Category: English

At graduation, Liam and I broke up. His eyes were full of hatred as he said he would definitely find a girl a hundred times better than me. Eight years later, because of my husband’s project, our old classmates gathered again. But Liam came with his girlfriend and handed out wedding invitations to us. Our classmates all looked at me with sympathy, because back then, he and I had loved each other like our lives depended on it. When the wedding invitation reached me, Liam gave me a half-smile. “I heard that all these years, you were so afraid of thinking about me that you didn’t even dare contact our old classmates.” “But now I’ve found the girl who belongs to me, so you should forget me.” Just as I was about to speak, a little boy suddenly ran in from outside the door and threw himself at me. He shouted, “Mommy.” 1 “Mommy!” The entire private room went silent in an instant. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned toward me all at once. I looked at the little boy throwing himself at me, with his round face and big eyes, and he was completely unfamiliar. This was not my child. I was just about to speak when the door to the private room was suddenly shoved open. A young woman rushed in, her face full of apology. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Leo, I told you not to run around!” She scooped up the child and kept bowing to everyone. “I’m sorry for interrupting you.” The woman hurried away with the child in her arms, and everyone let out a breath of relief. “I knew it, how could Lena already have a kid?” It was Zoe, who had sat behind me back then, and she had always loved gossiping. “If she got married, how could none of us old classmates know?” Someone immediately chimed in, “Exactly, Liam isn’t even married yet, so how could she get married first?” As soon as those words came out, everyone’s eyes swept back and forth between Liam and me again. Liam and I dated for four years in college. During those four years, he skipped required courses from the entire department for me and played guitar under my dorm building while singing off-key love songs. I waited for him for three hours in heavy snow just to give him a scarf I had knitted by hand. We squeezed into the cheapest rental near campus, shared a six-dollar bowl of beef noodles, and still thought it was the best food in the world. But on the eve of graduation, I broke up with him. I remembered his bloodshot eyes as he gripped my wrist tightly and asked, “Why?” I could not give him a reason. In the end, he flung me away, and the love in his eyes was swallowed by hatred. “Lena, in this lifetime, I will definitely find a girl a hundred times better than you and make you regret it.” Now, he had done it. He brought his fiancée and handed me that gold-embossed wedding invitation in front of all our old classmates. How was that a wedding invitation? It was clearly a slap to my face. Before I came, my roommate quietly told me that Liam had specifically asked in the group chat, “Is Lena coming?” All his setup was prepared for me. In the silence, Willa, who was beside Liam, suddenly stood up. She held a glass of wine and smiled warmly and gracefully, but there was a faint hint of provocation in her eyes as she looked straight at me. “What happened in the past is all in the past.” “I’m very grateful that someone took care of Liam for me during those years.” She said the words “for me”very lightly, but they stabbed like needles. She paused, looked around the room, and finally turned her gaze back to Liam’s affectionate face, her voice firm. “But from now on, the person who can stay by Liam’s side can only be me, Willa.” “Well said!” Someone started it first. Thunderous applause instantly rang through the private room, and someone even whistled. “Liam is so lucky!” “Willa said it perfectly!” Liam took the chance to pull Willa into his arms, resting his chin on the top of her head with a doting expression. He raised his glass toward everyone, smiling with total satisfaction. “Thank you, everyone.” I picked up the coffee cup in front of me and calmly took a sip. This situation had nothing to do with me. The scalding coffee slid down my throat. I lowered my eyes and pretended to study the delicate pattern on the rim of the cup. But from the corner of my eye, Liam’s gaze kept drifting, intentionally or not, past the fiancée in his arms and landing on me. 2 Liam’s gaze was like a net, and there was hatred in that look. There was also love that had burned itself to ashes. And there was a trace of confusion that even he himself had never noticed. He did not understand eight years ago, and now, he understood even less. My thoughts were instantly pulled back to that muggy summer night. In the study room of the university library, I was clutching an acceptance letter from an Ivy League school. It was the dream I had earned by staying up countless nights and giving up all entertainment. “Lena, what are you looking at so seriously?” Liam’s voice came from behind me. He pressed a bottle of ice-cold Coke against my face, and I snapped back to myself with a jolt. “You scared me.” “What are you thinking about, future big designer?”he asked with a smile as he sat down beside me, his eyes bright as if they were filled with stars. He had never doubted my talent, and he believed even more firmly than I did that I could stand on the world stage. “When we graduate, I’ll open a tiny architecture studio.” “You’ll be my chief designer.” “We’ll rent a small apartment downtown, and it doesn’t have to be big, just big enough for your drawing board and my models.” “Then we’ll get a cat, a fat one, like a little pig.” He rambled on about our future, and every word crashed into my heart and into the acceptance letter in my hand. Silently, I folded that piece of paper and tucked it into the deepest part of my book. It was like burying a grand dream. I turned to meet his gaze and said with a smile, “Okay.” “It’s a deal.” But in the end, I still broke that promise. “Lena?” Zoe’s voice dragged me out of my memories. “Liam is asking you a question, where are you working now?” Her tone was barbed, and everyone’s eyes focused on me once again. Some wanted to watch the show, some were waiting for me to embarrass myself, and some were gloating. Liam let go of Willa, held his wineglass, and strolled over to me. He looked down at me from above. “What, you can’t say it?” He let out a soft laugh, with seven parts mockery and three parts satisfaction. “Then again, the top student in our department back then had such high standards, so how could an ordinary job be good enough for you?” “Maybe you married some incredible man and got hidden away at home.” With every word he said, the laughter around us grew louder. Willa leaned against him and added another cut at the perfect moment, her voice soft and innocent. “Liam, don’t talk about Lena like that. Maybe she’s just low-key.” I raised my eyes and calmly looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar face in front of me. Eight years was enough to grind a sunny young man into a man covered in thorns. I picked up my coffee cup and lifted it toward him with composed movements. “Sorry to disappoint you.” “I’m just making a living at a small company.” My calmness seemed to make him even angrier. “A small company?” He sounded as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world, and his pitch rose. “Lena, that wasn’t what you said back then.” He took a step forward and pressed closer to me. “Didn’t you say I couldn’t give you the life you wanted?” “What, eight years have passed, and now you’re willing to ‘make a living’ at a small company?” 3 The life I wanted. Ha. I sneered inwardly. Liam, do you really know what I wanted? The air in the private room seemed to freeze. “Why aren’t you talking?” Liam moved closer, and the smell of alcohol mixed with an unfamiliar cologne made me frown. “Did I hit the truth and leave you speechless?” The satisfaction in his eyes almost overflowed. “Or are you really married, and that hidden husband of yours is just an Uber driver, so you’re too ashamed to say it?” Suppressed snickers came from around us. Willa leaned in Liam’s arms and gently tried to persuade him. “Liam, don’t be like this, we’re all old classmates.” As she spoke, she picked up a glass of red wine. “Lena, let me toast you, and let the past stay in the past.” She walked toward me, then suddenly twisted her ankle. “Ah—” A cry of alarm rang out. A full glass of red wine splashed perfectly across my moon-white dress. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Lena!” Willa apologized in panic, but a smug smile was hidden in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to.” Liam pulled her back into his arms without even looking at me. “You’re still so clumsy, like a kid.” There was not a trace of blame in his tone, only indulgence. He looked at me with icy eyes. “It’s just a dress, Lena, you wouldn’t be that petty, would you?” I said nothing. I only looked at him quietly. I looked at the man I had once loved for four full years. So time really could change a person. It could make him completely unrecognizable. I smiled. It was a very soft sound. But Liam’s face instantly darkened. “What are you laughing at?” I raised my eyes, swept my gaze over him, and landed on Willa, whose face had gone pale in his arms. “I’m laughing at you.” “Liam.” I slowly picked up the wet wipe on the table and gently wiped the hem of my dress with elegant movements. “You’re right, it’s just a dress.” Willa clearly let out a breath of relief. The corner of Liam’s mouth also curled back into a mocking smile, as if victory was already his. But then I changed the subject. “It’s just a little troublesome.” “It was a wedding anniversary gift from my husband, and now that it’s dirty, it’ll be hard to explain to him.” In an instant, the entire private room became so quiet you could hear a pin drop. All the color drained from Liam’s face, and he stared at me as if he could not believe his own ears. “You’re… really married?” I raised my eyes, met his trembling pupils, and curved my lips into a perfect but cold smile. “What else? Did you think every woman in the world should wait for you, Mr. Harper?” His breath caught, and a storm I could not understand surged in his eyes. Willa clenched her fists and spoke softly, unwilling to give up. “Lena, stop joking, what does your husband do? And why didn’t you invite any classmates when you got married?” That question was very skillful. It sounded casual, but it also hinted that my marriage was something shameful. I turned my head to look at her, my gaze falling on the sparkling diamond ring on her hand. “This dress really isn’t that expensive.” I lowered my head, my tone casual. “It’s only about…” I paused, met everyone’s curious gaze, curled my lips, and said a few words. “Ten times the price of the diamond ring on your hand.” The entire room was shocked. Willa’s face turned blue, then white, then red. Liam’s fists clenched at his sides with cracking sounds, and he took a step forward, his eyes bloodshot. “Lena! Who is your husband?!” 4 When I heard his question, I met his bloodshot eyes and smiled. “My husband…” I deliberately dragged out the ending. “He’s a very petty man.” “He’s also possessive.” “He doesn’t like it when the things he gives me are dirtied by other people.” Willa’s face was as pale as paper. But Liam was like a lit stick of dynamite. “You’re lying!” He growled, his voice full of uncontrollable rage and… a hint of panic even he himself had not noticed. “Lena, you’ll say anything just to piss me off!” “You were like this eight years ago, and you’re still like this now!” Willa tugged at his sleeve, looking as if she was about to cry. “Liam, don’t be like this… Lena didn’t mean it, let’s go…” She acted pitiful and also noticed that something about Liam’s attitude was slightly wrong. I looked at her coldly. “Shut up.” Willa’s crying stopped abruptly, and she looked at me in disbelief. My gaze returned to Liam. “Liam, you’re still the same as you were eight years ago.” “Childish, impulsive, and always thinking the whole world should revolve around you.” “Who do you think you are?” My voice was not loud, but every word cut straight to the heart. “You—” He suddenly stepped forward and grabbed my wrist. “Say that again!” A sharp pain shot through my wrist. Just like eight years ago, he had also grabbed me like this and asked me why. I looked at him, and the last trace of warmth in my eyes faded away. “Let go.” “Who is that man?! What does he have that’s better than me?!” His eyes were bloodshot. The classmates around us were silent with fear, and no one dared to step forward and say a word. I frowned from the pain, but I did not struggle. I only looked at him coldly. “He is better than you in every way.” That sentence completely shattered the last of his reason. He gripped me even harder, almost crushing my bones. “Lena!” Just then, the door to the private room was pushed open from the outside. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the man at the door. The light outlined the man’s deep, cold features. It was a face so handsome it almost felt aggressive. He did not look at anyone. He only walked straight toward me. “Lena.” It was Julian Sterling, my husband. Liam seemed frozen in place as he stared stiffly at the man who had suddenly appeared, forgetting how to react. Julian’s gaze slowly moved downward. It landed on the wrist Liam had gripped red. His eyes turned cold in an instant. “Who gave you permission to touch my wife?”

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1 My fiancée, Sienna Hartley, didn’t just buy a merman. She bought a twelve-million-dollar investment. To house this “specimen,” she had a custom-built, climate-controlled saltwater pool installed in the basement of our beachside villa, and she personally curated a menu of the highest-grade sashimi-quality seafood, flown in daily. The problem was, this piece of exotic wildlife actually started believing he was the man of the house. While Sienna was away on a three-day corporate retreat in Aspen, he cornered me. He was lounging at the edge of the pool, his tail shimmering like a dying rainbow under the LED lights. “Let’s be real, Ethan,” he sneered, his voice a strange, melodic rasp. “Every night, she comes down here. She brushes my scales, inch by inch, with those soft hands of hers. She uses a special wash that smells like jasmine and ocean salt.” He looked at me with a pity so thick it was nauseating. “The way she looks at me… it’s pure, raw possession. I’ve already made up my mind. When she gets back, I’m going to take a specialized serum to shed this tail. I’ll endure the pain to become human. For her.” I stared at him for a long beat, then slowly reached for the waterproof tablet he’d been using. I didn’t say a word as I uninstalled the trashy, over-the-top soap opera app he’d been binge-watching. “You’ve been watching too many ‘Forbidden Alpha’ shorts, pal,” I said, my voice flat. “Sienna wouldn’t spend twelve million dollars to date a fish. She’s a venture capitalist, not a romantic lead. My advice? Enjoy the free buffet while you still have a tail. Stop trying to win her heart, or you’re going to regret the day you ever saw a hook.” He took my genuine warning as the desperate gasps of a jealous man. He was hell-bent on becoming the king of this castle. What he didn’t know was that Sienna sent me updates every single hour. Husband, her latest text read, I used that professional-grade deodorizing wash on him again. He’s starting to smell less like a pier and more like expensive silk. When I harvest those scales for your custom wedding suit, you’re going to look breathtaking. No one in Manhattan will have anything like it. A follow-up message popped up: He’s still a bit lean, though. I told the caretaker to double the tuna. We need to fatten him up. Once his vitals peak, that internal pearl should be large enough to finally cure your chronic migraines for good. My poor babe shouldn’t have to suffer anymore. I honestly didn’t think a fish could be a “pick-me,” but here we were. Eventually, I reached my limit and showed the screen to the “Sea Prince.” “Wake up, Beau,” I said. “Her only interest in you is your skin and your internal organs.” He didn’t believe me. He hissed, a sharp, aquatic sound, and swiped my phone with a speed that caught me off guard, hurling it into the deep end of the pool. He flicked his iridescent tail, shimmering with an arrogance that only the truly beautiful and truly dim-witted possess. “I know what you’re doing,” he spat, his eyes wide and wild. “You’re terrified I’m replacing you. You’re using pathetic lies to drive us apart. But I am the rose she chose to cultivate. I am the one she whispers to at night. Unless she says it herself, I won’t believe a single word out of your mouth.” I didn’t feel like arguing with a creature that lived in a tank. I grabbed my tablet and initiated a FaceTime call with Sienna. When she picked up, she was in the middle of a gala, a glass of champagne in her hand. I didn’t bother with a “hello.” I pointed the camera directly at the pool. “Tell this fish exactly why you bought him. Right now. He’s having some identity issues.” On the screen, Sienna brightened up, waving a manicured hand. “Oh, hey! Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Because Beau is so much more handsome than the other specimens on the market. Look at those colors!” She blew a kiss toward the water, her eyes crinkling in that way that usually meant she was closing a deal. “Be a good boy, Beau. Eat those extra octopuses I ordered. You need to be big and strong to look your best.” I stared at the screen, a fresh headache blooming behind my eyes. She’d been gaslighting this creature for months with this romantic script. Even a golden retriever would have caught feelings after a performance like that. “Sienna, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “You’re playing with his head. He thinks he’s your boyfriend.” Sienna pouted at the camera, looking incredibly innocent. “Ethan, honey, I’m the victim here! The breeder’s manual specifically said that if they get depressed, their scales lose their luster and fall off. If I told him I was planning to skin him and harvest his heart-pearl to fix your head, he’d probably die of a heart attack on the spot. That’s twelve million down the drain. Do you know how hard it is to find a merman this size?” In the background, Beau was already calling the caretaker over, demanding fifty more octopuses. He wanted to film a “good boy eating” video to send back to his “Lady.” I looked back at the screen. “Sienna, your twelve-million-dollar investment just polished off thirty pounds of bluefin tuna thirty minutes ago. At this rate, he won’t die of a broken heart; he’ll explode from overeating.” Before I could finish my sentence, the tablet’s battery died. The screen went black, leaving me in the dim blue light of the basement. I rubbed my temples, feeling the familiar throb of pain. Fine. Let him believe whatever he wants for the next few days. He’s a fish. Why was I even competing with him? But I underestimated how far a desperate merman would go. In the middle of the night, I was woken by a strange, wet dragging sound. Beau had actually dragged the caretaker into the pool and held him under until the terrified man agreed to overnight a black-market “Transformation Serum.” When I walked into the basement the next morning, the pool water was a murky, dark crimson. A thick layer of grey, shredded scales floated on the surface like dead leaves. Beau was crawling out of the pool, gasping for air. His lower half was gone—the magnificent, shimmering tail had been replaced by two pale, long, human legs. He looked like a ghost, shivering and wincing with every agonizing movement. Each step seemed to be a fresh torture. But when he saw the shock on my face, a triumphant, jagged smirk touched his bloodless lips. He ignored the pain, his voice raspy as he threw down the gauntlet. “I didn’t have legs before,” he wheezed, clutching a silk robe from the lounge chair. “It made it difficult for Sienna to… be close to me. When she sees me like this, she’s going to be thrilled. If you have any dignity left, Ethan Miller, leave before she has to kick you out herself.” He purposefully shoved past me, stumbling like a newborn fawn. He imitated human mannerisms, grabbed a silk robe, and stumbled up the stairs to Sienna’s bedroom. He collapsed onto her bed, eye-ing the door with the pathetic devotion of a loyal dog waiting for its master. The caretaker stood there, soaked to the bone and shaking. “Mr. Miller, I’m so sorry. That serum… it’s high-risk stuff. It has a horrific side effect. If he doesn’t get back into the water within seven days, his internal pressure will build until he… well, he’ll burst. His organs can’t handle the atmospheric shift for long.” I looked at the grey, lifeless scales floating in the pool and went silent. Sienna was a lot of things, but above all, she was a control freak. She hated when things didn’t go according to plan. She had spent months meticulously cleaning those scales, preparing for that custom wedding suit. It was supposed to be our “exclusive legacy.” And now, the raw materials looked like something scraped off a discount fish market floor after a long day. I pulled out my phone and texted Sienna: For dinner tonight, do you prefer your fish grilled or steamed? She replied instantly: I like it braised in red wine, babe. Why? Everything okay at home? I sent back a grimacing emoji. Nothing. Just wait until you get home and see for yourself… By the time I got back from the city after finalizing our wedding venue, the caretaker had spent the entire day trying to talk sense into the merman. But Beau wouldn’t budge. He was determined to be the master of the house. To prove his point, he’d gone around the villa and smashed every single one of our engagement photos. The frames Sienna had spent hours picking out, the specific angles she obsessed over—all of it was in shards on the floor. When he saw me enter, he pointed a shaking, pale finger at my face. “You’re just trying to trick me back into that tank! You’re terrified she’s going to fall hopelessly in love with the man I’ve become, aren’t you?” I sighed, feeling more pity than anger now. I reached out and patted his damp, messy hair. “Listen to me, Calamari. Go back to the water. If Sienna sees what you did to those photos, she’s not going to be ‘thrilled.’ She’s going to be terrifying.” I wasn’t lying to him. My plan had been to convince her to release him back into the ocean once the “harvest” was over—give him a chance at a normal life. But he was making it impossible. Between the wedding stress and his constant tantrums, I was running out of patience. The caretaker was practically vibrating with anxiety. “Please! I’m just an employee! You cost twelve million dollars! Your scales are ruined—how am I supposed to explain this to her? Get in the water! If you do it now, they might still grow back. After tonight, it’s permanent!” Beau shoved him away, his eyes manic. He refused to move from Sienna’s bed. I looked at the caretaker. “Fine. We tried the nice way. Use the gear.” The caretaker, who had been pleading like a saint seconds ago, reached into his pocket, pulled out a high-voltage taser, and dropped the merman with a clinical efficiency. When Beau woke up, the pool had been converted into a reinforced glass containment unit. He was underwater, staring at me through the glass, pounding on it with his fists. “The caretaker said the water is the only thing that will keep you alive,” I said, my voice muffled by the glass. “And for the record, I don’t want your scales or your pearl anymore. Once you’re healed, I’m sending you back to the Atlantic. I’m done.” The idea of being “discarded” back to the ocean made him even more hysterical. He pounded the glass until his knuckles bled, the red wisps of blood curling in the water. “Sienna brought me here! You have no right to kick me out!” The caretaker paced nearby, frantic. “Just take the win, kid! Most creatures caught by collectors never see the ocean again. Mr. Miller is giving you a life!” But Beau was lost in his own soap-opera narrative. He started sobbing, bubbles rising from his mouth, as he talked about how much Sienna loved him. “She gave me a name! She called me Beau!” I almost laughed at the name again. Ever since Sienna dubbed him “Beau,” his eyes had turned more and more soulful. But I knew my fiancée. She hadn’t been calling him “Beau” (B-E-A-U). She’d been calling him “Bow” (B-O-W)—as in “Bonito,” the fish she liked to use for her miso broth. I didn’t have the heart to crush his romantic spirit entirely, so I stayed silent on that. But I couldn’t let him keep believing the rest. “Beau, listen. She wasn’t telling you bedtime stories to comfort you. We had a bet. She bet me that merman tears turn into pearls. She wasn’t trying to soothe you; she was trying to make you cry so she could collect the profit.” Beau froze. Then, he shook his head violently in the water. “Liar! You’re just jealous because she spent more time with me. She came to see me every night to drink wine. She only did that because being with you is so suffocating that she needed an escape!” I frowned and turned to the caretaker. “Wine? Can fish even process alcohol?” The caretaker looked pained. He leaned in and whispered, “That was Ms. Hartley’s ‘pre-seasoning’ technique. It wasn’t wine. It was… cooking sherry and a ginger-garlic marinade. She said it helps ‘neutralize the fishy odor’ from the inside out so the scales would be easier to process.” I stared at him. I actually felt a moment of genuine shock. “Jesus. Is Sienna a human being or a sociopath?” Beau heard us. The realization—or perhaps the insult to his ‘Lady’—was too much. He slammed his head against the reinforced glass and knocked himself unconscious. His last words, muffled by the water, were: “Don’t talk about her like that… she loves me…” At 3:00 AM, I got up to look for my painkillers. My head felt like it was in a vice. I found the caretaker still by the tank, looking somber. He knew that for all Sienna’s talk of “investment,” the main reason she bought this creature was to cure me. He looked at the bottle in my hand and hesitated. “Mr. Miller… should I just harvest the pearl now? To help with your head? He’s already unconscious.” I swallowed the dry pills and shook my head. “No. It’s too cruel. Besides, I told him I’d send him back. I’m keeping my word.” The truth was, I didn’t want to deal with the screaming. If he woke up while we were performing surgery, he’d howl loud enough to wake the neighbors. This whole thing was already messy enough. But then I realized how quiet the room was. I looked at the tank. It was empty. “Where is he?” The caretaker’s eyes shifted. He pointed toward a dark, shadowed corner of the room. “Mr. Miller, I didn’t mean to disobey you. But his skin started cracking. The glass made it worse. I had to pull him out to apply a medical-grade antiseptic, or he wouldn’t have made it to morning. Forget the pearl—he wouldn’t even have been a whole fish by sunrise.” I sighed with relief. “It’s fine. Just keep him stable.” The caretaker had twenty years of experience with exotic marine life, but this merman was clearly the “Titanic” of his career. As long as the thing was breathing, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to leave the man alone with the mess, so I stayed to help. I never imagined I’d spend my night sitting on a cold floor, helping a professional rub iodine on a half-man, half-fish. By the tenth bottle of iodine, I was ready to quit. This was all Sienna’s fault. Her and her “projects.” I grabbed my phone to call her and tell her to get her ass home and dump this fish properly, or the wedding was off. But her phone was off. As I was about to leave a blistering voicemail, the caretaker’s face went pale. “Mr. Miller… something is… very wrong.” I groaned. “Please tell me he’s not dead. I can’t deal with a twelve-million-dollar corpse.” The caretaker pressed his ear to the merman’s distended stomach. He listened for a long time, his expression shifting from confusion to absolute horror. “Based on my experience… he’s extremely… full. And… Mr. Miller, I think he’s been like this since the day Ms. Hartley brought him home.” I froze. A terrible, logic-defying thought entered my mind. Mermen are biologically unique… but surely… Sienna and a fish? No. Impossible. But Beau chose that exact moment to wake up. He heard the caretaker’s words and let out a piercing, joyous shriek. “Are you saying… I’m finally carrying Sienna’s child?” He lunged for the phone on the table with a clumsy, staggering gait. “Give me the phone! I have to tell her the news! We’re going to be a family!” I broke into a cold sweat and pinned his hands down. “Beau, stay calm. Sienna isn’t that kind of person. Whatever is in your stomach… it’s probably not hers. Did you have a… ‘friend’ back in the reef?” I tried to sound mature, but I was panicking. Beau shoved me off with a look of pure triumph. “Oh, so now you believe she loves me? Now that we have the fruit of our passion? If you have a shred of self-respect, you’ll pack your bags and get out of our house.” I pulled my hand back, feeling sick. “Beau… brother… I’m not trying to be mean. But… how exactly did you two… ‘do it’?” The room went silent. You could hear my heart thudding. Beau’s face turned bright red. He looked away, dodging the question. “That’s none of your business! It was private!” Since I couldn’t get a straight answer, I turned to the caretaker. “Should we… call a vet? Or a doctor? I don’t even know who handles merman maternity.” The word ‘vet’ triggered an immediate reaction. “No! I won’t let you neuter me or my baby!” He lunged, bit my arm hard enough to draw blood, and shoved me into the empty pool. The caretaker jumped in to pull me out, but in the water, even a leggy merman has the advantage. He used some decorative kelp to tie us up like Christmas hams and dragged us into the storage closet. Before slamming the door, he leaned against the frame and sneered. “I know you won’t give up on her easily. So, you can stay in there until she gets home. I want you to watch the look on her face when she realizes she’s going to be a mother.” I tried to scream at him to get back in the water—that his life depended on it—but no sound came out. My throat felt paralyzed. The caretaker struggled beside me. “The bite,” he wheezed. “Merman venom. It paralyzes the vocal cords for at least two weeks. We’re going to be mutes.” We sat in that dark closet, exhausted and tied in kelp. Just as I was about to give up hope, I heard the front door chime. Then, Sienna’s high-pitched, playful voice echoed through the hall. “Hubby! I’m home early! How’s my little fatty doing? Are his scales ready for harvest?” Beau, of course, was the first to meet her. Through the crack in the closet door, I saw him trying to sashay toward her on his new legs. To him, he probably looked like a supermodel. To anyone else, he looked like a shivering, iodine-stained wreck in a bathrobe. Sienna froze. The silence stretched for five long seconds before she finally spoke. “Wait… where are your scales? Where the hell is my twelve-million-dollar fish?!”

