Category: English

My eighteenth attempt at a wedding with my fiancé, and once again, my adoptive sister stole everyone away. My parents called, their voices a mixture of anxiety and impatience. “Molly’s stomach is acting up again. We’re taking her to the hospital. You handle the wedding. It’s been canceled so many times, you’re an old pro at this.” My maid of honor, my best friend since childhood, just clicked her tongue. “Is your wedding really more important than Molly’s health? She was in so much pain she almost passed out, and you expect us to just ignore her? When did you become so cruel, Kara?” And my fiancé? He didn’t even bother to call. Just a text with five words: Wedding’s off. We’ll reschedule. We’ll reschedule. I repeated those words to myself over and over. He’d used those same five words to dismiss me seventeen times before. A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I was so done with this. “System.” “Sever my ties with all of them.” A familiar voice replied, “As you wish. All connections between you and the other characters have been severed.” “Countdown initiated. In 72 hours, they will lose everything they possess. Including their lives.” 1 As the system’s countdown began, I picked up the microphone and walked onto the stage, a sea of violet—Molly’s favorite flower. How fitting for my wedding. “I apologize, everyone. Today’s wedding is canceled.” The guests exchanged glances, but no one seemed surprised. “I knew it,” one woman whispered. “They’ve never managed to actually go through with one. If I were Kara Fairley, I’d be too embarrassed to even show my face.” “The whole family dotes on the younger one. If I were her, I’d just let my sister have him. At least she’d get a reputation for being generous instead of being the laughingstock of the city.” “You don’t get it,” another chimed in. “This one’s not to be messed with. Every time Mr. Vance refused her, his company’s stock would tank the next day. He lost millions before he finally agreed to stay with her.” I walked away under a cloud of pitying stares, a sarcastic smile playing on my lips. This time, it was going to be more than just a stock dip. I changed out of my wedding dress and went back to the Fairley mansion to pack a few things. As I was about to leave, the front door opened, and the whole laughing, smiling group walked in, gathered around Molly. The moment they saw me, the smiles vanished. Liam Vance’s eyes flashed with anger. “Kara, if you were going to cancel the wedding, why didn’t you explain it properly? Now everyone is going to assume it was because of Molly again.” My father’s voice was a sharp command. “Kara, your handling of this was abysmal. In the past, you’ve managed the PR for these cancellations flawlessly. You’ve disappointed me. Go and release a statement immediately. Say it was because of your own selfish whim.” My best friend, Chloe, whipped out her phone. “I’ll have my agent contact the media. If Kara posts a statement now, we can still control the narrative. We’ll hire some online trolls to attack her, and no one will suspect Molly…” I didn’t respond to their accusations. I just watched the countdown timer in my mind. Two days and eighteen hours. Then, they would be finished. “Kara, are you deaf? Let me be clear. If you don’t fix this, I can’t promise you when the next wedding will be.” Liam stepped in front of me, his voice dripping with impatience. Finally, Molly spoke, her voice soft and frail. “It’s all my fault. I ruined your wedding, Kara. I’m so sorry.” “There are still other good days this month. You two shouldn’t postpone it any longer…” She broke off, coughing weakly. Liam rushed to her side, rubbing her back. “It’s not your fault, don’t even think that. Your sister will never leave me. It doesn’t matter when we get married.” “You’ve got that wrong,” I said, my voice cold. It was the first thing I had said. They all stared at me, stunned. I held up my duffel bag. “I’m leaving.” The words had barely left my mouth when a sharp crack echoed through the living room. 2 I turned my head to the side, a bitter laugh escaping me. My mother’s hand was still trembling with rage. “How dare you cause a scene?! We’ve spoiled you rotten all these years, and this is what you’ve become? So selfish and arrogant?” “And you’re leaving? Where will you go? Are you trying to make this a city-wide scandal, to make everyone think we favor Molly, that we’re cruel to you? Kara, when will you ever learn to be considerate? How could I have a daughter like you? You’re not even half the woman Molly is!” The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I licked my lips. Yes, in the past, I would have thrown a fit. Because I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why, when Molly was the one who broke our father’s priceless antique, they blamed me. I didn’t understand why, even with security footage, they refused to believe I hadn’t pushed Molly down the stairs. Even buying flowers that triggered Molly’s allergies was seen as a deliberate act of cruelty. This wasn’t the first time my mother had hit me. The last time was just two days ago. Because I refused to let Molly wear my wedding dress. And then, she fainted. My mother shoved me, then took a pair of scissors and shredded the custom-made gown I had waited six months for. For Molly, my mother and I were practically at war. So, yes, I would cause a scene. I would make everyone see the injustice. But this time, I was done fighting. I am the Chosen One in this world. All the other characters can only gain their power and luck by being connected to me. The day after I was born, the nearly bankrupt Fairley Corporation suddenly struck gold, becoming the wealthiest family in the city. My father’s stage-two liver cancer miraculously vanished. My best friend, Chloe, grew more beautiful with each passing year of our friendship, eventually achieving her dream of becoming an award-winning actress, a superstar. As for Liam… He was a street vendor, hawking counterfeit goods. Chased by police, beaten by competitors. Until he saved me when I got lost in a night market. I fell for him instantly. From that day on, he founded his own brand, and every business venture he touched turned to gold, until the Vance Corporation was listed on the stock exchange. For over twenty years, they had all cherished me. Liam, especially, treated me like the most precious thing in the world. And through me, they all got everything they ever wanted. But then, Molly was brought into our family. And everything changed. My father’s voice was cold. “Someone, take her things. She’s not taking a single thing from this house with her.” “Kara, you can leave. But this time, no one is coming to coax you back. If you walk out that door, we will hold a press conference and disown you. You will no longer be our daughter!” They threw me out without so much as a change of clothes. Liam sighed and discreetly handed me a key. “You can stay at this apartment. Kara, we’re tired. We can’t keep playing these games with you.” “I wish the person I had saved that night was Molly.” I scoffed. “You can marry her now, then.” Liam sighed again, a weary sound. “There you go again. Kara, you know I promised to marry you. I won’t go back on my word.” “Molly is a sweet, innocent girl. I won’t have you speak of her so casually, as if she’s some kind of toy. Don’t let me hear you say that again.” He turned and walked back up the steps. I threw the key on the ground and was about to leave when Molly rushed out, grabbing my sleeve. “Don’t go, sister! I shouldn’t have wished for a life that wasn’t mine! I don’t deserve it!” “Don’t go. I’m the one who should leave. I’ll leave the Fairley family right now…” I knew what she was doing. So I just stood there, letting her cling to me and put on her show. But when I didn’t push her away like I usually did, she suddenly gasped for air and collapsed at my feet. “Molly!” “Call Dr. Chen! Molly, my daughter!” They all rushed over, surrounding her. Liam’s eyes were blazing as he grabbed me by the throat. “Kara, you dare to touch Molly again? Do you really think I won’t hurt you?!” I almost laughed. It was truly absurd. I hadn’t even touched her. And yet, here I was, the attacker. “Liam, I hope you all don’t regret this.” “Someone!” my father roared, pointing at me. “Lock her in the basement! It’s time for some family discipline!” 3 The damp, dark basement. This was my second time here. The first was still fresh in my memory. It was because I found Molly sneaking into Liam’s room in the middle of the night. I caught her red-handed, right there on his bed. But she cried and claimed she was sleepwalking, a result of some past trauma. She didn’t know why she had ended up in Liam’s room. She just said it felt… safe. She hadn’t meant to do it. My parents and Liam bought her story completely. Liam even told her, gently, that if she was ever scared, she could come to him anytime. At the time, I was more in love with Liam than ever. I wouldn’t even tolerate a female assistant near him. The entire executive floor was a no-woman’s-land. So I had slapped Molly across the face. And my parents had locked me in this basement. For seven days, with only a bowl of thin porridge each day. They only let me out when I was so weak from hunger that I agreed to apologize to Molly. This time, it was clear they had more in mind than just starving me. When my father came down with a rattan cane, Liam was with him. “According to the Fairley family rules, you should receive thirty lashes. But Molly feels sorry for you. She knelt and begged me to use the cane instead. The cane is not as severe as the whip, so you will receive fifty strokes.” Crack! The cane struck my back, and a red welt immediately rose on my skin. My father hit me a dozen times. The welts turned into open wounds. Each subsequent blow was a searing, agonizing pain. I remembered them saying Molly had begged for the cane. It must have been soaked in chili water. “Apologize to your sister!” “Are you going to apologize or not?!” My father grew more enraged with each unanswered demand. After fifty strokes, my entire back and arms were a mess of lacerations. The skin was torn and bleeding, trickles of blood running down my spine and pooling on the floor. I was numb with pain. I huddled in the corner, gasping for breath. My father threw the cane down and left. “Stubborn girl!” he spat as he walked out. Liam walked over and knelt beside me. “Molly prepared this medicine and these clothes for you. Kara, Molly has always been respectful to you. As her older sister, and as her future brother-in-law, we should take care of her. Why are you so petty? Why do you always assume the worst of her?” “When you’ve thought it through, apologize. Don’t make us angry again.” He shook out the clothes Molly had “prepared” for me. And thoughtfully draped them over my back. The moment the fabric touched my open wounds, it felt like I had been plunged into a vat of salt water. I curled into a ball, shaking with pain. “So dramatic. Molly is in agony every time she has one of her episodes, and she never makes a scene like you do.” Liam clicked his tongue and stood up, then left. It took me a long moment to catch my breath. “System…” “Host, would you like me to activate your pain shield?” “No. I want to accelerate the severance.” “Understood. Acceleration initiated. At noon tomorrow, all characters will experience the full backlash.”

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To make sure my daughter got a decent meal, I took a massive risk and snuck her into the company’s annual banquet. I never expected the big boss to decide to “dine with the commoners” and sit at our exact table. My daughter blinked her big, innocent eyes at the CEO. The CEO looked back at her. She turned her head, called me “Mommy,” and then stared incredibly seriously at the CEO. “This is Mommy. Why aren’t you calling her Mommy?” 1 Instantly, every single eye at the table was glued to me and the CEO. I frantically slapped my hand over her mouth, laughing awkwardly. “Kids say the darnedest things! So silly!” Penny yanked my hand away and pointed innocently at my two coworkers. “Auntie Maya and Uncle Leo call you Mommy too!” Maya and Leo were our newest interns. I noticed they were always eating sad desk salads or ordering takeout, so I invited them over for dinner a few times. The two of them had been so overwhelmed with gratitude that they tearfully started calling me “Mommy.” I scooped Penny up in my arms and bolted. “Excuse us, she needs the restroom!” Penny struggled, trying to speak, but she was no match for my panicked adrenaline. I hauled her away. “Penelope, what did you promise me before we left the house?” I stood her against the wall, making her put her hands flat against her sides. I used my most serious Mom Voice. “Only eat, no talking,” she pouted, her lower lip sticking out as she immediately tried to act cute. “I’m sorry, Mommy! But I’m so hungry.” “When we go back, absolutely no talking!” I lightly tugged on her earlobe, and she dramatically winced and nodded. I had hoped the big boss would have moved to another table by the time we got back, but he was still sitting there. Seeing me return, my coworkers immediately tried to smooth things over, telling me the food was getting cold and urging me to eat. I was eating and keeping an eye on Penny when a piece of sweet and sour rib suddenly appeared on her plate. Before I could say thank you, Penny shrieked, “You didn’t use the serving chopsticks! That’s unsanitary!” Everyone’s heads snapped over, catching sight of the CEO’s chopsticks before he even had a chance to pull them back. Then, in perfect unison, everyone slammed their heads back down, pretending they had never looked up in the first place. The CEO coughed twice, picked the rib back up, grabbed the communal serving chopsticks, and placed a fresh piece on Penny’s plate. The little girl nodded in satisfaction. Then, using her own chopsticks, she dropped a piece of beef onto Liam Sterling’s plate. “Courtesy demands reciprocity.” It was like the two of them had initiated a localized automated protocol. They just kept going back and forth, serving each other food. I was incredibly embarrassed, but I also used the distraction to eat my weight in crab legs. I was very satisfied. Halfway through the banquet, Liam had to leave for another engagement. The moment he walked away, everyone at the table exhaled a massive sigh of relief. “Chloe, I swear my food wasn’t digesting while he was sitting here,” Leo groaned, watching Liam’s retreating back. “Me neither,” Maya quickly agreed. “I was too scared to even chew.” I looked over at little Penny, who was happily munching on a shrimp, and couldn’t help but give her a thumbs-up. 2 It was very late by the time we got home. Penny had run wild all day, so she crashed the second her head hit the pillow. I took a shower, crawled into bed, and my phone lit up. I opened my texts and saw a two-word message from a specific contact: [Come over.] After double-checking that Penny was dead asleep, I went next door. Before I even had a chance to scan my fingerprint, the door swung open from the inside. A pair of strong, muscular arms pulled me in and pinned me against the wall in the entryway. He gripped my waist, gently rubbing his nose against mine, and pecked my lips playfully. “Mommy?” My face turned burning red. “Kids don’t know what they’re saying.” He let out a low chuckle, raising an eyebrow as if considering the thought. “Well, she’s not entirely wrong.” Then he suddenly scooped me into his arms. By the time I opened my eyes again, it was 8:00 AM. I panicked, frantically throwing on my clothes, terrified that Penny would wake up and freak out when she couldn’t find me. Liam leaned back against the headboard. “I already had someone go over to your place.” “Who?” I asked. He frowned. “That kid you adopted at the office.” A second later, my phone rang. Maya’s voice came through the speaker: “Chloe! Penny is still asleep. Don’t worry about your business trip, I’ll watch her!” Knowing someone was with Penny, I let out a massive sigh of relief and slowed down my frantic dressing. Liam hugged me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. “Since you’re awake, let’s get some exercise.” Liam was flying out for a business trip at noon. Before he left for the airport, he had someone deliver a massive order of steamed pork ribs to my apartment. It was my absolute favorite dish, and also Penny’s favorite. The clock on the wall hit 6:00 PM. I brought the ribs home and called Penny and Maya to the table for dinner. Last night was a rare exception; Liam almost never let me stay the night. We kept our relationship perfectly hidden. He was the untouchable CEO; I was an invisible assistant in the secretarial pool. He was going to be gone for three months this time. I felt an unprecedented wave of relief. On the first of every month, he wired money to my account. This time, he sent six months’ worth upfront. I took that money and took Penny to the fancy buffet she had been begging to go to. Liam had never treated me poorly, but I knew the day would eventually come when he got bored of me. When that day arrived, I would take Penny and leave San Francisco to move back to my hometown in the Midwest. It wasn’t as glamorous as SF, but the schools were decent, and more importantly, I wouldn’t have to live in constant fear of being discovered. I was incredibly thankful that Penny looked exactly like me. There wasn’t a trace of Liam in her features. But as she got older, some of her little mannerisms were becoming terrifyingly similar to his. It was starting to make me anxious. 3 Getting pregnant with Penny was a complete accident. Six years ago, I was a brand-new hire. The senior executive assistant had to travel, so I was temporarily assigned to accompany Liam to meet a client. It turned out someone had slipped something into his drink. I had just graduated. My grandmother was critically ill and needed surgery we couldn’t afford. In a moment of absolute desperation, I gritted my teeth, got into his bed, and planned to use it to blackmail him for the surgery money. But before I even had the chance to demand the hush money, the hospital called. My grandmother was failing. I dragged my exhausted body to the hospital, but I was too late. I didn’t have a dime. I couldn’t even afford to decide where she would be buried. Eventually, my relatives scraped together enough money to buy a plot in a public cemetery back in our hometown. Three days later, I went back to the office. The senior assistant had heard about my grandmother and told me to just go with the flow and try to live in the present. I forced a smile and nodded, even though I had my resignation letter drafted and ready to send. After what I did, being fired was the best-case scenario. I could have gone to jail. But what I expected didn’t happen. Instead, the company transferred me to the Austin branch “for professional development.” I was terrified, asking around to find out why I was being shipped off. The senior assistant just smiled and told me it was a good opportunity and not to worry. It wasn’t until later that I found out the person who actually drugged Liam was the head of the Austin branch. That woman threatened to jump off the building if Liam didn’t marry her. Liam immediately called her parents. To apologize and sweep it under the rug, her parents handed over a massive piece of commercial real estate to Liam’s company. “She’s been obsessed with Mr. Sterling forever,” a coworker gossiped. “She’s the daughter of a family friend. She used to work here at HQ, but they transferred her to Austin.” “Did you know about her and Mr. Sterling?” The coworker winked at me and started spilling all the colorful details… I was shocked. Did another girl go into his room after I left? “Weren’t there security cameras?” I asked, pretending to be casually curious. “Please, the princess planned it perfectly. She had the hallway cameras shut off in advance. If Mr. Sterling hadn’t played hardball, we probably would have all been invited to their wedding by now,” another older coworker chimed in knowingly. I let out a long exhale. I could finally tear up my resignation letter. “You lucked out,” someone else joked. “The Austin branch is smaller, but there’s plenty of money to be made there.” I just smiled and didn’t say anything. Not long after I got to Austin, I realized I was pregnant. My first instinct was to get an abortion. But I was so desperate for family. So desperate for a companion. After agonizing over it, I decided to keep the baby. Looking back, I was actually incredibly lucky. Just a few days after I found out I was pregnant, another coworker was transferred from HQ to Austin. They ended up taking on a lot of my workload. By the time I was transferred back to HQ, Penny was already learning how to talk. Everyone at the main office was shocked that I came back with a toddler. I fabricated a tragic story about getting engaged in Austin, but my fiancé dying in a car crash. Everyone was so sympathetic, telling me that having a child meant having a piece of him to hold onto. I forced a bitter smile and agreed. As for Liam and me… he was the one who approached me. He said we were both adults with physical needs. Since I already had a child, he knew I wouldn’t cling to him with unrealistic expectations like the younger girls. He also offered to move me into a much nicer, more secure building, and give me a generous monthly allowance. I just stared at his eyes, completely dumbfounded. “Does Ms. Vance feel the compensation is too low?” he asked. It wasn’t just “not low.” It was more than enough for Penny and me to live very comfortably. “It’s not low,” I replied, giving an honest assessment. He let out a low chuckle. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you get the short end of the stick.” 4 Liam texted me saying he wanted home-cooked food. The moment I saw the message, a wave of intense irritation washed over me. I had promised to steam fish for Penny tonight. I couldn’t just drop everything and go to his place. He usually didn’t ask to see me the day he got back from a business trip. This sudden ambush really annoyed me. Not long after I sent a text rejecting him, the doorbell rang. Penny cheered and ran to the door, chanting, “Penny’s boba! Penny’s boba!” I didn’t want her opening the door alone, so I followed her. I was absolutely stunned to see Liam standing in my entryway, looking like he had just stepped off a plane. “Mommy, we don’t have shoes for him,” Penny frowned, looking up at me. I was so caught off guard by his sudden appearance that the only thing I could do was hand him Leo’s extra pair of guest slippers. “Those are Uncle Leo’s,” Penny pouted. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy will buy Uncle Leo new ones,” I said, crouching down to hold her little hands. Suddenly, I felt an intense, burning gaze sweeping over me. I looked down and realized I had completely forgotten I was only wearing a thin silk camisole. While I was standing there panicking, the doorbell rang again. Liam smoothly opened the door and took a beige insulated bag from the delivery driver. “Penny’s boba!” Penny shrieked happily, reaching up with both hands to grab the bag from Liam. Liam kicked off his shoes—pointedly avoiding Leo’s slippers—and walked into my living room in his socks, holding the bag in one hand and putting the other in his pocket. Penny followed right behind him like an eager little puppy. He slowly and methodically pulled the boba cup out, poked the straw through the lid, and gestured for Penny to hold the cup with both hands. The little girl’s eyes were glued to the boba. She obeyed his every command. When she finally got her hands on it, she took a massive gulp and let out a very satisfied sigh. “Mommy, can I drink my boba and play on my iPad?” Her eyes screamed, Please do not say no to me. I nodded, and she bolted toward her bedroom with the boba. Once her door clicked shut, I finally had a second to deal with Liam. For once, I didn’t call him “Mr. Sterling.” I said, “Liam, why are you at my house?” He casually grabbed the second cup of boba from the bag and took a sip. “Too sweet.” Then he walked over to the entryway and dragged his carry-on suitcase inside. “I want to take a shower.” He said it so casually, like it was his own house. I did something incredibly childish and tried to physically push him out the door. Instead, I ended up trapped in his arms. “Be a good girl. Raising a kid takes a lot of money.” Liam’s tone was light, but there wasn’t a trace of a smile in his eyes. “Doesn’t it?” His words hit me like a slap to the face, waking me up immediately. Just because he had been a little accommodating lately, I had completely forgotten that I held zero leverage in this dynamic. I was getting arrogant. “Good girl. I’m going to shower,” he said, releasing me with a slow, leisurely smile. With an extra adult in the house, I grabbed some more vegetables from the fridge. I kept chopping and prepping, but my mind was a million miles away. I had changed out of the silk cami into a standard, practical cotton pajama set. Suddenly, a pair of slightly damp arms wrapped around my waist, and wet hair tickled my ear. “I’ve never seen you wear pajamas like this,” Liam whispered in my ear. 5 To keep him happy, I always made sure to wear sexy lingerie or silk nightgowns around him. This was the first time I was letting him see the domestic, everyday version of me. “Mommy!” Penny’s voice was getting closer. Liam released me like he had been electrocuted, instantly putting distance between us. “Did you finish it?” I asked. “No.” Penny always dragged out her syllables when she talked. “Mommy said I could only have a little bit, so Penny only drank a little bit.” “You’re so good.” I wiped my hands on my apron and patted her little head. “Can you go look at your picture books for a little while? Dinner will be ready soon!” Now that the sugar rush was settling down, Penny suddenly became very interested in Liam. “Mommy, who is he?” I glanced at Liam, completely freezing up. “I’m your mommy’s coworker,” Liam said, crouching down to her eye level. “Do you know what a coworker is?” “I know! Like Uncle Leo and Auntie Maya!” Penny looked incredibly proud of herself, clearly waiting for a compliment. “Not exactly the same.” Liam was about to keep talking, but I quickly cut him off. “Penny, ask the nice man to read you a storybook!” The second I said it, I realized how impulsive it was. I looked at him nervously, and sure enough, his brow was slightly furrowed. I tried to backpedal immediately. “Mr. Sterling, if it’s too much trouble…” “Let’s go,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’ve read to my friends’ kids before.” I let out a long sigh of relief, but a sudden wave of sadness hit me. This was the first time Penny was ever spending time with her father. 6 After dinner, Liam dragged me back to his place. Even though we had been intimate countless times, being alone with him still made me incredibly nervous. “How old is your daughter?” he asked. “Four,” I lied, shaving a year off. “Was it a C-section?” Liam asked. My hand instinctively reached toward my C-section scar, but he beat me to it. My hand ended up covering his. Our hands had intertwined a million times before. Whenever passion overwhelmed us, I would cling to him like a lifeline, his palms always radiating intense heat. He flipped his hand over and gripped mine tightly. “Did it hurt?” I forced myself to stay calm, terrified of what he was getting at. Did he somehow know? “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. But since he’s gone, I wanted to have a piece of him left in this world.” I dragged out my fabricated dead fiancé to use as a shield. Liam squeezed my hand harder. “You two must have been very much in love.” I couldn’t read the emotion in his voice, but the crushing grip on my hand made it very clear he was not happy. “I don’t like talking about the past,” I said, pulling away from his embrace. “I have to go. I can’t leave Penny home alone.” He didn’t say anything. He just leaned back against the headboard. The warm yellow light from the lamp spilled over him. I couldn’t clearly see his face, but I knew he wasn’t going to ask me to stay. The first thing I did when I got home was check on Penny. I loved staring at her face while she slept. People always say daughters look like their fathers. I was terrified of seeing Liam’s reflection in her face. Thankfully, she still had her baby fat. Forget looking like anyone specific, she just looked like a generic toddler. If you tossed her into a room full of kids, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to spot her right away. But tonight, seeing the two of them sitting next to each other at the dinner table… those subtle micro-expressions, the identical little habits… I closed my eyes, too scared to even think about it. Women are emotional creatures. Even though I had zero feelings for Liam when this started, things were different now. I felt like I was falling for him. I even had this insane, reckless urge to just tell him the truth—that Penny was his biological daughter. But then what? Would Liam even want her? And even if he did want Penny, would he want me? I stubbed out my cigarette, hid the pack back in its secret spot, and let the smoke drift out into the night air. I opened the balcony window, and the freezing wind slapped me in the face, waking me up completely. It was time to end this. 7 Some busybody posted the photos of Liam and Penny interacting at the banquet into the company group chat. [Do you guys think Chloe’s kid might actually be Mr. Sterling’s…] They didn’t finish the sentence, but… everyone knew exactly what they were implying. [No way. Chloe is way too plain. She’s not Mr. Sterling’s type at all.] [You guys need to stop gossiping. Chloe’s fiancé died in a car crash. The baby was born after he died.] An older coworker jumped in to defend me. [You guys need to watch your mouths. Little Penny already doesn’t have a dad, and now you’re making up disgusting rumors about her mom!] [Careful what you type…] More and more coworkers started taking my side. “These people are unbelievable,” Maya was even angrier than I was. “Penny looks nothing like the CEO.” “Penny is so adorable!” Leo huffed indignantly. “Mr. Sterling is nowhere near as likable as Penny.” The second the words left Leo’s mouth, Mr. Sterling coughed twice right behind him. There was a very important client standing next to him, desperately trying not to laugh. “Our CEO is a natural-born king,” Leo said without missing a beat, not breaking eye contact with his monitor. “We wouldn’t dare ‘like’ him. We only gaze upon him in awe from a distance.” Then, he turned around with a perfectly feigned look of surprise. “Oh! Mr. Sterling! You’re here!” Liam gave him a long, dark look before striding away. “I almost died,” Leo slumped against Maya’s desk. “How does the CEO walk without making a sound?” “Maya, can you please take this file to Mr. Sterling’s office for me?” Leo begged, looking at her with puppy dog eyes. “You’re scared? I’m scared too!” Maya shoved him away. “Get off me, stop trying to use me as a shield.” Leo turned his desperate, pleading eyes to me. With no other choice, I—the woman currently at the center of the company’s biggest scandal—had to step into the line of fire. “Liam, is that really your daughter?” “Do you actually believe that?” Before I even had a chance to knock, their conversation drifted out of the partially open door. “If she is, that’s great,” the client said. “Daughters are sweet.” “I don’t like kids,” Liam’s voice was freezing cold. “Especially fragile, whiny little girls. I can’t handle them.” I stood outside the door, the blood draining from my face. So he absolutely hated kids. Then why the hell did he read Penny a storybook? Forcing myself to stay calm, I knocked on the door. “Mr. Sterling, I have a contract that needs your signature.” “Come in.” He took the contract from my hands, signed it, and handed it back. “Ms. Vance.” “Do not bring your child to the office again. “Your salary is more than generous. You do not need to bring your child to company events just to get a free meal.” He handed me the signed contract without looking at me once. “I apologize, Mr. Sterling. It won’t happen again,” I said, keeping my face perfectly neutral, apologizing instantly. “Liam, you’re being too harsh,” the client chuckled. I shot the client a grateful look and quickly escaped that suffocating room.

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1 After the “real” daughter of the family snatched my fiancé, I decided I was done playing by the rules. I did the one thing I could: I got him into my bed, and then I ran. He may have been a rebellious disaster, but he was unfairly handsome. So I made a choice. I kept the premium-grade souvenir of our night together. Jax Walker was furious, swearing that when he found me, he’d make my life a living hell. I spent five years in hiding, my heart pounding every time I heard his name. Until one day, I went to pick up my son from school. A huge crowd was gathered at the gate, buzzing about a fight. My eyes lit up. I eagerly pushed my way through the crowd, ready for some good, old-fashioned drama. And there they were, in the open space by the school entrance, two figures locked in a clumsy brawl. The taller one wore a black trench coat, his back as straight and unyielding as a pine tree. His movements were sharp, efficient. The shorter one was in a primary school uniform, his little legs pumping like pistons. His fists were small, but every punch was aimed at a vital spot. I rubbed my eyes, staring at the two of them—one a carbon copy of the other, just shrunk down. My world tilted on its axis. What was wrong with these two? How could a father and son who had never met before just start throwing punches? … Jax turned his head, deftly dodging my son’s fist. The corner of his eye twitched upward in a look of lazy, arrogant amusement. That face. It was the kind of face that haunted my nightmares. I took a deep breath. And another. And one more for good measure. And to think, Noah told me he was a model student. From the look of his practiced fighting stance, he seemed more like a seasoned brawler. That left hook had some serious power, the angle was vicious, and he even knew how to feint before landing a punch. A circle of parents had formed around them. Some were filming with their phones, others were cheering them on. “Whose kid is that? He’s got some moves!” “Go for the big guy! You got this, kiddo!” I covered my face, wishing the ground would swallow me whole. Noah planted his hands on his hips, his little chin jutted out. “Mister, you’re blocking my way.” Jax glanced down at him and scoffed. “You own the sidewalk, pipsqueak?” “It’s not mine, but you’re blocking the school gate. My friends can’t get out.” A laugh escaped Jax’s lips, a mix of annoyance and disbelief. “Who the hell is your mother? Raising a little tyrant like you.” I winced. The kid had inherited my temper and Jax’s in equal, disastrous measure. Everyone who knew us knew that when Jax and I met, sparks flew. And someone usually ended up bleeding. The day I found out I was the Sterling family’s switched-at-birth mistake, Jax was the first one to show up and gloat. “Well, well, Willow. Turns out you’re a fake. No wonder you have no class.” I lunged at him, sinking my teeth into his neck. He couldn’t push me off, no matter how hard he tried. I felt the coppery tang of blood seep between my teeth. He let out a muffled groan of pain, his eyes wide with disbelief. “What are you, some kind of animal?!” Only then did I release him, licking the blood from the corner of my mouth. I just never imagined he’d have the same effect on our son. Jax reached out, his fingers closing around the back of Noah’s neck. “Alright, let’s go find your parents. I have to see what kind of people are responsible for a little monster like you.” My throat tightened. It was time to run. But just then, a sharp voice cut through the air. His teacher, Ms. Davis, came storming over in her high heels, her face a mask of fury. “Excuse me, which class are you with? Are you bullying one of our students?” For a rare moment, Jax actually looked embarrassed. Before he could speak, a woman in a chic cream-colored coat emerged from the crowd. She gracefully looped her arm through Jax’s and offered Ms. Davis a practiced smile. “Hello, teacher. I am so sorry about this. Please forgive our intrusion.” “We’re investors in the school, and we were just passing by to see the campus. My fiancé isn’t always the best with children. If he’s offended your student, I apologize on his behalf.” She gave a slight bow, her posture a picture of elegance. Ms. Davis’s anger immediately deflated. “Oh, an investor. Well, even so, you can’t be getting into fights with students…” Isabelle, the real Sterling daughter, turned to Jax, her tone laced with a gentle scolding. “Jax, darling, really. Why are you arguing with a child?” I watched their linked arms, a cynical sound escaping my lips. After Isabelle was welcomed back into the family, she had made it her mission to take everything from me. “Jax is mine too, sister,” she had said. “Surely you’re not going to try and steal him from me as well?” I had trembled with rage. If she was going to accuse me of being a usurper, I might as well play the part to the hilt. That night, I got him roaring drunk, dragged him to bed, and was gone before sunrise. I tugged the brim of my hat lower. As long as no one recognized me, everything would be fine. But just then, the teacher’s voice rang out again, stopping me in my tracks. “Oh, Noah’s mom! There you are. I was just about to call you.” I froze. 2 Jax’s gaze was already sweeping in our direction. Ms. Davis walked over to me, holding Noah’s hand. “Noah and that gentleman had a little misunderstanding. I just wanted to fill you in…” I kept my back to Jax, my voice a low whisper. “I’m in a huge rush right now, something urgent came up. Can I call you back later?” Ms. Davis blinked, taking in my panicked expression, then glanced over my shoulder. “Well, but…” I mumbled a half-baked excuse, bent down, and swept Noah into my arms. He wrapped his arms around my neck, his face a picture of confusion. I turned and ducked into a nearby alley, rushing us home. As soon as I set him down, Noah looked up at me. “That man kept staring at you, Mommy. When you walked away, he watched you for a really long time.” I didn’t answer, moving to shut the door, but a hand shot out and held it open. Isabelle stood on my doorstep, a triumphant, phony smile on her face. “Sister. I knew it was you. It’s been a long time.” “Tsk, tsk. I can’t blame Jax for not recognizing you. You look nothing like the proud, arrogant Sterling heiress you used to be.” Noah peeked out from behind my leg, his little face tense as he glared at her. Isabelle noticed his gaze and looked down, her smile widening. “And whose little bastard is this?” I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck. “Are you done?” The smile on her face faltered for a second before she pulled a gold-embossed invitation from her purse. “Sister, tomorrow is my wedding to Jax. Mom and Dad said that, after all, you were their daughter for twenty years. Even if you’re not their blood, they’d still like you to be there.” She pressed the invitation into my hand and leaned in close to my ear. “By the way, I still have those drawings of yours.” My eyebrows shot up. Isabelle took a step back, her face a mask of perfect composure, but her eyes were cold and sharp. “You left in such a hurry. That manila envelope… there were about twenty of them, right? All from your high school days.” She tilted her head, her smile sickeningly sweet. “I heard you were supposed to go to art school. What a shame. It was me who convinced Mom and Dad to cut you off financially. A pity you couldn’t afford it.” “I’ve looked through those drawings a few times. They’re all rather… intimate sketches of Jax, aren’t they?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “What do you want? I’ve left the Sterling family. Can’t you just leave me alone after all these years?” She let out a delighted laugh. “Sister, you stole so many years of my life. This is just the beginning.” “If you come to the wedding on Saturday, I’ll return the drawings to you in person. If you don’t… well, then I’ll just have to display them for all the guests to see. Let everyone know just how disgusting you are.” A laugh burst out of me. “Great. Go ahead. Let the whole world see his nudes.” Isabelle froze, her face flushing a deep red. “You’re shameless!” I smiled, pulling out my phone and waggling it at her. “Oh, and if that’s not explosive enough for you, I’ve got more. From that night… you know. Want a private screening?” I had nothing, of course, but I was an expert at bluffing. Isabelle’s face turned ashen. “Willow, you’re despicable!” I tilted my head, my smile bright. “If you don’t show everyone my masterpieces, you’re a coward.” She was shaking with rage, pointing a finger at me, unable to form a word. “You were spoiled rotten by the Sterlings! Even after all these years on your own, you still haven’t learned any humility. Just you wait.” She shot me one last venomous glare, then spun on her heel and stormed off. I yelled after her, “I’ll be there tomorrow! You’re a coward if you don’t show them!” Noah poked his head out from behind the door. “Mommy, what did you draw?” I pinched his cheek. “Mommy is taking you to crash a wedding.” 3 The next day, I arrived at the old Sterling family estate as promised. Isabelle, draped in a wedding gown with a long train, found me in a corner where I was adjusting Noah’s little suit. “Sister, you came. Perfect. There’s something I need your help with.” I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her next move. She clapped her hands, and two security guards in black suits appeared behind her, grabbing my arms. “The kitchen is short-staffed today. The dishwasher called in sick. Since you’re not doing anything, you can go help out.” I frowned. “Isabelle, you invited me to your wedding just to make me wash dishes?” She looked me up and down, her gaze dripping with condescension. “It’s not hard work. Just washing some plates, mopping the floor. Surely you can handle that? You’re not the Sterling heiress who never lifted a finger anymore.” The guards started dragging me towards the kitchens. Noah rushed forward, clinging to my leg. “Don’t touch my mommy!” Isabelle gave one of the guards a look. He stepped forward, grabbed Noah by the collar, and lifted him away from me. “Isabelle!” I struggled, shouting. “Let go of my son!” “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him,” she said, adjusting her veil, her voice light and airy. “As soon as you’re done in the kitchen, I promise you’ll get your son back in one piece.” She paused, leaning close to my ear, her voice a low hiss. “Of course, that’s only if you do a good job. Break a single plate, and you and your son will be going home naked.” The guards shoved me into the kitchen and left me in front of a mountain of greasy plates. “You can leave when you’re finished.” The door was locked from the outside. I took a deep breath, rolled up my sleeves, and started scrubbing. I washed for nearly an hour, my hands pruned and white. Suddenly, I heard a commotion from the main hall. It was followed by Isabelle’s piercing shriek. “How is that possible? It was right on my hand! That diamond ring is worth five million dollars!” “Where could it have gone?!” A cold knot of dread formed in my stomach. A terrible premonition washed over me. I peeked through the crack in the door. The next thing I heard was Isabelle’s voice, thick with insinuation. “Just now… I think there was a child who was very close to me. He even bumped into me, and now my ring is gone.” Before her words had even faded, a guard emerged, holding Noah firmly. My son was still holding half a macaroon, his cheeks puffed out. He looked utterly bewildered by the sudden attention. “I didn’t do it!” “What are you doing? Let me go!” Noah began to struggle violently. Isabelle rushed over, her face a mask of fake apology. “I’m so sorry, little one.” “But this ring is extremely valuable. I simply can’t afford to lose it. I just want to check, to see if you have it on you. If you don’t, I’ll have them let you go immediately!” As every guest in the room watched, the ring was pulled from Noah’s pocket. A collective gasp went through the hall, followed by a wave of murmurs and disgusted looks from every direction. 4 A few of the society ladies close to the Sterling family were already frowning, pointing at Noah. “You can just tell he has no breeding, running around like a wild animal at an event like this.” “Where are his parents? When a child causes this much trouble, the parents need to be held accountable.” Noah’s face slowly turned crimson. He shouted, “I didn’t! I didn’t bump into her! And I didn’t take her ring!” But his small voice was lost in the sea of judgmental whispers. I pounded on the door, my palm stinging, but it wouldn’t budge. Just then, the police and venue security arrived. The evidence was undeniable, found in front of everyone. A police officer knelt down. “Son, where are your parents? Who told you to steal?” That question was like a needle, popping the balloon of Noah’s composure. He blinked, his eyelashes suddenly wet, but he fought back the tears. “I don’t know.” Isabelle clung to her mother, who had rushed to her side, sobbing dramatically. “Mom, that ring… it was a symbol of Jax’s love for me.” “This is the son my sister raised on the outside. We were kind enough to invite them to the wedding, and this is how they repay us, with their thieving hands.” The murmuring grew louder. “Oh, it’s her… the fake heiress…” “No wonder. A bastard raises a bastard. A family of thieves!” Noah bit his lip so hard it was a wonder it didn’t bleed, refusing to let a single tear fall. At that moment, a hush fell over the entrance to the hall as the crowd parted to form a path. Jax walked in, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit, his expression unreadable. Isabelle dried her tears, her voice becoming formal and business-like. “Officer, there’s one more thing.” She took her phone out of her clutch, pulled up a few photos, and handed it to the police. “These are drawings my sister made. The subject matter… they are all photos she secretly took of my fiancé, which she then used to create… those kinds of drawings.” She paused, a faint blush on her cheeks, as if the topic was too embarrassing to discuss. “My fiancé is Jax Walker, the heir to the Walker Corporation. These drawings are a serious violation of his privacy, and the content is incredibly… obscene.” The officer took the phone, his brow furrowed. “Where are these drawings now?” “They were in my possession. My sister came to the wedding today to demand them back. But I believe this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated. I intend to press charges.” She turned to Jax, her voice softening. “Right, Jax?” Jax finally looked up. He walked over to the police officer, and in one smooth motion, he lifted Noah into his arms. “I’m his father.” “And as for those pictures, I was the one who was barely dressed, trying to seduce her. I begged her to draw them.”

