My son won an award for his college capstone project, which came with a $2,000 cash prize. He used $1,000 to buy himself a pair of limited-edition sneakers, $500 to buy his dad a tailored suit, and the remaining $500 to book a weekend getaway for his grandparents. I thought he was saving an even bigger surprise for me, waiting with a heart full of anticipation. When he noticed me waiting, he frowned and muttered, “You’re just a stay-at-home mom. You’ve never sacrificed anything for me. What right do you have to a cut of my money?” Overhearing this, my husband looked at me with pure disgust. “Stay-at-home moms have it so easy. I’ve given you a wonderful life, and you have the nerve to be greedy for your son’s money! You’re insatiable.” Later, the whole family signed up for premium health insurance policies, leaving me as the only one uninsured. They claimed that since stay-at-home moms didn’t do any “real” work, I wouldn’t get sick. As it turned out, out of the entire family, I was the only one who developed a critical illness from years of chronic overwork. Seeing the astronomical cost of the surgery, they immediately opted to pull the plug on my medical care. In the end, I died entirely alone in a cold hospital room. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn. And my son was currently screaming in my face, calling me a control freak. 1 “All you do is hover over me and control every little thing! You won’t let me eat this, you won’t let me drink that—you’re so damn annoying! “Why don’t you just go fucking die?!” My son’s spit flew onto my face, snapping me out of a daze. Looking around, I was utterly shocked by the painfully familiar scene unfolding before me. I had been reborn. I was back in the year my son was in eighth grade! Because it was the final year before the crucial high school placement exams, I had drafted a rigorous study schedule for him. Today was the fifth day of that plan, and the moment he walked through the door, he exploded. He came in cursing and throwing a tantrum. I had barely asked him one question before he hurled that vicious insult at my face. He grabbed the expensive study tablet I had bought him, slammed it onto the floor, and stomped it into pieces. “To hell with English! If you care so much, go learn it yourself! Stop forcing your own pathetic dreams onto me and making me accomplish them for you, you selfish freak!” This was the third time he had thrown a violent tantrum this week. I looked at him and asked calmly, “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t settle for anything less than an elite prep school?” He let out a disdainful scoff. “I’ve been at the top of my class since middle school started. It’s just a prep school; do you seriously think I can’t get in?” My mother-in-law, Brenda, chimed in from the couch. “Exactly, Nora. You’re way too strict with Tyler. Our Tyler is brilliant; he doesn’t need to study all this extra junk. Your schedule is suffocating him. You need to reflect on your own behavior.” My father-in-law, Arthur, spat a sunflower seed shell onto the coffee table and nodded in agreement. I asked them, “One hour of self-study every night, three hours of tutoring on Saturday, and taking all of Sunday off. For a student preparing for high school placement exams, is that really considered strict?” Tyler hurled his heavy backpack onto the floor. “You’re a fucking control freak! You enjoy the power trip, so of course you don’t think it’s strict! I’m a human being, I need to breathe! Give me back my weeknights and weekends!” My husband, Mark, pushed the front door open, his brow deeply furrowed. “What’s all the screaming about? I could hear you guys all the way down the hallway.” He turned his gaze to me. “Nora, are you nagging Tyler again?” The entire family unanimously decided it was my fault. I remembered what happened at this exact moment in my previous life. I had desperately tried to provide evidence that if Tyler didn’t put in the effort, his grades would slip. I was rewarded with nothing but eye rolls and bitter resentment from the whole family. Looking back, I realized how pathetic and ridiculous I had been. This time, I didn’t get angry, and I didn’t panic. I just looked at my son and asked, “So, what do you want to do?” Tyler looked at me in shock, as if he hadn’t expected me to ask that. He stood frozen for a long moment before finally speaking up: “First of all, I get to eat whatever I want, and I go to sleep whenever I want. You are not allowed to manage me!” I nodded. “Okay.” 2 Tyler’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. In pure disbelief, he demanded, “Don’t patronize me! I’m being completely serious!” Mark masked his own surprise and interjected, “Nora, this isn’t the first time I’ve told you this. A growing boy needs more than just studying; he needs rest. You force him to bury his nose in books all day, you’re going to depress him. Do you really not see that you’re the problem here?” Brenda added fuel to the fire. “I’ve said from the start that Nora’s parenting methods were toxic! Our Tyler used to be such a sweet boy, and her parenting has made his temper worse and worse. People outside the family keep asking me if there’s something psychologically wrong with him and telling me to take him to a therapist!” Arthur let out a heavy grunt, angrily tossing a handful of sunflower seed shells onto the floor. He glared at me coldly. “As a mother, you cannot push a child to the brink like this! If we were living in the old days, a mother who drove her son to this point would be thrown in an asylum!” I couldn’t help but laugh. I threw my hands up. “Why is everyone getting so worked up? What did I even say?” Brenda bared her teeth and spat at me, “I don’t need you to say it to know you disagree with letting Tyler rest! It’s not like I just met you yesterday!” I ignored her and looked back at my son. “Do you have any other demands?” Tyler glanced at his dad and grandparents, then tentatively added, “On top of those two, I want you to cancel my forty-five-minute daily screen time limit. I want to be on my phone as long as I want. If I want to game, I game. If I want to watch streams until three in the morning, you are not allowed to interfere!” I nodded again. “Done.” His eyes widened even further. He immediately grabbed a pen and paper, ducked his head, and frantically scribbled down over a dozen demands. I skimmed the list. The gist of it was simple: he wanted me to completely step away from every aspect of his life. He shoved the paper toward me. “Sign it! I’ll only believe you if you sign it!” I swept my gaze over my husband and my in-laws’ reactions. They were all looking at me with smug expressions, fully expecting me to say “no,” ready to jump in and ruthlessly criticize me the moment I did. I had lived that life for nearly ten years. Tyler was not naturally gifted at academics. A concept that another student could grasp in one minute took him half an hour to fully understand. Yet, from a young age, he was obsessed with being number one and wanted everyone to call him a genius. Since he lacked natural talent but desperately wanted the glory of getting into an elite prep school, he had to work twice as hard. In my previous life, when I realized this, I weighed my career against his future and chose him. I quit my job as a teacher, dedicating myself entirely to being a stay-at-home mom. I single-handedly dragged him from the absolute bottom of his grade to the top ten. Every single day, apart from doing chores and waiting on my in-laws hand and foot, my routine consisted of buying him study materials, making schedules, tutoring him one-on-one, solidifying his knowledge, and making sure he didn’t burn out. For almost ten years, year in and year out, I did this. Though the days were monotonous and exhausting, seeing him improve made me feel it was all worth it. I swallowed his constant, unreasonable tantrums, bore the brunt of his family’s baseless accusations, and successfully molded him into an Ivy League design student who even won a prestigious award for his senior thesis. And what was the result? When he stood on that stage to give his acceptance speech, he thanked everyone under the sun. He thanked himself, his dad, his grandparents, his professors, his classmates—he even thanked the stray cats on campus. But he didn’t mention me once. When it came to the prize money, I was entirely excluded. After college, riding on the coattails of the stellar resume I had essentially built for him, he landed an incredible offer at a top firm. The very first month he got paid, he rented an apartment and moved out. For an entire year, he didn’t even come back to visit me on holidays. Later, when the years of repressed stress and exhaustion manifested into a terminal illness, I lay in a hospital bed and begged to see him. He dragged his feet, taking half a month to finally show up. The moment he walked into my room, his face was buried in his phone, and he even chuckled at whatever he was watching. When I tried to speak to him, he cut me off impatiently. “I’m an independent adult now! Are you seriously still trying to micromanage me just for playing on my phone?” After that, the only other time he came to the hospital was when I was on the brink of death. He rushed in and immediately told the doctors to withdraw all life-saving care… Now, staring at the piece of paper in front of me, I smiled. I picked up a pen and signed my name with a fluid stroke. “From today onward, you’re free, Tyler.” 3 My son literally jumped for joy. He kicked his shoes off, threw his jacket on the floor, grabbed a massive bottle of Coke, and bolted into his room to boot up his gaming PC. After playing for a bit, he yelled out into the living room. “Grandma! Order me some KFC! I want fried chicken! Two whole buckets!” Brenda eagerly obliged, as always. “Okay! Whatever my precious grandson wants to eat, Grandma will order it. Unlike some people, who micromanage every bite of food that goes into their own son’s mouth.” As she spoke, she pulled out her phone to order the food, her eyes shooting daggers in my direction, clearly waiting for me to step in and stop her. Tyler hated exercise but loved deep-fried food. At 5’11”, he was already pushing 200 pounds. He was heavily overweight, and his blood panels were all bordering on dangerous levels. I used to try desperately to help him lose weight, cooking him healthy, low-fat meals. But I couldn’t stop his dad from secretly giving him allowance money to buy junk food at school. Because of that, I strictly forbade him from eating any junk food once he got home. Over this one issue alone, the family and I had fought no less than five times. Seeing that I wasn’t saying anything, Brenda deliberately raised her voice to Arthur. “Old man, look! I ordered two whole buckets of fried chicken for Tyler!” Her voice was booming, as if she were terrified I wouldn’t hear her. I picked up my phone and walked outside to take a call, completely ignoring her. I had sent a text earlier to an old colleague asking about job opportunities, and she was calling me back. We used to teach at the same school. Later, I quit to become a housewife, and she quit to open her own private tutoring center. A year ago, when we ran into each other and she found out I had been personally tutoring my son the whole time and hadn’t really left the education sphere, she was thrilled. She practically begged me to join her company as a partner. In my previous life, I had been incredibly tempted, but the thought of Tyler needing my one-on-one attention made me refuse without hesitation. This time, I was going to reboot my life. Hearing that I was ready to join, she excitedly invited me out for dinner. I immediately grabbed my purse and got ready to leave. Seeing this, Brenda asked nervously, “It’s almost six o’clock! Where are you going? Aren’t you making dinner?” “I have plans.” “You have plans?! You can’t just leave! The whole family is waiting to eat!” Brenda scowled, her mouth gaping open like a bottomless pit. “If you have hands, cook it yourself. If you don’t, then starve.” Dropping that sentence, I walked right out the front door. I grabbed dinner with my old colleague, went shopping, and got my nails done. My mind and body experienced a level of relaxation I hadn’t felt in years. In the past, my only thoughts were helping my son be number one and taking care of the family so my husband could focus on work. My mind was always tightly wound. The smile had long vanished from my face, replaced only by deepening wrinkles with each passing day. Tonight, doing something so simple with a friend made me feel like I had traveled back ten years in time. By the time I got home, it was almost 10:00 PM. The living room lights were blazing. Mark was sitting on the couch, his face dark as thunder, waiting for me. 4 “So you finally decided to come back?” I looked at him calmly. “I’m not lost, obviously I know how to come home.” His face darkened further. He pointed at the disaster zone on the floor and yelled, “Do you see this?! Your precious son threw all this! There’s sunflower seed shells trailing all the way to his bedroom door! And chip crumbs, and dirty tissues! You turned a perfectly good house into a garbage dump! “And look at the time! He ate two buckets of fried chicken before dinner, then ate an entire takeout box during dinner, and now he had his grandmother make him a huge bowl of noodles! If he keeps eating like this, he’ll be over 200 pounds by tomorrow! “I’m not done! I just checked his backpack. He hasn’t written a single word of his homework today! He’s been playing that game since six o’clock! Is this a joke to you?” He grew more agitated the more he spoke. He turned and slapped the calendar on the wall, emphasizing, “He has midterms in ten days! And right after midterms is the parent-teacher conference! I already bragged to my coworkers that my son is a genius who always ranks in the top ten, and they’re waiting for me to send them pictures from the conference! How the hell is he supposed to get top ten with this kind of studying attitude?!” I listened quietly to his rant, then let out a small laugh. “Wow, so you actually knew all of this? I assumed you were completely clueless, considering how you always accused me of being a tyrant who was driving her child insane every time I tried to discipline him.” His face changed. He choked on his words for a long moment before squeezing out, “Don’t play games with me! You’re his mother! You know better than anyone what’s good for him! Letting him do whatever he wants is absolutely not loving him!” He waved his hand dismissively, barking an order at me. “Look, I know you’re just putting on a show to teach him a lesson, but time is precious. Drop the act and go rein him in!” I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not acting. Since I signed that agreement, I absolutely will not go back on my word. If you want to manage him, go right ahead. It’s not like he’s only my son.” He puffed his chest out righteously. “I have to work and make money to provide for you!” I pulled out the employment contract I had just signed and tossed it on the table. “What a coincidence. I have a job now too. $4,000 base salary plus commission. I start tomorrow.” He picked it up, skimmed it, and all the fire drained out of him. He started stammering, “Y-you’re serious?” I shrugged. He hurriedly walked over, pushed me down onto the couch, and started lecturing me with faux earnestness. “Why are you doing this? You have a roof over your head and food on the table. Why do you need to go out and show your face to the world? Is the $3,000 allowance I give you every month not enough?” I sneered. “Try living on it yourself, and you’ll see if it’s enough.” He fell silent for a moment, then pulled out his phone to show me a video of a female livestreamer. “Do you really think making $4,000 at a tutoring center is easy? What kind of ‘good job’ can a middle-aged married woman realistically get? They’re lying to you. In the end, they just want you to do this kind of trashy, borderline-explicit livestreaming. Look at this woman—how disgusting and cheap is she? Is that what you want to become?” His words were dripping with such vile misogyny it made me sick. I glared at him coldly. “Is your brain full of actual garbage? You’re filthy, so everything you look at seems filthy to you!” He scoffed, licked his lips, and tried another angle. “No, seriously, your son is at the most critical stage of his life right now. If he bombs his high school placement exams, he’ll have to go to some mediocre public high school. Can a mediocre high school get him into an Ivy League? Definitely not! If he doesn’t, what kind of future will he have?” I turned my head toward my son’s bedroom and shouted, “Tyler! Can you get into a top prep school without my help?!” Tyler, who just happened to be walking out to use the bathroom, heard me and let out a contemptuous laugh. “You make it sound like the only reason I got top ten before was because of you. I got those grades because I’m smart! It has nothing to do with you!” Heh. Those were the exact lines his grandparents constantly fed him to stroke his ego, and he actually believed them. His IQ really was a tragedy. 5 Seeing this, Mark’s face turned incredibly ugly. He had always played the role of the loving, indulgent father. He was nowhere to be found during the grueling daily grind of actual parenting, but the second Tyler got good grades, he’d rush to the parent-teacher conferences to soak up all the glory. After holding it in for a long time, he finally spat out, “Tyler, your mom is really mad.” My son’s face instantly darkened, and he glared at me with murderous intent. “What the fuck, are you trying to back out of the deal?!” Brenda interrupted, trying to steal my lines. “That’s right! Your mom wants to back out! You’ve eaten enough tonight, stop eating, or she’ll just nag you to death again.” Look at that. The whole family knew I was right; they just didn’t want to be the ones the kid hated. Tyler’s rebellious streak flared up. He picked up his massive bowl of noodles and started shoveling them into his mouth right in front of my face. His cheeks puffed in and out, genuinely looking like a pig at a trough. Mark and Brenda stared at me, waiting for me to blow up. Instead, I gave a bright smile and gave my son a thumbs up. “Your dad is right. You’re a growing teenager. Eat as much as you want.” In that moment, I saw a flash of unprecedented panic in Mark’s and Brenda’s eyes. Ten days passed just like that. The midterm results were posted. Ranked 200th in his grade. A catastrophic, sheer-drop decline! The entire family was convinced I wouldn’t be able to keep up the act anymore and would finally tear up the agreement.