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The day before the college fall formal, a new announcement was posted in the Discord channel for Sigma Alpha, the fraternity where my online boyfriend Tyler belonged. [For tonight’s freshman dare challenge, whoever draws the King of Spades must bring Tyler’s 300-pound online girlfriend to the formal tomorrow night!] Right after that, Tyler posted a photo of me from last Christmas into the channel. In the photo, I was wearing an absurdly oversized reindeer sweater, my chin fat piled up in folds, looking so huge I seemed like a moving mountain. The guys in the channel instantly exploded. “Bro, are you serious? Whoever takes her to the dance is definitely going to die of embarrassment.” “Tyler, you actually brought her to Harbor City? Wouldn’t a girl that size need two plane seats?” Tyler sent a laughing emoji. “Relax, I already told her this was a romantic in-person meetup!” “I’ll bet five hundred bucks that no matter who picks her up tomorrow night, she’ll break down crying because she can’t fit into a formal dress.” Julian, known as the fraternity’s “ice-cold chairman,” never said a word. But Luke, the guy who loved stirring up trouble the most, kept tagging my lurking alt account like crazy: “Ms. Chloe, you have to come tomorrow night. Don’t bail at the last minute.” I looked at the insults scrolling across the screen and clenched my fingers. For this cross-state meetup, I had spent a full year dropping from nearly 300 pounds to 130. I looked at the clearly defined lines of my abs in the mirror, and at the tight, sultry red designer gown hanging in the fitting room. Quietly, I placed a thousand-dollar bet in the pool that I would show up on time.

The amount in the channel’s betting pool jumped instantly. A thousand bucks stood out sharply among all the ten- and twenty-dollar pocket change bets. The chat box, which had been flooding nonstop, froze for a few seconds. Soon, someone sent a string of question marks. “What’s going on? Who is this lurker? They dropped a thousand dollars right away?” “That ID looks unfamiliar. Where did this rich guy come from?” “Could it be Chloe herself? Tyler, you didn’t kick her out, did you?” I put down my coffee cup and tapped on the screen. “I’m Chloe.” “Winner takes all. See you tomorrow night.” The moment the message was sent, my phone started vibrating wildly. Tyler flooded my DMs. “Are you crazy?” “Where did you get a thousand dollars? Didn’t you say all your part-time money was going toward tuition?” “The guys were just joking. What are you doing jumping in and making a scene?” I looked at the accusations he sent, my gaze landing on the red dress in the mirror. The old me was insecure and didn’t like talking to people in real life. So I chose an online relationship and met Tyler. Over the past year of that online relationship, I had helped him revise fourteen economics term papers. When he got drunk at a party in the middle of the night, I stayed on FaceTime with him until dawn across the time zones. He complained that all the girls around him were too shallow, and only I understood his soul. Looking back, he was just unwilling to lose a free high-end academic ghostwriter and a twenty-four-hour online therapist. I didn’t reply to him. Luke, the one who loved stirring trouble the most, sent three whistle emojis in a row. “Nice. A 300-pound dose of courage is heavyweight, all right.” “Since Chloe dares to come, then tomorrow night’s King of Spades punishment has to be played all the way through.” “Tyler, now it’s our turn to draw cards.” A link to a virtual card-drawing mini game popped up in the channel. Tyler was obviously panicking. He directly tagged me in the channel. “Chloe, be good and cancel the bet. Tomorrow night’s formal is black-tie. You don’t have the right clothes, and coming will only embarrass you.” It sounded like concern, but really he was just afraid of losing face. I was about to type when a new message popped up in the channel. “Can you all not be so mean?” It was Serena, the business school’s recognized head cheerleader. “Even though Chloe’s body type is a little unusual, flying over here from so far away isn’t easy. Tyler, how can you use your girlfriend as a bet?” “Chloe, if you don’t have a formal dress, I can lend you one. But my size is XS, so you might need to check a plus-size women’s store to see if they have any one-size-fits-all capes.” The group instantly burst into laughter. “Serena really is kind. A cape is perfect, just cover her up and problem solved!” “Unreal. Let’s just change tomorrow night’s formal theme to a Halloween pre-show. I’m scared I’ll laugh out loud.” I looked at the insults scrolling across the screen and felt my heart turn colder. Over the past year, in order to stand beside Tyler with my head held high, I had sweated it out in the gym every single day. When stomach pain hit from extreme dieting, I still had to grit my teeth and help him with data analysis in front of my computer while my body cramped up. All because I thought he was the first person who loved only my soul. I left the group and threw my phone onto the sofa. Then I turned and walked to the full-length mirror, pulling up the invisible zipper at the back of the red dress.

At seven o’clock that night, the outside of the Claude Hotel in Harbor City was brightly lit. I stepped through the revolving doors in ten-inch stilettos. The fitted red dress wrapped around my curves, and the slit in the skirt showed off my long legs as I walked. A lot of eyes in the lobby turned toward me. I walked straight to the elevator. My phone kept vibrating inside my clutch. I took it out and glanced at it. The Discord channel had already switched to live-stream mode. Luke held up his phone at the entrance to the ballroom, a smile on his lips. “Guys, it’s seven fifteen. Chloe, the 300-pound girl, still hasn’t shown up.” “Tyler, your thousand bucks is basically guaranteed.” The camera shifted and landed on Tyler, who was dressed in a custom tuxedo. He was holding champagne, and Serena, in a white sequined fishtail gown, stood beside him. Serena was clinging to his arm affectionately. “Tyler, you’re such a jerk. Chloe must be hiding in some motel somewhere, too scared to come out.” Tyler took a sip of wine, a smug smile hanging at the corner of his mouth. “I already tried my best to talk her out of it. She insisted on placing the bet herself. If she can’t even handle this much pressure, how is she supposed to survive in Harbor City?” Laughter broke out behind them in agreement. Just then, the elevator doors opened. I put away my phone and stepped out. At the end of the hallway was the sign-in desk for the ballroom. Several fraternity freshmen were checking names against the list. I walked over and gave my name. “Chloe.” The freshman in charge of registration was a chubby guy wearing glasses. When he heard my name, he jerked his head up. His gaze swept over my face and the red dress several times, and the pen in his hand dropped straight onto the table. “You… are Chloe?” He stammered so badly he could barely get the words out. “Is there a registration record?” My tone was calm. “Yes, there is, but…” He swallowed hard. “Tonight your escort is Chairman Julian. You’ll need to wait for him to bring you in.” Julian. The ice-cold chairman who had never spoken in the channel flashed through my mind. So the King of Spades in last night’s draw was him in the end. “Where is he?” “On the terrace.” The freshman pointed to a glass door on the side of the hallway. I turned around, pushed open the glass door, and walked outside. The terrace had no main lights on, only wall lamps casting a faint glow. A man in a black bespoke suit stood with his back to me at the railing. The night wind blew past, bringing a cool cedar scent. Hearing the sound of high heels, he turned around, revealing a refined face. His features were deep and sharp, and his brows and eyes carried a coldness that kept people at a distance. His gaze landed on me, without any cheap appraisal, only curiosity. “Wrong place?” His voice was low. “No.” I walked toward him and met his gaze. “I’m Chloe. I heard you drew the King of Spades.”

A faint shift crossed Julian’s face. He looked at me, and a hint of thought flashed through his dark gray eyes. “Tyler’s online girlfriend?” “Ex-girlfriend.” I corrected him. Last night I had sent Tyler a breakup message, but he hadn’t replied. Coming here today was just me putting a close to my first love. He narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze dropping from my face and pausing at the faint muscle lines visible in the slit of the red dress. There was nothing frivolous in it. He was only confirming some fact. “How long did it take you?” “One year and two months.” He nodded. “Good stamina.” “You saw the betting pool in the channel.” I looked him in the eye. “I need to get in. If you think taking me inside would hurt your image, I can go in by myself.” “Since I drew the punishment, I don’t have a habit of running from it.” Julian straightened up, buttoned his jacket, and held out his right arm to me. “Let’s go.” I placed my hand in the crook of his arm. The muscle under the fabric was solid and powerful. We walked side by side toward the ballroom doors. Behind the heavy double doors, the noise was so loud it felt like it could blow the roof off. Luke’s voice could be heard clearly even through the door. “Five minutes left. If Chloe still doesn’t show, the betting pool gets settled right now!” “Tyler, you really cleaned up on this one. Not only did you dump a huge headache, you also picked up a free thousand bucks.” The waiter at the door saw Julian and immediately bowed respectfully before opening the door. The light from the crystal chandelier poured out instantly. The noisy ballroom fell silent for a second the moment the door opened. Everyone instinctively looked toward the entrance. Julian was at the center of Harbor City’s social circle, so every move he made was already under a spotlight. But at this moment, once those gazes landed on me in his arm, they all froze. I clearly saw that several guys not far away, each holding a glass of wine, had their mouths hanging open wide enough to fit a pool ball. Luke’s phone was still held up in livestream mode, the camera pointed straight at us. “Julian’s here…” Someone muttered under their breath. “Who’s that beauty beside him? Is she some other rich family’s daughter?” “That red dress looks like a Milan runway couture piece this year. Damn, you’d need an insane figure to pull that off.” I lifted my chin slightly and held onto Julian’s arm, walking down the steps one by one. Wherever I passed, people automatically made way. I walked straight toward the center of the hall. Tyler was standing with his back to me, whispering and flirting with Serena. When he heard the strange silence around him, he turned around. The instant our eyes met, a clear flash of shock appeared in Tyler’s eyes. He even let go of Serena’s hand and subconsciously adjusted his bow tie. He didn’t recognize me. Not only did he not recognize me, he lifted his chin slightly and came over on his own. He ignored Julian beside me and stared straight at my face. “Lovely lady.” Tyler put on his signature deep, loving smile. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at a Harbor City formal before. May I have the honor of buying you a drink?”

As soon as Tyler finished speaking, envious looks shot over from all around. Serena stood not far away, her face slightly green, but she still kept up her polished socialite image and didn’t lose her temper. Julian turned his head and glanced at me. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t withdraw his arm. He just stood quietly on the side. “Buy me a drink?” I let out a light laugh. That laugh made Tyler think he had succeeded. He stepped closer, his tone even more presumptuous. “Of course. A dazzling girl like you shouldn’t be ignored. Julian’s always so boring anyway. He doesn’t know how to take care of a lady.” I took a glass of red wine from a passing waiter’s tray. Tyler immediately raised his own glass, ready to clink with me. Just as the two glasses were about to hit, I turned my wrist. The rim tilted. The crimson wine poured down the collar of his custom tuxedo. The white shirt was instantly stained red, and wine dripped down his chin. A wave of gasps erupted in the ballroom. Serena screamed and rushed over, frantically digging tissues out of her bag. “Are you crazy!” She shouted at me. “Do you know how expensive his suit is?” Tyler wiped his face in a flustered mess, and the loving mask on his face finally shattered completely. “Who the hell are you?” He glared at me through gritted teeth. I set the empty glass back on the tray. “What, you don’t recognize me after I changed clothes?” I looked him in the eye and said each word clearly. “Didn’t you bet five hundred bucks that I couldn’t fit into a formal dress?” The whole ballroom went dead silent. Luke’s phone fell straight onto the carpet. Exclamations of shock broke out in the crowd. The anger on Tyler’s face froze instantly, his pupils contracting hard as he stared at me. “You…” His lips trembled, unable to form a complete sound. “Let me reintroduce myself.” “I’m Chloe. One hundred thirty pounds.” I pulled a thousand-dollar check out of my clutch and tucked it between two fingers, and slipped it neatly into the pocket of his still-dripping suit. “You lost.” “Take the extra thousand and get your eyes checked.” The moment I turned, I caught his wrist with my other hand and yanked him so hard that he staggered forward a step. Then I lowered my voice to something only the two of us could hear. “And don’t think I don’t know that the core data in that A+ final paper of yours was all run by me overnight. If I send the draft to your professor, guess what happens?” Tyler’s face went instantly pale, and his grip loosened. Just then, Julian’s voice came from behind me in a flat tone. “Tyler, since the game is over, you should fulfill the bet.” Tyler jerked his head up. “What bet?” Julian stepped forward, blocking Tyler’s hand when he tried to grab me. He looked down at Tyler from above, his tone without the slightest fluctuation. “The betting pool rule tonight was set by you. The loser has to crawl around the dance floor three times in front of everyone.” Julian’s dark gray eyes were cold as ice. “Now, you can start crawling.”

