The boy next door used to be a piano prodigy. He had won countless awards by the time he was fifteen. But after he met my classmate, he gladly let her sit on his beloved piano and kiss him. He threw away his education for her, smashed his piano to pieces, and spiraled into total ruin. So, I told his parents. Because of that, the boy next door was forced to go abroad to study at a conservatory. Years later, he made a massive name for himself. He became the brightest, most untouchable superstar in the entertainment industry. And I ended up as a trainee at his management agency. Without even looking up, he pointed a finger at me. “I’ll take her.” That very night, my manager got me blackout drunk and sent me into the hotel rooms of powerful corporate investors. He stood by the doorway, biting down on a cigarette, and chuckled softly. “Consider this my way of thanking you for snitching on me back then.” I was abused to death on that freezing winter night. When I opened my eyes again, I was back before any of it had happened. 1 “Don’t you think dragging the untouchable golden boy down from his pedestal would be a total rush?” “His lips are so thin. I wonder if he’s a good kisser.” My desk-mate rested her chin on her hand, teasing playfully. Directly across the courtyard, a tall, striking silhouette sat by the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was eighteen-year-old Caleb Bennett. I snapped out of my daze, clutching my chest and gasping heavily for air. I turned my head. The girl sitting next to me was my classmate, Ashley. In my previous life, she had sat exactly like this, resting her chin on her hand, staring at Caleb with a flirtatious gaze, looking absolutely determined to conquer him. Back then, I just thought she was talking big. But that very night, I saw her sitting on top of Caleb’s grand piano. Looking down and kissing him. I was back. I had been reborn, returning to the time before everything went wrong. I forced myself to stay calm and reached out to shut the window. “I need to study. If you don’t have anything else to do, go back to your own house.” Ashley pouted. “Aren’t you curious? I thought you had a crush on him.” I froze instantly. When I was seventeen, I made two massive mistakes. One, I secretly harbored a crush on the boy next door, but never had the courage to confess my teenage feelings. Two, I snitched on his secret relationship with Ashley. Because of that, he hated me for six years. He didn’t even hesitate to destroy me just to exact revenge for that betrayal. Thinking back to that desperate, freezing winter night in my past life… I squeezed my fingers tight, my teeth biting into my lower lip until it bled. 2 “No, I never had a crush on him.” I replied with deadpan calm. Ashley smiled slyly, the corners of her mouth curling up. “Good, then I don’t have to feel bad. I wasn’t sure how to tell you that Caleb and I are officially together. I didn’t want to trigger you.” In my past life, Ashley had brazenly staked her claim exactly like this. Ashley was a total player. Almost every decent-looking guy in school had dated her at some point. She was loud and unapologetic. While everyone else was stressing over SATs and finals, she was busy dating, smoking, drinking, and hitting the clubs. She was the exact opposite of a “good girl.” But girls like her possess a fatal attraction for guys who have spent their whole lives following the rules. Caleb was clearly one of them. I remembered the moments right before my death in my previous life. My hands, covered in cigarette burns, desperately clutching the cuff of Caleb’s crisp white shirt. I begged him to let me go. “Even if you hate me, you shouldn’t do it like this.” But Caleb just looked down at me, his cold lips curling into a smirk. He scoffed. “And how should I do it, Chloe? If it weren’t for you, Ashley wouldn’t have been forced to marry someone else, and she wouldn’t have died in childbirth. Why does she have to be dead while you get to live a perfectly happy life?” “Chloe, it’s just not fair.” He was right. Because of my snitching in our past life, Caleb was forced to move overseas. Ashley, distracted by the romance, bombed her conservatory auditions and ended up marrying a local street punk. Not long after, she got pregnant out of wedlock. Her parents disowned her. The punk bailed on her, and she ultimately bled out in a sketchy back-alley clinic. Caleb always believed that if I hadn’t told his parents, he never would have left the country. And Ashley never would have died. So, it was all my fault. I lowered my eyes. “That’s great for you guys. I wish you a long, happy life together.” Ashley gave me a weird look but didn’t say anything else. 3 Days passed by. The two of them dated in secret. Like all teenage couples, they skipped class to catch movies, got matching tattoos on their chests, and kissed on romantic Ferris wheel rides. They rode motorcycles through the midnight streets. They completely forgot that their primary identity was supposed to be high school students. I watched all of this with cold indifference. Meanwhile, I nervously prepped for my college entrance exams. In my previous life, heavily influenced by Caleb, I had chosen to attend the same performing arts high school as him, training to be a musician. I spent my life chasing his shadow, desperately hoping to touch his light. Now, I was planning to drop the arts track and switch back to standard academics. I was going to retake the standard exams and forge my own path. It was undeniably going to be a brutal uphill battle, but no matter how hard it was, I wanted to try. Until one day, I overheard Ashley bragging to some girls at school: “Caleb is just a piano nerd. He doesn’t know anything about the real world. Honestly, if he wasn’t famous for winning all those competitions and didn’t make me look good, I wouldn’t even be dating him.” Classmate A: “Yeah, right. Like he’d actually fall for you? He’s probably just messing around with you.” Ashley confidently fired back, “Don’t test me. If I tell him to jump, he asks how high.” Classmate B: “I heard he has a massive piano competition coming up. If you’re so powerful, make him skip it.” Ashley smirked. “That’s easy. Just wait and see.” I was sitting right nearby. And I knew that winning first place in that competition guaranteed a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious European conservatory. I knew exactly how important this competition was to him. Sure enough, even without my interference, the major turning point of my past life was still unfolding. In my previous life, I knew Ashley had ulterior motives. I dropped hints to Caleb several times, but he just thought I was a jealous drama queen trying to ruin their relationship. After hesitating for days, I finally chose to tell his parents. With his parents stepping in, the fallout was massive. The two were forced to break up. Caleb, devastated and completely out of it, ended up losing the first-place trophy anyway. However, he still secured an opportunity to study abroad. But he held a grudge against me for years because of it. To the point where he personally destroyed my life. By the time I snapped out of my thoughts, Ashley had leaned close to my face. She winked at me. “Chloe, you’re not going to snitch, are you?” I looked down, calmly flipping the page of my textbook. “Of course not.” This time around, I chose silence. I would respect other people’s fate. 4 Until I saw Caleb sitting on my front porch. This was the first time I had crossed paths with him since I was reborn. Thinking about what he had done to me in our past life… I swallowed down my nausea. I glanced down. Shattered beer bottles were scattered all over the ground around him. Blood was dripping steadily from his hands. The moment he saw me, he scrambled up from the ground and grabbed me, his eyes completely bloodshot. “Chloe, you and Ashley are close, right? Can you please call her for me? She said she wants to break up. I really can’t lose her.” “She said playing piano is boring. I can stop playing! The piano will never be as important as her. Just help me, please?” “I’m completely out of options. I love her. I’d give up anything for her.” I stared at the pathetic boy standing in front of me. His radiant halo was completely gone. His long, elegant, pale fingers were slashed open by glass, but he didn’t seem to care at all. In my memories, he used to guard those hands with his life. He used to say he was grateful to God for giving him hands that could play such beautiful music. He loved the rhythm of his fingers dancing across the keys. But right now, to him, a pianist’s most precious asset meant absolutely nothing compared to Ashley. He was no longer the boy I used to have a crush on. I suppose a first love is only beautiful when it stays a memory. I thought for a second, pulled out my phone, and dialed Ashley’s number. “Ashley, Caleb is drunk outside my house. Can you come over?” He stood carefully beside me, staring at the phone with desperate, hopeful eyes. Ashley seemed to scoff on the other end of the line. Then she said, “Ask him for me—is it true he’d do absolutely anything for me?” I had it on speakerphone, so Caleb heard it perfectly. He panicked and practically yelled, “Of course I can!” “Then don’t go to the competition.” With that, Ashley hung up the phone. Leaving a stunned Caleb standing rigidly on the porch. I studied Caleb carefully. I wanted to see what choice he would make in this life, without my interference. Dreams versus love. Which one would he choose? Caleb kept his head down. It took a long time before he finally let out a bitter laugh. “Is giving up the competition really the only way to prove how much she means to me?” He clearly wasn’t asking me. But I knew he already had his answer. I didn’t say a word. I just watched him turn around and walk away, looking completely defeated.

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1 My brother was rotten from the start. He tried to kill me more times than I could count. At five, he threw a lit lighter onto my lap. The flames melted half my face, scarring me forever and leaving a constant, burning itch. Through tears, I told the truth, but Mom only held me and whispered, “Your brother’s just a baby. He couldn’t have done that.” At ten, he tricked me into fetching a ball from a thorn thicket hiding a hornet’s nest. I was stung by hundreds, fell down a ravine, and shattered my leg. My kidneys failed, leaving me tied to a catheter for life. Still, no one believed me. “You weren’t careful,” they said. “Stop being a burden.” On my eighteenth birthday, he shoved peanut butter cake into my mouth. I choked instantly, collapsing as he stood over me, grinning at my struggle. Only when he’d had his fill did he run out shouting, “Grace ate cake and had an allergic reaction!” Mom screamed. Dad cursed. “Why won’t that useless girl just die already?” I smiled. [Congratulations, Host. Hidden ending unlocked: 99 Deaths.] [In 24 hours, the portal to the real world opens.] My throat was almost entirely blocked. Every attempt to breathe sounded like a broken bellows, yet not a single drop of oxygen reached my lungs. As I lay on the floor drifting into unconsciousness, I heard heavy, hurried footsteps echoing down the hall. Dad burst through the door and immediately slapped me twice across the face. “Always stuffing your face! Are you really that greedy? What did I do in a past life to deserve you? Can’t you give us one single day of peace?” Mom was frantically tearing through the drawers. “Where is the EpiPen? Where does this stupid girl keep her emergency medication?” When I was first injured years ago, they kept emergency meds in every corner of the house. Back then, even a slight cough from me would make Mom panic and rub my back. “Are you okay, Grace? Do we need to go to the hospital?” But as the incidents piled up, their concern morphed into exhaustion. Eventually, I was left to drag my crippled leg to my follow-up appointments all by myself. Of course she didn’t know where the medication was. She hadn’t cared enough to look in years. Dad’s face darkened, and he dumped the contents of a drawer onto the floor, his voice dripping with irritation. “If we can’t find it, then fine. Maybe we will finally all be free.” Two agonizing minutes later, Mom found the pen on top of a cabinet. Her hands shook as she plunged the needle into my thigh. The crushing weight on my chest slowly lifted, though the fiery red hives covering my body still burned, and the residual muscle aches left me pinned to the floor, unable to move a muscle. Mom looked at Dad, a flicker of guilt in her eyes. “Maybe we should take her to the hospital just to be safe?” Dad hesitated for a fraction of a second, but then his anger flared up again. “To the hospital? With what money? Every penny we make goes toward her endless medical bills! Luke, next time your sister tries to kill herself, don’t bother telling us. Once she’s gone, the rest of us can finally have a real life.” He slammed the door behind him. Mom sighed, shooting me one last disappointed look before following him out. Luke leaned down, whispering in my ear with a cruel chuckle. “Can’t die, can’t leave. Pretty miserable, huh? Guess what kind of game we are going to play next time?” He strolled out of the room, puffed up with pride, totally missing the genuine smile that spread across my face. Thank God. I am finally the one who gets to be free. Years ago, in the real world, I had been terminally ill and refused to be a burden to my grandmother. I jumped from the hospital rooftop, only to hear a mechanical voice in my head as I fell. [Host detected. Survival instinct is below 10%. Initiating the Rebirth Redemption Quest. If you successfully complete your mission, you will be rewarded with a healthy, brand-new life in your original world.] My mission was to redeem my sociopathic younger brother, Luke. From the day he was born, I did everything to care for him, constantly whispering words of love and guidance. But on the very night he learned to speak, he stared at me with a sickeningly sweet smile. [You are the ninety-ninth host I’ve met,] he had whispered inside my mind. [The first ninety-eight died playing my games. I hope you last a bit longer.] That was when I realized he wasn’t just a troubled child. He was a malicious, corrupted transmigrator. With his twisted experience, Luke easily turned my life into a living hell, systematically stripping away my parents’ trust until I was completely isolated. When I was lying in a hospital bed with third-degree burns, clinging to life, the system’s voice had chimed again. [Due to a major world glitch, Host has unlocked the hidden ending. Surviving ninety-nine deaths will also count as mission completion.] In truth, every one of Luke’s pranks should have killed me. The system had kept my broken body barely functioning, forcing me to endure over a decade of horrific torture just to reach this day. [The portal opens in 24 hours. You only need to experience your one-hundredth and final death to leave this world forever.] I forced my battered body up, trying to drag myself back onto the mattress, but my palm accidentally pressed down hard on the emergency call button on my headboard. A piercing alarm blared. Footsteps thundered down the hallway, and the door was thrown open once more. 2 Dad stood at the entrance, chest heaving, his car keys clenched tightly in his fist. Mom scanned me with lingering panic. “What is it now?” I shook my head weakly. “Nothing… I just…” Before I could finish, Dad hurled his car keys directly at my face. They struck the bridge of my nose with a sickening crack, sending a blinding wave of pain through my skull. “If it’s nothing, why the hell did you press the alarm? Are you trying to give your mother and me a heart attack?” Dad roared. “You’re already a useless cripple, and now you’re acting out like a psychopath. Why can’t you be more like your brother? When are you going to grow up?” Watching him rave, I felt absolutely nothing. No anger, no sorrow. The stolen happiness of my childhood was always meant to be paid back. Before Luke was born, my parents had treated me like their whole world. I wore the nicest clothes they could afford. When I mentioned wanting to learn the piano, Dad worked three months of overtime just to buy me a high-end brand and hire a professional tutor. When a boy at school cut my hair as a prank, my normally timid mother marched straight into the principal’s office and fought for me tooth and nail. In the real world, I had been raised by my grandmother and never knew what it felt like to have parents. For a brief, foolish moment, I had actually hoped I could stay with them forever. But then Luke arrived, and the dream shattered. Even as an infant, Luke would spit in my face. When I pinched his cheek in frustration, Mom yanked me away, her eyes cold with disappointment. “Grace! You’re the older sister! How could you lay a hand on a baby? Did we teach you nothing?” After the fire, whenever the scars on my face flared up with excruciating pain, I would sob and clutch Mom’s hand. “It was him! He threw the lighter at me! He was born evil, Mom! He’s going to ruin us all!” I begged. “Please, it’s not too late. We have to watch him. Don’t let him fool you!” At first, they offered half-hearted comfort. But eventually, Dad’s patience snapped. He slammed a heavy glass ashtray onto the floor, his eyes shot with blood. “Grace, we tolerated your tantrums because we felt bad for you! But this is insane! You caused that fire yourself, and now you’re trying to frame your toddler brother?” He raised his hand to strike me, but Mom held him back, looking at me with pitying disdain. “Grace, listen to me. I know what you’re doing. But throwing these fits out of jealousy to get our attention is only going to make us resent you.” From then on, Luke’s physical abuse became a regular routine, and my parents’ tolerance evaporated. Once, he pushed me from the top of a slide. I hit the concrete head-first and blacked out. When I opened my eyes, I was still lying on the cold pavement. Mom stood over me, her arms crossed. “I suppose your brother did this too? How long are you going to keep up this pathetic act?” she snapped. “Do you think the hospital is a hotel? My credit cards are already maxed out from your bills!” That was the day I gave up. I completely let go of any hope of redeeming Luke. Seeing me silent, Mom sighed and reached down to pull me up from the floor. But Luke’s eyes darted around, and he suddenly let out a shrill cry. “Mom! Dad! Talk to me! I can’t hear anything!” He clutched his ears, feigning agony. “I was standing right next to the alarm. It was so loud… I think my ears are bleeding!” Mom gasped, instantly dropping my arm. My crippled leg hit the hardwood floor with a dull thud, sending a jolt of pain through my spine. “Oh my god, let’s get you to the doctor right now!” she cried. Dad grabbed me by the hair and dragged me toward the basement stairs. “You miserable parasite! You’re already a broken piece of trash, and now you’re trying to ruin your brother too?” he spat. “Stay down here and think about what you’ve done. No food for you today!” The heavy wooden door slammed shut, plunging the cellar into pitch darkness. The only sound was the scratching of mice in the corners. I closed my eyes, peacefully waiting for the clock to run down. Some time later, a rough hand shook me awake. 