suffered a massive hemorrhage during labor and had to sign my own consent forms. The day our daughter turned a month old, he drank until dawn in a VIP lounge. The day she first called him “Daddy,” I recorded a video and sent it to him; he replied a day later with a single word: ‘Annoying.’ But for our daughter’s sake, I endured it. Three years ago, when she was diagnosed with congenital heart disease, Elliott pulled strings and hired the best medical team in the country. For a brief second, I thought we might finally find happiness. But the surgery failed. During those agonizing eleven hours in the waiting room, every call and text I sent him vanished into a black hole. I knelt on the cold hospital floor, throwing up from sheer panic. And where was the man who had vanished? He was all over Amber’s latest Instagram post. The caption read: ‘The best kind of company.’ He was at a music festival with Amber, kissing her passionately under a shower of confetti in a roaring crowd. Before my daughter passed away, her last words were: “I hope Mommy and Daddy don’t fight anymore.” I had foolishly believed that day would come. If only I was quiet enough, patient enough, obedient enough. But I never saw that day. And now, I truly couldn’t do it anymore. My phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Elliott: ‘Pick up a box of ultra-thin condoms on your way back. And get some macarons from that bakery down on 4th. Amber wants some.’ I stared at the screen, motionless. I had done things like this too many times. When they slept in my bed, I slept on the living room sofa. When she wanted desserts from the other side of town, I drove two hours in traffic to buy them. When she wanted to wear my clothes, I cleared out my closet. I didn’t feel anything anymore. The phone buzzed again. ‘If you aren’t back in twenty minutes, consider yourself off the Chelsea project.’ The project was my life’s blood, the product of countless sleepless nights. I looked at the pouring rain outside, took a deep breath, put on my coat, and walked out. I returned drenched to the bone. Opening the front door, I saw Amber sitting on the living room sofa wearing my silk pajamas. Her bare feet were propped on the coffee table, and she was turning something over in her hands. It was my daughter’s picture. The frame I kept on my nightstand, the one showing her happiest smile. Amber tapped her manicured nails against the glass. “Cute kid,” she murmured. “Too bad.” My voice squeezed out of my throat, raw and unrecognizable. “Amber. Put it down.” She looked up, a smirk playing on her lips, and loosened her fingers. The frame slipped. It hit the hardwood floor, and the glass shattered, sending shards flying everywhere. I stared at the cracks, a violent buzzing filling my ears. Amber carelessly kicked a piece of glass away with her toe. “Oops. Hand slipped. Hazel, you’re not going to get angry over a dead person, are you? After all, how can the dead compete with the living?” I was shaking so hard my bones ached. I raised my hand and slapped her across the face, hard. Amber’s head jerked to the side. She froze for a second, then began to shriek. “Hazel, don’t you think you’re taking this too far?” Elliott walked into the room, grabbing my arm in a vice grip. His voice was flat, but the fury beneath it was unmistakable. He pulled so hard I stumbled, my knees crashing onto the floor. Shards of glass sliced into my skin, and the sharp pain made me gasp. “Elliott, do you even dare to look down?” I choked out. “That is your own flesh and blood.” He glanced down, the anger in his eyes flickering slightly. “I’ll have someone restore the photo.” Amber buried herself in his chest, whimpering, “Elliott, it was an accident… I didn’t mean to…” He let go of her and leaned down toward me. “But as for hitting her, that’s where the line is crossed.” He reached out and yanked the necklace from around my neck. It was the promise necklace he gave me years ago. When we were eighteen, he told me it belonged to his late mother and was meant for his future wife. The chain snapped. The pearls scattered across the floor. Elliott clutched the pendant in his hand, looking down at me. “From now on, you don’t deserve to wear this.” He tossed the pendant carelessly into the trash can. Then he picked Amber up in his arms and walked toward the door. Amber clung to his neck, looking back at me over his shoulder. Her lips moved silently. I read her lips perfectly: ‘Serves you right.’ The door slammed shut. Left behind were the scattered pearls, the broken glass, and my daughter’s smiling face, sliced into jagged pieces on the floor. She seemed to be asking me: ‘Mommy, does it hurt?’ I collapsed onto the glass, my tears falling one by one, blurring her ruined smile. I fell into a dream. I dreamt of our senior year of high school, when I was hospitalized with acute appendicitis. Back then, I had no parents, no family. I had to sign my own surgery forms. Elliott skipped three days of classes just to sit by my bedside. When the pain kept me awake, he held my hand and told me terrible jokes, over and over. They weren’t funny at all, but he told them with such earnestness. The day I was discharged, he knelt down to tie my sneakers. The sunlight caught the back of his head, highlighting his hair in gold. He looked up at me, his eyes crinkled with warmth. “Hazel, from now on, I’m tying your shoes. For the rest of our lives. I promise.” I smiled in my sleep. Then I woke up, my pillow soaked. My phone screen lit up. It was a video from Amber. In a VIP hospital suite, Amber leaned against the pillows, a shy, radiant smile on her face. Elliott sat on the edge of the bed, his hand resting gently over her slightly rounded belly. “Who do you think the baby will look like?” he asked, looking up into her eyes. “I’ll give both of you the absolute best of everything. I promise.” Amber giggled and snuggled into his chest. The text beneath read: ‘It’s been so long since you’ve been a mother, Hazel. I guess you probably can’t comprehend how happy I am right now.’ The screen went black. I stared at the dark glass for a long time. My chest felt squeezed by an invisible hand, numb with pain. In three years, he had never once asked who our daughter looked like. “I’ll give both of you the absolute best of everything.” He had never said those words to me or to Lucy. My phone buzzed again. A location pin from Elliott. ‘Thought you wanted to talk about the divorce? Get over here.’ I changed my clothes, took the divorce agreement, and walked out. The door to the third-floor VIP lounge was cracked open. The moment I pushed it open, a dozen pairs of eyes whipped around to face me. The long leather sofas were packed with people, their expressions shifting from surprise to amusement. “Look at that, the wife actually showed up!” “And she made it in under thirty minutes! Damn, I just lost three grand!” Elliott sat right in the center, legs crossed, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. “Mrs. Mercer is always punctual.” Amber walked up to me, snatched the papers from my hand, and read aloud: “Voluntary dissolution of marriage…” The room erupted into laughter. Some clapped, others doubled over. “Hazel, are you seriously divorcing him? Where are you going to find a guy as good as Elliott?” “Yeah, even if he plays around, he still gave you the title, didn’t he?” Amber picked up a small red booklet from the coffee table and held it up to my face. A marriage certificate. She opened it, pointing to the names and photos. ‘Elliott Mercer. Amber Ward.’ “Hazel, look closely,” she laughed, her smile widening. “Your marriage certificate is a fake!” “The venue was rented, the officiant was a hired actor, and the entire wedding was a sham populated by paid extras.” She snapped the booklet shut and tapped it against her hand. “This one is real.” The laughter swelled around me. “Jesus, Elliott, that is brutal!” “I went to that wedding! She was sobbing her eyes out, completely clueless! Haha!” “The officiant could barely read his lines, and she just thought he was nervous!” The laughter poured into my ears and leaked out of my eyes. I stood frozen. I had thought that, at the very least, I had that wedding. I had that boy in the white shirt. I had his promise to tie my shoes forever. It turned out even that was a lie. Elliott sat there, watching me through the haze of smoke and mockery. “The day we were supposed to register, Amber clung to me and begged so sweetly I couldn’t say no. But publicly, you were still Mrs. Mercer, weren’t you?” It seemed there was no need to sign the divorce papers after all. I turned and walked out of the lounge. Behind me, the laughter continued. “Elliott, she was crying like that at the wedding. Now that she knows it was all a joke, do you think she’ll want to kill herself?” His voice was soft, indifferent: “Who cares.” I leaned against the hallway wall, slowly sliding down until I was crouching on the floor. I had grown up an orphan, and at eighteen, I was severely bullied at school. I fell into deep depression and stood on the edge of the school rooftop, ready to jump. It was Elliott who had appeared behind me. “Hazel, I’ll protect you.” He had pulled me back from that ledge. Everything I learned afterward—how to smile, how to stand tall, how to walk with my head held high in a crowd—I learned because of him. But the person who had pushed me right back to the edge of the roof was also him. I got home after midnight and began to pack. There wasn’t much in my closet. Most of the clothes had been worn by Amber anyway, and I didn’t want them. I packed only a few of my own things and the photo album. I flipped to the last page of the album. Lucy was completely bald, terribly thin, but she was still smiling. She said, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Lulu doesn’t hurt.” I clutched the album to my chest, crouching on the floor. My phone buzzed several times. Amber. ‘Hazel, there’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you.’ ‘You didn’t actually think your daughter’s surgery failed because of bad luck, did you?’ My hands began to shake violently. ‘The day of her surgery, Elliott knew I had a high fever, so he pulled her entire surgical team to treat me instead.’ ‘The schedule got messed up, and they had to swap in a backup surgeon who wasn’t up to the task.’ ‘Oops, I didn’t think there would be an accident~’ ‘But honestly, she was just a kid. She couldn’t possibly be more important than me, right?’ I could barely hold the phone. Back then, when Elliott secured the country’s top medical team, it had kept me from completely losing my mind. I thought he cared about us. I had stayed in that empty marriage, lying to myself, hoping he would change his mind and make our family whole again. But he hadn’t even cared about his own daughter’s life. Another video arrived. In the video, Elliott leaned back on the couch while Amber snuggled in his lap, her voice babyish: “Elliott, do you regret pulling the medical team away for me back then?” His voice was calm. “You had a hundred-and-four-degree fever. I wasn’t thinking about anything else.” Amber pouted. “But do you regret it?” Elliott paused for a second. “No. There’s only one of you.” The video ended. I stared at the black screen. My voice was trapped in my throat, but the tears wouldn’t stop. I bent over, my forehead pressed against the cold floor, my entire body shaking with dry, silent sobs. By the end, my tears had run dry, leaving only a hollow, radiating ache in my chest that made it hard to breathe. My daughter’s smiling face was pressed against my chest, icy cold. I packed the album into my suitcase, zipped it shut, and booked the earliest flight out. On my way to the airport, I watched the sky gradually brighten outside—from black to gray, and finally to white. My heart was entirely still, devoid of even a single ripple. I took out my phone and sent Elliott one final message. After printing my boarding pass and passing through security, my phone lit up before I could turn it off. Texts from Elliott. One after another, the phone vibrating relentlessly. I turned it off. As the plane lifted into the air, the string inside my heart—the one that had been stretched taut for so many years—finally snapped.

