The day I found out I was the switched-at-birth heiress, I didn’t waste a second. I went straight to the Garver estate to claim my life. There was no cliché drama. After a quick DNA test, my biological parents, the Garvers, announced my return to the world. Even the fake heiress, Stella, didn’t cause any trouble. In fact, she did everything she could to help me adjust to my new, opulent life. But I wasn’t satisfied. I made a habit of turning the house upside down, my anger a constant storm. It finally came to a head when I slapped one of the maids. My mother, Mrs. Garver, exploded. “What is it you really want, Zoe?” I pointed a trembling finger at the maid. “She’s always comparing me to your other daughter,” I spat. “She says I’m stupid, that I’m ugly. An ugly duckling.” Then, my finger swung towards Stella. “Everything she is, everything she has, she stole from me. Why should I have to live under the same roof as her, a constant reminder of what I lost? Get her out, or I’ll keep tearing this house apart.” My parents exchanged a look, then tried to reason with me. “Zoe, the switch wasn’t Stella’s fault.” No, it wasn’t her fault. But was it mine? “I refuse to share the role of ‘good daughter’ with her,” I declared. “It’s one or the other. Either she goes, or I do.” 1 “Zoe, please…” My mother reached for me, her voice softening, ready to smooth things over like she always did. I slapped her hand away without a second thought, my glare venomous. My father’s voice boomed. “What is that attitude? Is that any way to treat your mother?” I grabbed my hair, my voice rising to a hysterical shriek. “She’s not my mother, and you’re not my father! You’re Stella’s parents. What am I? Some intruder who crashed your perfect family? You probably wish I’d just died out there, don’t you?” My eyes darted to the source of my latest tantrum: a box of strawberries on the coffee table, not quite fresh. I snatched the box and smashed it on the floor. With the heel of my shoe, I ground each berry into the marble, the sweet juice splattering like blood. “In this house, your precious daughter is a princess, and I’m a beggar! She wants strawberries, the maids get her the freshest, most expensive ones from Japan. I want some? I get the week-old rejects that are starting to rot! When have you ever treated me like your real daughter? Why does everyone here look down on me?” I’d always heard the staff whispering. I’d ignored it, swallowing my pride because, in a way, they were right. I knew if I caused too much trouble, I’d wear out my welcome. But my restraint was met with their scorn. “A phoenix without its feathers is no better than a chicken,” I’d overheard one of them sneer. “What does she know about fine food? Those strawberries are a hundred dollars a box. Even the rotten ones are too good for her.” That’s when I realized the big, juicy strawberries I’d been happily eating were Stella’s leftovers—the ones she’d tasted and deemed not good enough. Her trash. Why? I was the real daughter of this house. I screamed and cried until I was hoarse. But my parents just offered placating words. “We’ll fire her immediately. You want strawberries? We’ll take you to the market right now, buy the very best.” Stella bit her lip, her voice calm. “I didn’t know about any of this. I…” She took a step towards me. I shoved her, hard. “Don’t you pretend to be the good guy, you thief! You stole my life and you still walk around here acting so high and mighty.” Stella stumbled backward, her head cracking against the corner of the table. Blood gushed from the wound. I froze, horrified. My mother crumpled to the floor, a strangled sob escaping her lips. Pain flashed across my father’s face. Seeing their reaction, a fresh wave of hatred washed over me. Without thinking, I bolted for the balcony and threw one leg over the railing. 2 Hands grabbed me, pulling me back. My parents. I fought them, trying to throw myself over the edge. “Let me go! Either I die, or she leaves!” Only one thought consumed me: get rid of Stella. Get rid of the thief, the robber who had stolen everything from me. My mother was weeping hysterically, but she never once said the words. She never agreed to make Stella leave. In the end, it was Stella herself. Clutching her bleeding head, she walked to the balcony and slowly sank to her knees before me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, blood smearing her face, making her look utterly pathetic. “I’ll go now. I’m sorry for taking your place for so long.” She looked wretched, but I knew it wasn’t an act. She had wanted to move out for a while. It was my parents who wouldn’t let her. This time, my father didn’t try to stop her. He just let out a long, defeated sigh. My mother, however, clung to Stella, both of them sobbing in a heart-wrenching embrace. That night, Stella vanished from the house. A massive weight lifted from my chest, replaced by a giddy sense of triumph. I didn’t care about the strange looks the maids gave me. In fact, right in front of them, I marched to the refrigerator, pulled out every single box of strawberries, and dumped them in the trash. “I hate strawberries,” I announced to the room. “From now on, I don’t want to see a single strawberry in this house. In fact, I don’t want to see anything that belonged to Stella. Get rid of it all.” The staff didn’t dare cross me again. They cleared out Stella’s belongings with record speed. It was a victory. Ever since I’d arrived, they’d looked at me with mocking eyes, whispering behind my back that I could never measure up to Stella. They jumped to do her bidding, but treated my requests as an afterthought. After Stella was gone, I reveled in my freedom for a while. But seeing the joy drain from my parents’ faces, a slow, creeping anxiety began to set in. So, I tried to win them over. I started mimicking Stella. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. If I had grown up here, I would have been the one doing all those things anyway. I thought I could replace her. And I worked tirelessly at it. I learned the complex art of tea ceremonies that my father loved, and the elegant flower arranging my mother adored. On top of that, I had my regular studies. I was sleeping less than six hours a night. But it was all a pathetic illusion. An illusion shattered by a property deed. Since my return, I had acquired a host of enemies. The other debutantes looked down on me, their insults a constant barrage of thinly veiled contempt. Stella’s old rival was the worst. “I never liked how stuck-up Stella was,” she’d sneered at me, “but compared to a piece of trash like you dragging down our social circle, she was a damn queen.” I had been furious. So after I kicked Stella out, the next time the girl came at me, I threw it in her face. “No matter what, a fake is still a fake. You really think some cuckoo in the nest is better than the real thing?” She just laughed. “Oh, you poor, stupid girl.” Then she told me the truth. My parents had bought Stella a sprawling luxury apartment downtown. And all those nights they claimed to be busy with work, they were at that apartment, playing happy family with her. “You idiot. You thought you kicked her out, but all you did was gift her a multi-million dollar condo. You got one of those? Oh, that’s right, you don’t even have parents anymore. They’re off building a new family without you.” 3 I didn’t want to believe it. But a cold knot of dread in my stomach told me it was probably true. When I found the property deed in my father’s study, signed over to Stella Garver, my reason snapped. I stormed over to the address like a wife catching a cheating husband. When Stella opened the door, I shoved past her and burst inside. And there they were. My parents, who had told me they were on a business trip, sitting in the warm, cozy living room. My elegant mother was wearing an apron, carrying a platter of steaming food. My father was on the sofa, watching the evening news. The moment they saw me, their faces changed. I gritted my teeth. “Sorry to interrupt your little family reunion.” The sense of betrayal was a tidal wave, drowning me. “A multi-million dollar apartment. How generous! I thought you said she was going back to where she belonged.” My father cleared his throat, his expression turning grave. “We had no choice, Zoe. You lived in that place for sixteen years. You know what it’s like. For Stella to go back there… it would be like sending her to hell.” Hell? A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “That’s because she was born in hell. What’s that got to do with me? I know, you think I’m not as graceful or as kind as she is. I’m calculating, petty, selfish—I have all the ugly traits of someone who clawed their way out of poverty. But did I ever have a chance to be like her?” My adoptive parents—Stella’s biological parents—were the laziest couple in our town. They never worked, never earned a cent, just leeched off their own parents. When their kids got old enough, they started leeching off us. By the time I was four, I was out with my older sister, scavenging for scrap metal just to have enough to eat. A few years later, I was in a factory, my small hands working day and night. I learned to fight over every last penny, to never let anyone take advantage of me. I’m sixteen now, but I’m barely five feet tall. I only just got my first period. The family doctor said I was severely malnourished, my growth permanently stunted. “You feel sorry for her, for being sent to hell?” My voice cracked. “Why don’t you feel sorry for me? The place you call hell is where I spent sixteen years of my life!” Even if they had sent Stella back, she would have had it better than I did. They would have given her money. She was old enough now, she could have endured it for a couple of years, gotten into college, and escaped those parents for good. Stella just stood there, biting her lip, murmuring, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” My mother finally broke. “What more do you want? Yes, yes, you suffered! But whose fault is that? Do you think I wanted my child to grow up in poverty? Do you think I enjoyed raising someone else’s daughter? Fate played a cruel joke, letting you be born from my body only to live a life of misery. Maybe… maybe you were just born into the wrong fate. Stella was destined for a good life, and you were destined for…” She trailed off, her lips trembling. I finished her sentence for her. “To be worthless?”

