Category: English

The year I turned eight, the woods surrounding our valley developed an appetite for human flesh. That afternoon, I was the only one in the yard when the two voices drifted over the fence. “The Hollow is going to eat its way through this town tonight.” “Yeah. It’s a damn shame. These folks have no idea the hell that’s coming for them.” 1 Our community was one of several off-the-grid settlements nestled deep in the Appalachian mountains. That year, the neighboring settlement over the ridge had gone dead quiet. Nobody had come down to the county hardware store or the farmers’ market for weeks. My dad, Thomas, couldn’t shake the bad feeling in his gut. He gathered a few of our strongest guys and hiked up the logging trails to check on them. What they found was a ghost town. All three hundred and seventeen residents, gone. Devoured. The scene was something out of a slaughterhouse nightmare. I don’t know what specific horror my dad saw out there, but when he came back, his face was carved from stone. He was our town’s unofficial mayor, the man everyone looked to, and he immediately ordered every able-bodied person to the perimeter to start building a reinforced timber wall. I was left alone in the yard to entertain myself. It was a gorgeous string of days. The wind was pushing cotton-ball clouds across the sky, leaving feathery trails in the blue. Bored out of my mind, I was squatting by the foundation of the house, poking a stick into an anthill. Faintly, almost obscured by the rustle of the trees, two bizarre voices drifted to my ears. “The Hollow is going to eat its way through this town tonight.” “What’s the point of building walls? No fence is gonna keep that thing out. Man, disaster is right on their doorstep.” The moment the words hung in the air, the entire yard seemed to fall into a vacuum of silence. A spider crawled noiselessly across the brickwork. The wind pushed a cloud directly over the sun, casting the deep forest into a sudden, menacing shadow. The distant peaks seemed to solidify into a bruised, impenetrable black. An involuntary shiver violently racked my small body. The Hollow?! I dropped my stick instantly, pressing my back against the wall, straining my ears to eavesdrop. A second voice, slightly higher and more nasal than the first, chimed in. “I don’t know, I’d say they have a fighting chance of not getting eaten.” “Oh? And how do you figure that?” “Word is, The Hollow is practically human, and it’s got its habits. Whenever it hits a new town, it always sniffs around to see if the meat is fresh. If they hang a slab of raw meat at the foot of their beds, and pretend to be dead asleep—absolutely dead silent—The Hollow will think the room is full of rotting meat. It’ll pass right by.” The sun broke free from the clouds, the wind rustled the tops of the pines, and the voices vanished completely. But I understood. I understood perfectly. The people in the neighboring settlement hadn’t just disappeared. They had been eaten by The Hollow! Every ounce of childhood playfulness evaporated from my bones. I sprinted toward the perimeter where the men were hauling timber, screaming for my dad. But when I stood there, breathless, and repeated everything I’d heard, the men just wiped the sweat from their brows and laughed. “Look at the little storyteller we got here,” one of them chuckled. “That’s a good one, kid. ‘The Hollow’.” “I’ll give her credit, she tells it like it’s the gospel truth.” 2 The sting of their condescending amusement hit me hard. My face flushed a violent, desperate red. “I’m not making it up! I heard them! Clear as day!” I whipped my head toward my dad, terrified he would brush me off too. “Dad, I swear I heard it. The people over the ridge—they were eaten. That’s why there were no bodies left.” “Maeve, who did you hear this from?” My dad’s gaze cut through the laughter like a hunting knife. His eyes locked onto mine, so intense that I instantly wilted. The conversation I’d overheard had been so mesmerizing, so terrifying, that I hadn’t even thought to peek over the fence to see who was speaking. I swallowed hard, my confidence crumbling. “I… I didn’t see them. But I swear on my life I heard them, Dad. You have to believe me.” “I believe you.” I blinked, stunned. Before I could even process his words, Bobby, a hotheaded mechanic from down the road, scoffed loud enough for everyone to hear. “Thomas, you’ve gotta be kidding me, right?” My dad turned to face him. He was silhouetted against the glaring sun, but I could see his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white. The veins in his neck pulled taut against his skin. “I believe Maeve,” my dad said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “Not just because she’s my daughter. But because The Hollow is real.” The lingering chuckles died instantly. “Years ago, when I was working construction down in the valley for old man Vance, he told me stories about things in these mountains. Things with a hunger. I thought it was just campfire bullshit.” The silence in the clearing was so absolute you could hear the pine needles dropping. “Until I went up that ridge yesterday. Until I saw the bone fragments left behind. There were bite marks. Human teeth marks. But the jaw span… Jesus, folks, it wasn’t an animal that did that.” He looked around the circle of pale faces. “Three hundred people, gone in a single night. Not one survivor. If it’s not The Hollow, what the hell else could it be?” “That’s why I ordered this wall built the second I got back. I just wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to incite a panic until I knew what we were dealing with.” For the younger guys who had barely ever left the county, this was too massive, too horrifying to swallow. But the older folks—the ones who had lived in these mountains their whole lives, who knew the deep, dark folklore—finally spoke up. “Thomas is right,” an old timer wheezed, leaning heavily on his shovel. “It’s true. The Hollow… God help us, I remember now. The old stories say it lives deep in the bedrock, only wakes up when it’s starved.” Another elder nodded grimly. “My granddad’s whole bloodline was wiped out by it. Skinned them, drank the marrow. They say from a distance, it looks like an old hunched man, but it’s five times the size of any normal person. Don’t let the shape fool you. It’s an abomination that comes down the mountain to eat people alive.” Once the town elders validated it, the reality set in. Tools dropped to the dirt. The men building the wall backed away from the timber, their nerve entirely broken. Bobby’s hands were shaking so hard he dropped his hammer. His voice cracked. “So… what the hell do we do?” “We do exactly what Maeve said,” my dad ordered, his authority absolute. “Tonight, every family hangs a slab of raw meat at the foot of their bed. And no matter what you hear, no matter what you see, nobody makes a goddamn sound.” My dad was a man of his word. He slaughtered the only cow we owned and butchered it, distributing the raw cuts to every family in town. Long before the sun dipped below the tree line, people were scrambling back to their cabins, locking themselves inside, paralyzed by fear. My dad took my hand and walked me home. After deadbolting the heavy front door and pulling down the steel shutters, my mom pulled me into her lap. Her heart was hammering against my back like a trapped bird. “Is this really going to work, Thomas?” she whispered into the dark. “We have to try,” he said softly. “Whatever or whoever gave Maeve that advice at a time like this… it’s either an angel or a devil.” “But how do you know it wasn’t The Hollow itself trying to trick us?” My mom’s question hit like a physical blow. The realization washed over me late, but when it did, every hair on my arms stood on end. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water down my spine. Absolute, suffocating dread. Thank God, my dad replied steadily, “Because The Hollow doesn’t walk in the daylight. And before today, nobody except me and a few of the old-timers even remembered what it was.” I let out a shaky breath, but then my mind spun again. I’d almost rather it be some sick prank by the neighbor kids. At least then, there wouldn’t be a monster. I closed my eyes and prayed silently to a God I hoped was listening that the meat trick would work. In the corner of the bedroom, the raw beef dripped blood onto a towel. Drip. Drip. Drip. Time bled away. Night fell. 3 The town felt like it had been suffocated under a heavy, black quilt. Not a single porch light. Not a single candle. The silence was deafening. I knew, with absolute certainty, that behind every locked door, people were lying rigid in their beds, faking sleep. The three of us lay in the dark, our eyes glued to the foot of the bed. Everything we had, our very lives, rested on that dripping piece of meat. The moon crested the pines. The wind picked up. My eyes were burning from staring without blinking. I closed them for just a fraction of a second. When I opened them, a shadow had materialized outside our bedroom window. It was jarring. Violent in its suddenness. The Hollow really did look like an old man. But twisted. It was hunched over at a grotesque angle, yet its back scraped the roofline of our two-story house. Its jaw hung slack, drooping unnaturally all the way to its sunken chest. I could hear it taking wet, labored snorts as it dragged its massive feet toward our front door. CRACK. The front door splintered open. I caught a flash of two eyes glowing like hot coals in a furnace, and I yanked the quilt over my head, squeezing my eyes shut. A smell hit me—a gag-inducing wave of rotting meat, copper blood, and stagnant swamp water. I bit down on my own lip so hard I tasted iron, just to keep the whimper trapped in my throat. “Tsk. Why does it smell like dead rot in here?” a voice hissed. It sounded like grinding stones. “Spoiled. It’s all spoiled meat.” The heavy, dragging footsteps slowly retreated. Just as I thought the nightmare was over and went to take a breath, my mom’s hand clamped down brutally over my mouth. I peeked out from the blanket. In the pale moonlight spilling through the ruined doorway, the top half of The Hollow’s face was hanging upside down from the top of the doorframe. It was peering into the room. Those glowing red eyes swept over our bed, manic and starving, terrified of missing a single morsel. My heart pounded so violently I thought my ribs would crack. Finally, The Hollow muttered in disappointment, “Nothing but dead rot.” The massive shadow stood upright. The floorboards groaned, the earth outside thudded heavily a few times, and then, it was gone. It wasn’t until the morning sun broke over the ridge that anyone dared to move. People gathered in the street, their faces pale but alight with the euphoric, hysterical relief of having survived. “Holy mother of God, it’s real. The Hollow is real.” “Thomas, we’re safe now, right?! Do we still need to finish the wall?” “Damn right we finish the wall,” my dad said firmly. “We prepare for the worst.” Slowly, the crowd dispersed, exhaustion taking over. I felt the adrenaline crash, leaving me hollowed out. I dragged myself toward the porch, desperate to sleep. But right as my eyes started to droop, those two voices drifted back into the yard. “Why the hell are they celebrating? Do they think The Hollow packed up and left?” “The Hollow gets smarter every day it’s in a new hunting ground. Raw meat ain’t gonna fool it twice. What are they gonna do tonight? I heard it muttering to itself—it said if it doesn’t get a meal, it’s not leaving. But once it gets a taste, it’s gonna eat the whole damn town!” 4 “Tsk, let me think… I remember The Hollow has a sweet tooth. Actually, wait. It hates…” The voice paused, and I couldn’t help myself. I stretched my neck, leaning as close to the side yard as I dared, straining to hear. “It hates sugar! All they gotta do is keep a piece of hard candy tucked under their tongues. But they can’t swallow it, and they sure as hell can’t spit it out. If they just let it sit there, The Hollow will be repulsed and leave on its own.” “Are you for real? Don’t be messing around now. This ain’t a game.” “Why would I lie? Shh, shut up, I think someone’s listening!” For a long time, the yard was dead silent. My dad’s question from yesterday echoed in my mind. Who exactly was I listening to? Curiosity overpowered my lingering exhaustion. I crept toward the low wooden fence that separated our yard from the animal pens, determined to peek over and see who was talking. Suddenly, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. I jumped out of my skin, whipping around. My dad was standing right behind me. He shook his head sharply and pressed a finger to his lips. He had heard them too. Together, moving with agonizing slowness, we backed away until we were on the other side of the yard. Only then did he drop to a crouch and whisper, “Don’t spook them. Maeve, the voices you heard yesterday… did they sound like that?” I nodded frantically, my pulse racing. “Dad, they said The Hollow didn’t leave! They said we have to sleep with candy in our mouths tonight!” My dad frowned deeply, his eyes locked on the low, squat structure hugging the fence line—our duck coop. Inside, our eight white ducks were waddling around, casually preening their feathers, occasionally letting out a soft quack. “That’s damn strange,” my dad murmured to himself. “There wasn’t a single human being over there.” “I know,” I whispered back. “I never saw anyone either. Just the voices.” My dad fell silent, staring at the coop. My mom’s terrifying theory from the night before crept back into my mind. I tugged his flannel sleeve. “Dad… do we still trust them?” He reached down and ruffled my hair, his face lined with an impossible weight. “Better safe than sorry, kiddo. Go inside. Get that big jar of butterscotch from the pantry and start handing them out.” Sometimes, a little sweetness is the only thing that can push back the dark. 5 But when my dad called an emergency town meeting to announce the new plan, the crowd pushed back. Hard. “What? Hard candy? Since when does a piece of butterscotch stop a monster? That’s crazy talk.” “Thomas, what if that thing gets right up in my face? If I panic and swallow it by accident, I’m dead meat!” “This is starting to sound like a whole lot of voodoo bullshit,” Bobby chimed in, crossing his arms. My dad swept his gaze over the sea of panicked, exhausted faces. When he spoke, his voice boomed over the clearing. “Three hundred people over the ridge were chewed down to the marrow in one night. And you think candy is the unbelievable part?” The crowd immediately shut their mouths. “If you want to live to see tomorrow, you do as you’re told. Anyone who doesn’t want to end up in its teeth, line up and get your candy from Maeve.” As they reluctantly shuffled forward, my dad added, “And the wall construction continues. The more barriers we have, the better we sleep.” Ultimately, the terror of The Hollow easily overrode their skepticism. Night descended, wrapping the valley in a chokehold. I lay in bed, pressed tightly against my mom’s side, a piece of butterscotch wedged firmly beneath my tongue. But my mind was racing. My heart wouldn’t settle. Something was wrong. Why did I feel like something was terribly wrong? Those two voices… it felt like they had spoken up knowing I was listening. My dad said The Hollow didn’t walk in the daylight. But what if… What if those voices belonged to Lures? The old stories said monsters sometimes sent Mimics ahead of them—twisted spirits that sounded like neighbors, feeding bad advice to humans to lead them right into the monster’s jaws. Before I could spiral any deeper into the panic, The Hollow arrived. And this time, it came early. It sounded frantic. I could hear its massive, dragging footsteps pacing back and forth on the gravel road outside. I could hear the sickening pop and crack of its joints as its elongated neck whipped back and forth. “Makes no sense,” it hissed, its voice like rusted metal scraping together. “The cabins aren’t broken. There’s life here. Hot blood. So why the hell do I only smell cow blood and sugar? Where are they?!” It was lingering longer at every single door. More than once, I felt the oppressive weight of those glowing red eyes peering through the cracks in our boarded-up windows, staring unblinkingly into the dark room. I clenched my jaw, using every ounce of willpower to keep my tongue clamped down over the candy, terrified my own saliva would cause it to slip down my throat. The Hollow stopped outside our cabin. It stayed there for an agonizingly long time. I heard the wet, sickening sound of its cheek pressing flush against the glass of our window. “The meat in here is tainted. How am I supposed to eat this? Son of a bitch, I’m starving! This whole town is repulsive.” It dragged its claws down the siding of the house. “Fine. Fine. Let them rot. I get sharper the hungrier I get. A few more days of scaring them like this, their meat will seize up. Fear makes the muscles tight. Makes it taste better. I’ll rip them all out of the floorboards eventually. Let’s see where they hide then!” It stood outside our window for what felt like an hour, breathing heavily, before finally stomping away in a furious, defeated rage. The silence rushed back in. When dawn finally broke, the townspeople gathered in our yard, their faces drawn but filled with the desperate, giddy luck of the surviving. 6 But after two nights of cheating death, the adrenaline was wearing off, replaced by a creeping, toxic paranoia. The whispers started. And honestly, they mirrored my own dark thoughts. “It ain’t right,” Bobby muttered to a group of men resting by the wall. “The more I think about it, the more it stinks.” “What do you mean?” someone asked. “I mean, how convenient is it? Raw meat and candy, and we magically survive? Little Maeve says she’s hearing two voices giving out the master plan. Ain’t it a bit too perfectly timed? How do these voices know exactly what the beast is thinking?” A woman gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “Lord Almighty… do you think they’re Lures?” “Exactly!” Bobby pointed a dirty finger in the air. “The settlement over the ridge got wiped out, right? What if two of ’em got turned into Mimics? They’re out here playing us. Didn’t you hear the monster last night? It said it wanted to scare us to make the meat taste better!” My dad stood a few feet away, his jaw clenched, staring at the ground. I knew the weight he was carrying. As the leader of this town, a single wrong call meant everyone’s blood was on his hands. “Thomas, honey,” my mom whispered, stepping up beside him. “The folks have a point. We can’t ignore the possibility. What if we’re taking orders from the monster’s own bait?” “I know,” my dad sighed, running a trembling hand over his face. “But until we have another option, following those voices is the only thing keeping us breathing.” The perimeter wall wasn’t even half finished. We were boxed in by deep woods and jagged mountains. There was nowhere to run. “We take it one night at a time,” my dad said grimly. “And God willing… I need to find out exactly who the hell is doing the talking.” He shot me a loaded glance. That afternoon, the bizarre, ghostly voices returned. I was waiting for it. I tracked the sound instantly. It was coming from directly behind the hay bales piled up in the corner of the duck coop!

