Category: English

Twenty-three years. That was the lifespan of my marriage to Robert. Together, we’d built a home, a reputation, and raised a son we thought was the best of us. After our son started college, he began bringing a girl home. I was thrilled. I genuinely liked her. I thought I was witnessing the start of my son’s first real love story, imagining a future daughter-in-law. That illusion shattered the moment I saw Robert’s phone. There, tucked behind the digital folders of family vacations and graduation photos, was a shot that didn’t belong. It wasn’t a family portrait. It was a nude. In that heartbeat, the world tilted. The girl wasn’t our son’s girlfriend. She was Robert’s mistress. Our son wasn’t a young man in love; he was the lookout. He was the smoke and mirrors for his father’s mid-life filth. “She’s barely older than your own son,” I screamed, my voice cracking, the hysteria clawing at my throat. “Do you have even a shred of dignity left?” Robert didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look guilty. He just sat there with the terrifying composure of a man who believed he was owed the world. “Joanna, look at us. Twenty years of history. No one can touch what we have,” he said, his voice smooth, academic. “Piper… she’s just a distraction. A detour.” He paused, then looked me straight in the eye with a cold, clinical honesty. “When I married you, you’d already given yourself to someone else. For twenty-three years, that’s been a thorn in my side. I just wanted to know what it felt like…” He hesitated, tasting the words. “I wanted to know what it felt like to be a girl’s first.” 1 Today was the third time Piper had been to the house. She was wearing a white pleated sundress, her long hair loose and effortless. She was barely wearing any makeup, the kind of natural beauty that only comes with youth. The second she walked in, she chirped a sweet “Hi, Professor!” to Robert. She didn’t even look at me. It had been like this every time. She ignored me as if I were part of the furniture. No “Mrs. Bennett,” no “Ma’am,” not even a polite nod. It was raining outside, a sudden summer downpour that had soaked her through. Robert, a man who usually guarded his personal space like a fortress, immediately grabbed a plush towel. He began to dry her hair himself, his movements rhythmic, intimate. “You’re drenched,” he murmured. “Next time it rains, call me. I’ll come down to the parking lot with an umbrella.” “I will. Thanks, Professor,” she sang back. “What are you hungry for? I’ll have her fix us something.” Piper pouted her lips, rattling off a list of complicated, high-maintenance dishes. Then, all three of them—Robert, Piper, and my son, Tyler—turned to look at me. “Go on, Joanna,” Robert said. “And remember, she can’t do spicy. Make sure there’s no heat in anything.” Piper offered a hollow, performative smile. “Do you want me to help in the kitchen, Mrs. Bennett?” “No,” Robert snapped before I could answer. “You just got your nails done. Don’t ruin them. Joanna’s hands are… well, she’s used to the work. It’s fine.” “Okay! I’ll just wait for the feast then!” A knot of unease tightened in my chest, but I forced it down. You’re being paranoid, I told myself. She’s Tyler’s girlfriend. Robert is just being a mentor. I spent the next two hours sweating over a stove while laughter drifted in from the living room. They were playing chess. Piper lost two games and, in a fit of “adorable” rebellion, used a felt-tip marker to draw whiskers on Robert’s face as a penalty. Robert, a man with a notorious obsession with hygiene, just threw his head back and laughed, letting her mark his skin. I remembered a time, years ago, when I’d tried to touch his face before washing my hands. He’d recoiled as if I were covered in acid. The knot in my chest turned into a cold weight. I scolded myself for being jealous of a girl. She was my son’s partner, after all. That evening, after Piper left, I remembered she’d taken some photos of the three of us earlier. I asked Robert to air-drop them to me. “Sure,” he said. He sent over a dozen shots, but then, his face went pale. He frantically tapped his screen, unsending a photo. “Slip of the thumb,” he muttered, his voice thick with fake casualness. “Sent a random screenshot by mistake. You didn’t see it, right?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. In the five seconds before he’d deleted it, I’d seen it. It wasn’t a screenshot. It was Piper. Posing. Exposed. 2 In the photo, she was provocative, her tongue out, her legs parted in a way that was undeniably an invitation. There was no mistake. None. Why was that on my husband’s phone? The realization hit me like a physical blow. All the “small things”—the lingering glances, the hair-drying, the whiskers—they weren’t my imagination. They were the truth. My brain was a chaotic roar of static. She was Tyler’s age. Robert could have been her father. It was grotesque. And Tyler… did he know? The questions were exploding in my head like shrapnel. I needed the truth. I needed to see it all. I waited. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, until 1:00 AM, listening to the steady, rhythmic snoring beside me. Once I was sure Robert was dead to the world, I reached under his pillow. My fingers were trembling as I pulled out his phone. I entered our anniversary—the code he’d never bothered to change—and the screen glowed to life. I searched his messages. My breath hitched. Hidden in his archived chats was a group thread. Three people: Robert, Tyler, and Piper. Robert had sent the last message: [Piper, are you back at the dorm?] Piper’s response was a voice note. I pressed the phone to my ear. Her voice was a sugary purr: “I’m back, Professor. Did the Wife suspect anything today?” Robert had typed back: [No. She spends her whole life in the kitchen. Her brain has turned to mush. She won’t figure it out.] Then, Tyler’s text popped up below it: [Exactly. Mom is clueless. Besides, I’ve got you guys covered. Don’t worry about it.] The betrayal was total. My husband. My son. They had invited this girl into my home, sat at my table, and treated me like a court jester in my own life. I scrolled up, my chest tight, my ribs feeling like they were about to crack under the pressure. They had started six months ago. Tyler had introduced them. Piper was a “fan”—a literature student who had idolized Robert’s published novels since high school. When she found out Tyler was the son of the great Robert Bennett, she begged for an introduction. Admiration had turned into an affair within weeks. In six months, they had met at hotels thirty-one times. Once a week, like clockwork. I found digital receipts for thousands of dollars. Lingerie. Jewelry. And prescriptions for Viagra. Robert and I hadn’t touched each other in two years. He’d told me it was “low testosterone,” a natural part of aging. It was a lie. He just wasn’t interested in me. The room blurred as tears finally came—hot, silent, and bitter. I turned to look at the man sleeping beside me in the dark. For a long time, I just watched him breathe. Then, I reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp. I shook him hard. 3 “What… what is it? It’s the middle of the night,” he groaned, squinting against the light. Then he saw my face. “Joanna? What’s wrong?” “I know,” I whispered, my voice a jagged edge of rage. “I know everything.” I shoved the phone into his chest. “You’re sleeping with a girl who could be your daughter. Have you no shame, Robert? Do you have even a pulse of human decency?” Robert sat up. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look panicked. He just sighed, reached for a tissue on the nightstand, and offered it to me. “Joanna, let’s be adults. Twenty-three years. That’s a foundation no one can shake. Piper… she’s just a lapse in judgment. A mid-life glitch.” His tone was insufferably condescending, like he was explaining a difficult text to a freshman. “Look,” he said, leaning in. “When we got married, you weren’t ‘new.’ You’d been with that guy before me. For twenty-three years, I’ve had to live with that. I’ve had to carry the weight of being the second man.” He paused, a flicker of something dark crossing his face. “I just wanted to experience what it was like to have someone who was only mine. To taste… purity.” I couldn’t hear him anymore. My ears started ringing, a high-pitched drone that drowned out his voice. I could see his lips moving, but the words were just static. Twenty-three years. He’d been nursing a grudge for twenty-three years over something that wasn’t even my fault. Before him, I’d dated a man who turned out to be a predator. He’d drugged me. I’d woken up in a nightmare. When I tried to go to the police, he’d threatened me, told me he’d tell everyone I was “used goods.” I went to the police anyway. It was a scandal. My classmates whispered behind my back. Robert was the only one who stood by me. He told me he loved me, that my past didn’t matter, that he wanted to protect me. I had spent two decades being grateful to him. I thought he was my savior. I didn’t realize he was just a bookkeeper, tallying up a debt I could never pay. “Joanna, do you know what it does to a man’s ego? Knowing his wife was handled by someone else first?” he continued. “I don’t blame you, but I needed balance. I found Piper. I promise you, it was a one-time thing. It’s over.” My stomach lurched. I scrambled out of bed, ran to the bathroom, and doubled over. I retched until my throat burned. Robert followed me, standing in the doorway, looking mildly inconvenienced. “Joanna…” “I had no idea you were this broken inside,” I gasped, wiping my mouth. “If you’ve been in this much pain for twenty years, then we’re done. I want a divorce.” Robert’s face hardened. “No. Absolutely not. We’re an institution, Joanna. We’ve come too far.” He stepped forward and tried to put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched away. “We’re almost fifty,” he said, his voice softening into a manipulative purr. “In a few years, Tyler will get married. We’ll have grandkids. We’ll retire, travel the world. It’s going to be beautiful. Don’t throw all that away over a tantrum.” A tantrum? I felt a wave of vertigo. For a split second, I actually hesitated. The “sunk cost” of my life felt like a physical weight. Our lives were like two vines that had grown so tightly together you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. To pull apart would mean tearing skin, breaking bone. Could I actually survive the surgery? 4 Robert helped me back to bed. He stroked my hair with a chilling tenderness. “Just sleep. When you wake up, this will all feel like a bad dream.” The next morning, he was the picture-perfect husband. He made breakfast—avocado toast and poached eggs, just the way I liked. He even went out to the local bakery for the sourdough I loved. He was “better” than he’d been in years. Remorse, or the fear of losing his lifestyle, had made him attentive. Throughout the day, he sent me texts from his office. Thinking of you. What do you want for dinner? I’ll pick it up on the way home. He ended the texts with a little winking bunny emoji. I’d seen that emoji in Piper’s texts. The nausea returned, violent and absolute. I realized then that I couldn’t lie to myself. Betrayal isn’t a smudge you can wipe off; it’s a crack in the foundation. I called Tyler. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?” His voice was casual, flippant. “I know about your father. And Piper.” There was a long silence on the other end. “I’m not calling to argue,” I said. “I’m calling to tell you that I’m divorcing him.” Tyler actually laughed. “Mom, are you serious? You’re going to blow up our whole family over this? At your age?” “Tyler—” “Dad treats you like a queen. So he had a little fun on the side. Big deal. Every guy does it. Just close your eyes and let it pass. You’re halfway to the grave, don’t you think a divorce is a bit embarrassing?” He sighed, his voice dripping with disdain. “And honestly, Mom? You’ve been a housewife for twenty years. How are you going to survive? You want to be a beggar? Get over yourself.” He hung up. The silence of the dial tone was the coldest thing I’d ever felt. My son was gone. My husband was a stranger. That night, Robert and Tyler walked through the door together. Tyler had obviously tipped him off. Robert was in full “damage control” mode. He even went into the kitchen to help me prep vegetables—something he hadn’t done since the Clinton administration. “Look, Mom,” Tyler said, leaning against the counter. “Dad is trying. He’s tired from work, and he’s still helping you. He’s a good guy.” I let out a sharp, dry laugh. “Oh, and I’m not tired? Keeping this house running for twenty years isn’t work?” The two of them exchanged a look. The “crazy woman” look. “Joanna, honey,” Robert said with a forced smile. “Stop being angry. If you don’t want to cook, let’s go out. That French bistro you like? The one with the long waitlist? I’ll get us a table.” I’d been asking him to take me there for six months. He always said he was too busy with his research. It wasn’t that he didn’t have time. It was that his time belonged to her. I shoved his hand off my arm. “Don’t touch me. I’m not going anywhere with you.” “Joanna… for God’s sake! I’m giving you an out here! How much more do I have to grovel?” Robert’s patience finally snapped, his true face peeking through. “If you keep pushing this, it won’t end well for you.” I opened my mouth to scream at him, but the doorbell rang. It was Piper.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408328”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, waiting to snag a carton of eggs on clearance, when the glowing text suddenly materialized in the air in front of me. [So this is the phantom ideal the male lead has been obsessing over all these months?] [Look closely, the villainous adopted daughter actually looks a lot like her…] [Because of that resemblance, the male lead blindly favors the adopted kid. The actual heroine never stood a chance.] [The heroine was depressed for years. It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer that the male lead finally woke up and regretted everything.] A violent shudder ripped through me. I stood frozen in the middle of the aisle, my hand hovering over the carton. A phantom ideal? A tragic muse? But… I’m fifty years old. 1 Because I had stopped moving, the woman behind me seized the opportunity. She reached right past my elbow and snatched the largest, most pristine carton of jumbo eggs from the display. My old friend Barb nudged me hard in the ribs. “What are you doing, Maggie? You just gonna let her take your eggs?” I blinked, the neon lights of the supermarket coming back into focus, and hurriedly grabbed a different carton, dropping it into my basket. By the time Barb and I squeezed our way out of the crowd and headed toward the registers, the floating lines of text were still scrolling relentlessly across my vision. [As a billionaire CEO, the male lead gave the heroine plenty of money, but he never gave her an ounce of love.] [Yeah, the poor heroine. She loved him so much…] [If he’s emotionally unavailable, fine, but why does he unconditionally pamper the evil adopted daughter? What’s his problem?] A hand suddenly waved in front of my face. “Earth to Margaret. You’re spacing out again.” Barb frowned, eyeing me up and down. Then, as if struck by a sudden epiphany, she clapped her hands together. “Oh, I get it! Arthur asked you to the community center dance yesterday, didn’t he? Finally falling in love? If you ask me, Arthur is a catch. Back in the day, he was the most handsome guy in the county…” Barb was the undisputed gossip queen of our little social circle. She thrived on sniffing out secrets. Ever since Arthur made his feelings known a little over six months ago, she hadn’t stopped teasing me about it. “I’m just saying, a twilight romance isn’t the worst idea in the world,” she prattled on. “Arthur is financially stable, his kids are all grown and living in Europe…” I waved her off, exhausted. “Drop it, Barb. I’m used to being on my own.” Barb and her husband had a wonderful marriage; even in their golden years, they still liked to play at romance. I was different. I had lived on this earth for half a century and had never been married. No strings, no attachments, no lingering regrets. My days were quiet, unhurried, and perfectly my own. But today, these bizarre, hallucinatory comments had appeared out of nowhere. Calling me the “phantom ideal” of some fictional male lead. What an absolute joke. I’m retired. I have a pension. I don’t have time for this nonsense. 2 I went home and started cooking dinner. The text began scrolling again against the backdrop of my kitchen cabinets. [The heroine accidentally broke a picture frame today and the male lead screamed at her. She’s still hiding in her room crying.] [Yeah, she hasn’t even eaten dinner.] [The housekeeper tried to bring her some food, but the male lead stopped her. Said he wanted to teach the heroine a lesson.] [You’ve gone too far this time, you garbage CEO!] Before I retired, I was a high school teacher. I made a decent living. As an older woman with a bit of money and a lot of free time, I’d read my fair share of romance novels. The whole “billionaire loves the evil stand-in while the true heroine gets terminal cancer” trope? I’d read at least eighty variations of that exact story. But according to the glowing commentary, this specific tragedy was somehow connected to me. The so-called “villainess” was only receiving the male lead’s twisted, unconditional love because she looked like me. And that favoritism was indirectly driving the heroine toward a miserable, lonely death. My conscience simply couldn’t take it. Through the comments, I pieced together the details. The male lead was Nathaniel Bancroft, the thirty-year-old CEO of Bancroft Holdings, based in Chicago. …I was twenty years older than him. How on earth did I become the object of his eternal fixation?! I wrestled with it all night, but by dawn, I had booked a flight to Chicago. After a cab ride that cost entirely too much, I finally stood before the towering wrought-iron gates of the Bancroft estate in the affluent North Shore suburbs. Only to discover, unsurprisingly, that I couldn’t even get past the security checkpoint. I was standing on the sidewalk, seriously debating whether I should try to fake my way in as a newly hired maid, when the comments suddenly exploded. [The girls are home from school!] School? I froze. A second later, a sleek black Bentley glided down the street and pulled to a smooth stop just outside the estate gates. The tinted rear window rolled down, and a small, delicate face peered out. The girl looked at me with cautious, innocent curiosity. “Excuse me, ma’am? Do you need some help?” Before I could even open my mouth, the text went wild. [Sobbing! Our baby heroine is just too sweet.] [She’s living in a nightmare, but the second she sees someone who needs help, she still reaches out…] [And this beautiful angel ends up with terminal cancer. My heart is literally breaking.] [It’s all Nathaniel’s fault. Just you wait, Nathaniel Bancroft, I’m going to climb through this screen and rip your throat out.] Before I could reply to the sweet girl, another face appeared from the shadows of the backseat. Two small heads, side by side. Only, the one on the right had a voice like grinding glass. “You’re being pathetic again, Clementine,” the second girl sneered. “Did you forget how hard you cried the last time you got scammed by a beggar?” [The villainess is so spoiled. Does she even remember how hard she tried to suck up to Clementine when she first moved into this house?] [Right? A perfectly good kid, completely warped.] [You can’t entirely blame her. Kids mirror the adults around them. She sees Nathaniel treating Clementine like trash, so she just copies him.] [At the end of the story, when Clementine gets cancer, Nathaniel finally regrets everything and kicks the villainess out.] [But by then, he’s already spoiled her beyond repair. She can’t survive on her own and literally starves to death on the streets.] [Basically, Nathaniel ruins everyone!] Amidst the furious debate scrolling before my eyes, I stood rooted to the pavement, utterly dumbfounded. Wait a minute. Why did no one mention that the “heroine” and the “villainess” in this tragic saga… were currently just two little kids?! 3 I lied. I told them I had come to Chicago looking for work and had my purse stolen at the station. I just needed a little something to eat. Without a second of hesitation, Clementine said, “Please, get in the car. We have food at the house. I’ll have the chef make you something.” Isabelle, the younger girl, let out a sharp, aristocratic scoff. She looked at me with naked disgust. “Who goes looking for a job outside a gated billionaire’s community? You’re so stupid, Clementine. You deserve to get scammed.” “When Dad gets home, he’s going to scream at you for this.” At the mention of their father, Nathaniel, a shadow of genuine sorrow flickered across Clementine’s eyes. But she forced a brave, wavering smile and looked back at me. “Please, ma’am. Come inside.” I slid into the front passenger seat and reached for the seatbelt. Behind me, Isabelle scoffed again. I studied her in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. But the slight, upward tilt of her eyes, and that distinct, dark beauty mark resting just beneath her left eye… it did look like me. But that was where the resemblance ended. I am fifty years old. The silver in my hair is undeniable, the lines around my mouth etched deep by decades of living. She was just a cruel little child. 