My boyfriend’s birthday—my first time staying over at his place. In the middle of the night, while he was sound asleep, I got up for a drink and accidentally bumped his computer. The screen lit up, showing an Instagram post visible only to friends. The bold title read: [The Billionaire’s True Love Game] Eight months ago, this billionaire had started publicly documenting his operation to hunt down a Cinderella. The post had plenty of followers. I scrolled to the latest comments. “What’s up with Ethan lately? No updates? Isn’t the new target supposed to be dumb and clueless—difficulty level zero?” I refreshed. A new reply appeared: “Ethan already said he’s taking this girl’s virginity tonight. He’s busy with that right now!” I looked at the blogger’s profile picture—unmistakably Ethan’s profile. That side view I could never mistake. A bone-deep chill washed over me. What I thought was true love was just a con. He’d pretended to be a poor, hardworking, innocent boy—just bait tossed out by a wealthy playboy in his game. I forced down my explosive emotions and posted from my Instagram burner account to ask strangers for advice. Half an hour later, I’d made my decision. I grabbed some chicken blood from the fridge and climbed back into bed.

I didn’t sleep well. When I woke up, my eyelids felt heavy. Ethan sat at the small table typing on his laptop, his white dress shirt glowing faintly in the morning light. Campus heartthrob looks—truly captivating. Hearing me stir, he brought over a glass of warm milk. He affectionately pinched my cheek, his voice doting and magnetic: “Baby, drink your milk.” Then he pulled out a paper jewelry box and opened it. Inside was a tarnished silver ring that looked dirty and old. He knelt on one knee, held the ring up in front of me, and said: “Baby, this is the silver ring my mom took off her own finger and gave to me. It was also a gift from my grandmother to her.” “It’s not expensive, but to my family, it means everything.” “We’ve only been dating for five months, but from the moment we met eight months ago, I fell deeply in love with you.” “Please don’t refuse me, okay?” I silently sneered to myself. Wasn’t this the exact suggestion from the comment section when he posted pictures last month? A cheap alloy ring bought online for a dollar, free shipping during promotions. And they’d written so confidently: Game props don’t deserve expensive investments. Their disgusting game involved deliberately pretending to be poor, deceiving girls who struggled to make ends meet, scamming them for money and sex. And they justified it shamelessly: This is the only way to find girls who aren’t materialistic. Ha! Screw their “good girls!” I stayed silent, lowering my eyes. Ethan maintained his kneeling posture, his expression gradually tensing. He was worried I’d reject this piece of trash. I hid my left hand under the covers and viciously pinched my thigh. Tears immediately sprang to my eyes. Then, overcome with joy, I extended my right hand and slipped my ring finger into the silver band. I quickly pulled it back, as if afraid he’d change his mind. “It’s too precious. Are you sure you want to give this to me now?” Ethan blinked, caught off guard. He set down the paper box, using that movement to compose his expression. He gave me a sincere smile: “Of course. I’m sorry, baby. This is all I can give you right now.” What award-winning acting. I wiped away my tears and clasped my hands tightly together. “Ethan, don’t you dare look down on yourself!” I pressed the ring against my chest and solemnly declared: “I swear, it’s more important to me than my own heart.” His expression froze slightly, the mockery hidden in his eyes quietly dissipating. I shyly pulled him close, wrapping my arms around his waist and burying my face in his white shirt. I mentally reviewed all the netizen comments from last night. Ethan stroked my hair and murmured: “I’m sorry. Last night… I couldn’t hold back.” Fighting the urge to jump up and slap him, I gently pushed him away and turned to pull at the bedsheets. Against the large expanse of sky blue, a spot of oxidized rusty red stood out prominently. From where Ethan stood looking down, he could definitely see it. I quickly bundled the sheet into a ball. When I turned around, his face indeed showed poorly concealed smugness. “Last night was worth commemorating. Baby, don’t bother cooking. I’ll treat you to pizza.” I stuffed the sheet into the secondhand washing machine, poured in detergent, and replied casually: “Forget it. Takeout is expensive and dirty. I’ll cook instead. We need to save money if we’re going to buy a house someday.” Ethan looked deeply moved and tender. “You’re right, baby, but today’s an exception.” Without waiting for my answer, he placed the order. Then he walked over and held me tight. “Don’t worry. I’ll definitely make you happy. I’m going to work and earn money now. You eat first, okay?” The door closed. As I listened to the washing machine rumbling, memories flooded back.

Eight months ago, I was running a street stall on Central Street. Ethan worked at the boutique shop next door. That night, a woman with a nose ring and tattoos all over her body walked past my stall and kicked over my most expensive crystal ball. It shattered completely. I immediately stopped her and demanded compensation. The woman shoved me hard, climbed on top of me, and started hitting and cursing me. Ethan, from the boutique a few meters away, stepped forward and pulled her off me. The woman pointed at his nose and cursed him out, then stormed into the shop threatening to cause trouble. The shop owner wanted to keep the peace and told Ethan to apologize. I grabbed him and refused to let him. In the end, Ethan and I packed up my little stall and left together. We were both ordinary people who’d come from far away to make a living. No special skills, no connections—just warming each other through hardship. Half a month later, he handed me discounted red roses. Blushing, I kissed the corner of his mouth. That’s how our relationship began. Ethan was wonderful—handsome and gentle. Worried about my safety, he accompanied me to my stall whenever possible. When I caught a cold and felt chilly, he held me through the night. Last month, he proactively suggested I move in with him. Living together would save more money than living separately. Once we’d saved enough, we could get married. I was overjoyed and nodded eagerly. I looked forward to our future. But “the future” was just a joke. Now, I opened his profile page. Sure enough, there was a new post. “Easy as pie. She’s even dumber than I thought.” In the comments, his buddies posted a string of emoji. “That’s our Ethan!” “Ethan’s the best! Destroy her!” I smiled mockingly. Ethan put serious effort into pretending to be poor. He worked overtime every day, but in reality, his private blog posts showed yachts, mansions, and seafood feasts. Naturally, I couldn’t fall behind. I turned around and increased my workload, getting up early and staying out late, running all over the south and north sides of the city. Every night in the latter half of the night, I’d return to this cheapest basement apartment with my voice hoarse. But I never complained. I took care of him a hundred times more attentively. I’d rather eat rock-hard bread myself than skip making him chicken soup. Watching me grow increasingly pale, the mockery in Ethan’s eyes gradually disappeared. Instead, he occasionally seemed lost in thought. One morning, I knelt on the floor polishing his leather shoes. He seemed to choke up. After a long pause, he said: “Baby, they’re not worn out. I can still wear them.” I carefully wiped them, saying: “Clothes make the man. You can’t wear shoes with peeling polish—people will laugh at you.” “I don’t have money to buy you new ones right now, so I’ll just touch up the polish for you. Look! All done! Come try them on!” Ethan hesitated for a long time before walking over and stepping into them. His smile looked very unnatural. This weekend, Ethan said he had time off and took me to the night market. He bought me a grilled sausage, half-jokingly apologizing that this was all he could afford. I ate it with a blissful expression, as if it were a delicacy. Just then, the woman with the nose ring walked toward us from across the way. She was fawning all over a bald man’s arm. What rotten luck. The bald man had a face full of flab. He listened to the woman whisper in his ear, then sneered at us: “So you two are the ones who offended my woman?” This nouveau riche posture—in the past, Ethan wouldn’t have been worthy of pouring him water. Ethan’s fists clenched tight. If he threw that punch, the so-called game would end early. My eyes swept the area. I grabbed nearby pasta and hurled it at them. The bald man and nose-ring woman both shrieked, utterly embarrassed, then cursed and charged at us. I shielded Ethan behind me, waving the bamboo stick from my sausage while shouting tremblingly: “You bastard! Don’t think having money means you can bully people!” The bald man’s eyes widened as he tried to kick me. “Bitch, who are you trying to scare?” But he didn’t succeed. Ethan stepped forward quickly, kicked his foot away with one leg, then kicked him to the ground. His hand gripped the bald man’s throat, his expression murderous. “You want to die?” The bald man’s face turned completely red. A few seconds later, Ethan released him. The bald man didn’t even bother with nose-ring woman and fled directly. Ethan grabbed my hand and threw away the bamboo stick. “Do you know you could go to jail if you hurt someone? Just because of me… you fool.” His words were tender, but his eyes held scrutiny. I squeezed out tears and smiled at him. “You’re my man. I protect my boyfriend. Do I need a reason?” “Ethan, I’d do anything for you.” For an instant, something seemed to crack in his eyes. Ethan, who played with people’s hearts, claimed not to believe in genuine feelings—but what he wanted most was exactly that: genuine feelings.

That day when we got home, Ethan proactively put his arm around me for a selfie and posted this couple photo to social media for the first time. I understood—my progress bar had advanced another notch. Late that night, I opened his private profile page in the bathroom. Sure enough, there was a new blog post. He’d written about today’s events. The comments were full of mockery: “This chick’s got some fire in her.” “Ethan, are you catching feelings?” “Tsk tsk tsk, is Ethan going serious? You’ll lose the game if you do.” Ethan hadn’t replied to a single comment. The next night at midnight, he came home reeking of alcohol, looking at me with both despair and pain. “I’m sorry. Baby, let’s break up.” He pulled out a diagnostic report. “I’ve been feeling unwell these past few days—dizzy, headaches. I went to the hospital today for a checkup. Turns out I have a brain tumor.” “Surgery would cost at least two hundred thousand dollars. Where would I get that kind of money?” Did he steal this from a soap opera? I resisted rolling my eyes. Ethan half-reclined on the sofa, tears streaming down his face. “Lily, I can’t ruin your entire life.” I clasped my hands together, my nails digging into my palms, my lips biting until they bled. Between my part-time jobs and street stall, I’d only managed to save fifty thousand dollars so far. Two hundred thousand could crush me. Ethan cried while sneaking glances at me. He was waiting to see how I’d agree to break up, dump this terminally ill boyfriend, and restart my life. But I said nothing and turned to leave. The door clicked shut. His mouth opened—he hadn’t expected me to leave without a single word. After turning two streets, I opened his profile page. Ethan’s tone was agitated. “She ran off over two hundred thousand. Really poor, cheap, and worthless.” The comment section echoed in agreement: “Normal. For poor people, two hundred thousand is worth more than life itself.” “Ethan, you’ve played with this one for most of a year. Getting bored? Let’s find someone new!” Ethan didn’t reply, but he didn’t leave either. He stayed in the basement apartment, continuing to smoke and drink. Staring fixedly at the door.

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When I got home from work, I noticed one of the spare keys on the table was missing. I asked my husband Ethan about it. He said he’d lost it. In the shower, I spotted a strand of hair stuck to the drain. Long, curly, wine-red. My hair was short. Soon after, I received a message on my phone. It was from Vivian, Ethan’s newly hired assistant. “Aria, Ethan gave me a spare key the other day. He said it was for convenience.” I didn’t respond. The next day, I changed the locks. Then I posted a message in the company’s group chat. “Locks have been changed. If Vivian wants a new key, she can come find me.” The moment Ethan got home, his face darkened. “Aria Summers, have you lost your mind? What nonsense are you spouting in the company group? Do you know what people are saying about her?” I set down the soup. Looking straight at him, I asked, “Then why did you lie about losing the key?” He froze. After a long pause, he sighed, his voice softening slightly. “Vivian is my assistant. Giving her a key was just for convenience. I lied because I was worried you’d overthink things. Did you really need to react like this?” I was silent for a few seconds, my voice hoarse. “Should I just give her all the keys then?” “Aria Summers!” Ethan raised his voice impatiently. “Vivian left crying this afternoon. She and I are just normal colleagues. Can you stop being so paranoid?” “Then how do you explain the overlapping handprints on the shower wall?” “What handprints?” I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bathroom, pointing at the wall where the handprints should be. But there was nothing there. Ethan immediately shook me off and snorted coldly. “I don’t want to fight with you, but this better not happen again! Go reflect on yourself.” Then he kicked me out of the group chat. A new notification popped up on my screen, showing that I, the administrative assistant, had been terminated. The grayed-out group number and the termination notice. Like two heavy slaps across my face, leaving it burning. The fragrance of soup drifted from the kitchen into my nostrils. Suddenly, it didn’t smell good anymore.

Seven years. I hadn’t waited for his proposal yet, but I’d waited for him to publicly defend someone else. It reminded me of the year my father jumped off a building and my mother left. He had held me then, his eyes red, voice low and fierce. “Aria, listen to me. Even if the whole world abandons you, you still have me. If I can’t do surgery, I can still be a pharmaceutical rep. I can give you a home, a balcony for growing flowers. You plant azaleas, I’ll grow succulents, and we’ll have lots and lots of children…” My heart had ached with tenderness then. I couldn’t refuse Ethan, who had ruined his hands saving me in a car accident, losing his ability to hold a scalpel, yet still making me promises. I stayed. From a tenth-level pianist to a nanny who racked her brains to take care of him. Massages, cooking soup, arranging daily life—my entire existence revolved around Ethan. My mom couldn’t understand. “Is it worth giving up your life’s dream for him?” I had answered with certainty. But now, looking at Ethan’s still-handsome face under the warm lights, growing increasingly cold and distant, I realized I’d been wrong. Ethan and I fell into a cold war. He stopped coming home, and I had the housekeeper continue delivering his meals as usual. Vivian’s social media posts became increasingly frequent. Like the Pikachu slippers that appeared outside Ethan’s usual break room. Not my size. Not his style either. Like the new soup bowl Ethan was using, in a pink he would never choose. In the photo, they shared one bowl of soup, smiling at each other. Vivian’s caption read, “Drinking love soup with the one I love. Some old things are destined to exit the stage.” But I’d spent four hours making that soup. The discarded bowl was from the matching couple’s set I’d given him seven years ago. In the comments, someone teased, “Did Ethan switch girlfriends? Better than the previous one, they look more compatible.” Ethan didn’t deny it. Instead, he liked the comment. The lighting was warm and yellow. The heating was on full blast. Yet I felt bone-chillingly cold. Because of Ethan’s casual like, my seven years of giving everything were just “old things” in others’ eyes and “the previous one” in his. With a ding, Vivian tagged me in a post. “Sorry, Aria. Last time I accidentally got my clothes dirty and borrowed your bathroom. I apologize. Please don’t make things difficult for Ethan because of this.” “Ethan said he’s already added my fingerprint to the system, so I don’t need to get keys from you anymore…” Followed by a smug emoji. She had every reason to be smug. Apologizing on the surface while secretly telling everyone that Ethan was on her side. An acquaintance defended me. “Is this an apology or marking territory? Ethan, aren’t you going to do something about this?” “Do what? Can’t you see Mrs. Blake is about to be replaced?” The comment section erupted. Ethan said nothing, but under the “Mrs. Blake is being replaced” comment, he posted a smiley face. I stared at the screen. My eyes stung with pain. I exited the app and opened the fingerprint settings. Deleted my newly added fingerprint, leaving only his two. Ethan wanted a replacement. And I was tired of being his nanny.

That evening, Ethan came home. His face was expressionless, but his eyes gleamed brightly. Then he shoved a music score into my arms. “I promised to give you this before. Here.” He pushed me down onto the sofa and sat at the piano himself. With his back to me, hunched over, he clumsily searched for each key. If this were before, I would have, like Vivian, taken a photo and posted it with the caption, “My boyfriend is trying so hard to make me smile!” But now, I just asked calmly, “When did it start?” The piano stopped. Ethan turned around, his brows furrowed tightly. “I’ve explained. I’ve apologized. Aria Summers, what more do you want?” I looked up at him directly. “There’s an extra pair of slippers at home, a new perfume, and a Pikachu plush. The bedside drawer also has several boxes of ultra-thin condoms, the strawberry-flavored kind we never bought. Your closet—” “Enough!” The living room fell into dead silence. Only our amplified breathing could be heard. Ethan stood still for a few seconds before getting up. The music score crumpled in his grip, his knuckles white with tension. He looked at me with disappointed, cold eyes. “Aria Summers, I’m starting to wonder if your father’s mental illness was hereditary. Are you planning to jump off a building to force me next?” “Just like how your mother cheated and your father used death to force her?” A roaring sound filled my ears. My heart felt like it had exploded. I’d thought he might argue or deny. I never expected him to tear open my old wounds this way. “Some things are better left unsaid—that’s adult maturity! No matter what I do outside, you’re still the future Mrs. Blake. I ruined my hands for you, gave up my dream of being a doctor. What more do you have to be suspicious about?” “Vivian shouldn’t have showered in your bathroom, but she apologized. Don’t blow other things out of proportion and target her!” His voice grew louder with each word. Combined with those cold eyes, every word cut like a sharp blade. As if the one being unclear with a subordinate, maintaining an ambiguous relationship, wasn’t him, but me. I looked at him, finding the certainty in his eyes painfully glaring. Not the guilt of being caught, but the confidence that I had no way out, that I wouldn’t dare break things off with him. My throat felt blocked. I didn’t say another word. He only remembered ruining his hands, giving up his dream of being a doctor. But he’d forgotten that I’d also ruined my hands, spending every day in the kitchen for him. After he went to the bedroom, I numbly pressed piano key after piano key. The music played on. But it no longer had the sweetness of the past. Neither of us spoke again that night. Around midnight, Ethan quietly left. When the door closed, I opened my eyes. Soon after, Vivian posted again. Five photos. Each one showed brilliant fireworks exploding in the night sky, forming words. Together, they read, “Ethan Loves Vivian.” I’d received the same confession three years ago. Back then, Ethan’s company had just gone public. On the same day, he gave me a villa key and a huge flower-growing balcony. It had roses, peonies, orchids, and succulents. Lively like a warm little home. That night, countless fireworks exploded in the night sky as he shouted with a smile, “I did what I promised Aria. I’ll love Aria forever.” Same person. But the object of his love had changed. My phone vibrated. It was a reply from my mom. I turned off my phone, opened my suitcase, and began packing my clothes. Everything else went into the trash. When Ethan returned, what he saw was that suitcase.

He instinctively frowned. “Where are you going?” “On a trip.” “A trip?” He loosened his tie, as if he’d heard a joke. “You’ve taken care of me for seven whole years without leaving home for a single day. You think you can actually leave?” “Aria, if you think you can force me to give in this way, it won’t work.” “I don’t think I’m wrong, and I don’t think Vivian and I did anything wrong. I’ve supported you for seven years. You should be more understanding by now.” I didn’t speak or argue. I just stuffed the 20-inch suitcase back into the closet. The suitcase was light. Just like this home I’d stayed in for seven years, this marriage I’d anticipated for seven years. I’d thought it was full of blooming flowers. But it was riddled with holes. Only then did Ethan nod with satisfaction, a laugh escaping from his nose. “Good that you understand.” “In this world, besides me, no one else can give you a home, a balcony for growing flowers. You should cherish your blessings.” These words were certain yet cold. Mixed with an unfamiliar strawberry-milk scent on his collar, my heart throbbed with delayed pain. “Remember, you’re no longer the Aria Summers who shone on stage. You’re just my nanny now, a woman I’ve taken care of who’s become useless. Stop with these pointless acts. Behave, and I’ll treat you well…” The man’s slightly cold words drifted through the sound of running water. I couldn’t hear clearly. But it was enough. He didn’t know. The suitcase I’d put back contained my travel documents and clothes. I didn’t leave, not because I couldn’t bear to, but because I’d booked a flight for the day after tomorrow. The next day, Ethan unexpectedly called me. His tone was soft. “Company gala. The business partners all want to meet you.” A laugh came through the phone. “Come. I’ll use this opportunity to propose.” My heart raced for a few seconds, then calmed down. Not much excitement. But I still agreed. Not because I had any expectations, but for these seven years of wholehearted devotion, I wanted an answer. That evening, he had someone deliver a pair of sapphire earrings to me. And a black off-shoulder dress. My favorite color. My exact size. My heart warmed slightly. When the grand doors of the venue slowly opened for me and I walked step by step to the center of the crowd, I froze. On the stage paved with flowers, Vivian stood at the center in a black diamond-studded off-shoulder dress. Around her neck was an even larger sapphire necklace. And Ethan was holding a ring, down on one knee. Brilliant lights cast halos around them. The clicking of cameras mixed with congratulations loud enough to shatter the ceiling. Like a tsunami drowning me. I should have felt sad. But I didn’t. Only a sense of relief, as if things had turned out exactly as expected.

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Every time my mother packed a bag to run away from home, she’d make it exactly halfway before finding an excuse to turn back. The first time, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind half a watermelon that was about to go bad in the fridge. The second time, we actually made it onto the Greyhound bus before she gasped and said we had to go back to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. The third time, I saw that familiar, sickeningly anxious look wash over her face again. Looking back at those first two attempts, I would have had to be completely blind not to figure it out. She never really wanted to leave the man who beat her. She was just using my heartbreak and panic to satisfy her own desperate need to feel like a martyr. 1 I stood outside the sliding glass doors of the regional bus depot, watching my mother’s hands tremble as she clutched the ticket to my grandmother’s town. She looked back over her shoulder. One. Two. Three times. “Heather, I forgot to turn off the stove.” Her voice was frail, laced with that precise pitch of hesitation I had grown so accustomed to that it made my stomach turn. I didn’t say a word. My phone screen was still glowing in my palm with a text from Nana: Come on down, baby. Got the spare room all made up for you and your mama. Nana was seventy-three. Her knees were shot. But she had made my Uncle Dave spend his whole afternoon clearing out the dusty guest room just for us. And my mother was standing here saying she forgot to turn off the stove. Last month, Rick—I had stopped calling him Dad a long time ago—threw her down a flight of stairs. Her elbow had been swollen to the size of a grapefruit for a week. When I was rubbing arnica cream into the bruised skin, she had forced a smile and told me she just tripped over her own two feet. I was seventeen. Not seven. “Are you coming or not?” I asked her. My mother looked down at the crumpled ticket, then back up at me. Her lips parted, pressing together again before she spoke. “Heather, honey, maybe… maybe we should just go tomorrow?” I laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. It was just a rush of air forced out of a chest so tight I felt like my ribs were cracking. “Joanne, you do this every single time.” I used her first name. She froze. For the first time in seventeen years, I didn’t call her Mom. “The first time you took me away, we made it three blocks before you said you couldn’t stand wasting half a rotten watermelon in the fridge. Did you really think I bought that?” “The second time, you were literally sitting on the bus. You said the wet clothes were sitting in the washing machine. I moved them to the dryer for you, did you know that? I did it before we walked out the door. You didn’t even listen to me.” “And the third time, right now. The stove? I stood in the kitchen and watched you turn the dials to off before we walked out.” A flush of red crept up her neck. It wasn’t the blush of a modest woman; it was the hot, humiliating flush of being entirely seen through. She stopped talking. The paper ticket was practically disintegrating in her sweaty grip. Over the intercom, a garbled voice announced the final boarding for the bus heading downstate to Oakhaven. Nana’s town. I gripped the plastic handle of my rolling suitcase and gave her one last look. “If you’re not going, I am.” As I turned my back on her, I heard her voice crack behind me. “Heather! Heather, wait for me!” I didn’t stop. Because I knew, deep in my bones, that even if I stopped, she would never actually step foot on that bus. Three steps. Five steps. Ten steps. Just as I suspected, I didn’t hear her footsteps following me. When I finally glanced back, she was standing frozen on the concrete, the evening sun casting a long, hollow shadow behind her. She looked impossibly fragile, her shoulders caved in, still clutching that ruined ticket. For a split second, my heart genuinely ached for her. But when the ache passed, I was left with a clarity sharper than glass. It wasn’t that she couldn’t leave. It was that she didn’t want to. I got on the bus alone, making my way to the very back row and pressing myself against the window. As the bus rumbled to life, I sent a text to Nana. It’s just me coming. She replied instantly. Where’s your mother? I turned my phone off. The city skyline blurred into suburbs, the suburbs melting into vast stretches of dark, empty fields. I rested my forehead against the cool glass and thought about the first time I ever saw a bruise on my mother’s face. I was eight. She told me she walked into a doorframe. I believed her for nine years. Until last winter, when I walked into the hallway and saw Rick gripping her by the hair, slamming her skull against the drywall. Nine years. She had lied to me for nine years. And it took three failed escapes for me to finally understand that she didn’t want to be saved. 2 The bus ride took two and a half hours. By the time we pulled into Oakhaven, the sky was pitch black. Uncle Dave was waiting for me in his beat-up Ford pickup. When he saw me step off the curb alone, the hopeful expectation on his face melted into a heavy, tired pity. “She didn’t come again?” “Yeah.” He didn’t push it. He just grabbed my suitcase, tossed it into the truck bed, and we started the drive out to the county line. There were no streetlights out here, just the yellow sweep of the truck’s headlights cutting through the dark. The wind whipping through the cracked window was biting and cold. “Your Nana made a chicken pot pie,” Dave said quietly, keeping his eyes on the road. “The kind with the biscuit crust. Your favorite when you were a kid.” “Mhm,” I murmured. When we pulled into the gravel driveway, the old woman was standing on the porch, leaning heavily on her cane. The second she saw I was alone, her eyes welled up with tears. “Heather, baby, your mama…” “Nana, I’m starving.” I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have this conversation tonight. Nana quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and hobbled into the kitchen to pull the pie from the oven. The steaming food was set on the worn wooden table. I kept my head down, eating mechanically, while Nana sat across from me, just watching. “Heather, your mother… she’s always been like this.” I took another bite. I didn’t say a word. “When your grandpa was alive, he had a temper on him too. He’d throw plates. Smash things. Sometimes, he used his hands. And back then, I…” Her voice trailed off, swallowed by the quiet ticking of the kitchen clock. I looked up at her. The harsh overhead light threw the deep lines of her face into sharp relief. “I never left either,” she whispered. I put my fork down. The metallic clink was loud in the silent room. “So what are you saying, Nana? It’s genetic?” “It’s not genetics.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s a habit. Your mother grew up watching me swallow my pride and take it. She learned that enduring it was just what you did. It’s not that she doesn’t want to leave. It’s that she can’t comprehend where she would even go.” “She could come here.” “Here?” Nana let out a dry, bitter laugh. “What’s here? A crumbling house on an acre of dirt. Your uncle Dave works at the lumber yard making barely enough to keep the lights on for his own kids. We scrape by.” I fell silent. “Your mother… she always thought leaving just meant becoming someone else’s burden. She’d rather suffer it herself.” “What about me?” My voice cracked like a whip in the quiet kitchen. “She suffers it, but what about me? Did she ever stop to think about me?” Nana opened her mouth, but nothing came out. “Since I was eight years old, I’ve watched the bruises on her face turn black and purple, getting worse every single year. I put the ice packs on her. I helped her lie to the school guidance counselor. I swept up the shattered dinner plates after Rick lost his mind.” “I said, Mom, let’s go. And she said, Okay, let’s go.” “And then what? Three times. Three times she abandoned me and ran right back to him.” “Every time she said we were leaving, I felt like I could finally breathe. I folded all my clothes perfectly. I packed my textbooks. I took every dollar I’d saved from my weekend job and shoved it in my pockets.” “And every single time, she left me standing there.” By the time I finished, my voice was shaking violently. But I didn’t cry. I was way past the age where crying fixed anything. Nana sat in silence for a very long time. “Heather, you just stay here for a few days. Let me try calling her again. Maybe I can talk some sense into her.” “Don’t bother.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “You can’t talk her out of it. She likes how it feels.” “Likes how what feels?” “The sacrifice. She likes feeling like she’s throwing herself on the sword for our family. She likes being the tragic victim who takes all the hits so she can sit around waiting for everyone to feel sorry for her.” Nana didn’t have a response to that. I walked down the hall to the guest room she had prepared and shut the door behind me. The bed was made with freshly washed sheets that smelled like laundry detergent and sunshine. My phone buzzed against my thigh. A text from my mother. Heather, I’m back home. Your dad didn’t even drink tonight, he’s being so good. Be safe at Nana’s. I stared at the glowing letters in the dark for a long time. And then, I turned the screen off without replying a single word. 3 On my third day at Nana’s, my mother finally called me. “Heather, come home. Your dad promised he’s never going to lay a hand on me again.” It was the exact same script. Every single time. “He said that last time,” I replied, my voice flat. “This time is different. He wrote it down. A whole letter of apology.” “He wrote one last year too. He even signed it.” The line went dead silent for a few seconds. “Heather, if you don’t come back, your dad said…” Her voice dropped to a frantic, hushed whisper. “Said what?” “He said he’s going to go down to your high school and make a scene.” My breath hitched. Rick always knew exactly how to play my mother. He’d beat her bloody, then hand her a bouquet of flowers. But with me, he used a different currency: terror. He knew I was a senior. He knew I was in the top ten percent of my class, applying to colleges. And he knew that if he showed up drunk and screaming in the middle of the school day, I would never be able to look my classmates in the eye again. “Let him come.” I didn’t even know I was going to say it until the words were out of my mouth. “I’m not scared of him.” My mother panicked. “Heather, please, stop being so stubborn! Just come home, I’m begging you.” “You’re begging me?” My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. “I am the last person you should be begging. You should be begging the police. You should be at the courthouse. You should be begging the people whose actual job it is to save you.” “What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m seventeen. You want me to come home and act as your human shield?” “Heather—” “Don’t. If you want to stay in that house, then stay. But don’t you dare drag me down to drown with you.” I hung up. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone. I turned around to find Nana standing in the doorway. She was leaning against the frame, a paring knife in one hand and a half-peeled apple in the other. “That was your mother?” “Yeah.” “That bastard feeding her sweet talk again?” “He said he’s going to show up at my school and ruin my life.” The knife in Nana’s hand stopped moving. The blood drained from her face, replaced by a fierce, terrifying anger. “He wouldn’t dare.” “Of course he would,” I said hollowly. “Is there a line he hasn’t crossed?” Nana set the apple down on the dresser. She turned around and marched into the hallway. A moment later, I heard her shouting into the landline. “Listen to me, Rick. If you so much as step foot near Heather’s school, I swear to God I will drag my dying bones to the police station and have you locked in a cage!” I could faintly hear Rick’s voice barking back through the receiver, slurred and muffled, but I caught the gist: Mind your own damn business, you old bitch. Nana’s lips were trembling with sheer rage. Uncle Dave came rushing in from the porch, wiping grease off his hands, and snatched the receiver from her. “Rick. You listen to me. If you touch my sister or my niece again, I will put you in the ground myself.” Click. The line went dead. Dave’s face was a violent shade of crimson. “Mom, we can’t just let this keep happening.” Nana collapsed into the armchair, burying her face in her hands, completely silent. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, looking out the window at the dilapidated little backyard. There was a stack of chopped firewood against the fence, clothes flapping in the breeze on a rusted line. This was the furthest I could run. Two and a half hours away. A distance my mother couldn’t even manage to cross. The next morning at sunrise, Uncle Dave drove me back into town. “You sure you wanna go back, kid?” “I’m not going back to that apartment,” I said. “I’m going to the school.” “The school? Classes don’t start for another week.” “I need to talk to my homeroom teacher.” Dave shot me a look, but he didn’t argue. The bus station in town looked exactly the same as it had yesterday. Run-down and miserable. I bought a one-way ticket back to the city. Right before I stepped onto the bus, I sent my mother a text. I’m going back to school. I’m not coming home. She replied instantly. Okay. Just one word. No punctuation. No emojis. I didn’t know if she was relieved that she didn’t have to protect me, or disappointed that she’d lost her buffer. It was probably both. 4 It was 2:00 PM when I dragged my suitcase onto the campus. The security guard at the front gate knew me from the honor roll assemblies. He buzzed me in. “Heather? What are you doing here so early? The dorms aren’t even open yet.” “I need to see Mrs. Gallagher.” Mrs. Gallagher, my AP English teacher and homeroom advisor, lived in the faculty apartments right across the street. When I knocked on her door, she answered with a red pen in her hand, looking utterly baffled. “Heather? Honey, what’s wrong?” I stood on her welcome mat, suddenly entirely unsure of how to form the words. What was I supposed to say? Hey, my mom is a battered wife. I ran away from home. And my abusive father is threatening to terrorize the campus. Every single variation of the truth tasted like ash and humiliation. But I had burned all my bridges. I was standing at the edge of the cliff. “Mrs. Gallagher, I need to tell you something.” She ushered me inside immediately and poured me a glass of water. I sat down at her small dining table and pulled my phone from my pocket. I opened the hidden album in my camera roll. A close-up of the horrific, mottled purple bruising on my mother’s elbow. A shattered ceramic vase strewn across the living room rug. A fist-sized crater punched straight through the hallway drywall. And then, the worst one. The one of my mother’s face. I took it last winter, after Rick came home drunk from a sports bar and decided his dinner was too cold. One backhand had sent her flying. Her head clipped the sharp corner of the glass coffee table. Her temple had split open, bleeding freely. I had been hiding in the dark of my bedroom, capturing the photo through the crack in the door hinges. Mrs. Gallagher flipped through the photos. With every swipe, the color drained from her face until she looked physically ill. “Is… is this your mother?” “Yes.” “How long?” “At least nine years. Probably longer.” “Has she ever called the police?” “No.” “Why on earth not?” I let the silence hang in the air for a moment. “Because she doesn’t want to.” Mrs. Gallagher looked at me, her eyes brimming with a total, absolute lack of comprehension. I couldn’t blame her. How do you explain the psychology of that? A woman beaten like a dog for a decade, who will violently defend the man holding the leash. Who would believe it if they didn’t live it? “Mrs. Gallagher, I’m not here to ask you to help my mom.” She blinked, startled. “Then why are you…” “I need you to help me.” I told her exactly what Rick had threatened to do. The shock on her face hardened instantly into cold, righteous fury. “He thinks he can come onto this campus? I’ll have the squad cars waiting for him before he even steps out of his vehicle.” “It’s not him coming here that scares me, Mrs. Gallagher. It’s…” I swallowed hard. “What is it?” “I’m terrified that my mom will use his threats as an excuse to force me to go back.” Mrs. Gallagher went very quiet. She was in her late forties. Divorced. Raising a teenage daughter entirely on her own. I think she understood the dark, unspoken subtext of what I couldn’t say out loud. “Heather, you’re going to stay in the dorms. I’ll go speak with administration right now and get your room unlocked early.” “Thank you, Mrs. Gallagher.” “And those photos on your phone? Text every single one of them to me right now.” “Why?” “So I have a paper trail. If that man shows his face anywhere near these gates, I am handing my phone straight to the precinct captain.” I AirDropped the files to her. That night, I slept in a desolate, echoing dormitory. A room meant for two girls, entirely empty except for me. It was so quiet I could hear the blood pumping through the veins in my ears. My phone vibrated on the mattress. It wasn’t my mother. It was Rick. Heather, get your ass home right now. I didn’t answer. He called seven times in a row. On the eighth ring, I picked up. “If you call this number one more time, I’m dialing 911.” The line went dead quiet for two seconds. Then, a low, cruel chuckle crackled through the speaker. “Call the cops? Go ahead. Let’s see who looks like the white trash family on the evening news.” “You think I’m the one who should be embarrassed?” “You think you’re pretty tough, huh, little girl? You keep pushing, and I swear to God I will beat your mother so bad you won’t even recognize her face.” The blood rushed to my head so fast I felt dizzy. My palms were slick with cold sweat. But when I spoke, my voice was dead calm. “You touch her, I call the cops. Every time you lay a finger on her, I make a report. I have the photos. I have audio recordings. I have a video of you taking a baseball bat to the television. You want to test me? Let’s see whose life gets ruined first.” Silence on the other end. Heavy, breathing silence. Then he muttered a vile string of curses and slammed the phone down. I dropped my phone onto the thin mattress. My hands were shaking violently. My heart was beating out of my chest. But I knew, sitting there in the dark… this was only the beginning.

