During the few days my wife was supposedly out of town on a business trip, I took a detour on my way home and ran into a traffic bottleneck. A wedding procession had spilled out onto the cobblestone street of the historic district, and the groom was weeping so hard he was practically gasping for air. Between his loud, ragged sobs, he was crying out to his deceased parents, telling them he had finally found a good home, a safe harbor. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered around him, murmuring comfort, completely blocking the narrow street. Usually, I’m a restless driver, always anxious to get home, but the raw emotion of the scene touched something in me. I turned off the engine and decided to wait it out, watching them finish their roadside ceremony. Then, a voice from the crowd shouted, “Serena! You better treat this boy right!” The bride, standing beneath the canopy of old oaks, raised her hand to the sky and vowed loudly, “If I ever treat him wrong, may I be cursed to live the rest of my life in absolute isolation. He is the only one I will ever love.” Serena. The name struck a strange, cold chord in my chest. It was my wife’s name. And the voice—husky, slightly breathless at the end of a sentence—sounded exactly like hers. The crowd erupted into sweet, teasing cheers, and the tension broke into a flurry of laughter. The groom’s tears finally gave way to a bright, boyish smile. Slowly, the onlookers began to disperse, clearing the path. I restarted the engine and slowly rolled past the venue. Through the rolled-down window of my sedan, I looked straight at the bride. It was Serena. She was wearing a vintage lace gown, her hand clasped tightly in the groom’s. She turned her head, and our eyes locked. The color instantly drained from her face. So. The business trip she had packed for was actually a trip down the aisle with another man. 1 Serena threw me a desperate, pleading look, silently begging me to keep driving. I had intended to go straight. Instead, I pulled over to the curb, killed the engine, and stepped out of the car. “Mind if I join?” I walked up to the reception area with a tight, polite smile. “It’s a beautiful day, and I’d love to buy a drink to toast the happy couple. Consider this my wedding gift.” Weddings are superstitious affairs; no one wanted to turn away a well-wisher offering good vibes. The groom, Todd, beamed with genuine warmth. “Of course! Please, join us.” I took a seat at one of the outer tables. It was surreal, almost comical. I was sitting at my own wife’s wedding reception. I looked around, taking in the white linens, the expensive floral arrangements. An older man at my table, introduced to me as Mr. Henderson, leaned over and struck up a conversation. “They make a beautiful couple, don’t they?” he whispered, watching them dance. “It wasn’t easy for them to get to this day.” I gritted my teeth, a sudden wave of nausea washing over me. “Oh? Why is that?” Mr. Henderson leaned in closer, glad to share the local gossip. “Well, Serena’s older brother was always dead set against it. A real piece of work, apparently. He refused to get married himself and didn’t want his little sister finding happiness either. It took them five years of hiding and fighting to finally have this wedding. Thank God Todd is young. He was willing to wait for her.” I dug my fingernails deep into the palms of my hands. It all clicked. Serena was an only child. I was the “overprotective, tyrannical brother.” I was the obstacle. Five years. Serena, you really are something else. Only two nights ago, before she “left for her trip,” she had clung to my neck, her eyes filled with a soft, practiced guilt. “I’m so sorry I have to leave again, Daniel. Things are just so chaotic at the firm right now. I promise, as soon as this project wraps up, I’m all yours.” I had smiled, kissed her forehead, and packed her suitcase with her favorite pajamas. Every day of her trip, she had sent me texts detailing her dry business meetings, sharing little anecdotes about her hotel dinners. It had all been a beautifully scripted lie. Perhaps she felt a fleeting pang of guilt, so she overcompensated with sweet texts to keep me oblivious, to keep herself feeling like a good wife. The food served at the reception was top-tier, expensive catering. To me, it tasted like ashes. When it came time for the couple to toast the tables, they finally reached mine. Serena’s eyes darted nervously. Her bridesmaids, standing just behind her, looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them whole. They had obviously been in on the secret, playing their parts perfectly. One of them, a timid girl named Katie, looked at me and almost let the word husband slip out of her mouth. Serena cut her off with a sharp laugh. I smiled, my voice smooth and calm. “So, when are you two getting the marriage license? I actually work near the municipal building. I can help expedite the paperwork if you need. They’re running a special package this month.” Todd blushed, looking down like a shy teenager. “Tomorrow morning, actually.” “Wonderful,” I said, keeping my tone perfectly pleasant. I didn’t ruin their reception. Todd looked entirely clueless, and I wanted to see exactly how Serena planned to keep this house of cards standing when the sun came up. But I didn’t have to wait for tomorrow. The next morning, Todd was standing on my front porch. He didn’t waste any time. “You’re Serena’s husband, aren’t you?” His face was flushed, his eyes wild with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. Clearly, Serena had confessed something to him during their wedding night. I leaned against the doorframe. “I am.” He pushed past me into the foyer. His eyes immediately caught our large, framed wedding portrait hanging on the wall. His chest heaved, and his voice trembled, though he tried to sound brave. “You don’t love her,” he hissed. “Not like I do. Serena told me how you used to lock her out of the kitchen, how you starved her for days. I don’t care if we can’t get a legal marriage license. I’m not leaving her.” He stood there, posing like some tragic hero in a romance novel, fighting for his forbidden love. My hand froze on the doorknob. “So… you knew about me the whole time?” He gave a small, defiant nod. A cold rage bloomed in my chest. I regretted my restraint from the night before. I should have flipped the tables and ruined her precious day in front of everyone. And as for “starving” her—Serena had a severe gallbladder condition, and the doctor had put her on a strict, medically supervised fast before her surgery. I had spent those nights cooking broth and keeping her away from solid food for her own survival. I had tried to be civil. I had tried to give her the courtesy of a private conversation. But these two didn’t deserve it. Serena’s car screeched to a halt in the driveway. She practically threw herself through the front door, immediately stepping between Todd and me, shielding him as if I were a monster. “Daniel, please! Let me explain,” she panted, her hands shaking. “It’s not what you think. Todd’s family… they saved my life years ago when I was in college. When he came to the city five years ago, I promised them I’d look after him. His family back home is incredibly conservative, and they were pressuring him into an arranged marriage. We only threw the wedding to get them off his back. It was a sham.” I looked down at her, my expression deadpan. “You’re a bit late with that script, Serena. Your new husband just gave me a very different story.” Serena kept her arm firmly around Todd’s waist. “He’s just emotional. He has a crush on me, sure, but to me, he’s just a kid. A younger brother. He’s immature, Daniel. Please, don’t make a scene.” A warning. That was a warning. I let out a dry, humorless laugh. It was so incredibly pathetic. I took a step forward. Serena instantly grabbed my wrist, her grip vice-like, desperate to stop me from touching her precious boy. “Daniel, I said I’m sorry!” she yelled, her composure cracking. “He’s family to me. I couldn’t just abandon him. I explained everything to him last night. Just let it go!” She squeezed so hard my skin pinched. I wrenched my arm back, the sudden movement causing a sharp pain to shoot up my forearm. My skin was already turning a angry, bright red. “Serena,” I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I don’t care what your excuses are. Get this trash out of my house. Both of you. You’re tracking dirt all over my floors.” Trash. The word seemed to finally register. Serena looked down at my reddened wrist, her grip softening as she realized she had hurt me. “Daniel… I’m sorry. I was just afraid you’d… Look, we all need to calm down.” She wasn’t afraid of me hurting Todd. She was afraid of me breaking the illusion she had built. “Get out,” I repeated. As I stepped forward to escort them to the door, my shoulder brushed against the edge of a tall, narrow bookshelf in the hallway. It wobbled, tilting dangerously. As the books began to slide and the heavy wood started to fall, Serena didn’t hesitate. She lunged, throwing her entire body over Todd, shielding him from the impact. But in doing so, she blocked my escape route. The heavy oak shelf crashed down, striking my arm. A sharp, blinding pain flared through my wrist, and it swelled instantly. The silence that followed was suffocating. Instinct never lies. Todd hadn’t even been in the path of the falling shelf. He was perfectly safe. But Serena’s first, primal instinct was to protect him, even if it meant trapping me under the debris. I’m done, I thought, looking at the mess on the floor. I don’t want you anymore, Serena. Serena didn’t even look at me. She was busy checking Todd over, her hands hovering over his face. “Are you okay? Did it hit you? Let’s get you to the clinic. Didn’t you say you had a headache earlier?” She didn’t spare me a single glance. “Daniel, I’m taking Todd to the hospital. There’s some ice and ointment in the medicine cabinet. Put some on your arm.” The front door clicked shut. The house was quiet again. I stood there for a long moment, then reached for my phone and dialed a local moving company. “I need a crew here today. Pack-and-move service. Everything.” This house was my property, purchased before we ever got married. Every corner of it was filled with memories of us—memories that now felt tainted. My pride, ingrained in me since childhood, kept me from crying. I dragged the first-aid kit out and awkwardly bandaged my own arm. I remembered how she used to tease me about my clumsiness. “What would you ever do without me, Dan?” she’d say, kissing my scraped knuckles. Now, I was doing just fine. I was about to call a divorce lawyer when my phone buzzed. It was my buddy, Marcus. His voice was frantic. “Dan, you need to get to the community hospital right now. There’s a massive scene. Your parents heard about Serena’s wedding, and since they were already at the clinic for your dad’s checkup, they went to find that kid, Todd, to get answers. Todd went completely psycho.” “What?” My heart leaped into my throat. My parents loved Serena like a daughter. Whenever we had minor disagreements, they always took her side. I knew they must have been devastated and confused, but they were gentle people. They wouldn’t have attacked him. I grabbed my keys and flew out the door. When I arrived at the hospital, there was a crowd gathered outside, staring up at the roof. Todd was standing right on the ledge of the rooftop terrace, crying hysterically. “If you want me dead, just say so! I have nothing left anyway!” Serena was up there with him, her hands outstretched, begging him to step back. My parents stood near the roof access door, looking absolutely horrified. “We just asked him what happened,” my mother whispered, her voice shaking. “We just asked him how he could do this to Daniel, and he suddenly ran up here threatening to jump.” They were dignified, educated people. They had never dealt with this kind of unhinged drama in their lives. Down below, people in the crowd started whispering. “Hey, isn’t that the guy from the wedding yesterday? The one who lost his parents? Oh my god, what did they do to him?” Hearing the crowd’s sympathy, Todd’s wails grew even louder. Serena turned toward my parents and screamed, “Shut up! Both of you, just shut up!” She turned back to Todd, pouring out every sweet, reassuring promise she could think of to get him down. Her parents—my in-laws—arrived shortly after. Instead of defusing the situation, they rushed to the edge, crying out, “Todd, sweetheart, please step down! Your parents asked us to watch over you. You’re like a son to us. We can sort this out. Don’t do this!” My father looked at them, his face pale with disbelief. “Thomas, Margaret… you knew? You helped them put on this farce? Have you lost your minds?” Thomas looked away, his face red with embarrassment, but Margaret snapped back, “A boy’s life is on the line, Robert! We can talk about morality later!” So they all knew. Serena slowly reached her hand out to Todd. “Give me your hand, Todd. I’ll make them apologize to you. I promise.” She glared at my parents. “Mom, Dad. Apologize to him. Now!” I stepped out onto the roof, my voice cutting through the wind like a knife. “Serena. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Who is apologizing to whom?” My parents looked at me, tears in their eyes. They had loved this girl, and now she was demanding they humble themselves before her manipulative lover. Serena let out a frustrated sigh, looking at me as if I were a stubborn child. “Daniel, this is life or death! Can we please not litigate the past right now? I know your parents have been good to me, but Todd is on the edge. Apologize!” The sheer, shameless audacity of it broke something inside me. I walked up to her and delivered a sharp, stinging slap across her face. Serena stumbled back, her cheek blooming red, but she didn’t back down. “Don’t tempt me, Daniel. Just apologize so he can come down.” Thomas and Margaret joined in, pleading, “Daniel, please, just play along! Todd just wanted to feel loved. Is it really worth a life?” I pulled my parents behind me. “I’m filing for divorce. And as for an apology? We have nothing to apologize for.” Serena’s eyes darkened. “You really want to play this game, Daniel? Right now?” She pulled out her phone, dialed her secretary, and spoke clearly into the receiver. “Suspend the bridge loan to the Norton Group immediately. Freeze all joint asset transfers.” My breath hitched. My mother gasped. My father’s logistics company was currently in the middle of a massive restructuring phase, and they were heavily reliant on a temporary capital injection Serena’s firm had facilitated. Serena had been the one to suggest the partnership, claiming it was her way of giving back to the family that had helped her build her start-up. Now, she was using it as a weapon to crush my father’s life’s work. Thomas and Margaret realized how far she was going and tried to stop her. “Serena, don’t do that! That’s too much. Call them back.” But Serena kept her eyes locked on my parents. “I’m sorry, but Todd’s life comes first.” My father’s phone began to ring. He answered it, his hand trembling. “Mr. Norton… there’s a major glitch in the accounts. The wire was recalled. The suppliers are threatening to halt shipments…” My father had spent forty years building his reputation as an honest businessman. He had trusted his daughter-in-law implicitly. To have his life’s work destroyed in a single phone call, not by a competitor, but by the girl he had treated like a daughter, was too much. He clutched his chest, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed onto the concrete roof. “Robert!” my mother screamed, dropping to her knees. “Robert, look at me! Oh my god, please… I’ll apologize! I’ll say whatever you want, just please don’t do this!” I didn’t waste another second. I lifted my father and rushed him toward the emergency room stairs. The last of my love for Serena died on that roof.

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I had been Wesley Ashford’s kept canary for three long years. The rules were incredibly simple: show up, perform our routine business, and then go back to my own room. Tonight, just like any other night, I sat up and prepared to slip away. Fuck, is that it? I barely even got warmed up! Now I have to wait another goddamn half-month? A harsh, thoroughly frustrated voice roared clearly inside my head. I froze, slowly turning around. Wesley’s face was still its usual ice-cold mask, his eyelids not even twitching. But that voice—there was absolutely no mistaking it. It was him. Somehow, I could suddenly hear this man’s inner monologue. It seemed our quiet little cage was holding two very confused birds. 1 My name is Fiona. I’ve been Wesley’s kept canary for three years now. You probably wouldn’t believe me, but this arrangement is a million times easier than the grueling eighty-hour-a-week corporate grind I used to have. On the fifteenth of every month, his assistant promptly wires a generous sum of money to my account. It is more than enough to let me live a very comfortable, elegant life in the city. The price? Once every two weeks, I have to go to his bedroom. The process is strictly fixed. I walk in, the lights are already off, I lie down on the bed, we finish, and I leave. The entire sequence never takes more than twenty minutes. He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. We are more punctual than employees punching a timecard, and colder to each other than distant coworkers. For three years, I haven’t even had a proper look at his face in bed to see what kind of expression he wears. It isn’t that I don’t want to look. It is just that he has strict rules. The lights must stay off. And the moment it’s over, he rolls over, turning his back to me. The signal is loud and clear: You can leave now. I’ve always been sensible. I put on my clothes, quietly slip through the door, return to my room to put on a face mask, scroll through my phone for a bit, and go to sleep. Life went on like this, quiet and still as a stagnant pond. Until tonight. Tonight, everything started out exactly the same. Twenty minutes, done. He rolled over, presenting his back to me. I sat up, reaching into the darkness to find my clothes. And then— She’s leaving again. A deep, masculine voice, laced with a heavy, repressed irritation, suddenly exploded inside my brain. My hand paused. What? Who was talking? I instinctively looked toward the door. No one was there. I looked back at Wesley. He was still turned away from me, completely motionless, his breathing slow and steady. I figured I was hallucinating and went back to dressing myself. Every single time. She just takes off the second we’re done, like she’s racing to her own funeral. What am I to her? A glorified vibrator? I froze entirely. That voice. That tone. That volatile mix of irritation and sheer, wounded pride. I slowly turned my head, staring at Wesley’s rigid back. His mouth wasn’t open. He definitely wasn’t speaking out loud. But the voice was undeniably coming from his direction. No, not just his direction. It was echoing directly inside my head. Whatever. She doesn’t care anyway. Next time… should I make it last longer? No, that’s too obvious. She’ll notice. Damn it, Wesley, you pathetic loser. My mind went entirely blank. I sat on the edge of the bed like a statue, my brain working in overdrive. I could hear Wesley’s thoughts? How was this possible? Was I losing my mind? Should I book a psychiatric appointment? Why isn’t she leaving yet? Did she figure something out? Keep it together, Wes. You’re acting completely normal. The muscles across his back visibly tensed for a split second, though he still didn’t move. My lips twitched. Normal? You call this normal? If the version of me from three seconds ago had heard what was going on in your head, I would have thrown myself off the twenty-eighth floor. I took a deep breath, deciding to retreat for now. Whether this was a bizarre hallucination or some supernatural phenomenon, I needed space to process. I finished dressing and walked to the door. Just as my fingers brushed the cold metal handle— Just go. It’s not like you’ve ever looked back at me anyway. There was a distinct note of self-pitying defeat in his mental voice. My fingers tightened. Urged by some inexplicable impulse, I turned my head. Just a glance. Wesley hadn’t moved an inch, but I heard him loud and clear: Wait, did she just turn around? Is she looking at me? What does this mean?! His heartbeat suddenly spiked, thumping so loudly it sounded like a frantic drumbeat in my ears. Don’t move. Don’t you dare move. Wesley, if you turn around right now, you are a clown. A total clown. I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from curving upward. I stepped out, closed the door, and returned to my room. Lying in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, my mind was flooded with his unspoken words. “I barely even got warmed up.” “Now I have to wait another goddamn half-month.” “What am I to her? A glorified vibrator?” I buried my face in my hands, letting out a silent, breathless scream. Wesley Ashford. The head of Ashford Enterprises. A billionaire. The notoriously cold-blooded titan of the business world. How on earth was his inner self a frustrated, brooding tragic hero? For three years, I thought he felt absolutely nothing for me—that I was just a physical outlet. But it turned out he believed I felt nothing for him, that I was only here for the paycheck. Well, then. It turned out this cage was holding two very stubborn birds playing dead.

