I had just returned from Vienna with the highest international accolade in canine behavioral science in my hands. Barely twenty-four hours later, my husband, Tyler, shattered the crystal trophy against the marble floor of our foyer. My crime? I had quietly warned him that his newest houseguest—our housekeeper’s daughter and aspiring influencer, Delilah—had brought a “rescue” dog into our home that was dangerously unstable. I told him it had no business being paraded around his corporate gala. Surrounded by the glittering shards of my life’s work, my eyes burned. I screamed at him, my voice cracking, “Tyler, that dog baring its teeth isn’t ‘just playing’! It’s resource guarding to a lethal degree. If we don’t isolate it right now, someone is going to die!” Tyler had wrapped his arms around me then, his voice a low, soothing purr. He apologized. He told me he’d been wrong to doubt me. But it was a trap. Minutes later, I was shoved into a wrought-iron containment cage. The lock clicked shut. And I wasn’t alone. Tyler stood on the other side of the bars, adjusting the ring light, his phone broadcasting live to millions of his followers. He looked directly into the camera lens and smiled. “This is my wife, Viola,” he announced to the internet. “A so-called ‘top-tier’ dog whisperer. Tonight, she’s generously volunteered to use her own body to prove her methods. Let’s see if she can heal this poor, traumatized stray.” A cold, bitter laugh rose in my throat. He was using me as a prop. A human sacrifice to validate Delilah’s manufactured damsel-in-distress persona and win her affection. What Tyler didn’t know was that his younger brother’s guide dog—a retired search-and-rescue shepherd named Titan—was currently crashing from acute neurological shock. Titan was scheduled to be euthanized by morning. And I was the only behavioral specialist on the continent qualified to pull him back from the brink. Almost on cue, Tyler’s phone began to vibrate violently. It was his grandfather, the patriarch of the family. Even through the speaker, Warren’s voice was a frantic, weeping roar: “Tyler! Have you lost your damn mind?! Get your wife out of there! She’s the only one who can save your brother’s dog!” 1 The cold iron bars dug into my spine. Camera flashes popped in rapid succession, blinding me. Opposite me, Delilah’s “stray”—a hulking, scarred beast she called Snowball—stood with its back arched, muscles coiled tight as steel cables. A low, vibrating growl rumbled in its throat. Outside the cage, my husband swirled a glass of bourbon. His face held a mask of profound, performative affection that I had never seen directed at me behind closed doors. “My wife, Viola, is an absolute master of her craft,” Tyler said smoothly to his phone. “She has absolute faith in her ability to rehabilitate this poor, misunderstood creature.” Delilah, perfectly framed in the background, squeezed out a few glistening tears. Her voice was a masterclass in breathy innocence. “Viola is so brave,” she whimpered, dabbing her eyes. “Unlike me. I just have so much empathy for Snowball, but I’m too clumsy to actually help him… I’m just so touched that Viola volunteered to put herself in the enclosure like this.” In three sentences, she had absolved herself of all responsibility, painting me as the arrogant instigator of this nightmare. I didn’t waste my breath on her high-school theater act. Every ounce of my adrenaline was locked on the animal in front of me. Its posture was entirely wrong. This wasn’t the fearful, defensive crouch of a street dog. The squared shoulders, the fixed, unblinking stare, the terrifying silence before the strike—this dog had been systematically trained for violence. It was a fighting dog. I backed against the bars, keeping my voice dead level, aiming my words at the man I had married. “Tyler. Turn the camera off. Now. This is not a stray. This animal has been conditioned for the pit. It is going to kill me.” Tyler scoffed, rolling his eyes. He thought I was throwing a tantrum, trying to embarrass him in front of his audience. He didn’t even dignify me with a response. He just flicked his chin toward his assistant. The assistant, face blank, pulled a slab of bloody, raw flank steak from a plastic bucket and shoved it through the feeding slot of the cage. “Mr. CEO wants to drive up the engagement metrics,” the assistant droned. The heavy, metallic scent of blood hit the air. Snowball’s pupils dilated into pinpricks. With a guttural snarl, it launched itself across the cage. I threw my arm up. Jaws clamped down on my forearm. The sickening sound of tearing flesh echoed in the cage, followed by a shockwave of pain that turned the edges of my vision black. The live chat on the phone exploded. Tyler frowned, taking a half-step forward. But before reality could set in, Delilah let out a theatric gasp, covering her mouth. “Oh my god! Snowball just loves Viola so much! He’s just playing rough!” she cried out. “Wait, is she bleeding? Viola, you’re being too aggressive with him! You’re scaring him!” Her poisoned words worked like magic. The flicker of doubt in Tyler’s eyes vanished, replaced by irritation at my “incompetence.” I swallowed the scream rising in my throat. Ignoring the tearing agony in my arm, I used my free hand to jam my thumb under the dog’s jawline, applying a specialized pressure-point release technique to barely keep its teeth from severing my brachial artery. My bone was grinding against its molars. The muscle was giving way. If I couldn’t break its hold, I would lose my arm. I gathered every shred of oxygen left in my lungs and screamed over the snarling. “Tyler! Kieran’s guide dog, Titan! He’s in acute neurological distress! I am the only one who can perform the stabilization protocol! If I don’t get to him tonight, they will put him down!” That made Tyler freeze. His younger brother, Kieran, was a former smokejumper who had been blinded in a wildfire rescue. Titan wasn’t just a dog to Kieran; he was his eyes, his lifeline, his entire world. But the hesitation only lasted a second before Tyler’s mouth curled into a cruel sneer. “Nice try, Viola. You love manipulating the old man with your exaggerated credentials. Kieran’s dog is at the best veterinary hospital in the state. They don’t need you.” He took another sip of bourbon. “Stop using my brother to get out of this. If you want out, apologize to Delilah.” He snapped his fingers. A sharp crackle sounded in my earpiece, and my microphone went dead. On the livestream, my mouth was wide open, screaming in agony, but the audience heard nothing but silence. The pain in my arm flared into a white-hot blinding fire as blood poured down my fingers. The dog shifted its grip, aiming for my throat. 2 Blood was pooling on the iron floor. It slipped hot and fast down my skin, dripping steadily into a dark puddle between my boots. On the screen just outside the cage, the comments were a blur of cruelty. The few voices asking if I was genuinely hurt were drowned out by a sea of digital mockery. “Fake blood? So dramatic.” “Anything to ruin the vibe. Lame.” “Thought she was an expert? Can’t even handle a rescue mutt.” Delilah caught sight of the jagged tear in my arm. A tiny, uncontrollable smirk twitched at the corner of her lips before she expertly smothered it under a mask of frantic concern. She reached into her designer clutch and pulled out a small, metallic silver whistle. She held it up to Tyler like a precious jewel. “Tyler, baby, I read online that these high-frequency whistles are like therapy for stressed dogs,” her voice was spun sugar. “Snowball looks a little overwhelmed. Let me help Viola.” Tyler looked down at her. The annoyance he felt at my bleeding instantly melted into fond indulgence. He nodded. Delilah turned toward the cage. She met my eyes. The smile she gave me was pure, unadulterated malice. She brought the silver whistle to her lips and blew with all her might. Piiiiieeeeercing—! The sound was a needle driven straight into the brain. Inside the cage, Snowball went rigid. The hair along its spine stood straight up. Its eyes went bloodshot, and whatever sanity the animal had left completely shattered. It let out a demonic, hollow roar. The dog lunged again, but this time, it wasn’t just reacting to food—it was moving with the explosive, lethal intent of a predator unleashed. My stomach plummeted. That wasn’t a calming whistle. That was a hyper-frequency combat trigger. It was a black-market tool used in illegal dog fighting to bypass an animal’s pain receptors and trigger a fight-to-the-death instinct. Delilah was trying to kill me. I threw my body backward, kicking out to defend myself, but I wasn’t fast enough. A blinding agony ripped through my left calf. Snowball’s jaws locked onto my leg. I heard the sickening crunch of canine teeth scraping against my tibia. The pain was so absolute it wiped my mind blank. Cold sweat drenched my shirt. My hands. My legs. I was a behavioral specialist. My body was my instrument. She was destroying my livelihood. Just then, Tyler’s phone began to ring. A harsh, urgent vibration. He groaned, answering it and putting it on speaker. “What now?” His grandfather’s voice exploded through the phone, hoarse and ragged with tears. “You stupid, arrogant son of a bitch! Titan just attacked three of the state’s top neurologists! He’s completely feral!” “They’ve classified him as a lethal public threat! They have the euthanasia chemicals drawn up right now!” “They are begging for Viola! The chief of staff said she is the only human being alive who knows how to bypass his trauma response! Where the hell is your wife?! Get her to this hospital now!” Tyler turned to stone. He slowly looked up, his gaze passing through the iron bars. He saw me. Soaked in my own blood. Trapped in a cage with a monster tearing into my calf. The floor painted crimson. True, icy terror finally gripped his chest. Delilah realized the narrative was slipping. All the color drained from her face. Acting on pure survival instinct, she let out a faux gasp and dropped the silver whistle. It clattered onto the floor near the cage. She immediately dissolved into hysterical, breathless sobs. “Oh my god… Tyler, I’m so sorry… I was just trying to help… Viola, are you okay?” She patted her pockets frantically. “Tyler… the key… I was so scared by the dog, I think I dropped the padlock key inside the cage…” The sound of her crying snapped Tyler out of his shock. He looked at her trembling, delicate frame, her tear-stained face looking utterly innocent and devastated. His panic subsided, replaced by his ingrained need to protect her. He took a deep breath, his voice softening. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s not your fault,” he murmured. “Step back. It’s dangerous here.” Then he whipped around to his security detail, his eyes wild. “What the hell are you idiots standing around for?! Get the bolt cutters! Break the damn lock! Now!” The sudden screaming and chaos outside the cage pushed Snowball over the edge. The low growls escalated into a frantic, thrashing frenzy. The jaws clamped down harder on my broken leg, attempting to rip the muscle clean off the bone. 3 The pain was dragging me down into a dark undertow, but I knew if I passed out now, I was dead. I rallied every last fractured ounce of my strength and screamed at the chaotic mess of security guards outside. “Do not open that door! It will kill whoever is standing there!” My voice was ragged, choked with blood and exhaustion, but it carried the unquestionable authority of a professional. The frantic movement outside halted. Everyone froze, staring at me. “Get the high-pressure fire hose from the hallway! Aim for the eyes!” I commanded, fighting through the nausea as the dog shook my leg. The guards snapped out of their stupor and scrambled for the emergency glass. Tyler stood frozen, staring at the blood. “Don’t just stand there!” I roared at him. “Find a pole! Tie your jacket around it! Shove it through the side bars to break its visual fixation! Move!” For the first time in our marriage, Tyler didn’t argue. He stripped off his bespoke Tom Ford jacket with trembling hands, wrapping it frantically around a janitor’s broom handle, and jammed it through the grating. Under my direction, the chaos morphed into a tactical extraction. The blast from the fire hose hit the dog directly in the face. The shock of the water pressure blinded and disoriented it. With a yelp, the jaw mechanism released my calf. Instantly, Tyler waved the jacket-wrapped pole. The movement triggered the dog’s prey drive, and it abandoned me, throwing itself at the expensive fabric, tearing it to shreds. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder. Animal Control and the police burst into the room. A tactical officer raised a tranquilizer rifle. He took a breath, aimed, and fired. Thwack. The dog convulsed once, its eyes rolling back, before it collapsed heavily onto the steel floor. The cage door was violently pried open. Paramedics flooded the space. As hands grabbed me, my adrenaline crashed. My body went entirely limp, sinking into the cold, sticky pool of my own blood. As they strapped me to the backboard, I felt reality slipping away. The edges of the room began to blur into static. Just before the darkness took me, I forced my eyes open, grabbed the sleeve of the nearest police officer with my uninjured hand, and whispered. “Check… the whistle…” Delilah was already weaving her web, crying hysterically as she tried to climb into the back of my ambulance. “Viola! Oh my god, I’m so sorry… It’s all my fault, I just wanted to—” An older man in a faded Animal Control uniform, his hair salt-and-pepper, stepped squarely into her path. He was holding a clear evidence bag. Inside it was the silver whistle. He looked at it, then looked up at Delilah. His eyes were devoid of sympathy. “Miss.” He didn’t yell, but the sheer gravity of his voice silenced the loading bay. “This is a Class A contraband combat whistle. It is banned globally. It is designed to induce a psychotic break in canines, pushing them into an irreversible kill-state.” He stepped closer to her. “Where exactly did you ‘find’ this?” Tyler’s face hardened. Without a second thought, he stepped in front of Delilah, shielding her from the officer, his posture radiating arrogant hostility. “What the hell are you implying?” Tyler snapped. “Delilah is a sweet, soft-hearted girl. She doesn’t know anything about illegal dog-fighting! It’s a whistle she found. Are you seriously trying to frame her to cover up my wife’s incompetence?” I was loaded into the ambulance. The heavy doors began to swing shut, perfectly framing Tyler’s face as he angrily defended the woman who had just tried to butcher me. I looked at him. And to my own surprise, I felt nothing. No anger. No sorrow. Just a profound, hollow exhaustion. It didn’t matter what the truth was. It didn’t matter what evidence was placed in his hands. He would always choose her. As the ambulance doors clicked shut, plunging me into the quiet dimness of the cab, I felt something inside my chest click shut right along with them. I was done. 4 I woke to the sterile hum of monitors and a voice completely devoid of bedside manner. “Massive avulsion of the brachial plexus in the right arm. Multiple severed tendons in the left leg. The prognosis for full mobility is poor.” The surgeon looked at his chart, not at me. “Ms. Viola, your hands… I’m afraid high-level, fine-motor tasks are likely going to be impossible for the rest of your life.” The words drifted through the air like snow, cold and disconnected. My hand. Gone. My life’s work. Over. I stared at the white ceiling. There was a vast, echoing wasteland inside my chest. I couldn’t even find the energy to cry. Crash! The hospital room door flew open, rebounding against the wall. Tyler stormed in. His face was flushed, his eyes wild, and there wasn’t a trace of remorse in his expression. He swept his arm across my bedside table, sending my water pitcher shattering against the tile. “Are you happy now, Viola?!” he hissed, towering over my bed. “You would rather maim yourself just to make Delilah look bad?! You turned my entire family into a public circus! You’re supposed to be a world-class professional! You let a stray mutt chew you up just to win an argument?!” I looked at his contorted, furious face. It was almost comical. “You really believe that, don’t you?” I whispered, my voice raspy. “You think I orchestrated a dog mauling out of jealousy.” “Tyler, please, don’t yell at her…” Delilah scurried into the room right behind him, her eyes perfectly bloodshot. She threw herself dramatically to her knees beside my hospital bed. “Viola, I am so, so sorry. It’s my fault. Please don’t be mad at Tyler, he’s just stressed because he cares about me…” She sobbed, her shoulders heaving in a picture-perfect display of distress. “You can punish me however you want, Viola! Just please, forgive him!” It was a brilliant performance. Every word out of her mouth was designed to stroke his ego and paint me as the villain. Right on cue, Tyler’s expression softened as he looked down at her. He reached out to gently lift Delilah by her shoulders, turning a look of pure disgust back to me. “Look at her, Viola. Look at how gracious she is. And look at you. Bitter, vindictive, and selfish.” He lunged forward, his hand snapping out to grab my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Apologize to her.” His voice was a venomous whisper. “Admit you provoked that dog to frame her, and apologize. Now.” I closed my eyes. I let the silence hang in the room, wrapping myself in the last shreds of my dignity. My refusal pushed him over the edge. Just as his grip on my jaw tightened, the door was shoved open again. “Viola!” Kieran, Tyler’s younger brother, stumbled blindly into the room. He was pale, sweating, and weeping openly. He fell against the foot of my bed, his hands grasping frantically for the blankets. “Viola, Titan is dying!” Kieran sobbed, his sightless eyes wide with panic. “They said he’s too far gone. They said you’re the only one in the world who can talk him down. Viola, please! I’m begging you!” Tyler spun around, the veins in his neck bulging at the sight of his brother begging me. “Get off her!” Tyler yelled, violently shoving his blind brother back into a chair. Tyler turned back to me, his chest heaving, his eyes locking onto my heavily bandaged right arm. A terrifying, cruel realization dawned on his face. “Is this your play?” he sneered. “Did you and Kieran cook this up? Trying to prove how indispensable you are so I have to beg you?” “Viola, if you don’t drop this act right now, I swear to God I will make sure this hand never touches another animal as long as you live!” He reached out, his fingers curling like claws, aiming directly for the fresh, bloody sutures on my ruined hand. My breath hitched. A cold spike of pure terror shot through my veins. “Don’t touch me!” Before his fingers could graze the gauze, the heavy wooden door of the hospital room was kicked open with enough force to crack the drywall.

