Category: English

We were halfway through a private spa party when my fiancée went missing. I headed toward the VIP wing to find her. As I walked, lines of glowing text—a bizarre, floating stream of internet comments—glitched across my field of vision: [Why is this charity-case fiancé suddenly heading to the sauna? The heroine is in there getting cozy with the golden-boy imposter right now!] [I love that he paid for the private booking, only for it to become their secret love nest. Delicious irony!] [Serves him right for standing in the way of true love. Die mad about it!] My fiancée’s assistant, Luke, stepped out of the shadows to block my path. “Mr. Carpenter, Miss Harrington said she went to fetch some fresh linens for you. She asked you to wait in the private lounge.” [Luke’s such a bro, always covering for them.] [Our sweet, edgy Christian belongs with Isla. If I were there, I’d lie to this country bumpkin too.] [Isla was too reckless, though. She slammed the door so hard she jammed the emergency lock from the inside. You can’t open it from within now.] I looked at the heavy door. Faint waves of heat radiated from the seams, shimmering in the cool corridor air. Then I looked at the red “Out of Order” sign hanging from the brass handle. I pulled out my phone and dialed the locksmith down the mountain. “Hi, the lock on the sauna door is jammed. Take your time riding your scooter up the mountain. No rush, an hour should do. I’ll wait right here.” [Wait, no! If they wait an hour, they’ll be steamed alive!] 1 “Wayne, what are you doing standing out here?” Isla’s trust-fund friends approached me. Leading the pack were Chad and Ashley. They belonged to Isla and Christian’s elite circle, and they had despised me ever since the Carpenters brought me back a year ago—the biological son who had been lost for twenty years. Chad rolled his eyes, his voice dripping with condescension. “Didn’t Isla tell you to wait in the lounge?” “Did you get lost, Wayne? I guess a luxury alpine resort is a bit much for a guy raised in the sticks.” Ashley chimed in, crossing her arms. “Honestly, Wayne, just because you have the title of fiancé doesn’t mean you have to cling to her like wet paint. Isla has been working herself ragged with PR lately. She finally gets a second to unwind, and you’re smothering her. Aren’t you embarrassed?” [Seriously, this guy is so clingy. Go away already!] [Don’t interrupt our couple’s private time!] [It’s getting incredibly hot in there. Go away, Wayne! Luke, figure out a way to get them out!] I didn’t bother replying to their barbs. Instead, I turned to the spa attendant standing nearby. “Bring me a chaise lounge,” I said. “And set up two of those heavy-duty industrial fans, pointed right at me.” “Oh, and bring over a platter of iced watermelon, chilled grapes, and the most expensive gelato you have.” The attendant blinked, startled, but scurried off to comply. Chad frowned, his brow furrowing. “Wayne, what the hell is wrong with you? This is the VIP corridor. You’re turning it into a campsite?” I ignored him, sinking into the plush leather of the lounge chair the attendant had brought and scooping up a spoonful of blood-orange gelato. “I paid to book out this entire floor. I’ll sit where I want, eat what I want. If you don’t like it, the elevator is right there. Walk.” “You—” Chad’s face turned a dark, mottled purple. Luke was sweating now. His eyes darted repeatedly to the heavy, sealed door of the sauna. The heat escaping from the seams was already warming the hallway. “Mr. Carpenter, it’s really humid out here. It’s not good for your health. How about I escort you to the hydrotherapy pool?” I took my time swallowing. “No need. I just noticed the lock on this sauna seems to be broken. What if someone’s trapped inside? I have a soft heart, Luke. I think I’ll stay right here and wait for the locksmith.” Luke’s face drained of all color. He knew exactly who was in there: his boss, and the adoptive brother she actually loved. [Oh my god, he’s doing this on purpose!] [Does he know? No way, how could a brainless charity case figure it out?] [This is bad. Christian has a weak heart. It must be over 120 degrees in there by now. They’re going to dehydrate!] Chad stepped up, pointing a finger at my chest. “Wayne, don’t push your luck. There’s a maintenance sign on the door. Why would anyone be in there? You’re just throwing a tantrum to get Isla’s attention, aren’t you? Let me tell you something—no matter what pathetic stunts you pull, she will never look at you.” Ashley sneered in agreement. “Exactly. You’re a crude, classless bore. You don’t possess a fraction of Christian’s grace. The Carpenters only brought you back out of pity. Don’t act like you actually belong here.” I looked at them, my gaze cold. I was the biological Carpenter heir, stolen at birth and raised in poverty for twenty years. A year ago, they found me. But my birth parents and my older sister had already poured two decades of love into Christian, the boy they adopted to replace me. They hated my bluntness, my refusal to play their high-society games. Even Isla, the girl I had been betrothed to since childhood, only had eyes for Christian. For a year, I tried to fit in. I begged for their affection. In return, I received nothing but cold shoulders and quiet mockery. Well. I was done playing nice. 2 I dropped the empty rind back onto the silver platter with a loud, deliberate clatter. Chad and Ashley flinched, their irritation spiking. “Who do you think you’re throwing a tantrum at, Wayne?” Chad crossed his arms, looking down his nose. “You think having the Carpenter name makes you special? In this town, people only respect Christian. You’re just a stray dog who wandered into a mansion.” I laughed. “A stray dog? Chad, did you fail basic English, or do you just struggle with metaphors? Christian lived my life, spent my parents’ money, and wore my name for twenty years. How exactly am I the stray here?” [He’s just bitter. Blood means nothing; history is what counts!] [Christian is so sweet. If he weren’t trying to protect Wayne’s feelings, he and Isla would have gone public ages ago.] [Someone open the door! It’s hitting 140 degrees in there!] [Isla is losing consciousness, and Christian is fading. They’re going to die of heatstroke!] Luke was practically vibrating with anxiety, clutching his walkie-talkie but too terrified to call for help publicly. “Mr. Carpenter, please, I’m begging you. Go back to your suite. Let me handle this. If Miss Harrington sees you acting like this, she’ll be furious.” I leaned back into the chaise lounge, completely unbothered. “Let her be furious. What do I care? Nobody touches that door without my permission.” Ashley’s patience snapped. “Wayne, you’ve always been a ghost in our social circle. If you don’t leave right now, I will personally make sure you are blacklisted from every country club and gala in the state!” “Yeah! We’ll freeze you out completely!” Chad barks. I looked at them, finding it almost tragic how much I used to care about their approval. I used to swallow their insults and pay their bar tabs, just to spend five more minutes near Isla. Now? I couldn’t care less. “Sounds great,” I said softly. Chad and Ashley exchanged a stunned look. They hadn’t expected me to fold so easily—or rather, not care at all. “What did you say?” Chad blinked. “I said, sounds great. Frankly, I’m sick of paying for a bunch of trust-fund freeloaders anyway. I already closed the tab for today. From now on, if you want to drink, buy your own. Oh, and Chad? Venmo me for the gelato and the fan rental. Let’s split it fifty-fifty.” [Is he insane? He’s actually burning bridges with her friends?] [He used to beg to be included!] [Forget about that! Christian just collapsed in Isla’s arms! Save them!] [Isla tried to throw herself against the glass, but she’s too weak. It’s blast-resistant glass, she can’t break it!] Luke could not take it anymore. Gritting his teeth, he stepped forward. “Mr. Carpenter, forgive me.” He reached out to grab the arm of my chaise lounge, intending to drag me away. I looked up at him, my eyes like ice. “Touch me, Luke, and see what happens. You’re Isla’s assistant, not my keeper. Remember your place.” Luke froze. Just then, a sharp, irritated voice cut through the humid air of the corridor. “Wayne! What on earth are you doing now?” I looked up. It’s my biological older sister, Vicky. And she brought security with her. Chad immediately ran to her like a kicked puppy. “Vicky, thank God you’re here! Wayne is throwing a fit. He’s blockading the hallway, insulting us, and threatening Luke!” Vicky’s brow furrowed, her eyes blazing as she marched over to me. “Where is Christian?” “We’ve been looking for him everywhere, and here you are, lounging like a king and stuffing your face?” Looking at her familiar, biased face, I felt a dull ache in my chest, but I swallowed it down. “He’s a grown man. Why would I know where he is?” Vicky pointed a manicured finger at my face. “Don’t you dare use that tone with me! Christian has a heart condition. If anything happens to him because of your negligence, you’ll answer to me. Get up right now and go find him!” I took another sip of my chilled drink. “No. I’m waiting for the locksmith.” 3 “What locksmith? Have you completely lost your mind?” Vicky swats the glass out of my hand. It shatters against the marble floor, sticky liquid splashing across my designer trousers. She doesn’t apologize. She just looks at me with pure disgust. “Wayne, when is it going to be enough?” “Every time we go out, you ruin the mood. Do you have any idea how pathetic and small-minded you look right now?” [Yes! Tell him, Vicky!] [He needs to be thrown out of the family!] [Vicky, move him! It’s nearly 160 degrees in there! Christian is slipping away!] [Isla’s skin is completely flush! Break the door!] “Vicky,” I said, my voice deadly quiet as I stood up and brushed the glass shards off my knees. “That is the last time you will ever lay a hand on me.” “If you don’t want to wait for the locksmith, be my guest. Smash the door open yourself. If you have the guts, go ahead.” Vicky let out a bitter laugh. “You are utterly deranged. Security, remove him. Get him out of my sight before he embarrasses this family any further.” The two guards she brought stepped forward, grabbing me by the shoulders. [Yes! Toss him out!] [Once he’s gone, they can break the lock!] [Christian, hold on, help is coming!] [Isla is convulsing. Oh my god, this is awful!] “Get off me!” I twisted violently, anchoring my hands around a heavy marble pillar in the corridor. Vicky snapped: “Pry his hands off!” The guard applied pressure to my knuckles, a sharp, white-hot pain shooting up my arm. In a flash of adrenaline, I leaned down and bit his wrist, hard. “Ah!” The guard gasped, releasing his grip instantly. Dark red blood began to drip onto the pristine white marble. [Oh my god! He bit him?!] [Feral trash! He has no class whatsoever!] [Vicky, call the cops! Don’t let him delay the rescue!] Vicky screamed, “Wayne! You animal!” “I will teach you some respect if it’s the last thing I do!” Chad yelled, “Call the resort police! Get him arrested for assault!” Within minutes, two local deputies who patrolled the resort area arrived. Vicky pointed at me, her voice shaking with calculated fury. “Officers, my brother is mentally unstable. He’s been causing a public disturbance and just brutally assaulted my security guard. Please take him into custody immediately.” Chad and Ashley eagerly backed her up. “Yes! We saw it! He’s extremely violent!” The deputies looked at the guard’s bloody wrist, their expressions hardening. “Sir, you’re under arrest for aggravated assault. Please step away from the pillar.” The cold metal of the handcuffs clicked around my wrists. I offered a thin, razor-sharp smile. “I’ll go quietly, deputies. But I suggest you stick around. There’s about to be a massive scandal in this hallway.” “Shut your mouth!” Vicky snarls. Just then, the elevator chimes. “Vicky! Have you found Christian yet?” A portly, middle-aged man in a tailored suit rushed out, followed by several wealthy business associates he’d been entertaining. 4 My father, Richard Carpenter, looked frantic. But when he saw me in handcuffs, his worry curdled into instant rage. “Wayne! You worthless embarrassment! What have you done now?” “Your brother is missing, and you’re here starting fights and getting arrested? I should have left you in whatever gutter we found you in! You are a stain on the Carpenter name!” [Preach, Mr. Carpenter! He doesn’t deserve the name!] [Only Christian is a true Carpenter!] [Drag him away! The lock is melting!] The deputy explained, “Sir, your son assaulted a guard. We have to take him in.” Richard waved his hand dismissively. “Take him! Keep him locked up for a few days to teach him a lesson! Just get him out of my sight so I can find Christian!” I looked at the man who shared my DNA, feeling nothing but a cold, liberating emptiness. “Dad,” I said, the word tasting like ash. “You want to find your precious Christian?” “Look right there.” I nodded toward the sauna door with the “Out of Order” sign. Richard’s face faltered. Vicky immediately scoffs. “Don’t lie. Why would Christian be in a closed sauna?” “If you don’t believe me, ask Luke,” I said, tilting my head. “He’s been guarding this door like a loyal dog since the start.” Every eye in the corridor turned to Luke. Luke stammered, his collar soaked in sweat. “No… no, sir… Miss Harrington and Christian… they aren’t in there…” I let out a soft laugh. “Really? Then who turned the temperature dial up to maximum? And who slammed the door so hard the lock jammed?” “Your golden child, Dad. He’s inside right now, having a lovely little rendezvous with my fiancée.” Slap. The force of Richard’s hand spun my head to the side. My cheek burned instantly, and the metallic taste of blood pooled in my mouth. “You filthy-minded degenerate!” Richard was shaking, his face bright red. “You dare slander your own brother and Isla? Christian is a boy of impeccable character! He would never do something so vile! You’re just jealous because he’s better than you, more loved than you, so you throw dirt on his name!” The wealthy associates behind him shook their heads. “Wayne, that’s incredibly low. You don’t accuse your own brother of that.” “Yes, Isla is a lovely girl. Quite respectable. This is absurd.” I touched my burning cheek, my eyes narrowing to slits. Slap. An even louder, sharper crack echoed through the corridor. I watched as Richard stumbled back, clutching his own face. The hallway goes dead silent. Vicky gasped, her eyes wide with horror. “Wayne! You hit Dad!” Richard looked like he wanted to tear me apart. “You ungrateful bastard! I brought you into this world, and you dare strike me?!” The deputies quickly stepped between us. “Sir, step back! Calm down!” I stood behind the deputies, looking down at my father. “You gave me life, but you never gave me a father. If you think I’m lying, open the door. Let’s see who is telling the truth.” Driven mad by the humiliation, Richard lunged toward the sauna. “I will! And when it’s empty, I’m personally throwing you out of the family!” He grabbed the metal handle of the sauna door. “Ah!” He shrieked, pulling his hand back. The metal was scalding. Just then, the locksmith ran out of the elevator, clutching his tool bag. “Make way! Emergency!” The man worked fast. Within thirty seconds, his drill ate through the jammed lock mechanism. With a heavy click, the blast-resistant glass door swung open.

