My online boyfriend is a bit of a weirdo. He constantly sends me pictures of his pet snake, always asking me if I think the little guy is handsome. I honestly am not a huge fan of reptiles. But my virtual boyfriend is a god at video games, has a voice like liquid velvet, and is incredibly generous with his wallet. So, I routinely swallow my conscience and shower the reptile with praise. “Absolutely gorgeous!” “That is literally the most handsome snake I have ever seen in my entire life!” He would always text back, “Does my baby like him?” I would reply in seconds. “I love him! So much!” Fully satisfied, the man on the other end of the screen would casually wire me five thousand dollars. Eventually, I wanted to meet up in real life. But when I arrived at our agreed location, the only thing waiting for me was that little black snake. 1 It was incredibly easy to recognize the little black snake. After all, Asher sent me pictures of him every single day. “This is his front profile.” “This is his back.” “Here is a side view.” I practically had the reptile’s anatomy memorized. So, even though the little black snake had been meticulously groomed today, wearing a miniature top hat and a tiny silk bowtie, I recognized him instantly. The strange part was that Asher was nowhere to be found. I mean, I look pretty good in person. There was no way he got spooked by my appearance, abandoned his precious pet, and made a run for it, right? Maybe he just stepped out to take a call or grab something from a store. I thought about standing a bit further away to wait. But the moment the little snake locked his emerald-green slit pupils on me, his eyes lit up with an unnatural brightness. He let out a soft hiss. He genuinely seemed thrilled to see me. I was still a little creeped out. But then I remembered this was the beloved pet of my stupidly rich, overly generous internet boyfriend. I had to put on the performance of a lifetime. Bracing myself, I sat down next to him. The light in the little snake’s eyes grew even brighter. He happily wiggled the very tip of his tail, slowly inching closer to me. Swallowing the urge to scream, I put on my best gentle, maternal smile. I even reached out and lightly teased his chin. Sitting alone at a table with a reptile was getting incredibly awkward, so I gathered my courage and spoke to it. “You are so cute.” The little snake actually seemed to understand me. A faint, rosy flush miraculously appeared on his dark, scaly face. Testing the waters, I added, “You look even better in person than in your photos.” The snake was over the moon. He even lifted his tail tip to wave at me. Fighting down my primal human fear of cold-blooded creatures, I did my absolute best to interact with the little guy. I was determined to make sure that when Asher finally came back, he would see me radiating pure, maternal love. And then, hopefully, he would wire me another five grand. But I kept up the act from noon until nightfall. Sitting in that high-end luxury restaurant, I drank three artisan lemonades, ate a plate of truffle pasta, two salads, and three different cuts of steak. I texted Asher ten different times. No reply. No Asher. It wasn’t until midnight that the waiter finally approached my table. “Miss Sophie, we are preparing to close for the night.” Was this bastard Asher playing some kind of sick joke on me? Feeling utterly humiliated, I reached for my purse to pay the massive bill. The waiter just smiled warmly and shook his head. “The future boss’s wife never has to pay for her meals.” The staff even brought out a mountain of beautifully wrapped gift bags that Asher had prepared for me in advance. It suddenly clicked. Asher didn’t show up because this was a test. Billionaires love doing this kind of thing. He wanted to observe me from the shadows to see if I was emotionally stable, if I had good manners, and if I possessed a genuinely loving heart. Normally, I possess none of those things. But remembering the sheer size of Asher’s bank account, I was suddenly overflowing with the noblest virtues known to mankind. If this was a test, I was going to pass it with flying colors. So, when I gathered my things to leave, I absolutely refused to leave the snake behind. Steeling my nerves, I scooped the little guy up, tucked him against my chest, and carried him all the way home. You can do this, Sophie. You are going to secure the bag. 2 The little snake probably wasn’t used to human body heat. Tucked against my chest, he got totally dizzy and looked a bit out of it. I scrambled to find a clean cardboard box and gently placed him inside. He finally snapped out of his daze, but for some reason, he looked completely crestfallen. Just totally lethargic. I couldn’t let his beloved pet die on my watch. I immediately went online, hunted down the contact info for a premium exotic pet store owner, and paid an absolute premium to have a luxury, temperature-controlled terrarium delivered and set up in my apartment that very night. I carefully placed the little snake inside. Looking at him, a funny thought crossed my mind. He looked exactly like a billionaire CEO waking up in his thousand-square-foot California king bed. I snapped a picture and sent it to my MIA boyfriend. Still no response. Considering he had already spent roughly half a million dollars on me over the course of our relationship, I decided to be patient. I went to take a shower. Squeaky clean and wrapped only in a fluffy towel, I walked over to check on the snake. The moment he saw my bare shoulders and legs, he frantically turned his little head away, visibly flustered. Oh my. What a perfect gentleman of a reptile. Now, let me see if you are a boy or a girl. I had looked it up online, and the internet told me you could figure out a snake’s gender by checking the base of its tail. It felt a little intrusive. But curiosity got the better of me. Ignoring the snake’s frantic squirming, I gently but firmly held him down and inspected his underside. Wow. He was a male, and a surprisingly well-endowed one at that. I couldn’t help but let out a cheeky wolf whistle. The little snake struggled so hard his top hat popped off and his bowtie went crooked. He finally scrambled into the far corner of the tank, staring at me with a look of absolute, violated betrayal. I cooed at him, offered a few words of comfort, and happily went to bed. 3 Of course, I didn’t actually go to sleep. You have to stay up late to truly appreciate the value of your free time. Around two in the morning, my phone finally buzzed with a message from Asher. “Baby, I honestly never expected you to be so passionate and bold.” I knew it. My brilliant performance at the restaurant paid off. I happily texted back, “Do you like it?” The chat went completely silent. I started overthinking. Did he see how much food I inhaled? Was he judging me? “Did you think I ate too much?” I typed the words out, then quickly deleted them. Never incriminate yourself. Make him bring it up first. If he mentioned it, I would just lie and say I starved myself for three days so I could fit into my prettiest dress for our date. But then Asher’s reply finally came through. “I love it.” “So… are you satisfied?” Of course I was satisfied. Asher had showered me with designer jewelry, luxury bags, and endless attention. I was living the absolute dream. I thought exactly that, so I said exactly that. Asher sent back a blushing emoji. Then he typed, “Baby, you are so honest. I love you so much. I promise I will make you the happiest woman in the world.” Right on cue, a notification popped up. A five-thousand-dollar transfer with the note “Voluntary Gift.” Just another casual day making five grand from my couch. I punched the air under my blankets, absolutely thrilled. This was amazing. The money I had saved up from him was already enough to buy a Porsche Cayenne and put a down payment on a luxury penthouse. Asher sent another photo of the snake. “He made it home.” In the picture, the little snake was wearing his hat and bowtie, coiled up perfectly on a velvet cushion. The background was Asher’s staggering, modern glass mansion. Wait a minute. The snake was just here. I threw off the covers and ran to the living room. The terrarium was empty. The little escape artist had actually broken out. He snuck out and managed to navigate his way back to a billionaire’s mansion all by himself? What an absolute genius of a pet. I happily texted Asher back. “Baby, this photo is stunning!” “Out of all the pictures you’ve ever sent me, this is the most handsome he has ever looked!” Asher was delighted. “I always trust my baby’s taste.” A second later, that exact photo became Asher’s profile picture. He even sent me a second cash transfer for the night. Alright, up to ten grand for the day. I happily accepted the money and typed, “I can’t wait for our next date!” After all, one date with this man earned me more than half a year’s salary. 4 After days of relentless begging on my end. Asher finally agreed to a second date. I went all out. I wore my most elegant, figure-hugging dress. Colored contacts, expensive false lashes, flawless contouring. I showed up to the cafe looking like a supermodel. But sitting at our reserved table, all I found was his pet snake. His outfit was even more elaborate this time. The little guy was wearing a custom-tailored miniature suit jacket and balancing a tiny pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his snout. Was he cosplaying as a bespectacled intellectual? No, wait. That wasn’t the point. Where the hell was Asher? I finally realized something was deeply wrong. Was he really standing me up again? Just as the frustration began to boil over, I felt a soft pressure against my palm. I looked down and saw the very tip of the snake’s tail. Tied neatly around the tail was a beautiful little ribbon, tied into a perfect bow. He looked exactly like a meticulously wrapped gift, impossible to reject. The little snake looked up at me with eyes full of pure, unadulterated sincerity. The moment I smiled, the entire snake slithered happily into my open hands. Oh, you sweet little thing. I finally understood. Asher wasn’t just looking for a girlfriend. He was looking for a stepmother for his precious pet. I had a great personality, and I had proven my high tolerance for reptiles, so Asher chose me. He didn’t show up because he wanted the snake to personally vet me. He was letting his pet choose his new mom. Asher really loved this animal. Well, if my job was to pamper the snake, I was going to be the best snake mom in the world. I dutifully straightened his tiny suit jacket, then carried him around the city. We walked through the botanical gardens and even caught a movie. I wanted to make conversation, but then I realized Asher had never actually told me the snake’s name. Without a name, I decided to just call him “Baby.” “Baby, do you like this park?” The little snake nodded. “Baby, do you want to go look at the pond?” He nodded again, perfectly obedient. “Baby, do you want to come home with me?” The snake hesitated. But the hesitation lasted exactly three seconds before he started nodding so hard his glasses nearly flew off. Winning over the pet was basically winning over the billionaire. I was floating on cloud nine. I leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of his scaly head. The little snake blushed a deep crimson and buried his face into my chest, making soft, happy little squeaks. Honestly, putting Asher’s massive bank account aside for a moment. This little snake was incredibly cute, surprisingly handsome, wildly intelligent, and never tried to bite me. Spending the rest of my life taking care of him with Asher didn’t sound like a bad deal at all. 5 The snake rested perfectly still in my arms as I carried him back to my apartment. My phone remained completely silent. Asher was probably tied up with corporate billionaire stuff. So, I sat on the couch with the snake and watched sports highlights until late. When it was over, I tucked him back into his luxury terrarium. Middle of the night. I was deep in sleep when a soft rustling sound near my ear woke me up. I groggily opened my eyes. The little snake had somehow crawled under my duvet and was sleeping soundly, curled up right against my chest with a look of absolute bliss. I gently poked him. His tail tip wrapped securely around my finger, like a child begging for affection. But as a responsible pet owner, I had to be safe. I grabbed my phone and searched online. “Is it safe to sleep in the same bed as a pet snake?” The internet firmly replied, “Absolutely never sleep in the same bed as a snake.” I had to ignore his pleading, watery eyes. I picked him up by the middle and carried him back to the glass tank. He tried to wrap himself around my wrist, refusing to let go, but I gently detached him. “Good babies have to learn how to sleep in their own beds.” The little snake shivered, slithering into the furthest corner of the tank, coiling his body tightly and hiding his head. I turned to walk back to bed. But then I heard a faint, pathetic sniffling sound. I turned on the lamp and looked closer. The little snake was literally crying tiny, glassy tears. But even with the tears, he had to sleep alone. I was a chaotic sleeper. If I rolled over and squashed the billionaire’s beloved pet, my dreams of luxury real estate would die with him. I couldn’t just walk away while he was sad, though. I leaned over the tank, kissing his head and whispering sweet nothings. “You are the best baby in the world. I know you can be brave and sleep by yourself.” His little scaly body trembled slightly, but he finally uncoiled and settled into his warm hideout box. I could finally go to sleep. 6 When I woke up, my phone screen was flooded with 99+ notifications and dozens of missed calls. All from Asher, spanning from four in the morning until just a few minutes ago. “Baby, I know I was moving too fast, but please don’t hate me.” “I am so sorry.” “Baby, why aren’t you answering?” “Are you mad at me?” … “Baby, please just reply to me. Please.” Scattered between the frantic texts were multiple massive cash transfers. I really do sleep like a rock. Asher probably felt incredibly guilty for standing me up again and was having a meltdown apologizing. Luckily, I am the most understanding girlfriend in the world. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I typed back. “I’m not mad. I just fell asleep.” The man on the other end instantly calmed down. “Thank god.” I happily clicked ‘Accept’ on all the cash transfers. Asher sent another message. “Baby, do you think a snake’s body temperature is too cold?” What kind of random trivia question was that? Snakes are cold-blooded animals. Obviously, they are cold. I replied, “It’s fine. Not a big deal.” Asher asked, “Can you truly accept that?” Me, “Absolutely.” I rolled out of bed, stretching, planning to go play with the little guy. I looked in the tank. He had broken out again. Oh, my god. My golden goose was gone. I tried to console myself. Maybe he just slithered back to his mansion again? I hesitantly texted Asher. “Baby, how come you haven’t sent me a picture of him today?” The chat went dead silent for a long time. I was doomed. What if he got caught by a stray cat? What if someone turned him into snake soup? Just as I felt the sky crashing down around me, Asher sent a new photo. In the picture, the snake was wearing a pristine, custom-tailored tuxedo, perched elegantly on the keys of a grand Steinway piano. He looked incredibly proud and aristocratic. Asher wrote, “I was just getting him cleaned up.” I glanced at the timestamp. It took him thirty minutes to reply. He must have scrubbed that snake down with a toothbrush. But at least he was safe. I let out a massive sigh of relief and went back to my professional hype-woman duties. “He looks so handsome!” The snake was definitely cute, but I was dying to know what Asher actually looked like. My curiosity was peaking. But when I brought up scheduling a third date, Asher hit me with bad news. “Some urgent corporate matters came up in Europe. I have to fly out to handle them personally.” “Baby, can you wait for me for one more month?” 7 I waited an entire month. Finally, Asher texted me. “Baby, I am flying back into the country today.” I waited all day. I practically sat by the door. When the knock finally came, I threw the door open, ecstatic, thinking I was finally going to see the man of my dreams. The hallway was completely empty. My heart dropped. I slowly closed the door. A second later, another knock. I swung the door open, annoyed, ready to curse out whatever neighborhood kid was playing a prank on me. But then I heard a familiar hiss near my feet. I looked down. It was Asher’s pet. His outfit was incredibly flamboyant today. He was wedged into a sharp, deep-purple blazer, and he was even wearing a subtle, expensive-smelling cologne. The whole vibe was ridiculously charming. I held out my hand. The snake happily slithered up my arm, coiling around my wrist. Well, the man didn’t show up, but at least he sent his pet as a consolation prize. I sat on the couch, playing with the little snake, tracing the scales on his back. But despite his cute company, a heavy wave of disappointment washed over me. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up, and I drifted to sleep right there in the living room. I vaguely felt something cool and smooth curl against my chest. I was too tired to care. I just let the sleep take me.