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The man who funded my education for years went bankrupt and lost his sight. I found him, brought him home, and took care of him. He stared blankly with unseeing eyes, his voice fragile and thick with unshed tears. “Don’t be so good to me, Harper. I’m thirty. I’m a ruined man. I don’t deserve you.” I leaned over to gently wipe the dampness from his cheek. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw his adopted son leaning against the hallway wall, arms crossed, watching him with a frigid glare. “He’s right. You are thirty,” the boy said softly. He shifted his gaze to me, a smirk playing on his lips—a smile wrapped in barbed wire, radiating a storm. “And me?” he said. “I’m only eighteen.” 1 It was my third year in the corporate world when the news broke: Arthur Harrison had lost everything. His massive gamble on a tech merger had failed spectacularly. He was wiped out. His rivals hadn’t hesitated to kick him while he was down, and amidst the chaos, a car accident had taken his sight. “Arthur Harrison just didn’t have the teeth for it. A businessman with a heart that soft was never going to last,” my coworkers gossiped over their cubicle walls. “God, he used to be Chicago’s most eligible bachelor. Now look at him. He’s worse off than a beggar on the street.” “Harper? Are you okay? You look awful,” one of the women finally noticed me. I stared at them for a second, my mind entirely blank, before I grabbed my purse. “Sarah, I have a family emergency. I need to take the afternoon off.” If you had told me three years ago that my reunion with Arthur Harrison would happen in a greasy, linoleum-floored diner near Chicago Med, I would have thought you were insane. Three years ago, he was a wildly successful young entrepreneur. He had been the keynote speaker at my college graduation. He had stood at the podium—radiant, effortless, and devastatingly handsome. The campus anonymous boards had talked about him for weeks. Now, his eyes were dull and unfocused. His long fingers groped blindly across the sticky Formica table. I saw a smear of ketchup near his sleeve and quickly caught his hand. With my other hand, I took a wet wipe and scrubbed the table clean. “Stop fussing and just spit it out!” a brash, impatient voice snapped. I turned my head. Sitting across from Arthur was a college kid radiating pure, unadulterated hostility. He had a shaved head, a slit in his left eyebrow, and a silver stud in his ear. He knocked his knuckles hard against the table, barking like a cornered stray. “I’m warning you, the money is gone. You could shake him upside down and you wouldn’t find a dime, so drop the Good Samaritan act.” “I apologize. My son’s temper gets the better of him. He didn’t mean to offend you,” Arthur said softly. “Why are you being polite to her? Anyone looking for you right now is a debt collector.” “Jaxon, that’s enough.” They started arguing. Arthur kept his voice low, trying to de-escalate, but Jaxon was relentless. He was stubborn and vicious, throwing words like punches until Arthur’s pale cheeks flushed with humiliation. I stared at the rigid, defensive line of Arthur’s back for three full seconds before I realized I was still holding his hand. I looked down. There was a tiny, distinct mole resting right on the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Only when Arthur’s flush deepened and those cloudy, unseeing eyes turned vaguely in my direction did I finally let go. “Mr. Harrison, you misunderstand. I’m not here for money. My name is Harper. Harper Hayes. I’m one of the students you sponsored.” Arthur blinked slowly, his brow furrowing as he searched his memory. I figured he had forgotten. He had dropped out of an Ivy League school to build a startup that changed the industry, and in his quest to change the world, he had funded the education of hundreds, if not thousands, of underprivileged kids. But then, Arthur smiled. It was the same smile from three years ago, when he had his bodyguard hand me a bouquet of flowers at graduation, waving goodbye to me through the tinted glass of his town car. “I remember you,” he said softly. “All the other kids called me Arthur in their letters. You always called me Mr. Harrison.” He remembered. I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to suppress the sudden, violent hammering of my heart. “Mr. Harrison,” I said, my voice remarkably steady. “If you don’t mind, you can stay at my place for now.” Jaxon crossed his arms. “He can’t pay rent.” “He doesn’t need to.” Jaxon scowled. “He needs money for medical bills.” “I’ll pay them.” Jaxon narrowed his eyes, assessing me. “You’ve got a good job, you’re pretty. Why the hell are you anchoring yourself to dead weight?” Arthur turned his blind gaze toward me, silent, lost, and deeply worried. I tapped the table, a flicker of genuine anger sparking in my chest at the term “dead weight.” When I spoke, my tone had turned to ice. I looked right at Jaxon. “Seven years ago, I had nothing. If Mr. Harrison hadn’t paid for my schooling, I would have been trapped in a dead-end factory town for the rest of my life, popping out kids.” I sat up straight and looked back at Arthur. “I will remember that grace until the day I die. I am here to pay my debt. He is not dead weight, and I refuse to let him sink into the mud. I will hold him up. I will carry him.” 2 It took some convincing, but Arthur eventually moved into my apartment. He was hesitant, but he had no other options. The banks had seized everything. He was penniless, homeless, and responsible for Jaxon—the orphaned son of his late older brother. Jaxon had just started his freshman year of college. As far as I was concerned, he was a walking lawsuit waiting to happen. But he was Arthur’s kid, which meant I had to tolerate him. Blindness made every little thing a monumental task for Arthur. I held onto his sleeve, gently guiding him through every room, letting him touch the edges of the furniture, the doorways, the counters. He smiled, apologizing for the trouble, assuring me he had memorized the layout. But that very first night, he mistook the living room for his bedroom. I was lying on the couch in the dark, scrolling through my phone, when I noticed him stop dead in his tracks by the wall. I paused, curious. When he didn’t call out, I realized he had no idea I was there. I smiled to myself and opened my mouth to let him know. But before I could speak, Arthur—staring blindly at the drywall—began to unbutton his dress shirt. Inch by inch, his chest was exposed in the moonlight. He slipped the shirt off, draping it over his forearm. He pressed his right hand against the wall for balance, and then— He reached for the buckle of his belt. 3 I lay paralyzed on the couch, instantly regretting not speaking up two seconds earlier. Arthur’s skin was pale, his muscles lean and tightly coiled. Bathed in the silver light spilling through the window, he looked like a statue carved from moonstone. Left in nothing but a pair of dark grey boxer briefs, he trailed his hand along the wall, trying to navigate toward the bed. Except he was in the wrong room. After a few steps, his hand hit the flat screen of the TV. A flash of sheer panic crossed his face. Arthur was a dignified man. I doubt he had ever in his life stripped down in a woman’s living room uninvited. His hands began to shake wildly as he felt his way along the wall. It took him an agonizingly long time to finally find the door to the guest bedroom. He practically fled into the room, pulling the door shut behind him. On the couch, the breath I had been holding in my lungs finally escaped in a violent, trembling exhale. He had a mole on his left shoulder blade, right near the curve of his collarbone. It looked like a dark, tiny fish swimming in a pale pond. Beauty is marked by its flaws. For some reason, that phrase echoed in my head. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I lay there until the early hours of the morning, waiting until I was absolutely certain Arthur was asleep before I silently crept off the couch and slipped into my own bedroom. 4 The first time I saw Arthur Harrison was at my high school. It was a decaying, underfunded public school in a dying Rust Belt town. Arthur was twenty-three at the time. His startup had just secured its first major round of funding, and the world was his oyster. He was brimming with energy, desperate to use his newfound wealth to do some good. I stood at the very back of the auditorium, craning my neck through the sea of heads to catch a glimpse of his striking, expressive face. He was so young—he looked more like a student than I did, with my heavy, dead-eyed exhaustion. I knew the principal thought this “rich kid” was an easy mark. He had padded the scholarship list with the kids of local politicians and school board members. I, who was actually on the verge of dropping out to work shifts at the local diner, had been pushed to the very bottom of the list. Small towns are like that. Corrupt in the pettiest of ways. I stood in line without a shred of hope, zoning out, trying to calculate how many shifts I’d need to afford rent once I quit school. The line moved fast. Suddenly, I was standing right in front of him. He looked at me, glanced down at my calloused hands and the frayed, muddy hems of my jeans, and knelt down slightly to meet my eyes. “I’m moving your name to the top of the list,” he said softly. “Focus on your grades. You won’t have to worry about college tuition, I promise.” “Mr. Harrison, you can’t—” the principal panicked. The top of the list meant a full-ride sponsorship. Arthur smiled and politely shut him down. He looked gentle, but his tone was absolute steel. Watching his profile, I suddenly felt like a weed that had sprouted in a manicured garden. A hot flush of shame crawled up my neck. I hid my hands behind my back, terrified he would look too closely at the scars on my knuckles or the cheap fabric of my clothes. He was out of my league in every conceivable way. Over the years, I watched him from afar in crowded rooms. He was a good man, fiercely dedicated to his foundation. Because our county was so poor, he came back every semester to check on the kids. We spoke privately a few times, but it was always strictly about my academics. He was warm, but it was the same blanket warmth he gave everyone else. From high school through college, I wrote him letters. Once a month, like clockwork. I was terrified that if I wrote too often, I’d annoy him, but if I wrote too little, he’d forget I existed. In one of his early replies, he jokingly asked why I was so formal. Why “Mr. Harrison”? The other kids called him Arthur. The bolder ones even called him Artie. I never dared tell him the truth. I wanted to be special. Even if that “specialness” was entirely in my own head. Like a stray dog guarding a bone, I quietly idolized him. He was my personal saint. Back then, I didn’t fully understand what my obsession was, or why I was so fiercely opposed to treating him like a peer. But lying in bed now, I finally understood. 5 I had just experienced my first wet dream. It wasn’t about the Hollywood actor my friends obsessed over, or the perfectly nice accountant my coworker had tried to set me up with. It was about Arthur. In the dream, his shirt was unbuttoned. He was lying back against my pillows, a faint, devastating flush on his cheeks. A slow smile spread across his lips as he asked me what I wanted to call him now. And dream-me was terrifyingly bold. I straddled him, burying my face in his neck, and murmured, “Mine.” Then I bit down softly on the little mole on his hand. I kissed my way up his forearm, and finally, I sucked on the dark mark near his collarbone until the pale skin around it bloomed into a violent red bruise. Arthur let out a low groan. “Harper,” he whispered, his voice dark and heavy. “Let me.” He turned his head, gripping my wrists, pressing his lips to my pulse point. He looked up at me through his lashes—feral, seductive, entirely in control. “I’m older than you,” he murmured. “I know more than you. I should be the one teaching you.” I woke up gasping for air. From the kitchen, I heard the loud hum of the exhaust fan. I scrambled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and practically ran into the kitchen. Standing by the stove was Jaxon. He was flipping an egg in a skillet with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans. My pink checkered apron was tied around his waist, the thin straps stretching tightly across his muscular back. He heard me, turned around, and glared through the smoke. “Look what time it is. You finally awake?” I offered an awkward smile and reached for the skillet handle. Jaxon yanked it away, our forearms brushing. “Sit down, it’s almost done,” he snapped. “And go wake him up. He’s got this weird complex about being a burden. He’ll starve in there before he asks you for food.” I hurried over and knocked on the guest room door. “Come in.” I pushed the door open. Arthur was already awake, sitting perfectly straight at the desk. His hands were gently tracing the contours of a small clay sculpture. My heart dropped into my stomach. How the hell had I forgotten to hide that? It was a bust I had made during a weekend pottery class. Somehow, subconsciously, the face I had sculpted looked exactly like him. He’s blind, I reminded myself frantically. He can’t tell what it is. Arthur tilted his head up. In the morning light, the grey film over his eyes was highly visible. He smiled at the empty space in front of him. “Thank you for taking me in, Harper. Did you make this? I can’t quite feel what it’s supposed to be, but I imagine it’s beautiful.” “I made it, yeah.” His thumb gently brushed against the cheek of the clay face, right over a fingerprint I had accidentally left behind. I cleared my throat loudly, snatched the sculpture from his hands, and shoved it into a drawer. “It’s just a tree,” I lied smoothly. “It’s really poorly done. Don’t worry about it.” “A tree…?” Arthur murmured, a small smile playing on his lips. The way he smiled sent a sudden, electric jolt straight to my core, bringing the wet dream rushing back in vivid detail. My face burned. I hated myself in that moment. I felt entirely devoid of morals. This was Arthur Harrison. A fundamentally good man who had hit rock bottom. When he got back on his feet, he belonged with a refined, elegant woman from his own world. And here I was, a nobody whose life he had saved, harboring dirty, filthy thoughts about him while he was vulnerable. I was disgusting. I cursed myself a thousand times over, forcing the twisted, heavy desire out of my mind. But a dark, pessimistic voice in the back of my head whispered: How long is your willpower really going to last? Arthur turned his face toward the window, his expression serene. He didn’t know I had taken a silent step closer. I was so close I could see the fine, golden hairs on his jawline. “Is the sun out?” he asked softly. “I think… I think I can see a little bit of light.” “It is. It’s a beautiful day.” I stood there, just watching him. The sun warmed the earth, but Arthur had warmed my life. Standing in this tiny room, it felt as if my own personal saint had fallen right into my hands. 6 Breakfast was a struggle for him. His chopsticks kept missing his plate, clicking against the table. Without thinking, I picked up a piece of egg and guided it to his mouth. Arthur’s face flushed a deep red. He chewed, looking profoundly uncomfortable. Jaxon hadn’t touched his food. He sat across from us, arms crossed, watching the exchange with cold, hard eyes. He hadn’t said a word. “Jaxon, aren’t you going to eat?” I asked, baffled by the sudden mood swing. He had been fine in the kitchen. “I ate before my run. Not all of us sleep till noon,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “Jaxon! She works full time. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in on a Saturday,” Arthur scolded, frowning. Jaxon stared at him deadpan, his jaw ticking as if he were grinding his teeth. Then, completely deliberately, Jaxon stretched his long legs out under the small table, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, you’re right! Good thing it’s Saturday. I’m staying here all day.” As he stretched, his foot bumped mine, forcing my knee directly into the side of Arthur’s thigh. I jerked back like I had been burned. Arthur didn’t seem to notice the contact. He just frowned in Jaxon’s direction. “Jaxon, behave.” “It’s fine,” I said quickly. “He’s family. I know he’s worried about leaving you here alone with me.” Arthur didn’t say anything else. But later, when Jaxon went to the bathroom for a smoke break, Arthur reached out, his fingers finding my sleeve. He leaned in close. Because of his blindness, his spatial awareness was shot. If I hadn’t leaned back, his chest would have pressed directly against mine. Arthur tilted his head slightly, his sightless eyes searching, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Why do you call him Jaxon?” “What?” “You’ve only ever called me Mr. Harrison.” “I—” My brain short-circuited. He was so close I could smell him. Clean soap, cedar, and the faint, warm scent of his skin. “Harper…” “I just—” Whatever shred of sanity I had left was rapidly evaporating. He looked so innocent. He clearly had no idea how intimate this was. No wonder. He couldn’t see the frantic, desperate pounding of my pulse at my throat. A ruined, beautiful man. Like a fragile glass chalice placed right at the edge of a table. If I just leaned in a fraction of an inch, I could kiss him. Would he even know it was my lips, or would he think my hand had brushed against him? I could lie to him. Clatter! I sprang out of my chair so fast it tipped over backwards. Arthur flinched violently. I grabbed his arms to keep him from falling, my teeth clamped shut to keep my emotions from spilling out. “I call you Mr. Harrison because you’re my benefactor.” “Can’t a benefactor be a friend?” “A benefactor is a benefactor.” The bathroom door clicked open. Jaxon stepped out, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He had the eyes of a feral wolf, and they locked directly onto me. I looked away, my face burning, praying he hadn’t seen exactly what I had been thinking. Jaxon just let out a low, mocking scoff. 7 After Arthur went to bed, Jaxon knocked on my bedroom door and let himself in. He dropped into my desk chair, sprawling his legs out, the silver stud in his ear catching the light. He tapped his knuckles on the desk like a detective at an interrogation. “Alright, out with it. What do you actually want?” “What?” “Are you after his equity? Corporate secrets? His contact list?” I laughed out loud. “I’m a middle manager at a logistics company. I have zero interest in tech equity or his billionaire contacts. Why would you even think that?” Jaxon’s face flushed. He was only eighteen, and his forced, hardened-man persona instantly cracked. He ran a hand over his buzzed head, frustrated. “Then you have to want something! Don’t tell me you… you want…” I looked at him, amused. He stammered, unable to finish his sentence, his face turning the color of a tomato. I sighed. “Do you read comics? I have the vintage Calvin and Hobbes box set in the living room if you’re bored.” Jaxon looked like he wanted to spontaneously combust. “Who the hell reads Calvin and Hobbes! Stop trying to change the subject!” Because he was Arthur’s kid, every time I looked at him, I saw traces of Arthur. It softened my edges. I looked at him gently. “Okay, take your time. What do you think I want?” He forced the words out like he was choking on them. “…Sex.” I blinked in surprise. Jaxon glared at me, defensive and utterly humiliated. When he saw that I looked genuinely shocked—and not a bit guilty—he realized he had severely misread the situation. Too proud to admit defeat, he raised his voice. “Fine! I get it! But you can’t blame me for thinking it! I’m good-looking, I’m built, girls literally line up outside the library to talk to me. I thought you were just using him to get to me!” His voice dropped to an embarrassed mumble. “He’s sponsored so many kids, and you’re the only idiot who actually showed up to wade into this mess. I thought you had an ulterior motive… I didn’t know you were just genuinely stupid.” He scratched his jaw, his bicep flexing. “I, uh… I misjudged you. My bad.” He stood up quickly. “Anyway. I’m gonna go do push-ups in the living room. See ya.” I shook my head, laughing softly. Half a second later, Jaxon ducked back into the room, grabbed the Calvin and Hobbes books off the shelf, and sprinted away. Who’s the stupid one here? 8 After Jaxon went back to his dorm, it was just Arthur and me. Over the next few days, I put tactile stickers on the microwave buttons and his meal prep containers. I added foam corner guards to all the furniture, and I bought him a folding cane so he could navigate the apartment safely. Most things were manageable. But there was one major hurdle: showering. I was terrified to leave him alone in the wet, slippery bathroom. But I also couldn’t just pull up a chair and sit outside the shower curtain like a creep. Arthur gave me a brave, strained smile. “It’s fine, Harper. I can manage.” The sheer vulnerability in his voice completely destroyed my hesitation. Fine. I’ll stand guard. I couldn’t risk him breaking a hip. I took his hand, guiding his fingers over the shampoo, the body wash, and the temperature dials, explaining everything until he had it memorized. Only then did I pull the curtain shut. The water turned on, and my mind instantly went into overdrive. Every single one of my senses was hyper-fixated on the silhouette behind the thin, frosted plastic curtain. I clenched my fists, staring aggressively at my own knees, trying to focus on literally anything else. “Harper.” Maybe it was the acoustics of the bathroom, but the way he dragged out my name sounded thick, low, and incredibly intimate. Intimate? I was losing my mind. I glared at my hands, wishing I could physically reach into my brain and scrub it with bleach. “Harper?” “Yeah?” I croaked, turning around. The curtain was pulled back an inch. A wet, muscular arm and a sliver of a sharp V-line were exposed. He held out his open palm, looking confused. “I’m sorry, my memory is failing me. Did I just pump the body wash or the shampoo?” “Body wash,” I said, my voice sounding incredibly tight. A deeply paranoid thought flickered through my brain: Is he… is he flirting with me? “Oh,” he smiled softly, looking down. “Losing my sight has made me so clumsy. So stupid.” The guilt hit me like a freight train. I was a monster for sexualizing this man’s tragedy. “You’re not stupid,” I whispered. To me, bankrupt or blind, he would always be the brilliant, kind man who changed the world. Even if he only changed my little corner of it. He wasn’t clumsy. He was surviving. The water shut off. “I’m done. But… I think I forgot to bring my clean clothes in.” “It’s okay. I have them.” I grabbed the neat stack of clothes from his bed and handed them around the curtain. “What’s this?” “Your t-shirt. The tag is in the back.” “And this?” “…” I coughed into my fist. “Your… boxers.” Arthur smiled warmly. “Thank you.” Once he was dressed, he pulled the curtain back. I took his arm to guide him out, but I noticed he was walking stiffly. “Are you okay?” Arthur’s ears turned crimson. He stayed silent for a long time before he finally muttered, “Harper, the underwear you bought me… I think it’s a size too small.” 9 I broke into a coughing fit. I felt a bizarre, overwhelming wave of guilt, like I was actively bullying a saint. Days passed. I went to work; Arthur stayed home. Things were peaceful. Except a few times, when I got off work early, I would hear a voice through his closed bedroom door. He seemed to be on phone calls—conference calls, maybe. The voice sounded like his, but completely devoid of the soft, broken vulnerability he showed me. This voice was ice-cold, commanding, and arrogant. Like a king executing his enemies. It sounded so different I convinced myself he must be listening to an audiobook. Because I was rushing home every day, my coworkers finally caught on. “Harper, do you have a boyfriend?” one of them asked, smirking. I shook my head frantically. She clapped her hands. “Oh, thank God. I thought I missed my window. That guy from accounting I set you up with? He really liked you. He wants to take you to dinner.” “How about tonight? No time like the present! He’s a great guy, tall, good benefits…” I vaguely remembered the guy. He was quiet, polite, and completely inoffensive. My coworker was so pushy I couldn’t find a polite way to say no, so I caved. Before I left the office, I called Arthur. I told him I had to work late and that I had ordered delivery for him. Arthur didn’t complain. He just told me to be careful and take an Uber home if it got too late. I wanted to explain that I wasn’t working, but I stopped myself. It was none of his business. He was just being polite. If I over-explained my whereabouts, he’d think I was full of myself. Dinner dragged on. By eight o’clock, my coworker, who had tagged along as a wingwoman, dragged us to a movie. When I finally got into an Uber to head home, I checked my phone. It was past 11 PM. I had five missed calls. All from Arthur. He had called exactly once every hour. Controlled, but borderline obsessive. He had left one text: Harper, where are you? I’m worried. When I unlocked the front door, I froze. Arthur was sitting on the hardwood floor in the dark. He was soaking wet. He was staring blankly ahead, the faint streetlights casting harsh shadows over his sharp cheekbones, making him look devastatingly frail and abandoned. I dropped my bag and rushed over, grabbing a towel from the bathroom to dry him off. “What happened to you?” “I slipped in the bathroom,” he said softly, his voice trembling. “My knee gave out. I couldn’t get up. I’m sorry, Harper. I’m such a burden to you.” “Where does it hurt?” I panicked, touching his leg. His knee was deeply bruised. The guilt was suffocating. I should never have silenced my phone for a stupid movie. I knew I had a blind man at home relying on me. How could I have been so selfish? I looked down at his damp hair. “I’m so sorry. I got held up.” Arthur shook his head slightly. “Where were you?” “…I met up with some friends.” Arthur’s eyelashes fluttered. “It sounds like you had a wonderful time. That’s good. I truly hate the idea that my broken body is ruining your normal life.” “You’re not broken! And you’re not ruining anything!” Arthur offered a pale, tragic smile. “Aren’t I? When you didn’t come home, I thought… I thought you had finally gotten sick of dealing with me.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I was just… so lonely. I can’t see anything, the apartment was so quiet, and I panicked. That’s why I called you so many times. I’m sorry. I have no right to demand your time when you’ve already been so generous to me.” I stared at him in the dark. I took a deep breath, making a decision. “Stay here. I’ll go get you some dry clothes.” When I walked into his bedroom, I pulled out my phone and sent a polite rejection text to the guy from accounting. I told him I had personal commitments and no time to date. He took it gracefully, and we deleted each other’s numbers. I looked at the screen, a bitter smile crossing my face. I had to admit the truth to myself: Arthur Harrison was a lethal weapon, and I was completely defenseless against him. One slight frown, one tremble in his voice, and my vaunted self-control shattered into a million pieces. 10 Back in the bedroom. Arthur struggled to stand, leaning heavily on me before collapsing onto the edge of his bed. “I’m embarrassing myself,” he muttered. He fumbled weakly with his soaked shirt. “It’s fine. I can dress myself.” I couldn’t stand watching him struggle. “Let me help.” Before he could object, I added quickly, “Don’t worry, Mr. Harrison. I’ll blindfold myself. I won’t look.” “…Okay.” I grabbed a sheer silk scarf from my dresser and tied it over my eyes. It wasn’t until I had it knotted that I realized the fabric was too thin—I could still see the blurry outline of his body perfectly. But it was too late to change it now without making a scene. I gently took his hand and brought it up to my face, letting him feel the knot at the back of my head. “See? I’m completely blindfolded. You’re safe.” His pants were soaked through and heavy. With Arthur sitting on the edge of the bed, I had to step into his space, practically wrapping my arms around his waist to shimmy the wet denim down his hips. To get them past his calves, I had to kneel on the floor. Because my vision was obscured by the scarf, I was entirely focused on the stubborn denim. I didn’t realize how close I was. My face was inches from his lap; my warm breath was hitting his bare skin. As I pulled the jeans down, Arthur’s voice drifted down from above me. “Harper, you really can’t see anything right now?” “Nothing,” I lied. He let out a soft laugh. “It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? I’ve dragged you into the dark with me.” I opened my mouth to laugh, but the sound died in my throat. Through the sheer veil of the scarf, I saw his dark grey boxer briefs. And the very prominent, very distinct shape pressing against the fabric. Arthur’s voice didn’t waver. He sounded casual, relaxed, perfectly normal. “It’s the weekend tomorrow. That little menace Jaxon is going to come barging in here. I wonder if he actually misses me, or if he’s just skipping track practice.” “Yeah,” I squeaked out automatically, my brain entirely offline. I blinked hard behind the silk. I wasn’t hallucinating. The shape was definitively growing. Suddenly, my fingers, which were resting near his waistband, felt like they were on fire. The skin-on-skin contact felt electric and terrifyingly intimate. I bit my lip, slowly pulling the denim the rest of the way down. My mind was screaming in panic. Do I act natural? Do I stop? If I stop, he’ll know I can see! Maybe it’s just biology, I rationalized wildly. Maybe it’s involuntary! Maybe he doesn’t even realize it’s happening! He was such a gentleman. He had almost starved to death rather than wake me up. If he knew I was kneeling directly in front of his raging erection, he’d probably throw himself out the window out of pure shame! My heart hammered against my ribs as I finally got the jeans past his knees. Suddenly, a large hand clamped down over mine, stopping me. “I can do the rest. Thank you.” I nearly collapsed with relief. I handed him the dry sweatpants and stepped back. As he pulled them up, he paused, clearing his throat lightly. “You haven’t taken the blindfold off yet.” He sounded almost bashful. “Why don’t you leave it on for a bit? We can just talk for a while. Two blind people sitting in the dark.” I sat down heavily in the desk chair, my face burning like a furnace. “Okay.” For a long time, neither of us said a word. Two people, in the dark, harboring terrifying secrets. It wasn’t until the swelling in his sweatpants finally, agonizingly subsided that Arthur lifted his head and, with that same perfect smile, asked me what I wanted to do for breakfast. Adults truly are spectacular liars.

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1 The day Graham Shaw touched down at JFK after a decade in London, I handed my wife the divorce papers. Elena Hastings didn’t scream. She didn’t even flinch. She simply set down her tea—a delicate bone china cup filled with an Earl Grey that smelled like bergamot and indifference—and looked at me with those cool, slate-gray eyes that I had spent ten years trying to decipher. “I haven’t been unfaithful, Elias,” she said. Her tone was flat, a professional monotone she usually reserved for dismissing a junior architect’s poorly drafted floor plan. She sat there, draped in a cream-colored cashmere sweater that probably cost more than my first car, looking every bit the heiress to the Hastings architectural legacy. I managed a thin, exhausted smile. “I know.” I slid the leather-bound folder across the Carrara marble kitchen island. The sound of the paper whispering against the stone felt like a serrated blade in the heavy silence of our Upper East Side apartment. “I’m just done, Elena,” I said, meeting her gaze. “My heart… it’s a hollowed-out building. There’s no structural integrity left. We’ve been living in a ruin for years, and I’m tired of trying to patch the cracks.” “Let’s end this. Let’s get a divorce.” The moment the word divorce hit the air, the vintage fountain pen in Elena’s hand slipped. It clattered onto her vellum sketches, a heavy blot of midnight-blue ink blossoming across her latest design like a bruise on white skin. I recognized that pen. It was a limited-edition piece Graham had sent her from a boutique in Mayfair during his third year at the Architectural Association. The silver cap was engraved with her name in a script that looked suspiciously like a caress. Graham Shaw. The name had been a fishbone caught in my throat for ten years. He was the golden boy of her Ivy League days, the light source in every one of her sketches, the phantom third party at every dinner we’d ever shared. And me? I was Elias Miller—the negative space, the filler material used to patch the holes Graham left behind when he chose London over her. He was back now. The architectural world was already vibrating; the “prodigy” who’d swept the RIBA Gold Medal was returning to New York to launch his own firm. My wife hadn’t been the same since the second his plane touched the tarmac three days ago. In seventy-two hours, she’d missed nine of my calls but managed thirty-plus encrypted messages to him. She’d drive forty minutes into the industrial heart of Brooklyn just because he mentioned “missing the grit of the old shipyards,” taking photos of the sunset on the piers to send to him. She spent all night in our kitchen preparing a multi-course gourmet spread to drop off at his hotel because he “craved something home-cooked after years of British food.” She hadn’t left a single bite for me. Standing in the kitchen doorway that night, watching her back—so vivid, so full of a frantic energy she never afforded me—I felt like a stranger in my own house. I was the ghost haunting my own marriage. “Just because Graham is back?” Elena finally spoke, her knuckles white as she retrieved the pen. “Elias, aren’t you being a bit… dramatic?” I didn’t answer immediately. I just watched the ink soak into her sketches. “Dramatic? Elena, I’ve been a spectator in my own life for a decade. I’m just tired of the view.” I pushed the papers closer. The terms were spelled out in black and white, drafted by the best lawyers my money could buy. She got the beach house in the Hamptons. She got the Tesla. She got the primary checking account. I just wanted my name back. I wasn’t a failure. Miller & Associates wasn’t a global titan like Hastings & Co., but we cleared eight figures a year in boutique commercial contracts. My friends used to call me the luckiest man in Manhattan for landing Elena Hastings. The Hastings were architectural royalty—old money, effortless grace, “quiet luxury” personified. “You hit the jackpot, Eli,” they’d say over cigars. I’d just nod and sip my scotch. They didn’t realize the jackpot was paid out in ice. In ten years, her most frequent responses to me were “Sure,” “Fine,” or “Understood.” We were like two strangers who had signed a long-term co-living agreement. I used to think she was just “built cold”—some people are just wired for detachment, I told myself. Until Graham returned. Then I saw the glow. I saw that she wasn’t incapable of affection; she was just keeping all her heat in a trust fund, waiting for the original owner to claim the interest. Elena didn’t look at the settlement. She stared at me, searching for a trace of a joke, a sign of a bluff. “Ten years,” she whispered, her voice finally trembling. “You’re throwing away a decade over a misunderstanding?” “A misunderstanding?” I let out a dry, jagged laugh. I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the city skyline I’d spent my life trying to conquer. “Elena, do you remember our third anniversary?” She hesitated. “Of course. We went to that French bistro in the Village.” “No. We were supposed to go to Per Se. I waited four hours at that table, Elena. Four hours. You finally showed up and told me Graham had broken up with his partner in London and you’d been on the phone with him all night to keep him from ‘doing something stupid.’ You said, ‘He’s a friend in pain, Elias. It’s the decent thing to do.’ And I, being the fool who loved you, believed you.” Her face began to drain of color. “Our fifth anniversary, I booked that overwater villa in the Maldives. You told me you didn’t want to travel, that staying home was ‘more intimate.’ I found out later Graham was in town for a visa renewal that week. You needed to be available for coffee, for walks, for whatever he needed. I was the husband on standby.” “Your phone passcode is his birthday. The watercolor in your study? The one you won’t let me move? It’s signed by him. Every password, every favorite playlist, the way you suddenly started liking your afternoon tea served exactly the way they do it at the Savoy—it all points to him. You aren’t married to me, Elena. You’re married to the memory of him. I’m just the guy who pays the property taxes.” Every sentence I spoke was a brick being removed from the foundation of our life. By the time I finished, she looked translucent, like she might shatter if the wind changed. “Those were just… coincidences,” she stammered, her voice thin. “Coincidences don’t skip my mother’s 60th birthday gala to pick someone up at the airport, Elena. Coincidences don’t involve a hidden folder on your cloud filled with every photo he’s posted on Instagram since 2014. You have a museum of him in your pocket.” The kitchen was so quiet I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. It sounded like a countdown. “Elias…” she finally said. “Nothing happened between us. Physically. Not once. I have been a faithful wife.” “I know,” I nodded, and the bitterness in my throat was like ash. “You’re far too disciplined for a messy physical affair. You’re a master of the emotional betrayal—the kind where you keep your body in my bed but your soul in his inbox. You think that makes you innocent? It makes it worse. I’d almost prefer a one-night stand. At least that’s honest. This? This is a slow-motion execution.” She swayed slightly, her hand bracing against the marble island. “Is that really what you think of me?” “I don’t ‘think’ it, Elena. I’ve lived it. Have you ever once wondered why I stopped eating seafood? I’ve been allergic for three years, and you still put shrimp in the risotto last month because ‘Graham always loved the way the kitchen smelled when it was cooking.’ I spent a week in the hospital for my gallbladder surgery last year; you visited three times, and twice you were in the hallway texting him about his new studio space. I watched you through the glass, Elena. You were smiling at your phone while I was hooked up to a morphine drip.” I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair. “Read the papers. Have your lawyer call mine. I’ve already moved my essentials into the corporate loft.” As I walked out the door, I heard the sound of something shattering—a porcelain cup, probably. I didn’t look back. Outside, the October rain was brisk and cold. It felt like a baptism. The next day, Elena didn’t call. I wasn’t surprised. The corporate loft was sterile, smelling of industrial cleaner and silence. It took exactly one suitcase to pack my life. Ten years of marriage, and my personal belongings were as thin as a ghost. “Mr. Miller? I thought you were taking the week off for the anniversary,” my assistant, Sarah, said in shock as I walked into the office at 7:30 AM. “Change of plans, Sarah. Let’s get to work. I want the briefings for the North Shore project on my desk in ten minutes.” “Right. Well… about that,” she said, her voice dropping an octave. “The North Shore Riverfront project just moved to the RFP stage. The city just released the shortlist. St. John Collective made the cut. Graham Shaw is their lead.” I took the briefing from her hand. Graham Shaw. The name was a recurring fever. The “prodigy,” the darling of the London scene, the man the city council was already grooming for the win. My firm was respectable, but we were the underdogs here. To the world, I was the guy who married into the Hastings family—a talented enough designer who rode the coattails of old money. No one knew that I was the one who pulled the eighty-hour weeks while Elena brooded over her “artistic visions” and Graham sent her poetry from overseas. At 10:00 AM, my phone buzzed. Not Elena. Her mother, Margaret Hastings. “Elias, what on earth is this nonsense? Elena tells me you’ve lost your mind and moved out.” “Margaret,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “It’s called a divorce.” “Don’t be flippant with me. Do you have any idea what this looks like? You were a boy from a state school with a mid-tier firm, Elias. Marrying a Hastings was the making of you. We gave you our name, our connections, our daughter. You should be grateful for the life we provided.” I moved the phone away from my ear. The same script for ten years. The lucky interloper. The charity case. “The house and the money stay with Elena, Margaret. I’m not taking a dime of your ‘legacy.’ I’m building my own. I’m hanging up now.” It was the first time I’d ever hung up on her. It felt better than a shot of top-shelf bourbon. By 2 PM, my lawyer, Frank, called. “Elias, she’s refusing to sign. She’s hired Silas Wright. They’re contesting the pre-nup, claiming your firm’s growth was ‘marital property’ built on the Hastings’ social connections. They’re coming for fifteen percent of Miller & Associates.” I spun my pen in a tight circle. Silas Wright—the shark of the Upper East Side. “My firm was built on sweat and caffeine, Frank. Not cocktail parties. Tell them I’ll see them in the deposition room.” “Understood. But Eli… they’re also asking for the Greenwich house and a five-million-dollar cash ‘rebalancing.’ You sure you want to fight this?” “I’m not being generous, Frank. I’m buying my freedom. If she wants the Greenwich house and the cash, give it to her. But she doesn’t get a single share of my firm. Not one.” I turned back to my computer. The North Shore Riverfront project. It was the largest urban renewal project in the city’s history. Twelve miles of shoreline. Eight billion dollars in total investment. Six firms were shortlisted. Graham’s St. John Collective. And my firm, Miller & Associates. I didn’t want this project to spite Graham. I wanted it because I had been walking that twelve-mile stretch for five years. Every weekend, every midnight when Elena was busy on the phone with London, I was there. I knew every rusted bolt on those piers. I knew where the salt had eaten through the wood. It was my obsession, the only thing that felt real when my marriage felt like a stage play. At 9 PM, I left the office to grab a sandwich. In the parking lot, I saw a familiar white Porsche Taycan. Elena was leaning against the door, her trench coat cinched tight, her hair windswept and uncharacteristically messy. “You aren’t answering my calls,” she said. “Talk to Frank. That’s what he’s for.” “I want to talk to you, Elias. Not a man in a three-piece suit.” “There’s nothing left to say, Elena.” I walked toward my SUV. “Elias!” she called out, her voice cracking. “Are you really going to throw away a decade over a misunderstanding?” I stopped. I turned back to see her standing under the amber hum of the streetlamp. She looked small, almost fragile, but all I could see was the decade of coldness she’d wrapped me in. “A decade of what, Elena? Being your second choice? I’m tired of being the man who pays the bills while you dream of someone else’s hands. I’m not a misunderstanding. I’m a casualty of your indecision.” She didn’t move. I got in the car and drove. In the rearview mirror, she was still standing there, a lonely figure in the dark. A year ago, that sight would have broken me. Now? I just felt the cold air from the vents.

