I spent our wedding night sitting upright in an armchair, watching the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows turn from ink-black to a pale, bruising gray. Early the next morning, Jessica walked in, tossing a cardboard box onto the duvet. Inside were fifty scratch-off lottery tickets. “Go ahead, Larry,” she said, her voice dry and thick with fatigue. “Scratch them. Whatever you win, I’ll match it ten-fold and wire it to your father’s company.” I reached for the quarters on the vanity with numb fingers. First card: Try again. Second card: Try again. Third card: Not a winner. Jessica leaned against the doorframe, a faint, mocking smile on her lips. “Is this really the extent of your talent? You seemed a lot bolder last night when you poured that glass of Pinot Noir over Dan’s head.” I looked at the silver shavings on my fingers. “I won’t do it again.” She paused, surprised by my docility, then walked over and patted my head, the way one might soothe a temperamental golden retriever. “Good. Remember that. Keep your hands off Dan.” She pulled a titanium card from her purse and tapped it against my cheek. “This is more than enough to bail out your dad’s firm.” My eyes dropped. “I don’t want it.” She didn’t know my father was dead. Dead men don’t have payroll to meet. … Jessica’s brow furrows. “Larry, stop playing hard to get. I told you, Dan is just my assistant. You throwing a scene in front of our investors didn’t hurt him—it humiliated me. I withheld the wire to teach you a lesson.” I look at her collarbone. There is a faint, plum-colored bruise there. She sees me looking, and her lips twitch into a smug, fleeting smile. “I understand,” I say. She looks at me, searching my face. “You understand what?” “That I was being childish.” She softens slightly, a look of vindication settling over her features. “Good. You need to stop expecting everyone else to clean up your messes.” She looks nothing like the girl who first came to my father’s house for Sunday dinner. My dad had spent all day making roast beef. Afterward, he took her into his study, placed my hand in hers, and said, “Larry is stubborn, Jessica. I’ve spoiled him, and his temper gets the best of him. Please, look out for him.” Jessica had squeezed my hand. “I promise, Mr. Westfield. I’ll always stand by him.” But now, she uses my father’s survival as a leash. Her phone buzzes on the nightstand. She glances at the screen and answers, her voice softening instantly. “What is it, Dan? … I’ll be right there.” She hangs up. “Dan’s having an allergic reaction to some seafood. I have to go check on him.” She walks to the mirror, adjusting her collar. “You were spoiled, Larry. You’re used to everyone bowing to you. But now that we’re married, you need to learn to bend.” I stand there, watching her, then look down at my own phone. Twenty-three missed calls from an unknown number. “Are you going to the hospital?” I ask. She stops, looking at me through the mirror. “What? Checking up on me already?” “No,” I say softly. “Just take the card with you. Buy him a new tie while you’re out.” Her expression darkens. She strides over, grabbing my chin. “Do you have to be so incredibly passive-aggressive right now?” She lets go with a harsh laugh. “Fine. Since you’re in such a generous mood, the wire can wait another three days. When you learn to speak to me with a little respect, I’ll release the funds.” Ever since our family’s supply chain collapsed, everyone in the city knew Jessica was our only hope. And because of that, she became utterly convinced I could never leave her. She started ignoring my calls, showing up to galas with Dan on her arm, and silencing my protests with a cold threat: One more word, Larry, and the money gets delayed. She turns on her heel. “Scratch the rest of those cards. I want to see them on the counter tomorrow morning. And wipe that miserable look off your face. It’s depressing.” The heavy oak door slams shut. The house falls dead quiet. I walk into the walk-in closet, pull out a battered leather duffel bag, and begin folding my shirts. Jessica doesn’t know. My father, driven to the edge by loan sharks, went up to his office rooftop. He lost his footing. He fell eighteen stories. He died on impact. The next morning, I walk out of the villa carrying my bag. Robert, the butler, stops me at the iron gates. “Mr. Westfield, where are you going?” “Just out.” Robert looks at my bag, his face tightening with worry. “Mrs. Davenport gave strict instructions. If you leave the house, you have to let her know.” I pull out my phone and dial Jessica’s number right in front of him. It rings six times before she picks up. “What is it now?” she asks, her voice dripping with irritation. “I’m leaving the house.” “Where are you going?” “The hospital.” “The hospital? For god’s sake, Larry, stop playing sick for attention.” “I have things to take care of.” She scoffs. “Fine. Just don’t bring any of that hospital misery back into my house.” “Okay,” I say. I hang up and look at Robert. He sighs, stepping aside. At the county morgue, the coroner hands me a clipboard. “Mr. Westfield, here is the autopsy report and the cremation consent form.” I take the pen. My father had hundreds of friends when he was wealthy. But standing here today, I am the only one left to sign his name away. My hand trembles so hard the pen barely touches the paper. “Is there any other family we should call?” the coroner asks gently. I dig my fingernails into my palm until the pain sharpens my focus. My hand steadies. “No,” I say. “Just me.” “When can we proceed with the cremation?” The coroner takes the clipboard back, glancing at the empty hallway behind me. “Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock.” “Thank you.” When I step outside, the autumn sun is blindingly bright. It reminds me of the afternoon my father went in for his first biopsy years ago. Jessica had canceled a merger meeting to sit with me in the waiting room. My palms had been slick with sweat, and she had wrapped her hands around mine. “Don’t be scared,” she had whispered. “I’ve got you.” Later, my dad had patted her shoulder. “Jessica, Larry is a bit fragile under pressure. I’m relying on you to look after him.” She had looked at me with genuine warmth. “Don’t worry, sir. As long as I’m here, he’ll never have to carry the weight alone.” And now, here I am, signing his death warrant in the same hospital while she buys ties for another man. My phone vibrates. It’s Bill Davis, our company’s head accountant. “Larry, the wire from Davenport Enterprises still hasn’t cleared.” “I know, Bill.” “Larry, you have to talk to her. Please. We can’t reach your father, and the creditors are at the door. We can’t let the firm collapse.” “Bill,” I interrupt quietly. “How much is left in the operating account?” “Less than ten thousand dollars.” “Use it to pay out severance to the staff. Tell everyone to go home today.” There is a long pause. “Larry… what do you mean?” “We’re filing for Chapter 7. We’re liquidating.” On the other side of town, Jessica is stepping out of a boutique with Dan. Her assistant, Diana, stands by the idling town car, speaking in a low voice. “Ms. Davenport, there’s been some news from Westfield Logistics. It seems Mr. Westfield senior has…” Dan is holding the car door open, a subtle smile playing on his lips. Jessica frowns. “What news?” “It seems there was an incident—” “Did Larry tell you to say that?” Jessica cuts her off, her voice cold. Diana hesitates. “No, ma’am, it came from—” “That’s enough,” Jessica says, waving a hand dismissively. “I told you, I don’t want to hear about the Westfields’ dramatic ploys to get my attention. All I care about is whether Larry has called to apologize. Let him stew for a few days. He’ll learn.” I walk into the funeral home. The director shows me the options. “This solid mahogany vault is beautiful. It’s moisture-resistant. Eight thousand dollars.” I hand him my debit card. “This is fine.” The machine beeps. Declined. I close my eyes, remembering that I used the last of my savings to clear his final medical bills yesterday. My dad spent his whole life trying to shield me from the cold realities of the world. And now that he’s gone, I can’t even afford to buy him a decent final resting place. “Give me a moment,” I tell the director. I sit on the steps outside and open a luxury consignment app on my phone. I list the Rolex and the bespoke Dunhill suits Jessica had bought me over the years. I price them to sell. Within ten minutes, the notifications chime. Sold. Paid. I suppose that was the only real value of her love in the end—it bought my father a sliver of dignity. I transfer the funds to my card and walk back inside. “Try this one.” The transaction goes through. I sit on a stone bench outside the crematorium, cradling the heavy mahogany box in my lap. It feels so small, yet my arms ache from the weight of it. My phone rings. Jessica’s name flashes on the screen. “Larry, where the hell are you?” she demands. “Outside,” I say. “I just got an alert from my concierge. You sold the Rolex I got you for our anniversary? And your formal suits? Are you completely out of your mind?” I look down at the dark wood in my arms. “I needed the money.” She lets out a sharp, mocking laugh. “I told you, Larry. Walk through the front door, apologize to me, and twenty million dollars will be in your account within the hour.” “No, thank you.” “Larry!” her voice rises, sharp and dictatorial. “I gave you a way out of this. Don’t push me.” “Jessica, let’s get a divorce.” The line goes dead silent. Ten seconds pass, filled only with the faint sound of her breathing. “What kind of game is this?” she asks, her voice dripping with condescension. “Your father’s company is on the verge of ruin. You think you’re in a position to ask for a divorce?” I don’t say anything. She takes my silence as surrender. “There’s a charity gala tomorrow night. Get yourself together and be ready by seven. And don’t wear one of those drab, depressing black suits. If you behave yourself, I might consider releasing five million on Friday.” She hangs up before I can answer. I look at the small photograph of my father I keep in my wallet. He’s smiling, standing on a dock with a fishing rod in hand. It was taken five years ago, right around the time Jessica asked for his blessing to marry me. I remember him holding her hand, looking at her with tears in his eyes. “Please, take care of my boy.” And she had looked him in the eye and said, “I promise, Mr. Westfield. He will never suffer as long as I live.” I slowly slip the platinum band off my left ring finger. The next day, I spend the morning in the quiet chapel of the funeral home. At five in the afternoon, Isabel calls. “Larry? Where are you? Jessica’s driver is looking for you.” “I’m not coming, Isabel.” “Larry, stop it,” she sighs. “I know things are tense, but Dan is going to be there. If you don’t show up, people will talk. Jessica said if you don’t come tonight, she’s completely cutting off the Westfield accounts.” I watch the small fire flicker in the iron hearth of the chapel, throwing long shadows across the stone floor. “Tell her I’m busy,” I say, and hang up. I watch the last of the embers die down, then stand and brush the gray soot from my coat. Tomorrow is the burial. I need to make sure the plot in Westlake Cemetery is ready. The next morning, a cold, gray drizzle falls over the city. I stand alone under a black umbrella, watching two cemetery workers lower the mahogany box into the earth. I thought I would cry, but my throat is raw and my eyes are dry as bone. I lay a bundle of white chrysanthemums on the wet grass. “Goodbye, Dad.” The rain smears the glass of his framed portrait. I reach out to wipe it away, but my fingers are freezing, completely numb. I remember a rainy afternoon years ago when I had a high fever. My dad had carried me on his back to the clinic, and Jessica had held the umbrella over us, her own shoulder soaking wet so not a single drop would touch me. And now, on the day I bury him, she is nowhere to be found. By the time I get back to the Davenport estate, it’s noon. My black wool coat is heavy with rainwater, the cuffs stained with cemetery mud. I push open the front door. The sound of a daytime talk show echoes through the foyer. Jessica is curled up on the velvet sofa, her head resting on Dan’s shoulder. Draped over Dan’s lap is a cream-colored cashmere throw—the one my dad had bought me for my twenty-fifth birthday. “Keep warm, Larry,” my father had joked back then. “Even when you have a wife, you have to look after yourself.” And now, that very blanket is keeping Dan warm in my home, next to my wife. My hands clench into fists at my sides. A primitive urge flares up inside me to tear it off him, to scream at them to get out. But I just look away. It doesn’t matter. My father is gone. A piece of fabric means nothing. Hearing my footsteps, they both look up. Jessica’s face hardens the second she sees me. “So you finally decided to crawl back?” She looks at my mud-splattered boots, her brow furrowing with disgust. “Why are you wearing all black? Who died?” She brushes a piece of lint off her sleeve, as if looking at me is physically exhausting. I look down at the mud on my cuffs. I don’t say a word. I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, the raw grief will tear through me. I turn toward the stairs. Jessica springs up, grabbing my wrist. Her grip is white-hot and tight. “I’m talking to you, Larry! You hang up on me, block my texts, and now you walk in here looking like a ghost. Do you think I have infinite patience for your tantrums?” “Let go,” I say quietly. She laughs, tightening her grip until my bones ache. “Are you still trying to punish me for withholding the money? Let me tell you something, Larry. You missed the gala last night. The Westfield deal is dead. This morning, I personally instructed our bank to pull the emergency credit line.” She leans in, her breath warm against my ear. “Your father is probably hiding from debt collectors in some dark alley right now. You want to save him? Kneel. Beg me. Maybe I’ll throw him a bone.” I look at her, my face completely blank. My father is in the ground. No one can hurt him now. Dan stands up from the sofa, adjusting his shirt with a soft, patronizing smile. “Larry, listen to Jessica. Just apologize and let’s move past this. Your father isn’t young anymore. He can’t handle that kind of stress. If something terrible happens, you’ll have to live with the guilt.” Jessica lets go of my wrist, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. “Go change. We’re going to my family’s estate for dinner.” Right then, her phone on the coffee table begins to vibrate. It’s Isabel. Jessica sighs and answers. “What is it, Isabel?” Isabel’s voice is trembling so violently I can hear it from where I stand. “Jessica… where are you?” “At home. Why?” “You need to go to the police station. Now.” Jessica’s brow furrows. “Why would I go to the police station?” “Detective Miller just called me. Your father-in-law’s file is being closed, and they need a family member to sign the final release forms. He couldn’t reach Larry, so he called me.” Isabel takes a ragged, shaking breath. “Charles fell from his office roof three days ago, Jessica. The burial was this morning.” The living room falls into a suffocating, dead silence. Jessica’s hand freezes mid-air, the phone still pressed to her ear. Slowly, she turns her head. Her eyes travel down to my black coat, to the dried gray mud on my cuffs, to the hollow emptiness in my eyes. The realization hits her like a physical blow. “No,” she whispers, her voice cracking. “Isabel, stop playing these stupid games.” She stares at me, her face pale. “Larry, tell her she’s lying. Tell me this is just another stunt to get the money! Say something!” I look at her. Even now, her first instinct is to assume I’m manipulating her. I don’t offer an explanation. I simply reach into my coat pocket, pull out a folded piece of paper, and place it on the glass table. Jessica looks down. It’s a death certificate. The time of death is printed clearly in black ink. It was the exact hour she had switched her phone to silent to sit in a hospital room with Dan. The phone slips from her fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor.

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My father always said I was a liar. In preschool, when a plastic truck got stepped on, I said I wasn’t the one who broke it. He told the teacher I was lying. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Peterson, came over to borrow a wrench and noticed a dark purple bruise on my father’s calf. When he asked what happened, I said Mom had kicked him. My father laughed it off, claiming he’d just walked into the coffee table, and told Mr. Peterson that I just loved to make things up. When Grandpa Hank asked if my dad was good to me, I told him the truth: “No, he’s not my real dad.” My father chimed in from the doorway, “Hank, I told you, the kid has a vivid imagination. He can’t tell fact from fiction.” Grandpa Hank just sighed, rubbed my hair, and let it go. I was five when my father applied for a major promotion at the county utility commission. Because it was a government-adjacent role handling public funds, they sent representatives to our house to conduct a routine background and character check. That was the day everyone finally realized that everything I had ever said was true. 1 On the day of the interview, three people came to our house. There was Mr. Burke, a stern-looking man in his late forties who led the questions. A young woman named Lucy, who sat with a laptop to take notes. And an older gentleman with thinning silver hair who sat quietly at the end of our sofa. Mr. Burke started with the basics, asking my father standard questions: date of birth, where he grew up, his parents’ names, and when he and my mother got married. My father answered effortlessly, his smile warm and perfectly measured. Mr. Burke nodded, noting down a few things, before turning to me. His expression softened. “And what about you, buddy? Is your dad good to you?” The living room fell dead silent. “He hits me,” I said. “A lot.” My mother’s hand froze as she set down a teacup. My father’s smile didn’t slip, but I noticed his fingers tremble slightly against his knee. He let out a soft, helpless laugh—the sound of a patient, wounded parent. He looked at Mr. Burke and shook his head. “You see what I have to deal with, Mr. Burke? He’s like this all the time. Not a single word out of his mouth is true.” He gently pulled up my sleeve, exposing my bare arm. It was smooth, pale, and completely unmarked. “You be the judge, Mr. Burke. If I beat him every day, would he look like this?” Mr. Burke looked at my arm and remained silent. My father kept going, his voice growing thick with emotion. “He’s been doing this since he was three. His preschool teacher said he pushed another child off the slide, and he absolutely refused to admit it. The moment I try to discipline him, he goes around telling everyone I abuse him.” Tears began to well up in my father’s eyes, his voice cracking. “Since the day he was born, I’ve given him everything. Food, clothes, toys—he’s never wanted for anything. And this is how he repays me, by badmouthing me to anyone who will listen… I don’t know what I did to make him hate me so much.” My mother sighed beside him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s true, Mr. Burke. He’s had this issue since he was a toddler. We even took him to see a child psychologist—” “I’m not sick,” I said. The room went quiet again. I looked straight at Mr. Burke. “He really does hit me. It hurts.” Mr. Burke studied me for a long moment. “Where does he hit you, Toby?” I had to think about it. My thighs. But that was in the summer when I wore shorts, and the bruises had faded. My ears. But the redness from having my ears pulled vanished quickly; they weren’t red now. “He just does,” I said quietly. My father didn’t say another word. He just stared at me, tears streaming down his cheeks. They looked so incredibly real. Mr. Burke sighed and turned to my father, his tone turning sympathetic. “Kids say hurtful things when they’re angry. We understand.” He closed his notebook, looking ready to wrap up. But the silver-haired older gentleman, who had been silent the entire time, suddenly spoke. “And why does your father hit you?” 2 The moment the question hung in the air, my father’s quiet weeping stopped. My mother’s hand hovered over her teacup. All eyes in the room landed on me. I looked at my father. “Because he’s not my real dad,” I said. “My real dad didn’t look like him.” My father’s face drained of color. It was only for a fraction of a second before his wounded, pitying expression returned. He shook his head. “This boy… I honestly don’t know what to do with him anymore.” Mr. Burke finished packing up his briefcase and said they would head back to verify the information. The silver-haired man was the last to leave. He paused at the doorway, turning back to give me a long, searching look. It felt like he was trying to see right through me, searching for something hidden deep beneath the surface. But he didn’t say anything. The second the front door clicked shut, my father grabbed my arm, dragging me down the hallway and throwing me into the bathroom. The light flickered off. The door locked from the outside. In the pitch black, his muffled voice drifted through the wood. “Say one more word like that, and you’re sleeping on the floor in there tonight.” I sat on the tile, leaning against the base of the toilet. I didn’t cry. I was used to the dark. But my mind kept returning to that old man’s eyes. He was different from the others. Others looked at me like I was a broken toy. He looked at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve. Since I was three, my father had been building this narrative. The first time was in preschool. When a toy got broken and the teacher asked who did it, I said it wasn’t me. My father was called in. In front of the teacher, he pinched my cheek hard and said, “Don’t believe a word he says, Ms. Davis. He’s a pathological liar.” I cried, protesting my innocence, but he pinched me again, laughing it off. “See? There he goes again.” The second time was Mr. Peterson. He saw the dark purple bruise on my father’s thigh and asked about it. I told him Mom had done it. My father laughed, blamed the doorframe, and later cornered me. He squeezed my thigh until I whimpered. “Speak up again, and I’ll sew your mouth shut.” After Mr. Peterson left, he locked me in the bathroom for the entire afternoon. From then on, I never spoke of Mom hitting him again. But my father didn’t stop. He made sure to warn everyone about my “condition.” Teachers, neighbors, relatives. Every time someone looked at me, there was a strange, pitying skepticism in their eyes. That’s the dishonest boy. When I was three, Grandpa Hank asked me, “Is your dad good to you, Tobes?” I said no. “He’s not my real dad.” My father shook his head sadly. “I told you, Hank. The boy can’t help himself.” Grandpa Hank sighed, patted my head, and left. At four, I told him again. This time, Grandpa Hank didn’t even sigh. He just looked at me with a profound, aching pity. Not because he thought I was being abused, but because he thought I was mentally ill. On my fifth birthday, I blew out my candles and made a wish. I wished for just one person to believe me. Just one. But nobody did. They all believed him. He knew how to play the victim, how to cry, how to wrap his arms around me in public and whisper, “The poor kid was just born a little off.” And all I could do was repeat the same phrase over and over: “He’s not my real dad.” Like a broken toy that only knew one line. 3 Until the investigators came and I said it again. I thought this would be the moment. But the look on Mr. Burke’s face told me he didn’t believe me either. That night, my father didn’t hit me. Instead, he made me kneel on the concrete of the back porch for two hours. The early autumn breeze was freezing. My knees felt like they were cracking under my weight. My mother stayed in the living room, watching TV, never looking out. When Grandpa Hank called to check in, my father answered smoothly. “Oh, everything’s fine, Hank. Toby is just taking a bath.” When he hung up, he walked out to the porch and knelt down to meet my eyes. “Toby,” he whispered, his voice as soft and sweet as a lullaby. “If you ever say those crazy things to the investigators again, I’ll have you committed to an institution. They lock kids like you in rooms with straightjackets, and you never get to leave. Do you understand me?” I nodded. He smiled and patted my head. “Good boy. I’ll go warm up some milk for you.” He got up and went inside. I kept kneeling. As the wind swept over me, a memory flickered— My real dad had warmed up milk for me, too. It was the only memory I had from when I was barely a year old. He was wearing a white pajama top, carrying a warm mug from the kitchen, blowing gently on it to cool it down before handing it to me. They were not the same man. I knew it with absolute certainty. But no one believed me. Thirty-five days passed after the investigators left. I thought they were gone for good. My father thought so too. He stopped wearing high-necked sweaters and went back to his loose t-shirts. He started shouting at my mother again, throwing dishes, sliding back into his old skin. My mother started drinking again, smashing glasses when she had too much. Everything returned to the way it had always been. Except for Grandpa Hank. He started visiting more often. He would bring boxes of pastries, watching me eat in silence. Sometimes he would sigh out of nowhere, stroke my hair, and whisper, “My poor boy.” I didn’t know if he believed me or not. I didn’t care anymore. One afternoon, I was playing in the dirt in the front yard. The doorbell rang. My father went to open it, and the cheerful greeting died in his throat. Mr. Burke was standing on the porch. It was the same three people: Mr. Burke, Lucy, and the silver-haired older gentleman. But this time, the older man walked in first. “Mr. David Henderson,” Mr. Burke’s tone was strictly professional. “We need to follow up on a few details. May we come in?” My father’s smile was stiff, but he stepped aside. “Of course, of course. Please.” My mother came out of the kitchen. When she saw them, her face went pale, but she quickly masked it. “Mr. Burke, is there a problem with the background check?” “Just a routine follow-up,” Mr. Burke said. “Please, have a seat.” But they didn’t sit on the sofa. The silver-haired man walked straight over to me and knelt down. “Toby,” he said softly. “Last time, you said this man isn’t your real father.” “Do you have any proof?” I remembered. I had seen my real dad when he was taking a shower once. On the left side of his chest, there was a birthmark. A small, heart-shaped mark. I opened my mouth to speak— But my father let out a sudden, loud laugh. It was a cold sound that made the hair on my arms stand up. “Walter, you’re seriously going to listen to a five-year-old’s fantasy? The kid is a pathological liar. What ‘proof’ could he possibly have?” The old man, Walter, ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed on me. They were incredibly bright. “Don’t be afraid, Toby. Take your time.” Looking into Walter’s eyes, I realized something. He was serious. He actually wanted to hear what I had to say. “My real dad,” I said, “had a heart-shaped birthmark on the left side of his chest.” “He doesn’t have one.” My father’s laughter died instantly. His face went white as paper.

