The annual family meeting was meant to discuss everyone’s contributions to the corporate empire. Dividends were merit-based, but the family trust had officially labeled me the sole “negative asset.” Not only was I denied any annual payout, they were also voting to remove my name from the family register. It made no sense. The subsidiary I ran had just secured our largest overseas distribution channel ever. My division alone contributed eighty percent of the group’s profits. How had I become a liability? My aunt Vivian sneered contemptuously. “We only got those channels because Tiffany ran herself ragged networking.” “You, meanwhile, embezzled corporate funds to wine and dine your little boy toys. And you still talk about contribution?” “Out of respect for our bloodline, we’re only asking you to compensate each household two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Refuse, and don’t blame us for getting ugly.” Instantly, everyone joined in, cornering me and demanding payment. Even my fiancé Oliver looked at me coldly. “Quinn, if not for your cousin stepping in, your reckless spending would have sunk the company. None of us would get a dime. Just pay, and they might let you keep your dignity. If they kick you out, I’ll be dragged down with you.” I looked down at the financial summary on the table. Beside my cousin Tiffany’s name, her “contribution dividend” was listed as ten million dollars. I gave a soft laugh and shook my head. “No. I’m leaving the Montgomery Group entirely.” What these vultures didn’t know was that the company’s technical lifeline and every top-tier client answered to one person alone: me. 1 “You ungrateful little brat!” Aunt Vivian slammed her wine glass down on the table so hard the crystal shattered. A sharp shard flew up, slicing the back of my hand. “Look at your expenses for this quarter alone! Over half a million dollars! Are you entertaining clients, or are you just living it up on our dime?” “The supply chain vendors are all old friends of the family. Tiffany handles all the outward-facing platform work. And you? For every dollar you make, the family has to cover ten dollars of your wasteful spending. A spoiled parasite like you is the biggest negative asset the Montgomery family has ever seen!” “Agreeing to let you run Nova Corp was the biggest mistake of my life!” Hearing this, a dry, humorless smile touched my lips. When Tiffany screwed up the pricing algorithm on our e-commerce platform and got all our best-selling links suspended, I was the one who stayed awake for forty-eight hours straight, trembling from exhaustion, coding the fix. When our suppliers boycotted us, I was the one who stood in the freezing rain outside the client’s headquarters for a week just to win back a single contract. When Nova Corp was on the verge of bankruptcy, a company of hundreds pulling in less than three thousand dollars a month while bleeding a half-million-dollar interest loan, I drained my personal savings to bridge the gap. I turned a dying husk into a highly profitable enterprise in just three months. When they were begging me on their knees to save the business, they certainly were not singing this tune. I quietly wiped the bead of blood from my hand. Before I could even open my mouth, Tiffany blinked her heavily lashed eyes and offered a sickeningly sweet smile. “Honestly, it wasn’t just my hard work. Every time we ran a platform beta test, all the aunts and uncles pitched in to help. It made us so much more efficient. In marketing, time is money. The glory of the Montgomery Group is built on our family working together as one!” The moment those words left her mouth, every relative in the room beamed with pride. “Oh, our Tiffany is so thoughtful! Not like some people, throwing Montgomery money around like water just to make herself look important, never acknowledging anyone else’s hard work!” “Exactly. Some people will never learn. No wonder she tries to steal credit when she has achieved nothing! I really don’t know how her mother raised her.” “You can’t entirely blame her mother. A child’s lack of discipline falls on the father… and well, her dad did die early, didn’t he?” I shot to my feet, my chair screeching against the floor, glaring at them with absolute fury. Vivian immediately pointed a manicured finger at me, her voice shrill. “What do you think you’re doing?! Don’t forget you are surrounded by your elders!” Oliver quickly grabbed my arm, pulling me back. “Quinn, don’t throw a tantrum. Your aunt isn’t actually going to kick you out of the family. Everyone just thinks you need to feel the pinch. Otherwise, you will never learn to stop hemorrhaging money. No matter how much profit Tiffany brings in, it cannot sustain your lavish lifestyle.” “Just lower your head, apologize, and promise you will stop dragging us down. Pay the compensation, and I will personally beg your aunt for leniency. We are family, they won’t back you into a corner.” I froze, staring at him in utter disbelief. My fiancé of five years was actually standing against me, telling me to swallow my pride and apologize to these parasites? In the span of my silence, the insults and accusations rained down on me like hail. Someone even threw a silver fork at my face, screaming at me to get out of the Montgomery house. I mocked myself internally. For two years, I spent countless nights patching security loopholes. I stayed on international calls until dawn, securing overseas channels. I emptied my own bank accounts just so Vivian wouldn’t end up on a federal debtor’s list. And my reward? Being branded a negative asset. Looking at this pack of rabid wolves calling themselves my family, I finally understood that words were useless here. I shook off Oliver’s grip and gave a faint, icy smile. “Keep your leniency. I, Quinn, voluntarily withdraw from the Montgomery family.” The sound of another glass shattering against the wall mixed with Vivian’s furious screech. “You arrogant bitch! If you walk out that door, you are never stepping foot in the Montgomery Group again!” I did not say a word. I turned on my heel and walked out the heavy oak doors without looking back. If the Montgomerys were too blind to see my sacrifices, too stupid to realize that every single client and resource was loyal to me alone… then so be it. I would take my hundreds of millions in profit and build my own empire. When I finally got home, the food on the dining table had long gone cold. My mother was frantically tearing through drawers, her face pale with panic. “Mom, what are you looking for?” I asked, exhaustion thick in my voice. Tears welled in her eyes as she shoved a heavy metal lockbox into my arms. “Sweetheart, this is every penny I have saved. If I sell the two storefronts downtown, we can scrape together maybe two hundred thousand. You take this and pay them a fraction of what they want. We can slowly pay off the rest of the compensation!” “I will go beg your aunt Vivian tomorrow! If the family kicks you out, we will have nothing left. And your wedding… Oliver will call off the wedding!” A loud ringing filled my ears as a surge of pure, unadulterated rage boiled over in my veins. Ever since my father passed away from illness, my mother had lost her anchor. She lived in constant fear. Vivian had used that against her, manipulating my mother with just a few honeyed words. Vivian had convinced my mother that I was a sickly, useless girl with no real prospects, and that the Montgomery family was doing us an immense favor by taking me in. I had walked away from an executive CEO position at a Fortune 500 tech firm just to take over the dying mess that was Nova Corp, solely to give my mother peace of mind. And now, Vivian was using the exact same psychological warfare to torture her again. I did not even need to ask what Vivian had said on the phone. She had inverted the truth, erased my achievements, and painted me as a promiscuous, reckless spender driving the company into the ground. Thinking about the pitifully low salary I drew, and the absolute bare-minimum health insurance the family trust provided for my mother, my blood turned to liquid fire. I grasped my mother’s trembling hands, my voice deadly calm. “Mom. From this day forward, I am never going back to the Montgomerys. But I promise you, I will make sure you live a hundred times better than any of them.” The next morning, I returned to the Nova Corp skyscraper to clear out my office. The moment I stepped into the lobby, a cloud of concrete dust choked my lungs, sending me into a coughing fit. Smash. A brick, knocked loose by a renovation crew, plummeted from the scaffolding and narrowly missed my shoulder, shattering by my feet. “Watch where you’re walking! Are you blind?” a worker yelled. “What is going on here?” I snapped instinctively. “Who authorized heavy construction in the main lobby?” As the words left my mouth, Tiffany strutted out of the executive elevator, flanked by a massive entourage of employees. The moment they saw me, the sycophantic smiles on their faces vanished. They shifted uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at me. Tiffany looked me up and down, a mocking lilt to her voice. “I was wondering who was causing a scene. Turns out it’s just my former cousin.” “Now that the platform revenue has crossed twenty million under my leadership, the company is entering a new era. It is time for a complete facelift!” I understood immediately. Tiffany was putting on a theatrical display. She wanted every employee to know that the crown had passed to her. Those very same employees, people who had fought in the trenches beside me, caught her drift perfectly. They turned their gazes on me, eyes dripping with disdain. Jessica, the Director of Marketing, stood with her hands on her hips right next to Tiffany. “Ms. Montgomery, you have incredible taste! This new aesthetic is going to boost our morale tenfold! Not like the old days, when certain people were too cheap to invest in the office, but threw tens of thousands at luxury restaurants, yacht rentals, and sketchy phone bills!” “Exactly! Let’s be honest, we all stayed because of Ms. Montgomery’s vision. If we had to keep following a certain someone, we’d be ‘negative assets’ for the rest of our lives! Hahaha!” The HR Director tossed a plastic visitor badge at my chest. “Honestly, Ms. Montgomery is just being merciful. She said you could stay on as a junior secretary out of pity. If it were up to anyone else, security would have tossed you into the street by now!” Their laughter and jeers felt like jagged knives sliding between my ribs. Jessica was a distant relative on my mother’s side. When I took over Nova Corp, she was working at a real estate office, getting harassed by clients daily. Her deadbeat husband had racked up massive gambling debts and forced her to pay them off. When she couldn’t, he broke her nose and put her in the hospital. She was so desperate for cash she got into a physical brawl with a rival agent, ending up with her face clawed bloody. The rival’s wealthy backer pulled strings and had Jessica thrown in jail. I was the one who bailed her out. I gave her a second chance at Nova. I intentionally funneled massive corporate accounts under her name so she could clear her debts in one lump sum. I hired the lawyers that helped her win her divorce and get a restraining order. Back then, she had cried until her eyes were swollen, swearing on her life that she would follow me to the gates of hell. And now? Jessica was acting as Tiffany’s loyal lapdog, leading the charge to push me off a cliff. I gave her warmth when she was freezing, and she paid me back by throwing stones while I was down. I forced myself to remain expressionless. Turning a deaf ear to their taunts, I walked into my office, only to find it completely stripped. In the corner, a black trash bag sat with its mouth splayed open. Inside were the personal items I kept in my office suite. My tailored blazers, my toothbrush, even my passport, all covered in construction dust. Just as I bent down to retrieve them, a heavy leather boot stepped deliberately onto the bag. I looked up and met Oliver’s eyes. Compared to my exhausted state, he looked incredibly smug and vibrant. “Quinn, stop throwing these little tantrums. Just lower your head, say you were wrong, and you can go back to your comfortable little life. If you just follow Tiffany’s lead, I am sure you won’t be a negative asset anymore.” “The company will keep spinning without you. But aside from the Montgomery family, who else is going to tolerate your uselessness?” He crushed my dignity with the casual weight of his boot. In the past, my heart would have shattered. But now, the waters of my mind were dead calm. Because the moment they labeled me a negative asset, I finally saw clearly. Oliver, just like the Montgomerys, had never seen me as a human being. I stood up straight, a razor-sharp smirk forming on my lips. “If you want to stay and be a parasite for the Montgomerys, that is your choice. From this moment on, we are done. I don’t need a pathetic excuse for a man like you.” Oliver’s jaw tightened, his fists clenching. “Quinn! I am trying to save you! I looked the other way when you were out partying and flirting with male models on corporate trips. Now you are being swept out like trash, and I am begging them to show you mercy. How dare you speak to me like that?” I did not want to waste another breath on him. I turned toward the door, but Tiffany stepped into my path, leaning her entire body into Oliver’s chest. The sight of them pressing against each other made my stomach churn. “If you want to throw away your only lifeline, fine! You won’t even listen to Oliver! Who would want a piece of garbage like you anyway? If my aunt hadn’t insisted on marrying your loser father, you wouldn’t even exist! You deserve to be a negative asset! You will rot at the bottom forever!” A volcanic heat surged through my veins. I stared dead into Tiffany and Oliver’s eyes, my gaze freezing cold. Tiffany threw her head back and laughed, calling me a stray dog that not even a homeless man would touch. It was a pity they couldn’t read the lethal intent in my eyes. And it was a pity they had no idea what kind of hell was about to rain down on them. Leaving the Nova Corp skyscraper, I stepped out into a sudden, torrential downpour without a single ounce of regret. Though the rain soaked me to the bone, it felt like it was washing away years of toxic grime. I felt incredibly light. I was shedding the dead weight. It was time to start over. By the afternoon, the rain cleared. I went to the registry and expedited the paperwork for a new corporate entity. The news of my departure from Nova Corp sent shockwaves through our industry network within hours. Headhunters and rival marketing firms immediately started digging. My phone buzzed relentlessly with over a hundred connection requests on social media. Before accepting a single one, I logged into Nova Corp’s encrypted financial database. I initiated a full backup of every revenue stream, expense report, and ledger I had managed since taking over. Every single transaction was documented with crystal clarity. Anyone looking at the hard data would instantly see that the “extravagant spending” they accused me of was barely a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of millions I brought in. After securely transferring the encrypted files to my legal team, I opened the master control panel of Nova’s e-commerce platform. With a single click, I unbound my administrator credentials, severing my digital footprint completely. Before I could even log out of the communication software, I noticed I had already been kicked from every single Nova Corp work chat. I let out a dark chuckle. At least it saved me the trouble of leaving them one by one. I accepted the dozens of friend requests. The messages were nearly identical. Every major firm wanted to poach me as their Chief Marketing Officer or General Manager. The lowest base salary offered was a hundred times what the Montgomery family paid me. But I declined them all. Instead, I called Arthur, a former university classmate who controlled a massive network of supply chain resources. In the past, out of loyalty to the Montgomerys and to avoid Oliver’s insecure jealousy, I had rejected Arthur’s partnership offers time and time again. When I told him I had severed ties with Nova Corp, the line went dead silent for two full minutes. Then, his voice crackled through the speaker, thick with poorly concealed triumph. “Fucking finally.” Within hours, we had drafted the framework of our new empire. We would fast-track the development of a proprietary platform. I would send formal notices to every client in my Rolodex, officially announcing my departure from Nova Corp. Whether they chose to stay with Montgomery or follow me was entirely up to them. Furthermore, exactly one week after our platform went live, we would host an exclusive, invite-only gala for our top distributors. I also coordinated a strategy with Arthur. Any legacy client from Nova Corp who migrated to our new platform would retain their top-tier status, plus an additional, highly lucrative “welcome back” incentive package. Arthur agreed without hesitation. We divided the workload and dove headfirst into the grind. Meanwhile, by that evening, two trending hashtags had skyrocketed to the top of the financial and tech forums. #NovaCorpLeadStepsDown #MassExodusOnNovaPlatform The internet was flooded with wild speculation about why I left. People were tagging my official accounts, demanding a statement. I stayed silent. But soon enough, a highly upvoted comment surfaced and pinned itself to the top of the discussion. @ran_truth: The former director, Quinn, embezzled Montgomery Group funds to live a lavish lifestyle and hire male escorts. When the board found out, she refused to admit it. They just asked her to pay back a fraction of what she stole, but she threw a massive tantrum at a family banquet and quit. Her cousin, who is actually competent, had to step in to save the sinking ship. The very next day, Quinn broke into the office and physically assaulted her cousin and her own fiancé! Attached below was a high-definition, closely cropped video of the lobby confrontation. Within minutes, thousands of comments flooded in. “Corporate parasite,” “shameless gold digger,” “she’s probably the one sabotaging the user database out of spite!” The vitriol was deafening. I massaged my temples, letting out a heavy sigh. I knew exactly who owned that burner account. It was Oliver. What the idiot didn’t know was that since college, I had used a dummy account to track his digital footprint. I had archived every single photo and post he had ever uploaded before he scrubbed them. I took a fresh screenshot. But this time, it wasn’t a picture of him posing at a bar. It was absolute, concrete proof that he had manufactured evidence to frame me for another woman. Just as the internet mob reached a fever pitch, Tiffany struck while the iron was hot, releasing a formal public statement. She lamented the “unfortunate family tragedy” and tearfully urged old platform users not to be “brainwashed” by my lies. Riding the wave of viral traffic, she announced that Nova Corp would be hosting a massive press conference and contract renewal ceremony the following week. “On the day of the press conference, we will be joined by our newest overseas channel titan, Mr. Harrison! We cordially invite all our esteemed clients and distributors to attend!” She looked as proud as if she were accepting a Nobel Prize in Economics, her face practically glowing with unearned arrogance. I closed out of her trending video and accepted a direct video call request from Mr. Harrison himself. I wondered if Tiffany would still be smiling on the day of her little gala. For an entire week, Nova Corp poured millions into promoting their press conference. They invited every distant branch of the Montgomery family, local politicians, major corporate clients, and over a hundred media outlets. A week later, the doors opened at the Montgomery Group’s grand banquet hall. Dozens of servers in crisp uniforms lined the entrance. A plush red carpet stretched for hundreds of yards, leading straight to the main street. The entire hall was illuminated by dazzling laser lights. The distant relatives Tiffany had invited were practically salivating, chatting loudly about how much their dividends would multiply this year. Journalists set up a barricade of cameras and microphones. The event was even being broadcast live on the massive digital billboard in the center of the financial district. In the center of the hall, Tiffany stood wearing a custom velvet gown dripping in diamonds. Oliver, my ex-fiancé, was looking at her with sickening devotion, letting her lean heavily against his side. They looked like the ultimate power couple, passionately detailing their utopian business roadmap from the podium. The clock ticked. The ceremonial bell-ringing, originally scheduled for 10:58 AM, was delayed. The distributors hadn’t shown up. Twenty minutes passed. The only people walking around the floor were hired event staff. Several elderly Montgomery board members were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, their backs aching from waiting. A couple of them had flat-out fallen asleep on the VIP sofas. A camera crane swept past, broadcasting a shot of an old uncle drooling directly onto the city’s central billboard. 11:30 AM. The media reporters were getting restless. The murmurs grew louder and more agitated. A veteran journalist finally lost his patience. “Ms. Montgomery, it’s 11:30. We are half an hour behind schedule! If you don’t start now, we have other breaking news to cover!” “We’ve been waiting all morning. Our time is valuable too!” “I’m on a deadline. Pack it up, guys, we’re leaving!” Seeing the press corps threatening a walkout, Tiffany panicked. She furiously signaled her assistants and staff to call the distributors again, desperately promising that anyone who showed up would get a year of platform fees waived for free! She then gave the MC a frantic nod to commence. The MC’s face paled, but he forced a bright smile and stepped up to the microphone, shouting into a room devoid of actual clients. “Distinguished guests! Nova Corp partners! Family! Our ceremony officially begins!” “Please welcome our visionary leader, Ms. Tiffany Montgomery, to the stage!” Tiffany forced a radiant smile, waving enthusiastically at a sea of empty chairs. Just as she reached the microphone, her lead assistant sprinted onto the stage, completely panicked. Because the mic was still live, her frantic, breathless voice echoed through the massive speakers for everyone to hear. “Ms. Montgomery! The phones at the main office are exploding! The distributors… they said they are never renewing their contracts with Nova Corp!” “What?!” Feedback screeched from the sound system. Tiffany practically leaped off the stage, grabbing the assistant by the collar. “Didn’t I tell you to call them and offer a whole year for free?! Why isn’t anyone here?!” The assistant stammered, terrified. “The distributors are saying the backend system is completely corrupted! They submitted bug reports days ago and no one fixed them. Customers are paying for orders, but the system isn’t processing the shipments! They aren’t just canceling their contracts… they are filing class-action lawsuits for lost revenue!” “What?! Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?!” The assistant shrank back. “I tried to tell you three days ago, but you were busy shopping for a new sports car with Mr. Oliver, so you told me to…” Tiffany’s face flushed a violent, ugly shade of red. “What are you standing here for?! Give me my damn phone!” The assistant shakily handed over the device. The journalists below, seeing Tiffany’s complete meltdown, immediately sensed blood in the water. The whispers turned into loud demands. “What’s going on here? Are you playing us for fools?” “Ms. Montgomery! We didn’t come here to watch you play pretend CEO!” Being publicly humiliated, Tiffany snapped. She pointed a shaking finger at a female reporter and shrieked, “Who the hell do you think you are?! You should be grateful I even invited you! How dare you bark at me in my own building?!” The atmosphere instantly turned hostile. The press corps closed ranks, furiously condemning Tiffany’s arrogance. Cameras flashed rapidly, capturing every vein popping in her red, screaming face. “Let’s go! We have our headline! This company is a complete joke!” The hall devolved into total chaos. The Montgomery relatives couldn’t sit still anymore. “Tiffany, why is everyone leaving? The event hasn’t even started!” “Yeah, we are relying on this for our year-end bonuses!” Tiffany, who had just been chewed out by her mother Vivian earlier that morning, was entirely out of patience. “Shut up! You greedy old fossils! Go ask your own useless kids for bonuses! Stop bothering me!” The relatives froze, staring at her in shock, before slamming their hands on the tables in outrage. “Excuse me?! That is not what you promised us last week! You said you had massive international clients coming today and our dividends would triple!” In a blind rage, Tiffany kicked over a towering champagne pyramid. Glass shattered everywhere. “Get out! All of you! You do absolutely nothing and expect to get paid?! Security, throw them all out!” In her hysterical breakdown, Tiffany had completely forgotten one crucial detail. At that very moment, the live feed was still broadcasting her psychotic meltdown to the massive digital screen in the center of the city.

