In front of the classified cleanroom doors, my manager was throwing an absolute fit, pointing a trembling finger right at my nose and screaming at me. I had missed his voice memo because I didn’t have my phone on me. “Do you have a single brain cell in your head?! I sent you a message, and you dare to ignore me?!” I pointed at the red-lettered warning sign bolted to the wall: ABSOLUTELY NO COMMUNICATION DEVICES PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. Then, I pointed to the young woman standing right next to him. It was the Plant Director’s niece, Chloe, who was currently holding her iPhone up on a ring light, aggressively live-streaming the assembly line. “Manager, company policy strictly forbids phones in the cleanroom.” The manager violently slapped my hand down. “Chloe is executing a corporate culture marketing campaign! Who the hell do you think you are to compare yourself to her? One of her videos gets tens of thousands of likes! What is a day of your manual labor worth?!” Chloe shoved her camera right into my face, her voice sickeningly sweet and dramatic. “Look at this, chat! This is exactly the kind of stubborn, rigid boomer that ruins companies. No wonder she’ll be tightening screws for the rest of her miserable life.” Desperate to kiss up to Chloe, the manager made a split-second decision. “Fine! Since you love the rules so much, you can go home and follow them all you want. Effective immediately, this facility no longer requires your services. You’re fired.” I unclipped my company ID badge and grabbed the notebook that was propping up the wobbly leg of the supervisor’s desk. It was the only handwritten, master calibration log for the entire factory. As I sat down on the city bus heading home, a piercing, deafening alarm suddenly erupted from the massive, antique German CNC machine back at the plant—the machine that I was the only person in the state qualified to calibrate. “Get the hell out! If I ever see your face in this industrial park again, I’ll call the cops!” A senior technician with ten years of seniority, fired on the spot for missing a text message. I didn’t look back. The cleanroom was blindingly bright. Two massive, high-wattage ring lights were pointed directly at people’s eyes. “Did you guys see that, chat?” Chloe squeaked into the microphone, pitching her voice up an octave. “She actually picked up that trash pile of scrap paper like it was some kind of treasure. Some people are just born to be garbage collectors, I swear.” I stepped over the yellow hazard line. My steel-toed boots clicked heavily against the epoxy floor. As I walked past the German 5-axis CNC machining center, I stopped. The machine was humming, but the frequency was wrong. That machine had insanely strict voltage requirements. Right now, Chloe’s live-streaming setup, her two massive ring lights, and two phone chargers were all plugged directly into the machine’s dedicated, isolated power supply. That specific circuit was meant exclusively for micro-millimeter precision calibration. My right thumb twitched. I instinctively reached out to check the hydraulic pressure dial. “What the hell are you looking at?!” Manager Davis lunged forward, physically blocking the machine. “Trying to sabotage company property?! Evelyn, you are terminated! If you touch this machine one more time, I am calling the police and having you thrown in a cell!” “Good luck, Manager Davis.” “GET OUT!” He shoved me hard in the shoulder. I used the momentum to turn around and walk straight toward the loading dock doors. Behind me, the low hum of the machine began to mix with the distinct, grinding sound of metal-on-metal gears. The lubrication supply was failing. To my trained ears, that sound was deafening. I walked out of the facility and down to the bus stop at the edge of the industrial park. A city bus, belching black exhaust, pulled up to the curb. I stepped on and tapped my transit card. The exact second the card reader beeped, a shrill, catastrophic siren erupted from the factory behind me. It was a Level 3 Critical Failure alarm. I sat down by the window. Through the glass, I saw the security guards sprint out of their booth. The workers inside the plant were running around in pure panic. The German CNC machine had completely shut down. Red warning strobes were flashing violently across the exterior walls of the factory. An abnormal shutdown meant the core spindle had automatically locked down. Besides the 16-digit hex code written in my notebook, absolutely no one on earth knew how to bypass that lock. The bus had barely driven a hundred yards. In the side mirror, a security golf cart came flying out of the gates. Manager Davis had the throttle pinned to the max, waving frantically at the bus driver, his mouth open in a desperate scream. The bus slammed on its brakes. I jerked forward in my seat. “STOP! STOP THE BUS!” Manager Davis violently pounded on the folding doors. The driver opened the doors. Davis charged up the steps and grabbed my arm. “Get off!” His face was completely twisted in rage. “You sabotaged the machine before you left, didn’t you?! The machine is dead! You aren’t going anywhere today!” Davis clamped his hand around my wrist and violently dragged me off the bus. His grip was brutal. He wasn’t treating me like a human being. The bus driver took one look at Davis’s gold “Manager” badge, quickly shut the doors, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. It was shift change. A massive crowd of workers was bottlenecked at the factory gates. Even people from the neighboring factories were poking their heads out to watch the drama. “Search her bag!” Davis pointed at me, screaming at the security booth. The guards didn’t move. Old Frank, the head of security, glanced at the crowd. “Manager Davis, searching an employee’s personal belongings without a warrant is illegal.” “I AM THE LAW AROUND HERE!” Davis kicked Old Frank hard in the shin. “That machine costs millions of dollars! If it’s broken, are you going to pay for it?! She definitely stole a microchip or slashed a wire! If you don’t search her, you’re all fired!” Old Frank took a step back and fell silent. A few younger guards hesitantly stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Evelyn.” I tightened my grip on the strap of my canvas tote bag. Before the guards could even reach me, Davis violently snatched the bag from my shoulder, ripped the zipper open, turned it upside down, and shook it violently over the pavement. Everything crashed onto the asphalt. My glass water bottle shattered. A half-empty pack of tissues scattered in the wind. Two pink, wrapped tampons landed right on top of the pile. A few wolf-whistles echoed from the crowd of male workers. The sound of hushed, mocking whispers drilled into my ears. I stared at my belongings on the ground, keeping my spine perfectly straight. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Chloe squeezed through the crowd, shoving her selfie stick right into my face. “Look at this, chat! This is what happens when you try to sabotage a company. Her bag is literally just full of garbage.” She aimed the camera lens directly at the tampons on the ground. “Bringing this kind of gross, private stuff into a sterile cleanroom? So disgusting.” The comments on her live stream were scrolling at lightning speed. Davis didn’t find any stolen microchips or wire cutters. The only thing he saw was the notebook. It had landed splayed open on the wet asphalt. “Is this what you stole?!” Davis snatched the notebook off the ground and flipped through a few pages. “Looks like alien chicken-scratch.” He couldn’t understand a single word of it. But he noticed that I had been fiercely protecting it earlier. “Give it back,” I said, holding out my hand. The sky had darkened ominously. Thunder rolled overhead, and the rain suddenly began pouring down in sheets. Davis raised his arm high. He violently chucked the notebook into a muddy puddle by the curb. He stepped directly onto it, grinding the sole of his leather dress shoe into the pages. Black mud soaked instantly into the paper. The fountain pen ink was completely destroyed by the rainwater. The meticulously recorded calibration data turned into a massive, illegible blur of black ink. “Garbage belongs in the garbage dump.” Davis spat on the ground. The rain was coming down hard now. The crowd of onlookers retreated under the security awning. No one said a word. I crouched down. Rainwater blurred my eyelashes. My fingers dug into the wet, mushy pages. I picked it up and tried to wipe it with my sleeve. It only smeared the black ink further. “Stop wiping it.” Davis opened an umbrella, holding it over Chloe, while his own shoulder got soaked in the rain. “Evelyn. The machine is flashing completely red. You are coming back inside to fix it right now. If you can’t fix it, that’s millions of dollars in damages. You couldn’t afford to pay that off if you sold both your kidneys.” I stopped wiping the book. I stood up straight. Rainwater dripped steadily from my chin. “I have already been terminated, Manager Davis.” I stared him dead in the eye. “Since it’s garbage, you can fix it yourself.” I turned around. Behind me, the piercing shriek of the machine’s alarm cut right through the torrential rain. His phone was violently vibrating in his pocket. It was the client, screaming for their order. “You ungrateful bitch!” Davis threw the umbrella aside and frantically waved at the guards. “Arrest her! Lock her in the security booth! Until that machine is fixed, nobody is leaving this property!” Two guards grabbed me by the arms. I didn’t fight back. Even if he locked me in a cage, there wasn’t a single person on this earth besides me who could fix that machine. The security booth had nothing but a cheap wooden desk and a folding chair. The roar of the rain pounding against the window was deafening. My uniform was completely soaked, clinging heavily to my back. I curled up in the folding chair, pressing my elbows into my knees, tightly clutching the dripping, mud-soaked notebook to my chest. When the 5-axis CNC center goes into a voltage-anomaly lockdown, if the system isn’t bypassed and reset within twenty minutes, the hydraulic pressure system suffers a catastrophic overload. The machine being destroyed was the least of their problems. Clamped inside that machine was a three-million-dollar piece of aerospace-grade aluminum. The minute hand on the wall clock ticked forward. The door violently slammed open, hitting the wall with a loud crack. Davis burst into the room. His tie was ripped loose, and the collar of his dress shirt was soaked in nervous sweat. Behind him trailed a group of junior technicians who usually walked around with their noses in the air. Right now, they were all shrinking into themselves, staring intensely at their own shoes. “THE PASSWORD!” Davis slammed both hands brutally onto the wooden desk, making the metal thermos jump. “WHAT IS THE RESET PASSWORD FOR THAT STUPID PIECE OF JUNK?!” I hugged the notebook even tighter. “There is no password.” It was a hardcoded, base-level logic bypass code. There was no simple “6-digit pin.” “BULLSHIT!” Davis pointed a shaking finger at the technicians cowering behind him. “They tried everything! The system is hard-locked! It requires a master-level override command! You are the only person who has it!” The technicians shrank back even further. They were perfectly happy swapping out drill bits and refilling coolant, but the second it came to complex system calibration—the actual dirty, exhausting work—they ran faster than anyone else. “Chloe is still live-streaming!” Davis paced the tiny room in frantic circles, his wet shoes squeaking aggressively against the linoleum. “The machine won’t stop screaming! It’s so loud she can’t even sing for her viewers! The client called asking why the background noise is a literal emergency siren! How the hell am I supposed to explain that?!” “That is the equipment overload warning.” “In exactly ten minutes, the pressure valves are going to rupture.” I looked up at him. “When that happens, it won’t just be loud. People are going to die.” The fat on Davis’s face violently trembled. He yanked his phone out of his pocket, pulled up a video, and shoved the screen inches from my face. On the screen, a blonde, blue-eyed German executive was slamming his fist on a boardroom table, screaming in broken English about triggering the 3x penalty clause for breach of contract. Five million dollars. “Did you hear that?!” “Evelyn! If the company has to pay this fine, I am going to the cops and pressing charges against you for premeditated sabotage and destroying industrial infrastructure!” From the hallway outside, Chloe’s voice echoed loudly. She was holding her phone high in the air. “Listen to this, chat! Do you hear how evil this woman is? She got fired, so she’s trying to drag the entire factory down to hell with her! She’s just jealous because I’m young and pretty, and because my uncle is the Plant Director!” She squeezed into the tiny security booth and latched onto Davis’s arm. “Dave, stop wasting time talking to her. Just call the cops.” Davis didn’t say a word. If he called the cops, the first thing they would do is investigate the electrical load failure, and the entire blame would fall squarely, 100% on his shoulders. His eyes darted around the room before he suddenly bent over, bringing his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Evelyn. I’m going to give you one chance.” “Director Vance is on his way right now.” “You are going to walk out there, fix the machine, drop to your knees on Chloe’s live stream, and publicly confess that you deliberately sabotaged the equipment.” “If you do that, I won’t press charges.” He lowered his voice to a venomous whisper. “Otherwise, I will make sure you rot in federal prison for the rest of your life.” A wave of stale cigarette breath hit my face. I glanced at Chloe, who was currently pouting her lips at her front-facing camera, and calmly wiped the muddy water from my notebook onto my sleeve. “Sure.” I looked directly at Davis. “Then we’ll wait for Director Vance to get here.” Before the words even finished leaving my mouth. BOOM! A deafening, explosive boom detonated from the direction of the cleanroom. The glass windows of the security booth rattled violently. Davis’s legs instantly gave out. He collapsed hard onto the floor. The technicians behind him turned the color of wet cement. The pressure valve had ruptured. Davis scrambled up from the floor like he had been electrocuted. “Did… did it explode?!” He stumbled backward, trembling uncontrollably. I glanced out the window at the thick plume of white steam billowing out of the factory roof. “Not yet. That was the primary release valve. There’s still a secondary backup.” Davis lunged forward, grabbing me by the collar of my uniform, his knuckles digging painfully into my throat. “FIX IT! IF YOU WANT TO DIE, DON’T DRAG ME DOWN WITH YOU!” He violently hauled me out of the booth. I stumbled after him, struggling to keep my balance. The cleanroom was completely engulfed in blinding white steam. The air was thick and suffocating with the acrid stench of atomized hydraulic fluid. Chloe had retreated to the far wall by the main breaker box, her phone still held high in the air. Seeing me get dragged in, she instantly shoved the camera lens toward me. “Chat! We caught the terrorist!” She pointed dramatically at the hissing, screaming machine. “Look! This is all her fault!” Davis violently shoved me toward the main control console. “Do it! Now! Director Vance is going to be here any second! If he walks in and this machine isn’t fixed, I will literally kill you!” The massive steel loading dock doors began to roll upward. A black Audi A6 came tearing into the warehouse, slamming on the brakes, the tires shrieking as they left thick black skid marks on the polished epoxy floor. The driver’s side door flew open, and Robert Vance, the Plant Director, vaulted out of the car. He slipped on the wet floor and nearly face-planted onto the concrete. His white dress shirt was completely soaked by the rain, clinging tightly to his stomach. Several Chief Engineers sprinted in right behind him. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” Vance’s roar completely overpowered the shrieking alarms. He stared in absolute horror at the machine, which was now flashing blood-red emergency strobes, his eyes bulging out of his skull. “Uncle Robert!” Chloe threw herself at him, tears streaming down her face with perfect, dramatic timing. “I was so scared! It’s all Evelyn’s fault!” She pointed a vicious finger at me. “She was mad that she got fired, so she sabotaged the machine! She almost blew me up! Look at my dress, it’s ruined!” Davis wiped the rain and sweat off his face and scurried over to Vance. “Director! I tried everything! Evelyn holds a grudge against the company, refused to run the maintenance protocols, and actively tried to destroy the facility!” Vance was panting heavily. His furious gaze swept over the screaming machine, over Chloe, over Davis. And finally, it locked onto the dedicated, isolated power supply outlet on the wall. Plugged directly into that highly sensitive circuit were the two massive, thousand-watt ring lights, with thick, heavy extension cords trailing all across the wet floor. The veins on Vance’s neck looked ready to burst. Chloe tugged on Vance’s wet sleeve. “Uncle Robert, tell the security guards to arrest her! I’m going to sue her for…” SMACK! Vance swung his arm with everything he had and delivered a brutal, open-handed slap directly across Chloe’s face. Chloe spun 180 degrees from the impact and collapsed hard onto the floor. Her phone flew out of her hand and smashed onto the concrete, the screen instantly shattering into a spiderweb of cracks. Davis stood there with his mouth hanging open, entirely speechless. Chloe clutched her burning cheek. “Uncle… you hit me?” Vance pointed a trembling finger at the power outlet. “Live-streaming inside a classified, restricted-access cleanroom?! Plugging commercial ring lights into a micro-voltage industrial outlet?!” “ARE YOU TRYING TO BLOW THIS ENTIRE BUILDING OFF THE MAP?!” Vance turned around and slowly looked at me. He bent at the waist, bowing a full, perfect ninety degrees. “Evelyn. I am begging you. Save us.”

