1 It all started when I mindlessly clicked a link my roommate sent me. A few minutes later, a notification popped up on my phone. My bank account had a sudden deposit of three hundred bucks. I just stared at the screen, totally bewildered. While I was trying to figure out how to reverse the transaction, an unknown number called. The voice on the other end was cold and aggressive. The guy told me I owed their platform fifteen hundred dollars, and the three hundred I just received was merely the interest. A cold sweat broke out on my neck. I had somehow stumbled into a predatory payday loan trap. I immediately went to confront my roommate, Harper. She just batted her eyelashes, looking like the picture of innocence. “You took the money yourself, Jess. Paying back your debts is just how the world works, isn’t it?” The debt collectors were ruthless. They threatened to show up on campus and make such a scene that I would never be able to show my face in class again. Terrified and in tears, I had no choice but to call my parents and confess everything, hoping they could help me bail myself out. I braced myself for the scolding of a lifetime. But instead, my dad’s eyes practically lit up through the FaceTime screen. “Hold on, kiddo. Does this app still let you borrow? Think we can hit them up for a little more?” … My mom and I were both stunned into silence. Mom slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Frank, have you lost your damn mind? These are loan sharks! Do you want our daughter’s credit score ruined for life?” I nodded frantically. “Yeah, Dad! I haven’t even graduated yet. I don’t want to be blacklisted by the banks.” Dad just rolled his eyes at us. He leaned into the camera, a sly grin on his face. “These offshore shadow lenders aren’t recognized by the federal government or the state laws. If they have the guts to lend it out illegally, we have the guts to keep it.” With that, Dad pulled out his phone and started making calls. He dialed my uncles, my aunts, and even my cousins. Then he told Mom to get her side of the family on the line. He asked me to forward him the app link. A minute later, it was sitting in our massive extended family group chat. He was officially rallying the entire bloodline to drain these loan sharks dry. My older brother, Connor, who works as a corporate lawyer in the city, called a few minutes later. He asked Dad if he had joined a pyramid scheme. But once Dad explained the situation, Connor went dead silent. Finally, Connor sighed. “They set up a predatory snare for my little sister. Fine. Tell everyone to borrow as much as they can. If the heat comes down, I’ll bury them in court.” Having a lawyer’s guarantee was like pouring gasoline on Dad’s fire. He told the neighbors. The neighbors told their neighbors. Our relatives told their bowling leagues and church groups. Before long, every single household in Brookhollow was taking out illegal loans. Even Great-Grandpa Sully, who was eighty-eight and half-blind, somehow racked up tens of thousands in debt. Families were using the scammers’ money to put new roofs on their houses and buy decent used trucks. Mrs. Higgins from down the street patted my shoulder with tears of joy in her eyes. “You really are our little college scholar, Jess. First year out of town, and you’re already bringing home the bacon for the whole valley.” Brookhollow was a forgotten little town tucked deep in the Appalachian mountains. Normally, even the crows didn’t bother stopping here, and anyone with half a brain had moved to the city years ago. Because we were so isolated, the folks who stayed were tightly knit. We fought like cats and dogs sometimes, but when it came down to it, we were one big, terrifyingly loyal family. I sniffled, finally snapping out of the trauma of being extorted. Dad shoved three hundred bucks in cash into my coat pocket and told me to head back to school and focus on my grades. He promised he would handle the fallout. But the second I got back to campus, all hell broke loose. 2 The moment I pushed open the dorm room door, Harper was taking a bite of her loaded burrito. She let out a snort of laughter, spraying lettuce on her desk. “Well, if it isn’t the campus deadbeat. How do you even have the nerve to show your face around here?” My other roommate, Riley, quietly forwarded a link to my phone. It was a post on the university’s anonymous gossip forum. The debt collectors had posted my full name, claiming that if I didn’t pay up, my ID details and a bunch of photos would be leaked everywhere. The comments underneath were brutal. People who had no idea what was going on were tearing me apart. “Some girls are just desperate for designer bags. Imagine taking out a massive loan just to flex.” “Total trash. Does she have no respect for her parents or herself?” My hands were shaking with pure rage. I walked over and slapped the burrito right out of Harper’s hands. It hit the floor with a wet splat. “You think you have the right to laugh at me? If it wasn’t for you, would I be drowning in this mess?” It happened at the start of the semester. I had overspent on textbooks and groceries. Harper was the only one in the room, so I asked if she could spot me five bucks for a coffee and a sandwich. Instead of lending me the cash, she texted me a link. I thought it was one of those coupon referral codes. I clicked it, filled out a basic form, and instantly received three hundred bucks. And just like that, I was strapped with a fifteen-hundred-dollar debt. Harper jumped up, furious about her food, and practically spit in my face. “Not my problem, broke girl! You’re the one who was begging for cash. I didn’t put a gun to your head and make you sign up.” A heavy knot of anger lodged in my throat. “I asked for five dollars for lunch! If you didn’t want to lend it to me, you could have just said no. Did I ask you to sign me up with the mafia?” Harper rolled her eyes and shoved past me. “If you don’t want the money, just pay it back. Oh, wait. You’re just trying to scam them, aren’t you?” When I first saw the fifteen-hundred-dollar balance, I was so sick to my stomach I couldn’t even eat. I tried to return the money immediately. But their “customer service” told me I couldn’t pay early unless I paid the entire fifteen hundred in one lump sum. Where was a broke college kid supposed to get that kind of cash? I had waited anxiously for the first due date and paid back the three hundred. Then I found out that the payment only covered the interest! I was still fifteen hundred in the hole. That was why I went home crying to my parents. But thank God I went home. Now, I had a spine. “I never wanted their dirty money,” I said, glaring her down. “Even if I did pay, they only get the three hundred back. They’re not getting a single extra dime out of me!” 3 Harper’s face went completely pale. She sneered. “I knew you were just a cheap scammer. You just don’t want to pay the interest. Thank God I never lent you a cent.” A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I wanted five bucks. What kind of interest was she planning to charge me on a sandwich? Harper pointed a manicured finger at the spilled food on the rug. “Clean that up right now, Jess. Or I swear I’ll make your life a living hell.” I stepped right over the mess. “Do your worst. Call the cops if you want.” I had already tried calling the police about the loan sharks. The dispatcher told me it was a civil dispute and they couldn’t intervene. I highly doubted they were going to dispatch a squad car over a dropped burrito. I walked out of the dorm, ignoring the dark, venomous look Harper was shooting at the back of my head. I had barely sat down in the library to study when my phone started vibrating violently against the wood table. I whispered apologies to the annoyed students around me and jammed my phone on silent. The screen lit up with endless streams of unknown numbers. When I didn’t answer, the text messages flooded in. “Jessica, when are you paying the $1,500? You’re a college student. Have you no shame being a filthy thief?” “You have until 6 PM today. If we don’t see the money, your parents, professors, and friends will know exactly what you are. Consequences are on you!” “Keep ignoring us and see what happens to your credit, you little deadbeat. Nobody’s ever going to hire a thief!” I had mentally prepared myself for the harassment, but seeing the sheer volume of threats made my stomach churn. Studying was out of the question now. I grabbed my backpack and headed toward the cafeteria, blocking numbers as I walked. My thumb slipped on the screen, and I accidentally answered a call. A rough, gravelly man’s voice barked through the speaker. “Well, look who finally decided to pick up! Thought you dropped dead, Jessica.” “You go to Bayview University, right? Pay the damn money! Or I’m coming down to your campus to get it out of you myself!” I forced my voice to stay steady. “Your loans are predatory and illegal. You have no legal standing.” The guy let out a vicious string of curses. “If you’re broke, just say you’re broke! Legal my ass. You weren’t whining about the law when you took our cash. Pay up now, or I’m gonna ruin you!” I hung up on him and blocked the number. I took a deep breath and walked into the dining hall, but the lunch lady practically slammed my tray onto the counter, splashing soup near my hand. “Kids these days,” she muttered loudly. “No respect for anyone, just dragging their families down.” I looked around. Students at the nearby tables were staring at me, whispering behind their hands. “That’s her.” “The one who steals money and bullies her roommates. Total psycho.” My chest tightened. I rushed back to the dorm and opened the university forum. My face was plastered right on the front page. 4 Harper had written a massive essay online. She played the tragic victim, claiming I was a degenerate gambler who refused to pay my debts and took out my anger by terrorizing her in our own room. I was officially the most hated girl on campus. The academic advisor was already waiting in my dorm when I got back. Harper was standing next to her, squeezing out fake tears and looking fragile, while the advisor rubbed her back sympathetically. My blood boiled. “I’m the one getting death threats! What are you crying for?” The advisor glared at me sharply. “Watch your tone, Jessica! Taking out shady loans is bad enough, but resorting to physical intimidation? Unacceptable.” “Apologize to Harper right this second, or I’m writing you up for immediate suspension!” A crowd of students had gathered in the hallway outside our open door, whispering and recording the drama on their phones. Normally, I would have just swallowed my pride and kept my head down. I hate confrontation. But I was pushed entirely past my limit. “Why should I apologize? She’s the one who tricked me into clicking a loan shark link! Why do you think I knocked her food out of her hands?” Harper gritted her teeth and wailed louder. “Stop lying! I never forced you to do anything. You clicked it yourself!” She turned to the advisor, her voice trembling. “I know I don’t come from a rich family, but that doesn’t give Jess the right to treat me like garbage! She’s been bullying me all semester, and now she wants to blame her debts on me! If you don’t expel her right now, I’ll jump out of this window!” She actually lunged toward the dorm room balcony. The crowd gasped. The advisor nearly had a heart attack trying to pull her back. She whipped her head around to look at me, her face flushed with fury. “Do you have anything else to say for yourself? Do you think you can just terrorize people because you feel like it?” “I’ve heard enough. You are suspended pending an investigation. Your scholarship for this semester is revoked. Pack your bags!” Tears of pure frustration stung my eyes. My family had been dirt poor for three generations. When did I suddenly become the rich campus bully? I looked at Harper, soaking up the sympathy from the crowd, and I wanted to scream. I was half-tempted to say I would jump out the window with her. But right then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Dad. I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinked back my tears, and looked the advisor dead in the eye. “Fine. I accept the suspension.” 5 It took a train, a Greyhound bus, and hitching a ride in the back of a pickup truck to finally make it back to Brookhollow. But the town was unrecognizable. Almost every house was putting up fresh siding. The dirt road leading into the valley had been paved with smooth, black asphalt. Even the old hound dog that slept on the porch of the general store was wearing a fancy new leather collar. Mom had cooked an absolute feast to comfort me. “Don’t you worry your pretty head, sweetie. The boys are about to bleed these scammers dry. They won’t be bothering you much longer.” Sitting at the kitchen table, a warm feeling finally spread through my chest. Sure, I had been public enemy number one at school for a month, but my whole hometown was living like kings. The next billing cycle was approaching. Like always, I played dead and ignored the app. But then a text came through from Harper. “Jessica, have you no shame? Are you really not going to pay?” I frowned at my screen. Even if I was a deadbeat, what the hell did it matter to her? When I left her on read, she started blowing up my phone. Her texts reeked of desperation. “Don’t pretend you can’t see this. You think hiding out in the woods is gonna save you?” “Do your parents even know how much trouble you’re in?” “Do you really want to humiliate your family in front of your whole redneck town?” I chuckled out loud. My family were local heroes right now. Folks were lining up to buy my dad a beer at the tavern. Before I could type out a snarky reply, another text chimed in. This one was from the debt collectors. “Brookhollow, right? We’ll be there by 6 PM tomorrow. Have the cash ready, or you’re gonna find out what happens.” A thrill of adrenaline shot through me. I typed back immediately: “Doors are unlocked. Come on down.” Our whole town had been waiting for them to show their faces. Seeing that I wasn’t scared, the collector sent back a single, ominous threat: “You just wait, you little bitch.” The next afternoon, the whole town was on high alert. A battered white cargo van with out-of-state plates slowly rolled past the town limits. Several heavy-set guys dressed like cheap gangsters climbed out. They used the address from my ID upload to march straight up to my front yard. The leader, a guy with a neck tattoo and sleeves of faded ink, sneered at me from the grass. “Jessica? You the dumb broad who thinks she can stiff us?”