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1 The day annual bonuses landed, mine came in a box of condoms. “Sales is just the company’s red-light district. All those numbers? From boozing and sleeping around.” I looked up at the secretary, her face stretched into a lewd grin. “Having a blast and making bank? I wouldn’t mind that gig.” A few crude chuckles echoed through the conference room. I snapped my laptop shut, pushing back from the table. Leaning by the window, I opened my messenger. A message from the VP of our rival company, three days old, still sat there. “Ms. Graham, thought about it? Bring your clients over, and the VP spot is yours.” … More lewd laughter drifted from the conference room behind me. Then came Mr. Henderson’s reedy, squawking voice: “Walk out that door, and don’t you dare regret it!” I didn’t look back, striding purposefully towards the open-plan office. Linda, her ten-centimeter heels clicking, chased after me. She deliberately raised her voice in the hallway: “Oh, come on, Ms. Graham, stop pretending you’re so high and mighty.” “Without this company, you’re nothing. And don’t forget to pick up that box of condoms from accounting. Mr. Henderson’s little severance gift.” Colleagues glanced over, whispering. I stopped, sweeping a cold gaze over her. Linda hugged her arms, a triumphant, sneering smile plastered across her face. Instead of getting mad, I smirked, turning towards my workstation. Last month’s sales reports still sat piled on my desk. That was the result of three consecutive all-nighters, my team and I burning the midnight oil. Just ten minutes ago, Mr. Henderson had, with a casual flick of his wrist, erased it all. I looked at the familiar faces beyond my cubicle. Josh kept his head down, pretending to type, his shoulders trembling slightly. Ms. Lee, eyes red-rimmed, shot me a look of suppressed fury. In that moment, my last shred of hesitation vanished. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. The screen showed a message from Mr. Chen, the VP of Genesis Tech, our competitor. “Ms. Graham, what’s your decision?” My fingers flew across the screen. “I’m bringing the project. I want the Sales Director position.” He replied almost instantly. “Deal. Contract’s ready, car’s downstairs.” I shoved my phone back into my pocket and started packing. I didn’t bother with the box full of random junk. I just unplugged my encrypted USB drive. Then, I opened my laptop, my fingers dancing across the keyboard. After copying the core client data, I deleted the files directly. Leaving behind only a heap of worthless surface-level data in the company system. Once that was done, I shut down the computer, feeling utterly refreshed. Mr. Henderson burst out of his office, I hadn’t even noticed him. He stared at my empty desk, the jowls on his face quivering. “Iris Graham, if you walk out that door, I’ll make sure no one in this industry ever hires you!” He pointed a finger at my nose, roaring, “Everyone knows your dirty little secrets! Don’t think changing places will magically clean up your act!” Here we go again with the sleazy rumors. It was his usual tactic, trying to corner me with that kind of low-down garbage. I cut him off impatiently: “Mr. Henderson, save it.” I casually unclipped my ID badge from my neck. In front of everyone, I tore the badge cleanly in half. With a flick of my wrist, the pieces landed precisely in the nearby trash bin. “Keep your threats and your condoms for yourself. Be careful not to screw yourself over.” The entire floor fell silent. Mr. Henderson’s face turned scarlet with rage, his mouth agape, unable to utter a word. I picked up my bag and walked out without a backward glance. Stepping out of the company building, the late autumn chill wind hit my face, yet it felt exhilarating. A black Maybach was parked by the curb. Mr. Chen, the VP himself, got out and opened the car door for me. “Ms. Graham, welcome to Genesis.” No talk of probation periods, just the core employment contract. I signed my name, watching the passing scenery outside the window. I pulled out my phone and posted on social media. The accompanying photo was my brand-new Genesis Tech ID badge. The caption was just a simple line. “New beginnings. Making money with my brains, not my looks.” A few minutes later, my phone vibrated furiously. 2 The day after I left, my old company was in an uproar. According to Josh’s whispered messages, the sales department was in complete chaos. Mr. Henderson slammed the printed client list onto Linda’s face. “That Iris broad always hogged the resources, now they’re yours!” He pointed at the long list, roaring, “Go close those deals! Prove that sales is all about looks!” Linda, holding the folder with only contact information, was brimming with confidence. She changed into a low-cut, tight red dress, her perfume so strong you could smell it two blocks away. Her first target was the multi-million-dollar client, Mr. Thompson from Apex Group. Linda, with two fresh-out-of-college girls in tow, marched straight to Apex Group’s building. She thought it would be the same old song and dance she used to pull with Mr. Henderson. But I knew Mr. Thompson too well. He was a true go-getter, utterly disgusted by suggestive “public relations” tactics. Sure enough, less than half an hour later, Linda emerged, looking utterly deflated. Not only did Mr. Thompson refuse to see her, he called a complaint directly to the company’s front desk. “Tell your Mr. Henderson that if he sends any more inappropriate people to harass us, he can expect a legal letter!” Mr. Henderson, in his office, furiously smashed a cup. Unwilling to scold Linda, he turned his wrath on the rest of the sales department. “It’s all your fault for not backing up Director Linda properly!” “A bunch of useless hacks! Can’t even handle one client!” My former colleague, Ms. Lee, was crying uncontrollably on the phone. “Iris, we can’t take it anymore.” “Mr. Henderson is forcing us to give clients gifts, entertain them at dinners, and even hinting that the female employees should follow Linda’s lead…” I clenched my phone, my voice turning colder. “Hang in there for two more days. The real show’s coming.” Hanging up, I looked at the dense data analysis on my computer screen. At Genesis Tech, I hadn’t wasted a second, working through the night to churn out a proposal. Completely discarding my old company’s “drinking culture.” Mr. Thompson agreed to my invitation. The meeting was set for a quiet business tea room. I didn’t order alcohol, opting instead for a pot of premium Pu-erh tea. I placed the thick analysis report on the table, sliding it towards Mr. Thompson. “Mr. Thompson, this is the proposal tailored for Apex Group.” Mr. Thompson flipped through a few pages, his brows slowly relaxing. “Ms. Graham, you truly understand me.” He closed the document, sighing, “The new people at that previous company are an insult to my intelligence.” I smiled faintly, refilling his teacup. “Professionals handle professional matters, Mr. Thompson. We only discuss business.” The meeting was very productive. Not only did I secure Mr. Thompson’s verbal commitment, but I also gained a crucial piece of information. My former company’s supply chain had a major vulnerability. Since I used to manage supply chain coordination, I knew exactly where their weak points were. At an industry gala that weekend, fate ensured a run-in. Mr. Henderson and Linda arrived, dressed to the nines. Linda was clinging to Mr. Henderson’s arm, her dress slit almost to her thigh. Upon seeing me, she deliberately raised her voice. “Well, well, isn’t it Iris Graham, the one who got kicked out?” All eyes in the vicinity instantly converged on us. Linda sauntered over, swaying her hips, scrutinizing my business attire. “Think you can close deals just by jumping to the competition? Or are you back to sleeping your way to the top?” Mr. Henderson let out a grating, cold laugh beside her. “Iris Graham, even a dump like Genesis can take you in?” “Heard it was Mr. Chen himself who picked you up? Guess you only have talent in that one area.” Their vulgar words echoed through the gala hall. Many people started pointing and whispering about me. I held my glass of juice, watching the two clowns. In that moment, I felt no anger, only a detached amusement, like watching a poorly acted play. 3 Facing Linda’s malicious slander, I didn’t descend into a shouting match like a fishwife. Instead, I merely turned slightly, smiling at the industry titans around me. “Mr. Henderson’s company culture is certainly… unique.” I said, unhurriedly, “After all, when annual bonuses are condoms, I just can’t appreciate that kind of generosity.” My voice wasn’t loud, but it was just clear enough for everyone nearby to hear. A stir went through the crowd, many revealing looks of disdain. Mr. Henderson’s face instantly turned ashen, as if he’d been slapped hard. Infuriated, he pointed at me: “Iris Graham, you just wait!” After the gala, Mr. Henderson didn’t let up. He aggressively spread rumors in several industry group chats, each with hundreds of members. He claimed I’d stolen trade secrets from my former company, even Photoshopped some explicit images. All in an attempt to completely ruin my reputation before the Apex Group tender. Whispers started circulating within Genesis Tech as well. People gossiped in the break room, questioning whether I would bring negative publicity to the company. “That Ms. Graham, her reputation isn’t great, is it?” “Why did Mr. Chen hire someone like her?” Mr. Chen, the VP, walked straight in, slamming a file onto the table. “I value Ms. Graham’s capability.” He scanned the room, his voice icy: “These underhanded tactics just prove our competitor is desperate. Anyone caught gossiping will be out the door.” Standing outside the door, a warmth spread through me. With the company trusting me so much, I couldn’t afford to lose. I didn’t rush to defend myself in the group chats; that would be a waste of time. Instead, I contacted a lawyer directly, getting all of Mr. Henderson’s defamatory screenshots and recordings notarized. At the same time, I reached out to a few former clients who had been burned by Mr. Henderson. We were going to team up and prepare a big surprise for him. The Apex Group bidding conference arrived as scheduled. Mr. Henderson and Linda, with their team, arrived in full force. They carried a beautifully bound proposal. Just a glance at the cover told me it was a plagiarism of an old, discarded draft of mine. Even the formatting hadn’t changed. Linda cornered me by the lounge door. She leaned in, smugly, “Don’t bother, Ms. Graham.” “Mr. Thompson privately agreed that as long as tonight…” She gave an ambiguous wink: “The contract’s ours. Your boring data won’t do anything.” I looked at her as if she were a hopelessly foolish child. “You don’t even know what Mr. Thompson detests most, and you think you’ll win the bid?” Mr. Thompson had a daughter who had been harassed early in her career. That’s why he loathed workplace quid pro quo above all else. Linda was dancing in a minefield, thinking she was waltzing. I couldn’t be bothered to enlighten her, merely sneering, “Is that so? Well, I hope you have a pleasant evening.” Both parties entered the conference room. Mr. Henderson sat opposite me, glaring menacingly. He raised a hand to his neck, miming a throat-slitting gesture. His lips clearly formed: “You’re toast.” I calmly opened my laptop. Mr. Thompson entered, his expression stern. His gaze flickered with distaste as it swept over Linda’s overly revealing dress. When he looked at me, he gave a slight nod. 4 Linda was the first to present. She swayed her hips to the projector screen, as confident as if she were on a red carpet. “At Cornerstone, we boast industry-leading service philosophies…” The entire presentation was a display of provocative posing, with the PPT content utterly vacuous. It was filled with suggestive phrases like “dedicated service” and “premium experience.” When she reached the crucial technical aspects, she stumbled. “Uh… well…” She had to turn to the technician beside her for help, and the atmosphere grew incredibly awkward. Mr. Thompson cut her off coldly: “Mr. Henderson, is this your idea of commitment?” Mr. Henderson immediately broke into a cold sweat, stammering, “Well… Mr. Thompson, we can discuss the terms further…” Mr. Thompson waved his hand impatiently: “Next.” I adjusted my blazer, picked up the clicker, and walked to the stage. My presence commanded the room. No wasted words, just solid data and logical arguments. I pointed to the line graph on the screen: “From what I understand, Cornerstone’s current inventory turnover rate isn’t sufficient to meet Mr. Thompson’s demands.” That sentence struck Mr. Henderson’s Achilles’ heel directly. He slammed his hand on the table and shot to his feet: “Iris Graham! You’re leaking former company secrets!” He pointed at me, roaring, “Mr. Thompson, this is corporate espionage! She stole all this data!” He tried to disrupt the meeting, to muddy the waters. I looked at him calmly, a mocking curve to my lips. “Mr. Henderson, these figures are derived from your publicly available financial reports.” “Is it so hard to admit to poor management?” My gaze was sharp: “Also, this is my professional integrity. Unlike some people who only focus their energy on how to hand out condoms to employees.” The room erupted in laughter. Mr. Thompson couldn’t help but smile, his admiration unconcealed. Mr. Henderson’s face turned beet red, but he couldn’t utter a single word in rebuttal. Mr. Thompson announced on the spot: “No further discussion needed.” He closed his folder: “I’m very satisfied with Genesis Tech’s proposal. Ms. Graham, let’s sign.” He completely ignored the Cornerstone group. Linda wasn’t giving up, trying to rush over to flirt and win him back: “Mr. Thompson, please reconsider…” Mr. Thompson frowned and called security. “Please escort this lady out. This is a conference room, not a nightclub.” Linda was dragged out by security, her arm in their grip, having lost one of her high heels. Mr. Henderson’s face was ashen, watching the multi-million-dollar contract fall into my hands. All his arrogance was extinguished in that moment. Walking out of the conference room, Mr. Henderson slumped, utterly defeated, onto a bench in the hallway. Like a mangy dog with its back broken. I walked up to him, looking down at him. “Mr. Henderson, I told you.” “Multi-million dollar contracts aren’t signed by taking off your clothes.” “This project? I’m taking it.” The glass door of the conference room was violently shoved open with a loud thud. Mr. Henderson, face red and tie askew, stormed out. He slammed a thick stack of files onto Ms. Lee’s desk, sending papers flying everywhere. “Useless! What good are you all, you good-for-nothings!”

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When Jason’s mentee tripped and fell, he rushed to take her to the hospital. I stood in his office doorway, holding a file: “Here’s the budget for next quarter. Just sign it if everything looks good.” His mind was already miles away. Without even glancing at it, he scribbled his name. Watching his hasty retreat, I couldn’t tell if I felt disappointment or relief. But what he didn’t know was that what he’d just signed wasn’t a budget sheet at all. It was the divorce papers for him and me. 1 I pushed open his office door, immediately hit by a rich, unfamiliar scent. I turned, spotting an elegant aroma diffuser on the cabinet by the entrance, and a bouquet of white roses on his desk. This was definitely not Jason’s doing. He used to scoff at such things. Just then, his assistant, Tina, walked in. Seeing me eyeing the diffuser, her expression grew complicated. She stammered, “Ms. Graham, that’s Ms. Lee’s.” I looked up at her: “Ms. Lee? Jason’s mentee, Alice Lee?” “Yes.” She bit her lip, deliberating for a long moment before finally speaking: “Ms. Graham, you’ve been busy traveling for work lately and haven’t been in the office much, but Ms. Lee has been a frequent presence in Mr. Trachtenberg’s office.” “A few days ago, someone even saw them in the parking lot, being very… intimate. Now… now, everyone’s whispering about an inappropriate relationship.” I nodded, saying softly, “I understand.” After Tina left, I pulled open Jason’s desk drawer. A torn condom wrapper was carelessly tossed inside. Just then, my phone rang. Jason’s name pulsed on the screen. I answered. Silence on the other end. After two seconds, a suppressed moan suddenly broke through. A woman’s sultry voice purred: “She just got back today, and you’re already here with me. Aren’t you afraid she’ll be upset?” “Afraid of what? She stuck by me when I had nothing. Now that I’m so successful, how could she ever leave?” Alice Lee giggled. Her voice was laced with a hint of a pout: “Then don’t go home tonight. Stay and keep me company, okay?” “That depends on how well you behave tonight.” A crackle of static came through the receiver, and then the call abruptly ended. Three days prior, while I was on a business trip in Rhode Island, a photo suddenly appeared on my phone—Jason and Alice kissing in a car. In that moment, I felt as if I were frozen, my mind ceasing to function. Soon after, my brother called. He said only one sentence: “Iris, come home.” That night, I booked a flight home. It was my first time returning home in seven years. Seven years ago, Jason and I fell in love, but my father and brother vehemently opposed it. They said Jason was ambitious, overly proud, cold-hearted, and fickle. But I was head over heels, convinced they simply looked down on him. Every discussion about Jason ended in a bitter argument. Later, I helped him start his company. Several times, when we were at a dead end, I had no choice but to ask my family for help. My father agreed but made one condition. I had to conceal my identity from Jason for ten years. Jason was inherently sensitive, and to be with him peacefully, I had never mentioned my family’s background. By then, there was even less need to. So, to this day, he still believed I was a struggling individual with a difficult upbringing, just like him. 2 My father and brother handed me all the evidence of Jason’s infidelity. Looking at the dense array of videos and photos, my chest ached, making it hard to breathe. My brother sighed, patting my shoulder consolingly: “It’s not too late to find out now, Iris. Think about it carefully.” I looked down at the signed divorce papers in my hand and dialed my brother’s number. He picked up quickly. “Bro, give me three days. I’ll sort things out here, then I’ll join Reliance Capital.” His voice on the other end was noticeably brighter: “Good. I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. Call me if you need anything.” Hanging up, I stared blankly at our wedding photo on his desk. The picture was from our wedding. Back then, Jason’s eyes were full of me. He swore he’d always treat me well, never let me suffer, never let me be sad. Those words, he’d long forgotten, flung to the bottom of the ocean. I picked up the photo frame and tossed it into the trash can, then stood up and left the office. I returned home and started packing. Opening the closet, a black lace nightgown, clearly not mine, hung conspicuously inside. It seemed to be mocking me, reminding me how ridiculous my seven years of devotion had been. I opened the smart lock’s surveillance app. Sure enough, on the very night I left for my business trip, Jason had brought Alice Lee home, acting as if they owned the place. They were recorded clearly, kissing by the door, embracing by the elevator. On the last day of the surveillance footage, Alice Lee’s dress captured all my attention. It was the one Jason had bought for me. One year for my birthday, he wanted to take me shopping for a gift. It was early in his startup, he didn’t have much money, and I felt for him, only picking out a two-hundred-dollar dress. But a few days later, Jason bought that two-thousand-dollar dress instead. He smiled, telling me he knew I liked that dress when I walked past the store. That day, I was moved beyond words. I treasured that dress, wore it once, then washed it and hung it in the closet, never daring to wear it again. Jason knew how precious it was to me. Alice Lee twirled in that dress in front of Jason, asking him with a smile, “Does this dress look better on me, or on her?” Jason didn’t answer her. Instead, he leaned in and kissed her lips. In an instant, my stomach churned. I clapped a hand over my mouth, rushed to the bathroom, and knelt before the toilet, throwing up. It took a long time before I finally recovered. Looking up, I saw the face wash, makeup remover, and various skincare products haphazardly strewn across the vanity. I reached out and found a women’s underwear, one I’d never seen before, pressed beneath the face wash. My heart sank to the bottom, everything before me feeling absurd and sickening. I forced myself to remain calm, then tossed everything in the bathroom into the trash can. Back in the bedroom, looking at the closet and dressing table, I wanted none of it. I couldn’t accept anything that had been touched by someone else. Not objects, not men. I found all my identification documents, put them in my bag, and walked out the door. The moment I closed the door, it felt like I was sealing away my past seven years behind me. 3 Before leaving, I had one last thing to do. Visit Mrs. Walker, an old neighbor, in the hospital. She was the landlady of the rented house Jason and I used to have in the city outskirts. She had no children, and her husband had passed away years ago. Back then, Jason didn’t have much money, and she treated us like her own kids, looking after us a great deal. Later, our company grew better and better, and we earned more and more money. We moved out of the rental house and into our own place. But I never forgot Mrs. Walker’s kindness to us. Whenever work wasn’t too busy, I visited her almost twice a month. Six months ago, she suffered a sudden brain hemorrhage and was hospitalized. For her safety, she had been hospitalized for observation for the past half-year. I bought her favorite osmanthus cakes and flowers, then went to the hospital. She seemed much better than the last time I saw her, overjoyed to see me. She kept asking if Jason and I were doing well. I didn’t want to worry her, so I held back my discomfort and gently reassured her with a smile. “Don’t worry, he treats me very well.” Only after receiving a positive answer did she nod contentedly. “That’s good, that’s good. You went through so much with him to get to where you are now. He absolutely must treat you well.” We chatted for a long time, and I reluctantly left only when it was almost time to go to the airport. I stood in front of the hospital room, lost in thought for a moment, until a familiar voice behind me snapped me back to reality. Jason asked with some concern: “What did the doctor say?” I turned around and saw him with his arm around Alice Lee’s waist. Alice Lee blinked, then stood on her tiptoes to kiss his lips. Then she handed him a paper: “Jason, you’re going to be a daddy!” My mind went blank. A scene from four years ago suddenly flashed in my mind—my miscarriage. Back then, it was our busiest time. I was swamped, helping him find resources, pull in investments, pulling all-nighters to revise proposals, going on endless business trips and networking dinners. After one dinner engagement after another, a sharp pain shot through my abdomen, and I fainted. When I woke up, I learned I had been over two months pregnant. The stress from work during that period had caused me to lose the baby. The doctor said that, given my physical condition, natural conception would be difficult in the future. Jason saw my sadness and comforted me, saying it was okay if we didn’t have children, that he didn’t like kids anyway. But now, Jason’s joyful voice reached my ears. He held her in his arms, repeating over and over: “I’m going to be a dad! I’m going to be a dad!” Watching this scene, it just felt so laughable that I had actually believed his lies back then. As his words faded, our eyes suddenly met. Jason’s body stiffened, frozen in place for a moment. However, it wasn’t long before he regained his usual composure, a careless smile playing on his lips as he approached me. We went to a coffee shop near the hospital. Alice Lee sat opposite me, leaning delicately into Jason’s embrace. One hand caressing her stomach, her voice tinged with provocation: “Iris, I’m pregnant and not feeling well. I can only feel better leaning on Jason. You wouldn’t mind, would you?” Jason looked at her, his eyes filled with even more doting affection. He teased: “Do you think my wife is as petty as you are?” Hearing this, Alice Lee pouted, feigning a tantrum: “Well, that’s just because I care about you.” After she spoke, he glanced at me. His expression was playful: “Alice, you should learn from Iris. To love a man, you not only have to care about him, but you also have to be understanding.” I watched it all with cold eyes, taking a sip of coffee. 4 He handed her the car keys, commanding: “Go wait for me in the car.” Alice Lee didn’t want to, but she had no choice. She grudgingly walked out, looking back three times. After she left, Jason pushed the cake in front of me. “Cranberry, your favorite flavor.” I glanced at it, not touching it. I replied: “That was just a past preference. It doesn’t mean I still like it now. Nothing stays the same forever.” He paused for a moment. He chuckled: “Jealous?” I forced a smile, finding it oddly amusing. He spoke again: “Iris, as long as you behave, the position of Mrs. Trachtenberg will always be yours. There will be no one else.” I looked up at him: “Do you think I care?” He chuckled softly: “Don’t you? You spent seven years with me to get to this point, finally living a life of comfort and abundance. Would you really give it all away?” “Don’t blame me. With the company doing so well, I can’t not have a child, can I? Otherwise, who would inherit the company later?” “Iris, you understand, right?” I smiled. I looked up at him. I asked seriously: “Jason Trachtenberg, do you remember what you said when we got married?” He paused. I smiled: “You said you wouldn’t let me suffer even a little bit.” I took off my wedding ring and placed it on the table. His face changed. I spoke slowly: “I can’t walk this path with you anymore.” With that, I picked up my bag and turned to leave. He swiftly blocked my path, frowning as he questioned me: “Iris, what do you mean?” “Exactly what it sounds like. I can’t be generous enough to share my man with other women. These past seven years, consider it my punishment for being lovestruck.” “From now on, whether it’s Alice or anyone else, it has nothing to do with me.” His face went cold. “You’re divorcing me?” He then let out a cold laugh: “You wish. Divorce? You can forget about that for the rest of your life!”