4 It didn’t take long for me to follow Clementine and Isabelle into the cavernous Bancroft mansion. The interior was a masterclass in cold, sterile wealth. Marble floors, vaulted ceilings, and staff bustling about like silent ghosts. The house lacked even a single ounce of warmth. Clementine dropped her backpack on an absurdly expensive leather sofa and scurried toward the kitchen on her short little legs. Isabelle simply rolled her eyes, swinging her designer backpack over her shoulder as she marched upstairs. A few minutes later, Clementine reappeared, carefully balancing a plate with a thick turkey sandwich. “Here, ma’am. You can eat this.” She tilted her head back, offering me the sweetest, most blinding smile. “I’ll go pour you a glass of milk.” Looking into her wide, earnest eyes and her soft, flushed cheeks, I felt my heart melt into a puddle. The comments were practically howling. [Ahhh! Clementine is so cute I could die!] [If Nathaniel doesn’t want this perfect angel, can I please adopt her?!] [Honestly, I’m just confused. This random lady is old. Why would the CEO use her as his ultimate phantom ideal?] Her curiosity matched my own perfectly. Unfortunately, the comments debated it for a while and came up with absolutely nothing. They eventually just blamed the author for being a hack who wrote illogical plot holes just to torture the heroine. I had just finished the last bite of my sandwich when Isabelle came sauntering back down the grand staircase. “Dad comes back from his business trip tonight,” Isabelle announced, a wicked glint in her eye. “The teacher said we need a parent’s signature on our report cards. Have you figured out how you’re going to explain failing math yet, Clementine?” At the mention of the failing grade, the soft smile vanished from Clementine’s face. Her shoulders slumped, and she bowed her head in defeat. The comments wept for her. [Poor Clementine.] [She had food poisoning the day of the test! She was in agony for two hours and couldn’t even finish the paper.] [Nathaniel didn’t even ask. He just saw the grade, screamed at her, and then praised the villainess right in front of her.] [Clementine cried in her room all night.] I looked at Clementine. She was gripping the straps of her backpack, her knuckles white, practically trembling where she stood. I couldn’t help myself. “Bring me the test,” I said softly. “I’ll sign it for you.” 5 Neither of them seemed to expect that. Both girls froze. After a long, agonizing moment, Clementine reached into her bag, bit her lip, and handed me the crumpled math test. “I… I didn’t finish it,” she whispered. I took it. It was a second-grade math assessment. At the top, in aggressive red ink, was a glaring 43%. Large sections of the paper were completely blank. The long addition and word problems were almost entirely untouched. Isabelle leaned over to sneer at it. “It’s so easy. I got a hundred percent. Dad is going to give me a massive reward later. I’m going to make him buy me that new designer princess dress!” I ignored her. I just put a gentle arm around Clementine’s narrow shoulders. “Tell me the truth,” I said quietly, looking into her eyes. “Do you know how to do these problems?” Encouraged by my steady gaze, Clementine gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Beside us, Isabelle shrieked, “You’re lying! If you knew how to do them, why didn’t you write the answers? You’re just scared Dad is going to yell at you again—” I cut her off. My voice was calm, but sharp enough to slice glass. “Little girl. This is your older sister. Speaking to her with that kind of venom is hardly what I would call good breeding.” Clementine’s head whipped up. She stared at me, her mouth slightly parted in shock. Isabelle looked like I had just slapped her. Her face twisted in ugly indignation. “You’re literally a beggar! How dare you lecture me?!” she screamed, completely losing her composure. “You have no right to talk to me! Get out of my house! Get out right now!” Just then, the heavy oak front doors swung open. A chorus of staff voices murmured, “Welcome home, Mr. Bancroft.” Both little girls instantly went rigid. In the blink of an eye, I watched Isabelle undergo a terrifying metamorphosis. She rubbed her eyes furiously until they were red, squeezed out a single, glittering tear, and looked past me with an expression of pure, victimized terror. “Daddy! Clementine found a crazy beggar on the street and forced her inside! I tried to tell her it wasn’t safe, but she wouldn’t listen!” “And then they both called me uneducated! Daddy, I’m scared!” 6 The floating text exploded into a frenzy of rage. [This manipulative little monster! I want to strangle her.] [It’s over, it’s over. Nathaniel already comes home in a bad mood on this day. He’s going to destroy Clementine.] [Random grandma, please do something! Channel your inner phantom ideal!] Sure enough. A second later, a voice like a frozen blade cut through the foyer. “Isabelle.” “Apologize to your sister. Right now.” Clementine flinched violently. I pulled her tighter against my side, resting a hand on her hair to soothe her. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Don’t be scared.” I stood up straight and slowly turned around. My eyes met the gaze of a tall, imposing man. He was young, undeniably handsome, with sharp, aristocratic features—but there was a suffocating, violent gloom baked into his expression. This was the male lead. Nathaniel Bancroft. I steadied my breathing. “Mr. Bancroft. Hello.” Nathaniel didn’t speak. He just stared at me. I watched his pupils blow wide, consuming the irises. I watched his Adam’s apple bob frantically as his breathing hitched. I frowned, momentarily thrown off by his intense reaction. I quickly tried to explain myself. “I’m not a beggar. I came to Chicago looking for work. My name is Margaret Callahan.” The man’s gaze suddenly sharpened into something terrifying. His jaw locked. Through clenched teeth, he forced out a single, trembling sentence: “What did you say your name was?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408313”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I stumbled across a shared folder titled “Honeymoon” on my wife’s laptop. For a fleeting, beautiful moment, I thought she was finally making good on a promise she’d deferred for five years. I clicked into it, my heart light with anticipation, only to find a spreadsheet that looked nothing like the one we’d drafted together. The departure date fell right in the middle of a business trip I’d already scheduled, so I pushed it back two days. I noticed she’d picked Antarctica; I changed it to Iceland, remembering that she’d once mentioned wanting to see the Aurora Borealis, which wouldn’t be visible in the south this time of year. Then, thinking of the budget we were trying to save for the baby we were planning, I downgraded the first-class flights to business. Suddenly, a cursor flickered on the screen. Another user had entered the document. With surgical precision, they reverted every single one of my changes. Then, a comment popped up in the sidebar: “Mommy, we said Antarctica. If we change it, Daddy will be sad!” I froze. A prank? A virus? A neighbor’s kid who’d somehow linked accounts? I didn’t hear Claire walk up behind me. Her voice was terrifyingly level when she spoke. “He’s the son of my foster brother, Bennett. Next time, Nigel. I promise, next time I’ll take you on a honeymoon.” 1 Claire said it with the casual indifference of someone mentioning the weather. She had a son. With Bennett. My jaw tightened, a ghost of a smile twitching on my lips. “It’s not April Fools’, Claire. What kind of joke is this?” I prayed for it to be a joke. A cruel, tasteless one, but a joke nonetheless. Instead, Claire picked up her phone right in front of me and hit a contact. “Hey, sweetie. No, that was just an accident. Someone touched the computer who shouldn’t have. I promised we’re going to see the penguins, didn’t I? Mommy never breaks her promises.” The softness in her eyes—a maternal glow I had hungered to see directed at a child of our own—felt like a hallucination. She hung up and turned the screen toward me, showing the traveler list for the “Honeymoon” trip: Claire Steward, Bennett Steward, and a five-year-old named Jamie. “Honestly, keeping this from you for five years has been exhausting,” she said, leaning against the desk. “Maybe it’s better this way. Now you know.” She reached into her bag and tossed a document onto the desk. A marriage certificate. “We’re a family. Legally.” The room seemed to tilt. The oxygen left my lungs. “A… family?” I thought back to the beginning. My internship at her firm, the whirlwind romance, the quiet ceremony we had five years ago, the domestic life we’d built. Every meal, every shared secret, every night in each other’s arms. I wasn’t even her husband. Not in the eyes of the law. Claire nodded, her expression bored. “At our engagement party, I had too much to drink. I thought Bennett was you. I was pregnant with his child when we ‘married.’ I had to take responsibility for him, Nigel. I had to give Jamie a legitimate home.” “But… the baby you had,” I stammered, my mind racing back to that sterile hospital room five years ago. “The doctors said he died. Minutes after he was born.” She stepped closer, placing a hand on my chest. “Don’t worry about the logistics. In my heart, you’re my husband. That’s how we’ve lived all this time, hasn’t it? Nothing has to change.” How we’ve lived. The pieces began to click into place, a mosaic of betrayal. The nights I’d spent in the ER after a car accident while she was “working late.” The times I’d waited at home with a candlelit dinner for an anniversary she forgot. She wasn’t at the office. She was with them. With her real family. I looked at the flight confirmation I’d printed out just an hour ago—the one I’d intended as a surprise. I felt a laugh bubble up in my throat, bitter and sharp. “You know, this was the last time,” I whispered. “The last time I was going to ask you to choose me.” Before I could finish, her phone chimed. The caller ID read Husband, punctuated by a heart emoji. Claire walked toward the hallway, answering with a voice so honeyed it made my skin crawl. Bennett’s voice bled through the speaker—intimate, demanding, familiar. I stood there in the silence of our—her—house, my hands shaking so hard I had to shove them into my pockets. That was when my phone buzzed. A friend request on Instagram from a private account: Bennett_Steward. 2 I accepted. The first thing I saw was a pinned post from two weeks ago. A wedding. A real wedding. Claire in white, Bennett in a tuxedo, Jamie between them, all of them laughing under a canopy of wisteria. Claire had told me she was in London for a merger that weekend. I had stayed up all night worrying because she hadn’t texted. While I was staring at the ceiling, she was promising forever to another man on a cliffside in Big Sur. I scrolled down. It was a curated gallery of a life I wasn’t part of. Family trips to Disney, weekends in the Hamptons, Christmas mornings. Everything I had begged for—the simple intimacy of a shared vacation—was their everyday reality. The final blow was a locked album he’d sent me a link to in a DM. Thousands of photos of Claire. But these weren’t the stiff, professional headshots she let me take. These were candid. Claire laughing with a smear of flour on her nose; Claire sleeping; Claire looking at the camera with raw, unfiltered adoration. Whenever I tried to take a photo of her, she’d swat my hand away. “I’m not a child, Nigel. Put the phone away. It’s tacky.” She wasn’t camera-shy. She just didn’t want to be captured by me. Claire walked back into the room, her phone tucked away. She wrapped her arms around my waist from behind, a practiced, hollow gesture of affection. “Nate, I’m sorry I kept it from you so long. I’ll make it up to you. Next time, I promise, it’ll be just us.” She said it so easily. As if five years of systemic gaslighting could be brushed away with a “next time.” I wrenched myself out of her grip. “I don’t want a next time! You’ve lied to me for half a decade. You think I’m that pathetic?” I felt the heat behind my eyes, the sting of humiliation. “We’re done. Get out.” I realized, with a sickening jolt, that I couldn’t even say the word divorce. There was nothing to divorce. Claire’s face hardened. The mask of the doting “wife” slipped, revealing the cold CEO underneath. “A man in my house doesn’t throw tantrums, Nigel.” She saw my tears and her voice softened, though it was the softness of a parent talking to a deluded child. “Jamie will learn to call you Dad eventually. As for the ‘legal’ part… to the rest of the world, you’re the man of this house. Why obsess over a piece of paper?” “Because it’s a lie!” I shouted, the dam finally breaking. “It’s not fair! None of this is fair!” She looked at me as if I were a tragic, broken thing. “You’re the only man who lives here. Bennett is just family. You should be set an example. Bennett’s birthday gala is tomorrow night. I expect you to be there, and I expect you to be composed.” She turned and left without looking back. She didn’t come home that night. Instead, she appeared in Bennett’s stories. The woman who claimed she hated the smell of grease was in a kitchen, covered in flour and butter, laughing as Jamie threw dough at her. Then, an anonymous DM hit my inbox. A video. It was grainy, shot in a hospital five years ago. A doctor was walking out of a delivery room with a crying newborn. Bennett stumbled into the frame, sobbing, grabbing the doctor’s coat. “The doctor just told me… I’ll never be able to have kids,” Bennett wailed into the camera. “No one will want me. I’ll never be a father. Claire, are you really going to leave me like this?” Claire was there, holding the baby. She looked torn, her eyes darting to the door where I was presumably waiting in the hallway. The baby in the video was loud, healthy, and very much alive. Then Claire spoke, and the sound of her voice made my ears ring. “Go tell my ‘husband’ the baby died. Tell him there were complications.” 3 I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning. The child I had mourned for five years—the son I had wept for in a cemetery for three days straight—wasn’t dead. She had given him away. She had handed my flesh and blood to Bennett like a consolation prize. The next evening, Claire’s security detail literally forced me into a suit and drove me to the gala. Bennett was there, looking every bit the master of the house, one hand on Jamie’s shoulder, the other resting possessively on Claire’s waist. I stood on the periphery, a ghost at my own funeral. I heard the whispers behind me. “I heard Nigel can’t have children. That’s why she keeps Bennett around—to secure the Steward heir.” “Bennett’s the real power there. Nigel’s just the trophy.” Claire looked at me, a small, triumphant smirk on her lips. She thought I’d finally folded. She thought I was there to play my part. I didn’t. I walked straight up to them, my voice trembling with a decade’s worth of suppressed rage. “You stole my son. You told me he was dead and gave him to him.” Claire’s eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before they turned into icy daggers. “We’ll discuss this at home. Do not make a scene.” The last flicker of hope I had for her died in that moment. The video was real. The betrayal was total. Bennett pulled Jamie closer, shrinking back with a look of practiced terror. “Nigel, please. Don’t hurt us again. I never told her about what you did… just leave us alone.” He shifted his sleeve, intentionally revealing bruises on his and Jamie’s arms. The guests gasped. “He’s bitter because he’s sterile?” someone hissed. “To hit a child…” another whispered. “Nigel, you monster!” Claire’s voice boomed over the crowd. “He’s my son!” I screamed. “I would never—” “That mean man hit me!” Jamie cried out, his voice shrill and rehearsed. “He told me to stay away from my real Daddy! I saw him hit Papa too!” The room spun. My own son was looking at me with eyes full of lies, coached by a sociopath. Claire’s face was a mask of pure loathing. “I had no idea you were this sick, Nigel. To take your jealousy out on a child?” I reached for Jamie, a desperate, primal instinct to connect with my son. “Luke—Jamie—I’m your father—” Bennett gave the boy a subtle, violent shove. Jamie tumbled backward, crashing into a towering pyramid of champagne flutes. Glass shattered. Blood bloomed on the boy’s white shirt. “Nigel, no!” Bennett shrieked. “He’s just a baby!” 4 I froze, paralyzed by the horror of the setup. Claire’s palm slammed across my face before I could breathe. “You did that right in front of me!” she screamed, her voice shaking with rage. “God knows what you’ve been doing to them behind my back!” The taste of copper filled my mouth. The room was a cacophony of insults and camera flashes. Bennett looked at me from behind Claire’s shoulder. His face shifted—the fear vanished, replaced by a slow, mocking grin. His lips moved silently: How does it feel to lose everything? I lost it. I lunged for him. I didn’t even reach him. Claire’s heel caught me in the chest, a brutal, practiced kick that sent me spiraling down the marble stairs. I landed in a bed of broken glass. “Nigel, enough!” Claire yelled from the top of the stairs. I couldn’t move. The pain in my chest was sharp, but the shards of glass in my skin were worse. “Help me,” I wheezed. “Please… he’s lying. Look at him.” “You’re a danger to this family,” Claire said, her voice dropping to a deadly, cold whisper. “If I leave Jamie with you, you’ll kill him.” She turned to her security team. “Take him to the private clinic. I want him sterilized. A man like this doesn’t deserve the chance to ever be a father again.” My heart stopped. “Claire, you can’t. That’s illegal—Claire!” She let out a short, sharp laugh. “Consider it a lesson in accountability. You want to play the victim? I’ll give you something to cry about.” The guards pinned me down. The last thing I saw was Claire turning her back to me to comfort Bennett and the boy. I was dragged into the back of a black SUV. The clinic was private, unmarked, and cold. The anesthesia was poorly administered; I felt the tugging, the slicing, the agonizing heat of the procedure. I thought of the years Claire and I spent talking about names for a second child. I thought of the nursery we’d painted blue. While I lay on that table, Bennett posted to his stories. The three of them were at the airport, heading to Antarctica. A perfect family, heading to a frozen wasteland. Claire sent me a text while I was in the recovery room: If you can learn to accept Bennett and Jamie, maybe I’ll take you on that honeymoon when we get back. I didn’t reply. I waited until I could walk. Then I gathered the medical waste—the physical evidence of what she’d stolen—and the flash drive of the clinic’s security footage I’d bribed an orderly for. I packed them into a cold-storage box and addressed it to her office. Claire, I’m returning what’s yours. We’re even now. A week later, Claire returned home with her “family.” The house was silent. Nigel was gone. The doorbell rang. A courier stood there with a package. “For Ms. Steward. Mr. Nigel said you’d want this personally.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408329”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