3 Dad tossed a worn jacket over me, his voice eerily calm. “Put this on. Get up.” My body felt like it was going to detonate. A sudden, violent fever had taken hold, leaving my head spinning. When I didn’t move fast enough, Dad’s face twisted with annoyance. Mom stepped forward, grabbing my limp arms and shoving them into the sleeves. “Grace, stop being stubborn. Just listen to us. We’re doing this for your own good.” Suddenly, she paused. “Why are you burning up? Are you…” Before her hand could touch my forehead, Luke chimed in, his voice dripping with exaggerated sweet concern. “Do we really have to send her to a care facility, Mom? I can skip my tutoring classes. I won’t go out with my friends on weekends anymore. I’ll spend all my time and money looking after Grace myself!” He looked at me, a sickening glint in his eyes. “Grace, just apologize to Mom and Dad. Promise you won’t cause any more trouble, and we can get through this as a family.” A few years ago, a family friend had suggested sending me to a long-term care home after seeing my condition. Back then, Dad had slammed his fist on the table in a rage. “Your father-in-law went into one of those places and died a month later! Are you asking me to murder my own daughter? As long as we have a roof over our heads and food on our table, I will never abandon Grace in a dump like that!” Looking back, the memory was a sick joke. I shook my head weakly. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Mom’s hand froze in midair, her expression hardening into disgust. Dad’s anger boiled over. He grabbed my arm and dragged me across the floor toward the front door. “I should have shipped you off years ago. Why did I waste so much time and money on an ungrateful leech like you?” I was tossed onto the back seat of the car. With every bump in the road, my internal organs felt like they were being pierced by hot knives. I drifted in and out of consciousness from the sheer agony until the car finally screeched to a halt in front of a pair of rusted iron gates. The facility director, wearing a stained white coat, hauled me out of the car and shoved me into a squeaking wheelchair. “You folks got lucky today,” he said with a greasy smile. “We just had a bed open up. Once you pay the administrative fee, we can get her processed.” Before we even crossed the threshold, the sound of blood-curdling screams and shattering glass echoed from the hallway. A few burly male orderlies rushed past us, pinning a thrashing patient to the dirty floor like livestock before plunging a syringe into his neck. Within seconds, the patient’s eyes rolled back, and he went limp. Mom shrank back, suddenly terrified. “What is wrong with him? And our Grace is a young woman, and you can’t put her in a room with a violent man!” The director shrugged off her concern. “He’s just a bit schizophrenic. He’s perfectly pleasant when he’s medicated. Besides, we’re completely full. Once you’re in a place like this, gender is the least of your worries.” Dad stared at the floor, his face grim, while Mom darted uneasy glances at me. After a tense silence, Dad opened his mouth to speak, but Luke cut in. “Dad, Mom, the air in here is making me feel really sick. I think I’m getting a fever.” He forced out a wet, dramatic cough. “Besides, Grace grew up around boys. I’m sure she’ll get along fine with him.” Panicked, Mom and Dad immediately started pushing Luke toward the exit. “Right, right, let’s get out of here. Director, we’ll leave Grace in your capable hands.” The staff tossed me onto a filthy mattress like a sack of meat. Once the director locked the door, they abandoned us. Late into the night, the schizophrenic patient on the floor finally stirred. He rolled over, locked his wild, bloodshot eyes on me, and let out a manic, silent grin. From beneath his pillow, he pulled a small kitchen knife, playfully tracing its edge along my skin before plunging it deep into my thigh. Dark blood sprayed across the sheets. I was too weak to lift a finger, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have fought back. He went into a frenzy, stabbing at my face and chest. The room filled with the wet, sickening sound of tearing flesh. I bit my lip until it bled, choking back every scream. Just a little longer. Just bear it a little longer, and it will all be over. After what felt like an eternity, the pain vanished. I found myself floating, looking down at my own butchered body. The familiar mechanical voice echoed in my mind. [Congratulations, Host. Mission accomplished. The return portal will open at noon. Please stand by.] My spirit drifted out of the room, wandering the grim halls of the facility. Around eight in the morning, to my surprise, I saw Mom and Dad walking down the corridor. Mom’s eyes were red and puffy. “I couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” she murmured. “No matter how angry we were, we shouldn’t have left her in a place like this.” Dad huffed, though his voice had softened slightly. “You women are always so dramatic. Let’s just see how she’s adjusting. If she’s miserable, and if she’s willing to apologize and beg for forgiveness, maybe we’ll take her back home.” Standing nearby, the director rolled his eyes when they weren’t looking. “They got along beautifully. Not a peep out of them all night. But let me make one thing clear: if you change your minds now, you’re only getting half your deposit back.” A card terminal beeped as Dad swiped his card. Then, the heavy door was pushed open.

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1 The heatwave apocalypse arrived without warning, sending global temperatures soaring into uncharted territory. As the power grid collapsed across the country, the government rationed electricity, leaving household air conditioners dead. Millions fell victim to severe heatstroke, their bodies cooking from the inside out. I had spent my life savings on a small, portable cooling tent. Due to power limitations, it could only fit one person at a time. My family and I agreed to take turns, one day at a time. But by the second day, they stole my turn. First, they gave my slot to my younger brother. Second, they gave it to my mother. By the third day, I died of heatstroke. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my bedroom, exactly one week before the world went to hell. This time, I woke up with the Sensory Swapping System. The first thing I did after my rebirth was shut down every assembly line at my food processing plant. I took all the rice, flour, grain, and oil from the factory and locked them away in our storage vaults. With the apocalypse looming, raw survival depended entirely on securing resources. Checking the countdown on my phone, I had exactly six days and seven hours before global temperatures spiked by thirty percent, scorching crops and drying up rivers. At that point, anyone with food and water would become a prime target. Simply having supplies was not enough; I needed an absolute fortress. My top priority was upgrading the factory. I expanded the main warehouse, installed an independent solar power grid, and dug deep to place a heavy-duty underground water filtration system. Every production line was cleared out, and raw ingredients were categorized and secretly moved into cold storage and reinforced vaults. Finally, I hired a high-end security firm to install a defense system. With my safe house ready, I turned to the remaining supplies. I rented a twenty-four-foot refrigerated box truck. It was large enough to haul my entire checklist, yet modest enough to navigate the city streets and enter the factory gates without drawing suspicious eyes. More importantly, it kept temperature-sensitive cargo perfectly chilled during transport. I bypassed local supermarkets and wholesale markets, which were too crowded and lacked the bulk items I needed. Instead, I drove to a massive warehouse club on the city outskirts and bought vacuum-packed rice, flour, grains, frozen meats, and canned goods in bulk. I cross-referenced my checklist to make sure no detail was missed: antibiotics, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, gastrointestinal medicine, antihistamines, and wound disinfectants. Once the medical supplies were secured, I cleared a small indoor plot inside the factory. As soon as my first truckload arrived, I sowed vegetable seeds into the fertile soil. There was no telling how long the heat would last, and relying solely on stockpiles was a death sentence. I needed a continuous, renewable source of food. By the time I finished my second supply run, my bank accounts were drained. Running a private factory meant most of my liquid capital was tied up in unpaid invoices, so I liquidated my stock portfolio and sold my family’s ancestral home far below market value. With the cash, I covered the factory roof with high-efficiency solar panels, adding several industrial-grade diesel generators capable of running for years. I also purchased an encrypted military-grade radio transmitter, multiple thermal imaging cameras, and a state-of-the-art automated defense system. Six days later, the heatwave struck. My external sensors registered a blistering 119 degrees Fahrenheit. And I knew this was just the beginning. The municipal power grid collapsed within four hours of the initial spike. The city fell into a suffocating silence. Water systems rely on electricity; when the pumping stations ground to a halt and the last drops trickled out of the taps, raw panic tore through the streets. I unlocked my phone, watching the desperate cries for help online and tracking real-time aerial footage from my drone. The once-bustling streets were completely abandoned. The asphalt was melting, bubbling up and releasing a pungent chemical stench. As my drone hovered over my old apartment building, I spotted three familiar faces through the window. “It’s too hot! Why isn’t the AC working?” “I’m going to die!” My brother’s whining voice filtered through the audio receiver. Watching the three of them drenched in sweat, I reached into my mini-fridge, grabbed a cold can of soda, and took a long, refreshing drink. The icy liquid slid down my throat, sending a pleasant shiver through my body. It actually felt a little chilly, so I adjusted my thermostat to a comfortable seventy-eight degrees. By the third day, the temperature outside hovered near 140 degrees. Reports of heatstroke deaths were skyrocketing, and vicious fights over bottled water were breaking out on every corner. Unbothered, I pumped filtered water from my well and gently misted the green sprouts pushing through the indoor soil. But as I stood enjoying the quiet, my security console flashed a bright red warning: [Bio-signature approaching]. 2 Through the high-definition security monitors, I watched two men carrying heavy fire axes kick through my outer factory gate. “The air is cooler in here! There’s definitely food inside!” On screen, their faces were twisted with heat exhaustion and manic desperation. I recognized them instantly. In my past life, these same two men had looted a local convenience store during the initial blackout, hacking the elderly shopkeepers to death for a single case of bottled water. They began hacking at my security doors, cursing and screaming. Their violence only made my decision easier. Since I had spent millions on an automated defense grid, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to test it. I moved my finger across the console and tapped the [Purge] command. A silent laser swept across the hallway. The two intruders collapsed instantly, blood pooling on the concrete. Within seconds, automated cleaning arms emerged from the wall, dragging the bodies toward the incinerator chute. I launched my drone to scan the factory perimeter. The location was remote enough that no one else seemed to be nearby. But as the drone returned toward the main hangar, three figures caught my eye. “Mom, Dad, this is where Sylvia is hiding!” “That selfish bitch is in there enjoying the AC while we’re out here dying!” I had fully expected Gavin to drag our parents to my door eventually. But what I did not expect was the sudden alert on my monitor: [Main Door Unlocked]. The sound of my security system disengaging made my blood run cold. How was that possible? The security architecture was my own design, featuring physical and digital barriers. Without my master biometric override, opening the door from the outside should have been impossible. I pulled up the lock diagnostics. The primary electronic lock icons were flashing red, showing they had been bypassed. Zooming in on the entryway camera, I saw Gavin holding a strange, custom-built electronic device. He was running it over the keypad, forcing the system to cycle through codes. I had forgotten that despite his lazy, useless attitude, my brother was a mechanical prodigy when it came to locks and circuits. I took a deep breath, my fingers flying across the auxiliary control panel. I had engineered this system to handle any threat, including an inside betrayal. I initiated the secondary lockdown protocol. I wiped the digital keypad memory and engaged the heavy steel physical deadbolts. [Authorization required: Iris scan, palm print, thirty-six-digit dynamic physical key.] [Processing security protocol… 3… 2… 1…] [All external digital signals blocked.] The moment the physical bolts slammed into place with a heavy thud, Gavin’s face fell. He kicked the door in frustration, triggering the automated defense warning. Realizing what would happen if he stayed, he grabbed our parents and retreated into the courtyard, screaming curses into the security camera. I assumed they would wander off and perish in the heat, but two hours later, they returned. This time, they were dragging someone with them. It was Martha, my oldest factory employee. She had been with me since I started the business, treating me like her own daughter. In my previous life, I had lost contact with her during the chaos. In this life, with time running short, I had anonymously sent her a massive crate of supplies and a stack of cash, urging her to escape to the countryside. How did they find her? “Sylvia!” Gavin screamed at the camera, holding a kitchen knife to Martha’s throat. “If you don’t open this door, I’m going to carve this old lady up piece by piece! You have three minutes!” The temperature outside was rising. Sweat poured off my family as they counted down the seconds, their eyes wild with desperation. In the final seconds, I relented. I put on my tactical body armor, gripped my rifle, and opened the inner security gate. “Let Martha go, and you can step inside,” I announced through the speaker. But I underestimated their cruelty. The moment the cool air of the vestibule hit their skin, Gavin kicked Martha hard in the stomach, sending her sprawling. Before I could catch her, the three of them rushed past us into the primary safe room and slammed the door, locking it from the inside. I didn’t panic. I simply smiled, helped Martha up, and led her into the secondary shelter next door. Fortunately, I had designed the factory with a dual-zone layout. By locking themselves in the primary room, they had only cut off a tiny fraction of the facility, leaving the storage vaults and greenhouses entirely under my control. But as the minutes ticked by, the air in my secondary room began to warm up. I checked the monitors and saw Gavin frantically pressing buttons on the master panel, cutting the power to my section of the building. The suffocating heat of my past life began to creep back into my chest. On the split-screen monitor, I watched Gavin tearing through my refrigerator, guzzling my cold drinks while my parents submerged their heads in the sink. I pulled up the system interface on my tablet. [Sensory Swapping System activated. Please select target.] Without hesitation, I typed in my brother’s name: Gavin.