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On the day of my vasectomy, Valerie vanished. The nurse stood by my bed, tapping a manicured fingernail against her clipboard. She needed my wife’s signature. Clinic policy—they wouldn’t push the twilight anesthesia without the emergency contact present to sign the final release. I called Valerie once. It rang out. I called a second time. Sent straight to voicemail. On the third try, she finally picked up. The background was a chaotic blur of sirens and street noise. She told me her grad student, Neil, had been in a traffic accident. I looked at the clock on the wall, the second hand ticking away my remaining dignity. My voice trembled. “You took the whole day off to be here. Why are you the one handling this? Come back. They won’t make the incision until you sign. The prep is done, Val. We’re just waiting on you…” “He’s fragile, Harvey,” she cut in, her tone sharp, clipped. “He’s not like you. I can’t just leave my student’s safety in the hands of strangers.” A bitter, acidic lump rose in my throat. I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice. “Is he actually hurt, or is he just playing you again so I have to lie here on an operating table waiting for you to care?” Her breath hitched. I could feel her finger hovering over the ‘end call’ button. I practically roared into the receiver. “Valerie, if you hang up this phone, we are incredibly, permanently done.” She sighed, a long, patronizing sound. “Just calm down. Don’t be melodramatic about a minor outpatient procedure.” The line went dead. The dial tone hummed in my ear. Ten minutes later, the doctor made an exception, and I was wheeled into the surgical suite alone. When I woke up, groggy and aching, the first thing I saw was my phone screen lighting up with an Instagram notification. A post from Neil. So grateful to Professor Val for rushing over to save the day! Totally my fault, got too spacey and scraped my bike against a curb… The attached photo was taken in Valerie’s private office at the university. He was holding up his arm, sporting a cartoon band-aid. The exact same brand of band-aids I bought for our infant son. … 1 I set the phone face down on the scratchy hospital blanket. Outside my curtain, I could hear two nurses whispering. “That couple out in the waiting room is exhausting,” one muttered. “Last month the kid twisted his ankle and insisted on coming to the ER. Today he bumps his bike and they’re back. The woman treats him like he’s made of spun glass. I heard she’s his professor. Talk about crossing boundaries.” The other nurse sighed, her voice drifting closer to my bed. “Yeah, well, compare that to this guy. Went through surgery and his wife hasn’t shown her face once. Night and day.” I couldn’t see Valerie from where I lay, but through the thin drywall, I could hear her. I could hear the devastating softness in her voice. Neil had a scratch on his arm. A literal scratch. And she kept asking him if he needed ibuprofen, her tone dripping with an agonizing, unfiltered tenderness. She didn’t spare a single thought for her husband, who had just undergone surgery to ensure she wouldn’t have to go through another difficult pregnancy. She didn’t think about me, stitched up and swollen, or our newborn son waiting at home. My mother sat in the plastic chair beside my bed. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but she forced a tight, reassuring smile for my sake. My father, however, was trembling with rage. He stood up, ready to storm out into the waiting room and drag my wife in by her collar. I reached out, my fingers weak, and caught the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Dad. Don’t.” He froze. When he looked back at me, his eyes were wet, his voice thick with unshed tears. “Her parents died when she was young, Harvey. Your mother and I treated her like our own flesh and blood. And this is how she repays us? She abandons you and her baby for some college kid?” I managed a weak, fractured smile, my grip on his sleeve loosening. “It’s fine, Dad. Really. Let it go.” Because I had been through this too many times. Like last Christmas, when we were supposed to drive to my parents’ house. We had just pulled into their driveway when Valerie got a call and immediately threw the car into reverse. She told me it was an emergency. I believed her. I told her to go, to be careful. Two hours later, I walked to the pharmacy down the street and saw her kneeling in the parking lot, tying Neil’s shoelaces. When I confronted her, she swore he had tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs and was badly hurt. I found out later he had tripped on a single step. The explanations. The screaming matches. The broken plates. It always ended the same way. She believed him, implicitly, entirely. Once you get used to the cold, you stop complaining about the draft. My phone buzzed. A text from Valerie. Neil is still feeling a bit shaken up. I’ll swing by later to check on you and the baby. Don’t wait up. No explanation. No apology. I stared at her contact photo. It was a candid from our wedding day. In the picture, her smile was soft, radiant, her eyes locked entirely on me. We had been college sweethearts. Eight years together before we finally tied the knot. She stayed in academia, clawing her way up to a tenured professorship. I stepped back, launching a freelance consulting firm from home so I could manage the house. We were the golden couple of our alumni circle. I genuinely thought we would grow old together, sitting on a porch somewhere, quietly in love. Until year seven. Until Neil. Suddenly, his name was the only thing in her mouth. He sought her out during office hours. He “accidentally” bumped into her at off-campus coffee shops. He kept his hand raised until the lecture hall emptied out. At first, I thought he was just an eager, overachieving kid. I even added him on social media. I invited him to the house for the end-of-semester dinners, trying to play the supportive faculty husband. Looking back, I realize that was when he decided he was going to take her from me. And me? When you accumulate enough disappointment, the heavy weight of it eventually crushes your desire to hold on. I didn’t want her anymore. Valerie. I was just… done. My thumb moved automatically, scrolling down my contacts to a number I hadn’t dialed in years. It rang once. A woman’s voice answered, smooth and steady. “Harvey?” I gripped the phone, the plastic digging into my palm. I let the silence stretch for three seconds. “Years ago, you told me that if my marriage ever fell apart, you’d be waiting. Does that still stand?” “It always stands.” “Okay,” I breathed out. “I’ll see you in three days.” 2 The familiar, urgent click of Valerie’s heels echoed down the corridor. I hung up the phone and slipped it under my pillow. I looked up just as she pushed the curtain aside. She was looking down at her screen, a soft, intimate smile playing on her lips. I knew that smile. I had mapped the corners of it for a decade. It used to be mine. Now, it belonged to Neil. A sharp, phantom pain flared in my chest, bitter and suffocating. Right on cue, my phone rang again. It was an unrecognized campus number. “Mr. Harvey? Congratulations. The literary analysis paper you submitted has won the Alumni Fellowship’s grand prize. The ceremony is in three days. We’d be honored if you attended.” I blinked, momentarily stunned. “Thank you. Yes, I’ll be there.” Valerie walked further into the room, and I quickly ended the call. She glanced first at the plastic bassinet where our son was sleeping, then at me. Her brow furrowed in that familiar, maternal way. “Why are you still awake? You just had surgery. You need to rest, Harvey. You’re going to make yourself sick.” The concern in her eyes looked incredibly real. But after witnessing the display with Neil earlier, her concern just made my stomach turn. I didn’t say a word. She stepped closer, reaching into her designer bag. She pulled out a braided leather bracelet, adorned with a small silver charm, and tied it around my wrist. It was an intention bracelet. The kind you get at high-end spiritual retreats. I looked at her, genuinely shocked. Valerie was not a gift-giver. She forgot anniversaries. She barely remembered birthdays. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there when you went under,” she murmured, her voice dropping into a register of practiced sweetness. “Thank you, honey. For doing this for us.” A second later, her phone—which she had carelessly tossed onto my tray table—lit up. A text notification. Neil’s face. Did you make it to the hospital, Professor? Is the old man’s ego bruised? I told you to go back to him earlier, but you’re always hovering over me like a worried little mom. Btw, please don’t tell him you drove all the way to Sedona to get that protection charm for me. He’d probably throw a fit. The words burned themselves into my retinas, one by one. I slowly lifted my chin and locked eyes with Valerie. The blood drained from her face. She lunged for the phone, panic wiring her movements. I was faster. I snatched it, swiped up, and opened the thread. The chat history was meticulously deleted. Nothing but those three incoming texts. But I saw the contact name. Neil 🤍 3 For all her academic brilliance, Valerie was remarkably careless in her personal life. She had over a hundred contacts in her phone, and she never bothered with emojis or special nicknames. Except for me. And now, Neil. I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the pillow, pretending the exhaustion had simply overtaken me. I heard Valerie let out a shaky, silent exhale of relief. But the moment she turned her back to speak to the nurse, I ripped the braided leather bracelet off my wrist and dropped it straight into the biohazard bin. Three days later, I checked myself out of the hospital and took an Uber to the university campus, entirely behind Valerie’s back. The awards ceremony was held in the grand alumni hall. I was wearing an old, slightly frayed tweed suit—the only pair of trousers loose enough to accommodate my surgical swelling. Standing amidst the polished academics, I felt like a ghost haunting my own past. “Harvey! Man, it really is you!” An old classmate clapped me on the shoulder. “Heard you took the fellowship prize! Incredible.” “You were always the prodigy of the Lit department,” another chimed in. “We all thought you’d get the tenure track, but you stepped aside for Val.” “Look at you guys now. She’s the big-shot professor, you run a company from the living room. Modern gender roles at their finest, huh?” I forced a polite smile, though my facial muscles felt like concrete. Suddenly, a ripple of whispers swept through the crowd near the entrance. I followed their gaze. Valerie entered through the heavy oak doors. Trailing right behind her was Neil. She leaned in and whispered something to him. He ducked his head, laughing softly, a blush creeping up his neck. The perfect picture of a bashful, adoring boy. A few of his frat buddies were standing nearby. One of them shoved Neil playfully. He stumbled, crashing directly into Valerie’s chest. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t step back. Instead, her arm naturally wrapped around his waist to steady him. She looked down, smiled, and gently patted his back. The physical intimacy was so fluid, so deeply ingrained, it looked like a choreographed dance they had practiced a thousand times. The alumni around me went dead silent. A few shot me glances heavy with excruciating pity. I lowered my eyes, adjusting my cuffs. “Excuse me. I need to use the restroom.” The water from the brass faucet was freezing. I splashed it on my face, gripping the edges of the porcelain sink. When I looked up, there was someone else in the mirror. Neil leaned against the tiled wall behind me, a smug, venomous little smirk on his face. “Well, if it isn’t the supportive husband. Don’t take what those guys did out there too seriously. We’re just young. We like to mess around.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping. “Though I gotta admit, showing up to campus days after getting snipped? Screams insecurity, Harvey. Had to come keep an eye on your wife?” I grabbed a paper towel, dried my hands methodically, and turned to face him. “Neil, I’m here to accept an award.” I tossed the towel into the trash. “But let me give you some free advice. Focus on your thesis. Stop playing house with married women. Take it from someone who knows—when a woman decides to walk, you won’t be able to run fast enough to catch her.” His face twisted in ugly, bratty fury. He scoffed, spun on his heel, and stormed out. I took a deep breath, smoothed my tie, and walked out to the auditorium. I was just approaching the steps to the stage when a hand clamped down on my wrist like a vice. Valerie stood there, her eyes blazing, her chest heaving beneath her silk blouse. “Harvey, how could you stoop this low?” I stared at her, genuinely bewildered. She dropped my arm in disgust, grabbed Neil by the hand, and marched up the stairs to the podium. She snatched the microphone from the dean’s hands. “Excuse me. Everyone, please listen,” her voice rang out, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “My husband, Harvey, is a stay-at-home father. He does not belong on this stage. The paper that won this fellowship is plagiarized.” The hall erupted into a shocked, deafening murmur. “He accessed my private laptop at home,” Valerie continued, her voice trembling with righteous indignation. “He stole the core thesis from one of my graduate students. This award belongs to Neil.” Neil stood beside her, covering his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking as if he were weeping. But through the gaps in his fingers, his eyes found mine. They were gleaming with triumph. The whispers turned into daggers, flying from every corner of the room. Plagiarism? Are you kidding me? The sheer audacity to show up here. He should just stay home and wash bottles. What a joke. I heard his wife spends all her time with that student anyway. Karma’s a bitch. Get him out of here! Fraud! Every word was a physical blow, slicing through the air. I walked up the wooden steps. Slowly. I stopped inches from Valerie. I forced myself to keep my eyes wide so the tears wouldn’t fall. “Valerie. In your eyes, I’m just a pathetic, washed-up househusband, aren’t I?” My voice cracked. “So you’ll believe whatever garbage he feeds you? You’ll stand up here and destroy me?” Her brow furrowed in deep, unmasked revulsion. “Did the surgery sever your moral compass too, Harvey? You stole from my student, and you have the nerve to play the victim?” She shook her head. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.” Neil immediately played his part. He stepped forward, timidly tugging at the sleeve of her blazer. “Professor, please. I’m sure he didn’t mean to. Maybe he’s just acting out because he’s mad at me…” He didn’t get to finish the sentence. I closed the distance between us. I raised my hand and slapped him across the face. Hard. The sharp crack echoed through the microphone. Neil shrieked, stumbling backward, clutching his cheek. Valerie moved purely on instinct. She lunged forward to protect him, shoving both of her hands violently against my chest. I was already off-balance. The force sent me tumbling backward toward the edge of the stage. As I fell, survival instinct kicked in. I reached out and grabbed the closest thing I could find—the belt loops of Valerie’s slacks. The momentum dragged her down with me. We hit the polished hardwood. But as she fell over me, her knee came down with the full force of her body weight, crashing directly into my groin. A blinding, agonizing explosion of pain ripped through my nervous system. I curled into a fetal position on the stage, the world going white. It felt like I had been torn apart from the inside out. I could feel something warm and wet seeping through the fabric of my trousers, sliding down my thigh. Through the haze of agony, I saw Valerie look at me in sheer terror. She reached out, her hands hovering, wanting to help. But Neil grabbed her sleeve. He was sobbing now, real tears streaming down his face. In the final second before the darkness swallowed me, I watched my wife hesitate. Then, she turned her back to me, wrapped her arm around Neil, and walked him toward the campus clinic. I woke up back in a hospital room. My mother was sitting by the bed, rocking my infant son. Her eyes were swollen shut from crying. When she saw me blink, a fresh wave of tears spilled over. “Harvey. Oh, thank God. You’re awake.” Her voice shook violently. “That monster. That absolute monster. How could she push you? Your father was out of town, but he’s driving back right now.” 4 The baby in her arms started wailing. It was a thin, desperate sound. He was so small he couldn’t even open his eyes properly, and he was crying himself hoarse. I shifted, instinctively wanting to hold him. A tearing, white-hot agony flared below my waist. “Mom. Give him to me. Let me hold him.” She slammed a hand down on my shoulder, physically holding me back. Her whole body was vibrating. “You can’t! You had a secondary rupture, Harvey. You were in surgery for three hours. The doctors…” She choked on a sob. “They said the damage is permanent.” Her tears splashed hot against the back of my hand. “You’re hooked up to a dozen IVs right now. Your infection markers are off the charts. Harvey, if I lose you, I won’t survive it.” Trace was still crying. And I didn’t even have the physical strength to lift my arms to take him. The heavy wooden door pushed open. Valerie walked in. Neil was right behind her like a shadow. She stopped at the foot of the bed. When she saw the tubes, the monitors, the sheer paleness of my skin, the color drained from her face. A flicker of genuine horror crossed her eyes. But Neil gently bumped his shoulder against hers. She blinked, her spine straightening, and her face hardened into ice. “Harvey. You know how seriously I take academic integrity. I despise plagiarism more than anything. Apologize to Neil right now, and we can put this whole ugly mess behind us.” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. My mother stood up. She stepped between Valerie and my bed, holding my crying son against her chest. “You have the audacity to show your face in here?” my mother hissed, her voice vibrating with pure hatred. “My son went under the knife for you. He was bleeding out on a stage, and you pushed him because of him?” “Look, I shouldn’t have shoved him, I know,” Valerie snapped, defensive. “But that’s separate. He stole a manuscript. He committed fraud.” “Fraud?!” My mother pointed a trembling finger at Neil. “You brought your little homewrecker in here to humiliate my son? He is permanently disfigured because of you, and you come in here to demand an apology? What kind of sociopath are you?!” She took a step forward. “We trusted you with our boy!” Neil shrank back against the doorframe, his eyes wide and watery, playing the terrified victim flawlessly. Valerie’s jaw clenched. “Don’t you dare speak to him like that.” My mother, blinded by grief and rage, shoved her shoulder. “Get out! Both of you, get the hell out of this room!” Valerie threw her hands up and forcefully shoved my mother back. My mother caught her heel on the linoleum. She pitched backward. Her arms flew open to break her fall. Trace slipped from her grasp. I watched, paralyzed, as that tiny, fragile bundle wrapped in a hospital blanket sailed through the air. He hit the hard tile floor. There was no sound. No cry. Nothing. My jaw unhinged, but there was no air in my lungs. “MOM! THE BABY!” The scream finally ripped from my throat, tearing my vocal cords, shattering the sterile quiet of the ward. Nurses and doctors flooded the room in a tidal wave of blue scrubs. Valerie stood frozen, her hands suspended in the air, her face ashen. In the chaos, Neil grabbed her elbow and dragged her out into the hallway. They tried to resuscitate him for a long time. But he was gone. … My parents pushed my wheelchair over the uneven grass. I held the small, heavy wooden box in my lap. My eyes were bloodshot, burning, but I couldn’t cry. The well was completely dry. When we reached the plot, I forced myself out of the chair. Still in my hospital gown, shivering in the wind, I dragged my feet toward the tiny granite headstone. It bore his name. Trace. Trace. I picked the name. Because that was all he’d ever be. A trace of a life. He didn’t even get to open his eyes to see the sun. He died because his father was a fool who fell in love with a monster. I sank to the damp earth, pressing my cheek against the cold wood of the urn, whispering a final, silent apology to my son. Footsteps crunched violently against the gravel behind me. Valerie sprinted toward me. She grabbed the shoulders of my gown and hauled me upward with terrifying strength. “Where is he?! Where did you hide my baby?!” She shook me, her eyes wild, bloodshot, scanning the cemetery like a lunatic. “Is this some kind of sick joke, Harvey?! Are you trying to torture me into coming home?! Neil called his friends at the hospital! They said the baby was perfectly fine!” I said nothing. I just stared past her, at the small headstone. She kept screaming. Cursing. Threatening me with lawyers. My mother, overcome by the sheer cruelty of it, collapsed onto the grass in a dead faint. My father scrambled to find her heart medication in her purse. But I didn’t hear a word Valerie was saying. All I could hear was the echo of my son’s desperate, hungry cries from the hospital room. He was so small. He had been so hungry. He had been in pain, and he was terrified. And his mother hadn’t even looked at him. She was too busy protecting another man. I finally brought my eyes to hers. My voice was a hollow rasp. “He’s dead.” She froze. “Because of you. He is dead.” Neil stepped up behind her, gently looping his arm through hers. He let out a theatrical sigh. “Professor, I think he’s having a psychotic break. Wishing death on his own child just to punish you? He probably bought an empty box online just to put on this whole show. God knows what’s actually in there. It’s truly sick.” Valerie stared at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “Harvey,” she ground out through her teeth. “I am going to ask you one last time. Where is my son?” I looked through her. I turned, crouched down, and reached for the box. She lunged past me and snatched it from my hands. “Let’s see what kind of prop you put in this fake urn to guilt-trip me!” She ripped the lid off. A sharp gust of wind swept across the hill. I knelt in the dirt, entirely paralyzed, as I watched the pale gray ash lift from the box. It swirled into the air, scattering over the grass, over the marble, over the dead leaves. Valerie stopped breathing. She looked down at her hands, coated in a fine, pale dust. Her lips parted. Her face turned the color of bone. “Is… is this…”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “404084”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Just as I tipped off my childhood best friend, telling him to bring Manhattan’s reigning IT girl to catch me red-handed after I had supposedly slipped a roofie into her billionaire fiancé’s drink, a few lines of glowing text materialized in the air right before my eyes. [The villainous side-chick and her bestie are actual morons. Do they really think the heir to the Winslow empire got drugged? The glass was swapped ages ago!] [Seriously. The main couple gets into one little fight, and these two try to swoop in. Trash really does attract trash.] [Whatever, they’re just pawns in the main couple’s twisted foreplay. As soon as the female lead kicks the door down and realizes the male lead is perfectly fine—and was just testing this little pick-me girl—they’ll finally get their happily ever after.] [Yep! And the side-chick and her buddy are going to get tossed off a yacht into international waters!] A violent shudder ripped through me. I violently dodged Cole Winslow’s searingly hot mouth. “Mr. Winslow! Let’s get you to a hospital!” Cole’s eyes narrowed into dark, dangerous slits. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, thick with a dangerous kind of frustration. “What?” Honestly. … 1 I knew my current setup—one shoulder of my blouse strategically slipping down, my eyes pooled with practiced, misty tears—made my sudden shift to playing the responsible citizen entirely unconvincing. But my voice trembled anyway. “You’re not acting right. I think someone spiked your drink. I’m taking you to the ER right now.” I tried to scramble off the sofa, but Cole’s hand snapped out, his fingers wrapping around my wrist like a vice. With one effortless tug, I was yanked right back, trapped flush against his chest. His breathing was undeniably heavy, but the curve of his lips was pure, mocking amusement. “And how would you know I was drugged? Maybe I’m just running a fever.” Because I’m the one who drugged you, you lunatic. Also, his body was entirely too hard against mine. It was incredibly distracting. Desperate, I tried to squirm into a safer position. Cole’s arm banded around my waist, his voice dropping an octave into a lethal warning. “Don’t move if you want to live.” I froze. Completely and utterly still. Which gave me ample time to read the floating, holographic text scrolling in my peripheral vision. [The combined IQ of the side-chick and her boy toy is hovering somewhere around room temperature.] [Agreed. Who buys a knock-off aphrodisiac from the dark web that looks like a damn Alka-Seltzer tablet?] [I was howling when she handed him the glass and it was literally fizzing and bubbling.] [When you’re too stunned to speak, you just have to laugh.] My stomach plummeted as the memory hit me. When I had handed Cole the glass, I hadn’t dared to look him in the eye. The water had been aggressively carbonated, bubbles violently shooting to the surface. Cole had raised an elegant brow. “I asked for still water.” I had been sweating bullets, lying through my teeth. “It’s… purified sparkling.” He had just let out a low chuckle, taking the glass from me, the pad of his index finger deliberately tracing the sensitive center of my palm as he did. Then, room service had called. I had stepped away to answer the phone. That had to be when he swapped the glasses. … Cole had known from the absolute beginning. And yet, he had sat there, playing along with my pathetic little charade. Cole had the kind of aristocratic, ruinously handsome face that belonged on the cover of Forbes, but right now, the corners of his eyes were flushed a deep, sinful red. His lips were darker than usual, and his chest rose and fell in a jagged rhythm, like a man fighting to breathe. Beneath the crisp white of his dress shirt, his muscles were tense, a thin sheen of sweat making his pale skin gleam under the dim penthouse lighting. Wait a minute. There had only been two glasses on that table. Because I was so nervous, I had chugged my glass for liquid courage. I took a rapid inventory of my body. I felt fine. No sudden surges of heat, no loss of control. I whipped my head toward the coffee table. Cole’s glass was empty. When I had turned back from the phone call, I remembered seeing the bubbles still rising in his glass. He had taken a long sip, his dark eyes fixed on me over the rim. There had been a challenge in his gaze. And something else. Something… feral. The floating text suddenly exploded with realization. [Wait, is the male lead just acting? Give him an Oscar.] [No, look at him. I think he actually drank the spiked one.] [The tension is literally going to blow up my screen.] [Relax, everyone. Don’t forget the female lead is on her way. She’s the ultimate antidote.] [The male lead is so unhinged. I love it.] [He’s about to play Blair Kensington like a fiddle.] Blair Kensington. Manhattan’s untouchable heiress. So, Cole and Blair were the destined protagonists of this universe. And my childhood best friend, Miles, and I were nothing but the pathetic clowns paving their road to true love. And I had just texted Miles. “Come catch us.” “Copy that.” I frantically reached for my phone, desperate to abort the mission. But before my fingers could brush the screen, Cole’s hand threaded into my hair, and he kissed me. The wet, desperate sound of his mouth crashing against mine drowned out the frantic hammering of my own heart. It felt like my eardrums were going to shatter. He was losing his mind. His lips trailed down my neck, his teeth sinking gently into my exposed shoulder. “Don’t be scared, Harper,” he murmured against my skin. “I’ll be gentle.” But I was terrified. Tears spilled over my lashes, hot and fast. Getting eaten by sharks in the middle of the Atlantic sounded excruciatingly painful. Feeling the wetness on my cheeks, Cole froze. He pulled back, his dark eyes instantly clearing of the haze. “What’s wrong?” I fumbled with the buttons of my blouse, my hands shaking uncontrollably. “I don’t want to…” Cole went deathly still. For a long, agonizing moment, the silence stretched between us. Then, he collapsed back against the sofa cushions, throwing one arm over his eyes, his long legs sprawling out. His voice was a gravelly, tight command. “Call Dr. Wilder.” I dialed the private chauffeur on one line and Cole’s concierge doctor on the other. During the suffocatingly tense car ride to Dr. Wilder’s private Upper East Side clinic, I pressed myself flush against the opposite door, completely terrified to even glance in Cole’s direction. Under the cover of my purse, my thumbs flew across my phone screen, blasting messages to Miles. “Abhort! Don’t come here. Go to the hospital.” “We’ve been set up! We’re going to die!” Nothing. Total radio silence. Oh god. Had Miles already been dragged off to a pier somewhere? Once I successfully handed Cole over to the discreet staff at the private clinic, I immediately dialed a number I had frantically Googled. Tears were streaming down my face. “Yes, I understand. But I want the mahogany urns with the gold inlay. Yes, for two.” “It needs to look expensive. They care about that sort of thing.” “If I buy the premium funeral package, is there a discount?” “Can we do a dual plot? There’s a very high chance it’s going to be a package deal.” Just as I was about to aggressively negotiate the price of my own burial, I looked up. Standing at the end of the hospital corridor was Miles. He looked like a ghost. Our eyes locked. In that single, loaded glance, we both knew. He had seen the floating text too. We sprinted toward each other, huddling in the corner like two terrified fugitives. I hissed at him, “Did you not see my texts?!” Miles let out a shaky breath, running a hand through his hair. “Blair dropped my phone in a pitcher of margaritas.” “Why?!” “She said someone slipped something in her drink! She asked me to choose between my phone or her.” “And what did you say?!” “She… she kissed me.” As he said it, a pathetic, unmistakable flush of red crept up Miles’s stupidly handsome face. “Why are you blushing?!” I whisper-yelled, slapping his arm. “Do you not realize the gravity of the situation?!” I wanted to rip my hair out. “I was literally just negotiating a two-for-one deal on our cemetery plots, Miles!” Miles looked at me, a complicated expression crossing his features. “I’ve been standing here for five minutes listening to you. It was very obvious you were only booking the premium plot for yourself, and I was going to be the discounted add-on.” I choked on my own spit. The floating text above us was having a field day. [God laughs when these two try to form a thought.] [A mahogany urn? Girl, the sharks aren’t going to leave enough of you to fill a shot glass. You need a cenotaph.] [Dumb and Dumber really think they can outsmart the leads.] [Wait though, why are the main leads acting so weird? Why was Blair drugged too?] [The male second lead’s doing, obviously.] Miles scrambled to defend himself. “The second Blair lunged at me, I shoved her away! I’m not dying for a kiss. That kind of risk requires a massive hazard pay!” “I rejected Cole, too.” The moment the words left my mouth, a heavy, suffocating silence fell between us. Because the undeniable truth was this: I was hopelessly in love with Cole, and Miles was completely obsessed with Blair. But Cole and Blair were the golden couple. New York royalty. So, naturally, Miles and I became each other’s toxic enablers. When they were happily together, we watched from the shadows, wallowing in our unrequited misery. When they broke up, we sharpened our claws and waited for our moment to strike. A fresh wave of terror washed over me. I grabbed Miles by the lapels of his jacket, forcing an emergency post-mortem. “Okay, think. We haven’t done anything too unforgivable to them, right?” Miles stared at me. “…” Cole and Blair. The heir to a global hedge fund and the daughter of a real estate empire. But back in high school, the two titans had apparently done something to piss off their respective dynasties. They were exiled from their elite Swiss boarding schools and dropped right into our mundane, upper-middle-class prep school in upstate New York. The moment they arrived, they effortlessly claimed the number one and number two spots in the class rankings, knocking Miles and me down to third and fourth. And it wasn’t even close. The academic gap between us was a gaping canyon. This was a massive problem. It directly threatened our full-ride scholarships. So, when we discovered that the two untouchable prodigies were actually a toxic, on-again-off-again couple, Miles and I had retreated to the bleachers and let out cartoonishly evil villain laughs. We had laughed so hard we ended up slapping each other across the face. Miles had clutched his cheek, suddenly snapping out of it. I had hugged my arms around myself, shivering. “What the hell just possessed us?” Miles rubbed his jaw, looking disturbed. “I don’t know, but your face looked genuinely terrifying just then.” But we quickly brushed off the weird momentary possession. We executed a flawless infiltration plan. We befriended Cole and Blair. The goal? To secretly study their academic methods while simultaneously dragging them down into a life of degenerate behavior so their grades would tank. Our strategy was brilliant. Miles took Cole out to the sketchiest dive bars, picking fights with local frat boys. And while Cole was busy throwing punches in the alley, Miles would crouch behind a dumpster, frantically whipping out an AP Calculus textbook and studying under the streetlamp. Meanwhile, I took Blair to an exclusive underground club. She adapted instantly, ordering bottle service and an entourage of VIP hosts. While she was busy playing dice games with them, I pulled out my SAT vocabulary flashcards. I looked at the gorgeous, shirtless host next to me. “Quizz me.” The guy looked wildly uncomfortable. “Look, babe, I don’t really do the whole ‘strict teacher’ domination thing. I’ll start laughing.” I clapped my hands over my ears, mortified, as if he had just cursed at me in church. “I meant quiz me on my AP Vocab words, you degenerate!” “Oh. Right…” And so, it went. Every night, Miles and I would meet up to analyze our sabotage, terrified of leaving any loopholes. Then the mid-term rankings came out. Cole was still number one. Blair was still number two. The sky fell. Miles and I turned on each other like rabid dogs. “I thought you said you were getting Cole addicted to nicotine and street brawls!” I shrieked. Miles looked like he was going to cry out of sheer frustration. “Does Cole look like someone I can influence?! He taught me how to properly smoke a cigar! Do you know how much stress I was under? Every time I tried to sneak a math worksheet in the bathroom stall, my heart was beating out of my chest! He almost caught me three times!” “Well, what about you?!” Miles fired back. “What happened to dragging Blair into a life of hedonism?!” I choked. “I tried! I really did! But she dragged me to an underground MMA fight! There were abs everywhere! It was completely distracting, and I had to memorize French conjugations in the dark! And you know that bottle boy who quizzed me on my flashcards? He got a perfect score on his SATs because of me! He just got accepted into Columbia!” It was useless. The harder we tried, the more miserable we became. Miles and I had slumped down onto his hand-me-down couch, thoroughly defeated. Miles let out a soul-crushing sigh. “Forget it. I’m just going to pick up a third shift at the diner.” Since the scholarship money was clearly a lost cause. “Same. I’m going to see if the gas station needs a graveyard shift.” Miles and I had both grown up in the foster system. We only had each other. We were smart, but without our stipends and scholarships, we couldn’t afford our lives. Before our beloved foster mother passed away, she had left us the tiny, rundown house we shared. After that, we completely abandoned our sabotage plot. We just wanted to quietly leech off their study habits. But somehow, Cole and Blair turned us into a crucial element of their twisted foreplay. Whenever they had a screaming match, if Cole was the one to cave first, he would come to me. He’d wire me ten grand and order me to text Blair to beg for his forgiveness on his behalf. The chat logs looked exactly like this: Me: [Incoming Wire Transfer: $10,000.00] Me: I’m giving you ten grand. Please get back together with Cole. Blair: ? Blair: Do I look like a charity case? Who the hell is he trying to insult? Blair: [Incoming Wire Transfer: $20,000.00] Blair: Tell him to take his pennies and go to hell. Stop texting me. Men only slow down my reading comprehension. But when I tried to return the money to Cole, he’d get disgusted by my incompetence and block my number. So, I’d try to send it back to Blair. She’d refuse the transfer, and the money would automatically bounce back into my account. Miles experienced the exact same phenomenon on his end. And it wasn’t just a one-time thing. It happened constantly. It was as if Cole and Blair possessed a genetic mutation that made them completely blind to the value of currency. So, Miles and I thrived. We rode the wave of their toxic wealth-blindness, skimming the middleman fees to pay our way through high school, hire private tutors, and eventually close the academic gap between us and the two untouchable heirs. Now, standing in the hospital corridor, frantically scrolling through our old chat logs to make sure we hadn’t crossed any lines, the floating text above us was having an absolute meltdown. [I HATE THE RICH!] [Give that money to me! I’ll show them what a loyal dog looks like!] [What about my feelings? I am a kind, innocent bystander on the internet, and I am personally victimized by this wealth gap.] Miles and I ignored them, still frantically swiping through our histories. Thankfully, the vast majority of our interactions had just been us silently pining from afar. Miles: Harper, I think I’m still in love with her. I feel sick… Miles: But she still leaves me on read. Me: I am begging you to stop texting me. Me: I heard my phone buzz and thought it was Cole. Me: But no, it’s just your pathetic ass again. Reading those old texts, Miles and I let out a synchronized breath of relief. This current drugging fiasco was our one and only time crossing the line from passive observers to active villains. And we had aborted the mission before any real damage was done. Miles and I locked eyes. We came to a silent, unanimous agreement. Stay the hell away from the main characters, and embrace a long, boring, safe life. The next morning, I walked into the Winslow empire’s skyscraper with my resignation letter printed on heavy cardstock, and a sleek black debit card sitting in my pocket. The card held my entire life savings. Cole was a terrifying boss, but his compensation packages were bordering on absurd. If people didn’t know I was his executive assistant, they would absolutely assume I was his sugar baby. My resignation letter was a masterpiece of corporate flattery, praising Cole’s leadership in thirty different, non-repetitive ways. I was just standing up from my desk when the VP of Sales practically tackled me. “Harper, you have to save us. Mr. Winslow is on a warpath.” The VP looked like he was about to burst into tears. “The atmospheric pressure in that boardroom is lethal. He’s slaughtering everyone.” I sighed, clutching my letter. “Me going in there isn’t going to fix it.” “Are you kidding? Every time you walk in, it’s like someone slipped a Xanax in his coffee. The whole room breathes easier.” That was a blatant lie. But I still grabbed a fresh cup of black coffee and lightly tapped on the glass door of his corner office. Cole’s icy voice cut through the glass. “Enter.” The second I stepped inside, the twelve senior executives looked at me like I was a descending angel. I put on my best, sweetest voice. “Your coffee, Mr. Winslow.” Cole glanced up from his tablet, his dark eyes locking onto mine. “Did you put sugar in it?” I blinked, thrown off. “You… you always drink it black.” I guess when a billionaire is in a bad mood, he just wants to watch the world burn. But then, the corners of Cole’s lips twitched upward into a faint smile. “Right. Whatever you say.” He gave a sharp flick of his wrist. Like a herd of terrified gazelles, the executives scrambled out the door, the click of the lock echoing loudly in the silence. I bit the inside of my cheek, mentally preparing my exit speech. Cole cleared his throat softly. “Harper.” “Yes?” “We’re in the office. Let’s keep things professional.” Huh? What was I doing? Cole smirked, his long, elegant finger rising to tap against his own lower lip. What the hell was this? Workplace sexual harassment? When I just stood there, paralyzed, Cole tapped his lip again. He held the power to ruin my life with a single phone call, and I was terrified of him. But I was a changed woman. I was embracing a new, moral life. I squared my shoulders, adopting a tone of rigid righteousness. “Mr. Winslow! I don’t know how things operate in your tax bracket, but where I come from, administrative assistants do not make out with their bosses!” Silence hung in the air for five agonizing seconds. Then, a low, dark laugh rumbled in Cole’s chest. “So last night was just a slip-up?” It was the definition of a catastrophic mistake! But since he seemed to be in a strangely good mood, now was the perfect time to drop the bomb. I slid the heavy envelope across his mahogany desk. Cole’s smile vanished instantly. He pinched the corner of the envelope between two fingers, staring at the words Resignation for a long, calculating moment. He let out a sharp, dismissive scoff. “What is this?” I kept my customer-service smile plastered on. “I am so incredibly grateful for the mentorship you’ve provided over the last three years, Mr. Winslow. But my career trajectory has shifted, and I’m looking to spread my wings in a new—” Cole cut me off with a bored hum. “You want a raise.” My heart stung. After all this time, did he really just view me as a shallow gold digger? I offered a sad, self-deprecating smile. “Mr. Winslow, it isn’t about the money.” Cole didn’t even look up. He just uncapped his Montblanc pen and started signing a stack of contracts. “One million base salary.” I stood my ground. “You can’t just throw money at me and expect me to compromise my boundaries.” “Ten million.” “I will literally do whatever you want.” The floating text above Cole’s head descended into sheer chaos. [The side-chick has no spine. Honestly, I would have folded at the one million.] [Give me 500k and I’ll bark like a dog!] [Don’t ruin the market rate! I’ll do it for thirty bucks and a MetroCard…] [What is the male lead doing?! Keeping her around is basically planting a time bomb in his relationship!] When I showed up at Miles’s apartment that evening, my stomach was in knots. I had stopped by Whole Foods on the way and bought the outrageously overpriced organic fruit, trying to soften the blow. We had promised each other. We were going to quit our jobs, cut ties with the billionaires, and start fresh. And not only had I failed to quit, I had secured an astronomical raise. But the second I pushed open his front door, I stopped dead. Miles was wearing a floral apron, turning around with a blinding, domestic smile. “You’re here!” It was sickeningly picturesque. And then I looked at his dining table. It was a literal Michelin-star feast. Beef Wellington. Lobster risotto. Ha. “You didn’t quit, did you?” I asked flatly. Miles’s spine went rigid. He pressed his lips together, looking like he was about to drop to his knees and beg for mercy. But then his eyes darted to the $40 bag of organic pomegranates in my hand. He straightened up instantly, his confidence returning. “You didn’t either.” He stated it like a fact. I sighed. “You got me.” I threw my hands up in defeat. “I couldn’t help it! Cole just kept throwing zeroes at me.” But my curiosity won out. “What did you even tell Blair to get her to counter-offer?” Miles shifted uncomfortably. “I told her I was getting old, and my family wanted me to move back upstate to settle down and go on blind dates.” “And she immediately bumped your salary.” I groaned, massaging my temples. “Of course she did. They are literally the exact same person. Even their retention strategies are identical.” Miles bit his lip. He looked at me, his voice pitching up in pathetic hope. “Harper… do you think… I mean, is it completely impossible that Blair actually has feelings for me?” Before I could even open my mouth to crush his dreams, the floating text went feral. [Bro has a nice face, but he is delusional.] [Miles, listen to me. You deserve the best, but Blair Kensington is NOT the best. She is a menace.] [You are literally just a prop in their relationship.] [If the main couple wasn’t currently beefing over a corporate merger, neither of them would even look at you two.] [Honestly, kind of respect the blind confidence.] [Am I the only one who thinks Cole and Blair are actually super toxic together? If Harper and Miles had played their cards right growing up, they could have totally stolen them. It proves the main couple’s bond isn’t bulletproof.] Honestly, the commenters were right. Miles and I totally had windows of opportunity over the years. But we were branded as the villains of the story. Which meant we suffered from a terminal case of wanting the best for each other, but also being violently jealous if the other succeeded. Once, Cole and Blair got into a massive cold war. They couldn’t even be in the same room without rolling their eyes. On the surface, Miles and I played the concerned peacekeepers. But behind closed doors, we were popping champagne. We promised to be each other’s wingmen. So, Miles took Cole out to a high-end whiskey bar to talk trash about Blair. Cole slung an arm over Miles’s shoulder, his words slurring slightly. “I’m telling you, man. That woman has ice in her veins. She’s ruthless.” Miles nodded emphatically. “Exactly. Honestly, whoever ends up marrying her is going to be cursed for eight lifetimes.” (Meanwhile, internally, Miles was screaming that he would gladly take the curse for eight hundred lifetimes if it meant he got to marry her). They drank until 3 AM. Miles, who had the alcohol tolerance of a Victorian child, was completely hammered. But he remembered his mission: hype me up to Cole. So, he flawlessly executed an “accidental” pivot. “Yeah, Blair is terrifying. But man, you don’t even know. Harper? When she was three, she threw a lit M-80 firecracker into a porta-potty and covered our foster mom in absolute sewage. Hahaha!” And with that, the floodgates opened. Miles proceeded to list every single humiliating, unhinged thing I had done since I was a toddler. How at four, I thought I was a fairy and jumped off a second-story balcony with a bedsheet, giving our foster mom a mild heart attack. How at five, I saw our bald kindergarten teacher and tried to water his head with a watering can to make his hair grow. By the end of the night, Cole and Miles were practically crying from laughing so hard. My cool, mysterious image was obliterated. After that night, Cole developed a strange affliction where he couldn’t even look at me without cracking a smile. Meanwhile, Miles and Blair started getting dangerously close. One day, Miles pulled me aside, his eyes shining. “Harper, what kind of guys is Blair actually into?” I gave him a sweet, supportive smile. “Lean, shredded guys. Total gym rats.” At the time, Miles was built like a string bean. The next day, he practically moved into Equinox. After a few months, he actually started to bulk up. Playing the role of the supportive best friend, I casually suggested, “You should really start taking protein powder. It’ll speed things up.” Miles agreed enthusiastically. So, while cackling like an evil witch in my kitchen, I meticulously replaced his expensive whey protein with cheap, sugary hot chocolate powder. Miles spent months wondering why his gains had completely plateaued, his self-esteem slowly crumbling. He was too insecure to confess his feelings to Blair. He didn’t find out the truth until the night we watched Cole and Blair walk the red carpet at the Met Gala, arm-in-arm. We had missed our window again, and in my misery, I confessed my crimes. Thinking about it now still made my blood boil. Miles violently shook me by the shoulders. “If you hadn’t sabotaged my macros, I would be dating Blair right now!” I grabbed him by the throat, shaking him right back. “If you hadn’t told him about the firecracker, Cole wouldn’t burst into laughter every time I tried to flirt with him!” The floating text was practically sobbing at our stupidity. [Thank God Blair got away from Cole to realize the world is full of idiots.] [Fools! Absolute museum-grade imbeciles!] [They were so terrified of their bestie finding love they nuked their own chances.] Eventually, we called a truce, collapsing into the dining chairs, gasping for air. “Whatever. Murder is illegal,” I wheezed. “And I really don’t want to lose my five million dollar salary,” Miles groaned. I threw my hands up. “But we have to do something! We need an alibi.” I was not going to end up in a weighted sleeping bag at the bottom of the Hudson. Miles tapped his chin, his eyes narrowing in thought. “A billionaire CEO and his executive assistant… there’s bound to be rumors of an affair.” “Exactly! And I have zero intention of sleeping with Cole Winslow.” Because love is beautiful, but I prefer breathing. “Harper,” Miles said suddenly, his voice dead serious. “Let’s get together.” It only took one look. I knew exactly what he was playing at. If Miles and I publicly dated, it was the ultimate show of loyalty to Cole and Blair. Look at us. We belong to each other. We are absolutely no threat to your relationship. It was genius. So, suppressing my intense physical revulsion, I batted my eyelashes and cooed, “Oh, Miles~” Miles’s face contorted in disgust for a fraction of a second before he smoothly pulled me into his arms, his voice dripping with fake affection. “My sweet Harper~” The floating text became an endless sea of ellipses… [Are they legally allowed to do this?] [They are starving. Truly starving. They will consume any plotline.] [Wait, why is the tension kind of crazy right now?] [I’m… I’m kind of shipping them.] [The Villainous Power Couple? I’m seated.]