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In the second year of my divorce battle with Rachel, the court stripped me of everything. I was cleaned out, left with nothing but the clothes on my back and a mountain of debt. While I was packing my life into cardboard boxes, my daughter fished an old, dusty phone from the bottom of a trunk. “Look, Daddy! It lights up!” I tapped the screen. A single email notification popped up, casting a dim glow over the empty bedroom. It was a message from ten years ago, written by my younger self. Are you doing okay, twenty-eight-year-old Drew? Did you marry the girl of your dreams? Is our baby as cute as you always hoped? She loves kids more than anything. I bet you guys are incredibly happy, aren’t you? My throat tightened. I gripped the phone, typing back a reply line by line. I got married. We have a beautiful daughter. But three years into the marriage, I found out she was sleeping with my best friend. The godfather of our child. We fought in court for two years. She won. She made sure I was left with absolutely nothing. Seconds after I hit send, a reply flashed across the screen. You’re lying! Rachel and Jordan love me more than anyone in the world. They would never betray me! I let out a bitter, hollow laugh, my fingers trembling against the glass. The people who love you most? Our daughter has a congenital heart defect. She won’t survive without surgery. I literally got down on my knees, begging Rachel for the money to save her life, and she accused me of trying to extort her. She froze all my bank accounts and spent our wedding savings on a lavish ceremony with Jordan. The invitations are already out. Drew, don’t be an idiot. Ten years from now, Rachel doesn’t love you anymore. Whether you break up with her or stay—it’s your choice. … The messages stopped. I waited ten minutes, but there was no reply. Eighteen-year-old Drew was so hopelessly in love with Rachel. How could he possibly believe me? I wiped the tears from my eyes and went back to packing. My daughter sat on top of the open suitcase, swinging her little legs. “Daddy, why are we moving?” she asked in her sweet, quiet voice. I opened my mouth, but the words caught in my throat. How do you explain to a child that you lost everything? How do you tell her that her mother is marrying someone else, and that she will soon have a brand-new family that doesn’t include us? It was a burden too heavy for a four-year-old to carry. Below, the purr of a high-end engine broke the quiet afternoon. A sleek, black Mercedes-Maybach pulled up to the curb. Jordan and Rachel stepped out, laughing and talking in low, intimate whispers as they walked up the steps. I dragged my heavy suitcase down the stairs, meeting them right at the landing. Jordan smirked, waving a marriage certificate in front of my face. “Leaving so soon, Drew?” he asked, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Rachel was in such a rush. The court finalized the divorce this morning, and she insisted we get hitched this afternoon. She couldn’t wait a single minute.” I didn’t look at him. My eyes locked onto Rachel, but she simply stepped aside, her expression entirely blank. She looked at me the way she would look at a stranger on the subway. Lucy, completely unaware of the tension, waved her tiny hand. “Uncle Jordan, hug!” Jordan smiled warmly, pinched her cheek, and slid a thick white envelope into my hand. “Just a little something for the kid. Take it.” The envelope was heavy. In the old days, my fist would have met his jaw before he could finish the sentence. But now, I swallowed my pride, gripped the envelope, and slid it into my pocket. Rachel’s brow furrowed in disgust. “Is this who you are now, Drew? You couldn’t win any assets in court, so now you’re stooping to taking handouts?” I stood there in silence for a few seconds before asking one last time, my voice barely a whisper. “Rachel… Lucy’s surgery. Can you please just—” “Drew, enough!” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “I have given you more than enough money over the years. Stop using our daughter as a cash cow. I saw her physical report from the clinic—she’s perfectly healthy. You won’t extort another dime from me.” I gripped the handle of my suitcase so hard my fingernails dug into my palms. It hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes. I had told her dozens of times that the clinic report Jordan gave her was a fake, but she refused to believe me. She said Jordan’s family owned the best private hospital in the city, so there was no way they could be wrong. She trusted Jordan blindly. When I tried to show her the official diagnosis from the state general hospital, she tore it to pieces right in front of me, calling me a liar. She had even hired a high-powered corporate legal team specifically to ensure I walked away with nothing. Lucy pulled at my coat. “Daddy, I’m scared.” I bent down, scooped her into my arms, and walked right past them, dragging the suitcase behind me. As I brushed past Jordan, I caught the sharp, woody notes of his cologne. It was the custom fragrance Rachel had gifted me for our anniversary two years ago. She had told me it was a limited blend, that it represented how I was the only one in her heart. Not long after, the same scent started clinging to Jordan. Every time I smelled it, it felt like a physical blow. I loaded our lives into the back of my old sedan. As I started the ignition, the old phone in my pocket vibrated. Are you really me? eighteen-year-old Drew wrote. I asked Rachel about it. She laughed and said she’d only ever love me. She promised our baby would be healthy and beautiful, and that she’d give her the world. Rachel loves me. I believe her. Of course he did. He was young and untouched by betrayal. I pulled the gold-embossed wedding invitation from my bag, took a photo of the names Rachel & Jordan printed in elegant cursive, and hit send. Ask her then. If she swore to love me forever, why is she marrying him today? After sending the email, I powered the phone down. From the moment I first discovered Rachel’s affair until today, I had remained remarkably quiet. I had signed the papers quietly. I had stood in the courtroom quietly. Even when her lawyers tore my character to shreds, I hadn’t shed a single tear. But now, communicating with the ghost of our past, a profound wave of grief washed over me. Because I remembered, better than anyone, how fiercely she used to love me. When my family went bankrupt when we were sixteen, she gave me every penny of her savings to help pay off our debts. When her parents cut her off financially to force us apart, she worked three part-time jobs just to help me pay my college tuition. After graduation, she defied her entire family to move to an unfamiliar city and build a startup with me. I had tried to push her away back then, telling her she deserved a better life. But she had held onto me, crying, and said, “Drew, as long as I have you, I don’t need anything else.” We had promised to build a beautiful life for our future children. But the very day we finally moved into our dream home, our marriage began to rot from the inside out. I drank myself to sleep that night in our cramped rented apartment. The next morning, my head was splitting, but I forced myself to sit up and dial every contact in my phone, begging for loans to cover Lucy’s surgery. I had just put the phone down when the preschool called. “Is this Lucy’s father? Lucy just collapsed on the playground. We’re in the ambulance on the way to the pediatric ER…” By the time I sprinted into the hospital lobby, Rachel was already there. She stood by Lucy’s bed, looking down at our pale, unconscious daughter. Her expression was cold and harsh. “Alright, Drew. How much do you want this time?” My hands shook as I dug through my bag for the medical charts. “Rachel, she’s really sick. Just look at the arterial scans, please—” Rachel grabbed my wrist, her grip unexpectedly painful. “Stop acting.” She threw a shiny platinum debit card onto the linoleum floor. “I know exactly what’s wrong with Lucy. This card has more than enough to cover your rent and living expenses. The PIN is your birthday.” I wrenched my hand free and knelt to pick up the card. Rachel glanced at Lucy one last time, then turned toward the exit. As she passed me, she paused. “Drew, if you had just pretended not to know about Jordan and me, we would still be a happy family. I never wanted to marry him. You’re the one who insisted on a divorce and made this so incredibly ugly.” My chest heaved with a quiet, burning rage. Pretend? How could I pretend when I had walked into our own guest bedroom and seen her wrapped in the arms of the man I called my brother? Even when she was pregnant, she couldn’t keep away from him. It was the constant stress and her reckless lifestyle that had caused Lucy to be born premature. Since she was an infant, Lucy had been in and out of critical care. While I spent sleepless nights weeping in hospital corridors, Rachel was either at “late-night business dinners” or traveling with Jordan. Jordan had spent more time with our daughter than Rachel ever did. I leaned against the hospital wall, suddenly remembering the old phone. I pulled it out, charged it, and powered it on. Several unread emails popped up. Drew, I asked her, the messages from my younger self read. She saw the photo of the invitation and broke down. She swore it wasn’t her. She actually cut Jordan out of her life. He lost his mind, screaming at her, but she told him she couldn’t bear the thought of hurting future-you. Jordan was supposed to go to the same college as us, but now he’s enrolling in a school abroad. See? The future can be changed. Rachel also said that if she ever turns into the monster you described, she wants to apologize to you. She’s so sorry. A strange sensation washed over me, like ink dissolving in water. My mind felt fuzzy for a moment, and then, a set of new memories settled into my brain. In this altered timeline, Rachel had indeed severed ties with Jordan after high school, and Jordan had left the country. But four years later, he returned. He used his family’s massive investment fund to bail out Rachel’s struggling startup, positioning himself as her primary partner. They still ended up in the same bed. I typed back to the eighteen-year-old Drew: It doesn’t work. He comes back. If you want to save our daughter, you have to break up with Rachel. You have to leave her completely. Lucy remained unconscious through the night. The next morning, she slowly opened her eyes, her tiny hand reaching out to touch my cheek. “Don’t cry, Daddy. Lucy doesn’t hurt anymore.” I buried my face in her small, warm palm, letting my tears flow silently. The doctor stepped into the room, his face grim. “Mr. Evans, your daughter’s vitals are dropping. We need to get her into the operating room as soon as possible. Have you secured the deposit?” “I’m working on it,” I whispered. I had exhausted every single resource. The money I managed to scrape together was barely enough to cover the pre-op tests. In a state of sheer desperation, I dialed Jordan’s number. “Jordan… please. I need sixty thousand dollars. I’ll sign whatever you want. I won’t contest the assets, I won’t look at Rachel again. Just let Lucy live.” A soft, mocking chuckle came through the receiver. “Well, look who finally crawled back to me.” “Jordan, please.” “There’s a high school reunion tonight at the hotel downtown,” Jordan said, his voice dripping with malice. “Come down. Get on your knees and beg me in front of everyone, and maybe I’ll think about it.” At eight o’clock that evening, I pushed open the heavy oak doors of the private dining room. The laughter inside died down instantly. Dozens of eyes turned to me, filled with amusement and pity. “Wow, Jordan wasn’t lying. The fallen prince actually showed up for a handout.” “If he hadn’t played the victim and kept Rachel away from her family back then, she would have married Jordan years ago…” I had lived with these whispers for three years. But the boy who used to throw punches to defend my honor in high school was now the man sitting on the plush velvet sofa, swirling a glass of expensive Cabernet. “You’re here,” Jordan said, tilting his chin upward. “On your knees, Drew.” I froze, my joints locked. “What’s wrong? Don’t want the money?” He slid a blank check across the polished mahogany table. “Kneel, and you can write whatever number you want.” The room erupted into snickers. “Just do it, Drew. Don’t act like you still have pride.” My fists clenched, my chest burning with a humiliation so intense it felt physical. Slowly, I let my knees drop to the carpet. “Jordan, I’m begging you. Save Lucy. She’s only four. She didn’t do anything wrong.” Jordan stood up, walked over to me, and slowly tipped his glass, pouring the dark red wine directly over my head. “You know what I hate most about you, Drew?” he whispered, his eyes dark. “We grew up together, the three of us. But Rachel always looked at you. I spent years trying to earn her parents’ approval, and she threw it all away for a charity case like you.” The cold, sticky liquid ran down my forehead, dripping into my collar. Jordan tossed the check onto my wet lap. “Take it. Write the amount. We were brothers once; I’m not going to let a kid die.” I picked up the pen and wrote the exact amount needed for the surgery. Not a penny more. Just as I finished, the double doors burst open. Rachel walked in. She took one look at the check in my hand, walked straight up to me, and delivered a stinging slap across my face. I fell sideways onto the floor, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. “Have you no shame, Drew?” she spat, her voice trembling with rage. “You’re actually begging Jordan for money now?” Jordan stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Babe, don’t be mad. I just felt bad for him. He has nothing left.” Rachel looked down at me, her eyes filled with cold, unadulterated disgust. “Take the charity and get out. You’ve embarrassed yourself enough.” I grabbed the check and scrambled to my feet, walking out to the sound of hushed laughter. As the heavy doors clicked shut behind me, I caught the voice of an old classmate asking, “Rachel, do you ever regret marrying him in the first place?” Through the crack in the door, I heard her clear, steady reply. “Every single day. If I could go back ten years, I wish I’d never met him.” My chest seized. If eighteen-year-old Rachel could hear those words, she would hate the woman she had become. I rushed back to the hospital and scheduled the surgery for the following week. After agonizing over it, I dialed Rachel’s number. It took ten attempts before she finally answered. “Rachel… can you come to the hospital on Wednesday? It’s the day of her surgery. She keeps asking for her mom.” The line was quiet for a long moment. “I have a product launch. I’m busy,” she said flatly. “Just text me when it’s over. Oh, and Jordan and I are having our ceremony this weekend. Don’t cause any trouble.” Before she could say another word, I hung up. The day of their wedding, the entire city seemed to be celebrating. Every local news channel was broadcasting the “wedding of the century” live from the grand cathedral downtown. I sat by Lucy’s bed, staring at the gold-embossed invitation, wanting nothing more than to tear it into a thousand pieces. Suddenly, the monitors beside the bed began to blare. Lucy’s face turned a terrifying shade of blue, her tiny chest heaving as she gasped for air. Within seconds, a team of doctors and nurses rushed into the room, pushing me out of the way. “Lucy! Lucy, look at Daddy! Stay with me!” I screamed, but a nurse held me back as they wheeled her toward the ICU. “Mr. Evans, her lungs are failing. We have to do the emergency bypass right now! Go to the billing desk and clear the deposit!” I sprinted to the desk, pulling the platinum card Rachel had given me from my wallet. “Declined,” the receptionist said, looking at me with pity. “The account has been frozen.” My blood ran cold. Rachel had frozen the card. I called her. Declined. I called again. Blocked. I ran out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and urged the driver to fly toward the cathedral. When I arrived, the steps were covered in white rose petals. Rachel was standing near the entrance, her magnificent lace gown trailing behind her, a bouquet of white calla lilies in her hands. I lunged past the security line, grabbing her arm. My voice was completely shot, raw and bleeding. “Rachel, Lucy is dying! She’s in the ICU right now. Unfreeze the card! Please, I’m begging you, just unfreeze the card!” Rachel’s face darkened. She waved her hand, and two large security guards immediately grabbed my shoulders, dragging me backward. “Drew, stop this ridiculous drama!” she yelled over the crowd. “I checked the clinic reports myself. She has a mild arrhythmia. To crash my wedding with a lie like this… you’re pathetic.” “Rachel! Please!” The heavy oak doors of the cathedral closed, and the beautiful, resonant notes of the wedding march began to play, completely drowning out my screams. I fell to my knees on the stone steps. In my pocket, the old phone vibrated. It was a message from eighteen-year-old Rachel. Drew, it’s Rachel. I know everything now. I promise you, I will never let those awful things happen to us. I swear to love you with my entire life. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I stared at the screen, my vision blurring with tears. The eighteen-year-old Rachel had sworn to love me with her life. The twenty-eight-year-old Rachel was inside, walking down the aisle to another man, leaving our daughter to die alone. My phone rang. It was the hospital. “Mr. Evans… I am so sorry. We couldn’t get her into the operating room in time. Lucy passed away at 2:14 PM.” The world went entirely silent. The air left my lungs. My mind went blank, a vast, frozen wasteland. Through the stained-glass windows of the cathedral, I could hear the faint sound of cheering. They were exchanging rings. A sudden, violent surge of adrenaline hit my system. I broke free from the guards’ grip, threw my weight against the heavy wooden doors, and charged down the center aisle. “Rachel!” I screamed, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. “Our daughter is dead! She’s dead because of you!” The guests gasped, rising from their pews. Rachel shrieked, stepping back into Jordan’s arms. “Drew, you’re insane! Lucy was fine! Someone get him out of here!” “Drew, get the hell out!” Jordan yelled, stepping in front of her. “I paid for her treatment!” I lunged at him, my fist connecting heavily with his cheekbone. “You changed the records! You knew she was dying, and you hid it from her! You killed my little girl!” The chapel fell into absolute chaos. Guests were screaming, and several security guards tackled me to the ground, pinning my face against the cold stone floor before dragging me out into the pouring rain. As I lay on the wet pavement, the old phone in my hand buzzed one last time. It was eighteen-year-old Drew. I can’t do it, Drew. I can’t break up with her. She loves me too much, and I love her. I have to believe her. I let out a ragged, weeping laugh. We were the exact same fool, he and I. Even when we knew how the story ended, we still chose to believe. I pushed myself up, my fingers slippery with rain and blood as I typed my final reply. Drew, Lucy is dead. She died ten minutes ago while Rachel was kissing Jordan at the altar. They killed her. I am begging you, please break up with her. Don’t love her. Don’t marry her. Please… don’t let my little girl die again. The tears blinded me completely. I couldn’t see where I was going. I stumbled off the curb, my boots slipping on the wet asphalt. High-beam headlights cut through the gray storm. A horn blared, deafening and sharp, followed by the violent screech of brakes. The world spun. In the final, fading moments of my consciousness, I thought I saw an eighteen-year-old girl in a high school uniform, tears streaming down her face, sprinting toward me through the dark. “Drew!”

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I saw the post on our building’s resident WhatsApp group at ten on a Tuesday night. It was the kind of message that made me stop mid-sip of my wine, my eyes widening in the dim light of my living room. Belinda, the pregnant woman from across the hall, had tagged everyone. “Can anyone keep my husband company? Requirements: chat with him, cook him dinner in the evenings. I’ll pay $3,000 a month pocket money, plus a brand-new La Mer skincare set.” The chat went instantly quiet, a collective breath held in the digital ether. Then, she tagged me directly. “Lauren, I think you’re perfect for this. You’re single and beautiful. I’ve already left the gift box at your door. Just head on over tonight.” I opened my front door. Sure enough, there was a beautifully wrapped green box sitting on the welcome mat. I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. I picked up the box, walked to the trash chute down the hall, and tossed it right in. Then I typed a quick reply in the group chat: “Are you out of your mind?” I honestly thought it was just some bizarre, temporary lapse in sanity. I was wrong. It was only the first step into a nightmare. … At seven the next morning, I opened my door to head to the office. “Lauren, you took the skincare. Why didn’t you show up to keep my husband company last night?” Belinda was standing in the hallway, blocking my path. Her hands were propped on her heavily pregnant belly, her eyes wide and demanding. I frowned, keeping my voice low. “Have you completely lost your mind?” Belinda’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How dare you speak to me like that? I was trying to be generous. That La Mer set cost more than you make in a week, and you take my things and refuse to do the work? Where is your decency?” I pointed toward the end of the hallway. “The box is in the trash chute. Go fish it out if you want it. Now, get out of my way.” I tried to step around her toward the elevator, but she lunged forward, grabbing the strap of my canvas tote bag. “You stay right here! Is it the money? Do you think three grand isn’t enough?” Belinda’s grip was surprisingly tight. “I’m telling you, it’s easy cash. Just cook for my husband, talk to him. It’s not like it’s going to kill you!” My face went cold. “Belinda, let me say this one last time. I have zero interest in your husband, and I have zero interest in your money. If you touch me or my belongings again, I will call the police.” “Go ahead! Call them!” Belinda didn’t flinch. Instead, she pushed her pregnant belly toward me. “I’m pregnant. What do you think the cops are going to do to me? Touch me. Lay one finger on me and I’ll sue you until you’re completely bankrupt!” The shouting was loud enough to echo in the concrete stairwell, drawing the attention of our neighbors. Mrs. Higgins, an elderly woman from the floor below, poked her head out of the elevator vestibule, holding a mug of tea. “Oh, Lauren, dear, what’s all the commotion? It’s far too early for this.” Belinda pointed a manicured finger at me. “Mrs. Higgins, you be the judge! This girl took my expensive gift, promised she’d help watch my husband while I’m resting, and now she’s going back on her word!” My hands shook with sheer frustration. How could anyone twist reality so effortlessly? I pulled out my phone and pulled up the WhatsApp group. “Mrs. Higgins, look at this. She posted this insane proposal last night. I didn’t let her in, I didn’t accept her package, and I threw it straight into the garbage.” Mrs. Higgins squinted at the screen, then looked at Belinda. Her expression shifted into deep, awkward discomfort. “Oh, Belinda… sweetheart, this is… well, it’s a bit much, isn’t it? Who hires a companion for their own husband?” “What do you mean, a bit much?” Belinda’s voice grew louder, more hysterical. “I’m pregnant! I can’t take care of him right now. What’s wrong with finding him a little company? It’s my duty as a supportive wife!” She glared at me, her eyes dripping with condescension. “She’s a single woman. She dresses up to turn heads every single day—we all know what she’s looking for. I’m offering her a paid opportunity, and she’s acting like she’s too pure for it!” I took a deep, steadying breath, bypassing her completely, and dialed building security. “This is Lauren in Apartment 802. I have a tenant blocking my doorway and harassing me. Send security up right now. If they aren’t here in three minutes, I’m calling 911.” Hearing me mention security, Belinda’s face flickered with a brief flash of hesitation. “Call them! You think I’m scared of some rent-a-cops? My husband is a senior VP at a top firm. He could crush you like a bug!” Five minutes later, two security guards stepped out of the elevator, looking thoroughly flustered. I pointed at Belinda. “Get her away from my door so I can go to work. If she blocks me again, I’ll file a formal complaint against management for failing to maintain a safe building environment.” The guards looked apologetic, shifting on their feet. “Uh… Mrs. Matt, please. You’re pregnant, you shouldn’t let your blood pressure get this high. Let’s just go back inside, okay?” Belinda slapped their hands away, her finger nearly touching my nose. “Lauren, you’re going to regret this! This isn’t over! You think you can treat me like this? I’ll make sure you can’t show your face in this neighborhood!” I kept my expression entirely blank, walked past her, and stepped into the waiting elevator. I tried to convince myself that if I just ignored her, she would eventually get bored and stop. But I had severely underestimated how low she was willing to sink. That evening, I didn’t get home until eight after a grueling sprint of overtime. The moment the elevator doors slid open on the eighth floor, a sharp, chemical stench hit my nose. Wet paint. I walked toward my door, and my heart dropped into my stomach. My door was covered in thick, dripping crimson paint. Slurred across the wood in frantic, jagged strokes were the words: HOMEWRECKER GO TO HELL. Hanging from the brass doorknob by a bright red string was a dead, bloodied rat. The hallway seemed to spin. A wave of intense nausea washed over me, and I had to lean against the wall to keep my knees from buckling. Right then, my phone buzzed in my hand. I picked up. Belinda’s soft, mocking laughter came through the receiver. “Do you like my housewarming gift, Lauren?” My voice was like ice. “Your gift? Are you admitting you vandalized my door?” Her tone was dripping with fake innocence. “Vandalized? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a fragile pregnant woman, Lauren. I can barely bend over to tie my shoes, let alone carry a paint can. What could I possibly do?” She paused, letting the silence stretch. “But then again, there are plenty of decent people in this building who can’t stand a homewrecker. Maybe some good Samaritan decided to do some community service.” My grip on the phone was so tight my knuckles turned white. “Belinda, do you honestly think you can get away with this just because the hallway camera is down?” “Go ahead and check the feeds,” she sneered. “The building manager told us weeks ago that the system is broken. Lauren, be smart. Wash up, put on something nice, and go to my husband’s room tonight. Let’s put this little misunderstanding behind us.” “Otherwise, tomorrow, it won’t just be paint on your door.” I hung up immediately, blocked her number, and dialed 911. Ten minutes later, two officers arrived. I laid out the entire sequence of events, showing them the WhatsApp logs, the call logs, and the recording of the call I had just received. The two young officers exchanged troubled looks. “I’ve heard some strange neighborhood disputes, but this is a new one,” one of them murmured before walking over to knock on Belinda’s door. The door opened. Belinda was wearing a loose, flowing linen maternity dress, holding a pristine bowl of washed grapes. When she saw the police, her face contorted into a perfect picture of innocent shock. “Officers? Oh my goodness, is everything alright? Did something happen?” The officer pointed toward my door. “Do you know anything about this, ma’am?” Belinda gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth. “Oh, how dreadful! Who would do such a horrible thing? Lauren, have you been getting involved with the wrong crowd?” I stared at her, my voice deadpan. “That’s not what you said on the phone five minutes ago.” The officer pulled out my phone and played the audio recording. As her own voice echoed in the hallway, Belinda’s eyes welled with tears. “Officers, please listen to that. Did I ever actually admit to doing it? I was just upset because she’s constantly trying to catch my husband’s eye. I was just talking back. How could a pregnant woman carry paint and do all that?” The officers looked frustrated. Without direct camera footage or an explicit admission, their hands were tied. “Mrs. Matt, your statements on this recording clearly constitute harassment,” the officer warned her, his voice stern. “Consider this a formal warning. If there are any further incidents, we will have no choice but to issue a summons.” Belinda nodded eagerly, wiping her dry eyes. Once the police walked away, the hallway fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Just the two of us. Belinda’s face instantly changed, her tearful expression melting into a cold, triumphant smirk. “See that, Lauren? Even the cops can’t touch me.