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Three years into my marriage with Tristan Vance, everyone around us still firmly believed his carefully crafted “single and available” persona. At the company’s annual success gala, his personal assistant sang a love song dedicated entirely to him. She even got down on one knee, delivering a deeply passionate confession of her love. I thought, surely, this was the moment he would finally announce our relationship to everyone. But instead, faced with the roaring encouragement of our colleagues, he simply offered a helpless, indulgent smile, nodded, and accepted Chloe’s confession. The cheers erupted like a tidal wave, each wave louder than the last. I stood in the shadows, my entire body trembling with a cold so deep it chilled my bones. Tristan’s gaze met mine across the room. His eyes carried a sharp, unmistakable warning. But this time, I didn’t pull him aside to demand an explanation like I usually did. I just stood there and clapped along with the rest of them. “Congratulations, Director Vance. Congratulations, Chloe.” “Such a happy occasion! Doesn’t this mean the Director owes everyone here a round of drinks on his tab?” … The moment the words left my mouth, the crowd’s cheering grew even more frantic. Tristan’s brows knotted together. He shot me a covert, furious glare. But, trapped by the sheer enthusiasm of the crowd, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and pull out his black card, paying for a massive round of expensive champagne for everyone. When he finally made his way over to me, he waited until no one was looking, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into the breakroom. “Why are you joining in and making a scene? Do you have any idea how much money I just dropped buying drinks for this entire department?” “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” He genuinely believed my comments out there were just me being petty. I forced a bitter smile. I wanted to speak, but it felt like something was suffocating me, blocking my throat. I couldn’t force a single word out. I just let out a heavy sigh. “Tristan, we’ve been married for three years. You promised me.” “You promised that once your career stabilized, we would make our relationship public. What exactly are you doing right now? Are you cheating on me?” Tristan’s eyes had been darting toward the breakroom window, nervously checking if anyone was listening. Hearing my accusation, his head snapped back to me. “What kind of nonsense are you spewing?!” Realizing his voice had spiked, he forcibly swallowed his anger. “Harper, yes, I made a promise.” “But have you stopped to think about your mother? If I hadn’t been financially supporting her treatments, do you really think she’d still be alive today?” “I have to climb higher. I have to make more money. Otherwise, how many months of her medical bills do you think your pathetic little salary could cover?” Every single word he spat out hit my eardrums like a physical blow. “So you accept Chloe’s confession right in front of my face? What am I to you? I am your wife!” I growled, keeping my voice low but fierce. This only made Tristan angrier. “Can’t you be a little understanding?! If it weren’t for me these past few years, your mother would be dead and buried by now!” I had heard these exact words countless times over the years, but they had never ripped my heart apart quite like this. In Tristan’s eyes, our marriage, our home, our entire future… They would always, always be secondary to his ambition. And all of this was simply because Chloe was the CEO’s daughter. That was why he desperately maintained his single persona, while brazenly flirting with Chloe in front of the entire company. He was affectionate with her right in front of my eyes, yet he demanded that I be “understanding.” From the day we started dating to the day we got married, he had always been this intensely ambitious. After we got married, he even took control of all my bank accounts, insisting he manage our finances. As he worked harder and harder, and the money piled up, his heart grew colder and colder. Whenever we had an argument, he always, without fail, weaponized my terminally ill mother’s life against me. “Then give me back my bank cards. From today on, my mother doesn’t need a single cent from you…” My words were cut off by the sound of the breakroom door being pushed open. Chloe leaned against the doorframe, looking at Tristan and me with a surprised expression. Tristan immediately took a huge step away from me, acting as if nothing had just happened. “Oh, Manager Harper, you’re here too. I was looking everywhere for you guys. I thought something was wrong.” Chloe beamed a massive smile, walking over and naturally intertwining her fingers with Tristan’s. She affectionately pressed her cheek against his. “I’ve already told my parents about us. They want to meet you.” I could clearly see the flash of absolute ecstasy in Tristan’s eyes. He instinctively shot me a glance, then tightened his grip on Chloe’s hand. “Of course. I’m available whenever they are.” My hands, hanging loosely at my sides, clenched into tight fists. My nails dug deep into my palms; only the sharp, stinging pain kept me grounded in reality. Chloe walked over to me and shoved a thick, bulging envelope into my hands. She flashed a radiant, triumphant smile. “Manager Harper, you work so closely with Tristan and handle so much. Consider this a little bonus for all your hard work.” As soon as she finished speaking, Tristan gently pulled her away. Before he walked out the door, he didn’t even spare me a single glance. I was left completely alone in the breakroom. Outside, the celebration continued to rage. The notifications in the company group chat were exploding with congratulatory messages for the new couple. I looked down at the hidden photo album on my phone. It was a scan of our official marriage certificate photo. He had forbidden me from using it as my lock screen, so I could only hide it deep in my camera roll. Every time I looked at it, I somehow convinced myself I could hold on a little longer. I stared at that photo with its bright red background for a very long time. Then, I uploaded it directly to the company’s internal message board. I had endured this for three years. I had absolutely no strength left to keep pretending. It took exactly one day for that photo to circulate to every single screen in the building. When I walked into the office, the way my coworkers looked at me was entirely different. The relentless, hushed whispers drifted into my ears from every direction. [What the hell is going on? Manager Harper and Director Vance are married?] [Then what was all that yesterday? Chloe is the other woman…?] Some of the bolder employees walked right up to my desk and asked me directly. “Manager Harper, you never mentioned you were married. Is that photo photoshopped?” Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Tristan summoned me into his private office. The moment the door clicked shut. A splash of scalding hot water was thrown directly into my face. Tristan’s face was twisted with absolute fury. He violently smashed the glass mug onto the floor right at my feet. The flying shards of glass sliced a shallow cut near the corner of my eye. Drops of blood hit the floor. “Harper, are you intentionally trying to ruin me?!” “Didn’t I explicitly tell you that absolutely no one could know about our marriage?! The entire company is gossiping about it right now!” “Did you even stop for one second to think about how this would affect Chloe?! Everyone out there is calling her a homewrecker!” I wiped my face. The skin where the boiling water had hit was searing red. “I just posted the truth. Is telling the truth a crime?” I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong. “Are you afraid of losing face, or are you just terrified of ruining your perfect image in Chloe’s eyes?” “Does the CEO’s precious daughter know she’s sleeping with a married man?” Tristan’s lips parted, a flash of undeniable guilt crossing his eyes. He aggressively rubbed his temples, then, predictably, brought up my mother. “Don’t you dare forget that your half-dead mother is currently laying in the most expensive VIP suite at that care facility, being kept alive by the most expensive imported drugs.” “If I get suspended over this scandal, how the hell are you going to pay her medical bills?!” I let out a dry, exhausted chuckle. The fatigue weighing on my soul felt infinitely heavy. Always this. It’s always this. “Give me my bank cards back. I can pay my mother’s medical bills myself.” Tristan looked at me in shock, which was quickly replaced by utter contempt. He let out a mocking scoff. He marched over to his safe, pulled out a thick, heavy stack of hospital bills, and slammed them onto his desk. “You want to settle accounts with me? Fine! Let’s go through it line by line. Let’s see exactly how much money you and your mother have bled from me!” He stabbed his finger at the stack of bills, speaking through gritted teeth. Only then did I realize that from the day we got married until this exact moment, he had meticulously tracked every single penny he had spent on me. Three years ago, when he asked me to marry him, he had looked me in the eye and said: Your mother treated me like her own son. She saved my life once. I will give everything I have to help her. He did keep his word. But Tristan turned that help into a weapon to control me. Every time. Every single time. Whenever I did the slightest thing that displeased him, he weaponized my mother’s life against me, forcing me to surrender over and over again. He climbed higher and higher, eventually becoming the highly respected Director Vance everyone admired. And then he told me: “Harper, my career is on a massive upward trajectory right now. I can’t let the executives know we’re married. It’ll ruin my image as a fully dedicated company man.” “You have to understand. Mom’s life is more important than anything else right now.” I believed him. I watched him meticulously build his “single, eligible bachelor” persona, while simultaneously getting closer and closer to his new assistant, Chloe. Whenever I confronted him about it, he would look at me with sheer impatience and say: “Chloe is the CEO’s daughter. She is going to inherit this entire corporation one day.” “I’m just trying to climb the ladder and secure our financial future. What exactly am I doing wrong?” The office door was violently shoved open. Chloe burst into the room, her eyes completely bloodshot. She held up her phone, the screen displaying our marriage photo, and screamed at Tristan. “Tristan Vance! You lied to me?! Are you two actually married?!” Tristan didn’t miss a beat. He shook his head with absolute conviction. “No, I have always been single. Harper has already admitted she made a terrible mistake. She’s going to issue a public clarification right now.” His expression didn’t change as he pulled out his phone and opened a live security feed. The camera was pointed directly at my mother’s hospital bed. He lowered his voice into a vicious, lethal whisper. “The private nurse at the hospital works for me. If you don’t go out there and clarify this right now, I will order him to pull her oxygen tube.” My pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated terror. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Tristan?! Have you lost your fucking mind?!” Tristan raised his hand, counting down on his fingers. “Three. Two…” “Fine.” I clenched my fists so tightly my nails drew blood. The agonizing, tearing pain in my chest was the only thing reminding me I was still alive. I stood in the center of the bullpen, facing the entire company, and confessed. “I photoshopped that image. Director Vance and I have absolutely no romantic relationship whatsoever.” Because of my “confession,” Tristan was immediately reinstated and cleared of all suspicion, while I was indefinitely suspended pending an investigation. As I packed up my desk into a cardboard box, I could feel the malicious stares piercing my skin like needles. The hushed whispers had escalated into open, blatant verbal abuse. “I knew Harper was shady. She’s been acting so desperate for a sugar daddy lately.” “Exactly. Director Vance always said he was single. How could he possibly be married to someone like her? She was clearly trying to force his hand and be the other woman.” “She’s so disgusting.” I bore the brunt of their malice, fleeing the corporate building like a cornered rat. When I finally got back to our apartment, my phone buzzed with a text from Tristan. [Harper, no matter what happens, we are still husband and wife. Once my promotion to VP is finalized, I’ll fix all of this, and I’ll cut ties with Chloe completely.] [Just wait a little longer. You have my word.] Staring at those empty promises, I realized I didn’t believe a single syllable anymore. I don’t know who did it, but someone had recorded a video of my forced confession and leaked it onto the internet. Overnight, I became the city’s biggest laughingstock. “Tarnishing the company’s reputation.” My suspension was quickly converted to a termination for cause. I didn’t even receive a severance package. The internet mob relentlessly attacked me, flooding my social media with vile, degrading insults. Some deranged vigilantes even tracked down my address and splashed red paint all over my front door. I was terrified to step outside. Every single day, people would gather outside my door and scream abuse. “You desperate, homewrecking slut! If you want money so badly, go find an old creep to pay you!” “People like you are the absolute scum of society!” No matter how I tried to defend myself, no one was willing to listen to the truth. I sat on the couch, completely hollowed out, scrolling mindlessly through Tristan’s Instagram. He had just posted a new carousel of photos. Aside from a series of romantic couples’ portraits with Chloe… There was a close-up shot of two hands, both wearing matching Cartier diamond rings. The diamonds caught the light flawlessly. The caption read: [The love of my life.] I covered my face with my hands, hot tears pouring through my fingers. I grabbed my heavy glass water bottle and hurled it violently at the massive framed wedding portrait hanging on the wall. The glass shattered, raining down in a thousand pieces. I took a deep, shuddering breath and dialed the number of a lawyer friend. “Draft divorce papers for me and Tristan Vance. I want to completely maximize my financial settlement.” “He committed adultery. I have irrefutable proof.” During the days I spent finalizing the divorce strategy, Tristan never came home. He never even called. A week later, it was company payday. When I was terminated, HR had assured me that my final month’s base salary would be paid out normally. But when I checked my bank account, the only deposit was a pathetic $200 attendance bonus. At the exact same time, my former colleagues in the departmental group chat were throwing a digital party, celebrating Chloe for single-handedly closing a massive, highly lucrative corporate contract. I stared at the signature on the finalized project brief. A deafening ringing filled my ears. That was the contract I had literally drank myself into a stomach hemorrhage to secure during a brutal negotiation dinner. I was the one who had built the relationship with that client from the ground up. If that commission had paid out to me, I would have had enough money to cover my mother’s bills. I wouldn’t have needed Tristan’s money anymore. My hands shook violently as I tried to message the client, confused as to why they had signed early without me. But the message bounced back. The client had blocked my number. I called Tristan. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until my nineteenth call that the line finally connected. Before I could even speak, the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing came through the speaker. Chloe’s voice, thick with annoyance, snapped at me. “Harper, you’ve been fired. Could you stop harassing my boyfriend?” “Can’t you take a hint?” I instinctively slammed the ‘End Call’ button. But those repulsive, wet sounds kept echoing in my brain. The hand holding my phone was trembling uncontrollably. A sharp, piercing agony radiated from my heart, spreading through my entire body like venom. But reality didn’t give me a single second to catch my breath. My phone rang again. This time, the caller ID showed the hospital. It rang relentlessly, sending me into a blind panic. “Hello…” “Ms. Harper, there has been a critical incident regarding your mother.”

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I had just posted a vacation photo with my boyfriend on Instagram when a “Loyalty Tester” slid into my DMs. “Babe, your boyfriend looks like a player. Send me his handle. I’ll run a loyalty test on him for free, how about it?” “Are homewreckers really this bold and self-righteous nowadays?” I replied. After I rejected her, she immediately took a screenshot of our chat, posted it on TikTok, and played the victim. Within hours, thousands of netizens flooded my DMs, cursing me out. To keep the peace, I swallowed my pride and posted a public apology, stating I just wanted a quiet, normal life. But she and her followers decided my apology was proof of a guilty conscience. They insisted I was terrified, and she boldly declared she was going to test him anyway to “save” me. A few days later, the Loyalty Tester smugly posted a screenshot showing she had successfully added my boyfriend on Snapchat. The caption read: “Easy catch. Your man isn’t exactly a saint, babe~” I looked at the post, but all I felt was pity for her. Her new post went viral. Within an hour, it hit ten thousand likes. I stared at the two screenshots in the post. The first was her friend request: “Hey handsome, this is me in the pic. Add me?” The second was a chat interface. She had blurred his username, but I recognized the profile picture instantly. It was a photo of me, taken during our vacation just a few days ago, smiling radiantly at the camera. The comment section was an absolute bloodbath. Hordes of netizens rushed in to mock me. “@Chloe, come look at this! Do you recognize the guy flirting in someone else’s chat?” “Where is that clown who was defending him? No wonder she got so defensive over a free loyalty test. Her precious Prince Charming belongs to the streets.” “Stop hiding, pick-me girl. Come out and beg the tester for an apology.” As the internet demanded, I was tagged in the top pinned comment, right beneath the Loyalty Tester’s smirking emoji. Watching the comments grow increasingly vile, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I posted a response: “I appreciate everyone’s concern for my relationship. However, my boyfriend and I have known each other since high school. We’ve weathered a lot of storms together. I know his character, and I have absolute faith in our relationship. If things ever fall apart, I won’t hesitate to walk away. But until then, I will not subject him to some twisted psychological test, and I do not welcome anyone trying to interfere in our relationship.” Seeing a wave of rational users upvoting my response, I breathed a sigh of relief, praying the mob would disperse. But the Loyalty Tester immediately replied with a crying video: “Babe, I don’t want to ruin your relationship! I’m just terrified of seeing a sweet girl get manipulated by a toxic man. I just wanted to help!” The moment she spoke, her army of followers descended, and the narrative violently shifted again. They decided I was just a desperate, pathetic “doormat” who couldn’t bear to let go of a cheater. They started mocking my post, turning it into a copypasta template, laughing and calling it a “masterclass in delusion.” Even the few comments wishing us a long, happy relationship were downvoted to oblivion. Staring at the vicious, stinging words, my chest tightened. Finally, I just turned off my phone. That evening, I came home exhausted from work. The moment I walked through the door, I saw Mason leaning back on the sofa, staring at his phone with a faint, handsome smirk on his face. Hearing my keys, he instinctively flinched. He quickly placed his phone face-down on the cushions and coughed awkwardly. “Chloe, you’re home early today?” “Yeah. Were you chatting with someone?” “Just one of the bros.” My heart sank. He was lying. Mason had a specific tell—every time he lied, he blinked rapidly. I forced myself to rationalize it. We were adults; everyone is entitled to their privacy. I pretended not to notice. I sat down and started complaining about the drama at my corporate job, just like I usually did. Mason listened quietly, just like he usually did. But his eyes kept darting back to his phone. After talking for ten minutes without getting a single response, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me. Remembering the internet circus from earlier, I couldn’t help but test the waters. “Mason, did anyone… weird try to add you online today?” He smiled casually. “Nope.” Hearing that single word, my heart plummeted into the abyss. I subconsciously gripped the hem of my shirt, desperately trying to shake the paranoid thoughts from my head. Mason and I had been through a lot. It wasn’t like other girls hadn’t tried to shoot their shot before—college underclassmen, flirty coworkers—but he had brutally rejected every single one of them. Why would a random internet troll suddenly destroy what we had? Besides, I knew exactly what kind of man Mason was. Comforting myself with that thought, I let out a breath and went to the bedroom to rest. But the moment I opened Instagram, I saw the Loyalty Tester had just dropped a new update. “You poor, naive girl. My heart breaks for you.” I was instantly drawn to the cover photo. It was a screenshot of her chat with Mason. At first, it was just her awkwardly trying to make conversation. But once she “discovered” that Mason loved playing Valorant, they instantly hit it off. He even invited her to a duo queue. After the match, the chat showed him praising her gaming skills, saying she was way better than his “clueless girlfriend” who didn’t know how to play. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. It was true. Mason was an incredible gamer, and I was absolute garbage at it. Whenever we played together, I dragged him down, and he had to constantly save me while reassuring me it was fine. Knowing I was a liability, I eventually just stopped playing with him altogether. The internet mob arrived on cue. “Oh my god, she’s still not dumping him?!” The comments aggressively tagged my handle. “She’s the ultimate pick-me. What do you expect? She’s perfectly happy eating garbage.” “Poor OP, having to force herself to flirt with such a disgusting guy just to prove a point.” The Loyalty Tester replied sweetly: “Babes, it’s not hard work. I just want to help my sisters see men for who they truly are.” The internet erupted in applause, showering her with digital hugs. “The OP is a literal angel. Too bad the pathetic girlfriend is too blind to appreciate it.” “It’s okay,” the tester replied. “Some girls are smart, and some girls are just a little slow. We need to be patient. I’ll keep working hard until she finally wakes up.” She attached a cute finger-heart emoji. Moved by her “heroic” mission, her follower count skyrocketed overnight. I clicked on her profile. Her entire grid was dedicated to exposing other people’s boyfriends. Every cover photo had the words “CERTIFIED TRASH” stamped across it in bold red letters. The comment sections were filled with cheers and women thanking her for saving their lives. So, was it my turn now? Just then, I heard the bedroom door open. I looked at Mason as he walked in. The lighting cast shadows across my face. I asked him one more time: “Mason, I can trust you, right?” Mason tilted his head in confusion, then smiled, walking over and pulling me into a warm hug. He affectionately nuzzled his forehead against mine. “Of course you can.” “Okay. I trust you.” I put my phone down and turned off the lamp. For the next few days, I stayed off social media, and Mason didn’t show any strange behavior. I figured that once the internet found a new target to bully, the mob would naturally disperse. But a few days later, while I was taking a coffee break after a client meeting downtown, I spotted a familiar back across the outdoor promenade. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a sleek black leather jacket. He stood out in the crowd. And standing out just as much was the stunning woman beside him. She was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress, smiling radiantly as she clung to his arm. It was the Loyalty Tester. I gripped my handbag tightly and marched forward. Just as I got close, the Loyalty Tester suddenly let go of his arm and scurried away, as if trying to avoid suspicion. Mason turned around. He looked at me, a mix of shock and panic flashing across his face. “Chloe? What are you doing here?” My gaze shifted from him to the retreating figure of the woman, my voice freezing cold. “Who was that?” He avoided my eyes. “Just an aggressive street promoter. She wouldn’t stop trying to sell me cologne.” “Then what are you doing all the way out here?” Mason owned a high-end automotive tuning club. He was usually at his shop all day. Today, he had driven an hour across the city. He smiled softly. “I heard you had a client meeting in this area. I was waiting for you to finish so I could take you to dinner.” He pulled out his phone to show me a reservation at a wildly expensive, incredibly romantic restaurant. Even though the overly dramatic, candlelit decor wasn’t really my style, I appreciated the gesture and agreed to go. The food was actually fantastic. By the end of the meal, my mood had significantly improved. Bored, I pulled out my phone to check if the internet drama had finally died down. The very first thing on my feed was a new post from the Loyalty Tester. “Babe, you ate my food.” The photo attached showed me sitting happily at the romantic restaurant, chatting with Mason. Mason happened to have his head turned away from the camera. From that specific angle, his back looked somehow lonely and distracted. I whipped my head around to look at the spot where she must have taken the photo, but the area was already empty. My good mood instantly evaporated. A wave of suffocating irritation washed over me. I accidentally glanced at the comment section, reading the sarcastic, mocking quotes from her followers. A lump of pure, unadulterated rage lodged in my chest, completely trapped. Right on cue, the Loyalty Tester sent me a DM. Her tone was still dripping with that fake, patronizing pity. “Babe, I assume you saw it. I bet that trashy man told you I was just a promoter, didn’t he?” The fire in my chest exploded. My typing was aggressive: “I am warning you for the last time. I do not need your so-called loyalty tests. Stay the hell away from me and my boyfriend!” The Loyalty Tester replied with breezy arrogance: “Every woman acts exactly like you when forced to face reality. But it’s fine. I know that in a few days, you’ll be on your knees thanking me.” “Enough. Let me make this clear: intentionally inserting yourself into someone else’s relationship, regardless of your pathetic excuses, makes you a homewrecker.” She replied with a melodramatic sigh: “Fine. I’ll just help you test him a little longer.” She vanished offline. I was so furious I wanted to throw my phone across the restaurant. I looked up. Mason had just checked a message on his phone. He looked at me apologetically. “Chloe, work just blew up. I’m really sorry, but I have to go.” He threw cash on the table and rushed out. I looked out the restaurant window. I watched him get into his sports car in the valet lane. Just as he pulled up to the curb, a woman slipped into the passenger seat. The angle obscured her face, but she was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress. I sat alone at the table for a long time before finally remembering I needed to head back to the corporate office. When I walked in, the pitch deck I had assigned to my team that morning was still sitting half-finished on a desk. “What is the meaning of this? I assigned this at 9 AM, and it’s still not done?!” I slammed the folder onto the desk. A few junior employees lowered their heads in silence. But in the corner, Leo, the new Gen-Z intern, was scrolling on his phone and let out a loud, mocking snicker. “What’s so funny?” He lazily lifted his eyes and turned his phone screen toward me. It was the Loyalty Tester’s newest post. The algorithm was pushing it so hard that everyone in my office had seen it. “Supervisor Chloe,” Leo drawled, a smirk playing on his lips. “You’re getting publicly humiliated and cheated on for the whole internet to see, and you’re coming in here to take your anger out on us?” The other employees didn’t look the least bit sympathetic. Their eyes were dancing with suppressed laughter. Just then, the department director pushed the door open. Seeing the absolute chaos and the untouched pitch deck, he lost his mind and screamed at all of us—but aimed the brunt of his fury at me. I kept my head down and took the verbal beating, not daring to defend myself. Behind me, the intern was secretly snapping photos of me getting yelled at. When he was finally done screaming, the director pointed a lethal finger at my face. “Chloe, I am warning you! Your pathetic personal drama is severely damaging the company’s image. Clean up your mess in one week, or you’re fired!” He slammed the door and left. I tried to reassign the tasks. My team listened half-heartedly before sluggishly returning to their desks. But the second I stepped out for a breather, I saw that they had already leaked the photo of me getting screamed at to a gossip forum, laughing about it in the comments. That night, I dragged my exhausted, heavy body home. When I opened the door, the apartment was pitch black. I flicked on the lights. Sitting on the coffee table was a handwritten note. “Chloe, I had to head out of town for an emergency. Take care of yourself. I’ll bring you back a present.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. It went straight to voicemail. My iMessages were left on Delivered. I sat on the sofa for a moment, then subconsciously opened Instagram. Sure enough, pinned to the very top of the Loyalty Tester’s profile was a brand new update. “Invited by a certain gentleman to go on a trip for a few days! I’ll be doing a paid, exclusive live stream of the final loyalty test results for all my sisters!” Attached was a selfie of her holding a first-class boarding pass. The internet lost its collective mind. Even when they realized they had to pay to access the live stream, thousands of people eagerly bought tickets, declaring they would gladly pay for front-row seats to this drama. A mob flooded my comment section, demanding to know if I was finally going to dump him. I held my ground, pinning a stern message directed at the Loyalty Tester: “I know exactly what kind of man my boyfriend is. I am asking you to stop harassing us. I am telling you this for your own good.” Unlike before, the mockery shifted into a wave of condescending pity. Armchair psychologists began dissecting my entire digital footprint, psychoanalyzing me. Some claimed I was a victim of childhood neglect, which is why I was desperately clinging to a toxic man. They urged parents to love their daughters so they wouldn’t end up like me. Others said I was just pathologically stubborn, terrified of losing face, and willing to swallow poison just to prove the internet wrong. I was too exhausted to argue. I closed the app. Suddenly, a friend request popped up from an anonymous account. As soon as I accepted it, they sent me a stealth photo of Mason, followed by a GPS pin. “He’s here.”

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The young girl at the front desk of the Starlight Indoor Playground checked her system, looked up, and smiled. “There are two kids registered under this membership card. Should I page both of them to the front?” I froze. I only have one son. “Two?” “Yep,” she said brightly. “A two-and-a-half-year-old boy named Leo Davis, and a three-year-old girl named Chloe Vance.” She swiped the tablet to turn the screen toward me. The registered guardian for the little girl was listed as: Sarah Davis. The emergency contact was: Mark Vance. I had no idea who this Mark guy was. But I absolutely recognized the check-in photo in the top right corner of the screen. It was my wife. She was holding a little girl, and a man with short hair was standing right beside her. All three of them were smiling at the camera. They looked exactly like a happy, picture-perfect family. The timestamp on the photo: Last Saturday. Last Saturday was the day my wife told me Leo went absolutely crazy in the ball pit and was sweating through his clothes. Leo is two and a half. That little girl was three. Which meant that before my wife even gave birth to my son, that girl was already born. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned completely white. I raised it and took a clear photo of the screen. … “Sir? Sir?” The girl at the front desk was still trying to get my attention. “Which child would you like me to page for you?” I forced the corners of my mouth up into a tight, mechanical smile. “Never mind. I gave you the wrong phone number.” As I turned and walked out the glass doors of the playground, the afternoon sun was so bright it stung my eyes. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of kids playing—screams of joy and laughter all blended together. I didn’t know who Leo was currently playing with in there. And I didn’t know which child Sarah was standing next to right now. On my phone screen, I zoomed in on the photo I had just taken. I zoomed in again and again. The little girl’s facial features… they looked just like Sarah’s. Especially her eyes. Leo has those exact same eyes. I sat in a coffee shop directly across the street from the playground for forty minutes. At the forty-first minute, Sarah walked out the front doors holding Leo’s hand. Just Leo. She buckled him into his car seat and started the engine. I dialed her number. It rang twice before she answered. “Hey honey, we just finished playing. Leo was sweating like crazy, so I’m going to take him to get cleaned up first. We’ll be home a little later.” “Okay.” I hung up the phone. Her SUV didn’t turn north, toward our house. It turned south. I flagged down a taxi and pointed. “Follow that white SUV.” The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror but didn’t ask any questions. The white SUV eventually pulled up to the security gates of a high-end, gated townhouse community on the south side of the city. The Emerald Estates. We lived in a modest suburb on the north side. I watched as Sarah carried Leo, swiped an access card at the pedestrian gate, and walked right in. She did it with the effortless muscle memory of someone walking into her own home. I memorized the name of the community. She finally brought Leo home at 8:00 PM. He had clearly been given a bath, and he was wearing clean clothes. But it wasn’t the spare outfit I had packed in his diaper bag. It was a little blue hoodie with a cartoon race car embroidered on the chest. I had never seen it before in my life. “Where did Leo get this hoodie?” I asked. Sarah kicked off her shoes into the entryway closet. “Oh, I just grabbed it from a boutique next to the playground. His other shirt was completely soaked in sweat.” “How much was it?” “I don’t remember. Like thirty bucks, maybe?” When she walked away, I checked the tag on the collar. Jacadi. A premium European children’s brand. The retail price for their hoodies is usually around $120. I didn’t say a word. I warmed up a bottle of milk for Leo and rocked him to sleep. Later, Sarah was lounging on the living room sofa, scrolling through her phone. I watched her through the crack in the bedroom door. She was smiling. Smiling warmly at whatever was on her screen. When she talked to me these days, she almost never smiled like that. After she finally went to bed and fell asleep, I didn’t try to touch her phone. I knew she had a complex passcode, and if I got locked out, it would only alert her that I was suspicious. Instead, I opened my laptop and logged into the county’s public property tax records database. I typed in Sarah’s Social Security Number. I work as a financial controller; I have all our sensitive information memorized. When the search results loaded, a loud, high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Registered Owner: Sarah Davis. Date of Purchase: Three and a half years ago. Three and a half years ago. We had only been married for six months. Which meant that before the honeymoon phase of our marriage was even over, she had bought a luxury townhouse on the south side of the city. And I knew absolutely nothing about it. Monday morning, I dropped Leo off at daycare, but I didn’t go straight to the office. I drove south to the Emerald Estates. It was a newly developed community, beautifully landscaped. There was an Amazon Hub locker right outside the main gates. I parked across the street and waited for half an hour. At 9:10 AM, a man in a black trench coat pushed a high-end stroller out of the pedestrian gate. Sitting inside was a little girl, maybe three years old. She was eating a banana, smearing it all over her face. The man stopped, leaned down, and gently wiped her mouth with a tissue. His profile was perfectly visible. It was the man from the playground check-in photo. Mark Vance. He walked over to the Amazon Hub and retrieved two packages. One large, one small. The large one was a heavy cardboard box with the logo of an expensive organic toddler formula brand printed on the side. The small one was a padded envelope. He ripped it open, glanced at whatever was inside, frowned slightly, and shoved it into his pocket. I snapped several clear photos from my car, but I didn’t approach him. I put the car in drive and headed to work. During my lunch break that day, I cleared all the search history from my personal phone. Then, I used my secure work computer to access the county’s deed and mortgage registry to look up Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Paid in cash. $650,000. Three and a half years ago, Sarah and I had a combined total savings of barely $200,000. She grew up in a working-class family; her parents were blue-collar workers with zero generational wealth. That $200,000 was mostly money my parents had given us when we got married as a down payment for our future, plus the savings I had scraped together since I started working. I genuinely believed that money was still sitting safely in our joint high-yield savings account. That afternoon, I logged into our joint bank app. Available Balance: $6,150. I stared at that number until my eyes burned. $200,000. She had drained it down to six grand. Where did the other $450,000 to buy the townhouse come from? I ran a soft credit check on her, looking for credit cards or personal loans. Nothing significant showed up. But with my background in corporate finance, I knew that if someone paid $650,000 in cash for a property, and only $200,000 came from our savings, there were only a few ways to source the remaining $450,000. An untraceable private loan, a massive withdrawal from a retirement account, or— Someone else paid for it. That night, Sarah came home very late. She walked through the door at 11 PM, reeking of alcohol. She collapsed onto the sofa, muttering something about having one too many drinks at a client dinner. I poured a glass of ice water and set it on the coffee table next to her. “Sarah.” “Mhm?” “How’s your mom doing lately?” She rolled over, burying her face in the cushions. “She’s fine. Same old, same old.” “Do you want to take Leo to visit his grandma this weekend?” “We’ll see.” She let out a massive yawn and passed out almost immediately. I picked up her discarded coat and went through the pockets. No secret secondary phone. But my fingers brushed against a thick plastic card. A parking garage access pass for the Emerald Estates. Status: VIP Resident / Auto-Renew. The second Saturday. Sarah stuck to her routine and prepared to take Leo out for the day. “Try to be home a little early today,” I said, wiping down the kitchen counter. “I’m making short ribs.” “Sounds good.” As she bent down to tie Leo’s tiny sneakers, her sleeve hiked up, and I saw a watch on her wrist. It wasn’t the practical Citizen watch I had bought her for our anniversary. It was a Cartier. I had never seen it before. After they left, I drove straight back to the Emerald Estates. This time, I didn’t wait outside on the street. I walked right down the entrance ramp into the underground resident parking garage. I found her white SUV parked on the second subterranean level and snapped a photo of its location. Reserved Spot: B2-073. On the concrete wall next to the spot, a notice from the HOA was taped up: Please ensure all monthly parking and HOA fees are paid by the 15th. I found the elevator bank and rode it up to the 14th floor. Outside unit 1403, there was a small woven welcome mat. Resting on it were two pairs of adult slippers, one pair of toddler sandals, and— I recognized them instantly. A pair of orthopedic walking shoes. They belonged to my mother-in-law, Mary. She always complained about her bad knees and claimed this specific, ugly brand was the only shoe she could comfortably wear. I stood in the quiet, carpeted hallway for exactly three minutes. Through the heavy oak door, I could hear laughter. A little girl’s laughter, Leo’s infectious giggles, and the familiar, grating voice of an older woman: “Chloe, slow down, sweetie! Don’t steal your brother’s snacks.” Brother. She was calling Leo her “brother.” Then came Mark’s voice: “Mom, Leo really loves your baked ziti. You’ll have to teach me the recipe next time.” Mom. He was calling my mother-in-law “Mom.” A wave of icy dread washed over my spine, freezing my blood. I turned around and walked back to the elevator. I didn’t knock. It wasn’t because I was afraid. It was because I couldn’t afford to. I was completely unprepared. If I knocked on that door right now and blew this wide open, all they would do is coordinate their lies, delete digital evidence, and immediately start hiding assets. When the dust settled, I would be left with absolutely nothing, not even the right to cry about it. Driving home, I passed by a sleek, modern law firm. I parked the car and stood on the sidewalk outside for five minutes. In the end, I didn’t walk in. Not because I was hesitating. But because I was still missing the most crucial piece of the puzzle. Where did that $450,000 come from? At 4:00 PM, my mother-in-law, Mary, called me. “Hey, Arthur! Is Sarah home?” “No, Mary. She took Leo to the indoor playground.” “Oh, okay.” She paused for two seconds. “Are you guys free to drive up and visit us in the suburbs this weekend? Your father-in-law’s tomato garden is doing great this year.” “I’ll have to check with Sarah and see what her schedule is like.” “Sure, sure. I know you both work so hard. Don’t exhaust yourselves!” Her voice was so warm. Her tone so caring. Like the perfect, loving mother-in-law. Just thirty minutes ago, she was making baked ziti for another man in a luxury townhouse. Calling another man’s daughter “Chloe,” and calling my son “brother.” When the call ended, my hands were shaking violently against the steering wheel. Not from fear. From pure, unadulterated rage. On Wednesday night, my mother-in-law came over to our house for dinner. She claimed she had taken the commuter train all the way from their house in the suburbs to bring us fresh vegetables. I knew for a fact she didn’t come from the suburbs. She came straight from the Emerald Estates. I could easily prove it by checking her transit card history. Of course, I didn’t say a word. At the dinner table, she bounced Leo on her knee, smiling so hard her eyes crinkled. “Leo is such a good boy. He looks just like his mom did at this age.” “Actually, Mary, I think Leo looks a lot more like me.” “Boys should look like their dads! It’s better that way,” she said smoothly, dropping a piece of short rib into my bowl. “Arthur, you and Sarah really need to start thinking about having a second one.” Here we go again. In the three years we’ve been married, she had brought this up no less than twenty times. “You guys are still young! Have a little girl! Give Leo a sister to play with.” It felt like a golf ball was lodged in my throat. She already had a granddaughter. A three-year-old, chubby, happy little granddaughter. A child who called her “Grandma,” and who called Mark “Daddy.” And here she was, sitting at my dining table, eating the short ribs I spent three hours slow-cooking, pressuring me and Sarah to give her another granddaughter. “We’ll see, Mary. Work has been insanely stressful lately.” “Work isn’t as important as family! A man can be the best CEO in the world, but nothing beats having a sweet little daughter to come home to…” Sarah quietly picked at her food, keeping her eyes glued to her plate. I looked at her. She didn’t look back. That night, after putting my mother-in-law in an Uber, I sat alone on our small apartment balcony. Looking down, I could see the community courtyard. Under the dim, orange glow of a streetlight, a young couple was huddled together on a park bench. The year Sarah and I got married, we sat on that exact same bench. She had looked at me and said: “We’re going to build a beautiful life together. I promise.” That was three years ago. I pulled out my phone and opened our joint banking app again. Every month, Sarah’s $8,000 salary was supposedly deposited here. Our monthly living expenses were roughly $4,000. Logically, over three years, we should have accumulated around $144,000 in savings, just from her income alone. But the balance was $6,150. Where did the money go? I requested a full, itemized three-year transaction history. Every single month, a scheduled transfer of $2,500 went out to an unknown account. Account Holder: Mark Vance. Three years. Thirty-six transactions. Totaling $90,000. Then came the massive, lump-sum withdrawals: Down payment wire to the title company: $200,000. Contractor payments for renovations: $75,000. High-end furniture and appliances: $40,000. Miscellaneous Venmo and Zelle transfers to Mark: $60,000. Combined with the monthly “allowance” she was sending Mark… The grand total: $465,000. Every single dime of the savings we had built since our wedding, plus the $100,000 wedding gift from my parents—completely wiped out. The “salary” Sarah brought home every month was just a smokescreen to cover the basic household bills here. The real money, the serious wealth, was all being funneled directly into her second life. And I was the one who managed the household budget for three years. I cooked the meals, I took care of our son, I worked my stressful corporate job until 8 PM every night. She stole almost half a million dollars to fund a secret family. And I didn’t even know who bought the Cartier watch on her wrist. My temples were throbbing violently. I took a deep, shuddering breath. Enough. I had found everything I needed to find. Now, I needed a ruthless lawyer. During my lunch break the next day, I walked into the law firm I had hesitated outside of last week. The attorney who took my consultation was a woman named Jessica Hayes. She looked to be in her early forties, wore sharp glasses, and had an intimidating wall of legal volumes behind her desk. I laid every single piece of evidence out on her desk. The property tax records. The bank statements. The wire transfer receipts. The photo of the playground membership screen. The 401k early withdrawal penalties I found on our joint tax return. The hidden credit cards I uncovered using a deep-dive credit monitoring service. Jessica flipped through the documents for fifteen solid minutes before pushing her glasses up her nose. “Arthur, you work in corporate finance, don’t you?” “I’m a controller.” “Makes sense. I’ve been practicing family law for fifteen years, and I have never seen a client walk in with a paper trail this airtight.” She closed the heavy manila folder. “What’s your objective?” “Divorce.” “What are we fighting for?” “Full physical and legal custody of my son. And aggressive restitution for the marital assets she fraudulently transferred.” Jessica nodded slowly. “The townhouse in the Emerald Estates was purchased during the marriage. Regardless of whose name is on the deed, it is legally considered marital property in this state. The fact that she used joint marital funds to purchase a home for a paramour is textbook ‘dissipation of marital assets.’ Under the law, we can petition the court to award you the entirety of that equity, or force a sale to recoup your stolen funds.” “How long will the process take?” “If she fights it? Six to eight months. If this evidence is as bulletproof as it looks, and she realizes she’ll be slaughtered in court… three months, if we’re fast.” “I have one non-negotiable condition.” “Name it.” “I do not want her to have a single second of warning to liquidate or hide any remaining assets.” Jessica looked at me, her eyes narrowing in professional respect. “When do you plan on confronting her?” “When the trap is fully set.” For the next two weeks, I acted like absolutely nothing was wrong. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I warmed up Leo’s milk. On Saturday, Sarah took Leo to the playground, just like always. I didn’t follow her. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need any more evidence. I just needed the perfect execution. Jessica drafted a brutal, unyielding divorce petition. She also prepared a massive ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order on all assets. The moment I signed it and she filed it with the clerk, a judge would freeze every single piece of real estate and bank account tied to Sarah’s Social Security Number. Including the townhouse in the Emerald Estates. But I told Jessica to hold the filing. Because I had thought of a much, much better way to play this. I wasn’t just going to take my money back. I was going to make sure they all knew exactly what it felt like to have their lives completely destroyed by a lie.

