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Seven years of emotional entanglement, and I was finally, utterly exhausted. It wasn’t a grand explosion that finished us. It was a notification on our seventh anniversary. A trending topic on social media that cut through the noise of my day: “New Celestial Discovery Officially Named: Parker Ward.” I clicked the link. The post was from my wife, Talia. The caption read: “Naming a star after you so that even in the vastness of the universe, you will never be lonely.” Benedicteath it, a comment from her junior colleague at the lab: “I’m so happy you decided to share this private romance with the world, Talia! You’ve made me the happiest man alive.” In the past, I would have spiraled. I would have called her a hundred times, demanding an explanation, begging for a reason why her “exclusive” love was being gifted to another man. But this time, I didn’t reach for the phone. I didn’t feel the familiar sting of tears. I just felt… done. 1. When Talia finally came home, I was out on the balcony, a cigarette burning between my fingers. She hated the smell. She used to wrinkle her nose and lecture me on lung capacity and the sanctity of our shared air. Because of her, I’d forced myself to quit years ago, enduring the shakes and the irritability of withdrawal just to keep her smiling. She saw me smoking now and paused, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. But she didn’t scold me. She reached into her bag and handed me a small, velvet-lined box. Her voice was flat, professional. “Happy seventh anniversary.” “Sorry I’m late. Things got crazy at the lab. I forgot to call.” “It’s fine,” I said, taking one last drag before stubbing the cherry out. I opened the box. It was a necklace—a delicate silver chain with a star-shaped pendant. I snapped the box shut. “I love it. Thank you.” Talia froze. Whatever excuse she had rehearsed died in her throat. She looked at me, waiting for the interrogation, the accusations, the inevitable fight. She expected me to be hysterical after seeing the news. I had expected that of myself, too. I had made reservations at the restaurant where I proposed. I’d bought fireworks. I’d taken the afternoon off to wait for her outside the Space Research Institute, wanting to surprise her. I didn’t find her. I found a headline instead. “Minor Planet 960306 officially designated the ‘Parker Ward Star.’ Lead Astronomer Talia Vaughn credits the discovery to a ‘significant personal inspiration.’” Talia’s post was the top result. “Named for you. Wear the sky like a crown. You are never alone.” The photo attached was of her and Parker at a dimly lit French bistro, their faces pressed close together. Parker was holding the framed celestial certificate, beaming. His comment—“Sharing our private romance with everyone, thank you, Talia!”—had ten thousand likes. I had tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and driven to our reserved dinner alone. I sat under the display of fireworks I’d paid for, eating two steaks by myself, a silent wake for a seven-year marriage that was already dead. As I reached for a second cigarette, Talia suddenly snatched the lighter from my hand. Her brow furrowed. “I thought you quit, Benedict.” “I felt like having one,” I said, putting the pack away and turning to head to the bedroom. She grabbed my wrist, her eyes searching mine, filled with a sudden, localized panic. “It’s our anniversary.” I looked at her, truly looked at her. “And?” Her grip tightened. “You didn’t get me anything? Are you really going to bed this early?” She leaned in to kiss me. Talia had always possessed this magnetic contradiction—cool, intellectual distance paired with a sudden, feline sensuality. Usually, when she initiated, I was a goner. But as she got closer, I smelled it. Not her perfume. Not the sterile scent of the lab. It was the smell of menthol cigarettes. Parker’s brand. I stepped back, tilting my head away from her lips. “You had a long day at work,” I said quietly. “Get some rest.” 2. I ignored her stunned expression and went to the bathroom to wash up. When I came out, my phone buzzed with a message. It was from Luke, my business partner and oldest friend. “Are you serious about the Paris move? Can you really leave Talia? If you fly back after two days because you miss her, I’m going to kill you myself.” I typed back immediately: “I’m serious. If I turn back this time, you have my permission to take me out.” Three years ago, our firm needed someone to spearhead the European branch. I’d discussed it with Talia, and we’d agreed it was a great move. But three days after I landed, she called me, crying, saying she had a stomach flu and couldn’t cope alone. I caught the next flight back. I stayed behind to keep her world steady, while Luke handled the travel. We had been together for twelve years—five dating, seven married. Since high school, I knew she was the kind of person who got lost in her work. I didn’t trust the world to look after her. Our friends often asked why a guy like me—someone who valued a warm home and a shared life—was with a woman who didn’t even know how to boil an egg. They said she was a great Muse, but a terrible wife. I always told them: “She saved me. Mentally and physically.” Because of my family history, I’d struggled with deep clinical depression in my twenties. At my lowest point, when I was ready to let the tide take me, she was the one who pulled me back. She was a slip of a girl, barely a hundred pounds, dragging my dead weight away from the edge. She went to every therapy session with me. Rain or shine. When I finally got better, I asked her, “Weren’t you scared? You were so young.” She’d just shrugged, looking out at the horizon. “I couldn’t stand the thought of someone with a smile like yours leaving the world. We have a long time left, Benedict. I want to see the world with you.” The Talia from back then probably never imagined she’d become the reason my depression flared up again. Life isn’t a multiple-choice test. And I was no longer the answer she was looking for. Luke, who had watched our entire history, sensed something was different. “The world is huge, Benedict. There’s better food, more interesting people, and a future that doesn’t involve you being a second-place trophy. July 1st is tomorrow. New month, new start.” A moment later, another text: “The Paris office opens in a week. Forget the girl, brother. Let’s get rich.” 3. The next morning, I woke up early for our monthly board meeting. To my surprise, Talia was in the kitchen, hovering over the stove. I blinked, momentarily disoriented. I only knew she could cook because of Parker’s Instagram. The kid loved documenting his life—especially the parts that belonged to me. He’d post photos of her making him spicy ramen during late-night shifts. He’d post about her picking him up in the rain. He’d post the carefully chosen gifts she bought for his birthday. Just like the star. He’d pouted that he wanted one, and she’d simply given it to him. I had spent the previous night in a fit of digital masochism, scrolling through Parker’s feed, watching the highlights of their “mentorship” turn into a full-blown romance. “Benedict, come eat,” Talia said, pulling me toward the table. “I made that oatmeal you like.” I picked up the spoon, took one bite, and set it down. She looked at me, confused. “What’s wrong?” I looked at the bowl. “I only eat it with brown sugar and honey, Talia. I like it sweet.” I’d told her once that sweet things helped with the dopamine. I had a sweet tooth that bordered on an addiction. She froze for a few seconds, her face flushing. “I… there are eggs in the kitchen. I’ll make those instead.” I shook my head. “Don’t bother. I’m in a hurry.” I’d seen Parker’s post from yesterday: “Yay! Talia promised to make me breakfast tomorrow. Savory oatmeal with poached eggs and sea salt. My favorite!” As I headed for the door, she grabbed my arm, her frustration finally boiling over. “Are you still sulking? Because of yesterday? I told you, it was a work emergency. I apologized.” “The research project is in its final phase, Benedict. As the lead, I can’t just put my personal life first. You’ve always supported my career. Why are you acting out now?” She was right. That was the dynamic we’d established. I loved her, so I was the shock absorber. I tolerated the forgotten birthdays, the missed anniversaries, the days where she wouldn’t even text to say she was alive. I told myself it was for her dream. Until the day she finished a major study and I went to pick her up. She was sitting in her car, laughing at her phone. The woman who always said texting was a “tedious waste of time” was typing a mile a minute, her face lit up with a genuine, effortless joy. That was the first time I heard his name. Parker. The “clumsy but brilliant” intern. That was the day I realized she didn’t hate texting. She just hated texting me. I pulled my arm out of her grasp. My gaze was level, empty. “I’m tired, Talia. These years… I’m just tired.” “We should—” I didn’t get to finish. Her phone rang. The ringtone was a theme from an anime I knew she didn’t watch. She didn’t even check the ID before answering. Her voice softened instantly. “Hey. What’s up?” She probably didn’t realize how her expression melted into something tender. Parker’s voice was loud enough for me to hear through the receiver. He sounded like a whining child. “Talia, I’m starving! When are you coming back to the lab? If I faint from hunger, it’s on your conscience.” Talia laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard in months. “You ate a mountain of wings last night. How are you hungry already?” “Fine, I’m coming now.” I felt a cold smirk tug at my lips. The boy on the phone seemed to sense something. “Oh, hey, tell your husband I said hi. Since I stole his star and kept you late for our celebratory dinner on your anniversary, I should probably buy him a drink or something. To say thanks.” 4. Talia’s eyes flickered with a brief, sharp guilt. She took a step back, clutching the phone. I didn’t say a word. I turned to leave. She hung up abruptly and chased after me, insisting on driving me to work. “The star… Parker was a huge part of that research,” she said as we got into the car. “I couldn’t just take all the credit. It was his birthday, and he mentioned wanting a star, so I figured it was a good way to reward his hard work.” “The dinner was a group thing, Benedict. It wasn’t just us. Don’t overthink it, okay?” I looked out the window. She had been working on this planetary research for three years. Parker had been there for three months. The lie was so insulting it was almost funny. She didn’t realize that whenever she lied, she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. It was a tell I’d known since we were twenty. She dropped me off at the office, but before I could even get through the lobby, her phone rang again. Parker. A “crisis” at the lab. She looked at me with an apologetic shrug and sped off. It didn’t even hurt anymore. The rain started that afternoon. A typical Seattle deluge. I got soaked running to a meeting and by evening, I was shivering with a high fever. I was lying on the couch, drifting in and out of a sweat-soaked sleep, wanting to ask Talia for some Tylenol. I heard her in the bedroom, but she wasn’t getting medicine. She was changing her clothes. “Parker’s water heater burst,” she said, not looking at me. “He doesn’t know how to fix it. I’m going over to help.” I stared at her. I didn’t know whether to ask why an astrophysics genius couldn’t call a plumber, or why my wife was the designated handyman for her intern. She didn’t give me the chance. She was out the door in minutes. She didn’t notice the thermostat was set to sixty-five, or that her husband was shaking under three blankets. She wasn’t like the girl in college who used to scold me for running into air-conditioned libraries after soccer practice. “Do you think you’re invincible?” she’d barked, wiping the sweat from my forehead with a tissue. “You’re going to get a fever, and then I’m the one who has to nurse you back to health!” At the office the next day, Luke dropped a thick file on my desk. “Start memorizing. If you mess up the Paris transition, I’m kicking you out of the partnership.” I dove into the work like it was a lifeline. I stayed until the building was nearly empty. Before I left, I opened my email and saw the draft from my lawyer. The divorce papers were ready. I printed them out. Outside, the storm had turned into a nightmare. I drove to Talia’s institute, the papers sitting on the passenger seat. When I pulled into the underground garage, my phone buzzed. A notification from social media. Parker had posted a video. It was from a Comic-Con event a few weeks back. In the video, Parker had won a gaming tournament. In his excitement, he grabbed Talia in the middle of the crowded hall and kissed her. Deeply. The caption: “From the moment I met you, I wondered if I could ever have you openly. Now, I finally do.” I turned off the screen and leaned my head back, laughing at the ceiling of my car. Twelve years. We had spent our entire adult lives together. And yet, the woman in that video was a complete stranger. I started to put the car in reverse when I heard a muffled shout from a few rows over. 5. “Talia, please! Don’t do this to me…” “I love you… is that a crime? I’ve loved you since you gave that guest lecture at my school…” I followed the sound. Parker, tall and lanky, had Talia pinned against the side of her car. His eyes were bloodshot, his face a mask of desperate youth. In a fit of dramatic despair, he leaned down and crushed his lips against hers. I saw her hands, which had been hanging at her sides, slowly rise. They slid up his chest and locked behind his neck. They stood there in the shadows of the garage, lost in a long, rain-slicked kiss. CRACK— A sudden bolt of lightning illuminated the garage, followed by a roar of thunder that shook the concrete. “Who’s there!” Parker snapped. They both turned and saw me standing ten feet away. Their heavy breathing was the only sound in the silence that followed. Talia looked like she’d seen a ghost. Her face went bone-white. “Benedict… Benedict, why are you here?” I walked toward them, one slow step at a time. “Sir, it’s not what it looks like,” Parker stammered, stepping in front of her. “It’s not her fault. I’m the one who loves her, it’s all—” I didn’t let him finish. I put every ounce of my twelve years of suppressed resentment into a single punch that sent him sprawling across the wet pavement. Then, I pulled my wedding ring off and threw it at Talia. It hit her shoulder and clattered to the ground. The shock seemed to snap her out of it. She shoved Parker away, her voice rising to a frantic pitch. “Benedict, let me explain! It’s not—” I cut her off, thrusting the divorce papers into her hands. “Talia. We’re done.”

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It was April Fool’s Day, and a stupid game with friends turned south. The penalty for losing was a “dare”: I had to text the person at the top of my contact list and ask to borrow money. I didn’t think twice. I pulled up my messages with Nicole and typed: “Hey, can you Venmo me fifty bucks for dinner?” Nicole had always been generous, the kind of woman who didn’t blink at a three-figure bar tab. I expected a quick transfer and a playful jab. Instead, she took a screenshot of my request and posted it to her Instagram Stories. The caption read: “And they say chivalry isn’t dead. Imagine being a man who has to beg his girl for fifty bucks. #DeadbeatStatus #GetAJob.” My blood ran cold. I called her immediately, my voice trembling with indignation. She picked up on the third ring, her tone maddeningly dismissive. “Relax,” she said, her voice airy. “Parker had my phone. He’s just a kid, Jackson. He was being playful for April Fool’s. He didn’t mean anything by it. I’ll make him apologize, okay? I’ve got a meeting. Bye.” The line went dead. Seconds later, I saw Parker—her twenty-something “executive assistant”—update his own Story. It was a selfie of him grinning, Nicole’s designer bag visible in the background. The text overlay said: “Accidentally cyber-bullied the boss’s husband. Oops! Good thing the boss loves me too much to stay mad. I better watch out or she might have to ‘punish’ me again. Sorry, Mr. Boss Man! ;)” It wasn’t an apology; it was a territorial marking. It was a slap in the face. I didn’t scream. I didn’t type out a furious reply. I simply tapped the little heart icon on his post, a silent acknowledgment of the war he’d declared. Then, I whispered to the empty room, to the woman who was currently cooing at a boy on the other end of a silent line: “The engagement is off. You can have him.” 1. “What did you just say?” Nicole’s voice dropped an octave, the playful chatter of the boy in the background suddenly cut short. I opened my mouth to repeat it, but Parker’s voice chirped in before I could. “Oh my god, Nicole, it’s April Fool’s! He’s totally messing with you. Everyone at the firm knows his family’s real estate empire went bust. He’s not going anywhere—where would he go? He knows a golden goose when he sees one.” I heard the audible sigh of relief through the speaker. Nicole’s tension evaporated. “Since when did you start making jokes about breaking up?” she asked, her tone returning to that patronizing lilt. “Stop being dramatic. I’m busy. Go out with your friends, have a good time. Put it on my card.” She hung up. In the past, my friends would have cheered, calling her a “boss babe” who spoiled me. But today, they sat in uncomfortable silence, staring at their drinks. They remembered how, when my father’s business first collapsed, Nicole was the one who threatened to ruin anyone who called me a “gold digger.” She used to say she hated the way people looked at our bank accounts instead of our hearts. She told me she wanted me to feel safe with her, unburdened by the shadow of my family’s debt. And now, she wasn’t just letting someone else say those things—she was handing him the keys to her digital life. She had given him the intimacy that used to be mine alone. Looking back, I realized the rot had been setting in for a while. But Nicole and I… we had history. When we were skiing in the Swiss Alps and that shelf of snow gave way, she hadn’t let go of my hand. She had risked her life to pull me into that crevice, saving us both from the avalanche. I told her then that she had a “get out of jail free” card for life. No matter what happened, I owed her a chance. I decided to go home. I wanted to talk, to find the woman I’d almost died with. But when I walked into our penthouse, my heart hit the floor. Parker was sitting on our Italian leather sofa, wearing a silk robe and one of my custom-formulated charcoal face masks. The mask was part of a private clinical set Nicole had commissioned specifically for my skin sensitivity. It was personal. It was ours. Nicole looked up from her laptop, seeing my frown. “He’s staying the night,” she said simply. “He lost a bet with his friends, and the dare was to find someone to take him in for the night. I figured, why not? We have the space.” My brain felt like it was short-circuiting. Years ago, my best friend from college got kicked out of his apartment after a messy breakup. I’d asked if he could crash in the guest room for a few days. Nicole had thrown a fit, claiming she “hated having strangers in her sanctuary.” She told me this house was a collection of our exclusive memories, and she didn’t want anyone else’s energy staining it. I had never invited anyone over since. I took a deep breath. “I don’t want him here, Nicole. Tell him to leave, or I will.” 2. Nicole blinked, startled by the steel in my voice. She reached out to grab my hand, but Parker beat her to the punch. “Hey, man, look,” Parker said, his eyes welling up with practiced vulnerability. “You’ve lost everything. You’re more alone than I am. Don’t get upset because of me. If I’m the problem, I’ll go. I’ll just find a bench somewhere.” He looked at Nicole, a single tear escaping. “I’m so sorry, Nicole. I overstepped. I’ll leave right now.” Nicole’s hand snapped to his wrist, holding him in place. “You’re not going anywhere,” she snapped. Then she turned to me, her eyes flashing with disappointment. “This is my house, Jackson. I pay the mortgage. If I say he stays, he stays.” “Nicole—” “I know you’re still sensitive about the Instagram thing,” she interrupted. “But your jealousy is showing, and it’s pathetic. We are colleagues. You don’t need to try and ‘alpha’ him to prove your worth to me. If you can’t handle being a grown-up, go for a walk. I’m not stopping you.” I looked at her, truly seeing her for the first time in months. Back in college, Nicole was a human lie detector. She could spot a “pick-me” guy from a mile away and would shut them down with brutal efficiency if they ever tried to undermine me. Now, her own assistant was mocking me to my face, and she was calling it “competition.” She was gaslighting me in the home she once promised would be my refuge. “We’re done,” I said, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. “And you’re right. I should leave.” I packed a single suitcase, ignoring the burn of tears in my eyes. As I reached the front door, I heard their voices drifting from the living room. “Nicole, are you sure? Did you really just kick him out for me?” There was a two-second pause. “He just needs to clear his head,” Nicole said, her voice sounding bored. “He’ll realize soon enough that he has no other options. Without me, he’s nothing. A little reality check will do his ego some good.” My heart gave one final, agonizing throb. She didn’t know. My father had called me last week. The offshore venture we thought was dead had been acquired by a tech giant. Our family was back in the top tier of the Fortune 500. I had planned to surprise her at the engagement party—to silence the critics who called her a “sugar mama.” But the first person to look down on me was her. I booked a flight to London for three days from now. If she wanted to be rid of the “deadbeat,” I would oblige her. I posted a short status: The engagement is officially canceled. My phone blew up. Most people thought it was an April Fool’s prank. I didn’t reply to any of them. The next morning, a text from Nicole popped up: [Going through with the act, are we? Fine. Bring the ring to the office. Give it back.] I didn’t hesitate. I caught a cab to her headquarters. When I walked in, the receptionist—a woman who used to bring me coffee and call me “Mr. Todd”—looked right through me. “You’ll need to make an appointment, sir. Please wait in the lobby.” The first move of her “reality check.” She wanted me to feel the loss of my status. I considered leaving the ring at the desk, but I couldn’t. The diamond was a vintage heirloom from her mother. Her mother had loved me, and even if Nicole had forgotten who I was, I owed that memory a dignified end. I waited for an hour. When I finally was called in, I opened the door and was immediately hit by a bucket of ice-cold water. I stood there, drenched, shivering, as Parker burst into laughter, holding an empty janitorial pail. “Sorry, man!” Parker giggled. “Where I’m from, we have a tradition. If you say something ‘unlucky’ on April Fool’s, you have to get doused to wash away the bad juju so the universe doesn’t take you seriously.” I looked at Nicole. She was sitting behind her mahogany desk, watching me with a smirk that bordered on affection. No anger. No reprimand. “There,” she said. “You’ve had your little tantrum, and Parker got his revenge for you being mean to him last night. Are we done? You’re not seriously giving the ring back, Jackson. I don’t have time to shop for a new fiancé.” She thought a few pretty words and a “prank” would reset the clock. But looking at her now, I felt a deep, visceral surge of disgust. I took the ring box and threw it. It hit her square in the chest before bouncing onto the desk. “I’m not the one throwing things away, Nicole. I’m the one moving on.” 3. Nicole stiffened, her smirk vanishing. “Jackson, are you serious?” I took a shaky breath, the cold water seeping into my skin, but the fire in my chest was hotter. “Yes. I’ve never been more serious in my life.” Her eyes reddened instantly. “Fine! Go! Don’t you dare come crawling back when you realize the world doesn’t give a damn about a man with an empty bank account!” “I won’t,” I said. “I promise you that.” I walked out of that office like a drowned rat, feeling the weight of a dozen mocking stares from the staff. By noon, Nicole had updated her relationship status. She didn’t just announce the breakup; she announced a new engagement. To Parker. My feed was flooded with photos of them. Nicole taking him to a tailor for a custom tux. Nicole picking out a new ring. She was giving him the “royal treatment,” even skipping a global board meeting to be with him. The year before, I’d asked her to come with me to my final suit fitting. She’d stood me up, claiming a “client emergency.” I found out later through the office grapevine the client was just Parker wanting to go to a specific steakhouse. I’d told myself it was just business. I had been so blind. I was about to turn off my phone when a message came from an unknown number. [Hey big brother, I accidentally broke this old watch. Nicole said it was just some junk you left behind and told me to throw it out. Thought you might want to dig it out of the trash.] Attached was a photo. My heart stopped. It was the vintage pocket watch my grandparents had given Nicole before they passed. It was their most prized possession, a symbol of their blessing for our marriage. I drove to the bridal boutique like a madman. When I burst in, I found Nicole surrounded by her friends. They were drinking champagne, looking at me with predatory amusement. “I told you he’d show up,” one of them laughed. “He doesn’t care about a watch. He just can’t stand being replaced.” I ignored them, my eyes locked on Nicole. “Where is the watch? Give it back to me.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is that really what you want to talk about right now?” I didn’t answer. I stepped toward her, reaching for the pocket of her blazer where I saw a metallic glint. Before my hand even touched her lapel—SLAP. My head snapped to the side. My cheek stung with a fierce, throbbing heat. Parker was standing there, rubbing his hand, his eyes wide and watery. “Nicole is my fiancée now. You can’t just put your hands on her, man. It’s disrespectful.” I looked at Nicole, waiting for the old her to emerge, for her to scream at him for touching me. Instead, she slid an arm around Parker’s waist and pulled him close. “He’s right,” she said coldly. “I am his now. Know your place, Jackson.” The room erupted in sharp, jagged laughter. “The little drama queen has no one left!” someone jeered. I swallowed the bile in my throat. “Fine. I’ll keep my distance. Just give me the watch. It belonged to my grandparents. It’s for the woman I’m going to marry, and that isn’t you.” Parker smirked. “Too late. It’s broken, so I tossed it in the dumpster out back.” Nicole frowned slightly, but she didn’t contradict him. I spent the next two hours in the blistering sun, digging through a commercial dumpster. The Nicole I knew once lost her own necklace in a park and cried for two days until I found it in the rain. This Nicole stood in the air-conditioned boutique, watching me through the glass with clinical indifference. When I finally gave up, covered in filth and heartbreak, Parker walked out of the store. He held the watch between two fingers, crinkling his nose in mock disgust, and dropped it into a pile of literal garbage at my feet. “Oh, oops! Found it. Sorry you spent two hours digging for nothing. My bad!” I snapped. I lunged forward and slapped him—hard. “You little piece of—” I didn’t finish the sentence. Nicole was there in a flash, shoving me backward with a force that sent me sprawling onto the pavement. “Enough!” she screamed. “He was playing a joke! It’s April Fool’s, for god’s sake! Why do you have to be so miserable? You’re lucky I don’t call the cops for assault!” She helped Parker up and led him to her car, never once looking back at my scraped, bleeding palms. I thought she was just venting. But when I got back to my hotel, two police officers were waiting for me. “Mr. Todd? We received a report of a physical assault in public. You’re coming with us.” 4. At the station, Nicole was holding an ice pack to Parker’s cheek. She looked at me with a face made of stone. “This is intentional harm,” she told the officer. “My fiancé has a mild concussion. I want to press charges. No settlements. I want the full three days of detention, the fine, and a public apology.” The pain in my head from the fall was getting worse. “They started it! He destroyed my property! Check the boutique’s security cameras!” But when they pulled the footage, it had been “cleaned.” The record showed me entering, standing around, and leaving. The incident with the water and the dumpster was nowhere to be found. Nicole had deleted the evidence. The officer shook his head. “If they won’t settle and you have no proof, my hands are tied.” I looked at the paperwork: three days in county jail, a $2,000 fine, and a court-ordered apology. My phone buzzed. A text from Nicole. [You care so much about your pride. If you apologize to him in front of my friends, I’ll drop this.] [You don’t want a criminal record following you around when you’re trying to find someone else to take care of you, do you?] I let out a jagged, hysterical laugh. Tears finally spilled over. “Officer,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’ll take the three days.” Nicole’s jaw dropped. “Jackson! Don’t be a martyr. Just say you’re sorry!” “I am sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I ever met you.” She grabbed Parker’s arm and stormed past me. As she went, she intentionally clipped my shoulder, sending me stumbling. My lower back hit the heavy metal door handle of the precinct. A sharp, white-hot spark of pain shot up my spine. I instinctively reached out, grabbing the hem of her coat to steady myself. She didn’t show concern. She didn’t flinch. “Stop acting,” she hissed. “I’m not falling for your pathetic plays for sympathy anymore. You want to be tough? Be tough in a cell.” She ripped her coat out of my hand and walked away. I hit the floor hard. The world began to tilt and fade. I woke up in a hospital bed. A concussion and a localized spinal contusion. The officer who escorted me looked sympathetic. “We need to contact your family or your emergency contact to settle the discharge.” “No,” I said, clutching the thin hospital blanket. “I’ll handle it myself.” I spent three days in that hospital under “custodial supervision.” I used the time to rebook my flight. The moment my time was up, I headed straight for the airport. As I sat in the back of the Uber, a message arrived. [I’m at the station to pick you up. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Come out so we can go home.] I didn’t reply. I blocked her number, deleted every photo of us, and gripped my grandfather’s pocket watch—now dented but still ticking—as I boarded the plane to London. Goodbye, Nicole. We’re done.