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Memories from five years in the future rushed into my mind. I woke with a gasp, realizing I had been sent back in time. The despair of my past life was seared into my soul. Thomas’s broken body, the toys on bloody asphalt, the twisted faces of that woman and her son. It all played like a nightmare. That day, I held a positive pregnancy test, waiting for Thomas. The police called instead. He was dead. At the crash scene, his hands still clutched small, expensive action figures. I was naive. I thought he had been rushing to buy a surprise for our baby. Guilt swallowed me. I hated myself for not telling him sooner. The grief broke me. I hurt myself, lost the baby, and became a ghost. My only plan was to join him after the funeral. But at the service, a four year old boy barged in. He screamed that it was my fault. He said his father had been sneaking out for his birthday. I tried to grab him, but a woman stopped me. She smirked. She said she and Thomas had been together for five years. She asked if it was a crime to let his real child say goodbye. Then she told me everything. She was the one who pushed me down the stairs years ago, killing my first baby. Thomas had fallen for her that night and paid someone to take the blame. While I was in surgery losing our child, she and Thomas conceived her son in the hospital bathroom. Her words were a poisoned dagger. As my vision darkened, the boy shoved me violently. I fell backward through the chapel window. 1 I lost my first baby. It was the exact same day Thomas and that woman fell in love at first sight. When I finally came to, Thomas was kneeling beside my hospital bed, his eyes completely bloodshot. “Gina, it’s okay if we don’t have a kid. I only need you.” He was crying so hard, looking so thoroughly heartbroken. I just stared at him, still hoping my memories were just a terrifying fever dream. I opened my mouth a few times before I could force a raspy whisper past my lips. “The person who pushed me. Did you call the cops?” He froze for a fraction of a second, his eyes darting to the floor. “Yeah. I called them. Don’t worry.” In my past life, I believed him without a second thought. But with the memory of my violent death still exploding behind my eyes, I stared at him, trying to see straight through his skin to the rotting core underneath. Thomas couldn’t handle my intense gaze. He hastily made an excuse about getting the doctor and practically fled the room, leaving his phone on the mattress. We had been together for fifteen years. His passcode had always been my birthday. Acting purely on instinct, I unlocked the screen. The moment I saw his messages, my entire body began to violently tremble. The chat was open with an unsaved number. “I pushed your wife on purpose tonight.” “It’s so unfair. We finally have this incredible connection at first sight, and it’s all your fault for being married. Why did you have to step up and fight those guys for me tonight? I was just so jealous.” “But I swear I didn’t know she was pregnant.” Thomas’s reply was right underneath. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you. Don’t be scared, sweetheart. I’ll handle everything.” A deafening buzz filled my ears. In my past life, he told me he was at a bar with a difficult client who was giving him a hard time. Terrified he was going to get hurt, I rushed over. A drunk patron had thrown a heavy glass bottle his way, and I threw myself in front of him without thinking. In the chaos, someone shoved me hard down a flight of stairs, killing my first child. The woman’s texts kept rolling in. “Your wife is literally bleeding out getting surgery right now, and you just made my legs turn to jelly in the hospital bathroom. Are you a total bastard or what?” He replied: “I’m a bastard. But I don’t know what it is. The second I saw you… I just felt like you were different.” Different. Thomas used to say those exact same words to me. When I was seven, my family moved to a rough part of town. My dad would lose money at the poker tables and use me as a punching bag. Thomas was the one who always grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the house to hide. He lived with his blind grandmother. They had nothing. But even when his stomach was rumbling, he would break his only piece of bread in half and give me the bigger piece. I once asked him why he was so good to me. He scratched the back of his neck and smiled. “I don’t know. You’re just different.” The phone slipped from my sweaty fingers and clattered onto the linoleum floor. A sudden, agonizing cramp ripped through my abdomen. I curled into a tight ball, gasping in pain. Just then, Thomas rushed back into the room. Seeing his phone on the floor, his shoulders visibly relaxed. He quickly picked it up, but when he saw my pale, sweating face, his expression twisted into genuine panic. He grabbed my hand. “Baby, does it hurt again?” He sounded so incredibly gentle. For a second, it felt like the disgusting, adulterous texts I just read were nothing but a hallucination. My stomach felt like it was being put through a meat grinder. The emotional shock triggered a secondary hemorrhage from my surgery. Suddenly, his phone rang. The voice bleeding through the speaker was sickeningly sweet. “I’m wearing that outfit you like. Why aren’t you here yet?” A flash of sheer panic crossed Thomas’s face. “Baby, there’s a massive emergency at the office,” he lied, kissing my forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can to keep you company.” He turned around and walked briskly toward the door. I used every ounce of strength I had to scream for him. “Thomas… get a doctor…” He didn’t hear me. Or he didn’t want to. As my vision began to blur from blood loss, I remembered the last text I saw on his screen. “I know you didn’t finish earlier. I’m waiting in our spot by the hospital stairwell.” Thomas had sent one last reply before he left. “Someone’s going to be crying and begging for mercy in ten minutes.” A single tear slipped out of the corner of my eye, tracking down my temple. Just before I blacked out, I heard the nurses rushing in, screaming. “Secondary hemorrhaging! Where is the husband?! He promised he wouldn’t leave her side! How could he abandon a critical patient?!” When I woke up again, I was entirely alone. I let out a broken, hysterical laugh, wiping the tears from my face as I dialed my lawyer’s number. “Mr. Caldwell. I need you to draw up divorce papers. And tell me… is there any way to put the person who assaulted me behind bars?” “Gina, to get a criminal conviction, chat logs aren’t enough. We need an airtight chain of evidence.” Mr. Caldwell had already pulled the security footage from the bar. Conveniently, the cameras covering the stairs were “broken.” Someone had obviously deleted the files. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. We had been together for a decade. How could Thomas go to such horrifying lengths to protect a woman he had literally just met? I told Mr. Caldwell to give me a little more time. I used Sienna’s phone number to track down her social media accounts. She felt absolutely zero guilt about being a homewrecker. Her entire feed was dedicated to Thomas. And her most recent post made my blood run cold. Thomas had brought her into our home. “Had the most intense time with my crush tonight. My throat is so sore from screaming his name. I wonder if his wife was screaming this much during her surgery?” “His wife is stuck in the hospital for a few days, so my crush got super excited and took me five times in their marital bed.” I stared blankly at the photos attached to the posts. The expensive silk sheets I had personally picked out were a wrinkled mess, stained with their disgusting activities. Shredded lingerie was tossed over my nightstand. Used condoms littered our hardwood floor. A few commenters called her a shameless homewrecker, but Thomas was in the replies, defending her at every turn. “Don’t talk to her like that. Blame me. I’m just too obsessed with her.” Moving like a machine, I took screenshots of every single photo and saved them to a secure cloud folder. Then I leaned over the side of the hospital bed and dry-heaved until my ribs ached. I don’t know how I survived the rest of my hospital stay. Thomas came to pick me up the day I was discharged. He looked at me with deep, soulful eyes and handed me a velvet box. “You’ve been through hell, sweetheart. I picked this out just for you. I swear on my life, I will never let anyone hurt you again.” It was an expensive, beautifully crafted necklace. I might have even believed him if I hadn’t checked Sienna’s feed yesterday. “I threw his cheap wedding ring in the trash. Looking at it felt like that ugly wife of his was mocking me.” “He ordered us a custom pair of diamond rings worth a fortune, engraved with our initials.” And this necklace? It was just the complimentary gift that came with his massive purchase. I stared at his bare ring finger. “Where is your wedding band?” Our rings were cheap stainless steel. Back then, we had poured every dime into his startup. We used to share a single bowl of instant noodles for dinner. I bought him a fifty-dollar ring when we got married to save money. He had held that cheap piece of metal to his chest, too excited to sleep all night. “Gina, this ring is my love for you. I’m never taking it off until the day I die.” Now, his face tightened in panic, and he quickly tucked his hand into his pocket. “I took it off to wash my hands before a client meeting and accidentally left it in my desk drawer.” I didn’t have the energy to say another word. I kept a close eye on both Thomas and Sienna. A month later, I received a text from an unknown number. “Wanna come down to the office and see what’s really going on?” I received this exact same text in my past life. Back then, I thought it was a malicious prank and ignored it. This time, I grabbed my coat. It was exactly what I expected. Sienna was lounging across the leather sofa in Thomas’s private office. Thomas, a notorious germaphobe, was happily letting her drop potato chip crumbs all over the expensive rug. So this was how early he brought her into my orbit in the previous timeline. And I just sat at home like a blind idiot, trusting him completely. Sienna looked me up and down with a smug, calculating smirk. “So you’re the wife?” Thomas shot up from his desk, his face draining of color. “Gina! What are you doing here? I…” I looked at Sienna and gave a soft, condescending laugh. “Is this your new secretary? She has absolutely no manners. I don’t like her. Fire her.” I wanted to trigger her. When a mistress is provoked, she always tries to prove her dominance over the man. It was the fastest way to get her to slip up and give me evidence. For the first time in fifteen years, Thomas’s face hardened, and he snapped at me. “She’s doing a great job. The company needs talent like hers.” “Gina, be good. Don’t throw a tantrum over nothing. You’re almost thirty. Acting like a spoiled brat isn’t a good look for you.” The sheer hypocrisy of it pulled a bitter laugh from my throat. When we were broke, I would stare at dresses through store windows, but I always told him I didn’t like them because I wanted to save his hard-earned cash. Back then, Thomas wore the same jacket for three years just so he could afford to take me to the amusement park, to the mall. He would buy me the nicest things he could possibly afford and place them in my hands like offerings. Back then, he held me and said, “Gina, when you’re with me, you can be a spoiled little kid forever.” I stared dead into his eyes, letting the heavy, suffocating silence stretch between us. Right at that moment, the entire building shuddered. An earthquake. The floor violently pitched beneath our feet. The massive crystal chandelier above us let out a terrifying metallic groan, ripping free from the ceiling. Thomas instinctively lunged toward me, reaching out to grab my arm and pull me to safety. But Sienna suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Thomas! Help me! I’m scared!” Without a single second of hesitation, he dropped my hand, spun around, and threw himself over her to shield her body. “I’ve got you,” he yelled to her. In the violent shaking, his sudden movement shoved me backward. I crashed hard into the sharp corner of his mahogany desk. A blinding agony ripped through my abdomen. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run. I lay there, staring wide-eyed as my husband wrapped his arms tightly around his mistress. The chandelier slammed directly onto my back. Through the sheer, bone-shattering agony, my mind drifted to the past. Years ago, a gas line exploded in our cramped apartment building. Thomas had pinned me to the floor, covering my body entirely with his own, nearly going deaf from the blast to keep me safe. I used to believe we loved each other so much we would gladly die for one another. That was why, in my past life, when I identified his mangled body at the morgue, I went home and slit my own wrists, ready to join him in hell. When I woke up in the hospital this time, I had three broken ribs. Thomas sat by my bed, his eyes rimmed with red, making desperate promises. “Gina, I swear to God, I only pushed you because my first instinct as a boss was to evacuate my employees… I already fired that assistant. I swear.” It was such a pathetic, insulting lie. I just smiled weakly. While he stepped out to speak to the doctor, I grabbed my phone and fired off a text to Sienna. “Getting fired is just a warning shot. We are never getting a divorce. Know your place, little girl. Stop acting like a desperate stray begging for scraps.” My phone blew up almost instantly. “You old bitch, so you finally figured it out!” “Don’t act so smug! He literally told me he stopped loving you years ago! I’m the only one he cares about now!” I replied with a simple, Then prove it, and tossed the phone onto the bedside table. The pain in my chest was suffocating, wrapping around me like a tight corset. Sienna’s retaliation came fast and ruthless. For the next few days, Thomas vanished entirely. But Sienna made sure I knew exactly where he was, texting me live updates of their grand romance. While I was paralyzed in a hospital bed with broken ribs, Thomas bought a luxury condo and moved her in. He was deathly allergic to dog dander, but he bought her a Pomeranian and let it sleep on his chest. The man who used to complain about not having enough time to eat lunch with me was suddenly taking her out to endless, boring indie movies. “These are just the basics,” she texted me. “You have no idea what he’s really willing to do for me.” She stopped right there. No matter how much I provoked her, she refused to elaborate on the miscarriage. I sent the mountain of screenshots and texts to Mr. Caldwell. His response was frustratingly practical. “This is great for securing a massive payout in the divorce settlement, but without a confession, we still can’t press criminal charges for the miscarriage.” It felt like the air was being sucked out of my lungs. This time, I was the one who called Thomas, forcing myself to sob hysterically into the receiver. “Thomas, are you in love with someone else? Do you not want me anymore? If you do, let’s just get a divorce.” Thomas rushed to the hospital in record time. His hair was damp with sweat, and his voice was raw as he pulled me into a tight embrace. “Gina, stop saying that. I love you. Please, never say the word divorce again.” I squeezed my eyes shut. In my past life, they slept together for five years, and he still refused to divorce me. I knew he wouldn’t let me go this time either. Was I supposed to be happy? I didn’t know. The grief and absolute despair felt like a dark, endless ocean. I gripped his sleeve, crying genuine tears. “Then why weren’t you here while I was hospitalized? I keep having nightmares about you pushing me away to save another woman. If you really love someone else, I’ll step aside. I promise.” My words twisted the knife of guilt in his chest. He kissed my tears away, holding me so tightly my broken ribs throbbed. “Only you. I only have you.” Driven by sheer guilt or cowardice, Thomas didn’t leave my hospital room again. He even had his entire desktop setup moved in so he could work next to my bed. Sienna’s enraged texts started flooding my phone. “You manipulative bitch! Don’t think you’ve won just because he hasn’t come back to me!” I didn’t reply to a single one. The day I was finally cleared for discharge happened to be my birthday. I asked Thomas to plan a massive, romantic birthday surprise for me, claiming I needed to wash away the bad luck of the hospital. Desperate to make amends, he agreed instantly. Candlelight dinners. Thousands of imported roses. “I’ll hold you while we look at the stars tonight, and when dawn breaks, we’ll watch the sunrise on the beach together,” he promised, looking incredibly proud of his plan. A wave of dizziness hit me. When Thomas first confessed his feelings to me, it was on a beach. We had stayed up all night just to watch the sunrise. As the morning light hit the water, he handed me a tiny, wilted bouquet he bought for five bucks, his face burning bright red. “Gina, I honestly don’t know how I ended up loving you this much.” I turned my head, swallowing the lump in my throat and forcing the tears back. I gave him a bright, hollow smile. “That sounds perfect. You treat me so well.” The second he turned his back, I took a screenshot of the entire itinerary and sent it straight to Sienna. “Look at this. The wife is always the wife. Stop playing the clown and accept reality.” Sienna didn’t text back. But on the night of my birthday, I sat on the freezing beach for hours, and Thomas never showed up. Instead, my phone pinged with an audio file. “Let’s see how smug you are now! Do you have the guts to listen to this?” My hands shook violently as I tapped the play button. The audio was crisp, amplified by the emptiness of the beach. It was Sienna, crying like a total victim. “Are you regretting choosing me?! Back then, I pushed Gina down the stairs on purpose to kill her baby! Go ahead and call the cops! Once I’m in prison, I won’t have to miss you anymore!” Thomas let out a heavy sigh, his voice soft and coaxing. “Don’t be stupid, baby. How could I ever regret you? That was my child too, and I still covered it up for you, didn’t I?” The recording cut off. I stared out at the pitch-black ocean, reaching up to touch my face. My fingers came away slick with tears. What a joke. Why was I even crying? I finally had the concrete evidence I needed to destroy them. I forwarded the audio file directly to Mr. Caldwell. I stood there frozen for a long time, letting the freezing ocean wind bite at my skin. Finally, I wiped my face and turned to walk back to the road. Suddenly, a brutal force grabbed me by the hair and yanked me into the dark alley between two beachfront shops. A heavy boot slammed squarely into my stomach. “They hired me to mess up a cripple?” a gruff voice spat. The man let out a sick, guttural laugh. “Whatever. Crippled or not, you’ve got a pretty face.” He stepped closer, pinning my waist to the concrete. My ribs screamed in agony, and the pain radiating from my stomach made me dizzy. My attempts to fight him off were pathetically weak. As he ripped my coat open, my fingers desperately scrambled behind my back, closing around my phone. Fighting through the searing pain, I tried to dial 911 blindly, but my thumb slipped. The screen lit up—I had accidentally called Thomas. The call connected. But before I could even scream for help, Sienna’s breathy laughter echoed out of the speaker. “You’re so heartless… Your wife is out there waiting for you. What if a sick patient like her runs into trouble in the dark?” Sienna was panting heavily. “Don’t bring her up right now,” Thomas’s voice growled. “You’re the little menace who forced me to come here.” “Let her fend for herself. The only person I’m interested in punishing right now is you.” Sienna let out a sharp gasp. “Careful! Don’t go too hard, I’m pregnant!” The blood in my veins turned to absolute ice. So the little bastard who pushed me to my death in my past life had finally been conceived. The thug above me finally noticed the glowing screen. He kicked the phone out of my hand, sending it smashing against the brick wall. The screen flickered and died. I stared at the shattered glass, too numb to even react. The man slapped me across the face, his ring cutting my cheek. “Trying to call for help? Did you hear that, bitch? Nobody cares if you live or die!” He raised his heavy boot, aiming a crushing blow right at my healing ribs. I squeezed my eyes shut. But the sickening crunch I expected never came. The private security detail I had hired weeks ago finally stepped out of the shadows. I slumped against the cold pavement, keeping myself conscious by a thread. “Did you…” I gasped out. “Did you record everything?” The security guard nodded grimly, holding up a camera. A massive wave of relief washed over me. I let the darkness pull me under and completely collapsed onto the sand. … Hours later, the adrenaline of his affair faded, and Thomas finally remembered me. He tried to call my phone to spin some elaborate lie about a car breaking down, but it went straight to voicemail. Panic started to set in. He called his assistant, ordering him to check the beach. The assistant’s callback made his blood run cold. “Mr. Thomas… The beach is empty. The police just left the scene. They said… they said there was a homicide attempt.” Thomas froze completely. Suddenly, a blinding, agonizing pain ripped through his skull. Thousands of fragmented, terrifying memories flooded his brain. Memories from five years in the future. He saw himself dying in a mangled heap of metal. He saw Sienna and her bastard son confronting me at his funeral. And he saw exactly how I died.

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When a gentle woman moved into our home, I saw my brother smile for the first time in ages. He said she would live with us and take care of me. I ran to her with a card I’d made and asked if she knew his biggest wish. She crouched down, smiled, and said, “Your brother’s biggest wish is for you to disappear.” At that moment, memories flooded back: my parents in a pool of blood, my brother’s vows at their graves, the plates I broke, the tears he could never wipe away. After the accident, I became the idiot everyone whispered about. My medical bills drained our family’s savings. My brother went to college by day and worked grueling night shifts, yet returned to a house I’d trashed. I’d throw filthy things at him, shouting that he wanted to hurt me. He never got angry, just held me, repeating, “Besser, it’s me. It’s your brother.” Later, as I worsened, he had to take me everywhere. One day, I ruined a new job he’d worked so hard to get. He crouched with his back to me, shoulders shaking, and said brokenly, “Besser, why don’t you just die? Stop torturing me…” Those words unlocked a piece of my memory. I walked over, wiped his face with my shirt, and whispered, “Brother, don’t cry.” He pulled me into a tight hug, choking on apologies. Now I finally understood. Those moments of clarity and his occasional tenderness were just the calm before the storm. Some wishes are not just words spoken in anger. 1 I stared blankly at Randee. It took a long time before I could force a sentence out of my mouth. “Die… what does it mean to die?” Randee let out a cold scoff. “You really are a retard. You don’t even know what dying means.” She crouched lower, explaining with mock patience. “Dying means you end up exactly like your parents. Gone. Erased.” I stumbled backward in terror and shook my head. “Brother said… he doesn’t want Besser to die.” Randee stood up, looking down at me from above. “Your brother changed his mind. He told me himself. His greatest wish is for you to vanish.” “So go die, Besser. It’s better for him, and it’s better for me.” I stood frozen, gripping my handmade card tightly, struggling to process her words. When I finally snapped out of it, I noticed the sliced fruit scattered across the floor and the trash that had spilled out of the bin. No. The house was messy. Cole was going to be mad. I quickly squatted down, trying to scoop the garbage back into the bin. A noise came from the front porch. The door clicked open. Cole was home. I looked up at him with a big smile. I was just about to tell him how good I had been today, but Randee ran past me, crying, and threw herself into his arms. She pointed at the mess on the floor. “I really can’t handle your sister anymore, Cole. I tried to feed her some fruit, and not only did she refuse to eat, but she threw everything everywhere!” A deeply apologetic look crossed my brother’s face. He stroked Randee’s hair gently. “I am so sorry, Randee. The doctor said she was getting better. I didn’t think she would act up again so soon.” My mouth fell open slightly. I instinctively wanted to defend myself, but my damaged brain couldn’t string a complete sentence together. I could only stutter, “Besser didn’t…” Randee shot me a sideways glance before complaining again. “Look at her. She even knows how to lie now.” Cole let out a heavy sigh. He knelt in front of me. “Besser, lying is wrong.” “And didn’t I tell you to listen to Randee while I was gone? Why didn’t you listen?” I was so confused. But Randee told me to go die. Brother, was I really supposed to listen to her? My already broken mind felt like an overheated engine. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I collapsed weakly into his arms. Randee leaned in close. “Will she ever really be normal again?” Cole held me a little tighter. His voice was firm. “She will. Even if there’s only a one-in-a-ten-thousand chance, I am going to cure her.” He didn’t notice the dark, venomous look that flashed across Randee’s eyes. But a second later, her voice was sickly sweet again. “Okay. Focus on your work. I’ll help you take good care of her.” Cole was moved to tears by her understanding. But for me, the real nightmare had just begun. One afternoon, she was sitting on the sofa watching TV and ordered me to massage her legs. I squeezed her calves clumsily. She kicked me hard in the chest, sending me flying backward. “Are you stupid? You can’t even massage a leg right?” I landed a few feet away, crying out loud from the sharp pain. But when Cole came home, Randee twisted the story, claiming I was throwing another tantrum. Cole could only tell me, over and over again, to be a good girl and listen to her. Choking on my sobs, I reached out, wanting my brother to hold me like he used to. But he swatted my hands away. His tone was unusually harsh. “Besser. Say it. Tell me you will listen to Randee.” I was trembling from crying so hard. I mumbled incoherently, “Brother says… listen to Randee…” Right then, Randee pulled me into a sympathetic hug. She looked up at Cole. “Come on, Cole. She’s just a kid with a sick brain. Don’t be so mean to her. I can handle a little unfairness.” Cole was so touched by her grace that he completely missed the way the blood drained from my lips while I was trapped in her embrace. Seeing that Cole believed her every word, Randee dropped her mask entirely whenever he left the house. She would secretly pinch the soft flesh of my inner arms. When I instinctively tried to pull away, she would lean in and whisper, “Besser, remember what your brother said? You have to listen to me.” “Hold your arm out!” And so, weeping quietly, I would hold my arm out to her. She seemed to hate me to my core. Every pinch was calculated to inflict maximum pain. Just as I was about to pass out from crying, Cole walked in. Randee immediately yanked my sleeves down and threw herself into his arms. It took her less than a second to play the victim. “Cole, your sister is impossible! She just won’t listen to anything I say!” One day, I had a sudden moment of clarity. I pulled up my sleeves to show Cole the dark, ugly bruises mottling my skin. Cole froze. Randee quickly chimed in with a deeply apologetic tone. “It’s all my fault. I didn’t keep a close enough eye on her.” “You know how she is, Cole. She can barely walk straight these days. She bumps into the corners of the tables and bruises herself instantly.” Cole thought back. It was true that almost every time he opened the door, he found me sitting on the floor crying. The very next day, he bought foam padding and wrapped every sharp corner and piece of furniture in the house. Randee gritted her teeth and glared at me. “Your brother really treats you well, doesn’t he?” I nodded happily. “Brother treats Besser good. Doesn’t want Besser to die.” Randee let out three cold, mocking laughs. She grabbed a plastic clothes hanger and began raining blows down on my head and shoulders. It hurt so much. I screamed for my brother. Randee just sneered. “He’s on a business trip. He won’t be back for two weeks.” “You little bitch, you actually tried to snitch on me!” She grabbed my chin with her left hand and slapped me across the face with her right, over and over until my cheek was swollen and burning. I couldn’t stop shivering and crying. My pain only seemed to excite her. She kept hitting me until a knock sounded at the front door. Panicking slightly, she shoved a rag into my mouth, threw a heavy blanket over me, and went to answer it. It was Mrs. Higgins, our neighbor. “What’s going on? Why is Besser crying so terribly?” Randee offered a helpless, weary smile. “She’s having an episode again. She keeps screaming that I’m the one who killed her parents. I can’t calm her down.” Mrs. Higgins looked sympathetic. She pulled out a small tin. “It’s so hard on you two. I baked some cookies. Let me go in and try to coax her.” She made a move to step inside. Randee quickly blocked the doorway. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Mrs. Higgins. I’ll take good care of her.” She took the tin of cookies, shut the door, and locked the deadbolt. She sat on the sofa, crossing her legs, casually eating the cookies meant for me. Between bites, she warned, “You better behave yourself these next few days. Don’t cause me any trouble.” When she was done, she grabbed a thick rope, tied me to the leg of the heavy dining table, and left the house. I needed to use the bathroom, but the rope was too short. The rough fibers rubbed the skin off my neck. It burned. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I soiled the floor. When she came back, she kicked me twice in the ribs. Then she took a picture of the mess and sent it to Cole. She called him, crying hysterically. “Cole, what do I do? I really can’t take this anymore. I took my eyes off her for one second and she went to the bathroom all over the floor. Is she doing this on purpose to punish me?” Cole replied almost instantly. “How did that happen? Baby, I’m sending you money right now. Hire a cleaning service. I am so sorry you have to deal with this.” He sent her dozens of apologizing emojis. After the cleaners came and went, Randee walked toward me with a dark, murderous look. She slapped me hard across the face. “You useless piece of trash! You can’t even control your own bowels!” After venting her anger, she looked down at me. I was lying on the floor like a dead fish. Her voice turned ice cold. “If you ever try to snitch to your brother again, I will beat you worse than this.” “Let me tell you the truth. Every single girlfriend your brother ever had left him because of you.” “I am the only one willing to put up with this.” “Do you know how much money your brother has burned trying to fix your broken brain?” “Don’t you realize you are nothing but a burden?” “Besser, if you really love your brother, you need to grow up. Stop ruining his future.” Her words sank deep into my mind. I really was a burden. When Cole returned from his business trip, he brought Randee a thick gold necklace. Randee grinned from ear to ear. “Gold is so expensive right now. You really bought this for me?” Cole told her he knew taking care of me was incredibly hard. He promised to buy her a piece of gold jewelry every single month from now on. Randee’s smile grew even wider. But a second later, her smile froze completely. Cole pulled a solid gold bracelet out of his bag. It was much heavier, and far more expensive, than her necklace. He slipped the bracelet onto my wrist and smiled gently. “Merry Christmas, Besser. I just want you to be safe and happy for the rest of your life.” Randee’s voice was stiff. “Cole, you’re putting a bracelet like that on a retard—I mean, your sister. Aren’t you worried she’ll lose it?” I felt a spark of anger. For the first time, I talked back to her. “No. Besser won’t be careless.” Hearing my response, Cole grabbed Randee’s hands excitedly. “Did you hear that? That’s the longest sentence she’s spoken in months!” “She’s definitely getting better.” He hugged me tightly, thrilled. But then his eyes fell on the raw, red marks around my neck. He frowned. “Besser, how did you hurt your neck?” I wanted to tell him. I wanted to say Randee bullied me. But before the words could leave my mouth, Cole’s attention was pulled away by a small bandage on Randee’s finger. “Your sister wanted me to peel an apple for her, and I accidentally cut myself,” she lied smoothly. She was lying. She hurt her finger when she went out partying with her friends. I opened my mouth and stammered, “Not… not because of me.” But no one heard me. Luckily, Cole had accumulated a lot of paid time off after his trip. For a little while, I didn’t have to get beaten. I didn’t have to eat food off the floor like a dog, or have Randee record humiliating videos of me on her phone. But I also knew Cole couldn’t stay home with me forever. Suddenly, I remembered what my mother told me a long time ago. “Besser, if anyone ever bullies you, you must, absolutely must, tell your family.” Yes. I needed to listen to my mom. I needed to tell Cole what Randee was doing. But whenever Randee was in the room, I never got the chance to speak. The moment I stepped out of my room, her eyes would lock onto my gold bracelet with a terrifying, greedy intensity. I could only cover the bracelet with my sleeve, hide in my room, and listen to the noises outside. Finally, the day came. Randee received a money transfer from Cole and went out shopping. Hearing the front door shut, I immediately ran out, grabbing Cole’s sleeve. “Randee. Bad. She hurts me.” Naturally, Cole didn’t believe me. After all, I used to call him a bad man too. He squatted down and looked at me gently. “Besser, if you falsely accuse people, it will make Randee very sad.” I shook my head violently, my eyes wide and serious. “No lie.” I ran to the storage closet, found the thick, rough rope she used to tie me up, and slipped it over my own neck. Then I placed the other end by the leg of the dining table. I got down on my hands and knees, looking up at him. “Randee makes me eat like this.” “She ties me here.” “I need the bathroom. Can’t walk. Neck hurts.” I pointed to the scabbing wounds on my neck, stuttering as I desperately tried to explain. Cole’s expression grew darker and more serious by the second. He rolled up my sleeves. Despite the foam padding covering every edge in the house, I had more purple and yellow bruises than ever before. “Randee hit you?” he asked quietly. I nodded. Cole took a deep breath. “I understand.” Later that evening, I hid in my room. Through the thin walls, I heard Cole and Randee get into their very first fight. “You’re taking the word of a retard over mine?!” Randee’s voice was shrill, much louder than his. She screamed hysterically. “Your sister never liked me! She thinks I stole your love, and you actually believe her?!” “I must have been blind to choose you. My parents told me we would never be happy. I cut ties with them just to come here and help you take care of her, and this is the thanks I get? You suspect me?!” She cried with absolute heartbreak. I sat on my bed, staring blankly at my own bruises. Did I really do this to myself? Eventually, the house fell completely silent. I crept out of my room and found Cole sitting on the floor, looking utterly defeated. When he saw me, he offered an exhausted smile. “Did we wake you up, Besser?” Seeing the look on his face, I suddenly remembered the woman who had been by his side before Randee. When that woman first met me, she couldn’t hide the disgust on her face.

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1 Sitting by Dante’s hospital bed, I watched the anesthesia keep its heavy hooks in him. His lips parted, slurring a string of digits into the sterile hospital air over and over again. I didn’t even have to think. I picked up his phone on the nightstand, dialed the number he was mumbling, and pressed the receiver to my ear. The call connected almost instantly. A girl’s voice, thick with tears and desperation, came through the speaker. I recognized her immediately. It was his star grad student. “Professor Bennett, I thought you were never going to call me again!” she cried out, her voice dripping with grievance. “Why have you been ignoring all my texts?” This was the same girl who, barely a month ago, had nearly pushed my marriage to the brink of divorce. I still remembered that night. Dante had smoked three packs of cigarettes in the freezing cold. The next morning, with bloodshot eyes, he dropped to his knees. He begged me to think of the baby growing inside me, to give him one last chance. He swore on his life that he would cut ties with her completely and return to our family. Now, my fingers gripped his phone so tightly my knuckles turned white. My body trembled, yet the voice that came out of my throat was terrifyingly calm. “He just got out of surgery. He’s at St. Jude’s Medical Center, room 403.” Before she could process it, I added, “Come see him,” and hung up. The moment the screen went black, I opened a browser and booked an appointment at a women’s clinic for that very afternoon. Lying on the examination bed, I watched the cold IV fluid drip steadily into my veins. The rhythmic beeping of the monitor seemed to pull my consciousness into a blurry haze. Memories flashed behind my eyelids. I saw the college frat party years ago. Some drunk guy was mocking me, asking Dante why a brilliant Ivy League prospect like him would settle for a girl from a no-name state college. Dante had stepped right in front of me, his eyes blazing with a fury I had never seen before. “She is my entire world. Don’t you ever question why I love her!” The scene shifted. It was the night I found out I was pregnant. Dante had just wrapped up a massive research grant and took his lab assistants out to celebrate. I went to the bar to pick him up, worried he would drink too much. Instead, I stood in the shadows and watched my husband look down with absolute tenderness as he took a shot glass from his female student’s hand, drinking it for her. And beneath the sticky surface of the booth, hidden from the rest of the world, their fingers were tightly intertwined. The memories bled into each other, making my chest heave and my breath catch in my throat. We had been married for three years. People who didn’t know us well always said I hit the jackpot, landing a handsome, brilliant professor like Dante Bennett. Those who knew our history said it was karma paying off. My dad had taken Dante in off the streets when he was a beaten, starving kid. Now that Dante was a success, he was making sure my dad and I never had to worry about a thing. I used to ask him, half-joking, why he really married me. Was it love, or was it just a debt of gratitude? He would always laugh, ruffle my hair, and call me silly. I really was incredibly stupid. I was naive enough to believe his feelings for me were genuine. It wasn’t until I saw the way he looked at the woman he truly loved that the ugly truth hit me. He never loved me at all. “Mrs. Bennett? Are you awake?” The nurse’s gentle voice pulled me back to reality. “The procedure went smoothly. You can rest in the recovery lounge for a bit before heading home.” She helped me up and guided me to a plush chair in the next room. Just as she was about to leave, she paused, pulling a few tissues from a dispenser and handing them to me with a soft sigh. “You young people really need to be more careful. A few more weeks, and this wouldn’t have been a simple outpatient procedure.” It was only then I realized my cheeks were soaked with freezing tears. I didn’t understand why I was crying. I had already made peace with losing this baby. The day I caught Dante crossing the line, I slapped divorce papers on the table. I told him I was terminating the pregnancy because I refused to bring a child into a broken, poisoned home. That was when Dante fell apart. He crawled to my feet, sobbing, begging for mercy. “Aria, I have no one else in this world!” he had choked out, pressing his face against my knees. “It’s just you, Dad, and our unborn baby. If you throw me away, I’d rather be dead!” I knew Dante’s dark past. I knew he wasn’t making empty threats. So, against every instinct screaming in my head, I caved. I gave him a second chance. I forced myself to believe his promises of moving on. Yet his love for that young girl ran so terrifyingly deep that even when his brain was chemically paralyzed by anesthesia, hers was the only number he remembered. He didn’t even know my license plate number by heart. A sharp cramp twisted through my lower abdomen, sending a wave of ice into my bloodstream. I don’t know how long I sat there before they finally cleared me to leave. I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed, but my house keys were still sitting on Dante’s nightstand. Dragging my aching, hollowed-out body, I took a cab back to his hospital room. I didn’t expect Harper to be there already. Through the crack in the door, I saw her buried in Dante’s chest, sobbing violently. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having surgery? How long are you going to keep hiding from me?” Dante’s hand hovered just inches above her hair, trembling with hesitation. Finally, he gave in. His palm rested gently on her head, his touch dripping with agonizing affection. “Stop crying. I’m fine, aren’t I?” I stood outside the door like a pathetic voyeur, stealing a glimpse of someone else’s epic romance. I stared at the raw, vulnerable tenderness on my husband’s face. It was a look he had never, not once, given me. Harper jerked her head up, her face flushed with that toxic, entitled defiance only a twenty-something could muster. “Dante, I don’t believe you don’t love me. Look me in the eye and say it. Say you don’t love me, and I’ll walk out that door and never bother you again!” Dante’s face froze. His eyes were a storm of suppressed agony and conflict. He let out a ragged sigh, his voice cracking. “Don’t push me, Harper. You know exactly how I feel about you.” “Then what about your wife?” Harper pressed, looking dangerously smug at his confession. “Is the rumor true? Are you only with her because you owe her dad your life? Is there really nothing between you two?” My heart seized in my chest. Sickeningly, a pathetic part of me was still holding its breath, waiting for his answer. But right at that moment, Dante looked up. His eyes locked onto mine through the glass panel of the door. Panic flashed across his face, and he instinctively tried to sit up. My keys were sitting on the table right next to his bed. I took a deep breath, swallowed the bile rising in my throat, and pushed the door open. Seeing me walk in, Harper shot up from the edge of the bed. There was no panic on her face. No guilt. No shame. Instead, she glared at me with blatant annoyance, as if I were the villain interrupting her tragic love story. This wasn’t our first meeting. Just a week before I caught them, this same girl had been in my living room, eating dinner at my table. I had treated her like a little sister. When I finally confronted them after seeing them hold hands, she hadn’t flinched. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs. Bennett. But this is a private faculty-student event. Non-academics need to leave.” That night, when Dante dragged me out by my arm to avoid a scene, she had stood tall, watching me with that same fearless, mocking gaze. Just like today. But my stomach was cramping too fiercely to play the scorned wife. I didn’t have the energy for a screaming match. I walked past them, grabbed my keys, and turned for the door. I didn’t expect Dante to rip his IV out and stumble after me into the hallway. “Aria, listen to me! I swear I didn’t call her!” he pleaded, grabbing my wrist. Blood was already welling up from the puncture wound on his hand. “I know,” I said softly. “I called her. But she’s the one you truly wanted to see, isn’t she?” I sniffled, looking up into his panicked eyes. I forced the corners of my mouth up into a broken smile. “Dante, I know she’s the one in your heart. So let’s just get a divorce, okay?” Dante stared at me, his chest heaving. Then, suddenly, his desperation morphed into cold frustration. “Aria, I already promised you I’d end it with her. Today was an accident. You don’t need to keep using divorce to threaten me.” He tightened his grip on my arm. “You don’t even have a job. How are you going to raise a baby on your own? How are you going to pay for your dad’s nursing home?” Ever since my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Dante had used his university connections to get him into the best, most expensive memory care facility in the state. When my dad’s condition was at its worst, Dante didn’t trust the orderlies. He took time off work to bathe him, feed him, and clean up his messes with his own soft, academic hands. He didn’t know it, but those moments had forged an ironclad shield around him in my heart. That was the only reason I gave him a second chance. But a shield can only take so many hits before it shatters completely. As for the baby… I yanked my arm out of his grasp and reached into my purse for the clinic discharge papers. Before I could pull them out, a loud crash echoed from inside the room, followed immediately by Harper’s piercing shriek. “Professor Bennett… my stomach… it hurts so bad!” Without a single second of hesitation, Dante spun around and sprinted back toward the door. After two steps, he glanced back at me over his shoulder. “If you want to go home, just go. I’ll explain everything tomorrow. But stop bringing up divorce. I don’t want to hear that word again.” I honestly don’t remember how I got home that day. All I know is that shortly after walking through the front door, a violent fever hit me. Tossing and turning in a pool of sweat, my mind dragged me back to when Dante was eight years old. He was huddled in an alley, covered in blood, nearly beaten to death by his alcoholic father. I remembered tugging on my dad’s sleeve, begging him to save the pretty boy with the sad eyes. I remembered his high school graduation. He got a full ride to a prestigious university, while I barely scraped into a local college. It was the first time I ever drank alcohol. Fueled by liquid courage, I cornered him and blurted out, “Dante, I’m in love with you. Do you want to be together?” Since the day we met, Dante had never said no to me. Not even that night. We dated, we graduated, we got married. It was supposed to be a fairy tale. How did it rot into this? A shrill ringtone ripped me out of the fevered nightmare. It was an unknown number. “Hello, is this Aria Bennett? Your father managed to bypass our security system. He’s missing.” It took them until three in the morning to find him. He was standing on the cracked pavement in front of our old childhood home, clutching two melted caramel apples in his wrinkled hands. “Aria, baby, come here! Daddy bought treats for you and little Dante,” he beamed, his eyes milky and vacant. “Why didn’t you wait for me at the school gates? Did you run off to play again?” Sticky caramel dripped onto his calloused fingers. I broke down. I threw my arms around his frail body, sobbing uncontrollably into his chest. “Dad… why did you wander off? You scared me to death!” After that night, I refused to take him back to the facility. We moved straight into the old house. I was divorcing Dante anyway. There was no way I was going to let him keep paying for my father’s care. I had my own savings, enough for my dad and me to live a quiet, simple life. I didn’t expect Dante to track us down so quickly. When I opened the front door, he pushed his way in, his face dark with fury. “Are you out of your mind taking him out of care? Do you have any idea how unstable his condition is right now…” “He is my father, Dante. I can take care of him,” I cut him off smoothly, blocking the hallway so he couldn’t take another step inside. Maybe his snobby academic friends were right. We were from two entirely different worlds. He was the esteemed Professor Bennett, and I was just an unemployed housewife. But even so, he had lost the right to dictate my family’s life. Shock rippled across his face. “Are you seriously still throwing a tantrum over what happened?” I didn’t answer. It was exhausting even looking at him. Arguing felt childish now. But he refused to back down. “Whatever issues we have between us, we handle them between us. You don’t use Dad’s safety as leverage in your petty little war! Aria, you’ve taken this joke way too far!” I almost laughed in his face. It was mind-blowing how he could commit the ultimate betrayal, yet stand there with such righteous indignation, lecturing me about being petty. But my body was still recovering from the surgery, and I had zero strength to fight. I just slammed the door in his face. What I didn’t anticipate was the sheer scale of Dante’s arrogance. The next afternoon, I ran to the grocery store. When I came back, the house was dead silent. My dad was gone. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Dante. “I’ve moved Dad to a private, secure location. Don’t bother looking for him. He’s got round-the-clock professional care. As for you, when you’re ready to apologize and act like an adult, I’ll let you see him. I’m flying out for an international symposium for a few days. We will discuss this when I get back.” He fired off the sentences like a dictator, hung up, and immediately turned his phone off. I dropped my phone, my legs giving out as I collapsed onto the porch. For the first time in my life, I felt completely, utterly powerless. It was suffocating. I tried everything. I called lawyers, I called the police. But legally, Dante was listed as a primary contact and power of attorney from the previous facility. He had covered his tracks perfectly. Unless he gave the word, I wasn’t seeing my dad. I spent the next few days wandering the empty house like a ghost. Every morning, I prayed for Dante’s flight to land so he could finally tell me where he hid my father. But Dante never called. Instead, the police did. The call that brought the news of my father’s death. My dad had slipped out while his new, expensive private nurse was using the bathroom. He was found wandering down a busy highway, muttering about “picking Aria up from school.” A semi-truck couldn’t brake in time. “Mrs. Bennett, we are incredibly sorry. By the time paramedics arrived, there was nothing they could do. We tried to reach your husband to get you there in time, but his phone went straight to voicemail.” The morgue was freezing. My dad lay on a stainless steel table, a stark white sheet pulled over his face. Every step toward him felt like walking on broken glass. The moment I pulled back the sheet, my sanity snapped. I dropped to my knees on the unforgiving tile, grabbing his ice-cold, stiff hand, pressing it against my face. “Dad… daddy, please… why did you leave me all alone?” I wailed until my throat bled. The man who had held up my entire sky had been ripped away from me. I cried until my vision blurred into nothingness, until I was just an empty shell being physically supported by the morgue attendants. “We’re so sorry for your loss, ma’am,” they whispered. Just then, my phone chimed in my pocket. It was a text from Harper. [Can you stop having those nurses blow up Professor Bennett’s phone? He is at an incredibly important conference right now. He doesn’t have time to deal with your dead-weight father!] Attached was a photo. Dante was standing at a podium, looking handsome and commanding. Pressed right up against his side was Harper, beaming with pride. The photo was taken the exact second they locked eyes. The raw, unfiltered adoration passing between them was sickeningly obvious. Over the next few days, I arranged my father’s funeral completely alone. I brought his ashes back to the old house and set up a memorial table in the living room. An old superstition says that unborn souls who aren’t mourned will wander forever, lost in the dark. So, next to my father’s urn, I placed a tiny wooden plaque. It read: Hope Bennett. It was the name Dante and I had picked out the night I showed him the positive test. I hadn’t tried to contact Dante once, but suddenly, his texts started flooding in. [Have you thought about it? Do you realize how childish you were acting?] [When I fly back, I’ll take you to see Dad. We can go to your OBGYN appointment for the baby right after.] I ignored every single one. Until tonight, when he sent: [Aria, I know I was harsh before. I lost my temper and crossed a line. Please, talk to me?] If this had happened a month ago, seeing his rare apology might have made my heart waver. But what he didn’t know was that while he was playing the concerned husband, Harper had been relentlessly sending me updates of their romantic getaway. A picture of their intertwined hands watching the sunrise from a hotel balcony. A video of Dante cooking room service pasta for her in a plush robe. Paragraphs of unhinged rants, telling me I wasn’t good enough for him and calling me a desperate leech who wouldn’t let go. Exactly five minutes before Dante texted his apology, Harper had sent the final blow. It was a photo of Dante, shirtless and fast asleep, his head resting peacefully on her bare chest. [I gave him my virginity.] [Dante said he never knew what it meant to have two souls and bodies perfectly intertwine until tonight.] Fighting back the urge to vomit, I saved every single photo, every single text. I logged onto the university’s official portal and found the anonymous tip line for the ethics committee and the Dean’s office. I was going to let him go quietly. I really was. But they crossed the line. They killed my father. The day Dante finally flew back, I had already changed the locks on the house. He stood on the porch, knocking with practiced patience. “Aria, open the door, please. Don’t you want to see Dad?” I had just finished lighting fresh incense for my father and my baby. As he pulled out his phone to call a locksmith, I yanked the front door open. A flash of irritation crossed his face, but the moment he looked past my shoulder into the living room, his eyes blew wide open in sheer horror. Dante shoved past me, stumbling toward the memorial table. He stared at the urn and the two plaques, his entire body trembling violently. “Aria… what the hell is this?” he choked out, his voice cracking. “Dad is perfectly fine! What kind of sick joke…” Before he could finish the sentence, his phone erupted in his pocket. It was the Dean of his college. Dante answered, his eyes still glued to the memorial. “Hello?” “Professor Bennett, the university has received a massive file containing evidence of an inappropriate relationship between you and your student, Harper. Furthermore, there are severe allegations of academic fraud and falsifying data for her publications. Based on our preliminary review, the evidence is damning. You need to come to the campus immediately.”

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During the annual memorial at the family estate, my husband and his brother’s wife vanished. I was lighting candles by my father’s open grave with my mother in law Martha when glowing text flashed before my eyes. It said my husband had hidden inside the burial vault with Mia, and the groundskeepers would fill the grave that afternoon. It mocked their death wish. Then I understood. He had not gone to pick lilies. He was sneaking into the crypt to be with her. As I stood, Declan, his half brother, stopped me. He said the wind was too strong and that he would look instead. The text reappeared. It praised Declan for covering for them. It said Mia only married him to stay near my husband. Once she had a girl, they would trick me into believing my missing daughter was found. But the next line froze me. It said my daughter had died long ago in an abandoned pigpen. They kept me only to drain my accounts. I swallowed the rising bile. I turned to Martha and said the vault looked unstable. I told her we should have it filled at once. Relatives took shovels to help. If they loved hiding in graves, they could stay there and keep my daughter company. 01 [Holy shit! Why is the wife filling the grave now? This isn’t how the script goes!] [It’s fine. The dirt is barely at their ankles. The brother needs to step up and save the day!] Declan stepped forward, blocking the relatives. “This… filling the plot so suddenly might bring bad luck. Shouldn’t we wait for the priest to bless the earth first?” I leaned on my shovel, lifting my eyes to glare at him. A year ago, Declan was the one who suggested taking my daughter out for a walk. Penny was only three. She could barely walk straight, but she clamored to go to the store to buy candy for me because my blood sugar was low. She never came back. Declan claimed he took her to meet Preston and Mia. He said the moment Penny saw them, she ripped her hand away and ran off into the crowd. I refused to believe it. I searched the streets for three days and three nights. I screamed her name until my vocal cords bled. I walked until my feet were covered in gruesome blisters. In the end, all I could do was file a missing person’s report. I sat by her empty princess bed and cried every single day for a year. And now, these floating comments were telling me my baby girl died in a rotting, rural pigpen? My knuckles turned white around the wooden shovel handle. A cold sneer crept onto my lips. “Leaving a gaping hole like this disturbs the dead. We need to let your father rest.” Declan froze, his eyes darting around nervously. “Audrey, I’m just thinking of Preston. You know how superstitious he is about the family plot. We should at least wait for him to get back and take a look.” The glowing text updated in real time. [Good job, bro! Otherwise the dirt would be at their waists by now. How are they supposed to make a baby in that?!] [I am so stressed! They are right in the middle of the action! Why is the wife being such a pain?] I nodded slowly. Since he wanted to play this game, I would play along. “Fine. We will wait for your brother, Preston. Oh, and Mia too. We can all pay our respects and seal the grave together.” Before Declan could let out a sigh of relief, I turned to the crowd and raised my voice. “Everyone has been working hard all morning! It’s time I treat you all to a proper meal.” I pulled out my phone and dialed the most extravagant southern barbecue joint in the county. “Hi, I need five massive party platters of ribs, ten buckets of fried chicken, twenty briskets, fifty pulled pork sliders…” Ignoring Declan’s horrified stare, I let my lips curl into a slow, venomous smile. “The walk down the hill is too steep. Let’s just sit right here by the grave, eat, and wait for Preston and Mia.” The floating comments exploded into an absolute frenzy. [She gets to stuff her face, but what about our main couple?! The oxygen in the vault is running out!] [Ahhh this is bad! Mia is going to pass out from hypoxia!] [Look! Preston is kissing her to share his breath! The sexual tension is insane!] [Who cares if the bitter wife throws a tantrum? She’s just a tool to push the plot forward!] [Exactly. The main couple has plot armor. They won’t actually die.] 02 Every word felt like a needle driving into my heart. We had been married for five years. Whenever Preston kissed me, it was always a brief, sterile peck. He always claimed he hated physical intimacy. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to it. It was just that in his world, I was nothing more than the villainous first wife. Well, if that was the case, I was going to play the villain to perfection. After the massive feast, I looked at the relatives slipping into food comas and offered a sickly sweet proposal. “Martha, everyone is exhausted. Let me handle the rest of the dirt.” Martha paused, clutching her silver rosary. “By yourself? What if the soil isn’t packed tight enough?” I totally understood her concern for the old man’s resting place. I gave her a reassuring smile and yelled toward the road. “Bring it up!” A deafening roar echoed through the trees. The crowd turned to see a massive, yellow backhoe excavator rumbling up the hill like a tank. The comments went absolutely feral. [What the actual fuck?! Is the wife psychotic? One scoop from that thing and our couple is dead!] [Preston is freaking out down there! He’s desperately clawing at the dirt trying to climb up!] [Wait! What about Mia? She’s still at the bottom!] Thank god I had the foresight to call a heavy machinery crew while ordering the barbecue. Martha’s face broke into an approving smile. “You always think ahead, Audrey. You might not be as sweet and obedient as Mia, but you did good today.” Declan wasn’t smiling. He stared at the giant steel bucket, his face entirely drained of color. “No! You can’t use an excavator! Send them away right now!” I raised an eyebrow. “What is your problem? Do you not want your father to rest in peace?” The relatives turned to glare at him. He stumbled back a step. “That’s not what I meant…” I didn’t give him a second to breathe. “Or are you saying there’s something hidden down there that you don’t want us to see?” Martha’s eyes instantly lit up with greed. “Hidden? Like what? Did the old man stash his secret fortune down there?” The relatives leaned in, their eyes gleaming. Everyone knew the old patriarch was obsessed with hoarding gold and antique jewelry. It wasn’t a stretch to think he took a secret stash to his grave. I cleared my throat softly. “Well, you are his illegitimate son, Declan. He only called you and Preston into his room right before he died.” All eyes locked onto Declan’s violently red face. Martha, who would rather die than let a penny of family money go to a bastard son, scowled fiercely. “Declan, you have always tried to steal what belongs to Preston. You better start talking right now.” “I… I’ll tell you!” Declan gulped, shooting a desperate glance at the rapidly filling burial plot. He clenched his teeth and made a wild gamble. “Dad did bury a chest of gold down there!” “You have to dig the dirt out! Please!” The floating text was practically sweating bullets. [We are so screwed! If they dig it up, the secret affair is completely exposed!] [Well, we can’t just sit here and watch them get buried alive! Better exposed than dead!] [Wait, look! What is Preston doing?!] Thud. A heavy, muffled thud echoed from deep beneath the earth. Everyone froze. 03 Martha stumbled back in horror. “What was that sound?” [The dirt is past their throats! Preston is desperately kicking his dad’s coffin to get someone’s attention!] [Mia is dying in his arms! Her face is turning purple. She’s going to suffocate!] Declan’s pupils dilated in sheer panic. He started screaming at the relatives. “Grab shovels! Dig! The treasure box might be caving in!” Trying to save them? Not on my watch. I stepped right in front of him. “Hold on. Didn’t you want to wait for the priest? Well, I had my spiritual advisor look at the charts yesterday.” “Today is an auspicious day for sealing the grave, but a cursed day for unearthing it. Anyone who digs it up will suffer eternal retribution.” “To hell with retribution! It’s all…” “Shut your mouth!” Martha gripped her rosary so hard the chain nearly snapped. “Nobody digs! Fill the grave!” Declan’s jaw dropped. “What?” [I am furious! The evil wife totally knows Martha is insanely superstitious. She’s playing her!] [You can’t blame Martha. The old bat has done too many evil things. She literally poisoned the old man for the inheritance!] [The old man is nothing! She killed her own granddaughter! When the couple suggested leaving Penny in the pigpen to starve, Martha was the one who personally drove her there.] I almost couldn’t believe my own eyes. Even tigers don’t eat their own cubs. Memories flooded my mind. Countless nights, little Penny would cautiously try to win her grandmother’s affection. She would waddle over, holding out her favorite toy, only for Martha to slap her so hard she would fall to the floor. “You little parasite! Why couldn’t you be a boy! Do you have any idea how long I had to play the sweet mother-in-law to trap your mother into this family?!” Back then, I just thought Martha was a bitter traditionalist who hated girls. I never imagined she actively wanted my baby dead. But deeply religious people usually feared bad karma. My gut told me there was an even darker conspiracy at play. Another muffled, frantic thud echoed from the dirt. It was unmistakably human. Declan looked like he was about to burst into tears. “No, seriously, you have to dig it up! There’s…” “Even if there is treasure, you wouldn’t get a single dime.” I cut him off with a half smile, watching Martha’s face darken like a thundercloud. She was incredibly greedy and selfish. There was no way in hell she would let an illegitimate son touch a cent of the inheritance. “Declan, the old man spoiled you when he was alive, but I run this family now.” Martha tilted her chin up arrogantly. “Fill it! Pack it tight! Don’t leave a single crack!” Watching the excavator roar back to life, Declan couldn’t take it anymore. He clenched his fists and sprinted down the hill. “Fine! If you’re going to force my hand, don’t blame me for getting ugly!” The comments immediately started buzzing again. [Where is he going… Is he getting the Mayor?!] [Probably. The Mayor controls all the land deeds and permits on this mountain. He has the final say on whether a grave gets opened.] [Hahaha, let’s see how the wife stops the Mayor from digging!] [Exactly. The unloved one is the real homewrecker. I hope she dies soon so she stops getting in the way of our true love!] Reading the glowing lines, a freezing smile touched my lips. They had no idea. The excavator was already dumping the final load of dirt onto the grave. 04 Declan returned quickly, towing the town Mayor behind him. “Who gave you permission to seal this plot?!” The Mayor puffed his chest out, marching over. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re hiding treasure down there! Dig it up immediately! That belongs to the county!” “If you try to hoard it, I’ll have the sheriff lock you all up!” Martha’s face paled. “What are you talking about? This is my family’s private cemetery. You have no right!” The Mayor sneered, pulling a crumpled document from his jacket. “Your dead husband owed me money! I’m seizing his assets to settle the debt. Digging up his grave is perfectly legal.” Martha leaned in. It was undeniably the old man’s handwriting. Declan kept his head down, but his lips twitched into a relieved smirk. [Omg, did you guys see that?! That IOU is totally forged by Declan!] [Right? Our deeply devoted second male lead has been secretly in love with Mia since they were kids. But Mia told him she’d only marry him if he covered for her affair with Preston.] [And Preston totally treats Declan like a real brother. Declan is sacrificing his own happiness for their true love! So selfless!] I quietly enjoyed the sight of Martha being rendered absolutely speechless before I finally spoke up. “Mayor, are you entirely sure you want to dig? The things buried down there… might be a bit of a shock.” The Mayor glared at me sideways. “None of your damn business. Even if God Himself came down, I’d still dig!” He waved his arm aggressively. “Where is the construction crew?! Start digging! Anyone who finds gold gets a massive bonus!” But the only response was the idle rumbling of the machinery. Not a single man moved. “Are you deaf?! Do you know who I am?! If you disobey me, you’ll never work in this town again…” His words died in his throat. The foreman stepping out of the excavator was a face he knew all too well. [Holy shit? That’s not a local crew. That’s the private contractors from the Sinclair family in New York?!] As the comments chattered away, the foreman stepped up and gave me a respectful bow. “My apologies, Miss Sinclair. I hope we didn’t startle you.” “The moment I got your call, I brought the crew straight here. We are entirely at your disposal.” I nodded. The Mayor probably had no idea that ever since I married into this family, I had been using my trust fund to quietly prop them up. This entire rural town, which didn’t even have paved roads five years ago, was built up by Sinclair money. The construction crew, the extravagant feast, the luxury cars, even the cemetery plot itself, it was all paid for by me. “Wait… you’re the heiress to the Sinclair empire!” The Mayor finally realized who he was screaming at. His legs gave out, and he dropped straight to his knees in the dirt. “I was blind! I am so sorry! Whatever you want! We don’t have to dig!” Martha’s eyes lit up with triumph. I let a dark, playful smirk pull at my lips. If we didn’t dig, how was I going to enjoy the show? “Well, you were so passionate about it. Now I’m curious to see what kind of treasure is hiding down there.” Everyone froze. Declan’s eyes bulged, staring at me in pure disbelief. [Is the wife bipolar? Dig, don’t dig, what the hell does she want?] [Hahaha she’s definitely scared! Even with all that money, she doesn’t want a murder charge!] [Hurry up and dig! I haven’t seen an update on the main couple in forever! They are finally getting saved!] Seven or eight burly men grabbed shovels and started moving earth. Declan stood on the sidelines, completely failing to hide his overwhelming relief. Martha, on the other hand, was trembling with rage, pointing a shaking finger at me and muttering curses. “If it wasn’t for your New York money, do you really think Preston would have ever looked at you?” “Don’t think your billions make you a goddess! Let me tell you, you don’t even compare to a single strand of Mia’s hair!” “Sure, Mia grew up poor, but she knows how to be a proper, obedient woman!” I sneered. Over our five year marriage, Martha had constantly compared me to Mia. In her eyes, Mia was the flawless, ultimate prize. “Then you should have let your precious son marry Mia,” I shot back. The moment the words left my mouth, the comments surged. [Oh my god! The wife doesn’t know! Our sweet baby Mia and Preston are biological siblings!] [Martha refused to let Preston marry Mia precisely because she knew they were brother and sister!] [Hehehe, thank god our girl Mia is smart. She married Declan just so she could keep hooking up with Preston! I am obsessed with them!] “Wait! Look at this! What is this?!” The Mayor’s trembling hand pulled a piece of fabric out of the dirt. It was a woman’s black lace thong. Martha nearly fainted. Her eyes almost rolled into the back of her head. “Why is Mia’s underwear down there?!” I stepped forward and casually tugged at another piece of fabric, pulling out a man’s boxer brief. I gasped in mock horror. “My husband’s underwear is in the grave too?!” Every single pair of eyes locked onto the two pieces of muddy lingerie. Suddenly, a relative gasped. “Hold on… has anyone noticed that Preston and Mia have both been missing this entire time?” The floating text started panicking like ants on a hot skillet. [What’s going on? They’ve been digging forever, why haven’t we seen the main couple?!] [Wait… look at how deep they are digging. Are they… dead?] [Look! Look at the dirt! Is that… human fingers?!]

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The arm of my porcelain Guardian Angel snapped off and hit the desk with a sharp clatter. I stared at the severed ceramic limb, a violent chill racing down my spine. It was a death omen. In my hometown, a broken angel meant a catastrophic doom was looming. The only way to survive was to completely abandon whatever you were holding onto. Just minutes ago, I had been riding the ultimate high. My roommate and I had scratched off a shared lottery ticket and won a staggering seven million dollars. Then, my phone chimed with a Venmo notification. Brianna had sent me five dollars. The transaction note read: Refunding your half of the ticket cost. It was my idea to go into the store, so the jackpot is mine. Sorry not sorry! I was about to storm over and scream in her face, but my eyes locked onto the small shrine on my desk. The jagged ceramic edge of the angel’s severed arm felt like a screaming warning. Pure terror seized my lungs. I backed away, my hands shaking violently as I yelled at her. “I don’t want the ticket! I don’t want a single cent!” Let me back up. 1 The moment I matched the winning numbers online, I practically flew back to our college dorm. “Brianna! That scratcher we bought the other day? We actually won!” I burst through the door and tackled her in a massive hug, my face hurting from smiling so hard. This was seven million dollars. Even after taxes, splitting it down the middle meant I was set for a very, very long time. My family was strictly working class. We weren’t broke, but we were definitely one bad hospital bill away from ruin. I was your classic struggling college student, surviving on instant noodles and hunting for digital coupons just to afford a decent coffee. This money was going to change my family’s life forever. It was total financial freedom. “Brianna! Seven million! I’ve never even seen that kind of money in my life. We need to pack our bags and go to the lottery headquarters tomorrow morning!” I expected Brianna to be jumping up and down with me. Instead, her smile looked incredibly forced. Her body was stiff. After a second, she gently pushed me away, putting a strange amount of distance between us. She sat back down at her desk, tapping rapidly on her phone. “Hey, babe. I was actually just about to talk to you about that.” A second later, my phone buzzed. I opened Venmo and stared at the five dollar transfer. While my brain was still trying to process the sheer audacity of it, Brianna spoke up. “So, here’s the thing. You remember how it went down, right? We were walking past the gas station, and it was my brilliant idea to go inside and buy a ticket. I even picked the specific gas station. Sure, you pointed at the specific scratcher in the display case, but if I hadn’t dragged you in there, we never would have bought it. Right?” I nodded slowly, covering my mouth to hold back a confused laugh. I genuinely thought she was messing with me. “Yeah, obviously! It was a team effort!” “Right. So logically, the ticket belongs to me. But since you threw in a crumpled five dollar bill at the register, I just Venmoed it back to you. We’re all square!” The sickening reality finally hit me. The other two girls in our dorm room had stopped what they were doing, watching the drama unfold in stunned silence. The blood drained from my face. I crossed my arms, letting out a dark, incredulous laugh. “Brianna, are you seriously telling me you want to buy out my half of a seven million dollar jackpot for a five dollar Venmo?” Brianna dropped her sweet, bubbly mask in a heartbeat. She stood up, her voice raising to a shrill pitch. “Excuse me? If it wasn’t for my idea, do you really think you’d ever see a winning ticket in your miserable life? Besides, I gave you your money back! Stop acting like I’m ripping you off!” The tension in the room exploded. The air turned incredibly toxic. Our other roommates exchanged nervous glances, terrified of getting caught in the crossfire. My face burned hot with absolute fury. “Do you think I’m that desperate for five bucks? If I hadn’t paid for half of it, the cashier wouldn’t have even handed it to you! What the hell is wrong with you?” She planted her hands on her hips, fully shedding the friendly roommate persona she had worn all year. “Harper, I honestly never knew you were this selfish. I said the ticket is mine, which means it’s mine. Take the five bucks or leave it. I don’t care!” One of our roommates, Lily, couldn’t take it anymore. She spoke up in my defense in a tiny, nervous voice. “Brianna, I really think you should split it. Harper did pay for half the ticket…” “Shut your mouth! Nobody asked for your opinion!” Brianna snapped, rolling her eyes in disgust. I opened my mouth to completely tear into her, but a sharp crack echoed through the room. Snap. My eyes darted to my desk. The porcelain Guardian Angel I kept meticulously clean had just lost its arm. The severed ceramic limb lay motionless on the wood. The angel’s face remained peaceful, its eyes half closed in eternal grace, but the missing arm made it look utterly grotesque. All the color vanished from my face. I stumbled backward, my legs suddenly feeling like they were made of lead. “I don’t want the ticket! Keep it! I don’t want the ticket!” Seeing me back down, a triumphant smirk spread across Brianna’s face. She couldn’t resist twisting the knife. “What do you mean you don’t want it? It was never yours to begin with! Stop acting like you’re doing me some grand charity favor, okay?” My face was dead serious. “Brianna, we’ve lived together for a year, so I’m going to give you one final warning. You need to burn that ticket. Do not claim it.” The moment the words left my mouth, the entire room went silent. Even Lily looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Drop dead, Harper. You have absolutely no right to tell me what to do. It’s my ticket, and I’ll spend the money however I want!” “It’s blood money!” I screamed at her. “You might claim it, but you won’t live long enough to spend it! It’s going to kill you!” Our fourth roommate, Sienna, who had always hated my guts, let out a loud, mocking scoff. “Give it a rest, Harper. You’re just pissed that Brianna is about to be a millionaire and you’re not. Blood money? Please. That cheap porcelain statue of yours is probably just a piece of junk from a dollar store. It broke because it’s trash.” Sienna walked over and linked her arm with Brianna’s. “You know you can’t have the money, so you make up some psychotic lie to curse Brianna with death. I never realized how purely evil you are.” Empowered by Sienna’s backup, Brianna’s ego swelled. She grabbed her designer purse and headed for the door. She paused in the frame, throwing one last venomous glare my way. “Curse me all you want. You’re going to die a broke, pathetic loser, Harper!” I didn’t argue back. I didn’t even feel angry anymore. I just turned around and began carefully sweeping up the sharp porcelain shards. The angel was small, perfectly sculpted, and gave off a comforting, merciful aura. But with its arm shattered into a dozen pieces, the peaceful smile now looked profoundly unnerving. Deep in the isolated Appalachian mountains where I grew up, we had a very specific tradition. When a child comes of age, the local parish performs a blessing, and we are given a porcelain Guardian Angel to watch over us. We are taught to keep it close and treat it with absolute reverence. The holy spirits are merciful. They can foresee catastrophic doom and send warnings. If an angel statue cracks or moves, it is a dire warning of misfortune. But if an angel statue snaps off its own limb… it means absolute, inescapable death. It means the approaching evil is so overwhelmingly powerful that even the holy spirits cannot protect you. They have to sever their own limbs to escape its grasp, abandoning their human ward to survive. The statue on my desk wasn’t a guardian anymore. It was an empty shell. The only way to get a new one was to return to my hometown and pray for a replacement. I had never experienced an anomaly with my angel since I left for college. For it to violently amputate its own arm… I was genuinely terrified. I immediately called my parents. Their voices trembled over the receiver as they begged me to stay safe and lock my doors. When I told them what Brianna did, they were