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “I am carrying the heir to the Matt family fortune. Even if I ended you, any lawyer would get me off on postpartum psychosis. I wouldn’t spend a single day in a cell.” I looked at her, and for the first time, a strange, calm smile touched my lips. “Is that so? Let’s see how that works out for you.” I didn’t waste another word. I walked away, called a locksmith to change my locks, and hired a professional deep-cleaning crew to scrub the paint off my door. The next morning, the moment I walked into the lobby of my office building, the receptionist, a sweet girl named Julie, rushed over and grabbed my arm. “Lauren, oh my god, have you looked at the company Slack?” My stomach tightened. I pulled out my phone. On the main company-wide channel, an anonymous user had posted a long, detailed article. The title was venomous: The Dual Life of Senior Designer Lauren: Classy on the Outside, Homewrecker on the Inside. The post featured my professional headshot side-by-side with a cropped screenshot of Belinda’s WhatsApp message to me. The text beneath was pure poison: “This woman targets married men for money. She accepted expensive luxury gifts from a pregnant neighbor’s husband, but when she realized she couldn’t extort more cash, she backed out and called the police on a pregnant woman to cover her tracks.” The office was already humming with it. When I walked through the bullpen, my coworkers’ conversations died instantly. Eyes darted toward me, whispered judgments hanging thick in the air. I didn’t hesitate. I walked straight into the Director’s office. Diane, our Design Director, was a sharp, formidable woman in her late forty’s. She looked at the screenshots I handed her, then at the police report and the call logs. Her brow furrowed deeply. “Lauren, I’ve worked with you for five years. I know your character,” Diane said, her voice measured but serious. “But this post has spread like wildfire. We’ve already had two major clients call asking if this is going to affect our current campaign.” “I understand,” I said, drawing a breath that felt like lead. “I will handle this completely. If I can’t resolve it within the month, I will tender my resignation.” Diane nodded slowly. “Alright. Take the time you need to clear this up. I’ve already instructed IT to permanently remove the post and track the IP.” Leaving her office, I immediately called Russell, a private investigator I’d met through a mutual acquaintance. Defamation. Harassment. Extortion. I wasn’t going to play defense anymore. I booked a room at a boutique hotel near my office and didn’t return to the apartment. For the next month, Belinda went completely silent. There were no more posts, no more text messages. Everything seemed to return to normal. I allowed myself to believe they had finally realized they were playing a dangerous game and backed off. I was incredibly naive. It was a rainy Friday afternoon, exactly four weeks later, when I walked out of the office lobby. A figure stepped out from the shadow of the awning, blocking my path. He wore a tailored gray suit and gold-rimmed glasses, looking every bit the polished professional. He looked at me with an expression of profound, humble apology. “Lauren? Hi. I’m Zachary Matt, Belinda’s husband.” I stopped, my body instantly tensing. “What do you want?” Zachary sighed, reaching into his leather briefcase to pull out a beautifully wrapped package. He held it out with both hands. “I came to apologize to you in person,” he said, his voice soft and deeply apologetic. “Belinda’s hormonal levels have been completely unstable since she got pregnant. She’s had severe mood swings, and she’s done some incredibly irrational things. I’ve been traveling out of state for work and had no idea how bad things had gotten. I am so, so sorry for the nightmare she put you through.” I didn’t touch the box. “I don’t want your apology, and I don’t want your gifts. I’ve retained a lawyer, Mr. Matt. We’ll settle this in court.” At the word lawyer, Zachary’s eyes flickered. He withdrew the box slowly, taking a step closer. His voice dropped to a low, confidential murmur. “Lauren, a lawsuit is so exhausting. It takes months, and honestly, a public dispute like this won’t do any favors for a single woman’s reputation.” He adjusted his glasses, his eyes drifting down my figure with a slow, deliberate assessment. “To be honest… Belinda’s idea was crazy, but it doesn’t mean it was entirely wrong.” I froze, wondering if I had somehow misheard him. “What did you just say?” Zachary smiled, a greasy, predatory curl of his lips. “You’re a gorgeous woman, Lauren. It must be so exhausting, trying to survive in this city entirely on your own. Belinda’s health is poor right now, and she can’t… satisfy me.” He reached out, his fingers hovering just inches from my cheek. “If you agree, we don’t have to talk about three thousand dollars. I can make it thirty thousand a month. All you have to do is spend a few nights a week with me.” “Belinda is old-fashioned. She genuinely believes this is her duty to keep me happy. See? My entire family wants you. Why are you hesitating?” A wave of cold revulsion washed over me. These two were a perfect match: one was a delusional madam, and the other was a self-righteous john. I slapped his hand away and, in one fluid motion, brought my palm hard across his cheek. SLAP. Zachary’s head snapped to the side. He cupped his face, his polite facade instantly evaporating into a dark, vicious glare. “Don’t flatter yourself, Lauren,” he hissed, spitting a bit of saliva onto the pavement. “I was throwing you a bone.” He leaned in, his voice barely a whisper against the sound of the rain. “Believe me, I have a hundred ways to make you beg me to touch you.” I met his gaze, my voice deadly quiet. “I’d love to see you try.” I turned on my heel and walked away. The moment I got back to my hotel room, I called Russell. That night, around two in the morning, I was pulled from a deep sleep by a violent, deafening pounding on my hotel door. BANG! BANG! BANG! “Lauren! You miserable bitch, open this door!” It was Belinda. I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs. How did they find out which hotel I was staying at? “Open up! You think you can sleep with my husband? You think you can lay your hands on him? Get out here!” The screaming was hysterical, accompanied by a barrage of vile insults that echoed down the quiet hallway. I grabbed my phone, immediately dialed 911, and then called the front desk. “I’m in Room 802. There are people trying to break down my door. Send security up immediately!” Outside, the noise grew louder. Zachary’s voice joined the shouting. “Lauren, stop playing innocent! You had the nerve to hit me, but now you’re hiding like a coward?” His voice sounded slurred, heavy with alcohol and toxic confidence. I stood flush against the door, my hand trembling as I held a can of pepper spray. Five minutes felt like an eternity before I heard the sharp command of security guards, followed by the heavy, hurried footsteps of police officers. Only then did I let out a long breath and unbolt the lock. The hallway was a scene of utter chaos. Belinda’s hair was wild, her eyes crazed as she struggled against an officer trying to hold her back. Zachary was standing to the side, raising his hands to explain to another officer. “Officer, please, it’s just a family matter. My wife is pregnant and highly emotional. She thought her husband’s mistress was in this room. We just wanted to talk.” I stepped out, pointing directly at them. “Officer, they have been stalking and harassing me for over a month. They tracked me to this hotel.” The responding officer recognized them immediately. “You two again? The vandalism case from last month isn’t even resolved, and now you’re causing a scene at a hotel?” Belinda’s eyes turned bloodshot, her face contorting with wild rage as she lunged toward me. “You whore! You hit my husband! I’ll tear your eyes out!” The officer grabbed her arm, pinning her back. “Ma’am, calm down! You’re pregnant, you need to stop this!” Suddenly, Belinda went completely still. The rage on her face vanished, replaced by a ghastly, pale mask of pure terror. A low, guttural moan escaped her throat. “My… my stomach… Oh god, it hurts…” She collapsed onto her knees, and within seconds, a dark, brilliant pool of blood began to seep through the hem of her light-colored dress, staining the patterned hotel carpet. Everyone froze. Zachary’s face drained of color as he threw himself onto the floor beside her. “Belinda! Belinda, what’s happening?” The officer immediately barked into his radio: “Dispatch, we need an ambulance at the Grand Hyatt, eighth floor. Hemorrhaging pregnant female.” The hallway was a blur of shouting and panic. Belinda clutched Zachary’s jacket, her fingers trembling, her gaze locked onto me with a look of absolute, venomous hatred. “It’s her… she did this to my baby… Zachary, don’t let her get away with this…” When the paramedics finally arrived and wheeled her out on a stretcher, Zachary stood up. He turned back to look at me, his eyes dark with a terrifying promise. “If my child dies, Lauren, I will make sure you pay with your life.”

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The turbulence on the flight home was violent, the kind that makes your stomach drop and the cabin scream. At the boundary between life and death, with my hands shaking, I dialed Griffith’s number, desperate to hear his voice one last time, to leave him my final words. He hung up on the second ring. An automated text popped up a second later: Driving. On my way to pick up Leona. In our five years of marriage, I’ve flown eighty-six times. Before every single landing, I would send him a tentative text, asking if he might be free to pick me up. His answer was always a variation of the same cold refrain: Leona’s flight is coming in too. I have to get her. Eighty-six landings for me. Eighty-six airport pickups for Leona. The worst of those times was during a torrential downpour last spring. I spent two miserable hours standing under the leaky awning of the arrivals terminal, dragging my heavy suitcase through puddles, unable to hail a single cab. When I called him, sobbing softly, it wasn’t Griffith who answered. It was Leona, her voice sweet and light over the static. “Hey, Monica. Griffith’s got his hands full loading my bags into the trunk right now. He can’t really talk.” Now, the cabin around me was a nightmare of screams, falling oxygen masks, and weeping. The plane was spiraling out of control at thirty thousand feet. Through the window, the night sky was stained a violent, blinding orange as the left wing ruptured into flames. My screen buzzed. A message from him. Got Leona. What time do you land? I’ll come get you. I stared at the glowing words, a bitter, hollow laugh escaping my throat. Five years. He was finally offering to pick me up. But the fire was consuming us, pulling the metal bird down in a sickening, terminal dive. He didn’t know. My flight was never going to land. 1 “Grif, has Monica texted you back yet?” The car was warm, the heater humming softly. Leona sat in the passenger seat, adjusting the collar of her wool coat. Griffith kept his eyes on the traffic light ahead, his hands relaxed on the steering wheel. “Not yet. She’s probably just sulking.” I sat in the back seat, watching them in silence. I wasn’t sulking. I was dead. My physical self was still trapped in the smoking, shattered wreckage of a fuselage. But my soul, bound by some invisible, cruel tether, had drifted back here—into the quiet luxury of Griffith’s SUV. Griffith picked up his phone, pressing the voice note icon. “Monica, I’m at the terminal. Which exit are you at?” He hit send. The little voice message bubble sat quietly in our chat, unanswered. The minutes ticked by, stretching into an uncomfortable silence. Outside, the wind whipped through the airport plaza, rattling the signs. Leona shivered and let out a soft sneeze. “Do you think something’s wrong? What if Monica got hurt?” Griffith let out a dry, dismissive scoff. “What could possibly be wrong? She’s just throwing a tantrum because I didn’t pick her up first. She’s playing hard to get.” He raised the phone to his mouth again, his tone sharpening. “Monica, there’s a limit to how much drama I’ll tolerate. Leona and I are both sitting here waiting for you.” He sent it. It sank into the same quiet abyss. With a cold, irritated sigh, Griffith shoved the phone into his pocket. “Forget it. It’s freezing out. I’m taking you home first. Once she’s done acting out, she’ll make her own way back.” He had no idea I was sitting right behind him, watching the faint line of annoyance etched onto his profile. On the drive back, the speakers played Leona’s favorite indie-pop playlist, filling the car with cheerful, mocking melodies. Thirty minutes later, the SUV pulled up in front of Leona’s apartment building. Griffith unbuckled his seatbelt, stepping out into the cold night to retrieve her bags. Leona wrapped her coat tighter around her shoulders, offering him a soft, grateful smile. “Thanks for picking me up tonight, Grif. You should probably head back and get Monica now.” Griffith grabbed her suitcase, his voice flat. “No need. She’s a grown woman. She has legs; she can hail an Uber.” I stood beside them on the damp pavement, watching this bitter little play. Five years. Eighty-six flights. Not once did he offer me this simple courtesy. While I had stood in endless, freezing taxi lines, shivering under the fluorescent airport lights, he was reserving his warmth, his gentleness, and his late-night drives for someone else. He wheeled her suitcase past the glass lobby doors. “Get some rest.” Leona took a step forward, wrapping her arms around his waist in a lingering embrace. “Thank you, Grif. Honestly, since we were kids, you’ve always been there when I needed you most.” Griffith patted her back, his expression softening into something incredibly tender. “Go on up. Get some sleep.” She turned and stepped into the elevator. Griffith walked back out to the sidewalk, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He struck a lighter, the small flame illuminating his face in the dark. He pulled out his phone again and tapped on our chat. Still nothing. The last shreds of his patience evaporated. He typed out a final, biting message: If you’re going to act like a child, Monica, don’t ever expect me to pick you up again. When you’re done throwing your fit, call a cab and get home. He locked the screen with a sharp snap of his thumb. Crushing the cigarette butt against the rim of a metal trash can, he climbed back into the driver’s seat. I sat in the passenger seat next to him, watching his hands grip the steering wheel as the engine purred to life. Griffith, don’t worry. I will never ask you to pick me up again. I’m never coming home. 2 Despite the harsh words he had texted, Griffith drove home fast, weaving through the late-night traffic. He was convinced I was already home. He was likely picturing me sitting on the living room sofa, arms crossed, staring sullenly into space. He was probably planning to throw a few half-hearted apologies my way, wait for me to soften, and put the whole thing behind us. But when he unlocked the front door of our townhouse, the living room was enveloped in pitch darkness. A flicker of irritation crossed his face. Suddenly, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out quickly, a spark of anticipation in his eyes that instantly died when he saw the sender. It was Leona. Hey Grif, just unpacked and heading to bed. Did Monica ever get back to you? Griffith typed back with one hand. Not yet. She probably checked into some airport hotel to make a point. Maybe you should go look for her? Leona replied. It’s pretty late for a woman to be out alone. It can be dangerous. Griffith let out a dry laugh. She’s a grown woman. What could possibly happen to her? He tossed the phone onto the kitchen counter and walked into the master bedroom. On the nightstand sat a silver picture frame. It was a photo from our third anniversary. We were standing on a beach, smiling into the camera. His gaze lingered on the photo for a long beat. I floated right beside him, a foolish spark of hope flaring in my chest, wondering if he had finally remembered. Once the clock struck midnight, it would be our fifth wedding anniversary. But he didn’t remember. The momentary pause was just the final sigh of his exhausted patience. He pulled open the closet, grabbed his silk pajamas, and headed into the bathroom. The rush of the shower filled the quiet room. He didn’t notice that the very bottom drawer of the wardrobe wasn’t fully closed. Peeking out from the gap was the corner of a small, pastel pink gift box. It was the surprise I had painstakingly prepared for our fifth anniversary, meant to be opened at midnight. Inside was a positive pregnancy test, alongside a pair of tiny, hand-knitted white baby booties. If the flight hadn’t torn apart in the sky… If I had made it home… I would have placed that box in his hands tonight. But now, both I and the tiny, unformed life inside me were nothing but ash, scattered across a barren field miles away. The water stopped. Griffith stepped out onto the bedroom balcony, throwing a dark bathrobe over his shoulders. He unlocked his phone. Still no missed calls. No texts. The silence was grating on his nerves. He tapped out another message, his thumbs flying across the screen with aggressive force: Monica, I don’t have the energy for this running-away game. Tomorrow morning, I’m taking Leona to that artisanal bakery upstate—the one with those brioche donuts she likes. Meet us there. Don’t make me go hunting through every hotel lobby near the airport. It’s embarrassing for both of us. He threw the phone onto the outdoor lounge chair and went back inside to bed. I stared at the messages sitting in the digital void, a profound sadness washing over my cold soul. That bakery upstate. It was my favorite place in the world. It was a forty-mile drive from the city. I had begged him, so many times, to take me there on a lazy Sunday morning. It’s too far, Monica, he’d always say, barely looking up from his laptop. It’s out of the way. A waste of time. But now, because Leona wanted those donuts, a forty-mile drive was no longer too far. It was no longer a waste of time. Griffith pulled the duvet over himself and switched off the bedside lamp. In the quiet dark, his breathing soon became slow and even. He slept soundly, wrapped in the comforting delusion that when the sun rose tomorrow, everything would return to its proper place. That I would still be waiting, ready to be forgiven. 3 The next morning, Griffith tried calling me one last time before leaving the house. It rang out, eventually dropping to voicemail. Suppressing a sigh, he drove over to pick up Leona and headed toward the upstate bakery. The morning commute was congested, bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching down the highway. The radio was playing softly in the background, transitioning into the morning news broadcast. “…Breaking news this morning. A commercial flight traveling from Chicago to New York experienced catastrophic failure late last night due to severe weather and structural distress. The aircraft crashed in a remote area upstate. Search and rescue operations are underway, but hopes are slim for the one hundred and thirty-two passengers and crew members on board…” Leona gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as her face paled. “Oh my god… that’s awful. Grif, wasn’t Monica flying back from Chicago last night? She wasn’t on that flight, was she?” Griffith’s fingers tapped rhythmically against the leather of the steering wheel. His expression remained entirely unbothered. “No way. She’d never book that one. It’s a prime-time evening flight—the tickets are always double the price. Monica is too frugal for that.” I sat in the back seat, looking at the absolute certainty on his face. He didn’t know. To see him a few hours earlier, to surprise him on the eve of our fifth anniversary, I had splurged. I had paid the exorbitant change fee to get onto that exact flight. He pulled into the gravel parking lot of the bakery. “Come on, let’s get some food. We can’t have our Leona starving.” The bakery was buzzing with the morning rush, smelling of fresh yeast and roasted coffee. Griffith’s eyes swept across the crowded tables, looking for my familiar face. He glanced down at his watch, his brow furrowing as his impatience mounted. Usually, if we had a disagreement, I would have arrived early just to secure a table for him, desperate to smooth things over. But the minutes stretched on, and the seat opposite them remained empty. “She’s really dragging this out,” he muttered, checking his phone again. He figured he’d grab a quick bite, drop Leona off, and then check a few airport hotels to find me. But before their order arrived, his phone rang. It was his senior VP, sounding frantic about an urgent board meeting that required his immediate presence at the office. Griffith had to rush through breakfast, drive Leona back to her apartment, and head straight to his downtown office. The moment he walked into his suite, his executive assistant, Thomas, was waiting with a tablet in hand. “Mr. Payne, the briefing materials for the emergency meeting are ready.” “Good.” Griffith shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over the back of his chair. Thomas hesitated, looking slightly uneasy. “Sir… is Mrs. Payne doing alright? I saw the news about the crash upstate this morning, and I knew she was traveling.” Griffith opened his laptop, not even looking up. “She’s fine. She wasn’t on that flight.” “Thank goodness,” Thomas said, visibly relieved. He cleared his throat. “Also, today is your fifth anniversary. Would you like me to book a table at Le Jardin tonight?” Griffith froze, the realization hitting him like a belated wave. It was their anniversary. The tight lines around his mouth softened slightly. No wonder I had been so angry last night. No wonder I had gone completely silent. “Yes,” Griffith said. “Book the corner table overlooking the river. And order a bouquet of red roses.” Thomas smiled and nodded, turning to make the arrangements. Griffith picked up his phone again. Looking at our still-empty chat history, he let out a quiet sigh. He typed: Monica, I’m sorry about last night. I should have picked you up. Then, he sent the location of the French restaurant. Seven o’clock tonight. Let me make it up to you, okay? He assumed that once I saw the effort, the reservation, the roses, my anger would melt away. He had always operated this way. A cold shoulder, followed by a sweet gesture. He truly believed a fancy dinner and a dozen roses could erase months of neglect and quiet humiliation. But he didn’t know. I would never make it to dinner. 4 By late afternoon, the sky turned a bruised, heavy grey. Rain was on the horizon. A strange, low-level anxiety began to hum in Griffith’s chest. Then, a text from Leona popped up: Grif! My project bonus just cleared! I want to buy you dinner to celebrate tonight. Are you free? Griffith hesitated. He had plans to celebrate our anniversary tonight. But then he reasoned that he could easily grab a quick drink with Leona first and still make it to the restaurant by seven. Sure. Send me the place, he replied. I watched him make the choice with a dull, familiar ache. For five years, it had always been like this. Whenever Leona called, no matter how sacred the day was to us, she was always his first priority. After work, Griffith went straight to meet Leona at a trendy bistro downtown. He sat across from her, listening patiently as she rambled about her career wins, clinking his glass against hers to toast her success. It wasn’t until his watch read 6:45 PM that he finally slid his jacket back on and stood up. “I’ve got a commitment I can’t push, Leona. I have to run. Bill’s already taken care of.” On his way to the parking garage, he passed a luxury jeweler’s boutique. He popped inside, hastily picking out a delicate diamond necklace as an anniversary gift. Then, he got into his car and sped toward the French restaurant. I sat in the passenger seat beside him, staring down at the velvet box on the console. He had forgotten. Again. I had a severe contact allergy to certain metal alloys, especially nickel. Years ago, he had gifted me a similar necklace. To avoid hurting his feelings, I had forced myself to wear it for an entire evening. By midnight, my neck was covered in raw, weeping hives, and we ended up spending our anniversary in the ER. That night, he had held my hand, green with guilt, swearing he’d never be so careless again. But now, the promise had dissolved from his memory entirely. By the time he walked into Le Jardin, he was thirty minutes late. He expected me to be sitting there, just like I had for the past four anniversaries, waiting patiently with a gentle, forgiving smile. But the table was empty. He stood there, staring at the unoccupied velvet chair, momentarily stunned. He dropped the gift box onto the white tablecloth with a sharp click and pulled out his phone, shooting off an irritated voice note. “Monica, I booked the restaurant, I bought you a gift, and I’m sitting here waiting. How much longer are you going to keep this up?” A waiter approached him cautiously. “Sir, shall we bring out the steaks?” “Give it ten more minutes,” Griffith snapped, loosening his tie. He was growing increasingly resentful. He had cut his celebration with Leona short just to make it here, and yet I was still making him wait. What more did I want from him? He didn’t know I was sitting right across from him, staring at his frustrated face. His eyes remained fixed on the restaurant’s entrance, waiting for the door to swing open. He was utterly convinced I would walk through it. Just as I always did. Throughout our five years of marriage, all it took was a small crumb of affection for me to swallow my pride and sweep all my hurt under the rug. The minutes crawled by as the rain outside turned into a torrential downpour, splashing heavily against the glass. Griffith’s brow furrowed deeper. The silence since last night, paired with the background noise of the morning’s crash report, began to fester in his mind, growing into a cold, prickly dread. Suddenly, his phone vibrated violently against the wood table. The screen lit up with my name: Monica. The tension drained from Griffith’s shoulders, and he let out a long, heavy breath of relief. He swiped to answer. “So, you’re finally done playing hard to get? I knew you couldn’t stay away for long.” But it wasn’t my voice on the other end. It was the solemn, clinical voice of a man. “Is this the family of Monica Payne? We are calling regarding the passenger flight from Chicago. The aircraft suffered a fatal crash last night. “We need you to come to the precinct forensic center immediately to identify the remains.”