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When I opened my eyes again, I was standing outside a private suite in a five-star hotel, clutching a delivery tray. My blue courier windbreaker was stained with grease, and on the tray sat two plastic cups of cheap lemonade—supposedly the “hangover cure” for the two power players inside. The memories of my previous life hit me like a physical blow. In that life, my boss had slammed those cups against my chest, the lukewarm liquid soaking through my shirt. “Who told you to bring this garbage? I ordered the Lobster and Truffle Bisque!” his roar had vibrated in my eardrums. His assistant, Lexi, had immediately chimed in with a shrill sneer. “He probably drank it himself and replaced it with this swill. Make him pay for it!” I had pulled out my phone with trembling hands to show them the order on the app—it clearly showed her handle, PrincessLexi, had placed the order for the lemonade. But she didn’t even look. She swiped my phone out of my hand, and the screen shattered into a spiderweb across the marble floor. Then, she called dispatch to file a formal complaint. I was fined a week’s wages and fired on the spot. My mother was in the hospital, waiting for that money to stay alive. I was left penniless, forced to watch her take her last breath in a cold hospital ward. Worst of all, a video of that night—maliciously edited—went viral. Under the headline Delivery Thief Drinks Customer’s Soup, a million strangers cursed me with the most vile language imaginable. The despair drowned me like a rising tide. Eventually, I walked into the river. But now, the door opened. Howie, the man who had ruined me, beckoned me inside. A cold smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. In this life, I wasn’t going to be the sacrificial lamb. This business negotiation was about to get very “interesting.” 1 “Excuse me, I have a delivery for ‘Princess Lexi’?” I stood before the two executives and Lexi Brooks, the assistant, holding out the paper receipt. In my last life, I hadn’t been prepared; the paper slip had vanished in the chaos. This time, as long as she acknowledged the name, the receipt would be my ironclad proof. Lexi offered a saccharine smile. “That’s me. My favorite hangover cure. Bring it over.” There was a glint of anticipation in her eyes. She hadn’t made a mistake. She had ordered the lemonade on purpose, setting a trap for a reason I had yet to fully grasp. Clatter. I set the two plastic cups on the mahogany table. Both men immediately frowned. “What is this? Lexi, didn’t I tell you to order the Truffle Bisque?” Howie Briggs, her boss, demanded. Lexi was still playing her part. “Oh, Howard, honestly, the lemon enzymes are actually better for—” Thud! Howie slammed his hand on the table. “Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know what kind of meeting this is?” He turned to the other man, an intimidating figure in a charcoal suit. “Mr. Wolfe took time out of his insane schedule to meet us, and you’re serving him ten-cent lemonade? This is a business dinner, not a high school picnic!” Realizing Howard was actually furious, Lexi’s face paled. She lunged for the paper receipt. “Let me see that. There must be a mistake.” I moved to show the receipt to Howard, but Lexi was faster. She “accidentally” dropped the slip into the decorative fireplace beside the table. It turned to ash in a heartbeat. “Oh no! Boss, I’m so sorry. I did order the bisque. This boy must have swapped the orders. I was just trying to be nice and cover for him!” Lexi stepped toward me. Her makeup was flawless, but her eyes were like a predator’s. “Sweetie, why don’t you go back and get the real order? I won’t report you if you hurry.” When I didn’t move, she gasped, covering her mouth. “Oh my god. You’ve never seen soup that expensive, have you? Did you drink it and buy this cheap stuff to replace it?” I opened my mouth to speak, but Howard cut me off. “Drinking my food? I know how to handle thieves.” He slowly poked a straw through the plastic lid of the lemonade. He lifted the cup and, without warning, poured the icy liquid directly over my head. “You think you can touch Howard Briggs’ property?” He sneered as the ice cubes slid down my neck. “You have two choices. You buy me two new orders of that bisque right now, or you pay me the full cash value. Otherwise, one call to your head office and you’re blacklisted for life.” I knew how the corporate office worked. They wouldn’t listen to a courier. A complaint from a man like Howard meant a ten-fold fine or immediate termination. And I needed every cent to save my mother. “I’ll pay,” I said, my voice steady despite the dripping lemonade. I glanced at the silent partner across the table—Sebastian Wolfe, the CEO of the company Howard was desperate to sign with—and then at Lexi, whose breathing was shallow with guilt. To break this, I had to go through her. “But I’ve never even seen a hundred-dollar soup. If I go to the wrong place, I’ll just waste more of your time. Lexi, could you show me the order confirmation on your phone so I know exactly where to go?” Howard nodded curtly. “Show him, Lexi. Let him see what real luxury looks like.” Lexi reached for her phone, her fingers—manicured in a deep, blood-red—trembling violently. 2 I watched her screen like a hawk. As she unlocked it, I caught a glimpse of her wallpaper: a selfie of Lexi and Howard, their faces pressed together, surrounded by heart stickers. So, she wasn’t just his assistant; she was his mistress. It explained why Howard had never questioned her in my previous life. You don’t blame the woman you’re sleeping with. As for the lemonade? She was likely trying to play some “thrifty, down-to-earth girl” persona for Mr. Wolfe and it had blown up in her face. Now, I was the fall guy. She fumbled with the phone, scrolling frantically. Under Howard’s impatient gaze, she finally opened a luxury food app and pointed at a listing for a gold-leaf garnished bisque. “That’s the one,” she said, trying to pull the phone away. I grabbed her wrist. “Wait, I didn’t see the ‘Ordered’ tab. Did you actually hit buy?” “Hey! Let go of me!” she shrieked, ducking behind Howard. “Howard, look! He’s assaulting me! My wrist is going to bruise!” Howard didn’t hesitate. He barked into his intercom, and seconds later, two hulking security guards burst in. They tackled me, twisting my arms behind my back and slamming me onto the cold floor. “You dare touch my woman?” Howard spat, standing over me. He raised his foot. The sole of his expensive Italian leather shoe, covered in street grime, pressed into my cheek. A wave of humiliation crashed over me. My whole life, I had never stolen a thing. Even when my mother got sick, I didn’t beg. I worked three jobs, day and night, to pay the bills. I walked the straightest line possible, yet here they were, crushing me. Just because they had money? I struggled, but the guards were too strong. My face was mashed against the freezing marble. The commotion drew a crowd—hotel staff and curious diners peered through the open door. Lexi began to perform for them, her voice trembling with fake tears as she painted me as a thief and a harasser. The whispers started. They felt like needles. “The poor have no shame. Stealing is one thing, but getting handsy?” “He shouldn’t even be in a hotel like this. Typical bottom-feeder behavior.” “Just pay the man and get out of here before you lose your job, kid.” Blacklisted? I looked up at Lexi. She was holding her phone up, livestreaming the whole thing. This was it. This was how the video started in my last life. She would edit it to make it look like I was a criminal and they were the “gracious” victims. “Fine!” I shouted. “I’ll admit to whatever you want. But on one condition!” Howard laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Conditions? From you? Fine, let’s hear it.” I looked at the guards. Howard gave a slight nod, and they hauled me up. My shoulders screamed in pain. If they had actually broken something, I could have sued, but I couldn’t wait for a legal battle. I had to end this now. “The condition is—I want everyone in this hotel and everyone watching that stream to witness my ‘confession.’” 3 Lexi visibly relaxed the moment I agreed to confess. Don’t get too comfortable, I thought. The show hasn’t even started. The hotel manager, who had clearly been tipped by Howard, gathered the staff to provide “security.” Howard was throwing around hundred-dollar bills like confetti to keep the crowd engaged. A man worth hundreds of millions was trying to destroy a delivery boy over a soup order. That was the reality of the “elite.” The hallway was packed now. People were filming on their phones. Lexi’s livestream numbers were hitting record highs for her account. “Wait, is that the guy from the nursing home?” a comment flashed on her screen. The internet was already doing what it does best: doxing. Courier Ben Sullivan. Mother has end-stage renal failure. He dumped her in a state-run home two years ago. A nursing home? Wow. His mom raised him alone and he just shoves her in a hole? What a piece of trash. Total scumbag. No wonder he’s stealing soup. The vitriol poured in. They didn’t know I had spent a year sleeping on a hospital chair, or that I had sold everything I owned to pay for her dialysis. I had moved her to the facility because I had to work twenty hours a day to afford the transplant she needed. I was so close. In my last life, I was so close to the surgery fee. These people, with their keyboards and their “morality,” were the ones who had helped kill her. Not this time. Seeing me cornered, Lexi whispered to Howard, “Let’s get him to apologize on camera. It’ll look great for the brand. We’ll look like the bigger people.” Howard pinched her nose playfully. “Always thinking of the PR, babe. Once we’re done with this loser, I’ll show you how much I appreciate your ‘creative’ ideas tonight.” Lexi blushed. “Stop it, Howard.” Howard cleared his throat and looked at the camera, his chin held high. “I’m Howard Briggs. I’m not a man who likes to punch down, but theft and harassment cannot go unanswered. However, I’m a man of mercy. If this boy gets on his knees and apologizes right now, I won’t file the police report. I’ll even let him pay only half the damages. What do you say, kid?” He had already sentenced me without a trial. “Mr. Briggs,” I said, my voice echoing in the quiet room. “If it turns out Lexi actually ordered the lemonade, what then?” Howard looked at Lexi for a fraction of a second. She puffed out her chest. “Howard, don’t you trust me?” That was all he needed. “If we’re wrong, I’ll fire her on the spot and pay you ten thousand dollars for the ’emotional distress.’ Deal?” “Deal.” The paper receipt was gone. My only proof was the digital record. I reached into my pocket for my phone, but my heart skipped a beat. It was gone. “Are you looking for this?” Lexi smiled, holding up my phone. It was dripping wet. “You’re so clumsy. You dropped it right into the lemonade.” I grabbed it and tried to wake the screen. Nothing. It was fried. 4 The hotel staff started chanting. “Just kneel! It’s a thousand bucks!” “Don’t be an idiot, you’re gonna get fired anyway!” “Kneel! Kneel!” The pressure was a physical weight, a roar of sound designed to break a man’s spirit. “Someone will prove it,” I whispered, but my voice was drowned out. Howard shook his head with mock disappointment. “I tried to be nice. Time for the call.” He dialed the dispatch center. The manager there, a man I knew to be cold and calculating, answered with a voice like honey. “Mr. Briggs! What an honor. How can we help you today?” Howard smirked at me. “Your courier, Ben Sullivan? He swapped a high-end order for some trash lemonade, probably drank the original, and now he’s harassing my assistant. I want a formal termination.” The manager didn’t hesitate. “Consider it done, Mr. Briggs. I am so sorry for the inconvenience. He’s fired, and we’ll be docking his final pay for the damages. Anything else?” The manager could have checked the back-end system. He could have seen the truth with two clicks. But Howard Briggs was a “Diamond Tier” client. His companies used our service for everything. One courier’s life was a small price to pay for Howard’s continued business. “Manager! Wait!” I screamed. Howard put the phone on speaker. The manager’s voice turned venomous. “Ben? You still there? You’ve got a lot of nerve. Pack your locker. You’re done.” Tears blurred my vision, but I wiped them away. “If I have proof that I’m innocent, what will you do then?” The manager laughed. “If you have proof, I’ll personally apologize to you on a public stage and pay you a bonus. But you don’t. So get out.” He felt safe. The evidence was in his hands, and he wasn’t going to look for it. “Fine,” I said. I looked at the clock on the wall. Five minutes until 8:00 PM. The internet was still tearing me apart. Just kneel, you idiot! Are you really going to waste your mom’s medical fund on pride? He doesn’t care about his mom. He’s a narcissist. Lexi was tagging her own company in every post, basking in the “positive” attention they were getting for being “merciful.” Orders for Briggs Appliances were reportedly spiking. Howard put his arm around Lexi. “My patience is wearing thin. Kneel or get dragged out by the cops.” I held up a finger. “Three minutes.” They exchanged a look. “Three minutes for what? You losing your mind?” I held up two fingers. “Two minutes.” The crowd started to murmur. They didn’t understand. “Final minute countdown!” I shouted. The commenters on the stream started joining in, thinking it was a joke. 30 seconds! 20! Is he gonna do a backflip? “Ten, nine, eight…” I led the room in the count. “Five, four, three, two, one!” I stood up straight and pointed at Lexi’s phone. “Check your comments now.” She looked down. Within seconds, the blood drained from her face.