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Five years after marrying Dante, the brooding, mercurial heir of a powerful West Coast dynasty, news of my stern, old-fashioned uncle’s death arrived from back home. When the executive assistant’s international call came through, it was barely five in the morning in Los Angeles. “Miss Lynn, Christian is gone. The Harrington estate is in absolute chaos. You’re the only one who can come back and steady the ship…” I hadn’t heard that name in five years. The sound of it made me freeze, the phone heavy against my ear. Growing up as an adopted ward in a high-society household, I had only done two truly reckless things in my entire youth. The first was coaxing Christian into my bed one rainy night when he was too drunk to think straight, letting ourselves spiral into a beautiful, ruinous mistake. The second was boarding a one-way flight to Los Angeles to marry another man before Christian even woke up to face the morning light. With that flight, I severed eighteen years of codependency—a bond forged in the quiet corners of the orphanage where we had once kept each other alive. I never expected that when I finally returned to the cold, old-money streets of Boston, it would be to bury the only man I had ever desperately, destructively loved. On the day of the funeral, the damp spring air was thick with the scent of lilies. As the service ended, a little boy in a tiny black suit broke away from the crowd of mourning relatives and threw himself into my arms. When I lifted him up, he wiped a smudge of dirt from his tear-stained cheek, sobbing uncontrollably. “Mommy! You’re finally home!” “They’re all bad people! They just want Daddy’s money, and they keep pushing me around!” Staring at the boy’s face—a face that carried at least eighty percent of Christian’s sharp, striking features—my mind drifted back to the very first time I had met his father. 1 My earliest memories carried no warmth, no parents, no home. I survived the winters by pickpocketing tourists near the historic harbor. I was quick, quiet, and entirely unschooled. But when I was seven, I made the mistake of slipping a vintage Rolex off the wrist of a wealthy young man, only to have his fingers lock around mine before I could run. He wore a bespoke suit that cost more than I could comprehend. Yet, he didn’t yell, and he didn’t call the police. Instead, he knelt on the dirty pavement, held out his hand, and revealed a strawberry hard candy sitting in his palm like a small miracle. He smiled, his eyes warm and steady. “Lynn, I’m so sorry I’m late.” “My name is Christian. I was an old friend of your parents.” “From now on, I’m going to be your guardian. I’ll take care of you forever.” He kept every single promise. He showed up to my parent-teacher conferences, threw hands at the street thugs who tried to corner me, taught me how to hold a salad fork, and sat beside me at the piano until my clumsy fingers could play Chopin. He took a wild, prickly street urchin and carefully molded me into a proper lady fit for the Harrington name. But I got greedy. Being his niece wasn’t enough. I wanted to keep his warmth all to myself, to possess the only light I had ever known. I had planned to tell him the truth on his birthday—to confess that the night we crossed the line wasn’t just a drunken mistake to me. I had even prepared myself for his anger. I figured I would cry, scream, and throw a tantrum the way I used to when I wanted candy, until he finally gave in. But before I could say a word, the family dinner commenced, and he stood up to announce his formal engagement to Serena Mercer, a darling of high society. The entire table fell silent, every eye shifting to me, waiting for the inevitable explosion. But this time, I didn’t scream. I simply reached into my bag and slid a velvet box across the table. When Serena opened it, a pair of natural pink diamonds shimmered under the chandelier, flawless and brilliant. My adoptive mother gasped, her eyes darting between us. “Lynn… those diamonds cost a fortune. Weren’t you saving those to make your own—” “They were always meant for Christian,” I interrupted, my smile perfectly intact, my voice smooth and polite. “A fitting engagement gift for my future aunt.” A flicker of unease crossed Christian’s face. He set his wine glass down, his tone shifting into something between a warning and an old habit of patronizing comfort. “Lynn, when you were younger, I let you get away with your moods. I spoiled you.” “But you’re an adult now. If you cause trouble, I won’t overlook it.” I clenched my fists beneath the tablecloth, keeping my expression bright. “You’re entirely right, Uncle. I won’t let you down.” Christian’s brow furrowed, a lingering sense of doubt hanging over him, but his phone buzzed before he could speak. It was Serena, asking him to step outside to watch the fireworks. He grabbed his overcoat, but as he reached the door, he hesitated and looked back at me. “Lynn, do you want to come with—” “Go ahead, Uncle,” I said, my voice light, urging him forward. “Have a wonderful night with Serena.” He stared at me for a long beat, his expression unreadable, before stepping out into the cold night. The moment the door clicked shut, the smile fell from my face. My adoptive mother looked at me, a deep pity softening her eyes. “Lynn, sweetheart. If you need to cry, just cry.” Instead, I stood up, walked over to her, and knelt by her chair, taking her hands in mine. She gasped, trying to pull me up. “Lynn, what are you doing?” “The Harringtons raised me for nearly twenty years,” I said, my voice quiet and absolute. “I owe this family everything, and I won’t ask for another thing.” “I know the family has been trying to secure a partnership with the Moretti family in Los Angeles but couldn’t find an in. I’ll do it. I’ll marry their youngest son, Dante.” Her face went pale. She gripped my wrists. “Lynn, you want to marry Dante Moretti?!” “Do you have any idea what they say about him? He’s cold, volatile, dangerous. You’re throwing yourself into a furnace!” I didn’t pull away. I just softened my voice. “Those are just rumors, Mom. And besides, isn’t that exactly how everyone here sees me? Volatile? Selfish? A girl who would burn down her own family just to keep other women away from her guardian?” “The Morettis are notoriously private. A marriage alliance is the only way they’ll sign the contract. You and Dad have given me everything. Let me do this for the family.” I laid out the corporate advantages, my eyes clear and steady. My mother stared at me for a long time, her eyes welling with tears, before she reached out to stroke my hair. “If your mind is made up… the Morettis will send a plane for you. The ceremony will be in Los Angeles in two weeks.” Two weeks. I realized the timing with a quiet, bitter sense of irony. My wedding day would be the exact same day as Christian’s engagement party. Mother started fretting, trying to think of what she could prepare. “I haven’t even put together your dowry. I’ll have your father transfer a portion of the company shares to your name—” “I don’t need anything, Mom,” I said gently. “But I do have one request. Please don’t tell Christian about the marriage. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to force his hand, or use this to stop his engagement.” She sighed, unable to argue with the finality in my eyes, and pulled me into a tight embrace. By the time I returned to my bedroom, the sky was beginning to turn a pale, dusty grey. After expediting my visa application online, I collapsed onto the bed, utterly exhausted. I didn’t sleep long. In the haze of early morning, I felt a weight settle on the edge of my mattress. I opened my eyes. It was Christian. He was staring at the floor, his shoulders hunched, his jaw tight with an anger he was trying to keep under lock and key. I had never seen him look so frayed. In all my memories, Christian was a monument of restraint. Solid, immovable, speaking in measured tones even when the world was ending around him. But right now, there was a visible crack in his armor. Before I could speak, he cleared his throat, his voice low and scraping. “Lynn. I’m going to ask you this once.” He looked up, his eyes dark with accusation. “Someone leaked a thread of Serena’s private history and tax records online last night. Was it you?” I didn’t say anything. He stood up, towering over me, his conviction already set in stone. “You’ve hated her since the day she introduced herself. You’ve made her life miserable every time she stepped into this house. And now that the engagement is official, you decide to strike.” “Sabotage is cheap, Lynn. It’s beneath you.” He paused, his voice dropping an octave, as if offering me a final chance to salvage my dignity. “Tell me the truth. How much did you have to do with this?” I propped myself up against the headboard, looking at him. Outside, a morning breeze rustled the curtains, letting in the smell of damp earth. I waited until the silence stretched thin before I spoke. “I didn’t do it.” “Lynn—” “I said, I didn’t do it.” My voice was flat. Empty. It caught him off guard. He had expected me to scream, to cry, or to throw something. He wasn’t prepared for this cold, hollow quiet. He pulled out his phone and thrust the screen in front of my face. “The post went viral at midnight. The timestamp matches the exact hour you locked yourself in your room after dinner.” “You were alone. Nobody saw you. Nobody knows what you were doing on your computer.” I glanced at the screen, then calmly reached out and pushed his hand away. “A correlation in timing doesn’t constitute proof.” “Then who else?” his voice hardened. “Who else would have the motivation to target her right now?” I didn’t bother answering. The question was entirely rhetorical; he had already written the verdict before he walked through my door. I slid out of bed and began folding the blanket with slow, deliberate movements. “Christian.” “Call me Uncle,” he snapped, his voice sharp. I paused for a second, then started again. “Uncle. Are you finished?” His expression faltered, his brow knitting closer together. “What is that supposed to mean?” “Nothing,” I said, standing up and brushing past him toward the vanity. “I just think it’s curious. My guardian sneaks into my bedroom at dawn, not to check on me, but to interrogate me over a internet rumor.” Christian went silent. That silence hurt more than any accusation. I looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face went through a dozen different emotions—confusion, anger, regret—before settling into a cold, distant mask. He averted his eyes. “Serena is extremely distressed. I think it’s best if you take a trip upstate for a couple of weeks. Don’t come back until after the engagement party is over.” Before he could finish the sentence, the bedroom door was violently thrown open.

