Today is the highly publicized “Love of the Century” mega-wedding event, and my fiancé, Isaac, and I are one of the couples. Fifty couples are scheduled to sign their marriage licenses and say their vows on a live, nationwide broadcast. According to the network’s run-of-show, the grooms are currently downstairs navigating the “Groom’s Gauntlet”—a televised obstacle course and trivia game—while the brides wait in our respective hotel suites. I wanted to give Isaac a little surprise. I slipped out of my suite and crept down the hall, planning to hide in the alcove so I could jump out when he finally made it to my floor. I had just ducked behind the ice machine when I heard the low, hushed voices of Isaac and his groomsmen. “Isaac, man, I don’t know about this,” one of his friends muttered, sounding frantic. “This is a massive, officially sponsored live broadcast. If you use this setup to secretly marry your brother’s widow, Josie is going to be publicly humiliated.” I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Then, Isaac’s voice drifted over, dripping with an exhausted kind of martyrdom. “I don’t have a choice. Lola has been a widow for three years. My parents treat her like absolute garbage, blaming her for Declan’s death. The only way she gets legal protection and access to the family trust is if she has my name.” “And as for Josie,” he continued smoothly, “she and I have always had a connection that transcends a piece of paper. We are soulmates. We don’t need a marriage license to validate what we have. She won’t care about the legalities.” The groomsman still sounded hesitant. “But dude, you’re forgetting something. When your brother dumped Josie for Lola at their engagement party three years ago, Josie nearly drowned herself in the river. It took you three years to pull her out of that dark place. If she finds out… she’s losing her husband to the exact same woman twice. She’ll lose her mind.” Isaac cut him off, his tone dismissive and cold. “It’s a fifty-couple wedding. It’s chaos down there. The network mandates that all brides wear those heavy, opaque vintage lace veils for the ‘blind reveal’ at the altar. I’ll just say I couldn’t see through the lace and grabbed the wrong hand. No one is going to investigate it.” “Besides, you guys know the truth. The only reason I pursued Josie back then was to keep her occupied so Lola could marry my brother in peace. Now that Declan is gone, it’s my duty to protect Lola.” He turned to the other two groomsmen, his voice dropping into a hard, authoritative register. “Go stand outside Room 302. Don’t let Josie out. Once the ink is dry on the license and the live broadcast wraps, it’ll be legally binding. Even if my parents throw a fit, it’ll be too late to undo it.” Listening to him, a hollow, freezing sensation washed over me. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just let out a quiet, bitter exhale, and silently slipped back into my room. I pulled out my phone, opened the massive group chat the network had set up for the couples, and scrolled until I found the guy who had originally been paired with Isaac’s sister-in-law for the broadcast. I typed out a quick text: Room 302 is missing a groom. You want to swap in? …… 1 I set my phone face-down on the vanity. The screen was still glowing. “Josie, get over to the door! Isaac’s group just passed the first checkpoint!” The corner of my mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile. Seeing me frozen there, my best friend Gemma rushed over and grabbed my arm. “Hurry up! They’re on the second floor. When he gets up here, what kind of riddle should we make him solve to get in?” “Don’t bother,” I said, gently pulling my arm out of her grip. Gemma blinked, confused. “What do you mean?” I looked at her, enunciating every word. “I don’t think this wedding is happening.” Gemma stared at me, completely lost. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You two have been waiting for this broadcast for months. You fought tooth and nail to get one of the fifty spots. What do you mean it’s not happening?” I didn’t answer. Fought tooth and nail to get a spot… Three months ago, Isaac had slammed the application forms onto my kitchen counter. He told me about this massive network event. A live-streamed wedding. Fifty couples. The whole country watching. He told me he had stayed up for forty-eight hours straight just to secure our audition spot. He said he was only going to do this once in his life, and he wanted it to be spectacular. I had hesitated. Because right around that time, my mother had been moved into the ICU. Her biggest regret in life was that she and my dad never had a real wedding. They were poor; they signed some papers at the courthouse and called it a day. She always told me that when I found the right man, she wanted to see me in a white dress. She wanted to physically place my hand into his. I wanted her to have that. I took the application to her hospital room. I showed her the fine print at the bottom of the page: “Due to live-broadcast logistical constraints, the traditional parental give-away will not be permitted.” My mom had smiled a frail, paper-thin smile and said it was fine. “As long as I live long enough to see you marry him, I don’t care about the logistics.” But when she flipped to the page showing the venue layout, she had gone quiet for a long time. “So… I won’t even get to see you walk down the aisle?” she had whispered. I had broken down in the hospital corridor that afternoon. That night, I begged Isaac. “Can we just pull out of the TV thing? Let’s just do something tiny. A backyard ceremony. Let my mom sit in her wheelchair and hand me over to you…” Isaac had pulled me into his arms, stroking my hair. “Baby, don’t be unreasonable. We fought so hard for this spot. It’s going to be broadcast live. Your mom can watch it from her hospital bed. It’s the same thing.” “It’s not the same,” I had cried. “When I come to pick you up at the hotel, we’ll FaceTime her,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s the same thing, Josie.” I stopped fighting him. Because when he said it, his eyes were red. He told me he just wanted to give me the most magnificent day of my life. I believed him. My mom’s condition deteriorated. She was moved to the palliative respiratory ward. On the last day she was truly lucid, she held my hand and wheezed, “Momma isn’t going to get to see you in your dress.” “You will,” I promised, swallowing my tears. “It’s on TV. I’ll have the nurses turn it on. You have to watch.” She nodded. “Okay.” And yet today, just moments ago, the man I was supposed to marry said: “She and I have always had a connection that transcends a piece of paper. She won’t care about the legalities.” My mother was lying in a hospital bed right now, her eyes glued to a television screen, completely unaware that her daughter didn’t even deserve a piece of paper. Suddenly, heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway outside our suite. Gemma’s head snapped toward the door, her eyes narrowing. “That’s weird. Why is it only two groomsmen? Where’s Isaac?” 2 She looked back at me, her face scrunched in confusion. “The gauntlet is over. Shouldn’t he be the first one sprinting up here to get his bride?” I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Gem… when the groom gets here, don’t give him too hard of a time.” Gemma paused, then covered her mouth and giggled. “Oh, whatever! I know you’re just protective of him.” “Fine,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Considering the poor guy chased you for three years, I’ll tell the other bridesmaids to go easy on him. Maybe just twenty push-ups at the door.” She rapidly typed out a text to the girls in the hall. “Bride’s orders. Don’t be too vicious. Leave the groom some dignity.” The corners of my mouth curved up slightly, but I stayed silent. Under any other circumstances, this would have been such a sweet, perfect moment. Gemma tucked her phone away and came over to loop her arm through mine. “Honestly, Isaac is going to look devastating in his tux today. You guys have been together for three years, and he’s always treated you like fragile glass. You’re finally making it official. Are you nervous?” “No,” I said. Gemma laughed. “Liar. Your lips are completely white.” Just as the words left her mouth, my phone buzzed on the vanity. It was a FaceTime call from my mom. She had just finished her final, desperate round of chemo. She was completely bald, her skin a sickly, jaundiced yellow, but her eyes were crinkled in absolute joy. “My beautiful girl,” she rasped, beaming. “I’m watching the broadcast. Isaac was working so hard during those silly games to get to you. You tell your friends not to torture him too much…” I forced out a laugh and nodded. “I just can’t wait to see you two sign those papers,” she whispered. A nurse walked into the frame to adjust her IV and glanced at the screen. “Oh, is your daughter one of the TV brides today?” “Yes she is! Fifty couples, live on national television!” My mom’s voice was as frail as a flickering candle in the wind, but it was filled with so much pride. “She found herself a wonderful man. Three years, and he’s never given me a single reason to worry. He cherishes her like she’s the most precious thing in the world.” I gripped my phone so hard my fingernails dug half-moons into my palms. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that the man who had pursued me for three years, who had “loved” me for three years, had orchestrated this massive television spectacle for one singular purpose. To use the chaos of the broadcast to marry his brother’s widow. To force his parents’ hands into accepting an unholy alliance, live on television, where they couldn’t scream and stop it. I took a deep, shuddering breath, and smiled into the camera. “Alright, Mom, the signal is getting a little choppy. I’ll call you as soon as the ink is dry.” I hung up. Gemma stepped behind me and carefully draped the heavy, opaque vintage lace veil over my head, completely obscuring my face. “You know, this whole vintage veil gimmick is actually kind of romantic,” she mused, adjusting the lace. “And your mom being able to watch it live… I bet just seeing this will cure her halfway.” She wandered over to the window and peered down at the courtyard. “Where is Isaac?” she muttered. “The other rooms are already clearing out. The host on the loudspeaker is already calling the twenty-eighth couple down.” 3 She turned back, picked up a favor box of jordan almonds from the table, popped one into her mouth, and crunched down. “But seriously,” she said, her voice softening. “Three years ago, if someone had told me you’d be marrying him today, I would have thought they were crazy.” I didn’t say anything. Gemma chewed her candy, her gaze drifting to a memory. “When Declan broke your heart like that, I was genuinely terrified we were going to lose you.” “Declan was such a manipulative piece of trash,” she spat. “When you two were together, he acted like he would pull the stars from the sky for you. We all thought you two were endgame.” Her voice dropped. “And then Lola showed up.” My fingers curled inward, the heavy lace of my dress scratching against my skin. Lola. I hadn’t let anyone say that name around me in a long time. It wasn’t until I had been dating Isaac for six months that he finally brought me home to meet his family. That was the day I found out that my ex-fiancé, Declan, was his older brother. And the woman who had destroyed my life, Lola, was already his sister-in-law. I had started shaking violently. I turned to walk right back out the door. Isaac had grabbed my hand, his grip tight, his voice shaking. “Josie, please. Give me a chance. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Let the past be the past. Please.” I had struggled with it for months. Every time I had to sit across from Declan and Lola at family dinners, my stomach churned with nausea. But Isaac… Isaac was so incredibly good to me. He never forced me to call Declan ‘brother’ or Lola ‘sister’. He intercepted the wine glasses they tried to hand me. He filled my plate. At family gatherings, he acted as a physical shield, ensuring they never even got close to me. “You don’t have to talk to them,” he would whisper. “They don’t exist in our world.” But I didn’t want him to be caught in the middle. He was a part of that family. Lola was his sister-in-law. Holidays were inevitable. The better he treated me, the more guilty I felt for holding onto my trauma. After eight months of inner warfare, I finally raised my glass at Thanksgiving, looked right at the woman who ruined my engagement, and smiled. “To you, Lola.” Beneath the table, Isaac had gripped my hand so hard, his eyes shining with unshed tears. From that day on, I played the part. For him. But it wasn’t long after that Declan was killed. A freak accident on a construction site. Gone in an instant. Lola became a widow overnight. “I really didn’t want to bring all this up on your wedding day,” Gemma scoffed, pulling me out of my memories. “I’m just so pissed off. My boyfriend and I couldn’t even get on the waitlist for this TV wedding, but somehow she gets to participate?” “And the guy she’s marrying is Brandon? Isaac’s old college roommate who just moved back from London?” She threw her hands up. “Like, seriously? Does every man on earth just fall for her tragic, helpless act?” She was getting angrier the more she spoke, her fingers crushing the cardboard favor box. “When you and Declan were celebrating your engagement, he literally abandoned you in front of both your families to run to Lola because she ‘wasn’t feeling well’ and ‘needed someone to take care of her’. And how did he take care of her? By sleeping with her!” Gemma’s voice cracked, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. “That night… you went down to the river all by yourself…” I lowered my eyes beneath the veil. My eyelashes fluttered. “If Isaac hadn’t jumped in and dragged you out…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She aggressively wiped at her face. I handed her a tissue from my lap. “Isaac,” Gemma sniffled, taking the tissue and forcing a watery smile. “He was soaking wet. His lips were literally blue from the cold. And he just knelt there in the mud, holding you, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’ve got you.’ Why would a total stranger do that for someone?” Her tone lightened, filled with that survivor’s reverence she always had when talking about my relationship. “He told us he understood you. He said he had been betrayed too, and that he was willing to spend his whole life helping you heal.” “Do you remember? You had withered away to nothing. You wouldn’t speak to anyone. But when he came over, you’d finally eat. We all thought he was a literal angel sent to save you. He chased you for three years. He respected your boundaries so much he barely even held your hand for the first year. We used to joke that maybe he had intimacy issues—but looking back, what kind of man has that much patience? A man who is truly, deeply in love with you.” Her eyes were bloodshot by the time she said the last word. I tilted my head up, looking toward the window, my face hidden beneath the thick lace. I let out a soft laugh. “He didn’t love me.” Gemma froze. “What did you say?” 4 My lips parted in a dry, humorless smile. “He only approached me to keep me out of the way, so his precious Lola could marry his brother in peace.” Gemma was completely derailed. “Wh… what does that mean?” I looked at her blurred silhouette through the veil. Suddenly, I felt utterly exhausted. There was no point in explaining it all now. Why ruin her day, too? All she saw was the Isaac who saved me. The Isaac who treated me like royalty. She didn’t know about the late-night phone calls he took in the driveway whenever the ‘widow’ was having a panic attack. She didn’t hear the way eight out of ten sentences out of his mouth ended with, “Lola has it so hard, Josie, please just be understanding.” She didn’t know that for every birthday, every anniversary, he insisted on taking Lola to lunch first, because she ‘needed the company’, before coming to celebrate with me. I should have woken up a long time ago. But I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of the man who had pulled me out of the freezing water. “You… you always do this. You swallow everything and only tell me the good stuff. What’s going on?” Gemma’s voice was trembling now, her eyes locked onto me. “Don’t think I didn’t notice. The way Isaac treats his sister-in-law… it’s crossed the line into weird so many times.” “I used to ask you about it, and you’d always just brush it off. ‘It’s fine, she’s his family, he’s just being supportive.’ You seemed so okay with it, so I kept my mouth shut.” She sniffled, a sob catching in her throat. “But I kept track of it. I worried about it.” “Until the day he proposed to you. In the plaza below your office building. Hundreds of roses. When he yelled your name, his voice was literally cracking. I thought to myself, how could a man who looks at her like that not love her?” She forced a laugh, wiping her nose. “So I threw all those doubts away. Because today is the day my Josie finally gets her happily ever after.” Right on cue, a chorus of cheers and laughter erupted from the hallway. “The groom is here! The groom is here! Pay the toll!” Gemma’s eyes lit up instantly. She wiped the last of her tears away, a massive grin breaking across her face. “He’s here! Isaac is finally here!” “Okay, sit up straight, fix the veil, don’t let him see you yet—wait, is my makeup ruined?” I sat perfectly still, watching her flurry of movement through the lace. She was smiling. I was smiling, too. She was smiling because she thought Isaac had finally arrived. I was smiling because my groom had finally arrived. 5 The moment the door swung open, the smile vanished from Gemma’s face. The man who walked in was not Isaac. The other brides’ bridesmaids were still in the hallway, cheering and yelling things like, “Give us the envelopes!” and “Sing us a song!” They didn’t know Isaac; they just assumed the man walking into 302 was the groom assigned to this suite. But Gemma knew. Her head whipped back to look at me, her eyes immediately welling up again. The look on her face was a devastating cocktail of confusion, panic, and a dark, sinking realization that she had just put the pieces together. I reached out and gently squeezed her hand. It was as if she had been struck physically. The tears spilled over her eyelashes. She didn’t ask why. Maybe the sentence I had just spoken—”He only approached me so Lola could marry his brother”—finally clicked into place. Or maybe it was because the woman sitting beneath the heavy lace veil was so eerily calm. She understood. In an instant, she understood everything. Biting down hard on her lower lip, Gemma took a step back and gave a shaky wave to the man in the doorway. The man walked in. He didn’t say a word. He simply reached out, took my hand in his, and led me out the door. The hallway was eerily quiet now. All the other suites had been emptied out in a flurry of laughter and camera flashes. Only Room 302 remained, its bride walking silently away, her hand held by a complete stranger. When we reached the outdoor plaza, the fifty brides in their identical vintage lace veils were lined up in five perfect rows. The network host’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “Alright! The final couple has taken their place! Fifty couples, all present and accounted for!” “It is time for the couples to take their vows—” Isaac, who had been whispering and laughing with Lola, heard the words ‘all present’ and frowned. “Wait,” he said sharply.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452013”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