My best friend set his sights on the reigning queen of Alden University, relentlessly pursuing her for weeks. She wouldn’t even spare him a passing glance. Feeling too pathetic dying on this hill alone, he tried to pawn her best friend off on me—the resident sickly shut-in. I pointed to my chronically pale lips. “Marcus, do I look like I have the stamina to court someone?” He just patted my shoulder with the solemnity of a slick-haired preacher. “Romance is good for your cardiovascular health, Eden.” Eventually, Marcus decided to give up the chase. Naturally, I stopped mine too. That was when the campus queen texted my best friend, her tone utterly exhausted: Fine, I’ll go out with you. Just make your friend unblock my best friend. I’m drowning in her tears over here. 01 Ever since my best friend, Marcus, attended a guest lecture at Alden University last month, he had been profoundly, irritatingly obsessed with Valerie, the school’s untouchable IT girl. He made up his mind to win her over, dedicating weeks to the pursuit. The girl was carved from ice; she didn’t so much as look in his direction. Yet, rejection only seemed to fuel his delusion. It was like a sickness. “This is exactly the kind of woman I need, Eden,” he’d declare, pacing the floor. “If she’s too easy to get, I won’t cherish her later.” Because of my perpetually poor health, my parents rented a quiet off-campus apartment for me. Marcus moved in to keep an eye on me. We were a package deal. It was past nine on a Tuesday night. A cold, rhythmic rain beat against the windows. Marcus burst through the front door, dropping a pile of shopping bags, his face twisted in utter indignation. He kicked off his soaked loafers, his voice echoing in the hallway. “Damn it all. Why is Valerie so impossibly immune? I wore my killer crimson blazer today, the lucky one. I looked devastating. But she’s like a damn saint. Completely unfazed.” I dragged my eyes away from the movie playing on my laptop, taking in the sight of Marcus standing there in a dripping red suit. “If she’s that impossible to reach, maybe look somewhere else?” I suggested softly. “It’s not like you have a shortage of people throwing themselves at you.” “No, no, no.” He padded over to the fridge, pulled out a soda, and slumped onto the sofa, cracking it open. “Valerie isn’t like the rest of them. Just looking at her makes my heart do this… this crazy flip. And besides…” He covered his mouth, a dopey, lovesick grin spreading across his face. “Her body is insane. I went to watch her dance rehearsal last time. She has these killer abs, that sharp V-cut, straight out of an anime. Kissing her would be an absolute religious experience.” I turned my attention back to the screen, entirely unable to comprehend the chaotic inner workings of a man drowning in unrequited lust. “Hey!” He bumped his shoulder against mine, a sly, dangerous glint in his eye. “Let me show you a picture.” Before I could protest, he unlocked his phone, pulled up a photo, and shoved the screen into my face. I took it, mildly curious. A girl stared back at me. Her gaze was chillingly cool, her features bright but aggressively sharp, with an intimidating arch to her eyebrows. It looked like a screenshot he’d stolen from Valerie’s social media. “What about it?” “Eden. Do you like her?” Marcus and I had been joined at the hip since childhood. I could read the twitch of his brow before he even opened his mouth. I pointed to my pale, bloodless lips. “Marcus, do I look like I have the stamina to court someone?” His eyes sparkled. He grabbed my hands, holding them tightly. “Eden, listen to me. These two girls are attached at the hip. We need someone to divide and conquer. Plus, chasing Valerie all by myself is just… really lonely.” He gave me his best puppy-dog eyes, his tone shifting into earnest desperation. “Just keep me company in the trenches. Besides, getting your heart racing a little is good for your health.” The movie played on in the background, the protagonist’s voice cutting through the silence: I can’t believe I’m buying into your twisted logic! A second later, his phone pinged. Marcus instantly forwarded me the girl’s contact. “Trust me, Eden. You have to give this a shot. She… well, she looks a little fierce, but she’s actually really sweet.” I let out a long, heavy sigh. “Fine.” “God, I love you!” He lunged forward to hug me, then abruptly froze, realizing he was still drenched in rainwater and hair product. “Wait, let me shower first, then I’ll squeeze the life out of you. Wait for me!” I just stared at him. While he was in the shower, I tapped the link to add her, only to realize I was already on her friends list. Huh? I lowered my eyes, studying the girl’s profile picture. It was Snorlax from Pokémon. My own screen name was a bit embarrassing, a relic from my teenage years: SleepyPuff. My icon was Jigglypuff. I just wanted to live a simple, well-fed, deeply sleepy life, completely free of worries. Her screen name was CheeryPuff. My finger hovered over the glass screen. Anyone who loves vintage Pokémon can’t be a bad person, I reasoned with myself. By the time Marcus emerged from the bathroom, I had already switched the movie to My Neighbor Totoro. I didn’t have many hobbies outside of staying alive, but getting lost in animation and cinema was my sanctuary. “Eden, did you add her?” He walked out aggressively towel-drying his hair, wearing nothing but a faded tank top. “Yeah,” I mumbled, my eyes glued to the magical creatures on screen. Suddenly, a thought struck me. I scratched my head. “Wait, am I supposed to announce my intentions? Like, ‘Hello, I will be pursuing you now’?” “Hmm…” He leaned against the wall, pondering. “Ask her if there’s anyone she likes right now. If she says no, you hit her with: ‘Would you mind if I took that spot?’” “What?” My face scrunched up in pure disgust. “That sounds incredibly cheesy. Is this seriously how you hit on people?” “Look, there are a million complicated mind games out there. A raw, unpolished line like this will make her think you’re pure and innocent. Do exactly as I say. It’s foolproof.” “It’s called… laying the groundwork.” Despite my overwhelming skepticism, I tapped out the message: Hi. Do you have someone you like right now? I set the phone face down, expecting it to take hours. I was just settling back into the movie when the screen immediately lit up. “?” “Marcus,” I panicked quietly, “what if she just sends a question mark?” Before I could even voice the question aloud, a second message popped up. No. A shiver ran down my spine. Marcus peered over my shoulder. “Copy exactly what I told you. I’m gonna go blow-dry my hair.” “Okay.” Her message: Why do you ask? I typed: Would you mind if I took that spot? The moment I hit send, I threw the phone onto the cushions in sheer agony. God, the cringe was physical. The phone stayed silent. I forced my attention back to the movie. When Marcus returned, hair perfectly styled, he flopped onto the sofa next to me. “Well? How’d it go?” “She left me on read,” I said honestly. He grit his teeth, staring at the ceiling. For a second, I thought he was having an epiphany about his own terrible flirting strategies. Instead, he sighed, “It’s fine. That’s normal. Valerie didn’t reply to my first text either.” I stared at him in silence. I wanted to tell him that she probably didn’t reply because the line was a radioactive level of cringe, leaving her paralyzed with secondhand embarrassment. Marcus had a group project to work on, so he booted up his laptop to edit some video slides. I picked up my phone to check the time, and my breath hitched. Marcus spoke up, “By the way, her name is Morgan.” Morgan: Wait, what do you mean? I don’t just accept anyone’s feelings. Morgan: I’m not that kind of easy girl. Morgan: Are you saying you actually like me? There was a one-minute gap after those texts. She was probably waiting for my reply, which never came because my phone was face down. Morgan: Actually, I’m pretty easy. Are you trying to court me? Morgan: I’m really easy to catch. Another minute passed. She was panicking. Morgan: If you like me, let’s just date. Morgan: I’m sorry, I was playing hard to get just now. Morgan: Are you busy? Can you reply when you see this? Morgan: It’s been ten seconds. Still busy? Morgan: I messed up. I should be the one pursuing you. You don’t have to lift a finger. Please text me back? Morgan: I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so detached. I was just so excited, I asked my best friend what to say, and she told me to play it cool. Morgan: She said if I said yes too fast, you wouldn’t cherish me. Morgan: Baby, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad. Morgan: The truth is, baby, I’ve liked you for a really long time. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I had no idea you liked me too. I sat there. Utterly speechless. “What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, not looking away from his screen. “Did she reply?” I pressed my lips together in a tight line. “Chasing someone usually requires them to reject you first, right?” I asked carefully. “Yes, exactly.” Then what on earth is happening right now? A sudden spark of inspiration hit me. I typed: Reject me. If she rejected me, I would have a legitimate excuse to pursue her. Then I wouldn’t be leaving my best friend alone in the trenches. Morgan immediately fired back a crying meme: No! I don’t want to reject you! I was wrong, okay? I want to go back in time and strangle the version of me that tried to play it cool. I shouldn’t have listened to my friend. I know I messed up. You can yell at me, just please don’t leave me. I rubbed my temples. No. Reject me, so I can chase you. This time, the reply didn’t come as quickly. The “typing…” bubble pulsed at the top of the screen for what felt like an eternity. Finally, a cautious message appeared: Baby, is this some kind of roleplay thing? Promise me you won’t actually leave me. How long do you plan on chasing me? Give me a timeline so I can emotionally prepare. I glanced over at my fiercely focused best friend and typed: I don’t know yet. Okay, baby. I reject you. That rejection only applies to the roleplay, not to my actual feelings for you. Seeing that, I finally turned to Marcus with a straight face. “She rejected me.” Marcus leaned over, clapping my shoulder. “It’s fine. We have to be resilient. I’ll teach you the advanced pursuit tactics later.” Then, I watched in abject horror as he cleared his throat, put on his deepest, most affected voice, and sent a voice memo to Valerie: Could you save two seats for me and my friend tomorrow? I really want a front-row view of you playing basketball. I quietly opened a browser tab and searched: How to woo a girl. The top results from a dating blog laid out a few key points: a. Master the push-and-pull. Don’t be too eager. b. Match her energy. If she runs hot, you run hot. If she goes cold, ice her out. c. Maintain an aura of innocent charm. d. Never act desperate. I looked at Marcus. “Did you get your dating advice from the internet?” “Ha.” He confidently ran a hand through his hair. “Do I look like a guy who needs to steal someone else’s playbook?” No wonder you’ve been single so long, I thought. My mentor is a certified disaster. 02 The next afternoon, right after our last class, Marcus expertly navigated us to the Northridge College campus. By the time we arrived, the dance studio was already packed. His eyes lit up the moment he spotted someone. He waved frantically over the crowd. “Valerie!” I was still scanning the sea of bodies when he practically dragged me forward. The girl was wearing a sleek white performance outfit, her expression completely detached. I hadn’t actually seen Valerie in person before, only through the obsessive lens of Marcus’s camera roll. Because of my fragile immune system, I rarely ventured into crowded spaces. “Eden, if you start feeling faint, tell me immediately. The air is pretty stagnant in here,” he whispered, suddenly shifting into protective-brother mode. “I’m fine,” I signed with an okay gesture. We were just about to back away to the bleachers when we heard Valerie turn to the other dancers. “Where’s Morgan?” “No idea, haven’t seen her all day.” A second later, a girl near the entrance gasped, pointing a shaking finger toward the door. “Holy crap, that absolute vision cannot be Morgan!” Every head in the room instinctively swiveled. A tall girl stepped into the frame. She had fresh, silver-blonde highlights woven through her dark hair, a sleek silver stud catching the light on her left ear. She radiated an effortlessly beautiful, razor-sharp energy. “What… what did she do? Did she skip practice just to get her hair done?” “Who provoked her this time?” From the moment Morgan walked in, her eyes darted furiously across the room until they finally locked onto my pale pink sweater in the crowd. No, I have to play the part, she must have reminded herself. Her determined stride toward me abruptly veered off-course halfway across the floor. Marcus was just about to pull me toward the seats when a guy jogged up and clapped Valerie on the shoulder. “Hey, Valerie, where’s the seat you saved for me?” The guy had a clean, preppy haircut and a small entourage of equally loud guys trailing behind him. “Who is that?” I asked quietly. The bright smile on Marcus’s face instantly died. “Her childhood friend. They grew up together.” I might not socialize much, but I consumed romance novels like they were keeping me alive. The scent of a toxic, boundary-crossing orbiter hit me instantly. A single phrase flashed in my mind: The ‘Just a Friend’ Guy. “Um…” Morgan had inevitably gravitated toward me, desperate to speak, but before she could formulate a sentence, Marcus grabbed my wrist and pulled me away. His mood had plummeted. “Out of sight, out of mind,” he muttered darkly. I glanced back over my shoulder, catching Morgan’s devastatingly pitiful gaze. She looked exactly like my mother’s golden retriever right after being told she couldn’t have table scraps. “Over there. Go sit yourself down,” Valerie pointed out a row of seats to Spencer, the preppy guy. Morgan, looking absolutely murderous, intentionally shoved her shoulder hard against Valerie’s as she walked past. Valerie stumbled slightly, blinking in shock. “Did you eat gunpowder for breakfast?” Morgan silently stripped off her oversized jacket. A couple of guys tried to approach her, but one sweep of her frigid glare froze them in their tracks. … In the bleachers, I tentatively probed Marcus. “How does she treat that guy?” Marcus shot me a defeated look, his lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just… wherever Valerie is, he is.” Speak of the devil. Spencer and his entourage swaggered over to our section. Valerie was truly a piece of work. She had reserved an entire row. The words I wanted to say died in my throat. Sigh. The spectator sees the game best. Right before the performance started, my phone buzzed with rapid-fire texts from Morgan. Why didn’t you talk to me? I thought you were supposed to be chasing me? Are you giving up? Can I chase you now instead? I’m going on stage in a second. You have to keep your eyes on me. I looked up from the screen just as Morgan glanced up at the stands, her eyes locking onto mine. The guys next to me immediately started whispering. “Morgan keeps looking up here. Spencer, is she looking at you?” “Man, I’m so jealous you grew up with two absolute goddesses.” Spencer’s cheeks flushed slightly, a sickeningly smug gleam in his eyes. “Oh, come on, it’s not like that.” Marcus let out a loud, derisive scoff next to me. I calmly broke eye contact, and the corners of Morgan’s mouth instantly turned down into a pout. Once the music started, I completely lost myself in the performance. I genuinely loved watching dance. The room was filled with gasps of admiration, applause, and whispered debates about who had the best technique. Suddenly, Morgan executed a flawless, brutally difficult sequence of rapid pirouettes, sending the entire gymnasium into a frenzy. The girl’s face was flushed with exertion, the sleek lines of her exposed arms flexing with a mesmerizing grace. She instinctively looked up at our section again, drawing more hushed gasps from the crowd around me. “Is her girlfriend sitting up here or something? She keeps staring right at us.” To my right, someone sighed enviously. “Spencer, if both Valerie and Morgan wanted you, who would you even pick?” “They’re both so stunning. That’s an impossible choice!” “Oh, stop it, you guys, just watch the show,” Spencer deflected, basking in the attention. Marcus leaned over and mouthed the word, Poser. When the showcase ended, Marcus turned to me, panic in his eyes. “Eden, don’t move a muscle. Stay exactly right here. I’ll be right back.” With that, he bolted toward the backstage area with a bottle of water clutched in his hand. Spencer was already long gone, naturally. I sat obediently in the empty bleachers. Against the flow of the departing crowd, a girl pushing her way up the steps caught my eye. She had changed into street clothes, her hairline still damp with sweat. I didn’t blink as Morgan closed the distance and dropped into the empty seat beside me. Seeing me, a slow, breathtaking smile spread across her face. “I thought you were courting me? Where’s my water?” “I’m sorry. This is my first time chasing someone. I lack experience.” My voice was soft, airy, but my eyes held absolutely zero remorse. Morgan was still breathing heavily from the routine. Hearing my response, she let out a breathless, exasperated laugh. She tilted her head back, taking a long pull from her own water bottle. She was already devastatingly cool, but right now, with the corners of her eyes tinted red and a post-adrenaline flush on her cheeks, she looked dangerously intoxicating. She wiped her mouth, dropping her head in defeat as she leaned in close. “Stop torturing me, baby.” “Can we just make it public right now?” The heat radiating off her skin carried the sharp, clean scent of sweat and adrenaline. I instinctively leaned back. “Sit up straight.” I tapped her shoulder with one finger. Tilting my head, I asked softly, “You like me?” She immediately snapped to attention, nodding with frantic sincerity. “But…” I let the word hang, pointing down toward the gym floor where Spencer was marching toward the backstage area. “What is your relationship with him? I heard you two were childhood sweethearts.” Morgan’s dark, obsidian eyes locked onto mine as she scrambled to explain. “Valerie, him, and I did grow up together, yes. But we are strictly platonic. Literally just friends.” “Really…” I shifted my gaze past her shoulder. Spencer, looking livid, was stomping up the bleachers toward us. He glared at me before hissing through gritted teeth, “Morgan!” “Where the hell did you go? I searched the entire backstage for you! Wow, choosing a pretty face over your best friends, huh? Unbelievable!” I stared at the two of them in utter silence. Morgan’s jaw clenched. She turned her head slightly away. “I already told you, Spencer. I don’t drink water given to me by anyone. Except my partner.” “I… how can you compare me to anyone else? We grew up together! What’s the big deal about me bringing you water? Are you saying the second you get a partner, we can’t even be friends anymore?” Instantly, Spencer’s eyes went red. He bit his lip, playing the absolute picture of a wounded victim. I looked calmly at Morgan. “I never said you couldn’t be friends once you have a partner. I just said there needs to be boundaries.” Spencer’s teary eyes snapped to me. His voice wavered with a perfectly engineered tremor. “I didn’t see you there earlier. I didn’t realize you were her partner. I’m so sorry if I made you misunderstand.” Wow. Coming right out of the gate, slapping the ‘jealous, unreasonable girlfriend’ label on me. I spent my life locked in my room reading hundreds of novels where the female lead mathematically dismantled toxic orbiters. I just never had the chance to test it in the field. Until now. The theory was about to meet practice. I mentally rolled up my sleeves. But Morgan beat me to it. She scowled, her voice dropping to a dangerous register. “What the hell are you talking about? She hasn’t agreed to be my girlfriend yet, but honestly, the way you’re talking right now is pissing me off.” Spencer’s face froze. He literally forgot to keep fake-crying. Right on cue, Marcus called me. “Eden, let’s go.” I grabbed Marcus’s bag from the seat and stood up. Morgan looked up at me, panic and desperation swirling in her eyes. I smiled, pulling a fresh bottle of water out of Marcus’s bag. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Spencer watching. I handed it to Morgan. “Here.” Morgan’s amber eyes practically lit up like floodlights. Her knuckles grazed mine as she snatched the bottle. “We’re going out to celebrate later. Do you and Marcus want to come?” I stepped around the benches, stopping right in front of Spencer, with Morgan trailing obediently behind me like a shadow. I smiled at him. “Excuse me, classmate. You’re blocking the way.” Spencer ground his teeth together and stepped aside. I walked a few paces down the stairs, then glanced back over my shoulder. I gave Morgan a brilliant, lingering smile. “See you next time, Morgan.” When I reached the bottom of the bleachers, I grabbed a shell-shocked Marcus by the sleeve and dragged him toward the exit. He whipped his head around, staring in disbelief at Morgan, who was glued to her spot, watching me leave like a sailor watching a lighthouse. He looked back at me. “Holy… what did you do? How did you train a wolf into a golden retriever in five minutes?” “Secret.