My sister and I share a body, and we’ve been mortal enemies since birth, desperate to kill each other. She calls me the parasite, the monster who ruined her life. I always thought it was just her vicious curse—until I found the medical records our mother had hidden. It turns out, everything she said was true. 1 My sister and I were enemies from the moment we sparked into being, fighting for dominion in the dark of the womb. If she pulled on my umbilical cord, I hammered my fist against her skull. If she hogged all the nutrients, I sank my gums into her flesh. After we were born, our misshapen connection became the original sin for which we could never forgive each other. She’d deliberately knock over a kettle of boiling water, scalding the skin we shared. In return, I’d wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until she passed out. She once used a stolen pair of scissors to try and snip through the bridge of flesh that bound us; I responded by throwing myself down a flight of stairs, landing us both in the ICU. We were like two rabid dogs chained together, desperate to tear into each other’s flesh, to drink each other’s blood. Then yesterday, I found the medical file Mom had hidden in the attic. A faded sonogram, dated three months into her pregnancy, showed a single, healthy baby girl. Olivia. I didn’t appear until the six-month scan, a distorted tumor of flesh clinging to her side. I had leeched her nutrients, forced my own developing organs to fuse with hers. The doctor’s notes read: “Rare parasitic twin, suspected genetic mutation. Termination of pregnancy is advised…” I stared down at the jagged, scarred flesh that joined us, and a sickening understanding washed over me. I wasn’t her twin. I was a mutation, a monster. I had violently torn her normal body apart, destroying the happy life she was supposed to have. I was the original sin, the mistake that should have never existed. All this time, Olivia had been right. I was the parasite. I deserved to die. … At dinner, Olivia turned her head away, a familiar act of defiance. I knew what she was doing. She was trying to starve the parasite out. We shared a stomach. If she didn’t eat, I didn’t eat. It was her favorite and most effective form of revenge. Her lips were a thin, tight line, refusing every spoonful Mom offered. Broth dribbled from the corner of her mouth, running down onto the shared expanse of our chest, a messy stain between us. Mom’s voice was frayed with exhaustion. “Olivia, honey, please. Just eat something. Do you want to end up back in the hospital? Do you want the feeding tube again?” My body tensed. The memory of that tube, thick and abrasive down my throat, was enough to make me gag. No, I didn’t want that. I was about to take the fork from Mom’s hand and eat for the both of us when Olivia’s arm shot out, knocking the utensil to the floor. She glared at me, her eyes like poison-tipped daggers, and the look carved me up inside. “I won’t let you eat,” she hissed. “Starve, you leech. Starve.” Our shared stomach cramped, a hollow, clawing ache that made my entire body feel frantic. A wave of frustration and helplessness washed over me. Why should I have to starve just because she was on a warpath? Deliberately, I grabbed the bottle of lemon juice from the table and took a long, defiant swig. Olivia’s face instantly contorted. She hated anything sour, and on an empty, acid-filled stomach, the shock of it was brutal. A violent spasm seized our midsection. The hunger intensified tenfold, and she started retching, sour saliva flooding her mouth. Her eyes shot fire at me. “You little roach! Always pulling these tricks!” I ignored her, pouring more of the acidic juice into my mouth. Her complexion grew paler, sicklier. Finally, she broke. She stared at me, her eyes red-rimmed—not with tears, but with pure, unadulterated hatred. She snatched her bowl and began shoveling food into her mouth, swallowing whole chunks without chewing, a savage motion as if she were tearing into my own flesh. “Eat yourself to death, you monster!” she choked out between mouthfuls. “I hope you burst! I hope you die, die, die!” Warm food filled our stomach. The gnawing hunger subsided, but my heart felt like a gaping wound, a cold wind howling through a space that could never be warmed. I had been planning to tell her. I was going to tell her that I would agree to the separation surgery, that I wanted her to be a whole person. But watching her force food down while cursing me, the words caught in my throat like fish bones. Forget it. If I told her now, she’d just think it was some new, twisted game. It was better this way. Let her keep hating me. 2 Because some of our shared organs were under twice the normal load, Olivia and I had a daily regimen of pills to keep our body’s systems in balance. But today, after Mom set down the pills and a glass of water, Olivia did something unusual. She insisted that Mom leave the room. The second the door clicked shut, Olivia snatched the pills. But she didn’t take them. Instead, she lunged at me, forcing them into my mouth. “Swallow them! Parasite!” Her eyes were wild, her fingers digging brutally into the soft flesh under my chin, trying to shove the pills straight down into our stomach. I gagged, the bitter coating dissolving instantly on my tongue. I twisted my head, thrashing, knocking the glass of water over. Cold water splashed across our clothes, our skin. But the pills went down. I clawed at my throat, trying to force them back up. “Are you insane?” I rasped. “That was your heart medication!” I took a ragged breath. “I just took a double dose. Don’t you get it? If you poison me, you die too!” A twisted, triumphant smile spread across her face. “Perfect, isn’t it?” she said. “If I can’t be happy, neither can you. I can’t take another day of this. So let’s just die together.” She didn’t understand. Or maybe she just didn’t care. An overdose of her heart medication was poison to my relatively healthy system. And with her refusing her dose, her own failing heart would quickly drag our shared circulatory system into collapse. It was a suicide mission where she took us both out. I couldn’t get the pills out. They slid down my esophagus, carrying all of Olivia’s hatred with them. The bitterness traveled from my throat to the pit of my stomach. She watched me swallow, panting, a victor’s smirk on her lips. She was so focused on her win that she didn’t notice the color draining from her own face, a visible, ashen gray creeping over her skin. My sister was a complete and utter idiot. She always had been. She never seemed to grasp that we were one entity. Her loss was my loss. Inflicting pain on me meant she felt it too. And yet, she had an endless supply of stupid, self-destructive ideas, all aimed at taking me down with her. The effects of my overdose and her lack of medication began to hit us, fast and hard. Olivia’s breathing became sharp and ragged, as if an invisible hand were squeezing her throat. Beneath our joined chest, I could feel her heart hammering like a trapped bird. Her face was a mask of pain, but her unfocused eyes were still smiling at me. “Feel that?” she wheezed. “I’m dying. And you, the parasite, you get to die with me. My own personal tombstone.” Tears of pure rage streamed down my face. “Shut up, you idiot!” The poison in my system and her failing heart were strangling us from two different directions. I could feel our shared life force draining away with terrifying speed. I screamed until my voice cracked. “Mom! Help us!” I shrieked. “Mom, get in here!” By the time Mom burst in, Olivia was unconscious. I held on just long enough to gasp, “She didn’t take her pills… I took a double dose…” Then my world went black. I woke to the sharp, sterile scent of antiseptic. A doctor was speaking in low, serious tones to my mother. I heard Mom’s voice, thin with a desperate hope, ask if there was any chance for a separation. The doctor’s tone was heavy. “Their case is incredibly complex. With current medical technology, even with our best efforts… we could only save one of them.”

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For five years, my genius husband saw me as an empty-headed trophy wife. He publicly humiliated me for his brilliant protégée—a woman my family’s charity put through college. But when he dragged me, nine months pregnant, up the stairs and risked our child’s life to defend her honor, he made a fatal mistake. He forgot my name is Sterling, and the Sterling empire doesn’t just get even. It gets biblical. 1 Five years of marriage, and I knew one thing for certain: my husband despised me. To him, I was nothing more than a “trophy wife,” a decorative piece from an old-money Manhattan family. He was Dr. Adam Cole, one of the country’s leading astronomers, a man who conversed with the cosmos. I was Charlotte Sterling, a woman who played Chopin and arranged peonies. He and the brilliant young student my family sponsored would lose themselves in conversations about nebulae and wormholes. I would be tracking the fall couture collections. While he stood at a podium at an international symposium with his protégée, I was making headlines for winning a bidding war at Christie’s over a diamond necklace—a bauble I needed for a single charity gala. When I once begged him to celebrate our anniversary, his voice was laced with ice. “I prefer not to engage too deeply with the world of finance and power.” “My work is sacred.” Then he turned around and spent the evening patiently teaching his student how to calibrate a new telescope. The breaking point came when he, in a fit of rage to defend that same student’s honor, dragged me—nine months pregnant—up the stairs, inducing a dangerous premature labor. That was when I finally signed the divorce papers. It was time to give us both back our freedom. Without him, I was still Charlotte Sterling, the most sought-after heiress on the Upper East Side. Without me… well, he was about to find out. … I dialed Adam’s number. “What is it?” His voice on the other end was cold, clipped, the impatience radiating through the phone. I rested a hand on my swollen belly, the skin stretched taut over the life inside. I’d called to tell him my due date was just a week away, to ask him to clear his schedule. Before I could speak, a chirpy, saccharine-sweet female voice cut through the background. “Professor, is that your wife calling to bother you at work again?” “Honestly, back where I’m from, pregnant women were still out working in the fields. She’s so delicate, acting like being pregnant gives her a right to call and pester you all day.” “She’s slowing down our research! Ugh.” It was his student, Maya Rivera. Adam’s tone softened into something warm and indulgent, a complete reversal of the frost he reserved for me. “Your ‘Mrs. Cole’ was spoiled from the day she was born, Maya. She isn’t like you—an independent, modern intellectual.” “Her days are empty. It’s just a cycle of spending money and then spending more money. How could she possibly understand the sacrifices we make for our research? She calls whenever the whim strikes her.” “Don’t worry. I’ll handle her. I won’t let her disrupt our progress.” He made no effort to lower his voice. He’d never bothered to hide his contempt for me. He conveniently forgot that his own parents had practically begged my family for this marriage, that the line of suitors for my hand had stretched from Park Avenue to Paris. I was about to fire back a retort, but he cut me off. “Charlotte, you heard that. This project is at a critical stage. I need you to stop calling me over every little thing.” “I don’t expect you to grasp the importance of this work—you’re a pampered socialite who has never worked a day in her life. But at least try not to drag me down with you.” And then, he hung up. The father of my child hadn’t asked a single question about him. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, the silence of our cold, cavernous apartment pressing in on me. I wondered if there was anything left of this marriage to save. That evening, I waited up for him, as was my custom. It wasn’t about love anymore; it was about maintaining the facade, the basic respect a wife of my station was expected to show her husband, even if it was never returned in kind. And I needed to ask him one last time if he would be at the hospital when I gave birth. Not for me, but for my parents. I couldn’t bear for them to see the full, brutal extent of his neglect. But midnight came and went. Adam never came home. Just as I was about to turn in, a notification lit up my phone. A new post on his Instagram. The caption read: Celebrating my most brilliant student’s birthday with a view of the blood moon! The photo was a gut punch. Maya, her sun-kissed skin glowing in the moonlight, had her head resting on my husband’s shoulder. They sat close, gazing up at the crimson-stained moon like a pair of lovers. A comment from a mutual friend in our circle appeared almost instantly: Adam, Charlotte is over nine months pregnant. Don’t you think you should be home with her instead of watching the moon with your student? This doesn’t look right. Adam’s reply was as cold and arrogant as I’d come to expect: She is a perfectly adequate society wife, but she is not the wife of my heart. Our marriage was an arrangement. My parents valued the Sterling family’s influence and resources. I married her to secure an alliance, to stabilize my family’s position. It was a transaction. But Maya is the only one who speaks my language. Discussing the universe with her—that’s when I feel alive, when I know my worth. Maya is the kind of brilliant, intellectual woman I’ve always admired. My knuckles turned white as I gripped my phone. It wasn’t sadness that I felt, but the pure, unadulterated rage of public humiliation. I had tried, for the first six months, to build a real marriage with him. When I realized it was hopeless, I gave up. With a ten-billion-dollar dowry, a loveless marriage was an inconvenience, not a tragedy. But this… this public shaming was a declaration of war. As if on cue, Maya’s comment popped up right below his. Thank you for believing in me, Professor. <3 And please don’t be hard on your wife. A woman like her, who’s never known a single day of hardship, could never understand the passion that drives people like us! Heart.JPG The two of them, performing this little play for the world to see, stoked the fire in my gut. I opened my chat with Adam. The log was nearly empty. Our last exchange was six months ago. I hit the call button. He answered. “Delete the post,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “I don’t give a damn what’s going on between you and your protégée, but the Sterling family name will not be dragged through the mud. I don’t want my parents to see this and worry.” There was a pause, then a condescending laugh. “Charlotte, has playing the socialite finally rotted your brain? You spend all your time obsessing over these meaningless trifles. Your world is so pathetically small.” “I’m telling you, the post stays up. And my relationship with Maya is none of your parents’ damn business.” A sharp pain shot through my stomach. I was about to unleash a torrent of fury when Maya’s voice, dripping with false innocence, came through the line. “Mrs. Cole, the professor works so hard. You shouldn’t bother him with such trivial matters.” “Besides, he was just telling the truth. You really… you don’t understand our world. Denying it won’t change anything.” “Why don’t you just go back to being a pretty vase? The professor and I are busy observing the lunar eclipse. If you don’t understand, you shouldn't interfere.” I could hear Adam murmuring to her in the background, his voice a gentle caress. “Maya, what’s the point in talking to her? Her mind is filled with couture and galas. She can’t even begin to compare to you. Engaging with her only lowers your intellectual standards.” Every word was a carefully aimed dart. This was how he had seen me for five years. And the irony? How the Coles had courted my family, begging for this union? Dozens of families had wanted an alliance with the Sterlings. My parents, terrified I would be unhappy, chose the Coles, believing it was a safe match, that I would be marrying down and thus be cherished. What a bitter joke. I reached into my nightstand and pulled out the divorce agreement I’d had my lawyers draw up months ago. My hand went to my stomach. My resolve hardened. No amount of patience or compromise would ever change this man. There was no reason to maintain this farce any longer. He despised me but didn’t have the guts to ask for a divorce himself, wanting to have his cake and eat it too. I wondered how he would explain this to his parents. Adam’s voice snapped back onto the line, as if just remembering I was there. He spoke with that familiar, patronizing tone. “Charlotte, stop looking for trouble where there is none.” “If you’re that bored, go buy another couture gown. It’s a better use of your time than monitoring my life.” “Our marriage is what it is—a dynastic merger. Don’t ever expect love from me.” “The woman I love has a higher purpose, a brilliant mind. Not an empty-headed doll like you.” He hung up. Again. A slow, cold smile spread across my face. The anger was gone, replaced by crystalline clarity. The moment this baby was born, I was done. I would not let this self-righteous hypocrite poison another day of my life. The next morning, I walked downstairs to a shocking sight: Adam Cole in the kitchen. He was cooking breakfast. Adam, the man who claimed his hands were instruments reserved solely for scientific discovery, was standing over a stove. Before I could process it, Maya Rivera emerged from the guest bedroom, wearing one of Adam’s crisp white button-down shirts and nothing else. Her eyes met mine. On her, with her sun-kissed skin, the shirt was a statement, a flag planted on conquered territory. She scanned me from head to toe with the same arrogant, dismissive gaze as her mentor, a clear challenge in her eyes. She didn't greet me, the mistress of the house. Instead, she glided into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Adam from behind, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for making me oatmeal, Professor,” she cooed. “I feel so spoiled.” The irony was nauseating. His wife, nine months pregnant, hadn't received so much as a kind word, yet this student had him playing short-order cook. Adam chuckled, ruffling her hair. “As long as you like it. Just try to be more careful with your next data set. No more mistakes.” He glanced over at me. “You have a brilliant future, Maya. Don’t waste it and end up useless like your Mrs. Cole.” Their open flirting made my stomach turn. I started to head for the bathroom, but Adam finally noticed me standing there. The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a scowl. “Don’t just stand there blocking the way,” he snapped. “You have nothing to do all day, but Maya and I have important work. We can’t afford to be delayed by you.” I changed course. Instead of retreating, I walked directly to the dining table. This was my house. I was, for the moment, still Mrs. Adam Cole. Why the hell should I hide from this sordid little affair? “Maria,” I called to the maid, “please bring me my breakfast.” Maya’s eyes flashed with irritation. “You know,” she said, her voice dripping with faux concern, “where I come from, pregnant women are expected to help out. But you, you treat your pregnancy like a disability. You even have servants bring your food to you.” She sighed dramatically. “Mrs. Cole, the staff are people too. You should really show a little more respect for the working class.” I looked up at her, as one might observe a particularly loud insect. “My dowry was ten billion dollars. I can afford to employ ten thousand maids if I choose. Who are you—a woman my family’s charity put through college—to lecture me on morality?” The color drained from her face. Before she could form a reply, I pulled out my phone, dialed my family’s trust manager, and put the call on speaker. “Mr. Davis, good morning. Please immediately terminate all financial support for Maya Rivera.” “Furthermore, I want you to calculate the total sum the Sterling Foundation has provided for her education and living expenses over the years. Inform her she has three days to repay the full amount. If she fails to do so, you will initiate legal proceedings.” I paused, letting the words hang in the air. “The Sterling family does not sponsor traitors.” Maya’s face went chalk-white. She grabbed Adam’s arm, her voice a shrill cry. “Professor! She’s doing this to humiliate me! She looks down on me!” “This is all she knows how to do! Use her money to threaten people because she has nothing else!” Adam, ever her champion, immediately stepped in front of her. “Charlotte, that’s enough!” he roared. “Don’t you dare go too far!” “It’s a few hundred thousand dollars! I’ll pay it for her!” I laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “You’ll pay it?” “Adam, have you forgotten? When your parents were begging for this marriage, they were so eager that they didn’t bother with a prenup.” “Your money is our money. It’s community property. If you dare use our joint assets to pay her debt, I will have my lawyers sue her for misappropriation of marital funds. We’ll see how that looks on her academic record.” His face turned to stone. The trap had sprung. Just then, our maid, Maria, approached nervously with my breakfast tray. Adam’s rage found a new target. With a sudden, violent movement, he kicked the tray out of her hands. Porcelain shattered, and food splattered across the marble floor. CRASH! He whirled on the terrified staff. “Get her back to her room! Lock the door!” “She may have been a Sterling, but she lives in the Cole house now! My parents may indulge her, but I will not!” The servants stood frozen, looking from him to me. “This is my house!” he bellowed. “Who do you work for?” I shot to my feet, my voice ringing with fury as I pointed a finger at him. “Adam Cole, you dare?!” “If you lay a hand on me today, you can start preparing the eulogy for your family’s company.” But he had lost face in front of Maya, and his pride was a wounded, desperate animal. He threw all caution to the wind. “Dare?” he sneered. “Of course I dare!” “Why should a parasite who does nothing but spend money be allowed to destroy the future of a brilliant intellectual like Maya? Maybe some time alone in your room will give you time to reflect on your behavior!” Maya, seizing her moment, collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “Professor, I know I received their charity, but that doesn’t give her the right to insult me like this! I have my dignity! All my hard work, my dedication to science… she’s trying to reduce it all to a dollar amount!” Adam stroked her hair, murmuring comforting words. The staff, though employed by the Coles, knew where the real power lay. Not a single one moved toward me. Seeing their defiance, Adam’s face grew darker. “Fine! Fine! So my own staff won’t obey me anymore! You’re all fired! Every last one of you! Be out by noon!” He turned his glare back to me. “Maya and I are late for the observatory. We don’t have time to waste on your hysterics.” “If you won’t lock her up, I’ll do it myself!” He strode toward me. Before I could react, he grabbed my arm, completely ignoring my nine-month belly, and started dragging me toward the stairs. I struggled, fighting with all my strength, but he was too strong. In the scuffle, my stomach slammed hard against the corner of the wrought-iron banister. A blinding, razor-sharp pain ripped through my abdomen. I cried out, clutching my belly. “The baby…” “Adam! This is your child too! Let me go!” His eyes were bloodshot, his face contorted in a mask of madness. “A little pregnancy,” he hissed, his teeth clenched. “Women in Maya’s village are back in the fields the next day! I know you’re faking it!” “If I don’t teach you a lesson today, you’ll never stop bullying Maya!” A wave of pure despair washed over me. And then, I heard my father’s voice, a crack of thunder from the doorway. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DAUGHTER!” In the next instant, Adam was kicked violently to the ground. A second later, my mother was holding me, her own tears streaming down her face. I looked down. Blood was spreading, a dark crimson stain on my dress. Adam saw it too. The color drained from his face. He stammered, his voice a ghost of its former arrogance. “How… how is that possible? Your due date is still a week away…” “I… I was just trying to teach you a small lesson…” My father ignored him, scooping me into his arms and rushing for the door. But even through the haze of pain, I grabbed his arm. “Dad…” I gasped, “the nightstand… in the bedroom… give him what’s inside…” My words hung in the air. Adam froze, then scrambled to his feet and sprinted up the stairs. We heard the drawer being wrenched open. Then, a dead silence. When we glanced back, he had collapsed to the floor, his face a portrait of utter disbelief. “No…” he whispered. “You can’t do this to me.”

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Showing up at my ex-boyfriend’s engagement party was a power move. Seeing him hustle toward me, his face pale with panic, confirmed it. “Don’t make a scene,” he hissed, grabbing my arm. I gave him a withering look and walked right past him, my heels clicking on the marble floor. I made a beeline for his uncle. “Daniel,” I said, my voice steady. “I’m pregnant. And it’s yours.” Daniel Russo’s gaze, cool and unreadable, lingered on the pregnancy test in my hand for a long moment. Then, a slow smile spread across his face. He pulled me down to sit beside him, his arm draping over my shoulder as he announced to the table, “Well, if it’s mine, then I suppose I’ll have to take responsibility.” 1 The party Leo threw for himself was exactly as ostentatious as I’d expected. I’d stood at the grand entrance for a few minutes, watching him play the gracious host, a bitter laugh bubbling in my throat. The thought of him whispering sweet nothings to me one night, only to get engaged to his family-approved, childhood sweetheart the next, was enough to make me sick. As guests ebbed and flowed through the doorway, his eyes met mine. First, there was a flicker of confusion, then raw, undisguised panic. He strode toward me, his posture stiff. “Ava, what are you doing here?” he whispered, his voice tight with anxiety. “I thought we talked about this. You can’t be here, not tonight. This is important.” He assumed I was here to pick a fight with his fiancée. A classic, pathetic catfight. But my target was so much bigger than him. I rolled my eyes. “Get out of my way, Leo,” I said, my voice dripping with ice. “You’re blocking my path to the father of my child.” “The what?” I shoved him aside. The look of utter shock on his face was almost satisfying as I walked directly toward the main table, toward the one man who outshone everyone else in the room. The moment I stopped in front of Daniel Russo, the ambient chatter of the ballroom seemed to drop by half. Every eye in the vicinity swiveled in our direction. Their focus wasn’t on me, of course. It was on him. Daniel was the kind of man who always seemed to be smiling, a polite, aristocratic curve of his lips that never quite reached his eyes. Up close, you could see the cool, calculating intelligence behind them. He looked up at me now, that same gentle smile in place, his expression one of polite inquiry. I pulled the pregnancy test from my clutch and held it out. My voice was crisp and clear. “Daniel, I’m pregnant.” His eyes held mine, then dropped to the little plastic stick. The silence stretched. Then, with a smoothness that took my breath away, he pulled me down into the chair beside him, his arm a warm, heavy weight on my shoulders. “Well, if it’s mine,” he said, his voice carrying just enough for the surrounding tables to hear, “then I suppose I’ll have to take responsibility.” 2 After a beat of stunned silence, the old man sitting next to Daniel—his father—clapped him on the shoulder and let out a booming laugh. “Well, well, Daniel! Keeping a girlfriend secret from your old man, were you? And with results like this!” The tension broke. The room erupted in a flurry of excited chatter and congratulations. “And here we were thinking no woman on earth could catch Daniel Russo’s eye,” someone chirped. “Turns out he had one hidden away all along!” “That’s Daniel for you! Quietly becoming a father while the rest of us are still playing games. The patriarch can finally rest easy!” “This certainly puts him ahead of Leo, doesn’t it? So, when can we expect a wedding invitation, Daniel?” I’ll admit, this was a calculated move. Choosing this party, in front of all these people, was designed to hit Leo where it hurt. Daniel was the man Leo both admired and feared above all others. If I suddenly became his fiancée—his future aunt—he’d have to bow his head to me for the rest of his life. I had run through a dozen scenarios in my head on the way here, but I never, not once, imagined he would just… accept it. Not only accept it, but play along, creating this instant illusion of us as a loving, committed couple. The reality was, we were practically strangers. A few brief encounters, a handful of exchanged pleasantries, and one messy, chaotic night. We’d probably spoken less than twenty sentences to each other in our entire lives. The heat from his hand seeped through my dress, and I felt a blush creep up my neck. I was starting to feel completely out of my depth. My unease was broken by Leo, who had finally stormed over to our table. “Ava, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. His anger snapped me back into character. I straightened my spine. “I told you, Leo. I’m here to see the father of my child.” His eyes, wide with disbelief, darted to his uncle. “Uncle Daniel?” Daniel’s smile tightened just a fraction. “Leo, your bride is waiting for you. Go do what you’re supposed to be doing.” The words were soft, but they carried the unmistakable weight of a command. Leo flinched as if struck. He shot me one last, conflicted look, then clenched his jaw and walked away. And just like that, I spent the rest of my ex-boyfriend’s engagement party as Daniel Russo’s baby mama. The spotlight, which should have been on Leo and his new fiancée, was now fixed squarely on us. Especially from the distinguished old man beside me—Daniel’s father, Leo’s maternal grandfather. He spent the entire evening beaming, his eyes crinkling as he peppered me with gentle questions about my life and how Daniel and I had met. Daniel handled it all with unnerving calm. I just… faked it. A wave of regret washed over me. This was a terrible idea. This was a conversation that should have happened in private. When the party finally wound down, Daniel offered to drive me home. He dismissed his driver and slid behind the wheel himself, the engine humming quietly in the cavernous underground garage. But he didn’t start the car. He pulled a dark cigar from his breast pocket, not lighting it, just rolling it between his fingers. He stared straight ahead through the windshield, lost in thought. The silence was so thick I felt like I was suffocating. I opened my mouth to break it, twice, but before I could find the words, he spoke. “Alright,” he said, his voice devoid of its earlier warmth. “Whose baby is it?” 3 I froze, turning to face him. His eyes, now stripped of all pretense, were cold, sharp, and all-knowing. For a second, I was speechless. Then, anger surged through me. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Are you backing out now?” A humorless smile touched his lips. “You misunderstand. I don’t deny the things I’ve done. But—” He paused, the smile deepening as his eyes grew even colder. “I never touched you.” It was the second time a man had said that to me today. A hysterical laugh escaped me. They both never touched me? Was this some kind of immaculate conception? My breath came in ragged bursts. I fought to control my voice. “Daniel, if you don’t want to be responsible, just say so. I came here fully prepared for you to deny it. It was a mistake, a drunken accident.” I took a shaky breath. “And yes, I chose this party to tell you because I wanted to hurt Leo. I used you, and that was wrong. But you don’t have to humiliate me like this.” He was silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. “If I wanted to humiliate you, Ava, I wouldn’t have played along back there,” he said patiently. “But I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t touch you.” He said it with such absolute certainty that, for the first time, a sliver of doubt pierced my anger. Could he be right? It had all started on his yacht, at Leo’s birthday party. I saw him—Leo—kissing his fiancée for tonight in a hallway near the restrooms. The sight shattered something inside me. I went straight to the bar and started drinking. I remembered Daniel bringing me back to a cabin. A gesture of kindness, I’d assumed, looking out for his nephew’s drunk girlfriend. But my mind was a toxic cocktail of alcohol and betrayal. All I could see was Leo’s face, his lies. I was hurt and furious, and I wanted to lash out. Back then, I didn’t know the girl was his family-ordained fiancée. I just thought I wasn’t enough, that my desire to wait, to not have sex before marriage, had pushed him into the arms of someone else. In that moment, it felt like a failing. My failing. So, in a haze of drunken bravado, I’d thrown my arms around Daniel’s neck. I remember slurring something stupid, something like, “It’s just sex, right? If he thinks it’s so casual, so meaningless, then why can’t I? I can be casual too!” So, yes. Maybe. It was probably me who initiated it. Me who practically forced him. But I know what happened to my body. I woke up alone the next morning, but my body remembered. There was a distinct, undeniable ache. Unless— A horrifying thought struck me. “Wait,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “It was you who took me to my room that night on the yacht, wasn’t it?” Daniel nodded. “It was.” “And you were the man who stayed with me all night?” He hesitated. “I was.” “Then how can you say you didn’t touch me?!”

