Category: English

On the live trivia game show, the host asked my mom: “What is one plus one?” Without a second of hesitation, my mom answered: “Three.” Everyone in the studio froze. To scrape together the astronomical cost of my life-saving surgery, my family had gone on this show. As long as they answered ten questions correctly, they would win a five-million-dollar grand prize. After agonizingly fighting their way through nine difficult questions, the host, acting out of sheer pity, tossed them an absolute softball. This prize money was my only lifeline. But my mother, a woman with a PhD in Mathematics, deliberately answered it wrong. …… I lurched upward in my hospital bed, a dull, suffocating pain blooming in my chest. On the screen, the host recovered instantly, snapping on a professional smile: “Dr. Lillian Evans is a math PhD. Perhaps in some advanced, theoretical realm of mathematics we haven’t discovered yet, one plus one can equal three.” “However, the question I just asked is incredibly simple. You only need to use the logic of a first-grader!” But my mom just blinked, her voice unyielding: “One plus one equals three.” The host’s smile began to crack. My older brother, Caleb, thrust two fingers into the air, waving them frantically in front of my mom’s face. “Mom! We just need to get this last question right, and we’ll get the money for Chloe’s surgery!” “This is not the time to make jokes!” My dad was sweating bullets. “Honey, did you mishear the question? Did it just come out wrong by accident?” But no matter how hard my dad and brother pleaded, my mom held her ground, insisting—”One plus one is three.” The live audience erupted. “Is this mother insane?” “This has to be scripted! What kind of real mother wants her own kid to die?” Each question had a ten-minute time limit. Seeing the countdown ticking away, I begged the nurse to help me make a video call to the show’s production team. They connected me immediately. My pale, wasted face was projected onto the giant screen inside the studio. A collective gasp went through the crowd. The host’s eyes brimmed with genuine sorrow. At sixteen, I had suddenly been diagnosed with a malignant cardiac tumor. I was in mortal danger every single second of the day. The only hope I had left to live was that prize money. The host was vibrating with anxiety, looking like an ant on a hot pan: “There are only three minutes left on the clock.” “If you answer incorrectly, all of your family’s hard work will be for nothing!” To get on this show, my entire family had stayed up all night for three months, memorizing endless trivia databases. They had done the impossible and gotten nine questions right, only for my mom to start spouting nonsense on the tenth. I spoke into the camera, my voice trembling: “Mom, the prize is five million. My treatment only costs three million.” “I won’t take a single cent of the rest of the money!” “And as soon as I recover, I promise I’ll work so hard to make money, and I’ll give you my entire paycheck to take care of you!” The audience was weeping. Even Mom’s eyes welled up with tears. With ten seconds left on the clock, Mom raised her hand to indicate she wanted to change her answer. I finally let out a breath of relief. Maybe she was just playing a cruel joke on everyone. “I’m sorry, I misspoke earlier.” “One plus one… should equal…” I held my breath. Mom scanned the room, and suddenly, a small smile played on her lips. “One plus one equals one!” The countdown hit zero. The $5,000,000 on the giant screen instantly reset to zero! Chapter 2 Right then, Mom said in a slow, casual voice: “Oh, I’m sorry. I was careless. I meant to say two.” But the timer was done. My surgery money was gone. A violent throb of pain ripped through my chest. The world in front of me started to go black. Caleb lost control, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Mom! What the hell are you doing?!” “Chloe is going to die!” Mom just calmly pointed a finger at the giant screen: “Look. See how much pain Chloe is in?” “You know she’s in pain and you still got it wrong on purpose?!” Caleb’s eyes were bloodshot. “You knew if you answered it right, she would live!” “This is all your fault…” My mom’s voice suddenly spiked: “My fault? I didn’t do it on purpose!” “Of course I know one plus one is two, I was just careless with my answer!” Careless? My eyes widened in shock. How could anyone be careless about one plus one? Mom knew perfectly well that if we didn’t get that money, I would die immediately. Why would she… Amidst the crowd’s shock and fury, my mother cocked her head, turning to look at Caleb. “Caleb, do you remember your prep school entrance exam? You lost five whole points because you wrote down that one plus one equals three.” “Because of those five points, you didn’t get into the elite middle school.” “When I disciplined you, you had the nerve to talk back. You said you were just being ‘careless,’ and that you’d just pay more attention next time.” “Well, today, I’m showing you exactly what the consequences of a moment of ‘carelessness’ can be!” Mom pointed back at the big screen: “Look closely. Burn Chloe’s sweating, agonizing face into your memory.” “This is the consequence of being careless!” “Today, I am using your sister’s suffering to teach you a lesson!” The entire studio went nuclear. I stared at the screen, utterly dumbfounded. Caleb is a junior in college now! She had held onto that grudge from his middle school exams all this time just to do this?! Dad went berserk: “Do you realize Chloe is about to die?!” “If you want to teach Caleb a lesson, couldn’t you pick literally any other time or place?!” My mom just huffed, looking annoyed: “Doctors always exaggerate. Chloe is young; she can hold on much longer than other people.” “Caleb’s sloppy, careless habits needed to be cured a long time ago! Gentle lecturing didn’t work, so I am giving him a lesson carved into his very bones so he’ll never forget it!” I could barely breathe. The nurse gripped my hands tightly, her eyes filled with profound pity. Dad roared, lunging forward like he was going to tackle Mom. My mom just raised a hand to stop him. “What’s the rush?” “Doesn’t the show have a Bonus Lightning Round?” “As long as we get the next question right, we might not get the five million, but we still get a guaranteed three million dollars!” “That’s more than enough for Chloe’s surgery!” Under the host’s frantic mediation, Dad and Caleb finally managed to calm down. Mom looked at the screen, her gaze softening artificially. “Chloe, just hang on a little longer.” “Mommy just wanted to take this opportunity to educate your brother.” “The next question, Mommy will definitely get right!” I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted blood, fighting back tears. “Mom… I know you love me… but for this next question… can Dad or Caleb answer it, please?” Mom’s expression froze. Dad and Caleb, terrified that Mom would pull another stunt, immediately agreed with my suggestion. But it was too late. In the previous rounds, they had already used up all their personal answering slots. Mom was the only one allowed to take the stage. This final question held my life in the balance. The studio was dead silent. Sweat poured down the host’s face. He flipped frantically through the database, finally settling on the absolute easiest question he could find. “Lillian Evans, what date is your birthday?” “You can just say the month and day.” I let out a breath of relief, looking at the host with eyes full of immense gratitude. Mom didn’t hesitate to press the buzzer. But she said: “Host, I would like to use my ‘Phone a Friend’ lifeline!” Chapter 3 The audience gasped. How could anyone not remember their own birthday? A sickening panic settled in my stomach. Since I got sick, Mom’s hair had gotten grayer and grayer. I had heard that if middle-aged people were under chronic stress for too long, it could trigger early-onset dementia. Was Mom’s health actually failing her this badly? Tears blurred my vision. My hands were shaking. Mom chose Dad as her lifeline. Dad looked completely exhausted and exasperated: “Your birthday is January 8th.” Mom nodded and hovered her hand over the buzzer again. But she was suddenly stopped by a visibly tense Caleb. “Mom, did you hear him clearly?” “What date is it? Repeat it back to me!” Under Caleb’s intense insistence, Mom repeated “January 8th” three times before she was allowed to press the button. But Mom didn’t speak. I could see her tension. Fighting through the agonizing pain in my heart, I forced myself to comfort her: “Don’t be scared, Mom. Just answer this one last question, and it’s all over.” Mom smiled at me. But the answer that came out of her mouth plunged me into an abyss of ice. “My birthday is… January 9th!” The air instantly solidified. The host tried to save it immediately: “Your husband stated your birthday is January 8th.” “Lillian, you must have misspoken. Please, say it one more time!” But Mom’s gaze was unyielding: “I didn’t misspeak. I said it wrong on purpose.” The audience exploded into chaos. My heart ached so badly I couldn’t sit up straight. The nurse reached out to cut the video feed, but I stopped her. “Mom… why did you get it wrong on purpose again?” I choked out, my voice shivering. Mom’s eyes were full of tears, but her tone was that of a deeply aggrieved victim: “It’s all your father’s fault!” Not just my dad, but everyone in the studio was utterly bewildered. My dad had literally just given her the correct answer. What had he done wrong? Under the host’s pressing questioning, Mom wiped her tears and revealed the “truth.” “A few weeks ago was our twentieth wedding anniversary. It was also my birthday.” “But my husband, Robert Hayes, forgot the date!” “Robert! Didn’t you swear to me that my birthday was January 9th? Well, now I’m making your wish come true!” Veins popped out on my dad’s forehead. He was shaking with rage. “I admit, I accidentally got the date wrong.” “But during those days, I was working back-to-back double shifts for three days straight just to make enough money for Chloe’s medical bills! I was exhausted and delirious, so I mixed it up!” “I apologized to you afterward! I drove Uber Eats every night for three weeks straight to save up enough to buy you a gold bracelet to make up for it! Are you still not satisfied?!” Mom didn’t say a word. She just lowered her head and kept wiping her tears. The countdown was rapidly decreasing. The pain in my chest had transformed into a searing, fiery agony. Cold sweat soaked through my hospital gown. Dad begged her, pleading with her to just say the correct answer, get the money, and send me into surgery. But Mom remained entirely unmoved. My heart finally died. It turned out my life was nothing but a tool for my mother to discipline her family. The countdown had three minutes left. Using every last ounce of strength in my body, I reached out and shut off the live stream. The doctors and nurses in the room all had red, tear-filled eyes. My voice was a barely audible whisper, but it was absolute: “Doctor, I want to sign an organ donation agreement.” “And, after I die, I require that my mother be forced to watch the entire organ procurement process from start to finish!” Mom, you love teaching people lessons, don’t you? Well today, I am going to teach you a lesson! The exact second I finished signing my name, a catastrophic surge of pain ripped through my entire body. Everything went black. In the final second before my consciousness vanished entirely, I heard my mother’s voice screaming through the TV broadcast in the background: “Why are you all panicking?!” “Chloe has had this condition for months! She isn’t just going to drop dead in a single second!” Driven by sheer desperation, my father actually knelt on the floor in front of the entire nation, begging her for forgiveness, swearing he would never forget another important date again. Mom finally gave the correct answer in the absolute last second before the countdown hit zero. But, it was already too late. Chapter 4 In the resuscitation room, the doctors were desperately doing chest compressions. But my heartbeat was fading fast. My lead surgeon shouted: “We have to operate right now!” But the prize money hadn’t hit my account yet. I only had a few hundred dollars to my name. Per hospital protocol, they could only provide standard life-saving measures, not the massive experimental surgery. As my consciousness drifted, I thought I saw my mother. Mom, you knew perfectly well that I was in mortal danger every single second. Why did you keep getting it wrong on purpose to waste time? Mom, do you really not love me? The doctor’s compressions were getting harder and harder. I could almost hear the sickening crack of my own ribs. Mom, I really can’t hold on much longer… If you could just come see me one last time, I wouldn’t blame you anymore. But I waited and waited. Shot after shot of epinephrine was injected into my veins, but my breathing continued to fail. The heart monitors blared their warning alarms. According to the rules, if the funds didn’t clear, they couldn’t perform the surgery. The surgeon was furious and called the production team directly: “Didn’t she get the answer right?! Why hasn’t the money hit the hospital account yet?!” The production team was helpless. “We originally wanted to wire the money directly to the hospital, but her mother insisted on physical cash!” “They are probably driving to the hospital with the cash right now.” That final, fragile breath I was holding onto completely snapped. The EKG flatlined into a solid, silent line. In that moment, I heard my family arguing in the hallway. “Chloe is hanging by a thread! Why did you insist on cash?!” Mom sounded completely self-righteous: “Three years ago, you got scammed out of $200 online!” “Digital payments are too dangerous. Haven’t you learned your lesson?” “Cash is the only safe way! Today I am finally teaching you a lesson about financial security!” Dad sounded like he was losing his mind, his footsteps frantic. “Fine! Fine! Cash is safe!” “But what about Chloe?! Every second Chloe waits, she is closer to death!” Mom sounded incredibly annoyed: “Will you stop talking?!” “If Chloe is in danger, it’s because you cursed her with your negative attitude!” “Chloe was perfectly fine this morning! How could anything happen to her this afternoon?” Inside the resuscitation room, the doctor was slowly pulling a white sheet over my face. Utterly oblivious, my mother pushed open the door to my empty hospital room. “Chloe! Mommy brought the money!”

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Four hours before the city-wide lockdown was announced, my husband, Liam Vance, sent me a text: Working late tonight, don’t wait up. Six hours later, the entire city was under a strict quarantine mandate. I called his phone. It went straight to voicemail. I opened my flight tracking app. His name was listed on the passenger manifest for Delta Flight 587. Destination: Auckland, New Zealand. On that same flight, sitting right next to him, was Chloe Davis. Seats 12A and 12B. Window and middle. They were even sharing an armrest. In the kitchen, the pot roast was still simmering on the stove. My mother-in-law, Eleanor, poked her head out of the guest bedroom. “Why isn’t Liam home yet? I’m starving.” I turned off the burner. He wasn’t coming home. The broth boiled over, hissing as it extinguished the flame. I stared at my phone screen. DL587, Status: Departed. Next to the status bar, a tiny airplane icon was slowly inching its way toward the Southern Hemisphere. I placed my phone face down on the counter. Walking into the master bedroom, I slid open Liam’s side of the walk-in closet. Empty. Suits, winter coats, cashmere sweaters—not a single piece remained. Even his favorite brown loafers were gone. In his desk drawer, a rectangular dust outline marked where his passport usually sat. The house deed and our marriage certificate were still there. But his photocopy of his driver’s license had been removed. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I crouched down and pulled a shoebox from the very bottom of the closet. Inside was a printed e-ticket receipt from Delta Airlines. The print date was eleven days ago. Three tickets. DL587, Auckland. Rylee Miller, Liam Vance, Chloe Davis. The three names were printed side-by-side. But stamped across the ticket bearing “Rylee Miller” was a red “CANCELED/REFUNDED” watermark. Cancellation date: Five days ago. Eleven days ago, he bought three tickets. Five days ago, he canceled mine. He had considered taking me with him. And then, he decided not to. “Rylee!” Eleanor’s voice echoed from the living room. “Where is the food? My blood sugar is dropping, are you trying to starve me?” I folded the itinerary and shoved it into my purse. When I walked out carrying a plate of food, the TV was blaring the emergency lockdown broadcast. “Effective at 10:00 PM tonight, all public transportation in the metropolitan area will be suspended. Residents are ordered to shelter in place and non-essential travel is strictly prohibited—” Eleanor frowned and changed the channel. “So annoying, they play this all day. Did Liam say when he’s getting off work?” “He went on a business trip.” “A business trip? Where to?” “Overseas.” I set the plate down in front of her. Eleanor muttered something about “traveling at a time like this,” lowered her head to eat, and didn’t ask anything else. I stood on the balcony and watched as police tape was strung across the entrance to our gated community. A man carrying a suitcase tried to run out but was stopped by an officer and sent back. The wind was howling, whipping the yellow caution tape with a loud smack, smack, smack. At this exact moment, Liam was likely cruising at thirty thousand feet. Sitting next to him was Chloe. Standing next to me was his mother. My phone buzzed. A text from Liam: Just got to the office. Looks like I’ll be here super late tonight, you should go to bed early. Sent at: 5:14 PM. At that time, he was already sitting in the international departure lounge. I didn’t reply. I took a screenshot of the text and saved it to a newly created photo album. I thought about what to name the album for a second, then typed: Evidence. By the third day of the lockdown, our groceries had dwindled to almost nothing. Eleanor stood in front of the open fridge, rummaging around before slamming the door shut. “This is all we have left? Why didn’t you stock up beforehand?” “Because Liam said there was no need to hoard, that the lockdown would be lifted quickly.” “Can’t you think for yourself? Do you have to rely on other people to plan everything for you?!” I didn’t argue. I opened an app to check the community grocery delivery group. Vegetable bundles had to be pre-ordered a day in advance, arriving tomorrow at the earliest. I placed an order. $80 for a basic bundle: cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and a bunch of green onions. Eleanor leaned over and glanced at the screen. “Eighty dollars?! Are they robbing us?” “Then you’ll have to endure it for one day, Eleanor. We’ll have fresh food tomorrow.” “You want a woman pushing sixty to go hungry?” She pulled out her phone and dialed Liam’s number. It rang. “Liam! Your wife doesn’t even know how to buy groceries, we’re about to run out of food! When are you coming home?” She had it on speakerphone. Liam’s voice came through, sounding slightly echoed, like he was in a large, empty room. “Mom, the lockdown is strict over there. I can’t get back right now. Tell Rylee to figure something out.” “Well, where are you? Can you even sleep at the office?” A brief silence. “Yeah… the company has a breakroom with cots. Don’t worry.” Eleanor hung up and immediately started lecturing me. “Look at you. Liam is sleeping on the floor at the office, and you can’t even manage to put a decent meal on the table.” I didn’t say a word. The office breakroom. He was in Auckland, New Zealand, telling his mother he was sleeping on the floor at the office. I suddenly wondered how much Eleanor actually knew. Dinner was plain oatmeal with some pickled vegetables. Eleanor took two bites and slammed her spoon down. “I can’t eat this garbage. It’s pathetic.” At 2:00 AM, a noise woke me up. The living room light was on. Eleanor was sitting on the sofa, talking on the phone. Her voice was hushed, but through the crack in my door, I heard her perfectly clearly. “…As long as you arrived safely, that’s what matters. How is Chloe? Is she treating you well?” Chloe. She knew. She knew everything. She knew her son went to Auckland. She knew her son was with Chloe. She knew all of this, yet she lived under the same roof as me, ate the food I cooked, used the groceries I bought, and still had the nerve to curse me out for not providing a decent meal. “Don’t worry about the visa issue. Chloe’s family has connections; it’ll definitely get approved.” I leaned against the doorframe, my fingertips turning ice-cold. “Don’t worry about Rylee, I’m keeping an eye on her,” Eleanor’s voice drifted through the quiet house. “Don’t sell the house just yet, wait until the lockdown is lifted. Make sure she keeps paying the mortgage.” Don’t sell the house just yet. Make sure she keeps paying the mortgage. I quietly backed away from the door, not making a sound. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. In this house, I was the only one being played for a fool. Day seven of the lockdown. I crouched on the balcony taking inventory: half a bag of rice, a quarter bottle of cooking oil, enough vegetables in the fridge for two days. I checked my bank account balance three times. Joint Checking Account Balance: $4.63. I remembered that when my paycheck hit last month, this account had nearly $65,000 in it. I pulled up the transaction history and scrolled down, line by line. Jan 15: Transfer Out – $15,000. Recipient: C. Davis. Jan 21: Transfer Out – $12,000. Recipient: C. Davis. Feb 2: Transfer Out – $20,000. Recipient: C. Davis. Feb 8: Transfer Out – $15,000. Recipient: C. Davis. C. Davis. Chloe Davis. Four transfers, totaling $62,000, draining our joint account entirely. Time span: twenty-four days. The last transfer was two days before the lockdown. $65,000. That was three years of my savings. When I quit my job as a researcher at the CDC, Liam told me he made enough money and that I should stay home and take care of his mother with peace of mind. But the mortgage on this condo was still being paid from my pre-marital savings account, costing $3,000 a month. The utilities, Eleanor’s expensive supplements, and daily expenses all came out of the joint account. He deposited $4,000 into it every month, and my personal savings were pooled in there too. Now, it was all gone. My personal account only had $580 left. Not even enough for next month’s mortgage. I sat on a small stool on the balcony. The sun warmed my back, but it couldn’t reach the coldness in my heart. A message from Liam popped up: Honey, how are things over there? Are you and Mom okay? I stared at the word “Honey” for a long time. I typed out a single line: Where is the money from our joint account? Sent. Three minutes later, he replied: What money? The $62,000. The money transferred to C. Davis. Read. No reply. Ten minutes later, he called me. “Rylee, listen to me. That money went into a high-yield investment. Once I get back, we’ll—” “C. Davis is Chloe Davis.” Silence. “…She’s helping me manage some offshore assets. You wouldn’t understand the financial side of it.” “I wouldn’t understand?” I let out a short laugh. “Liam, my Ph.D. is in Epidemiology, but I minored in Statistics during my undergrad. Do you want to guess what else I found when I ran an analysis of your spending habits over the last six months?” He hung up. I didn’t call back. I took a screenshot of the call log and saved it to the “Evidence” folder. Eleanor hobbled out of the bathroom using her cane, looking pale. “Rylee, I feel dizzy.” I helped her sit down and took her blood pressure: 168 over 100. She had a history of hypertension. She hadn’t been eating well the past few days, and her medication was running low. I scoured the medicine cabinet. Only three blood pressure pills left. I called the community health hotline; busy signal. I called 911; placed on hold due to high call volume. I hung up the phone and looked at Eleanor’s pale face. This woman, who had actively helped her son scheme against me, was currently leaning against my shoulder, trembling. “Rylee, I feel awful…” “I know.” I broke one of the last three pills in half and gave it to her. “Take this for now. I’ll go figure something out.” Hating her was one thing. Letting her die on my watch was another. I got the blood pressure medication from my neighbor, Sarah. She lived across the hall, a retired nurse who used to work at the local clinic. When I knocked on her door, she was mixing bleach to sanitize the hallway. “Blood pressure meds? Yeah, I have half a box left. What kind does your mother-in-law take?” “Nifedipine extended-release.” Sarah dug through her medical kit and handed me a blister pack. “This is enough for ten days. By then, the pharmacies should be allowed to deliver again.” “Thank you so much, Sarah.” “Do you have a medical background?” she asked suddenly. I paused for a second. “I used to. Not anymore.” “What field?” “Epidemiology.” The look in Sarah’s eyes changed. “Rylee, do you know our district doesn’t even have a specialist advising us right now? The community clinic only has two doctors, and they’re overwhelmed. A few days ago, someone in Building 3 had symptoms, and everyone was terrified. We didn’t have anyone qualified to assess the risk.” I didn’t reply. Three years. It had been three years since I touched anything related to my field. Liam had said: “A family only needs one breadwinner. You staying home and taking care of Mom is more valuable than any job.” Eleanor had said: “What’s the point of a woman getting all those degrees? She still just ends up staying home to raise kids.” My publication record had flatlined three years ago. My former mentor, Dr. Harrison, texted me every New Year’s Day: “Rylee, the door to the research institute is always open for you.” Every year, I replied, “Thank you, Professor,” and went back to making soup, buying groceries, and sorting Eleanor’s pills. When I got back inside, Eleanor’s color had improved. She had taken the medicine and was leaning back on the sofa, watching TV. “Rylee, look at this news segment.” The TV was broadcasting a report about Liam’s company, highlighting their donation of medical supplies to overseas relief efforts. The screen flashed, and I saw Liam. Impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, standing among a group of executives behind a donation banner. The background was the blindingly blue sky of Auckland. Standing right next to him was a woman in a sleek black blazer, her hair pinned up elegantly, a necklace resting against her collarbone. I recognized that necklace. Swarovski, the iconic Swan collection. Liam had given it to me for our anniversary last year. I had only worn it once, feeling it was a bit too flashy, and put it away in my jewelry box. Now, it was draped around Chloe’s neck, catching the light for the cameras. Eleanor didn’t recognize it. She only cared about her son. “Liam looks so thin; his face is drawn. He’s all alone out there, I wonder if anyone is taking proper care of him.” Someone was taking care of him. Taking very good care of him. While wearing my jewelry. I walked into the kitchen and turned the faucet on full blast. The rushing water drowned out everything else. I gripped the edge of the sink for a long time, my nails digging into my palms. The cold water ran through my fingers. When I finally turned the faucet off, my phone rang. Caller ID: Dr. Harrison. “Rylee, you know what the situation is like right now. Our institute is desperately short-staffed, and your expertise in transmission dynamics modeling is exactly what we need.” “Professor, it’s been three years since I—” “Three years is nothing. Your brain hasn’t atrophied, and you haven’t stopped keeping up with the literature. I checked the system logs; you’ve maintained your premium access to the academic databases.” I stayed silent. He knew I had kept reading. Liam didn’t know. Eleanor didn’t know. Only my mentor knew that I had never truly let it go. “Come on as a volunteer first, no pressure. But Rylee, your talent shouldn’t be wasted standing in front of a stove.” I hung up the phone and stepped out onto the balcony. The courtyard of the complex below was completely empty. Dead leaves were tangled in the chains of the swingset. There was no sound of children playing. The entire city felt like it was on pause. But for some things, it was time to hit play again. Day fifteen of the lockdown. Liam started calling frequently. Not me, but his mother. Every evening after dinner, Eleanor would take her phone into her bedroom and shut the door. I didn’t try to eavesdrop anymore. I didn’t need to.

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Before I translated this story, I knew it needed to breathe the air of a different place. The heart of the narrative—a toxic family dynamic, the crushing weight of a parent’s addiction, and the struggle for self-preservation—is universal. However, the textures, the settings, and the expressions had to become authentically American. My goal was to maintain the original emotional arc and the specific structure of the short story while making it feel as though it were written here, for us. Names have been changed. Cultural markers, like the specific mechanisms of gambling debt or social pressure, have been localized. But the raw pain, and ultimate hope, remain. Chapter 1 I didn’t cry when my mother asked me for money for the first time. I didn’t cry when she showed up at my workplace, causing a scene and making sure everyone from HR to the mailroom knew my father was a gambling addict. I didn’t cry when she stole my debit card and drained five years of my savings—every penny I had—to pay off my father’s latest debts to some shadowy bookie. I didn’t cry when she secretly went behind my back to ask my boyfriend for cash, leading to weeks of his family bombarding my phone with angry, accusatory texts and calls. But when she told me she was finally planning to get a divorce, I cried. I laughed until I cried. “Elena,” I said, using her first name because ‘Mom’ felt like a lie, “that is hands-down the funniest joke I’ve heard all year.” … Before terms like “codependent” or “toxic enabler” became common, I just thought my mom was the most devoted wife on the planet. It didn’t matter how badly my dad yelled at her or belittled her the night before; the next morning, she’d be up at six, making him coffee just the way he liked it, smoothing out the collar of his shirt before he left for work. Then, the moment the front door clicked shut, she’d lean against the kitchen counter, wiping her eyes, whispering to no one about how miserable her life was. When I was little, my dad ran an import business that kept him on the road, hardly ever home. Our house was always quiet, except for the sound of my mother’s muffled sobbing. She’d say he was heartless for abandoning us, that she’d moved all this way to be with him and had never known a day of happiness. My tiny heart ached for her. I decided my dad was the villain, the boogeyman. Whenever he actually came home, I’d hide in my room, ignoring him no matter how loud he called my name. The consequence? My mother would spank me, screaming that I was an “ungrateful brat.” She’d tell me my father worked so hard for us, and if I couldn’t say anything nice, I should at least be respectful. “Useless child,” she’d hiss, cutting me a glare while pouring him a glass of water. Later, when the import business went under, he came home and got a regular job at a local warehouse. But my mother’s complaints didn’t stop. The house was always full of his friends and relatives. My mom ran herself ragged cooking and cleaning for them, while my dad just sat, drank beer, and bragged. Everyone praised her. “What a great wife,” they’d say. “So capable, so hardworking.” The praise only made my father more arrogant. He’d drink more heavily, food and beer spilling onto the carpet. After the guests finally left, my mom would clean up the mess, cursing under her breath the whole time, her hands never stopping. My dad, meanwhile, would be passed out on the living room recliner. I asked her once, “Why doesn’t Dad just take everyone out to a restaurant? This is too hard on you.” She snapped back that money didn’t grow on trees, and asked if I was the one who wanted to go out, accusing me of not caring about the family’s budget. “I’m worried about you!” I shot back, furious. But she just looked annoyed. “You’re just like your father. All talk. Who knows what you’re really thinking.” I tried to help her clean, but she shoved me away, saying I’d only get in the way. Later, when my dad woke up from his nap, I heard her telling him, “Your daughter says you’re cheap. Thinks you’re too stingy to take people out to dinner.” My father erupted, roaring at my bedroom door. “You disrespectful little shit! My business is none of your concern!” By the time I was in high school, the fighting was constant. Often it would last past midnight, only stopping when the neighbors threatened to call the cops. I couldn’t sleep through it. I was always exhausted in class, leading to a humiliating public reprimand from a teacher during a parent-teacher conference. When we got home, they started fighting about that. I finally yelled, “Can’t you two just get a divorce? It would be better for everyone!” My dad slapped me, hard across the face. My mother just wept. “If it wasn’t for you, we would have divorced a long time ago.” “You ungrateful child,” my father added. “We’ve sacrificed everything for you, and now you want to break up this family?” A few days later, they were back to acting like newlyweds. And I was the villain who had tried to tear them apart. Growing up, it didn’t matter how much my mom complained about my dad to me; she could never leave him. And whenever I tried to take her side, to pointing out what my dad was doing wrong, she’d immediately turn on me. “Apologize to your father. He’s still your father!” “How can you speak to him like that? He’s your father!” “This is between us, you stay out of it.” I heard it so many times I became numb to it. The words formed a callous over my heart. My mother didn’t love me. She only loved my father. That’s why she willingly walked into the fire, knowing it was a trap. That’s why, no matter how much she suffered or complained, she’d never let anyone speak a bad word about him. That’s why she didn’t care about anything I did for her, easily stealing my life savings. That’s why she was willing to embarrass me in front of my colleagues and my boyfriend, just to get money for his gambling debts. Chapter 2 The summer after high school graduation, my dad vanished. He took every dime the family had saved and drove south, starting a new life with his mistress. My mom tried to throw herself out a window several times; I had to drag her back inside. She beat me with her fists, screaming and crying that it was all my fault. She blamed me for everything. If I had been more obedient, if I had been more successful… Their marriage wouldn’t have ended. It was like I was the villain in a movie, the one who broke up the star-crossed lovers. My grandparents took over caring for my broken mother, and I dragged my suitcase alone onto a Greyhound bus, heading north for college. There was no money for tuition or housing. Every spare moment I had was spent working. I got a job tutoring a middle school kid. One night, the family asked me to stay for dinner. Watching the three of them at the table, talking and laughing, I had to force the delicious food down my throat past the bitterness. I felt like a sewer rat, spying on other people’s happiness. When I went home for winter break my freshman year, I discovered my dad had been back for six months. He’d developed a serious gambling problem down south, been swindled out of all his money by the mistress, and only made it back home after a sympathetic old friend gave him a ride. My mom told me this as if it were nothing, completely ignoring the way my face was turning purple with rage. “So, you’re just going to take this piece of trash back? He didn’t want you! He only came back because he had nowhere else to go!” “How dare you talk about your father like that? He’s turning over a new leaf! He made a mistake! Not like you, still standing there with your cold, heartless attitude.” She felt that as long as he came home, it meant he still loved her. She even said, “All men are like this. Your father isn’t so bad compared to some. The guy you find will probably be worse.” “Children don’t stay forever. Your father is the only one who will be with me until the end.” I never asked her why she never sent me money. She never asked me how I was paying for college. It was like we both just accepted it as the natural order of things. I accepted that she would never give me money. She accepted that I was an adult now, and responsible for myself. After I went back to school, I rarely visited. My life was consumed by part-time jobs and studying. There was no time for the fun, carefree college experience I was supposed to be having. When I went back for Thanksgiving senior year, she accused me of being cold-blooded in front of all the relatives. “He gets out into the world and completely forgets his parents. Doesn’t even call. Then he comes back here and just eats, eats, eats. He’s like a bill collector coming to collect a debt.” My aunts and cousins chimed in. “You’re an adult now, you need to grow up. Family comes first. Your parents worked hard to raise you; you need to show some gratitude.” I listened to their accusations in silence, the rare holiday break already ruined. A fleeting, regretful thought crossed my mind: I should have stayed at school and worked the holiday shift. Triple pay. After graduation, I stayed up north, found a job, worked myself to the bone, pulling shifts until 2 AM, hoping to get hired permanently. Apartments near the city were too expensive. To save money, I rented a damp garden-level studio. Sleeping in that cold, dark room, I made a silent vow to work even harder, to someday have a real home of my own in this city. Not long after, my mother called. She was beat around the bush, asking about my salary, saying she wanted to come visit. Under my repeated questioning, she finally admitted the truth. Dad was gambling again. He’d lost all the money and came home drunk and beat her. “My sweet daughter, send your mother some money. I think my arm is broken. The pain is so bad I can’t even make dinner.” Chapter 3 I took two days off and caught the next flight home. In the taxi on the way from the airport, I called 911. When I knocked on the door, my mother’s left eye was bloodshot, a massive bruise forming on her cheek. Her arm was twisted at a grotesque, broken angle. The moment she saw me, she burst into tears and begged me to take her to the hospital. I said, “Not yet. We’re waiting for the police.” I saw the look in her eyes shift from fear to panic, then anger. “Who told you to call the police? Do you want to send your own father to jail?” She flailed her good arm, hitting her own leg. “Oh, what have I done to deserve this? I should never have called you.” “Get on the phone. Right now. Call the police back. Tell them everything is fine, you made a mistake, that we don’t need them. Do it now!” Before she could finish, there was a knock on the door. Despite my mother’s repeated insistence that she had fallen, based on my explanation and the clear evidence, the police took my father away. They found him in a back room of a local bar, sitting at a poker table. The whole place was shut down. While we were at the hospital getting her arm set, my mother didn’t care who was listening. She screamed at me, calling me heartless. I didn’t argue. Those words still felt like needles pricking my chest, but I decided she was just in shock. She’d relied on this man her entire life, obsessed with the idea of a complete family unit. For the sake of that complete family, she could forgive his laziness, even his affair. But when his fist actually connected with her body… I honestly didn’t believe she could forgive that. But I still underestimated my mother’s toxic enmeshment. Even with her arm in a cast, she dragged herself out to bring him a blanket and home-cooked meals while he was in holding, terrified he was cold and hungry. She said everything she could to the police, begging them to release him early. The police were fed up with her, too. They held him for three days and then let him go. I didn’t see him. I only had two days off. Once I got my mother from the hospital, I left. The day he was released, my mother called. She spewed the most vile, hateful insults at me. I knew she was doing it for him, right in front of him. She felt her husband had been wronged, and she needed a visible way to get revenge for him. Before hanging up, I said softly, “Mom, don’t ask me for money again.” She paused, then her voice became even sharper. “We raised you for nothing. Other kids start working and know they need to send money home to their parents. And you?” “Giving your own parents a little money is like pulling teeth for you. You don’t care if your mother lives or dies. And you called the police! You embarrassed us so badly, how are we supposed to show our faces around here? All your life, all you’ve ever done is cause trouble…” I couldn’t listen anymore. I hung up. It was true, I had never sent money home. But when I was in college, no one sent me money, either. I did care if she lived or dies, but since she didn’t seem to care about her own life, I had to respect her choice. But what I never expected was that, for his sake, for that illusion of love she’d conjured, she would actually destroy her own daughter. Chapter 4 Back at work, I blocked my mother’s number. Two months later, I saw her standing outside my office building. Ignoring the rush of morning commuters, she burst into tears and lunged for me, begging for money. “Daughter, you have to help us. Your father… he went gambling again… and this time he owes some very dangerous people. They showed up at the house!” “They said we have one week to pay it all back, or they’re going to… they’re going to chop off your father’s fingers!” This was the day of my final review, the one that would determine if I got hired permanently. My Sun exploded with shame as colleagues gave me strange looks. I dragged my mother to a secluded corner, pleading with her that she needed to get a divorce, not keep paying off a gambler’s debts. “Mom, I just started this job. I don’t have that kind of money. What kind of life is this? We can’t keep doing this with a gambler. When are you going to wake up?” She wiped her eyes. “But he’s still your father. I’ll go home and talk to him, try to talk some sense into him. You can’t just stand by and watch him… watch him get his fingers chopped off!” Seeing her still only worried about him, the rage boiling inside me erupted. I screamed that she was delusional, that dad only got this far because she had enabled him every step of the way. But looking at the wrinkles on her face and the worn-out patches on her coat, I ultimately couldn’t do it. I ordered her a Lyft, told her to go to my apartment and wait, and that we’d figure something out when I got off work. I never imagined that by the time I got off work, having bought groceries to make her some soup, she would be gone. And she’d stolen my debit card. That card held every penny I had saved, from my student jobs to my current position. Six thousand dollars. My entire life savings. I sprinted to the nearest ATM. The money was gone. My PIN was my birthday. I wanted to ask her, so badly: when she had me, was it to build a warm family, or just to have someone she could push all her problems onto? When I was little, I was her emotional garbage can, a tool to manage her relationship with her husband. And now that I was an adult, I was just her ATM. I slumped down in front of the ATM, useless. My phone buzzed. It was a text from my mother, using someone else’s phone. “Your father’s fingers are safe. You were good for something after all.” I could only offer a bitter laugh. Given the choice between me and my father, she would always choose him. My work app chimed. My manager had seen the scene that morning. Despite a perfect final presentation, I wasn’t getting hired permanently. In a single day, I lost my savings, my job, and my will to live. Dragging my heavy feet, staring at the endless stream of city traffic, I wondered if I could just let go. Could I finally escape this toxic family, never be used again? I closed my eyes and started to step out into the middle of the street, my Sun full of despair, wanting only an end. Just before a speeding car could hit me, someone grabbed my arm. Looking at him, sweating and panting, I realized someone had run three blocks just to save my life. His name was Ethan. We were in college together; I later found out he’d had a crush on me back then. Like a lost ship spotting a lighthouse in the dark, we fell together. His parents had retired to Arizona, his sister was a successful local entrepreneur, and he’d landed a job at a major tech company. I often felt like I didn’t deserve him. But he always said that when he saw me that day, huddled in a little ball, his heart had physically wrenched in his chest. Surrounded by his love, I couldn’t help but start to fantasize about the warm home we would build, a family that was completely different from the one I had known. But that beautiful dream bubble burst with a single phone call from his sister. I heard her say, “You need to handle your girlfriend. Tell her mother to stop asking my brother for money. One more time, and I am calling the police and reporting them for fraud! Don’t you dare think you can marry into our family by using my brother’s feelings. We aren’t trash like your family. Get out!” A bone-chilling cold invaded my core. For the first time, I felt an overpowering, towering hatred for my parents. I hated them for endlessly draining me, for being like ghosts that never left, and for even going behind my back to ask Ethan for money. If this was my fate, fine. I’d accept it. But Ethan was too good. He was like warm sunshine, shining light on my cold, gray corpse. He hadn’t even mentioned that my mother was asking him for money. I couldn’t drag him down with me. His sister was right. A trash family like mine didn’t deserve them. I packed my things and moved out of Ethan’s apartment. I sent him a text breaking up with him and blocked his number. But he found me almost immediately. With tears streaming down my face, I said I could write him an IOU, that I would pay back whatever money my mother owed him, and to please just give me some time. While I was saying I was sorry, he pulled me into a crushing hug. I could feel his hands trembling through my clothes. “Don’t apologize,” his voice came, muffled against my shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” “Ethan, my family situation… I don’t want to drag you down. We aren’t right for each other.” “Trust me to help you handle this. Please, just let me help you. Okay?” “I don’t want to see you suffer anymore. You’ve had it so hard. You deserve a happy life.” Do I deserve that? I choked, unable to speak. No one had ever said that to me before. All my life, I had been blamed. My mom always said that if it wasn’t for me, dad wouldn’t have been like that, that she would have been happier. Having heard it enough, I truly believed I was the family’s curse. Now that I was an adult, the weight of this toxic family had crushed me. A peaceful life was a far-off dream, and I didn’t dare ask for happiness, or for someone to help me. It turns out I didn’t do anything wrong. They did. Ethan helped me pack my things that day. I left the cramped, moldy studio I had rented and moved back to our little home. In that dry, comfortable bed, in Ethan’s warm, broad embrace, I had the deepest sleep of my entire life. The next time my mother called Ethan for money, I took the phone. When she heard my voice, my mother paused, her tone sounding guilty. “Daughter, you have better luck than your mother. You found a good man. Help your mother one more time. I promise, your father won’t gamble again! I… I’m getting a divorce from him right away.” When I heard that, I gave a soft chuckle. “Mom, Ethan isn’t giving you another dime. You and dad are on your own. Believing a gambler like you… I’d have better luck believing a stop sign could talk.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “397476”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