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On the day the San Francisco earthquake hit, Liam told me he had joined the hospital’s emergency response team and was leaving that very night. I calmly packed his suitcase for him. As he dragged it toward the front door, I stopped him and asked, “Do you think you really know me?” He looked back at me, frowning, clearly confused by the question. “Like… what’s my Myers-Briggs personality type?” I smiled faintly. “Never mind. Have a safe trip.” We had an appointment at City Hall this Thursday to get our marriage license. To make that happen, I had worked overtime for the better part of a month just so I could take a half-day off during the workweek. But after he derailed my plans time and time again, I realized our relationship had reached its absolute limit. 1 Perhaps because I hadn’t been an emotionally supportive girlfriend during this brief separation, Liam took the initiative to call me at 11:30 PM on Thursday. It sounded like he had belatedly realized today was the day we were supposed to get married. His voice was exhausted as he offered apologies. I stared at the blinking cursor on my Word document. I had been sitting there since 10:00 PM and had managed to type exactly two lines. Only other fiction writers understand the absolute agony of writer’s block. His phone call chased away a fleeting spark of inspiration in my brain. Just like every other time he broke a promise, it made me incredibly irritable. Naturally, my tone wasn’t great. “Yeah, I know. Get some sleep.” I was about to hang up when he quickly added, “The hospital will give me a few days off when I get back. We can go get the license then.” A person with good morals probably shouldn’t say something upsetting to a doctor who is risking his life to save earthquake victims. But I believed that dragging things out would only cause more pain. Since he wasn’t going to be part of my future plans, he shouldn’t be interrupting my present. My work was important to me, too. “I’m afraid that won’t work,” I rejected him coldly. “Liam, from now on, my reasons for taking time off have nothing to do with you.” “What does that mean?” He paused for a moment before asking. “It means we’re breaking up.” I sounded like I was reading a corporate memo. “We’ve had a lot of happy memories over the years, but regardless, I wish you all the best in the future.” I hung up, blocked his number, and deleted his contact. To make a clean break, I even unfriended him on Venmo. That weekend, I packed up everything that belonged to him and had it delivered to his old apartment. I changed the passcode on my front door, deleted his fingerprint access, and then unblocked his number just long enough to text him: When you get back from SF, go straight to your own apartment. Don’t come here. Then, I blocked him again. That night, Liam used a random phone number to call me. He patiently and gently apologized again. “Chloe, it was wrong of me to postpone getting our license without talking to you first. But I thought you would understand. I am a doctor first, and myself second.” “I know,” I replied, my fingers flying aggressively across my mechanical keyboard. “I genuinely praise and admire your decision to volunteer in the disaster zone. But if you think our problems are just because you postponed a piece of paper… Liam, you’re insulting my intelligence.” “If you’re going to keep acting oblivious, stop calling me. It does nothing but ruin my mood.” Before today, I was willing to speak to him politely when breaking up. But after seeing an article published by the media company I used to work for, everything about Liam suddenly made me sick. Even though it was an entertainment gossip blog, during a massive event like the San Francisco earthquake, they pivoted to disaster coverage. However, the writers were still gossip columnists at heart. Under a clickbait headline like “Race Against Time: Gorgeous Doctors Perform Joint Brain Surgery,” the article subtly tried to ship the two attractive neurosurgeons involved. The handsome doctor was Liam. The gorgeous doctor was the woman he had secretly written about ten years ago on a postcard at a tourist trap: “Unrequited love is miserable. I’m just waiting for the woman I love to break up with her boyfriend.” I don’t know what state of mind a twenty-one-year-old Liam was in when he wrote that sentence. But ever since I accidentally discovered that photo with his desperate confession written on the back, all the strange, subtle shifts in Liam’s behavior recently made perfect sense. 2 Her name was Audrey Vance. She started pre-med at Boston University in 2006 and had been working in the neurosurgery department at Mass Gen ever since graduating. She came from a family of doctors, was currently thirty-four, three years older than Liam, and had started college at sixteen. That meant she was five academic years ahead of him. Because it was so long ago, it was hard to find much information about Audrey’s college days online. I only managed to piece together that she was a standout graduate, hailed by her peers as a child prodigy. But recently, BU posted an announcement that Audrey was returning to give a guest lecture. The high-res photo attached to her bio showed a striking, radiant woman. That face perfectly aligned with the young, immature girl I had seen in Liam’s family photo albums. The conclusion was glaringly obvious: Liam and Audrey grew up together. When I first flipped through those albums, I was curious about the little girl who appeared so frequently from childhood through high school. Then, she just vanished from the photos. At the time, Liam’s tone was casual. He just said she was a neighbor, their families were close, so they took a lot of pictures. But after her family moved to Boston, they lost touch. Audrey’s guest lecture at BU was scheduled for Saturday, June 29th. On that exact day, Liam and I had planned to go to a used bookstore to hunt for some rare editions. Early that morning, before breakfast, he looked hesitant and distracted. Finally, he told me that a doctor he deeply admired was giving a lecture at a university nearby, and he really wanted to go watch. For some reason, my mind instantly flashed to the announcement I had seen about Audrey’s lecture. BU live-streamed all their guest lectures now. I sat in front of my computer for ninety minutes and watched the whole thing. The content was almost identical to every other “outstanding alumni” speech I had suffered through during my own college years. It was the standard formula: her childhood dreams, her hard work in high school, her clear career planning in college, wrapped up with some motivational chicken soup for the wide-eyed undergrads in the audience. She mentioned a few rare clinical cases she had encountered, but since she was still relatively young, her experience was mostly just observing senior surgeons. If Liam was genuinely interested in those rare cases, reading the actual medical journals published by those senior surgeons would have been far more educational. In short, there was absolutely no professional reason for Liam to waste his time listening to that lecture. But thinking about it practically, they grew up together, and judging by the photos, they were close. It was perfectly normal to want to catch up and grab a meal after not seeing someone for years. So why couldn’t he just look me in the eye and tell me he was going to see her? When Liam got home, it was already evening. Beneath his usual calm expression, I could sense a hidden, bubbling joy. He immediately offered to take over the cooking. I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed, watching this tall, incredibly fit man look effortlessly handsome while flipping a spatula. “What did you have for lunch?” I asked him. “Braised chicken,” he replied. “With a friend?” I pressed. He glanced at me quickly. “Why do you ask?” I smiled. “If a lecture was good enough to make you cancel our plans, it probably attracted other med school alumni too. I figured you might have run into an old classmate.” He turned off the stove. In the moment it took him to slide the food onto a plate, the joyful fish swimming beneath his calm surface suddenly went completely still. “Yeah, I ran into an old classmate. We caught up for a long time.” “What about you? Did you find the books you were looking for?” he deflected. “No,” I said, feigning disappointment. “I was only going to try my luck today anyway.” Liam was an incredibly smart and observant man. If he hadn’t been completely intoxicated by the joy of reuniting with the woman he had loved for a decade, he probably would have noticed something when he came home from the lecture to grab his car keys. My everyday slippers weren’t by the front door. Which strongly implied I was home. I literally listened to the front door open and close. I watched through the living room security camera as he grabbed his car keys—something he rarely did, as he hated driving. And then, I checked the dashcam app on my phone and watched him drive Audrey Vance to the airport. “Next time. I’ll take a day off and go with you next time. We’ll definitely find the books you want,” he promised. 3 Audrey’s home was in Boston, and so was her career. It was hard for two neurosurgeons living on opposite sides of the country to maintain a spark. The little flutter of excitement from their reunion slowly faded over time. But then, Audrey was coming back. I only found out by chance. My alma mater, MIT, posted an article about an upcoming symposium featuring “Outstanding Young Innovators.” Audrey’s name was on the list. The date was Monday, July 29th, at 9:00 AM. I didn’t click the article to read all the bios. Her resume was just so impressive that they used her name in the headline as clickbait. It was impossible to miss. Monday, July 29th, was also the day Liam and I were scheduled to have our wedding photo shoot. We were supposed to try on five different outfits—two for indoor shots, three for outdoor locations. As he was getting ready to leave for work that morning, he hesitated. Once we were in the elevator, just the two of us, he finally spoke. “Chloe, the hospital is running a free clinic today, and I really want to volunteer. It’s just for the morning. We can still try on the outfits in the afternoon.” The hospital Liam worked at did occasionally set up free clinics outside the main entrance, usually on Mondays, from 10 AM to 4 PM. It was late July. The humidity was suffocating, making the city feel like a giant sauna. Standing outside a heavily air-conditioned hospital in this heat to run a free clinic was absolutely miserable work. Fine. He was a saintly doctor. I told him to go. After he left, I used the excuse of booking a Groupon for a hotpot place—$100 off a $300 meal for new users—to log into his phone. In reality, I just opened his transit app to check his subway history. He tapped in at the station near our apartment. He tapped out at the MIT station. Getting to MIT required transferring from the Red Line to the Green Line. His hospital was a straight shot on the Orange Line. A moment later, I closed the app and handed his phone back. “You should stay at the clinic for the afternoon too. I suddenly got swamped with work,” I said. He didn’t question it. He just nodded. Maybe that was the exact moment the idea of marrying him started to curdle in my mind. The receptionist at the bridal studio had told me earlier that the couple booked for the afternoon slot had a sudden emergency, and asked if Liam and I could swap with them. Given how insane both of our work schedules were, getting everything done today would have been perfect. But I didn’t ask Liam’s opinion immediately. I waited. I waited to see if he had the self-control to stay away, to see if he would choose to go see Audrey. I ended up going to the bridal studio alone that afternoon. The studio was completely unsympathetic and informed me that downgrading from a couple’s shoot to a solo portrait session didn’t qualify for a partial refund. Furious, I went and ordered a massive Korean BBQ combo meant for four people and ate it by myself. I brought the leftovers home. Liam asked if I had gone out with coworkers. I told him I went alone. He paused, then asked why I didn’t invite him. “You were busy,” I replied. We had been dating for three years and living together for two. He knew that when I was mad, my default response was a cold, sarcastic attitude. He didn’t coddle me, mostly because whenever he messed up, he would take the initiative to apologize. Like that time. Like right now. I used to soften up whenever he apologized. I would comfort myself by thinking that if we were going to be married for decades, fights were inevitable. If we were committing to a life together, we needed to be forgiving. Besides, in many other aspects of our life, he was incredibly accommodating to me. Now, it just felt completely hollow. His apology was as sincere as ever. He admitted his mistake first, and then proposed a solution. “I’ll take tomorrow off. We’ll go try the outfits together,” he said. I shoved the leftover BBQ into the fridge, turned around, and stared at him expressionlessly. It felt like he suddenly didn’t know me at all. I liked my life meticulously organized. If one of my plans was disrupted without warning, I got angry and irritable. Especially when the disruption wasn’t due to an unavoidable emergency. “So, I have to take tomorrow off too?” “In your mind, your work is a career, and my work is just a hobby?” A flash of guilt crossed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll schedule my time off around your days off.” “Don’t bother,” I replied. “Since you don’t care about it, it doesn’t matter if we take the photos or not.” Before walking into the bedroom, I looked at him with deadly seriousness. “You need to think long and hard about this marriage.” 4 Why didn’t I just break up with him right then? Why was I willing to give him another chance? Because the blueprint of my entire future was covered in his fingerprints. My original plan was to get the marriage license first, and then lay all my cards on the table about Audrey. I knew him well enough to believe that once everything was out in the open, he would sever any lingering romantic ties. Until I saw him and Audrey together in San Francisco. The night air in the suburbs was crisp and clean. Julian stood next to me, his voice so soft it felt like a breeze could blow it away. “So, why did you finally decide to end it? Do you think he intentionally went to SF to see his old crush?” I shook my head, turning to look at him with a smile. “Because the universe loves me.” “The postcard from ten years ago, the headline in the university newsletter, the article on my old company’s website… don’t you think that’s way too many coincidences?” I looked at him, my eyes bright. All the gloom from my fights with Liam had evaporated. “Plus, tonight, when I drove out here… I thought I could push past my hatred of driving. But I couldn’t. You have no idea how miserable I was the entire drive over here.” “I hate driving, period. So far, I haven’t met a single person or encountered a single situation that makes driving not feel like a chore. So you can imagine… when Liam chose to drive Audrey to the airport that day, the sheer joy he felt had to completely overpower his hatred of driving.” “So…” Julian prompted. “So, everything happens for my benefit,” I said. “The universe favors me. It was telling me not to wait until decades from now, when Liam is on his deathbed, wondering if his life would have been different if he had just been brave enough to chase the woman he truly loved.” “I know that once you’re dead, nothing matters anymore, but just the thought of him harboring that kind of regret makes me sick to my stomach.” Julian was a professional chess player I had met by chance, a world runner-up. We met in a bookstore run by an incredibly eccentric owner. Membership was ten dollars a month, and you could read any book in the store for free. The AC was always blasting, and the decor and vibe were absolutely perfect. But there was a catch: absolutely no books could be bought or borrowed. If you wanted to read, you had to stay in the store. In today’s hyper-fast world, almost no one has the patience to sit quietly in a bookstore. Combined with its hidden location, the place was virtually empty. I only found out about it because I loved hunting for rare editions. When I realized this store had a massive collection of out-of-print books, I felt like a massive idiot for spending a thousand dollars on eBay for a vintage magazine set that originally retailed for twenty bucks. When the night breeze finally felt too cold, I got ready to drive Julian back. He waved his phone at me. “It’s going to be a minute. I ordered an Uber.” “If you hate driving, calling a car is a much better option.” “I hope you don’t mind me interfering.” Talking to Julian was incredibly comfortable. He easily matched my wavelength, and everything he said was exactly what I wanted to hear. For example— The day Liam came back from San Francisco was a Saturday. He dragged his suitcase to my front door, the dim hallway lighting unable to hide his exhaustion. I thought about his apartment, which hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Whether he cleaned it himself or hired a maid, it would take time. In a moment of weakness, I let him in. He froze in the entryway. I said, “You don’t need to take off your shoes. Just come in.” His slippers were no longer on the shoe rack. “Are you going straight to bed, or do you want to eat something first?” I asked. His tall frame stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room, his suitcase making him look travel-worn. “You sentenced me to death. You owe me an explanation.” I didn’t hide anything. I told him straight out that I knew about his past crush on Audrey, and that I knew he was still obsessed with her. Honestly, I wasn’t mad that he used to have feelings for someone else. Audrey was an incredibly impressive woman. If he hadn’t tried to have his cake and eat it too, I would have just thought he had great taste in women. “I admit it,” he said after listening to me, his face blank. “I handled that poorly.” “After her lecture, I cut contact with her. Running into her in SF was a complete coincidence. We’re both at critical points in our careers. Volunteering for disaster relief looks great on a resume when it’s time for promotions. You know how this works.” “I know,” I said, completely unfazed. “I also believe you went to SF purely to help people, not to see her.” “But you know me. I believe in fate. The universe putting that article right in front of my face was its way of telling me that your connection isn’t severed, and that you and I were only ever meant to be a stepping stone.” “There is no ‘unsevered connection,’ Chloe. She’s married. Her husband is a cop. She has an adopted daughter. She’s incredibly happy.” I froze, staring at him in disbelief. “She’s married and you’re still obsessing over her? That’s completely unethical.” “So all your assumptions were just a huge misunderstanding,” Liam countered. “Hiding my meetings with her and keeping a ten-year-old postcard was wrong, and I apologize. Can we move past this?” His pleading tone softened my heart for a fraction of a second. But I am as stubborn as a mule. Once I make a decision, I rarely change it, even if it’s the wrong one. We had the most explosive fight of our entire relationship that day. The golden window for earthquake rescue is 72 hours. He hadn’t slept properly for 72 hours, had to deal with this relationship disaster, and came home to a stubborn mule like me. Anyone would have lost their temper. He said, “Chloe, we aren’t kids anymore. This isn’t college where you date if you feel like it and dump someone if you’re bored.” He continued, “You chose to marry me for purely practical reasons. You say I want my cake and eat it too? What about you? You don’t even know how to be in a relationship. You just picked a husband who checked your boxes, someone who could be useful to you. You factored in so many selfish variables when you chose me. Look at how much I’ve tolerated since we got together. Why can’t you tolerate me just this once?” It felt like he was trying to collect interest on every grievance he had ever suffered with me. I looked at him, looking as deflated as a popped balloon. I felt no pity, no heartbreak, only rage and a sense of absolute absurdity. “Oh really? Tell me, how exactly did I use you for my own gain?” He pressed his lips together and stayed silent. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Aside from my corporate day job, I was also a novelist. After we met, I constantly asked him questions about neurosurgery to write a medical workplace drama. It got published and the TV rights were sold. I pocketed nearly a million dollars from the IP rights. I had done this before. My ex-boyfriend was a corporate negotiator, and I used his professional knowledge to write a book that also sold film rights. I never hid that from Liam. “Deep down, you think I only date guys so I can mine them for research to sell books? You think you’re just a cog in my money-making machine? “That is hilarious, Liam. If I just wanted professional advice, I could pay consulting fees to dozens of elite professionals. I can write workplace dramas, get them published, and sell the film rights because I have a sharp commercial eye and raw talent. I don’t need to play emotional games just to steal some medical jargon. I’m above that. “Yes, I am practical. I chose you because you come from a good family, you have elite degrees, and you’re incredibly handsome. Why else would I choose you? Do you really think someone with my average background, average education, and average job isn’t good enough for a golden boy like you?” Spitting out every thought in my brain in one breath, I watched his face drain of color. The last shred of affection I had for him evaporated. “I’m so sorry to break it to you, but I think I’m pretty fantastic. I’m good enough for anyone.” I slammed the door and left. After driving a few miles, I suddenly realized it was my apartment. Rookie mistake. Julian found me at a Dave & Buster’s. I was aggressively playing the claw machine. When you’re in a terrible mood, the whole world seems to conspire against you. I had blown way too much money on tokens, but I couldn’t grab a single plushie. I wanted to kick the machine through the wall. Julian plucked three tokens from my basket and started operating the joystick beside me. “When you play chess, you have to calm your mind. The same goes for the claw machine.” He handed me the Lotso Bear I had been failing to win for twenty minutes. “You look like you’re having a terrible time. Do you need someone to vent to?” As an introvert, I usually processed my problems internally. I rarely vented to anyone. But that day, I followed Julian to a spot with a beautiful view of the city skyline at night. Whenever Julian spoke, if he included a philosophical point or life advice, he always used chess as a metaphor. Coincidentally, I had outlined a novel a long time ago about a male chess prodigy. I had shelved it because my own understanding of chess was pathetic. I recognized Julian because I had watched his tournament videos on YouTube while researching the book. Maybe Julian could provide the inspiration I was missing for that story. Sometimes I hate how my brain works. The more chaotic and frustrated I feel, the more aggressively rational I become. “I use the silent treatment. I refuse to communicate. I have a million toxic flaws as a girlfriend, and I admit all of them,” I said, staring at the distant moonlight, my tone stubborn. “But he tried to use my flaws to justify his betrayal. I can’t accept that.” Julian looked up at the moon. The soft silver light washed over his face, highlighting his sharp jawline perfectly. “A rose’s thorns are part of its beauty, even if they draw blood.”