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The “Women in Tech” appreciation mixer was in full swing on the rooftop terrace of our Seattle branch. The afternoon sun caught the glass skyline, and our branch manager, Richard, was practically glowing with self-importance as he handed out flowers to the female staff. “Madison, you’re the absolute life of this team. These red roses match your energy perfectly!” Madison squealed, clutching the extravagant bouquet to her chest, drawing a smattering of applause from the sycophants circling the open bar. Richard then turned to the head of building security, a beefy guy who’d helped set up the catered buffet, and slipped a thick, folded wad of hundred-dollar bills into his palm. “Appreciate the hustle, man. Take the guys out for a round on me.” I stood near the edge of the crowd. As the lead engineer who had just secured the core algorithmic patent our entire quarter depended on, I figured I was at least due for a bonus, or perhaps a mention in the toast. Instead, Richard stopped in front of me and shoved a plastic-wrapped bundle of wilting, bruised carnations into my hands. He leaned in, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. His smile didn’t reach his eyes; it was predatory, cold. “I know you’re pregnant, Caroline,” he murmured, his voice dropping so only I could hear. “So these dying flowers are pretty fitting, don’t you think? Take a piece of friendly advice: take care of that little problem before it becomes an issue. Don’t wait for me to terminate you myself.” I stared at the browning, curling petals in my hands. The blood roared in my ears. I pulled my phone from my blazer pocket, dialed a private number, and waited for the gravelly voice on the other end. “Grandpa,” I whispered into the receiver. “If you don’t get here soon, the manager you hired is going to ‘terminate’ your great-grandchild.” … 1 Madison drifted over to me, burying her face in the vibrant red roses. The cloying, overpowering scent of the blooms hit me like a physical blow, making my stomach churn violently. I was barely eight weeks along, and my first-trimester nausea had turned my sense of smell into a curse. She lowered the roses, her eyes flicking down to the pathetic, dying carnations in my grip. A flash of unmistakable triumph danced in her gaze. “Caroline, don’t take Richard’s bluntness to heart. He’s really just looking out for you,” she said, lowering her voice into a perfect, practiced imitation of a concerned friend. “Our project is just hitting the critical integration phase. You’re our lead engineer. Getting pregnant right now… it kind of feels like you’re intentionally sabotaging the company, doesn’t it?” I stared at her face, marveling at the sheer, unadulterated hypocrisy painted across her features. A cold, bitter laugh lodged in my throat. When Madison first joined the firm, I was the one who mentored her. I held her hand through the onboarding. When a demanding client chewed her out during her probationary period and left her sobbing in a bathroom stall, I was the one who took the heat for her mistakes. I stayed late, rewriting her sloppy code. Hell, the only reason there was a budget for this lavish rooftop party—and the expensive roses in her arms—was because I had secured that core patent. And now, she had eagerly sharpened herself into the fastest knife in Richard’s drawer. “Sabotaging?” My voice was deadpan, stripped of all warmth. “I pulled all-nighters for three months to land that patent. I’ve streamlined the entire deployment protocol. My pregnancy isn’t going to affect the maintenance phase in the slightest.” Madison clicked her tongue, reaching out to loop her arm through mine. I twisted my shoulder, stepping out of her reach. She didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. Instead, her smile widened, hardening at the edges. “You’re too rigid, Caroline. You’re going to snap,” she purred. “Richard might have sounded harsh, but he’s right. You’re at the peak of your career. If you go home to play mommy now, this seat won’t be waiting for you when you get back.” She leaned closer, her breath hot against my ear. “Listen to me. It’s early. Go to a clinic and get it handled. If you can’t bring yourself to go alone, I’ll drive you. I’ll even split the cost of the procedure with you.” My head snapped up. I locked eyes with her. “Madison. You were the only person in this entire building who knew I was pregnant. You told him.” She blinked, momentarily caught off guard, before her spine stiffened. She looked back at me with the righteous indignation of someone who had fully rationalized her betrayal. “I was thinking about the big picture, Caroline. The company’s future. Richard was going to find out eventually. Better I manage the optics and get ahead of the narrative, right? It gives you the advantage.” “The advantage?” My voice shook with a rage so pure it felt like ice in my veins. “You mean the advantage of him handing me dead flowers and publicly threatening to fire me if I don’t get an abortion?” Madison shrugged, the mask of the caring friend finally slipping away to reveal the raw, ugly ambition beneath. “You brought this on yourself. Who told you to get knocked up at the most critical juncture of our fiscal year? You’re messing with everyone’s money.” She sneered, shifting her grip on the roses. “Richard made it clear: if this rollout happens smoothly this month, everyone gets a massive end-of-year bonus. If you drag your feet because you’re tired and throwing up, and we miss the deadline… who’s going to pay for that?” She spun on her heel, her designer heels clicking sharply against the decking. “Think about it, Caroline. Are you going to protect a microscopic clump of cells, or are you going to protect the career you bled for?” I watched her walk away, a chaotic storm of grief and fury raging inside me. I had genuinely believed we were friends. I had shared my lunches, my insights, my quiet fears with her. But the moment a pile of money and a promotion were dangled in front of her, she sold me out without a single blink. I looked down at the wilted carnations in my hands. This was Richard’s ultimatum. To them, a pregnant woman was no longer a brilliant engineer or a top earner. She was a liability. A ticking time bomb. I rested my palm flat against my lower stomach, beneath the tailored fabric of my slacks. There, safely tucked away, was a tiny, fragile heartbeat. This was the baby my husband and I had prayed for, cried for, and dreamed about for years. I took a long, trembling breath, forcing the violent shaking in my hands to stop. If they wanted to play ruthless, they were about to learn what ruthless actually looked like. 2 Richard sauntered over, his hands clasped behind his back, looking like a king surveying his conquered territory. Madison trailed just behind him. “Madison, go print out the IP transfer and transition forms for the patent. Have Caroline sign them,” he ordered casually. “From here on out, you’ll be taking over as the lead on this project.” I froze. Madison taking over? That algorithm was my blood, sweat, and tears. It was my genius. And Richard was stripping me of my life’s work to force me out the door. He glanced at the dead carnations I had tossed onto a nearby patio table, his lips curling into a smug, patronizing smirk. “Still haven’t come to your senses, Caroline?” I met his gaze, my expression glacial. “Richard, the core architecture of that patent is mine. All the backend encrypted data is on my personal drive. Madison doesn’t even understand the basic syntax of what I built. She can’t take it over.” Richard chuckled, clapping my shoulder again. This time, his grip was hard, his fingers digging into my collarbone painfully. “You’re too arrogant, Caroline. The one thing a tech firm never lacks is replaceable talent. Sure, Madison might be a little green, but she’s obedient. She’s a team player. And most importantly, she knows how to prioritize.” He leaned his weight into that last word, letting the threat hang heavy in the air. “Unlike some people, who hoard company resources and then decide to pull a stunt that tanks our productivity.” I let out a harsh, incredulous laugh. “Starting a family is a fundamental human right. It’s a protected class under federal law. What you are doing right now, Richard, is illegal.” His face darkened instantly. He leaned in, his voice a venomous hiss. “The law? In this office, I am the law. You want to threaten me with HR or lawyers? Go ahead. Try it. Let’s see what happens faster: your little lawsuit making it to court, or me blacklisting you so thoroughly you’ll never work in Silicon Valley or Seattle again.” He backed up, straightening his tie. “You’re going to sign that transition agreement. Whether you want to or not.” Madison returned, carrying a stack of pristine legal documents. Tucked under her arm was my dark green Moleskine notebook—my private journal of algorithmic equations. She wore a sickeningly sweet, triumphant smile. “Just sign it, Caroline. Richard is doing this for your own good, so you can rest. With the state you’re in, if you pass out in the server room, it’s a liability for the company.” She shoved a sleek silver pen into my hand. Her eyes were daring me to fight back. I stared at the paperwork. The clauses were explicitly clear: I was voluntarily waiving all future attribution rights, royalties, and bonus distributions tied to the patent, transferring them entirely to Madison. This wasn’t a reassignment. This was a mugging in broad daylight. “I’m not signing this.” I dropped the pen onto the decking. It clattered loudly. Richard’s face flushed a deep, ugly magenta. “Caroline! I gave you an out, you ungrateful bitch. Do you really think this company stops running without you?” He pointed a finger inches from my nose. “Let me make this crystal clear. If you don’t sign that paper today, I will have your desk dumped into the alley by tomorrow morning. And don’t even dream of seeing a dime of maternity leave or severance. I have a hundred different ways to make you quit, and you’ll leave here with nothing.” Around us, the party had gone dead silent. Coworkers were stealing nervous glances, but not a single person stepped forward. Even the engineers I grabbed drinks with on Fridays suddenly found their shoes incredibly fascinating. Human loyalty, I realized in that moment, was terrifyingly cheap. Madison fanned the flames, her voice dripping with fake pity. “Oh, Caroline, why are you doing this to yourself? What’s the point in fighting Richard? You’re pregnant. If you get too worked up and something happens to the baby, it really wouldn’t be worth it, would it?” As she spoke, she began casually flipping through my Moleskine notebook. “Wow, these notes are incredibly detailed. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, babe.” That was my personal property. It contained entirely separate concepts, ideas I hadn’t even drafted proposals for yet. I lunged forward to grab it from her. Before I could reach her, Richard shoved me hard in the chest. I stumbled backward, my heel catching on the decking. I lost my balance, flailing wildly before my hip slammed against the sharp edge of a high-top table. My hands instantly flew to my stomach, a cold sweat breaking out across my forehead. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Richard! Are you out of your mind?!” I screamed. He scoffed, adjusting his cuffs. “Am I? I’m thinking perfectly clearly. Since you refuse to play ball, I’m done playing nice.” He snapped his fingers at the security guard who had just pocketed his bribe. “Revoke her keycard access immediately. Aside from the transition handover, she is banned from all secure labs and server rooms.” The guard, flush with cash, puffed out his chest. “Yes, sir. This way, Caroline. Let’s go.” 3 I pulled out my phone again. My thumb hovered over my grandfather’s contact name. Arthur Kensington. The founder and majority shareholder of the massive conglomerate that owned this subsidiary, and dozens of others. My finger trembled, but I didn’t press call. Grandpa’s heart condition had worsened over the last few years. He had retreated to his estate in the Hamptons, leaving the day-to-day operations to an executive board. A bottom-feeder like Richard only dared to act like a tyrant because he thought the corporate gods were too far away to notice the dirt on his shoes. I had already called Grandpa once today. He was likely already furious, scrambling his people. If I called him back now, in tears, the stress could trigger an episode. I couldn’t risk his life for this. But I also couldn’t let them slaughter me like a lamb. I took a deep, shaky breath. I bent down, picked up the pen, and scrawled my signature across the transition agreement. Madison let out a high-pitched, delighted gasp. “See? Wasn’t that so much easier, Caroline?” Richard smirked, deeply satisfied with his own perceived power. “Smart girl. Since you’ve signed, and until the transition is complete, if Madison doesn’t need you, you can go help out in the basement storage facility. They’re doing a hardware inventory. They could use a tech to supervise.” The basement storage? It was a windowless, damp concrete bunker with no ventilation. It required hauling massive, heavy crates of outdated servers. He was trying to break me physically. I opened my mouth to refuse, but Richard had already gestured to the security guard, who grabbed my upper arm and began forcefully frog-marching me toward the freight elevator. I wanted to fight back, to kick and scream, but the lingering terror of the shove kept me docile. I couldn’t risk a physical altercation. Not with the baby. I had to endure this, just for a little while longer. The harsh fluorescent lights of the basement flickered overhead, casting a sickly pallor over the mountains of defunct hardware and tangled cables. The air was thick with dust, coating the back of my throat and making me cough violently. “Caroline, we need these crates of coaxial cables sorted and cataloged. And those old server racks over there need to be dragged to the east wall.” The security guard, Derek, picked his teeth with a thumbnail, eyeing me with naked disdain. I looked at the server crates. They had to weigh fifty pounds each. My stomach plummeted. “I’m a software engineer, Derek, not a mover. And I’m pregnant. My doctor explicitly forbade heavy lifting.” Derek snorted, dropping a crumpled candy wrapper on the floor. “That sounds like a personal problem. Boss said if you’re on the clock, you work. Don’t want to do it? Fine. The boys and I can come over there and help you do it. Whatever it takes.” He laughed, a cruel, ugly sound. I ground my teeth, staring him dead in the eye. “Richard is doing this specifically to torture me. Are you absolutely sure you want to be his accomplice when the fallout hits?” Derek rolled his eyes and shoved my shoulder. “Shut up and lift! You don’t leave until it’s done.” The push sent me stumbling backward. My spine collided hard against the freezing metal rungs of a shelving unit. A sharp, pulling ache bloomed deep in my lower abdomen. The color drained from my face. I grabbed the edge of a wooden crate, slowly lowering myself into a crouch, terrified to breathe. I’m so sorry, baby. Mommy is so useless. The sharp, rhythmic click-clack of stilettos echoed against the concrete floor. Madison strolled into the dusty basement. She had changed into a sharp, tailored blazer and held a steaming oat milk latte from the artisanal cafe across the street. She looked like she was on a runway; I looked like I was in a war zone. She took one look at my pale, trembling form and smiled. “God, the smell down here is foul. Why haven’t you started moving those boxes? Richard is waiting for your inventory sheet.” She strutted over, deliberately invading my space, and set her latte down on the metal shelf right next to my head. “Oh, by the way, Caroline. I reviewed the core algorithm for the patent. It’s cute, but it’s missing a certain… flair. But don’t worry! I hopped on a call with some guys at global headquarters. They said with a few minor tweaks, I can completely rebrand the architecture under my name.” My head snapped up, the fire returning to my eyes. “Madison, that is my life’s work! You’re going to blatantly plagiarize my code to global?” She took a slow, deliberate sip of her latte, utterly unbothered. “Plagiarize? Watch your mouth. You signed the intellectual property over. That patent belongs to the company, and the company gave it to me. You are officially irrelevant.” Suddenly, she crouched down until we were eye-level. The bubbly, fake-sweet facade vanished, replaced by something deeply malignant. “You’re so incredibly naive, Caroline. Did you really think being the smartest girl in the room would protect you? Richard is my cousin. Do you get it now?” The words hit me like a physical blow. The ringing in my ears intensified. It all made sickening sense. That was why Madison was fast-tracked past her probation. That was why Richard shielded her from every mistake. They were family. I was just the workhorse they intended to ride until I broke, before sending me to the slaughterhouse. “You… you both are actually going to do this to me.” I laughed, the sound hollow and manic. I grabbed the metal rack, hauling myself to my feet. “Madison, do you really think stealing my algorithm means you’ve won? You didn’t find the backdoor in the root directory, did you?” Madison’s face fell. “What backdoor? You tampered with the company’s patent?” I stared her down, channeling every ounce of ice I possessed. “It’s standard defensive architecture. The code won’t compile into a live environment without my encrypted authorization key. You have the raw data, sure. But the second you try to take it commercial, the entire system will brick itself.” It was a complete lie. There was no kill-switch. But I was gambling on her incompetence. Madison was a hack; she couldn’t read deep backend logic to save her life. The gamble paid off. Panic flared in her eyes. She lunged at me, her manicured hands gripping my forearms with shocking, desperate strength. “Caroline! Give me the admin key! Give it to me right now, or I swear to God I’ll have Richard ruin your life!” 4 I ripped my arms out of her grasp, looking at her with absolute disgust. “You want the key? I want Richard down here, apologizing to me in front of the entire department. I want my title back, and I want my name restored to the patent.” Madison was shaking with rage. She pointed a trembling finger at my face. “In your dreams! You manipulative bitch! You think getting knocked up with some parasite gives you leverage? Watch me!” With a sudden, violent shriek, she shoved me with both hands. The concrete floor was slick with years of accumulated dust and grease. My heel slid out from under me. For a terrifying, suspended second, I was airborne, falling backward into the dark. CRACK. My lower back slammed into the sharp steel corner of a bottom-tier shelf. An agonizing, blinding explosion of pain ripped through my entire body. It stole the air from my lungs. My vision went white. And then, I felt it. A gush of warm liquid pooling between my thighs, soaking through my slacks. The bottom fell out of my world. “Help…” I gasped, my voice barely a cracked whisper. My hands clawed desperately at my stomach, curling inward as I writhed on the filthy floor. “Help me…” Madison froze. The color drained from her face, leaving her chalk-white as she stared at the dark, spreading stain of blood on the gray concrete. “I… I didn’t mean to…” she stammered, backing away. “You tripped! You fell on your own!” She turned and sprinted toward the freight elevator, the frantic clicking of her heels fading away, leaving me completely alone in the freezing, suffocating dark. I was in so much pain I couldn’t breathe. The edges of my vision were turning black. Dimly, as if underwater, I heard the chaotic sounds of the elevator doors opening and voices echoing in the corridor. It was Richard and Madison. “What the hell happened? Why is there blood?” Richard’s voice was laced with panic, but mostly, it was irritation. It was the sound of a man annoyed by a mess he had to clean up. Madison was hysterical. “She threw herself backward! I swear to God, I just asked her a question, and she threw herself into the shelf to frame me!” I lay on the ice-cold floor, a vast, consuming black hole of despair opening up inside me, ready to swallow me whole. I was losing my baby. I was dying in a basement. And then, a sound like a thunderclap shattered the air. The heavy, reinforced double doors of the warehouse were violently kicked open. A flood of blinding, golden afternoon light poured into the gloom, casting long shadows. In the center of the light stood a silhouette. It looked like salvation. A voice, thick with age but vibrating with absolute, unquestionable authority, boomed through the space. “NOBODY MOVE.” It was Grandpa. He looked frail, leaning heavily on a silver-handled cane, but the terrifying aura of a man who had spent forty years building a global empire from scratch radiated off him in waves. Richard froze. He turned around, squinting at the elderly man in the tailored wool suit standing in the doorway. “Who the hell are you? This is a restricted area! Derek! Where the hell is security?!” Richard, blinded by his own pathetic fiefdom, hadn’t put the pieces together. He took an aggressive step toward my grandfather. He didn’t make it to a second step. Two men in immaculate dark suits materialized from behind Grandpa. One of them closed the distance in a blur, sweeping Richard’s legs out from under him and pinning him face-down against the concrete with a knee planted firmly between his shoulder blades. “Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am?! I run this company!” Richard shrieked, his face mashed into the dirt, spitting curses. Grandpa didn’t even look at him. He moved as fast as his legs would carry him, falling to his knees beside me. When he saw the blood, his gnarled hands began to shake uncontrollably. “Caroline… Oh, Caroline, sweet girl. Don’t be afraid. Grandpa is here.” He gathered my head and shoulders into his arms. I saw tears welling in his fierce, pale eyes. “Medics! Get the paramedics in here now!” he roared over his shoulder. I clutched at the lapel of his suit. My voice was fading, slipping away into the dark. “Grandpa… please… save the baby… They… they stole my work… They tried to force me…” Grandpa’s face turned rigid. The sorrow in his eyes instantly crystallized into an icy, bottomless fury. He slowly lifted his head, his gaze locking onto Richard, who was still squirming beneath the bodyguard. “You are Richard?” Richard, still defiant, wrenched his neck to glare back. “Yeah, that’s me! And you’re a dead man walking, old man! Breaking into my building—” Grandpa let out a low, terrifying chuckle. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a heavy, custom-minted platinum coin—the Founder’s Medallion of Kensington Global—and tossed it so it clattered against the concrete, coming to a stop an inch from Richard’s nose. “Look closely at that.” Richard stared at the medallion. The heavy, interlocking ‘K’ insignia staring back at him was the same one printed on his paychecks, on the building’s facade, on the software he sold. Every executive in the conglomerate was taught to recognize that medallion. It was the absolute symbol of corporate life or death. The arrogant sneer melted off Richard’s face, replaced by a mask of sheer, unadulterated terror. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped onto the floor. “M-Mr. Kensington? Chairman? Wh-what are you doing here?”

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I was just a mid-level HR rep, but I managed to hire a ghost. A phantom employee who didn’t exist. This employee never clocked in, never worked a shift, and yet, every single month, I used his name to siphon two thousand, eight hundred dollars in base pay and attendance bonuses straight out of the accounting department. I got away with it because I was the one who generated the timesheets. I ran the payroll. Even the photocopy of his driver’s license and Social Security card were top-tier forgeries I’d paid a guy on the dark web to mock up. On the rare occasions the owner did a spot-check, I’d casually mention the guy was out sick or running a delivery route. The only reason I had the nerve to pull this off was because the meat processing plant where I worked was an absolute circus. The owner was a pathological cheapskate, the turnover rate was catastrophic, and the guys on the killing floor barely knew each other’s first names, let alone the faces of the night crew. For three years, I lived off this phantom. I hoarded every single stolen cent, burying it in a savings account. It was blood money, sure, but it was going toward a literal bleeding heart—my daughter’s. She was born with a severe congenital heart defect, and her life was measured in the price tags of experimental surgeries. My plan was simple. Next month, the minute her final surgical fee was fully funded, I was going to process a quiet resignation for my ghost employee, wipe the digital footprint, and wash my hands of the whole grift. But last night, the plan shattered. John Miller—my fictional, non-existent employee—had a fatal workplace accident. … 1 At 3:00 AM, the frantic buzzing of my phone vibrating against the nightstand jolted me awake. I squinted at the caller ID. Gary Walsh. The plant owner. My stomach plummeted. Gary didn’t even reply to my emails during business hours. Why the hell was he calling me in the dead of night? I slipped out from under the covers, tiptoed past my sleeping daughter’s bed, and stepped out onto the freezing balcony before hitting accept. The second the call connected, Gary’s voice slammed into my ear—a manic, terrified roar. “Harper! What kind of blind, incompetent morons are you hiring?!” “That new guy, John Miller! He bypassed the safety guard on the industrial meat grinder during the night shift! He got pulled in!” “By the time they cut the power, he was… Jesus Christ, Harper, he’s ground to a fucking pulp!” A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears, like a flashbang had gone off inside my skull. My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the freezing ceramic tiles of the balcony, the phone trembling against my cheek. It’s over. That was the only coherent thought my brain could form. John Miller was a figment of my imagination. A name on a spreadsheet. How could he possibly be working the night shift? And how, in God’s name, could he be in the grinder? “Harper?! Are you there? Say something!” Gary was practically foaming at the mouth through the speaker. “Get your ass down to the plant, right now! We have to bury this before the sun comes up!” My entire body shook violently. I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, desperately stifling a scream. If John Miller didn’t exist… then who the hell was dead in that machine?! But I couldn’t say that. I would take that secret to my grave. The second I admitted John was a phantom, my embezzlement would be exposed. I wouldn’t just be looking at federal wire fraud charges and a prison cell—the funding for my daughter’s heart surgery would vanish. She would die. For her, I had to keep playing the part. “Mr. Walsh,” I choked out, my voice raw. “I’m on my way.” 2 The 4:00 AM wind cut across my face like shattered glass. When I pulled into the factory parking lot, a makeshift ring of yellow caution tape had already been hastily strung up around the loading dock doors. A few guys from the graveyard shift were huddled by the dumpsters, smoking furiously and whispering. I didn’t dare look toward the processing floor. I made a beeline for the metal stairs leading up to Gary’s second-floor office. I pushed the door open to a suffocating cloud of cigar smoke. Gary was pacing like a caged animal. When he saw me, he hurled his half-smoked cigar onto the linoleum at my feet. “Did you walk here? Took you long enough!” Sitting on the faux-leather sofa was my arch-nemesis: Monica, the Operations Manager. Monica had made it her life’s mission to micromanage me out of a job, and right now, her eyes were locked onto me with predatory calculation. “Well, Harper, considering you’re the one who hired the guy, HR is definitely going to take the heat for this disaster,” Monica drawled, her voice dripping with venom. I ignored her, forcing myself to look Gary in his bloodshot eyes. “Gary, what’s the status? Have the police been called?” “Are you out of your mind?!” Gary slammed his fists onto his desk. “OSHA is scheduled for a surprise inspection next week! We have a fatality on the floor, Harper! If the feds get wind of this, they’ll shut down production, hit me with criminal negligence, and bankrupt me by Friday!” I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat making it hurt. “So… what are you saying?” “We settle. Off the books.” He spat the words out through gritted teeth. He marched around the desk, stopping inches from my face. “You hired him. You have his file. Pull his emergency contact, right now! Call his family. Get them down here before the morning shift arrives. I don’t care what it costs—they sign a non-disclosure, they take the payout, and we get that body bag to a crematorium today!” Hearing the words emergency contact made the blood freeze in my veins. Because on John Miller’s intake form, the emergency contact number I’d listed… was my own burner phone. “What are you standing there for? Move!” Gary barked. Monica stood up, a sickly sweet smile playing on her lips. “Yeah, Harper, chop-chop. I mean, you personally handled his onboarding. Funny, he’s been here three years and I don’t think I’ve ever put a face to the name. You must know him pretty well, right?” Her words were a scalpel, finding my exact weak point. She was already suspicious. John Miller never swiped a badge; I manually entered his hours every pay period. I took a shaky breath, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Right. I’ll pull the file.” I turned and walked out. The second the heavy office door clicked shut behind me, I slumped against the wall, my legs turning to jelly. What do I do? If I pretend the emergency number is disconnected, Gary will panic and call the cops to trace the next of kin. Once the police run John Miller’s fingerprints or run his fake SSN, they’ll realize the dead man isn’t John Miller. Then they’ll look at the payroll, and I’m done. But if I answer the burner phone… who the hell plays the grieving widow? In that fraction of a second, a thought so deranged, so reckless, sparked in the darkest corner of my mind. Gary was desperate to bury this. I don’t care what it costs, he’d said. For an unreported, gruesome workplace death? The hush money would have to be staggering. At least half a million dollars to keep a family from going to the press. If the guy in the machine is a John Doe… And John Miller is my fictional creation… Why couldn’t I hire someone to play the widow and walk away with the half-million-dollar payout? The identity of the dead man would be erased forever. Gary gets his dirty secret buried. And I… I get the money to save Mia’s life. In cash. Immediately. My heart began to hammer against my ribs, a violent, deafening rhythm. It was a suicide mission. If I win, my daughter lives, and I walk away clean. If I lose, I lose everything. 3 I slipped into a bathroom stall, pulled out my actual phone, and scrolled down to my cousin’s number. Roxy was a grifter. She’d spent her twenties running minor scams and bouncing between shady dive bars. More importantly, she was currently drowning in debt to a local bookie and was infinitely more desperate than I was. The phone rang for an eternity before she picked up. “Who died at three in the morning?” she rasped, her voice thick with sleep and cigarettes. I kept my voice to a breathless whisper, outlining the entire insane plot in under sixty seconds. “Rox, listen to me. You come down here, play the devastated blue-collar wife, and demand five hundred grand in cash to keep your mouth shut. When it’s done, you walk away with a hundred and fifty grand.” Dead silence on the line. Just the sound of her heavy breathing. “Harper, you’ve lost your mind,” she finally whispered, her voice trembling. “That’s a dead body. If we get caught, that’s federal wire fraud, extortion, maybe accessory to murder. We’ll rot in prison.” “Do you have the money for your bookie, Rox? Because last I checked, they were threatening to break your kneecaps,” I hissed, the adrenaline making me ruthless. “The factory owner is more terrified of the cops than we are. He’s not going to dig. You cry, you sign, you take the bag, and you vanish. Who’s gonna stop you?” Silence. Thick, suffocating silence. Then, a sharp exhale. “I’m in. Text me the dead guy’s stats. I’m on my way.” I hung up. The back of my blouse was drenched in cold sweat. I splashed freezing water on my face, slapped my cheeks until the color returned, and marched back upstairs. “Mr. Walsh, I got her,” I said, stepping back into his office. “His wife lives out in the county. I just got off the phone with her. She’s hysterical, but she’s driving down now. Should be here by seven.” Gary collapsed into his leather chair, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Good. Good. Intercept her at the gate. Bring her straight to the ground-floor conference room. Keep her the hell away from the production floor.” Monica shot me a venomous look from the sofa. “Wow. Look at you, employee of the month. So efficient.” I didn’t flinch. “A man is dead, Monica. Forgive me for acting fast. If you think you can handle a grieving widow better, be my guest.” She scoffed and looked away. 4 The next few hours were sheer psychological torture. At exactly 7:00 AM, a woman appeared at the security gate. Roxy had outdone herself. She wore a faded, oversized flannel shirt, muddy work boots, and her hair was a tangled, unwashed mess. Her eyes were swollen red, and before she even cleared the metal detectors, her wails were echoing across the asphalt. “John! Oh, God, Johnny, why?! What am I supposed to do now?!” Watching Roxy deliver an Oscar-worthy performance of rural grief, a fraction of the knot in my chest loosened. Gary, visibly sweating, ordered security to rush her into the windowless conference room. It was just the four of us: Me, Gary, Monica, and Roxy, who was currently slumped over the mahogany table, sobbing hysterically. “Ma’am, please, I need you to breathe,” Gary said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “This was a tragic failure of safety protocols. And the company… we want to make this right.” Roxy’s head snapped up. She glared at him, a feral, cornered animal. “Make it right?! You ground my husband into meat! I’m calling the police! I’m calling the news! I want this whole damn place leveled!” Gary went chalk-white. “No, no, no! Please, Mrs. Miller, listen to me. Lawyers take years. The courts will bleed you dry. We can settle this today.” He held up his hands, placating her. “Two hundred thousand. Cash transfer. Today.” “Two hundred?! Are you insulting me?!” Roxy screamed, slamming her fists on the table. “That was a human life! Five hundred thousand! Not a penny less, or I’m walking out that door and straight to the precinct!” Watching them bargain over a phantom life was nauseating. Eventually, Gary cracked. Five hundred thousand. He was bleeding from the eyes, but to save his business from criminal charges, he agreed. “Fine. Five hundred grand. But you sign an ironclad NDA, a release of liability, and you authorize us to transport the remains directly to the crematorium. You take the ashes and you never look back.” Roxy did a brilliant job of hesitating, biting her lip before finally giving a curt, devastated nod. “Fine. Show me the money.” It was going perfectly. Too perfectly. Just as Gary was reaching for his phone to call his shadow-accountant, Monica stood up. She’d been sitting quietly in the corner, her arms crossed. She walked over to Roxy, staring down at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, she smiled. “Mrs. Miller. I’m the Operations Manager. For a payout of this magnitude, company policy dictates I need to verify your identity. I’m going to need to see your ID and a copy of your marriage certificate.” My heart stopped beating. The air left my lungs. I’d had my forgery guy print a fake marriage certificate overnight. Physically, it looked flawless. But if Monica tried to run the names through any public database… we were dead. Roxy stiffened, but she didn’t break character. She went full offensive. “Are you accusing me of lying, you cold-hearted bitch?! My husband is dead in your factory, and you’re trying to find a way out of paying?!” She reached into her battered purse, pulled out the forged certificate I’d handed her in the parking lot, and slammed it onto the table. Monica picked it up. She read the names. And then, she said the words that dragged me down to hell. “John Miller. Born 1985. Registered in Knox County.” Monica looked up slowly, her eyes locking onto mine with the lethal precision of a sniper. “You know, Harper, I was just so curious about this invisible employee of yours. So last night, while Gary was panicking, I called my brother. He’s a dispatcher for the state police. I had him run John Miller’s Social Security number from his HR file.” Monica leaned over the table, her voice a deadly whisper. “There is no John Miller attached to that Social. The number belongs to a deceased woman in Ohio. Your guy… he doesn’t exist. It’s a fake identity.” The room went completely, terrifyingly silent. Gary froze. Roxy froze. Monica stared at me, her lips curling into a triumphant, vicious sneer. “What kind of game are you playing, Harper? Because if John Miller is a fake… who the hell is dead in that machine?!” The silence in the room was deafening. Monica held the fake marriage certificate like a loaded gun pointed directly at my head. Gary’s face went from pale to a dangerous, mottled purple. He whipped his head toward me. “Harper! What the fuck is she talking about?!” My brain was red-lining. Cold sweat poured down my spine. If I broke now, I was going to prison. And Mia was going to die in a hospital bed. A mother backed into a corner is a dangerous thing. I dug my fingernails into my palms, forcing the pain to ground me. I whipped my head toward Roxy, my eyes wide with manufactured shock. “Roxy! John gave us a fake ID?!” I pitched my voice an octave higher, sounding even more betrayed than Monica. “When I hired him, he gave me his actual Social Security card! It cleared the e-Verify system! How could it be fake?!” Roxy didn’t miss a beat. She’d survived the streets; she knew how to improv. She let out a gut-wrenching wail and collapsed back into her chair. “Oh, God! I told him! I told him this would catch up to us!” She pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at Monica. “You heartless corporate vulture! He’s dead, and you’re digging through his past?!” Roxy looked at Gary, tears streaming down her face. “My husband… he had a gambling problem. He owed fifty grand to the cartel down in Texas. They shot out our windows. He bought a fake identity off a guy in a motel parking lot just so he could work a night shift and send us money without them finding him! We’ve been living in terror, and now you’re using his desperation to screw his widow out of a settlement?!” It was a masterclass in deflection. Monica was stunned, her mouth opening and closing. “That’s—that’s insane! A fake ID wouldn’t pass the background—” “Enough!” Gary’s roar rattled the glass walls of the conference room. He looked at Monica, his eyes bulging with a terrifying, primal rage. “Monica, are you completely out of your goddamn mind?!” He stormed over to her, spit flying from his lips. “Do I look like I give a shit what his real name was?!” “I don’t care if he was a cartel runner, a fugitive, or the Pope! He is dead in my factory!” Gary screamed. “You want to call the cops? You want them digging into his past? You want the feds shutting my doors and putting me in handcuffs because you wanted to play detective?!” Monica shrank back, her face draining of color. She had completely misread the room. She thought exposing the fake ID would make her the hero. She didn’t realize that Gary’s only objective was making the corpse vanish. “Sign the damn papers. Pay her the money.” Gary snatched the marriage certificate out of Monica’s hand, didn’t even glance at it, and shoved it back at Roxy. “Take the money. The medical transport is out back. They’ll take the remains straight to the incinerator. You walk out of here, and this never happened.” 5 The rest of the morning moved with sickening speed. The wire transfer cleared. Five hundred thousand dollars, routed through a shell LLC directly into the untraceable account Roxy had set up. She signed the NDA. She inked her thumbprint. I watched the plant’s private refrigerated truck pull out of the loading bay, carrying the unmarked bags of human remains toward a private crematorium Gary had on payroll. He sent two of his most loyal security guards to tail the truck, ensuring Roxy didn’t suddenly veer off to a police station. By noon, the guards texted Gary a photo of an urn. It was done. A catastrophic, business-ending nightmare, erased with half a million dollars. That afternoon, I claimed I was feeling ill and slipped off the property. Two miles down the road, at a decaying roadside motel, I found Roxy. She had already scrubbed off the dirt and changed into her normal clothes. On the laminate table sat a brand-new prepaid debit card. “PIN is your zip code,” Roxy said, taking a long drag from her cigarette. She looked pale. “Three hundred and fifty thousand is on there. I moved my cut, paid my guy. We’re square.” I grabbed the card, clutching it so tightly my knuckles turned white. We did it. Mia’s surgery was funded. The post-op care, the meds—all of it. The mountain that had been crushing my chest for three years was suddenly gone. “Harper, listen to me,” Roxy said quietly, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Her eyes were dark, serious. “This money is cursed.” I froze. She crushed her cigarette into the glass ashtray and stood up. “Whatever poor bastard died in that machine… it doesn’t add up. The owner didn’t even flinch when the ID was fake. He didn’t investigate. He just wanted the body burned. Fast.” She grabbed her duffel bag. “He wasn’t paying me off for a workplace accident. He was paying me to help him get rid of a body.” “I’m leaving the state. I’m never coming back here. You need to quit that job today. That place is a graveyard.” Roxy walked out, leaving me alone in the dim motel room. Her words wrapped around my throat like a cold wire. She was right. If John Miller was a ghost… who was the man working the grinder at 2:00 AM? Why would a stranger be in the factory, operating heavy machinery under a fake name? And Gary’s reaction. Gary, who would dock a man’s pay for taking a ten-minute bathroom break, dropped half a million dollars without batting an eye. He wasn’t buying silence from a grieving family. He was buying an alibi. A horrifying realization bloomed in the dark corners of my mind. This wasn’t an accident. It was murder. And I, desperately trying to cover up my petty embezzlement to save my daughter, had just provided the perfect cover story for a killer.

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The day I went into labor, my husband ordered the nurse to administer the third dose of labor suppressants. Sweat soaked through my hospital gown, my hair plastered to my forehead in salt-slicked clumps. I clutched his sleeve, my voice a broken rasp. “Please, Simon, I’m begging you… the doctor said if we wait any longer, the baby’s heart won’t take it. He’s in danger.” Simon’s expression was a mask of cold indifference. He didn’t even flinch at the sight of my agony. “I made a promise,” he said, his voice level. “Only Norma is allowed to give birth to my firstborn.” He looked down at me, as if explaining a simple business transaction. “The first child in the Harvey line is the only one who inherits the primary estate trust. Your child is a product of this marriage; I’ll ensure he’s taken care of for life. But he won’t be the heir.” “It’s just a two-hour delay,” he added, pulling his arm away from my frantic grip. “If he’s really my son, he can handle a little discomfort.” Two hours later, my unborn son suffocated in my womb. While the life was draining out of me, Simon was in the next wing, cradling the son Norma had just delivered. A perfect, happy family of three. When the news finally reached him that my baby was gone, Simon merely knit his brows. His tone softened, but only slightly—the way one might speak to an employee who had misplaced a file. “Take care of yourself,” he said, sliding a slip of paper onto the bedside table. “There will be other children.” It was a check for ten million dollars. “Consider this your compensation,” he added. I didn’t move. I didn’t look at the check. I didn’t even breathe. He had no idea. There would never be “other children.” Simon had just personally murdered the only child he would ever have. 1 I remained motionless, my gaze fixed on the gray sky outside the window, my eyes hollow and glazed. Simon sighed, the sound of a man whose patience was being unfairly tested. He placed the check on the nightstand with a sharp clack. “Think it over, Cassidy,” he said. “It’s a tragedy, losing a child. But I’m keeping my word—you’re still Mrs. Harvey. That hasn’t changed.” I didn’t offer a word of protest. I didn’t even blink. “Fine,” Simon said, turning toward the door. “If you don’t want to talk, then rest.” I knew exactly where he was going. He was heading to the VIP suite next door to visit Norma, his “one who got away.” They had both just given birth. I looked like a specter, my skin the color of curdled milk. Norma, I heard from the whispering nurses, looked radiant, a delicate flush on her cheeks as she held her prize. “Simon, come look at our son.” I could almost hear her voice through the walls. Earlier, when they moved her past my door, she had given me a look of pure, sharp-edged triumph. A look that said: Cassidy, you lost. I tried to pull my lips into a smile, a bitter self-mockery, but I didn’t even have the strength for that. A sudden, blooming warmth spread across the bedsheets. I looked down slowly. A sea of crimson was swallowing the white linens. “Nurse…” I croaked. A second later, a tray crashed to the floor. “Doctor! Emergency! We have a postpartum hemorrhage in Room 6!” Perhaps it was the cocktail of drugs they’d forced into my system. My consciousness began to drift, heavy as lead. Amidst the frantic shouting and the rattle of the gurney as they pushed me back toward the operating theater, a voice drifted over me. “Mrs. Harvey, stay with us! Don’t you dare close your eyes!” But my eyelids were so heavy. I slipped into a dream. No—a nightmare. I was back on the delivery table. Simon was standing over me, ordering the nurses to prep another injection. I was paralyzed, my strength siphoned away, cold sweat drenching the pads beneath me. Every contraction was a dull saw blade hacking at my vitals. The nurse had pleaded with him. “Mr. Harvey, we can’t keep doing this. We’ve exceeded the safe dosage. If we continue, the fetal distress will become irreversible.” The attending physician was pale, his voice trembling as he faced Simon. “Sir, she’s fully dilated. The heart rate is plummeting. If we delay any further, the baby will suffocate. We are looking at two lives on the line!” Simon stood in the doorway, his silhouette sharp and uncompromising. He uttered only two words. “Keep dosing.” I had reached out, my fingers clawing at his expensive suit. “He’s your flesh and blood, Simon. Please… the doctor said two more hours will kill him.” We had been married for three years. I had been the perfect wife. I had played the role of the elegant Mrs. Harvey, never causing a scene, never breathing a word about the rumors. I had endured his lingering obsession with Norma in silence, all for the sake of this child. I had stripped away every ounce of my pride. For the baby, I would have accepted any humiliation. “Please… let me bring him into the world. I’ll give Norma everything. I’ll leave. I’ll disappear. Just let him live!” Simon looked down at me from his height, his eyes devoid of warmth. “You think I need you to ‘give’ her anything?” he asked quietly. “Everything Norma wants, I will hand to her myself.” “I promised her. Only she carries the true Harvey heir.” His voice was flat, but every word felt like a shard of glass in my heart. “The firstborn gets the legacy. Your child is just a legal formality. I’ll provide for him, of course. He’ll have the best life money can buy.” “It’s two hours, Cassidy. If he’s my son, he can endure a little hardship for the sake of the family.” Endure it? He was a living soul. He had been kicking inside me for ten months. He had responded to my voice. He was a person. I shook with sobs until my vision blurred. The medical staff looked at me with pity, but they were terrified of the man in the doorway. The needle bit into my skin once more. The cold liquid surged in. The pain of the contractions spiked into an agonizing crescendo, and then—nothing. I stared at the ceiling, my eyes vacant. I felt the movements inside me slow. The frantic thrashing became a weak flutter. Then, a final, desperate jerk. And then, silence. A silence so absolute it felt like a physical weight. “Heartbeat is gone,” the doctor whispered, his voice cracking. “The fetus is… there are no signs of life.” In that moment, something inside me died, too. I couldn’t tell if I was still dreaming or if the chaos around me was real. “Where’s the family? Who is the emergency contact for Cassidy Harvey?” “The patient is in critical condition! We need a signature for surgery immediately!” There was no answer. Only the hum of machines. A young nurse whispered, “I know her. Isn’t she the Harvey woman? Her husband is Simon Harvey. I saw him leave a few minutes ago. Apparently, the woman in Room 7 wanted bird’s nest soup, and he went home to slow-cook it himself.” Just as the panic reached its peak, a cold, steady voice cut through the noise. “I’ll sign.” 2 The air in the hallway seemed to freeze. The doctor stammered, “And you are…? What is your relation to the patient?” “I’m her… brother-in-law.” The paperwork was handled in a blur. I was rushed back into surgery, a ghost being haunted by living men. When the lights finally dimmed and the scalpels were put away, the surgeons stood over me, their faces grim. “Her will to live is non-existent,” one whispered. “The surgery was a success, but the patient is fading. It’s up to her now.” They were right. I didn’t want to wake up. But as I began to slip into the dark, a man’s voice vibrated near my ear. It wasn’t Simon’s. It was deeper, rougher. “Cassidy. Are you really going to die like this? Pathetic and forgotten?” “The man who killed your child, the man who destroyed you… he’s still out there. He’s breathing. He’s celebrating.” “They’ll be happy if you die. You’re just clearing the path for them. Are you really going to give them exactly what they want?” No. The thought sparked like a dying ember. I couldn’t die. I had to survive. For my son. A nurse gasped. “Her pulse! It’s stabilizing!” “It’s a miracle.” I don’t know how much time passed before I finally opened my eyes. The room was bright, filled only with the rhythmic beeping of monitors. There was no sign of the man who had spoken to me. Since the universe had seen fit to give me back my life, I decided to take it. I stayed in the hospital, letting them pump me full of vitamins and iron, rebuilding my shattered body. A week passed. Simon didn’t visit once. However, he ensured I was “taken care of.” Private nurses, gourmet meals, silk pajamas. The perfect gilded cage. I would listen to the nurses gossiping in the hall, their voices hushed but excited. “That Norma in Room 7 is the luckiest woman alive. Her husband—well, the father—is obsessed with her.” “Shh, that’s not his wife. The woman in Room 6 is the real Mrs. Harvey. Norma is just… the first love.” “I heard he delayed his own wife’s labor just so the mistress’s kid could be the firstborn. The whole hospital is talking about it.” “Money can’t buy a soul, I guess. I’d rather be poor than be that woman in Room 6.” When they realized I was awake and listening, they scurried away like mice. I remained calm. I felt like a frozen lake—smooth on the surface, but with a terrifying, jagged depth beneath. Norma eventually found the strength to waddle over to my room, carrying her son like a trophy. “Oh, Cassidy,” she sighed, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy. “I was so heartbroken to hear about your little one. Such a tragedy.” “I really thought, since we were pregnant at the same time, our boys could grow up like brothers.” She shifted the baby, ensuring I could see his face. “Did Simon tell you? He already picked out the name. Julian. It means ‘youthful’ and ‘strong.’” I looked up at her then. My heart didn’t break; it turned to stone. Julian. Years ago, during our brief “honeymoon” phase, Simon had whispered that name to me while we were curled up in bed. “If we have a son, Cassidy, I want to call him Julian. After my grandfather. It’s a name for a leader.” I had been naive enough to believe him. I didn’t realize back then that every time he called me “Cass,” he was actually reaching for the “Norma” he’d lost. I looked at Norma’s smug face and the child in her arms. “Congratulations,” I said. My voice was as dead as the winter wind. The smile faltered on her lips, her eyes narrowing at my lack of a breakdown. Two weeks later, I was discharged. The first thing I did was return to the Harvey estate. Simon was in the study, looking over some documents. He didn’t even stand up when I walked in. “I figured you’d be back today,” he said. “It’s been over two weeks. I assume your little tantrum is over?” He flicked a check across the mahogany desk. “Your allowance for the month. Buy something expensive. Go to a spa. Just stop moping.” I didn’t touch the paper. “You already gave me a check at the hospital.” Simon raised an eyebrow. “That was… for the child. This is for you.” I let out a soft, jagged laugh. “How generous of you, Simon.” This was his pattern. Every time he crushed a piece of my soul, he tried to buy the silence with a signature. When he threw me out of his car on the highway because Norma called with a “crisis” and I had to walk five miles until my feet were a bloody mess? A million-dollar check. When I took the fall for a scandal Norma caused and was harassed by the press for a month? Five million. And now, for the life of our son? Ten million. I was tired of the game. “Simon, we need to talk—” “Simon!” The study door swung open. Norma walked in, glowing in a silk robe—my silk robe—holding the baby. She froze when she saw me, her expression shifting into a mask of feigned surprise. “Cassidy! You’re home! I didn’t expect you so soon.” I turned to Simon, my voice trembling for the first time. “Why is she in our house?” During the entire pregnancy, I had tolerated their affair. My only boundary, my only request, was that he keep her away from our home. No matter how bad things got, he had always respected that one line. Until now. Now, she was standing in my study, wearing my clothes, likely sleeping in the master suite that got the best morning sun. 3 Simon’s face hardened at my tone. “Norma just had a difficult birth. She’s fragile, and her apartment isn’t suitable for a newborn.” “Besides, her son is the Harvey heir. It’s absurd for him to live anywhere else. This is his legacy.” He stepped toward me, his eyes cold and mocking. “Norma will be living here from now on. If you want to remain the mistress of this house, Cassidy, you’ll have to learn to get along with her.” “If not,” he shrugged, “you’re welcome to move into the old family estate on the outskirts. My brother is the only one who uses it, and he’s never there.” I stood there, surrounded by the ruins of my marriage. Norma stepped forward, her voice a sugary whine. “Cassidy, honey, I hope this isn’t a problem. I never wanted to come between you and Simon. I just… I wanted to be close to him. For the baby’s sake.” Simon wrapped a possessive arm around her waist, his touch tender in a way it had never been with me. “Why are you out of bed?” he murmured to her. “Go rest. Let the nanny handle the baby.” Watching them play house was the final kill. The divorce papers I had planned to demand stayed in my pocket. I wouldn’t just leave. If I left now, I’d leave with nothing but a check and a broken heart. I nodded slowly. “Fine. I’ll move to the old estate.” I turned and walked out without a second glance. Simon hadn’t expected me to fold so easily. I heard him call out behind me, a hint of confusion in his voice. “Cassidy, don’t be dramatic.” Dramatic? I had screamed. I had begged. I had wept at his feet in that delivery room. I had asked him to choose his son over his ego. He had found me “tiresome” then. He found my grief “inconvenient.” Now that I was silent, he didn’t know what to do with me. I stopped at the door and looked back at him. “I’m not being dramatic, Simon. I told you once—I’m willing to give up everything.” Simon flinched. For a fleeting second, his face went pale. He was remembering the hospital—remembering me on the floor, losing my dignity as I begged for our child’s life. “Please, I’ll give Norma everything… just save him.” He looked as if someone had just tightened a hand around his throat. But the moment passed, and I walked away. I went to our room to pack. The maid stood by, looking terrified. “Just a few suitcases of clothes,” I instructed her. “Leave the rest. Leave everything.” Norma would want it all anyway. My things would only be an eyesore in her new life. When I got into the car, the driver asked quietly, “To the old estate, ma’am?” I looked back at the house—the house I had tried to turn into a home. Through the window, I saw the silhouette of Norma leaning into Simon’s chest. I closed my eyes. “The old estate.” After all, I wasn’t going to be alone there. I was going to find my only remaining ally. 4 That night, I arrived at the sprawling, gothic mansion on the edge of the city. I dismissed the staff and didn’t go to the bedroom. Instead, I walked down the long, dim hallway to the library. In three years of marriage, I had never stepped foot in this wing. This was the domain of Simon’s older brother, Dominic. The two brothers were at war. A brutal, silent struggle for control of the Harvey empire. Simon had warned me a thousand times: “Don’t speak to Dominic. Don’t go near him. He’s a vulture.” For three years, I had obeyed. I had crossed the street to avoid Dominic. But after dying on that operating table, I realized who the real vulture was. I knocked three times. The heavy oak door creaked open. Dominic stood there, his gold-rimmed glasses catching the light. He looked at me with genuine shock. “Cassidy?” He looked past me, searching for Simon. When he saw I was alone, a slow, dark smirk spread across his face. “Well, this is a surprise.” “Simon isn’t here, yet here you are… knocking on my door in the middle of the night.” I didn’t blink. “He kicked me out.” Dominic’s smirk faded. He leaned against the doorframe, studying me. “And you came to me? Why?” I looked at his face—cold, sharp, but fundamentally honest. I didn’t play games. “Dominic, I never got to thank you for signing my surgery papers at the hospital. You saved my life.” “I’m here to show you my gratitude.” Dominic froze. He looked at me for a long beat, then let out a short, dry laugh. “Interesting. And how do you plan to do that?” Dominic was the true firstborn of the Harvey family. But because his mother had died young, the old patriarch had sent him abroad, leaving the path clear for Simon’s mother to maneuver her son into the CEO’s chair. Everyone knew they hated each other. “I know where the bodies are buried,” I said, stepping into his office. “I know everything Simon has done.” “Dominic, I know you’re not the villain he made you out to be. The company should have been yours. Simon stole it, and I am going to help you take it back. Every single cent.” I met his eyes. “No one knows his weaknesses better than I do.” His gaze was no longer mocking. It was calculating. “And what do you want in return?” “Justice for my son,” I said, my voice like iron. “Simon killed my baby. I want him to feel what it’s like to lose everything. I want him disgraced. I want him bankrupt. I want him to watch as his world turns to ash.” Dominic stared at me for a long time. Just as I thought he would turn me away, he reached out and took my hand. “Welcome to the team, Cassidy.” A week later, Simon showed up at the old estate. He acted as if nothing had happened. “Arrange a family dinner for three days from now,” he commanded. “I’m bringing Norma and Julian. It’s time they were formally introduced to the elders.” He wanted to legitimize his mistress. He wanted to rub his bastard son in my face in front of the entire Harvey clan. In the past, I would have collapsed. I would have screamed at him. Now, I just nodded. “Of course. I’ll make the arrangements.” My compliance seemed to please him. “You’re finally growing up, Cassidy,” he said, patting my shoulder. “You’re starting to act like a real Harvey wife.” Three days later, at the family gala. “Everyone,” Simon announced, his voice booming with pride as he stood in the center of the ballroom. “I’d like to introduce Norma. She has given the Harvey family its greatest gift—my firstborn son, Julian. From now on, they will reside in the main estate as my family.” He beamed at Norma, his eyes full of that sickening, soft devotion. Norma leaned into him, cradling the baby, soaking in the polite applause and the shocked whispers of the elders. She looked at me, her eyes dancing with malice. Simon walked over to me, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Cassidy, as my wife, I expect you to help raise Julian as your own. He is, after all, the only heir to the Harvey name.” He was waiting for me to break. He was waiting for the show. Instead, I took a slow sip of my champagne and looked him dead in the eye. “Simon,” I said clearly. “Do you have a humiliation fetish?” The room went silent. Simon’s smile vanished. “What did you just say?” I smiled, and it was the sharpest thing in the room. “I mean, why else would you be standing there, proudly holding another man’s child and calling it your heir?”