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1 It was the second year of Jason’s supposed return to our family, two years after I’d first discovered his affair. The shattered bones in my right hand, the hand of a surgeon, had finally started to knit back together. I was cleared for duty, back within the sterile, familiar walls of Metropolitan General Hospital. But on my very first day back, I ran into her. Bella. The woman who had fractured my marriage. She was lowering herself awkwardly from an ultrasound table, her belly swollen, ripe with a full-term pregnancy. The moment the curtain was pulled aside, my eyes locked with Jason’s. His hand, steadying Bella, froze for a fraction of a second. His gaze darted away, unable to meet mine. Without a word, I turned and walked out. I went straight to the admissions desk and scheduled a procedure for myself. Termination of an early-stage pregnancy. This twisted, tangled mess of years… it was time to finally cut the cord. … I stood there, a statue in a white coat, my chest tightening until I could barely breathe. My mind was a blizzard of white noise. My first instinct was to flee, but Jason’s voice, sharp and loud, stopped me in my tracks. “Ava!” At the sound of my name, Bella let out a startled cry and crumpled to the floor. “Jason… something’s wrong… my stomach…” The hand he’d started to reach out to me snapped back. He rushed to her side, all frantic concern. I watched, a cold, detached observer in my own life’s wreckage. “What kind of doctor just stands there?” a voice muttered from the growing crowd. “Look at her, frozen like a statue. A pregnant woman is on the floor, and she’s not lifting a finger.” The commotion drew a small crowd, phones already emerging to capture the drama. Jason shielded Bella with his body, her pale, tear-streaked face pressed against his back. “Ava… it’s not what you think… I didn’t…” he started, his voice a low plea. Bella peeked around him, her eyes wide with feigned innocence. “Dr. Ross, it wasn’t his fault, I swear. It was me. I couldn’t leave him alone. Please… don’t blame him, please?” A sharp pain lanced through my head, but with it came a chilling clarity. I walked toward them, each step deliberate, and slapped her across the face. The sound was a clean, sharp crack in the hospital corridor. “Is screwing another woman’s husband some kind of addiction for you, Bella?” I asked, my voice dripping with the venom I’d suppressed for years. She staggered, grabbing my hand, refusing to let go, her lips forming pleas for forgiveness. That’s when Jason finally snapped. He yanked me away from her and shoved me, hard. I slammed onto the cold, unforgiving tile floor. “Ava! Have you lost your mind? Can’t you see she’s pregnant, about to give birth?!” he roared, his face a mask of fury. “Where’s your humanity? Where’s your goddamn compassion? The baby is innocent!” My head hit the ground with a sickening thud, the world ringing in my ears. Warm blood trickled from my forehead, catching in my eyelashes, staining my vision crimson. But the years of hatred and rage coalesced into a single, burning point of focus. I gritted my teeth, pushing myself up. “You want to talk about time and place?” I spat, the words tasting of blood. “Did you think about ‘time and place’ when you were tearing the clothes off this slut? Did you think about my feelings every time you swore you’d changed, every time you promised our family came first?” I staggered to my feet, a phantom ache flaring up in my right hand, the one he had already broken. This sham of a marriage should have ended long ago. It should have ended three years ago. The day he shoved me down a flight of stairs—costing me our first child—just so Bella could steal the credit for my research paper. It should have ended when he used my ruined hand as leverage, forcing me to perform surgery on Bella’s mother. It should have ended when he desecrated my parents’ final resting place, scattering their ashes to the wind just to get me to pull some strings for her mother. I remembered the surgeon’s words after my tenth operation, the phrase seared into my memory. “I’m sorry, Dr. Ross. It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever hold a scalpel again.” I should have filed for divorce right then, in the depths of that living hell. I regret not doing it sooner. My whole body trembled. My back, my chest, and now a dull, heavy ache in my lower abdomen. The sight of me, bloodied and shaking, seemed to finally penetrate Jason’s rage. He reached a hand out, then let it hover in the air, uncertain. He couldn’t look me in the eye. His tone softened, an old, familiar attempt to placate me. “Ava… why do you have to be like this… so… dramatic?” “I promise you,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Once the baby is born, I’ll never see her again. Okay?” “It’s my fault. I just… I didn’t know you’d be at the hospital today.” He knelt, trying to help me up. The guilt in his eyes looked almost real, but Bella’s staged sobs in the background were a constant, grating reminder of the truth. He had cheated. Again. My right hand drifted to my stomach, a sudden, damp warmth spreading through my clothes. He didn’t know. The next patient scheduled for an ultrasound was me. It was my fault. My fault for believing a man like him could ever change. My fault for being so foolish as to conceive a child in the ruins of our life. Tears I didn’t know I was holding back streamed down my face. “We’re getting a divorce,” I said, my voice hollow. “And you will leave with nothing.” Meeting Jason had been an accident. His family’s empire had crumbled overnight, leaving him with nothing but his parents’ debts. He’d been stabbed by loan sharks, left for dead in a filthy alley, crawling his way onto the street when I found him. No one in the city would touch him. No one dared. But I was a doctor. My oath was to save lives. So I saved his. He called me his savior, the only light in his world. And then, with the life I’d given back to him, he rebuilt everything, creating a new empire from the ashes of the old one. When I wanted flowers, the entire hospital would be filled with them the next day. When I wanted love, he tattooed my name over his heart and filled the sky with drones spelling out his devotion for 520 consecutive days. When I wanted his time, he dropped everything, cancelled meetings, even skipped the anniversary of his parents’ deaths. Then came a car accident. Bella became his private nurse. And somehow, she moved from his hospital room right into his heart. Betrayal was just that simple. When I first found out, he fell to his knees before me. “Ava, she looks so much like you. I was coming out of anesthesia… I thought she was you!” Their on-again, off-again affair dragged on for a year. It started with secret meetings in hospital rooms after faked injuries and escalated to him bringing her into our home. It all came to a head when security footage caught her pushing me from a second-story balcony. I was five months pregnant. I lost the baby. Bella went to jail. And Jason, finally, came back to me. Or so I thought. It was clear now they’d never really been apart. … After scheduling the abortion, I left. It took a long time sitting in my car in the parking garage to still the shaking in my hands. Finally, I picked up my phone and called my lawyer. “Cole, that divorce petition you drafted for me last year? Let’s proceed.” “The grounds are the same. Adultery. We can prove cohabitation. And per the postnup he signed, I want everything. I want every single dollar he spent on his mistress back.” “Have the papers on my desk in three days.” As the car wound its way out of the garage, the cramping in my abdomen grew sharper, a relentless tide of pain. Maybe I wouldn’t need the surgery after all. Maybe this tiny, unformed life was already slipping away. I looked up just in time to see headlights. A deafening roar of metal on metal. The airbag exploded against me, but the force of the impact was too great. I was thrown from the car. “Help… someone…” I gasped, the world spinning. Before the shock could even register, another car, a pearl-white sedan, screeched to a halt, its tire inches from my head. My terror was a beat too slow. The car lurched forward. The tire rolled directly over my right hand. “AHHH!” The agony was instantaneous, absolute. I curled into a ball, but through a haze of pain, I saw her face in the driver’s seat. Bella. Her expression was a mask of triumphant fury. Her lips formed two words. “I win.” … I was bundled onto a stretcher like a broken doll, rushed from the ambulance to the OR. Through the fog, I could hear a frantic, weeping voice. “Jason… what do I do? What do I do?” “I was just trying to catch up to her! I just wanted to explain!” “I’ve screwed up so bad! Jason, you’ll protect me, won’t you?” “Jason, I can’t go back to jail! Our baby can’t grow up without a mother! Save me!” And then, cutting through the wail of the sirens and Bella’s desperate sobs, I heard Jason’s voice, deep and steady. “Don’t worry.” “I’ll handle everything.” For a moment, the physical pain vanished, replaced by the chilling echo of those two sentences. Jason. All these years… what a fucking joke. My life flashed before my eyes, a chaotic, nonsensical nightmare. But the cold sting of the anesthetic and the glint of the scalpel told me this was real. This was just one more cross I had to bear. “I’m sorry, Dr. Ross,” the surgeon told me later. “The chances of you regaining enough function to operate are now virtually zero. We’ll have to discuss alternative positions for you at the hospital.” “And… about the pregnancy… the trauma from the impact was too severe…” Before he could finish, Jason walked in, holding two documents. One was a liability waiver. The other was a statement, promising I would not press charges against Bella. I stared up at him, a sense of profound absurdity washing over me. I was fresh out of surgery, and he was already here, running interference for the woman who tried to kill me. He didn’t even have to speak. I snatched the papers from his hand and, ignoring the searing pain, tore them into confetti. “She did this to me, Jason! She deserves to pay for what she’s done!” “You want me to just let it go? Not a chance in hell!” I watched his expression shift from annoyance to cold, hard authority. His hand cracked across my face. The IV stand beside me wobbled and crashed to the floor. “Ava, why can’t you ever learn?” he snarled. “Bella has already apologized. Why can’t you just leave her alone?!” “She’s already been to prison once because of you! Are you trying to destroy her completely!?” “Do you have any decency? Any empathy?” “You’re just like them,” he spat, his voice filled with a sudden, chilling venom. “You’re just like the loan sharks who left me for dead in that alley. So self-righteous. So determined to burn everything to the ground.” I snapped. The last thread of my sanity broke. A year ago, after I’d saved his life, I’d been harassed by his creditors, kidnapped three times, and once, almost gang-raped. I had risked everything for him. And now he was comparing me to them. I launched myself at him, grabbing a shard of the broken IV bottle and swinging it at his head. But he was too strong. He caught my wrist, twisted my arm, and slammed me against the wall, his hand closing around my throat. “Your hand is already useless,” he hissed, his face inches from mine. “You have no future as a surgeon.” “Let Bella go, and I won’t divorce you.” Security guards, nurses, and Bella herself rushed into the room, drawn by the commotion. Bella threw herself into Jason’s arms, sobbing. “Jason… don’t fight. Please don’t fight because of me. It’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to our baby!” Her crying grew more frantic, more hysterical. “I’ll go,” she wailed. “I’ll leave. I’ll disappear from your life forever. I’ll raise the baby on my own, I won’t take a single cent from you, just please, please don’t fight with her, don’t divorce her…” Whether it was a performance or a genuine breakdown, I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, she dropped to the floor and began slamming her head against the tiles, the rhythmic thudding echoing in the tense silence. Jason’s resolve crumbled. He looked completely undone. With a choked cry, he grabbed a piece of the shattered glass from the floor. He gritted his teeth, and in one swift, horrifying motion, he slashed his own arm, severing a tendon. Blood sprayed across the white walls, a constellation of crimson. The room erupted in chaos. “Ava,” he gasped, clutching his bleeding arm. “Bella’s mistakes… I’ll pay for them. I’ll carry her burden.” “But I will not let you hurt her again!” For a second, I was lost in a memory, the image of him shielding me from harm two years ago overlapping with the monster standing before me. I stared blankly at the scene. A nurse shrieked. A pool of blood was spreading on the floor beneath Bella. The call button buzzed incessantly. Bella was screaming, clutching her stomach. Jason, panicked and on the verge of becoming a father, was shouting for help. The room felt like a scene from hell, a cacophony of pain and fear. A gurney finally arrived and wheeled Bella away, leaving my room in a sudden, ringing silence. It was a relief. Except for Jason’s parting threat, thrown over his shoulder as he left. “If anything happens to Bella or my child, I swear to God, you will pay!” Through the light slanting in from the hallway, his face was a blur of rage. My own bandages were already soaked through with fresh blood. A doctor rushed in, his face grim. He said I needed a second surgery, immediately. As the anesthetic began to work its magic, my mind drifted back to the last time our marriage had shattered. Just after they’d released me from the psychiatric hospital Jason had committed me to. I remembered standing in the bright, sterile living room of our villa, feeling small and fragile. “Ava, dear, just apologize to Jason, and he’ll apologize to you. Then we can all put this behind us,” my mother had said, casually admiring an expensive gift he had bought her. Jason stood by the window, tapping ash from a cigarette. “Ava, I was wrong. I sent Bella overseas. I swear I’ll never have contact with her again.” He slid a document across the table. “This is my guarantee to you. If I ever cheat again, everything I own becomes yours. Just be good now, okay?” I had hesitated. Maybe it was because I still loved him. Maybe it was the terror of being sent back to that place. In the end, I agreed. I chose to try and salvage what was left of our broken marriage. … The second surgery was quick. The moment I was wheeled out of the OR, a shadow fell over me. It was Jason. He grabbed my newly bandaged right hand and hauled me up from the gurney. His face was contorted with a rage that bordered on madness. “Ava!” he roared. “Why can’t you ever learn? Why did you get to have your surgery before Bella?” “It’s your fault! You caused her to go into premature labor! It’s your fault there’s something wrong with my baby!” The pain was so intense I couldn’t even scream. Cold sweat drenched my body. “Ja…son!” I gasped. “Let me go!” I struggled against his grip, but it was useless. There was a sickening snap. I felt the fragile bones in my hand give way, my wrist bending at an unnatural, ninety-degree angle. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? My baby—our baby—is in the NICU!” he bellowed. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened!” He dragged me off the gurney and began slapping me, over and over. The hospital corridor was full of people, but no one moved. No one dared to intervene. I started to laugh. A raw, gurgling sound. My mouth filled with blood, spilling from my lips and gums. The sound was horrifying, inhuman. A true vision of hell. My laughter seemed to startle him. His face twisted in disgust. “You’re pathetic! You’re completely insane!” After one final, ringing slap, a nurse came rushing up to him. “Mr. Croft, your baby is type AB. The mother is type A. We need to test your blood type. The blood bank is critically low, and the baby is in danger!” Jason, still breathing heavily from his assault, froze. The color drained from his face. “I’m… I’m O-negative.”