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It was over. Again. His large hand wrapped around my ankle, silently demanding another round. A surge of frustration bubbled up in my chest. I kicked out, my bare foot planting squarely against his firm chest. Before he could react, glowing lines of text suddenly materialized in the air right in front of my eyes. [The male lead and the side character have zero chemistry. Just stop already. Neither of them is even enjoying this.] [Honestly, he doesn’t even like her. He’s just using her to get off.] [Can the side character stop hogging him? The female lead is the delicate, sweet sorority girl he’s actually destined to be with. They’re going to meet so soon.] [Stop being delusional, girl. He doesn’t love you. If he did, why would he be okay with hurting you? If I remember the plot correctly, the side character literally dies from severe internal hemorrhaging after he pushes her too far.] I pressed my foot down harder against his skin. A muffled grunt escaped his throat. Instantly, I pulled my leg back. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I said, my voice completely devoid of warmth. 01 Bob froze. Those striking amber eyes, still dark and heavy with lingering desire, looked up at me in pure confusion. “Why?” he asked, his voice rough and gravelly. I kept my face perfectly blank. Rolling out of bed, my legs immediately gave out. My lower back ached so deeply I had to stumble forward a few steps just to catch my balance. Bob’s expression shifted to immediate concern as he reached out to steady me. I swatted his hands away. Turning around, I locked eyes with him and spoke with slow, deliberate precision. “I told you to slow down earlier. Why didn’t you listen?” I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.” “I thought you liked it that way.” I broke eye contact, letting the silence stretch between us. I didn’t have the energy to argue. Instead, I turned and walked straight into the bathroom. The floating text I had just seen refused to leave my mind. Deep down, I knew there was a suffocating layer of truth to those glowing words. Bob was the untouchable golden boy of our university. The ice prince everyone wanted but no one could have. I was the one who had chased him relentlessly until he finally agreed to date me. But ever since we made it official, he had remained completely emotionally unavailable. Except when we were in bed. Bob possessed an almost terrifying stamina. Every single time, it lasted for hours. When my body was entirely spent, when I was trembling and whispering for him to stop because it was starting to ache, the man acted like he was completely deaf. He would just stubbornly pull me right back against his chest. His voice would drop to that gentle yet chillingly possessive whisper right against my ear. “Just a little longer, baby. Bear with me.” He never took my feelings into account. He never cared if I was hurting. I closed my eyes, letting the hot water from the shower wash over my face, carrying the salty taste of my tears down the drain. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, I had locked all my emotions into a tight little box. Bob was sitting on the edge of the mattress. His gaze immediately snapped to me, his lips parting like he wanted to explain himself. I cut him off before he could try. “I’m exhausted.” Hearing that, he pressed his lips together, stood up in silence, and headed toward the shower. “Get some sleep, then.” I turned off all the lights and slipped under the covers. But sleep wouldn’t come. I tossed and turned, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before Bob quietly re-entered the dark room. He smelled faintly of mint body wash. His movements were incredibly cautious. Just like always, he lay down on the absolute farthest edge of the mattress. Creating as much distance between us as humanly possible. Our physical intimacy strictly existed only when we were actively sleeping together. Outside of that, we were strangers sharing a bed. Right on cue, the floating text illuminated the darkness. [Yikes. He genuinely despises her. He won’t even cuddle her.] [If I were her, I would have dumped him ages ago. What’s the point of clinging to a guy who acts like this?] [Let’s be real. If his destined girl hadn’t shown up so late in the timeline, and if he didn’t have such a crazy high sex drive, he never would have settled for the side character.] I blinked rapidly at the ceiling. The bridge of my nose started to burn. I absolutely hated how easily I cried. I didn’t want to shed another tear over him, but my body simply wouldn’t listen to my brain. In the pitch black, I clamped both hands over my mouth, terrified of making even the slightest sound. Thankfully, I didn’t have to hold it in for long. A few minutes later, Bob suddenly threw off the covers and walked out of the bedroom. A bitter smile tugged at the corners of my lips. My relief was entirely overshadowed by a crushing wave of sadness. The comments were right. Bob didn’t love me. He probably didn’t even like me. The holographic words danced in the air, relentlessly mocking my misery. [When a guy doesn’t love you, it’s so obvious. He doesn’t even want to breathe the same air as her.] [She’s so useless. She can’t even satisfy him in bed, and now he has to go take a cold shower.] [If the female lead were here, she would definitely know how to keep him happy.] I squeezed my eyes shut. My mind violently flashed back to that specific sentence. The side character dies from severe internal bleeding. A violent shudder racked my spine. I didn’t want to die. I needed to break up with Bob. 02 The next morning. When I woke up, Bob’s side of the bed was already cold. I got dressed in silence and was just about to leave his apartment when the front door swung open. Bob walked in. He had faint dark circles under his eyes, likely from not sleeping at all last night. He was holding a brown paper bag from my favorite artisan bakery downtown. It was miles away from campus, and the line was notoriously brutal on weekend mornings. He set the pastries and coffees on the kitchen island, arranging them meticulously. Only when everything was perfectly laid out did he look up at me. “Are you going to eat?” “Skipping breakfast is bad for your stomach.” I nodded slowly and took a seat on the barstool across from him. The spread was massive. Every single thing on the counter was something I absolutely loved. And it was all still piping hot. It meant Bob had rushed straight back without wasting a single second. Looking at the steam rising from my coffee, a tiny crack formed in the walls I had built around my heart. What if the floating comments were just messing with my head? What if Bob just had a cold personality, but deep down, he actually cared about me? I needed to know the truth. I sniffled quietly, lifting my gaze to meet his deep, unreadable eyes. “Bob, do you—” Before I could finish the sentence, a sharp ping echoed through the kitchen. It was Bob’s phone. Both of our eyes dropped to the glowing screen resting on the marble counter. I could see the notification clear as day. It was a message from a girl saved as Karen. [Hey Bob! When are you free today to help me with…] The preview cut off there. My eyes remained glued to that glowing rectangle. I couldn’t look away. The floating texts immediately swarmed my vision. [Look at her face! Little does she know the male lead added the female lead on social media weeks ago.] [And HE was the one who asked HER out to dinner! Buying breakfast for the side piece means nothing. Karen is the only one who matters in his heart.] [Just give up, girl. You can’t fight the plot.] Right. I was just making a fool of myself again. Bob noticed my shift in demeanor. “What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. I lowered my eyes, shoving a piece of croissant into my mouth. “Nothing,” I mumbled around the pastry. A second later, Bob seemed to realize what had happened. He picked up his phone and slid it across the marble straight to me. He stared right into me. “Do you want to check my phone?” I froze. We had been dating for nearly a year. We had always respected each other’s privacy. We never snooped. In that moment, a war waged in my head. One side screamed: He’s offering it! Just look. Put your mind at ease. The other side whispered: What’s the point? What if you find exactly what you’re afraid of? And even if his messages are clean today, that doesn’t mean they will be tomorrow. Besides, Karen was the main character. How could I possibly compete with destiny? I pressed my lips together. After a few agonizing seconds, I slid the phone back across the counter. I shoved all my chaotic emotions down into a dark pit, forced a painfully fake smile, and gave him the calmest response I could muster. “No.” “I trust you.” Bob’s eyes darkened. He studied my face for a long, heavy moment before looking away. “…Okay.” For some bizarre reason, that single word sounded almost hurt. I brushed it off. I was definitely just projecting. It was Monday. I left his place and headed straight to the science building for my morning lecture. Thanks to those cursed floating comments, my anxiety was through the roof all day. Of course, the professor randomly called on me to answer a complex question. Luckily, I had practically memorized the textbook, so I managed to get through it without embarrassing myself. When the bell finally rang, I walked out of the double doors. Bob was leaning against the brick wall waiting for me, dressed in gray sweatpants and a crisp white tee. He was here to walk me back. 03 Normally, I would have practically sprinted over and intertwined my fingers with his. Today, all I felt was a dull, heavy exhaustion. Right on time, the glowing words appeared to ruin my day. [LMAO, does she actually think he came here just for her? He only swung by because he was dropping Karen off at the auditorium next door.] [Yeah, he’s just doing the bare minimum so she doesn’t throw a tantrum.] My fingers dug into the straps of my backpack. I walked up to him, stopped a few feet away, and kept my voice flat. “Let’s go.” Bob’s hand had started to lift. It hovered in the empty air between us. His fingers curled inward. He looked down at my hands, his expression completely unreadable. I didn’t wait for him. I just started walking. After a few steps, I realized he wasn’t beside me. I turned around to see him still rooted to the exact same spot. “Are you coming or not?” He looked up at my face, looking genuinely lost. “Did I do something to upset you?” I didn’t answer right away. But the question burned in my throat until I finally just spat it out. “Where did you come from just now?” He blinked, clearly caught off guard by the question. But he answered honestly. “The auditorium.” A bitter smile twisted my lips. The truth felt like a physical blow, even though I already knew it. But a sick, masochistic part of me needed to hear the rest. “You dropped Karen off at the auditorium first, and then came over here to pick me up. Right?” Bob’s jaw clenched tight. He gave a slow nod. “Are you mad?” “If you don’t like it, next time I’ll just—” “Don’t bother,” I interrupted. I wasn’t actually mad at him. I just felt incredibly defeated. If everything the comments said was true, then he was the leading man, Karen was his destined love, and I was just a temporary roadblock. They were bound by the universe to fall in love. How was I supposed to fight the universe? I let out a shaky sigh and looked at the pavement. “I’m just tired. I want to go back to my dorm.” Something dark flickered in Bob’s eyes. He stared at me for a few agonizing seconds. Then, he stepped forward, smoothly slipped my heavy backpack off my shoulders, and started walking with long, purposeful strides. “Let’s go.” “I’ll walk you.” We didn’t speak a single word the entire way across campus. When we finally reached the steps of my dorm building, Bob just stood there holding my bag. He made absolutely no move to hand it over or say goodbye. He just stared at me in that intense, quiet way of his. I frowned. “What is it?” Bob looked down. His voice was terrifyingly low. “You always kiss me before you go inside.” He was right. Every single time before today, I did. Usually, I practically begged him for a kiss. But today, my heart felt completely hollow. I shook my head, reached out, and yanked my backpack out of his grip. My voice sounded as exhausted as I felt. “Maybe next time.” “…Okay.” Once I was safely locked inside my room, I sat on my bed and tried to figure out how to navigate this mess. The floating texts were driving me insane. But what was even worse was that every single thing they predicted turned out to be completely true in reality. Logic screamed at me to cut my losses and dump him. But my heart felt like it was bleeding. I couldn’t just let him go. I had fought so hard to get him. Before the comments showed up, our relationship wasn’t perfect. He was distant, and he was way too aggressive in the bedroom. But aside from that, he treated me well. And, if I was being completely honest, the physical side of our relationship was intoxicating when it wasn’t hurting me. While I was spiraling, my phone buzzed with a calendar notification: [Bob’s Birthday.] It was tomorrow. I had already bought his gift weeks ago. And right on cue, the floating text flooded my cramped dorm room: [Oh my god, is she actually planning to celebrate his birthday? Karen has already booked the entire night for him.] [If she doesn’t believe it, she should check out the Grand Plaza Hotel tomorrow. Karen set up a massive surprise party. He’s not going to care about whatever cheap trash the side character bought him.] [Girl, I am begging you. Dump him. You are literally marching toward a bad ending.] I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I sat there in silence for a very long time. This time, I wasn’t going to just blindly trust the text. I needed to see it with my own two eyes. 04 The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes the next morning was a text from Bob: [SGA stuff all morning.] [I’ll pick you up at noon.] I typed back a quick: [Okay.] Thanks to the toxic commentary from last night, a seed of pure paranoia had taken root in my chest. Was he actually working? I got dressed, ordered a rideshare, and headed straight for the luxury hotel the comments had mentioned. A quick chat with the concierge confirmed there was indeed a private birthday luncheon happening in one of the VIP suites. I took the elevator up. The second the silver doors slid open, I saw him. Bob was standing in the corridor. He had one hand casually tucked into his pocket, a rare, soft smile playing on his lips as he looked down at the girl standing in front of him. Karen looked down shyly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. A pretty blush dusted her cheeks. The chemistry between them was so incredibly perfect it almost looked like a movie scene. It was so perfect I felt like an intruder just by looking at them. I braced my hand against the cold wall. My knees felt like they were going to give out. So… he really did lie to me. [Look at her face. Reality check, much? He doesn’t love you.] [Look at him smiling at Karen! He’s so focused on her he hasn’t even noticed his actual girlfriend standing ten feet away.] [Listen to me, girl. Dump him. You deserve better anyway.] I inhaled sharply, trying to hold back the tears. Seeing it with my own eyes felt like a knife twisting directly in my chest. I stood frozen for a few seconds, trying to gather the strength to turn around and sneak away. But then, a familiar, surprised voice rang out. “Amanda.” Bob had caught sight of me in his periphery. He instantly closed the distance between us, his long strides eating up the hallway. Karen trailed right behind him. I turned my head. I stared blankly at the two of them standing side by side. I didn’t say a word. Karen was the first to break the suffocating tension. Her smile looked incredibly stiff as she glanced between us. “Bob… you have a girlfriend?” Bob stepped right up next to me. He smoothly took my purse from my shoulder, the softness in his eyes completely unchanged. “Yeah.” “Karen, meet my girlfriend, Amanda.” The hallway fell into a dead, horrifyingly awkward silence. The floating texts went absolutely wild: [Omg, the male lead is so responsible and honest! Even though he’s not into the side character, he didn’t lie to the female lead to get in her pants!] […Isn’t that just basic human decency?] [Exactly. Stop praising a man for doing the bare minimum.] [Wait, look! The male lead is physically reacting to the female lead! It’s biological destiny!] I flinched. My eyes automatically dropped toward Bob’s waistline. But I couldn’t see anything. He had strategically placed my purse directly in front of himself. Karen, standing directly across from him, was completely oblivious. But from where I was standing right next to him, I had a very clear view of what he was hiding. I snapped my gaze back up. A bitter, reckless laugh escaped my throat. “He doesn’t have to have a girlfriend if he doesn’t want to.” The second the words left my mouth, both of them whipped their heads to look at me. Karen looked utterly bewildered. “What?” Bob’s eyes went completely dark. He said absolutely nothing. I forced a fake, breezy smile. “Just a joke.” The ride back to campus was agonizingly quiet. Bob walked beside me, radiating a tense, heavy silence. It wasn’t until we reached the courtyard of my dorm that he finally lowered his eyes, unable to hold it in anymore. “Amanda, did I do something wrong?” I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned my head to look at him. I couldn’t just sweep this under the rug. “You texted me that you had student government work.” “Bob, if you were working, why were you at the Grand Plaza Hotel?” His dark eyelashes fluttered. When he spoke, his voice was tight and raspy. “I’m sorry.” “The events committee sent me that address. They said we were meeting a vendor for the winter formal. But when I got there, the vendor had already left. I was just about to text you when you walked off the elevator.” I closed my eyes. A crushing wave of absolute exhaustion washed over me. It felt like the universe was constantly pulling strings behind the scenes just to force the two main characters into the same room. And I was powerless to stop it. 05 While I was zoning out, Bob stepped closer and gently wrapped his warm hand around mine. His palm was so comforting. His voice was calm, with that familiar cool tone, but there was a hint of pleading in it. “I made a reservation for dinner. Let’s go eat, okay?” I slowly shook my head. With agonizing precision, I pulled my hand out of his grip, slipping my fingers away one by one. “No.” “I have plans tonight. Maybe next time.” I had finally made up my mind. If I didn’t have the courage to break it off entirely right this second, I was going to slowly distance myself. I would pull away, piece by piece. Until one day, letting him go wouldn’t hurt anymore. Bob turned completely rigid. He stared at me like I had just grown a second head. It took him a long time to find his voice. He looked entirely devastated. “Do you really not remember what day today is?” How could I possibly forget? I had booked an impossible-to-get reservation a week in advance just to celebrate his birthday. I had bought his gift a month ago. An expensive watch and a tiny, hand-knit bear were currently sitting at the bottom of the purse he was still holding for me. But now? There was no point in giving them to him. I reached out and pulled my bag from his hands. My face was unnervingly blank. “It’s nothing important.” The color instantly drained from Bob’s face. His lips parted. It looked like he was desperately trying to force words out of his throat. After a suffocating silence, he just dropped his gaze to the concrete and echoed my words. “Right.” “Nothing important.” The comments started flooding my vision again in a chaotic frenzy: [Omg the male lead looks utterly shattered! It’s HIS birthday, and he even bought a gift for HER, and she totally forgot!] [Turn around, Bob! Karen is waiting for you!] [Why hasn’t he dumped her yet? She treats him like garbage. I feel so bad for him.] [Don’t worry, the side character’s exit is coming right up.] I turned my back on him and started walking toward the dorm doors. My chest felt so tight I could barely breathe. But I didn’t look back. Not even once. When I finally got to my room, I opened my bag, fully intending to shove the watch and the bear into the darkest corner of my bottom drawer. But my fingers brushed against a velvet box that didn’t belong to me. I pulled it out and popped it open. Inside sat a breathtakingly gorgeous diamond necklace. I recognized it immediately. The last time we went to the mall, I had stared at it in the display window for far too long, only to walk away when I saw the price tag. He had actually gone back and bought it. I blinked rapidly. Tears instantly blurred my vision. I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore. Through my tear-filled eyes, the glowing text materialized to ruin the moment. [Aww, is the side character touched? Plot twist: He bought it for Karen, but she rejected it, so he just pawned it off on his girlfriend.] [LMAO, basic girls are so easy to manipulate.] Right. I was being delusional again. I furiously wiped the tears off my cheeks. This time, I didn’t even consider confronting Bob to ask if it was true. Every single time I dug for the truth, I ended up getting hurt. I was so incredibly done. Over the next few weeks, I successfully managed to avoid him. Whenever class ended, I would immediately disappear into the chaotic crowd of students. Whenever he texted asking to hang out, I used midterms and study groups as an excuse. The first few days were agonizing. But eventually, I started getting used to being on my own. I certainly didn’t expect our inevitable collision to happen like this. I had recently won a prestigious academic scholarship, and the campus newspaper wanted to do a quick profile on me. We couldn’t find an empty study room on campus anywhere. Desperate, the senior running the interview suggested booking a cheap day-rate hotel room right off campus just for thirty minutes to record the interview in peace. I never in a million years expected to run into Bob in the lobby. His hand clamped around my wrist like a vice. The edges of his eyes were rimmed with angry red as he physically blocked my path, refusing to let me walk past him. “Do not go up there with him.” I scowled, trying to rip my arm out of his grip. “Let go of me.” Bob planted his feet. He was like an immovable brick wall.

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Everyone said the heir of the Sterling family had found himself a massive headache of an influencer girlfriend who was obsessed with “blind box” gimmicks. When it came to distributing performance bonuses to the staff, she insisted on making it a blind box draw. “I turned everyone’s bonuses into blind boxes! You draw your luck, and whatever amount you get is what you take home. Isn’t that so much more thrilling?” An assistant who had loyally worked under her for three years ended up drawing a measly fifteen dollars. He couldn’t pay his rent and was kicked out by his landlord the very next week. During a major corporate bidding war, she gave Julian Sterling a “brilliant” strategy: blind box bidding. “Let the bidding companies draw blind boxes to decide who wins the contract. It’s all about the thrill!” As a result, a shell company that had been registered for exactly three days, lacking even the basic operational licenses, walked away with the group’s largest annual contract. And on the eve of Sterling Group’s massive offshore acquisition negotiations, she did it again. “I’ve randomized all our minimum walk-away prices into blind boxes! Let’s make this negotiation exciting!” In my past life, as Julian’s wife and business partner, I had called out this utter madness. I fought tooth and nail to correct the proposal. I even personally flew to London, working seventy-two hours straight with no sleep, to secure exclusive authorization from the seller’s core executives. That was the only reason the Sterling Group didn’t go bankrupt right then and there. But instead of being grateful, she threw a massive tantrum, claiming I had humiliated her. She ran away in a fit of rage and got caught in a crossfire street shooting during her chaotic flight. Once the dust settled, Julian grabbed my wrist so hard it bruised and slammed a divorce agreement in my face. “Sienna was just trying to have some fun! If you hadn’t constantly opposed her and made her feel worthless, she would have never run out and faced that horror! Sign it and leave with nothing!” When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment she was tampering with our walk-away prices. Looking at the real pricing sheet that I had already memorized by heart, I chose to remain completely silent. I turned on my heel and walked back to my office. I wish you two a very happy, uninterrupted ride straight to hell.