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I was the only one on the wall for seventy-two hours against a siege of hackers. I held the line until the last second, then collapsed on the server room floor. I woke up in the ICU. The first message I saw was a company-wide memo: Three days of unexcused absence. A fifty-thousand-dollar fine. My director stood at my bedside and laid it out plainly. “Rules are rules. No exceptions.” I pulled the IV from my hand and said one word. “Fine.” From that day on, no one understood the rules better than me. 1 The fluorescent lights of the ICU were a stinging white. I had to blink three times just to pry my eyes open. The air was thick with the scent of antiseptic, and an IV needle was taped to the back of my left hand. A deep blue bruise was blooming on my wrist. On the bedside table, my phone screen was lit up. I turned my head, my gaze falling on the notification bar. 127 unread messages. The one at the very top was a company-wide email. Sender: Human Resources. With my free hand, I reached for the phone, my thumb swiping the screen open. “Subject: Official Notice Regarding Unexcused Absence of Alex Chen, Technology Department. This memo is to inform all personnel that, following a review, it has been confirmed that Alex Chen, Network Security Engineer, was absent from March 12th to March 14th without submitting a formal leave request as stipulated in Article 17 of the Employee Attendance Management Policy. In accordance with company regulations, the following actions will be taken: 1. A formal reprimand will be issued company-wide. 2. Mr. Chen’s quarterly performance bonus of $50,000 will be forfeited. 3. This incident will be recorded in Mr. Chen’s permanent employee file.” I scrolled to the bottom of the email. CC: All Employees. A flick of my thumb down, and the department group chat was already exploding. Someone tagged me: “Alex, you okay, man?” Someone else asked, “This has to be a mistake, right?” But most of them were silent. A heavy, telling silence I knew all too well. I stared at the ceiling, a dull ringing in my ears. March 12th, 9:47 PM. The company’s internal network monitoring system lit up like a Christmas tree from hell. I was just about to leave. My backpack was slung over one shoulder, one arm already in my jacket sleeve. The single alert on my screen multiplied, from one to ten, then ten to a hundred. Someone was hitting our core database with a distributed attack. This wasn’t a standard DDoS flood; it was a surgical strike. They knew our internal topology, slipping through a port that should have never been open. It was like they had a key to the front door. I dropped my bag on the floor, threw my jacket over the back of my chair, and sat down to fight back. I called Marcus Reed, my director. It rang six times, no answer. I called Frank, one of the lead ops guys. He said he was on the freeway, at least two hours out. It was just me, alone, staring at six monitors, plugging the holes. I’d block one vector, and they’d pivot, coming at me from another angle. Block that one, and they’d find another. The attack traffic surged from 800 megabits per second to 40 gigabits per second. I downed twelve cans of Red Bull. Then came the coffee, black, no sugar, chugged cold right from the pot. The first day passed. The second day passed. On the third day, the afternoon of March 14th, as I tried to stand up from the server room floor, my vision went black. My knees buckled first, then my forehead slammed into the sharp metal corner of a server rack. Frank told me later that when he finally pushed open the server room door, I was face down on the ground, blood matting my hair, my hand still resting on the keyboard. The attack was over. I had held the line. The data, client information, and core code for over three hundred employees—not a single byte was lost. And then I ended up in the ICU. And then I received the notice of unexcused absence. The door to my room swung open just as I was reading that email for the third time, word by agonizing word. Marcus Reed walked in. Suit, tie, hair perfectly coiffed. He carried a small bag of fruit, which he placed on the bedside table, patting an orange as if to check its firmness. “You’re awake,” he said, pulling a chair over and crossing his legs. “How are you feeling?” I didn’t answer. He waited a few seconds, sensing the tension, and cleared his throat. “You saw the memo, I take it.” I nodded. “Alex, you’ve been with us a while. You know the policies.” His tone was a well-rehearsed “my-hands-are-tied,” but the slight curve of his lips betrayed him. “Leave requests have to go through the official channels, approved by your direct supervisor. You were gone for three days with nothing in the system. When HR asked me about it, I couldn’t exactly lie, could I?” “I was in the server room,” I said, my voice hoarse. He held up a hand, a gesture to stop me. “I know you worked hard. I appreciate the effort. But effort is one thing, and policy is another. They’re two separate issues. If you had just called me, sent a text, anything to get a paper trail started, I could have approved it after the fact. But you did nothing.” He paused, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Corporate is auditing attendance records right now. At a time like this, nobody gets a pass.” I just looked at him. His gaze was steady, his lines delivered flawlessly, as if he’d practiced in a mirror. “Rules are rules,” he said, standing and smoothing a non-existent wrinkle from his trousers. “No exceptions.” The room fell silent for a few seconds, punctuated by the steady beep… beep… beep of the heart monitor. I clenched the bedsheets, my nails digging into my palms. The last seventy-two hours flashed through my mind in a chaotic montage: the frantic cascade of data across six screens, the stomach-cramping coffee I kept pouring down my throat, the low hum of the fluorescent lights in the server room at 4 AM, the cold, sharp shock of metal against my forehead as I collapsed. I swallowed hard. And then I said one word. “Fine.” Marcus froze for a second. He had probably come prepared with a full script. If I got angry, he’d play the sympathetic but helpless manager. If I broke down, he’d offer a tissue and feigned compassion. But all I said was, “Fine.” The word was too small, too quiet. It gave him nothing to work with. He nodded, patting my shoulder. “Good. Get some rest. We need you back at the office.” The door clicked shut. His footsteps faded down the hall. I stared at the IV in the back of my hand for a long, long time. Then I picked up my phone, closed the email, and opened a new note. I typed a line: Employee Attendance Management Policy, Article 17. Then another: Find the full text. 2 The day I was discharged, the sky was a bruised gray, hanging so low it felt like it could collapse at any moment. I stood outside the office building for three seconds, took a breath, and pushed through the glass doors. The receptionist looked up, met my eyes, and then her gaze darted away as she pretended to sort a stack of packages. Walking past the marketing department, I could feel their eyes on me from the corners of their vision. The rhythmic clatter of keyboards suddenly intensified, the keys struck with a little too much force, a performance of “I’m very busy and definitely not looking at you.” I ran into Susan from accounting at the elevators. She held the door for me. After a moment of hesitation, she spoke in a low voice. “Alex, about that memo… nobody thinks it was right.” I just nodded at her. “Thanks, Susan.” I didn’t say anything else. The tech department was on the twelfth floor. The moment I walked in, a hush fell over the entire area. I understood that silence. It wasn’t concern. It was the quiet of a crowd watching a spectacle. Everyone has their own scale. They knew what I did, and they knew how I was being treated. But on the other side of that scale sat their mortgages, their car payments, and their kids’ tuition. So the scales didn’t move an inch. I got it. I sat down at my desk, booted up my computer, and said nothing. A fresh stack of work orders sat on my desk. The one on top was signed by Marcus, marked “URGENT.” I pushed the stack aside, opened the company’s internal portal, and typed into the search bar: “Company Policies.” Employee Attendance Management Policy, 94 pages. Overtime Management Regulations, 47 pages. Travel and Expense Reimbursement Policy, 62 pages. Project Management Workflow Standards, 118 pages. Information Security Management Ordinance, 83 pages. In total, thirty-seven policy documents, over two thousand pages of text. I started with the first one, reading every single word. At 3 PM, Frank came over with two cups of coffee. He set one on my desk and held the other. “Alex,” he said, pulling up an empty chair and leaning in close. “Don’t do this to yourself, man. That fifty grand… I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. I’m sorry.” “Frank,” I said without looking up from my screen. “When you found me in the server room, what did it look like?” He was quiet for a moment. “You were face down. Your forehead was split open on the corner of a server rack. There was blood everywhere. When I rolled you over, your hands were ice-cold.” “And who did you tell about this?” “I told Marcus,” Frank said, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the paper cup. “He said he knew, but told me to keep it quiet. Said corporate was breathing down our necks and we couldn’t afford any drama.” I nodded slowly, my eyes still fixed on the screen. Frank didn’t leave. He seemed to want to say something more but couldn’t find the words. Finally, after a few minutes, he broke. “What the hell are you reading, anyway?” “Company policy.” “Why would you read that crap?” I turned to look at him then. “I’m learning.” Frank’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. He’d known me for five years. He knew that when I said “I’m learning,” I wasn’t kidding. He walked away, taking his coffee with him. By the end of the day, I had finished the Attendance Management Policy and the Overtime Management Regulations. I had jotted down seven specific article numbers in my notes. One of them, Article 23, Section 4, was crystal clear: “In the event of a sudden emergency preventing the timely submission of a leave request, the employee’s direct supervisor may submit a retroactive request on their behalf within three working days.” In other words, during those seventy-two hours, all Marcus had to do was click a “Submit Retroactive” button for me in the system, and my absence wouldn’t have been unexcused. He didn’t click it. He chose not to. I highlighted that article in red and saved the note in a new folder. I named the folder “Study Notes.” Before shutting down my computer, I looked up one more thing. That anomaly I first noticed at 9:47 PM on March 12th, right before the whole system went into meltdown. The point of entry for the attack—a port that should never have been open. The permissions required to open that port could only be granted by an admin account at the director level or higher. I had been too busy fighting the fire to dig deeper then. Now, I had time. I copied the port number into my notes. Then I shut down my machine. On the dot. 6:00 PM. Not a second later. 3 The next morning, I clocked in at 9:00 AM sharp. Not 8:55, not 8:58. Exactly 9:00. Because the company policy stated, black on white: “Working hours are from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.” Marcus called on me during the morning stand-up. “Alex, did you see that urgent ticket I sent you yesterday? The client is breathing down our necks.” “I saw it,” I said. “And when can we expect delivery?” “As soon as the process is complete.” He frowned. “What process?” I opened the notes app on my phone and read aloud. “According to the Project Management Workflow Standards, Article 8, Section 2: ‘Tasks requiring inter-departmental collaboration must be initiated via a formal Collaboration Request Form, signed and approved by the heads of both departments before work can commence.’ This ticket requires server permissions from the Operations team, which qualifies as inter-departmental collaboration. We need their signature.” The conference room fell silent. My colleagues stared down at their notebooks, avoiding my eyes, avoiding Marcus’s. A muscle in Marcus’s jaw twitched. “We’ve never bothered with formal processes for small things like this.” I looked up, meeting his gaze directly. “Director, you were the one who taught me. Rules are rules.” His expression hardened into a mask. That ticket didn’t get done that day. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t do it. The process wasn’t complete. The head of Ops, Dave, was out of town on business. He wouldn’t be back to sign it for three days. I documented the delay with meticulous clarity in an email, CC’ing Marcus and the entire project team, and attached a screenshot of the relevant company policy. At 5:58 PM, I started clearing my desk. At 6:00 PM, I stood up. Marcus poked his head out of his office. “Alex, that data migration isn’t—” “Director,” I cut him off. He stopped, stunned. I pulled a printed sheet of paper from my desk drawer and handed it to him. Overtime Management Regulations, Article 5: “Employee overtime must be requested by the department head via an Overtime Request Form at least twenty-four hours in advance and approved by Human Resources. Any work performed outside of standard hours without prior approval will not be recognized by the company or compensated as overtime.” “If you need me to work late, please submit the request twenty-four hours in advance,” I said, placing the paper on his desk. “See you tomorrow.” Marcus stood in his office doorway, the muscles in his face pulled taut. He wanted to explode. But he couldn’t. He had no grounds. Because these were the very rules he had used as a weapon against me. I turned and walked out of the office. Behind me, I heard the sound of his door slamming shut. I ran into Frank in the elevator on my way out. He looked me up and down, a complicated expression on his face. “What?” I asked. “Nothing. It’s just… you’ve changed.” “How so?” He thought for a long moment before finding the word. “Terrifying.” The third day, the client called to check on the project’s progress and was informed the paperwork was still being processed. They filed a formal complaint directly with Marcus. From my desk, I heard the sound of a mug shattering against a wall in his office. I didn’t look up. My fingers typed out a new line in my notes. Information Security Management Ordinance, Article 31. Server operation logs must be retained for a period of one year. It had been eleven days since March 12th. Three hundred and fifty-four days left. Plenty of time. 4 Marcus was spearheading a major project. The Apex Solutions data platform—a $1.5 million contract, the biggest deal of the year for our company. From its inception, I had been the one to design every core technical solution for that project. Marcus didn’t understand the tech; he understood signing documents and leading meetings. At every technical review with the client, he’d sit at the head of the table in his tailored suit, give a three-minute opening speech, and then say, “And now, I’ll turn it over to our lead technical expert to walk you through the details.” That was my cue to take the microphone for the next two hours. The client thought Marcus was the technical mastermind. In reality, he couldn’t even name the tech stack I was using in my own proposal. Now, the project was at a critical acceptance phase. The client demanded that phase three be delivered by Friday, or they would invoke the penalty clause in the contract. Marcus sent me an email. The subject line had three exclamation points. “URGENT!!! Apex Project Phase Three Delivery—Must Be Completed This Week.” I replied with an email of my own. The body was just three lines long, with two attachments. “Director Reed, Regarding the Apex project phase three delivery, the following process steps have not yet been completed: 1. The ‘Database Permission Change Request’ requires your signature before it can be submitted to the Information Security department for approval. Current Status: Awaiting Signature (This has been in your approval queue for 6 working days). 2. The ‘Test Environment Deployment Plan’ requires cooperation from the Operations team. An ‘Inter-Departmental Collaboration Request’ must be submitted by you. Current Status: Not Initiated. Once these processes are complete, I will begin the technical delivery immediately.” I CC’d the entire project team and HR. Twenty minutes later, the door to Marcus’s office was yanked open. “Alex. My office. Now.” His voice was controlled, but barely. The edges were frayed. I stood up, taking my phone with me. I walked in. He shut the door behind me, turned around, and his face was flushed a deep, angry red. “What the hell are you doing?” “Awaiting your approval.” “That request has been sitting in my queue for six days! Why didn’t you just remind me?” I stood my ground. He hadn’t invited me to sit. “According to the Internal Systems Usage Policy, Article 12: ‘Approvers at all levels are expected to process requests within three working days of receipt. The system will issue an automatic reminder for any overdue items.’ The system has already reminded you twice, Director.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Alex, is this about the memo? Are you holding a grudge?” “No.” “Then what is this?” I looked him straight in the eye. “You taught me, sir. Rules are rules. I’m just following them.” His right hand gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white. The phone on his desk rang, its shrill tone cutting through the tension. He hesitated for a second, then snatched it up. It was the client. I stood two meters away, but I could clearly hear the impatient male voice on the other end. “Marcus, what’s the status on phase three? My director has asked me about it three times already.” Marcus’s face contorted, a strained smile plastered on his lips. “Mr. Davis, rest assured, we’ll have it for you in the next couple of days—” “A couple of days? That’s what you said last week.” He turned his back to me, lowering his voice, but I heard every word. When he hung up, he spun back around. “I want you to go right now and get that—” “The process isn’t complete,” I said. He stared at me, his eyes burning. I stared back. After a tense ten seconds, he violently ripped a folder from his desk, flipped to the pending approval form, scribbled his signature, and slammed it down in front of me. “Take it.” “The inter-departmental collaboration request needs your signature as well.” He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling sharply through his nose. He signed it. I picked up both sheets of paper. “I will submit these to Information Security for approval today. The standard processing time is two to three business days. I will begin execution as soon as approval is granted.” “Two to three business days?!” his voice shot up. “The client’s deadline is this Friday!” I paused at the door without turning back. “Director, I don’t set the approval timelines. Company policy does. If you have a problem with the process, I suggest you take it up with corporate.” I walked out of his office, pulling the door gently shut behind me. Back at my desk, a new message from Frank was on my screen. “Are you insane???” I didn’t reply. I opened my notes app and created a new file inside the “Study Notes” folder. The title was: “Plan for Retrieving Server Logs for Anomalous Port Opening on March 12th.” On Friday, the Apex project failed to meet its deadline. The client sent a formal notice, invoking the penalty clause for a total of twenty thousand dollars. Marcus posted a message in the department group chat: “I will be reporting the cause of this project delay truthfully and accurately to upper management.” Everyone knew he was talking to me. But he didn’t tag me. Because he couldn’t. Every step I took was by the book.

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I was pregnant, and I was craving strawberries. I bought two pounds of them, brought them home, washed them perfectly clean, and called my husband and mother-in-law to come have some. I went to my bedroom to change my clothes. When I came back, the plate was full of pale, white cores. The bright red, sweetest tips of the strawberries had been bitten off by my husband. The middle parts had been gnawed away by my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law, her mouth dripping with juice, pushed the plate toward me: “Emily, eat! They’re so sweet!” I stared at the pale, leftover bottoms of the strawberries. Stuck to the fruit were gross, dark green bits of garlic and spinach that had fallen out of my mother-in-law’s teeth! I grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it over. I turned, walked out the front door, and called my mom. “Mom, you were right. I’m getting the abortion.” 1 I had been talking about wanting strawberries for a week. David promised to buy them for me every single day. And every single day, he came home from work looking like a beaten dog, dragging his feet, and giving me a shameless smile: “Sorry, honey, I totally forgot!” His mother would stand off to the side, doting on her precious son. She’d hand him a cold beer, massage his shoulders, and then throw a passive-aggressive jab at me: “What’s so special about a fancy fruit anyway? You don’t have to eat it today. I’ll buy it for you tomorrow!” I was furious. I complained to David: “Your mom says she’ll buy them for me every day, and I still haven’t had a single strawberry all week!” The moment I brought up his mother, his face darkened: “Do you know how old she is? It’s hard enough for her to come all the way out here to take care of you, and you have the nerve to order her around?” His tone made my blood boil. “Then send her back home! Who asked her to take care of me?!” David’s eyes grew cold. He clenched his jaw and didn’t say another word. We had been fighting about this constantly lately. I was so sick and tired of it. As my best friend put it: “Just tolerate it. It’s his mom. If he’s the kind of guy who abandons his mother the second he gets a wife, you couldn’t rely on his character anyway.” I sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Fine. I’ll just buy the damn strawberries myself tomorrow! 2 I specifically asked to leave work half an hour early. I took a long detour to an upscale organic grocery store just to buy them. I never used to have cravings like this. It was definitely the pregnancy. Not getting to eat what I was craving was making my entire body physically uncomfortable. When I got home, my mother-in-law, Martha, was sitting on the couch with drooping eyelids, knitting baby booties. I had told her previously that no one puts babies in hand-knitted itchy wool booties anymore. She didn’t listen, so I stopped caring. Let her do what she wants. When she looked up and saw the carton of strawberries in my hand, her sarcastic attitude immediately flared up. “Oh, so you actually bought them? Wow, young people these days are so spoiled. Eating whatever they want, whenever they want. Back in my day, the men got the best cuts of the roast, and the women ate the scraps and gristle.” I couldn’t be bothered to respond. At this point, my strategy with her was just to pretend she didn’t exist. Just as I was heading to the kitchen to wash the fruit, the front door clicked open. David was home. He walked in completely empty-handed, acting like an overgrown infant, holding his arms out so his mommy could take his coat. “The project is finally over, Emily. I’ll spend lots of time with you these next couple of days.” I looked at him and let out a cold laugh. “You’re home so early. Where are my strawberries?” He slapped his forehead. “I forgot. I’ll go buy them right now.” Martha quickly grabbed his arm. “Come back here! You’re exhausted, don’t run back out. See, no one loves you as much as your mother.” After saying that, she shot a vicious, sideways glare at me. I turned into the kitchen, washed the strawberries thoroughly, and popped one into my mouth. God, it was so sweet! I looked down and realized I was still in my work clothes. I set the bowl of strawberries on the dining table. “Have a couple. I can’t eat all of these myself anyway.” I went to the bedroom, changed into my loungewear, and came back out. My strawberries were ruined. A plate full of pale, white bottoms. Not a speck of red left. David had already rolled off to his study to play video games. Martha, chewing loudly with juice staining her lips, pushed the plate toward me: “Emily, eat! They’re so sweet!” 3 I had waited a week for these strawberries! I bought them, I washed them, and I only got to eat exactly one! I didn’t even need to guess. The sweet, red tips were definitely bitten off by David, and the middle parts were gnawed on by Martha! Ever since Martha moved into our house, this was how she and David divided food. If I cooked a steak, David got the tender center cuts, and Martha happily took the fatty edges. Martha was even proud of it. She used to say that when David’s father was alive, she wasn’t even allowed to eat the fatty cuts. Now, her status had been elevated! I stared at the leftover strawberry bottoms on the plate. On several of them, I could clearly see the dark green bits of leftover spinach and garlic that had dislodged from Martha’s teeth. Wilted, dark green muck smelling of garlic, stuck to the remaining quarter-inch of fruit… and she wanted me to eat it? Eat my ass! My stomach violently churned with intense nausea! These were my strawberries! This was my house! I was shaking uncontrollably with rage. “AHHH!” I screamed, grabbed the edge of the table, and flipped it into the air! The cute, ceramic piglet plate crashed to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. It looked like it had been violently executed. I grabbed my coat, snatched my purse, and slammed the door behind me. In the fraction of a second before the door clicked shut, I heard David’s panicked voice: “What’s going on?! Emily, where are you going?!” 4 Where was I going? Yeah, where was I going? I lived in this city with no family and no close friends. I had no one to rely on. I only had David. And until recently, I actually thought I had love. What an absolute joke. I was delusional. I walked laps around our neighborhood complex for a long time, letting the cold air calm me down. A decision I had been agonizing over for weeks finally cemented itself in my mind. I dialed the one number that would never, ever reject me. The moment the call connected, I couldn’t hold back my sobs: “Mom, you were right! I’m getting the abortion!” Before I could say another word, my phone was violently snatched from my hand. I could hear my mom’s panicked voice projecting from the speaker: “Emily! Emily, what happened?! Emily!” It was David. He looked absolutely furious as he hung up the call. “Stop acting crazy! It’s such a trivial thing, is this really necessary?!” The tears I had been desperately holding back finally spilled over. I stared at him with pure stubborn defiance. “Give me my phone.” He frowned, extending his arm high into the air. I was six inches shorter than him; I couldn’t reach it. “Can you stop running to mommy and daddy over every little inconvenience? We’re married. If there’s an issue, we discuss it! You literally flipped our dining table, and I didn’t even yell at you. Can you stop throwing a tantrum? You’re making a joke out of us in front of the neighbors. Let’s go home and talk.” I jumped up furiously, trying to snatch the phone from his grip. “Give it to me! I have nothing left to say to you. Go live with your mother!” He raised his arm even higher, getting agitated: “When it comes down to it, you just despise my mom! You are so incredibly disappointing!” 5 I clawed at his arm, jumping wildly to reach the phone. He gripped my wrist tightly, trying to pin me down. That was when Martha came running out of the building. While she was still a good thirty feet away, she suddenly sprinted, dropped to her knees, and did a dramatic baseball slide right across the pavement, stopping right in front of me. Smack! She slammed her forehead onto the concrete. “Oh, my dear daughter-in-law! You’re taking my life away! Please stop jumping around, if anything happens to my grandson, how will I ever face your parents in the afterlife?!” Watching her performance, I completely froze. I knew she was a two-faced actress, playing sweet to my face and talking trash behind my back. But I never expected a theatrical display of this magnitude. David couldn’t handle it. He reached down to pull his mother up. “Mom, what are you doing?!” Then, he turned his head and glared at me with vicious eyes: “Hurry up and help my mom up!” I help her?! I’ll help you straight to hell! Martha used David’s leverage to stand up. She immediately started slapping her own face, over and over again. “I was wrong! I am a sinner! I shouldn’t have eaten your strawberries! Please don’t be mad at me, just come home with me.” David was completely broken by this. Tears were literally welling up in his eyes. “My mom is literally begging you, what more do you want?! I admit I was wrong, okay?! Tomorrow I will buy out the entire farmer’s market so you can eat all the strawberries you want!” Because of their loud, dramatic wailing, neighbors were starting to gather. Seeing that she had an audience, Martha’s acting kicked into overdrive. “I shouldn’t have eaten the strawberries. I don’t deserve to eat them! I didn’t know my daughter-in-law valued those fruits more than my life! Back in our rural village, wild berries grow everywhere in the mountains! If you love them so much, Mom will go pick them for you! Just stop fighting with us, please come home. I came here with a good heart to serve you, but if you can’t tolerate me, I’ll leave! I’ll never come back! I’m just old and useless!” The surrounding neighbors started pointing fingers at me. “Am I hearing this right? Over some fruit? Is she serious?” “Exactly. She couldn’t bear to part with a few bucks worth of fruit. That breaks an old woman’s heart!” “Parents give their absolute all to their kids, and look at how the kids treat them. Can’t even let her eat a strawberry.” “It’s so hard being old! If you don’t help, they say you’re lazy. If you do help, they say you’re a burden. Might as well just die when you get old.” I watched as the crowd threw their judgmental words at me like poison darts. Some people were even pulling out their phones to record me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I screamed at the top of my lungs: “Her! That old hag! She wanted me to eat the scraps she spat out! Strawberries covered in her garlic and spinach spit! If I handed them to you, would you eat them?!” 6 I was going insane. I was shivering with pure anger. I ground my teeth together and glared at David: “Give me back my phone. Give it to me!!!” His eyes were bloodshot. He looked at me with unadulterated hatred. I had never seen him look at me like that before. It was like I wasn’t his wife. I was the murderer who killed his entire family, and he loathed my very existence. I used every ounce of my strength to punch him in the chest: “I told you to give me my phone!” Smack! He slapped me across the face! I fell hard onto the pavement! A second later, my phone started ringing in his hand. He glanced at the screen. Then, using all of his strength, he violently hurled my phone at the concrete. The screen shattered into a million pieces. The ringtone died instantly. Silence. In the fraction of a second before the screen went black, I saw the caller ID: Mom. My mother! I reached my absolute breaking point. Shaking with fury, I used all my strength to spring up from the ground and delivered a brutal kick directly to David’s groin. He let out a horrifying howl, clutching his crotch, and dropped to his knees in agony. I scrambled to grab my shattered phone to run. But Martha grabbed me in a death grip. In the chaotic pulling and shoving, my vision blurred, and everything went completely dark. 7 When I opened my eyes, I was back in the bedroom of our apartment. Beside the bed, David was sitting with his head slumped forward, his hands gripping his hair tightly. I heard footsteps approaching, so I quickly squeezed my eyes shut. “David, you need to eat something. You’re going to break your mother’s heart.” “I don’t want to eat. Mom, shouldn’t we take her to the hospital? It’s been all night. I’m worried something’s wrong.” “Oh, please! I’ve been through this, would I harm my own grandson? She’s fine, pregnant women are just frail. Especially her, she refuses to eat this and that, so picky. You spoiled her into having these bad habits! Plain food builds a strong body. Women these days act like they’re laying a golden egg when they get pregnant. When I gave birth to you, I was still bleeding when I pulled my pants up and went to the kitchen to cook dinner.” David’s voice sounded like he was trying to suppress his panic, wavering unsteadily. “Times are different, Mom. Emily has never suffered a day in her life.” Martha’s voice suddenly dropped her usual sweet facade and became ice cold. “If she hasn’t suffered, then she needs to suffer now. What woman doesn’t suffer? When the baby comes, are you going to carry the burden of this whole house alone? Are you going to serve her every day? She actually dared to kick you! You should have beaten her to a pulp! If you don’t break her terrible habits now, you’ll be the one suffering later. Come eat with Mom! Ignore her! If she doesn’t wake up soon, I’ll take a sewing needle to her lip, I guarantee that’ll wake her up.” After a long pause, the shuffling footsteps slowly faded away. David left the room and closed the door. The room was dead silent. I slowly opened my eyes, feeling like I had just woken up from a terrifying nightmare. 8 David and I were college classmates. He chased me relentlessly for four years. I loved sleeping in, so every morning he would run to the dining hall to grab hot breakfast sandwiches and deliver them to my dorm. When I had an internship fifteen miles off-campus, he rode his bicycle through traffic just to bring me my favorite candied fruit from a street vendor. During the first heavy snow of winter, I opened my curtains to find a massive snowman outside my window, and him standing next to it, his face red from the freezing cold. I knew he came from a poor background, but if he had a dollar, he was willing to spend ninety cents on me. When I finally agreed to date him, our entire department was shocked. Everyone said his sheer willpower and persistence wore me down. The guys marveled that relentless stalking actually worked. The girls were horrified, asking if I had gone legally blind. After graduation, we dated for three years. He took care of my every need. When he proposed, the diamond ring cost him over three thousand dollars. I knew that was money he had saved by working multiple side jobs from dawn till dusk. Even though the diamond was tiny, I was moved to tears. Back then, I deeply believed in a popular saying: Don’t judge a man by how much money he has; judge him by how much of it he is willing to spend on you. I truly believed he would treat me well for the rest of my life. Who cared if he was a little broke? We could build our wealth together. 9 When I told my parents I was going to marry him, my mom fought me tooth and nail. Our relationship became incredibly strained over it. I even slammed my hand on the table and yelled at them: “I only asked for your opinion out of respect! I don’t need your permission to get a marriage license, and you can’t stop me!” My mom looked at me with eyes full of disappointment and heartbreak. She pressed her lips tightly together and didn’t speak for a long time. In the end, they couldn’t stop me. My mom yelled: “Fine! If you marry him, we won’t give you a single dime for the wedding!” I was so arrogant. I told her I didn’t care about their money anyway. But on the actual day I got married, my dad slipped a bank card into my hand. He sighed heavily. “Your mother has a sharp tongue but a soft heart. Whether you understand it or not, she is truly looking out for you. But I sincerely hope you made the right choice. Emily… you are our entire world. Do you know how hard it is for parents to watch their child willingly walk into hardship? Remember, if anything ever happens, call us immediately.” At the time, I was actually thrilled. I thought I had won the war against my parents!!! 10 After he finished his Master’s degree, I compromised and moved across the country with him to this city. The night before we left, I peeked through the crack in my parents’ door. My mom was sobbing against my dad’s chest. “It’s my fault. I raised her to be too naive.” My heart ached, but I swore to myself that I would build a beautiful life and prove that my choice was right. I’d show them. In the beginning, things were sweet. But everything changed the moment I got pregnant and Martha moved in. I always knew he grew up in a rural area. But when we got married, Martha didn’t even attend the wedding. His excuse was that she was in poor health, had never traveled, and it was too far away. I even said at the time: “Then we should go visit her! We’re getting married, I can’t just never meet my mother-in-law.” His eyes darted nervously. “You’ll meet her eventually. The living conditions out in the country are rough, I’m afraid you won’t adapt. My mom is a great person, she won’t mind.” It wasn’t until I got pregnant that my husband said: “We’re both so busy, and you really need someone to take care of you right now. Why don’t I bring my mom out here? She can cook for you. Ordering takeout every day isn’t healthy.” I thought it was a good idea. I planned to treat her like my own mother. I firmly believed I could build a good relationship with her. Reality proved I was dangerously naive. Her “cooking for me” meant that if David was home, there was fresh food. If he wasn’t, she would heat up three-day-old leftovers and serve them to me. If there were a few good cuts of meat in a dish and I grabbed one with my chopsticks, she would literally snatch it from my bowl and put it in her son’s. She constantly tried to brainwash me. She’d say pregnant women who did hard labor had easier deliveries. She’d brag about washing cloth diapers in freezing well-water in the dead of winter. She constantly talked about how tough she was, how much she suffered, and how she sacrificed her blood, sweat, and tears to raise David. Whenever she told these stories, mother and son would stare at each other, eyes brimming with tears! The most infuriating part was that after she memorized my phone passcode, she constantly snooped through my phone. I had reached my limit. I asked David multiple times to send his mother home, saying I didn’t need her taking care of me. He just glared at me coldly: “She is my mother! Blood is thicker than water! Now that I have a good life, shouldn’t she get to enjoy it? Are you disgusted by her?!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “444436”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Dominic is a control freak. He needs to know precisely when I wake up, when I eat, when I sleep, even when I go to the bathroom. He has me trained like a dog. His friend once asked me, “Has it ever occurred to you that your entire life is being controlled by that psycho, Dominic?” Dominic, with a faint smile, answered for me. “He hasn’t.” Alright, fine. If that’s how he wants to play. I told Dominic, “From now on, our curfew is 7 PM.” “And we need to have our phone locations shared at all times.” I started video-calling him eighteen times a day. I’d pull him into intimate photos, plastering our “love” all over social media, making a grand show of our relationship. I forced him to live inside my own web of suffocating, omnipresent surveillance and performance art. And then… he got off on it. 1 I was out of breath when I stumbled through the door at one minute past eight. The house was dark, completely unlit. I thought Dominic wasn’t home yet and breathed a silent sigh of relief. But in the next instant, with a soft click, the lights flooded the room. Dominic’s tall figure stood in the entryway, silhouetted against the blinding light. Like a ghost. “Noah,” he said softly, “you’re 1 minute and 27 seconds late.” The sudden light had already startled me. His whisper-soft voice sent a chill down my spine, and a cold sweat broke out on my back. I took a deep breath, trying to force down the metallic taste of blood that had risen in my throat from running so hard. “An old classmate of mine is in town, so a few of us got together. I was already on my way back at seven, but the traffic was insane. That’s why I’m a little late.” He gestured for me to sit on the low bench in the entryway, then knelt gracefully before me. His hand wrapped around my slender ankle. His fingers slid slowly upwards, gripping the sliver of skin just above my white sock. He lifted my foot with a gentle pressure to help me change my shoes. He looked up at me and smiled, a picture of innocence. “Then why didn’t you leave earlier? Or you could have asked me to pick you up.” My fingers, braced against the bench, trembled slightly. “I… I didn’t want to bother you. You had a long day at work.” “I really thought I could make it back before curfew,” I explained, my jaw tight. “I planned ahead, I swear. The mall is only a half-hour drive from our place… I never expected the traffic to be this bad.” He slowly slipped off my sneakers, his fingers squeezing the soft sole of my foot through my sock. I felt a tickle and instinctively tried to pull my foot back, but his grip on my calf was like iron. I couldn’t move an inch. He put my slippers on for me. “Are these old classmates of yours really that important?” he murmured. “So important that you can’t even come home on time?” “Did you not want to come home? Did you want to spend more time with them that badly?” “Was an old flame among them?” “Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped, cutting him off. “Today was a one-time thing. I’ll be back before curfew from now on!” He ignored my outburst. He stood up, leaned in, and brushed his nose against my cheek. “Noah,” he whispered, “why can’t your eyes be only on me?” 2 I woke up the next morning in a fog. When I managed to force my eyes open, I saw Dominic leaning against the headboard, smiling down at me. “Good morning, my love.” He kissed me. As he leaned over, his hand brushed against mine. I flinched violently. Before Dominic, I never could have imagined that there were so, so many ways to torment a person, to make them break, to make them lose control of their own body, stripped of all dignity… all without a single act of violence. Seeing me recoil, he pulled me into his arms, comforting me. “Darling, how about we go to Finland for the weekend? I’ll have my assistant clear a flight path. We can take off after work on Friday. You can sleep on the plane, and we’ll fly back Sunday night.” He gently outlined a weekend schedule detailed down to the minute. “On Saturday morning, we can try the bread at a local private kitchen. We’ll go see the snow in the late morning, and then we can have a spa treatment in the afternoon…” Everything was planned to perfection. But the more he spoke, the stiffer I became. “I promised Chris I’d go to the comic convention with him on Saturday,” I said in a low voice. “I told you on Monday.” My words hung in the dead silence of the bedroom. After a long, terrifying pause, Dominic finally spoke. “You’re right, you did tell me. I forgot. I’m sorry, my love. You go have fun.” He released his grip on my waist, letting me go without a fuss. Just like a normal, ordinary boyfriend. With my back to him, I couldn’t see the blank, emotionless mask that had replaced his gentle tone. 3 On Saturday morning, I dragged my sore, aching body out of bed, buzzing with excitement. Dominic, shirtless, propped himself up on one elbow and watched me get dressed. Seeing me awkwardly trying to pull on my pants, he said considerately, “If you’re not feeling well, just tell Chris. You can rest at home. I’m sure he’ll understand.” If it weren’t for what he did last night… I stubbornly finished dressing myself. “I’m not tired. I feel great. I am absolutely going to that convention today!” Just before I left, I got a call from Chris. I answered cheerfully. “I’m on my way out! Where are you?” Chris’s voice on the other end was full of guilt. “Noah, man, work just dropped an emergency business trip on me. I’m packing right now. I have to go be a corporate slave in Chicago for two weeks… I’m so sorry.” My hand froze on the doorknob. The smile on my face slowly faded, but I kept my voice normal. “Hey, no worries! Go do your thing. I’ll grab some merch for you while I’m there.” He sounded relieved. “You’re a lifesaver, bro!” I hung up, and a voice came from behind me. “What’s wrong?” I turned to see Dominic’s lean frame propped against the marble dining table. He looked as luxurious as the deep blue silk robe he was wearing. He raised an eyebrow. “Stood up again? Your friends really are unreliable.” A sliver of suspicion entered my mind. I asked him deliberately, “Well, do you want to go to the convention with me then?” His expression flickered. My heart clenched. Could he really have been the one to ruin Chris’s weekend? If he was… “Unfortunately,” Dominic shrugged, “I didn’t know your friend was going to bail, so I didn’t get a ticket. I can’t get in.” “But I can give you a ride, if you’d like. My dear.” I relaxed. If he hadn’t prepared in advance, he probably wasn’t the one who got Chris sent on a business trip… “No, thanks. I’ll just get a cab. You enjoy your weekend at home.” 4 Wandering the convention alone was pretty boring. I bought the pin Chris wanted most and was about to leave when I turned and bumped into a soft wall. “Oh, sorry—” I said, rubbing my forehead. I looked up and saw a very familiar face. I stared. “How did you get in?” Then, feeling deceived, I added, “You said you didn’t have a ticket!” It had to be him. He must have been the one who got rid of Chris. He’d always hated all my friends! I was about to lose it. “You son of a—” Dominic pulled a staff pass from the pocket of his expensive suit. “I don’t have a ticket. But I do have a little money.” “Just got this staff pass—a little bit of ‘cash-power.’” I was speechless, staring at the pass hanging from a gold chain. Who in their right mind uses a pocket watch chain for a staff pass? He smiled at me. “A son of a what?” I looked at his benevolent smile and shivered, remembering things. “A… a… a guy who just shines with brilliance!” I blurted out, a stroke of genius. I let out a long breath, feeling like I’d regained the upper hand. I looked him over. He was wearing a custom-tailored black tailcoat that accentuated his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs. He exuded an air of pure class. “What are you doing dressed to the nines at a comic convention? Who are you trying to seduce?” His eyes crinkled into a smile. He took my hand with his white-gloved one and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I am here to serve you, My Lord.” I froze, and before I could even blush, a wave of suppressed squeals erupted around us. “Oh my god, he’s so hot!” “Is he cosplaying Sebastian? Or Claude?” “I don’t think so, he’s not wearing any makeup…” “Holy crap! He’s that handsome without makeup? His character model is insane!” I was suddenly the center of attention, so embarrassed I could have dug a hole and lived in it. I grabbed Dominic’s hand and pulled him away. Once we were out of the crowd, I finally breathed. “You have to work? What kind of work?” He answered with a straight face, “Yes, I do.” “My job is to accompany you around the convention.” “Noah, I will do anything with you. I will never stand you up. So please… look at me more.” My eyelashes fluttered, and the tips of my ears grew hot. “I spend more time with you than I do at work. Isn’t that enough?” He stared at me. “No. It’s not nearly enough…” His intense, obsessive gaze sent a shiver down my spine. But in the next second, Dominic was back to his usual gentlemanly self. 5 I quickly forgot about that little episode and excitedly dragged Dominic around the convention. By the afternoon, I was getting hungry. We passed a stall where cosplayers were selling snacks, and I wanted to grab something. But as I eagerly headed over, a hand caught my arm. I turned to Dominic. “What’s wrong?” He frowned at the shabby-looking stall, the scent of artificial flavoring wafting over. “If you want takoyaki, I’ll have the chef make it for you when we get home. Don’t eat from street stalls like this. It’s not clean.” At that moment, several girls who had just bought snacks walked past us, giving us a strange look. The kind of look you give rich lunatics. I tugged at his sleeve, embarrassed. “It’s not dirty. Don’t say that.” The girls at the stall were wearing masks and disposable gloves. But Dominic was clearly unconvinced. He didn’t trust any street vendors, food stalls, or hole-in-the-wall restaurants. In the three years we’d been together, I hadn’t had a single bite of delicious junk food. This time was no different. He held my hand, his grip gentle but firm, and wouldn’t let me go. “If you’re hungry, let’s go home.” There it was again. Once he made up his mind, there was nothing I could do to change it. I was still holding the merch I’d bought, only halfway through the convention… but suddenly, all the fun had drained out of it. I lowered my head and went home with Dominic. I don’t know if it was because I’d skipped breakfast or because I was in a bad mood, but my stomach started to hurt on the way home. The pain was so bad my face went pale and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Dominic noticed immediately, his expression changing. In that instant, I knew I was screwed. He had found out I didn’t eat breakfast. From that day on, he watched me eat every single meal. 6 I ate three healthy meals a day under his watchful eye, but my stomach pain didn’t get better. Once, it even woke me up in the middle of the night, a sharp, twisting pain. This time, Dominic ignored my protests and took me to the hospital for a painless gastroscopy, colonoscopy, and a full-body check-up. Finally, the doctor at the private hospital looked at my test results, thought for a long time, and said slowly, “You have some mild gastritis, but nothing serious. Just stick to a light, healthy diet. Most importantly, try to stay in a good mood. The stomach is an organ of emotion…” I walked out of the consultation room in silence. I had barely stepped out the door when my colleague called. Because of my stomach pain last night, Dominic had insisted on taking me to the hospital today. I had to take a sudden day off work and hadn’t had time to hand over my tasks. I stood in the hospital corridor and talked to my colleague for ten minutes before hanging up. When I turned around, I saw Dominic standing behind me, frowning. “Is work very stressful lately?” “No.” “But between the office and working from home, you’ve been averaging overtime until eight-thirty.” “It’s the end of the year. It’s always busy.” I thought that was the end of it, but that night, he brought it up again. “Noah, have you ever thought about your career path?” I looked up from my phone on the sofa, confused. Dominic handed me a glass of warm water and leaned against the armrest, his voice gentle and persuasive. “I think you should consider it. You don’t have to run yourself ragged for a little money. You could think about what you really want to do. Take a break, think about what kind of person you really want to be.” 7 Dominic is six years older than me. I met him during my senior year internship. I had good grades and got into a top company. There were a lot of interns that year, and the backstabbing and office politics left me exhausted and full of self-doubt. I met Dominic when he came back to our university as a distinguished alumnus to give a speech. When he pursued me, he gave me a lot of confidence during a low point in my life. I’m a simple person; he was exceptional, and to be pursued so ardently by someone so exceptional was a huge boost to my ego. It helped me rebuild some of the confidence that the cutthroat corporate culture had shattered. After we got together, aside from his control issues… and his kinky side, he was a nearly perfect partner. As the older one, he had always guided me. I trusted him. After his words, I began to seriously consider the impact my job was having on me. Just then, my company lost two major deals in a row, and rumors of downsizing started to fly. There was a change in the company’s ownership, and the office became a toxic, anxious environment. After being targeted by my boss repeatedly, the thought of quitting started to form in my mind. Coincidentally, Chris returned from his business trip, and I met up with him for dinner. He spent the meal complaining about his trip, and I vented about the chaos at my company. It was a cathartic meal for both of us. Finally, Chris leaned in and whispered mysteriously, “Do you know who our big client was on this trip?” I raised an eyebrow. “Who?” “Evergreen Hospitality,” he said with a sly grin. “You’ve probably never heard of it, but you’ve definitely heard of the Brighton Group that backs it! I was wondering why my boss was making such a big deal out of a regular budget hotel chain. Turns out he was trying to get in with the Brighton Group…” I froze. Of course I knew the Brighton Group. It was a massive conglomerate that had started with a chain of hotels and expanded into multiple sectors. More importantly, the current head of the Brighton Group, Pierce Brighton, was Dominic’s childhood friend. I don’t know how I got back to the office that afternoon. The first thing I did was look up my company’s new owner. It was a company I’d never heard of. But I didn’t give up. I traced the chain of holding companies and majority shareholders all the way up. When the name “Brighton Group” finally appeared, my heart skipped a beat. Of course… How could there be so many coincidences in the world? Chris and I had planned to go to a convention, and he gets sent on an emergency business trip. Dominic thinks my job is affecting my health, and my company loses two major deals and gets a new owner. He had been so subtle about it, even routing everything through Pierce’s name. Even if I found out, he could just say it was a coincidence. Just the Brighton Group’s expansion plans, just Pierce’s decisions. What did it have to do with Dominic? I suddenly clutched my chest, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. 8 “Noah, are you off work? I’m waiting for you in the parking garage…” Today was one of Dominic’s friend’s birthdays, and he was taking me to the party. I calmly went downstairs, found his car, and got in. He expertly navigated out of the garage. Noticing my low mood, he asked softly, “Did you run into trouble at work?” “Yeah.” Seeing I was upset, his voice became even gentler. “A change in ownership and a new boss can really disrupt things. If you’re not adjusting well, you can always take some time off and rest at home. Or if you don’t want to quit, you could consider taking a leave of absence.” “Noah, you’ve been so distracted and down lately. Work is important, but I hope you’ll put your health first.” I suddenly turned and stared straight at him. “Do you want me to quit?” His expression didn’t change. He still wore that faint, gentlemanly smile. “I respect all of your decisions.” 9 The birthday party was held in a newly built private garden, complete with a celebrity-headlined lawn concert. Dominic led me to a table in the inner circle. After dinner, they started playing cards. Dominic won three hands in a row, and the atmosphere became lively. A group of privileged elites, all with a competitive streak, were getting fired up. Pierce was among them, and he was losing the worst, already down two sports cars and a prize horse. Even as everyone ganged up on him, Dominic remained effortlessly in control. He even found a moment to remind me, “Don’t drink. I had someone get you some warm water.” Pierce, seeing he was about to lose again, threw down his cards. He gave a knowing smile and raised an eyebrow. “Dominic, you won’t even let him drink now? You’re getting more twisted by the day.” Then he turned to me. “Noah, has it ever occurred to you that your entire life is being controlled by this psycho?” Dominic wrapped an arm around my suddenly rigid frame, smiled, and threw down a royal flush, winning another hand. He answered for me. “He hasn’t.” Pierce clicked his tongue and gave him a thumbs-up. For a split second, I wanted to flip the table, to smash the wine bottles over Dominic and Pierce’s heads. If you don’t want to perish in silence, you have to fight back.

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On a night of torrential rain, my fiancé abandoned me on the side of the road to go comfort his childhood sweetheart. As I stood there, completely drenched and shivering, a Range Rover pulled over in front of me. A tall, incredibly muscular man stepped out of the car and held an umbrella over my head. “With rain this heavy, what on earth are you doing out here, miss?” My eyes drifted first to his prominent, muscular chest pressing against his shirt, and then slowly up to his face. And then, I burst into loud, ugly tears. He panicked instantly, waving his hands frantically. “Holy shit! Please don’t cry! If you’re in trouble, just tell me! I’ll help you!” 1 “Son of a bitch! Is he even human?!” Sitting in the passenger seat of his car, I finished telling my story. The kind stranger was furious, cursing loudly and slamming his fist against the steering wheel. “What an absolute bastard!” “Don’t cry, miss. Here, dry your hair first.” He handed me a clean towel. His movements were incredibly gentle and careful, a complete contrast to the aggressive way he was cursing just seconds ago. He looked at me with deep sympathy, righteous anger burning in his eyes. “Good lord, look at how he treated a sweet girl like you. He’s a disgrace to men everywhere.” The more he talked, the more wronged I felt, and my tears just wouldn’t stop. Even total strangers thought he was completely out of line, yet Nate Sterling genuinely believed he hadn’t done anything wrong. It was an autumn night. I was soaked to the bone, and the freezing wind made me shiver uncontrollably. The man quickly took off his heavy jacket, draped it over my shoulders, and blasted the car’s heater. “Thank you so much.” “Don’t be sad, miss. I’m not a bad guy, I swear. Where do you live? I’ll drive you home. You’ll catch pneumonia if you stay out here.” I gave him my address, and he drove me straight home. That night, Nate Sterling abandoned me to comfort Chloe, his childhood friend who claimed to have severe depression. Instead, it was a random stranger passing by who saved me. Even though I got into the car quickly, I still woke up the next morning with a high fever. While drifting in and out of consciousness in bed, I heard my mom and Nate talking outside my bedroom door. “I was wrong about last night. I came to apologize to Hazel,” Nate said. My mom sighed. “Couples fight all the time. It’s normal. Just go in and talk to her softly. She’ll forgive you.” My mom didn’t know the full story of what happened last night. She assumed it was just a minor, petty argument. After all, I loved him so deeply and desperately. How could I ever stay mad at him? In the past, a few soft words were all it took for me to forgive him. The bedroom door opened. A warm palm rested gently against my forehead. I opened my eyes and looked at him coldly, turning my head to dodge his touch. Nate froze for a second, but his expression quickly returned to normal. His eyes held a trace of apology. “Last night was an emergency. You know Chloe has severe clinical depression. I couldn’t just leave her alone when she was having an episode.” You couldn’t bear to leave Chloe alone, but you could bear to leave me. A bitter taste flooded my throat, and my heart turned completely cold. Chloe constantly weaponized her “depression,” using it to snatch Nate away from me countless times. During our dates. While we were eating dinner. Even when we were lying in bed at night. All it took was a single phone call. No matter how busy or preoccupied he was, he would drop everything and rush to her side immediately. He constantly told me I needed to be “understanding” of Chloe. He swore he only saw her as a little sister. But what kind of “brother and sister” are so intimately close that they fall asleep hugging in the same bed? He claimed it was because Chloe lacked a sense of security and needed to be comforted. Last night, Chloe called him again, crying hysterically and saying she couldn’t breathe. Nate immediately turned the car around. I snapped and we got into a massive fight. His face was full of annoyance. He frantically checked his watch over and over, terrified that if he delayed even one more second, Chloe might do something drastic. “Can you stop causing drama for once?! Chloe is sick! She is a patient! You have absolutely zero empathy!” In that moment, I desperately wanted to know who mattered more to him. I arrogantly, foolishly issued an ultimatum: “You have to choose right now. It’s either me or Chloe.” And then… I was humiliatingly, brutally abandoned on the side of the road. I still remember the freezing, indifferent tone of his voice right before he left: “You are being incredibly cold-blooded right now. Stand here and reflect on your behavior.” The car tires screeched as he sped away, splashing freezing, muddy rainwater all over my dress. It felt like fireworks going off to celebrate Chloe’s ultimate victory. It was late at night. The road was completely deserted. He wasn’t worried that I might run into danger; he was only worried that Chloe might hurt herself. If that kind stranger hadn’t stopped to help me last night, I have no idea what could have happened to me. If he actually felt guilty, why didn’t he call me once during that entire, endless night? Why didn’t he come looking for me? Why did he only show up now? Because he spent the entire night keeping Chloe company, obviously. The agonizing pain of a heart covered in scars had finally gone completely numb. I was just sinking into an endless abyss. From seventeen to twenty-five. I had to face the brutal reality: the man I had loved for my entire youth was rotten to his very core. I would never be his first choice. As long as Chloe existed, the scales in his heart would always, permanently tip toward her. I stared at him, my gaze terrifyingly calm and detached, and spoke slowly: “Nate, I don’t want to marry you anymore.” “Let’s break up.” “I’ll explain everything clearly to both of our families.” My tone was so incredibly calm that Nate’s expression cracked for a split second. He furrowed his brow, familiarly reaching out to tuck the blankets around me. “You’re just speaking out of anger right now. Don’t say stupid things you’re going to regret later.” He leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to my forehead. It was incredibly tender. So tender that it made my nose sting with unshed tears. That’s the cruelest part. I desperately wanted to stop loving this despicable man, but I could still see the ghost of the boy I fell so deeply in love with. It made cutting him out of my life feel like pure psychological torture. “Rest up and get better. I’ll be right here with you.” 2 For the next few days while I recovered at home, Nate visited me every single day. He brought me pastries from my favorite bakery, meticulously fed me my meals, and made sure I took my medicine on time. My parents had originally been against our relationship. They thought Nate was emotionally unstable and unreliable. But I loved him so desperately, and after throwing enough tantrums, they finally gave in and gave us their blessing. Now, seeing Nate acting so attentive and caring, their opinion of him completely flipped. They started treating him incredibly warmly. Nate sat by my bed and said softly, “I already hired the wedding planner. If everything goes smoothly, we can have the wedding by the end of the year.” He held my hand, looking deeply into my eyes: “The venue design is exactly the style you wanted. Your custom wedding dress should arrive soon. Once you recover, we’ll go in for your final fitting.” Maybe God was giving me one final chance to reconsider. Because my fever refused to break, lingering for days. I silently pulled my hand out of his grip. Meeting his shocked gaze, I asked him: “If we get married… what happens to Chloe?” Chloe was Nate’s childhood friend. They grew up on the same street. They had been practically glued together since they were kids. Nate spoiled her like she was his own flesh and blood. He gave her whatever she wanted, and he always, instinctively, prioritized her needs over everything else. It was basically a hardwired reflex. Of course, the “she’s just my little sister” excuse was entirely Nate’s own delusion. In the eyes of their entire friend group, the two of them were soulmates who were destined to end up together. So when Nate finally introduced me to his elite social circle and announced I was his girlfriend… Everyone’s reactions were incredibly complex. But absolutely no one looked happy for us. Especially Chloe. Her face went ghostly pale. She forced a tragic, fragile smile, raised her wine glass, and with tears shimmering in her eyes, said: “Congratulations. I hope Nate and his new girlfriend are very happy together.” That night, Chloe drank heavily. No one could stop her. Nate’s brow remained furrowed in a tight, anxious knot the entire evening. His entire focus was completely monopolized by Chloe. Aside from Nate, I didn’t know a single person in that room. I felt entirely ostracized by their tight-knit group, so incredibly awkward I could only stare down at my phone. When Chloe got blackout drunk, she started crying hysterically and throwing a fit. She refused to let anyone touch her except Nate. In the end, Nate abandoned me. He told me to call an Uber and go home by myself, while he carried Chloe out and drove her home. 3 Before Nate left, he looked furious. Whenever an issue involved Chloe, he seemed to completely lose control of his temper. He looked at me with frustration and annoyance, defending himself: “I told you a million times, she’s just a little sister to me. We are completely platonic! Why do you always have to project such disgusting, toxic assumptions onto everyone?!” Am I the one making toxic assumptions, or are they the ones with something to hide? Honestly, everyone in that room knew the truth. But I wasn’t allowed to say it out loud. The second I said it, I became the villain. After Nate left that night, he didn’t come to see me for several days. My fever eventually broke. A close friend of mine, Leah, was officially launching her new non-profit organization, and the opening ceremony was perfectly timed. Standing near the entrance of the community center, Leah grabbed my hand, pointing excitedly at a man in the center of the room being praised by local politicians. “Look, that’s our primary donor! He’s incredibly generous. When he heard about our youth outreach program, he just signed a check for $500,000 without even blinking.” The man was extremely tall and powerfully built. He stood out massively in the crowd. The second I looked at him, I recognized him. It was the good Samaritan who drove me home that night in the rain. A second later, he turned his head and locked eyes with me. A look of genuine surprise crossed his face, and he walked briskly toward me. “Hey! Aren’t you the girl who was crying her eyes out on the side of the road in the middle of the night?” Leah froze, her expression instantly darkening. “What do you mean, crying on the side of the road in the middle of the night?” The man immediately slapped his own mouth lightly. “Ah, my bad! I shouldn’t have brought that up. Don’t be mad, miss, I didn’t mean to reopen an old wound.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s fine. Honestly, I really need to thank you again. I wouldn’t have made it home safe without you.” He waved his hand dismissively, a booming, hearty laugh escaping him. “Don’t mention it! That’s what neighbors are for.” He was clearly an incredibly kind, straightforward guy. He drove a stranded girl home in the freezing rain, and he was dropping half a million dollars on a local charity. Plus, he just radiated a rugged, protective aura. “By the way, miss, what’s your name?” “Hazel.” “Beautiful name. I’m Carter Vance.” He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “So… did you finally dump that piece of garbage boyfriend yet?” At the mention of Nate, my smile turned slightly bitter. “I’m planning to call off the engagement soon.” “Good for you! Let me tell you, where I’m from, a man who doesn’t treat his woman like a queen deserves to be struck by lightning.” Leah, who had been completely out of the loop, stared at me with wide eyes. “Wait… what?! You’re breaking off the engagement with Nate?!” Instead of trying to convince me to reconsider, she slapped her thigh, her eyes lighting up with absolute joy. “HELL YES! You should have dumped that loser years ago!” “He and Chloe are a toxic, narcissistic match made in hell. If I didn’t know how deeply in love you were, I would have told you to run a long time ago!” Sometimes, people refuse to listen to advice. But when life finally slaps them in the face, they learn the lesson immediately. 4 When Nate heard that Leah was launching a non-profit, he also donated $15,000. He was wealthy; to him, it was just pocket change. Even Chloe donated $3,000. Nate used this exact point to lecture me: “I told you Chloe has a good heart. The misunderstandings between you two are just too deep. You need to find a time to sit down and clear the air with her.” In his mind, even after we were married, he had absolutely no intention of cutting contact with Chloe. In fact, he demanded that I learn to get along with her. What was his ultimate goal here? A modern-day harem where everyone lived in harmony under his roof? When Leah found out about the night Nate abandoned me on the road, she was so furious she actually cried. She wanted to refund Nate and Chloe’s donations immediately, but I stopped her. “Don’t let pride get in the way of funding. There are so many kids who need food and supplies. Our current budget is nowhere near enough.” “So when are you going to tell your parents about calling off the engagement? Is Nate actually going to agree to it?” Nate felt completely secure. He wasn’t worried that I would break off the engagement unilaterally. Because technically, he and Chloe hadn’t engaged in any explicitly sexual or romantic physical contact. If I used Chloe as the reason for the breakup, his entire social circle would just brand me as a paranoid, hysterical, jealous woman making a huge scene over nothing. The end of this relationship couldn’t be framed as my fault. While I was trying to figure out a clean exit strategy, Nate invited his friend group out for dinner. Chloe was there, too. His goal was obvious: he wanted to force me and Chloe to “resolve our misunderstandings” and force me to finally accept her presence in our lives. Nate’s world simply could not function without Chloe in it. He would rather force me to swallow my humiliation and pain than ever abandon her. Using group pressure and social dynamics to “mediate” our relationship was nothing but emotional blackmail. When I arrived at the restaurant, Chloe was sitting in the dead center of the private dining room, surrounded by their friends. Her eyes were red, she looked incredibly fragile and tragic, and everyone was fawning over her, comforting her. She was the beloved, protected princess of their elite little clique. She was the only girl in the group, and she grew up alongside Nate. I was just the awkward outsider who suddenly intruded on their perfect dynamic during high school. Back then, I genuinely believed Nate and Chloe were just platonic friends. He rarely even mentioned her name around me. But one afternoon, I went to drop off an umbrella for Nate because it was raining. From a distance, I saw Chloe arguing with him. I didn’t hear what she said, but she ended up crying and sprinting away into the rain. The very next day, Nate officially asked me to be his girlfriend. After that, I didn’t see Chloe around him for a very long time. Until the news of Chloe’s “clinical depression” suddenly broke. Even though Nate’s friends were superficially polite to me, behind my back, they blamed me for Chloe’s mental breakdown. In their eyes, I was the malicious homewrecker who had stolen Nate and destroyed Chloe’s life. “Don’t worry, Chloe. With us here, she wouldn’t dare try to bully you.” “Seriously, Nate, why do you put up with Hazel? She’s the one who needs to apologize, and she has the nerve to show up late?” “Can’t you see how devastated Chloe is? Why do you insist on staying with Hazel? What does she even have to offer?” Right as their toxic gossip reached its peak, I pushed the heavy oak doors open and walked in. The room instantly fell dead silent. The expressions on everyone’s faces were incredibly entertaining, quickly smoothing over into masks of thinly veiled disgust. They reflexively ignored my existence, performatively pouring tea and handing tissues to Chloe, deliberately trying to signal that Chloe was fundamentally different from me, and that I would never, ever be accepted as one of them. I smiled. “What’s with the setup? Are you guys planning to put me on trial?” Nate pulled me down into the chair next to him, frowning. “Hazel, could you please not speak with such a hostile tone? You never used to be like this.” As he said that, his eyes instinctively darted toward Chloe. Seeing her looking like she was about