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After my family declared bankruptcy, I was sent off to marry into the Thorne family to clear our debts. On the very first day of our marriage, my new husband threw a black card onto the table and told me that the only thing he could give me was money. Not only that, he seemed to despise me. He would rather do all the housework himself than let me touch a single thing in the house. After three years of this cold treatment, I wanted a divorce. I walked to his study, divorce papers in hand. But just as I reached the door, I heard the distinct sound of sobbing coming from inside. “Three years! I’ve been waiting on her hand and foot for three years! I transfer a million dollars to her account every month, I cook dinner for her every single night, and she still doesn’t care about me!” Then, his best friend’s angry voice cut through the air. “I told you not to be so dramatic back then! You’re a total house-husband, why the hell did you brand yourself as a playboy?” 1 My family went bust. As a result, I was engaged to Sterling Thorne. The Thorne family is old money—deep ties in both politics and business. Their foundation is rock solid. Logically speaking, a family like that shouldn’t have looked twice at a bankrupt heiress like me. But, as fate would have it, their second son, Sterling Thorne, was a disaster. He was the city’s most notorious playboy. The number of girlfriends he’d had was uncountable. Because of this, any decent socialite with a bit of family wealth who had the luxury of choice wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. Sterling’s parents were desperate. When they heard about my family’s financial collapse, they immediately sent a proposal. They told my parents that as long as I married Sterling, they would wipe out our debt. Although we were broke, my background was clean. I graduated from an Ivy League school, I was reasonably attractive, and I had a reputation for being gentle and well-mannered. I was exactly the kind of docile daughter-in-law they wanted. My parents looked at me with guilt. Despite the tempting offer, they knew exactly what kind of man Sterling was. I, however, just nodded. “No problem. I can get married anytime.” My reasoning was simple: rather than struggling and potentially ending up with a broke jerk later, I’d rather marry a rich jerk now. 2 I had heard plenty of rumors about Sterling Thorne, but the day we signed the marriage license was the first time I actually met him. He didn’t look like the playboy I had imagined. He was wearing a soft, light blue cotton shirt. The top button was undone, offering a glimpse of his collarbone. He wore gold-rimmed glasses that gave him a scholarly, almost refined air. He looked elegant. Sophisticated. It was hard to believe this man was the wildest player in the city. You really can’t judge a book by its cover. Sterling didn’t seem to like me much. During the signing at City Hall, he kept a poker face and didn’t say a word to me. But when he took the marriage certificate, he paused. The hand holding the document trembled slightly. Maybe even he couldn’t believe that a free spirit like him had actually gotten married. We didn’t have a wedding ceremony. After getting the license, I moved directly into Sterling’s villa in the Hamptons. That same day, he handed me a bank card. “I’ll wire a million dollars into this account every month. You can spend it however you like. “I have nothing else to offer you. The only thing I can give you is money.” I accepted it calmly. We were a business merger, after all. There were no real feelings involved. He was upfront about it, and he was generous with his money. I had nothing to complain about. I nodded and started dragging my luggage toward the guest bedroom. I’d heard Sterling often brought women home. I figured I should be a considerate roommate. 3 Sterling’s expression stiffened for a second. He called out to me. “Harper, where are you going?” I looked at him, confused. “I heard that… your villa gets a little lively at night. So, I prepared the guest room for myself.” Sterling looked like he didn’t understand. “Are you worried about noise? I had the butler install soundproofing in the master suite. You don’t need to sleep in the guest room.” I decided to be more direct. “No, I mean… I heard you often bring female friends back to the villa. I don’t want to disturb you.” Sterling’s face suddenly turned bright red. “No… that’s just…” But seeing my knowing look, he awkwardly nodded. “Right. Yes. I do… sometimes bring female friends home. You know, a guy with my reputation, I have to keep up appearances. “I’ll sleep in the guest room. You take the master bedroom. Don’t worry, I won’t let them bother you.” I raised an eyebrow. Them? Sterling really played the field. While I was still processing this, Sterling grabbed my suitcase, carried it into the master bedroom, and started unpacking for me. He hung my dresses in the closet. He organized my skincare products on the vanity. He even folded my socks into perfect little squares. Watching his practiced movements, I couldn’t help but marvel. Is the competition among playboys this fierce nowadays? They have to be domestic gods too? 4 It wasn’t until Sterling had organized all my belongings that he seemed to realize what he was doing. He froze. We looked at each other, silence stretching between us. “I didn’t expect… you to be so thoughtful,” I said. Sterling’s eyes darted around the room. “No… don’t misunderstand. I just…” “I get it,” I said, nodding understandingly. “You have a lot of relationship experience, so it’s a habit. I won’t read into it.” Sterling paused, then nodded firmly. “Right… exactly. That’s it. I’ve had a lot of ex-girlfriends. I got used to serving them. Don’t mind me.” I waved my hand. “No, I don’t mind. Everyone has a past.” Sterling suddenly checked his watch, as if remembering something urgent. “I have a meeting at four. Can I come back at five to make you dinner? What do you want to eat?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re coming back… to cook for me?” Sterling froze again, but he recovered quickly. “Sorry, I was just using my watch to text a friend. I promised her I’d cook this afternoon. You don’t mind, do you?” I gave the sensible answer. “Not at all. I understand.” However, as he walked away, I stared at the Patek Philippe on his wrist with confusion. Since when can a mechanical watch send text messages?

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I transmigrated into a dark romance novel with a single mission: capture the heart of Alistair Vane, the city’s most reclusive, sanctimonious billionaire. He was cruel, numb, cold-blooded, and untouchable. And he killed me exactly nine times. The first time, he flayed me alive, tanning my skin to bind his personal bible. The second time, he cut me open to remove the unborn child, turning the fetal skull into a sacrificial chalice. The third time, he carved my flesh into “purified” relics, crushed my 206 bones into dust, and scattered them over the Rockies for the eagles to feast on. … Every time I died, the world reset, and my progress bar dropped back to zero. I crawled over broken glass to pray for him until my knees were ruined. I suffered seventy miscarriages in a single year. When he called me “filthy,” I ate mud for three years just to prove my penitence. But he still killed me. It wasn’t until the ninth attempt, when my soul was already riddled with holes, that I realized the truth. Alistair Vane didn’t have a heart. I begged the System to end the mission, but it was undergoing an update and couldn’t respond. However, the glitch delayed the reset. Floating as a ghost, I watched him gently caress the memorial photo of his dead fiancée, Seraphina. His eyes held a tenderness I had never seen directed at me. “Be patient, my angel. Just one more time. Once I kill that wretch again, we can go back to the moment before you took your own life.” “If she hadn’t drugged me, you never would have walked in on us.” “That was supposed to be my wedding, but it became your funeral.” The truth hit me like a bullet. He wasn’t affected by the reset. He remembered everything. He wasn’t a stone I couldn’t warm up. He was a man who had hated me to the bone since the moment Seraphina died. My mission had failed from the very start. My spirit followed Alistair toward a heavy oak door covered in Latin verses. What I saw inside stopped my spectral heart. The room was filled with silicone casts of Seraphina’s lower body, arranged in neat, obsessive rows. Alistair, the man who preached abstinence and cold detachment for nine lifetimes, picked up one of the molds and kissed it with feverish devotion. He looked more pious than he ever did in church. Then, stripping off his clothes, he began to use the mold like a man possessed. I watched, suffocating in shock. For nine lifetimes, except for the first time when I used drugs, he had refused to touch a woman. In the fourth loop, when I lost control and kissed him, he felt so defiled that he poured boiling oil over himself to “cleanse” his skin. That was the only time the world reset because the target died. Since then, I never dared to touch him. But now? He was groaning, sweating, losing his mind over a piece of silicone. I looked at his ecstatic face, then at my own ghostly hands—hands that had been bleached white from scrubbing his floors with harsh chemicals. The irony was crushing. It wasn’t about piety. He just thought I was dirty. Suddenly, the System came back online. [Host death detected. Initiating reset.] 1 In a blur, I was back in the center of the wedding hall. Alistair was holding the ring, about to put it on my finger. The reset point had jumped forward again. Seraphina stormed onto the stage, tears streaming down her face, a knife pressed to her wrist. “Alistair, are you really going to marry her?” Alistair’s eyes darkened. He reacted instantly, shoving me hard. I crashed into the champagne tower. Shards of crystal embedded themselves into my back. Alcohol seeped into the open wounds. Every breath was agony. But Alistair didn’t even glance at me. He rushed toward Seraphina, grabbing the blade with his bare hand, tears in his eyes. “Angel, don’t do this!” He… was crying? For nine lifetimes, I thought his emotions reset with the world. I endured his cruelty because I thought I could fix him. If the System hadn’t lagged, I never would have known he was faking it all. “The wedding is off,” he announced coldly, holding Seraphina close. I staggered to my feet. “What?” His face twisted into a mask of disgust. “Elara, did you really think drugging me and crawling into my bed like a whore would force me to marry you?” The guests gasped. “Oh my god, she looks so innocent, but she’s trash.” Seraphina sobbed into his chest. “Alistair, when I heard you two that night… I couldn’t take it…” He wiped her tears with infinite gentleness, then turned that gaze onto me like a weapon. “Your cheap tricks make me sick.” He grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the broken glass. “You think I don’t know? Every single time, you…” He stopped himself abruptly. My pupils dilated. I stared at him. “Every single time… what?” Say it. Admit you know everything. But he just released me, letting me tumble down the marble stairs. Blood from my forehead blinded me. He stood above me, looking like a vengeful god. “Stop trying to seduce me. I will always despise a slut like you.” The pain was blinding. Flashes of my nine deaths played like a slideshow. The searing heat of being flayed. The hollow agony of being cut open. The sharp pecking of eagles eating my bones. The System seemed to malfunction, dumping the sensory pain of all nine past lives onto me at once. Meanwhile, he kissed Seraphina, not looking back once. The guests surrounded me, spitting on the floor near my face. “Home-wrecker.” “Deserved it.” Suddenly, a group of hotel security guards rushed out. At his subtle signal, they began to tear at my dress. I heard his whispered command to the head guard: “After you’re done with her, use a champagne bottle to ruin her insides. Make sure she can never carry a bastard child.” Lying in the wreckage, I laughed. “Alistair Vane, you’re a hell of an actor…” He looked back, his eyes cold. “What did you say?” I wiped the blood from my lip. “I said… I hope you two rot in hell together.” Internally, I screamed at the System. “I forfeit the mission.” [Host has forfeited. Extraction from this world will occur in 15 days.] 2 It was a stormy night when the guards finally threw me out the back door of the hotel. My body was broken. Blood wouldn’t stop running down my legs. My heels had snapped, so I walked barefoot on the asphalt. I looked up and saw Alistair’s bodyguard in the shadows, his phone pointed at me. “Don’t block the camera. Mr. Vane wants to watch the livestream.” The bodyguard smirked. I straightened my spine as much as I could and limped to a convenience store. Counting the change in my pocket, I had just enough for a roll of bandages. The cashier looked at my bruised face and sneered. “Aren’t you that desperate girl who drugged Mr. Vane?” I kept my head down. The TV behind the counter was looping the wedding chaos. SHOCKING: Billionaire exposes bride’s drug scandal at altar! The screen cut to a close-up of Seraphina weeping in Alistair’s arms. The cashier turned up the volume. “Look at that necklace on Miss Seraphina. It’s made from the ashes of Alistair’s own finger bone. That’s true love!” Ashes… bone… I took the bandages, my hands shaking. In the fifth loop, he had burned me alive to make “relics.” Phantom pain shot through my skeleton. I ran out into the rain, realizing I had nowhere to go. Alistair had seized all my assets, including my small apartment. The rain intensified. I found a dry spot under an overpass and curled up in a discarded cardboard box. My fever spiked. In the haze, I saw the ghost of my sixth life, bleeding out right here on this pavement. I saw the third life, where homeless men attacked me in this exact spot. Every memory overlapped. Hunger gnawed at my stomach. I stumbled toward a nearby dumpster. I found an unopened sandwich, but before I could grab it, a stray dog lunged, sinking its teeth into my arm. I cried out, but stifled it quickly. The dog let go. The wound was deep. Just then, three men approached. “Are you Elara?” The leader held up a phone. Alistair’s cold voice rang out from the speaker: “Do whatever you want. The money will be wired when you’re done.” “Mr. Vane said we could have some fun,” the man grinned, grabbing my hair. “He said you’re durable.” I struggled. “Get off me!” But I was too weak. A fist to the stomach. A blow to the face. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I curled into a ball, instinctively trying to protect my back—my back that had been flayed in the first life. Ribs cracked. Just as blackness began to take me, sirens wailed in the distance. The thugs scattered, kicking me one last time for good measure. I lay in the mud, letting the rain wash the filth away. At dawn, a street sweeper found me. “Another junkie found in the trash.” Then, hurried footsteps. “Yes, Mr. Vane. We found her.” It was his assistant. I heard Alistair’s voice on the phone. “Is she alive?” I opened one swollen eye. The sweeper whispered, “Is that the girl from the news? The one who tried to off herself?” Silence on the other end, then the sound of glass shattering. “Suicide? Impossible! She…” His voice cut off. She what? She can’t die? I looked at the grey sky and smirked. You think you can still control the narrative, Alistair? Keep dreaming. 3 I woke up shivering uncontrollably. I was locked in a walk-in freezer set to -4°F. My wounds had been bandaged, but the cold made them ache deep in the bone. The room had been set up like a chapel. In the center was a desk made of ice. I trembled, remembering the seventh life. He had bled me dry in a chapel to use my blood as ink. “Copy the Bible. Kneel.” Alistair stood at the door, his voice colder than the air. He remembered everything, yet he conveniently forgot that I had absorbed snake venom for him in a previous timeline—venom that flared up when exposed to cold. “And if I say… I can’t?” He sneered. “I thought you loved kneeling for forgiveness?” I laughed bitterly. “Since I met you, I have never prayed to a god.” That was the last timeline. I had kneeled for eighty-one days to pray for his health. My words seemed to glitch him. A flicker of panic crossed his eyes. “You said it yourself. You’d endure anything for me. Forgotten so soon?” “Kneel for another eighty-one days. Prove you won’t harass Seraphina again.” Seraphina again. In the first timeline, before she died, he didn’t even look at her. He called her a boring, clingy stalker. He publicly declared me the love of his life. But once she died, she became a saint. The cold venom activated. It felt like thousands of ants eating my marrow. The scabs on my knees split open. Blood stained the ice. I passed out.

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The old man made it clear: if I could get pregnant, there would be a fifty-million-dollar bonus waiting in my trust fund. On my wedding night, I stared at the man on the bed. He was completely ignoring my sheer lingerie, devoting all his attention to a Captain Galaxy action figure. I was furious. I snatched the toy out of his hand and shoved it down the neckline of my dress. I smirked at him, wiggling a finger. “You want it? Come and find it.” 1 Sterling Vance’s brain might be broken, but his body was certainly top-tier. He had broad shoulders like a linebacker and a tapered waist. His muscles were defined, sharp, and eye-catching. He looked like he could do some serious damage in the bedroom. Unfortunately, that prime physique was currently being piloted by a damaged processor. All he cared about was his action figure. I tugged at my dark crimson lace nightgown. The neckline was dangerously low, my skin glowing under the warm light. And yet, he didn’t even glance at me. I’m Blair Montgomery. I turn heads wherever I go. When have I ever been ignored like this? I grabbed the toy and stuffed it against my chest. The hard plastic dug into my skin, but I didn’t care. “You want it?” I crooked my finger, smiling wickedly. “Come get it yourself.” Sterling finally looked up. His lashes were thick and dark, his eyes innocent like a golden retriever’s. His gaze dropped, locking onto my neckline. God, he was hot. “Can’t find it,” he mumbled. I leaned forward intentionally, letting the fabric gape open. “Look closer.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. His gaze drilled downward. My breath hitched, my chest rising and falling. “See it yet?” “Red.” His cold face spat out the word. It was unexpectedly sexy. My knees almost gave out, but I held my ground to tease him. “Wrong. It’s pink.” He frowned, looking deadly serious. “Captain Galaxy’s combat mode is red.” … I wanted to beat him until he turned red. But looking at his tempting physique, and thinking about the fifty million dollars… I calmed down. “Since you’ve seen it…” I lowered my voice, guiding his eyes with my fingertip. “Don’t you want to take it out with your own hands?” I stepped closer across the plush carpet. The hem of my nightgown swayed. Sterling’s eyes were dark and heavy. I didn’t know if it was because of me or that stupid toy. But as he walked toward me, I actually felt jealous of an action figure. He got closer. Sterling leaned down, his pitch-black eyes staring straight at my chest. His warm breath hit my collarbone. It tickled. His fingers were long and clean, knuckles defined, hovering just an inch away. He was about to touch me. I held my breath, my heart hammering— Then, this jerk suddenly turned around, opened the nightstand drawer, and pulled out another Captain Galaxy figure! Are you kidding me? Back when his brain worked, he ignored me to annoy me. Now that he’s regressed, he’s inventing new ways to torture me! Fine, Sterling. Just you wait. For fifty million, I have no morals. Tonight, I’m getting what I want, even if I have to do all the work myself. 