The air in the suite was still heavy with the scent of expensive lilies and the lingering hum of the reception downstairs. It was my wedding night—the beginning of everything I had spent years dreaming of. But when I reached for my wife, she pulled away with a coldness that made my skin crawl. I thought she was just exhausted. The wedding had been a marathon of high-society expectations and forced smiles. I reached out again, trying to pull her into my arms, ready to make a joke to break the tension. “It’s actually pretty boring being with you,” she said. Her voice was flat, as if she were discussing the weather. She gestured toward the nightstand, where a box of condoms sat. My best friend, Dexter, had handed them to me earlier that day with a wink. “Before the ceremony, he and I were together all night,” Monica said, her tone light, almost conversational. “That box? It’s empty. We used them all.” The room seemed to tilt. I felt the blood drain from my face, but she wasn’t finished. “When I was late to the toasts? It wasn’t because I felt faint. We were in the dressing room for another round. That’s why my legs were shaking when I finally came out.” A small, reminiscent smile played on her lips. “To be honest, being with him is the only thing that makes me feel alive. He knows exactly how to handle a woman. He gave me a pleasure I didn’t know existed.” She looked at me then, her eyes sharp as glass. “Something you could never do.” Her words were like serrated blades carving through my chest. I stood there, frozen, my mouth opening and closing as my throat tightened, sealing off any sound. Monica sighed, a soft sound that held a hint of apology but far more relief. “Logan, I’ve said what I needed to say. Whether we keep this farce going or not… that’s up to you.” 1 I stared at her, listening to the casual cruelty of her voice. I forced every ounce of my remaining strength into three raspy words. “Why? Just… why?” Monica paused, her gaze drifting back to me with utter indifference. “Why what? Why did I sleep with him? Or why am I telling you now?” The silence that followed was suffocating. She let out a short, mocking scoff. “Logan, every time we tried, you always had an excuse. ‘Not in the mood,’ ‘Not feeling right.’ If you’re broken, is it really my fault for looking elsewhere? I wasn’t going to tell you—Dexter was worried about losing his ‘brother’—but three years is a long time to play pretend. Hiding every time we wanted to touch each other was getting exhausting.” My heart hammered against my ribs. “Three years?” Monica nodded, her expression thoughtful. Then, she let out a genuine laugh. “Yeah. Three years ago, at your parents’ funeral. After you passed out from crying so hard, we went into the room next door. It was the first time. We were so reckless I ruined my dress. You thought it was my period, remember? You spent the whole day taking care of me. You even hand-washed the silk, thinking you were being so sweet, not realizing you were scrubbing his fluids out of my skirt.” Seeing that malicious glint in her eyes, I reached my breaking point. I didn’t think; I just reacted. My hand swung out, and the crack of the slap echoed through the room. “Have you no shame, Monica? Have you no soul?” The despair felt like a black hole opening up inside me. It dragged me back to when I was eighteen. My father’s business had collapsed into a heap of debt and scandals. I watched him walk off the edge of a rooftop. I came home to find my mother being tormented by creditors—men who stripped her of her dignity until she, too, followed him into the abyss, dying right in front of me. I lost everything in a single night. The depression that followed wasn’t just sadness; it was a physical weight that crushed the life out of me. During those dark years, Monica and Dexter were my anchors. They were the ones who stayed. I worked three jobs, destroying my health to pay off the debts my father left behind. Every time I felt like I was slipping into the dark, Monica would hold me, whispering into my ear, “Don’t be afraid, Logan. You have me. I’m never leaving.” Even last night, she had called me, her voice trembling with what I thought was joy, calling me “husband” over and over. Remembering how raspy her voice had sounded on that call, the realization hit me like a physical blow. She wasn’t crying because she was happy to marry me. I was just the audience for their twisted foreplay. My stomach churned. I lurched off the bed, stumbling toward the bathroom, and began to retch violently. My strength evaporated. A shadow fell over me. Monica stood in the doorway, looking down at my trembling body. For the first time in years, she didn’t reach down to hold me. She just watched me, her face a mask of boredom. Finally, she pulled a tissue from the box and dropped it near my hand, like she was feeding a stray dog. “Clean yourself up. A grown man acting like this… it’s pathetic.” 2 The disdain in her voice acted like a trigger. I shoved the tissue away, my voice cracking. “Don’t touch me. We’re done, Monica. I want a divorce.” My vision swam with black spots. I scrambled toward the nightstand to find my medication, but my hands were shaking so violently that the bottle shattered against the floor, spilling pills everywhere. Monica chuckled, picking up a single pill and rolling it between her fingers. “Divorce?” she asked, her voice mocking. “Logan, look at yourself. You’re a wreck. Without me, without my family’s influence, you wouldn’t last a week in this city. You’d be back in the gutter where I found you.” Her eyes began to blur as my consciousness flickered. As I slipped into the dark, memories flashed like a frantic montage. The years of heavy medication just to keep my heart beating. The relatives who vanished the moment the money did. The funeral where no one showed up except for them. Monica, the spoiled rich girl who didn’t know how to boil water, had spent months learning to cook just to make sure I ate. When the medication made my hair fall out in clumps, she didn’t hesitate—she cut her own long, beautiful hair off to match me. And the last time I tried to end it all… when I stood on that window ledge… she had climbed out right next to me. “If you jump, Logan, I’m right behind you. I don’t want a world without you.” The sweetness of the past felt like poison in my veins. The image shifted—distorted. I saw them together, laughing at me. I bolted upright in a hospital bed, gasping for air. A muffled, rhythmic sound came from behind the thin curtain of the room’s partition. Groans. Whispers. I froze. I wasn’t dreaming. I forced myself out of bed, my legs like lead. I stood outside the heavy door of the private suite’s sitting area. The sounds from inside made the bile rise in my throat again. I pushed the door open and vomited right there on the polished floor. The room went silent. Dexter, fully dressed but with his shirt tucked in haphazardly, rushed over to help me. I looked up at him, my eyes bloodshot and stinging. I saw the marks on his neck, then looked past him at Monica, who was adjusting her skirt with a look of pure guilt. I swung. My fist connected with Dexter’s jaw, fueled by years of misplaced gratitude. “How could you?” I screamed. “You’re supposed to be my brother!” Before I could land another blow, I was shoved hard. I hit the floor, the world spinning. Monica was standing over Dexter, shielding him, her face contorted with rage. “What is wrong with you, Logan? Are you insane?” She frantically checked Dexter’s face for bruises. Dexter looked at me, then at her, his expression shifting to one of feigned regret. “Mo… you told him? I told you not to tell him.” He turned to me, his voice smooth and manipulative. “Logan, look, it was an accident. Just let me explain.” 3 “An accident?” I stared into Dexter’s eyes, searching for a shred of the friend I thought I knew. “Fucking my girlfriend at my parents’ funeral was an accident? Sleeping with my wife for three years was an accident? Monica said you were together all night—she was still on top of you while she was supposed to be changing for our wedding toast! Are you two really that desperate? That pathetic?” My words stung. Dexter’s face darkened. “Logan, we’ve been friends since we were kids. Don’t make this uglier than it has to be.” Monica let out a sharp, cold laugh. “Logan, watch your mouth. Don’t talk about ‘affairs.’ To be honest—” “Monica, don’t,” Dexter snapped, cutting her off. I looked at her, at the way she looked at him, and I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up. “Did I say something wrong? You two are the ones doing the dirty work, yet you want to keep your hands clean? I didn’t realize how truly disgusting you both were.” Monica snapped. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Disgusting? You want to talk about disgusting? Dexter and I might be a lot of things, but we aren’t so pathetic that we watched our own mother get ruined until she jumped off a building. You want to talk about ‘dirty’? Look in a mirror, Logan!” The world stopped. Dexter’s face went pale. He immediately grabbed her, covering her mouth. “Monica, shut up!” She realized what she’d said. She looked at me, at the way the light had completely vanished from my eyes, and a flicker of remorse crossed her face. She opened her mouth to apologize, but I didn’t give her the chance. I grabbed a heavy gift basket from the table—something Dexter had brought—and hurled it at them with every bit of strength I had. “GET OUT!” “Monica, watch out!” Dexter lunged in front of her. The wicker and glass shattered against him, slicing into his arms. “Dexter!” Monica screamed. Seeing the blood blooming through his shirt, her guilt vanished, replaced by a white-hot fury. She marched over and slapped me, hard. “You’re out of your mind! You know Dexter has a coagulation disorder! Are you trying to kill him?” Dexter held her back, playing the martyr. “Mo, it’s fine. I deserve it. He’s sick, don’t let him get to you.” His “noble” act made me look like the villain. It worked. Monica’s rage doubled. “Sick? He’s plenty strong when he’s attacking people! Why is it that everyone else gets better, but you just stay ‘sick’? You’re faking it, Logan. You just love the attention!” I stood there, paralyzed. Ever since I proposed to Monica, I thought I was cured. I thought I had finally found the light. I didn’t realize that to her, my survival was just a long, boring performance. “Ms. Thorne, Mr. Brooks is losing too much blood. He needs an immediate transfusion,” a doctor said, rushing in after hearing the commotion. “But he’s O-negative, and the hospital bank is low.” Monica didn’t hesitate. She grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the door. “He’s the same blood type. Take it from him.” I tried to fight, but the Thorne family bodyguards were already there. They pinned me down and dragged me into a procedure room. A sedative hit my veins. My resistance died. Monica forgot one thing. Dexter had a clotting issue, yes. But after years of illness and malnutrition, I was severely anemic. By the time they were done, I was hovering on the edge of a blackout, unable to even lift my head. Monica never came back to my room. Instead, Dexter sent a flurry of “apology” texts in the middle of the night. I didn’t read them. I blocked his number. At dawn, I checked myself out. I limped to the city hall, the marriage certificate clutched in my hand. I couldn’t bear to be tied to her for another second. But when I handed the papers to the clerk, she looked at them, then at me, with a strange, pitying expression. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hunter. This certificate is a forgery.” I stared at her. “That’s impossible. We signed it three months ago. Monica Thorne. Look again.” The clerk sighed and pulled up the records on her screen. “Ms. Thorne is indeed married, sir. But her husband’s name isn’t Logan Hunter. It’s Dexter Brooks.” 4 I walked out of the government building, the useless piece of paper fluttering in my hand. I started to laugh, and the laughter turned into ragged, choking sobs. So that’s what she was going to say in the hospital. It wasn’t an affair. I wasn’t the husband being cheated on. I was the mistress. I was the side-show. I was the third wheel in my own life. I was wandering aimlessly when a black SUV screeched to a halt beside me. Two men jumped out and threw me into the back seat. Monica was there, her eyes red and swollen. “Logan! I told you to stay away from Dexter! Are you trying to destroy him?” She shoved her phone into my face. SCANDAL: Brooks Heir Caught in BDSM Affair at Funeral; Brooks Group Stock Plunges. The video on the screen was a grainy, hidden-camera shot. The background was unmistakable: it was the funeral home where my parents had been laid to rest three years ago. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Dexter’s father had a heart attack. The family had him whipped—he’s in the ICU right now! He worked for years to become the heir, and you ruined it in a second!” I stared at her, bewildered. I was so sick back then; I barely remembered the funeral. How could I have filmed anything? “You think I did this?” Monica’s fury spiked. “Who else would want to hurt him like this? You’ve pushed me too far, Logan.” She tapped her phone and sent a file. Then, she ordered the driver to the city center. “Dexter and I got married a year ago,” she said, her voice trembling with a cruel sort of triumph. “He’s my legal husband. Out of pity for you, he let you have the ‘wedding.’ He was willing to be the invisible man just so you wouldn’t break. And this is how you repay him?” “You like posting videos?” she hissed. “Fine. Let’s see how you like this one.” We pulled up to the tallest skyscraper in the city, the one with the massive LED screens. My heart stopped. On the giant screens, visible to thousands of commuters, a video began to play. It was my mother. The night of the bankruptcy. The men who had broken into our house were humiliating her, laughing as she begged for mercy. It was the deepest, most private trauma of my life. “Stop it,” I whispered. “Monica, stop it!” But she wasn’t done. The car sped toward the outskirts, toward the abandoned apartment building where my parents had jumped. Monica’s smile was demonic. “Since you love funerals so much, why don’t we visit them one last time?” Several of her family’s men were already on the roof. They were holding two ceramic urns. My parents’ ashes. “No! Stop! Please!” I tried to lunged out of the car, but the guards pinned me to the pavement. I watched, screaming, as they tilted the urns. A gray cloud of ash spilled into the wind, scattering over the trash and the dirty concrete of the alleyway. “Drag him up there,” Monica commanded. “Lock him in that building until Dexter wakes up. Let him think about what he’s done.” By the time they dragged me to the roof, the urns were empty. I fell to my knees, clawing at the dust and gravel, trying to find any trace of them, let alone a goodbye. I let out a sound that wasn’t human—a raw, broken howl of agony. In the car below, Monica’s assistant winced. “Ma’am… is this too much? He’s unstable. If he has an episode…” Monica scoffed, her eyes cold as she watched the building. “There are no ‘episodes.’ It’s just fake ash—I had the urns swapped. It’s a lesson. He needs to learn that for every action, there’s a consequence. Dexter is the victim here.” Her phone rang. It was the hospital. Dexter was awake. Without another look at the building, she ordered the driver to go. She spent the night by Dexter’s side, managing the PR crisis and ensuring the scandal was buried. Only when his vitals were stable did she finally relax. “The heat is off Dexter,” she told her assistant. “Call the guys at the apartment. Tell them to bring Logan here. He’s going to apologize to Dexter on his knees.” Just as the assistant reached for his phone, the hospital’s waiting room TV flashed an emergency bulletin. “Breaking News: A man has just jumped from the roof of the Willow Street Apartments. Witnesses say he was clutching two empty urns. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Viewer discretion is advised…”

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The roar of the pier market was still ringing in my ears, but my mind was already made up. Tomorrow was the start of the Memorial Day weekend—the busiest three days of the year. I had gone out of my way to ensure these local vendors could maximize their profits, rerouting my own deep-sea fleet and cold-chain logistics to provide them with priority stock at near-wholesale prices. It was supposed to be a win-win. Then I stepped into the market today. I was just browsing, pointing a finger toward a sea bass in a tank to ask the price, when the vendor grabbed a heavy wooden club. With a sickening thud, he crushed the fish’s head right in front of me. Then he looked me dead in the eye and demanded a hundred dollars. I told him I hadn’t agreed to buy it. He didn’t blink. He slammed a blood-stained gutting knife into his cutting board, the blade quivering. He told me, “Market rules, city boy. You point, you buy. The fish is dead because you spooked it. Pay up.” I wasn’t in the mood for a scene. I turned my back and started walking away without giving him a cent. I hadn’t gone ten steps before my phone buzzed. It was a notification from the “Pier District Merchants” group chat—a group I monitored but never posted in. I clicked it open. There was my face, a candid photo taken seconds ago. “Got a live one at Stall 4. Just tagged a dead grouper for a hundred bucks. Boys, get out there and block the exits. No pay, no play. Drinks are on me tonight.” The replies flooded in immediately. “On it.” “Teach the tourist some manners.” “Rule of the docks, baby.” It seemed my charity had reached its expiration date. It was time to cut the cord. 1 I shoved my phone back into my pocket, not even glancing at the dead fish. I just kept walking toward the main exit. But I only made it two steps. Two heavy industrial carts were pushed out from the neighboring stalls, one from the left and one from the right. The aisle, already narrow and slick with melted ice and fish guts, was suddenly a dead end. The two vendors behind the carts leaned against them with practiced nonchalance, their faces twisted into mocking smirks. My phone buzzed twice more in my pocket. I didn’t need to look. The “boys” had arrived. Behind me, I heard the heavy, wet slap of footsteps. Big Mike, the owner of the fish stall, rounded his counter. He was carrying the sea bass by its tail, the head a mangled mess of scales and red pulp. He strode up behind me and dropped it at my feet with a wet thud. “Where you going, pal?” Big Mike crossed his meaty arms over his stained apron, looming over me. “You bought that fish the second you pointed at it.” He leaned in, smelling of old brine and cheap cigarettes. “You don’t pay that hundred, you aren’t just staying in the market—you aren’t leaving this street.” He paused, using the toe of his boot to nudge the carcass. He let out a dry, jagged laugh. “Actually, you just dropped this dead fish on my floor. That’s a mess. Call it another fifty for the cleaning fee. One-fifty, total. Venmo or CashApp. Now.” I looked down at the blood blooming across the toe of my shoe, then back at the mutilated fish. A wave of nausea hit me, but beneath it, the heat of my anger had crystallized into something cold and sharp. “I never said I wanted it. You killed a fish to force a sale,” I said, my voice leveled, meeting the eyes of the vendors circling me. “And now you’re blocking my path. Is this a market or a mugging?” A chorus of jagged laughter erupted around me. The lanky guy leaning on the left cart shook his head. “Mugging? Calm down, Senator. This is a ‘transactional dispute.’ You spooked the livestock. In this harbor, if you break it, you bought it.” The guy on the right chimed in, his voice dripping with faux-concern. “Look at him. Suit probably cost more than my truck, and he’s crying over a hundred and fifty bucks. Just pay the man and go get your latte, man. Don’t be a cheapskate.” Big Mike stepped closer, his finger almost touching my nose. “I’ll tell you how it is. In this market, my word is the law. You call the cops? Go ahead. They’ll see a civil dispute over a dead fish and tell us to work it out. By the time they leave, I’ll make sure you’re leaving in an ambulance.” They worked together like a well-oiled machine. Every word was a calculated move in a game they’d played a thousand times, wrapping their thievery in the “tradition” of the docks. To them, I was just another nameless suit, a “mark” with deep pockets and no backbone. I looked at their ugly, greedy faces. Tomorrow was the holiday rush. Every shop on this street was expecting my fleet’s refrigerated trucks to roll in. I had always felt for the “little guy,” the ones waking up at 4 AM to haul crates. I’d kept the wholesale prices at rock bottom, even let them run tabs, just so they could keep their heads above water. I had been feeding a pack of wolves, and they had mistaken my kindness for weakness. I didn’t argue. I just pulled out my phone. “Fine,” I said quietly. “If we’re playing by market rules, let’s bring in the Market Director. Let’s check the cameras and see whose ‘rules’ carry more weight.” 2 It didn’t take long for the “authorities” to arrive. A few minutes after I called the complaint line, a man in a faded windbreaker with an official-looking lanyard pushed through the crowd. He was balding, with a gut that hung over his belt and a bored expression. Big Mike grinned the moment he saw him. “Director Halloway! Glad you’re here. This guy’s causing a scene, killed my fish, and now he’s trying to skip out on the bill.” I pointed to the high-definition security camera mounted directly above the stall. “Director, please check the footage. I was two feet away. I asked a price. I never touched the tank, let alone the fish.” Halloway didn’t even look up at the camera. He didn’t even look at me. “Cameras have been down for maintenance since Tuesday,” he muttered, his voice flat. “Line issues.” I let out a short, sharp laugh. How convenient. Halloway tucked his hands into his pockets, looked at the fish on the ground, and started in with a practiced, bureaucratic drone. “Look, son. Mr. Vancini has been a staple of this pier for fifteen years. Honest guy. These deep-sea fish are delicate. You start waving your hands around, you stress ’em out. If they flip, it’s on the person who caused the stress. That’s the code of the docks.” It was a masterpiece of gaslighting. This man was likely on my payroll indirectly—Voss Maritime paid a hefty “security and management” fee to the city for this district—and here he was, acting as the muscle for a shakedown. Just then, an older man in a stained chef’s coat pushed through the onlookers. He sighed, looking at me with a face full of weary disappointment. “Listen to him, kid,” the old man said, sounding like a concerned grandfather. “I’m a chef at the bistro around the corner. Sea bass are high-strung. One bad shock and their hearts give out. These vendors work twenty-hour days for pennies. You look like you’re doing well for yourself. Don’t be that guy. Don’t ruin a man’s day over a few bucks. Pay the man, and let’s all get back to work.” The crowd murmured in agreement. “Exactly. Look at his shoes—they cost more than my rent.” “Rich guys think they can just do whatever they want.” “Just pay him, you jerk.” The theater was flawless. They had their villain, their victim, and their moral compass. I was being cast as the heartless elite. Halloway saw me go quiet and took it as a sign of surrender. He pulled a crumpled citation book from his pocket and ripped off a yellow slip, flicking it toward my chest. “Enough talk,” Halloway said, his voice hardening. “Pay the one-fifty plus the cleaning fee. If you keep obstructing the flow of trade, I’m calling the pier security to hold you in the cold storage office until you cool off. And believe me, you don’t want to see the ‘processing fee’ for that.” 3 I watched Halloway’s thumb hovering over his walkie-talkie. Suddenly, my phone vibrated several times in quick succession. I made a show of opening my banking app, but I was actually looking at the group chat. The same people who were currently looking at me with righteous indignation were having a digital party. Halloway is a pro! ‘Maintenance’—I love it! Did you see Old Man Jenkins? Give that man an Oscar! The kid looks like he’s about to cry. Dotty, you’re up! Do the ‘good cop’ routine. Drain him dry before he leaves! The cynicism of it was almost impressive. They had turned extortion into a choreographed stage play. They were rotten to the core. The crowd parted again. A middle-aged woman in a red waterproof apron rushed in, looking breathless and frantic. “Oh, now, let’s be reasonable! Everyone just take a breath!” Dotty Higgins shoved Halloway’s hand away from the radio. As she did, I saw her hand slip something—a pack of cigarettes, maybe with something tucked inside—into Halloway’s pocket. She turned to me, her eyes wide and full of “kindness.” “Sweetheart, you’re not from around here, are you? Listen to Dotty. Don’t let this escalate. Going to the security office… that’s a nightmare you don’t want. These boys have tempers, but they’re good people.” She sighed, the picture of a tragic peacemaker. “Tell you what. I’ll help you out. I’ll take that dead fish off your hands for fifty bucks—I can use it for fish cakes at my stall. You pay Mike the remaining hundred, and we all walk away friends. How does that sound?” The “passersby” immediately flipped the script. “See? There’s still some heart on this pier!” “You’re a saint, Dotty. Kid, you better thank her.” I looked at Dotty’s “honest” face. I turned off my screen. “Fine,” I said, nodding. I opened my Venmo and scanned Big Mike’s QR code. Payment Received: $150.00. I saw the flicker of greed in Mike’s eyes as the notification hit his phone. I was a “whale.” A sucker with an open wallet. Dotty’s eyes lit up. She grabbed my arm with surprising strength, pulling me toward the stall next door. “You’ve had a rough start, honey. Come on, let me get you a water. Relax a bit. Mike’s just stressed about the holiday. Tell you what, I’ve got some prime Dungeness crab today. I’ll give you a deal—wholesale price, just to make up for the trouble.” I looked at the crabs snapping in her tank. A thin, cold smile touched my lips. “Sure, Dotty. I’d love some crab.” I wanted to see how far they’d go. 4 Dotty moved with lightning speed, scooping two large crabs out of the water. “Look at these beauties! Best in the Atlantic. Usually fifty a pound, but for you? Thirty. You’re getting away with murder, honey!” She tossed them onto a digital scale. “Four pounds. That’s a hundred-twenty. I’m practically giving these away!” She reached for a black plastic bag. “Wait,” I said, reaching out to stop her. I picked one of the crabs up from the scale. It was heavy—unusually so. But I didn’t feel the weight of the meat. I felt the thick, heavy industrial rubber bands wrapped four, five times around each claw. They weren’t the standard thin bands. These were thick, water-logged strips of heavy-duty rubber. I grabbed the end of one and pulled. It uncoiled like a snake. I dropped the crab back into the tank and laid the wet, heavy pile of rubber on the scale. The red numbers flickered. “Half a pound of crab. Half a pound of rubber,” I said, looking Dotty dead in the eye. Her “kindly” face froze. “Is this the ‘wholesale’ deal, Dotty?” For one second, she looked panicked. Then, the mask shattered. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t even try to explain. She sat down right on the wet floor and started screaming. “Help! Help! He’s attacking me! This big man is bullying a widow!” She started slapping her own thighs, her voice reaching a shrill, piercing pitch. “I put the bands on so he wouldn’t get bit! I was trying to protect him! He’s trying to steal from me! He’s trying to ruin my business!” It was the ultimate trump card. The damsel in distress. Predictably, the pack descended. Big Mike was back in my face instantly, and Halloway was already on his radio. “You piece of work!” Big Mike roared. “You think you can come here and harass women? You’re paying that hundred-twenty and you’re paying it now, or you’re leaving here in a box!” Halloway yelled into his mic: “Security to Stall 5! We’ve got a violent 10-34! Bring zip ties!” The other vendors joined in, their voices a cacophony of manufactured rage. “Scumbag!” “Think you’re better than us?” “Pay her!” I stood there, perfectly still, as the circle closed in. I took out my phone and dialed a number on speed dial. It picked up on the first ring. I looked at the screaming mob, my voice quiet but cutting through the noise like a blade. “This is Voss. Call the logistics lead and the warehouse managers. Now.” “Lock the trucks. Stop the offloading. Every Voss Maritime shipment scheduled for the Pier District is to be diverted to the downtown markets immediately.” “As of this second, this street is under a total supply embargo. Not a single fish moves into this market until I personally sign off on it.”

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Three years ago, the global outbreak of the “Dark Strain” plunged me, along with the rest of humanity, into permanent midnight. And then, this morning, I opened my eyes and the world was there again. It was nothing short of a miracle. My heart hammered against my ribs, wild and euphoric. I couldn’t wait to run downstairs and tell Dad. But as I sat up and looked around my bedroom, the breath completely left my lungs. My body went rigid. Across every single wall of my room, smeared in thick, frantic strokes of dark paint, was the exact same warning. The letters wrapped around me like a brand, screaming in silence: DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE. — 1 The sheer joy in my chest curdled into a cold, heavy knot of confusion. Surely, this was a prank. But who could have crept into my room in the dead of night to paint all of this without making a sound? Mom and Dad? That was impossible. They were entirely blind, just like me. Before my mind could spiral further, Dad’s voice drifted up from the foot of the stairs. Warm. Familiar. “Breakfast is ready, kiddo!” I pushed the dread down. There was no time to overthink it. I scrambled out of bed and jogged out of my bedroom. The dining table was laden with all my favorites: a stack of golden buttermilk pancakes, crispy thick-cut bacon, scrambled eggs, and a steaming hazelnut latte. “Thanks, Dad,” I chirped. He reached out, his hand finding the top of my head with practiced, gentle precision, ruffling my hair before pressing my backpack into my arms. Over by the sofa, Mom was quietly zipping up her own tote bag for work. Everything was devastatingly normal. It had to be a sick joke. Maybe some kids from the neighborhood broke in? I shook my head, desperate to toss the absurd, terrifying thoughts away. “I’m heading out to campus, Dad.” I grabbed my bag and headed for the front door. I had just wrapped my fingers around the brass doorknob when a hand slipped over my shoulder. It was utterly soundless. “You forgot your cane, sweetie.” I forced out an awkward, breathless laugh. “Oh, right. Guess I’m just in a rush.” Dad pressed the collapsible white cane into my palm. His tone was breezy, almost conversational. “Your vision came back, didn’t it?” My pulse spiked. I hesitated, biting the inside of my cheek, debating whether to tell the truth. But then Dad chuckled, tapping a finger against his own temple near his eyes. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said, smiling softly. “I woke up this morning, and the blindness was just… gone. I was actually going to suggest we skip school and go to the hospital to get checked out.” A massive wave of relief washed over me. “Wait, you can see?” I gasped. “Sure can.” Whatever the hell was written on my walls, it didn’t matter. Dad would never hurt me. The tension drained from my shoulders in a long, shaky exhale. “Oh my god, really? Dad, my sight came back too! Just this morning, I—” The smile froze on my face. A sudden, wet tearing sound echoed in the foyer. I looked down, my brain struggling to process the visual. The sharp metal tip of a mobility cane was buried deep in my abdomen. Blood, hot and shockingly red, poured over the white shaft, pooling onto the hardwood floor. My eyes tracked the length of the cane to the hands gripping the handle. Mom’s hands. My lips parted, but all that came out was a wet gasp. “Why…?” Dad was standing right in front of me, staring at my face. His eyes were entirely dead. He didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his hands and shoved me backward with a brutal, mechanical force. There was a sickening thud as my body pitched backward down the porch steps. Then, a sharp, deafening crack. I felt the spine in my neck sever. A gurgling sound scraped up my throat. The blood pooled around my head, thick and warm. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My vision began to blur at the edges, tunneling into darkness. But in my final, fading second of consciousness, I looked up. Dad was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at me. The gentle, paternal warmth had completely melted off his face, leaving behind something utterly hollow. Something that wasn’t human at all. 2 I gasped, my eyes flying open. I was staring at the walls again. DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE. My chest heaved as I sucked in greedy, panicked breaths. I looked around wildly. “What the hell…?” I yanked up the hem of my shirt, staring at my stomach. Smooth skin. No blood. No gaping hole. Had I… reset? Was it morning again? I sat in my familiar bed, surrounded by my familiar things, but a creeping, suffocating terror wrapped around my throat. What is happening? Downstairs, the voice rang out again. Cheerful. Warm. “Breakfast is ready, kiddo!” I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to breathe. Hiding up here wouldn’t do any good. If I stayed, they would eventually come up. I needed to take control of the narrative. I pasted a smile onto my face—or at least, what I hoped looked like one—and opened my bedroom door. I nearly screamed. Dad was standing inches from my door. Ramrod straight. Completely motionless. My heart stalled, but survival instinct kicked in. Without missing a beat, I unfolded my cane, tapping it rhythmically against the floorboards, acting exactly as I had for the last three years. I walked forward, pretending I couldn’t see the man blocking my path. He didn’t speak. He just turned, his footsteps falling perfectly in time with mine, trailing me down the hall. I sat at my usual spot at the dining table. Only then did Dad pull out his own cane, tapping it lightly against the kitchen tiles, fabricating the auditory illusion that he had just walked into the room. A cold sweat broke out across my spine. He can see. He can see perfectly fine. So why is he pretending to be blind? Has he been pretending for the last three years? I ate my pancakes in suffocating silence, using my peripheral vision to watch him. He looked exactly like my father. The same laugh lines, the same tiny mole near his left eye. But the way he sat was wrong. He didn’t eat. He didn’t blink. He just sat directly across from me, his dark pupils locked onto my face with a terrifying, predator-like stillness. My breath caught in my throat for a fraction of a second. Instantly, his hand shot across the table, pressing against my forehead. “You feel cold, sweetie. Didn’t sleep well?” I forced a weak chuckle. “Probably just kicked the blankets off. I’m fine.” His voice was dripping with fatherly concern, but his facial muscles were completely slack. It was like watching an animatronic doll. I forced myself to keep eating, meticulously mimicking the clumsy, cautious movements of a blind person. Halfway through my eggs, I purposely fumbled my fork, letting it clatter to the floor. I bent down to pick it up. As I did, I peeked through the space beneath the table toward the living room. Mom was on the sofa, methodically packing her bag. Normal. Ordinary. Except her head was turned at a sharp, unnatural angle. Her unblinking eyes were fixed dead on me. She was faking it too. The air in the room felt like it was turning to glass, fragile and sharp. I couldn’t keep this up. I was going to crack. I grabbed the fork, sat up, and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the empty space ahead of me. “I’m full, Dad. Gotta head to class.” I stood up quickly. “Hold on a second.” Dad moved with terrifying speed, stepping directly into my path. I froze, my muscles locking up. He knew. He had to know. Then, he let out a soft chuckle and slipped my travel mug into the side pocket of my backpack. “You forgot your coffee, kiddo.” I kept my chin down. I couldn’t let him see my eyes. He patted my head. “Alright. Dad’s off to work.” “Bye, Dad.” I intentionally fumbled with the straps of my backpack, buying time, waiting for him to leave first. The rhythmic tap-tap of his cane faded toward the front door. The latch clicked shut. I exhaled, the tension draining from my muscles. But then, the knob turned again. Without making a single sound, the door cracked open. Dad stepped back inside on the balls of his feet. He held his cane suspended an inch above the ground. Absolute, terrifying silence. He crept back into the living room, sat down on the sofa next to Mom, and together, they stared at me. Unmoving. — 3 A violent shudder ripped through me, my clothes instantly sticking to the icy sweat on my back. He didn’t go to work. Why was he back? I bit the inside of my lip so hard I tasted copper, forcing myself not to process the horror. I gripped my cane—the one I’d made sure to grab this time—and tapped my way to the front door. As I walked out, I saw them rise from the sofa. They followed me. I walked down the sidewalk, tapping my cane, staring straight ahead, while my “parents” stalked me on their tiptoes just a few feet behind. It wasn’t until I crossed the iron gates of my boarding school campus that the suffocating weight of their stares finally vanished. When I slid into my seat in the lecture hall, I immediately scanned the room for Dustin. He was a few rows ahead of me, sitting rigid. The professor was droning on at the front, his eyes glazed and vacant. All the students around me had the same hollow, unseeing gaze. Everyone was blind. But Dustin was shifting in his seat. Twitching. The second the bell rang, Dustin grabbed my arm and dragged me into the boys’ restroom, shoving me into a stall and locking the door. His breathing was ragged. “Gemma, have you noticed anything weird?” My stomach plummeted, but I kept my face utterly blank. “What do you mean?” “My parents,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “Something is really wrong with them.” I raised an eyebrow, gesturing for him to keep going. He checked under the stall door, paranoid. Seeing him like this made my own hands curl into fists. Satisfied we were alone, he leaned in, his lips barely brushing my ear. “I can see. It came back this morning.” A shockwave hit my chest. I opened my mouth to say Me too, to tell him everything. But then the image of my own blood pooling on the hardwood flashed in my mind. DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE. I swallowed the truth like broken glass. “Wait, really?” I faked a gasp of awe. “That’s amazing! I wish mine would come back. But what does that have to do with your parents acting weird?” Dustin looked terrified. He started rambling about his parents standing over his bed, about them tracking him with dead eyes. I murmured comforting words, validating his fear, but I locked my own secret tight behind my teeth. The warning bell rang. Dustin looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown. A pang of guilt hit me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we were in the exact same boat and we needed to team up. Then, without warning, Dustin’s hand shot out, his index finger jabbing directly toward my left eye. Every instinct screamed at me to flinch. But the sheer, paralyzing terror of what my father had done to me overrode the reflex. I forced my eye to stay wide open, my face completely slack. His fingernail stopped less than a millimeter from my cornea. Dustin tilted his head. The panic on his face evaporated, replaced by a chilling, clinical emptiness. He stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. Slowly, he lowered his hand. “I guess so,” he muttered, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. “We should get back to class. Maybe I’m just losing my mind.” “Yeah,” I breathed. Cold sweat trickled down my temple. He had been testing me. If I had blinked, I’d probably be dead on the bathroom floor. I made the right choice. I couldn’t trust anyone. — 4 After the incident with Dustin, I existed in a state of hyper-vigilance. Everyone was a threat. I went through the motions. Classes. Lunch. Small talk. Heading back to the dorms. I played the perfect blind girl. My plan was to lay low for a few days, gather supplies, and figure out a way to run. But during afternoon cleaning duty in the library archives, I found something. A diary. It was shoved behind a loose baseboard. The cover was worn leather, with several frantic, red warning symbols etched into it. I frowned, tracing the cover. More importantly, it wasn’t written in Braille. Since the Great Blindness hit, almost all printed text had been converted to Braille. Traditional books were incinerated or recycled as scrap. Written words simply didn’t exist anymore. Who wrote this? Was it the same person who painted my walls? The other students were busy sweeping. No one was looking. I smoothly slid the book up my sleeve. I didn’t dare pull it out until I was back in my dorm room, safely hidden beneath my heavy comforter with a flashlight. — 5 The entries were a chaotic mess. The sentences were disjointed, punctuated by grotesque, scribbled illustrations. At first, my heart sank. It read like the fever dream of a terrified child. I risked so much to steal this, and it was just nonsense? But as I flipped the pages, a cold knot formed in my gut. March 7: Toby and I got our sight back a week ago. He didn’t believe the writing on the wall. He said it out loud… He’s gone. I looked everywhere. Mom and Dad keep dragging me from town to town. I don’t know what we’re running from. I’m so scared. April 1: He’s dead. Toby didn’t run away. He’s dead. His body was shoved in the… No wonder I couldn’t find him. April 7: Dad has Toby’s watch in his pocket. They killed him. But they loved him the most, didn’t they? April 15: They asked me today if I could see. I said no. It’s the only thing keeping me alive. I stopped reading, my breath shallow in the stale air under the blanket. Was this real? If it was, why were the dates marked 2036? That was ten years from now. And if the parents were on the run, why would they murder their own kid? The logic was completely fractured. I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms, the parallels to my own life sinking in. If telling the truth meant death, did I have to fake being blind forever? What if I slipped up? Would I get to respawn again? Something deep in my bones told me no. I only had one extra life. This was it. The later entries grew shorter. The handwriting was erratic, deeply panicked. Several pages had been entirely blacked out with heavy ink, masking whatever horror the author had witnessed. May 2: There are more people running now. We passed three groups on the highway. What are they so afraid of? Is something chasing them? I looked back. I saw it—[heavily blacked out]. I pray to God I never have to look at that thing ever again. May 10: I finally found others like me! It’s not just Toby and me. There are so many whose sight came back, and they’re all hiding. They’re hiding in the… I clawed at the pages, frantic. Hiding where? Who is chasing them? Why the hell did they ink out the location?! I carefully tore out the page with the heavily blacked-out illustration and held it up to the beam of my flashlight. The light barely pierced the ink, but I could make out the faint silhouette of… something. It was vaguely humanoid, but the proportions were horribly wrong. Was that a person? I flipped to the end. The remaining pages were ripped out. There was only one entry left on the inside back cover. If you are lucky enough to read this, RUN. Run right now. Do not hesitate. I shivered. Run? My eyes drifted to the very last line, scrawled in tiny letters at the bottom corner. I wish I had stayed blind. A profound, bone-deep chill swept through me. I pulled my knees to my chest. It might have been paranoia, but the hair on my arms stood up. I felt like I was being watched. I whipped the blanket down and scanned the dark dorm room. Empty. Just me and the moonlight filtering through the blinds. A hallucination. It had to be. Knock. Knock. Knock. I jumped, nearly dropping the flashlight. “Gemma?” It was the dorm mother’s voice, muffled through the heavy wood. “Pack your bags, sweetie. Your dad is here to take you home.” My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. Boarding school students only went home on weekends. Today was Monday. He knew. He figured it out. I looked back down at the diary. Run right now. If I got in that car with my “father,” I knew with absolute certainty that I would never see the sun again. “Okay! Just a second!” I called out, forcing my voice to sound tired and compliant. I shoved my wallet, the diary, and a water bottle into my backpack. I opened my window, slipped out onto the fire escape, and dropped quietly into the bushes below. The night was pitch black, a thick, suffocating overcast hiding the moon. Normally, running in the dark would be terrifying. But I had spent three years living without light. The darkness was my element. I sprinted toward the woods bordering the campus, heading for the county road. Suddenly, from the tree line behind me, I heard it. The crunch of dead leaves. The wet, frantic sound of heavy footsteps. Something was hunting me.

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Today is the highly publicized “Love of the Century” mega-wedding event, and my fiancé, Isaac, and I are one of the couples. Fifty couples are scheduled to sign their marriage licenses and say their vows on a live, nationwide broadcast. According to the network’s run-of-show, the grooms are currently downstairs navigating the “Groom’s Gauntlet”—a televised obstacle course and trivia game—while the brides wait in our respective hotel suites. I wanted to give Isaac a little surprise. I slipped out of my suite and crept down the hall, planning to hide in the alcove so I could jump out when he finally made it to my floor. I had just ducked behind the ice machine when I heard the low, hushed voices of Isaac and his groomsmen. “Isaac, man, I don’t know about this,” one of his friends muttered, sounding frantic. “This is a massive, officially sponsored live broadcast. If you use this setup to secretly marry your brother’s widow, Josie is going to be publicly humiliated.” I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Then, Isaac’s voice drifted over, dripping with an exhausted kind of martyrdom. “I don’t have a choice. Lola has been a widow for three years. My parents treat her like absolute garbage, blaming her for Declan’s death. The only way she gets legal protection and access to the family trust is if she has my name.” “And as for Josie,” he continued smoothly, “she and I have always had a connection that transcends a piece of paper. We are soulmates. We don’t need a marriage license to validate what we have. She won’t care about the legalities.” The groomsman still sounded hesitant. “But dude, you’re forgetting something. When your brother dumped Josie for Lola at their engagement party three years ago, Josie nearly drowned herself in the river. It took you three years to pull her out of that dark place. If she finds out… she’s losing her husband to the exact same woman twice. She’ll lose her mind.” Isaac cut him off, his tone dismissive and cold. “It’s a fifty-couple wedding. It’s chaos down there. The network mandates that all brides wear those heavy, opaque vintage lace veils for the ‘blind reveal’ at the altar. I’ll just say I couldn’t see through the lace and grabbed the wrong hand. No one is going to investigate it.” “Besides, you guys know the truth. The only reason I pursued Josie back then was to keep her occupied so Lola could marry my brother in peace. Now that Declan is gone, it’s my duty to protect Lola.” He turned to the other two groomsmen, his voice dropping into a hard, authoritative register. “Go stand outside Room 302. Don’t let Josie out. Once the ink is dry on the license and the live broadcast wraps, it’ll be legally binding. Even if my parents throw a fit, it’ll be too late to undo it.” Listening to him, a hollow, freezing sensation washed over me. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just let out a quiet, bitter exhale, and silently slipped back into my room. I pulled out my phone, opened the massive group chat the network had set up for the couples, and scrolled until I found the guy who had originally been paired with Isaac’s sister-in-law for the broadcast. I typed out a quick text: Room 302 is missing a groom. You want to swap in? …… 1 I set my phone face-down on the vanity. The screen was still glowing. “Josie, get over to the door! Isaac’s group just passed the first checkpoint!” The corner of my mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile. Seeing me frozen there, my best friend Gemma rushed over and grabbed my arm. “Hurry up! They’re on the second floor. When he gets up here, what kind of riddle should we make him solve to get in?” “Don’t bother,” I said, gently pulling my arm out of her grip. Gemma blinked, confused. “What do you mean?” I looked at her, enunciating every word. “I don’t think this wedding is happening.” Gemma stared at me, completely lost. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You two have been waiting for this broadcast for months. You fought tooth and nail to get one of the fifty spots. What do you mean it’s not happening?” I didn’t answer. Fought tooth and nail to get a spot… Three months ago, Isaac had slammed the application forms onto my kitchen counter. He told me about this massive network event. A live-streamed wedding. Fifty couples. The whole country watching. He told me he had stayed up for forty-eight hours straight just to secure our audition spot. He said he was only going to do this once in his life, and he wanted it to be spectacular. I had hesitated. Because right around that time, my mother had been moved into the ICU. Her biggest regret in life was that she and my dad never had a real wedding. They were poor; they signed some papers at the courthouse and called it a day. She always told me that when I found the right man, she wanted to see me in a white dress. She wanted to physically place my hand into his. I wanted her to have that. I took the application to her hospital room. I showed her the fine print at the bottom of the page: “Due to live-broadcast logistical constraints, the traditional parental give-away will not be permitted.” My mom had smiled a frail, paper-thin smile and said it was fine. “As long as I live long enough to see you marry him, I don’t care about the logistics.” But when she flipped to the page showing the venue layout, she had gone quiet for a long time. “So… I won’t even get to see you walk down the aisle?” she had whispered. I had broken down in the hospital corridor that afternoon. That night, I begged Isaac. “Can we just pull out of the TV thing? Let’s just do something tiny. A backyard ceremony. Let my mom sit in her wheelchair and hand me over to you…” Isaac had pulled me into his arms, stroking my hair. “Baby, don’t be unreasonable. We fought so hard for this spot. It’s going to be broadcast live. Your mom can watch it from her hospital bed. It’s the same thing.” “It’s not the same,” I had cried. “When I come to pick you up at the hotel, we’ll FaceTime her,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s the same thing, Josie.” I stopped fighting him. Because when he said it, his eyes were red. He told me he just wanted to give me the most magnificent day of my life. I believed him. My mom’s condition deteriorated. She was moved to the palliative respiratory ward. On the last day she was truly lucid, she held my hand and wheezed, “Momma isn’t going to get to see you in your dress.” “You will,” I promised, swallowing my tears. “It’s on TV. I’ll have the nurses turn it on. You have to watch.” She nodded. “Okay.” And yet today, just moments ago, the man I was supposed to marry said: “She and I have always had a connection that transcends a piece of paper. She won’t care about the legalities.” My mother was lying in a hospital bed right now, her eyes glued to a television screen, completely unaware that her daughter didn’t even deserve a piece of paper. Suddenly, heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway outside our suite. Gemma’s head snapped toward the door, her eyes narrowing. “That’s weird. Why is it only two groomsmen? Where’s Isaac?” 2 She looked back at me, her face scrunched in confusion. “The gauntlet is over. Shouldn’t he be the first one sprinting up here to get his bride?” I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Gem… when the groom gets here, don’t give him too hard of a time.” Gemma paused, then covered her mouth and giggled. “Oh, whatever! I know you’re just protective of him.” “Fine,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Considering the poor guy chased you for three years, I’ll tell the other bridesmaids to go easy on him. Maybe just twenty push-ups at the door.” She rapidly typed out a text to the girls in the hall. “Bride’s orders. Don’t be too vicious. Leave the groom some dignity.” The corners of my mouth curved up slightly, but I stayed silent. Under any other circumstances, this would have been such a sweet, perfect moment. Gemma tucked her phone away and came over to loop her arm through mine. “Honestly, Isaac is going to look devastating in his tux today. You guys have been together for three years, and he’s always treated you like fragile glass. You’re finally making it official. Are you nervous?” “No,” I said. Gemma laughed. “Liar. Your lips are completely white.” Just as the words left her mouth, my phone buzzed on the vanity. It was a FaceTime call from my mom. She had just finished her final, desperate round of chemo. She was completely bald, her skin a sickly, jaundiced yellow, but her eyes were crinkled in absolute joy. “My beautiful girl,” she rasped, beaming. “I’m watching the broadcast. Isaac was working so hard during those silly games to get to you. You tell your friends not to torture him too much…” I forced out a laugh and nodded. “I just can’t wait to see you two sign those papers,” she whispered. A nurse walked into the frame to adjust her IV and glanced at the screen. “Oh, is your daughter one of the TV brides today?” “Yes she is! Fifty couples, live on national television!” My mom’s voice was as frail as a flickering candle in the wind, but it was filled with so much pride. “She found herself a wonderful man. Three years, and he’s never given me a single reason to worry. He cherishes her like she’s the most precious thing in the world.” I gripped my phone so hard my fingernails dug half-moons into my palms. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that the man who had pursued me for three years, who had “loved” me for three years, had orchestrated this massive television spectacle for one singular purpose. To use the chaos of the broadcast to marry his brother’s widow. To force his parents’ hands into accepting an unholy alliance, live on television, where they couldn’t scream and stop it. I took a deep, shuddering breath, and smiled into the camera. “Alright, Mom, the signal is getting a little choppy. I’ll call you as soon as the ink is dry.” I hung up. Gemma stepped behind me and carefully draped the heavy, opaque vintage lace veil over my head, completely obscuring my face. “You know, this whole vintage veil gimmick is actually kind of romantic,” she mused, adjusting the lace. “And your mom being able to watch it live… I bet just seeing this will cure her halfway.” She wandered over to the window and peered down at the courtyard. “Where is Isaac?” she muttered. “The other rooms are already clearing out. The host on the loudspeaker is already calling the twenty-eighth couple down.” 3 She turned back, picked up a favor box of jordan almonds from the table, popped one into her mouth, and crunched down. “But seriously,” she said, her voice softening. “Three years ago, if someone had told me you’d be marrying him today, I would have thought they were crazy.” I didn’t say anything. Gemma chewed her candy, her gaze drifting to a memory. “When Declan broke your heart like that, I was genuinely terrified we were going to lose you.” “Declan was such a manipulative piece of trash,” she spat. “When you two were together, he acted like he would pull the stars from the sky for you. We all thought you two were endgame.” Her voice dropped. “And then Lola showed up.” My fingers curled inward, the heavy lace of my dress scratching against my skin. Lola. I hadn’t let anyone say that name around me in a long time. It wasn’t until I had been dating Isaac for six months that he finally brought me home to meet his family. That was the day I found out that my ex-fiancé, Declan, was his older brother. And the woman who had destroyed my life, Lola, was already his sister-in-law. I had started shaking violently. I turned to walk right back out the door. Isaac had grabbed my hand, his grip tight, his voice shaking. “Josie, please. Give me a chance. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Let the past be the past. Please.” I had struggled with it for months. Every time I had to sit across from Declan and Lola at family dinners, my stomach churned with nausea. But Isaac… Isaac was so incredibly good to me. He never forced me to call Declan ‘brother’ or Lola ‘sister’. He intercepted the wine glasses they tried to hand me. He filled my plate. At family gatherings, he acted as a physical shield, ensuring they never even got close to me. “You don’t have to talk to them,” he would whisper. “They don’t exist in our world.” But I didn’t want him to be caught in the middle. He was a part of that family. Lola was his sister-in-law. Holidays were inevitable. The better he treated me, the more guilty I felt for holding onto my trauma. After eight months of inner warfare, I finally raised my glass at Thanksgiving, looked right at the woman who ruined my engagement, and smiled. “To you, Lola.” Beneath the table, Isaac had gripped my hand so hard, his eyes shining with unshed tears. From that day on, I played the part. For him. But it wasn’t long after that Declan was killed. A freak accident on a construction site. Gone in an instant. Lola became a widow overnight. “I really didn’t want to bring all this up on your wedding day,” Gemma scoffed, pulling me out of my memories. “I’m just so pissed off. My boyfriend and I couldn’t even get on the waitlist for this TV wedding, but somehow she gets to participate?” “And the guy she’s marrying is Brandon? Isaac’s old college roommate who just moved back from London?” She threw her hands up. “Like, seriously? Does every man on earth just fall for her tragic, helpless act?” She was getting angrier the more she spoke, her fingers crushing the cardboard favor box. “When you and Declan were celebrating your engagement, he literally abandoned you in front of both your families to run to Lola because she ‘wasn’t feeling well’ and ‘needed someone to take care of her’. And how did he take care of her? By sleeping with her!” Gemma’s voice cracked, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. “That night… you went down to the river all by yourself…” I lowered my eyes beneath the veil. My eyelashes fluttered. “If Isaac hadn’t jumped in and dragged you out…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She aggressively wiped at her face. I handed her a tissue from my lap. “Isaac,” Gemma sniffled, taking the tissue and forcing a watery smile. “He was soaking wet. His lips were literally blue from the cold. And he just knelt there in the mud, holding you, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’ve got you.’ Why would a total stranger do that for someone?” Her tone lightened, filled with that survivor’s reverence she always had when talking about my relationship. “He told us he understood you. He said he had been betrayed too, and that he was willing to spend his whole life helping you heal.” “Do you remember? You had withered away to nothing. You wouldn’t speak to anyone. But when he came over, you’d finally eat. We all thought he was a literal angel sent to save you. He chased you for three years. He respected your boundaries so much he barely even held your hand for the first year. We used to joke that maybe he had intimacy issues—but looking back, what kind of man has that much patience? A man who is truly, deeply in love with you.” Her eyes were bloodshot by the time she said the last word. I tilted my head up, looking toward the window, my face hidden beneath the thick lace. I let out a soft laugh. “He didn’t love me.” Gemma froze. “What did you say?” 4 My lips parted in a dry, humorless smile. “He only approached me to keep me out of the way, so his precious Lola could marry his brother in peace.” Gemma was completely derailed. “Wh… what does that mean?” I looked at her blurred silhouette through the veil. Suddenly, I felt utterly exhausted. There was no point in explaining it all now. Why ruin her day, too? All she saw was the Isaac who saved me. The Isaac who treated me like royalty. She didn’t know about the late-night phone calls he took in the driveway whenever the ‘widow’ was having a panic attack. She didn’t hear the way eight out of ten sentences out of his mouth ended with, “Lola has it so hard, Josie, please just be understanding.” She didn’t know that for every birthday, every anniversary, he insisted on taking Lola to lunch first, because she ‘needed the company’, before coming to celebrate with me. I should have woken up a long time ago. But I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of the man who had pulled me out of the freezing water. “You… you always do this. You swallow everything and only tell me the good stuff. What’s going on?” Gemma’s voice was trembling now, her eyes locked onto me. “Don’t think I didn’t notice. The way Isaac treats his sister-in-law… it’s crossed the line into weird so many times.” “I used to ask you about it, and you’d always just brush it off. ‘It’s fine, she’s his family, he’s just being supportive.’ You seemed so okay with it, so I kept my mouth shut.” She sniffled, a sob catching in her throat. “But I kept track of it. I worried about it.” “Until the day he proposed to you. In the plaza below your office building. Hundreds of roses. When he yelled your name, his voice was literally cracking. I thought to myself, how could a man who looks at her like that not love her?” She forced a laugh, wiping her nose. “So I threw all those doubts away. Because today is the day my Josie finally gets her happily ever after.” Right on cue, a chorus of cheers and laughter erupted from the hallway. “The groom is here! The groom is here! Pay the toll!” Gemma’s eyes lit up instantly. She wiped the last of her tears away, a massive grin breaking across her face. “He’s here! Isaac is finally here!” “Okay, sit up straight, fix the veil, don’t let him see you yet—wait, is my makeup ruined?” I sat perfectly still, watching her flurry of movement through the lace. She was smiling. I was smiling, too. She was smiling because she thought Isaac had finally arrived. I was smiling because my groom had finally arrived. 5 The moment the door swung open, the smile vanished from Gemma’s face. The man who walked in was not Isaac. The other brides’ bridesmaids were still in the hallway, cheering and yelling things like, “Give us the envelopes!” and “Sing us a song!” They didn’t know Isaac; they just assumed the man walking into 302 was the groom assigned to this suite. But Gemma knew. Her head whipped back to look at me, her eyes immediately welling up again. The look on her face was a devastating cocktail of confusion, panic, and a dark, sinking realization that she had just put the pieces together. I reached out and gently squeezed her hand. It was as if she had been struck physically. The tears spilled over her eyelashes. She didn’t ask why. Maybe the sentence I had just spoken—”He only approached me so Lola could marry his brother”—finally clicked into place. Or maybe it was because the woman sitting beneath the heavy lace veil was so eerily calm. She understood. In an instant, she understood everything. Biting down hard on her lower lip, Gemma took a step back and gave a shaky wave to the man in the doorway. The man walked in. He didn’t say a word. He simply reached out, took my hand in his, and led me out the door. The hallway was eerily quiet now. All the other suites had been emptied out in a flurry of laughter and camera flashes. Only Room 302 remained, its bride walking silently away, her hand held by a complete stranger. When we reached the outdoor plaza, the fifty brides in their identical vintage lace veils were lined up in five perfect rows. The network host’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “Alright! The final couple has taken their place! Fifty couples, all present and accounted for!” “It is time for the couples to take their vows—” Isaac, who had been whispering and laughing with Lola, heard the words ‘all present’ and frowned. “Wait,” he said sharply.

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It was our fifth wedding anniversary, and instead of a candlelit dinner, I was behind the wheel of my sedan, grinding out another shift as a rideshare driver. The passenger door swung open, and a woman slid into the back seat. My breath hitched when I caught her reflection in the rearview mirror—underneath her designer trench coat, she was wearing absolutely nothing from the waist down. She was shivering, her teeth chattering from the Chicago winter, but her eyes were sharp, brimming with a cruel sort of provocation. “Never seen a girl having a little fun before?” she snapped. “Everett likes it this way,” she continued, her voice dripping with a smug, breathless pride. “He says the risk of being caught outdoors is the only thing that really gets him going. It keeps him on edge.” She let out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Not like that pathetic housewife of his. He says she doesn’t even know how to look at him, let alone touch him.” The woman—Roxy, according to the app—leaned forward, her smile widening. “Get this: just to impress me, he hired some guys to stage a kidnapping. He told his wife it was some old ‘business rivals’ coming for his head.” “And the idiot actually fell for it! She showed up to trade herself for him. They put her through hell for twenty-four hours straight while he and I watched.” “Tell me,” she whispered, leaning closer to the partition. “Isn’t that just madness? He loves me so much he’s willing to destroy his own wife just to give me a thrill.” I slammed on the brakes. The screech of tires echoed through the quiet street, but all I could hear was the blood roaring in my ears. My body went cold, paralyzed. A few months ago, I had been beaten into a coma trying to “save” my husband, Everett. I walked with a permanent limp now, a constant reminder of the night I thought I was being a hero. 1. I forced my hands to stay steady on the steering wheel, my knuckles white. “So,” I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else—someone far away. “This… boyfriend of yours. How did you two meet?” Maybe it was a coincidence. The name ‘Everett’ wasn’t exactly rare. And the Everett I knew was a man of quiet habits, a low-level office drone who complained if the heating bill was ten dollars too high. He wasn’t some adrenaline junkie playing sick games in the woods. “He’s not my boyfriend,” Roxy said, lounging back against the leather seat, looking utterly bored with her own wealth. “He’s my benefactor. My sugar daddy, if you want to be gauche about it.” “I’ve been his ‘special project’ for five years. Since the day I graduated. He tucked me away in a corner office at his firm.” “A million-dollar salary just to look pretty.” I felt a microscopic surge of relief. My Everett was a nobody. He made less than I did. On my last birthday, I’d ordered a small cake, and he’d made me return it, calling it an ‘unnecessary extravagance.’ He’d scolded me for ‘wasting’ money when I made him a bowl of noodles with two eggs. Frugality is the only way we survive, Margot, he’d always tell me. Roxy’s lips curled into a sneer. “His wife is such a loser. She has no idea who she’s actually sleeping next to. A billionaire playing ‘poor’ just for the psychological experiment of it all.” “It’s hilarious, really. She’s out here breaking her back driving an Uber while he spends more on one of our lunches than she makes in a year.” I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird in my chest. “Last year,” she went on, her voice a sing-song of malice, “my vacation happened to fall on the same day his wife ended up in the ER. Some car accident.” “He didn’t even blink. He skipped out on signing her consent forms and took me on a ten-country tour of Europe instead.” “I got upset because we were five minutes late for the private jet, so he bought me three supercars just to stop me from pouting. Fifty million dollars, just like that.” A wave of nausea hit me. Last year, after the accident, I was hovering on the edge of death. The hospital had called Everett dozens of times, but there was no answer. When he finally showed up days later, he told me he’d been in a dead zone for a ‘crucial business trip.’ He’d cried by my hospital bed, holding me, telling me he’d never leave me for work again once we finally ‘made it.’ He’d brought me three little plastic toy cars. I had to save up for weeks to get these for you, babe, he’d said. To remind you of the life we’ll have someday. I forced the car back into gear, my vision blurring. Roxy didn’t notice. She was too busy with her own reflection. “I think Everett actually loves her, in his own twisted way,” she mused. “That’s why he gives me the money but keeps her as the ‘wife.’ But who cares?” “He told me himself: she’s boring. Gray. A piece of stale bread compared to the fire I give him.” I forced a pale, hollow smile into the mirror. “Yeah. I bet.” Roxy seemed satisfied with that. She suddenly slapped her forehead. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pair of lacy, discarded silk panties. “I’ll pay you double the fare if you drop these in the mail for me. Address it to the ‘little woman.’” “Today is their five-year anniversary,” she cackled. “Everett told me to pick out a ‘gift’ so she wouldn’t get suspicious about him being out late.” She handed me her phone to show me the delivery address. My last shred of hope withered and died. It was my house. 2. Roxy pulled her phone back, a look of smug charity on her face. “I’m honestly too kind, helping him manage his domestic trash,” she laughed. “But a woman who’s been cheated on that long? She deserves the leftovers. She’ll probably see the silk and think he’s finally being ‘romantic.’ God, I can’t wait.” I gripped the steering wheel so hard the plastic groaned. I wanted to turn around and wrap my cord around her neck, but I forced myself to breathe. If they wanted to play games, fine. I hoped they’d still be laughing when I saw them in court. I discreetly tapped the ‘record’ button on my dashboard dashcam. “He sounds devoted to you,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I hope you get that wedding ring soon.” She tossed her head back, eyes burning with a manic sort of triumph. “Oh, it’s coming. That useless woman can’t compete with me.” “Do you know how much he spoils me?” she bragged, leaning in again. “I mentioned I had a headache this morning, and he hired two separate medical teams to stay on call for me twenty-four hours a day. He even bought me a brownstone right across from his office. If I so much as sneeze, he’s there.” A sharp, stabbing pain flared in my chest. I didn’t know Everett had that kind of tenderness in him. In five years, he had never even remembered my birthday. I’d asked to go to the beach once, and he’d lectured me on the cost of gas. He ‘forgot’ I was allergic to mangoes every time he bought groceries. To ‘save money,’ I lived on a five-dollar-a-day food budget. I’d spent years hovering around free sample stations at Costco, once fainting from hypoglycemia and being rushed to the hospital by a stranger. Everett had seen all of it. And he had smiled and lied. He’d even taken my meager earnings from my rideshare shifts, claiming he was ‘paying off our debts.’ “He’s… incredible,” I rasped, the lie burning my throat. Roxy kicked her bare feet up on the back of my seat. “That’s nothing. You want to hear the best part?” Her smile turned into something jagged and cruel. “A few months ago, I got bored. I told him I was jealous of how much time he spent at home with that ‘thing.’ So, to cheer me up, he staged that kidnapping.” My face went ghost-white. My hands shook. A game. It was all a game to make her smile. She was practically dancing in her seat now. “I told him I hated the idea of her ever touching him again. Do you know what he did?” My body convulsed—a phantom memory of the darkest night of my life. The humiliation. The screaming. “It was so intense,” she whispered, her eyes glazed with the memory. “She screamed all night long. And Everett and I were in the very next room… screaming for a different reason. I can still hear her sometimes. It’s a rush.” I remembered it with terrifying clarity. I thought my world was ending when I heard he’d been taken. I didn’t call the police because I was terrified they’d kill him. I begged the ‘debt collectors’ to hurt me instead of him. They tied me up. They broke my leg. They took away the last shred of my dignity as a woman. And all that time, I thought I was protecting the man I loved. I didn’t know he was ten feet away, tangled in silk sheets with her. I’d spent weeks crying in the hospital afterward. Everett had sat there with his fake tears, whispering, Even if you’re broken now, Margot, I’ll never leave you. I had actually felt lucky. I thought the tragedy had brought us closer. “It was a bit much, though,” Roxy added, her tone shifting to annoyance. “He felt ‘guilty’ afterward. Ignored me for a whole month. He even talked about ‘coming clean’ and telling her he was a billionaire, but I stopped him.” My voice was a jagged thread. “Why did he want to tell her?” Roxy scoffed. “He wanted to pay for some experimental surgery to ‘fix’ her. And her little brother—what’s his name? Jamie? The kid needs a transplant. Everett was going to reveal everything just to save the brat’s life.” 3. “And you stopped him?” My voice cracked, rising into a sharp, ragged edge. Roxy mistook my horror for awe. She smiled, preening. “Keeping him ‘poor’ was my idea. I told him it was the only way to test if she was really ‘loyal’ or just another gold-digger looking for a payout.” “He bought it. He decided to ‘test’ her for a little longer.” She sighed, looking annoyed. “But he still couldn’t let go of the brother thing. He actually made an anonymous donation. Millions of dollars to the hospital under some charity’s name. Such a waste.” “But I’m a smart girl. I intercepted the wire transfer. Spent two weeks in Vegas with some male models instead. Best vacation ever.” The world began to spin. I couldn’t breathe. Jamie had needed two hundred thousand for his heart surgery. I’d given up my own rehabilitation, choosing to remain a ‘cripple’ just to funnel every cent I had into his care. He was my only living relative. But Everett had been so angry back then. He’d insisted Jamie was faking it. He told me the kid was just trying to ‘drain us’ because he was lazy. We’d had the most vicious fight of our marriage over it. I never understood why he hated my brother so much. Now I knew. He thought Jamie had stolen the ‘anonymous’ millions he’d sent. After that fight, Everett ‘disappeared’ for a week. Jamie couldn’t wait any longer. I was desperate. I did the only thing I could—I sold a kidney on the black market to get the surgery money. But when I hobbled into the ward the next day, Jamie was gone. Missing. All that was left on his empty bed was the two hundred dollars he’d managed to save from his paper route. I knew why he left. He didn’t want to be a burden anymore. He chose to go off and die alone so I could have a life. But he could have lived! Everett could have saved him with a flick of his wrist! That money could have saved him ten times over! I was shaking so hard my teeth were clicking. I bit my lip until I felt the hot burst of blood. “Do you have any idea,” I hissed, my voice a ghostly rasp, “that playing with people like this… people die?” Roxy waved a hand dismissively. “If they’re too weak to handle it, that’s not on me.” “I actually went to the hospital myself to make sure that donation didn’t reach him. I needed a new phone and some boots, so I pocketed the ‘petty cash’ they had on hand and left the kid two hundred bucks.” She laughed, looking out the window. “I bet the sister thought he saved it up himself. It was probably ‘escort’ money from some nurse, for all I know.” Then she turned to me, her eyes bright, waiting for me to join in on the joke. She didn’t see a driver. She saw a mirror for her own cruelty. But she found herself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a woman who wanted her dead. 4. The rage was a tidal wave, drowning out every sense of law, reason, or survival. In that moment, Margot the wife died. There was only a monster left. “Want to know a secret?” Roxy asked, her voice light with a sense of total victory. “Everett’s been desperate for an heir. I’ve made sure that never happens. Every time his wife got pregnant, I bribed the ultrasound tech.” “We told her the baby had ‘genetic defects.’ Made her terminate.” She tapped her chin, counting. “Three, I think. Three little ‘mistakes’ gone.” She looked at me with a sickening confidence. “Now that she’s ‘barren’ from the trauma, I just have to get pregnant myself. The ‘Wife’ title will be mine by Christmas.” “And if she won’t sign the papers? I’ll let her stay. She can raise my kids while she scrubs my floors. She’s already used to being a doormat.” I stared at her pretty, hateful face. Every moment of the last five years—the hunger, the pain, the loss of my children—it wasn’t bad luck. It was a screenplay written by her and directed by him. “You animal,” I whispered. I lunged. I reached back and grabbed Roxy by her hair, slamming her head against the partition. I took my seatbelt and looped it around her throat, pulling with every ounce of strength I had left. I screamed—a primal, guttural sound—as I began to rain blows down on her face. Roxy’s nose shattered. Blood sprayed across the back of the car. “You soulless bitch!” I roared. “Why wasn’t it you? Why are you still breathing?” She was dazed, thrashing like a landed fish. “You… you’re dead! Everett will kill you! He’ll kill your whole family!” She spat out a piece of a broken tooth, still trying to look down at me. “I did her a favor! I got rid of her brat brother! I saved her from having kids she couldn’t afford! She should be thanking me on her knees!” I was seeing red. Pure, literal red. I grabbed the glowing, red-hot cigarette lighter from the dash and jammed it into her eye. A scream ripped through the car—a sound like a dying animal. “I’m going to make you pay in blood!” Roxy convulsed, blood and fluid streaming down her face. “Help! Murder! Someone help me!” The car swerved violently as she kicked at my seat, but I didn’t care. I let go of the steering wheel entirely, keeping the belt tight around her neck. I floored the accelerator. “My three children! My brother! My life!” I screamed. “You’re going to burn for all of it!” The car shot forward like a bullet, hurtling toward the guardrail of the bridge, sixty feet above the black, icy waters of the river. 5. “No! Stop! Don’t kill me!” “I’ll give you money! Millions! Just stop!” Roxy shrieked, her voice thin with the sudden, cold realization of her own mortality. I closed my eyes. I unbuckled my own seatbelt. Let’s end this together. Once we hit that rail, once we fell into the abyss, the pain would finally stop. Jamie, I’m coming. I’m bringing your murderer with me. I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m sorry I was too blind to protect you. The wind roared past the windows. The engine screamed. But the impact never came. Just as the car was about to shatter the guardrail, a heavy black SUV roared out from a side street, T-boning us at full speed. The force of the collision sent my head through the windshield. The world went white. Then red. I was dragged from the wreckage like a piece of roadkill. I hit the wet pavement, my vision swimming. Through the haze, I saw Roxy being helped up by several large men in suits. She was alive. She walked over to me, her face a mask of gore and hatred. “You thought you were so tough, didn’t you?” she spat, clutching a piece of jagged glass from the broken window. “I’m going to take my time with you. I’m going to make you beg for the ‘mercy’ of a bullet.” She drove the glass into my palm. I screamed, the pain lancing through my arm, as she laughed, a high, broken sound. She raised the glass again, aiming for my throat. “STOP!” A voice like a thunderclap echoed across the bridge. Footsteps. Familiar, expensive shoes clicking on the asphalt. Everett—no, Jackson—stormed into view, his face contorted with fury. “Who touches what’s mine?” he roared. I looked up, my face a mess of blood and glass. He didn’t recognize me. Not like this. Not in these clothes, covered in the filth of the road. “Jackson…” I whispered. I had loved this man for five years. I had sacrificed my body and my soul for him. He didn’t even look at me. He ran straight to Roxy. “Roxy, baby, are you okay?” He gathered her into his arms, stroking her hair as if she were a piece of fine porcelain. The tenderness in his eyes made me want to vomit. Roxy leaned into him, sobbing theatrically. “Jackson, this psycho… she blinded me! She tried to kill us both! You have to do something!” “If she stays alive, I can’t live like this, Jackson! I’m scared!” Jackson’s gaze shifted to me. It was the coldest thing I had ever seen. He walked over and ground his heel into my head, pressing my face into a freezing puddle. I choked, spitting out mouthfuls of dirty water and blood. “Roxy is my woman!” he hissed. “You touch her, you pay a hundredfold.” He waved a hand to his guards. Two men stepped forward and began to crush my hands under their boots. “Jackson, look at me…” I wheezed. But my voice was drowned out by Roxy’s screech. “Look at her! Still trying to beg for her life! She’s pathetic! Break her, Jackson! Do it for me!” Jackson nodded, his expression one of pure disgust. “You made a mistake, driver. Now you live with the consequences.” “Break her limbs. Then bring her to the basement. Roxy can finish her there.” A guard raised a steel pipe, aiming for my arm. I found one last spark of strength. I threw the guard off me and sat up, wiping the blood from my eyes with a trembling hand. I looked Jackson dead in the eye. His pupils dilated. The color drained from his face until he was as white as a sheet. “Mr. Billionaire,” I rasped, a bloody grin splitting my face. “Whose limbs were you planning on breaking?”

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When Grandpa Howard received my message, he was likely turning that old jade seal over in his hands—the one that had stamped the wardship-to-marriage contract twenty years ago. The text was brief: She doesn’t need me anymore. Per our agreement, it’s time for me to go. Today was our fourth wedding anniversary. When Gemma handed me the hotel key card earlier that evening, the glint in her eyes was like honey laced with arsenic. “Jamie, I have a surprise for you,” she’d said. There was a lilt in her voice, a spark of life I hadn’t heard in the two decades I’d spent by her side. The moment I pushed the door open, I heard it—that rhythmic, familiar hitch in breath that I knew better than my own. The two figures were tangled on the bed. The man pinned beneath her, his hands buried in her hair, was Dillon. My best friend. The brother I’d grown up with, the one I thought would take a bullet for me. Gemma didn’t scramble. She didn’t scream. She simply pulled her silk robe closed with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Her voice was colder than a scalpel. “My emotional apathy didn’t just vanish because of you, Jamie. You weren’t the cure.” She let out a soft, jagged laugh. “Dillon was the one who taught me what desire actually feels like. He doesn’t want to ruin your ‘brotherhood,’ and I’m not leaving you. If you can just accept us, we can keep this marriage going.” Nobody knew how many times I had laid on a sterile operating table, undergoing invasive, experimental fertility treatments just so she could have the child she claimed she wanted. And nobody knew that from the day I was brought into the Whitaker estate as her “companion”—a boy groomed to be the anchor for the heiress—my life had been nothing but a long-term rescue mission with an expiration date. 1 Gemma leisurely pulled the duvet over Dillon’s bare chest before walking toward me barefoot. “Why are you crying?” she asked, tilting her head. “Shouldn’t you be happy for me? I finally feel something. Someone else is finally reaching me.” I tried to speak, but my throat felt like it was filled with powdered glass. Silence was the only thing that came out, followed by the heavy thud of tears hitting the hardwood floor. Dillon sat up, the bruising marks on his neck stark against his skin. His eyes were rimmed with red, his voice a raspy whisper. “Jamie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.” “You can hit me, you can hate me,” he continued, his voice trembling with a rehearsed kind of guilt. “Just don’t blame Gemma. It’s all on me.” Gemma frowned, pulling Dillon into her arms. She looked at me with a flicker of impatience. “Stop scaring him, Jamie. I know this is a lot to take in, but there’s no point in a scene.” “Dillon isn’t asking for your title. And I’m not discarding you. Can’t you just be sensible for once?” I stared at her hand—the hand I had held through her night terrors, the hand that had remained limp and cold for years—as it stroked Dillon’s hair with genuine tenderness. It was almost funny. During her years of treatment, when she’d go into fits of rage and shatter everything in sight, I was the one who swept up the glass in silence. When she retreated into weeks of catatonic silence, I was the one who kept the house running, hovering nearby like a ghost just so she wouldn’t be alone. I had swallowed every bit of resentment, every lonely night, and every ounce of pain just to keep her stable. I didn’t even let her see me cry, fearing it would trigger her. And this was the reward for my “sensibility.” I took a shaky breath, the bitterness coating my tongue. “How long?” Gemma picked up her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it out to me. “See for yourself.” I scrolled through the photos with numb fingers. A year ago: they were at a concert, Dillon leaning on her shoulder, Gemma laughing—a real, vibrant laugh I’d never seen. Two months ago: at a carnival, her face smeared with cotton candy as she made a silly face at the camera. Last week: while I was at the clinic alone, recovering from another round of hormone injections, they were watching the sunrise on a mountain peak. I had known her since I was five years old. I had been her shadow through the darkest parts of her adolescence. When she first started showing signs of recovery, she told me, “Jamie, I feel like I can ignore the whole world, but you’re the only one who makes me feel like being alive has a purpose.” I thought I was the one who had finally cracked the ice. Now I realized I was just the ferryman who had carried her across the dark river. I was never the destination. I threw the phone to the floor. The screen shattered, echoing the mess inside my chest. “You lied to me for a year!” I screamed, the sound raw and ugly. “Gemma, do you remember what you told me? You said you’d learn how to love for me. You said as long as I was there, it was enough!” There was no guilt in her eyes. Only a flat, terrifying indifference. “People change, Jamie. You can’t hold me to things I said when I was sick.” “And stop crying,” she added, her lip curling in a slight sneer. “You look pathetic. I’m not trying to hurt you; I’m just tired of lying. You gave me habit and dependency. You spent twenty years failing to make my heart race. Dillon did it in one.” While I was curled in a ball on a cold clinic bed, weeping from the physical toll of trying to give her a family, she was out discovering “excitement” with my best friend. Twenty years of devotion. Dozens of procedures. All of it rendered worthless in the face of a “spark.” “Are you done?” Gemma’s voice snapped me back to the room. Dillon buried his face in her neck. “Gemma, stop. He’s allowed to be angry. Maybe I should go… let you guys talk…” Gemma held him down, her grip firm. “You aren’t going anywhere.” She turned to me, her gaze turning icy. “If you can’t handle this, then leave. But let me remind you—you’ve been under my wing for your entire life. If you walk out that door, who else is ever going to want you?” I didn’t answer. I turned and walked out. Behind me, I heard Dillon’s weak, performative voice: “Jamie, wait! Don’t leave like this!” And then Gemma’s low, soothing murmur: “Let him go. He just needs to throw his tantrum.” 2 After leaving the house, I received a call from Grandpa Howard. “Jamie, you’ve done enough,” he said, his voice heavy with a fatigue that matched mine. “I’ve heard. We’ll handle the divorce when I’m back in the country.” I checked into a hotel he arranged and spent two days in a catatonic fog. Then, Dillon called. “Jamie, please come home,” he begged, sounding like the brother I used to know. “Let’s just talk. I promise I’ll never see her again. I’ll leave the city. Just come back.” Before the Whitakers took me in, Dillon and I had grown up in the same foster home. When he found out I was being “sold” to a wealthy family to be a companion for a sick girl, he had held me and cried for two hours. He had even given up his dreams of pro sports to study psychology, claiming he wanted to help me fix my marriage, to ensure I had a “normal” life. “Our Jamie deserves the best,” he’d said back then. “I’m going to make sure you’re the happiest man alive.” I had believed him. I thought having a brother like him was the greatest blessing of my life. He became Gemma’s therapist, just as he said he would. But it turned out he didn’t just cure her; he cured himself right into her bed. I hesitated, then agreed to meet him. Not because I forgave him, but because some things needed to be finished face-to-face. When I arrived at the house, Dillon ushered me in. He sat me down on the sofa and handed me a bowl of warm peach cobbler—the comfort food he used to make for me whenever I was down. “Jamie, I just lost control of my heart. Please, just take a bite. Let me feel like I’m doing one thing right.” I didn’t want to argue. I took a few bites just to get it over with. Minutes later, the world began to tilt. My vision blurred into a hazy gray. Dillon helped me into the master bedroom, where Gemma was already asleep. My head was spinning, my body burning with a sudden, localized fever. Through the fog, I saw Dillon standing at the door. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was wearing a cold, triumphant smile. The drug hit like a freight train. Every inch of my skin screamed for contact. My body, acting on a chemical impulse I couldn’t control, began to thrash, seeking the coldness of Gemma’s skin. A sudden, sharp pain jolted me into a moment of horrifying clarity. My voice was a broken rasp. “No… please, stop…” But Gemma didn’t stop. I was too weak to push her away, trapped in a nightmare where pleasure was indistinguishable from agony. Then, a sickening cramp seized my abdomen. A warmth began to spread beneath me, soaking the sheets. Gemma finally pulled away, her brow furrowing for a second before a sneer twisted her features. “Really, Jamie? You’re going this low now? Drugging yourself to trap me? You’re disgusting.” There was no pity in her eyes. Only revulsion, as if she were looking at something rotting. I tried to tell her. I tried to say it was Dillon. I tried to beg for help. But Gemma just slammed the door, leaving me in the dark. I couldn’t utter a single word. When I woke up, the housekeeper had already called an ambulance. The nurse in the recovery room sighed, her eyes full of pity. “You lost a lot of blood, honey. You’re lucky to be alive.” “Rest now. Your body needs to heal. You… you can try again for children later.” My eyes felt like they had been scorched dry. I couldn’t even cry. My mind was a slideshow of the last twenty years. Gemma at seven years old, witnessing her mother’s affair and her father’s subsequent suicide. She had stopped speaking that day. The doctors called it a trauma-induced apathy—a defensive wall so thick she couldn’t feel or express a thing. Grandpa Howard had brought me in as a “fiancé” in a desperate bid to give her a reason to connect. He told me when I got older that he would respect my choice; once she was better, I could leave. But I had fallen in love with her. I threw my choice away. I spent twenty years smiling at her stone-cold face. I studied every psychological text I could find. I put in every ounce of effort to make her “normal.” On our wedding day, she had looked me in the eye and promised, “If we ever have a child, I’ll make sure they are the happiest baby in the world.” But she had spent her life hating her mother, only to grow into the exact same woman. 3 I spent three days in the hospital. Gemma didn’t send a single text. As I was signing my discharge papers, my phone rang. It was the police. “Is this the husband of Gemma Whitaker? She’s been brought in on a sexual assault allegation. We need you down at the station.” When I arrived, a young officer pulled me aside. “The complainant is a man named Dillon. He claims that after a heated argument yesterday, Mrs. Whitaker forced herself on him.” “We brought her in for a statement, but now Dillon’s phone is off. We can’t reach him. If he doesn’t drop the charges, we have to proceed.” Gemma walked out of the interrogation room, her face livid. “Are you happy now? If you hadn’t played the ‘wronged husband’ and run away, Dillon wouldn’t be acting out like this!” “He didn’t even want to replace you, Jamie! But you pushed him!” The young officer taking notes froze, staring at us in pure disbelief. I felt the heat rise to my face. Looking at her—so self-righteous, so utterly delusional—I realized that words were a waste of breath. “You called me here… so I could convince Dillon to drop the charges?” Gemma shrugged as if it were obvious. “I’m telling you to go apologize to him. Fix whatever you broke so he stops being dramatic.” She truly believed it was my fault. That my “lack of grace” was the reason she was in a precinct. I didn’t want any more drama. I just wanted to be gone. I contacted Dillon and met him at a quiet cafe he’d pinned. He was leaning back in his chair, a smug, careless grin on his face. “Recovered already? That was fast.” I didn’t play the game. “The drugs, the police report… what are you doing, Dillon?” He leaned in, his voice a low purr. “I want to see you crawl, Jamie. I want to see you on your knees, begging me.” I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just looked at him and asked one thing. “Dillon… was any of it real? When we were kids?” “In the group home, you always gave me the bigger half of the bread. You took the beatings for me. The day I left for the Whitakers, you gave me that bag of candy you’d saved for months and told me to never look back.” A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek. “I thought you were my brother. I thought you wanted me to be happy.” He flinched. His chest began to heave. “I did, at first,” he spat. “But then I watched you get everything. And I started to hate you.” “Jamie, I was stronger than you. Smarter. But the Whitakers didn’t choose me!” “When I finally got fostered, my ‘mother’ abused me for years. While you were living in a mansion, eating five-star meals, and driving luxury cars. Gemma was a statue, sure, but you had a bottomless credit card. Do you know how much it killed me every time I saw you?” I stared at him, speechless. He had been nursing this venom for over a decade. Dillon laughed bitterly. “I didn’t study psychology for you. I studied it because if the Whitakers wanted a ‘good, obedient boy’ like you, I knew I could play that part better. If the family wouldn’t pick me, I’d make the heiress pick me herself.” He sat back, waiting for me to break. Waiting for me to beg for Gemma’s freedom. I felt my nails bite into my palms. I forced myself to stand, then, with a heavy heart, I lowered myself to the floor. I knelt. The other patrons whispered, their eyes full of judgment, but Dillon just reached out and patted my cheek. “I’ll drop the charges. I wouldn’t want her behind bars, after all. But I don’t want to see your face in that house ever again.” I got back to the estate late that evening. Gemma was already there, looking as composed and elegant as ever. When she saw me, she didn’t ask how I was. She just said, “Dillon told me. He said you were the one who told him to call the police.” 4 I stood rooted to the spot. “Gemma, I have never played games like that. He drugged me, I was hospitalized, and then he turned on you!” Gemma lit a cigarette, her eyes full of mocking disdain. “I never realized how manipulative you were, Jamie.” “You’re getting quite good at fiction. You expect me to believe you were pregnant with my child and didn’t tell me? Do I look like a fool?” Before I could answer, the front door burst open. Dillon stumbled in, looking like a wreck. His hair was a mess, his shirt torn, his face streaked with tears. Gemma’s expression shifted instantly. “Dillon? What happened?” He looked at me with a gaze full of practiced terror. He pointed a trembling finger. “He… he hired people. Women. They cornered me in the alley… I barely got away.” I stood there, my mind blank. It was so brazen, so absurd, that I couldn’t even find the words to deny it. Gemma didn’t wait for an explanation. She crossed the room and slapped me across the face so hard my head snapped back. I fell, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. Gemma looked down at me with pure disgust. “You make me sick, Jamie.” “You like playing these little games? Fine. Let’s play.” A few minutes later, the housekeepers brought in several rough-looking women from the local dive bars—women who smelled of stale beer and desperation. They circled me. They tore at my clothes, pinning my wrists to the floor. I fought. I kicked. But it only made them more aggressive. Gemma was already gone, cradling Dillon, whispering that she’d take him to the hospital to get checked out. As the heavy oak door slammed shut, a familiar, agonizing cramp ripped through my gut. Blood began to pool beneath me, dark and hot, spreading across the white rug. The women finally stopped, their eyes wide with sudden panic. “Wait, why is he bleeding like that? Is he dying?” Without a word, they turned and fled, leaving the door wide open. I lay there in the cold, red mess, unable to even lift a finger. I don’t know how long I was there before Mr. Bradley, Grandpa Howard’s longtime butler, rushed in with two security guards. “Mr. Whitaker… oh, heavens. Master Howard sent me to get you out. You’ve suffered enough.” … At the hospital, while Dillon was getting a few scratches treated, Gemma’s phone rang. “Grandpa? You’re back?” Grandpa Howard’s voice was like stone. “Get to the estate. Now.” Gemma let out a dry laugh. “Did Jamie tattle? He brought this on himself, Grandpa. I just gave him a little scare to teach him a lesson.” The silence on the other end lasted for an eternity. Then, the old man spoke. “I’ve already sent him away. You’re coming here to sign the divorce papers.”

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When my eyes flew open, the scent hit me first—stale tobacco layered beneath a suffocating, synthetic pine air freshener. I was back in the backseat of the rideshare, and my three roommates were in the middle of their favorite game: playing at being filthy rich. The phantom pains of my past life violently crashed into me. In that previous timeline, I had scrambled to de-escalate the situation, warning the driver that they were just joking, knowing full well that you never flaunt wealth in front of a desperate stranger. My roommates, feeling humiliated and stripped of their manufactured glamour, had stormed out of the car in a rage. But the driver hadn’t let me leave. He locked the doors, a sickening grin spreading across his face as he told me that since I had saved them, I would have to pay their toll. The assault was brutal. I fought with every ounce of my being, barely escaping with my life. I went straight to the police. Yet, when the detectives questioned my roommates, they formed a united front of lies. They claimed I had intentionally sat in the front seat to seduce him, that I refused to get out of the car because I “wanted a thrill.” The driver’s wife caught wind of this, dragged me by my hair through the street, branded me a homewrecker, and plastered my battered face all over the internet. The digital mob tore me apart. The final nail in the coffin was when the driver sent photos of my violated body to my mother. The shock triggered a massive heart attack. She died before the ambulance even arrived. Shattered, hollowed out, and utterly alone, I took my own life. And my roommates? They used the “trauma” of my tragic suicide to secure full-ride fellowships to graduate school, smiling for the cameras as they accepted their offers. … 1. “God, what is this, an early two-thousands Chevy? My family’s housekeeper wouldn’t even be caught dead driving this piece of junk to the grocery store.” The moment I blinked the disorientation away, Kendall’s sickeningly sweet, nasal voice pierced the heavy air of the car. “And what is up with these seat covers? Polyester?” On the other side of me, Jocelyn pinched the fabric of the seat cover, her face contorting in exaggerated disgust as she shoved it down toward the floor mats. “My golden retriever sleeps on higher thread counts.” “Seriously. I wouldn’t even wipe my shoes on it.” My phone vibrated in my palm. It was our dorm group chat. Kendall was texting beneath the sightline of the rearview mirror, egging them on. Look at this guy in the rearview. He looks like a total creep. Bet he folds the second someone stands up to him. We are whoever we say we are outside of campus. Keep acting rich, let’s freak him out! The absurdity of the scene playing out in front of me perfectly overlapped with the nightmare of my past life. Back then, terrified that their reckless roleplaying would invite a tragedy, I had tried to smooth things over. Their reward for my kindness was leaving me trapped in a moving vehicle, completely deaf to my screams for help. This time, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them from digging their own graves. In the driver’s seat, the man’s face visibly darkened. The muscles in his jaw locked as he let out a dry, chilling chuckle. “You ruin those mats, little girl, and you’re paying for them.” “How much could a cheap piece of fabric possibly cost?” Jocelyn scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much the Persian rug in my foyer is worth? Forty thousand dollars.” “Exactly. Only people from your… tax bracket obsess over pennies.” Phoebe, sitting in the middle, offered a careless shrug. Suddenly, she pointed a manicured finger at the generic, plastic water bottle resting in the driver’s cupholder. “Oh my god, how do you drink that tap water garbage? Aren’t you afraid of getting parasites?” Watching their theatrical performance, I slowly shifted my gaze out the window, my mind racing. The sun was dipping below the horizon, bleeding the sky into a bruised purple. I needed to find a way out of this car, and fast. I absolutely refused to be dragged down to hell by these idiots again. The driver’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. He grabbed the water bottle, his neck stiffening as he kept his eyes on the road. “Well, when your life isn’t worth anything to begin with, I guess you just drink whatever’s cheap,” Kendall smirked, practically preening with self-satisfaction. “Unlike us. I literally can’t hydrate with anything except Voss, shipped straight from the aquifer.” Phoebe giggled, her eyes curving into cruel crescents. “Kendall, stop. The guy probably doesn’t even know what Voss is.” “True. It’s a socioeconomic thing. He couldn’t grasp it in a lifetime.” The three of them dissolved into high-pitched, grating laughter. Outside, the wind whipping against the windows began to howl, growing sharper, colder. I gripped my seatbelt tightly. A dangerous, desperate plan began to take shape in my mind. Before the driver could snap back at them, I turned my head and cut through the noise. “Can you guys just stop? You’re going too far.” The three girls in the back stopped laughing, turning to stare at me in stunned silence for a fraction of a second. Kendall recovered first, shooting me a venomous side-eye. “Giselle? You’re taking his side? Oh, wait, that makes sense. You’re from some trailer park in the rust belt, aren’t you?” “I heard your mom cleans out diners for a living,” Phoebe sneered, looking down at me with an air of aristocratic pity. Even when they weren’t pretending to be heiresses, their upper-middle-class backgrounds eclipsed my reality by miles. “No wonder you always smell like cheap bleach and old grease.” “God, you and the driver really are from the same gutter. You guys must have so much in common,” Kendall chimed in. “What do you talk about? Food stamps?” As their insults rained down on me, I bit my lower lip, feigning deep hurt. “You can say whatever you want about me, but leave the driver alone. He’s just trying to make an honest living for his family.” Jocelyn raised an eyebrow, letting out a sharp scoff. “Family?” Kendall lazily kicked the back of the driver’s seat with her designer sneaker. “Hey, old man. Someone as broke as you actually has a wife and kids?” The driver let out a low, breathy laugh. His foot slammed down on the gas pedal. I whipped my head toward the windshield. The car violently jerked into another lane. In my palm, my phone began to vibrate incessantly, the rideshare app flashing a glaring warning. He had deviated from the route. 2. My breath hitched, my heart hammering so violently it felt like it might crack my ribs. Time was up. I immediately leaned forward, grabbing the driver’s phone from the dashboard mount and waking the screen. I turned to the girls, raising my voice. “What are you talking about? Look, here’s his family right here!” The cracked screen illuminated a faded, happy photo of a family of three. The driver looked years younger, a testament to how old the picture was. The little boy in the photo was strikingly pale, his skin translucent, his head completely bald from intensive treatments. In my past life, I had learned the truth much later. The driver’s intense hatred for the wealthy stemmed from a broken medical system. His son had battled severe leukemia, and because he couldn’t afford the exorbitant experimental treatments that rich families could easily buy, the boy died at only six years old. His son was the absolute line you did not cross. Kendall snatched the phone from my hand, her face immediately twisting into open disgust. “What kind of knock-off trash phone is this? The pixels are huge.” She squinted at the lock screen. “Ew. Why does that kid look like a ghost? It’s genuinely creepy.” The driver whipped his head around, his face contorted into something demonic. “What did you just say!?” The car swerved wildly, the tires screeching as we narrowly missed a concrete divider. Kendall shrieked, tossing the phone carelessly onto the console. “Watch the road, you psycho!” Phoebe gripped the headrest, her chest heaving as she glared at the man. “You almost killed us! Over a stupid lock screen?!” “Seriously. If you’re that defensive over a picture, maybe the kid isn’t even yours,” Jocelyn sneered, raking a hand through her messy hair. “Wife probably cheated on you.” The phone had slipped into the crack between the seats. Moving faster than the driver, I dove for it, retrieved it, and glared righteously at my roommates. “Just because you have money doesn’t give you the right to strip away someone’s dignity!” Jocelyn looked me up and down, deeply annoyed. “Giselle, look at yourself. You really think you’re in a position to play savior?” “We let you be the roommate coordinator out of pity, don’t let it go to your head!” Hearing that, my fists clenched so tight my nails dug into my palms. I almost laughed at the sheer audacity. Freshman year, the three of them had bullied and manipulated me into being the “roommate coordinator” simply because they couldn’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. I was the one scrubbing the toilets. I was the one mopping the floors. When the drain clogged with their hair, or when they were too hungover to get their own food, it was always me fetching and cleaning. In my previous life, I genuinely believed that because I had poured my heart out serving them, they would at least have the decency to tell the police the truth. Instead, they framed me as a slut who threw herself at a predator. This time around, I was going to make sure they tasted every single drop of the agony I endured. The driver retrieved his phone, his thumb brushing over the cracked screen. The shadow over his face briefly receded, replaced by a haunting, hollow smile. “I apologize,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “That is the last photo taken of my son before he passed away. I lost my temper.” Kendall shrieked, frantically pulling a bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse and scrubbing her hands. “Dead? Oh my god, that is such bad energy. I literally touched it.” Phoebe pulled out a pack of wet wipes, handing one to Kendall with a worried frown. “Ken, you’re totally going to have nightmares tonight.” Jocelyn shrugged, thoroughly unbothered. “Just drink it off. I brought a bottle of Dom we can pop when we get to the rental.” “Ugh, thank god for you.” They chatted back and forth, entirely ignoring the man in the front seat, acting as if the death of a child was a minor inconvenience compared to Kendall potentially having a bad dream. I watched the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. For a split second, his expression completely fractured. In my last life, mere wealth-flaunting had planted a seed of violent hatred in him. This time, they had crossed lines so deeply depraved I couldn’t even fathom the horrors this broken man was dreaming up for them. The notifications on my phone multiplied. Rerouting. Rerouting. Rerouting. The vibration in my hand matched the frantic tempo of my pulse. I took shallow, quiet breaths. In my calculated panic, I intentionally flipped the mute switch off. Instantly, the loud, rhythmic pinging of the GPS warnings echoed through the suffocating cabin. 3. The driver slowly turned his head to look at me. His eyes were completely dead. A terrifying pool of eerie calm. They were the eyes that had haunted my nightmares, night after agonizing night. I looked away instantly, a physical shudder ripping through my spine. Hearing the chimes, Phoebe peered out the dark window, her perfectly plucked eyebrows knitting together. “Why are there no streetlights out here? Do you even know how to use a GPS?” The driver let out two dry, rhythmic laughs. He kept his hands casually draped over the steering wheel. “There’s a massive pile-up on the interstate. I’m taking a shortcut to get you girls there.” I thought that after the screaming match, they would at least have a baseline level of situational awareness. But I severely overestimated their survival instincts. Jocelyn crossed her arms, letting out a haughty huff. “At least you’re marginally useful.” The other two nodded in agreement. “Well, this car smells like a dumpster, so we aren’t paying extra for the detour,” Kendall complained, waving a hand in front of her nose. The driver remained perfectly placid. Not a single muscle in his face twitched in anger. “Just go into your app and change the drop-off location to wherever we are now. The rest of the ride is on the house.” The three of them paused at the mention of a free ride. They exchanged a look, then collectively turned to me, snapping their fingers. “Cancel the ride, Giselle. Quick.” I clutched my phone tightly. Watching their faces soften at the prospect of saving a few bucks, I knew my window had finally opened. “No.” I sat rigidly in my seat, staring straight ahead. “I’m not cancelling it.” Jocelyn’s eyes bulged. “Giselle, what the hell is wrong with you? If you need a therapist, go find one, but stop dragging us into your weird complexes!” “Seriously. You’re broke and you’re obnoxious. Just do it!” They fired off insults, their faces flushed with irritation. Jocelyn started spamming my phone with texts in the group chat. Do you have money to burn or something?! Do you know how expensive a ride from the airport to the estate is?! The driver caught my eye in the mirror and offered a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. “Are you worried about safety, sweetheart? There are cameras everywhere these days. Who’d be stupid enough to try anything?” He paused, his gaze slowly dragging across the three girls in the back. “Besides… you ladies are clearly very important people. I wouldn’t dare offend you.” “Exactly!” “Why would he do anything to us? He’s not an idiot.” Jocelyn, her ego sufficiently stroked by the driver’s feigned submission, looked at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Listening to their absolute delusion, a cold, bitter laugh bubbled up in my chest. This man drove these roads for a living. He knew exactly where the city’s cameras stopped and the dark country roads began. And the fake billionaire identities these girls were parading around? They didn’t intimidate him. They only fueled his desire to watch them bleed. But this time, I wasn’t going to be the voice of reason. “I don’t care what you say. I am not changing the destination.” I crossed my arms, immovable. My stubbornness was the spark that blew Kendall’s notoriously volatile temper wide open. “Fine. If you won’t change it, get the hell out.” She glared at me with pure venom, pointing toward the desolate, fog-covered bridge rolling past the windows. “It’s pitch black out here. Good luck walking back to civilization.” “And if you get jumped by some local meth heads, don’t bother calling us to save you!” I let the insults wash over me, refusing to touch the app. My phone chimed with the third major route deviation warning. Kendall let out a bark of bitter laughter. “Giselle, you asked for this.” She delivered a brutal kick to the back of the driver’s seat. “Pull over!” The driver didn’t hit the brakes. “Ladies, why don’t you just take her phone and do it yourselves? It’s awfully dangerous for a young girl to be out here alone at night.” But Kendall wasn’t the type to be reasoned with. In my past life, it was her blinding rage that caused them to abandon the car in the first place. She kicked the seat again, harder, her voice turning shrill and violent. “I said pull the car over! Are you deaf!?” Jocelyn and Phoebe leaned forward, aggressively shoving the driver’s shoulder. Between the blaring GPS alarms, Kendall’s screaming, and the physical struggle, the cabin erupted into absolute chaos. The car slammed to a violent halt. “Get out!” Kendall threw her door open, stomped around to the other side, ripped my door open, and grabbed my arm, yanking me toward the asphalt. “You want to play the martyr? Let’s see how you like it out here, you ungrateful bitch!” I didn’t fight back. I stumbled out of the car, my knees slamming into the loose gravel of the shoulder. The sharp pain brought hot tears to my eyes—but not from sadness. I was alive. The loop was broken. I had survived the car ride. Jocelyn slid out right behind me and snatched the phone from my unresisting hands. She tapped the screen a few times, altered the destination, and finalized the drop-off. Then, she looked down at me, holding my phone over the guardrail of the bridge. She flashed me a radiant, wicked smile. “Want it back?” Before I could even open my mouth, she opened her fingers. My phone plummeted into the dark, rushing river below. “Oops. Butterfingers.” She shrugged, her laugh a nasty, metallic sound. I sat slumped on the wet gravel, watching as the two of them triumphantly climbed back into the vehicle. Kendall, wanting more legroom, had even taken the passenger seat in the front. Through the glass, I caught the driver’s eyes. They were fixed on me, dark and seething with a twisted sense of disappointment that his first prey had slipped away. Jocelyn slammed her door shut and, with the haughty command of a queen, ordered him to drive. The driver tore his eyes away from me and hit the gas. I sat there, utterly still, watching the red taillights bleed into the impenetrable darkness of the tree line ahead. Beyond that point, there were no cameras. No cell towers. Nothing but miles of dense, unforgiving woods. Under the cover of the night, a slow, deep smile spread across my face. Welcome to your personal hell, girls.

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The sounds that shattered the peace of our home, the phantom echoes that made the walls feel like they were bleeding—those were all my mother’s designs. She scripted them before she died, a parting gift to ensure he would never know a moment of silence. I remember when she died. She bled out on an operating table while my father stood outside the door, screaming at her. He told her he had been more than generous by coming back to her at all. He told her she needed to “cool off” and stop being so dramatic. He didn’t know that behind that door, my mother had already stopped hearing him. She had stopped hearing everything. When he finally came home that night, his face was a mask of calculated conflict. He told me that Melanie’s children were still so young; he couldn’t bear to see them separated from their mother. It turned out that after the company’s core secrets were leaked and the capital chain snapped, the Clark family had offered a lifeline. The price? A business marriage between a daughter of our house and their eldest son, a man left paralyzed after an accident. It took three years for the truth to settle. Melanie and her twins—the ones my father pampered like royalty—weren’t enough to stop his empire from crumbling. He had even fired the security guard who dared to joke about my mother’s “ghost,” even though every man on the night shift claimed they could hear a woman sobbing in the dark. When Melanie gave birth to the twins a year later, my father simply frowned and suppressed the rumors. Their wedding had been a grander affair than his first, a spit in the face of my mother’s memory. That night, a priceless Ming vase was smashed to pieces in the foyer. When my father heard the news, a small, twisted smile touched his lips. That was the first year he had officially declared his divorce and given Melanie a “real” home. He never stepped foot in our old wing after that. My mother had thrown her wedding ring at him, screaming through her breakdown that he was never to cross the threshold again. But even that didn’t save the child she was carrying. I remember her eyes, wet with tears, fighting him with every ounce of her strength. But my father had listened to some hack spiritualist who claimed the baby in my mother’s womb was a curse upon Melanie’s future. “Melanie is upset again because of you,” he had told my mother, his voice cold as a winter grave. “I’ve already dealt with her, but you… you need to learn.” After the third time Melanie “accidentally” lost an expensive handbag, my father did the unthinkable. He had my mother bound and driven to the clinic for a forced termination. … 1 Less than ten minutes later, a driver arrived to take me to Melanie’s estate. On the way, he stole a pitiful glance at me through the rearview mirror. “Are they really sending you to marry a cripple, Miss?” Before I even crossed the threshold, I heard Melanie’s high-pitched laughter. My father was staring at a contract on the mahogany table, his silence heavy and suffocating. I sat down calmly, watching the smile on Melanie’s face slowly turn brittle under my gaze. “Franklin,” she prompted, her voice a soft, manipulative purr. “The company is your life’s work. I’m sure Wren and her mother will understand. It’s for the family.” My father didn’t move. I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for my mother to storm in, to scream, to put up a fight. But the dead don’t show up for arguments. At dusk, I took the engagement ring provided by the Clarks and returned to the other house alone. My father had flown into a rage. He cursed my mother’s “stubbornness” and froze her bank accounts. He even sent men to burn every flower in her garden, using the ashes as fertilizer for the roses he bought for Melanie. That night, I performed the final task my mother had set for me. I took the heirloom jade bracelet—the one meant for the matriarch of our family—and dropped it into the trash. For three years, Melanie had been the “Mrs. Clark” in the eyes of the world. But she had never even laid a finger on that bracelet. It was the one symbol of status she couldn’t steal. “No matter how angry she is, she shouldn’t have thrown it away,” Melanie sobbed later, tears welling perfectly in her eyes. “I don’t mind the disrespect to me, but that bracelet has been in your family for generations. Think of how heartbroken your parents would be.” She took a jagged breath, her voice trembling with practiced grace. “About the baby… I know your mother blames me. Franklin, maybe it’s better if you just let Wren go. Let her marry into the Clark family and be done with it.” My father’s eyes turned a violent shade of red. He ordered the maid to unlock the door and kicked my mother’s bedroom door off its hinges. Every word he spoke felt like it was being dragged through gravel. “Evelyn! I’ve made my decision! In seven days, Wren is getting married. And you? You will stay in this empty house. You won’t see her. Not for the wedding, not ever!” My mother had loved me more than life itself. Before she died, she had looked at me, her eyes struggling to stay open, whispering, “If I could do it again, I’d take you away, Wren. We’d go somewhere he could never find us.” She didn’t want to leave me. But when she refused to “cooperate” with the termination, my father had ordered the doctors to sedate her. He forced her onto that table. He cut off her only way out. Now, looking at the empty room, I was suddenly grateful she was in the ground. At least there, he couldn’t hurt her anymore. On the bed, the duvet was bunched up into a shape that looked like a sleeping body. Melanie glanced at it, a flicker of a triumphant smile crossing her lips before she masked it with worry. “Franklin, the Clarks are a top-tier family. Evelyn… well, everyone knows she’s your ex-wife now. I’m worried Wren will be looked down upon if she comes from a ‘broken’ home.” She had stolen my mother’s husband, her home, and her dignity. Now, she wanted to erase her motherhood too. A cold stone of defiance settled in my chest. But my father didn’t hesitate. He nodded, following Melanie’s lead perfectly. “I’ll have Wren’s legal records updated immediately. She’ll be listed as your daughter. It’s better for her future.” Seven days from now, I would be married. It was also my mother’s birthday. Melanie was right about one thing: my mother wanted revenge. She and my father had been “the” couple for decades. Then Melanie appeared, and he treated twenty years of love like a piece of scrap paper. My mother couldn’t swallow that insult. “Evelyn, Wren is grown now, and you’ve taught her nothing! Melanie is the one who does everything, who looks after her!” my father screamed at the empty bed. “You weren’t the only victim back then. Melanie suffered too! She battled depression in silence while you made everyone’s life a living hell with your tantrums! How long are you going to keep being this selfish?” Three years ago, he took me away and forbade me from seeing her. Now, he blamed her for our distance. The bed remained still. My father’s brow furrowed, and he instinctively moved toward the bedside. 2 But Melanie’s eyes darted quickly, and she suddenly doubled over, clutching her stomach. “Franklin… I have a sharp pain. The baby…” He forgot all about the bed. He scooped her up and rushed her to the hospital. Before they left, Melanie cast a gloating, razor-sharp smile back at the room. I followed them, silently counting down the final seven days. “Congratulations, Mr. Clark. She’s pregnant!” The doctor’s words hit the room like a physical weight. Melanie’s eyes went wide as she stared at the flickering grey image on the ultrasound monitor. “Franklin, we’re having another baby,” she whispered, her voice thick with joy. My father laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated happiness. He threw my mother out of his mind instantly. For three days, he never left Melanie’s side. The servants were given massive bonuses, and everyone whispered about how much he adored her—how she was the true love of his life. But I remembered. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father started dozens of charitable foundations just to “earn blessings” for her. He spent money without blinking. He was so careful at night that he wouldn’t even sleep in the bed, terrified he might roll over and hurt her. He spent his days in cathedrals and temples, kneeling until his knees bled, praying for her safety. He used to sit on a stool by her feet at night, just watching her sleep with a look of terrifyingly intense devotion. “Franklin,” Melanie murmured, her voice soft as silk. “It’s been so long since the last time. And right after we visited Evelyn’s house… Do you think the baby we lost finally found its way back to us? I’m so happy.” My father froze for a second. And just like that, because of a few sweet words, he gave the name my mother had picked for her lost child to Melanie’s unborn baby. I remember my mother holding my hand, her eyes shining as she told me, “When you were born, your father cried all night. He was so obsessed with finding the perfect name. This second one… I have to think carefully. I won’t let him outdo me this time.” She had spent months agonized over the perfect name. Now, it was being used as a trophy for another woman. “Tell Evelyn to come to the hospital,” my father said, his fingers stroking Melanie’s belly. “And tell her to bring that heirloom silver locket she made for the baby.” The driver returned, trembling. “Everything… it was all burned, sir. And she… she refused to come.” The air in the room turned arctic. With a violent crash, my father kicked over a table. The veins in his neck were bulging. “I arranged the tests myself back then! That fetus wasn’t viable! If she were smart, she’d realize the baby left her because she was so full of malice and jealousy! The child knew Melanie had a kind heart and chose her instead. And she still refuses to repent? She’s still nursing her grudges?” Not viable. That was the lie Melanie and the doctor had crafted together. I saw them exchange a quick, triumphant look. “She’s just hurting, Franklin,” Melanie said, playing the martyr. “She misses the baby as much as we do. Don’t be angry. I’ll take the children and visit her more often. We’ll keep her company.” My father’s face softened. He pulled her into his arms, his gaze melting with tenderness. He would do anything for her now. When Melanie asked to personally prepare my dowry, he agreed. When Melanie suggested digging up the small memorial marker my mother had placed for the lost baby, he agreed to that too. “The child is back with us now,” he said. “That grave is just a morbid reminder of a bad time.” The guards went into my mother’s garden. They kicked and trampled the flowerbeds and tore the small headstone from the earth. My mother and the baby had died together. I had buried her long ago in a place he would never find. This grave was just an empty shell I had built for the performance. Melanie watched the destruction with a satisfied smile. My father looked at the house—the house that had been silent for three years—and sneered. “This place has been a tomb for three years. It’s time to move on.” 3 “She burned the baby’s clothes? Fine. Burn the whole wing. Leave nothing behind!” Melanie looked like she had won the lottery. I, too, felt a strange surge of joy for my mother. He had killed her. He was selling me off. And now, he was erasing every physical trace of our existence. Soon, he would realize that when he wanted to find her again, there wouldn’t even be a shadow left to grasp. “Franklin, what about that cherry blossom tree behind Wren?” Melanie asked, her voice laced with poison. When Melanie first met my father, she had seen my mother painting under that tree many times. The falling petals, the elegant silhouette—it was an image that had once captivated my father so much he couldn’t breathe. Melanie hated it. My father’s gaze shifted to me and locked. My face is seventy percent my mother’s. For a heartbeat, he lost himself. He took a step toward me as if he were seeing a ghost. Then he remembered. “I don’t like the smell of cherry blossoms,” Melanie complained, rubbing her stomach. “It makes me nauseous. And think of the baby, Franklin.” The trees would bloom in a few months. My father pressed a hand to the sudden hollow in his chest. Then he turned and kissed Melanie’s forehead. “Whatever you want.” The smell of smoke began to fill the air. He led Melanie away, not even bothering to suggest where my “mother” should sleep tonight. On the final day, the dowry was delivered to my room. But except for the wedding dress, every diamond necklace and gold bar had been replaced with common stones. The guard turned pale and immediately called my father. Within the hour, I was hauled back to Melanie’s villa. Melanie sat beside my father, sobbing as if her heart were breaking. “Where is your mother?” my father roared. “She stole the dowry just to stop you from leaving? Those were the Clark family heirlooms you were supposed to wear at the ceremony!” The money didn’t matter, but the Clarks’ pride was not something to be trifled with. I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Melanie’s wailing grew louder. “I only wanted to show her the jewelry to see if she wanted any changes! I was trying to be kind! And this is how she treats me?” My father swept everything off the coffee table in a fit of rage. The atmospheric pressure in the room dropped. “Search the city. I don’t care if you have to tear up every floorboard in the state. Find her!” Hours passed. Nothing. Melanie began to hyperventilate, clutching her stomach. “She doesn’t want Wren to be happy. She doesn’t want my baby to be born. It’s all my fault. Who am I to upset the Great Evelyn?” She collapsed into his arms, refusing to see a doctor. “If I lose the baby, I lose the baby. If it makes her happy, then maybe Franklin can finally have some peace. I’ll accept it.” My half-sister, Paige, came running in from school, out of breath. “Dad, I’ll go! I’ll marry into the Clark family if I have to. I’m not afraid. I know the company is in trouble. I can handle it.” My father’s face was like frost. After a long, terrifying silence, his cold gaze landed on me. “Take her outside. Fifty lashes with the rod.” Melanie dabbed at her eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching for a fraction of a second. To avoid upsetting Melanie’s “delicate state,” they gagged me before they started. My father told the guards to keep going until my mother “showed herself.” By the time they finished, my back was a mess of blood and torn skin. “Franklin, is this too much? What if something happens to her?” Melanie asked. She had taken her “medicine” and her complexion was perfectly rosy. My father glanced at me through the window and looked away just as quickly. “Evelyn won’t let Wren suffer forever. If she isn’t here in an hour, throw the girl in the basement.” 4 In the haze of pain, I thought I heard my mother’s voice. She was crying for me, telling me to just say it, to stop carrying the burden. I forced my eyes open. The voice was gone. In the brightly lit living room, I saw my father stroking Paige’s hair, smiling at her with a warmth I had never known. “Sir… the girl fainted.” My father paused. He walked out to me, his expression flat. He looked at the empty driveway, the empty gates. “Where is Evelyn?” The guard wiped sweat from his brow. “Sir… we still haven’t found a trace of her.” A flicker of disbelief crossed my father’s eyes. Then, he let out a sharp, angry laugh. I was tossed into the basement. Someone smeared a bit of ointment on my back, but otherwise, I was left in the dark. Late that night, a shadow approached. “Do you know what this is?” my father asked. A guard held out a wooden box. My father opened it. Inside was a severed hand. I froze. In my ears, I could hear my mother’s scream again. “This belongs to your aunt. The only relative your mother has left. She was in a ‘car accident’ half an hour ago.” When my mother died, my aunt had nearly followed her. It was my mother’s final wish that kept her alive. But even my mother’s last hope had been crushed by his cruelty. “Wren, I’ll ask you one last time. Where is she?” My face was ghost-white. I shook my head. My father’s lip curled. “The news of the accident is all over the wires. And she still won’t come out? Does she think hiding will save you?” He turned and vanished into the night. I curled into a ball in the corner, haunted by nightmares. The next morning, Melanie sent people to do my makeup. A long fleet of Clark family cars lined the driveway. I knelt and bowed once toward the direction of my mother’s grave, then got into the back of the Maybach. At the office, my father was staring at the wedding ring my mother had discarded. When his assistant burst in, he stood up abruptly. “Did you find her? Where is she?” He had set the trap. He assumed she would try to see me one last time before I was driven away. But as he prepared to go catch her, a guard trembling with fear handed him a letter. “Sir… the girl gave me this. For you. From her mother.” The guard’s voice cracked. “She said… she’s gone, sir.”

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When my thumb slid across my husband’s unlocked screen, I was only looking to Venmo myself a couple hundred dollars for my weekend poker buy-in. An accidental tap on a muted group chat stopped my heart. The “Wolf Pack” was on fire, buzzing with logistics for a yacht proposal scheduled for Saturday at seven. One guy reminded the group to wear black tie; they wanted to give “the future Mrs.” a surprise she’d never forget. Another voice jumped in, telling Damian to make sure he kept his wife occupied. He joked that I was “too sharp for my own good.” Damian’s reply came with a digital shrug. He’d already cleared the runway, he said. I’d told him I was planning an all-night poker game with the girls, so there was zero chance of me crashing the party. The chat exploded with laughing emojis. Someone joked that once the ring was on her finger, I wouldn’t even have a shoulder left to cry on. Then came the question about the ring. Someone warned the “Big Dog” not to let me find it like I almost did last time. Damian’s response was typed with terrifying confidence: It’s in the office vault. She doesn’t have the code. Once this is a done deal, let’s see her try to make a scene. That sentence hit me like a jagged glass shard to the eye. I scrolled up. The latest message was a voice note from Damian. I could hear the smirk in his voice as he thanked his brothers for the heavy lifting, promising to buy the first five rounds of Macallan once the deed was done. He ended it with a sharp directive: Keep a tail on her. Don’t let her slip away. The cold light of the screen washed over my face. I stared at the interface for a few seconds, the silence of our bedroom suddenly feeling predatory. My fingers began to move again. This time, I didn’t transfer two hundred dollars. I moved twenty thousand. If I was going to play a hand this big, I needed a stack that could actually break the table. 1 The air conditioning in the private club was dialed down to a crisp, biting cold. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of shuffling chips drowned out the ambient jazz. “Nina, look. Look at this piece of trash.” Beth shoved her phone in front of my face, the screen glowing with a photo that felt like a physical blow. A yacht on the Hudson. Golden hour light. Silk and shadows. Damian was down on one knee, sliding a rock the size of a postage stamp onto Kayla’s finger. The caption read: To the rest of our lives. Forever yours. For a moment, the only sound at the table was the low hum of the HVAC system. “Wait… isn’t that Damian?” Penny, sitting across from me, gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “And his assistant? Is he… is he proposing?” “Proposing? It’s a goddamn public execution!” Beth’s chest heaved with fury. She pointed at the background of the photo, where our friend Scott was grinning like an idiot. “Look at these men. Every single one of them. They’ve been playing you for a fool, Nina!” “Scott told me he had a ‘corporate retreat’ tonight. Turns out he was just the wingman for his best friend’s betrayal!” Another woman leaned in, letting out a long, slow sigh. “Nina, everyone in the city remembers how hard he chased you back in college. You were the ‘it’ couple. How did it come to this?” “Money turns them into monsters,” Penny muttered. “And let’s not forget, his firm would be a parking lot if your father hadn’t funded his first three rounds.” “I’ve met that Kayla girl. She plays the ‘sweet intern’ act well. I didn’t realize she was a vulture.” “Nina, what are you going to do? You can’t let this slide.” They were vibrating with secondhand rage, already mapping out a hundred ways to ruin him, to tear them both apart. I just listened, my eyes fixed on the card I had just drawn. An Ace of Hearts. I looked up at Beth, who looked like she was about to cry on my behalf. I let the corner of my mouth twitch into the ghost of a smile, and then I slid my entire stack of chips into the center. “I’m all in.” The chatter died instantly. They traded nervous glances, confused by my lack of tears, my lack of screaming. The atmosphere turned heavy, almost surreal. I didn’t say a word. I flipped my cards over one by one. A Royal Flush. As they stared at the table in stunned silence, I stood up and reached for my coat. “I believe the house owes me a payout,” I said softly. 2 I let myself into the penthouse, the weight of my designer bag heavy on my shoulder. The living room lights were dimmed, and Damian was sitting on the sofa, seemingly waiting for me. The moment I stepped in, he stood up, wearing that practiced, gentle smile that used to make me feel safe. “You’re back? How was the game? Did the cards love you tonight?” I didn’t answer. I walked straight to the marble coffee table and dropped the thick envelope of cash I’d collected from the club. It landed with a heavy, satisfying thud. “Card gods were on my side,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I guess the old saying is true. Lucky in cards, unlucky in love. Though, looking at my bank account, I’d say I’m doing just fine.” Damian’s smile flickered, then held. “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re acting strange.” “Strange?” I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and pulled up the screenshot I’d taken of his ‘forever’ moment. I turned the screen toward him. The yacht. The diamond. His knee on the deck. Kayla’s staged, virginal surprise. It was all there, vivid and disgusting. “Damian, do you want to explain this ‘game’ to me?” The color drained from his face so fast it was almost cinematic. His eyes darted around the room, looking for an exit that didn’t exist. “Nina, listen, I can explain… it’s… it was a joke. A prank for the guys. The ‘Wolf Pack’ went too far, you know how they are when they drink…” “I don’t want the script, Damian.” I cut him off and tucked my phone away. My voice was a flatline. “Tomorrow morning, bring Kayla here. To our home. We’re going to have a conversation.” Damian froze. He took a tentative step toward me, reaching for my hand. “Nina, honey, don’t do this. I know you’re hurt, but—” I stepped back, avoiding his touch like it was a contagion. I reached into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out a heavy, cream-colored business card. I held it between two fingers, offering it to him. “This is my divorce attorney,” I said. “If you have anything else to say, tell it to her tomorrow. In front of your mistress.” 3 At ten the next morning, the buzzer rang. Damian walked in, followed by a demure, downcast Kayla. The second they reached the living room, Damian grabbed Kayla by the arm and shoved her toward me, his voice harsh and performative. “Apologize to Nina! Right now!” Kayla’s eyes welled with tears instantly. It was impressive. Her voice trembled as she spoke. “Mrs. Cross, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let things get so close. I didn’t mean for you to get the wrong idea.” “The yacht… it was just a stupid party. Everyone was drinking. It wasn’t real.” “Damian didn’t sleep a wink last night. He was so worried about you being upset. Please don’t blame him. If you have to hate someone, hate me.” She kept calling me “Mrs. Cross,” playing the role of the humble penitent. But that line about him “not sleeping a wink” was a jagged little needle. She was telling me, in code, that they had spent the night together after he stormed out of here. I leaned back against the sofa, watching the performance with clinical detachment. “Are you finished?” Kayla bit her lip and took a step forward, closing the distance. “I know you’re angry. But Damian has such a sensitive stomach. He can only sleep if he has a glass of warm milk, and he was so restless at my place last night…” “He still cares about this home, Nina. Please don’t let me be the reason you break up a marriage.” “Damian.” I ignored her and looked at the man whose face was turning a sickly shade of gray. “Did you bring her here to give me a play-by-play of your sleepover?” “Nina, don’t listen to her! She’s confused!” Damian scrambled toward me, trying to grab my hand again. I pulled away. Seeing the ice in my eyes, he pivoted to the emotional blackmail. “I stayed at the office last night. I swear. Nina, we’ve been together for six years. Don’t you remember the early days? When we were splitting a ten-dollar pizza and dreaming of this life?” “We’ve survived so much together. You’re going to throw it all away over a misunderstanding?” “It was a joke! A stupid, drunken mistake!” He was getting worked up now, playing the part of the misunderstood, devoted husband. Just as he was reaching his crescendo, Kayla spoke up. “Damian…” She didn’t call him ‘Mr. Cross’ this time. Her voice was thin, but it cut through the room like a blade. “I didn’t want to say anything. But I’m scared… I’m scared for the baby to grow up without a father.” The air in the room turned to lead. Damian’s expression shattered. He spun around to look at her, his mouth agape. “What did you say?” “I’m pregnant.” Kayla looked up, her face streaked with tears, but as her gaze flicked to mine, I caught it—a spark of pure, unadulterated triumph. “Nina, I don’t want your money. I just want Damian. You can’t give him a family, but I can. I can give him a real home.” “Shut up!” Damian let out a panicked roar, his face white as a sheet. Kayla flinched as if he’d hit her. She stumbled back half a step, her heel catching on the edge of the rug. She went down hard, landing heavily on the hardwood floor near the coffee table. “Ah—!” A sharp cry of pain escaped her. She clutched her stomach, her forehead instantly breaking into a sweat. “Damian… my stomach… it hurts so much…” Damian had been watching my reaction, but at the sound of that scream, he snapped. He lunged for her, gathering her into his arms. “Kayla! Kayla, talk to me!” His voice was vibrating with a terror I hadn’t seen in years. The “devoted husband” who was just begging for my forgiveness vanished in a heartbeat. “It hurts… the baby…” She gripped his lapels, gasping for air, tears streaming down her face. Damian didn’t even look at me. He scooped her up in his arms and bolted for the door like a man possessed. The heavy front door slammed shut with a boom that echoed through the empty penthouse. Silence rushed back in. I sat there, staring at the spot where they had just been standing. A long moment passed before my phone lit up with a notification. It was a text from Kayla. 4 The photo was a tactical nuke. Tangled silk sheets, limbs intertwined, and a profile I knew better than my own buried in the crook of a woman’s neck. The text beneath it was designed to kill: Nina, Damian is with me now. He said he’s going to take care of me and our child. After all, he’s tired. He’s tired of coming home to a cold, empty woman who can’t even hold onto a pregnancy. Cold? I stared at the word until it blurred. I wanted to laugh. So that was how he described me to the world. It made sense. Three years ago, when I had tripped and tumbled down the stairs, covered in blood and clutching my phone to call him, he’d used the same tone. The background noise on his end had been a thumping bassline and laughter. He’d sounded annoyed when he picked up. “Nina, can you just give me one night of peace? It’s Kayla’s birthday, the whole team is out celebrating. Don’t be a buzzkill.” That was the night we lost the baby. And he was out buying lemon drops for another woman. The panic and raw desperation he’d shown while carrying Kayla out of the house just now… that was a look I had never seen on his face while I was lying in a pool of my own blood. He wasn’t incapable of warmth. He just wasn’t warm for me. I wasn’t “incapable” of having a family. He just didn’t want one with me. The weight I’d been carrying for years—the guilt, the “what-ifs”—suddenly shattered. Good. Let the last of the embers burn out. I took a deep breath and dialed Beth. “Beth, are you awake?” Her voice boomed through the speaker, loud and sharp. “Awake? I’m livid! I saw Scott’s car at the hospital! I’m about to go down there and give those two a piece of my mind. How are you? Don’t you dare sit there alone.” “I’m fine,” I said, and surprisingly, I meant it. “I just wanted to ask… when you want to take out a pair of narcissists with zero mess… what’s the cleanest way to do it?” There was a three-second silence on the other end, followed by a sound that could only be described as predatory glee. “You’re finally ready? Thank God. Hold on, let me get my notebook. Class is in session.” I hung up, opened my laptop, and typed 24-hour white-glove moving service into the search bar. Booked. Paid. Confirmed. Less than an hour later, three men in blue jumpsuits were at my door. I led them to Damian’s walk-in closet and pointed at the rows of bespoke suits and limited-edition sneakers. “Everything,” I said. “Pack it all. Every shoe, every watch, every scrap of paper.” “And the desk in the study. I want it gone.” They were efficient, professional, and silent. In ninety minutes, the penthouse—a place once filled with his ego—was half-empty. As they were maneuvering his massive mahogany desk toward the elevator, the front door swung open. Damian stood there, looking haggard and drained. He froze, eyes widening as he saw the chaos in the hallway, his prized desk hovering mid-air. “What the hell is this? Who authorized this!” He lunged forward, trying to block the movers. The men stopped and looked back at me. I was standing in the center of the living room, calm as a summer lake. Damian’s gaze snapped to mine, his voice shaking. “Nina, have you lost your mind?” I didn’t answer him. I just looked at the movers. “Keep going.” They stepped around him like he was an inconvenient piece of litter. Damian stood paralyzed, glaring at me. I reached for the intercom by the door and signaled the front desk downstairs. “Starting now,” I told the security guard, “this gentleman and his belongings are no longer permitted on the premises. Revoke his key fobs and clear his name from the guest list.”

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In the hierarchy of the Serpent-shifters, a male who has tasted the intimacy of a mate finds it nearly impossible to walk away. It’s a biological tether, a soul-deep obsession. But my mate’s younger brother had been harboring dark, twisted designs on me long before the ink on our contract was dry. I never imagined that after being bought for a staggering price at a high-end auction and brought back to the Serpent’s Reach, I would actually fall for the man who claimed me. Even less expected was that I would bear his children. For our kind, conception is a rare miracle. Yet, in one breath, I defied the odds and laid three healthy eggs, eventually hatching three perfect, tiny serpents. But the man who once looked at me with a possessiveness that bordered on insanity now wore a face carved from ice. “To be honest, I regret it,” Jeffrey said suddenly. His voice held the temperature of a winter grave. I looked up at him, my heart stuttering in my chest. I didn’t understand. His gaze raked over my body—lingering on my breasts, still full from nursing, and the soft, feminine curve of my hips—with a cold, clinical scrutiny that made me feel naked in the worst way. “If I hadn’t been trying to spite Lydia back then, I never would have brought you here. Now that I look at you, you’re just… ordinary. A common female with nothing in her head but the instinct to breed.” “And my Lydia…” His voice softened with a trace of tenderness he never offered me. “She’s suffered so many years of heartache because of my pride.” The blood in my veins felt like it was turning to slush. My eyes burned, the sting of tears threatening to spill over. I forced myself to speak, my voice a mere thimble of sound, reminding him of the bond. I told him he couldn’t leave me—that his nature wouldn’t allow it. Jeffrey didn’t even flinch. Instead, he looked almost manic as he began detailing his plan to bring his “golden girl” back to his side. He spared me one last look of pure Revulsion, as if I were a piece of furniture that no longer fit the decor. “If it weren’t for that body of yours, do you really think I’d have looked at you twice?” “But don’t worry. You gave me heirs, so I won’t throw you to the wolves. My brother doesn’t have a mate yet. When Beau returns, you’ll be moving into his quarters.” … “Are you certain you want to transfer the legal guardianship of your mate to your brother?” The clerk at the Tribal Registry looked at Jeffrey as if he’d grown a second head. He glanced at me—my curves prominent and healthy—and then at the woman shivering in Jeffrey’s arms. Lydia was gaunt, frail, looking like a gust of wind might shatter her. “Once this is filed, you can’t undo it without the consent of the other male. It’s a permanent severance.” Jeffrey didn’t even look at me. He just scowled. “Of course. Just hurry it up. Lydia just got back and she’s overwhelmed. I need to get her home and settled.” The clerk let out a sharp breath of annoyance. He struck Jeffrey’s name from my record and replaced it with a new one. I was now legally bound to a man named Beau. “Fine. When your brother gets back, send him in to provide the blood-seal,” the clerk muttered. Jeffrey was too busy tucking Lydia’s head into his chest to care. “Tomorrow,” he tossed over his shoulder. When we stepped out of the Registry, I stood alone on the pavement. The wind was biting, but it was nothing compared to the void opening in my chest. I watched Lydia pout, her voice a high-pitched whine as she scolded Jeffrey for “abandoning” her years ago and buying “that woman” right in front of her. Jeffrey cooed to her, his heart on his sleeve, before finally remembering I existed. He glanced back. I must have looked pathetic, standing there in the cold with my thin coat wrapped around me. He hesitated for a second, something flickering in his eyes, but it died before it reached his lips. The silence stretched until I broke it. “Do I have to move out today?” Jeffrey’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have to be in such a rush—” “Your name is Ivy, right?” Lydia interrupted, her eyes narrowing as she cataloged every inch of me with blatant envy. “I remember you. The ‘Prize’ of the auction.” She let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “Men are so predictable. They love the tits and the ass. But honestly, aren’t you embarrassed to walk around looking like… that? If I were that top-heavy, I’d never leave the house.” She looked up at Jeffrey, her eyes brimming with fake tears. “Jeffrey, you actually like that kind of thing, don’t you?” Jeffrey panicked instantly, desperate to prove his devotion. “Who told you that? It’s repulsive. It makes my skin crawl.” I went rigid. My eyes went hot. Repulsive? The man who spent every night winding his serpent tail around me, whispering my name into the crook of my neck as he took me again and again? The man who wouldn’t let me go until I was breathless and trembling? That was what he called repulsive. Lydia smirked, tucking her arm through his, looking at me with a sickening kind of pity. “Don’t be upset, Ivy. If Jeffrey hadn’t bought you, you’d still be in a cage. You should thank me. If I hadn’t picked a fight with him back then, there never would have been a vacancy for you to fill.” I looked at Jeffrey. He didn’t defend me. He didn’t even look me in the eye. “Right,” I whispered, the word tasting like ash. Seeing that I was too broken to fight back, Lydia lost interest. She started tugging on Jeffrey’s arm, demanding they go home. He smiled at her—that soft, doting smile that used to be mine—and let her lead him away. After a few steps, he called back over his shoulder, “Ivy, since you’re so eager to go, go ahead. Move your things.” Then, as an afterthought: “Don’t take it to heart. We’re still family.” Family. Yes. We were still family. Except I was no longer his mate. I was a hand-me-down for his brother. The moment we reached the house, Lydia’s facade crumbled. She stormed into the master bedroom—our bedroom—and began tearing through my things. She threw my clothes into the hallway. She found the pair of grass-woven rings I’d made for our anniversary. She found the silk protection charm I’d spent weeks sewing, the one I’d hidden under Jeffrey’s pillow to keep him safe on his hunts. I’d worked so hard on the stitching. Every thread was a prayer for him. Now, it was under her heel, ground into the dirt. I stood there, paralyzed, watching her move like a hurricane through the home I had meticulously built, piece by piece. Jeffrey stood in the doorway, watching. He didn’t stop her. He just gave a helpless, weary smile. He caught my eye and said casually, “Just let her have her moment. I owe her this. She’s had a hard time. If she breaks anything, I’ll buy you a replacement.” My throat felt like it was closing. I shook my head. “No… it’s fine. It wasn’t anything important anyway.” Jeffrey paused, a flash of irritation crossing his face, but he said nothing. Outside in the yard, there was a row of vegetables I’d planted. Jeffrey used to complain about the dirt, saying we could just buy whatever we needed. But I wanted something of our own. He’d grumbled, but one night, I caught him secretly building a small cedar fence around the sprouts to keep the rabbits out. Now, Lydia marched right over the seedlings. She ripped my lingerie off the drying line, shaking it with disgust. “You actually hang these outside? Are you trying to advertise?” She dropped the lace to the muddy ground and stepped on it. Jeffrey let out a short, surprised laugh. His eyes were fixed on Lydia’s fiery spirit, completely oblivious to how pale my face had become. I instinctively hunched my shoulders, feeling a crushing sense of shame for my own body for the first time in my life. Lydia wasn’t done. She scouted the yard until her eyes landed on the wicker basket in the corner. It was a beautiful day. I’d brought the basket out so the hatchlings could sleep in the sun instead of the stuffy nursery. Panic spiked in my chest. “The babies are in there! Don’t—” Before I could finish, she reached for the handle, intending to hurl it over the fence. I didn’t think. I lunged forward. But I was too late. Lydia, startled by my sudden movement, stumbled back. She let out a sharp cry as she lost her balance. In a blur of motion, a dark shadow streaked past me. Jeffrey caught her, pulling her securely into his arms. The basket tumbled. The three tiny serpents, curled together in their fleece blankets, rolled out like fallen fruit. They were so small. Too small to even make a sound when they hit the grass. Only the eldest, slightly larger than the others, let out a thin, pained hiss as he woke. “My babies!” I dropped to my knees, frantically scooping the three of them into my arms. They were trembling, their tiny tails lashing out to wrap around my fingers for safety. The eldest had a scrape on his tiny head, a bead of pale blood welling up. I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my chest was physical. Jeffrey had been closer to the basket. If he had wanted to, he could have caught it. He could have saved his children. But he chose Lydia. He watched his own flesh and blood hit the ground and didn’t even blink. In the quiet hours of the night, when we were tangled together, I used to wonder if this was love. I told myself his possessiveness, his intensity, his constant need for me… that it had to mean something. In this moment, I finally realized how wrong I was. I looked up at him, my eyes red and my voice shaking. “Jeffrey, please. I’m begging you. Don’t let her touch anything else. I’ll pack. I’ll go now. I’ll take everything and I won’t leave a single trace that I was ever here.” Jeffrey went still. He slowly released Lydia. The hatchlings were still hissing at their father, their tiny voices full of hurt. They wanted him to tuck them into his scales like he used to. But before Jeffrey could speak, Lydia burst into tears. “Jeffrey! Do you feel sorry for her? You do! You care about her and those… those things she produced!” “I knew it! You say she’s repulsive, but you can’t let go!” Jeffrey’s jaw tightened. “Lydia, I didn’t—” “You promised you’d take me away!” she shrieked, tears streaming down her face. “And instead, you bought her at an auction for a record price. Everyone laughed at me for six months. They said I was delusional, that a man like you would never want someone like me.” “No one would buy me after that. I had to wash clothes, chop wood… I did the filthiest work. One winter I had a fever for seven days. I laid in the dark thinking of you, waiting for you to come for me.” “And you? Were you busy holding her? Had you already forgotten me?” She collapsed against his chest, her fists thumping weakly against his heart. “Jeffrey… we can have babies too. I’ll give you so many… just stop looking at her. Please.” I watched Jeffrey’s rigid body slowly melt. He looked away from me, away from his bleeding son, and gently wiped the tears from Lydia’s face. “Don’t cry. I’ll do whatever you want, okay?” The hatchlings watched their father, their cries growing weaker. They nudged my fingers with their small snouts, their black, obsidian eyes reflecting my own shattered face. They seemed to be asking: Why doesn’t he see us? We’re hurt. Why won’t he look? I couldn’t give them an answer. My face felt frozen. I stroked their tiny heads, forcing a bitter, broken smile. “It’s okay, my loves. Mama’s got you.” I lowered my head and started picking up my ruined belongings. Things fell out of my trembling hands as fast as I could grab them. I kept picking them up. I kept dropping them. Scalding tears hit the dirt and vanished. In the background, I heard Lydia’s voice, sweet and demanding. “I want you to build me a new bed! I won’t sleep where you laid with her.” “And dig up those vegetables. I want flowers there. And that fence? It’s hideous. Tear it down.” Jeffrey looked toward the garden. His gaze lingered on the green sprouts for a heartbeat. He looked at me, then turned back to Lydia, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Anything you want, Lydia. Anything.” Over the next few days, I moved into Beau’s quarters. He had been away for so long that the place was thick with dampness and dust. I managed to clear a small corner, layering my old clothes over some dry straw to make a nest for the babies. The humid night wind drifted through the window, carrying the cloying scent of flowers. Jeffrey had dug up my garden and replaced it with Lydia’s favorites. The hatchlings were restless, huddling against my chest. They were heartbroken. Since the day they hatched, their father had never ignored them like this. I leaned down, pressing my lips to their cool foreheads, my eyes stinging. Outside, the sound of Lydia’s muffled giggles and Jeffrey’s low voice drifted through the walls. I rolled over, pressing my hands over my ears. Then, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the main house. “Jeffrey, no! Stop! Don’t touch me! I’m scared, please!” Footsteps thundered across the porch. My body went taut. A second later, my door was kicked open. Jeffrey stood in the doorway. His eyes were a glowing, predatory green, fixed on me with a terrifying intensity. His gaze slid from my face down to the swell of my breasts, partially exposed by my loose tunic. I knew that look. It was the look of a male in his heat. In the dark of our old room, he would pull me into his lap, his tail coiling around my waist, claiming me over and over until the sun rose. He was in his cycle. I instinctively scrambled back toward the corner. Seeing me recoil, Jeffrey’s teeth ground together with an audible snap. He looked furious, though he probably didn’t even know why. The primal urge of the beast was screaming in his blood, drowning out reason. To his lizard brain, there was only one truth: I was his mate. And no one else could have me. As Jeffrey lunged forward, I shook my head violently. “No! Jeffrey, stop!” My rejection seemed to burn him. He stopped in his tracks, looking at me with a wounded, confused expression. Don’t look at me like that, I thought. You’re the one who threw me away. “I won’t do this…” Before I could finish the sentence, he had me. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand, his strength effortless and suffocating. Suddenly, a sharp hiss cut through the air. The eldest hatchling was struggling to stand. He used his tiny tail to prop himself up, putting his miniature body between me and Jeffrey. I could feel him shaking. His eyes were wide with terror at the sight of his father’s half-shifted, monstrous form, but he didn’t back down. He bared his tiny, undeveloped fangs, letting out a fierce, desperate hiss of warning. The other two woke up and scrambled to join him, three tiny creatures no bigger than my palm, standing in a row to protect their mother. Tears flooded my eyes. “Babies, no… get back…” I tried to reach for them, but Jeffrey held me fast. His mind was gone, lost to the fog of the heat. He reached out to swat them away, his large hand catching the eldest. The little snake thrashed, lashing his tail. “No! Jeffrey, let him go! You’re hurting him!” I screamed, my nails raking across his forearm, drawing blood. Jeffrey growled, an animal sound, and tossed the hatchling aside. The tiny body hit the far wall with a sickening thud and slid to the floor. “My baby!” I felt like my soul had been ripped out. My eyes went bloodshot with rage. “You’re a monster! He’s your son! How could you throw him?!” Jeffrey blinked, a momentary flicker of clarity returning to his eyes. He looked at his hand, then at the huddle of shivering scales in the corner. But the heat was a tide that wouldn’t be stayed. His gaze locked onto me again, his hand moving to my throat, his voice a slurred, guttural mess. “Ivy…” Just then, a scream pierced the room from the doorway. “What are you doing?!”

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