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408314”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When I graduated and hit the wall of “what now,” I turned to an AI for career counseling. The algorithm suggested a path in municipal administration—a stable, prestigious government track. It coached me through the exams, polished my interview persona, and helped me land the job. I was more than grateful; I was a believer. Then the “guidance” turned dark. The AI warned me of an impending “physical catastrophe.” It suggested I book a preventative dental surgery to “realign my luck.” I went, but on the way, a reckless driver slammed into me, leaving me permanently disabled. The AI then suggested I take out high-interest private loans to cover the astronomical medical bills. I listened. Not long after the funds cleared, my parents were brutally beaten by debt collectors. Desperate, I scoured the internet for remote side hustles to pay off the mounting debt, but haste bred mistakes. I fell for scam after scam. The hole only got deeper. The AI then suggested my father take a lucrative electrical contract overseas. I trusted it. I begged him to go. He was lured to a lawless compound in Southeast Asia. Within months, news of his death reached us. When my mother heard the news, her heart gave out on the spot. My brother, Connor, lost his mind. He lunged at me, a kitchen knife sinking deep into my chest. “You killed them! You destroyed this family!” As the light faded, I couldn’t understand how my life had become a horror movie. Then, I blinked. I was back in my bedroom. It was the morning the AI first told me I had a “physical catastrophe” coming my way. … I sat up, gasping, staring at the familiar walls of my apartment. The phantom pain of the knife piercing my heart was so vivid I clutched my chest. The grief was a physical weight, crushing the air out of my lungs. Tears tracked down my face before I could even process a thought. I didn’t understand. It had started so simply. I was just another lost grad student looking for a roadmap. The AI had been my North Star. It helped me get that government job back in my hometown. I remember the day the offer letter arrived—the way my parents and Connor sobbed with joy, the way they held me. I thought we were finally safe. Then came the “warning.” The dental appointment. The car that turned me into a broken doll. Lying in that hospital bed, feeling my bones scream under the weight of the casts, I heard my father outside the door. His voice was a ragged whisper. “I don’t know what to do, Diane. Even if we sell the house, it won’t cover the rehab… Maybe I can sell a kidney. People do that, right?” Terrified he’d do something that desperate, I consulted the AI again. It pointed me toward “Specialized Medical Financing”—predatory loans disguised as a lifeline. I picked the one that looked the safest: five hundred thousand dollars, a ten-year plan. I thought I’d solved it. I thought I’d saved my father. But the ink wasn’t even dry before the collectors showed up. They broke into the house, leaving my parents bloody. My mother was struck so hard she lost hearing in her left ear. I went into a fever state. I spent every waking second on my laptop from my hospital bed, trying to find a way out. But I was a mark. I stepped into trap after trap, and the debt ballooned into millions. That’s when the AI suggested the overseas job. “High-risk, high-reward electrical engineering in a developing zone.” I didn’t want him to go, but we were drowning. I did the research—or so I thought—and found a company that looked legitimate. He went. And then he was gone. My mother’s scream when the “Consulate” called… it still echoes in my brain. “Frank… they took his heart… they took everything… did it hurt, Frank? Did it hurt?” I reached for her heart medication, but I was too slow. By the time I pulled her into my arms, she was cold. Then Connor. My little brother. He didn’t see a sister; he saw a monster. He grabbed the knife and ended it. “Are you happy now? You ruined us! You killed Mom and Dad! You took everything from me!” Blood filled my throat. The world turned black. I leaned against the wall now, shivering in the present. I’m not going to that appointment, I decided. I packed my bags. I’d go home for the holidays early. I missed my parents so much it hurt. I just wanted a normal Christmas. To be safe, I avoided the bus and booked an Amtrak ticket. Trains were safer. Controlled. I made it all the way to the station. I stepped off the platform, feeling the crisp winter air, thinking I had outrun my fate. Then I saw it. A black SUV, accelerating, veering straight toward me. It was too fast. I didn’t even have time to scream. I lost consciousness the moment the metal hit my hip. When I woke up, the first thing I blurted out was, “My legs… can I feel my legs?” A nurse pushed me back down. “Don’t move, honey!” “A utility pole took most of the impact before the car hit you,” she said, her voice a soothing hum. “Your legs are fine. You’ve got several fractures and some internal bruising, but you’ll walk again. You just need time.” I let out a breath that was half-sob. At least I wasn’t paralyzed this time. But why? Why did it still happen? Was this my “destiny”? Was this the “catastrophe” the AI warned me about? Before I could spiral, the door flew open. My parents rushed in, eyes red and swollen. My mother immediately started spooning warm chicken soup into my mouth, her hands shaking. “Regina, baby, it’s okay. We talked to the doctor. You’re going to be fine.” “The doctor said protein is good for you,” my dad added, hovering at the foot of the bed. “Mom’s going to make this for you every day. We’ll get you back on your feet.” I was pinned by braces, unable to move, forced to just swallow. The soup was warm, and slowly, the icy chill of blood loss began to recede. I thought, This is it. A second chance. I can fix this. But then, my father looked away. He couldn’t meet my eyes. “Regina…” he started, his voice heavy with guilt. “The accident… the emergency surgery and the out-of-network costs… it wiped us out. The insurance is fighting it. We’re flat broke.” He paused, a desperate flicker in his eyes. “Do you have anything? All that money we sent you for rent and school… did you save any of it?” My mother looked at me with that same jagged expectation. A chill ran down my spine. It was happening again. The script was the same. In my last life, I had lied to protect their dignity. I’d claimed I had plenty of money and then secretly took out the predatory loans that destroyed us. This time, I wouldn’t carry the lie. “I don’t have a cent,” I said firmly. “The money you sent just covered the basics in the city. I haven’t even started my job yet. How could I have savings?” My father’s face fell. He scratched his head, looking utterly defeated. I thought for a moment. “Dad, the house. It has equity. We can go to the bank, get a formal mortgage or a home equity line. It’s the legal way. It’s safe.” “Once I’m healed, I’ll work double shifts. We’ll pay it back. We won’t lose the house.” It was the most logical, safest path I could offer. My parents exchanged a look. It was brief, almost imperceptible. Then they nodded. Two weeks later, I was discharged. When I pulled up to the house, I froze. The front door was hacked with deep gouges, as if by an axe. Red paint was splashed across the porch like fresh blood, smelling of chemicals and rot. Inside, the house was a shell. The TV, the furniture, even the microwave—everything of value was gone. I turned to my mother, horrified. “What happened?” She let out a bitter, hollow laugh. “Your father… he couldn’t bring himself to go to the bank. He was afraid they’d reject him. So he went to some local guys in the neighborhood. Private lenders.” I felt like I was going to faint. I told them to go to a regulated bank! In my previous life, the loans I took were at least disguised as legitimate. These… these were street thugs. Debt collectors who used pipe wrenches and gasoline. You don’t “pay back” people like that. They just own you until you’re dead. My father shuffled out of the kitchen, a thick, blood-stained bandage wrapped around his head. “They came for the first payment,” my mom whispered. “They broke his head open. But don’t worry, honey. It’s just a scalp wound.” My father reached out and patted my hair with a terrifyingly gentle hand. “It’s okay, Regina. It’s fine.” “I heard about a gig overseas. Electrical work. Pay is incredible. I already called the guy. I’m leaving in a few days.” “Don’t worry. I’ll clear the debt. It won’t touch you. I’ll be safe. I’ll just work and send the money home.” I screamed. I threw things. I went into a hysterical fit, kneeling on my fractured legs, begging him, threatening to kill myself if he left. I did everything in my power to stop history from repeating itself. But my father still packed his bag and walked out the door. The harassment started immediately. Men would hammer on the door at 3 AM with machetes, screaming obscenities. They poured buckets of sewage over our threshold. The smell was unbearable. Connor, full of young, misplaced rage, tried to fight them every time. My mother would have to pin him down to keep him from getting killed. I felt the familiar, gnawing helplessness. I had to do something. “I’m going to start my job early,” I told my mother. “I’ll talk to the department. I’ll get an advance.” “No!” she snapped. “You aren’t going anywhere!” “Your bones aren’t set. You’ll be a cripple for life if you don’t rest. I’ve already called your supervisor. I told them you had a relapse. They’re holding the position for another month. Your career is safe.” I stared at her. “How did you get the supervisor’s personal number? How did you pull those strings?” She didn’t answer. She just pushed a bowl of soup toward me. Ten days later, the phone rang. “Is this the home of Frank Miller?” a detective asked. “Yes,” my mother said, her voice trembling. “I’m his wife.” “Your husband went overseas for work. He was lured across the border into a restricted zone. When the local authorities found him… well, he’d been stripped. His organs were gone. You need to come identify the remains as soon as possible.” My mother’s face went white. “That’s… that’s impossible…” The detective added one more thing. “Do you have a daughter? Unemployed? Had an accident recently? We think that’s why he took the risk. People lose their minds when they’re under that kind of pressure.” The words hit me like a physical blow. It’s all my fault. As long as I existed, my father would die. This family would be destroyed. Destiny was a straight line, and I was the one drawing it in blood. It’s all… on me? My mother clutched her chest and collapsed. She was gasping, tears streaming down her face. I scrambled for her heart pills, shoved them into her mouth, but she went limp. I tried to check her pulse, tried to call 911, but Connor shoved me back so hard I hit the floor. “Don’t touch her!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in debt! Dad wouldn’t be in a body bag with his insides scooped out!” “You destroyed this family! You killed us all!” “Don’t you dare touch her! You don’t have the right!” I crawled toward him, sobbing. “Connor, stop! We have to help her! We have to get her to the hospital or she’s going to die!” I tried to push past him, but he shoved me again. My head hit the corner of the wall. Pain exploded in my skull, and I felt warm blood trickling down my neck. Connor picked up a kitchen knife. He walked toward me, his eyes cold and dark. “Regina, you should never have been born. We were so happy before you. Mom and Dad wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for you.” “You’re a parasite. Even in hell, you won’t find peace.” I killed them? But… Mom was right there. We could save her. Why was he stopping me? In that moment, like a bolt of lightning, the fog cleared. I looked up at my brother. My eyes were red, but my heart turned to ice. “…All for this?” I whispered. “What?” I used the wall to pull myself up. I reached into my pocket and threw an object directly at his face. He caught it. His expression shifted instantly. His hand started to shake. “You…” He looked at me, trying to maintain his mask of rage. “Why do you have a passport? Were you planning to run away and leave us with the debt?” My voice was a jagged blade. “That’s Dad’s passport, Connor.” “Tell me, Connor. How did Dad go overseas without his passport? I took it the day he said he was leaving. I haven’t let it out of my sight.” Connor’s eyes darted around the room. “He… he must have gone through a coyote. He went illegal to make more money because of you! That’s why he ended up in that compound!” His confidence surged again. He pointed the knife at my throat. “You destroyed us, Regina!” I didn’t flinch. I walked right into the tip of the blade. “Why won’t you let me check on Mom?” “Mom’s had heart trouble for years. She faints, sure, but if you get her to a doctor, she’s fine.” I stared him down, and for the first time in our lives, he was the one who backed away. “You’re blocking me because you’re trying to let her die for real this time… or…” I looked at my mother lying on the floor. The grief was gone. Only a cold, hollow realization remained. “Is she even sick at all?” Connor jumped in front of her body. “Shut up! You’re a monster! You don’t deserve to touch her!” I pulled out my phone. “If she’s dead, I should call the family. Let’s start with Aunt Sarah.” “I’ll dial now—” Smash! Connor lunged, snatched the phone from my hand, and hurled it out the window. It fell twenty stories to the pavement below. He turned back to me, snarling. “Regina!” “Connor!” I screamed back, the sound tearing from my lungs. “You’ve been lying to me from the start!” “You, Mom, Dad… and your little AI project. You’ve been squeezing me until I break!” The tears came again, but they weren’t for them. They were for me. “The car accident. The debt. Making me believe I was a murderer who destroyed her own family. And then, when that wasn’t enough, you decided you had to actually kill me!” Connor’s pupils dilated. He looked at me with a terrifying, calm pity. “You’ve really lost it, Regina.” “No one is out to get you. You did this to yourself.” I laughed. It was a sharp, jagged sound. “Is that so?” Before he could react, I tackled him. I was always stronger, faster. In my last life, he only got me because I was paralyzed by shock. This time, I pinned him to the floor, the knife pressed against the side of his neck. “Regina! Get off me!” he shrieked. I ignored him. I looked at my “dead” mother. “Mom, stop playing. If you don’t get up right now, I’m going to open up your favorite son’s throat.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408330”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The ping from my gig-worker Discord server cut through the silence of dinner like a dropped knife. [URGENT: Need 2 groomsmen for this Friday. $300 cash, paid on site. DM for client details.] My thumb slipped, tapping the notification. For a second, the screen blurred. My brain went entirely blank. Across the kitchen island, Barbara set her phone face-down on the marble counter. Her tone was agonizingly casual. “I have to fly out to Milwaukee for work on Thursday. I’ll be back Monday.” She paused, taking a slow sip of her wine. “I’m going to be swamped. If I don’t text back right away…” A dry, humorless scoff escaped her lips. “Please don’t act like a neglected housewife and interrogate me this time.” I gave a numb, mechanical nod. Beneath the counter, out of her line of sight, I typed a quick reply into the Discord server. I’ll take the job. We had been together for seven years. The least I could do was show up to her wedding. … 1 The initial shock was blinding, but once it faded, a terrifying clarity took its place. After the gig coordinator confirmed my spot, I cleared my throat. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “I thought your firm froze all new acquisitions for the quarter,” I said, staring at my half-eaten pasta. “Why the sudden trip?” Barbara froze. The annoyance rolling off her was palpable. “I literally just asked you not to do this, and you’re already tracking my every move?” She slammed her fork down, shoved her phone across the island, and glared at me. “Look for yourself.” I lowered my eyes. The screen was open to her corporate Slack channel. Five minutes ago, her department director had tagged her in a message about an emergency site visit. It was perfectly timed. The exact same timestamp as the groomsman listing in the gig server. “You haven’t been breathing down my neck lately, so I actually thought you were making progress,” she snapped, crossing her arms. “But you’re exactly the same. Cole, aren’t you exhausted being this paranoid all the time?” I sat in silence for a long moment. My knuckles were white around my fork. Finally, I looked up. “Barbara,” I asked quietly. “Earlier this year, you said we were going to get married. Is that still happening?” She blinked, caught off guard. For a few seconds, she just stared at me. Then, she pushed abruptly away from the counter, her stool scraping loudly against the hardwood. “It is pathetic that you feel the need to trap me with a ring just because you don’t trust me,” she spat. “I told you I’d marry you, Cole. But I’m going to do it because I love you, not to prove a point.” All the suffocating weight I’d been carrying for months suddenly caved in on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. So, my seven rejected proposals were because she didn’t love me enough. But marrying him on Friday—that was love? A tremor started in my hands and quickly violently shook my whole body. I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat. “Then let’s break up,” I said. A flash of genuine panic crossed Barbara’s eyes, but she masked it quickly with a haughty tilt of her chin. “What kind of tantrum is this?” she demanded. “I never said we weren’t getting married.” I looked up, stunned by her audacity. She let out a long, exaggerated sigh, snatched her phone back, and tapped the screen a few times. “Look. I was going to wait until after my birthday to take you home to meet my parents and officially talk about the wedding. I even started planning the honeymoon.” She shoved the screen back in my face. It was a confirmation email for two first-class tickets to Cabo. Seeing my silence, Barbara reclaimed her usual air of untouchable arrogance. “The tickets are booked. Believe whatever you want.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked to the bedroom, leaving the kitchen in a suffocating, dead silence. Driven by an instinct I couldn’t quite name, I walked over to the living room and flipped open her MacBook on the coffee table. She was terrible with passwords; they were always combinations of our anniversaries. I hit enter. My heart slammed against my ribs. Her email was open. One minute ago, she had submitted a cancellation request. For the two tickets to Cabo. Somewhere between hysterical laughter and absolute despair, a thought pierced through the fog. I had only joined that gig-worker Discord to scrape together enough cash to buy Barbara that $1,500 Arc’teryx climbing setup she’d been eyeing for her birthday. I was an ER resident. My salary barely covered the rent, and my hours were brutal. To afford her gift, I had picked up every humiliating side hustle I could find. I drove late-night Uber. I participated in clinical sleep trials. Once, I delivered food to a drunk frat guy who slapped me across the face because I forgot his extra ranch dressing. Because I desperately needed the tip, I swallowed my pride, apologized, and walked back to my car with my cheek burning. When I finally got home that night, smelling like cheap beer and exhaustion, I thought Barbara would at least hold me. But the apartment was empty. She didn’t reply to my texts. She didn’t answer my calls. I stayed awake all night, sick with worry. The next morning, I opened Instagram and saw a photo she had posted on her climbing account. A sunrise shot at the peak of a bouldering trail. In the corner of the frame, intentionally blurred, was the profile of a man. Looking back now, that profile perfectly matched the photo of the groom attached to the gig listing. It all clicked into place. The guy she had been climbing with that weekend was Cameron. 