2 The Vance and Montgomery families go way back. Sterling and I were basically childhood frenemies. But this man always hated my lifestyle. I was the trust-fund party girl; he was the serious heir. If I was dancing on tables, he was frowning in the corner. If I was laughing in a crowd, his face was black as thunder. Pft. Who needs his approval? The line of guys wanting to date me stretches to Paris. When the merger marriage was announced, I wasn’t surprised. Energy giants merging. Standard operating procedure. I didn’t like anyone else anyway, so why not? But I made sure to look miserable about it, just to annoy him. I didn’t expect him to go nuclear. At the engagement dinner, he stood up to his father. “I won’t agree to this marriage. Don’t force it.” He said hurtful words, but his posture was so straight, so defiant… it was annoyingly sexy. Fine. You’d rather tear the family apart than marry me? Sterling had his own tech company, so he didn’t need his daddy’s money. He had the capital to rebel. If he hadn’t crashed his McLaren and scrambled his brain, this wedding would have been delayed until I hit menopause. The doctors said once the hematoma cleared, he’d be back to normal. Mr. Vance was desperate. He pulled me aside and whispered, “Blair, while he’s… confused… get pregnant. Fifty million, wired immediately.” With Sterling’s face? His body? Sleeping with him is a win. Getting paid for it is a jackpot. Most importantly… imagine the look on his face when he wakes up and realizes I had my way with him. Just thinking about it made me laugh out loud. 3 Sterling was by the cabinet, posing his toy. “Is that thing really that fun?” I narrowed my eyes and shimmied two steps closer. He didn’t look up. “Yes.” I closed my eyes. Patience. I deliberately slid my strap down half an inch. “Do you… want to play something more exciting?” He looked up, eyes innocent. “Like what?” Now! I opened my arms and lunged at him like a hungry tiger. He side-stepped. Smoothly. Then he started doing parkour around the room. He ran, I chased. I was seeing stars. This guy has the stamina of a marathon runner and he’s using it to play tag in the master suite! He ran me in circles for twenty minutes. I didn’t even touch the hem of his shirt. I was panting, hair sticking to my sweaty face, my dress twisted. “S-stop… running…” I wheezed, holding my waist. He stood six feet away, clutching the toy. “Stop chasing.” … Hard power won’t work. Fine. A battle of patience? I threw myself onto the bed, pulled out my phone, and started playing a MOBA game. “First Blood!” My phone blared. He glanced at me, fingers still adjusting Captain Galaxy’s pose. Unbelievable. Other newlyweds are burning the sheets; we’re playing video games and dolls. This marriage is truly one of a kind. 4 Two hours later. Gurgle. The sound ripped through the room. I looked up. Sterling was clutching his stomach. Right. The idiot hadn’t eaten all day. My anger faded. Looking at that handsome face and that tight waist, my ulterior motives returned. Idea. I sprinted to the mini-fridge, grabbed a yogurt, and locked the fridge door with a satisfying click. “Hungry?” I shook the yogurt, slowly peeling the lid back. Sterling was definitely hungry. He stared at the cup. He swallowed. The jerk. He didn’t gulp for me, but he gulped for Greek yogurt. “It’s so good~” I licked the spoon. “Want a taste?” He nodded, eyes wary. “Come here. I’ll feed you.” “Don’t trust you.” He took a half-step back. I took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Fine. You stand on that side of the bed, I’ll stay on this side. I’ll feed you across the mattress. Deal?” He tilted his head, thinking. Finally, he shuffled to the edge of the bed. I leaned over the mattress, stretching my arm out, offering the spoon. “Say ahhh.” Sterling leaned down, opening his mouth to catch the spoon. His thin lips parted, a flash of tongue swept out. White yogurt landed on his tongue. It was… inexplicably erotic. My best friend Sloane’s voice echoed in my head: “Sterling is the repressed type. When he finally kisses someone, he’s going to devour them.” I stared at his mouth. I swallowed, too. I kept feeding him like a machine. One bite. Another. Sterling lowered his guard. He kept his eyes down, playing with his toy while opening his mouth on command. He didn’t notice when I switched the spoon for my finger. He instinctively wrapped his lips around my fingertip, his tongue grazing the sensitive pad. A jolt of electricity shot down my spine. I almost moaned. Excellent. Next step: pants. He was still oblivious, sucking on the yogurt. With every bite, I crawled further across the bed, inching closer in a very unladylike manner. Victory was two feet away. Sterling was right there. The focused way he ate was so pure, yet it made my mouth go dry. I stared at his throat moving as he swallowed. Time to undo the belt. The cup was almost empty. I dipped my finger in the last bit. As he lowered his head to lick it, I jerked my hand back. Reflexively, he lunged forward to follow it, lost his balance, and collapsed right on top of me. Jackpot! My legs instantly wrapped around his waist, locking him down. My hands scrambled for his belt buckle. What kind of designer buckle is this? I can’t open it! Afraid he’d bolt, I tightened my legs. “Don’t move,” Sterling said, his voice huskier than a “fool” should sound. Before I could react—Click. He undid the metal buckle with one hand. Yes! He pulled the belt off and threw it aside. Then he leaned his weight onto me. That familiar, oppressive aura… it felt like the old Sterling was back. Is it happening? I closed my eyes, nervous anticipation flooding me. Suddenly, Sterling clamped my wrists. His grip was iron. I panicked. “Hey, easy…” Before I could finish, he crossed my wrists above my head and wrapped the leather belt around them. Tight. Bondage? Since when is he into this? My eyes went wide. I watched him reach down, grab my ankles, and forcefully pry my legs off his waist. “Sterling Vance!” My voice trembled. He didn’t even look up. He straightened my legs, turned around, and walked away. He left. He actually left. He left me tied up on the bed, dress hiked up to my thighs, cleavage out. Is he even human? He grabbed a pillow, picked up Captain Galaxy, and walked straight into the bathroom. I struggled against the belt, the leather burning my wrists. “You jerk… just you wait!” It took me twenty minutes to wiggle free. I jumped off the bed and charged the bathroom. Locked. “Sterling! You coward! Open the door!” I twisted the handle until my hand cramped. Nothing. In a rage, I kicked the door. Thud. … Ow. My toe.

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When I was thirteen, I decided to end it all. But the moment before I jumped off that bridge, I met a man. He grabbed my arm, stopping me from plummeting into the icy water below. When I asked him why he saved me, he just smiled and said nothing. Before he left, he said something that sounded like a riddle: “In the name of spring.” I didn’t understand what he meant back then. But later, I realized he was saving me in the name of a season that represented hope. He was the spring that lasted my entire life. 01 At thirteen, I made a decision. Death might seem like a distant concept to most kids my age. But as I sat on the railing of the bridge, I was genuinely calculating the best way to fall. Making the decision to die is actually the hardest part. I looked down at the rushing river. A crowd had gathered, pointing fingers and whispering. A frantic woman nearby was trying to talk me down, someone had already called 911, but the sirens were still distant. I looked at the world with total apathy. Dying on my birthday seemed poetic. It wasn’t like anyone cared what day it was anyway. Not my parents. Not my grandparents. Not a single soul in my life. 02 I was the middle child. Above me was Serena, the golden girl my parents adored. Below me was Noah, the son my grandparents had prayed for. I knew from a young age that I was the mistake. Serena meant “serene and bright.” Noah meant “rest and comfort.” My name was Elara. Just Elara. When I was born, my grandparents walked out of the hospital without even looking at me. They even took back the homemade soup they’d brought for my mother. Serena was three then. My dad worked all day and came home to a postpartum wife, a crying toddler, and a newborn me. He grew to resent it all. “Another girl? What’s the point? We shouldn’t have bothered.” I heard stories like that before I could even tie my shoes. I was six when Noah was born. Money was tight. My family didn’t love me—a fact I accepted before I lost my first tooth. But understanding it didn’t mean I accepted it. If there were two drumsticks at dinner, I’d still shamelessly fight for one. Mom would intervene: “Elara, you’re the older sister. Let Noah have it.” “What about Serena?” I’d ask, looking at Dad. Dad would just put the other drumstick in Serena’s bowl. “Your sister is about to start middle school. She needs the protein for her brain.” I chewed on my bitter greens, face blank. I survived until thirteen, but the neglect only got worse. In the morning, Grandma woke Noah up with kisses. Mom made Serena a fresh omelet and Dad drove her to school. Me? I got a ten-dollar bill—my food allowance for the day—and walked to school alone. Indifference is scary. Habit is scarier. When indifference becomes a habit, love evaporates. Today, they took the whole family to Six Flags to celebrate Serena getting straight A’s. They completely forgot that today was my thirteenth birthday. 03 “Oh my god, come down, little girl! Think of how heartbroken your family would be!” Family? I scoffed. They were probably screaming on a rollercoaster right now, having the time of their life. “I’m not lying, honey! Look, your brother is here!” The nosy woman clapped her hands, pointing. Brother? Noah was seven. “Right there! Talking to the cop. The guy in the trench coat.” That was the first time I saw him. Even years later, I never learned his real name back then. “Elara,” he called out, his voice cutting through the wind. “Come down.” He reached out his hand. 04 Trusting a strange man is dangerous. That’s what I’d been taught. But in that moment, possessed by something I couldn’t explain, I reached back. I let him pull me down to the pavement. “Thank God!” the woman yelled. But my eyes were locked on the man. “Since her brother is here, we’ll let you handle it,” the police officer said, looking relieved to avoid the paperwork. “Kid, talk to your family. Don’t go scaring people like this.” “I will,” the man nodded earnestly. “I’ll take her home.” The cop tipped his hat and drove off. The crowd dispersed. The man turned to me. “Let’s go. I’m taking you to get some food.” “Who are you?” I asked, speaking my first words of the day. He flashed a brilliant, white-toothed smile. “Me? I’m the guy who’s here to save you.” 05 Walking off with a stranger was reckless. But I went anyway. Part of me darkly hoped he was a serial killer. If I died, would my parents finally cry? Would they regret treating me like a ghost? When you’re young and hurting, you often want to hurt yourself to punish others. It took me years to realize that if they don’t care, your pain means nothing to them. But at thirteen, I just wanted revenge through death. “Stop overthinking, kid,” he said lightly, tapping my forehead. He took me to a clean, quiet diner. “What can I get you two?” the waitress asked. “A stack of pancakes with a candle, and the biggest burger you have,” the man said smoothly. “It’s the kid’s birthday.” “Coming right up!” I stared at him. His temples were graying, his hair messy, but he had kind, laughing eyes with a small mole beneath the left one. “Why are you staring?” He slid a menu toward me. “Order whatever else you want.” I shook my head. “Who are you? You didn’t answer me.” “Me?” He leaned back, crossing his legs with a roguish grin. “I’m from the future. I came back just to save you.” I read a lot of manga at the bookstore to escape my house. So, surprisingly, I believed him. “Why me?” I was the unlovable child. The black sheep. The punching bag. I wasn’t a protagonist. The man smiled, but his eyes seemed to shimmer with unshed tears. “Because, Elara… In the name of spring, I had to come for you.”