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During the years when our love was at its most pure, Oliver spent an entire night kneeling in the freezing rain beside my mother’s grave. He was terrified I was going to break up with him. He prayed to her spirit, begging her to visit my dreams and convince me to stay. My heart softened. I took him back and uprooted my entire life to move to his city. Five years after that grand gesture, he cheated on me with a beautiful, much younger girl. For her, he was ready to quit his job, pack up his apartment, and move across the country. It was snowing heavily the day he officially asked for a break. I had walked block after block in the freezing wind just to buy a bag of hot roasted chestnuts from his favorite street vendor. My hands were numb as I asked him, “Can we just fix this? What am I supposed to do if you leave?” He stared at his phone, his face twisted with impatience. “Lily, are you seriously this obsessed? Can you really not survive without me?” I stopped begging. I wiped my tears, walked away, and erased every trace of him from my existence. Six months later, he crawled back. He was completely broke, looking like a ghost of the man I knew. He dropped to his knees, sobbing into his hands. “Can we just fix this? I can’t survive without you.” I looked down at him and spoke with perfect calm. “Then go die.” 1 Discovering Oliver’s infidelity happened on an utterly unremarkable Tuesday. I was in the kitchen prepping dinner. He had been out in his car taking a phone call for three hours. By the time he walked back through the front door, the food was ice cold. I was sitting quietly at the dining table, typing away on my laptop to finish an urgent marketing deck for my boss. I didn’t even look up. “Just microwave your plate,” I said, my voice tight with work anxiety. He gave a faint grunt of acknowledgment and headed straight for the bathroom. Maybe it was just a woman’s intuition. Something felt incredibly wrong. The old Oliver never hid in his car to take phone calls. Suddenly, the marketing deck didn’t matter. My mind was racing, searching for clues. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the steaming bathroom that I spotted it. Wrapped around his left wrist was a thin, red woven thread. It was cheap. Basic. Not a single bead or charm on it. Oliver worked in high-end fashion merchandising. He was borderline obsessive about his image and aesthetic. He coordinated his luxury watches and tailored cuffs with surgical precision. If he wore something out of place, his colleagues in Manhattan would eat him alive. There was absolutely no logical reason for him to be wearing a dollar-store friendship bracelet. He noticed me staring at his wrist. Smoothly, almost casually, he slid his hand behind his back. “I’m cutting carbs this week. Think I’ll skip dinner.” “Make sure you heat up your food when you’re done working,” he added. “Don’t eat it cold.” Then he vanished into the bedroom. I watched his back disappear as the door clicked shut. It felt like someone had just swung a baseball bat into my chest. I sat frozen at the dining table, staring at that closed white door. A horrific, prickling numbness washed over my skin. A voice echoed in the back of my skull, screaming a truth I didn’t want to hear. He is cheating on you. I don’t know how long I sat there. It was December in New York, and my entire body felt turning to ice. Fighting through the nausea, I forced myself to walk over to the bedroom. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Oliver jumped. He clearly hadn’t expected me to come in. His reflexes took over. He slammed his phone face-down onto the duvet. As I walked closer, he ripped out his AirPods and shoved the phone under his pillow. “You’re done already?” he asked. “That was fast.” “You should eat and hit the shower. Need me to warm up your plate?” If this were the old days, Oliver wouldn’t be asking. Whenever I had late-night projects, he would bring his iPad to the living room and sit beside me until I finished. He always knew exactly when I was about to get hungry. He would have the food hot and waiting, with a bowl of freshly washed berries on the side. I used to tease him about it. “You’re making a great housewife. You’re making me look bad.” He would pull me into his lap and say, “Then let me quit my job. You can be my sugar mama.” But whenever I agreed, he would shake his head. “Nah. I need to save up for a brownstone. I have to give you a real home.” When exactly did that boy disappear? I had no idea. Oliver’s eyes darted everywhere but my face. The guilt was suffocating the room. A wave of sheer desperation washed over me. Acting on pure impulse, I stripped off my clothes right there in front of him. I crawled onto the bed, straddled his lap, and started kissing him like my life depended on it. I needed his physical touch to prove he still loved me. I needed to know that, at the very least, we still belonged to each other in this way. But Oliver shoved me hard in the chest. He grabbed a random sweater off the floor and threw it over my naked shoulders. “Lily, what the hell are you doing?” That single question shattered whatever was left of my bleeding heart. “What am I doing? Is it that hard to figure out? I want my boyfriend.” His eyes were still dodging mine. He grabbed his phone from under the pillow, stood up, and backed away from the bed. “Let’s just not tonight. I’m exhausted.” “Go to sleep. I have to head to the office and pull an all-nighter.” It felt like an invisible hand had just slapped me across the face. Is there anything more humiliating than throwing yourself naked at the person you love, only to be looked at with disgust? Actually, yes. There is. 2 Oliver changed into fresh clothes and bolted from the apartment like it was on fire. I followed him into the hallway, wanting to scream, wanting to demand answers. But as I stood behind the heavy front door, I heard his voice echoing near the elevator bank. “Babe, why would I touch her?” “Stop overthinking. I’m going to sleep in the car.” “I know, I know. I’ll stay on the phone with you. I won’t hang up.” The elevator dinged. The doors slid shut, cutting off his voice. My hand hovered over the doorknob. I didn’t dare turn it until the hallway was dead silent. The space outside my door felt like a freezing, desolate wasteland. On his way out, he had even taken the trash I left by the door. So domestic. So cruel. The dam broke. I sank to the hardwood floor and sobbed until I was gasping for air. Why? Why was he doing this? My brain felt starved of oxygen. I stumbled over to the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and looked down at the street. His car was parked under a streetlight. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, phone pressed to his ear, laughing at something the girl on the other end said. He looked so relaxed. So happy. He spent the entire night in that car. I spent the entire night sitting on the cold floor by the window. At six-thirty in the morning, the car door finally opened. I scrambled back into the bedroom, threw myself under the covers, and pretended to be dead asleep. I had left the bedroom door cracked open. I heard him walk in, brush his teeth in the guest bathroom, and head back toward the front door. I heard every single footstep. Every second, I prayed he would walk into the bedroom. Just to hug me. Just to press his lips to my forehead like he had done a thousand times before. To whisper, “Going to work, baby. Love you.” If he did that, I could lie to myself. I could pretend last night was a nightmare. We could go back to the way we were. He never stepped foot in the bedroom. The front door slammed shut. I lay there for hours. I lay there until my swollen, burning eyes produced fresh tears, soaking my pillow completely through. I must have passed out from exhaustion. In my dreams, I was pulled back to the very beginning. Oliver and I were childhood friends. We grew up in the same small town in upstate New York. But it wasn’t some golden, sun-kissed coming-of-age movie. When he was eight, his parents had a messy divorce. His dad remarried a woman who didn’t want a stepson. His mom, eager to start a new life in Europe, dumped him at his grandmother’s house with ten grand in a checking account and never looked back. His grandmother lived in the apartment right above mine. I was eight years old, too. I didn’t have a dad. It was just me and my mom, scraping by. Oliver and I were like two stray dogs licking each other’s wounds. We kept each other standing. From elementary school through senior year, we didn’t spend a single day apart. He became the absolute center of my universe. When teenage hormones kicked in, the transition from best friends to first loves was seamless. We promised to go to the same college in the city. We swore we would never be separated. But when acceptance letters rolled in, I secretly changed my plans. I didn’t go to the prestigious university in Manhattan with him. I enrolled at the local state college back home. He didn’t find out until the final paperwork arrived in the mail. He stormed into my house, furious. “Why the hell would you change your major without telling me?” “Was everything we talked about just a lie?” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. My mother had just been diagnosed with a severe illness. I couldn’t leave her. Instead, I played the villain. “I just don’t have the same ambition you do. I want a quiet, boring life.” “Oliver, we just don’t make sense anymore.” We didn’t speak for the entire summer. The night before he left for the city, I found a stuffed envelope jammed under my front door. Inside was a wad of cash, maybe five hundred dollars, and a note written on lined paper. [This is the money I made flipping burgers all summer. It’s mine, not my dad’s. Use it. We’re going to figure out your mom’s medical bills together.] It broke me. I ran out into the damp evening air, crying, intending to run all the way to the bus station. But as soon as I opened the downstairs lobby door, I saw him. He was leaning against the brick wall, hands shoved in his pockets, grinning at me. I avoided his burning gaze, awkwardly wiping my face. “Why aren’t you on the bus?” He walked up and pressed a warm brown paper bag into my hands. The rich, sweet smell of roasted chestnuts filled the air. “I was worried a certain someone was too stubborn to realize she still needs me.” Whenever we fought as kids, a bag of hot roasted chestnuts was our silent truce. I took the bag and walked him to the station. Right before he boarded, he crushed me in a hug. “Lily, please don’t leave me behind. You’re all I have.” “Let’s make this official. Please?” 3 I said yes. Back then, I truly believed young love could conquer any tragedy. We dated long-distance for four years. Whenever he had a free weekend, he took the bus upstate. His Instagram and Snapchat were flooded with pictures of me. He constantly told me he wanted to make me feel secure, to prove I could always trust him. But I refused to let my baggage drag him down. Shortly after graduation, my mother passed away. I was completely alone. I handled the hospital bills, the morgue paperwork, the cremation, and the funeral plot all by myself. Oliver called me a few times. He said he had final-round interviews at top-tier firms on Wall Street. He couldn’t leave the city, but promised he’d rush back the second he secured an offer. I texted back a single word: [Okay.] The people who came to the funeral were mostly older neighbors. They all knew about me and Oliver. They stood near the buffet table, whispering about how successful he was becoming. Full academic scholarships. Bidding wars between corporate giants. He was going to put roots down in New York City and make a fortune. I listened to them, and I realized they were right. He had a massive, glittering future ahead of him. He shouldn’t be chained to a grieving orphan in a dead-end town. The day after my mother went into the ground, I sent him a text ending the relationship. Then I blocked his number, deleted my social media, and disappeared into a cheap motel where no one could find me. I spent a week existing in a numb blur. It wasn’t until his grandmother managed to get a hold of me that I found out he had come back. He had gone completely insane trying to find me. When he couldn’t, he drove to the cemetery and collapsed by my mother’s grave. He stayed on his knees in the freezing mud, begging her spirit to make me stay. Hearing that destroyed my resolve. I caved and went to the cemetery. I found him curled into a ball against her headstone. I couldn’t tell if his eyelashes were coated in morning dew or frozen tears. When he saw me, he scrambled to his feet and practically tackled me, burying his face in my neck, shaking violently. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. His voice was entirely gone. “Lily, please. Please don’t leave me.” “I’m begging you…” Looking at the boy who loved me that much, I had no defense left. We got back together. I packed up my life and moved to a tiny apartment in Queens with him. He worked insane corporate hours, so I took an easy admin job just so I could manage the apartment, cook his meals, and do his laundry. As he climbed the corporate ladder, setting his sights higher and higher, I started taking night classes, desperately trying to upgrade myself so I wouldn’t be left behind. I was still fighting for our future. How did he lose his way? My phone blaring aggressively on the kitchen counter jolted me awake. It was my boss, absolutely screaming into the receiver. She wanted to know where the marketing deck was and asked if I was trying to get fired. I squinted at the clock. It was 4:00 PM. My bones ached, and my brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I dragged myself out of bed and dug a thermometer out of the nightstand. I was running a massive fever. After apologizing to my boss, I threw a heavy cardigan over my pajamas and walked out to the dining table to finish the deck. Last night’s dinner was still sitting there, completely untouched. But there was a sticky note pressed to the wood. Oliver’s handwriting: [Flying out for a business trip for a few days. Throw the food out.] A hot tear splashed onto the yellow paper. Business trip. Right. He was with her. I knew it in my gut. Like a complete maniac, I started calling him. Back to back to back. He didn’t pick up once. Finally, my phone buzzed with a text. [Let’s just take some space and calm down.] Calm down? Space? What did that even mean? Total panic set in. I booted up the iPad and logged into the car’s GPS tracking app. The little blue dot was parked outside a boutique hotel downtown. Before I took an Uber there, I walked for twenty minutes through the biting wind until I found a street vendor selling hot roasted chestnuts. Clutching the warm paper bag to my chest, I found his luxury sedan in the hotel lot. I used the digital key on my phone to unlock the doors and climbed into the passenger seat. I assumed the app notification would alert him, and he would come down to see me. Instead, another text popped up. [Go home. I want to be alone right now.] I wanted to scream through the phone. Alone? Are you really alone, or is she in the bed next to you? But I was too terrified to ask. My chest felt like it was being crushed in a vice. My fingers trembled as I typed: [I have a high fever.] Ten minutes later, the elevator doors in the lobby slid open. Oliver walked out, pulled open the driver’s side door, and let out a long, heavy sigh. “Lily, if you’re sick, go to an urgent care. I’m not a doctor.” Tears blurred my vision. I reached out, desperately wanting to wrap my arms around his waist. He stiffened and leaned away from my touch. “Lily. I’m seeing someone else. You already figured that out, didn’t you?”

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My twin sister and I were getting married on the exact same day. But on the morning of the wedding, someone shredded her gown to pieces. When my husband found out, he took my wedding dress and gave it to her. The wedding coordinator was frantically calling for the bride and groom to line up. I was spinning in circles, tearing the bridal suite apart looking for my dress. That was when my husband finally looked at me, a flicker of guilt in his eyes. “It’s Hailey’s first time getting married. She deserves to have a flawless day. You two are exactly the same size, so I let her borrow your gown.” I stared at him, entirely unable to process his words. “What about me? This is my first wedding, too.” Carter furrowed his brow, completely exasperated. “Hailey is your twin sister. Can’t you just be the bigger person for once? Besides, we already signed the marriage license at the courthouse last month. Today is just for show. I already talked to Hailey. She’s going to walk down the aisle a second time pretending to be you. You guys are identical anyway. As long as you keep your mouth shut, no one will ever know.” 1 Half an hour ago, when Carter told me he gave my dress to Hailey, I thought I was having a stroke. I stood frozen in the hallway for a full thirty seconds. When my brain finally rebooted, I shoved past him and marched straight for the ballroom doors. Hailey and I had booked our receptions at the same luxury hotel. My reception was in the Sapphire Room. Hers was right next door in the Emerald Room. I stepped into the dim ballroom. Up on the altar, Hailey was exchanging rings with her groom. A brilliant spotlight shone down on her lace bodice and flowing train. Pure, radiant, and absolutely breathtaking. It was my dress. The tips of my fingers went completely numb. I planted my foot, ready to storm that stage. But Carter grabbed me from behind. His grip was brutal. His fingers dug into my bare upper arm like steel claws. He practically dragged me backward, shoving me all the way into the secluded bridal suite. “Jules, stop acting crazy! This is the most important moment of Hailey’s entire life!” He slammed the door shut and yanked at his bowtie, looking thoroughly annoyed. My eyes began to burn. A pathetic, choked sob clawed its way up my throat. “Is today not the most important moment of my life, too?” I stared at him without blinking. I wanted to look right through this man. We had known each other since childhood. We had been dating for two years. Carter avoided my eyes. A fleeting shadow of guilt passed over his face before it vanished. He reached out to hold my hands, speaking to me like a disappointed parent. “Jules, Hailey isn’t built like you. She’s highly sensitive, and you know she has a weak heart. If her wedding day was ruined, she would spiral into a depression she might never recover from.” “We all grew up together. You know Hailey has always needed extra protection. Whatever she wanted, if you didn’t have it, you helped her get it. If you did have it, you gave it to her.” “Why are you throwing a temper tantrum over something so trivial?” I slapped his hands away and let out a dry, hollow laugh. “You think I’m throwing a temper tantrum?” “What else would you call it?” Carter ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair, his voice rising with frustration. “It’s just a piece of fabric! I’ll buy you ten new designer dresses tomorrow if you want. Do you really have to be this relentless?” I looked at his self-righteous face. Every compromise I had ever made, every boundary I had ever let them cross, suddenly felt like jagged glass lodged in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Since I was a little girl, I was conditioned to yield to Hailey. If she wanted my favorite doll, I handed it over. If she wanted the trophy I won at the science fair, I let her put her name on it. When she developed a crush on Carter and actively tried to steal him, I quietly stepped back. But then Carter came to me. He asked me out. He looked me in the eyes and said he finally realized I was the one he loved, not Hailey. That was the only reason we were standing here today. I had swallowed all the unfairness because my mother drilled it into my skull every single day. She always told me Hailey was fragile. Hailey was sickly. I had to yield. But did I really have to yield my wedding? My dress? My own husband? When I didn’t say anything, Carter assumed I had surrendered. His tone softened. He reached out to stroke my cheek. “Be a good girl. I promise I’ll make it up to you tonight, okay? Let’s go out there. We have to do our vows. You can just wear one of the bridesmaid dresses. It’s just family and friends out there anyway, nobody is going to judge you.” I leaned back, dodging his touch. I reached onto the vanity, picked up my diamond engagement ring, and dropped it onto the glass table. The sharp clink echoed in the quiet room. It sounded like a gunshot. Carter’s face went completely pale. “Jules, are you seriously doing this?” “Did you think I was joking?” I looked at him. My voice was so dead and calm it even scared me. “Carter, I’m done yielding. You can have the dress. You can have the wedding.” “I want a divorce.” “Absolutely not!” 2 The heavy wooden door flew open. My mother stormed into the suite, her face dark with fury. Hailey was right behind her, still wearing my wedding dress. “Do you think marriage is a game?” my mother hissed, glaring at me. “You’re refusing to walk down the aisle over a minor inconvenience? What are all those guests going to think of you? What are they going to think of this family?” I stared at her. “So you think it’s perfectly fine for me to walk down the aisle in a plain bridesmaid dress on my own wedding day?” “A dress is a dress! It’s just a little less flashy. When I married your father, I didn’t even have a real gown!” She rattled off her excuses rapidly. Her tone was practiced. It was entirely rehearsed. My legs suddenly felt like lead. “Mom, you knew about this. Didn’t you?” My mother paused. Her eyes darted away from mine. “Jules, my hands were tied. I’ll explain everything once the reception is over.” My voice shattered the quiet room. “So you all knew! You all conspired behind my back to strip me of my dress and give it to her!” Total silence fell over the room. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning vent overhead. The cold air hit my face, freezing me to my very core. “Mom, am I actually your daughter?” Memories flooded my brain. Every single year on our birthday, Hailey was the one who blew out the candles. I used to beg for a second cake so I could have a turn. My mother always said buying two cakes for twins was a waste of money. She promised we would alternate years. But every year, without fail, she pulled Hailey up to the table. When we were in middle school, the neighbor’s house caught fire. The flames spread to our siding. I was trapped in bed with a broken ankle. They completely forgot about me. They grabbed Hailey and ran out into the street. Thank God the fire department arrived in time. After high school, Hailey completely bombed her SATs and didn’t get into a single good college. My scores got me into Cornell. My mother secretly called my guidance counselor and tried to force me to take a gap year. When I refused, she dropped to her knees in the kitchen and begged me. She said if I went to an Ivy League school while Hailey stayed home, the humiliation would kill Hailey. Hailey locked herself in her room and cried for two straight weeks. But what about me? What did I ever do wrong? Hailey stole everything I ever earned, and I was just supposed to swallow the pain. Was I cursed to be treated like garbage for the rest of my life? 3 My mother looked away, her voice sharp and defensive. “You are the older sister. It is your duty to accommodate her. Hailey can’t handle failure. You are tough. You can take the hits. What is the big deal?” Standing behind her, Hailey peeked out. Her eyes were red and swimming with tears. She looked like a terrified little deer. “Please don’t fight. It’s all my fault.” She sniffled, her voice trembling. “Jules, please don’t be mad at Mom. Someone maliciously ruined my dress. I didn’t want to steal yours, but Carter swore you wouldn’t mind because we’re sisters.” “If you really hate me for it, I’ll take it off right now.” I looked at her with pure disgust. “Great. Take it off.” All the blood drained from Hailey’s face. She stood frozen, awkwardly clutching the expensive lace skirt, biting her bottom lip as huge tears rolled down her cheeks. I let out a bitter laugh. “What are you waiting for? Take it off.” My mother lunged forward, putting herself between me and her precious favorite child. She raised her hand and slapped me hard across the face. “Have you lost your damn mind?! Are you trying to humiliate your sister on purpose?!” The left side of my face went completely numb. I didn’t cry. I actually smiled. For twenty-five years, no matter who was at fault, my mother always protected Hailey. I looked my mother dead in the eyes, speaking with absolute clarity. “I am walking down that aisle in my wedding dress, or I am walking out that door and filing for divorce. And I will never come back to this family again.” Carter panicked. He grabbed my wrist, his voice shaking. “Jules, stop acting like a psycho! There are two hundred guests sitting out there waiting for us! If you walk out now, my family will be a laughingstock!” Hailey spoke up again, her voice tiny and sweet. “Actually, I have an idea. If Jules is really this upset, we shouldn’t force her. We look identical anyway. Even Mom gets us confused sometimes. I can just put the veil over my face, go out there with Carter, and do the vows for her.” Carter’s eyes lit up. “That’s brilliant. We’re in completely different ballrooms. Nobody will ever notice.” My mother nodded in aggressive agreement. They stood there plotting, treating me like I was completely invisible. It was so absurd I wanted to vomit. I violently wrenched my wrist out of Carter’s grip. I didn’t know I had that much strength in me. “Do whatever the hell you want.” I grabbed my clutch off the vanity and headed for the door. Carter stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “You can’t leave. If Hailey is on stage pretending to be you, what happens if someone sees you walking through the lobby?” My mother bit her lip. She grabbed a thick spool of silk ribbon from a floral arrangement on the table and shoved it into Carter’s hands. Tie her up. “I am not letting you ruin Hailey’s perfect day,” my mother said coldly. “You’re just going to have to wait in here.” “Are you people insane?!” I swung my fists, hitting Carter in the chest and the face. I kicked at his shins, fighting like a wild animal. But I was just one woman against two people. Carter clamped a hand over my mouth, binding my wrists tight with the thick ribbon. Together, they shoved me into the massive, heavy oak wardrobe in the corner of the room. Carter looked at me through the narrowing crack of the door, his face twisting with pity. “I promise I’ll let you out the second the reception is over, Jules. Just sit tight.” The very last thing I saw before the door shut was Hailey. She was standing behind Carter. She looked right at me, and the corners of her mouth twitched up into a sickening, victorious smirk. 4 Click. The lock turned from the outside. The wardrobe plunged into pitch black. The only light came from the tiny gap under the door. Muffled through the heavy wood, I could hear the DJ in the Emerald Room hyping up the crowd. I heard the bass of the music. I heard the distant cheering of the guests. Those cheers were meant for me. Now, every single clap felt like a needle driving directly into my eardrums. My chest ached so badly I couldn’t breathe. Thump. Thump. Thump. I threw my entire body weight against the heavy doors. The wood barely rattled. Nobody outside responded. The only result was a blinding pain shooting through my shoulder. The silk ribbon cutting into my wrists felt like razor wire. Every time I struggled, the friction burned my skin raw. I don’t know how many hours passed. The music outside eventually faded into nothing. I slumped against the back of the wardrobe, gasping for air, completely exhausted. Warm blood trickled down my hands, soaking the ribbon and turning it sticky against my skin. By the time the hotel fell completely silent, it was late into the night. Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps entering the suite. I let out a desperate, muffled scream through the gag and threw my good shoulder against the door with everything I had left. Click. The wardrobe doors were violently yanked open. A terrified housekeeper and the hotel’s night manager stared down at me. “Oh my god! What happened to you?! Who locked you in here?!” the manager yelled. The harsh overhead lights blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut as silent tears streamed down my bruised face. “Call the police.”

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For three years, my husband Derek enforced a strict 50/50 split—mortgage, bills, even groceries, which he’d calculate to the cent. I told myself he was just frugal. Then one day, my period came early. Out of supplies, I asked him to grab overnight pads on his way home. That night, a Venmo request arrived: Always Ultra Thin Overnights – $7.99. Personal item.It hit me like a needle to the heart. Derek emerged from the bathroom, towel around his waist, smirking. “Too expensive?” he said. “Stock up next time. Or buy Walmart’s generic brand—I’m not subsidizing your choices.” I looked at him—really looked—for the first time in three years. Rising, I pulled a manila folder from beneath the table and dropped it before him. “Derek, we’re getting a divorce.” My voice was steady. He laughed. “Over eight dollars? We split everything. Remember the prenup protects my assets. Your salary can’t even cover a studio here.” He leaned in, sneering. “You leave me, you can’t afford rent.” I stayed silent, meeting his gaze. “You’ll soon see exactly how much of your money I’ll touch.” In front of him, I texted my lawyer: Initiate asset freeze. File evidence. We’re going to trial. His laughter stopped. For the first time, panic flickered across his face. 1 The next afternoon, while Derek was sitting in a board meeting at his consulting firm, a process server handed him a court summons. He absolutely lost his mind. He called my cell phone back to back, the screen lighting up again and again. I hit decline, then permanently blocked his number. Unable to reach me, he ran straight to his mother, Brenda, to complain. Through the audio feed on my laptop, I heard Brenda shrieking in the background. “That ungrateful little bitch! She ate our food and lived in our house for three years, and now she thinks she can just fly the coop?!” “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. We kept the books completely clean. She won’t get a single red cent from us!” “Let her throw her little fit. Let’s see what she can actually do!” I closed the remote access app synced to the hidden microphone in his home office and looked out the window at the busy Manhattan traffic. For an entire year, I had lived like a rat in the shadows, quietly and methodically collecting every shred of evidence proving this mother-son duo was laundering marital assets. Now, the curtain was finally going up. 2 My marriage to Derek was a meticulously calculated scam from day one. When we got engaged, he pitched the 50/50 split as a modern, progressive way to live. He said it would prevent financial resentment and give us both total independence. He said good business partners keep clean books, and a marriage is the most important partnership of all. God, I actually thought he was a visionary back then. I never imagined his 50/50 rule would become a psychological torture device. The down payment on our condo was split exactly down the middle. The mortgage, the HOA fees, the electric bill all perfectly halved. It sounded fair on paper. Except the master bedroom he occupied was a hundred and fifty square feet larger than the guest room I used as an office. So, he spent an hour on Excel calculating the square footage and demanded I pay 0.5% more of the utility and maintenance costs. He called it equity. I cooked dinner every night. He came home to hot meals. After eating, he would literally pull out a digital kitchen scale. He would estimate how many grams of salt and how many ounces of olive oil I used in the recipe. Then, he would cross-reference the grocery receipt and Venmo me exactly half the cost of the ingredients. His justification was maddening. “We only split joint expenses. You bought the groceries, but we both consumed the seasoning.” He called it respecting my labor. The most absurd moment happened when I was hospitalized for severe food poisoning. He came to visit me in the ER, bringing a small bouquet of bodega flowers. I was lying in the hospital bed, pale and violently dehydrated. He sat in the visitor’s chair, perfectly calm, and pulled out his phone calculator. “The ER copay, we split down the middle.” “The IV fluids are for your personal bodily needs, so you cover that 100%.” “My Uber ride here to see you was $38, so you owe me $19.” He pointed to the cheap carnations. “The flowers are a gift from me. No need to split those.” Lying in that sterile bed, watching him aggressively punch numbers into his phone, the very last shred of love I had for him evaporated into thin air. That was when the suspicion started. How could a man who obsessed over pennies to this psychotic degree suddenly become so “successful” in his freelance consulting side-hustle, yet our joint standard of living never improved? Where exactly was all that lucrative consulting money going? I used to be a senior financial analyst. I have an instinct for numbers and cash flow. After I was discharged, I told him I wanted to streamline our household budgeting software. I tricked him into granting me viewing access to his primary checking account. Then, using my professional background, I began secretly tracing every single dollar that entered and exited his name. It didn’t take long to uncover a horrifying secret. Every single month, a massive wire transfer was sent directly into Brenda’s personal bank account, labeled as a “Caregiving Stipend.” I remembered a conversation from a few months prior. Derek had proudly bragged to his friends that he bought his mother a gorgeous retirement property in the Hamptons in straight cash. When I asked him about it, he brushed it off. “It was money I made from an old investment before we met. It has nothing to do with our household.” Before we met? His pre-marital savings were a joke. He had to beg his uncle for a loan just to cover his half of our condo’s down payment. I knew right then he was lying through his teeth. I tapped into my old industry contacts and ran a deep background search on his shell LLCs and off-shore routing numbers. The results made my blood run cold. When my divorce attorney, Arthur, reviewed the preliminary forensic audit I put together, he actually gasped. “Vivian, every single penny your husband made from his private consulting contracts over the last three years bypassed your joint accounts entirely.” “He funneled all of it directly into his mother’s checking account under the guise of living expenses and elder care support.” The day of our pre-trial mediation, Derek’s lawyer strutted into the conference room looking like he already won the lottery. He slammed a binder as thick as a phonebook onto the mahogany table. “Your Honor, opposing counsel. Please direct your attention to this ledger. This is a comprehensive, line-by-line accounting of every joint expense shared by Mr. Davis and my client over their three-year marriage.” “Every single transaction is documented and acknowledged.” “This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that both parties operated under a strict, agreed-upon separation of finances.” Derek sat across from me, a winner’s smirk plastered across his face. During the recess, Derek’s lawyer walked over to me, dripping with arrogance. “Vivian, you can’t even keep track of your own grocery bills. Do you really think you can unravel a multi-million dollar asset portfolio?” “I suggest you take the high road and drop this. Stop embarrassing yourself.” I looked at that massive binder of receipts and smiled. For three years, I swallowed my pride and endured your financial abuse just to make you feel invincible. I lulled you into a false sense of absolute security. The cleaner you kept these petty little books, the harder you are going to bleed. 3 When the mediation session went on recess, Derek cornered me in the courthouse lobby. He stood with his chest puffed out, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “I am giving you one last chance, Vivian. Drop the lawsuit right now, and we can walk away clean.” “Don’t even dream about squeezing a single dime out of my pockets. You don’t have the brains for it.” His voice was kept low, but it was laced with deliberate cruelty. I didn’t waste my breath arguing. I simply reached into my designer tote, pulled out a separate legal document, and shoved it into his chest. It was a formal notice drafted by Arthur that morning. The bold black header read: Notice of Intent to Litigate: Fraudulent Dissipation of Marital Assets. Derek snatched it, scanned the first few lines, and let out a loud, mocking scoff. “What a joke! You think paying some ambulance chaser to write a scary letter is going to intimidate me?” “Every dollar I spent went to my own personal expenses. Our financial boundaries are legally documented in that binder. You could take this to the Supreme Court and you’d still lose!” He crumpled the notice into a tight ball, threw it onto the marble floor, and ground it under the heel of his Italian loafer. “You are so naive, Vivian.” I stared at the crushed paper on the floor, feeling absolutely nothing. The mediation resumed. Derek’s lawyer was putting on a masterclass in theatrics, endlessly praising the modern brilliance of their 50/50 financial arrangement. He painted me as a hysterical, greedy housewife trying to steal her brilliant husband’s hard-earned pre-marital wealth over a petty argument. Right in the middle of his grand speech, Arthur stood up. “Your Honor, my client is submitting an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction.” “We request the immediate freezing of the defendant’s primary bank account ending in 8848.” The entire room fell dead silent. Arthur handed the motion directly to the mediator and the judge. “My client has uncovered evidence that Mr. Davis is currently bleeding massive amounts of capital out of his personal accounts to undisclosed offshore entities.” “To prevent the total liquidation of marital assets, we require an immediate freeze.” Derek’s face completely dropped. He snapped his head toward me, genuine panic flashing in his eyes for the very first time. But he quickly forced his features into a calm mask. He probably assumed I had only found a few hidden thousands. A minor inconvenience. His lawyer immediately jumped in. “Objection!” “The transfers in question are routine, documented financial gifts to my client’s elderly mother. It is a standard display of familial duty.” “This has absolutely nothing to do with asset concealment! We demand opposing counsel produce hard evidence of fraud!” “Hard evidence?” I finally spoke up. My voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the heavy silence of the room like a knife. I looked dead into Derek’s eyes. “Don’t panic, Derek. This is just the appetizer.” “Every single penny you swallowed in the dark, I am going to rip out of your throat with interest.” My words completely broke him. He slammed his hands on the table, surging out of his chair, pointing a shaking finger at my face. “Who the hell do you think you are, Vivian?!” “If you can actually prove anything, I’ll legally change my name!” The room erupted into chaos. I watched him hyperventilate, a cold smile touching my lips. The higher you climb on your pedestal of arrogance, the more bones you will break when you hit the pavement. Derek finally realized I wasn’t just playing games. The second the hearing adjourned, he ambushed me in the parking garage. He slapped his hands against the driver’s side window of my car. His face had undergone a terrifying transformation. The smug superiority from the courtroom was entirely gone, replaced by a sickeningly sweet, desperate warmth. “Viv, roll the window down. Let’s just talk.” I lowered the glass a few inches, staring at him blankly. He instantly put on a face of deep, wounded heartbreak. He was playing the emotional manipulation card. “Vivian, I know the last few years have been hard on you.” “But our financial setup… I only did it so we could build a stronger foundation for our future. Why can’t you see that?” His voice was buttery soft, acting like we were still a pair of star-crossed lovers. “Are you really going to destroy three years of a beautiful marriage over an eight-dollar Venmo request?” 