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As we passed our old high school, Wright suddenly spoke. “Georgia, let’s call off the wedding. It’s in three days, I know, but…” My expression remained flat. “For a trainwreck who can’t keep herself out of trouble?” Wright’s eyes flared with warning. “No matter how much of a mess she is, I’ll always be there to clean up after her. As long as her feelings for me are real.” I stared at this man I had loved for nine years. Finally, I smiled and nodded. “Fine. Then I hope you get exactly what you want—a trainwreck’s pure, unadulterated heart.” Nine years of devotion. The love had died a slow death long ago. It was time to go home, inherit the family empire, and marry the childhood ward my grandfather had groomed to be my husband. …….. Wright’s cool, detached eyes flickered in surprise. He hadn’t expected someone as notoriously rigid and proper as me to speak with such biting sarcasm. Then his lips curved downward into a frown. “Georgia, I admit I’ve wasted nine years of your life. But I hope you won’t let jealousy drive you to do something that hurts her.” He didn’t bother to examine the shift in my demeanor. He simply chalked it up to bitter, ugly envy. I looked at this man. The man I had chased for nearly a decade, whose love I could never quite grasp. Suddenly, the whole thing felt incredibly hollow. He used to say we both needed to work hard for our future together. But in reality, he had just stood by, coldly watching me sink deeper and deeper into a relationship I couldn’t escape. He didn’t love me. He didn’t care about my soul, my hopes, or my quiet suffering. To him, I was just a walking stereotype—the rigid, disciplined heiress bound by duty and etiquette. I was boring. Not even half as exciting as his precious scarlet letter. I used to think that even if he strayed, he would eventually find his way back to the right path. That we would face the world together as partners. Now I saw the truth. Some people are just destined to remain in the gutter. “Wright, I knew you wouldn’t forget our nine-year promise.” A tall woman in a striking scarlet dress stepped out from behind him. Jet-black hair, blood-red lips—she was breathtakingly, aggressively beautiful. She carried herself with an easy, untamed confidence, sliding her hand effortlessly around Wright’s arm. “I heard you finally gave up on me and were getting married. Why didn’t I get an invitation? And if you’re really tying the knot, why did you come to meet me today?” Scarlett’s barrage of questions made the usually taciturn Wright flush a deep crimson. He answered in a panicked rush: “Who said I was getting married? It’s completely untrue.” As the words left his mouth, he cast a tense, guilty glance at me, terrified I would expose his lie. I lowered my head, hiding the bitter smirk playing on my lips. “He’s right. It’s entirely untrue.” No wonder Wright—who was supposed to go wedding dress shopping with me today—had suddenly taken a detour to our old school. Scarlett tossed her long hair back with a carefree laugh. “Georgia, honestly, you’re hopeless. I gave you nine years, and you still couldn’t lock him down? If I were you, I would’ve just pounced on him the way I did back in the day.” If I hadn’t known Scarlett’s true colors, I might have actually believed she was just a bright, free-spirited beauty. She smiled, reminiscing about the past. Wright reached out to hold her hand, his tone firm: “I’m not the kind of guy who settles for just anyone.” I didn’t believe a word of what Wright usually said, but that statement? I agreed with it completely. Even when Scarlett had cheated on him a dozen times with wealthy patrons to secure her modeling career—getting caught red-handed in hotel rooms more times than I could count—Wright had remained fiercely, pathetically loyal, begging her not to leave him. You have to understand, Wright came from old money. He was notoriously proud, cold, and untouchable; most people couldn’t even get him to spare them a glance. Yet Scarlett could pull his heartstrings with a single look, making him lose his absolute mind. Scarlett smiled seductively, leaning into him. “Didn’t you say you wanted to show me what it feels like to ride in a Maserati again? Let’s see if you’re still as good as you used to be.” Wright’s eyes darkened with raw desire. He didn’t even try to reject the invitation. I watched them walk away hand in hand. I didn’t say a word to stop them. When I was seventeen, my grandfather bypassed my greedy, vulture-like uncles and handed me my first major project as a test for the family inheritance. But my first campaign was publicly exposed for plagiarism. Wright, representing our partner firm, mobilized his own resources to prove someone had deliberately copied and leaked my pitch. A classic damsel-in-distress rescue. Cliche, but incredibly effective. I fell head over heels for this quiet, serious, meticulous man. We both carried the crushing expectations of our families. In the eyes of high society, we were the perfect golden couple. When Wright’s mother was driven to suicide by his father’s mistress trying to force her way into the estate, I used my family’s PR machine to block the mistress from taking her place. When his illegitimate half-brother tried to steal his shares, I helped him land a massive international client, securing his position. When he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer and admitted to the ICU, I wrote him letters by hand every single day, pulling strings to get them delivered to his sterile room. I was naturally quiet and reserved, but I spent hours scouring the internet for jokes, reading them over and over until I laughed out loud, just so I could write them down and coax a smile from him. Over three years of cancer treatments, I wrote a thousand letters. I stood outside that ICU window, watching him in secret, a thousand times. The day his cancer went into complete remission, Wright wrote back to me for the very first time: My life was as flat and colorless as water, but meeting you made it burn. We had walked through the valley of death together. It was indeed a burning, passionate survival story. I thought our silent bond didn’t need to be spoken. I thought we were partners, chosen for life. But then Scarlett burst into our lives like a force of nature. On the day he was discharged, Scarlett, carrying a bundle of fiery red roses, collided straight into his chest. She laughed and said, “Hey handsome, you broke my flowers. You have to pay me back. These were meant for my sweetheart, but since they’re in your hands now, I guess you’re my sweetheart!” He had frowned, but he hadn’t pushed her away. At the time, I didn’t realize that single collision had knocked her straight into Wright’s heart. If I had known, I would have thrown myself between them without hesitation. After that, Scarlett pursued Wright relentlessly. She held up massive signs in public, filled his driveway with elaborate flower arrangements. Wright went from frowning and avoiding her to smiling the moment she entered the room. Finally, in front of the entire student body, Scarlett presented him with a giant cardboard box. Wright had rubbed his temples, a helpless, indulgent smile on his face. “Fine, I give in. Just stop making a scene.” But Scarlett opened the box. “Give in to what? I’m just delivering your lunch. Pay up.” Wright’s face flushed. He pulled her into his arms, kissing her deeply. “Stop playing with me.” Three months. In three months, Scarlett did what I couldn’t do in three years. Since then, Scarlett loved to flaunt her hold over him in front of me. “I heard you two have known each other forever. You don’t still think of him as your cold, older-brother figure, do you? Let me tell you a secret. That untouchable prince of yours? To me, he’s just a toy.” Wright didn’t feel insulted. He would just affectionately ruffle her hair and say, “You’d better play with me for the rest of your life.” Scarlett would slap his cheek playfully, her eyes dripping with triumph. “Do they know that the great, dignified Wright Geller is just a begging dog when he’s with me?” Wright would stare at the love bites on her neck, his smile wild and reckless. “Then you’d better tell them I’m a dog that bites.” Scarlett would hit him in mock annoyance, and they would kiss passionately, completely ignoring my presence. Then she’d look at me. “And what about your dear ‘sister’ here? I hear you two have been partners in crime for years. Everyone in town thinks you’re a couple.” Wright’s brow would furrow with undisguised disgust. “Being with someone as stiff and boring as her doesn’t compare to being ruined by a beautiful mess like you.” It felt like a physical blow to my chest, stealing my breath. He proved it with his actions. Even after Scarlett humiliated and betrayed him countless times, he never looked at me. He was willing to throw his dignity away, punching her new boyfriends, getting into ruinous fights with her wealthy sponsors, dragging his own reputation through the mud. He refused to let go. But his burning obsession couldn’t keep her. “I just wanted to see what it felt like to tame the untouchable bachelor,” she told him one day. “I’m bored now. Bye.” That night, she posted a picture on a luxury yacht, wrapped in the arms of an international media mogul, captioned: [Next goal: Becoming his muse.] Scarlett repeated her tricks, chasing after the billionaire, turning herself into a joke across two continents. Wright didn’t say a word. He simply brought me a business proposal: “Didn’t you say we were partners? Help me regain my position in the company. When this is over, there will only be you by my side.” … Women always have this savior complex. For nine long years, I thought I was dragging Wright out of the quicksand. I helped him secure sole control of the Geller empire. But to him, that success was just leverage to win Scarlett back. I used to feel so bitter. How could I lose to someone so shallow? Now, I just felt thoroughly disgusted. If he wanted to chain himself to a toxic wreck, then I wished them a lifetime of misery together. May they never set each other free. The news of Wright canceling our wedding swept through our social circles. Many mocked me behind my back for being a pathetic, desperate hanger-on who got dumped at the finish line. My grandfather called me. “Are we still going ahead with the wedding?” I gave a quiet hum of agreement. Grandfather sighed softly. “If you don’t want to, sweetheart, we can call it off. I won’t force you.” My voice was light, untroubled. “A stray dog can never compare to a loyal, well-trained hound at home, Grandpa. Besides, if I don’t get married, my uncles will keep circling the estate like vultures. I’ve played this game long enough. It’s time to settle down. The wedding goes on. There’s no reason to waste a multi-million-dollar ceremony just because the groom ran away. We’ll just swap him out. It’s no big deal.” In our world, true love is a luxury few can afford. I had accepted that reality long ago. I went to my final bridal fitting alone. The moment I walked in, I noticed the sales associates looking at me with absolute dread and embarrassment. Sensing something was wrong, I stepped deeper into the boutique. The wedding dress—the one my mother had custom-ordered for