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I was four months pregnant when my OB-GYN husband, Alex, accompanied me to pick up the prenatal screening report. The smile on his face froze the instant he saw the results. Without a word of explanation, he dragged me toward the appointment desk to schedule an abortion. I stood there, stunned. The attending doctor had just told us the fetus was perfectly healthy! I wrenched my hand free and demanded, “Why? Why do I need an abortion?” He didn’t answer. He had already booked the D&C procedure on his phone. Seeing I was about to run, he gripped my arm tight enough to bruise. “This child absolutely cannot be born!” Protecting my belly, I frantically dialed my parents, who were also prominent OB-GYNs. When they arrived, my father—who had always doted on me—raised his fist as if to punch me right in the stomach. My mother looked horrified, shaking her head frantically. “No, we can’t do it like this.” “Find a few men. Lock them in a room with Sarah.” I didn’t understand why they wanted to dispose of my child—and me—in such a brutal way. I tried to flee. But they overpowered me and threw me into a dark basement room. When I saw the blood running down my legs, I knew my baby was gone. My mother came to pick me up, smiling as if nothing had happened. I screamed at her, begging to know why they did this to me. She didn’t answer. She turned around and had me committed to a psychiatric ward. I was tortured to death in that hospital. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day we went to pick up the report. … 1 “Honey, this is our first baby. I can’t wait to meet him.” Alex looked at me, his face beaming with joy. “Come on, let’s go. The clinic gets busy.” Hearing Alex’s voice, I snapped back to reality. My hand instinctively went to my slightly protruding lower abdomen. I was pregnant. I was back. In my previous life, Alex had been the perfect expectant father. He bought something new for the nursery every day and had a list of a hundred names. Since he worked at the hospital where I was getting my care, he always made time to be there. At four months, we went for the standard genetic screening. The doctor told us the fetus was healthy and ruled out Down syndrome. Alex, being a doctor himself, took a look at the detailed report. That was when his smile vanished, replaced by a look of pure terror. Without explaining, he grabbed my wrist and tried to force me into surgery. “Alex, the baby is fine! Why are you doing this?” I had screamed, pulling away. He ignored me, his breathing jagged, eyes bloodshot. “Sarah, this child cannot exist!” Terrified, I had messaged my parents. When they arrived, instead of saving me, they made it worse. My father punched Alex in the face, demanding to know why he wanted to terminate a healthy pregnancy. Alex didn’t speak. He just handed the report to my father. The moment my father saw it, his anger turned into horror. His hands shook as he held the paper. 2 My father raised his fist, aiming directly at my pregnant belly. My mother threw herself in front of me, taking the blow. “Are you crazy?” she screamed. “That’s your grandchild in there!” Father let out a cold laugh and shoved the report into Mother’s hands. My mother, who had just been protecting me, looked at the paper and turned pale as a ghost. She shoved me away from her like I was contagious, shaking her head violently. “No… no, this can’t happen.” I realized the problem was in that report. “Mom, what is it? What’s wrong with my baby?” She ignored me. She grabbed my father’s arm. “We can’t do it here. It’s too public. I have an idea.” “Get some men. Put them in a room with Sarah.” I stood frozen, a chill running down my spine. Why did that piece of paper turn my loving family into monsters? I tried to run, but my father caught me. They gagged me, threw me into a van, and locked me in a windowless room with five naked men. I banged on the door until my hands bled. No one came. The men dragged me to the floor. When I fought, they beat me. My child became nothing more than a pool of dried blood on the concrete floor. A week later, my parents and Alex came to get me. “Let’s go home, Sarah,” my mother said, smiling sweetly. 3 “Why?” I had screamed at her, hysterical. “Why did you do this to me?” My mother’s smile vanished. My father slapped me across the face. “Ungrateful slut!” Then, my mother looked at me with cold, dead eyes. “Sarah is confused. Take her to the asylum.” Inside the institution, Alex paid the orderlies to make my life hell. The husband who once adored me wanted me dead. Three months later, I died in agony. And I still didn’t know why. Now, standing in the hospital lobby, the old fear washed over me. I took a deep breath, hand on my belly. This time, I had to find out the truth. I made sure to grab the report first. Even after the attending physician said everything was fine, I held onto the folder tight. As long as Alex didn’t see it, I thought I’d be safe. But as we walked out, Alex held out his hand. “Let me see the report, babe.” My heart skipped a beat. I forced a smile. “Why? You heard the doctor. We’re both healthy.” “I’m the father, and I’m a doctor,” he laughed. “It’s normal for me to want to see the details.” “I trust your colleague,” I said, tucking the report into my purse. “I’m not showing you today. Keep the mystery alive.” Alex thought I was just being playful. “Okay, fine. As long as you feel good.” “I need to use the restroom,” I said, clutching my bag. “Then we can go home.” I rushed to the bathroom. I needed to read every line of that document in private. I had glanced at it earlier, but I hadn’t seen anything obvious. But when I opened my bag in the stall, my heart stopped. The report was gone. 4 I panicked and ran out of the bathroom. Down the hall, I saw Alex. His face was ash white. He was holding the report. He saw me. He started walking toward me, fast. I tried to turn and run, but he caught my arm. His grip was iron. “Sarah,” he hissed, eyes bloodshot. “This child cannot stay. We are doing the surgery. Now.” It was happening again. The transformation from loving husband to executioner. But this time, I wasn’t going to be dragged away quietly. “Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “He’s trying to kill my baby!” The hallway was crowded. Immediately, people turned to look. Alex gritted his teeth. “Shut up, bitch!” I dropped to my knees, clinging to his leg, making a scene. “Alex, the doctor said the baby is healthy! Why are you forcing me to get an abortion?” A large man stepped in, shoving Alex back. “Hey! What the hell are you doing?” “My god,” a woman gasped. “The baby is healthy and he wants to terminate it? Does he not want to pay child support?” “Forcing a woman to abort is illegal! Someone call the police!” Alex was hyperventilating. He looked at me with pure hatred, but surrounded by a hostile crowd, he couldn’t drag me away. Then, he smiled. A twisted, cruel smile. He pulled out his phone and called my parents. When they arrived, they saw us surrounded. My mother rushed to hug me, acting the concerned grandmother. The crowd explained what happened. My father, furious, raised his hand to slap Alex. But before the blow landed, Alex held up the report. “Dad, don’t look!” I lunged forward. Too late. My father snatched the paper. I saw his eyes widen. The pupils trembled. “Dad?” I whispered. He looked at me. His eyes were red with rage. He slapped me across the face so hard I tasted blood.

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During a critical surgery, my husband’s girlfriend suddenly called. He abandoned the anesthetized patient and left the operating room for a full 40 minutes. I tried to stop him: “The surgery isn’t finished. If you leave now, what if something happens?” My husband, the lead surgeon, sneered coldly: “If something happens, it’s your problem as the anesthesiologist. I’m the lead surgeon, but I haven’t cut yet. If the family wants to sue or attack anyone, it’ll be you and the attending physician. What does it have to do with me?” Afterward, Chloe Sterling, his wealthy mistress, arrogantly told me: “See? All it takes is one word from me, and your husband will drop everything to come to me.” It turned out Chloe called him away just to spite me? I didn’t say a word. I silently contacted others and began compiling a dossier of evidence… 1 I am an anesthesiologist, and today was my shift. The moment I saw the schedule, I frowned and asked the Chief of Anesthesiology, “Why am I paired with Dr. Pierce?” The Chief smiled, avoiding my gaze. “There were some last-minute changes. Dr. Pierce needed to move his surgery up, and you were available.” I pressed him. “Does the hospital not have a policy against spouses operating together?” Although there’s no explicit law forbidding immediate family members from being in the same OR, it’s an unwritten rule in the industry to avoid it. The risk of personal conflict affecting professional judgment is too high. Our hospital had specifically listed this rule in the employee handbook. “Heh, special circumstances require flexibility…” The Chief chuckled, trying to smooth things over. I despised Ethan Pierce. I pretended not to understand the Chief’s hints and kept citing the rules, insisting I wouldn’t work with him. Annoyed by my persistence, the Chief dropped his smile. “Dr. Lin, rules are dead, people are alive. That rule is meaningless.” My brow furrowed. “Spouses have conflicts, sure, but don’t colleagues? Don’t dating couples?” he argued. “If a doctor and a nurse fight, do we ban them from surgery? Think about it. How many doctors and nurses are secretly dating? If we had to police that, the whole hospital would shut down.” “Besides,” he added with a meaningful smirk, “before you and Dr. Pierce got married, didn’t you partner up all the time?” “Not only did you two work well together, but when Dr. Pierce was dating Nurse Sarah Jones, he brought her into every surgery. The work got done, didn’t it? No accidents.” I clenched my fists, a bitter taste in my mouth. Ethan Pierce was my husband, but I wasn’t his only woman. Sarah Jones was a nurse, one of his many conquests. When they were “in love,” Ethan took her everywhere, flaunting their relationship to the entire hospital. The Chief was using Sarah to needle me, likely annoyed by my lack of cooperation. Knowing there was no room for negotiation, I took a deep breath and looked down. “Understood.” Leaving the Chief’s office, I returned to my desk, trying to convince myself: It’s just one surgery. It’ll be fine. Before we were married, Ethan and I were a seamless team. As long as we stuck to our roles, nothing would go wrong. But my eyelid kept twitching. I had a bad feeling. My phone buzzed. A text from Chloe Sterling. [When are you divorcing him?] Short, rude, no greeting. My temples throbbed. Ethan had many women, but Miss Sterling was the most arrogant. Chloe Sterling was Ethan’s new “student.” She had returned from studying abroad with a degree in Landscape Architecture—completely unrelated to medicine. Yet, through some “special program,” she was slotted into a residency under Ethan. In three years, she’d be a doctor. Ordinary people lose their hair studying for a decade just to get a foot in the door. To get a residency under a top surgeon like Ethan, you usually need to be a top-tier med student from an Ivy League school. But Miss Sterling, a graduate of a third-rate foreign college with a non-medical degree, was stepping over everyone. Not only that, she somehow had several SCI papers to her name. A glittering resume built on money and connections. When I learned about her family background, her “excellence” made sense. That’s why I never thought she’d sleep with Ethan. When rumors first swirled, I laughed. “No way. Someone like Miss Sterling would choose a husband who matches her status. Dating Ethan would be a stain on her family name.” Ethan was successful, sure. But he was over 40, married, with a 7-year-old child, and a reputation for sleeping around. Chloe was young, beautiful, and filthy rich. Why lower herself? Did she like that he didn’t shower often? If she wanted his influence to gild her resume, money and power were enough. She didn’t need to sleep with him. Ethan wasn’t exactly a man of high moral standing; pay him enough, and he’d do anything. But the jaw-dropper was that this heiress actually fell for him—and got pregnant! It was absurd. For her, Ethan quickly cut ties with other women, playing the role of the doting partner, and started pressuring me for a divorce. 2 Thinking back on Ethan and Chloe, I suppressed my anger and typed back: [Miss Sterling, I will not divorce Ethan.] When I first discovered Ethan’s infidelity, my instinct was to leave. But the bastard wanted me to leave with nothing—no assets, and he wanted full custody of our daughter. So, I refused. I was going to drag this out until it destroyed him. As soon as I hit send, Chloe called. “Lacey, don’t be ungrateful.” I replied coldly, “You’re the one who needs a reality check, Miss Sterling.” Chloe laughed. “Me? You’ve already been demoted from Team Lead to a regular anesthesiologist. Still don’t get it?” My heart sank. She hit a sore spot. I used to be the lead anesthesiologist for the ICU team. After my conflict with Ethan over Chloe began, I was demoted. I gritted my teeth. “Since you guys stripped my title, I have even less reason to divorce. Let’s see who breaks first.” “Lacey, I think you’re mentally ill,” Chloe sneered. “You’re fighting a losing battle. Your marriage is dead. Why not divorce and live freely instead of watching us be happy? You’re asking for pain.” “Who said our marriage is dead?” I scoffed. “We’re great. Don’t try to drive a wedge between us. During the last board inspection, we were even praised as a ‘model couple.’” The term “model couple” made me want to laugh. Because we actually were praised. Since we weren’t divorced, Ethan had to bring me to high-profile events. Chloe finally got angry. “‘Model couple’? Stop lying to yourself. Ethan loves me. You can’t control him, but I can. One phone call, and he’ll be by my side. I’ll prove it to you…” She was so childish. At her social level, arguing with me over who a middle-aged philanderer truly loves was pathetic. It was about money and power, yet she insisted on packaging it as romance. “Oh, really? Amazing,” I deadpanned. “You don’t believe me?” “No, I don’t.” I hung up. I had a surgery to prep for. I entered Operating Room 6. The nursing team was already prepping. The room was sterile, instruments laid out perfectly. The nurse nodded at me. I went to my station. The patient was already on the table—an 8-year-old girl, just a year older than my own daughter. She had a congenital heart defect. Two previous surgeries had failed. Her parents had sold their house and traveled across the country to our hospital, specifically for Ethan. They believed a famous doctor guaranteed safety. Ethan did have skills; you don’t become Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery without them. I spoke softly to the girl. “Don’t be scared. You’ll fall asleep quickly, and when you wake up, it’ll be all done.” She nodded obediently. “I want to get better soon so Mommy and Daddy stop worrying.” An angel. “You will,” I smiled. I injected the anesthetic. Soon, she was unconscious. “Anesthesia complete.” “Let’s begin.” Ethan walked in, scrubbed and gowned. He picked up the scalpel without looking at me. I focused on the monitors. We were strangers now. Suddenly, a phone on the side table rang. A specific ringtone. I recognized it immediately. It was Chloe’s ringtone, customized by Ethan. It rang twice. Ethan barked at the nurse, “My phone. Bring it here.” The nurse held it to his ear. I don’t know what was said, but Ethan’s face changed dramatically. He put down the scalpel and marched toward the door. “You too, come with me!” he ordered his assistant surgeon. 3 The nurses and I were stunned. The patient was under, the incision site prepped. Why was the surgeon leaving? And he took his assistant. With both doctors gone, no one could operate. We were left waiting. The nurses looked at each other in panic. Remembering Chloe’s threat, a chill ran down my spine. I bit my lip and chased after him. The automatic doors closed behind me. The hallway was empty except for Ethan and his assistant. “Wait!” I called out. Ethan turned, frowning. “What do you want?” “The patient is on the table,” I said. “Why are you leaving?” “Something came up,” he said curtly. “What sort of thing?” Ethan sneered. “Who are you to demand a report from the Chief of Surgery?” I choked back my anger. “When will you be back? You have to give us a time.” He laughed, a dismissive sound. “How should I know?” How should I know? My eyes widened. “If you don’t know when you’re coming back, what about the patient?” Ethan smiled again, a cruel, mocking smile. “That’s your responsibility as the anesthesiologist. Until I return, you keep the patient stable. Understood?” Cold sweat broke out on my back. If a surgeon delays, the anesthesiologist has to keep the patient under. But prolonged anesthesia carries huge risks. If something went wrong, I would be the primary person responsible, not the surgeon who hadn’t cut yet. Was he doing this just to punish me? “Ethan, be clear. Are you doing this to get back at me?” He raised an eyebrow, didn’t answer, and kept walking. I ran in front of him, blocking his path. “Ethan! You cannot play with a patient’s life for personal reasons. Go back!” “I have an urgent matter. Stop acting crazy,” he spat. “If something happens to the patient, you can’t escape responsibility!” Ethan smiled slightly, spreading his hands. “I haven’t even made the incision. If something happens, what does it have to do with me? You’re the anesthesiologist. You’re liable.” I was shaking. In big hospitals, if there’s an anesthesia accident, the family sues the anesthesiologist and the attending physician. Even if the delay caused the complication, the blame shifts. “Do you have no conscience?” I trembled with rage. Ethan’s face darkened. “I said I have business. Get out of my way!” He shoved past me, taking his assistant. Defeated, I walked back to the OR. I tried to rationalize it. Ethan was a scumbag, but he cherished his reputation as a top surgeon. He wouldn’t joke with his career. Maybe it really was an emergency. 4 Looking at the little girl on the table, my heart was heavy. “Dr. Lin, when is the Chief coming back?” a nurse asked. I shook my head. “He didn’t say.” The nurses exchanged worried glances. I kept my eyes glued to the monitors. Everyone was anxious. Minutes ticked by. My phone vibrated. It was Chloe. I declined the call. I wouldn’t take personal calls during a crisis. A moment later, a WeChat message popped up on my screen: [See? All it takes is one word from me, and your husband will drop everything to come to me.] I stared at the message in disbelief. He really left because Chloe called him? He abandoned a surgery just to help her bully me? I took a deep breath and typed: [Is there an emergency?] My phone rang again. Chloe. I answered. “Lacey,” her voice dripped with arrogance. “Do you see the difference between us now?” “What is wrong with you?” I hissed. “He was in surgery! The patient is anesthetized on the table! Why call him away? What if something happens?” “I didn’t know he was in surgery,” she sniffed. “Besides, what do I care if a patient lives or dies?” Liar. When Ethan answered the phone, everyone in the OR heard him say, “I’m in surgery.” I didn’t have time for this. “Send him back. Now.” “He’s the Chief,” she giggled. “I’m just a student. I can’t order him around.” She hung up. My chest tightened. She wouldn’t let him return. A patient was waiting, life hanging in the balance, and they were playing games to hurt me? I looked at the girl. It was my fault. If I had refused to work with him more firmly… No. Stop blaming yourself. Solve the problem. I called the Chief of Anesthesiology and reported it as an incident. “It’s only been 10 minutes,” the old man said. “Wait a bit longer. Dr. Pierce has urgent business.” “Chief,” I snapped, “Chloe Sterling called him away. They are doing this to spite me. They are gambling with a patient’s life!” “Dr. Lin,” he chided. “Don’t spread rumors. Don’t let your emotions dictate your professionalism. Who will want to work with you if you act like this?” I choked. The schedule change. The pairing. It was all a setup. “It’s been 10 minutes,” the Chief repeated. “It’s normal for a surgeon to step out.” “He took his assistant!” I yelled. That was the smoking gun. If a surgeon steps out, the assistant takes over or preps. Ethan took everyone who could cut. “Maybe they’ll be back soon,” the Chief said, dismissive. I hung up, helpless. Ten more minutes passed. The nurses knew what was happening. Some were silent, others furious. But no one dared to speak up against Ethan Pierce.

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During the years I believed in pure love, I wrote a love diary every day. Sterling Vance pretended he didn’t care about anything. But when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he blushed and blurted out that he wanted my diary. My heart was so sweet it could burst. Until the class president, Aria Sterling, sent me a video— In the first part of the video, there was my diary, filled with words I had written stroke by stroke. The lines spoke of a girl’s sincere, innocent, and secret love. In the second part, Sterling smiled lazily. “If it weren’t for making Aria jealous and giving her a little sense of crisis, I wouldn’t be interested in dealing with a low-achiever like Stella Starling.” “Compared to a trophy girlfriend who follows me around like a puppy, I much prefer a cool, intellectual type like Aria.” Oh. So I was just a pawn in their love game. I didn’t cry or make a scene. I asked my brother to transfer me to another school, voluntarily exiting their passionate world of two. Eight years later. Sterling, who had searched the entire city for me, suddenly saw a trending topic about a top star’s wedding. The beautiful bride wore a pure white wedding dress, smiling brightly at the camera. Hundreds of love diary entries written to his wife on the star’s secret social media account were also exposed. “May 6, 2025. Tuesday. Sunny.” “The Blue Gum has met its migration bird; I love nothing in this world but you.” 1 While I was getting an IV drip at the hospital, a message suddenly popped up on my phone. It was from our class president, Aria Sterling. She had forwarded a video to me. The first part of the video showed the diary I had painstakingly written. Between the lines, it poured out a young girl’s sincere, green, and hidden affection. Then the video cut to Sterling Vance. He was leaning back, his long legs stretched out, looking bored. “Reading that trashy diary every day makes me sick. No wonder her grades are so bad; you don’t need a brain to be a clingy admirer.” He glanced casually at Aria, who was sitting not far away. “Compared to a pretty vase like Stella Starling, I much prefer a cool, intellectual type.” Aria kept her head down, reading her textbook, acting as if she hadn’t heard a thing. Sterling scoffed and walked over to her desk. He leaned over, placing both hands on the desk, trapping her between the desk and his arms. “So, my genius lady, are you going to keep rejecting me?” Aria looked up, pursing her lips, cool and stubborn. “Sterling, what do you take me for?” “You’re already with Stella. I won’t be the other woman.” Sterling raised an eyebrow. “Who said you’re the other woman?” Tears instantly welled up in Aria’s eyes, looking full of grievance. Sterling’s gaze softened. He ruffled her hair and explained gently. “I’m just playing around with Stella.” “If I didn’t provoke you, how could I force you to show your true feelings?” “If anyone is the third wheel, it’s Stella, not you.” … The video ended. I stared blankly at the phone screen. I was at a loss. What did Sterling mean? What did he mean by “just playing around” with me? 2 Before I could recover, Aria sent another voice message. “Stella, did you watch the video?” I took a deep breath. Clutching the phone, I wanted to demand an explanation. But my hands were trembling so much that I couldn’t type a single word. Aria’s voice messages came one after another. “I have your diary. Sterling gave it to me.” “Actually, Sterling has been chasing me for two years, but I wanted to focus on my studies and never agreed.” “I just didn’t expect him to get involved with you just to force me to admit my feelings.” “I’m really angry, but I have to admit, his tactic was very effective. I can no longer ignore his feelings.” “Sterling said you’re too love-struck and was afraid you couldn’t handle it if he told you directly. He wanted to break it to you slowly. But I think it’s better to rip off the bandage quickly. So Stella, I’m officially notifying you—” “Don’t have any delusions about Sterling. He belongs to me.” “We’ve already agreed to apply to Stanford together.” “I advise you to focus on your studies. The SATs are in a year. With your current grades, it’ll be hard for you to get into even a decent state college, right?” Aria’s voice was clear and cool, her pacing unhurried, her emotions calm and stable. She carried the unique confidence of a straight-A student. 3 Sterling had said similar things to me. My grades were lopsided. I excelled only in English and Creative Writing, having won several national writing competitions. But my other subjects were barely passable, and my Math was a complete disaster. If I was a natural underachiever, then Sterling was a natural genius. His grades were incredibly stable, always ranking in the top ten of our grade. The gap between us was like a chasm. But I was delusional. I studied day and night, wanting to apply to Stanford with Sterling. Sterling saw through my little ambition and laughed at me. “Why torture yourself?” “With your grades, forget about Stanford; you’ll struggle to get into a mediocre state school.” My heart stung, and my eyes couldn’t help but redden. He then came to comfort me. “Okay, okay, my bad. How about I tutor you to make up for it?” During that time, for the sake of tutoring, we were inseparable. I had attended cram schools and hired tutors, but Sterling was better than all of them. His explanations were clear, and he knew my weak points. Under his tutoring, my math scores actually improved significantly. When I got my report card, I excitedly hugged him and cried loudly. His eyes held a smile. But his gaze was wandering, landing somewhere in the distance. At that time, immersed in the joy of progress, I was oblivious. Only now did I realize. The direction he was looking at back then was clearly where Aria sat. Proactively helping me with tutoring. The intimate interactions. It was all an act. Sterling indeed never confessed to me. I thought we had a tacit understanding of mutual affection, just waiting for someone to break the silence. But in Sterling’s eyes, I was just a tool to make Aria jealous. 4 Just as I walked out of the hospital entrance after finishing my IV, I heard someone call my name. “Stella!” I looked back. Sterling and Hayes were standing under a huge oak tree. Standing together, the two of them were handsome in their own unique ways. Sunlight filtered through the branches, dappling light and shadow on them, like a scene from a teen drama, causing passersby to glance over repeatedly. I walked over slowly. Looking up, I stared straight at him. Noticing my gaze, he asked with amusement: “What? Is there something on my face?” I lowered my head and said nothing. Sterling suddenly leaned in close, examining me carefully. “Why are your eyes red? Like a little kid, did you cry from the shot?” Saying this, he took my hand and blew gently on the needle mark. “Let me blow on it for our little Stella. It won’t hurt after I blow on it.” I awkwardly pulled my hand back and asked in a muffled voice. “Where is my diary?” A trace of unnaturalness flashed in Sterling’s eyes, then he frowned and said. “It’s on the bookshelf at my house.” “Since you gave it to me, it’s mine. Why are you asking?” I didn’t expose him. Sterling took out the notes for the classes I missed today from his backpack and handed them to me. “Hayes took these notes. His handwriting is better than mine, and he marked the key points for you. Take a look yourself.” Hearing this, I glanced at Hayes, who had been standing silently by the side. Seeing me look at him, he smiled at me, his eyes curving. Sterling hooked his arm around Hayes’ shoulder and continued. “I won’t tutor you today. Hayes and I are going to play basketball tonight.” “I suddenly have something to do. You go play by yourself,” Hayes said calmly, pushing Sterling’s hand away.