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I had this whale of a client who constantly paid top dollar to commission my hand-knit scarves. Until this time, when he tipped me an extra three thousand bucks. “Make this one special. She’s my favorite.” The day after I shipped it out. My gorgeous, brooding, and totally broke boyfriend silently handed me a scarf. I stared at it. “…You knitted this?” He pressed his lips together. “Yeah. Do you like it?” I smiled so hard my teeth ground together. “I love it. Tell you what, why don’t you knit me one every single week?” I gripped the soft fabric of the scarf, gasping in feigned amazement: “These stitches, the cast-off edge… it’s incredible. Silas, you really put so much heart into this!” The more I praised him, the tighter I gripped the scarf. I was squeezing it so hard it was almost losing its shape. His slightly long bangs half-covered his dark eyes. The corners of his thin lips curled up slightly, looking a bit shy. “I’m glad you like it.” I asked, dripping with concern: “It must have taken you forever, right? It’s so detailed. For a beginner, this is honestly amazing.” I stared intently at Silas’s face. He paused for a fraction of a second, barely noticeable, and gave a soft “Mhm.” His voice was cool and clear. “It was a little difficult, but if you like it, it was worth it.” I clenched my fists, threw myself into his arms, and laughed. “I love it to death. Tell you what, why don’t you knit me one every single week?” The air in the room froze for a long moment. He agreed. “Okay.” A few seconds passed. He asked, “Are you… trembling?” Oh, I was trembling alright. Trembling with sheer, unadulterated rage. My smile grew increasingly stiff and twisted. I forced a choked sob into my voice. “I’m just so happy. This is the first time anyone has ever hand-knitted something just for me. I feel so lucky… so incredibly lucky…” By the end of my speech, I was practically grinding my teeth to dust. My eyes were red from the sheer anger. Silas awkwardly patted my back. “If you like them, I’ll just keep making them for you.” After Silas dropped me off at my dorm. I got a new notification on eBay. Z: [Knit me one every week. Can you do it?] I typed back: [Five thousand bucks a pop.] Honestly, the prices I usually listed for my custom scarves ranged from a hundred to a few hundred bucks. I’d occasionally get clients, and the transactions were usually pretty smooth. Until this client named “Z” found my page. I was in the middle of explaining the different knitting patterns and how the material costs varied, when he just randomly Venmo’d me a thousand bucks: [Just use the best of everything.] One look and I knew he was an ignorant rich guy with more money than sense! If I didn’t take his money, I’d be an idiot. After that, he became a regular. I even set up a private, thousand-dollar listing specifically for him to buy. Every time he paid, I shipped it to the address he left on his profile. It was in the same city as me. Unsurprisingly, it was in the most notoriously expensive, gated mansion community in the state. But I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that he could be my sweet, beautiful, desperately poor, brooding boyfriend. The moment I sent the five-thousand-dollar quote. Z: [?] Me: [I’ve got a lot of commissions lately. Demand is high, so the price went up.] The other side stayed quiet for a long time. Just as I was debating whether I should unsend the message, he bought five quantities of my thousand-dollar listing. I let out a cold laugh. I immediately went on Amazon, bought a bunch of fifty-dollar scarves, had them shipped to my dorm with Prime delivery, and then planned to repackage and ship them to his address. Whatever, I was the one receiving these scarves in the end anyway. After placing the order, I opened iMessage. The only pinned chat at the top of my screen had a new message: [At work. Thinking of you.] I frowned. I immediately hit the FaceTime button. It rang for a long time, no one answered, and it automatically disconnected. Twenty minutes later, Silas texted: [My manager yelled at me for being on my phone. What’s up?] I replied: [Nothing, just thinking of you too.] But during those twenty minutes, I had already hopped on my bike and ridden down to the small diner where he supposedly worked. I walked in and asked the owner, “Hey Sarah, about that student I referred to you earlier—” Before I could even finish my sentence, the owner cut me off, her eyes wide with anger. “Don’t even get me started, Chloe. I only agreed to hire your friend because you were such a hard worker when you were here!” “Who knew he would get into a screaming match with a customer on his very first day!” “He was wearing some fancy watch on his wrist—a Patek Philippe or something? A customer saw it, joked around, and asked him to take it off so he could look at it. And your friend actually snapped back, ‘It’s broken, and if you drop it, you couldn’t afford to replace it!’” “Who knows if it was real or fake? If it’s fake, why couldn’t the guy look at it? And if it was real…” The owner clutched her chest in frustration. “Why the hell did you send his royal highness to work in a diner?! I think you were just trying to mess with me!” My body went cold. My voice trembled slightly. “Is he… is he still here?” “He quit on his first day!” the owner scoffed loudly. “Turned my diner completely upside down and didn’t even ask for his day’s pay.” I stood frozen in the middle of the diner. I didn’t know what to say. The night wind carried a sharp chill. It blew through my thin jacket, making me shiver violently. The owner waved her hand at me, her face full of disgust. “Just get out of here. I bet you two just did this to piss me off. Chloe, ask your conscience, did I ever treat you badly when you worked here? Unbelievable!” “I’m so sorry…” I mumbled awkwardly. On the bike ride back to campus. I scrolled through my text history with Silas. I knew he was poor. I knew he skipped meals to save money. So whenever I made a little extra cash from my scarves, I’d Venmo him a few bucks every couple of days. It wasn’t a lot, maybe twenty or thirty dollars at a time. But that was money I scraped together from my own meager living expenses, after putting every other cent toward paying off my family’s debts. When my deadbeat dad died, he left behind a mountain of loans. My mom and I busted our asses every single day just to make the monthly payments. I honestly thought Silas and I were two pathetic, freezing souls huddling together for warmth in a cruel world. Who knew I was just a toy in his little poverty-simulation game. And he was a CHEATER!!! All those other scarves I knitted for him before… they were all given to other people. As his “absolute favorite,” was I supposed to feel honored? But after the violent wave of rage passed, an icy calm washed over me. After some deep, strategic thinking, I decided this wasn’t the right time to expose him. After all, I was currently scamming five thousand dollars a week out of him. And I didn’t even have to knit the scarves myself. If Silas really just had a sick fetish for pretending to be poor and playing poverty-romance games, and I popped his bubble, he might get embarrassed, the novelty would wear off, and I wouldn’t get another dime! While he was still entertained, I needed to milk him for all he was worth. However. Was there a way to make his life miserable without actually breaking up with him? I racked my brain. Three days later. I called Silas. “Want to go on a date tomorrow?” He agreed immediately. “Sure.” My tone was sickly sweet. “Did you finish knitting my scarf? It’s been a few days, right? We haven’t seen each other because you’ve been so focused on knitting my scarf, haven’t you?” Silas paused for a second. “Yeah.” “Great. See you tomorrow.” The exact second I hung up the phone. I got an eBay notification. Z: [Are they done?] I glanced at my dorm desk. Sitting right there were the cheap scarves I had just picked up from the Amazon locker that afternoon. I left him on read. Z: [Expedite this.] [Can you deliver it tonight? Your shipping is always super fast, we must be in the same city.] Me: [That’s a little difficult.] He Venmo’d me five thousand dollars. Me: […Fine.] [Same address as usual?] Z: [Yes.] He Venmo’d me another hundred bucks: [For the Uber. You can drop it off yourself or hire a courier, I don’t care.] I picked up the Amazon scarf and inspected it. Honestly, the machine-knit quality was a little cleaner than my hand-knit stuff. Then I opened the Uber app to look for a package delivery driver. It was the middle of the night. My campus was miles away from his gated community, on the complete opposite side of the city. The app quoted me forty bucks. I gritted my teeth and hit request. No one accepted. I bumped the tip up to sixty bucks, waited another half hour, and still, no drivers took the bait. Bumping it higher would just be bad business. I threw on a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and a surgical mask. I shoved the scarf into a fancy gift box and snuck out of my dorm. The gated community was massive. Even though the security guard had been expecting me and gave me directions, I still drove in circles for twenty minutes before I finally found the right mansion. I messaged Z on eBay: [I’m here. At the front door.] I pulled my cap down lower, adjusted my sunglasses, and pinched the wire on my mask. Before leaving my dorm, I had even borrowed my roommate’s perfume and sprayed a cloud over myself. I really didn’t want him to recognize me. But as I stood on his doorstep, my mind started racing. What if he did recognize me? What kind of chaotic, disastrous scene would that be? But very quickly, reality slapped me in the face. I was overthinking. A girl wearing a designer trench coat and carrying a Prada bag walked right past me. She expertly punched a code into the electronic keypad on the front door. The heavy mahogany doors swung open. A blast of heated air hit my face, carrying the heavy bass of thumping rock music. I could see a crowd of people inside. It was wild. They were throwing a massive house party. The girl turned her head and glanced at me. Her eyes dropped to the gift box in my hands. “Delivery? Who bought it? Silas? What’s inside?” She curiously tapped the box, but didn’t dare open it herself. I didn’t answer. I was too busy staring at the scarf wrapped around her neck. She rolled her eyes, bored. “Whatever. Want me to take it inside for you?” Right at that moment. A lazy, deep voice echoed from the foyer. “Why are you standing out there? It’s freezing.” The girl and I turned our heads at the same time. Silas was leaning casually against the doorframe. His slightly long bangs were pushed back, revealing a pair of sharp, untamed, arrogant eyes. The quiet, brooding, poor boy act was completely gone. His gaze briefly flickered from the girl to the gift box in my hands. “I ordered that. Bring it in for me.” The girl let out a small “Oh” and took the box from my hands. The warm, golden light from the mansion spilled out onto the porch. Silas stood up straight, about to close the door. He casually swept his eyes over me one last time, but his gaze suddenly locked onto my sunglasses. In that single, frozen second, my heart slammed against my ribs. I had rushed out of the dorm so fast I forgot to take them off. These were the exact sunglasses Silas and I had won at a carnival game a few months ago. He raised an eyebrow, his thin lips parting slightly. “You’re the seller?” I nodded stiffly. He let out a mocking scoff, offering a casual critique: “Wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night? Take the money I just paid you and buy yourself some designer frames.” I stood frozen. After dropping that line, Silas smoothly turned around and slammed the massive door shut. Cutting off the music, the heat, and the party inside. I slowly trudged back to the streetlight, pulled off the sunglasses, and rubbed the plastic frames. The cheap plastic was fading, the color chipping off unevenly. It looked incredibly weird. When we won them at the carnival, I was so excited. I thought they looked edgy and cool. I put them on and smiled brightly at Silas, asking, “How do I look?” His ears had turned bright red, and he gave a small nod. “You look beautiful.” Because he said that, I cherished these cheap plastic sunglasses. Why did they suddenly look— So tragically pathetic and hilarious? The next morning, I walked out of my dorm building. As I approached the campus dumpsters, my hand reaching into my bag, I locked eyes with Silas. When he saw me, the corners of his mouth immediately curved upward into a sweet smile. My hand froze inside my bag. I had forgotten to throw the sunglasses away last night. I was planning to toss them in the dumpster this morning. Silas walked over and gently wrapped a scarf around my neck. The exact same Amazon scarf I had bought. “Do you like it?” he asked softly. I forced a radiant smile, pulling my empty hand out of my bag. “The stitching is flawless. I absolutely love it.” His thin lips curled into an imperceptible, satisfied smirk. “I’m glad you like it.” I let him take my hand. I couldn’t even be bothered to interrogate him about his “knitting process” or his “diner shifts” anymore. He wouldn’t feel guilty; he’d just calmly and confidently invent another lie. Silas and I went to the amusement park. Right as we lined up for the first roller coaster, we bumped into a slender, very familiar silhouette. It was the girl from last night. She was wearing her designer trench coat, carrying her Prada bag. She was staring intently in our direction. I instinctively glanced at Silas. He locked eyes with the girl and gave a barely noticeable raise of his eyebrow. The girl immediately plastered a bright smile on her face and sauntered over to us. “Silas! Is this your girlfriend?” He gave a noncommittal “Mhm.” I looked at him, my expression perfectly normal. “A friend of yours?” Silas stared at the girl for a few seconds, interlacing his fingers with mine. “Not really.” “Hey.” She pouted. “Don’t act like you don’t know me.” She tapped her chin, pretending to think. “Hmm… Silas’s family is super poor, right? So back in high school, I hired him to tutor me. I guess you could call me his former employer.” As she said this, she looked at Silas, her eyes dancing with amusement. Silas’s eyelids lazily drooped. “Employer?” “Yeah. Shouldn’t you show a little more respect to the person who used to sign your paychecks? Poor. Boy.” The girl smiled brilliantly. If I didn’t already know the truth, I probably would have felt terrible for Silas right now. Having to swallow his pride and get mocked by his arrogant former boss. But hearing it now? I just wanted to laugh in their faces. Were they seriously flirting right in front of me? “What rides are you guys hitting? Let me tag along.” The girl pulled out her phone and waved it at Silas. “I actually need someone to keep me company. I’ll pay you five hundred bucks to hang out with me today. Pretty sweet deal, right?” Silas’s face instantly went cold. He glared at her. “Stop interrupting my date with my girlfriend.” The girl looked at me. “Five hundred bucks. You’re not going to let your boyfriend make some easy money?” “Do you want to make some easy money?” I asked Silas. Silas paused for exactly two seconds. “Sure.” I fell silent. I didn’t say another word. Silas rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand, lowering his voice. “I’ll Venmo you the money later.” I just smiled. Before we got on the drop tower, the attendant reminded us to take off loose items, including scarves.