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Labor Day weekend was creeping closer, and the usual pre-holiday hum was vibrating through the office. Everyone was checked out, their minds already on beach rentals or backyard barbecues. Then there was Jessie. She was the kind of coworker who treated office politics like a blood sport, always wearing a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She sauntered over to my desk, fluttering the holiday on-call schedule like it was a prize she’d just won. She pointed to the grid, a faint, smug curve to her lips. “Nicole, honey, such bad luck. Looks like you’re pulling the lion’s share of the holiday shifts again. Sorry you have to work so hard.” I glanced at the paper. Out of the five-day break, she’d stuck herself with two days. I had three. I gave a casual shrug, not letting her see the flicker of annoyance. “It’s fine. Triple pay on holidays means I’m basically getting paid to sit in an empty office and catch up on my Kindle list. More money for me.” Her eyes widened, the gears behind them grinding instantly. I could practically see the dollar signs flashing in her pupils. She leaned in, her voice dropping to that sickly-sweet register she used when she wanted something. “Nicole, do you really mean that? Because if you’re looking for more hours, maybe you could…” I didn’t let her finish. I held up a hand, cutting her off mid-sentence. I knew exactly what she was playing at. Last Labor Day, she’d spun some sob story about a last-minute getaway, then “fell ill” the moment her shift started, leaving her phone off for forty-eight hours. The boss had been livid, and to save the department’s reputation, I’d stepped in. I pulled five straight days. I worked myself into a literal collapse, ended up in the ER with exhaustion, and had to take a month of unpaid medical leave just to feel human again. I wasn’t about to be her martyr a second time. 1 I looked Jessie dead in the eye and pushed the schedule back toward her. The practiced sweetness on her face curdled. “Nicole, come on! You can’t be serious,” she whined, crowding into my personal space. She reached out as if to grab my arm, her voice hitting that high-pitched, performative frequency. “Have a heart! I already found these amazing discount tickets to Cabo. If I cancel now, the fees will eat me alive!” She blinked rapidly, trying to summon a tear. “And my mom… her health has been so rocky lately. I just wanted to take her to the ocean to clear her lungs. It might be her last chance for a trip like this.” I didn’t blink. “Save it, Jessie.” My voice was ice. “Last year it was a ‘medical emergency’ in San Francisco. You disappeared. You went completely dark—no calls, no texts, nothing. You left me to drown.” I stood up, forcing her to take a step back. “I pulled five days straight because you decided to play dead. I fainted in the subway on my way home and spent weeks recovering. Did you offer to cover my medical bills? Did you even apologize for the ‘inconvenience’?” Being called out in plain English made her face go blotchy. When she realized the “frail woman” act wouldn’t work on me, she pivoted. She turned toward Kevin, the guy in the next cubicle who spent half his day buying her lattes and the other half staring at her legs. Kevin, right on cue, jumped to her defense. “Nicole, Jesus. We’re all on the same team. Why do you have to be so aggressive?” He puffed out his chest, looking ridiculous. “She’s got a family situation. If you’re just gonna be home anyway, what’s the harm in helping out? Try having a little empathy.” I let out a sharp, cold laugh. “Kevin, if you’re so worried about your ‘work-wife,’ why don’t you take her shifts? Triple pay. Twelve hundred bucks for two days. Go tell HR right now.” He froze. His mouth opened, then snapped shut. The thought of losing his long weekend was apparently a bridge too far for his chivalry. He turned back to his monitor, mumbling something about “not being authorized for warehouse access,” and vanished into his spreadsheets. The office went silent. Jessie realized she’d lost the room. She gritted her teeth, the mask finally dropping to reveal a look of pure, concentrated venom. She walked back to her desk, but I saw the way her fingers gripped her bag. If she couldn’t win by asking, she’d win by cheating. I knew she had a backup plan. The first three days of the holiday were eerily quiet. On the afternoon of the third day, just as the clock was ticking toward five, I made a show of heading to the restroom at the end of the hall. I dawdled, checking my makeup, waiting a full fifteen minutes. When I walked back to my desk, I saw it. Lying right in the center of my keyboard was a heavy ring of brass keys—the master set for the high-value inventory warehouse. Tucked under the keys was a neon-pink Post-it note in Jessie’s loopy, performative handwriting: “Nicole! Thank you SO much for agreeing to cover for me after all! You’re a literal lifesaver! I left the keys here for you. Have a great shift! xoxo” 2 I looked over at Jessie’s station. Computer off. Desk cleared. She was long gone. She’d dropped the keys, snapped a photo of the note for “evidence,” and fled, thinking she’d successfully forced me into a corner. I didn’t make a sound. I simply picked up the keys and slid them into my coat pocket. If she wanted a trap, I was going to make sure it was airtight. I walked to the window. Down on the street, Jessie was standing by the curb, wearing an oversized sun hat and a flowy sundress, clutching a pink designer suitcase. She was staring at her phone, waiting for her Uber. I took the stairs, fast. She was facing away from the building, her back to the lobby doors. She was totally absorbed in tracking her ride on the app. I walked past her, pretending to be on a heated phone call, moving through the crowd like just another busy city professional. As I brushed past her suitcase, I moved with the precision of a ghost. My fingers caught the hidden zipper on the very bottom of her bag—the small, flat compartment people usually use for laundry or spare shoes. A quick pull, a silent shove. I jammed the heavy brass keys and the pink note deep into that hidden pocket and zipped it shut. I vanished into the sea of commuters. Seconds later, a black sedan pulled up. Jessie smiled brightly, watched the driver lift her bag into the trunk, and sped away toward the airport. I watched the car disappear and felt a cold, sharp satisfaction. You wanted to play games, Jessie? Now you own the stakes. The next morning, I didn’t set an alarm. I woke up to the sun streaming through my apartment windows. I made a slow pot of coffee, sat on my sofa, and placed my phone on the coffee table like a ticking bomb. At 8:05 AM, it started. The vibration hummed against the wood. Jessie was calling. Once, twice, three times. I watched the screen light up with her name. I knew the script. She was probably lying in a cabana in Cabo, frantically trying to “remind” me to open the warehouse, hoping to browbeat me into submission one last time. Even if I didn’t answer, she wouldn’t worry. She assumed that once the boss realized the warehouse was locked, he’d call me, use some corporate “team player” rhetoric, and force me to go in and clean up her mess. “You want to play the moral high ground?” I whispered to the empty room. “Fine.” I swiped the phone into Airplane Mode and shoved it under a pillow. Two thousand miles away, Jessie listened to the automated voicemail for the tenth time. She wasn’t panicked; she was smirking. “Going dark, are we, Nicole?” she muttered, tossing her phone onto a lounge chair. “Fine. Stay home. Let’s see how you explain it to Garrison when he finds out the most important shipment of the year is sitting behind a locked door.” She put on her sunglasses and headed for the water, already picturing my tearful apology in the manager’s office on Monday. At 10:00 AM, back at the office, a ten-centimeter high-pressure fire main on the second floor finally gave up. Years of internal corrosion met a sudden surge in pressure. With a muffled roar, the pipe burst, sending a geyser of water through the ceiling tiles. The water didn’t stay on the second floor. It followed the gravity of least resistance, pouring directly down the conduits into the first floor. Directly into Warehouse A. Inside that warehouse sat the “Big Bet”—twenty thousand precision electronic motherboards, worth nearly eighty thousand dollars. Our boss had literally put his house up as collateral to secure the credit line for this order. They were slated for delivery to our biggest client in Seattle on Tuesday morning. If those boards sat in water for more than ten minutes, they were scrap metal. When the security guard finally noticed the sound, the hallway was already a lake. Muddy, yellowish water was bubbling out from under the heavy steel shutter of the warehouse door. He called the property manager. The manager checked the logs and called the boss. 3 Mr. Henderson was at a theme park with his kids, halfway through the line for a roller coaster. When his phone rang, his face went the color of curdled milk. He dropped his cotton candy right into the dirt. “Open it! Get someone in there now! Save the stock!” he screamed into the phone. “Sir, it’s a Grade-4 security lock,” the manager shouted back over the roar of the water. “We don’t have a master key. Where’s your on-call person?” Henderson scrambled to open the digital schedule on his phone. There, in bold letters for Day 4, was one name: Jessie. His fingers shook as he dialed her. Silence. Then a click. Then the “unavailable” tone. He tried her FaceTime, her WhatsApp… nothing. At that exact moment, Jessie was on a jet ski in the middle of the ocean, screaming with joy, her phone tucked safely in a waterproof bag back on the beach, completely oblivious to the world. 10:45 AM. Henderson skidded into the lobby, his clothes disheveled. The sight of the flooded hallway made his knees buckle. He slumped into the water, staring at the warehouse door. “Break it down! Someone get a damn axe!” His eyes were bloodshot, bordering on manic. He grabbed a fire axe from the wall and, joined by a few frantic male employees who lived nearby, started hacking at the reinforced steel. With a final, agonizing groan, the door gave way. A waist-deep wall of water, choked with sodden cardboard and shattered glass, surged out, knocking Henderson flat. When they finally waded into the back of the warehouse, a choked sob escaped his throat. The bottom three tiers of shelving—holding the most delicate components—were completely submerged. Eighty thousand dollars of precision tech was now nothing but expensive junk. “JESSIE!!” Henderson roared, his voice echoing off the wet concrete. “JESSIE, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!” 1:00 PM. Henderson sat at a makeshift table in the lobby, drenched in gray silt. The floor was littered with dripping boxes. The tally was in: sixty-seven thousand dollars in direct loss, plus the inevitable breach-of-contract penalties from the client. His life’s work was circling the drain. He pulled out his phone and opened the company-wide Slack channel. @Jessie! @Jessie! Answer me right now!! The warehouse has been under water for two hours! Why were you not at your post?! You just cost this company nearly eighty thousand dollars! I will see you in a courtroom for this! The channel stayed silent. In Cabo, Jessie was rinsing the sand off her feet. She was humming as she pulled her phone out of the waterproof bag, ready to pick the best selfie for her Instagram grid. The moment she unlocked the screen, the phone froze. Hundreds of notifications slammed into her UI like a physical blow. As she read Henderson’s messages and saw the photos of the ruined warehouse, the tropical heat vanished. She felt a coldness so deep it turned her bones to ice. Eighty thousand dollars? Negligence? Prison? She collapsed onto the sand, the phone nearly slipping into the surf. Even if she worked for three lifetimes, she couldn’t pay that back. Her survival instinct kicked in—pure, poisonous redirection. She hit the call button for Henderson. The second he picked up, before he could even draw breath to scream, she erupted into a jagged, hysterical sob. “Sir! It wasn’t me! Oh my god, sir, you have to listen! It wasn’t my responsibility!” “You weren’t there! Don’t tell me about responsibility!” Henderson bellowed. “Where are you?!” “Sir, I handed over the shift! I did a formal hand-off to Nicole yesterday afternoon! We swapped! Nicole was supposed to be there today!” Jessie shrieked, the lies pouring out of her. “I have proof! I’m sending it to the group right now!” She hung up and frantically uploaded the photo she’d taken the day before—the one of the keys sitting on my desk with the pink note. 4 The photo hit the Slack channel like a grenade. The coworkers who had been lurking in silence suddenly found their voices, smelling blood in the water. Kevin was the first to jump in. Boss, Jessie’s telling the truth! I saw her at Nicole’s desk yesterday right before we clocked out. She was doing the hand-off. The keys and the note were right there on Nicole’s desk, the HR manager added. Who knows why Nicole took the keys and then just… didn’t show up? That’s psychopathic. I always thought Nicole was a bit of a loner, but to sabotage the company like this? another chimed in. The collective fear of losing their holiday bonuses turned into a pitchfork-wielding mob. I was the perfect scapegoat. Watching the tide turn in her favor, Jessie finally let out a shaky breath. Some color returned to her face. She doubled down, typing out a long, “sorrowful” message to the group: Everyone, please, don’t be too hard on Nicole. I’m sure she didn’t mean for this to happen. Maybe she just overslept or had a personal emergency. It breaks my heart to see the company like this. If we need to pull together, I’m happy to donate a portion of my next paycheck to help cover the damages… A hundred-dollar “donation” against an eighty-thousand-dollar debt. She looked like a saint; I looked like a criminal. Henderson, pushed past the point of reason by my lack of response, issued the final ultimatum. Nicole is officially terminated for gross negligence and abandonment of duty. I’m directing finance to freeze her final checks and bonuses immediately. I’ll sell everything I own to fight this, but I am calling the police. I want her prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 6:00 PM. Henderson called an emergency meeting for every employee currently in the city. The lobby was a wreck, the air smelling of damp mold and panic. Dozens of people huddled in the dim light, barely breathing. The projector screen flickered to life. Jessie was there via video call. She’d blurred her hotel background and changed into a wrinkled, drab t-shirt. She’d even messed up her hair to look like she’d been crying for hours. BAM! Henderson slammed the damage assessment onto the table. “Eighty-two thousand, four hundred dollars!” His voice was a jagged rasp. “That is the price of Nicole’s spite. She stole the keys and went AWOL. Firing her isn’t enough. I want her in a cell.” On the screen, Jessie covered her mouth, letting out a soft, theatrical whimper. “Sir… Nicole’s had it rough lately. Even if she kept the keys to hurt the company, please don’t send her to jail. She’s young… a criminal record would ruin her life…” Every word was a calculated twist of the knife. “Ruin her life?” Henderson’s face contorted. “She ruined my family’s future! I’ll see her behind bars if it’s the last thing I do!” “Jessie, you’re too good for this world!” Kevin shouted, pumping a fist. “Stop defending her! Call the cops! Get a warrant for her apartment!” The room erupted in a chorus of vitriol. 5 In that muddy, broken room, the hatred for me reached a fever pitch. Henderson reached for his phone. “Enough!” he roared. The room went dead silent. He tapped three digits: 9-1-1. He hit the speakerphone and placed it in the center of the table. On the screen, Jessie leaned forward, her eyes glittering with a predatory joy. The whole company held its breath. The call connected. “911, what is the address of your emergency?” At that exact second, the heavy glass lobby doors swung open with a bang. Everyone spun around. The setting sun was at my back, casting a long, sharp shadow across the wet floor. I looked at Jessie’s frozen face on the screen, then at Henderson’s trembling hand on the phone. A slow, mocking smile spread across my face. “I heard someone was looking for me,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence like a blade.

