Chapter 1: The Golden Boy and the Grinder The air in the locker room didn’t smell like sweat. Sweat is honest. Sweat is the byproduct of hard work, of a gym in Philly or a dojo in Jersey. No, this place smelled like copper and stale adrenaline. It smelled like fear that had fermented in the concrete walls for a decade. I sat on the edge of a wooden bench that was splintering with age, staring at my hands. They didn’t look like my hands anymore. They were swaddled in layers of white gauze, wrapped so tight my fingertips were turning a dusky purple. I flexed them, testing the tension. The tape was rough, like shark skin. I brought my knuckles to my mouth and spat on them, rubbing the saliva into the fabric. It was an old trick, a dirty trick. It made the wraps harden as they dried, turning my fists into limestone clubs. “You nervous, Viper?” The voice came from the doorway. It was Sergei, my handler. A man built like a vending machine with a neck that disappeared into his shoulders. He was wearing a suit that cost more than my father made in a lifetime, but it couldn’t hide the fact that he was a thug. “I don’t get nervous, Sergei,” I lied, my voice sounding like gravel grinding in a mixer. “I get impatient.” “Good.” He lit a cigarette, ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign that was peeling off the wall. “Because the odds are shifting. The crowd loves this Carlos kid. They call him Apollo. They say he’s beautiful.” I snorted. “Beautiful don’t stop a shin bone from snapping.” “Just win, Viper. The Big Boss has a lot of money riding on the underdog tonight. And you are the underdog.” He left, leaving a trail of expensive tobacco smoke and existential dread. I stood up and walked to the mirror. The glass was cracked, a spiderweb fracture right over where my face should be. Maybe that was fitting. I looked at the reflection. A lean, scarred body. Asian heritage mixed with something else, something harder. My eyes were dark, hollowed out by years of sleeping in barracks and training in freezing Siberian warehouses. I wasn’t beautiful like Carlos. I was a tool. A hammer. I walked out into the corridor. The noise of the crowd hit me like a physical wave. This wasn’t a sanctioned bout in Vegas. This was the “Summit,” an illegal, high-stakes tournament held in a converted slaughterhouse somewhere on the Mexican border. The audience wasn’t fight fans; they were cartel bosses, arms dealers, human traffickers, and the kind of billionaires who got bored with hunting lions and wanted to see men hunt each other. I stepped into the arena. The lights were blinding, hot white halogens that made the blood on the canvas look black. And there he was. Carlos. Sergei wasn’t lying. The guy looked like a Greek statue brought to life. He was tall, maybe six-two, with skin the color of polished bronze and muscles that looked like they were sculpted by Michelangelo. He had blonde highlights in his hair and a smile that said he’d never been hit hard in his life. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, shadowboxing with a fluidity that was terrifying. He was faster than me. Stronger than me. Europeans usually had the size advantage over us Asians, but Carlos was a genetic freak. Just like Khan, I thought, a bitter memory rising in my throat. Khan was a friend, a fellow fighter who had faced Carlos in the qualifiers. Khan was dead now, or wished he was. I stepped through the ropes. The referee, a impartial mercenary who looked like he’d stab his own mother for a twenty, waved us to the center. “No rules,” he mumbled, repeating the mantra of the Summit. “Fight until one can’t stand. Or won’t.” The bell rang. Carlos didn’t waste time. He came at me like a thunderstorm. He threw a jab that snapped the air like a whip. I slipped it, but the wind of it stung my cheek. He followed with a cross, a hook, an uppercut. His hands were a blur. I covered up, shelling into a defensive posture, feeling the impacts rattle my skeleton. He hit hard. My forearms screamed in protest as I absorbed the blows. I was backed into the corner, the ropes digging into my spine. “Is that all you got, Chinaman?” Carlos sneered. He actually spoke to me. In English. I peeked through my guard. He was grinning. He was enjoying this. He thought this was a sport. Big mistake. I remembered Khan. I remembered watching the tapes. Carlos was a headhunter. He loved the knockout. He loved the glory. But when Khan had fought him, Khan had stumbled him with leg kicks. Carlos had weak foundations. He was a statue made of marble, standing on clay feet. I waited for his next combination. He threw a looping overhand right, looking to take my head off. I ducked under it, pivoting my hips. I didn’t aim for his head. I didn’t aim for his body. I aimed for the meat of his left thigh, just above the knee. WHACK. My shin connected with his muscle. It sounded like a baseball bat hitting a side of beef. Carlos flinched. The smile flickered for a millisecond. He reset and came at me again. Jab, cross. I ate the jab. I tasted blood in my mouth. It tasted metallic and familiar. I didn’t care. I stepped in, twisting my body, and unleashed another low kick to the exact same spot. WHACK. This time, his leg buckled slightly. The nerve cluster in the thigh is a funny thing. You can be the strongest man in the world, but if someone shuts down the peroneal nerve, your leg becomes a dead weight. “Stop running!” Carlos shouted, frustration creeping into his voice. I didn’t answer. I wasn’t running. I was chopping down the tree. For the next three minutes, I became a machine. I ignored his punches. My left eye was swelling shut, turning the world into a blurry haze on one side. My nose was bleeding freely, dripping onto my chest. But every time he stepped forward, I kicked him. Inside leg kick. Outside leg kick. Calf kick. Thigh kick. His left leg was turning a horrific shade of purple and black. He started to limp. The fluid bounce was gone. He was flat-footed now, a stationary target. The crowd sensed the shift. The roar changed from excitement to bloodlust. They didn’t care who won; they just wanted to see something break. Carlos was desperate now. He knew his mobility was gone. He loaded up for a hail mary, a massive haymaker intended to end my life. I saw the telegraph. He dropped his shoulder. I didn’t retreat. I stepped in. I used a front teep—a push kick—straight to his face. My heel connected with his nose. Cartilage crunched. He stumbled back, eyes watering, hand flying to his face. “Chinese?” he sputtered, blood leaking through his fingers. “That’s right,” I whispered. He roared and lunged, abandoning all technique. This was it. I waited until his weight was fully committed on that damaged left leg. I spun. I put every ounce of hatred, every ounce of fear, every ounce of the freezing Siberian winters into my right leg. I aimed lower this time. Not the muscle. The joint. The kick connected with the side of his knee. CRACK. It wasn’t a thud. It was the sound of a dry branch snapping in a quiet forest. It was a sound that made your stomach turn. Carlos’s leg bent inward at an angle that anatomy does not allow. He didn’t scream immediately. There was a second of silence where his brain tried to process the information. He looked down at his leg, which was folded sideways like a broken doll. Then, the scream came. It was a high-pitched, animalistic shriek that tore through the noise of the arena. He collapsed to the canvas, clutching the ruin of his knee, rolling in the blood and sweat. The referee didn’t even count. He just waved his arms. I stood over him, my chest heaving. I looked at this Apollo, this golden god, now writhing in the dirt, snot and blood mixing on his beautiful face. I felt… nothing. No joy. No triumph. Just a cold, hollow relief that it wasn’t me screaming. I looked up at the VIP box. Sergei was there, lighting another cigarette, nodding. The Russian mobsters were clinking glasses of vodka. They had made a fortune. I spat a glob of blood onto the canvas and walked away. Chapter 2: Ghosts in the Bunkhouse That night, the adrenaline crash hit me like a freight train. The “accommodations” for the fighters were a joke. We were housed in a concrete block that used to be a holding cell for cattle. Rows of metal bunk beds, a single toilet that always backed up, and the constant hum of industrial fans trying to circulate the humid, stagnant air. I lay on my bunk, staring at the underside of the mattress above me. My shin was throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache. My eye was completely swollen shut now; I looked like I had gone a rounds with a baseball bat. “You got lucky, Viper.” The voice came from the bunk across the aisle. It was “Reaper.” He was a towering heavyweight from Ukraine, a man whose face was a map of scars. He had fought earlier in the day. He had won, but his eyebrow was split open so wide you could see the white of the skull. “Luck had nothing to do with it,” I muttered, touching the bruise on my ribs. “He had a glass leg.” “He had arrogance,” Reaper corrected, sitting up and cleaning his wound with a bottle of cheap vodka. “He thought he was invincible. Just like Khan did.” I flinched at the name. “Don’t talk about Khan.” “Why? Because he’s dead?” Reaper took a swig of the vodka and winced. “We’re all dead, Viper. We just haven’t laid down yet. Look around you.” I looked. The room was half empty now. When the tournament started three days ago, there were thirty-two of us. Now, there were eight. The empty bunks were like missing teeth in a smile. Where was “The Sickle”? The skinny Brazilian kid who fought like a demon? Gone. Strangled to death this afternoon. Where was “Ironhead”? The massive Korean judoka? Gone. Neck broken in the preliminaries. “Tomorrow is the semi-finals,” Reaper said, his voice low. “Do you know who you have?” “I don’t care,” I said, turning on my side, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt. “You should. It’s ‘The Priest’.” I froze. The Priest. I had watched his fight. He was from somewhere in Southeast Asia—Thailand or Cambodia maybe. He was small, wiry, with skin like tanned leather. He didn’t look like a fighter; he looked like a malnourished farmer. But in the ring… he was a nightmare. He didn’t punch. He didn’t kick much. He moved like water. He would slide around his opponents, slippery and elusive, until he got a hold of them. And once he grabbed you, it was over. He was a master of strangulation. He didn’t just submit people; he put them to sleep and held the choke until the light went out of their eyes. I had watched him kill “The Sickle” today. The Sickle had tapped out. He had slapped the mat frantically. But The Priest hadn’t let go. He just stared into the distance, a blank expression on his face, squeezing and squeezing until The Sickle stopped moving. “He’s fast,” Reaper warned. “And he likes the ground. If you go to the ground with him, Viper, you don’t come back up.” “I know,” I whispered. “Get some sleep,” Reaper grunted, lying back down. “If you can.” I closed my good eye. Sleep? How could I sleep? Every time I drifted off, I saw the faces. Not the faces of the men I fought, but the faces of the men I used to know. Da Hu. Ah Qiang. Nai Kun. The Indian brothers. They were all fighters I had trained with in the early days, back when we thought this was a sport. Back when we dreamed of gold belts and cheering crowds. Now, they were all gone. Some dead in the ring, some dead in alleyways, some just broken and discarded by the Syndicate. I was the only one left. The last gladiator. I touched the bandage on my hand. Why was I doing this? Why didn’t I just run? Because there was nowhere to run. The Russians had my passport. They had my family’s address back in China. They owned me, body and soul. “Just one more day,” I told the darkness. “Just survive one more day.” Chapter 3: The Embrace of the Priest The semi-final match was scheduled for noon. The sun was high and brutal, heating the metal roof of the arena until it felt like an oven inside. I stood in my corner, bouncing on my toes, trying to shake the stiffness out of my legs. My shin was bruised black and blue from kicking Carlos, but the adrenaline masked the pain. Across the ring stood The Priest. He was terrifyingly calm. He wasn’t bouncing. He wasn’t psyching himself up. He just stood there, arms hanging loosely by his sides, staring at my throat. His eyes were black pits, devoid of any humanity. He looked like a reptile waiting for a mouse to make a mistake. The bell rang. I didn’t rush in this time. I circled, keeping my distance. I threw a few probing jabs, trying to gauge his reaction. He didn’t flinch. He just tracked me, his head moving slightly, like a cobra following the movement of a flute. Suddenly, he lunged. It was fast. Inhumanly fast. He covered the distance in a blink. He didn’t throw a punch; he threw a low sweeping kick, but it was a feint. As I lifted my leg to check it, he changed levels and shot in for a takedown. He hit my waist with the force of a cannonball. I sprawled, trying to get my hips back, trying to stuff the takedown. But he was slippery. He used my own momentum against me, twisting his hips and dragging me to the canvas. Panic. Cold, sharp panic spiked in my chest. I was on the ground. This was his world. I tried to scramble to my feet, to wall-walk up the cage, but he was on me like a wet blanket. He moved with a fluid, suffocating pressure. He passed my guard effortlessly, sliding from side control to mount. He was heavy. For a small man, he felt like he weighed a ton. His center of gravity was perfect. He didn’t strike. He didn’t try to punch my face. He began to work his hands up, snake-like, seeking my neck. I grabbed his wrists, fighting him, but his grip was like iron pincers. He isolated my left arm, trapping it with his knee. Then, he wrapped his arm around my head. He was setting up a choke. A D’Arce choke? A Guillotine? No, he was transitioning to the back. In a scramble of limbs, he took my back. His legs wrapped around my waist, his hooks sinking in. I was in hell. I could hear his breathing right next to my ear. It was slow, steady. In. Out. In. Out. He wasn’t even tired. His right arm snaked under my chin. I tucked my chin, burying it in my chest, trying to block the forearm. But he was relentless. He used his other hand to pry my head up, just an inch. That inch was all he needed. His forearm slid under my jaw, pressing against the carotid arteries. He locked his hands together. He squeezed. The world instantly started to go grey. The roar of the crowd faded into a dull buzz. The lights seemed to dim. It wasn’t painful. It was just… inevitable. It felt like sinking into deep water. I remembered The Sickle. I remembered how he tapped, and how The Priest didn’t let go. If I tap, I die. If I don’t tap, I die. The blood flow to my brain was being cut off. My vision tunneled. I saw spots of light dancing in front of me.