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On the night I finally won the Academy Award for Best Actress, a troll account leaked a video of me from years ago. In it, I was heavily, undeniably pregnant. The auditorium erupted into pure chaos. Every reporter in the room shoved their microphones in my face, screaming the exact same question: “Ms. Vance, who is the father of the child?!” I turned and looked at Tristan Sterling. His face was frozen in absolute shock. The man who was famous for being coldly composed and utterly unshakable had just lost his composure in public for the very first time. I turned back to the reporters, smiled gracefully, and denied it. “I don’t have a child.” Years ago, when Tristan abandoned me to save his childhood best friend, it sealed our fate. It guaranteed that he and I would never, ever have a future together. Right before I stepped out of the limo to walk the red carpet, my manager, Chloe, gave me one final, stern warning. “If you run into Savannah Hayes, pretend she doesn’t exist. Under no circumstances are you to start drama with her tonight.” I couldn’t exactly blame her. Savannah’s financial backer was Tristan Sterling. Half of the entertainment industry was owned by the Sterling family. There used to be an ugly, unspoken rule in Hollywood: If you want to be famous, you have to sleep with Tristan Sterling. It was crude, but the reality was that any woman remotely connected to Tristan saw her career skyrocket. Except for me. I was the only woman who had publicly dated Tristan Sterling, and I was the only one who almost got blacklisted from the industry because of it. Because I had offended his precious childhood friend. For six grueling years after our breakup, it didn’t matter how hard I worked. It didn’t matter how much the public praised my acting. I never won a single award. Time and time again, I was nominated just to sit in the audience and watch someone else take the trophy. It ground away all my sharp edges. I started actively avoiding Savannah. Any script she showed interest in, I would politely decline, citing “scheduling conflicts.” Maybe my silent submission finally paid off. Or maybe, since she and Tristan were finally getting married, she didn’t want the bad karma of crushing me anymore. Whatever the reason, this year, they decided to be merciful and let a Best Actress trophy slip through their fingers and into my hands. When Chloe got the inside scoop that I was winning, she almost cried. She hugged me and said, “Victoria, the dark days are finally over.” Tristan was finally willing to let me go. Even though the breakup wasn’t my fault, I knew I could never win a war against Tristan Sterling. I had surrendered a long time ago. But less than five minutes after Chloe warned me to avoid Savannah, Savannah herself intentionally invited me to walk the red carpet alongside her. The billionaire heir’s new fiancée and his notorious ex-girlfriend. Just standing next to each other was enough to break the internet with trending hashtags. I knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted to humiliate me from every possible angle. Not just because she was Tristan’s new love, but because tonight, we were wearing gowns from the exact same luxury fashion house. The difference was, she was wearing their unreleased, custom haute couture. I was wearing a piece from last year’s ready-to-wear collection. I could already picture the Twitter threads. Her fans and my haters would tear me apart, mocking me for looking cheap and outdated. But I didn’t care. I never had any intention of competing with her over clothes. And I certainly had no delusions about Tristan ever coming back to me. If she wanted to be the stunning red rose, I was perfectly fine playing the plain green leaf in the background. But my submission didn’t seem to satisfy Savannah. She leaned in, keeping her voice low. “Victoria, do you know Tristan is coming tonight?” I didn’t. From the day we broke up, Tristan and I had cut ties completely. But just hearing his name made my heart skip a painful, erratic beat. Savannah noticed. She let out a mocking little laugh. “Don’t get any ideas. He’s only here for me. It has absolutely nothing to do with you.” “I know.” Even though the Sterling family practically owned the industry, before tonight, Tristan had never attended a single Hollywood award show. Even when we were insanely in love, he had never once shown up to support me. Savannah leaned in closer. “Tristan and I are getting married soon.” I nodded, turned to her, and offered a genuine, polite smile. “Congratulations. I wish you both the best.” My reaction was probably too soft, too boring. It completely killed Savannah’s desire to keep taunting me. Or maybe she was just in a hurry to find Tristan. The second we finished walking the carpet, she ditched me and vanished into the venue. I stayed behind, posing for the photographers and answering a few standard questions. The reporters were surprisingly disciplined. Not a single one mentioned Tristan. Our relationship had been a massive, passionate spectacle, but the ending was incredibly ugly. Tristan, the other half of the relationship, only found out he had been dumped when he saw it trending on Twitter. During a red carpet interview back then, a reporter had casually asked about how things were going with Tristan. I looked straight into the camera and calmly said four words: “We broke up.” There was no warning. No explanation. Tristan called me once after that. He didn’t explain himself. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even ask why. He just asked one question to confirm: “Are you sure about this?” I softly replied, “Yes.” He was silent for one second, and then he hung up. I had fully expected him to be furious. He had been treated like a god since the day he was born. No one ever defied him. And yet, I dumped him, and he wasn’t even the first person to know. #TristanSterlingDumped trended at number one on Twitter for three straight days. Tristan never ordered his PR team to take it down. My agency, terrified of offending the Sterling family, paid a fortune to have the hashtag removed. But less than a minute after it was scrubbed, it was forced right back to the top of the trending list. That wasn’t Tristan being humiliated. That was Tristan sending me a warning. Sure enough, from that day forward, my career hit a massive, invisible brick wall. Until six years passed. Until Tristan’s anger finally faded. Until he and Savannah were about to tie the knot. The memories rushed back so vividly, making me feel slightly dizzy. The host called my name twice before I finally snapped back to reality. Everyone around me was cheering. Amidst the thunderous applause, I glanced down at the front row. Savannah was sitting there. The seat next to her was empty. There was no name tag on it, but everyone in the room knew it belonged to Tristan. He still wasn’t here. Good, I thought. It saves us both the awkwardness. But when I stepped up to the microphone to give my acceptance speech, I looked out at the audience, and there he was. Tristan was sitting perfectly straight in the front row. I hadn’t seen him in years. His aura had grown even colder, even more intimidating. The moment our eyes met, he looked at me like I was a complete stranger. There was absolutely zero emotion in his gaze. I steadied my nerves and delivered my speech smoothly and confidently. But right as I reached the middle of my speech, a massive commotion broke out in the audience. To call it whispering would be an understatement. People were trying to be discreet, but the gossip was so explosive that their voices instinctively rose in volume. A troll account had just leaked a video of me heavily pregnant. It was from six years ago, right after Tristan and I broke up. I had intended to throw myself into my work to numb the pain, but right before filming was supposed to start, I found out I was pregnant. I dropped out of the project and completely vanished from the public eye for an entire year. The video was security footage from the apartment complex I lived in at the time. I couldn’t remember what I was going outside for that day. But because I wasn’t wearing a mask, my face was captured perfectly on camera. As I practically sprinted off the stage with my Oscar, Chloe and my assistant rushed forward, trying to shield me and get me out of the venue. But it was too late. The press had already swarmed us. Cameras and microphones were shoved aggressively into my face, everyone screaming the exact same question: “Ms. Vance, who is the father of the child?!” I was completely trapped by the mob, unable to move a single inch. Not far away, Tristan sat in his chair. No reporter dared to get within ten feet of him. If Tristan and I were still dating, the press would have treated me with a lot more respect. I looked over at him. His face was a mask of absolute shock, and his fingers, resting on the armrests, were gripping the fabric so tightly his knuckles were white. He knew exactly who the father of the child was. Which was why the man famous for his unshakable composure was losing his mind in public for the first time in his life. I didn’t answer the reporters’ question directly. Instead, I smiled and offered a simple denial. “I don’t have a child.” There has probably never been an Oscar winner who fled the ceremony looking as pathetic as I did. The hem of my gown was trampled and muddy, and I had lost an earring in the chaos. A horde of reporters chased me all the way to the parking garage. It didn’t look like I had just won Best Actress; it looked like I was fleeing a warzone. Chloe and my assistant were terrified. It took them a few minutes in the safety of the SUV before they could finally speak. “Victoria, what the hell is going on? You have a kid? Is it Tristan’s? Where is the child now?” It was a lot of questions. I offered a bitter smile, not knowing which one to answer first. Chloe and my assistant hadn’t been with me from the beginning. Everything they knew about my relationship with Tristan came from internet gossip or industry rumors. When I vanished for a year, everyone assumed Tristan had blacklisted me. When I finally returned to Hollywood… The narrative shifted. People assumed I had been so heartbroken over the breakup that I took a year off to travel and heal. No one in the industry knew what actually happened during that year. Including Chloe and my assistant. Until they saw that video tonight. Just like everyone else, they assumed I had gone away to secretly give birth. One year. The timeline matched up perfectly. Chloe actually looked a little excited. “If Tristan comes looking for you because of the kid, you need to use this opportunity to get back together with him! He’ll guarantee you win every award in town for the rest of your life!” I shook my head. Chloe froze, then practically jumped out of her seat, almost hitting her head on the roof of the SUV. “Are you insane?! Are you trying to piss him off again?!” How could I possibly dare to do that? I shook my head to clarify. “There is no child.” I was pregnant once, yes. But I didn’t keep it. Chloe looked skeptical. The one-year gap was just too perfectly suspicious. She was about to press me further, but my assistant handed her an iPad. “Chloe, look at this.” “Did the negative hashtags explode? Those vulture journalists!” Chloe snatched the iPad, but after glancing at the screen, her expression turned bizarre. “What… what’s going on here?” There wasn’t a single negative trending topic about me. There wasn’t even a single unflattering photo of me fleeing the venue. Even though I had looked like an absolute disaster running out of that auditorium. This was Tristan’s doing. It was incredibly easy for him to destroy someone. It was just as easy for him to protect someone. Chloe rubbed her temples, overwhelmed. “Did you really not keep the baby? Then how are you going to explain this to Tristan?” Why did I have to explain anything to him? He didn’t love me. And he was about to marry Savannah. I knew Tristan would come looking for me. The video dropped like a bomb, and it involved a potential child. He was going to demand answers. I just didn’t expect him to show up this fast. When my SUV pulled up to my apartment building, he was already waiting outside. Standing in the darkness, his tall, imposing silhouette looked exactly the same as it did six years ago. The only difference was, six years ago, when Tristan saw me, he would open his arms and wait for me to run into them. Now, he just stood there, radiating a coldness that made it impossible to approach him. Chloe was nervous. As I got out of the car, she grabbed my arm. I turned back and smiled at her. “It’s fine. If he wanted to murder me or burn my house down, he wouldn’t do it himself.” “Fair point.” Chloe sighed, then urged me to have a calm conversation with him. “You survived the hardest years, Victoria. The future is bright. Please, don’t make your life any harder than it has to be!” I smiled and nodded. I waited until their SUV drove away before I started walking toward Tristan. My pace was calm, like I was walking up to an old friend. But I was the only one who knew that in the final two steps before reaching him, my heart rate spiked uncontrollably. I had loved him so deeply once. Because I loved him so much, when the earthquake hit, and he abandoned me without a second thought to save Savannah, I almost lost the will to live. Tristan knew exactly why I dumped him. But after the fact, he never offered a single word of explanation. Instead, because my public breakup humiliated him, he allowed the entire industry to mock and ostracize me for years. What could I do? He had the power and the money. Even today, knowing exactly who was at fault, I was still the one who had to speak first. “Mr. Sterling.” Tristan frowned, his voice low. “I’m still used to you calling me by my name.” I had called his name so many times in the past. [Tristan, we just wrapped filming! I’m coming to find you for dinner!] [Tristan, you’ve been on a business trip for a week. When are you coming back?] [Tristan, I miss you so much.] Six years had passed, yet the memory of exactly how I used to whine and confess my love to him was still crystal clear in my mind. A wave of inappropriate nostalgia washed over me, and I smiled, shaking my head. “Savannah told me you two are getting married soon. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to call you by your first name anymore. Congratulations, by the way.” “Do you honestly think I can still get married now?” Tristan replied. Even if Savannah was still willing to marry him and immediately become a stepmother… The Hayes family was extremely conscious of their public image. They definitely wouldn’t allow it now. I had ruined his life again. “I’m sorry,” I apologized quickly. “Where is the child?” Tristan finally got to the point of his visit. The child that had suddenly been exposed to the world, but that no one had ever seen. He sounded frustrated, his tone much darker than before. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant back then?” Because I didn’t know at first. By the time I found out, we had already broken up. “I didn’t want the baby to ruin things between you and Savannah.” Tristan let out a harsh, cold laugh. “You hid it for six years, and it got leaked anyway. Did it ruin things any less?” “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say besides those two words. When Tristan and I first started dating, someone warned me that Tristan liked his women obedient. But I couldn’t fake being submissive. I was young, and I thought one passionate romance would last a lifetime. Who could fake a personality for a lifetime? So, around Tristan, I was stubborn. I threw tantrums. He wasn’t great at comforting me, but he never held it against me, either. Usually, once I got the anger out of my system, I was fine. Back then, I was vibrant and passionate. I wasn’t the smooth, enduring, hollowed-out version of myself he was looking at now. He asked me again, “Where is the child?” “There is no child.” From the moment I saw the positive test, I never intended to keep it. A man who didn’t love me wouldn’t love a child I gave birth to. And I never had any desire to be a single mother. So, I had an abortion. A violent spark exploded in Tristan’s eyes, tearing through his usual dark, composed facade, finally letting me see the chaotic emotions raging underneath. He actually cared about the unborn child. That genuinely shocked me. Did he care because it was his flesh and blood? Or was it because, once upon a time, he had actually, genuinely loved me, even just a little bit? Tristan was angry. Even though we had been separated for six years, his habit of closing his eyes when he was furious hadn’t changed. I looked at him, feeling completely lost. I didn’t understand why he was angry. If anyone had the right to be angry, it was me. Right before we broke up, Tristan and I had both managed to squeeze five days out of our schedules for a romantic vacation in Mexico. But because he had casually mentioned our itinerary to Savannah, she showed up at our resort the very next day. I was obviously unhappy about it. But Savannah claimed their families were practically related, that she and Tristan had grown up together, and that they were like brother and sister. And since Tristan didn’t tell her to leave, I had no choice but to tolerate it. Who could have predicted that a massive earthquake would hit the resort the next day? I still remember it clearly. As we were trying to evacuate the hotel, I fell down a flight of concrete stairs. My thigh was severely bruised, and my ankle was badly sprained. Worst of all, I hit my head on the way down, and my vision blurred. Tristan initially tried to pick me up to carry me out, but then he heard Savannah screaming— “Tristan! Tristan, please, come save me!” “Tristan, where are you?! Help me!” Tristan looked at me for one second, then turned and ran toward Savannah’s voice. He left me right where I fell. He didn’t care if I could make it out on my own, and he didn’t seem to care if I died in that stairwell. Even later, when I publicly announced our breakup without telling him first, he never once offered a single word of explanation for why he did what he did. But tonight, Tristan asked me, “Do you want to hear an explanation?” I froze. That earthquake had become my worst nightmare. Every time I thought about it, my chest would physically tighten, and I would struggle to breathe. Two years ago, I starred in a movie that featured a massive earthquake scene. The director praised my performance to the heavens, saying he had never seen anyone act out the sheer, visceral terror of an earthquake so perfectly. I wasn’t acting. I was genuinely terrified. It took me a very long time to shake that feeling after filming wrapped. That night, I had nightmares about the past. I dreamed about being abandoned by Tristan all over again. I woke up drenched in layers of cold sweat. My mind was completely conscious, but my body was paralyzed; I physically couldn’t get out of bed. The next morning, when my assistant noticed I still wasn’t up, she forced her way into my room and found me burning up with a massive fever. She rushed me to the ER. Whether it was before I publicly dumped him or after, I never once asked Tristan for an explanation. Because I believed actions spoke infinitely louder than words. In a life-or-death situation, the person he wanted to save was Savannah. So, no matter how many times he said he loved me, those words were meaningless. But I also wanted to be free from the nightmares. Since he brought it up, I decided to listen. Tristan told me that the Hayes family originally had two children. Savannah had an older brother. He and Tristan had been best friends since childhood. When they were thirteen, the two boys snuck out to hang out in the city. But someone with a grudge against the Sterling family saw an opportunity. They tried to kidnap Tristan.