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1 While taking a quiet walk around our residential neighborhood, I ran straight into my ex-husband, Tristan. For a second, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. No one knew better than I did how much Tristan detested this town, and how much he despised this exact neighborhood. I stopped in my tracks, offering a polite but distant greeting. “Are you back to visit your grandmother’s grave?” He stood there, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, his eyes locked onto mine without so much as a blink. “I bought a house here. I stay here whenever I’m in town on business.” A wave of disgust washed over me, instantly killing any desire to be polite. I looked down, already mentally calculating the cost of moving somewhere else, and stepped aside to walk away. But Tristan stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “Brooke, I regret it.” I pretended not to hear him, my eyes lighting up as I waved to someone behind him. “Jasper!” Jasper walked over, naturally taking my hand in his. When I first met Tristan, he wasn’t the powerful tech CEO he is today. Back then, in the eyes of our classmates and neighbors, he was just a lonely, impoverished seven-year-old boy. He had no parents and no friends. His divorced parents had tossed him back and forth like a hot potato before finally dumping him on his grandmother. Winters in Seattle were wet and bone-chilling, filled with endless drizzle. While the neighborhood kids played together, Tristan could always be seen trailing behind his grandmother, collecting cardboard and plastic bottles from recycle bins. He wore thin, worn-out clothes, constantly shivering with his head tucked into his collar. Some of the kids from our block spread the story at school, and soon, everyone started calling him “the garbage boy.” Since we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school, I constantly witnessed him being bullied and mocked. Eventually, I couldn’t bear to watch it anymore. I began taking care of him in secret. I would pack an extra breakfast to share with him, and I gave him my spare gloves and insulated thermos. When my dad discovered why my things kept going missing, he let out a soft sigh and brought Tristan into our home. From that day on, Tristan played at our house, ate at our table, showered in our bathroom, and did his homework beside me. My mother started buying everything in pairs: one blue, one pink. On Tristan’s tenth birthday, my father bought him a computer. That was the day we discovered his terrifying talent for programming. After that, his life changed completely. He swept every local and national coding competition, his room filling up with trophies and cash prizes. At fourteen, he traveled abroad as the youngest competitor in the World Programming Championship and took first place. I still remember the video of him holding the trophy on a bustling European street, his eyes shining brightly as he smiled into the camera. “I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Su. Without them, I wouldn’t be standing here today. And thank you, Brooke.” We were only fourteen, but watching that broadcast, my face burned crimson. During our senior year of high school, the day he received his early admission letter to Boston Tech, he wrapped his arms around me. “Brooke, please apply to a school in Boston,” he whispered softly in my ear. For that single sentence, I left Seattle and enrolled in a mediocre local college in Boston. I had always been ordinary: ordinary grades, an ordinary life, an ordinary degree. I was nothing like Tristan. He was a man of extremes. When he loved something, he loved it to the point of obsession. He loved programming, and he worked himself to exhaustion to launch his startup. He loved me, too, often running across campus just to eat breakfast with me after pulling an all-nighter at his office. But when he hated, he hated with equal intensity. During our freshman year, Tristan used his hacking skills to break into his biological father’s small logistics firm, systematically ruining his most lucrative contracts. During our junior year, while his startup was in its most critical phase, he took a night off to throw a lavish party, celebrating the day his mother’s second marriage collapsed. Looking back, the way he treated me after he fell out of love was entirely consistent with who he had always been. 2 At twenty-three, the moment I graduated, Tristan and I got married. By then, his company was valued at millions, and he had purchased a luxury penthouse in one of Boston’s most expensive districts. Because we had no financial worries, I took a quiet, low-stress job earning about three thousand dollars a month. In a city like Boston, it wasn’t a high salary, but the hours were strictly nine-to-five, and the office was incredibly close to Tristan’s headquarters and our home. Tristan was consumed by his work, and I had no grand career ambitions. I preferred coming home to cook dinner and tend to our pets. In the beginning, everything was perfect. Tristan’s company grew rapidly, and he was hailed as one of the youngest, most promising tech executives in the country. He was sharp, confident, and deeply devoted to me. He would sit at our table, drinking the soup I had simmered for hours, and tell me how incredibly lucky he felt. But gradually, his nights out grew longer, and the distance between us stretched into a chasm. The breaking point arrived on Tristan’s twenty-seventh birthday. I stayed up waiting for him all night. When he finally walked through the door at dawn, I spotted a clear smear of red lipstick on his collar. In that instant, something inside me snapped. I hurled his birthday cake at him, lunging forward to tear at his shirt. I smashed everything within reach: the dishes, the decorations, our framed wedding portraits. Tristan watched my hysteria with cold, detached eyes. He calmly reached behind him to close the front door. “Brooke, if you’re going to scream, at least close the door. If you don’t care about your reputation, I care about mine.” He looked at me, his brow furrowed with deep irritation. “You’re still my wife, and as long as you don’t cross the line, nothing will change. No one is going to take your place. Be reasonable. It’s better for everyone.” He didn’t even bother to deny it. He just stood there and admitted it. My mind shattered. I lunged at him again, but he pushed me away with enough force to send me stumbling. He looked down at me, his words cutting like glass. “Look at yourself. Do you look like a CEO’s wife? You look like a screaming street vendor.” He turned and walked out of the apartment. He didn’t return for weeks. I was twenty-seven, proud, and entirely unprepared for that level of humiliation. I began showing up at his office, demanding a confrontation. It didn’t take me long to find out who the other woman was: Vivian, his corporate partner. Tristan hadn’t even tried to hide her. They were already behaving like a married couple in front of the staff, attending meetings and dinners together. His assistants, his executives, everyone knew. I was the only one kept in the dark. The betrayal kept me awake for days. Eventually, I lost control and lunged at Vivian in the office lobby, grabbing her hair as we tumbled to the floor. She was thin and lacked my physical strength, but even as I pinned her down, she glared up at me with tears in her eyes. “I know I’m wrong, Brooke! But I was there coding with Tristan when we were still in college! We pulled seventy-hour weeks, drank cheap coffee, and survived on instant noodles! Where were you? What were you doing?” “Tristan would finish a twenty-hour shift and still have to run to your campus to walk you to your morning classes! You sat back and enjoyed his success while he nearly worked himself to death! You don’t deserve him!” My hands went limp, and I stumbled back, staring at her in disbelief. How could she speak with such self-righteous fury? Was she actually accusing me of failing him? Tristan rushed into the lobby. He didn’t look at me once. He helped Vivian up, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and led her away. I walked back to our empty penthouse like a ghost, sitting in the dark for days, her words echoing in my mind. Where was I while they were building his dream? What was I doing? I was in Seattle. 3 I was taking care of Tristan’s grandmother. She was a gentle, kind-hearted woman who had always treated me like her own family. During our senior year of college, she fell gravely ill. Tristan’s startup was at its most critical point, and he was working himself to the bone. Meanwhile, I was trying to finish my thesis and secure an internship. Tristan had collapsed into my arms one evening, weeping as he talked about his company and his grandmother’s failing health. I remembered exactly what I told him. I told him I would return to Seattle to care for her. Tristan had held me so tight I could barely breathe, whispering endless promises of gratitude. He told me he had decided to marry me when he was fourteen, and that he would spend the rest of his life making me happy. His tears had soaked my shoulder, and I comforted him, telling him I needed a break from the academic pressure anyway. I claimed it would be good to spend some time with my own parents. I had gaslit myself into believing I was the one who needed a break, all to ease his guilt. And so, I spent over a year in Seattle, working with my parents to nurse his grandmother through her final days. I didn’t return to Boston until after her funeral. Tristan had kept his promise. The moment I got back, he proposed with a diamond ring, and we married shortly after. But now, his mistress was standing in his office lobby, demanding to know what I had done to deserve him. It was a sick joke. I locked myself in the apartment, weeping through the nights, slowly destroying myself. I obsessed over our history, trying to figure out where things had gone wrong. Sometimes I hated Tristan with a burning passion; other times, I blamed myself. I had married an extraordinary man, but I had failed to keep pace with him. After two weeks of silence, Tristan came home. He held a bouquet of crimson roses, handing them to me as if nothing had happened. “Vivian agreed not to press charges for the assault.” “Brooke, think about your parents. Your father is a high school teacher. If you keep making these scenes, do you think his reputation will survive the scandal?” He actually had the nerve to bring up my parents. “We have a lifetime of history together. Vivian isn’t going to take your status. You have wealth, position, and everyone in this city calls you Mrs. Lu. I’ve given you everything a woman could want. You need to be content.” “Be sensible, Brooke. Let’s just go back to the way things were.” Mrs. Lu. What a sickening title. Looking at the man standing in front of me, a wave of physical nausea hit me. I rushed into the bathroom and threw up until my stomach was empty. A week later, I found out I was pregnant. The news thrilled Tristan, and he seemed to commit himself to our family. He took my hand, his eyes filled with apparent remorse. “I made a mistake, Brooke. I’m sorry. Now that we have a baby on the way, I’m done playing around. I promise I’ll cut things off with Vivian. Let’s raise this child and build a real home.” I wept, but eventually, I chose to believe him. I convinced myself that I shared some of the blame, that his years of hard work had taken a toll on him. He was back now, and that was all that mattered. But the human heart is a fragile thing. I felt as though my soul had been hollowed out. I had lost my job after missing so much work, so I spent my days sleeping, staring at the walls, and waiting. Tristan kept his word, coming home every night to cook dinner and read stories to my belly. And I might have actually believed he had changed, if Vivian hadn’t started sending me video clips every single day. 4 He spent his nights with me, but his days were still spent with Vivian. In the videos Vivian sent, the staff called me “the primary boss’s wife” and referred to Vivian as “the little boss’s lady.” They joked about Tristan’s ability to keep both of us happy. On Vivian’s birthday, Tristan announced to the entire office that anyone who wished her a happy birthday would receive a double bonus. He certainly knew how to make a woman feel special. Watching those videos, I realized Tristan’s love was like a firework: brilliant, loud, and easily given to anyone. All I had left was the ash. I didn’t know why I was still clinging to the ruins of our marriage. But looking down at my six-month pregnant belly, I couldn’t bring myself to give up on the life growing inside me. I decided to block Vivian’s number, put my head in the sand, and just focus on bringing my baby into the world. But Vivian had no intention of letting me find peace. On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, she showed up at my door carrying a large cardboard box. She didn’t come inside; she simply dumped the contents onto the floor of my entryway. Out spilled my old college notebooks, a framed photo from our wedding, and a small horse sculpture I had bought Tristan when he started his company. “Brooke,” Vivian said, her smile sweet but her eyes cold as ice. “Tristan said these things were taking up too much space in his office. He wanted me to throw them away, but I thought it would be a shame to lose such precious memories. I brought them here so you could keep them.” Staring at the mess on the floor, I didn’t even feel angry. “Get out,” I said quietly. I was done fighting with her. It wasn’t worth the energy. “Oh, are we sensitive today? I haven’t even started,” Vivian sneered, stepping closer and intentionally shoving her shoulder into mine. “Tristan told me you look like a bloated pig these days, and that you smell like baby formula. He says looking at you makes him sick.” She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Did you know we bought a new, larger sofa for his office lounge?” My vision blurred. The fragile peace I had built shattered into a thousand pieces. I don’t remember how I lunged at her, or how we ended up on the floor. I don’t even remember when Tristan arrived. There was only chaos, screaming, and then a sharp, tearing pain in my abdomen. When I woke up, the storm had passed. I was lying in a hospital bed, and my baby was gone. Tristan sat beside me, clutching my hand as tears streamed down his face. “Brooke, we’re still young. We’re only twenty-eight. We can try again. I swear, I’ll cut Vivian out of my life permanently this time…” Without a word, I grabbed the paring knife from the fruit basket on my bedside table and plunged it toward his chest. He flinched, and the blade buried itself in his shoulder. But even as blood soaked his shirt, he didn’t let go of me. He held me tight, weeping into my shoulder. His tears felt like grease on my skin. The moment I was discharged, I filed for divorce. Tristan refused to sign the papers. In response, I picked up another knife and drew it across my wrist, slicing deep into the flesh. The sight of the blood terrified him, and he finally signed the papers. In the settlement, he transferred ten million dollars to my account. I didn’t refuse the money; I knew I would need it to pay for my medical treatment. My mind was broken. I was diagnosed with severe, clinical depression.