me the year I was born—was currently draped over Scarlett. I turned to the manager, my voice cold. “Who gave permission to let someone try on a gown stored under the Lawson family name?” A sales girl rolled her eyes at me. “The Lawson family? This is Mr. Geller’s future wife’s dress. Everyone knows your engagement is off, so what does this dress have to do with you? Can’t even keep her own man, yet she’s trying to claim a priceless designer gown.” The girl stepped in front of me, physically blocking me from touching the fabric. I let out a dry, cold laugh, looking past her to Wright. “I wasn’t aware this dress had a new owner.” Wright, dressed in a matching tailored tuxedo, didn’t look even remotely guilty. He spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “Scarlett is the wife I’ve chosen.” He slid a black Amex card onto the counter. “There’s five million on here. Consider it payment for the gown. Don’t make a scene.” Scarlett giggled, covering her mouth. “Oh, Wright, even if this thing were dripping in real diamonds, it wouldn’t be worth five million. You really do spoil me.” Having no interest in their cheap theater, I walked past Wright, my face expressionless. “Take it off.” Wright stepped in front of me, a warning in his eyes. “Georgia, don’t force me to play dirty with you.” I smiled. The moment Wright decided to cancel our wedding and humiliate my family, we were already past the point of civility. “I won’t repeat myself. Take. It. Off. Or I’ll gladly strip your sweetheart naked right here in front of everyone, so they can get a good look at her famous figure.” Scarlett knew I wasn’t bluffing. She pouted, suddenly playing the victim. “Fine, Wright. Since Georgia wants it so badly, I’ll just let her have it.” I refused to play into her hands. “Who knows if you’ve already ruined it. I want to watch you take it off.” I didn’t trust Scarlett as far as I could throw her. Wright glared at me, his eyes burning with hatred, as if I had subjected his precious angel to some unspeakable torture. “Georgia!” Scarlett let out a triumphant smirk and pulled me into the fitting room. “Sure, then. Come watch.” I kept quiet, watching her slide the zipper down. She exposed her flawless skin and suddenly spoke: “Do you want to know why Wright would rather be my dog than look at you? Because to him, I’m the one who wrote him those thousand letters when he was dying of cancer. I’m his entire survival story.” I froze, staring at her in utter disbelief. Her grin widened. “You stayed by his side for all those years. You blocked his dad’s mistress after his mother died. You saved his inheritance. So why couldn’t you stay with him when he needed you most? Why did you give up on writing those letters?” She looked at me with the smug satisfaction of a victor. “Did you really think Wright kept you around for nine years out of affection? No, Georgia. He kept you around because he hated you. He hated you for leaving him halfway. He hated that your love wasn’t strong enough to stay.” A cold numbness spread from my chest to my fingertips. Everything in the last nine years had been a massive, tragic misunderstanding. Scarlett stepped closer, smiling. “It’s maddening, isn’t it? You were the one who wrote the letters. You were the one who pulled strings to get him the best oncologists when his family gave up on him. But he thinks it was me.” I stared at her, my hands shaking. She tilted her head innocently. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t steal your credit. Wright assumed it all on his own from the moment I ran into him. He said you were too stiff and boring to ever write such beautiful, funny letters. He said only someone as wild and vibrant as me could have saved his soul.” At that moment, I felt a wave of profound, pathetic irony. No verification. No questions. Wright had simply decided that Scarlett was his savior because she fit the fantasy. Suddenly, Scarlett raised her hands and violently slapped her own cheeks. She dragged her nails down her collarbone, leaving angry red welts, and began to shriek: “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have touched your dress! I’m so dirty, I’m just a terrible person!” Wright burst through the door. Seeing Scarlett disheveled, crying, and covered in scratches, his face contorted in rage. He raised his hand and slapped me across the face. My head spun from the force of the blow, and I stumbled against the wall. “Georgia! I’m the one who called off the wedding! If you have a problem, take it out on me!” Remembering what Scarlett had just told me, I opened my mouth to speak. I wanted to ask him if he would feel a single shred of remorse if he knew the truth. But before I could speak, he cut me off: “You insisted on coming in here just because there are no cameras. You wanted to hurt her! Well, you got what you wanted. Are you happy now?” He pulled out his phone right in front of me and dialed a number. “Announce it to the press immediately. I am marrying Scarlett Young. From this day forward, if anyone so much as touches a hair on her head, they answer to me!” He glared at me. “If you ever go near my wife again, I will destroy the Lawson family if it’s the last thing I do!” He took off his tuxedo jacket, wrapped it around Scarlett, and ushered her out. The store owner, who had rushed over after being alerted by the staff, began apologizing profusely: “I am so sorry, Miss Lawson. I was out of the boutique today and didn’t brief the staff properly. I will personally resolve this misunderstanding with your fiancé.” She looked pale, terrified that this disaster would get her blacklisted from the entire luxury industry. “Don’t bother. He is not my fiancé.” I wasn’t going to take my anger out on an employee. I merely said, “Clean the gown. I’ll need it in three days.” The manager blinked. “But… isn’t the wedding off?” “The wedding is on schedule,” I replied coldly. “But you’ll need to size up the groom’s tuxedo. My new fiancé is three inches taller.”

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My cousin Tyler got married on a crisp October afternoon, but my wife, Tracy, refused to stand by my side at the ceremony. I’d seen it coming. It was the same script she ran every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, finding some eleventh-hour excuse to avoid visiting my family in our quiet Ohio hometown. Yet, even with my expectations managed, standing in the reception hall under the warm string lights, dodging well-meaning questions from aunts and childhood friends, a familiar, bitter ache settled in my chest. I knew what people whispered when my back was turned. ‘Can’t even bring his own wife home. What kind of man is he?’ Some had already quietly assumed we were divorced. I sat at the corner table, nursing a glass of bourbon in silence, the noise of the celebration fading into a dull hum. Right then, a strange, cold clarity washed over me. I made my decision. There was no need for them to whisper anymore. I pulled out my phone and dialed Tracy’s number. It rang. Declined. I called again. Declined. A third time. Declined. A text popped up a second later: ‘Are you seriously doing this right now? I’m busy.’ Staring at her words, the last lingering thread of my patience snapped. I calmly typed three letters back: ‘I want a divorce.’ I locked my phone, set it face down on the table, and took a slow sip of my drink. 1 ‘You are completely insane,’ her text read the next morning. ‘You want to throw away our marriage just because I didn’t drag myself to your cousin’s wedding?’ Another text followed immediately: ‘My sister Courtney came up to the city for the weekend. God forbid I actually spend time with my own family.’ In the past, I would have replied with a essay. I would have tried to appeal to her sense of fairness, explaining how it felt to always be the one compromising. I would have reminded her of the double standards—how she claimed to loathe “obligatory family gatherings” yet expected me to show up, smiling and helpful, at every backyard barbecue, birthday, and baby shower her family threw. But I had run out of words. The silence in my chest felt too vast to fill with arguments. ‘I’m serious, Tracy,’ I typed back. ‘Start thinking about what you want to keep. I’ll do the same.’ ‘We split everything fifty-fifty. If you agree, we can sign the papers and keep this quiet.’ A beat of silence, then her final reply: ‘Get help.’ I put my phone away. I had no intention of replying. For the rest of the holiday weekend, the silence between us stretched across the state lines. She didn’t call, and I didn’t reach out. On Sunday evening, the heavy front door of our apartment clicked open. Tracy walked in, carrying a reusable grocery bag stuffed with fresh produce and farm eggs from her parents’ place upstate. She took one look at my cold, set expression, rolled her eyes, and marched into the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frames in the hallway. A few minutes later, the door swung open again. She stormed into the living room, her face flushed with rage, clutching the draft of the separation agreement I had left on the kitchen island. “What is this?” she demanded, flinging the papers at my chest. They fluttered to the hardwood floor. “A divorce,” I said, my voice flat, matching the gray light filtering through the window. “I want a real reason, Jeremy.” “I’m tired,” I said, looking her dead in the eye. “I don’t want to do this with you anymore.” “You’re discarding me over a wedding?” Her voice cracked, and her eyes welled with tears. In the early years, those tears would have undone me. I would have reached for her, apologized, swallowed my own hurt just to make her stop crying. Now, I watched her face with the detached curiosity of a stranger. “We’re adults, Tracy. Can we at least do this with some dignity?” “Dignity? You call tearing our lives apart dignified?” She grabbed the papers from the floor and ripped them in half, then in quarters, scattering the white scraps like confetti. “I’m not divorcing you. I’m not going to be the town gossip because you had a temper tantrum.” I stood up, walked into the guest room, and rolled out the suitcase I’d packed earlier that afternoon. “I’ll give you three days to think it over. If you don’t agree to a dissolution, I’ll file contested.” “Step away from that door! Jeremy, you don’t get to just walk out on me! What did I ever do to deserve this?” She followed me into the entryway, her voice rising to a shriek. “Is there someone else? Who is she?” I didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer. I pulled the door shut behind me, the lock clicking into place with a definitive, satisfying snap. I just wanted it to be over, even if it meant leaving money on the table. But the peace didn’t last. Less than two hours later, my phone lit up with a call from my father-in-law, Richard. He didn’t yell; he just told me to come over to their house so we could “talk like men.” Hoping for a clean break without a prolonged legal circus, I turned my car around and drove to their suburban home. When I walked into the living room, the atmosphere was suffocating. Richard, his wife Pam, and Tracy’s sister Courtney were all lined up on the sectional sofa, their faces grim. It felt less like a conversation and more like a tribunal. Pam was the first to