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Ever since my husband started spending his off-duty days at his late partner’s widow’s house, I noticed our daughter, Lucy, had started writing “My father is dead” in her school essays. The school counselor called me to confirm. I stood in the hospital hallway, silent for a long moment, before I whispered, “Yes. A long time ago.” On Father’s Day, Lucy’s class made cards. Instead of a standard folded card, she folded her paper into a paper airplane and wrote four neat words on the wing: Deliver to Heaven. During the parent-teacher open house, the classroom walls were covered with essays titled My Father. Lucy’s read: My dad died on a battlefield called “Next Door.” There is a lady there who never stops crying, so Daddy had to stay. He never came back. Every time she finished one of these essays, she would clutch her eraser so hard in her tiny fist that her palm would sweat, turning the rubber slick and gray. Eventually, Garrett noticed something was wrong. He rushed home, holding a bouquet of supermarket roses, desperate to celebrate Lucy’s eighth birthday. But when he opened the door, his eyes fell directly on the new notebook left open on the coffee table. The title was written in her careful, childish pencil strokes: If Dad Were Still Alive. … “Norah, is this how you’re raising our daughter?” Garrett stared at the open notebook, his chest heaving under his flannel shirt. The lead pencil script stared back at him: If Dad Were Still Alive. The easy, practiced smile he’d walked in with vanished. His eyes widened, dark with a sudden, sharp anger. “I am standing right here, healthy and breathing, and you’re letting her write that I’m dead?!” He whipped his head toward me, his voice booming in the quiet of our living room. He threw the birthday cake he’d been holding onto the coffee table. The plastic box cracked, and the frosted edge slumped against the cardboard. “I didn’t teach her that,” I said quietly. “She wrote it herself.” Garrett ground his teeth, reaching down to grab the notebook as if he were going to rip it to shreds. But as his fingers brushed the page, his eyes caught the loops of Lucy’s handwriting. He froze, then slowly let his hand drop. He had no idea. He didn’t know this wasn’t the first time Lucy had buried him in her stories. Ever since he brought his fallen partner’s widow, Heidi, and her son, Toby, back to our city, the father Lucy once knew had ceased to exist. I didn’t offer any further explanation. I just stood there, looking at him with a cold, detached indifference. Hearing the shouting, Lucy crept out of her bedroom. She was wearing her faded, twice-washed cotton pajamas, her small frame partially hidden behind my hip. She didn’t rush to throw her arms around his neck the way she used to. She didn’t cry or shrink away from his anger, either. She just watched him. Her eyes were flat, calm, and utterly vacant. Like she was looking at a stranger on the subway. That kind of look is far more agonizing than any tearful tantrum. Garrett’s breath hitched. The roar of his anger seemed to choke him, dying somewhere in his throat under the weight of her indifference. He pulled at his collar, trying to swallow his irritation, and reached into the paper shopping bag he’d brought. He pulled out a sleek, white shoe box. “Lucy, sweetie, come here,” he said, forcing his voice into a gentle, coaxing register. “Daddy was passing by the mall today, and I finally got you those ballet slippers. The ones you wanted.” “You have your level exam next month, right?” “Come on, try them on. Let’s see if they fit.” Those were the satin slippers Lucy had stared at through the glass window of the dance boutique for three months. Every time we walked past, Garrett had promised, Next time, kiddo. Next time for sure. A few months ago, she would have leapt with joy, wrapping her arms around his waist. Now, she didn’t even twitch. Garrett sighed, dropping to one knee with the practiced patience of a man used to dealing with crises. He popped the lid off the box, reaching out to gently grasp her ankle. But before his fingers could brush her skin, his pocket vibrated. A soft, melancholic piano ringtone cut through the room. Everyone at his private search-and-rescue firm knew that ringtone. It was reserved for one person: Heidi. Garrett’s hand jerked back as if he’d been burned by dry ice. He stood up in a single, fluid motion, his fingers already sliding the phone from his pocket. “Heidi? What’s wrong?” There was a frantic tenderness in his voice, an immediate, protective panic he couldn’t hide even if he tried. Through the receiver, Heidi’s breathy, fragile whimpering carried into the quiet room. “Garrett… I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t call. But Toby… his asthma is flaring up again, and he’s crying, begging for you. I can’t lift him, and I’m just so scared. I don’t know what to do.” I stood there, listening to the same clumsy, rehearsed melodrama she had used a hundred times before. A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach. Garrett’s expression shifted instantly. There was no hesitation. No pause to look at his daughter, who was still standing in her faded pajamas. He tossed the ballet shoes onto the carpet and grabbed his car keys from the entryway table. “Norah, keep an eye on Lucy. Toby’s having a severe attack. I have to get over there right now.” He spoke with the absolute conviction of a martyr, convinced that abandoning his own child to play savior to another man’s son was his moral duty. The heavy front door clicked shut. He didn’t look back once. The apartment descended into a graveyard silence. Lucy walked forward, her bare feet silent on the rug. She looked down at the satin ballet slippers lying askew on the carpet. Then, she bent down, picked them up by the ribbons, and dropped them into the kitchen trash can. “Mom,” she said, her voice light, almost conversational. “Dead people don’t buy shoes, do they?” My chest tightened so sharply it felt like a physical tearing of flesh. The air in my lungs tasted like copper. I knelt down, pulling her small, fragile body against mine, burying my face in her soft hair. “No, baby,” I whispered. “They don’t.” After Lucy fell asleep, I sat alone in the dim light of the study. I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk. Lying there was an official, stamped transfer notice from the state medical board. I was a senior pediatric orthopedic surgeon. For years, I had turned down fellowships at prestigious research hospitals in Chicago, all to keep our family in this city for Garrett’s career. But I was done drowning in this swamp. I picked up a red felt-tip pen and drew a thick, heavy circle around a date fifteen days from now. The absolute deadline to report for my new position. In fifteen days, Lucy and I would be gone. We would live our lives as if Garrett Davies had never existed. Ten days left. I had just finished a grueling six-hour emergency reconstruction surgery, my shoulders aching under the weight of my scrubs. When I stepped out of the elevator on our floor, I froze. Our front door was propped wide open. The hallway echoed with the gruff, loud voices of moving men. I rushed inside, and the sight turned my blood to ice. The living room was in shambles, cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly. In the hallway, two men in overalls were maneuvering Lucy’s upright Steinway piano out of her study. Garrett, dressed in his off-duty clothes, was gesturing toward the door. “Careful with the corners,” he warned them. “That instrument is worth more than my truck.” I had worked three years of consecutive holiday night shifts to buy that piano for Lucy’s fifth birthday. Lucy wiped the keys down every single night; it was her absolute sanctuary. “Garrett, what the hell are you doing?” I marched over, placing my body directly between the movers and the door. Seeing me home early, a flicker of guilt crossed Garrett’s face, but it was quickly replaced by that familiar, defensive righteousness. “Norah, don’t make a scene,” he said, stepping closer. “Heidi just moved into a new apartment. Toby’s classmates have been bullying him because he doesn’t have a dad, and his child therapist said learning an instrument would help heal his emotional trauma.” He paused, clearing his throat. “Heidi’s a single mother. She can’t afford something like this. Lucy hasn’t even been playing much lately anyway. We’re just letting Toby borrow it.” I listened to his absurd, twisted logic, a cold laugh escaping my throat. He was taking the physical manifestation of my hard work and his daughter’s joy to heal another woman’s child. How did he manage to make such blatant betrayal sound like a charitable act? If this had been a year ago, I would have screamed. I would have grabbed the movers, threatened to call the police, and fought him tooth and nail. Instead, I pulled out my phone and switched on the video camera, recording the movers’ faces, the piano, and Garrett standing in our living room. “What are you doing?” Garrett snapped, reaching out to snatch the phone. I took a step back, keeping my arm out of his reach. “Documenting this,” I said, my voice deadpan. “This piano is marital property. You are transferring assets to a third party without my consent. I have every right to keep a record for my attorney.” Garrett’s face darkened, his jaw tightening. “Norah, when did you become so cold and calculating?” he hissed. “This is Patrick’s son! Patrick died so I could walk out of that collapse alive! It’s a piece of wood and some strings. Are you really going to be this petty?” His phone buzzed. A second later, a notification popped up on my screen—a money transfer of five thousand dollars. “There,” he said, gesturing to my phone. “Consider it bought out. You can take Lucy to Target and get her one of those electric keyboards to practice on.” He turned back to the movers. “Keep going. Take it down.” As the door clicked shut behind them, the sudden emptiness of the study felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest. An hour later, Lucy came home from school. She carried her backpack into the hallway and stopped right outside her study. The space where her piano had stood was empty, leaving four deep, rectangular indentations in the hardwood floor. She didn’t cry. She didn’t ask me where it went. She simply walked into her room, pulled out the creased notebook Garrett had almost torn, and sat down at her small desk. With a pencil, she began to write her fourth essay. The title was: The Dead Dad Took My Piano, Too. I stood in the doorway, watching her small, solitary shoulders. My eyes burned with a dry, aching heat. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a notification from social media. I opened the app to find Heidi’s latest post. In the photo, Toby was sitting in front of Lucy’s Steinway, a brilliant, triumphant grin on his face. The caption read: Patrick is watching over us from heaven. Toby finally has his first piano. Thank you to our dearest Captain Garrett, for being the light that keeps us going. At the bottom of the post was a single blue thumbs-up from Garrett. I stared at the screen for a long time, then slowly tapped the “like” button myself. Then I switched over to my banking app and transferred the remaining balance for the down payment on the townhouse I’d leased near my new hospital. Just as the transaction cleared, a text from Garrett popped up. Once Toby’s settled in, I have a long weekend off next month. I’ll take Lucy to Disneyland to make it up to her. Stop teaching her to hold grudges, Norah. I stared at the word “Disneyland.” A hollow, mocking smile touched my lips. I didn’t reply. He didn’t realize there would be no next month. Three days left. Today was the award ceremony for the statewide youth art competition. Lucy sat in the front row of the museum auditorium, wearing a navy blue velvet dress I’d bought her for the occasion. Her eyes were fixed on the double doors at the back of the hall. I sat beside her, holding her damp, slightly trembling little hand. My heart ached with a dull, persistent throb. I knew Garrett wouldn’t show up, but children have a stubborn, tragic capacity for hope. “Mom,” Lucy whispered, her eyes never leaving the doors. “Daddy promised. He said he’d be here to watch me get my ribbon.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her. I just squeezed her fingers. Ten minutes before the presentation began, my screen lit up with a text from Garrett. Got called into an emergency briefing. Can’t make it. Tell Lucy I’m sorry. A familiar excuse. A familiar betrayal. I turned the phone face down on my lap and remained silent. Lucy glanced back one last time. “Maybe he’s just stuck in traffic.” The ceremony proceeded with agonizing efficiency. The announcer took the microphone, his voice echoing off the high gallery ceilings. “And now, we are thrilled to present our Grand Prize for the elementary division!” Lucy’s grip on my fingers tightened. “The winning piece—Daddy in the Fire!” The massive projector screen behind the stage lit up, displaying Lucy’s watercolor painting. It was a painting she had spent two weeks working on, depicting Garrett in his heavy rescue gear, his back to a wall of golden-red flames. It was her love letter to her father, filled with the awe and devotion she used to feel for him. Lucy gasped, half-rising from her seat. “Mom! That’s my painting!” I smiled, preparing to guide her toward the stage. But then the announcer continued: “Let’s welcome our winner to the stage—young Toby Walsh!” The smile froze on Lucy’s face. On the bottom right corner of the projected image, the digital label read: Toby Walsh, Age 8. Her name, Lucy Davies, had been completely erased. She stood frozen in the aisle, her mouth slightly open, but no sound came out. Behind us, a parent leaned over to whisper to another, “Why is that little girl standing up? I thought they called a boy named Toby?” Lucy heard them. Slowly, her small shoulders slumped, and she sank back into her seat, bowing her head. My hands clenched into fists. I stood up and marched straight toward the VIP family seating area. Heidi was already standing, fussing over Toby’s little bow tie. I stepped directly into her path. “Heidi. Stop right there.” Heidi looked up, the triumphant smile still lingering on her lips. “Oh, Norah! You’re here too?” “That painting belongs to my daughter,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “Why is your son’s name on it?” Heidi shrank back half a step, her shoulders pulling in, adopting her signature posture of defensiveness. “Norah, please don’t do this here… Garrett took care of the registration. I didn’t know anything about it…” Then, she leaned in slightly, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me, a sharp, ugly malice glinting in her eyes. “But honestly, Norah, does it really matter who painted it? What matters is who Garrett wants to give the world to. Your daughter can stay up all night painting, but with one word from Garrett, her hard work belongs to my Toby. He loves us, Norah. No matter how mad you get, you can’t change the fact that he doesn’t care about either of you.” “You shameless bitch.” The words left my mouth just before my hand connected with her cheek. The slap cracked loudly through the gallery. Heidi’s head jerked to the side, and she let out a sharp, theatrical wail, clutching her face. Before I could grab her arm to drag her to the event organizers, a heavy force shoved me from the side. “Norah! Have you lost your mind?!” I stumbled back several steps, the small of my back colliding hard with the edge of a wooden bench. A sharp pain shot up my spine, forcing me to double over. I looked up through a haze of pain. It was Garrett. He was standing there, shielding Heidi and Toby behind his broad shoulders, his eyes wild and red with anger. Heidi clung to his back, sobbing loudly. “Garrett, it hurts… please don’t blame Norah, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let Toby accept the award. I’ll give it back…” Seeing the red mark blooming on Heidi’s cheek, Garrett’s fury boiled over. He pointed a finger at my face. “Norah, what is wrong with you? Attacking someone in public? Look at you—you’re acting like an unhinged, hysterical lunatic!” I steadied myself against the bench, forcing myself to stand tall. “Garrett, that painting took Lucy weeks to finish. You put Toby’s name on her art, and now you’re pushing me to defend this woman?” “It’s just a damn drawing!” Garrett yelled, cutting me off. “Lucy can draw another one! Toby lost his father. He gets bullied at school. He needs this kind of recognition to build his confidence!” “Patrick died saving my life! What is so wrong with giving his son a little win?” “You’re an adult, Norah, and you have absolutely no grace, no compassion. To strike Heidi like this? You are completely out of your mind!” Hysterical. Out of my mind. My daughter’s art had been stolen. Her tribute to her father had been handed to another child by that very father. And when I demanded justice, her father threw me to the ground to protect the thief. I stopped talking. There was nothing left to say. On stage, the coordinators escorted Toby to the microphone. He held the trophy aloft, posing in front of Lucy’s painting, smiling for the cameras. Heidi stood by Garrett’s side, a faint, satisfied smirk playing on her lips. When she went up to accept a sponsor’s bouquet, she spoke into the microphone, her voice trembling with mock emotion. “Toby wouldn’t be here today without his mentor, Captain Garrett Davies… He has been more than family to us…” Garrett watched them, letting out a long, emotional sigh. “Mom.” A small, quiet voice called out from behind me. I turned. Lucy was standing a few feet away. She was looking at Toby with his trophy, at Garrett with his arm resting protectively near Heidi’s waist, and at me, still clutching my bruised back. “Lucy…” I reached out, trying to pull her to me. But she took a step back. Slowly, she reached up to her chest, unpinning her contestant badge. With methodical, quiet precision, she tore the paper tag into tiny, unrecognizable shreds, letting them flutter into the trash can beside her. She brushed her hands together, clearing away the dust. “Mom, let’s go home.” Her little face was incredibly tight, her chin trembling as she fought back her tears. My heart shattered into a million jagged pieces. I walked over, wrapped my arms tightly around her, and without another word, we walked out of the museum. I didn’t stay to argue. Arguing with a man who has chosen to be blind is a waste of breath. When we got home, Lucy sat in her room for hours. Eventually, she opened her notebook and began to write. The title of her fifth essay was: Dad Gave the Painting of Him to Someone Else, and He Hurt Mom for Them. I opened my phone and rescheduled our flight. I changed our departure to the day after tomorrow. I couldn’t spend another second in this city. The day before we were set to leave. I took Lucy to the downtown shopping district to purchase a few essentials for our move. The mall was crowded, filled with the low hum of shoppers and soft pop music. As we walked past a glass-fronted pizza parlor, Lucy suddenly stopped. I followed her gaze through the glass window. There was Garrett. He was sitting at a booth, carefully cutting a small piece of pizza with a knife and fork. He blew on it gently before feeding it to Toby, who giggled. Heidi sat beside him, looking like the picture of maternal bliss. She reached over with a napkin, tenderly wiping a smudge of marinara sauce from the corner of Garrett’s mouth. A perfect, happy family. Looking at them, I actually felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in my throat. This was the “urgent department emergency” he had claimed kept him from answering my texts. The lie was so bare, so pathetic. Lucy’s small fingers tightened around the hem of my coat. “Mom,” she whispered. “I thought Dad was working.” “He isn’t,” I said, a cold numbness settling over me. “Let’s go.” Before we could turn away, a deafening siren began to wail through the concourse. A split second later, a massive explosion shook the first-floor food court. The blast shattered the glass partitions of the nearby storefronts, and a wall of thick, black smoke and orange flames came rolling through the atrium. Panicked screams erupted instantly. The crowd transformed into a stampeding herd, rushing blindly toward the exits. “Lucy!” I screamed, lunging forward to grab her hand. But the crowd was a chaotic tidal wave. A heavy-set man slammed into my shoulder from behind, sending me crashing hard onto the polished tile floor. My hand slipped. Her fingers slid out of mine. “Mom!” By the time I managed to scramble to my feet, the smoke had already risen to the second level, making it hard to breathe. “Lucy!” I screamed, coughing violently. Through a gap in the dark smoke, I saw her. She had tripped and fallen behind a heavy display counter near a structural pillar. A fallen metal advertising board had pinned her down, trapping her in a dead end. At that moment, a figure came charging through the smoke. It was Garrett. His training took over immediately as he began directing people toward the fire exits. Then, he saw her. He looked right at his daughter trapped behind the counter. I saw the sudden, violent conflict flare in his eyes. But that hesitation lasted less than two seconds. From the other side of the corridor, Heidi’s voice pierced the chaos. “Garrett! Help us! Toby’s trapped under the display shelf!” Garrett froze. He looked back at Lucy, who was coughing in the rising smoke. “Lucy, stay there!” he roared across the din. “Daddy’s going to get Toby out, and then I’m coming right back for you!” And then, right before my eyes, he turned his back on his own daughter and ran toward the other woman. He scooped Toby into his arms, threw his jacket over Heidi’s head, and ran toward the emergency stairs. In a moment of life and death, he had abandoned his daughter. Again. I stared at the empty space where he had stood, the copper taste of blood filling my mouth as I bit through my lip. Wait. He had told her to wait, trading her survival for theirs. Through the choking black smoke, Lucy watched the direction her father had vanished. Her small body went completely still. She stopped crying. She stopped calling out. Slowly, she let her small hand drop from her face, allowing the toxic smoke to fill her throat. A single tear cut through the soot on her cheek. Her lips moved, forming silent words. Mom, Dad went to save someone else… I don’t have a dad anymore. That silent whisper snapped the last thread of my sanity. I let out a raw, guttural scream. Grabbing a heavy red fire extinguisher from the wall, I swung it with manic strength, shattering the display counter blocking her path. “Lucy!” “Mom is here!” “I’ve got you!” I pulled her limp, semi-conscious body into my arms, wrapped my wet coat over her face, and charged blindly through the emergency exit. The moment we burst into the cool air of the street, the first sirens of the fire department were arriving. I ran straight to an arriving ambulance, climbing inside with my oxygen-deprived daughter. At the hospital, the red light of the emergency room flared to life. I collapsed onto a plastic chair in the waiting room, my hands shaking. I pulled out my phone and opened the chat with my divorce attorney. I’ve signed the papers. File it. Cut every single tie. Then, I opened the airline app. I changed our flights from tomorrow morning to the very next flight leaving tonight. I was leaving. And Garrett Davies would never find us again.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “479981”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I have been blown into literal, microscopic pieces four times. All because some brain-dead protagonist insisted on playing his stupid little “reform the villain with love” game. For the first four loops, he cried his eyes dry, and the villain still flattened the world anyway. Fifth loop. Watching him prep his tear ducts to dive into the villain’s parents’ arms and play the victim, I didn’t hesitate. I kicked him straight into a sewer drain. Get lost. If love can’t tame this little monster, then my fists will have to teach her some manners. 1 The fifth time the wealthy Henderson couple came to the Greenwood Orphanage to adopt a child, Nicky was already squeezing the hem of his shirt, his eyes rimmed with red, preparing to launch himself into Richard’s arms. He’d been working on those tears all morning; they were right on the verge of spilling. I stood right behind him, expressionless, and casually stuck my foot out. Smack! Nicky made a spectacularly pathetic sound as he face-planted straight into a muddy puddle, muddy water splashing everywhere. Before anyone could process what had just happened, I stepped forward, planting my foot squarely on Nicky’s back, and plastered a sweet, innocent, completely harmless smile across my face. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson,” I pitched my voice high, sounding sickeningly sweet. “I’m Connor, the most well-behaved kid in this whole place.” Richard froze. Diana stared. Only the semi-transparent chat overlay hovering in my vision began scrolling frantically like a broken stock ticker: [LMAO holy shit, why is the Demon Child stepping up?] [Didn’t he beat up the orphanage bully just two days ago?] [Seven years old and the undisputed king of the yard. Even the stray dogs lower their heads when he walks by.] [If this kid gets adopted, the Henderson house is going to implode in three days.] [I’m dying. But wait, is this the protagonist’s fifth attempt at the quest?] Yes. The fifth time. Under my sole, Nicky was thrashing wildly in the mud, muffled, pig-like squeals escaping his throat. Without breaking my sweet smile, I shifted more weight onto my heel, grinding it right into his lower spine. During the first four loops, Nicky had used this exact pathetic, tragic routine to worm his way into the Henderson family. He’d sworn up and down that he would plant the seeds of love and peace in the black heart of their naturally sociopathic daughter, Beatrix. And how did that go? The first time, she locked him in a cellar for three days and then, on a whim, blew up the harbor bridge. I happened to be selling flowers on that bridge. Vaporized. The second time, he tried to hug her during one of her manic episodes and got his lung punctured with a kitchen knife. In her panic, she triggered a chemical plant alarm. I was working an illegal shift in that factory. Blown to pieces again. The third time, the fourth time… Goddamn it. I was just a nameless extra in this godforsaken story, yet I’d been dragged down to a horrific, scattered death four times because of these two lunatics! And let me tell you, getting blown to bits hurts like hell. That sheer despair of having your internal organs instantly vaporized by superheated gas, before you can even scream—I experienced that four times. Four. If love can’t reform that little psycho, then it’s my turn. After all, I know a thing or two about throwing a punch. “Oh, my… what a bright-looking boy,” Richard finally found his voice. Looking at my face, which was lightly splattered with mud, a flicker of paternal warmth softened his eyes. Diana cleared her throat, her gaze drifting down to the writhing mud-man beneath my shoe. “What is that… under your foot?” I glanced down. “Oh, this is just Nicky. He really, really loves playing in the mud.” I smiled with pure, unadulterated innocence. I lifted my foot and casually hauled Nicky out of the puddle by his collar. Nicky’s face was caked in foul-smelling silt, bubbles blowing from his mouth. He snapped his eyes open, staring at me with the sheer, unbridled fury of a high-dimensional player whose spellcast had been rudely interrupted: “Connor! You absolute psych—” Quick as lightning, I clapped my hand over his mouth and pulled him into a tight, suffocating hug. “Oh, Nicky, I know you’ll miss me! But this nice gentleman and lady… they look so warm. It’s like I’m seeing the mom and dad from my dreams.” I managed to squeeze out two perfect, crystalline tears. It was an Oscar-worthy performance. Richard was entirely sold. He was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown dealing with his psycho daughter at home; he desperately needed a sweet, sensible son to restore some balance to his life. “We’re taking him,” Richard said, his tone leaving no room for argument. The director stood nearby, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “Mr. Henderson… Connor is… well, he’s a very energetic boy.” 2 No shit. Last month, some street thugs came trying to shake down the neighborhood, and I chased them three blocks wielding a loose brick. Is that energetic? That’s a feral honey badger. “Energetic is good. It means he’s healthy,” Diana declared, sealing the deal. The paperwork was finalized in record time. Before leaving, I went to the restroom to change my clothes. Nicky blocked the door. He had washed his face, but muddy water was still dripping from his hair, making him look like some vengeful swamp monster. “Connor, do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Nicky hissed, his voice dropping to a cold, menacing whisper. “This is my quest! Only I can save Beatrix! You’re just a low-dimensional NPC—what the hell are you interfering for?” I shut off the squeaking faucet, turned around without a word, and slapped him across the face. Crack! Sharp, clean, and incredibly loud. Nicky spun halfway around from the force of it. He clutched his cheek, staring at me in sheer disbelief. “You… you hit me?” “Damn right I did, you absolute moron.” I shook out my tingling wrist and stepped into his personal space. “Save her? With what? That brain of yours that’s leaking radioactive waste? For four loops, what did you do besides cry and beg, ‘Oh, big sister, please don’t do this!’? Did you accomplish a single useful thing?” I grabbed him by the collar, slamming him hard against the tiled wall. “I was blown to pieces four goddamn times because of your precious storyline. This time, you’re going to stay right here in this orphanage, eating your bland cafeteria mush. If you so much as poke your head out to play hero, I’ll send you to the afterlife myself.” A flash of genuine terror crossed Nicky’s eyes, but he still tried to grit his teeth. “Beatrix is insane! She ends up killing her own parents! You think you’re going to survive your first night in that house?” “Don’t lose sleep over it,” I said, releasing his collar and smoothing out his crumpled shirt. “Monsters deserve bigger monsters. You don’t reason with a rabid dog; you use a heavier stick.” I pushed open the restroom door. Diana was standing at the end of the hallway, waving me over. I instantly flipped the switch back to my sweet-child persona and trotted over. The chat overlay flared wildly in the air: [Holy shit, that slap felt so good to watch!] [Sweet! I’ve wanted to punch Nicky’s self-righteous face since loop one.] [But can our Demon Child actually handle Beatrix? She isn’t some orphanage weakling.] [She’s a seven-year-old genius who can cook up homemade explosives. Don’t get cocky and get vaporized, kid.] I watched the comments scroll, a cold smirk forming in my mind. Homemade explosives? How fitting. Before I got blown up in my past life, my day job in the underground market was bomb disposal. We climbed into the Hendersons’ stretched Rolls-Royce. The air conditioning was freezing. Richard took my hand, patting the back of it. There was a faint, guilty nervousness in his eyes. “Connor, don’t be scared when we get to the house. You have an older sister, Beatrix. She’s…” He paused, seemingly digging through his vocabulary for any positive word he could find. “She’s usually very quiet. Just… occasionally, she has a very… spirited personality.” Spirited? I rolled my eyes so hard they almost went into the back of my skull. Pushing her Ivy League private tutor out of a second-story window and breaking his legs, pouring concentrated acid into her nanny’s thermos, dissecting the neighbor’s purebred Tibetan Mastiff alive… You call that spirited? That is textbook antisocial personality disorder. “That’s okay, Dad!” I chimed happily. “I love spirited sisters. I’ll make sure to take excellent care of her.” From the front passenger seat, Diana glanced at me through the rearview mirror. Her gaze was complicated—probably thinking I was just a naive, foolish kid walking straight into a meat grinder. 3 The car glided smoothly into the gated enclave nestled in the hills. From a distance, I could see the massive European-style estate sprawling like a sleeping beast in the shadows. The car had barely come to a halt, and before the chauffeur could even open the door—BOOM! A dull, heavy explosion echoed from the second floor of the villa, followed immediately by the sharp, agonizing screech of shattering glass. Richard’s face drained of all color instantly. Diana threw her door open and bolted toward the house. I followed at a leisurely pace. The moment I stepped through the grand double doors, a thick, choking stench of gasoline hit my nostrils. The foyer was a war zone. Priceless Ming dynasty porcelain lay shattered across the marble floor; the luxury leather sofas were slashed to ribbons, their foam stuffing spilling out like guts. Our middle-aged butler was clutching his bleeding forehead, practically crawling down the spiral staircase, shaking like a leaf. “Sir! Ma’am! Miss Beatrix… she’s having another episode!” The air in the foyer turned to ice. The maids and servants were huddled in the corners, terrified to make a sound. I looked up, following the sweep of the grand staircase. Standing by the second-floor balustrade was a little girl. That was Beatrix. She was wearing a pristine, custom-tailored black dress, her long dark hair half-veiling her face. If you ignored the red plastic gas can she was casually dangling from her left hand, she looked like a delicate little Victorian princess. Her skin was porcelain-pale, her features exquisitely delicate. But her eyes… those eyes were entirely devoid of life. They were like twin pools of stagnant water, hiding a violent, chaotic madness that threatened to swallow everything. She was flicking a heavy silver Zippo in her right hand. Flick. A flame danced. Snap. Darkness. In the absolute silence of the foyer, the rhythmic metallic clicking sounded like a countdown to execution. The chat went absolutely wild: [HIGH ALERT! HIGH ALERT!] [Nicky literally pissed his pants at this part in the previous loops.] [Beatrix’s stare is unreal. Chills down my spine.] [Get out of there, Demon Child! Don’t try to face her head-on, she will actually light the place up!] Richard was shaking with a mixture of terror and rage. He pointed a trembling finger upward. “Beatrix! What are you doing now? Put that lighter down!” Beatrix tilted her head. She didn’t even spare her father a glance. Instead, her eyes locked onto me, tracking me like a predator spotting prey. “Is this the new toy you bought me?” Her voice had the sweet clarity of a child, but her tone was bone-chillingly cold. “He looks kind of stupid.” A cruel, twisted smile touched her lips. “I’ll count to three. Get out of my house, or I’ll burn him along with the rest of this place.” She raised the Zippo. Flick. The flame reflected in her pitch-black eyes. Richard gasped, instinctively grabbing my shoulder to push me back toward the door. “Connor, get out! Go! Now!” I didn’t budge. I just stared up at that smug, arrogant little brat on the landing, and a wave of pure, unadulterated irritation surged straight to my head. The phantom agony of being vaporized four times over screamed in my mind. This was the little parasite responsible. I took a deep breath. Then, under the horrified stares of everyone in the room, I calmly unbuttoned the cheap, oversized jacket the orphanage had given me, slipped it off, and tossed it onto the ruined leather sofa. “Connor? What are you doing?” Richard stammered. I rolled my neck, my joints popping with a satisfying series of cracks. “Nothing, Dad. Just going up to introduce myself to my new sister.” I stepped forward, walking over the shards of glass and porcelain, heading straight for the stairs. “Stop!” Diana yelled. “Are you insane? Come back here!” I ignored her. Beatrix watched me ascend. A flicker of surprise crossed her face, but it was quickly replaced by a deeper, manic glee. “You aren’t afraid of dying?” She laughed, tossing the silver Zippo toward the Persian rug doused in gasoline. “Then burn.” The split second the lighter left her fingers, I burst into a sprint. Adrenaline flooding my seven-year-old body, I vaulted up the remaining steps like a predator. In mid-air, my foot connected perfectly with the falling lighter. Clack! The silver Zippo flew backward like a bullet, smashing against the wall and breaking into pieces. Beatrix froze. For the first time, her mask of cold, calculated indifference cracked. 4 Before she could even process the sight, I was in her face. The raw, terrifying strength of my past-life muscle memory exploded from this tiny seven-year-old frame. I grabbed her by the collar of her expensive designer dress and shoved her back with everything I had. Thud! Her back slammed hard against the solid oak balustrade. I didn’t give her a second to breathe. I clamped my hand around her throat, driving her upper body backward, dangling her out over the edge. A collective gasp echoed from the foyer below. Richard’s eyes rolled back, and he fainted right onto the floor. The butler let out a screech like a dying chicken. “Miss Beatrix!” Dangling five meters above the ground, Beatrix’s feet lost contact with the floor. If I let go, she would plummet onto the hard marble below. It wouldn’t kill her, but it would definitely shatter a few bones. I looked down at her, watching the panic finally leak into her pale face. “Toy?” I bared my teeth in a savage grin. “Today, kid, I’m going to teach you what a real machine feels like.” The chat was moving so fast it was practically lagging: [HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT!!!] [Is this a drama? This feels like an action movie!] [Incredible! Beat her down, Demon Child!] [Oh my god, goosebumps! This is the best twist ever!] Beatrix’s face began to flush red from the lack of air. She clawed at my wrist, trying to pry my fingers loose. But it was useless. My grip was like a steel vice. Just as I was about to haul her back and deliver a couple of solid slaps to her cheeks, she stopped struggling. Her flushed face suddenly twisted into an incredibly eerie, manic grin. Looking at me, her eyes held no fear of death—only a sick, triumphant madness. Shit. What’s that sound? My stomach dropped. The next instant, her right hand, which had been hanging limply at her side, snapped up with terrifying speed. A small, black object pressed firmly against my ribs. Bzzzt. The low hum of electrical current crackled at point-blank range. It was a custom-modified, high-voltage pocket taser. Beatrix stared at me, her voice raspy but trembling with a sickening thrill. “Got you, little mouse.” She pulled the trigger without a second thought. BZZZZT! A high-voltage shock surged directly into my side. Blue arcs of electricity crackled between us. Any normal seven-year-old would have been on the floor foaming at the mouth, losing control of their bladder. But my grip didn’t waiver. Damn. Did it hurt? Absolutely. The sensation of my muscles seizing up surged straight up my spine. But compared to having my organs vaporized and my bones turned to ash four times? This electricity was nothing more than a cheap, crappy massage. I locked my eyes onto hers and grinned. In my rush, I’d bitten my lip, and blood was smeared across my teeth. “That all the voltage you got?” my voice came out raw and mockingly cold. “Did you forget to eat breakfast?” As Beatrix’s pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated horror—as if she were looking at an actual demon—I tightened my grip on her collar, hoisted her up, and drove my forehead violently into her nose. Crack! The dull, sickening sound of cartilage meeting bone. She let out a high-pitched shriek. Her hand went limp, and the modified taser slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the marble floor below and breaking in two. A torrent of dark red blood erupted from her nose, painting her pale, perfect face. I hauled her back over the railing like a wet rag and threw her hard onto the floor of the hallway. Before she could even try to crawl away, I straddled her waist, pinned her down, and began raining slaps down on her face. Slap! Slap! Slap! The sharp cracks echoed loudly through the cavernous estate. “You want to play with fire? You want to shock me? You think you’re hot shit, huh?” One blow after another. No fancy techniques—just raw, therapeutic, physical education.

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Grace hated it when I talked at the dinner table. “Chewing with your mouth open is incredibly rude,” she’d say, her voice flat and dismissive. Then she would slip her AirPods in, scrolling through videos on her screen, leaving me to swallow my words and my pride. After two years of this, we were nothing more than strangers sharing a lease, quietly passing the salt. I used to think adult love just naturally quieted down over time—that passion simply rusted into a dull, comfortable silence. Until the day I left work early and caught her at the noodle bar down the street, sitting in a corner booth with her new colleague, Troy. He was complaining about the scallions in his bowl, so she picked them out for him, one by one, with her own chopsticks. He was talking about a television show finale, and she listened, laughing and chatting with him for half an hour. It turned out she knew exactly how to make someone feel special. But my quiet heartbreak wasn’t even worth her putting down her fork. She had plenty of things she wanted to share—just not with me. That night, when she came home, she set her iPad on the table as usual and asked, “What are we watching tonight?” I put my fork down. “Nothing.” “Grace, I’m done sharing this table with you.” … When I put down my fork, Grace finally looked up at me. The reality show on her iPad was still laughing, but she hit pause. “You were at the noodle bar with Troy this afternoon, weren’t you?” A flicker of exhaustion crossed her face. She didn’t deny it. “We had to work late. We just grabbed a quick bite.” “It’s Troy’s first time leading a project on his own, and he’s incredibly stressed,” she continued, her tone reasonable, almost clinical. “As his director, it’s only natural for me to check in on him.” I didn’t let it go. “So picking the scallions out of his bowl is part of the job description too?” She hesitated. “He has a sensitive stomach.” “And talking about some drama series for thirty minutes? You…” Grace sighed, running a hand through her hair. “He was on the verge of a panic attack, Jesse. He needed a distraction.” Every excuse sounded perfectly logical, leaving me looking like the petty, paranoid partner. The fatigue in her eyes deepened, turning into a silent accusation. “Jesse, is this because you’ve been cooped up at home for too long? You’re starting to make mountains out of molehills.” My fingers curled into my palm. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, her voice softening slightly. “But every time you open your mouth, it’s about mundane household stuff.” “The electric bill, grocery prices, the leaky faucet, which coat needs to go to the dry cleaners. My work is exhausting enough. When I come home, I just want some peace and quiet while I eat.” “We’re adults. We don’t need to throw a tantrum over dinner.” Sitting across from her, I felt a sudden, hollow realization. I had become nothing but background noise to her—static that always interrupted when she wanted to relax. Seeing my silence, Grace stood up and ladled some soup into my bowl. “Don’t overthink things. Just eat.” It was the tone she used to quiet a difficult child. But her next words went cold much faster than the soup. “About the wedding… I think we’re going to have to push the date back again.” I looked up. Grace avoided my gaze, picking up her chopsticks. “The new project is at a critical stage. I can’t step away right now.” “What about the tuxedo fitting? The bridal boutique booked us for next week.” Her hand paused in mid-air. “Let’s cancel it for now. We’re getting married eventually anyway. There’s no rush.” She had no anticipation for our wedding. It hadn’t always been like this. I remembered when the cottonwood fluff drifted outside my grandmother’s porch. My parents were arguing over who had to take me, treating me like a piece of luggage they both wanted to leave behind. Grace had run through the pouring rain, shielding a warm paper bag of bagels under her coat, and thrust them into my arms. “From now on, you’ve got me.” So, years later, when the scaffolding collapsed at her construction site, I didn’t think twice. I threw myself forward and shoved her out of the way. The steel beams crushed my shoulder and my back, and the thick dust filled my lungs. When I woke up in the hospital, she was holding my hand, her whole body shaking as she wept. “Jesse, I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you.” She had cried so hard, with such fierce honesty. Maybe she hadn’t been lying then. But “making this up to you” slowly morphed into “I’ll marry you eventually.” Promises wear thin, until nothing is left but obligation. Before we could finish eating, Grace’s phone buzzed. Troy’s name lit up the screen. She shot me a brief, apologetic look, but she answered it anyway. The panicked voice on the other end was audible even to me—the client was changing the specs last minute, and Troy didn’t know how to handle it. Grace immediately stood up. “Take a breath. Let me look at it.” She walked into the study, closing the door halfway. I sat in the dining room, listening to her lowered, gentle voice as she broke down the problem step-by-step. She didn’t find his questions tedious. She didn’t mind that he was going in circles. Instead, she laughed softly, encouraging him. “You’re already doing better than most junior designers.” I sat alone at the table, my old back injury flaring up with a dull, throbbing pain. The soup went cold. The food congealed. The apartment was empty, save for the warm, patient murmur drifting from the study. I didn’t go in to confront her. What would be the point? She would have a hundred logical reasons ready. I stood up and scraped the leftovers into the trash. As I poured the cold soup down the drain, the steam rose and vanished in an instant—just like the years of resentment I had quietly accumulated. Once warm, now completely frozen over. I went back to the bedroom and pulled out a dusty hard drive from the back of the closet. It was filled with the interior design portfolios I had created years ago. I used to stay up all night working on these, my blood buzzing with excitement. Eventually, I had tucked them away, because Grace had told me my health was too fragile, that the doctor said I needed complete rest. “Don’t push yourself,” she’d said. “I’ve got us covered.” The screen glowed in the dark, illuminating the blueprints I had abandoned for two years. I created a new social media account and uploaded my first draft. The caption read: Even when you’re living alone, you still have to build a life. I stared at the words, a tight knot forming in my chest. After all that love, I was back to being just me. The next morning, Grace stopped me just as she was heading out the door. “Jesse, can you find an old file for me?” She was fastening her cufflinks, her eyes glued to her phone. “The blueprints for that early model unit we did. The client wants to use it as a reference.” “Sure,” I said. She didn’t say thank you. She took my helpfulness for granted, as if it were simply part of my function. At the bottom of the storage bin, under a layer of dust, was an old accordion folder. A few hand-written budget sheets fell out. It was my handwriting. Back when Grace was still trying to get her firm off the ground, I had pulled countless all-nighters with her. She drew the big picture; I filled in the details. She charmed the clients; I crunched the numbers. I handed the folder to her. She opened it, scanned a couple of pages, and smiled. “You always know where everything is. So reliable.” She was praising me, but only as one praises a well-oiled machine or a silent, ticking clock that keeps her life running on time. That evening, Grace took me to a company dinner. It wasn’t a planned invitation. Her team had been teasing her about never bringing her fiancé around, so she sent me a last-minute text: [If you’re free tonight, come grab dinner with the team.] I changed into a dark button-down shirt and put on the silver necklace she had bought me. As I fastened the clasp, I felt a stupid, childish spark of hope. The private dining room at the restaurant was buzzing. When Grace opened the door, all eyes turned to us. “Grace! Aren’t you going to introduce us?” “This is Jesse Ward,” she said, her voice casual. No mention of her fiancé. No affectionate titles. Just Jesse Ward. I sat beside her, listening to them talk about the new project. Troy was talking animatedly about how renovating older brownstones shouldn’t just be about historical charm; it needed to be about “shareability” and creating viral moments that young professionals would want to post on Instagram. His fingers swiped rapidly across his iPad screen. For a brief second, I saw my younger self in him—that burning belief that your ideas could change the world. I couldn’t help but chime in. “Average families don’t look for viral moments first.” The table fell quiet. “They care about whether the kitchen has enough counter space for prep, whether an elderly parent might trip on the stairs in the dark, and if there are enough outlets by the kids’ study desks.” “An old house isn’t just an Instagram backdrop. It’s a place someone has to live in every single day.” Troy blinked, then nodded earnestly. “That’s actually a really great perspective!” But Grace smoothly cut in with a polite chuckle. “Jesse used to be an assistant designer, so he’s still a bit sensitive about those minor details.” I sat there, suddenly not knowing where to put my hands. “But his health isn’t great, so he stepped away from the industry a while ago.” With that, she steered the conversation right back to Troy. They kept talking, and I sat in silence. I felt like an old, folded blueprint. Full of useful information, but shoved in a drawer because no one wanted to bother opening it up. After dinner, Troy was waiting for an Uber by the curb. “Mr. Ward, what you said earlier… it was actually more practical than half the stuff we discuss in our official meetings.” Before I could reply, Grace stepped up and handed him her coat. “It’s freezing tonight, and didn’t you just get over a cold?” “Oh, no, I’m fine,” Troy insisted, but Grace naturally draped the wool coat over his arm anyway. “Keep it on.” I, too, had worn her coats before. When my back injury flared up, she used to wrap me up so tightly, warning me not to catch a chill. But tonight, the cold wind whipped down the collar of my shirt. The dull ache in my shoulders began to burn, and she didn’t even glance my way. On the drive home, Grace wouldn’t stop talking about Troy. She talked about his ambition, his drive, how refreshing it was to see a young designer with so much fire. “Unlike so many people who just let themselves get ground down by life.” I wanted to ask her: Do you mean me? When we got home, I pulled out my passport, my bank cards, and packed a few clothes. The canvas duffel bag was small, and even after putting everything in, there was still empty space. I had lived in this apartment for so long, yet the things that actually belonged to me were pathetic. I texted an old friend from my design days, asking if he knew of any cheap rentals. [You’re moving? Any specific neighborhood?] [Doesn’t matter if the light is bad. Just need a place to sleep.] Grace walked out of the shower and saw me sitting on the edge of the bed. “Why aren’t you asleep yet?” I slid the duffel bag under the bed with my foot. “Just about to.” She was so used to me being there. She had no idea that I was already calculating exactly how much it would cost me to leave her. Grace’s firm had landed the model unit renovation for an old apartment complex. The client’s budget was razor-thin, but their demands were high. They wanted high-end functionality without the high-end cost. Her team had been stuck for days. Troy had proposed a trendy, modern overhaul—an open-concept kitchen, arched doorways, full-wall built-ins, and smart LED lighting. It sounded beautiful on paper, but the building’s load-bearing walls couldn’t be touched, the old plumbing couldn’t be easily rerouted, and the natural light was terrible. The moment those pretty renderings hit the actual construction site, they were going to crumble. Grace came home incredibly late that night. I was just about to shut down my laptop when she did something rare—she sat down right next to me. “Jesse,” she said, handing me her iPad. “You know these old building layouts better than anyone. Take a look at this. Just as a favor to me.” “You don’t have to deal with the client. Just give me some feedback. It won’t take much out of you.” Whenever she needed me, she was masterfully precise with her boundaries. Just a little. Just this once. But my doctor had been explicit. No all-nighters. No prolonged desk work. Avoid dust and heavy construction sites. The old nerve damage in my back was connected to my respiratory tract; when it flared up, the pain felt like a hot blade pressing into my chest. She looked at me, a trace of her younger self lingering in her eyes. I remembered the early days of her startup, when she would curl up on my grandmother’s porch with her laptop, her eyes bloodshot. Jesse, I don’t want to fail. The echo of that old tenderness was a powerful trap. My heart softened. “Email it to me.” Grace let out a long sigh of relief. “Thank you so much.” I worked straight through the night until the sun came up. I rerouted the traffic flow, slashed the material costs, and drew up a list of affordable alternatives. By the end, my shoulder was throbbing so violently my fingers went numb. I popped a couple of painkillers and kept going. At four in the morning, I sent the completed files to Grace. Her reply came almost instantly. [You’re a lifesaver! Thank you!] Not a single word asking how I was feeling. I was in so much pain. The next afternoon, the client demanded an unscheduled on-site inspection. Grace was stuck in an external meeting, leaving Troy to lead the team to the site alone. He couldn’t decipher several of my critical structural notes, and the contractor was about to tear down a wall they weren’t supposed to touch. The contractor called Grace. Two minutes later, she called me. “Jesse, can you run down there?” I was lying in bed, my voice raspy and thin. “Grace, I really don’t feel well today.” There was a pause on the line. “The site is only ten minutes from the apartment.” “This project is crucial for the firm. Troy is still new; he can’t handle a crisis like this. Please, Jesse.” My lingering love for the craft overrode my body’s warnings. I got up and dressed. The dust in the old building was suffocating. The stairwell was narrow, and the elevator was broken. By the time I climbed to the sixth floor, cold sweat was dripping down my spine. The unit was a chaotic mess. The contractor, the client, and the design team were shouting over each other. Troy stood in the corner, his face pale. I grabbed the blueprints out of the contractor’s hands and pointed out three specific modifications that would blow the budget. I explained the exact plumbing layout, the structural load limits, and the alternative storage solutions. The client peppered me with technical questions, and I answered them one by one. My throat felt like sandpaper; my lungs burned. “Now this is a plan we can actually build,” the client representative finally said, satisfied. By the time Grace arrived, the situation had stabilized. She walked through the door and immediately rushed over to Troy, who was standing by the wall with red eyes. “Are you okay? Did they scare you?” “I was just so afraid of ruining everything,” Troy whispered. She smoothed his hair back gently. “You did great.” I stood there, surrounded by drywall dust, holding myself up against the wall, trying to breathe. That night, I went to the ER to get put on oxygen. I had to wait two hours in the crowded waiting room before they called my name. While I was hooked up to the machine, an old colleague sent me a screenshot of Grace’s company group chat. The credits for the approved model unit plan read: [Lead Designer: Troy Kent] [Project Director: Grace Porter] My name wasn’t anywhere on it. I texted Grace. [Why is Troy’s name on my design?] She called me back immediately. “Jesse, don’t take this the wrong way.” “You’re not in the industry anymore. Having your name on it doesn’t do anything for you.” “Troy is just starting out. He needs this win to establish himself. Besides, we’re getting married. My successes are your successes anyway, right?” So my sleepless nights, my physical pain, were just currency to buy someone else’s future. My name was something she could just erase. The doctor walked over and reviewed my chart. “You can’t keep pushing yourself like this, Mr. Ward. If you keep ignoring these flare-ups, the damage is going to become permanent.” I nodded quietly, opened my phone, and signed the lease on that dark, cramped apartment. Then another text came from Grace. [The team is celebrating the project approval tonight. Since you’re not feeling well, you should stay home and rest.] I took a deep breath of oxygen and typed back: [Okay.] The day before I was supposed to move, the bridal boutique called. “Hi, Mr. Ward, just calling to confirm your tuxedo fitting next week. Ms. Porter’s assistant said you both would be coming in.” Before I could answer, my phone buzzed with an incoming call from Grace. I switched over. Her voice was hurried, frantic. “Jesse, I won’t be home for dinner tonight.” “Some senior designer just embarrassed Troy in front of the client. He’s a mess. I have to take him to meet an important contact to smooth things over.” She spoke rapidly, as if trying to head off any argument. “And I’ll be out of town for the next few days. We have to secure the follow-up contract.” I pressed my hand against the cool glass of the window. The bridal shop was still holding on the other line. “What about our fitting?” “Jesse, can we please put the wedding stuff on hold for five minutes? You know how overwhelmed I am right now. I promised I’d marry you, and I’m not going back on my word.” It didn’t sound like love. It sounded like a debt she was begrudgingly agreeing to pay. Her voice softened slightly, carrying a hint of irritation. “Just let me get through this busy stretch, okay? Don’t make things harder for me right now.” When was it ever not “right now”? During her startup phase, it was the hardest time for the business. When she got her footing, she was too busy expanding. Now, with the new project, it was a critical transition. I switched back to the bridal boutique. “Mr. Ward? Are we still on for next week?” Below my window, a neighbor was walking a golden retriever, carrying a bag of groceries, moving at a slow, peaceful pace. The world was moving forward, warm and messy, while I had spent years frozen in place, waiting. “Cancel it,” I said. The clerk sounded confused. “Would you like to reschedule?” “No. Just cancel.” That night, I came down with a fever. The old injury flared, a dull, rusted hook digging into my spine, making every breath shallow and painful. I went to the medicine cabinet, only to realize I had used the last of my prescription and forgotten to refill it. I was always refilling things in this house, but my own needs were always the easiest to overlook. I sent Grace a message: [I’m really sick, and I’m out of medication. Can you stop by the pharmacy on your way back?] No reply. I forced myself out of bed and drove to the urgent care clinic myself. By the time I finished my IV drip and walked out, it was pouring rain. I stood under the clinic’s awning, shivering, without an umbrella. As I pulled out my phone to call a rideshare, a familiar black SUV rolled slowly past the entrance. It was moving slow enough for me to see into the passenger seat. Troy was sitting there, wrapped in Grace’s wool coat. She was leaning over, gently brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead, her eyes filled with a soft, focused warmth. Rain splattered against my face. On my screen, the message—I’m really sick—still sat there, unread. After my accident, Grace had sobbed at my bedside, murmuring over and over how terrified she was of losing me. The irony of human nature is so cruel. When we think we’re about to lose something, we cherish it with our lives. But once it’s safely ours, we don’t mind watching it bleed. The next morning, Grace left for her business trip with Troy, just as planned. It made moving out remarkably easy. I left the apartment spotless. I washed and folded the table linens. I organized her seasonal clothes by color. I put expiration labels on all the food in the fridge. Just as I had done a thousand times over the last two years. I made sure her life was perfectly ordered, and then I quietly extracted myself from it. The mover looked around the kitchen. “Are we leaving all the cookware?” “Yes,” I said. “Leave it.” I only took my drafting board and my measuring tape. Before I got into the truck, I forwarded the bridal shop’s cancellation confirmation to Grace, along with a short note: [Grace, you don’t have to marry me anymore.] When she saw the message, she was at a dinner lounge, drinking to protect Troy. A client had been pressuring Troy to drink, and his face had gone pale. Grace had snatched the glass from his hand and downed it in one go. Her phone buzzed in her hand. When she read the words, her brow furrowed. Her first instinct was annoyance. Again? Why does he have to throw a fit right now? She shot back a quick reply: [Stop acting out. We’ll talk when I get home.] A few days later. Around ten at night, Grace walked through the front door, exhausted from her trip. The apartment was pitch black. She assumed I was asleep. “Jesse, I’m home,” she called out. She flipped the light switch. The souvenir gift box she was holding slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor. Her eyes widened in shock.

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The year I was thrown back to my eighteenth birthday, I found myself sitting at a high school desk, assigned to be the burnout’s lab partner all over again. She still hated school. She slept through lectures, ditched class to smoke behind the bleachers, and spent every free second huddled in the dark neon glow of the local arcade. But this time, I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t lecture her or try to manage every second of her life like I had in my past life. Until one afternoon, my eyes caught the parent signature scrawled across the top of her failed history exam. Two sharp, aggressive words— Roxanne Blake. I froze, the air knocked from my lungs. So… the daughter Roxanne and I had… she’s already this old? Staring at that signature, a cold numbness spread through my veins. The defiant, leather-jacket-wearing girl sitting next to me wasn’t Roxanne. It was Roxanne’s daughter. 1 I finally understood what The System meant when it told me I had to “go back and correct the timeline.” Years ago, I was pulled into this world with one mission: to drag a delinquent out of the gutter and push her to the pinnacle of success. That delinquent was Roxanne. After I left, I heard she lived a brilliant life. She built an empire, achieving massive wealth and fame at a shockingly young age. I thought my mission was a perfect success. I went back to my original world in peace. Who could have guessed that nearly two decades later, her daughter would inherit her teenage rebellion, taking up the mantle of the local burnout? In fact, she’d surpassed her mother. She was the undisputed queen of the bad crowd. I let out a slow, heavy breath. Now, I had to straighten out this wild sapling. Keep her from growing crooked. Keep her from tearing her own world apart. When I left this timeline back then, it was sudden. Tragic. The System never told me the baby had survived. Time moves differently in my reality. By my count, I had only been gone for three years. But here, my child was almost grown. Before the weight of it could fully crush me, a flash of fire-engine red burst through the classroom door. Silhouetted against the hallway light, she was slender but stood with a rigid, defensive posture. Her jawline was sharp, her skin porcelain-pale. Her glaringly bright red hair was pulled into a high, messy ponytail, and a heavy black stud pierced her upper cartilage. She wore her signature scowl like armor. She marched toward me, her voice dropping to a freezing register. “Move.” I looked up, colliding with her dark, heavy eyes. I lost my breath for a second. She looked exactly like Roxanne. But taller. Colder. And far more untamable. I stood up quietly and let her into the seat. Ruby slid her long legs under the desk, crossed her arms, and immediately buried her face to sleep. I just sat there, studying her profile. This was the first time I’d seen her since I had been dropped back into this world. For two weeks, she hadn’t shown her face at school. I’d heard rumors she was either haunting the arcade or running with a bad crowd downtown. But Roxanne had too much money. A massive donation to the school board ensured her daughter’s name stayed on the roster. I sighed inwardly. A stubborn mother. A hardheaded daughter. This was going to be a nightmare. Ruby slept through the entirety of AP Calculus. When the bell rang, she suddenly sat up, clutching her stomach. All the color drained from her face. I frowned, leaning in instinctively, my voice dropping low. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?” The girl cut her eyes at me, her voice dripping with venom. “Back off.” So rude. How the hell had her mother raised her? My hand moved faster than my brain. Before I realized what I was doing, my palm landed squarely on her upper back in a firm, disciplinary pat. Smack. The entire classroom went dead silent. Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto us. My hand hovered in mid-air. I couldn’t pull it back, but I couldn’t leave it there either. I forced myself to lie through my teeth. “Your hair, Ruby. It’s too bright. It’s distracting me from my notes.” Ruby’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of the desk. Her jaw clenched so tight I thought it might shatter, and her eyes burned with absolute fury. She was half a second away from exploding, but the warning bell for the next period rang. The homeroom teacher walked in, catching the tail end of the tension. “Ruby? Are you trying to get me to call your mother in for another chat?” That stopped her. She swallowed the rage, her shoulders tense, and dropped her head back down onto her arms, simmering in silence. The kid behind me tapped my shoulder, his glasses reflecting the fluorescent lights with sheer awe. “Dude, you’ve got a death wish. Nobody makes Ruby back down.” I offered a dry, tight smile. Ruby wasn’t the type to just take a hit. Before she had lowered her head, she muttered a vicious promise under her breath: “After school. You’re dead.” Fine. I’ll wait. But when the final bell rang, Ruby bolted. She left in such a rush she didn’t even grab her denim jacket. I waited. And waited. The classroom emptied out, the hallways fell silent, and the janitors started their rounds. I finally slung my backpack over my shoulder to leave. Just as I turned, her jacket on the desk began to vibrate. She’d left her phone. This reckless kid. What was she in such a hurry for? I pulled the phone from the pocket. The screen lit up with a caller ID that made my heart stop. Roxanne. I didn’t want to answer it. But the phone rang. And rang. Relentlessly. In the final seconds before it went to voicemail, I swiped the screen. 2 “Where are you?” The woman’s voice was crisp, authoritative, carrying a heavy chill through the receiver. “Ma’am…” I cleared my throat. I couldn’t bring myself to say her name. After a long, suffocating pause, my face flushed hot, and I gathered my courage. “Hello, ma’am. I’m a classmate of Ruby’s—” She cut me off before I could finish. “Right. Tell her to come home.” Click. The line went dead. I stood in the empty classroom, gripping the phone. Roxanne. Do you really have so little patience left for her? As I stood there wondering how to return the phone, a flurry of text messages popped up on the lock screen. “Ruby, got the cake. Come pay for it.” “Rubes, where are you?” An address followed. I stared at the lock screen. I tried her birthday. Incorrect. I tried her mother’s birthday. Incorrect. I tried the birthday of the cat we used to have. Incorrect. Finally, guided by some ghost of a memory, I typed in my birthday. The phone unlocked. My chest seized. A wave of thick, suffocating sorrow clawed its way up my throat. After eighteen years of being gone… Someone in this world still remembered me. I rubbed my eyes hard, memorized the address, and headed out into the fading afternoon light. When I arrived at the bakery, Ruby and a group of her friends were being physically shoved out the door by the owner. The man was red in the face, waving a pair of tongs. “Fucking freeloaders! Get out of my shop!” “Kids these days, lying through your teeth!” “If you don’t have the cash, just say it! Don’t give me this ‘I forgot my phone’ crap!” Seeing their leader get humiliated, a few of the girls—sporting heavily dyed hair and torn jeans—grabbed the metal patio chairs, ready to start a riot. I sprinted forward and grabbed Ruby’s arm, pulling her back. “No fighting.” “I brought your phone.” Ruby looked at me. Her eyes were a storm of complicated emotions. But she snatched the phone, tapped her digital wallet, and paid the man. The owner’s demeanor flipped instantly. He muttered apologies and rushed to box up the cake. I stood on the sidewalk, waiting. I could hear the whispers from her friends behind me. “Is that the new boyfriend?” “No way. She was just with that college guy last week.” “Probably dumped him. Ruby never keeps a guy around for more than seven days.” I frowned. Who taught her to treat people so recklessly? I looked through the bakery window. Ruby was sitting at a small table, her posture perfectly straight, writing on a small card with absolute focus. I thought she was writing a note for some boy. I stepped closer. When I saw the words, my feet rooted to the floor. Happy Birthday, Mom. She had written it, crossed it out. Written it again. Crossed it out again. The ink was bleeding into the heavy paper. She didn’t know what to say to her. Finally, she settled on a single, distant line: Wishing CEO Blake continued success. My heart ached with a bitter, acidic sting. This kid. She wasn’t nearly as rebellious as she pretended to be. She remembered her mother’s birthday. She remembered that Roxanne hated sweets—the cake had zero fondant, and she had specifically ordered the lowest sugar option. She was so much more thoughtful, so much more fragile than I could have imagined. Before I left, I looked at her. My voice was very soft. “Your mom is waiting at home for you to have dinner.” That woman… she always hated being alone. Especially on her birthday. Go home. Keep her company. Ruby didn’t answer. She picked up the box and turned toward the door. But right before she walked out, she glanced back at me. Her voice was barely a whisper, light as dust. “Thank you.” Watching her walk away into the dusk, I couldn’t help but think of Roxanne. It was a lifetime ago. When Roxanne was a delinquent, she was far more feral than her daughter. Wild, reckless, a total firecracker. She would sleep through tutoring sessions, and the second her friends called, she’d bolt. Nine times out of ten, I’d catch her in the alley behind the local dive bar. And when I caught her, I’d drag her back by the collar. We lived across the hall from each other back then. Once I started tutoring her, her mother essentially handed over total custody of her life to me. Her mom had given me this heavy, old wooden yardstick. She used to hit Roxanne with it, but it never did any good. By the time it was passed to me, the numbers had worn completely off the wood. But somehow, that stupid piece of wood worked. Whenever Roxanne saw me holding it, she’d shrink back and quietly follow me to the library. During our senior year, she finally settled down. And miraculously, she got into a top university. The day the acceptance letters came in, both she and her mother cried. Roxanne had thrown her arms around my neck, burying her face in my chest, her tears soaking right through my shirt. Her “thank you” carried a weight that shattered me. She looked up at me and said, “I’ll listen to you from now on. Always.” 3 During the first few years we were together, she was addicted to online gaming; I would literally pull the ethernet cord out of the wall. When she tried to skip lectures to hang out at the campus bar, I would physically march her back to the lecture hall. Once, she secretly got a massive, intimidating sleeve tattoo. I grabbed her by the ear, threatening to drag her to a laser removal clinic. She panicked and furiously scrubbed at her arm with a wet napkin. “It’s a temporary decal! It’s fake! God, Kieran, you’re psycho.” I managed her life like that, every single step of the way. For four years. By the time we graduated college, Roxanne had collected every academic award and recommendation letter a professor could write. Everyone on campus knew Roxanne had a terrifyingly strict boyfriend. But I didn’t care. Dragging someone from the bottom to the absolute top is never a gentle process. After graduation, she started her own tech firm. Once the company started taking off, her new way of relieving stress was alcohol. The pressure was crushing, and she would disappear into high-end lounges, drinking until she was numb. Her medical reports were full of red flags. Severely damaged stomach lining. Chronic bleeding ulcers. One night, I dragged her out of a VIP booth. Before I could even open my mouth to lecture her, she violently wrenched her arm out of my grip. Her eyes were ice-cold. She looked at me, enunciating every single word. “Kieran. You control way too much.” “Aren’t you exhausted?” I just stared at her. The silence stretched, suffocating and heavy. Finally, she let out a long, ragged sigh. “I’m tired, Kieran.” “Being managed by you all these years… I’m just so goddamn tired.” My throat tightened, the words turning to ash. But Roxanne didn’t have the patience to coddle my feelings anymore. She didn’t say another word. She just turned around and walked away. I stood frozen on the pavement. My fists clenched at my sides. I thought about it for a very, very long time that night. The truth was, managing her all those years… It wasn’t just exhausting for her. It exhausted me, too. I knew people whispered behind my back. They called me controlling, suffocating, a tyrant. I heard it all. And I also knew that sometimes, when she was with her wealthy new friends, she would softly agree with them. “Yeah, it’s a lot. I really should have found someone a bit softer.” Once she hit the pinnacle of her success, different kinds of people started orbiting her. Things happened. Things I didn’t want to know about. But the whispers always found their way to me. I never asked. And she never explained. I just grew quieter, shrinking myself down to take up less and less space in her life. I pulled myself out of the memory. I finished the last bite of a cheap muffin I’d bought and stepped out of the bakery. Outside, Ruby’s friends were still lingering. When they saw me, they swarmed. “Hey, school boy. It’s late. Ruby said we should walk you to the bus stop.” I glanced up at the flickering streetlights. I didn’t decline. Along the walk, through their scattered gossip, I began to piece together what Ruby’s life had been like all these years. “Honestly, I feel bad for Ruby. Her dad died a long time ago.” “Her mom is literally always working. It’s like she lives in a hotel. Nobody is ever home.” “They have this massive, gorgeous house, but when Ruby got super sick last winter, she was practically dying in bed and there wasn’t even anyone to get her a glass of water.” My fingers curled into fists, my nails biting into my palms. Roxanne. Is this how you take care of my daughter? “But Ruby is fiercely loyal.” “Her mom acts like she doesn’t exist, but Ruby still buys her a custom birthday cake every single year.” “She acts all tough, but my mom says Ruby is way more mature than the rest of us.” I thought about how she acted in the classroom. The second the teacher threatened to call her mother, all the fight drained out of her. It wasn’t because she was scared. It was because she knew her mom was busy. She didn’t want to be a burden. She didn’t want her mom to have to come clean up her messes. The dyed hair, the fake piercings, the manufactured rebellion… It was all just a desperate plea for her mother to look at her. My chest physically ached. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Watch,” one of the girls scoffed. “She’s taking that cake home, but her mom won’t even touch it.” “It happens every year. Tomorrow, Ruby will bring the whole thing to school for us to eat.” “A whole custom cake, and her mom won’t take a single bite.” “I don’t know how someone can be that cold.” My heart twisted into a violent knot. So this was it. This was what my child had endured for the last eighteen years. That night, I lay in my cramped, freezing apartment, tossing and turning. My mind was consumed by the image of Ruby’s lonely, defensive posture. I couldn’t sleep. “System,” I whispered to the dark ceiling. “I want to use one of my lifelines to see what Ruby is doing right now.” 4 When I was sent back, The System granted me three “lifelines”—three chances to bend the rules of reality. Once I used all three, I would be permanently ripped from this world. But the anxiety gnawing at my bones was too much. I had to know she was okay. A holographic projection shimmered into existence in my dark room. In the projection, Ruby had just walked through the front door of a sprawling, immaculate mansion. She was holding the cake box by the string, staring at a figure sitting on the living room sofa. A woman in a sharply tailored designer suit sat there, bathed in the blue light of an iPad. She was buried in her emails. She didn’t even look up to acknowledge her daughter walking in. A long, suffocating silence stretched across the room. Ruby’s knuckles turned white around the bakery string. She looked at the back of the sofa and called out softly, “Mom—” “I’m home.” She said it twice. Nothing but silence. Ruby lowered her eyes. She just stood there in the foyer, looking utterly defeated. Watching from my bed, I felt a violent surge of anger. I wanted to shatter the projection, grab Roxanne by the collar, and shake her. It took a painfully long time before Roxanne finally set the iPad face down on the glass table and turned her head. Gold-rimmed glasses made her gaze look incredibly sharp. Her eyes were dead. Devoid of any warmth. Looking at her own flesh and blood, her face betrayed absolutely zero emotion. “Let’s eat.” There were several dishes set out on the long dining table. It was obvious she had been waiting for a while. Ruby set the cake box on the table and reached out to untie the ribbon. Roxanne’s icy voice cut through the air before she could open it. “Don’t bother.” “You know I don’t eat sweets.” That was the cake my daughter spent an hour agonizing over for you. No fondant. Low sugar. Ruby’s hand froze mid-air. She stared at her mother’s stone-cold profile. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed back every explanation, every defense. She quietly sat down and began to eat. The massive dining room was dead silent, save for the hollow clinking of silverware against porcelain. “How are your classes?” Roxanne asked without looking up. Better than yours ever were, I thought bitterly. Even when my daughter skips class, she still aces the exams. “Fine,” Ruby muttered. “Your homeroom teacher called. Said you haven’t been in class for two weeks.” Roxanne finally looked up, her gaze pinning Ruby down. “What exactly are you doing with your time?” Ruby fell silent. When the silence dragged on too long, Roxanne’s tone dropped to a dangerous octave. “You’re out roaming the streets with those degenerates, aren’t you?” Ruby clenched her hands in her lap, her voice barely audible. “Yeah.” “Do I give you an allowance so you can play pretend with a bunch of street trash?” “Look at yourself. What are you turning into?” Roxanne’s eyes locked onto the glaring red hair. Her brow furrowed in deep, visible disgust. The air in the room was suffocating. Suddenly, Ruby stood up, her chair screeching violently against the hardwood. Her hands balled into fists. “All you do is throw money at me! Why the hell do you care who I hang out with?” “You think I don’t care? You want me to just sit back and watch you rot in the gutter with them?” Roxanne slowly raised her eyes. The light caught the edge of her glasses, glinting like a blade. That kind of look… aimed at a teenage girl… It was far too heavy a burden. “I’d rather rot in the gutter than end up completely alone like you!” Ruby screamed, her voice cracking. “You’re pathetic, Mom. You’re more pathetic than me.” “In this entire world, besides my dad, has anyone ever actually loved you?” Ruby didn’t wait for an answer. She snatched her jacket off the chair and bolted out the front door. The massive, cavernous house fell dead silent. Leaving Roxanne entirely alone. She just sat there at the head of the table. Her hands folded tightly in her lap. Her back looked impossibly rigid, but the loneliness radiating from her was deafening. I watched her for a few more seconds. Then, I willed the projection to follow Ruby. Once she left the property, the visual feed glitched out. All I knew was that she had gotten into a cab. My face hardened. I called out to the void in my room. “System. Transport me to Ruby’s location.” Oakwood Cemetery. Ruby was sitting cross-legged on the frozen grass in front of my headstone. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees, holding herself together. I stood a few yards away, watching her trembling shoulders. A sharp, physical pain tore through my chest. She sat there for a long time. Finally, she lifted her head. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her voice was broken, scattering into the winter wind. “Dad.” “Mom… she hates me.” The raw, choked sob in her voice made my eyes burn. So Roxanne didn’t just resent me. She couldn’t even bring herself to love our daughter. “Dad, can I just come find you…?” The wind swallowed the rest of her words. Leaving only a devastating, overwhelming grief. I clenched my fists. My chest felt like it was caving in. Unable to bear it a second longer, I stepped out from the shadows and spoke, my voice thick. “Ruby.” She whipped around. She stared at me. Her dark eyes were swimming in tears, wide and terrified. Like a puppy that had been kicked out into the rain. I crouched down beside her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. My heart was breaking. “Sweetheart.” “Did that stubborn old woman make you cry again?” She instinctively tried to flinch away from my touch. But when she heard the words, she froze entirely. She looked at me, her eyes darting across my face, full of desperate suspicion. I let out a soft sigh. “When you were born, we had a cat at home.” “Three years old. He had a black patch shaped like a thumbprint right beneath his left ear.” “Do you remember?” “Your mom and I found him when we were in college.” “We named him Marble.” “Did he ever… have kittens?” Tears rapidly welled up in Ruby’s eyes, spilling over her lashes. She wiped her face aggressively with the back of her sleeve and choked out, “No.” She still couldn’t let herself believe it. “How can you prove you’re my dad? You look like you’re my age.” I looked at her face—a face that mirrored Roxanne’s so perfectly. A thousand words clawed at my throat, but none of them could explain the impossible.