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Through the haze of cigarette smoke, she crushed out her ember and delivered the reason for the divorce—she had fallen in love with our son’s classmate. I agreed without a second’s hesitation. I had already lived through this once. In my previous life, I had been the stubborn fool who refused to let go. I had clung to the wreckage of our marriage, only for her young lover to be whisked away into a marriage of convenience by his own family. The fallout broke her. She spiraled into alcoholism and eventually suffered a massive stroke that left her paralyzed. For ten years, I was her shadow. I cared for her every need, day in and day out, until I finally nursed her back onto her feet. And the very first thing she did once she could walk again? She took our son by the hand and forced me into a divorce. “It’s your fault for not letting her go back then!” my son had screamed at me. “Mom wouldn’t have gotten sick, and my life wouldn’t have been this pathetic!” Under the pressure of his suicide threats, I finally signed the papers. Later, she married their former male housekeeper, while I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. That mother and son duo coldly rejected every single one of my pleas for help. In my final moments of consciousness, I felt nothing but a vast, freezing desolation. But then, I opened my eyes. I was back on the day she asked for the divorce. This time, I calmly exhaled two words: “Okay. Fine.” 1 She snapped her head up, her face a mask of shock. “What did you say? Say that again!” I spewed a large piece of pot roast into my mouth, chewing casually. “I said the divorce is fine. We split the assets fifty-fifty. Any objections?” She knit her brows, looking down in silent contemplation. She didn’t speak. I served myself a massive bowl of mashed potatoes and began eating with a vengeance. In my last life, I had gone three days without a drop of water or a bite of food before the illness finally took me. Now, I was going to eat my fill. Mona sighed, a look of weary condescension on her face. “David, I’m being serious. I’m in love with Jordan, and he feels the same way about me.” “I know there’s a twenty-five-year gap between us, but our souls are entwined. As my partner for the first half of my life, you should respect my choice. You should give us your blessing.” I nodded. “Sure. Honestly, I’m tired of living with you anyway.” She froze again. Then, a flicker of genuine delight crossed her features. “You’re… you’re not just saying that? You’re not planning to make a scene?” I gave her a silent shrug of confirmation. She rubbed her hands together, visibly vibrating with excitement. “Good. I’m glad you’ve reached this level of self-awareness! I suppose twenty years with me rubbed a little bit of class off on you after all.” “Look, we’ll split the assets three ways. One for you, one for me, and one for our son. That’s more than fair, and it’s my way of doing right by you.” “I’m staying with Mom,” our son, Lucas, chimed in suddenly, not looking up from his phone. “She can manage my share of the money.” Mona let out a sharp, triumphant laugh. “Perfect! That means two-thirds for me, one-third for you. Really, David, it’s a generous deal. You’ve been a stay-at-home dad for twenty years; you haven’t exactly contributed to the household income. You’ve lived off me all this time. Taking a third is plenty. Be grateful.” Lucas waved his phone in the air. “Dad, I recorded you saying you’d agree to the divorce. Don’t even think about backing out.” 2 I looked at my son. Quietly. Steadily. A phantom ache throbbed in my chest. This was my flesh and blood. Once, I believed we were a team. In the previous timeline, when Mona first brought up the divorce, my first thought was of him. He was studying for the Bar exam. He needed his mother’s academic connections and her financial backing. I knew Mona—if I divorced her then, she would have washed her hands of him to pursue her “true love.” And I was just a fifty-year-old man with no career, no savings, and a resume that had been blank for two decades. I couldn’t help him. I feared he’d fail his exams, lose his social standing, and never find a partner. So, I bit my tongue. I endured the humiliation. I kept the hollow shell of a marriage together just for his sake. How was I rewarded? Years later, he was the one who drove me to a dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere and left me to rot. He didn’t even buy me a bag of rice, let alone take me to a doctor. When I begged him over the phone, he had responded with ice in his voice: “If you die, you die. A useless man like you doesn’t contribute anything to society anyway. You’re just wasting oxygen.” Remembering that, I smiled faintly. “Don’t worry, Lucas. I’m not going to fight your mother for you. Even if you wanted to come with me, I wouldn’t take you.” His expression shifted for a split second, then curdled into a sneer. “Give it a rest. No matter what you say, I’m not choosing you. What can you even do for me?” “Jordan is like a brother to me. Once he marries Mom, we’ll be closer than ever. He’s got a Master’s degree, he’s young, he’s brilliant—he’s actually a match for a professor like Mom. When you stand next to her, you look like her gardener.” He stuck his tongue out at me like a petulant child. “I’ll have two cultured, educated people taking care of me now. I don’t need you.” He tossed his fork onto the table and sauntered back to his room. I looked at the remnants of the dinner he’d mostly inhaled. I looked at the laundry drying on the balcony that I had scrubbed. I looked at the potted plants he bought and never watered. I looked at the pet turtle he cried for and then never fed. I had done everything for him. And in his eyes, all that effort was worthless because it didn’t come with a salary. His mother was a professor, so even if she did nothing, she was a giant. I had no job, so even though I carried his entire world on my shoulders, I was trash. A son like this? I didn’t want him anymore. 3 After finishing my meal, I walked out the door. At the bottom of the stairs, I ran into Mona and Jordan. They were laughing, no longer bothering to hide it. They stood there, fingers entwined, glowing with a nauseatingly sweet intimacy. I acted as if they were invisible, brushing past them. “Hey, Dave!” Jordan called out. He beamed at me, his smile bright and predatory. “Going out, Dave?” “You might want to stay out late. I’d hate for you to come home too early and see something you can’t handle. Like… this.” He leaned in and kissed Mona deeply, making a wet, deliberate sound that would have made any husband’s blood boil. Mona looked slightly uncomfortable, her eyes darting around. When he finished, Jordan grinned again. “By the way, Mona said she’s buying me a massive estate in the Hamptons. Did you know? Have you ever even stayed in a place like that? Probably not.” “Tell you what, after the divorce, you can come over and be our housekeeper. That way, you can finally see how the other half lives.” He winked, as if he were wishing me well. The first time I met Jordan, he had that same innocent, sweet smile. He said he wanted to prep for his exams and asked if my wife could tutor him. Three weeks into those “sessions,” I heard his heavy breathing coming from her study. “I just love the taste of a sophisticated, mature woman,” he had whispered. Last time, I tried to stop them. This time, I was going to make sure they got exactly what they deserved: each other. I hailed a car and went straight to a labor agency. I hired six men and drove them out to my parents’ old farm in the countryside. It was the only thing they had left me. It had been abandoned for over a decade, overgrown with weeds. This was the place where I had died in the other life. When Lucas threw me out, I slept on the floor with the insects for days. In that life, Lucas had pointed to a hole in the floorboards and laughed. “You never guessed, did you? Mom hid over a million dollars in cash! All those ‘consultation fees’ and gifts from students’ parents over the years… she stashed the kickbacks right here in this dump!” One point two million dollars. She hadn’t touched a dime of it when she was paralyzed. She let Lucas blow her pension on parties while I worked odd jobs to pay for her physical therapy. And then, the moment she recovered, she dug it up to buy herself a new husband. She wouldn’t even give me ten thousand for my treatment. Well, this time, I was taking what was mine. 4 After securing the money in a safe, private location, I took a week-long solo trip. I spent those seven days slowly ticking off the regrets of my past life. Mona sent me daily texts, her patience wearing thin. [I’m sick of looking at your junk. Get back here and move it out!] [How much longer are you going to hide?] When I finally returned, I looked like a different person. My skin was clear, my eyes were bright. The neighbors all commented that I looked ten years younger. “I’m getting divorced,” I told them with a grin. “Turns out, not being a servant to an old woman is great for the complexion.” They roared with laughter. Naturally, the conversation turned to the local gossip—how a certain young man managed to stomach the idea of kissing an aging professor. My apartment was on the second floor. I could see Jordan standing on the balcony, looking down and spitting toward us in a fit of pique. I pushed the door open and went to change my shoes, only to find my slippers were gone. Fine. I didn’t need them. I scanned the living room. Everything had been replaced. Even the curtains were different. Jordan swaggered out of the kitchen. “Hey, Dave. Your taste was hideous, so I tossed everything. You don’t mind, do you? I mean, you’re moving out anyway, right?” I remained calm. “Actually, I’m glad you did. I was tired of looking at that stuff too.” His face flushed red. Young men are so impatient; one sentence and he was already losing his cool. “David! Your wife doesn’t want you! How can you even show your face here? Look! The wedding photos are of me and her now. The family photos are me, her, and Lucas. There’s no room for you!” I glanced at the photos. I chuckled. “If I recall correctly, the papers haven’t been filed yet. Legally, I’m still the only husband in this house.” “So what? She doesn’t love you!” he screamed, loud enough for the whole building to hear. Just then, the front door—which hadn’t been latched—was kicked open. A middle-aged couple burst in. “Jordan!” the man yelled. He was trembling with rage, his eyes bloodshot. Jordan turned pale. “Dad? Mom? What are you doing here?” He looked at me, realization dawning. “You! You snake!” Before he could finish, his mother slapped him across the face. “We worked ourselves to the bone to put you through school, and this is how you repay us? Being a homewrecker? Get your things. You’re coming home!” Mona walked in from work just then, her academic composure ready to “negotiate.” She was met with a flurry of insults and nearly caught a stray fist from Jordan’s mother. They scuffled until the couple dragged a sobbing Jordan out the door. I sat there, sipping a cup of tea, until the house was quiet again. Mona wiped a smear of blood from her nose. She looked at me with cold, dead eyes. “We’re going to the lawyer this afternoon. I’m giving Jordan a legal title. I’m making this official.” I smiled. “You think his parents will let that happen?” “That’s my problem! You just sign the papers, and everything else is fine!” I shook my head. “I’ve thought about it for a few days. I’ve decided I’m not divorcing you.” 5 Mona’s face transformed into a mask of fury. “You… what?” I held up my hands. “You were right. I’m just a house husband. Jordan said if we divorce, I’ll end up as a janitor. So why would I leave? I don’t care what you do or who you see anymore. I’m staying for the status.” She slammed her hand on the table, her face contorting. “You have to leave!” This desperate rage was exactly like her old self. In the other life, I had stayed because I still loved her. This time, staying was just a strategy. “Mona, you’re a professor. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Let’s look at the math. What did I get out of this marriage?” “Did I get diamonds? Wealth? A life of leisure? No.” “I got twenty years of grocery shopping, scrubbing toilets, and raising an ungrateful brat who treats me like dirt.” She stared at me, her bravado slowly leaking away. She opened her mouth to speak several times, but nothing came out. Finally, she managed, “I offered you a third of the money!” I set down my tea. “You have eighteen thousand dollars in your savings account. A third is six thousand. How long is that supposed to last me? I don’t even have a place to live.” “This house was mine before we married!” I nodded. “Exactly. Divorce has zero benefits for me. So, go ahead and play with whoever you want. I truly don’t care anymore.” “You’re being unreasonable! Greedy! You’re a small-minded, petty man! Marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life!” I looked her in the eye. “Get his things out of here. If I have to do it, I won’t be gentle.” I walked into the master bedroom and began tossing Jordan’s designer clothes out into the hallway. Lucas came home and unleashed a barrage of profanity at me. I simply put on my noise-canceling headphones, sat on the couch, and started a movie. At dinner, the two of them sat at the table, glaring at me with sour faces. “Where’s dinner?” Lucas snapped. I shrugged. “Are you joking? After the way you’ve treated me, you expect me to cook for you?” I went to the door, picked up the takeout I’d ordered for one, and went into my room to eat. This went on for three days. Finally, Lucas snapped. “I can’t take it anymore, Mom! Just give him what he wants!” “This apartment isn’t even that nice, and your savings are chump change anyway!” “I’m sick of his cooking! When Jordan moves in, he’ll cook for us!” “You have to decide now! Jordan’s parents are trying to send him out of state!” Five minutes later, Mona knocked on my door. “Fine. If you sign the divorce papers today… you can have the apartment and the savings. All of it.”

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I was born with a ridiculous kind of gravity. But instead of pulling objects toward me, I pull luck. Anyone who spends a little time in my orbit—whether we shake hands or just share a cup of coffee—inevitably stumbles into a windfall. Their stocks skyrocket. Their dead-end projects suddenly get green-lit. Miracles fall into their laps. The cruel irony? None of that luck ever rubbed off on me. I remained spectacularly, chronically broke. Until three years ago, when Richard St. James, the patriarch of the St. James real estate empire, tracked me down. His eyes were bloodshot when he begged me to marry his daughter, Gemma. He told me his family’s legacy was bleeding out, teetering on the edge of a catastrophic bankruptcy, and that I was the only one who could stop the hemorrhage. He promised that if Gemma ever treated me poorly, I could walk away with zero contest. In the meantime, I’d receive a hundred thousand dollars a month in walking-around money. I figured I had nothing to lose and no assets to be scammed out of. Plus, the man was offering me a lifeline. I said yes. Over the next three years, the St. James empire didn’t just avoid going under; they dominated the market and went public with a valuation that made Wall Street salivate. I traded my cramped, windowless Bronx apartment for a sprawling Hamptons estate with a heated infinity pool. Which brings me to a sunny Tuesday afternoon. I was doing laps in that very pool when I caught the voices of Gemma and her best friend lounging on the terrace. “Toby flies back next week,” her friend said, the ice clinking in her glass. “What are you going to do about your… charity case husband?” Gemma’s voice was as smooth and unbothered as a silk sheet. “I’ll wire him fifty grand and tell him the company’s accounts are frozen again. He’s gullible enough to believe it.” “And if he refuses to sign the divorce papers?” Gemma scoffed, a sound dripping with aristocratic disdain. “Please. The man married me for a paycheck. If he dares to make a scene, I’ll make sure he leaves with nothing.” Hearing that, I broke the surface of the water, pushing my wet hair back, and rested my arms against the imported Italian tile of the pool’s edge. “So,” I called out, wiping water from my eyes. “When are we signing those papers?” I knew for a fact that Gemma’s biggest corporate rival was currently being squeezed to the brink of liquidation. I figured it was the perfect time to go offer my services. … “My father was desperate. He threw five million dollars at some mystic who claimed this guy had a ‘Midas aura.’” Gemma let out a breathy, condescending laugh. “It’s been three years. We both know the St. James IPO was my doing.” “I’ve already booked the restaurant,” Gemma continued. “The night Toby lands, I’m proposing.” That was my cue. I pushed myself up from the water, elbows braced on the ledge. “So, when do we get this divorce over with?” Both women jumped, nearly spilling their mimosas. Gemma’s face drained of color. “What… how long have you been in there?” I casually shook the water from my hair. “As your kept husband, I have a strict regimen to maintain this physique. One hour of cardio a day.” I offered a tight, utterly hollow smile. “Let’s skip the pleasantries, Gemma. When do we sign? I’d hate to delay my search for a new sugar mama.” Gemma recovered quickly, her shock hardening into a sneer. “You’re a fraud, Kieran. Without me, you’re nothing but a street rat.” I looked at her, a strange, quiet pity settling in my chest. If only she knew. I wasn’t a fraud. I really was a human rabbit’s foot. Whoever touched me, prospered. Just never me. And frankly, three years in the St. James manor had suffocated me. Richard had been good to me, yes. The allowance, the black card, the designer clothes. But Gemma? In three years of marriage, I doubt we had exchanged more than three hundred words. Mostly variations of fine, okay, and don’t wait up. I was treated like an expensive porcelain figurine. Put me on a shelf, dust me off occasionally, and ignore me. Fine. I got to live in a mansion and swim in a private pool. But right now, I couldn’t wait to cut the cord. I hauled myself out of the pool, dripping onto the pristine deck, and walked inside. Ten minutes later, I returned, fully dressed, holding two copies of a divorce agreement I’d had a lawyer draft months ago, just in case. “Sign them,” I said, dropping the papers on the glass patio table. “Let’s make this a clean break.” Gemma stared at the documents, a muscle feathering in her jaw. “You’re serious?” “Wasn’t it your idea?” I tilted my head. “What, are you going to miss my lucky touch?” Her expression darkened. She glared at me as if I were a stain on her rug. “All you do is eat, sleep, and drain my accounts. What luck have you ever brought me? You can’t even win a hand of blackjack when you’re dealt twenty. You aren’t a lucky charm, Kieran. You’re a goddamn jinx.” My eyes widened. Calling me a gold-digger was one thing. Calling me a jinx? She had officially crossed the line. I tapped the paper against her chest. “Sign it. This is happening. But remember this moment, Gemma. Remember that it was me who decided to walk away.” The second I turned my back on her, I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled to a number I’d had saved for three years. Never called. Never texted. Rowan Mercer. The CEO of the Mercer Group. Gemma’s most ruthless, hated rival. The line rang twice before a voice, low and textured like crushed velvet, answered. “Hello?” “Rowan Mercer?” I asked, keeping my stride even as I walked down the long driveway. “This is Kieran. Gemma St. James’s soon-to-be ex-husband.” A beat of absolute silence. “Why is Gemma’s husband calling me?” “Because I want to marry you.” Another pause. Slower this time. “…Excuse me?” “You’ve had a massive city zoning permit for the Hudson Yards project stalled in bureaucratic hell for three years, haven’t you?” Rowan’s tone shifted, the temperature dropping a few degrees. “How do you know about that?” “Come down to your lobby. I’m standing across the street from your headquarters. Shake my hand, and you’ll have that permit approved in ten minutes.” Three minutes later, the revolving doors of the Mercer tower spun, and a woman in a sharply tailored black trench coat stepped out into the Manhattan wind. Rowan was taller than Gemma, with striking, deep-set eyes that looked like they could cut glass. She crossed the street, stopped directly in front of me, and didn’t say a word. She just held out her hand. I took it. Her grip was firm, her skin cool. Ten seconds later, she let go. Almost instantly, the phone in her coat pocket buzzed. She pulled it out, read the screen, and I watched the faint, almost imperceptible widening of her pupils. “The permit,” she murmured, staring at the email. “It’s signed.” I smiled. “Believe me now?” She studied my face for three long seconds, dissecting me. “What do you want?” “Like I said. Marriage.” “Why?” “Because Gemma just told me I’m a jinx who ruins everything I touch,” I said, lifting my chin, letting the cold wind hit my face. “I want to show her just how high a ‘jinx’ can elevate her worst enemy.” When we walked out of the City Clerk’s office later that afternoon, I had a marriage certificate tucked into my jacket. Rowan slid her copy into her briefcase and glanced at me. “Do you need to go back for your things? I’ll have my driver take you.” “No, if you come, it’ll just cause a scene.” She didn’t push it. She simply instructed her driver to take me back to the Hamptons and stepped out of the black SUV. “Call me if you need anything.” I gave her the address, feeling a strange flutter of adrenaline in my chest. Twenty minutes later, I walked through the double doors of the St. James estate. Toby was sitting on the velvet sofa, wearing a crisp white button-down, two Louis Vuitton suitcases parked by his feet. Gemma sat next to him, the space between them virtually non-existent. Pippa, Toby’s sister and Gemma’s constant shadow, was draped over an armchair, swirling a glass of Pinot Noir. All three heads snapped toward me. Toby spoke first. His voice was soft, overly sweet, like artificial syrup. “Oh, Kieran, you’re back. I was just about to help pack your things. I didn’t want you to have to do it all by yourself.” He offered a sickeningly sympathetic smile. “I heard Gemma gave you fifty thousand? That’s more than enough for someone with your… background to start over.” I stopped dead in the foyer and turned to face him. “Someone with my background?” Toby covered his mouth, feigning a giggle. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Don’t be so sensitive.” Pippa chimed in, swirling her wine. “You’re too kind, Toby. The guy is a con artist. He leeched off the St. James family for three years, and now he’s walking away with fifty grand? He could buy a whole farm back in whatever trailer park he crawled out of.” Gemma didn’t move from the sofa, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk. I dropped my duffel bag onto the hardwood floor. The heavy thud echoed in the massive, vaulted room. “Toby, do you know why I married into this family in the first place?” He tilted his head, playing dumb. “For the money, obviously.” “Because your future father-in-law got down on his actual knees and begged me,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “He said the St. James empire was burning to the ground and I was the only one who could put out the fire. Now that the house is saved, you’re trying to throw me out into the cold?” Toby’s face faltered. He looked nervously at Gemma. Gemma stood up, smoothing the front of her designer slacks, and walked toward me. She looked down her nose, a queen addressing a peasant. “Don’t try to paint yourself as a martyr, Kieran.” “Do you have any idea how much money you’ve burned through? A hundred grand a month. The black card charges. You’ve cost me millions.” She let out a dry, bitter laugh. “I don’t care if you think you’re a lucky charm or a curse. Not a single thing that belongs to the St. James family is leaving this house. That Tom Ford suit you’re wearing? Paid for with my money. Take it off before you walk out that door.” I looked down at the dark wool of my suit jacket. Her father had bought it for me. Richard had picked it out himself, paid for it from his personal, private account. But I was too exhausted to explain the nuances of her own father’s kindness to her. “Fine.” I nodded. “But while we’re doing the math, shouldn’t we calculate the billions of dollars in market cap I helped your family generate over the last three years?” Gemma scoffed. “You generated? You slept till noon and swam in my pool. What exactly did you ‘generate’?” Toby stood up, hovering safely behind Gemma’s shoulder. “Just give it a rest, Kieran. Gemma’s giving you three days to wire back every cent you spent during the marriage, or we’re calling the police and pressing fraud charges.” Police? Fraud? I stared into Gemma’s eyes. There wasn’t a flicker of hesitation in them. Only a cold, clinical disgust. Three years. I had anchored her sinking ship, turned a dying legacy into a Wall Street titan. I hadn’t expected love. But I had expected basic human decency. Instead, she was trying to destroy me. I took a deep breath, reached into my pocket, and pulled out my phone. “Who are you calling?” Gemma snapped, her brow furrowing. I ignored her. I hit the contact I’d saved barely two hours ago. It rang once. “Is there a problem?” Rowan’s voice was crisp. “Wife,” I said, grinding the word out between my teeth. “Gemma is demanding I pay her back for three years of living expenses. Says if I don’t give her the millions she claims I spent, she’s calling the cops.” Silence hummed through the receiver for two seconds. “Text me her routing number.” “What?” “Tell her to wait right there. She’ll have it in ten minutes.” I lowered the phone and looked right at Gemma. “Wait right here.” Seven minutes later, Gemma’s phone vibrated on the coffee table. She picked it up, glancing at the screen. Her face went ashen. She snapped her head up to look at me, her eyes wide with shock. “Who… who just wired me ten million dollars?” Toby stepped forward, his voice shrill. “Ten million? Kieran, who the hell gave you ten million dollars? Did you find some desperate old widow to leech off of?” I picked up my duffel bag and turned to face him. “Take a wild guess.” “You—” Toby’s face flushed an ugly, blotchy red. I let out a low laugh. “You called me a street rat, Toby. But this street rat just got a ten-million-dollar buyout. Tell me, golden boy… how much is Gemma paying you?” The red drained from his face, leaving him pale and sickly. Gemma marched toward me, her eyes flashing dangerously. “You’re crossing a line, Kieran.” “Me? Crossing a line?” I tilted my head, studying the woman I used to share a bed with. “You threatened me with the police, Gemma. But let me give you a piece of advice. You don’t mistreat a lucky charm and expect to get away with it. Just wait.” Rowan’s driver dropped me off outside a sleek, glass-fronted luxury high-rise overlooking the East River. Now that her massive development project was finally unblocked, Rowan was drowning in meetings, but she still managed to call me to discuss the wedding logistics. I sat cross-legged on the leather sofa of my new apartment, staring out at the Manhattan skyline. “Whenever works for you,” I said casually. “It’s not like you married me because you’re swept off your feet.” “You needed a weapon to use against Gemma. I needed my project green-lit. It’s a mutually beneficial transaction.” If my cursed luck would just work on myself, I wouldn’t have needed to marry Rowan to slap Gemma in the face. On the other end of the line, Rowan was quiet for a long moment. “Right,” she finally said. On my third day in the high-rise, I was curled up on the couch eating an apple when my phone lit up with a notification. Toby had posted a picture on Instagram and tagged me. I opened the app. Toby’s caption read: #StJamesGroup hits a new all-time high! Finally helped Gemma close the European logistics deal that’s been stalled for three years. She said it’s the best engagement present she could ask for! So grateful the universe brought me back to New York. And thankful that a certain someone finally left the picture. Once you take out the trash, the blessings start pouring in. The photo was a close-up of their intertwined hands resting on a white tablecloth at some Michelin-starred restaurant. A massive, gaudy diamond ring sat heavily on Gemma’s finger. The comments were flooded with verified accounts and obvious PR bots: “Toby is the real lucky charm! He lands and immediately secures a massive international deal. Way better than that imposter who leeched off her for years.” “Did you hear the ex tried to extort ten million from Gemma on his way out? Actual garbage human.” “Gemma is too nice. I would have let him rot in jail for fraud.” Some of Gemma’s more rabid socialite followers had found my old Instagram account and were spamming a photo of me by the pool from last summer. “Con artist! Pay her back!” “Thinks he’s Midas, actually just a parasite. Disgusting.” I stared at the screen, tapping my finger rhythmically against my phone case. This “European logistics deal” that had been stalled for three years… I remembered it perfectly. Back when Richard first brought me into the house, I’d been wandering through Gemma’s home office and had absentmindedly dragged my hand across a thick, leather-bound folder on her desk. The deal was approved three days later. At the time, Gemma had just shrugged it off as “good market timing.” And now Toby was claiming the credit? My phone buzzed in my hand. A text from Rowan. Do you want my PR team to handle this? I thought about it for a second, then typed back: No. Let them dig their own graves. By the way, you’re bidding against St. James for that AI tech contract tomorrow, right? Yes. Why? I’m coming with you. I sent a little black cat emoji. Let’s show them exactly whose luck is running out. The next morning, I walked into the conference room at the Four Seasons, where the Mercer Group and St. James Group were going head-to-head for the biggest AI infrastructure contract of the decade. I was wearing a bespoke, deep crimson suit. My lucky color. When I strolled in, my leather shoes clicking softly against the marble, Toby, who was sitting next to Gemma at the negotiation table, practically leaped out of his chair. “How did you get in here? This is a closed corporate bidding, Kieran, not a soup kitchen.” “I’m here for the entertainment,” I said, pulling out the empty chair right next to Rowan and sitting down. The entire room went dead silent. Gemma’s eyes narrowed into slits. Her gaze shifted from my red suit to Rowan’s impassive face, and a muscle ticked in her jaw. Toby covered his mouth, laughing into his hand. “Kieran, did you really come here to cheer for Rowan? You can’t even read a balance sheet. Aren’t you embarrassed sitting there?” “Oh, this is too good,” Pippa chimed in, suddenly appearing from the sidelines, her phone held high. She was live-streaming. “Hey guys, look who it is! The fraud of the century, crashing a corporate buyout to beg for scraps.” Pippa shoved the phone lens right into my face. I could see the comments on her screen scrolling at lightspeed: “Omg is that the guy who scammed Gemma St. James?” “Why is he sitting next to Rowan Mercer? Does she really want St. James’s sloppy seconds?” “Mercer’s bid is 15% higher than St. James. No way they win. What is she doing, hoping this guy uses his voodoo magic?” “Toby is the real king. Send the scammer home!” Pippa read one of the comments aloud and laughed hysterically. “Hear that, Kieran? The whole internet knows you’re a jinx. Just leave before security drags you out.” I barely glanced at the screen. Instead, I looked down at the thick stack of contract papers resting on the table in front of Rowan. “Touch it,” Rowan said quietly, sliding the binder a fraction of an inch toward me. I placed my palm flat against the heavy cardstock cover. Just a light, lingering touch. Toby burst out laughing. “What are you doing? Blessing the paperwork? God, you really think you’re some kind of wizard, don’t you? It’s pathetic.” The words had barely left his mouth when Rowan’s assistant practically sprinted into the room, leaning down to whisper frantically in Rowan’s ear. Rowan looked up. Her eyes met mine, and the very corner of her mouth curved upward. Toby noticed the exchange and his face pinched. “Don’t tell me you’re actually falling for his grift, Rowan.” He leaned across the table, his voice loud, meant for the room. “Ms. Mercer, as a professional courtesy, I’d advise you to check your wallet. He spent three years in our house doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and spending. All this ‘lucky charm’ nonsense is smoke and mirrors. He conned Gemma, and if you keep him around, he’ll run Mercer Group into the ground.” Rowan’s gaze shifted to Toby. Her eyes were like glacial ice. “Mr. Toby… whatever your last name is. A man who can’t even recite the index numbers of his own project proposal has no right to lecture me on fraud.” Toby’s face flushed an angry, mottled pink. “You—” “Furthermore,” Rowan cut him off smoothly, “I do not require outside counsel on Kieran’s character. How I operate my business and my life is none of your concern.” The room fell into a stunned silence. At that exact moment, the heavy oak doors of the conference room swung open. Mr. Caldwell, the CEO of the tech firm fielding the bids, walked in with a wide, beaming smile, trailed by his legal team. “Apologies for the delay, everyone. Traffic on the FDR was a nightmare.” Gemma stood up immediately, smoothing her jacket, extending a hand to greet him. But Caldwell walked right past her. He marched directly to Rowan Mercer, holding out a sleek leather folder. “Ms. Mercer. It’s a pleasure. My board of directors just held an emergency vote. We are unanimously awarding the contract to the Mercer Group.”

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I was in the middle of trying to wrench my wrist from his grip when the strange, glowing text began scrolling across my field of vision. The floating characters hovering in midair like a phantom chat room told a bizarre story: they said the charming boy I had grown up with was going to con me, leaving me utterly bankrupt and destitute. They also said that this moment—right now—was the very last time the man holding my wrist would ever try to keep me. If I let him go today, he would lock his heart away forever. “We grew up under the same roof. You practically raised me. Don’t you think this whole arrangement is sick?” Only seconds ago, I had been sneering those exact words at him. This was my third time trying to run away from our wedding, and my third time being dragged back. I thought he was finally going to give up. But the second I processed the meaning of the glowing words floating in front of me, my hand shot out. I tightly gripped his fingers just as he was about to release me. “Everett, let’s get married,” I heard myself say, the words tumbling out in a rushed, desperate breath. His grip on me was still painfully tight, his dark eyes swirling with an exhaustion and profound loneliness he couldn’t hide. “Do you really hate the idea of marrying me that much?” His weary voice from moments ago was still echoing in my ears. 1 Everett Cross froze. For a long second, he just stared at me, before his thick lashes fluttered down, casting shadows over his cheekbones. He let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “Is this your new tactic to trick me?” He couldn’t mask the crushing disappointment in his tone. “Gemma, I won’t force you anymore.” He pulled his arm from my grasp and pointed toward the heavy, open oak doors of the estate. “You were right before. I’ve been too controlling. My need to keep you safe became a cage.” He swallowed hard. “So, right now… I’m giving you the freedom you want.” Beneath the icy, untouchable exterior of the billionaire CEO, there was a faint, nearly imperceptible tremor in his voice. [Even though the male lead is saying this, he’s actually terrified she’s going to walk out that door, right?] [Yeah, but compared to forcing her to stay and making her hate him even more, he’d rather rip his own heart out and let her go.] [God, I’m sobbing. He’s dying a thousand deaths inside but acting completely unbothered. Does the villainess even have a soul?!] I stared at the floating comments, my throat suddenly dry. Instinctively, I reached out and caught the hem of his tailored suit jacket, tugging it gently. “Everett… do you really want me to leave?” He clearly hadn’t anticipated the question. He stiffened, a heavy silence falling between us before he let out a long, ragged sigh. “Gemma, I’m just terrified you’re going to be used. Tyler is manipulative, and his depth of cruelty… you’re not equipped to handle him.” Perhaps fearing his words were too harsh, that they would spark another one of my rebellious explosions, he reached out and gently smoothed my hair. His tone softened, becoming excruciatingly tender. “I just wanted to find a way to stay by your side and protect you, but I completely ignored how you felt about it. That’s my fault.” With that, he turned to the head butler and ordered that, effective immediately, all security details keeping me on the estate were dismissed. Before he walked up the grand staircase, he paused, giving me one last, lingering look. 2 That night, sleep completely evaded me. My mind was a cinematic loop of Everett’s final, devastating glance. He was the son of my late father’s army buddy. When Everett was twelve and his father passed away, he was brought into the Astor household. I was seven. I still remember the first time I saw him. He was a tall, impossibly straight-backed boy, like a pine tree after a storm. He reached his hand out to me, his eyes bright, his expression fiercely serious. “Gemma, from now on, I’m going to protect you.” And for all these years, he absolutely did. Every time I got into trouble, every time someone at my elite prep school tried to bully me, Everett was the one standing like a fortress between me and the world. Everything was fine. Perfect, even. Until my father, on his deathbed, unilaterally declared that Everett and I were to be married. That changed everything. His protection morphed into something suffocating. He managed my life with an airtight grip that left me gasping for air. So, naturally, I fought tooth and nail to escape. It didn’t help that Tyler was constantly whispering in my ear, convincing me that Everett was just playing the long game to steal the Astor fortune. “Gemma, has he ever actually confessed to you? Has he ever said the words ‘I love you’? No. He just wants a painless way to inherit your family’s empire.” “The second you say ‘I do’ to Everett Cross, he’ll swallow you whole. There won’t be anything left of you.” Truthfully, I hadn’t believed Tyler at first. I had marched straight into Everett’s study, mustered every ounce of my courage, and demanded, “Do you even like me?” He had remained silent. To me, silence meant no. My pride was shattered. I cried until my eyes were swollen shut. And then, fueled by Tyler’s insidious encouragement, I ran away from the wedding. Twice. When Everett dragged me back the second time, I screamed at him until my voice broke. “Why are you doing this?!” Everett just looked at the floor. “Gemma, I don’t want you to get hurt.” Hypocrite, I had thought. Dressing up his greed in the noble robes of duty and obligation. But I refused to be trapped in a loveless marriage. From that day on, I never gave him a kind look or a soft word. This most recent escape attempt was my third. The wedding was exactly one month away. I thought that if Everett finally let me go, I would feel an overwhelming sense of euphoria. But sitting alone in my vast, quiet bedroom, I just felt hollow. Like a massive piece of my foundation had just caved in. Two soft knocks at the door pulled me from my thoughts. Thinking it was him, I bolted for the door, not even bothering to put on my slippers. When I pulled it open, it was only the butler. “Miss Gemma, Mr. Cross asked me to bring you some warm milk.” “He said that if you go to bed on an empty stomach, you struggle to sleep.” Beneath the warm ceramic mug was a folded slip of paper. There was only one line written on it. Drink it while it’s warm. I added the vanilla bean and cinnamon you like. The handwriting was a little messy, the strokes hesitant, as if he had agonized over the words before writing them. I held the warm mug in both hands and looked down the long, shadowed hallway. Usually, he was the one who brought the milk. Even though I routinely slammed the door in his face, he would still stand on the other side, his voice soft and unwavering. But tonight, his bedroom door at the end of the hall remained firmly shut. I suddenly remembered the floating text: this was the very last time he would ever try to keep me. Was he really going to just wash his hands of me forever? [The male lead finally lets go, and suddenly the villainess doesn’t want to run? Human nature is truly twisted.] [Honestly, if she just waited until after the wedding and experienced his… heavenly endowments… she’d never want to leave that bed, let alone the house.] [Right?! He’s been holding back for a decade. If they actually do the deed, her eyes are going to roll into the back of her head.] [She’s so clueless. If he didn’t obsessively love her, why would he be hand-washing the silk nightgowns she throws out…?] [Wait, hand-washing? Like… the way I’m thinking?] I read the comments, my face suddenly flushing with a violent, inexplicable heat. It was true that in all these years, there had never been another woman by Everett’s side. Just me. But for years, I hadn’t just been cold to him; I had been downright cruel. I had made it my mission to despise him. If I changed course now… would he even accept it? 3 The next morning, I cornered his assistant for his schedule. He had a business dinner that evening. I knew his stomach was sensitive. Whenever he drank at these corporate functions, he would spend half the night in agonizing pain. In the past, I used to gleefully hope he felt sick so he’d be too distracted to micromanage my life. Thinking about it now made me feel sick to my own stomach. Grabbing my car keys from the foyer, I drove straight to the restaurant. Since I had literally never once gone to pick him up from anything, I decided to text him a warning. What time are you finishing up tonight? The reply was almost instantaneous. [?] I scrolled up. Our entire text history was a graveyard of Everett checking in on me, asking if I was safe, asking if I had eaten. I had ignored ninety percent of them. Biting my lower lip, I typed: There’s something I really need to talk to you about. It took a long time for the three typing dots to appear and disappear before he finally replied: Gemma, I’ve already lifted the security detail. If you want to leave, you can go anywhere you want. I will also make the announcement tomorrow that the wedding is canceled. He thought I was coming to demand he call off the wedding. No. I just want to know which private dining room you’re in. I’m coming to take you home. The typing bubble hovered on the screen for what felt like an eternity. A full two minutes later, he sent the address and room number. Drive safe. If you’re tired, call the driver. Don’t force yourself. The phantom comments were having a field day: [LMAO Everett really thought she was coming to dump him! He was probably rewriting that text fifty times trying not to sound devastated.] [But why is the villainess suddenly acting like a decent human being? Suspicious.] [I don’t trust it. Gemma, if you don’t love him, please just leave him alone!] I started the engine. The entire drive there, my phone buzzed every ten minutes with Everett asking for my location. For a man who wore an expression of untouchable ice in boardrooms, he was an absolute mother hen in private. After handing my keys to the valet, I walked into the lobby to catch the elevator. The doors chimed open on the ground floor. Tyler was standing inside. His eyes lit up with predatory surprise. “Gemma! What are you doing here? Did you come to see me?” “No.” Perhaps sensing the absolute frost in my voice, he stepped forward as the elevator doors closed, trapping us in the small, mirrored space. “Did that control freak forbid you from talking to me?” He moved closer, boxing me in between his body and the cold metal wall. To anyone looking in, it would look incredibly intimate. My skin crawled, and I instinctively raised my hands to shove him away. Before I could, he grabbed my wrists. “Are you punishing me? Just because I couldn’t pick you up yesterday? You wouldn’t even answer my calls.” He flashed his signature boyish smile. “But I knew you’d soften up eventually. Since you came all this way to find me, I forgive you.” “Don’t worry, Gemma. I’ve got everything arranged this time. I won’t let that orphaned parasite drag you back to his cage.” “Tyler,” I said, my voice deadpan. “I’m an orphan too.” His expression faltered. He opened his mouth to pivot— Ding. The elevator doors slid open. Everett was standing right there. He took one look at Tyler trapping me against the wall, holding my wrists, and whatever fragile hope had been in his eyes died instantly. 