“Chloe Vance, have you lost your mind?” “Sienna was just trying to lighten the mood. What’s with that cold, miserable face of yours?” Julian kicked my office door open, his voice roaring with impatience. I stared at the computer screen showing the randomized negotiation prices, a cold smirk playing on my lips. “I just don’t like spending my time around suicidal idiots.” “Who are you calling suicidal?!” Julian’s voice pitched higher, his face turning an angry shade of red. “Sienna set up this blind box negotiation because she felt bad that everyone has been working late. She wanted to bring some fun and energy to the team!” “But look at you. You didn’t say a word, just walked back to your office and slammed the door. Who are you trying to intimidate?” Julian’s tone was dripping with annoyance. “The entire project team is praising her for being creative. You’re the only wet blanket here.” “Get back out there right now and apologize to Sienna.” The memory of the words “leaving with absolutely nothing” on that divorce papers from my past life flashed through my mind. My voice turned ice-cold. “Julian, tampering with the walk-away price of an international acquisition is corporate suicide.” “If you two are tired of living, go jump off a cliff yourself.” “Leave me out of it.” Julian let out a harsh sneer. “Stop trying to scare me with your dramatic corporate speeches!” “Sienna already told me that her backer—a legendary hedge fund manager from Silicon Valley—is pulling the strings for her behind the scenes.” “Before the negotiation officially starts, he will send the real, optimized numbers directly to the heads of each department via email.” “It’s called psychological warfare. Do you even understand high-level strategy?” Psychological warfare? Using the entire group’s offshore expansion as a poker chip for some imaginary influencer game? It was beyond pathetic. “Then enjoy your game. Just don’t drag me down with you.” I pushed him out of my office and shut the door. Before Julian’s footsteps could even fade down the hallway, the assistant of the Sterling family matriarch rushed in. “Ms. Vance, Victoria Sterling has arrived!” Sienna was Victoria’s distant niece. I didn’t even need to guess—she had gone crying to the old lady the second I walked away. “Chloe Vance, Sienna said everything is under control!” “As Julian’s wife, not only do you fail to appreciate Sienna’s hard work, but you’re also actively rebelling against management and ruining team morale!” I cut off Victoria’s screeching voice without an ounce of respect. “There are less than twelve hours left before the negotiation begins.” “If we don’t recover the real pricing sheet right now, the moment the sellers realize our numbers are a chaotic mess, they will short our stock. Do you have any idea what will happen to the Sterling Group then?” “When the company goes under, is Sienna going to take the fall? Or are you?” “Insolent!” Victoria slammed her cane on the floor. “Don’t think just because your family empire, the Vance Group, holds a major stake in this merger, you can talk down to me!” “Sienna was so stressed by your toxic attitude that she just fainted in the lounge!” “I’m glad you remember the power of the Vance Group.” “I’ve been executing cross-border acquisitions with my father since I was eighteen. Do you honestly believe a TikTok influencer understands international trade better than I do?” “Harvey, escort Mrs. Sterling out!” “You—!” Seeing that she couldn’t bully me, Victoria stormed out, her face twisted in rage. I reached into my drawer, took out my family’s corporate digital authorization token, and called my core team. A message popped up on my phone. It was a private Slack message from Wyatt, the VP of Strategic Investment. The company-wide WhatsApp group was flooded with brainless praise for Sienna. “Sienna has a literal Silicon Valley god backing her! This blind box pricing is going to be a genius move!” “I just checked! Our team’s bid was set to the rock-bottom minimum! This is so exciting!” Wyatt’s message followed immediately after: “Chloe, these lunatics are actually going to submit those randomized numbers. Are we really just going to stand by and watch?” I typed out five words and hit send: “Let them burn. Save yourselves.” There were only ten hours left. In my past life, I flew across the Atlantic overnight, faced a hostile board of foreign regulators alone, and worked until my eyes literally bled. And my reward was being thrown out of my own home with nothing but a divorce suit. This time, I was going to grab some popcorn. Without me acting as the shield and the brains, I wanted to see how long these clowns could keep up their little circus. Just then, Julian burst back into my office. “Chloe! Sienna is in tears and hyperventilating!” “You are going to her right now, and you are getting down on your knees to apologize!” I looked into his raging eyes and calmly replied, “If she’s hyperventilating, call an ambulance.” “What do you need me for? Am I an oxygen tank?”

“Chloe Vance, are you really going to be this stubborn?” Julian took a violent step forward, slamming his hand down and scattering the files on my desk. “Sienna is just a young girl. What harm could she possibly mean?” “She put so much effort into this blind box pricing just to bring some fun to the boring prep work.” “And honestly, she did it to help you! You’re a miserable workaholic who does nothing but stare at spreadsheets. She wanted to make you less boring!” I looked at the documents scattered across the carpet and let out a soft laugh. “Risking a multi-billion dollar merger just to make me ‘less boring’? How incredibly charitable of her.” “Cut the sarcasm!” Julian pointed a finger right at my face, shouting, “Sienna said her backer is a retired Silicon Valley legend who can predict market trends perfectly! He already knows the seller’s absolute limit!” “The moment we submit our bid, it will be the most brilliant ambush in the history of the Sterling Group!” “We will swallow their market whole, and it will all be thanks to Sienna’s genius out-of-the-box thinking!” I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing. An ambush based on randomized, unchecked numbers? What kind of fairy-tale business textbook did he read that from? “Julian, do you have a single brain cell working?” “Those are minimum walk-away prices. One wrong digit means a loss of hundreds of millions. You are literally throwing this company into a volcano.” “Losses? If there are losses, it’s because the team your dad sent from Vance Group is incompetent!” Julian spat, glaring at me with pure disgust. “You’re just jealous of Sienna’s talent. You’re jealous that she has connections with elite players while you’re just a dry corporate suit.” “Let me tell you something, Chloe. If you don’t apologize to Sienna today,” “You can kiss your status as my wife goodbye, and we will terminate the strategic partnership between Vance Group and Sterling Group immediately!” I let out a low laugh, slowly pushing the remaining acquisition binders off my desk, letting them crash to the floor. “Julian, who was the one who practically knelt at my father’s feet, begging for Vance Group’s backing and a marriage alliance?” “If my father hadn’t respected your grandfather’s legacy, do you honestly think I would have agreed to marry a useless, incompetent boy like you to secure your CEO seat?” “Let me tell you this: this pathetic marriage? Anyone can have it. I’ve been sick of playing your savior anyway.” Julian clearly didn’t expect me to be so ruthless. He froze, his face turning pale as he stood there, completely speechless. “Chloe Vance… stop trying to play hard to get!” “Do you think anyone else in high society would ever tolerate a cold, heartless bitch like you?” He slammed my office door so hard the glass partition rattled, and stormed off. The cold air conditioning hummed in the empty room, making me feel utterly detached. Julian and I grew up together, but there was never any love between us. My father raised me as his sole successor. To protect our family assets and help Julian stabilize his grandfather’s company, I agreed to the marriage. Now, at the most critical juncture of the offshore acquisition, I was representing Vance Group in this joint venture, only to watch it turn into a complete joke. Sienna’s “blind box” show had already spread throughout the entire department. A few project managers were gathered in the breakroom, talking excitedly. “Hey, did you hear?” “Sienna randomized all the bidding brackets. We literally draw numbers out of a hat to fill in the final bid!” “That’s so fresh! I was so tired of doing the same old financial modeling. This actually makes work exciting!” “Exactly! Sienna’s Silicon Valley backer is a genius. Whatever number we pull is meant to be!” “Director Leo from finance tried to ask for the real spreadsheet earlier, and Julian literally kicked him out of the project. Said he was sabotaging Sienna’s strategy!” I watched these brainless sheep walk happily toward the slaughterhouse. Just then, my phone rang. It was Wyatt, the VP of Strategic Investment. I answered. His voice was frantic and trembling with fear. “Chloe!” Yes, although Julian was nominally leading the team, everyone in the industry knew I was the actual brain of this acquisition. “I can’t do this anymore! This blind box pricing is driving us straight off a cliff!” “I want to pull my entire team out of the project tonight. Please, give me the green light!” I remained silent for a moment, then calmly said, “Hold your ground. Do nothing.”

In my past life, Wyatt was the one who stood up and demanded the real pricing sheet. Julian publicly fired him on the spot and blacklisted him from the industry. This time, I wasn’t going to let him make himself a target. Right after I hung up, Harvey pushed my office door open. “Chloe, we have a massive crisis!” Harvey’s face was pale, sweat dripping down his forehead. “The teams just drew their numbers. The finance team pulled a bid that is ridiculously below our actual cost!” “It doesn’t even cover manufacturing. The moment we submit that, the seller’s legal team can sue us for predatory pricing and anti-competitive practices!” “The head of finance begged Sienna to let them redraw, but Sienna just said ‘it’s a trade secret’ and had security drag him out of the building!” I scrolled through the emails on my phone, my expression entirely blank. “So, why are you telling me?” “Chloe, you’re the actual director of this merger! Just say the word, and we will bypass Julian to upload the real pricing data!” Harvey slammed his hand on my desk in frustration. “Upload the real data?” I let out a cold laugh. “Julian made it very clear: anyone who touches Sienna’s pricing sheet will be treated as an insider threat and fired.” Harvey’s eyes were bloodshot. “So we just sit here and watch?” “The negotiation is tomorrow! If we submit these numbers, we won’t even get to see their board. We’ll be laughed out of Wall Street, and our stock price will tank before lunch!” I looked up at him, my voice dangerously calm. “Harvey, listen to me carefully.” “From this moment on, lock down Vance Group’s core proprietary data. Make sure our team’s independent legal channels are secure. No one is to touch our original models.” “As for the rest of them? Their survival has nothing to do with us.” Harvey opened his mouth to argue, but the sheer coldness in my eyes shut him up. He grit his teeth, turned around, and walked out. Outside the window, night had fallen. There were less than ten hours left. Over a hundred employees, running on the whims of an influencer’s blind box. What a beautiful disaster. In my past life, I bled for these ungrateful bastards, only to be thrown out like trash. This time, I was going to enjoy the show. Suddenly, a barrage of celebratory emojis and notifications popped up in the company Slack. I walked to the glass window and looked down at the open office floor. Sienna, dressed in a head-to-toe designer outfit, was standing on a desk in the middle of the room. She held a gold envelope high in the air, laughing hysterically. “Attention everyone! My Silicon Valley mentor has given the final green light! The blind box bids are officially locked!” “We are submitting our destiny-approved bids directly to the offshore board!” Hundreds of employees cheered, throwing paper into the air like they were at a college frat party. Julian stood right beside her, looking at her with eyes full of adoration. The first round of bidding emails was officially sent out. Ten minutes later, the Director of Offshore Operations came sprinting down the hall, slamming Julian’s office door open. “The sellers just rejected our first round of bids! They said our numbers are completely incoherent and insulting! They’re accusing us of wasting their time!” “Worse, two of our pricing brackets are so low that their legal counsel just sent a formal warning. They are preparing to sue us for commercial fraud!” It was the exact chain-reaction collapse I had predicted. Julian stood up, the smile fading from his face, but he immediately turned his fury onto the Director. “Incompetent! This must be because your operations team failed to execute Sienna’s strategy correctly!” He turned to Sienna, his voice carrying a hint of desperation. “Sienna, didn’t your mentor say this was a guaranteed win? Why are they threatening to sue us?” Sienna’s face turned slightly pale, but she quickly covered it up, twisting her fingers and looking incredibly victimized. “Julian, you have to trust the process. My mentor said we must break things down to rebuild them! This is a classic Silicon Valley tactic.” “Their aggressive response is just a test. If we stand our ground, they will back down!” “This is just a minor bump in the road. Once we push through, we win!” I almost burst out laughing at her absurd logic. Using a multi-billion dollar lawsuit as a “test of faith”? And Julian, the brilliant CEO, actually nodded. He waved his hand and roared, “Order the legal department to fight back! Crush their attitude!” “Anyone else who dares to question Sienna’s strategy is fired immediately!”

I gripped my phone tight. The memory of the freezing cold divorce papers made my fingers tremble. In my past life, this stunt wiped out half of Sterling Group’s market cap overnight. I took a deep breath, pushing down the anger, and walked back to my desk. Harvey rushed in, his voice shaking. “Chloe! Finance is in complete chaos!” “Leo, the finance director, realized how bad the numbers were and tried to recall the emails.” “But Julian had IT lock him out of the server, claiming he was committing corporate sabotage! He was escorted out by security and fired on the spot!” I slammed my fist on the desk. Firing the only people telling the truth? Julian had lost his mind. “Chloe, the entire finance department is being forced to execute the blind box contracts!” Harvey’s eyes were red. “Those numbers are a death sentence. The breach of contract fees alone will bankrupt us!” “Please, do something! Let’s release our Vance Group independent valuation sheet to the press!” I closed my eyes, my voice like iron. “Release it? With what authority?” “Julian has locked down all server permissions. If we upload anything now, we’ll be flagged for unauthorized data breaches.” “So we just watch the ship sink?” Harvey shouted, his voice cracking. “Vance Group will not be collateral damage.” I opened my eyes, cold and focused. “Harvey, protect our team. Lock our legal firewalls.” “If anyone from Julian’s side tries to touch our assets, sue them immediately.” Before Harvey could reply, loud arguing erupted outside. Wyatt, the VP of Strategic Investment, was practically thrown into my office. His suit was stained with spilled coffee, his tie torn, and a scratch ran down his cheek. “Chloe, please save us!” Wyatt gasped, gripping the edge of my desk. “Julian called me a traitor. He’s removing me from the board!” “I don’t care about my job, but there are dozens of people in operations who worked day and night on this! Now they’re all going to be ruined!” I stood up and handed him a bottle of water. Wyatt was a good, honest man. In my past life, he stayed up three nights straight helping me clean up Julian’s mess without a single complaint. And now, he was reduced to this. “Wyatt, listen to me,” I whispered. “If I step in now, even my corporate token can’t save anyone. Julian has bypassed the board.” “Vance Group is our final stronghold. Stay quiet, and I will protect you and your core team.” Wyatt stared at me, his lips trembling, before he finally let out a long, defeated sigh and bowed his head. “Harvey, take him out through the back elevator. Don’t let anyone see him.” In the hallway, the loud voice of Julian’s executive assistant echoed: “By order of the CEO, we are conducting an internal audit for corporate spies! All departments must comply!” I adjusted my blazer and stepped out of my office, coming face-to-face with the arrogant assistant. “Ms. Vance, have you seen Wyatt?” I stared at him with absolute disdain. “Do you think you have the security clearance to search my office?” The assistant hesitated, intimidated by my tone. “Mr. Sterling’s orders. Anyone harboring a traitor will be treated as an accomplice.” “If you are protecting Wyatt, you are defying the executive board!” I took a step forward, my presence forcing him to take a step back. “Go tell Julian that Vance Group only answers to our partnership agreement, not his childish tantrums.” “If you take one more step into my wing, my lawyers will have a harassment lawsuit on your desk before you can walk back to the elevator.” The assistant swallowed hard and scurried away. Julian was burning his own house down, and no one could stop him. Just as I sat back down, Harvey’s phone rang. He picked it up, and within seconds, all the color drained from his face. “Chloe… it’s over.” “The offshore regulators just stepped in. They are launching an international fraud investigation against Julian!” “Julian has just been detained for questioning!”

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After the car accident, my father lost his memory and had been living in a care facility. I visited him every week. He was in good spirits today, sitting quietly by the window, fiddling with a chess set. The caretaker smiled and told me he’d become obsessed with it lately, and was getting quite good. But I felt ice run through my veins. I couldn’t bring myself to take another step toward him. That chess set had belonged to my late mother. My father had sworn in front of every family member we had that he would never touch a chess set again for as long as he lived. The care facility was quiet. Afternoon sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, coating everything in the room with a soft gold. My “father” sat in that golden light with his back to me, a chess set laid out in front of him. He wore a clean striped patient’s gown, his hair combed neatly back, a faint shine of pomade catching the light. The caretaker walked in behind me, keeping her tone light. “Miss Thorne, look how well Mr. Thorne is doing today. He’s been obsessed with chess lately — plays for hours every day. He’s improving fast.” My feet felt nailed to the floor. The blood in my body turned cold all at once. I stared at that silhouette — the man I had called “Dad” for over a decade — and felt a chill cut straight to the bone. Chess. That single word was like a rusted blade jammed into my chest. My mother’s death was connected to chess. She had a serious heart condition. One day, She had a brief argument with her father over something trivial, and in the heat of the moment, she suffered an attack.” She collapsed in the living room, just a few feet from his study. My father had been sitting at his desk with his headphones on, lost in an online match, completely unaware of anything happening outside. By the time he finished the game and pulled off his headphones, it was too late. At my mother’s funeral, my father stood in front of every family member we had and smashed his most prized chess set — white jade, hand-carved — to pieces with a hammer. His eyes were red. His voice was steady, every word deliberate. “From this day forward, I, Richard Thorne, will never touch a chess set again for as long as I live. May heaven and earth strike me down if I break this oath.” Those words still rang in my ears. And yet that figure sat calmly before me, turning a cannon over in his hand. The caretaker noticed I hadn’t moved. “Miss Thorne? Is everything alright?” I took a slow breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m fine. Just a little surprised, that’s all.” I walked over and moved to his side. He seemed to sense something and looked up. When he saw me, a warm smile spread across his face. “Blair, you’re here.” His voice was the same as always — deep, with a richness to it. His face was the same face I’d known all my life, only a little pale and thin from the accident and the long recovery. Everyone said that after the crash he’d lost his memory — forgotten so many people, so many things — but that the one thing he hadn’t forgotten was me, his daughter. Every time I came to visit, he would smile and call me by name, just like that. But now, looking at that face, all I felt was a stranger staring back at me. “Dad,” I said softly, pointing to the board on the table. “When did you start playing the chess?” He glanced down and smiled. “Just a few days ago. The caretaker brought it in to keep me busy. Turns out I kind of like it.” “Is that right?” My voice wavered slightly. “Did you… used to like chess? Before?” He paused. A flicker of confusion crossed his eyes. “Before? I can’t remember. Probably not, I’d guess. Otherwise I’d have some memory of it.” He said it so naturally. So easily. And I felt my heart sink — down and down, into something bottomless. This man was not my father. My father, Richard Thorne, could forget the entire world, but he would never forget the guilt he carried for my mother. He would never forget the oath soaked in blood and tears. This man had taken my father’s identity, moved into my father’s care facility, spent my father’s money — and now he wanted to take me too. I pressed my nails into my palms until they dug into the skin. “Maybe so.” I looked down, hiding the cold fury in my eyes. “You should rest. I’ll come see you again soon.”