2 I first heard Cameron’s name at a rooftop party hosted by one of Barbara’s sorority sisters. The drinks were flowing, and someone across the fire pit laughed loudly, pointing at Barbara. “Honestly, B, you’ve got the best setup. A resident doctor playing househusband at home, and a hot adventure buddy to keep you entertained on the weekends.” I thought it was a joke. But then I saw the blood drain from Barbara’s face, and my stomach dropped. “Shut up,” Barbara hissed, her voice venomous. Maybe the girl was too drunk to read the room, or maybe she just hated Barbara. She pulled up a photo on her phone and shoved it across the table toward us. It was Barbara and a rugged, sun-kissed guy, sitting entirely too close together at a local brewery. “Oh, come on, that’s Cameron from the bouldering group,” the girl slurred. “I heard you guys have been doing overnight climbs together for months. Guess being in a relationship didn’t stop—” Barbara slammed her hand down on the table, cutting the girl off. An hour later, after I had smoothed over the screaming match and practically dragged Barbara out of there, we were in my car heading home. The streetlights flickered over her tense profile. “I thought you promised you were done keeping these random guys around,” I said softly. Her expression morphed from guilt to defensive rage. She stared out the window, refusing to speak until we pulled into our parking garage. “He’s a new vendor at work. What am I supposed to do, ignore him?” she snapped, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Does grabbing a beer mean I’m sleeping with him? God, Cole, your mind is so sick.” She slammed the car door and marched to the elevators. I sat alone in the dim, concrete garage for half an hour, letting the engine idle. My mind wasn’t sick. Barbara was projecting. She was furious because she got caught. Suddenly, a sharp knock on the window startled me. Barbara was standing there, jaw tight. She shoved her unlocked phone through the cracked window. “Look for yourself,” she demanded. I took it. It was a text thread with Cameron. It was entirely professional. Boring, even. They barely spoke outside of coordinating that one drink. My chest loosened, just a fraction. I let it go. But the seed of doubt had already been planted. A month later, that seed violently took root. I was working a grueling 14-hour night shift in the ER when paramedics wheeled in a guy who had been bitten by a rattlesnake on a hiking trail. He was going into anaphylactic shock. I grabbed the antivenom and sprinted into the curtained bay. Sitting by his bed, her hands tightly clutching his, was Barbara. The same Barbara who had told me she was going to bed early because she had a migraine. When I pulled back the curtain, our eyes locked. She dropped his hand like it was made of fire. The color vanished from her face. The attending nurse, entirely oblivious, clapped Cameron on the shoulder. “You’re lucky, man. Your girl here was practically hyperventilating when the ambulance pulled up.” I stared at Barbara. I felt completely hollowed out. I forced the corners of my mouth to lift into a dead smile. “You’ll be fine,” I told him, checking the monitor. “The venom load is low.” I turned my eyes back to Barbara, whose lips were trembling. “Let’s break up,” I said simply. Then I turned and walked out. But the moment the door to the doctors’ lounge clicked shut behind me, the agony hit. I sank to the linoleum floor, gasping for air. I couldn’t stomach the betrayal. But the thought of never seeing Barbara again—of severing a bond that had defined my entire adult life—felt like dying. Barbara and I met in high school. My dad was a violent alcoholic. I only made it to graduation because the public school system was legally obligated to keep me. During our senior year, when I couldn’t afford the fees for my AP exams and was about to drop out, Barbara quietly paid them. For three years, she shared her lunch with me every single day so I wouldn’t starve. When it was time for college, my dad demanded I go to a local community college to learn a trade so I could start giving him cash. It was Barbara who logged into the admissions portal at the eleventh hour and submitted my application for a pre-med program. During undergrad, practically her entire allowance went toward keeping me afloat. In a very real sense, she had financially carried me for seven years. All I could think about was my junior year of college. The heat in my cheap off-campus apartment had been shut off in the middle of a Chicago winter. I was shivering under a thin sheet. Suddenly, I heard someone screaming my name from the street. I looked out the window to see Barbara, knee-deep in snow, holding a massive new comforter and a down jacket. Whenever I remembered that image, every terrible thing she did seemed forgivable. So, an hour after I walked out of that ER bay, I broke. I called her, crying in the stairwell, and begged her to work it out. Barbara gave me exactly what I wanted. She deleted Cameron’s number right in front of me. She swore on her life that they were just climbing partners, that there was no romantic connection whatsoever. 3 I should have believed her. But whenever she worked late, my chest would tighten. I became the very thing I despised—a detective tracking my own life. I checked her location. I analyzed her Instagram likes. I asked too many questions. It peaked a few months ago. She went on an out-of-town conference, and my anxiety reached a boiling point. Driven by pure madness, I drove three hours, tracked down her hotel, and banged on her door. When it opened, I saw Cameron standing there in a wrinkled button-down. I didn’t think. I swung and hit him square in the jaw. Cameron cursed, shoving me back into the hallway, screaming that I was a psycho and that they were literally just prepping a PowerPoint. Over his shoulder, I saw Barbara’s regional manager sitting at the desk, looking horrified. Barbara was standing by the window, her face a mask of absolute fury and humiliation. It took a few seconds for Barbara to recover. She apologized profusely to her boss and Cameron, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me down the hall. “If you can’t trust me,” she whispered, her voice trembling with rage, “we are done.” The panic swallowed me whole. I dropped to my knees in that hideous patterned hallway. I apologized until my throat bled. I promised I would fix myself. And I really did try. But today, scrolling through a gig-worker Discord, I found out they were getting married. By the time I pulled myself out of the memory, I was lying in bed, confirming the final details with the gig coordinator. Once I guaranteed I would be on time, the coordinator Venmo’d me a $150 deposit and sent over the itinerary. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when I read the schedule. I wouldn’t have to be in the bridal suite. The hired groomsmen were strictly meant to manage the crowd, hand over the rings, and participate in the bouquet toss. I wouldn’t have to face them until I was walking down the aisle. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. A message from the coordinator: [Hey man, I noticed you’ve been taking a lot of random gigs lately. Everything from moving boxes to catering. You in some kind of trouble? Need cash bad?] My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I turned my head. In the living room, Barbara was humming a pop song as she folded designer clothes into her Rimowa suitcase. I opened my banking app. Balance: $1,520. Just enough for the Arc’teryx climbing setup. I typed my reply to the coordinator. [No trouble. After this gig, I’m actually deleting the app.] I switched over to the outdoor retailer’s website and hit ‘Purchase’ on the climbing gear. The night we got back together after the ER incident, I had mentally calculated every dollar Barbara had ever spent on me since high school. Over the last few years, I had quietly bought her expensive gifts, paid for vacations, covered rent. With this final $1,500 gift, the ledger in my head would finally hit zero. We were even. “Hey, Barbara,” I called out from the bedroom. “I bought you a gift for next week.” Barbara paused her packing. Her posture relaxed, a smug, satisfied lilt entering her voice. “The best gift you could give me is to stop acting like a paranoid freak.” I didn’t answer. I just closed my eyes and let the darkness take over. Maybe it was because I had just read the wedding itinerary, but that night, I dreamt of our wedding. It was a dim, suffocating affair. The lighting was sickly yellow. Nobody looked happy. When the officiant looked at us and asked the question—for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—a man in a tailored suit stormed the altar and shoved me so hard I hit the ground. “She’s mine,” he said. I looked up. It was Cameron. He was holding Barbara’s hand, looking down at me with absolute victory. I woke up gasping for air. 4 The space beside me was empty and cold. There was a sticky note on the nightstand: [You were sleeping so deeply I didn’t want to wake you. Make sure you actually eat while I’m on my trip.] I stared at the note, then crumpled it into a ball. I got out of bed, pulled my duffel bag from the closet, and began packing. Piece by piece. It was an excruciating process. Every object in the apartment was tied to a ghost. The ceramic coffee mugs we threw on a wheel during a pottery class in our twenties. The silver chain around my neck, holding the matching promise ring I couldn’t wear at the hospital because of the sterile environment. Her hair ties wrapped around the bathroom doorknob. My heart hurt so badly it felt like a physical wound. It hurt until the pain tipped over into total, freezing numbness. I called a local college kid off Craigslist and let him haul away everything I couldn’t fit in my bag, for free. Finally, I placed my apartment key gently on the kitchen island. Carrying my duffel and the massive box containing the climbing gear that had just arrived, I walked to the station and boarded an Amtrak train heading to Milwaukee. I bought the cheapest, slowest ticket available. I sat by the window, watching the landscape blur by in the dark, entirely awake. When I arrived at the venue the next morning, it was exactly call time. I went to the staff room to change into the rented tuxedo. The coordinator, a stressed-out guy with a clipboard, took one look at me and frowned. “Do me a favor and wear this black medical mask,” he said, handing one over. “With a jawline like that, you’re going to pull focus from the groom. Client requested background characters only.” It was perfect. I looped the strings over my ears. My assigned duties were simple: stand near the altar, hand over the rings, and catch the bouquet if the crowd was dead. While I was waiting in the wings for the ceremony to begin, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from Barbara. A photo of a beautifully plated slice of wedding cake. [Checking in! The clients catered some ridiculous desserts for this meeting.] I looked up. Thirty feet away, a waiter was placing the exact same slices of cake onto the tables of the reception area. It was so absurd, I actually laughed out loud. My chest rattled with it. I opened our chat. My thumbs shook as I typed. [Looks amazing. I miss you.] [Are you guys working hard?] [Who is the client again?] [When you get back, let’s finally get married, okay?] The moment the messages delivered, the little typing bubble appeared. Then vanished. Appeared again. Vanished. I waited. The silence stretched. Finally, a new message popped up, dripping with ice. [Seriously, Cole? You have to do this right now? You suffocate me. I literally don’t have room to breathe with you constantly checking up on me!] A few minutes later, the final nail in the coffin arrived: [We’ll talk about the marriage thing later.] A sharp, violent pain lanced through my chest. Later. It was a word she used as a weapon, stabbing into the corpse of seven years of hope. I put my phone on silent and slid it into my pocket. I stood quietly in the shadows as the house lights dimmed and the string quartet began to play. I watched Barbara step out into the aisle, breathtaking in a sweeping white gown. Her father held her arm, walking her slowly toward Cameron. The officiant began speaking, using all the right, emotionally manipulative buzzwords. I could hear people in the front row sniffing. I thought, with a profound sense of tragedy, that if the bride weren’t the love of my life, I might have cried at the beauty of it all, too. “Hey, groomsman. You’re up. Go.” The coordinator shoved the velvet box into my hand, snapping me back to reality. I gripped the box. I stepped onto the white runner, following the tape marks on the floor, and began the long walk toward Barbara.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408315”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The Kensington family’s monthly Sunday dinners were strictly closed-door affairs. No outsiders. Ever. Yet, Victoria’s junior assistant had somehow made the guest list, month after month. In the past, he just sat there, playing the quiet background character. I swallowed my pride and endured it. But tonight, my five-year-old daughter, Mia, bypassed me entirely and handed the private chef’s menu directly to him, asking what hewanted to eat. In that split second, the illusion shattered. I just felt an overwhelming, bone-deep exhaustion. The moment we got home, I dropped the divorce papers on the kitchen island in front of Victoria. She stared at the pristine white pages, a cold, mocking smile twisting her lips. “All this because Spencer picked an appetizer? Are you out of your mind?” “Yes,” I said. “Sign it.” 1. “Nathaniel, if you’re absolutely determined to throw a tantrum, can we at least schedule it?” Victoria leaned heavily against the back of the leather sofa, her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Can you wait until I get home from the office tomorrow night? I am suffocating under deadlines right now.” Spencer stood near the foyer, clutching a stack of legal folders. His posture was perfectly neutral—neither submissive nor arrogant. Outside, the engine of the Maybach hummed a low, expensive purr in the driveway. The housekeepers huddled in the adjacent dining room, wiping down spotless surfaces, their eyes strictly averted. Everything in the Kensington estate ran with immaculate, clockwork precision. Everything except me, standing in front of my wife, bristling like a cornered animal. After a long, suffocating silence, Victoria finally opened her eyes and looked at me. “Just let me off the hook for tonight. Please, Nathaniel.” The moment the words left her mouth, I heard a faint, barely disguised scoff from the dining room. I knew the staff looked down on me. I’d given them plenty of ammunition over the years, constantly picking fights with Victoria over trivial details, desperate to prove I still held some weight in her heart. Now, her weary, condescending retreat only made me look like an unreasonable lunatic. A surge of nameless anger ignited in my chest. I snatched the duplicate copy of the divorce agreement and slammed it back down in front of her. “No. Sign it right now.” Victoria looked up at me, a storm of complicated emotions rolling in her eyes. She looked genuinely worn down by my aggression. “Nathaniel. If you’re this humiliated over the menu thing, I give you my word, it won’t happen again. Mia hurt your feelings tonight. When she wakes up tomorrow, I will personally march her down here to apologize to you. Will that satisfy you?” Victoria Kensington never compromised. But just seconds before, I had caught the subtle, pleading glance Spencer shot her. Only then did her tone soften. I let out a harsh, hollow laugh, a chilling sadness pooling in my gut. My brilliant, high-and-mighty wife, bending so easily to the unspoken cues of a twenty-something assistant. Victoria and I grew up together. We were supposed to be the perfect match—two old-money families merging. I had loved her for as long as I could remember, but her heart had always belonged to someone else. Eventually, she caved to the ruthless pressure of the Kensington patriarchs and married me. Her first love, devastated, fled to the States. But timing is a cruel joke. Barely a month after our wedding, my parents died in a sudden accident, leaving my family’s empire in ruins. I was orphaned and stripped of my leverage. The Kensingtons had wanted a powerful alliance to solidify their absolute control over the East Coast markets. Instead, they got a bankrupt dependent. They despised me for it. It took three years of marriage—and the successful conception of our daughter, Mia—before I was even allowed to attend their sacred monthly dinners. And even with my “ticket” in, I was treated like a glorified servant, expected to pour the wine and swallow their veiled insults. I took it. I took it because I loved Victoria. I chose the humiliation. I chose to endure. I thought things would change when Mia was born. But as my daughter grew, she absorbed the venom of the Kensington household. She watched how they treated me, and she learned. Today, she had personally handed the menu to another man. A man who was blatantly gunning for my place in this family. I would never forget the night I drank myself into a bleeding ulcer at a networking gala, desperately trying to secure a contract for Victoria’s company. When I got home, clutching my stomach, I just asked her to order me something bland to eat. Her relatives had been visiting. They laughed in my face. They tore into my deceased parents, calling me a pathetic freeloader with no upbringing. Victoria had watched the whole thing. She didn’t say a word to defend me. She just told me to bear it. But the second I tried to stand up for myself, she joined them, picking apart my tone, my posture, my ‘inappropriate’ timing. I had revised this divorce agreement over and over. Disappointment isn’t a sudden explosion. It’s a slow accumulation. Tonight, the jar was finally full. I uncapped the fountain pen, signed my name at the bottom of the page, and shoved the heavy brass barrel into Victoria’s hand. “Save the speech. Sign.” 2. Victoria gripped the pen so hard I thought the brass would snap. The fire in her eyes flared into an inferno. “Nathaniel, you need to learn when to back down, before you push this past the point of no return! Do I really have to spell this out for you?!” With a violent swing of her arm, she hurled the pen. It slammed against the custom wallpaper, shattering the casing and splattering black ink across the hardwood floor. Spencer jumped, dropping his folders. I flinched, a tremor running through my spine. The temperature in the room plummeted. Breathing heavily, Spencer knelt to gather the scattered papers, then stepped closer to Victoria. He placed a gentle, grounding hand on her shoulder. “Victoria,” he murmured, his voice infuriatingly soft. “Stress is bad for your health. Just talk to him.” That quiet, soothing tone worked like magic. The tension bled out of Victoria’s shoulders. Before she could speak, the rapid patter of bare feet echoed from the stairs. Mia came running down, her little face scrunched in panic. Maria, our nanny, was right behind her, clutching a pair of slippers. “Mia, sweetheart, please put your shoes on! If you catch a cold, your father will be so worried.” I stood frozen as my five-year-old daughter ran right past me. She threw her arms around Spencer’s legs, looking up at him, checking him over frantically. “Spencer, don’t be scared!” she squeaked. “I’ll protect you! I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Spencer smiled a soft, practiced smile and ruffled her hair. “Thank you, Mia. But shouldn’t you put your slippers on? If you get sick, your dad will be sad. Maria, I’ll take those.” Only then did Mia look at me. Her little upper lip curled in obvious disdain. Maria stood there, paralyzed by the sheer awkwardness of the room, terrified of making a move that would offend the wrong person. “Give them to me,” I said quietly. I took the small pink slippers from the nanny, walked over to my daughter, and knelt on the floor. “Shoes on, Mia.” Instead of listening, Mia grabbed a heavy crystal ashtray from the coffee table and hurled it blindly at me. “I don’t want you to help me!” The heavy glass struck my forehead. The skin split instantly, warm blood trickling down into my eyebrow. Spencer let out a gasp and scrambled to find the first-aid kit. Victoria didn’t move. she just stared at the blood on my face, her eyes icy. “Are you happy now? Is this the scene you wanted?” Even now. Even with blood on my face, she thought I was just acting out. Looking at them—Victoria, Spencer, and Mia—I realized something profound. They looked like a family. I had poured eight years of my life into this house, and I was leaving with nothing but empty hands. I slowly reached down, picked up the ashtray, and set it perfectly back in its place. Victoria watched me in silence for a long time. Maybe the sight of me, bleeding and quietly tidying up, finally sparked a flicker of pity in her. She stepped forward and reached for my arm. “Stop cleaning,” she said, her voice dropping a fraction. “The staff will do it. Just… stop looking for a fight, and we can move past this.” I ignored her hand, sat down on the sofa, and slid the divorce papers back across the marble table toward her. “Are you ready to sign now?” “Nathaniel!” Victoria snapped. She shot up, glaring down at