My husband finally agrees to a family portrait for our daughter’s fifth birthday, and I’m so giddy I book the most exclusive studio in the city before sunrise. Lumina Elite Studios. Six months waitlist. I pulled strings. I’m sitting in front of the vanity in a custom Valentino gown, makeup flawless, hair styled to perfection. The lights are warm. The photographer is ready. But Julian and Lily are nowhere to be found. The studio’s closing time comes and goes. My phone finally buzzes. Julian:Forgot to mention. Company arranged a year-end trip. Took Lily with me. Back in a week. Then a voice note from my five-year-old daughter, all giggles and sunshine: “Mommy, the trip is sooooo fun! We’ll take pictures with you when we get back, okay?” I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I just smile, type back a cheerful “Sounds good, sweetie!” and then open a different chat. To Logan Chase. CEO of Chase Holdings. My oldest friend. Also, technically, Julian’s boss. Me: Funny. Why didn’t you tell your biggest shareholder you were sending the whole company on vacation? Three seconds later, my phone rings. “What vacation?” Logan’s voice is sharp, baffled. “Chloe, are you dreaming? It’s Q4. We’re squeezing blood from stones over here. Nobody’s on vacation except Julian. He requested PTO last week. The rest of us are pulling all-nighters.” My fingers tighten around the phone. “Got it.” “Whoa, hey, wait. Chloe, what’s going on?” I press my lips together. In the mirror, I see a woman in a ten-thousand-dollar gown, sitting alone in a studio she rented out for the whole afternoon. A walking punchline. “Come pick me up,” I say flatly, sending him the address. “Five minutes. Don’t move.” I sit frozen at the vanity as the staff start packing equipment. I can feel their eyes shift. The whispers earlier were envious. Look at her, must be nice to book the whole place out. Now they’re something uglier. Pity. Naked, suffocating pity. “Bet she got stood up.” “Poor thing. Money can’t buy a husband who shows up.” The studio manager appears beside me, holding a thick leather portfolio against her chest. Her smile is too soft, too careful. “Ma’am, please don’t be too upset. I’m sure your husband had an emergency. Why don’t you take a look at our portfolio? Pick a style for next time.” She slides the album in front of me. I’m too numb to refuse. I flip the cover. And every cell in my body turns to ice. The first page is the studio’s flagship piece. A massive, gilded family portrait. Cream backdrop. A man in a crisp navy suit, smiling like he’s in a cologne ad. A woman in white silk, glowing. And between them, a little girl in a pink tulle dress, clutching a bouquet of daisies, her eyes crescent-moon happy. That little girl is my daughter. That man is my husband. And the woman… The manager mistakes my frozen face for awe. She launches into her sales pitch, practically beaming. “Oh, you have excellent taste! That’s our signature family. Such a lovely couple. They’ve come every year since the baby’s first month.” “The husband’s a CEO at some Fortune 500. Seven figures, easy. Gorgeous man. And the wife is a total sweetheart. Devoted to her husband and daughter. The little girl is a natural in front of the camera, our whole staff adores her.” Every word is a knife sliding between my ribs. Six years ago, I quietly funded Julian’s career. I hid him inside Logan’s company so no one would push him around. I anonymously invested millions to make sure he became Top Performer of the Year, then VP, then CEO. And every time I tried to take a picture of Lily, she’d scream and hide behind Julian. “Mommy, GO AWAY! I HATE pictures!” Julian would always smirk and say, “Babe, drop it. She doesn’t like your photography. Honestly, neither do I.” She doesn’t hate pictures. She hates pictures with me. My eyes drift back to the woman in white. At first glance, just familiar. But now… Vivian Rose. The poor scholarship girl I funded through four years of college. The one I personally called in favors to place at a Fortune 500 firm after she couldn’t land a job. I gave that girl a degree. A career. And apparently, my husband. And my daughter. “Ma’am? Ma’am, do you like this style? If so, we can…” A roar of an engine outside. Tires screeching. Then footsteps pounding through the lobby. “CHLOE!” Logan bursts in, hair wild, leather jacket half-zipped. His eyes sweep over me, the empty studio, the Valentino gown. “Damn, girl. Look at you. Red carpet ready.” He grins, then frowns. “Where’s Julian? Where’s Lily? Thought you were doing the family portrait thing?” I close the album. Slowly. Carefully. Because I refuse to let him see the picture inside. “Chloe? Why do you look like that?” I lift my chin and smile. A smile sharp enough to cut glass. “Take me to The Grand Sovereign. Apparently, my daughter’s having a birthday party tonight.”

Logan doesn’t ask questions. He just floors it. The Grand Sovereign is the most exclusive hotel in the city. It also happens to be owned by Logan. We pull up to the entrance, and the first thing I see is a massive welcome banner outside the ballroom. The same family photo from the studio. Vivian curled into Julian’s side. Lily perched on Julian’s shoulders. And in glittering gold script: “Happy 6th Birthday, Our Beloved Lily!” Six. Lily is five. I read it three times. My brain refuses to compute. Logan’s jaw locks. He’s the owner of this entire building, and someone rented his ballroom to throw a party mocking his best friend. He moves to grab the nearest manager, but I touch his arm. “Not yet.” I push the ballroom doors open. Music. Champagne. Two hundred faces turning at once. Most of them are Julian’s employees. I don’t show up at his office often, but I’ve dropped off lunch a few times. Some of them recognize me. “Oh my God, isn’t that Mrs. Miller? The trophy wife?” Someone laughs. The whispers crash over me like a tidal wave. “What’s SHE doing here? On a night like this?” “I heard she doesn’t even work. Just spends Julian’s money all day.” “Look at that dress. Probably swiped his black card to buy it.” Julian is on stage. White tux. Long ceremonial knife in his hand. Vivian’s hand on top of his, both of them poised over a five-tier cake. The picture of a perfect couple. He sees me. And he doesn’t even flinch. He just frowns, like I’m a stain on his rug. “Chloe? What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay home. Don’t embarrass me.” He doesn’t even step down from the stage. He scolds me from above, like I’m a misbehaving dog. I keep walking. “Embarrass you?” My voice is hoarse. I point at the banner. “Julian. Is Lily five years old, or six?” His eyes flicker. Just once. Then he doubles down, chin high. “What’s the difference? Five, six, who cares?” That’s when Vivian glides forward. Custom gown. Champagne flute. Demure smile. The very picture of grace. “Chloe, sweetie, since you’re here, why don’t you grab a seat in the back? Tonight’s a celebration. Lily’s birthday, and my promotion. Don’t ruin it for everyone.” A small body launches itself at me before I can answer. A shove against my hip. Hard. “Get AWAY from her!” My five-year-old daughter. The girl I rocked through fevers, whose first word was Mama, whose tiny fingers I held while she learned to walk. She’s wearing a princess dress. And she’s looking at me like I’m her enemy. “You can’t bully Mama Vivian! Mama Vivian says you’re a useless loser! She says you’re just dragging Daddy down!” Something inside my chest cracks clean in half. “Lily…” My voice breaks. “Baby, I’m your mama…” “NO YOU’RE NOT!” She wraps her arms around Vivian’s leg and tilts her chin up like a queen. “Mama Vivian is my real mama! She’s pretty and rich and buys me everything! She says I have her smart blood, NOT some loser’s blood like yours!” The room erupts. Laughter. Howling, vicious laughter. “Oh my GOD, she’s been raising another woman’s kid?!” “Five years of changing diapers for nothing!That’s gotta be the cuck of the century!” Every employee who ever called me Mrs. Miller with a polite smile is now twisting the knife to suck up to Julian and Vivian. Six years ago, I was funding Vivian’s senior year of college. That same year, Julian “happened” to meet me at a coffee shop, weeping about how his ex broke his heart, how he just wanted a stable, gentle woman to settle down with. It was a setup. From day one. They needed a free meal ticket. A dumb, rich nanny. They picked me. And my own daughter… I already know the answer to that one. “Julian.” I drag in a breath. My voice is steel. “So these last five years. Was all of it an act?” Logan can’t take it anymore. He shoves to the front of the crowd and jabs a finger at the row of executives. “You blind idiots! Look at me! Look at me and tell me you don’t recognize who I…” “SECURITY!” Julian cuts him off, irritated, like Logan is a fly buzzing in his ear. “Get these two psychos OUT of here. Especially the bum next to Chloe. What’s he, your broke cousin? Dressed like a trailer park reject.” The employees are practically vibrating to impress him. Before security can move, three big middle-managers are already rolling up their sleeves and circling us, grinning like wolves.

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It was the eighteenth time the Castellanos and the Marchettis tried to put me and Dante at the altar, and once again every made man in the ballroom walked out behind my adopted sister. My mother called. Impatient. Not even pretending to care. “Mirella’s stomach is acting up again. We’re flying the Family doctor in. Just cancel, you’ve done it enough times, you know what to say to the room.” Then Gianna, my maid of honor, my blood sister since we were six, clicked her tongue at me through the phone. “You serious right now, Aria? Your ceremony matters more than Mirella nearly hitting the floor? When did you get this cold?” And Dante? My fiancé, the Don of the Castellano Family, didn’t even bother dialing. Just a text. Six words. Ceremony’s off. We’ll talk later. I read those six words over and over. He’d used that same line on me eighteen times. A cold laugh slipped out before I could stop it. And just like that, I felt nothing. Eighteen times. Enough. I walked out of the bridal suite, straight past the wall of amethyst violets. Mirella’s favorite flower. Never mine. The whole hallway reeked of her. The family chapel was at the end of the hall. I went inside and shut the door behind me. I dropped to my knees in front of the cross. Three days, I whispered. That’s all I want. Three days to cut every one of them off, and let them lose every damn thing they got because of me. The candles flickered once. Somewhere far away, I swear something answered back. I picked up the microphone and walked onto the engagement stage. Every inch of it draped in amethyst violets. Mirella’s favorite. Funny how that always worked out. “My apologies, everyone. Tonight’s ceremony is canceled.” The room of capos, consiglieres, and Family wives traded looks. Not one of them looked surprised. “Knew it. Eighteen ceremonies and not one’s gone through. If I were her, I’d have stopped showing my face years ago.” “The whole Marchetti house has bent the knee to that little sister for years. If I were Aria, I’d have stepped aside, kissed Dante goodbye, and at least walked out with my name still meaning something.” “Oh, honey. You don’t get it. Every time Don Dante’s tried to walk away from her, something happens. Last spring the Family lost three container ships off the coast of Naples. Two billion in product, gone overnight. The spring before that, the Atlantic City casino burned to the ground. He’s tested it more than once. That’s the only reason he hasn’t put her on a plane back to Sicily for good.” “So she’s, what, some kind of charm?” “Call her whatever you want. The man is stuck with her, and the whole East Coast knows it.” I walked off the stage with their stares on my back. I heard every word. The corner of my mouth ticked up. This time, a few burned ships were going to be the smallest of their problems. I changed out of the gown and drove back to the Marchetti estate to grab my things and disappear before sunrise. But the second I stepped into the foyer, the front gates opened and the whole convoy came rolling in. Three black SUVs, a dozen Family soldiers, and Mirella in the middle of all of them, leaning on Dante’s arm like she’d just walked out of a hospital instead of brunch. The moment they saw me, every smile in the foyer dropped. Dante’s eyes went black. “Aria. You canceled and didn’t give the room a single reason. Now every Family from here to Sicily is going to be whispering it was Mirella again. Do you understand what that does to my name?” My father scoffed. Didn’t even look up. “You really screwed up this time, Aria. Every other cancellation, you cleaned it up yourself. I never had to lift a finger. Get on the phone. Call the columnists, call the wives, call every gossip we own, and tell them the truth. Tell them you were being a brat.” Gianna already had her phone out. “I’ll start working the wives. By morning every Family on the coast will be saying Aria threw a tantrum and walked out. Nobody will be saying Mirella’s name.” I didn’t say a word. I just stood there and watched them. Two more nights. That’s all I needed. “Aria. Are you listening? I’m telling you straight. If you don’t fix this, I can’t promise when the next ceremony happens. Or if it happens at all.” Dante stopped right in front of me. Voice sharp. Done with me. And then Mirella finally opened her mouth, voice soft as silk. “It’s all my fault. I came between Dante and my sister. Blame me for everything.” “There are still a few good dates left this month. Please. Don’t push the ceremony back any further.” She didn’t even finish before she started coughing. Dante crossed the foyer and rubbed her back like she was made of glass. “It’s not your fault, sweetheart. Don’t even think about it. Your sister can’t live without me. We could put this off another year and nothing would change.” “Then you’re the one who doesn’t get it.” That was the first thing I said since I walked in. Every head in the room snapped toward me. I lifted the bag in my hand. “I’m leaving.” The words barely left my mouth. The next second, a sharp crack split the air. The slap echoed through the whole foyer.

I tipped my head and let out a bitter laugh. My mother’s hand was still shaking from the slap. “You’ve got the nerve to keep pushing me? After everything we’ve done for you? This is what we get?” “You want to walk out? Where? You think the whole Family won’t talk? You think they won’t say we threw you out like trash?” She was screaming by the end, voice cracking. “I should’ve never had you, Aria. Not one damn day of peace since Mirella came home. Not one.” The taste of blood spread across my tongue. I ran my tongue along the corner of my lip. Yeah. Every other time, I would have made a scene. Because I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how Mirella smashed my father’s antique pistol and somehow I was the one who broke it. I didn’t get how the security cameras caught her tripping on the staircase, and they still swore I pushed her. I didn’t get how I bought a bouquet of lilies, she turned out to be allergic, and suddenly I was a bully. This wasn’t the first time my mother had hit me. The last time was two days ago. Mirella wanted to wear my engagement gown and I said no. She fainted on the spot. My mother shoved me into the wall and took a pair of scissors to the custom gown I’d waited six months for. Mirella was tearing us apart, and we were almost done. So yeah. I used to scream. I used to drag every soldier and capo into the foyer and beg someone, anyone, to tell me I wasn’t losing my mind. Not this time. The truth was, I’d always brought this Family good fortune. Every single one of them. The day after I was born, the Marchettis pulled a port deal out of nowhere that yanked the Family back from the edge and made my father the most feared Don on the East Coast. His stage-two liver cancer cleared the same week. Every doctor in New York said it was impossible. Gianna was nothing but a forgettable kid from a forgettable little Family before she met me. Once she started running around with me, she grew into the kind of beauty that turned every head in a room. Landed every audition. Won Best Actress at twenty-two. Became the most bankable face in the country. And Dante. He was nobody back then. A teenager running cigarettes and stolen watches out of the back of a flea market in Queens. Cops chased him. Older crews beat him bloody. He slept on a cot in his cousin’s shop. Until the night he found me wandering lost down by the docks and walked me home. I fell for him before we made it back to the gate. After that, every move he made hit gold. Built his own crew. Never lost a deal. By thirty, he was Don of the Castellano Family, with his hands in half the ports from Boston to Miami. For twenty years, this whole Family treated me like the sun rose and set on me. Dante looked at me like I was the only thing keeping his heart beating. They got everything they ever wanted. Then Mirella was brought home. And every last one of them changed. My father’s voice went cold. He didn’t even glance at me. “Take it all back. The dress. The earrings. The watch. Pull every diamond off her wrist and her neck. Not one Marchetti thread walks out that door with her.” “You want out, Aria? Go. But don’t come crying back. I’ll be on the front page of every paper in the city tomorrow disowning you for good. You won’t carry my name another day.” They didn’t even let me grab a coat before two soldiers shoved me out the front door. Dante exhaled and pressed a key into my hand. “It’s an apartment downtown. Go there. Sleep it off. I’m not doing this with you again, Aria. None of us are.” “I should’ve saved Mirella that night. Not you.” I scoffed. “Then marry her.” He let out a long, exhausted breath. “Don’t start. I told you I’d put a ring on you and I will. That doesn’t change.” “Mirella is sweet. She’s a good girl. I’m not going to stand here and let you treat her like she’s something to throw away. Don’t pull that again.” He turned and walked back up the steps. I dropped the key on the marble and turned to leave. Mirella came running across the foyer and grabbed my sleeve. “Sister, don’t go. I’m the one who reached for what was never mine. I don’t deserve any of this.” “You stay. I’ll go. I’ll be packed and out before sunrise, I swear.” I knew exactly what she was doing. So I stood there. Let her clutch my sleeve and squeeze out her little tears. But the second she realized I wasn’t shoving her off like I always had, she gasped, clutched her chest, and crumpled at my feet. “Mirella!” “Somebody call the doctor! Mirella, honey, stay with me!” Every soldier and house staff member in the foyer came running and crowded around her. Dante’s hand closed around my throat. His eyes were black. “You laid a hand on her? Don’t think for a second I won’t put one on you, Aria.” Turns out, when you’re past furious, all you can do is laugh. I hadn’t even touched her. Somehow I’d still done it. “Dante. I really hope none of you live to regret this.” My father’s voice cracked across the foyer. “Get her the hell out of my sight. Lock her in the cellar. I’m not done with her tonight.”

The cellar was cold. Damp. The kind of dark that crawled under your skin. Second time I’d been thrown down here. The first time was still fresh. I’d caught Mirella sneaking into Dante’s wing of the estate at two in the morning. Found her curled up in his bed like she belonged there. She broke down sobbing. Said she’d been sleepwalking. Said her foster father back in Sicily used to lock her in a closet at night, and ever since, her feet just carried her somewhere she felt safe. She didn’t know it was Dante’s bed. She didn’t mean it. Please don’t be mad. My parents bought every word. Dante crouched down in front of her like she was made of porcelain and told her, soft as silk, that his door was always open. Anytime she was scared. Back then I was still out of my mind in love with him. I wouldn’t let a single woman near his office. Every female assistant on his floor got transferred out within a month. The only women allowed near him were the cleaning staff, and they had to be over fifty. So I walked over and slapped Mirella across the face. My father had me hauled down to this cellar that same night. Seven days. One bowl of broth a day. No light, no blanket, no door cracking open. They didn’t drag me out until I was too weak to stand and I agreed to apologize on my knees. This time, starvation wasn’t the plan. My father came down the stone steps with a riding crop in his hand. Dante walked in behind him. “Family code says thirty for what you did. Mirella got down on her knees and begged me to go easy on you. She asked for the crop instead of the belt. So now it’s fifty.” A pause. Then he raised his arm. Crack. The first lash tore a red welt across my back before I even felt it land. He went again. And again. A dozen strikes in. The welts split open one after another. By the tenth, every blow was hitting raw meat. My skin was on fire and somehow numb at the same time. The crop had been soaked in something. Even through the haze of pain, I could smell it. Vinegar. Salt. Some kind of brine. So that’s what begging for the crop really meant. “Apologize to your sister.” “You going to apologize or not?” He never got the answer he wanted, so he just hit harder. By the time he counted to fifty, my back and the backs of my arms were open. Strips of skin hung loose. Blood ran down my spine and pooled on the stone floor underneath me. I’d stopped feeling individual blows somewhere around twenty. I curled into the corner, forehead against the cold stone, breathing in shallow gulps. My father dropped the crop on the ground and turned for the stairs. “Stubborn as a damn mule. Just like her grandmother.” That was all he said before he left. Dante crouched in front of me. “Mirella sent down ointment and a clean shirt. After everything you put her through, she’s the one taking care of you.” “You’re her sister, Aria. Act like it.” “Just apologize. End this.” He shook out the shirt Mirella had picked out for me. Laid it across my back like he was doing me a kindness. The second the fabric touched my open wounds, my whole body locked up like someone had thrown me into a barrel of salt. I doubled over on the stone and couldn’t breathe. Mirella hadn’t sent ointment. She’d dusted that shirt with something. The sting was deep, chemical, the kind that bit straight into raw skin. I bit down on my tongue until I tasted iron just to keep from screaming. Dante stood up and looked down at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Christ. The dramatics. Mirella’s been white as a sheet from pain her whole life and you’ve never seen her put on a show like this.” He walked out. I waited until I heard the cellar door slam upstairs before I let myself breathe. Then I lay there on the cold stone, staring at the blood on my own hands, and counted. Two more nights. Two more nights and every last thing this Family had bled out of me was coming home.

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Every time my billionaire husband brings his latest mistress home, he graciously leaves a gorgeous college boy in my bed as a consolation prize. “I need a little excitement, you need company. Fair trade. No hard feelings.” That’s what Asher always says, like he’s negotiating a merger instead of cheating on his wife. This time, though, he really screwed up. He drags another boy toy into our living room, then pulls me aside with that smooth, coaxing voice of his. “Chloe got pregnant. We tried everything, but she wants to keep it, and she won’t unless I make her my wife.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear like he’s doing me a favor. “So we’re getting a quick divorce. Temporary. Just until the baby’s born.” “And before we remarry, you can have your fun with him. I won’t say a word.” Behind us, his entourage of leeches is already pouring whiskey. Later, when I’m out of earshot, one of them whispers, “Damn, Asher. You crawled a hundred miles on your knees for that woman. You’re really just gonna hand her over?” “Yeah, man. You didn’t even tell the kid to keep his hands off her?” Asher takes a long, lazy drag of his cigarette. “I’m not into cuckold porn, gentlemen.” “Scarlett’s a prude. A trophy wife with a stick up her ass. She won’t touch him.” “Genius, Ash. Pure genius. You bring the boy home, she sends him away, and somehow you end up the good guy. Hat’s off.” They’re already laughing, already counting their winnings, because every single time before, I played my part. Cold face. Fat check. “Get out of my house.” I’m sitting on the velvet armchair across the room, scrolling my phone, pretending I can’t hear them. Then I look up and smile. “Sure. Whatever you want.” Asher’s cigarette freezes halfway to his lips. The room goes dead silent. Lena recovers first. “Scarlett, sweetie— what did you just say?” I set my phone down on the coffee table. My eyes drift past Asher and land on the boy still standing awkwardly by the staircase. “I said yes.” I let my gaze sweep him from head to toe, slow and appraising. “He’s not bad looking, I’ll give you that.” Someone actually gasps. “She agreed?!” “No way. She’s not kicking him out this time?” “Asher, did you hear that?” Asher’s expression doesn’t shift. That lazy half-smirk is still glued to his mouth. But Chloe, the pregnant princess, suddenly clings tighter to his arm. “Ash, baby, sis finally came around. You should be happy.” He doesn’t answer her. He grinds his cigarette into the crystal ashtray, walks over to the boy, and claps him on the shoulder. “Take good care of her tonight.” Then he loops an arm around Chloe’s waist and walks her up the stairs. I turn to the boy. He’s still standing there, ears glowing red. “You commute, or are you staying?” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Whatever— whatever you want.” “Then stay.” I walk down the hallway, and the whispers start up behind me like static. “Wait, is she serious?” “Last time she pulled this, half of us caught a beating from Asher!” “Relax. She’s bluffing. She always bluffs. Like touching one of those boys would melt her precious skin off.” “Remember the football player? She literally had security drag him out by his collar.” “Nah, this time she’s just rattled. The pregnancy spooked her. She’ll fold by morning.” I keep walking. Their words pelt my back like little needles. Not deep. Just everywhere. And the worst part? They’re right. For three years, I’ve been exactly that woman. Too proud. Too icy. Too convinced that the words “I’m a prude” were some kind of holy shield. Every time Asher paraded a new boy in front of me, I’d hand over a check and toss him out like trash. I told myself that was winning. That at least I was the clean one in this filthy marriage. And now? Chloe’s belly is showing. My “purity” didn’t save a damn thing. Just bought me a divorce decree, a cold side of the bed, and a living room full of vultures laughing behind my back.

I push open the bedroom door upstairs. “This is it.” Then I lean against the doorframe and really look at him. Jace Holloway. Six-foot-two. Valedictorian. Top-ranked moot court champion at his law school. Full ride to grad school, dean’s list every semester. Asher really splurged this time. No more random gym rat from a downtown bar. “Selling yourself for cash?” I ask. He nods. No hesitation. No excuses. The old Scarlett would’ve smirked, tossed a few thousand at his feet, and snapped, “Take it and get lost.” God, I used to feel so righteous doing that. Standing on my little moral pedestal, waving my prudishness around like a sword. As if any boy who touched me would somehow stain me. As if Asher’s parade of pretty things were dirty just for showing up. And what did all that purity get me? The “dirty things” left. Asher never came back to me anyway. Honestly? Which one of those boys was ever dirtier than the man who sent them? “Tell the housekeeper if you need anything,” I say. I walk past him into the room. He follows, quiet, careful. “My name’s Jace.” “I know. Asher told me.” I keep walking, straight to the balcony. He doesn’t follow. Doesn’t push. Smart boy. Down on the lawn, Asher’s friends are starting to scatter. I watch their backs disappear into the night, one black sedan after another. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve watched me get humiliated. When I come back inside, my eyes catch on the divorce papers sitting on the nightstand. Three years. Three years of looking the other way every time Asher pulled some new stunt. Because of what happened back then. Because something broke between us, and neither one of us knew how to fix it. He had his reasons. I had mine. Debts always come due. In the beginning, I told him: just don’t bring them home. Then it became: just don’t get one of them pregnant. I kept retreating. He kept advancing. And now we’re both tired. I pick up the pen and sign my name. The bathroom door clicks open. Jace walks out, hair still dripping, a towel slung low around his waist. The second he sees me, his ears flush bright red. “Sorry— I just got out—” I stand up. God, Asher really picked a blusher this time. The other boys, the ones I sent away with checks, they always had a flicker of resentment in their eyes. One of them actually shouted at me: “Are you and your husband sick? One of you pushing me in, the other shoving me out— what the hell am I, a prop?” I’d just stared him down. “Take the money and shut up.” Looking back, the kid was right. We are sick. Both of us. One with a cuckold fetish. One with a frigid martyr complex.

My phone lights up. A text from Asher: Get some sleep. I stare at those three words and almost laugh. He’s never sent me anything like that. Not once in three years. But tonight? Tonight he sends it. Because Jace is still in my room? Because the great Asher Vance is finally starting to wonder if his prudish little wife might actually go through with it this time? I don’t reply. Outside, the last lights in the estate flick off. The whole house goes still. Chloe’s moved in. Jace has moved in. This place finally looks like what it is. A trash can. Stuffed with whatever anyone feels like dumping in. Including me. I turn off the lamp. There’s a smile on my mouth I can’t even see. He thinks I’m still the old Scarlett. He thinks I won’t. He thinks I never could. He thinks my so-called purity will hold the line forever. He’s wrong. — The next morning, my lower back still aches from a night of bad sleep. Jace is in the kitchen helping Maria, our housekeeper. When he sees me coming down the stairs, the spatula nearly slips out of his hand. I smile at him. Where’s all that smoldering eye contact from last night, kid? I’ve barely sat down when Asher strolls into the dining room. “You’re up early.” He drops into the chair across from me, smirking like he knows a punchline I don’t. “How was your night?” Before I can answer, the front door bangs open. Tyler Brooks comes barreling in first. “Ash! Ash, who won? Who won?!” “I bet twenty grand she folded before noon!” “I bet she kicked him out before midnight! Three to one odds, Ash, you’re holding the pot—” He stops dead when he sees me at the table. Three grown men, all suddenly very interested in their shoes. “Scarlett. Hey. Morning.” Asher picks up his coffee. Takes a slow, satisfied sip. Like the bet his buddies just placed on his marriage is some kind of trophy. “Sit down, boys. Breakfast is ready.” I stand up and walk toward the kitchen. “You should head to class,” I tell Jace. He blinks, unties the apron, and slips out the front door without a word. The door clicks shut. Two seconds of silence in the dining room. Then Tyler stage-whispers, “See? Told you. Sent him packing first thing in the morning.” Big Ron laughs. “What, you doubted Asher? That man can read his wife like a goddamn paperback.” “That’s why Asher’s the king,” Tyler says, all worship. “You wanna marry one of these, boys? Find one who knows her place.” Asher leans back in his chair, eggs already gone, that smirk still hanging on his lips. Drinking it in. I exhale slowly and walk back into the dining room. Asher and I open our mouths at the exact same second— “Have dinner at my parents’ place tonight—” “Two o’clock. Courthouse. Be there.”

The dining room goes still. I drop the signed divorce papers right on the table between us. “Let’s get this done.” Asher freezes for a second. His eyes drop to the signature line. He doesn’t move. I know exactly what he’s thinking. The old me would’ve ripped that paper in half with shaking hands. Cried. Screamed, “Asher, you don’t get to just decide we’re done!” Made him chase me around the house for hours before anything got signed. He looks up at me, that same lazy drawl in his voice. “What’s the rush, baby? I told you, we’ll handle it after Chloe’s first trimester.” “I can’t wait that long,” I say. “Two o’clock. Courthouse. Are you coming or not?” His eyelid twitches. “Scarlett.” He pushes the papers back toward the middle of the table. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” “Better sign before you wake up too,” I shoot back. “Otherwise you’ll change your mind and tear it up again.” The silence stretches. Then Chloe comes drifting down the staircase like a ghost in a silk robe. “Sis, please don’t be upset. I just— I don’t want my baby labeled illegitimate, that’s all.” Her voice cracks beautifully. “The divorce can wait until after the first trimester, really!” Her eyes are already brimming. She looks more torn up about my marriage than I do. Asher glances at her. That tragic little face. That trembling lip. That soft “don’t be upset”— it lands on his ego like a slap. When did Asher Vance ever get rushed into a divorce? “You think I won’t sign?” He laughs once, sharp, and grabs the pen. Tyler jumps up. “Ash, hold on—” “Shut up.” Asher doesn’t even look at him. He scrawls his name and slams the pen down. That signature smirk crawls right back onto his mouth. “There. You all witnessed it.” He nods at his entourage. “After the baby’s born, we remarry. Everyone heard me.” Then he leans down to my ear, voice dropping into something almost tender. “You’re the woman I dragged back from death itself, Scarlett. None of those girls out there hold a candle to you.” “This kid? He’ll be ours to raise. Only you get to be his mother. Got it?” I let out a soft laugh. So this is what he calls love. I don’t say a word. I just grab the suitcase I packed last night and walk out the front door. Behind me, Chloe’s voice floats out, soft as cotton: “Ash… she’s not really leaving for good, is she?” Asher doesn’t answer. Originally his plan was clean and tidy. Divorce on paper, but I keep my room. My closet. My place at the dining table. The illusion of a wife, parked in the corner like a vase. Me actually leaving? Wasn’t in the script. But it doesn’t matter. Not to him. “You little troublemaker,” he murmurs to Chloe, brushing her hair back. “Bet you’re loving this, huh?” “That’s not fair!” Chloe pouts. “You always tease me. I’d never break up someone’s marriage on purpose— my conscience won’t let me.” She rests her hand on her belly, eyes shining. “It’s all for the baby.”

She looks like a wilted little flower in a storm. Asher melts. “Okay, okay. No more teasing. I’m sorry.” I’ll give Chloe this much— she’s smarter than the rest of them. She doesn’t post passive-aggressive captions on Instagram. Doesn’t call me to flex about whose bed Asher’s in tonight. Doesn’t text me photos of his hand on her thigh. She plays the wide-eyed innocent. “I’m just trying to fit in! I’d never come between you two!” One sharp word from me, and Asher’s already convinced she’s the victim. I’ve seen prettier girls. Younger ones. Bolder ones. They all crashed and burned because they were in too much of a hurry. Pushing him to commit. Texting me to back off. Chloe? Chloe just moved in. Belly first. Calling me “sis” like we’re family. She did what none of them could. — 1:50 p.m. I’m sitting on a wooden bench outside the courthouse. I’ve called Asher nine times. This time he picks up. “Where are you?” I ask. His voice is so casual it’s insulting. “I’m at Chloe’s prenatal appointment. Can’t really leave. I’ll swing by when we’re done.” “I told you. Two o’clock. Divorce filing.” “The divorce isn’t going anywhere, sweetheart.” Like he’s coaxing a tantruming toddler. “Wait till Chloe’s done with her ultrasound. Talk later.” He hangs up. Wait. Always wait. I look around the lobby. Couples shuffling in and out. Some dabbing their eyes. Some staring straight through the wall. Some signing with steady, expressionless hands. I used to cry like that. The full breakdown. Begging. Snot and mascara everywhere. And every time, Asher would soften, pull me back, and reward me with a “fine, we won’t get divorced.” Like that was a prize. Today I’m done collecting his prizes. A clerk calls the next number. I pull up my contacts and text my lawyer: Megan— file for divorce. Contested. I’ll send the paperwork over this afternoon. — That night, after my father-in-law’s third call, I drive out to the Vance estate alone. The whole way there I’m rehearsing. How do I tell the old man? That his son knocked up his side piece? That he’s pressuring me to sign? That I’m filing in court? Family politics. Sometimes they’re worse than the actual lawsuit. I show up alone. The old man pauses, fork halfway to his mouth. “Where’s Asher?” “Busy.” “Busy?” He sets the fork down hard. “What the hell is more important than his wife?” I don’t answer. Mr. Vance and my late father were brothers in everything but blood. They served together. Bled together. He’d wanted Asher and me married since we were kids. His wife wasn’t sold. My family wasn’t rich enough. I’d been seriously sick as a teenager, and she decided my “energy” was wrong for her son. But Asher refused to walk away. He drove out to St. Bartholomew’s, the old cathedral on the hill, and walked the entire mile-long stone pilgrimage path on his knees. A hundred steps. By the end, his knees were raw and bloody. He knelt at the altar and said: “I don’t need to be with Scarlett. I just need her to be okay.” When I heard about it, I cried for two days straight. He was always the one running toward me. I was always the one shrinking back, scared I wasn’t enough. After that I grabbed his hand and said, “I’m done hiding. If you want to marry me, I’ll say yes.” I got better. I went home with him. The old man was so happy he transferred a third of his stock options into my name as my dowry. “For the family to see,” he said. “So you’re protected.” Back then I thought Asher’s mother was the worst thing standing between us. Now I know. Outsiders never destroy a marriage. Only the two people inside it can do that.

I’m still figuring out how to start when the door swings open. Asher walks in with Chloe tucked under his arm. He sees me and stops short. The old man’s face goes black. “You bastard. You bring that girl into my house?” Asher just pulls out a chair for Chloe, easy as anything. “Dad, relax. It’s just dinner.” Then he glances at me. “Scarlett, head home. I’ll deal with you later.” Like I’m an inconvenience he double-booked. He leans in, lowers his voice like he’s doing me a courtesy. “I didn’t think you’d actually show.Tonight Chloe’s the one I’m here for, okay?” I laugh. She’s the one he’s here for. He’s running cover for a mistress. Bringing her to family dinner before the ink on our divorce is dry. I used to think Chloe was a phase. New toy, fresh smell, gone in a few months when he got bored. Guess I had that one wrong. Then his mother walks in. Her eyes slide over me, then over Chloe. “So this is the pregnant one? Lovely. We just collect strays now, do we?” One sentence. Two women insulted. The Asher I used to know would’ve stepped in front of me. “Scarlett is the woman I chose. Watch your mouth.” Tonight he just frowns and pulls Chloe closer. “Mom. Don’t talk about my woman like that.” Sharper than he ever was when he was protecting me. Chloe melts into his shoulder, eyes glistening, the perfect picture of a fragile thing under attack. She always looks like the world is bullying her. Not like me. I get insulted and my face doesn’t even move. Whatever they throw at me, I just swallow it. I stand up. “I’m leaving.” The old man calls after me. He can’t make me stay. Asher doesn’t even look up. The second I’m through the front gate, I think about that pilgrimage. The cathedral steps. The bloody knees. “I don’t need to be with Scarlett. I just need her to be okay.” Well. He got his wish. — The divorce moves faster than I expected. Asher figures we’ll be remarried by Christmas anyway— Chloe pops the kid out, they hand it off to the housekeeper, life resumes. The day we sign the settlement, he shows up forty minutes late. But he signs. Smooth. No fuss. Then he leans toward me, voice dropping into something almost coaxing. “You always wanted a wedding, didn’t you?” “When we remarry, I’ll throw you the real thing. The beach you love. The white dress you used to dog-ear in magazines. Whatever you want. I’ll give you all of it.” I look up at him. “Asher. Don’t bother.”

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My boyfriend pushes me into a military-grade interrogation chair to save his “female best friend” from a wedding prank. He has no clue my family runs the syndicate that runs this city. It’s supposed to be Sienna Lopez’s big day. She schemed, lied, and slept her way into marrying Dominic Cavalier, the head of the Cavalier crime family. During the pre-ceremony games, the groomsmen pull out their toys. An interrogation chair. A crate full of snakes. Props designed to humiliate. Sienna, the so-called tough girl, suddenly turns into a tearful damsel. She looks at my boyfriend Julian with those trembling doe eyes. And he shoves me forward. “They’ve gotta mess with someone. Why the bride? Mess with the bridesmaid instead.” He lowers his voice, trying to sweet-talk me. “Sienna’s an influencer. She married into the Cavalier family. If any of this ends up online and ruins her image, it’s over. Just take her place. She’ll owe you big. I’ll make sure she pays you. Probably more than you make in three months running deliveries.” Then Sienna opens her mouth, simpering at the groomsmen. “Gentlemen, I know you boys love your games. I’d never kill the vibe.” She gestures at me. “This is my buddy’s girlfriend. She’s a delivery driver. Use whatever you’ve got on her. Don’t let it go to waste.” What she doesn’t know? I’m Elena Moretti. The sole heir to the most feared syndicate in New York. Running midnight deliveries in the Bronx was nothing but a bet I made with my grandfather. The family heirs I’ve put my fists through? You could line them up from New York to London. Jax Russo, the one leading the groomsmen, steps forward. Lip ring glinting. He squints at me. “Why does she look familiar?” Of course I look familiar. I beat the shit out of every trust-fund thug in this room at some point. But right now, my signature red hair is dyed black. My bold red lip is bare. My leather jacket is swapped for a plain white dress. Thick-framed glasses and skin tanned a shade darker from months on a bike under the sun. Who’s going to recognize their worst nightmare in this disguise? Sienna laughs nervously. “She’s just a delivery girl. Maybe she’s dropped off your food before.” Jax smirks. He points at the black metal chair behind him, sparking with live current. “Military-grade interrogation unit. Makes grown men piss themselves.” He blows out a ring of smoke. “Delivery girl. Wanna take a seat?” I turn to Julian. My voice is calm. “The first day we got together, you said you’d always stand in front of me. Shield me. Where’s that now?” He looks away. No spine. “Babe, Sienna’s delicate. You’re out in the sun every day. You’re tougher. Just take this one for her.” Fine. My mistake for not seeing through him sooner. I swallow the sting in my chest. I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Then I smirk. “Gentlemen, keep the party going. I’m out.” I head for the door. Sienna shrieks. “Julian! She’s leaving! Who’s gonna take my place?!” Julian blocks my path. His expression is dark. “You throw little tantrums all the time and I let it slide. But right now, in front of all these men, you walk out and disrespect them? You want Sienna to suffer for that? You want the Vance family to pay for it?” I stare at him. Same handsome face. But he’s a stranger now. When I say nothing, Julian grabs my wrist. Each word deliberate. “If you don’t take Sienna’s place today, we’re done.” His eyes are smug. Confident. Sienna giggles behind her hand, leaning toward the groomsmen. “Every time Julian threatens to break up, she folds. She literally can’t live without him.” “And honestly,” Sienna looks at me, contempt dripping, “with your status? Julian is the ceiling of what you could ever land.” I sigh. I glance at my phone. “Julian. Can we break up in one hour instead?”

“It’s our one-year together in an hour,” I add. This is about the heir’s bet. I can’t lose now. Julian gives me that insufferable look. The one that says I knew it. “See? I knew you couldn’t leave me. Baby, I can’t leave you either. That breakup threat? Just a little trick to keep you in line.” He takes my hand, presses it over his heart. “Even though I’m helping Sienna today, you’re the only one in here.” “Do this one small favor for her, and I promise I won’t break up with you.” No wonder he’s so confident. Last week, Sienna kissed Julian right in front of me. “Accidentally.” Drunk. Then laughed about how they’d pinky-sworn as kids. She said, “If there was anything between me and Julian, it would’ve happened already.” He said, “Babe, she’s like a brother to me. It’s not what you think.” And I still didn’t leave him. Everyone thinks I’m desperately in love with Julian Vance. Thinking about it makes me curse my grandfather for the eight hundredth time. “Are we doing this or not?!” Jax loses patience. He kicks a crystal vase off the center table. It shatters across the floor. That savage look in his eyes makes everyone flinch. “Who’s sitting in the damn chair?!” Sienna tugs Julian’s sleeve. Tears pooling. She doesn’t even need words. Julian hands her a tissue. Then shoots me a warning glare. “Sit in that chair. Now. One second of hesitation and we’re over.” I can’t lose the bet at the finish line. I paste on a soft, obedient smile. “Fine. I’ll do it.” Sienna opens her livestream. “Hey babes! Broadcasting my wedding! That’s Jax Russo, the Russo family heir. Hottest psycho in the city.” “My bridesmaid? Oh, she volunteered to play. She’s loving it.” The comments pour in like venom. “Isn’t that delivery girl Julian’s girlfriend? She hooked a rich guy and now she’s attention-whoring at someone else’s wedding?” “Gold-digger trying to seduce Jax Russo? Girl picked the wrong target. That man has ice in his veins.” I glance at the comments. Then at Jax. Hard to connect this so-called monster with the guy who used to tremble like a puppy in front of me. I drop into the chair. Hold out my arm. “Hook me up.” The bodyguard connects the electrodes. Sienna cuts in. “Jax, let me ask the questions. I know her better.” She lowers her voice so only we can hear. “Don’t you want to see her lose control of her bladder on camera?” Jax drags on his cigarette, waves a hand. Whatever. Sienna smiles sweetly. “First question.” “Have you ever killed an animal? A pet?” I think for a second. Nod. “Yeah.” The comments explode. “Psycho!” “Animal abuser!” “Look at her face, she doesn’t even care!” Julian stares at me. “I didn’t know you were that kind of person.” Jax, though. He leans forward. Interested. “Why’d you kill it?” “To save someone’s life.” It was a wolf. Legal to own overseas. I brought it to the estate, and on day one it tried to rip a courier’s throat out. I put a blade through its neck. But I can’t say that. Too many details that lead back to my identity. I shake my head. “No comment on the details.” Sienna pounces. “Even if an animal bites, you smack it! You don’t slaughter it! You’re cold-blooded!” The livestream chat calls for doxxing me. Threats to show up at my door. “Second question.” Sienna’s smile sharpens. “On your birthday, you faked a pregnancy to force Julian into buying you a forty-thousand-dollar necklace. And for his birthday, you were planning to give him… a wooden box. True or false?” Deny it, get electrocuted live. Admit it, branded a gold-digger forever. That’s her game. I smile slowly. “True.” Comments erupt. “She can’t even spend a hundred bucks on him?” “Classic gold-digger move.” Sienna shoves her phone in my face. “Look, everyone! Not even a hint of shame!” Why would I be ashamed? That box contains the Moretti Onyx Coin. Whoever holds it gets full protection and priority access to every deal in the Moretti empire. The Vance family is drowning in debt. That coin was their only lifeline. But I say nothing. Not yet. Julian’s jaw tightens. “So the rumors were true. You’re only with me for my family’s money. I gave you a forty-grand necklace and you can’t even…” I tap my fingers on the armrest. “That necklace. You know exactly what happened. Want to explain to the livestream? Or should I?” His face goes white. Then red. “…It’s in the past. Drop it.” Jax is bored. No one’s gotten electrocuted. No one’s screamed. “Forget this. She’s telling the truth every time. Boring.” He claps his hands. Bodyguards wheel in the massive crate draped in black cloth. Something hisses inside. Jax rips the cover off. Dozens of snakes. Coiled, writhing, tangled at the bottom. He grins. “So. Bride or bridesmaid. Who’s getting in?”

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Eight years I’ve waited to marry him. Now his mother is telling me I have to let him sleep with his ex-girlfriend for three nights. “It’s tradition.” I stare at her. Then at Ethan. Then at the woman she just pulled into the room — long legs, glossy hair, smiling at me like she already knows how this ends. “This is Raelynn,” Mrs. Monroe says, patting her hand, “Ethan’s first love. They’ve known each other forever.” “And in our family,” she goes on, voice silky, “before a man marries, he spends three nights with his first love. To say thank you. It’s how it’s always been done.” I almost laugh. I turn to Ethan, waiting for him to shut this insanity down. He doesn’t. He just leans back on the couch, smirking. “It’s a tradition, Val. If you want to marry me, you respect where I come from.” Then, softer — that little tilt of his head he uses when he wants something, “Come on, baby. Eight years you waited. You can handle three nights.” Everyone in the room is waiting for me to lose it. Scream. Throw a vase. Walk out. I don’t. I smile. “Okay. I accept.” Three days later, our wedding goes off perfectly. That night, when Ethan kicks open the door to the honeymoon apartment, his groomsmen cheering drunkenly behind him — There’s already a man in our bed! I step out of the bathroom in a silk robe, drying my hair, and give Ethan a slow, sweet smile. “Forgot to mention, babe. My family has a tradition too. On the wedding night, the bride have to sleep with her ex first. In front of her husband.” … The day I told Ethan okay, he packed a bag and moved into Raelynn’s apartment. Didn’t even kiss me goodbye. Three days. Zero texts. Zero calls. The night before the wedding, I tracked him down at a rooftop bar downtown. I could hear them before I opened the door. “Honestly, Ethan, you’re a legend. First love AND a hot fiancée? Some men have all the luck.” I push the door open. The laughter dies. Ethan’s draped on the couch with Raelynn tucked under his arm. He raises an eyebrow at me. “What are you doing here?” “Sorry to interrupt the reunion,” I say flatly. One of his friends jumps in fast, fake-bright, “Val, listen, this is actually a thing in a lot of families. You sleep with the ex one last time, then you close the door forever. It shows you take the marriage seriously.” “After tonight, Rae’s done. He’s all yours, promise.” “Mm.” I nod. “I understand.” “See? Val gets it. Ethan, you trained her well.” Something flickers across Ethan’s face. Amusement. He likes that. Someone gets bold. “Hey, last night of freedom, right? Let’s make it count. Ethan — kiss Rae. French. We haven’t seen that since you two were nineteen.” Ethan smiles slow. Pulls Raelynn into his lap. And kisses her — deep, wet, hands in her hair — right in front of me. I look away. “Ethan.” My voice doesn’t shake. “I came to remind you. Wedding’s at noon. Don’t be late.” I turn to leave. Behind me, one of his buddies snickers. “Damn, Ethan. She watched you make out with your ex and didn’t even blink. What a wife. Where do I get one?” And then Ethan — lazy, smug, loud enough for me to hear. “She’s been with me eight years. Three miscarriages. Doctor said she can’t have kids anymore. Who else would even take her?” I freeze in the doorway. The deepest wound I have. Tossed out like a punchline. I take a deep breath. Ethan thinks all of that broke me. He thinks I’m damaged goods nobody else would take. But he’s wrong about a lot of things. The truth is — my body is just fine. And he is the one who’s nothing without me.

I drive straight home. Don’t cry. Don’t call anyone. Right before I fall asleep, my phone lights up. Ethan. His voice is lazy, half-bored. “You mad about the bar?” “No.” He laughs. “You’ve gotten weirdly chill lately, Val. It’s freaking me out a little.” Then, smoothly, “Listen. Rae flew in from London the second she heard I was getting married. She and I are ancient history, okay? You’re the one I’m marrying. The three nights thing is just a family thing—” “You don’t have to explain.” I cut him off. “I respect your family’s traditions. Just remember — mine has one too. You’ll respect it tomorrow.” “Sure, baby. What’s the tradi—” A soft moan cuts him off. “Ethan… focus. You said tonight was our last night. Don’t get distracted.” He clears his throat fast. “Okay, gotta run. See you tomorrow. I’ll be there. Promise.” I hang up. Power off the phone. Go to sleep. Numb is better than hurting. … Morning. I turn the phone back on and a text from Dani is waiting. It’s a video. Two bodies tangled in the bed. I know who are they. I close the screen. Calmly. Set the phone face-down. Drive to the venue. In the bridal suite, Dani is shaking she’s so angry, yanking the zipper up the back of my dress. “What is wrong with him? Family tradition? That is not a tradition, Val, that is cheating! Betrayal!” “You walked out on your parents for him. He swore on everything he loved that he’d treat you right. And now he’s posting sex tapes with his mistress the night before the wedding! Does he have any shame?” Probably not. I think. When I chose Ethan, my family lost their minds. They had someone picked out for me already — practically since we were childhood. I said no. I walked out for Ethan. Completely. He swore — swore — he’d never make me regret it. When did it start to change? Six months ago, maybe. A call from overseas. Raelynn crying down the line about some breakup in London. And just like that, his head was somewhere else. Dani grips my shoulders. “Val. I love you. But you cannot actually be marrying him after this. Please tell me you’re not.” I look at myself in the mirror. White dress. Steady eyes. “Dani. You’ve known me since we were six. You know how I work.” I smile. “Someone humiliates me? I humiliate them back. Same way. Twice as hard.”

Ethan strolls in twenty minutes before the ceremony. His groomsmen exhale like they’ve been holding their breath all morning. “Bro, we heard you hooked up like five times last night. We were genuinely scared you wouldn’t make it out of bed.” Ethan smirks. “Please. You underestimate me.” Then his eyes find mine — and for a second, something flickers. Surprise. Maybe even guilt. “Val. You look incredible.” He crosses the room, slips a hand around my waist, voice low and coaxing. “Don’t listen to those idiots. Rae wasn’t feeling great this morning, that’s what slowed me down.” I smile. Say nothing. And then she walks in behind him. Raelynn. In a soft pink dress that’s just a little too fitted, a little too bridal. Smiling at me like we’re old friends. “Val! Congrats, babe! I couldn’t miss this — I had to see you two tie the knot.” Ethan shrugs like it’s nothing. “Rae was a mess this morning, begged to come. I figured why not. The tradition’s done — we’re keeping our distance from here on out.” Dani opens her mouth. I squeeze her arm. “It’s fine.” Raelynn looks me up and down. Then she laughs, soft and mean. “Val, your suit looks kind of… cheap? Didn’t Ethan get you a Tom Ford?” She gasps, all fake-shocked. “When we were eighteen, Ethan promised me a Tom Ford for our wedding. The biggest ballroom in the city. A hundred tables, minimum. A million-dollar day — because that’s what I deserved.” Her eyes drift around the room. The folding chairs. The grocery-store flowers. The cheap linens. “This is… cute, though.” The air goes thin. Ethan coughs. “Rae, come on. Val and I have been together a long time. We don’t care about that stuff.” “Mm.” I say. That’s all. Because here’s the truth: I planned none of this. Ethan did. He said keep it simple. He picked the $80 dress off Amazon for me and chose the cheapest favors in the catalog. I’ve known for a while where his heart really was. The MC starts warming up the crowd. Our engagement photos slide across the screen — eight years compressed into thirty seconds. Raelynn starts crying. Loud, performative, beautiful tears. “I’m sorry, I just— I’m so happy for you, Ethan. You get to marry the person you love. I’ll never get that.” She wipes her eyes. “I got diagnosed with lupus last month. The doctor said it doesn’t get better. I always dreamed of a big wedding before I— before I couldn’t anymore.” Ethan’s face changes. I watch it happen in real time. He turns to me. “Val. Let Rae take your place in the ceremony.” Dani actually screams. “Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND? She wants to wear the dress now? Who exactly are you marrying today, Ethan?!” “It’s symbolic,” Ethan says, like he’s explaining to a child. “Just the ceremony. Paperwork’s still Val and me, tomorrow at the courthouse.” He turns back to me. That soft voice again. The coaxing one. “Baby. You gave me three days. What’s one more hour? It’s just a ceremony — the wedding night is what matters, right?” “I swear. Let Rae have the ceremony. You and I have the wedding night. Deal?” The guests are already whispering. The groomsmen are looking at me with pity. I look up at him. Calm. Steady. Smiling. “Okay.” Ethan exhales. Leans down and kisses my forehead. “That’s my girl. Always so understanding. Head up to the apartment. I’ll be there the second this is done.” Perfect. I didn’t really want to walk down that aisle anyway. We’ll just skip straight to the wedding night.

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When Zachary Cross sat down for his first major television interview, the atmosphere in the studio was warm, almost reverent. The host smiled warmly, shifting her notes before bringing up a love letter he had written ten years ago. She quoted a few lines—gorgeous, devastatingly romantic prose that read like poetry. It was entirely at odds with his reputation as a cold, ruthless venture capitalist. Zachary remained silent for a long, heavy moment. He didn’t deny writing it. “What you all see as a romantic tragedy of youth,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of warmth, “was actually nothing more than a rich girl’s cruel little game. Back then, she deigned to date me. I was naive enough to think she actually loved me, while she was busy humiliating my poverty in front of everyone we knew.” The moment the interview aired, the internet exploded. I was dragged to the very top of the trending topics, vilified by millions of strangers. But before any public apology or defense could be mounted on my behalf, my death certificate found its way online. “Stop hounding her. Isabel Mercer died three years ago.” In his sleek, modern kitchen, Zachary had just finished preparing a quiet dinner. When the notification flashed across his screen, his face twisted into a look of pure, cynical amusement. He pulled up the contact info for the number he had blocked a decade ago and typed out a message: “Isabel, is this your latest performance? Do you honestly expect me to buy this?” … After hitting send, Zachary stared at the screen, momentarily lost in thought. A few seconds later, his phone buzzed with a reply. “Who is this? You’ve got the wrong number. My name isn’t Isabel.” Zachary’s brows knit together. A flash of familiar impatience crossed his features as his thumbs flew across the keyboard. “You’ve used this number since middle school. Don’t play games with me.” The reply came almost instantly: “Look, you definitely have the wrong person. The previous owner deactivated this line. I registered this number three years ago.” A cold sneer settled on Zachary’s face. “Do you really think I’m that gullible? Ten years later, and you haven’t changed at all. Still lying through your teeth.” I floated near the ceiling, suspended above the brass chandelier, looking down at the bitter hatred burning in his eyes. I remembered a rainy afternoon during our sophomore year. We had watched a girl hand a beautifully folded letter to a boy in the courtyard. Zachary had caught the faint, wistful look in my eyes. He had laughed, pulling me close under his umbrella, and promised he would write one for me, too. “Whatever other girls have, my girl gets too,” he had whispered. The absolute sincerity in his eyes back then was something I had carried with me to my grave. I never expected that the reply letter I spent weeks drafting would be intercepted and swapped for a cruel, mocking forgery—one that exposed his deepest insecurities and made him the laughingstock of the entire campus. I had grabbed his hand, desperate to explain, but I was met only with an icy wall of resentment. He became entirely convinced that our three years together had been nothing but a wealthy girl’s twisted amusement. Seeing that no further messages were coming through, Zachary tossed his phone onto the counter with an irritated sigh and carried the plates over to the dining table. Courtney Lane walked into the dining room, her eyes flickering when she noticed the dish—shrimp scampi. She hid her brief grimace behind a bright, practiced smile and leaned down to press a soft kiss against his cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. You went to so much trouble.” She pulled out her chair, keeping her tone light. “Though, you know I don’t really eat shellfish. I heard your first love was obsessed with shrimp, though. I saw the trending topics today… you aren’t still holding onto her, are you?” Zachary’s posture stiffened for a fraction of a second. Without a word, he scraped the entire plate of scampi directly into the trash can. “That was a lifetime ago,” he said, his voice level. “I forgot her years ago.” Seeing the lingering pout on Courtney’s face, he sighed softly and drew her into his arms. “Don’t let her ruin our evening. What if she was my first love? You’re the one who stood by me when I had nothing. You’re the only one who matters now, and the only one who will be here in the future.” Courtney flushed with pleased embarrassment, playfully swatting at his chest. Zachary smiled, reaching into his pocket to produce a small velvet box. He slipped a brilliant emerald tennis bracelet onto her slender wrist. “Stop being jealous,” he murmured. “A little gift. Do you like it?” Courtney leaned her head against his shoulder, admiring the heavy, glittering stones. “I suppose I can forgive you this once. Honestly, I don’t believe for a second that she’s actually dead. She probably ran off with some older, wealthy businessman after her father’s company went under, and she’s too embarrassed to show her face. It wouldn’t be the first time she lied to escape a mess.” She giggled, her fingers tracing the clasp of the bracelet. “Actually, I should probably thank her. If she hadn’t walked away from you back then, I wouldn’t have this beautiful life today.” Zachary’s gaze drifted toward the dark window, his jaw tightening slightly as he suppressed whatever thought had just crossed his mind. Courtney pulled up her phone, looking at their high school alumni group chat. A notification had just been pinned by the class president regarding their ten-year reunion. She smiled up at him. “Don’t think about it anymore. I’ve already hired a personal stylist for us for the reunion. We are going to make sure everyone sees exactly how far you’ve come.” Zachary didn’t refuse. Watching the two of them try on their elegant, custom-tailored outfits, a dull, familiar ache bloomed in my chest. When we were young, Zachary came from nothing. Dating me had earned him endless whispers and cruel jokes about climbing the social ladder. Now that he was a self-made billionaire and my family was bankrupt, it was only natural for him to want to show off his success. It was a pity I wouldn’t be there to give him the satisfaction. When Zachary and Courtney arrived at the private dining room of the upscale downtown restaurant, the class president rushed over, his face flushed with excitement. “Mr. Cross! Courtney! Look at you two—absolutely stunning. The perfect couple.” The surrounding classmates nodded eagerly, their voices thick with flattery. “Seriously, Zachary. To achieve this much success at your age and marry the prettiest girl from our class… you’ve truly won at life.” It was a stark contrast to the sneers and mocking laughter they had directed at him a decade ago. Looking at Zachary’s impeccable suit and quiet authority, one of the alumni sighed wistfully. “It really goes to show you should never underestimate a poor kid with drive. I wonder if Isabel regrets her choices now.” “I heard that after her dad’s business collapsed, she was left with mountains of debt. If she hadn’t broken things off with Zachary…” At the mention of my name, the lively chatter in the room came to a grinding halt. Our relationship had been loud, passionate, and heavily scrutinized. Most of our peers had bet on our downfall, but none of them had anticipated it ending in such an ugly, public ruin. Zachary set his wine glass down with a slow, deliberate click. “Why are we bringing her up?” he said, his tone dripping with indifference. “It’s bad luck.” Eager to please him, a man sitting across the table scoffed openly. “Exactly. A superficial gold-digger like Isabel never deserved you anyway, Zachary. Word on the street is she got herself a sugar daddy to pay off those debts. Some old guy who used to work with her father. If her dad knew, he’d be turning in his grave.” Several people chimed in, offering sycophantic smiles to Courtney. “Courtney was always the elegant, sensible one. She stayed by your side through everything. You two are a match made in heaven. She’s ten times the woman Isabel ever was.” Zachary idly toyed with Courtney’s fingers, offering a faint, polite smile under the weight of their approving gazes. “Marrying Courtney was the best decision of my life,” he murmured. Courtney’s cheeks pinked, and she tugged at his sleeve with a hushed whisper. “Let them have a little fun at her expense later to get some payback for you. Don’t go soft on us.” Zachary pinched her cheek affectionately. “Whatever pleases you, darling.” Just then, the heavy double doors of the private dining room swung open. Zachary’s shoulders tightened instinctively. But when he saw Jared Campbell walk through the door, a flicker of disappointment crossed his eyes. Jared paused just inside the entryway, taking in the cruel laughter and the mocking comments about me. His expression hardened. “You don’t need to wait around for her,” Jared said, his voice cutting through the noise. “Isabel isn’t coming. She passed away three years ago.” He walked closer to the table, his gaze sweeping over the classmates. “And that rumor about a sugar daddy is complete garbage. Her father’s debts were settled by a longtime family friend who couldn’t bear to see her drown.” Zachary tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Jared. A cold, mocking smile touched his lips. “I didn’t realize you were so intimately acquainted with her financial affairs, Jared.” The room erupted into knowing, suggestive snickers. An alumnus who had clearly had too much to drink leaned forward, shouting, “Hey, Jared, you were always trailing after her. You weren’t her little sidepiece, were you?” “Right? No regular classmate gets this defensive. I bet behind closed doors…” Listening to the crude remarks echoing around the table, Jared’s eyes turned murderous. He slammed his hand against the wood. “Shut up. All of you, shut your mouths.” His chest heaved as he stared down the room. “You pathetic, spineless hypocrites. How many of your families did Isabel’s father help when they were on top? The second they went under, you couldn’t wait to kick her. You spread lies to make sure she couldn’t keep the only decent job she managed to find.” Jared’s voice cracked with a mixture of rage and grief. “And now she’s dead, and you’re still dragging her name through the mud. Every single person in this room who gossiped, who stood by and watched, who turned their backs—you all have her blood on your hands.” A classmate scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Oh, come on, Jared. Stop trying to scare us. How much did Isabel pay you to put on this little show?” “Yeah, remember when you claimed she was terminally ill and tried to guilt-trip us into a GoFundMe campaign? Turned out her mother had died and she just wanted cash for a burial. What’s the scam this time?” Jared took a long, shaking breath. He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of medical files, tossing them onto the table. “You want to know why I know everything? Because I was her primary oncologist. If you don’t believe me, read it yourselves.” He slid the death certificate and the biopsy reports across the polished mahogany. The classmates glanced at one another, hesitating, before silently nudging the documents down the table until they rested directly in front of Zachary. Zachary stared at the medical paperwork, his eyes widening slightly. His hand trembled as his fingers closed around the edges of the death certificate. Sensing his sudden shift in composure, Courtney quickly wrapped her arms around his bicep, offering a dismissive laugh. “Zach, sweetheart, who knows if this is even real? Remember how she swore up and down that the letter she sent you was a fake, too?” At the mention of the letter, Zachary’s expression darkened into a mask of pure fury. He swept his arm across the table, violently knocking the files to the floor. “Get this garbage out of my sight.” I didn’t miss the flicker of smug satisfaction in Courtney’s eyes. When Zachary and I had been together, nobody supported us. Yet, we had held onto each other for three years despite all the rumors and disapproval. When he promised to write me a love letter, I had been overjoyed. He had begged me, with bright, hopeful eyes, to write him one in return. I had spent days choosing the perfect stationery, drafting countless versions, and placing his favorite dried pressed flowers inside the envelope. I never could have imagined that Courtney, who had harbored a silent, obsessive crush on him for years, would swap my letter for a cruel forgery—or that she would arrange for it to be opened and read aloud in front of the entire class. In that fake letter, “I” had mocked his deceased parents, ridiculed his dreams, and told him a poor orphan would never be anything more than a footnote in my life. It was a calculated strike designed to shred a proud, sensitive boy’s dignity. Our classmates, eager to see him fall, had distributed copies of the letter. The humiliation became unbearable. When his elderly grandmother, who had raised him, came to the school to bring him lunch, she walked into a group of boys jeering at him. The shock and distress triggered a massive heart attack, and she died right there on the pavement. I had run to him, desperate to explain, only to receive a phone call that my father’s company had filed for bankruptcy. By the time I managed to return to school to clear my name, Zachary’s eyes held nothing but absolute, freezing hatred. “Is it fun, Isabel? Playing with people’s lives?” “If you looked down on me, you could have just broken up with me. You didn’t have to drag my dignity through the dirt. You killed the only family I had left.” I had wept, falling to my knees and begging him to listen, but he had simply wrenched his hand away and walked out of my life. A few weeks later, while trying to secure an evening shift at a diner to help with our living expenses, I was cornered in a dark alleyway by three debt collectors. As their hands tore at my jacket, panic seized me. In a desperate, blind instinct, I dialed Zachary’s number. “Zachary, please… there are men cornering me behind the campus diner… please help me, I’m so scared…” The sound of fabric tearing and the men’s coarse laughter echoed clearly through the receiver. But all I heard in response was Zachary’s laughter. Cold, sharp, and empty. “Isabel, when you were destroying my life, did you ever stop to think about what it felt like? This is your karma. Enjoy it. I’ll be sure to call the police for you when you’re done.” The line went dead. My screams were swallowed by the shadows of the alley. When I finally dragged my bruised, shivering body back to our apartment, I arrived just in time to see my father leap from the roof of our building. His body hit the pavement with a sickening thud, his warm blood splashing across my shoes. My mother, witnessing the fall, suffered a severe stroke that left her partially paralyzed. To pay off the loan sharks and keep up with her medical bills, I dropped out of college. I worked eighteen-hour days, but every cent I earned was stripped away by the collectors before I could even buy groceries. Eventually, because we couldn’t pay the hospital bills, my mother was wheeled out onto the street. That was when I ran into Jared. Out of pity for an old classmate, he quietly arranged for her transfer to a hospice facility and helped me apply for medical grants. But the debt collectors still found us, threatening to dismantle the facility if they didn’t get their money. Just when we had reached the absolute end of our rope, an old business associate of my father’s stepped in, quietly clearing the outstanding balance out of respect for my father’s memory. But just as things began to quiet down, I started coughing up blood. Biopsy results: advanced gastric cancer. I looked at the double-digit balance in my bank account and smiled weakly at Jared. “I’m not doing the treatments. Just… don’t tell my mother.” Jared refused to give up. He badgered me daily to fight, and even tried to organize a quiet fundraiser at our old university. But my mother found out anyway. She sat by my bedside, weeping, telling me she was nothing but a burden dragging me down. That night, she slipped out of her room and threw herself into the river. When the rescue team finally recovered her body and wheeled her towards the municipal crematorium, Zachary’s brand-new luxury sedan pulled up alongside the curb. He rolled down the window, a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills clutched in his hand. He threw them carelessly out the window, letting the green paper flutter down onto my face and my mother’s cheap shroud. He looked at me with a lazy, satisfied smirk. “I heard your mother died and you couldn’t even afford a pine box. Consider this my charity.” Then, he stepped on the gas and left me in a cloud of exhaust. After my mother’s death, I lost any remaining desire to fight. The chemotherapy was a quiet, agonizing torture that left me too weak to swallow water. Whenever I felt myself slipping, Jared would sit by my bed and tell me about Zachary’s rising success in the business world. Strangely, it was my lingering, stubborn love for him that kept me breathing through those final months. Until the afternoon I saw him walk into our hospital wing, holding Courtney’s hand as they headed toward the executive suite for their pre-marital health screenings. Seeing the heavy platinum band on his ring finger, a violent spasm wracked my chest. I choked, vomiting dark blood onto my sheets. That night, I quietly packed my few belongings and checked myself out. By the time Jared tracked me down, I was sitting in a small, empty cemetery plot I had purchased with the last of my savings. Before I took my final breath, I wanted to close the book. I dialed his number one last time. When the call connected, a tiny, foolish spark of hope flared in my chest. But it was Courtney’s voice that answered, dripping with venom. “Isabel, today is my wedding day. If you’re going to die, go do it somewhere quiet. Don’t ruin our night.” The joyful brass music of their reception drifted through the speaker. The phone slipped from my numb fingers, shattering against the cold grass. My chest went entirely still. As the darkness took me, I fancied I could see my mother and father standing at the edge of the woods, waiting to walk me home from school, just like they used to. A loud argument snapped me back to the present. Jared was staring at Zachary with absolute disgust, ignoring Courtney’s frantic attempts to dismiss him. “The truth is right there on the floor,” Jared spat. “Believe it or don’t. Isabel left a package for you before she died, but honestly? You don’t deserve to touch it.” The reunion ended in a tense, uncomfortable silence. When Zachary returned home that night, he was quiet, his eyes unfocused. Just as he sat down in his study, an unknown number flashed on his phone. He answered it on autopilot. “Hello, is this Mr. Cross? This is the administration office at Oakwood Memorial. The lease on Ms. Isabel Mercer’s plot is up for renewal. Would you like to handle the payment?” Zachary’s brow furrowed in deep confusion. “You have the wrong number. Nobody in my family has a plot there.” Frustrated, he hung up, burying his face in his hands. Three days later, Jared walked up the winding path of Oakwood Memorial, only to find Zachary standing near the entrance, looking lost. Seeing the large bunch of baby’s breath in Jared’s hands, Zachary’s jaw clenched. “You’re bringing baby’s breath? Don’t tell me you’re visiting Isabel.” Jared didn’t answer. He simply nodded. The mocking retort died on Zachary’s tongue. He knew—he remembered—that baby’s breath had been my absolute favorite flower. He stared at the delicate white blossoms, a sudden, wild panic flickering in his dark eyes. Jared let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Are you brave enough to come see her, Mr. Cross?” I was buried in a modest plot next to my parents. The headstone was simple, bearing a engraved photograph of me at eighteen. I had chosen that photo because I wanted them to remember me when I was still whole, before the world broke me. Zachary stared at the headstone, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He forced a harsh, defensive laugh. “You really think a fake stone and an old photo are going to make me believe this elaborate stunt?” Jared placed the flowers at the base of the stone, his hands shaking with suppressed fury. “The letter you received ten years ago was swapped by Courtney. She hired someone to mimic Isabel’s handwriting. You spent a decade hating the girl who loved you, while sleeping next to the monster who ruined her.” Jared stepped closer, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Isabel never owed you a thing, Zachary. It was your own blind, arrogant pride—and the woman you married—that destroyed her life.” Jared pulled a thick manila envelope from his coat and shoved it against Zachary’s chest. I watched, holding my breath, waiting to see how Zachary would react. But Zachary barely looked at the envelope. He glanced at my smiling face on the headstone, his features hardening into a mask of denial. He tossed the envelope onto the dirt and ground his heel into it, twisting his shoe until the paper tore. “Isabel was a liar and a cheat. Don’t you dare compare Courtney to her.” Watching his stubborn defense of the woman who had ruined us, a familiar, dull ache settled deep in my spirit. If he had trusted me even a fraction as much as he trusted her, would we have ended up here? But there were no second chances in the dark. Jared’s eyes turned blood-red with anger. “Isabel called you when she was dying. She took her last breath listening to the music from your wedding reception. Every single time you celebrate your anniversary, you are celebrating the day she died. She left this world with nothing but your hatred.” Zachary froze. His hands began to tremble violently. A low, ragged laugh escaped his throat. “If she’s really in there… then dig it up. Dig up the grave and prove it to me.” “Are you insane, Zachary?” Jared roared. But Zachary had already signaled his security detail. At his command, three large men stepped forward, shoving Jared back. They brought out shovels, striking the earth with brutal, systematic force. The headstone was tipped over. The soil was torn away. Within minutes, they reached the small, simple urn. In their haste to pull it out, it slipped, crashing against the concrete edge of the burial vault. The ceramic shattered. My ashes scattered into the cold wind, drifting over the grass like grey snow. Jared let out a raw, agonized scream, throwing himself onto the ground to gather what he could, but the wind was too quick. I reached out, trying to touch my own remains, but my fingers simply passed through the dust. I tried to cry, but my eyes remained dry. I had forgotten how to weep a long time ago. Zachary stood over the mess, his face pale but his eyes wild. He pulled out his phone and dialed my old number once again. “Isabel! Stop playing dead! I’ve dug up your grave!” he screamed into the receiver, his voice cracking. “Your parents are right next to you. If you don’t show up here in thirty minutes, I’ll have their graves dug up too!” The voice on the other end erupted in terror and fury. “Are you a fucking psychopath? I told you, I am not Isabel! You dug up a grave? I’m calling the police!” The line went dead. Zachary stared at the screen, his face turning an ash-grey. By the time the police cruisers arrived, the cemetery was a scene of utter ruin. The lead officer looked at the scattered ashes and the shattered urn, his expression turning grim as he recognized Zachary. “Mr. Cross,” the officer said, his voice heavy with authority. “We’ve pulled the vital statistics and social security records. Isabel Mercer was officially pronounced dead three years ago.”

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Since I was a kid, I’ve been a golden retriever in human form—blessed with a rare, relentless brand of optimism. A walking dopamine machine. That was until Wyatt Landry, a billionaire worth hundreds of billions, signed me to live in his sprawling estate. My daily allowance was one hundred thousand dollars. My sole KPI? Just stay happy. You see, Wyatt suffered from severe, treatment-resistant clinical depression. He lived perpetually on the edge of a precipice, always one bad day away from the roof. But somehow, our emotions became linked. As long as I was giggling, he felt the world was worth living in. The moment my mouth curved downward, he was looking for a rope. Last month, the male lead in my favorite TV drama died, and I let out a couple of genuine, heart-wrenching sobs. At that exact moment, in the middle of a high-stakes board meeting, Wyatt broke down in uncontrollable tears. The terrified executives spent three hundred million dollars overnight just to force the production team to shoot an alternate resurrection ending. From that day on, my happiness became the company’s highest classified secret. Until Wyatt went on an overseas business trip. That was when Isabel Caldwell—who fancied herself his rightful fiancée—marched into my walk-in closet with a flock of bodyguards. “What kind of garbage are you to spend Wyatt’s money just to keep yourself amused? It’s time someone taught you some manners!” She sneered, snatching a rare, limited-edition figurine from my hands and smashing it to pieces. Then she reached for the front-row concert tickets of my favorite artist, preparing to rip them to shreds. Staring at the broken pieces on the floor, I broke down and sobbed. The second my tears fell, I could almost hear the heavy, exhausted sigh from across the ocean—Wyatt stepping onto the ledge of a skyscraper, completely done with this world. Oh, God. This woman wasn’t just destroying my toys. She was about to destroy her future husband’s life. 1 I forced myself to stop crying. As soon as the first tear escaped, my entire body went rigid. Wyatt was wishing for death again. I reached down and clamped my nails deep into the flesh of my inner thigh, hard enough to draw blood. I gritted my teeth and forced a stiff, unnatural grin onto my face. “What are you smiling at?” Isabel demanded. She ground her designer stiletto heel into the shattered remains of my collectible figurine, the plastic crunching under her weight. “I smash your things and you laugh? Are you mocking me? Laughing because you think I don’t have the authority to put you in your place, or because you think I can’t touch you?” I’m trying to save your fiancé’s life. But I couldn’t say it. I just kept up my stupid, vacant smile. The emotional link was a Tier-S classified secret, a clause baked into my contract with Wyatt. If the public found out, the entire Landry corporate empire would implode overnight. “Miss Caldwell, you’ve got it all wrong,” I squeaked. “Wyatt and I… we don’t have that kind of relationship.” “He lets me live here because—” “Because why? Because you’re cheap?” Isabel spat, stepping closer. “Wyatt and I grew up together. Our families have had an understanding since we were children. Who do you think you are? A nobody with no family name, living in his mansion and spending his money?” She waved a manicured hand toward the closet. “Pack up everything she owns. Every single thing. Throw it in boxes and get it out of here.” “Don’t leave a trace.” Four hulking bodyguards in dark suits pushed past her, tearing through my drawers and cabinets. I didn’t try to stop them. Clothes could be replaced. A life couldn’t. “Miss Caldwell, I strongly suggest you stop this,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “If you make me unhappy, something terrible will happen to Wyatt.” Isabel blinked, stunned for a fraction of a second, before bursting into a harsh, mocking laugh. “Oh, please! Listen to yourself. He’ll get hurt if you get upset? Who do you think you are? You think you control his heartbeat?” She rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable. The lies you gold-diggers spin get more pathetic by the day.” I thought back to a company retreat last year. A vice president named Mr. Gallagher had made a snide remark, calling me a useless trophy ornament. It was a single sentence, but it made my eyes sting with tears for all of three seconds. Just three seconds. Wyatt had smashed his glass in his office, stormed out, and confronted Gallagher directly. By that evening, Gallagher was committed to a psychiatric facility, stripped of every asset and title. His entire family spent two days kneeling in the rain outside the Landry headquarters, begging for mercy. “Cut the act,” Isabel said, snatching the concert tickets from my hand and ripping them down the middle, letting the confetti-like pieces flutter down onto my face. “I am the sole heiress to the Caldwell Group. My father holds fifteen percent of Landry stock. You think a creature like you can compete with me?” She leaned in, her breath cold against my ear. “I’m cleaning house for Wyatt today. If you have any sense left in that empty head of yours, you’ll pack up and crawl out of here on your own. Otherwise, I will make your life a living hell.” Suddenly, the sound of frantic, heavy footsteps echoed from the hallway. “Miss Caldwell! Stop! Please!” 2 Franklin, Wyatt’s chief of staff, burst into the room, drenched in sweat, his tie completely askew. The moment his eyes found the tear track on my cheek, his face drained of all color. In his trembling hand, his phone screen flashed with real-time biometric data streamed from overseas. Wyatt’s heart rate had plunged to forty-two beats per minute. “Miss—Miss Caldwell, you can’t touch Nora. I beg of you,” Franklin panted, practically gasping for air. “If she’s unhappy… Mr. Landry… he really will…” “He’ll what? Fly back across the ocean to strike me?” Isabel raised an eyebrow, amused. “He barely even looks at you people. You think you can use his name to scare me?” “No, you don’t understand—” Franklin’s face flushed a deep, terrified purple. His lips trembled, but the words died in his throat. He couldn’t break the non-disclosure agreement. “I’m begging you.” With a dull thud, Franklin dropped to his knees, his forehead hitting the marble floor. “Just let Miss Webb watch a funny video. Ten minutes. That’s all she needs to reset. Please, Miss Caldwell, this is a matter of life and death.” Isabel looked down at him, a slow, cruel smirk spreading across her lips. “An employee, kneeling on the floor, begging me to let some mistress watch comedy videos? What exactly is the relationship between the two of you?” “Are you sleeping together? Huh? Shacking up in Wyatt’s mansion behind his back?” “No! That’s not true! Don’t say such things—” “I’m lying?” Isabel kicked Franklin away. “Wyatt goes out of town and you show up. She cries and you’re on your knees. Who would believe you’re innocent?” She nodded toward her bodyguards. “Break his leg. Use that golf club over there.” One of the guards reached into the umbrella stand and pulled out a carbon-fiber driver. Franklin didn’t run. He couldn’t. The club swung down, connecting with his shin with a sickening crack. He collapsed, letting out a guttural scream of pure agony. “Stop! Please, stop!” I lunged forward to intervene, but a bodyguard shoved me back. My head struck the sharp corner of the wardrobe. The pain was instant. Fresh tears welled up in my eyes. Franklin lay on the floor, his face covered in blood, panting heavily. He didn’t beg for himself. Instead, he threw his arms around the bodyguard’s leg to hold him back, turned his swollen, bloodshot eyes toward me, and gasped out: “Nora! Think of something happy! I beg you! Anything! Just smile!” Isabel frowned. “Psycho,” she muttered. She knelt down, tapping Franklin’s bloody cheek with two fingers. “Since you’re so eager to protect this trash, you can join her.” She stood up and smoothed her cuffs. “Drag them both down to the basement storage room. Lock them in.” “Not a drop of water, not a scrap of food, until I say so.” 3 The basement storage room was deep underground, damp, dark, and smelling of rust and mildew. The guards threw me onto the cold concrete floor and slammed the heavy iron door shut, bolting it from the outside. Instantly, we were plunged into pitch-black darkness. I had been terrified of confined spaces since I was a little girl. My heart began to hammer against my ribs; my breathing grew shallow and rapid, and my hands turned ice-cold. My panic and despair were radiating straight across the globe to Wyatt. Right now, he must be standing somewhere high, the wind whipping around him, looking down at the pavement. No. I shoved my hand into my mouth, biting down on my own skin to stifle the tears. You can’t be afraid. You can’t cry. If you cry, he dies. CLANG. The iron door was kicked open a crack, letting in a sliver of blinding light. It was Dr. Evans, Wyatt’s private psychiatrist, clutching a medical kit. “Nora’s emotional telemetry has bottomed out!” he yelled, trying to push his way in. “If we don’t intervene now, Mr. Landry’s heart will stop!” But before he could take another step, the head housekeeper, who had been bribed by Isabel, blocked his path. “Who let you down here? Miss Caldwell gave strict orders. No one gets near them.” “She’s going to die! Mr. Landry is going to die!” Dr. Evans was shaking with rage and fear. The housekeeper pushed him back with cold indifference. “I don’t dare disobey Miss Caldwell. Your threats don’t work on me.” The door slammed shut again. The chains rattled into place. Darkness once more. I don’t know how much time passed before the door opened for the third time. Isabel walked down the stairs, her heels clicking softly. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Well, this filthy hole certainly suits someone of your background.” Behind her, the housekeeper held a stainless-steel dog bowl. Inside was sour, leftover food, gray gravy skin forming on top, with flies beginning to circle. “I heard you lose your mind if you miss a meal?” Isabel knelt, catching my chin in her tight grip. “Eat up. Consider it a gift.” She shoved the bowl toward my face. The rancid smell hit my nose, and I gagged, tears spilling over. “Crying again?” Isabel scoffed. She stood up and dusted off her hands. “If you think I’m treating you poorly, let me add a little garnish.” The housekeeper grabbed the back of my head and slammed my face down into the bowl. The sour, rotting liquid rushed up my nose and into my mouth. The taste of decay filled my throat. I thrashed, choking and gasping for air, as my vision began to vignette. Just then, a loud crash of breaking glass echoed from upstairs. It was Dr. Evans’ voice, shrill and completely hysterical: “The team overseas just called! Mr. Landry is on the roof!” “They said he’s already slapped himself seventeen times! His face is unrecognizable!” “If we don’t stop this, he’s going to jump!” A cold dread washed over me. Seventeen times. I lifted my head, staring at Isabel through the grime. “You think you’re torturing me,” I whispered. “But you’re killing Wyatt.” “If he dies, you have nothing.” Isabel tilted her head, cupping her ear. “What was that? Speak up, I can’t hear you.” “I said—” A heavy, stinging slap cut me off. “Don’t you dare speak his name, you filthy bitch!” Isabel’s eyes were bloodshot, filled with a wild, manic rage. “He was perfectly fine before he met you! If anyone should die, it’s you!” She stood up, her stiletto heel coming down hard on my fingers, grinding them into the concrete. “Tomorrow, I’m bringing people over to see what kind of creature Wyatt has been keeping.” “I want everyone to see what you really are.” She patted her hair into place. “Wash her up. Put her in something presentable.” “I want my friends to see exactly how cheap Wyatt’s little pet really is.” 4 The next morning, the sun was bright, but not a single ray reached the basement. When the housekeeper dragged me up to the living room, the space was already filled with people. Seven or eight young heiresses, dressed in designer clothes, sat around the coffee table, which was laden with fruit platters and afternoon tea. “This is her? This is the woman Wyatt Landry has been hiding?” A girl with dusty-pink hair leaned forward, looking me up and down with a sneer. “She looks like a stray. Even my cleaning lady dresses better than this.” Another girl, wearing oversized sunglasses, laughed as she cracked open a melon seed. “I heard she didn’t even finish high school. Used to sell roasted sweet potatoes on the street corner.” “Oh my god, seriously? When did Wyatt’s taste get so… municipal?” I stood in the center of the room, my head hung low, letting them dissect me. Isabel sat in the center of the plush sofa, her legs crossed. She beckoned me with a finger. “Come here.” “Kneel.” I didn’t move. “Are you deaf?” A bodyguard kicked me hard from behind, right in the back of my knees. I crashed onto the marble floor, the impact sending a shudder of pain through my kneecaps. Isabel smiled thinly. “Girls, Wyatt was so insistent that I take good care of her while he was away. And you know what? The more he talked about her, the more curious I got.” She leaned forward, her voice carrying across the room. “Whoever makes her cry and beg for mercy today gets the exclusive shipping contracts for the Caldwell Group’s southwest region next year.” Silence fell over the room for a brief second. Then, the pink-haired girl stood up. “Mind if I go first?” Isabel waved her hand generously. “Be my guest.” The girl walked over, stared down at me for a moment, and delivered a sharp slap to my left cheek. The sharp edge of her diamond ring sliced my skin. A bead of blood welled up and ran down my jawline, dripping onto my collar. I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t dare. If I cried, Wyatt would break down sobbing in some high-profile international boardroom. The European investors, waiting for any sign of weakness, would realize that the head of the Landry empire was unstable. I had to endure it. The slaps kept coming. When one grew tired, another took her place. They slapped my face, pinched my arms, and jabbed the backs of my hands with dessert forks. I clamped my jaw shut, absorbing the pain, refusing to let a single tear fall. But then, the girl in the sunglasses reached for the faded, dirty string around my neck. My pupils dilated. Attached to the string was a small, tattered rag doll, its paint long since peeled away. My grandmother had sewn it for me from scraps of old cloth before she passed away. Inside its belly, instead of cotton, was a tiny, cheap recording chip. Before she closed her eyes for the last time, she had pressed the record button one last time: “Don’t cry, my sweet girl. Grandma will always be here to make you smile.” It was the only thing I had left of her. It was the sole anchor of my happiness. “What is this garbage?” the girl sneered, ripping the doll off my neck. “Just a filthy piece of trash. Throw it away.” She tossed it casually. It flew through the air and landed right at Isabel’s feet. “No!” I lunged forward, my knees scraping against the marble, leaving a smear of blood behind. But just as my fingers brushed the string— Isabel’s stiletto heel came down on the doll. “So precious to you?” She picked it up by the string, pressing its belly. My grandmother’s raspy, tender voice drifted out of the worn fabric. “Don’t cry, my sweet girl. Grandma will always be here to make you smile…” “Oh my god, that is so tacky!” “Creepy!” “Please,” I sobbed, dropping my forehead to the floor. I banged my head against the marble over and over, the sound echoing through the room as blood began to trickle down my face. “That’s from my grandmother. It’s all I have left of her. Please, take anything else. Just leave me that.” “I’m begging you.” Isabel looked down at my bleeding forehead, her expression entirely devoid of warmth. “You know, an orphan looks quite beautiful when she’s begging.” She smiled. And then, right in front of my eyes, she ground her heel down into the doll’s chest. CRACK. The fabric tore. The stuffing spilled out onto the floor, and the tiny voice chip was crushed into plastic dust. The gentle voice—”Don’t cry, my sweet…”—cut off mid-word. I froze. The sound was gone. The light was gone. The warmth was gone. The part of me that was capable of feeling joy withered and died in that exact second. Isabel looked at me, hollowed out and limp on the floor, and clapped her hands together. She turned to a tripod setup nearby, waving at the live broadcast stream on her phone. “See, girls? She’s nothing but a cheap toy. Wyatt really lost his mind—” Before she could finish, a deafening roar shook the villa. A helicopter was hovering dangerously low outside. Heavier than the wind, the grand double doors and the massive floor-to-ceiling glass panes shattered inward. Before the shards even touched the floor, a man covered in dried blood, his designer suit shredded with blade cuts, charged through the cloud of dust. Wyatt. The heiresses shrieked, scattering in terror. Isabel froze, then quickly tried to put on a worried face, stepping toward him. “Wyatt! You’re back! Oh my god, you’re bleeding! Who did this to you—” Wyatt didn’t look at her. His bloodshot eyes were locked entirely on the motionless, bloody figure in the center of the room. He shoved Isabel out of his way. He didn’t yell. He didn’t strike anyone. His legs shook violently as he walked toward me. And then, with a heavy, hollow sound, he fell to his knees. The master of a multi-billion-dollar empire, kneeling before a broken girl covered in blood and filth. With a trembling, bleeding hand, he reached behind his back and drew a silver utility knife. He pressed the blade directly against his own throat, right over the pulsing carotid artery. Wyatt looked up at me, his face drenched in tears. His body was shaking with uncontrollable tremors. He looked into my empty, hollow eyes, and forced his lips into a wide, terrifyingly distorted smile. “Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Smile for me.” “Or… just kill me.” “I can’t… I can’t hold on anymore…”

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The day I turned thirteen, I finally got the call. A heart was waiting. A second chance at a life that had barely begun. But ten minutes before they were scheduled to wheel me into the operating room, the dream evaporated. A nurse walked in, her face pale, and told us the donor heart had been “requisitioned” for an emergency. The recipient was the only daughter of Chicago’s most powerful billionaire. I watched my parents fall to their knees, their spirits breaking right there on the sterile linoleum. They sobbed, pressing their foreheads to the floor. “If she doesn’t get that heart, our little girl will die!” my mother shrieked, her voice cracking under the weight of her desperation. “Please, we’ll do anything. Just give us back the heart!” I will never forget the way that billionaire couple looked down at us. It wasn’t just indifference; it was a quiet, chilling disgust. “Does a piece of gutter trash really compare to my precious daughter?” the woman said, adjusting her designer coat as if my family were nothing but a smudge on her sleeve. “If she dies, she dies. Stop making a scene.” I didn’t die. I clung to life on heavy experimental drugs for three agonizing months, dragging myself through the dark until, by some miracle, another heart became available. Twenty years later, I became the leading cardiothoracic surgeon in the country, specializing in complex heart transplants. And then, on a Tuesday afternoon, the hospital chief walked into my office, personally delivering an urgent surgical request. I looked at the signature on the consent form, and a slow smile crept over my face. I tossed the paperwork onto the desk. “I’m not taking this case,” I said. 1 The smile on Chief Baldwin’s face froze. “Grace, this is incredibly urgent,” he said, taking a step closer to my desk. “You know as well as I do that you’re the only surgeon in the country who has successfully performed this kind of redo-transplant with complex reconstruction.” I flipped open my schedule, not looking up. “My schedule for today is fully booked. If they want me to operate, tell them to get in line.” I was trying to give him a polite out, but Baldwin took it as a sign of flexibility. He leaned in, his voice taking on a desperate, pleading note. “We can hand off your later surgery to someone else! I’ll arrange it right now.” I raised my head, locking my eyes onto his. “Someone else? Who exactly do you plan to put on that case, Chief?” He choked on his words. He knew the answer. Everyone in the department knew. The surgery scheduled for this afternoon was one that only I could perform. But unlike the file on my desk, that one was a charity case. The patient was a nine-year-old boy named Jamie, who was suffering from end-stage dilated cardiomyopathy. He had survived on the transplant list for two agonizing years before a donor heart finally became available. But his father had recently died in a construction accident, and his mother, who ran a small food stall, couldn’t afford the exorbitant post-operative care fees. I had personally fought to get Jamie approved through our hospital’s charity care program. I felt a cold laugh bubble up in my chest. Twenty years had passed, and yet the world hadn’t changed a bit. The lives of the poor were still treated as currency to be traded away at a moment’s notice. Baldwin’s expression soured. He abandoned his gentle approach and threw his hands up. “You don’t understand who the patient is, Grace! She’s the only daughter of the Mercer family. Her mother’s family, the Kingsleys, have dominated Chicago for three generations. Their influence is absolute.” He leaned over my desk, tapping his finger on the mahogany. “Her father runs the largest medical capital conglomerate in the world. Half of our hospital’s research grants are funded directly by the Mercer Foundation!” I let out a sharp laugh. “So, because they have money, their lives are worth more?” Baldwin’s face flushed. “That is not what I meant.” “Then what did you mean?” I stood up, leaning forward until we were eye-to-eye. “On one hand, you have a child from a struggling family who has waited two years for a chance to live. On the other, you have a billionaire’s daughter. You didn’t even hesitate, Chief. You wanted me to toss that boy aside. Tell me, how much are they paying you?” “Dr. West!” Baldwin’s voice boomed, his face turning a deep crimson. “Watch your tongue! You are stepping way out of line.” I offered him a tight, humorless smile, sat back down, and pulled my afternoon charts toward me. I was finished talking. The silence in the office stretched, heavy and suffocating. Realizing anger wouldn’t work, Baldwin let out a long sigh and softened his tone. “Grace, you’re a smart woman. The Mercers have promised that if the surgery is successful, they will fully fund the expansion of our cardiac center next year. On top of that…” He held up five fingers. “They’re offering you five million dollars. Personally.” He paused, letting the number hang in the air. “They also have immense pull with the International Medical Association. I know you’ve been trying to get nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award in Transplantation. A single phone call from Charles Mercer will do more for your career than ten years of grinding.” I listened quietly, finding a grim amusement in the irony of it all. Twenty years ago, they used their power to steal my heart. Twenty years later, they wanted to use their wealth to buy my hands and my conscience. “My answer is still no,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Chief, I have a surgery to prepare for.” Baldwin’s chest heaved. He pointed a trembling finger at me, trying to find the words to curse me out, but ultimately slammed his hand on the desk, grabbed the folder, and stormed out. Through the heavy oak door, I could hear him apologizing profusely to someone waiting in the hallway. A few minutes later, the door flew open again. Baldwin rushed in, sweat slicking his forehead, and thrust his phone toward my face. “Dr. West, Mr. Mercer wants to speak with you directly.” A strange, dark curiosity washed over me. I took the phone and placed it to my ear. “Dr. West,” a smooth, baritone voice spoke from the receiver. “I know that adding a last-minute surgery is a massive imposition, but my daughter’s condition is critical. I must ask you—” Before he could finish, a sharp, piercing female voice drowned him out. “Why are you wasting your breath begging her? She’s just a doctor! Who does she think she is?!” 2 I narrowed my eyes. It was Katherine. Her voice was just as arrogant and razor-sharp as I remembered, dripping with an unearned superiority. It was the exact cadence of her mother’s voice from twenty years ago. I heard a rustle of clothing, and then Katherine’s voice came through clearly, as if she had snatched the phone from her husband’s hand. “I am ordering you to schedule my daughter’s surgery immediately! We are paying you to do a job. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking you have a choice!” I smiled. Leave it to the ultra-rich to demand a favor with a knife to your throat. When my parents had begged for my life, how had they acted? They had stripped away every shred of dignity they possessed. They had pressed their faces to the cold floor, begging for mercy. I still remembered the day my parents found out my donor heart had been given away. They ran through the hospital corridors, begging doctors, department heads, the previous chief—anyone who would listen. Finally, a sympathetic resident admitted that a VIP patient had pulled strings to redirect the organ. The hospital couldn’t fight them. My parents had blocked the operating room doors, weeping. “Please, Mrs. Kingsley… your daughter is stable. But if our girl doesn’t get this surgery, she won’t survive the week! We will work for your family for the rest of our lives. Just please, let her have the heart…” They begged until their foreheads bled against the floor. Katherine’s mother had simply pulled her designer skirt away from my mother’s grasping hands, looking at her with pure disgust. “Is a piece of gutter trash really comparable to my precious princess? If she dies, she dies. Stop making a scene.” Mr. Kingsley had stepped forward then, tossing a check onto my mother’s bleeding head. “You only have yourselves to blame,” he had said, his voice flat. “Your child was born to inherit your poverty and insignificance. Here is fifty thousand dollars. Take it, shut up, and accept your daughter’s fate.” My parents had torn the check to pieces. But I refused to accept that fate. I refused to let them have the satisfaction of my death. I fought the reaper every single day. A month later, after another massive heart failure, I lay in the ICU, surrounded by tubes, unable to even whisper. And then, I saw her. Katherine, looking healthy and radiant in a pink princess dress, stood outside the glass doors of my room. Her parents had taken her on a stroll around the ward before her discharge, specifically pausing to let her look at me. “Katherine, look closely,” her father had said, pointing at my gasping form. “This is what happens to the lower classes. You were born to be a princess. You never have to care about people like this. They don’t matter.” Katherine had tilted her head, her eyes wide and curious. “Daddy, why isn’t she dead yet?” I had carved that memory into my soul. It was the burning hatred for the Kingsley family that had kept me breathing when my lungs wanted to collapse. “Hello?! Are you listening to me?!” Katherine’s screeching voice pulled me back to the present. “Talking to people like you is such a chore. Zero manners.” I let out a soft, cold chuckle. “Mrs. Mercer. Is this how you ask someone to save your child’s life?” She laughed, a dry, mocking sound. “Ask? You think highly of yourself, Dr. West. You’re just a girl with a scalpel. The Mercers and the Kingsleys chose you because you’re supposed to be the best. You should be honored. We don’t actually need you.” “Is that so?” I replied, my voice dripping with honeyed malice. “If you’re so confident, Mrs. Mercer, I suggest you find someone else.” I hung up. I handed the phone back to Baldwin and gestured for him to leave my office. The truth was, they did need me. The specific redo-transplant their daughter required was a highly specialized procedure that only a handful of surgeons in the world could perform, and none of them were in the state. Furthermore, the girl’s cardiovascular system was too unstable to survive a long-distance flight, and flying an international specialist in would take months of bureaucratic approvals. They were out of time. For twenty years, I had dreamed of getting even with the family that had nearly killed me. I just never expected them to hand me the knife. 3 Predictably, three days later, I returned to my office after a consultation to find Katherine and her husband waiting for me. Charles Mercer stepped forward first, his demeanor far more polished than his wife’s. “Dr. West,” he began, offering a polite nod. “Please accept my apologies for my wife’s outburst the other day. She was distressed. I wanted to personally bring her here to apologize, and to see if we could find some common ground regarding our daughter’s surgery.” In the next instant, Katherine burst into tears. “Dr. West… I am so sorry,” she sobbed, clutching a lace handkerchief. “I was out of my mind with worry. My daughter is only eight years old. She is everything to us. Please, don’t let a mother’s foolish mistake cost an innocent child her life. I beg of you, save her…” She wept beautifully, her shoulders trembling. To anyone else, she would have looked like a desperate, loving mother. But I saw the truth. I saw the cold, calculated venom in her eyes when she lowered her handkerchief to wipe her face. I watched her performance with an icy calm. “Mrs. Mercer, the hospital has strict protocols. Every patient must wait their turn.” Katherine’s crying stopped instantly. “But my daughter doesn’t have time! She is in critical condition!” I nodded smoothly. “I understand. Every single patient under my care is in critical condition. If you want me to perform the surgery, please submit the standard paperwork, and my office will schedule you for the next available slot.” A shadow crossed Katherine’s face. She raised her voice, letting it carry out into the hallway. “Dr. West, are you really going to just stand there and watch a child die? Where is your medical ethics?!” I noticed a few people lingering outside my open door, whispering. Someone was holding up a phone, recording. A setup. They wanted to paint me as the villain. I didn’t flinch. I stepped closer to the doorway, ensuring my voice was loud and clear for the camera. “Your daughter is precious, Mrs. Mercer. But so is every other child in this hospital. You are asking me to violate protocol and push your daughter to the front of the line. What about the child whose spot she takes? Do they just die so yours can live?” I leaned in, staring directly into her eyes. “Or do you believe that because your daughter is a Mercer, her life is inherently more valuable than a normal family’s child? Do you believe ordinary children should step aside and die for yours?” The murmuring in the hallway shifted. The relatives of other patients waiting in the corridor began to glare at Katherine. This was the cardiothoracic unit. Almost everyone standing out there had a loved one clinging to life. The idea of a billionaire family using their wealth to cut the line didn’t sit well with them. The atmosphere grew incredibly tense. Charles Mercer’s polite smile vanished. He understood the public relations nightmare unfolding before him. If Katherine continued to push, she would essentially be admitting that the ultra-rich viewed the public as expendable. Charles quickly signaled his security detail. “Clear the hallway. No recordings.” The bodyguards immediately stepped out, shutting the door and pushing the onlookers back. Once the room was quiet, Charles took a deep breath, smoothing his tie and reassuming his gentlemanly facade. “Dr. West, you misunderstand. We have no intention of disrespecting other patients. If those are the hospital’s rules, we will respect them. We will find another way. Apologies for the intrusion.” He grabbed Katherine’s arm, pulling her toward the exit. Katherine looked as though she were about to explode. She whipped her head around, glaring at me with raw hatred. “You’ll regret this, West,” she spat. 4 I simply watched them leave, a small, cold smile playing on my lips. For once, the tables had turned. And I held all the cards. But the next morning, as I was scrubbing in for Jamie’s transplant, the head nurse stopped me. Her expression was deeply troubled. “Dr. West… Chief Baldwin needs you in the executive conference room immediately.” I frowned, holding my hands up. “The patient is prepped. We’re about to open.” She looked away, unable to meet my eyes. “The surgery has been put on hold.” I froze. When I pushed open the conference room doors, the room was packed. Chief Baldwin, the board of directors, the head of public relations, and legal counsel were all seated around the long table. Charles and Katherine sat at the far end, looking like the aggrieved parties. Baldwin slid a document across the table. Notice of Temporary Suspension of Clinical Privileges for Dr. Grace West. I flipped through the pages. I almost wanted to laugh. They had suspended me from all of my major upcoming surgeries, including Jamie’s charity transplant. Furthermore, my upcoming promotion to department chair, my international travel grants, and my federal research funding were all “indefinitely deferred.” I looked up. “On what grounds?” The PR director handed me a tablet. “See for yourself, Dr. West.” On the screen was a video from yesterday’s confrontation. It had been heavily edited. In this version, Katherine was sobbing, begging me to save her dying daughter, while I stood over her, looking cold, arrogant, and entirely unsympathetic. The headline was designed for maximum outrage: Genius Surgeon Refuses to Save Dying Eight-Year-Old: Tells Billionaire Family to ‘Wait in Line and Die.’ The comment section was a toxic wasteland of public anger. Who does this doctor think she is? Playing God? Emergency cases are supposed to take priority! She’s doing this out of spite. The Mercers were so polite, and she treated them like garbage. Strip her license! Baldwin sighed, a performative gesture of regret. “Grace, the public backlash is too severe. The hospital has to protect its reputation. We had no choice but to suspend you.” He paused, glancing at the Mercers. “But… there is a way to resolve this.” Charles Mercer sat in silence, his expression smug and victorious. Katherine, playing her part, wiped a tear from her eye. “Dr. West… I don’t know why you harbor so much resentment toward me,” she whispered. “But if you agree to perform the surgery on my daughter, we will release a statement clearing your name. We will make this all go away.” The board members immediately began to chime in. “Grace, just take the deal.” “A doctor’s duty is to save lives, after all.” “Think of the child.” “This is the best outcome for everyone.” Their words were empty, wrapped in a thin veneer of morality. They wanted me to bow down, to believe that my defiance was a failure of character. I smiled. I stood up and walked slowly toward Katherine. I reached into the pocket of my white coat and pulled out a red surgical marker. Katherine flinched, her eyes darting to the pen. “What are you doing?” I leaned down, pressing the tip of the marker directly over her left breast, right where her heart was beating. “Does it beat well, Katherine? The heart you’re wearing?” I whispered, my voice cutting through the room like dry ice. “How could the girl whose heart you stole twenty years ago ever look at you with anything but hatred?”

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I had spent two grueling months running myself ragged on these godforsaken missions. And there I was, sitting in the velvet shadows of a private VIP lounge, slipping a six-carat diamond proposal ring onto my finger for the eighth time. I smiled to myself, thinking, This is it. I’ve got these boys wrapped around my finger. Easy money. But when I pulled up the system interface, the progress bar was sitting at a flat, mocking zero percent. I completely lost my mind. I mass-texted all eight love interests at once: Is your love even real, or is it just a copy-paste job? You don’t care about me at all! That very night, a pair of strong hands pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth over my face. I blacked out, waking up locked in a pitch-black room. Beside me, a man loomed in the darkness, his jaw clenched, his voice dripping with venom. “Baby,” he growled, “you let me propose to you eight times. I thought it was some kind of twisted foreplay. I had no idea you were just face-blind.” Adam Peterson wrapped his arms around my waist, his breath hot against my skin. “You can’t tell us apart with our clothes on? Fine. Let’s see if you recognize me with them off.” 01 In the lightless bedroom, Adam’s lips slammed onto mine. My brain stalled. The only thing registering in my vision was the pale, sculpted curve of his abdominal muscles shifting in the dark. Adam seemed entirely out of patience. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, his teeth grazing my skin in a sharp, possessive bite. “Do you see me now? Do you know who I am?” His voice carried a dangerous, upward tilt at the end, his eyes flashing with raw irritation. My focus was completely shattered. I couldn’t even form words. I tried to roll over and bolt, but Adam let out a low hum, hooking his fingers around my ankle and dragging me back under him. He pinned me down, a solid, immovable weight. Panic clawed its way up my throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be a cozy, reverse-harem dating sim where I was the pampered main character. How the hell did I end up in a dark, obsessive captivity novel? Just two months ago, I was standing on the rooftop of my office building, screaming curses at my boss after he denied my raise. In my blind fury, I took a step too far and tumbled off the edge. When I woke up, a cold, mechanical System informed me it had saved my life—for a price. “Host,” the voice had droned in my head, “because the original protagonist was incompetent and failed her missions, you have been brought in as the stabilizer. You must successfully capture the hearts of this world’s eight male leads before you can return to reality.” At the time, my heart skipped a beat. Did “success” mean early retirement, unlimited wealth, and getting rid of an annoying boss forever? With visions of a billion-dollar payout dancing in my head, I readily agreed. And so, for two months, I threw myself into the role of a professional siren. Every single day was a blur of outfit changes, sweet-talking, shifting venues, and more sweet-talking. It was a non-stop, exhausting cycle. To be fair, at first, it felt like playing a real-life otome game. It was actually kind of fun. But after two solid months of it, my brain was completely fried. I couldn’t even remember the names of the eight male leads. I could barely distinguish them by their personal styles, and I almost called them by the wrong names multiple times. Eventually, I gave up trying to keep track and just called every single one of them “Babe.” They were all incredibly sweet, wildly clingy, and practically threw money at me. Within a month, I was dripping in Prada and driving a custom Lamborghini. I secretly congratulated myself on being a natural-born player. Riding that high, I decided to push for the finish line and drop hints about marriage. The boys took the bait beautifully. Each one of them bought a massive, glittering rock and dropped to one knee to propose. When I got home that night, my smile was practically splitting my face. The mission was as good as done, and I had walked away with eight priceless diamond rings. Licking my lips in anticipation, I opened the system interface to check my progress. And saw that big, fat, humiliating zero. 02 I deflated like a popped balloon, collapsing onto the sofa and glaring at my phone screen as I typed out the angry text to all eight of them: Is the rock-sized diamond a copy-paste job? Is your love just a template too? Your affection is completely fake! Careful as ever, I staggered the sending times. Even in my fury, I was a professional. I had to make sure the messages didn’t arrive at the exact same moment. But God, it hurt. I had worked so hard, and these useless men hadn’t given me a single point of genuine affection. Disgusting. I took a few deep breaths and immediately went to my closet to pull out the ultra-sexy dress the System had rewarded me with. Its item description claimed it boosted my charisma by eighteen points. That evening, I squeezed into the dress and scheduled a date with one of the male leads at a quiet, upscale bar. Yes, I was a coward who accepted defeat quickly, ready to drag myself back to the grindstone and try again. I stared at the prompt on the system screen: Invite any male lead to a quiet bar. Initiate physical contact to deepen his impression of you. Recommended steps: hand-holding, playing intimate games. I sighed. I had done this exact routine dozens of times over the past two months. Even if they weren’t tired of it, I was. Sure enough, the elegant, aloof heir sitting across from me looked thoroughly confused. “Sweetheart,” he said, his brow furrowing slightly, “isn’t this the exact same game we played when we first met?” “Why do you suddenly want to play it again…?” I forced a bright, celebrity-grade smile, burying the urge to roll my eyes. Why? Because of you hypocritical bastards, that’s why! I sneaked a glance at the subtle contour of his chest muscles beneath his shirt. Well, for the sake of those abs, I could play nice. I fluttered my false eyelashes, keeping my expression sweet and sincere. “I stayed up all night thinking about us,” I lied smoothly. “It feels like we’re moving way too fast.” “A guy as amazing as you shouldn’t be pressured into a proposal so quickly. So, I was thinking… what if we start over?” I reached across the table and took his hand, looking up at him like a devout worshiper. “Let’s act like we just met today. We can take our time~” The man’s gaze darkened slightly. The denim jacket he wore pulled tight across his shoulders as he leaned back heavily into his chair. I got the distinct feeling he was angry, though I couldn’t fathom why. Don’t men hate commitment and prefer strings-free fun? He remained silent for a long moment, slowly pulling out a cigarette. “Excuse me for a moment, baby.” With that, he headed toward the restrooms. I vented my frustration by aggressively eating all the desserts on the table, muttering under my breath, “Hmph, who does he think he is, catching an attitude? I’m the one who should be mad here!” “None of you actually love me, yet you all put on this devoted act. Hypocrites, the lot of you!” As I was cursing them, a pair of large hands suddenly clamped over my mouth from behind. Before I could scream, the world went black, just like a scene from a horror movie. The memory faded, and reality rushed back as Adam suddenly pinned me against the headboard. My wrists were bound tightly above my head, leaving me completely helpless. His fingers slowly traced down from my temple, lingering on my lips. He leaned down, his kiss so fierce and desperate it nearly stole the air from my lungs. “I’m Adam,” he whispered, his voice trembling with a dark edge. “Remember it.” I nodded numbly. I knew from experience that if I didn’t answer him correctly in a few minutes, he would find a highly creative way to punish me. The heat of our bodies and the slick sheen of sweat mingled in the dim light. I looked up into his eyes, which were dilated with naked obsession. As I marvelled at his sheer stamina, a terrible realization slowly dawned on me. I had caught a glimpse of the wall clock a moment ago. It was exactly 9:30 PM. The exact time I had scheduled my first angry mass-text to go out. The messages were set to send in five-minute intervals. Five of those targets would be receiving them right about now. Right on cue, my phone on the nightstand lit up with an incoming text alert. But that wasn’t all. Inside the closed nightstand drawer, several other distinct notification chimes began to ring in rapid succession. My pupils dilated as the pieces fell into place. Beside me, Adam let out a dark, mocking laugh, his jaw tight. “Baby,” he growled, “you had me propose to you eight times. I thought it was some kinky roleplay. I didn’t realize you were just face-blind.” He slid his hand down to my waist, his grip tightening until it bruised. “Did you really think a change of clothes meant a change of person?” “You can’t tell us apart with our clothes on? Fine. Let’s see if you recognize me with them off.” Oh, dear God. My mind reeled. I hadn’t seduced eight different men. I had seduced the same man in eight different outfits! I stared at Adam’s ridiculously handsome face, so angry I couldn’t breathe. I lunged forward, scratching at his back and screaming, “You absolute bastard! Why do you have to be so versatile? You completely tricked me!” “How is one person allowed to be a tech CEO, an investment mogul, and a brand ambassador all at the same time?! You set me up!” An amused smile played at the corner of Adam’s lips as he pressed his face against mine, murmuring, “I thought you liked the multiple personas, so I gave you a new one every time.” “Besides, is it a crime to model for my own companies?” I gasped for air, absolutely livid. “Conceited jerk,” I hissed. Adam seemed to enjoy the insult. He pulled the comforter over us, wrapping his arms tightly around my waist. Terrified that he would start another round, I quickly squeezed my eyes shut and pretended to fall asleep. Seeing that I was genuinely exhausted, he finally relented. He quietly reached down to massage my aching lower back. I fought the urge to kick him out of bed and screamed for the System in my head. System! Get out here right now! If Adam Peterson isn’t one of my targets, who the hell is he? The System’s voice echoed in my mind, cold and entirely devoid of empathy: Host, Adam Peterson is the ultimate villain of this world. … My mind shrieked in horror: Why didn’t you warn me about something this important?! Do you have any idea how much time I wasted on him?!

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It was the third year since Talia’s borderline personality disorder had clawed its way back to the surface. And it was the third time she had put me in a hospital bed. When I finally drifted awake in the sterile, white room, the space beside my bed was empty. A familiar, cold spike of anxiety shot through my chest. I scrambled out of bed, my limbs heavy and trembling, and limped out into the corridor to find her. Instead, as I approached the heavy fire doors of the stairwell, I heard a voice. It was Cody, my best friend, his tone low but vibrating with a suppressed, furious roar. “You almost choked him to death, Talia! Do you even realize what you did?” A heavy silence followed, thick and suffocating. “The first time you spiraled, you shattered his left ankle,” Cody continued, his voice cracking with emotion. “He’ll never run again because of you. The second time, you scalded his hands so badly he can barely hold a pencil. And now, this? You almost took his life!” “Why won’t you just divorce him? Why won’t you let him go?” I crept closer, my breath catching in my throat. Through the narrow pane of the reinforced glass, I watched them. Talia didn’t answer with words. Instead, she leaned in, her movements desperate and starved, and pressed her lips against Cody’s. It was a long, agonizing kiss. When she finally pulled back, her face was a mask of torture. “You know what this disease does to me,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “It only destroys the people closest to me. If I divorce him and marry you… I’ll just end up hurting you, Codes. I can’t do that to you.” “I just can’t…” The blood in my veins turned to ice. I stood frozen in the hallway, the sterile smell of bleach suddenly making me violently ill. Right then, my phone vibrated in my hand. It was a FaceTime call from an unknown number. Mechanically, my thumb swiped the screen. The face that appeared on the screen made my breath hitch. It was Talia. But not the Talia in the stairwell—this was Talia at eighteen, her eyes bright, her face free of the heavy, manic shadow that would later consume her. “I’m the eighteen-year-old Talia, the one who finally got cured,” the girl on the screen said, her voice bubbling with a sweet, youthful hope. “You’re twenty-eight-year-old Jesse, right? Tell me, did we get married? Do we have kids?” “And Cody… that annoying shadow of a best friend, he didn’t keep ruining our dates, did he?” A sharp, physical pain bloomed in my chest. Slowly, silently, I angled the phone’s camera toward the glass window of the stairwell. “See for yourself,” I whispered. … Talia’s eyes were filled with a burning, desperate intensity as she looked at Cody. “Three years ago, when I relapsed for the first time… it was because I saw you accept a drink from another woman at our wedding reception,” she confessed, her voice hollow. “I didn’t want to hurt you. So I had to take it out on Jesse.” My hand tightened around the phone, the metal casing digging into my palm. I remembered our wedding night. Talia had spent it huddled in the dark corner of our bedroom, staring at me like a predator cornering a rabbit. She had picked up a heavy wooden chair and hurled it at my shins, her eyes wild and bloodshot. “If I break your legs, you’ll never be able to run away from me, will you?” she had screamed. I had blacked out from the sheer agony. When I woke up, there was a steel rod holding my left tibia together. My athletic career, my scholarships—gone in an instant. And only now did I learn the truth. I had spent seven years helping Talia manage the illness she thought she had beaten at eighteen. But all it took was Cody showing a little warmth to someone else for the madness to drag her back under. Cody turned his face away, tears spilling over his eyelashes. Talia reached out, her fingers trembling as she cupped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “The second time I snapped… it was because you wrote a birthday card to a female colleague. What was I supposed to do? I had to find Jesse. I had to let it out.” The color drained from my face. My whole body began to shudder. After losing my athletic career, I had tried to rebuild myself, teaching myself digital design. I remembered the afternoon I had finally finished a major portfolio piece for a client. I had been so proud. Talia had walked into the study, carrying a kettle of boiling water. Without a word, she had poured it over my hands. “You’re working so hard,” she had whispered as I screamed in agony. “Are you trying to build a life without me? Just let me take care of you. Stay here.” Though she had panicked and driven me to the emergency room herself, the third-degree burns had already done their damage. My fingers were permanently stiffened. Even holding a stylus was an exercise in frustration. Cody shook his head desperately, trying to pull away from her touch. “Stop… please, Talia, just stop…” But she wouldn’t. “And this time? You texted me saying you were leaving the country. You were going to cut me out of your life forever.” I stumbled backward, my shoulder hitting the wall. Last night, I had spent hours cooking a beautiful dinner, waiting to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday. She had burst through the door, her face dark with fury. “You made all this food, put on this little show… is this your grand farewell?” she had hissed. “You’re never leaving me.” She hadn’t listened to a single word of explanation. She had dragged me from my chair, slapped me repeatedly until my face was numb and swollen, and then wrapped her hands around my throat. Just before the darkness took me, I had seen Cody burst through the door, sinking his teeth into her arm to pull her off me. For years, I had blamed myself. I thought my own inadequacies, my obsession with my work, had triggered her anxiety. But it had never been about me. Every single time she broke me, it was because of Cody. Cody was sobbing openly now. “I give up. I won’t leave. I’ll stay. Just… please don’t hurt Jesse anymore.” On my phone screen, the eighteen-year-old Talia’s eyes had gone completely wild. Tears of rage and horror streamed down her youthful face. “I’m going to kill them,” she hissed, her voice a terrifying whisper through the speaker. “How could they do this to you? How could I do this to you?” I let out a weak, broken laugh, leaning my head against the cold wall. “Don’t,” I whispered to the screen. “I don’t want revenge. I just want the eighteen-year-old you… to let the eighteen-year-old me go.” The young Talia froze. Her lips parted, trying to form words, but only a desperate sob came out. “Wait for me,” she finally managed, her voice cracking. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again. Not even myself.” The screen went black. I dragged myself back to my hospital room, feeling like a ghost inhabiting a broken shell. A few minutes later, Cody walked in, his eyes red and swollen. Seeing me awake, he rushed to my bedside, his hands hovering over my bandaged neck. “Jesse, you’re awake,” he breathed, trying to look into my eyes. “I… I gave her a piece of my mind. She won’t lay a hand on you again.” I flinched away from his touch, staring blankly at the ceiling. “You told me last week you were moving to Chicago. When’s your flight?” In the corner of the room, Talia, who had been quietly peeling an apple, froze. The paring knife nicked her finger, but she didn’t seem to notice the blood dripping onto the fruit. Cody’s smile turned stiff. “I’m not going anymore. Not with Talia in this state.” When he saw me frown, he quickly added, “Jesse, we’ve been brothers since we were kids. I’ve always had your back. If I leave, who’s going to protect you from her?” Looking at his tear-stained, earnest face, I felt a sick sense of wonder. How had he kept up this lie? They had been sleeping together behind my back for at least five years. My mind drifted back to the first day I met Talia. She had been huddled on the curb, bruised and crying after her stepfather kicked her out. I had stolen my dad’s first-aid kit to clean her scrapes. I had brought her into my home, shared my life with her. And in return, her attachment to me had grown into something suffocating. When we were kids, if I accepted a candy bar from another classmate, she would bite my arm until it bled. In high school, if I whispered to a female lab partner, she would drive a pencil into my palm. Once, she had even held a small pocketknife to my ribs, forcing me to let her scratch her initials into my hip. And every time she crossed the line, Cody would step in. He would scream at her, fight her, put himself between us. He had always been my protector. “She’s out of her mind, Jesse! She’s a psycho!” he would tell me. And Talia, after every episode, would dissolve into a puddle of weeping remorse. “Jesse, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m just so scared you’re going to leave me like everyone else did.” When we graduated high school, I had stolen money from my parents’ safe to take her to a private therapist. That was when we first heard the words: Borderline Personality Disorder. My parents had found out about the money and beaten me within an inch of my life. I remembered Talia kneeling beside me, her hands hovering over the welts on my back, weeping because she was too afraid to touch me. “Jesse… you’re the only person in the world who truly loves me,” she had sobbed. “I believe you now. You’ll never leave me.” After that, her symptoms seemed to vanish. We went to college together. She worked herself to the bone to build a successful career, desperate to prove to my parents that she was worthy of me. Three years ago, we got married. And on our wedding night, the nightmare started all over again. Cody had arrived at the hospital back then, silent and pale, staying by my side until I was discharged. I had thought he was just being a loyal friend. But now I understood. I was the anchor that kept her stable, and Cody was the tempest that tore her apart. I took a deep, agonizing breath. I looked directly at Cody and let out a cold, humorless laugh. “You don’t need to worry about protecting me anymore,” I said. “I’m divorcing her.” Talia stiffened. The paring knife clattered against the linoleum floor. “Divorce?” she whispered, her voice dangerously quiet. “You want to leave me? Just because of one bad night?” If we were eighteen, Cody would have jumped for joy, telling me I had finally gained some sense. But now, he only looked at me with a heavy, patronizing sigh. “Jesse, don’t talk in anger,” Cody said softly. “You two have been through hell and back for a decade. You can’t just throw that away. She only lost control because she was terrified of losing you. Tell you what—I’ll move into your guest room. I’ll help you keep an eye on her.” I pushed his hands away, a wave of pure disgust washing over me. “She almost killed me, Cody! If one of us has to die for this marriage to work, why does it have to be me?” Talia’s face darkened, the violent, erratic energy rolling off her in waves. She forced a tight, chilling smile and handed me the blood-speckled apple. “But you’re still breathing, aren’t you? You’ve survived worse. Don’t be so dramatic.” “Dramatic?” I threw the apple against the wall, where it shattered into wet pieces. Before they could stop me, I ripped open my hospital gown, exposing my chest and torso. “Look at me, Talia! Look at my arms, my legs, my ribs! Is there a single inch of my skin that doesn’t carry a scar from one of your ‘episodes’?” “I gave you everything. And what did you give me?” For a second, she looked at my ruined body, and a flicker of something close to disgust crossed her face. My voice cracked, tears finally spilling over. “I’m done. We’re divorcing. If you don’t sign the papers, I’ll let my lawyer handle it.” Talia slammed her fist into the drywall, leaving a dent. She took a step toward my bed, but Cody jumped in, his face pale as he pushed her back toward the door. “Get out,” Cody told her, his voice tight. “Let me talk to him first.” Once the door clicked shut behind her, Cody let out a long breath and turned to me. “Jesse, before you married her, I asked you if you were sure. You swore to me, on your life, that you would protect her forever…” “When did it start?” I interrupted, my voice barely a whisper. He froze. “What?” I looked him dead in the eye. “Was it after college, when you suddenly turned down that stable state job your dad got you, just to move to our city? Or was it when we were getting my tux fitted, and Talia insisted you try one on too?” The color drained from his face. “You… you know?” his voice shook, the self-righteous anger vanishing instantly. “Jesse, I… I did it to protect you. After high school, I went to the same college just to make sure she wouldn’t hurt you again. We were always together, the three of us. And then, graduation night… we both got so drunk, and it just… happened.” He bit his lip until it bled. “But I’ve been in agony, Jesse! Every single day for the past three years, I wanted to end it. But Talia…” The betrayal felt like a physical blade twisting in my chest. I grabbed my pillow and hurled it at his face. “Get out!” I screamed, my voice breaking. “Get the hell away from me! Don’t you ever look at me again!” Cody choked back a sob, turned on his heel, and ran out of the room. I lay back, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling as the silence of the room closed in on me. A text buzzed on my phone. It was from the unknown number again. “Almost there… just hold on a little longer, Jesse. You’re going to be free soon.” I closed my eyes, my head throbbing with a brutal, blinding pain. Suddenly, a violent force grabbed my wrist. Before I could process it, I was dragged off the bed and slammed onto the hard floor. A sickening crack echoed through the room as my left leg—the one with the steel rod—twisted unnaturally. White-hot agony flared through my body. I looked up, gasping for air through the sweat dripping into my eyes, and saw Talia. Her eyes were completely black with rage. “What did you say to Cody, Jesse?” Ignoring my screams, she grabbed my collar and began dragging me down the hall. My elbows and knees banged violently against the metal doorframes, then against the concrete steps of the stairwell as she hauled me upward. By the time she threw me onto the gravel of the hospital rooftop, I was barely conscious. I forced my eyes open. Cody was standing at the very edge of the roof, his back to the drop. He looked down at my bruised, shivering form and screamed at Talia. “How could you do this to him? You promised me you’d never lay a hand on him again!” Cody turned to me, his eyes filled with a desperate, tragic guilt. “Jesse… I’m sorry. I ruined everything. I’ll give her back to you now. I’ll make it right.” I let out a bloody, bitter spit onto the gravel. “Is this a joke to you, Cody? Are you trying to play the tragic hero now? I treated you like a brother, and you crawled into my wife’s bed. Now you want me to bless your drama?” Talia glared at me, her chest heaving. “Shut up! Jesse, you’re the one who should feel guilty! If you hadn’t forced your way into my life, if you hadn’t taken the title of my husband, he wouldn’t be like this! He’s been depressed for years because of us!” She grabbed me by my torn gown and shoved me toward the ledge, right next to Cody. “If you can’t convince him to step down, then you can go down with him!” I lost my footing, my bad leg giving out. The cold night air rushed past my back as I began to tilt over the edge. But just as gravity took hold, a small, incredibly strong hand clamped onto my forearm. “I’ve got you,” a voice gasped. I was violently pulled back onto the gravel. I looked up, panting, and froze. Standing there, holding my arm, was the eighteen-year-old Talia. She was breathing heavily, wearing the vintage denim jacket I remembered from high school. I looked over at the twenty-eight-year-old Talia and Cody. To my horror, their bodies were beginning to flicker. They were turning translucent, like fading ink on wet paper. “What… what is happening?” Cody gasped, looking down at his hands as they began to dissolve into the night air. I looked at the young girl beside me. “What did you do?”

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