I couldn’t stand to be there a moment longer. I was afraid that if I looked at him one more time, I’d lose it — I’d lunge forward and tear that fake smile right off his face. I turned and walked out without looking back. The caretaker called after me warmly, “Miss Thorne, won’t you stay a little longer? Mr. Thorne is doing so well today…” I didn’t respond. I walked straight out of the care facility. The sunlight outside was harsh, but I couldn’t feel any warmth in it. What was I supposed to do? I drove straight to the nearest police station. “I need to report a crime!” I rushed into the station and said it to an officer I saw — a man who had just been sitting there with a cup of coffee. He startled and set down his mug. “Ma’am, slow down. Tell me what happened.” “My father — someone is impersonating him! The man in that care facility is not my father!” I was barely making sense, my voice shaking. The officer frowned and gestured for me to sit. “Are you talking about the chairman of Submer Group? Mr. Thorne?” “Yes!” “Miss Thorne, I think you may be exhausted. Mr. Thorne has been monitored by our department since the accident. He lost his memory, yes, but his identity has been verified.” “No! You have it wrong! He’s a fake — he plays chess! He plays chess!” I was clutching at the only proof I had, saying it louder like volume would make them hear me. The officer’s expression shifted to something closer to pity. “Miss Thorne, we understand how difficult this has been since your father’s accident. But the fact that he plays chess now doesn’t prove he’s an impostor. Memory loss can change a person’s personality and habits — which is medically documented.” “But he swore an oath! He swore he would never touch chess again for the rest of his life!” “An oath doesn’t carry legal weight,” the officer said patiently. “And Miss Thorne — when we confirmed his identity, we ran a DNA comparison. The paternity match between him and you came back at 99.99%.” DNA. I went still. How was that possible? If the DNA matched, then… A wild, terrifying thought surfaced in my mind. Was there really someone out there who looked exactly like my father — whose DNA was nearly identical to his? I walked out of the police station in a daze. The city was lighting up around me as evening fell, but I felt more alone and helpless than I ever had in my life. No one believed me. To everyone else, I was just a daughter who’d become obsessive and unhinged after her father’s accident. What was I supposed to do? I drove without thinking and found myself back home almost without realizing it. This was the house I’d lived in with my father for over twenty years. Now it was just me. I went into his study. Everything was exactly the way he’d left it. A financial magazine he hadn’t finished was still sitting on his desk. I sat down in his chair and tried to draw some strength from the familiar things around me. My gaze drifted to a wooden box in the corner of the bookshelf, coated in dust. It was the box my father used to keep his chess set in. After my mother died, that box had never been opened again. Something pulled me toward it. I lifted it down from the shelf. It was heavy, carved with delicate patterns across the lid. I blew off the dust and opened it. Empty. No chess pieces inside. Right. My father had smashed that white jade set with his own hands. I was about to close the lid when something caught my eye. The bottom of the box looked slightly off. I tapped it with my knuckles. A hollow sound came back. A false bottom. My heart started racing. I worked my fingernail into the gap along the edge for what felt like forever, until finally a thin wooden panel came loose. Underneath, resting quietly in the hidden compartment, was a small black USB drive. Attached to it was a tiny label, written in my father’s bold, distinctive handwriting: “The Final Match.”

I held that USB drive in my hand, my palm slick with sweat. “The Final Match.” Those three words felt like a riddle — one pulling me toward the truth hidden behind it. I went straight to my room and plugged the drive into my laptop. It was password protected. I frowned. What would my father use as a password? His birthday? My mother’s? Their wedding anniversary? I tried every number I could think of. Wrong every time. I slumped back in my chair. “The Final Match…” If it was connected to a match, maybe the password was connected to chess too. Something came back to me. The day my mother died, my father had been in the middle of a game. He printed out the game record afterward and kept it tucked inside his favorite chess book. He said he wanted to remember that day forever. To remember what his mistake had cost. I went back to the study and pulled 《Silman’s Complete Endgame Course》from the shelf. I opened it. A slightly yellowed piece of paper slid out. On it was a printed game record — a complex position, the final move showing the black king caught with no escape. At the bottom, in handwriting, a single line: “Rook to f 6. No way back.” My father’s handwriting. My heart lurched. What if… I went back to my laptop and typed the combination into the password field: rooktof6. Enter. The drive unlocked. My heart was hammering as I opened the single folder inside. There was no bombshell confession. No final message. Just a dense collection of Excel spreadsheets and financial reports. I went through them one by one, frowning at the screen. Most of it looked like standard Submer Group accounting. But several files had been flagged in red. I clicked one open. It was a record of a massive overseas investment — the recipient, an offshore company I had never heard of. And in the signature field, the name of the person who had authorized the transfer was one I recognized immediately: Victor Cross. Vice chairman of Submer Group. My father’s most trusted business partner. I’ve always had a deep respect for him. My head went blank. After my father’s accident, Victor had been the one who stepped in without missing a beat — steadying the company, reassuring the shareholders, keeping everything from falling apart. Everyone had praised him. Said he was loyal, capable, the backbone of Submer Group in a crisis. I had always been grateful to him. But now, these files — the ones my father had gone out of his way to encrypt and hide — felt like ice water poured straight over me. My father had been investigating him. Before the accident, my father had already been building a case against Victor. That was not a coincidence. I copied every flagged file onto my own computer and wiped the USB drive. When it was done, I felt completely hollowed out. A terrible suspicion had taken shape inside me: My father’s accident was no accident. And the man impersonating him was almost certainly working with Victor. I went back to the police. This time, I didn’t say a word about chess or oaths. I handed the police the suspicious financial records directly and laid out my theory plainly: there were serious financial irregularities inside Submer Group, Vice Chairman Victor Cross was a strong suspect for embezzlement, and my father’s car accident might be connected to all of it. The same officer from last time. When he saw what I’d brought, his expression changed. “Miss Thorne, we’ll open a formal investigation immediately. But until we have solid evidence, please don’t do anything that might tip them off.” I nodded. “I understand.” I didn’t go home when I left the station. I got in my car and drove somewhere else.

Back to the mountain road where my father’s accident happened. It was a remote stretch of highway. Barely any traffic at the best of times. The official conclusion had been that the road was slick from rain and my father lost control of the car. Looking at it now, that conclusion had more holes in it than I could count. My father had been driving for decades. No matter how bad the road conditions, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I parked on the road and looked down through the gap in the guardrail. A cliff dropped away below — dozens of meters down, thick with trees. That was where his car had gone over. He was found with severe head trauma, unconscious, and rushed to the hospital. I started picking my way down the slope. I wanted to see the scene of the accident up close. Maybe something had been missed. The ground was slippery. I fell several times, getting mud on my pants and hands. After about fifteen minutes, I reached the base of the cliff. His car — a black Bentley — had long since been towed away. All that remained was some broken debris and a long scar scraped into the earth. I searched the area carefully, not leaving a single corner unchecked. But aside from the wreckage and some crushed brush, I found nothing. The light was fading. Wind came down from the mountain, cold against my skin. I was about to give up when I noticed a small village not far off. A few lights glowed in the windows, still and quiet. A thought flashed through my mind. The accident happened in such an isolated spot. If anyone had witnessed something that night, it would have been someone from that village. I decided to try. I walked toward the lights. Near the entrance to the village, an elderly man sat on a stone step, smoking a pipe. I approached and greeted him politely. “Excuse me, sir. I was hoping you could help me with something.” He looked up, studying me with clouded eyes. “What is it?” “A while back — on the night it rained heavily — there was a car accident up on the mountain road. Do you remember that?” The elderly man took a long drag from his pipe and nodded slowly. “That black car that came off the mountain. Terrible fall. Didn’t know if whoever was inside lived or died.” My breath caught. “Were you… there at the time? Did you see anything?” The elderly man squinted, as if pulling something up from his memory. “Rain was too heavy for me to go out. But I heard something.” “What did you hear?” “Arguing.” He paused. “Two men. Going at it hard. One of them kept shouting something like ‘you can’t do this.’” Two men. The air went out of my lungs. “Could you see what they looked like?” The old man shook his head. “Too dark. pouring rain. Couldn’t make them out.” He paused. “Though there was something strange.” “What was strange?” “The two of them…” He tilted his head. “Their voices sounded exactly the same.”

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After five years of marriage, I ghostwrote twelve bestselling novels for my husband and built his success with my own hands. At the launch party for his new book, he walked in with a rising celebrity on his arm and announced he’d found a new “muse.” When a reporter asked about my contribution, he smiled and cut them off. “Her? Without me, she’s nothing.” I just smiled back, calm as ever. Because from the very first book, he was never really my husband — He was an investment. One I’d spent five years carefully building up. And tonight, at the peak of his arrogance, his biggest rival would buy him out — contract and all — at the price I’d already set. The lights at the book launch were blazing, and they made Rowan Sterling look handsome and successful. Elara Vance stood beside him — a hot celebrity in an expensive gown, her arm looped through his. They were the stars of the night. I sat in the most invisible corner of the audience, holding a guest pass between my fingers. Rowan’s assistant had shoved it into my hand just to check a box. “Evelyn, tonight is really important for Rowan. Just watch from down here — don’t come up on stage. We can’t have you saying the wrong thing.” Her words were still ringing in my ears. Up on stage, the host introduced Rowan’s thirteenth book with barely contained excitement. “Rowan, congratulations on your upcoming release, Light in the Dust! Critics are already calling it the pinnacle of your career. Can you walk us through the creative journey behind this one?” Rowan picked up the mic and glanced at Elara. “This book wouldn’t exist without my muse — Elara Vance.” Every camera in the room swung toward her. She smiled for the lenses with the ease of someone who’d already won. “Every single day with Elara fills me with the drive to create. She’s like a beam of light cutting through the darkness inside me — a darkness I thought had run dry.” Applause and camera clicks filled the room. My heart was completely still. Like standing water that hadn’t moved in years. Light in the Dust — I came up with that title after three consecutive all-nighters in the attic, staring out the window at the faint glow of early morning. Rowan had been in another city at the time, attending some business event with Elara. He told me it was all for our future together. A reporter stood up. “Rowan, we all know you’re married. How has your wife supported your career? Was she involved in this new book at all?” It was a pointed question. Every eye in the room landed on Rowan. I watched his brow twitch — just barely, just for a second. Then it smoothed out, and he flashed that perfect smile. “My wife has always been my quiet support system at home. She takes care of everything so I never have to worry.” He paused, and his tone went flat. “As for the writing itself — that’s a specialized craft. It takes talent and inspiration. It’s not something you can compare to keeping house.” Five years of my life. Twelve books. Tens of millions of words. And he’d just filed it all under housework. Elara stepped in right on cue, her voice honeyed and smooth. “Rowan is such a dedicated writer. He locks himself in his study for hours — sometimes a whole day at a time. The best thing the people around him can do is stay out of his way and let him work.” She’d placed herself firmly in the category of the people around him. The reporter wasn’t done. “So, Rowan — does that mean your wife had nothing to do with the massive success of your previous twelve books either?” A flicker of irritation crossed Rowan’s face. He raised the mic, and his voice cooled. “My wife has given a lot to this family, and I’ve always been grateful for that. But the writing is mine. My work. My talent.” He said it without a moment’s hesitation. As if all those sleepless nights meant nothing. As if the pages covered in my handwriting had never existed. The young reporter sitting next to me — clearly new to the job — leaned over and whispered to her colleague. “Who even is his wife? I’ve never seen her before.” “Probably just a housewife,” the other one murmured back. “He keeps her so hidden — she must not be much to look at.” I looked down at my hands. At the knuckles that had bent slightly out of shape from years of holding a pen. Then another reporter stood up. “Evelyn — are you here tonight? As Rowan’s wife, do you plan to keep supporting his career? And what do you think about him finding a new muse?” Heads began turning all across the room, searching for me. Rowan’s gaze cut through the crowd like a blade, landing on me with a clear warning. He jumped in before I could say a word, his voice loud and carrying the easy condescension of someone doing a favor. “Of course she supports me. “ ”She’d be nothing without me.”

The room fell completely silent. Then came an even bigger uproar. Those words were captured by countless cameras and spread across the entire internet. I became what everyone was talking about — a worthless woman who could only survive by clinging to her husband. I slowly lifted my head and looked up at Rowan on the stage. He was basking in the spotlight, not sparing me a single glance. He thought I would swallow every humiliation and injustice, just like I had for the past five years. I took out my phone. The screen’s glow lit up my face. I found a number — one I had saved a long time ago but never once called. Elias Thorne. Rowan’s biggest rival in the literary world. I opened the email attachment. Inside was a complete document. The file was titled: Light in the Dust. Recipient: Elias Thorne. I hit send. Then I stood up and walked out of that place that made me sick to my stomach. My phone buzzed. A new email. From Elias. Just one word. “Yes.” I went back to the place that was supposed to be called “home.” It was quiet. Our wedding photo hung on the wall. The woman in that picture was smiling — genuinely happy. Back then, I believed I had married for love. I pulled out my suitcase and started packing my things. I didn’t have much. A few clothes, some books, and an old laptop. That laptop held every single word I had written over the past five years. Every word had been published under Rowan’s name, turned into the halo that crowned his head. I placed the laptop gently into the suitcase. I didn’t cry. I wasn’t angry. My heart was calm. When a person has been completely let down, there’s nothing left to feel. The door opened. Rowan walked in with Elara. He’d been drinking — the smell of alcohol clung to him. Elara had her arm around him. When she saw me packing, her eyes went wide with exaggerated surprise. “Evelyn, what are you doing?” Rowan shoved Elara aside and stormed over to me. He snatched the clothes out of my hands and threw them on the floor. “Evelyn, what the hell is wrong with you?” His voice was full of rage. “You already embarrassed me at the launch. Now you’re pulling some dramatic walk-out?” I ignored him. I bent down, picked up the clothes, and folded them again. “I’m not being dramatic, Rowan. I want a divorce.” My voice was steady. Rowan looked at me like I’d just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “Divorce? Evelyn, do you even know what you’re saying?” He jabbed his finger at me. “You eat my food, wear clothes I pay for, live in my house. If you leave me, where are you going to go? What are you going to do?” “Don’t forget — without me, you’re nothing.” He said it again. The same words. Elara walked over and tugged at his arm, putting on a show of trying to calm him down. “Rowan, don’t say it like that. Evelyn’s probably just not thinking straight right now.” She turned to me, her eyes full of gloating dressed up as pity. “Evelyn, I know you’re hurting. But you can’t force feelings. Rowan loves me now. You should let us be happy.” “Besides, a woman needs stability. Throwing a fit is one thing, but don’t throw away your whole future over it.”

She said it all so matter-of-factly. Like I was some child who didn’t know any better and needed to be set straight. The alcohol was hitting Rowan harder now. He dropped onto the couch and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Evelyn, I’m exhausted. I’m not doing this with you tonight.” “Right now, you’re going to apologize to Elara.” He said it like an order. “She had a rough night at the launch, and it’s because of you. You made her look bad.” I stared at him. It almost made me laugh. I was the one who’d been humiliated. I was the one who’d been publicly shamed. I was the one who’d been stripped of everything. And now he was telling me to apologize to the woman who had taken it all. “And if I don’t?” I asked. Rowan’s eyes narrowed. Something dangerous flickered in them. “Don’t push me.” “I’m telling you right now — I run this house. You either apologize and go back to being the way you were, or you get out.” “I’ll give you three seconds.” “One.” “Two.” Elara leaned against Rowan, watching me like she had a front-row seat to a show. I didn’t wait for three. I zipped up my suitcase and stood up straight. “You’re right, Rowan.” “This is your house. You make the rules.” “So I’m done here.” I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and walked toward the door. Rowan froze. He probably never expected that I — always so obedient — would actually leave. “Evelyn, you dare!” He roared at my back. I didn’t turn around. As I opened the door, I heard Elara say behind me: “Rowan, don’t be mad. She’s just throwing a tantrum. Give it a few days — once she runs out of money, she’ll come crawling back on her own.” Rowan’s voice dripped with contempt. “She won’t last three days before she’s crying and begging me to take her back.” I closed the door. Shutting the two of them — and my past — inside. The air outside was cold. I dragged my suitcase through the streets in the dead of night. I had nowhere to go. My parents were long gone, and my friends had all drifted away because Rowan didn’t like them. For five years, my whole world had been him. I checked into a hotel. The room was small, but clean. I set my suitcase in the corner and sat on the edge of the bed. My phone rang. It was Elias. I answered. “Hello?” “It’s me, Elias.” His voice was low, carrying a trace of surprise. “The manuscript you sent me — you wrote this?” “Yes,” I said. A brief silence on the other end. “All twelve of Rowan’s books — you wrote them?” “Yes.” Another silence. I could picture the shock on his face. The entire literary world had been fooled by Rowan. “Where are you right now?” Elias asked. “A hotel.” “Would you be okay meeting in person? I’d like to talk face to face.” “Sure.” We arranged to meet at the café downstairs. Elias was younger than I’d imagined. He was dressed casually, and he looked less like a successful businessman and more like an academic. When he spotted me, he stood up. “Mrs. Sterling.” “Just Evelyn is fine.” We sat down, and he ordered me a warm glass of milk. “I read the manuscript. It’s exceptional.” Elias got straight to the point. “The story structure, the prose — it’s far beyond anything Rowan is capable of now.” “He hasn’t produced anything this good in a very long time.” I said nothing, just stirred the milk in my cup. “I want to know — what are your plans?” Elias looked at me, his gaze direct. “I want to take back everything that belongs to me,” I said. “My name, my work, and my life.” Elias smiled. “Good.” He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a document, and slid it across the table. “Sell it to me.” “We want to purchase the rights to your manuscript, Light from the Dust, and promote it with everything we’ve got.” “The author’s name on the cover — your name.” I looked at the contract. The terms they were offering were even better than what Rowan currently had. “Why?” I asked. “Rowan is your rival. Helping me means going up against him. What’s in it for you?” Elias leaned back in his chair. “First — I respect your talent. Work this good shouldn’t be buried, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be stolen by a fraud.” “Second — taking down the competition is just business. Rowan has dominated this market for too long. It’s time for a change.” “Third,” he paused, “I think you deserve it.” I looked into his eyes. There was no pity there — only admiration and respect. In five years, no one had ever looked at me that way. “I have one condition,” I said. 4 “Go ahead.” “I want Rowan completely destroyed.” The corner of Elias’s mouth curved into a smile. “That’s not a condition. That’s just what happens when we work together.” I picked up the pen and signed my name at the bottom of the contract. Evelyn. Not Rowan’s wife. Not anyone’s shadow. Just myself. After signing, I went back to my room. There was an unread message on my phone from Rowan. “When you’re done with this little act, come home. I’ll pretend none of this ever happened.” I deleted the message, and typed back with a thrill I’d never felt before: “Don’t rush. The show has only just begun.” I signed a deal with Elias’s publishing house. They gave me an apartment to use as a temporary workspace. It was quiet, with a large floor-to-ceiling window. I could write there in peace. Elias’s team moved fast — they wasted no time getting my new book ready. Meanwhile, Rowan didn’t seem to sense the storm coming. He probably still thought I was just sulking. I spotted him in a business news segment. He had taken Elara to a major film and TV adaptation conference. The photo showed him looking confident and full of life, his arm around Elara’s waist, smiling at the camera. The report said that “Stellar Pictures” the country’s largest film and television company, was interested in adapting his next work, Light in the Dust, into a major production. Stellar Pictures was one of Elias’s business partners. My lawyer told me everything was going according to plan. A few days later, I got a call from Elias. “There’s a meeting with Stellar Pictures. You should come.” “In what capacity?” I asked. “As the original author.” The meeting was scheduled at the conference center of a five-star hotel. When I arrived, Rowan and Elara hadn’t shown up yet. I was directed to wait in the lounge area. It wasn’t long before I heard those familiar, grating voices. “Rowan, if this deal goes through, I have to play the female lead.” That was Elara. “Don’t worry. I’m on good terms with the CEO of Stellar. This project is as good as ours.” That was Rowan. They walked in. Rowan spotted me the moment he stepped through the door. His face flashed with surprise, then quickly shifted to contempt. He probably thought I had followed him here, or was looking for a job. “What are you doing here?” He walked up to me, looking down at me like I was beneath him. Elara followed close behind, arms crossed, wearing the expression of someone who couldn’t wait to watch a scene unfold. “Evelyn, are you here to beg Rowan for forgiveness?” I didn’t bother responding to either of them. Rowan’s patience ran out fast. “I don’t care how you got in here. Leave. Right now. Don’t embarrass me.” His eyes landed on the coffee machine in front of me, and something seemed to click. He pushed an empty cup toward me and spoke like he was giving an order. “Pour me a cup of coffee.” I looked at him. Elara laughed out loud. “Evelyn, weren’t you always so good at taking care of people? Don’t tell me you can’t even pour a cup of coffee anymore.” Rowan let out a scornful snort. “Without me, this is all she’s good for anyway.” His eyes were full of contempt. He thought I was still the same Evelyn he could walk all over whenever he felt like it. He thought that without him, I was nothing. I slowly stood up. I didn’t touch the coffee machine. I just looked at him and said, calmly: “Rowan, you’re going to find out very soon — which one of us is nothing without the other.” He looked at me like I’d just told the world’s worst joke. “You? Really? You?” Just then, the door to the lounge swung open.

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Late at night, I sat alone in our newly finished wedding suite, facing the antique Western mirror I’d won at auction for a small fortune, trying on the diamond crown I was meant to wear for the wedding tomorrow. The woman in the mirror was lovely, her eyes sweet with the joy of a bride about to walk down the aisle. Victor had booked out an entire private island for this wedding. Everyone said I was the happiest woman in our circle. My parents had died young, leaving me a fortune worth billions. Not only had I held the family business together, I’d also found a man who loved me down to the bone. Just as I was lost in that happiness, the surface of the antique mirror suddenly rippled like water. My once-clear reflection began to twist and blur. Then a woman appeared in the glass — skeletal, her hair gone gray, wearing a psychiatric hospital’s restraint jacket. She was strapped to a rusted iron bed, her eyes hollow and sunken, her cheeks covered in festering sores. And that face was my own.

The woman in the mirror slowly turned her head, those ash-gray eyes fixing on me. “Blair, look at me.” Her voice was hoarse, like sandpaper grinding. “I’m you, ten years from now.” In that instant, the blood in my veins seemed to freeze. Ten years from now? How could I ever turn into something this ghastly? “V… Victor is a monster!” The woman in the mirror suddenly grew frantic, thrashing against her restraints, the chains clashing with an ear-splitting screech. “He never loved you! He loves your money!” “You think you have the early-onset Alzheimer’s that runs in your family?” “No! He’s been poisoning you!” “Those imported ‘miracle pills’ he hands you every day — they’re hallucinogens that destroy your nervous system!” “He turned you into a madwoman who can’t even remember her own name, then took legal guardianship of you and seized Kensington Group!” I shook my head desperately, tears spilling out. “Impossible! Victor would lay down his life for me — how could he ever hurt me?” Years ago, when I was in that car accident, he’d shielded me with his own body, his back torn bloody by the glass. How could he be a con artist? “You fool!” The me from ten years later laughed, a shrill, ghastly sound. “That accident was staged — he hurt himself on purpose to win you over!” “And your best friend Chloe — she’s been sleeping with Victor for ages!” “While you’re locked in a psych ward eating slop, the three of them — him, her, and the baby — are living in your villa, spending your money, sleeping in your bed!” “Before the wedding tomorrow, he’ll bring out a full power-of-attorney document for you to sign.” “Don’t sign it! If you do, there’s no coming back!” The image in the mirror began to flicker, the woman’s voice growing fainter and fainter. “Check his second phone… the passcode is Chloe’s birthday…” “Remember — don’t drink anything he gives you…” The glass abruptly went still. In the reflection was only my own face, pale and terrified.

“Blair, why are you sitting on the floor?” The bedroom door opened, and Victor walked in wearing silk pajamas, carrying a delicate porcelain bowl. He hurried to my side and helped me up, his eyes full of concern. “Did you get dizzy again?” He gently touched my forehead, then picked the crown up off the floor and set it on the vanity. “Here, take today’s medicine first. The doctor said it slows down your memory loss.” He scooped up a spoonful of the dark, murky liquid, blew on it, and held it to my lips. “Good girl. Drink it and get to bed early — tomorrow you’ll be the most beautiful bride in the world.” Ten minutes earlier, I’d have swallowed it without hesitation and been moved to tears by his tenderness. But now, looking at that impossibly gentle face, my stomach just churned. The medicine gave off a strange, bitter-sweet smell. That festering face from ten years later wouldn’t leave my mind. “I… I feel a little nauseous. I’ll drink it later.” I turned my face away, fighting to keep from trembling. Victor’s eyes darkened almost imperceptibly, then quickly softened again. “The best medicine tastes the worst. You’ve been so forgetful lately — you can’t skip your doses.” There was a faint, hard edge under his tone. “Be good. I’ll feed it to you.” I clenched my fists so hard my nails nearly cut into my palms. “Victor, I really can’t drink it right now. I want to take a shower first.” I stood, not daring to meet his eyes, and all but fled into the bathroom. The second I locked the door, I leaned back against it, gasping for air. I heard Victor moving around outside, and after a while his footsteps left the bedroom. I turned on the faucet, letting the running water cover everything. Then I quietly eased the bathroom door open a crack. Victor wasn’t in the bedroom. Barefoot, I crossed to the nightstand and pulled open the bottom drawer. There was a hidden compartment there. Victor thought I didn’t know about it, but I’d found it long ago while cleaning — I’d just never opened it, because I trusted him. I fished out a black backup phone. With shaking fingers, I typed in Chloe’s birthday: 0912. The screen lit up. The phone had only one hidden messaging app. The pinned contact was named “Babe.” The profile picture was Chloe’s beloved ragdoll cat. I opened the chat history, and a wave of disgust drowned me instantly. [Honey, the baby kicked me again today. I can’t wait for him to be born.] Attached was a photo of a pregnant belly — and the background was the sofa in mine and Victor’s wedding suite! Victor replied: [You’ve worked so hard, love. Once that stupid woman signs the power of attorney tomorrow, Kensington Group is ours. Then I’ll send her straight to a sanatorium and bring you in to live here out in the open.] Chloe: [Should we up her dosage? I’m scared she’ll come to her senses tomorrow and refuse to sign.] Victor: [Relax, I doubled tonight’s dose. By tomorrow her brain will be total mush. She’ll do whatever I tell her.] Chloe: [You’re so smart, honey. I love you to death. That frump still thinks she’s dying of some terminal illness — it’s hilarious.] I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, just to keep from screaming out loud. Ten years of friendship. Five years of love. All of it a carefully built con to bleed me dry and slaughter me! They didn’t just want my money — they wanted to turn me into a total madwoman, to make me wish I were dead! I quickly forwarded all the chat logs and the photo of the prenatal report to my private encrypted email. Then I deleted the forwarding records and put the phone back in the compartment exactly as it had been. The moment I finished, footsteps approached the bedroom door. I rushed back into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. When Victor pushed the door open, I was just coming out, drying my hair. “All done?” He walked over smiling, still holding that bowl of medicine. “It’s the perfect temperature now. Drink up.” I looked at him and suddenly smiled. “Okay.” I took the porcelain bowl and walked to the windowsill. “Victor, you’re so good to me.” “For you, I’d do anything.” The instant a satisfied smile crossed his face, I flipped my wrist. Every last drop of the dark liquid poured into the prized clivia plant on the sill. “Oops, my hand slipped.” I looked at him with fake alarm. Victor’s face went instantly ugly, a vein jumping at his temple. But he quickly choked down his anger and forced out a smile. “It’s fine. I’ll go make you another bowl.” “Don’t bother.” I cut him off, walked over, and wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face against his chest. “It’s too late. I’m tired, and I have to be up early tomorrow.”

The next day, at the seven-star hotel owned by Kensington Group. Everyone of note in our circle had gathered for the wedding of the century. In the dressing room, I looked at my flawlessly made-up face in the mirror, my eyes clear and cold. “Blair, you look stunning today!” Chloe walked in wearing her bridesmaid dress, lightly made up, a designer bag on her arm, beaming as she came up behind me. “This gown is couture. Victor really spared no expense for you.” As she spoke, she very naturally touched her slightly rounded belly. If I hadn’t seen those messages, I’d never have noticed that unconscious, protective little gesture. “He really did put a lot of ‘thought’ into me.” I watched her reflection with a faint, knowing smile. Chloe froze for a beat, as if my gaze cut a little too sharp. But she covered quickly and pulled a red gift box out of her bag. “Blair, I went to the church and had this cross blessed especially for you.” “You haven’t been well lately, always forgetting things. The pastor said this will keep you safe and keep your mind clear.” She pressed the cross into my hand, her smile all sincerity. “You have to keep it on you at all times.” I looked at the cheap little cross in my hand. Inside, I was sneering. Giving me a cross? Was she afraid I wasn’t dying fast enough — or testing whether I’d noticed something was wrong? “Thanks, Chloe.” I casually tossed the cross into the trash can beside me. “But I don’t believe in any of that. Besides, with Victor around, what could possibly happen to me?” Chloe stared at the cross in the trash, her face stiffening. “Blair, you… why would you throw it away? That was a heartfelt gift.” “Sorry, I’m a hard-nosed realist.” I shot her a cold glance. Just then, the dressing room door opened. Victor walked in wearing a sharply tailored white tuxedo, every inch the storybook prince. “Blair, are you ready? The ceremony’s about to start.” He came to my side, his eyes flicking between me and Chloe. Chloe instantly put on a wounded expression and shot him a hesitant look. Victor gave her an almost invisible signal, then turned to me. “Blair, before the ceremony starts, there’s a small document I need you to sign.” He pulled a folded document from his inner pocket and held it out to me. “What is this?” I asked, though I knew full well. “It’s a full power of attorney.” Victor’s voice was dripping with tenderness. “You haven’t been well lately, and the doctor says you need a long rest — you can’t overexert yourself.” “Running Kensington Group is exhausting. I don’t want you wearing yourself out.” “Just hand the company over to me for a while. You can simply relax and be my Mrs. Thorne, all right?” He pressed a diamond-studded pen into my hand. “Sign it. We’ve got hundreds of guests and the press out there waiting for us.”

I looked down at the document. It was all spelled out in black and white. The moment I signed my name, every share of Kensington Group, all decision-making power, even the real estate in my name, would be Victor’s to do with as he pleased. This was the trap he’d so carefully laid. “Blair, just sign it.” Chloe chimed in from the side. “Victor only wants what’s best for you. Look at yourself lately — you fall asleep in meetings. Hand the company to him. What’s there to worry about?” Watching this pair of dogs sing the same tune, I suddenly found it absurdly funny. “Victor.” I lifted my head and stared straight at him. “Do you think I’ve gone so mad I can’t even read anymore?” The smile on Victor’s face froze. “Blair, what are you talking about? You’re just sick…” “Sick?” I shot to my feet and flung the power of attorney into his face. The sharp edge of the paper sliced across his cheek, leaving a thin line of blood. “Victor, those hallucinogens you’ve been dosing me with — did you really think I didn’t know?” The instant the words left my mouth, the air in the dressing room froze. Victor’s pupils contracted violently, but he was an old fox — he forced himself calm in a heartbeat. “Blair! Are you having another episode? You’re babbling nonsense again!” He rushed forward to grab my hands. “Chloe, quick, get her medicine!” Chloe panicked too, scrambling a pill bottle out of her bag and shaking out two white tablets. “Blair, stop this, just take your medicine!” She lunged over, trying to help Victor pin me down. “Get away from me!” I swung my hand around and delivered a deafening slap straight across Chloe’s face. Crack! I put everything into it. Chloe shrieked, crashing to the floor, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “You dare hit me?!” Chloe clutched her face, screaming in disbelief. “I’m hitting you precisely because you’re a shameless slut!” I looked down at her from above. “Carrying another man’s bastard and playing my bridesmaid — Chloe, aren’t you afraid you’ll give birth to a monster?” The words landed like a bomb, blowing Victor and Chloe to pieces. Victor completely lost his composure. He stared at me in disbelief, the devoted mask he’d worn ripping away to reveal the vicious face beneath. “You… how could you know?” “If you don’t want something known, don’t do it in the first place.” I gave a cold laugh, pulled a stack of photos from my bag, and hurled them in their faces. The photos rained down like snow. Every one was their vile chat logs and that prenatal report. “Victor, you thought you’d pulled it off without a trace?” “That poison you fed me every day — I never drank a single drop!” “Did you really think I’d hand Kensington Group over to a backstabbing snake like you?”

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“You were born with an extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. Touch a phone and your skin will peel right off. Your heart will stop.” That’s what my mom drilled into my head from the time I was a little girl. To survive, I went twenty years without ever touching electronics. I was locked in a dark room covered in tin foil, like a caveman, spending my days gluing matchboxes and washing bloodstained sheets. And on the other side of the wall, my brother had the latest gadgets, a top-of-the-line gaming PC, and all the love and money my parents could pour on him. Until one day, a drone spiraled out of control and slammed straight into me. Its spinning blades sliced my arm, and its glowing indicator light pressed against my skin. I shut my eyes and waited to die. But nothing happened — nothing except the gash on my arm. In that moment, I finally understood. There was no such rare, incurable disease. It was all a lie—a monstrous scam to drain me dry and hand everything to my brother.

Shoreline City. Hightide Grand Hotel. Laundry room, three floors underground. The sun never reached this place. The air was always thick with the sharp reek of bleach and the damp smell of mold. The dim explosion-proof light overhead buzzed with a steady electrical hum, like a countdown to death. This was the dream job my mom, Claire, had pulled every string she had to get me. She said, “Sally, the basement walls are thick. No cell signal. It’s perfect for your condition. You should be grateful. If it weren’t for your illness, your brother would already have the newest VR gaming system. Work hard and pay the family back.” I believed her. For twenty years, I wore heavy anti-static cotton clothes and thick rubber gloves, day in and day out, washing mountains of reeking sheets and tablecloths. My monthly salary of three thousand—I handed every cent over to my mom. I didn’t even dare glance at the neon signs on my way home, terrified that the deadly radiation would kill me. Then today, the heavy iron door of the laundry room swung open. A group of sharp-suited executives swept in, flanking a man who walked like he owned the room — because he did. The man was tall—well over six-foot-two—with cold, sharp features and a jawline carved like granite. His perfectly tailored black suit stretched across a body coiled with explosive power. He stood there with casual indifference, yet the air around him seemed to drop to freezing. Hank Graves. Absolute ruler of Hightide Incorporated. The youngest and most ruthless titan in Shoreline City’s business world. I shrank into the corner by the washing machines, trembling so hard I couldn’t lift my head. Because the executives with him were holding tablets glowing with blue light. Some were even recording with their smartphones. “Stay away… please… stay away…” My voice shook violently as I pressed myself into the corner, both hands clutching my throat. The radiation would kill me. My mom said that if I got too close to any glowing screen, my skin would erupt in red welts, my throat would swell like I’d been scalded, and I’d die gasping, in agony. Hank stopped. His gaze—cold and sharp as a hawk’s—swept over me, this strange creature cowering in the shadows. “What’s going on?” His voice was low and smooth, but carried an authority that didn’t tolerate questions. The hotel manager broke into a sweat, mopping his forehead and stammering, “M-Mr. Graves, this is the laundress, Sally Reed. She… she has some issues. Severe electromagnetic radiation phobia. Can’t be near electronics…” Hank narrowed his eyes, a flicker of scrutiny passing through them. Just then, one of the assistants, too nervous to hold steady, let the latest model tablet slip from his hand. It hit the tile floor and slid straight toward me, slamming into my rubber shoe. The screen blazed at full brightness, playing a high-definition promotional video of the hotel in flashing, vivid color. “AHHH—!” I let out a scream so sharp and desperate it sounded like a feral cat with a broken spine. I lurched backward, my back slamming against the cold tile wall with a dull thud. My fingers clawed at my collar as I gasped for air, cold sweat soaking through my coarse uniform. “Take it! Take it away! I’ll die! I’ll actually die!” I shook like a leaf in a storm, squeezing my eyes shut, waiting for the end. One second. Two seconds. Three… Half a minute passed. The choking stranglehold on my throat never came. No searing pain, no melting skin. My ragged breathing began to slow. Hank stepped forward, his expensive custom leather shoes splashing through the puddles on the laundry room floor. He bent down, picked up the tablet, and walked straight over to me. “Look at me.” His voice bore down on me like a physical weight, pressing into my soul. I couldn’t move. I was frozen solid. He let out a cold laugh, then reached out and gripped my chin with his long, powerful fingers, forcing my head up. His knuckles were cool, calloused from years of writing and training—solid and real. “Sally Reed,” he said, looking down at me, “what are you shaking for?” I bit my bloodless lip so hard I tasted copper. “Afraid… afraid of dying…” Hank let out a short, cutting laugh. Something shifted in his eyes — open, undisguised mockery. Then he flipped his wrist and shoved the blazing screen right up to my face. Less than four inches away. “Then open your eyes and watch closely. See if you die.” The cold blue light stung my eyes, long accustomed to darkness. I wanted to scream, but the sound died in my throat. Because what I saw, what I felt, was beyond the sheer terror in my head, my body felt nothing. No rash crawling across my skin. No shock. No cardiac arrest. My breathing stayed steady. My heart pounded, sure—fast enough to break my ribs—but that was fear. Not a medical reaction. Hank let go and pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his fingers with slow, deliberate care, like he was cleaning himself of something filthy. “Find somewhere else to play your little games. Hightide Incorporated doesn’t keep dead weight.” He dropped the handkerchief on the floor and walked out, his entourage of silent executives trailing behind. The basement fell back into silence, broken only by the roar of the washing machines. I collapsed onto the wet floor like a ragdoll, staring blankly at my reflection in a puddle of gray water. Gaunt face. Brittle hair. Eyes wide with terror. I looked like some medieval creature that had crawled out of a tomb. A complete joke. I hadn’t died. I’d been inches from a high-intensity screen and I hadn’t died. A thought—cold, slithering, poisonous—began to coil around my brain, squeezing my heart tight.

After work, I didn’t take my usual route home—the darkest alley, the one with no streetlights. Instead, I wandered through Shoreline City’s busiest commercial street. It was the first time in twenty years I’d walked down a main road at night. Massive LED billboards blazed everywhere in blinding colors. People walked past with their heads down, glued to phones, Bluetooth buds in their ears. Cars with smart sensors whizzed by. In my mind, this place was a gas chamber. The deepest circle of hell. And here I stood, breathing air thick with exhaust fumes, completely fine. I walked to a brightly lit phone store. Through the glass doors, shelf after shelf of electronics glowed with soft light. I clutched the only two hundred dollars I had—the bills I’d found in a corner of the laundry room today, not yet handed over to my mom. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door to what felt like a whole new world. The salesgirl took one look at my faded cotton clothes and the faint smell of bleach clinging to me, and her eyes turned dismissive. Still, she came over with a fake smile. “Buying a phone? We’ve got the latest models. Starting at six thousand. Refurbished section is in the back corner. Help yourself.” I ignored her and walked straight to the used counter, pointing at the cheapest smartphone—a scratched-up screen, nothing fancy. “How much is this one?” My voice scraped out like sandpaper. “One fifty. No haggling. No returns.” With shaking hands, I pulled out the crumpled bills and handed them over. The cold metal rectangle felt like a live bomb in my palm. I could barely hold it. I ran—sprinted—into an empty dead-end alley. The night wind was cold against my thin clothes. I leaned against a brick wall crusted with moss, and followed the salesgirl’s impatient instructions: hold down the side button. The screen lit up. White light flooded my face, streaked with tears and grime. I reached out one rough finger—tentative, painfully slow, just barely grazing the glass. Cool. Smooth. The screen glided under my touch. No welts. No trouble breathing. I was alive. Perfectly, absolutely alive. “Ah… ahhh…” A sound came out of me—raw, broken, hopeless. I slid down the rough wall and collapsed into the muddy dirt, clutching the cheap phone to my chest, and I sobbed. Twenty years. The best years of my life. Locked in an attic covered in tin foil. No friends. No school. No world outside. Not even a glimpse of a TV screen. I thought my parents were protecting me. I thought they loved me. I thought I was a burden dragging the whole family down. My mom always cried and said, “Sally, Mom doesn’t want to lock you up, but the radiation outside will kill you! For your sake, your brother has to hide under the covers just to play on his phone! We’ve all sacrificed so much for you! You have to be grateful!” My dad would sigh through his cigarette smoke and say, “Your illness is a bottomless pit. You have to be sensible. Work hard. Make money. Pay the family back for saving your life.” And my brother Lucas would look at me with that smug, pitying superiority. “Stay in your cave, sis. The high-tech world belongs to me. You’re just a caveman.” It was all a lie. All of it. They used one absurd, monstrous lie to strip away every right I had as a human being. They turned me into a slave—a money-making machine—to feed their precious son. Rage. Like wildfire, it burned through my chest. It dried my tears. It burned away the last scrap of feeling I had for that family. “Done crying yet?” A low, cold voice came from the mouth of the alley. I jerked my head up. Hank stood in the shadows, a cigarette burning between his long fingers, the red glow casting his sharp features in stark relief. What was he doing here?

Hank walked toward me, his long legs eating up the distance. In the narrow alley, his presence pressed down like a weight—the absolute authority of someone who owned every room he walked into. He stopped in front of me, looking down at the cheap phone still glowing in my hand, and the corner of his mouth curled into a mocking smile. “I had my assistant looking through your file,” he said, blowing out a thin stream of smoke. His voice was flat, like he was reading a verdict. “Sally Reed. Twenty-two. Dropped out of elementary school. Medical history: severe electromagnetic radiation allergy. Contact triggers anaphylactic shock.” He bent down, suddenly close. The clean scent of tobacco mixed with his expensive cologne wrapped around me. “Liar.” His voice was low, his eyes sharp as knives. I looked up, meeting that aggressive stare head-on. “I’m not lying!” My teeth were clenched, my eyes bloodshot. “I was the one who was lied to—for twenty years!” Hank’s eyebrow lifted slightly. My defiance seemed to surprise him. I don’t know where I found the courage. I grabbed the hem of his expensive suit like it was the last lifeline in the world. “Help me,” I said, staring up at him. “Take me to a hospital. I need a full checkup. I need proof.” Hank stared at me for a full ten seconds. I didn’t flinch. There was no submission in my eyes—just burning hatred and resentment, so thick it was practically spilling out. That pure, raw hatred seemed to interest him. “Why would I help you?” His tone was casual, dismissive. “Hightide Inc doesn’t take on problems.” “Because you find me interesting.” I held onto his jacket, refusing to let go. “You looked into me. You followed me. You want to watch the show, don’t you? I’ll give you one—a real one. Blood on the floor.” Hank smiled. It was a cold, dangerous smile. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me up out of the mud. His grip was brutal—like he could snap my bones without trying. “Sally Reed,” he said, pulling me closer, his warm breath brushing against my ear, his voice like ice. “Remember what you just said. My shows aren’t easy to watch. Mess it up, and you won’t like what it costs.” “I’ve already got nothing to lose.” I met his eyes without fear. Half an hour later, I sat in the back of Hank Graves’ extremely fancy Maybach. The cabin was climate-controlled, comfortable. The dashboard was a wall of high-tech screens. Even the seats had smart massage functions. I drank it all in—the “radiation” I’d been taught to fear like poison. Hank sat beside me, legs crossed, scrolling through international emails on his tablet. “Dizzy?” he asked without looking up. “No.” “Nauseous?” “No.” He set the tablet down and turned to look at me, his gaze deep and unreadable. “Tell me about your wonderful parents. How they ‘treated’ you.” A pause. “I’m curious what kind of lie can keep someone locked up for twenty years.” I took a breath and closed my eyes. The memories came flooding back—dark, moldy, suffocating. “My room had no windows. The walls, the ceiling—all covered in thick tin foil. Even the cracks around the door were sealed. The only light was a dim five-watt bulb.” “I couldn’t go outside. I spent my days gluing together matchboxes, stringing plastic beads. When I got older, my mom pulled strings to get me the hotel basement job. No cell signal down there.” “When I was ten, I found a broken digital watch someone had thrown away. I was curious—I just pressed one of the buttons.” I stopped. My voice started to shake. “My mom found out. She went nuts. She grabbed me by the hair and shoved my head into a bucket in the yard. Said she had to wash the radiation off me. I swallowed so much dirty water I almost drowned.” “Then she locked me in a dark metal cabinet for three days and three nights. No water. No food. She said it was ‘detox.’ I cried and begged and clawed at the door until my fingers were raw. She just stood outside and told me it was for my own good.” “After that, I couldn’t even look at something that glowed without shaking. I really believed I’d die. I was even grateful to them—I thought they were saving me.” The car fell dead silent. I opened my eyes. Hank’s face was dark—darker than I’d ever seen it. The mockery was gone, replaced by something that made my blood run cold. “Stop the car.” His voice was sharp. The driver hit the brakes and pulled over immediately. Hank pushed open the door and pulled me out after him. “Where are we going?” I asked, flustered. “Hospital.” He pulled me toward a brightly lit private clinic without looking back. “Time to get your evidence.”

The hospital was owned by Hightide Incorporated. Top of the line. Because Hank Graves had personally vouched for me, the director himself came in from home in the middle of the night to arrange the most thorough, most comprehensive checkup money could buy. Blood work. Allergy tests. EEG. MRI. Even genetic screening. I lay inside those cold, precise machines, listening to their whirring hum, watching the blinking indicator lights, and felt nothing but calm. This was the first time in twenty years I’d encountered real medicine. Before this, my mom had only ever fed me bitter, foul-smelling “herbal remedies” from god knows where. Two hours later, I sat in Hank’s private lounge—opulent and execlusive only for him. The hospital director walked in with a thick stack of reports, sweating under his collar. “Mr. Graves. Miss Reed.” The director adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his expression complicated and stunned. My heart shot into my throat. My hands clenched together. “Well?” Hank lounged on the leather sofa, legs crossed, his voice lazy but carrying the weight of absolute authority. “Miss Reed’s health…” The director swallowed hard, looking at me with a mix of sympathy and disbelief. “Aside from severe malnutrition, significant calcium deficiency, and extreme vitamin D deficiency from prolonged lack of sunlight—there are no other medical issues.” “As for the so-called severe electromagnetic radiation allergy…” He shook his head. “It’s complete nonsense. We ran Miss Reed through hundreds of physical allergy tests, including electromagnetic waves and UV radiation. All results came back negative.” “Miss Reed, you are a perfectly healthy, normal human being.” *BOOM*— Even though I’d already guessed the truth, hearing it confirmed by an authority figure hit me like a freight train. My brain went blank. Normal. I was normal. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t need to live like a rat in a lightless tin-foil room. I could have gone to school. Made friends. Run in the sunlight. Lived a real life. They—my own parents—had clipped my wings and shoved me into a cage they called “love,” bleeding me dry day after day. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood again. Tears fell like broken beads, silent, one after another, landing on the back of my hand. Hank waved his hand. The director took the hint and left, closing the door quietly behind him. We were alone. Hank stood up, walked over, and handed me a white silk handkerchief. “Wipe your face. You’re a mess.” His tone was still his usual disdain, but the gesture wasn’t harsh. I didn’t take it. Instead, I reached out and wrapped my arms around his waist. Hank froze. Every muscle in his body tensed. “Just let me…” I buried my face in his tailored suit jacket, and twenty years of suppressed pain, rage, and despair exploded out of me. I cried like a wounded animal. Ugly. Loud. Completely wrecked. Hank didn’t push me away. He stood there, stiff and uncomfortable, letting my tears and snot ruin his extremely expensive tailor made suit. After a long time—so long I was nearly dizzy from crying, my throat raw and silent— A warm hand came down on the top of my head. He rubbed my dry, brittle hair, gently. “Cry all you want,” his voice came from above me, hypnotic. “Then go get what’s yours. With interest.” A pause. “Need me to kill anyone?” Half-joking, half-serious—but there was a dangerous glint in his eyes. I lifted my head. My swollen eyes burned with cold fury. “No.” My voice came out in a rasp, each word deliberate. “Death is too easy. I want them to suffer. I want them to lose everything they care about.” Hank looked at me, and a deeply satisfied smile spread across his lips. “Good. That’s what I like to see.” He turned and picked up a document from the table, tossing it in front of me. “Sign it.” I looked down. *Employment Contract — Special Assistant to the CEO of Hightide Incorporated Group.* “You never went to school, did you?” Hank looked down at me like a king bestowing a decree. “I’ll teach you myself. From now on, you’re mine. I’ll give you an identity, resources, and the whatever you need for revenge.” “And the price?” I asked. I didn’t believe in free gifts. Twenty years had taught me that everything came with a hidden cost. Hank bent down, planting his hands on either side of the sofa arm, caging me in. Our noses almost touched. Our breath mingled. “The price,” he said, “is your life. It belongs to me now. I want absolute loyalty.” I looked into his deep, dark eyes, picked up the pen, and signed my name. “Deal.”

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My oldest brother’s rich fiancée — the one in the wheelchair — drank a cup of the calming herbal tea I’d brewed, then died in the guest room with blood seeping from her eyes, nose, and mouth. The medical examiner found a high concentration of poison residue in the tea leaves, and the police pinned me down hard against the cold tile floor. I thought my parents, who’d always doted on me, would fight to defend me. Instead, my mom stared down at the body on the floor, let out a long breath, and burst into tears of joy. “Thank God! Officer, well done! Lock this lunatic up right now!” My dad was even worse — shaking all over with excitement, his face wild with glee as he rushed over and screamed, “It was her! She did it! Take her away!” Six feet away, Claire— my brother’s bride-to-be — lay under a white sheet. Black blood seeped out from the edges, mixing with the spilled calming tea, giving off a sharp, rotten stench. A cop had my arms twisted behind my back, the side of my face pressed hard against the cold tile. I strained my neck, looking toward my parents standing a short distance away. “Dad, Mom… have you lost your minds? What are you talking about?” I twisted toward my mom. “Mom, explain it to the police! You mixed that herbal tea yourself. I was out in the yard chopping wood the whole time — I never even set foot in the kitchen!” I thought she would clear my name. Instead, she suddenly dropped to her knees with a thud, kneeling bolt upright in front of the officer in charge. “Oh God, oh God! What a disgrace to this family, what a disgrace!” My mom slapped both hands against her thighs, sobbing until her voice went hoarse, snot and tears running down her face. She beat her chest and clawed at the cop’s pant leg. “Officer, it’s my fault! Every bit of it is my fault, as her mother! Arrest me instead — I didn’t keep an eye on this crazy girl, and now she’s killed my poor daughter-in-law!” I froze completely. Before my brain could catch up, the woman who’d been wailing on the floor a second ago shot to her feet and crossed to me in two strides. Crack! A hard slap landed full across my face. My head snapped sideways, the corner of my mouth split open, my whole mouth filling with the taste of iron. “You little wretch! Still lying with death staring you in the face!” My mom jabbed a finger at my nose, spit flying across my face. “Yes, I brewed the tea — but I went out back to take in the laundry, and you took your chance to dump poison into the pot! Claire couldn’t walk well, but she was always generous with you. No matter how sick in the head you are, how could you do something this vicious?” My ears were ringing. That tea had been simmering on the stove for two full hours. She’d been sitting on a little stool right in front of it the whole time, peeling garlic — she never moved an inch! “Mom, why are you lying?” My voice was shaking, the tears breaking loose. “You poured that tea out yourself and handed it straight to me!” “You dare talk back!” My dad rushed over and kicked me hard in the shoulder. I sucked in a sharp breath of pain and curled up on the floor, dry-heaving. Before I could recover, my dad pulled a folded sheet of paper from an inner pocket against his chest and handed it respectfully to the officer in charge. “Officer, don’t listen to her nonsense. This girl had a breakdown when she was fifteen, and her head’s been wrong ever since — severe mania and persecution delusions.” He pointed at me, grinding his teeth, as if I weren’t his daughter but some mortal enemy. “She’s been off her meds for half a month. Almost thirty and no boyfriend, sitting at home all day glaring at everyone. Yesterday Claire just said the floor wasn’t swept clean, and today the madness took her and she poisoned somebody!” My mouth hung open. I forgot to argue back. I’d worked an honest job at the packaging plant in this town for eight years, clocking out on time every day to go home, cook, and do the housework. When had I ever taken psychiatric medication? “I’m not sick! I’m not sick at all!” I knelt on the floor, shouting at the police. “That paper is fake! Go ask the packaging plant — go check! I never touched any poison!” The officer in charge ignored me. He took the paper from my dad, glanced at it, and his face darkened further. “Jane Hayes, save your breath. We go by evidence.” He cut me off coldly. He turned aside, and a younger officer behind him stepped forward holding a clear evidence bag. Inside was a torn-open pink packet. “Five minutes ago, we found this empty packet in a shoebox under your bed.” The officer looked down at me. “Your fingerprints are the only ones on it.” I stared at the bag, stunned. “Impossible… that’s impossible…” “And there’s this.” The officer pointed at my right pocket. “Initial testing shows a high concentration of poison residue around the edge of your right jacket pocket. We have witnesses, we have evidence. Take her away.” Two officers grabbed my arms and hauled me up off the floor. I looked down at my pocket. Around the edge of the right pocket, there really was a faint trace of pink. An image suddenly flashed through my head. That morning, my mom had carried the steaming bowl of “medicine” toward me, and as she pressed it into my hands she stumbled, her whole body bumping into me, her hand clawing hard at my right pocket. She’d said over and over it was nothing, then hurried me along. “Go on, take it to your sister-in-law while it’s hot — the medicine won’t work as well once it cools.” Staring at that smear of pink, a wave of nausea rose in me. Outside, tires screeched in the yard. “What’s going on? What happened to Claire?” My oldest brother Leo’s voice exploded from beyond the gate, and the yard door was shoved open. Leo, my aunt, my uncle, and my younger brother Max — a whole crowd of them, eyes red, came pouring into the yard.

Leo, charging out in front, didn’t even glance at the white sheet on the floor. He lunged straight at me. The cop holding me didn’t have time to stop him before Leo’s leather-shoed foot slammed into my stomach. I toppled over, the handcuffs clanging against the floor with an ugly metallic clatter. “You poisonous bitch!” Leo stood over me, finger jabbing down, the veins in his neck bulging. “Claire was about to marry me! You give me my wife back!” “I didn’t poison her! Leo, you have to believe me!” I lay on the floor, shaking my head desperately, ignoring the churning in my gut. “Still making excuses!” Max stepped up from behind, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and wrenched my upper body off the ground. “Jane, fine, you sulk and snipe around the house — but how could you actually kill someone? At dinner yesterday, Mom gave Claire an extra bowl of soup, and you were in the kitchen slamming things around, saying why does she get all the good stuff. I thought you were just grumbling. I never knew your heart was this black!” “I didn’t! I was in my room folding cardboard boxes all yesterday — I never went near the kitchen!” My mouth was full of the taste of blood, and I looked in despair at the relatives filing in behind. “Auntie, you came by yesterday afternoon to borrow some sugar. You saw me in my room, didn’t you?” My aunt shrank back and covered her mouth, her eyes darting away. “I… I’m old, my eyes aren’t good. All I saw was you standing there staring blankly, holding a pair of scissors. Gave me a fright…” My uncle clasped his hands behind his back and gave a cold snort. “Never right in the head, even as a kid. Just like I always said — an ungrateful thing you can never feed enough.” I lay on the cold tile, looking at these people — the same relatives I brought armfuls of gifts to every holiday. The cops dragged me up off the floor, twisted my arms behind me, and hauled me toward the squad car outside. The handcuffs cut into the bone of my wrists, but I didn’t struggle anymore, and I didn’t cry out that I was innocent. At the gate, I stopped and turned my head. In the yard, the relatives were crowding around to comfort my parents. Leo had already turned away and was murmuring something to the deputy sheriff who’d taken the money, his shoulders shaking slightly, as if he were laughing. Max brushed the dust off his pants and walked into the kitchen. My mom and dad stood under the eaves of the main house and didn’t spare me a single glance. The white sheet over Claire’s body lay alone in the middle of the living room. They put me in the squad car. The door shut, and the car started, rolling a long way down the muddy dirt road. Not one of my heartbroken family members turned to look toward the car. Because of the psychiatric diagnosis my dad had handed over, I wasn’t sent to the county jail. Instead I was held for the time being in an abandoned holding room at the town police station. The single room had only one rusted iron bed. Two rough canvas straps fixed my hands to the rails on either side. I stared at the blackened ceiling, listening to the thunderstorm outside, my mind strangely clear. I wasn’t going to run. I just had to hold on until morning, when the medical examiner from the city would do the formal assessment and pull the traces from the kitchen — then I could prove I’d never touched the poison. Two in the morning. Someone cut the iron bars outside the room with bolt cutters. The old wooden window frame was forced open, and a figure climbed in with effort, dropping hard onto the concrete floor. Then a second one. By the faint light spilling in from the hallway, I made out the two faces. It was my mom and dad. My mom’s hair had come completely undone, and there was a gash split open on her forehead, dark red blood running down her brow and matting half her face. One of my dad’s legs dragged unnaturally along the ground, his clothes covered in muddy boot prints from being kicked. My mom stumbled to the bedside and reached out with trembling hands to undo the straps. “Jane, hurry, go,” she whispered, coughing bloody spit. I froze. Looking at the hands reaching toward me, I instinctively pressed myself back hard against the wall, watching them warily. The scene from that afternoon was still vivid — my dad yelling for the police to take me away, my mom slapping me across the face. “What are you doing here?” My voice shook badly, thick with suspicion. “Weren’t you both dying to have the cops haul me off this afternoon?”

Hearing that, my mom’s hands stopped on the straps. She wiped her tears with the back of a mud-caked hand, then suddenly covered her mouth and broke into stifled, wretched sobs. “Jane, this afternoon I was saving your life!” She grabbed the hand I’d pulled back and clutched it tight, gasping through her tears. “Leo came charging in with a whole gang of them — they looked ready to tear you apart! If we hadn’t played along and said you were crazy, gotten the cops to take you, Leo would’ve beaten you to death right there with a shovel! Even the town sheriff is on his side. Your dad and I had to give in to them first, just to keep you alive, so we’d have a chance to come for you tonight!” Looking at the blood smeared across half her face, and my dad’s leg that couldn’t even hold him straight, my throat tightened. “Then how did you end up like this… what happened to your head?” “That animal Leo did it.” My mom kept fumbling at the straps, hissing through the pain. “He was afraid we’d come for you in the night, so he locked the main-house door with an iron lock. Your dad smashed the back window glass and pulled me out — and Leo caught us. He swung a shovel at us. Your dad took the handle across his leg shielding me…” Her voice grew hoarser, almost despairing. “Jane, they mean to kill you! If you don’t run now, you really won’t make it!” “I’m not running! Mom, if I run, that makes me a fugitive admitting guilt! I didn’t kill anyone. When the city police come tomorrow—” “You won’t live to see the city police!” My dad leaned against the wall, dragging his broken leg, panting hard and shaking. “Leo did the poisoning. He secretly bought Claire a one-million-dollar accidental-death insurance policy, and the cop who took the bribe gets the biggest cut. The man escorting you tomorrow is his crony. Somewhere on the road, he’ll just stage it — ‘psychiatric patient jumps from the car, suicide’ — and you’ll never even reach the city police station!” Outside, a low roll of thunder passed. The storm had sealed off the hills; there was no getting out, not even down the dirt road. In this village ringed by mountains on three sides, waiting for the people from the city really was no different from waiting to die. Seeing me hesitate, my mom dropped to her knees beside the bed with a thud. Big, heavy tears splashed onto the back of my hand. “Jane! Just go! If you won’t, I’ll smash my head open right here and let you watch me die in front of you!” I looked at the blood dripping from her forehead. And suddenly I remembered the winter I was fifteen, when my hands were covered in chilblains, aching so badly I cried under the covers at night. She’d sat up with a coat over her shoulders, tucked my cold, oozing hands into her armpits to warm them, and hushed me to sleep, breathing warm air over them. The tears came down without warning, blurring everything. I stopped fighting it. “Mom, I’ll go…” I nodded, my voice ragged. The straps came fully undone. My mom swiftly pulled a black waterproof bag from behind her and pushed it into my arms. My dad gripped my arm and shoved me toward the window. “There’s five thousand dollars in the bag and my old phone. Follow the back hills south — once you’re clear of the mountains, call the police! Hurry!” “What about you two?” I clung to the bag’s strap. “We’ll hold them off!” My mom pushed me out the window, her voice gone completely hoarse. “Run! Don’t look back, not even if it kills you!” In the pouring rain, I looked at my blood-soaked parents, bit my lip until it bled, and plunged into the dark of the back hills. I stumbled all the way to an abandoned little hillside chapel halfway up the slope, shivering, hugging the waterproof bag tight. This was the way out my parents had risked their lives to buy me. Leo had raised his hand against his own father — if he found out I’d escaped, would my parents, left behind in that den of wolves, even survive? I unzipped the bag and pulled out the chipped old phone, hoping to find evidence for the police or send a message that I was safe. The photo album was empty. But in the “Recently Deleted” folder sat one unnamed video file. The timestamp below it read: April 12, 8:00 PM. That was the night Claire drank the poison — three full days ago. I tapped the video open. The instant I saw what was on the screen, the color drained from my face.

The screen was dark, the picture grainy, the edges tinged with the green glow of an aging lens. It opened on meaningless shaking, with the harsh hiss of fingers rubbing against the microphone. “This junk phone keeps freezing… fine, the locator light’s on, that’s all we need.” Max’s voice came through right against the mic, grating. Then someone set the phone down to one side. The picture tilted, half a table coming into view. Blurry as it was, I recognized the pink plastic packet on the table at a glance — the poison. My mom sat with her back to the camera, a few paper insurance policies gathered in her hands. “…We move the morning after tomorrow. I’ll brew the herbal tea,” she said, her heavy accent woven through the static. “Once that crippled girl Claire stops breathing, we say Jane did it in one of her crazy fits. The fake diagnosis is already taken care of — and dead, Claire can’t testify against anyone.” Leo’s face never appeared — just a hand with a cigarette wedged between the fingers, drifting across the edge of the frame. “Good. Once she’s locked in the holding room, you and Dad go in the middle of the night, smash your own heads open, play it pitiful, and slip her this junk phone. As long as she runs into the deep mountains carrying that locator… then the insurance money is locked in.” The video was only fourteen seconds long. The screen went black and cut off. In the ruined chapel there was only the thunder outside. I doubled over the dusty altar table and dry-heaved up the last sour dregs in my stomach, tears all over my face. They didn’t just want me to take the fall — they wanted to wring the last drop of life out of me for money. Claire’s death, the beating in the yard that afternoon, the gash on my mom’s forehead tonight… all of it was an elaborate chain of death they’d designed three days ago. Just then, I noticed a tiny “location sharing” icon blinking at the very top of the screen. The battery in the corner showed only ten percent left. Almost at the same moment, there came the snap of a dry branch breaking outside the chapel. “The locator says she’s right around here. Move fast, don’t let her get away.” It was Leo’s voice. A blinding flashlight beam swept across the cobwebbed wall through the gaps in the chapel’s drafty wooden door. “Leo, I tied the rope into a good slipknot — we’ll just loop it around her neck.” That was Max. Less than thirty feet away. I clamped a hand over my mouth, refusing to let out the faintest heavy breath. There was no running. Leo and Max were right outside. To bolt now would be to throw myself onto a blade. By a flash of lightning, I scanned the tiny chapel — barely a hundred and fifty square feet. No cabinet to hide in, no iron tool to defend myself with. The only way out was a half-collapsed hole in the wall behind the base of a statue. I pulled the five thousand dollars from the bag and stuffed it tight against my body, inside my underclothes. Then I hurled the old phone with its blinking locator hard through the wall hole, into the bottomless weed-choked gully behind the chapel. A heartbeat before the flashlight beam shoved the chapel’s wooden door open with a bang, I bent low and scrambled out through the wall hole on my hands and feet. Outside the hole was a brutally steep slope. At the bottom of it was the pit the village used to use for dumping dead pigs, dead dogs, and stove ash. These days of storms had turned that garbage pit into a reeking pool of rotten mud. Without a second’s hesitation, I slid straight down the slope into the muck. The freezing, foul water swallowed me to the waist in an instant. I lay flat in the mud, frantically raking the rotting leaves and stinking dead branches around me up over my head and body, layer after layer. “Nobody in the chapel!” Max’s voice came from above. “Impossible — the locator’s still moving. She must’ve gone out the back. After her!” Heavy boots came pounding closer through the mud. I buried myself fully in the muck, only my nostrils barely above the surface to breathe. The stink of mud and rotting animal carcasses jammed up my nose, my eardrums swollen from the soaking rain. Some insect crawled across my eyelid, and I didn’t dare so much as twitch a lash. “She’s down there!” Leo’s voice burst out, terrifyingly close. My whole body went rigid. Leo was standing right at the edge of the slope, less than two feet above my head. The flashlight’s ghastly white beam split the dark like a knife, falling straight onto the mud pool where I hid. Rainwater dripped off the toe of Leo’s shoe, tapping onto the rotten leaves I’d used to cover myself. I kept my eyes shut tight, my lips pressed into a thin line, breathing with the greatest care. If he poked down with the hatchet in his hand, or if the rain washed away a bit of that leaf cover, I was finished. “Leo, look over there!” Max suddenly shouted. The flashlight beam jerked away, swinging toward the weed-choked gully. “Damn it! The little wretch slid down toward the cliff!” Leo swore. That was where the old phone had tumbled. “That spot’s steep as hell, and there’s a fast current at the bottom. If she went down there, she’s definitely dead.” Max’s voice wavered. “Living, we need a body; dead, we need a body! No corpse, no money. Get down there and find her!” The footsteps hurried off along the gully, until I couldn’t hear them anymore. I stayed in the mud, not moving. Only once I was sure there was nothing but rain around me did I slowly lift my head out of that pile of stinking leaves.

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I spent seventy thousand dollars on an unlimited annual membership at an ultra-luxury wellness spa. But after only two weeks of going there, the lead therapist publicly humiliated me in front of everyone, calling me a “broke leech” who was just trying to abuse the card to get his money’s worth. When I tried to confront him, I realized he had already blocked my number and Snapchat. I went to the owner for a refund, but she turned the tables on me. She claimed that if I cancelled early, every single session I had would be billed at a walk-in rate of four thousand dollars. According to her math, not only was my seventy thousand dollars completely gone, but I also owed them an extra three thousand. Looking at the smug, arrogant faces of the owner and the therapist—both wearing an expression that practically screamed “What are you going to do about it?”—I smiled. I turned around and called the property management office. “Hey, Mr. Miller. Don’t renew the lease for ‘Luxe Haven Spa’ next month. Give them three days to pack their trash and get out.” Oh, I forgot to mention. This entire luxury shopping plaza? My family owns it. 01 The moment I realized I was blocked on Snapchat and iMessage, a nerve in my brain snapped. I couldn’t stand it for another second. I stormed straight to the third floor of the plaza, heading right for Luxe Haven Spa. Before I could even push open the heavy, ornate glass doors, the sound of loud, mocking laughter drifted out. “This guy, Ethan, is honestly pathetic,” Marcus’s voice echoed. “Just because he bought that unlimited Black-Card VIP pass, he thinks he owns the place. He basically lives here.” “I know, right?” another receptionist chimed in. “I’ve seen plenty of guys like him. He probably maxed out his credit cards or emptied his entire savings just to scrape together that seventy grand. All so he could play the big shot in front of us.” “It’s exhausting,” Marcus groaned, his tone dripping with undisguised disgust. “I get a headache the second he walks in. He demands a deep-tissue massage every single day. My hands are literally going to fall off because of this loser.” My blood began to boil. Marcus was the lead therapist, and yet here he was, gossiping about a paying customer with absolute contempt. Several junior therapists giggled and added fuel to the fire. “You’re so right, Marcus. His neck and shoulders are as stiff as rocks anyway. Even our premium essential oils are a waste on him. He should just stop embarrassing himself.” “Honestly, he probably doesn’t have a girlfriend to touch him, so he comes here just to feel some human contact.” “Hahaha! Exactly. He’s just a broke loser trying to abuse the system.” Their sharp, mocking laughter pierced my ears like needles. Rage surged straight to my head. I couldn’t take it anymore. I kicked the door open and stormed in. *BANG!* The heavy glass door slammed against the wall. The laughter inside stopped instantly. The temperature in the lobby seemed to drop to freezing point. Everyone stared at me as if they had just seen a ghost. “Who gave you the right to talk trash behind my back? Apologize to me. Now,” I growled, my eyes locked onto Marcus. Several junior therapists quickly looked down, their faces turning pale with panic. But Marcus only froze for a second. Then, he rolled his eyes, let out a cold sneer, and crossed his arms. “Nobody was talking about you, dude. Why are you losing your mind?” “Cut the crap. I heard every single word outside the door!” “Oh, really? No one else heard anything. Just you?” Marcus stepped closer, looking completely unbothered. “Maybe you’re hallucinating from too much steam in the sauna. Do you need a doctor?” Hearing this, a few receptionists couldn’t help but cover their mouths to stifle their giggles. Marcus puffed out his chest, looking incredibly proud of himself, like a soldier who had just won a grand battle. I clenched my fists so hard that my fingernails dug into my palms. “Then why did you block me?” I demanded, staring him down. Marcus looked me up and down with sheer disdain. “Look, buddy. I’m a very busy man. I deal with multi-millionaires every day.” “You keep spamming my Snapchat trying to book appointments. I’m a lead therapist, not your personal texting buddy.” “Then what did you mean by that post on your story? What ‘broke leech’ were you talking about?” “My membership is explicitly advertised as unlimited. Why are you complaining about me coming here?” “And didn’t you text me saying you were fully booked today? Why are you standing here gossiping if you’re so busy?” Marcus let out a mocking laugh, stepping right into my personal space and looking down at me. “Am I not allowed to take a break?” “Get a grip, dude. I’m a professional, not your slave.” “Did buying a membership really give you this much of an ego? Do you actually think you’re someone special?” He tilted his chin high, wearing a sickeningly arrogant expression. The other employees didn’t bother hiding their amusement anymore. They all stared at me with mocking grins, waiting to see me humiliate myself further. My temples throbbed with anger. I didn’t want to waste another breath on this garbage. I turned on my heel and walked straight toward the back office to find the owner, Cheryl. 02 Cheryl’s office was at the end of the hallway. She was a woman in her late forties, wearing heavy makeup and caked-on foundation, smelling of cheap perfume and sharp, greedy calculations. After listening to my complaint, she slowly took a sip of her tea. Then, with an agonizing slowness, she pulled a contract out of her drawer—one I had never seen before. “Mr. Sterling, please calm down,” she said smoothly. “But according to our policy, if a client requests a premature refund, all completed sessions must be billed at our maximum single walk-in rate.” “You have visited us fifteen times. Our premium walk-in rate is four thousand dollars per session. That comes out to sixty thousand dollars.” “Add in a two-thousand-dollar fee for premium oil consumption, one thousand for facility utility usage, one thousand for equipment wear-and-tear, and a one-thousand-dollar service fee.” “So, mathematically speaking… not only can we not refund you, but you actually owe us an additional three thousand dollars.” I laughed out of sheer shock. I slammed the ridiculous contract onto her desk. “Are you out of your mind, Cheryl? This is highway robbery! I never signed or saw this contract when I bought the membership.” Cheryl’s face darkened, her polite facade slipping away. “Mr. Sterling, this is standard industry practice. Feel free to ask around. Which high-end spa in this city doesn’t operate this way?” “Fine,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I won’t refund it. But I want to change my therapist. I don’t want Marcus anymore.” According to their own store rules, if a client blacklisted a therapist, Marcus would lose all his monthly commissions and bonuses, and he would face a heavy fine. Cheryl’s expression turned incredibly sour. “All our other therapists are fully booked for the next three months.” “Marcus is our star therapist. No one has ever complained about him before. Clearly, the communication issue lies with you.” “Tell you what. I’ll talk to Marcus and ask him to keep treating you. But you need to check your attitude, too. Don’t act like you’re above everyone else just because you bought a card.” My brain felt like it was about to explode. So, in the end, everything was my fault? I took a deep breath, fighting the overwhelming urge to smash her office to pieces. Without another word, I pulled out my phone, snapped a crystal-clear photo of the fraudulent contract, and walked out. Behind me, I heard Cheryl mutter with absolute disgust, “What a loser. Acting like a king when he’s probably living paycheck to paycheck.” 03 Over the next few days, I purposely didn’t ask for a refund. Instead, I kept booking appointments. Since it was unlimited, I wanted to see exactly what kind of games they were planning to play. Marcus pretended to be professional and took me back for my sessions, but he was actively looking for revenge. Under the guise of a “deep tissue detox session,” he locked me in the steam room at the absolute highest temperature setting. Normally, a steam session lasts twenty minutes max. He forced me to stay in there for an hour. He also brought me a cup of boiling hot “detox tea,” forcing me to drink it. When the heat became too suffocating to bear, I stood up to leave. But when I pushed the door, I realized it was locked from the outside. I banged heavily on the glass door, shouting for help. Marcus was standing right outside. Through the glass, he was casually sipping an iced energy drink, staring at me with a malicious smirk. “Come on, Ethan. You have too many toxins in your body. You need to sweat it out,” he mouthed through the glass, mocking me. “Didn’t you demand to have your daily sessions? Deal with it, or get lost.” I felt incredibly dizzy. My vision started to blur, and my heart was pounding wildly against my chest. Outside, he flipped me the middle finger. “You broke leech. I’m doing this for your own good. Sweating the poor out of you.” By the time the timer finally buzzed and the door unlocked, I had completely lost all strength. I collapsed onto the wet tile floor, unable to pull myself up. Just then, a few wealthy male VIP clients walked into the locker room. “Hey… please, help me up…” I gasped. But they were Marcus’s regular clients. They already despised me because they believed the rumors that I was “abusing” the membership and taking up Marcus’s time. They looked down at me with cold, disgusted sneers, making no move to help. “Oh, look, it’s that guy Ethan who clings to Marcus every day. Talk about desperate. Just because you have a yearly pass doesn’t mean you have to behave like a parasite.” “Seriously. Because of you, Marcus has been in such a bad mood lately. He barely talks to us during our massages.” “He deserves it. Broke loser.” Laughing, they stepped right over me and walked into the changing area. I clenched my teeth, dragging myself up off the floor using the wall. *Fine. Just wait.* 04 A few nights later, Marcus claimed he was too busy during the day and purposely scheduled my appointment for 10:00 PM. That was right before closing time. By the time the session ended, I was exhausted. I dragged my sore body into the shower room to wash off the massage oil. Just as I covered my hair in shampoo, the water suddenly cut off. Then, *click*. The lights in the shower room went out. The entire space was plunged into pitch-black silence. “Hey! Is anyone there? The water shut off!” I yelled. No one answered. I had no choice but to wipe the soap suds off my face with a dry towel, scramble into my clothes in the dark, and stumble out. The massive lobby was completely dark and empty. Marcus was standing outside the main glass doors of the spa. Under the dim hallway lights of the mall, he looked like a demon, smiling creepily at me. A terrible feeling washed over me. I rushed toward the exit. Suddenly, my foot slipped. I lost my balance and slammed heavily onto the hard marble floor. “Ugh—!” An agonizing, sharp pain shot through my body. I let out a choked scream, cold sweat breaking out over my forehead. I reached out to feel the floor in the dark, only to find it covered in thick, slippery massage oil. But that wasn’t the worst part. A sharp, stabbing pain shot through the palms of my hands. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. The floor wasn’t just covered in oil—it was covered in hundreds of sharp pushpins and thumbtacks. My palms and knees were dripping with blood, punctured by dozens of needles. Shaking with pain and fury, I looked up. Marcus was standing outside the glass door, watching my agony with pure glee. He mouthed two words to me: “Die, loser.” With a smirk, he pulled down the heavy metal security shutter, locked it, and walked away. My chest rose and fell as rage consumed me. I dragged myself up, ignoring the agonizing pain in my hands and knees. I screamed for help, but only my own echo answered. I tried to call 911, but my phone had zero service. They had installed a signal jammer near the lobby. Left with no choice, I limped over to the reception desk. I picked up a heavy metal barstool and slammed it with all my remaining strength against the expensive glass doors. Once. Twice. Three times. *BANG! BANG! CRASH!* The glass shattered into a million pieces, rain-showering the hallway. Dripping with blood and sweat, I crawled out of the ruined spa. Once I reached the mall parking lot, I immediately dialed 91