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In my past life, my piano teacher clawed her way into our family by playing the part of the doting caregiver, eventually becoming my stepmother. I never saw it coming. Once she married my father and fell pregnant, her true colors bled through. To ensure her unborn child would be the sole heir to the Whitman fortune, she orchestrated a nightmare. She conspired with kidnappers to have me poisoned, and then she watched as they dumped my body in the wilderness like trash. But then, I opened my eyes. I’ve been reborn. This time, I won’t be the stepping stone she uses to reach the top. I’m going to make her wish she had stayed in the gutter where she belongs. … My mother died bringing me into this world, but my father, Arthur, never entertained the idea of remarrying. It wasn’t out of some grand, eternal devotion. Theirs had been a strategic merger—a business arrangement between two powerful dynasties. There was no passion, and certainly no reason for him to remain a monk in her memory. He simply felt that since he already had an heir—me—a wife was an unnecessary complication. At my christening, in front of the crème de la crème of Manhattan high society, my father declared me the sole successor to the Whitman empire. He doted on me, giving me the world on a silver platter; my grandmother, the formidable Diana Whitman, treated me like the crown jewel of the family. But even a child who has everything still craves a mother’s touch. When I was five, they hired a piano teacher named Lydia. She was soft-spoken, attentive, and always seemed to know exactly when I needed a hug or a kind word. To my five-year-old self, she felt like the warmth I’d been missing. I didn’t realize it was a performance. She was using me as a Trojan horse to get to my father, desperate to trade her sheet music for the title of Mrs. Whitman. She eventually escalated her game, drugging my father’s drink one night and orchestrating a “scandalous” encounter. She thought a night in his bed would force his hand. She was wrong. My father was a man of the world. He’d seen every trick, every social climber, and every honey trap in the book. He saw through Lydia’s clumsy power play immediately. He didn’t even get angry; he just intended to write her a severance check and show her the door. But Lydia wasn’t going to let the golden goose go that easily. She came to me, weeping, telling me she was being forced to leave. By then, she had woven herself into the fabric of my daily life. I was addicted to her “love.” I refused to let her go. She seized the moment, whispering in my ear that if I begged my father to marry her, she could stay with me forever. My five-year-old brain, fueled by a desperate need for a mother, fell for it. I staged a hunger strike, screaming that I wanted her to be my new mom. My father had no desire to marry her, but he couldn’t stand to see me suffer. He relented. Lydia got her ring, though it was a quiet, private affair with no public announcement. For ten years, she played the part of the perfect wife. She was diligent, kind, and unfailingly “loving.” I truly looked at her as my mother. Then, she got pregnant. To clear the path for her own child, she “accidentally” fed me something laced with almonds. My anaphylactic shock was violent. While I was gasping for air, she coordinated with outsiders to kidnap me, intending to leave my corpse in the woods. As they threw me into the trunk of a car, I drifted back into a moment of agonizing clarity. I heard her hushed voice, cold and sharp, conspiring with the men. That was the moment the mask fell. But it was too late. Without an EpiPen, I was a dead girl walking. Even knowing my father would eventually avenge me, the unfairness of it burned. Fortunately, the universe decided to give me a second chance. Just before the darkness took me, a blinding white light swallowed the world. I woke to a voice—deep, cold, and achingly familiar. I opened my eyes to find myself curled in my father’s lap. He was idly playing with my small, chubby hand, his gaze icy as he looked down at Lydia, who was kneeling on the floor, trembling. “I don’t know what kind of spell you’ve cast on Celine to make her insist on having you as a mother,” my father said, his voice dripping with boredom. “But since my daughter has asked, I will grant her wish.” Lydia’s face was a mask of flustered humility. “Mr. Whitman, you’re joking. I truly love Celine, and I… I have feelings for you, too. It’s not a spell; it’s genuine.” My father’s patience snapped. “I don’t care about your ‘genuine’ feelings. If you want to be Mrs. Whitman so badly, fine. But remember this: your only currency in this house is Celine. You say you love her? Then you will spend every waking breath pleasing her.” “If you fail,” he added, his voice dropping an octave, “I will personally drop you back into the dirt you crawled out of.” Lydia went pale and whispered her assent. I chose that moment to rub my eyes and let out a soft, sleepy mumble. “Daddy?” The second he saw I was awake, the predatory hardness in his eyes vanished. He turned into the doting father I knew. “I’m here, sweetie. You’re awake. Are you hungry?” I nodded slowly. He patted my back, stood up, and began carrying me toward the dining room. Lydia scrambled to her feet, trying to follow. “Celine, are you hungry? Do you want me to feed you, sweetie?” she called out, her voice pitching up in that fake, sugary tone. Before she could take three steps, Barnaby, the butler, stepped in her path. I didn’t look at her. I just buried my face in my father’s shoulder, clinging to him. He paused, glancing back at the butler with a silent, sharp look. Barnaby understood immediately. He signaled to the nearby security staff. They stepped forward, clamped their hands over Lydia’s mouth, and dragged her toward the foyer. Lydia’s eyes went wide with terror, her muffled screams echoing as she struggled against them. It was useless. Our staff were professionals—they knew exactly how to handle a nuisance. Soon, the faint, rhythmic sound of slaps and Lydia’s stifled cries drifted through the hall. Barnaby’s voice followed, cold and instructional. “You common little thing,” he hissed. “You think because you crawled into a bed you can speak without permission? Today, we’re going to teach you the rules of this house. Again. Harder!” My father had agreed to let her stay, but she was a “Mrs. Whitman” in name only. In reality, she was a glorified, live-in nanny. My father knew she had manipulated me, and he was going to make her pay for that audacity while using the punishment to establish my absolute authority over her. In my last life, Lydia had also been “disciplined” by the staff early on. That brutality had kept her in line for a decade—until her pregnancy gave her the delusion of leverage. I sat in my high chair, slowly sipping my organic oatmeal while my father cut up fresh fruit for me. I looked up at him and gave him a bright, innocent smile. “Thank you, Daddy!” He beamed, ruffling my hair. Lydia, I thought, watching the door. Let’s see if you can survive this life without me protecting you. The next morning, I woke up in my sprawling bedroom—a sanctuary of blush silks, designer plushies, and custom-built dollhouses. I stood in front of the full-length mirror. The girl looking back was porcelain-perfect, but her eyes held a depth of cold calculation that no five-year-old should possess. Lydia wanted the life of a socialite. I was going to let her see the gold, let her smell the luxury, but I would make sure she could never truly touch it. She would be a ghost in a silk cage. Voices drifted up from downstairs. “Where is she?” It was Grandmother. Diana was here. “She’s still sleeping, ma’am,” Barnaby replied respectfully. “Let her sleep. Children need their rest. Now, bring that little social climber to me. I want to see exactly what kind of trash my son has let into this house.” To my grandmother, I was the perfect angel—the “Good Whitman.” I was the child who always asked for her advice, who never threw tantrums in public, and who was the envy of every other matriarch in the Hamptons. My grandmother lived for that prestige. My mother’s death had been a blow to her, especially since the Whitman-Price prenuptial agreement stated there would be only one heir, regardless of gender. My grandmother might have preferred a grandson, but since I was her only link to the future and brought her nothing but social credit, she adored me. Lydia, however, was about to become her favorite punching bag. I crept to the top of the stairs to watch. Lydia was standing in the center of the marble foyer, wearing a simple white sundress. Her face was haggard, her eyes bloodshot, and her cheeks were still swollen from the “lesson” she’d received the day before. Grandmother sat on the Louis XIV sofa, took a slow sip of her Earl Grey, and set the porcelain cup down with a deliberate clink. Only then did she look up. “So, you’re the girl? Lydia?” Grandmother’s voice was like a razor. “You’ve got that desperate, hungry look. You thought you could fly high, didn’t you? But you didn’t check if you had the wings for it.” She stood up and walked over to Lydia, plucking at the hem of her white dress. She spotted the designer tag and scoffed. “Wearing labels you couldn’t afford in three lifetimes. You must be feeling very smug right now, thinking you’ve made it.” Lydia shook her head frantically, eyes glued to the floor. “Celine is a Whitman,” Grandmother continued, her voice dropping. “To use a child’s innocence to secure your position… you have more nerve than I gave you credit for. You’ll stay in this house, but you won’t be enjoying any of its comforts. You will be paying for them in sweat.” She turned back to the sofa. “Martha, come in.” A sturdy, middle-aged woman walked in. Martha had been my grandmother’s personal maid for thirty years. She was as loyal as a wolf and twice as sharp. “Lydia, you said you love Celine, right? You wanted to be her ‘mother’? Fine. From now on, you are responsible for her every need. Martha will be your shadow, teaching you how to serve properly. If you so much as look at my granddaughter the wrong way, you’re out.” Lydia looked up, her bruised face twisted in shock. “But… there are housekeepers. Why do I have to do it? I’m Arthur’s wife now. We’ve signed the papers.” Grandmother let out a short, bark-like laugh. “Wife? You’re a legal technicality, darling. You aren’t a member of this family. You’re a domestic worker with a ring. If you want to stay, you serve. If not, I’ll throw you out and let Celine cry for a few days. She’ll forget you by next Christmas.” Lydia collapsed inward, her spirit breaking. She whispered her agreement. Grandmother then picked up a phone from the side table—it was Lydia’s. She scrolled through a social media page where Lydia had already begun posting coy, subtle hints about her “new life in luxury.” “Is this yours?” Grandmother asked, her brow furrowing. “This house is not a backdrop for your vanity. If you show this much lack of discretion again, I’ll have Barnaby remind you of the rules. I’m sure he’d love to leave a few more marks on that pretty face.” Lydia flinched, backing away and nodding frantically. Grandmother huffed and turned toward the stairs. I scrambled back to my room and dove under the covers, pretending to be fast asleep. Downstairs, the silence was broken only by Lydia’s quiet, pathetic sobbing.