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I had just finished slaving away at my late-night food cart, scrubbing grease off the flat-top, when I finally hit the milestone: fifty thousand dollars. It was every cent Hannah needed for her startup capital. Then, my phone buzzed. It was a FaceTime call from an unknown number. When I picked up, the face staring back at me was my own—only ten years older. Exhaustion forgotten, my heart leapt with a sudden, naive hope. I leaned into the screen and asked him, “Did she do it? Did Hannah’s business take off? Did she buy us that house with the big yard she always talked about?” I held my breath, waiting for the payoff of all those sleepless nights. “She promised me a beautiful wedding. Tell me, did I cry like a baby when she walked down the aisle?” The older version of me didn’t smile. He just shook his head, his voice dead and flat. “Hannah’s startup took off during her senior year,” he said. “In your timeline, she’s already a millionaire. She bought the house, Sean. But you’re not the one living in it. It’s Devon—the scholarship student you spent your own rent money to help.” My breath caught. “And that wedding?” he continued, a cruel edge slicing through his quiet tone. “You cried, alright. But only because you had to watch her marry Devon.” I stared at the screen, a nervous laugh bubbling up in my throat. “This is a joke. Who is this?” Instead of answering, he reached up and slowly pulled down his black face mask. The face beneath was mine, but ruined. A web of thick, jagged burn scars puckered across his skin, distorting his jaw and cheek. Before I could even scream, he tilted the camera downward. He lifted his pant legs to reveal a pair of cold, metallic prosthetic limbs. “This is what loving Hannah Kelly gets you,” he said, his eyes hollow. “This is your future.” “If you don’t believe me,” he added, “go to the Sapphire Lounge right now. The private room in the back. She’s there with him.” 1 The call disconnected. The silence in my cramped, dark apartment was so thick I could hear the erratic rush of my own breath. I tried to tell myself it was a prank, a deepfake, some elaborate hallucination brought on by sheer exhaustion. But the image of that ruined face, those metal legs, was burned into my retinas. It was too vivid, too terrifyingly real to ignore. Driven by a desperate, sickening panic, I grabbed my keys and drove to the Sapphire Lounge. The club was loud, a low bass vibrating through the floorboards, but the VIP hallway was quiet, smelling of expensive cologne and leather. When I found the door to Hannah’s private booth, my fingers hovered over the brass handle. Before I could push it open, a burst of laughter drifted through the gap. “Come on, Hannah,” a voice teased. “You bought Devon such a gorgeous birthday present. The least you can do is put it on him.” I leaned in, peering through the narrow crack in the door. There she was. Hannah. She was holding a sleek, heavy wristwatch, her fingers gently threading the leather strap around Devon’s wrist. She looked up at him, her eyes soft, glowing with an intimacy I hadn’t seen in years. My heart stopped. I recognized that watch. I’d seen it in a luxury magazine last month. It was a Patek Philippe. A hundred thousand dollars. Instinctively, my left hand went to my right. My fingers brushed against the cheap, lightweight band on my ring finger. She had put it there just yesterday. We were sitting on our sagging secondhand sofa when I asked her to marry me. No flowers. No grand gestures. Just us in our tiny kitchen. She’d slipped the ring onto my finger, her eyes filled with a sudden, tearful guilt. “I’m so sorry, Sean,” she’d whispered, kissing my cheek. “I don’t have the money for anything better right now. But once my business takes off, I promise I’ll make it up to you. I’ll buy you the world.” I had squeezed her tight, telling her I didn’t care about rings or money. As long as I had her, I had everything. When Devon had come over to congratulate us later that night, he’d looked at the ring and made a passing joke about how it looked like something bought off a cheap wholesale site. At the time, I’d brushed it off as him just being his usual blunt self. But standing in that hallway, a cold, sharp pain bloomed in my chest. He hadn’t been joking. My ring really was a cheap piece of online junk. But his watch—his watch was something she had spent months planning for. I stepped back into the shadows of the hallway, my hands trembling as I pulled out my phone. I typed a message to the number from the video call. When did they start? I wrote. If they love each other so much, why keep up this agonizing lie? Why not just break up with me? My future self replied almost instantly. Hannah told me they’ve been together since graduation, the text read. She didn’t break up with you because she couldn’t bear the thought of Devon being labeled a traitor or a gold digger. She pitied him. She hated that he had to stay in the shadows while she built her empire. So, she gave him the money, and she gave you the title. A bitter laugh escaped my throat, tasting like ash. Hannah and I had grown up together. When she was ten, her parents died in a tragic car accident. I remember her sitting on our porch, looking so small and broken, that I begged my parents to adopt her. We became family. The very first night she slept under our roof, she looked at me with tear-streaked eyes and promised, “I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you’re happy, Sean.” And Devon. He was my high school classmate. His family lived below the poverty line, struggling to keep food on the table. Back then, my father’s business hadn’t collapsed yet. I used my own allowance to buy Devon lunch, to pay for his study prep books, to make sure he didn’t fall through the cracks. On his sixteenth birthday, he sat in my room and told me I was the first person who had ever made him feel like he mattered. The two people who had promised to protect me were the ones holding the knives. Inside the room, Hannah’s voice cut through the laughter, sharp and authoritative. “Nobody breathes a word about me and Devon to Sean. I mean it. I don’t want him starting drama or making Devon’s life difficult.” It felt like someone had shoved a handful of dry sand down my throat. Even when she was warning people about me, she was doing it to shield Devon. I stumbled away from the door, running blindly out of the lounge and into the cold night air. The city lights blurred before my eyes as cars rushed past on the wet asphalt. I pulled out my phone again, typing with numb fingers. Is this the night? I asked my future self. Is this the night you lost your legs? His reply took a long time to load. No. It’s in three days. You’ll come home early from your food truck shift and find them in our bed. You’ll lose your mind. You’ll scream, you’ll demand answers, until Hannah finally snaps and tells you the truth. You won’t be able to breathe. You’ll run out into the pouring rain, blind with grief, and step right in front of a speeding truck. My lungs seized up. By the time I dragged myself back to the apartment, my body felt like lead. I lay on the mattress in the dark, staring at the peeling wallpaper, unable to quiet the screaming in my head. It was nearly two in the morning when Hannah finally came home. By the time she crept into the bedroom, she had already changed out of her designer clothes and back into her old, faded grey t-shirt and worn-out jeans—the uniform of the struggling entrepreneur she pretended to be. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep as she slipped beneath the covers. But when she settled in, turning her back to me, the quiet became unbearable. I reached out and gently took her hand, squeezing her fingers. “Hannah?” I whispered into the dark. “Are you marrying me because you love me?” The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Finally, she gave my hand a weak, reassuring squeeze. “Of course, Sean,” she murmured, her voice soft but distant. “I told you. We’re going to build a home together.” I pulled my hand back, a cold, bitter smile settling on my face. A home. She was doing this out of a sense of obligation, out of a childhood promise. Not love. And because there was no love left, my future self had ended up in ruins. The next morning, Hannah was already gone when I woke up. It was the perfect opportunity. My mother’s medical bills at the care facility were mounting, and every decision I made was ruled by tight budgets and cheap alternatives. As I walked around the apartment packing my things, I realized with a sudden, aching clarity how little I actually owned. Aside from my legal documents and a few changes of clothes, there was nothing of value. Nothing worth keeping. I had just zipped up my battered suitcase when the front door swung open. Devon walked in, a heavy silver key fob swinging from his index finger. He gave me a smug, bright grin. “Hey, Sean. Look what my girl just bought me.” He tossed the keys in the air and caught them. “I swear, she’s crazy. She already bought me a townhouse last year, and today she wanted to buy me a Porsche. I told her it was too flashy for a daily driver, so I compromised on a fifty-thousand-dollar BMW instead. Oh, by the way, I ran into Hannah downstairs. We rode the elevator up together.” If this had been yesterday, I would have smiled and congratulated him on finding someone who treated him like royalty. But today, hearing the words “fifty thousand dollars” and “Hannah” in the same breath made my blood run cold. I turned toward the doorway. Hannah walked in right behind him, her eyes lingering on Devon’s face before she finally looked at me. “The fifty thousand dollars in our joint savings account,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “You… you transferred it?” Hannah nodded casually, tossing her purse onto the kitchen counter. “Yeah. My startup needed some quick liquidity for a new inventory shipment. I took it this morning.” She noticed the raw, red rim of my eyes and paused, looking slightly puzzled. “What’s that look for? Didn’t you tell me two days ago that you finally hit the fifty-thousand mark? You were sleeping so peacefully this morning, I didn’t want to wake you.” A jagged, burning pain sliced through my chest. I remembered the night she cried about not being able to afford a decent wedding ring. I had held her close, telling her I only needed another hundred dollars to hit our fifty-thousand-dollar goal. I told her we would use it to launch her dream. She had taken those words, waited until I was asleep, and used my sweat and blood to buy Devon a car. Images flashed through my mind: evading the city inspectors in the freezing rain, arguing with angry customers, collapsing on the curb over a five-dollar discrepancy because my bones ached so badly. My throat felt parched. “Hannah… do you have any idea how hard it was for me to save that money?” I had no intention of letting her keep it. I needed that money to move my mother to a better, safer care home, far away from this city. Hannah stared at me, a brief flicker of guilt crossing her face before she brushed it off with a quick, dismissive smile. “Sean, I know you work hard. But don’t worry, once my business starts bringing in real revenue, everything I make is yours anyway. Besides, between your regular job and the food cart, it’s not like you have time to spend money anyway.” She knew how hard I worked. She knew the physical toll of those late-night shifts. But when it came to Devon, my pain was a sacrifice she was entirely willing to make. Before I could say another word, she grabbed Devon’s sleeve, pulling him toward the door. “This idiot managed to scrape the bumper against a concrete pillar on the way here,” she said over her shoulder, giving me a bright, artificial smile. “I’m going to go with him to the auto shop to get it sorted out.” Devon rolled his eyes, nudging her playfully. “Who are you calling an idiot?” They bickered softly, their voices fading down the hall as the elevator doors slid shut. It was a scene I had witnessed dozens of times before, but today, the scales had fallen from my eyes. It was sickeningly clear. I walked over to the window, looking down at the street below. I watched Hannah walk Devon to his brand-new car, naturally reaching out to open the driver’s side door for him. As my eyes lingered on the scraped front bumper of his car, my mind flashed back to last week. I had been rushing from my day job to get the food cart set up in time. I was driving too fast, took a corner too sharply, and my old truck flipped over. The impact had shattered the windshield, glass slicing into my forehead. I lay on the asphalt, blood pooling around my head, fading in and out of consciousness. With trembling fingers, I had dialed Hannah’s number. Her voice had been soft, but unyielding. “Sean, sweetheart, I’m in the middle of a pitch meeting. Can you call an ambulance and head to the ER? I’ll be there as soon as this wraps up.” I sat in the emergency room for six hours, getting fifteen stitches in my brow. She never showed up. Later, she told me the client had dragged the meeting out until midnight. That same night, lying alone in my hospital bed, I saw Devon post a picture on social media. It was a shot of two hands holding drinks, captioned: “Finally found my forever.” I had stared at the delicate, slender hand resting in his, feeling a strange, nagging sense of familiarity. Only now, after seeing my future self, did I realize those were Hannah’s fingers. I dialed my future self on FaceTime again. “If I leave her right now,” I pleaded, staring at his scarred face, “if I just pack up and disappear, can I stop all of this? Can I save us?” He looked back at me, his eyes dark with a heavy, sorrowful pity. “It’s too late to stop the first tragedy, Sean. It’s already happened.” He took a slow, jagged breath. “Dad’s death? That was Devon.” A wave of pure, icy dread washed over me, starting from my chest and freezing my limbs. The memory of my father’s body lying broken on the pavement outside his office building rushed back into my mind, sharp and agonizing. I clenched my fists, forcing my voice to remain steady. “What did Devon do?” A tear slipped down my future self’s scarred cheek. “He stole our family company’s proprietary designs and sold them to our biggest competitor. That’s why Dad went bankrupt. That’s why the debts were so overwhelming he felt he had no choice but to jump.” My hands began to shake violently. I had been the one who got Devon that internship at my dad’s firm. I had begged my father to give him a chance. I never imagined that a boy who looked so sweet and harmless could harbor such venom. “The competitor paid Devon a fortune,” my future self continued. “And he turned around and used every single dollar of that blood money to fund Hannah’s first startup. That was her seed capital.” My voice shook. “Did… did Hannah know?” The older Sean closed his eyes, tilting his head back to keep from sobbing. “She claimed she didn’t. I didn’t believe her. I lost my mind, grabbed a knife, and tried to stab her. She blocked it, and I ended up slicing her arm. But even after she found out exactly what Devon did to my father, she stayed with him.” I squeezed my eyes shut, a sob catching in my throat. “What do you want me to do?” He opened his eyes, burning with a desperate intensity. “Take Mom and run. Get her out of that care facility immediately.” He swallowed hard. “After they confessed their affair to me, Devon went straight to the facility to find Mom. He mocked her, taunted her about Dad’s death, until she had a psychotic break and tried to attack him. Devon stabbed her right through the heart.” The room felt like it was spinning. “I went to the police,” my future self whispered, his voice cracking. “I wanted him executed. But Hannah used her money, her lawyers, and her influence to spin the story. They made it look like self-defense. She told me… she actually looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Sean, your mother is already gone. There’s no point in ruining Devon’s life over an accident.’” My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the dusty floor of my apartment. I hated myself. I had welcomed the wolf into our home. I wanted to scream, to tear my own hair out, but looking at the ruined man on the screen, a profound, hollow exhaustion settled over me. I wanted to ask him about the fire. I wanted to ask how his face had been destroyed, what other horrors were waiting for him. But in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to say a word. After we hung up, I drove straight to my mother’s facility. Seeing her sitting quietly by the window, her mind fragile but peaceful, I knew I had to act. I called a trusted friend from college, someone outside Hannah’s circle, and arranged to have Mom transferred to a specialized private clinic in another state. My friend worked quickly. By that afternoon, Mom was safely checked out and on her way. On my drive back, I passed through the market district where I usually set up my food cart. Through the crowded sidewalk, I spotted them. Hannah and Devon. They were walking hand-in-hand, their fingers laced together. He said something that made her laugh—that beautiful, genuine laugh I used to love—and she looked up at him with a gaze so full of pure devotion it made me physically sick. I covered my mouth, leaning against the steering wheel as a sob finally broke through. This was the girl who had held onto my hands for dear life when we were children, refusing to let go when I slipped into a storm drain. This was the woman who, after my father died, held me in the dark and swore we would rebuild our lives together. She had become an absolute stranger. A sharp, burning pain flared in my abdomen. It had been lingering for weeks, but today it was unbearable. For peace of mind, I drove myself to the local clinic. After running some blood tests and an ultrasound, the doctor sat me down with a grim look. “Mr. Collins, you have severe gastric ulcers. You need immediate treatment and rest. You cannot keep pushing your body like this.” I stared at the medical report, feeling a strange, dark echo. I picked up my phone and called the older Sean once more. “What happened today?” I asked. “In your timeline, on the day you got your diagnosis.” He let out a ragged, trembling sigh. “The exact same day I found out about my stomach, Hannah took a pregnancy test. It was positive. They hid the truth from me. They let me believe the child was mine.” My chest tightened as his voice broke into a full sob. “I loved that boy, Sean. I loved him with every fiber of my being. I raised him for ten years, wiped his tears, took him to baseball games… and then, on the day Hannah and Devon finally had their public wedding, Devon cornered me. He laughed in my face. He told me the boy was his. And the worst part? The kid already knew. They had taught him to treat me like a foolish servant.” The sheer cruelty of it left me numb. I reached my hand toward the screen, wishing I could reach through the glass and comfort him. “So… you couldn’t take it anymore. You set the fire?” He nodded slowly, a look of profound regret passing over his scarred features. “I wanted to end it. But Hannah dragged me out of the flames. She wouldn’t even let me die in peace. Now I’m stuck like this. Half-human, half-monster. And the hatred… it eats me alive every single day.” A heavy weight settled over my chest. I took a deep, steadying breath. “I understand,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.” I hung up the phone and walked back into my empty apartment. Just as I crossed the threshold, my phone buzzed with a text from Hannah. Working late at the office tonight, babe. Won’t make it home. Don’t wait up! I stared at the screen for a moment, then locked my phone without replying. I slept for what felt like days, drifting in a dreamless, heavy fog. When I finally opened my eyes, I was surprised to find Hannah sitting at our small kitchen table. She was wearing her favorite faded grey hoodie, looking like the same girl I’d loved for a decade. “Morning, Sean,” she said softly, offering a warm smile. “I brought breakfast.” I sat down across from her, my expression entirely neutral. She slid a beautifully wrapped box toward me. “Your support meant everything. We secured the new account, and I wanted to get you a little something to say thank you.” I opened it. Inside was a high-end electric razor. I looked at it, then gently closed the lid. Hannah’s eyes searched mine, a trace of anxiety in her voice. “You don’t like it?” No, I didn’t. Last night, Devon had posted a picture of this exact razor on his social media, mocking it as “grandpa gear” before quickly deleting the post. I realized she must have bought it for Devon first, and when he rejected it, she decided to pass it off to me as a romantic gesture. I looked up, forced a small smile, and said, “It’s nice. I’ll try it out after breakfast.” She seemed to relax, letting out a soft sigh. “Sean… there’s something I need to tell you.” Before she could finish her sentence, her phone blared on the tabletop. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know who was calling. She answered quickly, her tone instantly shifting to panic. “What? I’m on my way. Hold on!” She hung up and scrambled to grab her purse. “Sean, I’m so sorry. Something came up. I have to go.” I remained silent, taking a slow sip of my coffee. She made it to the doorway, but then she froze. She slowly turned back to look at me, her expression thick with an odd, lingering anxiety. “Sean?” she asked, her voice cracking slightly. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I’m going?” She was waiting for me to play my usual role—the doting, slightly worried fiancé who would tell her to drive safely. I offered her a polite, empty smile. “If I ask, will you stay?” She flinched, the words hanging heavy in the air. She stared at me for a long moment before speaking with intense solemnity. “Wait for me here. Please. I have something really important to tell you when I get back.” “Okay,” I replied softly. “I have a gift for you, too.” A soft, hopeful smile touched her lips, and she turned and left. The moment the front door clicked shut, I stood up. I placed the cheap engagement ring she had given me on the center of the kitchen table. Beside it, I laid the electric razor. Then, I grabbed my packed suitcase and walked out of the apartment without looking back. Stepping into the bright morning sunshine, I pulled out my phone and sent a final text to my future self. Don’t hate anymore. Your nightmare is over. Meanwhile, after rushing to the hospital to check on Devon, Hannah’s anxiety only deepened. Unable to shake the cold dread in her stomach, she ignored his pleas for her to stay and drove back to the apartment like a madwoman. When she pushed open the door and found the place unlocked and dead quiet, her heart sank. She saw the empty closet. She saw the ring on the table. Panic clawed at her throat. She realized she had to find me, to explain everything, to fix this before it was too late. But as she spun around to run back to the stairs, she collided with a woman standing in the hallway—a woman who looked older, exhausted, but wore her exact same face.