For the fifth year of my relationship with Carter Hayes, we were still crammed into a tiny, run-down studio apartment. Because we were broke, I took on a side hustle on an anonymous venting app called VentSpace. It paid $15 an hour, double if the client wanted to hurl verbal abuse at you. While other listeners avoided the bad-tempered clients like the plague, I always scrambled to take them on. But today, I matched with an incredibly generous client who had a strong urge to confess. [I’ve been with my girlfriend for five years. Honestly, I’m getting bored.] [But she’s so stupidly cute. I purposefully buy her knockoff designer bags, and she accepts them with tears of joy. I pretend to be broke and tell her I can’t afford to marry her, and she actually says she’ll work extra shifts to help save up for our future home.] [I’ve wanted to end the game for a while now, but I just can’t seem to let her go. Besides her, I doubt anyone else would be stupid enough to work three jobs a day just for the chance to marry me.] A strange, unsettling feeling twisted in my chest. I tentatively replied: “Why don’t you try spending some time apart? See how you really feel about her?” The very next second, Carter sent me a text. “Baby, my boss just assigned me to a month-long business trip out of state! Triple pay! When I get back, I’ll finally have enough saved up to marry you!” 1 I stared at his pinned message at the top of my screen, a suffocating weight pressing down on my chest. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, unable to type a reply. How could this be possible? I looked up and scanned my surroundings. The cramped studio was filled with our shared life. Matching towels, matching toothbrushes, even the matching pajamas we wore were personally picked out by Carter. Every time he came back to this apartment, he would cling to me like a koala, never holding back his words of affection. “Baby, I love you so much. I washed cars all day today and my hands feel like they’re going to fall off, but the second I think of you, I’m not tired anymore.” “Baby, you’re too good to me. I just wish I wasn’t so broke. If I had money, I’d marry you tomorrow and hide you away in a mansion.” My eyes landed on the small humidifier by my bedside—a gift from Carter. Working multiple jobs from dawn to dusk had wrecked my skin. It was constantly dry, tight, and itchy. Especially my hands. They had endured the elements from passing out flyers, delivering takeout in the freezing rain, and soaking in commercial dishwater until they swelled. No one would ever guess they belonged to a twenty-something girl. They were calloused, cracked, and frequently bled. I still remember how Carter had held my bleeding hands back then, his eyes turning bright red. “Harper, when I make it big, I’m going to move you into a massive house. I’ll never let you suffer or get hurt again.” I would always smile at him and say, “I know. I believe in you!” The day I received that humidifier, my heart was full, completely convinced that true love could conquer all. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, I thought. I opened his chat: “Okay, I’ll wait for you.” A moment later, Carter replied: “Even though it’s only a month, it’s still long-distance. Baby, while I’m gone, you are absolutely not allowed to fall for anyone else.” He attached a cute, insecure-looking meme. I couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. Because of his supposed poverty, Carter always acted incredibly insecure around me, terrified that one day I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore and would leave him. To reassure him, even during the darkest, most exhausting days, I never once brought up breaking up. Now, I replied exactly as I always did: “I could never fall in love with anyone but you.” Before the text even finished sending, the VentSpace app chimed. I immediately switched screens. After all, this client was the only one who paid double without screaming at me. [That’s a great idea. I told her I have to go on a month-long business trip, and she didn’t suspect a thing. So gullible.] [I’ve played poor for so long, and she still refuses to leave me. Looks like she genuinely loves me. They say long-distance is the ultimate test of loyalty, right? I’m going to hire a guy to hit on her. If she resists the temptation, then I might actually consider marrying her.] [I don’t really have anyone I’m madly in love with right now anyway, so I might as well marry someone who is madly in love with me. When the time comes to reveal the truth, she’ll probably cry from how touched she is…] … The more I read, the colder my blood ran. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I clicked on his anonymous profile. It was filled with pictures of luxury watches and exotic sports cars. One photo was of a sleeping Toy Poodle. I stared at it for a very long time. The blanket the dog was sleeping on… was the exact scarf I had hand-knitted for him. He told me he lost it on the subway. He said he was so scared I’d be mad that he secretly saved up for months to buy me a Louis Vuitton scarf to make up for it. It turns out, my handmade scarf was thrown into a dog bed, and the LV scarf was a counterfeit. My nose stung. I blinked, and a heavy tear smashed abruptly onto my screen. Masochistically, I scrolled further down his feed, my heart turning to ash with every swipe. On Valentine’s Day, while I was freezing on a street corner selling single roses for five bucks a pop, he tipped an internet model ten thousand dollars in a single night. On New Year’s Eve, while I was crying tears of joy because he bought me a ten-dollar sparkler, he was dropping hundreds of thousands to rent out a drone light show for a minor actress. Carter was right. I really was stupid. Stupid beyond cure. Naive enough to believe that pure, unadulterated love could overcome any obstacle. I never stopped to consider if the other person’s heart was just as genuine. I wiped my tears and deleted the text I was about to send Carter. Instead, I typed: “Carter, what if I really do fall for someone else?” 2 Carter didn’t reply for a long time. I stared at the screen until my eyes burned. Just when I thought he was going to ignore it, my phone began to ring. It was him. “Baby, I was just joking! You know I have major insecurity issues. I’m so broke, and I’m dragging you down, making you work yourself to the bone just so we can afford a future together. I’m the one who’s terrified of you leaving.” I wanted to laugh. Five years of unwavering loyalty. What exactly did I have to do to give him a sense of security? “If you fell for someone else, I think I’d literally cry until I died. You wouldn’t have the heart to do that to me.” I don’t even know how I managed to hang up the phone. Choking back the sobs in my throat, I gave a vague hum of agreement. The VentSpace app flashed: [I just casually mentioned wondering if she’d fall for someone else while we’re long-distance, and she actually seemed to get mad. Tsk, tsk. Guess she just loves me too much. That’s why she’s so anxious.] I composed myself and typed a reply. As cold and detached as a bystander. “Are you still planning to hire someone to test your girlfriend? What if she actually does cheat?” [Of course I’m going to test her. Don’t you think it’s a fun game? If she actually cheats, perfect. It gives me the upper hand to force a breakup. I get to be the flawless victim. Then, when I drop the ‘poor’ act, she won’t have the dignity to come crawling back to me.] [If I talked about this with my buddies, they’d call me a toxic bastard. That’s why I like your service. You’re tight-lipped. Tell you what, I’ll send you a nice tip. Drop your CashApp.] Listening to the ding of the “$1,500 received” notification, I typed back, word by word: “Thank you, boss. Wishing you a successful breakup.” It wasn’t until my shift was completely over that sensation finally returned to my limbs. Two hours of chat time, plus the tip. A total of $1,530. Enough to cover a year’s rent on our cramped studio. Or, exactly the amount we were short for our goal. We had a goal of $20,000—the down payment for a modest starter home. Carter and I had been saving for five years, but we were always just a little bit short. Every time we got close to the finish line, an “accident” would happen. Either I would be purposefully harassed by a customer at the diner and forced to pay for a ruined meal, or Carter would fall severely ill and the money would vanish into medical bills. I still remember two years ago, when the mason jar we used as a piggy bank was finally stuffed to the brim. I held it, bursting with joy, ready to tell Carter we could finally start looking at houses. But when I called his phone, a nurse answered. She said Carter had been in a terrible car accident and was in the ICU. They didn’t know if he would ever wake up. I remember my hands shaking so badly I dropped the phone. I ran to the hospital in the middle of the night, still wearing my thin pajamas. I never got to see him, but I was directed to the billing department. When I smashed that mason jar on the counter to pay the deposit, my hands were trembling. Not because I couldn’t bear to part with the money, but because I was so, so thankful we at least had emergency funds to save his life. I wasn’t allowed into the ICU, but the daily out-of-pocket costs crushed me. Soon, our entire life savings were gone. I had no choice but to work day and night. I had just resolved to quit the waitress job where my manager constantly made creepy, inappropriate comments. The very next day, I had to swallow my pride and beg him for my shifts back. I still remember the way he looked at me in his office. Like I was cheap, desperate trash with zero self-respect. I endured his harassment, working twice as hard to make money. Whenever I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, I would run to the hospital. Even though I couldn’t see Carter, I would sit on the floor outside his ward for the entire night. The next morning, I would gather my strength and face reality all over again. But I had just seen the truth on his anonymous profile. During that exact same time period, when he was supposedly in a coma… He wasn’t fighting for his life in a hospital bed. He was taking his new flavor-of-the-month to a private villa in Bali. It was all fake. The only thing that was real was me being the ultimate punchline. I stared at the balance on my screen. I didn’t transfer it to our joint “future fund” like I usually did. Instead, I bought a blind-box plane ticket. The destination was a total surprise. Carter really didn’t know me at all. I love fiercely, but I hate just as fiercely. The thing I despise most in this world is desperate, pathetic clinging. 3 It didn’t take long for me to meet the man Carter sent to “test” me. Tristan Sterling. A notorious playboy and heir to a massive real estate empire. Logically speaking, we existed in two entirely different universes. If it weren’t for that deliberate rear-end collision, we never would have crossed paths in this lifetime. When I felt the violent jolt from behind my car, my heart skipped a beat, and my fingers trembled uncontrollably on the steering wheel. It wasn’t until a polite knock came at my window that I snapped out of it. “Miss, let’s talk about the damages.” I stepped out and took a look. His headlights were smashed, and my rear bumper was completely caved in. However, my car was a beat-up clunker. The entire vehicle wasn’t even worth one of his headlights. Carter really spared no expense just to play a prank on me. I forced a tight smile and looked at Tristan. He instantly offered a perfectly calculated, charming smile. Elegant and effortless. “Miss, let me get your number. We can settle this privately.” “Name your price.” As he pulled out his phone, I caught a glimpse of his active call screen. The profile picture was incredibly familiar. It was Carter’s. The call was active. A sharp pang of agony wrapped around my heart. I closed my eyes for a second. “You’re entirely at fault, correct?” Tristan froze, clearly not expecting this reaction. “Since that’s the case, let’s wait for the police to arrive and file an official report. The law will dictate the compensation.” Tristan’s perfect smile cracked. His expression changed, masking sheer disbelief. “Are you stupid? If we settle privately, you can walk away with a lot more cash!” “How much do you think insurance is going to pay out for this piece of junk?” Exhausted, I sat down on the curb. Looking down at my cheap, thrift-store clothes, I let out a bitter laugh. How could I not understand? It’s just that, now that I didn’t need to save for Carter’s fake future, I wasn’t that desperate for cash anymore. I made enough to feed myself just fine. As the wail of police sirens grew closer, I watched Tristan’s active call disconnect. At the exact same moment, the VentSpace app chimed. [I had my buddy rear-end her car to manufacture a meet-cute, and she actually called the cops! Do you think poverty rotted her brain? She could have easily used this to squeeze a massive payout out of him.] [Do you know how many women would kill for my friend’s phone number? The opportunity is practically shoved in her face, and she turns it down.] [I used to think she was just naive, sometimes in a cute way. But now I realize she’s a total moron. You don’t think she’s actually planning to latch onto me forever, do you?] I sat on the bus stop bench outside the police precinct. The cold, sterile glow of the streetlamp illuminated my face. It was terrifyingly apathetic. “If you want to make a clean break with her, why not just be direct? Maybe she won’t cling to you like you think.” The typing bubble flashed, and Carter replied instantly. [Are you kidding me!] [You have no idea what people like her will do for money. Her old boss was a total creep who constantly sexually harassed her. She would cry and complain to me about it every day, but when I told her to quit, she refused.] [She claimed she wanted to share my financial burden, but if you ask me, I bet she actually enjoyed the attention.] A numb, creeping sensation spread through my chest. My immediate instinct was to type back and expose the entire ugly truth. But the curses stalled in the text box. Word by word, I deleted them. I kept reminding myself: Do not give Carter what he wants. Five years of blood, sweat, and tears. I wasn’t going to let this end with a quiet, pathetic whimper! “If that’s the case, then you really don’t need to worry. Since your friend is wealthy and handsome, your girlfriend will likely jump ship very soon. When that happens, you’ll finally be free.” I hit send. When I looked up, a sleek Bentley had silently pulled up to the curb. The window rolled down, revealing Tristan’s face. The flirty, playboy attitude from earlier was dialed back, replaced by a veneer of formal charm. “Miss Evans, perhaps I misjudged you.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, the thrill of the hunt sparking in his eyes. “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.” “Let’s start over. Nice to meet you, Madam Plaintiff.” A freezing gust of wind whipped my bangs across my forehead, but I flashed a brilliant, radiant smile. “Sure thing, Mr. Defendant.” I cleanly opened the car door. As I leaned in, my hair fell forward, masking my face. Tristan never saw the absolute, glacial ice in my eyes. 4 With my deliberate encouragement, my relationship with Tristan escalated rapidly. Very soon, I moved out of the dingy studio apartment and into a luxury villa Tristan arranged for me. When I moved, one single suitcase held my entire life. The studio was too cramped, overflowing with cheap, random knick-knacks that were almost all tied to Carter. So, I left it all behind. “What’s wrong? Already missing your little dump?” Tristan’s voice pulled me back to the present. He smiled, loaded my suitcase into the trunk, and opened the passenger door for me. “Come on, I’m taking you out for a candlelight dinner. Let’s soothe that wounded little heart of yours~” When the FaceTime call from Carter came through, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. I gave Tristan a quick wave and went up to the quiet second floor of the restaurant to answer it. “Baby, why did it take you so long to answer? Are you doing something bad behind my back?” “No, I was just eating.” I kept my face perfectly neutral. “What about you?” Carter panned his phone camera around the room, then whispered conspiratorially: “My boss took me out to this super fancy restaurant! But honestly? I don’t think their food is half as good as the homemade chicken noodle soup you make me.” I couldn’t stop a short laugh from escaping my lips. Just a few days ago, Carter had complained on VentSpace: [I absolutely despise her chicken noodle soup. When I’m sick she makes me eat it, when I’m sad she makes me eat it. I’m so sick of it. It’s like she doesn’t know how to make anything else.] But Carter didn’t know that I remembered the very first time he made me chicken noodle soup. It was the first time anyone had celebrated my birthday since my parents died in a car crash. “Baby, did you just laugh?” Carter’s heart skipped a beat for some inexplicable reason. I looked over the balcony railing. Down below, Carter was enjoying a romantic candlelight dinner with a gorgeous girl. “I just think chicken noodle soup is bland and awful,” I said softly. The moment the words left my mouth, Carter’s smiling face instantly turned forced and irritable. “Baby, I’ll bring you back a gift. Let’s talk later.” I watched him hurriedly hang up the phone. The very next second, his entire aura shifted. He picked up a brand-new, latest-season designer handbag—easily eighty thousand dollars, enough to fund ten of our imaginary weddings. He casually tossed it into the lap of the girl sitting across from him. The girl squealed in delight. She looked remarkably like the minor actress he had briefly dated years ago. Her name was Serena Vance. Everyone in her social circle knew she had a billionaire boyfriend who spoiled her rotten, elevating her to the status of a socialite. Calculating the timeline, they probably started dating three years ago. I gripped my phone tightly. The VentSpace notification icon began to flash. [I purposefully FaceTimed her to test the waters, and she actually acted totally cold to me. So weird.] Leaning against the wall, I watched Serena intimately kiss Carter on the floor below, while my fingers flew across the keyboard: “Isn’t that a good thing? It looks like you’re getting exactly what you wished for.” But to my surprise, Carter suddenly exploded. It was the first time he had spoken harshly since buying my monthly listener package. [What the hell do you know?! She is NOT allowed to cheat, and she is DEFINITELY not allowed to fall for someone else!] “Even though this is a test you meticulously orchestrated?” [So what?! Besides me, who else would even want her? Even her own parents abandoned her; they didn’t even show up for their own funerals.] [Tristan Sterling? He’s just playing with her. I doubt a guy like him is even capable of loving someone. She’s better off with me. At least I’m not a complete bastard, and I actually know how to coax her.] [Forget it. Why am I even telling you this? Get lost. Service terminated.] Ding. A text from Carter popped up. “Baby, do you like this? I’ll bring it home for you when my trip is over.” Attached was a picture of a logo-stamped keychain. It was very familiar. It was the complimentary gift tag that came attached to the $80,000 bag he had just given Serena. It turns out that when your heart breaks past a certain threshold, you really do just go numb. I didn’t reply. I walked downstairs and returned to my seat. Under Tristan’s confused gaze, I sent one final message to Carter on the VentSpace app. “Look behind you.” Carter whipped his head around violently. As our eyes locked, the color completely drained from his face.