furious, but their anger quickly turned to pity. They muttered that Brianna was a fool digging her own grave. I ignored the weird looks Sienna was giving me and finished my phone call. When I hung up, I turned to Lily and Sienna. My voice was deadly serious. “Do not accept a single cent from Brianna. If you take her money, you are going to die.” They exchanged uncomfortable glances, but nodded slowly. That night, Brianna and Sienna didn’t come back to the dorm. They booked a luxury suite at a downtown hotel. I shook my head, carefully wrapping the broken angel in a clean cloth. I would just have to wait until I went home for the holidays to get a new one. Brianna was already a minor influencer on Instagram and TikTok. That very night, she went live from her penthouse suite, bragging to thousands of viewers about her seven million dollar jackpot. Her comments section exploded with pure envy. Virtual gifts rained across the screen. Sienna, who had spent the entire afternoon validating Brianna’s toxic behavior, was instantly promoted to her full time assistant. They were living the absolute dream. Brianna even twisted our argument into a viral storytime for her stream. She turned my financial contribution into me just “tagging along” while she graciously allowed me to stand next to her. Resting her chin on her manicured hand, Brianna rolled her eyes at the camera. “Guys, you literally won’t believe how psychotic my roommate is. She literally just walked to the gas station with me, and when my ticket won, she demanded half the money! I’m sorry, but I am not in the business of enabling toxic, entitled babies.” “I’ll be donating a chunk of it to local animal shelters, obviously. But I am not giving that greedy parasite a single dime. Sorry not sorry.” The live chat ate it up. [She’s so jealous of you! You have zero obligation to run a charity for your roommate!] [Omg you are so sweet for helping the animals! We love a generous queen!] [I am so sick of people lacking basic boundaries. Good for you for standing your ground!] The hate comments targeting me flooded the screen. The drama spilled over onto our university’s anonymous forums, and it didn’t take long for someone to dig up my identity. When I woke up the next morning, I had been completely doxxed. My phone was a brick of endless harassment. Unknown numbers calling non stop, vicious text messages, and thousands of death threats in my social media DMs. Overnight, my entire family was dragged through the mud by the internet. A quick scroll through Twitter showed me exactly how badly the narrative had been warped. A hot spike of fury lodged in my chest, but I forced myself to take a deep breath. I needed to stay calm. Swallowing my anger, I dialed Brianna’s number. She didn’t pick up. Sienna did. The moment the call connected, Sienna’s arrogant voice echoed through the speaker. “What do you want? Begging to come with us to the lottery office today?” “Sienna, if you two want to throw your lives away, that is your business. But keep my name out of your mouths. I am getting death threats because of your lies!” “If you’re getting hate, take it up with the internet! I didn’t personally message you! Stop throwing a tantrum and taking it out on me!” Right. Reasoning with these people was utterly pointless. I lowered my voice, speaking with a cold, detached clarity. “This is my final warning. Burn the ticket. Do not spend a single dollar of that money. You have invited something into your life that you cannot comprehend.” “Oh, what kind of something?” Sienna mocked, laughing loudly into the mic. “Go ahead, tell me! What’s gonna happen if we spend it? Are the ghosts gonna come get us? Ooooh, so scary!” I practically whispered my response. “It is far worse than ghosts.” Maybe it was the absolute deadness in my tone, but Sienna stopped laughing. Her voice took on a slightly defensive edge. “Nobody believes your psychotic delusions, Harper. Ghosts and demons aren’t real!” I caught the faint tremor of anxiety hiding beneath her bravado. I repeated myself slowly. “It is worse than ghosts. You have attracted something that cannot be bargained with.” She called me a crazy bitch and violently hung up the phone. The dorm room was quiet. Lily shifted in her bed, the mattress springs squeaking softly. I didn’t know if she had overheard the conversation. A few minutes later, Lily peeked her head out from behind her bed curtains. Her eyes were wide with genuine curiosity. “Harper… is there really something out there worse than ghosts?” I didn’t answer her directly. “The world is massive and deeply terrifying. Just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There are ancient things hidden in the dark, and all we can do is treat them with absolute fear and respect.” “Knowing too much will only get you killed. Just remember one thing. Do not touch a single cent of that lottery money.” Lily was a soft spoken, genuinely kind girl. When Brianna and I were screaming at each other, she was the only one who tried to defend me, even if Brianna immediately shut her down. I looked at her, my expression unreadable. “Do you know why an angel would sever its own arm?” She blinked, confused. “Your statue? I have no idea.” “Angels are usually depicted as beings of immense grace and mercy. They watch over us, listening to our prayers. People pray to them for health, for rain, for protection.” “Some angels are meant to heal. Some are meant to guide souls. The higher choirs of angels, the Seraphim, have multiple wings and eyes to witness all the suffering in the world. They protect humanity from demonic forces… There is a different angel for every kind of salvation.” “But the guardian statues from my hometown don’t grant wishes. They don’t heal the sick or bring good luck. They only do one thing: they act as a tripwire. Most people in my town go their entire lives without their angel doing anything. Even fatal car crashes or terminal illnesses won’t make the angel sever its own limb.” I locked eyes with Lily, offering a grim, humorless smile. “So tell me, what kind of unspeakable horror do you think it takes to make a holy spirit amputate its own body and flee in absolute terror?” Lily thought about it for a second. The implication suddenly clicked, and her face went completely pale. She clamped her hands over her ears and shook her head frantically. “No, no, no! Stop! I don’t want to hear it! That is so incredibly creepy!” Brianna obviously didn’t take my warning seriously. Instead, she weaponized it, turning my genuine fear into a viral marketing tactic. She knew exactly how to manipulate the internet’s morbid curiosity. “Since a certain someone claims I’m going to die the second I claim this money,” Brianna announced on her stream, “I’ll be live streaming the entire trip to the lottery headquarters! Come watch and see if I drop dead!” The internet mob rallied behind her, throwing around horrific insults aimed at me. Some people were just genuinely curious to see the payout, setting alarms to watch the stream. I couldn’t stand the continuous slander. I texted Brianna, demanding she meet me face to face to clear the air, but she completely ignored me, staying barricaded in her luxury suite. Now, the entire country knew she was the lucky girl who won seven million dollars. Brianna struck while the iron was hot, starting her livestream at 7:00 AM sharp on the day she was claiming the prize. Within minutes, the stream hit the front page of every social media platform. Millions of people were watching live. Digital fireworks and massive tip donations flooded the chat. Brianna had her makeup professionally done and wore a stunning designer dress, strutting out of her hotel like an A-list celebrity on her way to the lottery office. Sienna had completely forgotten my warning. Her face was flushed with pure excitement as she held the camera, hyping Brianna up and screaming about how Brianna was God’s absolute favorite. I sat alone in the dark dorm room, watching the bright screen of my laptop with dead eyes. “You can’t save those who have a death wish,” I muttered into the silence. “God’s favorite? Try God’s next victim.” Brianna had no idea. She had absolutely no concept of how terrifying the things that can scare a holy angel truly are.

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When the “Century Club” scandal broke, all of Port Sterling expected me, Avery Collins, to be humiliated. Scarlett, the impostor raised by Tristan’s family, rushed to declare herself the hundredth conquest, urging me to divorce him. Whispers of schadenfreude were everywhere. Just a day earlier, I’d been managing Tristan’s PR, and now I was the joke—no, the punchline. Tristan had the nerve to taunt me, smirking, “My sister is far better in bed than you, Avery. You’re like a corpse.” I didn’t react. Instead, I pulled out my phone, showed a QR code, and stated calmly, “Our deal: $100,000 per person. One hundred people. That’s ten million dollars.” Five years of marriage taught me: love fades, money doesn’t. Tristan laughed dismissively, “You love me, Avery. Just fix this.” I almost laughed. Ridiculous? I had the full list. Scarlett’s confession was one thing, but the other ninety-nine? They included wives of the city’s most powerful men. Releasing even a few names would destroy him. This time, he was finished. … Seeing my unwavering silence, Tristan’s smirk faltered, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Are you serious?” I just smiled and pushed my phone a little closer to him. The message was clear. His face darkened. “I gave you five million three months ago,” he bit out, “two million last month, and another three hundred thousand just two days ago.” He paused, his eyes locking onto my calm face, his voice tight with frustration. “Avery, when did you become such a gold digger? Sometimes I wonder if you ever loved me, or if it was always just my money.” I let out a soft sigh, a flicker of contempt in my eyes. How dare a serial cheater even speak the word ‘love’ to me? This was the man who hadn’t even come home on our wedding night, leaving me to face our empty bridal suite alone, the talk of the town. I endured it, believing he would change. But he only got worse, sleeping with the one person I despised most in the world: my so-called sister. That was the day I broke. I’d stormed in with a kitchen knife, ready to end them both. But security had me pinned to the ground in seconds. The only blood spilled was my own, from where the blade had sliced my hand. A pool of crimson spread across the pristine floor. Tristan showed no concern. He just threw money at the problem. A hundred thousand. A million. Ten million. Each payment wasn’t just hush money; it was ironclad proof of every agonizing night I’d spent in this sham of a marriage. So I learned my lesson. I stopped demanding his loyalty. As long as the money kept coming, it was enough. I even turned his philandering into a business. It was, in its own twisted way, exhilarating. Before I could respond to his accusation, the door burst open. Scarlett rushed in, her eyes red, pointing an accusing finger at me. “Sister, how can you be so petty at a time like this? Blackwood Industries’ stock is plummeting! Can’t you think about Tristan for once?” Her voice was thick with righteous fury, as if I were the one who had committed some unforgivable crime. The irony was suffocating. She was the one who’d drunkenly blabbed about his ‘Century Club’ to the press, and now she was here, moralizing, demanding I clean up her mess. A wave of moved emotion washed over Tristan’s face. He looked at me, his gaze hardening. “That’s enough, Avery. Stop this nonsense. This is your duty as Mrs. Blackwood.” My tongue went numb. Duty. The word landed on me like a mountain, crushing the air from my lungs. Years ago, when my family’s company was on the brink of collapse, my parents married me off to him. They called it a strategic alliance. In reality, they sold me into servitude. I was so naive back then. The first time I had to do PR for one of his affairs, I was carrying his child. Swollen with shame and fury, I screamed that I would rather die. Tristan had just laughed, his voice cold as ice. “My family invested five hundred million into your father’s company. What right do you have to refuse me? This is your duty as Mrs. Blackwood.” Terrified of angering him, my parents dragged me to the car. I fought them, thrashing wildly, until a brutal jolt to my belly sent me crumpling to the ground. I lost the baby. Tristan used my miscarriage as a PR tool, feeding a story to the ravenous media. “Mrs. Blackwood, in her desperate rush to defend her husband, tragically suffered a miscarriage. The couple’s deep bond is undeniable, putting all vicious rumors to rest.” His crisis was averted. The price was my child. 2 A humorless smile touched my lips, but my eyes were cold. “Without the ten million, I’m not going on that stage. Whoever made the mess can clean it up.” The room fell into a dead silence. Tristan’s head snapped toward me, his eyes wide with disbelief. His friends, who had been lounging around, stared, dumbfounded. “She really grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, didn’t she?” one of them sneered, not bothering to lower his voice. “No class. Her husband’s getting crucified out there, and she’s trying to cut a deal.” “Her parents never should have taken her back,” another added. “She’s practically inhuman.” Tristan had never demanded respect for me, so his friends felt free to say whatever they wanted. Their words were like a blade scraping against bone, carving away at me piece by piece. They all knew how much that old wound still bled. I could have been brought home so much earlier. When I was twelve, my real parents finally showed up at my foster home. But Scarlett, the girl they’d raised, grabbed a knife and pressed it to her own skin, screaming that if they took me, she would die right there. They saw Scarlett’s knife. They heard her empty threats. They saw the superficial scratch that barely broke the skin. What they didn’t see was me, thin as a reed, covered in bruises, tears streaming down my face. They just shoved a wad of cash at my foster parents and offered me a hollow promise. “Just one more year, sweetheart. We’ll come for you.” The moment their car was gone, my foster father kicked me to the ground, snatched the money, and told me to go slop the pigs. So I gritted my teeth and waited a year. Scarlett pulled the same stunt again. And again, I was left behind, discarded like an old toy. It went on like that, year after year, until I was eighteen. Only then did they finally pull me from that hell. Scarlett had made her point. I was nothing. Tristan knew all of this. He once held me and promised, “I’m here now. No one will ever hurt you again.” His heart pounded like a war drum against my ear, and for a moment, I let myself believe him. I’d bet on the wrong man. “Sister, you just hate me, don’t you?” Scarlett sobbed, her tears flowing freely. “I’ll get on my knees, I’ll do anything. Just help Tristan clear his name. You can kill me afterwards, I don’t care.” She produced a small penknife, theatrically pressing the tip to her throat. “Scarlett!” Tristan lunged, snatching the knife from her hand. He turned to me, his eyes blazing with fury. He took a deep, steadying breath, abandoning any hope of me attending the press conference. He put a protective arm around Scarlett and led her to the car. His friends jeered. “Ooh, someone’s in for it now. Tristan is terrifying when he’s angry. You’re gonna get what’s coming to you.” A knot of anxiety tightened in my chest. I immediately pulled up the live stream on my phone. A few moments later, Tristan appeared on screen. 3 He was impeccable in a tailored suit, the picture of calm composure, as if the scandal hadn’t touched him at all. His expression was one of weary resignation. “I apologize for taking up public resources,” he began, his voice smooth and steady. “The ‘Century Club’ story is a complete fabrication. My wife and I had a disagreement, and in a moment of anger, she created this… lie. Ultimately, the fault is mine. I hope you can all understand.” He was poised, his smile flawless. In a few short sentences, he had thrown me to the wolves. Gasps rippled through the press corps. They couldn’t believe I was the unhinged one. My friend Jessica, a reporter in the crowd, wasn’t buying it. “A fabrication?” she challenged, her voice ringing out. “But Miss Scarlett Collins, your supposed hundredth conquest, has already publicly admitted to it. Are you calling her a liar now?” Her question was a lightning bolt, electrifying the room. “Yes, Mr. Blackwood, your mistress confessed!” “What is your relationship with Miss Collins? Are you really divorcing your wife for her?” Tristan’s gaze found Jessica, but his smile didn’t waver. “Scarlett is my wife’s younger sister. She’s a gentle, timid girl who has always been afraid of her sister. She was bullied into lying. It was nothing more than a childish prank between them.” Jessica opened her mouth to argue, but Tristan cut her off, his eyes like steel. “I know you and my wife are close, Miss. But this is not the time to let personal feelings cloud your judgment.” Before Jessica could retort, her phone rang. After a brief, hushed conversation, the color drained from her face. She shot a look of pure hatred at the stage before rushing out of the room. Just like that, the tide had turned. With his masterful manipulation, Tristan hadn’t just cleared his name. He’d painted me as a liar and a cruel, abusive sister. That night, he bought an army of bots to scrub his image clean online and bury me in filth. Tristan’s legion of devotees swarmed my social media accounts. “You backstabbing bitch, you should kill yourself!” “No wonder your parents didn’t want you. If I were them, I’d have gotten rid of a monster like you too.” “Ugly and useless. Married for years and still just a barren hen.” “No, no, she had a kid. But she lost it… It was karma.” The world went dark. A wave of pain so intense it buckled my knees washed over me. When I came to, my fingers were wet with tears. All these years as his wife… and I meant less to him than a one-night stand. He had taken my deepest trauma and twisted it into a weapon to use against me. Tristan Blackwood… you have finally frozen my heart solid. I blinked my eyes open as the bedroom door creaked. The soft sound of footsteps approached, and then Tristan’s hand was on my shoulder. His lips brushed against my ear. “Still want to play games with me?” he murmured, his voice thick with triumph. When I didn’t answer, my face pale and drawn, he grunted, his gaze turning cold. But his tone softened slightly. “This was just a small lesson. I don’t want to hear any more threats from you. Just be a good little Mrs. Blackwood. I know you can do it. You used to be so good at it, weren’t you?” His hot breath tickled my ear as his large hand slid under my clothes. A jolt of revulsion shot through me. I sprang up and slapped him, hard. The sharp crack echoed in the silent room. Tristan’s expression turned murderous. His face, now bearing the red imprint of my hand, twisted into a snarl. “Fine,” he hissed, “Fine. Fine.” The slam of the front door rattled the walls. I raised my head, my eyes swollen and red, and walked numbly to the bedroom to pack a bag. But then my phone rang. It was Jessica. Her voice was trembling, a mixture of panic and sorrow. “Avery… I was fired.” “What?” A roaring sound filled my ears. I stumbled, grabbing the bedpost for support.