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Chapter 1: The Echo of “Doe” I knew my place in the universe. It was defined not by who I was, but by who I wasn’t. I wasn’t the sun. I wasn’t the gravity that pulled planets into orbit. I was, at best, a small, rocky moon, tidally locked to a gas giant, destined to show only one face to the world while the other froze in perpetual darkness. I was the “Placeholder.” The “Backup Plan.” From the very first day I agreed to pretend to be Chase’s girlfriend, I harbored a cruel, crystalline self-awareness. So, when the news broke—when the whisper network of our social circle confirmed that she was coming back, that the Prodigal Princess, his “White Moonlight,” had touched down at JFK—I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I sat in my beige-walled apartment, staring at a cold cup of Earl Grey, and calculated the trajectory of my own obsolescence. I picked up my phone. The screen felt heavy, like a slab of granite. I typed the text to Chase. “We need to talk. It’s time to call it off.” I expected resistance. Maybe a polite protest. Maybe a “Let’s talk about this.” Instead, the response was silence. A long, stretching silence that spanned hours. And then, surprisingly, a flash of anger. Not relief. Anger. Chase didn’t want to let me go. But not because he loved me. God, no. He was angry because the prop he had been using for three years was walking off the stage before the curtain call. Let’s rewind. To understand why I let myself become a prop, you have to understand the name. My name is Chloe. But growing up in the sprawling, manicured suburbs of Connecticut, I had a nickname: “Doe.” It wasn’t a compliment. It was derived from my last name, Doe, yes, but mostly it was because of my eyes. They were too big for my face, always wide, always startled, always looking like a deer caught in the high beams of an oncoming semi-truck. I was slow. My reaction time was a beat behind the rest of the world. When the punchline landed, I was the one blinking in confusion while the laughter washed over me. I was the kid who got picked last for kickball. I was the kid who, during games of Tag in the cul-de-sac, was always “It.” I remember one humid July evening when I was seven. The air smelled of cut grass and asphalt. The neighborhood kids were playing “Duck, Duck, Goose.” They knew I was slow. They knew I couldn’t catch anyone. So they targeted me. “Goose!” I scrambled up, my Keds slipping on the grass, lunging for the boy who tagged me. He was effortlessly faster. He sat down in my spot, laughing. “Goose!” another girl screamed five minutes later. I ran again. I failed again. I was trapped in a loop of humiliation, running circles around a ring of laughing faces, my chest burning, tears pricking the corners of my eyes, too “Doe-like” to shout about the unfairness of it all. That was when Chase stepped in. Chase was the boy next door. Literally. Our fathers were business partners in a boutique architectural firm, and our houses were mirror images of each other, separated only by a hedge of hydrangeas. He was three years older. At ten, he was already tall, with limbs that seemed to stretch overnight. He had sandy blond hair that fell into eyes the color of Long Island Sound on a cloudy day—grey, blue, intense. He broke the circle. He didn’t just tag someone; he stopped the game. “Cut it out,” he barked. His voice hadn’t dropped yet, but it carried the imperious weight of a future CEO. He put his hands on his hips, glaring at the other kids. “You’re targeting her. It’s cheap. Stop it.” The other kids froze. Chase was the unspoken king of the cul-de-sac. If Chase said the game was over, it was over. He walked over to me. I was panting, clutching the hem of my stained t-shirt, waiting for him to mock me too. Instead, he handed me a juice box he’d pulled from his cooler. “Stop running, Doe,” he said, wiping a smudge of dirt from my cheek with his thumb. “You don’t have to chase them. Stay here. I got you.” I got you. Three words. That was the foundation. That was the cement poured into the bedrock of my soul. For the next six years, Chase was my shield. He walked me to the bus stop. He did my math homework because my brain short-circuited when looking at fractions. When the adults joked about us—”Look at the little lovebirds,” “Arranged marriage in the making!”—I would turn the color of a ripe tomato. Chase? He never blushed. He would just grin, wrap a proprietary arm around my neck, and announce to the room, “Chloe is under my protection. Mess with her, you answer to me.” The room would erupt in laughter. My heart would erupt in a quiet, desperate hope. I cataloged these moments like a curator in a museum of unrequited love. I wrote them down in a diary with a lock I kept the key to on a chain around my neck. I was precocious in my sadness. I was mature in my longing. But Chase? Chase was just a boy playing the hero. His emotional awakening didn’t happen with me. It happened sophomore year of high school. And the catalyst wasn’t me. It was Vanessa. My stepsister. Chapter 2: The Girl in the Floral Dress My father remarried when I was twelve. My mother had passed away when I was a toddler—a faded Polaroid in my memory. Dad’s taste in women was consistent: delicate, artistic, fragile. Until Vanessa’s mother, Linda. Linda was vibrant, loud, and calculating. And she brought Vanessa. I will never forget the day Vanessa moved in. I was sitting on the stairs, clutching a copy of The Great Gatsby, struggling to understand the symbolism of the green light. The front door opened, and summer breezed in. Vanessa was fourteen, the same age as Chase. She didn’t look fourteen. She looked like something carved out of marble and rose petals. She was wearing a floral sundress that cinched at the waist, and she stood with a posture that suggested she owned the air she breathed. Chase had come over to help me with my algebra. He walked into the foyer just as Vanessa was directing the movers. He stopped. I watched it happen from the landing. I saw the precise moment Chase’s universe shifted its axis. He dropped his backpack. It hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud. “Hi,” Vanessa said, turning to him. She didn’t smile—not fully. She just offered a cool, appraising look. “I’m Vanessa. You must be the neighbor.” Chase, the boy who could talk his way out of detention, the boy who charmed mothers and intimidated bullies, stammered. “I… uh. Yeah. Chase. I’m Chase.” “Nice to meet you, Chase,” she said, dismissing him with a turn of her head. “Can you help me with this box? It’s heavy.” “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, absolutely.” He walked right past me. He didn’t even look up the stairs. That was the first time I tasted the acid of jealousy. It wasn’t a sharp pain; it was a dull, heavy ache, like swallowing a stone. Vanessa wasn’t mean. That would have been easier. If she were a wicked stepsister, I could have hated her. But she was… tolerant. She treated me with the gentle, slightly condescending patience one might offer a slow-witted golden retriever. “Oh, Chloe, let me fix your hair,” she would say. “You can’t go out looking like a haystack.” “Chloe, stop slouching.” Linda, her mother, tried too hard. She wanted to solidify her place in my father’s house, so she constantly pushed the “sisters” narrative. “Look at you two!” Linda would coo, clasping her hands. “You look so much alike! especially the nose. You could be twins!” Vanessa would pull me aside later, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Ignore my mom. She’s desperate. We look nothing alike.” I would nod, obediently. But I would go to the mirror later and trace the curve of my nose, then look at hers. We did look alike. Just a little. But where I was a sketch, Vanessa was the oil painting. Where I was the draft, she was the final publication. Chase, however, refused to see the resemblance. “You look nothing like her,” he told me once, while we were sitting on my porch swing. He was tossing a baseball into a glove, his eyes tracking Vanessa through the window as she practiced the cello. “Really?” I asked, a flicker of hope igniting. “Yeah,” he scoffed. “You’re… you know, ‘Doe.’ You’re goofy. Vanessa is… intense. She has these eyes. They’re sharp.” He said it like an insult to me, but a compliment to her. “Don’t let anyone compare you,” he added, throwing the ball hard into the leather. “You’re fine the way you are.” It sounded like consolation. You’re the consolation prize, Chloe. And that’s okay. I stopped talking to him for three days after that. He didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to figure out how to get Vanessa to ride in his new Jeep Wrangler. He and Vanessa became an entity. A binary star system. They were both popular, both beautiful, both sharp-tongued. The school gossip pages loved them. I felt like I was watching a movie I wasn’t allowed to be in. The distance between the middle school building and the high school wing felt like an ocean. But I forgot one crucial thing: Even before Vanessa, even when I had Chase all to myself, he had never looked at me that way. Chapter 3: The Birthday Paradox The inevitable happened on my birthday. It was a family dinner. My father had booked a private room at Le Bernadin. I was turning fifteen. Chase sat next to Vanessa. The air between them crackled with static electricity. They spoke in shorthand, laughing at inside jokes, ignoring the lobster bisque. I opened my presents alone. A new laptop from Dad. A cashmere scarf from Linda. “Where did Chase and Vanessa go?” Dad asked, looking around as the waiters brought the cake. They were gone. They came back twenty minutes later. Vanessa’s lipstick was smudged. Chase’s tie was loosened. They looked flushed, guilty, and exhilaratingly alive. “Sorry,” Chase said, grinning—a real, wolfish grin I had never seen before. “We got lost looking for the restroom.” A lie. A terrible, beautiful lie. That night, Vanessa came into my room. She crawled into my bed, smelling of Chase’s cologne—sandalwood and expensive tobacco. “Chloe,” she whispered in the dark. “We’re dating.” My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Chase?” I feigned ignorance. “But he’s… he’s a player. You said you hated him.” “I know,” she sighed, sounding delighted. “He’s arrogant. He’s annoying. But… he’s mine.” He’s mine. The possession in her voice chilled me. “I know you guys are close,” she continued, her voice softening. “You’re like his little mascot. Don’t worry. I won’t make him stop hanging out with you.” Mascot. I lay there, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars I had stuck to my ceiling when I was ten. I realized then that hope is the cruelest thing in the world. It doesn’t die when you feed it poison; it dies when you starve it. And I was starving. Chapter 4: The Calculus of Julian High school. The great equalizer. Or the great divider. Freshman year hit me like a freight train. My GPA tanked. I couldn’t focus. Every time I saw Chase and Vanessa in the hallway—his varsity jacket draped over her shoulders, her hand in his back pocket—I felt a physical blow to the stomach. My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Gable, was a woman who believed in “social engineering.” She rearranged the seating chart based on test scores. “To facilitate peer tutoring,” she claimed. I had failed the last math test. Spectacularly. “Chloe Doe,” Mrs. Gable announced. “You’re in the back row. Next to Julian.” Julian. I knew of him. Everyone knew of him. He was the “Sleepy Genius.” Julian didn’t walk; he sauntered. He had messy dark hair that looked like he had just rolled out of bed, and he wore hoodies that were perpetually two sizes too big. He sat in the back of every class, legs stretched out, usually asleep. And yet, he pulled a perfect 4.0 GPA. He was the kind of guy who solved complex calculus problems in his head while chewing gum, but forgot to bring a pencil to class. I dragged my bag to the back row. Julian was already there, head on the desk, arms folded as a pillow. “Hi,” I whispered, sitting down. One eye opened. It was dark, almost black, with eyelashes that were unfairly long for a boy. “You’re the girl who stares out the window,” he mumbled. His voice was gravelly with sleep. “I’m Chloe,” I corrected. “I know,” he sat up, stretching his arms over his head. His hoodie lifted slightly, revealing a sliver of skin. “You’re Chase’s shadow.” I stiffened. “I’m not his shadow.” “Sure,” Julian yawned. “And I’m not tired.” We didn’t speak for a week. I struggled with my trigonometry. He slept. Then came the incident with the graph paper. I was erasing a hole through my paper, frustration tears pricking my eyes. The sine wave just wouldn’t curve right. A hand reached over. Long fingers, calloused from… something. Guitar? Gaming? He took my pencil. “Stop murdering the paper,” he said. With three swift strokes, he corrected my equation and drew the perfect curve. “You’re overthinking the variable,” he said, tossing the pencil back. “It’s simpler than you think. X is just X. Stop trying to make it Y.” I looked at him. He was looking at me with an intensity that unsettled me. He wasn’t sleepy now. His eyes were sharp, intelligent, and oddly amused. “Thanks,” I muttered. “Don’t mention it, Doe,” he smirked. “My name is Chloe.” “I heard Chase call you Doe,” he shrugged. “Fits. You look like you’re about to bolt.” “I hate that nickname.” “Then stop acting like prey,” he said softly. That was the beginning. Julian was… loud. Not in volume, but in presence. Once he decided he was awake, he wouldn’t shut up. He poked me. He drew caricatures of Mrs. Gable on the corner of my notebook. He asked me a million questions. “Why do you eat apples with a spoon? That’s weird.” “What kind of music is this? It sounds like sad whales.” “Do you ever get mad? Like, scream-at-the-sky mad?” “I don’t scream,” I told him one day during study hall. “Everyone screams,” he countered, leaning his chair back on two legs, balancing precariously. “You just do it on the inside. It’s gonna give you an ulcer.” I found myself smiling. “You’re annoying, Julian.” “And you,” he grinned, “are finally smiling. Point for Julian.” Chapter 5: The Horror Movie and the Interruption Winter break arrived. Chase and Vanessa were fighting. I knew because Vanessa complained to me every night, and Chase complained to me every morning. I was the Switzerland of their relationship—neutral ground where they dumped their emotional garbage. But I was starting to detach. Thanks to Julian. Julian had texted me. “Hey, Doe. I bet you’ve never seen a horror movie.” “I hate scary movies.” “Liar. I saw you reading Stephen King in the library. Come to the cinema. My treat. If you get scared, you can hold my hand. I charge $5 per minute though.” I went. We watched some slasher film about a haunted campground. I spent half the movie peering through my fingers. Julian spent half the movie laughing and eating popcorn. Afterwards, we stood outside in the freezing cold. Snow was starting to fall. “You survived,” he teased, wrapping his scarf around his own neck. “Barely,” I shivered. “Hey,” he stepped closer. The neon sign of the theater reflected in his dark eyes. “You look nice when you’re terrified. Very… alert.” “Is that a compliment?” “In my book, yeah.” He reached out and tugged a strand of my hair. “You should come out more. With me.” “Why?” “Because,” he said, his voice dropping. “I think you’re interesting, Chloe. More interesting than the people you hang out with.” My heart did a strange little flip. Not the heavy thud it did for Chase. This was lighter. Fluttery. “Okay,” I said. “Okay?” He looked surprised. “Okay.” Just then, a car honked aggressively behind us. I turned. A black Jeep Wrangler. Chase. He rolled down the window. He looked furious. “Chloe!” he shouted. “Get in the car.” I blinked. “Chase? What are you doing here?” “My mom called. Dad’s looking for you. Get in.” “I’m with a friend,” I gestured to Julian. Chase looked at Julian. The look was withering. “Who’s this? The sleeper cell?” Julian didn’t flinch. He stepped forward, putting himself slightly in front of me. “Name’s Julian. And you’re interrupting.” “I’m taking her home,” Chase snapped. “Chloe. Now.” The tone. It was the tone he used when he defended me from bullies. But now, it felt like he was the bully. “I…” I looked at Julian. He gave me a small nod, a look that said Your call. Old habits die hard. The reflex to obey Chase was ingrained in my DNA. “I should go,” I told Julian. “My dad…” Julian’s face fell. Just a fraction. “Right. Go be a good girl.” He turned and walked away into the snow, hands deep in his pockets. I got into Chase’s car. “Who was that guy?” Chase demanded as he peeled out of the parking lot. “Just a classmate. Julian.” “Stay away from him,” Chase gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “He looks like trouble. You’re too naive for guys like that.” “I’m not naive, Chase!” “Yes, you are,” he shot back. “You’re Doe. You need looking after.” I looked out the window, watching the snowflakes melt against the glass. “Where is Vanessa?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “We broke up.” My breath hitched. “But,” he continued, glancing at me, “We’ll get back together. We always do. Right?” He needed reassurance. He needed his mascot to tell him he was the king. “Right,” I whispered. “You always do.” But as the car drove on, all I could think about was Julian walking alone in the snow, and the way he had looked at me—like I was a person, not a shadow. Chapter 6: The Barbecue A week later, Chase tried to make amends. He organized a barbecue at his parents’ lake house. He invited everyone. Including Vanessa (they were “talking” again). And, surprisingly, he told me to invite “that Julian kid.” “Why?” I asked. “To prove I’m not a controlling jerk,” Chase said. “And so you have someone to talk to while I fix things with Ness.” So, we were at the lake house. The air smelled of charcoal and pine. I was sitting on the deck, watching Julian skewer marshmallows. He was surprisingly good at social events. He had the guys laughing at his impressions of the teachers. Chase was by the grill, watching us. Vanessa walked over to me. She handed me a plate of fruit. “No melon,” she said. “I picked it out. I know you’re allergic.” “Thanks,” I said. “Wait, I’m not allergic to melon. I’m allergic to eggplant.” Vanessa paused. She looked at the grill where Chase was putting vegetables on skewers. “Oh,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Right. I hate melon. You hate eggplant.” She walked over to Chase. “Babe,” she purred, loud enough for me to hear. “You put eggplant on these. Chloe will die if she eats that.” Chase froze. He looked at the skewer in his hand. Then he looked at me. “S**t,” he muttered. “I forgot. I thought… I thought it was Ness who was allergic.” He had confused us. He had confused the girl he “loved” with the girl he grew up with. Julian dropped his marshmallow stick. “You don’t know she’s allergic to eggplant?” Julian asked, his voice cutting through the chatter. “You’ve lived next door to her for ten years.” Chase bristled. “It was a mistake.” “A mistake is a typo,” Julian said, standing up. He wasn’t slouching now. He looked dangerous. “That? That’s just not caring.” “Julian, stop,” I whispered, grabbing his arm. “No,” Julian looked at Chase. “You treat her like furniture, man. You think she’s just always gonna be there in the corner.” “She’s my best friend,” Chase stepped away from the grill. “Back off.” “Then treat her like one,” Julian spat. He turned to me. “I’m leaving. This vibe sucks. You coming?” I looked at Chase. He looked angry, embarrassed. I looked at Vanessa. She looked amused. I looked at Julian. He looked… disappointed. “I…” I faltered. “My dad is coming to pick me up later.” Julian nodded. Once. A sharp, final motion. “Okay, Doe. Have it your way.” He walked off the deck, through the sliding glass doors, and out the front. That night, Chase came to my room. He brought me a bag of gummy bears and some stomach medicine. “In case you accidentally ate the eggplant,” he mumbled, handing me the bag. “Thanks,” I said. He stood there, awkward. “That Julian guy… he likes you,” Chase said. “He’s just a friend.” “He doesn’t look at you like a friend,” Chase said. His voice was tight. “He looks at you like… like he wants to own you.” “That’s rich coming from you,” I snapped. It was the first time I had ever snapped at him. Chase looked shocked. “I’m going to sleep,” I said, closing the door in his face. I leaned against the door, my heart pounding. I looked at the bag of medicine. Pepto-Bismol. I wasn’t allergic to eggplant. I just didn’t like the texture. Chase didn’t know me at all. Chapter 7: The Peach Soju Epiphany College was supposed to be a reinvention. I stayed in-state, attending a liberal arts college in Connecticut, majoring in Marketing—safe, practical, decidedly un-heroic. Julian, consistent with his genius-slacker brand, got into a top-tier pre-law program in Boston. We were separated by a two-hour Amtrak ride, but in those first two years, the distance felt negligible. We were tethered by an invisible cord of constant digital noise and weekend visits. I remember the summer after sophomore year. We were at a dive bar in Boston, the kind with sticky floors and neon signs buzzing like trapped insects. Julian had dragged me there to celebrate my passing a brutal statistics final. “You need to loosen up, Doe,” he’d said, sliding a drink toward me. “Try this. Peach Soju. It tastes like juice, hits like a truck.” I took a sip. It was sweet, cloying, and synthetic. “It tastes like liquid candy,” I laughed. The lighting in the booth was dim, casting Julian’s sharp cheekbones in shadow. He was looking at me with that gaze again—the one that made me feel like I was the only person in the room, the only data point that mattered. He leaned in, his arm draping casually over the back of the vinyl seat behind me. “You’ve got something…” he murmured, reaching out. I thought he was going to wipe my mouth. Instead, his hand cupped my cheek, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. The noise of the bar—the clinking glass, the indie rock bassline—faded into a dull roar. “Julian?” I breathed. “I’ve wanted to do this since high school,” he whispered. He kissed me. It tasted like peaches and cheap alcohol. It wasn’t the tentative, terrifying kiss of a first crush. It was confident, claiming. It was the antithesis of how Chase treated me. Chase treated me like a porcelain doll to be placed on a shelf; Julian treated me like a variable he wanted to solve. That night, walking back to his dorm, the air thick with humidity, he asked me the question that had been hovering between us for months. “So,” he kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. “Are we doing this? Or are you still waiting for the Prince of Suburbia to notice his Cinderella?” I stopped walking. Under the streetlamp, my shadow stretched long and thin. “I don’t know,” I admitted, the old ghost of Chase flickering in my mind. “I feel like… I feel like I’m always the supporting character, Julian. Even in my own head.” Julian grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “In my movie,” he said, his voice fierce, “you’re the lead. You’re the whole damn plot. Don’t you get that?” We started dating. And for two years, I let myself believe the script had changed.