strike. “Jeremy, Tracy told us everything. Don’t you think you’re being incredibly cruel? Threatening divorce just because she missed one family event?” She leaned forward, her silver bracelets clinking. “Marriage isn’t a game. You don’t just throw a tantrum and walk away when things don’t go your way.” I sat on the armchair opposite them, keeping my hands folded in my lap, refusing to engage in the familiar, exhausting dance of defending myself. Over five years, we had fought about everything. We fought about our non-existent sex face because she rejected me so often I’d stopped trying. We fought about money—even as my salary climbed into the mid-six figures, she’d always find some friend’s husband who made more, using their success as a club to beat down my confidence. And then there was the control. If I was home, I wasn’t allowed to just ‘be’. If I watched a game or read a book, I was “lazy,” “lacking ambition,” “wasting my life.” For five years, she claimed we couldn’t have children because we weren’t financially stable enough, yet she had quit her demanding corporate job for a low-stress, twenty-hour-a-week receptionist gig that paid pocket change, spending her afternoons streaming shows and her weekends at the spa. I was drowning in her double standards. “Tracy has sacrificed so much to build a life with you,” Pam continued, her voice dripping with maternal indignation. “She’s never known a day of real comfort since she married you. What right do you have to call it quits?” My eyes drifted to the thick gold band glistening on Pam’s wrist. I bought that. I thought about Richard and Pam’s farmhouse upstate. When they fell behind on their property taxes and their private insurance premiums skyrocketed, I was the one who wrote the checks. I was the one who set up a monthly three-thousand-dollar transfer to keep them afloat. And Tracy? Every anniversary, birthday, Valentine’s Day, and random Tuesday of self-care was funded by my account. The only “bitterness” she had ever tasted was the artisanal coffee she complained was never hot enough. Pam’s mouth kept moving, recounting all the wealthy sons-in-law her friends had, comparing my efforts to theirs. I looked directly at her. “I came here to talk to Tracy. Could you please keep your mouth shut?” Pam gasped, surging up from the sofa. “Do you hear him? The charity case we let into our family is telling me to shut up! Tracy, look at the monster you married!” She pointed a manicured finger at me. “If you treat us this way in our own home, God only knows what you do to my daughter behind closed doors.” “If this is the level of conversation we’re going to have, I’ll let my lawyer handle it,” I said, standing up. “Sit down, Jeremy,” Richard barked, his voice thick with authority. “Do you think your parents raised you to treat your elders with such disrespect?” “Let’s wait for his parents,” Courtney piped up from the corner, checking her watch. “They should be here any minute.” My heart sank slightly. I knew Tracy had called them, hoping to weaponize my mother’s traditional views on marriage against me. But if we had to lay all the cards on the table, we might as well do it now. A few minutes later, the front door opened, and my parents walked into the tense room. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Pam lamented, immediately rising to greet them. “Your son has completely lost his mind. He’s threatening to ruin this family, and when I tried to offer some gentle guidance, he insulted me in my own home.” My father didn’t look at Pam. He walked over to me, placed a heavy, reassuring hand on my shoulder, and looked down at me. “Have you made up your mind, son?” “Yes, Dad. I have.” “Then we support you,” my father said simply. Pam’s face turned a violent shade of crimson. “Are you serious? We called you here to help fix this, not to encourage his foolishness!” “Fix what?” my father asked, his voice steady and quiet. “Since the day they got married, Tracy has treated us like we don’t exist. She hasn’t spent a single holiday with us. She’s never once called us Mom or Dad. Where was your ‘guidance’ then?” “They aren’t my parents!” Tracy snapped, her tears drying up as her anger flared. “I have my own parents. Why should I have to pretend?” “Then you don’t have to pretend to be his wife anymore either,” my father said. “Let’s go, Jeremy.”

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The Grand Prophet once foretold that a monstrous serpent would rise and bring ruin to our world. In response, the mortal King decreed a total purge. Every serpent shifter was to be hunted down and slaughtered, leaving none alive. With our clan facing complete annihilation, Grandfather, our Chief, decided to send our deadliest warriors to assassinate the tyrant. I rolled up my sleeves, practically vibrating with excitement as I volunteered for the job. But Grandfather simply patted my shoulder and sighed. “It is not your turn to play the hero, Maisie. Stay in the safety of our mountains and hold down the fort.” I had no choice but to swallow my grand dreams of battlefield glory. But tragedy struck, wave after wave. Garrick, our fiercest Black Mamba shifter; Talia, our deadliest Banded Krait; and even Toby, our master of stealth and camouflage—all of them met their ends at the hands of the tyrant King. Watching Grandfather lose his scales from sheer grief and stress, I couldn’t take it anymore. I scribbled a hasty farewell note and slipped down the mountain in the dead of night. The moment I crossed the ridge, Grandfather’s voice echoed through the canyon in a raw, hysterical screech: “You absolute idiot! You’re a corn snake! You don’t even have your adult fangs yet! What do you think you’re going to do, tickle him to death?!” Years later, I kicked that broody, cold-hearted tyrant clean off the royal mattress. Who says corn snakes are useless little pests? “Go on,” I’d tell him, pointing a finger. “Peel my corn.” … Grandfather’s voice was shredded by the howling mountain wind. I paused, blinking back at the dark peaks. “Was someone calling me?” I spun around twice, heard nothing but the whistling pines, and happily resumed my trek down the slopes. I pumped my fist in the air, a surge of righteous loyalty warming my chest. “Don’t worry, Grandfather! I won’t fail our people. The tyrant’s head is as good as mine!” But when I finally marched into the bustling capital, my heroic confidence evaporated. I stood frozen in the middle of the crowded cobblestone streets, completely lost. Damn it. I had spent so much time asking the elders for assassination techniques that I’d forgotten to ask the most basic question: How do you actually get inside the palace? Was I supposed to shift back into my snake form and slither past the armed guards on the drawbridge? As I crouched in a dusty alleyway, agonizing over my options, a pale, clean-shaven man in a stiff linen coat emerged from around the corner. He was wringing his hands, his voice pitched in a desperate, high-pitched whine. “Ruined! We’re absolutely ruined! One of the new kitchen maids caught the fever and died on the road. If our numbers aren’t complete, the Chief Steward will have my hide!” My eyes snapped wide. A palace recruiter. Just like the stories the elders told. I lunged out of the alley and blocked his path. “Excuse me, sir! Are you looking for staff? What about me? I can do anything—scrub floors, wash dishes, whatever you need! Just get me inside the palace. I need to see the King.” The steward eyed me up and down. A sleazy, split-second grin broke across his pale face, and he patted his chest importantly. “Well, aren’t you an eager little thing? I happen to be a very influential man in His Majesty’s household. Keep me happy, and I won’t just get you a meeting with the King—I’ll get you a ticket straight to his bedchamber!” I was practically vibrating with excitement. I nodded eagerly, trailing behind him like a loyal pup, dreaming of my impending glory. Ten minutes later, I was standing in the scullery of the royal latrines. “This is your new home,” the steward said, his smile entirely gone. He gestured coldly toward rows of wooden chamber pots lined up in the corner, radiating a stench so foul it made my eyes water. “From today on, you’re on chamber-pot duty. Thirty pots a day. No food until they’re spotless.” I stared at him, dumbfounded. “But… you said you’d take me to the King?” He didn’t even bother to look back as he swept out of the room. The other kitchen maids in the room burst into cruel, mocking laughter. “Look, girls, another gullible idiot fallen for old Higgins’s lies! A pot-scrubber wanting to see the King? Keep dreaming, honey!” I squeezed the rough scrubbing rag in my hand, my knuckles turning white. For the Clan. For the mission. I can endure this. I scrubbed. I scrubbed from the first light of dawn until the stars claimed the sky. By the time the last wooden pot gleamed in the dim candlelight, I sniffed my fingers and nearly gagged on the spot. Curse that rotten tyrant. Tonight, he pays for this indignity with his life. I stretched my aching neck, took a deep breath, and let the magic take over. My bones softened, my skin tightened, and my clothes fell away as I shifted into my true form—a small, vibrant corn snake, patterned in brilliant shades of red and orange. During my endless shifts, I had kept my ears open, piecing together a map of the estate from the maids’ idle gossip. I slithered along the cold stone baseboards, a silent, colorful shadow slipping undetected into the King’s private wing. I squeezed through a crack in the heavy oak window and slipped into the room. Sitting by the hearth, bathed in the warm glow of a desk lamp, was a man reviewing royal ledgers. He was stunning. Dark, sharp eyebrows, a nose carved like marble, and a jawline that could cut glass. I froze on the carpet, subconsciously swallowing a sudden pool of saliva. Get a grip, Maisie. I mentally pinched myself. This gorgeous creature is a cold-blooded monster who slaughters your people for sport. Kill him. I coiled my small body, aiming directly for the exposed, pale skin of his throat. With a silent prayer to our ancestors, I launched myself through the air. A split second later, two cool, incredibly strong fingers clamped around my neck, pinning my head in place. Wait. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I went completely rigid. Garrick, who was a master of the coil, had spent hours training me back home. He would pat my head and say, “Listen to me, little Maisie. Once our kind wraps around a beast’s throat, there is no escaping. You squeeze until their ribs crack and their lungs collapse. They die before they even realize what’s happening.” But theory and reality were violently clashing. I thrashed wildly, my tail whipping against his forearm in a desperate attempt to gain leverage. The two fingers holding me didn’t even twitch. Gideon raised his other hand, idly flicking the tip of my tail with his index finger. His voice was a low, amused drawl. “Where did you crawl out from, you foolish little thing?” Every single scale on my body flared in sheer indignation. Suddenly, the King’s brow furrowed. He brought me closer to his face, sniffing slightly, and his expression dissolved into pure disgust. “Why do you smell so foul? Did you fall into a cesspool?” Without another word, he wound my body into a tight, neat spiral—like a ball of yarn—and dropped me unceremoniously into a silver basin filled with fresh water. “Clean yourself up before you try to kill me again.” I thrashed in the water, cursing his entire royal bloodline to the heavens. But my small size made the simple task of untangling myself an absolute nightmare. I spent the entire night twisting, turning, and wrestling with my own knotted tail. By the time the horizon began to bleed gold, I finally managed to straighten my spine. Gasping for air, I propped my chin on the edge of the silver basin, only to find myself staring directly at the sleeping face of the King. Leaving an assassin loose in his chambers while he sleeps? He is as arrogant as he is foolish. I glided silently over the rim, climbing up the velvet bedpost and creeping onto the silk pillows beside his head. Talia’s voice echoed in my mind: “Our fangs carry the ultimate kiss of death, Maisie. One prick, and their heart stops before they can even scream.” I lunged forward, opening my mouth as wide as it would go, and bit down on his bottom lip with all the force my tiny body could muster. The King’s eyes snapped open. He didn’t scream. He didn’t even flinch. He simply reached up, plucked me off his face, and used his thumb to pry my jaw open. “You don’t even have your adult fangs yet, little pest,” he murmured, a slow, mocking smirk spreading across his lips. I glared at him, hissed, and tried to look as menacing as possible. Gideon tilted his head, bringing his face so close I could see my own bright, chubby reflection in his dark eyes. “Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll have the kitchens turn you into snake soup.” I froze. My eyes snapped shut, my tail tucked tightly against my belly, and I went limp, playing dead with absolute, shameless commitment. A soft, low chuckle vibrated above me. I peeked through a tiny slit in my eyelids, catching the thoughtful glint in Gideon’s eyes. He suddenly turned toward the door and called out, “Guards!” My stomach plummeted. A young servant rushed into the room, bowing deeply. “Your Majesty?” Gideon lifted me by the tail, dangling me like a piece of colorful rope. “Take this thing out and dispose of it.” Dispose of me? Soup? Skinning? Cold dread washed over me. I immediately flipped onto my back, let my tongue loll out of my mouth, and tried to look like a shriveled piece of jerky. “Oh dear, is it already dead?” the young servant gasped, recoiling slightly. Gideon glanced at my pathetic performance. The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly. “If it’s dead, throw it in a jar of spirits. It’ll make a fine medicinal wine.” The servant gingerly scooped me up and turned to leave. The moment we crossed the threshold into the cool hallway, I launched myself out of his hands, landing on the stone floor with a soft splat before vanishing into the shadows of the corridor. “Ah! It’s escaped!” the servant shrieked behind me. I fled through the maze of hallways, not slowing down until I scrambled back into the safety of my smelly latrine scullery. Only then did my racing heart begin to settle. Gideon was terrifyingly sharp. No wonder our first three assassins had failed so miserably. I curled up in the corner of the room, resting my chin on my knees, deeply analyzing my tactical errors. Direct force and venom were clearly out of the question for a harmless corn snake shifter. I needed to adapt. I needed to study Toby’s method of stealth and infiltration. But as I looked down at my reflection in a bucket of water, my heart sank. Bright orange and red scales, decorated with bold, festive yellow saddles. I looked like a walking holiday lantern. If I tried to hide in the grass, I’d be visible from a mile away. My snake form was useless for stealth. I bit my lip and made a decision: I would have to use my human form. For the next week, I pushed my body to its absolute limits. By day, I scrubbed my thirty chamber pots; by night, I slipped out to shadow the King, studying his schedule. Eventually, I noticed a pattern. When he worked in his private study late at night, he dismissed all his guards and advisors. A perfect, moonless night. The ultimate time for a strike. I slipped into a makeshift suit of black clothes I’d sewn from discarded rags. Crawling beneath the shadows, I reached the exterior wall of his study just as the sentries rounded the far corner. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the stone windowsill and hoisted myself up to climb through. I shoved the glass panes open with a sharp clatter. But I had vastly overestimated my physical agility. I ended up hopelessly wedged in the window frame, my legs dangling outside while my upper body spilled into the bright, warm study. The room was ablaze with candlelight. Gideon sat behind his grand desk, surrounded by several high-ranking ministers in formal robes. They were clearly in the middle of an incredibly important council meeting. Every single eye in the room snapped to me. The silence that followed was suffocating. “Uh, hi,” I offered, letting out a nervous, high-pitched chuckle. “Busy night, huh? Keep up the good work!” I frantically tried to wiggle backward out of the frame. I had just managed to get one leg back over when Gideon’s smooth, dry voice cut through the air: “Arrest her.” The guards lunged. Panic seized me. I thrashed wildly, but the cheap fabric of my makeshift black suit caught on a heavy iron latch, pinning me in place. Seeing the guards closing in, I tore myself free with a desperate wrench of my body. I fell backward, landing hard on the muddy grass outside. Before the guards could burst through the palace doors, I willed my body to shift back into my colorful snake form. But just as I made a mad dash for the shrubbery, a long, elegant hand descended from above, pinning me expertly by the neck. “You again?” I looked up into Gideon’s handsome, mocking face. He held me up to his eyes, examining my bright scales as if I were a particularly amusing clockwork toy. The guards came rushing around the corner, only to find a pile of torn black rags on the ground. “Forgive us, Your Majesty. The assassin has vanished.” Gideon waved them off with an indifferent shrug. “Let it go. Any assassin who gets stuck in a window frame is hardly a threat to the crown. Besides,” he added, glancing down at my plump midsection, “judging by her proportions, I suspect she was merely trying to raid the royal pantry.” I snapped, sinking my tiny, toothless mouth onto his index finger. Threaten my life all you want, but do not insult my figure! Unfortunately, no matter how hard I clamped down, I couldn’t even break his skin. Gideon ran his thumb down my spine, tracing the vibrant orange patterns of my scales. “I’ve been needing a new belt,” he mused, a dangerous spark in his eyes. “Since you’re so fond of sneaking into my quarters, I think I’ll keep you.” Before I could react, he wrapped my long, supple body around his waist and tied me in a loose, secure knot. The sheer humiliation of it. A proud warrior of the serpent clan, reduced to a tyrant’s belt accessory. I wanted more than anything to bite him, but every time I squirmed, the knot tightened, squeezing the breath right out of me. After a few futile struggles, I gave up, letting my tail dangle limply against his thigh, swaying with the rhythm of his steps as he walked back inside. My life went completely off the rails after that night. Whether Gideon found me genuinely amusing or simply wanted to torture me, he refused to go anywhere without his new “accessory.” During morning court, I was wrapped around his wrist, masquerading as an exotic orange bracelet. During meals, I was coiled neatly beside his plate, presented with a silver saucer of small, harmless crickets (which I flatly refused to touch). At night, he left me on the silk pillow right beside his head, completely unbothered by the fact that I was technically his sworn enemy. One morning, as I was dozing off around his wrist, a cold, grating voice echoed through the Great Hall, snapping me awake. “Your Majesty, the serpent plague remains a threat to our realm. I have read the stars, and the dark magic of the serpent clan still lingers. If we do not tear them out by the roots, they will bring ruin to your throne.” My eyes snapped open. Standing in the center of the hall was an old man in flowing black robes, holding a silver staff. It was Grand Prophet Lucius, the architect of our clan’s misery. “I implore you, Your Majesty, double our forces. Every serpent, from the grandest python to the smallest hatchling, must be put to the sword.” Rage surged through me, hot and suffocating. This was the man who had ordered the slaughter of my family. I squeezed Gideon’s wrist in a tight, furious grip. Sensing my sudden agitation, Gideon calmly laid his other hand over me, his thumb gently stroking the top of my head to soothe me. “I hear your concerns, Prophet. We shall discuss this at a later date.” Lucius frowned, stepping forward. “But Your Majesty, this is a matter of urgent—” “Court is dismissed,” Gideon interrupted, rising from his throne without another word. I peeked out from the edge of his sleeve, flicking my tongue toward Lucius as we swept past him. That afternoon, Lucius left the palace for his private manor. Waiting until Gideon was deeply engrossed in his paperwork, I slipped down his sleeve, sliding along the baseboards and out into the gardens. Lucius was a cunning old fox; physical force or brute strength would never work on him. But during my time spent clinging to the King, I had observed the royal physicians and managed to swipe a pouch of powerful sleeping powder used to treat Gideon’s occasional insomnia. I had stolen a massive dose. I would knock the old bastard out cold, and then I’d find a way to finish him. Keeping to my snake form to avoid detection, I carried the pouch in my mouth, trailing Lucius through the winding, quiet streets of the capital. When he finally turned down a deserted alley, I coiled my tail and launched myself through the air, flinging the pouch directly at his face. But Lucius didn’t flinch. A sickening, cruel grin stretched across his wrinkled face. He whipped out a heavy silk fan and gave it a sharp, powerful flick. The entire cloud of sleeping powder was blown straight back into my face. The world began to spin. My vision blurred, my muscles went limp, and I collapsed onto the cold stone path with a soft plop. A sharp, agonizing pain flared in my tail. Lucius ground his heavy boot down on my lower body, twisting his heel with slow, deliberate cruelty. He looked down at me, his voice dripping with malice. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you tailing me, you pathetic little worm?” I thrashed in agony, but the pressure only intensified, crushing my delicate scales. “A mere corn snake trying to take my life?” he hissed, raising his boot to hover directly over my head. “I could crush you like a common garden slug.” He smiled, his boot slowly descending. My vision began to go dark, my lungs screaming for air. Just as the sole of his boot was about to crush my skull, a calm, commanding voice echoed down the alleyway: “That is my pet you’re stepping on, Prophet. And I get incredibly displeased when people break my toys.”