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My wife was about to have our second baby. I went to my boss and asked for a five-hundred-dollar raise for formula money. He just sneered. “Do the job or get the hell out.” I’d given that company twenty years of my life. The other techs on my team were making nearly double my salary, while I was stuck at forty-five hundred a month. I was so pissed, I quit on the spot. A month later, he’d lost a hundred million dollars. Now he’s on his knees, begging me to come back? Too late. 1 My wife was asking for a five-hundred-dollar raise. Not for her, for me. For the baby. “The price of formula is just… it’s insane,” she’d said, her hand resting on the tight drum of her belly. Nine months. We were in the home stretch. So, the next morning, I went in early. The air in the office was stale with last night’s whiskey and this morning’s cigarette smoke. Marcus, my boss, was already there, hunched over his desk. I’d been with him since the beginning, since this whole plant was just a concrete shell and a handful of blueprints. Twenty years. “Marcus? Got a minute?” I asked from the doorway. He glanced up, his eyes bloodshot, and gave a noncommittal grunt. I took a deep breath. “My wife’s due any day now. I’ve been here twenty years, and I’m still at forty-five hundred a month. I was hoping… could we bump that up? Just five hundred. For the baby.” A dry, crackling sound that might have been a laugh escaped his lips. “If you don’t like the pay, Frank, there’s the door.” I just stood there, the words hanging in the air like smoke. I knew the other lead techs were making seventy, eighty thousand a year. I was the senior man, the one who’d built the damn place. The main control system, the schematics, the wiring for every single machine on the floor—I had laid it all out. When something went wrong, I was the one they called. Always. He stubbed out his cigarette, the cherry dying in a pile of ash. He crossed his legs. “You’re an electrician, Frank. Who do you think you are, coming in here and making demands?” My throat felt tight. “It’s not a demand. It’s just… things are tight at home. With the second kid on the way.” “Then maybe you shouldn’t have had a second kid,” he said, a smirk playing on his lips. “Everybody wants a raise. Are you in or are you out? Because I’ve got a hundred guys who’d kill for your job.” I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him, really looked at him, for a long moment. Then I turned and walked out. Five minutes later, I was back. I placed my toolbox on the polished surface of his desk. The clank of the metal was the only sound in the room. “I’m out,” I said. He froze, then shot to his feet, slamming his palm on the desk. “You’re serious? You’re really pulling this?” I just nodded. “I’m done.” I expected him to argue, to bargain, maybe even to yell some more. He did none of it. His face hardened into a mask of contempt. “Fine. Go. But don’t you dare come crawling back. Don’t even think about setting foot on this property again.” I didn’t bother replying. I went back to the locker room, rolled up the spare change of clothes I kept there, and walked. The sun hadn’t risen yet. A cold wind whipped around the corner of the building, stinging my legs through my jeans as I walked out the main gate. “Frank! You really did it?” It was Leo, one of the guys from my crew, his voice full of disbelief. “Yeah.” “Man, that’s crazy. I know Marcus is an ass and the pay sucks, but… twenty years, man. You can’t just throw that away.” I didn’t stop walking. My toolbox felt heavy in my hand, but my head was strangely empty. He was right. Twenty years. A whole career. All the overtime, the emergency calls in the middle of the night, the sweat and the scars. And in the end, it wasn’t even worth five hundred bucks a month. As I walked, my wife’s words from last night came back to me. “If he says no, it’s okay, honey. Don’t make it hard for him. We’ll figure it out.” A hot sting pricked the back of my eyes. Maybe I was just too damn quiet. Too loyal for my own good. When I got home, she was still asleep. I didn’t want to wake her, so I sat on the small balcony off our bedroom and lit a cigarette, watching the sky slowly fade from black to gray to a pale, hopeful blue. My phone buzzed. The direct deposit had hit. Paycheck: $4,500. After taxes and insurance, just over $4,100. The numbers started spinning in my head. Formula. Diapers. The mortgage. Groceries. 2 We had some savings. We could make it work for a little while if we were careful. I opened up my laptop and pulled up Indeed, the screen glowing in the half-light of dawn. The listings stared back at me: Lead Electrical Technician, starting at $60k. Control Systems Specialist, $75k. I sighed, scrolling through the possibilities. For twenty years, I’d treated that company like it was my own. And for twenty years, they’d treated me like a tool they could just leave out in the rain. I was there from day one. Back when it was just me, a young guy not afraid of a little hard work, pulling miles of wire through the skeleton of a building. I’d worked in the blistering heat of July, on black-tar roofs that felt like frying pans. I’d worked in the dead of winter, my fingers numb inside my gloves, coaxing a frozen main breaker back to life when everyone else was too scared to touch it. I never complained. Never asked for overtime pay for the 2 a.m. call-outs. I just did the work. I thought Marcus saw that. I thought it meant something. But his words kept echoing in my head: “Who do you think you are?” It finally clicked. It didn’t matter who I was. It only mattered what I was worth to him. And apparently, that wasn’t much. I handled the most dangerous jobs in the plant, the high-voltage systems that no one else would touch. The other department heads, guys who sat in air-conditioned offices staring at spreadsheets, were pulling down twice my salary. Last year, we hired this kid, Kevin. Fresh out of a technical college, couldn’t even read a basic control schematic. I spent a month showing him the ropes, walking him through every system. Six weeks later, he got a seven-thousand-dollar raise. He told me he’d gotten another offer, and Marcus matched it without blinking. I asked him what he’d put on his resume. “Everything you taught me,” he said with a shrug. “I just wrote it all down. They offered me eighty grand at another plant.” I didn’t say anything then. But now, I get it. It wasn’t Kevin’s fault. I was the fool. I was the one who believed in doing the work, in being a team player. But in a place like that, if you don’t play the game—if you don’t leverage other offers or threaten to leave—you get left behind. I remembered when my wife was pregnant with our first. I took a fall at a job site. A jolt of electricity sent me tumbling off a ladder. I ended up in the hospital for a month with a fractured ankle. The company gave me five days of sick leave. The rest, they said, was “on me.” I came back to work on crutches, and the first thing Marcus asked me was, “So, when can you climb a utility pole again?” I should have walked out right then. But I’d already put in more than a decade. I figured I’d just stick it out. And now, a decade later, here I was. I closed the laptop. I had to make a move. I didn’t have a college degree, but I had a skill. A damn good one. And in a world run by machines, people like me were always going to be necessary. I wasn’t worried about finding work. Just as I was about to head out the door, my phone rang. It was Leo. “Frank, you will not believe this. The main control panel for the whole assembly line is dead. Nothing’s turning on.” “Tell Kevin to fix it,” I said. “He won’t touch it! He’s terrified he’s going to fry the motherboard.” A cold smile touched my lips. I’d installed that motherboard. I’d written the custom code that ran it. Those college boys wouldn’t know where to begin. Leo lowered his voice. “Marcus is losing his mind. He’s screaming at everyone in the workshop. He wants someone to fix it, now.” I looked at my phone. No missed calls from Marcus. He’d said the company had plenty of people. I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. Let him see what his “plenty of people” could do. 3 By 7:30 a.m., the plant was in chaos. The main control screen was a black void. The automated conveyor belts were frozen, and the robotic arms were stuck mid-air like metallic gargoyles. A series of shrill alarms from the hydraulic system echoed through the cavernous space. Marcus kicked open the door to the control room. “Well? What the hell are you all standing around for? Where’s the electrician?” No one dared to speak. Kevin was huddled in a corner, his face pale. “Marcus, I… I can’t touch that. It’s high-voltage.” Marcus rounded on him. “I thought you said you knew these systems!” Kevin was shaking. “Frank never taught me this specific board. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Then what the hell good are you?” Marcus roared. He scanned the faces of the other workers. “Is there seriously no one in this entire plant who can fix this?” The shift supervisor finally spoke up, his voice barely a whisper. “Frank didn’t have time to do a handover before he left.” “He’s one electrician! How can the entire plant depend on one guy?” No one answered, but they all knew the truth. Frank wasn’t just an electrician. Five years ago, we’d upgraded the control system. The engineers the manufacturer sent couldn’t get it to sync with our older machinery. After three days of failures, I’d taken a notepad and a pen and redesigned the whole interface myself, hand-drawing the schematics and writing a new logic sequence from scratch. From that day on, it was my system. The official manual was useless; the only guide that mattered was the one in my head. Anyone else who tried to modify it would trigger an immediate shutdown. At 8:00 a.m., the clients arrived. They were there to inspect a massive order before shipment. They walked onto the production floor and stopped dead, their expressions shifting from anticipation to disbelief. “You told us the order would be ready to ship by nine,” the lead client said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Is this what you call ‘ready’?” Marcus rushed over, forcing a smile. “Just a minor technical issue. We’re on it.” “I don’t care if it’s minor or major,” the client snapped, waving a dismissive hand. “If that shipment is delayed by one day, we’re not just withholding the final payment—we’re suing you for breach of contract. You can expect a call from our lawyers.” He turned and walked out, his team trailing behind him. Marcus’s face was a mask of fury. He spun around and jabbed a finger at Kevin. “Fix it. Now.” “I… I don’t even have the programming password to access the main board,” Kevin stammered. Marcus turned to the supervisor. “Didn’t Frank leave an operator’s manual?” “He did,” the supervisor admitted, “but he said the specifics of the modifications were only in his head.” “Then why the hell didn’t you ask him to write it down?” Marcus screamed, his voice raw. By 10:00 a.m., three supply trucks were blocking the loading docks, their drivers fuming. The whole plant was grinding to a halt. “You told us you had a power surge, now you’re saying the whole system is down? Are you messing with us?” one of them yelled into his phone. Marcus slammed his office phone down so hard it cracked. “Find someone to fix this! Now!” Kevin timidly offered, “Frank’s not answering his phone.” “You’re telling me this whole company is going to fail because of Frank? Get an outside contractor! Get somebody! Why are you all just standing here?” Meanwhile, I was sitting in a diner in the old part of town, slowly sipping a cup of coffee. My wife had told me to take a week off, to decompress before the baby came. My phone had been buzzing all morning with blocked numbers. I bit into a piece of toast and switched it to airplane mode. The sun was streaming through the window, warm on my face. When the wind blew, it wasn’t cold anymore. I had only one word for it.

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My brother, in a fit of rage at our parents, opened the gas valve on the grill. Everyone else got out. I was asleep. The fire took most of my skin, and one of my legs. Mom and Dad walked through those first years in a daze of tears, until the day my brother, Ethan, brought home a girl and a piece of paper. A DNA test. It turned out I was the wrong baby, switched at birth. A stranger in their house. And just like that, their guilt was cut in half. I clung to life until I was eighteen. While they all went to the real daughter’s birthday party, I was in my bed, twisting. It had been a long time since Mom and Dad left on their business trip. Too long since anyone had turned me over. The old bedsores on my back had become infected, breeding something that crawled and itched with a fire of its own. I tried to roll over, a desperate, clumsy push that sent me tumbling onto the floor. As I lay there, a muffled shout drifted from the terrace next door, carried on the wind. “Ethan, aren’t you going to tell them? That you faked the DNA test?” It was like a switch had been flipped. “Shut up! Just shut up! I brought Ava home to fix things, to give them a way out. You want me to tell them now that it was all a lie? That I did it out of guilt? What place would I have in this family then!” His voice dropped, thick with a desperate self-righteousness. “I didn’t want everyone to spend their lives feeling guilty over Chloe. It was a kind lie. It was fair to everyone!” I lay frozen on the floor. Everyone? What about me? 1 I lay on the floor like a stray dog for a day and a night, woken only by the sound of shouting from downstairs. “Your sister is in that kind of state, and you want her to donate bone marrow to Ava? I won’t allow it!” It was Mom. She was back from her trip. When she comes in, I’ll tell her. I have to tell her. I’m not the wrong baby. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. “Chloe’s a write-off anyway, Mom! Why can’t she do something useful for Ava? Isn’t that the least she can do, after we’ve raised her all these years out of the goodness of our hearts?” Ethan argued his point as if I were a piece of burnt trash, something to be picked over for any last scrap of value. “Ethan Hayes, I didn’t raise you to be this cruel. Have you forgotten who the real culprit is for what happened to your sister?” I could hear the tears in my mother Catherine’s voice, the sheer pain of it all. Her biological daughter was sick, and it was tearing her apart, but her conscience wouldn’t let her hurt me further. “Fine! So I lit the goddamn gas. But none of you went in to save her either! Are we supposed to be trapped in that guilt forever? Donating marrow isn’t a big deal. If you won’t care about Ava, I will!” The slam of the front door echoed through the house, followed by a few muffled sobs. My bedroom door opened. Mom gasped. “Chloe! Honey, you fell! Why didn’t you call out?” Under the gauze, the sores itched and burned. I looked at my mother’s face and cried without making a sound. “Mom,” I started, my voice a broken rasp. “The truth is, I’m…” Before I could finish, her phone rang. The hospital. “Chloe, honey, they found out at her birthday party… your sister has leukemia. I have to go to the hospital now. You be good, okay?” She stroked my hair, her touch frantic. “I’ll take care of this and then I’ll be right back to see you.” She rushed out, a blur of motion and worry. I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. They were all living in a prison of guilt because of me. Now my sister was sick. I couldn’t be selfish. But all I wanted was to be their daughter. The tears carved paths through the scarred, uneven terrain of my face, trickling into my mouth. They tasted bitter. I’ll wait one more day, I told myself. Just one more day. When Mom has a clear head, I’ll tell her everything. I waited with a fragile, fluttering hope. But it wasn’t Mom who came. It was Ethan. “Chloe? You awake?” I was startled. It had been years since he’d used my name with such softness. He was carrying a bag full of gifts, and inside, I could see the plush pink of a stuffed rabbit, my favorite as a child. I hadn’t received a gift from him since the day he brought Ava home. Remembering what I’d overheard, I instinctively recoiled. Ethan’s face darkened at my movement. “Still holding a grudge, Chloe? You always do that. You look at me with those eyes. Every time I try to fix things between us, you ruin it.” I didn’t dare defy him. I just lowered my head, my silence a shield. “Where’s Mom?” “She had to go away on business. Be back in a week. She told me to take good care of you.” He leaned in, his voice conspiratorial and kind. “Don’t you want to get out? You’ve been stuck in this room for months. It must be suffocating. We haven’t done anything together, just the two of us, in forever.” He paused, letting the silence hang. “Please, Chloe. Let me make it up to you. I know I was wrong. Just give me one chance to apologize.” He gently placed the pink rabbit in my arms. The sincerity in his eyes was so overwhelming it felt real. I was born premature. Mom always said it was Ethan who saved me, sitting by my incubator every day after school. When I was a picky eater in kindergarten, he was the only one who could patiently spoon-feed me, the only one who would let me ride on his shoulders when we went out to play. After the fire, all of that became Ava’s. I had seen him through the gap in my curtains, gently stroking Ava’s hair, pushing her on the swing in the backyard, driving her across the city just to chase a sunset. I watched it all like a mouse in the walls, peeking at a life that should have been mine. Seeing me hesitate, Ethan wrapped his arms around me. For the first time in a decade, I felt a hug. It was hesitant, fragile, but it was there. “Chloe,” he whispered, his voice thick. “You’re my only sister. I’m begging you.” As he held me, his hand brushed against my back, and he felt the dampness of the sores through my clothes. His face twisted in rage. He stormed out of the room and unleashed a torrent of abuse on the nurse I had. “Is this how you take care of my sister? Get on your knees and apologize to her! And don’t get up until she forgives you. Then get the hell out of my house!” I watched the sharp line of his jaw as he defended me, a strange, electric current running through me. In that moment, forgetting everything else, I nodded. Because of the extensive burns, I couldn’t be in direct sunlight. Ethan wrapped me carefully in a thick blanket and carried me to the car, his movements gentle. Over the years, my brother had cost me so many tears, so much of my heart. And yet, I didn’t hate him. As he drove, a giddy, reckless feeling bubbled up inside me. For the first time since the fire, someone was taking me out of the tiny room that had been my world for a decade. And then, the car pulled into the hospital parking lot. 2 “Ethan, you said we were going out to play.” My voice was a ragged croak. The fire had damaged my vocal cords, and every word felt like swallowing needles. A flash of impatience crossed his face. “We are. But your sister is sick. We’re just stopping to get you tested for a match first.