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My father had just passed away when I received a collection call from the hospital. “Family member of patient William Miller, Neurology Bed 23. You have an outstanding balance of $246,000. Please arrange payment immediately!” I froze. I turned to look at my father, lying peacefully in his casket, and a sudden surge of anger flared in my chest. I suppressed it and said, “You must be mistaken. We’ve already been discharged.” “I knew you people would try to deny it! You think you can just sneak out of the hospital without paying?!” “I’m giving you 24 hours. If you don’t pay up, see what happens!” I lost my temper. “Fine! Let’s see what happens!” …… I hung up and pulled out the itemized medical bills from before the discharge. By yesterday, my dad was already gone. In his final days, he was only receiving basic IV fluids. There were absolutely no expensive medications involved. $246,000? They really had the nerve to demand that. I scoffed and tossed the bills aside, deciding to ignore it. But the phone rang again. It was the same landline number. I didn’t answer. The phone buzzed relentlessly for fifteen minutes, followed by a text message. “William Miller, stop pretending you can’t hear me! You’re too old to be acting like this!” “You owe us money, and you think you can just walk away?!” I took a deep breath and typed out a reply. “William Miller has passed away. I am his son, Ethan Miller. The hospital bills were settled in full upon his discharge. I suggest you check your system carefully.” I only sent that message to leave a paper trail. Besides, the hospital issued the death certificate themselves. Are their systems not linked? Billing a dead man? This was absolute nonsense! To my surprise, my phone rang almost immediately after I hit send. I answered it, and a shrill female voice pierced my ear. “Ethan Miller, do you have no shame?! You’re using a death as an excuse to get out of paying?!” “Let me tell you something. If you don’t pay, we are calling the cops! You want to be a deadbeat? Fine, I’ll make you famous!” I kept my voice dangerously calm. “What is your name?” “None of your business! $246,000. Not a penny less!” She hung up on me. I didn’t hesitate to block the number. According to our family’s tradition, there’s a three-day viewing period before the funeral, where friends and relatives come to pay their respects. Hearing the commotion from my phone calls, a few relatives asked what was going on. I kept it brief, just mentioning that the hospital was calling about a bill. They didn’t press the issue. I assumed the hospital would eventually check their own system, realize the error, and drop it. Plus, I was busy organizing the funeral, so I just blocked their numbers and put my phone on silent. That evening, after all the relatives had arrived and I had settled them into their hotels, I finally returned home. That was when I saw it—over a hundred missed calls and hundreds of text messages. All from the hospital. The texts were littered with profanity. Just reading them, I could picture how rabid the person on the other end must have been. I shoved the abusive messages to the back of my mind and ignored them. But the very next morning, a friend sent me a video link. “Ethan, why aren’t you paying your bills? The hospital put you on blast! They’re calling you a deadbeat and saying they called the cops!” “You need to clear this up ASAP before it ruins your life!” When I watched the video my friend sent, my vision literally went dark. The video was filmed at the billing counter of Memorial Hospital. A woman in her thirties, wearing medical scrubs, was staring at the camera with red, teary eyes. “Ethan Miller! Your father, William Miller, was receiving treatment at our hospital, and you sneaked him out without paying his $246,000 medical bill! If you don’t pay this back, the hospital is going to make me cover the cost!” “I’m begging you! We’re all just trying to make a living. Please don’t do this to me!” She cried beautifully, looking like the ultimate victim. Then, she played an audio recording of our “phone call”: “Stop calling! My dad is dead! I’m not paying a dime, go ask his ghost for the money!” The voice was mine, but I had never said those words. It was blatantly spliced together! But the internet believed it. A tidal wave of vicious, hateful comments crashed down on me from every corner of social media. Following that, my phone practically exploded with calls from unknown numbers. I was completely doxxed. Someone even ordered funeral wreaths and had them delivered to my house. My poor dad never could have imagined that after his death, our house would be flooded with over thirty funeral wreaths—all bearing my name. When my mom saw them, all the color drained from her face. “Ethan, what is this…?” “Mom, I’ll handle it.” I called the police and preserved the evidence. Even though social media platforms often ignore these things, having a police report on file was much better than fighting alone. Especially since this malicious cyberbullying almost gave my grieving mother a heart attack. This meant war. Next, I hired a lawyer. The lawyer had clearly seen the viral video. It wasn’t until I laid out my phone records and my father’s death certificate that he finally broke his long silence. “You really got thrown under the bus here. But don’t worry. The evidence is solid and complete. She is going to lose!” “I don’t just want that billing clerk to lose. I want the hospital to lose! This is a catastrophic error in their internal system, and they’re making an innocent person take the fall. I am not backing down!” My lawyer drafted a strategy. As I walked out of the law firm, my phone buzzed endlessly. Unrecognized numbers. Whenever I picked up, it was a barrage of vile insults. I set my phone to reject all unknown callers and filtered out text messages from non-contacts. I finally got some peace, but the video was still spreading like wildfire. The second I walked into work, I saw the messages in the company Slack channel. Before I could even open my mouth to explain, HR issued a formal termination letter and publicly posted it on the company’s LinkedIn page. The internet cheered when they saw it. “Serves that deadbeat right! Now he doesn’t even have a job!” “Honestly, they shouldn’t have fired him. They should have just garnished his wages and sent it straight to the hospital. Now that he’s broke, he’s definitely not going to pay.” “Right? Where are the cops? Didn’t the hospital press charges? Why isn’t he in jail yet?” I didn’t bother reading any more comments. I marched straight to my boss’s office. When he saw me, he immediately waved his hand dismissively. “What are you still doing here? We don’t employ deadbeats!” I looked him dead in the eye. “I will prove the truth in due time. But you fired me on the spot without cause. I expect my full severance package.” He froze. “Severance? You’re a moral degenerate…” “I don’t care what you think of my morals,” I cut him off. “If I am missing a single cent of my legally mandated severance, I will sue this company into the ground. You claim to hate deadbeats so much—I suggest you don’t become one yourself.” His face turned an ugly shade of purple. I just gave him a calm smile, turned on my heel, and walked out. As I packed up my desk, the boss couldn’t resist getting the last word. “Keep acting tough! You’re never going to find a job this good again!” I scoffed. I didn’t know if I’d find a better job, but I definitely knew working for him wasn’t worth it. I didn’t have the energy to argue. As I carried my box of belongings to my car, my phone rang. It was my mom, her voice panicked and shrill. “Ethan, get back here right now! There’s a mob of reporters outside our house! Your father’s body is still in the living room! What is going on?!” My voice turned to ice. “I’m on my way. Wait for me!” By the time I pulled up to my house, a massive crowd had gathered. There were reporters, bystanders, and even a few police officers. The relatives who were inside looked at me with eyes full of resentment. “Ethan, what the hell is wrong with you? You can’t be doing this kind of shady stuff, especially not now!” “Exactly! If you owe them money, just pay it! Making this huge scene while your father’s body is still here… he won’t be able to rest in peace!” The reporters immediately swarmed me, shoving microphones in my face. “Ethan Miller, when are you going to pay back the hospital?!” “You claim your father passed away, but even if he’s gone, the bills don’t disappear. Paying your debts is a basic moral obligation!” “We’re here representing the hospital and the concerned public. Exactly when are you going to settle this debt?!” “I see you’re using the newest iPhone. You have money for a luxury phone, but no money to pay your dying father’s medical bills?” Facing their aggressive interrogation, I couldn’t help but let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Instead of asking me, why don’t you go ask the hospital? If I actually had an outstanding balance of $246,000, how on earth did the doctors allow me to discharge him?!” “Furthermore, I’d love to know how a man who was already dead managed to rack up $246,000 in medical bills in a single day!” A voice shouted from the crowd, “That’s on you to prove! If you have doubts, why don’t you go confront the hospital face-to-face?” “Yeah! You’re just sitting at home hosting a funeral to collect sympathy donations! You’re greedy and evil!” Hearing that, I was so furious I actually laughed. My mom rushed over, grabbing my arm. “Ethan, what is happening? Just stop fighting it.” “Ma’am, did you know your son is a deadbeat?” a reporter sneered. “Your family sneaked out of the hospital without paying, and now you’re forcing an innocent, working-class clerk to cover your $246,000 bill. How do you sleep at night?” My mom froze, looking at me in shock. “Ethan?” “Mom, don’t worry about it.” But my mom was in a panic. “No! Your father lived an honest life! We cannot owe this money! Just pay the hospital, hurry! This whole mess is because of that bill, isn’t it?” The relatives chimed in, pressuring me. “Ethan, you shouldn’t have delayed it. Just go pay them, otherwise your dad will never rest in peace.” I finally snapped. “My dad is dead! And the day after he died, the hospital somehow charged him $246,000! Who exactly was using those medications?!” My roar silenced the entire crowd. The reporters stared at me, stunned. “What did you just say?” “You don’t believe me? Fine! Let’s go! We’re taking my dad’s casket and his death certificate, and we are going straight to the hospital! We’ll confront them face-to-face! Let’s see who the real shameless scammers are!” My eyes burned. I whipped around to the pallbearers I had hired. “Boys, we’ve got a job to do. Load up the casket. We are going to the hospital right now!” The men immediately jumped up. “You got it!” I had my relatives grab the funeral banners and the floral wreaths. We were taking the whole procession. When we arrived at Memorial Hospital, the Hospital Director was already waiting at the main entrance, trying to block my path. “Mr. Miller, if you’re here to have a rational discussion, we welcome you. But if you’re here to cause a medical disturbance, that’s illegal. And you absolutely cannot bring a corpse inside.” “Exactly! It’s just $246,000! You refuse to pay, and now you’re causing a riot! The cops will be here any minute to drag you all away!” The shrill, screeching voice was instantly recognizable. I knew who she was—she was the mastermind behind the cyberbullying campaign against me. Sarah Jenkins! “Where is the itemized bill for the $246,000? Show it to me. If it’s accurate, I will write a check right now!” Sarah scoffed. “Pay now? Too late! A deadbeat is a deadbeat. You know you’re caught, and now you have to pay the penalty!” “What kind of penalty?” “$246,000, plus a fine for malicious evasion! You owe us $300,000!” I laughed at her sheer, unadulterated audacity. “Fine. Forget $300,000—I’ll pay you half a million! But I demand to see the itemized bill!” Sarah sneered and violently threw a thick stack of papers right at my face! “Read it! Let’s see what kind of excuses you can spin out of this!” She stood there with her arms crossed, looking unbearably arrogant. I picked up the papers, scanned them, and immediately started laughing. I slammed the death certificate and the medical bills down on the counter right in front of them. “My father passed away on the 1st. Your own doctors signed the death certificate on that day, and I transferred his body to the funeral home.” “On the 3rd, I processed the official discharge paperwork. On the 4th, you call me and claim I owe you $246,000. Look at your own itemized bill. On the 2nd and the 3rd, there are charges for ‘Emergency Resuscitation’ and ‘Intensive Care Nursing.’ Please explain to me how a dead man was receiving emergency resuscitation?” “How did a corpse lying in my living room rack up $246,000 in emergency medical fees at your hospital?!”

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To toughen me up, my older brother forced me to hike the Appalachian Trail, completely ignoring the fact that I had severe asthma. It wasn’t long before I suffered an attack. My face turned blue, and I collapsed onto a boulder. Gasping for air, I desperately reached for my backpack to get my inhaler. But Chloe kicked my bag away, her voice dripping with annoyance. “Didn’t you just use a whole can of oxygen? Just because Liam is the expedition leader, you think you can put on a show for us?” She picked up my bag and whined toward my brother, who was walking ahead. “Liam! Maya is throwing another tantrum! I’ll just carry her bag for her, so she doesn’t waste all the effort you put into bringing her out here.” My brother stopped in the distance, looking deeply irritated. “This is embarrassing. You can’t even handle half of what Chloe does!” “You are going to crawl to camp if you have to! From now on, no one gives her any more oxygen!” My breathing grew more and more restricted, until my vision finally went black and I face-planted onto the rock. When I opened my eyes again, I realized I was floating in mid-air. I looked down and saw my own small, frail body, lying face down on the boulder. I’m sorry, Liam. I really can’t walk anymore. “Maya, get your ass up! Stop playing dead and holding everyone up!” One of the hikers, a big guy named Dave, cursed loudly and started jabbing my back hard with his trekking pole. “You are so damn stubborn, you know that? You think if you just lie there, we’re going to carry your useless weight down the mountain?!” “Your brother already gave the order! Don’t push your luck. Get up right now!” With that, he delivered another heavy jab. My corpse shifted slightly under the force of the trekking pole. Losing its balance on the uneven rock, my body tilted to the side, revealing half of my face—bloodless, cyanotic, and turning a dark, bruised purple. The other hikers stood around watching like it was a circus act, their faces full of contempt. “Maya, are you trying to win an Oscar? Because you’re putting on a hell of a performance!” “You really should go to Hollywood. This acting is top-notch!” “Look, even if the leader is your own brother, you can’t play games with everyone’s lives! The weather up here changes by the minute. If you delay the schedule, can you take responsibility for that?!” In the distance, my brother was standing with Chloe. Hearing the commotion, his brows knitted together in a deep frown, the disgust in his eyes practically overflowing. Chloe clung to his arm, her sickly-sweet voice raising in volume. “Liam, why is Maya acting like this?” “All you did was cut off her oxygen for a minute, and now she’s holding a grudge and throwing a fit against the whole team?” “She’s just too spoiled at home. She can’t handle a tiny bit of hardship.” Liam clicked his tongue in annoyance and took long, angry strides toward me. Floating in the air, I saw the rage contorting my brother’s face, and my heart still instinctively clenched in fear. Ever since our parents died in a car crash when we were kids, I had been terrified of seeing that exact expression on his face. Whenever he frowned, I wanted to rip my heart out and prove to him that I wasn’t useless, that I wasn’t inferior to the girl next door, Chloe. But right now, I was already dead. Why do dead people still feel fear? Liam marched up to my corpse, looming over me. He shot me that familiar look—the one reserved for absolute garbage. “Maya, I’m going to count to three. You will stand up immediately!” His tone was ice-cold, leaving absolutely no room for argument. “One!” The mountain wind howled, whipping the hem of my windbreaker. “Two!” Chloe chimed in. “Maya, just stop making Liam angry and get up. We all need to keep moving.” I continued to lie perfectly still on the rock, my eyes tightly shut. “Three!” The word hung in the air. When I still didn’t move a muscle, the hikers exchanged glances, clearly enjoying the drama. Liam’s fury ignited like gasoline. “Fine! Excellent! Maya, you think you’re tough now, huh?!” He grabbed the back collar of my windbreaker and yanked violently. Smack! A sharp, resounding slap landed squarely on my face. My head jerked violently to the side like a broken ragdoll, but my body remained entirely limp. Liam clearly hadn’t expected me to be completely unresponsive. His grip on my collar loosened, and I crashed heavily onto the jagged, rocky ground. The sharp stones instantly sliced my cheek open. “You…!” Liam looked at his own trembling hand, then back at me, lying there like a dead pig. The fire in his eyes burned even hotter. “Maya, you really are something else!” “You’re willing to play dead through gritted teeth just to force my hand, aren’t you?!” He was shaking with rage. “You think this little stunt is going to manipulate me? You think this is going to get you oxygen?!” “Let me tell you right now: Not a chance in hell!” Floating above, watching all of this unfold in silence, I suddenly felt the urge to cry. Liam, I’m really not faking it. And I really can’t feel the pain anymore. Ever since our parents died in that crash, Liam had been my only pillar of support. He never let anyone bully me. But everything changed the day Chloe moved in next door. The brother who used to dote on me suddenly vanished, as if Chloe was his real sister. “Liam, don’t get so worked up over Maya. It’s not good for your health.” Chloe gently blew on his palm, looking at him with exaggerated concern. “Maya, there has to be a limit to your tantrums.” She sighed, looking down at my motionless body with fake exasperation. “Everyone is out here toughing it out in sub-zero temperatures. You can’t make everyone else freeze just because you want to throw a pity party.” The other hikers started chiming in. “Jeez, kids these days really have an attitude!” “Boss, she’s your sister, but you can’t just enable her! She’s an adult, and she’s using cheap tricks to manipulate her own family?!” Liam’s face had turned a furious shade of purple. He pulled his hand away from Chloe, glaring down at me with a cold, terrifying sneer. “Maya, I’m giving you one last warning. Are you getting up or not?!” The wind shrieked. I remained as still as the rocks beneath me, not even an eyelash twitching. “Fine! Have it your way!” Blinded by rage, Liam lunged forward, reared his foot back, and delivered a vicious, brutal kick directly to my shoulder! As luck would have it, I was lying right on the edge of a steep, fifty-foot scree slope. “You want to play dead?! You want to lie down?! Then go roll down there and lie down for as long as you want! Let’s see how long you can keep this act up!” Following his furious roar, my corpse tumbled like a severed marionette, violently bouncing and rolling down the jagged slope. Crack… snap… I watched helplessly as my own body plummeted down the scree. My windbreaker was shredded by the razor-sharp rocks, and I could clearly hear the sickening sound of my ribs snapping as they slammed against the boulders. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore and turned away in the air. It must hurt so much. In the past, if I even slightly bumped my knee, Liam would nervously inspect the scrape. He would carefully blow on it, softly coaxing me: “Don’t be scared, Maya. Liam will blow on it, and the pain will go away.” But now, he just watched with cold, dead eyes as I tumbled down the slope, until my body finally wedged itself into the crevice of two massive boulders. After a brief, stunned silence, Dave leaned over the edge, looked down, and scoffed. “Wow, Maya, you really commit to the bit. I’ll give you that.” The others looked incredibly annoyed. “This is unbelievable! I’m done! We’re all carrying fifty-pound packs out here humoring your little drama. Do you have any conscience at all?” “Seriously, what does she expect? Does she want us to climb down there and formally invite her back up?!” My leg was caught in the crevice, snapped completely in half. The stark white bone had pierced straight through the fabric of my pants. If any of them had bothered to take a slightly closer look, they would have seen that I wasn’t acting. Unfortunately, they didn’t. And neither did Liam. Just then, a violent gust of wind ripped across the mountain. The sky, which had been relatively clear moments ago, rapidly darkened with the threat of an impending blizzard. The temperature plummeted instantly. “Boss, looks like a blizzard is rolling in fast!” Dave pulled the collar of his jacket tight against his neck. “Blizzards up here are no joke. We can’t afford to waste any more time!” The knot between Liam’s eyebrows deepened into a permanent fixture. He stood at the top of the slope, glaring down at my motionless body at the bottom. “Maya!” The temperature of his voice was barely warmer than the approaching storm. “I’m asking you one last time. Are you getting up?!” The only response he received was the shredded, torn fabric of my jacket fluttering in the howling wind. Liam spun around abruptly and barked an order to the team. “Everyone, gear up immediately! We are pushing for camp!” Chloe grabbed his sleeve, looking worried. “Liam, will Maya be in danger down there? It’s getting so cold…” “Danger?! She threw herself down there on purpose, what danger could she possibly be in?!” He waved his hand, cutting her off aggressively. “She’s just banking on the fact that I won’t have the guts to leave her behind! That’s why she thinks she can hold the entire team hostage!” Liam grabbed his trekking poles and marched forward without a single backward glance. “Leave her! Let’s see how long she can keep the act up! Once she realizes we’re actually gone, she’ll come crawling back up on her own!” “She’s been exactly like this since we were kids. If I don’t teach her a lesson now, she’ll never learn how the real world works!” “Move out!” The few hikers who had been hesitating quickly fell into line behind Liam, matching his brisk pace. Floating in the air, I hurried to follow them. Behind me, the snow fell like a white shroud, slowly burying my broken body. The atmosphere at the campsite, however, was a completely different story. Inside the large communal tent, the windproof stoves were roaring. Everyone was zipped into their sleeping bags, laughing, joking, and passing around rations. Liam sat near the tent entrance, his face terrifyingly dark. It had been three hours. The blizzard outside was a total whiteout; visibility was less than six feet. “Liam, eat something first.” Chloe tore open a self-heating MRE and thoughtfully handed it to him. “Maya really is something else. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and she insists on throwing a tantrum over a single can of oxygen. What if she gets frostbite?” The tiny sliver of unease in Liam’s eyes was instantly crushed. He let out a vicious, sarcastic sneer. “Frostbite? How could she possibly get frostbite?” “She has the thickest, zero-degree sleeping bag and a specialized solo tent in her pack. Right now, she’s probably hiding in a snow cave, fully fed and warm, just waiting for me to go back and beg her to join us!” His eyes hardened with absolute resolve. “I’m making this clear right now! When she comes crying back here, absolutely no one is allowed to open the tent for her!” “Only when she knows true fear and learns to behave will she finally drop this toxic, entitled attitude!” Dave swallowed a mouthful of rice and wiped his mouth. “Maya really crossed the line this time! She absolutely deserves a harsh lesson to put her in her place!” Floating near the ceiling of the tent, I didn’t even have the energy to laugh at the irony anymore. Liam. Did you completely forget? My backpack—the one with all my food, my tent, my sleeping bag, and my asthma medication… Chloe took it. Just as Liam finished his speech, and the cheerful mood in the tent was about to resume… Thump. Thump. Thump. A heavy, muffled knocking suddenly struck the outside of the tent. All conversation stopped dead. Every single person instinctively stared at the zippered entrance. Dave was the first to react, letting out a mocking laugh. “Boss, looks like you called it. Look who came crawling back.” Liam visibly relaxed. He leaned back against his pack, raised an eyebrow, and let out a cold smirk. “I told you. She doesn’t have the spine to hold out.” Chloe forced a smile and reached out toward the zipper. “Liam, the wind is so strong out there. I really think we should let Maya in now, otherwise she really will get sick…” “Leave her! Do not open that door!” Liam grabbed Chloe’s hand, pulling it back sharply. His voice suddenly spiked in volume, directed coldly at the other side of the canvas. “Maya, do you finally realize how cold it is? Do you realize you were wrong?!” “Weren’t you acting so tough earlier? Didn’t you prefer rolling down a cliff to walking with us? Why are you suddenly running back now?!” The knocking on the outside of the tent paused. The ice in Liam’s eyes thickened. “You want to come inside? Fine! Get on your knees right now, scream ‘I was wrong’ three times, and apologize to every single member of this team!” “After you scream, you will stay on your knees for another thirty minutes to clear your head! If you haven’t frozen to death after thirty minutes, then I will consider letting you inside!” “Boss, that is brilliant!” The other hikers erupted into laughter. Liam stared at the tent flap with deep satisfaction, waiting for me to drop to my knees and beg for mercy. One second. Two seconds. The outside fell into a dead, horrifying silence, broken only by the shrieking of the blizzard. When no response came, Liam’s brows knitted together again. He opened his mouth, ready to unleash another furious tirade. Riiiiiiip! The heavy-duty, windproof zipper was violently torn open from the outside. A blast of freezing, snow-filled wind roared into the tent, causing everyone inside to shudder violently. “Maya, have you lost your damn mind?! Tearing the tent…” Liam exploded in a blind rage, shooting up to his feet. But when he finally saw who was standing outside the flap, the words died in his throat. It was four or five men wearing bright orange search-and-rescue uniforms. The leader of the team had a face carved from stone. He scanned the people inside the tent, his voice heavy and somber. “Who is the expedition leader?” Liam froze. He instinctively glanced behind the rescue team, swallowed hard, and stammered. “I am… is there a problem?” The rescue leader took a deep breath, his eyes filled with profound tragedy. He spoke slowly, emphasizing every single word. “In the valley directly below the section of the trail you traversed earlier today, we recovered the body of a young woman.”