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1 For our first anniversary, my boyfriend gave me a twenty-dollar scratch-off card. When I scratched off a five-million-dollar jackpot, I screamed, ready to throw my arms around his neck. But my best friend, Vivian, grabbed my wrist. “Valerie, look closely! This card is fake. He’s running a loyalty test on you! To put it bluntly, the guy doesn’t trust you for a second!” She urged me to dump him. Who wants to be with a cheap, broke guy who uses fake junk to test real feelings? Honestly, for a split second, it made perfect sense. But just as I was about to march downstairs and slap that stupid ticket right into Tristan’s face, a tiny, furious voice echoed in my head. “Are you kidding me? Is my idiot mother really about to break up with my dad again?” “Does she have any idea that my dad is the sole heir of the Mercer dynasty? Literally the crown prince of New York’s elite?” “All she has to do is pass this stupid test and she gets a fifty-million-dollar reward. Instead, she’s going to listen to that toxic snake and end up dying in misery.” What? Tristan is the heir to a hundred-billion-dollar empire? Why didn’t you say so earlier! When I first realized the ticket was fake, Vivian’s words had sunk into my mind like a poisoned needle. “A man with actual capability would never run a messed-up test like this,” she whispered, her face tight with mock concern. “Deep down, he thinks you’re just some gold-digger! Why do you think he’s still waiting down there under the streetlamp? He’s waiting to see how you react. If you tell him you won, he’ll just shrug it off as a joke, feeding on your disappointment. If you don’t tell him, he’ll look down on you from his moral high ground, watching you embarrass yourself trying to cash a fake ticket!” Down on the street, Tristan stood quietly beneath the flickering yellow glow of the lamppost. His head was bowed, his face shadowed, making his expression impossible to read. For the past year, he had never bought me anything expensive, and I had never minded. I loved him for who he was. But if this was all a twisted game… Seeing me hesitate, Vivian pressed harder. “A relationship without trust is just a house of cards, Val. A guy with a mind this dark isn’t going to stop at one test. Do you want to spend the rest of your life walking on eggshells? Can you really tolerate being played like a fool? You need to go down there, expose him, and slap some sense into him!” Taking a deep breath, I gripped the scratch-off and walked toward Tristan. “Tristan, you…” Before I could finish, that squeaky, immature voice rang out again in my mind. “Are you kidding me? Is my idiot mother really about to break up with my dad again?” I whipped my head around, but the street was empty. The voice was coming from inside my own stomach. “Does she seriously not know my dad is the Mercer family heir, worth a hundred billion dollars?” “In her past life, she listened to that toxic witch Vivian. She threw the card in my dad’s face, screamed that he was a cheap hypocrite, and broke up with him on the spot after a massive fight. Then Vivian swooped in. She played the gentle, caring angel, married into the empire, and became the billionaire’s wife. And what happened to my idiot mom? Vivian ruined her career, dragged her name through the mud, and had her baby taken away. My mom ended up committing suicide in a dingy, rented room.” “I got reborn just to end up with a mother who doesn’t learn her lesson!” I froze, ice water running through my veins. The idiot mother was me? I was pregnant? And Tristan was a billionaire prince? The little guy in my belly let out a heavy, dramatic sigh. “Mom, get your act together! It wasn’t easy getting reincarnated. Don’t ruin it this time!” “Right now, right this second, go hug my dad. Pretend you’re ecstatic and tell him you won the jackpot!” “As long as you pass this test, my dad has a fifty-million-dollar bonus and a massive luxury penthouse waiting for you. If you don’t pull it together, that toxic bitch gets it all…” I looked up at Tristan. Suddenly, the streetlamp wasn’t the only thing shining. He practically glowed with the light of a golden god. He wasn’t just a hidden heir: he was my personal ticket to paradise. 2 Tristan watched my face fluctuate between tears and a hysterical grin, his brows knitting together. “Val? What did you want to say?” I took a deep breath, threw my arms around him, and buried my face in his chest. “Tristan, you won’t believe how lucky we are! That scratch-off you gave me? We won! It’s a five-million-dollar jackpot!” His body stiffened instantly. “You… actually told me?” “Of course I did! You’re the love of my life, and you bought the ticket. With this money, we can finally build our future together.” Up on the steps, Vivian’s face practically shattered. She marched down, her voice sharp. “Valerie, stop being so brainless! I told you, that card is fake! Tristan is just playing you!” So what if my golden goose wanted to run a little security check before raining cash on me? I was more than happy to play along. Inside my belly, the little guy gasped. “Wait, my mom actually used her brain? But now that the toxic snake exposed it, how is she going to save this?” Just sit back and watch your mother’s award-winning performance, I thought back. “Wait… you can hear me?” the baby wondered. I ignored him, focusing instead on the ticket. My eyes welled up with tears right on cue. “It… it’s a fake?” “Val, let me explain,” Tristan pleaded, his composure slipping. “I thought we finally made it,” I choked out, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes, letting a single tear roll down my cheek. “I thought you wouldn’t have to work three jobs anymore just to save up for our future.” I let out a shaky breath, wrapping my arms tighter around his waist. “But it’s okay. I know you were just trying to make me happy. It was nice to dream for a second. It just means you’ll have to keep working hard, and I’ll be right there beside you.” I buried my face back into his chest, letting out soft, muffled sobs. Tristan cupped my face, gently wiping away my tears. “You sweet, silly girl. The ticket is fake.” “But you passed the test. This is your real reward.” He slid something into my palm. I looked down. An Amex Black Card, and a key fob to a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I swallowed hard. “What… what does this mean? Tristan, where did you get this?” “My family is actually the Mercers of New York,” he admitted softly. “I had to hide my identity while dating. I want to bring you home, but my family required a test first. You have no idea how terrified I was that you’d leave me for five million dollars. Thank you, Val. I promise to love you with everything I have.” Vivian turned deathly pale. “Valerie, did you not hear him? He’s been lying to you from day one! He’s just playing with you. Men like him never marry girls like us! Throw that trash back at him! Don’t sell your soul for money!” The little guy in my belly snorted. “My dad is the sole heir of the Mercer line. The old patriarch is dying for a great-grandchild. If my mom spills the pregnancy news right now, the family gates will swing wide open for her.” Seeing Vivian reach out to snatch the card and keys, I quickly shoved them into my pocket, covering my stomach. “But I’m already pregnant with his child. I don’t want my baby growing up without a father.” Vivian froze. Tristan looked like he’d been struck by lightning. “Val… what did you say? You’re pregnant?” When I nodded, he immediately pulled out his phone, made a rapid-fire call, and scooped me up in his arms, walking toward a sleek black Maybach that had quietly pulled up to the curb. “I’ll have the wedding planned immediately. First, we go to the hospital.” The baby purred happily. “Not bad, Dad. But don’t celebrate too early. That toxic snake Vivian isn’t going to give up easily. She already knew your true identity and has been plotting to tear you two apart so she can take my mom’s place.” Resting in Tristan’s arms, I gently caressed my stomach. But I have you now, don’t I, my sweet reborn baby? After the hospital confirmed the pregnancy, the Mercer patriarch immediately gifted us a sprawling estate in the Hamptons as a welcoming present. Everything was picture-perfect. Except for Vivian. And my baby was about to give me a very grim warning about what she had planned next. 3 After the scratch-off incident, I moved out of my cramped apartment and into the estate. Vivian pretended to be happy for me, but she bombarded my phone with toxic texts daily. “Val, do you really know Tristan? Families that rich have crazy rules. Can you actually survive in that world?” “They only care about pedigree. You think you can secure your place just with a baby? Watch out, they might just take the kid and kick you to the curb!” “Men born with silver spoons don’t stick to one woman. High-society guys are all players.” Every time she tried to plant seeds of doubt, my little guardian angel chimed in. “She’s just trying to make you paranoid, Mom. My dad is completely devoted to you, and the Mercer family has strict moral codes.” “In the last life, my dad only ended up with her to make you jealous. He loved you to death. In fact, after you died, he took his own life.” “Don’t play into some tragic romance trope. Tell Vivian that even if the Mercers only want the baby, you’ll still be set for life on child support alone!” Grinning, I picked up my phone, switched on the video call, and slowly panned around my massive, thousand-square-foot master bedroom. “Vivian, look at this place. Just for being pregnant, they gave me this estate and an unlimited allowance.” “Even if they kick me out after the birth, they’ll have to pay me millions in child support. I’m set for life either way.” “And if I have a boy, he’ll inherit the entire Mercer empire. Who cares if I marry into the family? As long as I have the money, I’m happy.” “You shouldn’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. I heard your deadbeat, gambling father is looking for you again?” Vivian’s face flushed with a mixture of rage and humiliation. She slammed the phone down, hanging up on me. Why didn’t I block her? Because my sweet baby told me that villains like Vivian are like roaches. If you don’t face them head-on, they just skulk in the dark. It was much more satisfying to keep her close and drive her insane with my success. A few weeks later, Tristan took me to a high-society charity gala. It was my official debut as his wife. Since Tristan didn’t want a rushed wedding and wanted to spare me the stress while pregnant, we had quietly registered our marriage and planned a grand ceremony for the following year. Before we left, my little guy gave me a stern warning. “Be careful tonight, Mom. In our last life, Vivian set you up at this very gala, causing a massive public scandal that ruined your reputation.” What did she do? I asked mentally. “In the past life, you snuck in as a waitress to see my dad after finding out you were pregnant. Vivian spilled red wine all over your dress and led you to a private changing room.” “She had hired a man to wait for you there. When my dad walked in, you were disheveled and caught in a compromising position. He was blinded by rage. With Vivian whispering poison in his ear, he didn’t even believe the baby was his.” “You were thrown out into a torrential downpour, got hit by a car, lost me, and ended up with a crippled leg. Vivian is definitely going to sneak in tonight to pull something similar.” I shuddered, a cold sweat breaking out on my neck. At the gala, sure enough, I spotted Vivian. She was dressed in a server’s uniform, holding a tray. When she saw me, she marched straight over. “Oh, Valerie, that dress is stunning. Your new man must be incredibly generous. How much did you have to do to get it?” “I wish I could find a sugar daddy like that. Some of us actually have to work for a living.” She spoke just loudly enough for the surrounding socialites to hear. Several wealthy women exchanged mocking glances, instantly branding me as a gold-digging interloper. I remained perfectly calm. “Oh, this dress? It was a gift from my mother-in-law, Beatrice Mercer. She actually designed it herself when she was pregnant with Tristan.” My response delivered a double blow: it confirmed my marriage to the heir and showed I had the mother’s full backing. The socialites’ snickers instantly vanished, replaced by polite, flattering smiles.

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After being locked away in an asylum for two years, I finally learned my lesson. When my brother got into another bloody fistfight with a trust-fund billionaire over his unrequited love, I turned around and walked away. I didn’t interfere. When my sister insisted on marrying an abusive monster, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t utter a single word. When my father risked our entire family estate on a high-stakes corporate betting agreement, I pretended not to see. When my mother embezzled company funds to bail out her deadbeat brother, I minded my own business. The perk of cutting ties with them? My bank account is overflowing, and I actually smile now. But they? They’ve completely lost their minds. 1 On my very first day out of the asylum, I stumbled upon my brother, Rory, in a brutal alley brawl with a group of trust-fund elites. He was throwing wild, desperate punches, burying his fists into one of the rich heirs like a rabid dog. I stood a few yards away, a look of simulated terror plastered on my face. I trembled, feigning cowardice, and didn’t take a single step forward. One of the main reasons they locked me away in that hellhole was because I had tried to stop him from picking a fight with a prominent high-society heir two years ago. Back then, Rory was obsessed with Isla, the girl of his dreams. But Isla only had eyes for Barrett, a prominent billionaire heir. Out of sheer, blinding jealousy, Rory looked for any excuse to pick a fight with Barrett. I had been there. I held Rory back with everything I had, taking two heavy blows to my back from his wild fists, but I didn’t let go. Seeing how desperately I was trying to prevent a tragedy, Barrett took his security team and walked away, avoiding a bloodbath. But afterward, Rory blamed me entirely. He claimed I ruined his big moment, that I prevented Isla from seeing his raw masculinity. When Isla eventually rejected him and moved to Europe, Rory directed all his burning hatred toward me. This time? I turned on my heel and walked away. No way was I getting involved. I didn’t go home either. After my entire family conspired to throw me into a psychiatric ward, leaving me to rot for two painful years under the guise of doing what was best for me, I learned one absolute truth. Stay as far away from the Whitmores as possible. Every ounce of misery in my first twenty years of life came from them. From now on, I only live for myself. That night, a phone call dragged me back to the Whitmore estate. I didn’t want to start an open war with them, there was no benefit in that, so I decided to see what they wanted. The moment I stepped through the door, my father roared at me, “Your brother was in a street fight this afternoon! Why didn’t you stop him?!” Just as I figured. No matter what choice I made, the blame would always land on my shoulders. When you’re the unloved child, even your breathing is an offense. I replied coolly, “I was terrified. I didn’t even realize it was Rory.” My mother glared at me with pure venom. “You did it on purpose! Rory said you were standing less than ten feet away! How could you not recognize your own brother? You wanted him to get hurt, didn’t you? How did you become so utterly malicious?!” They hadn’t visited me once during my two years in the asylum. Now that I was finally out, their only concern was that I hadn’t played meat shield for my golden-boy brother. Rory was the one who went looking for trouble, and the fight was basically over by the time I walked past. My intervention would have changed nothing. But in their eyes, my lack of self-sacrifice was a crime. In the past, I had taken his punches to keep him safe, only to be rewarded with his eternal hatred. Why would I ever play the savior again? Ignorance is bliss. “If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do,” I said. I had no energy to argue with them. Just then, my father’s phone rang. It was the police department. Rory had been arrested. 2 He had broken three of Barrett’s ribs and slashed his face. The Whitmores were moderately wealthy, but we were nothing compared to the true, untouchable elite. Offending a billionaire’s son meant our family could be crushed overnight. Hearing that her precious son was locked up, my mother wept hysterically, insisting that the rich kid was using dirty political connections to suppress them. She threatened to go to the media to expose the corruption. My father, possessing a shred of sanity, immediately hired a top lawyer and began looking for mediators. They were willing to pay any amount of hush money as long as Barrett dropped the charges. Watching them scramble and panic for Rory, a bitter smile tugged at my lips. I had never once experienced that kind of parental devotion. When I lay in bed for three days and nights with a scorching fever, their only reaction was to ask why I hadn’t gone to school. When I was harassed by a boy at school and begged them for help, they told me to tell him to stop and reflection on my own behavior. When I earned my advanced classical piano credentials, they accused me of showing off because my sister, Jenny, couldn’t even read sheet music. When I got accepted into an Ivy League university, they frowned and asked if I had cheated on the SATs. The list of micro-cruelties was endless. For years, I kept testing them, hoping for a shred of affection. I had been pathetic. But those days were over. “I remember that rich boy was your high school classmate,” my mother suddenly said, grabbing my wrist tightly. “Go to the hospital right now. Find him and beg him to drop the charges against your brother!” Her nails dug into my skin, her eyes wide with desperation. I looked down at her phone screen, which was playing the security footage of the fight. The boy Rory had brutally beaten was indeed my former classmate, Barrett. But Barrett had ruthlessly bullied me in high school. I despised him, and the thought of seeing him made my stomach churn. I shook my head. “He bullied me in high school. He dragged me by my hair across the courtyard. I’m not going.” My mother gripped my wrist even harder, her eyes bloodshot. “Perfect! If he bullied you, he definitely remembers you! Use that to make him feel guilty so he’ll let your brother off! Go now!” Her tone was entirely transactional. I simply nodded. “Fine.” Fine, my ass. Once I walked out that door, she would have no idea where I went. I had absolutely no intention of begging my bully to save my abusive brother. If they could be this monstrously biased, I could match their coldness. I turned and walked away. But before I could reach the car, my mother caught up with me. “I’m coming with you.” She didn’t trust me. I let out a dry laugh. “Suit yourself.” On the drive over, she uncharacteristically asked if I had been comfortable at the facility. “It wasn’t a facility, Mother. It was an asylum,” I corrected her. She offered a tight, awkward smile. “I just remember the grounds were lovely. It seemed like a good place for you to rest…” “Was it? Is why you explicitly instructed the doctors to give me monthly electroshock therapy sessions to teach me how to be obedient?” I asked, my voice flat. During my first year, I was subjected to monthly ECT sessions, the agony so intense it made me lose control of my bladder. During the second year, because I started playing along, they let me off the shocks and made me memorize books on family morality instead, slapping me across the face whenever I missed a word. My mother’s fake smile vanished. “I… I only did it for your own good…” “Of course,” I murmured. The atmosphere in the car turned dead silent. When we arrived at the hospital, my mother explained our purpose to the receptionist. Barrett refused to see her, but he agreed to let me in alone. He still remembered me. He sat in his luxury suite, his bruised face twisting into a cruel smirk. His terms were simple: become his kept mistress for two years, and Rory goes free. I gave him a direct answer: “In your dreams.” He seemed entirely confident I would bend to his will, telling me I had one night to think it over. I didn’t even give him a second glance as I walked out. My mother was waiting in the corridor. Seeing the cold fury on my face, she assumed I had failed. She immediately began screaming at me, right there in the hallway. “You useless, worthless disappointment! You can’t do a single thing right! I don’t even know why I bothered raising you!” 3 I looked at her with total detachment. “Then let’s sever ties. Officially.” She hadn’t expected me to say those words. Her furious expression froze, but before she could utter another sound, I turned and walked out of the hospital, leaving her behind. The following morning, my phone rang. Somehow, they had found out about Barrett’s disgusting proposal. Their tone was suddenly incredibly gentle, practically begging me to sacrifice myself for Rory. They wanted me to sell my body to my high school bully. I refused immediately. My father tried playing the good cop. “Gemma, the Whitmores need this. Barrett comes from an incredibly powerful family. Countless women would kill to be in his bed. You’re not just saving your brother; you’re elevating yourself. If you play your cards right and bear his child, you’ll secure a spot in high society.” My mother took the bad cop approach. “If you don’t save your brother, you are no longer a Whitmore. We will disown you.” Since the gloves were entirely off, I didn’t hold back. I let out a sharp laugh and fired back through the speakerphone: “I have never met parents as repulsive and depraved as you. You’re actually encouraging your own daughter to become a rich man’s whore. If your precious son is too stupid to keep his fists to himself, he should face the consequences. He is a brainless idiot!” I slammed the phone down and blocked their numbers. To prevent them from trying to kidnap me again, I immediately packed my bags and moved out of my apartment. Two years ago, the four of them had physically forced me into a car with the asylum staff, claiming my depression and mild anxiety made me unfit for society. I wasn’t going to give them a second chance to lock me up. I went completely off the grid. They had no way of tracking me down, so they eventually had to give up. A week later, Rory was released. My parents had to pay nearly three million dollars in medical expenses and settlements to resolve the issue. Barrett’s family eventually dropped it to avoid a public scandal. The moment Rory was freed, he went straight to find Isla, who had recently returned from Europe. Instead of a romantic reunion, he found her kneeling by Barrett’s feet, gently massaging the rich heir’s legs. Assuming Isla had degraded herself to save him, Rory lost his mind. He charged in like a heroic idiot, screaming about how a real man takes responsibility for his own actions and telling Barrett to leave Isla alone. But Barrett had brought a full security detail this time. Rory’s pathetic display of chivalry earned him a brutal beating in a back alley. The entire incident was filmed and sent directly to my parents. My father nearly had a heart attack. He had just spent millions to bail the idiot out, only for Rory to immediately pick another fight. My mother wept for her darling boy but didn’t dare retaliate against an untouchable dynasty. Ultimately, they locked Rory inside the estate to keep him out of trouble. It was useless. In a desperate bid to escape and see Isla, Rory jumped from his second-story bedroom window. He broke his leg in three places.

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After I was brought back to my filthy-rich biological family, my adopted sister, the fake heiress, made it her life’s mission to destroy me. She framed me for pushing her down the stairs, accused me of stealing, and tried to snatch every penny of the shares our parents gave me. But I had mastered the art of the innocent facade. With a few perfectly timed tears and a soft voice, I turned the tables on her every single time. Even with my parents’ blatant favoritism toward her, I secured my place in the Wright family. That was until the day Dominic Blackwood, the most feared and respected CEO in Manhattan, suddenly proposed a marriage alliance with the Wrights. For the first time, the fake heiress didn’t fight me tooth and nail. Instead, she played coy, claiming she was too young, and eagerly pushed the engagement onto me. Backed into a corner by my parents’ relentless pressure, I had no way out. I started dating Dominic, and to my surprise, our chemistry was electric. Things were heating up fast. Then came the phone call. Dominic rang me up, his voice casual, saying his ultimate ‘best bro’ was returning from abroad and he wanted me at the welcome party. Serena, my fake sister, finally flashed me a wicked, victorious smirk. “You don’t know, do you?” she taunted softly. “Dominic’s little childhood girl-bro has ruined every single relationship he’s ever had. I can’t wait to watch you choke on this.” I just smiled. A ‘girl-bro’? Let’s see if this pick-me girl could survive a single round against someone who had turned playing the victim into an absolute art form. 1 The VIP lounge was pulsing with heavy bass when I walked in. There, sitting shamelessly on my fiancé’s lap in a plunge-neck dress, was the infamous female bestie. “Dom, baby, I have to spill a massive secret tonight!” she practically purred, ignoring everyone else in the room. “About us.” Dominic looked down at her with genuine fondness. “What secret, Jess?” “We’re actually married!” The room went dead silent. Even the background music somehow seemed to dip. Dominic froze. He shot me an incredibly awkward glance, but Jess grabbed his chin and forced him to look back at her. “Don’t tell me you forgot!” she giggled, slapping his chest. “That wild night in Vegas! The whole crew got trashed, and that little chapel priest legally pronounced us man and wife. On US soil, we are legally hitched, baby!” The air grew thick. Every pair of eyes in the room shifted to me, waiting for the explosion. “Married?!” I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth in a picture-perfect display of shock. The color drained from my face. If I didn’t give them a little drama, Dominic might actually think I didn’t care about him. The tension in the booth spiked to dangerous levels. Jess just looked smug. She leaned her head comfortably against Dominic’s shoulder and shot me a mocking look. “Relax, Penny babe. Dom and I have been bros since we were in diapers. Getting a little piece of paper together is just a funny story. No need to have a total meltdown.” I let out a soft breath, picked up a crystal glass of champagne, and walked over to her with slow, measured steps. “Penny, what are you doing?” Dominic instantly shielded Jess, his voice sharp. It was the first time he had ever snapped at me. “Jess and I just got a little too wild that night. I don’t even remember it happening! Could you please just be the bigger person here?” But the dramatic wine-tossing scene everyone was holding their breath for never happened. Instead, I crouched down slightly, my posture elegant, and raised my glass to Jess with a grateful, teary-eyed smile. “Jess, I honestly have to thank you. Thank God you brought this up tonight.” I turned my wide, worried eyes to Dominic. “Otherwise, Dominic would be committing bigamy! That carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in federal prison!” Dominic’s face cycled through three different shades of pale. It was a spectacular sight. Jess’s body went completely rigid. She awkwardly took the champagne glass from my hand, her smug smile cracking. “You’re overthinking it, Penny. It’s not that serious.” “Of course it’s serious!” I pressed a hand to my chest, my voice trembling with concern. “I double-majored in corporate law and criminal justice in college. I know these statutes inside and out. Unlike you, who just likes to play around without understanding the consequences.” I patted her shoulder gently. “But don’t worry. As long as you guys didn’t file the paperwork properly, the ceremony might be voidable. It won’t stop Dominic and me from getting our actual marriage license.” I leaned in, my voice dropping to a soft, maternal whisper. “Just promise me you won’t drag him into these messy legal gray areas anymore, okay? You could have ruined his entire life.” Hearing that, it was like Dominic had been splashed with ice water. He practically shoved Jess off his lap and moved to a seat on the complete opposite side of the booth, looking at her like she was carrying a contagious disease. 2 I immediately seized the moment, slipping into the empty space next to Dominic and resting my head timidly against his arm. For the rest of the night, no matter how many times Jess tried to initiate her usual touchy-feely games, Dominic kept a strict, polite distance. By the time the party ended, Jess was glaring at me with pure venom. Her eyes promised absolute war. Before she came back to town, Dominic had been the perfect match for me. His patience and gentleness made me feel like I could finally put my guard down. My adoptive parents back in that Ohio trailer park had hated me for being a girl. Then the wealthy Wright family found me, tossed my abusers a massive check, and expected me to just fit into their glittering, toxic world. My life in the Wright mansion was a battlefield. When you live under someone else’s roof, you learn to bend. I couldn’t afford to throw a massive tantrum over Jess just yet. If I pushed too hard and Dominic broke off the engagement, my standing with the Wrights would crumble entirely. But surprisingly, the Vegas incident didn’t ruin things between us. It actually made Dominic more attentive. Over the next two weeks, Jess tried to drag him out to bars and weekend trips, but Dominic mercilessly declined her calls, choosing to stay by my side. He was even secretly preparing an official, extravagant proposal. But a pick-me girl never rests. One afternoon while I was out, Jess actually chopped off her gorgeous long hair, rocking a two-inch buzzcut. She strutted right into Dominic’s office. “Dom! I can’t believe you’re getting tied down so soon. We need to go back to our old prep school and recreate our childhood photos! We’ll never get another chance.” She ran a hand over her shaved head. “I even cut my hair for this. Don’t I look just like the little tomboy you used to run around with?” Dominic had a soft spot for nostalgia. Seeing the lengths she went to, he got emotional and agreed on the spot. By the time the estate housekeeper texted me the gossip, Dominic and Jess were already wearing custom-made vintage prep school uniforms, running around their old campus. Jess wasted no time uploading a perfectly curated photo dump to Instagram. The caption read: “The Best Days. Just two bros against the world.” The pictures were highly intimate. Sharing a single pair of headphones under an oak tree. Him lifting her up to touch a basketball hoop. The two of them lying on the football field turf, heads pressed together. I stared at my phone screen for a solid minute. Before her little army of enablers could flood the comments, I typed out a perfectly innocent response: [Oh my God! Which cute gay influencer couple are you guys recreating? This is giving such pure, youthful romance vibes!] [Drop their handle! I definitely need to follow them!] The moment I dropped the words “gay couple”, the entire comment section froze. Nobody dared to type a single word. Anyone who actually knew Dominic knew he was a fiercely private, traditional guy. He had dealt with stalkers in the past because of his athletic build and absolutely despised having his pictures posted online without strict PR approval. Thirty minutes later, Jess’s photo dump vanished. Three minutes after that, she posted a frantic, angry text update. [Do some people seriously have gender perception issues?! Can you not tell when a girl is a girl?!] I immediately replied with overflowing concern: [Jess honey, what happened? Did someone mistake you for a guy? Tell me who it was, and I’ll have Dominic handle them!] [Everyone else read this carefully: Our Jess is one of the boys! Don’t you dare mistake her for a delicate woman!] She didn’t reply. Five minutes later, she deleted that post too. I found out from Dominic’s assistant later that day that the moment Dominic saw my comments, he realized how inappropriate the shoot looked. He forced Jess to scrub the post and made his assistant permanently delete all the raw files from the photographer’s camera. Those nostalgic school photos were supposed to be played in a montage during my proposal to humiliate me. Jess’s grand plan went up in smoke. When Dominic finally proposed, the weather was perfect. The event was so magnificent it made the front page of every Manhattan socialite blog. Everything was disgustingly beautiful. And the best part? Jess didn’t show her face once. 3 After the glittering confetti settled, I nudged Dominic playfully. “Why didn’t your best bro show up today? Where’s Jess?” His warm smile instantly dissolved into a dark frown. “I told her not to come.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately, but just looking at her gives me a headache.” I kept my face perfectly neutral, while throwing a massive celebration inside my head. But I also noticed that Serena was suspiciously absent from my family’s VIP table. She had been acting weird all week, definitely brewing some fresh poison. Following high society tradition, I moved back into the Wright estate to prepare for the wedding. Dominic was incredibly clingy. He drove over every single day, lingering in my room, finding every excuse not to leave. I usually told him to visit when the house was empty to avoid any drama with Serena. But collisions are inevitable. One afternoon, Dominic and I were caught up in a sweet goodbye near my bedroom door when Serena barged in without knocking. “Penny, I brought you some fresh water.” She was wearing a scandalously sheer silk nightgown. She took three steps into the room, “tripped” over absolutely nothing, and launched herself directly toward Dominic’s chest. Having survived years of Serena’s cheap tricks, my reflexes were razor-sharp. I lunged forward and physically blocked her path. Realizing she couldn’t land on him, Serena masterfully pivoted, throwing herself hard onto the hardwood floor. “Penny, please don’t hit me! I’m sorry!” She burst into hysterical sobs, curling into a pathetic little ball. She kept shooting me these terrified, trembling glances, looking at me like I was a serial killer holding a chainsaw. Dominic was utterly bewildered. “Penny? I thought you two got along. Everyone says you take great care of your adopted sister. What is happening?” “I…” Before I could form a sentence, Serena crawled across the floor and desperately hugged Dominic’s calf. “Dominic, you have to save me! Ever since Penny came back, she’s been insanely jealous that I had her parents’ love for eighteen years. She beats me behind closed doors!” Sobbing violently, she hiked up her silk gown, exposing her thighs. They were covered in horrifying, dark purple and red bruises. “Please take me away! If you don’t, she’s going to kill me!” Dominic’s expression hardened. He took a subtle step back, firmly pulling his leg free from her grasp. But when he looked at me, there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “Penny?” I didn’t waste a single breath. I picked up the glass pitcher of water Serena had brought in, dumped it directly onto her legs, and scrubbed my hand harshly over her “bruises.” The horrifying injuries instantly dissolved into a messy puddle of purple and blue watercolor paint. “Penny, are you insane?!” Serena shrieked, pulling her legs back and glaring at me with pure hatred. “Serena,” I said smoothly, dusting off my hands. “You’ve spent years throwing yourself down stairs, burning your own clothes, and scratching your own arms just to frame me. Have you gotten completely lazy? You couldn’t even bother to give yourself a real bruise this time?” “It looks so fake it’s insulting.” Serena didn’t even flinch. “Dominic, I only painted those on so you could visualize the truth! It doesn’t mean she hasn’t left real marks on me before!” “She only stopped beating me when she realized she could climb the social ladder by marrying you!” “Before that, she abused me so badly my parents had to send me to a recovery clinic in Europe! I only just got back three months ago!” “And when I came back, I found out she stole my marriage! I was the one supposed to marry into the Blackwood family!” She cried beautifully, every word dripping with absolute agony. What a spectacularly twisted tongue. But Dominic didn’t immediately buy her performance. He just looked at me, waiting for my side of the story. I looked down at Serena and let out a soft, mocking laugh. “Those are heavy accusations. Do you have a shred of proof that I ever laid a finger on you?” “And funny you mentioned a European clinic. Weren’t you vacationing in St. Barts six months ago? Your flight records are public, Serena. Anyone can pull them up.” The tight lines around Dominic’s eyes visibly relaxed. I let my shoulders drop just a fraction. “As for the marriage alliance, didn’t you literally push it onto me because you wanted to play the field? Why are you suddenly acting like I held a gun to your head and stole it?” Serena suddenly stopped crying. She stood up smoothly, a dark, victorious gleam in her eyes. “So, Penny, you finally admit it? You never actually wanted to marry Dominic. This entire engagement was just you being forced into it, wasn’t it?” 4 Wow. So this entire, poorly acted circus with the fake bruises wasn’t about making Dominic think I was abusive. It was a convoluted trap to get me to confess on record that I didn’t originally want the marriage. Too bad she was playing checkers while I was playing chess. I smiled warmly and wrapped both my arms around Dominic’s bicep. “When you threw this engagement away because you wanted to stay single, it gave me the chance to meet the most incredible man in the world.” “Love grows the more time you spend together. Dominic knows how much he means to me.” I reached into my blouse and pulled out a delicate, vintage silver locket. “And by the way, Serena. Every single time you’ve tried to frame me over the years, I’ve caught it on tape.” “You know I never take this necklace off. There’s a micro-camera built right into the pendant. Everything you’ve ever done to me is safely stored on a cloud drive. Do you want me to play the highlights for Dominic right now?” “Let’s show him who the real monster in this house is.” Serena’s face went chalk white. She lunged forward, clawing at my neck. I effortlessly stepped out of her reach. “Give it to me, you bitch!” I let out a crisp laugh. “Relax, sister. It’s just a normal locket. I was just testing you. But look how fast your victim act fell apart.” “You! You manipulative psycho! Dominic, you cannot trust a word she says!” But Dominic was already looking at Serena like she was trash on the bottom of his shoe. He wrapped a strong arm around my waist and guided me toward the door without giving her a second glance. “Penny, I shouldn’t have let you stay here. Pack a bag. I want you living in the penthouse I bought for you before the wedding.” “Okay. Thank you, sweetheart,” I murmured, letting my voice go perfectly soft and grateful. As we walked out, Serena’s furious screams echoed down the marble hallway. “You just wait, Penny! I’m going to rip that fake mask right off your face!” With only two weeks left until the wedding, the two women who wanted me dead went completely off the radar. A quiet enemy is a dangerous enemy. I was swamped with wedding dress fittings, and Dominic’s schedule suddenly became incredibly demanding. Sometimes we didn’t see each other for days. Occasionally, he would bring me along to corporate dinners. Surprisingly, Jess was there, but she completely stopped playing the ‘bro’ card with him. Instead, she started aggressively flirting with Arthur Harrington, one of Dominic’s major investors. During a truth-or-dare game at a lounge, Jess ‘lost’ and immediately threw herself onto Arthur’s lap, attempting to take off his suit jacket. Arthur’s wealthy, hot-tempered girlfriend walked right over and slapped Jess hard across the face. Jess didn’t quit. The next night, she tried to corner Arthur at the bar, wrapping her arms around his neck. The girlfriend caught her again, this time smashing a vodka bottle over Jess’s head, sending her straight to the ER. For a second, I thought Jess had realized I was too tough a target and pivoted to ruining someone else’s life. But I could still feel her eyes on me, watching me from the shadows like a venomous snake. I had several dark theories about what she was plotting, but no proof. Until one quiet evening. I was sitting alone in my new penthouse, looking over the gorgeous property deeds Dominic had transferred to me, when my phone buzzed. A video call from Jess. I answered it. The screen was blurry and chaotic. It was aimed at crisp white hotel sheets, showing two naked bodies tangled together. The lighting was terrible. I couldn’t see the man’s face. My heart seized. Could it be… “Jess, what is this?” I demanded. The call abruptly disconnected. Dominic had texted me earlier saying he was having drinks with some investors. Was this it? Was his perfect, protective fiancé act just a lie while he was secretly sleeping with his ‘best bro’ the whole time? If they actually slept together, I wasn’t going to play the pathetic, forgiving wife. I wouldn’t spend my life fighting off his female friends. If Dominic crossed that line, I had my perfect excuse to burn the wedding down and walk away rich. I grabbed my keys, jumped into my sports car, and sped toward the private club to catch them red-handed. When I kicked open the door to the VIP room, Dominic’s tailored jacket was draped over a leather chair. But he was nowhere to be found. Only Jess was sitting there, nursing a drink, a bruise fading on her forehead. She looked up at me with a deeply satisfied smirk. “Looking for Dom, Penny?” “Where is he? Who was in that video? Was it him or Arthur?” “I’m not going to lie to you, Penny babe. Dom and I just hooked up.” She sighed dramatically, playing with the rim of her glass. “You know how it is. We’ve always had this crazy tension. We had a few too many shots, and things just… escalated.”

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My husband, a titan in the field of cardiac surgery, was on the coast with the woman he’d always loved, picking up seashells. I called him, again and again, my voice raw as I begged him to come back and save his own sister. His voice was a blade of ice. “Ivy, how dare you curse my sister? Why don’t you just die, you venomous bitch!” He hung up and blocked my number. His sister, Cassie, died on the operating table. And the entire family blamed me. They surrounded me, their faces twisted with rage. They beat me, broke my arms and legs, and dumped me in the deep woods to die. I screamed for help. Someone came. But he didn’t come to save me. He came to kill me. He stabbed me dozens of times. My last sensation was one of pure agony and despair. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back on the day Cassie was murdered. 1 “Oh my God, someone’s been stabbed! There’s a killer!” The screams of passersby swelled around me, a rising tide of panic. The crowd of gawkers surged toward the scene, a morbid curiosity pulling them forward. Only I remained rooted to the spot, my body trembling uncontrollably. The searing pain of a dozen knives plunging into my flesh felt so real, a phantom echo that served as a brutal reminder: I, Ivy Ross, had been reborn. In my past life, I had followed that same crowd, my heart pounding with a nameless dread. The victim was my sister-in-law, Cassie, lying in a rapidly expanding pool of her own blood. I frantically called 911, rode with her to the hospital, and paced outside the operating room. I did everything I could, but she still died. And her family, my husband’s family, decided her death was my fault. They circled me like wolves, their voices thick with hate. “You evil woman, Ivy! You killed my sister!” Grayson, my husband, had roared. “Beat her! Kill this walking curse!” They threw punches and kicks, dragging me to the floor. They broke my bones and then left me in the wilderness for the animals to find. I screamed for help, but the man who came wasn’t a savior. He was a monster who finished the job, leaving me to die in agony. This time, I wouldn’t get involved. I spun around, pushing against the tide of the crowd, and walked straight to the grocery store. When I got home with the bags, the first thing I saw was the pinched, cruel face of my mother-in-law, Brenda Pierce. “Where the hell have you been? A simple trip for groceries takes you all damn day?” Her eyes, small and sharp, darted to the sink piled high with dirty dishes. “What good is a daughter-in-law like you? Are you just going to stand there like a goddamn statue? Get to the kitchen and wash those dishes! Or do you expect an old woman like me to serve you?” I lowered my head, hiding the inferno of hatred in my eyes. My voice was as gentle as a lamb’s. “I’m sorry, Mom. Don’t be angry. I’ll do them right now.” The moment I stepped into the kitchen, her phone rang. “Yeah? Who is this?” she answered, her voice dripping with annoyance. A second later, that voice shot up, a raw shriek that could have shattered glass. “What did you say?! My daughter is in the ER?!” The phone clattered to the floor. It was as if all the strength had been sucked from her body. A cold smile touched my lips, but I rushed out, my face a mask of perfect ignorance. “Mom, what is it? What happened? You’re scaring me!” Brenda’s face was ashen. Her lips trembled as she grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “Ivy! We have to go! Now! Get me to the hospital! It’s… it’s Cassie!” 2 I drove Brenda to the hospital at a reckless speed. It was Metropolitan General, the very same hospital where my husband, Grayson, was a star surgeon. Outside the operating room, a nurse rushed out. “Are you Cassandra Pierce’s family? The patient has lost a critical amount of blood, and the wound is dangerously close to the heart. We need to operate immediately! I need a signature!” Brenda’s knees buckled. I caught her before she could collapse. Her hand shook violently as she scribbled her name, her voice choked with sobs. “Please, I’m begging you, save my daughter! She’s only in her twenties!” “Mom, don’t panic,” I reminded her, my voice clear and steady. “Isn’t Grayson the best cardiac surgeon in the entire city?” “If he performs this surgery, I know Cassie’s heart will be perfectly fine.” I pulled out my phone, making a show of dialing his number. “Don’t call him!” She lunged for my phone like a cornered cat, her eyes wide with panic. She knew. She knew Grayson wasn’t at the hospital. He was on the coast with his childhood sweetheart, Sophie Hale, living out a romantic fantasy. Before he left, he had made her promise that no one would disturb them. I twisted my wrist, easily dodging her grasp. “Why not?” I asked, my eyes wide with manufactured innocence. “Mom, don’t you want Cassie’s surgery to be a success? This is a matter of life and death!” The accusation hung in the air, and Brenda’s face flushed a deep, ugly red. “Don’t you dare curse Cassie! I… I just… I just think her condition probably isn’t serious enough to need Grayson to personally operate!” She stammered, her eyes darting around, refusing to meet mine. Just then, the OR doors swung open again. A younger nurse rushed out, her face pale with stress. “This is bad! The blade penetrated too deep. Our chief of surgery says this procedure is too complex. Dr. Grayson Pierce is the only one in the entire hospital who can do it!” The nurse’s eyes landed on us, a desperate plea in her gaze. “You’re his family, right? You have to get him to cut his vacation short. He needs to come back and perform this surgery right now!” I feigned utter shock, turning to the nurse with disbelief. “What? On vacation?” “Are you sure you have that right? How could my husband be on vacation without me knowing? He told me just last night that the department was swamped and he’d be working consecutive shifts for days!” The nurse looked confused. “I wouldn’t know the details. The chief approved his leave request. All I know is you need to contact him. The patient is running out of time. Any longer, and it might be too late.” Brenda’s world seemed to implode. The color drained from her face, and she swayed on her feet, about to faint. I grabbed her arm, my voice laced with panic. “Mom, stay calm. I’ll call Grayson right now.” In front of everyone, I dialed his number. Once. Twice. Three times. Ten agonizing calls, and each time, the same cold, robotic voice echoed from the speaker: “The number you have dialed is currently unavailable.” Of course it was unavailable. To ensure his precious time with Sophie was uninterrupted, Grayson had blocked me. I remembered it all too clearly. In my last life, I had called him forty-nine times from my own phone. I finally had to borrow a nurse’s phone to get through. I had wept, begging him to come back and save his own sister. But his reply was a snarl of irritation. “Ivy, just because you hate Sophie and you’re jealous that I’m with her, you’d make up a lie about my sister dying? You’re so fucking evil. Why don’t you just die?” He hung up. After that, it didn’t matter whose phone I used. He never picked up again. And so, Cassie missed the golden window for survival. She died. But her family laid the blame squarely on my shoulders. They claimed my jealousy had clouded Grayson’s judgment, preventing him from returning in time. The person who killed Cassie, they decided, was me. The memory of that suffocating injustice made my hands clench into tight fists. I fought to control the rage boiling inside me. 3 “Grayson, where are you? Please, just pick up the phone!” I cried, forcing tears to well in my eyes. Brenda looked at me, her gaze filled with guilt and avoidance. She tried to defend her son. “Grayson is probably… probably busy with something important. If you can’t get through, just wait a while.” Even now, she was covering for his affair. My heart ached for Cassie, fighting for her life just a few feet away. Suddenly, a commotion erupted at the end of the hall. “Cassie! What’s happened to my precious granddaughter?!” My father-in-law, Robert, was helping the family matriarch, Grandma Pierce, hurry toward us. She was over seventy, but her face was a mask of fierce anxiety. “Where is Grayson? Is he in there saving Cassie right now?” Grandma Pierce adored Cassie, who was the spitting image of her as a young woman. Don’t let her age fool you. In my past life, when they beat me, she had the strength of a demon, breaking two thick wooden canes over my back. I still remembered the bone-deep agony. This time, I would not let them pin this on me. I put on a pained expression, my eyes red-rimmed. “Grandma, Grayson told me he had to work overtime. But I just asked the nurse, and he’s not here. He’s not in the operating room. I… I don’t know where he is.” “What do you mean, you don’t know? What kind of wife are you? If you don’t know, why don’t you call him and ask?” She jabbed her cane toward my face, the tip hovering inches from my eye. “Grandma, I did call.” I looked helplessly at Brenda. “Mom, you saw me, didn’t you? I just called him ten times in a row. He didn’t answer a single one!” Brenda nervously twisted the hem of her blouse and nodded. “Yes… yes, she’s been calling…” The old woman’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Then it’s your fault! You must have done something to piss him off, that’s why he’s not answering your calls. Try your mother-in-law’s phone. Let’s see if he dares to hang up on her!” Now Brenda was truly terrified. Her hand trembled as she gave me her phone. “Dial it!” the old woman commanded. I took a deep breath, pressed the familiar number, and put the call on speaker. After two rings, he answered. “Mom, what’s up? Didn’t we agree you wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency?” Grayson’s voice was lazy, the sound of wind and waves clearly audible in the background. I took another breath and shouted, my voice trembling with fake tears, “Honey, it’s me, Cass—” “Ivy?!” His roar cut me off like a gunshot. “Are you fucking insane?! It wasn’t enough to spam me from your phone, now you’re stealing my mother’s? I told you I’m busy!” “No, honey, please listen! Cassie is dying! She’s been stabbed, and you’re the only one in the hospital who can save her! You have to come back!” My voice cracked with desperation. There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, a sweet, cloying female voice floated through the speaker. “Grayson, honey, I think you should go back. Ivy is obviously just jealous. To get you to leave, she’s actually lying about poor Cassie. It’s okay, I can pick up seashells by myself. You don’t need to stay with me.” It was Sophie. I trembled with fury, my nails digging into my palms. “I am not lying! Sophie, shut your mouth! Cassie is in surgery! Grayson, I’m begging you, please come back. Cassie needs you!” “Ivy, that’s enough!” Grayson’s voice exploded again. “There’s a limit to jealousy! To trick me into coming home, you’d stoop to a lie like this? Cursing my own sister? Aren’t you afraid of karma?” “Stop bothering me! I’m busy! If you screw up my promotion to department head, I’ll make you wish you were never born!” “Beep… beep… beep…” He hung up. I stood there, clutching the phone, fat tears rolling down my cheeks. My eyes swept over the three elder Pierces. Their faces were a mirror of shock, humiliation, and utter disbelief. Just then, the OR doors were thrown open again. The nurse’s voice was more frantic than ever, practically a scream. “Have you reached Dr. Pierce yet?! The patient’s heart rate is dropping, and we can’t stabilize her blood pressure! She can’t wait any longer!” Grandma Pierce looked like she was about to have a stroke. She snatched the phone from Brenda’s hand and shoved it back at her. “You call him! You do it now!” Brenda’s fumbling fingers dialed the number. After several rings, Grayson finally picked up. His voice, colder than ice and more toxic than poison, echoed from the speakerphone once more. “What the hell do you want now, Ivy? If you’re that bored, go kill yourself! Hang yourself, drink poison, there are plenty of ways to do it. Just stop fucking bothering me!” The blood drained from Brenda’s face. Just before he could hang up, she mustered all her strength and shrieked. “Grayson! Don’t hang up! It’s your mother!” “You have to come home! Your sister… a monster stabbed her through the heart! She’s on the operating table! The doctors say you’re the only one who can save her! Please, son, come home!” Dead silence on the other end. It stretched for a full five seconds before Grayson’s voice returned. 4 “Mom… why are you getting involved in this nonsense? “I told you before, Ivy is a jealous psycho. She’ll say anything to get me to come back. Don’t let her fool you.” Tears streamed down Brenda’s face, her voice a desperate wail. “It’s not a lie! It’s real! Cassie is on the operating table right now, and the doctors say only you can save her! Mom is begging you, son, please come home!” The line went quiet for a few seconds. The Pierces stared at the phone, a desperate hope in their eyes. But before that hope could take root, a soft, delicate female voice cooed through the speaker. “Ouch! Grayson, honey, I think a crab just pinched my foot! It’s bleeding! I need you to kiss it and make it better.” Grayson’s tone shifted instantly, filled with alarm. “Sophie, don’t move! I’m coming!” He tossed one last sentence into the phone. “Mom, stop playing along with Ivy’s games. She’s just trying to trick me.” Then, without a moment’s hesitation, he hung up. Brenda stood there, phone in hand, looking like a statue. Her hands trembled so violently she didn’t even notice her nails cutting into her palms. Robert finally lost it. A vein throbbed in his temple as he dialed Grayson’s number on his own phone. He roared into the receiver with all his might, “You bastard! Your sister is dying, didn’t you hear me? Get your ass back here and operate now!” His shout was loud enough to shatter the windows in the hospital corridor. The voice that came back was strained, annoyed, and furious. “Dad, you too? How can you believe Ivy’s bullshit? She’s just bored and needs to be taught a lesson!” I continued my performance, weeping silently and glancing at Grandma Pierce. Her face was ashen, her knuckles white as she gripped her cane, looking like she was about to snap it in two. “My sweet boy!” the old woman wailed into the speakerphone. “Grandma is begging you! I’ll get on my knees for you! Please, just come back and save your sister!” But the voice on the other end remained cold and distant. “Grandma, it’s not that I don’t want to. I’ve been drinking. I can’t drive right now. I promise, as soon as the alcohol is out of my system, I’ll head back.” “That’s all. Sophie hurt her foot. I need to check on her.” “Beep… beep… beep…” The dial tone tore their last shred of hope to pieces. And then came the final blow. The red light above the operating room door went out. The lead surgeon emerged, pulling off his mask. His expression was heavy with exhaustion and regret. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could. The patient was pronounced dead at [Time] on [Date]. Here is the death certificate. Please sign for it.” It was like a lightning strike. Grandma Pierce fainted on the spot, caught by a quick-thinking nurse. Brenda let out a primal scream and threw herself onto the gurney, clutching her daughter’s cold, stiff body and sobbing uncontrollably. Robert staggered backward, collapsing onto a bench, his face pale and his eyes vacant. And me? Of course, I had to keep up the act, my wails louder and more gut-wrenching than anyone else’s.

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They called Kate an angel. When I, the long-lost heir, was dying, she saved me. No one knew she’d signed the organ donation papers. The surgery worked; I lived. But Kate was destroyed. Complications and depression consumed her, and she withered away. The house grew cold. Mother wept constantly; Father’s sighs deepened. I became the unwelcome ghost in the Harrington estate, my survival a glaring accusation. Then I heard Father’s choked confession: “We saved Sierra, but it cost Kate everything. What is the point of Sierra even being alive?” Paul’s icy glare cut deeper. “Don’t touch her. How dare you stand in the same room as Kate?” I opened my desk drawer. There lay the proof: Kate’s donation agreement, and the blank form I had prepared for myself. I once thought giving it back would be enough. Now I understood. A soul saved by an angel doesn’t deserve the sun. Every breath I took stole the light from her. This family needed Kate. They never needed me. I shut the drawer—and with it, the door to my heart they never truly opened. 1 I never realized the hallways of a hospital could feel this freezing. The corridor stretched out long and empty. The harsh, sterile lights illuminated every corner, leaving nowhere to hide. I gripped the organ donation form, my knuckles turning a pale, translucent white. “Sierra Harrington?” the nurse’s voice crackled through the intercom, utterly devoid of emotion. I stood up. The few steps to the consultation room felt like walking barefoot on shattered glass. The doctor was a middle-aged man with kind, tired eyes. He took the paperwork, scanned it, and looked up at me. “Your condition has progressed this far? It is a tragedy. You young people never take care of yourselves. A few more routine checkups and we could have caught this early.” “Doctor, I need to ask about the donation process.” My voice was terrifyingly calm. “I want to donate after I pass. Everything that is viable. I want it all to go to her.” His gaze sharpened instantly. “To who?” “Kate Harrington.” The name left a bitter taste on my tongue. He flipped through the forms, his frown deepening. “A relative? Then why aren’t your family members here to co-sign? We need informed consent from next of kin.” “I don’t have any family.” The words scraped against my throat like razor blades. “I am an orphan.” I quickly added another lie. “I am not biologically related to her. I just heard she was very sick.” The doctor stared at me for a long time. The silence stretched so thin I thought he was going to flat-out refuse. Finally, he let out a heavy sigh, pulled a pen from his pocket, and tapped a line on the consent form. “You will need to sign here. And initial these risk disclosure pages.” I took the pen. When the ink met the paper, my hand did not shake at all. “Given your current vitals, if you opted for the surgical intervention, there might still be a glimmer of hope,” he offered softly, seemingly unable to watch a young life extinguish itself without a fight. “A glimmer of hope?” I whispered. I wondered if this was a test from God. If a surgery succeeded, I could forget the past, take my father’s money, leave the Harrington family behind, and start over in some quiet town. But if it failed, I would give every piece of myself to Kate. They all said I owed her my life. It was time to pay my debts. 2 “Okay. I will do the surgery. If there is a chance, who wouldn’t want to live?” I offered a self-deprecating smile. After scheduling the admission and the operation, I walked out of the clinic. My phone began to vibrate in my pocket. The screen lit up with the word Mom. My thumb hovered over the green accept button, but I couldn’t bring myself to press it. Eventually, the buzzing stopped. A text message popped up. Sierra, are you coming home for dinner this weekend? I stared at that single line of text until the screen went black. Then, slowly, I deleted the message letter by letter. The phone rang again. This time it was Paul. I answered. Before I could even breathe, his voice cut through the line, sharp and cold. “Where are you?” “Out,” I replied. “Kate is having a terrible mental health day. Her psychiatrist says it is a severe depressive episode triggered by the donation complications.” Paul’s voice was tight with suppressed anxiety. “Mom has been crying all afternoon. If you don’t have any actual business here, stay away this weekend.” I leaned my back against the freezing tiled wall of the hospital and closed my eyes. “Understood.” “What exactly do you understand?” Paul’s tone spiked with sudden venom. “Do you have any idea how much she sacrificed for you? She has to take seven different pills a day now. Two of them are heavy antidepressants. She used to be the brightest, happiest girl in the world. Now she is terrified of the sunlight hitting her window.” I murmured a quiet agreement. Paul practically yelled into the receiver. “You get to walk around perfectly healthy while she rots away! Sometimes I really just want to…” He cut himself off. But I knew exactly how that sentence ended. Sometimes he really wished Kate had let me die. “I am sorry,” I said. I had said those words so many times they had lost all meaning. The silence on the other end lasted so long I thought the call had dropped. When Paul finally spoke again, he just sounded utterly exhausted. “Forget it. Mom told me to ask you about the Kensington charity gala next week. Are you going? Kate might make an appearance. If you are there…” “I am not going,” I answered immediately. I heard a faint exhale of relief from his end, though his tone remained rigid. “I will have my assistant send a dress to your apartment anyway. You know how it is. Mom had Kate’s gown custom-made in Paris, so yours will be a bit simpler off the rack. Do not take it personally. This is what you owe her.” I didn’t reply. I ended the call and slowly slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. The hospital tiles were like ice. The cold seeped through my clothes and buried itself deep in my bones. My phone buzzed one more time. A banking alert. Fifty thousand dollars. The memo line contained exactly three words. Take care, Dad. This was the third wire transfer this month. Richard always did this. He used wealth to spackle over the massive, unspeakable cracks in our family. It was as if the chime of a bank notification fulfilled his entire duty as a father. I forced myself to stand. My legs were numb. By the time I walked out through the sliding glass doors, it was dusk. The setting sun stained the sky a sickly, vibrant crimson. It looked like an open wound bleeding across the horizon. 3 I ate cheap takeout for three days straight. My phone lit up on the coffee table. A message in the Harrington family group chat from Eleanor. Kate agreed to go for a walk today! We only made it ten minutes, but it is a massive step forward! [Heart] [Heart] A cascade of celebratory emojis followed. Richard replied with a proud “Fantastic news.” Paul sent a row of digital fireworks. I stared at the glowing screen. My fingers hovered over the digital keyboard, but I typed nothing. I exited the chat and opened my files app. It was a scanned copy of the organ donation consent form I had finalized three days ago. My eyes locked onto the beneficiary line. Kate Harrington. Below it was a clinical checklist of harvested parts. Heart. Liver. Kidneys. Lungs. Corneas. It read like a menu for my own death. I locked my phone and shoved the paperwork into the deepest corner of my desk drawer, right next to the agreement Kate had signed a year ago. Two contracts. Two sacrifices. Two destinies swapping places. Outside, the sky turned pitch black. I stood up and began to clean the apartment. In truth, there wasn’t much to clean. I had been renting this place for barely six months, and my possessions were pitifully scarce. A few articles of clothing, a handful of books, some basic toiletries. When they brought me home from the foster system, I only had one small suitcase. I suppose I would be leaving the same way. On the desk sat a single framed photograph. It was the only picture I had of the entire family. We took it during my first month back at the estate. Eleanor had insisted on a portrait. In the picture, Richard and Paul stood in the back, their postures rigid and uncomfortable. Eleanor was in the center, her arms wrapped protectively around Kate, smiling with genuine warmth. And then there was me, standing on the far edge, looking like a stranger who had accidentally wandered into the frame. The Kate in the photo hadn’t gotten sick yet. Her eyes were bright, her lips curved into a beautiful, effortless smile. She wore a pristine white cashmere sweater that made her skin look like porcelain. I was wearing a cheap, ill-fitting red coat. Eleanor had pulled it out from the back of a closet at the last minute, mentioning it was something Kate bought years ago but never wore. “Red suits you,” Eleanor had told me before the photographer snapped the picture. But her eyes had never left Kate. I took the photograph out of its frame and placed it in the drawer with the medical documents. It was late. I lay in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. The walls of the apartment were paper-thin. I could hear the couple next door arguing, a baby crying on the floor below, the distant hum of traffic on the wet asphalt. These sounds used to make me feel overwhelmingly lonely. Tonight, they brought me comfort. They were proof of life. They were the heartbeat of the world. And my own heartbeat was a rhythmic reminder that I was draining the life out of someone else. The thought wrapped around my throat like ivy, pulling tighter and tighter. I sat up, switched on the desk lamp, and began to write a letter. I wrote incredibly slowly. Every stroke of the pen carried an impossible weight. I didn’t have a formal will to draft. Just a few words I never had the courage to say out loud. When I finished, I folded the paper, slipped it into an envelope, and left the recipient blank. 4 On the evening of the Kensington gala, Paul called me again. “Are you absolutely sure you aren’t coming?” He sounded drained. “Mom still thinks you should make a brief appearance.” “Isn’t Kate going?” I asked softly. “If I am there, she will just feel anxious.” A heavy pause settled on the line. “Good that you know. Just order yourself something nice for dinner. Don’t eat garbage.” The concern felt abrupt, like a forced pleasantry he remembered at the last second. I offered a quiet agreement and ended the call. The evening shadows crept across the living room as the city skyline ignited with thousands of golden lights. I stood by the window, gazing at the metropolis I had lived in for twenty-three years but had never truly belonged to. At seven o’clock, my phone buzzed. It was Eleanor. I hesitated, but my thumb ultimately swiped right. Her voice came through slightly muffled. The background was alive with the clinking of champagne glasses and polite laughter. She was already at the venue. “Did you eat dinner yet?” “I made your favorite lemon ricotta ravioli and froze a batch in the top drawer of the freezer.” There was an artificial lightness to her tone, a desperate attempt to keep things casual. “You should swing by the house and grab them. We are all out for the night anyway. Boil them up for dinner. Stop eating takeout, it is terrible for your health.” My heart felt as though an invisible hand had gently squeezed it. She actually remembered that I loved lemon ricotta ravioli. I had casually mentioned it once during the holidays last year. I never expected her to commit it to memory. “Okay,” I whispered, my voice thick. “Take care of yourself,” Eleanor said briskly. “Once Kate stabilizes a bit more, you can move back to the estate. I have kept your bedroom exactly how you left it.” “Thank you, Mom,” I breathed. Someone called her name in the background. She muttered a rushed goodbye and the line went dead. I stood frozen in the middle of the room for a very long time. I was never going to retrieve that food. By nine o’clock, the gala would be in full swing. I slipped into a simple black slip dress and stood before the mirror. The dress was off-the-rack and poorly tailored. The shoulder straps hung loose, and the waist swallowed my figure. The girl staring back at me was deathly pale, with bruised purple shadows under her eyes. I unzipped my makeup bag and carefully applied a layer of foundation. It couldn’t mask the exhaustion, but it brought a deceptive flush of life to my skin. I chose a deep, vivid crimson lipstick. It was a bold, aggressive color. It felt like a final declaration. Then, I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Waiting for the end was a strange sensation. There was no terror. Just a bottomless, profound tranquility. I felt like a drowning victim who had finally stopped thrashing against the current, allowing the dark water to pull me down into the quiet deep. At ten o’clock, I stood up and took one final look around the room. Spotless. Empty. Barely any proof that I had existed here at all. I walked to the desk, pulled open the drawer, and retrieved the medical documents. I looked at the letter, hesitated, and left it inside the drawer. I only took the clinical forms. When I walked out the door, I did not look back. The hospital was eerily silent at night. The fluorescent lights in the emergency wing hummed overhead, occasionally broken by the squeak of a nurse’s rubber shoes. I approached the triage desk. The night nurse glanced up. “How can I help you?” “I am here to be admitted.” My voice was so steady it frightened me. She typed away at her keyboard and gave a brief nod. “Sierra Harrington? Please follow me.” She guided me through a maze of corridors into a private prep room. The next morning, a different doctor entered the room. She was young, female, and wore an expression of intense gravity. “Ms. Harrington, are you absolutely certain you want to proceed with this surgical intervention?” she asked. “Even though you have signed the waivers, we must verbally confirm one last time.” “I am certain.” “And you truly have no family members to notify?” “No,” I replied softly. “I am an orphan.” The doctor hesitated, a flicker of sorrow in her eyes, before she nodded. “Please sign here. The nurses will begin your prep.” I signed the final paper. My hand remained perfectly still. When they moved me onto the operating table, the surgical lamps glared down at me, burning my eyes. The anesthesiologist, a gentle older man, leaned over and whispered, “Do not be afraid. Just close your eyes and take a deep sleep.” I was not afraid. I closed my eyes, and my life shattered into a kaleidoscope of fleeting memories. I remembered the rainy evening before I was kidnapped. Eleanor was holding my tiny hand, walking me home from kindergarten. She had tilted the umbrella so far over my head that her own shoulder was soaked. I remembered the years in the foster system. The cold houses, the screaming, the backbreaking chores. I learned later that they treated me like garbage because they knew I was a stolen child. I remembered the day the DNA results came back. Richard looked at me, and there was no joy in his eyes. Only confusion, and a microscopic trace of disappointment. I remembered the first time I met Kate. She was wearing a flowing white sundress, looking like a jasmine flower in the morning dew. She smiled and said, “Welcome home, big sister.” I remembered when she signed the organ donation papers. No one warned her the aftermath would destroy her mind and body. She had just smiled and said, “If one of my kidneys can save my sister, take it.” The anesthesia was flooding my veins. The world was dissolving into static. The final sound I heard was the sharp, panicked voice of the surgeon. “Vitals are crashing! The surgical intervention is failing. She is letting go. Prepare to pivot to the organ procurement protocol based on her advance directives.” Hearing those words, a single, crystal-clear thought bloomed in my fading mind. Now, I am giving it all back to you. Her blood, her love, her health, her future. My debts were finally paid in full.

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I couldn’t sleep last night, so I was mindlessly scrolling through short videos on my phone. I stumbled upon a trending question: “Just how much damage can a man’s unforgettable first love do?” Right there in the top comments was my boyfriend’s reply. “She was just diagnosed with terminal cancer. But all I can think about is how glad I am that she isn’t her.” Well. That was awkward. Especially since my cancer turned out to be a misdiagnosis. 1 The day I walked out of the hospital clutching a terminal cancer diagnosis, Sebastian was still throwing a tantrum because I hadn’t delivered breakfast to him after his night of heavy drinking. I had been with Sebastian for three years. For three years, I had been the perfect, compliant girlfriend. I worked like a dog, swallowed my pride, and never uttered a single word of complaint. He would get wasted at some exclusive club, call me in the dead of night, and demand I bring him a bowl of homemade soup. And when I rushed over to deliver it, he would toss it straight into the trash without blinking. Then he would turn to his wealthy friends and smirk. “Told you she’d come crawling. Pay up.” When he was caught flirting with other women, he would force me to step in, use my status as his official girlfriend, and clean up his mess. Afterward, he would brag to his inner circle. “As long as Stella stays this obedient, I might just let her stick around.” Yes. Sebastian was the most notorious playboy in our social circle. He was young, insanely wealthy, drop-dead gorgeous, and knew exactly how to play the game. Rumor had it he was incredible in bed, too. He was adored in this elite world. During our time together, practically every other month I would get a phone call from some socialite demanding I step down and make room for her. The only reason I managed to stay by his side for so long was pure, unadulterated obedience. And the fact that I looked exactly like his first love. Over the years, I had heard the tragic tale of his “white moonlight” from countless gossiping mouths. They were childhood sweethearts. Families of equal status. The ultimate first love trope. If tragedy hadn’t struck, they would have walked down the aisle and merged their empires. But right before their engagement, her family abruptly declared bankruptcy. The arranged marriage was instantly canceled by Sebastian’s ruthless father. Heartbroken, the girl fled to Europe and never looked back. Every time Sebastian paraded a new woman around, someone would maliciously recount this story to me. My ears were practically callous from hearing it. They were reminding me of my place. I was just a cheap stand-in. I was no different from the rest of his disposable toys. Even Sebastian’s friends constantly told me I should be counting my lucky stars just to breathe the same air as him. Usually, I had the patience to stroke Sebastian’s massive ego. But I thought I was dying. I had zero patience left for his toxic games. When he called to complain about breakfast, I snapped. “I don’t have time today. Buy your own damn food.” He clearly hadn’t expected me to talk back. He froze for a second. “You want me to buy takeout? You know my stomach is a mess, and you’re telling me to eat garbage?” Suddenly, the whole charade felt incredibly exhausting. “If your stomach hurts, go see a doctor. I’m not a physician. What the hell is calling me going to do?” I hung up immediately and blocked his number. A massive wave of relief washed over me. Three days ago, I received a phone call from across the Atlantic. It was Sebastian’s legendary first love. She told me she was flying back. My mission was over. Everyone thought my three years of enduring Sebastian’s sadistic mood swings was because I was desperately, hopelessly in love with him. They were wrong. Molly had paid me three million dollars to buy three years of my life. Molly. Sebastian’s untouchable first love. 2 Nobody knew the real reason I took Molly’s three million dollars. I had a younger brother whose kidneys were failing. He was dying. Our parents had died in a horrific car crash when I was very young. For years, I juggled multiple minimum-wage jobs while going to school, desperately trying to keep my brother, Toby, fed and clothed. He was eight years younger than me. When he was little, he would rest his chin on my shoulder and whisper softly. “Stella, I’m going to grow up fast.” “When I get big, I’m going to buy you a closet full of beautiful dresses.” He was always such a good kid. He studied hard, stayed out of trouble, and grew from a tiny toddler into a handsome, six-foot-tall young man. Even when he was confined to a hospital bed, his face pale and sickly after grueling dialysis sessions, he would still hold my hand. He would tell me over and over again. “Stella, Sebastian is a bad person. You need to leave him.” I would stroke his hair and lie through my teeth. I told him it was fine. I told him Sebastian was just a little immature, but he was a good guy deep down. Toby would just look at me and silently cry. He told me he was nothing but a burden. He said he had been dragging me down since he was born. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to tell him that my Toby was never a burden. He was my only anchor in this brutal world. People need an anchor to survive. But then I lost him. I watched helplessly as the boy I raised was reduced to an urn small enough to hold in my hands. My only tether to this world was gone. The day the doctor told me I needed to be hospitalized for my own failing health, Sebastian’s first love touched down at the international airport. It was treated like a royal homecoming. A mutual friend screenshotted Sebastian’s Instagram story for me. It was a photo of the two of them. Molly looked breathtaking in a white designer dress, stepping out of the private terminal with a massive bouquet of roses pressed to her chest. She looked elegant, wealthy, and flawless. The caption read: “Finally.” The comments were flooded with his elite friends kissing their feet. Sebastian actually seemed to care about Molly. He wiped his social media completely clean of his playboy past. He curated his image to look like a devoted man who had spent years waiting for his true love to return. If he hadn’t used a burner phone to text me at two in the morning, I might have actually believed he had changed. The text read: “Stella, if you behave and crawl back, I’ll pretend your little tantrum never happened.” I blocked that number too. What a piece of trash. Three years ago, just days after Toby was admitted to the ICU, a mountain of medical debt threatened to bury me alive. That was when Molly found me online. She offered me a deal. If I agreed to act as Sebastian’s girlfriend, report his every move to her, and keep him occupied until she returned, she would wire me three million dollars. I agreed in a heartbeat. That money was Toby’s lifeline. My logic was beautifully simple back then. I just wanted the cash to cure Toby, and then we would vanish together. God only knows how exhausting it was to play the submissive, sweet girlfriend for three years. There were so many days I fantasized about kicking Sebastian down a flight of stairs. I finally held out until Molly returned. The moment I tasted freedom, the air had never felt sweeter. Go back to him? He could rot in hell. 3 I didn’t check into the hospital. The doctor warned me that without immediate treatment, I wouldn’t have much time left. I still didn’t go. I remembered the sheer agony Toby endured on that sterile bed. I was terrified. He had always hated pain. I still didn’t know how he survived those brutal dialysis sessions. I hated pain too. But more than that, I was terrified of waking up screaming in the middle of the night with no one there to hold my hand. I took the remaining money from Molly’s payment and opened a tiny coffee shop. Over the years, I had worked countless odd jobs to keep Toby alive. Being a barista was one of them. Toby always loved the coffee I made. Lying in the hospital, pale as a ghost, he used to smile and promise me that when he got better, he would work three jobs, save up, and open a café just for me. He said he would be my loyal waiter. He never made it to that day. Now it was just me, alone in this little shop. Business wasn’t booming, but it was enough to keep the lights on. Right before closing on a Friday, a massive corporate order came in. One hundred artisanal coffees. I smiled so hard my cheeks ached. I worked like a machine, terrified that if I was a minute late, they would cancel the order. But when I arrived at the delivery address and saw Sebastian standing in the penthouse lobby, I turned on my heel to leave. To hell with this money. Sebastian stepped into my path, tilting his perfectly sculpted jaw. “Stella, are you done throwing your little fit?” He narrowed his dark eyes, radiating arrogance. “Do not push my boundaries. If you come back to my apartment right now, I will let this slide. Even though Molly is back, I’ll allow you to stay by my side.” He spoke slowly, his tone dripping with condescension. He genuinely believed he was offering me the charity of a lifetime. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I ripped the lid off a cup and hurled the scorching coffee directly into his smug face. “Are you out of your psychotic mind?! Go see a psychiatrist!” “These past three years with you have been a living nightmare. Do you actually think you’re God’s gift to women?” “Sebastian, looking at your face makes me physically nauseous!” “What a waste. You just ruined a perfectly good cup of coffee!” God. Molly never mentioned I would have to deal with post-sale customer service when I signed that contract. Sebastian was completely stunned. He stood frozen, espresso dripping from his expensive hair onto his designer suit. He couldn’t compute what had just happened. It made sense. For three years, I had been completely docile. If he told me to walk east, I never looked west. If he demanded I jump off a yacht into freezing water just for his amusement, I did it without hesitation. My dedication to the role was unmatched. He wiped his face, his eyes turning slightly red with frustration. “You were never like this.” “I just want things to go back to how they were.” I understood exactly what this was. Asking this arrogant billionaire to show weakness was like asking him to cut off his own arm. But why the hell should I care? I tossed the empty cup into a nearby trash can. “How they were? You mean playing the role of your pathetic, obedient dog?” “Sorry to break it to you. I’m resigning from that position.” I didn’t wait for a response. I walked out to my delivery van and drove away. In my rearview mirror, I could see him standing frozen in the plaza. He looked like a proud, majestic lion that had just been brutally beaten. I let out a cold, mocking laugh. I knew Sebastian better than anyone. Showing up today was just another one of his sick little games. I wondered how much money he and his frat-boy friends had bet on this outcome. None of it mattered to me anymore. I only cared about what his next move would be. Because right now, he was dancing exactly to the tune I was playing.

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