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes cold. “Chloe, you can’t be so selfish. I know the fire was hard on you, but Ava is the real daughter of this family. If you do this, the Hayes family will be even more grateful to you. Do you understand?” My world narrowed to a single point. How could I not be selfish? I was their real daughter. The fire wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t… “Mom said… she said I don’t have to.” It was the first lie I had told in a long time. It was the first time I had ever fought back. Ethan exploded. “Mom is just guilty! She’s not thinking straight, and neither are you! It’s not a big deal! If you’re still pissed at me, take it out on me, not Ava!” They held me down while they drew the blood. The results came back quickly. To Ethan’s profound disappointment, I was not a match. How could I be? The chances of a match between two people with no blood relation were minuscule. “Ethan,” I ventured, my voice trembling. “No one in the family is a match for her. Are you sure… are you sure she’s really our sister?” Crack. The slap sent me reeling, nearly knocking me out of my wheelchair. Ethan loomed over me, his eyes red, a cornered animal. “You sick bitch. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You love the idea that Ava is a fake, so you can go back to being the center of our guilt.” He leaned closer, his voice a venomous hiss. “Let me tell you something. Dream on. Ava is the real Hayes daughter. If it weren’t for that mistake at the hospital, you never would have had this life.” His words lit a fuse in me. Tears blurred my vision, but I screamed back at him, the sound tearing from my throat. “I wish I wasn’t your sister! If it weren’t for that mistake, the person in this wheelchair wouldn’t be me!” “I’d be normal! I’d have parents who loved me, I’d be able to run and jump and live in the sun!” Another slap cut my words short, silencing the rage. Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth. But the hatred in my eyes didn’t waver. Ethan’s hands were shaking. A flicker of regret, of something broken, crossed his face. His voice was suddenly quiet. “I… I can’t talk to you. You’re an ungrateful…” He couldn’t finish. “Just wait here. The driver will come get you.” He turned and fled, as if escaping a monster. Every eye in the hospital lobby was on me. A child passing by saw my face and burst into tears. “Mommy, that person looks like a ghost! She’s scary.” “Don’t look, honey. How disgusting. Let’s go, let’s go, before we catch something.” “Jesus, I thought I was seeing something out of a horror movie. I’m never coming to this hospital again.” I sat there, in the middle of the lobby, with no phone and no one who dared to come near me. I sat from day until night, until my tears ran dry and I nearly passed out from exhaustion. No one came. Finally, a night-shift nurse took pity on me and managed to contact my mother. When the driver arrived, his face was a mask of annoyance. “Why hasn’t this thing been kicked out of the Hayes house yet? Clinging on like a leech, making me come out in the middle of the night.” If it weren’t for the tiny, flickering hope of my parents coming back, I would have prayed for death. Everyone already thought I was a useless burden anyway. Sometime in the dead of night, I was woken by a hot, searing sensation on my face. The nerves there were mostly dead from the first fire, so by the time I jolted awake, the wax from a candle had already hardened into a crust on my cheek. Ava was standing over me, holding the candle, her face flushed with alcohol, her eyes wild. “You’re happy, aren’t you, sister? The tissue typing failed. Now you can take everything back.” She thrust the candle towards my face, and a scream tore from my lungs. “Fire! Get it away! Get it away from me!” Ava just laughed, a crazed, high-pitched sound. “Let me tell you what my brother said. The real daughter of the Hayes family will always be me!” She jabbed a finger at me. “You… you monster. You half-dead thing. You will never take my place.” She staggered out of the room, leaving the candle behind. She didn’t see the flame catch the edge of the curtains. The fire spread with terrifying speed. I was back in that night from years ago, a night where no one answered my screams. No one knows the pain of a severe burn like I do. It’s the feeling of a million ants chewing you alive, your skin blistering and rotting, weeping pus, stinking. And even after it heals, for a long, long time, the phantom pain remains, a constant, stinging companion.[1][2] I had imagined a thousand ways to die. Any of them were better than being burned alive. Through the thick, rolling smoke, I saw a figure running towards me. Why? Why was it him? Why was it my brother? 3 When I woke up again, it was to the sharp, sterile smell of a hospital. Ethan was there, looking haggard, his arm bandaged, pacing anxiously around the room. I couldn’t understand it. Why him? Why did he always do this to me? He made it impossible to love him, impossible to hate him, impossible even to escape him. When Ethan saw I was awake, the raw worry on his face was so real it felt like a dream. “Eth—” “When Mom and Dad get here, you tell them you knocked over the candle by accident.” Our voices overlapped. I heard the exact moment my own breathing stopped. It was the same nightmare, all over again. I looked down at my body, at the ruined landscape of my skin—the scarred flesh, the dead tissue, the craters and valleys—now freshly seared red and raw by a new fire. I felt nothing. The pain receptors had been destroyed the first time around. I tried to push myself up, to make him look at me, at the heap of ruined flesh that was his sister. “Don’t you look at me like that!” he snapped. “To save you, I left Ava in there! She was hit by a falling beam! Aren’t you satisfied?” His voice cracked, rising with hysteria. “Why is it always you? Why are you the one who always traps people in guilt? I won’t let Ava live with the guilt of burning you, not like I have!” He was rambling, his words tumbling over each other. “It would be better to just die. It would be a mercy.” “Besides,” he added, his voice dropping, “she’s already paid the price. Mom and Dad are giving her blood right now. You know what to say when they get here.” He was about to say more when the doctor rushed in. “Mr. Hayes, your sister is in critical need of blood. The hospital’s reserves are low. We need you to come and donate now.” Ethan flew out of the room with the doctor. Outside the operating room, my mother, Catherine, was waiting anxiously with my father, Robert. “Ethan, what happened? How could your sister be so badly injured?” Catherine was leaning against Robert, on the verge of collapse. “Why does it have to be my children? Why is it always my children in a fire?” Ethan’s expression was a twisted mask of emotions. He swallowed hard. “Chloe… she knocked over a candle in her sleep. The whole room went up. I got to Chloe first, but a burning beam fell and hit Ava.” Catherine and Robert were speechless. A wave of regret washed over them. “If we had just sent Chloe away back then,” Robert murmured, “maybe Ava wouldn’t be going through this.” He shook his head, his voice gaining a bitter edge. “I told you then she wasn’t fit to be kept in the house. You wouldn’t listen. Who knows if she did this on purpose, to get back at Ava.” “Ethan told me before that Chloe and Ava weren’t getting along. He told me to send her away. It’s my fault. I was too soft.” Ethan started to speak, to defend me, but the words caught in his throat. He let his father’s assumptions, fueled by his own previous complaints, fester in the silence. “Family members,” a nurse called out, “the father’s blood type doesn’t match. We need both of you to get tested as well.” Ethan and Catherine hurried after the nurse. Robert walked into my room. When I looked up and saw my father, a dam of grief broke inside me. Before I could even speak, tears soaked through the gauze on my face. “Dad…” My choked whisper was cut off by his cold voice. “You have no right to call me Dad. I know Ethan wronged you in the past, but he has lived with that guilt every single day. He would sneak into your room at night just to watch you, to make sure you were still breathing.” He took a step closer, his face a storm of fury. “You’ve been burned. You know how much it hurts. Why would you inflict that same pain on my daughter? If anything happens to Ava, I will never forgive you.” “As soon as this is over, you will leave this family. We have no room for a jinx.” His figure blurred as the oxygen in the ventilator suddenly felt thin, suffocating. Even though most of my ability to feel pain was gone, a different kind of agony seized me, making my whole body tremble. Robert returned to the surgical waiting area. His son was still being tested; his wife was staring blankly at a piece of paper. “Catherine, what is it? Is something wrong with Ava?” She turned her head slowly, mechanically. The tears had already started to fall. By the time she faced him, her face was streaked with them. “Why is she Type A?” she whispered, the words trembling. “Why is she Type A?”

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Five years into my marriage with Adrian Vaughn, he brought his piano accompanist home. He cornered me at the funeral home, just moments after my mother’s cremation, to tell me he wanted a divorce. The scent of wilting lilies and antiseptic hung in the air, a sickening cocktail. “I connect with someone like Hailey,” he said, his voice devoid of the warmth I once cherished. “Someone with an artist’s soul. Being with you, Cora… it’s just dull.” Grief was a physical weight, a stone in my chest. I could barely breathe, let alone process his words. Tears I thought I’d run out of pricked at my eyes again. “Can’t we talk about this another day?” A cruel, dismissive smile touched his lips. “No. Today.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded, the fight draining out of me. “Fine.” What he didn’t know was that “Aria,” the anonymous, masked pianist currently taking the classical music world by storm, was me. And that next month, my debut tour was scheduled to begin, where I would finally show my face. Later, much later, Adrian would be laid up in a hospital bed after a car wreck, his arm in a plaster cast. He’d find me on the day of my wedding, his eyes wild with desperation, and cry, “Can’t it be another day?” And I, echoing the ghost of his past cruelty, would look at him with a cold smile and say, “No. Today.” 1 Adrian was a pianist. It was the core of his identity. In the years we were married, his life was a blur of concert halls and international tours. Our home was little more than a place for him to store his things between flights. A few weeks ago, he had a performance in our city. I didn’t tell him I was going; I bought a ticket online and slipped into a seat in the back, just wanting to feel close to him for a night. But as I was leaving the venue, I heard the familiar banter of his friends echoing from the green room. “Damn, Adrian,” one of them crowed, “you’re really getting the full service from that accompanist of yours. Hailey’s what, twenty-two? You lucky bastard.” A young woman’s voice, feigning modesty, followed. “Adrian is the brilliant one. I’m just happy to be near him…” Before she could finish, Adrian’s voice, the voice I knew better than my own, cut in. “Alright, guys, lay off. Hailey’s sensitive. Don’t want to scare her away.” The jeering continued. “Ooh, protective, are we? What about the ball and chain at home? Isn’t she going to lose her mind when she finds out?” The air went still for a second. Then came Adrian’s cold, dismissive laugh. “Why would you even bring her up? She’s the housekeeper’s daughter. Do you really think I don’t come home because I’m busy? The woman is a bore. Seeing her face is a chore. I’m ending it as soon as I get back.” The world went flat and gray. I don’t remember walking home. I remember the buzzing in my ears, the way the streetlights smeared into meaningless streaks of light. Then, the phone rang. It was the hospital. My mother was gone. I knew it was coming. The cancer had been relentless. But for both blows to land on the same day felt like a special kind of cosmic cruelty. There was no time to process Adrian’s betrayal. I threw myself into the grim logistics of death, the endless paperwork and phone calls. The funeral was a blur of hushed condolences and sympathetic looks from people I barely knew. I had just walked out of the chapel, clutching the small, heavy box of my mother’s ashes, when I saw him. He wasn’t there for my mother. He was there for himself. And standing beside him, her hand clutching his arm, was the other woman. Hailey. She looked at me with wide, supposedly innocent eyes, pressing herself into Adrian’s side as if I were a threat. He instinctively stepped forward, shielding her. The gesture was a gut punch, a perfect, painful mirror of a time long ago when he had shielded me from the snickering heirs and heiresses who called me the charity case, the girl from the wrong side of town. Back then, I was the one he protected. “Cora,” he started, his voice clipped and businesslike. “I brought Hailey here today because I wanted to be direct. We’re getting a divorce.” He continued, his words like polished stones, smooth and hard. “We were young. I made a mistake. I’ve realized the kind of woman I need is someone who understands art, who is graceful, who understands me. You can’t offer any of that.” He softened his gaze, turning it to the girl beside him. “You came to my family’s house from nothing. You never learned an instrument, your whole personality is just… small. I admire someone with an artist’s soul, like Hailey. Being with you is just plain boring.” The man I married, or the man I thought I’d married, was there in the gentle look he gave her. But it wasn’t for me. Not anymore. My eyes, already raw from weeping, filled again. “Can’t we talk about this another day? Today is my mom’s…” I thought he might, for her sake. My mother had practically raised him, had cooked his favorite meals and soothed his childhood fevers. But he cut me off with that cold smile. “No. Today.” A bitter taste filled my mouth. I forced it down, drew a breath that felt like swallowing glass, and met his gaze. “Fine.” 2 My mother was the Vaughns’ housekeeper. To keep me close, she brought me with her to their sprawling house after school every day. I became a permanent fixture, Adrian’s shadow and his study partner. We were two halves of a whole, our lives intertwined in a way no one else could understand. When he told his parents he wanted to marry me, they weren’t thrilled, but they agreed. His mother, especially, had watched me grow up. She knew my character, even if my bank account was empty. The Vaughns had been good to us. When my mother got sick, they paid for the best doctors, the most advanced treatments. They gave her a chance she never would have had otherwise. But the outside world saw a different story. They saw the celebrated pianist who never went home to his wife. They whispered that I’d used my mother’s position to claw my way into a world where I didn’t belong. They said Adrian was so repulsed by me he wouldn’t even have a child with me, afraid it might inherit my “poverty.” I endured it all, telling myself their kindness was worth the price of the world’s scorn. When the loneliness and the whispers became too much, I would retreat to the basement. Down there sat an old, dusty piano Adrian had long since abandoned. It was out of tune and worn, but the sound it made was mine. On weekends, I’d enter amateur competitions, always wearing a mask, collecting small trophies and accolades in secret. Adrian never knew. He never knew that the piano was my first love, long before he was. That my mother had saved for a year to buy me a cheap electronic keyboard when I was seven. This love I had nurtured for over a decade, my deepest secret, remained invisible to the man who shared my bed. The irony was suffocating. I wiped the last of the tears from my face. No more looking back. I just needed to pack my things and leave that house forever. But when I got home, the keyboard was gone. My heart hammered against my ribs. I called Adrian. His voice was casual. “Oh, that? I took it.” It wasn’t valuable, not to anyone else. But it was the last piece of my mother I had left. It was sixteen years of my life. The keys were already fragile; if it was handled carelessly… I couldn’t finish the thought. I arranged to meet him, my voice tight, demanding he return it. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. A notification from the high school alumni group chat. It had mostly become a fan club for Adrian. Someone had posted a video: Adrian and Hailey, on our living room sofa, locked in a passionate kiss. A minute later, it was deleted. “Oops, wrong chat!” the person wrote, but the damage was done. The chat exploded. Before I could leave the group, a private message popped up. Leo: You divorced? The name surprised me. Leo Sterling. In high school, he was the quiet, intense one who never ran with Adrian’s popular crowd. Now he was one of the most respected music critics in the country, easily the most successful person from our graduating class. I hesitated, then typed back: Yes. A moment later, his reply came. Leo: Congratulations. I frowned, puzzled, but my phone started buzzing incessantly. I’d been tagged back in the main group chat. “Cora, is it true you guys divorced because you couldn’t have kids?” “Honestly, you can’t blame Adrian. Cora was always so uptight. A guy’s got to have some fun before he gets too old!” “I always thought Hailey was a much better match for him. She’s so elegant. They’re a perfect pair!” “Wishing them the best!” The messages were a flood of criticism aimed at me, followed by a tidal wave of congratulations for him and Hailey. Adrian ignored the jabs at me, methodically replying “Thank you” to each message of support. My teeth clenched. I didn’t reply. I just left the group and silenced my phone. None of it mattered. I just needed to get my keyboard back. 3 The next day, I walked into the private room at the restaurant he’d chosen and was immediately drenched in a cascade of ice water. My eyes snapped up. The room was filled with the same friends from high school, circled around a large table. In the center, like a king and his new queen, sat Adrian and Hailey. I was lucky I’d worn a thick cotton sweater; otherwise, I’d have been completely exposed. Someone laughed. “Oh, it’s Cora! We made a rule in the group chat—last one to arrive gets a shower! You must have missed it since you left. Our bad!” My gaze, cold as the ice water soaking my clothes, found Adrian. The time, the place—it had all been his idea. This was a setup. He cleared his throat, the orchestrator of my humiliation. “It’s a class reunion. You’re part of the class. Just sit.” I didn’t move. “I’m not interested. If you don’t have my keyboard, mail it to me.” I turned to leave, but Hailey’s soft voice stopped me. “Cora, don’t go. Is it because of me? I know this is a reunion for you guys… I shouldn’t have come. Please, you stay. I’ll leave.” I glanced back. She made a show of standing up, only to be pulled back down by Adrian, who wrapped a protective arm around her. “You’re not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair. “Everyone loves having you here.” A chorus of agreement went around the table. Hailey dabbed at the corner of her eye, her performance complete. “Cora, the keyboard is on its way,” Adrian said, his tone sharp with annoyance. “Just sit down and stop ruining the mood.” I only cared about one thing. So, I sat. The party atmosphere returned. Hailey charmed them all, laughing and blushing at their questions. “Hailey, isn’t being a piano accompanist exhausting?” someone asked. She shook her head, her expression beatific. “Not at all. It requires skill and patience, and you don’t get the spotlight, of course. But to be immersed in music with the person I love… I think that’s its own kind of happiness.” She gazed adoringly at Adrian, who practically glowed. His friends laid it on thick. “That’s amazing, Hailey. The people behind the scenes are just as important!” “Exactly! At least you understand music. You’re good enough to be Adrian’s accompanist. Unlike some people, who probably don’t even know what an accompanist is.” The table chuckled, their eyes flicking to me. I ignored them, staring at my phone. Then Hailey turned to me directly. “Cora, you were Adrian’s wife, so you must know about pianos. The masked pianist, Aria, is revealing her identity next month. She’s a friend of mine, actually. She gave me some tickets. Would you like to go?” My head snapped up. A friend of yours? That’s news to me. Her question opened the floodgates for more ridicule. This time, Adrian joined in. “You can keep the tickets, Hailey. Cora doesn’t go to things like that. Don’t waste your kind gesture.” “Seriously! Can you imagine someone who only listens to country radio at a classical concert? She’d fall asleep!” “Give her a break. She didn’t grow up with this stuff. How would she even know who Aria is?” Laughter filled the room. A cold, sharp smile formed on my lips, though I kept my head down. I wasn’t going to say a word. Just wait until you see who’s under that mask, I thought. I wonder what your faces will look like then. 4 “You said it was on its way. Where is it?” My patience had evaporated. I looked directly at Adrian. He had the grace to look momentarily sheepish. “Oh, right. I forgot where I put it. That was just an excuse to get you to sit down and stop making a scene.” A roar filled my ears. I slammed my hand on the table, the plates and glasses rattling as I shot to my feet. “So you have no idea where it is?” The room fell silent. Hailey tugged on Adrian’s sleeve. “What is she talking about?” she whispered. “Nothing. Just some old, broken electronic piece of junk.” That was the spark. The room erupted again. “It’s a broken keyboard? Is that what this is about? What, you decided you want to learn piano now? Trying to turn from a crow into a phoenix to win Adrian back?” Adrian raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips. “It’s not worth anything, Cora. I’ll buy you a new one. Look, you can’t play, so just drop it. I’ve moved on.” The cold atmosphere was gone, replaced by their jeering laughter. But I couldn’t hear it anymore. I walked straight up to Adrian, swung my arm back, and slapped him hard across the face. The crack echoed in the sudden, dead silence. Everyone stared, their faces masks of shock. “A piece of junk?” My voice shook with a rage I didn’t know I possessed. “That was the last thing my mother ever gave me. Do you have any idea what it means to me?” Adrian, holding his reddening cheek, just stared. He had never seen this side of me. “Cora, I…” “Is this it, Cora?” Hailey’s voice cut through the tension. She held up her phone. On the screen was a picture of my keyboard. My name, carved into the plastic by my mother’s own hand, was clearly visible. I fought to control my breathing, my eyes burning as I walked towards her. “Why do you have it?” “I was using it to practice with Adrian a few days ago,” she said lightly. “But it didn’t work very well.” I took a deep breath. “Where is it now?” Hailey put her phone away. The pretense of innocence vanished, replaced by a smug, triumphant smile. “I threw it out.” The dam inside me broke. All the grief, the humiliation, the years of quiet resentment, erupted in a single, violent surge. I lunged, grabbing a fistful of her hair and slamming her against the wall. My other hand closed around her throat. “Ah!” Her face began to turn red as my grip tightened. The fear in her eyes was real now. She choked out pleas for mercy. Adrian, seeing me truly unhinged for the first time, finally snapped out of his shock. He grabbed me from behind, his arms like iron bands, forcing my fingers to uncurl. “Cora, stop! I’ll find it for you, okay? Just calm down!” I didn’t listen. I wrenched myself free and drove my heel into his shin. “This is your fault! You never should have let her touch it!” I left him clutching his leg, and fled the room, leaving their shocked faces behind. Outside, the cold wind was a brutal shock against my soaked clothes. Tears streamed down my face, hot against my frozen skin.

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Three years of marriage, and my husband, Weston Hayes, still doesn’t know who I am. He can remember the entire world, but he draws a complete blank on my face. If I get a new haircut, he’ll ask me, “Excuse me, miss, who are you looking for?” If I wear a different dress, he assumes I’m the new housekeeper. On our anniversary, I was trapped with him and a group of his employees in a collapsed mine tunnel, a remote asset of his corporation. In the suffocating darkness, I felt my way to his side, my voice trembling as I told him it was me, Claire. He shoved me away. “Stop pretending. My wife isn’t here.” It took the rescue crews three days and three nights to dig me out. That evening, at a celebratory dinner for the successful rescue, Weston raised his glass. “A toast to the team. No casualties.” He had completely forgotten I was lying in a hospital bed. After that, I created a uniform for myself. I wore only one color of clothing, kept my hair styled the exact same way, and used the same perfume, all in the desperate hope that Weston might finally recognize me. But every time, he looked at me like I was a stranger. I thought it was some kind of cosmic punishment. Then, on the day I flew to Milan to celebrate his birthday, I saw him. I watched him cut through a bustling crowd and pull a young woman into a fierce, unerring embrace. And I finally understood. He didn’t have trouble remembering my face because of some rare neurological condition. It was simply because he wasn’t in love with me. If that was the truth, then it was best we just became strangers to each other. 1 The moment I turned to leave, I was surrounded by several Italian police officers. They were shouting, mistaking me for some wanted fugitive. My broken, panicked Italian only made their expressions harden. One of them forced me to my knees on the cold pavement. In the chaos, my eyes instinctively found Weston, not twenty feet away. “Weston! Help me! They’ve made a mistake!” I screamed, my voice raw with desperation. He heard me. His gaze swept over my face, vacant and indifferent. Then, as if looking at a complete stranger, he calmly turned away. “I don’t know her.” It was the coldest sentence I had ever heard in my life. Fifteen days. I counted three hundred and sixty hours by the tolling of a distant church bell, locked away in a sunless interrogation room and a frigid cell. My innocence was finally proven by a DNA report that confirmed a case of mistaken identity. When I dragged my exhausted body out of the police station, it wasn’t Weston waiting for me, but his assistant, Arthur. Arthur adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his tone dripping with reproach. “Claire, what was all that about? Do you have any idea that Mr. Hayes waited at the airport for you for two whole hours?” Whatever little warmth I had left in my heart vanished into the cold Milan air. The day I landed back in New York, a wall of flashing cameras and microphones ambushed me at the gate. My arrest had become a full-blown, humiliating scandal. When I finally fought my way home, Weston’s first words were a reprimand. “How many times have I told you? You wear the white coat when you’re out. Why don’t you ever listen?” He frowned, his tone like he was scolding a disobedient child. “You know I have prosopagnosia. I can’t distinguish between women’s faces.” My fists clenched at my sides. He turned a page in the file he was reading, issuing his next command without looking up. “The PR department has drafted a statement. You’ll hold a press conference tomorrow.” “You need to clear this up. Apologize to the public.” Apologize? For what? For Weston’s heartless indifference? For his so-called “face blindness”? I stared at his cold profile. “At the airport,” I asked softly, “the woman you were holding… who was she?” The hand turning the page froze. For the first time, a flicker of tension crossed his features. After a few seconds, he finally spoke. “It was crowded. I thought it was you.” I almost laughed. The woman that day was wearing a vibrant, eye-catching scarlet dress, her hair in a cascade of voluminous curls I had never worn in my life. My closet didn’t contain a single red item. “Weston, I called out to you that day. You heard me.” The injustice of it all forced the words out. “And?” He lifted his eyes. “Do you want me to apologize for my medical condition? Claire, you knew about this problem long before we got married.” Looking at his completely unaffected face, I suddenly felt a profound exhaustion. He was right. This was all my own doing. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go to the press conference.” Weston seemed distracted, his gaze fixed on the tote bag at my feet. A corner of an in-flight magazine was sticking out. I followed his eyes and saw that the open page featured a photo of a symphony orchestra. There were dozens of people crowded together, but there, in the most obscure corner of the photograph, sat a young woman playing the cello. It was the girl Weston had embraced. The photo was so blurry you could barely make out her features. Yet Weston had seen her. In a single glance. So, it was never that he couldn’t recognize women’s faces. He just couldn’t recognize the ones he didn’t love. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise; even breathing hurt. Still, I forced a smile, pulled the magazine out, and pressed it into his hands. “Here,” I said. “I don’t want it anymore.” This title of Mrs. Hayes. And these three years of being invisible. I didn’t want any of it anymore. 2 The next day, I arrived at the press conference on time. The spotlights felt like a thousand sharp knives aimed directly at me. I was wearing a rose-colored gown, a deliberate rebellion against the white uniform Weston had demanded. Taking the microphone from the moderator, I spoke calmly. “The reason I was mistakenly arrested is that my husband, Mr. Weston Hayes, told the police, to my face, that he did not know me.” A wave of murmurs swept through the room. I paused, looking directly into one of the cameras, imagining him watching on the other side. “I imagine it must be agonizing to be trapped in a marriage for three years with a wife you can’t even recognize.” “So, I’ve decided to grant him his freedom.” “Mr. Weston Hayes and I will be divorcing.” It wasn’t until I was in the car that I noticed my hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the liberating release of shedding a heavy chain. My phone buzzed incessantly, the name “Weston” glowing on the screen. I switched it off. The car hadn’t gone far before it was cut off. Weston got out of his vehicle, his face a thundercloud. “Claire, have you lost your mind?!” He yanked me out of the car, his grip so tight I thought my wrist would snap. “Who gave you the right to spout that nonsense at a press conference!” I stared coldly at his furious face. “Which part of what I said wasn’t the truth?” He was momentarily speechless, which only fueled his rage. “Do you have any idea the damage you could cause to other people? What if they dig up the airport security footage and drag Isabelle into this? She just barely secured her position with the Vienna Philharmonic!” So he did know her name. He knew exactly who she was. The pain in my chest spread, a slow, torturous bleed. “Weston, you can recognize her.” His face was a mask of pure irritation. “So what if I can? She’s different, she means something to me, but I still married you.” He leaned in, his voice low and cruel. “Don’t forget, Claire. You’re the one who begged for this.” He was right. It was all my obsession. Weston couldn’t even remember my face, so how could I expect him to remember a promise made twenty years ago? I wiped the tears from my face. “Weston, I regret it. Let’s get a divorce.” He fell silent, but his expression wasn’t one of relief, as I had expected. After a long moment, as if making a monumental decision, he spoke. “Stop this nonsense. Just go back to how things were. Keep wearing the white dresses. I won’t mistake you again.” “And I am not divorcing you.” “Really?” I tilted my head, a bitter smile on my lips. He had apparently forgotten what document I’d handed him just this morning. I’d simply put on a wig and changed my clothes. Weston had automatically assumed I was a new temp secretary. He’d signed the divorce papers without a second glance. He had even asked me to organize the safe in his study. He had meticulously cut out the picture of Isabelle Reed from that magazine. And when I opened the safe, it was filled to the brim with articles and photos of her. In red dresses, blue dresses, black dresses. No matter how Isabelle dressed, Weston could always pick her out. The oldest photo was of her in high school. Wearing a white dress, her hair long and straight. An exact mirror of the image I had so painstakingly maintained for three years. As I stood there lost in thought, Weston reached for my hand. “Claire, I won’t lose you again.” I gave a sarcastic smile, about to tell him everything. But just then, Weston pushed me aside and took off running. I followed his gaze and saw the back of Isabelle Reed disappearing into the crowd. Halfway there, he seemed to remember something. He turned and shouted back, “Claire, wait for me! I’ll be right back.” But he was shouting in the wrong direction, at another woman standing near me. She was also wearing a rose-colored dress. I turned and walked away without a second’s hesitation. Weston was furious that I had left. He didn’t know I spent the entire afternoon in the café next door, meeting with an immigration lawyer. He never came back. I ignored his calls. All I had to do was change my clothes, and I became invisible to him. With my travel documents in order, the first thing I did was go shopping. For years, my closet had been a sterile shrine of white, a walking mausoleum I’d built to catch his eye. Now, the sight of it made me sick. A sales associate enthusiastically presented a fiery red dress. As I was about to pay, a cool voice cut in. “I’ll take that one.” I turned to see Isabelle Reed’s haughty face. She looked me up and down. “Ms. Gable, still trying, are you? Didn’t the airport teach you anything? Weston doesn’t love you. You could buy the most expensive dress in the world, and he’d still look right through you.” I didn’t have the energy to argue. I pulled the black Amex from my wallet and handed it to the associate. “This one she touched, plus every other style in this collection. Wrap them all up for me.” I added, “And please show her out.” The associate began to ask her to leave, but at that exact moment, Weston appeared. He walked straight to Isabelle, not even glancing in my direction. “Wrap up the dress for Ms. Reed.” The associate was stunned. “Mr. Hayes,” she whispered, “but this woman is your…” I was wearing smoky eye makeup and a wild mane of auburn curls. Weston, predictably, didn’t recognize me. “Who is she?” Weston’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried through the silent boutique. “Some nobody who thinks she can cut in line with Isabelle?”

