During the Memorial Day long weekend, I decided to stay in the presidential suite of one of my own hotels. I had made the reservation a month in advance, intending for this to be a quiet, undercover inspection of our flagship service standards. When I arrived at the front desk, the girl behind the counter didn’t greet me. Instead, she spent a solid three minutes looking me up and down with a gaze that felt like a physical sneer. Finally, she popped her gum and told me flatly that the presidential suite was no longer available. She suggested I leave. I slid my sunglasses down, my brow furrowing. “I booked this room a month ago,” I said, my voice measured. “Are you saying the hotel failed to hold a guaranteed reservation?” She rolled her eyes with an insolence that was almost impressive. “Look, honey, ‘no’ means ‘no.’ If you’re having trouble processing the English language, maybe find someone to translate for you while you wait outside.” The words had barely left her mouth when her face underwent a terrifying transformation. She beamed, a saccharine, practiced smile directed at a man walking up behind me. He was dripping in labels, a gold Rolex gleaming on his wrist. “Mr. Thompson! So good to see you again,” she chirped, her voice dripping with artificial honey. “I made sure to save the last presidential suite just for you.” She slid a key card across the marble counter with a wink. Once he had strutted toward the elevators, she reached into a drawer, pulled out a thick stack of cash, and threw it onto the floor at my feet. “Now the room is officially gone,” she said, her voice dropping back into a cold rasp. “That’s your compensation. Pick it up and get out.” I didn’t look at the money. Instead, I focused on the name engraved on her brass pin: Amber. I pulled out my phone and dialed the regional director. When he picked up, I didn’t bother with a greeting. “Fire the receptionist named Amber. Immediately.” … I cut the call, my face a mask of cold fury. This “undercover visit” had been eye-opening, though not in the way I’d hoped. As the CEO of the Monroe Group—a luxury empire built on the promise of radical hospitality—I was horrified. To think I had a viper like this on my payroll. Amber didn’t look worried. She actually laughed, unpinning her badge and slamming it onto the desk. “Oh, you’re having me fired? Please. Take a good look at the ID number. Go ahead, keep complaining. See if anyone actually gives a damn.” She leaned back, radiating a toxic level of confidence. I narrowed my eyes. “I had a confirmed booking. You gave my room to someone else right in front of me. That’s a massive breach of contract. Where exactly is this arrogance coming from?” She glared at me, exasperated. “I gave you the money, didn’t I? What else do you want, a parade?” She shoved my ID back toward me. As I reached for it, she let go too early. It skipped off my fingertips and landed on the floor. “Pain in the ass,” she muttered. My hand stayed suspended in mid-air for a heartbeat. My expression went deathly still. Another receptionist, a younger girl, came scurrying over. She looked at the cash scattered on the floor, then at my face, and then shot a terrified glance at Amber. “I am so sorry, ma’am,” the newcomer whispered, her forehead beaded with sweat. “Maybe… maybe I can help you find a room at the boutique hotel next door?” She knelt down, frantically picking up the bills Amber had thrown. “Why should I leave?” I asked, my voice low and dangerous. “It’s a holiday weekend. Every decent hotel in the city is booked. My room was given away as a personal favor, I was insulted to my face, and then I was showered with cash like I’m some beggar. You think a referral solves that?” Amber snorted. “Humiliated? Give it a rest, lady. You’re dying to grab that cash, I can see it. You’re just holding out for more.” She leaned over the counter, her eyes flitting over my plain linen blazer. “I checked your history. You’ve never stayed with us before. You’re just some out-of-towner trying to look like a big shot on a budget. Why would I give a suite to a nobody when I can get a massive tip from a regular?” I was momentarily speechless. So that was the game. A secret “tipping” culture where the staff auctioned off rooms to the highest bidder. “Is this the new standard for five-star service?” I managed. “Prejudice based on perceived wealth?” The younger girl, whose badge read Mia, bowed deeply. “I am so, so sorry. We will process your refund immediately. I’ve gathered the compensation money—please, just take it. Don’t be angry.” Mia caught my eye and subtly shook her head. Her lips moved silently: Don’t push her. My suspicion flared. I pushed the money away. “It’s not about the money. It’s about the attitude.” Amber smirked, as if she’d won. She reached under the counter and pulled out more stacks of cash. “Right. It’s never about the money until it’s about the money. Is this enough? How about this?” She began flicking the bills at my face. One after another, the paper snapping against my skin. I didn’t even have time to duck. The sharp edge of a hundred-dollar bill sliced across my cheek, a stinging, hot pain. I reached out and grabbed her wrist to stop her. She yanked herself back with a snarl. “I’ve seen plenty of losers try to play ‘rich’ by booking a suite they can’t afford, but you’re the first one brave enough to lecture me on my job.” Dozens of bills fluttered around me like red autumn leaves. I took a deep breath, smoothing back my hair, and felt a flicker of something beyond just anger. Logic kicked in. That money on the floor was more than her monthly salary. She didn’t care about it. She wasn’t just a receptionist; she was someone who felt untouchable. “You’re an employee,” I said. “You rely on the guests you’re currently insulting. I could call the police for assault.” Mia leaned in, her voice a frantic whisper in my ear. “Ma’am, please, just stop. She isn’t who you think she is. Even the police won’t touch her. Just take the money and go.” I stared at Amber. A receptionist with “protection”? Amber saw the confusion on my face and her lips curled into a sneer of pure triumph. “You want to know why I can do whatever I want? Because in this hotel, I’m the Queen Bee. I am the management.” I almost laughed at the absurdity. “I don’t recognize you. Who gave you that title?” “What’s all this shouting about?” A man in a sharp suit, wearing a ‘General Manager’ tag, strode toward us. “Rick!” Amber pointed at me, her voice turning into a shrill whine. “This woman is making a scene. She’s mad about her room and now she’s threatening to call the cops. She’s just a scammer trying to shake us down.” She looked at me and mouthed a silent, filthy curse. I suppressed my rage, studying this ‘Rick.’ If Amber was the Queen, then I had a feeling I’d found the King of this little rotten mountain. I needed to see how deep this went. “Manager Rick, I assume?” I said. “Your receptionist gave away a pre-paid reservation, threw money at me, and physically assaulted me. I want an explanation.” Rick didn’t offer an apology. He gave a shallow, mocking bow. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Mistakes happen with bookings.” I felt a slight thaw. “And her behavior? How will the hotel handle that?” Mia shot me a look of pure pity. Rick straightened his tie and let out a short, condescending laugh. “Actually, ma’am, this is just how we do things here. If you don’t like it, don’t come back. But while you’re here, you’ll take what we give you. She gave you compensation. It’s on the floor. If you’re too proud to pick it up, that’s your problem.” I froze. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Furthermore,” Rick continued, stepping closer to use his height as a weapon, “you grabbed our employee’s arm and scratched her. If you don’t apologize to her right now, I’ll be the one calling the police.” Amber nodded, looking delighted. “Cousin, give yourself a raise next month.” Rick grinned. He reached out and jabbed a finger into my shoulder. “Apologize. Now.” I clenched my fists, my knuckles turning white. “She threw money in my face. I was defending myself.” “She was giving you a gift!” Amber shrieked. “The Queen gives, and you receive. That’s the way it works.” The sheer madness of it finally clicked. Nepotism. Corruption. “So, because you have a manager covering for you, you think you own the place?” I asked. Rick and Amber shared a laugh. Mia tugged at my sleeve again, her voice trembling. “Ma’am… Rick is only the manager because of her. She’s dating the Regional Director. And the Director is best friends with the CEO, Cynthia Monroe!” Amber’s chest puffed out. She looked like she was expecting me to faint. I felt a wave of cold, dark irony wash over me. She had no idea she was bullying the very person she was claiming as her shield. My “friend,” the Regional Director, had just told me on the phone he’d never heard of her. “I know the Regional Director,” I said quietly. “And he’s married.” Amber’s face went purple. She lunged across the desk and slapped me, hard. “Don’t you dare lie about him! He does whatever I say! He’s not married, you bitch!” I stumbled back, my hand flying to my stinging cheek. Rick, seeing things had gone too far, cleared his throat. “Alright, that’s enough. You don’t have to apologize anymore. Just pick up your money and get the hell out before I have security throw you onto the sidewalk.” My skin was burning. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. “You think you can just sweep this under the rug? Think again.” A message flashed on my screen from the Director: Cynthia, I found out the issue. I appointed an acting manager named Jordan Rivers. This receptionist might be his girlfriend. I’m heading there now. “I’ve called the police,” I said aloud. Before I could say another word, Rick snatched the phone out of my hand. “Police? We paid you! You’re done!” “This isn’t about money anymore,” I snapped. “You slapped me. You stole my reservation. You’re not getting away with this.” Amber grabbed my phone from Rick and smashed it onto the marble floor. “If you call the cops, you’ll ruin Jordan’s career! You’re a liar and a scammer, and I’m going to tear that tongue out of your head!” She vaulted over the counter, acting like she owned the damn state, let alone the hotel. She tackled me to the floor, her nails digging into my scalp as she yanked my hair. “Stop it!” A sharp, authoritative voice cut through the chaos from the entrance. I looked up, gasping for air, and felt a surge of relief. But then I looked closer at the man standing there. Jordan Rivers. The name finally clicked. Jordan was the charity case I had sponsored for seven years. Years ago, I’d found him—a brilliant student who couldn’t afford tuition. I paid for his Ivy League education, his living expenses, even his study abroad program in London. On the day he graduated, he had knelt in front of me, crying, swearing he would spend his life repaying my kindness. I had no idea he had ended up working at one of my properties. Jordan’s face was dark with anger. Amber immediately dissolved into a puddle of fake tears, throwing herself into his arms. “Jordan! This woman… I forgot to hold her room and she attacked me! Look at my arm!” She showed him some faint red marks that I’m certain she’d scratched into herself seconds ago. Jordan’s eyes snapped to mine. He didn’t see his benefactor. He saw a woman on the floor, looking disheveled and “ordinary.” I had never shown him the full scale of my empire; I had always kept our meetings humble, wanting him to focus on his studies rather than my wealth. “Cynthia?” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “What are you doing here? Trying to humiliate me at my job? You hurt my girlfriend—do you have any idea that assault is a crime?” He let out an agitated sigh. “Look, I said I’d repay the favor, but you don’t need to show up here acting like a billionaire. Booking a presidential suite? Really? How much did you spend to try and impress me?” I was stunned. The boy I’d raised was looking at me like I was a parasite. “The security cameras will show the truth,” I said, my heart turning to ice. “She’s the one who attacked me. I’m calling the police.” Jordan gripped his tie, pulling it loose. “Police will hurt the hotel’s image. Look, you’re only here because you saw I’m successful and you want to cash in on that ‘charity’ you gave me, right? Just tell me how much. How much to make us even so you’ll leave me alone?” He pulled out his phone, ready to Venmo me. Then he paused. “Actually, no. First, you apologize to Amber.” Amber smirked from the circle of his arm. “I want her on her knees.” Jordan looked down at me, his expression cold and kingly. “You heard her, Cynthia. Do it.” I let out a short, hollow laugh. It all made sense now. My hotels were thriving across the country, except for this one. It was because “King Jordan” was running a kingdom of cronyism and cruelty. “I gave you a future out of the goodness of my heart,” I said. “And this is how you repay me?” “You paid a few tuition bills,” Jordan snapped. “I didn’t even have enough pocket money to keep up with the rich kids. You think you own my life for that? Don’t be greedy.” Amber sneered. “She saw you got a job at the Monroe Group and tried to climb the ladder through you. Pathetic.” The fire in my chest finally roared to life. I dug my nails into my palms. “Fine. Let’s talk money.” “According to the hotel’s own ‘Bill of Rights’ for guests,” I said, stepping forward until I was inches from Amber, “a walk-on cancellation for a guaranteed reservation requires a full refund plus three times the room rate as compensation. Additionally, the hotel must provide a suite in a comparable five-star property, fully paid. My rate tonight was $8,000. That means you owe me exactly $40,000.” I looked her in the eye. “Is the trash you threw on the floor enough, Amber?” Rick and Mia gasped. Jordan’s face flickered with a moment of doubt. “Forty thousand?” Amber shrieked. “You’ve lost your mind!” She looked at Rick for confirmation. Rick looked at the floor, sweating. They were amateurs. They hadn’t even read the employee handbook. Jordan laughed, though it sounded forced. “How would you know the internal policies of a luxury hotel? Unless you’re a professional scammer. Cynthia, was the money you ‘donated’ to me just stolen from other victims?” He looked at me with genuine disgust. “Apologize on your knees, or I’m calling the cops to haul you away.” I laughed—a sharp, clear sound. I reached into my pocket and slammed my business card onto the marble desk. “I’m Cynthia Monroe. I wrote the damn rules. How could I not know them?” Mia picked up the card. Her jaw dropped. “She… she’s the CEO? Cynthia Monroe, the head of the Monroe Group?” Rick and Amber froze. “This was an unannounced inspection,” I began. Jordan made a clicking sound with his tongue, his face twisting into deeper hatred. He grabbed the card and ripped it into pieces. “Same name, that’s all. You think you could be the Cynthia Monroe? She’s worth billions. You barely scraped together a hundred grand for me over seven years. You’re a delusional freak.” The words died in my throat. The boy I’d cried for when he got his first ‘A’ was now looking at me with total contempt. Amber, emboldened by Jordan’s denial, lunged at me again. She shoved me back down to the floor. “Liar! You think a few grand makes you a queen? Get on your knees!” Jordan watched her hit me. He didn’t move. He actually smiled. Rick held me down by my shoulders. I felt the fury threatening to explode out of my skin, but I was outnumbered. “I am your CEO! Look at my phone! The messages are right there!” Mia scrambled to pick up the broken pieces of my phone, tears streaming down her face. But the screen was black. It wouldn’t turn on. A cold pit formed in my stomach. I had a multi-million dollar merger meeting to finalize online tonight. If I couldn’t get into my accounts… the damage would be catastrophic. Amber pulled out her own phone and started a livestream. “I’m going to expose this bitch. Not only is she a scammer, she’s a stalker trying to impersonate our CEO.” She shoved the camera in my face, then grabbed the collar of my blazer and tore it. I gasped, humiliated, as she exposed my torn camisole to the camera. People began to gather at the hotel entrance, peering in. “Look at this home-wrecker!” Amber shouted to the crowd. “Trying to seduce my boyfriend and steal hotel property!” Strangers began to point and whisper. “Disgusting,” an old woman muttered. “She looks like a common tramp. Strip her and show everyone what a liar looks like.” I fought back, but Rick’s grip was like iron. “I am not a mistress! They are assaulting me! Someone call the police!” My pleas were drowned out by the insults. Mia tried to use her phone to call for help, but Amber slapped it out of her hand. Amber laughed, showing me the screen of her livestream. The viewer count was skyrocketing. The comments were a blur of hate. Is that actually Cynthia Monroe? Getting beat up? The host says she’s a scammer who stole her boyfriend’s money. Burn her! I saw comments from people I recognized—employees at partner firms. If this is the CEO, I’m resigning tomorrow. How unprofessional. My company is pulling our contract with Monroe Group. This is a PR nightmare. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I had bitten my lip in the struggle. My eyes were burning red with tears of rage. Jordan, standing with his hands in his pockets, glanced at the comments. Suddenly, his face paled. “Wait… why are people saying she looks like the real CEO?” Just then, the heavy glass doors of the lobby swung open with a bang. A man burst through the crowd, his face ashen. It was Bill, the Regional Director. He took one look at the scene—the money on the floor, my torn clothes, the marks on my face—and he looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “Stop! Every single one of you, GET BACK! What the hell have you done to Ms. Monroe?!”

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I grew up in the kind of suffocating Appalachian rust-belt town where people spoke with a heavy, unpolished drawl. Keith Crawford treated me like a ghost he was paying to haunt his own bedroom. “When you’re with me,” he would command, his voice dropping to a glacial whisper, “don’t make a sound.” He hated my voice. The moment I opened my mouth, the illusion shattered. I sounded absolutely nothing like Cecilia, the untouchable golden girl he had spent his entire life pining for. But if I actually managed to stay perfectly silent, he’d find ways to punish me for it. Often, right at the breathless precipice of things, his hands would bite into my hips. “You might be a cheap imitation of her in every other way,” he’d murmur, his breath hot against my skin, “but you definitely know how to pull a man under in bed.” Then he’d ask, “Is this your master plan? F**k me so well I can’t let you go?” I’d just roll my eyes in the dark. I was working three jobs a day. When you hustle that hard, your “technique” naturally gets pretty flawless. 1 I had two other patrons just like Keith. One was Theo Gilbert, the gentle, universally beloved A-list actor. The other was a walking taboo. He shared Keith’s last name but sat a generation above him on the family tree—Keith’s uncle. The man rumored to play the stock market like a grand piano, Gideon Crawford, the youngest guest professor of finance at Kingsley University. All three men were roughly the same age, and all three shared the same agonizing heartbreak: Cecilia DuPont, the award-winning actress who had fled to Europe, leaving a trail of shattered egos in her wake. That was the only reason a girl like me could hold down three lucrative arrangements at once. Among them, Keith was the billionaire CEO, yet somehow the most remarkably stingy. He only required my presence once a month. The compensation? Thirty thousand dollars. A drop in the bucket—barely a tenth of my total monthly income. And for that, I had to jump through hoops. I had to bathe in specific oils, burn a certain incense, and cater to a laundry list of his ridiculous, neurotic demands. If his garbage personality wasn’t bad enough, his performance in bed was… fine, at best. Honestly, if I didn’t have the phantom ache of poverty etched into my bones—if I didn’t treat every dollar like a lifeline—I wouldn’t have bothered with him. I gritted my teeth and viewed it as a character-building exercise. When it was over, I selfishly rolled myself into the Egyptian cotton duvet. Keith, however, refused to let the moment end. He yanked me back against his chest, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “What, are you still sulking about what happened this afternoon?” “Bianca is just a kid. She broke a bracelet. Is it really worth all this attitude?” His tone was dismissive, laced with that lazy, post-coital softness. “I don’t even remember when I bought you that thing. Why are you so hung up on it?” Bianca was Keith’s spoiled younger sister. When she found out her brother was keeping a blue-collar canary in his gilded cage, she made it her personal mission to make my life hell. With my back turned to Keith, I let out a massive, silent eye roll. Keep flattering yourself, buddy. That vintage Cartier emerald tennis bracelet? Gideon had bought it for me at a Sotheby’s auction for three million dollars. If that dark, controlling psychopath found out his gift had been smashed into pieces, I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of psychological torture he’d inflict on me. When the bracelet shattered, I had practically shoved the certificate of authenticity into Bianca’s perfectly contoured face. But Keith, the absolute bastard, had intercepted it. “It’s just a cheap bauble,” he had said, waving it off. “I’ll buy you another one.” Gee, thanks. As long as he was willing to write the check, I didn’t care. It saved me the retainer fee for a lawyer. Sensing my utter lack of enthusiasm, Keith’s mood darkened. “Maeve, have I been spoiling you too much lately? Is that why you’ve forgotten your place?” Me: ??? Psycho. 2 What was my place? I was a nobody. A trailer-park kid who dropped out after middle school to scrape together money so my deadbeat brother could pay off his gambling debts and get married. If I hadn’t gotten lucky and bumped into Keith while picking up extra shifts at an upscale nightclub, I probably would have been married off to the sleaziest mechanic in my hometown by now. When I agreed to be his little secret, he laid down the law. “Don’t harbor delusions about things that don’t belong to you. Be a good girl, do as you’re told, and I’ll make sure you’re comfortable.” I had nodded so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. “Don’t worry about it! Knowing our place is a core value where I come from.” I pride myself on my professional ethics. Besides, the man only said I couldn’t fall in love with him. He never explicitly forbade me from finding other investors. Carrying a heart full of gratitude, I held onto Keith even after I secured my two premium upgrades. My master plan was simple: stockpile cash for a few years. Then, use that war chest to finally get my education. “Knowledge changes your destiny.” That phrase is practically grafted onto the DNA of every kid who grew up wearing hand-me-downs. For the past two years, I had been teaching myself the high school curriculum. Even right after getting railed, I didn’t miss a beat. I pulled out my heavy Princeton Review SAT prep book and started running drills. I was staring daggers into a multivariable calculus problem, my brain completely blank. Beside me, Keith let out a condescending scoff. “I don’t understand why a girl with your… limited capacity wastes her energy on this.” I was about to snap back, but he reached over, took my pencil, and slashed a single, elegant auxiliary line across the graph. Instantly, the entire equation unlocked in my head. “I got it!” I looked up at him, a genuine, unguarded smile breaking across my face. Keith blinked, clearly caught off guard by the brightness of it. He turned his head away and cleared his throat. “If you get stuck again, you can ask me.” He had been his prep school’s valedictorian. To him, this was elementary math. He couldn’t fathom what this foolish woman was so thrilled about. Seeing him offer an olive branch, I immediately pushed my luck. I crawled over, draped my arms around his neck, and gave him my best sultry gaze. “Does that mean I can see you more often?” I didn’t care about the romance; I just wanted a free Ivy-league tutor. Private tutors in the city charged eight hundred bucks an hour. Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed. Whatever he imagined I meant, it made a dark flush creep up his neck. He abruptly shoved me away. “Stop using these cheap, low-class tricks on me.” Fine, be a jerk about it. If he didn’t want to help, I’d just find someone who would. 3 Speaking of my first meeting with Theo Gilbert, I actually had Keith to thank for playing matchmaker. Back when I first became his kept woman, Keith purposely paraded me around high-society galas. The goal? To make the exiled Cecilia insanely jealous. While Keith’s juvenile tactics yielded zero results with his ex, they did allow me to learn that Cecilia had left behind an entire roster of broken-hearted admirers. I smelled a business opportunity. So, at one particular charity gala, I cornered Theo Gilbert while he was standing alone by the terrace. The man was tall, lean, and breathtakingly gorgeous. He possessed this warm, magnetic aura that effortlessly drew the entire room’s gaze. He was a movie star, after all. God, he was beautiful. I marched right up to him and delivered my opening pitch: “Hey handsome. Are you in the market for a stand-in?” Yes, my Appalachian roots made me brutally direct. Theo, clearly having never been propositioned with such bizarre bluntness, froze. I doubled down on the sales pitch. “If you’re not, no worries. I’ve got a list to get through.” Cecilia had plenty of orbiters; I wasn’t going to starve. When he didn’t speak for a solid ten seconds, I pivoted to leave, ready to hunt down my next target. Suddenly, a hand clamped down on my wrist. Theo’s eyes flickered with a dark, unreadable emotion. It took him a long time to finally speak. “Yes,” he said. And just like that, I secured my second job. Compared to Keith, Theo was a dream. Generous, gentle, an absolute saint. Every single transfer was exactly $52,000. He always asked for my consent before coming over, and he treated me with borderline reverent care. In bed, he catered to my every need. If I even shifted uncomfortably, Theo would immediately stop and check on me. There was only one catch: he always tied a black silk ribbon over my eyes. Because the one feature I absolutely didn’t share with Cecilia was her eyes. Hey, the customer is always right. If a guy this generous and considerate has a blindfold kink, who am I to judge? 4 Keith only summoned me once a month. That left me with an abundance of free time, all of which I dedicated to Theo. For convenience’s sake, I started hosting Theo at Keith’s sprawling penthouse. Keith never showed up unannounced, so it was the perfect way to save on hotel fees. I was quite proud of my little logistical triumph. But if you play with fire long enough, you’re bound to get burned. One evening, I had just kissed Theo goodbye at the elevator. Not twenty minutes later, the front door clicked open, revealing a heavily intoxicated Keith. It was the very first time he had ever broken our schedule. The air in the living room still hung heavy with the sweet, damp scent of sex, and I hadn’t even bothered to cover the fresh red marks blooming across my collarbone. Thank God Keith was practically blind-drunk. He didn’t connect the dots. Instead, he just stared at the bruises on my neck, his brow furrowing in irritation as his thumb dragged over the sensitized skin. “Are the mosquitoes getting worse?” He stumbled over to the nightstand, grabbed a bottle of soothing lotion, and began rubbing it into my skin. For a fleeting second, his expression mirrored genuine concern. “You need to be more careful. Why didn’t you plug in the repellant?” The lotion was cool against my flushed skin, but Keith’s fingers were burning hot. The atmosphere suddenly shifted, growing dangerously intimate. I caught his wrist. “Mr. Crawford, are you in a bad mood?” “Is it because of Cecilia?” Reading a patron’s emotional state is the baseline requirement for this line of work. I was terrified he was going to start making a habit of dropping by unannounced. Where I come from, getting caught cheating in the very bed your sugar daddy pays for is generally considered bad form. Keith didn’t like the question. He grabbed my chin, his grip tightening. “Don’t try to play mind games with me. Remember what you are.” He squeezed harder, and a small gasp of pain slipped past my lips. A second later, he shoved me back onto the mattress. The red marks on my collarbone made his eyes darken, and he leaned down, biting right over the same spot. “Stop using her face to do these cheap, dirty things.” Keith was urgent and vicious that night. Considering I was now working a double shift, my legs were physically trembling by the time morning rolled around. Seeing the state I was in, Keith actually looked a flicker of guilt. He reached into his tailored suit jacket, pulled out a velvet box, and tossed it onto the blankets. I opened it. A massive, blinding pink diamond stared back at me. I instantly recognized it. It was the ten-million-dollar diamond Keith had won at an auction a few weeks ago—the one he intended to give Cecilia for her birthday. Looked like the gift had been rejected. No wonder he was drinking. But what did I care? It was ten million dollars. Overjoyed, I practically launched myself at him, planting a massive kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Keith! You treat me so well!” Keith sat there, stunned, his fingers brushing the spot I had just kissed. He watched as I treated the diamond like a holy relic, carefully sliding it onto my finger. The corner of his mouth twitched upward before he forcibly yanked it back down into a scowl. “You make a fuss over nothing. So uncultured.” He didn’t buy it for me. But Cecilia didn’t want it, so the scraps fell to me. 5 After that night, Keith didn’t contact me for a long time. I honestly thought the gig was up and was already drafting plans to find a replacement for his time slot. Then, the incident with Bianca and the shattered bracelet happened. I had raised such hell about it that Keith was forced to step in and handle the mess personally. When I saw him, he seemed to be in a surprisingly good mood. His lips were permanently fixed two millimeters higher than usual. In bed that night, he was uncharacteristically gentle, whispering soft, coaxing things into my ear. But the moment a soft, contented sigh escaped my lips—just like it always did—he froze. We both stared at each other, eyes wide in the dark. Wait a minute. Has it even been ten minutes? We laid there in absolute, agonizing silence. I couldn’t tell if the look on Keith’s face was sheer humiliation or violent rage. Whatever it was, he clamped his hand over my mouth. “From now on, when we do this, you don’t make a sound,” he warned, his voice tight. “The second you open your mouth, you ruin her.” Oh. A wave of realization hit me. I was being too loud and it was ruining his concentration. Tears welling in my eyes, I nodded frantically. For the rest of the night, I bit my lip and stayed completely silent, but Keith couldn’t quite shake off the awkwardness of his early misfire. When a man is embarrassed, he tries to look very busy. Keith put in overtime that night, and he was unusually chatty. “You don’t hold a candle to her, but God, you know how to work a man in bed.” “Tell me, is this your grand strategy? F**k me so well I can’t leave you?” … By the time Keith got out of the shower, I had already fallen asleep clutching my SAT prep book. In the hazy space between sleep and waking, I felt someone carefully slide the heavy book out of my arms. I heard Keith whisper against my ear, “Maeve.” “I am never going to fall in love with you.” His words were cold and absolute, yet the way he pulled me flush against his chest was incredibly practiced and natural. I instinctively snuggled deeper into his solid chest and smacked my lips. Whatever you say, buddy. Your pecs are warm. 6 I slept in until noon the next day, long after Keith had left for the office. When I checked my phone, the very first notification was a $520,000 transfer from Theo. It was his bat-signal. I hummed a happy tune as I took my time getting ready, putting extra effort into my makeup. Honestly, out of my three patrons, Keith was the most emotionally taxing and stingy. Gideon was the most generous, but he was a terrifying, unpredictable predator. Only Theo was gentle, empathetic, and took genuine care of me. Out of the three of them, he was easily my favorite. Sure enough, by the time I glided down the stairs of the penthouse, there were four steaming dishes laid out on the dining table. All my favorites. Theo was just walking out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of soup. The moment he set it down, I practically threw myself into his arms. Theo caught me by the waist, his strong hands stabilizing me so I wouldn’t fall. “Careful, wild thing.” His words were a scolding, but his eyes were melting with absolute adoration. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in the crisp, clean scent of cedarwood. “It smells incredible. I’m starving.” Theo effortlessly lifted me and set me down on a dining chair. “The food is ready. Let me just clean up a bit and we can eat.” He reached back to untie the little pink apron he was wearing, but I hooked my arms around his neck and pulled him down. “Theo,” I whispered. “I’m not talking about the food.”

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It started during rehearsal, when I casually pointed out that Brianna, the undisputed golden girl of our class, was half a beat behind the music. The words had barely left my mouth before her childhood-best-friend-slash-not-so-secret-admirer charged across the room and shoved me down the risers in front of the entire theater company. “What the hell is wrong with you, Gina?” he yelled, pointing a finger an inch from my nose. “The choreographer didn’t say a word. Who do you think you are, picking her apart from the back row?” Before I could answer, he whipped around to face the director. “I say we kick her out of the showcase. She’s just going to drag Brianna down and wreck our pacing.” Right on cue, Brianna turned around, her eyes instantly brimming with glossy, photogenic tears. “Maybe we should just let Gina be the lead dancer,” she told the director, her voice trembling with manufactured grace. Her loyal watchdog practically bent over laughing. “Are you kidding me? I’ve known her since we were kids. The girl trips over her own feet walking down the hallway. If she can lead a dance routine, I’ll eat dirt on a livestream!” A chorus of snickers rippled through the cast. I didn’t say a word. I just slowly picked myself up off the linoleum, dusted off my leggings, and shot him a dead-eyed stare. “Cool. Grab a spoon.” 1 The absolute flatline of my voice sucked the air out of the room. One second, the studio was echoing with laughter; the next, you could hear a pin drop. Connor’s smug grin morphed into ugly, blotchy rage. He vaulted down the wooden steps of the risers, his hand snapping out to grab my upper arm. He leaned in, his jaw ticking. “Gina, can you just drop the attitude for once?” he hissed through his teeth. “I knew you were plotting something. I was wondering why you—of all people—suddenly volunteered for the showcase when you usually don’t give a damn about this stuff. But you had it all figured out, didn’t you? You just wanted to steal Brianna’s spot.” He sneered, his voice rising for the audience. “When did you get so toxic?” Just like that, he slapped a label on my forehead, bold and permanent, right in front of everyone. The entire junior class knew that Connor and I were the ultimate cliché: the inseparable neighbors, the childhood best friends. We practically shared a sandbox. And right now, his words were the hammer driving a completely fabricated narrative straight into my chest. The looks the rest of the cast were giving me shifted from amused to suspicious. “Connor, stop it!” Brianna pushed her way to the front row, her eyes beautifully red-rimmed. She tugged gently at the hem of Connor’s hoodie, playing the role of the wounded martyr perfectly. “Even if Gina was just being petty and spoke out of turn, you shouldn’t yell at her like that. Just apologize to her, and let’s forget the whole thing happened.” She bit her lip, offering him a sad, forgiving little smile. It looked like she was trying to calm him down, but anyone paying attention could see it was gasoline on a fire. “Why the hell should I apologize to her?” Connor flared up, right on cue. “She should be apologizing to you!” He jerked my arm, nearly making me stumble, and barked an order for me to apologize to Brianna in front of the entire room. Apologize? For what? “I stated a fact,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. I used every ounce of strength I had to rip my arm out of his grip. I let my eyes drift over to Brianna, who was still clutching her metaphorical pearls. “Brianna,” I said, the syllables crisp and cold in the quiet room. “Have you suddenly reached a level of artistic divinity where no one is allowed to give you a note? Because if you’re going to break down sobbing over someone telling you that you’re off-tempo, what are you going to do when you actually get on stage? If the audience doesn’t give you a standing ovation, are you going to throw yourself off the balcony?” “And you—” I didn’t wait to watch Brianna’s face flush a furious, humiliating crimson. I turned my attention back to Connor, whose expression had gone rigid. I didn’t know when the boy I grew up with had turned into this defensive, irrational stranger, but I hoped to God he hadn’t forgotten that I held grudges. He wanted to try and humiliate me? Fine. I’d hand it right back to him. I took a slow, deliberate breath. “I know you’re in love with her, Connor. It’s high school. A guy playing the white knight for the girl he’s obsessed with is a tale as old as time. But do me a favor and stop acting like a rabid dog barking at everything that moves. It’s not romantic. It’s pathetic.” A smirk ghosted across my mouth. I didn’t hide the venom in my voice, and the collective gasp from the theater kids was immediate. The gossip mill ignited in real-time. “Wait, Connor likes Brianna? Since when?” “Gina’s known him forever. If she’s saying it, it’s definitely true.” Dozens of eager, drama-starved eyes began ping-ponging between Brianna and Connor. Connor’s face went scarlet, then a deep, furious purple. “Gina! Shut the fuck up!” “Oh,” I said softly, tilting my head. “So you don’t like her, then.” 2 I let the silence stretch, watching Connor choke on his own rage. He was trapped. Brianna looked utterly panicked. The delicate redness around her eyes gave way to genuine alarm. She darted a look around the room, then visibly took a large step away from Connor. “Connor,” she said, her voice high and breathless. “I only see you as a classmate. Please don’t let people spread rumors like this.” Now it was Connor’s turn to panic. “Brie… I—” “Enough!” Ms. Valera, the showcase director, slammed her clipboard against a music stand. The sharp crack killed the murmurs instantly. She surveyed the room, her gaze finally landing heavy on me. “Gina,” she said, her voice strictly professional. “You said you’d be willing to try the lead spot. Fine. Get up here. Show me the sequence where you claim Brianna was off-beat. After that, the class votes. You cast your ballots, and we settle this lead dancer nonsense right now.” It was a brutally fair ultimatum. I didn’t hesitate. Under the weight