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To spend a romantic birthday with her high school sweetheart, my wife put sleeping pills into our sick, crying daughter’s baby bottle. The baby fell into a deep sleep, allowing them to enjoy a romantic, uninterrupted night. When I got home, I found our daughter wouldn’t wake up. By the time I rushed her to the hospital, it was too late. I called my wife, but she only snapped impatiently over the phone: “Are you seriously trying to ruin things just because I’m celebrating Julian’s birthday? I’ll come home when it’s over.” Then, she hung up and turned off her phone. She had no idea that her romantic date night had just cost our daughter her life. I walked through the door at seven in the morning. Only our nanny, Mrs. Gable, was in the living room. When she saw me, a worried look crossed her face. “Mr. Sterling, Lily slept through the whole night without waking up or crying for her bottle. I tried to wake her up just now, but she wouldn’t budge. I was just about to call you.” I rushed into my daughter’s nursery. Lily lay there, looking like a little sleeping angel. “Lily? Lily, baby.” I called her name, but there was no response. I pinched her tiny hand. Still nothing. Cold dread washed over me. I looked up and asked, “Where is Chloe?” Mrs. Gable replied, “Mrs. Sterling called me last night and told me to watch Lily. She was already gone by the time I arrived, and she hasn’t been back all night. Lily was already asleep when I got here.” I called Chloe. She picked up, her voice thick with sleep. “What is it? Why are you calling so early? I told you, it’s Julian’s birthday. I stayed over at my friend’s house last night.” I didn’t care where she was. I just wanted answers. “Was Lily feeling sick yesterday? Did you give her any medicine? She’s been asleep all night and won’t wake up. She’s completely unresponsive.” Chloe paused for a second before raising her voice defensively. “She’s just tired and sleeping in. What is there to worry about?” “Lily is only eight months old!” I yelled. “It’s impossible for her to be this deep asleep!” Chloe groaned in irritation. “She was crying and screaming last night for no reason. She wouldn’t stop! So I put a little sleeping pill in her formula.” My brain went entirely numb. A loud ringing filled my ears. “Chloe Vance! Your daughter is only eight months old! Are you out of your mind? Do you want to kill her? How much did you give her?!” She hesitated, her voice suddenly trembling slightly. “Not… not that much. Just one pill. I take them all the time and I’m fine. What could a tiny dose do? Ethan, stop making a scene out of nothing.” With that, she hung up. I turned to the nanny, my voice shaking. “Hold Lily. We’re going to the ER. Now!” At the hospital, the doctor’s face turned pale the moment I explained the situation. Lily was rushed straight into the trauma bay. A nurse stood outside, looking at me with pure disgust. “How could you give sleeping pills to an infant? Are you people even human? How could you be such terrible parents?” I clenched my teeth, tears burning my eyes. “Please, nurse, save my daughter. I don’t care about the cost. I’ll pay anything. Just save her.” “If you cared so much, you should have been more careful before this happened,” she snapped. A few minutes later, a nurse ran out. “How many sleeping pills did she ingest? We need the exact dosage. It’s critical for her resuscitation.” “Her mother said… she said just one,” I stammered. The red light over the operating room stayed on. No other doctors came out. I don’t know how much time passed before a doctor finally walked out. His face was grim. “The dosage she took was far more than just one pill. And she was brought in way too late. We did everything we could, but she didn’t make it. I’m so sorry for your loss.” My mind went blank. My entire body froze. I could barely force the words out of my throat. “No… that’s impossible. How could my daughter be dead? She’s only eight months old.” When they wheeled Lily out, I threw myself over her small body, touching her cold cheek. “Lily, wake up. Look at Daddy. Please, Lily…” My tears fell hot and fast onto her quiet face. Her eyes were closed, looking exactly as if she were taking a normal nap. I looked up at the doctor, begging. “Look at her, she’s just sleeping. How can she be dead? Doctor, please, look again. Check her again!” Mrs. Gable stood beside me, sobbing into her hands. “It’s all my fault. If only I had realized something was wrong in the middle of the night…” “Lily was so sweet, always smiling… she was such a beautiful baby.” With trembling hands, I dialed Chloe’s number. It rang and rang. On the ninth attempt, she finally answered, her voice dripping with annoyance. “Are you seriously trying to ruin things just because I’m celebrating Julian’s birthday? I’ll come home when it’s over!” In the background, I heard Julian’s smooth, relaxed voice. “Babe, come eat breakfast.” Chloe hung up on me before I could say a single word. When I tried calling back, her phone was turned off. She said she was staying at a girlfriend’s house, but she was with Julian. It was all so clear now. I closed my eyes. Chloe, in your eyes, the happiness of this family doesn’t even compare to a single birthday date with Julian.

I gently lifted Lily into my arms. This was my daughter, and this was the last bit of warmth I could ever give her. I held her tight against my chest and kissed her forehead. “Baby, don’t be scared. Daddy will come see you every day. Just wait for me, okay? Daddy will come keep you company soon. Sleep tight, my sweet girl.” My tears flowed uncontrollably, but I couldn’t even make a sound. I felt as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest, thrown into the dirt, and trampled on. I was broken beyond repair. I handled Lily’s funeral arrangements completely alone, eventually bringing back a small urn. By the time I returned home, I didn’t care if Chloe was back or when she would ever return. I walked into Lily’s nursery. Her mobile was still hanging over her crib, and her playmat and toys were scattered across the floor, as if waiting for her to come back and play. I curled up on the rug next to her crib, clutching the little stuffed bunny she slept with every night. Holding it tightly, I cried myself to sleep in the dark, imagining my baby was still in my arms. I was barely asleep when I heard the front door open. A man and a woman were talking. The woman was my wife, Chloe, and the man—I didn’t even have to guess—was Julian. “Ugh, Ethan isn’t even home yet,” Chloe grumbled, her voice filled with annoyance and contempt. “The house is pitch black. Just because I went out to celebrate your birthday for a few days, he’s probably going to give me the silent treatment again.” “He’s always like this. Whenever you’re involved, Ethan gets so paranoid and insecure. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking when I married such a petty, narrow-minded man.” Julian comforted her smoothly. “Don’t be mad, babe. Maybe he just loves you too much. Or maybe we should stop seeing each other so often. You know I hate seeing you suffer because of me.” “Don’t worry about him,” Chloe dismissed him. “He’s just dramatic.” “We’ve been away traveling for a few days,” Julian asked softly. “Is Lily going to be okay?” Chloe brushed it off. “What could possibly happen to her? If anything was wrong, Ethan would have called to start a fight days ago. See? Not a single call or text from him these past few days.” I clenched my fists, suppressing the raging fire inside me. Of course I didn’t call or text you. You blocked my number on everything. “You must be exhausted after our trip,” Julian said tenderly. “Get some rest. I’ll head out now.” But Chloe stopped him. “Julian, stay. It’s late, and Ethan isn’t even here anyway. He probably took Lily to his parents’ house. You know his parents have always hated me. I can’t be bothered to call and ask them to bring her back.” Julian sighed. “Chloe, have you really been unhappy and miserable these past few years? It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t left back then, Ethan would have never had the chance to marry you. That is the biggest regret of my life.” “Chloe, if you’re truly unhappy, will you give me a chance? A chance to make you happy. Can we start over?” I quietly cracked the door open. Through the gap, I saw Chloe throw herself into Julian’s arms, her eyes red as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Julian, you know you’re the only man I’ve ever loved. Yes, I want to be with you.” “If Ethan hadn’t forced me to marry him in exchange for saving Vance Enterprises, I would have never married him! You have no idea how sick to my stomach I feel every time I have to lie next to him, Julian.” “I have never loved him. I even gave him a daughter—I’ve paid him back everything I owed. Now, I just want to be with you.” A bitter ache pierced my chest. What did our years of marriage mean to her? Just a debt to be paid? She claimed she had only ever loved Julian. In her eyes, I was just a villain who had taken advantage of her family’s misfortune. But she never stopped to think: without me, how could she still be living this lavish lifestyle? How could she still be the high-society heiress of the Vance family? Without my money, she would have been ruined long ago. I met Chloe at a charity gala. At the time, Vance Enterprises was facing a massive financial crisis. If they didn’t get an immediate cash injection, they were going to go bankrupt. Her family had brought her to the gala specifically to auction her off to some wealthy businessman in exchange for a marriage alliance to save their company. Everyone knew what was happening. The way the wealthy men looked at her was disgusting—like she was a piece of meat on display. Chloe was being mocked and humiliated by a group of wealthy heiresses. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, but she didn’t dare leave. I couldn’t stand seeing her suffer, so I stepped in and defended her. That was how we met.

I admit, it was love at first sight for me. She knew it, and she knew exactly what I could offer. Under my pursuit, she quickly agreed to marry me—on the condition that I bail out Vance Enterprises. I knew she had a first love who had gone abroad, but I truly believed that if I treated her with absolute devotion, our years of marriage and our beautiful daughter would make her love me back. It turned out to be nothing but a foolish, one-sided delusion. To her, I was an eyesore she couldn’t stand to look at, and Lily was just an unwanted burden. Looking at the two of them locking lips in my living room, I threw the door open with a loud SLAM, startling them apart. Julian’s face turned pale when he saw me standing there, my expression dark as storm clouds. Chloe immediately stepped in front of Julian, shielding him. “Ethan, if you have a problem, take it out on me! This has nothing to do with Julian!” She raised her chin defiantly. “You know I’ve never loved you. I only married you because my parents and you forced me into it! Now that Julian is back, I realize I still love him. I refuse to spend the rest of my life in misery.” “Don’t think your money gives you the right to control me. I’m not afraid of you anymore.” “Let’s get a divorce. You can keep our daughter—I don’t want her. We’ll split the assets fifty-five. You shouldn’t have a problem with that, right?” I took a step forward, my eyes bloodshot. With a swift movement, I slapped her hard across the face. SLAP! The force knocked her onto the couch. Julian rushed forward, grabbing my collar. “How dare you hit Chloe! I’ll kill you!” The thought that my daughter died because of him made my blood boil. Hatred consumed me. I threw a brutal punch straight into his face, over and over again, completely losing control. Chloe panicked and threw herself onto me to pull me back. “Ethan, are you insane?! I’m calling the police!” I shoved her away. Staring down at Julian, who was bleeding on the floor, I turned my murderous gaze to Chloe. “Chloe, you want a divorce? Fine. If you want me to sign, bring our daughter to me. Hand Lily over, and I will sign.” Hand her over? A sharp pain pierced my heart. Let’s see how you’re going to hand our daughter back to me. Chloe looked thrilled. “Really? You better keep your word!” I nodded slowly. “I always keep my word. Go ask her if she’s willing to go with you.” Chloe scoffed. “You’re the one who raised her. She always smiles whenever she sees you. Of course she’ll be willing. If she smiles, it means yes.” If only she could smile… If Lily could still smile at me, I would gladly give up everything I own. She walked into Lily’s nursery. A moment later, she called out in confusion. “Where is Lily? Did you leave her at your parents’ house again? I told you, stop leaving her there. We need to raise our child ourselves.” I let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Raise her ourselves? You? Since when do you care about raising her? Other than shopping, high tea, spa days, and spending my money, when have you ever spent a single second with her?” “When Lily was born, you said you didn’t want your body ruined, so you refused to breastfeed her for even a single day. She had to drink formula, and her immune system was always weak.” “You said you didn’t know how to take care of a baby, so I hired a professional nanny.” “You said her crying kept you awake at night, so Lily slept with me every single night.” “As a mother, what did you actually do? You drugged her with sleeping pills just so you could go screw around with your lover? You murdered her!” Chloe jumped up defensively. “What lover?! Julian and I are completely innocent!” “Innocent?” I sneered. “Affair during our marriage is innocent? Making out with another man in our home while your husband is away is innocent?!” Julian struggled to stand up, wiping blood from his mouth. “It’s just a sleeping pill. She’ll just sleep it off and wake up fine. Why do you have to be so dramatic and blow this out of proportion?” My eyes flared with rage. “What the hell did you just say? Sleep it off?!” Chloe crossed her arms. “What do you want from me? What’s done is done. Why are you acting like a psycho?” My anger reached its boiling point. “What do I want? Chloe, why don’t you take a good look at what you’ve actually done?!” I grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the dining table. She screamed, struggling against my grip. “What are you doing?! Let go of me!” But in the next second, her scream died in her throat as her eyes landed on Lily’s framed portrait and the small urn resting on the table.

Chloe’s hand trembled violently as she pointed at the urn and the photo. “What… what is that?” “Ethan, you’ve completely lost your mind! Just to win an argument with me, you’re cursing our daughter to death?!” I snatched the death certificate from under the urn and slammed it onto her face. “Open your eyes and read every single word on this paper! Read what it is!” With shaking hands, Chloe unfolded the paper. There, in cold black and white, was Lily’s name and her time of death. The color drained from her face. She stumbled backward, dropping the paper to the floor. “No… this is a lie. How could Lily be dead? How did she die? Ethan, how did the nanny watch her?!” I grabbed her by her chin, dragging her forcefully in front of Lily’s portrait. “You drugged your daughter with sleeping pills just to go on a date, leaving her completely alone in the house, and now you’re blaming the nanny?! Chloe, you are Lily’s mother! Is everyone else completely worthless to you compared to Julian?!” “You are so cold-blooded that you drugged your own flesh and blood. The doctor said the dosage was far more than just one pill. Tell me! How many did you give her?! Speak!” Tears streamed down her face as panic finally took over. “I don’t know… Julian was the one who poured it…” Julian stood frozen in place, whispering in shock. “I only put in two pills… but you told me to put in more so she would fall asleep faster…” Chloe began to shake violently. She grabbed my hand, sobbing. “Ethan, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to. Lily wouldn’t stop crying… she just kept crying…” I wanted nothing more than to choke the life out of her. “She was just a baby! You’re her mother! Just to go fool around, you actually did this? Are you insane?! Give me back my daughter!” My grip tightened around her neck. As her face turned purple, a sudden wave of clarity washed over me. I couldn’t let her off this easily. Death was too quick an escape. I had so much more planned for her. I threw her to the ground. “Chloe, we are getting a divorce. Now, take your lover and get the hell out of my house. If you stay one more second, I swear to God I will kill you both.” Chloe wrapped her arms around my leg, sobbing hysterically. “Ethan, no! I didn’t mean what I said about the divorce! I love Lily, I swear!” I kicked her away. “Get out, Chloe. Don’t let me ever see your face again. When I loved you, you could get away with anything. But now that I don’t, you are nothing but a corpse to me.” “But dying is too easy. Don’t think you’re getting off scot-free. Everyone has to pay for their sins, and you are no exception.” Chloe packed her bags and left with Julian that very night. The next morning, my lawyer contacted Chloe with the divorce papers. She called me immediately, screaming into the phone. “Why do I have to walk away with absolutely nothing?!” I replied nonchalantly, “We signed a prenuptial agreement. Did you really think you could touch the Sterling family assets? Aren’t you afraid of choking on them? The money I poured into the Vance family during our marriage—I’m already being incredibly generous by not clawing it all back. And you still want a fifty-fifty split? Chloe, I knew you were heartless, but I didn’t know you were this greedy.” “I married you!” Chloe demanded. “Half of your money belongs to me! Why shouldn’t I get it? Besides, I gave birth to your daughter…” She stopped abruptly, realizing her mistake, and slammed the phone down. Our daughter, Lily. I had been trying to suppress the agonizing pain in my chest, but hearing her mention Lily made my heart bleed all over again. I dialed my assistant’s number. “Call a meeting with the heads of all departments. Right now.” Did the newly resurrected Vance Enterprises give Chloe the confidence to act this way? Fine. Let’s watch them go bankrupt again.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “462024”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster

1 After we got engaged, the six of us booked one last trip together before the wedding. On our second night at the resort, my best friend, Vivian, came up with an idea over drinks: a “24-Hour Partner Swap.” The rules were simple. Everyone would draw a card from a mystery box, and whoever pulled matching symbols had to spend the next twenty-four hours acting like a real couple. And whoever drew a blank card? They were the designated odd one out—responsible for taking photos, carrying luggage, and staying out of the way. In the first round, I pulled a blank card. My fiancé, Ethan, and Vivian both pulled matching crescents. They held hands as they walked down to the shoreline to watch the sunrise, while I lagged ten paces behind them, my shoulders aching under the weight of three heavy backpacks. In the second round, I drew a blank card again. Ethan and Vivian pulled matching roses. The penalty for drawing the rose was a one-minute hug. The rest of the group gathered in a circle, whistling and cheering, while I stood on the periphery, watching the timer tick down on my phone. The third round. The fourth round… Seven rounds in a row. Every single time, I was the extra piece that didn’t fit. By the fifth round, Vivian was resting her head against Ethan’s chest, looking at me with wide, apologetic eyes. “Tess, it’s just a stupid game. You’re not actually getting jealous, are you?” Ethan reached over and lightly ruffled her hair, a gentle, familiar gesture that made my stomach knot. “Don’t bother with her, Viv. She’s always been terrible at taking a joke.” On our final night, they pulled matching wedding cards. The rule for the wedding card was absolute: the pair had to hold a mock wedding ceremony right then and there. Vivian slid into the ivory slip dress I had packed for our engagement photos. Then Ethan reached out, unclasped my hand, and gently pulled my engagement ring off my finger. Before I could process what he was doing, he slid it onto Vivian’s left ring finger. Everyone crowded around them, laughing and chanting in unison: “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” A second later, Ethan bent down, cupped the side of her neck, and pressed his lips firmly against hers. While everyone was cheering and taking videos, I walked quietly over to the side table and opened the mystery box containing the remaining cards. I opened the compartment assigned to me. Every single card left in my tray was blank. Then I opened the compartments assigned to Ethan and Vivian. They were stuffed with identical crescents, identical roses, and identical wedding symbols. It hadn’t been bad luck. The entire game had been constructed, from the very beginning, entirely for the two of them. I stood there in the warm evening air and let out a soft, silent laugh. Then I pulled out my phone, navigated to our wedding website, and clicked the button that permanently deleted all the digital invitations I had spent three months designing. If a six-person trip couldn’t make room for me, then I didn’t need to reserve a place for them in the rest of my life. When the digital invitations disappeared from my screen, a fresh burst of laughter erupted behind me. Ethan finally released Vivian’s waist. Vivian’s cheeks were flushed pink, but her hands lingered on his shoulders, her fingers lightly curled into his linen shirt. Derek, standing near the balcony rail with a beer in his hand, hollered out, “One more time! Do it again!” Ethan let out a low laugh and nudged him with his elbow. “Fuck off, Derek.” Yet he didn’t push Vivian away. He kept his arm loosely resting behind her back, as if her weight against him was the most natural thing in the world. It wasn’t until Vivian looked up and caught my eye that she seemed to remember I was standing there. She lowered her head, looking down at her left hand, and twisted the ring back and forth. “Tess, I think the ring is stuck,” she said, her voice dripping with soft innocence. “My fingers must be swollen from the humidity. Mind if I just wear it for the night?” That engagement ring was something Ethan had given me on my twenty-fifth birthday. He had made a huge point of telling me that he had spent weeks having it custom-sized to fit my exact finger circumference. Yet sitting on Vivian’s hand, it slid comfortably down to the base of her knuckle. It fit her perfectly. I didn’t call her out. I didn’t raise my voice. I simply gave a small nod. “Sure.” Ethan shifted his gaze toward me, his brow furrowing slightly, as if surprised by how effortlessly I had conceded. “Tess, drop the tragic act,” he said, a note of sharp annoyance creeping into his tone. “Everyone took time off work to come out here and celebrate with us. Don’t ruin the mood over a party game.” I looked at him, my eyes clear. “I’m not ruining the mood.” “Then smile,” he commanded softly. Derek was already holding up his phone, waving us down. “Alright, temporary bride and groom, look at the camera!” Tyler and the rest of the crew quickly pushed into the frame, sandwiching Ethan and Vivian in the middle. The five of them stood in a neat, perfect row, as if the space had been tailor-made for them. Derek stepped back and handed his phone to me. “Tess, you always take the best shots. Take a few for us.” I took the phone. Through the lens, they were leaning into one another, laughing. Ethan stood squarely in the center. Vivian, wearing my dress and my ring, had her arm hooked tightly around his elbow. The other three clustered around them like a genuine bridal party. “Tess,” Ethan snapped, his patience wearing thin. “What are you daydreaming about?” I blinked, brought the camera up, and tapped the shutter. One shot. Two shots. A dozen shots. Not a single one of them had me in it. By the time we returned to the hotel, it was nearly two in the morning. When we first arrived at the resort, I had booked three luxury ocean-view suites. Two of the suites were for the other four friends, while Ethan and I were supposed to share the third. But when we walked up to the front desk to pick up the keys, Tyler clapped his hands together with a grin. “Hey, there’s still twelve hours left on the Partner Swap timer. According to the game, Ethan and Vivian are staying together tonight.” My fingers tightened around the key envelope. “Sharing a room is part of the game now?” Vivian answered as if explaining something obvious to a child. “It’s just a room, Tess. The suite has two queen beds. It’s not like anything is going to happen.” Ethan’s face darkened as he looked at me. “With everyone right here, what exactly are you accusing us of?” I stared at him, ignoring his tone. “Then where am I sleeping?” The group exchanged brief, uneasy glances. Finally, Derek pointed down the hallway toward the end of the corridor. “Ethan and Vivian’s room is the family suite. There’s a pull-out sofa bed in the living room. Can’t you just sleep there?” So that was the arrangement. I was expected to sleep on a pull-out couch outside the bedroom of my fiancé and my best friend, listening to them close the door, waiting for their twenty-four-hour game to run its course. A sudden wave of absurdity washed over me. It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. “I’ll just book another room downstairs,” I said, turning back toward the reception desk. Tyler immediately caught my arm. “Woah, hold on! Rooms here are eight hundred dollars a night. Why waste that kind of cash? We all grew up together—who here doesn’t know everybody?” I didn’t grow up with them. The five of them had known each other since pre-K. Their families went on summer trips together; their parents sat on the same country club boards. I was the outsider who met Ethan during our sophomore year at NYU, the girl he eventually introduced to his inner circle. In those early years, I had tried so desperately hard to fit in. When they reminisced about breaking into their prep school’s boathouse in ninth grade, I listened quietly and smiled along, even though I had no idea who they were talking about. When they dropped inside jokes that only the five of them understood, I secretly jotted the names and references down in the Notes app on my phone so I could look them up later. I memorized every single person’s birthday, their coffee orders, their allergies, and their favorite cocktails. Whenever we planned a dinner, I was always the first to arrive. Whenever we went on trips, I was the one who spent weeks comparing flights, booking villas, organizing private drivers, and building color-coded itineraries. Yet no matter how much effort I poured in, whenever they talked about the past, it always boiled down to the same dismissive phrase: “Well, you didn’t know us back then, Tess. You wouldn’t get it.” Eventually, “you wouldn’t get it” mutated into “there’s no need to tell her.” They changed dinner reservations without notifying me. They started a new group text with matching profile pictures without including me. Even this trip—this supposed “pre-wedding celebration”—was something I only found out about because I happened to glimpse a chat log on Ethan’s laptop. They had been planning it for six months behind my back. When I had asked Ethan why nobody had mentioned it to me, he had simply chuckled and ruffled my hair. “Well, we were waiting for you to step in and organize it, babe. You’re so much better at that stuff.” So I had taken out my credit card, booked the flights, secured the resort, and paid for the deposits out of my own account. And in the end, the five of them came to enjoy the vacation, while I was brought along to act as the concierge, the photographer, and the pack mule. And now, I was expected to give up my own bedroom. I loosened my grip on the key card and handed it over to Tyler. “You guys take it,” I said quietly. “I’ll stay down in the lobby lounge.” I didn’t fight. I didn’t raise my voice. I just walked away. When I woke up the next morning on the plush sofa in the corner of the lobby lounge, the sun was already high. I unlocked my phone. The main group chat was active. Someone had posted a photo of the five of them sitting at the resort’s private beach club, enjoying a spread of mimosas, eggs benedict, and fresh fruit. Five place settings were arranged neatly around the outdoor table. A direct text from Vivian popped up right below it: [Tess! We were so worried we’d wake you up, so we came down to grab breakfast first. Eat whenever you wake up!] I washed my face in the lobby restroom, smoothed down my clothes, and walked over to the resort restaurant. The hostess gave me a warm, professional smile. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but our breakfast service closed fifteen minutes ago.” Before I could reply, my phone began to vibrate in my palm. It was Ethan. I answered. “Hello?” “Where the hell are you?” His tone was sharp, laced with heavy impatience. “At the restaurant.” “Why are you still at the restaurant?” He sighed loudly into the receiver. “We’ve been sitting down at the marina waiting for you for twenty minutes.” I opened the group chat again. Not a single person had posted about heading to the marina. “Nobody told me what time we were leaving,” I said. “Didn’t Vivian text you?” “She texted to say you guys were eating breakfast without me.” There was a beat of silence on his end, followed by an irritated huff. “Tess, use some common sense. If you see everyone else has left, couldn’t you just ask? Everyone is down here waiting on you.” I never got my breakfast. By the time I rushed down to the marina, the engine of the private yacht was already idling, sending deep vibrations through the wooden dock. The five of them were standing near the stern, drinking iced teas. Not a single seat had been cleared for me. Vivian was wearing Ethan’s oversized white button-down linen shirt over her bikini, the hem falling just past her thighs. When she saw me approaching, she pulled the collar flush against her chest, looking flustered. “Tess, please don’t get the wrong idea! The zipper on my linen cover-up snagged, so Ethan was nice enough to lend me one of his shirts.” Ethan’s dress shirts had always been off-limits to me. Once, during our second year of dating, I had accidentally washed one of his custom white shirts with a dark load, leaving it faintly tinted gray. He had refused to speak to me for an entire week, claiming that he hated anyone touching his personal garments. Yet now, Vivian was wearing his shirt right in front of him. Ethan didn’t mind at all. In fact, he reached out and adjusted her collar, his voice soft. “You should throw on some linen pants too later. Don’t catch a cold from the sea breeze.” Vivian poked her tongue out at me playful. “See? He’s such a control freak.” I grabbed the boat’s railing and stepped aboard. Before I could even balance myself, Tyler shoved a heavy tote bag into my arms. “Perfect timing! Sunscreen, the DSLR camera, and all the water bottles are in here. Mind watching over them?” I held the heavy canvas bag against my chest and took a seat on the small bench right next to the loud, rumbling engine—the most uncomfortable spot on the entire vessel. The cold ocean wind blasted against my face. Because I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon, my stomach began to twist in sharp, rhythmic cramps. I had spent six months taking private swimming lessons just for this day. Ethan loved deep-sea diving, but I had always been terrified of open water. Yet I had forced myself to conquer that fear, secretly training until I finally earned my open-water diving certification, hoping to surprise him on this trip. When we reached the dive site, the boat captain stepped out and announced, “We can only send five divers down per group due to safety regulations.” Derek immediately turned his head and grinned at me. “Hey, doesn’t Tess hate the water anyway? You can just stay on the deck and guard our stuff.” I parted my lips, wanting to tell them that I wasn’t afraid anymore—that I had my certification card sitting right inside my wallet. But before I could speak, Vivian threw her arms around Ethan’s right elbow. “Ethan, I’m so nervous! You have to hold my hand the entire time we’re down there, okay?” Ethan reached over and carefully checked the pressure gauge on her oxygen tank, his expression focused and gentle. “Don’t worry. I won’t let go of you.” I swallowed the words back down my throat. One by one, the five of them tipped backward off the edge of the boat and splashed into the crystal-blue ocean. I sat alone on the empty deck, holding their designer sunglasses, their phones, and their dry clothes. After twenty minutes, the boat captain walked over, holding two cups of warm water. He handed one to me and looked down at my hands. “You’re not going down?” I reached into my canvas bag, pulled out my wallet, and thumbed the edge of the glossy, brand-new diving certificate card. I looked at it for a long time. Then I slowly slid it back into my bag and shook my head. “No,” I whispered. “Not anymore.” By lunchtime, Vivian had developed a case of seasickness, and Ethan stayed glued to her side, rubbing her back and feeding her ginger chews. My stomach was cramping so severely from the hunger and stress that I couldn’t stomach the thought of rich food. I flagged down the boat’s catering staff and asked if they could bring me a small bowl of plain broth or simple rice porridge. Tyler overheard and burst out laughing. “Tess, seriously? Now you’re feeling sick too? Are you just copying Vivian because she’s getting attention?” The rest of the group chuckled along. Ethan raised his eyes from Vivian and looked at me, his brow furrowed. “Since when do you get seasick on boats?” “I haven’t eaten anything all day,” I explained softly, holding my lower abdomen. “My stomach hurts.” Instead of asking if I was okay, Ethan turned back, smoothed a stray strand of hair behind Vivian’s ear, and handed her a glass of warm water. “Then just hang tight for a bit, Tess. Don’t cause a scene while she’s actually feeling miserable.” A few minutes later, the crew member brought out a single bowl of steaming white porridge. Just as I reached my hand out to take it, Ethan reached across the table, grabbed the bowl, and set it directly in front of Vivian. “Eat a few bites of this,” he urged her gently. “It’ll settle your stomach.” My hand froze in mid-air. I looked around the table. Not a single person thought there was anything wrong with what he had just done. Vivian stirred the porridge twice with her spoon, took two tiny bites, and then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Ugh, it’s completely bland. I don’t want it.” She pushed the mess of stirred porridge back across the table toward me. “Tess, weren’t you complaining about your stomach? Here, you can have the rest.” The porridge was a soggy, scattered mess, and a faint smudge of her pink lipstick clung to the rim of the ceramic spoon. In the past, I probably would have smiled and accepted it. Because in the past, Vivian would always cuddle up to me and say, “We’re best friends, Tess! What’s mine is yours!” And Ethan would look at me approvingly and say, “Tess is always so sensible. She’s not high-maintenance like other girls.” But this time, I didn’t reach out. Instead, I raised my hand and motioned to the server. “Excuse me. Could you please throw this away?” Vivian’s face froze. “Tess… I barely touched it. Are you… are you disgusted by me?” “I don’t eat other people’s leftovers,” I said, my voice entirely flat. Ethan’s face darkened in an instant. “Tess! What the hell is wrong with you? She’s feeling awful and she still thought to share her food with you. Do you really have to embarrass her like this?” I looked at the five faces staring back at me across the table, and for a second, a strange sense of detachment washed over me. For seven years, this had been our dynamic. Whenever there were leftovers, they were passed to me. Whenever a table was too small, I was expected to sit at the adjacent counter. Whenever a car ran out of seats, I was the one who volunteered to take an Uber. Whenever they needed someone to document their lives, they remembered I existed. And the moment I refused to play my assigned part—even just once—I was suddenly labeled as bitter, petty, uncooperative, and incapable of fitting in. I lowered my eyes, staring at the polished teak floor of the boat deck. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. As expected, the tension around the table instantly evaporated. Derek let out a relaxed laugh and patted the table. “There we go! That’s more like it! We’re out here to have fun, guys!” I offered them a tiny, hollow smile. My apology wasn’t because I thought I was wrong. It was simply because I realized I no longer cared enough to argue with any of them. That evening, they set up a lounge area on the main terrace of the villa to drink margaritas. I went back to my room alone and pulled my luggage out from under the bed. The trip was supposed to last seven days, but we were only on day three. I had zero intention of enduring another four days of this psychological theater. I logged onto my phone and booked a seat on the earliest flight back home tomorrow morning. Once the confirmation landed in my inbox, I realized I couldn’t find my phone charger. I remembered that Vivian had borrowed it from my bag earlier that afternoon, so I walked down the hall to her room to retrieve it. The door to her suite was unlocked and slightly ajar. The room was empty—she was still downstairs on the terrace with Ethan—but her iPad was sitting open on the nightstand, its screen glowing brightly in the dim room. A new notification banner popped up at the top of the screen. It was from a group chat titled: The Original Five. I stopped in my tracks. Derek had just dropped a short video clip into the chat—it was the recording of Ethan and Vivian kissing during the mock wedding earlier that night. Below the video, a rapid stream of messages was flooding in: [Derek: Finally got them to lock lips!] [Tyler: Told you guys the Partner Swap idea would work like a charm.] [Derek: Tess’s face went dead white when Ethan kissed her. I’m amazed she didn’t blow up right then and there.] [Tyler: Please, she’s a master at faking it. She’d swallow her own teeth before making a scene.] I stood by the edge of the bed, my fingertips slowly losing all warmth. A group chat without me. I reached out and tapped the screen, scrolling upward through the chat history. The very first message in the log was dated three months ago. Vivian had dropped a screenshot of a viral “Couple Swap Game” into the chat, along with a text: [Vivian: Tess is always bragging about how smoothly she integrated into our group. How about we test how many rounds she can actually survive?] Tyler had replied almost instantly: [Tyler: Easy. Rig her box so every single card she pulls is blank.] Derek had added: [Derek: And make sure Ethan and Viv get matching cards every single time. From holding hands, to hugging, to kissing—make it wild.] My heart hammered against my ribs as I scrolled further up. Ethan hadn’t responded at first. But hours later, he had typed out a short message: [Ethan: Don’t push it too far.] I stared at those five words, a pathetic, stupid spark of hope flaring up in my chest. At least he tried to stop them. At least he cared. But then my thumb scrolled down to his very next text: [Ethan: Tess takes things way too seriously. We still need her to handle all the vendor bookings and logistics for the wedding. Don’t actually piss her off so much that she walks away.] Derek had replied with a series of laughing emojis: [Derek: Relax, man. She’s obsessed with you. She’s never leaving.] Ethan’s reply was brief: [Ethan: True.] True. Four letters, like a physical blow across my face. He hadn’t been ignorant. He had known about the game from day one. He knew every single card in my box was blank. He knew his friends were treating me like a performing monkey for their own amusement. He knew I would suffer through it, round after round, swallowing my pride. His only concern had been whether their cruelty would disrupt my ability to organize his perfect wedding. I kept scrolling, my mind numb. I saw the messages regarding the trip’s itinerary. I had posted my meticulous, weeks-long itinerary into the main group chat months ago, and no one had ever bothered to reply. But in The Original Five chat, they had ripped it to shreds: [Tyler: The diving excursion Tess booked sounds boring as hell.] [Derek: Vivian’s scared of open water anyway. Let’s switch it to a yacht party instead.] [Ethan: No need to tell her in advance. We’ll just change the plan when we get there. She won’t say no.] They had even debated the room assignments weeks before we left the city: [Tyler: Put Ethan and Vivian in the main family suite.] [Derek: What about Tess?] [Tyler: Sofa bed in the living room.] [Derek: What if she complains?] [Ethan: I’ll talk to her. She’ll agree.] Standing in the quiet bedroom, I felt a sudden, suffocating pressure in my chest, making it nearly impossible to draw breath. For seven long years, I had blamed myself for my inability to truly connect with them. I had assumed I was just too quiet, too awkward, or too culturally different. So I had tried with everything I had. I catered to their whims, laughed off their subtle disrespect, and willingly took on every tedious task they didn’t want to handle. Only now did I finally understand the truth. It was never that I wasn’t trying hard enough. They had been standing inside a locked room with their arms crossed, holding the door shut, watching me bang my fists against the glass from the outside—laughing at how desperate I looked. A new notification banner flashed across the top of the screen. [Tyler: Where’s Tess right now?] [Derek: Probably crying into a pillow in her room. Hey, should we set up another round for tomorrow?] A voice note from Vivian popped up a second later. I tapped it. Her sweet, airy voice filled the quiet room: “Maybe we should stop, guys. Tess seemed genuinely upset at lunch today.” Ethan’s text flashed immediately beneath her voice note: [Ethan: If she’s mad, let her cool off on her own. Does everyone have to baby her every single time she pouts? It’s exhausting.] Listening to his voice through the speaker, the absolute last embers of warmth inside my chest died out completely. I was about to close the tablet when a new video notification popped up in the chat. It was a clip Derek had stealthily recorded from the villa balcony just minutes ago. The terrace was empty now, except for Ethan and Vivian. Vivian was noticeably intoxicated, her head resting heavily on Ethan’s shoulder as they stared out at the dark ocean. In the video, her voice sounded small, fragile, and thick with alcohol: “Ethan… if I hadn’t turned you down back in college… would you still have ended up with Tess?” My fingers froze against the cold glass of the screen. The ocean breeze howled through the speakers. In the video, Ethan remained silent for a long, agonizing moment. Then, he spoke in a low, quiet voice: “No.” Vivian let out a wet, breathless laugh, tears slipping down her flushed cheeks. “Do you regret it now?” Ethan didn’t answer her with words. Instead, he reached out his hand, gently cupped her face, and wiped away her tears with his thumb. The tenderness in that single movement was an answer far more absolute than any words could ever be. The video cut off. The group chat remained silent for a few seconds before Derek sent a message: [Derek: I’ve been saying it for seven years: you two were always meant to be together.] Tyler chimed in: [Tyler: Tess was an intruder from the day Ethan brought her around. She took Vivian’s spot for seven years—it’s time she gave it back.] A high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears. To them, the woman who had stood beside Ethan for seven years, the woman who had supported him through his darkest moments, the woman he was supposed to marry in two months—was nothing more than an intruder who had stolen someone else’s life. I turned off the tablet, placed the charger back on the nightstand, and walked out of the room. I didn’t march down to the terrace. I didn’t scream. I didn’t demand an explanation. Because the answer was already crystal clear. I walked back to my room, opened my airline app, and moved my flight up to the red-eye departing in two hours. That gave me just enough time to pack and leave. If there was never any room for me in a group of six, then for the rest of my life, I would never reserve a single place for them again.