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My Best Friend Reported My Reselling Business for Tax Evasion; After the Customs Audit, Her Store Was Shut Down First. When the agents from Customs and Border Protection knocked on my door, I was in the middle of packing a box of SK-II Facial Treatment Essence for a client. Eight people. Six in uniform, two in plain clothes holding folders. The lead agent took one look at my hundred-square-foot warehouse and frowned. “Maya Brooks? We received a report alleging that you are evading import duties and taxes on your personal shopping business. Please cooperate with our investigation.” I froze. In my three years of running this import reselling business, I hadn’t missed a single invoice or declaration. Every order’s import record, duty payment certificate, and bank statement was filed away monthly, stacked neatly into fourteen distinct binders. It took me half an hour to haul every single binder out. The lead agent flipped through a few pages, his expression shifting subtly. He glanced at me and lowered his voice. “The information in the tip-off report was incredibly detailed. It even listed your exact flight numbers for your weekly sourcing trips to the airport.” A cold shiver ran down my spine. Whoever could write a report like that had to know me inside and out. And my specific sourcing routes, supply channels, and client lists had only ever been shared with one person. My best friend of ten years, Stella Montgomery. The agents began to inventory the goods in my warehouse, documenting them piece by piece. Six cases of Japanese and Korean skincare, four cases of supplements, two cases of premium baby products. For every single item, I produced a corresponding purchase receipt, an entry declaration form, and proof of duty payment. I leaned against the wall, watching them rummage through my life. My heart was beating so fast it felt like it would leap out of my throat. But I knew my books were perfectly clean. Three years ago, when I first got into this industry, I paid $500 for a cross-border e-commerce tax compliance course. I still remember the first thing the instructor said: “As a reseller, you shouldn’t fear running out of clients. You should fear an audit your books can’t survive.” From that day on, I bought a small fireproof safe specifically to store my duty payment certificates. Every payment, every customs document—I photographed them for digital archives, and locked the hard copies in the safe. Other resellers in my circle laughed at me. “You’re not running a massive corporation, why are you being so dramatic and official?” I never bothered explaining. I just kept doing my thing. “What was the total declared value for this specific shipment?” the lead agent asked. “$12,342.60. The corresponding tax documents are in the seventh binder, under the blue tab.” He opened it, cross-referenced the numbers, and stayed silent. A younger agent next to him couldn’t help but shoot me a look. I read his expression clearly—making a mountain out of a molehill. But a federal report was a report. The protocol had to be followed. “Have you received any inventory from unknown sources within the last month?” “No. I only source and sell my own inventory. I don’t drop-ship or handle other people’s goods.” I paused. “However…” “However what?” “Last month, my best friend borrowed my corporate courier account to ship three batches of goods. She said her own account had hit its volume limit.” I unlocked my phone, pulled up the direct messages, and handed it over. “This is the conversation when she asked to borrow my account. I explicitly told her she had to generate her own labels and fill out the customs declarations herself. I didn’t handle the shipments.” The lead agent took the phone and scrutinized the messages. “What is your best friend’s name?” “Stella Montgomery.” Saying her name made my throat tighten. Ten years. High school seatmates, college roommates, and after graduation, we both fell into this reselling industry together. She ran a much bigger operation than I did. I stuck to the legal, tedious channels. My profit margins were thin, my client base small but stable. She played fast and loose. Just last month, she was flaunting a brand-new BMW X3 on her Ins feed. I had never asked questions. The agent took photos of my chat logs and spent another half hour flipping through the binders. Right before leaving, the lead agent turned back to look at me. “Maya, let me give you a heads-up. There are details in that tip-off letter that a random outsider wouldn’t know. Your exact landed costs, your profit margins, and even the exact location of your safe.” “Think about it. Who possesses that information?” After the door closed, I stood alone in the warehouse. The SK-II was still sitting on the packing table, the shipping bag unsealed. The location of my safe. I had only ever brought one person to this warehouse. The day Stella came over to help me move boxes, I had personally made her a cup of fresh-ground coffee right here. I didn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, desperately trying to convince myself there was a mistake. Maybe it was someone else? Maybe it was a jealous competitor? But flight numbers, landed costs, and the safe’s location—the only intersection of those three data points was Stella. At 2:00 AM, I opened her Ins profile. Her latest story was posted six hours ago: eating an omakase dinner at a high-end sushi bar, with the caption, “Treating myself after a long day of grinding.” In the photo, her makeup was flawless. Across from her sat a man, only his cuff visible. I recognized that navy blue Hugo Boss shirt. It was her boyfriend’s. I scrolled further down her feed. Three days ago: “Ladies, clearing out top-tier Japanese beauty brands! SK-II Miracle Water marked down by $60! DM me ASAP!” The accompanying photo grid showed a table completely overflowing with high-end skincare. I stared at that image and zoomed all the way in. In the bottom right corner of the fifth photo, a tiny corner of a cardboard box was visible. Pasted on that box was a label bearing my corporate courier account details. I recognized the tracking number format. It was the batch she had borrowed my account to ship last month. I put my phone down and stared at the ceiling. My mind was chaotic, but one thing suddenly became terrifyingly clear: The goods she shipped through my account and the goods I declared myself went through the exact same customs audit channel. If there was an issue with her shipment, the one who would get audited and penalized was me. This was no coincidence. At 9:00 AM the next morning, Stella called me. “Maya! I heard you got raided by Customs? What’s going on?!” Her voice was thick with surprise and concern. If I hadn’t made those discoveries last night, I would have believed her completely. “It’s no big deal. Just a routine check.” “I knew it! You’re so meticulous, how could there be an issue? Do you want me to ask around for you? I know a guy at a customs brokerage—” “No need.” “Hey, don’t just tough it out. A Customs audit is no joke. If your inventory gets seized, what about your clients? If you need, I can cover your urgent orders from my stock for now.” I gripped my phone, my nails digging hard into my palm. I had only told my mother about the audit. “Stella, how did you know I was being audited?” The line went silent for two seconds. “Ah… didn’t you post a story on Ins yesterday? Saying the warehouse was temporarily closed for shipping—” “I put that story on a Close Friends list. Only my clients could see it.” Another two seconds of silence. “Maybe… a client screenshotted it and sent it to me? I don’t really remember.” “Oh. Okay then.” I hung up the phone. My palm was slick with sweat. She was lying. And it wasn’t the first time. I opened my laptop and pulled up every record of our cooperation over the last three years—how many times she borrowed my account, which goods she handled, the declared amounts, and whether there were customs forms. Customs wasn’t the only one who needed to conduct an audit. For the next week, I did absolutely nothing on the surface. I replied to client messages as usual, and met Stella for boba tea as usual. But every night when I got home, I started organizing. Over the last three years, she had borrowed my account to ship seven batches of goods. The first four batches had records; the amounts weren’t large, the biggest being maybe $1,800. But the last three were different. Those three were shipped in a concentrated burst between last October and this January. I couldn’t find the declared amounts for those batches. Because at the time, she had told me, “I’ll fill out the customs declaration forms myself, I don’t want to trouble you with the paperwork.” Back then, I thought she was being considerate. Now, I knew she was being deliberate. Wednesday lunch. I asked her to meet me at the mall for food. She was wearing a camel-hair Max Mara coat. I recognized it—it retails for about $3,800 on the official website, and she had flaunted it on her Ins last month. “Maya, why have you lost so much weight? Is the Customs stuff crushing you?” “I’m managing. My books are clean, anyway.” “That’s a relief.” She picked up a piece of sashimi with her chopsticks. “By the way, your client, Mrs. Thornton—the one who buys three sets of Sulwhasoo every month—has she contacted you lately?” My heart sank. “How do you know that?” “She came to me last week and bought them. Said she heard you were under investigation and was too scared to get stock from you.” Stella bit her chopstick and smiled. “Don’t worry, once your situation blows over, I’ll give her back to you.” Give her back. As if my clients were property she had just borrowed. “Besides Mrs. Thornton, who else has contacted you?” “Just… a few. Some people are just terrified of being implicated, it’s normal.” She was looking down, scrolling on her phone, and didn’t see my hand trembling around my chopsticks. When I got home, I went through my client list and messaged them to confirm their status, one by one. The results turned my entire body to ice. Out of the sixty-seven stable clients I had accumulated over three years, twenty-three were gone. Nineteen of them had transitioned to Stella. It wasn’t because they were afraid of my audit. It was because Stella had proactively contacted them, saying, “I don’t think Maya is going to clear this Customs hurdle, you shouldn’t wait around. Come over to me, my prices are lower anyway.” A client named Jenna sent me a screenshot of their direct messages. The last line Stella sent her was: “Rest assured, just stick with me. She’ll never know.” I put my phone down. There was no anger, just an unspeakable, numbing chill that spread from my spine all the way to the top of my head. Ten years. A ten-year friendship was apparently worth exactly nineteen clients. No, maybe it was worth more. Maybe from the very beginning, every step of this friendship was just her maneuvering closer to my client list. I started rewinding the tape in my head. Every event that had seemed completely normal back then now had a different flavor. Freshman year of college, she said her family was struggling financially. I helped her get a side gig running errands for an import business. Junior year summer, she said she wanted to learn the reselling ropes. I gave her my entire six-month archive of Japanese pharmacy lists, trending item price sheets, and shipping company comparisons. After graduation, I took her to Tokyo three times, personally introducing her to all my supply channels. I even fronted the money for her first solo buying trip to Japan. $500. She said she’d pay me back next month, but she never did. And I never chased her for it. Later, she scaled up. She rented proper office space to use as a warehouse, hired two girls to help with packing and shipping, and incorporated her business. I was genuinely happy for her. Sometimes when we video-chatted at night, she’d be working overtime in her fancy office, backed by a literal wall of inventory shelves. Meanwhile, I’d be on the balcony of my small apartment, slapping shipping labels onto six cardboard boxes. She would say, “Maya, why are you still playing so small? Come join my company, I’ll help you scale up.” Every time, I’d smile and politely decline. I was used to doing things my way. My books were clear, and my conscience was peaceful. But while her mouth said “help me scale up,” her hands were busy poaching my clients. I drafted a timeline. Last July: I tell her Mrs. Thornton orders three sets of Sulwhasoo religiously every month. Last August: Mrs. Thornton makes her first purchase from Stella. Last September: Stella borrows my corporate courier account to ship her first batch of goods. Last October to this January: Concentrated borrowing of my account to ship three massive batches. This February: Someone files a federal report alleging I am evading taxes. The timeline was entirely too perfect. She first poached my clients to build a baseline, then used my account to funnel goods that were likely illegal, and finally delivered the kill shot with a tip-off letter. If Customs found issues with the goods shipped through my account, they would hold me accountable. If my business was destroyed by the investigation, my remaining clients would have no choice but to go to her. Three birds, one stone. I sat in front of my computer, hands resting on the keyboard, not moving for a very long time. Outside the window, the sky was dreary and grey. It was about to rain. I didn’t cry. I just felt tired. The kind of exhaustion that seeps out from the marrow of your bones. The Customs investigation continued. I was required to remain available to provide supplementary materials, but they hadn’t seized my inventory. When Agent Miller called to inform me of this, his tone was entirely flat.