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The new estate manager claimed he was a “Narrative Hijacker.” To max out Madeline’s love meter and steal the heroine’s affection, he saved her life eight times. And eight times, he died right in front of her. On his ninth resurrection, the manager collapsed at Madeline’s feet, his voice raw and desperate. “Please, ma’am. Just love me this once. If I fail again, the System will erase me completely.” Madeline kicked him out without a second of hesitation. She threw herself into my arms, her eyes wide and earnest. “Cole, I swear to you,” she whispered against my chest. “You are the only man I will ever love in this lifetime. It’s just you and me.” Then, the earthquake hit. It was a sudden, localized anomaly. I was buried under the rubble of our collapsing sunroom. Madeline fell to her knees, digging through the jagged concrete until her fingers were shredded and bloody. Her screams echoed through the dust. “If Cole dies, I don’t want to live!” Everyone who witnessed it wept. They thought her love for me was etched into her very bones. But when I was finally pulled from the wreckage, barely clinging to life, I accidentally overheard Madeline talking to the manager in the shadows of the hospital corridor. “Maddie, you and Cole are the protagonists of a strict, monogamous romance algorithm,” he said. “The narrative rules dictate you can only love him. Every time you sleep with another man, the universe registers a glitch. It retaliates with catastrophic accidents.” “I know,” Madeline replied, her voice eerily calm. “But I used the System to transfer the physical punishment entirely onto him. Tell me… seeing him crushed like that, did it make your heart ache for me?” His answer was the wet, desperate sound of lips crashing together. I listened to the sickening rhythm of their bodies pressing against the wall. “You died eight times to save me,” Madeline murmured, her voice laced with a dark, intoxicating sweetness. “He’s just absorbing the narrative punishment for a year. You said it yourself—he’s the male lead. The plot won’t let him die. When your mission ends in a year, I’ll go right back to being the Madeline who only loves Cole.” The truth was a cold knife to the gut. She had already given him her heart. I felt the ground tremble beneath me once more. Another anomaly. I looked up at the sterile ceiling, staring into the invisible void of the narrative matrix. Good, I thought. I can finally go home. 1 The Price of Betrayal When the room began to shake violently again, I knew instantly. Madeline was in another man’s bed. The muffled sounds of heavy breathing and moans drifted through the thin hospital walls, drilling directly into my skull. My head throbbed. The next second, the heavy steel frame of my hospital bed snapped. The mattress buckled. My half-healed wounds tore open in a spectacular rip of agony, hot blood instantly soaking the back of my gown. The IV needle violently jerked out of my vein, leaving a massive, angry purple welt on my hand. The deafening crash brought the nurses running. They found me crumpled on the linoleum, pale and gasping for air. Panic set in as they scrambled to lift me. “What the hell happened? How did the bed just collapse?” “I checked this room top to bottom before he was admitted! This bed is brand new. There is zero mechanical reason for this!” “Oh my god, if Madeline finds out, we are all getting fired. You know how protective she is of her husband.” The youngest nurse was on the verge of tears. I looked at her terrified face and opened my mouth to offer a hollow reassurance. But before I could speak, the heavy metal IV pole tipped over, the steel base slamming directly into my forehead. The world went black. When I blinked my eyes open again, Madeline was sitting at my bedside. Her back was to me. Both of her thumbs were flying across her phone screen, and even from this angle, I could see the soft, unmistakable curve of a smile on her lips. “Water…” I rasped, my throat feeling like sandpaper. Madeline jumped. She hastily shoved her phone into her purse and poured a glass of steaming hot water from the thermos. Then, she immediately called the doctors in to check my vitals. As I looked at the unfamiliar faces of the medical staff, she sighed, brushing a hand through her hair. “The last shift was incredibly negligent. I can’t believe they let you get hurt. I’ve already had the hospital administration terminate all of them.” I managed a weak, bitter smile. My eyes drifted to the pristine white collar of her blouse. Just above the fabric, blooming against the delicate skin of her neck, were fresh, unmistakable red marks. She was completely oblivious to them. “Your neck…” I started to say. Before the words fully left my mouth, a ringtone shattered the tension. Madeline glanced at the caller ID and quickly hit decline. A second later, a text chimed. She opened it, her bright eyes widening for a fraction of a second before a deep, undeniable flush crept up her cheeks. She pocketed the phone and leaned over to tuck the blankets around my chest. “There’s an emergency at the company,” she said smoothly. “I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.” “Can’t you handle it from the hospital?” I asked quietly. She paused. “It’s highly time-sensitive. Don’t worry, Cole. Tomorrow, I’ll clear my entire schedule and stay with you all day.” She turned to leave. As she did, her elbow caught the edge of the tray table. The glass of scalding hot water she had poured for me tipped over, splashing directly onto my bruised, swollen hand where the IV had been ripped out. The skin instantly turned a furious, blistering red. My entire body violently spasmed from the pain. “Maddie. It burns. God, it hurts.” She stopped in the doorway. “I’ll go get the doctor.” She didn’t come back with them. I knew she wouldn’t. I watched as the new doctor frantically applied burn ointment and wrapped my hand. Once he thoroughly inspected the room to ensure nothing else could possibly malfunction, he let out a long sigh of relief. The moment the breath left his lungs, the fluorescent light fixture above my bed exploded. Sparks showered down. The electrical surge blew the outlet next to the bedside table, causing the heavy glass water boiler to shatter. Boiling water and jagged shards of glass rained down onto my broken body. 2 The Truth in the Wounds I was a mess of blood and ruin. Crimson soaked deep into the white hospital sheets. The boiling water had fused the fabric to my scalded skin. When they tried to move me, a massive layer of tissue peeled away with the blanket. The attending physician frantically dialed Madeline’s number to report the critical complication. When she answered, she only asked one question: “Is it life-threatening?” The doctor looked at my mangled body, his face pale. “No, not life-threatening, but…” Madeline cut him off, her tone sharp and impatient. “I pay your hospital a premium to fix problems. If you can handle it, don’t interrupt me.” “But—” “If you let my husband suffer permanent damage, you can all pack your bags. Do your jobs.” The line went dead. I drifted in and out of consciousness, listening to the dial tone echo in the room. I closed my eyes, a mocking laugh dying in my throat. The nurses whispered above me, their voices filled with confusion. “I thought she was obsessed with him? A year ago, he got a tiny paper cut and she practically shut down the boardroom.” “I know. Remember when he burned his finger on the stove? She took a red-eye flight back from Europe just to be the one to change his Band-Aid. Why is she…” A younger nurse leaned in, her voice dropping to a hush. “When she answered the phone just now… I swear I heard another man’s voice in the background.” No one said another word, but the heavy silence confirmed what they were all thinking. Dozens of tiny glass shards were embedded deep into my boiled, blistered flesh. Because of my erratic vitals, they couldn’t risk putting me under general anesthesia. The doctor had to use surgical tweezers to extract the glass, piece by agonizing piece. I was entirely, brutally awake. I felt every jagged edge dragging against my raw nerves as the glass pulled free from my muscle. I clamped my jaw shut, trembling violently as cold sweat poured from my face. The white pillow beneath my head was thoroughly soaked. I couldn’t tell if it was sweat, or tears. When the grueling procedure finally ended, the doctor wiped his brow and gestured for the nurses to prep a new room. “Don’t bother,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. “I’m going home.” 3 The Breaking Point I called Madeline three times. It went straight to voicemail. I arranged for private medical transport to take me back to our house. Miraculously, the narrative algorithm spared me any accidents on the drive. When I finally wheeled myself through the front door, the scene was exactly what I expected. Clothes strewn across the hardwood floor. Unidentifiable wet spots on the rug. The heavy, unmistakable scent of musk, sweat, and sex hung thick in the air, suffocating the beautiful home we had built together. From the master bathroom, the slick sounds of skin slapping against skin sent a fresh spike of agony through my skull. “Maddie, your love meter for me is already at ninety percent,” a male voice purred. “That means Cole’s narrative punishment is going to double. Don’t you want to swing by the hospital and check on him?” “The male lead can’t die,” came Madeline’s breathless reply, punctuated by soft moans. “But physical pain can break a man’s mind.” “He’s just taking a few cuts and bruises. You died eight times for me, Gavin. You bled out right in front of my eyes. Compared to the trauma you went through, his little injuries are nothing.” “Then you better make it up to me,” Gavin groaned. “Push that meter to a hundred.” “I will. For this entire year, you are the only man I touch.” The second the promise left her lips, the massive, twenty-pound crystal chandelier suspended above the living room ceiling gave a violent groan. The reinforced chain snapped. Trapped in my wheelchair, I had nowhere to run. I could only watch the mountain of glass and brass plummet directly toward me. The impact was deafening. I heard my own bones splintering. The wheelchair collapsed under the weight, sending me crashing to the floor in a grotesque, unnatural angle. Countless shards of crystal pierced my skin, embedding themselves into every inch of my body. The pain was so absolute, so blinding, I couldn’t even push the scream out of my lungs. The thunderous crash startled the two in the bathroom. Madeline burst into the living room, clutching a towel to her chest. She froze. She saw the devastation. She saw me pinned beneath the ruined chandelier, a pool of dark red expanding rapidly across our imported rug. Her pupils dilated in sheer horror. I reached a trembling, blood-soaked hand toward her. “Maddie… help me.” But before she could move, a loud thud came from the bathroom. Madeline didn’t hesitate. She ripped her eyes away from my mangled body, turned her back, and sprinted toward the bathroom. I watched her retreating silhouette. A moment later, Gavin emerged, leaning heavily on her shoulder. He was completely naked, wearing a flawlessly executed expression of distress, while Madeline looked at him with frantic, obsessive concern. In that moment, the final piece clicked into place. Madeline didn’t love me anymore. Gavin looked over her shoulder, meeting my eyes. He shot me a wicked, triumphant smirk, and pressed his bare chest closer to my wife. The pain finally dragged me under, and the world went beautifully, mercifully dark. 4 Prelude to an Exit While I was unconscious, a mechanical voice looped endlessly in my head. [Plot trajectory deviating. Plot trajectory deviating. Commencing repairs. Commencing repairs…] I forced my eyes open. I was floating in a stark, blindingly white void. A metallic, humanoid entity—an Administrator—was frantically smashing its hands against a floating holographic keyboard, trying to patch the broken code of this universe. “I have a solution,” I told it. The Administrator paused, turning its blank face toward me. I laid out my plan. It processed the data, then gave a slow, mechanical nod. “But once the bugs are fixed,” I said firmly, “I want to be extracted. I want to go back to my original world.” Madeline didn’t know this, but I wasn’t from this universe. I had accidentally transmigrated into this romance novel years ago. Over time, living in Cole’s skin, breathing his air, and experiencing Madeline’s overwhelming affection, I had truly fallen in love with her. I embraced my role. But I never expected her to betray the very foundation of this world. Even though the narrative was hard-coded to make her strictly monogamous, she couldn’t resist the allure of a new player dropping into her life. She compromised her soul. She weaponized the universe to torture me. I saw reality for what it was. I wasn’t going to cling to the rotting scraps of her affection, begging for her to turn back. With the deal struck, I woke up. This time, Madeline wasn’t by my bed. Instead, the living room was alive with conversation. “The doctor said the impact from the chandelier practically shattered his spine,” Gavin was saying. “He’s likely going to be paralyzed, Maddie. Are you really going to spend the rest of your life tied to a cripple?” “Then you stay,” Madeline replied softly. “If he’s paralyzed, he can’t interfere with us anymore.” “Maddie…” “Don’t leave me, Gavin. A year isn’t enough. I want you by my side forever.” Her confession hit me like a phantom limb. A dull, aching echo of something that used to be whole. I remembered the early days of our marriage. We were curled up on the sofa, her head resting on my chest as she aimlessly scrolled on her phone. I had kissed the top of her head and asked, “Hey, what if I just vanished one day? Would you come looking for me?” She had dropped her phone instantly, her arms locking around my neck in a panicked grip. “Don’t ever say things like that. I can’t even process the thought of you gone. I would lose my mind, Cole.” She had looked up at me, her eyes shining. “We are going to be together forever. One lifetime isn’t enough. I’m going to find you in the next one, too.” Oh, Maddie. The version of you in this lifetime doesn’t love me anymore. It was time for me to go. 5 The Wedding Trap In the days that followed, they stopped hiding. Perhaps because I was entirely bedridden, functioning as little more than a breathing corpse, Madeline and Gavin threw caution to the wind. They practically lived on top of each other, constantly tangled together like teenagers in the throes of first love. And for me, the universe’s wrath became a daily occurrence. If a wardrobe wasn’t collapsing on me, a freak electrical fire was breaking out in my room. A gas leak nearly suffocated me. Even when I was simply wheeled onto the patio to feel the sun, a stray hunting knife from the neighbor’s yard inexplicably launched over the fence and embedded itself in my chest. A month blurred by. I was wrapped in thick, blood-stained gauze from head to toe. Not a single hospital in the city would admit me. The whispers said I was cursed, a magnet for death, and they were terrified I would die on their watch and ruin their statistics. I didn’t care about the rumors. I was just waiting. Counting the seconds until my extraction. Until Gavin came into my room alone. He leaned over the bed, tracing a heavy gold band on his middle finger. His eyes gleamed with malice. “You know, Cole, Madeline’s love meter for me has hit ninety-nine percent. For that final one percent, she told me she wants to give me a wedding. She wants to be my wife.” He chuckled, a dark, venomous sound. “You really failed, didn’t you? Even with the Author’s algorithm hard-coding her to be obsessed with you, she’s willing to break reality just to walk down the aisle for me. To make sure I leave with no regrets.” I stared up at him from my fortress of bandages. My voice was raspy, hollow. “Gavin… is your mission really just about making her love you?” His smug expression faltered for a fraction of a second. Then, he leaned in so close I could smell the mint on his breath. “Does it matter? Once her love meter hits one hundred, I get everything I came for.” “Then I wish you a beautiful marriage,” I whispered. “May you two be deeply, madly in love for the rest of your lives. Forever tied together. Never to be parted.” My blessing wiped the smile off his face. He grabbed my throat, his grip tight enough to cut off my oxygen. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who wants to be stuck in this simulated hellscape tied down to one woman for a whole lifetime? Only a pathetic idiot like you actually believes a woman’s promises mean forever.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “411836”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

For fifteen years, I believed my wife was infertile. Then, she got pregnant. When I dug into the impossible math of it, the truth unspooled like a nightmare: she had quietly rekindled a romance with her high school boyfriend. Even worse? My mother-in-law had moved out of our house years ago specifically to live with him, facilitating the affair under the guise of “giving us space.” When the secret finally broke open, the screaming match that followed nearly tore the roof off our house. Yet, somehow, the people in our living room were looking at me like I was the monster. “Nate, you’ve been married a long time. There’s a chance the baby is yours,” one of her friends reasoned, her voice dripping with condescension. “And even if it’s not, Caroline is finally getting the chance to be a mother. You can’t just strip away a woman’s right to motherhood. Be reasonable.” I looked across the room at Caroline. At forty, she was still effortlessly striking, her posture defensive but defiant. I felt a hollow, scraping despair in my chest. “You can have the baby,” I said, my voice eerily calm, offering the final, bleeding piece of my dignity. “If it’s mine, it stays. If it’s not, the baby goes. And he goes with it.” It was the ultimate concession. Caroline didn’t scream. She simply picked up her purse and walked toward the front door. For a fractured second, I thought she had accepted my terms. Then, her hand paused on the doorknob. She didn’t look back. “Cameron has been living in the shadows for years,” she said softly. “I am absolutely not sending him away. If you can’t accept that, then from now on, he and I will just have to build a home somewhere else.” A dull, rhythmic ache pulsed behind my ribs. I lowered my eyes. The last flickering ember of our marriage quietly suffocated. “Then let’s get a divorce,” I said. 1 My words dropped the room’s temperature to absolute zero. Caroline let go of the doorknob as if it had burned her, spinning around to stare at me in sheer disbelief. “Nathaniel… stop throwing a tantrum. Even if you’re trying to scare me, it’s not going to work. I am not kicking Cameron out.” Her brows knitted together, twisting her beautiful face into a mask of pure indignation, as if I had just suggested something utterly profane. “Nate, sweetie, Caroline is right,” her aunt chimed in from the kitchen island, nursing a glass of Pinot. “You’ve been together forever. People make mistakes. Marriage is a partnership. Is there really nothing we can discuss here?” “And you really shouldn’t blame her,” a cousin added, crossing his arms. “All these years, Caroline took the bullet. She let everyone think she was the one who couldn’t have kids. But clearly, since she’s pregnant now, the issue was always you. She sacrificed fifteen years of her pride for you, Nate. Can’t you forgive her just this once?” “She just wants a baby. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.” The chorus of friends and family swelled around me. Caroline stood behind them, her chin tilted up, looking for all the world like the perfect, flawless victim. “Is that really how you see it?” I asked, my lips trembling as I looked directly at her. These people didn’t know the truth, but she did. For fifteen years, we had gone to the clinic for our annual checkups. She was always the one who picked up the physical reports. I was perfectly healthy. I had always been perfectly healthy, until I made a choice last year—a choice I made for her. Even if I were the problem, Caroline had no right to let me stand here and be crucified by her family. Especially when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was completely capable of giving her a child. “Nate, what is the point of obsessing over the past?” Caroline sighed, the sound heavy with performed exhaustion. “We aren’t children anymore.” “Why can’t you be a little more like Cameron? All these years, he never demanded anything. He never fought me. He even told me to go back to you, time and time again. In his heart, he just wanted to be near me. Is that such a crime?” She placed a protective hand over her perfectly flat stomach. “He stayed by my side in the dark, and now you want me to throw him out onto the street. I’m sorry. He is the father of the child growing inside me. I can’t be that cruel.” With that, she opened the door and walked out into the evening. The peanut gallery of relatives exchanged awkward glances before shuffling out after her, leaving me alone in the sprawling, suddenly cavernous house. I dug my fingernails into my palms. It was summer, but the house felt like a tomb. Fifteen years ago, I met Caroline on a blind date and fell stupidly, profoundly in love. She was radiant, kind, and possessed a quiet grace. I thought I had won the lottery. I couldn’t understand why a woman like her needed a setup. A year later, right before I bought the ring, she sat me down with a medical file in her hands. Tears in her eyes, she told me she couldn’t have children. She said if that was a dealbreaker, she would understand if I walked away. My parents were furious. They were traditional, insisting I couldn’t marry into a childless future. But I loved Caroline. I loved her so fiercely that I told my parents to go to hell. I told them if they didn’t accept her, I would go get a vasectomy just to prove a point. My sheer stubbornness won. We got married. For fifteen years, I thought we were the lucky ones. We built a beautiful life, just the two of us against the world. I didn’t know our happiness was a house of cards. And now that the wind had blown it down, all that was left was a sprawling, suffocating grief. The deepest betrayal, though, wasn’t even Caroline. It was her mother, Helen. A few years ago, to finally put an end to her mother’s passive-aggressive comments about grandchildren, I lied. I told Helen I had gotten a vasectomy, taking the “blame” entirely onto myself so Caroline wouldn’t have to suffer her mother’s judgment anymore. Helen had wept. She told me I was a saint, that she would treat me like her own flesh and blood forever. Yet, it was Helen who abruptly moved out of our guest house five years ago. Her excuse at the time was wanting “independence.” The truth? She had moved into an apartment across town to cook, clean, and care for her daughter’s secret lover. A sharp, stabbing pain radiated through my chest. I dragged myself out to the balcony and sat in the dark, staring at the skyline until the sun came up. Caroline didn’t come home. The next morning, my phone buzzed with a text from her. The tone was devastatingly casual. Nate, have you thought about it? Cameron never wanted to break our marriage apart. He just wants to join our family. We’ve been together for so long. I don’t want to make this hard for you, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Can’t you just try to see this from my perspective? If you agree, I’ll bring Cameron home tomorrow. I promise you, he won’t try to challenge your place as my husband. I read the paragraphs twice, my vision blurring. A bitter, broken laugh escaped my throat. 2 In her twisted reality, she wasn’t the one tearing our life apart by having an affair—I was the one being unreasonable by not letting her lover move into the guest bedroom. If I didn’t welcome Cameron with open arms, I was the bad guy. My fingers shook as I typed my reply. Caroline, what the hell do you think I am? You’re pregnant with another man’s baby. You don’t just want me to accept the kid; you want me to live under the same roof as the man you’re fucking. You want us to pass each other in the hallway so you can play house with both of us. Do you even have a conscience? I hit send, hoping to shock her into snapping out of this delusion. The “typing” bubble danced on the screen for a long time. When she finally replied, her voice note sounded almost regretful, but laced with a terrifying entitlement. “I’m sorry, Nate. But it happened. We just have to learn to accept reality. I told you before we got married that there was a boy from my past I never fully got over. Please. Do this for me. Just try to accept Cameron. I’ll give you time to adjust.” She used the softest, sweetest tone to deliver the most repulsive demand I had ever heard. It was as if I were seeing the real Caroline for the very first time. The illusion shattered completely. I put my phone down, opened my laptop, and found the number for a divorce attorney. “I need you to draft a separation agreement,” I told the lawyer over the phone, my voice dead flat. “I don’t care about the assets. I just want out.” Every second I spent breathing the air in this house felt like inhaling poison. I was willing to leave with nothing if it meant I could be free of her. Three days later, the lawyer couriered over the finalized divorce papers. Caroline still hadn’t come home. This was her classic move. The silent treatment. If I didn’t yield to her demands, she would freeze me out. I didn’t care anymore. I spent my days packing boxes, numb to the world. Seeing that her daughter’s stalling tactic wasn’t breaking me, my mother-in-law, Helen, decided to go on the offensive. My phone started pinging relentlessly with photos and videos. It was a curated gallery of Caroline and Cameron’s domestic bliss. In Helen’s twisted narrative, I was supposed to see how beautiful this was. Caroline, a woman who notoriously hated cooking and practically lived on takeout and private chefs, was wearing an apron, chopping vegetables, making soup from scratch for the man she loved. Cameron sat at the kitchen island, looking boyish and appreciative, dutifully eating everything she put in front of him. The subtext of the photos was violently clear: Caroline was smiling a genuine, glowing smile. She was willing to serve him, because she truly loved him. Helen’s texts followed like artillery fire. See this? Caroline never loved you. She didn’t want to have kids with you because she swore she would only ever bear Cameron’s child. I don’t know where you get the nerve to throw a fit. The person who isn’t loved is the real third wheel in a relationship. Caroline is doing you a massive favor by not kicking you to the curb, and you have the audacity to say you won’t tolerate Cameron? Paragraph after paragraph filled my screen. I stared at the words, feeling a dark, icy calm settle over me. I typed back, blunt and merciless. It doesn’t matter how ‘unloved’ I am, Helen. On her legal documents, my name is the one listed as her husband. No matter how much she loves him, the kid she’s carrying is a bastard who won’t even be able to get on a proper insurance policy without a massive legal headache. The moment the message delivered, Helen fired back a 60-second voice memo. It was the maximum length the app allowed. I could perfectly picture the veins popping in her neck as she screamed into her phone. I didn’t even press play. I was about to block her number when a FaceTime call popped up. I hit accept. Helen’s face filled the screen, twisted in absolute rage. “Nathaniel! I don’t care how hurt your little ego is, you do not talk about an unborn child like that! What, you want my grandchild to be branded a bastard before it’s even born? How can you be so vicious? I’m telling you right now, over my dead body!” She was fiercely, desperately protecting the child of the man her daughter was sleeping with. I swallowed the lump of ash in my throat, staring at the venomous woman on my screen. How could people change so fundamentally? This was the same woman who used to hold my hands, teary-eyed, telling me, “Nate, we owe you everything. You are my real son. Caroline doesn’t deserve you.” How much time had actually passed? She had morphed into a stranger. Caroline had morphed into a stranger. And somehow, they had convinced themselves that I was the villain. 3 The seconds ticked by like a metronome. I hung up on Helen without a word, dropped the phone onto the coffee table, and finally broke. I buried my face in my hands on the balcony, my shoulders shaking as the grief ripped its way out of my chest. When Caroline finally came home, I was still sitting there, my eyes bloodshot, staring emptily at the city lights. She walked out onto the balcony as if she had anticipated finding me like this. She knelt beside my chair and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist. The warmth of her body contrasted sharply with the chill of the evening air. I shuddered, looking down at her. She didn’t say a word. She just buried her face against my chest. It was a silent manipulation. She was saying, I’m here. Don’t do anything drastic. Years ago, when my startup nearly went bankrupt, we had held each other on this exact balcony. We were broke, living in a city that didn’t care if we existed, dealing with parents who thought I was a failure. At my absolute lowest, I had considered ending it all. I thought walking away from life would free her from the burden of my failures. Caroline had sensed it then. She had cried, holding me just like this, whispering, “Nate, do you regret marrying me? Are you trying to leave me?” Her tears had soaked through my shirt. I had held her back, pulling myself off the ledge. “Caroline, I’m sorry. I’m just so overwhelmed. I’ll never leave you. I love you. I will never divorce you, no matter what happens.” The hum of the summer cicadas had borne witness to that vow. She had been my anchor. It was that same night I had asked her, gently, “Caroline, can we go to a specialist? I know how much you want a baby. Let’s just see if there are options. If not, we can adopt.” I had wanted to give us hope. But Caroline had recoiled. She had made excuses—she didn’t want her body to change, she didn’t want to go through the trauma of IVF, she wasn’t ready. … So why? I looked at her now, her face pressed to my chest. Why is she willing to ruin her body and suffer for him? Why did she lie to me for fifteen years? I played dumb, sitting rigidly in the chair. Caroline let out a heavy sigh, keeping her silence for a few minutes too long. In that quiet space, the last lingering thread of my love for her snapped. It was over. “Nate,” she finally murmured, pulling back to look at me. “I will explain all the details to you later. But right now… I want to introduce you to someone.” The sliding glass door behind us opened. A man stepped out onto the balcony. He looked nervous, his posture submissive, but he extended both hands toward me with a practiced, melancholic smile. “Hi, Nate. I’m Cameron. I know you’re hurting right now. Caroline and I… we’re so sorry for the pain we’ve caused you. But the baby is innocent. I’m begging you, please let her keep the baby. I’ll walk away forever if I have to. Just let my child live.” He delivered his lines perfectly, his eyes darting to Caroline, overflowing with a tragic, cinematic longing. Time and time again, even before the baby was born, they were both so unshakably confident that the child was his. And I was just sitting there, the pathetic clown in the middle of their tragic romance. “Please?” Cameron asked again, his eyes pointedly dropping to where Caroline’s hand was resting on my knee. His sorrow looked so genuine. When we got married, I knew Caroline had a ghost from her past. A boy she loved desperately when they were young, but timing and circumstance had ripped them apart. I had always thought of him as a closed chapter. It wasn’t until this exact moment, seeing the sickeningly thick tension between them, that I realized what an absolute fool I had been. “Nate, Cameron is talking to you,” Caroline said softly, instinctively pulling her hand away from my knee and stepping backward—right into Cameron’s orbit. The way they gravitated toward each other was entirely unconscious. Their physical intimacy was so natural it must have been rehearsed a thousand times over the last five years. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes again, but this time, they were cold. I tilted my head up, a deep, freezing apathy washing over me. “And if I say no?” I gritted out. Caroline’s face hardened instantly. The soft, apologetic wife vanished. She glared at me. “Nathaniel, I was doing you the courtesy of informing you. I am not asking for your permission. This is happening. Are you really going to declare war on a pregnant woman?” 4 She protectively touched her stomach, which wasn’t even showing yet. Cameron immediately wrapped his arms around her from behind, looking frantic. “Caroline, please don’t get upset,” he cooed. “Nate is just having a hard time processing this. You’re carrying little Camden. You can’t let your stress levels spike.” Camden. Combining his name with hers. A roaring sound filled my ears as the foundations of my memory collapsed. Years ago, I had read an article about a father who named his daughter an anagram of his wife’s name, as a tribute to how much he loved her. I had thought it was the most romantic thing in the world. I had turned to Caroline in bed one night and whispered, “If we ever have a baby, let’s name it something that honors you. Or give it your last name.” Caroline had looked annoyed. She had brushed it off, accusing me of subtly mocking her inability to get pregnant. Now, I realized she had probably been laughing at me in her head the entire time. Why would I ever have a child with you? “Caroline,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “You’re naming him Camden?” I stared her down. She avoided my eyes, coughing awkwardly into her hand. “Nate, don’t start a fight over nothing. What’s wrong with the name? I’m the one who has to carry this child for nine months. Do I not even get the right to name him?” She was talking entirely too fast, trying to bury her guilt under a mountain of defensive chatter. Cameron wasn’t an idiot. But his true talent lay in knowing exactly when to play the martyr. “Nate, if you really hate it, we can name him after you,” Cameron offered softly. “I don’t mind. Caroline is risking her life to have this baby. As long as she’s okay, I’ll disappear. I only ask that you treat the child as your own.” He looked mournfully at Caroline’s stomach, then made a show of turning around, as if he were actually going to walk out the door. It worked perfectly. It instantly erased whatever microscopic trace of guilt Caroline had left toward me. She grabbed Cameron’s arm, her eyes flashing with anger as she pointed around my living room. “Cameron, I love you. I want to have a baby that belongs to us. Don’t listen to a word Nathaniel says. When we got married, he put my name on the deed to this house. He put my name on everything. If he has a problem with the way things are, he can be the one to pack his bags. He doesn’t have the right to kick you out.” She felt entirely entitled to the empire I had built. She was openly moving her lover into my home, armed with the knowledge that years ago, in a gesture of absolute, blind devotion, I had put all our major assets solely in her name to make her feel secure. I had thought of everything to protect her. And now, those protections were knives, sliding effortlessly into my back. “Caroline, please, don’t say things like that,” Cameron murmured, though he shot me a fleeting, triumphant look over her shoulder. I let out a dry, hacking laugh. Suddenly, this house—the hardwood floors I installed, the walls we painted together—felt like a crime scene. It made me physically nauseous. It wasn’t my home anymore. It was theirs. “Nate, apologize to Cameron right now, and I’ll let this go,” Caroline ordered, her tone authoritative. “I know how badly you’ve always wanted kids. When Camden is born, he can call you his godfather. Hell, if you’re good to him, he can even call you Dad.” “Stop throwing a tantrum. I’m pregnant, and my hormones are all over the place. I can’t deal with this.” She was so utterly convinced that I was unconditionally addicted to her. She thought I would never, ever walk away. I shook my head, staring at the floor, a dark smile playing on my lips. I reached over to the patio table and picked up the manila folder I had left there. We had been married for fifteen years. Caroline had been with me when I had nothing, and she had eaten ramen out of styrofoam cups right alongside me in the early days. Because of that, I was willing to be generous. The agreement gave her exactly half of my current business equity, plus the house. “Take a look,” I said, tossing the folder onto the table in front of her. “If the terms are acceptable, sign it.” A strange, hollow peace was settling over my mind. Once her signature was on that paper, I could grab my bags and walk out the door. The ink didn’t even need to be dry. “I won’t even make you move. You can keep the house. Just sign the papers.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “411835”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When Victoria’s golden boy stole her company’s trade secrets and drove her empire to the brink of bankruptcy, I didn’t walk away. Instead, I brought my family’s quiet, generational billions and stepped into the role of the devoted, background husband. I poured my wealth into the Croft family business, saving it from ruin. When Victoria was caught in a devastating car wreck, I stayed by her bedside, feeding her ice chips and managing the crumbling company single-handedly. When she finally recovered, she held my face in her hands and swore that I was the one person on this earth she would never, ever betray. But then Tristan came back. All it took was one whisper from him—a casual comment about a gruesome scene he’d watched on some historical HBO drama—for Victoria to shatter my legs and string me up from the vaulted ceiling of our Hamptons living room. For three days and three nights, I hung there. Parched, starved, and delirious with agony, I begged her to cut me down. She didn’t even look up. She simply pulled Tristan into her lap, their bodies tangled together on the Italian leather sofa, right in front of me. “If you hadn’t taken advantage of my vulnerability to force me into marriage, I wouldn’t be in a position where I can’t give Tristan my last name,” she sneered, her eyes entirely devoid of the woman I thought I knew. “You framed him. You sent him into exile. Now that he’s back, it’s time you paid your debts.” When it was over, my spirit was utterly broken. I dragged what was left of myself to my older sister, collapsing at her feet. “I lost, Caroline,” I choked out, pressing my forehead against the cold hardwood. “I was blind. Please, just get me out of here.” 1 By the time they finally cut me down, the pain had long since mutated into a cold, suffocating numbness. My body collapsed onto the Persian rug like a sack of broken porcelain, the slightest twitch of my fingers sending electric shocks of agony up my spine. The heavy, metallic stench of blood hung thick in the air. I forced my eyes open, catching sight of the dark, pooling stain beneath me, soaking into the hardwood. The rope burns on my wrists and ankles had cut straight down to the bone. The blood had already begun to coagulate into black crusts. “Victoria, he stinks.” Tristan pinched his nose, putting on an exaggerated show of gagging. Victoria looked down at my pale, wretched form. For a fraction of a second, a flicker of hesitation—maybe even pity—crossed her features. But it was instantly snuffed out by Tristan’s next words. “I bled this much too, you know,” he murmured, his voice trembling with practiced fragility. “When the men he hired violated me.” The temperature in Victoria’s eyes plummeted. Her voice hardened into absolute ice. “Drag him out to the patio,” she ordered the guards. “Hose him down with ice water. Let him wash off the filth.” My body began to violently tremble on instinct, but I bit down on the inside of my cheek, refusing to let a single plea slip past my lips. This was all because of a TV show. Tristan had been watching a bloody fantasy epic and mentioned how thrilling it was to see a traitorous general strung up by his broken legs on a castle wall. And just like that, Victoria ordered her security team to hoist me up in the center of our home. I had fought back, screaming in sheer disbelief. “Are you out of your mind, Victoria?! I am your husband!” But she had just held Tristan closer, looking at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. “This is what you owe him,” she had said coldly. “If you hadn’t orchestrated that setup to ruin his name, he never would have suffered so much before finding his way back to me. You are ruthless, Nigel. You did whatever it took to force me to marry you.” I had stared at the stranger wearing my wife’s face. Three years of marriage. Three years of waking up beside her, holding her, building a life together—annihilated by a few whispered lies from a ghost of her past. “He’s lying to you,” I had rasped, my voice tearing. “Have you forgotten the security footage? You saw him stealing the financial data with your own eyes.” Victoria’s lips had pressed into a thin, white line. “You manipulated the situation to force his hand.” Tristan had buried his face in her neck, shooting me a wicked, victorious smirk over her shoulder. “Nigel only did it because he loves you so much, Victoria. I don’t blame him. It’s just… the things they did to me in exile… it still hurts so much.” That single, hollow lie had been the catalyst. Victoria pulled him tighter, her protective instincts weaponized against me. “Break his legs first,” she instructed the guards, her tone chillingly casual. “Then string him back up. The general on television had broken legs. I want it to be exact.” Panic had surged through my veins. I scrambled backward, trying to get to my feet, but two massive bodyguards flanked me, driving my shoulders into the floor. A third man walked toward me, a solid aluminum baseball bat gripped in his hands. “No! Victoria, snap out of it!” I screamed, thrashing wildly. But it was useless. Crack. Blinding, white-hot agony exploded from my right leg. A guttural scream ripped through my throat. The bat had connected squarely with my knee, shattering the joint. “He sounds pathetic,” Victoria complained, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Gag him. Keep going.” A filthy rag was shoved down my throat, muffling my screams into pathetic, suffocating whimpers. Crack. My left knee caved. The sheer volume of the pain ripped my consciousness away for a few merciful seconds. When I came to, I was suspended in the air. My shattered legs dangled uselessly beneath me, every microscopic sway of the ropes sending shockwaves of nauseating pain through my pelvis. And there they were. Sitting on the sofa directly in front of me, curled up together, watching television. Occasionally, they would lean in to share a slow, lingering kiss. Tristan had intentionally cranked the volume on the TV. The canned laughter from the sitcom echoed off the high ceilings, creating a grotesque, mocking soundtrack to my torture. “Are you happy now, Tristan?” she asked softly. He wrapped his arm around her waist, whispering something against her ear. She let out a beautiful, ringing laugh—the exact same laugh she had given me three years ago when she woke up in the hospital and saw I hadn’t left her side. They began to make out on the couch, completely absorbed in one another, as if the dying man bleeding out above their heads simply didn’t exist. Tears slid silently down my cheeks, soaking into the gag. My heart didn’t just break; it felt like it was being fed through a shredder. 2 The shock of the freezing water hitting my skin was violently abrupt. It felt like a thousand needles driving into my flesh all at once. The initial piercing cold gave way to a deep, burning agony. I couldn’t even scream; I could only grind my teeth together, letting the sensory overload tear my fading sanity into shreds. Victoria stood on the edge of the patio, her gaze detached as she watched my lips turn a bruised, sickly purple. Tristan pressed himself against her side, his face glowing with sheer, sadistic pleasure. Victoria gestured to the staff. “Bring another bucket.” “Victoria, I think he’s actually dying,” Tristan murmured, coating his voice in a thick layer of mock concern. “Should we call a doctor?” “No,” Victoria replied flatly. “He won’t die that easily. He’s a cockroach. He probably likes the attention.” I turned my head, my whole body convulsing with shivers, and forced out a gravelly whisper. “Victoria… what did I ever do to deserve this? From the day I married you… haven’t I given you enough?” She brushed off the question like a nuisance. “Do you honestly think playing the devoted husband cancels out the years of hell Tristan endured because of you, Nigel?” I managed to lift my head, desperately wanting to scream that I had nothing to do with Tristan’s exile. But the absolute void of empathy in her eyes killed the words in my throat. Suddenly, Tristan’s eyes lit up. “Oh, in the show, the general was forced to drink urine, too. I want to see that.” Anger burned through my shivering frame. “No!” But Victoria merely offered a cynical smirk and waved a hand at the bodyguards. My pupils dilated in pure horror as the men stepped forward, unzipping their pants. The warm, metallic, putrid stench rained down over me. One of the men pried my jaw open, forcing the foul liquid down my throat. I thrashed wildly, but the catastrophic pain in my legs kept me paralyzed on the concrete. I collapsed onto my stomach, dry-heaving violently. My stomach, already hollow and burning from starvation, cramped so hard it felt like a knife twisting in my gut. I retched again, and suddenly, a dark spray of blood spewed from my mouth onto the patio stones. Victoria’s eyes locked onto the blood. Her pupils contracted, and her foot twitched forward, an involuntary instinct to help. But Tristan casually leaned against her shoulder. “You know, when Nigel’s thugs beat me, I threw up blood for days. No one called a doctor for me, either.” He’s lying! I had never hired anyone to touch him. But Victoria swallowed the lie whole. The brief flash of humanity vanished, replaced by a freezing glare. “He made a mess again,” she said. “Keep the ice water coming.” I genuinely wanted to ask her: what had our three years together actually meant? I had sacrificed everything for her, stripped myself of my own identity to be her anchor, and this was my reward. The ice water hit me again, flooding my nose and throat. The cold shocked my nervous system, but it was nothing compared to the absolute devastation in my chest. I glared at her through bloodshot eyes, my gaze burning with a hatred so profound it felt holy. “Victoria… I want a divorce.” The sheer force of my rage sent my heart into overdrive, and my vision immediately tunneled into black. I passed out. When I finally regained consciousness, someone was splashing lukewarm water on my face. I was lying in the dark, suffocating dampness of the estate’s basement storage room. My clothes were still soaked, and a fresh pool of blood had formed beneath me. I couldn’t feel my legs at all anymore. I forced myself to look down; the flesh around my knees was turning a terrifying shade of necrotic black. The faint, sweet smell of decay lingered in the stagnant air. Tristan was standing over me, looking down like a king surveying a slaughtered peasant. I hadn’t eaten in four days. My body was so depleted I couldn’t even lift my hand. My throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass, and every breath was a localized earthquake in my ribs. “Look at you. So pathetic,” he sneered, using the toe of his Prada loafer to tilt my chin up. “If you get on your knees and beg me, maybe I’ll let you live.” I let out a weak, rattling cough. My skin was radiating an unnatural heat—the infection had set in. But I locked my jaw. My entire body was vibrating with fever, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of my submission. I looked him dead in the eye, my lips pulling back into a blood-stained grin. “You really are the man Victoria deserves. You’re both absolutely vile.” His face contorted in rage. He grabbed a fistful of my wet hair, yanking my head back. “You think you’re so tough. You think she’s going to suddenly feel sorry for you? She won’t!” he hissed. “You’re just a toy. Whatever I want to do to you, she’ll let me. You brought this on yourself for getting in my way.” “What way?” The sudden female voice from the doorway made Tristan freeze. Victoria was standing at the entrance to the storage room, her brow furrowed in confusion. Tristan panicked for a split second before seamlessly slipping back into his victim persona. His eyes welled with tears. “I just came down to check on Nigel, but he started calling me a cheap whore…” Victoria’s confusion melted into fierce protectiveness. She pulled Tristan into her arms, then stepped forward, driving her heel directly into my ribs. “Don’t listen to him,” she cooed to Tristan. “You are my entire world. If he’s going to be this stubborn, clearly the punishment wasn’t enough.” The kick forced another mouthful of blood up my throat. My stomach spasmed violently. But they weren’t done with me. 3 Victoria had the guards strip me and force me into a piece of humiliating, sheer lingerie. Then, she fastened a thick leather dog collar tightly around my neck. I was dragged out to the driveway and chained to the rear bumper of her Mercedes. Like an actual dog. “Let’s go. Take the mutt for a walk,” she said lightly, slipping into the passenger seat as Tristan took the wheel. The car rolled slowly out of the estate and toward the commercial district. I was forced to stumble behind it, my bare, shattered feet dragging against the asphalt. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks, whipping out their phones to record. Laughter. Pointing. Disgust. I tried to shrink away, but the chain yanked hard against my windpipe, choking me. The passenger window rolled down. Tristan feigned a sigh. “Is this taking it too far, Victoria? Maybe we shouldn’t…” “Don’t be naive,” Victoria chuckled softly. “He was so vicious to you, and you still have a soft heart. Look at him. He loves the attention. He’s practically begging them to look.” The car came to a stop at a red light. A drifter, reeking of alcohol and unwashed clothes, stumbled off the sidewalk and approached me. His eyes roamed over my exposed, bruised skin. I tried to back away, but the chain held me tethered. He lunged, pinning me to the pavement. His filthy hands tore at the fragile lace. I fought wildly, screaming, but the necrotic pain in my legs paralyzed my movements. “Help! Somebody, please!” The man just gave a sickening, yellow-toothed grin. “Soft skin for a rich boy. Shut up, nobody’s coming to help you.” “Get off me! Get off!” Inside the Mercedes, Tristan’s laughter echoed over the chaos. He clapped his hands in delight. “Victoria, this is fantastic!” Through the rearview mirror, my absolute terror and the man’s vile assault were entirely visible. But Victoria just sat there, utterly indifferent. She cast one bored glance in the mirror, then let Tristan rest his head on her shoulder. “As long as you’re happy, darling.” Just as the man moved to unbuckle his jeans, the light turned green. The chain pulled taut, and the car accelerated. The violent jerk nearly snapped my neck, ripping me right out from under the man’s grasp. I lay flat on my stomach, being dragged down the avenue. The friction of the asphalt tore through my skin, scraping down to the muscle. I left a thick, red trail of blood in the car’s wake. Tristan leaned his head out the window, watching my agonizing tumble, smiling radiantly. My ears were ringing. The world shattered into fractured light and shadow. I truly believed I was going to die on that street. The car finally stopped. The door opened, and Victoria stepped out, looking incredibly bored. She looked down at my bleeding, mangled form with nothing but cynical mockery. “Remember this, Nigel. Your days of playing god in my house are over. You are going to atone for what you did to Tristan until he says you’re done.” My throat was so swollen I couldn’t form words. I could only lie there, gasping for air like a dying fish. Arthur, our elderly butler who had driven the trailing security car, finally broke. He rushed forward, his voice trembling. “Ma’am, please! Mr. Stephen is going to die out here! We have to get him to a hospital, I’m begging you!” Victoria frowned, deeply irritated by the interruption. “Watch your tone, Arthur. Throw him back in the storage room and lock the door.” “Victoria, don’t be mad,” Tristan whined, reaching for her hand. “It’s my fault. I took it too far…” “But he made me suffer so much,” Tristan added, looking down at his shoes. “I just wanted a little payback.” Victoria’s eyes softened instantly. All her anger evaporated. She gently brushed a stray curl from Tristan’s forehead. “You did nothing wrong. I promised to make you happy, and I will never let anyone hurt you again.” She wrapped her arm around him, and they walked back inside, already murmuring about their upcoming vacation to the South of France. The staff stood frozen in the driveway, heads bowed in terrified silence, avoiding my gaze. I tried to lift my head, but my vision was swimming in red. Hot blood dripped from my hairline into my eyes, turning the world gray. I realized, with quiet certainty, that I wasn’t going to survive the night. The only thing I could see in my mind was my sister Caroline’s face. If she knew I had ended up like this, it would destroy her. The darkest irony of it all was that I finally understood the truth: aside from my late parents, Caroline was the only person in the world who had ever genuinely loved me. I prepared myself for the end. But as soon as Victoria left the estate for the airport, Arthur defied orders and smuggled me into the back of his own car, speeding toward the hospital. I had helped his grandson with college tuition years ago, and he simply couldn’t watch me die. Clinging to the very last thread of my consciousness, I borrowed Arthur’s phone and dialed Caroline’s number. “Care… please… help me…” Meanwhile, lounging in a first-class suite on her way to Paris, Victoria felt a strange, nagging unease. She wanted to punish me, yes, but she hadn’t actually planned on killing me. She picked up her phone to call Arthur, intending to tell him to let me out and call a private doctor. But Tristan noticed. He leaned over, tracing her jawline. “You know, when his guys broke my ribs and locked me in a flooded basement for five days, I survived just fine…” His lies were structurally absurd, falling apart under the slightest scrutiny, but Victoria drank them in like gospel. She set her phone back down. They were flying back in two days anyway. She would take me to the hospital then. Just then, her phone buzzed. It was her Chief Operating Officer. “Victoria, you need to get back immediately! Five of our primary distributors just breached their contracts. They said the Stephen Group in New York has officially declared war on us…”

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The golden child threw herself out the window, screaming that I pushed her. What she didn’t know was that I had just been tethered to the Loop System. A digital parasite in my brain that allowed me to select any single action she made and force her to repeat it. One hundred times. By the time the golden child had crawled back up to the second floor like a reanimated corpse, hurling herself out the window for the hundredth consecutive time, our biased parents and our darling brother had completely lost their minds. 1. “Helen, you are so dead. Mom and Dad are never going to forgive you for this.” Beverly flashed me a wicked, gleeful smile. Then, without missing a beat, she tipped backward and plummeted out the second-story window. She landed squarely in the thick hydrangea bushes lining the estate’s foundation. The landscaper, who had been watering the beds, let out a bloodcurdling scream. My parents and my brother, Brooks, practically tore the patio doors off their hinges as they sprinted from the sunroom into the yard. The moment they saw Beverly lying there, the air was sucked right out of the world. Panic, raw and suffocating, took over. My mother immediately broke into a wailing sob. My father was frantically punching 911 into his phone. Brooks dropped to his knees in the dirt beside Beverly, his voice cracking in absolute devastation. “Beverly… oh my god, how did this happen?! Who? Who did this to you?!” Trembling, Beverly raised a pale arm, strategically scratched by the thorny branches, stark and beautifully tragic against the pristine white tulle of her dress. She pointed a shaking finger up at the second-floor window. Up at me. “Brooks…” she whimpered, her voice a masterclass in fragile innocence. “I don’t know what I did wrong… My sister, she… it hurts so much…” Instantly, three pairs of eyes snapped upward, glaring at me. Whatever thin, polite veneer we had maintained since I moved in was gone. There was no biological affection here, no familial bond. The pure, unadulterated hatred radiating from them was reserved solely for me—the sudden intruder, the biological anomaly who had dared to harm their carefully cultivated, deeply cherished daughter and sister. Perhaps in my past life, the naked cruelty in their stares would have pierced right through my chest. But right now? My blood was singing. System, I thought, the command cold and precise in my mind. That exact jumping motion. Lock it in. Repeat one hundred times. 2. In my last life, Beverly’s little stunt worked flawlessly. She walked away with a few cosmetic scrapes, but it was enough to ignite a blinding fury in the Prescott family. They rushed upstairs, dragged me to the floor, and kicked and beat me until my ribs splintered and my organs ruptured. While they were speeding in the back of an ambulance to get Beverly a designer band-aid, I bled to death on the hardwood floor alone. After I died, my soul floated untethered, and the sky above me filled with lines of glowing, scrolling text: [The real daughter is so pathetic!! The Prescott family are absolute trash, they all deserve to die!!!] [If the author wanted to write a villainous fake-sister trope, fine, but don’t do the innocent girl dirty like this! Using a helpless side character’s brutal death just to establish the fake sister’s ‘mean girl’ status is crossing a massive line. This isn’t satisfying at all!] [This family is just a bunch of soulless NPCs like in every other switched-at-birth trope! If the plot doesn’t change and they don’t get what’s coming to them, I’m reporting this entire book!] [Resurrect the real daughter!! Let her get revenge!!] Revenge revenge revenge revenge revenge revenge revenge revenge… The glitching, manic text entirely consumed my vision. That was the moment I realized I wasn’t a real person. I was cannon fodder. The tragic, biological daughter in a melodramatic web novel where Beverly was the twisted, untouchable female lead. [The readers are review-bombing this to hell. It’s getting too unhinged. You know what? Take this Loop System. I’m dropping this manuscript. You handle the rest! I’m out!] A voice—presumably the author’s—echoed in the void before vanishing completely. And then, I woke up. Reborn, mere seconds before Beverly’s theatrical leap, with the [Loop System] humming quietly in my temporal lobe. Looking at her smug, artificially playful face, the phantom aches of a hundred kicks from my past life rushed through my veins, hot and demanding. In my last life, I was slaughtered by the plot. In this life, I was going to let this family experience the sheer, unrelenting terror of a protagonist with a cheat code. “Helen Prescott!! Are you out of your damn mind?! You pushed Beverly?! Get down here right now!!” Just like before, Brooks thundered up the stairs. He didn’t care that I was a hundred-pound girl who had grown up malnourished in foster care. He raised his fist, ready to strike— “Ahhh!!!!! Beverly!!! Beverly, where are you going?!” This time, however, my mother’s hysterical shriek from the yard stopped his fist in mid-air. He instinctively looked down out the window. Down in the flowerbed, Beverly had suddenly snapped upright, stiff as a wooden plank. Her head hung low, chin touching her chest, and her legs began to move in a rapid, inhuman blur, sprinting toward the house with the jerky, terrifying cadence of a malfunctioning animatronic. She scurried up the stairs so fast she practically blurred, slamming her shoulder into Brooks and knocking him entirely out of the doorway. She marched straight to the window in front of me and hoisted herself onto the sill, perching there. Her eyes were completely glazed over, dead and vacant, but her mouth moved perfectly to deliver her opening line: “Helen, you are so dead. Mom and Dad are never going to forgive you for this.” Then, she tipped backward. CRACK. She hit the bushes again. “Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!” Downstairs, my mother and the landscaper shrieked in unison. My father stood frozen, his jaw slack. His phone slipped from his fingers and shattered on the patio stones. “Beverly!!!” Brooks screamed, a sound tearing his throat raw, and he bolted down the stairs. He didn’t even make it to the front door. Beverly was already coming back up. BANG! She plowed into him again, knocking the breath from his lungs, and scrambled onto the windowsill. “Helen, you are so dead. Mom and Dad are never going to forgive you for this.” Over she went. “Grab her!! Stop her!!” my parents finally snapped out of their stupor, bellowing at the top of their lungs. Brooks lunged. “Beverly!!” BANG!! Smashed aside again. And over she went. “Beverly!” THUD. “Beverly!!” THUD. “Watch her face—oh my god, her face!!!!” THUD. By the tenth repetition, Beverly’s speed had exponentially increased, defying all laws of physics. She was moving five times faster than a normal human. When she hit Brooks this time, she launched him into the air. He crashed hard onto the first-floor landing, his designer glasses splintering across the hardwood. That was the beauty of the Loop. The speed compounded, and with speed came terrifying, unnatural momentum. My parents threw themselves at her, tackling her around the waist in a desperate double-team to pin her down. Instead, her momentum simply dragged them across fifteen feet of manicured lawn. The abrasive patio stones sheared a layer of skin right off their arms, chests, and backs. They howled in agony. “Are you insane?! You’re running over your own parents?!” “Stop! Stop right now! Do you hear me?!!” They screamed the words, but the truth was, none of them dared to touch her again. They scrambled backward, pressing themselves into the corner of the patio, leaving a wide, terrified berth between the doorway and the stairs. All they could do was watch, eyes bulging with pure horror, as Beverly sprinted up the stairs again, and again, and again. Every single loop was punctuated by my mother’s agonizing wails. And this was only loop twenty-five. 3. By the time Beverly executed her fifty-fifth jump, the sun had set. She had entered the peak of her glitching state. She was moving so fast she left afterimages in the twilight. My mother had entirely run out of tears. The grief had been hollowed out, replaced by a suffocating, primal terror. And how could it not? When Beverly planned her little stunt, she had calculated the trajectory perfectly to ensure only superficial cuts. A little pain for a lot of sympathy. But no human body is meant to endure a second-story drop fifty times in a row. No body is meant to have the same scratches ripped open half a hundred times. The Beverly that was currently looping was a shredded, bloody mess. Her dress was in tatters, painted in dark crimson strokes, her limbs operating solely on the mechanical willpower of the System. When she scurried out from the pitch-black doorway of the ground floor, she looked like a charred, skittering spider. Up close, it was straight out of a horror movie. Who wouldn’t be trembling? “Mom! Dad! Do something!!! If she keeps jumping like this, she’s going to break into pieces!” Only Brooks was still trying to save her. Ignorance was bliss. Without his glasses, he couldn’t actually see the gruesome, twitching entity that was currently crawling across the floorboards. My mother’s vocal cords had ruptured; she was slumped against my father’s shoulder, completely unresponsive. My father had collapsed into a lotus position on the grass, muttering feverish prayers. He was a ruthless venture capitalist, but right now, he was bargaining with whatever god was listening. At loop ninety, the sky began to bleed a pale morning gray. Brooks was kneeling on the floor beside the long, dark-red smear Beverly had dragged across the carpet, rocking back and forth like a mental patient. My parents were huddled together, drenched in cold sweat, utterly mute. At loop one hundred, the ambulance—which had been stalled by the System’s interference—finally wailed up the driveway. The paramedics had to literally dig Beverly’s pulverized, barely-breathing body out of the crater she had formed in the earth. “Where is the family?! We need a guardian to ride with us!!” the EMT yelled over the flashing lights. Brooks crawled toward the door. “Me! Me!!! I’m coming with her!!!” Only then did I take my time walking down from the second floor. I arranged my features into a mask of identical, traumatized shock, rushing over to help my parents up. “Mom! Dad! Get up… Beverly’s condition, it was so… unnatural! Are you really going to let Brooks go to the hospital alone with her?!” The spell broke. An adopted daughter was just a daughter, but their son? Their heir? He was their lifeline. The two old hypocrites scrambled to their feet, their legs shaking violently. “We… we have to go. We have to follow them.” Yes, go, I thought. The best acts of the play were yet to come. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. 4. Beverly was the protagonist of the original plot, and it showed. She actually survived. Plot armor is a hell of a drug; she was remarkably hard to kill. Even so, she was a symphony of fractured bones and severe contusions. She wouldn’t be walking for at least three to five months. “It hurts!!!! What happened?!!! Why can’t I move?!” “My face… my face is burning!!! Make it stop!!!” “Mom!! Dad!! Brooks!! Why aren’t you helping me?!!!” Beverly had never experienced true pain in her life. With absolutely no memory of her glitching marathon, she woke up screaming, thrashing against her restraints, sobbing hysterically. The family of three desperately wanted to rush to her bedside to comfort her, but they physically couldn’t. The psychological trauma of the “blood-soaked spider” was too fresh. Especially for Brooks. When he had climbed into the back of the ambulance, he had leaned in close, desperately crying her name. In response, Beverly had turned a mangled, blood-drenched face toward him, her eyes rolled back so far only the bloodshot whites showed. He had nearly gone into cardiac arrest on the spot. So, it was just me. I was the only one who withstood the pressure. I stepped up to the hospital bed and gently patted the thick gauze wrapped around Beverly’s shoulder. “Beverly, it’s okay. You have to be strong. If you can’t handle this, how are you going to survive the rest of it?” I suddenly understood the psychology behind killers returning to the scene of the crime. Looking at Beverly right now, she felt like my own personal masterpiece. The uglier she looked, the more an undeniable fondness bloomed in my chest. She couldn’t even maintain her delicate, innocent facade anymore. She bared her teeth and shrieked at me: “Helen?! Why the hell are you in here?!! It was you, wasn’t it?!! You did this to me!!!” “Mom! Dad!!! It was Helen!! She pushed me!! Punish her!! Do it now!!!” I offered a serene, almost saintly smile, my voice perfectly level. “Beverly, I understand why you’re blaming me… It’s my fault as your sister. I should have caught you. Mom and Dad tried so hard to stop you from jumping, but…” I caught the fleeting look of retroactive terror on my parents’ faces. Their hands subconsciously drifted to their own bandaged, scraped skin. The physical pain only amplified their deep-seated, biological fear of the girl in the bed. Beverly, of course, missed all of this subtext. All she heard was that her parents hadn’t caught her. Panicked over the prospect of being permanently disfigured, she lost her mind entirely, spitting out words without thinking: “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” It was the exact sentence I was waiting for. System. Let her say it a hundred times. 5. “We tried to stop you! But we couldn’t!!” My father’s face was twisted in distress as he tried to defend himself. “You were too strong!” My mother nodded frantically. “Yes, yes! You dragged me right across the ground…” She pulled back her designer sleeve to show Beverly the massive, angry road rash on her forearm. “Look. My skin was torn right off.” Under normal circumstances, Beverly would have instantly dissolved into tears, apologizing profusely and delicately blowing on her mother’s wound to soothe her. But right now, her eyes remained bulged, and she barked out the exact same accusation, her tone frantic and venomous: “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” My parents froze. They stared at her, deeply unsettled. “Beverly…?” my mother whispered, her voice trembling. Beverly kept going. “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” My father’s guilt instantly calcified into anger. “How dare you speak to us like that?! I just told you, we couldn’t hold you down! If you’re going to put this on us, I’m going to lose my patience very quickly!” … “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” “Excuse me? What is wrong with you? Are you deaf?!” … “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” “Say that one more time!” … “Why didn’t you stop me?! If you had just stopped me, I wouldn’t look like this!!” “Shut up!!!!” My father absolutely lost it. He was panting heavily, jabbing a finger toward the bed. “Do you have zero respect left?!!! Keep acting like this, and you can sit in this room by yourself! We’re done visiting you!!” His eyes were bloodshot with rage. But Beverly was completely deaf to the world. She just kept repeating the sentence. Over and over. The volume rising, the pitch turning into a grating, shrill siren. My mother clutched her chest, unable to take the sensory overload, and burst into tears again. “Beverly, how can you blame me?! Don’t you think I wanted to save you?! We couldn’t do anything, why can’t you understand that!” Only Brooks was still running defense. “Mom, Dad, she’s just in agony. The trauma is too much for a young girl. She’s just delirious from the pain, please, the most important thing is her recovery. Don’t be angry with her!” I immediately chimed in to help. “Yes, exactly… And… why does she keep repeating the exact same phrase? Do you think… when she hit her head…” I delicately tapped my temple with one finger. “Helen! What the hell is that supposed to mean?! Are you calling her brain-damaged?!” Brooks spat, instantly reverting to his default setting. “Stop trying to tear this family apart! We don’t even know why she jumped in the first place. You bully her every single day, maybe you drove her to it!” Brooks truly was a flawless NPC. No matter what happened to Beverly, his programming automatically pinned the blame on me. I didn’t even dignify him with a look. I just turned my gaze to my parents. “Mom, Dad, let’s just call the doctor in. It couldn’t hurt for them to check on her head.” The suggestion landed perfectly. My parents exchanged a long, heavy look, their eyes darting back to the bed, evaluating Beverly with a new, deeply cynical calculation. After all, a wealthy heiress with a few broken bones could be hidden away to heal. But an heiress whose brain was broken? That was a massive liability.

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The fake heiress recorded a video, weeping to the camera about my supposed abuse. My parents and my fiancé stood right behind her, nodding in solemn agreement, testifying to my cruelty. Overnight, the internet became a tidal wave of vitriol, drowning my name in curses and death threats. If that wasn’t enough, my father cornered me in the hallway, his face flushed with righteous indignation, demanding I issue a public apology to my “sister.” What he didn’t know was that his real daughter was already dead. The thing breathing inside her body right now? Just a wandering, damned soul. With all of them watching, I shoved her down the sweeping marble staircase. “An apology? Sure,” I said, leaning over the banister. “But only if she actually breaks her leg.” …… I am a damned thing. A revenant. A ghost who learned the hard way that if you don’t bare your teeth, the world will swallow you whole. And somehow, I have woken up inside the body of Caroline Stanford. Caroline’s luck was truly tragic. She was the biological daughter of the Stanford dynasty, stolen away and lost for years. When she finally clawed her way back home, she found no warmth, no tears of joy. Just a cold house and parents who couldn’t look her in the eye. Instead, all their love had been siphoned off by the imposter—the cheap, surrogate sister who had occupied Caroline’s rightful place. This girl survived entirely on weaponized pity, playing the eternal victim, bewitching everyone around her. It culminated on Caroline’s eighteenth birthday. The entire family—including Caroline’s own fiancé—abandoned her to attend the fake sister’s prestigious conservatory piano showcase. Left alone in a sprawling, empty mansion, suffocating under the weight of her own insignificance, Caroline drew a blade across her wrists and bled out in the porcelain tub. The moment her heart stopped, my unfortunate soul slipped right in. Sifting through the shattered fragments of Caroline’s memories, I found myself thoroughly fascinated by this sister of hers, Belinda. I hadn’t realized the living could be so exquisitely, ruthlessly selfish, caring for absolutely nothing but their own survival. It was almost touching. It meant my kind had heirs in the mortal world. I pulled myself up from the cold, blood-stained water of the bathtub. I wrapped a haphazard towel around the jagged cuts on my wrists, threw on a hoodie, and called an Uber to the Stanford estate in Greenwich. The Stanfords possessed generational, obscene wealth. Yet, they had forced Caroline to take up menial part-time jobs, dressing up their neglect under the guise of “building her independence.” I immediately pulled out her phone and quit the diner job. Was it a joke? Why on earth would a trust-fund kid clock in for minimum wage? I wasn’t out of my mind. When I pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of the estate, the shock on the housekeeper’s face was palpable. I strolled past her, unimpeded, straight into the grand living room. There, nestled on the velvet sofa, was Belinda, her arms wrapped tightly around my fiancé, Carlton. Seeing me, Belinda didn’t pull away. She pressed herself even closer against his chest. The polite smiles on Richard and Margaret Stanford’s faces vanished the second they saw me. “Caroline? What are you doing here?” Richard demanded. I didn’t answer him. My eyes were locked dead onto Belinda. Sensing my gaze, her lower lip quivered. She instantly slipped into her pathetic, wounded-fawn routine. “Sister, you have everything now. I just wanted Mom, Dad, and Carlton to come see my performance. You’re not mad at me, are you?” “Why would she be mad? Hasn’t she taken enough of your things and your place in this family already?” Carlton let out a cold, derisive scoff, the disgust in his voice thick and unfiltered. Ah. I had miscalculated. It wasn’t just Belinda who was rotted through. This entire house was a cesspool. Not a single decent human being among them. I slowly raised my arm, letting the blood-soaked towel around my wrist dangle in the light. “Sister. You have Mom. You have Dad. You have my fiancé. All I wanted was to breathe, to stay alive. You wouldn’t force me to die, would you?” Belinda’s expression froze. A flicker of genuine panic crossed her eyes, but she was a professional. In a blink, the tears spilled over her lashes, fat and perfectly timed. Richard couldn’t stand to see his precious girl cry. He lunged forward, his hand cracking sharply across my cheek. “What kind of sick thing is that to say?!” he roared. “Are you trying to make Belinda feel guilty to death?!” I let the momentum of the slap carry me. I collapsed onto the Persian rug. Before I even had to fake a sob, Belinda’s trembling voice filled the room. “It’s fine, Dad. Let it go. I know my sister hates me. It’s okay. I’ll… I’ll just pack my things and move out.” She sobbed, her voice cracking beautifully. Yet, I noticed, she didn’t make a single move to stand up from the couch. Lying there on the floor, looking up at her, I felt a strange sense of awe. She was practically glowing in my eyes. I had an epiphany. The absolute zenith of selfishness is the ability to convince the world that you are a saint. “Listen to your sister!” Richard practically shoved his finger into my eye. “Look at the grace she has! Do you think everyone in the world is as vile and self-centered as you?!” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to conjure a single tear, but as a ghost, I simply didn’t have the hardware for it. Crying was impossible. Giving up, I pushed myself off the rug, dusted off my cheap jeans, and plopped down onto a plush armchair, casually crossing one leg over the other. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “She has the heart of an angel. She’s obedient and sweet. I’m selfish and greedy. Therefore, I’m moving back in.” Richard’s mouth dropped open. He stared at me like I had sprouted horns. When Caroline had originally moved out, it had technically been her own suggestion. But she had only fled because she was suffocating under the toxic atmosphere and Belinda’s daily, insidious gaslighting. I, however, was built differently. As long as I was comfortable, I couldn’t care less how much they hated me. “Enough!” Carlton’s shout echoed off the vaulted ceiling, so loud it nearly rattled my soul loose from Caroline’s body. He stood up, shielding Belinda behind his broad shoulders, glaring at me like I was vermin. “Caroline, I am not going to let you bully Belinda anymore. What gives you the right to stay in this house?!” I stared at him. The sheer, unadulterated audacity. Even when I was alive, I had never heard a man speak with such shameless entitlement. I was beginning to realize that the only reason I had become a formidable ghost back in my day was simply a lack of modern competition. “It’s okay, Carlton,” Belinda whimpered, clutching his shirt. “She is Mom and Dad’s biological daughter, after all. I…” She offered a brave, wobbly smile that was uglier than a frown. It was a masterclass. I almost wanted to applaud. So, I did. The sharp, rhythmic clapping of my hands cut through the tension. Everyone froze, looking at me with absolute bewilderment. “Beautifully said,” I grinned. “So forgiving. You see, Dad? Since my sweet sister says it’s fine, I’ll be staying. After all, like she said, I am your actual blood.” Without waiting for Richard’s brain to reboot, I turned on my heel and headed for the stairs, following the layout from Caroline’s memories. Carlton’s curses faded behind me as I hummed a light tune, my steps bouncing. But when I pushed open the door to Caroline’s old room, I stopped dead in my tracks. My nose wrinkled in disgust. This cramped, sunless, depressing little box? Did they really expect someone of my elegant, refined stature to sleep in a closet? Without a second thought, I slammed the door shut and began pacing the hallway, inspecting the other rooms. I stopped in front of a heavy, ornate double door. It smelled like expensive perfume and privilege. I reached for the handle, but a roar echoed up the staircase. “Stop right there! Don’t you dare touch that door!” It was Richard. He was storming up the stairs, Margaret right on his heels, her face twisted in rage. “Caroline! That is your sister’s room!” Margaret shrieked. I raised an eyebrow. Oh, really? Beginner’s luck. I had picked the best suite in the house on the first try. “Is it?” I murmured, casually turning the knob and pushing the doors open. The contrast was staggering. The space was massive, bathed in natural light, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the manicured gardens. It was a sanctuary of custom silk drapery and plush velvet. Behind her parents, Belinda began to weep, playing her part flawlessly. “Sister, I know you resent me. But… but Mom and Dad designed this room specifically for me. I’ll give you anything else, I swear. Please, sister, give me my room back.” It was a touching monologue, but I could read the panic in her eyes. She was terrified of losing her territory. Predictably, Richard and Margaret ate it up. They swarmed her, cooing and hugging her as if she’d just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I leaned against the doorframe, crossing my arms. “Are you done? Because the answer is no.” Belinda choked on her sob, completely blindsided. She clearly hadn’t anticipated a flat, emotionless rejection. Moral kidnapping was her specialty; she wasn’t used to a victim without morals. Taking advantage of her shock, I stepped inside and moved to shut the door, but Richard lunged forward, grabbing my wrist in a vice grip. His fingers dug perfectly, entirely by chance, into my freshly sliced veins. He didn’t notice, or simply didn’t care. His face was red with fury. “Caroline Stanford! This belongs to Belinda! Can’t you, for once in your miserable life, be the bigger person and let your sister have something?!” Fortunately, a ghost feels no physical pain. I slowly wrenched my arm out of his grasp. The hastily wrapped cuts tore open again, fresh blood seeping through the white terrycloth, dripping onto the hardwood floor. Richard glanced at the blood, his eyes cold. Not a flicker of remorse. “Sorry, no can do,” I chirped, giving him a dead-eyed smile. “And if you keep harassing me, be careful. I might just leak a few secrets to the press.” Before he could unleash whatever curse was building in his throat, I slammed the heavy door in his face and locked it. The Stanfords had never publicly acknowledged Caroline as their biological daughter. Back then, they had gagged her with excuses about “protecting the company’s stock” and “maintaining family stability.” But what did the Stanford dynasty’s PR mean to me? If they pushed me, I was more than happy to drag us all straight to hell. I threw myself onto Belinda’s massive, cloud-like bed and pulled out the phone. Over the years, the real Caroline had been so beaten down, so painfully insecure, that she didn’t have a single close friend. When I opened Instagram, her feed was a wasteland. But the trending pages? They were plastered with glowing reviews of Belinda’s piano recital, interspersed with nauseatingly perfect paparazzi shots of Belinda and Carlton—the “childhood sweethearts.” Timing is everything. A notification popped up: Belinda had just posted. I clicked on it. It was a highly filtered, carefully angled selfie, her eyes looking tragically glassy. Caption: My big sister finally came home today. I gave her my bedroom. Even though Mom and Dad built this room just for me, it doesn’t matter. As long as she’s happy, I’m happy. As expected, the comments were a bloodbath of hatred aimed at Caroline. To the public, Caroline was just an ungrateful, adopted charity case. How could she ever compare to the delicate, talented biological heiress? I smirked. I went into the settings, changed the handle to my real, full name, and cracked my knuckles. Time to go unhinged. I replied to her post: “Gave it to me? Or did I have to pry it from your cold, manipulative hands?” Then another: “Wow, guys. Are there actually people out there who sob to their parents in the hallway and then immediately run to Instagram to play Mother Teresa?” My comments were instantly flooded by Belinda’s rabid fan base. With her “piano prodigy” label and her old-money aesthetic, she had the online pull of an A-list celebrity. “You are disgusting! A stray dog taking the real daughter’s room!” one user wrote. Is that what they thought? In a stellar mood, I replied to that comment. “I think you make a great point. She really is just a stray.” Because of the sheer controversy, my reply was algorithmically boosted to the top of the comment section. Within three minutes, Belinda deleted the entire post. Free from having to look at her curated, teary face, I bounced off the mattress and opened the walk-in closet. It was packed with Belinda’s clothes. An endless sea of pastel pinks, ruffled tulle, and infantile innocence. Absolutely nothing in my aesthetic. I had finally possessed a rich girl. I wasn’t going to sit around in rags. It was time to swipe some plastic. I swung the bedroom door open, entirely intending to go shopping, only to find Belinda marching down the hall toward me. We were alone. The mask was completely gone. Her face was contorted in sheer, unadulterated rage. She closed the distance and grabbed me by the collar of my cheap hoodie. “Caroline, what the fuck are you doing online?! Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?!” God, I wished her little internet fans could see her now. The high-class, untouchable goddess, snarling like a rabid dog. I raised a single brow, keeping my face infuriatingly serene. “What’s wrong? I was just telling the truth.” Belinda ground her teeth so hard I legitimately worried her veneers would crack. She shoved me backward, lifting her chin with that familiar, sickening arrogance. “Listen to me, you pathetic bitch. Don’t think for a second that just because you have their blood, you’ve won. I forced you out of this house once. I can easily throw you out again.” And then, without breaking eye contact, Belinda reached over to the console table, grabbed a heavy porcelain vase, and smashed it directly against her own forehead. She let out a blood-curdling scream as the porcelain shattered. Dark red blood immediately began pouring down her face. Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Margaret appeared at the end of the hall, her face draining of color. “Belinda! Oh my god, what happened?!” She dropped to her knees, pulling Belinda’s bleeding head into her lap, frantically inspecting the wound. But when Margaret looked up at me, her panic crystallized into pure hatred. “Mom, I’m fine,” Belinda whimpered, her voice frail and shaking. “Don’t be mad at my sister. She… she just wants to be a part of this family so badly…” I had to hand it to her; Belinda was ruthless. The gash on her forehead was deep. Just looking at it gave me a phantom headache. Margaret carefully helped Belinda to her feet, unleashing a torrent of venom in my direction. “How did I give birth to something as vile as you?! Hasn’t Belinda been kind enough to you?! Why must you destroy everything she touches?!” “You never should have come back! You should have just died in the gutter where you belonged!” This was Caroline’s biological mother. She finished screaming at me and turned, supporting Belinda’s weight, ready to rush her to the hospital. But why would I let myself get cursed out for free? “Did I say you could leave?” I asked, my voice dangerously soft. Margaret whipped her head around. “What more could you possibly want?! Caroline, I swear to God—” She never finished the sentence. Because I had already picked up the matching vase from the other side of the console table and smashed it across the other side of Belinda’s head. This time, the scream was real. She was genuinely terrified. I looked down at the blood streaming symmetrically down both sides of her face and finally gave them a bright, sunny smile. “You see?” I said. “Now it’s a matching set. Much prettier.”

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I traded my life as the secret heiress to the Whitmore empire—the crown jewel of Manhattan’s elite—to marry Christopher Whitmore. I thought love was enough. I thought he was my sanctuary. But the day before our wedding, a car accident shattered my world. When I drifted back to consciousness, the world was gone. Everything was black. I was blind. Struggling to move, I heard Christopher’s voice from the shadows of the hospital room. He was talking to his assistant, his tone as cold as a winter morning. “Don’t worry, sir,” the assistant whispered. “The driver and the surgeons have been taken care of. They won’t breathe a word. But… Madeline lived for her painting. Now that her corneas have been harvested for Miss Miller… what if she can’t handle the truth when she wakes up?” “She’s resilient,” Christopher replied, his voice devoid of the warmth I had cherished for years. “Not like Becca. Becca is fragile. She wouldn’t survive another day in the dark. Besides, Madeline has me now. I’ll provide for her for the rest of her life. I love her, but I cannot lose Becca.” There was a pause, a heavy silence that made my skin crawl. Then, his voice dropped an octave, raspy and merciless. “And tell the doctor to perform the hysterectomy while she’s under. If Becca sees Madeline carrying my child, it will break her.” The assistant hesitated, his voice trembling. “But sir… isn’t that too much? Madeline has been with you since she was eighteen. She gave up everything—” “Just do it. Don’t ask questions.” A wave of glacial horror washed over me. I lay there, paralyzed, my body shaking with a primal, silent terror. The man I had loved unconditionally, the man I had sacrificed my identity for, had been in love with the girl I’d spent years sponsoring—a charity case I’d plucked from the gutter. He wasn’t just choosing her. He was systematically dismantling me to make her whole. If you want to destroy me, Christopher, I thought, my heart turning into a shard of ice, you’d better make sure I never get back up. … Footsteps echoed in the sterile room. I forced my breathing to remain shallow, feigning unconsciousness. “Mr. Whitmore,” the surgeon’s voice was strained. “Madeline just underwent the cornea retrieval. She’s incredibly weak. If we proceed with the hysterectomy now, there’s a high risk of complications. She might not survive the—” “I’m paying you for results, not suggestions,” Christopher interrupted. “This is a directive. But understand this: if anything happens to Madeline on that table, you’re finished.” “Yes, sir,” the doctor stammered. I felt the heat of Christopher’s fingers against my cheek. His touch, once my only comfort, now felt like the crawl of a spider. His voice was a honeyed lie. “Maddy, it’ll all be over soon. I’ll be here when you wake up. I’ll protect you forever. I love you, baby.” My body betrayed me with a slight shiver. I felt a coldness on my face—he had stood up. Sensing I was coming to, his tone flipped back to a frigid command. “Where is the anesthesiologist? Get the surgery started. I want this finished before she fully regains consciousness.” I forced my eyes open. Nothing. Only the terrifying, suffocating void. The tears came then, hot and involuntary. I reached out into the empty air, my hands trembling. “I… I can’t see. Why can’t I see?” “Maddy, don’t panic. I’m here. I’m right here.” Christopher pulled me into a tight embrace. His large, warm hand stroked my hair, his voice dripping with performative heartbreak. “There was an accident… the doctors say the blindness is temporary. Just a trauma response. I’m going to take care of you, Maddy…” I felt him nod to someone behind me. “Sweetheart, you’re still so weak. You need to stay calm. Let the nurse give you a sedative—just some nutrients to help you recover.” If I hadn’t heard him earlier, I would have believed him. I would have thanked him. Now I knew the “nutrients” were the anesthesia that would allow him to rob me of my womanhood. I gripped his arm, my voice cracking with desperation. “No… Chris, please. No needles. I want to go home. Take me home, please…” Before I could finish, the bite of a cold needle pierced my skin. As the darkness deepened and my consciousness began to slip, I heard his voice, as gentle as a lullaby and as sharp as a scalpel. “Be a good girl, Maddy. Just sleep. When you wake up, everything will be fine. I’m right here.” A single tear tracked down my temple and vanished into my hair. My body was going numb, but the ache in my chest was screaming. I closed my eyes, and for a fleeting second, I saw the eighteen-year-old Christopher. I saw him crying by my bed after he’d taken a knife meant for me during a mugging in a rainy Chicago alley. I heard his teenage voice, raw and fierce: “I swear, Maddy, I will never let anyone hurt you again.” What a joke. The person who wanted me dead was the boy who had once saved my life. When I woke up again, I hadn’t just lost my sight and my lover. I had lost the future. I would never hold a child of my own. The room was silent, save for the rhythmic hiss of my own labored breathing. Then, the muffled sound of an argument drifted in from the hallway. “Madeline was involved in a horrific crash! I have to see her,” a woman’s voice cried out—high, sweet, and manipulative. “She’s been so good to me. Without her, I’d still be in that shelter. I owe her my life. Don’t stop me…” It was Becca Miller. Christopher, a man who tolerated no insolence from anyone, answered her with a tenderness that made my stomach turn. “Becca, listen to me. Your transplant was a success, but you’re still healing. The doctors said you can’t be walking around yet. Madeline is being looked after. You don’t need to worry about her.” I clutched the bedsheets until my knuckles ached. When had Becca gone blind? Why hadn’t I known? Suddenly, a sharp pain flared in the back of my hand. A nurse was shoving an IV needle into my vein with zero grace. “Stop moving!” she hissed, her voice dripping with irritation. She pressed down harder than necessary, a silent warning. “Just my luck. The other girls get to wait on the new Mrs. Whitmore in the VIP wing, and I’m stuck with the blind girl.” She muttered under her breath, loud enough for me to hear. “If Miss Miller likes me, maybe she’ll put in a word with Mr. Whitmore. Then I won’t have to look at pathetic losers like you anymore…” CRAASH! The sound of a glass vial shattering on the floor cut through her vitriol. “Who the hell do you think—” the nurse started, then choked. “Mr… Mr. Whitmore. I didn’t see you there…” “Get out,” Christopher’s voice was a low, terrifying growl. “Never show your face in this hospital again.” The familiar warmth of his presence surrounded me. I felt him sit on the edge of the bed, his body trembling slightly. He sounded shattered. “I’m so sorry, Maddy. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I should have protected you from her…” I forced a brittle smile onto my face. Compared to what he had actually done—harvesting my eyes and hollowing out my body—a rude nurse was nothing. But he acted as though he was devastated by it. He held me so tightly I could barely breathe. “I don’t want to stay here,” I whispered. “I want to go home.” His warm breath tickled my neck. “As soon as the doctors clear you, I’m taking you home.” He didn’t realize that the “home” I was thinking of wasn’t the glass-walled penthouse we shared in Chicago. It was the Whitmore estate in New York. Years ago, during a violent internal power struggle within my family, my father had hidden me in Chicago to keep me safe. I was cornered in an alley when Christopher intervened, taking a blade for me. In that moment, I fell in love with a hero. We went to college together. We were the “it” couple, the kind people whispered about. Then Becca appeared. I saw her eating plain bread in the library, a brilliant student with nothing to her name. I felt for her. I funded her tuition, her rent, her life. We became “best friends.” I never knew when they started sharing a bed. I never knew when he stopped loving me and started loving the girl I’d “saved.” Christopher tucked a stray hair behind my ear, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “Maddy, the wedding is still on for tomorrow. I want to bring you home officially. I want you to be my wife.” The wedding of my dreams had become a waking nightmare. “No,” I said softly, shaking my head. Christopher paused, clearly not expecting resistance. He took a deep breath, his voice patient. “I know you’re scared. But everything is arranged. No one will dare say a word about your condition. Becca will be your maid of honor—she’ll guide you through the ceremony.” He leaned in closer. “And our officiant? It’s Everett Whitmore himself. I promised you the most magnificent wedding in the country, and I’m delivering.” At the mention of my oldest brother’s name, my fingers dug into Christopher’s sleeve. My family didn’t know I was in the city, let alone that I was the one Christopher was marrying. I had cut ties after a massive blow-up over an arranged marriage years ago. I hadn’t spoken to Everett in forever. A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t imagine the look on Everett’s face when he saw me like this—broken, blind, and discarded. Suddenly, a weight settled on my arm, accompanied by a frantic, high-pitched voice. “Madeline! Oh my god, I’ve been so worried! I’ll be your eyes now, I promise. I’ll take care of you forever…” Christopher cut her off, a hint of guilt flickering in his tone. “Don’t say that, Becca. The blindness is temporary.” Becca caught the hint immediately. She leaned her head on my shoulder, her voice saccharine sweet. “Of course! I’m so silly. You’ll probably be fine by tomorrow morning. You’ll be the most beautiful bride. I’m so happy for you, Madeline.” It was this—this mask of wide-eyed innocence—that had blinded me to her venom for years. Later, the assistant brought the wedding dress. Christopher left, leaving me alone with Becca. “Madeline,” she whispered, her voice no longer sweet. “I heard you designed this dress yourself? It’s stunning. Too bad the measurements are a bit… loose on me.” The sound of fabric ripping was deafening in the quiet room. I knew she was shredding my masterpiece. “You’re blind, Madeline. A dress this beautiful is wasted on a corpse. You look much better in those hospital rags.” Suddenly, a searing, agonizing pain erupted in my eye sockets. It felt like liquid fire was being poured directly into my brain. I tried to scream, but the air wouldn’t come. I reached up to claw at the bandages, my hands shaking. Becca’s hand clamped onto my wrist like a vice. Her voice was a hiss of pure malice. “You think the accident blinded you? You’re so naive. I mentioned I liked your eyes, and Christopher didn’t even hesitate. He took them for me. But honestly? I don’t even want them. They feel dirty. I’d rather throw them to the dogs.” She leaned in, her breath hot against my ear. “Just leave, Madeline. If you stay, do you think he’d hesitate to kill you if I asked?” The chemical she’d splashed on my bandages continued to burn, but the pain in my soul was worse. Hearing the sound of heavy dress shoes approaching, Becca’s demeanor shifted instantly. She roughly wiped the liquid from my face and shoved my hand upward, making it look like I was striking out. Slap! My palm stung as it hit her cheek. A second later, a massive force shoved me back. My head hit the wall with a sickening thud, and my ears began to ring. “Madeline! Have you lost your mind? Why are you attacking Becca? She’s fragile!” I couldn’t see his face, but Christopher’s voice was vibrating with a rage I’d never heard. This was the first time in years he had ever raised his voice at me. “Apologize to her!” he roared. “Now! Or the wedding is off!” He knew how much I’d wanted this. For years, my only dream was to walk down the aisle and become his wife. I played my part. I bowed my head, looking like a chastened child, even as the stinging in my eyes pulsed. “I’m sorry, Becca,” I whispered, my voice trembling with actual physical pain. Christopher’s cold voice came from the doorway. “Eight o’clock tomorrow. The car will be here.” He had no idea. Tomorrow wasn’t a wedding. It was an escape. The next morning, the assistant arrived. As Becca had predicted, I was forced into the car still wearing my hospital gown. When we arrived at the venue, I felt Becca’s silk dress brush against my ankles. She draped a heavy lace veil over my head. She let out a cruel little laugh. “Happy wedding day, Madeline. You think the veil makes you a bride? It’s just to hide those hideous eyes so you don’t embarrass him.” Before she could say more, Christopher’s voice cut through. “Where is the dress? Madeline, are you doing this to spite me? You’re showing up to our wedding like this?” The assistant hurried me toward the dressing room. I started to peel off the hospital gown, my hands fumbling in the dark. Suddenly, a man’s voice—breathless and predatory—erupted from behind me. “A blind one, huh? But damn, she’s a looker. Stay quiet, sweetheart. Let Daddy show you a good time.” Hands grabbed me, tearing at my remaining clothes. I fought with everything I had, but I was too weak. I leaned forward and bit down on his arm as hard as I could. “You little bitch!” The man snarled, throwing me to the floor. His heavy breathing was right over me. My shirt was ripped open just as the dressing room door flew open. A woman’s sharp, staged scream filled the air. “Madeline! Oh my god! How could you do this on your wedding day? To Christopher?” The man over me stopped, huffing. “She threw herself at me,” he said loudly. “I didn’t realize she was the bride. I don’t want a blind woman anyway.” The room flooded with voices—condemnation, disgust, mockery. “I can’t believe the Whitmore bride is a blind slut!” “Cheating on him in the dressing room? What a tramp.” I huddled on the floor, clutching the rags of my clothes to my chest, my body shaking violently. Then, the room went dead silent. Heavy, deliberate footsteps approached. “Madeline. You betrayed me.” A hand clamped around my throat, squeezing hard. I could feel the heat radiating from Christopher’s body, the sheer force of his fury. “I… didn’t…” I gasped, the world spinning. He slammed me back against the floor, then grabbed my jaw, his fingers digging into the bone. “You know I hate betrayal more than anything. You must be truly insane to do this with a man like that. Fine. There will be no wedding today.” He stood up, his voice echoing with finality. “Take her away. Get her to the psychiatric ward at St. Jude’s.” As guards grabbed my arms, my heart plummeted. If I was locked in a psych ward, I’d never reach my family. I’d be buried alive. I fought back, tearing myself away and running blindly into the corridor. “Get her!” Christopher yelled.

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