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On the day of my mother’s second wedding, my new stepfather clapped me on the shoulder with a grin. “He’s a big boy now. Staying in the dorms will build some real character, don’t you think?” My mother kept quiet, her silence acting as her consent. I said, “Fine. I’ll pack my bags tomorrow.” My stepfather blinked, caught off guard by how easily I had folded. The next day, I moved out. By the third day, my dad transferred thirty percent of his company’s shares directly into my name. When my stepfather found out, his face turned a sickly shade of pale. He screamed at my mother over the phone: “Your kid is sitting on millions in assets! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” That was the moment my mother finally realized she’d been played. 01 On the day of my mother’s wedding, they rented out a private room at a local estate house. There were about six tables. My new stepfather, Gary Becker, was in his early forties. His hair was slicked back without a single strand out of place, and he carried a warm, practiced smile that never quite reached his eyes. He walked from table to table, clinking glasses, telling anyone who’d listen, “I struck gold here. Got a beautiful wife and a great son all in one package.” The relatives all laughed, telling my mom how lucky she was to have found such a caring man. I sat in the far corner of the room, picking at a bowl of mixed nuts, saying nothing. After finishing his rounds, Gary walked over and slid into the chair next to mine. He clapped me on the shoulder, giving me that warm, practiced grin. “Thomas, you’re a sophomore now, right?” “Yeah,” I said. “I wanted to run something by you.” He lowered his voice, casting a quick glance around to make sure no one was listening. “The academy has those student dorms, right? You’re a big boy now. Staying on campus would be a great way to build some independence. What do you think?” I looked at him. He was still smiling—that perfectly measured, friendly curve of the lips. Then I looked over at my mother. She was sitting at the head table, her fingers wrapped tight around her fork, staring down at the salmon on her plate. She didn’t look up. She had heard him. The room wasn’t that big; there was no way she hadn’t. But she kept her mouth shut. And silence, in our house, had always meant agreement. I looked back down, popped a cashew into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll pack my bags tomorrow.” Gary blinked. He’d clearly prepared a whole speech—something about how ‘I only want what’s best for you’ and ‘boys need to toughen up.’ Now, he didn’t need any of it. “Oh… well, that’s great,” he stammered, offering a dry chuckle. “No need to rush, though. Take a few days to pack.” “No, tomorrow’s fine.” I stood up, grabbed a can of Coke, and walked out of the room. The hallway was quiet, the muffled laughter of the reception filtering through the heavy doors. I leaned against the cool drywall and took a sip. The soda was lukewarm and flat, sweet to the point of being nauseating. I pulled out my phone and scrolled to a contact. It was saved simply as “Dad.” Our last call was four months ago—he’d called, and I hadn’t picked up. I stared at the name for ten seconds, then slid the phone back into my pocket. I didn’t call. The next morning, I started packing. My room was small—barely a hundred and twenty square feet, with a desk by the window and a couple of physical maps of the US pinned to the wall. I stuffed my clothes into a single suitcase, packed my textbooks into two cardboard boxes, and realized I didn’t have much else. My mother stood in the doorway, watching me. Her hand rested on the doorframe, her mouth opening twice as if to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, she managed, “Do you want to take the heavy comforter? The dorms get drafty in the winter.” “No.” “Well… I’ll transfer your allowance at the beginning of the month.” “Don’t worry about it. I have enough in my account.” She fell silent for a moment, then added, “You can always come back for dinner on weekends.” I hoisted my suitcase and stopped briefly as I passed her. “Bye, Mom.” She let out a soft “Yeah,” her voice barely a whisper. I didn’t look back. I called an Uber to take me to campus. The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Moving out, kid?” “Just boarding.” “What year?” “Sophomore.” “Work hard. Get into a good college.” “I will,” I said. Outside, the September sun was baking the asphalt until it looked soft. I watched the maple trees flash past, neat and orderly. My phone buzzed. A text from my mom: Let me know when you get there. I replied with a quick K. Then I flipped the phone over, face down on my lap. From today on, that room wasn’t mine anymore. And that house probably wasn’t either. 02 The dorms were basic—eight-person rooms with squeaky metal bunk beds. By the time I arrived, the only spot left was the top bunk right next to the door. My roommate, Luke, who slept on the bottom bunk, was in the middle of a game on his phone. He didn’t even look up. “New guy? Top bunk is yours.” “Thanks,” I said. I slid my suitcase under the bed, made my bunk, and that was that. That night, lying in the dark, I stared at a patch of peeling paint on the ceiling, swaying gently in the draft from the window. Below me, Luke shifted, making the metal frame groan. “Hey, man,” Luke said. “Why’d you suddenly move into the dorms mid-semester?” “Things got crowded at home.” “Gotcha.” He didn’t push. I closed my eyes, but all I could see was my mother standing in the doorway. Her fingers had been dug so hard into the wood frame that her knuckles were white. She had wanted to keep me there. She just hadn’t said it. She had chosen Gary instead. My parents divorced when I was in eighth grade. It was simple, really. My dad was always traveling for his trading business, barely home two months out of the year. My mom raised me alone while working full-time, carrying the weight of the household for nearly eight years until she just couldn’t carry it anymore. They didn’t scream or throw things. They just sat down and talked. My mom said, “I’m exhausted.” My dad said, “Alright. You and the boy keep the house.” And that was the end of it. After the divorce, I stayed with my mom. My dad sent child support every month and wired extra money on holidays. Occasionally, he’d call to ask about my grades or if I was eating well, and I’d give him a brief “I’m fine.” We weren’t close. I didn’t hate him; I just didn’t know how to be close to someone I only saw a few times a year. My mom met Gary in March. A coworker had introduced them, saying he was a sales manager at a local firm, divorced, with a son who lived with his ex-wife. She said he was a stable, handy guy who knew how to treat a woman. The first time Gary came over, he brought a couple of nice bottles of wine and some imported fruit. He took off his shoes at the door, and when he noticed the kitchen faucet was dripping, he immediately grabbed a wrench from his car and fixed it. My mom smiled. “You’re pretty handy.” Gary grinned back. “Just basic husband skills.” When he saw me, he offered his hand. “You must be Thomas. Look at you—handsome kid, just like your mom.” I shook his hand but said nothing. After that, he started coming over more often—at least three times a week. He never showed up empty-handed. Brisket one day, fresh salmon the next, test prep books for me the day after. The smiles on my mom’s face grew more frequent. I didn’t object. She had been alone for three years; she deserved someone to keep her company. But the first night Gary stayed over, I walked out to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and heard him talking on the balcony. His voice was hushed, low and conspiratorial. “Don’t worry, everything’s set here. It’s a nice place, three bedrooms, good school district… Just her and the kid. He’s not an issue. Just a teenager, easy to handle.” I stood frozen in the middle of the dark living room, clutching my empty glass. The moonlight cut through the window, throwing a stark, pale square onto the hardwood floor. He didn’t see me. He hung up, yawned, and went back to the bedroom. I stood there for a long time, drank my water, and went back to my room. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I thought about telling my mom. But how could I put it into words? ‘Hey Mom, your new boyfriend thinks I’m “easy to handle” on the phone.’ Would she even believe me? She was finally happy again. If I said something now, she’d only think I was trying to ruin things. So, I kept quiet. They got their marriage license in May and held the reception in September. During those four months, Gary’s smiles around me grew more practiced, and his attentiveness to my mom grew more performative. Once, I came home early from school to grab something and caught him rifling through my mom’s desk drawer. He froze when he saw me, then quickly recovered with a smooth smile. “Your mom asked me to find a bank document. Said she left it in here.” “Oh,” I said. He smiled and slid the drawer shut. But I knew what was kept in that drawer. It was the deed to our house. From that day on, I started keeping my guard up. 03 I didn’t go home for my first weekend at the dorms. My mom called on Friday. “Come home for dinner this weekend. I’m making slow-cooked ribs.” “I can’t. There’s a school event.” “What kind of event?” “A club thing.” She hesitated. “Alright. Make sure you eat well. Don’t starve yourself.” “I won’t.” After hanging up, I sat on my bunk. Luke was eating instant ramen across from me. He looked up. “Not going home?” “No.” “Cool. Let’s shoot some hoops this afternoon.” “Sounds good,” I said. I went back the second weekend. Not because I wanted to, but because I’d left an important physics notebook in my room. I unlocked the front door around two in the afternoon. In the entryway, there was a pair of men’s sneakers—size 10. They weren’t mine. I walked inside and passed my old room. The door was wide open. I stopped dead. My desk was gone. The maps pinned to the wall were gone. The bedsheets had been changed to a blue plaid set that wasn’t mine. Where my desk used to be, there was a sleek new gaming setup with a high-end laptop and a mousepad branded with an esports team logo. On the nightstand sat a framed photo of a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, who bore a striking resemblance to Gary. My room had been completely overwritten. I stood in the doorway, my hand resting on the frame, unable to move. “Thomas? You’re back?” My mom stepped out of the kitchen, her hands dusted with flour. When she saw me standing there, she froze. “Oh…” She nervously rubbed the flour off her hands. “Gary said his son is going to start staying here on weekends. The boy lives with his ex-wife, but he comes by once or twice a month, and we had to give him a place to sleep…” “Where’s my stuff?” “We packed it up and put it in the storage closet. Everything is there, I promise. Nothing was thrown out.” I nodded slowly. “Where is my notebook?” “Which notebook?” “The blue one. My AP Physics notes.” She rushed to the storage closet and rummaged through it. Five minutes later, she pulled it out. There was a faint footprint on the cover. She wiped it with her sleeve. “It must have gotten stepped on when we were moving things.” I took it from her and flipped through the pages. The notes inside were intact. “I’m leaving.” “Stay for dinner! I’m making—” “No, thanks.” I turned and headed for the door. As I reached the entryway, the front door swung open. Gary walked in, followed by a boy. The kid was half a head shorter than me, round-faced, clutching a Starbucks cup. Gary blinked when he saw me, but the salesman smile snapped right back onto his face. “Thomas! You’re back! Perfect timing. This is my son, Zach. You two should get to know each other.” Zach glanced at me, didn’t say a word, and took a sip of his drink. I looked directly at Gary. “Gary, next time you decide to clear out my room, please let me know beforehand.” Gary’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second before recovering. “Ah, look, that was my bad. Your mom said you were boarding now and wouldn’t be back much, so I just… but don’t worry, your things are perfectly safe. We kept everything.” “Right.” I looked down, changed back into my shoes, and walked out with my notebook. I was the only one in the elevator. I stared down at the footprint on my notebook. It was a size 10—the exact same size as the sneakers in the entryway. It hadn’t been “stepped on during the move.” Once outside the building, I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, pulled out my phone, and scrolled to “Dad.” This time, I didn’t hesitate. I pressed call. It rang six times before he picked up. “Thomas?” His voice sounded startled, completely unprepared. “Hey, Dad. Are you busy?” “No, no, not at all. What’s going on?” A wave of words rushed to my throat, but when I opened my mouth, only one sentence came out. “Nothing. Just wanted to see how you were doing.” There was a long pause on the other end. “I’m doing well,” he said softly. “What about you? How are you adjusting to the new school?” “It’s fine.” “And your mom… is everything alright over there?” “Everything’s great.” As I spoke, my fingers gripped the edges of the notebook so hard the paper creaked. “Dad, if you have some time… I’d really like to see you.” Another pause. Then he said, “Name the place and time, Thomas. I’ll be there.” 04 I met my dad at a quiet diner just down the street from campus. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and since I had no classes, I’d gotten permission from my counselor to leave campus, claiming a family emergency. When I walked in, he was already sitting in a booth by the window. Two steaming bowls of chili and some fries sat on the table. He looked thinner than the last time I’d seen him, with more gray in his hair, but his posture was still upright and strong. I slid into the booth, and he handed me a fork. “Eat first. We can talk after.” I took the fork and dug in without speaking. He did the same, but his eyes kept drifting back to me. It was a look I knew well—that cautious, searching gaze that quickly darts away the second you make eye contact. My mom used to look at me the exact same way. Halfway through the meal, he spoke. “You’ve lost weight.” “Dorm food isn’t great.” “Do you need money?” “No, I’m good.” He nodded, looking back down at his plate. I set my fork down. “Dad, my mom got remarried. Did you know?” His hand paused. “I heard.” “His name is Gary Becker. Do you know anything about him?” He looked up. His eyes had changed—the cautious, timid look was gone, replaced by something much heavier and sharper. “I know a few things.” “Like what?” Instead of answering directly, he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “First, tell me what’s going on at home.” I laid it all out for him, from beginning to end. Gary’s hushed phone call on the balcony about me being “easy to handle,” him rifling through the desk drawer for the deed, the sudden push to get me into the dorms on the wedding day, and my room being given to his son the very next week. I spoke in a flat, even tone, like I was reading a textbook. He listened in silence, his fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the table. “Are you absolutely sure about that phone call on the balcony?” he asked. “Positive. Every single word.” He took a deep breath, leaning back against the vinyl booth. “I had someone look into him,” my dad said. I looked up. “He’s not a sales manager. He was laid off from that company three years ago. Right now, he doesn’t have a steady job—just bounces around doing odd contract work. His ex-wife divorced him because he took all of their joint savings and threw it into some sketchy investment scheme that went completely under. She got custody of their son, and he’s been consistently late on child support payments ever since.” My knuckles turned white around my fork. “Does my mom know any of this?” “No.” He nodded, as if he had expected that. “When your mother and I divorced, I left the house to her. It’s worth at least half a million now. On top of that, my business has done very well over the last few years. I’ve wanted to set things up for you, but your mother made it clear she didn’t want me interfering in your life, so I didn’t want to force it.” He reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out a thick manila folder, and slid it across the table. “Take a look.” I opened it. Inside was a stack of legal documents. One was a business registration for his trading company, listing him as the sole proprietor. Another was a share distribution agreement, and there, in bold letters, was my name, listed as holding a thirty-percent stake. Tucked between the papers was a black debit card. “I incorporated the business six years ago, and we started seeing significant profits last year. The company’s net worth is valued at just over three million. That thirty percent belongs to you—I’ve planned on giving it to you since the day you were born. And that card has fifty thousand dollars on it. It’s your college fund. I’ve kept it locked away until now.” I stared at the documents, my fingers trembling slightly. It wasn’t excitement; it was a strange, suffocating pressure in my chest. Six years. When he registered this company, I was only ten years old. That was the year he took me to the beach, and I’d found a smooth, grey stone and given it to him. He’d slipped it into his pocket and said, ‘Dad will keep this safe.’ I’d assumed he threw it away. Years later, I saw that exact stone sitting in his office desk drawer. “Dad,” I said, sliding the folder back. “I can’t take this yet.” He frowned. “Why not?” “The timing is wrong. If I take this now, Gary will notice, and my mom will be caught in the middle. It’ll make things impossible for her.” He studied me for a long moment. “What do you want to do?” “We wait. Let him show his hand first.” He fell silent. The food grew cold, a thin film settling over the gravy on our plates. Finally, he said, “Alright. We’ll do it your way. But if anything happens, you call me immediately.” “I will.” As I stood up to leave, he called out. “Thomas.” I turned back. His mouth opened, as if he wanted to say something meaningful, but he only managed, “Make sure you eat enough.” “I will,” I said. When I stepped out of the diner, the sun was dipping below the tree line, casting long shadows across the pavement. I looked back through the window. He was still sitting in the booth, pulling my half-eaten plate of food toward him, finishing it bite by bite. He looked so old. I turned and walked faster. 05 Over the next two months, I made a point of going home every other weekend. Not because I missed it, but because I needed to keep an eye on things. In mid-October, I went back to grab my winter coat. The moment I stepped through the door, I heard Gary’s voice booming from the living room. “…just a quick turnaround. Three months to get the principal back. I’ll handle my wife’s side of it…” As soon as he saw me walk in, he hung up, his face snapping back into its cheerful mask instantly. “Thomas! You’re back! Come on in, your mom’s in the kitchen.” I kicked off my shoes and walked toward the kitchen. My mom was chopping vegetables, her cuts uneven and rushed. “Hey, Mom.” “Oh, sweetheart! You’re home. Is it cold out?” “A bit. Mom, has Gary been asking you for money lately?” Her hand froze, the knife hovering over a carrot. “Who told you that?” “Just a guess.” She went back to chopping, the blade hitting the cutting board with heavy, rhythmic thuds. “He needs to keep some business cash flowing. It’s not much. Just fifteen thousand.” “And you gave it to him?” “…Yes.” “When?” “Last month.” I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, saying nothing. Fifteen thousand dollars. My mom worked at the local grocery store making minimum wage. That was nearly a year’s worth of savings for her. “What kind of business is it?” “Just business. Don’t worry about adult things, Thomas,” she said, keeping her back to me as she scraped the carrots into a bowl. Her shoulders were incredibly tense, the strings of her apron tied in a tight, messy knot. She wasn’t indifferent to losing that money. She was just terrified of admitting that she might never see it again. During dinner, Gary was insufferably attentive. He kept putting food on my plate, asking about my classes, telling me how “STEM majors are the future.” Zach sat beside him, eyes glued to his phone, ignoring everyone. I noticed a brand-new espresso machine on the kitchen counter—it looked expensive. The TV in the living room had also been upgraded to a massive smart TV. Meanwhile, my mom was wearing the same pilled sweater she’d had for three years. After dinner, I helped her wash the dishes while Gary and Zach watched a game in the living room, the volume turned up high. I lowered my voice. “Mom, has he asked for anything else?” She turned the sink faucet on full blast, the rushing water drowning out my voice. “Just wash the dishes, Thomas.” I didn’t press further. In early November, Luke’s mom came to drop off some extra blankets and left a bag of fresh apples for us. As Luke and I sat on the bleachers by the field eating the apples, he suddenly asked, “Your parents are divorced, right?” “Yeah.” “Same. Just me and my mom. My dad lives out of state, only sends money twice a year.” “Do you hate him?” He thought about it. “I used to. Not anymore. Hating him doesn’t change anything. You just have to live your life.” I chewed on my apple, not replying. “What about you?” Luke asked. “Who do you hate?” I swallowed. It tasted sour. “Nobody.” That night, I sent a text to my dad: Gary borrowed fifteen thousand from my mom. Said it was for business cash flow. He replied instantly: I’m on it. A minute later, another text arrived: Don’t get involved. I’ll handle this. I sent a brief K. Before my screen went dark, I saw the typing bubble on his contact light up, disappear, and light up again. He was writing and deleting, over and over. In the end, he didn’t send anything else. By late November, my mom called. Her tone was different this time—shaky, filled with a forced, fragile excitement. “Thomas, Gary says there’s an investment opportunity at the end of the year. If we put money in now, it doubles. He wants me to cash out my certificate of deposit.” “How much is in there?” “Thirty thousand.” I gripped my phone, my fingernails digging into my palm. Thirty thousand dollars. That was the money my mom had saved over three years of renting out our spare room, combined with the child support my dad had sent. She had scraped it together dollar by dollar. “Mom, don’t do it.” “But he says it’s guaranteed—” “Mom.” I took a deep, steadying breath. “Please. Trust me on this. Do not give him that money.” The line went silent for a long, agonizing moment. Finally, she whispered, “I’ll think about it.” The second she hung up, I called my dad. This time, I didn’t say ‘wait.’ “Dad,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

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I had just finished making a pact with my best friend, Lucy, to apply to Georgetown together once our exam scores came out. And then, my phone rang. It was Lucy—calling from ten years in the future. “Did we make it?” I asked, my voice bubbling with excitement. “Did we get into Georgetown?” “Are we married ten years from now? Did we actually have that double wedding we always promised each other?” “Is my husband Dylan? And is yours as drop-dead gorgeous as a movie star?” In the face of my rapid-fire questions, the line went dead silent. Just for a second. Then, a shaky, trembling breath broke through. “No,” she whispered. “None of it.” “You didn’t get in. You ended up at some mediocre state school. And you never married Dylan.” “We didn’t have a double wedding, either. Because you died the night before I walked down the aisle.” I froze. On the other end, Lucy began to sob. “Erica… I’m so sorry. Dylan and I… we’re so sorry. We were already sleeping together before graduation.” “I was terrified you’d find out. To keep you from coming to Georgetown with us, I logged into your portal and changed your university preferences behind your back.” “I kept it a secret for ten years. You didn’t find out until the night before my wedding.” “You broke down. You jumped into the river. By the time they pulled you out… you were gone.” “I’ve spent countless nights drowning in regret. If I hadn’t done what I did, you’d still be alive…” My hand clenched around the phone, my heart dropping into a cold, bottomless pit. She tried to say more. But in the background, a painfully familiar male voice cut in. “Babe, the baby’s hungry.” Dylan. 1 They actually ended up together. After the call disconnected, I stared blankly at the ceiling for what felt like hours, hot tears slipping down my temples. My phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Dylan. He said his class was having a pre-graduation dinner tonight and asked if I wanted to come. He and Lucy were in AP English; I was in AP Calc. Different classes, but whenever they had group hangouts, they always dragged me along. Dylan and I grew up next door to each other. Lucy moved to our neighborhood later. She was beautiful, and since our homeroom teacher was worried about her walking home alone, she asked Dylan and me to keep her company. From then on, we did everything together. We walked, did homework, grabbed dinners. Even after we ended up in different tracks, we promised to remain a trio. Years of shared history couldn’t be a lie. So how did it turn into this ten years down the road? The weight of that phone call pressed hard against my chest. Stubborn and aching, I typed back a rejection. It’s your class dinner. It’d be weird if I showed up. I’ll pass. The moment I hit send, “Typing…” flashed at the top of the screen. It appeared and vanished, hesitating. A minute later, his reply came: You’re always at our hangouts. Everyone knows you. No one’s going to say a thing. And even if they do, the Crybaby will tear them a new one. You know how she gets when she’s defending people. “Crybaby.” That was his private nickname for Lucy. They had their special names for each other. For me, I was just “Erica.” Or “Erica.” I had actually thrown a tantrum about it once. Back then, Dylan would throw “Crybaby” around constantly, leaving me sitting there like a third wheel, unable to get a word in. It was Lucy who noticed my mood first. She’d stopped teasing Dylan, ran over, and asked what was wrong. When she figured it out, she tapped my forehead gently. “Oh, Erica, don’t be silly. I’ve been trying to shake that awful nickname forever. Why on earth would you want it?” “Besides, you and Dylan are going to end up together after graduation anyway. He’s too busy trying to keep you happy to dare call you something so stupid!” Dylan had nodded along eagerly, backing her up. I let myself be swept up in their sweet words, letting the jealousy fade. But seeing those words on my screen now, the tears I’d managed to stop came rushing back. Feelings don’t change overnight. The seeds of their betrayal must have been planted back then, growing quietly in the dark. Ten minutes later, regret set in. I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that the boy I grew up with could betray me so thoroughly. I ordered an Uber and headed to the venue. When I arrived at the restaurant, the private dining room was alive with laughter and music. I reached for the doorknob, but froze when I heard my name. Lucy’s voice carried clearly through the door, striking me like a physical blow. “Can we please do a different dare? Dylan is literally proposing to his almost-girlfriend tomorrow. It’s so inappropriate for us to kiss right now.” Her voice was coy, drawing a chorus of rowdy teasing from the room. “Oh, please! Like you guys haven’t been making out in the back of the classroom all semester? We can practically hear you guys during study hall!” “Yeah! She’s just the almost-girlfriend, not his wife. It’s your last night of freedom, make it count!” “Exactly! Kiss her! A hundred times if you want!” The rowdy encouragement grew louder. Lucy’s face must have been bright red as she turned to Dylan. Dylan raised an eyebrow, a lazy smirk in his voice. “Once Erica and I are official tomorrow, we won’t have opportunities like this. You sure you want to pass it up?” The tone was light, but the underlying tenderness was unmistakable. While they basked in their mutual heat, I stood on the other side of the wall, my world turning ice-cold. My feet felt glued to the floor. In a moment of pure, masochistic desperation, I forced myself to watch through the crack in the door. Dylan pulled Lucy onto his lap. They leaned in, exchanging a deep, practiced kiss. And when Dylan’s hand began to slip beneath the hem of her skirt— I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned and ran, collapsing on the curb outside, sobbing uncontrollably. With trembling fingers, I dialed the future Lucy back. “Why?” I sobbed into the receiver. “Why did it have to be like this? We were supposed to be best friends!” A long, heavy silence stretched over the line. When she spoke, it was the same three words: “…I am so sorry.” “Erica, I’m not a good person. You looked at me through rose-colored glasses, but the truth is, I never saw you as my best friend.” My breath hitched. The crying stopped instantly. Lucy’s voice was quiet, hollow. “I was always jealous of you. You weren’t flashy, but you were better than me at everything.” “No matter how hard a task was, you handled it beautifully. Meanwhile, I ruined everything I touched.” “My mom, my teachers—they always used you to put me down. Even Dylan only had eyes for you. I wanted so badly to ruin you.” “So, on the day we submitted our college choices, I logged into your portal and changed your preferences. I wanted to make sure your perfect grades only got you into some third-rate state school while we went to Georgetown.” I suddenly remembered a time back in high school when she’d had a massive fight with her mother and got kicked out. I had offered to let her stay at my place. Instead, she had pushed me away like a wild animal, telling me to stop acting like a saint. At the time, I thought she was just stressed. I didn’t think twice about it. Now, the pieces finally fit. She had hated me all along. My voice was raw, barely a whisper. “Do you have any idea how much those applications meant to me?” “I knew. That’s why I chose that exact moment to destroy them. But Erica… do you think I’ve been happy?” “This call… this is my chance to make things right. Erica, please, this time, do not trust me. Okay?” The call cut off again. It took a long time for the fog in my mind to clear. By the time my vision focused, the tears on my face had dried into stiff, salty tracks. She was right. I shouldn’t waste another second of my life on these people. When Dylan came over later that evening, he brought a box of custard buns. “Your parents aren’t home, and I didn’t want you skipping dinner. The Crybaby said these are amazing, so I figured you’d love them. Don’t starve yourself.” He noticed I hadn’t moved, my eyes fixed on the side of his neck. There was a fresh, dark hickey there. A flash of panic crossed his eyes. He quickly covered it with his hand, offering a clumsy excuse. “Man, the mosquitoes in that restaurant were brutal…” “Right,” I said quietly. I took the plastic bag from him. “Thanks.” Then I closed the door in his face. Half an hour later, Lucy texted me. Erica, what’s wrong? Dylan said you seemed off when he dropped off the food. If something’s bothering you, don’t keep it bottled up. You always said I was your therapist! The memory of them in that dining room flashed in my mind, tightening my throat. Lucy sent another text, reminding me to eat the custard buns while they were warm. I looked down at the trash can. Inside, one of the buns had burst open, its yellow filling resembling a mocking, gaping mouth laughing at my stupidity. I absolutely hated custard buns. Neither of them had ever bothered to remember. The next day, I went to the private restaurant Dylan had booked three months in advance. But when he dropped to one knee, holding out a bouquet of lilies, I looked him in the eye and said, “No.” His body froze. He slowly stood up, his face contorting into a sudden, unprecedented rage. “Are you kidding me, Erica?” “We literally planned this! We agreed we’d get together after graduation. What the hell is this?” Lucy, who had been sitting nearby to “witness” the moment, panicked. Her chopsticks clattered onto the table. “Yeah, Erica, Dylan has waited so long for you. Do you have any idea how many girls he turned down over the years? You’re just joking, right?” “If you’re upset about something, just talk to us. There’s no need to hurt Dylan like this. We all know how crazy he is about you.” I didn’t say a word. I just watched them. Finally, a dry, cold laugh escaped my lips. He was “crazy about me,” yet he could pin Lucy against a wall and slide his hands up her skirt? Lucy’s eyes welled with tears. She lowered her head. “I’m sorry, Erica. This is between you two. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. Please don’t be mad at me.” She played the victim flawlessly. I didn’t budge. “Enough!” Dylan snapped. He grabbed Lucy’s wrist, pulling her up from her chair. “You did nothing wrong, Lucy. Why are you apologizing to her?” “She’s been acting like a psycho all day.” He glared at me, his eyes dark with malice. “Let me tell you something, Erica. I offered you a chance, and you threw it back in my face. Don’t you dare come crawling back to me.” With that, he dragged a sobbing Lucy out of the restaurant. The cloying scent of lilies drifted into my nose. The bouquet was left on the empty chair. He had bought her favorite flowers for my proposal, and he still wondered why I said no. My knuckles turned white as I clenched my fists, a bitter wave washing over me. I sat in that empty restaurant until closing time. Dylan blocked my number. For the next few days, not a single word passed between us. I spent every waking hour researching schools and majors, determined to find a path that wouldn’t cross theirs. Before this, my parents had begged me to apply to colleges near where they worked in New York, but I had refused without a second thought. “Dylan, Lucy, and I are a package deal,” I’d told them. “We’re going to Georgetown together.” Truthfully, with my academic record, I could have easily gotten into Columbia. But to accommodate Lucy’s lower scores, I had aimed lower. What a joke. They didn’t deserve my sacrifice. The day before the final application deadline, Lucy and Dylan suddenly showed up at my doorstep. Lucy was holding a small bakery box, offering it like a peace offering. “Don’t take what happened the other day to heart, Erica. Dylan only yelled because he loves you so much and got hurt.” “We can’t let one emotional fight throw away eighteen years of friendship, right?” She nudged Dylan’s arm, prompting him to speak. He offered a couple of half-hearted, reluctant murmurs. Satisfied, Lucy got straight to the point. “We have to submit our final choices tomorrow. Have you decided? We’re still doing Georgetown, right? You didn’t forget our promise?” There was a frantic, desperate gleam in her eyes. Lucy wasn’t smart. She had never been good at hiding her emotions. It was almost funny. Because I had trusted her blindly, it had taken me eighteen years to notice the jealousy dripping from her every word. Taking a sip of water, I looked at her. “I didn’t forget.” Lucy let out a visible sigh of relief. “Great! Let’s go to the computer lab and submit together tomorrow, okay?” She wrapped her arm around Dylan’s as they turned to leave. As soon as the door clicked shut, the future Lucy called again. “Do not eat that cake. It’s laced with heavy-duty laxatives. That’s how she did it last time—you were stuck in the bathroom all morning, which gave her the perfect window to log onto your computer and change your submission.” Even though I had spent days processing her betrayal, hearing this sent a chill straight down my spine. The lengths she would go to destroy me. My stomach churned with sudden nausea. I slumped over the trash can, dry-heaving into the dark. The next morning, I woke up early. I logged onto the portal and submitted my application to Columbia. The entire process took less than an hour. On my way back, I ran into Dylan, who was carrying a bag of breakfast. It was from Lucy’s favorite bakery. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was for. I tried to walk past him, but he grabbed my wrist. He looked at the empty hands where my application folder should have been, his brow furrowing. “Erica, you told Lucy we were going to submit together today. Why did you go behind our backs?” I yanked my arm free, my voice deadpan. “I never promised her anything. Keep your guilt trips to yourself.” Dylan blinked, then nodded, his expression turning cold and accusatory. “I get it. You hate her. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how hostile you’ve been to her lately.” “I hate Lucy?” I let out a dry, incredulous laugh. “Dylan, are you blind or just stupid? She brought me a cake laced with laxatives to make me sick, and you’re accusing me of being hostile?” Dylan froze for a fraction of a second, then immediately shook his head. “No way. She’s too innocent for that. Besides, she has a weak stomach herself; she’d never use something like that to hurt someone.” “You obviously just ate something bad and you’re blaming her sweet gesture. I actually feel sorry for her having to deal with you.” I bit my lower lip so hard the color fled. The defense I wanted to scream died in my throat. Slowly, my shoulders slumped. I turned away. His heart belonged to Lucy. Any explanation I offered would be a waste of breath. I went home and blocked them both. Then, I bought a plane ticket to New York to clear my head with my parents. When I finally returned to school to pick up my physical enrollment packet, I ran into Dylan and Lucy near the courtyard. They were holding hands. Seeing me, Lucy panicked and quickly pulled her hand away. “Erica, it’s not what you think… my hands were just cold, and Dylan was warming them up…” I walked past them without stopping. “I don’t care.” She scrambled to keep up. “You and Dylan love each other! You shouldn’t let a stupid misunderstanding ruin things!” “Who loves him?” I snapped, turning around. “Lucy, if you want him, he’s all yours. Keep me out of it.” She froze. Dylan stepped forward, shielding her behind him, his face dark. “What is your problem, Erica? We’re all going to the same college. We’re going to see each other every day. Do you really have to make things this miserable?” Looking at their unified front, I smiled. “Who said we’re going to the same college?” Dylan frowned, opening his mouth to ask what I meant. But before he could, the guidance counselor called out from across the lawn. “Erica! There you are! You’re the last one to pick up your package!” Before I could move, Dylan bolted past me, snatching the envelope from the counselor’s hands.