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In the blinding neon glare of the VIP lounge, the crystal chandelier scattered fractured beams of light across the room. The clinking of glasses, raucous laughter, and drinking games blurred together into a chaotic roar that made my eardrums throb. I leaned back in the deepest corner of the leather sofa, an unlit cigarette pinched between my fingers. The cold light caught the dial of my Patek Philippe watch. Dressed in an immaculate, bespoke Italian black suit without a single crease, I exuded an unapproachable distance that felt entirely out of place in this loud, suffocating environment. “Ethan! Ethan, man!” Someone with sharp eyes spotted me through the dense crowd and raised a glass, his voice booming over the blasting pop music. “The biggest nerd in our graduating class is now the CEO of a publicly traded tech empire! We have to toast to you!” The room erupted in laughter, and several others eagerly chimed in. “No kidding! Who would have thought? Back in the day, Ethan used to walk across three different quads just to catch a glimpse of Sarah at the dining hall. And what happened? She turned around and got together with Brad! Man, people clowned on him so hard back then!” “Hey, don’t say that! It was a blessing in disguise! If he hadn’t been so crushed, would Ethan have buried his head in his books, snagged a full ride to grad school, moved out to Silicon Valley, and built his startup into what it is today?” The gossip buzzed in my ears. I let out a faint, cynical smirk but didn’t say a word. I simply raised my glass of whiskey and took a slow sip. The harsh liquid burned down my throat, but it couldn’t quite extinguish the old, familiar itch rising from the depths of my memory. Nobody here knew how that “nerd” had survived countless freezing nights, eating cheap ramen while cramming for exams. Nobody knew that when I was in grad school, I lived in an unheated basement apartment to save on rent, my hands covered in frostbite as I stayed up coding until dawn. Nobody knew that during the early days of my startup, when we were on the verge of bankruptcy, I stood on a rooftop all night in the freezing wind, clutching a business proposal that was soaked through with my own nervous sweat. I never told anyone about that pain. And the only thing that had kept me going—aside from sheer, stubborn ambition—was the memory of a girl in a white dress walking away from me on the elm-lined campus walkway. Sarah. For twenty years, that name had been a thorn buried deep in my heart. I had never pulled it out, but slowly, it had stopped hurting. Right at that moment, the heavy door to the VIP room was pushed open. The noise in the room died instantly, as if someone had hit the pause button. All eyes snapped toward the doorway. I looked up, too. Silhouetted against the hallway light stood a frail, exhausted figure. The woman wore a simple, unadorned linen dress, her hair pulled back into a messy bun that exposed her thin neck. She was so gaunt it looked like a strong gust of wind might blow her away. But that face, even weathered by time, was instantly recognizable. It was Sarah. Twenty years later, the radiant, confident girl from college was gone. Her brow was lined with profound exhaustion. Only her eyes still held a faint trace of the lively spirit I once knew. But right now, those eyes were brimming with anxiety, helplessness, and a heavy, unshakable guilt. Her gaze cut through the crowd and landed directly on me. It was as if, across two decades of time, she had perfectly located the boy who used to be madly in love with her. The room was eerily quiet; you could hear a pin drop. Someone muttered under their breath, “Sarah? Why is she here… Where’s Brad?” Those words were like a needle, popping the dusty membrane over my memories. Scenes from the past flooded my mind without warning. I remembered the summer I was eighteen. The elm leaves blocked out the sky, and sunlight filtered through the gaps, landing on Sarah’s white dress, blindingly bright. I was clutching a three-page love letter, my palms sweating, my voice trembling: “Sarah, I like you. Will you… be my girlfriend?” I remembered Sarah biting her lip, her brows furrowed in apology, yet her tone undeniably firm: “Ethan, I’m sorry. I know you’re a great guy, but… I like Brad.” I remembered Brad walking up from behind her, a smug smirk on his face. He threw an arm around her shoulders and raised an eyebrow at me, his tone dripping with mockery: “Hey man, you can’t force these things, right?” I remembered the wind howling that day, scattering the elm leaves across the ground, and blowing away all the joy of my youth. I remembered hiding in the darkest corner of the campus library, listening to the muffled sounds of Brad and Sarah laughing outside. I gripped my pen so hard it snapped in half. The ink splattered across my notebook in an ugly, black stain—just like how I felt inside. After that day, I never spoke a single word to Sarah again, and I never acknowledged Brad. I poured every ounce of my energy into my classes and tech competitions. Like a cornered, enraged beast, I ran toward one single goal: to become stronger. Strong enough that everyone would have to look up to me. “Ethan.” Sarah’s voice, soft and carrying a barely detectable tremble, pulled me back to reality. She gripped the hem of her dress and walked toward me step by step, her white canvas shoes slightly dusted with dirt. When she reached my table, she stopped and lowered her head, not daring to meet my eyes. “Long time no see.” I withdrew my gaze. I crushed the unlit cigarette between my fingers, letting the shredded tobacco fall into the ashtray. I looked up at her, my eyes as calm as a stagnant pool. “Can I help you?” No pleasantries. No small talk. Not even a ripple of emotion. It was as if the woman standing in front of me was just an irrelevant stranger. Sarah’s face paled. She bit her lower lip, her voice dropping even softer. “I… I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Can we… talk privately?” I raised an eyebrow, scanning the room. Some people were gloating, others were hungry for gossip, and in the corner, Brad was holding a beer, glaring at us with a dark, resentful expression. I stood up slowly, my long fingers adjusting the hem of my suit jacket. “Let’s go.” As I walked past Brad, he reached out to block me, his tone laced with a forced, aggressive familiarity. “Ethan. Long time no see. Have a drink before you go?” I didn’t break my stride. I didn’t even glance at him, leaving him with nothing but a cold shoulder. Brad’s hand froze in mid-air, his face turning an ugly shade of red and white. An Apology Twenty Years Late In the emergency stairwell at the end of the hallway, only the dim, yellow backup lights were on. It stretched our shadows out thin and long against the concrete—like two parallel lines that could never intersect. The heavy steel door was shut tight, completely cutting off the noise from the lounge. The only sound was our slightly labored breathing. Sarah spoke first. Her voice choked with tears, her eyes rimmed with red. “Ethan. I’m sorry.” Three words. Twenty years late. I leaned against the freezing concrete wall, my hands shoved into my suit pockets, just looking at her. I didn’t say anything. Under the dim light, I could clearly see the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the bloodshot veins in her sclera. She looked incredibly haggard. She was practically a different person from the radiant, smiling girl in my memory. “Back then… I shouldn’t have treated you like that.” Tears fell without warning, splashing onto her plain dress and leaving dark, damp spots. “I know you spent a long time writing that love letter. I heard later that you dug through dozens of poetry books and stayed up for nights…” She wiped her face, her shoulders shaking. Her voice was thick with regret. “I was too young and stupid back then. I just thought Brad was exciting. He could take me to concerts, make me laugh, give me a thrill. I never realized my rejection would hurt you so deeply. And I never considered that getting together with Brad would turn you into the laughingstock of our entire class…” “Later, when I saw you burying yourself in the library every single day, when I saw how much weight you lost, how you were solving equations even during breaks… I felt incredibly guilty.” Sarah sniffled, her words disjointed. “I wanted to apologize to you, but I was too scared. I was afraid you hated me, afraid you didn’t want to see me…” I remained silent, just listening quietly. My gaze rested on her face, but it felt like I was looking right through her, seeing that young, broken boy hiding in his dorm room, secretly wiping away his tears. How pathetic was I back then? After she rejected me, the whole class gossiped about it. Some said I was out of my league, a toad trying to eat swan meat. Some said I deserved it—who told me to aim so high? Others pointed behind my back, calling me a spineless loser. Back then, my only thought was to get stronger. Strong enough that no one would ever dare laugh at me again. Strong enough to make Sarah regret it. Strong enough that… I would never have to shrink myself down into the dirt for anyone, ever again. “Brad and I broke up less than two years later,” Sarah’s voice pulled me back. “During our junior year, he cheated on me with a sorority girl from another major. That was when I realized ‘excitement’ is the most unreliable thing in the world.” She gave a bitter, sorrowful smile. “After the breakup, I was a mess for a long time. I used to see you in the library a lot. You always sat by the window. The sunlight would hit you, and you looked so focused reading your books. Back then, I kept thinking… if only…” “There are no ‘if onlys’.” I finally spoke. My voice was light, but it carried an undeniable, absolute certainty. Sarah froze, looking up at me with tear-blurred eyes. “Even if you had never existed, I still would have made it to where I am today,” I said, looking her dead in the eye, pronouncing every word clearly. “Your rejection was, at best, a minor catalyst. The thing that actually pushed me forward was me. It was the nights I stayed up coding, the days I gritted my teeth and endured, the ambition in my bones.” I paused, then added, “It didn’t have much to do with you.” Sarah’s tears fell even harder. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped her dress. She had always assumed my years of relentless struggle were somewhat tied to her. She thought I still harbored some lingering affection for her deep down. But my words were a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the last, faint flicker of hope in her heart. “I know it’s too late to say any of this now.” Sarah took a deep breath, as if making a massive decision. She reached into her canvas tote bag, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and handed it to me. “Please. Just look at this.” I looked down. It was a medical diagnosis from a hospital. The handwriting was a bit messy, but the words were unmistakable: Pancreatic Cancer. Terminal. My pupils constricted slightly. I had noticed her complexion was terrible, but I hadn’t expected something this fatal. “I have cancer. Terminal.” Sarah’s voice was as light as a feather, as if a breeze could blow her away. “The doctors say I don’t have much time left.” She looked at me, the guilt in her eyes so dense it was suffocating. “For the last twenty years, I’ve regretted it every single day. I regretted my immaturity, I regretted humiliating you, I regretted… not apologizing to you sooner.” “I’m not looking for you to beg for forgiveness. I just… I didn’t want to leave this world carrying this guilt.” Sarah’s voice carried a hint of pleading. “Ethan, can you… forgive me?” Only her muffled sobbing echoed in the stairwell. I looked at the diagnosis, then at the tear-streaked woman standing in front of me. In my heart, there was no hatred. There was no resentment. There wasn’t even a ripple of emotion. I thought about the boy twenty years ago, crying under his covers because he was rejected. I thought about the version of me in the library, turning all my humiliation into fuel. I thought about the arduous, brutal path I had walked to get to where I am today. Those memories had long been smoothed over by time. Did I hate her? Maybe, once upon a time. But now? Not anymore. Brad’s Provocation and the Hidden Truth Before I could answer, the heavy steel door to the stairwell was violently thrown open. Brad stormed in. He gripped a beer bottle, his face terrifyingly dark. His eyes were filled with aggression as he glared daggers at Sarah and me. “Sarah! What the hell are you doing out here?!” Brad’s voice was furious. He marched over and reached out to grab her arm. “Get back inside! What are you doing embarrassing yourself at a college reunion?!” Sarah violently dodged his hand, her brows knitting together tightly. “Brad, stop making a scene!” “I’m making a scene?” Brad acted like he had just heard the funniest joke in the world. He pointed at me, sneering. “I think you’ve lost your damn mind! It’s been twenty years and you’re still chasing after him? Did you forget how he used to be the biggest joke in our class?” “Enough!” Sarah’s voice spiked, filled with exhaustion. “Brad, please, just stop talking.” “Why shouldn’t I talk?” Brad’s gaze locked onto me, burning with jealousy and bitterness. “Ethan, you think you’re hot shit now, huh? A big-shot CEO! But don’t you ever forget, if it weren’t for me and Sarah, you wouldn’t be where you are today! You should be thanking us!” I frowned slightly. The thing I hated most was people attributing my success to some pathetic college heartbreak. My success was built step by step, with my own blood, sweat, and tears. It wasn’t given to me by anyone, and it certainly wasn’t fueled by some cheap romantic trauma. “Brad,” my voice dropped a few degrees. “My success has absolutely nothing to do with you, or Sarah. You don’t need to flatter yourself.” “What the fuck did you just say?!” Brad was triggered. He stepped forward, raising his fist to swing at me. “You arrogant piece of shit! If I hadn’t—” “I said enough, Brad!” Sarah suddenly screamed. She stepped in front of me, looking at Brad with pure disappointment. “When are you going to stop? Have you forgotten what actually happened back then?!” Brad froze mid-motion. His face instantly drained of color, a flash of panic crossing his eyes. I looked between the two of them, a hint of confusion surfacing in my mind. What actually happened? Was there a hidden truth to what went down twenty years ago? Sarah turned around to look at me, fresh tears welling in her eyes. She took a deep breath, as if resolving to finally unearth a secret she had buried for two decades. “Ethan, back then… I didn’t get together with Brad just because I liked him.” Her voice trembled. “During our junior year, my dad’s business failed. He went completely bankrupt and owed a massive amount of debt. Aggressive creditors were showing up at our house every day, threatening me and my mom.” My pupils shrank. I had known absolutely nothing about this. “I was losing my mind.” Sarah choked on a sob. “Brad found out. He came to me and said he could help. His family was wealthy, and he offered to pay off a significant chunk of the debt. But… he had a condition.” Sarah bit her lip, her voice dropping to a whisper. “His condition was that I had to be his girlfriend.” My heart gave a sudden jolt. I looked at her, a flash of shock in my eyes. I had never imagined that there was such a dark, desperate reason behind her choosing Brad. “I was at a complete dead end.” Tears fell like broken pearls from Sarah’s eyes. “My dad fell terribly ill from the stress. My mom cried every single day. Brad was the only person who could save us. I didn’t have a choice.” “So, when you confessed to me… I had to reject you.” She looked into my eyes, her own filled with immense guilt. “I couldn’t drag you down with me. You were a brilliant student. You had a bright future ahead of you. I couldn’t let my family’s mess ruin your life.” “And…” Sarah’s voice grew even quieter. “Brad threatened me. He said if I didn’t agree, he would hire people to come to the campus and broadcast my family’s bankruptcy to the entire university. I didn’t want everyone to look at me like a joke… and I especially didn’t want you to look at me like a joke.” Brad stood off to the side, his face ghostly pale, his lips trembling, but he couldn’t utter a single word. I was stunned. I looked at her tear-stained face, and it felt like something had gently struck my heart. So that was the truth. For twenty years, I thought she had rejected me simply because she liked the excitement Brad offered. I thought I was just a pathetic, discarded loser. I never knew she was hiding so much pain and helplessness behind her choice. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice carrying a barely noticeable huskiness. “Maybe I could have helped you.” “You couldn’t have helped.” Sarah shook her head, tears blurring her vision. “You were just a broke college kid, same as me. How could you have helped? I didn’t want to drag you into a life of being harassed by loan sharks.” She gave a bitter smile. “I thought choosing Brad would solve my family’s problems. But I never realized… he was just a predator. He paid off some of the debt, but it was only to possess me. It didn’t take long before he got bored and cheated on me.” “Eventually, my dad recovered. We slowly paid off the rest of the debt ourselves.” Sarah looked at me, her eyes full of regret. “But I lost so much. I lost my dignity. And I lost… the right to love you.” The stairwell fell into a dead silence. What We Miss is Just Our Youth The yellow emergency light cast a hazy, ambiguous glow over our faces, each harboring vastly different emotions. I looked at Sarah, a complex storm brewing in my chest. So, the “white rose” of my youth wasn’t the carefree, radiant girl I had pictured in my head all these years. Behind her smile, she had hidden so much suffering and despair. Brad kept his head down and left the stairwell without another word. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind him with a dull thud, breaking the suffocating silence. Sarah’s emotions slowly leveled out. She wiped her eyes and looked at me with a sense of relief. “I’ve held onto those words for twenty years. Now that I’ve finally said them, I feel so much better.” I was quiet for a moment before asking, “How is your health right now?” She smiled, though it was tinged with bitterness. “Not great. The chemo is agonizing. My hair is all gone. I’m wearing a wig today.” She reached up and gently touched her hair, a self-deprecating tone in her voice. “Does it look awful?” “No,” I shook my head. Her eyes welled up again. She looked at me and asked softly, “So… do you forgive me?” I looked into her eyes. They were so full of hope. I stayed silent for a few seconds, then nodded gently. “I forgive you.” That answer made Sarah let out a sigh of relief, yet it also brought an inexplicable, profound sense of loss to her heart. She felt like things shouldn’t be this way. She had thought I would hate her, that I would interrogate her, or at least yell at her. But I didn’t. My calmness was like a thick glass wall, permanently shutting her out of my world. “Actually…” Sarah hesitated, then spoke softly. “Over the years, I sometimes thought about our college days. I thought about how you used to save a seat for me in the library. How you brought me hot milk. How your eyes would sparkle like there were stars in them when you looked at me.” I looked at her, not saying a word. I thought about those things too. I remembered the summer I was eighteen, the girl in the white dress under the elm trees. I remembered the dimples framing her smile. I remembered her gentle voice when she asked to borrow my notes. Those memories were like yellowed, vintage photographs, locked away in the deepest vault of my heart. “I always thought I couldn’t forget you,” Sarah said, her voice laced with confusion. “I always thought my guilt all these years was because I still loved you.” I cut her off. My voice was light, but every word was crystal clear. “Sarah. You don’t miss me.” Sarah froze, looking up at me. “You miss the girl who dared to love and hate so fearlessly. You miss the carefree youth you used to have,” I said, looking out the small window at the neon-lit city sky—a sky that looked exactly like the one above our old campus night market. “Just like me.” I paused, then continued, “I used to think I couldn’t forget you, either. I couldn’t forget the look in your eyes when you rejected me. I couldn’t forget seeing you walk away with Brad. I used to think I worked so hard just to make you regret it.” “But later, I realized that the thing I couldn’t let go of was never you.” I turned back to look into her eyes, my gaze filled with total closure. “The thing I couldn’t let go of was the boy I used to be. The insecure, sensitive boy who made his crush his entire universe.” “It was that chaotic, heartbreaking, but incredibly pure youth.” Sarah stared at me, dumbfounded. The tears spilled over once again. But this time, it wasn’t out of guilt. It wasn’t out of regret. It was out of absolute closure. It was true. She didn’t miss Ethan Wright. She missed the version of herself that was young and willing to risk everything. She missed the days when my eyes would light up just by looking at her. That was the most beautiful testament to her youth. And what I missed wasn’t her, either. I missed the reckless, passionate boy I used to be. I missed the years I spent fighting tooth and nail for a single goal. We didn’t miss each other. We just missed the youth we could never get back. “Ethan.” Sarah wiped away her tears and gave me a relieved smile. This smile stripped away all the guilt and exhaustion, finally showing a glimpse of the radiant girl from twenty years ago. “Thank you.” Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for releasing me from twenty years of guilt. Thank you for helping me understand that the fading of a first love isn’t a tragedy—it’s just growing up. Looking at her smile, I smiled too. I reached out and gently patted her shoulder, like an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. “Focus on your treatment. Medicine is very advanced now. There’s always hope.” Sarah nodded vigorously. Her eyes were red, but her smile was brilliant. “I will.” We stood side by side in the hallway, watching the bustling traffic outside the window. Neither of us said another word. The obsessive grudges of our youth, the lingering resentments of the past—in this very moment, they vanished into thin air. The phantom of my youth had finally faded. But maybe, just maybe, this was the start of something new. The Curtain Falls and Final Farewell It was late into the night by the time the reunion ended. I had just seen the last of my classmates off and was about to get into my car when I saw Sarah standing under a streetlight. She was gripping her canvas bag, her silhouette looking exceptionally fragile in the yellow glow. “Did you need something else?” I walked over and asked. Sarah shook her head, then nodded. She pulled a small box tied with a red string from her bag and handed it to me. “This. I’m giving it back to you.” I opened the box. Inside was a fountain pen—the expensive brand-name pen I had saved three months of allowance to buy. I had planned to give it to her when I confessed my feelings, but ended up leaving it behind in the library. “I found it back then, but I never had the courage to return it.” Sarah smiled, fine lines of exhaustion showing around her eyes. “Giving it back to you now feels like checking off a final box on my list.” I closed the box and slipped it into my suit pocket. “Thank you.” “I should be the one saying thank you.” Sarah looked at me, her eyes full of genuine sincerity. “Ethan, I hope everything in your life only gets better from here on out.” “You too,” I said. “Focus on your health. There’s always hope.”