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I woke up in a hospital bed with a concussion I got while saving my girlfriend. The first thing that came to mind was to play a little joke. “Who… are you?” I asked, looking at her. I saw Chloe’s expression freeze, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. But then, she pointed to her best friend, Aria, who was standing beside her. “I’m a friend of your fiancée,” she said coolly. “This is your fiancée, Aria.” My smile froze on my face. Aria took a step forward, her expression unreadable. “That’s right. I’m your fiancée.” I forced a weak smile. “Then… let’s go home.” … Aria took me home. Her home. I looked around the unfamiliar apartment, a space that held absolutely no trace of my existence. No photos, no stray jacket, nothing. I lowered my head and started fiddling with my phone, trying to ground myself. “Do you want to get some rest first?” Aria’s voice was soft, gentle. She was playing the part of a loving fiancée perfectly. “Okay,” I nodded, using the amnesia as a perfect excuse to let her lead me to the bedroom. She seemed to let out a breath of relief once I was lying down. I closed my eyes, the air filled with her scent—unfamiliar, but surprisingly pleasant. A few minutes later, I heard a familiar voice drift in from the other room. “Aria, you’re the best friend a girl could ask for! Please, just pretend to be his fiancée for a little while?” It was Chloe. I sat up, peering through the crack of the bedroom door, which wasn’t fully closed. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll get his memory back one day?” Aria asked. They must have thought I was asleep; Chloe had her on speakerphone, her voice filling the quiet apartment. “Oh, please. If he remembers, I’ll just coo at him a little, give him a few kisses and hugs, and he’ll melt,” Chloe said with a syrupy sweetness that felt like a shard of glass in my gut. “He loves me so much, he’d never dream of leaving me.” So that’s what I was to her. Replaceable. A piece of trash she could throw away and pick back up whenever she felt like it, all because I loved her too much. “I’m just… a little bored,” she continued, her voice light and careless. “We’ve been together for so long. I just need a little space, a little excitement to feel alive again. It won’t be for long.” “And I know you can’t stand Ethan. So just think of it as doing me a huge favor, okay?” I never heard Aria’s reply. She walked further away, her voice fading. I pushed myself up, opened the door, and slowly walked toward the balcony where she stood. This should give her a scare, a wicked little thought surfaced. But as if she sensed me, Aria turned around. Our eyes met. She quickly ended the call and walked toward me, wrapping her arms around my waist and resting her head against my chest. “I thought you were resting. Why are you up already?” She snuggled against me, and for a surreal moment, it felt like we really were a couple who had been in love for years. “I’m a little hungry,” I said, my smile never reaching my eyes. Aria didn’t seem to notice. “What do you feel like eating? How about the perfect omelet?” Her words made me pause. My love for a perfectly cooked, fluffy omelet was a small, secret thing. Not even Chloe knew about it. “Okay,” I nodded. I gently unwound her arms from my waist, feeling a strange sense of unease, and sat down at the small dining table. Aria didn’t seem to mind, simply turning and heading into the kitchen. I watched as she expertly tied on an apron and began to cook. I rested my chin in my hand, a dizzying sense of déjà vu washing over me. This was it. This was the scene I had always imagined for my future married life. I just never imagined I’d be living it with my fiancée’s best friend. Soon, a golden, fragrant omelet was placed in front of me. Aria sat opposite me, her chin propped in her hand, watching me with a warm, genuine smile. My heart gave a sharp, painful jolt. I quickly looked down, scooped up a bite, and brought it to my mouth. It was perfect. Unbelievably good. “Is it good?” I didn’t answer. My body was more honest than my words as I quickly took another bite. Aria laughed softly at my eagerness. She leaned forward and gently brushed a stray crumb from the corner of my mouth with her fingertip. “No one’s going to steal it from you,” she teased. “Slow down. If anyone saw you, they’d think I was starving you.” The sudden intimacy made me press my lips together. For a split second, our eyes met, and I heard a frantic, pounding heartbeat. Was it hers? Or mine? I didn’t know. I looked away, tilting my head back slightly. Seeing my hesitation, Aria just smiled, a sad, knowing little smile, and leaned in to press a feather-light kiss to my forehead. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I know you’ve forgotten me. We can take it slow.” “Alright?” Looking into her deep, gentle eyes, I found myself nodding before I could even think. But none of it made sense. For all the years I’d known her, Aria had never shown the slightest interest in me. In fact, everything about her behavior suggested she felt the same way Chloe claimed she did. That she hated me. I stared at her, trying to solve the puzzle. Which one was the real Aria? “I’m going to a party with some friends tonight,” she said, breaking the silence. “Do you want to come?” Friends? An image of Chloe flashed in my mind. “Yes.” When Aria led me into the private room, I was hit by a chaotic mix of perfume and alcohol. It was packed, a tangle of bodies and loud music. Chloe was sitting right in the center of it all, with a familiar man beside her—Leo, her high school sweetheart, the one that got away. As we watched, the crowd roared them on, and they fell into a deep, passionate kiss. They only broke apart when they saw me enter. I could see the glint of challenge in Leo’s eyes. “Oh, you’re here,” Chloe said, leaning against Leo’s shoulder with a lazy smile. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Leo.” She punctuated the announcement with a sweet, shy kiss on his cheek. “Hey, I’m Leo,” he said, extending a hand to me, his smile warm and disarming. As if the look he’d just given me was a figment of my imagination. “Nice to meet you,” I replied politely, acting as if I’d never seen him before. But I’d seen him a hundred times. In photos on Chloe’s phone, in the pages of her diary, in the drunken, sentimental whispers she thought I couldn’t hear. I followed Aria to a quieter corner and sat down. No one spoke to us, but I could feel their eyes darting between the four of us, hungry for drama. In this circle, I had always been the butt of the joke. But tonight, with Aria by my side, they seemed to keep their distance. My gaze drifted to her. She was already looking at me, her expression soft and warm. Seeing the silent exchange between us, Chloe, who had been cuddling with Leo, suddenly sat up straighter. Her eyes narrowed at Aria, her voice dripping with an acid I didn’t recognize. “You and your fiancé seem to be getting along really well,” she said, her tone sharp. “You’ve got all your friends here, but it’s like you can’t see anyone but him.” The sourness in her voice was unmistakable. It was the bitterness of someone who felt like they were being cheated on. And yet, she was the one who had pushed me into Aria’s arms. I almost laughed. “Of course we do,” I said, unable to resist. The sound of my voice cut through the noise. “We’re engaged. It’s only natural that we’d be close.” Silence. The entire room seemed to freeze. “Alright, alright, enough of that! Let’s play a game!” someone shouted, breaking the tension. Chloe shot Aria a dark look before settling back with her boyfriend. “Let’s play the King’s Game,” the person suggested. “Whoever draws the King card gets to pick two numbers and make them do any dare they want.” The idea was met with enthusiastic approval. After the first round, the two numbers called belonged to Chloe and her boyfriend. At the King’s command, they had to French kiss for two minutes and post a video of it online. As they kissed, I could feel Leo’s eyes on me, watching for a reaction. When he saw my face was a mask of indifference, he finally turned his full attention back to Chloe. When they finished, Chloe looked at me, a flicker of guilt in her eyes. But when she saw me calmly sipping my drink, she visibly relaxed. The second round, the chosen numbers were mine and Chloe’s. The dare: I had to carry her, princess-style, and do five deep squats. As the others grinned knowingly, I smiled right back. Chloe glanced at Leo, whose face had hardened, then stood up with an impatient sigh, as if being paired with me was a punishment. “Can’t we pick someone else? I have a boyfriend.” I looked up at her, at the undisguised annoyance on her face, and I let out a soft laugh. “You’re right.” At my response, Chloe froze, looking at me in disbelief. “What did you say?” “You’re right,” I repeated, letting a hint of regret color my voice. “You have a boyfriend, and I have a fiancée. We shouldn’t be doing games like this together.” I sighed dramatically. “I guess I’ll just take the penalty drink for failing the challenge.” The moment I reached for my glass, Chloe’s hand shot out to stop me. Her face was a storm cloud of anger. “I can do it with you,” she said, the words practically forced through her clenched teeth. “No, that’s okay,” I said, shaking my head as she glared daggers at me. “Aria would get upset.” I turned to look at Aria, who was watching the exchange with a surprised expression of her own. “That’s what I used to call you, right?” I asked her, my voice full of feigned confusion. “Or was it Ari? Or maybe Sweetheart?” I was dancing on every one of Chloe’s last nerves. As expected, in the next second, she grabbed Aria by the arm and stormed out of the room. I followed a moment later, using the excuse of being worried. At the end of the hallway, Chloe’s voice was shaking with rage. “Aria, what the hell have you done to Ethan?” “I haven’t done anything,” Aria replied, her voice and expression a picture of pure innocence. “Isn’t this how he always was with you?” “He was always so terrified of making you angry,” she continued calmly. “The only thing that’s changed is the person he’s afraid of upsetting. His devotion is the same.” Aria’s words hit their mark. Chloe bit her lip, taking several deep breaths, unable to find a single word to refute the truth. “Just… I’m warning you,” Chloe finally spat out. “Stay away from him. I asked you to act. I didn’t ask you to make it real!” “I know,” Aria replied, her calm smile never wavering. “You know I can’t stand him.” I didn’t wait to hear more. I turned and went back to the party. When they returned, they were arm-in-arm, the perfect image of inseparable best friends. The party raged on. I ignored the challenging glances sent my way and allowed myself to relax and mingle. My newfound ease seemed to catch Chloe’s attention, and I felt her eyes on me throughout the night. Perhaps she was just surprised to see the quiet, boring man she’d grown tired of suddenly become so alive. Late that night, everyone went their separate ways. Aria helped me back to her apartment, supporting my drunken, stumbling form. The moment I sank into the soft mattress of the bed, I grabbed her wrist. “Aria.” My voice, husky with alcohol, seemed to catch her off guard. She stood frozen by the bed, her cheeks flushed. On the outside, I was a drunken mess. But inside, my mind was perfectly clear. I needed to prove something. With a gentle tug, I pulled her off balance, and she tumbled onto the bed beside me. Under the cover of being drunk, I leaned up and kissed her. The moment our lips touched, her eyes flew open in shock. But a second later, she took control, her arms wrapping around my neck, pulling me closer. The air in the room crackled with a sudden, intense heat. After a long moment, we slowly pulled apart. “Ethan,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering. “I had so much fun tonight.” Her words were weighted with meaning. My hand, resting at my side, curled into a fist. Aria’s words and her actions were two completely different things. She said she hated me, yet she never once pushed away my touch. She had even… kissed me back. I didn’t understand. Back when I was with Chloe, Aria had made her disdain for me perfectly clear. No matter how hard I tried to be kind, to win her over, she was always cold, always distant. She openly mocked my relationship with Chloe, telling her to her face that we would never last. I had learned to avoid her at all costs. But now, after I’d “lost my memory,” after Chloe had literally handed me over to her, she was a completely different person. Was she just trying to protect her friendship with Chloe? If so, this was going way too far. My thoughts were a tangled mess. For now, I decided to stop trying to unravel them. I would just continue to play my part in their little drama. Aria’s performance was flawless. Every day, she made sure I ate well. At night, she held me as we slept. In the morning, she greeted me with a gentle smile. She even called my work and, citing my medical condition, got me a month of leave. My days were spent in her quiet apartment, watching movies, tending to her plants, taking walks in the nearby park. It was a simple life, but it was filled with a strange, peaceful happiness I hadn’t realized I was missing. Until a phone call shattered the calm. I saw Chloe again. She was leaning against a sleek motorcycle, dressed in tight shorts, a form-fitting tank top, and a leather jacket. She looked impossibly cool, a radiant, confident smile on her face. Looking at her, I quietly clenched my fists. When we were together, I had always worried about her old back injury. I never wanted her to do anything dangerous—no street racing, no bungee jumping. She always said I was overreacting. I’d gently suggest she not wear revealing clothes when we went out, not because I was controlling, but because I worried about her safety. If she insisted, I’d always have a jacket ready, silently watching over her. To her, all of my concern boiled down to one word. Suffocating. She said I was stifling her, chaining down her free spirit. And now that she had pushed me away, she was finally free to breathe. She spotted us and waved, her smile bright. I gave a polite, distant nod in return. My muted reaction clearly wasn’t what she wanted. She strode over to me, deliberately tugging her shorts down a little lower. “Ethan, how do I look today?” “You look great,” I said, giving her the answer she was fishing for. But her expression only grew darker. “But not as great as Aria.” I was doing it on purpose. If she was allowed to push me away, why wasn’t I allowed to compliment someone else? My words hit their mark. I could see the anger flash in her eyes. “You know,” she said, changing the subject, “Leo organized this whole race today just for me. Because he likes me so much.” I just nodded again. “That’s nice.” My placid response seemed to frustrate her even more. She huffed and stomped back over to Leo. As their friends cheered, she pulled him into another passionate kiss, her eyes locked on mine the entire time. Only when she was certain I truly didn’t care did she finally push him away. Her lipstick was smeared across her mouth, but she didn’t notice. She grabbed a megaphone from someone nearby. “I have an announcement to make!” Her gaze found mine again as she took Leo’s hand and wrapped it around her waist.