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Pregnancy had turned me into a creature of suffocating anxiety. Every single day, I would text Donald to ask if he loved me. For the first ninety-nine times, he replied with a measured, manufactured gentleness. Until the hundredth time. Suddenly, my phone buzzed with three rapid-fire texts, dripping with a venom I’d never seen from him before. [Camille, do you seriously have nothing better to do?] [The morning sickness stopped, the baby isn’t torturing you anymore, so now you’ve decided to torture me?] [If you have this much free time, why don’t you look in the mirror? Your face is starting to look like a bloated piece of cheap meat.] I sat there, paralyzed. A second later, the messages vanished from the screen—unsent. A voice note popped up in their place. “I’m sorry,” Donald’s voice came through, smooth and composed. “My junior assistant accidentally sent those from my phone. Please don’t take it to heart.” Accident or not, the logistics didn’t matter anymore. All I knew, with a sudden and crystalline clarity, was that our marriage was completely, irreversibly dead. … I got up and went straight to the clinic. When I walked out of the sterile, brightly lit recovery room, my womb was empty. The four-month-old pregnancy was gone. By the time I finally returned to our penthouse, the city skyline was cloaked in absolute darkness. The living room was bathed in the warm glow of the designer lamps. Donald was sitting on the Italian leather sofa. Hearing the door, he looked up, his brow furrowing instantly. “Where have you been? It’s late. Do you not know how to return a text or a call?” I didn’t say a word. I slipped out of my heels, stepped into my slippers, and walked into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. He watched me, his gaze lingering on my face for a few seconds before he finally let out a long sigh. “I explained what happened this afternoon. My assistant grabbed the wrong phone. She’s already apologized to me, and I reprimanded her. It won’t happen again.” ‘A junior assistant grabbed her boss’s private phone by mistake?’ A faint, hollow laugh escaped my lips. I set the glass down and actually looked at him. Donald was breathtakingly handsome. It was the first thing I had known about him, the very first time I saw him. Now, at thirty-three, he had aged like fine bourbon—far better than most men his age. Just sitting there in his cashmere loungewear, he looked like an editorial spread in GQ. I used to love looking at him. I used to think I could spend a lifetime memorizing the planes of his face and never grow tired of it. But tonight, looking at him, I realized his beauty had nothing to do with me anymore. He was like a couture gown in a heavily guarded window display. You can stand on the sidewalk staring at it for years, convincing yourself it belongs to you, but you never actually get to take it home. “Donald,” I started, my voice ringing out much calmer than I had anticipated. “What was that little assistant’s name again?” He paused, a micro-shift in his posture. “Marissa. Why?” “How long has she been working for you?” “Six months, give or take.” He frowned, quickly adding, “Why are you interrogating me about this? I told you it was a misunderstanding. Do you really have to cling to this? Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see it?” Four defensive questions in a row. I didn’t take the bait. I just let the silence stretch for a moment before I continued. “I remember when she first started. You mentioned her in passing. You said the new hire was clumsy, practically incompetent, completely lacking the ruthless efficiency you usually demand from your staff. You never brought her up again. I naturally assumed you’d fired her.” I tilted my head. “But it turns out, not only did you not fire her, but right around the time she showed up, your ‘overtime’ hours mysteriously doubled. Your sudden out-of-state business trips became incredibly frequent.” The crease between Donald’s brows deepened. “Camille, what exactly are you implying?” I offered a small, empty smile. “I’m just stating the facts.” His irritation finally broke through his polished veneer. “Look, I know pregnancy is hard. Your hormones are all over the place, your emotions are volatile. I get that. But you can’t just spiral into paranoia over a few misfired texts. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the baby.” ‘The baby.’ The words were a microscopic needle slipping precisely between my ribs, piercing directly into my heart. How long had we been married? Four years. I was twenty-two when I sneaked back to the States after living in Europe, just wanting to rebel, to play. At a society party, I laid eyes on Donald and fell with a catastrophic, gravity-defying kind of love. I went after him with everything I had. At first, he thought I was too young, too naive. But I was relentless. I ripped my heart out of my chest and offered it to him on a silver platter. I bought him expensive watches, sent him rare vintages, and eventually, I was the one who proposed. People in our circle whispered. They laughed at me behind their manicured hands, saying a girl from my background shouldn’t be so desperate, so lacking in grace. But I hadn’t cared. I thought that was what love was supposed to be—brave, unashamed, loud. Eventually, he wore down. We dated for a year, then married. For the four years of our marriage, every single day was a tightrope walk of me pouring out my affection, desperate for scraps. If he gave me the slightest hint of warmth, it was like the sun rising in my universe. When I got pregnant, something shifted. He seemed genuinely pleased. He gave me more attention than he ever had. But the quiet terror had already set in. The foundation was rotting. I couldn’t shake the anxiety, constantly clinging to him, begging him to validate me. Even though he rarely used the word ‘love,’ his soft, ”I’ll be home early tonight,” felt like a lifeline. Until today. When the private phone—the one he never even let me touch—was casually handled by another woman to hurl insults at me. That was when the fog cleared. He had never, not from day one, held me in his heart. But it was okay. It was finally over. I had simply run out of love to give. Seeing me stand there in silence, he must have assumed I had yielded. He walked over, his anger softening into a patronizing patience, and reached out to pull me into his arms. “Alright, enough. Stop overthinking. I had the housekeeper make your favorite soup. Have a bowl and go to sleep. It’s the weekend tomorrow, I’ll take you shopping—” “I had an abortion.” The words slipped from my mouth, light as a feather. But Donald froze completely. His arms were still raised in the ghost of an embrace, suspended mid-air. The penthouse went so quiet I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the antique clock in the hallway. ‘One. Two. Three.’ Slowly, he straightened his posture. He looked down at me as if the English language had suddenly become a foreign tongue. “What did you just say?” I looked up, meeting his eyes dead on. I enunciated every syllable. “I said, the baby is gone. After you sent me those messages, I went to the clinic. I terminated the pregnancy.” I watched the color drain from his face, inch by agonizing inch. In the five years I had known Donald, I had almost never seen him lose his composure. To the world, he was utterly untouchable, a man whose emotions were regulated like a flawless piece of Swiss engineering. But right now, the gears were grinding to a halt. I found a morbid sense of fascination in it. I just kept watching him. “You didn’t consult me… and you just got rid of the baby?” My lips curved upward. “Yes.” “Camille.” My name tore from his throat, trembling. “That was my child, too.” I gave a nonchalant shrug. “I know.” “You know?” His voice suddenly shattered the quiet room, his eyes turning a violent, bloodshot red. “You know, and yet you went to the clinic by yourself and killed our child without even saying a damn word to me?!” “Camille! Do I even exist to you as your husband?!” He had never yelled at me like this. Whenever we fought in the past, his weapon of choice was icy silence. He would simply freeze me out until the lack of oxygen forced me to apologize first. But in this moment, a genuine laugh bubbled up from my chest. “Donald, so you actually ‘can’ get angry? Your eyes ‘can’ get red? You’re capable of losing your mind like a normal human being? I thought your only setting was emotional abuse.” Donald flinched, but the shock quickly morphed into absolute fury. His hand shot out, his fingers digging painfully into my jaw. “What the hell is wrong with you?! I told you I didn’t send those texts! Why won’t you just believe me?!” he roared, his breath hot against my face. “And that wasn’t just your baby! It was mine! What gave you the right to play God and rip it out of you?” “Since you’re so capable of murdering my child all by yourself, then you are going to give me another one!” Before I could process the words, he yanked me forward and crushed his mouth against mine. It wasn’t a kiss; it was an assault. The sharp, metallic taste of copper flooded my mouth instantly. I winced against the pain. Five years together, and he had never initiated a kiss. Even in our most intimate moments, I was always the one reaching for him, pulling him down. There were times I would lie awake, dreaming of him just wanting me like this. Now, all it invoked was a rising bile in my throat. I bit down, hard. He groaned in pain and shoved me backward. I stumbled, catching myself, my eyes burning with unshed tears as I glared at him. “You want a baby? Go find another woman. Your little assistant seems pretty damn eager to breed for you.” Donald froze, wiping the blood from his lip. “What did you say?” “I said,” I screamed, my voice tearing at the seams, “Go have a baby with Marissa! Keep your pathetic, hypocritical hands off me!” “Donald, right now, looking at you makes me want to vomit!” He stared at me, his gaze so intense it felt like he was trying to nail me to the floorboards. Three agonizing seconds passed. Then, he laughed. A cold, hollow sound. “Fine. Since you’re being so incredibly generous, I’ll give you exactly what you want.” He grabbed his keys from the console. “Don’t regret this. And don’t come crawling back to me crying.” The front door slammed shut with bone-rattling force. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before. I stared at the heavy oak door. The tears, which I hadn’t realized were falling, suddenly became a torrential flood. I collapsed to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably. It was as if I was purging five years of quiet humiliation, of begging for scraps, of making myself small. ‘Donald, I promise you, I won’t regret this.’ ‘And I will never, ever beg you again.’ I wiped my face with the back of my trembling hand, pulled out my phone, and dialed a number I rarely used. “Hey, it’s me,” I whispered when my brother picked up. “The shadow capital we injected into Donald’s firm. Pull it all. Every last cent.” Donald didn’t come home that night. First thing Saturday morning, I went straight to my lawyer’s office and had the divorce papers drawn up. Since it was the weekend, he wouldn’t be at the office. I had no idea where to find him to serve him. Just as I stepped out onto the bustling Manhattan street, my phone buzzed with a video file. A second later, a voice note from my best friend, Jocelyn, exploded through my speaker. “Cam! Is this your untouchable, golden-boy husband?!” “I’m at Fifth Avenue shopping, and I just saw him with some girl! He literally got down on one knee on the sidewalk to tie her shoe for her!” “You were four months pregnant, and he’s out here scavenging for scraps? The absolute audacity of this bastard! I swear to God, I am going to murder them both!” My thumb hovered over the screen. I tapped play. The footage was slightly shaky, shot from a distance. But there he was. The man who always stood above the rest of the world, crouching on the pavement with an indulgent, helpless smile, tying the laces of the young girl beside him because she was pouting. She was laughing, filming him with her phone. A sharp, phantom pain sliced through my chest. It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted that kind of indulgence from him. I had. But whenever I asked, he would just look down at me with that cool, detached expression. He never outright refused, but he never moved a muscle, either. He would just let the silence stretch until I was so humiliated I had to laugh it off and change the subject. I swallowed the lump in my throat, typed a quick reply to Jocelyn. [I’m divorcing him.] The moment the text sent, an unknown number called me. “Is this Camille St. Claire?” a stern voice asked. “Your husband and your friend were involved in an altercation. We need you to come down to the 19th Precinct immediately.” Jocelyn had a temper, but I hadn’t expected her to go scorched-earth this fast. I hailed a cab and rushed downtown. The moment I pushed through the heavy glass doors of the precinct, the shouting hit me like a physical wave. “Donald, you piece of shit!” Jocelyn was screaming, restrained by an exhausted-looking officer. “How could you do this to Camille?! She was carrying your child! And you’re out here flaunting your mistress in broad daylight, tying her damn shoes?! Why don’t you just drop dead?!” “Camille gave you everything! She loved you so much—” “Did I ask her to?” Donald’s voice cut through the air, sharp as a guillotine. I froze in the doorway. Donald wasn’t finished. “Did I ever beg her to treat me well? Did I beg her to love me? Was I the one who threw away my pride to chase a man who didn’t want me? Was I the one who crawled into her bed, practically begging to be married the second I snapped my fingers? So what if she was good to me? I didn’t love her. Why the hell should I owe her anything just because she decided to martyr herself? And what, just because she was pregnant, I’m supposed to chain myself to her side?” Jocelyn looked ready to combust. If the cop hadn’t been holding her back, she would have torn his throat out. “You soulless bastard! If it weren’t for Camille, you would’ve been bankrupt and rotting in—” “Jocelyn, stop,” I interrupted, stepping fully into the room. I walked straight past Donald and looked at the desk sergeant. “I’m here to take her home.” Before the officer could speak, Donald’s dark, commanding voice echoed through the bleak room. “She assaulted someone. You think she gets to just walk away?” I slowly turned to look at the woman clinging to his arm. Marissa. Her eyes were red, her cheek bearing the faint, pink outline of Jocelyn’s hand. Finally, I looked at him. “What do you want, then?” Donald’s eyes were glacial. “Your friend slapped my assistant. Now, I want her to pay it back.” Jocelyn let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “Let that little bitch try to hit me, I’ll break her—” “I didn’t say she would hit you,” Donald interrupted, his gaze sliding off Jocelyn and locking onto me with a terrifying intensity. “Camille. Your friend made a mistake on your behalf. Therefore, you foot the bill.” “You motherf—” Jocelyn trembled with rage, lunging forward. But before she could move, I spoke. “Fine.” Jocelyn’s head whipped toward me. “Camille, are you out of your mind?! He’s the one cheating! He’s the one who ruined everything!” I ignored her. I walked the few steps until I was standing directly in front of Donald and Marissa. “Do it.” Marissa shrank back slightly, tears welling perfectly in her eyes. “Mr. Hobart, please, don’t make it hard for your wife, I—” ‘SMACK.’ Before she could finish her performance, Donald grabbed Marissa’s wrist and drove her hand forcefully across my cheek. A sharp, burning pain exploded across the left side of my face. The room went dead silent. I turned to walk away. “Did I say we were done?” Donald’s voice was absolute ice. “She slapped Marissa once. I want it paid back tenfold.” He practically dragged Marissa forward. Before my brain could even register the threat, the blows rained down. ‘Smack. Smack. Smack.’ Nine hits. Each one heavier, more degrading, more violent than the last. With every strike, a tiny piece of the pathetic, desperate love I had hoarded in my chest withered away and died. By the time the final blow landed, I felt absolutely nothing. A profound, hollow numbness had settled into my bones. Something warm trickled down the corner of my mouth. I tasted iron. None of the officers stepped in. Donald Hobart owned half the real estate in this city; no one was going to cross him over a domestic spat where he technically didn’t throw the punch himself. When it was over, Donald gently massaged Marissa’s wrist, not looking at me. He delivered his final warning to Jocelyn. “Keep your dog on a leash. Next time she barks at people who belong to me, it won’t end like this.” He turned, placing a protective hand on Marissa’s lower back to guide her out. “Donald.” I called out to his retreating back. Reaching into my designer tote, I pulled out the manila envelope. “Let’s divorce.” He stopped, turning back with a look of pure disdain. “You want to divorce me?” I nodded once. “Yes.” He stared at me for a long, suffocating moment, and then a cruel smirk touched his lips. “Camille, I haven’t even settled the score with you for killing my child behind my back. Now you’re pulling this ‘divorce’ stunt to get my attention? Playing hard to get?” I gave a dry, broken smile. “You flatter yourself.” His expression darkened instantly. He snatched the papers from my hand, pulled a Montblanc pen from his breast pocket, and aggressively slashed his signature across the bottom line. He threw the papers directly into my chest. “Just a friendly reminder, Camille,” he sneered, leaning in close. “Without me, you are absolutely nothing. When you inevitably come crying back, begging me to let you in, I won’t even look your way.”

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In the final split-second of the grouping game, Daphne didn’t hesitate. She shoved me away. For the tenth time that night, she singled Jesse out of the crowd and pulled him into her arms. Jesse—my half-brother, the son of the woman who tore my parents’ marriage apart. She had turned a simple party game into a private chase between the two of them. Her excuse was always the same: “Losers have to take the penalty, Logan. He and his mother treated you like garbage, so I’m just giving him a taste of his own medicine.” But when Jesse, dripping wet and shivering under the giant suspended water bucket, finally broke down and sobbed, her face changed. She lunged forward, throwing her body over his to shield him. The lounge fell dead silent. The look on everyone’s faces made me feel like the ultimate punchline. “Look at how the campus queen looks at his little brother! Are Logan and Daphne even actually together? I swear those relationship photos he posts are AI-generated. Why else has Daphne never once acknowledged them?” “For real, Logan’s Instagram feed is just a collection of a desperate simp’s delusions. It’s wild!” I looked at Daphne, waiting for her to say something, but her eyes were locked entirely on Jesse. Her voice carried a manufactured sharpness: “What are you crying for? Logan didn’t even cry when your mother kicked him and his mom out.” But I saw it. I saw the raw, aching tenderness in her eyes. I swallowed the bitter lump in my throat, pulled out my phone, and wiped my feed. “You’re right,” I whispered to no one in particular. “Daphne and I were never actually together.” Maybe it was time to listen to my mother, leave the country, and accept the family match she’d arranged for me. … Daphne used to despise home-wreckers. When she first learned that my mother and I had been cast out of our own home because of Jesse and his mother, her protective rage was terrifying. She had literally grabbed a chair, marched over to my father’s office, and cracked his head open. Since then, she’d never given Jesse a single break. She targeted him at every turn, fighting my battles for me. But now, amidst the snickers of our classmates, she was gently, helplessly wiping the tears from my bastard brother’s face. Once Jesse’s sobbing quieted to a whimper, Daphne finally let out a sigh of relief. She slid back over and sat down beside me. “What were you guys talking about?” she asked. Before I could utter a word, our classmates chimed in, their voices dripping with mockery. “We were just saying how you and Logan are basically strangers.” “Yeah, Daphne, did you know? Logan’s been posting couple goals on his feed every other day. Talk about living in a fantasy world. It’s hilarious!” Daphne’s face was half-shadowed by the dim neon lighting of the lounge. Her expression was unreadable, her tone utterly detached. “Really?” she said, swirling her drink. “Then he should probably delete them.” The lounge erupted into a chorus of laughter. “See! I told you! Why would a girl like Daphne ever date a clinger like him?” “Honestly, she and Jesse make way more sense. Enemies to lovers, right?” In the middle of the mockery, my eyes stung with hot, rising tears. Over the last two years, Daphne had never explicitly forbidden me from posting about us. But whenever I begged her to post something in return, she’d always offer the same rehearsed line: “My social media is strictly professional, Logan. It’s for my professors and internship coordinators. It’s not appropriate to post relationship stuff. Your posts are enough for both of us.” So I would settle for the bare minimum, asking her to at least like my photos. She never did. And when I called her out on it, she would pull me close, whispering, “You know I hate scrolling through social media. As long as the people who matter know we’re together, who cares?” And so, for two years, I performed a solo play to an empty theater. Sensing the sudden shift in my mood, Daphne reached under the table, her fingers slipping into mine, squeezing reassuringly. “I was just joking,” she murmured, her voice soft and coaxing. “They’re just being assholes. Don’t take it to heart.” “I just took on a major research project under my adviser. If the department heads think I’m distracted by a public relationship, it’ll hurt my standing.” “Be good, Logan. Just wait until the semester ends, and I’ll explain everything to them.” But this time, the words didn’t soothe me. They felt like hollow, well-worn scripts. My nails bit deep into my palms. Forcing down the sob catching in my chest, I whispered, “Don’t bother.” Right there, in front of her, I opened my profile and deleted every single post, every photo, every mention of her name. I stood up to leave, my hands trembling as I shot a text to my mother across the Atlantic: Mom, I’ll take the flight. I’m ready to move and meet the person you chose for me. The moment I stepped out of the lounge, the cool night air hit me, and the tears I’d been holding back finally broke. Before I could make it to the curb, a firm hand gripped my wrist. It was Daphne, panting slightly. “Logan, where are you going? We agreed I was driving you home!” I wrenched my arm back with everything I had. “Don’t touch me!” Daphne froze, finally seeing the tear tracks shining on my face. Her breath hitched. “Are you seriously crying over a deleted post?” “Daphne, you’re in love with Jesse, aren’t you?” “Are you insane?” she snapped instantly. “He’s the bastard who ruined