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I am the biological daughter who was lost for fifteen years. When my family finally brought me back, my adoptive sister, terrified that I would slowly usurp her place, hired men to abandon me in the freezing Alaskan Barrens during a family vacation. I survived in that frozen hell for a month, nearly torn to pieces by wolves, before a local bush-dweller miraculously found me and saved my life. When I returned home, bloodied and hysterical, I told my parents she had tried to murder me. My parents brushed it off. “Beatrice was just being immature,” they said. “It was a prank, and she already knows she was wrong. Let it go.” I couldn’t accept the reality that my own parents didn’t love me. In a fit of raw, desperate rage, I took a knife and slashed Beatrice’s arm. Furious, they shipped me off to Stonebridge Academy—a brutal reform school disguised as a boarding school—to “break my spirit.” I spent three agonizing years there in a living hell until my heart turned entirely to stone. Three years later, they sent a car to bring me home. I escaped halfway through the drive and fled back to Alaska. I became a wilderness search-and-rescue specialist in the Barrens. For twenty years, I never lost a single soul. On my thirty-fifth birthday, I received a very specific rescue request. I looked at the dossier, shook my head, and said, “This one, I won’t save.” ……. Jonas, our local community lead, froze, the joy draining from his weathered face. He grabbed my sleeve, his voice tight with panic. “Kaya, why? Why won’t you save him?” “This is easy for you. If you pull him out, they’re offering five million dollars. That’s enough to replace your rusted prosthetic leg, and it would buy the targeted therapy drugs for your cancer.” “That five million is your lifeline. Why are you throwing this away?” I glanced down at the battered, scuffed prosthetic on my left leg and shook my head quietly. “I’ve lived long enough, Jonas. There’s no need to drag it out.” “If I say I’m not going, I’m not going. Just tell them I’ve gotten old and cowardly.” Jonas stared at me, his eyes filled with disbelief. “Old and cowardly? Kaya, if you were afraid of death, you wouldn’t have taken up Mika’s mantle as a search-and-rescue leader in these unforgiving wilds.” “Lately, the wolf packs in the interior have grown massive, and the danger of going out there is through the roof. Everyone else stopped doing runs years ago.” “Only you. For over twenty years, whenever someone screamed for help, you went out—no matter the blizzard, no matter the storm.” “And now you’re telling me you’re afraid to die? I don’t buy it.” My voice remained steady. “My mind is made up. I’m not saving him. You can find someone else.” Jonas sighed, defeated. “Who else? No one has been out into the deep Barrens in six years. They don’t even know the shifting ice paths. Besides, there are hundreds of wolves out there now. If a pack catches a scent, there won’t even be bones left to bury.” “But you’re different. You saved those pups years ago, including the alpha. The pack knows your scent. They won’t touch you.” Jonas ran out of breath. Seeing my stone-cold expression, he lowered his voice, almost begging. “Kaya, please. The boy’s name is Brody. He’s the only heir to one of the biggest billionaires in the country. People that rich… they look for scapegoats. They won’t care about your reasons.” “You have the power to save him. Why invite their wrath and bring trouble down on yourself?” I replied flatly, “Let them be angry. I’m not changing my mind.” Jonas sighed, defeated. He dialed a number on his satellite phone. When the call connected, he spoke with a heavy, pitying tone. “The boy just had his eighteenth birthday. His life hasn’t even truly begun. Can you really bear to let him freeze out there, to let the wolves tear him to pieces?” Eighteen… My mind drifted. I was eighteen when Beatrice had me dumped in the freezing Alaskan interior. I had struggled alone for a month before the wolves finally tracked me down and tore into my leg. Just as I was preparing to die, Mika, a local woman, risked her own life to drag me out and eventually helped send me back to the family who had cast me aside. And when I finally fled that family, hollowed out and broken, it was Mika who took me in. She taught me how to navigate the wilderness, how to survive, how to save others. The first time a survivor wept at my feet, thanking me for saving their life, something inside me healed. I found a purpose. I stayed in Alaska, saving hundreds of lives over two decades. Every rescue wasn’t just about saving someone else; it was about rescuing that terrified, eighteen-year-old girl sobbing in the dark. My thoughts were shattered by an arrogant, sharp voice coming through the speaker of the satellite phone: “If you bring my son back alive, I’ll double it. Ten million.” The familiarity of that voice made my chest tighten. I had spent twenty years convincing myself I had let the past go. But hearing her voice, the old, jagged glass in my chest cut deep. I took a slow, steady breath to quiet the storm inside me. “It isn’t about the money. I can’t do it. I won’t save your child.” On the other end of the line, Beatrice’s voice turned shrill and venomous. “I’ve done my research! You go in and out of the Barrens like it’s a walk in the park. You have the ability to save him, but you’re choosing to let him die. Aren’t you afraid of retribution?” Retribution? I whispered the word to myself and let out a cold, bitter laugh. Oh, Beatrice. Your retribution is already here. Back then, when they brought me back, I had been naive enough to think we could be sisters. I didn’t realize she saw me as a parasite. Terrified that my return would threaten her inheritance and her parents’ affection, she hired men to discard me in the freezing wilds during a family cabin trip. I had wept, begging her to let me go, promising I would leave the family and never claim a dime. Her cruel, venomous words had been burned into my soul for over twenty years: “You’re just a piece of trash they dug up from the dirt. You think you get to be my sister?” “Only when you’re dead will everything in this family truly belong to me.” I was left to rot, my leg mangled by wolves, rendering me a cripple. When Mika saved me and I dragged myself back to our estate, sobbing as I told my parents the truth, Beatrice merely shed a few crocodile tears. She clutched our mother’s sleeve and whimpered: “Mom, I just wanted to play a prank on her. I didn’t think she’d actually get hurt! I’m so sorry!” And my mother immediately shielded her, dismissing my agony with a casual wave. “Beatrice was just being careless. She apologized. Stop being so vindictive.” My mother’s eyes had been cold, filled with a warning. I had lost a leg, and she called it a careless prank. That was the moment I realized they would never love me. Hysterical and broken, I grabbed a paring knife from the counter, lunged at Beatrice, and screamed, “Then let’s see how you like my prank!” My mother threw herself in front of Beatrice, slapping me hard across the face, sending me crashing to the floor. “How did I give birth to such a monster? Your sister made a mistake, and you try to take her life? You should have just died out in the snow!” When my father returned, he didn’t even look at my bandages. He arranged for me to be sent to Stonebridge Academy, barking coldly: “You can come back when you’ve learned some basic decency, respect, and how to behave like a civilized human being.” The abuse I suffered at that reform school stripped away whatever affection I had left for them. The moment I escaped, I fled. But the despair of that day remained lodged in my chest like a rusted nail. Beatrice’s voice cut through my memories again: “If you rescue my boy, I will fund a state-of-the-art school for your village. I’ll make sure every single kid in that town gets a world-class education and a ticket out of there.” Jonas’s breath hitched beside me. I paused, but my voice remained flat. “I’m sorry. I cannot help you.” I hung up. Jonas looked at me, his eyes rimmed with red. “Kaya, did you hear her? She’s offering a future for the kids.” “We live in a place where teachers quit after three weeks because of the isolation. Our kids have to travel hours in freezing temperatures just to get to a basic middle school.” “We’ve been trapped in this cycle of poverty for generations. This is their only shot at a different life.” “Please, I’m begging you. Save the boy.” Listening to Jonas’s desperate plea, my lips trembled. “Jonas… it’s not that I don’t want to. I truly can’t. I won’t survive it, and neither will he.” Before the words fully left my mouth, the deep, thrumming roar of a helicopter echoed overhead, followed by the crunch of tires on ice. A fleet of black SUVs pulled up outside my cabin. The cabin door was thrown open. Beatrice, flanked by my biological parents, stepped inside. “Are you the legendary Kaya who navigates the Barrens?” Beatrice scanned me from head to toe, her expression dripping with cold arrogance. I looked at the three of them. There wasn’t a single flicker of recognition in their eyes. I had only spent three months with them before being shipped away. Now, after twenty years of harsh Alaskan winds, biting frost, and manual labor, my skin was weathered and dark, my cheeks flushed with permanent windburn, my frame thickened by years of hauling heavy gear. I looked nothing like the fragile, pale girl they had discarded. I said quietly, “I never said I could navigate it freely.” Beatrice’s lip curled in disgust. She cut me off dismissively. “Cut the act. You’re holding out for more money, aren’t you?” “Fine. Bring my son back, and I’ll give you fifty million.” I remained silent. Beatrice took my silence as greed, her tone turning venomous. “Don’t get greedy, sweetheart. Too much cash might choke you.” “Beatrice, mind your manners.” My mother pulled Beatrice back slightly, offering me a polite, plastic smile. “My daughter is just out of her mind with worry, Ms. Kaya. Please don’t take offense.” “Please try to understand our position. Brody is the sole heir to our family’s legacy. If we lose him, it will destroy us.” “You must have family of your own. Surely you can understand a mother’s desperation? I am begging you, as an old woman—save my precious grandson.” Seeing my biological mother humble herself to protect the child of the woman who had tried to kill me… a sharp, familiar pain bloomed in my chest. I wanted to scream at her. She isn’t even your blood! You give her and her son everything, so why couldn’t you spare even a drop of love for me? I didn’t need much. Just a crumb. But the words died in my throat. I pulled my lips into a cold, hard line. “I’m afraid I can’t relate. I was abandoned by my parents as a child, and I’ve never had a family of my own.” “I said no. Take your business elsewhere.” “You miserable bitch!” Beatrice’s face contorted with pure hatred. She pointed a finger in my face, her voice shrieking: “You cold-blooded freak! No wonder your parents threw you away. You deserve to die alone. I hope you rot in hell!” “Beatrice, calm down.” My father stepped in, gently patting her shoulder before turning his sharp, calculating eyes on me. He spoke in a measured, powerful tone: “Ms. Kaya, the golden window for rescue is closing. We have less than ten hours. Every second you waste puts my grandson closer to death.” “You’re refusing because the price isn’t right. Fine. Save my boy, and I will personally hire elite tutors to ensure every child in this village gets into an Ivy League school.” “On top of that, I will write a check for one million dollars to every single resident in this town.” “I believe that is more than generous.” “But if you still refuse…” My father’s eyes turned glacially cold as he gestured toward Jonas. “My conglomerate owns the distributors that purchase the wild chaga and morel mushrooms harvested by your people. It is the only source of income for this entire region.” “If you continue to stall, I will blackball your village. I will cut off your livelihood completely.” “Your people can starve on this frozen tundra for all I care. And I promise you, I keep my word.” Jonas’s face drained of color. He fell to his knees in front of me, grabbing my coat. “Kaya… they’re billionaires. They can do it.” “Please. For the sake of my mother who saved your life, bring the boy back. We can handle the cold, but the kids… their futures shouldn’t die here!” “Did you forget what my mother said before she died? She wanted the kids to see the world beyond these mountains!” I looked at Jonas’s tear-stained face, then glanced out the window at the local children huddled in the snow, watching us with terrified, wide eyes. The weight of their entire future crashed down on my chest. Tears welled in my eyes, but my voice remained a whisper. “I’m sorry. I really can’t save him.” “Why?! Why won’t you just save him?!” Jonas scrambled to his feet, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me in sheer, broken desperation. “Stubborn bitch,” Beatrice spat, her smile turning vicious. She turned to the armed security guards standing behind her. “Round up all the kids in this village. We’re taking them into the Barrens.” She laughed, a manic, desperate sound. “The biggest threat out there is the wolves. If we feed them first, they won’t touch my son.” “If this freak won’t go, we’ll use these local stray dogs to pave the way. One way or another, I’m getting my son back.” The guards moved instantly, heading toward the door. Jonas threw himself in their way. “Stop! Stop it! The kids have nothing to do with this!” I couldn’t believe the depth of her depravity. I shook with rage. “Beatrice! This is kidnapping! You’re breaking the law!” Beatrice lunged forward and kicked me hard in the chest. I crashed to the floor, my worn-out prosthetic snapping off and skittering across the wood. She stood over me, looking down with absolute disdain. “The law? There isn’t a cop for a hundred miles, you pathetic cripple. Who’s going to stop me?” “Besides, all of your worthless lives combined aren’t worth a single hair on my son’s head. Dying for him is the highest honor you’ll ever have.” “Don’t worry. Once he’s safe, I’ll pay some priest to pray for your miserable souls.” The guards dragged the screaming children from the snow, binding their wrists with zip-ties. “Kaya! Help us! I don’t want to go to the wolves!” “Kaya, I’m scared!” The screams of the children mixed with the desperate shouts of the villagers trying to fight off the armed guards. The scene was absolute chaos. And my biological parents stood there, watching the brutality unfold with cold, silent approval. Jonas was pinned to the floor by a guard. He watched his own nephew being thrown into the back of an SUV and screamed at me, his voice cracking: “Kaya! For God’s sake, tell me why! What did they do to you that’s worth sacrificing all of us?!” I stared at the cold, indifferent faces of my biological parents. I let out a ragged, hysterical laugh, and screamed at the top of my lungs: “Why?! Because his mother is the monster who tried to kill me!” “If I go out there, the only thing I’ll do is throw her son directly into the jaws of the wolves myself!” “Just like you did to me twenty years ago, Beatrice!”