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Prologue: The Whisper The truth didn’t start with the blood on my hydrangeas. It didn’t start with the sirens that shattered the pristine silence of Blackwood Estate, nor did it start with the terrifying footage of a man being taken apart like a Lego set. It started with a question, asked in the quiet, dusty aftermath of a funeral, over a plate of cold tuna casserole. Arthur Sterling was dead. The community was in mourning. The flags at the local high school were flying at half-mast. I looked at my son, Leo, who was pushing peas around his plate with a fork. He was twelve, that awkward age where limbs are too long and silence is a weapon. He had been one of Sterling’s favorite students. “Leo,” I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the empty kitchen. “Mr. Sterling… before he died, was there ever anything… off? Anything weird?” Leo didn’t look up. He stabbed a pea. “He used to give us private tutoring,” Leo said, his voice flat, devoid of the grief everyone else seemed to be performing. “He’d sit really close. Behind me.” I froze, the dishrag in my hand dripping soapy water onto the floor. “Close how?” Leo finally looked at me. His eyes were dark, unreadable pools. “He’d whisper,” Leo said. “Hot air. He’d press his mouth right against my ear. His lips would touch the skin.” “What?” I gasped, dropping the rag. The sound of wet fabric hitting the tile was a slap. “Did he do anything else? Leo, tell me.” Leo went back to his peas. “No. That’s all.” But as I stood there, a cold sensation trickled down my spine, icy and slow, like melting snow under a shirt collar. It wasn’t just the creepiness of the image. It was the intuition—that sharp, primal alarm bell that rings in the deep recesses of a mother’s brain. I realized then that the police were wrong. The neighbors were wrong. The newspapers, with their headlines about a “Senseless Tragedy,” were wrong. Arthur Sterling wasn’t a martyr. And the monster they were hunting? He wasn’t real. Chapter 1: The Red Morning Let’s go back to the morning the world ended. It was a Tuesday in late October. In the Pacific Northwest, October is less about crisp leaves and pumpkin spice, and more about a pervasive, bone-chilling dampness. The fog rolls off the Puget Sound and settles into the valleys, turning upscale gated communities like Blackwood Estate into scenes from a noir film. I woke up at 6:00 AM. Routine is my religion. I put on my silk robe, slid my feet into my slippers, and walked to the front door to retrieve the milk delivery. We still get milk in glass bottles here—retro, expensive, and performative. Just like everything else in Blackwood. I opened the heavy oak door. The air smelled of wet pine needles and ozone. I stepped onto the porch, hugging my robe tighter against the chill. I looked down at the welcome mat for the milk crate. It wasn’t there. I looked up, scanning the yard. And then I saw it. At first, my brain refused to process the visual data. It tried to categorize the object as something logical. A Halloween decoration? A dropped pumpkin? A mannequin head from one of the pretentious art installations the neighbors loved? It was resting in the middle of my prize-winning hydrangea bush. The flowers, usually a vibrant, genetically modified blue, were splashed with a dark, viscous crimson. It was a head. Arthur Sterling’s head. His eyes were wide open. Milky, glazed, staring fixedly at my front door as if he were waiting to be invited in for coffee. His mouth was frozen in a rictus of shock, lips pulled back to reveal expensive dental veneers. The skin at the neck was… ragged. I didn’t scream immediately. There was a moment of absolute, vacuum-sealed silence where the only sound was the thudding of my own heart in my ears. Then, the milk bottle in my hand slipped. SMASH. The sound of shattering glass broke the spell. I screamed. It wasn’t a movie scream. It was a guttural, animalistic shriek that tore at my vocal cords. It echoed off the manicured hedges, bounced off the three-car garages, and pierced the foggy morning silence of the entire estate. For months afterward, the neighbors—those gossiping harpies—would refer to me as “The Banshee of Blackwood.” They could afford to joke. They weren’t the ones who had to hose the blood of a “Teacher of the Year” off their driveway. Chapter 2: The Last Supper The Blackwood Estate security system is state-of-the-art. 4K cameras, motion sensors, night vision. We pay thousands a year in HOA fees for the illusion of safety. Paradoxically, that expensive surveillance provided the police with a front-row seat to a horror show. Detective Miller, a man who looked like he had been carved out of granite and cigarette smoke, sat in my living room later that day. He played the footage on his tablet, his face impassive. “Mr. Sterling attended a gala last night,” Miller said. “The Class of 2008 Reunion. It was held at the Club House, just inside the north gate.” I knew the event. Arthur Sterling was the guest of honor. He wasn’t just a math teacher; he was an institution. He was the “Olympiad King.” Parents fought tooth and nail to get their sons into his advanced calculus classes. He had a wall of awards in his office and a reputation that was bulletproof. According to the witness statements Miller recited, Sterling had been in high spirits that night. He was holding court, surrounded by adoring former students who were now tech CEOs, doctors, and lawyers. He was drinking aged scotch, his face flushed with the intoxication of power and adoration. “He was laughing,” Miller said, scrolling through his notes. “Witnesses say he was particularly chatty with the Cole brothers. Do you know them?” “The Coles?” I nodded. “They live two houses down. Sebastian and Julian.” “Right. Sterling was making jokes. He told Sebastian, ‘Look at you boys now. You’ve made it. You can even afford such a handsome nurse for your brother.’” The “handsome nurse.” Elias. Everyone knew Elias. Detective Miller tapped the screen. “Sterling declined a ride home. He said he wanted to walk off the scotch. He said, ‘I’m not that old yet.’ He walked into the fog at 11:15 PM.” That was the last time Arthur Sterling was seen alive by a human being. Five minutes later, the cameras caught him again. Or what was left of him. Chapter 3: The Anatomy of a Shadow The footage from Camera 04, which overlooks the weeping willow path near the community pond, was grainy but terrifyingly clear. 11:20 PM. Sterling is walking unsteadily. He stops to light a cigar. The flame illuminates his face for a split second. Then, a shape detaches itself from the darkness behind him. It’s a man. Tall. Lean. Wearing a dark hoodie, but the face is visible under the streetlamp. It was Elias. The Cole brothers’ caregiver. The movement was fluid, practiced. Elias didn’t rush. He stepped into the light, raised a heavy object—later identified as a machete—and brought the blunt edge down on the back of Sterling’s neck. Sterling dropped like a puppet with cut strings. No scream. Just a heavy, wet thud. Elias stood over the body for a second, motionless. He looked calm. Almost bored. Then, he grabbed Sterling by the collar of his expensive trench coat and dragged him into the blind spot of the camera, behind a dense thicket of rhododendrons. For ten minutes, the screen showed nothing but the swaying branches and the empty path. Ten minutes. I tried to imagine what was happening in that darkness. Ten minutes is a long time. It’s enough time to boil an egg. Enough time to listen to three pop songs. Enough time to take a human being apart. 11:30 PM. Elias reappeared. He was carrying something heavy. He made two trips. Trip one: The torso. Trip two: The limbs and the head. He walked with a steady, rhythmic gait, moving toward my property. He arranged the pieces on my lawn with the care of a gardener planting bulbs. Then, he turned around. He looked directly into Camera 05, which is mounted on my garage. He wasn’t wearing a mask. His face was illuminated by the motion-sensor floodlight. He was breathtakingly handsome. High cheekbones, a sharp jawline, eyes that seemed to glitter even in the monochrome footage. He wiped a speck of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. And then he walked away, disappearing into the night. Chapter 4: The Perfect Suspect The police thought they had it easy. They had the face. They had the weapon (found in the bushes). They had the motive—or at least, a suspect who had been publicly mocked by the victim hours earlier. “We’re looking for Elias,” Detective Miller announced at the press conference the next morning. “He is considered armed and dangerous.” But I knew something was wrong. Because I knew Elias. Or I thought I did. Elias wasn’t just a caregiver. He was a local legend among the bored housewives of Blackwood Estate. He worked for the Cole brothers. Sebastian Cole was a high-profile stylist, the kind who flew to LA and New York for Fashion Week. His younger brother, Julian, was a tragic figure. A former prodigy, a PhD candidate from an Ivy League school, who had tried to kill himself six months ago. Julian had jumped from the second-story balcony of his brother’s penthouse in the city. He survived, but his legs were shattered. He was confined to a wheelchair, a brooding, silent figure with hair that hung over his eyes. After the suicide attempt, Sebastian moved Julian here, to the suburbs, for “peace and quiet.” They bought the old Henderson place—the one with the pool where a child had drowned in the 90s. We called it the Cursed House. But they needed help. Sebastian traveled too much. They needed a live-in nurse. They went through a few bad ones. One stole silver. Another was caught smoking meth in the gazebo. And then came Elias. Elias was an angel. He arrived a month ago. He was quiet, efficient, and devastatingly attractive. He pushed Julian’s wheelchair around the lake every afternoon. We would watch from our kitchen windows, sipping Chardonnay, admiring the way Elias’s t-shirt clung to his shoulders. “He’s too good to be true,” my neighbor, Karen, had said once during a book club meeting. “Who looks like that and wipes chins for a living?” “Maybe he’s creating good karma,” I had replied. Since Elias arrived, Julian had improved. We saw him sitting up straighter. The dark circles under his eyes faded. Elias massaged his legs on the park benches, seemingly tireless. So, when the police said Elias was the killer, we were shocked, but we believed it. The footage didn’t lie. But then the investigation hit a wall. A wall made of nothing. Chapter 5: The Man Who Wasn’t There Three days after the murder, Detective Miller came back to my house. He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled like stale coffee and frustration. “Mrs. Vance,” he said, declining my offer of tea. “You live next door to the Coles. Did you ever talk to Elias?” “A few times,” I said. “Just hellos. He was polite. Soft-spoken.” “Did he ever mention where he was from? Family? Last name?” “No. Just Elias.” Miller rubbed his face with his hands. “Here’s the problem. We can’t find him.” “He ran away,” I said. “He took a cab to the north highway.” “We found the cabbie,” Miller said. “Driver named Old Man Henderson. He dropped Elias off at the edge of the badlands, near the state forest. We have dogs out there now. But that’s not what I mean.” Miller leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I mean we can’t find him. In the system.” “What do you mean?” “The Cole brothers gave us everything. The agency paperwork. The ID copy. The references. It’s all fake, Mrs. Vance. All of it.” “Fake?” “The agency doesn’t exist. The references are dead numbers. The Social Security number on his W-4 belongs to a woman who died in 1985.” Miller pulled out a photo of Elias—a screen grab from the surveillance video. “We ran facial recognition. FBI database, DMV, passport records, Interpol. Nothing. Zero matches.” He tapped the photo. “This man doesn’t have a birth certificate. He doesn’t have a credit score. He doesn’t have a high school yearbook photo. It’s like he popped into existence a month ago, killed Arthur Sterling, and then vanished into thin air.” “That’s impossible,” I said. “He lived next door. I saw him. He bought groceries at Whole Foods.” “Paid in cash,” Miller said grimly. “Always cash. No digital footprint.” I looked at the photo of Elias. That perfect, symmetrical face. The way the light hit his cheekbones. “So who is he?” I asked. “That’s the million-dollar question,” Miller said, standing up. “He’s a ghost. And ghosts are hard to handcuff.” Chapter 6: The Stylist and the Invalid The police turned the heat up on the Cole brothers. If Elias didn’t exist, surely his employers knew something. I watched from my window as the squad cars swarmed their driveway. Sebastian Cole, the stylist, looked impeccable even under interrogation. He stood on his porch, wearing a cashmere sweater, smoking a thin cigarette. He looked baffled, worried, but cooperative. “I found him through a friend of a friend,” I heard him tell the reporters who were camped out on the lawn. “I was desperate. My brother needed help. Elias seemed perfect. I didn’t run a background check. I’m an artist, not a private investigator. I just wanted my brother to be safe.” And Julian? Julian sat in his wheelchair in the window, looking out at the chaos. He looked smaller than I remembered. Fragile. His long hair curtained his face. The narrative was shifting. The media was painting the Coles as victims—two tragic brothers conned by a sociopathic drifter who infiltrated their home and then committed a brutal murder. “Poor Julian,” Karen said over the phone. “First the suicide attempt, now this. He was finally getting better, and his nurse turns out to be a butcher.” “It’s terrifying,” I agreed. “To think we let him walk around our kids.” But my son’s words kept echoing in my head. Hot air. He’d press his mouth right against my ear. And then, I started thinking about feet. Specifically, ankles. Detective Miller had asked me if I noticed anything odd about Elias. I had said no. I had said he was a good nurse because he massaged Julian’s legs constantly. “Why do you say that?” Miller had asked. “Because people in wheelchairs often have edema,” I explained. “Swelling in the ankles. Poor circulation. My father was in a chair for ten years. His ankles were always swollen. But Julian… his ankles were thin. Bony. Perfect.” “So Elias was doing a good job,” Miller had concluded. “Yes,” I had said. “He must have been massaging him hours a day.” But now, staring at the empty driveway next door, a different thought crystallized. Swelling doesn’t just go away with massage. Gravity is gravity. Unless… Unless the person in the wheelchair isn’t paralyzed. Unless the person in the wheelchair has been walking around when no one is looking. I grabbed my binoculars—the ones I told my husband were for birdwatching—and focused them on the Cole brothers’ living room. It was dark. But the TV was on, casting a flickering blue light. I saw Julian. He was in his wheelchair. But then, he reached for something on the high shelf. A book. He didn’t wheel over to the grabber tool. He didn’t call for Sebastian. He stood up. He stood up smoothly, effortlessly, on two strong legs. He grabbed the book, stretched his back like a cat, and then sat back down. My breath caught in my throat. Julian wasn’t crippled. And if Julian wasn’t crippled… then who was Elias? I thought about Sebastian’s job. He wasn’t just a stylist. He was a makeup artist. A special effects wizard. I remembered reading an interview with him in Vogue where he talked about “transforming the face.” The face is a canvas, he had said. I can make you look like a queen, or a corpse, or a completely different person. I looked at the photo of Elias on the news report. The sharp cheekbones. The slightly shadowed eyes. The perfection of it. It looked… contoured. I realized then that we weren’t looking for a man named Elias. We were looking for a masterpiece. A painting that walked. And the artist was right next door.