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My mother was the unwilling heroine of a dark, toxic love story, and I was the physical proof of her coercion. Even when she and my father eventually settled into a life of quiet devotion, she could never look at me without disgust. She hated me. She despised me. “Every time I look at your face, it brings back those dark days,” she would snarl. “You owe me for this!” “Why does a child born of hate even exist? You are a constant, sickening reminder.” “You are rotten to the core. A parasite. One day, you’re going to drag this entire family down with you.” My father always told me that Mom didn’t truly hate me—she was just struggling to accept me. I believed him. And so, I took every beating and every scream without a word. I even played the fool every day, making myself look ridiculous and dim-witted, just to coax a tiny smile out of her. Until I was eleven, and they had my sister. My sister’s name was Jade. A precious, flawless stone. Staring at her birth certificate, and then looking at my own name, Rue—the regret, the sorrow—I finally woke up. My birth was a complete, unmitigated mistake. My mother had never loved me. She had never even considered trying. But that was fine. I would just have to learn how to stop loving her, too. 1 The nurse handed Jade’s birth certificate to my mother with a warm, genuine smile. “Jade. Such a beautiful, precious name.” My mother gazed at my baby sister wrapped in the swaddling blanket, her face softening into a gentle warmth I had never once seen directed at me. “Thank you,” my mother murmured. “We thought about it for a long time. Jade—like the precious green gem.” My eyes dimmed, and I bit down on my lower lip until it stung. If she was Jade, a precious gem… what was I? My name was Rue. When I was six, my teacher asked us to write an essay about the meaning behind our names. Usually, I loved writing, but that day, I was the only one who didn’t hand it in. Only after the teacher gave me a final warning did I muster up the courage to ask my mother, desperately hoping she would give me some beautiful, hidden meaning. My teacher had shown me the other kids’ essays. Every single name carried their parents’ hopes, their dreams, their love. I wanted that so badly. But she just shoved me away, her eyes flashing with irritation. “It means regret,” she snapped. “It means sorrow, a mistake. Your birth was a mistake! A sin!” That was the first time I couldn’t hold it in. I broke down, sobbing uncontrollably right in front of her. Terrified I would anger her further, my father rushed in and carried me out of the room. He held me and comforted me until my tears finally stopped. He said, “Your mother is just bad at naming things, Rue. Don’t hate her.” I nodded. That night, I stayed up in the dark, searching my dictionary and the internet until I found another meaning: Rue is also known as the herb of grace. It represents strength, clear vision, and healing. It was the first time in my life I had ever lied, and I did it in my essay. I wrote that my mother had named me Rue because she wanted me to grow up strong, wise, and filled with grace. I wrote that she wanted me to overcome any hardship. Later, that essay was chosen as a model of excellence for the school district. But now, looking at the name Jade on my sister’s birth certificate, a quiet ache settled deep in my chest. Some people are born as precious gems, expected and adored from their very first breath. While I had to build a fragile, make-believe world out of lies just to feel a shred of warmth. I couldn’t keep lying to myself. My mother wasn’t bad at naming things. She just hadn’t cared enough to try for me. She wouldn’t spare me even a crumb of love. Yet, I still harbored a desperate, foolish hope. I reached out, tugging gently on my parents’ sleeves, and whispered, “Can I change my name?” “I don’t need a brand-new name. I can just share Jade’s theme. Can I be Ruby?” My father looked at the raw hope in my eyes, his face softening with pity. He turned to my mother, hesitating. “Maybe… maybe we should change it, Becca? Ruby matches Jade. They could grow up supporting each other, like sisters should.” My mother’s perfect brow furrowed in immediate disgust. “A bastard born of hate doesn’t deserve to share a name with our precious Jade.” “Besides, who wants her support? A damaged, rotten thing like her… we’ll be lucky if she doesn’t grow up to poison her sister.” My heart withered, and a faint, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I had never done anything bad in my life. But in my mother’s eyes, I was always the villain. If something went missing, she accused me of stealing it. If a dress was torn, she said I ruined it. Even when the flowers on the balcony withered, she claimed my ‘bad energy’ killed them. I realized then that my father was wrong. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to love me. She despised me. She hated me. Having someone you hate constantly lingering in your sight is annoying. But having the person you love despise you is a slow, agonizing death. For everyone’s sake, I filled out the application my teacher had given me for the elite boarding school across the state. It was a strict, military-style academy with the best academic reputation, but it was hours away, and students were only allowed to leave during major holidays. When I got home that afternoon, my father waited until my mother was in the other room before slipping a few chocolate bars into my hands. “I bought these specifically for you, sweetie. Eat something sweet, and you’ll feel better.” “A name is just a label, Rue. It doesn’t define who you are. Don’t let it get to you.” “Your mother and I read your essay. It was beautiful. From now on, that’s exactly how we’ll think of your name, okay?” My hands trembled slightly with a sudden, overwhelming wave of joy. I didn’t know my mother had actually read my essay. Maybe she did care about me, deep down. Maybe she was just terrible at showing it. The dark cloud that had hung over me all morning evaporated instantly. I grabbed my writing journal from my desk, looking up at my father like a puppy eager for praise. “Dad! Look at my latest essay. Don’t you think it’s really good?” He took the notebook, scanning it briefly before giving me a warm pat on the head. “Very good, sweetie. You have a real gift with words.” I beamed, rummaging through my backpack. “And guess what? This one won—” Suddenly, a sharp, piercing cry echoed from the nursery. My father stiffened. His hand slipped, and my journal clattered to the floor, face down. “What’s wrong with Jade?” he cried, panic written all over his face as he bolted down the hallway. “What happened?” Only after checking every inch of my sister did he let out a long, ragged sigh of relief. “She’s not hungry, and her diaper is dry. Did you just miss Mommy and Daddy, sweetheart?” My mother’s voice drifted out, softer than silk. “Mommy and Daddy are right here, baby. No more tears. Look, watch Daddy make a silly pig face. Isn’t he funny?” Soon, the bright, ringing laughter of a happy family of three floated out of the nursery. I stood in the exact same spot for an hour, frozen like a ghost. Nobody remembered I was there. I pressed my hands tightly over my ears, but the laughter still clawed its way in, sharp and agonizing. Finally, I knelt and picked up my journal. The tears had already smudged the ink of my essay. The words of my secret achievement died in my throat. Dad, my essay won first place in the entire state. It was an essay about our family. Dad, when Mom is in a good mood, do you think you could show it to her? Using my sleeve, I wiped my face hard and locked myself in my bedroom. I pulled out one of the chocolate bars my father had given me and took a bite, desperate for the sweetness to drown out the pain. Within minutes, my lips began to swell, burning intensely. I looked at the wrapper. It was pineapple-flavored. My face went pale as I checked the rest of the chocolates. Every single one of them was filled with pineapple. He said he bought them specifically for me. So how could he forget that I am severely allergic to pineapple? I quietly dug through my drawer, found my emergency allergy medication, and swallowed it dry. I knew better than to tell my parents. When I was four, I had run a dangerous fever, vomiting and sweating through my sheets. When my mother finally touched my burning forehead, there was no fear or worry in her eyes. Only a deep, exhausting resentment. “Can you go one day without causing trouble?” she had spat. “Your body is so weak because I was miserable the entire time I was pregnant with you. Having you is just a never-ending punishment.” From that day on, I learned to find my own medicine when I was sick, ensuring I never, ever became a burden to her again. On my way back to my room, I passed the master bedroom. My parents were whispering, planning Jade’s one-month celebration. Who to invite, what catering to choose, how to decorate the venue, which host to hire. I stood in the shadow of the hallway, listening hungrily, pretending they were planning something for me. How beautiful it must feel to be loved like that. A month passed in a blur. At the center of the grand banquet hall stood a massive, beautifully frosted tiered cake. Next to it was a life-sized sign featuring my father, my mother, and baby Jade, with the words: Welcome to the world, our beautiful Jade! I stared at it with aching envy. My parents had never once celebrated my birthday. Because, as my mother always said, my birth brought nothing but suffering. I didn’t deserve to be celebrated. Yet, a small, selfless part of me was glad. I was glad Jade was born at a time when our parents were happy. I was glad she would never know the coldness of being hated by her own mother. I stared at the cake, swallowing hard, breathing in the sweet scent of vanilla and sugar, imagining what the rich, velvety cream would taste like. A passing guest sneered at me, whispering to her friend, “Whose kid is that? So greedy and ill-mannered.” I recognized her. She was a member of my mother’s yoga class. But she had no idea I existed. My mother never posted photos of me on social media; even if a sliver of my shadow appeared in the background of a photo, she would blur it out completely. My face burned crimson. I stepped back, my voice caught in my throat, wanting to say: I’m their daughter, too. But looking at the perfect family of three on the sign, the words died. Giving the cake one last, lingering look, I slipped backstage to find my parents. They were taking professional portraits of Jade. One moment they dressed her in tiny angel wings; the next, they placed her in a rustic basket like a precious little nestling. I had never had a professional photo taken. I watched them, my chest aching with a deep, childish longing. I wanted to walk over, but then I looked down at my faded, tight-fitting clothes. I was eleven now; I had already developed a fragile sense of pride and shame. I knew my clothes were old, small, and unflattering. Usually, I tried to ignore it, but standing in this glittering hall, the shame was suffocating. Just as I turned to slip away, my father called out to me. “Rue! Come here, let’s take a family photo.” In an instant, my world lit up. “Me? Can I really be in it?” A family photo. With me? My father reached out and patted my head. “Of course, sweetie. We’re a family, aren’t we?” I glanced timidly at my mother. She merely scoffed and turned her head away, but she didn’t say no. That was enough. I forced a bright, eager smile and stepped into the camera’s frame. I knew it! The sign outside didn’t have me because they must have just forgotten, or maybe because I was at school when they designed it! Once the flash went off, I was dizzy with excitement. I nervously wrung my fingers together and looked at my mother. “Mom, my teacher said I got accepted into the elite academy. But… if you don’t want me to go…” The enrollment form was signed, but I hadn’t turned it in yet. I was still holding on. In that moment, I knew that if my mother showed even the slightest hint of wanting me near, I would throw the form away and choose the local school. But before I could even finish my sentence, she shoved me aside roughly. “Go or stay, why would I care? Do whatever you want. I don’t give a damn.” “Now get out of here. Don’t you dare ruin your sister’s celebration.” I stumbled out of the room, my nose stinging with hot tears. For a fleeting second, I had actually thought she was starting to accept me. But it was okay. At least we were a family. At least I would have this photo. As I stood in the hallway, wondering if I could ask the photographer to print a small copy of the family photo for my desk, I heard voices from inside the dressing room. “Delete the ones with the older girl,” my father’s voice said. “If my wife sees them when she’s having a bad day, she’ll lose her temper again.” The photographer sounded confused. “If you’re just going to delete them, why did you invite her to join in the first place?” My father let out a heavy, weary sigh. “She’s getting older. If we don’t throw her a bone once in a while, she’ll start acting out.” “Do you think I like looking at her? Every time I see her face, I’m reminded of my own failures, of the terrible things I did to Becca.” “But we have to manage her. If she feels completely unloved, she might develop psychological issues, and that will only trigger Becca’s trauma. Giving her a little pity keeps her stable. It’s for the best.” Ah. So it was pity. It was a calculated performance, not love. Suddenly, I thought of Mrs. Gable, my fifth-grade teacher who always looked out for me. She would always frown and ask if I was eating enough, and the next day, she would bring me into her office to share a home-cooked lunch. I thought of the elderly couple next door. Whenever I was locked out of the house, they would take me in, run a warm bath, dress me in clean clothes, and call me their sweet girl. Only now did I realize how utterly hollow my father’s kindness had always been. He had never truly stood up for me. He watched silently as my mother tore me down, only playing the gentle savior afterward to ease his own guilt. In that entire house, there was not a single soul who cared. A wave of pure, physical nausea washed over me. I felt sick to my stomach. The very next morning, I submitted my enrollment form to the boarding academy. After passing the entrance exams, I was officially admitted. It wasn’t until move-in day that my father finally realized he didn’t even know which school I was attending. “Oh,” he said, looking at the address. “It’s so far. You won’t be able to come home on weekends.” I nodded quietly. “I’m staying in the dorms full-time. I won’t be back until the summer.” My mother slammed her fork onto the table with a deafening clatter. “Do you see this? A child born of hate is inherently cold-blooded. She can’t wait to abandon us.” “Ungrateful brat. Good riddance. I feel sick just looking at you.” I stood by the door, my knuckles turning white as I gripped my backpack straps. “Then you won’t have to look at me ever again.” And I meant it. Aside from the mandatory school closures during the winter holidays, I never went back. At first, the silence in my dorm room was agonizing. I would lie awake wondering if my birth really was a curse, if I truly was the bad seed my mother claimed I was. But soon, the grueling academic workload consumed my every waking hour. I had no time left to grieve them. Slowly, a beautiful thing happened: I realized I didn’t need their love anymore. And just like that, I stopped loving them back. I didn’t return for a prolonged stay until the summer after my middle school graduation. When my mother saw me, a flicker of surprise—perhaps even a passing shadow of guilt—crossed her face. “You’ve grown so tall,” she remarked quietly. “Yes,” I replied, my voice completely flat. “I’m five-foot-five.” “Oh,” she murmured, and the conversation died. During that stay, I noticed her hostility toward me had dulled significantly, though she still treated me with a cold, distant indifference. I only spoke when spoken to. Jade was growing up, too. She was sweet, and for some reason, she adored the quiet older sister she barely knew. She would drag her favorite toys to my room, offering them to me with wide, innocent eyes. “Rue-Rue, hold me!” she would squeak. But I rarely got to hold her for long. My mother was always hovering, watching me like a hawk, convinced I was waiting for the perfect moment to hurt her precious child. She would snatch Jade out of my arms, glaring at me with raw suspicion. “Don’t touch her!” Clasping Jade tight, she would whisper loudly as she walked away, “She’s dirty, sweetie. Touching her will make you sick.” “Don’t call her your sister. She is not a part of this family.” Not a part of this family. Years ago, those words would have shattered me. Now, they didn’t even leave a scratch. After my mother left the room, my father sighed. “Rue, your mother is just…” “Just very protective of Jade,” I finished for him, cutting him off. Toddlers are easily distracted, and Jade’s attention soon drifted to the grand piano in the living room. Recognizing her interest in music, my parents had spent a small fortune on a custom Steinway and hired the most prestigious instructors in the city. To be honest, her playing was terrible; she had absolutely no musical talent. But my parents would sit there, listening as if she were Mozart, showering her with endless, creative praises. They had never done that for me. Throughout my life, I had consistently ranked at the top of my class. Whenever I brought home a perfect report card, my mother would look at it and sneer, “Don’t get cocky. Someone will humiliate you next semester.” My father would offer a quick, performative smile before tossing the paper aside. “Great, great.” I pulled myself out of the memory. It didn’t matter anymore. Those old wounds had turned to stone. During my high school years, I practically erased myself from their lives. I spent short breaks at school, and during the long summer vacations, I worked long hours at local diners and bookstores, leaving before they woke and returning long after they had gone to sleep. Sometimes, my father would secretly try to slide some cash into my pockets. I took it. My mother only allowed me fifty dollars a week, claiming that giving me any more would turn me into a delinquent. The day after my high school graduation, I packed my bags and took a summer job at a summer camp that provided room and board. I stayed there until it was time to leave for college. I went back to the house one last time to retrieve my old academic certificates and writing awards. I wanted to take my history with me. As I walked up the driveway, I saw Jade playing in the yard. She looked up, her face lighting up with a brilliant smile. “Rue! You’re back!” “I’m trying to build a swing. Can you help me?” I looked at the crooked wooden board and the dangerously loose knots she had tied around the tree branch. With a sigh, I stepped forward and began tying the rope securely to the sturdy frame. Jade pointed upward. “Tie it higher, Rue! Higher!” “No, that’s too dangerous. This height is perfect.” She pouted. “Just a little higher, please?” I checked my watch; it was already five in the afternoon. She would only play out here for another hour before it got dark and she had to go inside for dinner. By tomorrow, she would have moved on to some other game. I told her I had to pack my things and warned her strictly not to touch the ropes myself. Back in my old room, I gathered my certificates. In the back of the closet, I found a cheap, painted piggy bank. I remembered it. I was four or five when my parents took me to a local carnival, and my father had won it for me. My mother had been in an unusually good mood that day, almost gentle. It was one of the very few warm memories of my childhood. After a moment of hesitation, I wrapped it in a sweater and packed it into my suitcase. I decided I would say a formal goodbye before I left. At the very least, they should know which city I was moving to. Just as I zipped my suitcase, a sickening, heavy thud echoed from the yard. Then came Jade’s piercing, terrified scream. My heart dropped. I bolted out of the house. One side of the swing’s rope was dangling uselessly in the air. Jade was sprawled on the grass, her face scraped and bleeding. Her nose was already swelling, and she had bitten through her lip, blood pouring down her chin. My mother was already there, cradling Jade, her face pale with horror. Before I could utter a single word of explanation, a vicious slap struck my cheek, the force of it throwing me hard against the dirt. My mother’s eyes were wild, bloodshot with rage. She struck me again and again. “I knew it! I knew you would try to kill her! You sick, evil monster!” “I should have smothered you the day you were born! Why won’t you just die?!” My father stood behind her, his face dark with disappointment. “I really wanted to believe you were a good kid, Rue. But you are rotten to the core.” “It wasn’t me!” I screamed, tasting blood. “She untied the ropes herself and tried to make it higher! I told her not to touch it!” My mother let out a cold, manic laugh. “Fine! You want to play innocent? I’ll give you a chance.” “Jade, tell Mommy the truth. Did you touch the ropes after Rue left?” Jade looked at me, her eyes wide with terror and guilt. She looked back at our mother’s furious face, panicked, and slowly shook her head. My mother turned back to me, her voice dripping with venom. “What else do you have to say for yourself?” My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I wanted to tell them to check the security camera in the yard. But I realized it was pointless. They had already written the script. I was the monster. Nothing I said would ever change their minds. My mother handed the crying Jade to my father, then stormed into my bedroom. Within seconds, my belongings were being hurled out into the yard. My cheap piggy bank shattered against the concrete, its ceramic shards mixing with my old essays and certificates. My mother pulled a lighter from her pocket and struck a flame, dropping it onto the pile of my childhood. As the fire flared up, a wild, suffocating anger took hold of me for the first time in my life. I screamed at them, my voice cracking with years of unshed tears: “If you hated me so much, why didn’t you just abort me?!” “Why do I have to carry the weight of your hatred? How am I the guilty one here?!” “I didn’t choose to be born! You two are the ones who are sick! You are disgusting!” My mother flinched, a sudden, rare look of bewilderment crossing her face. But the anger in me died as quickly as it had flared, leaving only a cold, hollow emptiness. I looked at them, my voice dropping to a whisper. “This is the last time I will ever call you my parents.” “I am done.” I turned my back on them and picked up my suitcase. “Rue!” my mother screamed after me. “What do you think you’re doing? If you walk out that gate today, don’t you ever think about coming back!” I didn’t look back. “Good,” I said. And I walked out into the evening light.