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The first trip we took after officially declaring our feelings for each other ended in a mess of shattered glass and twisted metal. When I finally blinked my eyes open, the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital room momentarily blinded me. And then, there was Spencer. He was sitting by my bedside, his handsome face etched with a textbook display of agonizing worry. Seeing him like that, a sudden, mischievous spark ignited in my chest. I decided to play a little game. Feigning a perfectly blank, confused stare, I tilted my head and whispered, “Who are you?” Spencer froze. The breath hitched in his throat. Underneath the blanket, I was secretly smiling. I remembered the frantic, desperate way he had confessed his love to me just days ago. Now that I had conveniently “lost my memory,” how would he play it? Would he immediately claim the title of boyfriend? Or would he skip the formalities and call himself my future husband? I was biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. But then, the air in the room seemed to turn to ice. “I’m your fiancé,” Spencer said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “But, to be completely honest with you… there are no real feelings between us.” My heart stopped. Before I could even process the words, he pulled out his phone and turned the screen toward me. Staring back at me was a photo of a girl. She looked timid, frail, drowning in an oversized sweater. I recognized her vaguely—she was a charity case his family’s philanthropic foundation had put through college. “This is the woman I actually love,” Spencer continued, his tone conversational, as if he were discussing the weather. “You know how it is with our families. This marriage is just a boardroom merger. We’ve always agreed to live our own separate lives.” Separate lives? If that was the case, there was absolutely no reason for this wedding to happen. Without a second of hesitation in my heart, I knew the engagement was over. But as time went on, I would learn a bitter truth about Spencer Harrington: he was a man who wanted to play a game he couldn’t afford to lose, and no matter how hard I tried to throw him away, he just wouldn’t let go. [1] After pulling the doctor aside to confirm that retrograde amnesia was indeed a plausible side effect of my concussion, Spencer walked back to my bed. “I brought you on this trip specifically to confess this to you,” he said, his eyes darting away from mine, unable to hold my gaze. “But don’t worry. I am still going to marry you.” A fiery, suffocating rage clawed at my throat. “If your heart belongs to someone else, why the hell would you marry me?” I reached blindly for my phone on the nightstand. “Tell me which one of these contacts is my father. I’m calling him right now. The wedding is off.” “Don’t!” Spencer lunged forward, his fingers clamping down hard around my wrist. Our eyes locked. For a fraction of a second, I saw raw, unfiltered panic flash in his irises. A tiny, pathetic ember of hope flared in my chest. Was it a joke? Was he just trying to get back at me for my amnesia prank? But before that pathetic joy could even begin to warm me, Spencer shattered it. “Can you stop being so damn impulsive?” he snapped. “Do you have any idea how many millions in capital our families will bleed if we call off this merger now?” He leaned closer, his jaw tight. “You are the golden child of the Prescott family. Nobody will ever point a finger at you. But what about my love? What about Paige? She’s just a girl from a trailer park who relies on my foundation. If the press digs into our relationship, they’ll tear her apart. What is she supposed to do?” A wave of absolute bitterness flooded my mouth. I wanted to scream at him: And what about me? What am I supposed to do? Am I just the sacrificial lamb for your trust fund? Suddenly, Spencer seemed to remember that I was the one who had just been pulled from a car wreck. His gaze dropped to my wrist, which was now turning a violent shade of red under his grip. A flicker of remorse crossed his face. He let go. “I know you’re a perfectionist. I know you hate the idea of sharing,” he said, his voice softening into something patronizing. “Just relax. I’m going to send her abroad soon. We’ll never see each other again.” He left the room shortly after. I didn’t say a single word. I couldn’t. For over a decade, we had been the perfect high-society cliché—childhood sweethearts destined for the altar. I had honestly believed the feelings were mutual. It turned out I was just a fool living in an echo chamber of my own devotion. Spencer Harrington’s heart had been given away a long time ago. “What the hell is going on with you?” Around midnight, hushed voices drifted through the crack in my hospital door. “You literally just confessed your dying love to Caroline Prescott,” one of his fraternity brothers was whispering fiercely. “And now you’re telling us Paige is your girlfriend?” “I’ve been engaged to Caroline since we were kids. She looks at me like I hung the moon. I figured it was just time I said the words…” Spencer’s voice drifted through the gap, sounding utterly detached. “But then yesterday, Paige texted me. She said she wanted to die.” Spencer’s tone suddenly shifted, filling with an anxious, vibrating energy. “I didn’t realize how much she depended on me.” “Paige is so fragile. She’s constantly terrified of losing me. I need to give her a love that is entirely, exclusively hers.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The moment my bare toes touched the freezing linoleum floor, a physical ache shot through my heart. “So what about Caroline?” the friend asked. “I’m not going to string them both along,” Spencer reasoned, sounding disgustingly righteous. “I just want to spend this last stretch of time with Paige. I need to teach her how to stand on her own two feet. Then I’ll set up a trust for her, give her enough money to be comfortable, and send her far away. I’ll never see her again.” “And Caroline?” “Caroline and I are a done deal. Our marriage is set in stone. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her.” My heart flatlined. It was completely, utterly dead. I tilted my head back, staring at the sterile ceiling tiles, refusing to let a single tear fall for a man who wasn’t worth the salt. Spencer, if you knew I was a perfectionist, if you knew I wouldn’t accept a tarnished love… why did you ever think you could test my limits? I picked up my phone and opened the text thread with my dad. [Cancel the engagement with the Harringtons.] [2] I sat frozen on the edge of the bed until dawn broke. When my phone finally buzzed, my father’s anxious voice filled my ear. “Sweetheart? Aren’t you and Spencer on vacation? I thought you two were practically walking down the aisle. Why the sudden cancellation?” I stayed silent for a long moment. I had spent the entire night tearing my heart apart and stitching it back together. The conclusion was simple: over ten years of unrequited longing had amounted to absolutely nothing. I refused to force a lock that didn’t fit my key. I forced a casual, breezy tone. “I hate the voice he uses on his car’s GPS. We’re just not compatible, Dad.” My father, Richard Prescott, loved me more than anything in this world. Hearing my flippant excuse, he just let out a low, knowing chuckle. “Honestly, it’s fine. I’ve been looking to expand our European portfolio anyway. If you’re done with this wedding nonsense, I’ll have the staff open up the estate in Lake Geneva tomorrow.” I didn’t mention Paige’s name. The girl had clawed her way out of crushing poverty; maybe she wasn’t inherently malicious. A second after I hung up, my phone vibrated. A new friend request on social media. It was Paige. The moment I accepted, without a single word of greeting, she bombarded me with photos. The first image was of Spencer and Paige crammed into a tiny, claustrophobic studio apartment. The rickety table was covered in food—all of it bland, steamed, and entirely devoid of spice. But Spencer loved heat. He loved rich, complex, scorching flavors. [He cooked every single dish,] Paige’s message pinged right after. [I can’t handle spicy food, so he compromises for me. Even though he’s eating bland food, as long as he looks up and sees me smiling, he’s happy.] My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t like spicy food either. But whenever my eyes watered from the heat of a dish at a Michelin-starred restaurant, Spencer would just prop his chin on his hand and laugh at me. “If you can’t even handle a little chili, how are you going to survive being the Harrington matriarch?” he used to tease. I had always thought it was just playful banter. Now I realized the truth: he had been conditioning me to accept a life where I would never be prioritized. My fingers trembled as I tapped on the second photo. It was a pair of matching vintage Cartier watches. The kind where if you wound one, the other would sync, even across the world. [This was the gift you begged him for when you turned eighteen. It’s a shame. I told him I thought they were pretty, so he gave them to me instead.] A memory hit me like a physical blow. When I had asked Spencer for those watches, he had tapped my nose affectionately and laughed. “In such a rush to mark your territory? I thought you were going to cancel the engagement the second you became an adult.” I had been so sure he was going to buy them for me that I had pretended to be annoyed and never brought it up again. But at my eighteenth birthday gala, he had gifted me a custom diamond necklace featuring stones sourced from four different continents. “Those watches are so cliché,” he had told me back then. “This necklace actually means something.” I had been so swept up in the romance of him traveling the world for my diamonds. I only just realized he had meticulously redirected my interest so I wouldn’t find out he had already given the watches to Paige. As I scrolled through the photos, the last remaining warmth in my blood turned to ice. [Miss Prescott, is it really that fun guarding a man who doesn’t even love you?] When I didn’t reply fast enough, her impatience bled through the screen. I let out a dry, hollow laugh. My fingers moved steadily over the keyboard. [I’m so sorry, but I suffered a head injury in a car crash and have retrograde amnesia. I have no idea who you are, and my memories of Spencer are pretty blurry.] [All I know is that when I woke up, he insisted we were getting married, and promised me he was shipping you off to another country very soon.] Paige went dead silent for several agonizing minutes. Finally, a single message popped up. [You are out of your league. You can’t beat me.] I frowned at the screen. Beat her? Who the hell was trying to compete? A split second later, the hospital room door slammed open. Spencer stormed in, his eyes blazing with fury. “Didn’t I tell you I was going to marry you? Why the hell are you still torturing Paige?!” Before I could even open my mouth, Spencer lunged at me and violently ripped the IV needle out of the back of my hand. “Paige tried to kill herself! She’s in hypovolemic shock right now. I know your blood type matches hers. You are coming with me right now to give her a transfusion!” I recoiled, clutching my bleeding hand. “What does her suicide attempt have to do with me?” Spencer stared at me, his expression a twisted mess of anger and disgust. “Caroline, you knew exactly how fragile her mental state is. Yet you purposely texted her, bragging that I was going to send her away.” “I already promised you I wouldn’t see her after the wedding. Why did you have to push her over the edge right now?” “This is your fault. You are going to take responsibility for it.” I swallowed the heavy, suffocating lump of betrayal in my throat. I looked him dead in the eye and enunciated every word. “The doctor explicitly said I need bed rest after the concussion—” A cruel, mocking smirk twisted Spencer’s lips. His chest was heaving. “Cut the crap. At the end of the day, you just want her dead, don’t you? Why couldn’t you just give her a few more months?” His voice dropped into a terrifyingly low register. “Does a human life mean absolutely nothing to you?” I sat completely frozen. Over a decade of history. A childhood spent side by side. And it wasn’t enough to buy me even a singular ounce of his trust. Ignoring my desperate screams, Spencer dragged me out of the bed, hauled me up to the hospital roof, and shoved me into his family’s private helicopter. My concussion was still raging. The violent vibrations of the chopper blades made the world spin until I thought my skull would crack open. The moment we landed at his private medical facility, he yanked me out and practically dragged me down the sterile hallways. He pinned me down into the phlebotomy chair. It was only when the freezing wipe of the alcohol swab hit my arm that I finally found my voice. “Spencer, are you out of your goddamn mind?” The attending doctor noticed my pale, trembling state. After drawing only a fraction of a bag, he immediately stopped the line. “Mr. Harrington, this young woman’s current physical trauma makes her an unsuitable donor for a full extraction.” The doctor pointed to two full bags of blood already sitting on the counter. “Besides, we already have enough for Paige’s immediate needs, and the blood bank courier is ten minutes away.” Spencer’s eyes finally dragged themselves to my ghostly white face. A flicker of hesitation crossed his features, and his brow furrowed. [3] Suddenly, a pathetic, trembling whimper echoed from the observation room next door. It was Paige. Spencer’s demeanor shifted instantly. All hesitation vanished. “Keep drawing,” he ordered coldly. “Paige is the one actively dying.” “Caroline, you made this mess. You pay the price.” As he watched my lips slowly turn a bruised shade of purple, Spencer seemed to waver. He reached out and gently rested his hand over mine. “Just hold on a little longer. It’s almost over,” he murmured, his tone dripping with a sudden, sickening gentleness. “I just needed you to learn a lesson. You shouldn’t have bullied her.” Revolted, I violently ripped my hand out from under his. I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look at him for a second longer. Spencer let out a heavy sigh. He pulled out his phone and made a call. “That hyper-exclusive restorative stem-cell infusion they were auctioning off tonight? Call the concierge doctor. Tell him I’m buying it. Whatever the price.” I slowly faded into unconsciousness. When I woke up, the private suite was empty. The only thing in the room was a steaming cup of an artisanal herbal restorative tea resting on my bedside table. My body felt like lead, but I forced myself up. I didn’t even glance at the cup. I shoved my feet into my shoes and staggered toward the door, desperate to leave. As I passed the room next to mine, a weak, raspy voice called out. It was Paige. I paused for a fraction of a second, but I didn’t turn around. I had no interest in her games. But as I took my next step, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air behind me. “Ah! It’s burning!” I instinctively whipped around. Paige was sitting up in bed, having just deliberately upended a scalding cup of boiling herbal broth entirely over her own forearm. “Caroline!” Spencer’s roar echoed from the end of the hallway. He sprinted into the room, grabbing my shoulder and violently shoving me inside with him. “When the hell are you going to stop?!” Spencer’s eyes were practically alight with fury. “You can’t even leave a dying patient alone?” I watched as he frantically grabbed sterile gauze, his hands trembling as he delicately tended to her burns. Suddenly, I just felt bone-deep exhaustion. I looked right past him, fixing my gaze on Paige’s eyes. My voice was eerily calm. “I am not marrying Spencer. You can drop the act.” Spencer’s hands froze. After a few agonizing seconds, he slowly stood up. A patronizing, mocking smile touched the corners of his mouth. “The doctor said your amnesia was temporary.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a worn, leather-bound notebook. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it onto the bed in front of me. “When you finally remember how desperately you used to love me, you’ll regret saying something so incredibly stupid.” My heart violently spasmed. It was my diary. The one I had shyly pressed into his hands the night he confessed to me. Its pages were filled with a decade’s worth of agonizing, embarrassing, heartfelt declarations of love that I had been too terrified to say out loud. And now, he was using my own vulnerable, teenage heart as a weapon to humiliate me. I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, but the tears spilled over anyway, hot and unstoppable. Spencer kept going. “If you ever go back to being the kind, graceful Caroline Prescott I knew, I will respect you, love you, and protect you just like I used to.” “But look at you now. You’re so consumed by jealousy you don’t even care if someone dies.” “Selfish. Vicious… When did you turn into such a monster?” I was choking on my own sobs, completely unable to form a word in my defense. “She has always been exactly who she is.” A deep, commanding voice suddenly cut through the heavy air from the doorway. “She has always been a proud princess. And princesses never bow their heads. You are the one who failed her.” [4] The man who walked into the room was dressed in the tailored black suit of the Prescott family security detail, but he moved with an unmistakable, overwhelming aura of aristocratic authority. He stepped between us, shielding me completely from Spencer’s view, and pulled me into a protective embrace. “I apologize for the delay, Ms. Prescott.” I quickly wiped my face, swallowed my tears, and looked over the bodyguard’s broad shoulder at Spencer. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice finally steady. “How desperately did I love you? I guess I just can’t remember.” Without another word, I turned on my heel. In my peripheral vision, I caught a rare flash of genuine panic on Spencer’s face. He took a step forward, as if to chase after me. “Spencer… my arm… it hurts so much…” Paige’s fragile, trembling voice echoed from the bed. Spencer stopped. He didn’t follow me. As I crossed the threshold out of the ward, I grabbed the leather diary off the edge of the bed and dropped it straight into the biohazard trash bin. After that day, I severed all contact with Spencer Harrington. I was busy packing my life into boxes; he was busy giving Paige his “exclusive” love. A few days later, the high-end bridal atelier on Fifth Avenue sent me a text. The bespoke wedding dress I had spent months personally designing was finally finished. It hit me then—our grand society wedding was supposed to be exactly one week away. Even though I knew I would never walk down the aisle in it, I had poured my soul into that design. I just wanted to see it one last time. Inside the hushed, velvet-lined boutique, the gown shimmered under the spotlights, an absolute masterpiece of silk and hand-sewn pearls. My fingers were trembling as I gently grazed the tulle. “I thought you said you weren’t marrying him? Clearly, you’re still obsessing.” I turned around. It was Paige. Again. “I came to say goodbye to my art,” I said coolly. “I have zero interest in keeping a man whose loyalty comes with an asterisk.” “It’s just a shame this dress is going to waste.” I let out a sharp, dismissive laugh. “If you want it so badly, it’s yours. Take it.” To my surprise, Paige didn’t look insulted. Her eyes lit up with a terrifying, greedy hunger. She actually stepped forward, reaching out to touch the fabric. I sighed, shaking my head. In a way, her delusion was pathetic. At the end of the day, Spencer was the architect of this entire disaster. But I vastly underestimated the depths of Paige’s malice. The moment she leaned over the bodice, her breathing hitched. She began gasping violently, her knees buckling as she collapsed onto the plush carpet. Panicking, I dropped to my knees beside her. “What’s wrong with you?” “Paige!” Before I could even touch her, I was violently shoved backward. Spencer had arrived. Paige’s lips were turning blue, but as she looked up at me, I caught a fleeting, unmistakable gleam of absolute triumph in her eyes. “Ms. Prescott… she said…” Paige gasped, clutching her chest. “She said since you were shipping me away… I should at least get to see the wedding dress…” “I was so jealous… I just wanted to touch it… but suddenly… my asthma…” Spencer’s hands flew over the dress. He noticed a faint dusting of fine powder on the silk neckline. He brought his fingers to his nose, and then his eyes snapped to mine, sharp and lethal. “Hazelnut dust. Paige has a severe tree nut allergy. You did this on purpose!” He screamed for his driver to get the car ready to rush her to the ER. I shook my head, utterly bewildered. “I literally already told you I am not marrying you! Why on earth would I go out of my way to hurt her?” Spencer, his face darkened with absolute rage, ignored my words completely. He raised his hand and slapped me hard across the cheek. “Liar! You’re literally standing here hovering over your wedding dress, and you’re still lying to my face!” “I gave you my word that I would send her away! Why couldn’t you just let her live?!” He grabbed me by the arm, dragging me toward the back of the boutique, and shoved me into the windowless, soundproof VIP fitting room. Then, he hit the light switch. “Spencer, you bastard, you know I’m claustrophobic!” I screamed, slamming my fists against the heavy oak door. The room was pitch black, sealed tighter than a vault. Spencer didn’t say a word. Through the suffocating darkness, the tiny red light of the smoke detector blinked rhythmically. My heart began to pound against my ribs like a trapped bird. When I was ten years old, I had been kidnapped and locked in a shipping container. The trauma had left me with paralyzing claustrophobia. Back then, my parents had been too busy dealing with the fallout and the police. It was Spencer who had snuck into my bedroom every single night, holding my hand until the night terrors passed. “Don’t be afraid,” he used to whisper in the dark. “I’m right here. You never have to be scared again.” But now, separated by a heavy wooden door, his voice was ice-cold. “Sit in the dark and think about what you did today. Maybe it will teach you to stop torturing Paige.” My lungs seized. The panic attack hit me like a freight train. I collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, gasping for air that wasn’t there. “I never touched her! I swear I didn’t! I’ll leave! I’ll never look at you again! Please, just let me out!” My begged screams were cut off by the muffled voice of Spencer’s driver in the hallway. “Sir, she’s fading fast. She keeps crying, saying she just wants to see you one last time before she dies.” The footsteps rapidly faded away. I was left entirely alone, shivering violently in the pitch black. I don’t know how many hours passed. My nails were bloody from scratching at the door. Finally, light flooded the room. It wasn’t Spencer. It was the bodyguard from the hospital. And standing right behind him was my father. Seeing me curled up on the floor, covered in sweat and shivering, a flash of pure, agonizing heartbreak crossed the bodyguard’s stoic face. My father was shaking with a wrath I had never seen before. “My daughter has been treated like absolute garbage, and I am only finding out about this now?!” Right before I blacked out from the exhaustion, I heard my father issue a quiet, terrifying order to his right-hand man. “That zoning intel from the governor’s office? Don’t warn the Harringtons. Let them sink their entire fortune into bidding on that plot of land.” My father knelt down, his warm hand gently brushing the matted hair from my forehead. “Oh, my sweet girl. I thought you were just throwing a tantrum about the wedding. I haven’t even officially broken the news to the Harrington board yet. But since Spencer is so desperately in love with that little viper…” His voice dropped into a lethal whisper. “This wedding is going to be my grand gift to the happy couple. I hope they’re ready to choke on it.”