4 [Oh no no no no! The tiny shred of hope our boy had just got obliterated! His internal monologue right now: ‘Of course. Her texting me was a trick. The person she really wanted to see was Tyler all along.’] [Everett is literally shattering into a million pieces.] [Gemma, open your mouth! Explain! Speak!] Just as the elevator doors began to slide shut again, I violently shoved Tyler backward and bolted out into the hallway. I jogged straight up to Everett, blocking his path. The lighting in the corridor was dim. He kept his eyes cast downward, a self-deprecating smile twisting his lips. “Did you come to find me so I would give you my blessing to be with him?” He finally looked up at me. His gaze was a volatile mix of obsession, defeat, and profound sorrow. “Gemma, if doing that will finally make you happy, I’ll…” “I had no idea he was even going to be here.” I cut him off, my words tumbling over each other in my panic. “I came here for you. It has nothing to do with anyone else. And what I said yesterday? I meant it. I want to marry you. It’s not out of spite, and I’m not just ‘softening up.’ Can you please stop trying to pave an exit route for me every time you look at me? I’m not leaving.” Everett froze. He stood rooted to the carpet, looking at me as if I were speaking a language he couldn’t comprehend. A delayed wave of heat rushed to the tips of my ears. What am I doing? Did I just aggressively propose to him in a hallway? For a moment, the air between us was thick and awkwardly silent. “Gemma, why are you degrading yourself to please him?” Tyler had stepped out of the elevator, strolling over to us with an infuriatingly arrogant swagger. The floating text was moving at warp speed now. [This toxic waste of space is back. So annoying.] [Honestly, the person actually trying to steal the Astor money is standing right there.] [Poor Gemma. Blind as a bat. Manipulated for years, and in the original timeline, she gets her entire inheritance drained by this absolute loser.] My chest tightened painfully. Bastard. Play with my feelings all you want, but try to steal my money? Absolutely not. Seeing my silence, Tyler reached his hand out toward me, his eyes burning with what he probably thought was undeniable charisma. “Come here, Gemma. I’ll take you away from him.” His voice was grating on my last nerve. It was only in this exact moment, bathed in the dim hallway light, that total clarity washed over me. I had never had romantic feelings for Tyler. Never. He was the one who was constantly orbiting me, showering me with strategic affection. The only reason I had ever even entertained the idea of running away with him was out of sheer teenage rebellion—a desperate bid to break free from Everett’s iron grip. With my heart suddenly feeling lighter than it had in years, I took a deep breath and reached out, lacing my fingers through Everett’s. He flinched in surprise, his fingers stiffening against mine. “Tyler, I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m getting married.” Tyler stared at me in disbelief. I didn’t want to look at his face for another second. Pulling Everett by the hand, I marched us straight out of the building. It wasn’t until we were sitting in the plush leather seats of his Maybach that my racing heart began to settle. The comments were practically cackling. [In the dark corner where Gemma can’t see, Everett’s mouth is literally twitching he’s smiling so hard LMAO.] [His brain right now: ‘She held my hand hehe. She initiated it! Did you hear that? She wants to marry me!’] [Look at him trying to act so normal while his soul is doing backflips.] I turned my head to look at him. Everett was sitting ramrod straight. Like a perfectly behaved schoolboy. Aside from the tips of his ears, which were burning a brilliant shade of crimson, his expression was completely, impeccably stoic. 5 When I walked out of the kitchen carrying the can of hangover drink, Everett was leaning heavily against the corner of the living room sofa, his eyes closed in a light doze. He had yanked his tie loose, and the top buttons of his crisp dress shirt were undone, exposing the sharp, incredibly appealing lines of his collarbone. I hadn’t allowed myself to openly stare at him like this in years. It hit me then that the comments weren’t exaggerating. Everett Cross was built like a Greek god. “Ev. Drink this before you sleep.” I sat on the edge of the sofa cushion and gently nudged his shoulder. His brow furrowed slightly as his eyes fluttered open, his dark gaze still a little hazy from the alcohol. I scooped up a spoonful of the warm broth and brought it to his lips. He obediently parted them and swallowed it down. Spoonful by spoonful, the only sound in the massive, quiet house was the soft clink of the porcelain spoon against the bowl. Just as I leaned in to offer him another bite, a few loose strands of my hair slipped over my shoulder and somehow looped themselves tightly around one of his open shirt buttons. When I tried to pull back, a sharp pain bit into my scalp. “It’s caught. It’s pulled tight,” Everett murmured, his voice suddenly gravelly. He reached up, his large, warm hand covering mine to stop me from yanking it. I had to lean forward, my face practically hovering over his lap, to give him slack. “It hurts.” “Because it’s tangled. Gemma, relax.” His fingers brushed against my neck as he worked at the knot. “If it’s your first time dealing with a knot like this, the more you move, the more it’s going to hurt.” His breath brushed against my cheek, warm and laced with the sharp scent of expensive whiskey. It made my face burn. There was a large, decorative mirror on the wall opposite the sofa. I caught our reflection—the way I was bent over him, the way his larger frame seemed to envelop me entirely. It looked… scandalous. “You’re moving too slow. Hurry up.” “Alright… I’ll go faster.” I could feel the subtle movements of his fingertips working the button, grazing my collarbone. My heart hammered against my ribs. “Got it.” Finally, the tension at my scalp released. I immediately tried to push myself up, but I had been kneeling in that awkward position for too long. My leg had fallen completely asleep. As soon as I put weight on it, my knee buckled, and I collapsed directly onto Everett’s lap. In my sheer panic, my hands flailed, desperately grabbing for anything to break my fall. I heard Everett let out a sharp, muted groan. His hands clamped down on my waist like iron vises, the heat of his palms searing through my thin silk top. “Everett,” I gasped, staring wide-eyed at where my hand had landed. “What is that…?”

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A line of glowing text drifted across my vision, shimmering like a glitch in the air: She’s been through three lifetimes and she still hasn’t realized her mother is faking the illness. I froze. Today was the morning of the National Merit Finals—the single most important day of my academic life. And yet, here I was, locked in my own bedroom. My mother was having another “episode.” She claimed her prosopagnosia—her face blindness—had flared up again. She screamed that I wasn’t her daughter; she claimed I was her mother-in-law, the woman who had tormented her for years. “I won’t let you out to hurt me again!” she shrieked through the heavy wood of the door. “Stay in there, you old hag!” I hammered on the door, my voice cracking. “Mom, it’s me! It’s Julie! I have to leave for the exam right now. Please, Mom, look at me!” But she just kept muttering to herself, a rhythmic, terrifying chant about how she had to protect herself. Desperation clawed at my throat. I looked at the third-story window, actually considering the jump. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done this. Years ago, on the day of my Ivy League prep camp interview, she’d caught me at the door. That time, she’d “mistaken” me for my father’s mistress. She’d lunged at me, tearing at my blazer, screaming that I was a home-wrecker. She’d dragged me by my hair, her sharp, manicured nails digging into my cheeks, leaving two deep scars that took months to fade. I’d always forgiven her. Because she was sick. Because when the “episodes” passed, she would collapse in tears, cradling me and whispering, “I’m so sorry, baby. Mommy is so sorry she breaks down when you need her most…” 1 I stood in the center of my room, my heart hammering against my ribs. Faking? It couldn’t be. Ever since my father left, Linda had been fragile, drifting in and out of reality. But that text… it was still there, floating in the air like a live social media feed only I could see. I shook my head violently, trying to clear the hallucination. Stress. It had to be the stress. I looked up, and the text scrolled faster. [It’s already 7:30. At this rate, she’s just going to jump again. What a waste.] [The first two times she jumped, she hit the pruned hedges downstairs. Ended up paralyzed from the waist down. Spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.] I lurched back from the window as if the glass had turned red-hot. I couldn’t jump. I couldn’t risk the hedges. I turned back to the door, my palms bleeding from where I’d bitten them. “Mom! It’s the finals! I am not Grandma! You’re confused!” I screamed. “I spent a whole extra year studying for this after the ‘accident’ last year. Open the door!” The text accelerated into a blur. [Why is she still begging? Is she serious?] [Linda’s acting is top-tier. If I didn’t have the bird’s-eye view, I’d be fooled too.] [She doesn’t even know that the ‘accident’ last year—getting stuck in the elevator for twenty-four hours—was Linda’s handiwork.] [Think about it, Julie. Who gets face blindness only during life-changing moments? Who mistakes their own daughter for a mistress? Only a naive kid would buy this.] My hand, raised to strike the door again, went limp. The hair on my arms stood up. The elevator. Last year. I had missed the exams because I was trapped in a metal box between the fourth and fifth floors of our building. I’d screamed until my throat bled, but no one came. [Linda saw the ‘Out of Order’ sign. She tore it off and watched the elevator doors close on her daughter. She heard her screaming and just… went to get a latte.] [And when she was finally ‘rescued,’ Linda just said she’d been at her sister’s place. Total lie.] The world seemed to tilt. I remembered the maintenance man’s face when the firefighters finally pried the doors open. He had been muttering, “I know I taped the warning sign right there…” I’d thought I was just unlucky. A cold, oily sensation washed over me. I remembered when my father offered to pay for me to study in London. Linda had thrown a fit, saying she couldn’t bear to be apart from me. I thought it was love. I let out a sharp, jagged laugh. It wasn’t love. It was a cage. She didn’t want me to have a future. She wanted me right here, under her thumb, broken. I looked at the clock. 07:50. The exam started in seventy minutes. The testing center was across town. I backed up to the far wall, my eyes fixed on the old mahogany door. I tucked my shoulder, gathered every ounce of rage and betrayal I possessed, and charged. CRACK. My shoulder screamed in protest, but I didn’t stop. CRACK. THUD. On the third hit, the frame splintered. I burst into the hallway, stumbling into the light. 2 Linda was standing by the foyer, a look of pure, cold shock crossing her face before she quickly masked it with a mask of trembling terror. “You!” she gasped, shrinking back. “You old witch! What are you doing out of your room?” [Look at her. Award-winning performance.] [Good luck, Julie. You’re dealing with a pro.] I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I reached up and wiped a stray tear with the back of my hand, my eyes hard as flint. I didn’t have time to process the trauma. Not yet. I ducked back into my room to grab my bag. I’d left my ID and my admission ticket right in the center of my desk last night. The desk was empty. I tore through my drawers, threw my books on the floor, my heart rate spiking. They were gone. And for the first time, I didn’t need a floating text to tell me where they were. I walked back into the living room. Linda was still cowering in the corner, playing the victim. “Where are they?” I asked, my voice dangerously low. “My ID. My ticket.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, you hag—” “Stop it,” I snapped. “The act is over, Linda. If you really thought I was Grandma, why would you steal a high schooler’s ID? Does Grandma have a National Merit ticket? Does she?” Linda froze. The “fear” drained from her face, replaced by a cold, vacuous expression that made her look like a stranger. Then, she let out a dry, mocking snort. “Well,” she said, her voice perfectly normal. “If you’re so smart that you figured it out, why don’t you go find them yourself?” My fists clenched so hard my nails drew blood. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment filled with twenty years of clutter. I had sixty minutes. She was playing a game with my life. The wall clock ticked. 08:00. I was shaking, a primal urge to scream rising in my chest. Linda didn’t care. She sat down on the velvet sofa, picked up the remote, and turned on a morning talk show. She reached for a bowl of almonds and started snacking. “Don’t be so dramatic,” she said, eyes on the TV. “I just thought you were looking a little too stressed. Too tense. I wanted to give you a little break. I took the papers, sure.” I took a step toward her. “Where. Are. They.” She popped an almond into her mouth and chewed slowly. “I honestly don’t remember where I put them. Somewhere safe.” I grabbed her wrist, my vision tunneling. “Mom! Stop this! This is my life! Just tell me where they are!” A frantic pounding at the front door broke the tension. I ran to open it. Standing there, drenched in sweat and looking frantic, was my father. “Julie? Why aren’t you at the center?” Thomas gasped. “I’ve been waiting outside the gates since seven. I thought… after last year… I thought something happened.” Seeing him, the dam finally broke. I sobbed, pointing at Linda. “She took them, Dad! She locked me in my room and hid my ID and my ticket! She won’t let me go!” My father’s face turned a shade of purple I’d never seen. He stepped into the room and towered over the sofa. “Linda! I’ve put up with your’ episodes’ for fifteen years for the sake of our daughter, but this is the line. This is her future! What the hell is wrong with you?” The moment he attacked, Linda’s “calm” evaporated into a screeching fury. “Oh, here we go! The two of you ganging up on me! After everything I’ve sacrificed? I gave up my youth to raise this girl, and all I get is a husband who cheats and a daughter who turns on me!” “I’m going to kill myself! I’ll do it right now!” 3 She made a theatrical dash toward the wall, as if to throw herself against it. I turned pale and moved to stop her, but my father held me back. He looked at her with a weary, soul-crushing disgust. “Linda, enough,” he said, his voice dropping to a deadly quiet. “You can scream, you can cry, you can play the martyr. I stayed away because I thought you were at least a good mother. I thought that despite our mess, you loved her.” “We’ll stay,” he continued, glancing at the clock. 08:10. “If she misses this, she’ll stay in-state for college. She’ll stay right here with you. Is that what you want? To ruin her just to keep her?” Linda stopped her histrionics. She sat back down, smoothing her hair. “If she misses it, she can just retake it next year,” she muttered. “What’s the big deal?” I felt a hollow, aching despair. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to scream until the windows shattered. My father saw the look on my face. He turned back to Linda, his voice like ice. “Linda, if Julie doesn’t make it to that exam today, the five thousand dollars a month in alimony? Gone. I will burn that money before I give you another cent. I’ll tie you up in court for the next ten years. You won’t get a dime.” That hit home. Linda’s lifestyle was expensive—the designer bags, the daily trips to the spa, the high-end hair salons. She spent money like water, yet somehow my five-hundred-dollar textbook fees were always “too much.” She faltered, her eyes darting around. “I… I really did lose them. I hid them and I don’t remember where…” My knees went weak. I felt like I was falling. “I didn’t do it on purpose!” she whined. “Why is everyone being so mean?” My father growled, “Don’t expect another penny from me.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Mrs. Adler, my honors advisor. “Julie? Where are you? The doors are opening, and you’re the only one not checked in.” I broke down, the words tumbling out through my tears. “Mrs. Adler, I can’t find my ID. My mother… they’re gone. I don’t know what to do.” I expected a lecture. I expected her to tell me it was over. Instead, her voice was calm. “Julie, listen to me. Get down here right now. The state changed the regulations this year. We have an on-site verification system for emergency lost documents. As long as I can vouch for your identity and we have your digital record, we can issue a provisional pass. But you have to be here before the final bell.” “Really?” I wiped my eyes, a spark of hope igniting in my chest. I didn’t look at Linda. I grabbed my pens and ran. When we reached the elevator, I saw the silver doors and felt a phantom sensation of suffocation. I veered toward the stairs. “The stairs, Dad. We’re taking the stairs.” He didn’t ask why. He just ran with me. 08:18 We made it to the testing center in record time, my father driving like a man possessed. Mrs. Adler was waiting by the gate. “Most students don’t know about the emergency policy,” she whispered as she rushed me toward the administration office. “We don’t broadcast it because we don’t want kids being careless, but for a student like you? We make it work.” In ten minutes, I had a temporary pass in my hand. Mrs. Adler walked me to the door of the hall. “Go get ’em, Julie. Show them what you’re made of.” I turned to thank her, but a commotion at the security gate stopped me. My mother was there, breathless, her face contorted. “Wait! Officer! I need to report something!” My father’s face fell. I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. Linda pointed a trembling finger at me. “I’m her mother! I have to tell the truth! Julie is planning to cheat! She has notes hidden in her clothes!” The crowd of parents waiting outside fell silent. All eyes turned to me—judgmental, suspicious, shocked. Linda sobbed, her voice carrying across the lawn. “Julie, honey, I love you, but I can’t let you do this! Success means nothing if you steal it! Please, give the officers the notes!” Before I could move, she lunged forward, reaching into the pocket of my hoodie and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. “See! Look! These are her cheat sheets!”