to cry, a flash of deep pain crossed his face, and he looked back at me with sharp reprimand. It was as if I was just being an irrational, dramatic child. He had completely forgotten his promise to love and accept every part of me. Now, just because I made one slightly sarcastic comment, he was already blaming me to protect his precious childhood friend. Honestly, he wasn’t any different from the rest of the people in this room. Deep down, he had never truly viewed me as a real part of his life. The good news was: I didn’t care anymore. Chloe forced a tragic, brave smile, sniffled quietly, and raised her glass of juice toward me. “Hazel… in the past, I was immature and didn’t understand boundaries. I caused too much trouble for you and Nate. It was my fault. I’m apologizing to you now, and I really hope you can forgive me.” The young woman looked at me with an expression of profound sorrow, mixed with a defiant, stubborn glint in her eye. It was obvious she wasn’t actually sorry at all. I didn’t even bother standing up. I just stared dead into her eyes. “Chloe, are you actually diagnosed with clinical depression? Or are you just faking it?” The second the words left my mouth, Nate violently grabbed my wrist. His face contorted with rage, looking like he genuinely wanted to murder me. “HAZEL!” Chloe’s expression completely shattered. Her face went stark white, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into hysterical, gut-wrenching sobs. “Hazel… how could you possibly say something so cruel?” The entire room erupted in fury, pointing fingers at me. “Hazel, are you even human?! Who the hell jokes about something like that?!” Coincidentally, one of my close friends worked in the exact psychiatric hospital where Chloe claimed to receive treatment. I had asked her to check the system. Chloe’s name was completely absent from all patient records. I had actually told Nate about this before. But he refused to believe me. After all, Chloe had genuinely been admitted to the ICU for a “suicide attempt” in the past. I watched the chaotic, screaming room with absolute, deadpan calm. Nate was deeply offended by my cold, emotionless reaction. His eyes were full of profound disappointment. “You never used to be like this.” “You never used to be like this either.” I laughed. “Did you forget the promises you made to my parents?” “We haven’t even been engaged for that long, and you’re already teaming up with outsiders to bully me.” “Nate, you are truly an incredible fiancé.” His face cycled through several shades of red and white. His friends were yelling loudly, aggressively demanding that Nate “be a man” and put me in my place. Nate gritted his teeth, and ultimately, chose to stand firmly by Chloe’s side. “Hazel, you need to apologize to Chloe.” His voice was soft, almost like he was coaxing me. He was coaxing me to lower my head and submit to the woman he shared an ambiguous, emotionally entangled history with. My nose stung with a sharp, burning sensation. I suddenly realized that I had never, truly seen the real him. Or maybe, I had just projected my own idealized fantasy onto him. And now that I had finally accumulated enough disappointment, I could see his true face with absolute clarity. Everyone loves a man with a strong sense of responsibility, empathy, and devotion. But when a man distributes that responsibility, empathy, and devotion generously to every woman around him… he’s not a good man. He’s just a communal space heater. My eyes burned hot. Without saying a single word, I picked up the glass of iced water on the table and threw it directly into Nate’s face. The entire room gasped in shock. Nate’s face went completely, terrifyingly dark. Whatever final shred of patience he had for me instantly vanished. “Hazel, have you lost your fucking mind?!” The man sitting next to Chloe lunged forward, his face twisted in fury, raising his hand to hit me. With tears still blurring my vision. I grabbed a heavy glass tumbler and smashed it directly into his face. SMASH. It hit him square in the nose. Blood instantly gushed everywhere, and the sheer pain made him howl in agony, tears streaming down his face. “You’re all a bunch of brain-dead dogs. I’m done playing your pathetic little games!” I grabbed my designer purse and turned to leave. Nate chased after me, grabbing my wrist tightly, refusing to let go. “Hazel, you are going to apologize to them right now! If you don’t, how are you ever going to interact with my friends after we get married?!” I wouldn’t interact with your fucking friends even if you paid me! I swung my free hand around and slapped Nate hard across the face. “If you care about them so much, why don’t you just marry them instead?!” Even if I hadn’t already decided to cancel the wedding, why the hell would I ever care what these irrelevant losers thought? “You are being completely irrational!” “You are coming back inside with me right now!” Chloe, who had followed him out, tried to intervene, pulling at our arms. “Nate, please! This is all my fault. Please don’t fight with Hazel over me!” In the chaotic scuffle, someone shoved her hard. Chloe fell to the floor, scraping the palms of her hands on the pavement. She winced, her face going pale from the pain. Seeing her injured, Nate completely abandoned our argument, immediately dropping to his knees to frantically check on Chloe. “I’m fine. I just really don’t want you two to ruin your relationship because of me.” Chloe had an incredibly innocent, pure aesthetic. When she cried, she looked heartbreakingly fragile. Nate could never bear to see his precious “little sister” shed a single tear. And now, he truly, deeply hated me. “Hazel. If you refuse to apologize to Chloe right now…” “Then I think we need to cancel the wedding.” Using the wedding to threaten me? That was exactly what I had been praying for. Since I managed to secretly record the entire conversation on my phone, everyone would clearly hear Nate prioritizing an outsider and trying to force his fiancée to submit. When I leaked the audio, the blame would fall entirely on him. I didn’t have the energy to waste another breath on these two. I turned around to walk away. But Nate blocked my path again. As we struggled, a massive hand suddenly grabbed Nate by the shoulder and shoved him violently backward. Nate stumbled, nearly losing his balance, his brow furrowing in anger. “Who the hell are you?!” I stared blankly at the man who had just appeared. Carter Vance glared at Nate with a terrifying, aggressive scowl, pointing a thick finger directly at his face. “Who am I? I’m your worst fucking nightmare!” “Are you incapable of using your words like a man?! Why the fuck are you grabbing her?! You dress like a Wall Street executive, but you act like a complete degenerate! If there weren’t security cameras here, I’d rip that arm off and use it to scratch my dog’s back!” This guy could curse like a sailor without even pausing for breath. I didn’t know Carter was not only kind-hearted, but also an elite-tier trash talker. Nate’s face flushed a violent shade of red. He wasn’t the type to get into screaming matches; he literally didn’t know how to respond to street-level aggression. “What I do with my fiancée is none of your business!” Carter’s eyes went wide. He looked at Nate, then looked down at Chloe sitting on the floor. He nodded slowly, a disgusted smirk on his face. “Ah. So you’re the absolute scumbag who abandoned this sweet girl on the side of the road in the freezing rain to go hook up with your side-piece.” “I have a great eye for reading people. One look at you, and I knew exactly what you were. You and this little green-tea manipulator are clearly screwing around behind her back, and you have the audacity to come out here and torture a good woman.” “What century do you think this is? Are you trying to build a harem?!” Chloe had never been spoken to with such vulgar, brutal disrespect in her entire life. Her face turned just as pale as Nate’s. “What kind of garbage are you spewing?!” Carter shot her a freezing, contemptuous glare. “A girl like you is so toxic I could use you as rat poison, and you’d still smell like cheap perfume. Don’t sit there trying to play the innocent victim when you know exactly what you’re doing.” He wrapped his massive, muscular arm around my shoulders, pulling me protectively behind his back. Seeing this, Nate suppressed his fury and reached his hand out toward me. “Hazel. Come here.” Carter immediately launched another devastating verbal combo. “Come where?! Who the hell do you think you are, ordering her around like a dictator?!” “If I hadn’t happened to drive by and pick her up that night, she could be the victim on tonight’s True Crime broadcast! You abandoned your own fiancée shivering in the freezing rain, just so you could go snuggle up in a warm bed with your side-chick!” Nate was 6’1″, which wasn’t short. But standing next to Carter, he was still half a head shorter. Combined with Carter’s massive, heavily muscled frame, the physical intimidation factor was completely unmatched. He looked incredibly aggressive and scary, but standing behind him, I felt an overwhelming, profound sense of safety. When Nate’s friends had ganged up to bully me, I didn’t cry. When he stood by Chloe’s side and demanded I apologize, I didn’t cry. But suddenly, hearing a total stranger forcefully validate all the trauma and injustice I had suffered… Having someone finally stand up for me… I couldn’t hold it back anymore. The tears just started falling. Carter was a pro at talking trash, but he clearly had no idea how to handle a crying woman. Seeing my tears, he panicked, stammering awkwardly for a few seconds. Finally, he leaned down and whispered softly in my ear: “Don’t cry, Hazel. Give me a minute, I’ll find some guys to beat the shit out of him later.” My tears stopped instantly. I was supposed to be deeply upset, but his comment caught me so off guard I actually laughed. “Assault is a felony.” He winked at me conspiratorially. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it quietly. No one will ever know.”

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I was the pampered secret Norman Lancaster held in the palm of his hand. When his obsession with me was at its peak, even the most arrogant old-money socialites in Manhattan had to treat me with respect. That was until one day, at twenty-eight years old, I was personally decorating a private table at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Hudson River for our ninth anniversary. My phone buzzed with a text from him. “I am getting engaged today… I was worried you might find out and cause a scene.” “Be a good girl. I will come home later and explain.” The silver fork in my hand clattered against the plate. I froze, paralyzed. It felt like the floor had opened up, swallowing me into an endless abyss. Tears spilled over my lashes before I could even blink. “Then all these years… what was I to you?” I hit send. The chat screen remained dead, met with an agonizing, suffocating silence. 1 The dawn sky was a stifling, cinematic gray, making the faint flush of warmth in the bedroom feel even more intense. I had just rolled over. My gaze collided straight into the dark, bottomless eyes of the man beside me. They were heavy with sleep. He had just woken up. “You are up early,” I whispered. The arm wrapped around my waist suddenly tightened, locking me against his hard chest. “Dom, stop…” “Mhm.” He let out a low, gravelly hum that vibrated against my skin. His hands, however, did not stop. Warm fingers, heavy with familiar desire, smoothly slipped the strap of my silk nightgown down my shoulder, tracing lower. Before I could even push him away, his powerful, overwhelming body pressed over mine. … Two hours later. I dozed lightly against his chest until the bright morning sun pierced through the curtains, waking me up. His hands were still brazenly wandering over my curves. His voice was lazy, completely satisfied. “What is it? Cannot sleep?” I shifted my aching hips and playfully punched his shoulder. Pulling the heavy duvet over my flushed face, I mumbled my complaint. “It is all your fault…” He had been utterly insatiable last night, taking me again and again until I was entirely exhausted. And the second he opened his eyes this morning, he was all over me again. It always gave me this pathetic, delusional hope that he loved me down to the marrow of his bones. Because of that, the tiny, suppressed hope in my heart started sprouting like weeds after the rain. I just could not keep it buried. I crawled up, resting my chin on his chest. My index finger traced slow, teasing circles over his smooth skin, careful and deliberate. “Norman… do you know what day it is today?” The pale, elegant fingers holding his cigarette paused. It was as if he had hit an invisible wall. His hand froze in mid-air. His thin lips parted slightly. “No. Why? Is something going on?” Plumes of white smoke drifted upward in lonely, perfect rings. The haze blurred his sharp, devastatingly handsome features, but it could not hide the sudden, icy shift in his demeanor. I shivered, my heart dropping to my stomach. I understood instantly. He had forgotten what today was. Again. A heavy weight dragged my chest down. For the past nine years, today had been our anniversary. Yet, he never actively remembered it. It felt deliberate. Like he was erasing it on purpose. He would go all out for Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or my birthday, showering me in diamonds and attention. But never today. It made me feel so incredibly cherished, yet utterly worthless all at once. … The silence in the bedroom grew deafening. “Are you mad?” Seeing my silence, he leaned over and pinched my chin, tilting my face up. I snapped out of my daze. His expression had returned to normal. He stared down at me, letting out a low chuckle. “Let me guess what holiday you invented this time. A rose festival? A Cartier jewelry day?” That lethal, sexy mouth curved upward. “I will have Assistant Wyatt handle it for you.” “But,” he added, his tone dripping with lazy finality, “I really do have plans tonight.” He said it so casually, but there was an underlying, absolute authority in his voice that dared me to argue. A massive wave of grievance hit me. My eyes quickly filled with hot tears. If it were any other day, I would have swallowed my pride and compromised like a good girl. But not today. Today, I wanted to be selfish. I forced my voice to stay steady, completely ignoring his warning as I blurted out the truth. “What could possibly be so important that you cannot cancel it? I do not care. You have to have dinner with me tonight.” The relaxed lines between Norman’s brows snapped together. He eyed me, his aura turning freezing cold, but he maintained a sliver of patience. “I cannot cancel it.” My chest physically ached. I raised my voice, fueled by pure hurt. “Norman, are you doing this on purpose? I said, you are having dinner with me.” “…” When his sharp, perfectly sculpted brows furrowed deeply, a distinct look of offense crossed his face. Like a peasant had just insulted a king. It was a look I had never seen directed at me. His glacial eyes swept over me without an ounce of affection before looking away. He coldly put out his cigarette, stood up, and fastened his luxury watch around his wrist. “We will talk later.” He grabbed his crisp dress shirt and put it on. It was not until he was fully dressed and standing by the bedroom door that he finally looked back at me. His voice was laced with pure frost. “Madeline, you are crossing a line with this tantrum. It is not a good look on you.” Panic instantly seized my throat. I called out desperately, “Dom…” But the only answer I got was the sound of the heavy bedroom door slamming shut. The lock clicked, trapping my voice inside this massive, empty room. 2 Norman said this was not like me. But did he know that this was not like him either? When I first met him nine years ago, the image burned into my brain was of a man entirely composed, brutally disciplined, and untouchable. It seemed like nothing in the world could ever make him lose his temper. At least, that was how he had always been with me. I still remember our very first encounter. It was my college graduation. As the valedictorian, I was supposed to receive my diploma and an award from him, our university’s most prestigious billionaire donor. When our hands met, the hand offering me the certificate paused. His voice, crisp and cool like a rushing stream, echoed through the microphone. “Excellent work. What is your next goal?” In that exact moment, I looked up and got lost in his eyes. I completely froze. How could I even describe those eyes? They were obsidian, mysterious, like a massive black hole threatening to swallow me whole. I could hear my own heartbeat going absolutely chaotic in my ears. “I, I…” In my panic, my fingers crushed the edge of my graduation gown. The words tumbled out of my mouth. “I want to be yours…” “…” The entire auditorium went dead silent. A second later, a massive wave of laughter erupted from the crowd. I stood there, paralyzed, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me. My face drained of all color. I waved my hands frantically, desperate to fix it. “No, no, no! I meant… I want to be someone like you…” Despite my absolute humiliation, the man standing before me remained perfectly composed. There was not a single ripple of shock in his eyes. Those dark, narrow eyes gleamed slightly under the stage lights. His thin lips curved into a smile gentler than a spring breeze. “A very creative opening statement. Miss Madeline truly earns her title as valedictorian. The rest of you should take notes.” He chuckled softly. “I will remember you.” “Keep up the good work,” he said smoothly. Norman did not get offended. Instead, in front of thousands of people, he handed me a graceful way out, rescuing my fragile, shattered pride. His grace left me absolutely deeply shaken. That day felt like I had been cleansed by a sudden, beautiful rainstorm. I also knew, deep down, that he was a shore I could never reach, no matter how hard I swam. After graduation, I found a decent corporate job in Boston. I mapped out a practical life, aiming for a modest, successful future that had absolutely nothing to do with him. But just as my life was getting on track, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. In just three months, we drained every single penny we owned, but we still could not save her. My father broke under the grief. He turned to alcohol, cigarettes, and eventually, underground gambling. He mortgaged our house and took out massive loans from loan sharks. He destroyed whatever was left of our family. The next time I saw Norman, I was taking a shot of cheap tequila for a girl named Penny. She was there to party. I was there as a bottle girl, desperate for cash. Inside a loud, chaotic VIP booth, a sweaty, drunk man was dragging her by the wrist, trying to force liquor down her throat. “I bought this, so you are going to drink it.” “I will not!” Penny thrashed wildly. “Let go of me! My uncle is Norman Lancaster! If you touch me, he will destroy you!” That specific name made my hand freeze over the ice bucket. The next second, right as the man was about to pour the liquor into her mouth, I reached out and snatched the glass. “I will take this drink for her.” The man looked up, annoyed. His gaze landed on my face, tracing my pale skin, my features, and my long legs in the uniform skirt. I knew exactly what my assets were. His eyes lit up with disgusting hunger. “Alright, sweetheart. You drink it. Drink this, spend the night with me, and I will let the little brat go.” … I lost count of how many glasses they shoved down my throat. Suddenly, a glass bottle shattered against the fat man’s head with a sickening crunch. When I forced my heavy eyelids open, the disgusting man was already cowering on the floor. Standing over him was a tall, imposing figure. Through my blurred, spinning vision, I only saw a man in a flawless tailored suit. His aura was entirely lethal yet aristocratic. His hand, adorned with a million-dollar watch, grasped my arm with strict professional boundaries, pulling me up. “Are you alright?” My tongue felt numb. “I… I…” I just gave up and shook my head. I was practically dragged out of the club. The wind outside was brutal. The cold air mixing with the alcohol made the world spin violently. I collapsed onto the soft mattress of a luxury hotel room without ever seeing the man’s face clearly. But my intuition screamed at me. I knew it was Norman Lancaster. When I woke up the next morning, the suite was empty. But on the nightstand, there was a crisp piece of hotel stationery. “I remember you. Thank you for what you did last night. Here is my personal number. Keep it just in case.” The elegant handwriting perfectly matched his breathtaking profile. His face instantly flashed in my mind. My heart hammered against my ribs like an earthquake. 3 After that night, I kept my job at the club, constantly scanning the crowds, hoping Norman would walk through the doors again. But my luck was terrible. I did not find the man I was waiting for. Instead, I ran straight into the drunk man from that night. I learned his name was Director Marcus. He was a sleazy film director who had a few hit movies years ago and now used his fading influence to exploit desperate young actresses. Penny, wanting to break into Hollywood without her family’s help, had been tricked into coming to his booth. I was holding a tray of drinks when I locked eyes with him. The stench of stale alcohol hit my nose immediately. “You.” He ground his teeth, his eyes turning vicious. “You actually have the nerve to show your face around me?” His sweaty, greasy hands shot out, wrapping around my throat like a vice. He leaned in, panting heavily. “I am going to end you tonight, you little bitch.” My face drained of blood. I thrashed wildly, trying to break free. The other men in the VIP room immediately understood the assignment. They stood up and walked out, clearing the room for him. I screamed for help. “No! Let me go!” But the heavy, soundproof door clicked shut right in front of my eyes. My heart plummeted into absolute darkness. He violently threw me onto the leather sofa. His hands ripped at my uniform shirt, tearing the fabric. My hands scrambled blindly across the table, praying to find a glass bottle or a corkscrew. Anything. Instead, my fingers brushed against the phone in my vest pocket. I pressed the emergency dial without looking. BANG. The heavy doors were kicked open. Norman’s massive frame stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway lights like a literal god. That was the third time we met. Right in the middle of my ruined, miserable life. I was exhausted, broken, and helpless. He was the light cutting through the fog. I found out later why my accidental emergency call got him there so fast. He was already in the club that night for a meeting. He had seen me when he walked in, but he had kept his distance. Because of my own calculated move to set his private number as my emergency contact, I had miraculously saved my own life. “Mr. Lancaster, thank you.” My throat was bruised. My voice came out cracked and hoarse. Norman’s eyes swept over my torn clothes. With perfect gentlemanly grace, he shrugged off his expensive suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. He smiled faintly, polite and distant. “Do not mention it, Miss Madeline. I owed you a favor anyway.” “Consider us even.” Just then, his assistant walked in, carrying a brand new dress. I took it gratefully and went to the bathroom to change. When I stepped back out, I had regained whatever little dignity I had left. “The dress is beautiful. It looks like I owe you a favor again, Mr. Lancaster.” “…” As a way to repay him, or rather, using my gratitude as an excuse to cling to him. For the next two weeks, I practically stalked him. I begged him to hire me as his personal secretary. First, I genuinely wanted to pay him back. Second, I had realized a brutal truth. In this world, the only way to survive and protect myself was to stand behind the most powerful man in the room. Initially, Norman refused. But by pure luck, his executive secretary of five years, Rachel, had to go on sudden maternity leave. Her absence threw his entire meticulous life into absolute chaos. It was 11:00 PM. The icy winter wind slashed against my face, chilling me to the bone. I stood right outside the glass doors of Lancaster Corp headquarters. I watched this pristine, flawless billionaire walk out of the lobby, heavily rubbing his temples in exhaustion. His jaw was clenched tight, his expression masking deep frustration. His right hand was pressed hard against his stomach, rubbing it as if he were in pain from skipping meals. As his long strides carried him past me, I took a deep breath. I told myself, This is it. It is time to let go. But to my absolute shock, those expensive leather shoes stopped, turned around, and walked right back into my line of sight. “It seems I really cannot function without a woman organizing my life.” The freezing wind messed up his perfectly styled hair. His voice sounded like it was echoing from a deep, lonely cavern. Cold, detached, but yielding. He said, “Want to give it a try?” “…” And just like that. Our fourth encounter stopped time itself. I never told him that night was my deadline. I had made a bet with myself. If he rejected me by midnight, I would disappear from his life forever. Thank God. I had taken ninety-nine steps toward him, and just as I was about to turn around, he took the final step toward me. 4 After becoming Norman’s secretary, I became the busiest woman in New York. I did not want him to think I was a burden, so I compressed months of training into weeks, learning every single detail of his personal and professional life. My analytical brain, the one that made me valedictorian, allowed me to adapt instantly and navigate the corporate warzone with ease. Norman was extremely satisfied with my performance. Though he never praised me with words. Instead, he doubled my base salary, gave me massive performance bonuses, and bought me a luxury condo in the center of Manhattan. It was a life I used to think was a fantasy. Then came that night. I was wearing a stunning, elegant off-the-shoulder gown, accompanying him to an exclusive high-society gala. The old wolves of Wall Street kept coming over to toast him. As his secretary, I flawlessly stepped in, blocking the liquor and downing glass after glass with polite, charming smiles. I drank too much, too fast. My head was spinning. I excused myself and stepped out onto the terrace to get some fresh air. Suddenly, a warm, high-quality suit jacket was draped over my bare shoulders. My heart fluttered. Thinking it was Norman, I turned around eagerly. But the man standing there had a face I had never seen before. He had striking features and radiated an easy, arrogant wealth. I frowned immediately. “And you are?”