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On the afternoon of my college graduation, I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw a post from a local wedding photographer. Ten years in the business, and this is a first! A couple skipping their college graduation to shoot their wedding portraits! Not only are they drop-dead gorgeous, but the bride was entirely focused on her groom’s comfort the whole time. She kept saying that marrying him was the greatest luck of her life. My camera’s memory card is maxed out, but capturing a love like this? Totally worth it. A dull ache throbbed behind my ribs. Earlier today, my girlfriend, Cecilia, had bailed on our graduation ceremony at the last minute. We hadn’t even taken a single photo together in our caps and gowns. Swallowing my disappointment, I tapped on the photo, expecting to see a stranger’s happy ending. My eyes landed on their faces. The air vanished from my lungs. One of them was Cecilia. The girl I had loved for four years. The girl who told me we would get married the second we both landed stable jobs. The other was Jace. My best friend. The golden boy of our graduating class. Just two hours ago, Jace had been texting me, telling me that there were plenty of fish in the sea, that if Cecilia couldn’t make time for my graduation, I should just dump her. And now, here he was. Fingers laced with my girlfriend’s, looking every bit the man about to step into his happily ever after. … 1 I stared at the screen until the edges of the photo blurred and doubled. My phone buzzed frantically. Our senior class group chat was exploding. Wait, since when are Cecilia and Jace a thing? Ngl, Jace looks incredibly hot in a tux. Cecilia looks gorgeous too, but isn’t she dating Gilbert? Love triangle much? A sharp, electric pain shot through my chest. My fingers trembled so violently I could barely type as I opened Jace’s chat. Are you with Cecilia? Read at 4:12 PM. No reply. I hit the call button on Cecilia’s contact. The dial tone stretched out—fifteen seconds that felt like a slow, agonizing century. Finally, a click. “Gilbert? What’s wrong?” I dug my nails into my palm, fighting to keep my voice from breaking. “Where are you? I need to ask you something.” I have chronic asthma, and whenever my emotions spike, my throat tightens, leaving my voice a raspy wreck. Cecilia always used to notice. She’d show up at my dorm with thermos cups of hot honey tea, rubbing my back until the tightness faded. Now, hearing the gravel in my voice, a note of panic slipped into hers. “What is it? Are you having trouble breathing again?” “Are you with Jace?” Before I could even finish the sentence, Cecilia let out a sharp gasp. Her breath hitched. “Gilbert, I—I’m tied up right now. I’ll call you later!” The line went dead. I stood frozen in the middle of my dorm room, the silence ringing in my ears. She had hung up fast. But not fast enough. In that split second before the call dropped, I heard it. A man’s low, breathless chuckle. Jace. The blood rushed to my head in a roaring wave. I dialed again. It went straight to voicemail. By the time my brain caught up with my body, I was already sprinting across campus. Jace lived off-campus in a luxury townhouse his parents had bought him freshman year. He had programmed my fingerprint into his smart lock himself. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the gesture, but he had just laughed, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “Man, I know how easily you get played,” he had said. “Consider my place your safe haven. We’re brothers.” Now, I was standing in the foyer of my brother’s safe haven, tears blurring my vision. The rhythmic thud against the headboard upstairs. The muffled moans. It was like taking a baseball bat to the skull. I practically ripped the bedroom door off its hinges. Jace was standing by the bed, pulling up his slacks. He didn’t flinch. He just looked at me, an amused smirk playing on his lips, and raised an eyebrow. “Well. Busted.” On the bed, Cecilia frantically pulled the sheets up, her face pale with panic. “Gilbert, please, it’s not what you think—” But the roaring in my ears drowned her out. My eyes were fixed on the massive, framed engagement portrait already leaning against the wall. A year ago, we had watched a viral wedding video, and I had absentmindedly murmured that I couldn’t wait for us to have photos like that. Cecilia hadn’t said much. But the next day, she handed me a gift box containing a silk tie. “Gilbert, I can’t afford a whole custom suit for you right now,” she had said, her cheeks flushed. “But when I get my promotion, I promise I’m going to buy you the sharpest tuxedo in the city. You’re going to be the most handsome groom.” Now, I was nothing but a spectator to her actual wedding. The white tulle of her dress in that portrait looked like spun glass, sharp enough to bleed me out. I lunged forward, grabbed the heavy frame, and smashed it onto the hardwood floor. Glass shattered, biting deeply into my palms. Blood dripped onto the pristine white rug. Cecilia scrambled off the bed, grabbing my bleeding wrist, her voice shrill. “Are you crazy?! You’re hurting yourself!” I shoved her away, a visceral roar tearing from my throat. “Don’t touch me!” Jace, still shirtless, stepped between us. He looked at me with bored pity. Every ounce of heartbreak inside me crystallized into pure venom. I ground my teeth. “How does it feel, Jace? Fucking your best friend’s girl? Are you that pathetic that you have to take my leftovers?” Jace’s jaw clenched. He swung, his fist connecting squarely with my jaw. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. He let out a cold laugh. “Jesus, Gilbert. Stop being so dramatic.” “Don’t touch him!” Cecilia shoved Jace hard, turning frantically to check my bruised face. The strap of her silk slip fell from her shoulder, revealing a constellation of fresh, dark bruises blooming across her collarbone. Jace stumbled back, but he didn’t look mad. He just looked at me with utter contempt. “Cecilia and I are merging our families’ portfolios,” Jace said, brushing off his shoulder. “It’s a corporate marriage. It’s strictly business. You two can keep playing house for all I care. Honestly, I’m being the best friend you could ask for. I’m letting you sleep with my future wife, and you’re throwing a tantrum?” I stared at him, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “Merging portfolios?” Jace came from new money—a flashy, affluent background that had everyone on campus eager to get into his orbit. But Cecilia? She came from a standard, middle-class family. She couldn’t even make our graduation today because she was supposedly working a double shift at her entry-level desk job. Just weeks ago, I had joked about when we were going to turn our dating anniversary into a wedding anniversary. She had buried her face in my chest, laughing. “Once they take me off probation at work! I need to save up my own money so I can walk down the aisle with my head held high. You just focus on your career, Gilbert. I’m going to be the most beautiful bride.” Seeing the sheer confusion on my face, Jace burst out laughing. “God, Gilbert, you are even dumber than I thought.” He pointed a finger at Cecilia, his eyes gleaming with cruel delight. “She’s Cecilia Whitmore. Sole heiress to Whitmore Enterprises.” The room spun. “The whole school knew by the end of freshman year,” Jace continued relentlessly. “She bought everyone’s silence. She wanted to play ‘poor little rich girl,’ and you were the perfect, clueless prop. The guy she lived with every day, and you didn’t suspect a thing. You’ve been playing the idiot for four years.” The tears finally broke, spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. I swiped at them, but they kept coming. “Stop it, Jace! That’s enough!” Cecilia yelled, her voice cracking. She reached up, desperate to wipe the tears from my face. I stumbled backward, putting as much space between us as the room allowed. I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt absolutely nothing but a hollow void. “Is it true? You’ve been lying to me since day one?” Cecilia fell silent. For a long moment, she just looked at the floor. Then, she let out a long, heavy exhale. “Jace is right. I am a Whitmore.” Her tone was apologetic, yet beneath it, I could hear the unmistakable relief of a burden lifted. “That necklace you bought me for my birthday last year? I told you I didn’t want to wear it because it was too precious. The truth is, it turned my skin green. It was cheap. I hid my identity because I didn’t want you to be like every other guy, looking at my trust fund instead of me. Gilbert… you couldn’t even recognize the designer labels I wore. How could I ever actually marry you? I’d be the laughingstock of my social circle.” I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper. My entire chest went numb. For four years, I had worked myself to the bone. Every spare hour between classes was spent bussing tables or tutoring. Cecilia knew my mother was sick. She knew I needed the money for her medical bills. She would sneak twenty-dollar bills into my wallet, then delete the Venmo notifications so I wouldn’t feel emasculated. Once, during a brutal summer heatwave, I caught her handing out flyers in a heavy, sweltering mascot suit outside a car dealership. She was practically dizzy from dehydration. I was devastated, begging her to quit. But she had just smiled brightly, wiping sweat from her forehead. “I’m not doing this for you, dummy! I’m saving up my dowry!” For her birthday, I ate instant ramen for three months to afford a delicate, niche-brand necklace. I was poor, so I used the only currency I had: my absolute sincerity. She was rich. So she used her money to test mine. Jace looked at me with mock sympathy. “Gilbert, you need to know your place. The Whitmore family practically owns half this state. You really think they’d let her marry a guy who scrubs dishes for minimum wage? I tried to tell you to find someone in your own tax bracket. Too bad you never listened.” A memory flashed: Jace telling me I was too obsessed with my girlfriend, that I needed to remember the brotherhood. But he had always covered my tab when we went out. He’d slip me extra cash, claiming it was a “delivery fee” for picking up his packages. I thought it was brotherly love. It was just charity. A wave of profound humiliation washed over me, burning my skin. I lunged forward, shoving Cecilia away. “You’re both disgusting!” I roared. Cecilia stumbled but quickly recovered, grabbing my arm and pulling me into a tight, suffocating hug. She spoke in that gentle, soothing tone she always used when I was stressed. “Shh, Gilbert, don’t cry. You’re the Valedictorian. You have to give your speech tomorrow. Honestly, it works out perfectly. You and Jace are best friends. We’ll basically be a family. You’ll never have to worry about your mother’s hospital bills again.” Jace leaned lazily against the wall, snorting. “Honestly, if I thought some random guy marrying you would hurt Gilbert’s career later, I never would have agreed to this merger. Don’t worry, man. Our brotherhood comes first. You and Cecilia can keep dating. My marriage to her is just ink on paper.” I shoved Cecilia backward so hard she hit the mattress. Then I turned and drove my fist into Jace’s face with everything I had left. “Go to hell!” I ran. I sprinted out of the townhouse, out into the humid evening air. Cecilia didn’t follow me. The next morning, I walked into the university auditorium. My eyes were swollen shut, my face pale and haggard. Before I could even find my seat, someone in the aisle recognized me. “Holy shit. Is that the guy who got cucked by his own best friend?” Before I could process the words, a hand clamped onto my arm, dragging me into a quiet hallway. It was Cecilia. Her eyes were blazing. “Jace is your best friend. How could you do that to him?!” she hissed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” I yanked my arm away. Cecilia sneered, shoving her phone into my face. On the university’s anonymous Reddit forum, a post had thousands of upvotes. Someone had uploaded photos of Jace, claiming he had befriended a poor student just to sleep with his girlfriend. The comments were tearing Jace apart. Cecilia looked at me with sheer disgust. “Jace and I are just a corporate merger! Did you have to make this so incredibly ugly? He never looked down on you. He paid for half your meals! And this is how you repay him? You’re a parasite, Gilbert.” I told her I didn’t write the post. I didn’t care enough to write the post. But she just shook her head. Through the double doors, the Dean called my name to come to the stage. Cecilia took a step back, her voice dropping to a glacial whisper. “You’re going to regret this.” The commencement was being live-streamed to thousands of alumni. I forced myself to breathe, walking out to the center of the stage. I adjusted the microphone. I opened my mouth to speak. Suddenly, a voice roared from the back of the auditorium. “Get him off the stage! He’s a fraud!” “Expel him!” I flinched. Turning around, I looked at the massive projector screen behind me. Instead of my prepared slides, the screen displayed bank transfers, chat logs, and emails. They were entirely fabricated documents “proving” that I had hired ghostwriters for my senior thesis and bribed an administrator to secure the Valedictorian spot. The auditorium erupted into chaos. I gripped the podium. “This is a lie! I didn’t do this!” But the university administration panicked. The microphone was cut dead. Security guards marched onto the stage, grabbing me by the arms, dragging me off in front of a sea of booing parents and students. Backstage, Cecilia stood leaning against a brick wall, her arms crossed, watching me with dead eyes. I clenched my jaw, fighting the tears threatening to spill. “Is this what you wanted? To destroy my life?” Through the blur of my vision, I remembered the way she had looked at me when we found out my mother’s illness had returned. Her eyes had been so full of tears. “Gilbert, I’m going to work so hard. I’ll pay for Martha’s treatments. I just want you to marry me without any burdens.” Now, the woman standing in front of me was a stranger. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. “The best way to kill a PR crisis is to start a bigger one. If you hadn’t posted that hit piece about Jace, I wouldn’t have had to do this. You brought this on yourself, Gilbert.” By noon, my thesis was voided. My degree was officially revoked. I slumped against the wall of a campus alleyway, entirely broken. My phone vibrated violently in my pocket. Dozens of texts poured in. Backstabbing piece of shit. You framed Jace because you’re insecure. Kill yourself. I looked up. Jace was standing at the end of the alley, hands in his pockets, shrugging. “Gilbert, we’ve known each other for a decade. You know I don’t just sit back and take a hit.” When we were five, a group of older kids had cornered me in the sandbox. Jace had thrown rocks at them until they ran. When we were twelve, a convenience store owner accused me of stealing and locked me in the back room. Jace had thrown his heavy backpack at the man’s head, grabbed my shirt, and pulled me to safety. “Brothers for life,” he had panted, grinning. When we were eighteen, Jace gave up his lacrosse scholarship to spend six months studying with me, just so we could get into the same university. “You’re too soft, man,” he had joked. “Someone’s gotta watch your back.” Now, the boy who used to watch my back looked at me like I was a cockroach. “I’ve never been humiliated like this,” Jace said smoothly. “You stabbed me in the back on that forum. You got the whole school dragging my name. You had to pay the toll. It’s only fair.” It was Jace who had posted the rumors about himself. He played the victim, then released the “proof” that he and Cecilia had been engaged for months, painting me as the delusional, toxic ex who couldn’t let go. Seeing the dead, hollow look in my eyes, a flicker of hesitation crossed Cecilia’s face. She opened her mouth, stepping forward. Before she could speak, my phone rang. It was my mother. Her voice was thin, trembling like a leaf. “Gilbert… are you… did you ruin another man’s relationship?” The world stopped spinning. “Mom. No, I didn’t…” Before I could finish, a sharp, gasping wheeze came through the receiver, followed by the clattering sound of the phone hitting the floor. Then, nothing. Panic seized my chest. “Mom?! Mom!” Since the winter, my mother’s heart condition had deteriorated rapidly. She had been in the ICU three times. I had turned down a master’s program just to get a corporate job immediately, desperate for the health insurance to keep her alive. I sprinted to the hospital like a madman. By the time I reached her room, the monitors were screaming. Doctors were already running in. Through the chaos, she looked at me, her chest heaving violently. “Gilbert… tell me you didn’t do it…” Her eyes rolled back. The flatline tone pierced the air. “I didn’t! Mom, I swear I didn’t!” I screamed, dropping to my knees as the nurses shoved past me, wheeling her bed toward the surgical wing. I ran to the billing department, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I pulled out my debit card to authorize the emergency surgery deposit. The clerk swiped it. She frowned. She swiped it again. “Sir, this card is declining. The balance is zero.” “That’s impossible.” Every dime of my academic grants for the last four years was in that account. I had never touched it. I turned around. Jace was walking into the lobby, feigning surprise. “Oh, right. I forgot to mention,” Jace said lazily. “I had a chat with the financial aid office. Since you were expelled for academic fraud, they retroactively revoked your grants. Seized the funds. Best to leave that money for students who actually deserve it.” Tears streamed down my face. I pulled out my phone, dialing the HR director of the tech firm where I was supposed to start on Monday. I begged for an advance on my signing bonus. The response was glacial. “Mr. Joshua, we’ve received multiple reports regarding your disciplinary expulsion. Our offer of employment is formally rescinded.” The click of the phone hanging up felt like a bullet to the chest. I snapped. I lunged at Jace, grabbing him by the collar of his designer shirt, screaming, “What did I ever do to you?! Why are you doing this?!” Cecilia, having just walked through the sliding glass doors, saw me. She rushed over, tearing my hands off Jace and shoving me back. Her eyes blazed with fury. “I already had my assistant pay the hospital bill! Why the hell are you attacking Jace?!” I stumbled backward, the ground tilting beneath my feet. “Apologize to him,” Cecilia commanded, her voice cold and absolute. I looked up at her, the woman I had loved, entirely unrecognizable. She wrapped a protective arm around Jace. “He is my husband. You attacking him over and over is crossing a line I won’t tolerate. Apologize to him until he says it’s enough. Otherwise, I will walk over to that desk and withdraw the funding for your mother’s surgery right now.” Jace let out a soft, mocking laugh. “An apology is boring.” He looked down at me. “Remember our rule when we were kids, Gilbert? Whoever breaks the rules has to take a punishment. Get on your knees and beg. Then we’re square.” I thought of my mother. Her frail, hollowed-out face. Her gasping breath. I swallowed whatever pride I had left. I sank to my knees on the sterile linoleum floor. I bowed my head. My forehead hit the cold tile. Once. Twice. The dull thud echoed in the quiet lobby. Watching me completely shatter, a flash of something like guilt—or maybe just annoyance—crossed Cecilia’s face. “Alright, that’s enough. They just took your mom to the ward. Go see her.” Before walking away, Jace shot me a look so dark, so maliciously triumphant, that it sent a chill down my spine. I didn’t care. I scrambled to my feet and ran down the hallway toward the ICU. But as I rounded the corner, the doors swung open. A gurney was being pushed out. Covered entirely by a white sheet. The final thread of my sanity snapped. “You said she was going into surgery! Why is she—” The attending doctor looked at me, his face tight with regret. “Her vitals had stabilized. But a few minutes ago, a young man slipped into the room. We don’t know what he said to her, but her heart rate spiked massively. She suffered a massive cardiac rupture. I’m so sorry.” The memory of Jace’s dark, triumphant smile in the lobby hit me like a physical blow. My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the floor, pulling the sheet back just enough to see her face, and I screamed until my vocal cords tore. I walked back onto campus with Jace, the afternoon sun feeling entirely too bright. Everywhere we went, people were whispering, pointing, eating up the drama of Gilbert’s spectacular fall from grace. The vulgar jokes and sneers grating against my ears made my stomach turn. I frowned, opening my mouth to tell a group of frat guys to shut up. Suddenly, the wail of sirens cut through the quad. Three squad cars screeched onto the lawn, boxing us in. Officers poured out. “Jace Harrington? Cecilia Whitmore? You’re coming with us. You’re suspects in a homicide.”

