1 My grandfather was Hong Kong’s reigning shipping tycoon, his empire stretching across Southeast Asia. He was the one person in the world who loved me beyond measure. After his death, I thought I still had Carter, my newly minted billionaire fiancé, who promised to hold me in the palm of his hand. But Grandfather had not been gone for a week when Carter chaired his first board meeting as the new head. Standing before everyone, he announced the end of our engagement. In the same breath, he declared he would marry Freya, a girl from the local fish market. Whispers exploded through the grand boardroom. Every eye snapped toward me. Deep down, I knew this day was coming. I just did not expect him to be so desperate to cast me aside. My voice remained steady. Fine. I accept. Across the crowded room, I caught the flicker of panic in Carter’s dark eyes. Seven years ago, I had dragged him from the gutter. I took a street thug and pushed him ruthlessly to the top. Back then, I told him I would stake my entire fortune and life on him, but only if he swore never to betray me. His answer had been a desperate, searing kiss. So when exactly did Carter change? Perhaps it began when Freya cried to him, claiming I wanted to ruin her life. I was too proud to explain away her pathetic lies. I failed to notice the cold distance growing in Carter’s eyes. If this was truly what he wanted, I would give it to him. I picked up the microphone, locked eyes with Carter, and enunciated every single word. “I voluntarily dissolve my engagement to Mr. Sterling.” Without waiting for a response, I turned on my heel and walked out. The heavy elevator doors slid shut, cutting off the chaotic roar of the boardroom. Inside the quiet elevator, my phone screen lit up. Sender: Carter. “Harper, no matter what happens, trust me.” Trust him? My grandfather’s bones weren’t even cold yet, and he had just publicly humiliated me, forcing me to agree to a breakup in front of the entire board. How the hell was I supposed to trust him? I stared at the text. My finger hovered over the screen for three agonizing seconds. Then, I pressed down and hit delete. The elevator doors chimed open. My driver, Mr. Chen, was already waiting by the Bentley. “Miss Harper, are we heading back to the main estate?” “Take me to Kowloon.” Mr. Chen looked like he wanted to argue, but he just let out a heavy sigh and opened the door for me. The sleek car eventually pulled up outside a crumbling, dilapidated tenement building deep in Kowloon. The stairwell didn’t even have working lights. I navigated the pitch-black stairs by memory. Third floor, door on the left. When I pushed it open, the suffocating smell of mildew and thick dust washed over me. It had been seven years, but the room was exactly the same. A hard wooden plank for a bed, a dining table with a broken leg, and windows sealed shut with cheap plastic tarps. In the corner sat a stack of cardboard boxes, overflowing with the heavy business textbooks Carter used to study until his eyes bled. My gaze drifted to the rusty tin box sitting on the edge of the bed. The metal was corroded, the corners bent and flaking. I didn’t even need to open it to know what was inside. A crude, ugly ring twisted out of a piece of scrap wire. It was so rough it scratched the skin. And a single, yellowed piece of paper torn from a cigarette box. Scrawled across it in messy handwriting were the words: Carter will love Harper forever. The date at the bottom was exactly seven years ago. It had been pouring rain that night. When I found Carter, he was curled up in an alley next to a overflowing dumpster. His cheap white t-shirt was soaked in a sickening mixture of mud, rain, and his own blood. I crouched down in the filth and tilted my umbrella over him. “Carter. Come with me.” He slowly lifted his head. The icy rain mixed with the blood dripping down his forehead, running straight into his eyes. But he stared at me, his gaze fiercely, violently stubborn. “Harper. I don’t want your damn pity.” “It’s not pity,” I said, tilting the umbrella further to shield him completely. I locked eyes with him. “I am betting my entire life on you. I will give you everything you need to win. But you have to swear to me.” “Swear you will never, ever betray me.” He stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. “I swear.” That night, Carter took me back to his “home”—a makeshift shack slapped together next to the water tower on the roof of this tenement building. It wasn’t a home. It was a few sheets of plastic tarp strung up to block the wind, and a rotting, abandoned sofa he used as a bed. In the summer, the heat was suffocating. In the winter, it was so freezing you could see your breath when you spoke. While I was carefully cleaning the deep cuts on his face, he suddenly asked, “Why are you helping me?” My hands paused over his bruised jaw. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve completely lost my mind.” A dark, broken smile crossed his face. “Then let’s lose our minds together.” That night, we split a single, cheap cup of instant ramen. He dug into his pocket, pulled out that twisted loop of scrap wire, and clumsily, reverently slid it onto my ring finger. “This piece of trash doesn’t deserve you,” he whispered, his voice dangerously low, his grip on my hand tightening until it hurt. “But I swear to God, Harper. One day, I am going to use the entire Sterling Empire as your wedding gift.” He bit down on his own thumb, drawing blood, and smeared that promise across the cigarette paper. Under the flickering, dying lightbulb, he looked up at me. His eyes were burning. It looked like he had crammed every ounce of his savage ambition and his raw, bleeding heart into that single gaze. When he kissed me, I could taste the sharp copper of his blood and the cheap salt of the ramen. I didn’t pull away. The wind whipping off Victoria Harbour was brutal that night, rattling the plastic tarps violently. He buried his face in my neck, whispering my name over and over again. His voice was completely ruined. “Harper, I’m going to win.” “Harper, trust me.” “Harper…” My phone vibrated violently in my hand, ripping me out of the past. It was a breaking news alert. New Head of the Sterling Empire Chooses True Love Over Billions! Childhood Sweetheart Left in the Dust! The attached photo was a candid shot of Carter and Freya standing in front of a filthy fish stall. He was gently brushing a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. His expression was so soft, so tender, it looked completely foreign to me. The comment section was an absolute warzone. “This is what real love looks like! Those billionaire arranged marriages are just disgusting business deals anyway.” “I heard that Harper girl is an absolute nightmare. Carter has been putting up with her temper for years.” “Freya is such an inspiration! From a fishmonger to the future Mrs. Sterling! It’s literally a Cinderella story!” I looked out the filthy window. The skyline of Victoria Harbour was glittering with millions of lights. Buried in that glittering skyline was the Sterling Empire headquarters, the exclusive yacht clubs, the Michelin-star restaurants—the entire empire I had spent seven years helping Carter conquer, inch by bloody inch. And now, he was handing half of it to a girl who gutted fish for a living. I gently closed the rusted tin box and put it right back where I found it. I was locking those seven years away for good. Three days after the boardroom disaster, Carter finally showed up at my private estate. I hadn’t seen him in days. Deep, bruised bags hung under his eyes, and he looked incredibly exhausted, completely drained. I couldn’t help but mock myself in my own head. Even after everything he had done, my first instinct was still to feel sorry for him. “Why? And don’t give me any garbage. I want the absolute truth,” I demanded, forcing my voice to stay dead calm. “Freya… she’s had a really hard life,” he started, his voice a low, heavy rasp. “Her mother died when she was young. Her father is a deadbeat alcoholic. She’s been keeping that fish stall afloat entirely on her own just to pay for her little brother’s tuition…” “So,” I cut him off, my voice trembling violently despite my best efforts, “you decided to sacrifice me to play her savior?” The sprawling living room fell completely silent. “Carter, three years ago, when you closed your first billion-dollar acquisition. You were so happy. You drank so much that night.” “You rested your head on my shoulder and told me that when we got married, we were going to have two kids. One that looked exactly like you, and one that looked exactly like me.” I stared dead into his dark eyes, desperately trying to see whatever was left of his soul. “Who are your kids going to look like now? Freya?” Carter flinched. He looked away, staring out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. After a long, suffocating silence, he finally spoke. “The engagement had to be dissolved. I had to do it. It was a promise I made to myself. But Harper, you aren’t going anywhere.” I froze, entirely caught off guard. “Excuse me?” Carter snapped his gaze back to me. His eyes were burning with a terrifying, absolute certainty. “The Sterling Group is expanding overseas. I’m making you the Director of International Operations. Or, honestly, whatever position you want. I will back you completely. It’s just…” He paused, clearly struggling to find the right