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I had spent a whole year looking forward to it—the one day my father would take the train down to Boston to see me. But it was barely two in the afternoon when Leona looked up from her phone and said, “Your dad should probably get going.” We had been married for seven years, and every single year, my father made this trip. And every single year, he was ushered out the door before sunset. I wanted to ask him to stay the night, to tell him I’d already made up the guest bed. But before I could even open my mouth, Leona added, “He can keep those slippers if he wants.” He had been wearing them for less than three hours. She didn’t hand them to him. She just gave them a careless flick with the toe of her shoe, sending them sliding across the hardwood floor until they clattered to a stop near his feet. My dad flinched. Then, a slow, tight smile squeezed onto his weathered face. He bent down, his joints popping slightly, and scooped them up. “Thank you, Leona,” he muttered. He was so small, so desperate to avoid being a burden. I knew exactly what he was doing—he was shrinking himself so he wouldn’t cause trouble for me. Before my dad could even straighten up, Frank walked out of the guest bedroom. He was holding a can of Lysol, spraying the air with aggressive, systematic puffs. “God, it’s filthy in here,” Frank muttered, coughing dramatically. “I think my allergies are acting up. Honestly, Leona, you can’t just let anyone track dirt into the house.” Frank had been living in our guest room for three months. Leona had driven two hours to pick him up and bring him to our home herself. My dad’s face flushed a deep, painful crimson. Mortified, he clutched his cheap plastic bag of belongings and hurried toward the door. My tongue felt completely numb. I looked at Leona, waiting for her to say something, anything. But she didn’t even look up. She just turned around and helped Frank spray the entryway. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed my coat and ran out after him. “Dad, wait! I’m coming with you.” … He ended up forcing me to go back. He stood there on the platform, stubbornly pushing my shoulder, trying to smile even though his eyes were raw and red. I stood there for a long time, watching his heavy, slightly hunched back disappear into the crowd. I felt hollowed out. It wasn’t until a sharp, persistent ringing broke the silence that I snapped out of it. It was Leona. “When did you go out?” I looked down at my watch. Almost two hours had passed. It had taken her two hours to notice I wasn’t in the apartment. Before I could even answer, she continued: “Frank wants those roasted nuts from the shop down the street. Grab some on your way back up.” The words I wanted to say died in my throat. “Okay,” I said, and hung up. When I walked back into the apartment, Frank was in the middle of throwing my dad’s favorite mug into the trash can. I reached out and caught his wrist, pulling the mug back. “What’s wrong with this?” I asked. Frank looked a bit embarrassed, but he quickly recovered, offering a smooth, plastic smile. “Oh, it’s just old. Corey bought a brand-new ceramic set for the kitchen, so I was just clearing out the clutter.” “Don’t throw it away,” I said, my voice tight. “I’ll use it.” He shut his mouth, looking sheepish, and took the grocery bag from my hand. As he turned to walk away, I said, “Frank, here’s the receipt.” He froze, not reaching for it, and turned his head toward Leona. She had just stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. Her voice was incredibly casual. “Don’t worry about it, Dan. It’s just a few dollars. Let Frank have them.” One hundred and seventy-eight dollars. It wasn’t a fortune. But this was the ninth time this month. In total, I had spent over two thousand dollars on Frank’s errands and cravings. He had never offered to pay me back once. Yet, just this morning, Leona had refused to let me buy my dad a seventy-dollar train ticket. “Your dad has a pension,” she had said, not even looking up from her tablet. “He can pay for his own ticket. Besides, the money you’re spending is marital property.” My dad’s train ticket was “marital property.” But Frank’s snacks were “just a few dollars” of our shared money. Before I could say a word, Frank smiled triumphantly and retreated into his bedroom, leaving me standing in the hallway, my hand still holding the crumpled receipt in midair. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my heart. “When is Frank moving out?” I asked. “Corey is still looking for a place,” Leona replied. She had been giving me that exact answer for three months. “He’s been looking for a long time,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Can’t he just find a temporary studio, or stay with other relatives?” Leona’s hand stopped mid-stroke as she dried her hair. Her expression turned cold, slightly defensive. “Why are you in such a rush? Is someone else planning to move in?” Before I could speak, she sighed, a heavy, performative sound. “Even if someone is, isn’t there another spare room in this place anyway?” Yes. There was a spare room. But she couldn’t find it in her heart to let my father stay in it for even one night. My fingers clenched, crushing the paper receipt into a tiny, sharp ball in my palm. Outside, the sky had turned a bruising shade of purple, and then the rain started. A sudden crack of thunder rattled the windowpanes, and my ears began to ring. When my dad was a boy, he had slipped down a muddy ravine during a flash flood, trapping his leg for hours. Ever since, he had been terrified of heavy storms. During bad rainstorms, his anxiety would spike so violently he would sometimes bite his own tongue until it bled. My temples throbbed. I immediately dialed his number. It rang twice before someone answered—but it wasn’t my dad. “Hello? Are you related to the owner of this phone? He just collapsed in the waiting area of the transit station. We’re loading him into an ambulance right now.” A cold sweat broke out across my back. I thanked the stranger with a trembling voice, hung up, and bolted into the bedroom. As I threw on a dry shirt, I called out to the living room: “Leona, my dad collapsed. My car is still at the mechanic. I need you to drive me to the hospital to get him.” But when I walked out of the bedroom, the living room was empty. Leona was gone. Panic clawed at my chest. I called her three times in a row, but each call went straight to voicemail. Frank walked out of his room then. With Leona gone, he didn’t bother hiding his irritation. He looked at me with open disgust. “Dan, for God’s sake, you’re not a child. Leona went to pick up Corey. If you have some family emergency, go handle it yourself and stop breathing down her neck.” The proprietary tone in his voice, the casual way he spoke as if Leona belonged to his family and not mine, made my stomach turn. I pointed a shaking finger at the front door. “Get out of my house. Now.” Frank let out a condescending laugh, then sat down heavily on our leather sofa, stretching his legs out. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to leave, then leave. This is Leona’s apartment. You don’t have the right to tell me what to do.” The notification for my rideshare flashed on my phone. I didn’t waste another second looking at him. I turned and ran into the storm. At the hospital, I found my dad sitting on a gurney. He had fainted from panic, and when he fell, he had cut his forehead. When he saw me walk through the sliding doors, he immediately hung his head, looking like a little boy who had broken a vase. There was dried, dark blood flaking near his hairline. He looked so small, so devastatingly fragile in that bright, sterile room. My eyes burned. I walked over and took his rough, calloused hand in mine. “We’re going home, Dad.” “No, no,” he said, his voice quiet as he tried to pull his hand back. “You go on home. I can just stay here in the waiting room tonight. It’s fine.” He tried to smile, his fingers twitching in my grasp. “Don’t worry about me, Dan. I’m a grown man. I can take care of—” He stopped mid-sentence. His eyes widened, and his face crumbled with worry. “Oh, kiddo… please don’t cry. Don’t cry.” But I couldn’t stop the tears. They ran hot and fast down my face, dripping onto his hand. My dad stared at me, helpless and heartbroken. Finally, he let out a long, defeated sigh. “Okay. I’ll come back with you.” In the back of the cab, he held my hand so tightly his knuckles turned white, as if he were being marched into a lion’s den. When we reached the front door of the apartment, I gently brushed a stray lock of gray hair from his forehead. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Just stay right beside me.” I pushed the door open. Corey was already there, sitting on the sofa. The three of them—Leona, Corey, and Frank—were laughing, sharing some inside joke. The moment they saw us, the laughter died instantly. The room went dead silent. Leona blinked, her brow furrowing into a deep, immediate frown. “Why is your dad back?” She didn’t see the dried blood on his forehead. She didn’t see his damp, dirty coat. Her very first instinct was to ask why he was back. My dad shrank back slightly, his dry, chapped lips parting as if to apologize. I didn’t give him the chance. “This is his home too,” I said, my voice cold and steady. “He’s staying the night.” Under the heavy, suffocating weight of their stares, I led my father down the hallway and into the guest room. “Wait a minute.” Leona followed us, slamming the guest room door shut behind her. Her face was tight with anger. “You can’t just bring people over without letting me know first, Dan.” “Did you let me know before you brought your people here?” She gasped slightly, her eyes widening. “That is completely different!” I shook my head. “You’re right. It is different. One is my father. The others are strangers.” The words fell like lead weights into the room. Outside the door, the apartment went utterly silent. I could feel my dad trembling beside me, practically on the verge of tears. I squeezed his hand, trying to ground him. Suddenly, the door clicked open. Corey stood there, his eyes rimmed with red, looking incredibly fragile. “Dan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble between you two. I’ll leave. I’ll pack my things right now.” But Leona was faster. She grabbed Corey’s wrist, holding him back, before turning a furious glare on me. “Dan, stop being so childish!” I just stared at her. I watched her stand in my home, protecting another man, using me as a scapegoat to keep him comfortable. Seven years of marriage, and in that single, quiet moment, I realized it was over. The marriage was entirely, irreparably empty. Without saying another word, I pulled my father into the room and closed the door, turning the lock. When the latch clicked, I felt a warm tear fall onto the back of my hand. My dad was crying silently, his face pale with guilt. “It’s my fault,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I ruined everything. I made you two fight.” My dad had raised me all on his own, working twelve-hour shifts in a factory just to put food on our table. And now, in his old age, he had to suffer this kind of humiliation because of me. I wrapped my arms around his shaking shoulders, a deep, bitter wave of self-loathing washing over me because I hadn’t protected him. “Tomorrow, when I leave, you talk to Leona,” my dad murmured into my shoulder. “Couples shouldn’t sleep angry. You’ll make it right.” But he didn’t understand. There was nothing left to make right. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an email from my divorce attorney, attaching the drafted settlement agreement and asking if I wanted to make any revisions. I didn’t open it. I just wanted to focus on my dad. I found him a pair of clean pajamas. “Go take a warm shower, Dad. And make sure you lock the bathroom door.” He nodded quietly and walked down the hall. I went to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. As I walked past the master bedroom, I heard muffled laughter coming from inside—both male and female. My stomach dropped. I reached out and tried the doorknob. It was locked. The laughter stopped instantly. There was a sudden, frantic rustling sound from inside. A few moments later, the lock clicked, and Leona opened the door. Corey was standing just behind her. His face was flushed, his collar slightly askew, and his eyes had a bright, heavy look to them. “Hey, Dan,” Corey said, his voice soft, almost timid, though his eyes never left mine. He was watching me, waiting to see my reaction. “I didn’t have any clean clothes left, so I was just trying on one of your shirts to see if it fit.” I didn’t understand. Why did he need to try on my clothes in our bedroom? Why did the door need to be locked? It was a flimsy excuse, wrapped in a thin layer of provocation. Leona cleared her throat, not looking me in the eye, and told Corey to go get some rest. Once he was gone, Leona pulled me into the bedroom and closed the door. She picked up her phone, acting as if nothing had happened, and held it out to me. “Here, Dan. I bought your dad’s return ticket. Does this time work?” I looked at the screen. 7:30 AM. She truly couldn’t stand the thought of him being in her space for a single extra minute. I didn’t take the phone. I just looked at her. “Who said he’s leaving tomorrow?” Leona’s face tightened, a look of pure, cold resentment washing over her features. It was a look I knew intimately. For seven years, every time my father visited, that same look of disgust would creep into the corners of her eyes. I used to tell myself she just wasn’t used to sharing space with older people. But now, the truth was glaringly obvious. She looked down on him. She despised him because he was a retired blue-collar worker from a small town, and because he wasn’t Corey’s father. “Dan, there are already too many people living in this apartment,” she said, her voice dripping with irritation. I nodded slowly. “Then tell Corey’s father to move out.” “That’s different,” Leona snapped immediately, looking at me as if I were a petulant child. “They are our guests.” They were honored guests. My father was an eyesore. In that moment, a strange sense of relief washed over me. I was so incredibly glad we had never succeeded in having a child. It made what I had to do so much simpler. “Fine,” Leona muttered, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Let him stay as long as he wants. I don’t care anymore.” She slammed the door and walked out. When I went back to the living room, my dad had finished his shower. I sat him down on the sofa and went into the kitchen to start dinner. But the moment I turned my back, I heard Frank’s voice boom from the living room. “Hey! Get up. I bought that orthopedic cushion. Go sit somewhere else.” I heard my dad scramble to his feet, his voice small and apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” But Frank didn’t let it go. His voice grew sharper, louder. “If you don’t know, then ask! Honestly, where are your manners?” My dad went stiff, his head bowing under the weight of the scolding. He looked toward Leona, hoping for some kind of intervention, but she just kept her head down, staring at her phone as if she were completely deaf. My chest tightened. I turned off the stove exhaust fan. Frank’s voice carried clearly into the kitchen now, dripping with venom as he continued to berate my father. “First you show up uninvited, and then you refuse to leave. I’ve never seen anyone so shameless. At your age, don’t you have any dignity?” Something inside my brain snapped. I walked out of the kitchen. My dad was standing frozen by the sofa, looking completely hollowed out, as if he had dissociated from his own body to escape the shame. But Frank wouldn’t stop. “You should pack up and leave tomorrow. You’re just a farmer anyway, don’t you have crops to harvest? I mean, honestly, a man your age behaving like a parasite—” Before he could finish the sentence, I stepped forward and slapped him across the face. The crack of my hand against his cheek echoed through the room. “Dan!” Leona, who had been completely oblivious a second ago, flew off the couch and shoved me backward. “How could you hit him!” Corey ran over, throwing his arms around his father, sobbing loudly. “Dad! Oh my god, Dad! They’re treating us like animals. Let’s go, we can’t stay here!” Frank started wailing, clutching his cheek. “At my age, to be struck in the face like a dog… I don’t want to live anymore!” He lunged toward the dining table, grabbing a silver fruit knife. My dad, terrified that Frank was going to hurt me, immediately threw his frail body in front of mine. His lips were trembling with fear, but he didn’t move an inch. Leona panicked, rushing forward to wrench the knife from Frank’s hand. When she turned back to me, her eyes were burning with a hatred I had never seen before. “Dan, apologize to him. Now.” I didn’t even look at her. I gently took my dad by the arm and led him back into the guest room, closing the door behind him. When I stepped back into the living room, Leona grabbed my wrist, squeezing so hard her knuckles turned white. “I said, apologize!” Behind her, Corey was watching me over his father’s shoulder. The crying had stopped; there was a small, triumphant smirk on his lips. It made my stomach turn. A cold, heavy anger settled deep into my bones. I looked Leona dead in the eyes. “I am not apologizing. And both of them are going to pack their bags and get the hell out of my home.” Leona stepped in front of them, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. “Think very carefully about what you’re saying, Dan. If they leave, I leave too.” She looked at me with absolute certainty. In seven years of marriage, we had barely fought, and every time we did, I was always the one to crawl back, begging for forgiveness. I had fallen in love with her first, pursued her for a year, and everyone in our social circle knew I worshipped the ground she walked on. She was entirely confident that she held all the power. “Then go,” I said. Her face froze. She stared at me, her mouth parting slightly in sheer disbelief. When she realized I wasn’t bluffing, a mask of cold fury settled over her face. She packed a small bag, grabbed Frank and Corey, and stormed out, slamming the heavy front door so hard the walls vibrated. For the first time in years, I felt like I could finally breathe. Over the next week, Leona didn’t come home. Instead, she posted photos on her social media accounts—showing Corey and Frank around Boston, taking them to expensive restaurants. She knew I would see them. It was a calculated move, a gamble. She was waiting for me to break, to call her and beg for her to come home. But I spent those days packing. My dad didn’t ask any questions this time. He didn’t try to convince me to make up with her. He just silently helped me wrap my dishes in newspaper and pack my books into cardboard boxes. When we were done, I called a moving service to transport everything to a small condo I had purchased before we got married. My car was finally back from the mechanic. On the day we left, the sky was a clear, brilliant blue. I laid the printed divorce agreement on the dining table, walked out, and closed the door on that life forever.