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I am the infamous “Mad Heiress.” Once, someone mocked my late mother. I shattered his kneecaps and made him kowtow a thousand times at her grave. Someone kicked my dog. I released a thousand snakes into her house, photographed her wetting herself in fear, and posted the images everywhere. Since then, everyone avoids me. Later, on vacation in B City, my wallet was stolen. I was about to have my guards break the thief’s hands when a man appeared. He pinned the thief down, got my wallet, and tossed it back. “Kid, traveling alone? Pickpockets target out-of-towners. Be careful.” In that moment, my heart fluttered. I learned he was B University’s most popular guy. He liked “good girls”—sweet, obedient, innocent. The next day, I transferred to B University. I hid my true self and approached him. I made him bento boxes, showing the burns on my fingers. I handed him water and towels at basketball, always lowering my gaze shyly. We got together. I kept up the act for three years. My best friend said I seemed brainwashed. For him, I endured anything. Until a video arrived on my phone. The always aloof man was riding a motorcycle in a downpour. A girl with fiery red hair and bold tattoos sat behind him. The caption read: “The one he loved all his youth is back. A good girl like you should step aside now.” Step down? You want me to step down? Do you think I’m a pushover? 1 It was midnight, and River still hadn’t returned. I crushed the walnut I was rolling in my hand and called him. The moment he answered, my voice was choked with tears. “River, it’s thundering outside. I’m so scared. When are you coming back?” If my friends back in A City saw me acting like this, their jaws would drop to the floor. The noisy background on his end disappeared abruptly. His gentle voice came through. “I have some things to handle at the company. I’ll be late. You go to sleep first.” “But I’m too scared to sleep. How about I come to the company to find you…” “No!” he refused sharply, without hesitation. In the three years we’d been together, he had never spoken to me in that tone. A chill ran through my heart. Perhaps realizing his tone was too harsh, he quickly tried to smooth things over. “Willow, there are other colleagues here. It wouldn’t look good if you came. Even though it’s my family’s company, my dad is testing me. I’m almost through the probationary period. Once this is over, I promise I’ll spend more time with you.” Faint, suppressed laughter echoed from his end of the phone. My eyes grew cold. Did he really think I was an idiot? I refused to accept this. Why should I hand over the man I had worked so hard to get, just because his so-called “first love” had returned? For me, Willow, when I want something, I will get it by any means necessary. Let’s see exactly where he was in the middle of the night. My men quickly tracked his location. It was a bar. The private room’s door was slightly ajar. Inside, a group of men and women—River’s friends—were gathered. They were cheering loudly, pushing the girl from the video towards him. “River, aren’t we great brothers? We brought the person you’ve been pining for right to you.” “You two were together in high school. If Sierra hadn’t gone abroad with her parents, you would never have broken up.” “Yeah, what does Willow have to do with anything?” “Everyone at school thinks you like good girls. But only we know you chose her because she is the exact opposite of Sierra! It was the only way you could stop thinking about her!” “Now that the real deal is back, when are you going to dump that boring good girl?” River fell silent. Sierra smiled and spoke up. “River and I are in the past. I think his current girlfriend is quite nice. River likes her a lot, too. I bet he’s already forgotten about me…” “No, don’t talk nonsense,” River retorted anxiously, terrified she might misunderstand. The room fell silent. My heart plummeted straight to the bottom. After a brief pause, the room erupted again. They shoved River and Sierra closer together, chanting, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Right as the atmosphere reached its peak, I pushed the door open and walked in. Facing a room full of shocked, dumbfounded faces, I tilted my head, looking the picture of pure innocence. “What are you guys playing? Can I join in?” “Willow!” River was the first to react, shooting up from the sofa. His hand, which had just been resting on Sierra’s shoulder, suddenly seemed to burn him. “Why are you here… were you following me?” His face turned livid. 2 I shook my head innocently. “No, I was just too scared at home and wanted to find somewhere with more people.” River paused, then said anxiously, “So you came to a bar alone? Do you know how messy this place is? Why didn’t you call me? You…” “River, aren’t you going to introduce us?” Sierra raised an eyebrow, smiling. A flash of embarrassment crossed River’s face. He had no idea how much I had overheard. He gave a brief introduction. From beginning to end, Sierra’s eyes were fixed on me. Suddenly, she patted the sofa beside her, inviting me to sit. Before River could stop her, I sat down. Sierra took a drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke directly into my face, her red lips curving upward. “So this is the good little girl River has been spoiling for the past three years. You do look quite obedient.” I snatched the cigarette from her fingers, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and smiled. “No smoking indoors, okay?” How dare she make me inhale secondhand smoke. If it were the old me, I would have ground the cigarette butt into her face. A dark glint flashed in Sierra’s eyes. “I heard you’ve never been to a bar, and you don’t drink or smoke. Are we scaring you?” As she spoke, she handed me a glass of orange juice. Before I could even touch it, she let go. The glass shattered on the floor. The crisp sound of breaking glass silenced the room for a moment. Sierra hissed in pain, grabbing a tissue to press against her foot, which had been cut by a shard of glass. She waved her hand, looking apologetic. “Sorry. If you didn’t want orange juice, you should have said so. I’ll get you something else.” “Willow!” River strode over and yanked me away from Sierra. He used so much force that I frowned in pain. In our three years together, he was always terrified I might get a single scratch. It was no exaggeration to say he treated me like I was made of glass. If someone accidentally bumped into me, he would hold a grudge and retaliate. A wave of bitterness washed over me, and my eyes reddened slightly. But now, he was already crouching in front of Sierra, carefully tending to her cut. His friends leaned in, exaggerating the situation. “Oh my god, the cut is pretty deep. She’s bleeding so much.” “Even if the room is a bit dim, it’s not like you couldn’t catch the glass.” “Who knows if she really didn’t see it or if she did it on purpose.” These people had never liked me. When they first found out River was dating me, some of them had openly and covertly mocked me, saying I wasn’t good enough for him. It was true. In B City, I was just a girl from an ordinary family, while River was a wealthy young master. I played the role of a quiet, obedient girl, which meant I didn’t fit in with their crowd, so naturally, they looked down on me. But I didn’t care about any of that, as long as River loved me. Having stopped Sierra’s bleeding, River walked over to me, his face dark. I pursed my lips and said softly, “River, I didn’t drop the glass on purpose…” 3 River used to believe me. When I first transferred to B University, a girl who hated me hid her necklace in my bag and accused me of stealing it. I had a hundred ways to prove my innocence and destroy her in return. But before I could do anything, River stormed into my classroom and told everyone I wasn’t a thief. Leaning against his broad chest, I suddenly felt that as long as he believed in me, nothing else mattered. Later, through whatever strings he pulled, the girl admitted she framed me and left the university. He had said, “You’re so good. How could you ever do something like that?” I tugged at his sleeve, looking at him with pleading eyes. But the next second, River shook off my hand. “Willow, apologize to Sierra.” My mind went blank for a second. “What?” He looked at me and repeated it. “Apologize to Sierra.” A ball of fire erupted in my chest, and my fists clenched. I almost couldn’t hold back my true nature, but I forced it down. I continued to play the victim, squeezing out a few tears. “I didn’t do it. Why should I apologize?” “Forget it, River,” Sierra interjected. “Maybe the room is too dark, and she really didn’t see it.” River frowned. “You’re an important friend of mine. I can’t just stand by and watch you be wronged.” It felt like a needle had pierced my heart. In the past, if I shed a single tear, River would be so frantic he’d want to offer me the world. Now, he only cared about defending someone else. I sneered inwardly. Wronged? Who was really being wronged here? “Willow, if you don’t apologize, I won’t go on the graduation trip with you.” “Fine, then we won’t go.” River froze, his eyes full of shock. He knew how much I had been looking forward to this trip. I had started planning it a year ago. From domestic spots to international destinations, I had meticulously mapped out every leg of the journey. What to eat, what to play, where to stay—I filled three thick notebooks. I had even joked that not even the apocalypse could stop me from going. He had laughed along, promising he’d go with me no matter what. But for Sierra, his promise vanished in an instant. After saying that, I walked over to Sierra. I picked up a shard of glass from the floor and slashed it hard across my own hand. Blood welled up instantly. It looked far more terrifying than the cut on Sierra’s foot. Gasps filled the room. Sierra was stunned, staring at me like she had seen a ghost. River was horrified, yelling, “What are you doing?!” “River, I told you, I won’t admit to something I didn’t do.” I held up my bleeding hand and smiled. “But since you care about her so much, this should be enough, right?” With that, I turned and left the bar. On the way back, I received a call from my dad. “Sweetheart, how are things in B City? Isn’t it time to think about coming home?” Looking at the glaring cut on my hand, I suddenly felt bored with it all. “I think I’ve had enough playing here.” I agreed with my dad that as soon as my graduation project was finished, I would return to A City. He happily announced he would throw a grand party for me. I knew the old man just wanted an excuse to scout for potential marriage alliances. That night, I moved out of the apartment I shared with River and went back to the dorms. River apparently didn’t expect me to be this angry. He bought my favorite cakes and flowers and had them sent to my classroom repeatedly. I gave them all to my classmates. He sent over a hundred text messages, explaining that he only saw Sierra as a friend and that I was the one he truly loved. I didn’t reply to a single one. On my way back to the dorm, he blocked my path. “Willow, are you still angry?” “I admit I went too far that night. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?” “I bought the tickets. Let’s go on our graduation trip.” 4 He spoke earnestly, even saying he had already packed my bags for me. I had planned this graduation trip for a long time. Whether River was suitable to be my future husband—perhaps this trip would give me the answer. After a moment of internal struggle, I finally nodded. River excitedly pulled me into his car. On the way to the airport, he talked animatedly, seeming like the River from before Sierra returned. I wondered to myself, was I just overthinking things? Was his relationship with Sierra truly just friendship? When we arrived at the airport, he settled me in and ran off to buy me hot coffee. An hour passed, and he still hadn’t returned. The airport announcements started broadcasting our flight information. I called him, but his phone was off. I began to worry that something had happened to him. My men reported that River was in a fight in an alley near the airport. I didn’t have time to wonder why he was there; I immediately rushed over. From a distance, I saw River, his head covered in blood, shielding Sierra behind him. Facing him were five or six young thugs wielding metal pipes. “River! Hand over that bitch behind you, and we’ll spare your life!” “She conned our boss out of his money and his feelings. She’s not getting away with this!” River was already swaying on his feet, but he forced himself to stay standing. “As long as I have a breath left in me, you won’t touch a hair on her head!” My heart ached sharply. But the situation was urgent. I stood where I was and shouted toward them, “I’ve called the police! If you don’t leave now, it’ll be too late!” River looked shocked when he saw me. “Willow! What are you doing here… Run!” One of the thugs rolled his eyes, realizing what was going on, and quickly darted forward, grabbing my shoulder. “This little chick is yours too? Young Master River, aren’t you a bit too greedy?” “How about this? Let’s play a game. Choose one. How about it?” River’s face turned ashen at the thug’s words. I remained expressionless. My bodyguards were lurking in the shadows; these thugs couldn’t hurt me. But I was suddenly very curious. If forced to choose, who would River pick? “River, don’t worry about me! Go save Willow! She’s your girlfriend!” Sierra suddenly shouted from behind him. “They came for me anyway. If they want to kill me or torture me, let them.” Biting her lip hard, Sierra pushed River toward me. River stumbled forward, suddenly snapped out of his daze, and fiercely grabbed Sierra’s hand. “Are you crazy?! How could I just leave you?!” “Then… what about Willow?” Sierra looked toward me, a flash of triumph quickly crossing her eyes. “Willow…” River met my eyes, then suddenly looked away guiltily. My heart sank into the abyss. He didn’t say a word, but I already knew his choice. A bitter smile touched my lips. River, you really… disappoint me time and time again. “I choose Sierra. She’s injured,” he said. He added guiltily, “Willow, wait for me. Once I get Sierra to safety, I’ll come right back to save you!” With that, he hauled Sierra onto his back and ran off into the distance. Watching his figure fade away, the light in my eyes completely died. Did he not consider what would happen to a defenseless girl left alone with a group of thugs? Perhaps he did, he just couldn’t bear to let Sierra face it. 5 “This guy River really has no humanity. If I’m not mistaken, you’re his girlfriend, right?” “Abandoning his current girlfriend for an old flame… River is no good either. Hey, pretty girl, why don’t you submit to me?” “Hehe, let me go first… Ah!” Men in black suits swarmed from all directions, instantly taking down the thugs. I brushed off the spots on my clothes where they had touched me and said coldly, “Cripple their arms and legs.” “Yes, ma’am!” One agonizing scream after another echoed from behind me, accompanied by the roar of an airplane engine overhead. The flight we were supposed to take soared into the sky, gradually disappearing into the clouds. Back at the university, I blocked out all outside information and locked myself in my dorm for several days and nights until I finally completed my graduation project. While booking my flight back to A City, a news headline caught my eye. [Gen Z Jewelry Designer Sierra Reaches the Pinnacle on Her First Exhibition! Multiple Pieces Auctioned for Astronomical Prices!] Sierra? The background check I had run on her indeed showed she had studied jewelry design abroad. But from what I knew, her skills were mediocre at best. Suspecting the news was an exaggeration, I scrolled down. When I saw the pictures of the jewelry, my eyes widened in fury! These were not her designs! The designs that fetched those astronomical prices were clearly based on my mother’s posthumous sketches! How did Sierra get access to my mother’s designs? A sudden realization hit me, and my blood ran cold. I had once shown River my mother’s sketches. Did he secretly take photos of them when I wasn’t looking? I immediately sought out River to confront him. When he saw me, he smiled. “Willow, you finally came to see me. I thought you would never forgive me. Actually, I went back to look for you very quickly that day. I…” Slap! I slapped him hard across the face. “You stole my mother’s design sketches and gave them to Sierra!” River froze, clearly not expecting the normally docile me to strike him. He rubbed his cheek. “Willow, how can you use a word like ‘steal’? Sierra was just drawing inspiration…” “Inspiration? That was blatant plagiarism! Tell her to confess the truth immediately, or don’t blame me for blowing this out of proportion!” River gripped my shoulders, his expression serious. “Sierra’s parents got divorced. The only way she won’t be bullied is if she establishes herself here through her own merits.” “Willow, I’m begging you. Please don’t blow this up, okay? How much money do you want? I’ll buy the designs from you. Will that be enough?” My hands fell limply to my sides. He thought I was giving in and stepped forward to hug me. “Be good. You’re the most understanding. I promise from now on I will only spoil you and love you. Once you marry into the River family, you’ll have whatever you want… Ugh!” He shoved me away forcefully, staring in disbelief at the hairpin stabbed into his shoulder. This hairpin was the first gift he had ever given me. I hadn’t used hair ties since. Now, I was giving it back to him. My long hair cascaded down, hiding the frost on my face, but it couldn’t mask the bone-chilling cold in my voice. I spoke into my phone. “Burn down Sierra’s exhibition. Burn every single piece of jewelry. Don’t leave a single one intact.” River stared in shock at the person I had suddenly become. The icy aura radiating from me made him instinctively step back.

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1 I pinched pennies every month to sponsor a brilliant girl from an impoverished rural mining town, promising to cover every cent of her college tuition and living expenses. During summer break, I let her stay in my guest room. That was when I heard her crying to her livestream audience through the thin walls. “Guys, I seriously can’t take it anymore. My sponsor is a total control freak.” “She forces me to study constantly and hates it when I stream. Isn’t she just trying to cut off my income?” “And the allowance she gives me? It’s literally pennies. What am I supposed to do with that in a big city? I can’t even afford a decent designer bag.” “She claims it is for my own good, but I know she is just jealous because I am young, pretty, and have followers! The second I blow up, I am blocking her on everything.” I looked down at the $200 sundress she was wearing, the one I had just bought for her the week before. A cold smile crept onto my lips. If streaming was so lucrative, she could figure out her own tuition and rent. … “Mia, about my allowance for next month…” Jessica stood timidly in the doorway of my study, wearing that exact sundress. Her fingers twisted the fabric in a display of nervous innocence. She had a small, delicate face and big, watery eyes that naturally drew pity. That vulnerability was exactly why I had decided to fund her education in the first place. I did not even look up. My eyes remained locked on my monitor. “There isn’t one.” “What?” Jessica seemed to think she had misheard, taking a hesitant step forward. “Starting this month, the allowance and the tuition are gone.” I finally raised my eyes, meeting hers with absolute calm. The timid act melted off her face in a second, instantly replaced by shock and rising panic. “Why? Mia, did I do something wrong? Just tell me, I will fix it!” Her eyes turned red on command. She rushed to my desk, her voice trembling with a practiced sob. “You promised you would sponsor me until I got my degree! You can’t just go back on your word!” I closed my document, leaned back in my leather chair, and crossed my arms. “I thought your livestreaming was paying the bills. You can handle your own tuition from now on.” All the color drained from Jessica’s face. Her eyes darted around the room, terrified to meet my gaze. “Mia… you… you know?” Her voice was barely a whisper. Stripped of her confidence, she could not muster a single ounce of fake pity. I said nothing. I just let the silence stretch, watching her squirm. She panicked for a few seconds before a switch seemed to flip in her brain. She forcibly steadied herself. “Mia, this is a huge misunderstanding.” She sniffled, the tears arriving right on cue. “I only stream for a little pocket money so I don’t have to burden you so much. My followers send me gifts because they want to. I never ask for them.” She paused, injecting a hint of subtle grievance into her tone. “And the stuff I said on stream… that was only because you have been so cold to me lately. I was stressed and just venting to my chat. I didn’t mean a word of it, I swear! I am so grateful for everything you do!” “Are you done?” I asked. She froze. She clearly hadn’t expected me to be completely immune to her routine. “Mia…” “If you are done, get out. I have scripts to write.” I delivered the eviction notice without raising my voice, turning back to my screen. Jessica stood rooted to the spot, biting her lip. Her face flushed a mottled red and white. After half a minute of suffocating silence, she stomped her foot, spun around, and bolted from the room. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind her with a violent crack. 2 Three years ago, I connected with Jessica through a non-profit charity initiative. She was just a high school sophomore back then. Her file stated she was from a remote, dead-end town. Her parents had passed away early, leaving her with an elderly grandmother. She had straight A’s but was on the verge of dropping out due to crushing poverty. Attached to the file was a black-and-white photo of a fragile, stubborn-looking girl in a faded, oversized hoodie. My heart broke for her. From that day on, I paid for everything she needed to finish high school. She worked hard and proudly earned an acceptance letter to a prestigious university right here in my city. Knowing she had no family to rely on, I invited her to stay with me for the summer. I lived alone in a spacious three-bedroom apartment, so I had plenty of room. I bought her a new iPhone, a MacBook, and a closet full of clothes. I gave her a thousand dollars a month for living expenses, which was more than enough for a college student. I thought I was paving the way for her future. I thought she would study in peace, land a great job, and rewrite her destiny. I thought I was gaining a sweet, driven younger sister. That was until I came home early from a meeting, walked past her bedroom, and heard the most venomous lies spilling from her mouth. In that moment, I realized the resilient girl I had sponsored was gone. The person sleeping under my roof was a complete stranger. The day after I cut off her funding, Jessica made herself scarce. She locked herself in her room, entirely silent. When dinner time rolled around, Martha, my housekeeper, knocked on her door but got no response. “Miss Mia, do you think Jessica is sick?” Martha asked, wiping her hands on her apron. “She hasn’t come out all day.” “Let her be,” I replied flatly. “She will come out when she gets hungry.” That evening, my nephew Connor dropped by to raid my fridge. He was a college freshman himself and practically lived at my place on weekends. “Aunt Mia, did you change the WiFi password? Hook me up,” he yelled, waving his phone. I tossed him the new password. He connected, scrolled for a minute, and suddenly let out a loud gasp. “Yo, Aunt Mia, is this streamer living in your guest room?” I walked over. The screen showed Jessica’s face, heavily filtered and wearing flawless, expensive makeup. She was dressed in a pristine white slip dress, her hair curled into loose, elegant waves. She stared into the camera, looking utterly devastated. “Guys, I literally don’t know how I am going to survive…” “My sponsor found out I stream and cut off my entire allowance. Now she is threatening to throw me out on the street.” “I am terrified. I am still two grand short for my tuition. If I can’t pay it next week, the university is going to expel me…” Tears rolled perfectly down her cheeks. The background of her stream was the massive mahogany bookshelf in my study. I had never threatened to kick her out, but she certainly knew how to spin a narrative. The chat was moving at lightspeed, her “loyal fans” absolutely furious. “Protect Jessica at all costs!” “What kind of garbage sponsor is that? She is definitely just jealous of our girl’s pure heart!” “Drop her address, let’s dox the witch!” “Don’t cry Jessica, we got your tuition! Dropping a Galaxy right now!” Expensive digital gifts exploded across the screen in a shower of animated gold coins and fireworks. Connor stared at the phone, his jaw practically on the floor. “Holy crap. This is a classic Dark Academia grifter! They use the aesthetic of being a struggling, bookish scholar to scam simps out of their money. I can’t believe there is one living in your house!” “A Dark Academia grifter?” It was the first time I had heard the term. “Yeah,” Connor said, clicking on her profile to educate me. “Look at her grid. It is all ‘Day in the Life of a Pre-Law Student’ or ‘Immersive Thesis Writing’. Every photo is either in a vintage library or your study. She sells this image of a poor, hardworking genius just to bait donations. Look at the brands she is wearing. Does that look like poverty to you?” I scrolled through her feed. She was wearing a silk blouse I bought her, lounging on my velvet sofa, holding an untranslated French novel I knew she couldn’t read. The caption: Investing in your mind is the best luxury. She had taken a moody silhouette shot at my desk using the MacBook I paid for. The caption: The midnight oil will light the path to my dreams. She even used my signature designer perfume bottle as a prop for a flat-lay photo. The caption: A girl should always keep a little romance in her life. The comment section was a sea of absolute worship. “Beauty and brains! Jessica is unmatched!” “This is what a real intellectual goddess looks like.” “Subbed. Finally, an influencer with actual substance.” Every single thing I had provided to help her survive had been weaponized as a prop for her performance. My home was nothing but a beautifully curated movie set for her lies. “Aunt Mia, what are you gonna do?” Connor asked, looking disgusted. “This is vile. Are you just gonna let her keep scamming people?” I took my phone back and tapped the screen a few times with a completely blank expression. “Patience.” Down the hall, Jessica’s stream abruptly froze and went dark. She must have realized the router was off. She burst out of her room, her face twisted in rage. “Mia! Did you shut off the WiFi?!” She dropped the sweet ‘Aunt’ or ‘Sister’ act entirely. I leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping my water, admiring her absolute meltdown. “My house, my internet. I turn it off when I please.” “You!” She pointed a shaking finger at me, her face flushed dark red. “You just can’t stand seeing me succeed! Stop trying to control me! I don’t need your stupid charity money. I am doing amazing without you!” She spun around and stomped back to her room, delivering another violent slam of the door. Connor raised his hand and gave me a silent, enthusiastic high-five. 3 Jessica left the house at the crack of dawn the next day. I figured she had relocated to a cybercafe to keep her hustle going. Sure enough, Connor texted me a Twitch link that night. Jessica had a new setup. Behind her was the neon lighting and muffled shouting of a late-night gaming lounge. She was sobbing hysterically now. “Guys, I got kicked out. I have to sleep at this internet cafe tonight…” She cleverly angled the webcam so it only caught her face and the glowing monitor behind her, creating a perfect illusion of tragic homelessness. The collective heartbreak of her fans translated directly into a tsunami of digital cash. Watching her viewer count and donation tracker skyrocket, the temperature in my eyes dropped to freezing. For the next few days, Jessica left early and came back late. Sometimes she didn’t come back at all. She seemed to genuinely enjoy using the cybercafe as her base of operations. She clearly believed that if she milked enough sympathy, she could make enough cash to cut ties with me forever. That Thursday afternoon, I received a phone call I hadn’t anticipated. It was from the university. A Mr. Harrison, Jessica’s academic advisor. “Is this Ms. Mia? I am Jessica’s advisor at the university. I was hoping to speak with you regarding her current standing,” his voice was polite but strained. “Hello Mr. Harrison. Is something wrong with Jessica?” “Well, yes. Last semester, Jessica failed three of her core classes. We have been trying to contact her, but she isn’t answering calls or emails. Classes started a week ago and she hasn’t even registered. We checked her emergency contacts and yours was the only one listed. Has there been a family emergency?” Failed? Three core classes? That threw me off. She had entered this highly competitive university with top-tier test scores. It seemed her lucrative streaming career was rotting her academic life much faster than I realized. “She is physically fine, just…” I paused, finding the right corporate phrasing. “She has been going through a rebellious phase.” “Rebellious?” Mr. Harrison caught the hesitation instantly. “Ms. Mia, our institution has very strict academic standards. If she continues this trajectory and fails to secure her credits, she will face mandatory academic suspension. Or worse, expulsion.” Expulsion. “I understand, Mr. Harrison. I will have a serious conversation with her.” I offered the polite assurance he needed. “Thank you. Please ensure she reports to campus immediately. We have resources available if she is struggling.” I ended the call and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window at the city skyline. Jessica, you wanted absolute freedom. It looks like it is coming for you sooner than you thought. That evening, Jessica actually came home. She strutted through the front door, practically glowing with arrogance. She carried a massive shopping bag from a high-end luxury boutique. Clearly, the cybercafe tears had paid off beautifully. She paused when she saw me sitting in the living room, then tilted her chin up. “Oh, still awake?” she mocked, her voice dripping with attitude. I ignored the bait. I simply slid a printed piece of paper across the coffee table. “What is this?” She eyed it suspiciously before picking it up. It was a printout of the university’s academic policies. I had used a red marker to highlight a specific paragraph: Failing three or more courses in a single semester will result in Academic Warning. Consecutive failures or accumulating four failed courses will result in immediate Expulsion. The smugness evaporated from Jessica’s face the second she read the red ink. “You went behind my back?!” Her voice spiked into a shrill shriek. “Mia, who do you think you are! You are just a donor! You have no right to meddle in my grades!” She crumpled the paper into a tight ball and hurled it at my face. “Stop trying to scare me with expulsion! You think I care? I make more in a month of streaming than you make writing your boring scripts all year!” She violently shook the designer shopping bag at me, her eyes manic with the thrill of revenge. “See this? I bought this with my own money. Five thousand dollars! What did your pathetic little allowance ever do for me? You are just some old boomer who doesn’t understand the digital age. Degrees are useless now! Traffic is everything!” “I am about to sign a massive contract with an agency. I am going to be a top-tier influencer! When I am at the top, I won’t even look your way if you beg me!” She was panting, her face flushed with adrenaline. The innocent, sweet girl I once knew was completely gone, replaced by something twisted and consumed by greed. I stood up slowly and walked right up to her. “Perfect,” I said softly. “Since you are so wildly successful, you can afford your own place.” “You have three days to pack your things and get out.” 4 Jessica was utterly paralyzed. She probably expected me to yell back, or maybe give her a disappointed lecture. She never expected a cold, immediate eviction. “Wh… what did you say?” “Three days. Get out of my house,” I repeated, my tone devoid of any warmth. “You can’t just kick me out!” she finally screamed, her composure shattering. “You invited me to live here! You can’t just change your mind! You are a fraud!” “I invited you here so you would have a safe place to study. Look at what you have become.” I stared dead into her eyes. “I don’t care! I am not leaving! This is my home too!” She resorted to a toddler’s tantrum, dropping heavily onto the living room rug. “My name is on the mortgage.” I pointed toward the entryway console table where a copy of my deed sat in a folder. “If you aren’t gone, I will have the police remove you for trespassing.” The word “police” hit her like a bucket of ice water. Her screaming stopped instantly. As arrogant as she was, she knew she had zero legal ground. If the cops dragged her out, her neighbors would see, people would film it, and her delicate “innocent scholar” aesthetic would be nuked from orbit. She scrambled off the rug, glaring at me with pure venom. “Fine, Mia. You want to play dirty? I will leave. Just you wait!” She stormed into the guest room and began packing—or rather, violently throwing things into bags. The heavy thuds and muffled cursing echoed down the hallway. I paid her no mind. I simply texted Martha, telling her she could take tomorrow off as I had some personal business to handle. By early the next morning, Jessica was dragging two massive luxury suitcases out the front door. Suitcases I had paid for. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had intentionally rubbed her makeup to look as though she had suffered some unimaginable abuse. She was absolutely prepping for the performance of a lifetime. Sure enough, ten minutes after she left, my phone buzzed. It was Connor. “Aunt Mia, get on the stream! Jessica is literally broadcasting from your apartment courtyard! She is telling everyone you kicked her out onto the street and that she had to buy her own luggage. She is weeping.” I walked to the living room window and pulled the curtain back just an inch. Down in the courtyard, Jessica was sitting on her suitcase, holding her phone on a tripod, crying beautifully into the lens. A few neighbors were walking their dogs, side-eyeing her bizarre behavior. She was smart enough not to dox my exact unit number or name. She just spun a tale about a “ruthless corporate sponsor” who had thrown her to the wolves. “Guys, I am so lost right now… my whole life is in these two bags…” “It is so cold out here. I haven’t eaten…” Her acting was Oscar-worthy. Even from three stories up, I could feel the engineered tragedy radiating from her. Her chat went feral. “This is abuse! What kind of sick woman does this?!” “Jessica, we got you! What city are you in? I will drive right now and pick you up!” A user named “Knight_of_Jessica” suddenly dropped one hundred “Diamond Tiers” in the chat, a donation worth roughly three thousand dollars. “Go book a suite at the Four Seasons, baby girl! Daddy will take care of you!” Seeing the massive donation alert, Jessica’s sobbing magically paused. Her face lit up with a sugary, innocent smile. “Thank you so much, Knight! You are always my savior!” I watched the circus act for another minute, then let the curtain fall shut. Connor was practically vibrating with rage through the phone. “Aunt Mia, you are just going to let her do this? She is defaming you right in your own front yard!” “Let them watch,” I said, my voice steady. “I need you to do something for me.” “Anything. Name it.” “Run a check on social media. Find out if there are any major brands actively looking for an ‘intellectual’ or ‘scholar’ influencer for an upcoming ad campaign.” Connor sounded confused but didn’t hesitate. “I am on it. But Aunt Mia… what exactly is the endgame here?” I looked back toward the window. Down below, Jessica was loading her designer bags into a sleek Uber, a victorious smirk plastered across her face. Jessica, since you love building fake personas so much, I am going to help you build the biggest one yet.

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A company-wide Slack notification announced my “restructuring” under the Internal Conflict of Interest Policy. My fiancé Rory, the Sales Director, remained completely silent. Not a word of explanation. Whispers broke out immediately: “Since when do Tech and Sales have a conflict? And why fire the Tech Director?” Sophie, Rory’s childhood neighbor and the new tech intern, walked over with a sweet smile. “Don’t worry, Victoria. Leave peacefully. I’ll take over your work from now on.” I didn’t speak. I opened the severance email: seventy-five thousand dollars. I signed without hesitation. Becky, a junior developer on my team, was furious. “Victoria, aren’t you going to fight this?” I stood up, purse in hand. “There’s no need.” Sophie laughed softly, mockingly. “Fighting won’t change anything. Rory brings in tens of millions. Did you think the company would let him go?” I looked at her calmly. She had no idea how much a Tech Director truly carried. Thirty-two proprietary modules. Seventeen automation scripts. Lightweight LLM deployment. Model-driven architecture. The company’s foundations, built on five years of my work. No one else fully understood these systems. Rory didn’t come home until eleven, smelling of expensive whiskey. He looked at me, guiltless. “Victoria, you have to understand. We’re getting married soon. The company needs to avoid conflict.” I stayed quiet. His phone lit up on the coffee table. He snatched it fast—but I’d seen. Sender: Sophie. “Hey babe, the eyesore is finally out of our way.” I looked away and laughed quietly. It seemed there wouldn’t be a wedding after all. 1 I turned on the television in the living room, flipping aimlessly through the channels. My mind was a million miles away. I was trying to pinpoint the exact moment they started sleeping together. When Rory and I first started dating, he told me about his childhood neighbor. A sweet younger girl who grew up on his street. That was Sophie. Rory swore up and down that he only saw her as a little sister. Even his mother had pulled me aside once to assure me that Sophie was practically family, just a harmless girl from the neighborhood. So, when Sophie graduated from college and Rory asked if I could get her an internship in my department, I agreed without a second thought. I mentored her carefully for six months. I just never expected to mentor her right into my fiancé’s bed. Rory walked out of the bedroom, his face plastered with a mask of fake sympathy. “Honey, I am so sorry about what happened today. I know you are upset about being let go, and it sucks I can’t even stay up with you tonight. Once I finish this huge project, I promise I will take you on a nice vacation to clear your head.” I did not look at him. I just gave a vague hum of acknowledgement. He stood there, hesitating for a fraction of a second. “Are you mad at me?” “Please don’t take what Sophie said today to heart. She is just young and doesn’t know how to read the room. She was just joking around.” I finally turned my eyes to him. “So you heard what she said?” “Yeah.” “And you agree with her?” He did not answer. I turned off the television and stood up to head to the guest room. He grabbed my wrist. “Victoria, does any of this really matter? Women eventually have to step back to focus on the family and raise kids anyway. Having a highly successful husband reflects perfectly well on you. It gives you status.” I stared dead into his eyes. “Whose status? Rory the Director, or Mrs. Rory the trophy wife? Do you honestly think I spent sixteen years of my life studying advanced computer science just to be a footnote attached to a man’s last name?” He opened his mouth, but no words came out. I ripped my hand out of his grip and walked toward the hallway. He let out an exaggerated, exasperated sigh. “Fine. You are in a bad mood, so I am not going to argue with you. Take some time and cool off.” I ignored him and walked straight into the guest bedroom. He stood in the living room. He never followed me. A few minutes later, I heard the heavy thud of the master bedroom door closing. It was the first time we had slept in separate beds since we moved in together. On the night I was fired from my job. On the night I found out he was cheating on me. Surprisingly, I did not feel an overwhelming sense of grief. Instead, I felt a profound sense of relief. Relief that my entire future was not going to be destroyed by a marriage devoid of loyalty or basic human dignity. Truth be told, I was the one who got hired at the company first. Six months later, I personally recommended Rory to the CEO. His biggest sales accounts were only secured because I sat in on the meetings, breaking down the software’s performance and long-term scaling for the clients. He only reached the position of Sales Director because I carried him halfway there. Yet everyone in the corporate office genuinely believed he was the more valuable asset. Perhaps deep down, Rory believed he was entitled to my labor. That was why he orchestrated this incredibly cruel layoff. He wanted to lock me inside the cage of domestic life. He wanted me to silently toil away in the background, supporting his ascent without complaint. But I was never born to be someone’s accessory. And there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to sacrifice my career for a man who manipulated my livelihood just to screw his intern. I opened my laptop and navigated to my email. I pulled up the massive spreadsheet of wedding vendors. The florist, the caterer, the venue. Without blinking, I hit cancel on every single one and requested immediate refunds. Then I opened our shared financial documents. The house was jointly owned. We split the down payment, and we split the renovation costs. It was getting messy trying to figure out who spent a few extra dollars here and there. So I kept it simple. Cut it right down the middle. Whoever keeps the house pays the other their half of the equity. I tallied up the rest of our shared assets, dumped everything into a clean, itemized spreadsheet, and emailed it to Rory. He did not reply. I checked the clock. Eleven-thirty. He was definitely still awake. He always was at this time. The next morning, Rory said absolutely nothing about the spreadsheet. I didn’t bring it up either. He glanced at me over his coffee. “Is there anything else we need to buy for the wedding?” I knew exactly what he was doing. He was testing the waters. He wanted to know if my spreadsheet was a declaration of war or just an angry tantrum. “No. We are good,” I said evenly. “Great.” He exhaled a massive sigh of relief. “What are your plans for today?” I kept my eyes on my oatmeal. “I have to go back to the office. HR requested a final meeting.” He immediately put on a distressed expression. “You will have to take your own car then. I have a massive client meeting across town this morning.” I nodded slowly, saying nothing. He did not even finish his breakfast before rushing out the front door. The moment the lock clicked shut, I opened an app on my phone. The BMW he drove was legally mine, and I had installed a GPS tracking module on it for insurance purposes months ago. Thirty minutes later, the blue dot on the map parked right outside Oakwood Apartments. I had dropped Sophie off there after a team dinner once. I knew exactly where she lived. I took a screenshot, saved it to a secure folder in my camera roll, grabbed my keys, and left the house. When I arrived at the company lobby, I ran right into a radiant, glowing Sophie. She was wearing four-inch heels and a face full of flawless, expensive makeup. It was a stark contrast to my comfortable jeans, oversized sweater, and bare face. She strutted over, flashing me a brilliant smile. “Good morning, Victoria! Dressed a little casually today, aren’t we? Did you have to squeeze onto the subway to get here?” I looked at her, matching her polite smile perfectly. “I did. Unlike you, I don’t have a personal chauffeur to pick me up from Oakwood.” Her smile froze instantly, cracking at the edges. 2 I completely ignored her stunned silence and walked straight into the main office. Dozens of eyes immediately locked onto me. Some held pity. Some held regret. Some were gleaming with thinly veiled amusement. I had already experienced all of this yesterday. Today, they were just waiting for a sequel to the drama. I walked straight to the HR department. Rachel, the HR Director, offered me a polite smile and gestured to the chair across from her desk. The only reason she was being so courteous was undoubtedly because of Rory. In her mind, I was still the future wife of the company’s star Sales Director. “Victoria, let me just say congratulations in advance. Rory is an incredible catch. You are a very lucky woman.” She managed to say it without outright implying I was punching above my weight, but the tone was there. I smiled faintly, offering no response. She slid a thick folder across the mahogany desk. The cover page read Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement. I flipped it open. It was packed with dense legal jargon. The first few pages were standard corporate protection. No leaking trade secrets, no poaching current clients, no consulting for direct competitors within a specific timeframe. But the final two clauses stopped me dead. Clause 17: Party B is permanently prohibited from seeking employment or holding equity in the software development sector. Clause 18: Compensation for the aforementioned non-compete period will be paid in the form of 1% company equity, legally issued to the primary shareholder’s proxy, Rory. I sat in silence, letting the sheer audacity of those two sentences sink in. They were firing me, banning me from my own career path for the rest of my life, and giving my severance package directly to Rory. Tying Rory to the company with my equity meant tying me to Rory. They wanted Rory to step on my neck to reach the top. This contract was designed to force me into total financial dependence. I would become the little housewife spending her husband’s money, just like the office gossips whispered about. The CEO wanted my technical architecture for free. Rory wanted my severance to build his own empire. The audacity of their little scheme was almost impressive. After two seconds of dead silence, I actually laughed. I looked up at Rachel. “So, you are legally trafficking me?” Her polite smile vanished, replaced by a subtle, defensive sneer. “There is no need to be dramatic, Victoria. You are a top-tier technical asset. You built the core architecture for our biggest projects. The company has to protect its investments.” “A top-tier asset? Then why is the company firing me?” She choked on her words for a second. “Well, that is… because of the conflict of interest policy.” “Why doesn’t that policy apply to anyone else? I know for a fact there are at least three other couples in this building. Two of them are legally married. Do you want me to list their names?” Her face tightened. “They are mid-level employees. You and Rory are both executive directors. The risk is completely different.” I kept my eyes locked on hers, my smile never fading. “Is that right? We were dating when we both signed our initial contracts. Why wasn’t the conflict of interest a problem back then?” Her expression darkened into open irritation. “This is a decision made by the executive board. You arguing with me is pointless. I am just here to get your signature, not to debate corporate history.” I pushed the heavy folder back across the desk. “I am not signing it.” “You are refusing?” She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Do you have any idea how much 1% of this company is worth?” “I am perfectly aware. It matches my annual salary. Roughly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with the potential for aggressive growth.” “Then why on earth are you refusing?” “Is the equity being issued in my name? What does that money have to do with me?” She blinked, genuinely thrown off. “The equity goes to Rory. You two are getting married in a month. What is his is yours, right?” I looked at her, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “Rachel, you are married, right?” She nodded cautiously. “Yes.” “Then you understand how pre-nuptial assets work, don’t you?” She froze, her mouth slightly open. “We are not legally married yet. This agreement is pre-nuptial. Whether that equity is worth a hundred thousand or ten million dollars, legally, not a single penny belongs to me. Yet I am the one signing away my right to work in my own industry forever. Why in God’s name would I agree to that?” She stammered, trying to regain control. “Between a husband and wife, keeping score like this is…” “We are engaged. Not married.” I cut her off cleanly. “Rachel, if I asked you to sign a legally binding contract that gave your entire severance package directly to your husband’s personal bank account, would you sign it?” “Well, obviously not, but…” “Then why should I?” I stood up, looking down at her from across the desk. “Rachel, maybe you are comfortable depending on a man to survive. But I am Victoria. I don’t need a man’s charity. I have the drive to build my own life, and more importantly, I have the talent to back it up.” I turned on my heel and headed for the glass door. Panicking that she had failed her one objective, Rachel stood up quickly. “Victoria, be reasonable! This is about protecting corporate interests! You and Rory are going to be husband and wife. He holds the keys to our most sensitive sales data. If he accidentally leaks something to you while you work for a competitor, who takes the fall?” “He won’t.” “Excuse me?” “He won’t tell me anything. Because the wedding is off.” 3 I walked out of the HR suite and headed straight for the sales floor to find Rory. As I passed the CEO’s office, the door was wide open. Marcus, our CEO, was leaning back in his leather chair. He turned his head, and our eyes met. His face was a complete blank void. He looked away instantly. I did exactly the same. Without breaking my stride, I marched right into the glass-walled sales conference room. I pushed the door open. The entire sales team went dead silent, staring up at me. I ignored every single one of them. I walked directly up to Rory, reached across his laptop, and snatched the keys to my BMW right off the table. I turned around and walked out. The entire interaction took less than five seconds. Three seconds after I exited the room, my phone buzzed. It was Rory. “You need the car?” “Yes,” I replied coldly. “Could you have given me a little warning? I have a massive dinner meeting with clients tonight.” I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “I need to give you a warning before I drive my own vehicle?” He hesitated, his voice dropping into a defensive hiss. “Are you having another meltdown? Is this just because I gave Sophie a ride this morning? She sprained her ankle, Victoria. She lives on my route. I was just helping her out.” “You can chauffeur her around for the rest of your life for all I care. Just don’t do it in my car.” I hung up on him before he could say another word. I took the elevator down to the underground parking garage and unlocked my car. The moment I opened the door, a sickeningly sweet, artificial vanilla perfume assaulted my senses. I actually coughed. When I looked at the interior, my blood ran cold. Rory and I operated on completely different schedules. Sales required him to travel and entertain clients constantly, so his hours were erratic. Lately, I had just been taking the subway to avoid the terrible downtown traffic. My beautiful, minimalist cream-leather interior had been completely desecrated. Every surface was covered in pastel pink, girlish accessories. There were heart-shaped plush pillows stuffed into the back seats. Sitting neatly on the floorboard of the passenger seat was a pair of fluffy, pink bunny-ear slippers. I stood there for a few seconds in absolute silence. Then, methodically, I pulled every single item out of the car and shoved them all into the nearest concrete trash bin. Once the interior looked like my car again, I finally felt a fraction of my sanity return. Halfway through my drive home, Rory called again. “Victoria, what exactly did you say to Rachel? What do you mean we aren’t getting married? Stop throwing a childish tantrum and get back here to sign the paperwork.” I took a deep breath, keeping my eyes on the highway. “It is not a tantrum. I am not signing the contract, and the wedding is officially cancelled.” The line went completely dead for a moment. I could hear his breathing falter. “Victoria, do you have any idea what you are saying right now? We have been together for six years. We bought a house together. And now you are just calling it off? What the hell is going through your head?” My voice was terrifyingly calm. I even surprised myself. “Nothing complicated. I just realized you aren’t worth the trouble.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I hung up, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and let it ring endlessly. When I got to the house, I started grabbing a moving box. I packed away every trace of us as a couple. The matching coffee mugs, the electric toothbrushes, the framed photos. Everything went into the cardboard box. Right as I was taping it up, my phone rang. It was Rory’s mother. Her voice dripped with her usual condescending sweetness, though there was a sharp edge of annoyance underneath it. “Victoria, sweetheart, are you and Rory having a little spat? Listen to me, he is just under a lot of pressure at work. His job is very demanding, much different from yours. You need to be a supportive partner and show some understanding.” I seriously wanted to give the woman a standing ovation. She had mastered the art of being incredibly insulting without using a single curse word. “You are absolutely right, Mrs. Huo. I am clearly not good enough for your perfect son. So, I am calling off the wedding.” I hit the end button, pulled up her contact card, and permanently blocked her number. Thirty minutes later, the front door burst open. Rory stormed into the house like a hurricane. He started yelling before his coat was even off. “Victoria, my mother just called you and you blocked her? Are you out of your mind?!” I picked up a ceramic mug with our anniversary photo printed on it and casually tossed it into the moving box. It hit the bottom and shattered into jagged pieces with a sharp crack. Rory’s expression shattered right along with it. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, not looking up. “I won’t be talking to her ever again. Or you, for that matter.” He stared at the box, finally realizing that I wasn’t playing a game. “What exactly are you trying to say?” I dropped the tape dispenser and looked him dead in the eye. “Rory, did you look at the spreadsheet I sent you last night?” He flinched. A flash of genuine discomfort crossed his face. “I glanced at it. It is just the wedding budget, isn’t it?” “No. It is the house and the renovations. Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If you want to keep the house, you buy me out. If you don’t, I will buy you out. The rest of our shared assets are itemized. We split it fifty-fifty.” He stared at me, his eyes wide with shock. “Are you seriously breaking up with me?” “Yes.” “Over getting laid off?” “That is just part of it.” “Then what is the real reason?” I gave him a look of pure disgust. “You know exactly what the reason is.” Panic began to set into his features. “Is this about Sophie? Victoria, I already swore to you, she is just like a little sister to me…” “Rory,” I cut him off, my voice sharp as glass. “I am not an idiot. Save whatever dignity you have left and stop lying.” I turned my back on him, walked into the guest room, and locked the door behind me. 4 He left shortly after that. He didn’t come back that night. I didn’t reach out to him. I had significantly more important things to deal with than a dead romance. Before I was unceremoniously fired, I had been secretly developing an AI-driven marketing agent in my spare time. It had already reached the final beta testing phase. The architecture and the proprietary scripts were entirely mine. I built them on my personal servers on my own time. The company had zero legal claim to them. That aggressive non-compete clause couldn’t actually stop me. Even if I never worked a corporate job again, I could license my software independently and live incredibly comfortably. I had stayed at the company purely out of loyalty. Loyalty to the team I built, and loyalty to Rory. I had just sent out the beta testing portfolio to several major tech firms when my phone rang. It was an old client, Mr. Henderson. I answered, and he was already shouting over the line. “Victoria, the entire backend is throwing 404 errors! You need to remote in and patch this right now!” I kept my voice polite and professional. “Mr. Henderson, I actually no longer work for the company.” “What?!” The shock on the other end was palpable. “Since when?” “Yesterday. I was caught in a restructuring.” He went silent for two full seconds before his anger boiled over. “Are they absolutely insane?! Firing you? Do they want to bankrupt their own business?” I smiled slightly. “Someone else has taken over my role. You will need to contact the current technical team, Mr. Henderson. I am legally restricted from interfering.” He cursed under his breath, said a quick goodbye, and hung up. Ten minutes later, Mr. Davies called. Then Mr. Chen. Then five more major clients. All screaming about the exact same system failure. I knew exactly what was happening. When I packed up my desk yesterday, I purged my personal code modules and my seventeen custom scripts from the company’s servers. A 404 error was just the beginning. The real nightmare hadn’t even started. Once those scripts were gone, the security redundancies would collapse. User data would leak, and financial encryption would fail. Around two in the afternoon, Sophie sent me a text. Hey Victoria, which tool were you using for the automated log updates? I can’t find it in the repository. I built it myself. I took it with me. You took it?! Why? That is corporate technical property! It was my personal IP. It was never registered in the company’s asset library. I just let you guys use it for free for five years out of goodwill. You can ask the legal department if you want. I broke zero laws. She didn’t text back. Half an hour later, my phone rang. It was Sophie. “Victoria, you need to get back to the office right now! The main servers just crashed and users are flooding customer service about data breaches—” “I don’t work there anymore,” I cut her off instantly. “The company’s problems have nothing to do with me. Stop calling my number.” “But you are Rory’s fiancé! How can you just stand by and watch his company burn?!” “Not anymore, I am not. And even if I was, it is not my legal responsibility to fix your mess.” I hung up the phone and blocked her number immediately. The second the call ended, Becky sent me a frantic screenshot. Victoria, the office is a warzone. The client portals are completely down. Users are posting about the data leaks on Twitter and it’s going viral. The company’s stock just dropped two percent. We’ve lost millions in the last hour alone! I zoomed in on the screenshot. It was a chaotic mess of furious clients threatening lawsuits in a massive group chat. I didn’t reply. I just closed the app. Rory called next. “Victoria, why aren’t you at the office yet?!” “Why would I be?” “To fix the damn servers! You pulled the scripts, this is your mess to clean up!” I actually laughed out loud. “I built those scripts. Why wouldn’t I take them with me when I leave?” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Victoria, please, stop acting like this! The company is bleeding cash right now. Can’t you just be the bigger person?” “No. When the company fired me yesterday, nobody was the bigger person.” I hung up and added him to the block list. Five minutes later, the screen lit up again. This time, it was Marcus, the CEO. “Victoria, the situation has become critical. Can you please come down to the office? We need to talk face-to-face.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “444426”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I was on leave at home when my neighbor’s kitchen caught fire. I rushed in right away and pulled him and his wife out. The next day, he called the police and accused me of damaging his fifteen-thousand-dollar imported kitchen cabinet while putting out the fire, demanding I pay for it in full. I didn’t argue and silently cooperated with the investigation. He went around the neighborhood spreading rumors, “Aren’t firefighters supposed to be so rough? Rescuing people is so clumsy!” A month later, his father had a sudden heart attack on the 28th floor. The elevator was out of power, and he couldn’t carry his father. He knelt down and begged me for help. I looked calmly at the stairs and said, “I’m too rough. What if I bump or jostle your dad? I couldn’t afford to pay for that.” 1 I was off duty, doing a set of pushups in my living room, when the smoke detector down the hall started screaming. Pure instinct took over. I bolted to the balcony. Thick, oily black smoke was billowing out of the kitchen window of Unit 1702, diagonally across from mine. “Fire!” someone shrieked from the courtyard below. I didn’t waste a single second thinking. I grabbed the emergency fire axe and extinguisher I kept by my front door and sprinted into the hallway. The neighbor’s door was unlocked. I kicked it wide open. A wall of blistering heat and toxic black smoke slammed into my face, instantly drawing tears to my eyes. “Hello? Is anyone in here!” I shouted over the crackle of flames, dropping low to the ground to avoid the worst of the smoke. “Help… help us…” A weak, raspy voice drifted from the living room. I crawled forward through the smog and spotted two figures collapsed near the sofa. It was my neighbors, Derek and his wife Sarah. They had inhaled a massive amount of smoke. Both were drifting in and out of consciousness, coughing violently against the floorboards. The kitchen fire was completely out of control now. The flames were already licking the expensive cabinetry and inching dangerously close to the main gas line. There was zero time to hesitate. I grabbed them by the collars of their shirts, one in each hand, and used every ounce of strength I had to drag their dead weight toward the front door. “Hold on, I am a firefighter. You are going to be safe.” Combined, they weighed well over three hundred pounds. Dragging them across the hardwood floor felt like pulling concrete blocks. Above us, the heavy chandelier groaned. The intense heat was melting its fixtures, and the glass was beginning to shatter and rain down. I had no choice. I had to use the most brutal, direct method possible to carve a path out of this inferno. As we reached the entryway, a massive chunk of the ceiling gave way. To avoid being crushed, I jerked them hard to the side, throwing my own body weight heavily against the hallway storage cabinets. With a deafening crunch, the imported wooden panels splintered into pieces under my shoulder. I ignored the pain shooting down my arm, gritted my teeth, and hauled them out into the safe, breathable air of the stairwell. Minutes later, my crew from the local firehouse arrived on the scene and quickly suffocated the blaze. I handed a hacking, half-conscious Derek and Sarah over to the paramedics, then slumped against the cold hallway wall, gasping for oxygen. My off-duty clothes were soaked in sweat and coated in toxic soot. Several deep cuts bled down my forearm. Derek finally caught his breath through an oxygen mask. He looked up at me, his eyes full of complex emotions. “Gavin… thank you for this.” I waved a soot-stained hand, my throat burning. “Don’t mention it. Just doing my job.” The very next morning, I was scrubbing the stubborn ash out of my clothes when the doorbell rang. Two uniformed police officers were standing on my welcome mat. “Are you Gavin?” “Yes.” “We received a formal complaint. You are suspected of a property damage offense. We need you to come down to the precinct to answer a few questions.” My brain short-circuited. “Property damage? What are you talking about?” The officer pointed across the hall. “The homeowner, Derek, filed a police report. He claims that during yesterday’s rescue, you intentionally destroyed his custom fifteen-thousand-dollar German cabinetry. He is demanding full compensation.” I stood frozen in my doorway, my blood running completely cold. The man I had literally dragged out of a burning inferno yesterday. The man who had looked me in the eye and thanked me. He had turned around and stabbed me in the back without a single thought. 2 I was escorted to the precinct. Derek and Sarah were sitting right across the interrogation table. Derek looked entirely unapologetic, clutching a printed invoice in his hand. “Officers, that is the guy. He busted into my house yesterday claiming it was a rescue, but he was wrecking the place like a damn demolition crew!” “Look at this. These are the cabinets I just had imported from Germany last year. With shipping and installation, it comes out to exactly fifteen thousand, four hundred dollars.” “He completely smashed them to pieces with his shoulder. He needs to pay for every single cent of this!” Sarah sat next to him, covering her face and forcing out dramatic sobs. “Our home was burning down, and instead of trying to put out the fire, he just roughly dragged us across the floor! Look at the bruises on my arms!” “And those cabinets… that was my anniversary present from my husband. Now it is all ruined…” She peered at me through her fingers, her eyes dripping with accusatory venom. I stared at this twisted couple, feeling a profound sickness settling in the pit of my stomach. The officer taking the statement frowned. “Gavin, can you explain what happened on the scene?” “The kitchen fire had already reached flashpoint. The smoke was banking down fast, filling the entire apartment. Both of them were unconscious on the floor.” “My only priority was getting them out alive. In a life-or-death scenario, avoiding property damage is completely secondary.” I forced my voice to remain steady and professional. “Secondary?” Derek instantly raised his voice, pointing a finger at me. “You call yourself a professional firefighter? Is this how professionals operate?” “You were totally reckless! If you ask me, you are completely unfit for the badge!” “If you don’t pay up today, I am taking this all the way to court!” He slammed the invoice onto the table, looking like an absolute thug. I didn’t bother arguing. There was no point arguing with a parasite. I quietly cooperated with the police, gave my official statement, and signed the paperwork. By the time I walked out of the precinct, the sun had already set. The news spread through my firehouse like wildfire. The Captain called me into his office the next morning. His face was grim. “Gavin, what the hell is going on? You save a life and walk out with a lawsuit?” “Captain, I…” “Hold on.” The Captain waved his hand and let out a heavy sigh. “The homeowner is biting hard on this. He is screaming police brutality and massive property damage.” “The public is extremely sensitive to our conduct right now. This kind of PR is a nightmare for the department.” “According to protocol, until internal affairs clears you, I have to suspend you. You are off the trucks, off the training floor. Desk duty only, starting today.” Suspension. The word felt like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the wind out of me. I walked out of the Captain’s office, feeling the weight of every single stare in the hallway. Some guys looked sympathetic. Some looked confused. But plenty of others had that quiet, mocking smirk that said, ‘Look who finally screwed up.’ “I always knew he was a hothead. Now he’s dragging the whole house down.” “Fifteen grand for cabinets? That neighbor has some serious balls trying to extort him.” “Hey, you never know. Maybe Gavin did go a little crazy in there. He broke it, he should probably buy it.” I went home and collapsed onto my couch. My phone was vibrating off the table. It was the building’s HOA WhatsApp group. Derek and Sarah were putting on a masterclass. They had directly tagged me in front of five hundred residents. Derek posted a high-res photo of the shattered wood panels covering his floor. [Derek @Unit 1701 Gavin: Some people wear the uniform but act like absolute thugs. Breaking people’s property and then refusing to take responsibility?] Sarah immediately followed up with a tearful voice memo. [Sarah: I still have nightmares about yesterday. Not just the fire, but the absolute terror of being violently dragged across the floor like a sack of garbage… We just want a little justice. Is that really too much to ask?] Brenda, the building’s notorious busybody and HOA board member, instantly jumped into the fray. [HOA Board – Brenda: @Unit 1701 Gavin, what exactly is going on here? Helping put out a fire is great, but why did you vandalize their home? And now the police are involved?] The chat exploded. “Oh my god, fifteen thousand dollars for cabinets? Are they made of solid gold?” “Wait, is it a crime to save someone’s life now? These people are insane.” “To be fair, saving a life doesn’t give you a free pass to wreck someone’s house. You break it, you buy it.” “Exactly. If firefighters are just going to trash our homes, who is going to ever let them inside?” To them, my silence was proof of my guilt. Derek and Sarah ramped up their performance. [Derek: BREAKING NEWS! That thug Gavin just got suspended by the fire department! See? Karma always catches up to the wicked!] [Sarah: Thank you Brenda, and thank you to all our wonderful neighbors for supporting us! It is so hard for normal citizens to fight back against the system!] [HOA Board – Brenda: Firefighters with zero professional ethics need to be thoroughly investigated! A suspension is just a slap on the wrist!] I stared at the screen, my hands shaking with pure, unadulterated rage. I started typing out a massive paragraph, ready to expose every single lie they were spinning. But after the first few words, my thumbs stopped. I realized it was completely useless. They didn’t want the truth. They just wanted a witch hunt, and I was the chosen target. I deleted the text and muted the group chat. I walked into my bedroom, took my soot-stained uniform and my fire axe, and locked them in the deepest corner of my closet. 3 The days on suspension were absolute torture. I couldn’t put on my gear, I couldn’t run drills, I couldn’t ride the trucks. A firefighter stripped of his right to fight fires was like a hawk with broken wings. I replayed every single second of that rescue in my head. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that smashing those cabinets was the only tactical choice to keep us alive. I contacted the crew who responded that day and got a copy of the backup footage from my body cam. The video was chaotic. A literal wall of fire, blinding smoke, the horrifying crack of the ceiling giving way. The extreme danger was undeniable. The moment I slammed into the cabinets was a textbook evasive maneuver to dodge the collapsing ceiling structure. I did it to protect my life and theirs. With that concrete evidence in my hands, I finally felt a sliver of hope. I waited quietly for the department’s internal investigation to clear my name. Meanwhile, Derek and Sarah’s circus act was escalating. They weren’t just whining in the group chat anymore. They actually did an interview with a local clickbait news channel on YouTube. In the video, Derek stared right into the camera, looking like a righteous victim. “It was pure jealousy! He saw how nice our apartment was, how we could afford the best things, and he lost his mind!” “He smashed those cabinets on purpose! It wasn’t an accident, it was malicious destruction of property!” Sarah had done her makeup perfectly to look pale and exhausted. She squeezed out a few tears for the lens. “We can’t even sleep in our own home right now. We are stuck renting a cheap motel. The emotional and financial toll is ruining our lives.” “We aren’t asking for him to go to jail. We just want him to pay for the damages he caused and give us a public apology. Is that really so unfair?” The news channel edited the video with dramatic music and a highly inflammatory clickbait title: Hero or Hooligan? Firefighter Wrecks $15K Kitchen During Rescue—Who Foots the Bill? The video went viral locally. The comment section was a cesspool of hatred aimed directly at me. “Are all firefighters this brain-dead now?” “Does saving a life give you a free pass to act like a vandal?” “Suspended? He needs to be fired and stripped of his pension!” I became the epicenter of a massive cyberbullying campaign. Walking through my own building, I could feel the hostile glares tracking my every move. Disgust. Alienation. Whispers behind my back. Once, I ran into Brenda in the elevator. She was holding her little poodle. The second she saw me, she practically pressed herself into the corner like I was carrying the plague. She muttered just loud enough for me to hear. “Some people look like big tough heroes, but they have the morals of a street rat. So disgusting.” My chest felt like it was trapped in a vise. I was the one who ran into the flames. I was the one who pulled them from the jaws of death. So why was I the one standing trial in the court of public opinion? The pressure on the firehouse was reaching a boiling point. The Captain called me into his office again. He looked completely exhausted. “Gavin, the optics on this are getting worse by the hour. The brass is demanding we make this go away.” “Listen… why don’t you just try to settle with him? The house can pass a hat around. We can scrape the money together for you.” “We can’t let this one incident drag the entire department’s reputation through the mud.” He wanted me to buy my own innocence? He wanted me to bow my head and apologize to a greedy, extortionist scumbag? I looked at my Captain, my voice coming out as a harsh rasp. “Captain, if I didn’t break that cabinet, all three of us would have been crushed by a burning ceiling. Are you telling me my life is worth less than some imported wood?” The Captain went silent. After a long, agonizing minute, he reached out and patted my shoulder. “I know you are right. But… damn it.” He didn’t finish the sentence. But I understood. When faced with public outrage and PR nightmares, the integrity of a single rank-and-file firefighter meant absolutely nothing. I sat in the dark that night, staring at the wall until the sun came up. Just as I felt I was completely drowning, a lifeline appeared. Internal Affairs officially took over the case. They reviewed my body cam footage and brought in an expert panel from the State Fire Marshal’s office to analyze the incident. The conclusion was swift and absolute. The expert panel ruled unanimously: Given the extreme flashover conditions, the evasive maneuvers I took were professional, decisive, and entirely justified. Smashing the cabinets fell strictly under emergency hazard avoidance. It was done to preserve the lives of the victims and the rescuer. It was a textbook, lawful operation. As for Derek’s precious fifteen-thousand-dollar cabinets, the investigators pulled the original invoice from the contractor who installed them. The total cost of the cabinets, including labor, was less than three thousand dollars. The invoice Derek had slammed on the police table was a complete forgery. The truth was finally out. I thought this nightmare was over. I thought I could finally put my gear back on and get back to my life. But I severely underestimated Derek’s absolute lack of shame. When he found out about the official ruling, he didn’t back down. He actually doubled down and went completely rabid. He flooded the HOA group chat with insane conspiracy theories. [Derek: Unbelievable! The system is totally corrupt! You think a bunch of government fire experts are going to side with a normal citizen?] [Derek: So what if I bumped the invoice up? That covers the depreciation value! And emotional distress! You idiots know nothing about the law!] [Sarah: My husband is just too honest. That is why these bureaucrats feel like they can crush us! We are victims!] They actually rallied a bunch of their relatives, marched down to my firehouse, and staged a protest. They unfurled a massive white banner with bold black letters: Violent Rescue, Demand Justice! They sat right in front of the bay doors, wailing and screaming, attracting a massive crowd of pedestrians with their phones out. It escalated from a simple dispute into a full-blown hostage situation against the department’s public image. The brass was in a total panic. The official statement clearing my name, which had already been drafted and approved, was quietly shelved. The Captain pulled me aside, his face grim. “Gavin, these people are absolute lunatics. They won’t listen to reason.” “He told the brass that unless we cut him a massive check, he is going to protest here every single day and take this to the state governor.” “The chiefs had a meeting. We are going to transfer you to the logistics warehouse for now. Just until the heat dies down. We will figure it out later.” Logistics. That was the graveyard of a firefighter’s career. Desk duty. Counting inventory. It meant I would never hold a hose again. I would never step foot in the arena again. I stared at the Captain, pronouncing every word with agonizing clarity. “The official investigation completely cleared me. Didn’t it?” The Captain nodded slowly. “Yes. It did.” “Then why am I the one getting exiled?” “Gavin, I am begging you. Take one for the team. Take the hit so the department can breathe.” My heart plummeted to the floor. So this was it. Justice and truth were completely irrelevant when faced with a loud enough liar. I didn’t argue. I just nodded and accepted the orders. Later that afternoon, I packed my locker into a duffel bag, getting ready to head over to the logistics warehouse. Just as I walked out of the barracks, my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I picked it up. A voice on the other end was screaming in absolute, unfiltered panic. It was Derek. “Gavin! Get over here! You have to come right now!” “My dad… my dad is dying!” Before I could even process what he was saying, his voice broke into a hysterical sob. “He is having a massive heart attack! We are on the 28th floor! The building’s power just went out, the elevators are dead! I can’t carry him down!” “Please! Gavin! You have to help us! You are the only one who can carry him down the stairs!” The sheer terror and desperation in his voice was a jarring contrast to the arrogant thug who had tried to ruin my life just yesterday. I stood perfectly still on the pavement, my grip tightening on my phone. Through the receiver, I could hear Sarah screaming in the background, and the muffled voice of a 911 dispatcher telling them they needed to get him downstairs immediately. “Gavin! Are you there?! I will get on my knees right now! I will beg you!” “I was wrong! I was completely out of my mind! I don’t want your money! I don’t care about the cabinets! Just forget all of it!” “Please save my dad! Please!” I looked up at the towering high-rises dominating the city skyline in the distance. Twenty-eight floors. No elevators. Carrying a dying man down twenty-eight flights of stairs wasn’t just about brute strength. It required professional technique, perfect pacing, and an iron will. One wrong step, one jerky movement, could trigger a fatal cardiac event. And out of everyone in that entire apartment complex, I was the absolute only person physically and professionally capable of doing it. I took a slow, deep breath, suppressing the storm of emotions raging inside me. Then, speaking into the receiver with a terrifying, ice-cold calmness, I said: “I am way too rough.” “What if I accidentally bump him against a wall? I definitely can’t afford to pay you for the damages.”

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My wife and I were reborn at our own wedding, ten years in the past. Without a word of explanation, we both defied our families and friends, both demanding the ceremony be called off. After we went our separate ways, she wasted no time getting with another guy who’d been chasing her, and they moved overseas together. I kept my head down, grinding away as a simple programmer. Ten years later. Her new boyfriend had become a rising star in the international business world, a celebrated mogul with a future brighter than the sun. And I, in everyone else’s eyes, was still just a programmer at the same old company. She leaned into her man’s arms, a vision of sultry success, and looked down her nose at me. “Ten years, Finn, and you’re still the same dead-end programmer. Thank God I had the sense to cut my losses when I did.” I couldn’t be bothered with her smug, triumphant act. Not until my wife, a world champion, gently looped her arm through mine. That’s when Lydia shattered the wine glass in her hand. “Finn! I’m your wife! How could you let another woman touch you?” 1 We met again at the funeral of our old university professor, a decade after our rebirth. Lydia’s husband now was Grayson, the hotshot business mogul who’d just returned to the country. A crowd of fawning admirers buzzed around him, making him the undisputed center of attention. The service was about to start, but the funeral home’s A/V equipment was on the fritz. To keep things from falling behind schedule, I was crouched by the stage, troubleshooting the system. That’s when Lydia and Grayson made their grand entrance. A flock of our old classmates practically tripped over themselves to greet them, completely ignoring the somber setting. “Grayson, you’re a legend! Building an empire at such a young age.” “Heard you’re back to expand into the domestic market, Grayson. Don’t forget about us old friends, huh?” “Totally! I always knew you were different back in school. A cut above the rest.” “And Lydia, you haven’t aged a day! You look like you just stepped off campus. What a power couple.” Lydia couldn’t hide the smile blooming on her face. “Oh, you guys are too kind.” Seeing how much she lapped up the praise, the crowd doubled down, each person trying to outdo the other in their flattery. I rose from behind the console of equipment. “Could you show some respect? This is a funeral. Your racket is completely out of line.” Lydia’s brow furrowed the moment she saw me. “What is he doing here?” Most of the people here were old classmates. They knew that Lydia and I had been reborn at our wedding and had promptly, wordlessly, cancelled the whole thing. They knew our history. “Isn’t that Finn? What’s he doing behind the tech booth? Still a programmer after all these years?” “Man, to think you and Lydia were almost married. Look at you two now. Worlds apart.” A flicker of discomfort crossed Lydia’s face. She shot a nervous glance at Grayson. “That’s all in the past. Let’s not talk about it.” At her cue, everyone shut up and quickly changed the subject. I gave the equipment a final check, and seeing everything was working, I stepped back into the crowd. As I approached, Grayson let out a cold snort. “Still slinging code at that same little company, huh?” His words were a signal, and the pack pounced. “Yeah, Finn. Ten years and you’re still stuck in the same place?” “No wonder you never show up to the reunions. If my life were that pathetic, I’d hide too.” “Exactly. Lydia and Grayson missed them because they were overseas building an empire. You missed them because you’re a nobody.” I looked up. Lydia was dressed in a designer gown, a limited edition piece that probably cost more than a car. Her hair was swept up loosely, with a few tendrils framing her face, their tips brushing against a pair of diamond earrings. Every move she made oozed a calculated sensuality. Grayson stood beside her in a bespoke black suit, a watch on his wrist that screamed wealth. Together, they looked like they’d stepped right out of a luxury magazine. A perfect, untouchable pair. The barbed comments kept coming, and I shot them all an irritated look. “This is a funeral. Try to have a shred of decency for the man we’re here to honor. If you want to kiss their asses, wait until the service is over.” My words were blunt, and Lydia’s face tightened, ready to snap back. But Grayson held up a hand, stopping her. “Finn’s right. Let’s honor the professor.” He then turned his attention to me. “Look, the Dean mentioned we’re all getting dinner tonight. You should come.” “My new hotel is having its grand opening, so we’ll go there. It’s on me. It’s been too long since we all got together.” I was about to refuse, but then I remembered the Dean had called me last night. He’d specifically mentioned this dinner, telling me several senior faculty members wanted to meet me and that I absolutely had to be there. While I hesitated, Grayson’s voice cut in again, laced with a challenge. “What’s the matter? Too good for my invitation? Or are you afraid to show up?” I raised an eyebrow. Afraid? “In that case, I’d be honored. Thanks for footing the bill, Grayson.” My acceptance seemed to satisfy them, and the murmuring finally died down, allowing the funeral to proceed. As Lydia and Grayson walked past me to lay flowers, Lydia paused, her gaze dripping with condescension. “Look at you, Finn. Just look at the pathetic mess you’ve become.” Her voice was a low, venomous whisper. “If you had just listened to me, you wouldn’t be stuck as a dead-end programmer for the rest of your life, scraping by on a few thousand a month, struggling just to get by.” “We’re on different paths now, Finn. We have been for a long time.” Watching them walk away, I got lost in thought. Different paths? She had no idea. In our first life, Lydia and I met in college. We were each other’s first love. After graduation, we got married, just as everyone expected, and started our life together. But that simple, happy life didn’t last. Everything changed when Grayson returned from overseas. He had pursued Lydia relentlessly in college, but she’d chosen me. So, after we got married, he left the country. Just like in this life, he returned a decade later, a self-made tycoon, dripping with success. At the reunion party thrown to welcome him back, the way Lydia looked at him had changed. I tried to tell myself I was imagining things, that Lydia wasn’t the type of woman to betray our vows. But after that party, she quit her job. The collection of designer bags and clothes in our closet started to grow exponentially. On the day we were reborn, she hadn’t come home all night. When she finally did, her neck was covered in the faint, unmistakable marks of passion. That’s when we had our final, explosive fight. She threw her new Hermès bag right at my head. “I must have been blind to choose you, Finn!” she screamed, her face twisted with rage. “So what if I cheated? Look at this bag! Your entire pathetic salary for a year couldn’t even buy this! I’m sick of this miserable life!” Staring at her distorted face, all I felt was a deep, chilling sorrow. The truth was, our life wasn’t miserable. We owned our own home in a decent city, had a reliable car. My salary was more than comfortable, and with no kids, we lived well. But Grayson’s return had shown her a bigger, shinier world, and she’d gotten a taste of wealth and status. I could understand wanting a better life, but I could never accept her betrayal. After her tirade, she stormed out. She was so agitated, I was afraid she’d do something reckless, so I ran out after her. Maybe it was the guilt of being caught, but she couldn’t calm down. We were arguing on the street when an out-of-control truck came barreling towards us. The next thing I knew, we were both waking up, ten years in the past, at our own wedding. Even with everyone watching, we acted in perfect, unspoken agreement, cancelling the ceremony on the spot. After we split, she seamlessly transitioned into a relationship with Grayson, and they left for Europe together. And I went back to being a programmer, continuing down my path of software development. The only difference between this life and the last was that I was no longer just a “simple programmer.” I had a ten-year head start on the rest of the world. A decade of foresight. After the rebirth, I saw the coming storm of short-form video. I developed what is now the world’s most popular social media app, and my first move was to acquire the very company I used to work for. Once the money started pouring in, I began donating to my old university—new equipment, entire buildings, and a scholarship fund for underprivileged students. It was where my dream began; giving back felt natural. But I was always buried in work and hated the spotlight, so I never attended any of the university’s ceremonies or thank-you events. Besides the Dean and a few top administrators, no one knew who I really was. Today was the professor’s funeral. The Dean had called me last night, and after turning him down so many times, I finally agreed to his dinner invitation. Running into Lydia and Grayson was not part of the plan. But since it happened… I wasn’t the one who did something wrong. I wasn’t the one who should be hiding. After the funeral, the group headed for the hotel. Grayson and Lydia walked out, surrounded by their sycophants. A sleek, low-slung sports car was parked right at the entrance, and they headed straight for it. Gasps of awe rippled through the crowd. “What a machine. Only the best for Grayson.” “Isn’t that a limited edition? Of course he’s already got one.” “If I could own a car like that, I could die happy.” I tuned out their pathetic bootlicking and walked over to a row of shareable e-scooters. The World Championships had just ended, and today was the day my champion wife was flying home. After my driver dropped me at the funeral home, I’d sent him to the airport to pick her up. The hotel wasn’t far. A scooter was faster and would let me zip through traffic. Just as I reached the scooter bank, Grayson’s smug voice sounded behind me. “Seriously, Finn? All these years and you still can’t afford a car?” “A guy your age, riding a public scooter? I’m almost embarrassed for you.” “You know what, why don’t you ride with me? I’ll give you a lift.” He paused dramatically. “On second thought, never mind. Don’t want to get my seats dirty.” I unlocked a scooter and glided over to him, giving him a lazy, sidelong glance. “A car’s a tool, man. No matter how fancy yours is, we’re ending up at the same place. So stop barking. It’s annoying.” Without waiting for a response, I sped off. Halfway down the block, a thought occurred to me. I stopped, turned back, and grinned at Grayson’s thunderous expression. “Oh, and by the way, since your car is so precious, you probably shouldn’t drive it. You should carry it to the hotel, Grayson. Wouldn’t want it to get dirty.” …