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When I opened my eyes again, the sterile scent of floor wax and the hum of the hospital’s HVAC system hit me like a physical blow. I was back. Right in front of me, Bonnie was clutching her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white. Her eyes were wide, brimming with that carefully practiced desperation, searching mine for a lifeline. She told me, with a voice that trembled perfectly, that if only someone would buy her cottage, she might finally have the money to survive. I knew what came next. In a few days, she’d be diagnosed with terminal stage-four cancer. Or so the charts would say. In my previous life, I was the fool. To save her, to give her the chance at the surgery she supposedly couldn’t afford, I offered to buy her place at a premium. But within days of me moving in, a “miracle” occurred. Bonnie’s cancer vanished—utterly, impossibly cured—while I was the one suddenly staring at a terminal diagnosis. I had tried to be the bigger person. Through the agonizing pain, I squeezed out a smile to congratulate her on her recovery. And how did she repay me? She filed a formal complaint with the Board of Ethics. She accused me of forging her medical records to scam her out of her property. She stood in the hospital lobby and shrieked, asking if I wasn’t afraid of divine retribution for preyed on a dying woman. I fought back. I pulled every chart, every bank transfer, every scrap of evidence to prove I had acted out of mercy. She just sneered. She told the board that everyone knew a good con artist plays the long game. She asked the room, “If I really had terminal cancer, how could I be standing here perfectly healthy?” Even Scott, my boyfriend of three years, turned on me. He looked at me with such profound disgust it felt like a knife to the ribs. He claimed I had nearly destroyed a family for a piece of real estate. He told the board he’d checked the accounts—that the money I claimed to have paid Bonnie never actually reached her. I was blacklisted. Fired. The families of former patients threw stones at my windows, screaming for “justice” for their loved ones. Scott took every penny of my savings, claiming it was “restitution” for Bonnie’s suffering. In the end, the cancer ate me alive. I died in a puddle of my own cold sweat in a cramped studio apartment, forgotten and hated. This time, I’m not playing the martyr. 1 Listening to Bonnie’s thinly veiled hints, the realization that I had been given a second chance settled into my bones like ice. In the old life, I fell for it. I offered her twenty percent over market value for that house. She had dropped to her knees, sobbing her thanks, calling me her “guardian angel.” Then, forty-eight hours after the keys changed hands, she was at the administration office, tearing me apart. “The second she got the deed, the Chief told me there was nothing wrong with me,” she had told the investigators. “Isn’t that convenient? Scott always told me how badly Claire wanted a house she couldn’t afford. She just waited for me to be vulnerable.” I died a pariah. And I never understood how a healthy thirty-year-old woman like me suddenly developed a late-stage malignancy overnight. Not this time. I didn’t bite. I shoved my hands into my lab coat pockets and offered a tight, professional smile. “If things are that dire, Bonnie, have you considered a GoFundMe? Or maybe listing the house on Zillow? If the price is right, I’m sure a developer would snap it up in a heartbeat.” Bonnie’s smile faltered. She stood up abruptly, a flash of genuine indignation crossing her face. “Dr. Whitfield… Claire. I’m trying to sell my home, not beg for scraps on the internet. I have some dignity left.” “I’m just a doctor,” I said, my voice flat. “But if you’re that sick, you don’t have time to be picky about where the money comes from, do you?” She bit her lip, her eyes darting toward the door. “Scott’s girlfriend is supposed to be my friend. We have history. I thought you’d want to help me out of this hole. I thought maybe…” She trailed off, waiting for me to fill the silence with an offer. Instead, I pulled a drawer open and slid a stack of business cards for local real estate agents across the desk. “These guys are the best in the city. Fast closings, aggressive marketing. List with them today, and you’ll have your surgery money by the end of the month.” Bonnie looked like she’d swallowed a wasp. “Are you serious? You’re throwing me to the sharks? These agents will take a massive commission. How am I supposed to pay for treatment if I’m giving six percent to some guy in a suit?” She leaned in, her voice sharpening. “I’m saying, if you buy it, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that.” “Find another way,” I said, leaning back. “I’m broke.” Her face darkened instantly. She reached out, grabbing my wrist with a grip that was entirely too strong for a “dying” woman. “You have the money, Claire. Don’t lie to me. It’s only seven hundred thousand. You can swing that. Let’s go to the title company. Right now.” I looked down at her hand, a cold laugh bubbling in my chest. She wasn’t asking; she was demanding. I wrenched my arm back. Bonnie’s eyes welled with tears instantly. “I know you think I’m pathetic because I’m sick, but the house is fine! Please, don’t make me list it. I can’t wait for a buyer. I need the surgery now!” Before I could respond, the door burst open. Scott Bennett stormed in, looking every bit the white knight. He moved to Bonnie’s side, supporting her as she “wavered” on her feet. “Claire, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “She’s just trying to survive. Why are you being so heartless?” 2 I kept my expression stone-cold, the picture of professional detachment. “As her attending physician, my job is to treat her. I am under no ethical or legal obligation to fund her lifestyle or her real estate transactions.” Scott waved a hand dismissively, as if my career-long commitment to ethics was just a minor personality flaw. “You want a house. She needs to sell. It’s a win-win. Why do you have to be so difficult? Why drag a middleman into this?” He sighed, shaking his head at me. “You’re so petty, Claire. Always looking for an angle, even with family.” Watching him, I felt a wave of nausea. This was the man I thought I’d grow old with. In the last life, when Bonnie accused me, he had used that same “disappointed” tone. ‘I’ve known Bonnie for fifteen years, Claire. She doesn’t lie. Just apologize. Give her the house back and let her keep the money. It’s a small price to pay for your reputation.’ He never believed me. Not for a second. The urge to scream was almost overwhelming. “Scott, we’re through—” But he cut me off, pulling a set of keys from his pocket with a triumphant flourish. “Luckily, Bonnie wanted to surprise you. She already signed the deed over to me to give to you. Your ‘dream home’ isn’t going anywhere.” He tossed the keys onto my desk. They hit the wood with a sharp clack. He didn’t even look at me; he was too busy checking his watch. “Now, quit the drama and transfer the funds to Bonnie. She needs to be in pre-op by tomorrow.” The blood drained from my face. My breath hitched in my throat. “You… you bought her house?” Scott shrugged. “I put it in your name. We’re getting married eventually; it’s our future home. Consider it a favor to a friend. Now, pay her. Don’t be cheap.” I picked up the keys and threw them back at his chest. “I don’t want the house. You want to be a hero? You keep it. You live in it.” Scott’s face turned a mottled purple. “We’re a team, Claire! This is for us! And more importantly, it’s for Bonnie’s life. Stop being a selfish brat and send the money!” I said nothing. Bonnie suddenly collapsed to her knees, her voice rising to a theatrical wail that carried into the hallway. “Dr. Whitfield, please! I’m begging you! I just want to live! You can hate the house, but don’t kill me because of a deed! I need that money for the operation!” Scott jumped in, his voice loud enough for the patients in the waiting area to hear. “She’s a fraud, isn’t she? You gave her your word and now you’re backing out when her life is on the line?” I could hear the murmurs from the hallway. “I wouldn’t want a doctor like that,” a woman whispered loudly. “Who knows if she’d hold back my meds if she didn’t like my attitude?” “Unbelievable,” another man added. “She’s probably overcharging us just to pay for her vacations while her friend dies.” The noise grew. People were calling for the Chief. Bonnie looked up at me, a tiny, smug glint in her tear-filled eyes. She held up her phone, the Venmo QR code ready, her chin lifted in a silent challenge. I straightened my coat, took a breath, and pulled out my phone. But I didn’t open a banking app. I tapped a recording I’d started the moment she walked in. “From the start of this conversation,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise, “I have never agreed to buy your property. In fact, I’ve repeatedly advised you to seek professional real estate counsel. Are we really suggesting that because a person is poor or sick, they have the right to commit identity theft and financial coercion?” The hallway went dead silent. 3 Bonnie’s eyes darted around, her lip trembling. “Claire… I know you’re worried about setting a precedent, but you have the keys. You can’t deny it now!” Scott stepped forward, his jaw set. He looked like he wanted to be proud of himself, convinced that if he just pushed hard enough, I’d fold like I always did. “In your dreams,” I spat. Scott’s composure broke. He lunged forward and slapped me—hard. The crack of his hand against my cheek echoed in the small office. “Claire, the money is gone anyway! Quit being a bitch! You’re taking this house, and you’re paying for it. Bonnie already put it in your name. You have no choice!” I clutched my stinging cheek, staring at them. They were so desperate to tie me to that house. Why? In my last life, my cancer was stage four by the time it was found. My mentor, Dr. Sutherland, had been devastated. He said if we’d caught it even a month earlier, I might have stood a chance. But I’d had no symptoms. None. Is it possible to go from perfectly healthy to terminal in a week? My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Dr. Sutherland with my routine physical results. Claire, you’re healthy as a horse. I think you’re just burnt out. Stop imagining symptoms and take a vacation. See you Monday. The weight in my chest evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. If I wasn’t sick now… then what happened last time? I looked at Scott, forced a shaky breath, and feigned a look of defeat. “Fine. If you’re going to force my hand… I’ll take the house.” Their faces softened instantly. Relief washed over Bonnie’s features. “But,” I added, “the title goes in Scott’s name. Since it’s ‘for our future’ and he’s the one so eager to help, it’s only fair he holds the deed.” Scott froze. His eyes shifted. “The loan… it’s already tied to your credit, Claire. We can’t change the paperwork now.” His voice lost its humility, turning sharp and demanding again. “We’re going to be family. My debt is your debt. Just pay her and let’s move on!” ‘I’m doing this to atone for your sins,’ he had told me in the other life as he emptied my bank accounts. ‘You owe Bonnie everything. This money is nothing compared to her life.’ The rage finally broke through. I didn’t scream. I kicked—hard—landing a blow right on Scott’s kneecap. He buckled with a groan. “You used my identity to take out a loan for your mistress’s house? You want to talk about ‘good deeds’? Take the loan yourself, Scott. Either the house goes in your name, or…” I turned to Bonnie, giving her a terrifyingly sweet smile. “You return every cent of that ‘sale’ money to the bank immediately. I don’t care if you die on the sidewalk.” Scott looked away, silent. Bonnie began to sob hysterically. “Claire, you’re just saying my house is ‘dirty’ because of me! I’m sick, but my house isn’t! If I have to die to make you happy, fine! I’ll do it!” Before anyone could move, Bonnie scrambled toward the window. She threw it open and hauled herself onto the ledge, staring down at the concrete five stories below. 4 The hallway erupted. Screams of “Don’t do it!” and “Look what you did!” pelted me from all sides. “It’s just a loan!” a nurse shouted. “You’re going to be married! Why are you killing her over a credit score?” “She’s trying to prove her house is clean!” a patient yelled. “You should be ashamed!” Scott scrambled up, gasping in pain, and tackled Bonnie away from the ledge, pulling her back into the safety of the room. He held her shaking body and glared at me with pure, unadulterated hatred. “This house is her legacy, Claire. You’re losing a bit of money; she’s losing her life! Even if you don’t want it, you don’t drive a dying woman to suicide! Just sell it yourself later if you hate it so much!” Bonnie’s wails intensified. She clung to Scott’s shirt. “No! I won’t let her sell it to a stranger! It has to be Claire. Only Claire. I don’t have much time left… please, let this be my final wish.” I looked around the room. Every eye was a judge. Every mouth was a weapon. If Bonnie was this insistent on me living in that house… there had to be a reason. Something she couldn’t risk a stranger finding. “Fine,” I said, my voice steady. “I’ll move in.” Bonnie’s crying stopped as if a switch had been flipped. She blinked, her face lighting up with an eerie, manic glow. “You won’t regret it, Claire. But… I want to see you there. I want to know you’re settled.” Scott nodded quickly, speaking for me. “Whatever you want, Bonnie. Claire will do it.” “I want you to send me videos,” Bonnie whispered, her voice honey-sweet now. “Every day. I want to see you living there. I want to see you sleeping in that bedroom. It’ll make me feel like I’m still part of the world.” She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And I want Scott to stay there with you. To make sure you’re… safe. But you take the bed. Scott can sleep on the floor. I want to know you’re comfortable.” I agreed, the hair on my arms standing up. Within hours, they were “helping” me move. Bonnie was practically vibrating with excitement as Scott hauled my suitcases into the master bedroom. She spent the whole time fussing over the furniture. “That bed was a fortune, Claire. Best sleep of your life, I promise. Don’t you dare replace it.” She patted the mattress with a strange, reverent intensity. “The mattress is custom-fitted. Don’t move it. Don’t even flip it. Just… rest.” I nodded absently, watching her. As she stood by the door to leave, her face looked gaunt, almost grey in the hallway light. “Watch your health, Claire. Cancer is a sneaky thing. It would be a tragedy if you ended up like me because you waited too long to get checked.” A cold shiver raced down my spine. How does she know? Once they were gone, I stood in the center of the silent house. Everything was fresh, newly renovated, smelling faintly of paint and expensive wood. But there was something else—a metallic, ozone-heavy scent that didn’t belong. I called a professional to test for formaldehyde and lead. Nothing. The house was “clean.” I tore through the closets, checked the vents, looked for hidden cameras. Nothing. I sat on the edge of the bed, my mind racing. ‘Sleeping on a patient’s bed… aren’t you afraid of the bad juju?’ a friend had joked once. I looked down at the mattress. ‘Don’t move it. Don’t flip it.’ I stood up, gripped the edge of the heavy custom mattress, and heaved it off the frame. When I saw what was taped to the slats underneath, a jagged, terrifying laugh escaped my throat. I finally understood how Bonnie’s terminal cancer had “disappeared.”

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Boris Montgomery was the secret I kept buried under my skin for years. He never knew that the man who orchestrated his family’s ruin, the one who pulled the rug out from under their empire, was my father. Before he fled the country five years ago, the last words he threw at me were like shards of poisoned glass: “Sylvia, you’re just like your father. You make me sick.” Thinking about it now still makes my chest tighten, a phantom pain that never quite dulls. In the hollow years that followed, I started hunting for traces of him in a revolving door of strangers. I looked for his jawline, his gait, the way he’d tilt his head when he was thinking. Wyatt Beckett was the one who came the closest. I gave Wyatt everything. Every resource, every luxury, every piece of myself I could spare. To the world, I was the devoted girlfriend; to myself, I was just curating a masterpiece in Boris’s image. Wyatt, blinded by his own sudden fame, used to smirk at me and ask, “Sylvia, are you honestly this obsessed with me?” Sometimes he’d push further, testing the leash. “If I ever walked away, would you just crumble? Would you cry your eyes out for me?” I would just smile, a quiet, practiced thing. I never said a word. Because we both knew—or at least I did—that the game was only fun until the original came home. And then, the news broke: Boris Montgomery was back. 1 When the headline about Wyatt’s latest scandal hit the tabloids, I was in the middle of closing a massive brand deal for him. The CEO of the company was Howard, an old friend of my father’s. He’d known me since I was a child; he was the one who taught me how to hold a fountain pen when I was six. We were at a private dinner—steaks and expensive red wine—when I asked if he’d consider making the star of my agency the face of his new luxury line. He agreed almost too easily. “Howard, please,” I said, sliding the dossier across the mahogany table with a soft smile. “Don’t just do this because we’re family friends. Look at the data first.” I pointed to the highlighted sections. “His commercial value, the social media engagement, the projected ROI… I’ve mapped it all out. I want this to be a win for your brand, not a charity case for me.” Howard blinked, clearly surprised by my preparation. He chuckled and turned to his teenage grandson, who was sitting at the end of the table. “Logan, take notes,” Howard said. “You see how Sylvia works? She’s built a powerhouse from the ground up. Out of all the kids in our circle, she’s the one who’s actually made something of herself.” I offered a modest smile, but kept my thoughts to myself. Howard didn’t know that my “powerhouse” agency only had one client: Wyatt Beckett. Or, to be more precise, I had only built the agency because of Wyatt. The data was undeniable. Wyatt’s numbers were staggering; he was the “It Boy” of the moment, with a fanbase that would buy anything he touched. Howard liked what he saw. To show his support, he had his legal team bring over the finalized contract before dessert was even served. The terms were more generous than I had dared to ask for. Before I could even start my polite refusals, my father leaned back and smiled. “Go on, Sylvia. Go take care of your business,” he said. “I’ll settle up with Howard here. Consider it a favor I’ll owe him.” I knew they had things to discuss that didn’t involve me. I thanked Howard, took the contract, and headed back to my suite. I pulled out my phone to tell Wyatt the good news, but my screen was already flooded. My friend Lexi had sent a dozen screenshots of the trending topics an hour ago. Below them was a link to a video. And then, her usual unfiltered commentary: Seriously, Sylvia? What is Wyatt doing? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. You’re out there grinding for his career, and he’s out there making you look like a fool? Is this a PR stunt or is he actually this stupid? I’m telling you, you can’t spoil men like this. He needs to remember he’s a project, not a god. Don’t let him disrespect you like this… I scrolled past her rant and clicked the link. It was classic paparazzi footage—grainy, long-lens, but the two people in the frame were clear as day. It looked like a scene from a high-budget romance. The evening breeze was catching the hem of Tinsley Hart’s white silk dress. She was laughing, her hands full with a latte and a stick of cotton candy. When the wind blew a bit too hard, Wyatt was there in a heartbeat, his hand reaching out to press the fabric of her skirt back down against her thigh. They were bent over, laughing together. The camera zoomed in. Tinsley pointed toward the lens, whispering something to Wyatt, and a second later, Wyatt looked directly at the camera. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he draped an arm over Tinsley’s shoulder, pulled her close, and threw a mocking, defiant smirk at the photographer. I didn’t even need to check Twitter to know it was a bloodbath. #WyattBeckettTinsleyHart #WyattDefiesPaps #SummerGardenTryst #JustFriends? The threads were a war zone between fans trying to “clear the search terms” and shippers going wild. They were both rising stars, young and beautiful. The fans didn’t want a dating scandal to ruin their “clean” images, but the chemistry was undeniable. Still, the video wasn’t “incriminating” in a legal sense. No kissing, no disappearing into a hotel room for six hours. It was deniable. Wyatt’s PR team—the one I paid for—could handle it in their sleep. I closed the app, unfazed. I took a photo of the contract and sent it to Wyatt. Just landed you the luxury line deal. The contract is signed. When do you have a minute to go over the details? His reply came hours later. It was curt, dripping with the arrogance of someone who thought they were untouchable. Busy. Bring it to the set tomorrow. I stared at the screen for a long beat before typing a single word back. Okay. 2 Wyatt had grown comfortable giving me orders. He treated me like a glorified assistant, someone he could beckon with a snap of his fingers, rather than the woman who had built his throne. He had forgotten I was his girlfriend, and more importantly, he had forgotten I was his boss. I suppose it was my fault. I had been too good to him. Back in college, I was famous for two things: my family’s quiet wealth and the speed at which I cycled through boyfriends. I had a “type,” but no one could figure out the pattern. I dated guys with beautiful hands, guys with gentle eyes, guys with a specific, sharp profile. I once dated a guy for two weeks just because he had a tiny mole on the left side of his nose. I’d fall fast, or at least pretend to, and then end things just as abruptly. There were threads on the campus forum about me, claiming I was “collecting” parts of people, like a scavenger hunt with no prize. But despite the turnover, no one had a bad word to say about me. I was generous, I was kind, and I never made a scene. Then came Wyatt Beckett. He was the jackpot. He had every single feature I had been hunting for. Long, elegant fingers with prominent knuckles. Amber eyes that looked cold until he smiled. The perfect height. And there, on the bridge of his nose, the exact same mole. I dove into “loving” him like a woman possessed. I became the girl who would do anything for him. To be fair, Wyatt was a challenge. He was colder than the others, more guarded. He held the record for the longest I’d ever pursued someone without success. The first time I introduced myself, he frowned and told me flat-out: “Look, rich girl, I’m not interested in being your flavor of the month. Go find someone else to play with.” I remember looking into his eyes—those amber eyes—and feeling a chill go down my spine. “You’re special, Wyatt,” I whispered. “You’re not like the others.” He wavered then. After that, the “collection” stopped. I didn’t look at another man. I stayed by his side, but I didn’t crowd him. I played the long game. I showed up at group dinners as a friend. I kept a respectful distance. I gave him birthday gifts that weren’t expensive, but were exactly what he needed. When he ended up in the hospital during junior year, I was the one who cleared my schedule to stay with him. He didn’t want to worry his parents, and his roommates had finals. I hired the best private nurses, but I sat in the corner of the room every single day. One afternoon, while he was napping, the room was bathed in the amber glow of the setting sun. I sat there for hours, just watching his silhouette against the pillow. For a split second, I let myself believe the ghost had finally come home. When Wyatt woke up and saw me still there, his expression shifted. “Sylvia,” he said, his voice raspy. “Do you actually love me this much?” He’d seen how I treated my exes—the casual indifference, the easy goodbyes. With him, I was different. I was devoted. I blinked, coming out of my trance. He was looking at me with a mix of confusion and something that looked like guilt. “Sylvia,” he said, his tone sharpening. “Love isn’t a debt. You can’t force it with kindness. If this is just a game to you, pick a different target.” I almost laughed. I looked at him softly and said, “Don’t worry, Wyatt. I’m not asking for anything.” He looked away, his ears turning a deep shade of red. As I stood up to leave, he spoke to the wall, his voice muffled like a stubborn child admitting defeat. “If you’re serious… then fine. Let’s try it. Let’s be together.” And that was it. The campus forums went wild, taking bets on how long we’d last. Three months? Six? A year? But as the months turned into years, everyone eventually decided I had finally found “The One.” The truth was, we did have good moments. Wyatt had a streak of stubborn pride that I admired. In the beginning, he never let me pay for anything. He’d put his hand over mine when I reached for my phone at a restaurant and say, “I’ve got it,” with a finality that brooked no argument. Once we were official, he took his role seriously. He went everywhere I wanted to go. He wore the clothes I picked out for him. He replied to my texts within five minutes, every single time. Eventually, we fell into the rhythm of a normal couple. We studied together, ate together. I learned to hide price tags so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I started memorizing his specific likes and dislikes—the things that were actually him, not just the man he reminded me of. I’m a creature of habit. I don’t like change. If things had stayed stable, I probably would have stayed with him forever. But then, he met Tinsley Hart. 3 In a cruel twist of fate, I was the one who introduced them. It was senior year. Wyatt had been scouted by an agent. He had the face for it, but he was green. He fell into a trap—a predatory contract with a bottom-tier agency that specialized in “influencer houses” and shady livestreams. By the time I found out, Wyatt was drowning in debt, trying to find a way to pay a massive kill-fee for a contract he’d barely read. His roommate told me the truth: “Wyatt didn’t want you to know. He’s humiliated. But Sylvia, he’s in over his head. They’re trying to force him into these… weird ‘fan meetups’ and scripted ‘dating’ streams.” I fixed it. The problem that had been crushing his spirit was solved with one phone call from my father’s legal team. I tried to be discreet, but Wyatt wasn’t stupid. He saw the shift in the agency’s attitude. The predatory manager suddenly became a groveling assistant, handing over the release papers with a trembling hand and even offering a “settlement” for the trouble. When he got home that night, he didn’t look happy. He looked small. “Was it you, Sylvia?” he asked. I hesitated. “Would you have preferred I did nothing?” He didn’t answer. The silence was heavy. I wanted to tell him that if he chose to be with me, he had to accept the reality of who I was—and what I could do. He needed to get used to the power imbalance. But the words felt too cruel. Instead, I kept it light. “Do you really want to be in this industry? Because if you do, I’ll just start a company for you. We’ll do it right.” He looked at me and laughed, a bitter, mocking sound. “I guess I’d be a fool to turn down a silver platter, wouldn’t I?” “Think of it as an investment,” I said. “We’ll sign a real contract. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one making me rich in five years.” That seemed to soothe his ego. His face softened. “Does it really pay that fast? The entertainment business?” I didn’t answer. He let out a self-deprecating snort. “Right. Even ‘fast’ isn’t your kind of fast. Your trust fund probably grows by a house every minute.” His debut project was a high-end indie romance. I made sure he was the male lead. And I chose Tinsley Hart to be his co-star. Tinsley was the “National Sweetheart.” She was talented, she had a massive following, and everyone loved her. I thought her star power would rub off on Wyatt. I went to the set on the first day of filming. The cast and crew were gathered for the kickoff. Wyatt stood next to Tinsley, looking striking in the morning light. His amber eyes caught the sun, and for a moment, he was so beautiful it hurt to look at him. He completely outshone the veteran actors around him. I didn’t expect him to become a superstar overnight. It was a small film. But when it was released, Wyatt was the only thing anyone talked about. He became the internet’s new obsession. The “shippers” started editing videos of him and Tinsley, crying over their “tragic” onscreen chemistry. And that leads us to now: their second project together. A project I explicitly told him not to take. A project he signed onto behind my back. Our first real fight was about that script. “The fans want this, Sylvia,” Wyatt had argued, his confusion genuine. “Why wouldn’t I give them what they want? The buzz is already insane.” It wasn’t just that the script was a repetitive teen drama. I had worked my connections to get him an audition for a major director’s new feature. If he did the show with Tinsley, he’d have to pass on the movie. It was the difference between being a flash-in-the-pan idol and a serious actor. I tried to explain the long-term strategy. Wyatt just laughed coldly. “You’re just jealous of Tinsley, aren’t you?” I froze. Jealousy was an emotion I didn’t know how to process. I didn’t like Tinsley, that much was true. The first time I met her on set as Wyatt’s manager, she had looked at me with this long, searching expression. Then she turned to Wyatt and said, “I know you were a ‘civilian’ before this, so having a girlfriend makes sense. But why are you letting a girl who knows nothing about the industry handle your career?” “Wyatt,” she had continued, “some girls just want to cling to someone famous to feel important. They’re afraid you’ll outgrow them. You have so much potential; you don’t need an anchor dragging you down.” The “National Sweetheart” wasn’t so sweet when the cameras were off. She looked like a classic mean girl. But I could see why she was confused. I kept a low profile. Most people thought Wyatt had built his own studio with his own money. Everyone assumed he was some “Secret Billionaire’s Son” playing at being an actor. Wyatt had started to explain who I was, but I cut him off. “Miss Hart,” I said coolly, “your acting in real life is much more convincing than your acting in the script.” Tinsley glared at me, then turned back to Wyatt, grabbing his arm and whining in a playful, sugary voice, calling him by his character’s name. “Liam, look at her… she’s so mean to me!” Wyatt didn’t pull away. He looked at me, frowning. “Enough, Sylvia. She’s just blunt. She’s a ‘free spirit.’ Don’t be a bully.” I looked at his hand on her arm, then up at his face. I wondered if he was lost in the role or if he was just losing his mind. They were “method” during filming, which meant a lot of flirting off-camera. It was blurring the lines of what was acceptable for a man in a relationship, but there was never any “proof” of an affair. I had tried to be the “cool girlfriend.” I tolerated it. But I didn’t like it. I told him as much. I suggested he keep a professional distance. Wyatt’s response was a cold sneer. “Sylvia, I’m not your property. Why don’t you just buy a leash and lock me in your basement?” “Is this because you love me so much? Or are you just that possessive?” “If I ever left you,” he said, mocking me, “would you actually die of a broken heart?” He thought he’d found my weakness. He thought he could use my “devotion” to buy his freedom. “If you don’t want me to leave, Sylvia,” he said, “then stop trying to control me.” I looked at him—at the makeup, the stylized hair, the arrogance in his eyes—and I realized he looked less and less like the man I was trying to remember every day. 4 I drove to the set to deliver the contract myself. When I arrived, Wyatt and Tinsley were rehearsing a scene. The set was a chaotic mess of grips and PAs, so no one noticed me. I stood in a corner, watching them. Wyatt was leaning down, tilting his head to catch Tinsley’s lines. She was looking up at him, radiant and glowing. The midday sun was brutal, and I noticed Wyatt shielding her with his script, creating a patch of shade for her. It was a small, thoughtful gesture. It was a level of tenderness he hadn’t shown me in months. They looked perfect together. A matched set. For a second, I felt like laughing. Wyatt must have felt my gaze, because he suddenly looked over. He didn’t look guilty. He looked expectant. He said something to Tinsley, she glanced at me, and then he started walking toward me. We went to his luxury trailer. I handed him the contract. As he flipped to the final page, his eyes widened. He knew what this meant. Howard’s brand was a household name. They didn’t need “influencers.” Getting this deal was a massive coup for Wyatt’s prestige. A smug smile touched his lips. But then, he looked at me and asked, “Sylvia, can we turn this into a joint endorsement? For me and Tinsley?” He asked it casually, but the air in the trailer shifted. I stared at him. He was wearing colored contacts for his role—dark, flat brown. The amber was gone. I let out a short, sharp laugh. “What did you just say?” If he were smart, he would have dropped it. But he doubled down. “I want to do this with Tinsley. Our ‘couple’ brand is at an all-time high. It’s better for the company if we do it together.” He paused, then added the ultimatum: “If it’s not a joint deal, I’m not signing.” The smile stayed on my face, but the light in my eyes went out. I looked at him for a long time—or maybe it was only a few seconds—and then I set the contract down on the table. I stood up and walked to the door. I gripped the handle and looked back at him. I had never used this tone with him before—polite, distant, and utterly final. “Wyatt,” I said, nodding toward the paper. “That contract isn’t a career move. It’s a parting gift. You’ve been a decent distraction these past few years, and I wanted to settle the bill. Whether you sign it or not is entirely up to you.” I watched the color drain from his face. “There is no third option,” I said.

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Even though Belinda and I were identical twins, no one ever put us in the same category. She practically lived on a diet of fried chicken and soda, yet her body remained as slender and willowy as a runway model, her legs growing longer by the day. I counted every single calorie, starved myself on wilted lettuce, and yet my body bloated like a waterlogged balloon. She baked under the harsh summer sun without a drop of SPF, yet her skin stayed as luminous and flawless as freshly poured cream. I hid from the daylight, slathered myself in sunscreen year-round, yet my complexion grew dull, broken, and bruised. She skipped class daily to get high with bleach-blonde dropouts behind the bleachers, yet she consistently pulled straight As and ranked first in the district. I slept three hours a night, my textbooks highlighted until the pages tore, and I still managed to fail every math exam handed to me. Eventually, I contracted a horrific, unspeakable disease. My skin blistered, weeping and rotting from the inside out. I died utterly alone on a sterile hospital bed. But after I died, my soul didn’t disperse. I lingered, floating in the cold, antiseptic air of the room. That was when I watched Belinda suddenly change. She stopped binge-eating junk food. She blocked the numbers of her dropout boyfriends. She began living a quiet, meticulously clean, and disciplined life. It was only then, suspended in the ether of the afterlife, that the horrifying truth clicked into place. The reason I had lived like a grotesque, suffering monster was entirely because of her. So, I spent my afterlife clawing through the dark, bargaining with whatever forces govern the dead, saving up enough karmic currency for one thing: a second chance. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day Belinda sat in front of her ring light, binge-eating for thousands of viewers. 1 I pushed open the bedroom door and saw Belinda mid-livestream. Every agonizing memory from my past life slammed into my skull—the weeping, rotting sores, the nights I spent screaming into my pillow from the pain, the thousands of comments online calling me a disgusting freak, telling me I deserved it. A loud, piercing ring echoed in my ears. I lunged toward the dining table, grabbed a paring knife from the fruit bowl, and brought it down hard across my own cheek. Blood welled up instantly, a hot, dark red line tracking down my jaw and dripping onto the floorboards. I didn’t care about the pain. I kept my chin high, staring dead into Belinda’s eyes. A flicker of mild surprise crossed her flawless face. “Whoa, why are you being so dramatic? Why would you do that to yourself? Go to the ER or something.” Without missing a beat, she turned her bright, camera-ready smile back to her phone. She picked up a massive, grease-dripping slice of pepperoni pizza. “Sorry about that, guys! Anyway, let’s keep going!” I stood frozen. Drops of my blood patterned the floor. I felt utterly, hollowly cold. Why? Why didn’t the gash on my face appear on hers? Was the transfer strictly one-way? No. In my previous life, there was a brief window where my body had actually started to heal. The transfer wasn’t a one-way mirror. There had to be a mechanism, a set of rules governing this sick magic. I was going to figure out how it worked. I refused to die as a sacrificial lamb again. Just then, our mother, Diane, stepped out of the hallway. She took one look at my face and let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Are you out of your mind?! Why would you do this to your face?!” She was screaming at me, but her hands were trembling violently. She frantically grabbed a clean dish towel and pressed it hard against my bleeding cheek. “Does it hurt? Shh, it’s okay, Mom’s here. We’re going to the hospital right now.” She practically dragged me to the ER. They cleaned the wound. Ten stitches. Through the entire procedure, Diane stood in the corner, crying into her hands as the doctor spoke. When we left the hospital, she drove straight to a high-end department store. She bought the most expensive scar-fading serums on the market and dragged me to a luxury beauty counter to color-match an array of heavy concealers. “With these, you won’t even be able to tell,” she whispered, her voice tight. Then, we went to an organic grocery store, loading the cart with lean proteins and dark greens. “Don’t worry, honey. Mom is going to diet right alongside you!” Later that night, I lay in my bed, the rhythmic throbbing of my stitches syncing with my heartbeat. Inside, my chest was a cavern of ice. I had been dead wrong. I thought hurting myself would finally make Belinda feel the pain. But I had ten black threads holding my face together, and she hadn’t so much as winced. The damage I inflicted on myself didn’t magically bounce onto her. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to sift through every microscopic detail of my past life. 2 In my previous life, I remembered a man visiting our house. He looked like one of those hollow-eyed street psychics—a drifter who claimed to read auras. Ever since the day he walked through our front door, the gravity in our house shifted. Belinda suddenly started doing “mukbang” livestreams, rebranding herself as an internet personality. On camera, she would tear into buckets of fried chicken, chug two-liter bottles of soda, and inhale entire frosted cakes in minutes. The more she ate, the less she studied. Her backpack gathered dust in the corner of her room. Her channel was called “The Honor Roll Glutton.” Her comments were flooded with people obsessing over how she could be so impossibly gorgeous, eat like a linebacker, and still be the smartest girl in school. But I knew the truth. She hadn’t opened a book in months. One evening, I watched her pull open a greasy cardboard box holding another massive pizza. I couldn’t help myself. “You really shouldn’t eat that. It’s garbage. And finals are coming up—you can’t just stream every night. You need to study.” Belinda looked up at me, a slow, mocking smirk stretching across her lips. “Why are you so obsessed with what I do? I’m naturally gifted. I can pass without even trying.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and turned back to her phone, her voice instantly dropping an octave into that sweet, breathy influencer tone. “Okay besties, time for the family-sized bucket challenge!” I bit my tongue and retreated to my room. But the moment I sat down at my desk, my stomach seized. A violent wave of nausea hit me. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving until I threw up bitter, burning bile. From that day forward, my weight skyrocketed. I could breathe in the vicinity of a carb and put on three pounds. My face erupted in deep, painful cystic acne that sat under my skin like angry red bruises. Diane dragged me to every specialist in the county. Every doctor gave us the exact same speech: My diet was terrible, I was consuming too much sugar and oil, and my hormones were severely imbalanced. They prescribed a pharmacy’s worth of pills and handed me strict, joyless meal plans. Diane hyper-fixated on my recovery. She spent hours in the kitchen prepping my “clean eats.” Boiled, unseasoned chicken breast. Sad, limp broccoli. Salads dressed in nothing but a squeeze of lemon. She maxed out her credit cards on skincare. My vanity was buried under glass droppers and frosted jars. “My friend at the med-spa said this is the holy grail,” she’d tell me, carefully lining them up. “Acne-clearing, brightening, cell-renewing. It has everything.” I looked at the price tags left on the bottles and felt a sickening knot of guilt in my stomach. “Mom, how much did all this cost? It’s too much.” “Don’t say that!” Diane snapped, though her eyes were shining with tears. “If it fixes you, I’d sell this house. You know that.” I swallowed the guilt and became a militant soldier for my own health. I kept a dedicated journal. I tracked every ounce of my weight, every fraction of an inch on my waist. I documented whether the swelling of my acne had gone down or flared up. But no miracle ever came. My weight didn’t just plateau; it climbed relentlessly, expanding me like a balloon hooked to a helium tank. Across the hall, Belinda strutted around in denim cut-offs, her skin taut and glowing, her legs perfectly straight and devoid of a single flaw. I stood in front of my mirror, staring at my heavy, swollen body, trailing my fingers over the bumpy, inflamed terrain of my cheeks. A violent concoction of grief and rage bubbled up in my throat. “I’m so jealous of you,” I muttered to her once. “You eat whatever you want, and your skin is perfect.” Belinda just smiled at me. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Good genetics, I guess. You can’t force what Mom and Dad didn’t give you. I mean, sure, we’re twins… but at the end of the day, some people are just built different. Right?” 3 My weight continued its terrifying, uncontrollable ascent. Diane was frantic. She pulled strings to get me into an exclusive endocrinologist. The specialist stared at my bloodwork and my painstakingly detailed food logs, his brow deeply furrowed. “Are you absolutely certain you’ve adhered to this diet and exercise regimen?” “Yes! Doctor, we follow it like it’s the Bible!” Diane’s voice pitched up in desperation. She pulled out her phone, aggressively swiping through a photo album documenting every single miserable meal I had eaten, alongside screenshots of my Apple Watch fitness rings. The doctor scrolled through the evidence, looking profoundly disturbed. “This doesn’t make physiological sense. Even with severe metabolic resistance, under this caloric deficit and cardiovascular strain, her weight should have stabilized. It certainly shouldn’t be climbing like this.” He looked up at me, his eyes entirely blank with confusion. “Your regimen is flawless. Scientifically, this outcome should be impossible.” I felt like I was drowning in wet concrete. Even the experts didn’t know what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I lose a single pound? Why was I living in a state of constant, grueling deprivation for absolutely nothing? And then there was Belinda. Screaming at her camera while shoving fistfuls of frosted cake into her mouth. She never moved faster than a slow walk. She didn’t even take the stairs if she could avoid it. Yet she looked airbrushed in real life. Glowing. Perfect. A dark, deeply unsettling thought wormed its way into my brain. Was it possible… that the “health” I was starving myself for, and the “results” of the grueling workouts I put my body through… were being transferred? Siphoned off, straight into Belinda? I shook my head violently, trying to rattle the insane theory out of my skull. It was ridiculous. I was just looking for a scapegoat for my own broken biology. But something in me snapped. I was done. If I was going to look like a monster anyway, I might as well stop torturing myself. That night at dinner, I shoved the plate of boiled, pale vegetables away. “I’m not eating this. Don’t cook it for me anymore.” Diane froze, her fork suspended in mid-air. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t just give up!” “I eat this garbage and I get fatter! I work out and I get uglier! What is the point?!” I yelled. “Paige, don’t do this.” The voice came from across the table. Belinda. She was staring at me, her voice laced with a frantic, desperate urgency I had never heard before. “You just have to keep going. It’s going to work. Look how hard Mom is trying for you.” I stared at my sister. Her shoulders were rigid. There was real, undeniable panic in her eyes. Belinda never looked at me. She treated me like furniture. Why on earth did she suddenly care if I ate my broccoli? She was overreacting. It wasn’t natural. She was hiding something. I swallowed the suspicion rising in my throat and forced my shoulders to drop, faking defeat. “Fine. You’re right. I’ll keep trying.” Diane let out a massive sigh of relief, and the visible tension completely drained from Belinda’s posture. But from that moment on, I lived a double life. When Diane brought me my diet food, I waited until she turned her back and flushed it down the toilet. Then I’d sneak out the fire escape, buy a massive bag of fast food, and eat it in the dark of my closet. During the hours I was supposed to be doing HIIT workouts in my room, I lay flat on my back, scrolling on my phone. I did this for four days. When weigh-in day arrived, I stepped onto the scale. I hadn’t gained a pound. In fact, I had dropped weight. As I stared at the digital numbers in shock, a furious shriek echoed from the living room. “Mom! Why the hell am I up two pounds?! And what is this massive zit on my chin?!” 4 I spent an entire week living like a total slob, and I dropped twenty pounds. Belinda was the first to realize something was wrong. “You haven’t been eating Mom’s food, have you? And you’re skipping your workouts.” I didn’t answer her. She immediately shot a sharp, panicked look at Diane. Diane practically lunged at me, gripping my upper arms tightly. “Paige, you can’t do this to me! We are so close to a breakthrough, you just have to push through the plateau!” I ignored her. So, Diane became my warden. She shadowed me. She watched me swallow every single bite of unseasoned spinach. She stood in the corner of my room, counting aloud while I jumped rope until my lungs burned. Two days later, I stepped on the scale. The twenty pounds were back. Belinda, meanwhile, walked out of her bedroom with glass-like skin, looking radiant and utterly refreshed. Word around the house was that she had connected with a “top donator” from her livestream—some rich older guy she was calling her Sugar Daddy—and she had started spending most of her nights out. Simultaneously, my body started failing again. My skin blistered and wept. A searing, agonizing itch spread across my most private areas. Diane rushed me to the clinic. When the lab results came back, the diagnosis hit me like a physical blow: an STD. Inside the small examination room, the way the doctor and the attending nurse looked at me made my skin crawl. It was a mix of clinical pity and profound, undisguised disgust. I sat on the paper-covered table, staring at my swollen, scabbed hands, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. When we got home, Diane placed the orange prescription bottle on the kitchen island. “You probably picked it up from a public restroom or something, honey. I know you’re a good girl. Just take the pills.” I swallowed the heavy antibiotics, but they didn’t do a damn thing. The itching grew worse, the festering sores spreading further across my thighs. That evening, Belinda actually graced us with her presence for dinner. Diane served her a bowl of rich, savory stew. As I watched Belinda lift the spoon to her perfect lips, a dark, intrusive thought bloomed in my mind and took root. When she got up to check her phone, I grabbed the heavy antibiotic pills the doctor had given me, crushed them into a fine white powder, and dumped them straight into her leftover broth. The next morning, I woke up, and the maddening, skin-crawling itch was practically gone. But that night, a video of me crushing the pills went live on Belinda’s social media. Diane had installed a nanny cam in the kitchen to make sure I wasn’t cheating on my diet. It had caught my exact, calculated movements. The video went viral within hours. The internet tore me to shreds. “Ugly on the outside, evil on the inside. She caught a nasty disease and tried to poison her sister with it!” “Looking like a literal troll and acting like a psycho.” “Belinda is an angel. Imagine living with a monster like that, praying for her.” “We love you, Belinda! Stay safe!” Diane watched the video and didn’t offer a single word in my defense. Belinda’s follower count exploded overnight. She hosted a livestream, sobbing beautifully into the camera, dabbing at her dry eyes. “I just… I never thought my own flesh and blood would try to hurt me like this.” Donations, super-chats, and digital gifts rained down across the screen. She trended on Twitter. #ProtectBelinda. #MukbangQueen. Talent agencies started sliding into her DMs, offering her brand deals and reality TV spots. The timeline was flooded with photos of her looking fragile, gorgeous, and “brave.” And I was the grotesque villain in her origin story. My face was photoshopped into horrifying, demonic caricatures, placed side-by-side with her angelic selfies. After that night, the last thread of my compliance snapped. Fuck the diet. Fuck the medication. Fuck the jumping rope. Diane cried. She begged. She screamed. She even slapped me across the face. “Are you trying to kill yourself?! Why can’t you just be good?!” I didn’t care. I barricaded myself in my room. I ordered greasy takeout, I refused to move, and I threw the medication in the trash. And, like clockwork, the numbers on my scale began to drop. The weeping sores on my skin finally began to scab over and heal. 5 When Diane realized I was fully refusing to eat her boiled garbage, she lost her mind. She went out to the garage and came back with a thin, flexible fiberglass rod used for tomato plants. “You are going to eat!” she screamed. “You are not leaving this table until that plate is clean!” I clenched my jaw and shook my head. She swung it. The rod sliced through the air and struck my arm right through my thin pajama shirt. It burned like a line of liquid fire. Tears streamed down my face from the shock of the pain. Sobbing, I grabbed handfuls of the cold, wet lettuce and shoved them into my mouth, chewing through my own tears. She stood over me until I swallowed every bite, then pointed to the jump rope. “Jump! One thousand times! If you stop before a thousand, I will beat you until you can’t stand!” I jumped. My heavy body shook with every landing, the tears blinding me. Every time I slowed down, the rod snapped against my back. But I didn’t lose weight. I only gained it back, heavier than before. I couldn’t take it anymore. While they were taking a nap the next afternoon, I slipped out the front door and sprinted all the way to the local police precinct. The desk sergeant looked over the counter at me, bewildered. “Can I help you, miss?” “I need to report an assault!” I gasped, out of breath. “My mother and my sister! They’re abusing me! She hit me with a fiberglass whip and forces me to exercise until I pass out!” The officer’s face hardened. “Do you have proof? Where are the injuries?” “Right here!” I violently shoved my sleeves up, then yanked up the legs of my sweatpants. “Look! She hit me so hard, I swear!” I looked down. My arms and legs were covered in soft, heavy flesh. The skin was completely clear. Not a single red mark. Not a single bruise. The officer frowned deeply. Before I could speak, the precinct doors burst open. Diane and Belinda rushed in. The second Diane saw me, she burst into theatrical, heartbroken tears, running over to wrap her arms around me. “Officer, I am so, so sorry! Please excuse this!” she wept, sounding entirely devastated. “My daughter… she’s very sick. She’s refusing her treatments. I’m just at my wit’s end!” She pulled her phone out, aggressively swiping to show the officer her meticulously curated photo album of my “health food,” along with a thick stack of printed medical records. “The doctors told her if she keeps gaining weight, her heart is going to give out! But if I don’t force her, she just lays in bed eating herself to death! What is a mother supposed to do?!” The officer looked through the medical files. His stern expression melted into sympathetic understanding. He turned to me, his voice taking on a firm, patronizing tone. “Listen to me, young lady. Your mother is trying to save your life. You need to cooperate. Put down the junk food, get some exercise, and get healthy.” Belinda stepped forward, placing a gentle, perfectly manicured hand on my shoulder. She looked at the officer, then at the small crowd of onlookers in the lobby. “Don’t worry, Officer. We’re going to get her the help she needs. Paige, please don’t give up. We’re family. We love you.” The bystanders nodded approvingly. “That poor mother.” “She’s lucky to have a sister who cares that much.” “Kids these days have no idea how good they have it.” Belinda’s face was the picture of sorrowful concern, but as she looked at me, the extreme corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk. To punish me for my little stunt, Belinda kicked her lifestyle into overdrive. 6 Belinda’s streams became unhinged. She booked a flight to a developing country on a whim. She went live while wading waist-deep into a highly polluted, trash-filled river, eating greasy street food with unwashed hands. When she got thirsty, she cupped her hands and drank the brown, murky river water right on camera. Her chat went nuclear. “OMG is she insane??” “Bro that water is toxic waste!” “She’s got a stomach of iron, absolute legend.” “Instant follow.” The shock value worked. She hit a million concurrent viewers. She stood dripping wet on the riverbank, proudly showing off her impossibly flat stomach and glowing, untouchable skin. Ten minutes after she ended her stream, I was sitting in my bedroom when my stomach cramped so violently I fell out of my chair. I crawled to the bathroom, gripping the toilet bowl, and vomited. It wasn’t food. It was pitch-black, rancid sludge that smelled like decaying meat. I collapsed onto the bathroom tiles, gasping for air. As my vision cleared, I looked into the bowl. Tiny, pale white parasites were writhing in the dark water. Something inside me shattered. I bolted out of the apartment. I didn’t know where I was going, I just ran until my lungs burned, blindly forcing open the roof access door of our apartment building. The wind hit my face. I stepped up onto the ledge. Just as I shifted my weight forward, a hand—bony but incredibly strong—clamped around my bicep and yanked me backward. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, child?!” I hit the gravel roof, curling into a ball, sobbing hysterically. It was Alma, an older woman who sometimes stayed with our neighbor, Martha. She was deeply spiritual, an old-school holistic healer who practiced out of a small apothecary downtown. Without asking, she dropped to her knees, grabbed my wrist, and pressed her fingers hard into my pulse points. Her silver eyebrows knitted together. “What have you done to yourself, girl?” she demanded, her voice sharp with authority. “Your pulse is a chaotic mess. It’s weak, completely hollowed out. This is the pulse of someone who has been ingesting literal filth and entirely depleted their life force! And the infections—are you living on the streets? Have you no self-respect?” “No! No, I haven’t!” I screamed, grabbing the hem of her cardigan like a lifeline, my voice cracking. “Please believe me! I swear! I only eat boiled vegetables! I’ve never even held a boy’s hand!” “What on earth is going on up here?” Martha, our neighbor, stepped out onto the roof, her eyes widening when she saw me on the ground. She listened to Alma’s harsh assessment, then looked down at me. Martha hesitated for a second before softening. “Alma, I’ve watched this girl grow up. She was always the quiet, sweet one. She’s not out there living wild. If she says it’s the truth, I believe her.” After all these years. Finally. Someone said they believed me. The dam broke. The years of gaslighting, the physical torture, the crushing isolation—it all flooded out. I wailed, my body shaking so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, the last remaining threads of my sanity snapping. Alma’s stern face softened. She pressed her fingers back to my pulse, muttering to herself. “It makes no sense. You carry all this weight, but your energy is entirely drained, like a hollow shell. A body this size shouldn’t be starving to death from the inside. Something here is deeply unnatural.” Martha gently helped me to my feet. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re coming to my place.” Inside Martha’s apartment, it felt like stepping into a different universe. She set a steaming bowl of rich, savory beef stew in front of me, alongside a plate of buttered rolls. I hadn’t tasted real salt or fat in so long. The first bite made me weep silently into the bowl. When I finished, she pulled a cold, perfectly ripe peach from the fridge and placed it in my hands. “I remember you used to love these when you were little.” I held the fuzzy skin against my palm. I did love them. But years ago, Diane suddenly declared I was deathly allergic to peaches and forbade me from ever eating one again. I took a massive bite of the sweet fruit. With my other hand, I pulled out my phone and tapped into Belinda’s livestream.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “424266”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I suffered every imaginable torment in that foreign penitentiary, waiting for a justice that never came. When the embassy finally contacted Chloe to claim my body, she laughed. She told the magistrate it was a sick prank, a silicone dummy I’d commissioned just to torture her. “That piece of trash violated me,” she sneered through the phone, her voice dripping with a cruelty that used to break my heart. “Even if his rotting corpse gets flushed down a storm drain, I wouldn’t waste a single breath looking at him.” What she didn’t know was that I wasn’t hiding. I was really, truly dead. Three years ago, after she was assaulted on that yacht, her trauma fractured her reality. She became hysterical, pointing a trembling finger at me, accusing me of being the monster who ruined her. Both of our families knew the truth. They knew the real culprit was inextricably tied to Brady—the golden boy, the untouchable center of her universe. Yet, they all looked away. They fed me to the wolves to satisfy her need for vengeance. They left me to rot in a sun-baked hellhole halfway across the world. And while I was bleeding on concrete floors, Chloe liquidated the tech company I had built from nothing, using my money to bury the evidence and keep her true love out of prison. I often wondered what she would do when she realized the truth. I imagined her holding my skeletal remains, laughing in manic triumph. I imagined her laughing so hard that eventually, the laughter would break, and the tears wouldn’t stop falling. 1. My remains were extradited back to the States. My wife, Chloe, received the formal notice to identify the body. She walked down the stark, fluorescent-lit hallway of the county morgue. As they approached the heavy metal doors, the faint, unmistakable stench of decay leaked into the air. She hesitated. Her stunning features twisted into a mask of pure revulsion. “Does he really think this is going to work?” she muttered, her heels clicking aggressively against the linoleum. “He fakes his death to guilt-trip me into forgiving a rapist? In his dreams.” In the end, she only made it through the doors because Brady had his arms wrapped securely around her waist. My soul drifted silently behind them. I watched, numb, as Chloe playfully bit Brady’s neck, right there in the morgue, as if she were trying to purge the sterile air from her lungs. Then, realizing she might have bitten too hard, she soothed the red mark with her tongue, letting out a soft, breathy giggle. A phantom pressure seized my chest. I couldn’t breathe, even though I had no lungs left to fill. She was flirting with her lover mere feet from my corpse. The medical examiner shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat to enforce some semblance of respect. Chloe pulled away from Brady, rolling her eyes. She spat a curse under her breath and finally yanked back the white sheet covering the steel table. Just one look. My nonexistent breath hitched. It wasn’t just that I was dead. It was that I had died with zero dignity. My remains were grotesque. “A rotting silicone dummy, Holden. Really?” Chloe’s voice was sharp, bouncing off the tiled walls. “You think you’ve fooled everyone, don’t you? You’re probably hiding in some pathetic little motel right now, laughing at my family. Laughing at the woman you brutalized. You make me sick!” “You might fool the embassy, Holden, but you can’t fool me!” she screamed at the mutilated flesh. “I wish you were dead. I wish you died so thoroughly that your soul wouldn’t even dare cross the border back into this country!” No, Chloe! I’m not lying to you! I surged forward, desperate, reaching out to grab her shoulders. But my translucent hands passed right through the expensive wool of her coat. She turned away from the table and buried her face in Brady’s chest, pressing a lingering kiss to his collarbone. “Let him play dead,” she whispered. “At least now we don’t have to hide anymore.” Brady carried her into the morgue, and he carried her out. The entire walk back to the administrative desk, she stroked his jaw, his neck, kissing him repeatedly as if demanding compensation for having to look at my face. At the front desk, the clerk handed them a thick manila envelope containing my autopsy reports and biometric data. Dozens of pages of irrefutable DNA matches and dental records. If she had bothered to look at even the first page, she would have known the body couldn’t be faked. Instead, Chloe shoved the envelope into her designer tote like it was garbage. Brady stroked her hair, his eyes heavy with practiced sorrow. “Three years ago, Holden almost dragged me down with him. If it weren’t for you fighting for me, exhausting yourself to clear my name… I would have been ruined. I owe you everything.” Chloe shook her head, her gaze softening. “Don’t say that. It wasn’t a big deal. I just spent a little money… liquidated a few of Holden’s start-ups. It didn’t cost my family a dime.” The tech firm I had bled for. The company I worked hundred-hour weeks to build from a garage to a high-rise office—gone in an afternoon. Sold off by my wife to buy the freedom of another man. The dead aren’t supposed to feel anything. So why did it hurt so much? Why did the sheer memory of her voice feel like glass in my veins? Forget it, I told myself. I built that company to afford the experimental treatments for her severe respiratory condition anyway. At least the money was used. “Holden owed me,” Chloe gritted her teeth, her eyes darkening. “Selling off his little vanity projects was letting him off easy.” Brady glanced back down the hallway toward the cold storage rooms. “Are you sure you don’t want to take one last look? Once you sign the release, they’ll bury him. Whatever he did, he was your husband once. He loved you in his own way.” Brady sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “Man to man… I almost pity him.” Chloe spat on the ground, her face contorting with disgust. “God, Brady, you’re too kind for your own good. Why are you defending a monster who tried to destroy us? He forced himself on me! Marital rape is still rape!” Her voice trembled, pitching up with genuine, manufactured trauma. “You fought him off. You saved me, and you almost went to prison for assault because of it! He doesn’t even deserve to have his name spoken.” The heavy doors of the morgue slowly swung shut. The clerk slid a clipboard across the counter. “Ma’am, I just need your signature on the release forms.” Chloe picked up the pen. Then, suddenly, her hand froze. She slammed the pen down and backed away. “I am not tying my name to that man.” “Excuse me?” the clerk asked. “Even if he is dead—which he isn’t—I will not put my name on a document as his wife. I have nothing to do with him!” She spun on her heel and stormed out. The clerk looked bewildered and chased after her. “Ma’am! You are legally married. By state law, the spouse must claim the remains—” Chloe paused at the automatic doors. She didn’t look back. “I don’t have a husband. Let his body rot in there. Let the rats eat him. It’s exactly what he deserves.” She threw open the door of her Porsche 911, slammed it shut, and peeled out of the parking lot, the engine roaring in defiance. In the passenger seat, Brady’s phone began to ring incessantly. The police. The morgue. Chloe glanced at the caller ID and shook her head sharply. “Ignore it. Just thinking about him makes my skin crawl. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on the deck of that yacht, crying, begging him to stop, and he just… he didn’t care. I could kill him myself.” My spirit trembled. Watching the absolute, venomous hatred radiate from her eyes, listening to her rewrite history until it justified grinding my bones to dust—it was a bitter, suffocating pill to swallow. Chloe was my wife, yet she had convinced the world, and herself, that I was a rapist. But I wasn’t. It happened shortly after our wedding, on a luxury cruise through a lawless stretch of international waters in the Caribbean. Armed mercenaries boarded the ship. Chloe was dragged up to the upper deck. By the time I tore through the ship like a madman and finally found her, it was over. She was catatonic, bleeding heavily onto the teakwood floor. The ship’s doctor later told me the trauma had been so severe, the internal damage so catastrophic, that she would never be able to carry a child. I was consumed by a blinding, agonizing guilt. I wanted to rip my own heart out and give it to her if it would make her whole again. But when Chloe finally woke up in the hospital, her mind had snapped. She screamed the moment she saw me. She threw things. She clawed at her own face, demanding that I die to atone for what I had done to her. Her trauma had completely rewritten her memories. She truly believed I was the one who had attacked her. I closed my ghostly eyes, letting the memory wash over me. To give her peace, I let her and her influential family lock me away in a brutal offshore prison. It was a cage built for the worst of humanity. Cartel enforcers, murderers, monsters. And in a place like that, a convicted rapist is the lowest link on the food chain. For three years, I was subjected to torture that defied human comprehension. And on the very night I was finally scheduled to be released, I was given my final release. I died in unimaginable agony. My body was beaten until it was no longer recognizable as human. … Brady drove like a maniac, eventually pulling up to the driveway of my sprawling estate in the suburbs. As Chloe stepped out into the freezing rain, he pulled her flush against his chest, kissing her deeply, hungrily. “It’s okay. Shhh, it’s over now. You’re safe,” he murmured. They held each other tightly in the downpour. I remembered my final moments on earth. I had begged a sympathetic guard to let me make one last phone call. Please… I had choked out into the receiver, blood bubbling in my lungs. Please, just pick up. I’m dying. This is my last chance, Chloe. My last chance to hear your voice… If she had answered. Even if she had picked up just to tell me how much she hated me. Even if she called me pathetic, manipulative, a coward trying to play the victim! If I had just heard her voice, I would have fought. I would have clawed my way back to life just to breathe the same air as her. But the phone just kept ringing. I died in absolute, suffocating despair. I died one day before my sentence was up. Now, I was a wandering ghost. An exile, tethered to the woman who put me in the ground. 2. My soul followed Chloe into the house. I stood in the corners of my own home, watching her and Brady live as husband and wife. They shared coffee in the mornings. They tangled their limbs together at night. Once, I watched Brady carry a heavily intoxicated Chloe through the front door. A visceral, territorial jealousy flared up inside me, and I glared at him, wishing I could tear him apart. But then I remembered Chloe’s sharp slap to my face years ago, her voice ringing in my ears: “Brady and I are just childhood friends! Only someone with a filthy mind would see something dirty in that!” But… do friends sleep in the same bed? Do friends kiss each other with that kind of desperate hunger when no one else is looking? Under the warm glow of the living room lamps, Chloe meticulously ironed Brady’s suit for the next day, folding it neatly over the back of the sofa. She looked like the perfect, devoted wife. That used to be my job. Before every gala, every board meeting, I would lay out her dresses. I would curate her jewelry, making sure every diamond and pearl perfectly complemented her mood. Chloe had always dismissed my efforts with a scoff. “You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but he still acts like the help,” she used to mock me to her friends. “He calls himself a Montgomery, but he has the soul of a butler.” Yet here she was, doing the exact same ‘servant’s work’ for Brady, and looking at him like he hung the moon. I guess that was the difference between being tolerated and being loved. Brady took her hands, bringing her knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss. Chloe closed her eyes, letting out a contented sigh. “Brady, I’m coming with you to the Montgomery estate tomorrow,” she whispered fiercely. “You are the true son of that family. No one is going to take that from you anymore. I’ll stand by you while you take back everything that belongs to you.” Watching her declare her absolute loyalty, I caught a fleeting, calculating shadow cross Brady’s face. I suddenly remembered how it all started. For twenty-something years, Brady was the pampered, adored heir to the Montgomery fortune. Until the day I was found in a dusty Appalachian town and brought back to the sprawling Boston estate. I remembered the look of profound disappointment in my biological parents’ eyes when they saw me in my faded flannel and scuffed boots. They couldn’t believe this rough, quiet mechanic was their actual flesh and blood. That afternoon, Brady had dramatically packed his bags, standing in the foyer with tears in his eyes. “I know we don’t share the same blood,” he had told my parents, his voice breaking perfectly. “But I’ve been a Montgomery my whole life. Even if you cast me out, I will always pray for your health and happiness.” We had been switched at birth. The rundown farmhouse I grew up in—the one with the leaky roof and the endless chores—was where Brady truly belonged. Tom and Mary O’Connor were his parents. But when the Montgomerys looked at me, their eyes begging me to be the bigger person, I caved. “If you want him to stay, let him stay,” I had said, shifting uncomfortably in my cheap sneakers. “Having two sons to take care of you isn’t a bad thing.” I meant it back then. But I regretted it almost immediately. Because Brady became a ghost that haunted my life, a shadow I could never escape, especially when it came to Chloe. At every high-society event, every charity gala, the moment Brady walked into the room, Chloe’s eyes would lock onto him like a magnet. Standing beside her, I—the actual heir to the Montgomery dynasty—faded into a pathetic, invisible joke. Chloe opened her eyes, her gaze practically overflowing with adoration. “It was always supposed to be you,” she told Brady, her voice thick with emotion. “We grew up together. You were the one I was supposed to marry. If that redneck hadn’t shown up and ruined everything, we would be married by now. We would have kids.” Her face hardened. “He stole my future. But it’s not too late. I’m going to divorce him, Brady. I’ll drag him out of hiding and force him to sign the papers, and then we can finally be together.” They stared into each other’s eyes, the air between them growing thick and heavy. Soon, the quiet whispers turned into heavy breathing. Watching them tear at each other’s clothes on the rug of my living room, I closed my eyes and let out a bitter, silent laugh. I always knew she didn’t love me. Her marriage contract was forged with the Montgomery heir. When my identity was revealed, she was legally bound to me. She was Boston royalty—cold, brilliant, and breathtakingly beautiful. I was a grease monkey who didn’t know which fork to use at dinner. How could I ever expect her to love me? I was so naive. I used to tell myself that if I just loved her hard enough, if I was patient and kind, year after year, maybe, just maybe, she would eventually look at me and smile. I was so incredibly wrong. When Chloe was assaulted, her parents had come to me. The aristocratic, untouchable Lynn family had fallen to their knees on my hardwood floor, weeping. “Please, Holden,” her father had begged. “Chloe is too proud. Her mind is shattered. If she knows she was taken by random thugs, she’ll kill herself. She has completely blocked out the real attackers!” “If you just confess,” her mother sobbed, clutching my pant leg. “If you let her believe it was you… her anger will keep her alive. She’ll have someone to hate. Please… it’s the only way she survives this.” Human nature is inherently selfish. If I confessed to a crime I didn’t commit, my life was over. I would be a pariah, a monster in the eyes of the world. I told them no. But I underestimated the depths of my own family’s betrayal. When I went to the Montgomery estate for help, my father locked himself in his study and refused to look at me. My mother threw herself on the floor, weeping hysterically, before swallowing a handful of sleeping pills right in front of me. As she was being pumped full of charcoal in the ER, she confessed the sickening truth. The attack on the yacht hadn’t been random. Brady had gambling debts. He had made a deal with the mercenaries, giving them the security codes to the yacht. It was his fault the pirates boarded. “I raised Brady,” my mother wept, clutching my hands with a desperate, bruising grip. “I love him more than my own life. If he goes to federal prison for this, Holden… I will kill myself. I swear to God, I will die.” Cornered by the people who brought me into the world, suffocated by the tears of the family I had married into, I broke. I took the plea deal. I “confessed.” And I died for it. I paid for their sins with my blood, dying alone in a country where I didn’t even speak the language. If my body hadn’t been deported by a bureaucratic technicality, my soul would have been lost in the dark forever. I tried to find comfort in the finality of it. I’m dead, I told myself. The truth is buried with me. Chloe will never know, and so she will never have to bear the pain of reality. But the phantom knife in my chest kept twisting. After the “incident,” Chloe had developed a severe psychological block. Her doctors called it trauma-induced delusion. Her subconscious had actively rewritten the narrative, turning me into the ultimate villain so she didn’t have to face the chaotic, senseless horror of what actually happened. Her parents enabled the delusion. My parents endorsed it. I did nothing wrong. I loved her perfectly. But the world decided that sacrificing Holden O’Connor was the easiest way to keep everyone else’s lives immaculate. During the private hearings, Chloe hired a ruthless legal team to crucify me. But the American judges weren’t blind. The evidence was circumstantial, the forensics didn’t match, and her case was thrown out repeatedly. Frustrated by the law, the two families pooled their vast resources. They used offshore connections, pulled political strings, and had me illegally extradited and thrown into that South American hellhole. My parents personally flew down to see me handed over to the guards. On that final day, my mother touched my face, her eyes brimming with sorrow. “Just hold on, sweet boy. Three years. We’ll bring you home, and you’ll go back to being a Montgomery.” My father patted my shoulder awkwardly. “Adversity builds character, son. I took my lumps building the empire. A few years roughing it won’t kill you.” As the heavy iron gates slammed shut, I saw Brady standing by the black SUV, waiting for them. He turned his head and looked at me. It was just one look. But it was entirely composed of arrogant, sneering triumph. He had stolen my parents. He had stolen my wife. And he left me to be devoured by the monsters in the dark. And everyone lived happily ever after. Because the right person had been sacrificed. 3. For weeks, my soul drifted aimlessly behind Chloe. I watched her move through the house I had meticulously designed for her, sleeping in the bed I had picked out, laughing with another man. Every corner of the house, right down to the ornate bronze oil diffuser in the hallway, had been placed there by me. Brady stepped out of the shower one evening, toweling his hair. As he walked past, his foot shot out, casually kicking the heavy bronze diffuser. It clattered against the wall, the glass reservoir shattering across the hardwood. “What happened?” Chloe called out, stepping out of the bedroom. Brady looked down at the mess, his expression the picture of innocent dismay. “Oh, damn. This was one of Holden’s little projects, wasn’t it? Supposed to be romantic or something. My bad, Chloe. Total accident.” Chloe stared at the broken glass for a moment. Then, she let out a dismissive scoff. “Typical Holden. Always wasting his time on useless, flashy garbage just so he could play the martyr. He loved putting on a show to prove how much he ‘suffered’ for me. Never once stopped to ask if I actually wanted his help.” My spectral hands curled into fists. The ache in my chest was a physical, pulsing thing. I just loved putting on a show? Chloe had severe, chronic asthma, complicated by a rare allergy. Whenever the seasons changed, or when the stress of running her company peaked, she would spend nights gasping for air, her face pale, terrifyingly close to suffocation. I hated seeing her in pain. I scoured the country for holistic specialists, finally tracking down a retired herbalist in the Pacific Northwest who formulated a customized, eucalyptus-based medicinal wax. Every night, I would set it in that diffuser, letting the slow heat fill the room with a vapor that opened her lungs. Once, after a brutal business trip, she collapsed from a severe respiratory attack, burning with a high fever. I lit the diffuser and sat by her bed, trying to keep the vapor near her face. But she was delirious, thrashing wildly, cursing my name, refusing to let me near her. Terrified she would knock the scalding oil onto her face, I took the medicinal wax, smeared it directly onto my own forearm, and held it over the open candle flame, letting the heat vaporize the medicine from my skin. I sat there like that all night, breathing with her. The hot wax and the open flame blistered my arm terribly. But I would have set myself on fire if it meant Chloe could breathe. When she woke up the next morning, her lungs were clear. My arm, however, was covered in weeping, agonized burns. I didn’t complain. A husband is supposed to protect his wife. You don’t hand the woman you love an invoice for your sacrifices. But when Chloe saw my bandaged arm, she simply rolled her eyes, told me I was clumsy, and walked out of the room. Now, I watched Chloe nudge a piece of the broken glass with her slipper. “Sweep it up and throw it out,” she told the maid coldly. “Holden is trash, everything he touched is trash. It all belongs in the dumpster.” She turned and curled into Brady’s chest, smiling up at him. “He’s such a coward. He doesn’t even have the guts to face me. Going through all the trouble to fake a corpse, just because he knows the second I see him, I’m shoving divorce papers down his throat.” “He knows his entire status in Boston rests on his marriage to me. His parents tolerate him because he’s tied to the Lynn family. If I dump him, he’s back to being nobody.” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “But he’s an idiot if he thinks hiding in some rat-infested motel will save him. I’ll drag him back by his hair if I have to.” I listened to her speech with a tired, hollow smile. I gave her my soul, and in return, she saw me as a pathetic, gold-digging coward clinging to her coattails. Brady’s eyes flickered, calculating. “Have your private investigators found anything yet? Chloe… is it possible the body was real? What if he actually is…” “Impossible!” Chloe snapped, suddenly stepping away from him, her body rigid. “If it weren’t for him, I never would have endured what I went through! Dying is too easy for him! He doesn’t get to just die!” She paced the room, her chest heaving. “That thing in the morgue was a prop. It’s a sick joke. He’s probably watching from somewhere, getting off on my reaction.” Suddenly, she spun around, throwing her arms around Brady’s neck and pressing her lips aggressively against his. “Distract me, Brady. Wash the thought of him out of my head. He makes me sick.” Brady let out a low laugh, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her toward the bedroom. “Happy to oblige.” They crashed onto the mattress, tearing at each other with a frantic, desperate energy. Chloe’s screams of pleasure echoed off the vaulted ceiling. I stood by the doorway, gripping the frame. I thought I had run out of tears. I thought ghosts couldn’t cry. But the agony tearing through me was so absolute, it felt like I was dying all over again. 4. Chloe’s private investigators turned up nothing. Naturally. My body was still lying in the cold storage drawer at the county morgue. The precinct captain and the medical examiner called her constantly, pleading with her to sign the paperwork so I could be laid to rest. But Chloe lived in a reality of her own making. She was fundamentally convinced the corpse was a fake, and that I was playing a cruel game of hide-and-seek. After hanging up on the police for the fourth time that week, Chloe threw a crystal vase at the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. My parents, Richard and Patricia Montgomery, visited the house shortly after. They had no idea I was dead. They assumed I had been quietly released from the offshore prison and was just laying low. They believed that because I loved Chloe so much—because I was willing to go to jail for her—I would inevitably come crawling back. But Brady handled their visit beautifully. He poured their tea, he reminisced about his childhood in their home, and he spun a masterful web of casual lies. “You know how Holden is,” Brady chuckled warmly. “He probably needed to blow off steam after everything. He’s out in Europe somewhere, spending money, enjoying the beaches. He’ll come home when he gets bored.” My mother smiled, completely reassured. “Well, he always was a bit… wild. Growing up in that rural environment, he never really learned responsibility. Let him get it out of his system. It’s good that he’s exploring the world.” My spirit froze. For three years, I was beaten with lead pipes. I was starved. I froze in the winters and baked in the summers. I lived a reality so horrifying it stripped away my humanity. And in my mother’s mind, I was just a wild kid backpacking through Saint-Tropez. “We’re getting older,” my mother continued, reaching out to pat Brady’s hand. “Honestly, having you here to take care of us is a blessing, Brady. You understand tradition. You understand duty. You’ll be the one to look after us when we’re gone.” My parents left the estate in good spirits. They never mentioned my name again. But Chloe was unraveling. Every day her investigators came back empty-handed, she grew more frantic. By day, she screamed at her staff. By night, she dragged Brady into her bed, demanding a physical intensity that was bordering on violent. You could see the exhaustion settling into Brady’s bones. She even posted a bounty on her social media. Ten thousand dollars to anyone with a confirmed sighting of Holden O’Connor. 5. After a particularly aggressive session in the bedroom, Brady collapsed back against the pillows, gasping for air. He pulled Chloe to his chest. “Chloe… I don’t think he’s hiding from you on purpose. What if he’s in trouble? Maybe he owes money to the wrong people abroad? Maybe he’s too scared to come back?” “Bullshit!” Chloe shrieked, shoving him away and sitting up violently. “If he needed money, he’d crawl back here! It’s not like the Montgomerys would let him starve. And if they did, he’d beg me for it!” She dug her nails into her palms. “He loves me! He’s obsessed with me! The only reason he’s staying away is because he knows I’ll divorce him the second I see his face. He’s dragging this out!” Her eyes darted around the room, manic and bright. “Fine. If he won’t come out, I’ll start burning down everything he cares about. He still has those hillbilly adoptive parents, doesn’t he? Go get them. Lock them in the basement. Let’s see how long he stays hidden when they start starving.” Brady stared at her, a flicker of genuine unease in his eyes. “Chloe, are you… are you starting to care about him? Is this about getting a divorce, or are you just desperate for him to look at you again?” I held my breath. For a split second, a pathetic, dying ember of hope flared in my chest. “Are you insane?!” Chloe roared, her face flushing with pure rage. “I just want this over! I want the divorce finalized so I never have to look at his disgusting face again! I want to be entirely clean of him!” Brady reached out, cupping her cheek, playing the wounded lover to perfection. “You’ve been acting so erratic lately. If… if you really still have feelings for him, Chloe, just tell me. I’ll pack my things. I’ll walk away and let you two fix your marriage.” “I am not married to him! Who in their right mind would love a piece of white trash like that?!” She caught herself, taking a deep breath to rein in her hysteria. She leaned down and kissed Brady’s forehead. “I’ll prove it to you, Brady. I’ll prove exactly how much I hate him.” I found out very quickly how she planned to prove it. That night, Tom and Mary O’Connor—the gentle, quiet people who had raised me—were dragged out of a black van, black hoods pulled over their heads. They were thrown onto the marble floor of Chloe’s living room like sacks of garbage. “D… daughter-in-law?” my mother stammered, her voice shaking violently as the hood was yanked off. She had lived a quiet life in rural Ohio. She was terrified. “Don’t call me that!” Chloe snatched a heavy crystal tumbler off the table and hurled it. It shattered against my mother’s forehead, drawing a sharp line of blood. My father let out a raw, guttural cry and threw himself over his wife, using his broad shoulders to shield her head. Chloe sneered, her eyes locking onto my father’s hands—hands that were permanently calloused and stained with engine grease and soil from working three jobs to keep me fed. “Filthy,” she muttered in disgust. She crossed her arms, looking down at them like insects. “Your pathetic son is hiding from me because he refuses to sign the divorce papers. Since he clearly has no spine, I’m holding you responsible. You’re not leaving this house until he shows his face.” My father looked up, his weathered face tight with indignation. “Holden is a good boy! He spent his whole life breaking his back to help us put food on the table! You don’t get to talk about my son that way!” Chloe’s eyes went dead. “Holden is a rapist. He violated me. It cost me millions in legal fees just to get him locked in a foreign cage where he belonged! His three years are up. He should be on his knees outside my door, begging for my mercy. But he’s too much of a coward to even face me. Calling him half a man is giving him too much credit!” “No! You’re lying! My boy would never do that! I don’t believe you!” My father, a man who had never raised his voice in his life, suddenly surged forward, his face red with protective fury. Chloe stumbled back, startled. But her security team reacted instantly. Three massive bodyguards tackled my aging father to the ground, slamming his face into the marble. Brady hurried down the stairs, tying his robe. “Chloe, what’s going on? Should we really be doing this? They’re old…” Chloe’s voice was ice. “Trash breeds trash. Break his legs.” “Chloe, wait—” Brady started. “If you raise a monster, you pay the price,” she barked at the guards. “Do it! It’s a public service!” No! Don’t touch them! Leave them alone! Rage, hot and blinding, erupted in my chest. My vision went entirely red. I threw myself at the guards, swinging wildly, screaming at the top of my lungs. But my fists just passed through empty air. I was forced to stand there and watch as they took a baton to my father’s knees. The crack of his bones echoed through the cavernous room. He didn’t scream. He just bit down on his lip until it bled. The jagged white edge of a fractured bone pierced through the fabric of his jeans. My mother began to scream—a high, piercing wail of absolute agony—before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed, coughing up blood. Chloe watched the entire scene with dead, bored eyes. She even gestured for her assistant to pull out a phone and start recording. The anger inside me was so absolute it felt like it was tearing my soul apart. How could I have ever loved this woman? How could I have ever thought there was a heart buried beneath that ice? Suddenly, the front door exploded inward. “Police! Nobody move!” A SWAT team flooded the foyer, assault rifles raised. “Chloe Lynn! We received a tip about a kidnapping at this residence. Drop the phone and put your hands behind your back!” Paramedics rushed in behind the cops, immediately swarming my parents. My father had passed out from the shock. My mother regained consciousness as they loa

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