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My father hired a pair of orphaned sisters as bodyguards for my brother and me. The older one, Stella, was quick, sharp-eyed, and fell for my brother, Liam, the moment she saw him. That left me with the younger sister, Maya. The one with the silence. I didn’t want to see her sent back to the group home, back to the bullies and the loneliness, so I accepted her. She never spoke, so I took her to every top psychiatrist on the East Coast. I carved out two hours every single day to tell her jokes, to read to her, anything to get a response, even though one never came. She couldn’t protect me, so I learned martial arts, built myself up from nothing, and begged my father not to send her away. I thought she was just wounded. I thought if I was patient enough, she would heal. Then came the day the yacht overturned. In the chaos of the churning water, she clawed the last life vest off my body. And for the first time, she spoke to me. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice raw. “But Liam’s is broken.” Liam. My brother. She watched as I began to sink, her hand squeezing mine one last time. “I owe you a debt in this life,” she whispered, her eyes holding mine as the cold water closed over my head. “I’ll repay it in the next.” So, it turned out her silence was only for me. When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in the grand foyer, back on the day we were meant to choose our bodyguards. 1 I stood before the two sisters, frozen. My brother, Liam, glanced at me, his perfect brow furrowed with concern. He bit his lip. “You know what? I’ll take Maya,” he announced, his voice ringing with false martyrdom. “Ethan isn’t as strong. He needs someone quick and alert, like Stella, to protect him.” With a flourish, he stepped away from the visibly sharp Stella and positioned himself beside the silent, withdrawn Maya. I could see the panic flash in Stella’s eyes. I still didn’t move, my mind reeling, trying to process the impossible reality of being back here. In my first life, I had hesitated then, too, after Liam and Stella had made their instant connection. Seeing my indecision, Liam had offered to switch bodyguards with me. Looking at his pained expression now, I remembered how I’d truly believed he was trying to give me the better protector. I thought he was looking out for me, so I refused, adamant that he shouldn’t be disadvantaged. I couldn’t bear to see my brother lose out, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Maya being sent back to that place. It was all a lie. When the yacht went down, Liam had made a show of refusing my life vest, but he’d stood perfectly still while both sisters strapped it onto him. His own bodyguard, Stella, was a certified lifeguard. There was a piece of floating debris right next to him. But he only offered a few token protests. That was Liam’s signature move. He always knew I’d refuse any offer that required someone else to sacrifice for me. He lost nothing, yet he always walked away with the reputation of a handsome, selfless saint. But this time, I just nodded. “Fine.” Liam’s face, perfectly arranged to display reluctant acceptance of my refusal, went rigid. He wasn’t the only one stunned. Maya’s head snapped up, her vacant eyes suddenly sharp, fixed on me. They were filled with a confusion and shock that mirrored my own. “No!” My father’s voice boomed through the hall. “You are the eldest son of the Reed family, Liam. Your safety is paramount. This girl has autism—she can’t even speak. She is not fit to protect you.” A cold, bitter laugh almost escaped me. So, he knew about Maya’s condition all along. Yet he’d brought her here anyway. This whole charade of letting us “choose” was just for show. “But…” Liam started, a wave of relief washing over his features as he subtly wiped a non-existent tear from his eye. He was about to launch into another performance when Maya spoke. “I can speak.” My head shot up in astonishment. The Maya from my past life, the one who hadn’t uttered a single word for seven years, was speaking now? I saw it then, an awareness in her eyes that didn’t belong to a girl her age. And I knew, with chilling certainty— She was reborn, too. So much for repaying me in the next life. Given a second chance, the first thing she did was ensure she wouldn’t be stuck with me again. But she didn’t know. I didn’t want her anymore. “As for my capabilities,” Maya continued, her voice steady and clear, “you are welcome to test them again, sir.” I didn’t doubt her skills for a second. After I died, my spirit had watched her, a phantom observer. I saw her fight to protect Liam until help arrived, saw her single-handedly drive a gaff hook through the head of a bull shark. The irony was laughable. In my first life, I’d learned to fight for myself, terrified my father would deem her useless—this “helpless” girl—and send her back to the orphanage. Of course, once Maya dropped the act, it took her only three moves to pin the national martial arts champion my father kept on staff to the floor. My father’s resolve began to waver. The pained expression on Liam’s face vanished, replaced by a glimmer of interest. Between the two sisters, Maya was always the more beautiful one. If it hadn’t been for her supposed condition, Liam would have chosen her from the start. “Very well,” my father conceded. “Maya will serve you, Liam. Stella, the second son will be in your care.” At our father’s decree, Stella shot a glance in my direction. Her eyes landed on the scar that marred the left side of my face, and her nose wrinkled in a flicker of disgust. She took a step back and bowed her head. “Sir, I would rather you sent me back to the orphanage.” 2 “What is the meaning of this?” my father asked, his brows knitting together. “A salary of half a million dollars a year isn’t enough to keep you? You’d prefer to go back to a place where you’ll have nothing?” Stella couldn’t hide the revulsion she felt looking at my face. “I am not worthy of serving the second young master.” I let out a quiet sigh. Ever since I got this scar at ten years old saving Liam, my face had been a source of disgust for others. Perhaps that was part of why Maya had treated me the way she did in our first life. “Stella! Are you just going to abandon my brother?” Liam cried out, grabbing her arm, trying to pull her to her feet. Stella looked at him, her eyes shining with an unmistakable adoration. “I didn’t come here for him.” I remained silent. Liam quickly masked a flicker of pleasure, arranging his face into a frown of disapproval. “No! That’s absurd! I won’t let you go back there to suffer!” “What’s the difficulty?” I said, my voice cutting through the drama. “Why don’t you just take both of them, Liam? It seems they’re both yours for the asking.” Liam’s face flushed. “What… what are you talking about?” From the moment the Chen sisters walked in, my brother’s eyes hadn’t left them. He wanted them both. My father looked at me, his expression thoughtful. “You really don’t want a bodyguard?” “I don’t,” I said plainly. “I’m not interested in either of them.” Both sisters turned to look at me then, their expressions a mixture of surprise and indignation, as if wondering what right I had to refuse them. Maya’s gaze was more complex, something deeper than simple curiosity. I couldn’t read it, and I no longer had the desire to try. “And what about your safety?” my father pressed. “Can you guarantee it yourself?” “Probably not,” I admitted, shaking my head. My father stared, taken aback. “Which is why you should send me to work with Claire,” I continued. “She has a whole security team.” 3 In my past life, I had poured all my energy into Maya. I’d even neglected my role in the family business. I wasn’t like Liam. My father paid lip service to loving us equally, but the trust fund was only ever in Liam’s and my older sister Claire’s names. Claire was out on her own, a titan in the tech world, making the family trust grow exponentially year after year. Liam’s annual dividends alone were more than most people make in a lifetime. Meanwhile, I had to practically beg our father for the money to cover Maya’s medical bills. If I wanted to raise my own standing, I had to get in the game. Claire, my rarely-seen sister who had little time for the family’s disfavored spare, didn’t even meet with me. Her assistant threw a menial position my way, and that was that. I wasn’t angry. I just put my head down and worked. I’d never explored this side of myself before. Now, discovering my own aptitude for business was a revelation, even to me. After I closed the deal with a notoriously difficult investor, Claire finally granted me an audience. She threw me a welcome party, three months late, and started handing over significant parts of her portfolio. The company had hit a plateau and desperately needed new blood. As much as she might favor Liam, she couldn’t afford to ignore me. Slowly, my reputation in the business world began to eclipse Liam’s fame for his good looks. One evening, returning home, Liam blocked my path. “Ethan,” he said, his tone dripping with faux concern. “Don’t you think you’re being a little… loud?” I frowned. “You’re making headlines everywhere. I’m not trying to bring you down, brother, but a rapid success like this is mostly luck. If you crash and burn, you’ll be dragging the Reed family name down with you.” He paused, then glanced meaningfully toward where Maya was standing in the distance. “Besides, with your… your face… being so high-profile won’t attract the right kind of attention from women.” He sighed dramatically. “Look, why don’t you stop bothering Claire? I’ll take you under my wing.” I cut straight to the point. “You’re afraid I’ll steal your spotlight, aren’t you?” He froze. “On what grounds are you telling me to keep a low profile, Liam? As the family’s golden boy? The primary trust fund beneficiary? No matter how you slice it, you’ve already won. What gives you the right to stand on your pedestal and tell me not to fight for my own?” “Ethan, you…” His eyes immediately welled up. I gave him no quarter. “Since you brought up my scar, let me ask you something. Have you forgotten what you did when we were ten? I stepped in to protect you from a mugger. If you hadn’t shoved me forward, I wouldn’t have stumbled right into his knife. This face wouldn’t be ruined.” Liam clapped a hand over his mouth, fat tears plopping onto his hand. “You don’t have to cry. You’re not the one who was wronged. Just go back to being the perfect son.” I turned to leave, but he broke into a choked sob, his whole body shaking with manufactured pain. “That’s not it, Ethan… I never meant for that to happen… I’m just worried about you… How could you think that of me?” His tears hit the marble floor, one by one. “That’s enough!” Stella, who had been standing silently behind Liam, rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve gone too far, Ethan!” Liam immediately tried to placate her, shaking his head through his tears. “It’s okay, Stella, I’m fine… really…” he whispered, his shoulders trembling. A flash of pain crossed Maya’s face. She looked directly at me. “You went too far,” she said, her voice cold and even. “Apologize.” I thought I’d misheard her. But Maya just stared at me, her expression unyielding. Crack. The sound of my hand connecting with her cheek echoed in the hallway. Liam gasped, rushing to shield her. “Ethan! How could you hit her!” I flexed my stinging hand. “You should learn to control your people, Liam. Otherwise, they might forget who signs the checks and who cashes them.” “You!” Stella hissed, her jaw tight with rage. Maya cradled her cheek, her eyes wide with a surprise I had never seen before. I turned and walked away without giving any of them another chance to speak. My plan was to pack my bags that night and leave, to never see Liam or those two women again. But the next morning, a frantic pounding rattled my bedroom door. Stella burst in the second I opened it, completely ignoring the intrusion. She grabbed my arm in a vice grip. “Liam’s been kidnapped! You’re coming with me!” 4 Thankfully, the martial arts I’d learned in my first life served me well. I twisted free, shoving her back. “Show some respect,” I snapped. “And what kidnapping? What does that have to do with me?” “You have the nerve to ask?” Stella’s eyes were bloodshot, as if she’d been up all night. “If you hadn’t said those awful things to him, he never would have run out of the house crying! He never would have been grabbed by his enemies! This is all your fault, and you’re going to go and switch places with him right now!” The front door flew open, and Maya stood there, her face pale and drawn. She looked up at us on the landing. “Is Liam back yet?” Stella held up my arm like a trophy. “No. But the kidnappers are offering an exchange. It was Ethan’s fault Liam was taken. It’s time for him to make amends.” “Let go of me!” I slapped Stella hard across the face. “You’re a bodyguard. Who gave you the right to lay hands on me?” A red handprint bloomed on her cheek, but her eyes held no remorse. “My apologies, sir. But this isn’t your decision to make. For Liam’s sake, we’ll accept the consequences of insubordination.” She tightened her grip on my arm and yelled over her shoulder, “Maya! Help me!” Against Stella, I might have been able to hold my own for a few moments. But Maya was different. The world tilted as I was slammed to the ground. Maya’s black leather boot appeared in my line of sight. I struggled against Stella’s hold, knowing that the outcome of this fight rested entirely on Maya. I looked up at her, my voice raw with desperation. “Maya, help me… I’m begging you, please!” A muscle twitched in her jaw. She closed her eyes for a brief second, and when she opened them, she whispered one word. “Sorry.” Then, a crushing weight as both women pinned me to the floor. 5 On the way to the exchange, Maya rode in the car with me, her eyes never leaving my face. “You were reborn, too,” she said, breaking the silence. “Yes,” I answered, my voice like ice. “And you’re still just as cruel to me as ever.” She paused, then murmured, “I’m sorry.” Crack. The sharp sound of another slap filled the car. “Of all the words in the world,” I said, my voice shaking with rage, “those three mean the least to me.” Her head was turned to the side, her hair obscuring her expression. “I promise,” she said, her voice low and heavy, “this is the last time.” Her hand covered mine, her grip surprisingly tight. “We get him out. That’s all. A bodyguard’s final duty. After that, I swear I’ll move heaven and earth to get you out safely.” I just laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. She squeezed my hand harder. “This is just a tactic, Ethan. I won’t let them hurt you for real.” The exchange took place in a desolate, abandoned wasteland. As Liam and I passed each other, he broke into a frantic run. “Maya! Stella!” I whipped my head around just in time to see Maya rush forward, catching him in her arms. Stella was already at his side, skillfully cutting the ropes from his wrists. Maya held him tight, her hands trembling. I could read her lips, even from a distance. I’m so sorry… I didn’t protect you… A strange, cold feeling washed over me. I thought I had prepared myself for this, for being the one who didn’t matter. A rough hand grabbed me, pulling me back to my new reality. Before I could say another word, a cloth was stuffed in my mouth, silencing me completely. 6 I’d been in the dark room for three days. There was barely an inch of skin on my body that wasn’t bruised or broken from the lashings. The leader of the group threw something against the wall in frustration. “Aren’t you a Reed? The second son? Then why the hell hasn’t a single penny shown up in three days! Are you even who you say you are?” I managed a weak, bitter smile. The Reed family only had one real son. And it wasn’t me. “I’ll give you one last chance.” The man approached me, holding a syringe. “This is going to amplify your pain by a factor of ten. You’re going to call your family. If they agree to send the money immediately, I’ll let you go. If not,” he grinned, “I guess we’ll just have to mail them your fingers.” “What? No… ah!” The fluid burned as it entered my neck, and my breathing instantly became ragged. “Call!” A phone was thrust into my hand. I scrolled through my contacts. My father and sister’s lines were busy. Liam’s went unanswered. Then, Maya… “Hello?” “Maya!” I gasped, clinging to her voice like a lifeline. “You have to bring the money! They injected me with something… they’re going to cut off my fingers!” The sound of loud, thumping music blasted through the receiver. I was stunned. “What… what are you doing?” “Ethan,” her voice was strained. “It’s Liam’s birthday. We can’t ruin it.” My eyes widened in disbelief. “What are you saying?” “Just hold on a little longer. After the party’s over, I’ll come get you.” “But if you don’t come now, they’re going to—” “Ethan,” she cut me off, her tone sharp with annoyance. “It’s just one night. Can you please not cause a scene?” The lead kidnapper let out a cold, cynical laugh. He’d already given up hope. My body trembled, but I forced the words out through gritted teeth. “But you promised. You promised you wouldn’t let them hurt me for real.” There was a moment of silence on her end. “Be good,” she said softly. “Just endure it a little longer.” Then she hung up.

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I always felt my husband was forced to marry me. Every time we were intimate, Parker only used his hands. Eventually, I gave up and decided to set him free. But the night before printing the divorce papers, I overheard him with his friends. “Why not touch your wife? She’s right there,” one said. “Nora might run off if you keep holding back.” Parker sipped his whiskey. “You don’t understand. She’s delicate. What if I scare her?” His voice deepened. “She’s my wife. I must cherish her. If she finds what I can’t give elsewhere… fine. As long as she comes home to me.” His friends laughed. “Then why secretly Google everything?” That night, I checked Parker’s history—99 searches, all variations of: “I finally married the girl I love, but I have a kink. How do I not scare her away?” 1 The day Parker came back from his business trip, I had a battle plan. I showered, shaved, and put on a full face of makeup before slipping into the new, sinfully sheer nightgown I’d bought. Then, I slid into his side of the bed, waiting to be conquered. But when he walked out of the bathroom, the sight of me in his sheets made him freeze, the towel in his hands stilled mid-rub. “What are you doing here?” There wasn’t a trace of warmth in his voice. My eyes roamed over him, from top to bottom. Parker’s body was a work of art; even the plush bathrobe couldn’t hide the swell of his pectoral muscles or the faint outline of his abs. Logically, with a nose that sharp and fingers that long, he had to be… well-equipped. And yet, in six months of marriage, I had never been allowed to get a “deeper” understanding. Refusing to be deterred, I decided to be direct. “I’m here to sleep with you.” I didn’t care what excuses he came up with. Tonight, he was mine. Parker’s expression flickered. His gaze dropped to my lingerie, and after a long pause, he gave a clipped, “Fine.” That easy? I was in disbelief. As he approached the bed, I felt a wave of uncertainty. The only light came from the small, mood-setting lamp on the nightstand. He lay down beside me, a wave of cool air and the clean scent of soap washing over me. My heart hammered against my ribs as I boldly wrapped my arms around his waist. Parker’s entire body went rigid. A beat later, his head turned, his eyes finding mine in the dim light. His voice was a low rasp. “Do you want me to help you?” Before I could answer, he pulled away, his movements swift as he opened the nightstand drawer. “…” The little spark of excitement inside me was instantly doused by the practiced ease of his actions. I didn’t even need to ask. I knew what was coming next. He was going to fulfill his husbandly duties—just not with himself. A white-hot spike of anger shot through me. It was always like this. His own body was under lock and key, untouchable even when he was clearly aroused. When he pulled out the finger cots, my face darkened. I snatched them from his hand and threw them at his chest. “Help me with what? You’re so damn vanilla, what new tricks could you possibly have?” My voice was sharp, brittle with frustration. The lamplight was too faint for me to see his expression clearly, but I could feel his dark eyes fixed on me, the intensity of his gaze like a physical touch. It was hot, and maybe, just maybe, laced with confusion. All the pent-up disappointment surged to the surface. “Parker, if you can’t get it up, just say so! It’s not like you’re the only man on the planet. I can find someone else, anytime!” We were married, for God’s sake. Why did every encounter have to feel like he was doing me a reluctant favor? “That’s not what I meant,” he said, his voice strained. But still, he made no move. Not even to cup my face for a kiss. Anything would have been better than this cold distance. This was the third time. The third time I’d laid myself bare, only to be rejected. The disappointment was a crushing weight. I grabbed the robe I’d just discarded and stood up. Then I stormed out, slamming the door with a thunderous crack that echoed the shattering of my patience. 2 I ended up at my best friend Cassie’s apartment. My phone buzzed relentlessly on the coffee table. “Not gonna get that?” Cassie asked, tilting her head. I threw back a shot of tequila, the burn in my throat a welcome distraction. With a sigh, I switched my phone off completely. “What kind of trashy cigarettes did you buy?” I grumbled, my voice already raspy. “One puff and my throat’s wrecked.” Cassie just laughed, playfully tapping the colorful pack in her hand. “They look pretty, don’t they?” She held it up for me to see, and with a few casual questions, she had the whole story out of me. Not that I was trying to hide it. There was one question that had been eating me alive. “Cassie, why won’t Parker touch me?” “Maybe… he’s not into women?” I shook my head. Parker had a girlfriend in high school, and since then, countless men and women had thrown themselves at him, only to be met with his signature ice-cold rejection. Then, a thought sparked in my mind. My eyes narrowed. “I bet he’s saving himself for my perfect older sister, the one who ran off to Europe.” I’d heard the rumors before—that Parker had always been in love with the gentle, quiet heiress of the Sinclair family. Now, it was all clicking into place. This marriage… I was just a stand-in. My sister was the one who was supposed to marry Parker. But she’d dumped him for her supposed “soulmate,” some artist she followed to another continent. Parker, ever the perfect gentleman, had never denied me anything in our six months of marriage—except for that one crucial thing. And every time he used his hands on me, watching my pleasure with that detached, controlled expression… there was never any desire in his eyes. He looked like a spectator at his own life. Did he find me… disgusting? The thought hit me like a physical blow, and the fragile dam holding back my hurt broke. I slammed my glass down on the table with a loud crack. “That’s it, I’ve decided!” Cassie jumped. “Decided what?” “I’m divorcing him!” A man who was all looks and no action was useless, no matter how handsome. Especially one who was still hung up on someone else. I was Nora Sinclair. I didn’t need him. “Okay, okay, easy there. No more drinking,” Cassie said, clearly thinking I was just drunk and emotional. She dragged me off to take a shower. She’d just gotten a fresh manicure, and being a restless sleeper, she left a few angry red scratches on my neck by morning. The moment I turned my phone on, it exploded with notifications. All from Parker. When I got back to our villa, I was surprised to find him home. The air was thick with the smell of stale smoke, the ashtray on the coffee table overflowing with cigarette butts. He looked up, his sharp features cutting a striking figure even in the morning light. “You’re back.” His voice was a gravelly whisper. Then his eyes landed on the marks on my neck, and his pupils contracted violently. The light in his gaze instantly went out, replaced by a chilling darkness. I hadn’t slept well, and the combination of smoke and alcohol had left my throat raw. I was in no mood for a dramatic confrontation. Just as he was about to speak, I raised a hand, my voice raspy. “I’m exhausted from last night. I’m going upstairs.” I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I was just done. I was really going to divorce him. A marriage without passion is a marriage without happiness. 3 But, as fate would have it, I came down with a fever that night. My body felt like it was filled with lead, my head swimming in a thick fog. The door creaked open. Parker had just showered, and the crisp scent of mint from his body wash was so strong it almost made me gag. I wrinkled my nose and tried to push him away. “Leave me alone.” His body tensed. “Then who should take care of you?” His voice was deep, laced with a carefully restrained emotion. He was trying, desperately, to be gentle. “Come on, be good. Take the medicine, and you’ll feel better.” His cool fingertips brushed against my lips, and I saw his hand, resting on his thigh, clench into a tight fist. His gaze lingered on my mouth, his breathing growing heavier. I was completely oblivious. Being held by him felt uncomfortable, and I twisted away, trying to lie back down. “Okay, you can go now.” As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I thought I heard the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. It seemed Parker was taking another shower. … When I woke up again, I was wrapped tightly in Parker’s arms. The distinct feeling of something hard and hot pressed against my leg was impossible to ignore. His warm breath ghosted across my ear as he stirred, his hand coming up to feel my forehead. “Still a little warm. The fever hasn’t completely broken yet.” I was wide awake now. It’s not the fever making me hot, you idiot! It’s you! I tried to elbow him away, but he expertly caught me by the waist. His calloused thumb brushed lightly against my skin, sending a jolt of electricity through me. A small gasp escaped my lips. “Nora.” Parker’s voice was a low, husky whisper, carrying a magnetic pull that was hard to resist. “Should we… try?” “…” On any other day, I would have jumped at the chance. But after the last few days, a wall had gone up between us. To me, this felt like a slap followed by a piece of candy. A pathetic offering. Still weak from the fever, my body ached. I turned my face away, my voice cold. “I can’t. I’m too tired.” The man behind me went utterly still. I could feel the tremor in his breath as the life seemed to drain out of him. With a visible effort, Parker pulled back, creating a small distance between us. He said nothing. When I finally turned to look at him, his eyes were dark pools of sorrow, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “It’s my fault. I don’t blame you.” I let out a cold snort. At least he had some self-awareness. “But please,” he continued, his voice barely a whisper, “don’t push yourself so hard next time. It’s not good for your body to get a fever like that.” Parker lowered his gaze, hiding whatever raw emotion was swirling within him. Before I could process his words, he stood up and went to the closet to get clothes for me. He usually wore silk pajamas, but for once, he was wearing only a towel wrapped low on his hips. The sculpted lines of his muscles and the tantalizing V of his torso were on full display. My eyes traced the firm curve of his waist and the tight clench of his glutes, and my heart gave a little flutter. But that was all. Any handsome man standing in front of me would have had the same effect. Parker handed me the clothes. Without a second thought, I started changing right in front of him. As expected, he immediately turned away, his eyes fixed firmly on the wall. What I didn’t know was that the moment I left the room, Parker walked straight back into my bathroom. 4 A few days later, I started noticing some of my clothes were missing. At first, I didn’t think much of it. They weren’t expensive pieces, and I had plenty of others. But then, the lace lingerie set Cassie had bought me last week vanished. I couldn’t figure it out. We didn’t have cameras in the house, so there was no way to identify the pervert. Finally, over dinner one evening, I brought it up with Parker. “I think we have a thief.” He was calmly sitting at the table, spreading butter on a piece of my toast. He paused for a fraction of a second at my words. Without looking up, he asked, his voice steady, “What’s missing?” “Lingerie.” “…” I said it nonchalantly, but his reaction was anything but. The butter knife slipped, smearing a dollop of yellow across the small mole on the back of his hand. My eyes narrowed, watching his uncharacteristic clumsiness. “Why so nervous? Did you take it?” Parker was silent for a few seconds before letting out a soft, humorless laugh. His long, dark eyes met mine. “What do you think?” Before heading to the office, Parker was always impeccably dressed. He wore a pair of thin, gold-rimmed glasses for his slight nearsightedness, which only served to accentuate the depth of his features. Right now, behind those lenses, his black pupils seemed colder than the sunlight streaming through the window. I offered a light smile. What did I think? Parker was the epitome of buttoned-up, straight-laced propriety. And besides, what on earth would he do with my underwear? I decided to drop it. “What time will you be back tonight? I have something for you.” The divorce papers were ready. Parker handed me the toast, his reply coming instantly. “Whenever you want me, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He said it so quickly, the words tumbling out, that I barely registered the meaning behind them. His phone rang. The assistant waiting in the driveway came in with a briefcase, reminding him he was late. Parker left. I placed a hand over my chest, where my heart had just skipped a beat. My other hand went to my ear, which was inexplicably burning hot. I was both flustered and annoyed. Why couldn’t he just talk normally? What was with all the flirting? 5 After my meal, I took a trip to the doctor’s office. He told me I had a hormonal imbalance and that finding a man to… regulate things would be beneficial. The moment Cassie heard this, she was practically vibrating with excitement, offering to “lend” me the services of a chiseled model with eight-pack abs and a young stud with pecs for days from her agency. At the time, I was sitting in my air-conditioned studio, sketching out the line art for my graphic novel, completely absorbed in perfecting my characters. I immediately shot her down. She cut straight to the chase. “You’ve been breaking out lately, haven’t you?” Her words hit a nerve. I mentally cursed Parker’s name again. Two pimples! Right on my chin. “You know what they say, the grass is always greener… Besides, you two are about to get divorced anyway. You’re really not going to try?” Cassie’s voice was a siren’s call of temptation. I put down my pencil. I was stuck on the design for a side character’s face. A little real-life reference couldn’t hurt. “Looking only. No touching.” So my testosterone was a little high. Once I was divorced, I could find a hundred and eighty men if I wanted. But not now. It wasn’t because I was a coward; I just had high moral standards. I didn’t just go around lusting after men’s bodies! Cassie laughed, clearly not buying my claims of self-control. I was full of confidence at the time, but that night, as I slept, my own mind betrayed me. I had the most vivid, steamy dream. In it, I was locked in a passionate kiss with a man, our bodies tangled together. Our breaths mingled, his hot and heavy against my skin, the sound of our mouths moving together pulling me deeper and deeper into a rising tide of pleasure. I was lost in his bold exploration, completely immersed in a world of shared ecstasy. It was pure bliss. Until—I saw Parker’s face, inches from mine. I jolted awake, my heart pounding, my body slick with a cold sweat. The phantom sensations of the dream still lingered. My legs felt weak as I made my way downstairs for a glass of water. That’s when I heard the lazy, teasing voices from the living room. “You know, some people are absolutely drowning in desire, but they’re so afraid of scaring their wives that they just… suffer in silence. Not naming any names, of course.” 6 Peeking around the corner, I saw Parker’s closest friends lounging on the sofas, whiskey glasses in hand, their tones dripping with mockery. “Women can’t resist a little temptation, Parker. You keep this up, and Nora’s gonna run off with someone else. You’ll be crying before you know it.” These guys were close enough to Parker to say whatever they wanted. In response, Parker just lifted his glass and took a slow sip, his handsome face an unreadable mask. He said something that made his friends roar with laughter, and a prickle of suspicion ran down my spine. They mentioned he had a secret blog. A private account where he posted things. Driven by a mix of curiosity and a desire to finally get some leverage on him, I mentally replayed the username they’d mentioned. I typed it in, and sure enough, an account with the same profile picture as Parker’s official one popped up. I clicked on it and saw a pinned post at the top. I was expecting to find some typical, crass locker-room talk. But the words on the screen made me freeze. It read— “I finally married the girl I’ve been in love with for years, but I have a specific kink. How do I make it a good experience for her without scaring her away?” The next post. “The world is full of temptations, and she thinks I’m boring. It’s my fault. If I tried to please her like this, would she reject me?” Attached was a picture of a male butler costume and a small, silver bell collar. In an instant, all the blood in my body rushed to my head…