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I woke up five years in the future. Married to my ex-boyfriend, who was now a titan of industry. And pregnant with his child. But he seemed to despise me. When I tried to cook for him, he wouldn’t touch the food. “What did you lace it with this time?” When I offered myself to him, he just sneered. “Trying to get me in the mood just so you can shove another woman into my bed again?” I begged him to let us be a happy family of three. He looked at me like a wounded animal. “Are you trying to humiliate me with this baby again?” Goddammit. You’re telling me the baby isn’t even his? 1 Last night, Cole had gone at it until the early hours of the morning. The insatiable beast. He nearly took me apart. “Cole!” I called out habitually. “Get me a glass of water.” Silence. No one answered. The silk sheet slid off my body as I sat up, revealing the slinky nightdress I had on. For all his rough handling last night, there wasn’t a single mark on my skin. Wait a second. I stared down at my stomach in shock. What was this… gentle curve? I… was pregnant? The room was unfamiliar, a minimalist palette of white and gray, with luxury whispering from every detail. But I could have sworn… last night, I was with Cole in his tiny rental apartment. The rickety wooden bed had creaked and groaned under his relentless assault all night long… 2 In a panic, I instinctively dialed Cole’s number. “What is it?” His voice was cold. I bit my lip, feeling a rush of confusion and hurt. “Where did you go?” “The office.” “The auto shop?” A pause. Cole’s voice came back through the line, laced with an unnerving chill. “Are you planning to use my past against me again?” “What past?” I was completely baffled. “Don’t you work at the auto shop?” “And another thing, last night we were in your apartment. How did I end up…” Beep… beep… beep… Before I could finish, the line went dead. Cole had hung up on me. That bastard! I cursed under my breath. Just as I was about to call him back, my eyes froze on the screen. The year… was 2030. Five years in the future. My gaze drifted numbly to my rounded belly. The horrifying realization dawned on me: I had somehow time-traveled five years forward. And I was pregnant. An old photograph sat on the nightstand. It showed a vibrant, dolled-up me, standing next to a ruggedly handsome Cole in a tank top. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I redialed his number. “Cole, we’re married, right?” “How many years has it been?” “How did my dad ever agree to let me marry you?” I was desperate to understand what had happened in those five years. But Cole seemed to hear something else entirely. He let out a bitter laugh. “Stella, are you trying to tell me you regret it all over again? This is the third time this month you’ve brought up divorce.” He paused. “And I’ve told you before, I won’t agree to it.” 3 “Who said anything about a divorce?” I asked, stunned. That face, that body, that… stamina. And now he was loaded? Why in the world would I want to divorce him? The other end of the line was silent. So silent I could hear the sudden hitch in his breathing. After a long moment, he said flatly, “Do whatever you want.” And before I could say another word, he hung up again. Seriously? When did this man get so moody? I probably spoiled him. You can’t spoil men. Knowing I was in my own home, at least, brought a small measure of relief. I decided to change and go downstairs. But when I opened the closet, I froze. It was an explosion of gaudy colors. Each outfit was tackier than the last. Ugh. This was my future self’s taste? I managed to find a relatively simple dress and slipped it on, then padded downstairs in my slippers. To my surprise, I found a familiar face in the living room. “Martha?” I cried out in delight. Martha had been our family’s housekeeper for over twenty years. Seeing someone I knew and trusted in this strange future was a huge comfort. “Perfect timing,” I said, linking my arm through hers warmly. “I was just about to cook a meal for Cole. With you teaching me, I know I can do it.” Martha’s expression was complicated. She hesitated, then whispered, “Ma’am… are you planning on making things difficult for Mr. Donovan again?” Making things difficult? Considering my disastrous cooking skills, that wasn’t an exaggeration. She tried to say more, but I cut her off. “I know Cole. Even if it tastes awful, he’ll force himself to eat every last bite.” 4 In the kitchen, I casually tried to pump her for information about the last five years. Five years ago, I had defied my family to marry Cole. After the wedding, he quit his job and started his own business to give me a better life. My father, despite his disdain for his penniless son-in-law, had secretly provided a lot of support in the early days. And Cole had more than proven himself. In just five years, he had transformed from a poor kid into one of the brightest rising stars in Crestwood. According to Martha, his wealth and status now far surpassed my father’s. “It’s just…” Martha began, her voice trailing off as she helped me with a chicken soup. “Ma’am, are you still seeing that boy, Jax?” “Jax?” I asked, stirring a pot distractedly. “Who’s that?” Martha looked stunned. “Your… boyfriend.” I nearly choked on my own saliva. Our eyes met. “I’ve been cheating?” Martha nodded, her face a mask of sorrow. “He’s a mechanic, too. You were so insistent on the divorce, you wanted to…” Her words were cut short by the sound of footsteps at the door. Martha fell silent instantly. I turned around and saw him. The Cole of five years later. His long legs were encased in tailored slacks, the cuffs of his dress shirt unbuttoned to the second button, giving him an air of rugged maturity. He was leaner now, his features sharper. Even knowing he was my legal husband, the sight of him still made me blush. “You’re… home.” “Yeah.” So cold. But then again, I was cheating on him with a younger guy. Why would he be nice to me? Taking a deep breath, I plastered a smile on my face and braced myself to clean up my future self’s mess. “You must be tired. Why don’t you wait outside? Dinner’s almost ready.” Cole’s eyes scanned the loose apron tied over my pregnant belly. His tone was flat. “I’m not hungry.” With that, he switched on the kitchen’s ventilation fan and turned to leave. “Cole!” I grabbed a spatula and hurried after him, my voice turning into an involuntary whine. “It’s almost done. I made all your favorites. Just try a little, please?” “I’m not hungry,” he repeated, and walked out. Beside me, Martha asked timidly, “Ma’am, should I… finish the food?” I sighed. “Yeah, let’s finish it.” 5 Dinner was ready. Four simple, home-cooked dishes and a soup. Cole, who had claimed he wasn’t hungry, was now sitting at the dining table. This is a good sign, I thought, and quickly placed a shrimp in his bowl. “Ma’am,” Martha whispered urgently from beside me, “Mr. Donovan is allergic to shrimp.” Damn it. I quickly snatched it back and replaced it with a piece of braised pork. But Cole didn’t move his chopsticks. He leaned back in his chair, watching me with a cool, detached amusement. “Go on. Tell me.” “What did you put in the food this time?” I stared at him, dumbfounded. “I didn’t…” Cole cut me off with a cynical drawl. “You’ve cooked twice this year. The first time, you put laxatives in my food. The second time, it was sleeping pills. All because I wouldn’t agree to a divorce. So, Stella, what is it this time?” I looked at him in disbelief, utterly speechless. “I really didn’t put anything in it.” To prove it, I frantically picked up a piece of meat and shoved it into my mouth. “See? It’s not poisoned…” “Ugh…” Cole’s face darkened. He reached out and tried to pry the food out of my mouth. “Fine, I’ll eat it, okay?” he snapped. “I’d eat it even if it was poisoned. You don’t have to do this.” I pushed his hand away and swallowed the chunk of meat whole. “It’s not poisoned, it’s just… really bad.” It had a greasy, gamey taste. Cole stared at me for a long moment. Then he sat back down. I could have sworn I saw the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile. He finally picked up his chopsticks. I watched his face intently. Sure enough, the moment the food touched his lips, even the stoic Cole couldn’t help but frown. But he had grown up poor. As bad as it was, he ate almost everything. Seeing him in a better mood, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. “Cole, I need to talk to you tonight.” His hand, holding the chopsticks, froze. “I’m busy.” His expression turned cold again. He set his chopsticks down with a sharp clatter. “I have to work late. We can talk some other time.” 6 I sat at the table, chin in my hands, lamenting my terrible luck. Five years of my life were a complete blank. It was no different from having my life cut short by five years. And on top of that, I had to clean up my future self’s messes and win back my husband. This new CEO version of Cole was moody and unpredictable, his temper turning on a dime. I sighed. Martha hesitated before asking, “Ma’am, are you… still planning on asking for a divorce tonight?” I blinked. “You thought I wanted to talk to him about a divorce?” “Well… yes, didn’t you?” Martha murmured, confused. “For the past year, you’ve been dead set on divorcing him. Every time you see him, you’re either forcing him to sign the papers or begging him to let you go.” I thought back to the ugly look on Cole’s face just now. So that was it. He had shut down and claimed he was busy because he was afraid I was going to bring up divorce again? That fool. 7 Cole worked in his study late into the night. I was dozing off waiting for him when I heard footsteps outside my door. They moved through the moonlit hallway and stopped right outside. Sleep vanished instantly. I grabbed my pillow and got out of bed. When I pulled the door open, I was met with Cole’s startled, vulnerable gaze. He froze, then slowly lowered the unlit cigarette from his fingers. “Cole,” I whispered. He gave me a complicated look, then rubbed his temples with a grimace. “I’m exhausted. Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow.” He turned to leave again. Gritting my teeth, I followed him, pillow tucked under one arm, and looped my other arm through his. Cole went rigid. I looked up at him. “I don’t want to sleep alone. I’m scared.” He turned his head away. Another rejection. “I have to work. I’m too tired.” “I won’t bother you,” I promised sincerely. “I’ll just sleep next to you. I won’t do anything. You won’t even know I’m there.” Cole didn’t speak, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob. “Fine,” he muttered. I happily followed him into his room with my pillow. The room was spartan. For a CEO, his room was surprisingly bare—just a bed, a wardrobe, and nothing else. Oh. And an old photo of me on his nightstand. I was about to take a closer look when Cole snatched it and stuffed it under his pillow. “I’ve been having nightmares,” he said gruffly. “The picture on the nightstand… it wards off evil spirits.” Right. Keep telling yourself that. Cole lay down with his back to me, clearly ignoring me. I hesitated for a moment, then slid in beside him and wrapped my arms around his waist. The next second, he flung my hand off. He rolled over to face me, his features cast in a sliver of moonlight, his expression utterly heartbroken. “Stella,” he whispered. “Are you just trying to seduce me so you can push another woman into our bed again?” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to suppress a wave of raw emotion. “You went through all that trouble, again and again, just to leave me… just to go to him?” I was completely stunned. My heart ached for him. What on earth had I done to him over these past five years? I didn’t know how to explain, so I just reached for his hand. “Cole, can you please just trust me? I don’t want a divorce. We have a baby on the way. From now on, let’s just be a family, the three of us. Okay?” But my words seemed to strike a nerve deep inside him. He pushed me away, his whole body trembling. The anguish in his eyes was so thick it was about to overflow. “Stella, are you going to use this baby to humiliate me again?” Humiliate him? I suddenly remembered Martha’s hesitant, unfinished sentences. A terrible premonition crept into my heart. Oh, God. Don’t tell me… the baby isn’t even Cole’s. 8 I was so shocked I could barely speak. Cole wouldn’t look at me. He gathered his blankets, stood up, and prepared to sleep in another room. “Cole!” I finally found my voice. “I need to tell you something. It’s going to sound crazy…” “I’m from five years in the past. The night before I woke up here, I was with you in your old apartment. You were… a real bastard that night. We did it seven times.” “But that’s not the point. The point is, I went to sleep and woke up five years in the future.” I licked my lips, feeling his disbelieving stare on me, and nervously finished my sentence. “The person who cheated… that was the future me. The real me… I love you.” Dead silence. Cole stood there, his face unreadable, until the silence could no longer contain his fury. “Stella.” “Yes,” I answered quickly. “I’m listening.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “So, the cheater was the future you, not the you standing in front of me right now, the one who just came from five years ago after sleeping with me in my apartment?” I nodded vigorously. “Yes!” If only he would believe me. But then Cole started to laugh. It was a cold, mocking sound. “Do I look like an idiot to you?” He pried my fingers from his sleeve, clutched his blankets, and walked out. “Get some sleep.” The door closed softly behind him, but the sound was deafening. I sat on the edge of the bed, dejected. I guess he had a point. If the roles were reversed, if Cole had cheated on me repeatedly and then told me it was his future self and that he had time-traveled from the past and wanted to start over… I’d probably slap him twice. Are you playing me for a fool? 9 I barely slept a wink. The next morning, I came downstairs with dark circles under my eyes. Cole had already left for work. Martha coaxed me into eating some breakfast. After much thought, I made a decision. I was going to the hospital. To get rid of this baby. I learned from Martha that Cole and I hadn’t slept together in almost a year. That meant this child could not possibly be his. I didn’t know why my future self had done what she did. But this baby could not stay. I made an appointment with an OB-GYN. However, just as my car turned off the main road onto a quieter street, a motorcycle screeched to a halt, cutting me off. The rider was a young man in cargo pants and a black t-shirt. For a split second, he looked just like the Cole I used to know. But when he took off his helmet, the face was completely unfamiliar. Handsome, rebellious, and unapologetically arrogant. He walked up to my car and tapped on the window with his knuckle. I could read his lips. He was saying my name. “Stella.” I rolled down the window. “Who are you?” The young man clutched his chest, feigning heartbreak. “It’s only been a few days and you’ve already forgotten me, sweetheart?” He reached out and pinched my cheek. “Is it because I haven’t seen you? I’ve been busy with a race. Don’t be mad. I’ll make it up to you today.” He raised an eyebrow, his smile wild and untamed. I had a pretty good idea who he was. “Jax?” “So you haven’t forgotten me completely.” I frowned, deciding to get straight to the point. “Since you’re here, let’s clear things up.” He grinned, putting on a show of listening intently. “Whatever we were before, it ends today. I have a family, and I am not getting a divorce. You’re young, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on a married woman. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” The young man didn’t say anything. He took a couple of drags from a cigarette, then turned his head and blew out the smoke. He let out a soft, humorless laugh. “Tired of your toy, so you’re just throwing it away? Are you playing me for a fool, sweetheart?” I was about to respond when I looked up. Past Jax, I saw Cole standing down the street. I couldn’t make out his expression. All I could see was the shopping bag in his hand. It was from my favorite bakery. 10 A sudden, sharp pain lanced through my chest. “Cole!” I scrambled out of the car, the door bumping into Jax. He grunted in pain. “No conscience at all, have you, sweetheart?” But I couldn’t spare him a thought. As I got closer, I finally saw the look in Cole’s eyes. It was a mixture of indifference, disappointment, and a deep, wounded sorrow. He just stood there, watching me silently. It was clear this wasn’t the first time he’d seen something like this. “Here.” He held out the bag. His voice was low. “The cake you loved five years ago.” He watched me, his gaze intense, as if he was searching for something. “You still love it, right?” A bitter, acidic feeling rose from my chest. So, he had believed my “time travel” story after all. As I stood there, stunned, Cole’s arm remained outstretched, rigid. Finally, as if all the strength had drained out of him, he slowly started to lower it. I rushed forward and took the bag. “I love it.” To prove it, I pulled out the cake and took a bite. The frosting was sickly sweet. I smiled, but I felt like crying. “It’s delicious.” Cole smiled back. He said, “Stella, I was up all night thinking. You said you came from five years in the past. I can believe you.” Not I believe you. I can believe you. Even though the reason was flimsy, absurd, even though he was a man of logic and reason. He could still choose to believe me.

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