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Three years of marriage, and Declan Shaw never once looked at me like I was a woman. I danced around a pole in a maid costume right in front of him. All he said was, “Don’t catch a cold.” I told myself he simply had no feelings for me—and handed him the divorce papers. He didn’t even glance up. He just picked up the pen and signed without a moment’s hesitation. But the instant the ink hit the page, I saw it. Golden words—glowing and bold—scrolling across the air above his head: [She’s actually going through with it?!] [This pen is terrible. Can it just run out of ink already?] [Is it too late for me to fake passing out?] My name is Daisy Robinson. Twenty-six years old. Married for three years. Getting divorced today. Declan Shaw and I were sitting across from each other in the VIP conference room of a law firm downtown. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Typhoon Mitag was tearing through the city. Rain lashed the glass, wind howled through the streets—like something was trying to swallow the whole city whole. The atmosphere inside was quieter than the eye of the storm. “Mr. Shaw, Mrs. Robinson—this is the final version of the divorce agreement. If there are no objections, please sign on the last page.” The attorney slid a copy in front of each of us. I looked down at those few thin sheets of paper. My fingertips were cold. Three years ago, I married Declan. When the Robinson family and Shaw Group announced the union, all of Hollywood said I was punching well above my weight. Declan was the head of Shaw Group out of Los Angeles—ruthless, unreadable, never letting a flicker of emotion cross his face. He was the kind of man no one dared to dream of. And I was just the overlooked eldest daughter of the Robinson family. My mother died when I was young. My father eventually brought home his new wife, Veronica Croft, and her daughter. After that, I became invisible in my own home. The only person I truly cared about was my younger brother, Leo Robinson. Three years ago, Leo got caught up in a hit-and-run. The evidence was overwhelming. He was looking at ten years or more behind bars. I had nowhere to turn—and my father pushed me right in front of Declan. “Daisy,” he said, “you marry into Shaw Group, and Leo walks free.” I didn’t have a choice. But on my wedding day, I’d let myself hope, just a little. Declan stepped in when people kept pushing drinks on me. He reached down and straightened my dress. When Veronica tried to remind me to show her proper respect as an elder, he cut her off with a single cold look and said, “She’s Mrs. Shaw now. I’d like to see anyone try to give her a hard time?” I thought—at the very least—he must have had some feelings for me. Then came our wedding night. His phone rang. He answered it, didn’t even change out of his suit, and walked out the door. At five in the morning, he came back reeking of cold air and something metallic, like blood. I was still sitting on the bed waiting for him. I looked up and asked, “Where did you go? Are you hurt?” He glanced at me—just once—and said two words: “Something came up.” Two words. Like a bucket of ice water poured over every foolish hope I’d let myself hold. For the next three years, we were the most perfectly civil strangers who ever shared a last name. We lived under the same roof but slept in separate rooms. We went back to the family estate together for holidays and played the part of a happy couple in front of his family. When people asked about me, he’d say flatly, “She’s fine.” But in private—he never held me. Never kissed me. Never explained anything. Never crossed the line. Once, I looked at him with tears burning in my eyes and asked, “Declan, do you hate me?” He didn’t look up from the papers in his hand. “Stop overthinking it.” After that, I stopped asking. Some people are just stone cold. You can press your hands against them until you’re numb and they’ll never warm up. I was done trying. A week ago, I left the divorce agreement on his desk. Declan stared at it for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he might actually ask me why. But in the end, he just picked up a pen and said one word: “Fine.” Three years of marriage. And that’s all it was worth in the end—one word. Now the attorney set the pen down in front of him. Declan picked it up, expression blank, like he’d just wrapped up some unremarkable business acquisition. He uncapped it, gripped the barrel between steady, long-fingered hands, and signed his name in one clean, unhesitating stroke. I watched him finish. Took a slow breath. Reached for my own pen. The moment the tip was about to touch the paper— Golden words burst into the air above Declan’s head, bold and glowing: [She’s actually signing?!] My hand jerked. The pen dragged a long black line across the page. I froze. More words came scrolling through: [This pen is terrible—can it just run out of ink already?] [Is it too late for me to fake passing out?] [Declan. Pull it together. You’re the ex-husband here. Don’t make it weird.] I stared wide-eyed at the top of his head. I figured I must be hallucinating — I hadn’t slept well these past few days, not with the divorce weighing on me. I closed my eyes. Three seconds later, I opened them. The floating messages above Declan’s head were still there, scrolling even faster than before. 【Why does she keep staring at me?】 【Does she regret it?】 【No way. The way she grabbed that pen was more decisive than me signing billion-dollar contracts.】 【Is she really not even a little sad? Three years — you’d still get attached to a dog after three years!】 Chapter 2### “Mrs. Robinson?” The lawyer looked puzzled when I still hadn’t signed. I snapped back to the present and glanced at Declan. He sat perfectly composed — suit crisp, jaw tight, eyes cold and unreadable. But the floating messages above his head were already crawling all the way up to the ceiling. 【Don’t sign it.】 【Please. Don’t sign it.】 【Who gets divorced during a typhoon? That’s terrible luck.】 【If she just puts the pen down, I’ll hand over every share I own. All of it.】 I fought to keep the corners of my mouth from twitching and deliberately slowed my hand, writing “Daisy Robinson” in careful, deliberate strokes. The moment the last stroke landed, the messages above Declan’s head erupted into a wall of gray static. Like a system crash. The lawyer collected the agreement and smiled. “Well, the paperwork is all signed. However, there’s a red typhoon warning in effect outside, and the entire building has been locked down. I’m afraid neither of you will be able to leave for now — we’ll need to ask you to spend the night in our firm’s lounge. We apologize for the inconvenience.” I nodded. “That’s fine.” Declan gave a composed nod as well. “Understood.” The next second, massive red text erupted above his head: 【THANK GOD!!!】 【Bless this typhoon. Bless the universe.】 【Mitag, you’re my hero. I love you!!!】 I nearly burst out laughing right there. The lawyer led us up to the VIP lounge on the top floor. The room was spacious, with a large leather sofa. Just one sofa. The lawyer gave an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Mr. Robinson — we have more guests staying over than expected tonight, and this is the only lounge we have left.” Declan said coolly, “It’s fine.” The door clicked shut, leaving the two of us alone. The silence turned awkward immediately. I walked to the window and watched the wind howl outside. “Once the typhoon passes, I’ll move out.” I spoke to the window, keeping my voice steady. Declan’s low, flat voice came from behind me. “Do whatever you want.” Those words again. I’d heard them countless times over the past three years. I said I wanted to visit my family. Do whatever you want. I said I wouldn’t be home for dinner. Do whatever you want. I said I wanted a divorce. Do whatever you want. He never tried to stop me. Never lost his composure. Never let a single thing I did get under his skin. But right at that moment, I used to think he would never hold me back, never lose control, never show any emotion because of me. But at that exact moment, a line of black text suddenly appeared above his head. 【Whatever the hell you want.】 I turned around and looked at him. He was sitting on the couch, casually flipping through a magazine, not even sparing me a glance. But the words above his head kept coming. 【She’s really leaving?】 【Where’s she even going? Does she think she can go back to that mess of a Robinson family? Veronica and her mother would eat her alive.】 【No, I can’t ask where she’s moving.】 【If I ask, it’ll look like I care.】 【I do care.】 【But she wants a divorce. What right do I even have to say anything?】 I stared at those words, and something indescribable twisted in my chest. For three years, I had always thought he was cold and indifferent, that I meant nothing to him. Turns out, there was a whole storm raging inside his head. I walked over and stood in front of him, looking down at him. “I don’t have much stuff. I’ll go back tomorrow, pack it up — should be done in half a day.” Declan’s fingers paused for just a moment as he turned a page, his voice as flat as ever. “Do you need me to send someone to help?” He said it like he was asking if I needed a housekeeping  service. But the words above his head were going crazy. 【Yes.】 【I need to.】 【Why send someone else — I’ll help her myself.】 【No, wait. I can’t help. If I help, she’ll be gone even faster.】 【Can I get someone to change the locks on the house? Or just burn all her luggage?】 I looked up at him and deliberately drew out my words. “No need. I’ll manage on my own. After all, we’re basically exes now — better to keep things at a distance.” Declan’s eyes darkened slightly. “Suit yourself.” 【Nothing about this is fine.】 【Not even a little.】 【Who said I want to be your ex?】 I moved to the other end of the couch and pulled out my phone, deliberately opening a dating site right in front of him. I wasn’t actually planning to use it — I just wanted to see how long he could keep up the act. “Oh, by the way,” I said, keeping my tone light, “now that we’re getting divorced, I should probably start thinking about my next chapter. Mr. Shaw, you’ve seen a lot of the world — do you think blind dates are worth a shot?” The air went completely still. Declan snapped the magazine shut and looked up. Those dark eyes locked onto me. His expression didn’t change. But the feed above his head exploded — exclamation marks flooding in from every direction. 【A blind date?】 【She just signed the divorce papers ten minutes ago and she’s already thinking about dating?】 【Am I dead to her? Does she think I no longer exist?】 【Which guy dares to go on a blind date with her? I’ll ruin him before the night is over.】 Chapter 3### I pretended not to notice, scrolling through my phone at my own unhurried pace. “This one looks nice,” I murmured to myself. “He’s a doctor. Gentle, refined.” Declan put the magazine down. His voice was ice-cold: “Daisy.” “Hmm?” I looked up. “We signed the divorce agreement, but we haven’t filed at City Hall yet. Legally, you’re still my wife.” He stared at me, every word deliberate. “Going on dates while still legally married makes you the at-fault party.” I raised an eyebrow. “Is that legal advice, Mr. Shaw?” His tone stayed level. “I’m just reminding you. Watch how this looks.” The feed: 【Because I’ll lose my mind.】 【Because I can’t stand the thought of you smiling at another man.】 【Because I haven’t learned how to lose you yet.】 【Please. Don’t look at anyone else.】 The last line appeared slowly. Like it was rising from somewhere deep inside him, surfacing bit by bit — carrying a barely perceptible trace of desperation. I found I couldn’t smile anymore. I set my phone down and looked at him steadily. “Declan, do you not want the divorce?” He went rigid. The feed went blank. Three full seconds. Then a flood of scrambled text. 【She asked.】 【Say you don’t want it.】 【Say something, Declan — what’s your mouth for, just breathing?】 【But… if I say it, will she even believe me? She’ll just think I feel sorry for her.】 Declan’s throat shifted as he swallowed. He finally spoke. “If you’ve already made your decision, I respect it.” The feed: 【Pathetic.】 【Declan, you’re absolutely pathetic.】 I lowered my gaze. That small, fragile softness that had just begun to stir inside me was pushed back down — hard — by those words. I respect that. Always, always I respect that. But what I’d always wanted from him was never his dignity or his respect. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” I got up, walked to the far end of the couch, and lay down with my back to him. The couch was wide, but two people was still a tight fit. Declan didn’t move. After a long while, I heard him get up. He took off his suit jacket and draped it quietly over me. The jacket carried his scent — that cool, crisp cedar-and-fir fragrance — wrapping around me all at once. I kept my eyes shut and stayed still. A faint sigh drifted down from above. The feed flickered with a dim glow in the dark: 【I’m sorry.】 【But Dais, I really don’t know how to love you.】 By the next morning, the typhoon had finally passed. We left the law office and drove back to the Shaw Group estate. The moment I walked through the door, I started packing. There wasn’t much to pack, honestly. Three years, and I’d always lived like someone who might leave at any moment — never letting myself treat this place as home. Declan stood in the bedroom doorway, watching as I folded my clothes into the suitcase, one piece at a time. He didn’t say anything. But the feed was nearly swallowing the whole room. 【She’s really leaving.】 【Three years — why does she have so little?】 【All the jewelry I bought her, all the haute couture — why isn’t she taking any of it?】 【Has she never once thought of this place as home?】 That last line made my hands stop for just a moment. Right. Because I’d never once felt loved here. How could I have called it home? I pulled the zipper closed on my suitcase. The sound tore through the quiet bedroom like a blade. “All done.” I turned and looked at him. Declan’s expression shifted — a subtle darkness crossing his face. His lips moved. In the end, he only said: “I’ll have the driver take you.” The feed: 【Don’t go.】 【Please.】 Chapter 4### I took a slow breath and pulled a black card from the drawer. I held it out to him. “Here — this is yours. I never touched the money.” Declan looked at the card. His expression sank, slowly. “Why?” “It’s not mine.” His voice went slightly cold. “It’s marital property. You have every right to use it.” I smiled faintly. “Declan, we’ve been married three years and we barely even felt like a real couple. Doesn’t talking about marital property feel a little ridiculous?” He went silent. But the feed kept coming, line after line. 【She doesn’t even want the money.】 【She really left herself no way back at all.】 【For these three years, just how insecure have I made her feel?】 Declan didn’t take the card. Instead, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. His palm was burning hot — so hot I flinched. “Keep it.” His voice was low and rough. “Even after the divorce, you’re still a daughter of the Robinson family. Don’t put yourself through hardship.” [Feed:] 【Just take it.】 【At least don’t let me worry about you suffering.】 I looked at him, about to pull free, when I suddenly felt something rough and uneven against my skin. I grabbed his hand and flipped it over. There was a deep, old scar carved across his palm. And it didn’t stop there — the scar stretched up his wrist and disappeared beneath his sleeve. I froze. “What is this?” Declan’s expression shifted instantly. He yanked his hand back. “Nothing. I cut myself by accident a long time ago.” He moved his hand behind his back. I kept staring at him. His feed erupted in blinding red. 【Don’t look.】 【She can’t know.】 【That knife wound from the underground market three years ago — it went too deep. What if it scares her?】 【If she finds out I nearly died in that underground parking garage trying to get Leo’s dashcam back, what would she think?】 【She’d feel guilty.】 【I don’t want her guilt.】 My mind went blank. Something detonated inside my skull. Three years ago? The underground market? Leo’s dashcam? My whole body was shaking. I stared at Declan. “You’re lying. On our wedding night three years ago — where did you really go?” Declan’s face was stone cold. “I told you. I went to handle something for the company.” “You lied to me!” I lunged forward and grabbed his collar, tearing it open. Buttons snapped off and scattered across the floor. Declan didn’t move. Across his broad chest was a massive scar — stretching from his left shoulder all the way down to his right side. It looked like something monstrous had been carved into him. Grotesque. Terrifying. I gasped, and tears burst from my eyes before I could stop them. How brutal had that blow been, to leave a scar like this? “This is from handling company business?” My voice shook. The tears wouldn’t stop. Declan panicked. He fumbled forward, desperate to wipe my tears away — but couldn’t bring himself to touch me. The red feed flashed wildly: 【Don’t cry.】 【Daisy, don’t cry.】 【I can’t stand it when you cry.】 【I never should have let her see.】 I shoved his hand away, sobbing. “Declan, how much have you been hiding from me? Leo’s case back then — was it you who—” “No.” He cut me off, sharp and final. “He got lucky. The police found new evidence on their own.” [Feed:] 【It was me.】 【Ryder Sinclair paid people on the underground market to destroy that dashcam footage.】 【I had no choice but to go get it back myself.】 【That knife nearly hit my spine. But I got it.】 【Not that it matters. I don’t want her staying with me out of gratitude.】