It was our fifth wedding anniversary, and instead of a candlelit dinner, I was behind the wheel of my sedan, grinding out another shift as a rideshare driver. The passenger door swung open, and a woman slid into the back seat. My breath hitched when I caught her reflection in the rearview mirror—underneath her designer trench coat, she was wearing absolutely nothing from the waist down. She was shivering, her teeth chattering from the Chicago winter, but her eyes were sharp, brimming with a cruel sort of provocation. “Never seen a girl having a little fun before?” she snapped. “Everett likes it this way,” she continued, her voice dripping with a smug, breathless pride. “He says the risk of being caught outdoors is the only thing that really gets him going. It keeps him on edge.” She let out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Not like that pathetic housewife of his. He says she doesn’t even know how to look at him, let alone touch him.” The woman—Roxy, according to the app—leaned forward, her smile widening. “Get this: just to impress me, he hired some guys to stage a kidnapping. He told his wife it was some old ‘business rivals’ coming for his head.” “And the idiot actually fell for it! She showed up to trade herself for him. They put her through hell for twenty-four hours straight while he and I watched.” “Tell me,” she whispered, leaning closer to the partition. “Isn’t that just madness? He loves me so much he’s willing to destroy his own wife just to give me a thrill.” I slammed on the brakes. The screech of tires echoed through the quiet street, but all I could hear was the blood roaring in my ears. My body went cold, paralyzed. A few months ago, I had been beaten into a coma trying to “save” my husband, Everett. I walked with a permanent limp now, a constant reminder of the night I thought I was being a hero. 1. I forced my hands to stay steady on the steering wheel, my knuckles white. “So,” I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else—someone far away. “This… boyfriend of yours. How did you two meet?” Maybe it was a coincidence. The name ‘Everett’ wasn’t exactly rare. And the Everett I knew was a man of quiet habits, a low-level office drone who complained if the heating bill was ten dollars too high. He wasn’t some adrenaline junkie playing sick games in the woods. “He’s not my boyfriend,” Roxy said, lounging back against the leather seat, looking utterly bored with her own wealth. “He’s my benefactor. My sugar daddy, if you want to be gauche about it.” “I’ve been his ‘special project’ for five years. Since the day I graduated. He tucked me away in a corner office at his firm.” “A million-dollar salary just to look pretty.” I felt a microscopic surge of relief. My Everett was a nobody. He made less than I did. On my last birthday, I’d ordered a small cake, and he’d made me return it, calling it an ‘unnecessary extravagance.’ He’d scolded me for ‘wasting’ money when I made him a bowl of noodles with two eggs. Frugality is the only way we survive, Margot, he’d always tell me. Roxy’s lips curled into a sneer. “His wife is such a loser. She has no idea who she’s actually sleeping next to. A billionaire playing ‘poor’ just for the psychological experiment of it all.” “It’s hilarious, really. She’s out here breaking her back driving an Uber while he spends more on one of our lunches than she makes in a year.” I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird in my chest. “Last year,” she went on, her voice a sing-song of malice, “my vacation happened to fall on the same day his wife ended up in the ER. Some car accident.” “He didn’t even blink. He skipped out on signing her consent forms and took me on a ten-country tour of Europe instead.” “I got upset because we were five minutes late for the private jet, so he bought me three supercars just to stop me from pouting. Fifty million dollars, just like that.” A wave of nausea hit me. Last year, after the accident, I was hovering on the edge of death. The hospital had called Everett dozens of times, but there was no answer. When he finally showed up days later, he told me he’d been in a dead zone for a ‘crucial business trip.’ He’d cried by my hospital bed, holding me, telling me he’d never leave me for work again once we finally ‘made it.’ He’d brought me three little plastic toy cars. I had to save up for weeks to get these for you, babe, he’d said. To remind you of the life we’ll have someday. I forced the car back into gear, my vision blurring. Roxy didn’t notice. She was too busy with her own reflection. “I think Everett actually loves her, in his own twisted way,” she mused. “That’s why he gives me the money but keeps her as the ‘wife.’ But who cares?” “He told me himself: she’s boring. Gray. A piece of stale bread compared to the fire I give him.” I forced a pale, hollow smile into the mirror. “Yeah. I bet.” Roxy seemed satisfied with that. She suddenly slapped her forehead. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pair of lacy, discarded silk panties. “I’ll pay you double the fare if you drop these in the mail for me. Address it to the ‘little woman.’” “Today is their five-year anniversary,” she cackled. “Everett told me to pick out a ‘gift’ so she wouldn’t get suspicious about him being out late.” She handed me her phone to show me the delivery address. My last shred of hope withered and died. It was my house. 2. Roxy pulled her phone back, a look of smug charity on her face. “I’m honestly too kind, helping him manage his domestic trash,” she laughed. “But a woman who’s been cheated on that long? She deserves the leftovers. She’ll probably see the silk and think he’s finally being ‘romantic.’ God, I can’t wait.” I gripped the steering wheel so hard the plastic groaned. I wanted to turn around and wrap my cord around her neck, but I forced myself to breathe. If they wanted to play games, fine. I hoped they’d still be laughing when I saw them in court. I discreetly tapped the ‘record’ button on my dashboard dashcam. “He sounds devoted to you,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I hope you get that wedding ring soon.” She tossed her head back, eyes burning with a manic sort of triumph. “Oh, it’s coming. That useless woman can’t compete with me.” “Do you know how much he spoils me?” she bragged, leaning in again. “I mentioned I had a headache this morning, and he hired two separate medical teams to stay on call for me twenty-four hours a day. He even bought me a brownstone right across from his office. If I so much as sneeze, he’s there.” A sharp, stabbing pain flared in my chest. I didn’t know Everett had that kind of tenderness in him. In five years, he had never even remembered my birthday. I’d asked to go to the beach once, and he’d lectured me on the cost of gas. He ‘forgot’ I was allergic to mangoes every time he bought groceries. To ‘save money,’ I lived on a five-dollar-a-day food budget. I’d spent years hovering around free sample stations at Costco, once fainting from hypoglycemia and being rushed to the hospital by a stranger. Everett had seen all of it. And he had smiled and lied. He’d even taken my meager earnings from my rideshare shifts, claiming he was ‘paying off our debts.’ “He’s… incredible,” I rasped, the lie burning my throat. Roxy kicked her bare feet up on the back of my seat. “That’s nothing. You want to hear the best part?” Her smile turned into something jagged and cruel. “A few months ago, I got bored. I told him I was jealous of how much time he spent at home with that ‘thing.’ So, to cheer me up, he staged that kidnapping.” My face went ghost-white. My hands shook. A game. It was all a game to make her smile. She was practically dancing in her seat now. “I told him I hated the idea of her ever touching him again. Do you know what he did?” My body convulsed—a phantom memory of the darkest night of my life. The humiliation. The screaming. “It was so intense,” she whispered, her eyes glazed with the memory. “She screamed all night long. And Everett and I were in the very next room… screaming for a different reason. I can still hear her sometimes. It’s a rush.” I remembered it with terrifying clarity. I thought my world was ending when I heard he’d been taken. I didn’t call the police because I was terrified they’d kill him. I begged the ‘debt collectors’ to hurt me instead of him. They tied me up. They broke my leg. They took away the last shred of my dignity as a woman. And all that time, I thought I was protecting the man I loved. I didn’t know he was ten feet away, tangled in silk sheets with her. I’d spent weeks crying in the hospital afterward. Everett had sat there with his fake tears, whispering, Even if you’re broken now, Margot, I’ll never leave you. I had actually felt lucky. I thought the tragedy had brought us closer. “It was a bit much, though,” Roxy added, her tone shifting to annoyance. “He felt ‘guilty’ afterward. Ignored me for a whole month. He even talked about ‘coming clean’ and telling her he was a billionaire, but I stopped him.” My voice was a jagged thread. “Why did he want to tell her?” Roxy scoffed. “He wanted to pay for some experimental surgery to ‘fix’ her. And her little brother—what’s his name? Jamie? The kid needs a transplant. Everett was going to reveal everything just to save the brat’s life.” 3. “And you stopped him?” My voice cracked, rising into a sharp, ragged edge. Roxy mistook my horror for awe. She smiled, preening. “Keeping him ‘poor’ was my idea. I told him it was the only way to test if she was really ‘loyal’ or just another gold-digger looking for a payout.” “He bought it. He decided to ‘test’ her for a little longer.” She sighed, looking annoyed. “But he still couldn’t let go of the brother thing. He actually made an anonymous donation. Millions of dollars to the hospital under some charity’s name. Such a waste.” “But I’m a smart girl. I intercepted the wire transfer. Spent two weeks in Vegas with some male models instead. Best vacation ever.” The world began to spin. I couldn’t breathe. Jamie had needed two hundred thousand for his heart surgery. I’d given up my own rehabilitation, choosing to remain a ‘cripple’ just to funnel every cent I had into his care. He was my only living relative. But Everett had been so angry back then. He’d insisted Jamie was faking it. He told me the kid was just trying to ‘drain us’ because he was lazy. We’d had the most vicious fight of our marriage over it. I never understood why he hated my brother so much. Now I knew. He thought Jamie had stolen the ‘anonymous’ millions he’d sent. After that fight, Everett ‘disappeared’ for a week. Jamie couldn’t wait any longer. I was desperate. I did the only thing I could—I sold a kidney on the black market to get the surgery money. But when I hobbled into the ward the next day, Jamie was gone. Missing. All that was left on his empty bed was the two hundred dollars he’d managed to save from his paper route. I knew why he left. He didn’t want to be a burden anymore. He chose to go off and die alone so I could have a life. But he could have lived! Everett could have saved him with a flick of his wrist! That money could have saved him ten times over! I was shaking so hard my teeth were clicking. I bit my lip until I felt the hot burst of blood. “Do you have any idea,” I hissed, my voice a ghostly rasp, “that playing with people like this… people die?” Roxy waved a hand dismissively. “If they’re too weak to handle it, that’s not on me.” “I actually went to the hospital myself to make sure that donation didn’t reach him. I needed a new phone and some boots, so I pocketed the ‘petty cash’ they had on hand and left the kid two hundred bucks.” She laughed, looking out the window. “I bet the sister thought he saved it up himself. It was probably ‘escort’ money from some nurse, for all I know.” Then she turned to me, her eyes bright, waiting for me to join in on the joke. She didn’t see a driver. She saw a mirror for her own cruelty. But she found herself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a woman who wanted her dead. 4. The rage was a tidal wave, drowning out every sense of law, reason, or survival. In that moment, Margot the wife died. There was only a monster left. “Want to know a secret?” Roxy asked, her voice light with a sense of total victory. “Everett’s been desperate for an heir. I’ve made sure that never happens. Every time his wife got pregnant, I bribed the ultrasound tech.” “We told her the baby had ‘genetic defects.’ Made her terminate.” She tapped her chin, counting. “Three, I think. Three little ‘mistakes’ gone.” She looked at me with a sickening confidence. “Now that she’s ‘barren’ from the trauma, I just have to get pregnant myself. The ‘Wife’ title will be mine by Christmas.” “And if she won’t sign the papers? I’ll let her stay. She can raise my kids while she scrubs my floors. She’s already used to being a doormat.” I stared at her pretty, hateful face. Every moment of the last five years—the hunger, the pain, the loss of my children—it wasn’t bad luck. It was a screenplay written by her and directed by him. “You animal,” I whispered. I lunged. I reached back and grabbed Roxy by her hair, slamming her head against the partition. I took my seatbelt and looped it around her throat, pulling with every ounce of strength I had left. I screamed—a primal, guttural sound—as I began to rain blows down on her face. Roxy’s nose shattered. Blood sprayed across the back of the car. “You soulless bitch!” I roared. “Why wasn’t it you? Why are you still breathing?” She was dazed, thrashing like a landed fish. “You… you’re dead! Everett will kill you! He’ll kill your whole family!” She spat out a piece of a broken tooth, still trying to look down at me. “I did her a favor! I got rid of her brat brother! I saved her from having kids she couldn’t afford! She should be thanking me on her knees!” I was seeing red. Pure, literal red. I grabbed the glowing, red-hot cigarette lighter from the dash and jammed it into her eye. A scream ripped through the car—a sound like a dying animal. “I’m going to make you pay in blood!” Roxy convulsed, blood and fluid streaming down her face. “Help! Murder! Someone help me!” The car swerved violently as she kicked at my seat, but I didn’t care. I let go of the steering wheel entirely, keeping the belt tight around her neck. I floored the accelerator. “My three children! My brother! My life!” I screamed. “You’re going to burn for all of it!” The car shot forward like a bullet, hurtling toward the guardrail of the bridge, sixty feet above the black, icy waters of the river. 5. “No! Stop! Don’t kill me!” “I’ll give you money! Millions! Just stop!” Roxy shrieked, her voice thin with the sudden, cold realization of her own mortality. I closed my eyes. I unbuckled my own seatbelt. Let’s end this together. Once we hit that rail, once we fell into the abyss, the pain would finally stop. Jamie, I’m coming. I’m bringing your murderer with me. I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m sorry I was too blind to protect you. The wind roared past the windows. The engine screamed. But the impact never came. Just as the car was about to shatter the guardrail, a heavy black SUV roared out from a side street, T-boning us at full speed. The force of the collision sent my head through the windshield. The world went white. Then red. I was dragged from the wreckage like a piece of roadkill. I hit the wet pavement, my vision swimming. Through the haze, I saw Roxy being helped up by several large men in suits. She was alive. She walked over to me, her face a mask of gore and hatred. “You thought you were so tough, didn’t you?” she spat, clutching a piece of jagged glass from the broken window. “I’m going to take my time with you. I’m going to make you beg for the ‘mercy’ of a bullet.” She drove the glass into my palm. I screamed, the pain lancing through my arm, as she laughed, a high, broken sound. She raised the glass again, aiming for my throat. “STOP!” A voice like a thunderclap echoed across the bridge. Footsteps. Familiar, expensive shoes clicking on the asphalt. Everett—no, Jackson—stormed into view, his face contorted with fury. “Who touches what’s mine?” he roared. I looked up, my face a mess of blood and glass. He didn’t recognize me. Not like this. Not in these clothes, covered in the filth of the road. “Jackson…” I whispered. I had loved this man for five years. I had sacrificed my body and my soul for him. He didn’t even look at me. He ran straight to Roxy. “Roxy, baby, are you okay?” He gathered her into his arms, stroking her hair as if she were a piece of fine porcelain. The tenderness in his eyes made me want to vomit. Roxy leaned into him, sobbing theatrically. “Jackson, this psycho… she blinded me! She tried to kill us both! You have to do something!” “If she stays alive, I can’t live like this, Jackson! I’m scared!” Jackson’s gaze shifted to me. It was the coldest thing I had ever seen. He walked over and ground his heel into my head, pressing my face into a freezing puddle. I choked, spitting out mouthfuls of dirty water and blood. “Roxy is my woman!” he hissed. “You touch her, you pay a hundredfold.” He waved a hand to his guards. Two men stepped forward and began to crush my hands under their boots. “Jackson, look at me…” I wheezed. But my voice was drowned out by Roxy’s screech. “Look at her! Still trying to beg for her life! She’s pathetic! Break her, Jackson! Do it for me!” Jackson nodded, his expression one of pure disgust. “You made a mistake, driver. Now you live with the consequences.” “Break her limbs. Then bring her to the basement. Roxy can finish her there.” A guard raised a steel pipe, aiming for my arm. I found one last spark of strength. I threw the guard off me and sat up, wiping the blood from my eyes with a trembling hand. I looked Jackson dead in the eye. His pupils dilated. The color drained from his face until he was as white as a sheet. “Mr. Billionaire,” I rasped, a bloody grin splitting my face. “Whose limbs were you planning on breaking?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452012”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When Grandpa Howard received my message, he was likely turning that old jade seal over in his hands—the one that had stamped the wardship-to-marriage contract twenty years ago. The text was brief: She doesn’t need me anymore. Per our agreement, it’s time for me to go. Today was our fourth wedding anniversary. When Gemma handed me the hotel key card earlier that evening, the glint in her eyes was like honey laced with arsenic. “Jamie, I have a surprise for you,” she’d said. There was a lilt in her voice, a spark of life I hadn’t heard in the two decades I’d spent by her side. The moment I pushed the door open, I heard it—that rhythmic, familiar hitch in breath that I knew better than my own. The two figures were tangled on the bed. The man pinned beneath her, his hands buried in her hair, was Dillon. My best friend. The brother I’d grown up with, the one I thought would take a bullet for me. Gemma didn’t scramble. She didn’t scream. She simply pulled her silk robe closed with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Her voice was colder than a scalpel. “My emotional apathy didn’t just vanish because of you, Jamie. You weren’t the cure.” She let out a soft, jagged laugh. “Dillon was the one who taught me what desire actually feels like. He doesn’t want to ruin your ‘brotherhood,’ and I’m not leaving you. If you can just accept us, we can keep this marriage going.” Nobody knew how many times I had laid on a sterile operating table, undergoing invasive, experimental fertility treatments just so she could have the child she claimed she wanted. And nobody knew that from the day I was brought into the Whitaker estate as her “companion”—a boy groomed to be the anchor for the heiress—my life had been nothing but a long-term rescue mission with an expiration date. 1 Gemma leisurely pulled the duvet over Dillon’s bare chest before walking toward me barefoot. “Why are you crying?” she asked, tilting her head. “Shouldn’t you be happy for me? I finally feel something. Someone else is finally reaching me.” I tried to speak, but my throat felt like it was filled with powdered glass. Silence was the only thing that came out, followed by the heavy thud of tears hitting the hardwood floor. Dillon sat up, the bruising marks on his neck stark against his skin. His eyes were rimmed with red, his voice a raspy whisper. “Jamie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.” “You can hit me, you can hate me,” he continued, his voice trembling with a rehearsed kind of guilt. “Just don’t blame Gemma. It’s all on me.” Gemma frowned, pulling Dillon into her arms. She looked at me with a flicker of impatience. “Stop scaring him, Jamie. I know this is a lot to take in, but there’s no point in a scene.” “Dillon isn’t asking for your title. And I’m not discarding you. Can’t you just be sensible for once?” I stared at her hand—the hand I had held through her night terrors, the hand that had remained limp and cold for years—as it stroked Dillon’s hair with genuine tenderness. It was almost funny. During her years of treatment, when she’d go into fits of rage and shatter everything in sight, I was the one who swept up the glass in silence. When she retreated into weeks of catatonic silence, I was the one who kept the house running, hovering nearby like a ghost just so she wouldn’t be alone. I had swallowed every bit of resentment, every lonely night, and every ounce of pain just to keep her stable. I didn’t even let her see me cry, fearing it would trigger her. And this was the reward for my “sensibility.” I took a shaky breath, the bitterness coating my tongue. “How long?” Gemma picked up her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it out to me. “See for yourself.” I scrolled through the photos with numb fingers. A year ago: they were at a concert, Dillon leaning on her shoulder, Gemma laughing—a real, vibrant laugh I’d never seen. Two months ago: at a carnival, her face smeared with cotton candy as she made a silly face at the camera. Last week: while I was at the clinic alone, recovering from another round of hormone injections, they were watching the sunrise on a mountain peak. I had known her since I was five years old. I had been her shadow through the darkest parts of her adolescence. When she first started showing signs of recovery, she told me, “Jamie, I feel like I can ignore the whole world, but you’re the only one who makes me feel like being alive has a purpose.” I thought I was the one who had finally cracked the ice. Now I realized I was just the ferryman who had carried her across the dark river. I was never the destination. I threw the phone to the floor. The screen shattered, echoing the mess inside my chest. “You lied to me for a year!” I screamed, the sound raw and ugly. “Gemma, do you remember what you told me? You said you’d learn how to love for me. You said as long as I was there, it was enough!” There was no guilt in her eyes. Only a flat, terrifying indifference. “People change, Jamie. You can’t hold me to things I said when I was sick.” “And stop crying,” she added, her lip curling in a slight sneer. “You look pathetic. I’m not trying to hurt you; I’m just tired of lying. You gave me habit and dependency. You spent twenty years failing to make my heart race. Dillon did it in one.” While I was curled in a ball on a cold clinic bed, weeping from the physical toll of trying to give her a family, she was out discovering “excitement” with my best friend. Twenty years of devotion. Dozens of procedures. All of it rendered worthless in the face of a “spark.” “Are you done?” Gemma’s voice snapped me back to the room. Dillon buried his face in her neck. “Gemma, stop. He’s allowed to be angry. Maybe I should go… let you guys talk…” Gemma held him down, her grip firm. “You aren’t going anywhere.” She turned to me, her gaze turning icy. “If you can’t handle this, then leave. But let me remind you—you’ve been under my wing for your entire life. If you walk out that door, who else is ever going to want you?” I didn’t answer. I turned and walked out. Behind me, I heard Dillon’s weak, performative voice: “Jamie, wait! Don’t leave like this!” And then Gemma’s low, soothing murmur: “Let him go. He just needs to throw his tantrum.” 2 After leaving the house, I received a call from Grandpa Howard. “Jamie, you’ve done enough,” he said, his voice heavy with a fatigue that matched mine. “I’ve heard. We’ll handle the divorce when I’m back in the country.” I checked into a hotel he arranged and spent two days in a catatonic fog. Then, Dillon called. “Jamie, please come home,” he begged, sounding like the brother I used to know. “Let’s just talk. I promise I’ll never see her again. I’ll leave the city. Just come back.” Before the Whitakers took me in, Dillon and I had grown up in the same foster home. When he found out I was being “sold” to a wealthy family to be a companion for a sick girl, he had held me and cried for two hours. He had even given up his dreams of pro sports to study psychology, claiming he wanted to help me fix my marriage, to ensure I had a “normal” life. “Our Jamie deserves the best,” he’d said back then. “I’m going to make sure you’re the happiest man alive.” I had believed him. I thought having a brother like him was the greatest blessing of my life. He became Gemma’s therapist, just as he said he would. But it turned out he didn’t just cure her; he cured himself right into her bed. I hesitated, then agreed to meet him. Not because I forgave him, but because some things needed to be finished face-to-face. When I arrived at the house, Dillon ushered me in. He sat me down on the sofa and handed me a bowl of warm peach cobbler—the comfort food he used to make for me whenever I was down. “Jamie, I just lost control of my heart. Please, just take a bite. Let me feel like I’m doing one thing right.” I didn’t want to argue. I took a few bites just to get it over with. Minutes later, the world began to tilt. My vision blurred into a hazy gray. Dillon helped me into the master bedroom, where Gemma was already asleep. My head was spinning, my body burning with a sudden, localized fever. Through the fog, I saw Dillon standing at the door. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was wearing a cold, triumphant smile. The drug hit like a freight train. Every inch of my skin screamed for contact. My body, acting on a chemical impulse I couldn’t control, began to thrash, seeking the coldness of Gemma’s skin. A sudden, sharp pain jolted me into a moment of horrifying clarity. My voice was a broken rasp. “No… please, stop…” But Gemma didn’t stop. I was too weak to push her away, trapped in a nightmare where pleasure was indistinguishable from agony. Then, a sickening cramp seized my abdomen. A warmth began to spread beneath me, soaking the sheets. Gemma finally pulled away, her brow furrowing for a second before a sneer twisted her features. “Really, Jamie? You’re going this low now? Drugging yourself to trap me? You’re disgusting.” There was no pity in her eyes. Only revulsion, as if she were looking at something rotting. I tried to tell her. I tried to say it was Dillon. I tried to beg for help. But Gemma just slammed the door, leaving me in the dark. I couldn’t utter a single word. When I woke up, the housekeeper had already called an ambulance. The nurse in the recovery room sighed, her eyes full of pity. “You lost a lot of blood, honey. You’re lucky to be alive.” “Rest now. Your body needs to heal. You… you can try again for children later.” My eyes felt like they had been scorched dry. I couldn’t even cry. My mind was a slideshow of the last twenty years. Gemma at seven years old, witnessing her mother’s affair and her father’s subsequent suicide. She had stopped speaking that day. The doctors called it a trauma-induced apathy—a defensive wall so thick she couldn’t feel or express a thing. Grandpa Howard had brought me in as a “fiancé” in a desperate bid to give her a reason to connect. He told me when I got older that he would respect my choice; once she was better, I could leave. But I had fallen in love with her. I threw my choice away. I spent twenty years smiling at her stone-cold face. I studied every psychological text I could find. I put in every ounce of effort to make her “normal.” On our wedding day, she had looked me in the eye and promised, “If we ever have a child, I’ll make sure they are the happiest baby in the world.” But she had spent her life hating her mother, only to grow into the exact same woman. 3 I spent three days in the hospital. Gemma didn’t send a single text. As I was signing my discharge papers, my phone rang. It was the police. “Is this the husband of Gemma Whitaker? She’s been brought in on a sexual assault allegation. We need you down at the station.” When I arrived, a young officer pulled me aside. “The complainant is a man named Dillon. He claims that after a heated argument yesterday, Mrs. Whitaker forced herself on him.” “We brought her in for a statement, but now Dillon’s phone is off. We can’t reach him. If he doesn’t drop the charges, we have to proceed.” Gemma walked out of the interrogation room, her face livid. “Are you happy now? If you hadn’t played the ‘wronged husband’ and run away, Dillon wouldn’t be acting out like this!” “He didn’t even want to replace you, Jamie! But you pushed him!” The young officer taking notes froze, staring at us in pure disbelief. I felt the heat rise to my face. Looking at her—so self-righteous, so utterly delusional—I realized that words were a waste of breath. “You called me here… so I could convince Dillon to drop the charges?” Gemma shrugged as if it were obvious. “I’m telling you to go apologize to him. Fix whatever you broke so he stops being dramatic.” She truly believed it was my fault. That my “lack of grace” was the reason she was in a precinct. I didn’t want any more drama. I just wanted to be gone. I contacted Dillon and met him at a quiet cafe he’d pinned. He was leaning back in his chair, a smug, careless grin on his face. “Recovered already? That was fast.” I didn’t play the game. “The drugs, the police report… what are you doing, Dillon?” He leaned in, his voice a low purr. “I want to see you crawl, Jamie. I want to see you on your knees, begging me.” I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just looked at him and asked one thing. “Dillon… was any of it real? When we were kids?” “In the group home, you always gave me the bigger half of the bread. You took the beatings for me. The day I left for the Whitakers, you gave me that bag of candy you’d saved for months and told me to never look back.” A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek. “I thought you were my brother. I thought you wanted me to be happy.” He flinched. His chest began to heave. “I did, at first,” he spat. “But then I watched you get everything. And I started to hate you.” “Jamie, I was stronger than you. Smarter. But the Whitakers didn’t choose me!” “When I finally got fostered, my ‘mother’ abused me for years. While you were living in a mansion, eating five-star meals, and driving luxury cars. Gemma was a statue, sure, but you had a bottomless credit card. Do you know how much it killed me every time I saw you?” I stared at him, speechless. He had been nursing this venom for over a decade. Dillon laughed bitterly. “I didn’t study psychology for you. I studied it because if the Whitakers wanted a ‘good, obedient boy’ like you, I knew I could play that part better. If the family wouldn’t pick me, I’d make the heiress pick me herself.” He sat back, waiting for me to break. Waiting for me to beg for Gemma’s freedom. I felt my nails bite into my palms. I forced myself to stand, then, with a heavy heart, I lowered myself to the floor. I knelt. The other patrons whispered, their eyes full of judgment, but Dillon just reached out and patted my cheek. “I’ll drop the charges. I wouldn’t want her behind bars, after all. But I don’t want to see your face in that house ever again.” I got back to the estate late that evening. Gemma was already there, looking as composed and elegant as ever. When she saw me, she didn’t ask how I was. She just said, “Dillon told me. He said you were the one who told him to call the police.” 4 I stood rooted to the spot. “Gemma, I have never played games like that. He drugged me, I was hospitalized, and then he turned on you!” Gemma lit a cigarette, her eyes full of mocking disdain. “I never realized how manipulative you were, Jamie.” “You’re getting quite good at fiction. You expect me to believe you were pregnant with my child and didn’t tell me? Do I look like a fool?” Before I could answer, the front door burst open. Dillon stumbled in, looking like a wreck. His hair was a mess, his shirt torn, his face streaked with tears. Gemma’s expression shifted instantly. “Dillon? What happened?” He looked at me with a gaze full of practiced terror. He pointed a trembling finger. “He… he hired people. Women. They cornered me in the alley… I barely got away.” I stood there, my mind blank. It was so brazen, so absurd, that I couldn’t even find the words to deny it. Gemma didn’t wait for an explanation. She crossed the room and slapped me across the face so hard my head snapped back. I fell, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. Gemma looked down at me with pure disgust. “You make me sick, Jamie.” “You like playing these little games? Fine. Let’s play.” A few minutes later, the housekeepers brought in several rough-looking women from the local dive bars—women who smelled of stale beer and desperation. They circled me. They tore at my clothes, pinning my wrists to the floor. I fought. I kicked. But it only made them more aggressive. Gemma was already gone, cradling Dillon, whispering that she’d take him to the hospital to get checked out. As the heavy oak door slammed shut, a familiar, agonizing cramp ripped through my gut. Blood began to pool beneath me, dark and hot, spreading across the white rug. The women finally stopped, their eyes wide with sudden panic. “Wait, why is he bleeding like that? Is he dying?” Without a word, they turned and fled, leaving the door wide open. I lay there in the cold, red mess, unable to even lift a finger. I don’t know how long I was there before Mr. Bradley, Grandpa Howard’s longtime butler, rushed in with two security guards. “Mr. Whitaker… oh, heavens. Master Howard sent me to get you out. You’ve suffered enough.” … At the hospital, while Dillon was getting a few scratches treated, Gemma’s phone rang. “Grandpa? You’re back?” Grandpa Howard’s voice was like stone. “Get to the estate. Now.” Gemma let out a dry laugh. “Did Jamie tattle? He brought this on himself, Grandpa. I just gave him a little scare to teach him a lesson.” The silence on the other end lasted for an eternity. Then, the old man spoke. “I’ve already sent him away. You’re coming here to sign the divorce papers.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452011”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When my eyes flew open, the scent hit me first—stale tobacco layered beneath a suffocating, synthetic pine air freshener. I was back in the backseat of the rideshare, and my three roommates were in the middle of their favorite game: playing at being filthy rich. The phantom pains of my past life violently crashed into me. In that previous timeline, I had scrambled to de-escalate the situation, warning the driver that they were just joking, knowing full well that you never flaunt wealth in front of a desperate stranger. My roommates, feeling humiliated and stripped of their manufactured glamour, had stormed out of the car in a rage. But the driver hadn’t let me leave. He locked the doors, a sickening grin spreading across his face as he told me that since I had saved them, I would have to pay their toll. The assault was brutal. I fought with every ounce of my being, barely escaping with my life. I went straight to the police. Yet, when the detectives questioned my roommates, they formed a united front of lies. They claimed I had intentionally sat in the front seat to seduce him, that I refused to get out of the car because I “wanted a thrill.” The driver’s wife caught wind of this, dragged me by my hair through the street, branded me a homewrecker, and plastered my battered face all over the internet. The digital mob tore me apart. The final nail in the coffin was when the driver sent photos of my violated body to my mother. The shock triggered a massive heart attack. She died before the ambulance even arrived. Shattered, hollowed out, and utterly alone, I took my own life. And my roommates? They used the “trauma” of my tragic suicide to secure full-ride fellowships to graduate school, smiling for the cameras as they accepted their offers. … 1. “God, what is this, an early two-thousands Chevy? My family’s housekeeper wouldn’t even be caught dead driving this piece of junk to the grocery store.” The moment I blinked the disorientation away, Kendall’s sickeningly sweet, nasal voice pierced the heavy air of the car. “And what is up with these seat covers? Polyester?” On the other side of me, Jocelyn pinched the fabric of the seat cover, her face contorting in exaggerated disgust as she shoved it down toward the floor mats. “My golden retriever sleeps on higher thread counts.” “Seriously. I wouldn’t even wipe my shoes on it.” My phone vibrated in my palm. It was our dorm group chat. Kendall was texting beneath the sightline of the rearview mirror, egging them on. Look at this guy in the rearview. He looks like a total creep. Bet he folds the second someone stands up to him. We are whoever we say we are outside of campus. Keep acting rich, let’s freak him out! The absurdity of the scene playing out in front of me perfectly overlapped with the nightmare of my past life. Back then, terrified that their reckless roleplaying would invite a tragedy, I had tried to smooth things over. Their reward for my kindness was leaving me trapped in a moving vehicle, completely deaf to my screams for help. This time, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them from digging their own graves. In the driver’s seat, the man’s face visibly darkened. The muscles in his jaw locked as he let out a dry, chilling chuckle. “You ruin those mats, little girl, and you’re paying for them.” “How much could a cheap piece of fabric possibly cost?” Jocelyn scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much the Persian rug in my foyer is worth? Forty thousand dollars.” “Exactly. Only people from your… tax bracket obsess over pennies.” Phoebe, sitting in the middle, offered a careless shrug. Suddenly, she pointed a manicured finger at the generic, plastic water bottle resting in the driver’s cupholder. “Oh my god, how do you drink that tap water garbage? Aren’t you afraid of getting parasites?” Watching their theatrical performance, I slowly shifted my gaze out the window, my mind racing. The sun was dipping below the horizon, bleeding the sky into a bruised purple. I needed to find a way out of this car, and fast. I absolutely refused to be dragged down to hell by these idiots again. The driver’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. He grabbed the water bottle, his neck stiffening as he kept his eyes on the road. “Well, when your life isn’t worth anything to begin with, I guess you just drink whatever’s cheap,” Kendall smirked, practically preening with self-satisfaction. “Unlike us. I literally can’t hydrate with anything except Voss, shipped straight from the aquifer.” Phoebe giggled, her eyes curving into cruel crescents. “Kendall, stop. The guy probably doesn’t even know what Voss is.” “True. It’s a socioeconomic thing. He couldn’t grasp it in a lifetime.” The three of them dissolved into high-pitched, grating laughter. Outside, the wind whipping against the windows began to howl, growing sharper, colder. I gripped my seatbelt tightly. A dangerous, desperate plan began to take shape in my mind. Before the driver could snap back at them, I turned my head and cut through the noise. “Can you guys just stop? You’re going too far.” The three girls in the back stopped laughing, turning to stare at me in stunned silence for a fraction of a second. Kendall recovered first, shooting me a venomous side-eye. “Giselle? You’re taking his side? Oh, wait, that makes sense. You’re from some trailer park in the rust belt, aren’t you?” “I heard your mom cleans out diners for a living,” Phoebe sneered, looking down at me with an air of aristocratic pity. Even when they weren’t pretending to be heiresses, their upper-middle-class backgrounds eclipsed my reality by miles. “No wonder you always smell like cheap bleach and old grease.” “God, you and the driver really are from the same gutter. You guys must have so much in common,” Kendall chimed in. “What do you talk about? Food stamps?” As their insults rained down on me, I bit my lower lip, feigning deep hurt. “You can say whatever you want about me, but leave the driver alone. He’s just trying to make an honest living for his family.” Jocelyn raised an eyebrow, letting out a sharp scoff. “Family?” Kendall lazily kicked the back of the driver’s seat with her designer sneaker. “Hey, old man. Someone as broke as you actually has a wife and kids?” The driver let out a low, breathy laugh. His foot slammed down on the gas pedal. I whipped my head toward the windshield. The car violently jerked into another lane. In my palm, my phone began to vibrate incessantly, the rideshare app flashing a glaring warning. He had deviated from the route. 2. My breath hitched, my heart hammering so violently it felt like it might crack my ribs. Time was up. I immediately leaned forward, grabbing the driver’s phone from the dashboard mount and waking the screen. I turned to the girls, raising my voice. “What are you talking about? Look, here’s his family right here!” The cracked screen illuminated a faded, happy photo of a family of three. The driver looked years younger, a testament to how old the picture was. The little boy in the photo was strikingly pale, his skin translucent, his head completely bald from intensive treatments. In my past life, I had learned the truth much later. The driver’s intense hatred for the wealthy stemmed from a broken medical system. His son had battled severe leukemia, and because he couldn’t afford the exorbitant experimental treatments that rich families could easily buy, the boy died at only six years old. His son was the absolute line you did not cross. Kendall snatched the phone from my hand, her face immediately twisting into open disgust. “What kind of knock-off trash phone is this? The pixels are huge.” She squinted at the lock screen. “Ew. Why does that kid look like a ghost? It’s genuinely creepy.” The driver whipped his head around, his face contorted into something demonic. “What did you just say!?” The car swerved wildly, the tires screeching as we narrowly missed a concrete divider. Kendall shrieked, tossing the phone carelessly onto the console. “Watch the road, you psycho!” Phoebe gripped the headrest, her chest heaving as she glared at the man. “You almost killed us! Over a stupid lock screen?!” “Seriously. If you’re that defensive over a picture, maybe the kid isn’t even yours,” Jocelyn sneered, raking a hand through her messy hair. “Wife probably cheated on you.” The phone had slipped into the crack between the seats. Moving faster than the driver, I dove for it, retrieved it, and glared righteously at my roommates. “Just because you have money doesn’t give you the right to strip away someone’s dignity!” Jocelyn looked me up and down, deeply annoyed. “Giselle, look at yourself. You really think you’re in a position to play savior?” “We let you be the roommate coordinator out of pity, don’t let it go to your head!” Hearing that, my fists clenched so tight my nails dug into my palms. I almost laughed at the sheer audacity. Freshman year, the three of them had bullied and manipulated me into being the “roommate coordinator” simply because they couldn’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. I was the one scrubbing the toilets. I was the one mopping the floors. When the drain clogged with their hair, or when they were too hungover to get their own food, it was always me fetching and cleaning. In my previous life, I genuinely believed that because I had poured my heart out serving them, they would at least have the decency to tell the police the truth. Instead, they framed me as a slut who threw herself at a predator. This time around, I was going to make sure they tasted every single drop of the agony I endured. The driver retrieved his phone, his thumb brushing over the cracked screen. The shadow over his face briefly receded, replaced by a haunting, hollow smile. “I apologize,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “That is the last photo taken of my son before he passed away. I lost my temper.” Kendall shrieked, frantically pulling a bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse and scrubbing her hands. “Dead? Oh my god, that is such bad energy. I literally touched it.” Phoebe pulled out a pack of wet wipes, handing one to Kendall with a worried frown. “Ken, you’re totally going to have nightmares tonight.” Jocelyn shrugged, thoroughly unbothered. “Just drink it off. I brought a bottle of Dom we can pop when we get to the rental.” “Ugh, thank god for you.” They chatted back and forth, entirely ignoring the man in the front seat, acting as if the death of a child was a minor inconvenience compared to Kendall potentially having a bad dream. I watched the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. For a split second, his expression completely fractured. In my last life, mere wealth-flaunting had planted a seed of violent hatred in him. This time, they had crossed lines so deeply depraved I couldn’t even fathom the horrors this broken man was dreaming up for them. The notifications on my phone multiplied. Rerouting. Rerouting. Rerouting. The vibration in my hand matched the frantic tempo of my pulse. I took shallow, quiet breaths. In my calculated panic, I intentionally flipped the mute switch off. Instantly, the loud, rhythmic pinging of the GPS warnings echoed through the suffocating cabin. 3. The driver slowly turned his head to look at me. His eyes were completely dead. A terrifying pool of eerie calm. They were the eyes that had haunted my nightmares, night after agonizing night. I looked away instantly, a physical shudder ripping through my spine. Hearing the chimes, Phoebe peered out the dark window, her perfectly plucked eyebrows knitting together. “Why are there no streetlights out here? Do you even know how to use a GPS?” The driver let out two dry, rhythmic laughs. He kept his hands casually draped over the steering wheel. “There’s a massive pile-up on the interstate. I’m taking a shortcut to get you girls there.” I thought that after the screaming match, they would at least have a baseline level of situational awareness. But I severely overestimated their survival instincts. Jocelyn crossed her arms, letting out a haughty huff. “At least you’re marginally useful.” The other two nodded in agreement. “Well, this car smells like a dumpster, so we aren’t paying extra for the detour,” Kendall complained, waving a hand in front of her nose. The driver remained perfectly placid. Not a single muscle in his face twitched in anger. “Just go into your app and change the drop-off location to wherever we are now. The rest of the ride is on the house.” The three of them paused at the mention of a free ride. They exchanged a look, then collectively turned to me, snapping their fingers. “Cancel the ride, Giselle. Quick.” I clutched my phone tightly. Watching their faces soften at the prospect of saving a few bucks, I knew my window had finally opened. “No.” I sat rigidly in my seat, staring straight ahead. “I’m not cancelling it.” Jocelyn’s eyes bulged. “Giselle, what the hell is wrong with you? If you need a therapist, go find one, but stop dragging us into your weird complexes!” “Seriously. You’re broke and you’re obnoxious. Just do it!” They fired off insults, their faces flushed with irritation. Jocelyn started spamming my phone with texts in the group chat. Do you have money to burn or something?! Do you know how expensive a ride from the airport to the estate is?! The driver caught my eye in the mirror and offered a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. “Are you worried about safety, sweetheart? There are cameras everywhere these days. Who’d be stupid enough to try anything?” He paused, his gaze slowly dragging across the three girls in the back. “Besides… you ladies are clearly very important people. I wouldn’t dare offend you.” “Exactly!” “Why would he do anything to us? He’s not an idiot.” Jocelyn, her ego sufficiently stroked by the driver’s feigned submission, looked at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Listening to their absolute delusion, a cold, bitter laugh bubbled up in my chest. This man drove these roads for a living. He knew exactly where the city’s cameras stopped and the dark country roads began. And the fake billionaire identities these girls were parading around? They didn’t intimidate him. They only fueled his desire to watch them bleed. But this time, I wasn’t going to be the voice of reason. “I don’t care what you say. I am not changing the destination.” I crossed my arms, immovable. My stubbornness was the spark that blew Kendall’s notoriously volatile temper wide open. “Fine. If you won’t change it, get the hell out.” She glared at me with pure venom, pointing toward the desolate, fog-covered bridge rolling past the windows. “It’s pitch black out here. Good luck walking back to civilization.” “And if you get jumped by some local meth heads, don’t bother calling us to save you!” I let the insults wash over me, refusing to touch the app. My phone chimed with the third major route deviation warning. Kendall let out a bark of bitter laughter. “Giselle, you asked for this.” She delivered a brutal kick to the back of the driver’s seat. “Pull over!” The driver didn’t hit the brakes. “Ladies, why don’t you just take her phone and do it yourselves? It’s awfully dangerous for a young girl to be out here alone at night.” But Kendall wasn’t the type to be reasoned with. In my past life, it was her blinding rage that caused them to abandon the car in the first place. She kicked the seat again, harder, her voice turning shrill and violent. “I said pull the car over! Are you deaf!?” Jocelyn and Phoebe leaned forward, aggressively shoving the driver’s shoulder. Between the blaring GPS alarms, Kendall’s screaming, and the physical struggle, the cabin erupted into absolute chaos. The car slammed to a violent halt. “Get out!” Kendall threw her door open, stomped around to the other side, ripped my door open, and grabbed my arm, yanking me toward the asphalt. “You want to play the martyr? Let’s see how you like it out here, you ungrateful bitch!” I didn’t fight back. I stumbled out of the car, my knees slamming into the loose gravel of the shoulder. The sharp pain brought hot tears to my eyes—but not from sadness. I was alive. The loop was broken. I had survived the car ride. Jocelyn slid out right behind me and snatched the phone from my unresisting hands. She tapped the screen a few times, altered the destination, and finalized the drop-off. Then, she looked down at me, holding my phone over the guardrail of the bridge. She flashed me a radiant, wicked smile. “Want it back?” Before I could even open my mouth, she opened her fingers. My phone plummeted into the dark, rushing river below. “Oops. Butterfingers.” She shrugged, her laugh a nasty, metallic sound. I sat slumped on the wet gravel, watching as the two of them triumphantly climbed back into the vehicle. Kendall, wanting more legroom, had even taken the passenger seat in the front. Through the glass, I caught the driver’s eyes. They were fixed on me, dark and seething with a twisted sense of disappointment that his first prey had slipped away. Jocelyn slammed her door shut and, with the haughty command of a queen, ordered him to drive. The driver tore his eyes away from me and hit the gas. I sat there, utterly still, watching the red taillights bleed into the impenetrable darkness of the tree line ahead. Beyond that point, there were no cameras. No cell towers. Nothing but miles of dense, unforgiving woods. Under the cover of the night, a slow, deep smile spread across my face. Welcome to your personal hell, girls.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452010”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The sounds that shattered the peace of our home, the phantom echoes that made the walls feel like they were bleeding—those were all my mother’s designs. She scripted them before she died, a parting gift to ensure he would never know a moment of silence. I remember when she died. She bled out on an operating table while my father stood outside the door, screaming at her. He told her he had been more than generous by coming back to her at all. He told her she needed to “cool off” and stop being so dramatic. He didn’t know that behind that door, my mother had already stopped hearing him. She had stopped hearing everything. When he finally came home that night, his face was a mask of calculated conflict. He told me that Melanie’s children were still so young; he couldn’t bear to see them separated from their mother. It turned out that after the company’s core secrets were leaked and the capital chain snapped, the Clark family had offered a lifeline. The price? A business marriage between a daughter of our house and their eldest son, a man left paralyzed after an accident. It took three years for the truth to settle. Melanie and her twins—the ones my father pampered like royalty—weren’t enough to stop his empire from crumbling. He had even fired the security guard who dared to joke about my mother’s “ghost,” even though every man on the night shift claimed they could hear a woman sobbing in the dark. When Melanie gave birth to the twins a year later, my father simply frowned and suppressed the rumors. Their wedding had been a grander affair than his first, a spit in the face of my mother’s memory. That night, a priceless Ming vase was smashed to pieces in the foyer. When my father heard the news, a small, twisted smile touched his lips. That was the first year he had officially declared his divorce and given Melanie a “real” home. He never stepped foot in our old wing after that. My mother had thrown her wedding ring at him, screaming through her breakdown that he was never to cross the threshold again. But even that didn’t save the child she was carrying. I remember her eyes, wet with tears, fighting him with every ounce of her strength. But my father had listened to some hack spiritualist who claimed the baby in my mother’s womb was a curse upon Melanie’s future. “Melanie is upset again because of you,” he had told my mother, his voice cold as a winter grave. “I’ve already dealt with her, but you… you need to learn.” After the third time Melanie “accidentally” lost an expensive handbag, my father did the unthinkable. He had my mother bound and driven to the clinic for a forced termination. … 1 Less than ten minutes later, a driver arrived to take me to Melanie’s estate. On the way, he stole a pitiful glance at me through the rearview mirror. “Are they really sending you to marry a cripple, Miss?” Before I even crossed the threshold, I heard Melanie’s high-pitched laughter. My father was staring at a contract on the mahogany table, his silence heavy and suffocating. I sat down calmly, watching the smile on Melanie’s face slowly turn brittle under my gaze. “Franklin,” she prompted, her voice a soft, manipulative purr. “The company is your life’s work. I’m sure Wren and her mother will understand. It’s for the family.” My father didn’t move. I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for my mother to storm in, to scream, to put up a fight. But the dead don’t show up for arguments. At dusk, I took the engagement ring provided by the Clarks and returned to the other house alone. My father had flown into a rage. He cursed my mother’s “stubbornness” and froze her bank accounts. He even sent men to burn every flower in her garden, using the ashes as fertilizer for the roses he bought for Melanie. That night, I performed the final task my mother had set for me. I took the heirloom jade bracelet—the one meant for the matriarch of our family—and dropped it into the trash. For three years, Melanie had been the “Mrs. Clark” in the eyes of the world. But she had never even laid a finger on that bracelet. It was the one symbol of status she couldn’t steal. “No matter how angry she is, she shouldn’t have thrown it away,” Melanie sobbed later, tears welling perfectly in her eyes. “I don’t mind the disrespect to me, but that bracelet has been in your family for generations. Think of how heartbroken your parents would be.” She took a jagged breath, her voice trembling with practiced grace. “About the baby… I know your mother blames me. Franklin, maybe it’s better if you just let Wren go. Let her marry into the Clark family and be done with it.” My father’s eyes turned a violent shade of red. He ordered the maid to unlock the door and kicked my mother’s bedroom door off its hinges. Every word he spoke felt like it was being dragged through gravel. “Evelyn! I’ve made my decision! In seven days, Wren is getting married. And you? You will stay in this empty house. You won’t see her. Not for the wedding, not ever!” My mother had loved me more than life itself. Before she died, she had looked at me, her eyes struggling to stay open, whispering, “If I could do it again, I’d take you away, Wren. We’d go somewhere he could never find us.” She didn’t want to leave me. But when she refused to “cooperate” with the termination, my father had ordered the doctors to sedate her. He forced her onto that table. He cut off her only way out. Now, looking at the empty room, I was suddenly grateful she was in the ground. At least there, he couldn’t hurt her anymore. On the bed, the duvet was bunched up into a shape that looked like a sleeping body. Melanie glanced at it, a flicker of a triumphant smile crossing her lips before she masked it with worry. “Franklin, the Clarks are a top-tier family. Evelyn… well, everyone knows she’s your ex-wife now. I’m worried Wren will be looked down upon if she comes from a ‘broken’ home.” She had stolen my mother’s husband, her home, and her dignity. Now, she wanted to erase her motherhood too. A cold stone of defiance settled in my chest. But my father didn’t hesitate. He nodded, following Melanie’s lead perfectly. “I’ll have Wren’s legal records updated immediately. She’ll be listed as your daughter. It’s better for her future.” Seven days from now, I would be married. It was also my mother’s birthday. Melanie was right about one thing: my mother wanted revenge. She and my father had been “the” couple for decades. Then Melanie appeared, and he treated twenty years of love like a piece of scrap paper. My mother couldn’t swallow that insult. “Evelyn, Wren is grown now, and you’ve taught her nothing! Melanie is the one who does everything, who looks after her!” my father screamed at the empty bed. “You weren’t the only victim back then. Melanie suffered too! She battled depression in silence while you made everyone’s life a living hell with your tantrums! How long are you going to keep being this selfish?” Three years ago, he took me away and forbade me from seeing her. Now, he blamed her for our distance. The bed remained still. My father’s brow furrowed, and he instinctively moved toward the bedside. 2 But Melanie’s eyes darted quickly, and she suddenly doubled over, clutching her stomach. “Franklin… I have a sharp pain. The baby…” He forgot all about the bed. He scooped her up and rushed her to the hospital. Before they left, Melanie cast a gloating, razor-sharp smile back at the room. I followed them, silently counting down the final seven days. “Congratulations, Mr. Clark. She’s pregnant!” The doctor’s words hit the room like a physical weight. Melanie’s eyes went wide as she stared at the flickering grey image on the ultrasound monitor. “Franklin, we’re having another baby,” she whispered, her voice thick with joy. My father laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated happiness. He threw my mother out of his mind instantly. For three days, he never left Melanie’s side. The servants were given massive bonuses, and everyone whispered about how much he adored her—how she was the true love of his life. But I remembered. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father started dozens of charitable foundations just to “earn blessings” for her. He spent money without blinking. He was so careful at night that he wouldn’t even sleep in the bed, terrified he might roll over and hurt her. He spent his days in cathedrals and temples, kneeling until his knees bled, praying for her safety. He used to sit on a stool by her feet at night, just watching her sleep with a look of terrifyingly intense devotion. “Franklin,” Melanie murmured, her voice soft as silk. “It’s been so long since the last time. And right after we visited Evelyn’s house… Do you think the baby we lost finally found its way back to us? I’m so happy.” My father froze for a second. And just like that, because of a few sweet words, he gave the name my mother had picked for her lost child to Melanie’s unborn baby. I remember my mother holding my hand, her eyes shining as she told me, “When you were born, your father cried all night. He was so obsessed with finding the perfect name. This second one… I have to think carefully. I won’t let him outdo me this time.” She had spent months agonized over the perfect name. Now, it was being used as a trophy for another woman. “Tell Evelyn to come to the hospital,” my father said, his fingers stroking Melanie’s belly. “And tell her to bring that heirloom silver locket she made for the baby.” The driver returned, trembling. “Everything… it was all burned, sir. And she… she refused to come.” The air in the room turned arctic. With a violent crash, my father kicked over a table. The veins in his neck were bulging. “I arranged the tests myself back then! That fetus wasn’t viable! If she were smart, she’d realize the baby left her because she was so full of malice and jealousy! The child knew Melanie had a kind heart and chose her instead. And she still refuses to repent? She’s still nursing her grudges?” Not viable. That was the lie Melanie and the doctor had crafted together. I saw them exchange a quick, triumphant look. “She’s just hurting, Franklin,” Melanie said, playing the martyr. “She misses the baby as much as we do. Don’t be angry. I’ll take the children and visit her more often. We’ll keep her company.” My father’s face softened. He pulled her into his arms, his gaze melting with tenderness. He would do anything for her now. When Melanie asked to personally prepare my dowry, he agreed. When Melanie suggested digging up the small memorial marker my mother had placed for the lost baby, he agreed to that too. “The child is back with us now,” he said. “That grave is just a morbid reminder of a bad time.” The guards went into my mother’s garden. They kicked and trampled the flowerbeds and tore the small headstone from the earth. My mother and the baby had died together. I had buried her long ago in a place he would never find. This grave was just an empty shell I had built for the performance. Melanie watched the destruction with a satisfied smile. My father looked at the house—the house that had been silent for three years—and sneered. “This place has been a tomb for three years. It’s time to move on.” 3 “She burned the baby’s clothes? Fine. Burn the whole wing. Leave nothing behind!” Melanie looked like she had won the lottery. I, too, felt a strange surge of joy for my mother. He had killed her. He was selling me off. And now, he was erasing every physical trace of our existence. Soon, he would realize that when he wanted to find her again, there wouldn’t even be a shadow left to grasp. “Franklin, what about that cherry blossom tree behind Wren?” Melanie asked, her voice laced with poison. When Melanie first met my father, she had seen my mother painting under that tree many times. The falling petals, the elegant silhouette—it was an image that had once captivated my father so much he couldn’t breathe. Melanie hated it. My father’s gaze shifted to me and locked. My face is seventy percent my mother’s. For a heartbeat, he lost himself. He took a step toward me as if he were seeing a ghost. Then he remembered. “I don’t like the smell of cherry blossoms,” Melanie complained, rubbing her stomach. “It makes me nauseous. And think of the baby, Franklin.” The trees would bloom in a few months. My father pressed a hand to the sudden hollow in his chest. Then he turned and kissed Melanie’s forehead. “Whatever you want.” The smell of smoke began to fill the air. He led Melanie away, not even bothering to suggest where my “mother” should sleep tonight. On the final day, the dowry was delivered to my room. But except for the wedding dress, every diamond necklace and gold bar had been replaced with common stones. The guard turned pale and immediately called my father. Within the hour, I was hauled back to Melanie’s villa. Melanie sat beside my father, sobbing as if her heart were breaking. “Where is your mother?” my father roared. “She stole the dowry just to stop you from leaving? Those were the Clark family heirlooms you were supposed to wear at the ceremony!” The money didn’t matter, but the Clarks’ pride was not something to be trifled with. I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Melanie’s wailing grew louder. “I only wanted to show her the jewelry to see if she wanted any changes! I was trying to be kind! And this is how she treats me?” My father swept everything off the coffee table in a fit of rage. The atmospheric pressure in the room dropped. “Search the city. I don’t care if you have to tear up every floorboard in the state. Find her!” Hours passed. Nothing. Melanie began to hyperventilate, clutching her stomach. “She doesn’t want Wren to be happy. She doesn’t want my baby to be born. It’s all my fault. Who am I to upset the Great Evelyn?” She collapsed into his arms, refusing to see a doctor. “If I lose the baby, I lose the baby. If it makes her happy, then maybe Franklin can finally have some peace. I’ll accept it.” My half-sister, Paige, came running in from school, out of breath. “Dad, I’ll go! I’ll marry into the Clark family if I have to. I’m not afraid. I know the company is in trouble. I can handle it.” My father’s face was like frost. After a long, terrifying silence, his cold gaze landed on me. “Take her outside. Fifty lashes with the rod.” Melanie dabbed at her eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching for a fraction of a second. To avoid upsetting Melanie’s “delicate state,” they gagged me before they started. My father told the guards to keep going until my mother “showed herself.” By the time they finished, my back was a mess of blood and torn skin. “Franklin, is this too much? What if something happens to her?” Melanie asked. She had taken her “medicine” and her complexion was perfectly rosy. My father glanced at me through the window and looked away just as quickly. “Evelyn won’t let Wren suffer forever. If she isn’t here in an hour, throw the girl in the basement.” 4 In the haze of pain, I thought I heard my mother’s voice. She was crying for me, telling me to just say it, to stop carrying the burden. I forced my eyes open. The voice was gone. In the brightly lit living room, I saw my father stroking Paige’s hair, smiling at her with a warmth I had never known. “Sir… the girl fainted.” My father paused. He walked out to me, his expression flat. He looked at the empty driveway, the empty gates. “Where is Evelyn?” The guard wiped sweat from his brow. “Sir… we still haven’t found a trace of her.” A flicker of disbelief crossed my father’s eyes. Then, he let out a sharp, angry laugh. I was tossed into the basement. Someone smeared a bit of ointment on my back, but otherwise, I was left in the dark. Late that night, a shadow approached. “Do you know what this is?” my father asked. A guard held out a wooden box. My father opened it. Inside was a severed hand. I froze. In my ears, I could hear my mother’s scream again. “This belongs to your aunt. The only relative your mother has left. She was in a ‘car accident’ half an hour ago.” When my mother died, my aunt had nearly followed her. It was my mother’s final wish that kept her alive. But even my mother’s last hope had been crushed by his cruelty. “Wren, I’ll ask you one last time. Where is she?” My face was ghost-white. I shook my head. My father’s lip curled. “The news of the accident is all over the wires. And she still won’t come out? Does she think hiding will save you?” He turned and vanished into the night. I curled into a ball in the corner, haunted by nightmares. The next morning, Melanie sent people to do my makeup. A long fleet of Clark family cars lined the driveway. I knelt and bowed once toward the direction of my mother’s grave, then got into the back of the Maybach. At the office, my father was staring at the wedding ring my mother had discarded. When his assistant burst in, he stood up abruptly. “Did you find her? Where is she?” He had set the trap. He assumed she would try to see me one last time before I was driven away. But as he prepared to go catch her, a guard trembling with fear handed him a letter. “Sir… the girl gave me this. For you. From her mother.” The guard’s voice cracked. “She said… she’s gone, sir.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452009”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When my thumb slid across my husband’s unlocked screen, I was only looking to Venmo myself a couple hundred dollars for my weekend poker buy-in. An accidental tap on a muted group chat stopped my heart. The “Wolf Pack” was on fire, buzzing with logistics for a yacht proposal scheduled for Saturday at seven. One guy reminded the group to wear black tie; they wanted to give “the future Mrs.” a surprise she’d never forget. Another voice jumped in, telling Damian to make sure he kept his wife occupied. He joked that I was “too sharp for my own good.” Damian’s reply came with a digital shrug. He’d already cleared the runway, he said. I’d told him I was planning an all-night poker game with the girls, so there was zero chance of me crashing the party. The chat exploded with laughing emojis. Someone joked that once the ring was on her finger, I wouldn’t even have a shoulder left to cry on. Then came the question about the ring. Someone warned the “Big Dog” not to let me find it like I almost did last time. Damian’s response was typed with terrifying confidence: It’s in the office vault. She doesn’t have the code. Once this is a done deal, let’s see her try to make a scene. That sentence hit me like a jagged glass shard to the eye. I scrolled up. The latest message was a voice note from Damian. I could hear the smirk in his voice as he thanked his brothers for the heavy lifting, promising to buy the first five rounds of Macallan once the deed was done. He ended it with a sharp directive: Keep a tail on her. Don’t let her slip away. The cold light of the screen washed over my face. I stared at the interface for a few seconds, the silence of our bedroom suddenly feeling predatory. My fingers began to move again. This time, I didn’t transfer two hundred dollars. I moved twenty thousand. If I was going to play a hand this big, I needed a stack that could actually break the table. 1 The air conditioning in the private club was dialed down to a crisp, biting cold. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of shuffling chips drowned out the ambient jazz. “Nina, look. Look at this piece of trash.” Beth shoved her phone in front of my face, the screen glowing with a photo that felt like a physical blow. A yacht on the Hudson. Golden hour light. Silk and shadows. Damian was down on one knee, sliding a rock the size of a postage stamp onto Kayla’s finger. The caption read: To the rest of our lives. Forever yours. For a moment, the only sound at the table was the low hum of the HVAC system. “Wait… isn’t that Damian?” Penny, sitting across from me, gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “And his assistant? Is he… is he proposing?” “Proposing? It’s a goddamn public execution!” Beth’s chest heaved with fury. She pointed at the background of the photo, where our friend Scott was grinning like an idiot. “Look at these men. Every single one of them. They’ve been playing you for a fool, Nina!” “Scott told me he had a ‘corporate retreat’ tonight. Turns out he was just the wingman for his best friend’s betrayal!” Another woman leaned in, letting out a long, slow sigh. “Nina, everyone in the city remembers how hard he chased you back in college. You were the ‘it’ couple. How did it come to this?” “Money turns them into monsters,” Penny muttered. “And let’s not forget, his firm would be a parking lot if your father hadn’t funded his first three rounds.” “I’ve met that Kayla girl. She plays the ‘sweet intern’ act well. I didn’t realize she was a vulture.” “Nina, what are you going to do? You can’t let this slide.” They were vibrating with secondhand rage, already mapping out a hundred ways to ruin him, to tear them both apart. I just listened, my eyes fixed on the card I had just drawn. An Ace of Hearts. I looked up at Beth, who looked like she was about to cry on my behalf. I let the corner of my mouth twitch into the ghost of a smile, and then I slid my entire stack of chips into the center. “I’m all in.” The chatter died instantly. They traded nervous glances, confused by my lack of tears, my lack of screaming. The atmosphere turned heavy, almost surreal. I didn’t say a word. I flipped my cards over one by one. A Royal Flush. As they stared at the table in stunned silence, I stood up and reached for my coat. “I believe the house owes me a payout,” I said softly. 2 I let myself into the penthouse, the weight of my designer bag heavy on my shoulder. The living room lights were dimmed, and Damian was sitting on the sofa, seemingly waiting for me. The moment I stepped in, he stood up, wearing that practiced, gentle smile that used to make me feel safe. “You’re back? How was the game? Did the cards love you tonight?” I didn’t answer. I walked straight to the marble coffee table and dropped the thick envelope of cash I’d collected from the club. It landed with a heavy, satisfying thud. “Card gods were on my side,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I guess the old saying is true. Lucky in cards, unlucky in love. Though, looking at my bank account, I’d say I’m doing just fine.” Damian’s smile flickered, then held. “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re acting strange.” “Strange?” I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and pulled up the screenshot I’d taken of his ‘forever’ moment. I turned the screen toward him. The yacht. The diamond. His knee on the deck. Kayla’s staged, virginal surprise. It was all there, vivid and disgusting. “Damian, do you want to explain this ‘game’ to me?” The color drained from his face so fast it was almost cinematic. His eyes darted around the room, looking for an exit that didn’t exist. “Nina, listen, I can explain… it’s… it was a joke. A prank for the guys. The ‘Wolf Pack’ went too far, you know how they are when they drink…” “I don’t want the script, Damian.” I cut him off and tucked my phone away. My voice was a flatline. “Tomorrow morning, bring Kayla here. To our home. We’re going to have a conversation.” Damian froze. He took a tentative step toward me, reaching for my hand. “Nina, honey, don’t do this. I know you’re hurt, but—” I stepped back, avoiding his touch like it was a contagion. I reached into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out a heavy, cream-colored business card. I held it between two fingers, offering it to him. “This is my divorce attorney,” I said. “If you have anything else to say, tell it to her tomorrow. In front of your mistress.” 3 At ten the next morning, the buzzer rang. Damian walked in, followed by a demure, downcast Kayla. The second they reached the living room, Damian grabbed Kayla by the arm and shoved her toward me, his voice harsh and performative. “Apologize to Nina! Right now!” Kayla’s eyes welled with tears instantly. It was impressive. Her voice trembled as she spoke. “Mrs. Cross, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let things get so close. I didn’t mean for you to get the wrong idea.” “The yacht… it was just a stupid party. Everyone was drinking. It wasn’t real.” “Damian didn’t sleep a wink last night. He was so worried about you being upset. Please don’t blame him. If you have to hate someone, hate me.” She kept calling me “Mrs. Cross,” playing the role of the humble penitent. But that line about him “not sleeping a wink” was a jagged little needle. She was telling me, in code, that they had spent the night together after he stormed out of here. I leaned back against the sofa, watching the performance with clinical detachment. “Are you finished?” Kayla bit her lip and took a step forward, closing the distance. “I know you’re angry. But Damian has such a sensitive stomach. He can only sleep if he has a glass of warm milk, and he was so restless at my place last night…” “He still cares about this home, Nina. Please don’t let me be the reason you break up a marriage.” “Damian.” I ignored her and looked at the man whose face was turning a sickly shade of gray. “Did you bring her here to give me a play-by-play of your sleepover?” “Nina, don’t listen to her! She’s confused!” Damian scrambled toward me, trying to grab my hand again. I pulled away. Seeing the ice in my eyes, he pivoted to the emotional blackmail. “I stayed at the office last night. I swear. Nina, we’ve been together for six years. Don’t you remember the early days? When we were splitting a ten-dollar pizza and dreaming of this life?” “We’ve survived so much together. You’re going to throw it all away over a misunderstanding?” “It was a joke! A stupid, drunken mistake!” He was getting worked up now, playing the part of the misunderstood, devoted husband. Just as he was reaching his crescendo, Kayla spoke up. “Damian…” She didn’t call him ‘Mr. Cross’ this time. Her voice was thin, but it cut through the room like a blade. “I didn’t want to say anything. But I’m scared… I’m scared for the baby to grow up without a father.” The air in the room turned to lead. Damian’s expression shattered. He spun around to look at her, his mouth agape. “What did you say?” “I’m pregnant.” Kayla looked up, her face streaked with tears, but as her gaze flicked to mine, I caught it—a spark of pure, unadulterated triumph. “Nina, I don’t want your money. I just want Damian. You can’t give him a family, but I can. I can give him a real home.” “Shut up!” Damian let out a panicked roar, his face white as a sheet. Kayla flinched as if he’d hit her. She stumbled back half a step, her heel catching on the edge of the rug. She went down hard, landing heavily on the hardwood floor near the coffee table. “Ah—!” A sharp cry of pain escaped her. She clutched her stomach, her forehead instantly breaking into a sweat. “Damian… my stomach… it hurts so much…” Damian had been watching my reaction, but at the sound of that scream, he snapped. He lunged for her, gathering her into his arms. “Kayla! Kayla, talk to me!” His voice was vibrating with a terror I hadn’t seen in years. The “devoted husband” who was just begging for my forgiveness vanished in a heartbeat. “It hurts… the baby…” She gripped his lapels, gasping for air, tears streaming down her face. Damian didn’t even look at me. He scooped her up in his arms and bolted for the door like a man possessed. The heavy front door slammed shut with a boom that echoed through the empty penthouse. Silence rushed back in. I sat there, staring at the spot where they had just been standing. A long moment passed before my phone lit up with a notification. It was a text from Kayla. 4 The photo was a tactical nuke. Tangled silk sheets, limbs intertwined, and a profile I knew better than my own buried in the crook of a woman’s neck. The text beneath it was designed to kill: Nina, Damian is with me now. He said he’s going to take care of me and our child. After all, he’s tired. He’s tired of coming home to a cold, empty woman who can’t even hold onto a pregnancy. Cold? I stared at the word until it blurred. I wanted to laugh. So that was how he described me to the world. It made sense. Three years ago, when I had tripped and tumbled down the stairs, covered in blood and clutching my phone to call him, he’d used the same tone. The background noise on his end had been a thumping bassline and laughter. He’d sounded annoyed when he picked up. “Nina, can you just give me one night of peace? It’s Kayla’s birthday, the whole team is out celebrating. Don’t be a buzzkill.” That was the night we lost the baby. And he was out buying lemon drops for another woman. The panic and raw desperation he’d shown while carrying Kayla out of the house just now… that was a look I had never seen on his face while I was lying in a pool of my own blood. He wasn’t incapable of warmth. He just wasn’t warm for me. I wasn’t “incapable” of having a family. He just didn’t want one with me. The weight I’d been carrying for years—the guilt, the “what-ifs”—suddenly shattered. Good. Let the last of the embers burn out. I took a deep breath and dialed Beth. “Beth, are you awake?” Her voice boomed through the speaker, loud and sharp. “Awake? I’m livid! I saw Scott’s car at the hospital! I’m about to go down there and give those two a piece of my mind. How are you? Don’t you dare sit there alone.” “I’m fine,” I said, and surprisingly, I meant it. “I just wanted to ask… when you want to take out a pair of narcissists with zero mess… what’s the cleanest way to do it?” There was a three-second silence on the other end, followed by a sound that could only be described as predatory glee. “You’re finally ready? Thank God. Hold on, let me get my notebook. Class is in session.” I hung up, opened my laptop, and typed 24-hour white-glove moving service into the search bar. Booked. Paid. Confirmed. Less than an hour later, three men in blue jumpsuits were at my door. I led them to Damian’s walk-in closet and pointed at the rows of bespoke suits and limited-edition sneakers. “Everything,” I said. “Pack it all. Every shoe, every watch, every scrap of paper.” “And the desk in the study. I want it gone.” They were efficient, professional, and silent. In ninety minutes, the penthouse—a place once filled with his ego—was half-empty. As they were maneuvering his massive mahogany desk toward the elevator, the front door swung open. Damian stood there, looking haggard and drained. He froze, eyes widening as he saw the chaos in the hallway, his prized desk hovering mid-air. “What the hell is this? Who authorized this!” He lunged forward, trying to block the movers. The men stopped and looked back at me. I was standing in the center of the living room, calm as a summer lake. Damian’s gaze snapped to mine, his voice shaking. “Nina, have you lost your mind?” I didn’t answer him. I just looked at the movers. “Keep going.” They stepped around him like he was an inconvenient piece of litter. Damian stood paralyzed, glaring at me. I reached for the intercom by the door and signaled the front desk downstairs. “Starting now,” I told the security guard, “this gentleman and his belongings are no longer permitted on the premises. Revoke his key fobs and clear his name from the guest list.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452008”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

In the hierarchy of the Serpent-shifters, a male who has tasted the intimacy of a mate finds it nearly impossible to walk away. It’s a biological tether, a soul-deep obsession. But my mate’s younger brother had been harboring dark, twisted designs on me long before the ink on our contract was dry. I never imagined that after being bought for a staggering price at a high-end auction and brought back to the Serpent’s Reach, I would actually fall for the man who claimed me. Even less expected was that I would bear his children. For our kind, conception is a rare miracle. Yet, in one breath, I defied the odds and laid three healthy eggs, eventually hatching three perfect, tiny serpents. But the man who once looked at me with a possessiveness that bordered on insanity now wore a face carved from ice. “To be honest, I regret it,” Jeffrey said suddenly. His voice held the temperature of a winter grave. I looked up at him, my heart stuttering in my chest. I didn’t understand. His gaze raked over my body—lingering on my breasts, still full from nursing, and the soft, feminine curve of my hips—with a cold, clinical scrutiny that made me feel naked in the worst way. “If I hadn’t been trying to spite Lydia back then, I never would have brought you here. Now that I look at you, you’re just… ordinary. A common female with nothing in her head but the instinct to breed.” “And my Lydia…” His voice softened with a trace of tenderness he never offered me. “She’s suffered so many years of heartache because of my pride.” The blood in my veins felt like it was turning to slush. My eyes burned, the sting of tears threatening to spill over. I forced myself to speak, my voice a mere thimble of sound, reminding him of the bond. I told him he couldn’t leave me—that his nature wouldn’t allow it. Jeffrey didn’t even flinch. Instead, he looked almost manic as he began detailing his plan to bring his “golden girl” back to his side. He spared me one last look of pure Revulsion, as if I were a piece of furniture that no longer fit the decor. “If it weren’t for that body of yours, do you really think I’d have looked at you twice?” “But don’t worry. You gave me heirs, so I won’t throw you to the wolves. My brother doesn’t have a mate yet. When Beau returns, you’ll be moving into his quarters.” … “Are you certain you want to transfer the legal guardianship of your mate to your brother?” The clerk at the Tribal Registry looked at Jeffrey as if he’d grown a second head. He glanced at me—my curves prominent and healthy—and then at the woman shivering in Jeffrey’s arms. Lydia was gaunt, frail, looking like a gust of wind might shatter her. “Once this is filed, you can’t undo it without the consent of the other male. It’s a permanent severance.” Jeffrey didn’t even look at me. He just scowled. “Of course. Just hurry it up. Lydia just got back and she’s overwhelmed. I need to get her home and settled.” The clerk let out a sharp breath of annoyance. He struck Jeffrey’s name from my record and replaced it with a new one. I was now legally bound to a man named Beau. “Fine. When your brother gets back, send him in to provide the blood-seal,” the clerk muttered. Jeffrey was too busy tucking Lydia’s head into his chest to care. “Tomorrow,” he tossed over his shoulder. When we stepped out of the Registry, I stood alone on the pavement. The wind was biting, but it was nothing compared to the void opening in my chest. I watched Lydia pout, her voice a high-pitched whine as she scolded Jeffrey for “abandoning” her years ago and buying “that woman” right in front of her. Jeffrey cooed to her, his heart on his sleeve, before finally remembering I existed. He glanced back. I must have looked pathetic, standing there in the cold with my thin coat wrapped around me. He hesitated for a second, something flickering in his eyes, but it died before it reached his lips. The silence stretched until I broke it. “Do I have to move out today?” Jeffrey’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have to be in such a rush—” “Your name is Ivy, right?” Lydia interrupted, her eyes narrowing as she cataloged every inch of me with blatant envy. “I remember you. The ‘Prize’ of the auction.” She let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “Men are so predictable. They love the tits and the ass. But honestly, aren’t you embarrassed to walk around looking like… that? If I were that top-heavy, I’d never leave the house.” She looked up at Jeffrey, her eyes brimming with fake tears. “Jeffrey, you actually like that kind of thing, don’t you?” Jeffrey panicked instantly, desperate to prove his devotion. “Who told you that? It’s repulsive. It makes my skin crawl.” I went rigid. My eyes went hot. Repulsive? The man who spent every night winding his serpent tail around me, whispering my name into the crook of my neck as he took me again and again? The man who wouldn’t let me go until I was breathless and trembling? That was what he called repulsive. Lydia smirked, tucking her arm through his, looking at me with a sickening kind of pity. “Don’t be upset, Ivy. If Jeffrey hadn’t bought you, you’d still be in a cage. You should thank me. If I hadn’t picked a fight with him back then, there never would have been a vacancy for you to fill.” I looked at Jeffrey. He didn’t defend me. He didn’t even look me in the eye. “Right,” I whispered, the word tasting like ash. Seeing that I was too broken to fight back, Lydia lost interest. She started tugging on Jeffrey’s arm, demanding they go home. He smiled at her—that soft, doting smile that used to be mine—and let her lead him away. After a few steps, he called back over his shoulder, “Ivy, since you’re so eager to go, go ahead. Move your things.” Then, as an afterthought: “Don’t take it to heart. We’re still family.” Family. Yes. We were still family. Except I was no longer his mate. I was a hand-me-down for his brother. The moment we reached the house, Lydia’s facade crumbled. She stormed into the master bedroom—our bedroom—and began tearing through my things. She threw my clothes into the hallway. She found the pair of grass-woven rings I’d made for our anniversary. She found the silk protection charm I’d spent weeks sewing, the one I’d hidden under Jeffrey’s pillow to keep him safe on his hunts. I’d worked so hard on the stitching. Every thread was a prayer for him. Now, it was under her heel, ground into the dirt. I stood there, paralyzed, watching her move like a hurricane through the home I had meticulously built, piece by piece. Jeffrey stood in the doorway, watching. He didn’t stop her. He just gave a helpless, weary smile. He caught my eye and said casually, “Just let her have her moment. I owe her this. She’s had a hard time. If she breaks anything, I’ll buy you a replacement.” My throat felt like it was closing. I shook my head. “No… it’s fine. It wasn’t anything important anyway.” Jeffrey paused, a flash of irritation crossing his face, but he said nothing. Outside in the yard, there was a row of vegetables I’d planted. Jeffrey used to complain about the dirt, saying we could just buy whatever we needed. But I wanted something of our own. He’d grumbled, but one night, I caught him secretly building a small cedar fence around the sprouts to keep the rabbits out. Now, Lydia marched right over the seedlings. She ripped my lingerie off the drying line, shaking it with disgust. “You actually hang these outside? Are you trying to advertise?” She dropped the lace to the muddy ground and stepped on it. Jeffrey let out a short, surprised laugh. His eyes were fixed on Lydia’s fiery spirit, completely oblivious to how pale my face had become. I instinctively hunched my shoulders, feeling a crushing sense of shame for my own body for the first time in my life. Lydia wasn’t done. She scouted the yard until her eyes landed on the wicker basket in the corner. It was a beautiful day. I’d brought the basket out so the hatchlings could sleep in the sun instead of the stuffy nursery. Panic spiked in my chest. “The babies are in there! Don’t—” Before I could finish, she reached for the handle, intending to hurl it over the fence. I didn’t think. I lunged forward. But I was too late. Lydia, startled by my sudden movement, stumbled back. She let out a sharp cry as she lost her balance. In a blur of motion, a dark shadow streaked past me. Jeffrey caught her, pulling her securely into his arms. The basket tumbled. The three tiny serpents, curled together in their fleece blankets, rolled out like fallen fruit. They were so small. Too small to even make a sound when they hit the grass. Only the eldest, slightly larger than the others, let out a thin, pained hiss as he woke. “My babies!” I dropped to my knees, frantically scooping the three of them into my arms. They were trembling, their tiny tails lashing out to wrap around my fingers for safety. The eldest had a scrape on his tiny head, a bead of pale blood welling up. I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my chest was physical. Jeffrey had been closer to the basket. If he had wanted to, he could have caught it. He could have saved his children. But he chose Lydia. He watched his own flesh and blood hit the ground and didn’t even blink. In the quiet hours of the night, when we were tangled together, I used to wonder if this was love. I told myself his possessiveness, his intensity, his constant need for me… that it had to mean something. In this moment, I finally realized how wrong I was. I looked up at him, my eyes red and my voice shaking. “Jeffrey, please. I’m begging you. Don’t let her touch anything else. I’ll pack. I’ll go now. I’ll take everything and I won’t leave a single trace that I was ever here.” Jeffrey went still. He slowly released Lydia. The hatchlings were still hissing at their father, their tiny voices full of hurt. They wanted him to tuck them into his scales like he used to. But before Jeffrey could speak, Lydia burst into tears. “Jeffrey! Do you feel sorry for her? You do! You care about her and those… those things she produced!” “I knew it! You say she’s repulsive, but you can’t let go!” Jeffrey’s jaw tightened. “Lydia, I didn’t—” “You promised you’d take me away!” she shrieked, tears streaming down her face. “And instead, you bought her at an auction for a record price. Everyone laughed at me for six months. They said I was delusional, that a man like you would never want someone like me.” “No one would buy me after that. I had to wash clothes, chop wood… I did the filthiest work. One winter I had a fever for seven days. I laid in the dark thinking of you, waiting for you to come for me.” “And you? Were you busy holding her? Had you already forgotten me?” She collapsed against his chest, her fists thumping weakly against his heart. “Jeffrey… we can have babies too. I’ll give you so many… just stop looking at her. Please.” I watched Jeffrey’s rigid body slowly melt. He looked away from me, away from his bleeding son, and gently wiped the tears from Lydia’s face. “Don’t cry. I’ll do whatever you want, okay?” The hatchlings watched their father, their cries growing weaker. They nudged my fingers with their small snouts, their black, obsidian eyes reflecting my own shattered face. They seemed to be asking: Why doesn’t he see us? We’re hurt. Why won’t he look? I couldn’t give them an answer. My face felt frozen. I stroked their tiny heads, forcing a bitter, broken smile. “It’s okay, my loves. Mama’s got you.” I lowered my head and started picking up my ruined belongings. Things fell out of my trembling hands as fast as I could grab them. I kept picking them up. I kept dropping them. Scalding tears hit the dirt and vanished. In the background, I heard Lydia’s voice, sweet and demanding. “I want you to build me a new bed! I won’t sleep where you laid with her.” “And dig up those vegetables. I want flowers there. And that fence? It’s hideous. Tear it down.” Jeffrey looked toward the garden. His gaze lingered on the green sprouts for a heartbeat. He looked at me, then turned back to Lydia, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Anything you want, Lydia. Anything.” Over the next few days, I moved into Beau’s quarters. He had been away for so long that the place was thick with dampness and dust. I managed to clear a small corner, layering my old clothes over some dry straw to make a nest for the babies. The humid night wind drifted through the window, carrying the cloying scent of flowers. Jeffrey had dug up my garden and replaced it with Lydia’s favorites. The hatchlings were restless, huddling against my chest. They were heartbroken. Since the day they hatched, their father had never ignored them like this. I leaned down, pressing my lips to their cool foreheads, my eyes stinging. Outside, the sound of Lydia’s muffled giggles and Jeffrey’s low voice drifted through the walls. I rolled over, pressing my hands over my ears. Then, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the main house. “Jeffrey, no! Stop! Don’t touch me! I’m scared, please!” Footsteps thundered across the porch. My body went taut. A second later, my door was kicked open. Jeffrey stood in the doorway. His eyes were a glowing, predatory green, fixed on me with a terrifying intensity. His gaze slid from my face down to the swell of my breasts, partially exposed by my loose tunic. I knew that look. It was the look of a male in his heat. In the dark of our old room, he would pull me into his lap, his tail coiling around my waist, claiming me over and over until the sun rose. He was in his cycle. I instinctively scrambled back toward the corner. Seeing me recoil, Jeffrey’s teeth ground together with an audible snap. He looked furious, though he probably didn’t even know why. The primal urge of the beast was screaming in his blood, drowning out reason. To his lizard brain, there was only one truth: I was his mate. And no one else could have me. As Jeffrey lunged forward, I shook my head violently. “No! Jeffrey, stop!” My rejection seemed to burn him. He stopped in his tracks, looking at me with a wounded, confused expression. Don’t look at me like that, I thought. You’re the one who threw me away. “I won’t do this…” Before I could finish the sentence, he had me. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand, his strength effortless and suffocating. Suddenly, a sharp hiss cut through the air. The eldest hatchling was struggling to stand. He used his tiny tail to prop himself up, putting his miniature body between me and Jeffrey. I could feel him shaking. His eyes were wide with terror at the sight of his father’s half-shifted, monstrous form, but he didn’t back down. He bared his tiny, undeveloped fangs, letting out a fierce, desperate hiss of warning. The other two woke up and scrambled to join him, three tiny creatures no bigger than my palm, standing in a row to protect their mother. Tears flooded my eyes. “Babies, no… get back…” I tried to reach for them, but Jeffrey held me fast. His mind was gone, lost to the fog of the heat. He reached out to swat them away, his large hand catching the eldest. The little snake thrashed, lashing his tail. “No! Jeffrey, let him go! You’re hurting him!” I screamed, my nails raking across his forearm, drawing blood. Jeffrey growled, an animal sound, and tossed the hatchling aside. The tiny body hit the far wall with a sickening thud and slid to the floor. “My baby!” I felt like my soul had been ripped out. My eyes went bloodshot with rage. “You’re a monster! He’s your son! How could you throw him?!” Jeffrey blinked, a momentary flicker of clarity returning to his eyes. He looked at his hand, then at the huddle of shivering scales in the corner. But the heat was a tide that wouldn’t be stayed. His gaze locked onto me again, his hand moving to my throat, his voice a slurred, guttural mess. “Ivy…” Just then, a scream pierced the room from the doorway. “What are you doing?!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452007”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I will never forget that high school reunion three years ago. It was there that her ex—the guy everyone called the “Golden Boy” back in the day—proposed a bet so twisted it felt like a fever dream. He wanted to test if our marriage was “the real thing.” He convinced her to fake her own death, cut off every cent of my inheritance, and seize our home. If I remained unmarried after three years, we would “win.” She had laughed with a chilling confidence, telling him that my love for her was written in my marrow. She said I wouldn’t just wait three years; I’d wait thirty. And then, she simply vanished. The bank accounts were frozen. The locks on our house were changed. I was left on the street with nothing but our young son, Sammy, and the clothes on our backs. Today, while I was scavenging through a dumpster behind a diner for scraps of food, a black Rolls-Royce pulled up to the curb. She stepped out, looking as radiant and untouched as the day she left, looking down at me with a mixture of triumph and pity. “You didn’t let me down, honey,” she said, a smile playing on her lips. “You passed the test.” She glanced back at the passenger seat where her “Golden Boy” sat, arching a manicured eyebrow in victory. In my hand, the moldy crust of bread I’d just found crumbled into dust. My heart didn’t race; it went ice-cold. She seemed to remember something then, a brief flicker of maternal instinct crossing her face. “Where’s Sammy? I’ve come to take you both home.” I looked up at her, my voice reaching a level of stillness that was terrifying even to me. “He’s dead.” The world seemed to sharpen around us. “Three years ago, when you cut off the insurance and the accounts, he needed surgery. We couldn’t pay. He’s gone.” … Lindsay froze. She began to scan the desolate alleyway and the trash-strewn lot, as if expecting a six-year-old boy to jump out from behind a dumpster. All she found was the stench of rot and me, clutching my ruined scraps of bread. I had loved that boy with every fiber of my being. We were a shadow and its light; I never went anywhere without him. “Stop it,” Lindsay said, her voice trembling for a fraction of a second before she regained her composure. “I’m being serious. I’m here to take you home.” “Home?” I looked up, my eyes stinging with a heat that felt like acid. “Three years ago, when you staged your death, the lawyers said you owed a mountain of debt. They took the house to settle the estate. Sammy and I have been breathing the exhaust of this city for three years. We don’t have a home.” She hesitated, her mouth working as she searched for a script that hadn’t been written yet. “That… that was part of the simulation. The house has always been in my name through a holding company. It’s still there. Look, just tell Sammy to stop playing hide-and-seek. Tell him Mommy is sorry, okay?” “Then go tell him yourself!” I reached into my tattered jacket and flung a piece of paper at her. It slapped against her expensive silk blouse before fluttering to the pavement. “Go down to the cemetery and apologize to him there!” Her hands shook as she picked up the death certificate. “Sammy…” She stared at the clinical words: Acute Cardiac Arrest. Her eyes welled up instantly. “I was only gone for three years. How can he be gone? You’re lying to me, aren’t you?” She lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders. “I know I messed up! Don’t use a child to punish me. Call him out here, now!” I just stared at her. My lips curled into a silent, jagged smirk. Her grip on me faltered. She began to sob, the reality—or the fear of it—finally puncturing her bubble. “Lindsay, come on. You really can’t see through this?” Dorian stepped out of the car, his movements fluid and arrogant. He snatched the death certificate from her hand. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to the paper. “Does this look familiar? It’s almost an exact replica of the one I forged for you three years ago.” He let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Honestly, it’s not even a good forgery. This seal here? It’s all wrong. We’re professionals at this, man. You’re trying to play the master at his own game?” Lindsay blinked, the tears drying as she listened to Dorian’s smooth, persuasive tone. “Look at the signature,” Dorian continued, showing her the lines. “It’s stiff. The paper has been artificially aged. He probably knew you were coming back today and staged this whole ‘homeless’ act to guilt-trip you into a bigger settlement.” “You’re a lying son of a bitch!” I lunged for him, my vision blurring red. Lindsay’s expression shifted. The grief was replaced by a cold, sharp disdain. “I almost fell for it,” she whispered. She threw the death certificate back at me like it was trash. “Dorian was right. You’re far more calculating than you look.” “Lindsay!” “Bring Sammy home by the end of the day,” she snapped, turning her back on me. “He’s six years old. He shouldn’t be learning these sick games from a father like you.” I scrambled to my feet, desperate to stop her, but Dorian blocked my path. “Hey, man,” he whispered, his voice low enough that only I could hear. “I know the kid is dead.” I froze, the air leaving my lungs. “You want to know why Lindsay doesn’t know?” He smiled, a slow, predatory thing. “Because I made sure every piece of mail, every hospital alert, and every bit of news about that boy never reached her. I scrubbed him from her world.” I clinched my fists so hard my knuckles popped. “Poor little Sammy,” Dorian mused, admiring his own reflection in the car window. “Born with a bum heart just as his mom ‘died.’ There was a donor match, wasn’t there? But you… you were just a delivery guy working four jobs. You couldn’t even afford the deposit to hold the organ. You let that heart slip through your fingers while you were out delivering cold pizza.” My vision went white. “But don’t worry,” Dorian chuckled. “He didn’t go to waste. His marrow, his kidneys, his corneas… I made sure the paperwork was signed while you were out on a shift. He was crying for his daddy, you know. Right until the end.” “You monster!” I threw myself at him, my fingers locking around his throat. “Give him back! Give me back my son!” “Enough!” A sharp sting exploded across my face. Lindsay had slapped me with enough force to send me spiraling into the pile of trash. She pulled Dorian into her arms, shielding him. He began to cough, his eyes watering as he put on a show of frailty. “I was just… I was just asking where Sammy was,” Dorian choked out, his voice thick with fake tears. “I told him the kid shouldn’t be living in a dump… and he tried to kill me!” “You’re lying! Lindsay, he just told me—” “Shut up!” Lindsay’s voice was like a blade. “If you have a single shred of decency left as a father, you’ll bring our son home. If you don’t, I’m filing for divorce and I’ll make sure you never see the light of day again.” She helped Dorian into the car and slammed the door. Divorce? I started to laugh, a jagged, broken sound that echoed in the alley. Fine. But before we get to that, I have one last thing to do. The next morning, an anonymous whistleblower report landed on the desk of the CEO at Lindsay’s tech firm. At the same time, a massive banner appeared across the street from the corporate entrance: [TECH STAR DIANA JONATHAN STAGED HER DEATH WHILE HER SON PERISHED] I stood there, right in the middle of the morning rush, holding a framed photograph of Sammy. I didn’t say a word. I just knelt on the sidewalk. I had printed hundreds of pamphlets detailing what Lindsay and Dorian had done—the bet, the frozen accounts, the medical neglect. People started to gather. I saw women reading the flyers, their eyes turning red. “Is this the boy? He was so small. How could she just leave them like that for a game?” “It wasn’t just a game, it was an execution. She cut off the money for his heart surgery?” “The company needs to answer for this! Is this the kind of person they have in the C-suite?” Within the hour, the Head of Human Resources came down personally to escort me upstairs. Lindsay was standing outside her office, her face unreadable, her eyes like flint. Once the door was closed, the CEO poured me a cup of tea, his voice smooth and conciliatory. “Mr. Miller, I think we can all agree that things have gotten a bit… out of hand. Let’s find a way to move past this.” I stared at the tea, my hands shaking. “Move past it? They killed my son.” “Now, let’s not use such heavy words. I know Lindsay was a bit extreme, and Dorian was… well, impulsive. But Lindsay is the backbone of this company. Our investors are here for her name.” I couldn’t find my voice. The CEO leaned in, smiling. “Here’s what I’m prepared to do. I’ll issue a formal reprimand to both of them. And for you… we can discuss a very generous ‘hardship’ settlement. As for the boy… it’s a tragedy, truly. But you and Lindsay are young. You can have more children. You’re a couple. You should be enjoying the life her success provides.” I let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “You’ll protect her because she’s an asset. But why are you protecting Dorian?” The CEO paused. “You don’t know? Dorian was hired on her personal recommendation. He’s her protégé.” My grip on the tea cup tightened until my knuckles turned white. I had applied to this company three times over the last three years. Every time, my resume disappeared into a black hole. I had begged Lindsay once, before all this started, just for an interview. I didn’t want a handout; I just wanted a chance. She had told me no. She said it was “unprofessional.” She said she had to “avoid the appearance of favoritism.” She had to avoid favoritism for her husband, but she could hand-walk her “Golden Boy” into a senior position. “What if I refuse your settlement?” I asked, staring him down. The CEO’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I strongly suggest you don’t try to fight the machine, Mr. Miller.” By the time I left the building, the narrative online had already shifted. The bots were working overtime. “Mentally unstable husband uses son’s death to blackmail tech executive.” “The tragic downfall of Diana Jonathan’s marriage.” “Did the husband’s neglect cause the child’s illness? Is he using the boy as a pawn?” The public, who had been sympathetic an hour ago, was now sharpened into a mob. The comments sections were filled with praise for Lindsay’s resilience and Dorian’s “professionalism.” I went back to the apartment—the one we’d finally been allowed back into, the one that felt like a tomb. I stroked the glass of Sammy’s urn. “I’m sorry, Sammy. Daddy couldn’t protect you.” I placed the divorce papers on the table. Before I could even pick up the urn to leave, the front door was kicked open. Lindsay marched in, her face contorted with rage, holding Dorian, who had a fresh bandage wrapped around his head. “Where is he?” she screamed. “Where is Sammy?” I wiped a tear from my eye. “What do you want?” “What do I want?” Lindsay spat. “Dorian was attacked this afternoon. You told Sammy to do it, didn’t you?” “Lindsay, listen to yourself!” I yelled. “What are you talking about?” Dorian cowered behind her, playing the victim perfectly. “Ewan, why lie? I saw him. The kid hit me with a tire iron in the parking lot. He said he was doing it for you. If Lindsay hadn’t shown up when she did, he might have killed me!” I grit my teeth so hard I thought they’d shatter. Lindsay looked at me with pure loathing. “I knew it. He’s been with you so long he’s learned how to be a liar and a thug. I should have taken him three years ago. Where is he? I’m taking him. Dorian and I will raise him properly. We won’t let you ruin his life.” “Fine!” I pulled the urn out from behind the photo. My eyes were burning. “Then go ahead. Take him. Teach him whatever the hell you want!” Lindsay stared at the urn, then at the photo of Sammy. I was shaking. That urn contained everything I had left of him. It was the only home I could give him. And a second later, she knocked it out of my hands. “Enough with the theatrics!” she screamed as the ceramic shattered against the floor. I let out a strangled cry and dropped to my knees, trying to gather the ashes. “How many times are you going to play this card?” Lindsay grabbed me by the hair, forcing me to look at her. She reached down and grabbed a handful of the grey dust. “It’s charcoal and bone-mold mix. You really think I don’t know the tricks? I’m a scientist, Ewan. I staged a death three years ago; I know what fake remains look like. You’re so desperate for attention you’d hex your own son?” “No… no…” She shoved a handful of the ash into my mouth. I gagged, retretching as the grit coated my throat. “Eat it! If it’s your little prop, why are you acting like it’s poison?” She held my mouth shut until my face turned purple, then threw me aside. I collapsed on the floor, coughing violently, my tears mixing with the dust and blood in my mouth. I tried to scoop the remains back together with trembling hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Lindsay stood over me, disgusted. “Think about Sammy. When he grows up and realizes his father used his ‘death’ and fake ashes to win an argument… he’s going to hate you. He’ll never forgive you.” I couldn’t even speak. She knelt down, her voice dropping to a chillingly calm tone. “Tell me where he is. If you have any soul left, give him to me so I can undo the damage you’ve done.” I looked at her through blurred vision and forced a smile. “Fine,” I whispered. “I’ll take you to him.” Dorian flickered with a moment of hesitation. Lindsay, however, looked relieved. She reached out and touched my hand. “I knew you’d come to your senses.” We drove to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Lindsay saw a small figure standing near the edge, wearing Sammy’s favorite hooded jacket. “Sammy!” she cried, jumping out of the car. But as she ran forward, she heard Dorian’s panicked voice from behind her. “Lindsay… wait…” She turned around. I had a hunting knife pressed against Dorian’s throat. … The police arrived within minutes, sirens wailing, lights flashing against the dark sea. I held Dorian tight, my arm locked around his neck, standing inches from the drop. The figure in the hoodie stood silently beside me. Lindsay was hyperventilating, the wind whipping her hair across her face. “Ewan, put the knife down. I won’t take him away. I won’t fight you for custody. Just let Dorian go. You don’t want Sammy to see his father become a murderer!” The news helicopters were hovering now, their spotlights pinning us to the cliffside. The negotiators were screaming through megaphones. I felt Dorian shaking in my arms. He was whimpering, a pathetic sound. I looked down at the “child” beside me. The figure looked up at me. I smiled at Lindsay. “No,” I said. “Sammy is going to be my witness.” I tightened my grip on Dorian. “Sammy! Help Daddy push this man over the edge!” “EWAN, NO!” “Sir, stop!” In the chaos, Lindsay did the unthinkable. She lunged forward and snatched a service weapon from an officer’s holster. She pointed it straight at my chest. “Drop the knife, Ewan! I won’t let you destroy him!” BANG. The bullet bloomed like a red carnation on my shirt. I stumbled back. I let go of Dorian. As I fell toward the abyss, I looked at Lindsay one last time and smiled. Then, I vanished into the dark. Lindsay stood frozen, the smoking gun in her hand. In front of the live cameras, the figure in the hoodie reached up and pulled back the hood. It wasn’t Sammy. It was a young girl. “Congratulations,” the girl said, her voice trembling but clear. “Now you’ve killed your husband, too.” The police swarmed Lindsay, disarming her. The lead detective looked at the girl, then at Lindsay. “Kid… what the hell is going on here?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452006”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The notification pinged on my phone: New photos added to the family album. I tapped it idly, and there it was—a group photo from a corporate gala. I was sitting dead-center at the head table. The nameplate pinned to my chest was unmistakable: Beckett Pierce, Co-Founder. In my living room, several suitcases stood by the door, already packed and zipped shut. Less than three seconds after the photo uploaded, my mother-in-law’s name flashed on the screen. I answered. “Beckett! What the hell is this photo?!” Erica’s voice was a jagged blade of interrogation. I couldn’t help but smile. I’d kept this secret for five years. Five years of playing a role, all undone because I forgot to turn off the auto-sync on a shared cloud account. The truth was out, stripped bare by a single digital upload. Honestly? It was a relief. It saved me the breath of an explanation. The moving truck was ten minutes away. 1 My name is Beckett Pierce. I’ve been married for five years. In the eyes of my wife, Mallory, and her entire family, I am a low-level administrative assistant at a mid-sized firm, pulling in fifty grand a year. That “fact” was the foundation of our marriage. Every rule we lived by was built on that lie. “We do a proportional split,” Mallory had declared before we even walked down the aisle. “I make $180,000. You make $50,000. It’s only fair we split expenses based on our income. I’ll cover seventy percent; you cover thirty.” On paper, it sounded progressive. Logical. In practice, it was a slow-motion execution. The mortgage on our Brooklyn condo was $6,000. She paid $4,200; I paid $1,800. The car lease was $800. She paid $560; I paid $240. Groceries? Every man for himself. Dining out? Separate checks. I wasn’t allowed to touch her credit cards. She wouldn’t dream of touching mine. “With your credit limit? What could you even buy?” she’d say, her voice laced with a casual, devastating pity. Our first anniversary trip to Miami: she booked a suite at the Edition, $1,200 a night. “Your share is $360 a night,” she told me. I Venmoed her the money without a word. At dinner, she ordered the Wagyu and the lobster. “I’ll get the check this time,” she’d say, her tone less like a partner and more like a philanthropist donating to a soup kitchen. I stayed silent. Our second year, her mother’s birthday dinner was at a high-end steakhouse. Twelve people at the table. When the bill came, Erica looked directly at me. “Beckett, we’re doing the proportional split for this, too. Pay your share.” The total was $2,400. My “share” for the table was $200. Mallory didn’t even look up from her phone. Two hundred dollars. For my mother-in-law’s birthday. Later, I found out Erica told the rest of the family: “The poor guy can’t even afford to take us to dinner. We have to let him pay in installments basically.” She didn’t mention it was her rule. She only mentioned I was “too broke” to be a man. For five years, the chorus of my life was: You don’t earn enough. Those four words were the yardstick Mallory used to measure my worth in this house. You earn less, so you do the chores. You earn less, so you listen when your mother-in-law belittles you. You earn less, so the cooking, the dishes, the vacuuming, and the laundry are your domain. “A cleaning service? Do you have any idea what a housekeeper costs in the city?” Mallory would roll her eyes. “Just do it yourself. You’re home by five anyway.” I was home by five. That part was true. What she didn’t know was that before I walked through the door at five, I had chaired three board meetings, signed two multi-million dollar contracts, and greenlit four global projects. There was so much she didn’t know. Like the fact that my monthly income wasn’t four thousand dollars. It was closer to eighty thousand. 2 Eighty thousand. To be precise, my base salary was twenty thousand, but with my founder’s equity and quarterly dividends, it averaged out to nearly a million a year. In a good month, it was more. In a bad month, it never dipped below forty. Why did I hide it? It started as a test. The year I met Mallory, I had just been named co-founder of my tech firm. We met through friends. she was polished, sharp, a rising star in a state-owned utility firm making good money. On our third date, she took me to meet her mother. Over coffee, Erica asked three questions: “What do your parents do?” “Do you own property?” “What’s your current salary?” I told her my parents ran a small hardware store in a small town, that I was renting, and that my salary was… “Fifty thousand,” I said. I had intended to tell the truth. But as I was about to speak, Mallory went to the restroom, and Erica took a call from her sister in the kitchen. She didn’t close the door. “The specs are average, but he’s handsome, tall, and seems easy to handle,” I heard Erica whisper. “The family has nothing. He won’t have any leverage. It’s better this way—my daughter needs someone who’ll listen, not someone with too much money and an ego.” Easy to handle. Those three words stayed with me. So, I stuck with the fifty thousand. I wanted to see what would happen if I was only “worth” that much. I watched for five years. The answer was crystal clear. The “fifty-thousand-dollar” Beckett was a second-class citizen in the Pierce-Vane household. At Christmas, Erica would give Mallory’s sister’s husband a Rolex and then turn to me with a $50 Amazon gift card: “I know things are tight for you. Don’t feel like you have to reciprocate.” When Mallory went to galas or industry mixers, she never invited me. “Why would you go? You wouldn’t even understand what they’re talking about.” I spent my holidays cooking for three, cleaning up after three, and listening to Erica complain about my seasoning. “Look at Mark—Mallory’s colleague’s husband—he’s an MD at Goldman, makes half a million, and he still manages to be a gourmet cook. What’s your excuse?” Mark. I’d hear that name a lot. But not because of his cooking. Every month, my actual pay—the real money—went into an account Mallory didn’t know existed. Over five years, I used that money to buy three properties in cash. A condo on the Upper West Side. A townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. A penthouse in Long Island City. All of them were registered under my pre-marital holding company. Clean. Untouchable. Mallory didn’t know. Erica didn’t know. They only knew the man who “managed” to pay his thirty percent on time. They only knew the man they had “graciously” allowed into their lives. 3 By the third year, it wasn’t the “proportional split” that hurt. It was the way Mallory looked at me. It was the look you give a coat you bought on clearance—functional, but not something you’re proud to wear. When people asked what I did, she’d say, “He’s in admin. You know, nine-to-five stability.” Then she’d give a tight little smile that meant don’t ask follow-up questions. She was ashamed of me. Once, her company had a retreat that allowed spouses. She didn’t take me. “The VPs’ husbands are all hedge fund guys or partners at law firms. What are you going to talk to them about?” I just looked at her. She didn’t even see the insult. To her, it was just a fact. In the fourth year, Mallory got a promotion. Her salary jumped to $220,000. Her ego followed suit. “I’m making nearly a quarter-mil now,” she’d boast on the phone to her friends. “In this economy, that puts me in the top tier.” She’d hang up and see me chopping vegetables in the kitchen. “Keep at it, Beckett. Maybe you’ll hit sixty grand by the time you’re forty,” she’d say, patting my shoulder like I was a slow student who’d finally learned to tie his shoes. I kept my head down. That month, my dividend check was $110,000. That was also the year Mallory’s performance skyrocketed. She landed a massive account: Skyline Tech. That one deal secured her bonus for the year. She was ecstatic. “Skyline Tech! Do you have any idea who they are? They’re a two-billion-dollar company. Their Director of Procurement reached out to me personally.” “Impressive,” I said. She didn’t catch the dryness in my voice. The Director of Procurement at Skyline was Jack Kerwin. My college roommate. I was the one who told Jack to throw her the bone. Mallory thought it was her brilliance. She used that “success” to take up even more space in our marriage. “This family runs on my back,” she’d say. “But don’t feel bad. Some people are just earners, and some are… supporters. I don’t hold it against you.” I don’t hold it against you. That was the moment I started planning my exit. Not because of the money. Not because of her mother. But because of that phrase. When a wife describes her husband as something she “tolerates,” the marriage is already a ghost. 4 In the fifth year, I found the other thing. It wasn’t a grand detective moment. It was a push notification on her iPad while I was paying the utility bills. I knew her passcode—her birthday plus 123. She never bothered to change it because she didn’t think I was smart enough to be curious. The credit card statements were normal at first. Gas, SoulCycle, salads. But then I saw it. On the 15th of every month: a $5,000 Zelle transfer. The recipient’s nickname: Babe. At first, I thought maybe it was for her mother. But Mallory called her mother “Erica” or “Mom.” Never “Babe.” I scrolled back. January. February. March. April. Eight months in a row. Forty thousand dollars. I didn’t recognize the account number. I took a screenshot and stayed quiet. That night, Mallory came home in a radiant mood. “Had dinner with the Skyline team. Tyler was there.” “Tyler?” “I’ve mentioned him. Tyler Stone. The new project manager at Skyline. He’s… brilliant.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. She was staring at her phone, a tiny, ghost of a smile playing on her lips. “What’s he like?” I asked. “Oh, nothing special. Just very competent. It’s nice to work with someone on my level for a change.” She went to shower. I picked up her phone. Passcode: same. Pinned at the top of her iMessage: Tyler. The last message was a selfie. Not of Mallory. It was a man—square-jawed, gym-shredded, wearing a heavy silver chain. The text: Missing you. Mallory’s reply: A kissing emoji. Sent at 3:17 PM. Three hours ago. I put the phone down. I went back to the kitchen. The soup was simmering. I turned off the burner. I stood there in the silence of the kitchen for a long time. Then I pulled out my own phone and texted Jack: Check on a guy named Tyler Stone at Skyline. I want everything. Background, finances, the works. Jack replied instantly: On it. Give me forty-eight hours. I sent another: That contract renewal for next month? Stall it. Copy that. The soup went cold on the stove. I wasn’t in a hurry. 5 Two days later, Jack sent me the file. Tyler Stone. 28 years old. Hired last September. Education: A degree from a generic online university. Background: Parents are blue-collar. No family money. I paused. Mallory had told me a different version of Tyler Stone. “Tyler comes from a very wealthy family,” she’d offhandedly remarked a month ago. “His father owns a private equity firm, I think.” His father worked at a textile mill in the Midwest for thirty years. Jack included screenshots of Tyler’s Instagram. The persona was a masterpiece of “New Money” fiction. Designer watches, afternoon teas at the Baccarat Hotel, photos at exclusive golf clubs. Everything screamed wealth. But Jack added a note: His salary account balance as of last Friday? Twelve hundred dollars. The watches are high-end fakes. The afternoon tea photos are from “split-the-bill” influencer meetups. He doesn’t even have a membership at that golf club—he sneaks in as a guest of a guest. Twelve hundred dollars. With a fifteen-thousand-dollar monthly salary, after NYC rent and maintaining a fake lifestyle, he was barely scraping by. The five thousand Mallory sent him every month wasn’t “pocket change.” It was his rent. Then came the internal Slack and text leaks Jack pulled from company devices. Tyler and his buddy. Tyler: She’s decent. A little stingy with the cash sometimes. Buddy: She got money? Tyler: Makes about two-fifty. Married. Buddy: So what’s the play? Tyler: She says her husband is a loser. Some admin guy. She’s going to dump him soon. Once she divorces him, the condo and the car are hers. She’s already promised to put my name on the deed. Buddy: Lol, you’re just waiting for the seat to open up. Tyler: I told her my dad owns a firm. She swallowed it whole. She thinks we’re “social equals.” Buddy: Women are so easy. Tyler: Once she clears the dead weight, we’re golden. I put the phone down. I poured a glass of water. Five years of marriage. To her, I was “dead weight.” I was the “admin guy” she had to “tolerate.” Tyler was the “social equal.” The “rich guy” she deserved. The irony was delicious. She looked down on the man with the actual millions to chase a man who couldn’t afford his own shoes. I wasn’t angry anymore. I was beyond that. I made a call. “Sandra, it’s Beckett. I need the divorce papers ready.” Sandra was another college friend, a top-tier matrimonial attorney. “Assets?” she asked. “She keeps what’s hers. She doesn’t touch what’s mine.” “The three properties are under the pre-marital corp, right?” “Yes.” “Then she has no claim. Do you have proof of the affair?” “Everything. Bank records, Zelle transfers, texts, and hotel receipts. Jack helped.” Sandra whistled. “You’ve been thorough.” “I’ve had five years to watch her. I’m just finishing the job.” “Alright. I’ll have the draft in three days. How do you want to play this?” I looked out the window at the Brooklyn skyline. “I’m going to wait for her to ask. I want her to think she’s winning until the very second she loses everything.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452005”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The truth is, I’ve always been a bit of a vacancy. Those glowing credentials—the Ivy League degree, the classical piano trophies, the ballet awards—were all carefully curated illusions. My parents spent a fortune to build a gilded cage of a life that my slow, wandering mind could never have built for itself. While traveling abroad with my boyfriend, Toby, his personal assistant, Lena, insisted on sleeping in the same bed as us. She claimed the hotel was overbooked, her voice a fragile trill of anxiety. In the dead of night, she suddenly clutched her chest, turning to Toby with a pained whisper. She told him her cat, Lilly, was pregnant back home, and through some mystical “soul bond,” she was experiencing sympathetic engorgement. She was in pain, she said. She needed relief. Without a second thought, Toby disappeared under the duvet. I heard the wet, rhythmic sounds of him “relieving” her. I watched, paralyzed by my own slowness, and asked why a cat’s pregnancy would make her chest hurt. Toby popped his head out from under the covers, his expression intensely earnest. He explained that Lena had raised Lilly since she was a kitten, that their bond was so deep it manifested as a psychosomatic resonance. It was science, he claimed. Lena chimed in, her voice breathless, telling me he was just being a supportive boss and that I shouldn’t overthink it. I nodded, a dull, obedient motion. My mother always told me: When you don’t understand, just nod. That night, I heard Lena whispering to something she called “The System.” she wanted to trade her IQ for mine. She said with my “genius” and her ambition, she would finally become the goddess everyone envied. The System’s voice was a cold, metallic hum in the dark. It said the transfer would be permanent in seven days. She actually thought she was stealing brilliance. She had no idea she was trading her cleverness for a void. … 1 The chime signaling the completed transfer echoed in the back of my skull. Suddenly, the fog that had blanketed my mind for twenty-four years began to thin. The world felt sharper, the edges of the room less blurred. Beside me, Lena moans grew louder, more theatrical. “Oh… Toby… that feels so good…” She caught her breath, letting out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Janice really does love you. Look at her. She isn’t even angry.” Toby’s voice came from the depths of the blankets, heavy with a lazy, post-coital satisfaction. “Everyone thinks I’m the one who slaved away to win her over. Hah. They don’t know shit.” “From the start, she’s been nothing but a dog. Throw a bone, and she’ll fetch. If I tell her to move East, she wouldn’t dare look West.” “I don’t believe you,” Lena teased, her tone lengthening into a dare. Toby raised his voice, an edge of command cutting through the air. “Janice. Get me a glass of warm water.” I stood up. I walked to the table. I poured the water, tested the temperature against the side of my thumb, and handed it to him. Toby took a sip, looking at Lena. “See?” “Try something else,” Lena urged, her eyes gleaming with malice. Toby poked his head out again. “My underwear fell on your side of the floor. Pick it up and bring it here.” I nodded. I knelt on the floor, fumbling in the dark. Once I found it, I handed it over. Toby smirked. “Told you. A well-trained pet.” Lena voice was a cocktail of shock and pure, unadulterated disdain. “She looks so cold and untouchable, but she’s really just your little slave, isn’t she?” I wasn’t “cold.” Since I was a child, my parents had one rule for me: Speak less. They said that if I opened my mouth, I’d lose everything. They told me I wasn’t bright, and that silence was my only armor. Every time we went out, I stood there like a beautiful, hollow statue. Before this trip, Toby had reminded me: “Just follow me, keep your mouth shut, and don’t embarrass me.” When they told me to sleep on the sofa that night, I did so without a word. I stayed far away from that bed. I didn’t want to be near them. They made my skin crawl. The next morning. Toby leaned against the headboard, sticking his bare foot out from under the duvet. He shook it slightly. “Put my shoes on for me.” I stared at his foot. Suddenly, my brain felt like a dam breaking. Memories flooded in—vivid, stinging, and nauseating. I saw myself kneeling on the floor, massaging Toby’s feet while he laughed, rubbing his toes against my face like I was a common rag. A wave of visceral disgust washed over me. What a pathetic piece of trash. Seeing me frozen on the sofa, Toby’s voice dropped an octave, turning threatening. “Get over here. On your knees. Change them.” “Don’t make me lose my temper, Janice.” I set my face into a mask, staring at him. Toby lifted his chin, his expression darkening, his eyes full of a cruel, predatory hunger. I picked up his leather loafer from the floor. Then, I slammed it directly into his open mouth. “Mmph!” His eyes went wide, bulging as he tried to spit it out. Before he could move, I lunged forward. I put every ounce of strength I possessed into a kick aimed squarely at his groin. “AAAAAGH—!!!” Toby curled into a fetal ball, clutching himself. His face contorted, a high-pitched, pig-like squeal ripping from his throat. “You! You stupid bitch! How dare you hit me!” I stood there, watching his agony. I let out a soft, vacant giggle. “Toby, I saw a new cartoon recently. Was that funny? Did I play right?” Lena woke up then, rubbing her eyes. “What is all this noise so early?” Toby’s body went rigid. He threw a poisonous look at me, then took a ragged breath, forcing his voice into something resembling a normal tone for Lena sake. “Nothing. She’s just throwing a tantrum. She wants to go home.” His face was ghostly pale, but he didn’t say more. He couldn’t risk the world knowing he was tethered to a “slow” girl just for her inheritance. Toby reached out, trying to pull me into a forced embrace, his voice shaking with suppressed rage. “Going home early is a good idea. We need to get the wedding back on track anyway.” 2 After we returned to the States, Toby said he wanted to take me to meet his “inner circle” at the country club. Before we left, he grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my skin. “Remember: shut up. Don’t humiliate me.” Toby was wearing a bespoke suit my mother had paid for, driving my limited-edition supercar. When we arrived at the golf club, the usual crowd swarmed us. “Wickham! Look at you!” A guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt whistled, his eyes raking over me. “This the fiancée? She’s even more stunning than the photos!” “Stunning? She’s a work of art. Toby, you lucky bastard!” I saw Lena in the crowd. She was wearing a delicate white sundress, standing on the periphery, her eyes locked on me. “If you guys ever want to relax here, just give them Janice’s name,” Toby bragged, slapping his friends on the back. “She’s an SVIP. Membership was nearly two hundred grand. Open bar, everything’s on the house.” “Damn! Two hundred grand? You’re really bleeding her dry, aren’t you, Toby?” “Bleeding her? No, he’s just a world-class gold-digger!” The guy in the Hawaiian shirt laughed, elbowing Toby. The laughter exploded around us. “Toby isn’t the gold-digger.” Lena voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the noise like a blade. The laughter died down. She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on mine, her voice dropping into a slow, deliberate honey. “Janice is the one who’s desperate.” “Really?” Hawaiian shirt leaned in, looking from Toby to me. “So, is it true, Janice? Toby says ‘jump’ and you ask ‘how high’?” Toby’s smile flickered, but he recovered quickly. He turned to me, gesturing toward Lena. “Janice, that bag you’re carrying is new, isn’t it? A limited edition?” He paused, his tone casual, almost bored. “It’s Lena birthday today. Why don’t you give it to her as a gift?” I blinked, looking at Lena. “Is it really your birthday today?” Lena froze. Her brow furrowed suddenly. “Wait… when is my birthday? I… I can’t remember.” She shook her head, her fingers pressing hard against her temples. “My head. It hurts. It hurts so much.” I watched her struggle, then asked with a look of pure, innocent concern: “Lena, is it happening again? Is it the sympathetic engorgement?” “Maybe Toby should help you ‘clear the blockage’ again. He’s so good at it. He really knows how to use his mouth to make the pain go away.” “Holy shit, what?” Hawaiian shirt’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. He whirled toward Lena. “You’re pregnant?!” “I am not!” Lena face went translucent. She denied it with a shriek. I stepped in to clarify. “No, no. Lena cat is pregnant. They have a soul bond. She gets congested when the cat does.” “Toby is such a kind boss. He climbed right under the covers to help her out so she wouldn’t suffer. Right, Toby?” “What the hell are you babbling about?!” Toby lunged, cutting me off. “It was a joke! Can’t you tell when someone’s joking? We were just messing with you! Jesus, you’re so dense.” “Yeah, Janice, it’s a misunderstanding! Totally a joke!” “Toby’s a saint to his staff, but it’s purely professional!” The others rushed in to smooth things over, patting Toby’s shoulder and throwing me wary glances. I nodded slowly. “Oh. Okay. I’m not mad.” Toby didn’t let go of my arm. He squinted at me, his eyes searching my face. “Janice, you’re acting… different today.” Before I could answer, Lena snapped. She lunged forward, snatching the bag off my shoulder with a violent tug. I stumbled back as she gripped the leather like a lifeline. She whirled toward Toby, stood on her tiptoes, and planted a heavy, desperate kiss right on his mouth. “Toby! I love you!” Her voice was high and manic. She clutched the bag, her eyes wild. “Thank you for the birthday gift! I love it so much!” The silence was absolute. Toby’s face turned a bruised shade of purple. He shoved Lena away so hard she nearly hit the grass. “Lena! Are you insane? What the hell is wrong with you!” Lena stumbled back, clutching the bag, her expression dazed, as if she didn’t quite know what had just possessed her. Then, the tears started. She turned and fled. Toby shot me one last murderous look before chasing after her. The rest of the crowd exchanged awkward glances and began to dissipate. I stood there, feeling the fog in my head clear a little more. It was like a window that had been caked in grime for years finally having a small corner wiped clean. I walked into the clubhouse, heading for the private suite my parents kept on retainer. Inside the bedroom, Lena was huddled against Toby’s chest, completely unclothed, a look of pure, delirious ecstasy on her face. They saw me. But they didn’t care. To them, I was just a dog that didn’t know how to bark. I took out my phone. I recorded the video. I uploaded it to the cloud. My brain was still a bit fuzzy, but one thought was crystal clear: This will be useful later. 3 My parents sat Toby down to talk about the wedding. “Toby, let’s be blunt,” my father said, leaning back in his leather chair. “Janice is our only child. One day, everything the Emerson family owns will belong to the two of you.” Toby’s fingers twitched, but his face remained a mask of humble sincerity. “Sir, I promise you, my feelings for Janice are genuine.” My father raised a hand, cutting him off. “We want to believe that. But rules are rules, for everyone’s protection.” “Before the wedding, you’ll need to sign a voluntary waiver of marital property. You will have a management role in the Emerson Group, but ownership and final authority will remain solely in Janice’s name.” “We will provide you with a generous salary and an allowance—let’s say, a hundred thousand a month—as a gesture of our trust.” Toby’s knuckles turned white. Then, he looked up, his eyes glistening with faux emotion. “Sir, Ma’am… I can’t accept that.” “I didn’t pursue Janice for her money. My family might not have what yours does, but I have my own two hands. I love her for who she is—simple, pure, and kind. I don’t want the management rights. I don’t want the allowance. I just want her.” He spoke with such conviction, his eyes clear and honest. I saw my father’s stern expression begin to melt. “Good lad! You’ve got spine. I feel better knowing Janice will be in your hands.” As soon as we were upstairs, Toby’s face went cold. He spent an hour furiously typing on his phone. When he went to shower, I opened his laptop. To “prove” his love, he had set all his passwords to my birthday. I saw the pinned chat at the top. [Did you see that movie about the guy who killed his wife? Men are so brutal. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?] [When those old fossils kick the bucket, the idiot gets everything. And she’s so obsessed with you, it’s basically yours anyway.] [Haha. Killing her would be a waste. Much easier to just get rid of the two old ones first.] I never imagined he was the one orchestrating the long game. 4 Today is the seventh day. The day of our engagement gala. In the mirror, I am a vision in white—a custom couture gown, my hair pinned up, crowned by a shimmering diamond tiara. The face in the mirror is beautiful, certainly. Perfectly arched brows, a delicate nose, rose-red lips. But the eyes were still vacant, lacking that vital spark. The fog had thinned significantly over the last few days, but everything still felt slightly muffled, like I was watching the world through a veil of silk. But I remembered one thing: I cannot marry Toby Wickham. My mother came in, smoothing my hair. “My beautiful girl.” I grabbed her hand, and tears began to spill. “Mom, I don’t want to get married.” She froze, then pulled me into a hug. “Oh, sweetheart. It’s just nerves. Toby is so good to you. He’ll look after you when we can’t.” “We checked everything, Janice. His family is respectable—both parents were teachers. He’s a good man.” “You’ll have a peaceful, safe life. That’s all we want.” I marveled at how well Toby had fabricated his “wholesome” background to win them over. I cried harder. I didn’t know how to explain it. The thoughts in my head were like small fish—darting close, then scattering into the deep. I couldn’t catch the words. My mother just assumed I was scared and continued to soothe me. The gala was spectacular. The ballroom was a sea of glittering lights and expensive perfume. Toby, looking sharp in his tuxedo, stepped toward me. He dropped to one knee and produced a ring. “Janice Emerson, marry me. I promise to cherish you for the rest of my life.” The crowd erupted in applause, chanting, “Say yes! Say yes!” I looked at the sparkling diamond, then at Toby’s smiling face. Suddenly, I remembered his voice in the dark hotel room. “…she’s nothing but a dog.” I took a step back. I shook my head. “No.” It wasn’t loud, but in the sudden hush, everyone heard it. The smile on Toby’s face curdled. “Don’t be silly, Janice. Everyone is watching. Be a good girl.” I looked up at the massive LED screen at the front of the hall. “Look there,” I whispered. I had intended to play the video of him and Lena. But that wasn’t what appeared. The screen showed photos of Toby bringing me water, Toby draping his jacket over my shoulders, Toby smiling at me with “devotion.” The MC’s voice boomed over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, look at these precious moments—a testament to the unwavering love Toby Wickham has for Miss Emerson.” Toby leaned in close, a cold, mocking smirk playing on his lips. His voice was a low hiss, meant only for me. “I knew you were up to something. I swapped the files hours ago.” He looked at me as if I were a disobedient pet that had failed a simple trick. “Once we’re married, no more cartoons. No more trying these pathetic little stunts you learn online.” “And no more phone. Do you understand?” I stared at his smug, triumphant face. Suddenly, there was a literal thrum in my brain. The fog that had muffled my world for eighteen years vanished in a heartbeat. It was as if someone had shattered the glass. Everything became blindingly, piercingly clear. I opened my mouth to speak. But a scream from the crowd beat me to it. “AHHHH—!!” A woman in a low-cut cocktail dress burst onto the stage. At the same time, a family of four stood up from the VIP table, their faces twisted with frantic energy.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452004”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel