I stayed late at the office to finish a project, and when I saw a colleague struggling with his filing, I decided to be a decent human being and help him organize his documents. I didn’t think twice about it. By the time I walked into the office the next morning, the entire company was whispering about “us.” When I checked his Instagram, my blood turned to ice. He’d posted two photos. The caption read: Nothing beats coming home to a woman who knows how to take care of her man. The first photo was a candid shot of me, head down, focused on the paperwork. The second was a deepfake—an AI-generated image of him and me locked in an intimate kiss. The office group chat was exploding with people cheering, telling me I should just marry him already. I didn’t say a word to anyone. Instead, I opened our private chat and sent him a single photo: my actual wedding portrait with the CEO. Underneath, I typed: Your photo is an AI fake. Do you think mine is? 1 Silence. It lasted for maybe ten seconds. Then, Brad’s reply popped up. [LOL, nice Photoshop skills. Almost had me there. You didn’t actually think I’d fall for that, did you?] He followed it with a mocking, toothy-grin emoji. I set my phone down and looked over at his cubicle. He was leaning back in his chair, spinning a pen between his fingers, chin tilted up in a smug, self-satisfied gesture of victory. I stayed silent. When I first saw his post last night, I’d tried to brush it off. I figured he was just one of those men who didn’t understand boundaries—someone who thought a “joke” justified anything. I had even prepared a mental script: if he apologized sincerely, I would let it go. Of course, Brad didn’t apologize. A few minutes later, he swaggered over to my desk. He leaned a hand on my workstation, looming over me with an expression he clearly thought was “smoldering.” “Carlton, I saw the group chat,” he said, his voice dropping into a performative huskiness. “Don’t be mad. I just figured I’d help you say the things you’re too shy to admit yourself. I know you’re the modest type.” He let out a short, dry laugh. “Anyway, we’re both single. Why not give it a shot? Who knows, maybe the AI was just predicting the future.” I looked up at him, studying him as if he were a specimen in a lab—something fascinatingly broken. “Brad, if these rumors cause serious damage to my reputation, I can and will sue you.” My voice was flat. “Delete the photos from the group chat and your social media. Post a public apology stating that the images were AI-generated. Now.” Brad’s grin vanished instantly. He straightened up, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Seriously? It was one picture, Carlton. Everyone’s having a laugh, keeping the office vibe light. You’re really going to turn this into a federal case?” I didn’t blink. I just watched him. He shifted under my gaze, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “Fine, fine. I’ll delete it. God, you’re so high-maintenance.” He turned and walked away. No apology. I waited all morning. Brad did delete the photo from the group chat, but then he posted a new one on his story: an AI image of a couple in wedding attire, hands intertwined. You couldn’t see the faces, but the message was clear. The caption: [Someone’s getting shy and told me to stop showing off our love. Fine, I’ll take it down for her, but you can’t hide true happiness. Those who know, know. 😉 ] The comments were a flood of “LMAO” and “We get it, Brad!” He had “deleted” the evidence, but he’d only reinforced the lie. And because the faces weren’t visible in the new photo, I couldn’t even prove it was me he was claiming to be with. I stared at my screen, feeling a heavy, suffocating sense of powerlessness. 2 The next morning, the atmosphere in the office was even more suffocating. As I pushed through the glass doors, the girl at the front desk gave me a look that was a cocktail of pity and judgment. My phone buzzed. It was a DM from Sophie in Accounting: [Carl, have you seen the group chat?] She sent a screenshot of Brad’s latest post—a photo of a homemade breakfast for two. I opened the main company Slack channel. The notifications were well over 999. I scrolled back to 7:13 AM. Someone had asked: “Hey Brad, did Carlton cook that for you?” He had replied with a coy: “I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no. Let’s keep it private, guys.” The channel went nuclear. [Damn, Brad’s the man!] [Wait, are they living together already?] [Is this the official announcement?] [Wedding! Wedding! Wedding!] Everyone was caught up in the spectacle. I closed the app and walked to my desk. Sitting there was a massive bouquet of ninety-nine red roses. The card read: To the most beautiful girl in the world. I picked up the bouquet and set it on the floor, ignoring it. This wasn’t the reaction Brad expected. He probably thought I’d be blushing and demurely accepting the “public’s” blessing. But I didn’t say a word to him. Around noon, he sent me a text: [I’ll put the flowers in your car later so you don’t have to carry them on the train. Lunch together?] I glanced at it and locked my phone. Fifteen minutes later, he couldn’t take the silence anymore. He marched over, bracing his hands on my cubicle wall and looming over me again. “Carlton, I’m being serious here.” I kept typing, my eyes fixed on the monitor. He chuckled. “You don’t have to be shy. I’ve known you’ve had a thing for me for a while. Ever since the company retreat when you brought me that water… I saw the way you looked at me.” The retreat? The water? I remembered it. It was three months ago. A hundred degrees outside during a team-building hike. He’d been standing in the sun, talking someone’s ear off. I was walking by with a bottle for myself, the cooler was right there, so I grabbed an extra one and handed it to the person standing closest to me. Him. That was it. I stopped typing and finally looked him in the eye. “Brad, don’t send me flowers. If you actually want to do something for me, stay at least ten feet away at all times. Thanks.” His face twitched with embarrassment. “Why are you playing hard to get? I get it, you want to keep it professional at work. I can wait.” He patted the top of my cubicle and walked off. I watched his back, realizing how terrifyingly delusional he was. And then, the “pursuit” truly began. 3 Every morning, there was a Starbucks latte on my desk with a smiley face and “For my love” written on the side. I walked it back to the front desk every time and told them it was a “wrong delivery.” Brad continued to post photos of the breakfasts he supposedly “made for me.” The comments were a never-ending stream of encouragement for him and teasing for me. I remained a ghost in his digital world. Then, he cornered me in the parking garage. He was leaning against the elevator wall, holding a small bouquet of baby’s breath. “Carlton, why are you ignoring me?” “I’m not ignoring you, Brad. I’m working.” “Then why don’t you answer my texts?” “Because I’m working.” His brow furrowed. He stepped closer, and I caught the heavy, cloying scent of his cheap cologne. His voice dropped into something that sounded less like romance and more like a threat. “You know the whole office is watching us, right? When you act like this, you make me look bad.” I almost laughed. “Brad, let me be very clear one last time. Helping you with those files that night was a professional courtesy. I would have helped anyone who was that far behind on their deadline. It had nothing to do with you personally.” His face darkened. “You know, I’ve met girls like you before. You say no, but you’re secretly loving the chase. You think it’s fun to keep me on a leash?” “I’m not keeping you on any—” He waved me off, that “I know all your secrets” smirk returning to his face. “Whatever. I get it. You have to keep up appearances. I’ve got patience.” He tossed the flowers into a nearby trash can and walked away. I stared at the bouquet lying among the coffee cups and waste paper, and it finally clicked. If I didn’t accept him, I was “ungrateful.” If I fought back, I was “playing games” or being “dramatic.” Brad’s posts became increasingly bold. When the office chatter became unbearable, I tried posting a message in the company Slack: [Brad and I are not in a relationship. Please stop spreading misinformation.] Brad replied within seconds: [Copy that! Lesson learned, boss lady! I’m shutting up now!] Immediately, the thread was flooded: [LOL!] [Brad’s whipped!] [Is this what public flirting looks like now?] I tried talking to him privately, being as cold and professional as possible. “Brad, I have no romantic interest in you. Your behavior is harassment. If you continue, I will go to HR.” Brad just spun his pen, looking at me with an expression that made my skin crawl. As I turned to leave, he muttered, “Women always say the opposite of what they mean.” I was so angry I had to stand in the hallway for five minutes just to breathe. That night, I stayed until 8:00 PM. When I went to pack my bag, my car keys were gone. I tore through my drawers, my purse, my pockets. Nothing. I was about to call an Uber to go home and get my spare set when I saw my car parked near the building exit. The door was unlocked. On the passenger seat was a note: Your car was filthy. I took it for a wash. No need to thank me—it’s what a boyfriend does. I stood by the car, my entire body shaking with rage. He had taken my keys. He had entered my car. He had violated my private space without a second thought. This wasn’t a “joke” anymore. This was a crime. I took a deep breath, photographed the note and the car, and called a valet service to drive me home. The next morning, I went to the building security office and pulled the surveillance footage. It was clear as day: Brad using a key to enter my car at 6:00 PM, driving away, and returning two hours later. I copied the footage and went to a local mechanic to check for any tracking devices or hidden cameras. The mechanic found nothing, but as I sat in my car afterward, I felt drained. I couldn’t just sit back and hope he’d stop. I had to end this.

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The tragedy of my last life began with a leaked corporate proposal. That afternoon, my uncle found the evidence on my cousin’s computer, and the finger was immediately pointed at me. I was the only other person who had touched her desk. Faced with my cousin’s breathless, tear-soaked pleading, my heart had softened. I swallowed my defense and took the blame, muttering something about a misclick. From that moment on, I was branded the family curse. The loss of her job, the derailed career—it was all hung around my neck. My relatives tore me apart at every family gathering. My parents, exhausted and humiliated by the relentless screaming from my aunt and uncle, eventually forced me to my knees to beg for forgiveness. Later, when my cousin’s own startup imploded, leaving her drowning in a mountain of debt, my aunt and uncle showed up at my door. They demanded I sell the small condo my grandmother had left me to bail her out. They said I owed them. In the violent scuffle that broke out on my landing, my uncle shoved me. I fell down the concrete stairwell. My neck snapped. I died instantly. The grief and shock destroyed my parents; they both fell ill and followed me to the grave within the year. But today, my eyes snap open. I am back on the exact day the proposal leaked. And this time, I’m not carrying anyone else’s cross. 1 “You ungrateful little parasite! After everything this family has done for you, you sell our company’s secrets to a competitor?!” “What kind of sick game are you playing? I’m calling the cops right now!” My uncle’s palm cracked across my cheek like a gunshot. The explosive, stinging heat radiating across my skin jolted me completely awake. I blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights. Scattered manila folders covered the office floor. My cousin, Brittany, was crouched by her leather desk chair, sobbing into her hands. Her mother—my Aunt Carol—was standing over me, hands on her hips, spitting venom. My laptop bag sat right where I’d left it on the glass table. I had actually come back. Back to the exact moment I took the fall. In my past life, this slap had completely disoriented me. Just as I opened my mouth to swear I hadn’t touched Brittany’s files, I had met her eyes. They were wide, brimming with tears, begging me silently. I had caved. I took the hit. I promised my aunt and uncle I would find a way to make up the financial loss. I didn’t know I was buying a one-way ticket to hell. Because of me—supposedly—Brittany lost a multi-million dollar bid and got fired. My uncle’s family made sure everyone in our zip code knew I was a backstabbing snake who ruined her bright future. The disgust in my relatives’ eyes. My parents, beaten down by the sheer volume of Aunt Carol’s hysteria, dragging me over to their house to grovel. Then came Brittany’s doomed business venture. The six-figure debt. My aunt and uncle, eyes red with greed and desperation, pounding on my door, screaming that this was my karmic debt to pay. They knew my grandmother had left me that little house in the suburbs. They brought men to physically pry the keys from my hands. The weightlessness of the fall. The agonizing crunch of my skull against the concrete. The sight of my parents, broken and weeping by my hospital bed as I slipped away. The memories rushed through my blood, freezing it into ice. I dug my fingernails so hard into my palms that the skin broke. The sharp pain grounded me. In this life, I would rather die than take the fall for her. Seeing me just standing there, Brittany dialed up the waterworks. She threw herself against her father’s chest. “Dad, stop, don’t hit Jo anymore! She probably didn’t mean to do it! She came by to hang out yesterday, she was messing around near my desk… she must have clicked the wrong thing…” It sounded like mercy. It was actually a perfectly executed trap to establish that I was the one on her computer. Aunt Carol pounced immediately. “Didn’t mean to?! This little bitch is just jealous of your salary! She did this to ruin you! You’re too sweet, Brittany, you’re letting her stab you in the back and you’re still trying to protect her!” “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” my uncle roared at me. “That was a multi-million dollar contract! You’ve destroyed her life!” A low murmur rippled through the open-plan office. The other employees were watching the spectacle. “Jo is usually so quiet when she comes around,” someone whispered. “Always so polite. Why would she do corporate espionage?” “You never know with people,” another muttered. “Paul is her own uncle. He wouldn’t falsely accuse his own niece, would he?” “Maybe she really was jealous of Brittany…” The whispers acted like gasoline on my uncle’s rage. Breathing heavily, his face flushed purple, he raised his hand to strike me again. I didn’t freeze this time. I took a sharp step back, dodging his hand effortlessly. When I spoke, my voice was absolute zero. “I didn’t leak that proposal.” 2 The office went dead silent. Brittany’s sobbing abruptly hitched, a flash of genuine panic cutting through the faux-tears in her eyes. My uncle glared at me, his jaw working. “You expect me to believe that? If it wasn’t you, who was it? Brittany said you were on her computer yesterday. Who else could have done it?” “I came to the office yesterday to see her, yes.” I locked eyes with Brittany. “But I never touched your computer. Not even the power button. I came to borrow a GRE prep book. You told me it was on your desk and to grab it myself. When I walked over, your monitor was black. I grabbed the book and walked out. I was in your cubicle for sixty seconds.” Aunt Carol practically foamed at the mouth. “Liar! You’re just trying to save your own skin! If you didn’t touch it, how did our competitor get the exact file?!” “It’s incredibly easy to prove,” I said, my voice steady, cutting through her hysterics. “Brittany’s computer has an activity log. What time the file was opened, what time it was sent—it leaves a digital footprint. Check her email, her Slack, her cloud drives. There will be an outbound record. Furthermore, this company has security cameras. Pull the tape from yesterday. See exactly how long I was at her desk, and see who else sat in that chair.” Aunt Carol wasn’t backing down. “You’re a tech major! You know how to hack! You probably remote-accessed her desktop!” A harsh, dry laugh escaped my throat. “So I spent four years mastering network security just so I could hack into Brittany’s completely unencrypted, password-free desktop?” I paused, turning my gaze back to my cousin. Her face had lost all its color. “Brittany, you just told everyone I ‘clicked the wrong thing.’ So which is it? Was I an accidental klutz, or an elite hacker? And if I clicked the wrong thing, tell me—what email address did I accidentally type out perfectly? At what exact time?” Brittany opened her mouth, but only a pathetic, raspy breath came out. Her fingers twisted the fabric of her silk blouse into knots. She couldn’t meet my eyes. I had spent the last two years helping this office out with their IT issues for free, just as a favor to my uncle. The staff liked me. Unlike Brittany, who treated the receptionists and tech guys like the help, I actually talked to them. Gary, the senior systems administrator, finally stepped forward, clearing his throat. “Jo has maintained our servers for months. We all know her character. If she wanted to steal a file, she wouldn’t do it from Brittany’s physical machine and leave a trail a mile wide.” My uncle hesitated, his anger momentarily replaced by confusion. He looked down at his daughter. “Brittany… is she telling the truth?” “I… I don’t remember,” Brittany stammered, her voice trembling—this time for real. All her self-righteousness had evaporated. “I was just so panicked! I saw her near my desk, and then the file was gone…” “You don’t remember?” I sneered. “A million-dollar contract on the line, and your memory gets fuzzy? Think harder, Brittany. Was it an accident, or did you send it to someone yourself?” Aunt Carol exploded. “How dare you speak to her like that! Why the hell would Brittany send it on purpose? Is she insane?!” “Only she knows the answer to that,” I said quietly. “Stop it! Dad, Mom, please, I just want to go home, I’m having a panic attack…” Brittany immediately reverted to the helpless, fragile girl routine, knowing it was her parents’ kryptonite. Realizing there was no smoking gun to immediately hang me with, Aunt Carol grabbed her purse. She shot me a look of pure venom. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this with your smart mouth. I will find the proof, and when I do, I’ll make sure you pay for this.” She grabbed Brittany by the arm and stormed out, my uncle trailing behind them. The glass door slammed shut behind them, rattling in its frame. Once they were gone, the adrenaline left me in a rush. My knees buckled, and I collapsed into the nearest rolling chair. I had survived the first hurdle. But I knew Aunt Carol and Brittany. They had lost the contract and humiliated themselves in front of the office. They wouldn’t let this go. The file really was in the competitor’s hands, because Brittany had sold it to them. And she would move heaven and earth to make sure I took the fall for her greed. 3 Sure enough, by 7:00 AM the next morning, the family group chat was a warzone. Aunt Carol led the charge. She sent over twenty voice memos, each one dripping with manufactured tears, twisting the events of the previous day into a bizarre work of fiction. In her version, I was a jealous, sociopathic monster who bit the hand that fed me. “Everyone, you have to hear this! When has Paul and I ever treated Jo with anything but love? Her parents work crazy hours, so she practically grew up in our house! Brittany treated her like a sister. She shared everything with her!” “And how does she repay us?! She steals Brittany’s proposal and sells it to a rival firm because she can’t stand that Brittany makes more money than her! Millions of dollars, gone! Brittany was fired! Her life is ruined! And Jo won’t even admit it! She brought her little IT friends to gang up on us! We tried to talk to her, and she practically raised her hand to hit Brittany! Is she even human?” “Her parents are just as guilty for raising such a toxic, rotten kid! I’m saying this right now: if Jo doesn’t pay us back for Brittany’s lost wages and get down on her knees to apologize, our side of the family is cutting her off. We’ll go to her parents’ workplaces and let everyone know what kind of criminals they’re raising!” Following her mother’s barrage, Brittany dropped a long text paragraph, accompanied by three selfies showing her red, swollen eyes. “Hi aunts and uncles… I know you all love Jo. I never thought she’d do something like this to me over petty jealousy. When I saw her at my desk, I just thought she was looking at my things. I never imagined she was stealing from me. I’m completely broken right now. I lost my job, and the person closest to me betrayed me. I don’t want to ruin Jo’s life, but I need her to take accountability and give my parents some closure. When you make a mistake, you have to pay the price, right?” It was a masterclass in manipulation. Within minutes, the chat was swarming with relatives taking the bait. The ones who usually sucked up to Aunt Carol for favors were the first to draw blood. “Jo is so out of line. How could she do this? Disgusting behavior!” “Brittany has always been such a sweet girl, she wouldn’t lie about this. Make Jo pay for the damages!” “This is what happens when you let someone else’s kid eat at your table. Paul and Carol wasted their love on her.” Even the relatives who usually stayed quiet chimed in, eager for the drama. “Family is family, but if Jo stole something, she needs to face the music.” “Millions of dollars is a big deal. The least Jo could do is show some remorse.” My phone rang. It was my parents. “Jo, honey, what is going on?” my mom’s voice was trembling with anxiety. “What is Carol saying about you? Tell us it’s just a misunderstanding.” Hearing my parents’ voices—alive, healthy, frantic with worry—sent a wave of fierce warmth through my chest. In this life, I wouldn’t let anyone touch a hair on their heads. “Mom, Dad, breathe,” I said softly. “It has nothing to do with me. Brittany leaked the file herself, and she’s trying to use me as a human shield. I have the proof. I’m just waiting for the right moment to drop it. Do not reply to the group chat. I have it handled.” They hesitated, but my parents trusted me. “Okay, sweetie. We believe you. But if they try to come over here and harass you, your dad and I aren’t going to just stand by.” “I know. I love you.” I hung up. I sat on my bed, scrolling through the toxic sludge in the group chat, quietly screenshotting every single message. Seeing that I wasn’t responding, Brittany grew bolder. She tagged me directly, demanding I come out of hiding. She warned that if I didn’t show my face, they were coming to my parents’ house. Aunt Carol took it a step further. She dropped a pin of my parents’ address into the chat. She invited everyone who lived nearby to come over at 7:00 PM to “demand justice” and watch my parents “discipline their thief of a daughter.” A cold, sharp smile touched my lips. Perfect. The stage was set. The audience was invited. It was time to pull the trapdoor. 4 At exactly 7:00 PM, cars started pulling up to the curb outside my parents’ house. Aunt Carol, Uncle Paul, and Brittany got out, followed by three of my louder aunts and uncles. They marched right onto our front lawn. Aunt Carol didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell; she just started screaming at the second-floor window. “Jo! Get your ass out here! Hiding in your bedroom like a coward won’t save you!” “Come out here and look your cousin in the eye! Pay up or we’re throwing a brick through your window!” “Come out here and explain yourselves!” an aunt yelled at my parents’ silhouettes in the window. Neighbors started stepping out onto their porches. People walking their dogs stopped on the sidewalk. Whispers broke out. Brittany stood slightly behind her mother, playing the tragic victim perfectly. She kept wiping her dry eyes, looking up at our window with a sickeningly triumphant smirk hidden just beneath her hands. She was waiting for me to break. Inside, my dad was shaking with rage. He reached for the front door handle. “I’m going down there. I’m not letting them speak to you like that.” “Dad, no.” I gripped his forearm tight. “Don’t get in the mud with them. It just makes you dirty.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Watch. Today, they’re going to choke on every single word they just spat out.” Down on the lawn, Brittany was still staring up at my window, waiting for my surrender. Then, a voice cut through the crisp evening air from the sidewalk behind her. “Brittany?”

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Standing in the auditorium, I stared up at the podium. Professor Evelyn Mercer. She practically radiated cold, untouchable perfection—the human embodiment of absolute, freezing abstinence. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, unable to shake my doubts. I called out to the System in my head. Sys, are you absolutely sure we have the right target? Looking at her, it was impossible to connect this pristine academic with the profile of an obsessive, unhinged stalker. The System’s robotic voice chimed back in a panic: It’s because she hasn’t developed feelings for the male lead yet! Once she falls for him, her dormant possessive-psycho attributes will completely detonate! You have to distract her, host. Under no circumstances can Evelyn be allowed to intervene in the romantic arc of the male and female leads! I stroked my chin, mulling it over for a few seconds before a spark of inspiration hit me. Fight fire with fire, right? If she was supposedly a dormant, dark-romance psycho, why not out-creep her and see what happened? Acting on impulse, I pulled out my phone, typed up an anonymous text, and hit send: Professor, your skin is so pale. I wonder if the rest of you is just as flawless under those clothes. Up at the podium, Evelyn picked up her phone, glanced at the screen, and set it back down. Not a single muscle in her face twitched. I raised an eyebrow. Impressive. An absolute master of composure. So, I sent another: Your waist is incredibly narrow. I bet if someone held you tight enough, their fingers would leave beautiful bruises. This time, I finally saw her brow furrow. Hmph. So what if you’re a dark, possessive psycho? I thought. Let’s see how a straight Ice Queen handles getting relentlessly targeted by an unhinged queer girl. 01 Unsurprisingly, my number was promptly blocked. The look of disgust on Evelyn’s face lasted only a fraction of a second. She smoothly regained her composure, her dark eyes scanning the lecture hall with total indifference. “The department is launching a new experimental research project. We require one undergraduate assistant,” she announced, her voice like chilled glass. “Do I have any volunteers?” The entire room went dead silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Even the frat boys who usually salivated over Evelyn quickly buried their heads in their textbooks, terrified of making eye contact. It was a universally acknowledged truth on campus: Professor Mercer of the Biology Department was unequivocally the most stunning woman at the university. She was also, unequivocally, its most ruthless tyrant. In her three years of teaching, she had overseen dozens of massive experiments. To this day, not a single student had ever walked out of her lab smiling. The silence stretched for three agonizing minutes. Not a single hand went up. Evelyn didn’t look surprised. She simply picked up the student roster, preparing to pick a sacrificial lamb at random. Right as her lips parted—about to call out Declan Wright’s name—I threw my hand into the air. “Professor Mercer. I volunteer.” Instantly, the collective gaze of the entire class snapped toward me. Their eyes were brimming with the kind of profound respect usually reserved for martyrs. Evelyn looked up, her gaze landing on me. She slowly closed the roster. “And your name is?” she asked, her tone impeccably flat. I flashed her a radiant, blinding smile. “Jordan. Jordan Ellis.” “Well, Jordan Ellis,” she said coolly. “I look forward to working with you.” 02 On the walk back to the dorms, Declan wouldn’t stop buzzing in my ear. “Jordan, you were acting so weird today!” he exclaimed, matching my stride. “Volunteering for Mercer’s lab? I thought you despised bench work.” I gave him a breezy, fabricated excuse. “I’m short on credits. Might as well knock them out.” “But Professor Mercer is brutally demanding. If you do this… you definitely won’t have time to chase after Naomi.” Naomi Foster. The female lead of this world. A wealthy, beautiful graduate student in our department. The System had originally assigned me the role of the tragic, throwaway side-character—the pathetic roommate of the male lead, Declan. In the original plot, “I” was Naomi’s ultimate, desperate simp. My entire existence revolved around finding new, humiliating ways to win her over, entirely ignoring my studies. Of course, as cannon fodder, all my efforts were doomed. Upon discovering that my goddess actually had a crush on my roommate, “I” was supposed to be consumed by jealousy, frame Declan for something awful, get exposed by Naomi, and be universally despised until I was forced to drop out. I wasn’t even supposed to be a footnote in the storyline between Declan and Evelyn. The System gave me this throwaway identity purely for the freedom to operate off-script. Now that my target was Evelyn Mercer, there was zero reason to maintain my original persona and keep playing the role of Naomi’s tragic lapdog. So, I kept my eyes on my phone, furiously typing as I casually replied, “Naomi is way too much work. I’m exhausted. I think I’m over her.” Declan’s eyes went wide with disbelief. He studied my face to make sure I wasn’t joking. When he realized I was serious, he let out a very quiet, very hopeful, “Oh.” Then, his curiosity shifted back to my phone. “Jordan, why do you keep staring at your screen today? And why are you smiling like… like a creep?” “Just messing with my digital pet,” I lied smoothly. “It’s highly entertaining.” “Digital pet? Like a Tamagotchi app?” “Uh… yeah. Something like that.” Just an ordinary, delightfully vulgar little game called ‘Pretend to be an Unhinged Lesbian to Terrify a Straight Woman.’ Evelyn had already blocked two of my burner numbers. But it didn’t matter. With the System acting as my ultimate tech support, I generated a third number and went right back to my harassment campaign. Professor, don’t waste your energy blocking me. No matter how many numbers you block, I’ll always find a way to reach you. Professor, you looked so incredibly sexy today. That silk blouse was fighting for its life against your chest. I just wanted to tear it open and devour you. Professor, your hands are so beautiful. They look like they’re meant to be soiled with something filthy. Want to try mine? Professor… Watching the little ‘Read’ receipts pop up beneath every single ignored message, I finally burst out laughing. Evelyn’s facial expressions right now had to be absolutely priceless. It probably never occurred to her—a dormant, obsessive psycho—that she would suddenly be targeted by an even more deranged, heavyweight stalker! I sent text after text, utterly relentless. Only when I had exhausted the entire notes app filled with ‘dark romance stalker quotes’ I’d curated did I finally take a breath. I assumed Evelyn was just going to ignore me into oblivion. I was just about to shove my phone into my backpack when the screen lit up with a reply. You better hope I never catch you. Because if I do, I will make you wish you were dead. I smirked, thoroughly unbothered. I already knew an unhinged psycho like her wasn’t someone to cross lightly, which was exactly why I was brilliantly hiding behind a digital smokescreen. She wanted to catch me? Good luck even figuring out my gender, sweetheart. Muahahahaha. 03 The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, ready to report to the lab. Suddenly, Declan popped up. “Jordan, let’s walk together. I really want that scholarship, so I begged Professor Mercer to let me join the project too.” My stomach dropped. Hell no! The entire reason I sacrificed my precious sleep to become a lab rat was to physically block him from getting close to Evelyn! Why was he coming?! I carried a knot of dread in my stomach all the way to the science building. It was only when I walked into the lab and saw Naomi standing there that I secretly exhaled a sigh of relief. Right. Evelyn and Naomi were cousins. It made perfect sense for Naomi to join her older cousin’s project. Declan was almost certainly here for Naomi. He had always harbored a crush on her, but out of loyalty to me—his tragic, simp roommate—he had buried his feelings. My little declaration yesterday about giving up on Naomi must have been the green light he was waiting for. He was here to spark up a romance with the female lead. Perfect. I nudged him with my elbow and beamed. “Declan, if you like her, go for it! I’m rooting for you.” Declan flushed bright red and ducked his head, looking completely bashful. I was just about to tease him a little more when a highly irritated voice snapped through the room. “Jordan? What the hell are you doing here? When is this going to end?” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Turning around, I was met with Naomi’s face, practically radiating annoyance. “This is a professional laboratory, not a playground for your obsession!” she hissed. “I don’t care how much you like me, you don’t get to stalk me here!” I swallowed my temper and offered a deadpan explanation. “Naomi, I’m here for the credits and the scholarship. Not for you. I am completely over you, so please, put your ego away.” Naomi froze. Her eyes darted nervously toward Declan for a split second before she lowered her voice. “I really hope you’re telling the truth this time. Don’t play games with me.” I couldn’t help but scoff. She reeked of that classic, obnoxious pick-me energy. Oh hell no. I wasn’t letting her win this round. Seeing that it was just the three of us in the lab, I aggressively rolled up my sleeves, planted my hands on my hips, and shamelessly stepped up onto a stool to gain the high ground. I unleashed on her. “Naomi, I swear to God, if I’m lying, I hope I get hit by a bus tomorrow! I’m totally over you! Actually, I’m obsessed with Professor Mercer now!” “You know what?” I continued, dropping into a vicious, rhythmic freestyle. “Compared to her, you’re nothing but a wilted piece of lettuce! She destroys you in looks! She destroys you in brains! She destroys you in body! Yeah! Absolutely wrecked!” My flawless execution left Naomi standing there, her face turning an impressive shade of bruised purple. I was just about to add some hand gestures for dramatic flair when a voice cut through the air behind me. “It seems my students are overflowing with energy today. Since that’s the case, we’ll add two more rounds of extractions to the schedule.” 04 And just like that, my beautiful Saturday was slaughtered on the altar of science. Staring resentfully at the elegant curve of Evelyn’s back—her long legs, that impossibly narrow waist—I pulled out my phone with a vengeance. Time for more digital harassment. Professor, you look so excruciatingly sexy today. I want you to step on me with those heels. I bet it would feel like heaven. Professor, the way you stare so intensely at those slides… I want to blind you to everyone else so you only ever look at me. Across the room, Evelyn picked up her phone. She glanced at the screen. Her brow furrowed sharply as her thumbs flew across the keyboard. Are you spying on me? I typed back at lightning speed: Ah~ The Professor finally replied! I’m so happy~ You’re absolutely right. I hid cameras in the lab. And in other places too… but I can’t tell you where. Professor, I’ll never take my eyes off you. For the rest of your life, you’ll never escape me! CRACK. The sharp sound of shattering glass echoed through the lab. “Professor Mercer!” Declan gasped. “Are you okay?!” I quickly shoved my phone in my pocket and hurried over. Evelyn’s hand was bleeding, a jagged cut sliced across her palm from a beaker she had apparently just crushed in her grip. Declan scrambled to find alcohol wipes and bandages, but I snatched them right out of his hands. Moving with ruthless efficiency, I cleaned the wound and taped up her palm before she could even process what was happening. She opened her mouth, likely to say she could do it herself, but I was already done. Declan: “…” Naomi, who had rushed over and contributed absolutely nothing: “…” Evelyn stared down in silence at the slightly crooked bandage on her hand. After a long moment, she looked up at me. “Thank you, Jordan.” “Don’t mention it,” I chirped. Considering I’m the one who pissed you off enough to shatter solid glass, it’s the least I could do. Heh. Because of Evelyn’s injury, the two extra rounds of experiments were mercifully canceled. In an incredibly sunny mood, I packed up my bag and left the building with Declan. Right as we stepped outside, I realized I’d left my notebook behind and jogged back inside. Passing the trash can outside the lab doors, I spotted the bloody alcohol wipe and the wrapper from the bandage sitting right on top. A slow smirk spread across my face. Dodging the angle of the hallway camera, I carefully picked it up. I snapped a photo and sent it to Evelyn. You threw this away, didn’t you? It still has the scent of your perfume on it. Ah… I couldn’t resist tasting it. I was so insanely jealous of the guy who bandaged your hand. I wanted to chop his fingers off. But I feel much better now. You need to be a good girl from now on. Don’t do things that make me angry. You are mine! You can only be touched by me! Do you understand? Hitting send, I violently shuddered, rubbing the goosebumps erupting on my arms. Were my curated stalker quotes a little too psychotic? Was Evelyn actually this deranged in secret? Thinking of her pristine, Ice Queen demeanor, I shook my head hard. Nah. No way. There was no way she was this unhinged… right? 05 A week of relentless harassment passed. Aside from two texts telling me to “Go to hell,” I received absolutely no response from Evelyn. That was a minor issue, though. Right now, I had a catastrophic, five-alarm fire to put out. I watched as Declan approached Evelyn for the fifth time that hour, holding up a clipboard of data and practically shooting heart-eyes at her. I let out a heavy, stressed breath. Nudging Naomi, who was standing beside me, I muttered, “Hey. Your boy is blatantly hitting on my girl. Aren’t you going to do something about it?” Naomi turned to look at me. Her eyes were deeply mournful, her expression tangled in a bizarre, complicated mess of emotions. I sighed, rubbing my temples. I hadn’t anticipated this. Ever since the day I stood on a stool and screamed that I was obsessed with Evelyn, the dynamic in this room had mutated into something horrifying. Naomi’s looks toward me were getting increasingly sorrowful and longing. Meanwhile, Declan wasn’t hitting it off with Naomi at all. Instead, he was aggressively orbiting Evelyn like a moth to a very cold flame. Everything was backward. The only silver lining was that my digital terrorism seemed to be working. Evelyn genuinely appeared wary that her psychotic stalker might lash out. As a result, she maintained a rigid, icy distance from everyone. Right as Declan leaned in close, she seamlessly took a step back. There wasn’t an ounce of romantic tension on her face—just pure, merciless professionalism. I stared at the bizarre love triangle playing out until Naomi’s voice broke my concentration. “Jordan,” she asked softly. “Do you… really like Professor Mercer?” I glared at her. “None of your business.” Naomi let out a soft huff. “I think you just said all those things to make me jealous. You’re so immature, Jordan.” I couldn’t even formulate a response to that level of delusion. I turned away, heading toward a quiet corner to draft my next harassing text to Evelyn, when her voice suddenly rang out, cutting through the hum of the lab. “Jordan. The data sets you submitted are flawed.” Her tone left absolutely no room for argument. “Come to my office immediately after lunch break.” 06 Heart in my throat, I knocked on Evelyn’s office door. When I walked in and saw the stack of red-inked lab reports on her desk, I let out a stealthy exhale of relief. Thank God. It really was just about the data. Five minutes into her lecture, my brain completely short-circuited. Evelyn truly lived up to her reputation as the university’s most terrifying academic. Even without raising her voice or saying a single insulting word, the atmosphere in her office was suffocatingly oppressive. If I were a normal person with an ounce of shame, I would have been mortified by the elementary mistakes she was pointing out, wishing the floor would swallow me whole. Unfortunately for her, I had absolutely zero shame. Her words flowed in one ear and right out the other. Instead, my eyes locked onto her mouth as it moved. Her lips were a beautiful, plush shade of pink. They looked so soft. So incredibly yielding. It would be the perfect time to drop a line from my stalker notes. “Professor, your lips look so—!!” I slammed my mouth shut in absolute horror, my eyes going wide. Holy shit! I had completely zoned out! I had almost said the actual filthy text message out loud! Evelyn paused, her dark eyes lifting from the paper to pin me down. “My lips look so… what?” “Dry! Really dry!” I scrambled forward, practically lunging for the pitcher on her desk to pour her a glass of water. “Professor Mercer, you’ve been talking for so long, you must be parched! Here, hydrate! Save your voice!” Evelyn stared at me in dead silence. After what felt like an eternity, the faintest, most inexplicable smile ghosted across her lips. She reached out, her fingers brushing against mine as she took the glass. “Alright. That’s enough for today,” she murmured softly. “Go back and re-verify your numbers, Jordan. Bring them to me tomorrow.” I pressed my lips tightly together and nodded like an obedient golden retriever. Stepping out of her office, I pulled the door shut and immediately sagged against the cool hallway wall. I stared down at my hand, absentmindedly rubbing the fingers that had just grazed hers. Her skin had been cold. Smooth and heavy, like touching polished jade. I pressed a hand over my chest, feeling the frantic, hammering rhythm of my heart. I let out a frustrated breath. Damn it. For an unhinged, fatal-attraction psycho… she was actually incredibly seductive. 07 The relentless, punishing hours in the lab had completely drained my life force. Sitting in an 8 AM lecture the next day, I was practically comatose. Through the haze of exhaustion, I remembered I hadn’t completed my morning quota of harassing Evelyn. Dropping my heavy head onto my desk, I blearily opened my phone, copied a paragraph from my notes app, and sent it off: Professor, I had the most beautiful dream last night. I dreamt I made you cry. Your eyes were so red, and you were begging me to stop. But I couldn’t. You look too pretty when you cry. I just want to lock you in a room so I can watch you cry for me forever. I hit send, locked the screen, and prepared to pass out for the rest of the lecture. But against all odds, the second my eyes drifted shut, my phone vibrated twice. Evelyn, breaking her week-long silence, had actually replied. I’ve seen this exact paragraph three times now. Are you going to send it a fourth? Three times?! The adrenaline spiked so fast I nearly fell out of my chair. Sleep vanished. I was wide awake and sweating. No wonder that paragraph felt so familiar as I was pasting it! I’d already sent it! I frantically scrolled up through our chat history. Oh, it was a bloodbath. Not only had I sent that dream text three times, but there was another text I’d accidentally sent twice! Mother of God! This was the karma I deserved for being too lazy to update my dark romance quotes! I furiously typed out a desperate save: I will. Not just a fourth time, but many times. Because every time I make you cry in my dreams, I have to be a good girl and report it to you. And soon, I’m going to make you cry in real life. You can look forward to it~ I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, mentally giving myself a high-five for that brilliant recovery. Just as I thought the crisis was averted, my screen lit up with one final text. I’ll be waiting. Staring at those three short words, an involuntary shiver crawled down my spine. The back of my neck felt suddenly, terribly cold. Did she… did she know something?

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432248”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

In this life, I am still the executive assistant. My boss is still the girl I grew up with. In my last life, when the boy who hung the moon in her sky handed her a joint venture proposal, I quietly intercepted it and turned it down behind her back. As a result, she made my life a living hell, systematically destroying everything I cared about until my family was left with nothing. When the fatal car crash finally took my life, she stood over my broken body, gave a soft, dismissive laugh, and whispered, “If there’s a next life, stay out of my business.” Now, I am breathing again. And when that same proposal crosses my desk, I don’t reject it. I hand it right to her. Not long after, her empire crumbles into bankruptcy. And I turn around, walking straight into the arms of my billionaire father. 01 “Catherine, this is the development proposal from Wesley Hawthorne.” I watched as Catherine Dupont, who had been wearing her usual icy CEO mask, suddenly lit up, her hands trembling slightly as she took the portfolio from me. The only reason she was this excited was because Wesley was her ultimate “what-if”—the golden boy she had spent her entire adolescence pining for, the one who always managed to slip through her fingers. But looking at the reality of the situation, Hawthorne Industries and the Dupont Group were apex predators in the same sector. They were fierce competitors. Not to mention, Wesley hadn’t bothered to initiate contact with Catherine in over a decade. For him to suddenly extend an olive branch out of the blue… anyone with a shred of business acumen would pause to look for the poison on the leaves. “Wesley actually reached out to me? Elliot, hurry up, schedule a meeting for us to sign the paperwork.” Catherine’s face was glowing. She was entirely incapable of sitting down to weigh the pros and cons. If this were my previous life, I would have spoken up to stop her. After all, childhood loyalties are nothing but loose sand in the face of corporate greed. People change. I did exactly that in my last life. And she screamed at me, her face twisted in rage. “Elliot, do you think everyone in the world is as cold-blooded and ungrateful as you are?!” “If Wesley hadn’t pulled me out of that lake when we were kids, I would have died!” I knew she was blindly devoted to him. The more I tried to reason with her, the more she hated me. So, I took the hit. I went behind her back and formally rejected the partnership. I didn’t do it out of jealousy. I didn’t care that she loved him instead of me. I did it because that “partnership” was a ticking time bomb Wesley had custom-built to blow the Dupont Group to pieces. Before I died in my last life, I never regretted what I did, even when Catherine found out, threw apocalyptic tantrums, and made my daily existence an absolute nightmare. At the very least, the Dupont Group survived. Catherine was her father’s first female heir, appointed against the immense pressure of their conservative board. Everyone was waiting for her to fail. Everyone wanted to see the empire burn in her hands. I couldn’t bear to see her break. So I volunteered to be her right hand, her shield. The price I paid was agonizing. I became the unforgivable villain in her love story, the obstacle keeping her from Wesley. My adopted family lost their jobs because of her petty retaliation. And the most pathetic part? I took the impact in that car crash to save her life. As I lay dying, she smiled down at me. “With you gone, Elliot, there’s nothing standing between Wesley and me anymore. If there’s a next life, do yourself a favor and leave me alone.” Only after I died did I realize that the crash was never an accident. It was her plan. A plan to eradicate me. Now, I’ve been given a second chance. Since Catherine doesn’t care about protecting her own legacy, why should I? Everyone has their own fate. This time, I will not entangle myself in her karma. If she wants a happily-ever-after with Wesley so desperately, I will personally hand her the bitter fruit she’s begging for. After all, you reap what you sow. To help my boss pluck the moon from the sky as quickly as possible, I played the role of the dutiful assistant to perfection. I didn’t waste a single second. I immediately contacted Wesley’s office and locked in an afternoon slot to discuss the terms. In the fifteen minutes between those calls, I pulled out a piece of paper I had memorized—a private investigator’s tip-line attached to a multi-million dollar reward for a missing heir. I dialed the number. “Hello,” I said, my voice steady. “My name is Elliot. I’m the biological son you’ve been searching for.” 02 There was a heavy pause on the other end. The voice that finally answered sounded exhausted, brittle with years of false hope. “Another scammer?” I let out a soft laugh. “This one is the real deal. Just tell me where and when you want to do the DNA test.” It was true. After I died in my last life, I discovered that my biological parents were fiercely private, ultra-wealthy billionaires. My adoptive parents were just working-class people who had found me abandoned by a patch of tall grass off a busy street. The only reason I grew up knowing Catherine and Wesley was because my adoptive mother worked as a housekeeper at the Dupont estate. My adoptive dad worked grueling shifts, so my mom had no choice but to bring me to work. Day after day, I trailed behind Catherine, and she trailed behind Wesley. Over time, we became a trio. When we were kids, the companionship was genuine. But as we grew older and the invisible walls of social class began to solidify, things changed. Catherine and Wesley never said it out loud, but deep down, they looked down on me. I was the help’s kid. Now, breathing the air of a second life, I couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they realized who I really was. Suddenly, my phone vibrated violently against my thigh. I answered it quickly. Catherine’s shrieking voice blasted through the speaker. “Elliot, where the hell are you?! I am giving you exactly twenty minutes to get back to the office!” “Oh, and detour to Fifth Avenue to pick up the dress I ordered! Their courier is too slow. Move your ass, Elliot! If you make me late to see Wesley, I will end you!” She hung up before I could utter a single syllable. I let out a low, cold breath. It was just a preliminary business meeting, but she was treating it like she was walking down the aisle. That was the power of the golden boy. I had guarded her quietly for twenty years, and it amounted to nothing compared to a man who had ignored her for a decade. Well, I was officially retiring from the role of the pathetic lapdog. But, considering she was technically still my boss, I drove toward the boutique. By the time I picked up her dress, I was already fifteen minutes past her deadline. I wasn’t in a rush. As I walked past a high-end designer window, my eyes caught a stunning white dress. A phantom image flashed through my mind, and on a whim, I walked in and bought it. When I finally made it back, Catherine was, predictably, ballistic. “What is wrong with you today, Elliot?! Everything you do is a beat too slow! Did you know I was meeting Wesley? Are you doing this on purpose?!” She knew I had feelings for her. Wesley had been the one to tell her. Before that, Catherine just found my working-class background a bit distasteful. But after Wesley snooped through my private journals and outed my feelings to her, her distaste curdled into absolute disgust. Wesley had casually dropped the bomb with a smirk. “You know, Catherine, Elliot wouldn’t be a bad choice for you. I kind of ship it.” From that day on, Wesley deliberately iced Catherine out. Not because he actually cared about her, but simply because he loved torturing me. The more miserable I was, the more entertained he was. His resentment stemmed from the fact that, growing up, I outperformed him in everything. Academics, sports, you name it. A nobody eclipsing the shining heir apparent. For a narcissist like Wesley, it was an unforgivable offense. But how was that my fault? Gold shines, no matter where you bury it. I let Catherine hit my arm a few times, her manicured nails digging into my jacket, before I stepped back. My voice was dead calm. “Are you done?” In my last life, Catherine used my love for her as a weapon to endlessly torment me. But this time, carrying the physical memory of a crushed ribcage and shattered glass, I wasn’t going down that road again. Having seen the ugly, rotten core of who she really was, loving her was a physical impossibility. Catherine froze, her hand hovering in the air. “Did you just snap at me, Elliot?” I needed to buy time. I hadn’t officially reunited with my biological family yet, so I couldn’t completely blow up my life here. I swallowed the vitriol and forced a veneer of patience. “We are less than thirty minutes away from the meeting. If you don’t hurry up, you’re going to leave him with the impression that you’re unpunctual. I imagine that’s not what you want.” I paused, letting my tone drop casually. “Besides, I heard Wesley is bringing his new executive secretary today. Word is, she’s absolutely gorgeous…” I feigned indifference, but it worked like a charm. Catherine’s eyes widened, her brows snapping together in immediate insecurity. “Well, what are you standing there for?!” she snapped. “Grab the files and get the car ready!” 03 Seeing her agitated actually brought a quiet sense of peace to my chest. I tossed the white dress I had bought for myself into the trunk just as Catherine rushed out of the building. It was true that Wesley had recently hired a stunning Ivy League grad as his secretary. Even though Catherine rarely interacted with him, I knew she obsessively tracked his every move through backchannels. Her interest in Wesley was purely romantic; she couldn’t care less about his actual business operations. Because of that blind spot, she hadn’t given this joint venture a second thought. She just saw it as a VIP ticket to finally getting the guy. “Hey. Elliot. How do I look?” I turned around. She was standing by the car, arms crossed, chin tilted up in a pose of absolute arrogance. The look in her eyes was loud and clear: Look at how perfect I am. You don’t deserve to even look at me. I had to admit, to outshine the rumors of Wesley’s new secretary, Catherine had gone to war. If you didn’t know it was a corporate M&A meeting, you’d think she was walking the red carpet at the Met Gala. She had completely sacrificed her own sharp, commanding style to cater to what she thought Wesley’s aesthetic was. I felt a brief flicker of pity, quickly followed by apathy. It wasn’t my problem anymore. I got in and drove us to the venue, pushing the speed slightly. I entirely “forgot” that Catherine suffered from severe motion sickness. Calling it an accident would be a lie. I did it on purpose. In my last life, I accommodated her every need. I drove her everywhere myself because I didn’t trust anyone else with her safety. I knew that if I drove too fast, the acid reflux would make her violently ill. “Elliot, you did that on purpose! Ugh!” I watched Catherine lean against the brick wall outside the venue, dry-heaving. I let a faint smile touch my lips. “You’re accusing the wrong guy, Catherine. I’m just setting the stage for you and Wesley to have a moment.” She shot me a venomous, red-rimmed glare. I held my hands up defensively. “Come on. Men love a damsel in distress. Playing the fragile, vulnerable card is the fastest way to trigger a guy’s hero complex.” I was being overly cynical, but Catherine hadn’t clawed her way to the CEO chair by being stupid. She caught the subtext instantly. She wiped her mouth, straightening up with a harsh, mocking laugh. “Why should I believe a word you say? It’s no secret you’re obsessed with me. I’ve told you a million times, it’s never going to happen. Stop trying to climb the social ladder through my bed. Wesley is the only one on my level.” She didn’t even try to hide the contempt. I put on my best hurt expression. “That’s exactly why I’ve decided to give up on you.” The moment the words left my mouth, Catherine actually went rigid for three full seconds. “Oh, please,” she finally scoffed, recovering her sneer. “You claim to love me, but you fold at the first sign of trouble. You’re pathetic, Elliot.” She turned on her heel and marched through the glass doors without looking back. I watched her go, my eyes narrowing into a cold stare. If I let myself repeat the same mistakes in this life, that would be pathetic. Wesley’s team had just arrived. The private conference room held only the four of us: me, Catherine, Wesley, and his secretary, Jordan. “Wesley, what made you suddenly want to work with us?” Catherine completely ignored the chair I pulled out for her across the table, glaring at me before practically throwing herself into the seat right next to Wesley. It was a four-person table, and she had stolen the seat meant for his secretary. “We’ve known each other forever, Wesley. No need to keep things so formal,” she purred. Wesley shot me a deliberate, mocking look. He draped his arm over the back of Catherine’s chair, letting it rest just millimeters from her shoulders. I took in his smug, territorial display with zero emotional reaction. In fact, it took everything in me not to laugh. A grown man, the CEO of a major corporation, still playing high-school dominance games like a dog marking a fire hydrant. I watched Catherine practically drowning in Wesley’s eyes. Knowing she would drag this out, I was about to speak up to push the deal forward, but the woman next to me beat me to it. “Mr. Hawthorne, Ms. Dupont,” Jordan said, her voice clipped and professional. “Since everyone is present, I suggest we begin.” Catherine, furious at having her flirting interrupted, shot the secretary a murderous glare. I took a moment to observe Jordan, then glanced at Catherine. In terms of pure glamor, Catherine had definitely outdressed Jordan today. That was probably the only reason Catherine hadn’t demanded the woman be fired on the spot. Because Catherine was entirely focused on Wesley, the contract review went dangerously fast. As Wesley stood up to leave, I smoothly stepped in front of him. “Mr. Hawthorne, our CEO is feeling a bit under the weather today. For old times’ sake, would you mind driving her home?” Catherine, who had been looking crestfallen at his departure, instantly perked up. She stepped close to him, putting on a soft, helpless voice. “Please, Wesley? Elliot is completely incompetent. He drove so erratically I got incredibly carsick. Would you mind?” I kept my eyes on Wesley, catching the microscopic flicker of irritation in his jaw before I gave him a polite smile. Once Catherine and Wesley were in his car, Jordan reached for the passenger door. Catherine immediately snapped from the backseat. “Wesley, I really prefer not having random employees know where I live.” Jordan looked genuinely speechless. Trying to hide my amusement, I gently pulled her back by the elbow. “Mr. Hawthorne, thank you for ensuring our CEO gets home safely. It’s a perfect opportunity for you two to discuss the finer points of the partnership.” As the car pulled away, Jordan dropped her leather briefcase onto the pavement with a heavy thud. “Is she psychotic? Just throwing her weight around to abuse the working class? She acts like everyone is dying to get their hands on that piece of trash.” Hearing her vent, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Well, to be fair, you’re the daughter of a billionaire. You’re hardly the ‘working class’.” 04 Jordan’s expression instantly turned lethal. She locked eyes with me, her posture shifting into something dangerous. “How do you know that?” I only knew because, after I died, I found out my billionaire father had a daughter two years older than me. To protect her from the suffocating pressure of the media, my father had scrubbed her existence from the public record. It gave her the freedom to live an actual life and experience the world on her own terms. While I was still lost in my memories, Jordan suddenly snapped a brutal kick aimed straight below my belt. I reacted purely on instinct, dodging just in time. “Who sent you? What’s your angle?” Jordan’s face was terrifyingly cold. I threw my hands up in a desperate surrender. “Hey, hold on! Are you trying to end your own bloodline?!” Jordan froze, then immediately pivoted to launch another kick. “What kind of psycho are you? You think you can just call me sister and I’ll buy it?” I blocked her leg with my forearm. “You don’t have to buy anything. We can do a DNA test right now.” Right on cue, my phone started vibrating furiously. I held it up to show her the screen. “I literally just scheduled the private doctor with the estate manager. Come on. Let’s go bleed for science.” With that, I popped the trunk, pulled out the white dress I had bought earlier, and tossed it to her. By the time we arrived at the discreet location I had arranged with my father, the estate manager was already waiting. To prevent anyone from buying off a public hospital, my father used the family’s exclusive private medical team. Because the stakes were so high, the lab ran the rush order flawlessly. The results came back within hours. Jordan stared at the paper, her eyes wide. “You really are my little brother.” My billionaire dad broke down, pulling me into a crushing hug, sobbing uncontrollably. The only tragedy was that I was a year too late. My biological mother had passed away from an illness twelve months ago. Her dying wish had been for them to find the son they had lost. Now that I was back, my father wanted to call a massive press conference and announce my return to the world. I immediately shut the idea down. My revenge wasn’t complete. The traps hadn’t been sprung. Showing my hand now would ruin the game. I pulled Jordan aside. “Hey, you hate Wesley, right? I hate him too. How about a little sibling bonding exercise to take him down?” Wesley was the quintessential bloodsucking capitalist, treating his employees like disposable batteries. Jordan had been sick of him for months. She raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.” As I laid out my blueprint, Jordan clicked her tongue. “Damn, little brother. You’ve got some deep-seated trauma with this guy.” She hit the nail on the head. I did. In my previous life, my death was entirely intertwined with Wesley Hawthorne. He was far more dangerous than anyone realized. 05 This entire “partnership” was a premeditated scheme designed by Wesley to gut the Dupont Group from the inside out. Right now, both companies were heavyweights in the same industry. Two tigers can’t share one mountain. Wesley was desperate to swallow Catherine’s empire whole. Because Wesley placed so much emphasis on this joint venture, Catherine became utterly obsessed with it. She worked me to the bone, piling on tasks that had never been part of my job description. She really had learned from the best. Growing up with Wesley had taught her how to be a ruthless capitalist. Honestly, I could have just thrown my resignation letter in her face right then and there, walking away to inherit my billions. But if I did that, my brutal death in the last life would go unanswered. They would win. Besides, before I officially stepped into my family’s empire, I needed to build a solid foundation. I found out that my father was currently eyeing a massive plot of land in the Southside Yards. Coincidentally, Wesley was desperate for that exact same parcel. But based on the memories from my past life, the Southside Yards project was poisoned chalice. It looked like a goldmine, but it was rotten to the core. Even though it was adjacent to the city’s new commercial hub, the land had a dark history. It used to be a low-income neighborhood. Due to deep political corruption and violent, forced evictions orchestrated by shell companies, families had been destroyed. People had died. The scandal had been buried deep. Worse, the geological survey had been doctored—the ground was inherently unstable and prone to catastrophic sinkholes. My father had only recently returned to the US and wasn’t privy to the local, buried dirt. He was still deciding if the land was worth the investment. Wesley, on the other hand, thought he was playing 4D chess. His plan with Catherine was to build a massive residential complex on the Southside Yards. Dupont Group would be the public face—buying the land and building the structures—while Hawthorne Industries would act as a silent, shadow backer. If the skeletons in the closet were unearthed, or if the ground caved in, the public would burn Catherine at the stake. Wesley could just sever ties, keep his hands clean, and watch his biggest competitor die. If the project succeeded, he raked in half the profits with zero risk. Wesley thrived on dirty deals disguised as brilliant business moves. In my last life, I saw right through his trap. I fought tooth and nail to protect Catherine, saving her company, her reputation, and her father’s legacy. My reward was being treated like garbage. This time? I wasn’t just going to sit back and watch. I was going to give them a little push over the edge.

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I rolled up my sleeve, the motion as thoughtless and routine as breathing, waiting for the cold swipe of the alcohol pad. But instead of the nurse’s gentle touch, Drew’s hand clamped down hard over my forearm. The first day of every month. For over a year, this had been our ritual. This was the day I sat in a pristine leather chair and let them draw my blood—the rare antibodies in my plasma supposedly keeping his chronically ill younger sister alive. He didn’t look at me. His voice was a flat, clinical drone that felt almost deliberately cruel. He told me that the woman whose life I had been sustaining month after month wasn’t his sister at all. She was his ex-wife. “Her autoimmune flare-ups have stabilized,” he said, casually adjusting his cuffs. “She’s fully recovered. We don’t need your plasma anymore.” I stared down at the crook of my elbow. The skin there was a constellation of tiny, faded purple dots—a roadmap of my devotion. A violent tremor started in my hands and quickly took over my entire body. “How could you?” The words tore out of my throat, raw and agonizing. “You knew I was pregnant during half those donations! You knew the risk—one wrong move, one drop in my pressure, and it could have killed the baby!” I was screaming now, but Drew’s face remained a mask of flawless, terrifying indifference. If anything, the look he gave me was laced with pity. “I was fully aware of the risks, Jolie,” he said softly. “But you see, the embryo the clinic implanted… it was created using my sperm and Cheryl’s egg. You were just carrying our child.” 1 “What?” The word hung in the air, impossibly fragile. A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears. Drew pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette. He looked annoyed, but beneath that annoyance was a sickening sense of entitlement. “Cheryl has a fragile constitution. Carrying a child to term would have destroyed her body. Why else do you think I married you?” He exhaled a plume of smoke, looking at me through the gray haze. “But it worked out. The boy is healthy, and her illness is in remission. If you want a divorce now, I won’t contest it.” He let out a long breath, as if a massive weight had been lifted from his tailored shoulders. He looked at my face—which must have been the color of chalk—and actually offered a light, breezy chuckle. “You have no idea the toll this took on me. Every time I was with you, it felt like I was having an affair. Like I was betraying her.” He paused, his eyes darkening with a twisted sort of loyalty. “I never even slept with you without getting her permission first.” The ringing in my ears escalated into a deafening roar. Fragments of our marriage—the tender late-night whispers, the tangled sheets, the vows we took—crashed through my mind, broken and bleeding. My lips trembled, but I couldn’t form a single syllable. As if reading the devastation in my eyes, Drew let out a low, dark laugh. “Last night, when we were in bed? She was on the phone. Listening. It made her so furious she was practically screaming, calling you a whore.” He shook his head, sounding almost disappointed in me. “But you were so far gone, so desperate for it, you didn’t even notice the phone on the nightstand.” The sheer humiliation of it, the absolute violation, surged up from my stomach and exploded behind my eyes. I lunged forward and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength I had. “You monster!” Drew ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the inside of his cheek. He didn’t look angry. He just looked thoroughly, unapologetically rotten. “I’ll admit, it was a shitty thing to do. I originally planned to keep you in the dark forever. But yesterday, Cheryl saw Toby call you ‘Mommy.’ She broke down. She cried for hours.” He sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “It broke my heart. I can’t let her suffer like that.” He stared right at me, and in that split second, I knew exactly what he was going to say. My body instinctively scrambled backward, pressing hard against the back of the chair. “Don’t you even think about it,” I gasped, terror wrapping around my throat. Drew lunged, grabbing my wrists. He looked at my tears as if they were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. “Jolie, be rational. You are not his biological mother. If we take him back now, you’ll get over it eventually. It won’t hurt as much as you think.” “I raised him for three years!” I shrieked, the tears spilling over, hot and pathetic and desperate. “A thousand days and nights! Do you know he’s allergic to mangoes? Do you know he ends up in the ER every spring with croup? Do you have any fucking idea that I nearly bled to death on the delivery table having him?!” For a fraction of a second, Drew’s expression went completely blank. I let out a broken, hysterical laugh. I remembered it now. He wasn’t there when I gave birth. I had been hemorrhaging. The doctors were shouting, the alarms were blaring, and I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe, begging the nurses to call my husband. I just wanted him to hold my hand. When they finally got him on the phone, his voice was like ice. “I told you, I’m closing a massive acquisition today. Women give birth every second of the day, Jolie. Stop acting like a spoiled brat.” But right before the line went dead, I had heard it. A woman’s soft, melodic giggle in the background. Pleased. Mocking. I had convinced myself it was a hallucination brought on by the blood loss. But it was Cheryl. I sobbed, my chest heaving uncontrollably. Drew watched me, and for a fleeting moment, a flicker of genuine pity crossed his eyes. He opened his mouth, perhaps to offer some hollow comfort, but his cell phone buzzed. He answered it. Cheryl’s voice bled through the speaker, sharp and furious, like a wife catching her husband in a cheap motel. “Why aren’t you answering my texts?! You’re screwing that bitch right now, aren’t you? Don’t think I don’t know how much you love that slut’s body!” Drew smiled. It was a helpless, entirely devoted smile. “Baby, don’t be mad. I’m not doing anything. I promised you I’d handle it, didn’t I? Have I ever let you down?” “Then how are you going to handle it? I want her to get on her knees and apologize to me!” He poured all his attention into the phone, soothing her, validating her. He didn’t even bother taking it off speakerphone. He didn’t care that I was sitting two feet away, listening to them discuss how to dispose of me as if I were the mistress who had overstayed her welcome. My stomach cramped so violently I thought I might throw up. I couldn’t listen to another word. Face ashen, I turned and stumbled toward the door. 2 Footsteps echoed behind me. Drew grabbed my arm, his tone dripping with annoyance. “Where are you running off to? Come back inside and apologize to Cheryl.” “For what?!” I whipped my head around, my eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred. Drew flinched. He wasn’t used to seeing me like this—so sharp, so jagged. He looked away, his jaw tightening. “I saved your life back then. Consider this your repayment.” The world seemed to drop out from under me. A devastating sob tore itself from my chest. Through the blur of my tears, I was violently pulled back to three years ago. I was twenty, trapped in the dirt yard of a crumbling trailer park, being beaten black and blue by my stepbrother and stepmother. Neighbors had gathered around the chain-link fence, watching the spectacle. My biological father leaned against a rusted pickup truck, smoking a cigarette and offering color commentary. “That’s what you get for hiding your waitress tips from us! Beat the brat!” My throat was raw from screaming. My back was a tapestry of welts and bruises from the broom handle. But worse than the physical agony was the look in the eyes of my high school classmates standing in the crowd—pity mixed with revulsion. I had prayed to die right there in the dirt. But just as I was losing consciousness, a sleek black Porsche had torn into the yard. Drew had stepped out like something from another universe. He had punched my stepbrother to the ground, scooped my bleeding body into his arms, and carried me toward his car. My father and stepmother had charged at him, screaming bloody murder. “You rich prick! That’s kidnapping! Put the little bitch down!” Drew had gently set me in the passenger seat, pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from his jacket, and thrown it in their faces. His voice had been colder than the bottom of the ocean. “Listen to me very carefully. Jolie has nothing to do with you anymore. If you ever breathe in her direction again, I have enough lawyers to bury you under a prison.” For months after that, Drew had built a fortress around me. And I, like a drowning girl, had clung to him as my sole savior. But life doesn’t deal in fairytales. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The man I thought was my redemption was just a predator dressed in a designer suit, dragging me into a much deeper, darker abyss. The phantom pain of those old bruises merged with the very real shattering of my heart. I pressed my fists hard against my chest, trying to breathe. Drew frowned, stepping forward to pull me into a hug, to stop me from hurting myself. But before he could touch me, Cheryl materialized out of nowhere and slapped me so hard my teeth rattled. “You shameless whore! Trying to seduce my husband right out in the open!” Between the shock and the chronic anemia from being her personal blood bank, my vision went black. I slammed my hand against the brick wall of the clinic to keep from collapsing. Pedestrians were stopping. Whispers rippled through the gathering crowd, their eyes darting between us with disgust and morbid curiosity. The humiliation was acidic. I stiffened my spine and pointed a shaking finger at her. “You’re lying! Drew and I are legally married! You’re the mistress!” Instead of looking ashamed, Cheryl’s lips curled into a slow, terrifyingly smug smile. “Oh? Are you sure about that?” Panic flashed across Drew’s face. He reached out, trying to pull her away. “Cheryl, let’s go—” She shoved him off, her eyes locked on me as she gleefully butchered my reality. “Keep dreaming, sweetie. I never signed the divorce papers. How the hell can you be his legal wife?” Gravity ceased to exist. I crashed heavily to the pavement, all expression wiped from my face. The whispers from the crowd turned into a loud, righteous buzzing. Fingers pointed at me like daggers. “Oh my god, she actually is the homewrecker. The absolute nerve of her.” “Screwing a married man before he’s even divorced? Trash. Someone record this and put it on TikTok. Expose her.” My skull felt like it was cracking open. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to scream the truth, but looking at the sea of disgusted faces, I realized none of them wanted the truth. They just wanted a villain. My chest heaved. I let out a guttural, wounded scream. And then, a tiny, tear-soaked voice pierced through the noise. “You’re mean! Stop hurting my mommy!” Toby wriggled out of the nanny’s arms by the clinic entrance and ran toward me on his little toddler legs, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks. “Mommy, Mommy! I’ll protect you!” My heart plummeted into my stomach. Instinctively, I opened my arms to catch him. But Cheryl lunged and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. Her smugness vanished, replaced by a grotesque, manic fury. “Look at me! I am your mother! Call me Mommy! Say it!” Toby burst into terrified wails. His little face went pale with panic as he reached his chubby hands out toward me, his fingers grasping at empty air. “Mommy! Help! Mommy!” A primal, agonizing pain ripped through my chest. I scrambled up from the concrete and threw my entire body weight at Cheryl, tackling her. “Let him go!” My hands found her throat. I don’t know where the strength came from—rage, motherly instinct, or pure madness—but she was entirely powerless against me. But my victory lasted less than three seconds. Hands clamped onto my shoulders and violently hurled me backward onto the ground. “Jolie, are you out of your fucking mind?!” Drew roared, his face twisted in fury. “Cheryl is sick! Why are you so evil?!” 3 Drew knelt on the ground, wrapping his arms protectively around Cheryl, his eyes filled with nothing but absolute loathing for me. I lay sprawled on the concrete. I didn’t defend myself. I didn’t say a word. I just dragged myself up on my hands and knees, reaching frantically for Toby to check if he had been hurt in the scuffle. But before I could even touch his hair, Drew snatched him up. “You’re completely unhinged,” he spat. “Cheryl and I are taking Toby. You need to go somewhere and get your head checked.” Toby looked paralyzed with fear, thrashing in Drew’s grip, his little arms reaching for me. “Want my mommy! I want Mommy!” “Toby!” I shrieked, stumbling after them. But the crowd of bystanders—these self-righteous strangers—stepped in my way, forming a physical wall between me and my son. “The kid belongs to the married couple, lady! Just because you babysat him for a while doesn’t make him yours. You can’t beat biology!” Every word they spoke was a knife twisting in my ribs. Tears blinded me. I stood there, utterly helpless, as Drew carried my sobbing child to his car, shoved him inside, and drove away. “Give him back,” I whispered to the empty street. “Give him back…” The world tilted, went gray, and then completely black. When I opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. Drew was sitting in the visitor’s chair. He looked exhausted, a rare, deep crease forming between his brows. Seeing me stir, he immediately leaned forward and tried to take my hand. “Jolie, stop fighting this. Just rest.” He sighed heavily. “I wired a million dollars into your account. Consider it compensation.” “A divorce settlement?” I croaked, and then a bitter laugh bubbled up my throat. “No, wait. It’s a breakup fee. Five years of my youth, acting as a free surrogate and a walking blood bank… don’t you think you’re being a little cheap, Drew?” He watched me quietly for a moment. Then, without missing a beat, he said, “I’ll wire another million.” He paused. “But Toby… I need you to stay away from him.” It felt like invisible hands were strangling me. My eyes burned, bloodshot and feral. “Why?” “Because a boy needs his real mother. You have no biological connection to him.” His voice was void of any emotion. Fresh tears spilled hot tracks down my cheeks, but the fight hadn’t left me yet. “I’ll sue you. I’ll go to the police. Bigamy, medical fraud, whatever it takes!” Drew blinked, his expression softening into that awful, condescending pity again. “Why put yourself through that?” he murmured. “Jolie… you know you can’t win against my lawyers.” His gaze dropped to my lower lip, which I was biting so hard it was bleeding. A strange, unfocused look came over his eyes. As if driven by some dark, selfish impulse, his tone shifted, dropping into a low, husky whisper. “If you really can’t bear to be apart from the boy… there is another way.” I shot up, grabbing the sleeve of his expensive shirt, my heart hammering. “What way?” Drew smiled. He turned his hand over and gently stroked my knuckles with his thumb. “We separate, but we don’t end things. I’ll buy you a luxury condo downtown. Whenever I have free time, I’ll bring Toby over to see you.” The silence in the hospital room was absolute. I let out two hollow, breathless laughs, then violently slapped his hand away. “You want me to be your mistress. You want me to sit quietly in some condo while you play happy family with your wife, waiting for the nights you get bored and decide you need to get your rocks off?” His brow furrowed. He maintained his maddening patience, speaking to me as if I were a petulant child. “There’s no need to make it sound so ugly. It’s an arrangement that benefits us both. Toby gets the love of two mothers, and I can still take care of you. You’re completely alone in this world, Jo. I’d worry about you.” He spoke so softly, so tenderly, weaving a narrative where he was the benevolent protector. But I knew the truth now. It was just a pretty lie to satisfy his own insatiable greed. He wanted the trophy wife and the devoted martyr, all under his control. My stomach churned violently. I threw off the thin hospital blanket and swung my legs over the side of the bed, putting as much distance between us as the small room allowed. “Keep your money. Keep your condo.” Drew’s face darkened. He had thrown me a bone, expecting the pathetic, love-starved girl he had groomed to crawl back to him with gratitude. My rejection bruised his massive ego. “Suit yourself,” he snapped, standing up and smoothing his jacket. “I’m only offering this once. When reality hits you and you regret this, don’t come crying to me. There are no second chances.” I wrapped my arms around myself, staring blankly out the window, refusing to give him another word. The door slammed shut with a concussive force, leaving me alone in the sterile silence. That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Toby screaming for me. At dawn, I checked myself out, packed a single suitcase from the house that was no longer mine, and left. I was sitting in a cheap motel room, trying to figure out my next move, when my phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. It was a post from Cheryl. “Baked a strawberry mango shortcake for my little prince! He threw a tantrum at first, but after Mommy force-fed him the first two bites, he gobbled it all up!” My heart stopped. The blood roared in my ears, and my fingers shook so violently I could barely type. “TOBY IS DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO MANGOES!!! GET HIM TO THE ER NOW!!!” I hit send. Two seconds later, the comment vanished. Deleted. I frantically hit her contact name to call her. Call Failed. Number Blocked. 4 I didn’t think. I just grabbed my keys, sprinted to my car, and drove like a maniac. Ten minutes later, I was throwing my shoulder against Cheryl’s heavy mahogany front door until the lock gave way. I burst into the living room. Cheryl was standing there, looking annoyed. In her arms, Toby was thrashing, violently scratching at his neck. His breaths were coming in short, agonizing wheezes. When she saw me, her face contorted with rage. “What the hell are you doing?! Get the fuck out of my house!” She aggressively shifted Toby to her hip, turning her back to me to hide him. I pointed at my son, cold sweat dripping down my spine. “Are you insane?! He’s going into anaphylactic shock! Call an ambulance!” “He is not! Stop making up lies!” Cheryl screamed, marching over and shoving me hard in the chest. “Get out! You psycho bitch, you’re just looking for an excuse to steal my husband and my kid! If you ever come back here, I’ll carve up your face!” Toby’s skin was turning a terrifying shade of red. He was sobbing, a horrific, raspy sound. He saw me over her shoulder and desperately reached out, his tiny fingers hooking into the fabric of my sweater. “Mommy… Mommy, it hurts…” Cheryl didn’t even look at him. She was entirely consumed with her hatred for me, slapping at my arms and screaming obscenities in my face. Something inside my brain just snapped. I grabbed her wrist, twisted it hard, and used my momentum to throw her to the hardwood floor. “Ahhh!” she shrieked, curling into a ball and clutching her arm. I didn’t hesitate. I scooped Toby into my arms and bolted for the front door. But as I crossed the threshold, I slammed directly into Drew’s solid chest. He staggered back, his eyes darting from me, to the crying child in my arms, to his wife sobbing on the floor. His face turned thunderous. “Jolie, what the fuck is wrong with you?! Put him down!” Cheryl wailed from the floor, pointing a trembling finger at me. “Drew! She broke in! She’s trying to kidnap Toby! Call the police and lock this bitch up!” I gripped Toby tighter, my chest heaving. “No! I’m not kidnapping him! He’s having an allergic reaction! He needs an EpiPen, he needs a hospital!” “Enough!” Drew barked. He looked at me with absolute, chilling disgust. There wasn’t a shred of belief in his eyes. He stepped toward me, his sheer size intimidating. “Stop the goddamn theatrics, Jo. Hand him over.” Toby had stopped fighting. His little head lolled against my collarbone, his breathing terrifyingly shallow. My heart was tearing itself to shreds. I braced my legs, preparing to run past him, to fight my way to the car. But Drew anticipated it. He lunged, blocking my path and shoving me hard by the shoulders. I lost my balance and crashed onto the porch. Drew ripped Toby from my arms. I scrambled forward, sobbing, gripping the leg of Drew’s trousers. “Look at him! Just look at him, Drew! He’s losing consciousness!” A sharp kick caught me in the shoulder. Cheryl had scrambled up and thrown herself on top of me, her nails digging into my scalp as she beat me. “Stay away from my son, you fucking psycho!” Neighbors were stepping out onto their lawns, their phones out, murmuring in horror. “Is she trying to kidnap the kid? Jesus.” “Someone call the cops! Hold her down!” I screamed, a sound of pure agony. Hearing it, Drew frowned. He looked down at me with a flicker of hesitation. For a fraction of a second, his grip loosened. And in that moment, the child in his arms—limp and boneless as a ragdoll—slipped downward. Drew froze. A terrible buzzing filled his ears. Slowly, agonizingly, he looked down at the boy in his hands. And what he saw made his heart completely stop.

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It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, the glittering climax of my engagement dinner. Then Jace, my fiancée’s adopted younger brother, abruptly snatched my phone right out of my hand. Before I could even register the violation, he hit accept on an incoming call and, with a flick of his thumb, put it on speaker. A woman’s voice, dripping with synthetic sweetness, echoed through the ballroom: “What’s your rate for the whole night?” The clinking of champagne flutes stopped. The low hum of conversation vanished. The silence in the room was absolute, the kind of heavy, suffocating quiet that precedes a car crash. Every eye in that banquet hall swiveled toward me, pinning me to the spot like searchlights. Jace, however, acted like we were in a sitcom. He flashed a lazy, impish grin at his sister. “Damn, Pat. I just posted his picture five minutes ago and the inquiries are already rolling in. Better keep a tight leash on this one.” My face flushed with a violent, glacial rage. But Patricia just waved a dismissive hand, a light, airy gesture. “Oh, it’s just kids messing around. Don’t take it so seriously.” Jace was practically vibrating with smugness. “I gotta admit, I picked a hell of a photo. It’s prime advertising.” Right on cue, the massive digital screen at the front of the hall—the one that had been displaying our monogrammed initials—flickered. An advertisement replaced it. It was a photo Patricia had coaxed me into taking last night, lying in bed wearing nothing but a pair of suggestive briefs. Next to my half-naked body, my name and personal cell phone number were printed in bold, undeniable text. But it was the bright red, flashing slogan beneath it that made my blood run cold: “PREMIUM ESCORT. AVAILABLE FOR HOUSE CALLS. GUARANTEED SATISFACTION.” …………… 1 My knuckles turned bone-white as my vision locked onto the massive screen. In the intimate, moody lighting of the bedroom backdrop, my body took up nearly the entire frame. The word “Escort” burned into my retinas, a brand searing my flesh. All around me, the guests—Patricia’s family, her wealthy social circle—were looking at me. Their stares weren’t just judgmental; they were scorching, peeling away my dignity strip by strip. It felt like being flayed alive in a tailored suit. And yet, it was Patricia’s parents who stepped forward to break the tension. Not to defend me, but to manage the optics. “Gideon, take a breath…” Mr. Hastings offered a placating, entirely empty smile. “You know how Jace is. We’ve spoiled him rotten. He’s a bit impulsive, a little reckless, but there’s not a malicious bone in his body.” A chorus of aunts and uncles immediately chimed in, a well-rehearsed symphony of gaslighting. “Exactly! It’s just a prank between boys.” “You’re about to be his brother-in-law. You’re not actually going to hold a grudge against your little brother, are you?” A prank. A laugh scraped the back of my throat, cold and sharp as shattered glass. Broadcasting an intimate photo to a room full of elites, branding me a rent-a-boy—this was a prank? Patricia finally caught the absolute zero temperature in my eyes, and a flicker of panic crossed her perfect face. She stepped forward quickly, reaching for my wrist, desperate to just shove the platinum engagement ring onto my finger and seal the deal. I violently jerked my hand away. That single movement was enough to set Jace off. He shot up from his chair, his voice rough and laced with an ugly, entitled arrogance. “Who the hell are you giving attitude to? You’re marrying into our family. You’re signing on to be a Hastings kept man. Don’t we have the right to inspect the merchandise?” He jutted his chin toward the screen. “Putting it online is just market research. Let’s see if any of your old sugar mamas come calling.” He paused, letting out a dark, mocking snort. “I mean, maybe you weren’t actually in the business before… but considering how popular you are with women, who’s to say you won’t be in the future?” My lungs felt like they were expanding with pure, combustive fury. I took a slow, deliberate step toward him, a bitter smile twisting my lips. “…So, that gives you the right to fabricate rumors and humiliate me in front of my future family?” Faced with the sheer gravity of my anger, Jace’s bravado faltered. The color drained slightly from his cheeks. But Patricia—my supposed partner, the woman who was supposed to stand by my side—stepped right in front of him, shielding him with her own body. “Gideon, what are you doing?” “This is our engagement party. Do you really have to blow this out of proportion and make us a laughingstock?” Safely tucked behind her shoulder, Jace’s eyes gleamed with a cowardly, triumphant malice. He was the fox using the tiger’s might. “My sister is the one doing you a favor by marrying you,” Jace sneered. “And she hasn’t dumped your ass yet. If she doesn’t care, why are you throwing a tantrum?” Looking at the two of them—the united front of siblings, the enabling parents, the murmuring relatives—a profound, sickening clarity washed over me. This whole family was playing me. They were breaking me down, testing my compliance. Seeing my silence, Patricia assumed I had backed down. Her tone softened, dropping into that practiced, placating register. She reached for my hand again. “Gideon, I know Jace came up with the idea, but I’m the one who gave him the photo. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me. Let’s just get through the ceremony. You’ll have the rest of our lives to be mad at me in private.” I took a slow, jagged breath, looking at her face as if I were looking at a stranger. I had known Patricia Hastings for twelve years. Only in this exact second did I realize how terrifyingly a person could change. My mind flashed back to our sophomore year of high school. I was a competitive swimmer back then, tall and built differently than the other boys. Girls who had been rejected by me would retaliate out of spite. They used to sneak photos of my chest and abs during gym class, spreading disgusting, hyper-sexualized rumors about me through the locker rooms. Patricia had been my fierce protector. She didn’t care what names they called her; she would march right up to those girls, screaming in their faces until they apologized to me in public. I remembered feeling terrible that she was taking the heat for me. But she had just smiled, a bright, unwavering light. “I’m fine, Gideon. A guy’s reputation matters too. Taking a few insults for you is nothing.” Now, staring at the humiliating billboard glowing above us, that memory felt like a cruel, sick joke. 2 If I was being honest with myself, the warning signs regarding Jace’s bizarre hostility had been there for a long time. The first time I formally met him was when Patricia brought him and some friends out for my birthday dinner. I had dressed up, feeling good about myself. Before the appetizers even hit the table, Jace was taking passive-aggressive shots at me. He looked at my styled hair and tailored shirt and sneered, saying I looked plastic, like a textbook gold-digger just waiting to bleed a rich woman dry. My face had fallen instantly. But Patricia had just rubbed my arm under the table. He’s just blunt, Gideon. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just a kid, don’t let him get to you. Later that night, the waiter brought out the custom cake Patricia had ordered. As it was placed in front of me, Jace laughed, said he was going to help me “take off my makeup,” and shoved my face violently into the frosting. As I sat there, humiliated, wiping cake and icing from my burning eyes, he had put on this wide-eyed, innocent act. “Oh, come on, Gideon, it’s just a joke! Even Pat knows I didn’t mean anything bad by it. You’re not actually mad, right?” From that moment, I knew her adopted brother was poisonous. But Patricia was always the mediator, always blurring the lines, begging me to just let it go for her sake. And she was doing it again right now. Seeing that I was still frozen, refusing to take the ring, Patricia’s voice took on a strained, patronizing edge. “Gideon, okay, the joke went a little too far. When the party is over, I’ll make him give you a proper apology, alright?” “Just be the bigger person. Don’t stoop to his level.” A dry laugh echoed in my chest. He had publicly degraded me in the worst way imaginable, and a forced “sorry” behind closed doors was supposed to fix it? Seeing Patricia firmly in his corner, Jace’s lips curled into a smug little smirk. “It’s just a photoshopped ad, man. What’s the big deal? I’ll delete it from the website right now, happy?” He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. Before he could swipe, I lunged forward. My hand clamped around his wrist like a vise, and I ripped the phone from his grip. “Delete it? Why would I let you do that? This is evidence. You trying to destroy evidence, Jace?” The blood vanished from Jace’s face, leaving him a sickly, terrifying pale. He stammered, “W-what evidence? Are you seriously thinking about calling the cops on me?” Patricia lunged at me, clawing desperately at my hand to get the phone back. “Gideon, have you lost your mind?! Over a stupid little prank, you’re going to involve the police?!” Looking at her contorted, desperate face, I searched for even a fraction of the love she claimed to have for me. There was nothing. Just cold, hostile defense of her brother. “I used to think you were gentle. Empathetic,” she hissed, her voice dropping so only I could hear. “I didn’t expect you to try and establish dominance over my family on day one. Jace is my brother, and you want to send him to jail? When did you become so vindictive?” Jace’s eyes flashed with a sick thrill of victory, but he immediately weaponized his victimhood, tugging pitifully at Patricia’s sleeve. “Pat, don’t. It’s your special night. I don’t want you guys fighting because of me.” The manipulation worked instantly. Patricia looked at him with profound sympathy. “You’re too good to him, Jace.” She turned her glare back to me. “But if I give an inch tonight, you’ll take a mile tomorrow. My mom was right. You can’t spoil a man who’s marrying into your money. Give him a little grace, and he thinks he runs the house.” With every syllable she spat at me, my heart sank further into a bottomless, freezing abyss. A self-deprecating smile touched my lips. She was right about one thing. If I backed down tonight, the abuse would never, ever end. 3 Just then, a commotion erupted at the heavy mahogany doors of the banquet hall. My best friend and business partner, Wyatt, burst into the room. He had brought a whole crew to celebrate. But the second he crossed the threshold and saw the massive, degrading billboard glowing on the screen, he froze. Wyatt was old money, a wildly unapologetic trust-fund kid whose older sister ran one of the most ruthless private equity firms on the East Coast. Wyatt didn’t take shit from anyone. He exploded instantly, his voice cracking like a whip across the silent room. “What the hell is this?!” “Who’s fucking with Gideon at his own engagement party?! Step forward right now, I swear to God!” We had started a design studio together right out of college. For tonight, Wyatt had dropped a twenty-thousand-dollar check on the gift table just to make sure the Hastings family knew I had backing. I grabbed Wyatt’s arm before he could start throwing punches. My face was pale, but my voice was terrifyingly calm. “I’m fine. Don’t swing,” I whispered. “Just… do me a favor. Text your sister. Ask her if what she said to me three months ago is still on the table.” Wyatt blinked, stunned for a microsecond, before a fierce, predatory grin spread across his face. He nodded hard. “Done. And don’t worry, man. Nobody in this room is touching you tonight.” He pulled out his phone and made a single, terse call. Less than ten minutes later, a fleet of black Escalades idled outside the hotel doors. A wall of men in tailored black suits entered, forming a barrier around Wyatt and me, escorting us out. Patricia tried to push through, her face frantic, but the security detail didn’t even let her get within five feet of me. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a barrage of texts from her. Gideon, are you done throwing your tantrum? Twelve years, and you’re just walking away? Do you really have to make this so ugly over a misunderstanding? My brother made a bad joke! Why are you acting like a psycho over it?! She kept using that word. Brother. As if on cue, a new text thread popped up. It was Jace. He sent me over a dozen photos in rapid succession. Some were of him and Patricia in the Hastings’ private pool, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, her body pressed flush against his. Others were selfies on the couch, their heads resting against each other, looking flushed and entirely too intimate. The last file was a video. I clicked play. In it, Jace pulled Patricia into his lap. He kissed her—not a peck, but a deep, desperate kiss. Patricia stiffened for a second, but then, softly, she kissed him back. When she yielded, Jace groaned, kissing her harder, his hands gripping her hips. His voice was a pathetic, needy whisper. “Pat… do you really have to marry him? You know you love me. You know you do.” Patricia shuddered, closing her eyes tightly. “Jace, we were kids. We didn’t know better. But we’re older now. We can’t do this anymore. Gideon will be a good husband… and you… you can only ever be my brother.” Watching them tangle together on the screen, acid rose in my throat. I genuinely wanted to vomit. Jace followed the video with a voice note, his tone a mix of toxic triumph and hysterical venom. “Did you see that, Gideon? She loves me. If you don’t want a marriage where I’m a ghost haunting your bedroom every single night, then back the fuck off. Because if you stay… tonight was just a warm-up.” When I didn’t reply to Patricia’s frantic texts, she finally lost her patience. The pleading turned into a threat. “Three days, Gideon. We are re-doing the ceremony at The Grand Astoria in three days.” “If you want to keep acting like a child by then… fine. But your reputation is already in the gutter. Let’s see who else would ever want you now.” 4 What Patricia didn’t know was that exactly three seconds after her threat came through, another text arrived. It was from Margot. Wyatt’s older sister. She was currently on a business trip in London. The text contained a screenshot of a first-class itinerary back to New York, and a single sentence: “The wedding proceeds. Wait for me.” For the next two days, I ghosted Patricia entirely. Meanwhile, the photoshopped ad Jace had made spread like a virus across local forums and social media. The comments were vile. “Eighteen hundred for that? Escorts really overvaluing themselves these days.” “Probably photoshopped to hell. Guarantee you the guy showing up is a 300-pound creep.” “Way too expensive for used goods.” Patricia finally tracked me down at my studio. She looked exhausted but smug. “Just marry me, Gideon. Do it, and I swear on my life I’ll have PR wipe every trace of this from the internet by tomorrow morning.” I looked at her. I searched her eyes, her posture, the tilt of her chin. I couldn’t find a single trace of the girl who had defended me in the high school hallways. It took me a long time to speak. “Do you remember what you told me back then?” I asked quietly. “You said a man’s reputation matters too. You knew how much that hurt me. Why would you let him do this to me? Why would you help him?” For a second, Patricia was speechless. A flash of genuine shame flickered in her eyes, or maybe it was just guilt at being caught. I didn’t wait for her to formulate an excuse. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice dead flat. “The wedding at The Grand Astoria is happening tomorrow. Right on schedule.” Just not with you, I added in my head. Patricia totally missed the ice in my eyes. She only heard the compliance. She exhaled a massive sigh of relief, reaching out to touch my arm. “I knew it. I knew you’d be reasonable, Gideon. Don’t worry, I’ll make Jace scrub the internet right now. Once we’re officially married, I’ll have him apologize to your face.” Before she left, she promised me, over and over, how good she was going to treat me once we were husband and wife. I gave her empty nods until she finally left to finalize the catering. On the third day, my black car pulled up to the grand entrance of The Grand Astoria. I stepped out wearing a brand-new, impeccably tailored black Tom Ford tuxedo. When I looked up, the entire Hastings family was waiting by the valet, looking stressed and irritated. Jace’s eyes dragged up and down my suit. He let out a loud, mocking laugh. “I heard you telling your college buddies you broke off the engagement. And yet here you are, wearing a suit that costs more than your car, just for a make-up dinner? Talk a big game, but you still came running like a good little dog.” Patricia’s face darkened, and she gave Jace a performative, half-hearted scolding. “Enough, Jace. I told you to show him some respect.” She reached out to grab my arm, but I sidestepped her smoothly, leaving her grasping at empty air. I ignored the whole family, walking straight past them through the revolving doors. Compared to the opulence of the first banquet, this setup was pathetic. They had secured a twenty-square-foot partition in the hotel’s discounted overflow lobby. Three or four sparse tables were set up. A handful of confused, bored relatives stood around awkwardly. Patricia coughed, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but immediately shifted the blame to me. “Well, you ruined the first one. All the guests went home. Did you really expect my parents to shell out another fifty grand to rent the main hall?” She reached for me again. “It’s just a formality anyway. We just need to go through the motions. I promise I’ll make it up to you later.” At that exact moment, the heavy brass doors of the hotel’s VIP wing swung open. A procession of staff, event coordinators, and security poured out. Outside, a line of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys pulled up seamlessly to the curb. And at the center of it all was Margot. She wore an architectural, sweeping white gown that looked like modern armor. She was stunning, sharp-edged, and entirely in control. Catching Patricia reaching for me, Margot’s perfectly sculpted brow twitched. She didn’t even have to speak; she just gave a micro-glance to her detail. The men in suits immediately surged forward, forming an impenetrable physical wall between me and the Hastings family. Margot stopped a few feet away and held out her hand. I closed the distance, a genuine smile breaking across my face, and took the boutonnière she offered me. Patricia stood frozen in absolute shock. Then, reality snapped into place, and she lost her mind. “Gideon! You are my fiancé! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Before she could take another step, two of Margot’s security guards forced her down, twisting her arms expertly behind her back to keep her immobilized. Margot looked down at her, a low, melodic laugh escaping her lips. “Your fiancé? Please. Do you honestly think a piece of trash like you gets to lay claim to my husband?”

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Ten minutes before the ceremony, I shoved a handful of condoms into my best friend’s chest. Dustin caught them with a grin, making a crude joke about how he wasn’t going to survive the honeymoon at this rate. Beside him, Carlin didn’t say a word. But there was a shift in her eyes—something dark, something I couldn’t quite read. Once Dustin walked out to join the groomsmen, she turned to the vanity mirror, adjusting her diamond drop earrings. Her voice was terrifyingly casual when she finally spoke. She told me she was the one marrying him today. She added that they were going to use every single one of those condoms tonight. I just stood there, the air knocked out of my lungs. Seeing my frozen expression, she laughed, a breezy, practiced sound, and told me she’d explain everything after the ceremony. The next hour felt like someone had hit fast-forward on my life, blurring the edges of my reality until nothing made sense. I stood in my tailored suit, anchored to the spot of the Best Man, and watched the two most important people in my world walk down the aisle together. Under the glow of the stained glass, the officiant spoke. They exchanged rings. They became husband and wife. … 1 I had imagined a million different endings for me and Carlin. This wasn’t one of them. Which was why, after the reception, when she and Dustin knelt on the carpet of the bridal suite, I felt entirely hollow. Carlin was still in her wedding gown, a faint, angry hickey blooming just above her collarbone. She was begging for my forgiveness. Looking down at her, a memory crashed into me. Ten years ago. She had dropped to her knees just like this, refusing to get up until I promised I wouldn’t leave her. Ten years. Three thousand, six hundred and fifty days. That’s how long I spent pulling her out of the suffocating, catatonic trauma that had locked her inside her own mind. And this was how she repaid me. By kicking me out of my own life. The door clicked shut. Dustin shifted his weight, kneeling right beside her. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. I could read the quiet, sickening triumph in his eyes. “How long?” I asked. My voice sounded flat. Foreign. Like I was asking about the weather. “Dustin’s fiancée bailed on him,” Carlin said quickly, her hands twisting the expensive lace of her skirt. “I was just doing him a favor. The invitations were sent. His parents flew all the way to Boston for this, Wes. He couldn’t bear to break their hearts…” Right. So my parents and I had to be the ones to take the hit. “Wes, come on, man. We’re brothers. Just do me this one solid.” Dustin reached out, tugging at the crease of my slacks. His eyes were red, playing the pathetic victim to absolute perfection. “There’s nothing going on between me and Carlin. I swear.” I tuned out the pathetic whining. I pulled out my phone and opened his Instagram. Thank you, C, for keeping me grounded… The caption sat below a photo of two silhouettes tandem bungee jumping. That was posted the weekend I got into that minor car wreck. The weekend Carlin told me she was at a medical conference in Chicago. I scrolled down. Two glasses of red wine, dim candlelight, and two hands intertwined across a linen tablecloth. She hadn’t even bothered to take off the engagement ring I gave her. Swipe after swipe, the digital footprint pieced together a version of Carlin I didn’t even know. Bubble tea runs. Viral downtown bakeries. Gourmet chocolate tastings. Whenever I suggested those things, her brow would furrow, and she’d brush me off with a sharp, “I don’t like sugar, Wes.” But for Dustin, she tried it all. Carlin was a notoriously brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon at Boston General. She treated her hands like million-dollar assets. She despised dirt, germs, and anything domestic. Yet, there was a photo of her wearing a flour-dusted apron, standing by a stove. My face flushed hot, a phantom fever burning beneath my skin. Two winters ago, I had the flu so bad I couldn’t stand. I asked her to make me some soup. She had stood in the doorway of our bedroom, completely detached. “I’m a surgeon, Wes. My hands don’t belong in a kitchen. Just Postmates something.” I had accepted it. I had spent ten years accepting her cold, clinical nature, assuming that was just who she was. So I ordered delivery, shivering under the duvet, listening to her murmur on the phone in her home office. Her tone had been so soft. So careful. I thought I was hallucinating from the fever back then. Now I knew I was just a blind idiot. The shock had burned off, leaving behind a vast, numbing wasteland. I shoved the phone screen inches from Dustin’s face. “You call me your brother,” I whispered. “And this is how you repay me?” I didn’t wait for him to scramble for a lie. I turned my head, locking eyes with the woman I had built my entire twenties around. “If you two want each other so badly, fine. You can have him.” 2 I ignored Carlin shouting my name. I walked out of the hotel, the heavy Boston rain hitting the pavement and my phone buzzing incessantly in my pocket. Every chime felt like a hammer taken to the last fragile pieces of my sanity. Years ago, Margaret Olivia—Carlin’s grandmother—had bailed my father’s firm out of bankruptcy. Ever since I was a kid, the narrative was drilled into me: We owe the Olivias. When Carlin’s mind fractured in her teens, when she violently pushed everyone away, I was the one who stayed. I would plaster on a smile, sit outside her locked door, and say, “I’m not going anywhere, C. I promised your grandmother I’d stay.” But I couldn’t stay anymore. [Wes, I already explained everything. What more do you want?] [Please don’t be mad. You’ve been wanting to get married, right? We’ll go to City Hall tomorrow. Just us.] The burn in my throat hit faster than the tears. My vision blurred. Her mental health had stabilized years ago. She became a doctor, a prodigy in the OR. She’d press her warm face into my neck in the middle of the night. She’d buy me expensive watches. I thought those were the signs that I had finally won her heart. I started bringing up marriage. [Give it time, Wes. My family is a medical dynasty. I need to become Chief of Surgery first.] [I just made attending. I barely have time to sleep, let alone plan a wedding. Next year, okay?] She had even grabbed my shoulders once, looking at me with pure frustration. “Dustin is your best friend. He’s out there grinding, trying to get his fellowship, trying to make a real mark in medicine. Why are you only obsessed with a ring?” I hadn’t thought it was strange back then. I thought it was nice that two people I loved, who usually bickered, were finally getting along. I had even smiled like a fool and said, “Dustin grew up with nothing, C. Look out for him at the hospital for me, will you?” She hadn’t said yes. But behind my back, she gave him everything. In just two years, Dustin’s career skyrocketed. He somehow afforded a luxury condo in the Seaport District on a resident’s salary. I had actually bought a bottle of Macallan and dragged Carlin over to his place to celebrate. God, I was stupid. I scrubbed my face hard, trying to wipe away the wetness on my cheeks and the pathetic memories of the last decade. I pulled up a text thread and typed a message to Margaret Olivia. “Mrs. Olivia, the Gustave family’s debt is paid in full. I am leaving Carlin.” When I finally got back to our apartment, Carlin was already sitting on the leather sofa. There was a velvet box resting on the coffee table. A diamond ring inside. Our eyes met. She stood up, exhaling a soft, tired sigh. “Wes, Dustin is up for a massive promotion. We’re going to get our license tomorrow. I even bought the ring. Just… stop throwing a tantrum.” Not ‘marry me.’ But ‘stop throwing a tantrum.’ I looked at the ring. It was a custom Tiffany setting. The exact one I had seen sparkling in the background of Dustin’s Instagram posts. She gave him the wedding of a lifetime. She gave me the leftovers. I stared at her. Looked at the face I had secretly painted a hundred times, the face I had carved into my heart since I was eighteen. I let out a soft, broken laugh. “I’m not throwing a tantrum. I won’t get in the way of his promotion, either. Because I’m not marrying you. Get out.” Carlin only heard the first half of my sentence. She stepped into my space, wrapping her arms around my waist, pressing her chin against my chest. Her voice held that familiar, confident hum—the sound of a woman who knew she always won. “Let’s just go to sleep. Tomorrow, wake up and post something on your socials. Clear the air for Dustin.” I froze. “Clear what air?” Her arms didn’t loosen, but I felt her brow furrow against my shirt, as if calculating the easiest way to manipulate me. “Just put out a statement saying Dustin and I have been dating for a while, and that you… well, that you were the one who got in the middle of it. It’s the only way to save his reputation.” A violent shudder ripped through my chest. I stared blindly at the wall behind her. Those red lips had kissed me a thousand times. They had whispered things in the dark that made my heart race. Now, every single syllable she spoke was a scalpel gutting me alive. I choked back the bile rising in my throat, grabbed her arms, and shoved her away. “What about my reputation? Does that mean nothing to you?” She stumbled back, blinking in genuine surprise. She wasn’t used to me saying no. She let out a small, condescending chuckle. “Wes, Dustin isn’t like you. He grew up in foster care. He had to claw his way up from the bottom. You’re his best friend. You should be willing to take a hit for him.” Should? On what grounds? When Dustin’s undergrad tuition bounced and the university was going to expel him, I drained my savings to pay it. Senior year, when he got mixed up with local dealers and owed money, I was the one who took the beatings to protect him. I brought him home, fed him, and introduced him to everyone as my brother. When no residency program would take him because his test scores were trash, I swallowed my pride and begged Carlin to pull strings at Boston Gen. Dustin had cried that night, burying his face in his hands. “You’re my savior, Wes. I owe you my life.” I didn’t realize paying me back meant sleeping with my fiancé. I exhaled a ragged breath, lifting my chin to look the woman I loved dead in the eye. “Carlin. I don’t owe you. And I sure as hell don’t owe Dustin. Walking away quietly and letting you two have each other is the absolute limit of my grace.” “I will never admit to being the other man. Ever.” 3 I turned on my heel, ready to pack a bag and leave. Her voice pinned me straight to the floorboards. “Think about the photos, Wes. Do you really want those seeing the light of day?” The silence in the apartment became deafening. I turned around slowly, looking at the ice-cold mask on Carlin’s face. Instantly, my mind violently dragged me back to when I was nineteen. I remembered her holding my bruised, bleeding body, shaking uncontrollably as she cried into my hair. Her mental breakdown had been at its worst that year. I spent my days chasing her around the house, trying to force her to eat, to take her meds. One afternoon, she bolted out the front door. I chased her for blocks into a bad neighborhood. Someone grabbed me from behind. Dragged me into an alley. A hand clamped over my mouth. The tearing of clothes. The suffocating weight. I never saw their faces. I couldn’t count how many there were. When Carlin finally found me, she lost her mind. She held me tight, chanting apologies, promising she would fix it. Later, holding my trembling hand, she swore she had used her family’s money to bury the attackers. She swore she had bought and destroyed the photos they took. She looked into my eyes and promised that her entire life belonged to me now. And now, for the sake of another man’s career, she was holding my deepest, ugliest trauma over my head. Seeing the blood drain from my face, a flicker of hesitation crossed Carlin’s eyes, but she ruthlessly buried it. She softened her voice, stepping back into the role of a soothing doctor. “Just post the statement, Wes. I’ll handle the rest. We’ll get married. We’ll have kids. I will be your wife…” “And if I say no?” “Think of your parents. Your father’s heart condition can’t handle a public scandal…” She didn’t finish the threat. She didn’t need to. We spent the rest of the night in suffocating silence. She went to bed, confident I would cave. I always caved. Every argument we ever had ended with me swallowing my pride and crawling back to her. When I turned on my phone the next morning, my notifications exploded. Dustin was trending locally. Boston surgeon exposed in shocking love triangle. Before I could even process the headlines, Carlin kicked the bedroom door open. “Wes, Dustin is your brother! How could you smear him like this? You ruined his name!” Her eyes were bloodshot. She didn’t give me a chance to speak. She grabbed my wrist and practically dragged me down to the parking garage, driving us straight to the hospital. When I stumbled out of her Porsche, my knee smashed into the heavy car door. I gasped in pain. She didn’t even turn around. I watched her sprinting toward the hospital entrance, and a broken laugh bubbled up in my chest. Her hand had always felt so tight, so warm in mine. But now, I felt like I was free-falling into a black void. The main lobby of Boston Gen had been turned into an impromptu press pen. Dustin sat at a folding table, his shoulders slumped, his eyes red-rimmed and tragic. Carlin rushed past the cameras, shoving me straight into the swarm of reporters, and ran to his side. A dozen microphones were shoved into my face. “Mr. Gustave! Dr. Dustin claims you suffered severe sexual trauma years ago, leading to psychological instability. Is that why you lashed out at his wedding yesterday?” “Is it true you’ve been stalking Dr. Olivia, despite knowing she and Dr. Dustin have been deeply in love for years? Were you trying to break them up?” “You two grew up together. How do you justify trying to steal your best friend’s fiancée? Have you no shame?” The blood roared in my ears, hot and violent. I stared at Carlin in pure, unadulterated horror. She promised me. She swore on her life she would never breathe a word of the alleyway to anyone. How did Dustin know? Before the math could click in my brain, the “brother” who swore he owed me his life looked up from the table. A vicious, phantom smile ghosted across his lips. A second later, the large digital display behind the reception desk flared to life. It was my face. Pale, terrified, tear-streaked. And my body. Covered in dark, violent bruises and dirty handprints. 4 The lobby erupted. The sound of camera shutters sounded like machine-gun fire, mixing with the sickening whispers all around me. “Jesus, he’s damaged goods. Using his family money to harass Dr. Olivia? Disgusting.” “If he hadn’t shown up and ruined the reception yesterday, Dr. Dustin wouldn’t have been forced to expose him…” My throat felt like it was packed with broken glass. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t scream the truth. I couldn’t scream that I was the one kept a secret in the dark. Carlin materialized beside me. Her voice was a soft, lethal whisper meant only for me. “It’s done. Just apologize.” “Your reputation is already dead,” she continued smoothly. “So protect Dustin’s. I keep my promises, Wes. I’ll still marry you.” I stared at her for a long time before I managed to force a sound past my teeth. “He broadcasts my rape to the world… he destroys my life… and you want me to apologize to him?” Carlin frowned, shaking her head as if I was the one being unreasonable. “Dustin is just protecting his career. What else was he supposed to do?” “Besides, these photos are real. He didn’t forge them. If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at your own bad luck.” Fury, suffocation, and a hatred so pure it terrified me collided in my chest. My knees buckled. I swayed on my feet, about to scream, when a sharp, desperate voice cut through the chaos. “Wes! Is this true? Have you been harassing Carlin and this doctor?” My heart stopped. My father stood at the edge of the crowd, clutching his chest. His face was ash gray. Before I could move, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. My mother shrieked, a gut-wrenching, animal sound. “David!” I shoved through the reporters, throwing myself onto the marble floor beside him. Before I could even touch him, a sharp slap cracked across my face, snapping my head to the side. My mother stood over me, her hand trembling. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t done these vile things, your father wouldn’t be dying!” She dropped to her knees, abandoning me to crawl toward Carlin, grabbing the hem of her lab coat. “Carlin, please! You’re a surgeon. Save him! Please save your Uncle David!” Carlin didn’t move. She didn’t call for a crash cart. She just stood there, her cold eyes locked onto mine. Dustin leaned in, whispering loud enough for the mics to catch. “Carlin, don’t hold Wes’s psychotic behavior against his parents. Just help Mr. Gustave.” Carlin looked at him, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “No. Wes has to publicly apologize first. He has to admit he tried to ruin our relationship. Otherwise, your reputation will be permanently scarred, and I won’t allow that.” She wouldn’t allow his reputation to be scarred. But she would watch my father die on the floor. “Wes! What are you waiting for?!” My mother screamed, the sound tearing through the lobby. She grabbed my hair, shaking me. “Say it! Are you going to watch your father die?!” I looked at my dad. His lips were turning blue. White foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. We were out of time. I swallowed the metallic taste of blood pooling in my mouth. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I shouldn’t have gotten between you two.” “That’s it?” a reporter yelled from the back. “You drove Dr. Dustin to the brink of ruin, and you just say sorry? Get on your knees and show some remorse!” The crowd murmured in vicious agreement. Carlin stood completely still. Silent approval. My mother, frantic and terrified, kicked me in the shin. She slapped my face again, twice, the smacks echoing off the walls. “Kneel! Hit yourself! Do you want your father to die?!” she sobbed, completely unhinged by panic. I looked at her. I looked at the blue tint spreading across my father’s cheeks. I slowly closed my eyes. I raised my hand and brought it down hard across my own cheek. Then again. And again. My face was entirely numb. My soul was entirely numb. The only thing I felt were the hot tears hitting the back of my hand, dripping onto the marble floor. Drop. Drop. SMASH. A silver-headed cane came flying out of nowhere, cracking violently over Carlin’s skull. A voice, sharp as a guillotine and cold as ice, boomed through the lobby. “Carlin Olivia! Take your little homewrecker and get out of my hospital! Get out of my family!” “As of this moment, Wesley Gustave is my grandson, and the sole heir to the Olivia estate!”

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Claustrophobia wasn’t just a fear I couldn’t shake; it was the monster that lived in my chest, a suffocating nightmare I had battled for years. On my eighteenth birthday, my father—a renowned clinical psychologist—announced he had a special gift to mark my transition into adulthood. He had meticulously retrofitted a small room in our basement into a complete sensory deprivation chamber. And then, he locked me inside. Through the heavy door, I could hear the muffled cheers of my friends shouting, “You got this, Nico!” mingled with the irritated sighs of my stepmother, telling me to stop wasting everyone’s time. I stayed in there, weeping and begging for mercy, until my heart simply gave out and stopped beating altogether. In his study, my father calmly typed into his research notes: “Hour 19: Subject has entered deep sleep. Preliminary assessment indicates successful desensitization.” 1 “Go on in, Nico. This is a surprise your father built just for you.” Beyond the door frame lay a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light from the hallway. My breath hitched, instantly catching in my throat. “Dad…” My voice trembled as I instinctively backed away. “No… please, you know how terrified I am…” “It is exactly because you are terrified that you must face it,” he said, his voice carrying the smooth, practiced cadence of a man used to lecturing from a podium. “Nicole, you are eighteen years old. So many of your friends came out to celebrate you today. It’s time to show them how brave you are. Right?” “But—” “No buts,” he cut me off smoothly. “This time, I am going to cure you. Once and for all.” “No!” I shrieked, shaking my head frantically, the tears already hot and fast on my cheeks. “I’m not going in! Dad, please… I don’t want this gift. I don’t want anything at all, just please don’t make me go in there—” “Nicole, stop throwing a tantrum.” The cold, clipped voice of Diane, my stepmother, sliced through the air. She stepped into my line of sight, arms crossed. “Do you have any idea how much time and money your father spent trying to fix this little issue of yours? He had this room specially renovated. It’s for your own good.” “Diane, please, I—” “Don’t ‘Diane, please’ me. Look at your friends waiting in the living room. Stop making a scene and embarrassing yourself.” My father’s hand pressed firmly against the small of my back, shoving me toward that solid block of black. “I don’t want to! Let me go!” I dug my fingernails into the doorframe, holding on for dear life. Methodically, without breaking a sweat, my father pried my white-knuckled fingers off the wood, one by one. “Nico,” he murmured, using my childhood nickname, his tone adopting a chilling imitation of warmth. “It’s only because I love you that I have to do this.” “The real world isn’t going to coddle you. I am being strict with you now so that you have the resilience to never be bullied by anything, or anyone, ever again.” “Come on, Nico! You can do it!” “Yeah, Nico, stop stalling!” From the direction of the living room, the faint, upbeat shouts of my friends drifted down the hall. “Hurry up and cooperate,” Diane hissed right behind me. I stumbled forward, swallowing a sob, and plummeted into the thick, suffocating pitch-black. 2 The darkness collapsed on me like an avalanche. “Dad? Dad! Turn on the light! Just a little bit! Please, I’m scared… I’m so scared…” Nothing. The silence was absolute. “Let me out! Please! I’ll be good! I’ll do whatever you say from now on!” I threw myself against the door, my palms slapping frantically against the cold, smooth metal. It was entirely soundproof. “The intercom… the intercom!” I remembered the small panel he had pointed out earlier. I slammed my hand against the button like a drowning girl reaching for a life preserver. “Nico? Is that you? How is it in there?” “You got this, Nico! Hang in there!” They were still there! They could hear me! I pressed my mouth to the speaker, screaming with every ounce of air in my lungs. “Becca! Jess! Help me! Please… please tell my dad to open the door! I can’t take it… my chest hurts so much… I can’t breathe… it’s too dark… I’m so scared…” The line went dead for a second or two. When the audio clicked back on, the voices sounded hesitant, unsure. “Uh… didn’t Dr. Carmichael say we weren’t supposed to interrupt? That it’s part of the therapy?” My heart plummeted, the icy realization sinking into my bones. Then, Kyle, a guy from my AP English class, chimed in with a boisterous laugh. “Nico! Don’t be such a wimp! What’s so scary about a dark room? Your dad’s literally an expert, just trust the process!” “Yeah, Nico,” Jess added, her tone carrying that sickly sweet, condescending edge. “Your dad is brilliant. He’s just doing what’s best for you.” “Totally. Everyone knows Dr. Carmichael’s methods work. Just go with it, Nico.” “Stop being so dramatic. It’s a birthday present, it’s supposed to be unique!” “Think about your dad’s career. He needs case studies for his research, and you get to help him out. It’s a win-win.” Their voices overlapped, a chaotic chorus of self-righteous “encouragement” and toxic positivity. “No… it’s not like that…” I broke down, sobbing uncontrollably into the microphone. “I’m dying in here… please… someone get my dad… or… call 911… I’m begging you…” My pleading was met with a brief, awkward silence, followed by muffled whispers. “Why is she acting like this? Dr. Carmichael obviously knows what he’s doing.” “I know, right? She’s being so ungrateful after he put all this work in.” “It feels a little performative. Like, it’s just a dark room.” “Do you think she’s just… doing it for attention? You know how she gets sometimes…” Their words were ice water, extinguishing the very last flicker of hope I had left. “Nicole, are you quite finished?” It was Diane. “Diane… please help me…” “Help you with what? Who is hurting you?” Her voice spiked with irritation. “Let me tell you something, Nicole. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Do you know how much your father has agonized over this ridiculous phobia of yours? Drop the spoiled princess act right now, and show some damn respect!” A sharp click echoed through the speaker. She had unplugged the power source to the intercom. The line went totally dead. No… don’t go… please don’t leave me alone… I tried to scream, but it was useless. Only tears poured out, silent and endless in the dark. 3 Time dissolved into a meaningless concept. It could have been ten minutes. It could have been three centuries. I started to hear things. Whispers scraping against the walls, coming from all directions. I whipped my head around. Nothing. Just the void. “Ahhh!” I shrieked, crawling backward on my hands and knees until my spine slammed hard against a corner. The hallucinations grew violent. Terror wrapped its cold fingers around my heart, squeezing tighter, tighter, tighter. A sharp, jagged pain ripped through the left side of my chest. Every breath required a Herculean effort. “…Dad…” I used the last ounce of my strength to paw at the dead intercom button, my fingers trembling violently. “…Hurts… my chest… it hurts so much…” Dead silence. I don’t know how much time passed before the heavy metal door finally unsealed. I was lying on my side, my face pressed toward the wall. He crouched down, studying me with clinical detachment for a few seconds. Then, he extended two fingers, expertly pressing them against the carotid artery on my neck. A pulse. Faint, sluggish, but steady. He stood up, pulled out his iPad, and quickly typed: “Hour 19: Subject has entered deep sleep. Preliminary assessment indicates successful desensitization.” She had entered the desired state faster than he had hypothesized. A brilliant success. He turned on his heel and walked out, locking the door behind him. Two minutes later, my heart stopped beating entirely. “Well? Is she done throwing her little fit?” That was Diane. Those were the last words I ever heard. My soul slipped loose from my heavy, broken body, fleeing that suffocating black box as fast as it could. I floated up the stairs, following the steady, unhurried rhythm of my father’s footsteps as he headed into his study. I drifted right through the oak door. He settled into his leather chair behind the massive mahogany desk, unlocked his computer, and opened an encrypted folder to create a new document. The title read: Acute Intervention and Neural Plasticity in Claustrophobic Subjects. I hovered just behind his shoulder, watching his elegant, manicured fingers fly across the keyboard. “Subject: Nicole, Female, 18 years old…” On the wall of the study hung an old, framed photograph of the three of us—my mother, my father, and me. I remembered being a little girl, terrified of the dark. Back then, they would buy me an endless array of nightlights: little glowing stars, a glowing moon, a plastic turtle that projected constellations onto the ceiling. They used to hold me and tell me there was nothing to be afraid of. But then everything changed. The academic ambition took over, and my father began treating his wife and daughter as test subjects in his behavioral experiments. The arguments grew frequent, then vicious. “Robert, we are not your lab rats!” The night my mother finally packed a small suitcase and walked out the door, she never looked back. And she didn’t take me with her. Then came Diane. Diane, who worshipped the ground my father’s intellect walked on. From the moment she moved in, her favorite refrain was: “Nicole, your father is doing this for your own good. Stop being so ungrateful.” “If you’re still scared of everything at your age, how do you ever expect to function in the real world?” I watched Diane walk into the study now, setting a warm mug of milk on my father’s desk. They exchanged a smile, went to the master bedroom, and turned off the designer bedside lamps. On the night I died, my father finalized the framework for what he believed would be a groundbreaking case study. And then, he slept soundly through the night. 4 At six-thirty the next morning, Diane’s internal alarm clock went off with perfect precision. Breakfast was plated, the coffee was brewed, and my father came downstairs in a crisp button-down. They sat across from each other at the kitchen island. Neither of them mentioned me. Before leaving for the university, my father fixed a small breakfast on a tray and took his time walking down the basement stairs. I was still curled in the corner of the room, my posture completely unchanged from the night before. The door swung open. “Nicole? Are you awake?” Silence. He frowned, stepping closer with the tray, stopping right beside my “sleeping” form. He stared down at me, his shadow falling over my face. “Still sleeping?” Irritation bled into his voice. He nudged my calf with the toe of his leather loafer. “Get up and eat. Do you know what time it is? Give you an inch and you take a mile.” My leg rocked limply from the force of his shoe, but I didn’t react. This clearly infuriated him. He slammed the tray onto the floor near my feet. Coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug, pooling on the plastic surface. “Nicole! I am talking to you! Do you hear me?” His voice echoed sharply off the metal walls. He crouched down, grabbing my shoulder and giving it a hard shove. “Stop playing dead! Didn’t you cause enough of a scene yesterday? What is this about now? Are you trying to convince people I’m abusing you?” My torso swayed from the push, my head lolling lifelessly to the side. “I bring you breakfast out of the goodness of my heart, and you pull this attitude. Fine. Starve. Keep playing dead for all I care.” He spun around in a huff, took two steps toward the door, and let out a cold, derisive scoff. “Ungrateful brat. You’re exactly like your mother. Always with the theatrics, always playing the victim.” My spirit stood quietly by the wall, watching my father walk away, leaving my cold, stiffening body on the floor next to a lukewarm plate of eggs. It was almost funny. He was a renowned genius, yet he hadn’t even realized his own daughter was dead. 5 After my father left for campus, Diane spent the entire day watching morning talk shows and tidying up the house. Not once did she even glance at the basement door. At dusk, my father returned home, bringing a colleague with him to show off his “experiment.” I hovered near the ceiling of the dining room, watching them eat a pleasant dinner, chatting about faculty politics and grant proposals. Finally, they brought me up, though only in the context of the research. The house functioned perfectly fine without me. “Should we go down and check on Nico?” Diane suggested, sipping her Pinot Noir. “Yes, I want Paul to get a look at the environmental setup,” my father nodded, picking up his ever-present iPad. Diane offered an apologetic, hostess-perfect smile to the guest. “You’ll have to forgive her, Dr. Evans. Teenagers… she might still be throwing a bit of a tantrum.” Dr. Paul Evans waved his hand dismissively, offering a polite, understanding chuckle. The three of them descended the stairs and unsealed the door to the dark room. I watched, a sudden, desperate anticipation flaring within my ghostly form. Look, Dad. Just look. Step a little closer and really look at me… “Nicole?” My father’s voice was a sharp command. “Wake up. Dr. Evans is here to see you.” No response. “Nicole!” The professorial calm cracked into harsh authority. “I am speaking to you! Get up! Say hello to Dr. Evans! Have you forgotten every ounce of your basic manners?” He reached down and slapped my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark if blood were still flowing through my veins. “Still putting on a show?” My lack of reaction was humiliating him in front of his peer. “Nicole! I have spoiled you rotten! Do you really think lying there is going to get you out of this? It’s childish! It’s pathetic!” His insults grew louder, sharper, cutting through the heavy air of the basement. I watched the scene unfold, feeling a phantom ache in my chest. I wanted to scream at him so badly: Dad! Look at me! Look at the color of my skin! Check my breathing! I’m not pretending… I’m dead! Your daughter, Nicole, is dead! But I was nothing more than a wisp of memory. I couldn’t make a sound he could hear. I could only stand by and watch. Diane lingered in the doorway, her voice shrill as she joined the chorus, even more vicious than she had been that morning. “Exactly! Nicole, stop playing dead right now! You entitled little brat! Your father is talking to you! Are you deaf? Or are you just trying to embarrass us on purpose?” But Dr. Evans wasn’t looking at my father, or Diane. He was staring down at me. All the color had drained from his face, replaced by an absolute, visceral horror that was rapidly consuming him. “Robert…” “She… she doesn’t… is she breathing?!”

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I was suffocating, caught in the velvet trap of my two childhood best friends and their relentless affections, when the mechanical hum first vibrated in my skull. It called itself the System. In a flat, synthetic tone, it informed me that the two boys whose devotion I’d taken for granted were not lovesick puppies. They were rabid dogs, biding their time before they tore my life apart. And Kellan Caldwell—the icy, brilliant heir I had spent my entire life despising—was the man who would actually destroy my family. I had stared across the room at Kellan, watching the way the chandelier light caught the sharp, untouchable angles of his face, and suddenly, the inexplicable, magnetic hostility between us made terrifying sense. Survival instinct took over. Following the System’s directives, I made it my absolute mission to make Kellan’s life a living hell. I undermined him, provoked him, and pushed him until his disgust for me hit a breaking point, culminating in his decision to leave the country for good. I thought I’d won. I thought I had neutralized the threat, and I was secretly reveling in my victory. Until the System fell into a prolonged, agonizing silence, only to return with an apologetic glitch in its voice. It had the data backward. Kellan Caldwell was actually my future husband. And the two boys next door, the ones I’d been agonizing over, the ones I trusted with my life? They weren’t harmless collateral in my love life. They were predators, waiting in the tall grass to consume me whole. 1 The ballroom of the St. Regis was suffocatingly bright for Kellan’s farewell gala. Declan and Zane flanked me, as they always did. Declan was smiling his trademark, ruinous smile, holding a silver fork to my lips with a bite of red velvet cake. Zane stood just behind me, his heavy-lidded eyes lazily tracking the room as his fingers absentmindedly played with the ends of my hair. The atmosphere was electric. Kellan was leaving for London. I should have been ecstatic. Instead, the blood in my veins had turned to ice. Are you out of your mind? I screamed at the System in my head. Can you be reliable for once in your miserable existence? …I apologize, Host, the voice echoed, sounding entirely too calm for the bomb it had just dropped. But your childhood friends are exceptionally dangerous. You must remain vigilant. Right now, the only thing I needed to be vigilant about was the voice in my head. Trusting it felt like a fool’s errand. Declan noticed the sudden, violent tension in my spine. His thumb grazed the corner of my mouth, catching a smudge of frosting. He brought it to his mouth, licking it off his own skin with a slow, deliberate gaze. “Not good?” he murmured. “…It’s delicious,” I forced out, grinding my teeth into a smile. Given the System’s track record, I wasn’t about to shove Declan away based on a single, glitchy warning. We had grown up together. We knew each other’s secrets, our scraped knees, our childhood terrors. Our intimacy was woven into the very fabric of my life. Glasses clinked. Laughter drifted over the string quartet. Because Kellan was the sole heir to the Caldwell empire, half of Manhattan’s elite had crowded into the ballroom to see him off. My parents had dragged me here as a matter of obligation. Kellan stood at the absolute center of the room. He held a crystal flute of champagne, his posture impossibly perfect, an aura of aristocratic detachment radiating from his tailored tuxedo. My eyes lingered on him for a fraction of a second too long. By the time I snapped back, Zane had already gathered my hair, his knuckles brushing the nape of my neck as he casually braided it. I blinked. “What are you—” Declan chuckled, leaning in to help, his fingers brushing against Zane’s. The phantom touches of their cold fingertips against my bare neck blurred together. I couldn’t tell whose hand was whose. A heavy, intimate silence settled over our little triangle. I stood paralyzed, letting them weave my hair, my thoughts drifting. Ever since I realized that both of my oldest friends were in love with me, my life had become a delicate, uncomfortable tightrope walk. Isn’t that how it goes? Declan had once said, his eyes crinkling with warmth. The kids who grow up together, end up together. But that was the problem. They both wanted me. How was I supposed to choose? Declan had always been the golden boy, revolving around me like the sun. He was charismatic, universally adored. Yet on every holiday, no matter how many people vied for his attention, he would always end up sitting on the floor next to my chair, tugging at my earring and whispering, I only want to be where you are. Zane, on the other hand, existed in a state of perpetual boredom. But when a group of older boys had cornered me in an alley behind our prep school, Zane had dismantled them with terrifying, silent efficiency. He had wiped the blood from his brow, wrapped a steady, bruising arm around my waist, and walked me home. Choosing one meant severing the other. And breaking their hearts was the one thing I couldn’t stomach. While I had been drowning in my indecision, the System had first appeared, whispering its toxic rationality: They are destined to be your lapdogs. Why rush? They will be pathologically loyal to you. You couldn’t shake them off if you tried. Your priority is Kellan. My lapdogs? Pathologically loyal? I had thought, rubbing my chin. Well, if they’re never going to leave… what’s the harm in leaning on them? And so, my hesitation had melted into entitlement. I used their devotion. I let them handle my messes. And slowly, I had become entirely desensitized to their suffocating, physical proximity. 2 Now, I had bullied Kellan right out of the country. I was about to graduate and take my place in my family’s firm. Everything was falling perfectly into place. And now this voice was telling me the data was backwards?! I cursed the System in my head until my mental voice went hoarse. The machine stayed dead silent, cowering in my cortex. Exhausted from the internal screaming, I collapsed onto a velvet sofa in the corner. Zane had been summoned by his father, and Declan hovered, clearly wanting to stay. I waved him off. “I’m exhausted. I just need to close my eyes for ten minutes.” Declan hesitated, his gaze sweeping over my face. “Alright.” The moment I closed my eyes, I slipped into a restless, suffocating sleep. In the dream, there was a heavy blindfold over my eyes. I was drowning in darkness. My limbs felt like lead, weighed down by the invisible drag of chains. I reached out, stumbling forward, gasping for air. Suddenly, an arm hooked around my waist, yanking me flush against a hard chest. I froze, paralyzed by a primal, instinctive terror. The hand on my waist didn’t stop; it mapped the curve of my hip, trailing upward with brutal, unapologetic ownership. Another hand landed on the back of my neck, the grip intimate but steeped in a dark, violent threat. A whimpering sound tore from my throat, and I jerked awake. The massive crystal chandelier above the ballroom blinded me. I was drenched in a cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I hadn’t seen a single face in the dream, but the sensation of being utterly, permanently caged clung to my skin like a second layer of sweat. It took me minutes to regulate my breathing. The dampness of my silk gown against my back made my skin crawl. I texted our family driver to bring in the spare dress I kept in the car, grabbed it from him in the lobby, and slipped away to the VIP lounges to change. The lounge was cavernous and draped in shadows. I clutched the garment bag, reaching for the handle of the private dressing room. The door opened from the inside before I could touch it. I froze in the doorway. “Kellan…” He swept a glacial glance over me and stepped past me, heading for the exit. “Kellan, wait!” I called out. He didn’t break his stride. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Let go,” he said, the sheer impatience in his voice cutting like glass. “The door wasn’t locked,” I stammered, my hand dropping to my side. “I didn’t know you were in there.” “The lock is broken.” Kellan lowered his dark eyes to mine, his expression utterly unreadable. “Was there something else?” The System’s words crashed into my mind. Future husband. Impossible. I curled my fingers into my palms, forcing a neutral mask onto my face. I cleared my throat. “Just… safe travels. I hope London treats you well.” The words actually made him stop. He lifted his gaze, his dark eyes slowly, meticulously dragging over my face, searching for the trap. A cynical, paper-thin smile touched his lips. “What new game is this? Figured out a way to humiliate me before I make it to the airport?” Before I could defend myself, his hand snapped up, his long fingers gripping my chin. The sheer, terrifying strength in his hold made my breath hitch. “You’re being paranoid,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just came to change my dress.” “Miraculous,” Kellan drawled, his thumb pressing lightly against my jaw. “Your two guard dogs actually let you out of their sight.” “They’re not dogs—” I started, the defensive reflex kicking in. But the words died in my throat as familiar voices drifted in from the corridor outside. “I swear to God, every gala, some woman miraculously spills cabernet on your shirt.” A low, dismissive scoff. “Whatever. It’s not like you ever give them the time of day… Did you see where she went?” “Wasn’t she sleeping on the sofa?” The handle to the main lounge door clicked. Panic, pure and irrational, hijacked my brain. I shoved Kellan backward, right back into the darkened, cramped space of the dressing room, pulling the door shut behind us just as Declan and Zane walked into the lounge. Through the thin wood, their voices were crystal clear. “She should be thrilled tonight,” Declan said. “Kellan’s finally leaving. Why does she look so miserable?” “She spent entirely too much time looking at him today,” Zane replied. A heavy, oppressive silence followed. Then, Declan let out a soft, mocking laugh. “Well, she’s always been volatile. We’re used to it, aren’t we?” “Her easy days are numbered,” Zane said. His voice was a lazy drawl, but the words carried the chilling finality of a judge passing a sentence. …If they had been talking about anyone else, I wouldn’t have cared. My eyelashes fluttered. The air in the tiny dressing room suddenly felt dangerously thin. Kellan was leaning against the back wall. His face was obscured in the dark, but I could feel the blistering weight of his stare. We were standing so close my chest almost brushed his jacket with every ragged breath I took. Our air mingled. The conversation outside wasn’t over. “You play the part well,” Declan hummed, a cruel edge to his usually warm voice. “I almost believed you were actually in love with her.” “Back at you,” Zane replied. “God, I can’t wait to see the look on her face when the time comes. It’s going to be so fucking sweet.” “Sweet?” Zane mused. “Tragic, maybe. But I suppose tragedy has its own kind of sweetness.” I didn’t understand the exact parameters of their metaphor, but the rotting core of it was unmistakable. The world went horrifyingly quiet. So quiet, I could hear the slow, sick thud of my own heart. I could accept a rival. I could accept that an arrogant heir might be my enemy. But I could not compute the reality that the two boys I had spent twenty years loving, the ones who had protected me from the world, harbored a malice toward me so deep it bordered on the grotesque. For the first time since it invaded my brain, I believed the System with absolutely no reservations. 3 My hand, pressed flat against Kellan’s chest to keep him back, was trembling visibly. The man in front of me leaned down. His mouth hovered right beside my ear, his breath warm and laced with mockery. “I’m leaving now, Miss Fallon.” He reached around me for the brass doorknob. In a blind panic, I grabbed his arm to stop him. My heel caught on the edge of the carpet, and I stumbled against the door. Thump. “What was that?” Declan’s voice snapped like a whip, entirely stripped of its usual golden-boy warmth. Meeting Kellan’s impassive gaze, I knew with absolute certainty he wasn’t going to cover for me. I sucked in a sharp breath and wrapped my hand around the doorknob. A second before I could turn it, Kellan’s voice cut through the dark. “It’s me.” He glanced down at me, a silent command. I didn’t hesitate. I pressed myself flat into the dark corner behind the door hinges, utterly swallowed by the shadows. Kellan pushed the door open. The angle of the wood perfectly shielded me from the lounge. “Well, well,” Declan’s voice drifted in. “Didn’t realize you had a fetish for eavesdropping.” The sheer venom in his tone made my stomach turn. I had never, in twenty years, heard Declan speak with such naked malice. It was a complete stranger’s voice. Kellan sounded entirely unbothered. “Does Fallon know about this little plan of yours?” A deathly, suffocating silence descended on the lounge. The air practically froze. It took a long time before Zane finally spoke, his voice dangerously low. “Are you planning on running to her with a warning? Who do you think she’s going to believe, Caldwell? You? Or us?” Declan seemed to relax, the tension bleeding out of his stance. “Exactly. You know exactly how much she despises you.” Kellan didn’t grace them with a response. Declan offered a short, derisive laugh. Footsteps echoed across the hardwood. The heavy lounge doors clicked shut. They were gone. I leaned the back of my head against the wall, exhaling a breath that burned my lungs. When I stepped out of the dressing room, Kellan was already halfway to the door, meticulously adjusting his platinum cufflinks. I stood rooted to the spot, a sudden wave of desperate uncertainty washing over me. If the System was right about them… then it had to be right about him. “What time…” I swallowed hard. “What time is your flight?” Kellan stopped. He lifted his heavy gaze, pinned me to the wall with it, and said absolutely nothing. “I mean,” I babbled, the adrenaline making me frantic, “when are you coming back? Ha, don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean anything by it, but if you don’t want to tell me—” “I suggest,” Kellan interrupted, his voice dropping to a merciless, freezing register, “that you start worrying about yourself.” He turned and walked out. Before I could even process the warning, my phone buzzed in my clutch. Declan. I hit decline. 4 When I finally forced myself back out to the ballroom, my mother grabbed my arm, oblivious to the fact that I was rigid with terror. She pulled me toward a circle of socialites. “Fallon, darling,” she beamed, the champagne making her bold. “You’re getting to that age. Have you thought about which of the boys you’re going to choose? You’ve always been so close to Declan and Zane. Who is it going to be?” The System shrieked to life in my brain. Host! You can curse me all you want, but you have to tread carefully! Do not choose either of them. They are not normal men! “You didn’t answer my call.” The voice came from right over my shoulder. Declan. I slowly turned my head. He was smiling. His eyes were crinkled at the corners, his mouth curved in that beautiful, familiar way, but his tone was feather-light, carrying the distinct pressure of an interrogation. Across the circle, Zane was staring at me. His gaze was unblinking, heavy, and dead. A cold sweat broke out along my spine. It felt like I had stepped into a pit with two vipers, and they were just waiting for me to make a sudden movement. I forced a bright, bratty laugh, looking back at my mother. “I like them both. Why can’t I just have both?” My mother blinked, offering an awkward, embarrassed laugh to the women around her. “Oh, listen to her. Such nonsense.” Zane’s mother chimed in, smoothing over the faux pas. “The kids are just too close. It’s impossible for her to pick right now.” Zane tilted his head, a slow, dark smile spreading across his lips. “Both?” he repeated. Declan, usually the one who couldn’t stop talking, went perfectly still. The smile never left his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. I kept the plastic smile plastered on my face and nodded. Inside, I was screaming. Both meant neither. This was the twenty-first century. I wasn’t about to run a harem, especially not a harem of psychopaths. “Alright.” Declan’s voice was bright, almost melodic. I stared at him. “Whatever Fallon wants,” Declan said smoothly. “I accept unconditionally.” If I hadn’t overheard them in the lounge—if I hadn’t known the truth—that sentence would have thrilled my ego. My gorgeous childhood friend, so obsessed with me he’s willing to share? Amazing. But now? All I heard was the sound of a trap snapping shut. I looked at Zane, my voice catching slightly. “You… you agree to that?” Zane slowly raised his eyes. I didn’t miss the flash of pure, unadulterated violence that passed through his pupils before it was buried again. “Yeah,” he murmured. “No objections.” I felt nauseous. My mother rubbed her temples, sighing. “Fallon, honestly. Though,” she paused, her eyes narrowing in thought, “I did hear that things have always been tense between you and the Caldwell boy?” The calculation in her voice was naked. She was weighing the Kellan Caldwell option. Months ago, my father had casually floated the idea of a Caldwell merger over dinner. Because I was knee-deep in my crusade to destroy Kellan, I had thrown an absolute tantrum, refusing outright. My father hadn’t brought it up since. The silence among the parents grew thick. I swallowed the lump in my throat, offering my mother a vague, dismissive shake of my head. I turned to Zane. “I’ve got a headache. Walk me to the gardens?” I stepped into his space, leaning my weight against his arm in a display of total, oblivious trust. Zane’s muscles went completely rigid beneath his suit jacket for a fraction of a second. I could feel Declan’s eyes burning into my back as we walked away. The moment we were out of the crowd, under the guise of slipping my arm through his, I dropped a microscopic audio bug straight into the pocket of Zane’s tuxedo jacket. I had to know. I had to know exactly what kind of hell they were building for me. 5 The moment I locked my bedroom door at home, I sprinted to the bathroom, turned the shower on full blast to mask any noise, and opened the app synced to the bug. Nothing but static for hours. I was drifting off to sleep when the sudden crackle of a voice jerked me upright. “What did she say to you tonight? She practically threw herself at you. You didn’t put your hands on her, did you?” Declan. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Zane’s voice was bored, flat. A few seconds of heavy silence. “Are you going soft on her?” Declan asked, his tone laced with something dark. “No.” Zane’s voice was ice. “The plan proceeds exactly as discussed.” “…I don’t know. I feel like she knows something. She was looking at us differently.” Zane scoffed softly. “She’s as clueless as she’s always been.” “The island is prepped?” “Yeah.” “Then we make the move in the next few days.” “I’ll ask her out tomorrow.” The audio crackled. A second later, my phone vibrated in my palm. A text from Zane. Want to see me tomorrow? My fingers flew across the screen. Why? What’s up? Date. I stared at the four letters, my stomach twisting into a violent knot. Swamped lately. No free time. I hit send. Through the audio bug, I heard Zane’s phone chime. “She says she’s got no time,” Zane relayed. “No time?” Declan let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “She spent the last year doing nothing but making Kellan’s life miserable. Now that he’s gone, she suddenly has no time?” “Do you think Kellan actually warned her?” Zane asked, his voice tightening. Declan clicked his tongue. “I know Fallon. Even if he did, she’d never believe him. She only trusts us.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth to stifle a sob. “Honestly,” Declan’s voice dropped to a whisper, a sound so possessive it made my skin crawl. “When the dust settles, I’m going to take her and…” I leaned in, straining to hear, when the audio dissolved into a harsh, scraping noise. Fabric rustling. Then, Zane’s voice, laced with a slow, terrifying amusement. “Well, look at this. Look what I found in my pocket.” A deafening, high-pitched squeal tore through the speaker. And then, dead silence. Connection severed. I stared at the screen as my chat with Zane remained perfectly still. He didn’t send another message. The app read: Device Disconnected. I sat in the silence of my bedroom for a long time. “System,” I whispered into the dark. “They really are monsters, aren’t they?” I am so sorry, Host, the System replied, sounding genuinely mournful. If I hadn’t mixed up the files, perhaps… I shook my head. “Even if you had told me the truth from day one, I wouldn’t have believed you. I had to hear them say it.” I looked down at my trembling hands. What were they going to do to me? Host, the System said. Go find Kellan. I blinked, the exhaustion making me slow. “Find him?” The System calculated for a moment. You can use him. Use him to flush out Declan and Zane’s true intentions. I frowned. You possess a fatal attraction over him, the System urged. He cannot refuse you.

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My boyfriend recently made a choice that felt like a localized earthquake: he hired his childhood sweetheart to be the head of administration at his boutique private hospital. The very next day, this new “Administrative Director” summoned me to collect my employee benefits. When I opened the bag, I found three pounds of bruised, weeping, fermented apples. The stench of rot hit me like a physical blow. I actually laughed, thinking it was a prank—an early April Fool’s joke, maybe. “Okay, very funny. You got me.” She didn’t laugh. She looked me up and down with a clinical, freezing contempt. “Dr. Sinclair’s orders. Starting today, benefits are allocated based on individual contribution. Even a Chief Surgeon isn’t exempt from the new metric.” Her lip curled into a smirk. “If you’re unhappy with your haul, maybe you should look inward. Find the root of your own lack of value.” My lack of value? I felt a surge of indignation and snatched the benefit ledger from her desk. Right there, next to her name—Lexi Dalton—the entry read: 3.5 oz 24k Gold Bar. She screeched, lunging across the desk to grab the folder. “That’s a confidential document! You have no right!” The shouting brought Parker running. He didn’t even look at me. He stepped between us, shielding Lexi as if I were a physical threat. “Claire! What is wrong with you? If you’re so incompetent that you have to take your jealousy out on her, do it on your own time. Don’t you dare bully her in front of me.” The dam broke. I slammed the bag of rotting fruit onto the mahogany desk, the juice splattering. “This is what you call a benefit? She is intentionally insulting me, Parker, and you’re standing there acting like her bodyguard?” Lexi didn’t look insulted. She looked victorious. she leaned in, looping her arm through Parker’s with a sickening familiarity. “Dr. Whittaker, really, have you no shame? Parker is my fiancé. Why on earth would he take your side?” I felt the air leave my lungs. I looked at Parker, waiting for the denial, the “it’s a misunderstanding,” the “she’s just joking.” Instead, he pulled her closer, his expression softening into a tenderness he hadn’t shown me in months. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. The silence was his confirmation. In that moment, the scales fell from my eyes. All those years he insisted on keeping our relationship a secret “to maintain professional boundaries” and “protect our careers”? It was never about the hospital. It was so he could cut me loose whenever he wanted, without a single tether to hold him back. … Watching them smile at each other, lost in their own private world of shared history, I felt a dry, bitter laugh bubble up in my throat. “So much for your rule about ‘no romance in the workplace,’ huh, Parker?” He turned to me, his eyes narrowing. That look—the one that always meant I was being a burden. “Claire, don’t be so incredibly childish.” “Childish? We’ve been together for six years.” “We dated,” he corrected, his voice flat. “But what was it, really? We were a couple, sure, but it wasn’t a life sentence. There was no need to broadcast it to the world.” He squeezed Lexi’s hand, a genuine smile finally breaking through his mask of coldness. “But Lexi… Lexi is different. She’s the person I want to build a future with. She’s always been the one.” Lexi beamed, leaning her head against his shoulder, pressing herself into him. Parker’s hand settled on her waist, marking his territory. When he looked back at me, the warmth vanished. “I kept us under wraps precisely because I knew you’d get like this. Obsessive. Clinging. If you have any dignity left, we can end this like adults.” Obsessive? Clinging? I felt like I was looking at a stranger. Six years ago, when I agreed to be his girlfriend, he had swung me around in his arms until we were both dizzy. “Claire, as soon as we graduate, I’m putting a ring on your finger. I want my whole life to be about you.” But for six years, that “future” kept receding like a mirage. Year one: “The market is too unstable; I want to give you the life you deserve first.” Year two: “The clinic is just starting; I’m too busy training staff. Just a little longer, baby.” Year three: He started getting annoyed. “Why are you pressuring me? Don’t you understand how much stress I’m under?” So, I stopped asking. I thought I was being the supportive partner. I thought I was giving him the space to build his dream. I didn’t realize that while I was waiting for him to build a home for us, he was just building a porch for someone else to move into. A year ago, the hospital needed a new MRI suite. He was short on capital, frantic, losing sleep. I had been ready to mortgage the house my grandmother left me to give him the cash. But then he vanished for a week. Didn’t return my texts. When he finally showed up, he blew up at me. “The hospital is at a critical juncture! I don’t have time to coddle you and your little princess moods!” And I—fool that I was—apologized. I blamed myself for being “needy” while he was under pressure. Contrast that with yesterday: Lexi, in her second day on the job, locked the hospital’s primary operating account because she forgot the password and tried too many times. Did Parker yell? No. He stroked her hair and whispered, “Don’t worry, honey. It’s just a glitch. We’ll fix it.” He dropped a million-dollar contract negotiation mid-meeting to drive her to the bank personally. He spent a week sorting out her mess, and not once did he lose his patience. He did have a soft side. He was capable of gentleness and grace. He just didn’t want to waste it on me. The realization was like a series of dots finally connecting into a picture I didn’t want to see. Within hours, the news of our “triangle” had burned through the hospital breakrooms. As the loser in the equation, I was treated to a gauntlet of pitying looks and whispered jokes every time I walked down a hallway. I kept my head down, my fingernails digging into my palms, performing my rounds like a hollowed-out doll. When my shift finally ended, I just wanted to go home and collapse. But when the elevator doors opened on my floor, my heart stopped. The hallway was a labyrinth of cardboard boxes. Two guys from a moving company were stacking my life against the wall like it was trash day. I pushed past them, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Beep—Access Denied. Beep—Fingerprint Not Recognized. I tried again. And again. Panic rising like bile. Then, the door clicked open from the inside. Lexi stood there, draped in a plush white towel—my towel. Her skin was flushed, and her neck was a roadmap of fresh, dark bruises. The air in the apartment smelled like sex and Parker’s expensive cologne. “Oh, hey,” she said, her voice airy and satisfied. “Parker said the move was happening today. He didn’t want things getting messy with too many people having access, so he wiped your biometrics and changed the codes. Hope you don’t mind.” I looked past her at the boxes. Six years of my life. My books, my clothes, my specialized medical journals—all evicted. “Move,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I need to get my things.” Parker stepped out of the bathroom, his lips swollen, looking every bit the man who had just been thoroughly satisfied. He pointed to a single, small suitcase in the corner of the foyer. “Everything you actually brought into this relationship is in there,” he said. “The rest… well, consider it a parting gift to the hospital you claim to love so much.” Six years. Reduced to a carry-on. Thud. The door slammed and locked. I walked down the dark sidewalk, the single suitcase rattling behind me on the pavement. That’s when the tears finally came. A pound of rotten apples. A suitcase. A “goodbye.” Six years. This was all I was worth. The next morning, the alarm on my phone woke me in a generic, windowless room at the Holiday Inn. I stared at the ceiling for a long minute, wondering if this was the day I finally broke. Instead, I splashed my face with ice water, bought a cold Coke from the vending machine, and pressed the can against my swollen eyelids. The relationship was dead, but my career wasn’t. The thought of resigning flashed through my mind, but I killed it instantly. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why should I be the one to go into hiding? I wanted to see how this farce ended. When I reached my office, the waiting area was eerily empty. No patients. A clerk from the medical board stopped me. “Dr. Whittaker, clinic is canceled for you today. You’re needed in the conference room. Now.” The room was packed. HR, the board, even my department head. Parker sat at the head of the table, looking every bit the powerful CEO. Lexi sat right next to him, dressed in a sharp power suit that looked like it cost more than her monthly salary. Parker didn’t look at me. He looked at the room. “I’ll keep this brief. Due to a documented history of professional negligence and a poor attitude, Dr. Claire Whittaker is being stripped of her title as Chief Surgeon, effective immediately.” A collective gasp rippled through the room. Dozens of eyes turned to me—some sympathetic, some mocking, most just curious. “She is a long-tenured employee,” Parker continued, his voice dripping with mock-humanity. “In the spirit of charity, we won’t be firing her. However, the Facilities and Logistics department is currently understaffed.” Facilities and Logistics. That was the hospital’s euphemism for the janitorial crew. Our head housekeeper had just retired, and they needed someone to scrub the toilets in the inpatient wing. The room erupted into hushed, frantic whispers. The looks shifted from pity to pure, unadulterated shock. Parker cleared his throat, calling for silence. “Furthermore, Dr. Whittaker has been the subject of several patient complaints. As such, she is no longer fit to hold equity in this institution. Her founding shares will be transferred to our new Administrative Director, Lexi Dalton.” I stood up, my chair screeching against the floor. “Complaints? Parker, that one malpractice claim was a confirmed setup. I called the police myself! They apologized to the hospital!” “And yet,” Parker said, leaning back, “it’s a stain on our reputation. Lexi, however, has already proven her worth. Yesterday, she successfully brokered a partnership with the world-renowned cardiothoracic specialist, Dr. Lawrence.” He paused for effect. “You claimed you had the ‘connections’ to get Dr. Lawrence for years, Claire. You burned through a million dollars of hospital funds on ‘research’ and never even got him on the phone. Lexi got him in one day.” I stared at him, genuinely impressed by the sheer scale of his lies. Dr. Lawrence was my mentor’s closest friend. I had spent two grueling months fly-fishing with the man in Maine just to get him to listen to the proposal. He finally agreed, but only on one condition: the hospital had to purchase the latest Da Vinci surgical robot. Those robots were on a two-year backorder. I spent months pulling every string I had, calling in favors from my family’s old circles, just to get us on the priority list. The night before Dr. Lawrence was supposed to sign the contract, Parker told me he’d handle the final meeting. He told me I deserved a night off. Lexi stood up amidst a smattering of coached applause. “I just got lucky,” she said, her voice sickeningly sweet. “But I’ll always do whatever it takes for the good of this hospital.” I didn’t wait for the rest of the speeches. I turned and walked out. Parker caught up to me in the hallway, his face dark. “Claire! You don’t just walk out on a board meeting. You’re lucky you even have a job!” I stopped and looked him dead in the eye. He flinched, just for a second, then doubled down. “Look, the janitorial position… it’s still a paycheck. The market is tough right now. I’m doing this because I care about our history…” “History?” I laughed, the sound sharp and jagged. “Parker, if you cared about history, you wouldn’t be cheating on your ‘history’ with a girl who can’t even remember a login password. You wouldn’t be stealing my work and handing it to her like a trophy.” He snapped. The mask of the “fair CEO” fell away, revealing the petty, cruel man underneath. “You should watch your mouth. Lexi is twice the woman you are. She’s kind. She’s loyal. When I met her—” “I don’t care how you met her,” I interrupted. “Give me my money back. Give me the fifteen million I put into this place, and I’ll walk away and pretend these last six years were just a bad fever dream.” He laughed, a cold, ugly sound. “Your money? What money? That fifteen million you mortgaged? It’s gone, Claire. Spent on ‘operating costs’ during the lean years. And that equity transfer? You signed the papers last week during the ‘routine audit.’ You don’t own a single brick in this building.” Ice water seemed to fill my veins. A week ago, he’d brought me a stack of papers while I was exhausted after a twelve-hour surgery. “Just some insurance stuff, babe. Trust me.” And I had. Lexi strutted up then, swaying her hips, her eyes gleaming with malice. “Parker, why are you even explaining things to this woman? You’re being too nice. She’s ungrateful. She’s a brat. If I were you, I’d have security escort her out right now.” I looked at them. The greed, the pettiness, the absolute lack of a soul. I had wasted six years on a man who was, at his core, a common thief. I didn’t argue. I went to the basement. I checked in with the custodial supervisor. I picked up a mop, a bucket, a scrub brush, and a pilled, scratchy uniform that smelled like industrial bleach. I took off my white coat. I put on the blue vest. As I was scrubbing the tiles in the east wing, a patient recognized me. “Dr. Whittaker? Why are you… are you cleaning the floor?” My colleagues avoided my eyes. They walked on the far side of the hallway, staring at their tablets. A memo had been circulated: No discussion regarding personnel changes. Everyone knew. Everyone saw the fall from Chief Surgeon to Janitor. And because I didn’t scream or cry or jump off the roof, the rumor mill decided I must be guilty of something. Or maybe I was just so pathetic I couldn’t leave him. The night Dr. Lawrence was officially welcomed to the staff was also the hospital’s sixth anniversary. I was at the mop sink when I heard that shrill, nasal voice behind me. “Dr. Whittaker! Oh, I’m sorry. I should call you ‘Claire the Cleaner’ now, shouldn’t I?” I turned. Lexi was standing there, holding her nose as if the very air I breathed was toxic. “The anniversary gala is tonight at the Royal Springs Resort,” she said, her eyes dancing. “Six o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.” I didn’t answer. I just kept wringing out the mop. “Normally, the help isn’t invited to these high-end events,” she continued, “but I begged Parker to let you come. For old time’s sake. Of course, if you’re too ashamed to show your face…” I flicked the mop, a few drops of grey water landing near her designer heels. “Six o’clock. I’ll be there. Now move. You’re in my way.” “You… ugh!” She huffed and stomped away. I showed up in my pilled blue vest. The doorman at the Royal Springs blocked my path for ten minutes, interrogating me until I showed him my employee ID. When I finally entered the ballroom, the room was a sea of tuxedos and silk gowns. Lexi was the center of attention in a plunging red dress, her hair in Hollywood waves, her lips a violent shade of crimson. She saw me and raised her voice so it carried across the room. “Oh look! Our custodial representative has arrived! Sorry, Claire, did a toilet overflow? Is that why you’re late?” The room erupted in cruel, snickering laughter. She pointed to a tiny, wobbly card table tucked into the corner next to the kitchen doors. “Go on. We saved a special seat just for you.” I walked through the gauntlet of whispers and sat down. A waiter arrived and placed a dented stainless steel bowl in front of me. Inside were brown, slimy cabbage leaves and a handful of dirt. The deputy head of HR walked over, swirling a glass of expensive Bordeaux. “Did you think you were getting lobster, Claire? Take your salad to the kitchen and wash it. Or better yet, go look in a mirror and realize exactly where you belong.” She was Lexi’s biggest sycophant. I didn’t say a word. I just pulled out my phone and took several high-resolution photos of the “meal” from multiple angles. This will look great on the internet, I thought. Crash! Dr. Wells, a brilliant young cardiologist I had mentored, slammed his glass onto his table. He stood up, his face flushed with rage as he looked at the silent board members. “How can you all sit there?” he demanded. “Dr. Whittaker built half of your departments! She mentored half of the people in this room! And you’re going to let this… this circus continue? This is disgusting. I’m done.” The silence in the ballroom was deafening. Parker, sitting at the head table, narrowed his eyes. “Sit down, Wells. Or follow her to the basement. Your choice.” “I’d rather work in a basement than for a man like you,” Wells snapped. He pushed back his chair and walked out. Parker turned his gaze to me, his voice a low growl. “You’re quite the temptress, aren’t you, Claire? Even as a janitor, you’re still finding men to do your dirty work.” I looked at the man I had once loved. The “gentle” Parker Sinclair was gone, replaced by this ugly, bloated ego. I stood up, picked up the bowl of rotting cabbage, and walked straight to the head table. “A person with a dirty heart sees filth everywhere,” I said. With one swift motion, I dumped the bowl of mud and slime directly onto the white linen in front of him. I didn’t look back as I walked out of the ballroom, leaving the screams of outrage behind me. Outside, the cool night air felt like a benediction. My phone rang—a specific, jarring ringtone I hadn’t heard in years. I answered. “Claire,” the voice on the other end boomed, vibrating with suppressed fury. “How much longer are you going to let these gutter-rats play in your yard?” “Uncle Thomas?” “You are a Whittaker. My god, Claire, if I hear that you let those two humiliations touch you again, I’m coming down there myself to burn that hospital to the ground.” The next morning, I walked back into the hospital in my blue vest. The staff looked at me like they were seeing a ghost. After the scene at the gala, everyone assumed I’d be hiding under a rock. Instead, I was mopping the lobby as if nothing had happened. By noon, the rumors started flying. The partnership with Dr. Lawrence was falling apart. “I heard Lexi canceled the order for the surgical robot to ‘save costs.’ Dr. Lawrence found out this morning.” “He brought a research team from Johns Hopkins to see the suite, and it was empty. He went ballistic!” “Why did Parker put an admin girl in charge of surgical logistics? Is he insane?” “Shhh! You want to end up like Dr. Wells?” Parker was spiraling. I could hear him yelling from his office all the way down the hall. He cornered me near the elevators. “Claire.” He tried to smile, but it looked like a grimace. “Look, there’s been a… misunderstanding with Dr. Lawrence. I need you to call him. Apologize for Lexi. Smooth things over.” “And if I do?” “I’ll fast-track your reinstatement. You can have your office back. We’ll pretend the last few days never happened.” His phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, then stepped away to answer. “Lexi, honey, it’s fine. Don’t cry. I’ve got it under control. I love you too.” He turned back to me, the ‘love’ still in his eyes for her, while he looked at me like a tool he needed to sharpen. “So? Dr. Lawrence?” “You have the wrong person, Director Sinclair,” I said, leaning on my mop. “I’m the janitor. I don’t have that kind of pull.” “Claire, don’t be difficult.” “I’m responsible for the floors, Parker. I’m not responsible for cleaning up your mistress’s messes. You’re a big, powerful CEO. Figure it out.” His face turned a dangerous shade of purple. “You’re going to regret this. I’ll make sure you’re blacklisted from every hospital in the country. You’ll be begging me for a job at a gas station!” He stormed off. Five minutes later, Lexi arrived in four-inch heels to finish the job. She kicked over my mop bucket, the dirty water cascading down the stairs I had just cleaned. I stepped back, avoiding the splash. “You bitch!” Lexi screamed. “Parker was being nice to you! You think you’re still the big-shot doctor? I can ruin you with one phone call!” She grabbed my arm, her diamond-encrusted nails digging into my skin until I felt the sting of blood. “If you’re so powerful, Lexi, why haven’t you fired me yet?” I asked quietly. “Is it because Parker is terrified? Because deep down, he knows he’s drowning and I’m the only one who knows where the life jackets are?” Her face contorted. She raised her hand to strike me. “I’ll kill you!” “Stop right there!” A hand like a vice gripped Lexi’s wrist mid-air. She spun around, eyes wide with terror. Standing there was a man in a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, his expression like granite. Behind him stood Dr. Lawrence and half a dozen other prominent surgeons. Lexi tried to wrench her arm away, then immediately shifted into “damsel” mode. “Dr. Lawrence! Oh, thank goodness. This woman was attacking me—” Dr. Lawrence didn’t even look at her. He stepped toward the man in the charcoal suit. “President Lin, I am so incredibly sorry. I had no idea Dr. Whittaker was being treated this way.” Lexi’s jaw dropped. “President… Lin?” Thomas Lin. The Chairman of the National Medical Oversight Committee. The man who held the licenses of every private hospital in the state in the palm of his hand. Thomas ignored her. He was staring at the blood dripping from my arm. “You’re bleeding, Claire. You need a bandage.” “I’m fine, Uncle Thomas,” I said, wiping the scratch. He looked at my blue vest, his voice trembling with a mix of heartbreak and rage. “Why are you wearing this? Who did this to you?”

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