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Chapter 1: The Girl Who Didn’t Cry Pain is the world’s most primal language. It’s the universal alarm system, the scream that says, “Stop, you are dying.” I was born deaf to that scream. My name is Nora Vance. In the sprawling, manicured estate of the Vance political dynasty in Upstate New York, I was known simply as “The Spare.” Or, if the servants thought I couldn’t hear them, “The Ghost.” My twin sister, Nova, was the masterpiece. She was the vibrant oil painting—full of color, passion, and fire. I was the rough sketch, discarded in the trash bin. Nova was the daughter who would inherit my father’s Senate seat. I was the daughter who had to be watched constantly, not because I was precious, but because I would chew through my own lip until it bled and not even notice. I remember sitting in the rose garden when I was six. I was fascinated by the thorns. They looked like little shark teeth. I grabbed a stem and squeezed. I watched, with a detached, scientific curiosity, as the blood welled up between my fingers, thick and crimson. It didn’t hurt. It felt like… warm water. Nothing more. My mother found me. She didn’t hug me. She screamed. Not in fear for me, but in horror of me. “She’s doing it again!” she shrieked to the nanny. “Fix her! Bandage her! God, she’s like a monster.” Monster. That was the label that stuck. While Nova was learning piano and ballet, I was undergoing tests in sterile white rooms. The doctors called it CIPA—Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis. “She can’t feel pain, heat, or cold,” the neurologist told my father, Senator Vance. “She lacks the nerves to protect herself. She is a danger to herself.” My father looked at me with the same expression he wore when he looked at a polling chart that was trending downward. Disappointment. Liability. “Keep her alive,” he ordered. “But keep her out of sight. We have an image to maintain.” So, I grew up in the shadows. I learned to fake it. I learned that when you fall down, you are supposed to cry. I learned that when you touch a hot stove, you are supposed to jerk your hand back, even if your brain registers zero sensation. I became an actress in my own life, performing humanity for an audience that wished I didn’t exist. Until the day the Thorne Family came calling. Chapter 2: The Deal with the Devil The summons came on a Tuesday. I was in the library, reading a book on anatomy—trying to understand intellectually what I couldn’t feel physically—when my father walked in. He didn’t knock. He never knocked for me. “Nora,” he said. He was wearing his campaign smile, the one that didn’t reach his eyes. “Put the book down. We need to talk.” I placed a bookmark on page 42. “Yes, sir.” “You know the Thorne family,” he started, pacing the room. “They control the shipping lanes. The unions. The… darker side of the city’s infrastructure.” “The Mafia,” I corrected calmly. “We call them ‘strategic partners,’” he snapped. “The Thornes and the Vances have been at each other’s throats for a decade. A truce has been negotiated. A merger.” He stopped pacing and looked at me. “A marriage.” I blinked. “Nova is dating the Governor’s son. You wouldn’t break that engagement.” “Not Nova,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You.” I stared at him. “Me?” “Declan Thorne,” he said. The name landed in the room like a grenade. Declan Thorne. The youngest son of the Thorne patriarch. The “Mad Dog.” Rumor had it he was cursed. Unstable. Violent. “He’s a widower,” I said. “Three times over.” “Unfortunate accidents,” my father waved his hand dismissively. “Heart failure. Car crash. Suicide. The police never found evidence of foul play.” “The tabloids call him ‘The Bluebeard of Brooklyn,’” I pointed out. “They say he kills them when he gets bored.” “He is powerful,” my father stepped closer, looming over me. “And he requested a Vance daughter. He didn’t specify which one.” I understood then. The realization washed over me, cold and logical. Nova was the asset. I was the expendable currency. If Declan Thorne killed his fourth wife, the Vances would lose nothing but a liability. In fact, my death would probably garner my father sympathy votes in the next election. “He is dangerous,” my father said, looking at my hands—scarred from years of accidental burns and cuts. “But you… you’re tough, Nora. You don’t break like normal girls. You don’t feel things.” He touched my cheek. His hand was cold, but I assumed it was supposed to feel warm. “Do this for the family. Do this, and you’ll finally have a purpose.” A purpose. To be a sacrificial lamb. “Okay,” I said. My voice didn’t tremble. Why would it? I couldn’t feel the sting of betrayal any more than I could feel a knife cut. “Okay,” I repeated. “I’ll marry the monster.” Chapter 3: The Fortress of Solitude The wedding was a private affair. No press. No white dress. Just a signature on a prenup that was thicker than a bible, and a black car ride to Declan Thorne’s estate. He didn’t live in a house. He lived in a fortress. A brutalist concrete mansion perched on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River, surrounded by electric fences and guards with assault rifles. I was ushered into the master bedroom by a silent maid. “Wait here,” she said. “Mr. Thorne will be up shortly.” I sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets were black silk. Everything in the room was sharp edges and chrome. It felt like an operating theater. The door opened. Declan Thorne walked in. He was not what I expected. The tabloids usually showed blurry photos of a man in a suit, looking angry. In person, he was… overwhelming. He was tall, over six-three, with broad shoulders that strained against his white dress shirt. His hair was dark, cropped short. But it was his eyes that caught me. They weren’t dead, like I expected from a serial killer. They were frantic. Alert. Paranoiac. He scanned the room as he entered, checking corners, checking the window locks. He looked at me. His gaze was physical, a heavy weight pressing down. “So,” he said. His voice was deep, gravelly—the sound of tires on a dirt road. “You’re the sacrifice.” “I’m Nora,” I said, standing up. “Nora. Nova. Whatever,” he scoffed. He locked the door behind him. “Did your father give you the speech? Duty? Honor? Family?” “He told me to survive.” “Optimistic of him,” Declan laughed, a dry, humorless bark. He walked toward me. I didn’t flinch. I stood perfectly still, my hands clasped in front of me. He stopped inches from my face. He smelled of whiskey and gun oil. “Strip,” he ordered. I blinked. “Excuse me?” “You heard me. Take it off. The dress. The shoes. Everything.” I hesitated. Was this it? The abuse? “Why?” I asked. “Because,” he snarled, reaching out and grabbing my arm. His grip was bruisingly tight. “The last wife tried to bring a wire into the bedroom. The one before that had a ceramic knife taped to her inner thigh. I’m not getting killed in my sleep by a politician’s daughter.” He wasn’t a predator. He was prey. He was terrified. “I’m not an assassin,” I said. “That’s exactly what an assassin would say.” He spun me around. He patted me down. Rough, efficient hands. He checked the hem of my dress. He checked my hair. Then, he reached into the pocket of my blazer. He pulled out a small, silver object. “Aha,” he said triumphantly. “What is this? Poison? A dart gun?” I looked at it. “It’s an EpiPen. I’m allergic to peanuts.” He stared at it. He uncapped it, sniffed it, and then tossed it onto the bed. He reached into the other pocket. He pulled out a Swiss Army Knife. “And this?” he raised an eyebrow. “For peeling apples, I assume?” “Self-defense,” I said honestly. “The city is dangerous.” “You bring a two-inch blade to kill me?” He laughed again, tossing the knife across the room. It clattered against the wall. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Who sent you? Your father? The Russians? The Board?” “No one,” I said. My head rattled, but I kept my eyes focused on his tie. “I’m just the spare daughter, Declan. I’m here because Nova was too valuable to waste on you.” He froze. He looked at my face, searching for fear. He didn’t find any. “You’re not scared,” he whispered, suspicious. “Why aren’t you scared? I’m hurting you.” He squeezed harder. His nails dug into my skin. I knew, logically, that it should hurt. I knew my skin was bruising. “You’re wrinkling my dress,” I said flatly. He let go of me as if I had burned him. He stepped back, looking at me with total confusion. “You’re a freak,” he muttered. “A robot.” He walked to the closet and pulled out a pillow and a blanket. He threw them onto the floor. “Sleep there,” he commanded. “If you move toward the bed, I shoot you. If you get up to use the bathroom, you announce it. Clear?” I looked at the floor. It was polished concrete. Hard. Cold. “Clear,” I said. I lay down on the floor, pulling the thin blanket over me. I closed my eyes. The floor was uncomfortable, I assumed. But to me, it was just a surface. I fell asleep to the sound of Declan Thorne checking the safety on his handgun, over and over again. Click. Click. Click. Chapter 4: The Tea Ceremony The next morning, I woke up because a boot nudged my ribs. “Get up,” Declan said. “We have to go to the Ancestral House. The Chairman wants to see the new merchandise.” The Chairman was Declan’s grandfather. The Emperor of the underworld. We drove in silence. Declan drove like a maniac, weaving through traffic, constantly checking his mirrors. The Ancestral House was an old Victorian mansion in the middle of the city, an island of gothic architecture amidst skyscrapers. Inside, the air was thick with incense and tension. We were led to a tea room. An old man sat on a tatami mat. He looked frail, like a dried leaf, but his eyes were black holes. The Chairman. “Grandfather,” Declan bowed stiffly. “Declan,” the old man wheezed. “And the Vance girl.” I bowed. “Sir.” “Sit,” the Chairman ordered. We sat. A servant poured tea. The steam rising from the cups was thick. “Your father,” the Chairman said to me, “is a snake. But snakes have their uses.” He picked up his cup. “Drink. It is a tradition. A toast to the union.” I picked up the cup. It was porcelain, thin and delicate. It was also boiling hot. The servant had poured it straight from the kettle. I could see the heat radiating from the ceramic. Normal people would wait. They would blow on it. But the Chairman was watching me. Testing me. If I hesitated, I showed weakness. If I showed weakness, I shamed Declan. If I shamed Declan, the alliance might crumble. I didn’t hesitate. I lifted the cup. My fingers didn’t send warning signals. I brought it to my lips. I drank. The liquid was scalding. It must have been near boiling point. I felt the texture of the liquid sliding down my throat, but not the burn. I didn’t wince. I didn’t tear up. I set the cup down. “Excellent tea,” I said politely. The room went silent. The Chairman stared at me. He looked at my lips, which were turning a bright, angry red. He looked at my hands, which were blistering where I held the cup. “You…” the Chairman narrowed his eyes. “You have iron skin, girl?” Declan was staring at me too. His jaw was unclenched for the first time. He looked… horrified. “She’s burned,” Declan said abruptly. He grabbed my hand. “Look at her skin. It’s peeling.” “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just tea.” “It’s boiling water!” Declan snapped. He turned to his grandfather. “Is this a test? Or did you just try to melt her throat?” “She drank it,” the Chairman chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. “She drank it without blinking. The Vances breed them tough. Good. Maybe this one will survive you, Declan.” Declan stood up, pulling me with him. “We’re leaving,” he growled. He dragged me out of the room, ignoring the Chairman’s laughter. Chapter 5: Ointment and Lies Back in the car, Declan didn’t start the engine immediately. He turned on the dome light and grabbed my face. “Open your mouth,” he ordered. “Why?” “Open it!” I opened my mouth. He peered inside. “Christ,” he hissed. “Your tongue is blistered. Your palate is… s**t, Nora. Does it hurt?” “No,” I said. He froze. He looked into my eyes, searching for the lie. “What do you mean, no? You have third-degree burns inside your mouth.” “I have a high pain tolerance,” I lied. It was the standard Vance Family Lie. “Tolerance isn’t immunity,” he argued. He looked down at my hand. The blisters were rising, white and fluid-filled. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a first-aid kit. He took out a tube of burn gel. “Give me your hand.” He applied the gel. His touch was surprisingly gentle for a man who threw knives at walls. His fingers were calloused, warm against my skin. “Why did you drink it?” he asked quietly, not looking at me. “He was testing us,” I said. “If I flinched, he would think I was weak. If I was weak, he would think you married a liability.” Declan stopped moving. He held my hand, staring at the blisters. “You burned yourself… for my reputation?” “I am your wife,” I recited the lines my father taught me. “Your reputation is my safety.” Declan let out a long, shaky breath. He looked at me, and for the first time, the paranoia in his eyes cracked. Behind it, I saw something else. Confusion. And maybe, just a flicker of respect. “You’re not a spy,” he murmured. “Spies don’t damage the merchandise.” “I told you,” I said. “I’m just the spare.” He finished bandaging my hand. He started the car. “We’re going home,” he said. “And you’re not sleeping on the floor tonight.” “The bed?” “The couch,” he corrected. “I still don’t trust you. But… I don’t think you’re going to kill me.” “Why not?” “Because,” he glanced at my bandaged hand as he merged onto the highway. “You’re too busy killing yourself.” Chapter 6: The Leftovers Life in the fortress settled into a strange rhythm. Declan was gone during the day, “managing the family business,” which I assumed involved shouting at union leaders and intimidating rivals. I stayed in the house. I explored. The house was cold. The kitchen was stocked with gourmet food, but the staff was terrified of Declan. They cooked elaborate meals that he never ate. One evening, Declan came home late. He found me in the kitchen. I was sitting at the island, eating cold lasagna straight from the Tupperware container. He stopped in the doorway, loosening his tie. He looked exhausted. There was a smear of blood on his shirt cuff—not his, I assumed. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Eating dinner,” I said, swallowing a bite. “That’s yesterday’s lasagna,” he said. “It’s cold.” “I know.” “Why aren’t you eating the fresh meal the chef prepared? There’s a steak in the warmer.” I shrugged. “I’m used to leftovers.” “Used to them?” He walked over, frowning. “You’re a Vance. You grew up in a mansion.” “I grew up in the West Wing,” I corrected. “My meals were sent up after Nova and my parents finished. Sometimes the trays sat in the hall for an hour. Cold food is… consistent. It doesn’t surprise you.” Declan stared at me. He looked at the cold, congealed cheese on my fork. He suddenly snatched the fork from my hand. “Hey,” I said. He took the Tupperware container and threw it into the trash. Clang. “We don’t eat garbage in this house,” he growled. He walked to the oven and pulled out the steak. He plated it. He poured a glass of red wine. He set it in front of me. “Eat,” he ordered. “Hot food.” “I can’t tell the difference in temperature,” I said, without thinking. He paused. “What?” I froze. I had slipped. “I mean… I don’t mind the temperature,” I corrected quickly. Declan leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. He was studying me again, with that intense, laser-like focus. “You didn’t flinch when I grabbed your arm on the wedding night,” he listed. “You drank boiling tea. You eat cold food. You walk around this house like a ghost.” He stepped closer. “And I saw you yesterday. In the garden.” My heart—which functioned perfectly well even if my nerves didn’t—skipped a beat. “I was pruning the roses,” I said. “I saw you catch a thorn,” he said. “It went deep. Into your thumb. You pulled it out and kept working. You didn’t even suck the wound.” He grabbed my hand again, ripping the bandage off my thumb. The cut was there, angry and red. “Why didn’t you react, Nora?” “I have a high tolerance,” I repeated the lie. “Bull****,” he whispered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. A silver Zippo. He flicked it on. The flame danced, blue and yellow. “Put your hand over the flame,” he said. “Declan, don’t be crazy.” “Do it. If you have a high tolerance, you’ll still feel the heat. You’ll pull away before it burns. It’s instinct.” He moved the flame closer to my hand. I watched the fire. It was beautiful. Hypnotic. I felt the pressure of the heat wave, the displacement of air. But I felt no pain. My brain knew I should pull away. Act. Perform. But I was tired. I was so tired of pretending. And Declan… he was the first person who actually looked at me closely enough to notice the glitches in my performance. The flame touched my skin. I smelled the singed hair. The skin began to blister instantly. I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch. I watched it like I was watching a science experiment. Declan snapped the lighter shut. He shoved my hand away. He looked pale. He looked terrified. “You don’t feel it,” he whispered. The horror in his voice was genuine. “You don’t feel anything.” “CIPA,” I said quietly. “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain.” Silence stretched between us, heavy and thick. “You’re a monster,” he breathed. But the word lacked the venom my mother used. It sounded more like… recognition. “I know,” I said. “That’s why they gave me to you. The monster bride for the monster groom.” Declan looked at my burned hand. Then he looked at my face. “Does it apply to everything?” he asked. “Heartbreak? Fear? loneliness?” “Just physical pain,” I said. “The rest… the rest I feel just fine.” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Well,” he said, turning to the drawer to get the burn ointment again. “That makes two of us. I feel too much of everything else, and you feel nothing of the one thing that keeps people alive.” He sat down next to me and started applying the salve. “You’re going to die if I don’t watch you,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “Probably,” I agreed. “Not on my watch,” he grumbled. “Three dead wives is a pattern. Four is a statistic. I hate statistics.” He finished bandaging me. He didn’t let go of my hand. “Eat your steak,” he said. “Before it gets cold. I know you don’t care, but I do.” I picked up the knife and fork. I took a bite. It was warm. Or at least, I imagined it was. And for the first time in my life, the warmth didn’t just stop at my skin. It seeped in, just a little bit deeper.