your family. I despise him!” She stopped, her posture softening as she stepped closer to wrap her arms around me. Her tone turned into that familiar, soothing caress. “Look, I’m sorry. Stop being difficult, let’s just go back inside.” “I’ll go back in there and tell them we’re together, okay? Right now.” Looking into her eyes, I saw the ghost of the girl who had always put me first. I remembered freshman year of high school, when I had slapped Jesse’s mother during an argument and my father locked me in my room for three days without food. It was Daphne who climbed the trellis to my window, sneaking in meals and eventually calling the police to force my father to let us go. Sophomore year, when Jesse played the victim, turning the entire grade against me. Daphne didn’t say a word; she walked right into the classroom, smashed his desk, threw his backpack in the dumpster, and told him, That’s what actual bullying looks like. Junior year, when Jesse lured me up into the mountain trails on a false pretext and abandoned me. Daphne drove all night—ignoring the fact that she had her SATs the next morning—and carried me down the mountain path on her back, step by painful step. Those memories were etched into my bones. My heart wavered, aching with the desperate hope that the girl who carried me through the dark wouldn’t do this to me. “Come on,” she whispered, tugging gently. “Everyone’s waiting. Once this is over, we’ll go home together.” I clenched my fists and let her lead me back into the private room. The second the door swung open, a massive slab of cake slammed directly into my face. Thick icing clogged my nose and mouth, suffocating me. The sugary grease stung my eyes, and the sticky weight of it dragged down my clothes. I stood there, utterly humiliated. As I blindly tried to scrape the frosting from my eyes, the room exploded into vicious laughter. “Oh my god, look at him! That is priceless! He’s actually trying to eat it off his face, that’s disgusting!” “Classic Daphne! One little sweet talk and he comes running back like a puppy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even have gotten this show!” The shame burned through my chest. Then I saw Daphne. She was leaning against the bar, her shoulders shaking with laughter. My voice shook, thick with tears. “Why?” Before Daphne could answer, Jesse’s smug, lighthearted voice cut through. “Come on, Logan. Everyone took their punishment tonight except you. You ran away. That’s not fair, is it?” “So I asked Daphne to bring you back.” My mind went entirely blank. I stared at Daphne, desperately searching her face, but her warmth had vanished, replaced by a cold, detached look. “Logan,” she said flatly, “if you play the game, you have to follow the rules.” Something inside me shattered, a clean, silent break. She hadn’t brought me back to clear the air. She hadn’t brought me back to declare her love. She brought me back because Jesse said it wasn’t fair. I was brought back to be their entertainment. A soft sigh sounded beside me as a heavy jacket was thrown over my head. Daphne’s voice was neutral, her expression carefully blank. “Clean yourself up. Stop making a scene.” But as the jacket slid down, my eyes caught her exposed collarbone. Written there, in bold, black Sharpie, were the words: Jesse’s property. Daphne noticed where I was looking. She let out a soft, amused scoff. “You missed it. I lost a drinking game to Jesse while you were gone. This was my dare. Kid’s got a weird mind, honestly. I don’t know what goes on in his head.” But Daphne’s tolerance for alcohol was legendary. She was a vault. I remembered a fraternity fundraiser where she systematically drank an entire table of recruiters under the table without her cheeks even flushing. And Jesse? If I remembered correctly, he was severely allergic to alcohol. If Daphne hadn’t wanted to lose, Jesse could never have outdrunk her. When we played games in private, she wouldn’t even let me draw a tiny flower on her wrist. Yet here she was, letting Jesse write something so degrading on her bare skin. The pain in my chest was dull and heavy, like my lungs had been stuffed with cotton. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. But Jesse wasn’t done playing. “Hey, you deserved it for throwing me under the bus earlier! That mark stays on for at least a month, Daphne! I’m getting back at you for everything. If I don’t make you cry by the end of this semester, my name isn’t Jesse!” Daphne smirked. “Oh yeah? Who was the one crying like a lost puppy five minutes ago?” He let out an embarrassed shriek and lunged at her, swatting at her arm. In the scuffle, his shoulder shoved hard against me. I stumbled backward, the sharp edge of the mahogany table cutting violently into my lower back. The pain was so sharp it drew cold sweat on my forehead. Through my blurred vision, I watched them. Daphne was laughing, batting him away, completely oblivious to the fact that I was hurting. The last embers of my hope died. She kept saying she hated him. But her body, her laughter, her focus—they all belonged to him now. The background chatter of the room drifted back in: “Daphne’s basically throwing herself at him. Unlike some people who beg for scraps and still get ignored. If I were Logan, I’d take the hint and leave. It’s embarrassing.” “Wait, if Daphne likes Jesse, why was she always so brutal to him before?” “Dude, you don’t get girls. When you like someone, you pick on them. That way, they’re forced to look at you.” In the past, I would have laughed that off. You don’t hurt the people you love. But now, the truth was staring me in the face. People change. Hearts rot. A notification vibrated in my pocket. It was a flight confirmation from my mother. Logan, the ticket is booked. Tomorrow morning. I looked up at Daphne, who had already forgotten I was in the room, deeply engrossed in a new round of some party game with Jesse. I looked down and typed back: Okay. If her heart had moved on, I didn’t want the leftover pieces anyway. By the time I got back to our shared apartment, the rain was pouring, soaking me to the bone. Daphne’s text thread remained completely silent. She hadn’t even realized I was gone. I briefly thought about sending her a formal breakup text, but decided against it. In the eyes of the world, we had never been together anyway. Then, a special notification popped up. Daphne had posted on her Instagram. It was a photo of two hands, fingers tightly locked. No caption. Immediately beneath it, her roommate had posted a video. In the clip, Daphne and Jesse were holding their breath, their fingers still intertwined. Daphne leaned in, tickling his side, making him squirm and laugh. “You’re cheating! You know I’m ticklish there!” he gasped. The roommate’s caption read: The tension in this room is insane. I am literally screaming! I stared at the screen until my fingers turned white from gripping the phone. So, she was capable of posting her life online. She just didn’t want to post me. I don’t know how long I sat there on the cold hardwood floor. Until the front door was kicked open with a violent bang. Daphne stormed in, her eyes wild with rage. She grabbed my collar, dragging me to my feet, and shoved her phone in my face. “Did you do this? Did you leak the story about Jesse being a bastard? You actually wrote that he’s trying to steal your girlfriend! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? He’s so hysterical he’s threatening to jump!” I looked blankly at the screen. It was an old account of mine that I hadn’t used in years. “I didn’t write that,” I said quietly. “It’s your account! Who else could have done it!” Daphne’s face was flushed, her jaw tight with disgust. “I’ve helped you get back at him so many times, Logan. Isn’t that enough? This is someone’s life! How could you be this petty?” “Delete the post right now, and post a public apology clarifying everything!” My nails dug into my palms. “Clarify? Clarify what, Daphne?” “Even if I did write it, is any of it a lie? Is he not a bastard? Did his mother not destroy my family?” Daphne looked at me like I was a monster. “He was just a kid! He didn’t choose his mother! He shouldn’t have to pay for her sins. If he had a choice, do you think he’d choose to be born illegitimate?” Seeing my silence, her expression went completely cold. “Fine. If you won’t clear his name, I’ll do it myself.” She snatched my phone out of my hand. I lunged to grab it back, but she held it high, pinning me against the wall with her body weight. Right in front of my face, she typed out a statement on my account: Everything I said about Jesse was a lie born out of jealousy. His mother never ruined my family. He is my brother, and Daphne and I were never together. I projected a fantasy of us being in a relationship. My accusations of him being a homewrecker are completely baseless. She pressed send. Then she mass-forwarded it to our entire school group chat. I lost it. I screamed, I thrashed, I pushed her with everything I had. My mother, being overseas, might not see the gossip sites, but she kept an eye on my social feed. If she saw this… the sheer humiliation she would feel on my behalf was too much to bear. I fought wildly to get the phone back, but Daphne caught my wrists and locked them behind my back, trapping me against her chest. “Shh, calm down,” she whispered, her voice suddenly switching back to that tender, suffocating warmth. “Once this blows over, it’ll be fine. Let Jesse’s head clear, and I’ll explain things to everyone. Then we’ll get married, okay? Just you and me.” With her free hand, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black velvet box. Inside was a ring. The ring I had dreamed of for two long years. Tears streamed down my face. I had imagined her proposing a thousand times, but never like this. No romance, no flowers, just a rushed gesture in a cold room, the ring clearly the wrong size. Even when she spoke of marriage, her mind was entirely on saving another man. My phone started ringing, breaking the silence. “Daphne! Jesse’s on the ledge of the dorm window! He won’t come down unless you come right now!” Daphne’s face went pale. She shoved the velvet box into my hand, gave me a hurried, desperate look, and ran out the door without another word. I stood in the empty apartment, the heavy silence settling around me. I looked at the ring, then let out a hollow laugh that quickly turned into a sob. “No, Daphne,” I whispered to the empty hallway. “I’m not marrying you.” I threw the ring directly into the trash can. I slid down to the floor, picked up my phone, and began deleting the post she had forced onto my feed. But the damage was done. The notifications were already pouring in—insults, threats, mockery. With shaking hands, I blocked the incoming messages. Then, I dug through my cloud storage. I found the voice memo from the night Daphne agreed to be my girlfriend. I had been so ecstatic, so afraid she’d take it back, that I made her repeat her confession so I could record it. I never thought I’d use it as a weapon. I uploaded the audio file, alongside the video of Daphne and Jesse tickling each other, to my feed. Underneath, I wrote: You can decide who the real liar is. Daphne and I were together for two years. But as of today, we are done. The internet erupted. Within seconds, Daphne’s name flashed on my screen. I blocked her number immediately, grabbed my suitcase, and walked out to the waiting Uber. As we drove down the highway, I saw her blue sports car speeding in the opposite direction, hurtling toward the apartment. For a brief second, our cars aligned, and I caught a glimpse of her panicked face. Goodbye, Daphne, I thought, looking away. We are finally over.

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