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To save myself a lot of trouble, I always made up a wife. One afternoon, while out shopping with a coworker, I spotted a jacket I absolutely fell in love with. The only problem was the price tag—it was a bit steep. As the sales clerk kept up her relentless pitch, I casually brushed her off. “Ah, never mind. My wife would kill me. Even if I bought it, she’d just make me return it.” I didn’t think much of it. But the very next day, a package arrived at the office. I ripped it open, and there it was—the exact jacket! My coworker’s eyes went wide. He grabbed the card tucked inside and read it aloud: “To my wonderful husband: If you love it, you should have it. You deserve the best of everything. Signed—Your loving wife!” I froze. My wife was completely made up. I had never even been in a relationship. Where the hell did a wife come from? 1 I figured Brandon was just playing a joke on me, making up the words as he read. I snatched the card from his hand. But the elegant, flowing script on the card was undeniable. There it was, written in black and white. “Damn, Zach. And here I thought you were just complaining all this time,” Brandon teased, nudging me. “Saying your wife doesn’t let you do this, doesn’t let you do that. Turns out she’s incredibly generous. Five grand, just like that!” A few other coworkers started crowding around my desk. “I had no idea your wife was so loaded, Zach!” I forced a tight, artificial smile, my throat completely dry. I couldn’t squeeze out a single word. I’d been at the firm for three months, and my status as a happily married man was rock-solid. Whenever there was a task I didn’t want to do or an after-work gathering I wanted to skip, I’d blame it on my “wife.” Oh, she’s cooking tonight. Oh, she prefers I stay in. It was the perfect shield. But the truth was, I was single. I had been single my entire life. I’d never even held a girl’s hand. So where did this wife come from? I snuck a glance at the label. Even the size was a perfect fit. Who sent this? For a brief, vain moment, I wondered if I had a secret admirer. But I had only seen the jacket when I was shopping with Brandon. He was the only one who knew about it. I quietly watched Brandon’s face. Nothing. He looked genuinely amused, completely devoid of guilt. I spent the rest of the day in a daze, unable to focus. Once I got home, I immediately called the store’s customer service. It was a high-ticket item, so they had to have some record of the buyer. But after a few seconds of keyboard clattering, the representative said, “I’m sorry, sir. This order was placed anonymously. The customer requested full privacy protection, so we don’t have access to their billing details.” Anonymous? Why so mysterious? I stared at the jacket for a long time before shoving it into the deepest, darkest corner of my closet. The next morning, Brandon stopped by my desk. “Hey, Zach, why aren’t you wearing the new threads? I was dying to see what a five-thousand-dollar jacket looks like on a regular Tuesday!” I laughed it off. “Wearing something that expensive to sit in a cubicle? Feels like a waste.” In truth, I was terrified to wear something when I didn’t know where it came from. Brandon dropped it, but before I could ease into my workflow, the receptionist paged me. “Zach, there’s a package for you at the front desk.” My stomach did a cold flip. I had a terrible feeling about this. Sure enough, I opened the box to find a luxury cologne set. And tucked inside was that same card: Your loving wife. Brandon, who had followed me, gasped. “Isn’t this that new limited-edition release? We were just talking about this last week! You said you loved almost every scent in the collection.” He was right. And I vividly remembered saying: “I’d love to buy the whole set, but my wife would have a fit. She already thinks I have too many bottles cluttering the bathroom.” Brandon shook his head in mock jealousy. “She wouldn’t let you buy it, huh? So she just goes ahead and buys the whole collection for you instead. Man, Zach, what kind of angel did you marry?” An angel. Right. An angel so celestial she didn’t even exist. What was happening to me? Was it really a secret admirer? If so, why not just ask me out? Why play this bizarre game, sending expensive gifts and calling herself my wife? My mind was a chaotic mess as I stuffed the cologne set into my bottom drawer. Brandon frowned, noticing my distress. “Hey, you okay? You don’t look happy at all. Did you and the wife have a fight?” I offered a weak, noncommittal smile. Taking my silence as confirmation, Brandon sighed. “Ah, that explains the gifts. Well, don’t stay mad at her too long. A wife that generous deserves a quick apology.” I said nothing. Instead, I copied the tracking number from the shipping label, found the online merchant, and messaged their support team. The response was exactly the same: Hi there! This order was processed anonymously under our high-profile privacy tier. We cannot disclose customer information. Can you even do that with standard online shopping? As I sat there, trying to make sense of it all, the receptionist’s voice cut through the office intercom again. “Zach, you’ve got a delivery. And… you’re going to need help carrying this.” 2 Flowers? I stood up, numb, and walked toward the lobby. A local courier was standing there, holding an enormous, breathtaking arrangement of deep red roses and orchids. It must have taken up half the counter. “Zachary?” the courier asked. “Your wife sent these.” I stood frozen. By the time I snapped out of it, the courier was already halfway out the door. I ran after him, catching him near the elevators. “Wait! Excuse me. Can you tell me who placed this order?” The courier gave me a strange look. “Your wife.” I shook my head, my chest tightening. “No, I mean, can I see the account name on the order? On your app?” The guy looked confused but shrugged and pulled out his phone, scrolling to his job history. As expected, the sender’s profile was completely blank—no name, no picture, just a system-generated ID. “Look, man, whoever she is, she paid three hundred bucks for the arrangement and left me a hundred-dollar tip,” the courier said, his grin reaching his eyes. “Your wife is amazing. You’re a lucky guy.” I handed his phone back, my fingers stiff. I managed to force a polite nod. Back in the office, my coworkers immediately swarmed my desk. “Are those roses? That looks like a fortune!” “That’s nothing. His wife didn’t even blink at a five-thousand-dollar jacket yesterday!” “Look, there’s a card. What does it say?” My eyes fell on the small envelope nestled among the petals. I slid the card out. Sweetheart, please don’t be mad at me anymore. My hand shook so violently I almost dropped the card. “Seriously, Zach, how could you ever stay mad at her?” one of the account executives joked. “I’m literally crying. Why can’t I find someone like that?” “Just forgive her already!” Their teasing voices faded into a dull hum. I kept my eyes fixed on Brandon. The jacket. The cologne. Only Brandon knew about those conversations. And now, right after I let him believe my “wife” and I were in a fight, a massive bouquet of apology flowers shows up. Was this some elaborate prank? Had he figured out that I was lying about being married, and decided to spend a fortune to mess with me? But Brandon was a junior designer. He didn’t have thousands of dollars to throw away on a joke. Nothing made sense. With my head spinning, I decided I needed some grounding. After work, I drove over to my Nana’s place. Nana’s small, cozy apartment always smelled of vanilla and baked chicken. She had prepared a massive feast for me, and as we sat down, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, letting the warmth of her home wash over me. But then I noticed her ears. “Nana, where is your hearing aid?” Nana, whose hearing had been failing for years, squinted at me. It took her a moment to register my words. “Oh, that silly thing!” she chuckled, waving her hand dismissively. “It fell right into the pond yesterday while I was out by the park. Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I can hear you just fine!” How could it not matter? I immediately pulled out my phone and started researching the best medical-grade hearing aids on the market. “Just get me a cheap one from the drugstore, Zach. Don’t go wasting your hard-earned money,” Nana insisted, patting my knee. I stayed the night on her pull-out sofa. The next morning, a sharp knock on the front door woke me. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I stumbled into the hallway. Nana had already opened the door. A delivery driver stood on the porch. “Delivery for Zachary,” the driver said. Nana stared at the small package, her face lighting up. “Oh, Zach! When did you order this? That was incredibly fast!” I froze, the sleep instantly draining from my brain. I rushed to the door. The package in the driver’s hand was from a premium audiology brand. But I hadn’t placed the order yet. I had only put it in my online cart the night before. A cold shiver ran down my spine, raising the hairs on my arms. 3 “Sir? Need a signature here,” the delivery driver prompted. Nana reached out to take the stylus, but I quickly stepped in. “Actually, I think there’s been a mistake. I ordered the wrong model. I need to reject the delivery, please.” This was for my grandmother. I couldn’t risk her using something from a stranger. Who knew what was actually in that box? As the driver took the package back, my eyes caught a small, familiar card taped to the side. Only the best for Nana. —Your loving wife. My hand trembled so hard I had to shove it into my pocket. After sending the driver away, I called into work to take the morning off. I drove Nana to a local clinic, got her fitted for a proper hearing aid, and paid for it myself. Before I left, I held her hands tightly. “Nana, if you get any packages over the next few weeks, do not open them. Call me immediately. Promise me.” Though confused, Nana nodded and promised she would. When I finally got to the office that afternoon, I was a nervous wreck. Who was this person? How did they know my grandmother’s address? And more importantly… I had only searched for those hearing aids on my phone the night before. I hadn’t spoken a word about it to anyone else. How could a package arrive first thing in the morning? There was only one logical explanation. I stared down at the screen of my phone. Someone had hacked my device. They were monitoring my searches, my location, my life. It had to be. Determined to reclaim my sanity, I went straight to an electronics store after work. I bought a brand-new phone, factory-reset my old one, and sold it to a trade-in kiosk. It was a massive hit to my savings, but as the days passed and no new packages arrived, I finally felt like I could breathe again. My relief lasted for about a week. Then, on a rainy Thursday night, I had a dream. In the dream, a woman I had never seen before stood in front of me. Her eyes were filled with a profound, aching sadness. “Sweetheart,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You won’t wear the jacket. You won’t use the cologne. You even sent back the hearing aid I got for Nana. “Do you hate me now? Or do you just not want my gifts? “It’s your birthday. Let me just give you money instead. That way, you can buy whatever you want.” I bolted upright in bed, my heart hammering against my ribs, drenched in cold sweat. I checked my phone. It was past midnight. Today was, indeed, my birthday. But what a bizarre, deeply unsettling nightmare. When my alarm finally went off, I shook my head, trying to banish the memory of her sad eyes, and got ready for work. At my desk, I was nursing a coffee and chewing on a bagel, trying to focus on a design pitch, when my phone buzzed. It was a notification from my banking app. I tapped it open. My jaw dropped. One… ten… a hundred… a thousand… ten thousand… a hundred thousand… One million dollars. A cool million had just been deposited into my checking account. I thought it was a glitch, some cruel banking error, but when I refreshed the page, the balance remained the same. And there was a transaction memo: Happy birthday, sweetheart. The room seemed to tilt. Let me just give you money instead. That way, you can buy whatever you want. The words from my dream echoed in my ears. I sat frozen in my chair, my entire understanding of reality crumbling. “Zach? You okay?” Brandon tapped my shoulder, noticing my blank stare. I quickly flipped my phone face down. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Dear God, what was happening to me? Where did a million dollars come from? Was it possible that I actually had a wife, and I had somehow… forgotten her? “Hey, I saw your calendar,” Brandon said, leaning against my cubicle wall. “It’s your birthday today. What are the plans?” I slowly picked up my phone and stared at the balance again. I had never used any of the physical gifts. But was this real? Could I actually spend this money? I took a deep breath. “Hey, everyone,” I called out to the office. “It’s my birthday. Dinner and drinks are on me tonight.” The office erupted into cheers. “Wait, Zach,” one of the designers asked. “Aren’t you celebrating with your wife?” “She’s… out of town on business,” I lied smoothly. I sent a group text with the address of a high-end steakhouse downtown. Brandon’s eyes went wide when he saw the venue. “Whoa, Zach. We’re going there? Are you sure you can afford that place?” I smiled, keeping my terror hidden. “Don’t worry about it.” But as we left, a cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. What if the card got declined? 4 It didn’t. My worries were entirely unfounded. When the bill came—totaling over fifteen thousand dollars after bottles of high-end wine—I slid my card over without a flinch. The transaction went through instantly. My coworkers stared at me in absolute shock. “Zach, what does your wife actually do for a living?” “Seriously, man, you’ve been holding out on us. We had no idea you were loaded.” “Alright, alright, let’s let the birthday boy make a wish!” Brandon had ordered a chocolate cake, and someone placed a paper crown on my head. As the candles flickered, I closed my eyes. Given the sheer absurdity of the past few weeks, a wild, ridiculous thought popped into my head. What if I had somehow developed a superpower? What if whatever I wished for simply materialized? Let’s test the limits, I thought. I breathed in and made a silent wish: I want to be rich. Unbelievably, ridiculously rich. I opened my eyes and blew out the candles. Later that night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. My phone vibrated with a text alert. I sat up, my heart hammering, and opened the message. It was another bank notification. The number was so long I had to count the digits twice. One hundred million dollars. My breathing turned shallow. I got out of bed and started pacing the room, convinced I was losing my mind. Did I really have a wish-granting superpower? But that defied every law of physics and science. And as the initial rush of adrenaline faded, panic took its place. A sudden influx of a hundred million dollars would undoubtedly trigger red flags with the IRS, the FBI, or homeland security. And if it wasn’t the government, what if some dangerous criminal syndicate was using my account to launder money? As much as I loved the idea of being wealthy, this money felt like a gilded ticking time bomb. I decided right then: tomorrow morning, I was going to the police. If they could trace the source of the funds, great. If not, at least I’d have a paper trail showing I tried to report it. Yes. That was the smart thing to do. I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves and crawled back into bed. I grabbed my phone to set my alarm, but my finger slipped, opening my photo gallery. I froze. There, at the very top of my camera roll, were several photos I had never seen before. They were pictures of me… standing next to a woman. She was smiling warmly, her arm wrapped around my waist. And her face was identical to the woman from my dream. Terrified, I scrambled out of bed and flipped on the lights. My apartment felt suddenly cold, haunted. I had absolutely no memory of these photos. I had never met this woman in my life. Could they be AI-generated? But I had just bought this phone. How could anyone have put them there? I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I kept every light in the apartment burning until dawn, and the second the sun broke over the horizon, I hailed a cab straight to the police station. “Morning. Can I help you with something?” The desk sergeant looked at me with immediate concern. I must have looked like a ghost, pale and disheveled. He poured me a cup of water. I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sandpaper. “Officer… someone is putting photos of a strange woman on my phone. And… I keep receiving massive sums of money from an untraceable source.” The officer frowned. “How massive?” “A million dollars yesterday. And last night… one hundred million.” “One hundred million?!” He practically choked on his coffee, his voice echoing in the quiet lobby. “Officer Nightingale, what’s all the shouting about?” another detective called out from across the room. But I didn’t hear him. Officer Nightingale. Nightingale. That surname… I slowly raised my head and stared at her face, her badge. Suddenly, a violent spark flared in my brain. I remembered. I knew exactly what was happening. Along with the realization came a blinding, agonizing headache. My vision blurred, the room began to spin, and before I could say another word, the world went completely black.

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I moved everything ourselves from our damp basement studio to the new place—a cramped, run-down sixth-floor walk-up I’d just bought. To save a hundred dollars on movers, I made seventeen round trips, hauling heavy boxes up those narrow, creaking stairs. Darren just stood by the door, watching me silently. It wasn’t until I dragged the final mini-fridge over the threshold and shoved it into the kitchen that my knees finally gave out. I collapsed onto a packing crate, reaching for a bottle of water, ready to take a sip. That was when he spoke. “Actually, I’ve been lying to you. I’m not some broke guy from out of town. I’m the only heir to Shaw Enterprises.” “I lied because the constant scheming in my circle got exhausting. I needed a simple environment to heal myself.” “I’m telling you the truth now because I don’t want you pressure-testing me about marriage now that you’ve bought a place.” I froze, a half-smile on my face, telling him not to play stupid jokes on a day like today. Then he unlocked his phone and held it in front of my face. It was a bank transfer receipt. To a girl named Charlotte Shaw. A single transaction of five million dollars. The memo read: “Birthday gift for my baby.” He told me he never took me to high-end restaurants not because they were too expensive, but because he thought my shabby, dust-covered appearance would embarrass him. The clumsy, hand-made anniversary card he’d given me? He’d bought it off Craigslist for five bucks. And that week-long trip back to his “hometown” for a cousin’s wedding? He had actually chartered an entire private island in the Caribbean to throw a million-dollar fireworks show for Charlotte. The plastic cup in my hand slipped, clattering against the bare floorboards. Water pooled around my worn sneakers. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even argue. I just stood up, grabbed my duffel bag, and started packing my clothes. Darren blocked the doorway, his brow slightly furrowed. “You’re just leaving?” I looked him dead in the eye, my voice entirely flat. “I put fifty thousand dollars down on this place. I want it back in cash. Every single cent.” 1 “Do you think I’m completely pathetic?” When I asked him that, Darren was leaning against the cheap shoe rack by the door, idly tapping the moving contract against his thigh. He glanced down at the paper, remaining silent. So I asked again, my voice rising just a fraction. “Five years, Darren. Five years of working until midnight, spending my weekends haggling with contractors over a five-dollar difference in floor tiles. What were you doing? You were wiring five million dollars to someone else?” He finally looked up at me. “That’s enough,” he said. “What’s enough?” “Are you done throwing a fit?” I stared at him. Over the past five years, he had spoken to me in a thousand different ways—with warmth, with mild irritation, with gentle coaxing. But he had never used this voice. He sounded like he was talking to a stranger. Darren set the contract down on the entryway table. He adjusted his cuffs. I noticed the cufflinks for the first time—deep blue sapphire, heavy and undeniably real. “About the apartment,” he said quietly. “You did put fifty thousand down. I’ll have someone wire it to you.” “I want to know what you were thinking,” I demanded, my hands shaking inside my pockets. “All these years. What was the point?” He paused for a few seconds. “I wasn’t really thinking anything.” “Darren!” He let out a soft sigh. He slipped his hands into his pockets, leaning back against the wall, entirely relaxed. The contrast between his effortless posture and my trembling frame was nauseating. “You really want the truth?” he asked. I nodded. “Fine,” he said, his voice level. “The truth is, I never planned on a forever with you.” “What does that even mean?” “It means I was with you because you made life easy,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “You’re sensible, you don’t ask for much, and living with you meant I didn’t have to deal with any of the high-society drama. But if you’re asking if I love you…” He trailed off, searching for the right words. “No. I never did.” I waited for the turn. I waited for him to say “but things changed” or “we built something real”. He didn’t. “Then why did you agree to save up for this place with me?” I asked, my voice cracking. “This place?” he replied smoothly. “Do you honestly think I needed to save up?” Right. Of course he didn’t. The amount of pocket change he threw around could buy ten of these run-down apartments. All those nights we spent in our damp basement, sharing stale sandwiches and walking an extra mile in the freezing rain to save three dollars on delivery fees—it wasn’t because he was broke. It was because he didn’t think I was worth the luxury. “You were playing with me,” I whispered. He didn’t deny it. “From the very first day you asked for my number at the subway station, telling me you were just another struggling transplant trying to make it in this city, all the way to today… you were just playing a game.” He shrugged. “If that’s how you want to see it, then sure.” “And Charlotte?” At the mention of her name, his expression shifted. Just a flicker of something real. “She has nothing to do with this,” he said defensively. “You gave her five million dollars for her birthday.” “It’s my money.” “So what you have with her is real, and everything with me was a lie.” He didn’t answer. But silence is its own kind of confession. I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing myself to ask one last question. “Over these five years… was there ever a single day where you actually envisioned a life with me?” Darren looked at me. The coldness in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I pulled it open. A woman stood in the hallway. She wore a pristine cream-colored cashmere coat, her hair pinned up in an effortless, elegant twist. Tiny solitaire diamond studs caught the dim hallway light. She looked entirely too clean, too perfect, like a photograph. She smiled when she saw me. “Hi,” she said, her voice dripping with easy confidence. “I’m Charlotte.” I couldn’t speak. She peeked over my shoulder into the apartment, her eyes lingering on something behind me before turning back to me. She scanned me from head to toe, then back up. “So, you’re the one he bought the place with?” She smiled a little wider. “Do you know what the first thing he said to me when he came home was?” She paused, waiting for dramatic effect. “He said, “Her hands are always covered in dust.”” She excelled at sounding polite while cutting deep. My hands “were” covered in dust. I’d been moving heavy boxes all day. My nails were dirty, and there was a small, raw scratch across my knuckle that I hadn’t even noticed until now. She glanced down at my hands, just for a second, then met my eyes again. “Thank you for your service,” she said softly. “It must have been exhausting playing house with a fake pauper for five years.” I heard footsteps behind me. Darren stepped up, stopping half a pace behind me. Charlotte’s expression softened, turning playful and flirtatious as she looked at him. “You didn’t tell me it would be like this. If I knew you were living in a dump like this, I would’ve just had the driver wait downstairs.” Darren said nothing. Charlotte turned back to me, leaning in slightly. Her voice was low, but every syllable cut through the quiet corridor. “You didn’t actually think he loved you, did you?” I gripped the doorknob so hard my knuckles turned white. “He told me about you,” she whispered. “He said you were so naive, you believed absolutely everything. He couldn’t believe you never figured it out. Every time he talked about his ‘frugal life’ with you, we laughed so hard.” She tilted her head, watching for my breaking point. And then, Darren laughed. In all the years I’d known him, I had never heard him laugh like that. It was a light, careless sound, shared only with her. They laughed together, and I stood between them, a ghost in my own home. Charlotte wrapped her coat tighter around herself, glancing at Darren. “How much longer? The driver is waiting.” “Five minutes,” Darren said. He was still standing behind me, but his voice was already directed outward, toward her world. I stepped aside. Charlotte didn’t even bother to step inside. She turned on her designer heels and walked toward the elevator. The sharp click-clack of her heels echoed down the tiled hallway, steady and self-assured. She paused at the elevator doors and looked back once. The elevator chimed. The doors slid shut, swallowing her up. The hallway fell silent again. Darren remained behind me. I waited for him to say something, but the silence stretched on. Finally, I turned around to face him. The smile had vanished from his face. “What was so funny?” I asked. He didn’t answer. He just stared toward the end of the hallway where the elevator had been. I kept my eyes locked on him. Darren reached down, picked up the crumpled moving contract, folded it neatly, and slipped it into his coat pocket. “Take care of yourself,” he said. He brushed past me to leave. “Darren.” He paused. I leaned against the doorframe, wiping the dust from my hands onto my jeans, and forced a smile. It felt tight and ugly on my face, but I didn’t care. “I don’t ever want to see either of you again,” I said. “Ever.” He looked at me for a long beat. “Fine.” He walked away. I didn’t watch him get into the elevator.