of thirty whispering teenagers, I walked to the center of the floor, preparing to mirror the choreography Brianna had just butchered. As I brushed past Connor, he leaned in, dropping his voice to a venomous whisper. “I can’t wait to watch you humiliate yourself.” Humiliate myself? My eyes darkened. I ignored him, hit my starting mark, and nodded at Ms. Valera to cue the track. The bass dropped, and I moved. I didn’t have Brianna’s formal training, but my body remembered. I let the music pull me, sweeping my arms, snapping through the turns, mapping the geography of the stage entirely from memory. I mirrored the sequence flawlessly, hitting every single beat right in the pocket. When the music cut out and I froze in the final pose, I caught Connor in my periphery. His smugness had been wiped clean, replaced by blank shock. Brianna was staring at me, her hands clenched at her sides. For the first time, her eyes weren’t just annoyed; they were flooded with a stark, undeniable sense of threat. Ms. Valera’s eyes were shining. She nodded enthusiastically. “Not bad. Not bad at all! You’re a little rough around the edges, Gina, but your musicality—the way you breathe through the transitions—is incredibly grounded. Give you a few weeks of real rehearsal, and you’d be phenomenal.” She clapped her hands, turning to the risers. “Alright, no more drama. We vote now. Who leads the class performance for the Centennial Gala: Gina or Brianna? Raise your hands.” It wasn’t a shock. High school is a hierarchy, not a meritocracy. When Ms. Valera called Brianna’s name, nearly the entire room raised their hands. When my name was called, only two or three sympathetic hands went up in the back. Brianna exhaled a long, shaky breath, the tension leaving her shoulders. The triumphant gleam returned to her eye, masked quickly by a sickly-sweet, apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry, Gina,” she cooed. “It looks like the class just feels safer with me in the front. After all, the lead represents all of us. If someone messes up out there, it’s not just their own reputation on the line. But really, for an amateur, you did a great job.” A chorus of sycophants instantly chimed in to agree with her. Connor, emboldened by the vote, couldn’t resist a parting shot. “See? I told you. Who cares if you can string a few steps together? Flailing around with your amateur hour moves is just going to embarrass you.” Ms. Valera shot me an apologetic look, a silent plea not to take it to heart, telling me there would be other chances. Honestly, I wasn’t crushed. In a twisted way, Brianna wasn’t wrong. I was an amateur. I knew exactly where my limits were. I opened my mouth, ready to tell Connor exactly where he could shove his opinion, when a voice cut through the noise from the shadowy corner of the room. A voice that was clear, quiet, and impossibly sharp. “Actually, I think Gina danced it better.” Every head in the room snapped toward the sound. Even though I knew exactly who it was, even though my heart recognized the cadence of his voice before my brain did, my breath still caught when he stepped into the light. Kieran. “Kieran, what are you talking about?” Brianna’s smug smile shattered. She looked completely derailed. Kieran was notorious for keeping his head down and staying out of high school politics. He never spoke up. And he certainly never spoke up for me. “I said, Gina dances better than you,” Kieran repeated, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. He stepped out from the shadows of the lighting rig. “Her technique is raw. That means she hasn’t practiced this. She just watched you do it a few times and replicated it purely by sight. Are we really pretending that isn’t incredibly impressive?” He shifted his gaze to Brianna, pinning her in place. “You, on the other hand, have been drilling this exact eight-count for two weeks. Half a month, Brianna. Half a month, and you still can’t find the downbeat. You have absolutely no right to call anyone an amateur.” 3 It was a surgical strike. In two sentences, he systematically dismantled her golden-girl halo in front of everyone. Nobody argued. They couldn’t. Everyone knew Kieran had spent the last decade accumulating national dance titles like spare change. When he was fifteen, he’d received a rare, early-admission invitation from Juilliard—he was a legitimate, undisputed prodigy. But he treated dance like a private religion, refusing to compete for the school or monetize his talent. “Kieran, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Brianna’s voice cracked, tears welling up again—real ones this time, born of pure humiliation. Seeing the girl he worshipped crumbling, Connor turned his fury on Kieran. He glared at him, practically vibrating with hostility. But Kieran didn’t even flinch. He just looked back at Connor with the mild, detached interest of someone observing a bug. “Just stating facts,” Kieran said smoothly. “Unless you’re questioning my professional critique, Connor?” That was the kill shot. Brianna broke. She let out a choked sob, shot me a look of pure, unadulterated venom, covered her face, and ran out of the studio. “Kieran. Gina.” Connor spat our names like curses. “You’re both unbelievable.” He shot us one last murderous glare before sprinting out into the hallway after his queen. Despite Kieran’s endorsement, Ms. Valera looked torn. Brianna had put the time in, and stripping her of the role now would be a massive blow to her ego. But at the same time, a director knows raw talent when they see it, and she didn’t want to let me slip back into the shadows. Especially not after what Kieran said. It was true—I had never practiced that choreography before today. The dilemma resolved itself the very next morning. Brianna formally resigned as the lead for the class performance. “The administration just got word that the school board and a few local arts scouts are attending the Centennial Gala,” Ms. Valera announced to the room, clapping her hands for attention. “Because of that, they’ve added a special duet slot to the program. They’re hosting an open, school-wide competition to cast it. Brianna, being on the pre-pro track, has decided to focus entirely on auditioning for the duet. So, the class lead is open.” She looked right at me, a hopeful spark in her eye. “Gina? Are you willing to step up?” I had originally provoked the situation out of pure spite, just to knock them down a peg. But now, with the spot practically handed to me on a silver platter? I wasn’t going to turn it down. When I walked into homeroom later that day, the air felt thick. The whispers followed me to my desk. Before I could even drop my backpack, Connor stormed through the classroom door, his face a thundercloud. He planted his hands on my desk, leaning over me. “What the hell did you say to the counselor and the director, Gina?” he demanded, his voice echoing off the cinderblock walls. “Why are you suddenly the lead?” “Have you completely lost your mind?” he continued, not letting me speak. “Do you just get off on stealing things from other people? Look in a mirror! So what if you can memorize a few steps? You’ll never be as trained as Brianna!” He was shouting now. The entire homeroom had gone dead silent, watching the trainwreck. “You’re going to take your little YouTube-tutorial dance moves and embarrass yourself, and you’re going to take the rest of us down with you!” “Yeah, Gina, seriously, it’s pathetic. Stop stealing other people’s spotlight!” “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Turns out you’re just a thief.” The Greek chorus of Brianna’s orbiters chimed in from the back row, their faces twisted in identical sneers. And right in the center of them sat Brianna herself. She was biting her lip, softly murmuring, “Guys, don’t be mean,” but her eyes betrayed her. They were bright, cold, and triumphant. “Get up,” Connor ordered. “We are going to the principal’s office right now, and you are going to tell them you’re giving the spot back to Brianna.” Before my brain could even register the threat, his hand clamped around my wrist like a vice. He yanked upward, dragging me out of my chair. “Connor, let go!” I scrambled to find my footing. “I said let go of me, do you hear me?!” His grip was bruising. He was literally dragging me down the aisle in front of thirty people. My voice cracked, a humiliating tremor of genuine pain breaking through. “Connor, it hurts!”

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After the catastrophic car accident that ended my previous life, I woke up to find myself back in the humid, electric summer following high school graduation. And I wasn’t alone. My best friend, Belle, had come back with me. In our first life, she was the “other woman”—the shadow that loomed over my marriage, the one who eventually shattered my family. This time, she swore things would be different. She looked me in the eye and promised she would never touch my life, never look at my husband again. She lived that promise with a performance that earned my trust. She chose a college on the opposite side of the country, thousands of miles away. She married young, started a family, and lived a life that seemed entirely separate from mine. Reassured, I let myself fall for Damian. Our life together felt like a hard-won victory. I thought I had finally escaped the nightmare of double betrayal—no more depression, no more losing a child, no more mental collapse. I thought the cycle was broken. Then came the holiday weekend this May. A colleague of mine caught her husband cheating and dragged me to a hotel, hysterical and desperate for a witness. I held up my phone, ready to record the evidence for her, but my movement caught a reflection in the hallway mirror. At the far end of the corridor stood Damian. The man who was supposed to be three states away on a business trip. And the woman standing before him, laughing as she toyed with his tie, was Belle—the woman who had sworn a blood oath never to ruin me again. It turned out that the tracks of destiny hadn’t shifted at all. We were still heading for the cliff. … 1 I don’t remember how I got down the stairs or how I managed to follow them to their room without being seen. My mind was a blur of static. Why was Damian here? He was supposed to be in Chicago for a week-long conference. He’d kissed me goodbye at the door, his suitcase in hand, smelling of the expensive cologne I’d bought him for his birthday. And Belle. My “sister.” The girl I’d shared a bunk with in the foster system when we had nothing but each other. She was already unbuttoning his shirt before the door even closed. The shock was a physical weight, a nausea that rose in the back of my throat. I ducked behind a corner just as Damian glanced back. “Belle, I’ve missed you so much,” his voice drifted down the hall, thick with a hunger I thought was reserved for me. “I told Janet the conference was mandatory. She didn’t suspect a thing. I have the whole week. It’ll be like a mini-honeymoon.” Belle giggled, a sound that used to represent safety to me. “Perfect. As long as she stays in the dark, I don’t care what lies you have to tell.” The door clicked shut. My feet felt like they were made of lead as I crept toward the room. The door wasn’t fully latched, leaving a sliver of an opening. I saw rose petals scattered on the carpet and the jagged remains of a discarded dress. Then came the sounds—the heavy breathing, the soft moans—stabbing into my ears like shards of glass. My hands shook so violently I had to grip the wall to stay upright. This was a carbon copy of the moment from my first life—the day I found them together in the back of a car. I reached for the handle, wanting to burst in, to scream, to burn it all down. But I stopped. I thought about the necklace Damian had given me that morning. A little something to keep me close while I’m away, he’d whispered, tucking it under my collar. Every word out of his mouth was a calculated performance. Every sacrifice Belle had made—the distance, the fake life—was just a long con to keep me complacent while they built a world behind my back. I wiped my eyes, turned around, and walked away. Downstairs, my colleague Cassie was a wreck. She’d found her husband in bed with some twenty-something, and the scene had been explosive. “Janet, how can people be so cruel?” she sobbed, her mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks. “I’ve been with him since we were seventeen. I gave him everything!” She grabbed my hand, looking for an anchor. “I’m divorcing him. I have to. God, Janet, you’re so lucky. Damian is one of the good ones. He’s so devoted to you and Sally. He works himself to the bone just to give you guys a better life. I wish I had what you have.” I forced a smile. It felt like my skin might crack. She didn’t know. Nobody knew. Damian was exactly like her husband. He just had a better script. “Without him,” I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else, “I can still give myself and Sally a good life.” I wasn’t going to give him a chance to “fix” this. Not this time. 2 I went home to our small, perfectly curated apartment. Every piece of furniture, every framed photo, represented a memory I now wanted to incinerate. I remembered when we first moved in. The place was a shell, and we’d sat on the floor and cried with joy. We’d worked double shifts, skipped meals, and fought for every square inch of this home. Damian had always looked after me. He’d cook elaborate meals, insisting I eat even when I was stressed. When I gained weight from the comfort of his care, he’d hidden the scale. “Janet, you’ve been through enough,” he’d say, kissing my forehead. “I don’t want you worrying about your body. I just want you happy. I’m going to work harder, buy us a house with a studio for your painting and a big yard for Sally. Just wait.” I had believed him. I thought we were the success story. I thought Belle had her own life. I walked toward Sally’s room. She was three, sleeping soundly, her thumb tucked near her mouth. Then, I heard a voice from the bathroom. My mother-in-law, Martha, had been staying with us to help with Sally. I paused by the door, hearing the low murmur of her phone conversation. “Damian, when are you going to bring Max over to see me?” she whispered, her voice warm with a grandmother’s affection. “I love the video calls, but I want to hold my grandson.” A cold chill settled in my bones. Max. “And listen,” Martha continued, “be careful when you’re out with Belle. Make sure you check in with Janet so she doesn’t get suspicious. You know how she gets.” Then, a voice came through the speaker—Belle’s voice, sweet and cloying. “I’ll bring him soon, Martha. He loved the toys you sent! He asks about his grandma all the time.” Max was their son. Martha’s grandson. I stumbled back, my shoulder catching the edge of the hallway console. A glass vase tipped over and shattered. Belle had told me four years ago that she’d had a baby with her “husband.” That meant Damian had been living a double life since before Sally was even born. And Martha—the woman who called me the daughter she never had—had been the architect of the lie. Martha rushed out of the bathroom, her face pale. “Oh, Janet! My goodness, you’re bleeding!” I looked down. A shard of glass had sliced my wrist. The pain was distant, muffled by the roar in my head. She grabbed the first-aid kit, her wrinkled hands trembling as she cleaned the wound. “You have to be careful, honey. This could get infected. Don’t you do a lick of work for the rest of the week, you hear? Damian would be heartbroken if he saw you like this.” She looked up at me, a practiced, motherly smile on her face. “You didn’t… hear anything strange just now, did you? My phone was acting up.” I was an orphan. I’d spent my life looking for a mother, and I thought I’d found one in her. She’d always taken my side. She’d told me I was the strongest woman she knew. It was all a lie. I was just the wife who kept the household running while they played family with the “real” heir. “I just walked in,” I lied, my voice flat. “I didn’t hear a thing.” She exhaled, the tension leaving her shoulders. “Good. I was worried the neighbors’ cat was bothering Sally.” That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat in the dark and searched for the man Belle had claimed was her husband—Damon. She’d sent me photos of their “wedding” years ago. He was a musician, edgy, nothing like Damian. I found his social media. He was living in Austin with another woman. When I messaged him, he didn’t hold back. Look, I’ll be straight with you, he wrote back. Belle and I were never married. She paid me five grand to pose for those photos and sign some fake papers. It was a gig. I heard she’s been with some guy from back home for years. That’s probably your husband, isn’t it? 3 Everything clicked into place with a sickening finality. Belle had never let go. She hadn’t moved away to protect our friendship; she’d moved away to create a theater where she could have Damian without me seeing the curtain. They had orchestrated a decade-long deception just to have their cake and eat it too. I spent the dawn hours drafting a divorce agreement. My eyes were burning when Sally toddled into the room, holding my phone. “Mommy,” she whispered, pointing at a social media reel. “The cherry blossoms are so pretty. When is Daddy coming home to take us to the park?” She’d been asking for weeks. Damian had promised her a trip to the botanical gardens as soon as he “returned” from his trip. She didn’t know the blossoms were already falling, dying in the spring rain. Then, she gasped, holding the phone closer to her face. “Mommy, look! Is that Daddy? He’s wearing the hair tie I gave him!” I felt my heart stop. I looked at the screen. It was a local “Day in the Life” video posted by a travel blogger at the park. In the background, clear as day, was Damian. A little boy—Max—was perched on his shoulders. Damian was holding Belle’s hand, looking at her with a radiance I hadn’t seen in years. They looked like a commercial for the perfect American family. He wasn’t too busy for the cherry blossoms. He just had another daughter’s-worth of memories to make with someone else’s son. I gripped my hands into fists, gently taking the phone from Sally and turning it off. “Sally,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Let’s go to the park ourselves, okay? Just us girls. We can see the flowers and find some ice cream.” Her face fell. “But… are we waiting for Daddy?” She was three. Her world was a tripod—Mommy, Daddy, her. I was about to kick one of the legs out. Before I could answer, Damian’s face appeared on my phone. A video call. Sally lunged for it, hitting ‘accept.’ Damian was a master. He was sitting in a coffee shop, his laptop open, stacks of folders surrounding him. He’d even used makeup or stayed up late to create dark circles under his eyes to look exhausted. If I hadn’t seen him in that hallway yesterday, I would have reached through the screen to comfort him. “Daddy!” Sally cheered. “Are you still working?” “Almost done, peanut,” Damian said, his voice dripping with fatherly warmth. “I’m working hard so I can come home to my two favorite girls. Remember to take care of Mommy, okay? Remind her to take her vitamins—she always forgets.” He looked at me through the camera, his expression softening into that fake, devoted gaze. “Is Mommy missing me? Is she eating enough?” Sally giggled. “She was crying earlier! She misses you so much!” He smiled, a perfect, handsome lie. He’d been with his other family minutes ago, and here he was, playing the doting husband. 4 I took the phone from Sally. “Damian. When exactly are you coming back? I have something important to tell you.” He leaned in, looking excited. “A surprise? Janet, don’t tease me. I’m already dying to get back to you. I might try to catch an earlier flight.” “Just get here,” I said. “Everything is ready.” I hung up before he could say another word of “love.” Then, I called a lawyer a colleague had recommended—someone known for being a shark in custody battles. The next day, I took Sally to the park. The cherry blossoms were fading, the ground covered in a shroud of white and pink petals. Sally didn’t care; she ran through the trees, laughing. I turned my head for a split second to grab a water bottle from my bag. Then I heard the scream. I spun around to see Sally on the ground near a stone planter. A jagged scrape ran down her arm, bleeding freely. A boy stood over her, pointing and laughing. “You’re so stupid!” the boy yelled. “I barely touched you and you fell like a baby!” I froze. I knew that face. It was Max. I rushed over, scooping Sally into my arms. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s got you.” Sally was trembling, trying not to sob. My blood began to boil, a cold, predatory heat. Max wasn’t done. He stepped forward and poured a bottle of blue tempera paint right over Sally’s white Sunday dress. He grinned, a cruel, entitlement in his eyes that he could only have learned from his parents. “Now you’re an ugly baby! Cry more!” The rage hit its peak. I grabbed his wrist—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to stop him. “Who do you think you are? Is this how your parents taught you to treat people?” “Let go of me!” he screamed. “My daddy and mommy are right there! They’ll get you!” He looked toward a nearby bench. “I’m Max! My grandma says I’m the prince! You can’t touch me!” The realization was a punch to the gut. While I was struggling through Sally’s infancy, Martha had disappeared for a week, claiming my father-in-law had a stroke. Damian had told me to stay home, to rest. Now I knew—Martha had been gone to help Belle with him. Their “prince.” “Fine,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “Call your parents. I’d love to meet them.” “Mommy! Daddy!” Max shrieked. Belle’s voice rang out first. “Max? Honey, what happened?” Then Damian’s voice, closer now. “Max, buddy, come to—” He stopped dead. The color drained from his face so fast I thought he might faint. Belle stood behind him, her eyes widening in pure horror.

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For five agonizing years, I withered away in the dim, stale air of an illegal basement casino, serving drinks and swallowing my pride, all just to scrape together enough for a ticket out. Today, I thought I had finally made it. But as I stood there, my mother met my gaze with a smile so twisted it made my skin crawl. With a sharp snap, she broke my debit card in two. “Moving out?” she purred. “Did you actually believe we were broke, Casey? This basement… it’s the only place you’ve ever belonged.” My father stood beside her, his eyes like chips of ice. When he spoke, the words were serrated, designed to draw blood. “We go back to the estate every night, you know. We watched you struggle on the security feeds. It was a necessary performance—to make sure Bess understands she’s the only daughter who truly matters.” A violent tremor took hold of me. My throat felt like it was filled with broken glass; I couldn’t even force out a sob. From the shadows behind them, my brother, Ted, let out a sharp, derisive snort. “I even hand-picked the ‘guests’ you had to serve,” he said, his voice dripping with contempt. “I needed your reputation dragged through the gutter so you’d never have the standing to bully Bess again. Learn your place, Casey.” “Why?” I finally choked out, my voice a thready whisper. “I’m your flesh and blood. I’m your biological daughter…” “Shut it!” My mother finally looked at me, but there was no recognition in her eyes, only a deep-seated loathing. “In my heart, Bess is my only daughter. If I’d known you’d be such a burden, I never would have brought you back from that foster home in the first place.” Without another word, the three of them turned and walked out, slamming the heavy steel door behind them. I stood frozen in the damp silence, staring toward the direction of the main house. Through the tiny, high-set window, I saw the lights flicker on—a warm, amber glow that felt like a slap in the face. I retreated to my corner of the basement and reached under my thin pillow. I pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills I’d been hoarding for five years. I didn’t hesitate. I swallowed them all. They would never know that from the very first day they sold me to this place, I had never planned on leaving this sickening world alive. … I am dead. My body lies on the concrete floor, a pale, greyish husk. A thin trail of dried blood stains the corner of my mouth. My eyes are half-open, pupils blown wide and vacant. It has been three days. No one has come for me. Meanwhile, the estate next door is ablaze with light. Bursts of laughter drift through the vents, and like a moth to a flame, my spirit finds itself drifting toward the sound. They are having dinner. My parents are swirling expensive Pinot Noir in crystal stems. On the table sits a spread of lobster bisque and pan-seared scallops. Bess pushes a spoonful around her bowl before waving it away, untouched. A phantom ache of hunger gnaws at me. I realize that in the forty-eight hours before I took the pills, I hadn’t eaten a single bite. A guest had complained I was too slow with his scotch, and as punishment, I was forced to kneel in the hallway for hours—no food, no water, no standing until he gave the word. Bess pouts at my mother, her voice a practiced honey-sweet trill. “Is Casey still not back yet? It’s been three days. Maybe I should go apologize to her?” Ted drops his fork with a heavy thud. “Apologize? For what? She doesn’t have the right to be angry.” “We just played a little trick on her,” he continued, leaning back. “It’s not like she was actually suffering. I told the manager at the den to look after her, to make sure she was fed and watered. We’ve probably just spoiled her too much.” “But still…” “There is no ‘but,’ Bess,” my father interrupted, his brow furrowed as he set his glass down firmly. “You’re too kind-hearted. It was a wake-up call, a way to show her where she stands. If she wants to throw a tantrum and play truant, fine. Let her stay away forever for all I care.” My mother glanced toward the basement with a look of pure derision. “Better if she doesn’t come back. After how she treated you when she first arrived? This is just karma.” She paused, pulling out her phone. With a few taps, she sent a fifty-thousand-dollar transfer to Bess. “Go buy that Chanel bag you wanted, sweetie. Since Casey’s ‘savings’ are sitting in my account anyway, consider it a gift from her.” My ghostly eyes flew open. Fifty thousand dollars. Five years of work. That was the money I had earned through forced smiles and broken spirits. It was the money I had saved while being forced to drink until my stomach bled, every cent of which I had transferred to my parents because they told me they needed it to save our family from ruin. It wasn’t a debt. It was Bess’s fun money. My chest tightened with a sob that couldn’t escape. When they first brought me back to the city after my grandmother died, they told me the business had collapsed. I dropped out of college, desperate to help. But the moment I complained about Bess’s reckless spending, I was “sold” to the gambling den the very next day. For five years, the abuse I endured was a constant needle against my nerves. I wanted to die a thousand times, but the thought of “saving” my family kept me breathing. It was all a lie. Ted’s phone suddenly lit up. My name flashed on the screen. He smirked. “See? Here comes the plea for mercy.” He hit the speakerphone with an air of smug triumph. But the voice on the other end wasn’t mine. It was a man, cold and professional. “Hello, this is Officer Winston from the 4th Precinct. Am I speaking with a relative of Casey Whitman?” My heart—or what was left of it—clenched. I watched them, waiting for the crack in their armor. “What is this?” Ted asked, his posture stiffening. “A body was discovered this morning. We’ve identified her as Casey Whitman. We need a family member to come down and identify the remains.” The room went deathly silent. Ted froze, then bolted toward the door. But Bess’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “This has to be a scam,” she said, her voice trembling perfectly. “Casey just posted on her Instagram story ten minutes ago.” She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god… did I just out her? I wasn’t supposed to be following her secret account.” My mother immediately pulled up the app. Her face contorted with rage. “That little brat! She’s faking her own death to extort us? How did I raise such a monster!” The screen showed a photo of “me” in a mirror, sticking my tongue out and flashing a peace sign. The caption read: Once I scam enough cash out of the old folks with this ‘death’ stunt, it’s straight to the Maldives for me. My father clutched his chest. “She’s a goddamn animal!” I stood there, invisible and screaming. That’s not me! It was an AI-generated deepfake, a composite Bess must have made. But no one could hear me. Ted dialed my number over and over, but it went straight to voicemail. He roared into the phone, “Casey! Listen to me! This is your last chance. If you aren’t home by tomorrow morning, don’t ever bother showing your face at this house again! You’re dead to us!” The next morning, my mother went to the precinct. She didn’t go to identify a body. She went to make a scene. “My daughter isn’t dead! This is a scam and I want to report you for harassment!” she screamed, slamming her fist on the intake desk. The young officer looked bewildered. “Ma’am, we have the body. We’ve confirmed the identity. Please, just look at the photo…” My mother slapped the photo out of his hand before he could even turn it over. It landed face-down on the tile—a polaroid of my grey face, flecked with white foam. “Stop lying! We’ve seen her social media! She’s alive and well, and if you keep helping her play this sick joke, I’ll sue this entire department for defamation!” “But the DNA matches…” the officer stammered. “I don’t care about your DNA! I’m telling you, Casey Whitman is alive, and I am finished with her!” She turned on her heel, her stiletto heels clicking sharply against the floor like gunfire. I drifted behind her, my spirit trembling with a sorrow so deep it felt like I was dissolving. Mom, I’m right here. I’m dead. Why won’t you just look at me? By noon, Ted got a call from the gambling den. “Mr. Whitman, Casey hasn’t shown up for her shift in four days.” When Ted arrived at the basement, his eyes landed on the “decor” in the hallway. There were photos pinned to the wall—staged, degrading photos of me being handled by men, my clothes torn, my dignity stripped. I shrieked, trying to tear them down, trying to block his view, but my hands passed through the paper like smoke. Ted’s hands were shaking. He grabbed the manager by the throat. “How dare you do this to my sister! You’re dead!” Security guards swarmed in. Bess arrived moments later, breathless. The manager didn’t blink; he just straightened his tie and sneered. “Mr. Whitman, we didn’t ‘do’ anything. She took those photos herself. She was our top girl. She told everyone she had a… ‘condition.’ Said she needed five men a night just to feel something. It was all her, man.” I saw the corner of Bess’s mouth twitch upward for a fraction of a second before she masked it with a sob. “Ted, don’t be mad. We have to find her. Maybe she… maybe she had a reason for all this?” “A reason? What possible reason?” Ted slammed his fist into a desk. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a terrifying red. “Casey… you are absolutely disgusting.” Bess hesitated, then whispered, “Actually, I noticed she was acting strange a while ago. She… she even tried to hit on my boyfriend.” Liar! I screamed. I hadn’t even met her boyfriend. But it didn’t matter. Bess was a master of the smear campaign. “Ted, why does she hate me so much? If I leave the family, will she come back? Is it my fault?” Ted pulled her into a protective embrace. “No. This has nothing to do with you. She chose to be trash. She chose the gutter.” Bess looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. “I have an idea on how to find her. If we… if we put those photos online? She’d have to come back and explain herself, right? She’d have to apologize.” Ted was silent for a long time. “Do it.” Behind them, my mother’s voice rang out. “Don’t even bother blurring the face. I want the world to see what she’s become. I want to see how much shame she can actually handle.” She reached out and covered Bess’s eyes. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you out of here. You shouldn’t have to see such filth.” I drifted in the air, hollowed out. The moment those photos hit the internet, I knew it was over. My face was clear, unblurred, broadcast to the world. The comments sections were a feeding pool. Isn’t she supposed to be a college grad? How pathetic. Once a whore, always a whore. Typical trust fund brat gone wild. Bess played the victim perfectly. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I forgot to click the blur tool. I was just so upset…” My mother gripped her phone, then pulled Bess closer. “It’s fine. She brought this on herself.” My father didn’t even look. He just turned off his screen. “We should have never brought her back.” Then, my mother’s phone buzzed. It was the funeral home. “Is this the Whitman family? We need a signature for the cremation of Casey Whitman. If you could just—” “Will you people stop it!” my mother screamed into the receiver. “Casey, how far are you going to take this ‘death’ act? Since you don’t care about your reputation, neither do we! From now on, you are nothing to us!” The voice on the other end turned ice-cold. “Ma’am, are you actually her mother? Who fakes a suicide? If you don’t believe me, I’ll have the precinct email you the full autopsy report. Now.” My mother slammed the phone down, her eyes rimmed with red. “How can she be so reckless? What did we ever do to her?” Ted spoke up, his voice uncertain. “Mom… maybe I should go to the funeral home. Just to be sure.” “You will stay right here! She’s trying to force us to crawl to her. If you go, she wins!” My father put a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Forget about her. From this moment on, we only have one daughter. Bess.” The next day, the Whitman Group issued a formal press release disowning me. But then, Ted received an email. It was a digital copy of the death certificate. His pulse quickened. “Another fake? Casey, you’re really committed to this.” He printed it out, tore it into pieces, and drove to the funeral home anyway. “I’m looking for Casey Whitman. Tell her to get out here now!” The receptionist looked at him with a mix of pity and horror. “You’re finally here. Please, sign the release. Do you want the ashes, or are you taking the body?” Ted froze. “How much did she pay you? To forge these documents? I’ll have you arrested. I’ll have this place shut down!” The woman snapped. “I don’t know what kind of family you are, but the police brought her in. You want to see her? Fine. Go see.” She led Ted to the cold room. She walked over to a stainless steel gurney covered in a white sheet. Ted’s hand trembled as he reached for the fabric. But before he could pull it back, his phone chimed. From Bess: Ted, look what Casey just sent me! It’s a deepfake of me with another man. She’s threatening to leak it unless I leave the house! What do I do? Ted’s hand dropped from the sheet. “Don’t panic. I’m coming home.” He turned and ran, never seeing what was under the shroud. I watched him go. The “leaked” video was a file Bess had made herself. She sat in her room, deleting the creation software and smiling. “Oh, Casey,” she whispered to the empty room. “You really were just… extra baggage.” Back at the house, Bess was “hysterical.” Ted held her as she sobbed. “It’s okay. If she wants to play dirty, we’ll destroy everything she ever loved.” They tore through my old backpack. Hidden at the bottom, wrapped in a scrap of red silk, was the silver locket my grandmother had left me. It was the only thing I had left of her. I lunged forward, trying to scream, trying to push Ted away. With a look of pure coldness, Ted threw the locket onto the marble floor and crushed it under his heel. He recorded a video for me, his voice a low growl. “Casey, this is just the start. Every little trinket that old woman left you… I’m going to find them and I’m going to burn them.” The red silk lay on the floor. On it, my grandmother had embroidered a few shaky words: For my little fish. May you always find your way to the deep blue. My mother looked at it and scoffed. “So melodramatic.” She walked to the kitchen, clicked on the gas stove, and dropped the silk into the flame. It vanished in a puff of black smoke. My spirit shook with a rage so violent my vision turned red. I felt tears of blood prickling my eyes. How dare they? How dare they touch her things? I reached into the blue flame, but I felt nothing. I was a ghost, a witness to my own erasure. Bess watched the silk burn, a tiny, secret smile playing on her lips. “Thank you, Ted. For standing up for me.” My mother patted her cheek. “Let’s not talk about Casey anymore. Today is your birthday, Bess. Let’s not let her ruin your party.” The gala began that evening. Bess stood on the stage, the picture of grace. “I’m standing here tonight because I want to ask for my sister’s forgiveness,” she told the crowd. “Casey, I know you’re hurting. But our parents love you. Please, just come home. If you want me to leave, I will. I just want our family to be whole again.” My parents stood by her side, beaming. They looked into the cameras. “Casey, enough is enough. Look at your sister. Look how much more mature she is than you.” The live-stream comments were a wildfire. Bess is an angel. Casey is a brat. She grew up in some trailer park with a senile grandmother, what do you expect? The old lady is dead, right? Good. One less trashy person in the world. A scream of agony built in my throat, choking me. Suddenly, a comment flashed across the screen in bright red. Casey Whitman isn’t ‘refusing’ to come out. She’s dead. The internet erupted. Ted saw it and frowned. “What do you mean, dead?” The doors to the ballroom burst open. A squad of police officers entered, led by Officer Winston. Bess stepped forward, her face a mask of concern. “Officers? Has something happened? Has my sister committed a crime? Is she in trouble?” Ted’s face darkened. “If she broke the law, take her. We won’t bail her out this time.” He laughed, though his fingers were white-knuckled. “I guess she finally played herself into a cell.” Officer Winston didn’t look amused. He pulled a folder of photos from his bag. The photos showed me. Cold. Pale. Foaming at the mouth. Beside them was the coroner’s report. Cause of death: Acute toxicity. Overdose of sedative medication. Suicide. The officer’s voice cut through the music like a blade. “The girl you’re talking about took her own life over a week ago.”

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A month ago, my girlfriend went on a business trip with the man she’s spent years pining for—her “one who got away.” When they returned, I realized that in their eyes, I’d become a different person entirely. In the past, when she handed my hard-earned projects over to him, I’d be so livid I’d want to resign on the spot. Now? I was proactively drafting his proposals, working late with a smile. When she intentionally sabotaged a design I’d pulled three all-nighters for just so he could secure the year-end bonus, I didn’t fight to prove my innocence like I used to. Instead, I quietly took the fall, accepting whatever “punishment” she deemed fit. I even went as far as staying calm when she proposed a radical promotion to make him the Managing Director. I didn’t just bite my tongue; I handed over my own shares, telling her she could distribute them however she liked. Rachel was baffled by the change. She couldn’t understand why her once-rebellious boyfriend had suddenly become so compliant. Toby, on the other hand, was gloating. I overheard him whispering to her, “See? I told you. Give him the cold shoulder, make him realize he’s about to lose you, and he’ll fall right back into line.” Rachel looked at him like he’d just solved a complex riddle. She laughed, called me a “good boy,” and even mentioned a promotion. Then, she did something unprecedented: she told me I should finally propose to her. But she seemed to have forgotten one tiny detail. During our long cold war, she had already signed my resignation papers. And more importantly, I’d checked out of this relationship a long time ago. That day, Rachel—my soon-to-be-ex—tossed a thick stack of files onto my desk. Her voice was like ice. “This proposal is urgent. I want it finalized before you leave today.” She turned and swept away before I could respond. The moment she disappeared around the corner, my colleagues swarmed my desk like vultures. “Isn’t that Toby’s project?” “That one’s a nightmare. The requirements are impossible, and the data is a mess. There’s no way that gets done by tonight—not even by tomorrow night.” “Rachel is way too biased toward Toby. Why is she letting him pawn his work off on everyone else?” 1 I listened to them, my face a mask of indifference. I knew they weren’t actually on my side. They just enjoyed the drama. Everyone in the office knew that Rachel, the CEO, was my girlfriend, yet she blatantly favored my rival, Toby. She’d broken company protocol to install Toby as a department manager. She’d even taken a multi-million dollar project—one I’d spent a month landing and another month of sleepless nights preparing—and handed it to him on a silver platter. When I’d protested back then, Rachel had insisted on a public vote to “fairly” decide who should lead the project. Those same colleagues now pretending to pity me had all voted for Toby. Later, they’d whispered excuses about being intimidated by Rachel’s authority, telling me I should just “be the bigger person” and help the new guy out. This had happened a dozen times. As they continued to whine on my behalf, I didn’t storm into Rachel’s office to demand an explanation like I usually did. I simply reached out and took the project files. The vultures stared, their mouths hanging open, ready to stir the pot further. But then Rachel stepped back out of her office. The group scattered instantly, scurrying back to their cubicles. Rachel seemed to be in a rare good mood. She ignored the office politics and tapped my desk. “Leave the finished draft on my desk when you’re done.” I nodded. She spun on her designer heels and walked away without a backward glance. She was wearing a meticulously applied face of makeup and a skirt that was just a bit shorter than her usual professional attire. I didn’t need to be a psychic to know she was headed to a “dinner meeting” with Toby. It had been like this for years. It started when I caught her and Toby exchanging “goodnight” texts that felt a little too intimate. When I questioned her, she called me petty and insecure. To spite me, she hired Toby. She claimed it was “exposure therapy” for my jealousy. She’d take him to every social event, sit next to him at company dinners, and even reach over to wipe a stray crumb from his lip in front of everyone. If I got angry, she gave me the silent treatment. If I apologized, she’d use it as an opportunity to lecture me—often in front of others—about how I lacked the “emotional maturity” a man in my position should have. For a long time, I actually believed her. I looked inward, wondering if I was the problem, if I was truly too narrow-minded. Then I discovered the truth: Toby wasn’t just a friend. He was the ghost that had haunted our relationship since day one. He was the “one who got away” from her college years. All that talk about “desensitizing” me was just a smokescreen so she could keep her old flame close without feeling guilty. Even if I hadn’t seen those texts, she would have found another excuse to bring him into our lives. Since they returned from their “business trip,” the air between them had shifted. The lingering glances, the shared drinks, the late-night tennis matches—it was all more blatant now. But the best part? I didn’t care anymore. Five years of devotion was a long time, but I was finally at the end of the script. This farce was over. By the time I finished the proposal, the office was a tomb. I checked my phone and saw Toby had posted a series of photos on Instagram. The background was a high-end steakhouse. Romantic candlelight. A table for two. The photo showed Rachel’s elegant hands using a knife and fork to cut up a steak on Toby’s plate. The caption: “Steak always tastes better when the CEO cuts it for you.” The comments were flooded with coworkers gushing about how “sweet” they were. Toby was leaning into it, bragging in the replies about how Rachel—who usually never drinks—had shared a bottle of red wine with him to “celebrate his success.” Speculation about their relationship status was rampant. Rachel didn’t deny any of it. She just commented: “You deserved it.” One oblivious intern asked when they were getting married. Rachel replied with three dots; Toby replied with a “winking” emoji. A few months ago, this would have sent me into a spiral. I would have called her, she would have screamed at me for being “controlling,” and I would have spent the night on the couch. Instead, I sent her a brief text: Proposal finished. Left it on your desk. Heading home. It wasn’t until I pulled into my driveway that I saw her reply. “Jordan, it’s Toby. Thanks for the hard work on the project, man. I’ll buy you a beer sometime.” Rachel was the kind of person who never let her phone out of her sight. If I even glanced at it to check the time, she’d accuse me of invading her privacy. Now, she was letting Toby read our messages and reply for her. I let out a dry, hollow laugh. The hierarchy of her heart was clear. When you actually matter to someone, the rules are different. Strangely, I felt a profound sense of peace. Things that used to feel like the end of the world now felt like a light breeze. Emotions can change, but hard work and self-respect are the only things that don’t betray you. I opened my calendar. While Rachel and Toby were playing house on their “business trip,” I had quietly submitted my resignation via the company portal. Just as I’d suspected, she was so distracted by him that she’d digitally signed and approved the “administrative batch” without even looking at the names. I had three days of transition left. Then, I’d be a ghost. I pulled up a contact I hadn’t touched in years—my old mentor from a prestigious research institute in Europe. Back when I graduated, I was a rising star in the field of robotics. I had a standing offer at the institute, a high salary, and a brilliant future. But when Rachel told me she wanted to start her own company and needed someone she could trust at her side, I didn’t hesitate. I walked away from my dreams to build hers. My mentor had begged me to stay, but I was “in love.” What a fool I’d been. The call connected. I explained my situation, expecting a lecture. Instead, the old man just sighed. He told me he’d kept tabs on me and had been waiting for this call. “Are you sure this time, Jordan?” he asked. “I’m sure,” I said, my voice steady. “My resignation is already processed.” “Resignation? What resignation?” The sharp voice came from the doorway. I turned around to see Rachel standing there, her face flushed from the wine, her eyes narrowed in confusion.

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I had been married to Declan Pierce—New York’s most elusive billionaire heir—for three years, standing in as the understudy for my own sister. Our daughter was the miracle he had spent those three years desperately praying for. Then, last week, my sister won Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Standing at the podium, gripping her Oscar, she suddenly went off-script and dragged up ancient history. She stared right into the camera and said she and her first love once shared a child, but tragically, he was still entirely in the dark about it. Everyone in our elite circle knew the truth: six years ago, she was the runaway bride who left Declan standing at the altar, humiliated and broken. And everyone knew that when I nearly bled out giving birth to our daughter, Declan had climbed the grueling, icy steps of St. Jude’s Sanctuary upstate—falling to his knees in prayer with every single step, walking thousands of paces just to beg a higher power for my survival. The media, smelling blood and scandal, whipped into a frenzy, digging up the ghosts of Giselle and Declan’s past. When the paparazzi cornered him, Declan just offered a chilling, dismissive smile and muttered, “She’s out of her fucking mind.” He told a reporter she had played too many tragic heroines, couldn’t stand seeing real people happy, and publicly stated he wouldn’t entertain an interview about her until she was in the ground. Anyone who actually knew Declan Pierce knew he was now utterly, hopelessly obsessed with his wife, and that he worshiped the ground our daughter walked on. But no one expected Giselle to actually swallow a lethal handful of pills. And on the night the news of her suicide attempt broke, Declan Pierce—without a single warning sign—slashed his own wrists. 1 The news of Declan’s suicide attempt came from his chief of staff. “Mrs. Pierce, it’s critical. We need you at the hospital to sign the surgical consents.” It seemed the cuts were deep. A Romeo chasing his Juliet into the dark. The summer night was humid, suffocating. Today was my twenty-fourth birthday. Just this afternoon, Declan had sent me a barrage of photos: the massive floral arrangements, the custom jewelry, a wooden music box he’d spent three months carving by hand. And two boxes of strawberry-flavored condoms. Through the screen, his face still held that boyish charm, though fatherhood had sharpened his jawline, giving his devastating good looks a mature edge. He had smiled at the camera, looking absolutely wicked. “Baby, just looking at you makes me weak. You’re going to have to take very, very good care of me tonight. Promise?” I promised. “I booked our favorite place. Do not be late, Joanna.” He had feigned a haughty arrogance. “When have I ever been late?” I replied. On any normal day, I wouldn’t have cared if he was delayed. I would have assumed a board meeting ran long. But earlier that evening, Giselle had sent me a text, dripping with arrogant confidence. He just hasn’t seen me in a while, Jo. Dogs are simple creatures. The Pavlovian response just needs a little trigger. I sat at our reserved table in the Michelin-starred restaurant, watching the dinner crowd cycle through three different turnovers. From romantic fantasy to hollow waiting. I had even, to my own profound shame, prayed to a God I barely believed in. Let me win. Just this once. Please let me win. But I lost. Declan probably didn’t even realize how pathetic his excuse sounded. And Giselle’s tactic of “accidentally” pocket-dialing me? Even more pathetic. Through the line, I heard it with sickening clarity. The wet, rhythmic sounds. The frantic, punishing collisions. Since taking over his family’s empire, very few things could make Declan Pierce lose his iron-clad composure. But over the phone, he sounded like a feral, starving dog, growling low in his chest. “I hate you. God, I fucking hate you, Giselle. Why did you come back?!” Then, I heard my sister murmur my name. Instantly, the audio tightened. Declan’s voice turned lethal, laced with pure rage. “Don’t you ever fucking mention my wife.” “If your mouth is that bored, keep it shut.” 2 At eight o’clock that night, Declan finally called me back. “Baby, the merger is still a mess. It’s probably going to cross midnight. Wait for me? Please wait for me.” I had once told Declan a secret. Whenever I was completely, overwhelmingly heartbroken, I would force myself to stay awake until midnight. Because when the clock struck twelve, it was a new day. And in a new day, the pain of yesterday didn’t have to exist anymore. But at midnight, the carriage turns back into a pumpkin. There are no fairy tales. When I didn’t answer immediately, his tone shifted to a strange, frantic anxiety. Like he was desperate to anchor himself to something. “Joanna, please. Just tonight. I need you to wait for me.” Through the baby monitor, I could hear Poppy blowing soft little milk bubbles in her crib. She had my fingers in her tiny grip. “Is Poppy asleep?” Declan asked, his voice cracking slightly. “Tell her Daddy is coming home soon.” I thought to myself: Even the unluckiest person in the world can’t lose every single bet for decades straight, right? “Okay, Declan,” I whispered. “I’ll wait.” That was eight PM. Now, the antique grandfather clock in our penthouse struck twelve. America’s newly crowned Best Actress had swallowed a bottle of pills in her Hollywood hills mansion. And the ruthless CEO of Pierce Global, Declan Pierce, had “coincidentally” slashed his wrists, rushed to Mt. Sinai in critical condition. The top ten trending topics on Twitter were a bloodbath. Wedged right in the middle was a hashtag bearing my name: #DeclanAndJoannaCenturyOfLove. Century of love. That was what he called it after I survived my hemorrhaging during childbirth. Declan had poured millions into restoring the historical St. Jude’s Cathedral, just to have a massive marble cornerstone engraved with our initials at its entrance. During the year it became a trend to buy celestial bodies, he bought a star and named it after me. It was placed right in the heart of the city, at a massive planetarium exhibit where millions of New Yorkers passed by. Declan had held my hand and said, “I want every person who walks by, and every celestial body in the universe, to know that we are going to spend a century together.” Fuck him. Fuck all of it. 3 Walking from the penthouse down to the private garage, my phone never stopped vibrating. Most were unknown numbers. Journalists, hungry for the bloody details of a high-society tragedy. They wanted to know why, less than an hour after the golden girl of Hollywood took pills, the untouchable Declan Pierce followed suit—especially when his medical records showed zero history of mental illness. It started a year ago. When Giselle won her first major award, a Vanity Fair reporter asked if she had any regrets in life. She smiled tearfully and said, “My first love doesn’t know this, but… we almost had a baby together.” At that time, I was only ten days postpartum, recovering from a massive hemorrhage. Declan had walked miles on his knees up that mountain to pray for me, and practically moved heaven and earth to drag a retired surgical genius out of seclusion to save my life. Declan had a lingering injury in his leg from his youth. The grueling climb ruined it entirely. For a year, he walked with a noticeable, heavy limp. When the media dug up Giselle and Declan’s past, they shoved microphones in his face, desperately trying to spin a narrative of lingering, star-crossed love. Declan didn’t give them the satisfaction. He looked dead into the cameras and smirked. “She’s sick in the head.” “The woman has a rap sheet of exes longer than Fifth Avenue, didn’t you do your research? If she wants PR, she picked the wrong target.” “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go home and kiss my wife and daughter.” The media retreated. The backlash against Giselle was severe. My parents summoned me to their Upper East Side townhouse, and my mother slapped me across the face. “Declan is worth billions now! Your sister has the awards, but she lacks the commercial backing. She needs the PR!” my mother hissed. “A little fake nostalgia doesn’t hurt anyone.” I stood my ground. “I asked Declan. He refuses to play along.” That night, Declan had cried. He had wreaked havoc inside my body, then softly, reverently kissed the faded surgical scar on my lower abdomen, his eyes wet and shining in the dark. “Baby, how could you even think of handing me over to someone else?” he whispered, voice trembling. “We made a daughter together.” My parents, of course, never believed he loved me. “Declan used to treat your sister like she hung the moon,” my father scoffed. “You think he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing by punishing her publicly?” I used the exact words Declan had drilled into my head to fire back at them: “You said it yourself—that was the past. Declan is my husband now. I come first.” And our daughter comes second. Yet, a year later. The joke was on me. Wow. So this was destiny. I had fought so hard, built so much, but I was still no match for the phantom of his first love. 4 On the drive to the hospital, neon lights blurred through the windshield. Waiting at a red light, my mind was a chaotic static. My ears rang with the unhinged, screaming voicemails my parents had left me. “We never should have brought you back!” “If your sister hadn’t begged us to be kind to you!” “You were missing for years—who knows what kind of trash raised you!” “Declan belonged to Giselle first! You’ve always been a jealous little bitch. If she dies, you better go to hell with her…” The truth was, Giselle couldn’t handle losing. People always romanticize the path they didn’t take. She told me she regretted running away. She begged me to give Declan back. “He only married you because you look like me, Jo,” she texted. “You’re just a knockoff.” Declan saw that text. He was usually so gentle with me, but that day, his fury was terrifying. “Joanna, are you a fucking doormat?!” he yelled. “Someone is trying to steal your husband, and you’re just sitting there!” When it came to fighting for love, I suffered from learned helplessness. I didn’t know how to fight. Declan dragged me into his chest, burying his face in my hair. He snatched my phone. “Watch and learn,” he muttered. He typed out a reply and hit send: Declan says if you have the guts, come for him yourself. Get help. After sending it, he looked down at me with a triumphant, arrogant smirk. Beneath the billionaire suit, I could still see the reckless boy he used to be. “Joanna, remember this. If I just wanted a stand-in, I would have married you the day she ran out on me.” “I wouldn’t have waited until I realized you were the one, and I wouldn’t have spent two whole years chasing you.” It was true. After Giselle bailed on the wedding, Declan drowned in whiskey and self-pity. He looked like a drenched, abandoned stray. When the families decided I would take her place to save the merger, I was secretly thrilled. I had loved him in silence for years. I went to his apartment. He pinned me against the wall, kissing me with a punishing, bruising desperation. But when he pulled back, his eyes were dead. Ice cold. “You want to fuck?” he slurred. “Giselle’s little understudy?” He knew I had too much pride. He knew I’d run. We were engaged, but I retreated into my shell, playing the quiet, obedient fiancée. As time passed, I realized I needed to protect my own heart. I tried to move on. I started dating a guy from my grad program. But that day, Declan snapped. He tracked us down, dragged me out of the hotel, beat the guy to a pulp, and threw me into the back of his Maybach. When the world blurred and we crossed the line in the backseat, he didn’t say Giselle’s name. He groaned my name. In this vast, empty world, the list of people who would firmly, unconditionally choose me was tragically short. I thought Declan was one of them. But right now? Right now, the grief was so heavy it felt like it was crushing my ribs. Tears pooled, making the streetlights refract into blinding stars. The ringing in my ears grew deafening. So much so that when the massive freight truck ran the light and barreled directly toward my driver’s side door… I didn’t even hit the brakes. I just sat there, hands resting lightly on the wheel. Quietly accepting the absurd, pathetic end to my story. 5 I never expected that waking up at eighteen again was something that could actually happen to me. In five days, my sister would run away from her wedding. And then, with the lofty grace of a queen tossing a bone to a peasant, she would hand Declan Pierce over to me. “I’ve seen the way you look at his photos, Jo. You must be losing your damn mind with happiness right now.” I sat in my quiet, cramped bedroom and looked around. From the cheap jewelry on the dresser to the clothes in the closet—every single piece was a hand-me-down from Giselle. She debuted in Hollywood at sixteen. By twenty, she was a rising starlet. Brands threw PR packages at her. Whatever she found ugly or off-season, she tossed into my room. “What are you standing there for?” Giselle’s sharp voice snapped me back to reality. “Are you deaf? I told you to give me back that studded Valentino bag.” She had called it tacky a month ago. But a major pop star just wore it in a paparazzi shot, the price skyrocketed, and suddenly she wanted it back. I should have learned this lesson years ago. Everything she gave me only came with usage rights, never ownership. Once an item belonged to her, it was hers forever. Declan included. “Are you fucking deaf?! I said get the bag!” She shoved me hard. I stumbled backward, my hip slamming into my desk. Actresses who look perfect on camera are usually starving and miserable in real life. Deprived of food, their resentment bleeds out onto everyone around them. A sharp, biting pain flared in my palm. I lifted my hand. Blood. My desk was covered in my crafting tools, and my palm had slammed directly onto the tip of an X-Acto knife. Fresh, bright blood welled up, thick and warm. The color of a poisoned rose. It didn’t hurt. Not really. Not compared to the agonizing, crushing pain of being pinned inside the mangled steel of a car wreck, waiting to die. Suddenly, a gust of wind seemed to sweep into the room. My wrist was seized by a trembling, familiar hand. The scent of cedar and citrus hit me. “Does it hurt? Jo, talk to me. Does it hurt?” Declan’s voice cracked, thick with a frantic, suffocating panic. “Let me… let me fix it.” He was twenty years old right now. In his most arrogant, reckless, foolishly romantic era. I glanced past him to see Giselle rolling her eyes. “I told you not to come over, Declan.” “You hopped the gate and almost broke your leg. Don’t play the victim and cry to me about it.” With that, she spun on her designer heels and marched downstairs. 6 But Declan didn’t run after her. His head remained bowed, his trembling fingers awkwardly trying to press a cotton pad against my palm. The blade had gone deep. Blood kept seeping through the white cotton, refusing to clot. Declan’s hands started to shake violently. Then, his shoulders began to heave. He was so close I could hear his ragged, uneven breaths. “Let me do it,” I said quietly, pulling the soaked cotton away. More blood spilled out. Suddenly, Declan let out a harsh, visceral gag. He slammed one hand against the wall to steady himself, while his other hand gripped my wrist so tightly it bruised, his knuckles turning white. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, staring at him. He lifted his face. He was deathly pale. He shook his head slowly. “Nothing… just… I’m a little dizzy from the blood.” When our eyes met, his breathtaking face was contorted in absolute agony. A mix of terror, devastating grief, and the violent shock of a near-miss. His eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears. “You’re alive. You’re alive…” he whispered, like a prayer. He raised both hands, hovering them just an inch away from my cheeks, desperate to touch me but completely terrified I would shatter. Dizzy from blood. Gagging. The twenty-year-old Declan Pierce was ruthless, violent, and loved a street fight. He grew up boxing and throwing punches to establish dominance. He was never afraid of blood. Only the twenty-six-year-old Declan Pierce was afraid of blood. Because in the delivery room, he had watched my heart monitor flatline. He had watched a massive pool of crimson soak through the stark white hospital sheets beneath my lifeless body. Ever since that night, the sight of red sent him into violent panic attacks. He would involuntarily break down in tears. Once, during a major board meeting, a slide showed a massive red pie chart. He suffered a panic attack, abandoned his executives, and drove at a hundred miles an hour just to find me. He buried his face in my lap and sobbed, ensuring I was still breathing. “I can’t do Christmas this year, Joanna,” he had wept. “Everything is red. Every day I wake up terrified I’m going to lose you. I can’t take it anymore.” So. He came back too, didn’t he?

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “453338”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I had been married to Donovan for almost five years, and tomorrow was our anniversary. To surprise him, I had taken time off from the hospital, boarded a five-hour flight from Boston, and landed in Manhattan where his private equity firm was headquartered. The moment I stepped through the revolving glass doors of his building, my phone buzzed against my palm. I had been pulled into a new iMessage group chat. The screen immediately lit up with a flurry of activity. Row after row of messages flooded in—“Welcome to the inner circle, sister-in-law!”—and a sweet warmth bloomed in my chest. We had been doing long-distance for three years. He always said the firm was bleeding him dry, that the deals were relentless. Our weekends together had dwindled to nothing; the last time I felt his arms around me was five months ago. I hadn’t wanted to spend this anniversary alone in an empty house, so I flew out. I had been terrified he might have forgotten the date entirely in the haze of his work, but looking at my screen, I realized I’d been a fool. He hadn’t forgotten. He had orchestrated all of this. Then, the screenshots started rolling in. His college buddies, the partners at his firm, were dropping massive wire transfer receipts into the chat. But as I squinted at the screen, the breath caught in my throat. The account name wasn’t mine. The money was being wired to an account under the name Sweet Briar. Brad sent the first receipt: $100,000. The memo read: Welcome to the family. Tyler followed with a $200,000 transfer. Welcome to the club. Jax blew them out of the water with half a million. Welcome, sister-in-law. … 1 The final notification was a transfer from Donovan. He had wired this Sweet Briar an even one million dollars. Time fractured. The air in the lobby turned to glass in my lungs. My hands shaking, I tapped on Donovan’s contact, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard to demand who the hell this woman was. But before I could type a single letter, the screen shifted. I had been removed from the group. It happened so fast it felt like a hallucination. “Miss Gwendolyn? What are you doing down here?” The voice jerked me out of my paralysis. The receptionist, who had been aggressively ignoring me a moment ago, was now practically glowing with deference as she rushed toward a woman standing just a few feet to my left. “Mr. Warner was very clear,” the receptionist cooed. “You’re five months along now. You really shouldn’t be on your feet.” I turned my head. Standing near the sleek marble front desk was a young woman in a flowing, cream-colored silk dress. Her baby bump pushed gently against the fabric. She was impossibly young, her profile soft and delicate, her eyes crinkling into crescents when she smiled. She was beautiful. And she looked exactly like me, back when I was twenty-two. “Where’s Donny? Is he still locked in that boardroom?” The young woman laughed, a light, musical sound, as she moved toward the plush leather waiting sofas. “It’s fine, I’ll just wait for him here. Don’t tell him I’m downstairs, I don’t want to break his concentration.” The receptionist practically fluttered around her, easing her onto the cushions. “Of course. Let me have the kitchen send down some of those macarons you like.” As the receptionist scurried away, the girl’s gaze landed on me. “Oh, hi! Are you here to see Donovan too? He’s tied up in a meeting, so you might be waiting a while.” I heard my own voice, brittle and thin, drifting out of my mouth. “Who are you to Donovan?” “I’m his girlfriend,” she said, her smile widening into something radiant and bulletproof. “Though, we’re getting married soon.” She was practically glowing, suffocated by her own happiness. “You wouldn’t believe it, but he just added me to this group chat with all his oldest friends. They sent me the craziest gifts! Like, actual money. Just to welcome me.” She leaned in, adopting a conspiratorial, friendly tone. “Listen, if you’re here to pitch him a deal, you should really push for it. He’s an incredible man. He works so hard, and every dollar he makes is blood, sweat, and tears.” Her hand drifted up to her collarbone. “But with me? He’s a total softie. We’ve been together three years, and whatever I want, he gets it for me. No questions asked.” She tapped a massive, staggering diamond pendant resting against her skin. “I saw this at a Sotheby’s auction. He didn’t even blink. Just bought it.” She let out a soft sigh, resting a hand on her stomach. “And last month, I just made an offhand comment about his penthouse feeling a little tight for a baby. The next day, he bought a multi-million dollar brownstone. Put the deed entirely in my name.” She clamped a hand over her mouth, giggling. “Oh my god, I am so sorry. Listen to me babbling. Are you a client? I don’t think I’ve seen you at the corporate parties. I’m Megan, by the way. What’s your name?” Now I knew who she was. She was Sweet Briar. And in that sterile, air-conditioned lobby, the remaining illusions of my life quietly bled out on the marble floor. The man I had loved for ten years. The man I had been married to for five. The man I commuted across state lines for, who I rearranged my entire existence for, had been sleeping with someone else. A girl barely out of college. And she was pregnant. I stood there, a bone-deep frost spreading through my veins. Donovan had sworn, on his own life, that he would never betray me. We had met in the wreckage of a car crash. I was a surgical resident on my way home; I had sprinted out of my car in the rain to stabilize a bleeding driver on the asphalt. He had been in town on a business trip, stuck in the traffic jam, watching me from the window of his town car. He told me later that it only took one look. He spent the next year relentlessly pursuing me. The flowers, the cars, the real estate deeds left on my doorstep—none of it moved me. I was exhausted, married to my hospital. It wasn’t until I collapsed in the OR hallway after a twenty-hour surgical rotation that he finally broke through. When I woke up, he was sitting by my hospital bed, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Camille, if you die, I’m following you right into the dirt,” he had whispered, his voice cracking. I had pressed my ear to his chest, listened to the frantic, terrified beating of his heart, and finally surrendered. I said yes. After the wedding, my career kept me in Boston, while his empire kept him in New York. Even when he was running on three hours of sleep, he would charter a flight to my city every single weekend just to wake up next to me. How could the man who cried at my hospital bed, who promised me forever on his knees, do this? “Hey, are you okay?” Megan reached out, her soft hand patting my shoulder. Her brow furrowed in genuine concern. “I’m fine.” The ambient noise of the lobby vanished. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. I shook my head, feeling as though someone had taken a hunting knife, slid it neatly between my ribs, and twisted it until I was entirely numb. “Megan? What did I tell you about wandering around the city by yourself? You’re going to give me a heart attack.” The voice was a low, familiar rumble. I turned my head. My eyes locked onto Donovan’s. The indulgent, adoring smile on his face instantly crystallized into something horrified. “Camille,” the name slipped from his lips, breathless. “What are you doing here?” 2 “Donny!” Before I could even open my mouth, Megan threw herself into his arms. “This woman has been waiting for you forever! Is she a client?” “Yeah.” Donovan swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. His arms wrapped instinctively around her waist. “Just a client.” He gently pivoted her toward the exit. “Let’s get you to lunch. I can starve, but my girls need to eat.” “But she’s been waiting so long,” Megan protested softly, looking over her shoulder at me. “Talk to her first. I don’t mind.” Donovan’s jaw tightened. He gently guided Megan back to the sofa. “Give me five minutes. I’ll be right out.” Only then did he look at me. The warmth in his eyes was completely gone, replaced by a cold, panicked calculation. “My private office. Now.” I followed him into his inner sanctum. I hadn’t been here in two years. The last time I visited, the room was a masterclass in aggressive minimalism—black leather, steel, and dark walnut. Now, the space was littered with soft blushes, a pastel throw blanket over the couch, a ridiculous plush bunny on his desk. It was the aesthetic of a college girl playing house. “Why didn’t you call me to say you were flying in?” He dropped onto the sofa, pulled a cigarette from a silver case, lit it, took one drag, and immediately crushed it out in the ashtray. “Megan’s pregnant,” he muttered, staring at the crushed tobacco. “I’m trying to quit.” Donovan was a chain-smoker. During high-stakes mergers, he could kill a pack a day. He was quitting. For her. “Donovan,” I choked out, the word scraping against my throat. “Do you have absolutely nothing to say to me?” I didn’t want to cry. I swore to myself I wouldn’t. But the tears spilled over, hot and humiliating. Seeing me cry, Donovan dragged a hand down his face and exhaled a heavy sigh. “She was an intern at the clinic. I collapsed from a stress ulcer a few years ago, and she took care of me. She’s… she’s not like you, Camille. You’re brilliant. You’re independent. If I walked out that door today, you would survive. You would thrive. But Megan? Megan can’t even make toast without burning it if I’m not there.” He paused, looking up at me with an infuriating sense of martyrdom. “The distance was killing me. If I didn’t have her keeping me sane, the stress of this firm would have put me in the ground.” I stood there, letting the tears fall, absorbing the sheer audacity of his defense. Without a word, I closed the distance between us, raised my hand, and slapped him across the face as hard as I physically could. The sound cracked through the quiet office like a gunshot. “I want a divorce, Donovan. You can have her.” He didn’t flinch. He reached out, wrapping his large hand around my trembling wrist, and pressed his lips to my palm. “I told you on our wedding day. The only way you leave me is in a body bag,” he said, his voice dropping into a dark, calm register. “You are the love of my life, Camille. Nothing changes that. Look, I know my mother has been down your throat for years about you not wanting kids. Once Megan has the baby, I’ll have the legal documents drawn up. We’ll adopt it. We’ll raise it as ours. I’m doing this to take the pressure off you. You need to look at the bigger picture here.” I stared down at the man kneeling in front of me. I realized, with a sickening drop in my stomach, that I had never actually known him at all. He entirely missed the horror in my eyes. “She’s due soon. I’m going to throw her a wedding. Just a ceremony to make her happy, to make things right for her before the birth. Since you’re already in town, stay at the penthouse for a few days. I’ll have the driver take you there now. Once I drop Megan off, I’ll come home to you.” The penthouse. The home we had bought together. Because his mother—a terrifying, old-money matriarch who thought a surgeon was essentially blue-collar labor—refused to let me stay at the family estate. “Be a good girl, Camille. Megan is heavily pregnant. Her blood pressure is fragile. If you’re going to stay in my city, you need to understand what is and isn’t acceptable behavior.” With that, he stood up, straightened his custom suit, and walked out of the room. I lunged toward the door, desperate to scream, to tear the room apart, but two massive security guards materialized in the doorway, blocking my path. “Apologies, Mrs. Donovan,” one of them said, his face a stone wall. “Mr. Donovan requested that you remain here until he and Miss Gwendolyn have left the premises.” I watched Donovan’s broad back disappear down the hallway. My hands shook so violently I could barely pull my phone from my purse. I dialed Evelyn, my mother-in-law. “Evelyn,” I breathed, my voice hollow. “You’ve spent five years praying I’d leave your son. You win. I want a divorce.” There was a pause on the line. The clinking of a porcelain teacup. “You finally woke up. What’s your price? Name the figure.” “Nothing. I don’t want a single dime of his money. Just make him sign the papers. Fast.” “Consider it done.” The guards eventually escorted me to a black SUV, which dropped me at the penthouse. I hadn’t been here in five months. It looked exactly the same. I had picked out the rugs, the art, the linen drapes. This was supposed to be our sanctuary. Now, it felt like a tomb. I spent three hours moving methodically through the rooms, pulling every piece of clothing, every book, every photograph that belonged to me, and shoving them into garbage bags. I was halfway through emptying the bathroom cabinet when the front door banged open. Donovan stormed down the hallway, his face twisted in a murderous rage. He grabbed my arm so hard my shoulder popped. “Did you tell my mother? Did you run your mouth about Megan?!” he roared, spittle flying from his lips. “You know damn well my mother will destroy her! Why would you do that!” 3 The pain in my wrist made me gasp, but I shook my head violently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t say a word to Evelyn about your mistress!” “Liar!” he spat. “You’re coming with me right now! If anything happens to Megan or the baby, I swear to God, Camille, I will make you pay.” He dragged me out of the penthouse, half-carrying, half-pulling me down the hall. I didn’t even have time to put on my shoes. “Let go of me! Donovan, you’re hurting me!” I stumbled after him into the private elevator. I thought he was taking me across town. Instead, the elevator doors opened one floor down. He had bought her the penthouse directly beneath ours. He kicked the door open. Inside, Megan was on her knees on the hardwood floor, sobbing hysterically, her body trembling. Evelyn sat on the velvet sofa, looking down at her like she was scraping something foul off her shoe. “Let’s skip the theatrics,” Evelyn said coldly. “How much will it take for you to abort it and disappear?” “Mrs. Donovan, please!” Megan wailed, clutching her stomach. “Donny and I love each other! I know I’m not from your world, I know I don’t have a pedigree, but I didn’t choose how I was born!” “Love?” Evelyn let out a sharp, aristocratic laugh. “You’re a parasite playing house, and you dare invoke the word love? That’s exactly what my idiot son said when he begged me to let him marry Camille. Five years later, he’s slumming it with you. How deep could that love possibly be?” “What?” Megan froze. The tears suspended on her lashes. “What do you mean, slumming it? What do you mean, married?” “Mom!” Donovan shoved past me, dropped to his knees, and pulled Megan into his chest. “Why the hell would you say that to her! She’s pregnant! Her heart can’t take this!” He whipped his head around to glare at me. “Is this your doing, Camille? Did you sick my mother on her?” I stared at him, exhausted to my marrow. “How is this my fault?” “If you hadn’t called her, how would she have found out?!” he yelled, his face red with veins. “You were terrified Megan was going to steal your title. You used my own mother as a weapon against a pregnant girl. How could you be so vicious, Camille?!” “You’re the one who cheated on your wife!” I fired back, my voice echoing off the high ceilings. “If you could keep your pants zipped, she wouldn’t have anything to find out!” A loud gasp cut through the room. Megan’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed limp against Donovan’s chest. “Megan! Baby, wake up! Megan!” Panic hijacked his face. He scooped her up in his arms and sprinted out the door toward the elevator, screaming for his driver. I stood alone in the entryway with Evelyn. She watched her son disappear, letting out a long, weary sigh. “There’s nothing quite as pathetic as a man panicking over a bastard child,” Evelyn muttered. She turned her sharp gaze to me. “I’ve never liked you, Camille. I still don’t. But compared to that weeping gold-digger, you at least have a spine. I was going to leverage this to force him back in line with you. But looking at you now… I see you’re done.” “Thank you, Evelyn. But you’re right. I’m done.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out the heavy, vintage Cartier emerald ring—the Donovan family heirloom she had bitterly handed over on my wedding day—and placed it on the console table. Evelyn looked at the ring, then at me. Something resembling respect flickered in her eyes. “Seven days,” she said quietly. “The finalized divorce decree will be in your hands.” After Evelyn left, the silence in the apartment was suffocating. I finally looked around. Above the fireplace hung a massive, custom-framed photograph. Donovan and Megan at a carnival. He had his arms wrapped tight around her waist, his head thrown back in a booming, uninhibited laugh. It was a look of pure, unadulterated joy. I hadn’t seen him look like that in years. I walked slowly up the floating staircase to the master bedroom. A sheer, ridiculously expensive La Perla nightgown was tossed carelessly across the unmade bed. It was provocative, loud. Something I would never wear. The nightstand drawer was cracked open. Inside was a box of condoms. Only one left. The vivid, sickening image of my husband sweating and writhing on these sheets with a twenty-two-year-old made the bile rise in my throat. I don’t know how long I stood there, trapped in a dissociative daze, before heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs. Two of Donovan’s private security men stormed into the room. “Mrs. Donovan. You need to come with us.” “Excuse me? Where are you taking me?” One of them grabbed my arm, his grip bruising. Pure terror spiked in my chest. I fought, kicking and scratching, but they hauled me out of the building and shoved me into the back of a Suburban like a criminal. When we pulled up to the private wing of Mt. Sinai Hospital, I saw Donovan slumped on a bench in the hallway, his head buried in his hands. Hearing our footsteps, he looked up. His face was gray. Dead. “You’re here,” he said, his voice terrifyingly flat. “Megan terminated the pregnancy.” 4 I froze. The floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet. Terminated? How could she? She was five months along. “Donovan…” I opened my mouth, searching for something, anything to say. But before a sound could escape, he crossed the hallway in two massive strides and wrapped his hands around my throat. The force of it slammed me against the plaster wall. The air was violently crushed from my windpipe. “Camille! Are you happy now?! Is this what you wanted?!” he roared, his spit hitting my face. “Why did you drag my mother into this! You take an oath as a doctor to save lives, and you drove a girl to murder her own baby!” Black spots danced in the corners of my vision. The hatred radiating from his eyes was blinding. I clawed at his wrists, my feet kicking weakly off the floor, suffocating under his iron grip. “Do you have any idea how much I wanted that child? I loved you so much, Camille! Why would you destroy me like this?!” With a feral yell, he threw me to the ground. I hit the linoleum hard, instantly curling into a ball, hacking and gasping desperately for oxygen, my lungs burning like fire. “I didn’t… cough… Donovan, I swear to God I didn’t tell her! She runs your trust funds, she probably saw the money moving!” “Stop lying to my face!” he screamed. “Get inside! You’re going to get on your knees and beg for Megan’s forgiveness. You’re going to apologize to my dead child!” He grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me across the floor, kicking the door to the VIP suite open. Megan was in the hospital bed, pale and weeping. When she saw me, her face contorted into absolute hysteria. “Get her out of here! I don’t want to look at her! Donny, make her leave!” She snatched a heavy crystal vase from her bedside table and hurled it directly at me. Crash. The heavy glass slammed into my forehead and shattered. A blinding spike of pain shot through my skull, followed immediately by the warm, thick slide of blood running down into my eye. The metallic smell of blood hit the sterilized air. Megan pointed a trembling finger at the door. “Get out! Both of you! Leave me alone!” Donovan didn’t look at my bleeding head. He snapped his fingers. The two guards stepped into the room. Before my brain could even register the threat, they forced me to the ground, shoving me face-first into the carpet. Straight into the shards of the shattered vase. The jagged glass sliced deep into my bare knees. A raw, animalistic scream ripped from my throat as the pain flared hot and white. “I brought her to apologize, Megan. To make amends for our baby,” Donovan said, his voice chillingly calm as he stood over me. He nodded at the guards. “Make her bow. Keep her down until Megan says it’s enough.” “Donovan! You are the one who cheated! This is your fault!” I shrieked, blood pouring from my forehead, blinding my left eye. The guards forced a hand onto the back of my neck, shoving my face inches from the bloody glass. “Megan is my entire world. If you hadn’t intervened, she would be holding my baby right now,” Donovan said, his voice entirely devoid of reason. He was lost in his own twisted narrative. “Stop playing the victim!” Megan shrieked from the bed, covering her ears. “I’ll never forgive either of you!” With a dramatic gasp, her eyes rolled back and she slumped into the pillows, unconscious again. Nurses rushed in, followed by the attending doctor, who physically pushed Donovan toward the door. “Mr. Donovan, she just underwent a late-term surgical procedure. Her heart rate is erratic. You need to leave the room immediately.” Donovan backed out into the hallway. The guards finally released me. I dragged myself up, my knees leaving bloody smears on the floor. My purse and phone were back at the penthouse. I had no money, no ID, and I was bleeding profusely in a city where the only person I knew was the man trying to destroy me. I had no choice but to limp after him to his car. He took me back to his penthouse and called his private concierge doctor to stitch my forehead and bandage my knees. “Don’t blame me, Camille. You know how this works. If I didn’t make you bleed, she wouldn’t believe I was punishing you. She wouldn’t forgive me,” he said, pouring himself a scotch as the doctor packed up his bags. I stared at the wall, nodding slowly. The cold inside me had finally crystallized into something solid and unbreakable. I didn’t want to fight anymore. Seeing my quiet submission, his shoulders relaxed. “You’re the only woman who will ever be my wife,” he murmured, crouching in front of me and resting his hand on my bandaged knee. “Once Megan recovers, we’ll try for another baby. Don’t worry. As long as you play nice and let her have her moment, you’ll always be taken care of.” “Okay,” I whispered, my voice completely hollow. “I’m going to give her the wedding next weekend. If she wants you there…” “I’ll go.” “Good girl. There’s my Camille.” He smiled, stroking my cheek. He didn’t notice that the light in my eyes was completely, irreversibly dead. I didn’t sleep that night. Around 3 A.M., hovering in a feverish, pain-medicated haze, I heard the faint click of my bedroom door opening. Before I could sit up, a heavy cloth was shoved over my head. Strong hands yanked my arms behind my back, binding my wrists with industrial zip-ties, then my ankles. I was shoved violently into a heavy burlap sack, suffocating in darkness, completely paralyzed. 5 Blind panic seized my chest. I tried to scream, but a thick layer of duct tape had been crushed over my mouth. Only muffled, pathetic whimpers escaped. I was dragged down a flight of stairs—the service stairs to the basement of the building, where the climate-controlled storage units were. Above me, a voice broke the damp silence. “I know you’re grieving, Megan. I know the baby dying broke you. I brought her down here for you. Take it out on her. Bleed her out until you feel better. Then… will you forgive me?” “If I kill her, does it bring my baby back? Will you actually marry me?!” Megan’s voice was shrill, echoing off the concrete walls. “I will!” Donovan cried, pulling her into what sounded like a desperate embrace. “I’ll give you the wedding of the century. You’ll be the only Mrs. Donovan!” Megan sniffled loudly. “You promise you aren’t lying to me?” “I swear it on my life! I will never lie to you again!” I heard the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor. “Camille killed our child,” Donovan said, his voice mutating into something sinister. “Do whatever you want to her. I won’t stop you.” “Are you sure you can stomach it?” Megan asked. The moment the words left her mouth, a deafening CRACK exploded against my ribs. Donovan had swung first. My spine arched off the concrete, an involuntary, muffled scream tearing through the duct tape as tears instantly flooded my eyes. That was why he hadn’t yelled at me when we got back from the hospital. That was why he played the gentle husband. He hadn’t spared me. He was just saving me for the slaughter. Crack! CRACK! The second and third blows landed with the sickening thud of wood against bone. It wasn’t a warning strike. He was swinging a baseball bat with the full, terrifying momentum of a grown man. Pain arced through my nervous system like lightning. I curled into a tight, trembling ball, my brain short-circuiting as the agony drowned out all rational thought. Then came the fourth blow. The fifth. The coarse burlap grew wet and heavy against my skin, sticking to the open wounds on my back. Blood pooled on the cold concrete beneath me. Through the roaring in my ears, I heard nothing but the relentless, rhythmic thud of the bat and my own pathetic, muffled sobbing. I don’t know how long it lasted. Hours, minutes—time no longer existed. Finally, the swinging stopped. “Are you tired, baby?” Donovan’s voice drifted down from above, soft, tender, dripping with devotion. “Let’s get you upstairs to bed. Once you’re healed, we’re doing the wedding.” “I want Camille to be my bridesmaid!” Megan demanded, breathless. Donovan hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Okay. Whatever you want.” Their footsteps echoed up the concrete stairs, growing fainter until the heavy metal door slammed shut. Alone in the dark, my body finally gave out, and I slipped into the merciful black void of unconsciousness. Just before he reached the penthouse, Donovan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from his head of security. Sir, what do we do with the girl in the bag? Donovan typed back without breaking stride: Write her a check. Tell her to get lost. Make sure Megan never finds out the girl in the sack wasn’t actually Camille. 6 When I regained consciousness, the smell of damp concrete and dried blood filled my nostrils. The duct tape was gone. The burlap sack was gone. I was curled on the floor of one of the basement storage units. The icy chill of the concrete seeping into my battered skin was the only thing keeping me awake. I was freezing. My throat was sandpaper. Every millimeter of my body screamed in agony. I tried to drag myself toward the steel door, but my legs refused to obey. I couldn’t move an inch. I never could have imagined the depths of Donovan’s cruelty. It wasn’t enough to let his mistress break a vase over my head. He had bound me, beaten me into a bloody pulp in the dark, and locked me in a cellar. A brutal fever spiked that evening. Through the delirium, I heard the heavy deadbolt slide open. Someone set a plastic cup of water and a styrofoam container of food on the ground. A small blister pack of Tylenol dropped next to it. “Poor thing,” a woman whispered. The housekeeper. “She doesn’t even know Mr. Donovan is marrying that girl tomorrow.” “Yeah, they’re pulling out all the stops. Rented out an entire estate in the Hamptons. Even Evelyn is going,” a second voice muttered. “What the hell are we supposed to do with the wife?” “Who knows. That Megan girl is a psycho. She demanded the wife be brought up as her bridesmaid. It’s a total power trip.” Despair washed over me like a rising tide, but beneath it, a tiny, stubborn ember of survival sparked. I knew I couldn’t die down here. Trembling, gritting my teeth against the blinding pain in my fractured ribs, I dragged myself toward the styrofoam box. I picked up the plastic fork with bloody fingers and forced the cold rice down my throat, choking on every bite. It’s almost over, I told myself, staring at the concrete wall. Just a little longer, and I’ll never have to look at him again. A memory, unbidden and agonizing, drifted into my mind. Our wedding day. Donovan, flushed with champagne and overwhelming joy, spinning me around the dance floor like he had conquered the earth. “Camille! You’re my wife now! You’re mine! Don’t you ever think you can leave me, because I won’t let you!” He had been so young, so fiercely alive with love. And now, he was standing at an altar with someone else. I don’t know how many days passed in that basement. Slowly, the fever broke. I could finally stand, leaning heavily against the wall. Faint sounds drifted down from the street grates. Traffic. Horns. Life moving on. Three days had passed. Today was the wedding. The steel door swung open, blinding me with the harsh fluorescent hallway lights. A maid stood in the doorway, holding a garment bag. “Mrs. Donovan. The boss and Miss Gwendolyn already left for the estate. You need to wash up and put on the dress. A car is waiting to take you.” I limped out of the cell, my body stiff and aching. The penthouse above was eerily quiet, though remnants of floral arrangements littered the foyer. “Oh, right. Evelyn sent this via courier this morning.” The maid handed me a thick manila envelope. My heart hammered against my bruised ribs. I ripped the seal open with shaking hands. Inside, embossed with the state seal, was the finalized decree of absolute divorce. It was done. I was divorced. I was free. “Ma’am, please hurry. The driver is getting impatient,” the maid urged. I folded the decree, slid it carefully into my purse, and grabbed the garment bag containing the bridesmaid dress. “I’ll head down now. I don’t want to ruin the dress on the ride over, I’ll change at the venue.” My voice was raspy, hollowed out, yet thrumming with a bizarre, electric calm. The maid watched me limp toward the elevator. “Be careful out there, ma’am.” Before the elevator doors closed, I took one last look at the penthouse. The soaring ceilings, the art we bought in Paris, the life I had built. I turned around and never looked back. I walked straight past the idling black town car waiting to take me to the Hamptons, and flagged down a yellow taxi on the avenue. “Penn Station,” I told the driver, staring out the window. “And step on it, please.” It was over. Have a beautiful life, Donovan.

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I’m alive again. After being left to wither away and starve in that godforsaken psychiatric ward, the universe has somehow pulled me back through the veil. Today is the day. The opening of the National Steinway Invitational. My twin sister, Brianna, is currently preparing to step onto that stage, clutching the sheet music she stole from my desk. In my previous life, I made the mistake of confronting her. I screamed the truth. I demanded my credit. The reward for my honesty? My own parents committed me. They told the world I was suffering from a “persecution complex,” that I was a jealous, delusional girl who couldn’t handle her sister’s brilliance. Brianna used my soul, note by note, to become the “Darling of the Classical World.” And when she no longer needed me, she let me rot. She forgot I existed while I clawed at the padded walls, my stomach a hollow pit of agony until the lights finally went out. If a “prodigy” requires blood to stay in the spotlight, then so be it. This time, I won’t fight her. I’m going to personally build her pedestal. I will lift her so high that when she eventually falls—and she will fall—there won’t be enough of her left to bury. I’m not crying to Mom and Dad this time. I’m playing a much longer game. 1 “Callie? I’m finished practicing. Can you come take a listen?” Brianna’s voice jolted me awake. I snapped my eyes open, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I was in my room. There was my black baby grand, the finish gleaming under the morning sun. Resting on the music stand were the handwritten scores I’d spent three sleepless nights perfecting. I wasn’t dead. I was back. The memory of the hunger still lingered—a phantom iron chain tightening around my stomach. I could still smell the rot of the institution and feel the cold weight of the steel door. Before I died, I had screamed until my vocal cords shredded, leaving nothing but the metallic taste of blood in my throat. I had watched my life drain away while, outside those walls, the radio played Brianna’s latest hit, Radiance. My life, transcribed into her glory. I quickly shut my eyes and curled into a ball under the duvet, pretending to be asleep. Brianna’s footsteps were light, hesitant. She crept toward the piano and, without a second’s hesitation, snatched the manuscript that held my entire heart: The Leviathan’s Descent. Under the covers, my fingernails dug into my palms until I drew blood. That piece was the spark that ignited her career. In my last life, it was my death warrant. Soon, the muffled sound of my parents’ excited voices drifted in from the living room. “Brianna, you wrote this? The melody… it’s so haunting. It tells such a story!” My mother’s voice was thick with pride. “I always knew our girl was born for the stage,” my father added with a booming laugh. “This kind of talent? You can’t teach that.” “Of course, Dad,” Brianna chirped, her voice dripping with that practiced, sugary modesty. “I am your daughter, after all.” My father paused, a hint of confusion in his tone. “But your scales lately, and the technical exercises…” “Oh, stop! I was just holding back, saving the best for the competition. This is my secret weapon!” Listening to her shameless lies, I bit my tongue until I tasted copper. The door to my room creaked open. My mother walked in, and seeing me awake, a flicker of awkwardness crossed her face. “Callie, you’re up? Sorry, your sister got a bit… excited. Did we wake you?” I rubbed my eyes, feigning a dazed, sleepy fog. “What’s going on? I was out cold. I didn’t hear a thing.” Mom visibly relaxed. She walked over and tucked the edge of my blanket in, a gesture that felt more like a dismissal than an act of love. “Nothing important. Your sister is entering a major competition, and we’re just celebrating the good news.” She hesitated, her tone turning cautious. “You should try to practice more too, Callie. I know you don’t have Brianna’s natural spark, but hard work can make up for a lack of talent. Don’t waste your time dreaming about things that aren’t realistic.” I looked down, hiding the ice in my eyes. “I know, Mom. I understand.” She gave my head a pitying pat and turned to leave, eager to get back to the living room to toast her “genius” daughter. I listened to their laughter and smiled into the shadows. This time, I’m going to build Brianna the most magnificent scaffold the world has ever seen. 2 A week later, the inevitable happened. Brianna won the gold medal with The Leviathan’s Descent. The local papers and TV stations swarmed our house. She sat at the piano in a white silk dress, bathed in the glow of the cameras, looking like some ethereal creature untouched by the grime of reality. She spoke to the reporters with a rehearsed grace. “My inspiration? It came from a documentary about the ocean. Watching a great whale die in the deep… how its body sinks and nourishes an entire ecosystem for decades. That kind of grand, tragic sacrifice… it moved me deeply.” She recited my words, my soul-searching, my private thoughts, word for word. It became her “inspiration.” My parents stood behind her, beaming, as if they were admiring a flawless diamond they had personally cut and polished. I, meanwhile, was ordered to stay in my room. “We don’t want the press getting the wrong idea,” Dad had told me earlier. “If they see two sisters and only one with talent, they might write something nasty about favoritism. It’s better for Brianna’s brand if you stay out of the shot.” I became the “extra” that didn’t fit the frame. When Brianna returned from the awards ceremony, the house was packed for a victory party. Our villa was teeming with socialites and relatives, all clamoring to touch the hem of the new prodigy’s dress. “The Voss family must be so proud! A world-class pianist in the making!” “She’s always been special. You can just see it in her eyes.” I stood in the corner with a glass of orange juice, a shadow in the periphery, watching the coronation. Brianna eventually spotted me. Clutching a glass of champagne, she navigated the crowd and cornered me. She lifted the heavy gold trophy, leaning in so only I could hear her. “See this, Callie? This is where I belong.” Her eyes were cold, predatory. “Stop daydreaming. People like you? You’re just the dirt that makes the flowers look brighter.” I looked up at her. I didn’t show the rage she expected. Instead, I gave her a dazzling, supportive smile. “Brianna, you were amazing,” I whispered. “You really are the greatest musician I know.” She froze. The sneer she had ready died on her lips. She had expected me to scream, to try and claw the trophy out of her hands like I did in the other life. She didn’t know that I wanted her this high. I wanted her at the very peak. From that day on, I became Brianna’s most devoted shadow. When she went to the studio, I had hot tea and pastries waiting. When she “ran out of inspiration,” I played her my “discarded” sketches and fragments, letting her take her pick. I spent every cent of my allowance on rare sheet music and concert tickets for her. At first, she was suspicious. She watched me like a hawk, looking for the trap. But eventually, she decided I had simply “broken.” She began to accept my service as her birthright, treating me as her personal muse and maid. My parents were thrilled by my “maturity.” “Callie’s finally growing up,” I heard Dad say one night. “She knows Brianna is our hope. She’s stopped being so difficult.” “It’s how it should be,” Mom agreed. “One sister in the light, one in the wings. It’s for the good of the family.” They cut my music budget and poured everything into Brianna. “Callie, your playing is just a hobby,” Dad told me. “Let’s not waste money on elite tutors for you anymore. Your job is to make sure Brianna has everything she needs. That’s how you contribute.” I nodded submissively. “I understand, Dad. Brianna needs it more.” Of course they felt that way. They didn’t need two stars. They needed one goddess and one servant to keep the temple clean. Perfect. 3 Three years vanished in a blur of fake smiles and stolen melodies. Brianna was now a national sensation—the “It Girl” of the American classical scene. Her repertoire was stunningly diverse—Baroque one day, avant-garde the next. The critics called her range “miraculous.” Only I knew that every “shift in style” came from the crates under my bed, filled with manuscripts the world had never seen. By day, I was the dutiful sister. By night, I was a ghost at my piano, teaching myself composition software and complex orchestration, pushing my soul into territories Brianna couldn’t even imagine. My technical skill far surpassed what I had achieved in my previous life. Brianna, meanwhile, had gotten very good at signing autographs and wearing couture, but her understanding of music was still stuck in high school. Soon, the whispers started in the industry. “Don’t you think Brianna’s work feels… disjointed? Like it’s missing a core identity?” “Yeah, her style is all over the place. There’s no signature Voss sound.” “I tried to talk to her about the counterpoint in her latest sonata backstage,” one critic whispered at a gala, “and she looked at me like I was speaking Greek. She’s remarkably vapid for a genius.” The rumors eventually reached Brianna. She became erratic, paranoid. One afternoon, after a critic wrote that her performance was “technically brilliant but emotionally hollow,” she lost it. “He doesn’t know anything! He’s just jealous!” she screamed, tearing my latest scores into confetti. The paper drifted down like snow. “Everyone is just a hack! They want to tear me down!” Mom rushed to comfort her, cradling her like a wounded child. “Don’t listen to them, honey. They’re just commoners. They can’t comprehend your level of art.” Dad, looking for a scapegoat, turned on me. “Callie! Have you been saying something to your sister? You’re always lurking around with that gloomy face, dragging down the energy in this house!” I looked down, my shoulders trembling as I put on my best “victim” face. “I didn’t do anything. I was just trying to help.” “Help? You’re probably praying for her to fail!” Dad spat. Brianna sobbed harder, burying her face in Mom’s chest. “They’re all against me, Mom! They want to take it away!” I watched the performance with a cold heart. The play was reaching its second act. I stepped forward, putting a gentle hand on Brianna’s back, my voice a soothing silk. “Brianna, ignore them. In my eyes, you’re the only one who matters. You’re a once-in-a-generation talent. No one can ever take that title from you.” Her sobbing slowed. She looked at me with red, puffy eyes—eyes filled with a desperate, frantic dependency. She was hooked. She couldn’t breathe without my music. From that day on, she demanded more. “Callie, I have a charity gala next week. I need something ‘healing’ and ‘warm.’ You get me?” “Callie, the theme for the festival is ‘Fracture.’ Give me something that sounds like glass breaking.” “Callie, I’m over my credit limit. Give me your card.” She stole my thoughts, my work, my identity. She even found my old childhood journals once and ripped them up in front of me. “Why keep this trash?” she’d sneered. I gave her everything. I even helped her craft her “musical philosophy” for interviews, teaching her the hollow, flowery words she needed to mask her empty soul. My parents saw her becoming more “professional” and felt more confident than ever. They were already dreaming of Carnegie Hall. And I stayed in the dark. Even the housemaid pulled me aside once. “Callie, dear, you’re so good to her. Why is she so cruel to you?” They didn’t understand. My “kindness” was just arsenic dipped in honey. 4 For Brianna’s eighteenth birthday, my parents rented out the city’s premier concert hall for a massive debut recital. It was a coming-of-age celebration and a launchpad for her international career. The program featured ten original compositions, every single one credited to: Brianna Voss. Every single one was a piece of my marrow. The night was a gala event. The titans of the music world were there—critics, scouts from the top conservatories, and the man everyone feared: Alister Crowne. Crowne was a world-renowned conductor with an ear that could detect a lie in a single note. In my last life, he had been the one to dismiss Brianna with four words: “Great hands, no soul.” It had ruined her career, but by then, I was already locked away, and no one believed the “crazy girl’s” claims of plagiarism. This time, I had been waiting for him. Brianna was wearing a custom gown that looked like a night sky, strutting through the backstage area like a peacock. “The sonata Breaking Light is a masterpiece, Brianna!” a donor gushed. “The way the harmony builds… I could actually see the sun rising!” Brianna smiled gracefully, basking in the stolen warmth. I stood in the shadows of the stage wing. A young journalist noticed me and walked over. “Are you Brianna’s sister? You look so much like her.” I nodded. “You must be musical too. What do you think of your sister’s work?” Before I could open my mouth, Brianna’s sharp voice cut through the air. “She doesn’t know the first thing about music!” She marched over, grabbing my arm and pulling me behind her, eyeing the reporter with suspicion. “My sister has… health issues. She lives a very sheltered life. She’s completely tone-deaf. Please don’t bother her.” She was terrified I’d steal even a second of her spotlight. The reporter looked embarrassed and shuffled away. Brianna leaned into my ear, her voice a frozen blade. “Callie, I told you. Stay in your lane. Do not embarrass me tonight, or you’ll find out exactly how far I can push you.” I bowed my head. “I understand, Brianna.” Suddenly, the room went silent. Alister Crowne had arrived. He was in a charcoal suit, his hair perfectly silver, radiating an aura of absolute authority. He didn’t mingle. He walked straight to the large promotional poster of the program pinned to the wall. His eyes lingered on the final piece of the night, a world premiere: Scorched Sun. He stared at the title, his gaze deepening. Brianna’s breathing became ragged. My parents rushed over, wearing their most sycophantic smiles. “Mr. Crowne, what an honor. Our daughter is a bit shy, please excuse her if she’s nervous.” Crowne didn’t look back. He kept his eyes on the title. After a long silence, he spoke. “This piece. Scorched Sun.” Dad nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, it’s Brianna’s latest. The inspiration came from—” Crowne held up a hand. His voice was calm, but it carried to every corner of the room. “There is a problem with this song.”

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For six years, I hauled the dead out of city basements and off hot asphalt. I worked the night shift for a body removal service, letting the stench of decay settle so deep into my pores that no amount of bleach could scrub it away. I did it for one reason: to pay for my sister’s leukemia treatments. Today, I finally had the last of the money. But as I stood in the hospital hallway, my sister, Hedy, looked at me with a chilling nonchalance. She didn’t need the surgery, she said. She wasn’t sick. Our parents weren’t dead. The car accident six years ago? She’d orchestrated the whole thing. I was the only one who actually bled that day, the only one left permanently mangled while they watched from the sidelines. Then came the second blow. My wife, Isla, stepped forward. She wasn’t bankrupt, and those late nights at the “office” weren’t for overtime. She’d been retreating to her private estate because she couldn’t stand the sight of our cramped, moldy basement apartment—or me. “We were going to keep the game going for another three years,” Isla said, waving a hand in front of her nose as if I were a piece of rotting meat. “But the smell of the morgue on you… it’s nauseating. Neither of us can take it anymore.” I stood there, my hand frozen over the check meant for her life-saving surgery. A wave of pure, concentrated absurdity washed over me, so cold it burned. Hedy snatched the check from my numb fingers and tossed it into a nearby trash can. “There’s no money left in your accounts anyway, Wayne. I’ve been rerouting your ‘death money’ to the homeless for years. Think of it as karma for your dead child. You earn a living off the dead—it’s bad luck. We wouldn’t touch a cent of it.” My blood turned to ice. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around the why. Then my parents appeared. They stood at the end of the hall, huddled together as if I were a leper. My father spoke first, his voice hard. “It was the only way, Wayne. You were a spoiled brat, always picking on Landon. We had to break you. We had to make you humble.” My mother nodded, her eyes devoid of warmth. “If you swear to never lay a finger on Landon again, you can be our son. Otherwise, we’re done.” As the world blurred and my heart gave its final, jagged beat of hope, a cold, mechanical voice echoed in my mind. It was the System, sounding almost… pitying. Do you wish to abandon the mission? Do you wish to leave this world behind? … 1 “Take me out.” I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. The pain was the only thing keeping me upright. [Confirmed. Departure in T-minus twenty-four hours.] Isla, seeing my silence, reached out to brush a tear from my eye. Her touch felt like a centipede crawling on my skin. “Do you finally get it? If you hadn’t fought Landon for our parents’ love, if you hadn’t tried to hurt him over and over, we could have been a happy family of three.” I shoved her hand away, a raw, guttural scream tearing from my throat. “You don’t get to talk about a ‘family of three’! Landon cut the brake lines! My son died because of him!” Isla’s expression remained terrifyingly placid. “The baby didn’t die, Wayne. I gave him to Landon the second he was born. Stop blaming him for your delusions.” The air left my lungs. It took seconds for my brain to process the words. “You… what did you say?” Isla looked at me as if I were a slow child. “He’s my heir. You didn’t honestly think I’d let him grow up in a basement with a man who hauls corpses? Landon is kind. Our son is better off with him.” I stood paralyzed. The cold was absolute now. Six years ago, I woke up from that crash with a shattered body and a broken spirit. Isla had been there, eyes red, telling me it was my fault we were out that night. She told me the baby was stillborn, that our parents were gone. Hedy had played the grieving sister, drowning her “sorrow” in booze until she “developed” cancer. The System had asked me then if I wanted to leave. The mission—to gain their love—was technically a failure. But I stayed. I dragged my broken body to the darkest jobs in the city, enduring the stares and the smell, all to save a sister who wasn’t dying and support a wife who was secretly laughing at me. It was all a joke. My chest ached so hard I thought my ribs might snap. “Why?” I whispered, tears leaking out. “Why not just lie to me until the day I died?” “Because Landon wants a daughter now,” Hedy said, her voice dripping with a terrifying maternal fondness for a man who wasn’t her brother. “The procedure for him is too invasive. He shouldn’t have to suffer. So, we need you one last time.” 2 I stared at them, my vision swimming. They weren’t people. They were monsters wearing the faces of those I loved. “Landon has suffered enough, Wayne. We just want to give him what he wants. Be a good boy. We can always have more children later.” Isla ruffled my hair, the gesture so patronizing it made me want to retch. “And this is your chance to prove to Mom and Dad that you’ve changed. Show them you won’t bully Landon anymore.” Landon had suffered? I thought of the dark closet in my foster home. I thought of the red-hot fire poker the woman used on me while she screamed that her son—the real Landon—was living my high-society life while I rotted. I yanked up my sleeves, exposing the jagged, silver scars that mapped my forearms. “Who suffered? You told me you’d make them pay! You said you’d never let me be hurt again—” “Wayne, stop lying!” Hedy snapped, slapping my arm away. I was malnourished and weak; the force sent me stumbling back until my hip collided with the sharp edge of a table. “Landon’s birth mother said no one ever laid a finger on you,” Hedy sneered. “Those scars? You got those fighting in alleys with delinquents when you were a teenager. You were always a rebel.” My parents scoffed in the background. “Nature over nurture,” my father muttered. “We didn’t raise him, and it shows. He’s a born liar. He’s not fit to be a father.” I stared at them, the metallic taste of blood rising in my throat. “I’m not fit? But the son of a human trafficker is a saint?” “Shut up!” Hedy’s eyes turned predatory. “How dare you? If Landon heard that, he’d be devastated.” She lunged forward, grabbing my arm with a grip like a vice. “Clearly, these six years haven’t taught you enough.” She forced my head down, her strength surprising me, and shoved me toward a large wooden shipping crate in the corner of the room. The moment the lid slammed shut, my breath died. Four years ago, while on a job, a grieving family had played a sick prank. They’d locked me in a casket with a fresh cadaver for three days. I had spent seventy-two hours nose-to-nose with the scent of rotting meat and silence. I’d developed a paralyzing, screaming case of claustrophobia that day. “Let me out! Please! I’m sorry! Help me!” I clawed at the wood, my words dissolving into frantic whimpers. I scraped my fingers against the seams until all ten of my fingernails were torn to the quick, the wood slick with my blood. Finally, the latch clicked. The lid opened. I spilled out, sobbing, clutching at Hedy’s ankles. “Please, don’t put me back. I’ll die, I’ll die—” Hedy retracted her foot as if I were a stray dog. “Stop the drama, Wayne. It’s pathetic.” She looked down at me, her expression bored. “Every client you worked for these last few years? I hand-picked them. I told them to be tough on you to build your character. Nobody actually hurt you.” The room tilted. “You… you arranged them?” Memories flashed: “Kneel. Crawl between my legs and bark like a dog, or you don’t get paid.” “Drink these ten shots of rotgut, and I might give you an extra hundred.” 3 The insults. The bottles smashed over my head. The most degrading moments of my life—all choreographed by my sister. “So what?” Hedy said. “I wanted you to learn empathy. To walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Without my ‘training,’ you wouldn’t be ready to come home.” Isla stepped forward, her voice like silk. “Tonight, Landon is hosting a charity gala. You’re coming. We need you there so the world finally stops whispering that Landon is the son of a kidnapper. If they see you two together, the rumors die.” She looked at me with a spark of something that might have been pity, if she were human. “You always wanted a real wedding, didn’t you, Wayne? Give Landon a daughter, and I’ll give you a wedding that will be the talk of the Hamptons.” It was the same promise she’d made me under the moonlight years ago. Now, it was just the bait on a hook. A neon countdown flickered in my peripheral vision: [12 hours remaining.] I lowered my head, burying the white-hot rage deep in my gut. When I looked up, the brokenness was gone, replaced by a hollow, terrifying calm. “Fine. I’ll go.” The gala was a sea of black ties and silk. The second I stepped in, the press swarmed. “Mr. Callahan, you’ve been underground for years. What’s the status of the ‘True Heir’ vs. ‘The Imposter’? Have you made peace?” My mother shoved a piece of paper into my hand, whispering harshly, “Read it. Word for word.” I looked down. [I was never kidnapped. I was a rebellious child who ran away. Landon’s mother was a saint who took me in. I’ve spent these years in seclusion, reflecting on my cruelty toward Landon. I am the one who is unworthy.] “Read it,” my father hissed. “Peace?” I whispered. My hands tightened on the paper. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, I ripped it into shreds and let them fall like snow. “Why would I make peace with the son of the woman who tortured me?” The room went dead silent. The flashbulbs stopped. I locked eyes with Landon, who was standing center-stage, looking like the golden boy they all thought he was. “Why don’t you tell them, Landon? You stole my name for twenty years. Now you’ve stolen my wife and my son. Is there anything left of mine you don’t want?” Gasps rippled through the hall. Landon didn’t even flinch. He waited exactly one second, then his eyes welled with tears. He looked like the victim of a grand tragedy. “Wayne… why do you keep doing this to me?” He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a small, navy-blue book. “I am Isla’s legal husband,” he said, his voice trembling. “You’re the one who’s been the interloper.” My brain shrieked. I lunged forward, snatching the marriage license. There it was, in elegant calligraphy: Isla Sterling and Landon Callahan. The reason she never showed me our certificate. The “safe deposit box” lie. The blood drained from my face. I turned to Isla. “Names don’t matter, Wayne,” she said, her voice loud enough for the room to hear. “I loved you in my own way, but Landon needed a legacy. You stole his birthright; we just gave him back a life in this city.” Hedy stepped up, her face a mask of disappointment. “I’m sorry, everyone. My brother has struggled with his mental health for years. Delusions of grandeur. Please, ignore him.” The pity in the room turned to disgust. 4 “He’s a psycho,” someone whispered. “Imagine trying to ruin a man like Landon.” “You’re a bad man! Stop hurting my daddy!” A small boy, no older than five, burst from the crowd. He charged at me, headbutting me with enough force to send me sprawling to the marble floor. One look at his eyes, and I knew. He was mine. My son. I reached out, my hands shaking, wanting to hold him just once. Hedy stepped between us, her heel narrowly missing my fingers. She leaned down, whispering in my ear. “He’s Landon’s now, Wayne. And if you try to take him, I’ll show him the video.” My voice was a thready rasp. “But he’s my son.” She pulled out her phone and hit play. The screen blurred, but I recognized the alleyway. It was three years ago, a night I’d tried to come home early from the morgue. A group of men had dragged me into the shadows. I’d screamed for Hedy, hoping she’d come for me. The video showed the nightmare. My dignity being shredded in the dirt. A sob broke out of me, a spray of blood hitting the floor. “You knew… you knew they actually did it? It wasn’t just ‘acting’!” “Stop it,” Hedy said, her voice cold. “I hired those men to scare you. They wouldn’t have actually touched a Callahan. You’re just making up stories to make us feel guilty so we’ll get rid of Landon. I don’t know why you hate him so much.” My heart hammered against my ribs. Who hated whom? The System countdown flashed: [5 hours.] There was no point in arguing. The exit was close. Suddenly, a fist slammed into my jaw. Then another. “Home-wrecker!” someone yelled. It started with one man, then a surge. Men whose wives had cheated, people looking for a scapegoat, all fueled by the “delusional psycho” narrative Hedy had spun. I curled into a ball as the kicks rained down. My lip split. My ribs cracked. Hedy’s face flickered with a brief moment of alarm. She started to move toward me, but Landon suddenly gasped, clutching his chest. “Hedy… too many people… I can’t breathe…” The tide turned instantly. “Oh honey, don’t look,” my mother cried, rushing to Landon. “Isla, help him!” Isla glanced at me, then at the trembling Landon. She hesitated for a heartbeat. “Wayne, they’re just venting. You’ll be fine.” She turned her back on me to follow Landon. Hedy lingered for a second, then scooped Landon up in her arms and walked away. The crowd closed in. “Scum! Did you sleep with my wife too? Let’s see how pretty you are after this!” A heavy boot landed between my legs, a sickening crunch echoing in my ears. I felt a hot, wet explosion of pain. Blood began to pool under me, staining the white marble. I vomited blood, my vision fading into a hazy grey. By the time I crawled back to the “family” estate, my parents were fussing over Landon on the sofa. When they saw me, their faces soured. 5 “Are you still doing this?” my father sighed. “Looking like a mess just to get attention?” Isla’s eyes were full of irritation. “Don’t look at us like that. If you hadn’t tried to embarrass Landon, he wouldn’t have had to go public with the marriage. He’s always thinking of you, Wayne. Be a man and apologize.” Every step I took felt like treading on broken glass. My internal organs were a symphony of agony. I didn’t have the breath to fight her. Landon reached out, grabbing my hand, his grip surprisingly strong. “Wayne, look at you. You’re a mess.” He leaned in, his voice a whisper only I could hear. “I’m bored with your son. Give me a daughter. I need something new to play with. If I’m in a good mood, I might give the boy back before I break him.” Something snapped. The last tether of my sanity ignited. I swung my fist at his smug, beautiful face. SLAP! My head whipped to the side. The taste of iron filled my mouth. Hedy stood over me, her eyes like chips of ice. “Have you no shame? Attacking him right in front of us? When will you stop being so selfish?” “Don’t hurt my daddy!” My son—Toby—lunged forward. He was holding a silver appetizer fork. He slammed it into my abdomen. He didn’t expect it to actually go in. His face went pale as the silver tines disappeared into my sweater. But he held his ground, glaring at me with Landon’s taught hatred. The world went dark for a second. The pain in my stomach was nothing compared to the hole in my chest. “You protect him because you think he’s your father,” I wheezed. “But Toby… what if I told you that I’m—” “Shut up!” My father threw his crystal whiskey glass. It shattered against my temple, blood instantly blinding my left eye. “Don’t you dare fill the boy’s head with your lies!” Toby sneered, his voice high and cruel. “You? My dad? You’re a body-hauler. You smell like death. If you were my dad, I’d rather be dead.” Hedy pulled out her phone, the screen showing the video of my assault in the alley. “Apologize, Wayne. Record a video recanting everything. Or I’ll post this on every social media platform in the world. You’ll be a joke forever.” I started to laugh. It was a wet, ragged sound that turned into a cough of blood. “Don’t bother threatening me anymore, Hedy. I’ll do it for you.” I took the phone. My thumb hovered over the screen. Send to all. Hedy froze, confused. Before she could react, I turned and scrambled onto the windowsill of the sixteenth-floor study. Behind me, the room finally erupted in panic. “Wayne, what are you doing?” my mother screamed. “Get down! This isn’t funny!” Isla’s face was white. “We won’t give the daughter away, Wayne! We’ll keep her! Just… don’t do this!” I smiled, shaking my head. There won’t be a daughter. Hedy, ever the cynic, crossed her arms. “He’s bluffing. He wants us to beg. He knows we care, so he’s using suicide to manipulate us.” She took a step forward. “Get down, Wayne. No matter how much you scream, you’re apologizing to Landon today.” The cold night air rushed in, whipping my hair. The System’s voice chimed in my skull. [Host, time is up. You may leave.] I looked at the four people who had systematically dismantled my life and gave them a hollow, empty smile. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this. But if my child and six years of my life weren’t enough to pay my ‘debt’ to Landon, then maybe my life will cover the rest.” As they lunged toward me, faces twisted in sudden, genuine horror, I let go. I leaned back into the dark.

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