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Chapter 1: The Origin of “Daze” I have always been a beat behind the rest of the world. My name is Daisy, but no one calls me that. To the kids at Blackwood Elementary, to the teachers who sighed when I stared blankly at the chalkboard, and eventually, to him, I was simply “Daze.” It wasn’t a compliment. It was a label. It meant I was slow. It meant that when a joke was told, I was the one blinking in confusion while the laughter washed over me like a tide I couldn’t swim in. It meant that in the grand, chaotic symphony of life, I was the pause. The rest note. I remember the exact moment the name stuck. It was a humid July afternoon in the suburbs of Connecticut. The air smelled of cut grass and asphalt melting in the heat. We were playing “Duck, Duck, Goose” in the cul-de-sac. I was “It.” I was always “It.” I wasn’t fast enough to catch anyone. I would tap a head, scream “Goose!”, and scramble around the circle, my Keds slipping on the grass, only to find the spot already taken. I would stand there, panting, my chest burning, while the other kids giggled behind their hands. “Daisy’s in a daze again!” someone shouted. “Look at her, she’s buffering!” I didn’t cry. Crying required a quick emotional reaction, and I was still processing the shame. I just stood there, a small, knobby-kneed girl in a stained t-shirt, waiting for the earth to swallow me whole. That was when Carter stood up. Carter Brooks. The boy next door. He was three years older, already tall, with hair the color of wheat and eyes that could cut glass. He was the king of the cul-de-sac. He didn’t run. He walked into the center of the circle, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me down to sit beside him. “She’s not ‘It’ anymore,” Carter announced, his voice carrying the natural authority of a future CEO. “I’m ‘It’.” The laughter stopped. If Carter said the game changed, the game changed. He looked at me. He didn’t smile. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a slightly melted Jolly Rancher, and pressed it into my hand. “Stop running, Daze,” he said. “You’re never going to catch them. Just stay here. I’ve got you.” I’ve got you. Three words. They became the foundation of my entire existence. They were the walls, the roof, and the floor of the cage I would live in for the next fifteen years. I thought he was my savior. I didn’t realize then that a savior needs a victim to save. By accepting his protection, I had unknowingly signed a contract: I would be the helpless one, and he would be the hero. And heroes don’t fall in love with the damsel. They just rescue her on their way to the princess. Chapter 2: The Shadow and the Sun High school was a hierarchy, and Carter sat at the apex. He was the quarterback, the student body president, the guy every girl wrote about in her diary. And I was his shadow. We were “Carter and Daze.” Not a couple. Never a couple. But a unit. I carried his extra textbooks. He drove me to school in his Jeep Wrangler. We did homework together at his kitchen table—or rather, he did his calculus while I struggled through basic algebra, and he would eventually sigh, take my pencil, and do it for me. “You’re hopeless,” he’d say, tapping the eraser against my forehead. But his tone was affectionate. Possessive. “What would you do without me, Daze?” “Die, probably,” I’d answer, eating his fries. He loved that answer. He fed on my incompetence. It made him feel big. But there was a third person in our orbit. Chloe. Chloe was my cousin. She lived two streets over. If I was the rough draft, Chloe was the final, glossy print. She was sharp, witty, and beautiful in a way that made people nervous. Carter hated her. Or so he said. “She’s too loud,” he’d complain to me as we watched Chloe hold court in the cafeteria. “She’s arrogant. She thinks she’s smarter than everyone.” “She is smarter than everyone,” I pointed out. “She’s annoying,” Carter grumbled, tearing into his sandwich. “Not like you. You’re… quiet. Easy.” Easy. He meant uncomplicated. He meant I didn’t challenge him. But I saw the way he looked at Chloe when they argued in AP History. I saw the sparks that flew when she made fun of his football stats. It wasn’t hatred. It was friction. And friction creates heat. One rainy Tuesday in November of our senior year, everything changed. Carter picked me up for school. His eyes were red-rimmed. He smelled of stale tobacco, which was weird because Carter didn’t smoke. “What’s wrong?” I asked, buckling my seatbelt. “Nothing,” he snapped. Then, softer: “Just… family stuff.” He didn’t talk the whole ride. When we got to school, he didn’t walk me to my locker. He disappeared. I found out later, through the grapevine (I was always the last to know), that Chloe had gotten into Yale. Early admission. She was leaving. And Carter? Carter had been rejected by his dream school, Stanford. That afternoon, I found him in the bleachers, sitting alone in the rain. I sat down next to him. I didn’t say anything. I just opened my umbrella and held it over him. He looked at me. He looked broken. “She’s leaving,” he whispered. “Who?” I asked, though I knew. “Chloe,” he choked out. “She’s going to Yale. She told me… she told me I was ‘small town.’ She said she’s going to eat the world, and I’m just going to stay here and peak in high school.” He put his head on my shoulder. He cried. “She’s a bitch,” he sobbed. “I hate her.” “I know,” I smoothed his wet hair. “I know.” He turned his face into my neck. “You won’t leave, right, Daze? You’re not going anywhere.” “I’m going to community college,” I said. “I’m staying right here.” “Good,” he gripped my hand. “Good. Stay with me. Be my… be my anchor.” He kissed me then. It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It wasn’t the kiss you see in movies where the music swells. It was a kiss of desperation. He was drowning, and I was the nearest piece of driftwood. I kissed him back. I poured fifteen years of silent adoration into that kiss. I thought, Finally. He sees me. I was wrong. He didn’t see me. He just saw that I was there. Chapter 3: The Comfortable Cage We dated for four years. Or, to be more accurate, we “existed” together. Carter stayed in town. He went to the state university, got a business degree, and started working at his father’s real estate firm. I finished my associate’s degree and got a job at the local library. We were the “It Couple” of our small town. Everyone expected us to get married. “Carter and Daze,” his mother would beam at Thanksgiving dinners. “Like salt and pepper. You just can’t have one without the other.” But salt doesn’t love pepper. They just sit on the same table. Our relationship was… comfortable. He picked me up for dinner on Fridays. We watched movies on Saturdays. On Sundays, he watched football with his friends, and I made nachos. He never asked me what I wanted to watch. He never asked me about the books I read. “You’re so low-maintenance,” he’d tell his friends, squeezing my knee. “Daze is great. No drama. No fights.” Why would we fight? I never disagreed with him. I was playing a role. I was the perfect, supportive girlfriend who was just grateful to be allowed in the room. But there were cracks. Like the time I cut my hair short—a pixie cut I had wanted for years. Carter stared at me when I walked in. He frowned. “Why did you do that?” “I thought it looked… chic,” I said, touching the ends nervously. “It looks… severe,” he said. “Long hair suits you better. It makes you look softer. Grow it back.” I grew it back. Or the time I mentioned I wanted to take a solo trip to Italy. “Italy?” he laughed. “Daze, you get lost in the mall. How are you going to survive Rome? You’ll get pickpocketed in five minutes. Let’s just go to the Cape again this summer. It’s safe.” We went to the Cape. I was safe. I was loved (I thought). I was Daze. And then, She came back. Chapter 4: The Return of the Queen It was a Tuesday. Always a Tuesday. I was at the library, shelving the new fiction arrivals, when my phone buzzed. A text from Carter. “Family dinner tonight. Mom wants you there. 7 PM.” Normal. Routine. I arrived at the Brooks’ house at 7:00 sharp. I walked into the dining room, holding a pecan pie I had baked. And I dropped it. Sitting at the table, laughing at something Carter’s dad said, was Chloe. She looked… expensive. That was the only word for it. She was wearing a cream cashmere sweater that probably cost more than my car. Her hair was a sleek, dark curtain. She radiated success, confidence, and the kind of sharp intelligence that made the air crackle. Carter was sitting next to her. He wasn’t looking at his phone. He wasn’t looking bored. He was leaning in. His face was animated. His eyes were bright—brighter than I had seen them in four years. “Daze!” Carter’s mom chirped. “Look who’s back! Chloe is back from New York! She’s taking over the marketing division at the firm!” Chloe turned to me. Her eyes swept over my cardigan, my sensible shoes, my messy bun. “Hi, Daisy,” she smiled. It wasn’t mean, but it was… pitying? “Still here, I see.” “Hi, Chloe,” I managed to say, bending down to clean up the pie. “Leave it,” Carter said, waving a hand without looking at me. ” The maid will get it. Come sit down. Chloe was just telling us about this merger she handled in Tokyo.” I sat down. For the next two hours, I was invisible. Carter and Chloe spoke a language I didn’t understand—business, strategy, ambition. They bickered. They challenged each other. “You’re wrong about the zoning laws, Carter,” Chloe said, pointing a manicured finger at him. “You’re thinking too small. You’re thinking like a townie.” “I am not a townie,” Carter shot back, grinning. “I’m the King of this town. And you’re just a tourist.” “Watch me take your crown,” she teased. The tension between them was electric. It was the same friction from high school, but now, it was grown up. It was dangerous. I sat there, pushing peas around my plate. Suddenly, Carter turned to me. “Daze, get me a refill on the iced tea, would you?” He didn’t say please. He didn’t even look at me. He held out his glass while maintaining eye contact with Chloe. I looked at the glass. I looked at Chloe, who was watching me with a strange expression. I took the glass. I walked to the kitchen. I put the glass in the sink. And I walked out the back door. Chapter 5: The Breakup Text I drove home in silence. I sat on my beige sofa in my beige apartment, and I stared at the wall. I realized something terrifying. I wasn’t Carter’s girlfriend. I was his placeholder. I was the soft place he landed when he fell. I was the warm body that kept his bed from being lonely while he waited for someone who challenged him. Someone like Chloe. He didn’t love me. He loved that I was there. He loved that I was “Daze”—slow, safe, manageable. I picked up my phone. I didn’t call. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I didn’t want him to talk me out of it. I typed: “We need to break up. I can’t do this anymore. Don’t come over.” I hit send. I expected him to be relieved. Or maybe confused. I didn’t expect him to be furious. Five minutes later, my phone rang. I declined it. It rang again. And again. Then the texts started coming. “What the hell?” “Are you drunk?” “Is this about Chloe? Don’t be jealous, Daze. It’s pathetic.” “Pick up the phone. You don’t get to dump me via text. I made you.” I made you. That was it. The truth. He thought he created me. He thought I was his invention. I turned off my phone. Half an hour later, pounding on my door. “Daisy! Open the damn door!” It was Carter. He sounded angry. Not heartbroken. Angry. Like someone had stolen his favorite hoodie. “Go away, Carter,” I shouted through the door. “You’re being irrational!” he yelled. “Open up. Let me explain. You’re just… you’re confused. You’re always confused.” “I’m not confused!” I screamed back. It was the first time I had raised my voice in twenty years. “I’m clear! For the first time in my life, I am crystal clear!” “About what?” “About the fact that you don’t love me! You just love that I’m not her!” Silence on the other side of the door. “That’s crazy,” he muttered eventually. “You’re my Daze. We’re… we’re a team.” “No,” I said, leaning my forehead against the wood. “You’re the quarterback. I’m just the water girl. Go home, Carter. Go chase the cheerleader.” I heard him kick the door. “Fine!” he shouted. “Be like that. You’ll call me tomorrow. You always do. You can’t function without me.” I heard his footsteps recede. I slid down the door to the floor. He was right. I didn’t know how to function without him. I didn’t know who I was without him. But I was going to find out. Chapter 6: The Stranger in the Bookstore Two weeks later. I was still a mess. I cried in the shower. I cried in the cereal aisle. But I hadn’t called him. I decided I needed to get out. I went to the one place Carter never went: the independent bookstore downtown. It smelled of old paper and coffee. I was reaching for a copy of The Bell Jar on a high shelf. I couldn’t reach it. Usually, this was the part where I would look around helplessly, waiting for Carter to grab it and pat my head. But Carter wasn’t there. I looked around for a step stool. None. “Allow me,” a voice said. A hand reached over my shoulder. Long fingers, ink-stained. He pulled the book down. I turned around. He wasn’t Carter. He wasn’t golden. He was… monochromatic. Dark hair, messy. Wearing a grey sweater that had a hole in the sleeve. He wore glasses that were slightly crooked. He looked at me. His eyes were dark, intelligent, and kind. “Sylvia Plath,” he said, handing me the book. “Light reading for a Tuesday?” “I’m going through a phase,” I muttered, clutching the book. “Thanks.” “I’m Julian,” he said. “I’ve seen you here before. You usually come in with that loud guy who buys the business magazines.” “I… yeah. That was my ex.” “Ex?” Julian raised an eyebrow. “Congratulations.” I blinked. “Excuse me?” “He took up a lot of space,” Julian said, shrugging. “He stood in front of the shelves like he owned them. Hard to see the books when he was around. Hard to see you.” My breath hitched. “You saw me?” “Hard to miss,” Julian smiled. It was a crooked, hesitant smile. “You’re the girl who organizes the poetry section when the staff isn’t looking. You put the Neruda next to the Oliver. Chronological order by emotional impact. Very clever.” I stared at him. I did do that. I did it nervously, compulsively. I didn’t think anyone noticed. “You noticed,” I whispered. “I notice quiet things,” Julian said. “Loud things are boring. Quiet things are where the story is.” He held out a hand. “I’m going to get coffee. The kind that tastes like mud, not the fancy stuff. Want to come? We can discuss why Plath is better than Hemingway.” I looked at his hand. It wasn’t a hand offering protection. It was a hand offering an invitation. I thought about Carter, who told me I would get pickpocketed in Rome. I thought about Chloe, who called me a placeholder. I looked at Julian. “I hate Hemingway,” I said. Julian grinned. “Perfect. Let’s go.” As we walked out of the bookstore, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I knew who it was. Carter. Probably checking if I had “come to my senses.” I didn’t check it. For the first time in twenty years, I wasn’t in a daze. I was wide awake.

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It was the third year since I’d been blacklisted when I ran into my ex-fiancé, Marcus. I was working as a stunt double on a dusty soundstage outside Atlanta. He arrived in a whirlwind of attention, the CEO of his own media empire, here to visit his supposed girlfriend. A prince among the masses, surrounded by sycophants. Me? I was just the girl in the rough muslin costume, covered in grime. The scene called for his girlfriend, Avery, to slap me. In pursuit of “authenticity,” she’d taken the director’s encouragement and slapped me more than twenty times. My face was numb. The director finally yelled “Cut.” Marcus walked over. He stood over me, looking down at my swollen, stinging face. “Apologize to Avery. Kneel down and beg her forgiveness right now, and the part of the Ingénue in this movie is yours,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving into that familiar, venomous smile. “Otherwise, jump off that two-story balcony. Give the crew a show.” I didn’t hesitate. I turned and jumped, straight off the balcony and into the frigid, murky depths of the fake pond below. 1 As gasps echoed around the set, I heard Marcus’s furious bellow. “Sierra! You’d rather kill yourself than yield, wouldn’t you? You’re a goddamn piece of work!” I spat out a mouthful of the pond water, which tasted like chemicals, and hauled myself onto the bank. My body was shaking, but I held out a trembling hand to the unit manager. “Hazard pay. You owe me the hundred dollars for the high fall. Cash now.” All the love, all the hatred, all the history—it was all just dust now. But that hundred dollars? It was exactly enough to buy myself the cheapest possible urn at the city crematorium. The unit manager was frozen. He looked instinctively up at Marcus on the platform. Marcus didn’t say a word, his face dark enough to curdle milk. The manager, scared, backed away. I panicked. The tumor inside my head was throbbing, a frantic, rhythmic dance. I forgot all about dignity. I dragged my heavy, soaked clothes, limping after him. “Give me the money.” “The agreement was a hundred for the jump.” “Give it to me.” I must have looked like a deranged woman, clutching his sleeve, refusing to let go. The crew started pointing and whispering, their eyes full of scorn and pity. “The former A-list star, reduced to this?” “Risking her life for a hundred bucks. She’s completely obsessed with money.” “Serves her right, after that hit-and-run. Karma.” I’d heard it all a thousand times. It didn’t even sting anymore. I’d bark like a dog for this money if it meant getting it. “Sierra.” Marcus was suddenly there. His polished leather shoes stopped right in front of me. “Marcus, pay the man.” He let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. He grabbed my chin, forcing me to meet his furious gaze. “Are you that broke, Sierra? Making yourself look like a drowned animal for a hundred dollars?” “What is it? Did the pretty boy dump you? Do you need the cash to support your little fling?” The ‘pretty boy’ was the phantom lover, the imaginary ‘adulterer’ he’d used as an excuse to torment me for three years. I wouldn’t explain. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. “Just give me the money. I have to go,” I repeated, a mechanical loop. His anger flared hotter. That’s when Avery strolled over. She linked her arm through his, then pulled a thick wad of bills from her limited-edition designer handbag—about two thousand dollars in crisp hundreds. “Oh, Sierra. You’re just pathetic.” She wore pity like a designer scarf. “Take this and go buy some cold medicine. Stop embarrassing yourself here.” With a flourish, she tossed the money in the air. The pink bills fluttered down like vulgar confetti, scattering into the mud and puddles. The crowd roared with laughter. Marcus watched, clearly waiting for me to lunge and scramble like a dog. I did lunge. But I ignored the clean, pink hundred-dollar bills. I scrabbled through the mud, digging for the few crumpled tens and the loose change that the unit manager had dropped in his haste. It added up to exactly one hundred dollars. I clenched the money in my fist like I was clutching my last breath. I didn’t spare the two thousand a glance. I stood, swaying violently. A sudden warmth flooded my nasal cavity. Nosebleed. I used the back of my hand, still slick with pond water, to wipe the blood away quickly. I couldn’t let him see. Marcus exploded at my deliberate snub. “Don’t play the martyr, Sierra! You won’t touch the two thousand, but you’ll risk your life for this pittance? Do you think this act is going to make me feel sorry for you? Dream on!” He kicked the scattered bills on the ground and pointed toward the gate. “Get out! Don’t let me see your face again!” I felt a wave of dizzying relief. “Thank you, Marcus.” I clutched the hundred dollars, bowed a shallow, mocking bow, and walked away, dragging my soaked, aching body out of the studio lot. Behind me, Avery’s voice, sweet and cloying: “Darling, don’t let her upset you. She’s not worth it…” Then Marcus’s soft reassurance: “It’s fine. Let’s go get some expensive French food.” I heard them. And felt nothing. My mind was on one thing: I finally had enough for my urn. Outside the lot, the sky was darkening fast. I was shaking uncontrollably, the fever making my vision swim. But I couldn’t stop. To save the cab fare, I rode my ancient, battered bicycle the twelve miles out to the suburban funeral home. The wind was a razor against my face, and the wet clothes had frozen stiff against my skin. My phone buzzed. It was the manager at the crematory. “Ms. Sierra, someone else is trying to buy that unit.” “The director says if you’re not here in thirty minutes, the box goes to the other party. It’s the last cheap one we have. You know the drill.” The line went dead. Panic seized me. That was my final resting place. I couldn’t bear the thought of dying and not even having a place to sleep. I pedaled like a madwoman. My lungs burned; every ragged breath tasted of blood. Suddenly, a black Maybach surged forward, cutting me off hard. “Screech—” A violent screech of tires ripped through the night. I went down, bicycle and body, slamming onto the asphalt. My knees hit the pavement and went instantly numb. The hundred dollars spilled out of my pocket, scattering. I didn’t care about the pain—I scrambled to gather the bills. A polished leather shoe landed squarely on a crumpled twenty. I looked up. Marcus’s face was dark, a storm of suppressed fury. “Where are you rushing off to?” he demanded, towering over me. “To see him? The ‘adulterer?’ You’re throwing your life away for him?” I was kneeling, my hand reaching for the bill under his foot. “Marcus, please. Move your foot.” “I need to go. I’m begging you. If I’m late, it’ll be too late.” My voice was a choked sob. If I didn’t get there, I would truly have no home, not even in death. Seeing my desperation only fueled his rage. He yanked me up by the wrist, the grip iron-hard. “A quick errand? A quick hookup, is that what you mean? You’re repulsive, Sierra.” “I won’t let you go!” I fought him wildly, my nails tearing streaks of blood across his hand. “I won’t! Marcus, let go! I need to go to the funeral home! I have to buy the urn!” I screamed the truth, raw and hysterical. He just laughed—a cold, brutal sound. “Buy an urn? You couldn’t come up with a better lie than that? Joking about your own death? You’ll say anything to see that man.” He didn’t believe a word. How could he? In his eyes, I was a conniving liar, a manipulative woman who would use any trick for money. I was shoved into the car. The door clicked shut, the lock engaging. It sealed me off from the cold wind, but more importantly, it sealed off my last shred of hope. I stared out the window, watching the scattering coins and bills vanish into the distance. Tears finally streamed down my face. Finished. It was all finished. The clock on my phone was ticking down: five minutes left. We were miles away, driving into the heart of the city. I collapsed against the leather seat, all the strength drained from me. Marcus watched my despair in the rearview mirror, his lip curled. “So, you’re miserable without him? Sierra, you will never get away from me. Not in this life.” The Maybach pulled up to the familiar gates of the mansion—our former marital home. He dragged me out and into the house. The heating inside was stifling, yet I felt colder than I had outside. Avery was sitting on the Italian leather sofa, applying a hydrating mask. She glanced at me, a flicker of surprise, then pure smugness. “Darling, why bring her back? She’s filthy. She’ll ruin the cashmere rug.” Marcus ignored her, hauling me straight toward the storage room under the main staircase. “Go inside. Think about what you’ve done.” “When you decide to tell the truth, I’ll let you out.” He shoved me in and slammed the heavy door shut. Clack. The sound of the deadbolt. Darkness swallowed me instantly. I threw myself against the door, beating the wood with my fists. “Marcus! Let me out!” “Please, Marcus, I’m begging you!” I cried until my throat was raw. “Is that man really so important to you? Important enough to beg like a stray dog?” Marcus’s voice was muffled through the wood. “Stay in there, Sierra. Get that man out of your head.” The sound of his footsteps receded. I heard Avery’s cooing and his soft, affectionate reply: “There, there. My Avery is always so sweet.” I slid down the cold wall, my knees pulled to my chest. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I fumbled for it, the light burning my eyes. The message from the crematory manager: Ms. Sierra, the unit has been sold. Deposit is non-refundable.

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Less than a month after moving into the Reid estate following our engagement, my fiancé, Spencer Reid, had already shredded three of my silk nightgowns. He was devoted to his career, waiting until nearly thirty to finally commit to me, and once the seal was broken, the flood was torrential. After losing consciousness for what felt like the tenth time, I was once again kissed awake deep in the middle of the night. I pleaded with him to stop, my voice hoarse and laced with a sob. His fingertips traced the curve of my earlobe, his voice a low, gravelly sound: “Say it, Ellie. Call me yours, and I’ll let you go.” I buried my face into the pillow and whispered the word: “Yours.” A month later, I was pregnant. I was planning how to surprise him when my phone buzzed with a trending headline: R.E. CEO and Star Designer Caught in Late-Night Embrace. In the photo, he and his ex-girlfriend were locked in an intimate hug. I sat in the empty great room until dawn. Then, I requested to dissolve the engagement with the Reids. 1 “The disgrace! Spencer Reid caught in a tryst with his ex-girlfriend while neglecting his fiancée—what good is the Reid family name now!” Grandmother Reid slowly read the headline aloud. As her voice dropped, the heavy riding crop in her hand slammed down hard across Spencer’s back. Her voice thundered with rage. “Incompetent fool!” Spencer knelt perfectly straight, his expression unmoving. “I will clean up the mess.” “PR is pulling every single headline.” After he spoke, Grandmother Reid’s face turned an even deeper shade of iron-gray. “I’m not talking about the headlines!” She raised her voice. “Eleanor is pregnant! How could you have the heart to leave her alone at home?” Only then did Spencer notice me, slumped in a distant corner, his eyes flashing with a complicated mix of emotions. I was too drained to even lift my eyelids, staring mechanically at my phone screen. My fingers were stiff as I scrolled, every word of the gossip feeling like a slow, excruciating cut. I clung to a veneer of composure, maintaining a fragile peace, until a new notification popped up. Golden Couple: He Conquers the Boardroom, She Guards His Heart. My heart spasmed. I clicked the link, unable to stop myself. The photo of the two of them, a stolen shot from a passerby in the restaurant, filled the screen. Genny Bell, in a white cocktail dress, was adjusting the slightly crooked tie of a disheveled Spencer. The look they exchanged—a silent, thousand-word conversation—was painfully clear. The comment section was a frenzy of celebration: OMG, Spencer still loves Genny! Soulmates 4EVA! Right? They’re the only perfect match. The fiancée is the real side chick, isn’t she? Suddenly, I felt ridiculous. That photo was six years old. Six years ago, all I wanted was to marry Spencer. I had believed that time would nurture love, but six years later, Spencer still only loved his ex-girlfriend, Genny Bell. A suffocating pain seized my chest, and I fled to the bedroom, barely breathing. I had just finished showering when Spencer pushed the door open. I silently stood by the mirror, blow-drying my hair, refusing to speak. Finally, a large hand reached out and gently took the dryer from me. Spencer skillfully worked the heat through my damp strands, a familiar gesture. After a long silence, he spoke, his voice wooden. “Are you still upset?” I didn’t answer. He continued, regardless. “I’ve had the PR team scrub the headlines. I guarantee there won’t be any more gossip.” “The position of Mrs. Spencer Reid will always be yours.” I snatched the dryer back from his hand and looked him directly in the eye. “What about Genny Bell? What are you going to do about her? Do you intend to keep this messy dynamic with her even after we’re married?” Spencer’s expression soured with impatience. “Don’t be so dramatic, alright?” The word ‘dramatic’ struck me as faintly absurd. To ask him to cleanly break ties with his former lover—that was ‘dramatic’ to him? I stayed silent. He pushed on. “The situation is handled. This is the best possible outcome for a PR nightmare. Why are you dragging your feet and making it worse?” “Besides, Genny is innocent in all this. Why do you have to be so relentless?” My eyes welled up, and my chest felt like it was being squeezed by an iron vise. I couldn’t articulate a single word. After what seemed like an eternity, I managed a fragile half-smile. I didn’t argue. “Yes… you are always right.” I didn’t sleep a wink. As soon as the sky grew light, I drove straight back to the Jensen family home. The moment I saw my mother, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I rushed into her arms, choking back sobs. “Mom, I want to call off the engagement.” My mother sighed softly and held me close. “Whatever you decide, your mother stands with you, Ellie.” The tense wires in my brain finally slackened. My family’s support eased the ache in my heart, just a little. I immediately drafted a notice of termination for the engagement and sent it to the Reids. When I got back, I ran into Spencer, who had come looking for me. He ceremoniously handed a gift-wrapped box to my parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Jensen, I’m here to take Eleanor home.” Thinking I might as well go back and pack my things, I spoke before my mother could. “Fine. Let’s go.” I remained silent for the entire car ride, desperate to just get to the Reid estate quickly. Halfway there, however, Spencer suddenly announced, “A business partner is back from overseas. I thought I’d take you to meet him.” I paused. Six years engaged, and he had never introduced me to his social circle. He’d never even mentioned my existence in front of them. When we reached the destination, I saw a group of people gathered in a private booth, and seated center stage was Genny Bell. I turned to him and demanded, “You didn’t say she would be here.” A flicker of awkwardness crossed his face. “Genny and the rest of them are old friends. It just worked out that way.” I scoffed silently. I was the outsider. The accessory. But since I’d already decided to end the engagement, I no longer cared to argue. I simply stated, “There’s too much cigar smoke in that room. I’m pregnant, so I shouldn’t stay long. I’ll wait for you downstairs.” I walked out of the booth before Spencer could respond. Near the elevator, I heard a conversation from around the corner: “I heard the CEO rented out the whole floor. He and his friend must be really tight.” “What friend? Reid booked the whole place because his ex-girlfriend won the Golden Spire design award today! This is her victory party. The ‘friend’ is just a side note.” Spencer really was something else. He made up an elaborate excuse just to trick me into coming. Inviting his fiancée to his ex-girlfriend’s celebration party—he truly was a special kind of monster. And those so-called ‘friends’ were nothing but dogs lining up to kiss Genny Bell’s ring. I let out a self-deprecating laugh and turned to call a ride-share. As I reached the elevator bank, Genny Bell approached, a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her face. She looked me up and down, a challenging gleam in her eye. “I just casually mentioned that I’d love to see you, and I can’t believe Spencer actually dragged you here.” “I told him not to make a huge fuss, but he insisted. You don’t mind, do you, Miss Jensen?” I glanced at her, my voice flat. “Is that right? Well, I’m not the type to cling to someone else’s fiancé like a cheap coat check ticket.” “I happen to have self-respect. I don’t do shameless things.” Genny Bell’s face fell instantly. She looked down at my slightly rounded abdomen and sneered. “Stop playing the saint! Tell me, if you lost this baby, would Spencer finally have a reason to divorce you?” No sooner had the cruel words left her mouth than she lunged forward, feigning a trip, and shoved me. I instantly grabbed her sleeve, and we both tumbled down the last few steps of the marble staircase. A violent, sickening clench seized my lower abdomen, a pain so sharp it stole my breath. Genny Bell immediately began to wail, sounding terribly wronged. “I was trying to help you down the stairs, why did you push me!” Before she finished, Spencer came barreling out. The excruciating pain in my belly was already soaking me in cold sweat, leaving me speechless. Spencer rushed past me, eyes wide with panic, and anxiously helped Genny up. Genny’s tone became even more pained. “Spencer, I just saw Eleanor was struggling with her pregnancy, so I tried to help her, but she just shoved me down the stairs!” Spencer immediately spun on me, his voice sharp with fury. “Genny is kind and honest! She isn’t someone for you to bully!” “When did you become so malicious? If anything happened to Genny, I swear I will never forgive you!” Watching him so fiercely protective of her, my heart plummeted into a pit of despair. I used the wall to slowly pull myself up, a gasping sound escaping my lips from the intense pain. I managed to speak in broken fragments. “Yes! I’m malicious, and she’s the innocent one! Then don’t marry me! Go marry her, you pathetic coward!” With that, I savagely tore the engagement ring off my finger and flung it onto the floor between them. The ring struck the marble with a single, sharp chime, and Spencer froze. He made a motion to come to me, but the woman in his arms let out a soft, whimpering cry. “Ah! My forehead hurts so bad, did I hit it?” In an instant, I vanished from his sight. He gently scooped Genny up and rushed her out to the car. I stood there, clutching my lower abdomen. A sudden gush of warmth spread between my legs. Within moments, the fabric of my dress was stained crimson. As my consciousness faded, the last thing I saw was Spencer Reid’s back, disappearing with Genny Bell in his arms. When I woke up again, I was staring at the stark white ceiling of a hospital room. My mother was sitting by my bedside. Seeing me, her eyes filled with unbearable pain. She choked out the words: “The baby… we lost the baby.” My breath hitched. After a long silence, I ran a trembling hand over my now flat abdomen. I whispered to myself, “Maybe it’s better this way. One less person to be unwanted by its own father.” Just then, I overheard the low murmur of nurses outside the door. “I saw how Spencer Reid looked at that designer, Genny Bell. They’re definitely still a thing.” “I know, right? I heard they had this incredible, dramatic romance before he got engaged. He’s been carrying a torch all these years. I mean, that’s real love, isn’t it?” I listened to their chatter, numb. My heart had long since been shredded into a thousand pieces. I stayed in the hospital for twenty days, and Spencer Reid never showed his face once. Back at the estate, I went to the safe and pulled out an old notebook. Every line documented my foolish love for Spencer, along with countless stolen pictures I’d taken of him. I had always cherished these things, guarding them with a possessive devotion. I flipped to the very last page, where I’d written a personal vow to myself: [To love someone means giving your whole heart, but if they wound you a hundred times, you must never look back!] Tears streamed down my face. Over the six years of our engagement, Spencer had given me too many heartbreaks. The first was the night of our engagement party, when he ditched me to be with Genny. The second was my birthday, which he spent on a ‘business trip’ with Genny. … The ninety-ninth was choosing Genny over me, which cost me our child, and he never even looked my way! I wiped the tears from my eyes, and beneath the vow to ‘never look back,’ I scrawled a determined, shaky ‘YES.’ Then, I tossed the notebook into the trash can. I pleaded with my mother: “Mom, I want to leave the country and start over.” She didn’t ask why. She simply began making the arrangements. The next morning, I returned to the Reid estate to pack and immediately bumped into Spencer. Our eyes met. Spencer’s voice was instantly cold. “You finally decided to show your face? Go apologize to Genny immediately!” I jerked my hand out of his grasp. “I did nothing wrong. Why should I apologize?” “Ellie, you…” Before he could finish, his phone rang. The name ‘Genny’ flashed on the screen. Spencer forgot all about me, answered the call, and strode away. I stood at the doorway, watching his figure disappear. I only felt a profound pity for the woman I used to be. … Spencer didn’t return until the evening. He had sent me several messages throughout the day, demanding I apologize to Genny. I hadn’t replied to a single one. He pushed the door open, his face stormy, ready to confront me. He froze. In the living room sat three people: Grandmother Reid and my parents. His expression shifted instantly, his whole body rigid. My mother was the first to speak, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Spencer, we have discussed it and agreed to terminate your engagement to Eleanor.” “You and Eleanor no longer have any relationship.” Spencer swayed violently, as if hit by a physical force. He managed a strained, terrifyingly artificial smile. “Mrs. Jensen, are you joking? Terminate the engagement? Just because Eleanor is having a little tantrum?” He instinctively looked at me, his eyes filled with his usual arrogance and a barely concealed hint of panic. “Ellie, stop playing games. I know I shouldn’t have taken Genny to the clinic first, but I explained—she could have been scarred. You were pregnant; you only fell…” “Only fell?” My father lunged to his feet, slamming his teacup onto the floor near Spencer’s feet. The hot tea splashed Spencer’s trousers, and the sound of porcelain shattering in the dead silence was deafening. “You selfish bastard!” My normally composed father was shaking with rage, pointing a finger directly at Spencer. “Eleanor was pushed down the stairs, she hemorrhaged, she nearly died, and where were you? You were coddling the woman who caused it over a mere scratch!”

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After the international operation I commanded went sideways—a complete wipeout—the commander’s wife was the one who personally saw me delivered to the court-martial. Stripped of my rank and uniform, I quietly finalized my discharge papers and petitioned for a post in a remote border town. That’s how I became a no-name mortician. I saw Sienna Knight again ten years later, in a documentary interview. The host shoved a microphone in my face: “Mr. Owen, Commander Knight hasn’t remarried in a decade. Everyone’s waiting for that storybook ending—the reconciliation!” As he spoke, Sienna herself walked in. She wore her dress blues, impeccably tailored, commanding the room the moment she crossed the threshold. Ten years hadn’t faded Sienna’s fierce composure. If anything, the youthful sharpness was replaced by a more formidable, measured authority. She watched me for a long time, and I could feel the silent weight of unsaid words passing between us. Finally, she offered a gentle greeting: “Owen. It’s been a long time.” “Yeah. A long time.” I gave a flat reply, my face betraying none of the internal tremors that a reunion like this should have caused. I remembered how the investigation lasted six months, concluding I had sold out my entire elite unit for five million dollars. My name was mud. My parents immediately disowned me. The families of my fallen teammates stood in court, their hatred a palpable, living thing, wishing I would just drop dead. But no one knew the truth: that the person who orchestrated the whole thing—the betrayal, the framing, the sacrificing of everything I knew—was the same “devoted” Commander Sienna Knight. All to cover for her lover-boy, Vaughn, who was the actual leak, then sealed the whole mess by eliminating the teammate who knew the truth, making me the scapegoat. 1 The mortuary’s frosted glass doors were tightly shut. Outside, the reporters were a frenzy of noise, and I could hear them clamoring on Sienna’s behalf. Sienna, however, looked completely unfazed. Hearing the rising volume, George, the old director, nervously stumbled out of the back. He gave Sienna a clumsy, half-salute. “Commander Knight… With all due respect, ma’am, this is a house of the departed. We can’t handle this kind of commotion.” “If you need Owen, I can get him, but could you maybe ask these journalists to wait outside?” He yelled toward the embalming room. “Owen, forget the cleanup. Someone’s here for you.” “No, George. Don’t force him.” Even after all this time, hearing her voice was enough to shatter my fragile sense of peace. I knew I couldn’t hide. She wouldn’t leave until she got what she came for. I let out a long, silent sigh and walked out. The reporters surged forward, the questions a brutal, rapid-fire assault. “How does it feel to fall from a decorated Special Forces Captain to a mortician?” “Commander Knight has remained unmarried, supposedly waiting for your reconciliation—do you still hold a grudge for her testifying against you?” “We heard your former trainee, Vaughn, has openly pined for Commander Knight for eight years. What is your take on that?” My gaze skipped past them, locking briefly with Sienna, who stood watching the scene with cool detachment. My body felt instantly rigid. The questions were like shards of glass, but my mouth was too dry to form a single defense. When they didn’t get the answer they wanted, the reporters grew more aggressive, nearly shoving me to the cold concrete floor. That’s when Sienna pushed through the crowd and stepped in front of me. “Gentlemen,” she said, her voice low but carrying the non-negotiable weight of her rank. “This is between Owen and me. It is also a funeral home. Respect the departed and their work. Disperse.” The journalists grumbled and backed off. In the wind-whipped snow, only a few of us remained. I felt the tension drain from my shoulders and was about to retreat to the quiet sanctuary of the embalming room. “Owen…” Sienna began. I forced the stiffness out of my shoulders, meeting her eyes. “Is there something else, Commander Knight?” Hearing my formal address, she flinched slightly. Slowly, she asked, “After all these years… are you… doing well?” The question, coming from her, was an absurdity so profound it was almost comical. She closed the gap between us, reaching out, presumably to brush snow from my shoulder. I recoiled. The instinctive physical flinch threw me off balance, and I didn’t see the small wicker basket of candles and incense by my feet. CRASH— The basket tumbled to the ground, scattering wax and sticks of incense. I landed hard, palms scraping the cold cement. A splash of melted wax left a stinging red patch on my skin. She rushed forward, her expression filled with concern. “Are you okay? Here, let me—” I scrambled back, planting my hands on the cold concrete to steady myself, not wanting to be anywhere near her touch. My fingertips were dusted with ash. “I’m fine…” I quickly managed, ignoring the look of shock on George’s face. “Commander Knight, if there’s nothing else, I have a cleanup to get back to.” Sienna’s eyes were wounded. She reached out again. “Owen, do we really have to be like this? You don’t know what I’ve been through these years…” Her words were cut short by a high, childish voice. “Mommy! Daddy and I missed you so much!” An eight-year-old boy rushed forward and threw himself into Sienna’s arms. Vaughn walked up, escorting my parents, Patricia and Robert. He squeezed Sienna’s hand and spoke with a mock-chiding tone. “Sienna, why didn’t you tell me you were coming to see Master? Mom and Dad were so worried when they heard you came to this… dreary place alone.” Then he smiled at me, a sharp, condescending glint in his eyes that spoke of his complete, sickening victory. He glanced pointedly at my work uniform. “Hope you don’t mind, Master. The kid misses his mom. And the little one she’s carrying… well, he’s probably been missing his dad, too.” My eyes involuntarily dropped to Sienna’s flat stomach. The reporters’ gossip about Sienna waiting for me, Vaughn’s open pining, and now this—the facts were a brutal, overwhelming mockery. I recalled how Vaughn had been injured on duty and sent to a recovery retreat for a year before my court-martial. Conveniently, Sienna had been stationed abroad that same year. They must have started their sick little game back then, leaving me clueless, a blind man walking toward the gallows. Before I could speak, my mother, Patricia, launched into a furious tirade. “Owen, you have the audacity to be alive! You’ve ruined the Knight name. You’ve soiled the family’s honor!” “Three years ago, your father had a major heart attack. If Vaughn hadn’t been visiting and called the paramedics, he’d be in the ground right now! How dare you stand here, a disgrace, looking him in the eye!” I looked at their graying hair and tired faces. Years of failing to be the son they needed twisted a painful knot in my chest. But seeing them defend Vaughn and Sienna like this was a cold, sharp stab. If they knew that the people they were praising—Vaughn and Sienna—were the ones who had destroyed an entire elite unit and then framed their son, what would they feel? My father’s gaze was ice-cold, filled with disgust. “Sienna, a traitorous disgrace like him isn’t worth your worry. He soiled the family’s honor. If it had been me, I would have put a bullet in my own head years ago!” My mother chimed in, stepping deliberately further away from me, her voice filled only with disappointment and contempt. “We consider Vaughn our son. You’re still our daughter-in-law, Sienna. We don’t have a son anymore.” George watched my parents’ bitter attack, then glanced at my calloused hands. He sighed, the gesture heavy with complex emotions, and silently knelt to help me pick up the scattered candles. I had nothing left to say. The slight trembling in my hands was not fear, but the deep-seated chill of total despair. Sienna watched my reaction, then offered a low, forced explanation. “They’ve been through a lot, Owen. They’ve been ostracized for years. Don’t blame them.” She soothed my parents with soft words. As they turned to leave, she turned back to me. “What happened back then, I owe you. My number hasn’t changed. Call me if you need anything.” I gave a mechanical nod, saying nothing. The last thing I wanted was to contact her. I just wanted them all to disappear. After they left, George put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t take it to heart, son. You’ve got to keep living.” He didn’t ask any questions, but I knew something fundamental had broken. Sure enough, the next morning, George called me into his office. “Owen, it’s not that I want to run you off,” he said, rubbing his hands together, his eyes red-rimmed and full of genuine distress. “After yesterday’s circus, too many families have called. They say they don’t want the traitor’s hands touching their loved ones. They say the departed won’t find rest.” I looked down at the complaint forms—Refusal of Owen Knight’s Services—the words were ice in my gut. My only sanctuary, the quiet, solitary work I’d used to hide from the world, was gone. “I understand, George.” The calmness in my own voice surprised me. “I’ll pack up and leave today. I won’t cause you any more trouble.” George tried to protest, but I shook my head. I couldn’t let my reputation destroy the business he had spent his life building. As I packed, a profound emptiness settled over me. This room had been my only refuge since leaving the brig, and now it was lost. Three days later, I was still searching for work. In this small, border town, everyone knew who the “traitor” was. No one would hire me. That’s when Sienna called. “Owen, I’ve secured you a position as a Tactical Instructor at the Special Operations Academy. My transport will be there for you in three days.” “Commander Knight!” I cut her off, my voice sharp. “I can’t afford your ‘kindness.’ Just leave me alone.” “Leave you alone?” Sienna’s voice was flat but carried an unyielding authority. “I’m trying to help you, Owen. I was trying to save you from yourself.” “I remember the pride of the Special Forces Captain you were. If not for…” She paused, clearly avoiding the full truth, then continued, “I know you hate me, but you can’t just throw your life away. If you don’t want to be an instructor, you can be a Tactical Consultant for Vaughn. He just got promoted to Captain of his own unit. You were his mentor; it’s the perfect fit.” I clenched my jaw, fighting the nausea her suggestion brought on. “I appreciate the offer, but I just want a quiet life.” She didn’t argue. She simply informed me. “I know you’re still bitter about the past. But now is not the time for you to be so stubborn. You will understand my decision later.” I almost laughed, a dry, bitter sound. “Your decision? Is that to keep me close, so I can continue to be a pawn in your cover-up? To continue to be Vaughn’s stepping stone?” “Owen!” Her voice cracked like a whip, the full military authority back in her tone. “I warn you—watch your words.” “You will take this consultancy. You have no choice.” “Unless… you want your parents to be run out of the Military Retirement Community. You know how quickly those things can be arranged.” My body went cold. She always knew my weakness.

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I’d been Rhys Kingston’s “best friend” for two decades. Twenty years. Not even the night we tumbled into bed—drunk, messy, losing our virginity to each other—could change that. All I got in return was his cool, measured voice: “That was just a mistake, Rory. We’re still best friends for life, right?” I used to believe Rhys was just emotionally detached, incapable of real intimacy. That was, until the day the housekeeper, Lana, climbed into my father’s bed, and I cracked my equestrian crop across her back until she bled. Rhys, who should have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me, had eyes only for Seraphina “Sephy” Bell, the housekeeper’s daughter, who stood weeping behind her mother. He was genuinely in love with her. He brought her brazenly into our exclusive social circle. He even announced his intention to marry her at the Kingston family dinner. Only I, his so-called childhood friend, was left to become the city’s laughingstock. My mother, crushed by the gossip and sinking deeper into depression, jumped from the top floor of our house. That twenty-year delusion of mine shattered into dust. I decided to simply vanish from his world and start over. But Rhys Kingston, We were just friends. So why did you panic when I hired a boat full of models? 1 When Rhys kicked open the cabin door, I was grinding against a male model, clad in a skimpy scarlet two-piece. My skin, slick with sweat and shimmering under the low, suggestive lights, was a reckless, burning fire—scorching the eyes of every observer. “Oh my God… what is this?” Devon Reed, usually all easy smiles, stopped dead in his tracks, his cheeks flushed, barely able to look directly at me. Rhys stood right beside him. He was still wearing his usual detached, above-it-all expression, though his gaze darkened considerably as it swept over me. “Aurora Wells! Are you done with this charade?” He strode forward, slamming off the deafening music, and tossed a heavy blanket over me. I ignored him, instead pulling the model closer and whispering against his ear. “Ignore him… let’s keep going.” The model smirked, pulling me into a tight embrace in open defiance, his shaggy head burying itself provocatively in my neck. But before his breath could even graze my skin, Rhys grabbed my arm, wrenching me away with such force I nearly stumbled. “Rory Wells!” His fury finally broke through. “Parties, hookups, models—do you even remember what day this is?!” “Of course I remember!” I froze for a split second, then spun around and slapped him across the face. The sound was sharp and clear, but the tears finally came, blurring my vision. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Rhys Kingston! And you definitely don’t get to mention my mother!” My mother had treated Rhys like her own son, pouring money and influence into him, securing his place as the Kingston heir. And yet, Rhys had fallen for the housekeeper’s daughter. He’d fallen for Seraphina Bell! Today was my mother’s funeral. The one person in the world who had no right to lecture me was him. Devon hesitated, stepping forward. “Actually, Rhys handled the entire funeral…” “Aurora Wells,” Rhys said, cutting him off with a cold voice. That face I had been obsessed with for twenty years was still utterly remote, his dark eyes fixed on me, but the words he spoke felt like a slow, agonizing flaying. “Did you forget? You’re the one who ran to the Kingston estate, caused a scene, exposed everyone’s secrets, and drove your mother to take her life.” I froze mid-breath. My swollen eyes locked onto his face, while inside, something cracked, splintered, and stabbed painfully through my organs. It hurt so much I couldn’t draw air. He was right. I hadn’t been able to stand the thought of him marrying Sephy. I had foolishly, shortsightedly, failed to see that the Kingston power now dwarfed my family’s, and that Rhys was no longer the bullied bastard child who needed my protection. I was the idiot who stormed the Kingston house, waving that embarrassing photo of us in bed, shrieking that Sephy’s mother was a shameless homewrecker. And when Rhys had rebuked me, I’d lost all control and publicly thrown his own mother’s background—she was once a struggling single mother who clawed her way up—back in his face. That was when the future Mr. Kingston had unleashed his true wrath. He not only silenced the rumors and had me physically removed from the estate. He retaliated. He took that photo of us, cropped his face out, leaving only the image of me, flushed and lost in the moment, for the entire city to consume. He let the entire city dissect and pass judgment on my passionate expression in bed. My twenty years of devotion to Rhys became a sick joke. Look at her. The Wells heiress is a desperate slut. Her mother couldn’t compete with Sephy’s mother, and she couldn’t compete with Sephy for Rhys, either. That’s what everyone said. And that was why my proud, vibrant mother, in a moment of utter despair, threw herself off the penthouse balcony, crashing into a scarlet stain on the pavement. Right before she died, she had a moment of lucidity, a clarity brought on by the trauma. She clutched my hand, her eyes sharp, clear, and utterly heartbroken. “Rory, you chasing after Rhys looks exactly like I chased after your father. Chasing… until you can’t see yourself anymore. It’ll kill you.” “Go find a few men. You’ll know that in the end, love is just… a cheap trick.” So, I had skipped her funeral. Instead, I’d chartered a yacht and hired a crew of models. And finally, it was my turn to use his words against him. “So what?” My smile was bright, but my nails were digging crescent moons into my palms. “We’re just childhood friends. You don’t get to dictate my life.” Rhys stared at me, his dark, heavy eyes emanating a strange, oppressive atmosphere. After a long pause, he simply said, in a dull voice: “Sephy is waiting for you.” In an instant, my heart stopped, then erupted in a wave of pain. I thought I had moved on. But twenty years of entanglement, all it took was one name to leave me a wreck. “You’re a real piece of work, Rhys Kingston.” I murmured the words under my breath. Typical of the “best friend” I grew up with—he knew exactly where to twist the knife for the maximum effect. He ordered his men to drag me into a waiting car. As I was leaving, I noticed the model’s light-colored eyes. Devon leaned in, whispering, “I know you’re hurting, Rory. But it’s your mom’s funeral. You can’t not go.” He glanced at Rhys, who was leaning back with his eyes closed, clearly resting, and hesitated. “Don’t be angry. Rhys oversaw the whole service. He really does care…” He trailed off, unable to finish. He was right to stop. Was Rhys doing it for me? Or was it to show respect for my mother’s protection all those years ago? Neither reason seemed to stick. The moment my mother jumped, whatever was between us curdled into an impossible, messy debt. I slumped into the seat, watching the tiny porcelain pendant hanging from the rearview mirror sway with the speed of the car. Devon, Rhys, and I had been inseparable since kindergarten. Yet, Rhys only ever had one picture in the car—a tiny old selfie of just him and me. And the passenger seat was always reserved for me. I used to believe that small “exception” was my special privilege, and I threw myself blindly at him because of it. Now, my photo was gone, replaced by the pendant Sephy had made by hand. The passenger seat was cluttered with a fluffy, incongruous pink dog blanket. Everywhere I looked, there were traces of Sephy. Oversaw the funeral? I managed a strained smile, tasting the metallic tang of blood at the back of my throat. He probably just wanted to impress Walter Wells so he could marry Sephy sooner. The car stopped at the Wells estate, and I shoved the door open and got out. My mother’s funeral had just concluded, but the Wells living room had already been completely redecorated. Even the old family portrait—my mother, father, and me—had been replaced with a wedding photo of Walter and the housekeeper. My mother’s body wasn’t even cold, and he was already rushing to bring his new wife home. “You wicked girl! Where the hell have you been all day?!” “How dare you skip your own mother’s funeral! Do you even care about this family?!” Walter Wells stood up, slamming his fist on the table, his face, ravaged by alcohol and indulgence, turning an ugly shade of red. Beside him, Lana Bell, dressed like the wealthy matriarch she’d always wanted to be, cooed softly in a proprietorial manner, though a flicker of disdain crossed her eyes. “Darling, Rory is just too distraught. That’s all.” “She’s still young. Don’t be so angry, Walter.” “Yes, Mr. Wells, Rory must be so sad,” Sephy chirped, standing nearby in a crisp white dress, looking as innocently fragile as a gardenia. Walter sat back down next to Lana and scoffed. “If she were half as level-headed as Sephy, her mother wouldn’t have died from despair!” I snapped my head up. Looking at this trio’s pathetic performance, I suddenly burst out laughing. “Stop the act. If you two hadn’t been shameless enough to sleep together, would my mother have been driven to jump?” “Aurora Wells!” Walter bellowed a warning. Lana’s face went white. “I am so sorry for your mother, but Walter and I are genuinely in—” Before she could finish, I lunged forward, grabbed a handful of her hair, and, over her shriek, slammed her down in front of my mother’s memorial photo. “You begged my mother to take you and your daughter in when you had nothing, and you repaid her by climbing into my father’s bed.” “If you really feel sorry, you should join her in the grave!” Walter roared for me to let go. Sephy rushed forward, crying and trying to pull me away. “Stop, Rory! You can’t blame my mother! You’re the one who drove your own mother to suicide, don’t pin the blame on her—” Before she finished that line, I snatched the nearby equestrian crop and viciously brought it down across her lying, two-faced mouth. “You hit me! Rhys won’t let you get away with this!” Sephy clutched her mouth and screamed, a malicious, poisonous gleam in her eyes. I gave her a wild, triumphant smile. “Not pretending anymore, are we?” “I like you better this way.” “You are going to kill me with this madness!” Walter clutched his chest in fury, servants and staff rushing to his side. “Your madness changes nothing! Your mother is gone, and it’s your fault! No one in this house wants you here!” Sephy shrieked through her red-rimmed eyes. I raised the whip again, but a hand suddenly grabbed my forearm, the grip so tight I felt my bones might crack. “Aurora Wells! Who gave you permission to lay a hand on her?!” Rhys, who had somehow appeared behind me, had two burning flames in his dark eyes. I refused to yield, though the hand gripping the crop trembled for a moment. “Didn’t you hear what she said? She deserves it!” “I heard,” Rhys said, his voice flat as he dropped my arm. “So what.” My heart stopped beating for an instant, and then the raw, sharp pain began to blossom. I stared at Rhys, disbelief suffocating me. He knew! He had always known Sephy was playing a role, he knew she was intent on driving me out of the Wells family, and he knew how impossible my life was here. But he still chose to stand with her. “Rhys!” Sephy sobbed, throwing herself into his arms. “She hit my mom, and she hit me with that horse whip!” Rhys held her close, his eyes fixed on me, his voice colder than ice. “Is that so? Then I’ll give her a hundred lashes myself to apologize to you. How about that?” “Rhys Kingston, you wouldn’t dare!” I glared at him, my eyes burning. Rhys met my gaze unflinchingly. His dark eyes held mine for a moment, then he raised his hand and ordered his bodyguards to restrain me on the floor. In front of Walter and the Bells, he ruthlessly beat me until my skin was raw and bloody. As the pain grew so intense I began to cough up blood, I heard a terrible, deafening crash inside my chest. Twenty years of affection, the very last flicker of hope… It was all ground into ash in that single moment. I don’t know how many lashes I took before I finally lost consciousness and collapsed. In a haze, I was lifted into a familiar embrace, the faint, clean scent of cedarwood and iris—Rhys’s signature scent—filling my nose. “Rory! Get a doctor now!” I heard his voice, ragged and panicked—a rare sound—but he was shouting for me only after he had commanded his men to beat me until I was bleeding. I used my last surge of energy to struggle out of his arms, preferring to fall painfully onto the tiled floor rather than remain in his embrace. “Rhys Kingston, you’re fucking disgusting.” Rhys didn’t respond to that. He had me rushed to the hospital that night and arranged for my treatment. But the next morning, the small company I had secretly started was reported to the authorities, and all the evidence was dumped right on Walter’s desk. The partners I had worked so hard to secure overnight immediately backed out. Even the photos of me and the models at the funeral party were deliberately circulated. One by one, these events cornered me. Walter publicly announced his intention to disown me. I was forced to swallow my pride and call in favors, desperate to find someone to intercede. The former darling of the city, Aurora Wells, was hobbling on unhealed whip marks, meekly asking for help from the socialites who used to follow her around. “Rory, it’s not that we don’t want to help.” Tristan Davies, the one at the head of the table, looked distressed, but his eyes were shamelessly licking over my pale face and the visible bruises on my neck. “But you crossed Rhys. That’s a cost none of us can afford.” He slid a glass of amber-colored liquor towards me, his eyes gleaming with a familiar, predatory hunger. “But if you’re willing to have a few drinks with us and hang out tonight… we could potentially reconsider.” I knew exactly what “a few drinks and hanging out” meant. It was the ugly, transactional game of power and sex, a common practice in our circle. I used to watch it with cold contempt. Now, I was the fish on the cutting board. No escape. “Tristan, I didn’t call you all here for that!” Devon, his face ashen, tried to intervene, but his lower-tier family status meant he was quickly—and physically—silenced. “She can’t expect us to risk everything without showing any sincerity,” someone sneered, his gaze on me vile and sickening. “Besides, who doesn’t know Rory plays fast and loose? A whole yacht of models—what’s a few more of us?” They advanced on me, liquor glasses in hand, a pack of wolves circling, savoring the reversal of power. The shame turned my face white, and the salty, metallic taste in my throat threatened to spill over. “Quite the party, isn’t it?” Rhys’s voice suddenly cut through the air. “Why didn’t you invite me?” The room went instantly silent. Everyone watched Rhys standing in the doorway, Sephy on his arm in a custom-made evening gown. It looked like a casual, accidental encounter. Tristan froze, then quickly recovered, ushering Rhys to the head seat with an awkward smile. “We knew you were busy, Rhys. Just a casual get-together.” Rhys’s eyes scanned my pale face, then the liquor glasses in every man’s hand. He settled calmly into the seat and issued his instruction to me. “Since you love to drink so much, maybe you should use this opportunity to properly apologize to Sephy.” “If she hadn’t interceded on your behalf, the punishment would have been far worse.” I bit my lip, glaring at him, and everything clicked into place. My small attempt at independence, my plan to get revenge on Walter—Rhys had seen it all. With a slight nod, he had crushed all my hope, pushing me into this humiliating, unspeakable position. All to exact revenge for Seraphina. My heart felt fit to burst with rage. But I bowed my head, forcing myself to swallow the burning liquor in one gulp. “Sephy, I was wrong. I apologize.” Only then did Rhys nod in satisfaction, turning to leave with Sephy on his arm. A moment later, a strange, burning heat coursed through my body, and I realized the drink had been spiked. I tried to leave, but Tristan blocked the door, slapping me hard across the face. “Running, are we?” Tristan had already had Devon quietly dispatched. His voice was a triumphant, savage roar. “Let’s see who saves you this time!” Save me? Through my blurring vision, I managed a bitter, hopeless smile. Who had ever saved me? Ever since I became the city’s joke, every step I took had already landed me in this unending hell. I bit down on my lip until it bled, grabbed the liquor bottle, and smashed it against the head of the man tearing at my clothes. I ran, dragging my leaden, injured leg. “Bitch! Get her!” Someone threw a bottle at me; someone else brutally kicked my lower leg. The stabbing pain, coupled with the feverish heat that threatened to overwhelm me, nearly drove me mad. Clutching the last shred of my sanity, I dragged my broken body into an empty supply closet and crammed myself into a utility cabinet. By pure instinct, I clawed out my phone and dialed my emergency contact. He picked up almost instantly, his voice quiet and calm. “Hello?” Fear and the drug made me choke out the words, sobbing. “Rhys, help me!” “I’m sorry, I was wrong, please, you have to save me—” Then Sephy’s voice cut in on the line. “Rhys, darling, I suddenly have a craving for that special gourmet shortbread. Can you go get it for me right now?” I screamed into the phone. “No, Rhys, please listen to me, my leg is broken, they’re trying to—” “Yes, of course.” “Beep—beep—beep…” Rhys had answered Sephy. I buried my head into my knees, letting the sound of despair roar out of me. Just as my consciousness began to fade, I heard footsteps outside the closet, like the approaching drumbeat of the devil.

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I was scrolling through a gossip thread after work when I saw it: [Do Childhood Sweethearts Really Stand a Chance Against a Sudden, Dazzling Arrival?] One highly-rated comment stood out: [Of course not. I stole my husband right out from under his so-called ‘childhood sweetheart.’] [Five years ago, my husband was a charming, polite college student, and his girlfriend was totally unsuited for him.] [So I played the cool girl. I worked my way into his life as his ‘guy friend,’ and then, under the guise of being his best buddy, I started chipping away at their relationship.] [It didn’t take long for them to start fighting. He invited me out for a drink to vent, and I showed up in a killer little black dress and the highest heels I owned. His eyes were glued to me.] [The night we got together, his little girlfriend was probably waiting for him to come home to take her to her prenatal appointment.] The accompanying picture showed a father holding an infant, meticulously giving a bottle. Though his face was obscured, I recognized the man immediately. The jagged, distinct scar tracing his forearm gave him away. It was Dean, my childhood sweetheart, Xu Xiangyi. I was stunned to see a post about him, completely unmoored in time and context, after so many years. I skimmed the comments—a nasty mix of praise and condemnation—then quit the thread and tossed my phone onto the passenger seat. I started the car, but before I could pull away, Harper leaned over from the passenger side. “Sierra, babe, someone named Dean called you.” “I answered it for you.” 1 “Wait—” Just as I grabbed the phone back, a familiar voice drifted from the speaker. “Happy Anniversary, honey.” My first instinct was to slam the End Call button, but Harper snatched the phone away again. She wore a “spill the tea, you dog” expression, mouthing silently: “Fess up. Since when?” I pressed the brake, pulling over. I was about to explain that the man on the other end already had a wife when a different, female voice cut in. “Oh my God, it’s the necklace I’ve been wanting! Thank you, honey!” “Also, babe, the results from the check-up came back today. The doctor says the baby is perfectly healthy.” Dean murmured, “That’s great. And the toddler? What’s my big boy doing? Why are you playing with Daddy’s phone—” The closeness of his voice stopped dead. For a moment, the only sound on either side of the line was the faint static of the connection. Finally, a faint whisper emerged. “Sierra?” That one word was a cold shock. I snatched the phone back, didn’t give him a chance to speak again, and instantly hit Hang Up. After all, I had once told him I’d rather die than ever speak to him again. The car eased back into traffic, but the atmosphere inside remained thick with unspoken tension. Harper broke the silence first, clearing her throat with a forced laugh. “Oops, must have been a pocket dial.” Then, attempting to lighten the mood, she rambled, “Speaking of, I saw some trashy viral post today. This woman was saying she stole her husband from his little childhood sweetheart.” “People will post any absurd, dramatic fantasy for clicks these days…” “That post wasn’t fiction. That was life.” I gripped the steering wheel, managing a calm, chilling smile as I glanced at Harper’s astonished face. “Because I was the stupid little childhood sweetheart whose boyfriend was stolen.” 2 Dean’s parents and mine were inseparable, practically family. Dean and I, we’d shared a crib. We were the literal definition of childhood sweethearts. Growing up, Dean was quiet, reserved, and almost painfully awkward. Mr. and Mrs. Reed often sighed, calling him their little ‘stone statue.’ In school, his honest, submissive nature made him an easy target for bullies. Luckily, I was the resident wild child—a terror in pigtails. If Dean got cornered, I’d rally my sisterhood and we’d go to war. The kids we beat up would stick out their chins and shout: “Look at him! A boy who needs a girl to protect him! Shame!” I’d immediately grab a rock and hurl it at them. “Say that again, and I’ll pull down your shorts and parade you through the quad!” I was always furious on his behalf, but Dean would just tug on my sleeve and press a piece of candy into my palm. I’d chew the candy, exasperated. “Dean, don’t be such a doormat. Your parents are worried sick. Can you try to be a man?” He’d just offer a gentle smile and ask if I had enough candy. I’d grab his ear and twist it in pure frustration. It’s fair to say that I protected Dean through our entire childhood and adolescence. He was always that sweet, mild-mannered boy. No matter how many times I drilled him on standing up for himself, he’d only smile and say: “I’ll just focus on being your strongest backup, Sierra.” Eventually, I gave up trying to change him. I even stepped in to defend him when Mr. and Mrs. Reed would scold him. It was half-serious, half-teasing, when Dean’s parents would say: “Oh, Dean. What on earth will you do without Sierra?” Dean would look at me with earnest, serious eyes. “Do we have to be apart? I want to be with Sierra forever.” I’d just laugh, flexing my small arm. “Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Reed! I’ll take care of Dean! As long as I have a meal, he’ll have the best seat at the table!” It was just child talk, but Dean never forgot those words. The day he finally confessed, he clung to me, his voice thick with emotion. “Sierra, you promised you’d take care of me. Don’t ever leave me, okay?” “Be with me, please?” I thought then that Dean was the most hopelessly stubborn boy I knew. He was fiercely devoted, stuck to his convictions, and once he made a decision, he followed it to the end. That’s how he was when he confessed to me. And that’s how he was the day I caught him, fiercely defending Tatum. “You’re kidding me?!” Harper shrieked. She pointed at the phone. “So, the Tatum you mentioned… she’s the… the one who posted the thread?” “Yes,” I said simply. “The woman who posted the thread.” Harper buried her face in her hands, tugging at her hair. “Why? You had two decades of history! Does a childhood bond really lose to a sudden, dazzling arrival?” I didn’t have an answer for that then, and I don’t really have one now. Looking back, the root cause of our implosion wasn’t even about love. It was about trust. How darkly ironic. Two people who had lived in each other’s shadows since birth, closer than siblings, ended up tearing each other apart over a fundamental lack of faith. Dean and Tatum’s meeting was completely ordinary. They were in the same university class, grouped together for a project. I first met her when Dean came to deliver me my first pumpkin spice latte of the season. I was ecstatic when I walked downstairs, but the first thing I saw was Tatum’s arm slung casually over Dean’s shoulder, their heads close together. When she saw me, Tatum whistled and called out in a loud, carefree voice: “Hey, sis-in-law!” My gut clenched. I saw a flash of sharp, competitive light in her eyes—the exact kind I’d seen a thousand times in the girls who’d tried to compete with me for Dean’s attention growing up. I realized instantly that she saw me as a rival. I warned Dean about her—repeatedly. I told him Tatum wasn’t as innocent as she seemed. I even said she was clearly flirting with him. But Dean would simply maintain his gentle smile and reassure me: “Sierra, you’re overthinking this. Tatum has high standards. She would never be interested in me.” His complete dismissal of my warning. The slight, almost imperceptible leap in his voice when he mentioned her name. And the hint of genuine disappointment in that phrase, “She would never be interested in me.” Every detail made my skin crawl. Our fights began, escalating quickly. But this time, Dean—the one who always came back tearfully begging for reconciliation—chose silence. He chose the cold war. 3 For three days, I felt like I was sitting on shattered glass. At dinner, distracted and sick to my stomach, I dropped and broke my spoon. When I leaned down to pick up the pieces, the world went black, and I collapsed. When I woke up, the doctor told me I was pregnant. In a daze, completely overwhelmed, I immediately called Dean. Half an hour later, he burst through the hospital room door, breathless. Mrs. Reed followed him, happily taking my mother’s hand and telling her not to worry, that I was now part of their family. From that day on, Dean was a shadow. He was meticulous in caring for me, catering to my every mood swing during those difficult first weeks. But slowly, his course load became “too demanding.” The group projects piled up. He started coming home later and later. Until the day of my first solo prenatal check-up, when Dean never showed up at all. I used every trick I knew to get Tatum’s address. The door wasn’t locked. As I pushed it open, the sound hit me first: the low, unmistakable sound of entangled breaths coming from the back room. The tension that had been building inside me for weeks, combined with the crushing sickness of early pregnancy, finally snapped. I grabbed the fruit knife from the kitchen table and ran into the bedroom like a lunatic. I was screaming, swinging the knife wildly, unleashing all the resentment and pain that had been building inside me. There was a muffled cry of pain. Dean had thrown himself in front of Tatum, and my desperate swipe had sliced a long, ugly wound across his forearm. Blood welled up instantly and streamed down his arm. But Dean didn’t look at his wound; his eyes were fixed on me. He finally roared at me. “Sierra! Have you lost your mind?!” In twenty-three years, that was the first time Dean had ever stood his ground with such force. The first time he had ever displayed such overwhelming certainty and protectiveness. And it was all for the woman he loved. It was a version of him I had never seen before. Every movement, every fierce look in his eyes—it was all for Tatum. We were done. Completely and irrevocably. He moved back to the university dorms. I turned around and terminated the pregnancy. When Mrs. Reed found out, she ordered Dean to come home and beg for my forgiveness. Dean’s eyes were fixed on my stomach, and he didn’t say a word. But I wasn’t the kind of girl to just walk away in silent defeat. I spread the pictures of Dean’s affair all over the university. I compiled a damning presentation and uploaded it online. I stood outside the student dorms with a megaphone and broadcast their secret relationship to everyone. I wasn’t a fragile, heartbroken little girl who would simply vanish after being wronged. I intended to make Dean understand the cost of crossing me. If I wasn’t going to be okay, neither were they. But within days, my own private photos—intimate shots Dean and I had taken—were leaked. They spread with a force that completely overshadowed the news of Dean’s infidelity. The scandal raged for two weeks, until the university board cited me for “disrupting the campus environment” and suspended me. Dean, the star student, faced no disciplinary action whatsoever. My mother, heartbroken, officially withdrew me from school. She said we would move to a new city and start over. On the day we moved, Mr. and Mrs. Reed came to the house, burdened with shame and apologies. Dean stood outside the door, where my father had forbidden him to cross the threshold. Just before getting into the car, I walked over to him. I had to know. I desperately needed to know why. Why had we ended up like this? Why the betrayal? Why the cruelty? Dean was silent for a long time, and then he said words I would never, ever forget. 4 He said: “Sierra, you are consumed by jealousy. You are selfish and self-centered. You only ever think about yourself. To you, I was just an appendage.” “You used me to advertise your success, to prove how charming you were.” “Tatum is different. She supports me, she understands me, and she knows what I truly want.” I stared at him, and my first instinct was to burst into a sharp, hysterical laugh. So, for twenty-three years, that was what he really thought of me. In that instant, a strange calmness washed over me. The pain, the crushing resentment, the humiliation—it all seemed to vanish. I nodded, smiling coldly. “Fine. If that’s the case, let’s agree to never cross paths again. It saves us the trouble of being disgusted by each other.” Dean frowned, hesitation crossing his face. “We’re only breaking up. But we still have all those years of history. If you ever need my help…” I cut him off, a wave of pure revulsion washing over me. “Don’t worry.” “I’d rather die than ever speak to you again.” With that, I turned my back, got into the car, and drove away from the place where I had suffered so deeply. … When I finished the story, the car was silent for a long time. Harper maintained her expression of sheer shock for three full minutes before saying numbly: “I thought guys this messed up only existed in bad fiction… I can’t believe he’s real.” After another long pause, she asked, her voice laced with confusion, “So, why do you still have his number? A guy like that—keeping his contact is like keeping a copy of your own criminal record!” I gave a casual shrug. “That was his secondary account. I forgot to delete it when I nuked everything else.” The car pulled up smoothly to my condo building. Harper clung to my arm as we walked. “We are ordering the best food tonight. That story made me physically ill. I need my Sierra-made butter tarts to recover…” We both stopped dead, mid-sentence. A solitary figure was standing right outside my door. He must have been there for a while; a thick dusting of snow covered the shoulders of his coat. He turned at the sound of our voices. It was Dean.

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