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My ex-husband was dead. His wife didn’t call to invite me to the funeral. She called to demand that my six-year-old daughter go to the funeral home to sit with her father’s body for the overnight vigil. “If his own daughter isn’t there to keep watch,” she’d sniffed over the phone, “the neighbors will talk. They’ll say we’re cold-hearted.” But I was out of town on a business trip, stuck three states away, so I had no choice but to beg my ex-husband’s sister, Claire, to watch over her. It wasn’t until two in the morning that my daughter’s smart watch buzzed with a fragmented, static-heavy voice message. “Mommy… it’s so cold… there are so many metal drawers here… I think people are sleeping inside them…” “The door is locked… I can’t get out…” My fingers spasmed, and the phone nearly slipped from my hand, clattering against the nightstand. She was locked in the mortuary cold storage room. I remembered what our pediatrician had once said during a winter safety brief. A six-year-old child trapped in forty-degree temperatures will begin to experience organ failure in less than four hours. … “Mommy, a sheet slid off one of the tables. I see a hand. It’s so, so white.” My fingernails dug into my palms, my entire body shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone to my ear. “Baby, don’t look! Cover your eyes and go sit by the door. Jump up and down, okay? Let’s count. Count from one to a hundred. Mommy is coming. I’m coming right now.” “One… two… three…” Her voice was thick with tears, each trembling number hitting my chest like a physical blow. I dialed Claire. It rang eight, nine times before she finally picked up, her voice slurred and heavy with sleep. “Mmh… Zoe? Melanie said she took her back to the chapel… I think I had too much to drink…” “She’s in the morgue freezer, Claire! Wake the hell up!” There was the sound of rustling sheets, followed by a heavy, wet snore. She had passed out cold again. I screamed her name three times, but there was nothing but dead air. Claire never drank. She had a terrible stomach; even a sip of wine made her violently ill. Melanie must have forced those drinks down her throat. Gritting my teeth, I dialed Melanie. She picked up almost instantly, the canned laughter of some late-night talk show blaring in the background. “Oh, Zoe?” Melanie said, her voice dripping with mock sweetness. “She’s sitting vigil for her father. It’s good for her. Children need to learn respect and duty early on.” “She’s not in the chapel! You locked her in the damn freezer with the corpses!” Melanie went quiet for two long seconds. “Oh, that little brat really has a big mouth, doesn’t she? I told her to sit tight. I’ll let her out when the sun comes up. Besides, dead people don’t bite. Her dad is right there keeping her company. What is she so afraid of?” A vein throbbed violently in my temple, my jaw aching from how hard I was clenching it. “Melanie, you go open that door right now. It’s forty degrees in there. Four hours and her organs will start shutting down. If you do this to her, if you kill my daughter, I swear to God I will end you.” She laughed. It was a cold, sharp sound that sliced through the television’s laugh track—hollower and faker than any studio audience. “Oh, please. Who are you trying to scare? I have legal guardianship of this family now. Besides, it’s the middle of the night. I’m not driving all the way out there.” She let out a slow, exaggerated yawn. “If you’re so worried, Grace… come get her yourself.” The line went dead. My entire arm was trembling so violently that my phone slipped from my fingers and bounced onto the mattress. I grabbed it and dialed 911. “My daughter is locked inside the cold storage room of the Southside Funeral Home! She’s six years old! She’s only wearing a thin summer dress! It’s forty degrees in there and she’s already been inside for almost two hours!” “Ma’am, please try to breathe,” the dispatcher’s voice was calm, too calm. “That funeral home is in the unincorporated county sector. The nearest patrol unit is about thirty to forty minutes away.” “Forty minutes?!” I screamed. “She’s wearing a dress!” “We are dispatching a unit right now, Mrs. Evans, please remain calm.” I slammed the phone down and swiped frantically through my airline app. The absolute earliest flight out was at 5:30 AM, landing at 7:00 AM. With the drive to the airport and the run to the mortuary, it would take at least seven hours. The screen flashed in bold, red letters: No Tickets Available. My phone buzzed again. It was Zoe. She wasn’t counting anymore. Her voice had changed—it was slow, dragging, thick with sleep. “Mommy, my feet hurt so bad. I lost my shoes. I’m so tired. I want to go to sleep.” I bolted from the edge of the bed, my knee slamming into the sharp wooden corner of the nightstand. I didn’t even feel it. Extreme lethargy. It was the onset of hypothermia—the most dangerous stage. If she fell asleep now, her core temperature would plummet. “Zoe! Do not sleep! Do you hear me? Stand up! Jump! Jump as hard as you can!” There was an agonizing silence on the other end. “Mommy… I can’t jump. My legs won’t move.” I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t just sit here and watch her die. My college roommate, Tara, lived back home, maybe twenty minutes from the Southside Funeral Home. I dialed her number. It rang four times. “Hello? Who’s calling this late?” she mumbled, thick with sleep. “Tara! It’s Grace! My daughter is locked inside the cold storage at Southside Funeral Home! She’s freezing to death! You’re the only person who can get there in under half an hour!” “The funeral home?” “Please, Tara! I’m begging you!” “Send me the address,” she said, her voice instantly sharp and sober. “I’m walking out the door right now.” I fired over the pinned location, kicked my bare feet into a pair of slip-ons, and bolted from my hotel room. No socks, no luggage. Just my phone and the rental car keys. That was all I needed. I couldn’t wait for the sluggish hotel elevator. I hit the heavy fire door and sprinted down the concrete stairs, throwing myself down twelve flights. At a landing, my elbow slammed into the steel railing, sending a sickening jolt of pain through my ribs, turning my vision black for a split second. I didn’t stop. I reached the parking garage, threw myself into the driver’s seat, and fired up the engine. My phone buzzed with an automated alert from Zoe’s watch. Wearer’s current core temperature: 95.7°F. Normal is 97.7°F to 98.6°F. My daughter was growing colder, degree by degree, right before my eyes. I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal, the tires screaming as the rental car tore up the exit ramp of the hotel parking lot. Less than three hours until organ failure. I was hitting over a hundred miles an hour on the dark interstate, the highway completely empty except for my headlights slicing through the black. Steering with my left hand, I used my right to frantically scroll through private charter apps on my phone. On the fourth service, a listing popped up: a small private propeller plane, on-call for emergency night dispatches, capable of taking off in an hour. Four thousand dollars. My fingers shook so hard I messed up the payment passcode three times before it cleared. Approved. Transaction successful. The watch call line clicked back open. Zoe was singing. “Twinkle… twinkle… little… star…” Each syllable was separated by an agonizing, shallow gasp. She didn’t have enough air. She was dragging the words out, pushing them past frozen lips. I bit down on my own lip, breaking the skin, the copper taste of blood filling my mouth. She stopped halfway through the verse. “Mommy… I can’t sing anymore. My mouth is hard. I can’t open it.” Her lips were stiffening. Hypothermic muscle rigidity. “Baby, listen to Mommy,” I sobbed, pressing harder on the gas. “Stand up. Clap your hands. Clap them really hard! If you make a loud noise, Mommy will buy you that singing bunny you wanted. The big white one.” “I can’t… my fingers aren’t listening to me…” I floored the accelerator, pushing the rental car to its absolute limit. My phone screen lit up with a voice note from my boss. His voice exploded through the car speakers. “Grace, the contract signing with the North Star Group is at eight tomorrow morning. You are the lead coordinator on this. I don’t care what kind of family emergency you have going on with your kid; you need to be in that boardroom. If you aren’t, the fifty-thousand-dollar breach-of-contract fee is coming straight out of your salary.” I held down his contact name and hit block. Fifty thousand dollars. My daughter was freezing to death in a room full of corpses, unable to even open her mouth, and they wanted to talk to me about fifty thousand dollars. The phone buzzed again. It was the 911 dispatcher transferring me to an officer on the scene. “Are you there?!” I yelled. The officer’s voice sounded young, hesitant. “Mrs. Evans, we’ve arrived at the funeral home. We’re in the main chapel right now with a Mrs. Melanie Evans. She’s keeping vigil, and there is a young girl next to her in a pink puffer coat who says she’s sitting with her father.” “That is not my daughter! That’s her own daughter! Ask that child what her name is!” Through the receiver, I heard the officer murmuring a question, followed by a sweet, high-pitched little girl’s voice. “My name is Lexi.” “Did you hear that?!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “Her name is Lexi! Not Zoe! My daughter is in the cold storage! Building B, the very back room!” There was a pause, a long, agonizing silence. Then Melanie’s voice cut in—soft, tremulous, laced with fragile, performative tears. “Officer, please don’t listen to her. ‘Lexi’ is just Zoe’s nickname. Her biological mother has been trying to ruin my life ever since she divorced my husband. She’s calling in the middle of the night making up these horrible, crazy lies.” Her sob pitched higher, perfectly practiced. “My husband’s body isn’t even cold yet, and she’s still trying to torture us like this.” The veins in my temples pulsed with a stabbing heat. I gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked under my palms. “She is lying! Just walk over to Building B and open the door! One look! That’s all it takes!” “Mrs. Evans… look,” the officer said, clearly uncomfortable. “Mrs. Melanie Evans is the deceased’s legal spouse. She tells us the cold storage door lock is malfunctioning and won’t open until the morning facility manager arrives. Without a warrant or visual probable cause of an immediate threat inside that specific wing, we can’t legally force entry.” “So you’re just going to stand there and watch a six-year-old freeze to death?!” Silence met my question. “Mrs. Evans, we will keep trying to resolve this with the family. Just try to stay calm.” The line went dead. I slammed my fist against the steering wheel three times, my knuckles cracking against the hard plastic in dull, useless thuds. A notification popped up on my screen. It was a text from Melanie. It was a photo. Lexi was sitting on a plush, heated velvet sofa in the main chapel, wearing the exact pink puffer coat I had bought for Zoe just last week. She was holding a warm bowl of sweet dumplings, smiling brightly for the camera. The caption read: Lexi is being such a good girl keeping watch for her sister. She’s warm, full, and completely safe. You can stop worrying now. One child was eating warm food in a stolen coat. The other was barefoot, freezing in a dark room full of dead bodies, unable to even part her lips. My phone vibrated with a FaceTime call from Tara. “Grace! I’m here! But the funeral home gates are locked!” she yelled, wind whipping into her microphone. “The security guard won’t open up. I told him there’s a kid freezing to death inside, but he says they don’t allow non-family members in after hours!” “Climb the fence!” I cried. “The east wall—there’s a low section near the trees. Climb over it!” Tara paused for a single beat. “Okay.” Over the speaker, I heard the frantic scraping of her shoes against brick, the metallic clatter of her hands grabbing the iron bars, and the sharp tear of fabric as her jacket caught on a spike. Then, a heavy thud. Tara gasped, sucking in air through her teeth. “I’m over. I’m running toward Building B.” Her footsteps were rapid, her breathing growing heavier and shallower through the line. Then, she stopped. “I’m here. It’s a low, gray brick building. The door is heavy iron, and there’s a massive padlock on the outside.” “Put your ear to the door!” A long, excruciating silence stretched over the connection. My hands on the wheel were slick with sweat, slipping against the leather. Then, Tara’s voice cracked. “I hear her. It’s incredibly faint… like a tiny whimper. Grace, she’s still breathing!” “Break it! Find a brick! Smash the lock!” The sound of a heavy brick slamming against steel echoed through the speaker. Clang. “It’s not working!” Tara panted. “It’s an industrial-grade lock! The brick shattered and the lock didn’t even scratch! My hand is bleeding, Grace. I can’t break it!” “Do it again!” Suddenly, the smashing stopped. There was a confusion of voices, the sweep of flashlights, and heavy, approaching footsteps. Melanie’s voice cut through the dark like a blade. “That’s her! She’s trespassing! What the hell are we paying security for?!” The sounds of scuffling and dragging filled my phone. Tara was struggling. “Let go of me! There’s a little girl in there!” A man’s gruff voice roared over her. “Get back! You keep making trouble and we’ll have you arrested!” “Get her out of here! Drag her out!” The call disconnected. I dialed back frantically, but it went straight to voicemail. A minute later, my phone rang. It was Tara, breathing hard, her voice tight with pain. “Grace… they threw me out. Four guys. They literally tossed me over the wall.” She paused, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.” “It’s not your fault,” I said, my voice eerily calm as adrenaline took over. “Call the police again. Tell them it’s unlawful imprisonment of a minor. Tell them you’re a witness and you heard her crying inside.” “I’m on it.” 4:10 AM. The private charter terminal. The small propeller plane sat on the dark tarmac. The pilot, a weathered man in his fifties, was running through his pre-flight checklist. “We need about twenty more minutes,” he said without looking up. “Make it ten. I’ll pay you an extra thousand dollars.” He paused, turning to look at me. He took in my tear-stained face, my bare, dirty feet, and my dust-covered clothes. He didn’t say a word. He just turned back and doubled his speed. My phone vibrated. I swiped and connected to Zoe’s watch. There was a sound on the other end. A tiny, incredibly weak breath. Slow. Shallow. The pauses between each gasp were terrifyingly long. “Zoe!” No answer. I screamed her name five, six times. Finally, there was a tiny rustle. “Mommy… Daddy is here. He’s telling me… to go to sleep with him. I’m so sleepy.” Her father had died three days ago. His body was sitting in one of those very freezer units. My six-year-old daughter was hallucinating her dead father telling her to go to sleep. “Zoe, listen to Mommy! You cannot sleep! Stand up! Jump!” No response. Her breathing was fading into a whisper. An automated alert popped up on my screen. Wearer’s temperature: 94.6°F. It was dropping again. “Zoe! Answer me! Please!” Nothing but a freezing, dead silence. The pilot called for boarding. The cabin door sealed shut, and my phone signal began to flicker—one bar, then half a bar. I made my first call to my brother, Jack. “Jack, I’m landing at 5:30. Pick me up. We’re going straight to the Southside Funeral Home.” He didn’t ask a single question. “I’m already in the car.” My second call was to my attorney, Robert. “Every recording, screenshot, and call log is synced to the cloud drive. If anything happens to my daughter, I want you to sue her. Sue her for everything she has. Destroy her.” “Grace, she’s going to be okay. Hang in there—” The signal cut out. The connection to Zoe’s watch severed. At thirty thousand feet, the world below was a vast sheet of black. I didn’t know if Zoe was still breathing. I didn’t know if her temperature had fallen past ninety-four. I didn’t know if she had closed her eyes and drifted off with her father. I knew nothing. I could do nothing. I sat in the dim cabin, clutching my dead phone, feeling every passing second tear away a piece of my soul. 5:28 AM. The tires screeched against the tarmac. The moment the plane touched down, my phone vibrated constantly as a flood of notifications poured in. Twelve missed calls from Tara. Three voice notes. The first one: “The police came back! Melanie is wearing full mourning black, crying and holding Lexi in the chapel! She’s telling everyone you’re completely unstable and making up stories!” The police had been fooled again. The second one: “I begged them to just check Building B! But her brother-in-law rushed in and accused me of trespassing again! He shoved me twice!” The third one, her voice hoarse and broken: “I tried everything I could, Grace. I’m so sorry.” A voice message from Melanie, sent forty-two minutes ago: “You’re still up in the air, aren’t you, Grace? By the time you get here, the sun will already be up.” And the final notification from Zoe’s watch, stamped forty minutes ago: Wearer’s temperature: 93.2°F. Heart rate: 48 bpm. A healthy six-year-old’s heart rate should be between eighty and one hundred and thirty. I threw open the cabin door and sprinted down the metal stairs into the freezing dawn. Jack’s truck was idling just outside the tarmac gate, exhaust pluming into the cold air. I yanked the door open and threw myself into the passenger seat. He took one look at me, asked nothing, and slammed his foot on the gas. The truck launched into the heavy morning fog. We were thirty minutes away from the funeral home. Zoe had been locked inside for over four hours. Jack drove like a man on a rescue mission. He didn’t slow down for the curves. When an oncoming semi blared its horn and flashed its high beams, he didn’t even blink, jerking the wheel to clip the edge of the shoulder and blast past. I gripped the door handle, my knuckles turning white against the plastic, my eyes glued to the GPS. 2 miles. 1.7 miles. “Jack, faster,” I whispered. He didn’t reply. The speedometer climbed from seventy-five to ninety. 6:05 AM. The heavy iron gates of the Southside Funeral Home loomed out of the morning fog. They were chained shut. Before I could even speak, Jack floored it. The front bumper plowed directly into the iron gate. A deafening screech of tearing metal echoed down the empty street as the gates were ripped from their hinges, dragging beneath the truck in a shower of sparks. He slammed on the brakes in front of Building B. I threw the door open and bolted toward the heavy iron entrance. Four people stood in our way. Melanie, her massive brother-in-law, her cousin, and a funeral home custodian. Melanie stood with her arms crossed, blocking the doorway. A brief flash of panic crossed her face, quickly replaced by a sneer of pure malice. “Are you out of your mind, Grace?! That’s public property you just destroyed! I’ve already called the cops! You’re going to jail!” I didn’t even look at her. My gaze cut past her shoulder, pinning itself to the iron door behind her. My daughter was behind that door. 93.2 degrees. 48 beats per minute. I took a step forward. Melanie’s brother-in-law, a massive guy over six-foot-two and easily two hundred and fifty pounds, stepped in front of me, spreading his thick arms. “You need to back off—” Before he could finish, Jack’s hand clamped onto the back of his neck. He hoisted the giant off his feet and threw him like a sack of concrete directly into the brick planters. Terracotta pots shattered everywhere. “Get out of our way,” Jack growled. Melanie shrieked and lunged at me, her long nails scraping across my neck, leaving three burning welts. I grabbed her wrist and threw her aside with everything I had. “Get off me!” She slammed against the brick wall and slid to the ground, howling. Her cousin took a half-step forward, but Jack gave him a single cold look, and the cousin instantly stepped back. The first door was secured with a heavy steel chain wrapped through the handles, held together by an industrial padlock. I spotted a metal emergency tool box on the wall. I tore it open with my bare hands, the sharp metal edge slicing deep into the meat of my palm. I barely felt it as blood welled up. I grabbed the heavy bolt cutters, clamping them onto the chain. I threw all my weight into the handles. Jack joined me, pressing down with his massive strength. The cuts on my hand split further, blood dripping down the cold steel. With a loud crack, a link snapped. I ripped the chains away and yanked the doors open. Behind us, Melanie was screaming. “This is breaking and entering! I’m suing you! I’m sending you both to prison!” The corridor inside was dark and freezing, the sharp stench of formaldehyde filling my throat. We ran. At the end of the hall stood the second door, secured with an electronic keypad lock. I grabbed the handle and pulled, but it didn’t budge. Jack raised the bolt cutters and slammed them into the control panel. Sparks flew as the LCD screen shattered, a shrill error alarm blaring incessantly, but the latch remained locked. We shoved the tip of the cutters into the gap between the door and the frame. We pried together, sweat and blood dripping onto the concrete floor. With a sickening screech, the frame gave way. We gave one final, desperate heave, tearing the aluminum casing out of the drywall. The door sagged open. We pushed through. The cold storage room. Two rows of stainless steel body drawers lined the walls, illuminated by the sickly green glow of emergency lights. At the far end was the third door. It was a heavy, walk-in freezer door, and an iron bar had been slid horizontally through the handle, jamming it tightly from the outside. I threw myself at it, pulling frantically, but my hands were covered in slick blood, slipping off the cold iron. Jack wedged the bolt cutters under the edge of the bar, hammering and prying. We took turns, pulling and slamming with raw, desperate fury until the bar finally began to budge. With a sharp clack, the bar popped free. I grabbed the round metal wheel handle and spun it—once, twice, three times. The seal broke with a heavy hiss, and the freezer door swung open. A wave of forty-degree air rolled over us. The lights inside were off. On either side, some of the body drawers were partially open, the white corners of body bags peeking out from the shadows. I ran inside, my eyes scanning the dark corners. Zoe was curled up on the concrete floor in the very back, wedged between two of the freezer units. She was barefoot, her thin summer dress covered in grey dust and stains. Her face was a ghostly, translucent white. Her lips were a dark, bruised blue, and a delicate layer of frost clung to her eyelashes. Her fingertips were completely purple. She wasn’t moving. I fell to my knees on the icy floor, scooping her up into my arms. She felt so light. Weightless. And cold—a deep, radiating cold that seemed to come from her very bones. I pressed my palm against her cheek. There was no warmth there. None. “Zoe! Zoe, wake up! Mommy’s here! I’m right here!” No response. I pressed my ear against her chest. My own heartbeat was roaring in my ears, so I held my breath, straining to hear. One second. Two seconds. Three. Then, a tiny, sluggish thump. Her heart was beating. It was agonizingly slow, but it was there. I ripped off my heavy winter coat, wrapped her in it, and stood up, running toward the exit. “Call 911!” I screamed at Jack. “Now!”

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