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That night, in that cramped, damp little rental room, I took Audrey like a man losing his mind—trying to use the heat of our bodies to fight off the coldness of the world outside. But before the high had even faded, her mother kicked open the already-flimsy wooden door and brought people in with her. Icy camera flashes. Cutting insults. They tore apart the last shreds of dignity we had left. “A filthy construction worker thinks he’s good enough to sleep with my daughter? You can’t even give her a roof over her head. Tomorrow, I’m marrying her off to Mr. Silas Draven!” For that three hundred thousand dollars, I pushed myself to the breaking point—and as I lay there, barely clinging to life, I watched her toss three years of our hard-earned savings onto the hospital bed and say coldly, “We’re even now.” Three years later, I came back with a fortune worth billions, ready to make her pay for what she’d done. But in a dark basement, I found her—skin and bones—and beside her, a child whose eyes looked exactly like mine… 0

August in the South felt like being sealed inside a pressure cooker with no way out. In this run-down studio apartment in the old part of the city, even the air felt thick and heavy. The ancient ceiling fan overhead let out a slow, dying creak, creak, but it couldn’t push away even a hint of the heat. I had Audrey pinned hard against that iron-frame bed—the kind that rattled violently at the slightest movement—like a desperate, caged animal, taking in every inch of warmth her body had to give. Sweat poured down my dark back and dripped onto her pale collarbones, leaving flushed, raw marks across her skin. “Kyle… easy… the bed’s going to break…” Audrey’s long legs were locked tight around my waist. Her voice was breathless—caught somewhere between moans she couldn’t hold back and sobs she was trying to swallow. Her nails sank deep into the muscles of my back, dragging red lines through my skin. I didn’t stop. I pushed harder. I hated this world. I hated this goddamn poverty. And this—raw, rough, and desperate—was the only way I knew how to claim what little power I had. On her. With her. “You’re mine… Audrey Brooks, you’re mine*!”* I bit down on her earlobe, my voice ground down to something raw, like sandpaper dragged across wood. “I’m yours… always…” She tilted her head back. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, mixing with sweat, catching the dim light like broken fragments of glass. We rolled across that narrow bed, the sounds of our bodies colliding sharp and unmistakable in the dead silence of the night. There was something destructive about it—we both knew how cold the world outside that door was, so we burned into each other with everything we had, in this tiny room that was all we had left. And then, just as we both reached the edge—minds going completely blank— BANG. One violent crash. The wooden door, which had barely been holding together to begin with, was kicked in from the outside. It slammed hard into the wall, the impact thundering through the room. The hallway’s motion-sensor light snapped on instantly. The harsh white glare cut through the doorway like a blade, slicing into the dark, heat-soaked room. “Ah—!” Audrey let out a terrified scream. She shoved me away and snatched the thin, faded blanket, yanking it around her naked body as she scrambled into the corner of the bed, shaking violently. I froze. Blood rushed to my head. On instinct, I grabbed a pair of pants and pulled them on, spinning around with eyes burning red. Standing in the doorway was Audrey’s mother. Behind her stood two thick-built families. One of them had his phone raised, the camera flash firing in rapid bursts—click, click, click—freezing our most humiliating, most wretched moment in photographs. “Put that down!” I roared, lunging forward like an enraged animal, tearing the phone out of his hand and smashing it against the floor. The crack of the screen shattering rang out sharp and clean in the silent room. SMACK. Before I could even straighten up, Audrey’s mother had already closed the distance. She wound her arm back with full force and slapped me hard across the face. She hit me with everything she had. My eardrum rang. My mouth filled with the taste of blood. “Kyle Hill, you disgusting piece of trash! Have you no shame?!” Gloria Brooks jabbed a finger in my face, her voice sharp enough to cut through the ceiling. “A filthy construction worker who can barely scrape together enough to feed himself—what gives you the right to ruin my daughter?!” I pressed my hand to my burning cheek, jaw clenched so tight it ached. I said nothing. What was there to say? I was shirtless. I reeked of sour sweat and construction dust that cheap soap couldn’t wash out. And Gloria stood there in a silk dress, a designer bag hanging from her wrist. The gap between our worlds had just become a physical thing—a slap across the face—and whatever dignity I had as a man shattered with it. “Mom! What are you doing?! Get out!” Audrey scrambled off the bed, the blanket still wrapped around her, and threw herself in front of me, screaming at her mother through her tears. “Shut your mouth! I have no daughter as shameless as you!” Gloria grabbed Audrey by the hair and dragged her toward the door. “Look at yourself! Living in this pigsty with this broke loser, you can’t even afford decent clothes! Mr. Draven has already made it clear — one word from you, and tomorrow he’ll buy you a Porsche. A luxury penthouse downtown, your pick. Are you out of your mind, putting yourself through this with a deadbeat like him?” “I won’t go! I’d rather die than marry that old man! I love Kyle!” Audrey fought back with everything she had. Her pale arms slammed against the iron bed frame, leaving a wide, dark bruise. “Love? Can love afford food on the table? Can love cover a down payment?” Gloria spun around and looked at me like I was a pile of garbage — her eyes filled with a suffocating contempt. “Kyle, I’m going to say this once. You want to marry my daughter? Fine. One month. Bring me five hundred thousand dollars for a down payment and buy an apartment downtown. If you can’t, get the hell out of her life. And if you ever touch her again, I’ll have your legs broken.” With that, she reached into her purse, pulled out a stack of photos, and hurled them at my face. The photos scattered across the floor. There I was — hauling bags of cement on a construction site, eating a five-dollar meal in the scorching sun, kneeling in front of the foreman just to beg for the wages I was owed. “Look at yourself. What could you possibly give my daughter? Do you really think you deserve her?” Gloria let out a cold laugh, then dragged a screaming, sobbing Audrey out the door. Bang. The door slammed shut. The tiny rented room fell silent again. The air still carried the faint, lingering warmth from the intimacy we’d shared, but my heart had plunged into a bottomless pit of ice. I slowly crouched down and picked up the photo of me kneeling. My fingers trembled, completely out of my control. Five hundred thousand dollars. Those words hit me like a mountain caving in on my spine — crushing me completely. 0

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat there shirtless on the cold cement floor and smoked an entire pack of cheap cigarettes. The embers glowed and faded in the dark, like my crumbling self-worth. Just before dawn, I heard the lock turn. My head snapped up. Audrey stood in the doorway. Her hair was tangled, her left cheek badly swollen, her thin T-shirt torn at the collar, revealing a bruised shoulder underneath. She had escaped. The moment she saw me, her tears broke loose. She threw herself into my arms like a wounded animal, clinging to the back of my neck with both hands. “Kyle… Kyle, I’m so sorry… I didn’t know they were following me…” She was shaking as she cried, her tears falling heavy and hot onto my shoulder. I raised my rough, callused hand, held it there in the air for a moment, then finally pulled her close. “Does it hurt?” I touched her swollen cheek, my voice so hoarse it barely sounded like mine. “No.” She shook her head hard and buried her face against my chest. “Kyle, let’s run away together. Let’s leave and go somewhere no one knows us. I don’t need a house. I just need you.” Run away together. Such a romantic, naive idea. But the reality was that my bank account held less than thirty thousand dollars — every cent Audrey and I had scraped together over three years, set aside for a down payment. In a city where even a modest apartment cost two million dollars, thirty thousand couldn’t buy you a bathroom. I looked into Audrey’s eyes, so full of hope, and felt an invisible hand squeeze my heart until I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t run away with her. I couldn’t let her spend her life hiding with me, slowly falling apart in the shadows of this city. She had once been the most radiant girl on campus. It was because of me that she had cut ties with her family and fallen into all of this. “Audrey… give me one month.” I took a deep breath, pushed down the ache rising in my chest, cupped her face in my hands, and said it slowly, word by word: “Five hundred thousand. I’ll figure it out. I promise I’ll buy us our own place downtown.” Audrey went still. She stared at me, a flicker of panic crossing her face. “Kyle, don’t do anything stupid. We can save up slowly. I’m not in a rush…” “I am!” I raised my voice, my eyes red as I held her gaze. “I’m done with the way your mother looks at me. I’m done letting you live somewhere the door won’t even close all the way. I’m a man, Audrey. I won’t let everyone look down on you because of me.” The look in my eyes scared her. She opened her mouth but said nothing. She just held me tighter and cried even harder — with a kind of despair that broke something deep inside me. 0

The next day, I went back to the construction site. The sun was merciless, like it wanted to peel the skin right off you. I was wearing a hard hat, weaving through a jungle of steel and concrete. I’m a civil engineer — sounds like a respectable white-collar job, but on the job site, I was basically a glorified errand boy. “Kyle, this rebar shipment has the wrong grade!” “Kyle, the inspector is holding up the paperwork again!” “Kyle, Mr. Smith wants you in his office!” I spun like a top, never stopping. Sweat dripped into my eyes and burned like hell. But I didn’t even have time to wipe my face. Only one thought was running through my head: make money. At noon, I knocked on the project manager’s office door. A wave of cold air hit me the moment I stepped inside, enough to make me shiver. Mr. Smith was kicked back in his leather executive chair, smoking an expensive cigarette, eyes fixed on the stock charts on his screen. “Kyle.” He didn’t look up. “What do you want?” I swallowed hard and kept my voice low. “Mr. Smith, I’d like to request a six-month advance on my salary.” His fingers stopped on the keyboard. He turned and looked me up and down, then let out a laugh. “Six months in advance? Kyle, you think this company runs a charity? You make $8,000 a month — that’s $48,000. What are you putting up as collateral?” “I… I can work overtime. I can do the work of two people. Mr. Smith, I really need this money, please.” I was sweating through everything I had on, practically ready to get down on my knees. Mr. Smith flicked his ash and gave me a look full of contempt. “Kyle, having ambition is a fine thing in a young man. But you’ve got to crawl before you can walk. You think $500,000 is easy to come by? Don’t think I don’t know about the pressure Audrey’s mother is putting on you. Let me give you some advice — don’t bite off more than you can chew. That girl Audrey is a beautiful woman. She’s wasting her time with you. Mr. Draven drives a Range Rover. How do you even think you compare?” His words were like a dull blade, carving into me piece by piece. I don’t know how I made it out of that office. The heat outside swallowed me whole again. I stood on an unfinished floor dozens of stories up and stared down at the city below me. Traffic flowed endlessly through the streets below, and towers of glass and steel stretched as far as the eye could see. This city held endless wealth and endless opportunity — but not a single inch of it belonged to me, Kyle. After work, I dragged my lead-heavy legs back to our rental apartment. Audrey had already made dinner. Nothing fancy. She was wearing that old faded T-shirt, her hair loosely pulled back, a bandage stuck to her forehead. “You’re home! come on” She smiled at me — sweet and warm — but I could see the exhaustion hiding behind her eyes. I sat down, picked up my fork, and dug in. The food wasn’t great, but I ate every bite like it was a feast. “Kyle, I went to look at an apartment today.” Audrey spoke up suddenly, her voice soft and careful. My fork froze mid-air. She pulled a crumpled flyer from her pocket and spread it flat on the table. “Look — it’s out in the west suburbs. Yeah, it’s old and rough, thirty years old, top floor, no elevator. But the price is low — only $600,000! The down payment is just $180,000. We already have $30,000 saved. If I borrow a little from some friends and you pull together a bit more, we can make it work!” Her eyes were shining. She pointed at the blurry floor plan on the flyer, excitedly laying out our future. “It’s only about 430 square feet, I know — but we could enclose the balcony to get more space, paint the walls that soft gray you like, find a nice second-hand couch on eBay…” I watched her go on and on, my vision slowly blurring. A run-down low-rise in the suburbs. This was the bottom of the bottom — what she had settled for, just to make up for my failures. She could have been sipping afternoon tea in a luxury downtown high-rise. Instead, she was ready to go beg and borrow from people, all for a 430-square-foot apartment. “Stop.” I cut her off. “Kyle…” Audrey froze. “I said stop!” I shoved back from the table and stood up, grabbed the flyer, tore it apart, and threw the pieces to the floor. “I’d rather sell my blood, work myself into the ground — but I will never let you live in a dump like that. $500,000, not a cent less. I will buy us a place right in the downtown of this city!” Audrey stared at the scraps of paper scattered across the floor, her eyes turning red. She didn’t argue. She just quietly crouched down and picked up the pieces one by one, her voice breaking: “Kyle, I just don’t want you wearing yourself out… I really don’t care where we live…” “But I do!” I screamed at her like a wild animal. “I care what people think of you! I care what your mom says about me behind her back! Do you get that?!” Audrey went silent. Her tears hit the floor, one drop after another. I watched her shoulders tremble and wanted to slap myself. I slammed the door and walked out into the thick black night. 0

When you have nowhere left to turn, desperation turns you into a monster. I reached out to a contractor I knew from the construction site — a guy named Marcus Stone. Marcus didn’t do legitimate work. He only handles off-the-books dirty work. Things like illegal demolition runs in condemned neighborhoods in the dead of night, or blasting in underground mines with zero safety measures. “Five hundred thousand?” Marcus blew out a long puff of smoke in the hazy pool hall and squinted at me. “Kyle, you’ve got some nerve. A job worth five hundred grand is the kind you pay for with your life.” “As long as I get the money, my life doesn’t matter.” I stared him down, my eyes shot through with red. Marcus smiled, showing a row of yellowed teeth. “Alright, I can see you’re the real deal. There’s an abandoned chemical plant on the south side of town that needs to be torn down. Inside, there are a few large tanks still holding residual toxic gas. Legitimate demolition companies won’t touch it — too risky, not enough profit. The owner is putting up eight hundred thousand, with a three-day deadline. You take a few guys in, cut those tanks open. When it’s done, I’ll give you five hundred thousand.” I knew exactly what that meant. No protective suits. No gas masks. Just a cutting machine, going at iron tanks that once held deadly chemicals. One wrong spark. One explosion. One breath too many of toxic gas — and there’d be nothing left of you to bury. “Fine. I’ll take it.” I didn’t hesitate for a second. For those three days, I told Audrey the construction site was on a tight deadline — strict on-site management, no going home. I took three men who had nothing to lose, and we crept into that chemical plant like rats, into the sharp, stinging smell that hit you the moment you stepped inside. The temperature was over forty degrees. The air was thick with a suffocating yellowish-green haze. Sparks flew from the cutting machine with every pass. Each cut felt like dancing on the edge of Death’s blade. On the first day, one of the workers inhaled too much toxic gas and collapsed inside one of the tanks, foaming at the mouth. We dragged him out. He was already gone. Marcus tossed his family twenty thousand dollars and called it settled. On the second day, my lungs felt like they were on fire. Every breath tasted like blood. My vision started blurring, and my hands shook so badly I could barely hold the cutting machine. But there was only one thought in my head: five hundred thousand dollars. With five hundred thousand, I could throw the down payment right in Gloria’s face. I could let Audrey walk down the aisle with her head held high. On the third night, the last tank finally came crashing down. I collapsed onto the ground, covered in oil and toxic sludge, and stared up at the black sky. Then I started laughing — loud, uncontrollable laughter. I’d made it out alive. I’d earned the five hundred thousand. Marcus tossed a heavy black plastic bag in front of me. “Kyle, you’ve got the luck of the devil. Money’s in there. Count it.” I didn’t count it. I clutched that bag like it was my life. I dragged my wrecked body back to our apartment that same night. When I pushed the door open, Audrey was slumped over the table, fast asleep. There was a bowl of oatmeal on the table, long gone cold. The noise woke her up with a jolt. The moment she saw me, she screamed. I was covered head to toe in black grime. My clothes were in shreds. My face was slashed with cuts. My eyes were so red they looked like they could bleed. My whole body reeked of chemicals that turned your stomach. “Kyle! What happened to you?! Don’t scare me like this!” Audrey rushed at me and threw her arms around me, not caring about the filth covering every inch of my body. I grinned, teeth showing, and shoved the black plastic bag into her arms. “Audrey… I got it… five hundred thousand… we’ve got the down payment…” The moment those words left my mouth, everything went dark. I blacked out.

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Christian Farnese gripped my chin with his own hands and forced that glass of arsenical wine down my throat. He hated me for taking what was never mine to take — for taking credit for what my older sister had done, for playing him like a fool for five whole years. What he didn’t know was that the cup of arsenical wine didn’t take my life. On the contrary, it used poison to counter poison, curing the five years of mental sluggishness that had left me dull and slow. The moment my mind cleared, I left without looking back. And when he realized I was truly gone — Christian lost his mind. “Drink it.” Christian Farnese’s voice was colder than ice in the dead of winter. His long fingers locked around my chin, squeezing so hard I thought my bones might shatter. Forced to tilt my head back, I looked up at the man I had depended on for five long years. His eyes were shot through with red, swirling with undisguised disgust and the desire to kill. He poured that crimson liquid down my throat without a shred of mercy. “Urk— ghk—” I tried to spit it out. Though he clamped his hand over my mouth. “Swallow it!” he said through gritted teeth. “Charlotte Lacy — you owe me this!” It felt like I’d swallowed a red-hot blade. The burning pain exploded from my stomach and tore through every inch of my body. I convulsed, and tears fell in heavy drops onto the back of his hand. “Christian… it hurts… it hurts…” I cried out in a broken voice, the way I had so many times over the past five years, hoping to stir even a flicker of pity in him. But this time, he didn’t pull me into his arms and soothe me like he used to. He shoved me away — like he was throwing out something filthy — and I crashed hard onto the floor. “Don’t say my name. You don’t deserve to.” He stood over me, watching me writhe and curl up on the ground, his eyes as cold as if he were looking at a corpse. “You stole Margaret’s place and lived in the Farnese Palace for five years, draped in luxury.” “You sat back and watched me act like a fool — treating you, the real fool, like you were something precious.” “Charlotte Lacy, you’ve put me through hell.” The pain was too much for me to speak. All I could do was shake my head over and over. I never deceived him. I was dull and slow, and my brain was foggy — with the mind of a five-year-old child. Five years ago, my older sister Margaret Lacy had carried him — badly wounded — up from the bottom of a cliff on her back. But the effort drained her completely, and the medicine she’d tested on herself left her unconscious. My parents, desperate to latch onto the powerfu, grabbed my hand and pointed at Christian Farnese lying in the bed. “Remember,” they told me, “you’re the one who saved him.” I didn’t understand what saving someone meant. All I knew was that my sister wouldn’t wake up. When Christian came back to consciousness, my parents pushed me in front of him. He took my hands that are covered in cuts from the herbs and branches — and promised he would take care of me for the rest of his life. He brought me back to the royal capital. He dressed me in the softest silks and fed me the sweetest pastries. He taught me to write, holding my hand and guiding it stroke by stroke through “Charlotte” and “Christian.” I hated bitter things, and he never once lost patience coaxing me to drink those awful medicines that were supposed to heal my mind. I thought it would always be like this. Then, three days ago, my sister Margaret Lacy came to the door. She had woken up. She stood at the foot of the Farnese Palace steps in a plain white dress and said only two words: “Your Grace.” Christian trembled. His eyes went red as he rushed toward her. The truth came out. And I became the shameless thief who had stolen someone else’s place out of greed. “In your next life,” Christian said coldly, tossing the words over his shoulder as he walked away, “don’t ever try to lie to anyone again.” The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him, cutting off the last sliver of light. I lay curled on the cold, damp floor as the pain about to tear my very soul apart. For five years, Christian had fed me those bitter medicines meant to heal my mind. Now, in this moment, they collided with the poison from the arsenical wine like a thunderbolt splitting open the sky. The fog that had clouded my thoughts for five years began — through that searing, unbearable pain — to slowly lift. Blurry, broken memories came rushing in like a tide. I finally remembered the purple Arisaema flowers at the bottom of that cliff. I remembered the dark blood my sister coughed up when she tested the medicine to save him. I remembered the greed on my parents’ faces — and the condescending charity in Christian Farnese’s eyes. The pain gradually went numb, replaced by a clarity I had never known before. I was not dead. The arsenical wine hadn’t killed me. Instead, it had done the opposite — poison fought poison, breaking through the clot that had clouded my mind for years. I, Charlotte Lacy, was no longer the silly Lottie with the mind of a five-year-old. I pressed my hands against the ice-cold wall and pulled myself to my feet, unsteady but standing. Through the gap in the woodshed door, I could see snow falling thick and heavy outside. This absurd dream that had lasted five years — I had finally woken from it.

The lock rattled. Pale daylight stung my eyes. Christian Farnese stood in the doorway, backlit, holding a candlestick in his hand. He had come to collect my body. When he saw me — leaning against the wall in the corner, watching him in silence — his pupils shrank. “You… didn’t die?” His voice was laced with disbelief, and beneath it, a tremor he could barely conceal. I looked at him calmly. I didn’t throw myself at his legs the way I used to. I didn’t cry or wail about the pain. I simply stood up straight and smoothed out the wrinkles in my disheveled skirt. “Sorry to disappoint you, Your Grace.” My voice was soft, but every word came out clear. Christian froze where he stood. He stared at me, and the chamber candlestick in his hand tilted slightly. A drop of wax fell into the snow with a faint hiss. “What did you just call me?” He stepped forward, his eyes sharp with suspicion. “You… you’re not the silly girl anymore?” “Thanks to that poisoned wine of yours, it all came back to me.” I met his gaze and didn’t look away. “I remember how my parents pushed me to take the blame. I remember how my sister was the one who tested your medicine and fell into a coma. And I remember…” I paused. A cold smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “I remember how, for five years, Your Grace kept me in this manor like a pet.” The color drained from Christian Farnese’s face. He seemed unable to reconcile the woman standing before him — clear-eyed, composed, every word deliberate — with the silly Lottie who used to trail after him begging for sweets. “If you recovered your senses long ago, why did you keep pretending?” he asked through gritted teeth, anger rekindling behind his eyes. “And if I told you I only just came to my senses — would you believe me?” I looked at him and almost laughed. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.” I stepped past him and walked straight toward the door. “Stop.” He grabbed my wrist, his grip was iron-tight. “Where do you think you’re going?” “Away from the Farnese Palace.” I pulled against his hold. He didn’t let go. “Away?” A cold laugh escaped him. “You deceived me for five years. You lived in luxury for five years. And now you think you can walk out with a single word?” I stopped. I turned to look at him. “What do you want for me then? Another cup of poisoned wine?” His breath caught. The hand gripping my wrist loosened, just slightly, without him seeming to notice. “Christian Farnese, I don’t owe you anything.” I said it slowly, one word at a time. “Back then, I had the mind of a child. My parents told me to go along with it, so I did. For five years, you gave me every comfort and luxury, and I gave you everything I had in return. You made me drink those bitter medicines — even though I would I gag, I swallowed them down anyway because you said it was for my own good.” “And what did you do?” I held his gaze and forced him to see the coldness in mine. “The moment you learned the truth, you didn’t ask for any explanation. You just tried to kill me.” “The moment that the arsenical wine went down my throat, whatever was between us was even.” His lips trembled. He looked like he was trying to say something, but no words came. A flash of panic crossed his eyes — and then he buried it. “Even? It’s not that simple.” His face stayed cold. “Your sister is recovering here at the Palace. If you leave, what will she think? She would believe that I drove you out.” “That’s your problem.” I wrenched my hand free. “Christian, don’t use my sister against me anymore. If you truly care for her, make it right with her. As for me… from this day on, I want nothing to do with you or the Farneses. Nothing at all.” I walked out into the wind and snow without looking back. Behind me, Christian stood motionless for a long moment. The candlestick slipped from his hand and fell into the snow. The flame struggled against the wind — and then eventually went out.

I didn’t leave the royal capital right away. My elder sister Margaret was still in the Farnese Palace. She had been unconscious for five years, and her body was weak to the point of breaking. I had to see her. I rented a modest room at an inn in the back alley of the Farnese Palace, using the only piece of silver jewelry I had left to exchange for a few copper coins. It was something Christian Farnese had casually given me five years ago. Now it served as travel money — fitting, I suppose. On the third day, my sister’s personal maid found me in secret. “Miss Charlotte Lacy, Miss Margaret wishes to see you.” I followed the maid and slipped into the Farnese Palace through the side gate. My sister was staying in the most secluded courtyard of the Palace. Christian Farnese had brought her into the estate, but had given her a legit identity — only calling her his “benefactor.” When I pushed open the door, my sister was leaning against the bed, coughing. She was gaunt, emaciated, her face as pale as paper. Only her eyes remained the same — gentle as ever. “Charlotte…” Her eyes reddened the moment she saw me, and she struggled to sit up. I hurried forward and pressed her back down. “Margaret, don’t move.” She grabbed my hand tightly, her eyes sweeping over me from head to toe, tears streaming down her face. “Your illness… are you all better now?” I nodded. “Yes. I remember everything now.” Margaret sobbed, unable to hold back her tears. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t fallen unconscious, Mother and Father never would have put you in this situation. These five years… you’ve suffered so much.” “I didn’t suffer.” I wiped her tears away. “You’re the one who truly suffered. You nearly gave your own life to save him.” Margaret let out a bitter smile, her gaze dimming. “Saving him — I did that willingly. I just never imagined he would treat you like that…” She paused, didn’t say the word “poison” out loud. “He thought you had deceived him, and his anger got the better of him. But he’s not a bad person at heart, Charlotte. Don’t blame him.” I looked at my sister’s sickly face — still making excuses for Christian — and felt a dull ache in my chest. She loves him. She had loved him ever since the moment she carried him up from the bottom of that cliff five years ago. “I don’t blame him,” I said calmly. “Margaret, I came today to say goodbye.” Margaret froze. “You’re leaving? Where to?” “Leaving the royal capital. Southward, to Napoli.” “But—” Margaret’s voice turned anxious. “You’re a young woman, all alone, with no one to rely on. Where can you go? Stay. I’ll plead with Duke Farnese to arrange a proper place for you.” “Margaret.” I cut her off, my voice was firm. “I can’t stay.” “If I stay here, I’ll only remind Christian Farnese every day that he was once made a fool of. And it will put you in an impossible position between us.” “I’m clear-headed now. I am perfectly able bodied. I can support myself.” Margaret looked at me, reluctant and worried. She knew my nature. Once I’d made up my mind, nothing could change it. “Then… will you ever come back?” “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Maybe. Maybe not. Margaret, take care of yourself. Christian Farnese owes you. Demand what you’re owed. Don’t sell yourself short.” Margaret nodded, tears still flowing. I stood up, ready to leave. Just then, a commotion erupted from outside the door. “Let us in! We want to see Duke Farnese! We’re his father-in-law and mother-in-law!” My brow furrowed. It was my parents.

I pushed open the door and walked into the courtyard. My parents were wearing worn-out cotton coats, struggling with several of the guards. When they saw me, they froze for a moment, then broke into wide grins. “Charlotte! You wretched girl, so this is where you’ve been hiding!” My father George Lacy rushed forward, raising his hand to hit me. “You ungrateful daughter! Now that you are living a fancy life, you’ve forgotten your parents, haven’t you? Five years, and you haven’t sent a single coin back home!” I stepped aside and dodged, looking at him coldly. “This is the Farnese Palace, not a place for you to cause trouble.” My mother Tavira Lacy’s eyes darted around, and she quickly plastered on a fawning smile. “Charlotte, sweetheart, I know you resent us. But if we hadn’t set you up with Duke Farnese back then, would you have lived like this all these years?” “And now that your sister is awake too — you two sisters sharing one husband — what a blessing that would be!” “Where’s Duke Farnese? Tell him to come out and see us. We traveled all this way — the least he could do is gift us a thousand gold coins or so, right?” I looked at their greedy faces and felt sick to my stomach. Five years ago, they sold me — simple-minded as I was — to Christian Farnese as a scapegoat, all for a handful of silver coins. Now that my elder sister had woken up, they came swarming back like flies drawn to blood, hoping to squeeze every last drop of value out of the two of us. “He won’t see you,” I said coldly. “What kind of nonsense are you spouting, you ungrateful girl!” George Lacy flew into a rage. “I’m his father-in-law! He wouldn’t dare refuse me!” “Father-in-law?” A cold voice drifted in from beyond the courtyard gate. Christian Farnese strode inside, a squad of armed guards following close behind him. He was dressed in a black brocade robe today, his expression sharp and severe — commanding without even trying. George and Tavira Lacy’s legs buckled with fear, and they dropped to their knees with a thud. “We… we greet Your Grace.” Christian Farnese looked down at them, his eyes filled with contempt. “So it was you two who pushed her to deceive me all those years ago?” George Lacy trembled from head to toe, stammering, “Y-Your Grace, please understand — we were foolish then… but this girl did serve you for five years. Surely that counts for something…” “Counts for something?” Christian Farnese let out a cold laugh. “If it weren’t for your greed, why would Margaret have suffered so much? Guards — drag these two out of the royal capital and make sure they never set foot here again!” “Please, Your Grace, have mercy! Your Grace!” My parents were hauled away by the guards, wailing and shrieking. The courtyard fell into a dead silence. Christian turned his head, his gaze landing on me. “Are you satisfied?” There was a faint note of expectation in his voice — as if he was waiting for my gratitude. I looked at him calmly. “Your Grace was simply upholding the law. What does that have to do with me?” His expression darkened. “Charlotte Lacy, do you have to speak to me in that tone?” “Then how should I speak to you?” I shot back. “Like before — kneeling on the ground to thank Your Grace for the generosity?” Christian Farnese was left speechless. He drew a slow breath and forced down his anger. “Your parents have been dealt with. From now on… just stay here at Farnese Palace. Margaret needs someone to look after her. Stay and keep her company.” The words came out stiff and hollow, like he was tossing me a scrap. I laughed. “Your Grace, I think you’ve gotten something wrong.” “I came here today to say goodbye to my sister.” Christian Farnese’s pupils shrank sharply. “You’re leaving?” “Yes.” “Where?” “To the ends of the earth. It’s none of your concern.” I turned and walked toward the gate. “Stop right there!” Christian stepped forward in an instant, planting himself in my path. His chest heaved, and his eyes churned with emotions I couldn’t understand. “Charlotte, do you think the Farnese Palace is somewhere you can just come and go as you please?” “I am a Duke. Without my permission, you won’t even make it past the city gates of the royal capital!” He finally let his authority show — the full weight of a powerful noble bearing down on me. Looking at him like this, flustered and furious, it was pathetic. Slowly, I reached into my coat and pulled out the jeweled pin I had been planning to sell. It was the same one he had once placed in my hair with his own hands. I pressed the sharp end of the pin against my own throat. “Duke Farnese, your power is truly beyond measure.” “But if I truly want to die, even you can’t stop me.” The pin broke the skin. A thin line of blood trickled down my pale neck. The color drained from Christian’s face instantly. He stared at the blood on my throat, his voice trembling.

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