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1 The first time Nathan actually looked at me—truly looked at me—was on the steps of the Cook County Courthouse. Over three years of marriage, I had sat through both of his mother’s surgeries, held her hand in recovery, and drained my own 401(k) to keep his startup afloat when the Series A funding dried up. In all that time, he hadn’t noticed when I cut eight inches off my hair or when I stopped wearing my wedding ring to bed because my fingers were swelling from stress. But that morning, he stared at me for a full ten seconds. He was staring because I wasn’t crying. “Joanna,” he said, his voice raspy from the flight back. “Are you sure about this?” “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” “Fine. The house is yours. I’ll keep the joint card active, and I’ll wire you five thousand a month for… transition costs.” “Don’t bother,” I said. He narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowing in that familiar way that used to make me want to soothe him. “Then what’s the angle, Jo? What are you trying to get out of this?” I gave him a small, tired smile. What was I getting? I was getting a life where I didn’t have to smell another woman’s expensive Le Labo perfume on his dry cleaning. I was getting a life where I didn’t have to nod and say “it’s okay” every time he told me he was “working late” while his Instagram tags suggested otherwise. I was getting silence. And God, I missed the silence. He reached out, grabbing my wrist. “Whenever you get mad, it never lasts more than seventy-two hours. You’ll cool off.” “Okay,” I said quietly. He thought I was waiting for him to talk me down. He didn’t realize that in seventy-two hours, my resignation would be processed, my one-way ticket to Denver would be booked, and the keys to my new life would already be in my pocket. Three days later, I sat in the HR office of Miller-Apex. I pushed the physical copy of my resignation across the desk to Mrs. Gable. She looked at the date, then at me, her expression pained. “Jo, Nathan hasn’t signed off on this. He’s in New York for the product launch. He told me to tell you he’d ‘handle it’ when he got back.” “Resignation is a notification, Mrs. Gable, not a request for permission.” I pointed to the clause in my contract. “My notice period starts today. The handover list, the admin passwords, and the vendor directory are all in the attached cloud folder.” “But Nathan said you were just… having a moment. Being impulsive.” I took my keycard off the lanyard and set it on the desk. The plastic was scuffed from three years of being the first one in and the last one out. During the early days, I was the one who fixed the broken equipment, did the payroll, and scheduled his mother’s oncology follow-ups while Nathan focused on the “vision.” Mrs. Gable put her hand over the card. “Jo, you’re his wife. Just wait until he’s back?” “Marriage is one contract. Employment is another,” I said firmly. “They’re both being terminated.” She lowered her voice. “Finance just got an alert to freeze your reimbursement access. Nathan… he probably just wants you to calm down before you do something you regret.” My fingers twitched. I had been planning to use my personal account to cover the last-minute freight costs for the Denver expo—a habit I’d formed when our cash flow was tight. I pulled the invoices out of my bag and handed them to her, unpaid. “In that case, these are now ‘uncompleted tasks.’ Tell him not to expect me to float the company’s bills with my personal savings anymore.” Mrs. Gable looked stunned. “But this shipment has to go out today.” “The authorized signer is in New York,” I said, standing up. “And I don’t work for free.” I was at the airport when Nathan called. I could hear the roar of a crowd in the background—the launch event was clearly a success. “Did you really turn in your badge?” he demanded. “I did.” “The finance lock is temporary, Jo. Come back to the office, and I’ll have them restore your access immediately.” “I’ve already filed the paperwork.” He must have moved to a quieter hallway. His voice dropped an octave, turning cold. “I didn’t approve the resignation. You aren’t going anywhere.” “Check the labor laws, Nathan. I’m gone.” The silence on the other end lasted several beats. “You’re really going to drag our personal issues into the workplace? That’s unprofessional.” I looked down at the old leather portfolio by my feet. Three years ago, when he opened his first boutique gym, the bank had pulled our line of credit. I’d given him every cent I had. He’d told me then: “Your faith in me is the only thing keeping this company alive.” Now, that faith had become something he thought he could overdraw indefinitely. “You’re the one who cut off my access,” I said. “I was afraid you’d do something reckless while you’re emotional.” “Right. And the first thing you thought to do was take away my money. That says everything, doesn’t it?” He didn’t answer that. Instead, his voice softened into that manipulative, charming tone. “Cancel the flight, Jo. I’ll have my assistant pick you up tonight. You’ve been wanting that trip to the coast, right? Once this launch is over, I’m all yours. We’ll go to Big Sur.” My grip on my suitcase tightened. In our second year of marriage, I’d booked two different B&Bs in Big Sur. Both times, he’d canceled at the last minute because Sloane had an “emergency” with her branch’s marketing. The reservation reminders were still in our shared calendar—ghostly notifications of a trip that never happened. The boarding call for Denver echoed through the terminal. At the same moment, a notification popped up on my phone from our shared business email. An automated receipt: Monthly Parking Renewal – 1200 N. Ritz Way. It was the luxury apartment building where Sloane lived. I clicked the link. It had been a recurring expense for nine months. Two hundred dollars a month, categorized as “Client Transit.” “Are you still there?” Nathan asked. “I’m here.” “Then cancel the ticket.” I took a screenshot of the receipt and saved it to my private drive. Then, I went into our shared Apple family settings and hit “Leave Family.” “Enjoy the launch, Nathan,” I said. “Joanna—” I hung up and switched my phone to airplane mode. Two hours later, I touched down in Denver. No one was there to meet me. I took the train into the city and met a rental agent at a 450-square-foot studio. It faced north, the light was dim, and it was four stops away from the Convention Center. The lease was cheaper than a short-term rental, but signing it felt like a finality. It meant there was no “going home in a few days.” My hand shook slightly as I signed the papers. That evening, I dragged my suitcase to an interview at the Denver Convention Center. By the time I walked out, the sun had set. I turned my phone back on. Seventeen missed calls. One text: I told you to cool off, not disappear. Get home tomorrow. I didn’t reply. Instead, a scheduled email I’d written earlier was sent to his inbox. It was a comprehensive list: the water filter replacement schedule, the insurance renewal dates, the dog’s heartworm medication, and his mother’s physical therapy appointments. I had only taken my clothes, my passport, and my books. I left Nathan with the only thing he’d never bothered to learn: the actual weight of running a life. 2 The interview task for the Convention Center was a nightmare: mapping the entry flow for an 800-person tech summit. I broke the staff into four teams—registration, wayfinding, security, and a “roaming” response unit. I added stanchions at the two exits where bottlenecks always happened. The interviewer, a man named Grant with sharp eyes and a no-nonsense manner, looked at my plan. “What if the budget only allows for one roaming staffer?” “Then you cut the double-verification at the door,” I said immediately. “Too many rules don’t make an event safer; they just create a crowd that’s harder to manage. Simplicity is security.” He flipped through my resume. “Your previous salary is nearly double what we’re offering here.” “I’m aware.” “Three-month probation. You work holidays. You’re on your feet ten hours a day.” “I can handle it.” When I reached the “Conflict of Interest” disclosure form, I wrote down Miller-Apex Fitness. Grant glanced at it. “What’s your relationship with the CEO?” “Going through a divorce,” I said, my voice steady. He didn’t pry. He just noted it and made sure I wouldn’t be assigned to any projects Nathan’s company might bid on. I was hired that afternoon. The pay was tight. After rent, there wasn’t much left. Standing in the grocery store, I reached for my usual expensive fair-trade coffee, then paused, and replaced it with a generic brand that cost half as much. That’s when Nathan called. “The gym equipment maintenance crew is at the Chicago flagship,” he snapped. “Where is the service contract?” “In the public cloud folder.” “I don’t have the password.” “The reset instructions are in the handover document I sent you.” “I don’t have time to dig through your directories, Jo! Just call the vendor and fix it.” I shifted my grocery basket to my other hand. “That isn’t my job anymore, Nathan.” “You used to handle this in five minutes!” “Because I was acting as your COO and your personal assistant simultaneously. I’ve resigned from both positions.” I heard him rustling papers. “Are you really going to be this petty?” “You set the tone when you froze my corporate card,” I reminded him. The line went quiet. Then, his voice changed. It became… almost concerned. “Have you even eaten since you got to Denver?” My grip on the basket tightened. Nathan wasn’t always a monster. During the first year of the startup, when I had a 102-degree fever and was still trying to balance the books, he’d driven across the city at 2 AM to bring me soup. He’d once given me the only cot in the office and slept on the floor so I could rest. The kindness had been real. Once. But then, Sloane’s voice drifted through the phone in the background. “Nathan, the guest list for the Denver opening isn’t confirmed. Can you look at this?” Nathan didn’t even bother to move away from her. He just said to me, “Send the vendor’s number to my email. Don’t let your temper interfere with business.” I sent the number to the general info@ account, not his personal text. At 10 PM, my phone buzzed. A bank alert: Transfer received: $15,000. The memo read: Living expenses. I initiated a “Return to Sender” immediately. I texted him: Please have HR settle my final paycheck and outstanding reimbursements through official channels. I do not accept private transfers. He called instantly. “Is it not enough?” “It’s not about the amount.” “Then what do you want? Your job is still open. Your seat is still here. You’ll find out within a week that you can’t pay a mortgage with ‘pride,’ Joanna.” “I already have a job.” There was a long pause. “Doing what?” “None of your business.” “You won’t last a week.” I looked at the small desk lamp I’d just bought. The shade was crooked, and I’d spent twenty minutes trying to level it. Usually, I would have called Nathan. He was good with his hands. But he was always so “busy” lately that I’d learned to do it myself anyway. “Maybe,” I said. “But it’ll be my week.” The next day, Mrs. Gable messaged me. Nathan had finally let Legal process my resignation. I threw myself into the high-octane world of the Convention Center. I survived the first month of my probation, working on my feet until my calves ached. Nathan didn’t call again. He was clearly waiting for me to break, for the lack of luxury to bring me crawling back. Until, with three days left in the mandatory “cooling-off” period before our divorce could be finalized, a notification popped up on our still-linked shared calendar. Event: Denver Branch Grand Opening. Attendees: Nathan Miller, Sloane Reed. He was finally coming to my city. But he wasn’t coming for me. 3 The grand opening was held in the West Hall of the Convention Center. I wasn’t assigned to that project; I was in the public concourse, checking the fire marshal’s clearances for a medical convention in the East Hall. I saw him from a distance, and despite everything, my heart skipped a beat. He was in a charcoal suit, looking every bit the successful CEO. Sloane stood beside him, radiant in a sheath dress. A local partner approached them, his eyes drifting toward me. “Nathan, who is that over there? She looks like she’s running the show.” Nathan followed his gaze. I saw his throat move as he swallowed. “That’s Joanna,” he said to the partner. “A former operations colleague.” Not his wife. Not even his “soon-to-be-ex-wife.” Just a “former colleague.” The partner walked over to shake my hand. “A pleasure. Nathan’s old right hand, I hear.” I didn’t correct him. I didn’t give Nathan the satisfaction of a scene. I just pointed to the pallet of equipment in the hallway. “This needs to be cleared. It’s blocking the fire exit.” Nathan stepped closer, his hand instinctively reaching for my clipboard. “What are you doing here, Jo?” I pulled the clipboard back. “Working.” “You didn’t think to tell me you were working here?” “How did you just introduce me, Nathan?” He stiffened. “It’s a professional setting. There’s no need to explain our private lives to strangers.” “Exactly,” I said. I signed the form and handed it to the floor manager. Nathan started to follow me, but Sloane called out to him, telling him the mayor had arrived. He shot me one last look. “We’ll talk tonight.” Then he turned and walked toward her. Half an hour later, Sloane found me in the staff breakroom. Her tone was measured, perfectly poised. “Joanna, this opening is a huge deal for Nathan. Could you maybe… stay in the East Hall? Your presence is a bit of a distraction.” “I don’t work for you, Sloane. And I don’t work for Nathan.” “I know that. But everyone here knows who you are. If people see the ‘wife’ wandering around like a staffer, it makes Nathan look bad. It makes the company look unstable.” “If Nathan feels unstable, that’s his problem to manage.” Her face tightened. “You’ve already filed for divorce. Why are you still clinging to the ‘Mrs. Miller’ identity if you’re so over it?” “Sloane.” I lifted my badge, pointing to the name printed on it. “I’m using my own name. And you’re standing over the yellow safety line. Non-staff need to stay behind the barrier.” Grant, my supervisor, happened to walk by at that moment. He didn’t ask about our history; he just looked at Sloane’s temporary guest pass. “Visitor passes aren’t allowed in the equipment zone,” Grant said, his voice like flint. “Please return to the lobby.” Sloane bit her lip. “I’m the head of marketing for the event.” “Vendors still follow the rules,” Grant said. He signaled for a security guard to escort her. Before she left, Sloane turned to me and whispered, “Nathan was right. You’re just having a tantrum. You aren’t actually going through with it.” I felt the edge of my clipboard dig into my palm. Nathan had told me we needed “space to think.” He had told her that I was just bluffing. He was playing both sides, keeping us both in our lanes until things got quiet again. I caught Nathan in the parking garage after my shift. “Friday morning. 9:00 AM. The courthouse back in Chicago for the final signature,” I said. “Last chance.” He looked exhausted, his tie loosened. “You really want to do this on the day of my biggest launch?” “I sent you the calendar invite twice. You said you’d be there.” “The opening ceremony ends at 10:30. I’ll fly back right after.” “The judge’s clerk leaves at 9:30. If we aren’t both there to sign the final decree, the filing expires.” He rubbed his temples. “I’ll have my assistant handle the morning session… fine. I’ll be there.” For a second, I actually wanted to believe him. He opened the car door for me, his voice dropping to that low, intimate register he used after every fight. “Let’s get dinner. You look like you’ve lost weight, Jo.” I looked into the car. Sloane’s perfume—that heavy Le Labo scent—was thick in the air. Her badge was sitting on the passenger seat. “Friday. Nine o’clock,” I said, and walked away. When I got back to my apartment, I went to delete our shared calendar. I noticed he had changed the entry. The “Divorce Finalization” event had been renamed to: Can be rescheduled. He had promised to be there, but in his mind, I was still just a minor task that could be pushed to the bottom of the list. 4 Friday, 8:20 AM. I was at the Cook County Courthouse. The lobby was quiet, the air smelling of floor wax and old paper. I took a number and sat on a hard wooden bench, the two copies of our marriage certificate heavy in my lap. 8:40 AM. I texted Nathan: I’m here. Confirm you’re on your way. I won’t wait past 9:30. No reply. 9:05 AM. His assistant called. “Joanna, Nathan is tied up at the Denver site. Sloane’s having a bit of a panic attack because the audio system failed, and Nathan needs to stay until the keynote starts. He wants to know if you can push the appointment to 1:00 PM?” “The court doesn’t work around his schedule,” I said. “And neither do I.” “Nathan says we can just re-file next month.” I looked at the digital display on the wall. My number was coming up. “Tell him he needs to tell me himself.” Minutes later, Nathan called. The background noise was a cacophony of cheering and music. “Jo, just give me an hour.” “Are you at the airport?” “I’m leaving as soon as the ribbon is cut.” “If you leave now, you can make the final signing.” “Sloane has never run an event this big, Jo! She’s falling apart. If I leave, the whole thing goes to hell.” “You have a professional tech crew and three managers.” “She only trusts me right now.” I traced the gold-leafed edge of the marriage certificate. “And what about me, Nathan?” The line went silent for a second. “You’re stronger than she is. You’re more mature. Don’t force me to choose today.” The speaker called my number. The clerk at the window waved me over. “Both parties need to be present to finalize,” she said. I stood up. “Nathan, I’m not asking you to choose today. I asked you to choose three years ago.” “Don’t be dramatic. It’s just a few weeks’ delay.” “Are you coming by 9:30? Yes or no?” In the background, I heard a voice: “Nathan, Sloane needs you in the green room. Now.” “I have to go,” Nathan said hurriedly. “Don’t make a scene out of nothing, Joanna.” He hung up. At 9:30, I put the certificates back in my folder and walked out of the courthouse. But I didn’t go to the airport. I walked three blocks over to my lawyer’s office. The paperwork was already prepped. I hadn’t wanted to use it, but I had it. The bank statements. The shared calendar logs. The receipts for Sloane’s apartment parking. The records of the $26,000 Nathan had funneled into “consulting fees” for Sloane that were actually just her rent and credit card bills. My lawyer looked at me. “You originally wanted a clean, no-fault break. No alimony, no asset split. Are you sure you want to pivot to a contested filing?” “I’m sure,” I said. “He didn’t show up. So now, we talk about the money.” I had wanted to be “the bigger person.” I wanted to walk away with nothing but my dignity. But Sloane had stood in my professional space and told me to hide. Nathan had used our money to build a life for her, while telling me my “salary” was a gift. If I left with nothing now, it wasn’t “grace.” It was just me paying for their affair. I signed the new petition. My hand didn’t shake. As I walked out, a photo was posted to the Miller-Apex Instagram. Nathan stood in the center, Sloane on his arm. She didn’t look like she was having a “panic attack.” She looked triumphant. Nathan texted me: The event is over. I’m heading to the airport now. Stay at the courthouse. I replied: I’m already gone. He called. I ignored it. Text from Nathan: How far are you going to push this tantrum? I sent him a photo of the court’s receipt for the new, contested filing. I replied: You missed the appointment. So I’ve filed for a contested divorce. That $26,000 you ‘gifted’ Sloane? I’m taking my half back. See you in court.

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On a quiet night during my hospital shift, my phone buzzed with an angry series of SnapChat messages from my neighbor, Mrs. Gable. [Dr. Carter, could you and your wife keep it down during your nighttime activities? We have kids in the next apartment!] [This has been going on for five nights straight! I knock on your door, and you guys just play dead. Are you doing this on purpose?] [Your wife is paralyzed, and you’re still pushing her like that? You bastard!] Sitting at my desk, still typing up medical records, a cold sweat broke out over my entire body. I had been working consecutive night shifts for the past five days. I hadn’t set foot in my apartment once! The moment my colleague arrived to cover my shift, I threw on my jacket and rushed out of the hospital. I dialed Chloe’s number repeatedly as I sped down the highway, but there was no answer. Strangely, Olivia, our live-in caregiver who never missed a call, wasn’t picking up either. Anxiety clawed at my chest, making my foot press harder on the gas pedal. Chloe and I had always been so in love. She would never betray me. Besides, she was paralyzed from the waist down. Intense physical intimacy was physically impossible for her. Then there was Olivia. Chloe had complained to me multiple times that Olivia was always on the phone with some sketchy guy during work hours. If I hadn’t been so busy and unable to find a replacement, I would have fired her weeks ago. Did that girl actually have the audacity to bring a man into my home? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I flew into our driveway at eighty miles an hour. My hands shook so violently that it took me three tries to punch in the door code. The apartment was pitch black, filled with the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. “Chloe? Olivia?” I called out, but only silence answered. A terrible dread washed over me. I fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. What I saw made my heart stop. Chloe was sprawling on the hardwood floor, struggling to crawl! Olivia was nowhere to be seen! Chloe’s hair and face were soaked with sweat, and her wrists were covered in raw, red friction burns. Fury boiled inside me. That useless girl Olivia must have tied Chloe up just so she could have her little tryst in our apartment! How dare she?! Chloe lifted her head, her tear-filled eyes locking onto mine. “Ethan? What… what are you doing home?” Her voice was incredibly raspy. My heart wrenched in pain. How long had she been crying? I rushed over, lifted her gently, and carried her back to the bed. I pulled her into my arms, stroking her damp hair tenderly. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry I came back so late. I let you go through this…” “If the neighbor hadn’t messaged me, I wouldn’t have known this psychopath of a caregiver was doing this to you!” Chloe’s body suddenly stiffened, and she pulled back slightly from my embrace. “The neighbor? What did they tell you?” Seeing the sheer panic in her eyes only made my chest ache more. “Chloe, Olivia has been bringing a man here for the past five days. Has she been locking you up like this the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me? Did she threaten you?” Chloe let out a long, shuddering breath, then buried her face back into my chest. “Ethan, you’re so busy at the hospital. You save lives. I didn’t want you to worry about me…” “And the man she brought… he’s huge, muscular, and looked so dangerous. I was terrified you’d get into a fight with him and get hurt…” Listening to her soft, fragile whimpers, my self-loathing reached its peak. My beautiful wife had endured such abuse at home just to keep me focused on my work. At the same time, my hatred for Olivia reached a boiling point. I pulled out my phone to dial 911. But before I could hit call, Chloe snatched the phone out of my hand. She gripped my hand tightly, her eyes begging me. “Please, don’t. If the police get involved, everyone in the building will know… they’ll look at me with pity. I can’t take that.” Looking at her fragile, pleading face, I felt utterly defeated. Chloe had been paralyzed for years. Despite the expensive experimental medications and my daily physical therapy sessions with her, there was never any improvement. To pay for her treatments, I worked endless overtime, leaving her alone more and more. I had watched her grow increasingly insecure and fragile over the years. To avoid the pitying stares of strangers, she hadn’t left the apartment in months—she wouldn’t even go to the clinic for her checkups. It was my fault. I wasn’t rich enough, and I wasn’t a good enough doctor to cure her. Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from downstairs, followed by a car alarm blaring and two men shouting obscenities at each other. Instinctively, I moved toward the window to check. But Chloe gripped my hand even tighter. She pulled me down to her, burying her face back into my chest. “Ethan, I’m so scared. Please don’t leave me. Not even for a second.” I stopped. I wrapped my arms around her again. Nothing in this world was more important than Chloe. I held her in bed until her breathing slowed and she drifted off to sleep. Gently, I slid my arm out from under her, walked into the bathroom, filled the tub with ice-cold water, and climbed in.

Chloe and I had never consummated our marriage. On countless sleepless, agonizing nights, this was how I calmed my burning desires—shivering in a tub of ice water. To me, sacrificing my own needs was just another way of loving her. But tonight, the bathroom smelled strange. A foul, metallic, fishy odor lingered in the air, giving me a splitting headache. I searched around and finally traced the smell to the trash can. Buried at the bottom was a pair of lacy red women’s underwear. The anger I had just suppressed flared up again. That damn caregiver, Olivia! She actually used our bathroom for her dirty deeds! The next morning, I threw the trash out. I gave Chloe her sponge bath, changed her underpads as I did every day, and prepared to leave for work. But Chloe was acting strange. She seemed exceptionally clingy. “Ethan, when will you be home today?” Normally, she never asked, fearing she’d distract me. She was clearly still traumatized by yesterday. I stroked her hair gently. “I’ll come straight home after my shift. I’ll make your favorite—creamy Tuscan chicken.” Despite wanting to stay, I had to leave. Chloe’s experimental meds were running low, and I needed to find a freelance gig to cover the next batch. As I drove around the corner of our street, my phone rang. It was Olivia. Before I could even speak, she screamed through the receiver. “Dr. Carter! Did you seriously blackball me in the agency for ‘bringing men over’? How am I supposed to get another job now?!” “If you have this much free time, you should watch your own wife! Stop acting like a clueless idiot!” I hadn’t even tracked her down yet, and she had the nerve to call and yell at me? But what did she mean by that last sentence? Before I could ask, she slammed the phone down. I spammed her on Snapchat, but she blocked me instantly. A cold, uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Unable to shake it off, I called in sick and turned the car around.

When I pulled into our apartment’s underground garage, I found my assigned parking spot occupied. After calling the number on the windshield several times, a tall, muscular man with a cast on his leg limped over. He was panting heavily, and I noticed fresh hickeys peppering his neck. I recognized him. He was the jerk who always stole my parking spot. When I complained, he didn’t even apologize. He just gave me a menacing glare, got into his car, and drove off. It wasn’t even noon, and I had already been yelled at twice. My mood was in the gutter. Walking into the apartment, the sight of Chloe sleeping peacefully calmed my nerves. I gently brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. That’s when I noticed a faint smudge of pink lipstick on the corner of her mouth. I hadn’t applied any makeup on her this morning. She never wore makeup at home. My heart began to hammer against my ribs. Instinctively, my eyes drifted down to Chloe’s thighs. Over the years, despite my daily massages, her muscles should have shown some signs of atrophy from lack of use. But as I stared at her legs, I realized something I had been too blind to notice before. Her thighs were as firm, toned, and perfectly shaped as they were before the accident. Suddenly, her eyes fluttered open. She looked startled to see me. “Ethan? Why are you back? Is… is there something wrong with my legs?” I quickly shook my head, forcing a smile. “No, nothing. I just realized I forgot to do your physical therapy massage this morning. I couldn’t stop worrying, so I came back.” She giggled and pinched my nose, but then her face fell, and tears began to pool in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ethan. It’s all because I’m a useless cripple. I make your life so hard…” In the past, my heart would have broken. I would have held her tight and told her how much I loved her. But today, Olivia’s warning, the muscular man with the cast, and the perfect shape of her legs created a dark cloud of suspicion in my mind. Was it possible… that Chloe’s legs had already healed? To find out the truth, I went to the bathroom, wrung out a towel in scalding hot water, and walked back to the bedroom. “Let’s do a quick hot compress first,” I said casually, pressing the steaming towel directly onto her thigh. The intense heat turned her skin bright red instantly. I watched her face closely. Her expression didn’t change at all. She kept smiling up at me, warm and affectionate. A wave of intense guilt washed over me. I felt like a monster. Chloe loved me so much, and here I was, testing her and hurting her. I was disgusting. Panicked, I grabbed the burn ointment and began applying it to her skin with trembling hands. As blister after blister began to form on her fair skin, tears of pure remorse streamed down my face. “Chloe… I’m so sorry. It’s my fault…” Chloe paused, then slowly used her arms to lift her upper body, pulling my head into her lap. “It’s okay, silly. I can’t feel anything anyway. It doesn’t hurt.” She reached into the nightstand, pulled out a carton of milk, inserted a straw, and handed it to me. “You look exhausted, babe. Drink some milk and take a nap. You need to rest.” My heart warmed. I took a big gulp. But the moment the liquid hit my tongue, a faint, bitter aftertaste sent a chill down my spine. As a doctor, I knew that taste instantly. It was a dissolved sleeping pill. Chloe was staring at me, her eyes locked onto mine, waiting. I didn’t know how she had gotten her hands on the pills, but I knew one thing: right now, she desperately needed me to pass out. To play along, I pretended to yawn heavily. “I need to use the bathroom first,” I mumbled. I rushed to the bathroom, shoved my fingers down my throat, and threw up every drop of the milk. Then, I walked back, stumbled onto the bed, and closed my eyes, letting my breathing fall into a deep, heavy rhythm. After a few minutes, I felt Chloe lean over me. She waved her hand in front of my face. Once she was absolutely sure I was “dead to the world,” she let out a cold, disgusted sneer. “Useless simp.” Through the tiny slit of my eyelids, I watched my paralyzed wife throw back the blanket, swing her legs over the edge of the bed, and stand straight up on her own two feet.

She walked over to the closet, changed into a skin-tight, sexy dress, slipped into a pair of high heels, and walked out the door. The moment I heard the elevator doors slide shut, I bolted out of bed. I grabbed my keys and followed her. Keeping my distance, I hopped into a taxi and trailed her Uber. Chloe’s Uber pulled up to a trendy, upscale street. She walked straight toward a vending machine tucked into a dark alley. She pressed a sequence of buttons, and the machine swung outward like a door. It was a hidden speakeasy. I waited a minute, copied her actions, and slipped inside. The club was dimly lit, packed with people, and pulsing with loud electronic music. I had never been to a place like this and felt completely out of place. After pushing through the crowd, I finally spotted her in a VIP booth in the corner. Chloe was draped over a tall, muscular guy, her fingers tracing his jawline playfully. It was the jerk from the garage. My mind reeled. Was that why he always parked in my spot? So he could keep tabs on when I was home or at work? The humiliation of being cheated on burned hot in my chest. I clenched my fists and walked toward the booth. But as I reached the heavy velvet curtain of their booth, Chloe’s voice drifted out. “Babe, I think Ethan is starting to suspect something. He’s been acting really weird lately.” “It’s all because of that nosy neighbor! She actually Snapchatted him to complain. What a bitch!” “And because of her, you had to jump out of my bedroom window and break your leg. I’m so sorry, baby…” The man chuckled, pulling her closer. “What are you scared of? If he finds out, we just throw it in his face. He’s just a broke, pathetic resident doctor. What’s he gonna do? Fight me?” “You’re too hot to be stuck with a loser like him anyway.” He planted a wet kiss on her lips, and Chloe giggled, slapping his chest playfully. “Stop it! If it weren’t for revenge, I would have divorced him years ago.” “If he hadn’t botched my surgery back then, I wouldn’t have spent years recovering. All my suffering is his fault! You think he’s staying with me out of love? He’s just trying to ease his own guilty conscience!” “But you’re the smart one, babe. Getting your buddy at the rehab center to fake the bills? We split the therapy money he pays, and my secret savings account is looking very nice right now.” The man laughed loudly. “Well, you’re the mastermind who came up with the plan to get rich off his guilt!” Their laughter echoed in the booth, but everything went dead silent in my mind. I stood there, frozen. The thumping bass of the music sounded like a chorus of mockery, needles piercing my brain. I never could have imagined that this was how Chloe saw me. Years ago, when I first met Chloe, it was my first year as a resident. She had been in a horrific car crash. When she was wheeled into the ER, her legs were a mangled, bloody mess. She needed immediate, highly specialized surgery. But the moment her parents heard the projected cost, they hesitated. “Even with the surgery, she might still end up paralyzed, right?” her father had asked. “We can’t afford this. We have a son to think about.” Even when I offered to help them set up a payment plan through the hospital, they flatly refused to sign the consent form. I couldn’t bear to see a young girl lose her legs forever because of her parents’ selfishness. So, driven by my duty as a doctor, I made a risky decision. I pushed her into the OR and performed the surgery, taking full responsibility. Although I saved her legs, the delay caused by her parents meant she still required extensive rehabilitation, and a full recovery was never guaranteed. For years, I gave up opportunities to study abroad, turned down promotions, and skipped conferences just so I could stay by her side, massaging her legs and taking care of her every need. But her legs just wouldn’t get better. Eventually, she told me she wanted to give up, and the rehab center staff subtly suggested I stop bringing her in. I had carried that guilt for years. I suffered from insomnia, constantly blaming myself for not being a better doctor. And all this time, they were just playing me for a fool to steal my money.

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1 In my past life, my mother took my father to Metro General for what should have been a routine, forty-minute appendectomy. He was wheeled into Operating Room 3 at 9:45 AM. He never came out. The hospital called it a “one-in-a-million anesthesia complication”—a sudden, irreversible loss of brain function. My mother, Eleanor, stood in the hallway, her face a mask of shattered grief, and told me that in his final moments of consciousness, my father had expressed a wish to save others. Seven years later, while I was interning in the hospital’s records department, I found the truth buried in a misfiled surgical log. My father hadn’t died from a complication. He had been kept “viable” just long enough for his heart to be harvested and walked across the hall to Operating Room 4. Eleanor hadn’t lost her husband to a tragedy; she had sacrificed him to save Tom Wright, her college sweetheart and the man she had never stopped loving. Then, the world blurred. The smell of old paper and dust vanished, replaced by the sharp, stinging scent of ozone and hospital-grade disinfectant. I was standing in the sterile, fluorescent-white hallway of Metro General’s emergency wing. My heart hammered against my ribs. I was back. A nurse in blue scrubs shoved a heavy plastic clipboard into my hand. My mother was standing right beside me, her hand resting on my arm. She looked younger, her eyes bright with a rehearsed, watery tenderness. “Xander, honey, please,” she whispered, her voice a soothing, practiced purr. “The doctor says the appendix could rupture any minute. Your father is in so much pain… we can’t wait for the lawyers. Just sign the consent forms so they can take him back.” I looked down at the clipboard. Tucked discreetly behind the standard surgical consent was a single, devastating sheet of paper: Organ Donor Intent Confirmation. I didn’t pick up the pen. Instead, I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed 911. “Xander? What are you doing?” Eleanor’s voice went sharp, the sweetness fraying at the edges. “My name is Xander Miller,” I said into the phone, staring directly into my mother’s eyes. “I’m in the surgical waiting area at Metro General. I have reason to believe a medical team is attempting to falsify records to facilitate an unauthorized organ harvest. My father, Arthur Miller, is being prepped for a surgery based on a fraudulent diagnosis. I need a police presence and a representative from the medical examiner’s office immediately.” Eleanor lunged for the phone, her manicured nails clawing at my hand. “Xander! Have you lost your mind? You’re going to let your father die because of a panic attack?” I stepped back, my voice booming through the quiet hallway. “Security! Someone help! This woman is trying to interfere with a police report!” The nurses at the station snapped their heads up. Eleanor’s hand froze in mid-air. Within seconds, she transformed. She dropped her shoulders, her face crumpling into a mask of weary, maternal exhaustion. “I’m so sorry,” she told the approaching guard. “My son is a forensics student… he’s been under so much pressure. He’s having a breakdown because he can’t handle the thought of his father in surgery.” I let out a cold, jagged laugh. “If this is just a ‘routine surgery,’ Mom, why is there an organ donation rider attached to the appendectomy consent?” The head nurse’s expression shifted from annoyance to sharp suspicion. She looked at the clipboard in my hand. Eleanor’s brow furrowed, her voice hardening into a tone of command. “That’s just standard hospital protocol for life support preferences. You’re being hysterical, Xander.” I pulled the page out and held it up for the nurses—and the security camera—to see. “It’s written right here: ‘In the event of irreversible loss of brain function, the patient and family consent to immediate organ procurement evaluation.’ And look at the signature. ‘Arthur Miller’ is already written in the patient line.” I knew my father’s handwriting better than anyone. He had a very specific habit; he always hooked the final stroke of the ‘r’ in Miller upward, a little flourish he’d used since he started designing jewelry. The signature on this page was flat. Soulless. I looked at her, my blood turning to ice. “When did Dad sign this, Eleanor? He’s been on morphine for three hours.” “He was in agony,” she hissed, her eyes turning into cold flints. “I confirmed his wishes for him. I am his wife.” “You confirmed his death for him,” I corrected. Before she could respond, the double doors of the surgical wing swung open. A woman in charcoal scrubs stepped out, her movements brisk and arrogant. Her badge read: Dr. Sarah Crane, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. In my past life, she was the one who signed the death certificate. She was the woman who had walked my father’s heart across the hall. Dr. Crane didn’t even acknowledge me. She turned to Eleanor. “The window is closing. If that appendix ruptures, we risk systemic sepsis, and then we can’t proceed with… the protocol. We need to move now.” “Where is the CT scan?” I interrupted, stepping between them. “I want to see the imaging and the white blood cell count that justifies an emergency appendectomy.” Dr. Crane’s lip curled. “And who are you?” “I’m the patient’s son and a forensics major. I know how to read a pathology report, and I know that appendicitis doesn’t usually fall under the jurisdiction of the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery.” Her gaze turned lethal. “A little bit of education is a dangerous thing, Mr. Miller. You’re risking your father’s life for a chance to play detective.” I held the clipboard up like a weapon. “Then prove me wrong. Until the police arrive, I am requesting a formal freeze and seal on every file, medication log, and blood sample associated with Arthur Miller. If a single needle touches him without my secondary consent, I will sue this hospital into the stone age.” Eleanor stepped close, her breath smelling of expensive mints and bile. “Xander, stop this. Think about the family name. Think about the business.” “I’m thinking about Dad,” I said, seeing her clearly for the first time in two lifetimes. “Something you stopped doing a long time ago.” Just then, the rhythmic thud-thud of a wheelchair echoed down the hall. Tom Wright, my mother’s “soulmate,” was being pushed toward the elevators by an orderly. He looked gaunt, his skin a sickly translucent grey, but his eyes were sharp. In my previous life, Tom had sat in his recovery bed, powered by my father’s heart, and told me, “Your father’s sacrifice was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.” Now, he looked up at me, his voice a frail, manipulative whisper. “Xander… please. I know there’s no love lost between us. But I’m dying. I just want a chance to grow old.” I stared at him, my skin crawling. “I don’t believe I ever mentioned that my father’s surgery had anything to do with you, Tom. How would a patient in the VIP wing even know about an emergency appendectomy in the ER?” Tom’s face went ghost-white. Eleanor immediately stepped in front of him, her body acting as a human shield. Dr. Crane snapped her fingers at the orderly. “Move him along. Mr. Wright is on the official transplant list. His presence here is a coincidence.” “Is it?” I asked. “Then let’s check the OR schedule. Let’s see if OR 4 is currently prepped for a heart. Let’s see why my father’s ‘appendicitis’ workup included a full cardiac enzyme panel and HLA cross-matching.” Dr. Crane’s professional mask finally shattered, revealing the panic beneath. Eleanor grabbed my arm, her nails sinking into my bicep. “Xander, where is this coming from? Who told you these lies?” I shook her off with a force that made her stumble. “I didn’t need to be told, Mom. I can see the blood on the floor before you’ve even spilled it.” My phone began to vibrate incessantly. The family group chat was exploding. A voice note from my Aunt Martha came through, her voice shrill with hysteria. “Xander! What are you doing?! Your mother says you’re blocking the doctors! Arthur is in pain and you’re playing games? Do you want your father to die? If he ruptures on that bed, his blood is on your hands!” I didn’t answer. I hit ‘record’ on my phone, capturing the shifting eyes of the nurses and the way Dr. Crane was whispering urgently into her headset. Then, I made the call that changed everything. “Uncle Gabriel? It’s Xander. I’m at Metro General. Eleanor and Dr. Sarah Crane are trying to harvest Dad.” There was a sharp intake of breath. Gabriel Miller was the city’s most feared litigator and my father’s younger brother. In my last life, he hadn’t arrived until the body was already cold. “I’m in the car,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a register of pure, legal lethalness. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do not let them give him so much as an aspirin. If they try to move him, call for a code ‘Alpha’ and demand a hospital ombudsman. Do not sign a thing.” Ten minutes later, the ER director arrived, looking like he’d been hit by a train. “Mr. Miller, the police have been dispatched. Per hospital policy during an active investigation, all elective and non-life-critical surgeries for Arthur Miller are stayed.” Eleanor shrieked, a sound of raw, ugly desperation. “Non-life-critical? He has appendicitis!” I pushed past her and entered the observation room. My father, Arthur, was lying on the bed, hooked up to a monitor. He was pale and sweating, but his eyes were open and clear. I took his hand. It was clammy and cold. “Dad,” I whispered. “Did you sign an organ donor card today?” He looked at me, squinting through the haze of pain. “A donor card? No… Xander, what’s… what’s happening? Your mother said I just needed a quick fix.” Eleanor rushed to the other side of the bed, her face a mask of faux-anguish. “Arthur, don’t listen to him. He’s confused. I just took care of the paperwork so you wouldn’t have to worry.” My father turned his head, looking at her with a slow, agonizing realization. “I never… I never asked you to sign for me, Eleanor. I’m not… I’m not that far gone.” The silence in the room was absolute. I placed the clipboard on his lap. “Dad, from this second on, Gabriel is your medical proxy. You don’t take a pill, an injection, or a glass of water unless he or I approve it. Do you understand?” Eleanor’s face contorted into a mask of pure rage. “I am his legal spouse! I have the right—” “A marriage certificate isn’t a bill of sale, Mom,” I snapped. “And it’s certainly not a license to kill.” Twenty minutes later, the double doors of the ER burst open. Detective Marcus Kane stepped in, followed by three investigators from the State Health Department. “Who made the report?” Kane asked. I raised my hand and handed over my phone, the recording of Eleanor’s threats and the photo of the forged signature cued up. “I’m requesting an immediate forensic audit of the records. I want to know why a heart surgeon is leading an appendectomy, and why OR 4 was prepped for a transplant before a donor was even officially declared.” Detective Kane looked at the hospital administrator. “Seal the wing. No one enters the digital records archive until my team is inside.” Eleanor stood in the corner, her shadow long and dark against the white wall. She looked at me with a hatred so profound it felt physical. The audit was swift and brutal. The digital trail didn’t lie. The “emergency” CT scan of my father’s abdomen was actually a recycled image from a patient three months ago. My father’s actual blood work showed a perfectly normal white cell count—meaning there was zero infection. But the most damning evidence was the medication log. “Detective,” I said, pointing to the screen. “Look at the pre-op vitals. My father was administered high-potency anticoagulants and a preservation cocktail. You don’t give those to an appendicitis patient. Those are only used when you’re prepping a body for organ retrieval.” The Health Department official looked at Dr. Crane. “Is this true?” Crane said nothing, her jaw locked tight. Suddenly, a young nurse named Natalie stepped forward from the back of the room. I recognized her—in my past life, she had been the whistleblower who was fired and silenced. “I have the internal memos,” she said, her voice trembling but clear. “Dr. Crane told us to skip the standard anesthesia consult and go straight to the ‘donor preservation’ protocol. She said the patient was already brain-dead, even though he was still talking to us.” Eleanor’s face went paper-white. “And the schedule?” I asked. Natalie looked at her tablet. “OR 3, Arthur Miller, 9:45 AM. OR 4, Tom Wright, 9:57 AM. A twelve-minute window for the ‘complication’ to occur and the heart to be moved.” My father, now sitting up in a wheelchair as Gabriel arrived, listened to every word. He looked at the woman he had been married to for twenty-five years. “Eleanor… you were going to let them take my heart while I was still awake?” Eleanor’s eyes darted around like a trapped animal. “Arthur, you don’t understand… Tom was dying! You were always so healthy, I thought… I thought we could save him and still have a life…” “A life with who?” my father whispered. “Because it wouldn’t have been with me.” I handed the forged donor card to Detective Kane. “I want a full handwriting analysis. And I want Eleanor Miller and Sarah Crane kept away from my father.” Eleanor finally broke. She slammed her hand onto the nurse’s station, her voice a shrill, ugly scream that echoed through the entire ER. “Enough! I am his wife! I am the one who has carried this family! If something happens to him, I am the one who decides how his legacy continues! I won’t let a child destroy everything I’ve built!” I stood my ground, looking her in the eye. “Is ‘his legacy’ just a spare part for your lover, Eleanor? Because that’s not a legacy. That’s a harvest.” Eleanor’s face finally fractured, the elegant socialite mask falling away to reveal the cold-blooded architect of a murder. As the sirens began to howl in the distance, I realized I hadn’t just stopped a surgery; I had ignited a fire that was about to incinerate the entire Miller legacy, and the first person to burn would be the woman who thought she could play God with my father’s heart.

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