words. “It’s just that, on paper, we can’t be husband and wife.” I stared at him for three seconds before I let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “Carter. Are you seriously asking me to be your mistress?” “Not a mistress!” He stepped forward aggressively. “Family. Your grandfather wanted me to take care of you, and I am going to!” “Don’t you dare bring my grandfather into this!” I screamed, losing my composure entirely. “This is the best possible arrangement for everyone.” His face was pale, his jaw clenched tight, but he forced his tone to soften. “Harper, you grew up here. All your friends, your entire network, your career—it’s all in Hong Kong. And besides…” He stared at me, his expression twisting into something deeply obsessed and stubborn. “We’ve been together for seven years. We are completely inseparable. Even without a ring, you belong right here, by my side.” “Belong?” The sheer audacity of his words made me sick to my stomach. “Why the hell do I belong by your side?” “Because you are the one who pulled me out of the gutter in the freezing rain!” he roared, his eyes flashing with a wild, desperate red edge. “You bled with me through every single nightmare we faced! You are carved into my damn bones, Harper! I am never, ever letting you go!” The afternoon sun shifted across the imported hardwood floor, drawing a sharp, blinding line between where he stood and where I stood. It looked like an absolute, impassable chasm. “The night of the victory gala,” I said, my voice dropping back to a quiet, lethal calm. “A group of trust-fund kids were harassing Freya. They threw a drink on her. You saw it happen, and you rushed over to play the knight in shining armor.” Carter’s entire body went rigid. “When you came home that night, you reeked of her perfume,” I continued, staring blankly at his chest. “It was some cheap, synthetic floral scent. Completely different from what you usually tolerate. When I asked you about it, you lied to my face. You told me someone bumped into you at the bar.” I tried to force a careless, mocking smile, but the tears completely betrayed me, slipping down my cheeks without warning. “I should have realized it right then,” I whispered, reaching up to violently wipe the tears away. “The second a man starts lying to you, his heart is already gone.” He stood frozen in place. I watched his Adam’s apple bob aggressively as he swallowed hard. After a long time, he spoke, his voice completely wrecked. “Name your price for compensation. Corporate shares, offshore accounts, cash—whatever you want, I will sign it over today. But I am not letting you leave.” “Then we burn it all down.” I locked eyes with him, refusing to give an inch. “Carter, I am not some fragile little canary you can lock in a gold cage. I am the woman who risked my entire life to build your throne. You either give me every ounce of your loyalty and respect, or…” “We are permanently, completely done.” Carter’s phone suddenly rang, shattering the tension. He glanced at the screen, his expression tightening instantly. He quickly hit decline. But the phone immediately rang again, loud and insistent. He stared at me for five agonizing seconds before turning his back and walking to the far corner of the living room to answer it. He kept his voice incredibly low, but in the dead silence of the house, I heard every word. “…I know. I’m on my way. Stop crying… I said okay, I’ll be right there.” He hung up and walked back over. His face was a mask of complicated, frustrating emotions. “Freya’s father got drunk and started a brawl. He’s at the police station,” he said flatly. “I have to go handle it.” I didn’t say a single word. I just turned my head and looked out the window. The rare orchids my grandfather had meticulously planted in the garden were finally blooming. The pure white petals were trembling slightly in the afternoon breeze. After a long silence, he spoke again. “Harper, think very carefully about what I just offered you. Stay here. I promise I will take care of everything.” “I don’t need to think about it.” I didn’t even bother turning around to look at him. “Carter, the second you chose Freya, whatever we had was dead.” A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room behind me. I heard the heavy oak front door open, then click shut. His heavy footsteps faded down the driveway. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was a text from Mr. Davis, the family’s senior estate lawyer. “Miss Harper, the contingency clause in your grandfather’s final will has officially been triggered. You may execute it whenever you are ready.” I stared at the glowing screen for a long time. Finally, I typed back a single word. “Execute.” The night of my grandfather’s memorial, a brutal typhoon hit the island. The ancestral hall was empty, save for me and a few of the oldest, most loyal estate staff keeping vigil. The extended family and the corporate vultures had cleared out hours ago. Carter never showed up. Word on the street was he was at a luxury boutique, watching Freya try on custom wedding gowns. Honestly, I preferred the quiet. Mr. Davis was waiting for me in the main drawing room. He handed me a thick, sealed manila envelope. “Miss Harper, this is the very last thing the old master left for you.” I ripped it open. Inside was a single, handwritten letter and a faded photograph. The letter was written in my grandfather’s hand, the strokes shaky and erratic from his final illness. Harper, my sweet girl. If you are reading this, it means that street rat Carter has betrayed you. The girl in the photograph is named Chloe. She died protecting Carter years ago. This new girl, Freya, looks exactly like her. A man’s obsession with a ghost is the most dangerous thing in the world. You can never win a war against a dead girl. Take the money I left you. Leave. And never, ever look back. I pulled out the photograph. It showed two teenagers, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting close together on the concrete steps of a grim-looking orphanage. The boy was Carter. He was scrawny, underfed, and staring at the camera with eyes full of feral, violent suspicion. The girl sitting next to him was a head shorter, with her hair tied in two messy braids. She was smiling brightly, breaking a stale piece of bread in half to hand to him. She was a dead ringer. Freya looked exactly like her. Suddenly, heavy, urgent footsteps echoed down the main hallway. I spun around just as Carter burst into the drawing room. Freya was trailing nervously right behind him. “Harper.” Carter looked at me, his chest heaving, his eyes a mess of dark, unreadable emotions. “I came to pay my final respects to the old man.” I walked slowly toward him. “Carter. Who is Chloe?” Every drop of blood instantly drained from Carter’s face. He looked like a corpse. Behind him, Freya froze completely, her fingers gripping the sleeve of his expensive suit in a white-knuckle panic. Carter’s jaw tightened. He turned his head slightly. “Freya, go wait in the side parlor.” Freya bit her lip, looking incredibly wronged and pathetic, but she nodded meekly and scurried off toward the parlor. Once she was out of earshot, Carter slowly turned back to face me. “Who gave you that name?” “Does it even matter?” I challenged, my voice sharp. “What matters is, are you marrying Freya because she is a carbon copy of Chloe?” A heavy, suffocating silence fell between us. Finally, his voice cracked, coming out as a hoarse, jagged whisper. “Chloe… she died because of me.” “It was winter. I was sixteen. I was breaking my back hauling crates at the docks. I had just gotten paid for three days of brutal work, and a gang of local thugs cornered me. I refused to hand over the cash, so they pinned me to the concrete and started beating the life out of me. Chloe had come to the docks to find me…” Carter stared blankly into the flickering candlelight of the memorial altar, his eyes entirely hollow. “She was so damn small. But she threw herself over me, shielding my head. She screamed at them, ‘He’s my little brother! If you want to hit someone, hit me!’ Those sick bastards… they shoved her.” He squeezed his eyes shut. His broad shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. When he spoke again, he was completely choking on his words. “She had a severe heart condition… Her head slammed against the concrete steps. There was so much blood. I pressed my hands against it, I pushed as hard as I could, but the blood just wouldn’t stop. By the time the ambulance finally showed up, she was already gone.” I looked at the incredibly powerful, ruthless billionaire standing in front of me, now reduced to a shattered, traumatized child. A wave of bitter, agonizing sadness washed over me. “So when Freya showed up, it felt like the universe was giving Chloe back to you?” “I owe Chloe my life!” Carter suddenly roared, the raw agony in his voice echoing through the silent hall. “When I look at Freya… it’s like looking at Chloe begging me to save her! I can’t just turn my back on her! I can’t!” “So you’re marrying Freya to keep a ghost alive. You’re marrying her to pay off a blood debt.” I locked my eyes onto his, refusing to let him look away. “And I am nothing but the collateral damage in your twisted redemption arc.” “You are not collateral damage!” he shouted desperately. He reached out to grab my wrist. I took a sharp step back, completely out of his reach. “Harper! You are