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The system’s voice echoed in my ear just as I was settling into my third year of modern life. It said my parents regretted what they’d done. They’d even hired a shaman to summon my soul back. To maintain the world’s order, I had no choice but to return to the home that had once cast me out. This time, I decided to play the part of the perfect daughter: obedient, gentle, and magnanimous. When my mother said the “fake” daughter, Clarice, needed quiet to recover, I immediately moved into a cramped, dark storage room. I didn’t make a sound, even when a rat scurried across my face in the dead of night. When my father said he needed my heart’s blood to save Clarice, I took a knife to my own chest, filled a bowl to the brim, and asked if it was enough. Even when Clarice, in a fit of rage, tore up my only family photograph, I just calmly swept the pieces into the dustpan. I told myself, just three more days. Then everything will go back to normal. I remembered the night they threw me out. Clarice had handed me a bottle of herbicide. “When are you planning to die?” she’d asked. “Mom and Dad are waiting for your heart. For me.” I’d stared at the closed doors of the grand house in the distance, a hollow ache in my chest. Then, with a faint, bitter laugh, I ended my life under a bridge. … I counted the pieces. Sixty-four. Clarice had torn the photo into sixty-four tiny shreds. I discreetly pocketed the one piece with my own face on it and calmly began to clean up the mess. When I turned around, I met my mother’s startled gaze. “Nova,” she said, “you’ve changed.” I smiled at her but said nothing. I knew what she meant. When they first found me and brought me back to the Harrington estate, I had played on their guilt, acting out, demanding everything. Whatever Clarice, the imposter they’d raised, had, I had to have double. They gave me everything I asked for. Until Clarice was diagnosed with a heart condition. After she nearly died, everything changed. My parents began to openly favor her, calling me ungrateful and selfish. The hope, the attention I had so desperately craved, was once again lavished on Clarice. Blood ties became a useless, painful tether, doing nothing but twisting the knife deeper. I shook my head, pulling myself from the memory. “Clarice is sick,” I said. “I should be more understanding.” “Aren’t you happy I’m like this now, Mom?” After all, she was the one who had pointed to the door and screamed, “If you can’t accept Clarice, then get out of my house! I wish I’d never found you! Then Clarice wouldn’t have gotten sick from all your tantrums!” I had stood there, frozen, humiliation washing over me. Later that night, I’d swallowed the herbicide Clarice gave me and left that world behind. My mother stared at my placid face, at a loss for words. “Nova, Clarice explained… She said the herbicide was expired. She was just trying to scare you.” “And you were in the hospital for pneumonia,” she continued, “from being out in the rain for so long. You can’t blame her for that.” “She’s sick, so I have to be the bigger person,” we said in unison, a mantra they had repeated to me hundreds of times since Clarice’s diagnosis. Suddenly, a surge of rebellion coursed through me. “Does Clarice look like she has a heart condition to you?” I gestured to her rosy cheeks, my voice dripping with scorn. “She can cry for three hours straight without taking a breath just to frame me. Is that something a person with a weak heart can do?” My mother faltered, but before she could respond, Clarice burst into tears. “Mom, I know she still blames me,” she sobbed. “She hates me for stealing her life. It should have been me who died that day!” From out of nowhere, she produced another bottle of herbicide and made a show of trying to drink it. “Clarice!” my mother shrieked, shoving me aside to get to her. I stumbled, my hip crashing painfully against the corner of a table. I stared at the plastic bottle on the floor, the clear water spilling out. A wave of profound weariness washed over me. Didn’t the system say my parents had sought out a shaman, willing to sacrifice half their own lives just to bring me back? Why, then, did they still fall for Clarice’s pathetic act so easily? Why didn’t they even bother to question it? My mother cradled Clarice, a mixture of sobs and relieved laughter escaping her lips, as if she were holding a priceless, recovered treasure. I watched them for a few moments, then turned and walked back to the suffocating darkness of the storage room. Even after being reborn, I couldn’t shake my fear of the dark. Clarice’s biological father—my foster father—had been a cruel man. He was a violent alcoholic who had driven my foster mother away and then turned his lecherous gaze on me. When I fought back, he locked me in a closet for three days to “reflect.” When my real mother heard about this, she was consumed with rage. My father had the man beaten severely. It was because of this that they’d abandoned the idea of sending Clarice back to him. “Nova,” they had promised, “we can easily afford to raise you both. We swear we’ll give you a better life. Let Clarice stay. She can be your sister.” I had thrown plates, flipped tables, and smashed everything I could get my hands on, refusing to let her stay. I remember it clearly. It was the first time my parents had ever looked at me with disappointment. “You’re so selfish, Nova.” “This is our decision. We don’t need your approval.” I closed my eyes, curling up in the corner, trying to push the memories away. The very first day I returned, I had voluntarily moved into this dark, damp cellar. My mother had looked at me with a complex expression, but Clarice’s whining had quickly stolen her attention. The scuttling of rats began around me. I could almost feel their tiny feet on my skin. These creatures that would make Clarice scream and run to our father were old friends to me. Locked away and ignored, I used to talk to the rats. Their squeaks were a symphony in my silent world. I counted on my fingers. Two and a half days left until the system’s deadline. In two and a half days, I could escape this miserable world and go back to my real home. Before I could savor the thought, the cellar door was kicked open. My father, his face a thundercloud, grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to Clarice’s room. It was a princess’s dream, filled with dolls and stuffed animals. She had once boasted that our father had brought them back for her from his business trips all over the world—all limited editions. After I came to live with them, my father had asked me what I wanted. Compared to Clarice’s easy, confident requests, I couldn’t think of a single thing. The world outside my miserable upbringing was so vast and new. Later, I overheard him sighing to my mother. “That girl, Nova… she’s a lost cause. She has none of Clarice’s charm. We’ll just have to make sure she’s fed. If we give her any real responsibility, she’ll run the company into the ground.” I stood there, stunned. I grew up in squalor. No one had ever taught me these things. Was that my fault, too? Their blatant favoritism, piece by piece, had crushed me. When Clarice handed me that bottle of herbicide, all I had felt was relief. A sharp sting on my cheek brought me back to the present. Clarice had thrown her favorite doll at me. “It’s all her fault!” she shrieked. “I was getting better, but the moment she showed up, my heart started hurting again! Daddy, am I going to die?” My father gathered her into his arms, his voice a soft murmur. He looked at me, his eyes full of a complicated emotion. “Nova, your mother and I brought you back because you are our daughter. You have our love, and you will inherit our fortune. Must you also covet what is Clarice’s?” I wanted to scream, what have I ever coveted from her? But I remembered the system’s instructions and held my tongue. I pulled a small knife from my pocket, pulled up my shirt, and sliced open the barely healed wound on my chest. Drops of blood fell to the floor, quickly forming a dark pool. My face grew pale, and I could feel the life draining from me. “Host, are you insane?” the system shrieked in my mind. “If you die now, you can’t go back!” My mind was a chaotic mess. Why, after I had finally found happiness, after I had finally been set free, did they have to bring me back with their so-called love? Just so they could play the part of the perfect, caring parents? I looked up and met my father’s panicked gaze. A small smile touched my lips. “Is this enough blood?” I asked. “If not, you can have it all. Anything to save Clarice. After all, she’s the only daughter you’ve ever really wanted, isn’t she?” My vision blurred. The system’s alarms blared in my head, trying to keep me conscious. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was my father running toward me. … Is it over?

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For three years, Sharon was my world. And for three years, she thought my job as a valet driver was a dead end. That night, she told me she was going to a friend’s party and would grab a cab home. I didn’t need to pick her up. At 10:30 PM, a ride request popped up on my phone. I accepted it, just like any other. I arrived at the location, opened the car door, and slid into the driver’s seat. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw them—a man and a woman tangled together in the backseat. The woman was completely wasted, draped over him. The man’s head was down, his hand already inching its way up the hem of her skirt. She tilted her face up, inviting his kiss, her cheeks flushed with a drunken, alluring red. She didn’t recognize me. Her movements caused a silver necklace to slide against her collarbone. The same one I’d fastened around her neck on our third anniversary. She once told me it was the best gift she had ever received. 1 I pulled out my phone and deliberately called her. A ringtone echoed from the backseat. She flinched, glanced at the screen, and immediately flipped the phone face down on the seat. She buried her face back into the man’s neck without even looking up. The phone rang six times, then went to voicemail. I called again. Voicemail again. The third time, she reached out and declined the call. Clean. Decisive. Like swatting away a telemarketer. I slipped the phone back into my pocket, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. The man in the back finally looked up and barked at me, “Hey, driver! The hell are you looking at? Eyes on the road! We’ve been driving for twenty minutes and we’ve only gone two miles. You trying to rip us off by taking the long way?” I said nothing. Sharon giggled, patting his chest. “Honestly, Rick,” she purred, “I don’t know how the app assigns these guys. This one drives like a snail.” She didn’t bother lowering her voice. “And he keeps staring at my chest. So gross.” She said it with a laugh, in a tone I’d heard for three years—the same dismissive, airy tone she used when complaining about delivery boys or incompetent waiters. As if she were talking about a stray dog in her way. “The AC,” Mr. Wallace barked again. “Set it to 78. You deaf? And what’s with the shaking? Did you bribe someone for your license?” I adjusted the temperature to 78 degrees. Still silent. “I’m talking to you! You mute or something? Where’s the customer service?” Sharon chimed in from the back, her voice lazy. “What do you expect from a valet driver? Don’t lower yourself to his level, Rick. These bottom-feeders, they have no class. Just let him drive. Don’t expect him to understand a thing about decency.” Bottom-feeders. The word slipped from her lips, as casual as if she were talking about the weather. Mr. Wallace grinned, satisfied. His arm tightened around her waist, his thumb tracing slow circles on her hip through the fabric of her dress. She didn’t flinch, just leaned into him. I kept my eyes glued to the road ahead, not saying a word, and brought the car to a smooth stop in front of the hotel. Mr. Wallace got out first. He stood there, pulled a few crumpled bills and some coins from his pocket, and flicked them at my face. The bills fluttered off my forehead. The coins clattered against the dashboard, one of them rolling into the crevice of the seat. “Buy yourself a pack of smokes,” he said, dusting off his hands as if he’d touched something filthy. “And think about your life. With skills like yours, you should be delivering pizza. Calling you a professional driver is an insult to the profession.” Sharon stepped out of the car in her high heels. She paused by my window, leaned down, and spat. The saliva landed on my sleeve, blooming into a small, dark stain. Then she took Mr. Wallace’s arm, and together they pushed through the hotel’s glass doors and disappeared inside. I sat there, motionless. Then I leaned down, picking up the crumpled bills from the floor mat, one by one. I dug the last coin out from between the seats and clenched it in my fist. I opened the dashcam app and replayed the footage from the interior camera. The quality wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Her face. His hands. And that necklace, glinting in the dim light, swinging back and forth. All of it, crystal clear. I saved the video to my phone. Then, I sent a text to my company’s head of legal: Pull every financial record for a Mr. Rick Wallace from the last two years. I want the most detailed report you can find. Three years. From the first time she complained my job had no future, to tonight, when she called me a bottom-feeder in my own rearview mirror. All this time, I had been waiting for her to say something different. I never got it. 2 The legal team got back to me the next day. The tone of the message was cautious. Mr. Wallace had an expense report disbursement flagged for a significant amount, signed off and transferred to a private account. I stared at the name of the account holder for a long time. Sharon. I set the phone down on the table and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. It was cold, but I couldn’t feel it going down. I sat back down and pulled up her calendar for the past three years, looking at every entry marked “Working Late,” “Company Party,” or “Sleepover at a friend’s.” I cross-referenced them with Mr. Wallace’s travel records. The first one was a match. The second, a match. The third, fourth, fifth—almost every single one lined up, with a time difference of no more than fifteen minutes. It was like clockwork. She used to send me “group photos” from these events. I’d never looked closely at them before. Now, zooming in, I saw one was taken in a hotel hallway. Reflected in a mirror behind her was the partial figure of a man—the tie, the cufflinks, the same suit Mr. Wallace had posted on his social media that day. Three years. I saved all the screenshots into a new folder. My father had been hounding me for days. Our chain of luxury car dealerships was expanding to a third city, and the West Coast division needed someone to take charge. He’d called and launched right in, “How much longer are you going to play around driving cars for other people? Do you have any idea how much work is piling up here waiting for you?” “Just give me a little more time,” I said. He paused. “Is this still about that woman?” I didn’t answer. He sighed, his voice softening. “Your mother told you from the start that girl had shallow eyes. We tried to stop you, but you insisted on learning the hard way. I guess you’ve finally had enough.” “Dad, I’ll head back as soon as I wrap things up here. For now, send Alex over.” He was quiet for another moment before agreeing. “Fine. I’ll have Alex there tomorrow.” After hanging up, I got a text from Sharon. She was “working late” at the office again tonight. She asked if I’d eaten and told me not to wait up, that she’d be very late. She ended it with, “Be good and wait for me at home,” followed by a kissy-face emoji. I texted back, “Okay.” Then I put on my jacket, went outside, and hailed a cab, giving the driver the address of her “office.” When I got there, the entire building was dark. Not a single light on. I found a spot on the curb across the street and sat down. Ten minutes later, Mr. Wallace’s car turned the corner and pulled over. Sharon walked up from the other direction, her steps quick, and slipped into the passenger seat. The windows rolled up. The car just sat there. It didn’t drive away. I turned on my phone’s video camera and aimed it at the car. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. An entire hour. The car remained parked under the streetlight, the engine running, the vehicle shaking. Not violently, but with a steady, unmistakable rhythm. I saved the recording, stood up, dusted myself off, and took a cab home. She got back at one in the morning, sighing about how “exhausting” her work was. She tossed her purse on the couch, changed into her slippers, and went to shower. When she came out, hair still damp, she propped herself up in bed and started scrolling through her phone, a look of deep relaxation on her face. It wasn’t the look of someone tired from work. It was the look of someone utterly satisfied. She looked up and saw I was still awake. “Why are you still up? Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” “Couldn’t sleep,” I said. She just hummed in response, said nothing more, and turned off the light. Within three minutes, her breathing was even and slow. I wondered, how many of her “late nights” over the past three years had been spent in that car? I sent a text to Alex: Get here tomorrow. We need to talk. When Alex arrived the next day, his first words were, “Sir, have you finally come to your senses?” I pushed my phone across the table to him. The screenshots of the financial records from legal. The hour-long video. The dashcam footage. I showed him everything, one piece at a time. He watched it all in silence, then pushed the phone back to me. “What’s your plan?” “The company gala,” I said. “It all ends there.” 3 The week before the gala, Sharon’s behavior toward me changed completely. She was suddenly the perfect, doting girlfriend. I’d wake up to hot coffee and a pastry from my favorite bakery already on the nightstand. I’d come home from work to find the apartment spotless, my clothes folded neatly on the bed, my slippers placed perfectly by the door. At night, she’d lean against my shoulder while we watched TV, tracing circles on my chest with her finger, looking up at me with a soft smile. It was exactly like when we first started dating. I knew what she was doing. She planned to bring me to the gala, and she needed me to play my part. She needed me to be stable, obedient, and to not cause any trouble. She needed me to be the same fool I’d been for the last three years. And so, I played along. I smiled as I took the water she offered, asking, “What’s gotten into you? You’ve been so nice to me lately.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, her face close to mine. “Because I love you, silly.” The necklace hung around her neck, sparkling under the lights. That weekend, she dragged me to the mall and picked out a shirt for me at a department store. It was on sale, but still cost a few hundred bucks. As she paid, she remarked to the cashier, “He just doesn’t care about these things. If I don’t stay on top of him, he’ll wear the same old t-shirts everywhere.” The cashier gave a polite, noncommittal smile, her eyes flicking over to me. I knew that look. It was the look that said she thought I wasn’t worth the money Sharon was spending. On the drive home, she gave me a list of instructions for the gala. Don’t talk too much. Don’t mention my job. If anyone asks, just say I’m “exploring a career change.” Don’t engage with anyone at Mr. Wallace’s table because “they’re on a different level, you won’t keep up.” Don’t offer any toasts, don’t stare around the room, just sit there and be quiet. She delivered these commands matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a discussion; it was a briefing. Like a patient but condescending parent teaching a dim-witted child how to behave in public. I sat in the passenger seat, nodding. “Got it.” Pleased, she patted my hand with a smile, then looked down to reply to a text. She angled the screen away, but I saw the contact name in the reflection of the car window: “Rick,” followed by a red heart emoji. The night before the gala, she went out, claiming she had to help set up the venue. I didn’t follow her this time. I had all the evidence I needed. I called Alex and had him double-check the file he’d prepared: the dashcam video, the hour-long recording of the car, the detailed financial audit from legal, and the transfer agreement signed with Sharon’s name. Everything was compressed into a single presentation file, ready for the big screen. “Sir, are you sure you want to do this at the gala?” Alex asked. “I’m sure.” He was silent for a beat. “Understood. Leave it to me.” Sharon came home after midnight, sighing her usual “I’m so exhausted.” She showered, slipped into bed, and turned to me before falling asleep. “Tomorrow, wear a tie,” she instructed. “No sneakers. And stick close to me. I’ve already given Mr. Wallace a heads-up, so just keep your mouth shut and you’ll be fine.” “Okay,” I said. She turned off the light. Her breathing steadied almost immediately. The morning of the gala, she woke up early. She put on makeup, wore a new dress, and stood by the door waiting for me. As I walked over, she picked up my tie. She stood on her toes, her focus absolute as she looped it around my neck, pulled it tight, then adjusted the knot. “There,” she said, patting my chest with a smile. “Don’t embarrass me.” I looked down at her. I wanted to say, “I won’t.” But in the end, I just nodded. Because the one being embarrassed tonight wasn’t going to be me. 4 As we entered the ballroom, Sharon’s grip on my arm was tight. She walked quickly, as if trying to hide me from view. A female colleague walked toward us, her eyes scanning me from head to toe. “So, this is your boyfriend?” she asked Sharon, loud enough for everyone to hear. “The valet driver?” She wrinkled her nose, not bothering to hide her disgust. “He kind of reeks of cheap.” Before Sharon could answer, someone else chimed in with a laugh. “Come on, Sharon. Mr. Wallace thinks so highly of you. Why would you bring a valet driver to an event like this? You’re just embarrassing yourself.” A few people around them chuckled. Sharon just pulled me forward, her pace quickening, her fingers digging into my arm. She wasn’t protecting me; she was afraid I’d say the wrong thing. After his opening speech, Mr. Wallace made his way through the crowd. His eyes landed on me, and he stopped. In front of everyone, he boomed, “Well, well. This must be Sharon’s boyfriend. The driver, is it?” He looked me up and down, shook his head, and turned to his sales director with a condescending smile. “See this? Sharon has terrible taste in men. A top sales champion dating a valet driver. She’s cheapening her own brand. And here I thought she was a smart woman.” The director forced a laugh and mumbled his agreement. Mr. Wallace turned back to me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t a friendly pat; it was a power move. “Listen, kid. What kind of future can you have as a driver? Life’s short. Don’t hold Sharon back. She’ll have a miserable life with you.” I remained silent. Sharon kept her head down, saying nothing. Her brother, Brandon, pushed through the crowd with a drink in his hand. “Hey, future brother-in-law!” he shouted. “Oh, wait. Not sure if that’s gonna happen!” He looked around, making sure he had an audience, and raised his glass. “My sister is this company’s sales champion, right? And she’s with a valet driver. Is she out of her mind or what?” The crowd roared with laughter. Someone muttered, “She could do better,” while others just shook their heads, enjoying the show. Brandon turned to me, his smile gone, replaced by pure contempt. “Look, dude, I’ll be blunt. You don’t deserve her. What do you possibly have to offer? Money? Connections? All you’ve got is a driver’s license. You’re a bottom-feeder, trash from the lowest rung of society, and you’ll never climb out. Don’t you get it?” Another wave of laughter. This time, Sharon spoke. “That’s enough, Brandon.” But her voice was flat, as if commenting on the weather. She then turned away to clink glasses with a colleague. She didn’t even glance at me. I sat there, my hands on my knees, my drink untouched. I thought about every time she’d said, “Can’t you be more ambitious?” I thought about her in the backseat, sneering, “Bottom-feeders do what bottom-feeders do.” I thought about Mr. Wallace throwing loose change at my face. I thought about his car, parked on the street for an hour, engine running. I thought about the screenshot from legal, with the recipient’s name: Sharon. Sharon’s mother stood up then, her voice shrill enough to cut through the chatter. “What can a worthless driver like you give my daughter? A big house? A luxury car? Your entire monthly salary is less than the commission she makes on a single sale!” Her finger was practically in my face. The people around us were laughing openly now. Just then, Alex walked in through a side door. He ignored everyone, calmly walked to the corner of the stage, and plugged a cable into the port for the main projector screen. The screen lit up. The first image: the business license for a chain of luxury car dealerships. In the box for “Owner,” was my name. The second image: the corporate hierarchy chart. Mr. Rick Wallace’s name was listed under “General Manager.” My name was above his. The room fell silent. Rick Wallace’s face, in that one second, went bone-white.

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1 For five years of marriage, I’d grown accustomed to visiting my mother’s and child’s graves alone each year. Once again, Mark Wallace produced two plane tickets before the spring remembrance festival. One for him. The other, not for me. “Chelsea needs to go back for the ancestral rites. Same old routine,” he said, his tone as flat as if he were discussing the weather. “I’ll book your ticket for October. Hotel’s already taken care of.” I couldn’t help but ask if this year could be an exception. In the frozen silence, the answer was already etched on his face. Christmas was spent with Chelsea and her family. Memorial Day was their son’s birthday. And my own child’s grave? He hadn’t visited it once in five years. Out of 365 days, October was the only time I’d briefly see him. Staring at the ticket that had nothing to do with me, the weariness of five years suddenly pressed down, stealing my breath. “If you walk out that door today, we’re filing for divorce,” I heard myself say, my voice eerily calm. … “When you go back this time, remember to buy the toy Arthur wanted last time…” Mark’s instructions stopped abruptly when I uttered the word “divorce.” He furrowed his brow, his voice stiff. “Divorce? What divorce?” “You’re talking about divorce over something so trivial?” Mark frowned, perplexed, as if I were being utterly unreasonable. “I’ve spent enough money on your sister, haven’t I? Her life is entirely dependent on me now.” “We agreed initially that I’d be staying in Portside for a long time. You consented to that. So what are you trying to do, bringing this up now?” My hands, hanging limply, trembled slightly. I felt a little lost for words. He used to say Arthur was too young, that I should be understanding. He promised that once Arthur was older and more sensible, he’d leave Chelsea. For my sister’s illness, I endured again and again. We got our marriage certificate five years ago, but there was never a wedding. No one even knew we’d been married for five years. We saw each other once a year, separated by two thousand miles. Even during video calls, Chelsea and Arthur were always by his side. I was always the outsider. “Mark, you and Chelsea are already divorced. Arthur is five years old now.” “So what are we? A transaction?” All the resentment and hurt of these years spilled out. But Mark was clearly getting impatient. He waved his hand dismissively. “Isn’t it?” My breath hitched. Mark seemed to realize his mistake a beat too late. A flicker of annoyance crossed his eyes. The atmosphere grew silent. He abruptly changed the subject. “Fine. I’ll double her medical fees this month.” “Go find a new place to live. How can anyone live in such a cramped space?” He looked at the peeling paint on the walls, the moldy ceiling, with undisguised distaste. He casually pulled a card from his wallet and thrust it into my hand. The cold touch spread from my palm to my heart, a bitter taste rising in my mouth. This house was my sister’s and mine. Our home. After my sister’s accident, I’d stayed here, guarding it. The money he gave me, my own salary, my bonuses—every single penny went into a bank account. Once it was full, I wouldn’t owe him anything. The old iron gate creaked open. A child of four or five ran straight into Mark’s arms. “Daddy! I missed you so much!” The house was small. Chelsea and her son came in, struggling to find a place to stand. “Jamie, you live here?” Chelsea said, feigning surprise. “It’s all Mark’s fault. I told him from the beginning, once you two were married, he should come home.” “But he refused. He can’t leave Arthur and me.” Her face was full of false apology, but her words dripped with sarcasm. “Why don’t you move to Portside with us? The house isn’t huge, but we can clear out a spare room for you.” Mark didn’t seem to have any objection to this absurd suggestion. “Chelsea’s right, it’s unfair that we only see each other once a year.” “Your sister’s condition is just… well, why don’t you just…” Seeing them as a family of three, a sense of powerlessness washed over me. “No, I don’t need to…” Before I could finish, a loud crash made me snap my head up. Arthur’s hands were empty. At his feet lay a shattered crystal ball. My pupils trembled. I lunged forward, pushing Arthur out of the way. The child landed on his bottom and burst into tears. “Who told you to touch that?!” Mark rushed forward, scooped up Arthur, and carefully checked him for injuries. He immediately started accusing me without bothering to understand what happened. “It’s just a broken trinket! Why would you push the child?!” Chelsea’s eyes were also filled with concern for Arthur. “Jamie, Arthur is just a child. How could you do that to him?” I couldn’t bring myself to listen to their accusations. I just crouched down, trying to piece the broken crystal ball back together. It was a gift from my sister on my birthday. That day, she’d been on her way to buy a cake for me, to surprise me, when the car accident happened. She’d been in a coma ever since. Clinging to life in a hospital bed. This was her only, her last, gift to me. I looked up, my eyes bloodshot, glaring at the family. “How are you going to pay for this?” 2 Mark’s face darkened. He pulled a few bills from his wallet and tossed them onto the floor. “Is that enough? Apologize. If you don’t, you won’t see me this year, or next.” “And your sister’s medical bills? Forget about them.” I slammed the door shut. The living room was so quiet I could only hear my own heartbeat. The floor was a mess. As I bent down to pick up the shards, I tried to put the crystal ball back together. But what’s broken is broken. Just like Mark and me. Five years ago, it was the second year after my sister’s accident. Mark Wallace had forced his way into my life. He took on all of my sister’s medical expenses. He was there for me during my darkest time. I accepted his proposal. But after we signed the marriage certificate, he confessed. “Jamie, I’ve been divorced before.” The marriage certificate was still warm in my hand. I looked up, stunned. “What?” “I have a son with her. He just turned one month old. He needs me.” “So we agreed to divorce but still live together. She’s in Portside. I have to leave tomorrow.” Mark’s calm words made my heart sink. He handed me a card. “Your sister’s medical expenses for this month. I’ll deposit money into this card from now on.” He asked me to understand him, to be considerate. For my sister, and because I clung to the hope of this relationship, I chose to forgive. But it was this forgiveness that allowed Mark to abandon me again and again. When I first found out I was pregnant, my mother was gravely ill, and no one was there to take care of me. I called him, told him the news. At first, he promised he would come home to be with me. But soon after, he called back. “Jamie, Arthur started crying non-stop when he heard I was coming home. I’ll send you some money. You can hire a nurse to look after you.” After that, I went to all my prenatal appointments alone. My belly grew larger day by day, and the neighbors looked at me strangely. “Jamie, your belly is so big now, but I never see your husband.” I forced a smile and brushed them off. “He’s busy with work.” But rumors spread like wildfire that I was some man’s kept woman, an illegitimate mistress. During my pregnancy, emotions overwhelmed me. Every time I called Mark, the call would be rejected before it even connected. It wasn’t until my due date that Mark finally returned from Portside. On the way to the hospital, he drove frantically, talking all the while. “When you go in to give birth, try to push hard and get it over with quickly. Arthur’s birthday is in two days, and I have to rush back.” My water had already broken. I was too weak to speak. When I was rushed into the operating room, I developed amniotic fluid embolism due to fetal malposition. Bag after bag of blood was sent into the operating room. Countless critical condition notices were issued. In the end, I survived, but the baby didn’t. When I opened my eyes, the nurse looked at me with pity. “Ms. Jensen, your husband already left. He paid your medical bills.” “You’ll have other children.” I covered my face, tears streaming down. But I wasn’t given a chance to recover. My mother, who had been ill for years, passed away three days after I lost my child. When he heard the news, he only sent me a text message. Arthur’s sick. You’ll have other kids. I’m just glad you’re okay. Your mom’s passing is a release for her. Don’t be too sad. I’ll be back to handle the funeral arrangements. By the time he returned, it was already after the seventh day of mourning for both my mother and my child. I had a huge fight with him. But he said to me, “Arthur’s illness this time is very serious. Can you understand what’s more important, the living or the dead?” “I know you’ve suffered, but didn’t I give you money?” “I made sure you had the best hospital room, the best nutritionist to recover, and I never missed a payment for your sister’s care. What more do you want from me?” He rubbed his temples, telling me over and over to be reasonable. “Mark, how many times have you said those things? Why are you still living with them?” “Is it because of the child again? Then why did you divorce her? Why did you marry me?!” I screamed, ignoring all decorum. But Mark never once thought he was in the wrong. He remained impassive, bringing up my sister without hesitation. “Jamie, you need to be grateful. Without me, how could your comatose sister be in such a good hospital?” “Before you make a scene next time, know your place.” After I suggested divorce, he cut off my sister’s medical resources. I had lost my child, lost my mother. I couldn’t lose my sister too. In the years that followed, I repeatedly gave in. When Mark was in a good mood, he would try to console me. “We’re married. Do you really think I’d run off?” I wiped away my tears, tidied up the house, and my gaze fell back on the plane ticket on the table. I reached out, tore it to shreds, and threw it in the trash. My phone suddenly rang. It was the hospital. My heart quickened. My sister’s condition had been stable for the past two years. For the hospital to call now… I didn’t dare to think, and quickly answered the phone. “Ms. Jensen, your sister just had a sudden cardiac arrest. She’s in critical condition right now. Please come to the hospital.” 3 My head buzzed. I grabbed my coat and ran out. When I arrived at the hospital, I was handed a critical condition notice by the doctor. That thin piece of paper almost slipped from my grasp. After signing it with trembling hands, the nurse told me to go pay the fees first. I handed over the card Mark had given me. But I was told there was no money in it. “Insufficient funds.” I froze for a moment. This card was given to me by Mark before he left. It contained double the medical fees. How could there be insufficient funds? “Is the machine broken? Try swiping it again.” The person at the payment counter was impatient. “No money means no money. It won’t change no matter how many times you swipe.” People behind me were urging me on. My sister’s life hung over me like a sword. I walked to the corner of the hallway and called Mark. The call took a long time to connect. I heard Mark’s nonchalant voice. “Had a change of heart? Do you know how to apologize?” “Arthur still hasn’t recovered, you—” I cut off his reprimand. “Why is there no money on the card?” He paused, as if recalling something. After a long silence, he spoke calmly. “I forgot. I gave that card to Chelsea before.” “She had a bad investment and needed money to cover the losses.” I tightened my grip on the phone, my knuckles white, my voice tinged with pleading. “My sister is in emergency surgery right now. She had a sudden cardiac arrest…” “What’s that got to do with me?” His voice on the other end of the line grew even more impatient. “Jamie, weren’t you acting so tough earlier?” “Figure out the money yourself. This is your punishment.” I felt my breathing constrict. I looked up at the red light above the operating room. My heart pounded. “Mark, when we got married, you promised me.” “I know, but I want you to remember who’s been bailing you out all these years.” Before I could say anything else, a child’s voice piped up. “Daddy, I’m hungry. I want to eat the food you made for me.” Then came the sounds of Chelsea and Mark laughing. “Mommy’s food isn’t as good? Your daddy was too tired yesterday, let him rest…” The call ended. The busy signal extinguished the last flicker of hope in my heart. Payment notifications kept coming in. I clenched my jaw, swallowed my pride, and asked my company for a three-month advance on my salary. I also borrowed money from everyone I knew. Finally, I scraped together enough for the surgery. The operating room light just switched off. I clenched my fists, staring intently at the doctor who emerged. I saw my pale-faced sister being wheeled out of the operating room.

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