4 The sheer hypocrisy of his performance made my stomach turn. “Three years of a beautiful marriage?” I let out a dry, venomous laugh. “Were you thinking about our beautiful marriage when you were calculating the exact retail tax on a box of tampons?” “Were you thinking about our love when you sat by my hospital bed punching numbers into a calculator to split an Uber fare?” My questions shattered his fragile mask of affection. Seeing that the soft approach was completely useless, his eyes darkened. The vicious, cornered animal finally came out. “Don’t push your luck, you ungrateful bitch!” He snarled, leaning close to the glass. “You think I don’t know you’ve been digging through my trash?” “I’m telling you right now, whatever garbage you think you found won’t hold up in court!” “If you actually try to take this to trial, I will drag your name through the mud. I will make sure you are totally blacklisted in your industry. You will never work in finance again!” He whipped out his phone and shoved the screen against my window. They were highly edited, out-of-context screenshots of our old text messages. He had spliced them together to make it look like the strict 50/50 rule was entirely my idea, and that I was financially abusing him. “You see this?” Derek gloated, his voice dripping with malice. “You don’t have a single shred of concrete proof that I hid millions of dollars!” “Everything you say in front of that judge is going to be thrown out as malicious slander!” “You are going to lose everything, Vivian!” I looked at his face, twisted and deformed by his own terrifying ego. The very last ripple of anger in my chest finally went completely still. I gave him one final answer. “I will see you in court tomorrow, Derek.” “That ‘garbage’ evidence you are so confident about is going to cost you a price you cannot even begin to comprehend.” I rolled the window up, shifted into drive, and left him standing in a cloud of exhaust. When I got back to my apartment, I unlocked my heavy steel safe and pulled out the masterpiece I had spent a year building. A fifty-page dossier titled: Forensic Analysis of Concealed Marital Funds. I smoothed my hand over the cover and flipped to a page near the middle. It was a printed screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation between Derek and Brenda. Brenda: Honey, the wire transfer cleared. I put it in the offshore high-yield account. We’re almost at two million. Is that enough for the Hamptons property? Derek: Don’t worry Mom, it’s more than enough. Just remember, do not leave a single paper trail with your signature on it. We declare it strictly as your retirement savings. That way, even if things go south with Vivian, that leech won’t be able to touch a single dime. I took a slow, deep breath and dialed my lawyer. “Arthur, tell the judge we are submitting our core evidence exhibit on the floor tomorrow.” “I want him to stand in front of a crowded courtroom and watch the lies he built burn to the ground.” The morning of the official trial was gray and overcast. The courtroom was packed. Brenda was sitting in the front row of the gallery. She glared daggers at me, her lips moving rapidly as she quietly cursed my name. Derek sat at the defense table in a sharp tailored suit, his hair slicked back, looking every bit the untouchable corporate elite. The trial commenced. Derek’s attorney took the floor first. He elevated our toxic financial dynamic, preaching about how our marriage was a shining beacon of modern, progressive financial independence. Then, he signaled his paralegal to lug that massive, brick-like binder of receipts over to the judge’s bench. “Your Honor, I direct your attention to Exhibit A.” “This ledger, spanning over three hundred pages, meticulously documents every single shared expense incurred by my client and the plaintiff over the course of their marriage.” “From mortgage payments and utility bills, to a single box of salt, a roll of paper towels, and even… personal feminine hygiene products.” He emphasized the last few words, drawing a smattering of muffled laughter from the gallery. “Both parties have physically signed off on this ledger.” “This explicitly proves that a strict, undeniable separation of assets was established and maintained throughout the marriage.” “There is absolutely no comingling of funds.” “Therefore, the plaintiff’s demand for equitable distribution of my client’s personal assets is entirely baseless in both fact and law!” As his lawyer finished, Derek shot me a wildly arrogant smirk. He looked right at me and silently mouthed the words. This is the price you pay for eight dollars.

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1 After I married Dr. Hayes, every morning at seven, I’d hear the progress of my ‘conquest’ of him in my mind. He was unfailingly responsive to my every whim, impeccably perfect. Yet, the progress bar stubbornly stalled at 95%. I loved him with all my heart, and naturally, I wanted him to love me just as completely. So, I shed my sharp edges, embraced his preferences, and transformed myself into the gentle, virtuous Mrs. Hayes. This morning’s progress report finally hit a hundred percent! He came home early, changed into an off-white linen pajama set, and the cold aloofness that usually surrounded him softened. We snuggled together, watching an indie romance film. He got up to wash fruit, and I leaned back on the still-warm sofa, my heart full of sweetness. Suddenly, my tablet chimed twice. Curiously, I tapped it open and froze. “Your wife is so ugly, ugh.” “At 4 minutes 13 seconds, her tummy rolls are practically popping out. You must be suffering, pretending to be in love with her watching this movie.” … I stared at the two lines of text on the screen. Shock, fury, disgust. All emotions intertwined, but I didn’t explode. How could the man I had completely ‘conquered’ be live-streaming our time together to someone else? I knew Robert’s character. He was aloof and proud; he would never do something so despicable. It must be a misunderstanding! Before he explained, I shouldn’t blindly lose my temper and accuse him. Robert walked out, drying his hair, and saw me sitting on the bed, pale, holding the tablet. “Amy, what’s wrong? Feeling unwell?” I turned the tablet and pushed it toward him. Robert’s gaze fell on the screen. I didn’t miss a single change in his expression. No panic, no guilt. He simply visibly darkened, then tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose: “She’s at it again.” “Who is ‘she’?” Robert sat beside me, his voice full of helplessness: “A new colleague who joined our department, her name’s Bethany White. She… has some issues up here.” He pointed to his head. “Probably severe delusional disorder.” He candidly pulled out his phone, unlocked it, opened his messenger, and handed it to me. “See for yourself.” The chat history was filled with Bethany’s one-sided barrages. “Dr. Hayes, you look so handsome in your lab coat today!” “Your spoiled, old-fashioned wife is no good. Only I can help you.” There were also various self-orchestrated fantasies. Robert’s replies were few and far between, and entirely about stiff work matters. I tapped into Bethany’s social media, no photos, just blurred silhouettes and travel check-ins. “She’s harassing you like this, why haven’t you blocked her?” My voice was still tight. Robert smiled bitterly, pulling me into his arms. “Amy, do you think I don’t want to? She was placed by the hospital board, and she has deep connections. The board insisted we work together on several major projects recently. If I blocked her, how would I move forward with my work? To avoid delays, I can only keep her on my contacts and pretend she’s dead, just ignore her.” His voice held deep exhaustion. “I thought if I just ignored her, she’d get bored and stop. I never expected her to send such disgusting things to you!” “I’m sorry, Amy. I didn’t handle it well; I let you down.” Just then, that voice in my head suddenly spoke. [Warning: Trust crisis detected with your target. Current approval rating 100%. Please stop baseless speculation and avoid damaging the perfect marital relationship!] The bloodshot eyes and candid look in Robert’s eyes filled me with guilt. I had misunderstood him. He worked so hard outside, dealing with harassment from a crazy person, and yet I doubted him over two messages. “I’m sorry, Robert…” I hugged him back, my voice choked, “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” He kissed my forehead: “Silly girl, we don’t need apologies between us.” The next day. I personally cooked several of his favorite dishes, carefully packed them, and took them to the hospital. Pushing open his office door, he was sitting at his desk, rubbing his temples. Seeing me, a flicker of surprise crossed his eyes. “Why didn’t you call ahead? Aren’t you tired?” He smiled, taking the insulated box. “Wanted to make sure you’re well fed.” Just as he picked up his chopsticks to eat, his phone screen lit up. Robert glanced at it, his face instantly changing, and he decisively stood up: “Amy, emergency in the ER. Major car accident. I have to go save them immediately!” He grabbed his lab coat and rushed out of the office. I stood there, stunned, looking at the steaming food, a hollow feeling in my heart. But there was nothing to do. Lives were on the line. I could only quietly pack up the insulated box and take a cab home. As soon as I walked through the door, I received a text message from an unknown number. “The food you cook, just the smell of it is sickening. Not as delicious as my body, though. Dr. Hayes is starving for it~” 2 If last night’s message was her one-sided fantasy, what about today? I had barely delivered the food to the hospital when Robert made an excuse about an emergency surgery and rushed off. I went straight back to the hospital. Not to find Robert, but to the HR department. “I want to file a formal complaint against Bethany White, a doctor in your cardiac surgery department!” I slammed both hands on the desk. “She has an unprofessional conduct and is severely harassing a colleague’s family!” The person across from me was startled. He frowned and opened the system: “Bethany White? Cardiac surgery? Please wait.” A minute later, he looked up, puzzled: “Are you mistaken? We have no doctor named Bethany White in our hospital system, nor any nurse.” “Impossible!” I raised my voice. “She’s new! She’s in the same department as Robert Hayes, how could you not find her!” “Truly, no one.” The clerk turned the monitor towards me. “The entire staff list is here. No one by that name.” I stared at the “No matching results” message on the screen, my mind a blank. Medical staff gradually gathered outside, curious. “Isn’t that Dr. Hayes’s wife?” “Why is she causing a scene here?” “I heard her mental state isn’t very good, always suspicious…” “Poor thing, Dr. Hayes is so brilliant, how did he end up with a crazy wife.” … The fragmented whispers pierced my ears. I looked around, experiencing panic for the first time. Just as I was on the verge of collapsing, Robert rushed in, drenched in sweat, pulling me into his arms. He didn’t get angry at me; instead, he bowed repeatedly, apologizing to everyone around us. “I’m so sorry, truly! My wife has been under a lot of stress lately, and hasn’t been sleeping well. She might have misunderstood something. I apologize for disturbing everyone, please don’t mind her!” I was half-hugged, half-dragged by him into the car. As soon as the car door closed, Robert’s eyes reddened. “Amy, I’m sorry… I lied to you.” I looked at him blankly. “Bethany White isn’t a colleague from our hospital.” He confessed, choked up, “She’s an external pharmaceutical rep. Last night, seeing how upset you were, how much you minded this person, all my energy was spent on calming you down. I didn’t want to mention irrelevant people and upset you further, so I just casually made up a lie, saying she was a colleague, hoping to gloss over the matter…” I remained silent, showing him the text message. “I really did go for an emergency surgery just now!” Robert looked up, his eyes full of sincerity and urgency. “That car accident patient is still in the ICU! I don’t know what’s going on with the text message, she must have bribed someone, or she was staking out the hospital and saw you! Amy, I really only lied because I was afraid you’d overthink things. I swear, she and I have absolutely nothing going on!” The warning in my mind sounded again. [Please trust your target! Stop self-sabotage!] I didn’t know who to believe, or even if I should trust my own judgment. I pushed open the car door, frantically hailed a cab, and returned to my parents’ home. This was my safe haven. Seeing me return distraught, my sister was terrified. After listening to my tearful account, she angrily smashed the decorative item beside her. “That bastard Robert Hayes!” She hugged me tightly, gnashing her teeth. “I knew that opportunistic guy couldn’t be trusted! The whole family disagreed when you insisted on marrying down! Have you forgotten how I used to argue with him? I feared he’d show his true colors once he found success!” I leaned in her arms, my thoughts a tangled mess. “What should I do? I feel like I’m going crazy.” My sister gently patted my back, her voice chilling. “Don’t worry. Mom and Dad and I will back you up! I’ll find out right now who that vixen really is!” 3 My sister moved quickly. “Got it.” “She’s the daughter of a high-ranking executive at Starcorp Group! A notorious party girl in the social circles.” The day I received the documents from my sister happened to be my birthday. Robert had specifically taken time off, booked out a restaurant, and even gifted me an expensive diamond necklace. Candlelight flickered, and a violin played a melodious tune. “Amy, happy birthday!” The atmosphere was warm, and he was about to clink glasses with me. His phone suddenly vibrated urgently. He glanced at the screen, his face instantly grave. After taking the call and listening for a few moments, he quickly stood up, looking apologetically at me: “Amy, I’m so sorry. There’s an emergency in the department, and I have to be the lead surgeon.” “But today…” “Come on, lives are at stake. I’ll come right back to you after I’m done!” He left the restaurant without a backward glance. I stared at the untouched glass of red wine opposite me, feeling a deep sadness. A few minutes later, my sister sent a message. [I just finished with a client and saw Robert Hayes at the Cloudhaven Club! He went into a VIP room, and Bethany White is in there too! I’ve sent you the location!] That voice in my head screamed again. [Warning: Target detected meeting with another woman. Maintain composure and defend your marriage!] The stress reaction made me lose my ability to think. I rushed towards the Cloudhaven Club following the location. “Bang!” After kicking open the private room door, Robert and Bethany were sitting very close on the sofa. I shrieked, grabbed the ice water from the table, and splashed it onto Bethany’s face. “You home-wrecker, are you that desperate for a man?!” She recoiled in surprise, shot a glance at a bodyguard, then pulled out her phone and started filming. “So, you’re Dr. Hayes’s pampered wife?” Bethany’s eyes were contemptuous, her words deeply insulting. “Truly, seeing is believing! It’s bad enough you ruin your husband at home, but you come out here pretending to be the wronged wife and hitting people! What? He can’t have a normal social life?” I continued to scream and struggle, accusing her of coveting a married man. Robert looked bewildered, simultaneously blocking the camera and shouting at me: “Amy! What are you doing! Why are you suddenly bursting in and making a scene like this?!” “You lied to me! You said you were going for emergency surgery!” I cried hysterically. But the bodyguard’s strength was too great; I couldn’t break free. Two hours later. Bethany posted the video online. #RenownedDoctorCaughtWithMistressByCrazyWife# #WifeThrowsFitLikeMadDog# … The hashtags quickly soared to the top of trending topics in our city. The entire internet was mocking me. Saying I had paranoid delusions and wasn’t good enough for Robert. He looked at me, sitting blank-eyed on the sofa, then suddenly slapped himself twice. “Amy, I’m sorry… I ruined you.” He knelt before me, sobbing uncontrollably, revealing the whole truth. It turned out he had long grown tired of the stagnant salary at the public hospital and wanted to strike out on his own, opening his private clinic. But he lacked startup capital. He disliked the nickname “Sterling family’s kept man” and didn’t want to ask me for money, so he had to find other ways. Bethany was the daughter of a Starcorp executive; she had resources and was willing to provide funding. Tonight, he was meeting her at the club to discuss the collaboration plan in detail, which was why he had no choice but to go. “If I had known you would misunderstand, thinking we were having a secret rendezvous, I would have told you the whole truth right then!” “I’m sorry, I was just too concerned about your feelings! I knew you minded her, and I was afraid you’d be upset if you knew I was meeting her, that it would ruin your birthday, so I found another excuse to leave…” “I messed up, I was too clever for my own good… Amy, hit me! Just don’t look at those comments, please!” I understood his pride, and I knew he hadn’t intentionally meant to hurt me. The pain, finding no outlet, left me only with silence. Later, Robert took extended leave from the hospital. Ignoring the public criticism, he stayed by my side at home, caring for me constantly. He cooked for me, coaxed me to sleep, and endured my occasional emotional breakdowns. I gradually improved, and we became even closer. I wondered if it was a blessing in disguise. 4 I still couldn’t help it. I threw up the noodles I’d just eaten, along with the multicolored pills, all into the toilet. The pills hadn’t had time to digest, their edges covered in murky white foam. For the past two weeks, Robert had been seeking out doctors and medicines everywhere, prescribing me a large quantity of psychiatric drugs. I took them on time every day, always feeling drowsy and muddled. My memory began to decline, and I couldn’t even walk steadily. The voice in my head came in snatches, like a fog. [Please maintain… emotional stability…] With the pills completely expelled, my mind cleared. I propped myself up by the sink: Was this still the spirited second daughter of the Sterling family from before? I splashed cold water on my face, forcing myself awake. One in the morning. The fingerprint lock clicked, and Robert returned. It wasn’t the sound of one set of footsteps, but two. Like a cat lurking in the dark, I slipped silently out of bed and pressed myself against the master bedroom door. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered on. I saw two intertwined figures, stumbling into the room next door. A few seconds later. Nauseating gasps and the tearing of clothes penetrated the wall, stabbing into my eardrums. “Robert… don’t be so rough!” The woman’s voice was seductively soft. Even though it differed from her usual style, I easily recognized it. It was the voice I had heard since childhood. It was my closest, most trusted sister! My own sister, and my beloved husband, were fervently entwined in the guest room less than three meters from me. “I’ve waited so long, how can I slow down?” Robert gasped, his voice already trembling with passion, completely devoid of any cold aloofness. “Gentle! Amy’s right next door, aren’t you afraid of waking her?” My sister laughed playfully. “Afraid of what?” Robert’s voice was incredibly certain. “She took double her dose tonight; she’s probably sleeping like a log. Even if we dragged her out and sold her, she wouldn’t know.” After a creaking sound, my sister chuckled softly. “I just said it casually back then, and you made it happen for me? Amy still thinks she’s the chosen one, tied to some novel’s system, right?” I pressed against the wall, my breathing stopped. “It was just a medical experiment, darling. Heaven blessed you and let it succeed,” Robert responded proudly. “She’s such a fool, doing tasks according to your demands for some illusory ‘conquest progress’!” What did that mean?! All those times I suppressed my true self, trying to conform to his every whim, were actually my sister’s demands? “Why does she always have such good luck? Why does she get all the good things? I’m going to make her go insane! Only then will Mom and Dad give up on her, and the Sterling family… oh my!” My sister’s complaints were silenced by his kiss, initiating a new round of passion. I stumbled backward in shock, unable to listen anymore. Compared to the pain of being betrayed by my closest kin, I cared more about something else. So… No conquest system. No mistress named Bethany. It was all fake?!