the woman I love! If you hadn’t pulled me out of that alley… I would have lost my damn mind years ago!” Suddenly, it all made a sick, twisted kind of sense. He needed to pay off a blood debt to a dead girl, so he found a living replacement. But the dark, psychotic path of his guilt terrified him, so he was desperately trying to drag me along to keep him sane. It was so incredibly cruel. And so unbelievably selfish. “You already lost your mind,” I said, my voice dead and cold. “The second you decided to use a living, breathing woman as a meat puppet for a corpse, you went completely insane.” We stared at each other across the flickering candlelight, looking like two brutally wounded animals locked in a cage. Suddenly, the sharp, violent crash of shattering porcelain echoed from the side parlor, immediately followed by Freya’s piercing scream. Carter spun around and sprinted toward the parlor. I followed close behind. Inside, the heavy mahogany tea table was overturned. Freya was collapsed on the floor, surrounded by jagged shards of broken porcelain. She was clutching her left arm, bright red blood welling up between her fingers. Old Mr. Ford, my grandfather’s most loyal butler, was standing a few feet away, his hands raised in absolute shock. “Mr. Ford, why would you push me…” Freya wailed, tears streaming down her perfectly pale face. Mr. Ford shook his head violently. “I didn’t! The young miss asked for a glass of water. I turned my back to pour the tea, and she suddenly threw herself against the table…” “You’re lying!” Freya screamed, huge, pathetic tears rolling down her cheeks. “You just hate me because I sell fish! You think I’m stealing Miss Harper’s place! But you didn’t have to attack me!!” She looked up at Carter, her eyes wide and devastatingly sorrowful. “Carter… maybe I really just don’t deserve to marry you?” Carter didn’t hesitate. He scooped Freya up off the floor into his arms. He turned his head and shot me a glare so intensely cold it felt like a physical blow. “If you’re pissed off, take it out on me. Do not touch Freya. If she has lasting nerve damage, I will never, ever forgive you.” Without waiting for a response, he carried her out, disappearing into the torrential rain. I slowly turned back to face the massive portrait of my grandfather resting on the altar. The candlelight flickered across his painted face. His eyes looked so kind, so warm. It felt like he was whispering to me, Harper. Don’t be afraid. I dropped to my knees on the cold stone floor and bowed perfectly, pressing my forehead to the ground. “Grandpa. I’m listening to you. I’m leaving.” At 3:00 AM, I was standing inside a massive, abandoned shipping warehouse down by the docks. I was waiting in absolute silence. In three hours, a private vessel was going to smuggle me out of Hong Kong forever. Mr. Davis had handled everything flawlessly—a brand-new identity, untraceable offshore accounts, and strict instructions to bring only a single, small suitcase. Suddenly, the emergency lights bolted to the ceiling flickered and died. Seconds later, thick, pitch-black smoke, carrying the overwhelming, nauseating stench of gasoline, began pouring in under the heavy metal doors. Fire. I dropped my bag and sprinted toward the main exit. The second my fingers grazed the metal handle, the searing heat burned my skin. I recoiled instantly. The hallway outside was already an absolute inferno. I backed away, coughing violently, and ran to the reinforced windows. I shoved one open, but a wall of blistering heat blasted me in the face. The ground floor was entirely engulfed. Massive plumes of toxic black smoke were rolling up the side of the building. The warehouse was essentially a sealed concrete box. The fire was spreading with terrifying, unnatural speed. The smoke began pouring down my throat. I dropped to my knees, hacking and gagging as the oxygen was sucked out of the room. In a blind panic, my hand brushed against my jacket pocket. My fingers wrapped around the rusted, wire ring. It felt exactly like a rotting, meaningless promise. A sudden, overwhelming wave of pure exhaustion crashed over me. Seven years. Over two thousand, five hundred days. I threw away my title as the untouchable heiress of the Sterling empire to become Carter’s shadow. I dragged him out of the gutters and bled for him until he reached the absolute pinnacle of power. And what did I get in return? Was any of it worth it? I closed my burning eyes and let myself slide down the concrete wall until I was sitting on the floor. Let it end here. Let this fire completely incinerate the pathetic, delusional Harper who had spent seven years playing the martyr. “Harper—!!!”
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