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I woke up at two in the morning to the sound of Giselle shuffling around the bedroom. Her brow was furrowed, tight with a tension I knew all too well. I sat up, the sheets slipping down my chest, and asked quietly, “You’re back? Did you two have a fight?” She stood by the edge of the bed, silent for a moment, before giving a slow, reluctant nod. I got out of bed, my voice gentle as I tried to soothe her. “He’s still young, Giselle. Spoiled, really. He’s just throwing a little tantrum. Buy him that vintage watch he’s been staring at, or maybe some new gear for his gaming rig tomorrow. He’ll come around.” She stared at me, a long, searching look that held a weight she couldn’t put into words. In the end, she didn’t say a thing. I lay back down and fell asleep, peaceful and untroubled. Four years. It had taken me four years to transition from a hysterical, self-destructive wreck of a husband into her most sensible, understanding confidant. … By seven, Giselle was out of the bedroom. She glanced at me as she adjusted her coat. “What’s on your schedule today?” “Just grabbing tea with a friend,” I said, pushing a bowl of warm oatmeal toward the empty seat across from me. “Sit down. Have some breakfast?” She didn’t sit. Instead, she pulled a sleek cream envelope from her leather portfolio and slid it across the marble countertop. “See if you like these.” Inside were two VIP passes to a modern art exhibition. I tucked them into my shirt pocket. “Thank you. What brought this on?” “Jesse likes that artist,” she said, her voice dropping slightly. “They’re… extras.” I nodded, offering a faint smile. If this had been four years ago, that bowl of oatmeal would have been dripping down her designer blouse by now. But I had learned not to waste food. I took a quiet sip of my coffee. She lingered, waiting for some kind of reaction, some crack in the armor. When I remained silent, she turned and walked out. It wasn’t long before my phone lit up with an unfamiliar number. There was a time when I would screen every unknown call, terrified of hearing his voice, but I had outgrown that anxiety. I picked up and slid the bar to speakerphone. “Hey, Jude. It’s Jesse. Giselle left some important documents at my place. Do you mind swinging by to pick them up?” I scooped up another bite of oatmeal. “She’s got a car and an assistant, Jesse. Tell her to get them herself.” “Honestly, I just wanted to talk. There are some things I’ve been keeping inside…” My face remained completely blank. “I’m busy this afternoon. Some other time.” I hung up. I wasn’t a generous man by nature. Jesse had been poking at my boundaries for exactly four years and eight days, and I kept a meticulous tally of every single slight. In the beginning, I was highly combustible. I reacted to everything, turning myself into a public spectacle. Later, on the advice of mutual friends, I stepped back and focused on my own life, leaving him to his own devices. So Jesse changed his tactics. He stopped hiding. Instead, he started shoving himself into my orbit. One day he’d post a picture of the new phone Giselle bought him; the next, he’d text me screenshots of their intimate conversations. Eventually, I snapped. I went to confront him. But in the end, Giselle always chose his lies over my truth. I refused to back down, escalating the drama, making myself look worse and worse until I was trapped in a toxic loop of my own making. But now? None of his strategies worked anymore. At three in the afternoon, I had been sitting in the quiet lounge of the hotel for barely half an hour when Giselle suddenly walked in. She rarely crashed my social circle, making this a rare surprise. “I was in the area,” she said, sliding into the leather booth and aimlessly flipping through the menu. My friend, picking up on the shift in energy, made a polite excuse and left. I looked at her. “Is something wrong?” “Did Jesse call you this morning?” “Yes.” “What did he say?” I looked up at her, studying her face. What else would he say? He’d probably brag about how wild she was in his bed, compared to how distant she was in mine. I remembered the very first time he called me. It was our second wedding anniversary. I had put together a small, intimate dinner party at an upscale restaurant, inviting a few close friends to celebrate our marriage. I waited for her until the candles had nearly burned down. Near the end of the night, an unknown number called. When I answered, all I heard was the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. Just as I was about to apologize and hang up, thinking it was a wrong number, a familiar female voice bled through the speaker—breathless, raw, and desperate: “Jesse, stop biting.” The entire table went dead silent, wine glasses frozen mid-air. Before my friends left that night, they all offered the same cautious, well-meaning advice: “Jude, Giselle is running a massive company now. The pressure is immense, the temptations are everywhere. Just sit down and talk to her when she gets home. Don’t do anything rash.” I listened to them. That night, she and I sat in the living room until three in the morning. I didn’t raise my voice once. But she confessed. She said it was a stupid mistake. She said she’d had too much to drink and had mistaken Jesse for me in the dark. Then she got down on her knees, crying, swearing she would never do it again, promising that I was the only one she loved. And I believed her. I thought that by exposing Jesse’s pathetic attempt to ruin our anniversary, Giselle would finally see him for the manipulative child he was and cut him off. Surely, a sensible woman wouldn’t allow herself to be played like that? But she did. She didn’t put any distance between them. In fact, she found his reckless behavior romantic. She actually felt sorry for him, convinced he was “willing to risk everything for her.” Behind my back, she bought him a luxury condo downtown, feeding his ego and his lifestyle with her wealth and her affection. That was when the truth finally settled in. There was no drunken mistake. She was perfectly sober. Jesse wasn’t an accident. He was her choice. And I was the one left behind, forced to smile and pretend to be the bigger person. My mind snapped back to the present. I looked at her and shook my head. “No, nothing major.” But I knew her well enough to recognize the underlying tension. Something was off. It usually meant I had somehow “injured” Jesse again without even trying. I set down my teacup. “Did he complain to you about me?” “What is it this time? Did he say I hired someone to mess with him? Or did I go to his building to make a scene? You can tell me directly, Giselle. No need to test the waters. I can explain.” In the past, his provocations had driven me to do countless stupid things, and Giselle always happened to catch me red-handed. The narrative of the jealous, irrational husband wrote itself, and I’d find myself frozen out once again. But I had grown wiser. I didn’t rush to defend myself, nor did I plan a counterattack. I simply took a slow, deliberate sip of my tea, waiting for her to lay down her cards. She blinked, her face darkening slightly. “He didn’t say anything.” “Well,” I murmured, “that’s a first.” Her lips parted, then closed. She rotated her teacup half a turn on the saucer. “I came back last night because we had a fight. But that wasn’t the only reason.” “Right,” I said, gesturing to the waiter for a refill. “The fight was the main reason. What else?” “Could you please stop doing this?” she snapped suddenly, rubbing her temples with an exhausted sigh. “If you’re angry, just say it. Let it out.” “I’m perfectly fine, Giselle. You’re projecting.” She didn’t reply, her eyes locked onto mine. I didn’t know how to convince her otherwise. Honestly, I could barely believe it myself. How could I be ‘fine’ when I had lost every shred of dignity in this marriage? There were no words for it. But then I remembered her favorite fallback line, and realized how incredibly liberating it felt to use it: “If that’s how you want to see it, I can’t stop you.” She stared at me, letting the words sink in, before rising and walking away without another word. I watched her retreating figure for a moment, then turned back to my book. Over the last four years, those endless nights waiting for her had worn down my spirit until there was nothing left to break. I had screamed, I had threatened to end my life, and all it had gotten me was a deeper descent into madness. Now that I truly didn’t care, she suddenly wanted me to be vulnerable again. Before Giselle, I was a man of logic and restraint. Back when I was making moves on Wall Street, I never imagined I’d reduce myself to a petty, suspicious spouse over a failing relationship. Love makes you greedy. It makes you want to own someone entirely. And when you realize you can’t, the loss of control tears you apart. But once the love is gone? You get to have yourself back. Around eight that evening, as I was preparing to head home, a voice note from Jesse popped up on my phone. I tapped it absentmindedly. “Hey, big guy. Giselle’s completely hammered. She’s demanding I take her home, but honestly, I’m not her husband. It feels wrong. Why don’t you come get her instead?” A pin drop followed, locating an upscale bar downtown. I didn’t go. Instead, I called Frank, our driver. “Giselle’s had too much to drink. I’m sending you the address. Please go pick her up.” At eleven, Frank brought her back, smelling heavily of gin. She nearly stumbled into the entryway when I opened the door. “Where’s Jesse?” I asked Frank. “The bartender said… well, Mr. Jesse expected you to show up. He wanted to force her to make a choice between the two of you right there. He didn’t expect me. He tried to drag her out of the bar anyway, but she wanted to keep drinking. I couldn’t just leave her there, so I brought her home.” I helped her onto the bed and began unbuttoning her coat. Suddenly, her hand shot out, gripping my wrist. “Do you… do you even love me anymore?” “You’re drunk, Giselle.” “I’m not,” she whispered, her eyes bloodshot and watery. “You used to cry. You used to scream and throw things. Now, even when he rubs my face in it, you don’t even flinch. What is going on in your head?” I pulled my wrist from her grip. “Get some sleep.” She rolled over, burying her face in the pillow. “You didn’t come for me…” I had to hold back a laugh. Come for her? Every single time I had tried to play the rescuing husband, I was met with a locked door. Even on the anniversary of my father’s passing, when I drove to her office to pick her up so we could visit his grave, she bailed at the last second because Jesse called complaining of a migraine. “Jude, it’s an emergency,” she had told me, rushing out to her car. “I have to get him to the hospital. We don’t know what’s wrong.” Her entire staff watched me stand in the lobby holding a bouquet of memorial flowers. I stood there for thirty minutes before driving to the cemetery alone. I was always the option she discarded in her endless game of two-choice ultimatums. They never seemed to tire of the game, but I had checked out long ago. The next morning, before she was even awake, I went down to the bank. The teller looked up from her screen. “Mr. Barlow, are you sure you want to liquidate this certificate of deposit into your checking account? There will be a penalty for early withdrawal.” “I’m planning an extended trip abroad,” I replied quietly. “I need the liquidity.” As I walked out of the branch, I ran right into Jesse. He was leaning against the glass door, wearing a smug, knowing grin. “Well, look who it is. What a coincidence.” Four years of dealing with him meant I knew every play in his book. In the past, I would have let him bait me, leaving me shaking with rage while Giselle watched the fallout. Now, he was just background noise. “Coincidence indeed,” I said, not breaking my stride. “Don’t you want to know what happened at the bar last night?” he called out after me. I kept walking, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a backward glance. “You don’t love her anymore, do you?” he yelled, his tone turning desperate. I stopped. That was a question I couldn’t leave unanswered. I turned around slowly. “Of course a husband loves his wife. But you’re just the side distraction, Jesse. Why are you so worried about us?” His mouth fell open, utterly speechless. When I got back to the penthouse, Giselle was awake, sitting on the sofa with a glass of bourbon. I frowned slightly and opened the terrace doors to let the stale smell of alcohol escape. “You might want to keep a tighter leash on your boy,” I said, walking over to the coffee table. “He’s been following me around.” I opened the drawer beneath the table, pulled out a velvet-lined box I had prepared weeks ago, and slid it toward her. “Here. It’s a limited-edition Audemars Piguet. Use it to keep him happy.” Her fingers froze over her glass. “Oh, and by the way,” I continued, ignoring her sudden stiffness, “the allowance fund you keep in my account for him? He’s burning through it incredibly fast these past two months. Tell him to budget. It gets tiring keeping track of his tantrums.” This was part of the ceasefire we had negotiated. Every dollar she spent on Jesse had to clear through my accounts first. I couldn’t stop her from funding her lover, but I refused to let her hide it. Seeing the numbers was better than letting my imagination run wild. Her expression darkened, and she gave a curt, dismissive nod. “The bank manager called me,” she said, her voice dropping to a low murmur. “They said you liquidated your accounts. Are you leaving?” I was surprised she even noticed, given how little attention she paid to me these days. Our marriage had fractured because of lies, and the cracks had only widened when the truth finally came out. I had no intention of keeping secrets now. “Yes. I’m planning to study abroad for a while.” A heavy silence filled the room. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a rare, leaden weight. “Are you setting up a divorce?” Divorce? This arrangement kept me comfortable, wealthy, and socially secure. As long as I didn’t let greed or emotion get in the way, it was a highly lucrative setup. I had no desire to change it. “I just want to travel,” I said honestly. “And what about me?” I looked at her, genuinely amused. “Giselle, if these four years have taught me anything, it’s that you have to put yourself first. You should do the same. Stop worrying about whether I’m angry or not. Just do whatever makes you happy.” She stood up, her throat tight. “I’ve told you a thousand times, Jesse is just… forget it. What if I told you I’m ready to cut him off? For good.” “That’s your choice. You don’t need my permission.” Cut off Jesse, and another one would take his place. Infidelity is a threshold; once crossed, the numbers lose meaning. Before she could reply, the apartment buzzer rang. Giselle pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a sharp breath, and went to answer the intercom. It was Jesse. Of course he had followed me home. He really didn’t need to try this hard. If anyone else had been in my shoes, he wouldn’t have lasted four years. But the person keeping him from the husband’s spot was never me. The young man pushed past her into the foyer. “Is Jude here? I need to speak to him.” I watched him from the living room. My mind flashed back to the first time I saw him. He was fresh out of college, glowing with youth and energy. Giselle’s blatant favoritism had driven me mad. I spent months trying to compete with a ghost. Because he was young, I started going to high-end medical spas—getting fillers, laser treatments, whatever promised to freeze my face in time. Because he was active, I took up boxing, rock climbing, even skydiving. But I could never compete with her devotion. During that dark period, the local tabloids were filled with my desperation: “Jude Barlow in public brawl with wife’s younger lover,” complete with embarrassing, unhinged photos. I made myself a laughingstock, and it didn’t bring my wife back for a single second. Those four years of fighting had drained me completely. They made me forget that marriage and love are merely the seasoning of life, not the main course. Giselle blocked his path. “Go home, Jesse.” “No!” For the first time, he yelled directly at me, ignoring her presence entirely. “Jude, stop playing this saintly victim role! You don’t love her anymore. Why won’t you just sign the papers? Why are you holding onto a title that means nothing to you?” I stood up from the sofa and walked calmly to the door. “Hey, Jesse. Good to see you,” I said, my voice smooth and polite. Then I turned to Giselle. “Some friends invited me to a poker game. I’ll head out so you two can have some space.” I made a move to step past him, but Giselle grabbed my wrist, pulling me back with surprising force. “You just got back. Stay here.” Her voice was muffled, strained. She turned to Jesse, her eyes cold. “Whether we divorce or not is between my husband and me. Stop acting like a child.” I stood quietly at her side, offering no comment. Years ago, Giselle used to tell me how sweet and innocent Jesse was, how he didn’t care about money or status and only wanted her affection. She told me I needed to be more understanding. I had fought tooth and nail to prove his greed. Now, I simply let it play out. They could argue about his status all they wanted, as long as they left me out of it. Seeing my indifference, Jesse snapped. “Jude, what kind of sick game are you playing?!” I looked at him, completely unbothered. “You’ve been with her for four years, Jesse, and you still haven’t convinced her to marry you. Why are you asking me for answers?” It was the simple truth. If Giselle truly wanted to marry him, I couldn’t have stopped her. But she valued her social standing and her corporate reputation far too much to deal with the fallout of a public divorce. Our wedding had been a grand, city-wide affair. The vows we took were heavy, and she lacked the courage to rip them up publicly. Jesse’s eyes welled with tears as he looked at her. For once, Giselle didn’t offer any comfort. She just stared at me. I felt as though she were trying to drill a hole through my skull with her eyes. But what did it matter? If I didn’t say something, she would later accuse me of being passive-aggressive. I had learned to state my boundaries clearly and keep myself beyond reproach. Jesse turned and ran out of the apartment. Giselle didn’t chase after him. Instead, she walked out to the balcony alone. I went back to the bedroom, pulled out my suitcase, and began packing. I didn’t hear her approach, but suddenly she was leaning against the doorframe. “Your visa cleared?” “Yes,” I said, folding a shirt. “I leave next Wednesday.” “When did you decide this?” “Three months ago.” She fell silent. Three months ago, Jesse had poisoned my Golden Retriever, Cooper. In retaliation, I had gone to his place and killed his prized rabbits. After a night like that, any decision seemed reasonable. But I hadn’t asked for a divorce. Yet, from that day on, she made sure to come home every single night. She cancelled meetings, declined invitations, acting as if she had suddenly remembered how to be a wife. The tragedy was, I no longer cared. “Get some rest,” she whispered, turning back toward the study. On Wednesday morning, I carried my suitcase downstairs. Giselle was sitting in the living room, looking as though she hadn’t slept in days. On the glass coffee table sat a duplicate set of legal documents. Her signature was already inked at the bottom. I looked at her, raising an eyebrow. She slid the divorce agreement toward me. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Sign it, and you’re free.” I didn’t even glance at the pages. I picked up my suitcase and began walking toward the door. “Stop,” she commanded, rushing to block my path. Her face was pale. “What are you doing, Jude?” I looked back at her. “I’m not signing. And I’m not divorcing you.” A flicker of relief, almost like hope, washed over her eyes. She thought I was still the desperate man who loved her too much to let go. “Jude, if you still care about me, we can—” “Love has nothing to do with this,” I laughed, cutting her off. “You said it yourself, Giselle. We’re adults. We don’t deal in feelings; we deal in assets. This marriage is highly beneficial to me.” Her expression froze. Whenever I had threatened divorce in the past because of Jesse, she would always use my financial situation against me. “I support your entire lifestyle,” she had said back then. “Without me, you wouldn’t even have a roof over your head. Think carefully before you throw a tantrum.” She had been so protective of Jesse’s feelings, blaming my lack of maturity for every argument. She knew she had complete control over me because she knew how deeply I loved her. But that cheap, desperate love was dead. All that remained was a calculated transaction. I decided to lay it out for her. “Three months ago, I started negotiating an international investment project. Do you know why they approved my proposal? Because of my association with your firm.” Her eyes widened slightly. “How many major accounts do you think my design studio has landed over the last four years? They didn’t hire me for my charm, Giselle. They wanted access to your corporate network.” I gave her a small, cold smile. “My decision to stay married isn’t about love or hate. It’s just business.” She stood there, looking as if she had taken a physical blow to the chest. “Do whatever you want with Jesse,” I said, opening the front door. “I’ll be in London for the next six months. Let’s keep things convenient for both of us. Oh, and try not to get pregnant. A child out of wedlock is messy, and the press would have a field day.” I rolled my suitcase out into the hallway without looking back. In the mirrored wall of the elevator, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. There was no joy, no sorrow—just a vast, quiet emptiness. I had lied to her. If this London venture went the way I planned, I had no intention of ever coming back. At the airport gate, just as I pulled out my passport, two plainclothes officers stepped into my path, flashing their badges. “Mr. Barlow, you are a person of interest in a homicide investigation. Please come with us to the station.” I stood still, letting out a soft, tired laugh. Another one of Jesse’s games. He never got tired of trying to ruin my life. I tried to step around them. But one of the detectives held up a photograph of a crime scene. My breath caught in my throat, and my eyes went wide.

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On the eve of our wedding, I accidentally connected to Natalie’s Bluetooth earbud. I was about to disconnect when I heard her voice—but she wasn’t talking to anyone in the room. She was speaking to her future self, ten years down the line. “Do not marry Lester Davis!” the voice warned, a frantic, desperate whisper in my ear. “He’ll find out the marriage certificate is fake. It won’t just destroy you—it’ll kill your first child with Jared, and he’ll throw acid in Jared’s face!” My mind went entirely blank, a sudden, deafening static roaring in my head. The Jared she was talking about was Jared Parker. My best friend. My brother. Just minutes ago, Jared had slapped Natalie across the face in a fit of rage because she had forgotten to adjust my tie before the rehearsal dinner. To the outside world, they were water and oil. They couldn’t stand being in the same room. Trembling, I looked out toward the balcony where Natalie was standing, her silhouette framed by the city lights. She murmured into her phone, her voice chillingly casual: “Don’t worry. This time, I’ll be careful. I won’t let Lester lose his mind, and I won’t let Jared suffer a single second of pain. I’ll protect them both.” … When Natalie walked back inside, the faint pink outline of Jared’s handprint was still fading from her cheek. My limbs felt leaden, cold. The echoes of her future self’s hatred and venom still vibrated through my head, making it hard to draw a full breath. “Does it hurt?” I asked. She touched her slightly reddened cheek, offering a tight, dismissive smile. “You worried about me? Then when are you finally going to cut ties with that lunatic?” Her voice carried the same sharp disgust she’d always shown toward Jared. Just minutes prior, Jared had lost his temper when he noticed she had neglected to fix my tie. He had struck her, claiming he couldn’t stand her treating me like an afterthought. For a fleeting second, I tried to convince myself I was having a breakdown. Maybe the voices were a hallucination. Ever since Natalie and I got together, Jared had treated her like poison. He claimed a wealthy heiress like her could never be faithful, that she was just playing with my feelings. Natalie, in turn, accused him of trying to poison our relationship, sparking bitter arguments whenever they crossed paths. I had spent the last two years caught in the crossfire, playing the desperate peacemaker. But then, the voice of the future Natalie crackled through the earbud again. You need to tread carefully! You and Jared were reckless in the restroom just now. If I hadn’t warned you to swap your dress, Lester would have already figured it out! My gaze dropped. I realized Natalie was wearing a different dress than the one she’d arrived in. And Jared had slipped away right after her. A violent, sour wave of nausea hit my stomach. A cold sweat broke out across my back. “Lester? What’s wrong? Your hands are freezing.” I shook my head, my throat too tight to release a single word. Natalie quickly draped her cashmere coat over my shoulders. She gestured to the kitchen staff to bring out a bowl of slow-simmered beef broth, my favorite comfort soup. Her eyes drifted to my ear. “How do the new earbuds feel? I had the research team design them specifically around your preferences.” The memory of the voice in my ear made my chest tighten. Before I could form a response, Jared materialized from the hallway. He reached out, snatched the earbud from my desk, and threw it to the floor. “What kind of garbage is this? Giving Lester a half-baked prototype?” Jared sneered. “Natalie, if you actually cared about him, you wouldn’t try to pacify him with trash.” That was when I noticed Jared had changed his shirt. And just above his collar, partially hidden, was a fresh, dark mark on his neck. I knelt, picked up the earbud, and slipped it back into my ear. My voice was flat. “Stay out of my business, Jared.” Jared’s face stiffened. “Lester, are you mad at me? It’s literally a test model. She’s insulting you.” I didn’t answer. I just kept the earbud pressed to my ear. And the voice returned. Jared is too soft-hearted. I had the team make his custom set first, but he refused to take them, insisting I give the prototype to Lester to keep up appearances. I already can’t give him my name; I couldn’t bear to let him suffer even in these little things. What is Lester’s problem? Jared was looking out for him, and he gives him attitude? Does he suspect something? A flash of panic crossed Natalie’s eyes. She masked it quickly, turning on Jared with cold anger. “Whatever I choose to give Lester is between us. It has nothing to do with you.” Jared’s face paled. He stared at me, waiting for me to take his side as I always did. When I remained silent, his expression hardened into bitter resentment. “Fine!” Jared snapped. “Lester, when she eventually dumps you on the street, don’t come crying to me!” He turned on his heel to leave. “Look out!” someone screamed from across the dining room, pointing upward. Above us, the massive crystal chandelier groaned, snapping from its mountings like a falling star. In my peripheral vision, Natalie, who was standing closest to me, didn’t hesitate. She threw her body over Jared, pinning him to the floor to shield him from the impact. I was thrown backward. The heavy iron and glass structure shattered over my legs and torso. Thousands of sharp, burning shards sliced into my skin. Blood pooled around me, warm and thick. My vision began to blur. Through the haze, I saw Jared push Natalie aside. He scrambled toward me on his knees. “Lester!” He dug through the piles of broken glass with his bare hands, his desperate, agonizing cries echoing through the high ceilings. When I woke, everything was sterile and white. Jared sat by my bedside, his eyes bloodshot, every one of his fingers wrapped in thick gauze. “Lester? Can you hear me? God, you scared me to death.” The relief and terror on his face looked exactly as they had for the fifteen years we’d known each other. But beneath it lay a tiny, flickering shadow of guilt. A dull, throbbing ache pulsed through my limbs. I stared at him. “Do you really hate Natalie that much?” He frowned, his answer immediate and fierce. “Of course I do! You have to believe me, Lester. She’s a snake. She’s unfaithful. Do you know what she—” “Jared! That is enough!” Natalie kicked the door open, her sharp voice cutting him off. “How I treat Lester is none of your business. Stop trying to poison his mind!” I looked at her, then silently touched my ear, turning on the earbud. Immediately, the future Natalie’s voice slithered back into my mind. Thank god you got here in time! Jared is so incredibly stupid. He thought confessing the truth would save Lester from getting hurt, without realizing that Lester is a ruthless sociopath who doesn’t care about old times! In the future timeline, once I discovered their betrayal, I had lost my mind. I had pushed Jared down a flight of stairs and, in a fit of rage, poured sulfuric acid over his face. Natalie had been the one to send me to prison. And now, she was stopping him from confessing—not to save my feelings, but to protect him from the monster she believed I would become. I slowly withdrew my hand from Jared’s grip. The last traces of my energy seemed to drain into the thin hospital mattress. “Natalie,” I said softly. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Are we still getting married?” Natalie looked puzzled, leaning down to stroke my palm. “What kind of silly question is that? If I don’t marry you, who else would I marry?” But her eyes darted to Jared. There was a lingering, heavy look between them—a silent dialogue they thought I was too blind to read. What is Lester playing at? the future voice wondered. The five-million-dollar mock city hall set is finished today. The actors are trained. Does he want to call it off? Or is he just throwing a tantrum because you shielded Jared at the restaurant instead of him? Natalie’s expression shifted slightly. She knelt by the bed, her face a mask of frantic concern. “Lester, about the restaurant… it was pure instinct. I know how much Jared means to you. I knew that if anything happened to him, you would never forgive yourself. I didn’t think… I just reacted.” She squeezed my hand. “I promise, from now on, I will always protect you first.” A bitter laugh threatened to choke me. What a beautiful, twisted lie. To swear love with her mouth while her body instinctively chose someone else. My mind drifted back to a year ago. My parents had died in a head-on collision. Within the same week, my firm brought in a well-connected executive to take the promotion I had spent five years working for, and I was let go. Overnight, I felt entirely erased from the world. I locked myself in my dark apartment, refusing to see anyone. It was Jared who finally kicked the door off its hinges, staying by my side day and night to keep me breathing. And when my grief turned self-destructive and I reached for a blade, it was Natalie who grabbed my hand, letting the steel slice her own arm instead. “Don’t be afraid, Lester,” she had whispered, her blood dripping onto my floor. “No matter what happens, I will always hold onto you.” And Jared had sworn, “If anyone ever tries to hurt you again, I’ll be the first to make them pay.” Yet here they were, holding the knives. My chest burned with a mixture of grief and fury. Suddenly, Natalie went pale. She gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth, and rushed into the en-suite bathroom. Jared rose instinctively to follow her, then caught himself, darting a guilty glance at me. But the panic in his eyes was impossible to hide. Then, the voice in my ear spoke again. Jared already knows you’re pregnant. He knows Lester is infertile, which is why he convinced you not to use protection. He wanted you to give the baby to Lester so he’d finally have a family. Jared does everything for him, suffers so much, and Lester doesn’t even have the grace to be grateful! The words felt like physical blows. I recalled how Natalie had gained a little weight recently, how her stomach had begun to curve gently. She had laughed it off, claiming she was just stress-eating before the wedding. And I had believed her. Natalie emerged from the bathroom, her face paper-white. Before she could speak, Jared stepped in to cover for her. “Her stomach has been acting up lately,” he said quickly. “Must have been some bad takeout…” “Jared,” I interrupted, my voice quiet. “Do you remember why I can’t have children?” Jared’s face twitched, the color draining from his skin. The ghost of six years ago rose between us like a wall of ice. In our freshman year of college, Jared and I had been cornered in an alley by three thugs. When we fought back, one of them pulled a switchblade, aiming straight for Jared’s chest. I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself over him and took the blade in my lower abdomen. The internal damage was severe. The doctors told me I would never be able to father a child. I had never regretted that sacrifice—until this exact moment. Jared averted his eyes, his voice choked. “I haven’t forgotten, Lester.” Seeing him falter, Natalie rushed over, wrapping her arms around me to steer the conversation away. “Silly,” she murmured. “We don’t need kids. A life with just the two of us is perfect. And if we ever want a family, we can always adopt.” But the future Natalie was already sneering in my ear. Is Lester serious? So what if he can’t reproduce? It’s not like he lost his life! Does he have to throw his injury in Jared’s face every time he wants to guilt-trip him? Jared has spent years punishing himself out of remorse. What more does Lester want from him?! The resentment in my ear and the tender display in front of me fused into a sickening reality. I looked at Natalie’s forearm, where the faint silver line of the scar she’d taken for me still sat. That scar had been the key that unlocked my heart. And now, she used those same hands to touch Jared in the dark. A violent shudder ran through my fingers. Dirty. They were so incredibly dirty. I pushed her away, pulling my knees to my chest. “I’m tired. I want to sleep.” Natalie nodded softly, adjusting my pillows. “I’ll come back tonight to check on you.” Jared stood frozen for a second before silently following her out the door. The moment the door clicked shut, I called a friend in private security. Ten minutes later, a PDF arrived on my phone. Natalie Ward. Seven weeks pregnant. I traced the dates back. It aligned perfectly with the anniversary of my parents’ death. While I was kneeling in the rain at their graves, they were tangled in each other’s sheets. A heavy, suffocating wave of grief threatened to drown me. But I took a deep breath and forced it down. I wouldn’t become the lunatic the future voice warned about. They weren’t worth my sanity. I saved the files, backed up the screenshots, and waited. That evening, Natalie returned with a bag of takeout. “I got us wontons from Joe’s on 4th Street,” she said, setting the bowl in front of me. But as she leaned over, the faint, warm scent of Jared’s woody cologne clung to her sweater. I forced myself to take a bite of a wonton. The moment the flavor hit my tongue, my throat closed. I spat it into a napkin, coughing violently. Natalie panicked, rubbing my back. “What’s wrong? Eat slower!” “Natalie,” I choked out, wiping my mouth. “These are chive wontons. Not shrimp.” Her face went completely rigid. I had a severe, life-threatening allergy to chives. She had known this since our very first date. For two years, she had double-checked every menu, terrified of a mistake. “The restaurant must have messed up the order,” she stammered, her eyes darting around. “I’m so sorry, Lester. I’ll have someone go back and get a new batch.” Her face looked remorseful. But the earbud told a different story. Chive is Jared’s favorite. You mixed up the bags. Since leaving the hospital, Jared has been a wreck. He won’t eat anything. You need to get those wontons to him before his ulcer flares up. He can’t starve. Before I could say a word, Natalie stood up, grabbing her keys. “Actually, Lester, I’ll go myself. I don’t trust the delivery guys to get it right.” She swept out of the room before I could even reply. The steam from the leftover bowl rose slowly into the cold hospital air. I reached up, wiped a single tear from my cheek, and let my lips curl into a cold smile. Natalie. Jared. Since you both decided to discard your humanity, don’t look for mercy from me. On the morning of our scheduled wedding registration, I stepped out of the luxury town car. Jared walked beside me, his hands deep in his pockets, his face pale and drawn. He kept glancing at me, his mouth opening and closing like he was suffocating. “Lester… are you absolutely sure about this? Marriage is… it’s a massive commitment. Maybe you should take some time.” I brushed his hand off my shoulder, my voice ice-cold. “I’ve never been surer. Besides, today is a milestone. I invited some old friends to witness it.” Natalie, walking ahead of us, didn’t suspect a thing. The “county courthouse” she had driven us to was bustling with people—couples holding hands, families smiling, even a few bitter-looking couples in the divorce wing. If I hadn’t already known the truth, I would have believed it. But this entire building was a hollow stage, populated by actors she had paid to play their parts. Just as we were about to walk up to the registry window, Jared muttered that he felt sick and headed toward the restrooms. The moment he left, Natalie’s phone vibrated. The screen read Secretary Parker. She had hired a new personal assistant named Parker last year. When I had asked about it, she claimed she did it to keep her work life separate from us. Now, I knew the truth. Natalie slipped away to answer the call. I pressed the earbud into my ear and tapped the record button on my phone, capturing the feed. “Natalie, we have to stop this,” Jared’s voice pleaded, raw and trembling. “If Lester ever finds out this is all a lie, it will kill him.” “We can’t stop, Jared,” Natalie’s voice was firm, completely devoid of her usual sweetness. “We’re already legally married. This time, I’m giving you and our child the life you deserve. As for Lester… we just have to make sure he never finds out.” Hearing the confirmation of their legal marriage tore a physical ache through my chest. The betrayal settled into my bones, hardening into a quiet, relentless rage. Natalie hung up and walked back to me, a radiant smile on her face. “Lester, they’re ready for us.” I let her take my hand and lead me to the counter. In my ear, the future Natalie was still screaming. Listen to me! Lester is a psychopath! He will destroy Jared’s life if you let this go on! Natalie reached up, gently smoothing the lapel of my suit. “You look so handsome today, Lester. I promise to make you the happiest man alive.” Ahead of us, the clerk signaled for us to step closer. You can have Lester! the future voice wailed. But I need Jared. I want him safe. He lost everything because of Lester. You cannot let him discover the truth! Natalie took her seat at the counter, her fingers tightening around mine. The clerk reviewed our papers and looked up. “Confirming for the record: you are both entering this marriage voluntarily, of your own free will, with no legal impediments?” “Yes,” Natalie said softly. “Perfect. I will now apply the official seal. Your marriage is legally binding.” The heavy metal embosser came down with a sharp clack, leaving a raised seal on the paper. Natalie grabbed the document, throwing her arms around my neck. “Lester! We’re finally husband and wife!” Once, I had dreamed of this exact moment. Now, I peeled her arms off my neck. I took the red leather-bound certificate from her hands. I turned toward the entrance, where three of my former college classmates were walking in: two plainclothes detectives and a senior investigative reporter. “I believe we have all the physical evidence we need now,” I said clearly, my voice echoing through the silent room. “Natalie Ward is already legally married. I am filing charges for bigamy.”

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Coming home after a grueling three-month business trip, the first thing I noticed was that my front door lock had been changed. I knocked twice. A middle-aged woman, her face twisted in a scowl, yanked the door open. She was wearing my silk pajamas. “What the hell is your problem?” she snapped. “If you wake up my grandson, you’re paying for it.” Through the crack in the door, I caught a glimpse of my custom-designed, sprawling living room. The European oak floors were covered in sunflower seed shells and unwashed laundry. In the center of it all, a feral-looking boy of about five was violently scribbling with a black Sharpie all over a handbag that cost more than a luxury sedan. My blood ran cold. “This is my home,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Who are you?” The woman froze for a split second. Then, she dramatically hurled the greasy bowl she was holding onto the hardwood floor and began to scream at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help! Somebody grab the homewrecker!” Her shrill voice echoed down the corridor, instantly drawing out the neighbors. The master bedroom door swung open. A strange, shirtless man sauntered out, scratching his stomach. He took one look at me and smirked. “Wow, you actually had the nerve to show up?” he drawled. “I told you a hundred times, I paid cash for this penthouse. It’s for my mother.” He pointed a finger at me. “You can throw a tantrum all you want, but you aren’t getting a single square foot of my property. Now get the hell out of here.” I stood there, looking at this mother-son duo, their faces dripping with unwarranted righteous indignation. I listened to the murmurs and insults of the neighbors gathering in the hall. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I took a slow step back, pulled out my phone, and dialed. “911? I need to report a home invasion.” I kept my eyes locked on the shirtless man. “Yes. Intruders have barricaded themselves inside my property. They are actively destroying high-value assets. The estimated damages are exceeding three million dollars. Send officers immediately.” … 1 I had been running on fumes for ninety days straight. When my red-eye flight finally landed, I bypassed the office and headed straight for my downtown high-rise. This place—a three-thousand-square-foot penthouse with half a million dollars in custom finishes—was my sanctuary. I had sacrificed five years of my twenties to the corporate meat grinder for it. I had drained my savings, working nights, weekends, and holidays, just to hold the deed to this sky-high fortress. During the last three months on the road, through endless hotel rooms and board meetings, the only thing that kept me from breaking was the thought of coming home. I just wanted to sleep in my own bed. Standing in front of my door, dragging my carry-on, I was looking down at my phone, firing off one last email. Pure muscle memory guided my thumb to the smart lock. But the texture was wrong. Instead of the sleek, cool glass of the biometric scanner, my thumb hit a chunky, rubbery button. I whipped my head up. The brushed steel door of my apartment had been violently retrofitted with the ugliest, cheapest keypad deadbolt you could find at a hardware store. My heart did a painful stutter-step. I’m on the wrong floor, I thought wildly. I took a step back and looked at the brass plaque. 1801. This was my home. I knocked twice, hard. When no one answered, I pulled out my phone to call the building’s concierge. But before it could ring, the door creaked open. A wave of nauseating air hit me—a suffocating mix of stale grease, sour milk, and unwashed bodies. I literally choked on the smell, stumbling back a step. Standing in the doorway was a heavy-set woman in her mid-fifties. She was shoveling some sort of greasy, microwaved chili into her mouth from a chipped ceramic bowl. But it wasn’t the smell or the bowl that made my vision blur with rage. It was what she was wearing. She was wrapped in a La Perla silk robe—a ridiculously expensive housewarming gift I had bought for myself. The tags were still hanging off the collar. She rolled her eyes, chewing open-mouthed as she looked me up and down. “What’s the banging for?” she demanded. “It’s barely morning. You wake my grandson up, you think you can afford to deal with me?” I stared at the robe. I stared at the mutilated doorframe. A high-pitched ringing started in my ears. “Who are you?” I demanded, my voice trembling with an anger so deep it terrified me. “Why are you in my apartment? Who authorized you to change my locks?” “Your apartment?” The woman laughed, a wet, ugly sound. She slammed her spoon into her bowl. “You’re a pretty young thing, but you’re a terrible liar,” she sneered. “This is my son’s condo. Back off and get lost. You smell like the airport, it’s making me sick.” My grip tightened around the handle of my luggage. I leaned to the side, looking past her shoulder into the apartment. It took one second for my heart to shatter. My living room. My beautiful, minimalist, meticulously curated living room. The imported Venetian plaster walls were smeared with something dark and sticky. The custom micro-cement floors were buried under a carpet of crushed chips, dirt, and sticky puddles. Several trash bags, leaking God-knows-what, were piled in the corner, staining the baseboards. Right in the middle of the room, they had dragged in a folding table. It was covered in rotting takeout containers. Flies were buzzing lazily in the air. But the killing blow was in the corner. A large cardboard box—a shipment of my own designer clothes and vintage bags I had sent ahead of my return—had been ripped open. A grubby little boy, maybe five or six, was squatting on the floor. In his hand was a thick black permanent marker. He was aggressively scribbling circles all over a vintage, limited-edition Chanel flap bag. The quilted white leather was already obliterated by a massive, ugly black stain. “Stop!” I didn’t think. I shoved past the heavy woman, sprinting the two steps into the room, and snatched the marker out of the kid’s hand. The boy gasped, staring at his empty hand for a second. Then, he threw himself backward onto the ruined floor, kicking his legs and wailing like a siren. “Gramma! The bad lady hit me! She stole my toy! Kill her!” The woman in the doorway went rigid. She hurled her bowl onto the floor, splattering greasy red chili everywhere, and lunged at me. She shoved me hard in the chest, scooping the screaming child into her arms. “You lay hands on a baby?!” she shrieked, pointing a thick, trembling finger in my face. “You shameless little tramp, I’ll tear your hair out!” She backed toward the open door, pivoting to face the hallway, and let out a blood-curdling scream. “Help! Help! Homewrecker! Come look, everybody! The little tramp is here beating on kids!” It was just past nine in the morning. Luxury buildings have great soundproofing, but nothing stops a banshee wail with an open door. Within two minutes, the hallway was populated. The couple from 1802, the guy from 1803, and even a few older women who had been waiting for the elevator crowded around. “What on earth is going on?” “Jesus, these girls today have no shame.” “Dressed so nice, but acting like a common thug. Hitting a child? Disgusting.” The whispers swelled into a chorus of judgment. My whole body was shaking. The adrenaline was a toxic rush in my veins. I pointed to the ruined Chanel bag on the floor, then at the squalor around me. “Are you out of your minds?!” I yelled, my voice cracking. “Look around! This is my property! My name is on the deed!” I turned to the neighbors. “This woman broke in! She is trespassing, and she is letting a child destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of my personal property!” At the mention of the deed, a flicker of panic crossed the older woman’s face. But she quickly masked it, emboldened by the gossiping crowd. “Don’t listen to a word this psycho says!” she cried out. “My son, Wayne, paid cash for this place! It’s his!” She clutched her chest dramatically. “He bought it for me to retire in! This… this whore has been stalking my son, demanding he put her name on the deed! He said no, so she broke in here today to rob us!” “Lord have mercy,” one of the neighbors muttered. “Hey, keep it down out here!” The heavy door to the master bedroom clicked open.

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When I moved into my new apartment, I didn’t bother setting up Wi-Fi. It seemed like too much hassle, and my phone’s unlimited hotspot was more than enough for my daily needs. But then Janice Gentry from 603 decided to call me out in the building’s group chat. “The girl in 601—stop leaching off my Wi-Fi. Have some self-respect, will you?” I didn’t reply. She kept up the public rants for an entire month. Soon, the whole building was changing their passwords, avoiding my gaze in the hallway, and collectively freezing me out. I was too tired to explain myself. Until one evening, I casually reached down and switched off the dusty router sitting in my living room corner. Suddenly, the internet for the entire building collapsed. Janice was the first one to knock on my door. “Do… do you actually have internet in there?” I let out a soft laugh. “Who do you think was leaching off whom?” On the day I moved in, before I had even finished unpacking my first box, my phone buzzed. It was an invitation to the building’s group chat. … The landlord had casually added me to the “Emerald Ridge Building 6 Resident Chat” during our final walkthrough. Within two hours of joining, my phone had blown up with over ninety notifications. I scrolled all the way to the top. Every single message was from a user named “Janice Gentry – 603.” “Could the new tenant in 601 please do everyone a favor and stop piggybacking on other people’s Wi-Fi?” “My connection has been painfully slow the past couple of days. I checked my active devices, and there’s a new one logged on. This started the exact day 601 moved in. Where are your manners?” “@601 Resident—I’m talking to you. Are you seeing this?” I read the messages twice, making sure she was actually referring to me. 601. That was my apartment number. I had just arrived. My suitcases were piled in the center of the living room, my bedsheets weren’t even laid out, and I hadn’t even thought about setting up a broadband contract. I was running my laptop entirely off my phone’s personal hotspot. I didn’t reply. I was simply too exhausted to type. But the silence only invited others to chime in. “Are you serious? People still steal Wi-Fi these days?” “Janice, did you report this to the leasing office?” “That’s so cheap. Some people really have no shame.” Not a single person asked me if there had been a misunderstanding. No one suggested that maybe, just maybe, she had the wrong person. I tossed my phone onto the mattress and went back to taping open cardboard boxes. The next morning, as I stepped out to take the trash to the chute, I ran into a woman in her late forties standing outside 603. She had tight, permed curls, wore a silk bathrobe, and was holding a mug of coffee. She looked me up and down. “You the girl from 601?” I nodded. She put a hand on her hip. “Look, I know you saw my messages in the chat. Don’t play dumb. A grown woman leaching off her neighbors’ internet is pathetic. Aren’t you embarrassed?” I stood there, trash bag in hand, looking at her. “I’m not on your network.” “Oh, really? Then why did a new device suddenly show up the day you got here? It was working fine before, and now it drags. If it’s not you, who is it?” “I don’t even have broadband.” “No broadband? Then how are you getting online? Do you think I’m stupid?” I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. I turned and walked toward the elevator. She shouted after me, her voice echoing down the concrete hallway. “Running away? Guilty conscience!” When I got back inside, my eyes drifted to the far corner of my living room. There was a router sitting on a small ledge. It had been there when I moved in, left behind by the previous owner. I hadn’t touched it. The power cord was plugged in, and a thin layer of dust had gathered over the plastic casing. I hadn’t thought twice about it. I used my phone’s data. I had no use for a physical router. That night, the group chat exploded again. Janice posted a screenshot of her router’s connected devices list. “Look at this, neighbors. The device name is literally ‘iPhone-601.’ What’s your excuse now?” I tapped the image to zoom in. The device name on her screen wasn’t mine. My phone’s name was a default alphanumeric sequence that I had never bothered to change. But facts didn’t seem to matter to the group. “Caught red-handed.” “Janice, you should go straight to management.” “People like this shouldn’t be allowed to live in our building.” I backed out of the app and set my phone face down on the table. In the quiet of the dark living room, the green indicator light on the dusty router in the corner blinked slowly. I still didn’t pay it any attention. By the third day, the rumor had solidified into absolute truth. It wasn’t just Janice talking anymore; the story had spread to every floor. “The new girl in 601 is a Wi-Fi thief.” Whenever I ran into neighbors in the elevator, they would immediately look down at their screens, shifting away from me in silence. An older man who lived on the fifth floor—someone who had kindly held the lobby door open for me on moving day—now turned his back to me completely when we shared the elevator. I pressed the button for the lobby. He pressed the button for the garage. When the doors opened, he slipped out without a word. Then my packages started disappearing. I went down to the lobby’s smart locker to retrieve a delivery, but my pickup code came back as invalid. I called the courier, who sounded apologetic. “Someone from your building’s group chat told us there was an active tenant dispute regarding your unit. They instructed us to leave all your parcels at the leasing office.” I had to walk over to the front desk. The young woman behind the counter gave me a long, cold look before sliding my package across the desk. “We’ll be holding your deliveries here from now on,” she said. “The residents on your floor filed a notice.” “A notice about what?” “Just… that there’s some ongoing friction, and they’d prefer if delivery couriers didn’t linger on your floor.” I took my package and left. There was no point in arguing with her. On the fifth day, Janice pinned a new message in the chat. “Friendly reminder to everyone in Building 6: make sure to change your Wi-Fi passwords immediately. Make them as long and complex as possible. We have a chronic leech on our floor, and who knows whose network she’ll try to hack next.” The replies rolled in like clockwork. “Done and done.” “Changed mine to a sixteen-character code.” “Thanks for the heads-up, Janice. Can’t trust anyone these days.” The entire building—over thirty units—collectively changed their network security. All because of me. A person who didn’t even have an internet subscription. On the seventh day, the leasing office finally knocked on my door. A man and a woman in matching company polos stood in the hallway, clutching clipboards. “Hello, ma’am. We’ve received several formal complaints regarding unauthorized network access from your unit.” “I haven’t accessed anyone’s network.” “We understand your position, but given the volume of complaints, we have to file a formal report and conduct a routine check.” “Who filed the complaints?” The man flipped through his printouts. “Units 603, 605, 502, 503… eight units in total.” Eight units. I had been here for a single week, and eight of my neighbors had reported me. “Have you actually checked whether I have internet running in here?” The two employees exchanged a brief, awkward glance. “We don’t handle technical network diagnostics,” the woman said. “We’re just documenting the reports. If you feel there’s been a mistake, we suggest you speak directly with your neighbors to clear the air.” “Speak with them?” I looked at her. She didn’t meet my eyes. They left shortly after. I shut the door and stood in the middle of my quiet living room. In the corner, the green light on the old router kept blinking. I walked over, knelt down, and turned the device over to look at the sticker on the back. Model number, serial number, default SSID, and default password. The default Wi-Fi name printed on the label was: “EMERALD-B6”. Emerald Ridge, Building 6. I stood up, pulled out my phone, and opened my network settings. There it was. Full bars. “EMERALD-B6”. I stared at the name for ten seconds. The strongest signal in the entire building was coming directly from this dusty little box in my corner. The previous tenant had evidently set it up, plugged it in, and left it running. I had never connected to it. When I moved in, I had simply relied on my unlimited hotspot without ever opening my Wi-Fi menu. But the router had remained active. It had been broadcasting its open, default signal to the entire building. I opened my phone’s browser and typed in the default gateway IP address. I tried the factory-set username and password: admin and admin. The previous tenant hadn’t even bothered to change those. The admin dashboard loaded instantly. I clicked over to the “Connected Devices” tab. The list spanned three full screens. Twenty-three active connections. Phones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, streaming sticks, smart speakers. I scrolled down. The names were incredibly specific. “Janice’s iPad,” “Janice’s Husb Phone,” “Living Room Smart TV,” “Marilyn’s Huawei – 605″… Some of them had literally put their full names and apartment numbers on their devices. Twenty-three devices, representing over a dozen households. The entire building was piggybacking on my router. I clicked over to the bandwidth usage statistics. The heaviest data consumer, by far, was a cluster of five devices belonging to Unit 603. Janice’s family. They had used 280 gigabytes of data over the past month alone. Second place was 502, with four devices and 190 gigabytes. Third was 605, with three devices and 160 gigabytes. I scrolled back through my WhatsApp history to Janice’s angry messages. When she had ranted about “a new device showing up on my Wi-Fi,” she had been looking at the admin panel of my router. She had been connected to my network for so long that she genuinely believed it was her own. She was publicly crucifying me for stealing her internet, while her entire household had been leaching off mine for weeks. No, probably for months—maybe even years, dating back to the previous tenant. I set my phone down. The apartment was perfectly still. Outside, the distant sound of someone walking their dog drifted through the window. I looked at the router. The little green light kept blinking. I left it plugged in. There was no rush. The next afternoon, I ran into Janice in the elevator again. She let out a sharp, theatrical sigh, keeping her eyes glued to her phone screen. “Changing the password didn’t even help. It’s still lagging,” she muttered to the woman from 605, loud enough for me to hear every word. “Some people are just relentless. You lock the door, and they still find a way to creep in.” The woman from 605 glanced at me nervously. She didn’t say anything, but she took a deliberate half-step closer to Janice. When the elevator reached the lobby, I stepped out first. Behind me, Janice’s voice drifted out. “See that? The guilty ones never have anything to say for themselves.” I walked out of the building. The afternoon sun was warm against my face. When I returned, I checked the router’s admin panel again. Twenty-three devices. Still active. They had changed the passwords on their own individual routers upstairs. But they had never changed the connection settings on their phones and tablets, which remained seamlessly logged into “EMERALD-B6” because no one actually knew where the signal was coming from. They probably assumed “EMERALD-B6” was some kind of complimentary community network provided by the property. Not a single person had stop to consider that the source was apartment 601. I took several screenshots of the dashboard. The device list, the data usage rankings, the connection uptimes. Then I locked my screen and laid the phone on the table. Still, I waited. In the group chat, Janice posted again: “@LeasingOffice is there an update on the 601 investigation? This needs to be handled. Don’t let her drag this out.” The leasing agent replied: “We are looking into the matter.” Someone else chimed in: “Exactly. We shouldn’t tolerate this kind of behavior.” I muted the chat. In the corner of my room, the green light kept flashing. Twenty-three devices, quietly drinking up my bandwidth. Janice didn’t stop there. By the second week, she changed her tactics. Trash started appearing outside my door. The first day, it was a plastic bag filled with greasy food containers, left right in the center of my welcome mat. I picked it up and threw it down the chute without saying a word. The second day, there were two bags. The third day, it was a leaking cardboard box with three words scrawled across the side in thick black Sharpie: HAVE SOME SHAME. I took a photo of the box, then disposed of it. On the fourth day, when I stepped out in the morning, I found a printed sheet of paper taped to the hallway wall next to the elevator. “ATTENTION RESIDENTS: The tenant in Unit 601 has been chronically stealing network bandwidth from neighbors. Despite multiple warnings, she refuses to stop. Please secure your personal information.” It was signed: The Tenants of the 6th Floor. There were only three apartments on the sixth floor. 601 was me, 603 was Janice, and 605 was Marilyn. “The Tenants of the 6th Floor” was just the two of them. I peeled the paper off the wall, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it in the trash. When I came back that afternoon, a fresh copy was already taped in its place. The text was identical, but someone had added a handwritten note at the bottom: Cc’d to the Tenant Association and Management. I left it there. I let it hang. That night, Janice was back in the chat. “Just so everyone knows, I’ve officially filed a report with the neighborhood tenant association regarding the Wi-Fi thief in 601. We can’t let this slide. If she’s stealing internet today, who knows what she’ll steal tomorrow.” A neighbor replied: “Thanks for taking charge, Janice.” “Agreed. We need to look out for each other.” “My kid’s online classes have been freezing up lately. I bet she’s the reason why.” Out of thirty households, not a single person suggested taking a breath to look into the facts. Not one. By the third week, the tenant association actually sent someone. A woman in her mid-fifties named Martha arrived at my door, wearing a volunteer lanyard and a friendly but concerned expression. “Hi, dear. I’m Martha, the building’s neighborhood liaison. Some of your neighbors have raised concerns about your internet usage, and I wanted to see if we could chat about it.” “I’m not using anyone’s internet.” “Well, the reports we’ve received are quite specific. I just think it would be best if we could all find a way to get along and avoid any unnecessary tension.” “I don’t have a broadband contract,” I said plainly. “I use my phone’s cellular hotspot.” Martha peered past my shoulder into the apartment, her eyes scanning the living room. “Well, maybe just try talking to them? If there’s a misunderstanding, it’s always best to clear it up.” “I tried. Nobody cares to listen.” Martha gave a soft, helpless sigh. “Well, try not to hold a grudge. We all have to live in the same building, after all.” She turned and walked away. As I went to close the door, I heard the faint click of the lock next door at 603. Janice had been listening. I walked back into my living room and pulled up the router admin panel on my phone. The connected devices had jumped from twenty-three to twenty-five. Two new devices had joined. The new names on the list were “Martha’s iPhone” and “Association-Tablet.” During the ten minutes Martha had spent standing in my doorway, her phone and work tablet had automatically discovered and connected to my open, high-speed network. I couldn’t help but smile. I took a screenshot and saved it. My photo library now contained sixteen distinct screenshots. Device logs, data consumption tables, connection histories—all organized chronologically by date. I pulled up my contacts list and found the customer service number my landlord had left me. I dialed. “Hi, I’d like to verify the account details and billing status for my address, please. Could you email a formal statement to my account?” “Of course, ma’am. Please provide your address and the last four digits of the primary ID on file.” I gave her the details. When the call ended, I sat quietly on the sofa, staring at the router. The green light continued to blink. Twenty-five devices, resting peacefully on my connection. Almost time. By the fourth week, Janice did something that pushed things past the point of quiet tolerance. I went downstairs to grab a food delivery. A small group of residents was gathered near the entrance—Frank from 502, a young couple from 503, and Janice. The moment I stepped out of the elevator, their eyes locked onto me. Janice stepped forward, blocking the path to the delivery lockers, her arms crossed over her chest. “Perfect timing,” she said, turning to the others before looking back at me. “601, let’s settle this right now.” “Settle what?” “Are you going to look us in the eye and honestly claim you aren’t stealing our Wi-Fi?” Frank chimed in, his voice sounding more disappointed than angry. “Young lady, we all know what’s going on. If you’re going through a rough patch financially, just say so. There’s no need to sneak around.” The husband from 503 remained quiet, but his wife gave his sleeve a gentle tug, and they both took a small step backward. I looked at Janice. “I’ve told you multiple times. I am not on your network.” “Oh, please!” Janice scoffed, looking at the neighbors for approval. “Then how do you explain being online? You admit you don’t have a contract here. What are you doing on your laptop all day? Just staring at a blank screen?” “I use my phone’s cellular data.” “Cellular data?” Janice laughed. “In this building? With our reception? Who actually believes that?” Frank shook his head. “Data plans are expensive. No young person is relying on that for everything.” I didn’t answer. Janice took another step closer. “You can deny it all you want, but I’ve already spoken to management. They’re coming to inspect your unit’s connection. Let’s see what you have to say then.” “Let them check.” “Don’t act so smug.” “Just make sure you’re there when they finish,” I said. I walked past her, retrieved my meal from the locker, and turned back toward the elevator. Janice yelled after me, “Keep running! We all know you’re guilty!” I stepped into the elevator and let the doors slide shut. The warm steam of my dinner rose through the paper bag. My phone vibrated in my hand. An email had arrived. It was an official account confirmation from the internet service provider. The document listed the registered owner, the billing address—Apartment 601, Emerald Ridge Building 6—and the service details. Account Activation: Three years ago. Plan: Gigabit Business Fiber. Billing Status: Prepaid annually; account active and fully paid through next June. I didn’t know what the previous owner had done for a living, but he had installed a commercial-grade fiber line. When he moved out, he had simply left the prepaid service active. When I bought the apartment, the line had come with the property. The router was his, too. The default password had never been changed, and its powerful signal reached every corner of the building. I took a screenshot of the email, adding it to the folder on my computer that now contained twenty-seven images. Back in my apartment, I sat at my desk and organized the files. The first screenshot: Day two of moving in, showing twenty-three connected devices. The last screenshot: Today, showing twenty-five. In between were weeks of bandwidth logs, device names, and connection times. And finally, the official letter from the provider. I saved the folder to my desktop under the name “Records.” My phone buzzed again. It was the group chat. Janice had posted: “Confronted 601 today. Still denying everything. Some people are just pathological. Don’t expect her to ever do the right thing.” The responses followed immediately. “Forget it. You can’t reason with people like that.” “If management won’t do anything, we’ll just have to keep freezing her out.” “Unbelievable.” I set my phone screen-down on the desk. I walked over to the corner of the room, knelt down, and watched the small green light flicker in the shadow of the cabinet. Not tonight. Not tomorrow, either. I would wait until she had pushed every single neighbor onto her side, until she was absolutely certain of her victory. And then, I would turn it off. The next morning, the leasing office called. “Hello, ma’am. Regarding the ongoing network complaints from your neighbors, we need to schedule a brief in-unit inspection. When would be a convenient time for you?” “I’m free all day.” “Would three o’clock this afternoon work?” “Yes.” At precisely three, Toby and his colleague arrived. Toby was holding a small handheld network tester. “We just need to verify if there’s an active line running into your wall jacks,” he explained. “Go ahead.” I stepped aside, and they walked in. Toby knelt by the baseboard, plugged his tester into the ethernet port, and waited for the lights to blink. “We have a strong signal here,” he said, turning to look at his colleague before looking up at me. “Your unit does have an active broadband connection.” “I know.” “Oh?” The female colleague blinked, looking confused. “You knew? But you told us before that you hadn’t set up internet…” “I said I didn’t set it up. The previous owner did. It’s a prepaid yearly plan, active through next summer.” The two of them exchanged a silent, stunned look. Toby’s eyes drifted to the old router in the corner. “Is that router connected to the line?” “Yes. It was here when I moved in. I haven’t touched it.” “And it’s currently turned on?” “It’s been plugged in and running the entire time.” Toby walked over, kneeling down to look closer. “Is the Wi-Fi network named ‘EMERALD-B6’?” “See for yourself.” He pulled out his phone, opened his network list, and found the SSID with maximum signal strength. When he stood back up, the color had completely drained from his face. “This network… our leasing office computer has been running on this exact signal.” The woman leaned over to look at his screen, her expression instantly turning to one of sheer panic.

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