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My phone buzzed relentlessly. It was the elite kindergarten’s parent group chat. Miss Collins, the head teacher, had tagged me with a photo attached. “Blair’s Mom, Blair was involved in a physical altercation in the classroom. You need to come to the school immediately.” My heart dropped into my stomach. I tapped the image. My sweet, tiny daughter was battered. Her face was bruised and swollen, and dried blood stained her pristine uniform collar. My fingers flew across the screen, trembling with rage. “Who did this?” A woman saved in my contacts as “Jax’s Mom” replied almost instantly. Her tone practically dripped with arrogance through the screen. “I told my son to do it.” Before I could even process the audacity of her confession, two more photos popped up in the chat. The first was a professional wedding portrait of her and my husband. The second was a candid family photo of me, my daughter, and my husband. “You filthy homewrecker,” her next message read. “Did you really think you could steal my husband and pop out a bastard child without consequences? You’re lucky I didn’t tell my boy to beat that little rat to death.” The group chat exploded. Notifications poured in like a landslide, every single parent dogpiling on me and my daughter with vicious insults. I grabbed my keys and sprinted to my car. While the engine roared to life, I sent a voice memo straight to my corporate legal team. “Execute the infidelity clause in the prenup. Draft the divorce papers. Chace leaves with absolutely nothing.” I took a sharp breath, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. “And someone assaulted my daughter. No settlements. No mediation. I want them destroyed.” A penniless gold-digger who married into my family really thought he could keep a side piece and a secret kid on my dime? When I pulled up to the extravagant wrought-iron gates of the kindergarten, I spotted her immediately. Jax’s mom. Vanessa. She was holding court near the entrance, surrounded by a flock of desperate, social-climbing mothers from Blair’s class. “Vanessa, you kept that so quiet! If this hadn’t happened, we never would have guessed your husband is the CEO of Apex Holdings,” one mother cooed, practically drooling over Vanessa’s designer handbag. “Right? I knew you had an aura of old money the second I met you,” another chimed in. “We came out specifically to support you today. We’re respectable women. We can’t let some trashy mistress walk all over you.” “Exactly! The mistress’s brat deserved it. Jax is truly the young heir to Apex Holdings. Taking out the trash at such a young age, what a brave boy!” Even Miss Collins, the teacher who was supposed to protect my child, was busy kissing up to her. “I am so sorry, Mrs. Kensington,” the teacher simpered. “If I had known you were the CEO’s wife, I never would have scolded Jax. Please rest assured, I will handle this matter to your absolute satisfaction.” Vanessa soaked up the flattery like a sponge, tilting her chin up as if she were royalty. Chace had been a nobody for years. After we married, I handed him the reins to Apex Holdings, our family’s smallest subsidiary, just to give him something to do and pad his resume. I never imagined it would become the very currency this woman used to buy her little army of sycophants. The moment they noticed me walking up, the sickeningly sweet smiles vanished from the parents’ faces. They looked at me like I was a piece of garbage stuck to their designer shoes. Miss Collins marched right up to me, her face hardening into a cold sneer. “Blair’s Mom, the director has instructed me to inform you that as of today, Blair is officially expelled.” I locked eyes with the teacher, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “My daughter gets beaten on your watch, and instead of protecting her, you expel her?” The teacher rolled her eyes dismissively. “This is an exclusive preparatory academy. Every child here comes from power and wealth. Keeping a bastard child born to a mistress will only poison our school’s reputation.” My expression turned glacial. “I highly suggest you do a background check and find out exactly who the mistress is in this situation.” The words barely left my mouth before Vanessa lunged forward. Her palm cracked across my cheek with a blinding force. “You cheap whore,” she spat, her face twisted in ugly triumph. “You think you can strut around in front of the actual wife? You think popping out a little bastard gives you the right to steal my spot?” The sudden violence left my ears ringing. Before I could regain my balance, the other mothers started throwing verbal daggers. “Look at her. Dressed so nice, but she spreads her legs for married men.” “It’s always the quiet ones. They see a billionaire and suddenly they forget how to keep their knees together.” “Mistresses are a disgrace to women. And their spawn are even worse.” The commotion drew a massive crowd of onlookers from the street. People pointed, whispered, and pulled out their phones to record me. Someone actually spit at my feet. I calmly unbuttoned my custom tailored blazer, ruined by the scuffle, and dropped the twenty thousand dollar garment directly into a nearby trash can. Then I turned to face Vanessa. “You are causing a public riot and committing assault,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Are you really not afraid of the police?” Vanessa threw her head back and laughed. “The only one who belongs behind bars is you! I’m serving justice. Why should I be afraid?” She crossed her arms, smirking. “My husband runs Apex Holdings. I could take your miserable lives right now, and he would still make it go away.” The chorus of sycophants nodded in frantic agreement. “If you weren’t sleeping with her husband, she wouldn’t have hit you. You brought this on yourself.” “You should be groveling on your knees, begging for forgiveness. One slap was a mercy.” Vanessa’s eyes suddenly darted past me, landing on my parked car. Her eyes narrowed with pure, unadulterated jealousy. “You leech,” she hissed. “Spending my husband’s hard earned money without a second thought. A Rolls-Royce? A piece of trash like you doesn’t deserve a car like this.” She marched over to my vehicle, pulled a jagged house key from her designer purse, and violently dragged it across the glossy paint. The metal shrieked. She carved a massive, ugly phrase into the driver’s side door. “WHORE.” I glanced at the ruined paintwork and let out a dry, hollow laugh. “You are going to realize very soon just how ironic that word is.” My calmness pushed her over the edge. “Still running your mouth? Still mocking me?” she screamed. “I’ll make you spit out every single dime you drained from my husband!” She grabbed a heavy brick from a nearby landscaping planter and hurled it straight into the windshield. Glass shattered, raining down on the pavement. She didn’t stop. The headlights, the hood, the mirrors. She smashed everything in sight. Seeing her go feral, the other mothers decided they wanted a piece of the action. They grabbed loose stones, umbrellas, whatever they could find, and started bashing my car. One of them actually climbed inside through the broken window to slash the hand stitched leather seats. In a matter of minutes, a half million dollar luxury vehicle was reduced to a pile of scrap metal. I watched the frenzy with eyes as cold as dead winter. “I hope you all feel this enthusiastic when the bill comes due.” Nobody cared. They were too drunk on the thrill of destroying things. Suddenly, one of the women popped the trunk open and let out a loud gasp. “Look at this! She’s got a bunch of fancy stuff stashed back here!” Vanessa strutted over, dragging a large, framed painting out of the trunk. She sneered at the canvas. “A woman who sells her body for cash wants to pretend she appreciates fine art? How pathetic.” I took a step forward, my voice hardening. “The contents of that trunk are worth substantially more than the car. I highly advise you to put that down.” Those items were fresh from an exclusive Sotheby’s auction. I had just secured them when I got the text from the school, rushing over before I even had the chance to transport them to the vault. Vanessa’s face twisted with spite. “Trash like you doesn’t deserve beautiful things.” She slammed the painting over her knee, snapping the antique wooden frame, then ripped the canvas right down the middle. She threw the shredded pieces onto the dirty pavement and stomped on them with her high heels. An older man in the crowd, who looked like an art appraiser, suddenly went pale. “My god,” he stammered. “That… that looked like an authentic Renaissance master sketch. The opening bid on something like that is at least forty million dollars!” Vanessa didn’t even blink. “Forty million? So what? It’s my husband’s money anyway! I can destroy my own property if I want to!” Her sheer stupidity left me speechless. First of all, Chace was a nobody who married into my wealth. Secondly, even with the title of CEO, his gross incompetence had caused Apex Holdings to lose nearly half its market value. If he wasn’t legally tied to me, I would have fired him months ago. Yet these women were treating him like a god of Wall Street. Spurred on by Vanessa’s boldness, the other mothers began ripping boxes out of the trunk, smashing priceless ceramics and tearing up historical documents just for the fun of it. I couldn’t waste another second on these lunatics. My only priority was my daughter. I ignored the chaos and marched toward the kindergarten entrance. Suddenly, Director Pritchard, the head of the school, stepped out to block my path. He looked at me like I was a diseased rat. “Do you honestly think someone of your status is allowed on our prestigious grounds?” “I want my daughter,” I demanded, my tone lethal. The director scoffed. “She’s been expelled. The staff is gathering her belongings. She’ll be out shortly.” Right as he finished speaking, the heavy doors opened. A staff member literally shoved Blair out the door, tossing her backpack right after her. My little girl hit the concrete hard, bursting into terrified sobs. I rushed forward, dropping to my knees to gather her into my arms. I glared up at the director, venom in my veins. “Is this how your academy treats young children?” He looked down his nose at me. “She is the offspring of a homewrecker. We are simply taking out the societal trash. Is there a problem?” The parents clapped and cheered. “Director Pritchard is a man of morals!” “Exactly! We can’t let stray dogs mix with purebreds.” “She doesn’t need school. Just teach her how to seduce rich men, that’s clearly the family business!” Vanessa sauntered over, completely high on power. “See this? This is what happens when you cross the line. You and your little rat will spend the rest of your lives at the bottom of the food chain, exactly where you belong.” Director Pritchard turned to Vanessa, bowing slightly with a greasy smile. “Mrs. Kensington, if you are satisfied with how we handled this, perhaps you could put in a good word for our school with your husband? We are looking to expand, and the land adjacent to us is owned by Apex Holdings.” Vanessa crossed her arms, playing the benevolent queen. “Don’t worry. You did well today. I’ll have him sign the deed over to you.” The director practically glowed. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Kensington!” The other parents swarmed her again, shoving business cards and gifts into her hands. “My husband’s firm would love an exclusive contract with Apex…” “Please take this black card for our family’s luxury department store, completely unlimited…” Vanessa basked in the worship. She looked down at me, her eyes filled with toxic pity. “This is power. You thought spreading your legs would buy you a ticket to the top? I am the true wife. You will never touch this kind of glory.” She leaned in close. “I’ll give you twenty four hours. Pack your bags, take your bastard, and get out of this city. If I ever see you near my husband again, I will bury your kid alive.” Blair whimpered, burying her tear streaked face into my neck. “Mommy, it hurts. I’m scared.” Her voice was raw, trembling with a trauma no child should ever know. I pulled her back slightly to check her injuries. Beneath her torn sweater, her tiny arms were covered in vicious, bloody scratches. They weren’t just scrapes. Someone had dug into her skin with a pair of sharp craft scissors. The sight of her mangled skin broke something inside me. My vision blurred with red hot, agonizing tears. I looked up at Vanessa, a murderous aura radiating from my bones. “Your son did this?” She examined her manicured nails, utterly bored. “Don’t be so dramatic. You should be thanking me he didn’t aim for the throat.” The mob backed her up immediately. “She’s still breathing, isn’t she? Stop crying like a victim.” “You knew the risks when you decided to be a whore.” The director smiled down at a chubby, arrogant looking boy standing next to Vanessa. “Jax is a natural born leader. Rooting out evil! I’ll make sure he gets an award at assembly tomorrow.” The brat puffed out his chest. “I’ll beat her up every time I see her!” I was shaking violently, not from fear, but from a rage so pure it felt like ice in my veins. “Every single one of you,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise like a scythe. “You are going to regret this.” The crowd erupted into hysterical laughter. “Is she delusional?” “She’s powerless. Just a barking dog.” “If I were her, I’d throw myself into traffic out of pure embarrassment.” The insults rained down. The crowd mocked me, spat at me, pointed their cameras at my crying child. Vanessa stood tall, the conquering hero, a sickening grin plastered across her face. Then, the low, powerful rumble of engines cut through the chaos.

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I woke up five years in the future. Married to my ex-boyfriend, who was now a titan of industry. And pregnant with his child. But he seemed to despise me. When I tried to cook for him, he wouldn’t touch the food. “What did you lace it with this time?” When I offered myself to him, he just sneered. “Trying to get me in the mood just so you can shove another woman into my bed again?” I begged him to let us be a happy family of three. He looked at me like a wounded animal. “Are you trying to humiliate me with this baby again?” Goddammit. You’re telling me the baby isn’t even his? 1 Last night, Cole had gone at it until the early hours of the morning. The insatiable beast. He nearly took me apart. “Cole!” I called out habitually. “Get me a glass of water.” Silence. No one answered. The silk sheet slid off my body as I sat up, revealing the slinky nightdress I had on. For all his rough handling last night, there wasn’t a single mark on my skin. Wait a second. I stared down at my stomach in shock. What was this… gentle curve? I… was pregnant? The room was unfamiliar, a minimalist palette of white and gray, with luxury whispering from every detail. But I could have sworn… last night, I was with Cole in his tiny rental apartment. The rickety wooden bed had creaked and groaned under his relentless assault all night long… 2 In a panic, I instinctively dialed Cole’s number. “What is it?” His voice was cold. I bit my lip, feeling a rush of confusion and hurt. “Where did you go?” “The office.” “The auto shop?” A pause. Cole’s voice came back through the line, laced with an unnerving chill. “Are you planning to use my past against me again?” “What past?” I was completely baffled. “Don’t you work at the auto shop?” “And another thing, last night we were in your apartment. How did I end up…” Beep… beep… beep… Before I could finish, the line went dead. Cole had hung up on me. That bastard! I cursed under my breath. Just as I was about to call him back, my eyes froze on the screen. The year… was 2030. Five years in the future. My gaze drifted numbly to my rounded belly. The horrifying realization dawned on me: I had somehow time-traveled five years forward. And I was pregnant. An old photograph sat on the nightstand. It showed a vibrant, dolled-up me, standing next to a ruggedly handsome Cole in a tank top. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I redialed his number. “Cole, we’re married, right?” “How many years has it been?” “How did my dad ever agree to let me marry you?” I was desperate to understand what had happened in those five years. But Cole seemed to hear something else entirely. He let out a bitter laugh. “Stella, are you trying to tell me you regret it all over again? This is the third time this month you’ve brought up divorce.” He paused. “And I’ve told you before, I won’t agree to it.” 3 “Who said anything about a divorce?” I asked, stunned. That face, that body, that… stamina. And now he was loaded? Why in the world would I want to divorce him? The other end of the line was silent. So silent I could hear the sudden hitch in his breathing. After a long moment, he said flatly, “Do whatever you want.” And before I could say another word, he hung up again. Seriously? When did this man get so moody? I probably spoiled him. You can’t spoil men. Knowing I was in my own home, at least, brought a small measure of relief. I decided to change and go downstairs. But when I opened the closet, I froze. It was an explosion of gaudy colors. Each outfit was tackier than the last. Ugh. This was my future self’s taste? I managed to find a relatively simple dress and slipped it on, then padded downstairs in my slippers. To my surprise, I found a familiar face in the living room. “Martha?” I cried out in delight. Martha had been our family’s housekeeper for over twenty years. Seeing someone I knew and trusted in this strange future was a huge comfort. “Perfect timing,” I said, linking my arm through hers warmly. “I was just about to cook a meal for Cole. With you teaching me, I know I can do it.” Martha’s expression was complicated. She hesitated, then whispered, “Ma’am… are you planning on making things difficult for Mr. Donovan again?” Making things difficult? Considering my disastrous cooking skills, that wasn’t an exaggeration. She tried to say more, but I cut her off. “I know Cole. Even if it tastes awful, he’ll force himself to eat every last bite.” 4 In the kitchen, I casually tried to pump her for information about the last five years. Five years ago, I had defied my family to marry Cole. After the wedding, he quit his job and started his own business to give me a better life. My father, despite his disdain for his penniless son-in-law, had secretly provided a lot of support in the early days. And Cole had more than proven himself. In just five years, he had transformed from a poor kid into one of the brightest rising stars in Crestwood. According to Martha, his wealth and status now far surpassed my father’s. “It’s just…” Martha began, her voice trailing off as she helped me with a chicken soup. “Ma’am, are you still seeing that boy, Jax?” “Jax?” I asked, stirring a pot distractedly. “Who’s that?” Martha looked stunned. “Your… boyfriend.” I nearly choked on my own saliva. Our eyes met. “I’ve been cheating?” Martha nodded, her face a mask of sorrow. “He’s a mechanic, too. You were so insistent on the divorce, you wanted to…” Her words were cut short by the sound of footsteps at the door. Martha fell silent instantly. I turned around and saw him. The Cole of five years later. His long legs were encased in tailored slacks, the cuffs of his dress shirt unbuttoned to the second button, giving him an air of rugged maturity. He was leaner now, his features sharper. Even knowing he was my legal husband, the sight of him still made me blush. “You’re… home.” “Yeah.” So cold. But then again, I was cheating on him with a younger guy. Why would he be nice to me? Taking a deep breath, I plastered a smile on my face and braced myself to clean up my future self’s mess. “You must be tired. Why don’t you wait outside? Dinner’s almost ready.” Cole’s eyes scanned the loose apron tied over my pregnant belly. His tone was flat. “I’m not hungry.” With that, he switched on the kitchen’s ventilation fan and turned to leave. “Cole!” I grabbed a spatula and hurried after him, my voice turning into an involuntary whine. “It’s almost done. I made all your favorites. Just try a little, please?” “I’m not hungry,” he repeated, and walked out. Beside me, Martha asked timidly, “Ma’am, should I… finish the food?” I sighed. “Yeah, let’s finish it.” 5 Dinner was ready. Four simple, home-cooked dishes and a soup. Cole, who had claimed he wasn’t hungry, was now sitting at the dining table. This is a good sign, I thought, and quickly placed a shrimp in his bowl. “Ma’am,” Martha whispered urgently from beside me, “Mr. Donovan is allergic to shrimp.” Damn it. I quickly snatched it back and replaced it with a piece of braised pork. But Cole didn’t move his chopsticks. He leaned back in his chair, watching me with a cool, detached amusement. “Go on. Tell me.” “What did you put in the food this time?” I stared at him, dumbfounded. “I didn’t…” Cole cut me off with a cynical drawl. “You’ve cooked twice this year. The first time, you put laxatives in my food. The second time, it was sleeping pills. All because I wouldn’t agree to a divorce. So, Stella, what is it this time?” I looked at him in disbelief, utterly speechless. “I really didn’t put anything in it.” To prove it, I frantically picked up a piece of meat and shoved it into my mouth. “See? It’s not poisoned…” “Ugh…” Cole’s face darkened. He reached out and tried to pry the food out of my mouth. “Fine, I’ll eat it, okay?” he snapped. “I’d eat it even if it was poisoned. You don’t have to do this.” I pushed his hand away and swallowed the chunk of meat whole. “It’s not poisoned, it’s just… really bad.” It had a greasy, gamey taste. Cole stared at me for a long moment. Then he sat back down. I could have sworn I saw the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile. He finally picked up his chopsticks. I watched his face intently. Sure enough, the moment the food touched his lips, even the stoic Cole couldn’t help but frown. But he had grown up poor. As bad as it was, he ate almost everything. Seeing him in a better mood, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. “Cole, I need to talk to you tonight.” His hand, holding the chopsticks, froze. “I’m busy.” His expression turned cold again. He set his chopsticks down with a sharp clatter. “I have to work late. We can talk some other time.” 6 I sat at the table, chin in my hands, lamenting my terrible luck. Five years of my life were a complete blank. It was no different from having my life cut short by five years. And on top of that, I had to clean up my future self’s messes and win back my husband. This new CEO version of Cole was moody and unpredictable, his temper turning on a dime. I sighed. Martha hesitated before asking, “Ma’am, are you… still planning on asking for a divorce tonight?” I blinked. “You thought I wanted to talk to him about a divorce?” “Well… yes, didn’t you?” Martha murmured, confused. “For the past year, you’ve been dead set on divorcing him. Every time you see him, you’re either forcing him to sign the papers or begging him to let you go.” I thought back to the ugly look on Cole’s face just now. So that was it. He had shut down and claimed he was busy because he was afraid I was going to bring up divorce again? That fool. 7 Cole worked in his study late into the night. I was dozing off waiting for him when I heard footsteps outside my door. They moved through the moonlit hallway and stopped right outside. Sleep vanished instantly. I grabbed my pillow and got out of bed. When I pulled the door open, I was met with Cole’s startled, vulnerable gaze. He froze, then slowly lowered the unlit cigarette from his fingers. “Cole,” I whispered. He gave me a complicated look, then rubbed his temples with a grimace. “I’m exhausted. Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow.” He turned to leave again. Gritting my teeth, I followed him, pillow tucked under one arm, and looped my other arm through his. Cole went rigid. I looked up at him. “I don’t want to sleep alone. I’m scared.” He turned his head away. Another rejection. “I have to work. I’m too tired.” “I won’t bother you,” I promised sincerely. “I’ll just sleep next to you. I won’t do anything. You won’t even know I’m there.” Cole didn’t speak, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob. “Fine,” he muttered. I happily followed him into his room with my pillow. The room was spartan. For a CEO, his room was surprisingly bare—just a bed, a wardrobe, and nothing else. Oh. And an old photo of me on his nightstand. I was about to take a closer look when Cole snatched it and stuffed it under his pillow. “I’ve been having nightmares,” he said gruffly. “The picture on the nightstand… it wards off evil spirits.” Right. Keep telling yourself that. Cole lay down with his back to me, clearly ignoring me. I hesitated for a moment, then slid in beside him and wrapped my arms around his waist. The next second, he flung my hand off. He rolled over to face me, his features cast in a sliver of moonlight, his expression utterly heartbroken. “Stella,” he whispered. “Are you just trying to seduce me so you can push another woman into our bed again?” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to suppress a wave of raw emotion. “You went through all that trouble, again and again, just to leave me… just to go to him?” I was completely stunned. My heart ached for him. What on earth had I done to him over these past five years? I didn’t know how to explain, so I just reached for his hand. “Cole, can you please just trust me? I don’t want a divorce. We have a baby on the way. From now on, let’s just be a family, the three of us. Okay?” But my words seemed to strike a nerve deep inside him. He pushed me away, his whole body trembling. The anguish in his eyes was so thick it was about to overflow. “Stella, are you going to use this baby to humiliate me again?” Humiliate him? I suddenly remembered Martha’s hesitant, unfinished sentences. A terrible premonition crept into my heart. Oh, God. Don’t tell me… the baby isn’t even Cole’s. 8 I was so shocked I could barely speak. Cole wouldn’t look at me. He gathered his blankets, stood up, and prepared to sleep in another room. “Cole!” I finally found my voice. “I need to tell you something. It’s going to sound crazy…” “I’m from five years in the past. The night before I woke up here, I was with you in your old apartment. You were… a real bastard that night. We did it seven times.” “But that’s not the point. The point is, I went to sleep and woke up five years in the future.” I licked my lips, feeling his disbelieving stare on me, and nervously finished my sentence. “The person who cheated… that was the future me. The real me… I love you.” Dead silence. Cole stood there, his face unreadable, until the silence could no longer contain his fury. “Stella.” “Yes,” I answered quickly. “I’m listening.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “So, the cheater was the future you, not the you standing in front of me right now, the one who just came from five years ago after sleeping with me in my apartment?” I nodded vigorously. “Yes!” If only he would believe me. But then Cole started to laugh. It was a cold, mocking sound. “Do I look like an idiot to you?” He pried my fingers from his sleeve, clutched his blankets, and walked out. “Get some sleep.” The door closed softly behind him, but the sound was deafening. I sat on the edge of the bed, dejected. I guess he had a point. If the roles were reversed, if Cole had cheated on me repeatedly and then told me it was his future self and that he had time-traveled from the past and wanted to start over… I’d probably slap him twice. Are you playing me for a fool? 9 I barely slept a wink. The next morning, I came downstairs with dark circles under my eyes. Cole had already left for work. Martha coaxed me into eating some breakfast. After much thought, I made a decision. I was going to the hospital. To get rid of this baby. I learned from Martha that Cole and I hadn’t slept together in almost a year. That meant this child could not possibly be his. I didn’t know why my future self had done what she did. But this baby could not stay. I made an appointment with an OB-GYN. However, just as my car turned off the main road onto a quieter street, a motorcycle screeched to a halt, cutting me off. The rider was a young man in cargo pants and a black t-shirt. For a split second, he looked just like the Cole I used to know. But when he took off his helmet, the face was completely unfamiliar. Handsome, rebellious, and unapologetically arrogant. He walked up to my car and tapped on the window with his knuckle. I could read his lips. He was saying my name. “Stella.” I rolled down the window. “Who are you?” The young man clutched his chest, feigning heartbreak. “It’s only been a few days and you’ve already forgotten me, sweetheart?” He reached out and pinched my cheek. “Is it because I haven’t seen you? I’ve been busy with a race. Don’t be mad. I’ll make it up to you today.” He raised an eyebrow, his smile wild and untamed. I had a pretty good idea who he was. “Jax?” “So you haven’t forgotten me completely.” I frowned, deciding to get straight to the point. “Since you’re here, let’s clear things up.” He grinned, putting on a show of listening intently. “Whatever we were before, it ends today. I have a family, and I am not getting a divorce. You’re young, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on a married woman. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” The young man didn’t say anything. He took a couple of drags from a cigarette, then turned his head and blew out the smoke. He let out a soft, humorless laugh. “Tired of your toy, so you’re just throwing it away? Are you playing me for a fool, sweetheart?” I was about to respond when I looked up. Past Jax, I saw Cole standing down the street. I couldn’t make out his expression. All I could see was the shopping bag in his hand. It was from my favorite bakery. 10 A sudden, sharp pain lanced through my chest. “Cole!” I scrambled out of the car, the door bumping into Jax. He grunted in pain. “No conscience at all, have you, sweetheart?” But I couldn’t spare him a thought. As I got closer, I finally saw the look in Cole’s eyes. It was a mixture of indifference, disappointment, and a deep, wounded sorrow. He just stood there, watching me silently. It was clear this wasn’t the first time he’d seen something like this. “Here.” He held out the bag. His voice was low. “The cake you loved five years ago.” He watched me, his gaze intense, as if he was searching for something. “You still love it, right?” A bitter, acidic feeling rose from my chest. So, he had believed my “time travel” story after all. As I stood there, stunned, Cole’s arm remained outstretched, rigid. Finally, as if all the strength had drained out of him, he slowly started to lower it. I rushed forward and took the bag. “I love it.” To prove it, I pulled out the cake and took a bite. The frosting was sickly sweet. I smiled, but I felt like crying. “It’s delicious.” Cole smiled back. He said, “Stella, I was up all night thinking. You said you came from five years in the past. I can believe you.” Not I believe you. I can believe you. Even though the reason was flimsy, absurd, even though he was a man of logic and reason. He could still choose to believe me.

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Dominic is a control freak. He needs to know precisely when I wake up, when I eat, when I sleep, even when I go to the bathroom. He has me trained like a dog. His friend once asked me, “Has it ever occurred to you that your entire life is being controlled by that psycho, Dominic?” Dominic, with a faint smile, answered for me. “He hasn’t.” Alright, fine. If that’s how he wants to play. I told Dominic, “From now on, our curfew is 7 PM.” “And we need to have our phone locations shared at all times.” I started video-calling him eighteen times a day. I’d pull him into intimate photos, plastering our “love” all over social media, making a grand show of our relationship. I forced him to live inside my own web of suffocating, omnipresent surveillance and performance art. And then… he got off on it. 1 I was out of breath when I stumbled through the door at one minute past eight. The house was dark, completely unlit. I thought Dominic wasn’t home yet and breathed a silent sigh of relief. But in the next instant, with a soft click, the lights flooded the room. Dominic’s tall figure stood in the entryway, silhouetted against the blinding light. Like a ghost. “Noah,” he said softly, “you’re 1 minute and 27 seconds late.” The sudden light had already startled me. His whisper-soft voice sent a chill down my spine, and a cold sweat broke out on my back. I took a deep breath, trying to force down the metallic taste of blood that had risen in my throat from running so hard. “An old classmate of mine is in town, so a few of us got together. I was already on my way back at seven, but the traffic was insane. That’s why I’m a little late.” He gestured for me to sit on the low bench in the entryway, then knelt gracefully before me. His hand wrapped around my slender ankle. His fingers slid slowly upwards, gripping the sliver of skin just above my white sock. He lifted my foot with a gentle pressure to help me change my shoes. He looked up at me and smiled, a picture of innocence. “Then why didn’t you leave earlier? Or you could have asked me to pick you up.” My fingers, braced against the bench, trembled slightly. “I… I didn’t want to bother you. You had a long day at work.” “I really thought I could make it back before curfew,” I explained, my jaw tight. “I planned ahead, I swear. The mall is only a half-hour drive from our place… I never expected the traffic to be this bad.” He slowly slipped off my sneakers, his fingers squeezing the soft sole of my foot through my sock. I felt a tickle and instinctively tried to pull my foot back, but his grip on my calf was like iron. I couldn’t move an inch. He put my slippers on for me. “Are these old classmates of yours really that important?” he murmured. “So important that you can’t even come home on time?” “Did you not want to come home? Did you want to spend more time with them that badly?” “Was an old flame among them?” “Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped, cutting him off. “Today was a one-time thing. I’ll be back before curfew from now on!” He ignored my outburst. He stood up, leaned in, and brushed his nose against my cheek. “Noah,” he whispered, “why can’t your eyes be only on me?” 2 I woke up the next morning in a fog. When I managed to force my eyes open, I saw Dominic leaning against the headboard, smiling down at me. “Good morning, my love.” He kissed me. As he leaned over, his hand brushed against mine. I flinched violently. Before Dominic, I never could have imagined that there were so, so many ways to torment a person, to make them break, to make them lose control of their own body, stripped of all dignity… all without a single act of violence. Seeing me recoil, he pulled me into his arms, comforting me. “Darling, how about we go to Finland for the weekend? I’ll have my assistant clear a flight path. We can take off after work on Friday. You can sleep on the plane, and we’ll fly back Sunday night.” He gently outlined a weekend schedule detailed down to the minute. “On Saturday morning, we can try the bread at a local private kitchen. We’ll go see the snow in the late morning, and then we can have a spa treatment in the afternoon…” Everything was planned to perfection. But the more he spoke, the stiffer I became. “I promised Chris I’d go to the comic convention with him on Saturday,” I said in a low voice. “I told you on Monday.” My words hung in the dead silence of the bedroom. After a long, terrifying pause, Dominic finally spoke. “You’re right, you did tell me. I forgot. I’m sorry, my love. You go have fun.” He released his grip on my waist, letting me go without a fuss. Just like a normal, ordinary boyfriend. With my back to him, I couldn’t see the blank, emotionless mask that had replaced his gentle tone. 3 On Saturday morning, I dragged my sore, aching body out of bed, buzzing with excitement. Dominic, shirtless, propped himself up on one elbow and watched me get dressed. Seeing me awkwardly trying to pull on my pants, he said considerately, “If you’re not feeling well, just tell Chris. You can rest at home. I’m sure he’ll understand.” If it weren’t for what he did last night… I stubbornly finished dressing myself. “I’m not tired. I feel great. I am absolutely going to that convention today!” Just before I left, I got a call from Chris. I answered cheerfully. “I’m on my way out! Where are you?” Chris’s voice on the other end was full of guilt. “Noah, man, work just dropped an emergency business trip on me. I’m packing right now. I have to go be a corporate slave in Chicago for two weeks… I’m so sorry.” My hand froze on the doorknob. The smile on my face slowly faded, but I kept my voice normal. “Hey, no worries! Go do your thing. I’ll grab some merch for you while I’m there.” He sounded relieved. “You’re a lifesaver, bro!” I hung up, and a voice came from behind me. “What’s wrong?” I turned to see Dominic’s lean frame propped against the marble dining table. He looked as luxurious as the deep blue silk robe he was wearing. He raised an eyebrow. “Stood up again? Your friends really are unreliable.” A sliver of suspicion entered my mind. I asked him deliberately, “Well, do you want to go to the convention with me then?” His expression flickered. My heart clenched. Could he really have been the one to ruin Chris’s weekend? If he was… “Unfortunately,” Dominic shrugged, “I didn’t know your friend was going to bail, so I didn’t get a ticket. I can’t get in.” “But I can give you a ride, if you’d like. My dear.” I relaxed. If he hadn’t prepared in advance, he probably wasn’t the one who got Chris sent on a business trip… “No, thanks. I’ll just get a cab. You enjoy your weekend at home.” 4 Wandering the convention alone was pretty boring. I bought the pin Chris wanted most and was about to leave when I turned and bumped into a soft wall. “Oh, sorry—” I said, rubbing my forehead. I looked up and saw a very familiar face. I stared. “How did you get in?” Then, feeling deceived, I added, “You said you didn’t have a ticket!” It had to be him. He must have been the one who got rid of Chris. He’d always hated all my friends! I was about to lose it. “You son of a—” Dominic pulled a staff pass from the pocket of his expensive suit. “I don’t have a ticket. But I do have a little money.” “Just got this staff pass—a little bit of ‘cash-power.’” I was speechless, staring at the pass hanging from a gold chain. Who in their right mind uses a pocket watch chain for a staff pass? He smiled at me. “A son of a what?” I looked at his benevolent smile and shivered, remembering things. “A… a… a guy who just shines with brilliance!” I blurted out, a stroke of genius. I let out a long breath, feeling like I’d regained the upper hand. I looked him over. He was wearing a custom-tailored black tailcoat that accentuated his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs. He exuded an air of pure class. “What are you doing dressed to the nines at a comic convention? Who are you trying to seduce?” His eyes crinkled into a smile. He took my hand with his white-gloved one and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I am here to serve you, My Lord.” I froze, and before I could even blush, a wave of suppressed squeals erupted around us. “Oh my god, he’s so hot!” “Is he cosplaying Sebastian? Or Claude?” “I don’t think so, he’s not wearing any makeup…” “Holy crap! He’s that handsome without makeup? His character model is insane!” I was suddenly the center of attention, so embarrassed I could have dug a hole and lived in it. I grabbed Dominic’s hand and pulled him away. Once we were out of the crowd, I finally breathed. “You have to work? What kind of work?” He answered with a straight face, “Yes, I do.” “My job is to accompany you around the convention.” “Noah, I will do anything with you. I will never stand you up. So please… look at me more.” My eyelashes fluttered, and the tips of my ears grew hot. “I spend more time with you than I do at work. Isn’t that enough?” He stared at me. “No. It’s not nearly enough…” His intense, obsessive gaze sent a shiver down my spine. But in the next second, Dominic was back to his usual gentlemanly self. 5 I quickly forgot about that little episode and excitedly dragged Dominic around the convention. By the afternoon, I was getting hungry. We passed a stall where cosplayers were selling snacks, and I wanted to grab something. But as I eagerly headed over, a hand caught my arm. I turned to Dominic. “What’s wrong?” He frowned at the shabby-looking stall, the scent of artificial flavoring wafting over. “If you want takoyaki, I’ll have the chef make it for you when we get home. Don’t eat from street stalls like this. It’s not clean.” At that moment, several girls who had just bought snacks walked past us, giving us a strange look. The kind of look you give rich lunatics. I tugged at his sleeve, embarrassed. “It’s not dirty. Don’t say that.” The girls at the stall were wearing masks and disposable gloves. But Dominic was clearly unconvinced. He didn’t trust any street vendors, food stalls, or hole-in-the-wall restaurants. In the three years we’d been together, I hadn’t had a single bite of delicious junk food. This time was no different. He held my hand, his grip gentle but firm, and wouldn’t let me go. “If you’re hungry, let’s go home.” There it was again. Once he made up his mind, there was nothing I could do to change it. I was still holding the merch I’d bought, only halfway through the convention… but suddenly, all the fun had drained out of it. I lowered my head and went home with Dominic. I don’t know if it was because I’d skipped breakfast or because I was in a bad mood, but my stomach started to hurt on the way home. The pain was so bad my face went pale and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Dominic noticed immediately, his expression changing. In that instant, I knew I was screwed. He had found out I didn’t eat breakfast. From that day on, he watched me eat every single meal. 6 I ate three healthy meals a day under his watchful eye, but my stomach pain didn’t get better. Once, it even woke me up in the middle of the night, a sharp, twisting pain. This time, Dominic ignored my protests and took me to the hospital for a painless gastroscopy, colonoscopy, and a full-body check-up. Finally, the doctor at the private hospital looked at my test results, thought for a long time, and said slowly, “You have some mild gastritis, but nothing serious. Just stick to a light, healthy diet. Most importantly, try to stay in a good mood. The stomach is an organ of emotion…” I walked out of the consultation room in silence. I had barely stepped out the door when my colleague called. Because of my stomach pain last night, Dominic had insisted on taking me to the hospital today. I had to take a sudden day off work and hadn’t had time to hand over my tasks. I stood in the hospital corridor and talked to my colleague for ten minutes before hanging up. When I turned around, I saw Dominic standing behind me, frowning. “Is work very stressful lately?” “No.” “But between the office and working from home, you’ve been averaging overtime until eight-thirty.” “It’s the end of the year. It’s always busy.” I thought that was the end of it, but that night, he brought it up again. “Noah, have you ever thought about your career path?” I looked up from my phone on the sofa, confused. Dominic handed me a glass of warm water and leaned against the armrest, his voice gentle and persuasive. “I think you should consider it. You don’t have to run yourself ragged for a little money. You could think about what you really want to do. Take a break, think about what kind of person you really want to be.” 7 Dominic is six years older than me. I met him during my senior year internship. I had good grades and got into a top company. There were a lot of interns that year, and the backstabbing and office politics left me exhausted and full of self-doubt. I met Dominic when he came back to our university as a distinguished alumnus to give a speech. When he pursued me, he gave me a lot of confidence during a low point in my life. I’m a simple person; he was exceptional, and to be pursued so ardently by someone so exceptional was a huge boost to my ego. It helped me rebuild some of the confidence that the cutthroat corporate culture had shattered. After we got together, aside from his control issues… and his kinky side, he was a nearly perfect partner. As the older one, he had always guided me. I trusted him. After his words, I began to seriously consider the impact my job was having on me. Just then, my company lost two major deals in a row, and rumors of downsizing started to fly. There was a change in the company’s ownership, and the office became a toxic, anxious environment. After being targeted by my boss repeatedly, the thought of quitting started to form in my mind. Coincidentally, Chris returned from his business trip, and I met up with him for dinner. He spent the meal complaining about his trip, and I vented about the chaos at my company. It was a cathartic meal for both of us. Finally, Chris leaned in and whispered mysteriously, “Do you know who our big client was on this trip?” I raised an eyebrow. “Who?” “Evergreen Hospitality,” he said with a sly grin. “You’ve probably never heard of it, but you’ve definitely heard of the Brighton Group that backs it! I was wondering why my boss was making such a big deal out of a regular budget hotel chain. Turns out he was trying to get in with the Brighton Group…” I froze. Of course I knew the Brighton Group. It was a massive conglomerate that had started with a chain of hotels and expanded into multiple sectors. More importantly, the current head of the Brighton Group, Pierce Brighton, was Dominic’s childhood friend. I don’t know how I got back to the office that afternoon. The first thing I did was look up my company’s new owner. It was a company I’d never heard of. But I didn’t give up. I traced the chain of holding companies and majority shareholders all the way up. When the name “Brighton Group” finally appeared, my heart skipped a beat. Of course… How could there be so many coincidences in the world? Chris and I had planned to go to a convention, and he gets sent on an emergency business trip. Dominic thinks my job is affecting my health, and my company loses two major deals and gets a new owner. He had been so subtle about it, even routing everything through Pierce’s name. Even if I found out, he could just say it was a coincidence. Just the Brighton Group’s expansion plans, just Pierce’s decisions. What did it have to do with Dominic? I suddenly clutched my chest, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. 8 “Noah, are you off work? I’m waiting for you in the parking garage…” Today was one of Dominic’s friend’s birthdays, and he was taking me to the party. I calmly went downstairs, found his car, and got in. He expertly navigated out of the garage. Noticing my low mood, he asked softly, “Did you run into trouble at work?” “Yeah.” Seeing I was upset, his voice became even gentler. “A change in ownership and a new boss can really disrupt things. If you’re not adjusting well, you can always take some time off and rest at home. Or if you don’t want to quit, you could consider taking a leave of absence.” “Noah, you’ve been so distracted and down lately. Work is important, but I hope you’ll put your health first.” I suddenly turned and stared straight at him. “Do you want me to quit?” His expression didn’t change. He still wore that faint, gentlemanly smile. “I respect all of your decisions.” 9 The birthday party was held in a newly built private garden, complete with a celebrity-headlined lawn concert. Dominic led me to a table in the inner circle. After dinner, they started playing cards. Dominic won three hands in a row, and the atmosphere became lively. A group of privileged elites, all with a competitive streak, were getting fired up. Pierce was among them, and he was losing the worst, already down two sports cars and a prize horse. Even as everyone ganged up on him, Dominic remained effortlessly in control. He even found a moment to remind me, “Don’t drink. I had someone get you some warm water.” Pierce, seeing he was about to lose again, threw down his cards. He gave a knowing smile and raised an eyebrow. “Dominic, you won’t even let him drink now? You’re getting more twisted by the day.” Then he turned to me. “Noah, has it ever occurred to you that your entire life is being controlled by this psycho?” Dominic wrapped an arm around my suddenly rigid frame, smiled, and threw down a royal flush, winning another hand. He answered for me. “He hasn’t.” Pierce clicked his tongue and gave him a thumbs-up. For a split second, I wanted to flip the table, to smash the wine bottles over Dominic and Pierce’s heads. If you don’t want to perish in silence, you have to fight back.

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I was the only one on the wall for seventy-two hours against a siege of hackers. I held the line until the last second, then collapsed on the server room floor. I woke up in the ICU. The first message I saw was a company-wide memo: Three days of unexcused absence. A fifty-thousand-dollar fine. My director stood at my bedside and laid it out plainly. “Rules are rules. No exceptions.” I pulled the IV from my hand and said one word. “Fine.” From that day on, no one understood the rules better than me. 1 The fluorescent lights of the ICU were a stinging white. I had to blink three times just to pry my eyes open. The air was thick with the scent of antiseptic, and an IV needle was taped to the back of my left hand. A deep blue bruise was blooming on my wrist. On the bedside table, my phone screen was lit up. I turned my head, my gaze falling on the notification bar. 127 unread messages. The one at the very top was a company-wide email. Sender: Human Resources. With my free hand, I reached for the phone, my thumb swiping the screen open. “Subject: Official Notice Regarding Unexcused Absence of Alex Chen, Technology Department. This memo is to inform all personnel that, following a review, it has been confirmed that Alex Chen, Network Security Engineer, was absent from March 12th to March 14th without submitting a formal leave request as stipulated in Article 17 of the Employee Attendance Management Policy. In accordance with company regulations, the following actions will be taken: 1. A formal reprimand will be issued company-wide. 2. Mr. Chen’s quarterly performance bonus of $50,000 will be forfeited. 3. This incident will be recorded in Mr. Chen’s permanent employee file.” I scrolled to the bottom of the email. CC: All Employees. A flick of my thumb down, and the department group chat was already exploding. Someone tagged me: “Alex, you okay, man?” Someone else asked, “This has to be a mistake, right?” But most of them were silent. A heavy, telling silence I knew all too well. I stared at the ceiling, a dull ringing in my ears. March 12th, 9:47 PM. The company’s internal network monitoring system lit up like a Christmas tree from hell. I was just about to leave. My backpack was slung over one shoulder, one arm already in my jacket sleeve. The single alert on my screen multiplied, from one to ten, then ten to a hundred. Someone was hitting our core database with a distributed attack. This wasn’t a standard DDoS flood; it was a surgical strike. They knew our internal topology, slipping through a port that should have never been open. It was like they had a key to the front door. I dropped my bag on the floor, threw my jacket over the back of my chair, and sat down to fight back. I called Marcus Reed, my director. It rang six times, no answer. I called Frank, one of the lead ops guys. He said he was on the freeway, at least two hours out. It was just me, alone, staring at six monitors, plugging the holes. I’d block one vector, and they’d pivot, coming at me from another angle. Block that one, and they’d find another. The attack traffic surged from 800 megabits per second to 40 gigabits per second. I downed twelve cans of Red Bull. Then came the coffee, black, no sugar, chugged cold right from the pot. The first day passed. The second day passed. On the third day, the afternoon of March 14th, as I tried to stand up from the server room floor, my vision went black. My knees buckled first, then my forehead slammed into the sharp metal corner of a server rack. Frank told me later that when he finally pushed open the server room door, I was face down on the ground, blood matting my hair, my hand still resting on the keyboard. The attack was over. I had held the line. The data, client information, and core code for over three hundred employees—not a single byte was lost. And then I ended up in the ICU. And then I received the notice of unexcused absence. The door to my room swung open just as I was reading that email for the third time, word by agonizing word. Marcus Reed walked in. Suit, tie, hair perfectly coiffed. He carried a small bag of fruit, which he placed on the bedside table, patting an orange as if to check its firmness. “You’re awake,” he said, pulling a chair over and crossing his legs. “How are you feeling?” I didn’t answer. He waited a few seconds, sensing the tension, and cleared his throat. “You saw the memo, I take it.” I nodded. “Alex, you’ve been with us a while. You know the policies.” His tone was a well-rehearsed “my-hands-are-tied,” but the slight curve of his lips betrayed him. “Leave requests have to go through the official channels, approved by your direct supervisor. You were gone for three days with nothing in the system. When HR asked me about it, I couldn’t exactly lie, could I?” “I was in the server room,” I said, my voice hoarse. He held up a hand, a gesture to stop me. “I know you worked hard. I appreciate the effort. But effort is one thing, and policy is another. They’re two separate issues. If you had just called me, sent a text, anything to get a paper trail started, I could have approved it after the fact. But you did nothing.” He paused, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Corporate is auditing attendance records right now. At a time like this, nobody gets a pass.” I just looked at him. His gaze was steady, his lines delivered flawlessly, as if he’d practiced in a mirror. “Rules are rules,” he said, standing and smoothing a non-existent wrinkle from his trousers. “No exceptions.” The room fell silent for a few seconds, punctuated by the steady beep… beep… beep of the heart monitor. I clenched the bedsheets, my nails digging into my palms. The last seventy-two hours flashed through my mind in a chaotic montage: the frantic cascade of data across six screens, the stomach-cramping coffee I kept pouring down my throat, the low hum of the fluorescent lights in the server room at 4 AM, the cold, sharp shock of metal against my forehead as I collapsed. I swallowed hard. And then I said one word. “Fine.” Marcus froze for a second. He had probably come prepared with a full script. If I got angry, he’d play the sympathetic but helpless manager. If I broke down, he’d offer a tissue and feigned compassion. But all I said was, “Fine.” The word was too small, too quiet. It gave him nothing to work with. He nodded, patting my shoulder. “Good. Get some rest. We need you back at the office.” The door clicked shut. His footsteps faded down the hall. I stared at the IV in the back of my hand for a long, long time. Then I picked up my phone, closed the email, and opened a new note. I typed a line: Employee Attendance Management Policy, Article 17. Then another: Find the full text. 2 The day I was discharged, the sky was a bruised gray, hanging so low it felt like it could collapse at any moment. I stood outside the office building for three seconds, took a breath, and pushed through the glass doors. The receptionist looked up, met my eyes, and then her gaze darted away as she pretended to sort a stack of packages. Walking past the marketing department, I could feel their eyes on me from the corners of their vision. The rhythmic clatter of keyboards suddenly intensified, the keys struck with a little too much force, a performance of “I’m very busy and definitely not looking at you.” I ran into Susan from accounting at the elevators. She held the door for me. After a moment of hesitation, she spoke in a low voice. “Alex, about that memo… nobody thinks it was right.” I just nodded at her. “Thanks, Susan.” I didn’t say anything else. The tech department was on the twelfth floor. The moment I walked in, a hush fell over the entire area. I understood that silence. It wasn’t concern. It was the quiet of a crowd watching a spectacle. Everyone has their own scale. They knew what I did, and they knew how I was being treated. But on the other side of that scale sat their mortgages, their car payments, and their kids’ tuition. So the scales didn’t move an inch. I got it. I sat down at my desk, booted up my computer, and said nothing. A fresh stack of work orders sat on my desk. The one on top was signed by Marcus, marked “URGENT.” I pushed the stack aside, opened the company’s internal portal, and typed into the search bar: “Company Policies.” Employee Attendance Management Policy, 94 pages. Overtime Management Regulations, 47 pages. Travel and Expense Reimbursement Policy, 62 pages. Project Management Workflow Standards, 118 pages. Information Security Management Ordinance, 83 pages. In total, thirty-seven policy documents, over two thousand pages of text. I started with the first one, reading every single word. At 3 PM, Frank came over with two cups of coffee. He set one on my desk and held the other. “Alex,” he said, pulling up an empty chair and leaning in close. “Don’t do this to yourself, man. That fifty grand… I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. I’m sorry.” “Frank,” I said without looking up from my screen. “When you found me in the server room, what did it look like?” He was quiet for a moment. “You were face down. Your forehead was split open on the corner of a server rack. There was blood everywhere. When I rolled you over, your hands were ice-cold.” “And who did you tell about this?” “I told Marcus,” Frank said, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the paper cup. “He said he knew, but told me to keep it quiet. Said corporate was breathing down our necks and we couldn’t afford any drama.” I nodded slowly, my eyes still fixed on the screen. Frank didn’t leave. He seemed to want to say something more but couldn’t find the words. Finally, after a few minutes, he broke. “What the hell are you reading, anyway?” “Company policy.” “Why would you read that crap?” I turned to look at him then. “I’m learning.” Frank’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. He’d known me for five years. He knew that when I said “I’m learning,” I wasn’t kidding. He walked away, taking his coffee with him. By the end of the day, I had finished the Attendance Management Policy and the Overtime Management Regulations. I had jotted down seven specific article numbers in my notes. One of them, Article 23, Section 4, was crystal clear: “In the event of a sudden emergency preventing the timely submission of a leave request, the employee’s direct supervisor may submit a retroactive request on their behalf within three working days.” In other words, during those seventy-two hours, all Marcus had to do was click a “Submit Retroactive” button for me in the system, and my absence wouldn’t have been unexcused. He didn’t click it. He chose not to. I highlighted that article in red and saved the note in a new folder. I named the folder “Study Notes.” Before shutting down my computer, I looked up one more thing. That anomaly I first noticed at 9:47 PM on March 12th, right before the whole system went into meltdown. The point of entry for the attack—a port that should never have been open. The permissions required to open that port could only be granted by an admin account at the director level or higher. I had been too busy fighting the fire to dig deeper then. Now, I had time. I copied the port number into my notes. Then I shut down my machine. On the dot. 6:00 PM. Not a second later. 3 The next morning, I clocked in at 9:00 AM sharp. Not 8:55, not 8:58. Exactly 9:00. Because the company policy stated, black on white: “Working hours are from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.” Marcus called on me during the morning stand-up. “Alex, did you see that urgent ticket I sent you yesterday? The client is breathing down our necks.” “I saw it,” I said. “And when can we expect delivery?” “As soon as the process is complete.” He frowned. “What process?” I opened the notes app on my phone and read aloud. “According to the Project Management Workflow Standards, Article 8, Section 2: ‘Tasks requiring inter-departmental collaboration must be initiated via a formal Collaboration Request Form, signed and approved by the heads of both departments before work can commence.’ This ticket requires server permissions from the Operations team, which qualifies as inter-departmental collaboration. We need their signature.” The conference room fell silent. My colleagues stared down at their notebooks, avoiding my eyes, avoiding Marcus’s. A muscle in Marcus’s jaw twitched. “We’ve never bothered with formal processes for small things like this.” I looked up, meeting his gaze directly. “Director, you were the one who taught me. Rules are rules.” His expression hardened into a mask. That ticket didn’t get done that day. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t do it. The process wasn’t complete. The head of Ops, Dave, was out of town on business. He wouldn’t be back to sign it for three days. I documented the delay with meticulous clarity in an email, CC’ing Marcus and the entire project team, and attached a screenshot of the relevant company policy. At 5:58 PM, I started clearing my desk. At 6:00 PM, I stood up. Marcus poked his head out of his office. “Alex, that data migration isn’t—” “Director,” I cut him off. He stopped, stunned. I pulled a printed sheet of paper from my desk drawer and handed it to him. Overtime Management Regulations, Article 5: “Employee overtime must be requested by the department head via an Overtime Request Form at least twenty-four hours in advance and approved by Human Resources. Any work performed outside of standard hours without prior approval will not be recognized by the company or compensated as overtime.” “If you need me to work late, please submit the request twenty-four hours in advance,” I said, placing the paper on his desk. “See you tomorrow.” Marcus stood in his office doorway, the muscles in his face pulled taut. He wanted to explode. But he couldn’t. He had no grounds. Because these were the very rules he had used as a weapon against me. I turned and walked out of the office. Behind me, I heard the sound of his door slamming shut. I ran into Frank in the elevator on my way out. He looked me up and down, a complicated expression on his face. “What?” I asked. “Nothing. It’s just… you’ve changed.” “How so?” He thought for a long moment before finding the word. “Terrifying.” The third day, the client called to check on the project’s progress and was informed the paperwork was still being processed. They filed a formal complaint directly with Marcus. From my desk, I heard the sound of a mug shattering against a wall in his office. I didn’t look up. My fingers typed out a new line in my notes. Information Security Management Ordinance, Article 31. Server operation logs must be retained for a period of one year. It had been eleven days since March 12th. Three hundred and fifty-four days left. Plenty of time. 4 Marcus was spearheading a major project. The Apex Solutions data platform—a $1.5 million contract, the biggest deal of the year for our company. From its inception, I had been the one to design every core technical solution for that project. Marcus didn’t understand the tech; he understood signing documents and leading meetings. At every technical review with the client, he’d sit at the head of the table in his tailored suit, give a three-minute opening speech, and then say, “And now, I’ll turn it over to our lead technical expert to walk you through the details.” That was my cue to take the microphone for the next two hours. The client thought Marcus was the technical mastermind. In reality, he couldn’t even name the tech stack I was using in my own proposal. Now, the project was at a critical acceptance phase. The client demanded that phase three be delivered by Friday, or they would invoke the penalty clause in the contract. Marcus sent me an email. The subject line had three exclamation points. “URGENT!!! Apex Project Phase Three Delivery—Must Be Completed This Week.” I replied with an email of my own. The body was just three lines long, with two attachments. “Director Reed, Regarding the Apex project phase three delivery, the following process steps have not yet been completed: 1. The ‘Database Permission Change Request’ requires your signature before it can be submitted to the Information Security department for approval. Current Status: Awaiting Signature (This has been in your approval queue for 6 working days). 2. The ‘Test Environment Deployment Plan’ requires cooperation from the Operations team. An ‘Inter-Departmental Collaboration Request’ must be submitted by you. Current Status: Not Initiated. Once these processes are complete, I will begin the technical delivery immediately.” I CC’d the entire project team and HR. Twenty minutes later, the door to Marcus’s office was yanked open. “Alex. My office. Now.” His voice was controlled, but barely. The edges were frayed. I stood up, taking my phone with me. I walked in. He shut the door behind me, turned around, and his face was flushed a deep, angry red. “What the hell are you doing?” “Awaiting your approval.” “That request has been sitting in my queue for six days! Why didn’t you just remind me?” I stood my ground. He hadn’t invited me to sit. “According to the Internal Systems Usage Policy, Article 12: ‘Approvers at all levels are expected to process requests within three working days of receipt. The system will issue an automatic reminder for any overdue items.’ The system has already reminded you twice, Director.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Alex, is this about the memo? Are you holding a grudge?” “No.” “Then what is this?” I looked him straight in the eye. “You taught me, sir. Rules are rules. I’m just following them.” His right hand gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white. The phone on his desk rang, its shrill tone cutting through the tension. He hesitated for a second, then snatched it up. It was the client. I stood two meters away, but I could clearly hear the impatient male voice on the other end. “Marcus, what’s the status on phase three? My director has asked me about it three times already.” Marcus’s face contorted, a strained smile plastered on his lips. “Mr. Davis, rest assured, we’ll have it for you in the next couple of days—” “A couple of days? That’s what you said last week.” He turned his back to me, lowering his voice, but I heard every word. When he hung up, he spun back around. “I want you to go right now and get that—” “The process isn’t complete,” I said. He stared at me, his eyes burning. I stared back. After a tense ten seconds, he violently ripped a folder from his desk, flipped to the pending approval form, scribbled his signature, and slammed it down in front of me. “Take it.” “The inter-departmental collaboration request needs your signature as well.” He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling sharply through his nose. He signed it. I picked up both sheets of paper. “I will submit these to Information Security for approval today. The standard processing time is two to three business days. I will begin execution as soon as approval is granted.” “Two to three business days?!” his voice shot up. “The client’s deadline is this Friday!” I paused at the door without turning back. “Director, I don’t set the approval timelines. Company policy does. If you have a problem with the process, I suggest you take it up with corporate.” I walked out of his office, pulling the door gently shut behind me. Back at my desk, a new message from Frank was on my screen. “Are you insane???” I didn’t reply. I opened my notes app and created a new file inside the “Study Notes” folder. The title was: “Plan for Retrieving Server Logs for Anomalous Port Opening on March 12th.” On Friday, the Apex project failed to meet its deadline. The client sent a formal notice, invoking the penalty clause for a total of twenty thousand dollars. Marcus posted a message in the department group chat: “I will be reporting the cause of this project delay truthfully and accurately to upper management.” Everyone knew he was talking to me. But he didn’t tag me. Because he couldn’t. Every step I took was by the book.

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