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The day my stepbrother, Chase, was released from prison for a crime I committed, I went to see him. He was leaning against the wall of a dive bar, smoke curling from his lips as he unbuckled his belt. I reached out to help, but he grabbed my wrist, stopping me cold. His eyes were dark, his laugh bitter. “What, you think I’m sick? I’m not gonna touch my own stepsister.” I retreated, feeling the sting of his rejection. Later, I found solace in one of his friends. Chase caught us. The friend froze, terrified. Chase just clenched his jaw and walked away, pretending he hadn’t seen a thing. But the friend disappeared soon after. And Chase? He was done pretending. “I’ve waited eighteen years for you,” he growled, cornering me. “And you’re just gonna let anyone touch you? Like you don’t care?” His hand tangled in my hair, pulling me close. “I’m gonna kiss you until you forget everyone else.” 1 Chase got out of prison today. His crew was already waiting outside the gates, a convoy of trucks and muscle cars ready to pick him up. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him before they whisked him away to a bar for a welcome-home party. I followed them. A childhood crush mixed with a heavy dose of guilt for him serving my time made it impossible to stay away. I saw him head for the bathroom and intercepted him in the hallway. He was wearing a dark jacket over a black tank top, cargo pants, and combat boots. His buzz cut was sharp, and the edge of a massive dragon tattoo peeked out from his shoulder. He walked with a swagger that said he owned the world. When he saw me, his expression soured. He took a drag from his cigarette and tried to brush past me. “Chase,” I called out. He stopped, raising an eyebrow. “What? Here to thank me for taking the fall?” I bit my lip and nodded. He scoffed. “How you gonna thank me?” I didn’t have words, so I reached out and put a hand on his waist. “Are you crazy?” He slapped my hand away. “I’m not into this.” My eyes welled up. “Why not? It’s not like we’re blood-related. We just grew up together.” “I don’t have money, Chase. This is all I have.” He laughed, a sharp, angry sound. “You think I need your money?” “You know how I feel…” I started. He ran a hand over his buzz cut, looking exasperated. “Look, I’m not an animal.” I turned my head, cheeks burning. “It wouldn’t matter if you were.” He heard me. He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling slowly before he spoke. “Harper,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “Are you trying to seduce me? Because I swear, I will throw you into the ocean.” Is that a promise? I thought, bold all of a sudden. Action speaks louder than words. I reached for the top button of his shirt. 2 Before I could even undo one button, Chase slapped my hand away and buttoned it back up, his face like thunder. He buttoned it all the way to the top, choking himself. “Trying to strangle yourself so I can find a new man?” I teased. He gave a short, disbelief laugh. “Don’t just go around unbuttoning guys’ shirts, Harper. You’ll regret it.” I looked up at him. The buzz cut, the jacket, the sheer size of him. He was mesmerizing. My ears burned as I whispered, “Are you just ‘any guy’?” He snorted, pinning me against the wall with one hand. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your time on me. I’m not interested.” He pushed off the wall and started to walk away, not looking back. One of his friends called out, “Chase! Someone’s here for you.” Over his shoulder, he tossed back, “Don’t waste your breath.” I looked up, but he was gone. I slumped into a corner booth, his words echoing in my head. Don’t waste your time. A sour feeling spread through my chest. My eyes burned, and tears started to fall. I downed a shot of whiskey, the burn a welcome distraction. Then I saw him. Chase was walking out, phone to his ear, laughing. “Damn, you missed me that much?” I followed him without thinking. I had to know why I wasn’t enough. Outside, a bright red sports car was idling. A woman with long, wavy hair and a tight dress was leaning against it. Chase was lighting her cigarette, their bodies almost touching. My nose stung. A tear splashed onto my hand, hot and sobering. Eighteen years of history, and it meant nothing compared to some random woman with a fast car. I wiped my eyes, clenched my fists, and turned to leave. The woman noticed me. She blew out a plume of smoke and nodded in my direction. “Chase, who’s the virgin?” Chase glanced over, a smirk playing on his lips. “That’s just my stepsister. Ignore her.” “Got a lot of stepsisters, don’t you?” she laughed. Hearing them joke about me made me snap. I marched over and slapped Chase across the face. Hard. Then, forcing tears into my eyes, I screamed, “Is one not enough for you? How many others are you hiding?” “Is this why you don’t come home at night? Because of her? Brother?” “…” The woman choked on her smoke. “Holy shit. You let her hit you, Chase?” “What’s going on? You just got out and you’re already juggling chicks?” I glared at him, lip trembling. Chase laughed, a genuine sound this time. He rubbed his jaw, eyes glinting. “Damn. I guess I better pay up on this debt tonight. You just wait.” My bravado evaporated. I pointed a finger at him, stammering, “You… you…” but nothing came out. I had played myself. The woman was loving it. “Chase still got it, huh?” “…” I didn’t think I’d see her again. Until… 3 I saw her at Chase’s new auto shop. Turns out, her dad had hired Chase to manage his fleet. The pay was incredible—enough to open ten shops like this one. But Chase had turned it down flat. “Tell your dad thanks,” he’d said, “but I don’t do well with bosses.” The shop was his dream. It was massive. Tonight, he was hosting a grand opening party. In the past, when we had no money, Chase would still save every penny to build his dream garage. It had everything: a gym, a pool table, a bar, a karaoke room. His friends had always wanted to see it, but he never let them. He hated the noise. I didn’t expect to see him tonight. But then someone yelled, “Holy crap, look who it is!” Chase walked in, wearing his signature black tank top and cargo pants. The dragon tattoo on his shoulder flexed with every movement. He owned the room. He was looking for someone, peeking into rooms as he passed. I quickly shut the door to the karaoke room. But it opened again. Chase stood there, looking at me and the guy I was with—one of his friends, Leo. He frowned. “Out.” His voice was low and raspy, like he’d just woken up. But it held an authority that no one questioned. Leo scrambled to apologize and left. The karaoke room was empty now, just the two of us. I took a nervous sip of my juice, coughed, and tried to act casual. “So, you decided to show up?” “What? Interrupting your date?” Chase was flipping his lighter open and closed, the flame dancing. I decided to push my luck. “Yeah, he’s cute, isn’t he?” Chase laughed, a sharp bark. He put a cigarette between his lips and lit it, inhaling deeply. His eyes were intense, stripping me bare. “I thought one was enough for you? I thought I wasn’t coming home?” “I thought you wanted me to pay my debts? What happened?” I choked on my juice, sputtering. My ears burned. “Chase, don’t be gross. If your future wife heard you, what would she think?” “Oh? You didn’t think about that when you were making a scene at the bar. Now you’re shy? Playing hard to get?” His arrogance was infuriating. If he wasn’t so damn hot, I’d punch him. I took a breath and forced a smile. “So, how are you going to pay your debt, big brother?” Two can play at this game. Chase paused mid-smoke. He took two quick drags, stubbed it out, and turned to leave. I spun around to stop him, but I tripped and fell onto the couch, pulling him down with me. I twisted my back. He landed on top of me. I couldn’t move. Chase seemed stunned. He put his hands under my arms to lift me, but it hurt too much. “Ow, stop. Can you not?” He had to adjust his grip. I whimpered. We were stuck like that for two minutes. I was pinned underneath him, my voice muffled against his chest. “Chase, are you enjoying this? Is that why you won’t let me up?” His jaw clenched, a vein popping in his forehead. “Enjoying you squirming around? You wish.” “Who knows? Maybe it’s your thing.”

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