The extraction process at the ER was pure hell. The doctor shook his head in disbelief as he pulled dozens of thumbtacks out of my skin. By the time I left the hospital, the sun was already rising. Without even changing out of my hospital gown, I went straight to the police station. “Officer, I want to report a crime. I was locked inside a business, assaulted, and intentionally poisoned and injured.” 05 Half an hour later, Marcus was brought into the precinct. The moment he saw me, he pointed at my face and started screaming. “Are you insane? Why the hell did you call the police on me in the middle of the night?” “You slipped and fell because you’re clumsy, and now you’re trying to sue me? People have to sleep, you psycho!” Cheryl arrived shortly after. Her hair was a mess, and she looked exhausted, but she immediately took Marcus’s side. “Officer, this man has been harassing my staff for weeks. He’s incredibly rude and constantly demanding. Marcus has been nothing but patient with him.” “And now, he makes up this ridiculous story and calls the police over a minor slip-and-fall? He literally destroyed our front entrance! I should be suing him for property damage!” I stared at them coldly. I pointed to the medical report on the desk, then pulled up my sleeves to reveal my bandaged arms and knees. “A minor slip-and-fall?” “Just because I used my unlimited membership, this psychopath locked me in a high-temperature steam room. And last night, he locked me inside the dark spa, covered the floor in oil and thumbtacks, and laughed while I was bleeding.” “You call that a minor issue? That is attempted murder!” Cheryl looked at me with a blank, mocking expression. “And do you have any proof of this?” “The security cameras are the proof! Officer, please review their security footage,” I demanded. Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Oh, what a shame. Our security cameras actually broke yesterday afternoon. We’re still waiting for the technician to fix them.” “You…” My jaw clenched, veins popping on my forehead. Marcus stood behind Cheryl, giving me a smug, triumphant wink. The next second, he pulled out his phone. Right in front of me, he started sending voice notes to their elite VIP Snapchat group, crying about how he was the victim. “Hey guys, please help me out. This crazy guy, Ethan, completely lost his mind, smashed our storefront, and now he’s trying to get the police to arrest me. Please tell them the truth!” The wealthy clients in the group immediately started replying: “He’s lying! Ethan has been obsessed with Marcus. He probably got rejected and decided to ruin the business.” “Exactly! He probably stayed in the spa on purpose so Marcus couldn’t leave, and got himself locked in. And those tacks? He probably stabbed himself to play the victim. What a creep!” “Marcus is literally the sweetest guy. He always gives us free fruit and snacks. Ethan is an ungrateful snake. Lock him up!” Listening to those voice messages, my blood ran cold with rage. I wanted nothing more than to smash Marcus’s phone into his face. Cheryl patted my shoulder, her voice dripping with triumphant malice. “Mr. Sterling, stop trying to play the victim. You’re going to pay for that glass door.” Marcus leaned in, whispering in a voice only I could hear: “This is just a warning, little boy. If you ever show your face in my spa again, I’ll make sure you never walk again.” I glared at him. If looks could kill, he would have been sliced into a million pieces. Because of the lack of evidence—the security cameras being “broken” and the crime scene being messed up when I smashed the door—the police couldn’t file criminal charges immediately. They treated it as a civil dispute, warned us to keep the peace, and told me to settle the glass door damage with the owner. Outside the station, Marcus and Cheryl stood side by side like victorious partners. They gave me one last mocking laugh before getting into Cheryl’s BMW. I stood in the cold morning breeze, my body aching and my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. But I didn’t lose my mind. I took out my phone and dialed a number. “Hey, Mr. Miller. Regarding the lease renewal for Luxe Haven Spa on the third floor… cancel it.” 06 That’s right. I am the actual owner of this entire luxury shopping plaza. The plaza was an inheritance left to me by my father. Cheryl and her spa had been leasing the space for almost three years. I’ve always kept a low profile and didn’t like showing off my wealth. Plus, I had been studying business in Europe for the past few years, only returning recently to take over the family estate. Knowing how hard it is to run a physical business these days, I had actually given them a twenty percent discount on their rent. I never revealed my identity to them, so they had absolutely no idea that the ground they walked on every day belonged to me. Mr. Miller panicked on the other end of the line. “Mr. Sterling? Why so suddenly? Did someone offer a higher rent? We can negotiate! Cheryl was actually planning to sign a five-year renewal lease today.” “It’s not about the money.” I took a deep breath and explained everything that had happened to me over the past few weeks, including the incident last night. By the time I finished, Mr. Miller was sweating through the phone, apologizing profusely. “Mr. Sterling, I had no idea they were behaving like thugs on your property! Don’t worry, I’ll serve them eviction papers immediately.” “No, wait,” I said, my voice turning icy. “Find me a new tenant first. I don’t care about the rent. But I have one condition: the new tenant must be loud, obnoxious, and extremely difficult to deal with.” “And keep this a secret from Cheryl for now. Let them think everything is fine. I want to teach these people a lesson they’ll never forget.” Mr. Miller immediately understood. “Understood, Mr. Sterling. Consider it done. I’ll make sure they get exactly what they deserve.” After hanging up, I looked at the rising sun, a cold smile forming on my lips. Their lease had less than twenty days left. To celebrate their three-year anniversary and attract new clients, Cheryl had just spent three million dollars on a massive luxury renovation. She had imported state-of-the-art equipment from Europe. Forget about the massive loss from shutting down. Just that three-million-dollar renovation alone would take them at least two years of profit to recover. And this was only the beginning.

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“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” I gripped the positive pregnancy test. After five years of failed IVF, I finally had the news Julian, my surgeon husband, dreamed of. Just as I reached the corner of the surgical wing, my phone buzzed. It’s a text from Julian: “Hey babe, I know you’ve had a long shift in Peds. Go home and get some rest. I’ve got an emergency surgery tonight. Don’t wait up.Love you.” Through the small rectangular window of OR 3, I see Julian—the man who just sent that “loving” text—grab an intern by the waist and pull her into the dark room. It’s Chloe Reed, the girl who’s been shadowing him for three months. The pregnancy report slipped from my fingers and hit the floor. Heavy, rhythmic grunting echoed from the room. “You’re so reckless, Julian,” Chloe’s voice giggles, breathless and sharp. “It’s broad daylight. What if someone sees us? You’re up for that Senior Attending promotion. You could lose everything.” “God, you’re such a brat,” Julian groans, his voice thick with a lust I haven’t heard in years. “You know exactly what you’re doing to me. Besides, I’ve got this room locked down. Nobody comes here. Now, shut up and give me what I want.” “Oh, like last time?” she taunts. “When you couldn’t even wait for the patient to be stitched up before you pinned me against the instrument table? I want you now, Julian. Right now.” I look down at the pregnancy test. This baby was supposed to be our miracle. Instead, its father is using the very table where he saves lives to betray his wife. I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I went numb. If they want excitement, I’ll give them a show the whole hospital will never forget. I pull out my phone and open the hospital’s main group chat—the one with over five hundred doctors, nurses, and administrators. My fingers are steady as I type. “Security alert: Thief in OR 3. Multiple suspects. Send everyone now!” The responses are instantaneous. “On my way! I knew it! Half the inventory of ultrasound probe covers went missing last week!” “I’m in the lounge, coming now!” “Don’t let them get away! Those new laparoscopy kits are worth a fortune!” I lean against the wall, watching the “Seen” count climb. Inside the OR, the sounds of their passion continue, oblivious to the storm gathering in the hallway. Then, Chloe’s voice drifts out again, slightly confused. “Julian, why is my phone blowing up? It hasn’t stopped buzzing for a minute.” “Forget the phone,” Julian snaps, his voice ragged with frustration at being interrupted. “It’s probably just the Director calling another pointless board meeting. He’s obsessed with the hospital’s new accreditation. Let the old man rot in his office. Focus on me.” He was talking about my father—the Director who fast-tracked Julian’s career. “Good,” I whisper to the empty hallway. “Keep talking, Julian.” I pull up my contacts and find my mother-in-law’s number. Julian’s parents are in town, visiting from their small rural village. They’re obsessed with their “doctor son” and his prestige. “Mom, Dad, come to OR 3 quickly!” I text. “Julian collapsed in the surgery wing! Hurry!” They reply instantly. They’re already downstairs in the lobby with a thermos of homemade soup. They’ll be here in five minutes. I turn and walk toward the nurses’ station, my heels clicking sharply on the linoleum. The Head Nurse looks up, startled by my expression. “Sophie? Are you okay? You look pale.” “I’m fine,” I say, my voice a flat line. “The security feed for OR 3. Send the last ten minutes of footage to my personal email.” The nurse whispered, “The cameras in OR 3 are down, Sophie. Julian specifically requested this room for ‘private study.’ We thought he was being dedicated.” I almost laugh. Dedicated. High-minded. What a joke. I look back at the heavy double doors of OR 3. The hallway is starting to fill with the sound of running footsteps. Security guards, curious residents, and nurses are all converging on the spot. Julian, you wanted excitement? You’re about to become the biggest star this hospital has ever seen.

Chief Miller and twenty staff members reached OR 3. “Is the thief inside?” the Chief asked, hand on his holster. I pointed at the door. “I heard furniture moving and heavy breathing. There are multiple people in there.” “Secure the exit!” the Deputy Director ordered. “Get in there now!” Two guards slammed their shoulders against the door. The lock snapped. The door flew open. Julian stumbled out, his white coat haphazard. His hair was messy, and his face was flushed. “What is this?” he shouted. “I was taking a nap!” The crowd snickered. Visible hickeys covered his neck. His shirt was misbuttoned. ” One hell of a nap,” a resident laughed. “You’ve got bite marks on your throat.” Julian grabbed my arm, his grip tightening. “Sophie, stop this drama,” he hissed. “Tell them to leave. I’ll explain at home.” I wrenched my arm away. “Explain what? The hickeys? Or the intern?” The elevator doors dinged. Julian’s parents, Martha and Silas, rushed out. “Sophie said you collapsed!” Martha cried, patting Julian’s face. She turned on me. “What is wrong with you? You nearly gave us a heart attack!” “She’s stressed,” Silas added dismissively. “Pregnancy hormones mess with a woman’s head.” Julian tried to regain his composure. “Everyone, please. My wife hasn’t been herself. There’s no thief. Go back to your stations.” The crowd didn’t move. Then, my father, Director Miller, walked into the wing. The crowd parted for him. He looked at the guards, then at Julian. “What is going on in my surgical wing?” he boomed. “It’s a misunderstanding,” Julian stammered. “Sophie got confused.” “Dad,” I said, my voice was cold. “Julian says he was sleeping. But the room is a mess and equipment is missing. As Director, you should verify the safety of the OR.” My father turned to Julian. “Step aside. If the room is empty, you have nothing to fear.” “It’s a sterile environment!” Julian’s legs started to shake. “You can’t let a mob in!” “Move,” my father commanded. I shoved Julian aside and kicked the door wide open. The surgical bed was stripped, sheets balled up in the corner. Empty probe cover packets littered the floor. “Do you usually sleep with your belt unbuckled, Julian?” I asked. The crowd poured in. “Look at the floor,” a nurse said, pointing at discarded, damp gauze. “That’s disgusting.” Julian scrambled to block the corner. “That’s waste from the previous surgery! Sophie, stop! You’re embarrassing yourself!” I walked toward the stainless steel sterile supply cabinet. Julian lunged for me. “Stay away! Those are imported instruments! If you break the seal, it’s hundreds of thousands in damages! You’ll be fired!” “I’ll take the hit,” I said. My father stepped forward. “Let her go, Julian. I’ll cover the damage. Open it, Sophie.” Julian’s hands dropped. Martha shrieked from the doorway, “Sophie, don’t be a fool! You’re ruining his career!” I grabbed a heavy metal IV stand and swung it. The glass shattered. I ripped the doors open. It was empty. Julian exhaled, his arrogance returning instantly. “Are you satisfied?” he barked at my father. “She’s had a psychotic break! She destroyed half a million dollars of equipment! She’s unfit for duty!” Martha rushed over. “You monster! Look what you’ve done to his reputation!” “I told you, she’s lost her mind,” Silas shook his head. “Julian, we’re taking you home. You shouldn’t deal with this crazy woman.” Even my father looked shaken. “Sophie… what were you thinking?” Julian smirked at me. He thought he had won. But I noticed his eyes darting toward the Biohazard Compactor. He was standing in front of it, blocking the view. The machine was humming, its power light glowing green. “The cabinet was a diversion,” I whispered. Julian’s smirk faltered. I walked toward the compactor. “Stay away from that!” Julian yelled, his voice high-pitched. “That machine is dangerous!” I turned to my father. “Dad, Julian says the janitors haven’t cleaned up yet. Let’s be helpful. Let’s run a cycle.” I reached for the green START button. “NO!” Julian screamed. He tackled me, trying to pull my hand away. “Julian! Get off her!” My father roared, hauling Julian back by his collar. Martha and Silas rushed forward, trying to pull Julian away from the fight. “It’s just a machine!” Silas grunted, shoving Julian aside to show off his own authority. “Here, I’ll do it! Let’s get this trash compacted so we can all go home!” Julian let out a terrified howl. “DAD, STOP!” Silas slammed his thumb down on the START button and hit the High-Pressure Override. The machine groaned. The heavy hydraulic plates began to slide. A blood-curdling scream erupted from inside the steel belly of the machine. “HELP! STOP THE MACHINE!”

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