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My own mother was catfishing eight different men online, simultaneously, using my face. In my past life, I begged her to stop before it was too late. She just rolled her eyes, waving me off with a manicured hand. “Relax, Natalie,” she scoffed. “Your mother is just a hopeless romantic. I’m only in it for the love, not the money!” But when those eight men—drained of their life savings and armed with actual machetes—showed up at our front porch, she had already packed her bags. She and my younger brother fled in the dead of night, taking every last cent. I was left behind to drown in millions of dollars of astronomical debt, branded a gold-digging whore by the entire internet. Driven to the absolute edge, with no way out, I climbed to the roof of my apartment building and threw myself off. My soul hovered in the cold air, suspended over the pavement, watching as my mother and brother rolled up to my shattered corpse in a brand-new Porsche. She looked down at me and laughed. “Well, gravity is a hell of an eraser!” she smirked. “With you dead, there’s no proof. That eight million your brother took is completely safe now.” She leaned closer to my ruined body, her eyes devoid of anything resembling maternal warmth. “Try to be born into money next time, sweetie. And whatever you do, don’t get in your brother’s way.” Then, I blinked. And I was back on the exact day I first discovered her little online game. … 1 “Daddy, come save your little princess, I’m so scared~” The sickeningly sweet, artificially high-pitched voice hit my ears the second I opened my eyes. I jolted upright. Sitting on the edge of the bed was my fifty-year-old mother, Donna, pinching her throat to sound like a helpless co-ed into her iPhone microphone. Hearing the exact same dialogue from my previous life, a cold realization washed over me. I was back. I had been reborn. “Jesus, Natalie! Don’t creep in here like a ghost without knocking!” Donna flinched so hard she nearly dropped the phone on her face. On her glowing screen was a selfie of me. It had been run through at least a dozen editing apps, making my skin look porcelain and my lips unnervingly pouty. In my past life, this was the moment I started shaking with rage. I had lunged for the phone, trying to delete her accounts. My reward had been a sharp slap across the face. This time, I stood perfectly still. Seeing my silence, Donna immediately pivoted to playing the victim. “What are you staring at? Your mother is just looking for a little emotional support!” She clutched her chest dramatically. “Ever since your father left, my heart has been an empty gaping hole! I sit in this dead, quiet house all day. Who cares if I live or die? So what if I’m getting older? What’s the crime in using your picture to make a few friends?” I looked at her self-righteous sneer, swallowing down the toxic, burning hatred that threatened to spill out of my eyes. Instead, I let out a soft sigh, walked over to the bed, and gently took her hand. “Mom, you misunderstood.” My voice was a whisper. “I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to support you.” Donna froze. “What did you just say?” I pulled out my phone and opened Zelle. Ding. Five thousand dollars instantly hit her checking account. “Mom, take this for now. I was going to buy you that physical therapy machine, but you need this more.” I kept my voice incredibly gentle, laced with the exact kind of daughterly devotion she exploited. “You’re right. A woman has the right to pursue love at any age.” Donna stared at the numbers on her screen, the wrinkles around her eyes crinkling into a massive, greedy smile. “Oh, my sweet girl! You’ve finally opened your eyes!” She practically vibrated with excitement, immediately transferring the funds into her high-yield savings. “Don’t you worry, Mom is just chatting with these guys. Playing some video games. I promise I won’t do anything crazy!” Watching her gorge herself on the money, a quiet, cold laugh echoed in my chest. “There is one thing I should warn you about, though, Mom.” I gently placed my hand over hers, stopping her scrolling. “You’re using my photos right now, right?” Donna instantly recoiled, defensive. “Yeah, so? Are you trying to take the money back?” I shook my head, leaning in closer, lowering my voice like a conspirator. “Mom, you’re taking money from these men. What if one of them turns out to be a psycho and traces your banking info? If you use your own ID and bank account, they’re going to find out you’re a fifty-year-old woman. Not only will your cover be blown, but they might call the cops and have you arrested for fraud.” All the color drained from Donna’s face. She slapped her thigh. “Oh my god, you’re right! What—what do I do? I just got eight new sugar daddies this week, and I was about to ask them for a thousand-dollar ‘welcome gift’ each!” “It’s an easy fix.” I walked over to the nightstand, pulled open the drawer, and took out a stack of debit cards. “Use Chase’s SSN and his bank accounts to set up your Venmo and Cash App.” They were empty accounts my brother, Chase, had left lying around the last time he had to dodge his bookies. “A guy’s identity is the safest,” I explained smoothly. “Even if things blow up later, when they see the money went to a guy named Chase, they’ll just assume they got scammed by some teenage gamer bro. And frankly, men have egos. If they realize they got played by another man, they’ll be too embarrassed to ever go to the police or make a public fuss.” I held her gaze, enunciating every word. “Besides, Chase is going to need a house and a wedding ring soon. If you collect the money directly into his accounts, you’re just saving it up for his future. Isn’t that perfect?” The moment the words left my mouth, Donna physically trembled. A feral, avaricious light exploded in her eyes. “Yes! Yes! My brilliant daughter!” She shoved her phone into my hands. “Quick, quick, show me how to change it! Frankie just said he wants to send me an allowance!” I nodded obediently. For the next thirty minutes, I methodically went through every single social media account, gaming profile, and payment app on her phone. I linked every last one to Chase’s social security number and his checking accounts. “All done, Mom. You can ask for whatever you want now. It’s completely untraceable to you.” Donna snatched the phone back, instantly holding down the voice memo button. Her voice pitched up into that nauseating baby-doll whine. “Frankie~ I really need my venti strawberry-crème pink drink! Don’t forget the extra sugar pumps, daddy!” “I’m so sad today… I think only a $5,200 transfer will make me smile again~” Listening to a woman with severe Type-2 diabetes demand full-sugar syrup, I turned and walked out of the room. “Cash App received: $5,200.” The crisp notification chime echoed through the door, followed by Donna’s unhinged, hysterical laughter. Laugh, Mom. Laugh it up. I just hope you and Chase are ready to catch this windfall. 2 The moment I pushed open the front door later that afternoon, Donna was already screaming from the living room. “Where the hell is my delivery? Frankie is waiting for a selfie of me drinking my pink drink!” I handed her the sweating plastic cup. “Right here.” Donna snatched it, stabbed the straw through the lid, and took a massive, gulping sip. “Mom, your diabetes is out of control, and your blood pressure is high. That cup is pure corn syrup and artificial dyes.” “What do you know?!” she snapped. “Frankie says he likes his girls sweet!” Suddenly, her eyes darted to me. She shoved the half-empty cup into my hands. “You know what, Mom shouldn’t be drinking this. Here, sweetie, this is for you! See how good I am to you?” I looked at the fake, plastic smile plastered across her face. I knew exactly what she was doing. Sure enough, a second later, she raised her phone, subtly aiming the camera at me. She needed a body double for her selfies. I didn’t expose her. Instead, I submissively took the drink. As I lowered my head to sip from the straw, I tilted my face just slightly, widened my eyes, and gave the camera a look of pure, innocent vulnerability. Click. After slapping a dozen soft-focus filters onto the photo she secretly took of me, Donna hit send. The reply came in seconds. A $500 Venmo notification. Attached note: Drink up, baby. I like you with a little meat on your bones. That look in your eyes is killing me. Before Donna could even type a reply— Crash. The front door was kicked open. My brother, Chase, swaggered in, sporting bleach-blonde hair and a permanent smirk of entitlement. “Mom, give me two grand. I’m taking the boys out drinking tonight.” He didn’t even glance in my direction, just held out his open palm like he was collecting taxes. Instead of scolding him, Donna practically vibrated with joy, waving him over. “Baby boy! Come look at how much Mom made for you today!” Chase leaned over her shoulder. His eyes bulged at the screen. “Holy shit! Thirty grand?! Did you rob a bank?” “Robbing a bank doesn’t pay this well!” Donna gloated, shaking the phone. “This is allowance money from Mom’s new online boyfriends! And it’s all sitting right in your checking account!” Chase lost his mind. He grabbed Donna and planted a huge kiss on her cheek. “Mom, you are a literal genius! You’re a walking ATM!” He turned, his eyes landing on me with absolute disgust. “Unlike Natalie, the useless parasite. Going to her stupid corporate job every day, working herself to the bone for a pathetic six grand a month. Looking like a beggar.” Donna nodded in profound agreement. “Exactly. Raising her is less useful than raising a dog.” I stood in the corner, holding the iced drink. I said nothing. Suddenly, a FaceTime Audio call lit up Donna’s screen. Caller ID: Preston (NYC Trust Fund) Without thinking, Donna tapped accept. Instantly, a furious, aggressive male voice blasted through the speaker: “Natalie! Why the hell did you sound like a chainsmoking seventy-year-old hag on that last voice note?!” “Are you fucking kidding me? Are you some old bitch stealing photos?!” The living room fell into a dead, suffocating silence. Donna trembled violently, nearly dropping the phone. The gig was up. The guy was about to explode. I moved. I snatched the phone from Donna’s hand and instantly hung up the call. Without a word, I walked into the bathroom. I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse, exposing my collarbone. I ran my fingers under the faucet and slicked a few strands of wet hair against my skin. Keeping my face hidden in the shadows, I snapped a dark, suggestive photo of my neck and jawline. Send. Then, I held down the voice memo button. I lowered my voice until it was perfectly raspy, laced with breathless indignation. “Preston, I just got out of the shower. I swallowed water and my throat is killing me.” “If you’re going to talk to me like that, don’t ever call me again.” I released the button. Sent. Donna and Chase were huddled by the doorframe, entirely paralyzed, barely breathing. Five seconds later. The screen lit up. Wire Transfer Initiated: $100,000. Three frantic voice notes followed in quick succession, the arrogance completely stripped from the man’s voice. “Baby, I’m so sorry! I’m an idiot, I was raging at a video game and took it out on you!” “I’m booking a flight tomorrow. I have to see you next month. I swear I’ll make it up to you!” Staring at the endless string of zeros on the screen, Chase threw himself at the phone, clutching it to his chest like a life preserver. “One hundred grand… Mom! He dropped a hundred grand in one click!” Donna’s spine straightened. Her heavy body trembled with the sheer adrenaline of sudden wealth. “Chase! If money is this easy to take, we’re going big!” She gritted her teeth, a feral, emerald glint in her eyes. “Didn’t Brittany say she wouldn’t marry you unless we bought a new house? Forget a mortgage. Mom is going to use these idiots’ money to buy you a penthouse in the city. Cash!” “Next month, we are throwing the biggest, most expensive engagement party this state has ever seen!” Chase was slapping his own thighs in ecstasy. “Yes! We are doing it! Let all our broke-ass relatives see who Chase really is!” The mother and son practically wept with joy, feverishly planning which luxury cars to lease and which zip codes to buy into. I picked up the mop from the corner, slowly pushing it across the cheap linoleum floor to clean up a water stain. The repetitive, quiet motion anchored me. “Mom is right,” I chimed in softly, keeping my eyes down. “It’s Chase’s big day. We can’t look cheap. If these guys love you so much, it’s only right that they chip in.” Donna sneered, kicking a piece of lint toward me. “Glad you finally understand your place. For the next few weeks, your only job is taking photos for me to keep them on the hook. If you do well, I’ll let you have the leftovers from the catering.” I kept my head down. The mop moved in a steady figure-eight. “Okay.” I just hoped you both would still be breathing by the time those leftovers were served. 3 Over the next two weeks, Donna went absolutely feral. To scrape together the millions needed for Chase’s “wedding of the century” and the cash-paid penthouse, she was online twenty-four hours a day. Her excuses morphed from buying bubble tea into utterly deranged, high-stakes cons. “Frankie, my mom is in liver failure! I need fifty grand for the transplant!” “Preston, baby, my family’s business just filed Chapter 11. I need two million for payroll or the feds are going to take our house!” I watched from the sidelines, perfectly still, as she played with fire. Her targets weren’t just lonely old men. There was the Manhattan trust-fund baby, a ruthless loan shark, and the CEO of a tech multinational. Donna was essentially walking into a tiger’s cage covered in raw meat. But she didn’t care. Watching the balance in Chase’s checking account rocket toward the eight-million-dollar mark, both mother and son had completely lost their grip on reality. “Natalie! Get in here! Record a voice note for Mick—make it sound like you’re crying!” Donna kicked open my bedroom door. I looked at her twisted, greed-swollen face and took a deep breath. It was time. I grabbed a stack of printed bank statements I had prepared and shot up from my chair. I forced my hands to shake, mimicking absolute terror. “Mom! You have to stop!” I forced tears into my eyes, my voice shrill and panicked. “Eight million dollars! This is felony wire fraud! You are going to federal prison!” “Before they realize what’s going on, we have to wire the money back! If you don’t, you’re going to ruin Chase’s life!” Smack! A stinging backhand whipped across my jaw. Chase had stormed into the room. He glared at me with pure, unadulterated venom. “You jealous bitch! You just can’t stand that I’m rich now, can you?!” “Wire it back? Why the fuck would we wire it back?! That’s Mom’s hard-earned money!” Donna charged at me, her thick finger practically jabbing into my eyeball. “You worthless parasite! You just want to see us miserable!” “Let me tell you something! This money is for Chase’s future! If anyone tries to touch a single dime of it, I will kill them myself!” I clutched my burning cheek, letting the tears spill over. “Mom! I’m trying to protect you! These men are dangerous! If they track us down—” “Shut your mouth!” Donna ripped the bank statements out of my hands and shredded them to pieces. “Track us down how? Through the internet? They don’t know who the hell I am!” “Besides, the accounts are in Chase’s name! It has nothing to do with me!” She spun around and kicked me hard in the shin. “Get out! Pack your shit and get out!” “I’m sick of looking at your miserable face! If you can’t be happy for us, you are dead to me!” Within minutes, she and Chase grabbed my suitcase and violently threw it out the front door. Slam. The deadbolt clicked. From inside, the muffled sound of their hysterical laughter bled through the wood. “Ignore that psycho, Mom! We’re going to the dealership tomorrow to pick up the Porsche!” “Damn right we are! And the engagement party? We’re renting out the entire Grand Magnolia Country Club! I want three hundred tables!” I sat on the cold concrete porch, listening to them celebrate. Slowly, I reached up and wiped the tears from my cheeks. The panicked, terrified expression on my face melted away, leaving behind nothing but cold, empty air. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the burner phone I had been hiding. I opened the mass-text app. I selected the eight contacts of the men who had just been drained of their fortunes. [Hey guys. Thank you so much for taking care of me lately. Next Sunday is my younger brother Chase’s engagement party.] [I want to surprise you. I’m sending you the address. You have to promise me you’ll be there.] [Location Pin: Grand Magnolia Country Club, Main Lawn Banquet.] 4 The following Sunday. The Grand Magnolia Country Club. The outdoor banquet spanned the entire estate, with three hundred tables covered in white silk. A plush red carpet was rolled out all the way from the highway exit down to the main lawn. Chase was strutting around in a custom-tailored Tom Ford suit, a massive boutonnière pinned to his lapel, soaking in the admiration. Donna was an absolute spectacle. She had thick gold rings crammed onto all ten of her fingers, and a diamond tennis necklace resting heavily on her chest. The relatives and townsfolk whispered in awe: “Donna, I can’t believe Chase made it this big!” “A two-million-dollar penthouse in cash, and he pulled up in a Porsche! The kid is a prodigy!” Donna stood on the main stage, her chin tipped so high she was practically staring at the sky. “Of course! My Chase has always been a genius! He earned every penny with his own two hands!” She paused, shooting a nasty glare in my direction. “Unlike some ungrateful daughters who can’t even afford to give her own brother a decent wedding gift. Waste of my damn time raising her.” The eyes of the entire county shifted to me, dripping with undisguised contempt. “God, Natalie is such a loser. Showing up to an event like this in a faded t-shirt? Humiliating.” “Seriously. She has a millionaire brother and doesn’t even know how to suck up to him. No wonder she’s broke.” I stood perfectly still in the back corner, wearing my washed-out denim and a plain tee. I didn’t argue. I didn’t show an ounce of anger. I just looked past the gossiping crowd, toward the main entrance of the country club. Checking my watch. It was just about time. Donna grabbed the microphone from the emcee, ready to launch into another monologue about her superior parenting. But before she could speak— RUMBLE. A deafening roar of high-performance engines shattered the classical music playing over the speakers. Every single head in the venue snapped toward the entrance. A convoy of dozens of pitch-black, tinted-window luxury SUVs and sports cars crawled up the driveway, completely blockading the country club gates. The car doors opened almost in unison. Eight men stepped out. They radiated an aura of absolute, terrifying violence, flanked by their own private security. They looked like a firing squad. The eight men didn’t even glance at the gold-draped mother and son on the stage. Instead, they walked directly down the red carpet, parting the terrified crowd, and stopped dead in front of me. Every single one of them was clutching thick folders of my photos and background checks. “Natalie, right?” The man in the front—a polished, sharp-eyed executive in a bespoke suit—spoke first. His face was a mask of cold fury as he gripped a thick stack of bank transfer receipts. “That two million dollars to save your bankrupt family business. Did it help?” Immediately, a mountain of a man next to him, his arms covered in prison tattoos, slammed his palm down on the cocktail table in front of me, splintering the wood. “You little bitch!” He cracked his knuckles, his voice a low, gravelly snarl. “Didn’t you tell me your mother was in liver failure and needed fifty grand for a transplant?” He leaned in, his breath hot. “I just got out of federal lockup. I took out loans from the mob to get you that money, and you’re out here eating caviar at a country club?!” The entire wedding party erupted into chaos. “Oh my god! Natalie scammed all these billionaires?!” “Look at those cars! How much did she steal?! She belongs in prison!” Up on the stage, Donna realized things were spiraling out of control. She ripped the microphone from the stand and screamed at the top of her lungs: “Gentlemen! Sirs!” “It was her! Natalie did all of it! It has nothing to do with my Chase!” “She’s been a little slut since she was a teenager! Always sleeping around! She took your money and blew it all!” “Arrest her! Take her! We don’t care if you beat her to death, just leave us out of it!” The moment Donna’s words echoed over the speakers, the tattooed ex-con lunged. His massive hand wrapped around my throat, slamming my spine against the edge of the table. “Eight million dollars!” he roared in my face. “If you don’t cough up every cent today, I’m shipping you to a trafficking ring on the dark web!” He raised his other hand, curling it into a massive fist, ready to shatter my jaw. In that exact, razor-thin second. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the burner phone, and shoved the screen directly into the ex-con’s face. “Are you absolutely certain,” I choked out, my voice deadly calm, “that the person calling you ‘daddy’ every night and begging for your money… was me?” His fist stopped mid-air. His eyes involuntarily dropped to the glowing screen. The corporate executive and the other six men closed in, their eyes locking onto the evidence. When they saw what was on the screen, their pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated horror.