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It had been eight years since I last saw my ex-girlfriend, Sloane Kensington. The bleached blonde hair was dyed back to a sleek raven black. The rebellious tattoos had been lasered off. She had morphed into a ruthless, untouchable corporate queen. Meanwhile, my already frail body had withered into something much worse. “Rowan, I am so sorry. The cancer has metastasized significantly. At this point, aggressive treatment would only bring you unnecessary suffering.” The oncologist was a kind man. Even handing out a death sentence, he tried to soften the blow. Clutching the medical paperwork that essentially stamped an expiration date on my life, I walked past the orthopedics ward. That was when I literally collided with Sloane. Eight years apart, and she was taller, more breathtaking, and far more… “If you don’t know how to use your eyes, donate them to someone who does.” Right. Far more vicious. 1 After throwing that icy insult at me, Sloane’s entire demeanor flipped like a switch. She turned to the man beside her, a guy with his leg wrapped in a heavy cast, and asked if he was okay with a voice full of soft, genuine concern. I hadn’t bumped into them on purpose, but since the guy was already on crutches, I figured I should rack up some good karma before I died. “My apologies. I wasn’t watching where I was going. Are you alright?” The man offered a warm, reassuring smile and shook his head. He glanced at Sloane, gently nudging her arm. “He didn’t mean it. Why are you being so harsh?” I raised an eyebrow in surprise and nodded in total agreement. Ever since she became a billionaire CEO, her personality had definitely taken a nosedive. “Sorry about that, man,” the guy said to me. “She just gets a little overprotective. She didn’t mean to offend you.” Despite leaning awkwardly on his crutches, the guy had perfect posture. He radiated quiet wealth and elegance. Standing next to Sloane, they looked like the perfect power couple. It seemed he had no idea about my history with Sloane. And judging by her rigid posture, she was pretending she didn’t know me either. Suddenly, the air in the hallway felt suffocating. I didn’t want to be there a second longer. “It’s fine. As long as you’re not hurt. I’ll be going now.” I stepped around them and walked away, my shoulder brushing past Sloane’s. The sterile hospital air was instantly cut by the faint, familiar scent of camellia perfume. By the time I got back to my tiny apartment, my body was running on fumes. I collapsed onto the mattress, and almost immediately, my stomach began to cramp in violent spasms. Cold sweat slid down my forehead, mixing with the tears I couldn’t stop from leaking out of the corners of my eyes. I lay there agonizing until my phone started ringing like a fire alarm. “Rowan! Great news! The investors love the pitch. We just need you to finish writing the script, and we can submit it for final approval.” It was Declan, a television producer. We met working on a small indie project years ago and had been close friends ever since. I looked over at the full-length mirror leaning against my bedroom wall. My face was a ghostly white, stained with dried tears, my hair plastered to my damp cheeks in messy clumps. “Declan, I still haven’t figured out the ending for this one. Can we push the deadline back a bit?” “Oh man, we absolutely cannot. The money behind this project is massive. If we ghost them now, we’ll both be blacklisted in this industry forever.” The excuses died in my throat. I didn’t care about my own consequences anymore, but Declan had a long, bright career ahead of him. “Alright. I understand. I’ll get it done as fast as I can.” After hanging up, I pulled out the bottle of painkillers the doctor had prescribed. One month’s supply. Exactly thirty pills. The instructions clearly said one pill a day. But since I was going to be dead in a few weeks anyway, I saw no point in enduring the torture. I shook three pills into my palm and swallowed them dry. Dragging myself to the computer desk, I opened the document and began typing the final chapter of my very last story. The sky outside my window turned from pitch black to pale morning light, and eventually back to dusk. The End. Typing those two words, I stretched my aching arms and let out a long, heavy exhale. This story had been sitting in my vault of ideas for years, but I never managed to flesh it out until now. I stared at the black text on the glowing screen and let out a bitter laugh. “Maybe everything really is just fate.” Not even an hour after I emailed the draft to Declan, my phone started vibrating off the desk. “Rowan, I am completely obsessed with this script. I honestly think it’s your best work ever!” The investors hadn’t even given the green light yet, but Declan was already itching to pop champagne. By the time I found myself sitting in a crowded booth at a downtown lounge, I still hadn’t figured out how he talked me into leaving my apartment. To meet the deadline, I had survived entirely on cheap granola bars for two days. Now, with a few sips of alcohol in my system, my stomach was screaming in protest. I couldn’t take my painkillers with alcohol. Fighting through the sharp cramps, I grabbed an empty glass and stood up, intending to find a bartender for some hot water. The second I turned around, a warm, soft body slammed directly into my chest. That crisp, elegant camellia scent flooded my senses. My mind went completely blank. 2 A split second later, I was shoved away with aggressive force. Sloane was glaring at me, her face twisted in pure disgust as she brushed off the front of her designer blazer where I had touched her. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking,” I offered a genuine apology. “Two days, and you’ve run into me twice. If it’s not intentional, then the part of your brain that controls motor function must be rotting.” Maybe it was because my stomach was tearing itself apart. Or maybe I was just exhausted to my bones. At that moment, my nerves were completely frayed. I was simply too fragile to handle Sloane’s venomous words. “Heh.” She let out a cold scoff, her eyes raking over me like I was trash. “What are you acting so pathetic for? I state an obvious fact, and your eyes start watering?” She was right. Eight years ago, when Sloane was kneeling in a blizzard, begging me not to leave her, I didn’t shed a single tear. Looking at this sharp, calculated, ruthlessly cold woman standing in front of me, I couldn’t find a single trace of the girl I used to know. I knew she remembered me. The disgust and pure hatred burning in her eyes were impossible to ignore. It was obvious she wanted nothing to do with me. I figured I would do her a favor and step out of her orbit for good. “My apologies. From now on, whenever I see you, I will walk the other way.” I side-stepped her and walked toward the bar. When I finally got back to the booth with a mug of hot water, Declan had returned from the restroom. “Where did you go? I came back and thought you ditched me.” “Just getting some water.” Bumping into Sloane was a statistical anomaly. There was no need to bring it up. I thought submitting the script meant my job was officially done. I was wrong. The very next morning, Declan called me in an absolute panic. “Rowan, it’s a disaster. The investors rejected the script! You need to get to the production office right now!” By the time I rushed into the conference room, Declan was already sweating bullets. He was talking to the lead investor, who was sitting in a high-backed leather chair facing the window. “Excuse me, but could you specify which part of the script you found unsatisfactory?” I knew this person was the big boss holding the checkbook, so I asked the question directly. Silence stretched through the room. Finally, a voice I knew all too well echoed off the walls. “The ending.” The chair swiveled around. Sloane’s beautiful, apathetic face came into view. So she was the massive corporate backer. She locked eyes with me. There was zero surprise on her face. Before I could say a word, Declan jumped in, desperately trying to salvage the deal. “Ms. Kensington, modern audiences want a happy ending. It aligns perfectly with current market trends and guarantees higher viewership.” Sloane nodded slowly, making Declan think she was actually listening. But before he could exhale, she spoke again. “But I don’t like this ending. Rewrite it.” Billionaires really lived in a different reality. “If you want the ending changed, you’ll need to hire another writer. I can’t do it.” I had sold my soul for a paycheck plenty of times in the past. But this specific story was different. I refused to compromise on it. Sloane looked at me, a cruel, mocking smile playing on her lips. “Fine. If you refuse to write it, you can just pay the breach of contract penalty.” Declan’s face went completely ghostly. I looked at him, and he subtly scribbled a number on his notepad. Ten million dollars. Forget selling my organs. Even if we sold Declan’s entire production company, we couldn’t scrape together ten million dollars. I let out a quiet sigh and smiled bitterly at myself. Whatever. I was going to be dead in a month anyway. Artistic integrity meant absolutely nothing in the grave. “Fine. I’ll change it.” The meeting ended. The corporate sharks got exactly what they wanted, leaving me as the miserable workhorse. But apparently, the universe wasn’t done messing with me. As I walked toward the elevator, Sloane’s assistant, Blake, jogged over and blocked my path. “Mr. Rowan. To ensure seamless communication regarding the rewrites, you are required to clock in and work directly from our corporate headquarters until the draft is approved.” I frowned, looking past him to where Sloane stood chatting idly with some executives. Didn’t she hate my guts? Why on earth did she want me sitting right under her nose? My empty stomach gave a violent lurch, protesting the lack of breakfast. I didn’t have the energy to fight it. I muttered a quick agreement and left. Once I was alone in the breakroom downstairs, I pulled out my pill bottle. “What are you doing?” Sloane’s voice cut through the quiet room, startling me so badly I dropped the bottle. The white pills scattered across the tile floor. 3 Without answering her, I dropped to my knees, frantically scrambling to gather the pills. These weren’t just standard painkillers anymore. They were my lifeline. Sloane stood there in absolute silence, watching me crawl on the floor, picking up the medication piece by piece. When I found the last three pills, I was about to pop them straight into my mouth, but she suddenly grabbed my wrist. “They were literally just on the dirty floor, and you’re going to swallow them?” I pulled my arm away, completely annoyed. Eight years had transformed her into a titan of industry, but she still had that annoying, obsessive germaphobia. “It’s none of your business.” I swallowed the pills dry. Sloane’s frown deepened. I turned to leave, but she spoke again. “What kind of medication is that?” I stopped walking and looked at her in confusion. Noticing my suspicious gaze, Sloane let out a sarcastic laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just curious. I wanted to know if you finally got what was coming to you after doing so many horrible things.” I smiled bitterly on the inside. I really did get exactly what was coming to me. I was the monster who shattered the pure, innocent heart of an eighteen-year-old girl. I took her virginity and dumped her the very next morning like garbage. Now I was dying of terminal stomach cancer. Karma never missed. But I refused to let her see me as a pathetic joke. I forced a bright, arrogant smirk onto my face. “Sorry to disappoint you. I just haven’t been eating enough fruit lately. It’s just Vitamin C.” I left the corporate building and took a bus out to a foster home in the suburbs. “Martha, what did the specialist say about Lucy’s eyes?” The director of the foster home shook her head, her face lined with grief. “We still haven’t found a viable donor. The doctors can’t do anything without a transplant.” For some reason, my mind flashed back to the day I bumped into Sloane at the hospital. I took Martha’s weathered hands and patted them gently. “Don’t worry, Martha. Lucy is such a sweet, good kid. She will see the light again. I promise.” Before leaving, I transferred a large sum of money into the foster home’s account. “Rowan, you aren’t getting any younger. You need to start saving some money for yourself. If you meet a nice girl, you’ll want to settle down and start a family. You’ve done more than enough for us. Your presence is all we need.” I grew up in this foster home. Martha practically raised me. She was the only mother figure I had ever known. “Martha, I make really good money now. You don’t have to worry about me.” I hadn’t told a single soul about my diagnosis. Not even Martha. She had a hundred other children to worry about. I was a grown man. I couldn’t bear to be another burden on her shoulders. When I got back to my apartment, I booted up my laptop and officially registered as an organ donor. Sloane’s harsh words actually made a lot of sense. I wouldn’t need my organs when I was dead. Someone else might as well use them. The next morning, I arrived at Sloane’s corporate headquarters right on time. Blake was waiting for me in the lobby. “Mr. Rowan, this will be your desk. The CEO’s office is right next door.” I stared at the pristine, floor-to-ceiling glass wall separating my desk from Sloane’s massive executive suite. “Could I get a different desk? Being this close to the boss gives me anxiety. I won’t be able to write.” “I apologize, Mr. Rowan. The CEO explicitly chose this desk for you.” Fine. No room for negotiation. Fortunately, Sloane was incredibly busy. By lunchtime, she hadn’t even stepped foot into her office. But Carter did. Carter hobbled over on his crutches, carrying a stack of high-end takeout containers. When he saw me sitting outside the glass, his eyes went wide with shock. I quickly explained the situation. “I’m the screenwriter for Ms. Kensington’s new investment project. I’m working on-site until the script is approved.” “Wow. It seems you and Sloane really cross paths a lot.” His eyes crinkled into a warm, friendly smile, making me feel bizarrely guilty. Footsteps clicked down the hallway. Sloane was back. She walked straight past me, walking up to Carter and taking the food containers from his hands. “Why did you bring this yourself? You could have just had the driver drop it off.” “It’s fine. I was bored sitting at home anyway.” They walked into her office together. I was completely ignored, treated like a piece of invisible furniture. I knew I had absolutely no right to be jealous, but my chest physically ached. 4 The week blurred by. I submitted three completely different endings. Sloane rejected every single one of them. My stomach pains returned with a vengeance. I hadn’t eaten a solid meal in seven days. Watching Carter bring Sloane gourmet food every afternoon made the cheap delivery food sitting on my desk look even more repulsive. The pressure was mounting. Sloane kept stonewalling the script. The worse I felt, the less I ate, and the more the cancer tore at my insides. In just one week, I lost another five pounds. It felt like someone had shoved a red-hot iron rod into my gut and was twisting it endlessly. The pain sent waves of freezing sweat pouring down my back. My fingers were trembling so violently I couldn’t even press the keys on my keyboard. I curled into a tight ball in my office chair, shivering uncontrollably. I was just reaching into my pocket for my pills when my chair was violently spun around. Sloane crouched in front of me. She grabbed my face with both hands, forcing my head up. “Rowan, what is wrong with you?” I wanted to tell her it was none of her business. I wanted to slap her hands away. But the second I opened my mouth, my teeth started chattering from the sheer agony. I couldn’t even lift my arms. A moment later, Sloane pulled out her phone and started shouting commands. When I finally regained a shred of awareness, I was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. At the hospital, the ER doctor ran a preliminary physical exam. His face fell. He urged me to consent to a full-body scan to confirm his suspicions. I shook my head weakly. “Doctor, you don’t need to run the tests. I already know. It’s late-stage stomach cancer.” The kind doctor looked heartbroken. He stood there awkwardly, struggling to find a single word of comfort. “Doctor, this is strictly confidential. Please do not tell anyone. Especially not the woman waiting outside.” He agreed. When Sloane cornered him in the hallway, he followed my instructions and told her I simply had severe gastric ulcers. “Can ulcers really cause someone to collapse in that much pain?” Sloane looked highly suspicious. I leaned against the doorframe, forcing a cocky, obnoxious grin. “What’s the matter? Are you worried about me?” Just as I predicted, the comment instantly disgusted her. Her face turned to ice, and she turned on her heel and walked away. I slowly shuffled out of the hospital entrance. A sleek, black luxury town car idled by the curb. “Mrs. Kensington. It’s been a long time.” The woman sitting in the back seat was Sloane’s mother. My former employer. “When you took my money and left, you made a promise. Have you forgotten?” “I haven’t forgotten. I promised I would never appear in Sloane’s life again.” She looked me up and down, her eyes dripping with aristocratic disdain. “Running into her was purely a professional accident. Don’t worry. She despises the sight of me now. What you’re afraid of is never going to happen.” I hated being evaluated like a piece of garbage, but she was the woman who had given me the money to save Lucy’s life. “Good. Finish your little writing assignment quickly, and get away from my daughter.” When I returned to the office the next day, I heard Sloane had flown out of the city on a business trip. She was going to be gone for two weeks. With the boss out of the building, the entire executive floor relaxed. “Why is the boss staying in Boston for so long?” a secretary whispered near the coffee machine. “You didn’t hear? She’s not just there for corporate meetings. She went to track down the top orthopedic surgeon in the country for Mr. Carter.” “Wow. Boston has the best bone specialists in the world. She really cares about him!” I didn’t stick around to hear the rest. I grabbed my coat and walked right out of the building. Back at my apartment, I opened my laptop and created a brand new, blank document. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what kind of ending Sloane wanted. I was just being greedy. I had been gambling, desperately hoping she would show me one last ounce of mercy and accept a happy conclusion. Now, it was time to let the delusion die. When the snow melts and spring arrives, we will sever all ties. In this life and the next, let us never meet again. That ending was approved instantly. Looking at the word Approved on my phone screen, a violent cough ripped through my chest. Thick, dark blood sprayed from my mouth, splattering across the keyboard. Total darkness swallowed the room. As I collapsed, a bitter smile touched my lips. It seemed my own story was ending right here, too.