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I’ve always had a terrifying capacity for survival. It didn’t matter how deep the cut or how shattered the bone; my body simply refused to stay broken. I was a biological miracle, a freak of nature, a man who couldn’t be scarred. Until the woman I loved decided to weaponize it. On the day her adoptive brother turned eighteen, Isabelle didn’t give him a car or a watch. She brought a “specialist” back from a remote retreat in the East and forced a ten-year Soul-Binding Rite upon me. The mechanics were simple and cruel: every ounce of physical pain, every injury, every sickness that should have touched Toby was instantly transferred to me. “It’s an early birthday present for him,” Isabelle had said, her voice as cool as a glass of Sancerre. She explained it with the terrifying logic of the ultra-rich: Toby was reckless, he was adventurous, and above all, he was deathly afraid of pain. Since I was the one who could heal from anything, I would be his human shield for the next decade. She had stroked my cheek then, her touch lingering with a tenderness that felt like a threat. She promised me that once the ten years were up, she’d finally give me what I wanted—a name, a ring, a permanent place by her side. So, I became a ghost in my own skin. When Toby totaled his Porsche over a canyon ledge, my legs snapped into jagged, unrecognizable shapes. When he got into a bar fight with the wrong people and took a dozen stiletto blades to the gut, I felt my own intestines spill out onto the floor of our penthouse. When he went BASE jumping and the chute tangled, my ribs punctured my lungs, and I spent hours drowning in my own blood on a pristine white carpet. Year after year, my flesh rotted and knit back together. My scars opened and closed until I didn’t recognize the man in the mirror. Then came the day she took me to a private research station on the edge of the Arctic Circle. She told me, with that mix of exasperation and indulgence she reserved only for him, that Toby wanted to try under-ice diving without a suit. He wanted to feel the “extremes.” I looked out across the jagged ice. Toby stood there in nothing but a pair of swim trunks, shivering with an adrenaline-fueled grin, looking like a boy who had never known a day of consequence in his life. I was shaking. My body, usually so resilient, was screaming. “Isabelle, I can’t do this,” I whispered. “This isn’t a broken bone. This is total system failure. I won’t hold.” She just reached out and ruffled my hair, the way one might soothe a nervous golden retriever. “Be a good boy, Kit,” she said. “The Rite is almost over. This is the last time. I promise, when we get back to the city, we’ll start planning the wedding.” But there was something she didn’t know. This time, I wasn’t going to heal. And more importantly, I had finally earned enough “Endurance Credits.” I was finally allowed to leave this world behind. … In the distance, the diving instructor hesitated, his breath hitching in the sub-zero air. “Mr. Steven, diving under the shelf without gear… it’s suicide,” he stammered. “What are you worried about? I’ve got a literal fall guy,” Toby snapped, interrupting him with a sneer. He threw a contemptuous glance my way. “As for his pathetic life? That’s not on your tab.” He tossed his oxygen tank into the snow, gave Isabelle a mischievous wink, and plunged into the black, jagged hole in the ice without a second thought. Isabelle let out a soft, indulgent laugh, shaking her head. “That little maniac,” she murmured, her eyes full of a pride that made my stomach turn. To them, this was a thrill. To me, it was the end. My core temperature plummeted instantly. My limbs went numb, then started to burn with a white-hot intensity. My teeth chattered so hard I thought they’d shatter. “Cold… Isabelle, it’s too much… make him come up…” “Just endure it,” she said, her eyes fixed on the dark water where Toby had disappeared. Her expression was soft, dreamy. “It’s his birthday, Kit. Don’t ruin the mood.” “I can’t… I really can’t…” I collapsed onto the ice, my body seizing in a violent spasm. She finally looked at me, her brow furrowing in minor irritation. “Kit, honestly. You’ve never been this dramatic before.” I closed my eyes. I could barely hear her over the roar of the blood in my ears. As Toby dove deeper into the abyss, the sensation of drowning took hold. My throat closed. My lungs felt like they were being filled with molten lead. Inside my mind, I screamed: [System, can I exit now?] The System’s voice sounded uncharacteristically sheepish: [We’ve hit a server upgrade…] [Then at least give me back my healing factor…] The voice grew even smaller: [All functions are suspended during the upgrade. It’ll be five days, minimum. Maybe… try asking Isabelle for help?] I forced a breath into my failing lungs, the sound rasping and wet. “Isabelle… it’s different this time. I’m serious…” I reached out, my frozen fingers catching the hem of her designer coat. “Please. Something’s wrong. If he doesn’t come up… I’m going to die.” She looked down at me, and for a fleeting second, I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes. But then she looked back at the water. “It is different,” she agreed, her voice hardening. “You’ll just be a little banged up, but this is Toby’s last chance to be truly reckless before he has to grow up. Tell you what—when we get back, I’ll buy you that private island in the Keys you liked. Consider it a wedding gift, okay?” Gifts. It was always gifts. Bespoke suits from Savile Row, rare rubies from Sotheby’s, keys to villas she knew I’d never visit alone. She could see the price of my suffering, but she refused to see the suffering itself. She ignored the grey tint of my skin, the tremors in my hands, the way my voice broke. Healing quickly doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. You still have to live through the agony before the skin knits back together. And now, the knitting had stopped. I tried to scream, but when I opened my mouth, a thick, dark slurry of blood erupted. It was heavy, clotted with bits of tissue that shouldn’t have been outside my body. Isabelle’s face finally went pale. “Kit!” She barked orders at her staff, making them pump me full of stimulants and nutrients. “Kit, stay with me. You have to hold on. At least until Toby has had his fun.” I curled into a ball on the ice and laughed, a wet, bubbling sound. She thought I had spent ten years in silence for a promise of marriage. For a title. For her. She didn’t know that my “miracle” was just a tether to a Masochism System. Every trauma I endured for Toby earned me points. I had stayed for the credits, for the chance to buy my way out of this hellscape and back to a reality that made sense. Now, the meter was full. The mission was over. The only thing left was the timer. My heart slowed to a crawl. Just before the darkness took me entirely, I saw Toby’s head break the surface of the water, laughing and invigorated. In my head, the mechanical chime rang: [System Upgrade: 90% Complete.] I woke up in a private wing of the Steven Medical Center. “Your healing factor is gone? Why didn’t you tell me?” Isabelle’s voice was low, laced with a rare, jagged edge of exhaustion. “You’ve been out for three days. The doctors said it was a miracle you survived. I haven’t left your side.” I looked at her. The dark circles under her eyes looked real. The words of resentment died in my throat for a moment. Seeing my silence, she sighed and cupped my gaunt face. “Are we still sulking?” Her thumb brushed against my cracked lip. “Toby is spoiled, I know. I made him that way. But can’t you just let it go? For me?” I dug my nails into my palms. It was always the same. His monstrous behavior was “spoiled.” My near-death was “sulking.” “Don’t worry,” I croaked out. “I’m leaving soon. I won’t be in your way much longer.” “Leaving?” Her brows snapped together. “The wedding invitations are at the printers. Where could you possibly go?” “A wedding?” I let out a dry, hacking laugh. “Do you honestly think your golden boy will allow that?” She paused, her expression softening into patronizing pity. “Oh, so that’s what this is about. You’re jealous.” “Toby is being very mature about this,” she continued softly. “He’s actually very involved in the planning.” As if on cue, Toby burst into the room, clutching a tablet. “Isabelle! I was thinking—what if the wedding theme is ‘Midnight Onyx’? All black. It would be so edgy and chic!” I frowned. Was he planning a wedding or a funeral? But Isabelle just smiled at him. “If you think it works, Toby.” “And the cake! Definitely mango mousse. It’s the best.” I’m deathly allergic to mangoes. Isabelle nodded without a second thought. “Whatever you want, honey.” “I’m tired,” I interrupted. “Go discuss your funeral arrangements elsewhere.” The room went silent. Toby pouted, his lower lip trembling with practiced precision. “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t like my ideas?” “Of course he does. Toby has wonderful taste.” Isabelle’s hand moved to Toby’s waist, but her eyes were cold as she looked at me. “Apologize to him, Kit. Or you can find somewhere else to recover.” The last flicker of warmth in my chest went out. I reached up and ripped the IV from the back of my hand, letting the blood well up and drip onto the white sheets. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Toby’s eyes gleamed. He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “Isabelle, I think he’s lying to you. If his healing powers were really gone, why is he acting so tough? He’s just doing this for attention, isn’t he?” Isabelle’s gaze turned predatory. “Kit, when did you become so manipulative?” “Disobedience requires discipline. You know the rules of this house.” “The cane, or an apology to Toby. Choose.” They just wanted blood. Fine. I picked up the paring knife from the fruit basket on the nightstand. Without a blink, I dragged the blade across my wrist. Deep. The skin parted like silk, and hot, crimson blood sprayed across the sterile white duvet. Toby shrieked and scrambled back. “Are you insane?!” Isabelle’s face transformed, her eyes wide with genuine shock. “Is that apology enough?” my voice was a flat, dead calm. Toby started to whimper. “Isabelle, she just asked for an apology and he does… that? He’s trying to make us look like monsters! He’s terrifying!” He ducked into her arms. “See? I told you he was faking the pain. He didn’t even flinch.” “It’s okay, Toby,” she soothed him, stroking his hair, but the look she gave me was pure ice. “This grandstanding is pathetic. It seems you need a reminder of who you belong to.” “Bring the rod.” They held me down. The heavy rattan cane lashed across my back, over and over. Each strike was a thunderclap of agony. I bit my tongue until I tasted copper, but I didn’t make a sound. When the cane finally snapped, Isabelle tossed the remnants aside. “You’ve had your penance. This subject is closed.” “Tomorrow is the engagement gala. Clean yourself up. Don’t embarrass me again.” She walked out, Toby trailing behind her like a triumphant puppy. In the heavy scent of iron and sweat, I heard the chime. [System Upgrade: 95% Complete.] I lay on the cold floor, a memory surfacing through the haze of pain. Three years ago, I could have left. I had earned enough points back then, but Isabelle had been caught in a corporate ambush—a literal hit. She was clinging to life in an ICU. I had used half my hard-earned credits to buy her a “miracle” recovery. The system had called me an idiot. But back then, I remembered how she had dug me out of a mudslide with her bare hands until her fingernails tore off. I remembered the way she’d drive across the city at 3 AM just to get me the specific soup I liked when I was sick. I remembered the Alpine snow falling on our joined hands. I thought that woman still existed. I was wrong. The snow had melted, and only the dirt remained. I was shaken awake by Isabelle’s security team. “Time for the gala.” I didn’t care about the engagement, but I knew I was leaving soon. It didn’t matter where I spent my final hours. At the hotel ballroom, Toby met us at the door, acting strangely affectionate. “I’ll take Kit to get changed into his suit,” he chirped, grabbing my arm. I pulled away. “I can manage myself.” His face fell instantly. Isabelle shot me a warning look. “He’s trying to be nice, Kit. Don’t be ungrateful.” At her signal, two guards grabbed my shoulders and forced me into the dressing room with Toby. As soon as the door clicked shut, the guards didn’t reach for a suit. They reached for my clothes, tearing them off with brutal efficiency. The bandages on my back were ripped away, taking the fresh scabs with them. I saw spots of black. I was too weak to fight. Someone kicked me in the gut—the same spot where I’d taken the pressure of Toby’s ice dive—and I coughed up a spray of red. Toby leaned down, whispering in my ear with a jagged little smile. “Tonight, Kit, everyone is going to see exactly what you are. A dog.” When they dragged me into the center of the ballroom, the roar of the crowd died instantly into a vacuum of silence. I looked at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows. I was dressed in a costume that stripped away every ounce of dignity. A “beast-man” outfit. Wolf ears pinned to my hair, a harness of sheer black mesh that showed every bruise, and a plush, humiliating tail pinned to the base of my spine. My back was a roadmap of raw, bloody stripes. Toby made a fake gasp, putting a hand to his mouth. “Oh no! I must have grabbed the wrong garment bag! Isabelle is going to be so mad at me!” Isabelle froze for a second, looking at me. Then, she reached out and patted Toby’s hand. “It was an honest mistake, Toby. How could I be mad at you for being stressed?” “But the guests… they’ll think I did it on purpose,” he whined. “They won’t.” Her voice was firm. She grabbed my wrist and hauled me onto the stage. I stumbled, my legs barely holding. Her voice boomed through the microphone, steady and commanding. “Thank you all for coming. As you can see, my fiancé has a rather… adventurous personality. He enjoys a certain level of ‘theatrics’ in his private life, and I choose to respect his kinks. I trust you are all sophisticated enough to understand.” The room erupted in whispers. “The rich really are different. Imagine marrying a slut like that.” “Look at that waist, though… and the tail… God, he’s built for it.” “He’s just a toy. She’ll keep him at home and play elsewhere.” Someone yelled from the back, “What happened to his back, Ms. Steven?” She didn’t flinch. She draped her own blazer over my shoulders. “Foreplay. Let’s leave it at that.” The media went into a frenzy. The flashes were blinding, a rhythmic stabbing against my retinas. I stood there, stripped bare before the world, a hollowed-out shell. And then, the cold, mechanical voice returned. [System Upgrade: 99% Complete.] [Countdown to Extraction initiated…] Once the reporters were cleared out, Isabelle shoved me into a private lounge. Her face was dark with fury. “How long are you going to keep this act up? Are you enjoying the attention?” “You’re making it look like I owe you something. Was this your plan? To humiliate me?” “There is no ‘owing’ anymore, Isabelle,” I said, my voice a ghost of itself. “We’re even. From this moment on, we are strangers.” Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. She grabbed my wrist. “Even? Strangers? Stop talking nonsense. Once we’re married, you’ll have a life people would kill for. You’ll be a Steven.” I looked at her, and the absolute lack of emotion in my eyes seemed to finally unnerve her. “No…” “Enough. Stop being dramatic.” She stood up abruptly, a flash of something—panic?—flickering in her eyes. “I have guests to attend to. Clean yourself up. Stop embarrassing me.” She threw a roll of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic at me and slammed the door. I didn’t touch them. What was the point of healing a body I was about to discard? I lay down on the sofa, waiting for the clock to hit zero. But Toby couldn’t let it go. He pushed the door open, his face twisted in a sneer. “Still playing dead? Give it up. Isabelle is always going to choose me.” “You can marry her, but she’ll always crush you into the dirt the second I ask her to. I own her, Kit.” I didn’t even open my eyes. He lowered his voice, leaning in close. “You want to know a secret? That miscarriage she had two years ago? It wasn’t an accident. I was curious about some ‘herbal’ stimulants I found, and she drank the tea I made. She lost the baby because of me.” My eyes snapped open. “You cried for weeks,” he laughed, his shoulders shaking. “You blamed yourself for not taking care of her. I loved watching that. Isabelle knew, by the way. She just didn’t care enough to punish me.” My blood turned to ice. I remembered her teary eyes, but her immediate command that “no one be held responsible.” “The child wasn’t meant to be, Kit. Let it go. We’ll have others, I promise.” The flowers she bought me daily after that, the sudden trips, the gifts—it wasn’t love. It was a distraction. It was a cover-up for the boy who had killed our child. That child was the only reason I had considered staying. I wanted to leave her a piece of me so she wouldn’t be lonely. “He was innocent,” I hissed through gritted teeth. Toby laughed. “He was a mistake. Just like you.” The rage finally broke through the numbness. I lunged upward and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength I had left. He didn’t hit me back. Instead, he grabbed the silk curtains and set them alight with a lighter. Then, he grabbed a decorative canister of lighter fluid from the bar and doused the floor. The flames roared to life. Toby screamed. The alarm shrilled, and heavy footsteps approached the door. He looked at me and grinned. “Who do you think she saves first?” I didn’t say a word. I lunged and bit down on his neck, the taste of copper filling my mouth. “What are you doing?!” Isabelle’s voice screamed as the door was kicked open. “Isabelle! He’s crazy! He attacked me, he’s trying to burn me alive! Save me!” Toby wailed, collapsing into her arms. In a heartbeat, a heavy boot slammed into my chest, throwing me backward into the growing inferno. Isabelle held Toby tight, looking at me with a face full of pure, unadulterated loathing. “You want to die that badly?!” I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. It didn’t matter. [System Upgrade Complete. Extraction in progress.] [Bonus Feature Triggered: ‘The Unfiltered Truth’.] [Target: Isabelle Steven. All deceptions regarding the host are now being uploaded to her consciousness.] As the fire licked at my skin, Isabelle’s body suddenly went rigid. Her eyes glazed over for a split second. “Wait… Kit… I… I’ll come back for you. Stay there!” She began to drag Toby out, her movements frantic, her face a mask of sudden, jarring confusion. My consciousness began to drift upward. I watched her retreating back through the orange haze and I smiled. There is no “back,” Isabelle. Not for us.

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It was the Labor Day weekend, and I had agreed to drive out to the suburbs to meet Beth’s parents. We had just settled the final details of our pre-nuptial financial agreement—a tense but necessary conversation—when the atmosphere in the dining room curdled. Beth’s mother, Mrs. Walters, had disappeared into the kitchen to fetch the roast when it happened: a shimmering, translucent line of text flickered across my vision like a digital hallucination. The words were a chilling warning. They claimed that Beth’s mother was about to frame me for stealing a gold heirloom bracelet. It went further, predicting a systematic campaign to bleed my family dry, eventually forcing me to sign over my house. I was still blinking, trying to make sense of the glowing script, when a sharp cry erupted from the hallway. “My vintage bracelet! It’s gone! I left it right here on the nightstand!” Beth’s sister-in-law, Cynthia, immediately whipped her head toward me, her eyes narrowing with practiced suspicion. “Wait… didn’t I see Wyatt go toward the master suite a few minutes ago?” I felt a cold smile touch my lips. Instead of panicking, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. “Since you’re so certain,” I said, my voice steady and dangerously calm, “let’s let the police explain it to us.” 1 When Mrs. Walters shrieked, “My gold bracelet is missing!” I was already reeling from the bizarre text hovering in the air. Now, a localized chill crawled up my spine. I suppressed the urge to rub my eyes. I watched her closely, noticing the quick, jagged glance exchanged between her and Cynthia. “Pretty sure Wyatt was the only one in the master bedroom recently,” Cynthia repeated, her finger practically touching my nose. Suddenly, every eye in the room was a weapon. The relatives leaned in, their gazes heavy with judgment and a dark, eager curiosity. My skin prickled. The text flitted across my field of vision again, and I felt the blood drain from my face. Beth stepped close to me, her hand gripping my bicep a little too tightly. She lowered her voice to a frantic whisper. “Wyatt, did you take it? That was my dad’s twenty-fifth-anniversary gift to her. She’s obsessed with it. If you have it, just give it back now before things get ugly.” I looked at her, truly looked at her, and felt a hollow ache of disappointment. “You actually think I’d steal a piece of jewelry from your mother?” Beth’s eyes darted away, unable to meet mine. She knew better. The housewarming gifts I’d brought today—the rare vintage wine and the designer handbag for her mother—cost more than that bracelet was worth. Mrs. Walters sniffed, her voice dripping with artificial sorrow. “I thought we were bringing a gentleman into the family. I didn’t realize we were inviting a common thief.” The insult burned. I stood my ground, watching them with the detached interest of a scientist observing a lab rat. Beth, losing her patience, began to tug at my arm. “Just let them look in your briefcase, Wyatt! If you didn’t do anything, you have nothing to fear, right?” Before I could even voice my refusal, Mrs. Walters lunged for my bag. As I moved to block her, a fresh wave of text surged before my eyes: [Holy crap, Beth’s mom is a pro. She slipped the bracelet into the side pocket of the briefcase while he was in the bathroom. He’s screwed.] My heart skipped a beat. A setup. A goddamn trap. I stepped in front of her, my voice dropping an octave. “Is this how you treat a guest? Slander and illegal searches?” Beth didn’t skip a beat. She grabbed both my arms, pinning them to my sides. “If you’re innocent, why are you acting so guilty? Mom, go ahead. Check it!” Mrs. Walters spat a curse, grabbed my leather briefcase, and turned it upside down. A cascade of files and my laptop hit the hardwood floor, and then—with a metallic clink—a heavy gold band rolled across the floor, coming to rest right against the toe of my shoe. Mrs. Walters pounced on it like a bird of prey. “Not even officially in the family yet, and you’re already looting my house!” she screamed. “What kind of people raised you? You’re a goddamn criminal!” The digital feed was losing its mind: [They planned this. They want to use the ‘theft’ as leverage to trap him into a one-sided marriage contract.] The room fell into a suffocating silence, broken only by the sound of heavy breathing. The condemnation in the room was physical, a weight pressing on my chest. I took a deep breath. If I let this narrative take hold today, my family’s reputation would be shredded, marriage or no marriage. Beth let go of me, rolling her eyes with a theatrical huff. She poked me in the chest. “My mom said she was going to give me her jewelry for the wedding anyway, but you couldn’t wait? Just apologize, Wyatt. Now.” 2 My brow furrowed, the veins in my temples throbbing with a rhythmic heat. Before I could speak, Mrs. Walters cut me off with a jagged laugh. “I don’t want his apology. The wedding is off!” I was shaking with rage, but my mind remained unnervingly sharp. I looked her in the eye. “What proof do you have that this bracelet is actually yours?” The shimmering text paused for a fraction of a second before exploding: [Damn, he’s got a brain! He’s not falling for the ‘prove you’re innocent’ trap.] [Go get ‘em, King!] Mrs. Walters choked on her next insult. I reached down, snatched the bracelet from her hand before she could react, and held it up to the light. “It’s a plain gold band. No engraving, no unique markers. How do you know this isn’t mine? I carry high-value items for my business all the time.” She was speechless, her face turning a mottled purple. The chorus of relatives started up again, accusing me of being disrespectful and delusional. I didn’t engage. In the distance, the faint, wailing herald of a siren began to grow louder. I looked at their ugly, distorted faces and smiled. “Why don’t you tell the police all about it?” The text feed went wild: [Wait, when did he call the cops?] [This isn’t how the script usually goes!] A moment later, two officers were at the door. I finally let go of the phone I’d been clutching in my pocket. The moment I had seen the first ‘hallucination’ and realized the vibe in the room had shifted, I’d sent a pre-written emergency text to a friend of mine on the force. Mrs. Walters tried to turn on the charm the second she saw the uniforms, waving it off as a ‘family misunderstanding.’ I stepped forward, my voice echoing in the small foyer. “She performed an illegal search of my property after orchestrating a false accusation of theft.” Beth tried to play the peacemaker, stepping between us, but I spoke over her with clinical precision. “Your mother claims the item was stolen from the bedroom. I noticed the curtains were open when we arrived—there’s a Nest camera on the neighbor’s porch that has a direct line of sight into that window. Shall we pull the footage?” I had spent the last ten minutes scanning every inch of the environment while they were screaming at me. The lead officer nodded, taking out his notebook. Mrs. Walters turned pale. She started stammering, and I didn’t give her an inch. I crossed my arms. “If you can’t prove the bracelet is yours, then it’s mine. It was in my bag, after all.” Trapped by her own lies in front of her entire family and the law, she finally hissed through gritted teeth, “I… I must have accidentally dropped it into your bag while I was helping you with your coat.” I laughed, a sharp, cold sound. “That’s a neat trick. My bag was zipped shut in the living room, and your bracelet was in a jewelry box in the back of the house.” Beth reached for my hand again, but I recoiled as if she were a viper. “We’re done, Beth. Your family is a nightmare, and I’m clearly overqualified for the role of your victim.” The officers watched as I gathered my things. Beth’s family screamed insults at my back as I walked down the driveway. “Let him go! We don’t need a petty, small-minded man like him in this house anyway!” I got into my car, the adrenaline finally beginning to ebb. The text feed was still scrolling: [Beth isn’t going to let a wealthy, only-child catch like Wyatt go that easily. That whole family was planning to live off his inheritance.] I stared out the windshield, my heart sinking, but a plan was already forming. I wasn’t just going to walk away. I was going to make sure they paid for the attempt. When I got home, my parents were waiting in the living room. My mother saw my face and stood up immediately. I dropped the ruined gifts on the floor and told them everything. 3 My mother’s eyes turned like flint as I finished. “They were trying to break you,” she said quietly. “I told you those people were vultures. What do you want to do now?” My father chimed in from the armchair. “It’s a blessing, son. Better to see the fangs now than after you’ve signed a marriage license. Walk away and don’t look back.” My heart swelled. They were my bedrock. I was ready to move on. But the next morning, I was jolted awake by the shimmering text: [Wyatt is still sleeping while the Walters clan is at his front door. They brought a ‘dowry’ briefcase to force a reconciliation.] The last remnants of sleep vanished. I threw on a robe and headed for the door. Beth was there, looking manic and over-eager. “Wyatt! Baby, listen. My mom feels terrible about the misunderstanding. Look—she went to the bank this morning. She’s putting up an extra hundred thousand for our house fund. More than we even discussed!” She held up a heavy silver briefcase. I narrowed my eyes. Yesterday, they were trying to frame me; today, they were showering me with cash? Something stank. “I thought I made myself clear yesterday,” I said. “There is no wedding.” Mrs. Walters pushed her way forward. “You’ve been living with my daughter for a year, Wyatt. You can’t just toss her aside like yesterday’s trash. Think of her reputation!” I said nothing, but the text feed was screaming in neon: [They haven’t changed a bit. The briefcase is stuffed with counterfeit bills.] I felt a smirk tugging at my lips. Mrs. Walters kept talking, trying to charm my mother, who had appeared behind me. “This money is for the kids’ future,” Mrs. Walters pleaded. “A gesture of goodwill!” I chuckled. “So, we should display this at the wedding? Like a traditional gift table?” My mother gave me a sharp, questioning look, but Beth and her mom beamed, thinking they’d won me over. The feed went nuclear: [I see their game. They want him to accept the ‘cash’ now, so they can later claim he stole or lost the real money at the wedding. It’s a double-scam.] “You know,” I said, “it’s not safe to keep this much cash in the house. We should go to the bank and deposit it right now.” Beth and her mom exchanged a frantic look. “Oh, it’s fine for a few days,” Beth said quickly. “Besides, we want it for the ceremony photos. Don’t be so difficult.” I stared at her until she shifted uncomfortably. Then, I turned and walked into my study. I emerged a moment later carrying a professional-grade bill counter. “If this is going to be our ‘future,’” I said calmly, “let’s count it. I wouldn’t want there to be any more… misunderstandings about missing assets.” The color drained from their faces. Beth started snapping at me, telling me I didn’t trust them. I ignored her and signaled for our housekeeper to block the exit. I started the machine. The first stack went through—genuine hundreds. I felt a flicker of doubt. Was the feed wrong? Then I hit the second layer. Beep. Beep. BEEP. The machine jammed. The bills were high-quality fakes. I pulled out the rest of the stacks and realized the middle was filled with “Motion Picture Use Only” prop money—bundles of paper that looked real from the side but were blank in the center. My mother let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Well. I suppose you don’t need a machine to tell those are fake, do you?” Beth was sweating now. “The bank… the bank must have made a mistake! They gave us the wrong bundles!” I leaned in, my voice a cold whisper. “Which bank, Beth? Tell me exactly which branch. We’ll go there with the police right now.” She went silent. I didn’t hesitate. I picked up my phone. “I’d like to report a massive fraud attempt,” I told the dispatcher.

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Dinner tonight was a bitter pill to swallow. I’d spent the entire morning at the farmer’s market and the afternoon hovering over a hot stove, prepping a spread that could feed a small army. My back ached, but I wanted everything to be perfect. Across the table, my sister-in-law, Amber, flashed me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Her voice was sugary, but the words were laced with venom. She started dropping hints about how “comfortable” I’d made myself, how I seemed to treat my childhood home like a free hotel every time I was on break from grad school. Then, she pointedly looked at my plate. “You’re really going for the expensive stuff, aren’t you, Dana?” she asked, her voice tilting upward in mock curiosity. Before I could respond, my six-year-old niece, Piper, pushed her bowl away. Her eyes welled up with performative tears. “Auntie Dana took all the shrimp! I didn’t get any!” I froze. I had literally just picked up my second piece. Amber didn’t hesitate. She reached over with her own fork, snatched the shrimp right off my plate, and dropped it into Piper’s bowl. She sighed, looking at me with a patronizing pity. “It’s not that I’m stingy, Dana. It’s just… you’re a grown woman. You shouldn’t be lingering in someone else’s house, eating them out of house and home.” Someone else’s house? I turned to my brother, James. He kept his head down, shoveled rice into his mouth, and refused to meet my eyes. 1 My mom had only been on her dream trip to Tuscany for two weeks, and already, they were acting like this house—the house I had lived in since I was in diapers—belonged solely to them. A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in my throat, fueled by pure indignation. Amber set her silverware down with a delicate clink and leaned in. “Look, Dana, I’m not trying to kick you out.” She sighed again, her tone so maternal it made my skin crawl. “I left home before I even finished high school. I worked three jobs, paid my own way, and even helped my younger brother with a down payment on his condo. And here you are, in your mid-twenties, still relying on family. I’m just worried about you.” She paused, her gaze narrowing. “A girl can’t stay in her ‘maiden home’ forever. It looks bad to the neighbors. People talk.” Every sentence was wrapped in the guise of “caring for me.” But every word felt like a deliberate needle prick. I gripped my fork so hard my knuckles turned white. Beside her, Piper pointed a greasy finger at me and shrilled, “Leech! Mommy says you’re a shameless leech!” “Piper! Don’t say that!” Amber chided, though the corners of her mouth were twitching upward. I stared at the grains of rice in my bowl, my voice trembling when I finally found it. “I come home on breaks because this is my home. And I never come empty-handed. Every time I’m here, I—” “Oh, please!” Amber cut me off with a sharp laugh. “We’re family, why are you keeping score? You stay here for free, don’t you? We don’t charge you rent.” She glanced at James, then back at me, her eyes glinting with a calculated spark. “Tell you what. Based on the current market rate in this neighborhood, why don’t you just give your brother fifteen hundred a month? Consider it a ‘contribution’ to the household. Sound fair?” I was stunned. I’d lived here for over twenty years. And now, I was being asked to pay for the privilege of sleeping in my own bed? I opened my mouth, but the words died in my throat. James finally looked up. His expression was cold, distant—the look of a landlord, not a brother. “Dana, just do what Amber says. It’ll make things easier for everyone.” Easier for everyone. It hit me then. This wasn’t a spontaneous argument. They had choreographed this. Amber played the villain, James played the “reasonable” decider, and even a six-year-old had been coached on when to call me a leech. I looked at the man sitting across from me. He felt like a stranger. I remembered when our parents were going through their messy divorce years ago; he was the one who held my hand and told me, “Don’t be scared, Dana. I’ve got you.” When I got into my Master’s program, he’d slipped a few hundred dollars into my bag and told me to study hard. But this version of James? He was treating me like an unwanted tenant. I couldn’t take it. I slammed my cutlery onto the table, stood up, and stormed back to my room. As the door swung shut, I heard Amber’s voice drift from the dining room. “Look at that temper. No wonder she’s still single.” She didn’t whisper it. She wanted me to hear. Then James’s voice: “Let it go. If she won’t pay, she won’t pay. Don’t stoop to her level.” I leaned against the door, the first hot tears spilling over. My phone buzzed in my pocket. 2 I swiped at my eyes and looked at the screen. It was a text from Mom. “Hi honey! I managed to change my flight. I’ll be home tomorrow! I picked up those dark chocolates you love from that little shop in Florence. Can’t wait to see you!” The tears came faster then. I stared at the message, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. I typed out a long, rambling message about how cruel they were being, then deleted it. I typed it again. Deleted it again. Finally, I just replied: “Sounds good. Safe flight.” Outside, I could hear Amber and Piper laughing. “Mommy, the shrimp is so yummy!” “Eat up, baby. It’s all yours.” I closed my eyes, letting the tears disappear into my hair. When Amber first married into the family, I truly looked at her as the sister I never had. She came from a rough background—a small town where girls weren’t expected to do much, and she’d been working since she was sixteen. I remember the first time she told me about her past; her eyes had been red, her voice thick with the pain of being ignored by her own parents. I’d felt so much for her. I’d taken her hand and told her, “Amber, this is your home now. You have us.” When Piper was born, I was the one who stepped up. I did the midnight feedings so Amber could sleep. For her birthday, I used my meager savings from a work-study job to buy her a designer scarf. She’d bragged about it for weeks. “My sister-in-law has such great taste,” she’d tell everyone. Once, when she and James had a blow-up fight and she ran out of the house crying, I’d chased her down for three blocks. I bought her a coffee, sat with her in the park, and listened to her vent until the sun went down. I took her shopping, did her nails, introduced her to the city. She told me no one had ever treated her like that before. I thought we were family. But looking back, maybe she never saw me that way. Maybe I was just a convenience. When I was picking a grad school, she was the loudest voice in my ear, telling me to stay local. “Stay close to home,” she’d say. “If anything happens, James and I are right here to back you up.” I had been so touched. I thought she loved me. I even bragged to my friends about what a “cool” sister-in-law I had. But once I started school, the calls started every weekend. “Can you come home? We’re so busy.” And every time I came back, I was the one grocery shopping, cooking, scrubbing the floors, and doing the laundry. She would just sit on the sofa, scrolling through her phone, acting as if my labor was a given. One summer, she went on a trip with her friends and left Piper with me for a week. I was trying to finish my thesis while wrangling a toddler. When she returned, she told her friends right in front of me, “Dana is so great. She’s better with the baby than I am!” I took it as a compliment then. Now, I see it for what it was: a tactic to keep me working. Even a few months ago, when the refrigerator died, she complained about it for days until I used two thousand dollars from my part-time tutoring gig to buy a new one for the house. I treated her like a sister. She treated me like an ATM and a maid. The weight of the betrayal felt heavy in my chest. I pulled the duvet over my head, trying to stifle my sobs. After a while, the silence of the house settled in. I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I passed James’s room, I heard hushed voices. 