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Three thousand, eight hundred dollars. My checking account was short exactly $3,800. I stared at the glowing screen of my phone, my thumb swiping down to refresh the banking app. It was still there. The fifteenth of the month. Auto-draft. I didn’t recognize the payee. I scrolled to the previous month. The 15th. There it was again. I scrolled to the month before that. Again. I didn’t keep scrolling. My fingertips felt numb, hovering over the glass. From the kitchen, the rhythmic clack-clack of Simona’s spatula hitting the rim of the frying pan drifted out to the living room. Just yesterday, she had stood in that exact spot, wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, and said— “Just a little more belt-tightening, babe. We’ll get our house down payment next year. I promise.” I slowly lowered my phone to the coffee table. Face down. 1. I had only opened the app to check my cell phone bill. Verizon had sent a text offering a discount if I linked a bank account for auto-pay. I figured I should check my balance first. Six hundred and twenty dollars. I had frozen on the spot. I just got paid two days ago. My monthly take-home is $8,000. After transferring $2,000 to my father-in-law, Richard, for his “living expenses,” I should have had $6,000 left. You don’t spend over five grand in two days. I tapped into the transaction history. October 15. Auto-Draft. $3,800. Payee: Greg Harley. I knew that name. Simona’s ex-husband. I sat on the sofa, completely immobilized. The phone screen stayed lit, the black text burning into my retinas. Three thousand, eight hundred dollars. Last month at Whole Foods, I had stood in the dairy aisle staring at a $49 case of organic, grass-fed milk. I picked it up twice. Put it back twice. Simona had walked by, nudging my arm. “We have regular milk at home, Ben. Let’s not waste money.” I dragged the transaction history backward. The fourteenth, nothing. The thirteenth, nothing. The fifteenth. $3,800. The month prior. The fifteenth. $3,800. Before that. The fifteenth. $3,800. The exact same day, the exact same amount, the exact same name. Greg Harley. Greg Harley. Greg Harley. I locked my phone. From the kitchen, Simona called out, “Ben! Dinner’s ready.” She walked out carrying two plates. Sautéed spinach and roasted potatoes. “Potatoes were on sale today. A dollar-twenty a pound,” she said, offering a bright, proud smile. I looked at her. She hadn’t even taken off her apron. Her sleeves were rolled up to her forearms, water glistening on her skin. She looked completely natural. Exactly the same as she had looked every single day for the past five years. “What’s wrong?” she asked, noticing I hadn’t picked up my fork. “Nothing.” I picked up the fork, speared a piece of potato, and put it in my mouth. I chewed twice. It tasted like ash. After dinner, Simona went to the sink. The sound of running water echoed through the small apartment. I walked into our bedroom, quietly closed the door, and opened the banking app again. This time, I scrolled all the way back. From January of this year. January, $3,800. February, $3,800. March, $3,800. Last year. January, $3,800. February, $3,800. The year before that. January, $3,800. The year before that. Still there. I stopped swiping month by month and just dragged the scroll bar straight to the bottom. To the very first occurrence. The date was October 15th, five years ago. Five years ago. October. Simona and I had gotten married at the courthouse in September of that year. The second month of our marriage. That was when the bleeding started. I leaned my head back against the headboard. Right above me was a pale yellow water stain on the ceiling, shaped like a map of nowhere. It had been there since our first year in this cramped apartment. Back then, Simona had looked up at it and said, “It’s fine, Ben. Once we buy our own place, we won’t have to look at this.” Five years. The stain was still there. We were still renting. The bedroom door clicked open. “Ben, I sliced some apples.” Simona handed me a small plate. Three apples, cored and sliced, arranged in a neat, symmetrical fan. I stared down at the plate. Her hands were clean, the nails neatly trimmed but unpolished. To save money. When did these hands link my bank account to her ex-husband? “Not hungry?” she asked, tilting her head. “I am,” I said, taking the plate. She smiled, turned, and left the room. I picked up a slice and put it in my mouth. It was sweet. In five years, the way she sliced apples hadn’t changed at all. The way she smiled hadn’t changed. The way she gently reminded me to “tighten our belts” hadn’t changed. A memory suddenly surfaced, sharp and uninvited. Our first winter as a married couple. I caught a terrible flu. My fever spiked to 103 degrees. Shivering so hard my teeth ached, I asked Simona if we could take an Uber to the urgent care clinic. “An Uber is surging right now, it’s fifty bucks,” she had said, pulling on her coat. “The bus goes straight down the avenue. I’ll walk with you.” It was twenty-five degrees outside. Sleet. We walked six blocks to the bus stop and waited twenty minutes. By the time I stumbled into the fluorescent lights of the clinic, my lips were blue. That same month, on the 15th, $3,800 vanished from my account. Right on schedule. Down to the penny. I finished the plate of apples. Every last slice. 2. I didn’t sleep that night. Simona slept deeply. Curled on her side, her breathing was soft, even, rhythmic. I lay in the dark listening to her breathe, each exhale swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I used to find that sound grounding. Like coming home. Now, it sounded like a bomb ticking down. I rolled over and squeezed my eyes shut, but all I could see was that line of text glowing against the black behind my eyelids. $3,800. $3,800. $3,800. Five years. Sixty months. I didn’t even try to do the multiplication in my head. I was too terrified of the answer. The next morning, I got up exactly when my alarm went off and made breakfast, just like I always did. Oatmeal, toast, a side of scrambled eggs. She sat down at the table, scrolling through her phone as she ate. “Hey, the local grocer has eggs on special today, $2.99 a dozen. Can you grab a carton on your way home?” “Sure.” She set her bowl down. A spoonful of oatmeal was left at the bottom. “Gotta run,” she said, grabbing her car keys off the counter. The door clicked shut behind her. I picked up her bowl and scraped the leftover oatmeal into my own. I had done this for five years. She had never once finished her oatmeal. And I had never once thrown the leftovers away. After washing the dishes, I sat back down at the dining table. The chair opposite me was still slightly warm from her body. I thought about the day we got married. No real wedding. No reception. Simona had squeezed my hand in the courthouse hallway and said, “Let’s save the money. We’ll throw a huge anniversary party once we buy our house.” I had smiled and said okay. Her father, Richard, had driven in from upstate. He brought two quilts and a starter set of dishes. Before he drove back, he pulled me aside, gripped my shoulder, and said, “Ben, listen to me. Simona took a beating in her first marriage. She got taken advantage of. You do right by her, and I promise you, she will never shortchange you.” She will never shortchange you. I believed that sentence for five years. In those five years, the most expensive piece of clothing I bought for myself was a winter jacket on clearance at Macy’s. One hundred and twenty dollars. I had tried it on twice in the store. Checked the price tag three times. Simona had stood behind me, smoothing the shoulders. “It looks great on you, Ben. Just get it.” So I did. On the drive home, she rested her hand on my thigh and murmured, “Let’s try to hold off on clothes for a while, though. We’re so close. Next year, the down payment will be ready.” I said okay. I wore that jacket for three winters. The collar was permanently pilled. One summer, I was walking past a farmer’s market. A vendor was selling fresh Rainier cherries for $18 a pound. I stared at them for a long moment, then kept walking. When I got home, Simona was on the couch, typing on her laptop. “Did you get the groceries?” she asked. “Yeah. Cabbage, tomato, a bag of onions.” “Perfect.” She didn’t even look up. I made Borscht for dinner. As we ate, she smiled across the table. “You’re getting so good at cooking, babe.” I looked at my bowl. “When you cook the cheap stuff enough times, you figure out how to make it taste good.” She didn’t hear the weight in my voice. She just smiled, scooped up some salads, and took another bite. My salary was $8,000. I gave her dad $2,000. Auto-draft took $3,800. That left me with $2,200. Simona covered rent and utilities. She told me not to worry about those. Groceries, household supplies, and incidentals came out of my remaining $2,200. By the end of every month, my balance hovered around three or four hundred dollars. Once, I checked my balance and saw $72. It was six days until payday. I opened the fridge. Half a head of cabbage and three eggs. I did the math. It would be tight, but I could make it work. For six days, I ate Borscht soup with cheap white bread. Simona didn’t know. She was away on a work trip. Before she left, she had kissed my cheek and said, “Eat whatever’s in the fridge, babe.” There was nothing in the fridge but the cabbage, the eggs, and a single cup of artisanal yogurt she had bought for herself. I never touched the yogurt. It was hers. It cost six dollars. When she came back, she opened the fridge, pulled out the yogurt, and frowned. “This is still here? Why didn’t you eat it?” “Wasn’t craving it.” “It’s expired,” she sighed, tossing it into the trash can. Six dollars. I stared into the trash can at the plastic cup, but said nothing. On payday, my phone would ping with a direct deposit notification. I never checked my balance. Because what was the point? Two days later, $3,800 would evaporate into the ether. I was so used to the rhythm: Paycheck hits — two days pass — balance plummets. I just always assumed it was her moving the money into our high-yield savings account for the house. 3. The next day on my lunch break, I walked to the local bank branch. I asked the teller to print five years of transaction history. It was printed on standard printer paper. Twenty-three pages in total. I sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs in the lobby and turned the pages, one by one. Sixty transactions. Every single one fell on the 15th. Every single one was $3,800. Every single one went to Greg Harley. Not a single month was missed. I flipped past the last page and closed the stack. The bank’s air conditioning was blasting, but a cold sweat clung to the back of my shirt. Twenty-three pages. I sat there for a moment, then got back in line. I asked for a printout of the $2,000 monthly transfers to my father-in-law. This stack was thinner, but it was still sixty transactions. $120,000. I pulled out my phone and opened the calculator app. $3,800 multiplied by 60 equals $228,000. Two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars. Plus the $120,000 to her father. $348,000. Five years. $348,000. I made nearly six figures a year. Over five years, my net income was almost half a million dollars. They had taken $348,000 of it. I had survived on roughly $132,000 over five years. Groceries, gas, the occasional piece of clothing. That averaged out to $2,200 a month. In this city, $2,200 was the monthly budget of an unpaid college intern living with three roommates. I sat in that plastic chair for a long time, my fingers death-gripping the stack of papers. People were being called to teller windows. Pens scratched against deposit slips. Nobody looked at me. My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Simona. What are you craving tonight? I’ll swing by the store after work. I stared at the bubble of text. This was how she always started it when she volunteered to buy groceries. A gentle, loving tone. Bulletproof. Usually, I would reply: Whatever you’re in the mood for, babe. Today, I typed four words: You decide. Surprise me. She instantly sent back a heart-eyes emoji. I shoved the phone into my pocket. I folded the twenty-three pages of bank records and tucked them into the deepest zipper compartment of my work bag. When I walked out of the bank, the afternoon sun felt blindingly bright. Right next door was a real estate agency. The window was plastered with glossy flyers of local listings. Move-in ready 2-bed, 1-bath. 20% down payment: $180,000. One hundred and eighty thousand. I stood in front of the window for five seconds. Then I turned and walked away. When I got home, Simona was already in the kitchen. She had bought pork chops. “They were practically giving these away at the meat counter, $14.99 a pound,” she said, waving the crinkled receipt at me. “We haven’t had pork chops in a while.” “I know!” I slipped off my shoes. She brought the platter to the table. Garlic butter pork chops. They looked incredible. I cut a piece and put it in my mouth. She rested her chin in her hands, watching me with that familiar, expectant look in her eyes. “Is it good?” “It’s really good.” “Then eat up, babe.” She smiled. The exact same smile from five years ago. The considerate, gentle, completely flawless smile. I cut another piece of pork. I did the math in my head. Fourteen-ninety-nine a pound. She had probably bought two pounds. Thirty bucks. Less than one percent of the $3,800 she siphoned out of my life every single month. Were these pork chops an apology? Or just maintenance? After dinner, she washed the dishes while I sat in the living room. On the coffee table sat a small moleskine notebook. My budget ledger. I had kept it since our first month of marriage. Potatoes: $1.20. Loaf of bread: $2.50. Eggs: $4.50. Laundry detergent: $9.99. Every penny accounted for. There were five of these notebooks stacked on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I opened the current one. Total expenses for last month: $1,642. The largest single expense: a $59 Yeti thermos I bought for Simona because her old travel mug was leaking. The smallest expense: $2.50. Bus fare. I spent $1,642 to keep us alive for a month. She took $3,800. I snapped the notebook shut. I didn’t sleep again that night. But this time, it wasn’t panic keeping me awake. It was a question. What the hell was the $3,800 for? A mortgage? Was she paying her ex-husband’s mortgage? With my account? Starting the second month of our marriage? When did she even link the account? …My banking password. She helped me set it up. Right before we got married, she had leaned over my shoulder, smelling like vanilla, and said, “Let me help you pick a password you won’t forget. That way, if you ever get locked out, I can help you reset it.” At the time, I thought she was just being sweet. A partner looking out for me. Looking back now— She didn’t want to help me remember my password. She just wanted my password. 4. It took me three days to confirm the details. 15th of the month. Auto-draft. Payee: Greg Harley. Category: Mortgage Payment. The funding source: My salary account. Date the auto-draft was authorized: October 6th, five years ago. What was I doing on October 6th five years ago? I opened my phone’s camera roll and scrolled back. October 6th. Columbus Day weekend. Simona and I had driven upstate to visit Richard. Her dad had cooked a massive dinner. Simona had taken a photo of the spread and posted it to Instagram with the caption: Nothing beats being home. I was in the background of that photo. Wearing a navy blue hoodie, laughing at something off-camera. I looked so ridiculously happy. Later that night, as we were getting ready for bed, Simona had said, “Hey, can I borrow your phone for a bit? Mine is totally dead and I need to check an email.” I handed it to her without a second thought. She gave it back the next morning. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Only now did I realize what she was doing while I slept in her childhood bed. Columbus Day weekend. Her father’s house. Her whole family around. When she took the phone from my hand, she had smiled and said— “Thanks, hubby.” Two words. Thinking about it now made bile rise in my throat. Confirming the payee wasn’t hard. I went back to the bank and spoke to a manager. She was very polite. “Sir, this is a recurring ACH transfer. The destination is a mortgage escrow account. The primary borrower on the loan is Greg Harley. If you’d like to revoke the authorization, we just need your ID to process the stop-payment.”

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“Let’s get married. As soon as possible.” Jodie said it casually, picking at her sea bass as if she were suggesting we try a new coffee shop instead of upending our entire lives. My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. Over the last three years, I had proposed seven times. I had curated sunsets, rented out galleries, and whispered the question in the quiet intimacy of our bed. Every single time, she had found a reason to say not yet. Jodie didn’t look at me. Her eyes wandered to the window of the dimly lit restaurant, watching the Manhattan rain streak against the glass. “I’m… I’m two months pregnant, Mike. It’s going to start showing soon.” I set my silverware down, the sharp clink against the china echoing like a gunshot. I stared at her, waiting for the punchline, but her face remained pale, strained. “If I remember correctly,” I said, my voice dangerously level, “two months ago, you were in London on a business trip. Alone.” She swallowed hard, her throat moving convulsively. When she finally spoke, the words felt like broken glass. “The baby… it’s my assistant’s. Jackson. That night in London, I’d had too much to drink. I was lonely, I was stressed, and for a second… I thought he was you.” I felt a cold numbness spread from my chest to my fingertips. “The doctor said if I terminate this pregnancy, I might never be able to have children again,” she hurried on, her voice rising in a desperate pitch. “If we marry now and announce it immediately, we can tell the world it’s ours. Once the baby is born, I’ll send Jackson and the child abroad. They’ll be taken care of, but they’ll never come back. They’ll stay out of our lives, I promise.” I looked at this woman—the woman I had loved for seven years, the woman I thought I knew better than my own soul—and for the first time, she looked like a complete stranger. “Jodie,” I said, the name tasting like ash. “We’re done. The engagement is off.” 1. Her face transformed instantly—the vulnerability vanished, replaced by a sharp, jagged panic. “You can’t be serious! Mike, think about the merger. Think about what our families have at stake!” I pressed my thumb into the palm of my hand, using the physical pain to tether myself to reality, forcing back the burning behind my eyes. I met her gaze with a terrifying stillness. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll give you two choices.” “One: We call off the wedding. You marry him, and you pay the exit penalties outlined in our pre-merger agreement. Every cent.” “Two: You deal with the pregnancy. You cut Jackson out of your life entirely. No contact, no ‘abroad,’ no traces. The alliance continues, but we sign a new prenuptial agreement. One that protects me from ever having to see his face—or yours—in my legacy.” Jodie froze. She looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking a foreign language. “Mike, listen to yourself,” she hissed, her voice trembling with a mix of disbelief and burgeoning rage. “How can you be so cold? My health is at risk. You’re asking me to give up my only chance at motherhood. How can you live with that?” I looked at her, the disappointment weighing more than the anger. “You’re asking me to raise another man’s child as a lie to save your reputation, Jodie. And when I refuse, I’m the cold one?” She reached across the table, her fingers brushing my hand. I flinched away. “Mike, please. It’s you I love. You know that. Jackson was a mistake—a moment of weakness. I feel a responsibility toward the child, but there’s no emotion there. None.” Her hand hung in the air, trembling. She let out a long, shuddering breath, the kind of weary sigh that had made me cave a thousand times before. “Seven years, Mike. We have seven years of history. Are you really going to throw it all away over one mistake?” I leaned back against the leather booth, a profound exhaustion washing over me. “Do you remember the terms of our family pact? Our first child—regardless of gender—inherits the controlling interest in both the Blackwood and Wentworth estates. If I claim this child, if I put my name on that birth certificate, what happens in twenty years? Does Jackson’s son run my father’s company?” The question hit her like a physical blow. Jodie turned a ghostly shade of white. “I can sign a waiver,” she scrambled. “I’ll make sure the child has no claim to the inheritance. It won’t affect our future children…” “I don’t believe you.” I said it softly, but the words were final. Jodie fell silent. In seven years, I had never doubted her. I had been her rock, her most loyal soldier, her most devoted lover. I looked into her eyes and saw the ghosts of our youth. The night we got engaged at eighteen, my palms sweating as we stood on her parents’ balcony. She had squeezed my hand and whispered, Don’t worry, I’ve got you. The long nights in the university library, her bringing me lukewarm coffee while we pulled all-nighters. The two years in Paris during our grad studies, living in that cramped, drafty apartment where she tried to cook Coq au Vin and nearly burned the place down. When we returned to New York, I thought marriage was the natural next step. The first time I asked, she said she needed to focus on taking over the firm. The second time, she wanted to wait until the Sterling acquisition was finalized. The third, the fourth… the excuses became more polished, more frequent. On my birthday last year, the seventh time, she told me, Just a little longer, Mike. I want to give you the best version of us. The “best version” turned out to be a child with her assistant. “Give me a week,” Jodie said, her voice barely a whisper. her eyes were rimmed with red. “One week to handle this. Give me one more chance to fix it. Please.” I looked at her. For the first time, the face I had worshipped for nearly a decade felt hollow. “Fine. One week.” I grabbed my coat and walked out into the rain. “Mike!” She called after me, but I didn’t look back. I got into my car and caught my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, but my vision had never been clearer. Suddenly, the weight of the last seven years felt unbearable. The alliance, the history, the woman I had built my world around—it all felt like a bad joke. And I was tired of being the punchline. 2. Three days into her “one week,” it was my birthday. The Wentworths had organized a gala. Investors, partners, and all the socialites within our orbit were there. Usually, this was the night Jodie and I would lead the first dance, the golden couple of Manhattan. “Mike, where is Jodie?” my mother whispered, her eyes searching mine with maternal intuition. “On her way,” I lied, forcing a smile as I took a sip of vintage champagne. As if on cue, Jodie swept into the ballroom. She looked breathtaking in a deep emerald silk gown, but the exhaustion behind her makeup was unmistakable. She hurried over, clutching my hand. “I’m so sorry, Mike. Something came up at the office.” “It’s fine,” I said, instinctively pulling my hand back. I offered a practiced, empty smile. A few of our old college friends crowded around us, grinning. “Hey, Wentworth! When are we finally getting that wedding invite? We’re not getting any younger.” I remained silent. Jodie’s smile wavered. “Soon. We’re just waiting on Mike to say yes this time.” I looked at her, my voice colder than I intended. “I think I need a little more time to… vet the candidate.” The room seemed to dip into an awkward silence for a split second before the band began to play. Someone shouted, “Jodie, it’s the opening dance! Take your man to the floor!” She smiled and nodded, but her eyes were glued to the phone in her hand. I caught a glimpse of the screen. A notification from Jackson. The messages were coming in like a barrage of gunfire. Her thumb hovered over the screen, trembling. She didn’t open them, but she was no longer in the room. Her mind was miles away, in a different borough, with a different man. The music swelled. It was time. I reached out my hand for her, but she didn’t see it. Her face went pale as a final text flashed on her screen. “Mike, I have to go. It’s an emergency,” she whispered, her voice tight with panic. “Jackson’s… he’s not stable. He’s alone at his place and he’s spiraling. I’m worried he’ll do something. I have to go.” “Jodie,” I said, my voice steady and quiet. “It’s my birthday. The dance is starting.” She looked at me for two seconds. In those two seconds, I saw the choice being made. “I’m sorry. I can’t let anything happen to him. Wait for me. I’ll be back as fast as I can.” Then, she turned and ran. I stood in the center of the ballroom, the air around me turning to ice. I could feel the weight of a hundred pairs of eyes—sympathy, mockery, delight at the scandal. I felt my mother’s gaze burning with worry. I heard the frantic whispers beginning to ripple through the crowd. I walked toward the microphone. The music was still playing, the guests waiting. I smiled, the mask perfectly in place. “Change of plans, everyone. Jodie had a sudden crisis at the firm. The opening dance is canceled. Please, enjoy the evening.” I set the mic down and walked out. The hallway was silent. I leaned against the cold marble wall and closed my eyes, taking a jagged breath. My phone buzzed. Mike, I am so, so sorry. Please. I replied with one word: Okay. Don’t be angry. I’m arranging for him to leave tomorrow. I’m not dragging this out anymore, I promise. I looked at the message and let out a dry, hallow laugh. She had promised me a week. It was day three, and one phone call from him was enough for her to leave me standing alone in front of everyone we knew. I didn’t believe in “waiting” anymore. I had done enough of it for a lifetime. When I got home after midnight, my mother was waiting in the library. “What is going on with her, Mike? Leaving you like that in front of everyone?” I sat down and poured myself a glass of water, my hands perfectly still. “Mom. I want to change the merger partner.” My mother froze. “What?” I looked her in the eye. “The Rossi family in San Francisco. Their daughter, Camille—didn’t they express interest in a partnership last year? I want to move forward with them.” My mother studied me for a long time, searching for a crack in my resolve. Finding none, she sighed. “Are you sure about this?” “I’ve never been surer of anything.” My phone buzzed again—a wall of texts from Jodie. I didn’t open them. The name that used to make my heart skip a beat was now just a series of pixels on a screen. Seven years. It was time to walk away. 3. On the fifth day, I didn’t get Jodie’s “resolution.” Instead, I got Jackson. I don’t know how he found my private address, but he was standing at my door, his eyes swollen and bloodshot. “Mr. Wentworth… please…” The moment I opened the door, he dropped to his knees. “Please, the baby is innocent. The doctors said if Jodie goes through with it, she might never have another chance. You can’t let her do it…” He looked up at me, tears streaming down his face. He looked so young—barely twenty-two, a kid who hadn’t been hardened by the world yet. “I don’t want anything,” he sobbed. “No money, no title. I just want Jodie to be able to have our child…” I looked down at him, feeling a strange sense of pity mixed with revulsion. “Get up.” “I won’t! Not until you promise!” his voice turned shrill, his fingers digging into my sleeves. “Jodie told me how much you love her. If you love her, how can you be this cruel? How can you kill her baby?” His nails scratched my skin. It stung. Before I could say a word, a car screeched into the driveway. Jodie blurred past me, hauling Jackson to his feet, shielding him behind her like a protective wall. She turned to me, her eyes flashing with indignant fury. “Mike! If you’re angry, take it out on me. Leave him alone!” Time seemed to stop. I slowly pulled my arm back, looking at the red welts Jackson’s nails had left on my wrist. The last crumbling pillar of my love for her finally collapsed. There she was—the princess guarding her knight. And there he was, cowering behind her like a wounded pup. They looked… right together. A sharp pang hit my chest, but it was brief. “Jodie,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Look at you. You’ve already made your choice. In your heart, he and that baby are the ones who need protecting. Not our legacy. Not me.” “No!” she cried, stepping toward me. I stepped back. “Mike, I’m pregnant, I’m not thinking straight! He was scared, he came here because he was spiraling… I was just afraid he’d hurt himself—” Behind her, Jackson let out a small, broken sob. Instinctively, Jodie turned her head to check on him. That look—that split-second flash of genuine, instinctive concern—was the final blow. “I’m going to have to ask you both to leave,” I said. “If you stay any longer, I might say something we’ll all regret.” Jodie grabbed my arm. “Mike! Talk to me. We’ll call our parents, we’ll sit down, we’ll fix this—” I shook her off. “There’s nothing left to fix. I told you everything I had to say the other night. Take him and go.”

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