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After three years in wedding planning, I finally secured the perfect venue for my own upcoming nuptials: The Legacy Ballroom at the Grand Regency. It took months of exhausting negotiation, countless late-night pitch revisions, and draining my entire savings account just to make the non-refundable deposit. My fiancée, Chloe, had even taken a high-stress corporate job across the country just so we could save faster to build our life together. Then came Mr. Vance. He was a difficult client who had rejected five distinct wedding concepts I’d drafted for him. Suddenly, he laid eyes on my personal booking at the Legacy Ballroom and decided it was the only option. “How about you assign the venue booking to me?” he suggested nonchalantly. “I’ll pay you five times your deposit amount.” He gave me a smarmy smile. “My wife and I decided on a date that fits perfectly. I really want to surprise her.” I didn’t even have to think about it. I politely declined. The very next day, Mr. Vance showed up outside my apartment building, and he brought his wife. “That planner is utterly unreasonable, baby,” Vance grumbled, leaning against his luxury SUV. “You have to put him in his place for me!” The woman watched him dote on him with an indulgent smile. “If it’s that important to you, I’ll offer him a hundred times the deposit,” she said smoothly. “Whatever makes you happy. I’ll handle him.” She laughed softly as she stepped forward, looking up at me. Then, her smile instantly vanished. We both froze, staring at each other in total disbelief. This was Chloe. My Chloe. The woman I was supposed to marry, the one who claimed she was working 3,000 miles away because we were broke. … The panic in Chloe’s eyes lasted only a fraction of a second before she masked it perfectly. Instead of explaining, she shot me a warning look—a silent command to stay quiet. Vance, completely oblivious to the agonizing tension, pulled out a checkbook and tapped it against his palm. “Let’s be blunt,” Vance said, sliding a pen from his breast pocket. “Write down whatever number you want. I want the Legacy Ballroom.” He slipped his arm around Chloe’s waist. “My wife is picking up the tab.” I looked up, desperately searching Chloe’s eyes for a hint of guilt, remissness, anything. There was nothing. Just cold calculation. To get this booking, I had camped out outside the reservation office for three days in freezing rain. My face had actually developed mild frostbite. By some miracle, another couple had canceled, and I had grabbed the slot. I had been so ecstatic I couldn’t sleep. I spent the entire night on a video call with Chloe, dreaming together about our future wedding. Looking at her now, it was obvious she had never even opened the wedding planning shared document I sent her. She didn’t realize I chose the Legacy Ballroom because that was where we had our very first date five years ago. I didn’t take the checkbook. Chloe broke the silence, her voice devoid of emotion, framing her words with terrifying significance. “Are you in a rush to get married?” I didn’t know who was asking that question. Chloe Vance, the wealthy wife? Or Chloe, my fiancée? But she, of all people, should know the answer. My family had been pressuring me to get married for five years. Every single time, I had offered a strained smile and told them, “There’s no rush. We’ll get married when we save enough money.” But the anxiety kept me awake at night. I hid my desperation from her because I didn’t want to add stress to her high-powered job. And now… I let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Actually, there’s no rush at all.” Chloe’s expression flickered, becoming complicated. Vance, however, beamed and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Good,” Vance said, scrawling a number on the check that I had never imagined seeing on a single piece of paper: One Million Dollars. “Take it,” he said, ripping the check out and shoving it toward me. “Don’t worry about it. I spend more than this on a business dinner.” “My wife and I spent millions on our reception, but after seeing the venue options, we decided the Legacy Ballroom is the only place suitable for us.” Vance looked me up and down, a sneer forming. “Listen, buddy, if you don’t have the cash, don’t pretend you do. Find a nice little diner for your wedding. That seems more your speed.” I was wearing a suit jacket from three years ago. It clashed violently with the luxury designer brands covering both of them. But Chloe had given me this jacket. It was the only “expensive” birthday gift she had ever bought me. Chloe lightly pulled Vance’s arm, and he snapped out of his arrogance. “Right. I’m pretty direct, don’t take it personally.” “Here,” he said, handing me a heavy, gold-embossed business card. “This is my wife’s card. We still need to discuss the details for the bride’s gown revisions.” The card read: [CEO, Sterling Group: Chloe Vance.] The Chloe I knew would wear the same T-shirt until it faded to white and cut her own hair to save twenty bucks. I realized now that every time I excitedly showed her the hundred-dollar gift cards clients gave me as bonuses, she must have been secretly laughing at me. I watched them walk away, their bodies close, their intimacy natural. I closed my eyes. Five years of long-distance. working night and day, sacrificing everything to save money… only to find out I was planning her wedding to someone else. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. A message from Chloe: [Meet my assistant at the villa later. We need to talk.] The bitter resentment bottled in my chest exploded. I started typing furiously, sending message after message. [Why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you ever tell me you were married?] [What am I to you?] But my messages vanished into a void. They remained “Delivered,” but never “Read.” Chloe’s assistant ushered me into a luxury sedan, driving us to a remote, gated community on the outskirts of the city. “This is a property the Sterling family owns, Mr. Vance doesn’t know about it,” the assistant said coldly. “Wait for Ms. Sterling here.” Sterling. Her maiden name. The servants surrounding the estate shot me looks of open amusement and disdain. As if the word “Mistress” was tattooed across my forehead. Except, I was a man. I walked into the massive villa, feeling utterly lost. Everything here was alien. Chloe had told me she lived in a small, rented apartment. In reality, just one of her spare properties was a palace. Meanwhile, I had spent five years living in a leaky, drafty basement apartment just to save an extra $300 a month on rent for our future. Seeing Chloe Sterling’s marriage certificate to Mr. Vance displayed prominently on the nightstand crushed my final defensive line. The date they signed the license… was the day my father passed away. I had called her that day, helpless and broken, needing her support. She had told me, “Work is insane, I can’t leave right now.” That lie had stripped away my last source of strength. In reality, that day was her joyous wedding day. Chloe pushed the door open, linking her arm through mine just as she always used to. “Ethan, he’s my childhood friend. It was an arranged marriage. I had no choice.” “I know you’re understanding. Can you forgive me?” I couldn’t take it anymore. I violently pushed her away, my eyes burning with rage and betrayal. “Then what was our five years together? What am I to you?” “I’m a bitch,” Chloe answered instantly, her voice decisive. “That’s why I want to make it up to you. You can live here. Vance never comes here, as long as you keep a low profile.” I looked around the room, staring at everything that didn’t belong to me, and laughed. I had waited for her faithfully for five years. And the only position she had for me in her life now was “Side Piece.” Suddenly, there was a commotion outside the door. “Sir…” Vance stood in the doorway, his face twisted in utter shock. He marched forward and, before I could react, planted a brutal punch squarely on my jaw. “I knew that perfume on her smelled familiar!” he roared. “I didn’t expect it to be the Side Piece trying to screw my wife!” Chloe panicked, stepping in front of me to shield me. “Let me explain…” Vance pushed her aside with brute force. He grabbed the collar of my jacket and started violently dragging me toward the hallway. “Get out! Get the hell out!” I struggled desperately, but my foot slipped on the polished marble floor. I tumbled headfirst down the massive spiral staircase. My blood-curdling screams echoed through the entire villa. As Chloe scrambled to run down the stairs after me, Vance suddenly clutched his head in apparent agony. “Chloe, my head… it hurts…” With just that one sentence, Chloe completely forgot about me. She linked her arm through Vance’s to support him and stepped directly over my broken body. I felt like every bone in my body was shattered. I lay in a pool of my own blood, consumed by utter despair. No matter how hard I yelled, how loud I screamed her name, Chloe never looked back. Not once. I begged the servants for help, but they twisted their heads away in disgust, muttering words like “homewrecker” and “Side Piece.” The fantasy I had cherished for five long years collapsed completely in that moment. My mouth was covered in blood. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to crawl up. I dialed a dusty, forgotten international number. “You said you’d always have a position for me. Does that still stand?” The second I hung up the phone, I received a notification from the hospital. Chapter 2 When I rushed to the hospital, my mother was lying in the intensive care unit, breathing her last breaths. “Ethan Miller, why would you become a homewrecker…?” I was paralyzed with shock. “Mom, listen to me…” But before I could even start to explain, my mother turned her head away in absolute disappointment, refusing to listen to another word. As she was wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery, I finally realized what was happening. Her phone was in the basket of her belongings, publicly broadcasting a news alert. Vance had posted their marriage certificate online, publicly accusing me of being the Side Piece who destroyed his family. Countless hateful terms like “trash man” and “homewrecker” flashed across the screen. The violent rage and heartbreak overwhelmed my system, and I collapsed into a sea of pain. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a hospital bed myself. Chloe was sitting by my bedside. She had massive dark circles under her eyes, looking utterly exhausted. But her eyes held no sympathy. They held threats. “Post an apology to Vance on social media.” “Vance said that if you’re willing to swallow your pride, he’ll turn a blind eye to us in the future.” I froze. Every drop of blood in my body felt like it was flowing backward. She had deceived me for five years, and now I was the one who had to take the responsibility for her mess? Tears exploded from my eyes. Rage ground out three words from between my gritted teeth: “In your dreams!” Before the words even finished leaving my lips, she silently pulled out a thick stack of my mother’s medical bills from over the years. “You’ve probably figured it out by now. I’m the one who has been paying for your mother’s treatments all this time.” “If you don’t agree, I can always choose to stop paying.” I looked up at her, utterly broken. Once, Chloe Sterling had sworn to me that no matter how hard life got, as long as she was around, I would never have to worry about money. She said she would do everything in her power to give me the best life possible. But that was before. Staring at the mountain of bills on the nightstand, I gave a numb nod. The moment I posted the statement online, a tidal wave of abuse flooded my phone. I didn’t dare open the notifications. I didn’t dare leave my apartment. People actually mailed razor blades and dead rats to my address. Until my wedding planning business app started blasting an emergency alert. When I rushed to the shop, a bucket of red paint hit me squarely in the face. “You shameless bitch! A Side Piece is all you’ll ever be!” “Mr. Vance had a severe depression episode and almost overdosed on sleeping pills because of you!” “You used your wedding planning job to seduce another woman’s wife!” In the blink of an eye, the business I had dedicated my life to building was completely annihilated. “Stop! Stop it!” Just as the crowd was about to get even more violent, Vance appeared. His hair was messy, and his eyes were bloodshot. “You knew our wedding was coming up, and you deliberately threw my custom tux into the sewer.” “You can punish me, but you can’t punish my wedding…” As he spoke, he carelessly rolled up his sleeve to reveal a few fresh, self-inflicted scars on his forearm. Under the crowd’s pitying gaze, he turned to Chloe to demand justice. “Chloe, if you want to protect him, then we should just cancel the wedding. I’ll give him my spot.” My heart clenched, and I waited for her answer. At the very least, I was her boyfriend of five years who had stuck with her through thick and thin. I was the lover she had promised the rest of her life to. But the next second, Chloe Sterling turned a terrifyingly dark gaze toward me: “So your apology was just a lie, and you were still retaliating against him behind my back!” “Since you refuse to listen, I guess I have no choice but to punish you.” A horrific feeling of dread flooded my chest. Before I could react, three massive bodyguards slammed me into the ground. I felt a violent, blinding pain as they brutally snapped my fingers back. The last image of her gentle smile that I held in my mind shattered along with my bones. My guttural screams did nothing to evoke a single ounce of sympathy from her. “You’re a monster! A monster!” The bodyguards stopped their assault, only for Chloe to turn around and order: “Snap three of his fingers every single day. Do not let him leave this shop until he sincerely begs for forgiveness.” Vance smiled triumphantly as he followed her out. Right before leaving, he turned back to shoot me a look full of gloating and pure hatred. Chloe Sterling locked me inside my ruined shop. Every single day, I lived in agonizing dread, waiting for the torture to begin again. Until finally, all my fingers were broken and twisted, and both my legs had been brutally snapped. They tossed me aside like a rag doll, covered in blood and scars. I don’t know when Vance walked in. He stood over me, sneering down at my pathetic state. “How does it feel to be the Side Piece? Do you finally accept that Chloe loves me?” My heart felt like it was being pierced by a thousand sewing needles. It was exactly because Chloe loved him that she was willing to make me take the fall for being a “homewrecker” just to save him from crying. Even though I had faced reality, my heart still cracked open in sharp, exquisite pain. He mocked: “Do you honestly think that if Chloe removes your vas deferens, I’ll allow you to survive?” I whipped my head up, my expression filled with confusion. Vance’s eyes danced with immense satisfaction. He let out a condescending, arrogant laugh. “Oh, you didn’t know? While you were unconscious, Chloe Sterling had your vas deferens surgically removed.” “You’re never going to be a father, you worthless piece of trash.” The man got more and more energized as he spoke, unable to hide his gloating triumph. “The Sterling family will only have one heir.” “Because Chloe Sterling said you were just a toy she used to satisfy her sexual urges. Why on earth would you be worthy of having her children?” My mind went completely blank. I couldn’t process the words. The truth was a thousand times more brutal than anything I had imagined. Every beautiful memory of her love for me that I cherished instantly became ugly, twisted, and grotesque. Next, the man slapped a piece of paper directly onto my face: “Ethan Miller, look! You actually shocked your mother to death!” Catastrophic tinnitus exploded in my ears. Choked-off sobs began to leak from the corners of my mouth. My eyes burned with blood-red rage. I violently spat in his face. “Karma will come for you!” The man ground his teeth in fury. “You honestly think you still have a chance? I will never let that happen.” With that, a sickening, pungent scent of natural gas filled the room. By the time I realized the danger and tried to escape, Vance had already slipped out of the room and locked the heavy door from the outside. I clawed at the door until my fingernails ripped off, leaving ten horrifying streaks of blood on the wood. The next second, with a deafening BOOM, a violent tidal wave of intense heat engulfed me. My vision slowly began to blur. I felt like I was seeing that gentle memory of me wearing a suit, dropping to one knee to propose to Chloe Sterling. But that wedding… would never, ever happen. By the time Chloe Sterling received the call from the emergency responders and rushed to the scene, the horrific image before her eyes caused her to freeze in absolute terror…

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In the chaotic emergency room, the doctor looked at us with frantic urgency. “What kind of venomous snake bit her?! I need an exact species right now so we can locate the correct antivenom!” I opened my mouth to speak, but my roommate cut me off, her voice panicked and shaky. “It was a coral snake! It… it was definitely a coral snake!” The blood drained from everyone’s faces. We had just returned to our dorms after winter break. Without telling anyone, she had smuggled a highly venomous reptile into our room. The snake had escaped its enclosure and bitten our roommate, who slept on the bottom bunk. We had sprinted all the way to the hospital carrying her. A few minutes later, and she might not have made it this far. Now, the doctor desperately needed the species to administer the life-saving antivenom. But my roommate, Chloe, had always possessed a twisted sense of humor. While we were terrified and hyperventilating, she kept changing her story. She absolutely refused to tell the truth. Watching her dramatically massage her temples, pretending she couldn’t remember, my entire body shook with rage. Chloe was notorious on campus for her “pranks.” No matter the situation, she loved messing with people. She wasn’t satisfied until she pushed someone to the point of tears. When people inevitably got angry, she would just brush it off with a breezy, “I’m just messing with you. Don’t be so sensitive.” But this was life or death. This was not a joke. Mia had fallen into a deep coma after the bite. The doctors needed to confirm the snake’s species to administer the antivenom. Every passing second was a step closer to death. Sure enough, when the doctor heard Chloe’s answer, his expression turned grim. “Are you absolutely certain? I need you to confirm one more time. What kind of snake bit her?” Chloe furrowed her brows in exaggerated concentration, then slowly shook her head and crouched down on the floor. I was losing my mind. I lunged forward and grabbed her by the collar of her hoodie. “Stop messing around! Tell the doctor what kind of snake it is right now! Are you trying to kill Mia?!” Her eyes welled up with fake tears. She bit her lip and said, “It’s a cobra! It’s definitely a cobra!” My other roommates and I exchanged a look, collectively letting out a massive sigh of relief. The doctor visibly relaxed and immediately turned to the nurse, ordering her to prep the cobra antivenom. Just as the nurse was about to sprint out of the room, Chloe suddenly spoke up again. “Wait!” “I think I might be remembering it wrong… Was it actually a cobra…?” We stood there, holding the unconscious Mia, our faces turning a ghostly white. “Chloe! Stop playing games! This is a medical emergency!” “The doctor needs the exact species to give her the right medication! If you keep stalling, it’s going to be too late!” Hearing our panic, Chloe actually let out a nonchalant little laugh. “Who’s playing games? I’m just worried that if I give them the wrong name, it might actually hurt her!” “Let me think… Nope, I was right. It’s a cobra!” The commotion was drawing the attention of everyone in the ER waiting area. Whispers broke out around us. “She secretly kept a venomous snake and now she’s playing guessing games? Is she trying to commit murder?” “Joking around at a time like this… that is psychopathic.” My fingertips were trembling. Not from fear, but from an overwhelming, blinding rage. Chloe was flipping her story back and forth, casually playing Russian roulette with Mia’s life. If she stalled any longer, the neurotoxins would completely shut down Mia’s system. It would be too late. Seeing the doctor preparing to administer the medication based on her “cobra” claim, I caught a sick flash of excitement in Chloe’s eyes. A cold chill shot down my spine. I shoved my way past the gurney and blocked the doctor. “Doctor, she is intentionally messing with you! Everything she just said is a lie!” “Please, I’m begging you, ask her one more time! Make her tell the truth!” My eyes were stinging with unshed tears. Mia, lying in my arms, was ice cold. Her breathing was so shallow I could barely feel it against my skin. The doctor frowned deeply, his sharp gaze darting between me and Chloe. The triage nurse immediately sensed the bizarre dynamic. She turned to Chloe, her voice hardening into a sharp command. “I am going to ask you one last time. What is the exact species of the snake? If you are obstructing a medical emergency with a prank, I will call the police immediately!” For years, we had tolerated Chloe’s twisted pranks. We had complained to our Resident Advisor several times, but he was a spineless guy who just wanted to keep the peace. “She just likes to goof off. She doesn’t mean any harm,” he would always say. For the sake of dorm harmony, I bit my tongue and let it slide, time and time again. Until winter break ended, and she secretly smuggled a highly venomous exotic pet into our room. The snake escaped and bit Mia. By the time we found her, she was already slipping into unconsciousness. We didn’t even have time to be angry; we just picked her up and ran like maniacs to the campus hospital. And now, after barely making it to the ER, Chloe was still treating this like a game. My eyes were bloodshot, and my voice shook violently. “Please, Chloe. Mia is fading fast. Can you please just stop this?” “If you just help us save her right now, I swear I will never complain about any of your pranks ever again.” The bystanders in the ER started chiming in. “Young lady, a life is on the line. Stop playing around.” “Save the girl first! If you keep stalling, she’s not going to make it!” Listening to the chorus of criticism, Chloe just rolled her eyes, completely unfazed. “It’s not that big of a deal. I was just pulling a little prank. Why is everyone overreacting?” Seeing that the doctor’s face had turned livid and he was reaching for the phone to call campus security and the police, Chloe finally dropped the smirk. She relented, sounding deeply annoyed. “Fine, fine! I’ll stop joking!” I let out a massive sigh of relief. But then, Chloe looked around at the crowd, her eyes finally settling on us, and she slowly, casually added: “It was a coral snake. Highly venomous. I just remembered.” The doctor’s face went completely pale. Before I could even process what was happening, he shouted at the nurse to stop, physically grabbing her arm to prevent the injection of the cobra antivenom. Seeing Mia’s lips turning a bruised shade of purple, Chloe spoke up again, her tone agonizingly slow. “Jeez, why do you guys look so stressed?” “I mean, the lights were out in the dorm, it was pitch black… I didn’t get a great look at it. I was just worried that if I gave you the wrong name, it would cause a problem!” “I’m just being cautious. I need to really think about it…” “Wait, no, no. It wasn’t a coral snake. It definitely was a cobra.” After delivering that completely contradictory statement, she clutched her chest and let out a dramatic sigh, as if she had just solved a complex math problem. I thought I was going to have a stroke. Holding the dying Mia, my last shred of self-control snapped. I screamed at the top of my lungs: “Chloe! IS THIS A FUCKING GAME TO YOU?! IF YOU STALL ANY LONGER, MIA IS GOING TO DIE!” But hearing my scream, Chloe didn’t look guilty. She looked offended. “How can you talk to me like that? Aren’t we roommates? It’s not like I did it on purpose!” “Oh, so you only care about her? My feelings don’t matter at all, right?” “I knew it! You guys are always ganging up on me! You’re bullying me!” “I can’t believe you’re treating me like this! If I knew you were going to be this mean, I wouldn’t have even come!” With that, she spun around and started storming toward the ER exit. My face went white. I shoved Mia into the arms of our other roommate and sprinted after Chloe, grabbing her arm in a vice grip. “Chloe! That’s not what I meant! Mia is literally dying, I’m just panicking! I didn’t mean to yell at you.” “The hospital has every antivenom in stock. As long as you tell the doctor exactly what kind of snake it is, we can save her right now, okay?” Chloe yanked her arm away and pointed a finger aggressively in my face. “This is your fault!” “If you hadn’t been screaming and making a huge scene in the dorm, maybe I wouldn’t have been so startled and I would have seen clearly what kind of snake bit her!” “It’s just a snake bite! My snakes are usually so well-behaved…” “You know what? I bet you’re targeting me! I bet you secretly let the snake out to bite her just so you could frame me for it!” My eyes went wide. I stared at Chloe, completely incapable of comprehending the sheer delusion coming out of her mouth. When the semester first started, I saw her sitting alone in the dining hall and went out of my way to befriend her and make her feel included. But ever since she got obsessed with exotic reptiles, everything changed. She spent every day in the dorm messing with various venomous snakes, completely ignoring our unified protests and genuine fear. She would bang around with their glass enclosures in the middle of the night, totally oblivious to anyone else’s existence. For the sake of dorm peace, I tolerated it. Until a few days ago, when she smuggled a new, highly venomous snake into the room in a locked box, calling it her “newest baby.” We had gone to the RA multiple times, but he was a coward who just wanted to avoid paperwork. He did absolutely nothing. Left with no choice, we lived in constant terror, reminding her every single day to make sure the latches were secured. But she always brushed us off. Until tonight. Just after lights out, a blood-curdling scream erupted from the bottom bunk. Mia was crying hysterically, saying something had bitten her. Chloe didn’t panic. Instead, she stood by her bed, clapping her hands and laughing. “See? Isn’t my little baby so pretty?” Mia was trembling violently in agony, her face turning a ghastly white. Ultimately, it was the rest of us who practically carried Mia all the way to the campus hospital. Mia had always been frail; her immune system couldn’t handle a massive dose of neurotoxin. She lost consciousness halfway to the ER. When we arrived, my first instinct was to call 911. But the other roommates begged me not to, saying we should contact the school administration first to avoid a massive scandal. Because we desperately needed to get in touch with Mia’s parents, I swallowed my anger and called the RA instead. But I never imagined that our constant appeasement would only embolden Chloe’s psychotic behavior. Even now, with a girl dying in front of her, she was still trying to prank us, refusing to name the snake. Watching Mia’s breathing grow shallower and shallower, the tears poured down my face. The triage nurse looked heartbroken, but medical protocol dictated they had to know the exact venom type before administering the serum. A mistake could be instantly fatal. I clutched Mia, sobbing as I begged Chloe. “Chloe, please, I am begging you, stop the prank. If we wait any longer, Mia is going to die. She’s your roommate!” The other roommate, her eyes red, chimed in softly. “Please. We’re begging you.” But Chloe just flashed her signature, infuriating smirk. “Ugh, relax! Stop rushing me. The more you rush me, the more nervous I get, and the harder it is to remember…” She turned and looked me right in the eye. “Victoria, I know you’re stressed, but you need to chill.” Saying that seemed to genuinely amuse her, and she let out a loud, bubbly giggle. I stared at her, suppressing a volcanic rage. “Chloe, if you intentionally give the doctor the wrong species, you are actively delaying life-saving treatment. You will be legally responsible.” Hearing that, Chloe finally shut her mouth. But her eyes were full of spiteful resentment at being called out. The ER doctor, finally understanding the twisted dynamic at play, spoke with cold authority. “Since the species is unconfirmed, we will proceed with broad-spectrum emergency stabilization. Please clear the doorway…” I let out a massive sigh of relief and nodded gratefully at the doctor, preparing to help wheel Mia’s gurney into the trauma bay. Just as the wheels started moving, Chloe suddenly shouted: “Wait! I remember!” “It’s the new snake I got today! It must have slipped out of the transport box!” She held up her phone, her eyes darting nervously but her posture projecting absolute confidence. “I’ll just pull up my order history right now! The receipt will say exactly what species it is!” Outside the trauma bay doors. Chloe stood frozen in place, holding her phone up, swiping aimlessly at the screen, putting on a highly theatrical show of searching for an email. First she claimed her phone was lagging. Then she claimed the hospital Wi-Fi was blocking the site. She dragged this agonizing performance out for nearly ten minutes before finally shoving the screen in our direction. “See? Found it… I told you guys to stop rushing me…” The screen did indeed show an exotic pet retailer’s confirmation page. The people standing nearby naturally leaned in to look, and their faces instantly contorted in shock. “Oh my god! That is an incredibly lethal species! This is insane!” “And we were actually feeling sorry for her earlier! She literally caused this entire nightmare herself!” Chloe’s face twisted into an ugly scowl. “I’m an exotic pet enthusiast. What’s the big deal if I keep a venomous snake? How does that affect any of you?” “Doctor, look, the receipt is right here! Now you know exactly what it is!” The doctor’s face darkened into a furious scowl. “Nobody move! Let me see that receipt clearly so I can authorize the correct antivenom!” I stared at the glowing screen. Something felt deeply, instinctively wrong. Sure enough, the very next second, she yanked the phone away and locked the screen. I reached out to grab the phone from her hand, but Chloe suddenly slapped her own forehead, looking incredibly annoyed. “Oh, shoot! I totally forgot! I ordered three different snakes in that shipment. Which one was the one that got out?” I was shaking with a rage so intense it felt like my blood was boiling. The dam finally broke. “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!” I screamed. “There is a limit to these sick jokes! Would it kill you to just shut your mouth and tell the truth?!” “You’re intentionally dragging this out! Why do you have to cause chaos right now?!” “If Mia dies because you stalled, I swear to God, I will never, ever let you get away with this!” Chloe seemed to finally realize that I was genuinely, dangerously furious. A flicker of panic crossed her face. “No… Victoria… I was just messing around with you guys. Why are you getting so mad?” At that moment, my other roommate finally snapped and screamed at Chloe. “Chloe! If you don’t have anything helpful to say, then shut the fuck up!” “Is this a time for jokes?! Mia was envenomated! If you delay this any longer, she is going to die!” “I… I didn’t mean to…” Chloe muttered, lowering her head under the verbal assault. But I could clearly see the defiant, unrepentant glare in her eyes. She truly, genuinely didn’t believe she had done anything wrong. But Mia’s body was growing colder by the second. I didn’t have time to entertain Chloe’s psychotic games anymore. I turned to the ER doctor, my voice hoarse and pleading. “I know your protocols require exact confirmation. I’m not trying to make your job harder.” “But if there is absolutely no way to confirm the species, is there anything else you can do? Please, just try to save her. Her breathing is almost gone. She can’t hold on much longer.” I bowed deeply at the waist, a gesture of absolute desperation. The doctor and the charge nurse exchanged a heavy look, and finally, the doctor nodded. As the nurses began rolling the gurney into the trauma bay, Chloe was still muttering in the background. “Why is everyone being so dramatic… it’s just a snake bite. Give her a shot and she’ll be fine. It’s not like people don’t get bit by snakes all the time…” I pretended she didn’t exist. I just held onto Mia’s cold hand, praying silently over and over again that she would pull through. Chloe mumbled a few more complaints, and when she realized no one was paying attention to her, she finally shut up. But right at that exact moment, the heart monitor hooked up to Mia flatlined. I watched in horror as the medical team swarmed the gurney, launching into a frantic, desperate resuscitation protocol. I was pulled to the side, forced to repeatedly review a binder of snake profiles with a toxicologist in a blind attempt to identify the species visually. As I waited for news from the trauma bay, my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. A suffocating wave of dread washed over me. I stared unblinking at the red “IN USE” light above the trauma bay doors, terrified of what it meant when it turned off. In a daze, Chloe’s voice echoed in my memory. Right before they wheeled Mia in, she had muttered: “I just couldn’t remember clearly, it’s not like I did it on purpose.” A violent shudder racked my body. Did she truly not understand that intentionally being vague in a life-or-death medical emergency was the exact same thing as murder? No! She knew exactly what she was doing. Just like she knew that keeping highly venomous reptiles in a tiny college dorm was strictly prohibited, yet she hid them under her bed anyway, completely disregarding our safety. She also knew that the moment Mia was bitten, she was racing against the clock. Yet she intentionally lied, stalled, and played games with the doctor. The realization made my chest physically ache. And then, from down the hall, I heard Chloe’s shrill, complaining voice again. “Stop trying to scare me! You hospitals just love to exaggerate everything!” “It’s just a tiny snake bite! Why are you making it sound like she has terminal cancer?!” “We’re not doing this! Wheel her back out here right now!” My stomach plummeted. I shoved through a pair of double doors and saw Chloe—who had “volunteered” to go to the billing department—throwing a massive tantrum at the payment counter. The young billing clerk looked completely overwhelmed and distressed. I sprinted over and grabbed the clerk’s arm. “Excuse me! I’m her roommate! What’s happening? Are they not working on her?!” The clerk recognized me from the ER and quickly explained: “Miss, the venom is spreading through your roommate’s system incredibly fast. The doctors ordered an immediate dose of a specialized, broad-spectrum anti-venom cocktail. But this young woman refused to authorize the charge or provide insurance info, and it caused a massive delay in the pharmacy…” Before she even finished her sentence, I felt my knees almost buckle. The months of accumulated frustration and rage detonated inside me. I spun around, my eyes blazing, and screamed at Chloe: “Chloe! If Mia dies in there, are you prepared to carry that charge for the rest of your life?!” Without waiting for her to spout another delusional excuse, I slammed my own debit card onto the counter. But when I checked my banking app, I was hundreds of dollars short. Seeing me panic, Chloe strutted over, looking incredibly smug and self-righteous. “I told you guys you were overreacting. There’s no need for all this expensive medical drama.” “Just listen to me. We’ll take her back to the dorm, let her sleep it off, and she’ll be fine. There’s no reason to throw away money on this scam.” I was shaking so hard I could barely stand. I opened my mouth to scream at her again. But then, the heavy doors of the trauma bay swung open. The lead ER physician walked out, his face utterly grim. “I am so sorry. We did everything we could.” My legs instantly gave out, and I collapsed onto the cold linoleum floor. At that exact moment, our Resident Advisor, Mr. Harris, came sprinting down the hallway, looking frantic. He saw the white sheet pulled over the gurney and let out a trembling, horrified yell: “What happened?! You said you were getting the antivenom! How is she dead?!”

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