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After five grueling years working overseas with my fiancé, our long-awaited payday never arrived. Instead, we were greeted by the deafening roar of artillery shells from the neighboring border. While I was stressing over the extortionate, million-dollar black-market flight tickets, the company accountant looked at me with pure envy. “Maya, you are so lucky. Carter just withdrew your combined two-million-dollar salary to buy flight tickets. Even if it means draining every cent of your hard-earned savings, he’s determined to get you back to the States safely. It’s so romantic!” My heart swelled with warmth, and I immediately rushed back to our quarters to pack my bags. But after dozens of unanswered phone calls, I stayed up until midnight, only to receive a single, freezing text message. “Maya, you’ve made a lot of friends over here, you know how to survive. Elena is a widow with no man to protect her, and she’s too soft for this environment. She’d get eaten alive. I’m sending her back to the States first, and then I’ll figure out a way to come back and get you!” As the sky lit up with anti-aircraft fire, I silently blocked his number. What Carter didn’t know was that I had just received a classified call from the US Embassy. Due to my status as a top-tier technological asset, I had been granted immediate access to a military extraction flight—and I was allowed to bring my family for free. Furthermore, the local airport had just been entirely commandeered by the US Armed Forces. Their commercial flight wasn’t going anywhere. …… When my armored transport arrived at the airport, thousands of desperate expats were already pacing anxiously on the cracked tarmac. The vehicle crawled slowly through the chaotic crowd. Outside my tinted window, right in front of the Embassy’s emergency registration desk, I spotted them. Carter was holding Elena tightly against his chest, shielding her. The sight of them was blindingly repulsive. Sitting in the passenger seat, Agent Sterling, the embassy liaison sent to extract me, was diligently filling out a clipboard. “Dr. Vance, do you have any other family members currently in-country? Given your High-Value clearance, we have the authority to extract them with you right now.” I looked at the intimately entangled pair outside the window and let out a soft sigh. Years ago, when my parents died in a tragic accident, it was Carter’s mother, Mama Hayes, who constantly invited me over for dinner and kept me company. If it weren’t for her, I might have succumbed to my depression and joined my parents. For the sake of Mama Hayes’s memory, and knowing full well that Carter and Elena wouldn’t be able to escape tonight, my heart wavered for a fraction of a second. I was just about to raise my hand and point to them when the embassy worker outside spoke to Carter in a hurried, anxious voice. “Sir, do you have any other family members in the country? The geopolitical situation is deteriorating by the second. Every minute they stay behind is a lethal risk. Even if you have to borrow money, you need to leave together!” Carter froze. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the black-market tickets in his hand. We both knew the truth. Our combined salary was two million, but as a middle-management executive at the multinational firm, he could easily request an emergency cash advance. Corporate wouldn’t just leave an employee to die. Elena looked up at him nervously and whispered, “Carter, if we contact Maya right now, knowing her temper, she’ll definitely throw a massive fit. We might end up missing our window to leave entirely…” The hesitation in Carter’s eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a cold resolve. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. It’s just us.” Those words pierced right through the bulletproof glass and slammed ruthlessly into my heart. Amidst the smoke and distant gunfire, the two of them clung to each other, looking like a pair of tragic, star-crossed lovers. Seeing Elena’s satisfied smile, Carter lowered his voice to comfort her. “Maya is tough. She acts like a total tomboy anyway. Even if she stays behind, no one would dare mess with her. Unlike you—you’re too fragile and delicate. You’d be bullied in a heartbeat.” Caught up in the emotion of his own twisted heroism, he gently kissed her forehead. “Don’t be afraid. As long as I’m here, I will keep you safe!” The bitter irony was that he had said those exact same words to me when he proposed. Now, he was perfectly fine abandoning me in a literal warzone, acting as if my “toughness” was a bulletproof vest that could magically deflect mortar shells. But he conveniently forgot something. Before I followed him to this desert wasteland, I was a quiet, soft-spoken academic who spent all her time in a sterile physics lab. Growing up, whenever I visited the Hayes house, Carter was always the one who looked after me. Naturally, he became the sole protagonist of my teenage daydreams. So, after Mama Hayes passed away, I threw away my brilliant career as a young, tenured physics professor back in the States to follow him overseas to strike it rich. To support his ambitions, I—one of the youngest genius physicists of my generation—worked alongside the rugged construction crews, grinding my way up from a manual laborer to a lead draftsman, all just to hear him say: “Once I save up two million dollars, I’m taking you back to the States to give you the grandest wedding imaginable! I’ll make sure your parents can rest in peace!” Last year, when our salaries finally got bumped up to the executive tier, I thought I could finally catch my breath. Instead, he flew his newly widowed sister-in-law over, claiming she was sweet, docile, and was getting bullied by her extended family back home. He told me to “take good care of her.” Elena hadn’t worked a day in her life. One minute she was complaining that the desert dust made it hard to breathe, the next she was whining about the heat making her dizzy. From that day on, I—the woman who wasn’t even legally married into the family yet—had to bake in the scorching sun at the construction site, only to come back to the barracks and play maid for my future sister-in-law. When the rough local contractors disrespected her for being overly dramatic, I was the one who stood in the doorway, hands on my hips, screaming back at them in their native language to protect her. I thought my sacrifices would earn Carter’s gratitude and devotion. Instead, I got nothing but disgust and betrayal. I let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh, lowered my hand, and turned to Agent Sterling, who was still waiting for my answer. Mimicking Carter’s exact tone, I said: “No. It’s just me.” Sterling nodded sympathetically. The armored SUV finally broke through the crowds and pulled up right in front of the main terminal. While Sterling went inside to expedite my clearance, I grabbed my bags from the trunk. Before I could take a step, two furious figures blocked my path. Carter’s eyes were ice-cold. “Didn’t I text you? You’re already used to living out here, waiting a little longer won’t kill you. Why are you shamelessly stalking us? Are you trying to guilt-trip me and force me into a difficult choice?” I glanced at the visibly nervous Elena and let out a dry, exasperated laugh. “I never thought you were torn about your choice for a single second.” Carter’s face stiffened, and he guiltily looked away. Elena hurriedly jumped in. “Maya, please don’t misunderstand! Carter only did this because he knows my health is terrible, and I’m not as thick-skinned and resilient as you are. That’s why he decided to take me first. But I completely understand why you’re angry. After all, I’m just a widow—I don’t deserve to have a million dollars spent to save my life. Just let Carter take you. I’ll stay here and wait to join my late husband…” Her performance was flawless—weeping like a fragile flower, acting as if I had inflicted some massive, unbearable injustice upon her. The guilt on Carter’s face instantly evaporated, replaced by blazing anger as he glared at me. “You know perfectly well that Elena is physically weak and can’t handle emotional stress! Did you specifically follow us here just to throw a tantrum and make her cry?!” He spoke as if I were somehow immune to bullets and emotional trauma. Hearing the artillery fire creeping closer, I had zero desire to entangle myself with them any further. I grabbed my suitcase and said coldly: “Since you don’t want to see me, get out of my way. From now on, whether I live or die has absolutely nothing to do with you!” Seeing me turn and walk straight toward the embassy staff who had just registered them, Carter panicked. He grabbed my arm, his eyes filled with utter contempt. “Maya Vance, I never thought five years in this country would turn you into such a toxic, vicious bitch! You’re actually going to the Embassy to report us? Is this because you’re mad I used your half of the salary to buy Elena a ticket?! In your eyes, is money seriously more important than family?!” It hit me then. He was terrified I was going to expose his embezzlement, which could stop them from boarding their flight. Elena instantly caught on to his panic and amplified her performance. Her eyes red, she took off the luxury watch David had given her for their wedding and tried to shove it into my hand. “Maya, I don’t have your luck. I don’t have an amazing man like Carter to protect me. This is the only valuable thing I own—the last thing my husband left me. I’ll use it to pay you back right now. Please, just don’t make things difficult for Carter, okay?” Absolutely disgusted, I slapped her hand away. “If you like spending other people’s blood money, be my guest. But I won’t take yours!” I barely even brushed her arm, but Elena dramatically threw herself onto the tarmac, bursting into pathetic tears. “Maya, please don’t hit me! I know everyone on the construction site calls you the crazy psycho lady! I’m scared!” Hearing the commotion, the surrounding passengers crowded in. A few American expats who recognized us looked at me with blatant disgust. “Isn’t that the notorious shrew from the Sector 4 site? Now she’s assaulting people in public? She’s an embarrassment to Americans everywhere!” “That’s her own sister-in-law, and she actually hit her! People like her deserve to be left behind to let the bombs teach them a lesson!” “Hanging around groups of sweaty male laborers all day, she’s either a complete slut or totally uncultured. How does trash like this even have the nerve to show up at the airport and mingle with people of our class? Just looking at her makes me feel dirty!” I recognized them instantly. They were the same entitled managers from our project site who used to bully Elena, the ones I had screamed at to protect her. But Elena pretended she didn’t know them. She pathetically tugged at Carter’s sleeve. “My future sister-in-law has offended so many people, and with the way she usually treats me… I’m so scared!” Feeling his ego bruised, Carter shoved me violently to the ground. “Look at your own reputation! This just proves that whenever I wasn’t looking, you were bullying Elena! I was completely blind when it came to you! You love money so much? Fine, here! Take it and get the hell back to the barracks! Stop making us sick!” He pulled a few crumpled bills from his pocket and threw them at my face like he was tossing change to a beggar. The sharp edges of the paper sliced across my cheek, leaving several bleeding paper cuts. I never expected that my first physical injury in an active warzone wouldn’t come from enemy shrapnel, but from my own fiancé. I was just about to snap back when an artillery shell slammed into a building just a few miles away. The massive shockwave forced everyone to hit the deck and cover their heads. The embassy staff sprinted off to assess the perimeter breach. In the distance, I saw Agent Sterling waving at me, signaling that my clearance was ready. I didn’t have time to waste on this toxic pair. I stood up, my expression icy. “Don’t worry. I have zero expectations of you taking me anywhere, and I don’t give a damn about your filthy money.” Seeing me nod in Sterling’s direction, Carter’s face turned pitch black. “So this is what it’s all about! To save your own pathetic life, you actually seduced another man?! Did you forget that you’re engaged to ME?!” The crowd around us suddenly looked at me with dawn realization and deep revulsion. “No wonder she had the nerve to show up here. She sold her body for a plane ticket! How is she any different from the cheap hookers in the red-light district?” “Don’t let dirty trash like her onto our commercial flight! It’s disgusting!” “She acted so high and mighty at the construction site, but the second she needs to flee, she throws her dignity in the trash!” Seeing them swarm around to block my path, I raised my voice to defend myself. “I didn’t! I am a Defense Specialist! I have the security clearance to board—” “Stop lying through your teeth!” A resounding, vicious slap trapped the rest of my words in my throat. Carter grabbed me aggressively by the collar. “High-level executives like us had to spend a million dollars on the black market just to secure a civilian seat! You think the United States Government is going to dispatch a dedicated flight to save a construction draftsman?! Do you think we’re all fucking idiots?!” Elena couldn’t hide the smug smirk playing on her lips, but she put on a mask of deep pity. “Maya, even I have my dignity. As weak as I am, I would never stoop to doing something so filthy just to survive. Grabbing a random man to sleep with just to escape? Don’t you think that’s a bit reckless? You haven’t even officially married into our family yet, and you’ve already dragged the Hayes name through the mud. If Mama Hayes knew about this, she’d be rolling in her grave!” Seeing me cornered by the mob from afar, Agent Sterling assumed I was saying goodbye to friends. To help me leave faster, he shouted across the tarmac. “I’m going to finalize the aircraft coordinates! Grab your gear, I’ll come pick you up in a minute!” He jogged off before I could even shout his name. Carter erupted in absolute rage. “The guy you’re fucking just admitted it! What else is there to deny?! Selling yourself to elope, and you have the audacity to call yourself an ‘expert’?! How could you betray everything I’ve done to take care of you over here?!” In his eyes, my face—tanned, weathered, and covered in dust from the harsh desert winds—no longer resembled the soft-spoken, easily blushing scientist he once knew. But if it weren’t for a grown man dropping to his knees, sobbing and begging me because he was terrified a long-distance relationship would cause another man to steal me away… If he hadn’t relentlessly begged me to come to this desolate, arid wasteland… how could I have ever ended up looking like this? I was burning with an uncontrollable fury. I pointed at the scar on my forehead from a falling brick, the burn marks on my hands from cooking for Elena, and the jagged knife scar on my leg from defending her from local thugs. My eyes were bloodshot as I screamed: “THIS is how you took care of me?!” I pulled out my phone and pulled up the urgent email he had sent to corporate that very morning. “Is this how you take care of me?! Leaving me to die in a warzone and dragging another woman to safety?!” His eyes darted nervously, and he turned his face away. “Whatever. Our flight is about to board, and I don’t want to argue anymore. You’re on your own…” Sensing his hesitation, Elena instantly fired up her toxic, tearful routine. “It’s all my fault. Because my husband died early, and my health is so poor, it made Carter pity me. I’ll just die right here! I won’t get in the way of you two reconciling…” She turned and acted like she was going to sprint directly toward the active mortar fire. Carter panicked, yanking her back and pulling her tightly into his arms. When he looked back at me, all the guilt was completely gone. “Elena, the person who deserves to be blown up by artillery fire is this cheating slut!” Holding the trembling, sobbing Elena in his arms, his face turned dark and sinister as he glared at me. “Get on your knees and apologize to Elena right now! If she doesn’t feel emotionally stable, you and your new lover aren’t getting on any plane today!” I was shaking with rage. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt—which, I noticed, had a faint lipstick stain on it. “She is the one who needs to apologize! Last night, the moment the bombing started, you instantly grabbed her and ran straight for the underground bunker! But you forced ME to run to the office building to salvage the critical project blueprints! Spending the whole night alone together in that bunker listening to the bombs… I’m sure you two found ways to keep yourselves entertained, didn’t you?!” Exposed and humiliated, Carter snapped. He violently shoved me back, knocking me to the ground. “Slandering me is one thing, but how dare you ruin Elena’s innocence?! I sent you to get the blueprints to give you a chance to earn credit! In the end, weren’t you the one commended for it?!” “Really?” I let out a bitter, heartbroken laugh. I pulled up the corporate report he had submitted this morning after seeing me run into the bunker, covered in soot, clutching the crucial documents. At the bottom of the report, under the section detailing the “heroes” who secured the critical assets, the primary name listed was Elena Hayes. “In your eyes… I have to act as her personal maid at home, I have to pave the way for her career at work, and I even have to hand over my fiancé on a silver platter! Who are the ones actually acting without an ounce of shame, sleeping together behind my back?!” Seeing the surrounding crowd begin to look at him with suspicion, cold sweat beaded on Carter’s forehead. He knew that if his illicit affair with his sister-in-law reached corporate HR, even if he survived and made it back to the States, he would be fired and blacklisted. He crouched down, his face twisting into an ugly sneer, and gripped my jaw fiercely. “I’ll say this one last time. Stay here and be a good girl! Stop fighting with Elena! Once I get back to the States and get hailed as a corporate hero, I will personally arrange to bring you home. If you keep making a scene and we all go down together, you won’t survive this either!” “Who the hell needs you to bring me anywhere?” Having finalized the flight coordinates, Agent Sterling rushed back over, furious. He violently shoved Carter away. “We are here on classified orders to extract a top-tier US asset! If you disrespect her again, you’re going to end up in a federal black site!” Seeing Sterling, Carter’s rage exploded. He sneered at him. “Still trying to use these pathetic excuses to cover up your affair?! Do I really need to remind everyone what kind of cheap trash she actually is?” The crowd, finally shifting their attention to Sterling, chimed in with relentless mockery. “Everyone here knows she’s just a construction site draftsman. Did she suddenly become a ‘top-tier asset’ in your bed?” “This so-called ‘expert’ probably bought her plane ticket while she was on her back!” “With the war raging outside, how many nights did she have to service you for a single seat?” Sterling was left utterly speechless by their vile ignorance. He quickly pulled out his federal credentials. “Are you people insane? I represent the US State Department, and I am here to extract Dr. Vance! How dare you slander a federal operation?!” The next second, an angry mob member snatched his badge without even looking at it and tore it to shreds. “Trying to impersonate a federal agent to protect this whore?! You’re an embarrassment to our country!” Furious, Sterling reached for his satellite phone to call for tactical support, but Carter slapped it out of his hand, smashing it against the concrete. “Degenerate scum like you two don’t deserve to sit on our civilian evacuation flight!” Suddenly, another mortar shell shrieked through the air, detonating incredibly close to our position. Carter instantly shoved me—the person closest to him—aside, throwing his body over Elena to shield her. Caught completely off guard by his violent shove, I had no time to find cover. I was hit by the blast wave and thrown heavily onto the jagged asphalt. As the dust settled and people began scrambling frantically toward the commercial airliners, Carter staggered to his feet, pulling Elena up with him. As he walked past me—bleeding profusely from the impact—he hesitated for a split second, before finally crouching down next to me. I thought his conscience had finally kicked in. I reached out and grabbed the hem of his pants. “Get a medic… hurry…” But instead of helping me, he pried my bleeding fingers off his leg, one by one. He picked up my scattered passport and ID from the ground and tossed them directly into a nearby debris fire ignited by the mortar shell. He let out a heavy sigh. “Maya, I’m sorry. If you keep these documents today, you will forever be a threat to Elena’s safety. I’ve already taken care of you enough since we were kids, but Elena was never as lucky as you. As for the wedding… I’ll make it up to you in the next life.” Agent Sterling, who had only suffered minor scrapes from the blast, saw the horrific state I was in. His eyes went red with sheer fury. He lunged forward and grabbed Carter, who was about to run away. “Help me carry her to our plane! Right now! If you save her, I guarantee you can fly out with us! Otherwise, once the military lockdown initiates, none of you are leaving this airport!” Carter violently shook him off. “Still trying to scam me?! Spit! We paid a million dollars for commercial tickets! I’d like to see who’s going to stop us from leaving!”