3 It was Amber. “I’m telling you, we can’t wait. We have to get her out of here before your mom gets back.” I froze, my breath catching in my throat. “Every month she’s here, the utility bills go up,” Amber continued. “And you know how your mom is. She favors her. Who knows if she’ll try to leave the whole house to Dana in the will? We need to secure the deed now, so we can move forward with that… other thing.” “Yeah,” James’s voice was low, resigned. “You’re right.” “I’ve got a plan,” Amber whispered, followed by a soft, sharp laugh. “You’ll see tomorrow.” My heart hammered against my ribs. A plan? The next morning, the living room was a hive of activity. I woke up to the sound of hushed, urgent whispering. “It’s just shameful… she needs to be taught a lesson…” “You can’t let this kind of behavior slide…” I frowned, threw on a robe, and stepped out of my room. The living room was crowded. James, Amber, and Piper were there, but so were the neighbors: Mrs. Higgins from downstairs, Sarah from across the hall, and Mrs. Gable from the next unit over. They all turned to look at me at once. Their eyes weren’t friendly. They looked at me like I was a criminal caught in the act. On the coffee table, several empty jewelry boxes were scattered, along with Amber’s favorite leather tote bag, which had been turned inside out. Amber spoke first. “Dana, I need to ask you something.” Her voice was trembling, the perfect image of a victim. “My diamond necklace, my gold hoops, and all the cash I had in my bag… it’s all gone. There’s no one else in the house. Did you take them?” I looked at her, and a cold, sharp realization washed over me. So this was the “plan.” Luckily, I hadn’t spent the night just crying. I’d prepared. “I didn’t take anything,” I said, my voice remarkably steady. Amber scoffed. “You didn’t take it? So it just grew legs and walked away?” “I have no idea where your things are.” I turned to walk back to my room. Suddenly, Piper stepped out from behind Amber’s legs. “Auntie Dana…” Her lower lip trembled, her eyes wide and tearful. She looked up at the neighbors, then pointed a small, shaky hand at me. “Mommy told me to be honest… it’s not right…” She started to sob. “Yesterday… I saw Auntie Dana go into Mommy’s room. She was digging through the jewelry box… she told me not to tell or she’d hurt me…” 4 A bucket of ice water couldn’t have made me feel colder. To coach a six-year-old to lie like that—to use her own child as a weapon—was a new low. Amber immediately pulled Piper into a hug. “Oh, Dana! How could you? She’s only six! You’re terrifying her into lying for you!” I opened my mouth to defend myself, but I looked at James instead. He was staring at the empty jewelry boxes, his head bowed, refusing to look at his own sister. Mrs. Higgins sighed, shaking her head. “Dana, honey, if things are tight, you should have just asked. But this? Your sister-in-law has been so good to you. This is heartbreaking.” Sarah chipped in, “Honestly, these grad students… they look so respectable, but you never know what they’re doing behind closed doors. Stealing from family? How do you even show your face?” I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms. “I. Did. Not. Take. It.” Amber put a hand to her chest, looking like she was about to faint. “Dana, just admit it. Keep the jewelry, I don’t care. Just don’t lie to me.” I took a deep breath and looked directly at my brother. “James. Do you really believe this?” His shoulders tensed. It took him a long time to speak. “If you took it… just give it back. Don’t make this harder on everyone than it already is.” Amber saw my silence as a white flag. She stood up, her voice rising an octave, gaining strength. “My mother-in-law isn’t here, so I’m going to do what’s necessary. I’m setting a boundary!” She pointed toward the front door, her eyes gleaming with a manic sort of triumph. “Pack your bags and get out. Now! We will not have a thief under this roof!” I stood my ground, crossing my arms. “You’re really committed to this, aren’t you?” “Get out!” she screamed. “Evidence,” I said calmly. “Everything requires evidence. Tell you what. Go into my room. Search it. If you find anything, I’ll leave and never come back. But if you don’t, you apologize to me in front of everyone here.” Amber blinked, caught off guard for a split second, but she recovered quickly. “Search? Why would I search? You’ve obviously hidden it somewhere else. I’m not playing your games.” She turned to the neighbors, her face a mask of wounded dignity. “You see? Even caught red-handed, she’s so arrogant. I’ve done everything for her, and this is how she treats me.” Mrs. Higgins stepped forward to play peacemaker. “Dana, just apologize. Don’t let it get this ugly…” Amber didn’t wait for her to finish. She lunged forward and grabbed my arm, trying to pull me toward the door. “Go! Just go! I don’t want to see your face—” The moment her hand touched my skin, the sound of a key turning in the lock echoed through the room. Click. The front door swung open. My mother stood there, her suitcase in hand, staring at the chaos in her living room.

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The Great Famine was exactly seven days away, but the heat had already turned the world into a pre-apocalyptic kiln. I’ve come back. I’ve been reborn into the exact moment I first received the Feast System. The memories of my past life are still etched into my retinas like a burn—the way I starved myself, scrounging every calorie the System provided just to keep my sister and my boyfriend alive. And how did they reward me? Once the world stabilized, they locked me in a windowless basement. They used me. They bled me. My boyfriend told me the Feast System should have been his from the start. He said if he had it, he could have saved Hailey—his “best friend,” his “soulmate.” He called me selfish for not giving half my rations to a woman who had never offered me so much as a smile. Even my own sister turned on me, claiming I was just jealous of Hailey’s popularity, that I was hoarding food out of spite. I died in that basement, watching my own blood pool on the concrete. Now, history is repeating itself. My sister is reaching for the System, her eyes gleaming with the same greed. She wants to be the savior. She wants to ensure Hailey lives so that Jude will finally look at her with gratitude. I watched her back as she turned to leave, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. She has no idea. She took the Feast System, but she doesn’t know I have a second one. I have the Siphon. 1 “Feast System online. Selecting host for binding…” “I’ll take that!” Before the System could lock onto my DNA, my sister, Macy, lunged forward and snatched the interface out of the air. “Binding initiated… Binding complete!” Macy let out a breathy, triumphant laugh. Her face was flushed with an ugly kind of joy. “Honestly, Claire, you wouldn’t even know what to do with power like this. Better to leave the heavy lifting to me.” The way her eyes sparkled gave her away. She’s back, too. She remembers. In my last life, when the temperatures spiked and the supply chains collapsed, I was the one who kept us fed. I practically hand-fed her and my boyfriend, Jude. In exchange, they conspired to toss me into the dark, letting me bleed out because I wouldn’t let Hailey raid our pantry. I felt a cold, sharp stone settle in my chest. If you love Hailey so much that you’d kill your own flesh and blood for her, Macy, then let’s see how far that loyalty goes this time. “Fine,” I said, my voice intentionally flat, feigning indifference. “Take it. I don’t even know what that thing is supposed to be.” Macy sneered, her lip curling in disdain at my “ignorance.” She turned her attention back to the glowing blue interface in her palms, stroking it like a lover. To test her new toy, she whispered a command: “Feast System, give me a roasted chicken.” A second later, a golden-brown, glistening bird appeared on our kitchen table. The scent of rosemary and fat filled the room, making my stomach ache with a phantom hunger. “Oh my god,” Macy breathed, her eyes wide. “Infinite food. I’m never going to be hungry again.” She’s so naive. The Feast System isn’t a magic wand; its reserves are finite. In my previous life, I skipped meals for days, storing every scrap for her and Jude. I loved them more than I loved myself. I was a fool. “Now that I’m the one with the food, Jude is going to realize who the real asset is,” Macy said, her voice dropping into that sugary, manipulative tone she always used when she was winning. “Don’t be too jealous when he starts coming to me for everything, Claire.” I didn’t realize back then that she had a thing for my boyfriend. I was too busy trying to keep us from dying. Macy squinted at me, a flicker of suspicion crossing her face. “You… you don’t know the rules for using this, do you?” She was testing me. Trying to see if I was a “Returner” like her. After all, I was the original master of the Feast. I shook my head slowly. “Rules? It’s your thing, Macy. Why would I know anything about it?” She let out a long, visible sigh of relief. The suspicion in her eyes was instantly replaced by pure, unadulterated arrogance. “Perfect. I’m going to go find Jude and Hailey. We have a lot to talk about.” The moment the front door slammed shut, I whispered into the empty room. “Siphon. Status report.” 2 “Siphon System online. Awaiting host instructions.” In my first life, I had actually been granted two systems. But back then, I was “good.” I was “moral.” I knew resources were scarce, and the Siphon felt like a villain’s tool. It felt wrong to take from others when everyone was struggling to survive. But I’m not that girl anymore. That girl died in a basement. I checked the date on my phone. June 20th. We had seven days before the heat became lethal and the world went dark. It was more than enough time. I grabbed my keys and drove to the outskirts of the city, to a decommissioned industrial lab my father had left me. On the surface, it looked like a rusted-out husk of a building—an old chemical research firm. But beneath the floorboards lay a massive, high-tech bunker. My father had spent his life there, working on classified contracts. Before he died, he gave me the only key. It had everything: a bedroom, a full kitchen, a reinforced ventilation system, and even a luxury bathroom. It was a fortress. I spent the next three days in a fever dream of preparation. I hit every wholesale club in the county. Cases of bottled water, mountain-sized stacks of protein bars, canned goods, medical supplies—I hauled them all into the bunker. The space was the size of three football fields; I could live here for years without ever seeing the sun. While I was dripping sweat and hauling crates, Macy was playing house. She thought the Feast System was a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card. When I finally dragged myself back to our shared apartment, looking like I’d been through a war, she just laughed. “Rough day at the office? You look like hell, Claire.” I didn’t look at her. I cracked a bottle of water and downed half of it in one go. “Just looking for work. The market’s drying up.” “Don’t bother,” she said, her voice smug. “Pretty soon, work isn’t going to—” She cut herself off, realizing she was about to spoil the surprise. She had no intention of warning me about the apocalypse. She wanted me to be caught off guard. She wanted me to be desperate. “Anyway,” she continued, changing the subject. “I think Jude’s finally realizing that he and I have a deeper connection. You should probably just… let him go. Do the graceful thing.” I glanced at her and forced a smile. “You? I thought he was obsessed with Hailey.” “It’s not like that!” Macy snapped, standing up. “They’re just close. They’re like family. Stop being so insecure.” I didn’t argue. I just went to my room and started ordering more supplies on my phone. Macy followed me, her tone softening into that fake-sweet register. “Claire, why are you spending all that money on Amazon? Stop wasting it. Give me your credit card—I want to buy Jude something special for his birthday.” I frowned. “You’re trying to steal my boyfriend, and you want me to pay for it?” “Don’t be so dramatic,” she huffed. “You guys aren’t even married. I have a right to pursue happiness. And honestly? He doesn’t even love you.” In my last life, she’d said the opposite. Every time Jude and I fought, she’d be there, telling me what a “catch” he was, how I’d never find anyone better. She was just keeping me in the relationship so she could stay close to him. My happiness was never part of her equation. Looking at her now, I felt a wave of nausea. I didn’t hate her for wanting Jude. I hated her for being so willing to watch me starve while she did it. 3 I didn’t give her a dime. I let her scream and throw a tantrum in the hallway while I locked my bedroom door and calculated my final needs. Solar generators for the bunker. Specialized steel plates to reinforce the vault door. I even moved my father’s old “defensive research” samples into the bunker—just in case. Finally, I set up a network of tiny, undetectable cameras throughout the apartment. I needed to see the look on their faces when the walls started closing in. By the time I was finished, the apartment felt like a tomb. Macy hadn’t done a thing to prepare. She’d bought a few cases of San Pellegrino and locked them in her closet, convinced that her “magic” would handle the rest. Jude came over that evening. Macy flew to the door like a moth to a flame. “Jude! You’re here! Claire’s just being lazy in her room again,” she chirped. “Where’s Hailey? Didn’t she come with you?” Jude looked frayed. He was sweating through his shirt, his eyes darting around the room. He grabbed Macy by the shoulders. “That thing you said… about the world ending. The heat. Are you sure?” Macy nodded, her expression solemn. “Trust me. But don’t worry. I have the Feast. I’ll take care of you.” Jude’s eyes widened. “We have to tell Claire. We need to get her to—” Macy cut him off, her hand on his chest. “Why? So she can eat our food? So she can complain and drag us down? Jude, if you’re still hung up on her, then maybe my ‘gifts’ aren’t for you.” She pouted, her eyes welling with fake tears. Jude didn’t hesitate for more than a second. The survival instinct—or maybe just the greed—erased every ounce of loyalty he had for the woman who had supported him for eight years. He pulled Macy into his arms. “No,” he whispered. “You’re right. It’s always been you, Macy. She… she doesn’t need to know. But we have to make sure Hailey is safe. She’s my best friend. I can’t lose her.” “Of course,” Macy purred. “Hailey is like a sister to me. We’ll look after her.” I watched it all on my phone from the other side of the door. Jude and I had met in college. He was the guy eating plain ramen in the library because he couldn’t afford a meal plan. I was the girl who gave him half my tray every single day, even when my own father’s lab was bleeding money. I lived in a damp basement for three years so he could start his business. I drank myself into a stomach ulcer at corporate dinners to land him his first big clients. He had knelt by my hospital bed and sworn I was his entire world. And now, with the world about to burn, he was choosing to let me “die off” so there would be more for him and his mistress. I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white. Okay, Jude. Let’s see how that loyalty tastes when the plates are empty. 4 The day before the collapse. Macy had invited Jude and Hailey to move into the apartment. Apparently, Jude didn’t fully trust Macy’s “magic,” because he had spent his savings on a massive haul of supplies. The living room was stacked floor-to-ceiling with crates of water and canned meat. “Why did you buy all this?” Macy asked, sounding offended. “Don’t you trust my System?” Hailey, a blonde woman with a perpetually bored expression, shifted uncomfortably. Jude stepped in, kissing Macy’s cheek. “It’s just a backup, babe. High temperatures are coming. We have to be smart.” Macy leaned into him, beaming. “Fine. Give me a kiss.” Jude obliged, though I could see the slight flinch in his eyes. “Where’s your sister?” Jude asked, glancing toward my closed door. Macy sat on the sofa, lazily painting her nails. “Working. Or whatever it is she does. But don’t worry—I changed the locks while she was out this morning. I even reinforced the window frames. When she tries to come home tonight, she’s going to find out she’s been evicted.” Jude looked startled. “You’re locking her out? Macy, if the riots start…” “So what?” Macy snapped. “She’s always been the ‘perfect’ one. The smart one. The one with the boyfriend. I’m over it. If she gets caught in a riot, it’s one less thing for me to worry about.” Jude’s face paled, but then he looked at his mountain of supplies. “Right. I mean… we don’t know how long the heat will last. We have to prioritize.” He turned to Hailey. “You okay with this?” Hailey shrugged. “She never liked me anyway. Always acted like she was better than me just because she was paying your rent. Good riddance.” A united front. Three people I would have died for, deciding I wasn’t worth a single calorie. I sat in my bunker, three stories underground, eating a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips and watching them on my tablet. The next day, the sun rose, and the world broke. The temperature hit 115 by noon. The news was full of reports of melting asphalt and power grids failing. My trio was huddled in the apartment, blinds drawn, eating ramen and feeling very smug. But their supplies were only meant to last a few weeks. Fast forward fourteen days. The fridge was a graveyard of empty containers. The crates in the living room were gone. “Okay, Macy,” Jude said, his voice cracked from thirst. “Time to show us what you can do.” Hailey leaned forward, her eyes hungry. “Yeah, Macy. Let’s see this ‘Feast’ in action.” Macy stood up, tossing her hair back with a flourish. “Easy. Watch this.” She closed her eyes, summoning the interface. “Feast System: Three large pepperoni pizzas. Now.” Ping. Three steaming, grease-glistening pizzas appeared on the coffee table. The smell was heavenly. Jude and Hailey lunged forward like starving animals. But before their fingers could touch the crust, the pizzas vanished. They didn’t just fall. They didn’t slide. They simply ceased to exist in that space. “What the—?” Jude yelled, his hands hitting the empty table. “Where did it go?”

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