me with absolute fury. “You just won’t let it go, will you?! Fine! You want a divorce? You can have it. But don’t even think about getting custody of Mia!” I had raised Mia with my own two hands. While Victoria chased her corporate ambitions, I was the one changing diapers, pureeing peas, and staying awake for 48 hours straight when the fevers spiked. I had sacrificed my own identity to be the safety net Victoria needed to conquer the boardroom. Despite Mia’s growing coldness toward me over the years, I had never stopped pouring every ounce of my love into her. Victoria knew Mia was my anchor. She thought she had the ultimate trump card. She was wrong. The moment Mia had looked at Spencer with adoration while hurling glass at my head, the tether snapped. I had already let my daughter go. “I’m forfeiting custody,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I’ll also leave my mother’s jewelry behind. Consider it my contribution to her trust fund. You don’t have to worry, Victoria. The second this paper goes through, I will vanish from Mia’s life. You’ll never have to explain me to her again.” The massive living room fell dead silent. You could hear the hum of the refrigerator two rooms over. Then, Mia’s high-pitched voice sliced through the quiet. “Good! I hate having you as my dad anyway! I want Spencer to be my dad!” She was five. She probably didn’t grasp the agonizing weight of those words. My chest caved in. A dull, suffocating pain radiated from my heart. I slowly bent forward, pressing my palms against my face, forcing myself to swallow the bitter, jagged grief clawing up my throat. Victoria didn’t reprimand her. Instead, she turned her wrath entirely on me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Nathaniel?! Are you happy now? Are you satisfied that you’ve turned your own daughter against you and torn this family apart?!” She lashed out, swiping her hand across the coffee table. The cracked ashtray went flying again, shattering loudly against the floorboards. Mia burst into tears. She buried her face in Spencer’s chest, sobbing. “Spencer, I’m scared! Tell Mommy to stop yelling! She only listens to you…” Spencer rubbed her back in slow, soothing circles. “Victoria, you promised me you wouldn’t lose your temper,” he said softly. “Please, speak to him calmly.” Then, he turned his wide, apologetic eyes to me. “Nathaniel, please don’t take it to heart. She’s just angry. It’s my fault for tonight. I shouldn’t have ordered the food. I promise, I won’t attend another family dinner. Please, just make peace with her.” There were actual tears pooling in Spencer’s eyes. He looked like a tragic peacemaker, sacrificing himself for our marriage. The sight of it made me want to vomit. I looked at Victoria. Despite her raging temper, Spencer’s words had worked. She had instantly quieted down. A laugh bubbled up in my chest. I laughed so hard the tears I’d been holding back finally spilled over. “Tell me, Spencer,” I wheezed, wiping my eyes. “In what capacity exactly are you playing marriage counselor for my wife and me?” “I—I—Nathaniel, you misunderstand!” Spencer stammered, stepping back. “Victoria and I are strictly professional! Please don’t be angry. If you hate me that much, I’ll resign tomorrow. I’ll leave the company. As long as you two are happy…” Victoria stared at him, her fists clenching so tight her knuckles turned white. I saw the raw, desperate concern bubbling up in her eyes. I decided to push it. “You should know something, Spencer,” I said, my voice dropping to a conversational murmur. “Victoria clearly has a soft spot for you. But until I vacate the position of the pathetic, live-in husband, you’ll never get the promotion you really want. If you keep begging me to stay, I just might. Is that really the outcome you’re hoping for?” 3. Victoria finally signed the papers, driven to the edge by the sound of Spencer’s soft, manufactured weeping. I called my lawyer right then and there, handing over the logistics. Victoria stood frozen by the island, her face a mask of frost, watching me handle the call with detached efficiency. When I hung up, the venom finally spilled out. “Remember this, Nathaniel. You brought this entirely on yourself,” she sneered. “I’ve signed. There is no going back. We have an ironclad prenup. Don’t harbor any delusions that you’ll be walking away with a single cent of Kensington money.” I carefully folded the agreement and slid it into a manila envelope. I nodded. “I know.” I stood up and looked at her. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to pack a bag.” Victoria’s blazing fury hit the brick wall of my absolute apathy, leaving her visibly choking on her own adrenaline. I knew that feeling. It was like having a wad of cotton shoved down your throat—you can’t swallow it, and you can’t spit it out. It just suffocates you. For eight years, that was exactly how she had handled every conflict between us: with walls of ice and suffocating silence. Her face darkened. Spencer took a cautious step toward her, reaching out to support her arm. I pulled my gaze away and looked down at Mia, whose face was streaked with tears. I thought about it for a second, then spoke softly. “I won’t be picking you up from preschool anymore. And I won’t be there when you’re sick in the middle of the night. You’re five now. You need to learn who actually cares about you, and who is just playing a part. Don’t go wandering off with strangers just because they offer you something sweet.” Six months ago, Victoria had a sudden out-of-town conference. She commanded me to drop off some clothes at her office before her flight. I was a nervous wreck; I’d been berated before for bringing outfits she deemed “unpresentable.” I spent an hour carefully steaming and matching her clothes, then drove like a maniac to her corporate headquarters. Because of that, I was twenty minutes late picking Mia up from her elite preschool. Mia had wandered out of the gates and down the busy avenue. A stranger offered her a lollipop and coaxed her into a car. Thank God, the person only realized she was lost and drove her straight to the precinct. But during those agonizing two hours, I lost my mind. The Kensington security detail swarmed the city. Victoria aborted her business trip and sped back from the airport. In the aftermath, I was crucified. It didn’t matter what the circumstances were. The entire Kensington clan poured their collective wrath onto me. I could take their abuse. I was used to being their punching bag. But from that day on, Mia looked at me like I was the villain of her story. That shift in her eyes was the slow poison that finally cured me of my attachment to her. “Nathaniel, Mia is the sole heir to the Kensington estate. She doesn’t need life advice from an outsider!” Victoria snapped. “Or are you just saying these dramatic, pathetic things hoping I’ll beg you to stay?” I just smiled, didn’t say a word, and walked lightly toward the master bedroom. I had been a stay-at-home husband for eight years. I never realized that packing a bag could feel so paralyzing. I looked around the bedroom. I had picked out the curtains, sourced the vintage rugs, framed the art. Suddenly, it all looked incredibly tacky to me. In the end, I only opened my bedside drawer. I took a single photo album and two keys. Victoria had been standing in the doorway the entire time, her eyes burning holes into my back. As I walked past her into the hall, I kept my voice flat. “Tell the staff to throw the rest of my stuff away tomorrow.” “Don’t you dare regret this, Nathaniel!” she screamed down the hallway. I didn’t break my stride. I walked out of that beautiful, frozen cage, and the front door clicked shut behind me. 4. A huge part of why I had loved Victoria with such humiliating devotion was because she was the only light in the darkest chapter of my life. In high school, I had severe, painful cystic acne. My parents took me to every dermatologist on the coast, but nothing worked. I was already cripplingly shy, and the relentless bullying pushed me to the brink of a severe depression. Victoria was a year ahead of me. Every single day, she would walk into my homeroom between periods just to stand by my desk. If anyone made a joke, she would physically throw down with them. She spent half her sophomore year in the principal’s office because of me. But she never cared. She’d just clap me on the shoulder, knuckles bruised, and say: “You’re my guy. I’m the only one allowed to mess with you. Anyone else tries it, I’ll break their jaw.” A sharp honk pulled me out of the past. I turned around. Spencer scrambled out of the backseat of the Maybach and jogged toward me. “Na—Nathaniel! Victoria has to get back to the office for a late conference call. Where are you going? We can give you a ride.” I looked past him. The rear window rolled down, and Victoria’s eyes met mine in the dim streetlights. She was quiet for a long moment before pressing her lips together. “Get in.” It was an unfortunate reality. My SUV was at the dealership getting a transmission check. Though the Kensington garage held six luxury cars, none of them had my name on the title. The estate was out in the wealthy, sprawling suburbs. Getting back to the city meant walking miles down a winding, unlit mountain road. Without overthinking it, I walked toward the passenger side. I didn’t expect Spencer to practically sprint to beat me to the door. He slid into the front seat, forcing me to sit in the back. Next to Victoria. I gave the driver an address in the city and didn’t say another word. The air in the car was frigid. But for the first time in years, she was sitting next to me and not staring at a glowing iPad screen. I could feel her peripheral vision snagging on me, over and over. Holding her tongue wasn’t her style. I let out a soft breath of amusement. As the city skyline came into view, I finally broke the silence. “What is it, Victoria? Spit it out.” She frowned deeply, her eyes fixated on the dried blood crusted over my eyebrow. “Nathaniel. If you swallow your pride and apologize, I’ll grant you visitation with Mia once a week.” “No thanks.” My answer was instant. The car pulled to the curb, and I pushed the door open. Victoria snapped. “You are so damn ungrateful! Your family is dead! Let’s see how long you survive out here on your own!” I hated being alone. It was my deepest, most agonizing fear. Victoria always knew exactly where to slide the knife. I slammed the door and walked away fast. But Spencer jumped out and chased me down, grabbing my sleeve. “Nathaniel, please! She only followed you because she was worried you’d get hurt walking in the dark! She cares about you…” Before he could finish the sentence, Victoria threw her door open. She marched over, ripped his hand off my jacket, and pulled him behind her defensively. “Let him go!” she barked. “Victoria, I just—” “I said, let him walk!” I stood on the pavement watching them scuffle. I didn’t miss the flash of smug triumph hiding just beneath Spencer’s wide, panicky eyes. A sudden, dark impulse seized me. I smiled. “I’m actually curious about something, Victoria,” I said, tilting my head. “Are you giving Spencer all this special treatment because you’re genuinely falling for him? Or is it just because, in the right light, he looks exactly like Wesley?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408331”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The apocalypse had already taken everything else, and now it had reduced my bitterest rival to an item on an auction block, locked inside a gilded cage. I was just about to raise my paddle to buy him when the Oracle Feed—the psychic broadcast that streamed endlessly through the ocular implants of the Citadel’s elite—flashed across my vision. [Is the side-chick actually psychotic? He’s the strongest Aether-class operative we have. He’s faking this whole “helpless slave” routine just so he can get close to the Golden Girl and be her devoted attack dog. It’s their twisted foreplay. Why is this tragic extra trying to insert herself into the main plot?] [Harper is so desperate for a man, it’s pathetic. When the Swarm breaches the walls next month and tears her into bloody confetti, she’ll totally deserve it.] A violent shiver racked my spine. I immediately lowered my paddle. “Never mind,” I muttered. “I’m out.” A second later, the man in the cage lifted his head. “I bid ten thousand Aether credits. I’ll buy myself, and I am giving myself to her.” Kieran raised a heavy, chained arm. He pointed straight at me. 1 “Sold!” The auctioneer’s gavel cracked like a gunshot. “Congratulations, Miss. This human male is now your exclusive property!” The blood drained from my face. I shot up from my velvet seat. “I literally just said I didn’t want him! How are you forcing a sale?” The auctioneer offered an apologetic, oily smile. “Miss, the gavel has struck. The transaction is bound by Citadel law. Besides, you aren’t paying a dime. The merchandise has volunteered to cover his own acquisition fee, begging for you to take ownership.” This was the subterranean black market of the Citadel, a lavish three-day event overflowing with illicit weaponry, rare defense tech, and stolen artifacts. I had been hoarding my Aether credits for three grueling years, intending to finally buy a weapon that wouldn’t jam when I needed it most. Instead, I found Kieran Cross on the auction block. Under the harsh, blinding glare of the crystal chandeliers, his eyes locked onto mine. While the audience was draped in silk and bespoke tailored suits, Kieran had been stripped of his tactical gear. He was locked in an iron cage, wearing nothing but dark grey combat trousers. His shoulders were impossibly broad, his waist lean, every muscle defined and coiled with a dangerous, predatory grace. A heavy obsidian collar was locked around his throat. A delicate, degrading chain of spun gold connected the collar to the piercings at his chest. He looked exactly like what he was meant to be tonight: a beautifully packaged plaything, waiting to be consumed. My initial instinct to buy him had been born of pure, foolish pity. I never expected Kieran to pay for his own subjugation, forcing himself into my life. The Oracle Feed in my vision exploded into a blur of frantic text: [Holy shit, what is happening?!] [The plot says the male lead is supposed to use his cunning to sell himself to Camille! He’s the ultimate manipulative simp—he even picked out that gold chest chain himself to appeal to her! Why is he suddenly throwing himself at the side-bitch?!] [Harper is such trash, trash, trash. Can she stay away from him?! Collateral damage girls who try to play the main character always end up dead!!!] [Whatever, buying him won’t save her. During the Swarm invasion next month, he’s going to shield Camille with his own body. Harper’s going to get gutted by an Aberration. The biggest piece left of her won’t be larger than a fingernail. Watch.] A visceral, bloody image flashed through my mind with sickening clarity. I looked down at my own fingernail and violently shuddered. The residual terror instantly morphed into irritation directed at Kieran. “The auction house claimed you were drowning in debt and selling yourself to survive,” I snapped, walking up to the cage. “Who exactly are you trying to fool with this pathetic act?” Kieran froze. Those cold, narrow eyes of his slowly dropped to the floor. He pressed his lips together, his voice a low, muffled rasp. “Harper. It’s been a long time. I thought… at the very least, you might say hello.” 2 I was fifteen the first time I met Kieran. Back then, I was just trying to survive, taking on bottom-feeding mercenary jobs in the Scrap Wards. He was out there too, a lone wolf with a chip on his shoulder the size of a crater. Somehow, we always ended up taking opposing contracts. Most days, we were bitter rivals, trading blows and insults in equal measure. It was only when one of us was bleeding out in an alley that we’d begrudgingly drag the other to safety. The last time I saw him, we had a screaming match that shook the rain-slicked streets. “Can you have some damn standards about whose money you take, Kieran?!” I had yelled, my voice cracking. “Do you have any idea that your client is a complete psychopath? He tortures kids in the lower levels!” I was so angry, the words spilled out like battery acid. “Or do you just enjoy being on someone’s leash?!” His face had gone deathly pale. He reached into his jacket and tossed a bloody, searing-hot Aether core onto the ground between us. “I know exactly who he is,” Kieran said, his voice dropping an octave. “That’s why I took the job. To rip the core straight out of his chest.” He stepped into my space, every word a deliberate strike. “There is nothing I hate more in this miserable world than someone trying to put me on a leash.” I bit my lip, instantly suffocating on my own regret. But he didn’t wait for an apology. His jaw was tight with fury as he turned and walked away into the smog. The very next day, the elite Croft family discovered my latent abilities and pulled me out of the Scrap Wards. I never saw Kieran again. I never even got to say goodbye. So, when the Feed told me that he would eventually abandon me to be ripped apart by monsters just to save another woman… it felt like a physical blow. Did those years in the gutter mean nothing? Was there really no loyalty left between us? Kieran stared at me through the bars of the cage for a long, heavy moment. His brow furrowed, casting a shadow over his face. “Besides,” he said quietly, the arrogance completely gone from his tone. “That was every last credit I had. My Aether core is shattered, Harper. I’m just a normal human now. I’ll never be able to earn that kind of money again.” I thought of the frantic scrolling of the Feed. He’s faking it. “Bullshit,” I breathed. “That’s impossible.” Kieran lowered his eyes, his thick lashes casting long shadows. “You’re a Healer class. You can check the core yourself.” Before I could protest, he reached through the iron bars, grabbed my hand, and pressed my palm flat against the thick, hard muscle of his chest. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. His heartbeat reverberated through his ribs, syncing violently with my own pulse. I took a shaky breath, carefully channeling a thread of my Aether energy, letting it slip through his skin to search for the radiant, burning core that should have been resting near his heart. A second later, my eyes snapped wide open in horror. It was gone. Not just damaged—obliterated. Jagged, dead fragments were all that remained of the most powerful Aether core I had ever sensed. Anyone with a shattered core couldn’t even conjure a spark, let alone fight. Why was the Feed lying? What the hell had actually happened to him? My mind reeled. As I hastily pulled my hand back, my finger caught on the delicate gold chain draped across his chest. The chain went taut. Kieran let out a sharp, breathless grunt. The skin around the piercings flushed a deep, angry red. He looked up at me through his lashes, his expression adopting a bizarre, unsettling submissiveness. “That pinches,” he whispered. “Could you take it off for me?” My mouth moved faster than my brain. “Oh? Beg for it, then.” He didn’t miss a beat. His gaze dropped, his voice a smooth, flat hum. “I’m begging you. Mistress.” Boom. I felt my own heart slam against my ribs, a massive, deafening beat in my ears. Kieran pressed his own hand over his chest, his voice muffled and thick. “The world has ended, Harper. Only the strong survive. Look at me. I’m just a fragile, broken man now. Easy prey for anyone.” He slowly lifted his eyes to mine. They were impossibly dark, an abyss of ink and gravity that threatened to pull me under. “As long as you promise to keep me by your side,” he said softly. “As long as you protect me, every second of every day…” He leaned closer to the bars. “In return… I’ll be your dog.” 3 For several agonizing seconds, the Oracle Feed was as silent as a graveyard. Then, it erupted. [WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! The plot is completely derailed! I don’t even recognize this story anymore!] [Wait, I just pulled the Citadel databanks! The male lead took an SSS-rank mission a few days ago and actually DID suffer catastrophic damage to his core! And Harper is a rare Healer class. If he drains her healing energy dry, his core will regenerate!] [Omg, that makes so much sense! He’s playing the long game. What a manipulative king.] [Haha, let the side-bitch suffer the drain. Our Golden Girl Camille is too precious to go through that kind of pain anyway.] My racing heart slowly began to decelerate. A strange, acidic ache bled from my chest outward, seeping into my veins. And then, it solidified into something else entirely. Pure, unadulterated anger. I stepped forward, gripping the heavy iron chain attached to his obsidian collar, yanking it upward to force him to look at me. “I own you now,” I said, my voice dangerously even. “Whether I want you cooking my meals and scrubbing my floors, or warming my bed as a late-night toy, you do exactly what I say. Understood?” He nodded once. A cruel, spiteful smile tipped the corner of my mouth. “Then let’s start by putting you in something I like.” I signaled the auctioneer and gave a few clipped instructions. A moment later, he returned with a sealed garment bag. “Keep the chest chain on,” I ordered, staring Kieran dead in the eye. “I like it right where it is.” Kieran stared at the garment bag, a flicker of something volatile crossing his face before he smoothed it over. “Yes. Of course.” He took the bag and vanished into the dressing room. The auction was still in full swing. Because Kieran had somehow transferred his own credits to my account to buy himself, I was treated like royalty. The manager practically bowed as he escorted me to a VIP viewing suite on the second floor. I pushed the heavy oak door open—and stopped dead. Someone was already sitting inside. “Murphy,” I said, blinking in surprise. “What a coincidence.” Murphy’s eyes lit up, a warm smile spreading across his face. “Little Harper. It’s been what, two years?” Like me, Murphy was a rare Healer class. He used to be contracted by the Croft family and was the closest thing I ever had to a mentor. He eventually got recruited by an elite combat squad and left the estate for good. I smiled back, the tension in my shoulders easing. “You look exactly the same. You were the best combat medic the Citadel ever saw. If you hadn’t insisted that your new squad captain saved your life, the Crofts never would have let you out of your contract.” Murphy sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, well. When I first met my Captain, he was young, built like a tank, and had off-the-charts Aether abilities. I thought he was a rock-solid leader. Turns out, the guy is a terminal romantic. A complete idiot for love.” He leaned forward, looking utterly exasperated. “Do you want to know what this lunatic did recently?” I raised an eyebrow. “What?” “He came to me and said that women only feel protective over men who are broken. Then he actually asked me if there was a medical way to temporarily shatter his own Aether core so he could play the tragic victim and force the woman he’s obsessed with to take him in.” Murphy let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “I don’t even know how far this lovesick bastard is willing to take it. Honestly, if the girl he likes told him to put on a frilly little maid costume, he’d probably do it with a smile.” A very cold, very precise sense of dread pooled in my stomach. That plotline sounded entirely too familiar. Click. The heavy door to the VIP suite swung open. Kieran walked in. He was wearing the humiliating pleasure-thrall outfit I had selected: a tight white velvet corset-vest, a ridiculous ruffled skirt that barely hit his mid-thigh, and an obsidian headband equipped with stylized cat ears. The gold chain peaked out from the plunging neckline, catching the chandelier light. Kieran froze. Murphy froze. They stared at each other.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408316”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When the System pulled me back into this world for the second time, I was already infamous. I was the ultimate charity case, the gold-digging husband who had married hopelessly out of his league. But I was done acting like a madman over my wife’s wandering eye. I was done shedding tears because my own daughter had started calling another man “Dad.” Instead, I instituted a new rule in our sprawling Virginia estate. Every time they mentioned Tristan’s name, they had to transfer five thousand dollars into my bank account. In just fifteen days, I had amassed a quarter of a million dollars. I did it because the System had whispered to me upon my return: “Your target mortgaged thirty years of her own lifespan to drag you back. But rest easy—this time, you only need to survive twenty days.” In these twenty days, my only goal was to save enough money to secure a peaceful retirement for my adoptive parents. At dinner, Victoria was chatting casually with our daughter. Inevitably, Tristan’s name slipped out. The atmosphere at the mahogany dining table froze instantly. I simply reached across the linen tablecloth, my palm face up. “Five thousand. Venmo or Zelle?” Mia, my daughter, finally snapped. She slammed her silver fork down, the clatter echoing in the cavernous dining room. “Is money the only thing left in your pathetic brain? You’re not even worth one of Tristan’s fingernails!” I didn’t argue. I just extended my hand a fraction closer to her. “Ten thousand. You just said it again.” 1 Mia stared at me, her young face contorted in sheer disbelief. My expression didn’t shift. I kept my voice flat, hollowed out. “Transfer the money first. Don’t make me ask twice.” “Simon, is this a joke to you?!” Victoria violently pushed her plate away, the porcelain shattering against the marble floor. Her eyes were dark, swirling with sudden, explosive anger. “I know you’re holding onto resentment. That’s why I’ve turned a blind eye for the past two weeks. I traded half my soul, half my life to wake you from that coma, because I wanted to build a real life with you! Why do you have to be so petty?” I lowered my eyes, my tone maddeningly even. “I wouldn’t dare be petty. But you are the CEO of Vanguard Defense. A woman of your word. You agreed to the rule; surely you won’t back out now.” Victoria lunged forward, grabbing my hand and pressing it hard against her chest, right over the jagged, ugly scar hidden beneath her silk blouse. It was the physical toll the System had extracted from her—an open-heart procedure she endured just to reboot my timeline. Her face contorted in pain, and her voice softened into a desperate plea. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him up in front of you. Please, Simon, don’t be angry, okay? Don’t call me CEO. I’m your wife. We are supposed to be forever.” Years ago, I would have killed to hear her admit she was wrong. I would have dreamed of her calling me her husband with that kind of raw vulnerability. Now, the feeling of her heartbeat against my palm just made stomach acid rise in my throat. I felt physically sick. I pulled my hand back, wiping my palm against my slacks. “You just said his name again. That makes it fifteen thousand.” The color drained from Victoria’s face in a sickening rush. “Fine. Fine.” Her voice trembled with a terrifying, glacial rage. “You really never cease to amaze me, Simon. I want to see exactly how long you can keep up this pathetic, money-hungry charade.” She yanked a black Centurion card from her blazer, hurled it at the floor, grabbed Mia by the wrist, and stormed out. The heavy oak doors slammed shut behind them. Standing by the sideboard, a young security detail whispered to a maid. “He doesn’t get it. The boss is tough, but she loves him. The six months he was gone, she lost her mind. She almost let the entire company go under. She just sat in the dark, clutching his photo until sunrise.” I raised a hand, dismissing them both. When the room was empty, I bent down and picked up the black card. I didn’t care where they went. I didn’t care about Victoria’s supposed grief. Five more days. That was all I had left before I vanished from this timeline forever. Having finally seen the absolute zero of Victoria’s heart, my only tether to this world was securing my adoptive parents’ future. I called one of the junior guards and ordered him to pack up every luxury watch, cufflink, and designer suit in my closet and take them to a high-end pawn broker in the city. While I was stripping the room, I caught sight of the platinum wedding band on my left hand. I gripped it, ready to pull it off and toss it into the sell pile. Before I could clear my knuckle, my wrist was seized in a vice grip. Victoria was standing there, her eyes bloodshot and wild. “You’re trying to sell our wedding ring?” I looked up at her, finding the entire situation profoundly absurd. Five years ago, she had taken her own wedding band to a jeweler to melt it down, using the cash to buy a vintage Rolex for Tristan. If she could sell hers, why couldn’t I sell mine? I wrenched my arm free and tossed the ring toward the guard. “It’s a heavy platinum setting. It should fetch a decent price.” “I said, don’t touch it!” Victoria screamed, snatching the ring out of the air. She glared at the guard with a look that promised violence. “Get out!” The moment the door clicked shut, she lunged at me, crashing her mouth against mine. It wasn’t a kiss of passion; it was a desperate, aggressive claiming. I shoved her away with everything I had. My lip tore against my teeth. I instinctively wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. When I looked up, Victoria was staring at me in utter devastation. “You… you’re disgusted by me?” Her voice broke. “Are you still punishing me because I let him touch me?” If this were five years ago, seeing her look so shattered would have broken me. I would have pulled her into my arms and forgiven everything. But now, I just held out my hand, my palm steady. “You just brought him up again. That’s five thousand.” Victoria swayed on her feet like she’d been struck. I watched her, completely numb. I remembered looking at her with that exact same agonizing desperation. Years ago, when Vanguard Defense was still a fledgling contractor, her convoy was ambushed overseas. She took three bullets to the chest and abdomen. I was the combat medic who refused to call time of death, dragging her back from the brink of the grave. She defied her wealthy, aristocratic family to marry me. The first two years were magic. We built a life. We had Mia. But four years in, she moved her recently divorced childhood best friend, Tristan, into the compound. She introduced him as a “consultant,” but gave him the run of the estate. He was the golden boy she’d never quite gotten over. I fought. I cried. I begged. But she would just look at me with exhausted irritation. “Tristan has no one else, Simon. What’s wrong with me looking out for him?” Slowly, methodically, he poisoned my home. Even Mia, the daughter I had stayed up nights rocking to sleep, began to drift into his orbit. “You don’t understand anything, Daddy. Tristan is so much cooler.” A sudden, sharp pain in my ribs snapped me out of the memory. Mia had charged into the room, shoving me hard. “What are you doing?!” she shrieked, pointing at the half-empty closet. “I already promised Tristan he could have the East Wing for his birthday! You emptied it all out! How am I supposed to explain this to him?” She glared at me, her eyes filled with a vitriol no child should possess. “Why did you even come back? Why couldn’t you just stay dead?” 2 I froze, the air knocked out of my lungs. I couldn’t form a single word. This room, the East Wing master suite, was the one Mia had helped me decorate when we first built the estate. She had painted a small, lopsided heart inside the closet door. “I want Daddy to have the safest harbor in the whole world,” she had said. Victoria clearly remembered that memory, too. A flicker of genuine guilt crossed her sharp features. “Mia, stop. You don’t mean that.” Mia yanked her arm away from her mother, her glare fixed on me. “Yes, I do! Why are you here?” “I said, shut up!” Victoria snapped, her voice turning to ice. But when she looked back at me, her eyes darted away, unable to hold my gaze. “Don’t listen to her. Simon… about Tristan and me. We were just… I had too much to drink that night. I thought he was you.” I listened to the silence ring in my ears. My chest felt tight, filled with a dense, suffocating ache. Six years. Six years, and she couldn’t even be bothered to invent a new lie. I dug my fingernails so hard into my palms that the skin broke, forcing the moisture back from my eyes. “You just referenced him four times. Plus the previous one. That’s twenty-five thousand dollars.” Victoria stood completely still for thirty agonizing seconds. Then, she exploded. She kicked the heavy, solid-wood nightstand, sending a designer lamp crashing to the floor. “Fine! You are unbelievable!” she screamed, her chest heaving. “You want money? I’ll give you money! In fact, I have a very lucrative job for you. Are you taking it or not?” I looked at her. Her lips curled into a cruel, calculated smirk. “Tristan is sick. It’s a severe stomach bug, very debilitating. You used to be a medic. You’re going to be his personal, live-in nurse.” Her voice dripped with venom. “Make him comfortable, and I’ll write you a check for half a million dollars.” “No.” I didn’t expect her to stoop to this level of humiliation. My voice was thick with suppressed rage. Victoria’s expression hardened into a mask of pure sociopathy. “You don’t have to agree. But if you don’t, I’ll just have my security team bring your adoptive mother here to do it. She was an award-winning head nurse before she retired, wasn’t she? I’m sure she’d love to help.” My heart seized. A cold, familiar terror washed over me. This was the same dead-eyed expression she wore five years ago when she ordered her private security to ruthlessly purge corporate spies from her company. She destroyed lives without blinking. I couldn’t gamble with my mother’s safety. My jaw tightened until my teeth ached. “Fine. I’ll do it.” A guard escorted me down to the industrial kitchen. Mia trailed behind us, her arms loaded with ridiculously expensive, holistic supplements. “These are imported truffles, and this is organic bone broth,” she dictated, dumping them on the stainless-steel counter. She looked at me like I was a stray dog that had wandered into her house. “Don’t think you can pull anything, Daddy. I’m going to watch your every move. You are not going to poison Tristan.” I just stared at her, feeling a profound, echoing emptiness. A second later, two raw, whole chickens were violently thrown onto the counter in front of me. The cloying, metallic smell of raw poultry hit my sinuses, and my stomach violently rebelled. I gagged, gripping the edge of the sink. Since I was a child, I’ve had a severe, documented psychosomatic aversion and contact allergy to raw poultry. Just touching it causes my skin to erupt in painful, burning hives. It was a trauma response from a childhood incident, and both Victoria and Mia knew exactly how bad it was. But Mia just rolled her eyes. “Tristan only likes fresh chicken soup. Just deal with it, okay? Besides, Mom told me to make sure you do it.” I snapped my head up. Victoria was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. There wasn’t a shred of pity on her face. Her voice was clinical. “Tristan has a weak constitution and a refined palate. He can only stomach your recipe.” She crossed her arms. “You grew up on a dirt-poor farm, Simon. Stop pretending you have the delicate sensibilities of high society. Make the soup and bring it up to him.” My hands were already breaking out in a furious, raised rash just from being near the raw meat. I shook my head, my breathing shallow. “I can’t. I—” “If you don’t,” Victoria cut in, her voice slicing through the air, “I’ll have your mother brought in from the city to pluck and gut them.” The last remnants of my pride crumbled into dust. My adoptive mother was nearly seventy. Her heart couldn’t take the stress of Victoria’s armed guards dragging her here. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, swallowed down the suffocating humiliation, and nodded. By the time I carried the heavy ceramic bowl of boiling soup up to Tristan’s quarters, my hands and forearms were covered in weeping, agonizing hives. I was running a fever, my legs shaking so badly I could barely stand. Tristan sat propped up against a mountain of pillows. He took a tiny, theatrical sip from the spoon, then grimaced. “It’s too greasy. I can’t keep this down.” Mia’s face instantly twisted in fury. She whirled on me, screaming. “Are you deaf? He doesn’t like it! Go back down and make a new batch right now!” I stood completely still, my vision blurring from the pain in my arms. Mia lost her temper and shoved my shoulder, trying to push me toward the door. Victoria stepped forward and caught Mia’s arm. Her tone softened, just a fraction, as she looked at my inflamed skin. “If you’re willing to just apologize to him, you don’t have to make another—” 3 “It’ll cost extra.” The rest of Victoria’s sentence died in her throat. Silence stretched through the room. Finally, she ground the words out through her teeth. “Fine. I will pay you extra.” I turned, walked back down to the kitchen, and spent another agonizing hour making a fresh bowl. When I brought it back, I handed it toward Tristan. As he reached for it, his hand “slipped.” He violently jerked his wrist, and the entire bowl of boiling, greasy broth splashed directly onto my thighs. The pain was instantaneous and blinding. Tears sprang to my eyes before I could stop them. Before I could even react, I was shoved hard against the wall. Victoria and Mia practically dove over me, frantically checking Tristan’s blankets to see if a single drop had touched his skin. Tristan shot me a smug, triumphant look over Victoria’s shoulder, while his voice trembled with engineered panic. “I’m so sorry! I’m fine, but Simon looks burned. Should we call the estate doctor?” Victoria didn’t even look up from wiping Tristan’s hands. “No need. Men who are this obsessed with money are cockroaches. He won’t die.” She pulled a checkbook from her blazer pocket, scribbled on it, and threw it. The paper fluttered through the air and landed in the pool of spilled soup at my feet. “Half a million. Take it.” She finally looked at me, her eyes filled with revulsion. “I’ll have the maids handle Tristan from now on. I’m sick of looking at you. Every time you open your mouth, it’s about a payout. It’s pathetic.” I didn’t say a word. I slowly bent down, my scorched skin screaming in protest, and picked up the damp check. The burn on my leg felt like it was chewing through muscle, but I didn’t make a sound. I secured the check and limped out of the room. This money. It was enough. My parents would be safe. The next morning, I packed the cash, the pawn shop receipts, and the checks into a duffel bag, intent on delivering them to my parents. But the moment I walked out the front doors of the mansion, I froze. Standing just beyond the main security gate was my adoptive mother, Martha. She was trembling violently in the morning chill. “Mom? What are you doing here?” A sickening knot pulled tight in my gut. “Where’s Pops? Didn’t he come with you?” Martha’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen. She grabbed my forearms, her grip desperate. “Your father was taken this morning. A black SUV pulled up, said Victoria invited him to the estate for breakfast. I followed them in a cab because I was terrified, but they won’t let me past the gate, and I haven’t seen him!” My heart plummeted into an icy abyss. My adoptive father, Henry, had taken a bullet to the head for Victoria years ago during a corporate hit. He survived, but the severe traumatic brain injury left him permanently with the cognitive capacity of a seven-year-old child. “Mom, stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll find him.” Before I could take a step, a blood-curdling, agonizing scream echoed from the back courtyards. My blood ran cold. I broke into a sprint, ignoring the tearing pain in my burned leg, tearing through the manicured hedges toward the sound. In the center of the stone courtyard stood Victoria, her face an unreadable mask of dark fury. Mia was huddled behind her, looking spooked. Tristan stood off to the side, looking the picture of a traumatized victim. And on the cold, hard concrete, my father was pinned facedown by two massive private security contractors. When he saw me running toward him, his cloudy, confused eyes lit up. “Simon! My boy is here…” “Shut him up!” Victoria barked. She stepped forward and kicked my father hard in the shoulder with her steel-toed boot. I let out a raw, animal scream and threw myself over my father’s body, shielding his head. “Victoria, what the hell are you doing?!” She grabbed the collar of my jacket and violently hauled me backward. Her face was contorted in disgust. “Why don’t you ask the old fool what he did?!” Tristan stepped forward, his voice trembling perfectly. “I was just walking in the garden. This… this crazy old man just lunged at me. He was trying to strangle me! If the guards hadn’t heard me scream, he would have killed me!” “You’re lying!” I roared, my voice tearing my throat. “His brain is ruined! He can’t even tie his own shoes or feed himself! How the hell could he coordinate an attack? You set him up!” Victoria let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Why would Tristan lie about something like this?” She didn’t look at me