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On the eve of our wedding, a heavily pregnant college student showed up at our door. My usually ruthless and decisive fiancé, Liam, immediately dropped to his knees and apologized to me. “I was drunk that night, I thought it was you. I swear it will absolutely never happen again.” The young girl, blushing, admitted that she saw Liam was wealthy and wanted to use the baby to secure her future. Liam personally took her to the clinic for an abortion. For the next six years, our marriage was the picture of perfect devotion. Until our sixth anniversary, when I held my positive pregnancy test, ready to completely turn the page and start a family. I was carrying a box of his favorite cake, arriving at the hotel where he was supposedly on a business trip. Just as I stepped out of the elevator onto his floor… I heard a woman’s voice coming from around the corner, holding a six-year-old boy and sending a sickly-sweet voice memo. “You’re so bad… you insisted on finishing inside last night. My legs still feel like jelly.” “You have to go easy on me tonight, or I’m going to give you the silent treatment.” I couldn’t help but marvel at how open people were these days, and out of sheer curiosity, I took a glance. My entire body froze in place. It was that exact same college student from six years ago. 1 Chloe seemed not to recognize me. She continued recording her voice memo, her tone soft and seductive. “Make sure you shower and wait for me. I’m going to wring you dry tonight.” “I don’t want strawberry flavor today, I want cheesecake~” “Mommy, I want to eat the strawberry tart Daddy bought!” The little boy called out in a sweet, childish voice. Chloe crouched down and kissed his cheek: “Okay, Daddy is waiting for us in the room. Be a good boy. When you see Daddy, you have to tell him how much you missed him.” With trembling hands, I pulled out my phone and sent Liam a text: [Honey, are you busy?] The top of the chat window continuously showed “Typing…”. But after a full minute, no message came through. I dialed his number. “We’re sorry, the number you have reached is turned off…” It seemed he had turned his phone off so he wouldn’t be disturbed. Chloe held the child’s hand, her hips swaying seductively as she walked to the presidential suite at the end of the hall. She raised her hand and knocked lightly three times, a cheerful rhythm. A large, distinctively masculine hand reached out, grabbing Chloe’s slender waist. He pulled her and the child inside. In the second before the door closed, through the crack, I clearly saw Liam’s familiar face. He was smiling so tenderly. He lowered his head to kiss Chloe’s forehead, his eyes full of absolute adoration. Then he scooped up the little boy, put him on his shoulders, and made funny faces to make the child laugh. Click. The door shut in my face, cutting off the happy laughter of their family of three. A wave of dizziness hit me. My feet felt as heavy as lead. The scenes from the past six years flashed through my mind like a movie reel. I remembered how, no matter how late he worked, he would always cook me healthy soups, insisting takeout wasn’t good for me. I remembered how every time he traveled for work, he would send me his itinerary and bring back a suitcase full of my favorite local treats. I remembered three years ago when he had the opportunity to transfer to the London office and be promoted to Executive VP. But because I wasn’t used to living abroad, he gave it up without a second thought. He had said: “Rylee, what’s the point of conquering the world if I don’t have you by my side?” That night, I was so moved I cried in his arms until dawn. I also remembered the day we got our marriage license six years ago. Chloe, heavily pregnant, stood crying hysterically outside the courthouse, begging me to step aside. Liam’s face had turned pale with rage. He dragged Chloe into his car, saying he was taking her to the hospital. Three hours later, he came back alone. His hands were covered in blood, and his shirt was stained with it. He dropped to his knees in front of me, knocking his forehead against the ground: “Honey, the mistake has been taken care of.” “Please, give me one chance. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.” Those blood-soaked hands became a nightmare I couldn’t shake for six years. But they also became the ironclad proof that made me believe he had truly changed. To give me peace of mind, he even voluntarily got a vasectomy. “Rylee, we don’t need kids. You are the only one I want for the rest of my life.” The vows were still ringing in my ears, but the man had completely changed. My phone vibrated suddenly. My mom sent a text: [How is it? Did you tell Liam the good news about the pregnancy? He must be thrilled!] Fighting back the urge to vomit, my fingers trembling, I typed a reply: [Just got to the hotel. Haven’t had a chance to tell him yet.] 2 After sending the message, I turned and walked toward the elevator. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I forced them back down. I sat on a sofa in the hotel lobby, waiting quietly. Ten minutes later, the elevator doors opened. Liam had changed into a navy blue button-down shirt, with gold-rimmed glasses resting on his high nose bridge. He looked refined and elegant, showing absolutely no trace of the degenerate behavior happening in that room just moments ago. When he saw me, his pupils constricted, and his footsteps halted for half a second. But he quickly adjusted his expression and walked briskly toward me. “Honey!” He crouched in front of me, his face full of concern, and reached out to hold my icy hands: “What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to get some rest at home?” “Traveling is exhausting. I didn’t want you to strain yourself.” I discreetly pulled my hands away and pointed to the cake box on the table: “Today is our sixth anniversary. I wanted to surprise you.” Liam glanced at the cake, guilt flashing in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, honey. It’s my fault I have to travel on a day like today.” “This is from your favorite bakery, right? Thank you so much.” Just then, the phone in his suit pocket vibrated. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, his expression shifting slightly, and then naturally hit ‘decline’ right in front of me. “Just a spam call.” He explained, but his eyes couldn’t meet mine. Watching his guilty demeanor, I sneered inwardly. My gaze swept over his collar. Even though he had purposely buttoned his shirt all the way up to the top. As he looked down, my sharp eyes still caught the edge of a hickey on his neck. Liam seemed to notice my gaze. He instinctively adjusted his collar, stood up, and said: “Honey, I have an incredibly important overseas conference call this afternoon.” “How about you go sit in the café for a bit, maybe get some hot milk? Once my meeting is over, I’ll come right down and take you out for a massive dinner, okay?” I abruptly stood up and grabbed the cake from the table. “No need. Since you’re busy, I won’t bother you.” With that, I turned and headed for the hotel entrance. Liam obviously didn’t expect this reaction and hurriedly chased after me, grabbing my arm. “Rylee, are you mad because I don’t have time to be with you right now?” “Be good, don’t throw a tantrum. This project is really critical for the company…” As he spoke, he leaned in, trying to kiss my cheek to coax me. As he got closer, the smell of baby lotion drifted into my nose. “Don’t touch me!” I violently shook off his hand and stepped back twice. Liam froze, his outstretched hand suspended in mid-air. “Rylee?” I stared at him, forcing down the bitterness in my heart. “I’m tired. I want to go home. Go do your work.” Liam checked his watch, hesitated for a moment, and still chose that mother and son. “Honey, please don’t be mad. I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get back. That necklace you had your eye on? I already had someone buy it for you.” With that, he quickly turned and walked briskly back into the hotel. Watching his eager, retreating back, I stood on the sidewalk, trembling all over. Two cleaning ladies passing by were chatting. “Wow, the guy in the presidential suite really dotes on his wife and kid.” “Yeah, every time he comes, he specifically asks for the baby crib with rounded edges. Says he’s afraid the kid will bump his head.” “Just now I saw him peeling shrimp for the woman. Tsk, makes you jealous.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I raised my hand and threw the cake box directly into a nearby trash can. 3 I flagged down a cab and headed straight for the train station. Along the way, my hands and feet were freezing, but my mind was exceptionally clear. I opened Instagram, searched the location tag for the hotel, and typed in keywords: “baby,” “anniversary.” Quickly, a mommy-blogger account named “Chloe’s Darling Life” popped up. Her latest post was from half an hour ago. In the photo, a man was holding a little boy, looking out the floor-to-ceiling window at the city skyline. The caption read: [Daddy finally finished work and came to celebrate our sixth birthday with us! Baby wished that Daddy and Mommy would be together forever. Love you, hubby~] The background was unmistakably that presidential suite. I kept scrolling down, my thumb swiping faster and faster, my heart growing colder and colder. This account had documented an entire six years. From prenatal checkups, giving birth, postpartum recovery, to the boy learning to walk and starting kindergarten. At every major milestone, that man—always shown only from behind or in profile—was there. Finally, I scrolled to her pinned post. It was a photo of a pink diamond tennis bracelet, with the caption: [Someone insisted on buying me this flashy thing, saying it’s a limited edition. But how am I supposed to hold the baby wearing this? It’s too scratchy. It’s just sitting in my jewelry box now.] I looked closely. It was the exact limited-edition pink diamond bracelet I had been obsessing over but couldn’t bring myself to buy. A follower commented below: [Wow, Chloe, your husband loves you so much! So jealous!] Chloe replied: [He said six years ago that he chose us, and he would love us for the rest of his life.] Large drops of tears smashed onto the phone screen, blurring my vision. Right then, Chloe posted a new update. The camera panned over a floor covered in red roses, ending on a nightstand with an opened box of condoms. In the video, Chloe’s sickly-sweet voice could be heard: “Hubby, for our next baby, do you want a boy or a girl?” Immediately after, Liam’s deep, laughing voice replied: “As long as it’s yours, I don’t care.” My entire body was shaking uncontrollably. Unable to stop myself, I dialed Liam’s number with trembling fingers. It rang for a long time. Just as it was about to go to voicemail, the call connected. “Hello? Honey?” Liam sounded slightly out of breath. I took a deep breath, forcing down the tremor in my voice: “Liam, if… if I was pregnant, would you be happy?” There was a two-second silence on the other end. Then came Liam’s gentle, reassuring laugh: “Silly, didn’t I get a vasectomy? How could you be pregnant?” “Besides, giving birth hurts too much. I couldn’t bear to see you suffer.” Just then, Chloe’s seductive, urging voice could be faintly heard in the background: “Hubby… the bath is ready, hurry up…” Though the voice was quiet, in the dead of night, it was incredibly loud. Liam obviously panicked for a second, speaking hurriedly. “Honey, the signal is bad here. What do you want for dinner tonight? I’ll take you out after my meeting.” I stared at the pregnancy test results in my hand and spoke flatly. “No need. I suddenly lost my appetite.” I could practically hear Liam let out a sigh of relief on the other end: “Then get some rest early, honey. I pulled a few all-nighters for this project and I’m really exhausted. I’ll make it up to you when I get back. Be good.” Hearing the dial tone as he hung up, I let out a self-deprecating laugh. When the train arrived, I took a cab straight to the clinic. I lay on the operating table, watching the anesthesia slowly push into my IV. “Ms. Miller, are you absolutely certain? The fetus is developing very healthily.” The doctor asked for final confirmation. “I’m certain.” I closed my eyes, tears sliding silently down my temples. After the procedure, I lay in bed at home for two full days. During those two days, Liam called dozens of times. I didn’t answer a single one. On the third day, my mother-in-law called. “Rylee, tonight is Liam’s 30th birthday, we’re having a family dinner at the estate. Your parents and your brother are already here. Get ready and come over.” 4 I agreed, put on a full face of makeup, slipped into a striking, crimson evening gown, and pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Thorne estate. My mother grabbed my hand, frowning at me: “Rylee, where have you been these past two days? Liam said you were throwing a tantrum and you wouldn’t answer your phone.” My brother, Ethan Miller, walked over, his brow furrowed: “Why are you so pale? Did Liam do something to you?” Before I could answer, Liam walked over briskly. He naturally wrapped an arm around my waist, coaxing me in a low voice: “Honey, are you still mad that I didn’t spend the day with you?” “I promise, I’ll never go to another meeting like that again.” Saying that, he pulled out a velvet box and opened it like presenting a treasure. It was the exact limited-edition pink diamond bracelet Chloe had called “flashy” and “scratchy.” “I pulled a lot of strings to win this at an auction. I think only my wife is worthy of its beauty.” Liam looked at me with deep affection. I didn’t take it. I picked up a glass of red wine from a passing waiter and threw the contents directly into Liam’s face. “Rylee! What are you doing!” My mother gasped, standing up and rushing over to grab my hand. My mother-in-law froze, and when she recovered, her face was ugly: “Rylee, Liam treats you so well! Even if you have a little temper, you need to know when and where to show it!” Liam wiped the wine off his face, surprisingly not angry at all. He gave a bitter smile and waved it off to the elders: “It’s fine. It’s my fault I neglected Rylee on my business trip. She’s upset, let her get it out of her system.” My mom quickly tried to smooth things over, smiling and changing the subject: “Rylee went to the hospital for a checkup a few days ago, and we have good news! Liam has been talking about it non-stop these past few days. If you guys can have a baby, he says his life will be complete.” Liam froze, then looked at me with an expression of wild ecstasy. “Honey, you’re pregnant? I’m going to be a dad?” I sneered, pulled the abortion clinic paperwork from my designer clutch, and slapped it onto the table. “I was pregnant. But I already had it aborted.” The ecstasy on Liam’s face instantly froze. He stumbled backward, his eyes turning bloodshot. “Why?” I pulled the divorce papers from my clutch and threw them in his face. “Liam Thorne, I’ve already seen Chloe Davis and your six-year-old son.” “After six years, aren’t you exhausted from all the acting?”

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On my second day after transferring to the County Clerk’s Marriage License Bureau, I took over a colleague’s desk. A young woman had come in to request a replacement marriage certificate. My colleague leaned over and whispered, “This is the 99th time this girl has come in for a replacement! We have her files backed up, so it’ll be quick.” I froze. “99 times?” My colleague laughed. “Yeah. The little brat married a rich older guy. Whenever they get into a fight, she loves to tear up their marriage certificate to throw a tantrum.” “Only an older man would put up with that kind of childish behavior. Word is her husband is the wealthiest man in the state, from the Sinclair family!” Instantly, my brow furrowed. “The Sinclair family prides itself on being low-key and humble. Are you sure her husband isn’t a fraud?” My colleague looked terrified and slapped a hand over my mouth. “Girl, keep your voice down! That is the legitimate head of the Sinclair empire—Arthur Sinclair.” I sat there, stunned. My phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the desk. On the lit screen was my lock screen wallpaper: a photo of Arthur Sinclair and me, cuddled close together. The young woman in front of the desk suddenly changed her expression. She snatched my phone right off the table. “Who are you? Why do you have a picture with my husband?” … I opened my mouth, but my throat felt completely blocked. She said my husband. But the man in that photo was the husband I had been married to for five years. The Sinclair family was a massive, sprawling dynasty with deep-rooted power. Because of that, our marriage was kept a secret. He told me that keeping it hidden was to protect me. He said his business was too high-profile, and he was terrified the media would harass me. I believed him. And I kept believing him for five whole years. I never expected that, in the end, I was the punchline to a sick joke. The young girl’s face flushed red with fury. “I’ve seen plenty of women like you! The second you see a wealthy man, you throw yourselves at him like your life depends on it, ruining other people’s families! And you have the nerve to work at the Marriage Bureau? I’m going to file a complaint! I’ll get you fired!” My colleague hurried over to smooth things out. “Ms. Harper, please calm down, there has to be a misunderstanding…” “What misunderstanding? The photo is right there!” I took a deep breath, took my phone back, and spoke with surprising calmness. “It is a misunderstanding. I used to work in a neighboring city as a journalist. I interviewed Mr. Sinclair and asked for a photo together. That’s all.” Hailey Harper stared at me, skeptical. “An interview?” “Yes. For work.” She studied my face for a few seconds before her expression gradually relaxed. “Oh… I’m sorry then, my mistake.” She let out a small laugh. “It’s just that my husband is so successful, there are always women trying to climb into his bed. I have to keep my guard up.” I forced a smile. “It’s fine.” “So, about my replacement certificate…” “Your file is missing your original birth certificate,” I said. “You’ll have to go back and get it.” Hailey frowned. “My house is close by. I’ll just run back and grab it.” “I can go with you,” I said, standing up. “I can just take a picture of it on my tablet and upload it directly so you don’t have to make another trip down here.” She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Sure, let’s go.” I followed her out of the city hall building. She drove a brand-new white Porsche. The interior was a sickly sweet, overwhelmingly girly pink. Twenty minutes later, the car pulled up to the gates of a very familiar luxury condo complex. It wasn’t until we went upstairs and stood in front of the door to the unit that my heart skipped a beat. Because I knew this condo intimately. Two years ago, when we got married, I used all my pre-marital savings to put the down payment on this exact place as our marital home. I knew the Sinclair family was incredibly wealthy and probably looked down on this modest condo, but I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t with him for his money. At the time, Arthur said his company was facing cash flow issues. He suggested we keep the marriage quiet and wait to hold the wedding until his finances freed up. I understood, and I supported him. Later, when his company’s cash flow recovered, he never brought up the wedding or this condo again. I asked him about it a few times, and he told me he had rented it out. I did receive rent money, transferred into my account right on time every single month, so I never once thought to come check on the place. Standing in the entryway, I looked into the living room and saw a massive wedding portrait hanging dead center on the wall. In the photo, Arthur wore a crisp white tuxedo, and the woman beside him wore a long, trailing bridal gown, smiling sweetly. “Come in, have a seat,” Hailey called out. I stepped inside. My feet felt like they were sinking into cotton. In five years of marriage, Arthur never gave me a wedding. He never took a wedding photo with me. Our only photo together was that tourist selfie I had practically begged him to take. In it, he stood next to me looking as stiff as a stranger. Yet here, a massive portrait of him and his bride hung on the wall. It was six feet tall, framed in gold, and facing the sofa for everyone to see. “Your home is very cozy,” I said, forcing the corners of my mouth up. She beamed. “I actually thought the wedding photo was way too big, a bit tacky even. But my husband insisted. He said he wanted everyone who walks in to know that I am his wife.” “He… treats you well.” “He’s alright,” she said, feigning modesty, though her eyes were shining with triumph. “Take a seat, I’ll go find my birth certificate.” I sat on the sofa, staring blankly at the wedding photo. Arthur’s smile was so gentle. It was a tenderness I had never once seen directed at me. It turned out he didn’t hate taking pictures. He just hated taking them with me. Hailey rummaged around for a while before coming back out empty-handed. “Weird, my documents aren’t here.” She picked up her phone. “Let me call hubby.” The call connected, and she put it on speaker. “Hubby, where did you put my birth certificate? I’m at the clerk’s office trying to replace our marriage license and I can’t find it.” Arthur’s voice floated through the speaker, so full of indulgence it made my stomach churn. “You tore it up again? Honestly, you’re a mother now, why do you still have such a child’s temper?” She whined affectionately, “So where did you put it?” “I have it with me. I was out looking at new houses for you today, so I happened to have your files in my briefcase. I’ll bring it to you soon.” “Well hurry up, I have someone waiting at the house.” “Got it. Did you buy the baby formula?” “Yes, yes, the brand you mentioned last time.” “Good girl. Wait for me.” She hung up, smiling like the happiest woman in the world. “My husband will be right back, sorry to keep you waiting. Oh! Let me show you my son!” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the bedrooms. “He’s six months old and absolutely adorable.” I let her drag me to the nursery, completely numb, only snapping back to reality when we crossed the threshold. In the nursery, a chubby, fair-skinned baby boy lay fast asleep in his crib. Hailey leaned over the railing, her face overflowing with maternal love. “Isn’t he cute? My husband says he looks just like me.” I stood there, a terrifying coldness seeping into my bones. They had a child. Arthur and I had been married for five years. Six months ago, I had finally gotten pregnant. At seven months, I suffered complications. They told me I needed an emergency induced labor, and that the baby didn’t make it. After that traumatic loss, he told me we should focus on his career and hold off on trying again. I thought he was just trying to spare my feelings. I never questioned it. It turned out he didn’t not want a child. He just didn’t want me to be the mother. “What’s his name?” I asked. Hailey’s smile grew even sweeter. “Grayson. My husband picked it out. He said he loved the sound of it.” A bomb went off in my head. Grayson. That was the name Arthur and I had picked out together. When I first got pregnant, he said we needed a meaningful name. My middle name is Grace. He said “Grayson” was perfect—literally Grace’s son. A tribute to me. “Does the name… have any special meaning?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. Hailey let out a dramatic sigh. “My husband’s late wife… her middle name was Grace. She had a terribly difficult labor, and neither she nor the baby survived. He chose this name to honor her.” I stared at her, the bitter taste in my mouth so strong I couldn’t speak. Hailey’s tone suddenly dropped, laced with insecurity. “Every time we fight, I tear up the marriage certificate. Please don’t think I’m just petty. The truth is, I’m terrified deep down.” “He is so deeply attached to his dead wife. What does that mean for anyone else? What if one day he just…” She trailed off. I stood by the crib, staring at the sleeping infant, a storm raging in my chest. If the baby I lost at seven months had lived, he would be exactly this big right now. “He told you his ex-wife died in childbirth?” Hailey offered a sad smile. “Yeah. The whole thing devastated him. It took him years to recover. It wasn’t until he met me that he slowly started to heal. Sometimes I think it must be fate… I kind of look like her.” I looked at her face. She looked absolutely nothing like me. If we had to share one common trait, it was that we were both utter fools. “Does he treat you well normally?” I asked. Her eyes lit up. “Of course, he’s wonderful, just incredibly busy. But he promised me that in a few years, he’s going to hand the company over to a board and take me around the world.” I nodded slowly. He told me the exact same thing. Five years ago. I stood in the nursery for another moment, my mind chillingly clear. “I don’t see a memorial or an urn for his late wife anywhere?” Hailey scoffed gently. “You care about that stuff? I asked him about it once. He said when someone is gone, they’re gone. As long as they live in your heart, you don’t need all those physical formalities.” I lowered my eyes. As long as they live in your heart. What profoundly touching words. Then where exactly did the child I lost at seven months live? I uncurled my tightly clenched fists, leaving deep crescent-moon indentations in my palms. “I have one more question for you.” “Hm?” “Your family is so incredibly wealthy. Why live in such an ordinary condo?” Hailey laughed. “I demanded it! My husband is too rich. He’s so rich that his mansions don’t even feel like human homes. I made him buy this place in a normal neighborhood so we could live like a regular family.” She pointed at the decorations on the walls. “See? I decorated all of this myself. He hated it at first, but he grew to love it. He says this place actually feels like a home.” “Your husband bought this place for you?” “Yep. He bought it as a gift.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I had my own selfish reasons. If he ever decides he doesn’t want me anymore, I won’t be left out on the street. He promised me this house is mine forever.”

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At the wedding reception, the woman who had stolen my life drifted over to me, a smug, provocative smile playing on her lips. Under the guise of a toast, she leaned in close. “Happy wedding day. Just wanted you to know, I took your billionaire husband and your bridal bed for a test drive last night. He’s incredible.” I couldn’t help myself. I slapped her hard across the face. The very next second, my fiancé, Liam Sterling, grabbed me and furiously slapped me six times in front of everyone. “Chloe Vance doesn’t have a greedy bone in her body! She’s given you everything, and yet you still can’t stand her existence!” “I would rather marry a dog than a classless, pathetic woman like you!” With one command, Liam had me thrown into the deep, lawless backwoods, tossed into a snake pit filled with venomous serpents to “reflect on my actions.” After seven days of torture, my three biological brothers finally came to settle the score. Caleb Vance, the oldest and CEO of the family empire, brutally kicked me, breaking my leg bone. “Chloe Vance cried all night. I’ve already authorized the legal transfer of every asset in your name to her.” Elias Vance, the second oldest and Hollywood movie star, twisted my arm until it snapped. “The family tree will only ever list Chloe Vance’s name. You, on the other hand, are dead to this family.” Gideon Vance, the youngest and a renowned medical prodigy, was the cruellest. He drove a knife straight into my abdomen. “Chloe Vance has had kidney issues since she was a child. To make it up to her, you must give her one of your healthy kidneys!” Before I could utter a single word in my defense, my organs were brutally ripped out of me while I was still alive. Amidst the bone-deep, maddening pain that should have broken my mind, the cold, mechanical voice of the System suddenly pinged in my mind. [Congratulations, Host. You have successfully completed all torturous plotlines assigned to the ‘cannon fodder’ villainess!] [Upon the confirmation of this physical body’s death, you will be transported back to your original world to enjoy a grand prize of $100 Billion USD!] 1 Hearing those words, I suddenly stopped screaming. The despair and agony inside me were instantly replaced by the absolute relief of imminent liberation. My older brothers, Caleb and Elias, had already left with my kidney. Inside the frigid snake pit, only I and my third brother, Gideon Vance, remained. Blood was still gushing from the incision. Gideon frowned in dissatisfaction as he started stitching the wound closed. “If you had just cooperated and donated the kidney earlier, we wouldn’t have had to operate under such primitive conditions.” “You’ve wasted so much of my time. You’re such a pain.” Just last week, Chloe Vance was processing some files when she got a tiny paper cut, so small it was barely visible. Gideon Vance acted like the sky was falling. He called in the nation’s top medical team to assist him in performing emergency bandaging on Chloe Vance, and then personally checked the wound’s healing progress every three hours. But now, facing me, whose entire kidney had been alive excavated, he was actually complaining that basic suturing was too much trouble. Perhaps seeing that I hadn’t moved or made a sound for a while, he leaned over, slapped my face lightly, and injected me with a shot of antibiotics. “Stop acting. I know you’re healthy as a horse. A little scratch like this is nothing to you.” “Aren’t you just trying to act pitiable to make me feel guilty, so you can steal my affection away from Chloe Vance? You are too dark and petty. Since you’ve entered the Vance family, you better learn to suppress your pathetic little schemes!” If this were the past, facing my own flesh and blood’s misunderstanding, I would have cried, my eyes red, pleading that I wasn’t that kind of person. But now, I felt only a numb calm. I closed my eyes and whispered, my voice raw, “You should leave too. I can wait here and die alone.” To me, the fastest way to liberation was to die immediately. But when those words fell into Gideon Vance’s ears, they clearly meant something else. “Elara Vance, what is that supposed to mean? Intentionally saying negative things just to disgust me, right?!” He deliberately pulled the suture violently. The fragile skin and flesh around the edge instantly constricted, dark blood gushing out, bringing with it a剧剧normal person would find absolutely unbearable. Seeing me gasp for air from the pain, my head covered in a cold sweat, a flicker of reluctance flashed in his eyes, and his tone softened slightly. “You are my biological sister. You can’t even imagine how much money and effort we three brothers spent over the years to find you. How could we possibly let you just die like this?” “Ultimately, if you weren’t so petty, unable to stand Chloe Vance, and even slapped her, why would you be suffering like this?” While complaining, he gave me a shot of anesthesia directly into the wound. “Just promise me that when you get back, you will stop making things difficult for Chloe Vance and give her a proper apology.” “I can take you back to the hospital, get you the best treatment, and you won’t have to suffer here anymore.” Listening to his condescending tone, as if he were bestowing a magnificent favor upon me, I felt only a cold, sarcastic chill. Even though I was a transmigrator, I had transmigrated into the body of Elara Vance when I was only six years old. Three years ago, after I had suffered countless hardships, the three Vance brothers found me, tears in their eyes, saying I was their long-lost biological sister, and brought me back to the Vance estate. But after going back, I discovered that the Vance family already had a princess: Chloe Vance, who they had adopted years ago. The first moment I saw her, I recognized her. Years ago, back in the orphanage, it was her who locked me in a small, pitch-black utility closet and impersonated me to go out and meet the Vance family, which is why she was adopted by them. For twenty years, Chloe Vance enjoyed all the Vance family’s care and affection in my place, while I endured all the suffering and misfortune in hers. But whenever she just pretended to be wronged and wrinkled her brow, my three biological brothers would unconditionally stand by her side and accuse me of being petty. Even my fiancé, Liam Sterling, with whom I had an arranged marriage, would only ever have a smile for her, while treating me with nothing but cold, furious glares. I was exhausted by this constant entanglement and pain. I didn’t want to waste another ounce of energy arguing. I simply lifted my hand and violently tore open the incision that had just been stitched shut. When the blood and intestines poured out together, Gideon Vance’s scream was utterly unhinged. “Elara Vance, you’re insane! You’re going to die!” Looking at the tears of panic on his face, I just curled my lips. “Die? That would be wonderful.” “Every second I have to spend alive in this world… makes me feel utterly disgusted!” After finishing that sentence, I could no longer control my sinking eyelids. Then, my head lolled to the side, and I lost consciousness. 2 I don’t know how much time passed before I woke up from the darkness. I thought I had already returned to my original world. When I opened my eyes, the familiar face of my oldest brother, Caleb Vance, was right there. “You’re finally awake.” His eyes were bruised with dark circles, looking like he hadn’t slept well, but his tone was completely devoid of patience. “You’re an adult. Why are you so impulsive?” “Making such a dramatic scene over one little thing… is absolutely beneath a daughter of the Vance family…” At the thought of still having to deal with this rotten world, I felt only a wave of exhaustion. I didn’t have the slightest interest in arguing, so I simply interrupted him, my gaze vacant. “You’re right. I’m an embarrassment. I don’t deserve to exist.” “So, just let me die.” Caleb Vance’s face instantly twisted. He instinctively lifted his hand to slap me. But when he saw my ghostly, pale face, completely devoid of any color, that slap ultimately did not fall. “Elara Vance! I am warning you to stop talking nonsense!” His voice was trembling. The impatience in his eyes faded slightly, hidden beneath a sliver of panic that even he himself didn’t recognize. “I spent so much effort pulling you out of thatSnake Pit. It wasn’t so you could sit here and say ridiculous things!” I curled my lips, revealing a completely cold, humorless smile. Spend effort? More like he’s terrified that if I die, nobody will be left to serve as Chloe Vance’s spare organ bank, and nobody will be left for her to play the pitiable, wronged victim with. Just as I was thinking this, the hospital room door was pushed open, and my youngest brother, Gideon Vance, walked in carrying medication. Seeing that I was awake, a flash of relief crossed his eyes, but when he spoke, his tone was still extremely aggressive. “Since you’re awake, drink your medicine. Don’t force me to have to pour it down your throat!” He held the medicine bowl to my face. The liquid was pitch-black, emitting a bitter aroma. I turned my head away and closed my eyes in refusal: “No need. Waste of medicine.” “You!” Gideon Vance was so angry his hands were shaking, but he didn’t force the medicine down my throat as he normally would. Instead, he placed the medicine bowl on the nightstand and reached out to check my wound. When his fingertips touched the bandage, his movements were actually unusually gentle. For the first time, there was a hint of the tenderness and consideration he normally reserved only for Chloe Vance. “Sure enough, using the best medicine really does speed up the healing process quite a bit…” He re-wrapped the bandage, giving me a vicious glare. “You better behave yourself. If this wound opens up again, I absolutely will not stitch it up a second time!” His words were harsh, but I clearly saw the red veins in his eyes, and the barely detectable tremble in his fingertips. No doubt, he had stayed up many nights watching over me. If it were the past, I would have definitely been moved by this sliver of tenderness, would have held him and cried, pouring out my grievances. But now, I found it only ironic. I broke free from his hand, violently yanked off the duvet, and was about to tear open the incision again. Right now, every second I spent alive was excruciating torture. As long as I could die quickly, I didn’t care about anything. “You’re insane!” Caleb Vance grabbed my arm in a death grip, his force so strong it nearly shattered my bones. But when I groaned in pain, he instantly loosened his grip slightly, only to scream at me, tears in his eyes: “Elara Vance, what exactly do you want to do?” “I want to die.” My tone was flat, like I was speaking about something completely insignificant. “Letting me die is best for everyone.” “You won’t have to be torn, and Chloe Vance can securely be the princess of the Vance family.” “So, please be so kind as to let me die faster.” 3 These words seemed to have struck Caleb Vance’s painful spot. His eyes went red, and he lifted his hand to give me a slap, but it was much lighter than any time he had ever hit me before. It was more like an act of frustrated desperation than punishment. “I absolutely forbid it! You are the biological daughter of the Vance family. Who would dare let you die?” Gideon Vance also panicked. He rushed forward, holding my shoulders, pushing me back onto the bed, his tone carrying a rare note of pleading. “Elara, stop messing around.” “I know you’re in pain, but just heal up. In the future… in the future, I’ll spoil you more, okay?” I looked at the pleading in his eyes, finding it utterly preposterous. What were you doing before? When you were alive excavating my kidney, when you were making such a huge fuss over Chloe Vance’s tiny cut, why didn’t you think about spoiling me then? I closed my eyes, refusing to look at them again. I let Gideon Vance tuck me back in, let him bring the medicine bowl to my lips, but I simply refused to open my mouth. Amidst the stalemate, the door opened, and my second older brother, Elias Vance, walked in, followed by a pale-faced Liam Sterling. Elias Vance’s eyes went red when he saw me. He quickly walked to the bedside. “Elara, I’m so glad you’re awake. You scared your big brother to death.” When I was first recognized by the Vance family, Elias Vance was actually the kindest of all the relatives to me. Not only did he take me all over the country to have fun, but he also told me about the family’s missing and searching for me over the years, often breaking down in tears when he spoke about it. But later, after Chloe Vance had wiped away tears and accused me of things a few times in front of him, his demeanor changed. He accused me of being a hypocritical, superficial person, betraying the family’s true sincerity toward me. Seeing him again, I felt only disgust and moved away from the hand he was trying to use to touch my face. Elias Vance’s hand froze in mid-air, a bitter expression on his face as he withdrew it. Seeing this, Liam Sterling stepped forward, proactively taking the medicine bowl from Gideon Vance’s hands. “I’ll feed her. She might listen to me.” It wasn’t surprising he would be so confident. After all, over the past few years, anyone with eyes could see just how much I tolerantly yielded to this fiancé of mine. I basically loved him to my very bones. Just as he walked toward me, the hospital room door opened again. “Elara Vance, I came to see you.” Chloe Vance, wearing hospital pajamas and looking very weak, walked in. Caleb Vance immediately stood up to help her: “Chloe, you just accepted the kidney transplant surgery, your body is still weak. Why are you here?” Chloe Vance shook her head, her gaze landing on me, her eyes filled with manufactured guilt. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t failed to stop Sister Elara that day, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point.” “My mind is uneasy. I had to come and apologize to her.” As she spoke, she took the bowl from Liam Sterling’s hands and sat on the edge of my bed. “Sister Elara, stop punishing yourself. Drink the medicine and heal up. Everyone is worried sick about you.” “I know you still blame me, but I really didn’t want to steal anything from you. Everything in the Vance family was originally supposed to be yours…” These words appeared to be a retreat, but in reality, every sentence was a hidden accusation that I was petty, holding onto the past, and intentionally using my own body to throw a fit. Before her spoon could touch my lips, I lifted my hand and violently slapped the medicine bowl away. A massive crash echoed as the porcelain bowl shattered on the floor. The scalding hot medicinal liquid splashed all over Chloe Vance, especially on her wrist and the front of her clothes, which instantly turned red from the heat. Chloe Vance gave a dramatic gasp, her eyes instantly red, her voice carrying a cry. “Sister Elara… how could you do this? I was just trying to feed you medicine…” She bit her lip, looking like she was enduring immense suffering, tears welling up in her eyes, a sight that was enough to break anyone’s heart. “Elara Vance! You’re insane!” 4 Caleb Vance was absolutely furious. He yanked Chloe Vance behind him, glaring at me with vicious hatred. “Chloe was kind enough to come see you, even feed you medicine, and this is how you treat her?” Gideon Vance immediately rushed forward to check Chloe Vance’s burn, his tone full of anxiety. “How is it? Does it burn badly? Call a doctor!” Elias Vance also knitted his brows tightly, his gaze filled with complete disappointment. “Elara, you’ve gone too far! Chloe has already proactively apologized. When are you going to stop with this dramatic tantrum?” Liam Sterling also quickly walked to Chloe Vance’s side, pulling out a tissue to wipe her off, his tone laced with accusation. “Elara Vance, can you stop being so immature? Chloe came here with good intentions. Even if you don’t appreciate it, you shouldn’t have violently attacked her.” Several men surrounded Chloe Vance, showering her with excessive concern and care, completely disregarding me—someone who had just been alive excavated of a kidney and whose wound was still throbbing with intense pain. Chloe Vance leaned into Caleb Vance’s arms, secretly casting a得意glance at me, a victorious flash in her eyes, though her mouth was still pretending to plead for me: “I’m fine, don’t blame Sister Elara. She’s just in a bad mood…” This white lotus performance… if this were the past, I would have definitely been shaking from fury. But now, I found it only absurdly hilarious. Such a clumsy, amateurish routine… anyone else would have seen right through it, but these four men, who occupied the very highest peaks in their respective fields, were actually willingly being played for fools by Chloe Vance. Or, as the saying goes, one is willing to beat and the other is willing to endure the beating. I was just an insignificant part of their weird play. “If you want to feel heartbroken for this animal, please take it outside to feel heartbroken. Do not pollute my hospital room.” Hearing my cold, indifferent voice, several men were so angry they were shaking all over. “Elara Vance, it seems you haven’t reflected enough!” Gideon Vance looked at me with profound disappointment, his voice sharp: “From now on, I am stopping all your pain medication!” “Until you’ve cleared your mind, until you are willing to apologize properly to Chloe Vance, then you will get your medication restored.” Caleb Vance also agreed: “Exactly! You should have a good taste of intense pain. Let’s see if you still dare to be so willfully reckless!” Elias Vance let out a sigh, his gaze full of powerlessness, but he did not object. Liam Sterling stood to the side, silently nodding, clearly in agreement with this decision as well. I closed my eyes, not offering any refutation, not feeling any anger. So what if the pain medication was stopped? The pain of the wound was completely insignificant compared to the humiliation and torture I had endured over the past twenty years. Instead, the intense pain would keep me even clearer as I waited for death to arrive. Seeing my completely unmoved attitude, Gideon Vance immediately acted, ripping out my pain pump. The moment the overwhelming, catastrophic wave of pain hit, my closest relatives and fiancé all surrounded Chloe Vance and walked out, looking deeply concerned for her. Until the door was slammed shut with a massive BANG, not a single person looked back. Ignoring the blood dripping from the corner of my lips, I pulled out a sharp porcelain bowl shard I had covertly hidden under my pillow just now, and slashed it toward my throat without a second of hesitation. As I collapsed again, I could feel the strength in my body slowly draining away. The pain of the wound gradually faded into the distance. My heartbeat got slower and slower… The moment the darkness fully descended, I actually let out a small laugh. This suffocating, painful life was finally over. … Out in the hallway, after the group had walked quite a distance, Caleb Vance, who was in the front, suddenly halted his footsteps. “You guys go accompany Chloe to get that burn treated. I… I don’t feel quite at peace. I’m going back to check on Elara.” The second he said that, Elias Vance immediately cut him off: “I’ll go. Elara is truly angry this time. Out of all the relatives in the Vance family, she and I had the best relationship. It should be me who goes to coax her.” Gideon Vance was unhappy upon hearing this. “Listen to that. Like anyone here isn’t Elara’s biological brother!” “You guys are amateurs. Elara needs a doctor right now. I should be the one going back.” Seeing them simultaneously turn to walk back, Liam Sterling knit his brows, giving a apologetic smile to Chloe Vance, who still hadn’t processed what was happening. “They are all going. As her husband, it would be inappropriate for me not to go.” “Besides, your burn isn’t very serious. Go get it treated yourself. When I’m done, I’ll go see you.” Finished speaking, not even giving Chloe Vance a chance to react, he chased after the three Vance brothers’ footsteps. But when they pushed open the door of the hospital room they had only just left, a thick, suffocating smell of blood came rushing directly toward them.

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