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1 The second I slid into the back of the Rolls-Royce Phantom, my hands moved with practiced lightning speed. I snatched three empty Evian bottles wedged in the crevices of the leather seats and stuffed them into my bag. My biological parents recoiled, pressing manicured fingers to their noses. My newfound brother sneered, muttering something about a waste of oxygen. Meanwhile, the elegant fake daughter sitting across from me hid a delicate smirk behind her hand, laughing at the beggar they had just dragged out of the slums. But as the heavy gates of The Heights—the city’s most exclusive gated community—swung open and we glided past the neighborhood’s private waste disposal center, my blood started pumping. A barely used, mid-century modern leather armchair. A massive, flawless mahogany serving tray. Even designer bags and seasonal couture, still wrapped in plastic, tossed aside like dirty tissues. To these people, it was a festering pile of garbage. To me, a veteran scavenger, it was a glittering, unmined mountain of pure gold. From that day on, I only had one mission in life. Trash. A crushed Tom Ford packaging box? Mine. Empty bottles of Macallan 1926? Snatched. A wobbly vintage credenza? I’ll take it. Fried computer hard drives? Bring them to mama. While this so-called high-society family plotted and schemed over their inheritance, I was quietly turning their trash into the kind of wealth that would soon slap the taste right out of their mouths. … I crouched by the estate’s recycling bins, cradling a waterlogged computer motherboard against my chest. Connor, my biological brother, stopped in front of me, hands on his hips. “What the hell are you digging for?” “Connor, you guys don’t want this motherboard anymore, right?” “It’s garbage. Been in the shed for six months.” He kicked a nearby cardboard box, sending two more motherboards clattering against my knees. “Take it. Take it all.” He took two steps back, his face twisting in disgust. “Just don’t let me catch you squatting out here again. You’re a goddamn embarrassment.” I gave him a wide, goofy grin and shoved the tech into my heavy-duty woven sack. The sharp click of stilettos echoed behind him. Paloma, the fake daughter who had lived my life for twenty-odd years, sauntered over in her Jimmy Choos. She was dangling three empty haute couture boxes and two empty Macallan bottles from her fingertips. “Roxy, I really don’t have any use for these anymore,” she said, her voice dripping with sugary pity. “If you like them so much, why don’t you keep them to play with?” “Thanks, Paloma!” I snatched them out of her hands so fast she actually flinched, before covering her mouth to muffle a giggle. What the little princess didn’t know was that those three empty boxes went for four grand a pop on the luxury resale black market. And those two empty Macallan bottles? I already had a buyer lined up for twelve grand each. I just provided the authentic glass. What the buyer filled them with was none of my business. At dinner, Richard Whitmore watched me shovel food into my mouth, his brow furrowed so deep it looked carved in stone. “Roxy, your mother has hired an etiquette coach for you,” he declared. “Lessons start tomorrow.” Eleanor dabbed her perfectly dry eyes with a napkin. “You are a Whitmore now, darling. You simply cannot act like… well, like you used to.” I nodded obediently, swallowed my last bite of steak, and bolted upstairs to my room. I locked the door, yanked the curtains shut, and pulled the motherboards from my sack. They had been submerged in water, sure. But if the chips were intact, the data was still there. I reached into the false bottom of my duffel bag and pulled out the portable data-reader I’d built from scratch in college. An hour and a half later, I stared at the encrypted wallet address glowing on my screen. I stopped breathing. Three years ago, Connor blew a fortune trading crypto and smashed his rig in a rage. What the idiot didn’t know was that his cold wallet private keys were still buried in the hard drive’s encrypted partition. The alt-coins he thought had tanked to zero? They had multiplied by forty over the last three years. It took me forty minutes to crack the encryption, and another twenty to tumble the funds and wash them through a dozen offshore accounts. My phone vibrated with a banking alert. Then another. Seventeen chimes in total. Two and a half million dollars. The garbage he literally kicked at my feet was worth two and a half million dollars. I clicked my phone dark, flopped back onto the ten-thousand-dollar mattress, and laughed until my ribs ached. The next morning, wearing the same faded tee from yesterday, I was back to squatting by the bins, flattening cardboard. From the second-floor balcony, the fake daughter looked down at me, leaning in to whisper into Connor’s ear. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I saw Connor roll his eyes. I could read his lips perfectly. Cheap trash. 2 The etiquette coach lasted exactly three days before storming out. I purposely launched a cherry tomato across the room with my fork, rolled my ankles in heels, and couldn’t even master a basic debutante smile. Eleanor clutched her pearls, sighing heavily at least eight times an hour. Richard slammed his hand on the mahogany dining table. “Enough. Cancel the lessons.” He glared at me. “If you can’t learn a single damn thing, then stop being an eyesore up here.” Connor didn’t miss a beat. “There’s a storage room on Sub-Level 3. It’s been piled high with junk for decades. You love trash so much? Move down there. Clean the place out while you’re at it.” Paloma took a delicate sip of her tea, blowing softly across the rim. “Connor, is that really appropriate? Roxy is our sister, after all…” “Shut up, Paloma. The adults are talking,” Connor snapped. I didn’t miss the triumphant little twitch at the corner of Paloma’s mouth when she lowered her head. “Sounds good to me,” I chirped. I grabbed my woven sack and headed straight for the basement stairs. Eleanor looked like she wanted to say something, but ultimately just let out another heavy sigh. Sub-Level 3 was freezing, damp, and choked with decades of dust. When I pushed open the heavy iron door, my knees practically buckled. The room was absolutely stuffed with treasure. The Whitmores had tossed all this out because their high-priced “appraisers” had labeled it worthless junk. But those guys weren’t in my league. During my four years of college, I went to class by day and apprenticed under the grittiest, sharpest antique restorers in the underground night markets. After graduation, I ran a scrapyard for three years. The amount of priceless relics I had pulled from the mud would make a museum curator weep. The next day, I locked the iron door from the inside and pulled a heavily stained, rolled-up canvas from a rotting wooden crate. The surface was speckled with coffee, the paint was peeling, and the frame was shattered. But when I smoothed the canvas out, my fingertips caught a slight edge. There was a false backing. I spent three days carefully applying chemical solvents to strip away the camouflage layer. At three in the morning on the fourth day, I slumped against the cold concrete floor, staring at the masterpiece in my hands. A lost Renaissance sketch. The only one of its kind in existence. Market value? Eight figures, easy. I used a burner phone to contact the most discreet underground auction house in the city. After verifying the piece via a secure video link, the broker on the other end sat in dead silence for thirty seconds. “Ghost Hand,” he finally whispered, using my street moniker. “We will list this anonymously at our highest tier. Our deepest respects.” A week later, the balance on my offshore account swelled by tens of millions. Right around the same time, the Whitmore Group’s supply chain took a massive hit. I heard rumors that Richard had smashed three crystal glasses in his study. He desperately needed to secure a lifeline from Mr. Carlisle, the most terrifying and powerful tycoon in the city’s elite circle. The Whitmores were practically turning the city upside down, hunting for a rare treasure to present to Carlisle at the upcoming high-society gala. Meanwhile, Whitmore Real Estate had just bulldozed a massive low-income housing project on the Southside. The evicted residents’ belongings were tossed into dump trucks as construction waste and dumped right into the estate’s private disposal yard. That night, I crawled out of the basement, covered head to toe in gray dust, and ran straight into Eleanor in the foyer. She was busy berating a maid but stopped to cover her nose when she saw me. “Roxy, sweetheart… I know you like to… tidy things up. But could you at least wash your face before coming upstairs?” “Sure thing,” I muttered, but my eyes were already looking past the floor-to-ceiling windows, locking onto the fresh pile of “garbage” out back. 3 The date for the gala was set, and the whole estate was buzzing like a disturbed hive. On my third night surfacing to take out the trash, I caught Paloma and Connor whispering in the garden pavilion. “Connor, just locking her in the basement isn’t enough. We need her completely ruined at the gala. Mom and Dad need to give up on her for good.” “And then?” “We commit her to a psychiatric facility.” “She digs through trash all day, right? We just give her a little surprise. Go find the most disgusting, cursed-looking thing in that Southside rubble and shove it into her stupid sack. When it spills out at the gala, we tell everyone she’s not just a kleptomaniac, but a freak who hoards dead people’s belongings. Dad will blow a gasket. I’ve already paid off a doctor to sign the committal papers.” I stood perfectly still in the shadows, letting their words wash over me. You want to hand-deliver me ammunition? I’ll gladly take the shot. Early the next morning, I was knee-deep in the Southside rubble. Down at the very bottom of my sack, I felt a heavy lump wrapped in a greasy, rotting rag. I pulled it out. A brass pocket watch. It was caked in hardened mud, the casing corroded green, the chain snapped in half. I held it up to the pale morning light, turning it over. The serial numbering on the casing was ancient, easily fifty years old, but the brass purity was incredibly high. I didn’t make a sound. I just slipped the watch into my pocket and went back to flattening cardboard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the twitch of a curtain on the second floor. Paloma’s phone camera was pointed right at me. Back in the basement, I bolted the door. I pulled out my rust-remover and a pack of cotton swabs, slowly eating away the decades of grime. As the corrosion faded, the dull gleam of polished brass emerged. The hinge on the cover was slightly loose. I worked on the back plate first. Under the harsh glare of my desk lamp, a line of deeply engraved script revealed itself. To my boy, Arthur. Mom will always wait for you to come home. I pulled out my phone, typed a name and a thirty-year-old cold case into the search bar. When the results popped up, my pupils contracted. The owner of this watch was directly tied to Arthur Carlisle. At the gala, this little piece of trash was going to be worth a thousand times more than the twenty-million-dollar jade sculpture the Whitmores had bought. On the third day, Richard called me into his study. Eleanor sat on the velvet sofa, her eyes predictably red. Two documents sat on the polished oak desk. One was a legal waiver, relinquishing all rights to the Whitmore family inheritance. The other was a consent form for an involuntary psychiatric hold. “Roxy, your mother and I aren’t kicking you out to the streets,” Richard said, his tone thick with forced paternal grief. “But look at yourself. You simply cannot represent the Whitmore name in public.” “Sign these. I’ll ensure a generous monthly allowance is deposited into your account. You can pick up all the… junk you want, and no one will bother you.” Eleanor reached out, her fingers icy cold against my wrist. “It breaks my heart, darling. But this family has rules.” I looked down at the psychiatric hold papers. “If I sign this, you’re locking me up, aren’t you?” “No, no, it’s just a formality,” Richard lied without blinking. A formality. Just like tossing me into an orphanage twenty-odd years ago was probably a formality. I picked up the heavy Montblanc pen. I signed them. Both of them. Richard and Eleanor exchanged a quick glance. I saw the massive wave of relief wash over their eyes. I stood up and walked out. As I crossed the living room, I saw Connor and Paloma lounging on the sofa. Connor was scrolling on his phone, not even bothering to look up. Paloma held a porcelain teacup, flashing me a brilliant, venomous smile. “It’s been so tough on you, Roxy.” I smiled right back. “Not as tough as it’s been on you, playing pretend all these years.” Back in the basement, I took out the gleaming brass watch. I pressed my thumb against the stiff latch and pushed. With a sharp click, the cover sprang open. There were no diamonds or rubies inside. Just a yellowed, water-damaged black-and-white photograph. A young woman, smiling warmly, holding an infant in her arms. On the back of the photo, a date and a tiny inscription were written in faded fountain pen ink. And tucked right beneath the picture was a microscopic, brass music box mechanism. I took a needle and gently coaxed the rusted gears. A fragile, broken melody bled from the damaged metal teeth. It was an old folk lullaby, something so obscure you couldn’t even find it on the internet. But I had found something else online. Thirty years ago, a brutal kidnapping shook the city. A rising businessman’s mother was taken for ransom and murdered. When they found her body, all her personal effects were gone. That businessman had kept a bounty open for three decades, just to find a single keepsake. He told the press it was a custom brass pocket watch, containing a recording of the lullaby his mother sang the day he was born. That businessman was Arthur Carlisle. And the name engraved on the back—Arthur—was his given name. I snapped the watch shut and wrapped it carefully in a piece of black velvet. The Whitmores had bled their accounts dry to buy a twenty-million-dollar trinket, hoping Carlisle would toss them a bone. He wouldn’t even look at it. But this piece of garbage I dug out of the slums? It was going to bring the most powerful man in the city to his knees. 4 The night of the gala, the Whitmore estate was blindingly bright, crawling with the city’s absolute elite. I stood behind the iron door on Sub-Level 3, listening to the muffled thumping of bass and clinking glasses above. At my feet was my woven tarp sack. Inside: three empty bottles, a stack of flattened cardboard, two crushed boxes, and a lump of black velvet. My phone buzzed. A text from Connor. Get up here. Dad wants you to show your face. Don’t look like a complete tramp. I looked down at my washed-out gray sweatpants and my scuffed Converse. Perfect. I grabbed my sack, pushed open the door, and slipped into the grand ballroom through the side entrance. Two society wives draped in diamonds noticed me first. Their polite smiles froze, morphing into expressions of pure horror as they physically recoiled, covering their noses. “Is that… the biological daughter they found?” “Oh my god. Is she carrying a trash bag? Did she crawl out of a dumpster?” The crowd parted for me like the Red Sea. Richard stood in the center of the room, the blood draining from his face until he looked like a corpse. Eleanor spun around, her eyes instantly brimming with dramatic tears. “Roxy… why on earth are you dressed like that?” Richard hissed, his voice trembling with barely contained rage. I blinked innocently and hoisted the tarp sack higher on my shoulder. “Dad, you told me to come up.” I took a step back, hugging the bag to my chest. “Hold on, Connor, these are my personal belongings.” “You—” “Enough.” A voice cut through the room like a heavy steel blade. The entire ballroom fell dead silent. Sitting at the head table was Arthur Carlisle. He was in his early fifties, lean, dressed in an immaculate dark bespoke suit. He hadn’t spoken a word all night. The tea in front of him had gone completely cold. Connor and Paloma exchanged a thrilling look. The main event was starting. Connor adjusted his tie, bowing deeply as he presented a polished mahogany box. “Mr. Carlisle, the Whitmore family spent the better part of a year tracking down this flawless, imperial green jade sculpture. It once belonged to royalty. It is the only one of its kind in the world.” He flipped the box open. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd at the sheer brilliance of the stone. Carlisle’s eyes flicked over it for a fraction of a second. His expression didn’t change. “Put it away.” Connor’s confident smile shattered. The last drop of color vanished from Richard’s face. Paloma seized her moment. She let out a piercing, tragic gasp. “My emerald brooch!” She clutched her chest, her eyes wide with panic. “I had it on right before the gala started! Where is it?!” Her gaze snapped perfectly, flawlessly, right to me. “Roxy, did you… did you take it?” “Paloma, please, don’t make accusations,” Eleanor interjected, playing the peacekeeper, though her eyes immediately darted to my woven sack. Paloma let out a choked sob. “If Roxy didn’t take it, I’ll get on my knees and apologize. But we have to look!” “Open the bag!” Connor roared. Before I could even pretend to resist, he lunged forward, grabbed the bottom of my sack, and violently upended it over the pristine marble floor. Crash. Three empty Evian bottles bounced across the tiles. Dirty cardboard scattered everywhere. Two crushed luxury boxes hit the ground. And then, the black velvet unspooled. A heavy, mud-stained, corroded brass pocket watch hit the marble with a dull thud. The room was paralyzed for exactly one second before erupting into vicious laughter. “Is she actually collecting garbage?!” “What the hell is that? A pawn shop wouldn’t even take that trash.” “This is humiliating. This is the Whitmore bloodline?” Connor kicked one of the water bottles aside, turning to Carlisle with a painfully apologetic bow. “Mr. Carlisle, please forgive this pathetic display.” He spun around, pointing a shaking finger at me, his voice booming for the whole room to hear. “Look at her! She’s a thief, and worse, she’s completely unhinged! She hoards disgusting trash from the slums!” “She is clinically insane!” He snapped his fingers. Two massive security guards rushed forward, twisting my arms behind my back and forcing me to my knees. “Dad, she already signed the consent forms!” Connor yelled, pulling the folded documents from his jacket pocket and waving them like a trophy. “Ship her to the psych ward. Tonight!” Paloma stood nearby, dabbing at her crocodile tears. “Roxy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it to come to this, but you need serious medical help…” Eleanor looked away, playing the devastated mother. Richard closed his eyes and let out a long, tragic sigh, washing his hands of me. The guards started dragging me backward. My knees scraped against the marble, leaving dull white streaks. Not a single person in the room spoke up for me. But then— The brass watch that had hit the floor. The impact had loosened the corroded latch. Click. The cover popped open. The jolt forced the rusted gears of the microscopic music box to catch. A jagged, metallic melody bled from the wreckage on the floor. The folk lullaby was so badly damaged it was barely recognizable. But there was one person in the room who recognized it. The second the first note played, Carlisle violently surged to his feet. He flipped the heavy table out of his way, the china shattering everywhere. He stumbled down the stairs, his knee crashing directly into the broken porcelain. Blood instantly soaked through his tailored trousers, but he didn’t even blink. He crawled through the scattered garbage, his hands trembling violently as he scooped up the corroded brass watch. Inside the cover, the faded photo of the young woman smiling with her baby stared back at him. Carlisle’s eyes flooded with blood-red grief. Massive tears broke loose, hitting the brass casing. Kneeling in a pile of literal trash, the most terrifying man in the city threw his head back and unleashed a raw, tearing scream. “Mom!!!!!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “447284”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 After marrying Alan Naughton, every morning at seven, I would hear the progress of my “conquest” of him in my mind. He was unfailingly responsive to my every whim, impeccably perfect. Yet, the progress bar stubbornly stalled at 95%. I loved him with all my heart, and naturally, I wanted him to love me just as completely. So, I shed my sharp edges, embraced his preferences, and transformed myself into the gentle, virtuous Mrs. Naughton. This morning’s progress report finally hit a hundred percent! He came home early, changed into an off-white linen pajama set, and the cold aloofness that usually surrounded him softened. We snuggled together, watching an indie romance film. He got up to wash fruit, and I leaned back on the still-warm sofa, my heart full of sweetness. Suddenly, my tablet chimed twice. Curiously, I tapped it open and froze. “Your wife is so ugly, ugh.” “At 4 minutes 13 seconds, her tummy rolls are practically popping out. You must be suffering, pretending to be in love with her watching this movie.” … I stared at the two lines of text on the screen. Shock, fury, disgust. All emotions intertwined, but I didn’t explode. How could the man I had completely “conquered” be live-streaming our time together to someone else? I knew Alan’s character. He was aloof and proud; he would never do something so despicable. It must be a misunderstanding! Before he explained, I shouldn’t blindly lose my temper and accuse him. Alan walked out, drying his hair, and saw me sitting on the bed, pale, holding the tablet. “Mia, what’s wrong? Feeling unwell?” I turned the tablet and pushed it toward him. Alan’s gaze fell on the screen. I didn’t miss a single change in his expression. No panic, no guilt. He simply visibly darkened, then tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose: “She’s at it again.” “Who is ‘she’?” Alan sat beside me, his voice full of helplessness: “A new colleague who joined our department, her name’s Clara.” He pointed to his head. “Probably severe delusional disorder.” He candidly pulled out his phone, unlocked it, opened his messenger, and handed it to me. “See for yourself.” The chat history was filled with Clara’s one-sided barrages. “Dr. Naughton, you look so handsome in your lab coat today!” “Your spoiled, old-fashioned wife is no good. Only I can help you.” There were also various self-orchestrated fantasies. Alan’s replies were few and far between, and entirely about stiff work matters. I tapped into Clara’s social media, no photos, just blurred silhouettes and travel check-ins. “She’s harassing you like this, why haven’t you blocked her?” My voice was still tight. Alan smiled bitterly, pulling me into his arms. “Mia, do you think I don’t want to? She was placed by the hospital board, and she has deep connections. The board insisted we work together on several major projects recently. If I blocked her, how would I move forward with my work? To avoid delays, I can only keep her on my contacts and pretend she’s dead, just ignore her.” His voice held deep exhaustion. “I thought if I just ignored her, she’d get bored and stop. I never expected her to send such disgusting things to you!” “I’m sorry, Mia. I didn’t handle it well; I let you down.” Just then, that voice in my head suddenly spoke. [Warning: Trust crisis detected with your target. Current approval rating 100%. Please stop baseless speculation and avoid damaging the perfect marital relationship!] The bloodshot eyes and candid look in Alan’s eyes filled me with guilt. I had misunderstood him. He worked so hard outside, dealing with harassment from a crazy person, and yet I doubted him over two messages. “I’m sorry, Alan…” I hugged him back, my voice choked, “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” He kissed my forehead: “Silly girl, we don’t need apologies between us.” The next day. I personally cooked several of his favorite dishes, carefully packed them, and took them to the hospital. Pushing open his office door, he was sitting at his desk, rubbing his temples. Seeing me, a flicker of surprise crossed his eyes. “Why didn’t you call ahead? Aren’t you tired?” He smiled, taking the insulated box. “Wanted to make sure you’re well fed.” Just as he picked up his chopsticks to eat, his phone screen lit up. Alan glanced at it, his face instantly changing, and he decisively stood up: “Mia, emergency in the ER. Major car accident. I have to go save them immediately!” He grabbed his lab coat and rushed out of the office. I stood there, stunned, looking at the steaming food, a hollow feeling in my heart. But there was nothing to do. Lives were on the line. I could only quietly pack up the insulated box and take a cab home. As soon as I walked through the door, I received a text message from an unknown number. “The food you cook, just the smell of it is sickening. Not as delicious as my body, though. Dr. Naughton is starving for it~” 2 If last night’s message was her one-sided fantasy, what about today? I had barely delivered the food to the hospital when Alan made an excuse about an emergency surgery and rushed off. I went straight back to the hospital. Not to find Alan, but to the HR department. “I want to file a formal complaint against Clara, a doctor in your cardiac surgery department!” I slammed both hands on the desk. “She has an unprofessional conduct and is severely harassing a colleague’s family!” The person across from me was startled. He frowned and opened the system: “Clara? Cardiac surgery? Please wait.” A minute later, he looked up, puzzled: “Are you mistaken? We have no doctor named Clara in our hospital system, nor any nurse.” “Impossible!” I raised my voice. “She’s new! She’s in the same department as Alan Naughton, how could you not find her!” “Truly, no one.” The clerk turned the monitor towards me. “The entire staff list is here. No one by that name.” I stared at the “No matching results” message on the screen, my mind a blank. Medical staff gradually gathered outside, curious. “Isn’t that Dr. Naughton’s wife?” “Why is she causing a scene here?” “I heard her mental state isn’t very good, always suspicious…” “Poor thing, Dr. Naughton is so brilliant, how did he end up with a crazy wife.” … The fragmented whispers pierced my ears. I looked around, experiencing panic for the first time. Just as I was on the verge of collapsing, Alan rushed in, drenched in sweat, pulling me into his arms. He didn’t get angry at me; instead, he bowed repeatedly, apologizing to everyone around us. “I’m so sorry, truly! My wife has been under a lot of stress lately, and hasn’t been sleeping well. She might have misunderstood something. I apologize for disturbing everyone, please don’t mind her!” I was half-hugged, half-dragged by him into the car. As soon as the car door closed, Alan’s eyes reddened. “Mia, I’m sorry… I lied to you.” I looked at him blankly. “Clara isn’t a colleague from our hospital.” He confessed, choked up, “She’s an external pharmaceutical rep. Last night, seeing how upset you were, how much you minded this person, all my energy was spent on calming you down. I didn’t want to mention irrelevant people and upset you further, so I just casually made up a lie, saying she was a colleague, hoping to gloss over the matter…” I remained silent, showing him the text message. “I really did go for an emergency surgery just now!” Alan looked up, his eyes full of sincerity and urgency. “That car accident patient is still in the ICU! I don’t know what’s going on with the text message, she must have bribed someone, or she was staking out the hospital and saw you! Mia, I really only lied because I was afraid you’d overthink things. I swear, she and I have absolutely nothing going on!” The warning in my mind sounded again. [Please trust your target! Stop self-sabotage!] I didn’t know who to believe, or even if I should trust my own judgment. I pushed open the car door, frantically hailed a cab, and returned to my parents’ home. This was my safe haven. Seeing me return distraught, my sister was terrified. After listening to my tearful account, she angrily smashed the decorative item beside her. “That bastard Alan Naughton!” She hugged me tightly, gnashing her teeth. “I knew that opportunistic guy couldn’t be trusted! The whole family disagreed when you insisted on marrying down! Have you forgotten how I used to argue with him? I feared he’d show his true colors once he found success!” I leaned in her arms, my thoughts a tangled mess. “What should I do? I feel like I’m going crazy.” My sister gently patted my back, her voice chilling. “Don’t worry. Mom and Dad and I will back you up! I’ll find out right now who that vixen really is!” 3 My sister moved quickly. “Got it.” “She’s the daughter of a high-ranking executive at Thorne Group! A notorious party girl in the social circles.” The day I received the documents from my sister happened to be my birthday. Alan had specifically taken time off, booked out a restaurant, and even gifted me an expensive diamond necklace. Candlelight flickered, and a violin played a melodious tune. “Mia, happy birthday!” The atmosphere was warm, and he was about to clink glasses with me. His phone suddenly vibrated urgently. He glanced at the screen, his face instantly grave. After taking the call and listening for a few moments, he quickly stood up, looking apologetically at me: “Mia, I’m so sorry. There’s an emergency in the department, and I have to be the lead surgeon.” “But today…” “Come on, lives are at stake. I’ll come right back to you after I’m done!” He left the restaurant without a backward glance. I stared at the untouched glass of red wine opposite me, feeling a deep sadness. A few minutes later, my sister sent a message. [I just finished with a client and saw Alan Naughton at the Crystal Club! He went into a VIP room, and Clara is in there too! I’ve sent you the location!] That voice in my head screamed again. [Warning: Target detected meeting with another woman. Maintain composure and defend your marriage!] The stress reaction made me lose my ability to think. I rushed towards the Crystal Club following the location. “Bang!” After kicking open the private room door, Alan and Clara were sitting very close on the sofa. I shrieked, grabbed the ice water from the table, and splashed it onto Clara’s face. “You home-wrecker, are you that desperate for a man?!” She recoiled in surprise, shot a glance at a bodyguard, then pulled out her phone and started filming. “So, you’re Dr. Naughton’s pampered wife?” Clara’s eyes were contemptuous, her words deeply insulting. “Truly, seeing is believing! It’s bad enough you ruin your husband at home, but you come out here pretending to be the wronged wife and hitting people! What? He can’t have a normal social life?” I continued to scream and struggle, accusing her of coveting a married man. Alan looked bewildered, simultaneously blocking the camera and shouting at me: “Mia! What are you doing! Why are you suddenly bursting in and making a scene like this?!” “You lied to me! You said you were going for emergency surgery!” I cried hysterically. But the bodyguard’s strength was too great; I couldn’t break free. Two hours later. Clara posted the video online. #RenownedDoctorCaughtWithMistressByCrazyWife# #WifeThrowsFitLikeMadDog# … The hashtags quickly soared to the top of trending topics in our city. The entire internet was mocking me. Saying I had paranoid delusions and wasn’t good enough for Alan. He looked at me, sitting blank-eyed on the sofa, then suddenly slapped himself twice. “Mia, I’m sorry… I ruined you.” He knelt before me, sobbing uncontrollably, revealing the whole truth. It turned out he had long grown tired of the stagnant salary at the public hospital and wanted to strike out on his own, opening his private clinic. But he lacked startup capital. He disliked the nickname “Sterling family’s kept man” and didn’t want to ask me for money, so he had to find other ways. Clara was the daughter of a Thorne Group executive; she had resources and was willing to provide funding. Tonight, he was meeting her at the club to discuss the collaboration plan in detail, which was why he had no choice but to go. “If I had known you would misunderstand, thinking we were having a secret rendezvous, I would have told you the whole truth right then!” “I’m sorry, I was just too concerned about your feelings! I knew you minded her, and I was afraid you’d be upset if you knew I was meeting her, that it would ruin your birthday, so I found another excuse to leave…” “I messed up, I was too clever for my own good… Mia, hit me! Just don’t look at those comments, please!” I understood his pride, and I knew he hadn’t intentionally meant to hurt me. The pain, finding no outlet, left me only with silence. Later, Alan took extended leave from the hospital. Ignoring the public criticism, he stayed by my side at home, caring for me constantly. He cooked for me, coaxed me to sleep, and endured my occasional emotional breakdowns. I gradually improved, and we became even closer. I wondered if it was a blessing in disguise. 4 I still couldn’t help it. I threw up the noodles I’d just eaten, along with the multicolored pills, all into the toilet. The pills hadn’t had time to digest, their edges covered in murky white foam. For the past two weeks, Alan had been seeking out doctors and medicines everywhere, prescribing me a large quantity of psychiatric drugs. I took them on time every day, always feeling drowsy and muddled. My memory began to decline, and I couldn’t even walk steadily. The voice in my head came in snatches, like a fog. [Please maintain… emotional stability…] With the pills completely expelled, my mind cleared. I propped myself up by the sink: Was this still the spirited second daughter of the Sterling family from before? I splashed cold water on my face, forcing myself awake. One in the morning. The fingerprint lock clicked, and Alan returned. It wasn’t the sound of one set of footsteps, but two. I like a cat lurking in the dark, slipped silently out of bed and pressed myself against the master bedroom door. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered on. I saw two intertwined figures, stumbling into the room next door. A few seconds later. Nauseating gasps and the tearing of clothes penetrated the wall, stabbing into my eardrums. “Alan… don’t be so rough!” The woman’s voice was seductively soft. Even though it differed from her usual style, I easily recognized it. It was the voice I had heard since childhood. It was my closest, most trusted sister! My own sister, and my beloved husband, were fervently entwined in the guest room less than three meters from me. “I’ve waited so long, how can I slow down?” Alan gasped, his voice already trembling with passion, completely devoid of any cold aloofness. “Gentle! Mia’s right next door, aren’t you afraid of waking her?” My sister laughed playfully. “Afraid of what?” Alan’s voice was incredibly certain. “She took double her dose tonight; she’s probably sleeping like a log. Even if we dragged her out and sold her, she wouldn’t know.” After a creaking sound, my sister chuckled softly. “I just said it casually back then, and you made it happen for me? Mia still thinks she’s the chosen one, tied to some novel’s system, right?” I pressed against the wall, my breathing stopped. “It was just a medical experiment, darling. Heaven blessed you and let it succeed,” Alan responded proudly. “She’s such a fool, doing tasks according to your demands for some illusory ‘conquest progress’!” What did that mean?! All those times I suppressed my true self, trying to conform to his every whim, were actually my sister’s demands? “Why does she always have such good luck? Why does she get all the good things? I’m going to make her go insane! Only then will Mom and Dad give up on her, and the Sterling family… oh my!” My sister’s complaints were silenced by his kiss, initiating a new round of passion. I stumbled backward in shock, unable to listen anymore. Compared to the pain of being betrayed by my closest kin, I cared more about something else. So… No conquest system. No mistress named Clara. It was all fake?!

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