again. She turned to the captain of the guard, her voice devoid of any humanity. “Take him to the wall. Fifty strikes with the heavy batons.” “No!” I screamed, thrashing wildly against the guards who had grabbed me. Tears streamed down my face, blurring my vision. “He’s almost seventy years old! Fifty strikes from those batons will stop his heart! Victoria, look at him! Have you forgotten he’s only like this because he took a bullet for you?!” Victoria’s posture stiffened. For a fraction of a second, hesitation flickered in her eyes. But Tristan immediately shrank back, clutching his throat. “Victoria… it’s okay. If it makes you look bad, let him go. I can take the bruises…” The guilt in Victoria’s eyes instantly evaporated, replaced by absolute, blinding rage. “Do it! If anyone intervenes, beat them too!” Knowing Victoria was a lost cause, I dropped to my knees, practically crawling across the concrete toward Mia. I grabbed her designer skirt. “Mia, please. Please. When you were little, Pops was your favorite person. He used to carry you on his shoulders. You know he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Tell your mother! Tell her he didn’t do it!” 4 Mia refused to look at me. A flash of profound hesitation crossed her face. Hope flared in my chest. I gripped her skirt tighter. “Mia, speak up! Tell them he’s innocent!” She slowly lifted her head. She looked over at Tristan, who gave her a subtle, sad, imploring look. Mia ripped her fabric out of my hands and shoved me backward. “I saw him.” I felt like I had been struck by lightning. The blood in my veins turned to ice. “Mia… what are you saying?” “I said, I saw him!” Mia shouted, her voice shrill, as if volume could make the lie true. “He’s a crazy old man! He tried to hurt Tristan, and he deserves to be punished!” The last ounce of strength drained from my body. I collapsed onto the freezing concrete. Victoria sneered down at me. “Even your own daughter saw it. Are you done spinning lies?” She gestured to the guards. “Commence.” “NO!” My scream was entirely drowned out by the sickening, heavy crack of the solid polymer baton striking bone. My father’s cries of agony echoed off the stone walls of the compound. He didn’t understand what was happening. He just cried out for me. “Simon… it hurts… Dad hurts…” I fought like a madman, tearing my fingernails on the pavement trying to reach him, but the two guards had their knees dug into my spine, pinning me completely. I was forced to watch. The heavy, rhythmic thwack of the batons. The blood pooling on the gray stone. By the fiftieth strike, my father’s body went completely limp. He didn’t twitch. He didn’t breathe. “Dad!” My voice tore completely. The guards finally let me go, and I scrambled over the blood-slicked concrete, pulling his broken body into my arms. His skin was already cooling. The light in his eyes was completely gone. Victoria stood over us, looking down with clinical detachment. “Enough. He was a vegetable anyway. This is a mercy. Don’t be too dramatic about it; I’ll pay for a premium funeral.” I stared at the blood on my hands. The world had gone entirely silent. Mia trotted over, looking annoyed. “Stop crying, Daddy. He tried to hurt Tristan. He brought it on himself.” She pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from her pocket and threw them. They fluttered down, landing in the pool of my father’s blood. “Here. This is enough to buy him a nice spot in the cemetery.” Suddenly, a piercing, soul-shredding shriek cut through the air. I snapped my head up. Martha had somehow slipped past the front gate. She was sprinting across the courtyard, her eyes fixed on the bloody heap in my arms. She threw herself onto my father’s body, her hands trembling violently as she touched his face. “Henry… Henry, wake up! How could you leave me? How could you leave me here all alone?!” “Mom.” I reached out a shaking hand to pull her back. Dad was gone. She was the only family I had left in the universe. But before my fingers could brush her sleeve, she lunged upward. With a guttural cry, she threw her entire body weight forward, driving her head headfirst into the sharp, granite edge of the decorative fountain. “NO!” I lunged, but my fingers only grazed the fabric of her coat. A sickening crack echoed. She slumped to the ground, a dark pool rushing out from beneath her skull. I knelt there on the stone. To my left, the beaten corpse of my father. To my right, the shattered body of my mother. In my hands, I still gripped the blood-soaked duffel bag of cash I was supposed to give them for their retirement. A terrible, suffocating pressure seized my chest. I doubled over, and a mouthful of dark blood violently expelled from my lungs, splattering across the concrete. “Simon!” Victoria’s voice fractured. The icy facade broke, replaced by sudden, raw panic. She rushed forward to grab me. But Tristan casually tugged on her sleeve. “He’s just playing the victim again, Victoria. He probably thinks we didn’t give him enough cash. Remember a few months ago when he faked a coma? He always comes back.” Mia pulled out another stack of bills and threw them directly at my face. “Is this enough? Get over it, Daddy. Stop acting. It’s annoying.” I looked at the scattered bills. I looked at the checks. I started to laugh. A broken, wet, horrific sound that clawed its way out of my ruined throat. Victoria took a hesitant step toward me, her face pale, but Mia stepped in front of her. “He’s just going to threaten to kill himself again. Let him do it. If he really dies this time, we won’t even care.” I reached out and gently brushed my thumbs over my parents’ open, sightless eyes, closing them. Then I looked up at Mia. “Okay. I’ll die.” Mia smirked. She reached over to the guard standing next to her, unclipped the heavy Glock from his holster, and kicked it across the pavement toward me. “Use this. It’s faster.” I picked up the heavy, cold steel of the gun. I didn’t say a word. Seeing me holding it silently, Victoria let out a long sigh of relief, assuming the bluff was over. “Alright, Simon, enough of the tantrums. Put it down, come inside, apologize, and we can move past this…” Before she finished her sentence, I pressed the barrel flush against my heart and pulled the trigger. BANG. The sound was deafening. A spray of boiling, crimson blood painted the side of Victoria’s face. The relieved smile on her face froze. The color drained from her skin, leaving her looking like a wax corpse. “SIMON!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408332”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I don’t dare touch AI anymore. Not because of the tech, but because every time I ask it a question, someone close to me dies. The first time, it was something mundane. I asked if sprouted potatoes were safe to eat. Within twenty-four hours, my parents were dead—acute food poisoning. The doctors couldn’t save them. The second time, I was at the pier with my boyfriend. I asked the AI if the vintage roller coaster was structurally sound. Minutes later, the safety harness snapped, and he was flung from his seat, reduced to a pulp on the concrete below. The police dragged me in as their prime suspect. They tore my life apart, searching for a wire, a poison, a motive. They found nothing. Terrified, I made a pact with myself: I would never touch a chatbot again. I would live a quiet, analog life. But then came my boss, Donovan. He was desperate to close a massive deal with a high-profile client known for his “appetite” for young assistants. “If you don’t go to that dinner tonight and keep him happy,” Donovan snarled, leaning over my desk, “don’t bother coming in tomorrow. You’re finished.” In a moment of pure, desperate weakness, I felt my thumb hover over that familiar icon. I needed a way out. I typed: “How do I protect myself from workplace harassment and a predatory boss?” That night, the company Slack channel exploded. There had been a massive gas leak at Donovan’s estate. His entire family—his wife, his kids, everyone—was gone. 1 I stood outside the office building, shivering in a low-cut dress I hated, my face caked in heavy makeup. I felt like a cheap imitation of myself. I was just about to text Donovan to see where he was when a squad car pulled up to the curb. Detective Miller stepped out. He caught sight of my outfit—the crimson lips, the exposed skin—and his eyes narrowed with immediate suspicion. “Detective?” My heart hammered against my ribs. I felt a hot flush of shame creep up my neck. “This… it’s for work. My boss was supposed to take me to a client dinner—” Slap. The blow caught me off guard, ringing through my skull. Brooke, Donovan’s fiancée, had lunged out from behind the squad car. “You total slut!” she screamed, her face contorted. “Dressing like a streetwalker and you have the nerve to say you weren’t sleeping with my husband?” My ear was throbbing, the metallic taste of blood blooming in my mouth. I opened my mouth to snap back, but Brooke collapsed into a jagged, hysterical sob. “You monster! You killed him! You killed Donovan… give him back to me!” Wait… what? Miller’s voice was like cold iron. “Donovan is dead, Jade. A gas leak. The whole house went up. All four of them.” The world tilted. I stood there, frozen, a garish doll in the middle of a nightmare. “I knew she was trouble the second he hired her!” Brooke shrieked at the gathering crowd. “But I didn’t think she was a murderer!” Brooke had always hated me. She’d spent months spreading rumors that I was trying to climb the corporate ladder through Donovan’s bed. But this was different. This was life and death. “I didn’t do anything!” I whispered, my voice trembling so hard it was barely audible. “You’re lying!” “Am I?” She whipped out her phone and showed it to Miller. “I have the security footage from the office last night.” The video was grainy but clear. It was late. The office was empty except for Donovan and me. I was shown stumbling out of his private suite, my blouse torn, pointing a shaking finger back at his door and screaming. “You’re a goddamn animal, Donovan! You’ll get what’s coming to you! I hope you and your whole family rot in hell!” I hadn’t realized a crowd had formed on the sidewalk. Their stares were like needles. Miller’s expression shifted from professional wariness to something much darker. I panicked. I had screamed those things. But it wasn’t because I was planning a hit. It was because… My hesitation was all they needed. To them, it looked like a confession. “Look at her!” Brooke screamed, lunging at me again, her nails clawing at my face. “She couldn’t get what she wanted, so she slaughtered them! Murderer! You bitch, I’ll kill you myself!” Later, in the suffocating heat of the interrogation room, Miller leaned across the table. “Tell me the truth, Jade. What really happened?” My face was swollen, a dark bruise blooming on my cheek where Brooke had hit me. My lip was still crusted with blood. “Detective, please! It wasn’t me!” I was sobbing now, the kind of deep, ugly cry that comes from total helplessness. “I didn’t do anything!” “Give it a rest!” Miller slammed his palm onto the table. I flinched, my chair scraping against the floor. “This is the third tragedy following you in six months. Your parents. Your boyfriend. And now your boss and his children. Once is a tragedy. Twice is a coincidence. Three times?” He leaned in closer, his breath smelling of stale coffee. “Three times is a pattern. It’s impossible for it to be anything else.” 2 “Detective Miller, you were the one who cleared me the first two times!” I was leaning forward, my voice cracking with desperation. “My parents died of food poisoning from sprouted potatoes. My boyfriend died because the pier maintenance was negligent. Those cases were closed! I’m innocent!” “Cases can be reopened, Jade. Especially when new ‘shadows’ emerge.” Miller’s eyes were cold. “The footage shows you were the last person to see Donovan alive, and it shows a violent motive. I have every reason to believe you’re our primary suspect.” I felt like I was sinking into a frozen lake. I started babbling, the words spilling out in a mess. “No… no, it’s not like that. It was Donovan! He was disgusting. He tried to force himself on me, that’s why I screamed at him! He told me I’d be fired if I didn’t go to that dinner. I had to stay!” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, my chest tight. “I was so scared. I even went online to look up safety measures… just in case things went south at the dinner…” “Wait.” Miller cut me off, his eyes sharpening. “Where did you look?” I blinked, startled. “Just… on my phone. The AI assistant I use.” “The AI again?” Miller’s voice went up an octave. I froze. Suddenly, the absurdity of it hit me. All three times. There was a sickening, impossible thread connecting every death. The potatoes. The roller coaster. The “protection” from my boss. Every single time, I had asked that specific AI a question right before the bodies started dropping. But I hadn’t done anything. The police had checked my phone before. It was a standard, commercial AI app. No hacks, no dark web links, nothing. My parents’ death was ruled a medical complication due to their age. My boyfriend’s death was a freak mechanical failure. The park took full responsibility. Determined to prove my innocence, I unlocked my phone and handed it over. “Look at the logs. It’s right there.” Miller scrolled through the chat history, his brow furrowed. He looked frustrated, stuck in a logical loop he couldn’t break. Suddenly, the door to the interrogation room burst open. Brooke charged in, her eyes bloodshot. “I knew it! You’re a goddamn serial killer!” she screamed. “I’ve been reading the forums. People are talking about ‘AI-assisted murders.’ You’re one of those sickos! You’re a freak!” “Ms. Sterling, please!” Miller tried to restrain her. “Those are conspiracy theories. We don’t have forensic evidence yet. Please, calm down.” But Brooke was beyond reason. She was vibrating with a terrifying, manic energy. “If you can’t prove it, then I’ll do it for you! Give me that phone. I want to test her ‘Oracle.’ I want to see if it has the guts to kill me!” 3 Miller hesitated. I was shaking my head so hard my neck hurt. “Don’t do it! Please, I don’t want to touch it ever again!” I was terrified. The mere sight of the app icon made my skin crawl. “Scared, are you?” Brooke sneered, leaning over me. “If you won’t let us test it, you’re admitting you’re the killer. You’re hiding behind a screen!” She began weaponizing her grief, threatening to go to the press, to sue the department for incompetence. Miller, backed into a corner, finally gave in. But he was smart. He set the stage. He used a department-issued device to mirror my phone, brought in tech specialists to track the backend data in real-time, and pointed three cameras at the screen. My mind was a blank slate of horror. I didn’t know what to type. I was terrified that a single typo would end another life. “What’s the matter? Lose your nerve?” Brooke shoved me aside and grabbed the phone. She began typing with a vengeful ferocity. [Jade is a cold-blooded murderer. I want her to pay for my fiancé’s life right now!] She even typed her full name. “There! Come and get me through the wires, you piece of plastic!” she barked at the phone. “Let’s see what you’ve got!” The room went silent. We waited. One minute. Ten minutes. Half an hour. The AI responded with its usual, robotic script: [I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request. Please adhere to our community guidelines regarding violent speech.] Nothing else happened. Brooke let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “See? Nothing! She just acts when no one is watching. This proves the AI is a smokescreen. She is the one doing the killing!” She was about to launch into another tirade when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She glanced at the screen, and for the first time that day, a genuine, secret smile touched her lips. She silenced the call immediately. “Fine. The facts are clear. Arrest her or I’m calling the Commissioner.” She turned to leave, but Miller blocked her path. “Just to be safe, I’d prefer if you stayed at the station tonight. Until we finish the digital sweep—” “I haven’t committed a crime, Detective. I’m the victim here,” she snapped, brushing past him. “My luck is better than hers. I’m not going to die.” She marched out, the heels of her boots clicking sharply on the linoleum. Miller signaled a young officer to follow her discreetly. Then, he turned to his tech guy. “Trace that last call she got.” The technician worked for a moment, then looked up, bewildered. “The number doesn’t exist, sir. It’s a ghost line. High-level encryption.” Miller’s face went pale. He keyed his radio. “Officer Henderson, where is she?” “She just pulled into the City Hospital parking garage, sir. I’m right behind her.” “Hospital? Why?” “I don’t know… she’s been inside for about ten minutes now…” Miller’s eyes went wide. “Something’s wrong. Move! Now!” 4 Miller grabbed his jacket and bolted, dragging me along with the squad. As we neared the hospital, the radio crackled. “Sir! She’s coming out!” Henderson reported. “She’s in her Porsche. She’s heading toward her apartment complex. I’m back on her tail.” Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the entrance of Brooke’s luxury parking garage. “She’s right there, Detective,” Henderson said, pointing to a sleek white Porsche idling in its assigned spot. “I haven’t taken my eyes off it.” Miller looked closer. The car was silent. The lights were off, the windows tinted dark. It was a freezing night, the underground garage feeling like a tomb, yet the driver wasn’t getting out. Miller unholstered his weapon. The other officers followed suit, fanning out to flank the vehicle. “Brooke? This is Detective Miller. Step out of the car!” Silence. Two officers moved to the front, while Miller reached for the driver-side door handle. He yanked it open. A scream ripped from my throat—a jagged, primal sound that didn’t feel like it belonged to me. My legs gave out, and I hit the concrete, retching as my stomach turned inside out. Brooke was there. Or what was left of her. She was still buckled into the seat, but her head… her entire head and neck were simply gone. The interior of the Porsche was painted in a sickening mosaic of deep crimson, shattered bone, and grey matter. It looked like a grenade had gone off in her mouth. “Seal the area! Call the coroner!” Miller barked, though even his voice had a slight tremor. He stepped into the car, his eyes scanning every inch of the gore. I was curled on the floor, gasping for air. The sight burned behind my eyelids. My chest tightened—a familiar, terrifying pressure. My lungs felt like they were filling with sand. “Help… please…” I clawed at a young officer’s pant leg, tears streaming down my face. “Let me go… my asthma… I can’t breathe…” The officer looked panicked, reaching down to help me, but Miller stepped out of the blood-soaked car and stood over me. His shadow was long and terrifying. “No one is going anywhere,” Miller said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?” “I… I didn’t…” I wheezed. “Stop lying!” Miller leaned down, his face inches from mine. “You killed her. You sat in my interrogation room and you killed her.” “Detective, that’s impossible,” Henderson stammered. “She was with us the whole time. She was under constant surveillance!” Miller didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes locked on mine. “You still won’t admit it? Fine. Let’s run an experiment.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out my phone—the evidence. He opened the AI app. “You say you’re having an asthma attack, Jade? Let’s see what your ‘friend’ says.” He typed into the chat: [I’m at the Harbor View Apartments parking garage. I’m having a severe asthma attack. What do I do?] The AI spat out a list of standard medical advice. I closed my eyes, waiting for the end. Less than ten minutes later, a small, autonomous delivery drone hummed into the garage. It landed softly a few feet away. In its claw was a sealed medical bag. Inside? A high-grade, prescription-strength emergency inhaler. The officers backed away as if the drone were a bomb. “Trace it!” Miller roared. The tech team scrambled. Minutes later, the report came back: “It’s a dead end, sir. The order was placed through an encrypted virtual account. No name, no credit card, no IP. It’s like the order originated from nowhere.” Miller turned back to me. He pulled out his own work phone, registered a fresh account, and typed the exact same prompt, even using my name. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Nothing happened. No drone. No help. Miller looked at me, his face a mask of grim realization. “I know how you’re doing it now, Jade.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “408317”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel