Out of the 203 people in the company, 197 voted for me. It was the exact same number as last year. Last year, Mr. Vance called me into his office. “Chloe, Liam’s family is going through a tough financial patch. Could you take the high road and let him have this spot?” I let him have it. This year, the moment the voting results were pinned to the bulletin board, the door to Mr. Vance’s office cracked open. I didn’t wait for him to call my name. I walked right in and slapped my resignation letter onto his desk. “Mr. Vance, no need to ask me to give it up this time.” “I’m walking out on my own.” Robert Vance stared at the resignation letter like his eyes weren’t focusing properly. He actually let out a small chuckle. “Chloe, what kind of tantrum is this?” “It’s not a tantrum.” I stood across from his mahogany desk, my voice perfectly flat. “It’s a carefully considered decision.” He picked up the crisp white paper, glanced at it, and tossed it back down. “You’ve been at Apex Solutions for five years. You know exactly how well this company has treated you.” “Yeah. I know exactly how I’ve been treated.” I nodded. He probably didn’t expect me to be this calm. His smile froze for a fraction of a second before morphing into a look of deep, paternal concern. “I know you have some lingering feelings about what happened last year. But Liam really was struggling. The ten-thousand-dollar bonus that came with the Employee of the Year award meant a lot more to his livelihood.” Ten thousand dollars. He said it so casually. Last year, that “Employee of the Year” title didn’t just come with a ten-thousand-dollar check. It came with a fast-track promotion review. Liam took that spot. By the beginning of this year, he was promoted to Account Supervisor. And me? My desk was moved from a bright spot by the window all the way to the dark end of the hallway next to the supply closet. The excuse was, “We need to clear out a spacious area for the new supervisor’s open-concept workspace.” I didn’t bring any of that up. There was no point anymore. “Mr. Vance, it’s clearly stated in the letter. For personal reasons, I’m requesting to resign at the end of the month.” “A four-week notice is plenty of time for a transition.” His smile finally vanished. He leaned back in his leather chair, tapping his index finger against the desk. “Chloe, you have three major projects in the execution phase right now. The annual retainer for Harrison Corp is up for renewal next month. Walking away right now is incredibly irresponsible to the company.” “Which is why I’m giving you a four-week transition period.” “What good is four weeks? Harrison Corp only recognizes you.” When he hit the words only recognizes you, his tone suddenly grew heavy. He wasn’t complimenting me. He was warning me—you are essential, so you are not allowed to leave. I looked at him dead in the eye. “Harrison Corp recognizes Apex Solutions’ service capabilities, not me personally.” “Once the handover is complete, anyone can take over.” As the words left my mouth, even I knew it was a lie. But I simply didn’t care anymore. The sound of the door pushing open shattered the tense silence. Liam walked in carrying two cups of artisan coffee. Seeing me, he paused in surprise. “Chloe? You’re here too.” He placed one of the cups near Mr. Vance’s hand and turned to look at me. “The annual voting results just got posted. You got the highest votes again this year! Congratulations.” He smiled, showing perfectly white teeth. I knew that smile all too well. Last year, he had walked into this exact office with that exact smile to take the award right out of my hands. Back then, he had said, “Chloe, I seriously can’t thank you enough. Let me buy you dinner sometime.” That dinner never happened. Instead, the Harrison Corp account—a client I had personally cultivated for three years—was transferred to his name by Robert Vance’s pen during Liam’s very first week as supervisor. “You’re too kind, Supervisor.” I didn’t accept his congratulations. I just turned and walked toward the door. Right as I reached the threshold, I heard Mr. Vance call out from behind me. “Chloe.” I stopped. “Think carefully about this resignation.” “I told you, it’s a carefully considered decision.” “Then let me make myself perfectly clear.” His voice dropped to a threatening baritone. “During your transition period, you are not permitted to take a single project file or client contact. If you try to take anything with you…” “The legal department won’t show you any mercy.” I didn’t look back. “Don’t worry. I won’t even take an extra paperclip.” When I pushed the door open, several people in the hallway were pretending to get water from the cooler. They had all seen me walk out of the boss’s office. The gossip would spread across the entire floor in less than ten minutes. I walked back to my desk at the end of the hall and woke up my computer monitor. The potted pothos plant on my desk was something I had bought at a farmer’s market three years ago for five bucks. Now, the green vines cascaded all the way down to the floor. I gently brushed a leaf and started organizing my digital folders. My phone lit up. A text message from Amanda, my point of contact at Harrison Corp. “Hey Chloe, are you still leading the strategy meeting next week? Mr. Harrison specifically asked for you.” I stared at the message for five seconds. I didn’t reply. The first person to approach me was Brenda. The head of Human Resources. She pulled up an empty chair next to my desk, holding a matcha latte, wearing her standard-issue corporate-empathy smile. “Chloe, I heard you submitted your resignation?” “Yeah.” “Oh, sweetie, why so sudden?” She reached out and patted the back of my hand. “Is this about the voting results last year? I know you felt wronged, but Mr. Vance was just looking out for the team as a whole—” “Brenda.” I cut her off. “It has nothing to do with that. It’s just for my personal career development.” Her smile didn’t waver, but her voice dropped an octave. “Chloe, let me speak to you from the heart. You’ve been at Apex for five years, and everyone sees your hard work. The award is just a piece of paper; it doesn’t define your actual capability.” “Take the high road here. Mr. Vance remembers your sacrifices.” Take the high road. I had heard that exact phrase no less than twenty times over the last five years. During my first year, I landed the company’s very first million-dollar contract. At the year-end review, I built the pitch deck, I ran the analytics, and Robert Vance stood on stage presenting it for forty minutes. My name was third from the bottom in the “Special Thanks” slide. Brenda had patted my shoulder then and said, “Chloe, you’re young. The higher-ups see your credit. Take the high road.” My second year, I single-handedly secured the annual retainer for Harrison Corp, totaling $500,000. On the day of the contract signing, Liam was assigned to tag along with me because Mr. Vance said he needed to “learn the ropes.” When the signing photo was posted in the company Slack channel, Liam was standing dead center. I was shoved to the far edge, half of my face cropped out. Brenda said, “Chloe, it’s just a photo. Don’t be so petty.” My third year. The Employee of the Year vote. 197 votes. Brenda didn’t come to comfort me that time. She was the one who handed the plaque to Liam. “Brenda, my mind is made up.” I slid her hand off mine. “But thanks for stopping by.” She stood up, the warmth fading from her face. “Well, I hope you’ve thought this through. The job market is brutal right now. It won’t be easy out there.” I didn’t respond. Within twenty minutes of her leaving, three different waves of people visited my desk. The first was Kevin from Admin, coming to “borrow” a stapler while awkwardly fishing for gossip. The second was Sarah from Marketing, returning a phone charger she borrowed a month ago, her eyes darting everywhere but my face. The third was Liam. He pulled up a chair and sat across from me, letting out a heavy sigh. “Chloe, did I do something wrong?” I looked up at him. His brows were slightly furrowed, wearing a perfectly crafted expression of I am so confused and guilty. It was so familiar. The night the voting results came out last year, he bought the entire department bubble tea to celebrate. He specifically left me out. Later, when someone pointed it out, he texted me: “Chloe! Omg I completely forgot to order yours, my bad! Let me order you one right now?” He was always “forgetting.” He forgot to invite me to client meetings. He forgot to mention my name in project reports. He forgot to tell clients that the strategy proposals were entirely written by me. But he never, ever forgot to add one specific phrase when reporting to Mr. Vance: “I personally oversaw this project.” “You haven’t done anything wrong, Supervisor.” My tone was ice-water flat. “It has nothing to do with you. I just want a change of scenery.” “Chloe, I just took over the Harrison Corp account. There’s so much I’m not familiar with yet. If you leave now—” “There will be a highly detailed transition document.” “About that…” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Could you put in a good word for me with Mr. Harrison? Their point of contact has been giving me the cold shoulder.” I finally smiled. “Supervisor, that is your client now. You put in your own good word.” The fake smile on his face instantly cracked. He stood up awkwardly. “Right. Well, I’ll let you get back to work.” After he left, I pulled open my bottom drawer. Tucked all the way in the back was a thick brown manila envelope. Inside was a master spreadsheet of every single project I had touched over the last five years. Which proposal was written by whom, which deal was negotiated by whom, which client relationship was maintained by whom. Dates, revenue amounts, email archive reference numbers. Not a single error. I had spent three months quietly compiling this. Not for revenge. But so that when I finally walked out those doors, I would know exactly, indisputably, what my true value was. Once the news of my resignation officially spread, the atmosphere in the office subtly shifted. People who used to walk past my desk would usually nod or say hi. Now, most of them took the long way around. Like I was carrying a highly contagious disease. Only Emily, the young receptionist, secretly slipped a box of fresh strawberries onto my desk during her lunch break. “Chloe, I know these are your favorite.” She whispered it frantically and practically sprinted away, looking like a bank robber. I stared at the strawberries, my heart aching just a little. At 2:00 PM, Robert Vance sent a message in the department Slack channel: “Effective immediately, Liam will take full control of the Harrison Corp account. Chloe will assist with the transition for the next four weeks.” Assist with the transition. With four words, I was demoted from Lead Project Manager to Liam’s assistant. Five minutes later, Liam replied in the channel with a handshake emoji. Then he tagged me: “@Chloe, please compile the meeting minutes, communication logs, and pricing sheets for Harrison Corp from the last three years and have them on my desk by tomorrow.” Three years of data. Hundreds of files. He said “have them on my desk by tomorrow” with the tone of an executive ordering an unpaid intern. I didn’t reply in the public channel. I sent him a direct message: “Three years of data is a massive volume. I am following standard handover protocols. ETA is one week.” He replied instantly: “A week is too long. Mr. Vance needs it ASAP.” I didn’t reply again. I placed my phone face-down on the desk and went back to organizing my files. By the third day, things started getting ugly. At 10:00 AM, I sent my usual email to Amanda at Harrison Corp to confirm the agenda for next week’s strategy meeting. Ten minutes later, Liam marched over from his bright “supervisor workspace” and shoved his phone screen in my face. “Chloe, I just saw you emailed Harrison Corp?” “Yeah.” “From now on, all emails to Harrison Corp go through me. Just CC me.” I stared at him. His desk was the one he had stolen from me three months ago. He had even taken the aloe plant I had nurtured for two years and placed it on his new desk. “Supervisor, I am still the point of contact during this transition period. If an email needs to be sent, I will send it.” “Then could you at least run your drafts by me before you hit send?” He smiled condescendingly. “After all, I’m the one in charge now.” I didn’t say a word. I just turned back to my monitor and kept typing. That afternoon, Brenda came back. She didn’t bring a matcha latte this time, and she wasn’t smiling. “Chloe, I need to notify you of something.” She dropped a legal document onto my desk. It was a supplemental Non-Compete Agreement. “The legal department advises you to sign this. For two years post-resignation, you are prohibited from working in the same industry or contacting any active client resources.” I flipped through the document. Three pages of severe, suffocating legal jargon. The penalty clause read: In the event of a breach, the employee shall be liable for damages to the company in the amount of $100,000. One hundred thousand dollars. I had been at Apex for five years. My salary had barely bumped from $60,000 to $100,000. If I didn’t eat or pay rent for five years, I wouldn’t have enough to cover that penalty. “Brenda, there was no non-compete clause in my original employment contract.” “This is a supplemental agreement.” “Adding a restrictive covenant during an active employment term requires mutual consent.” “I don’t consent.” Her eye twitched. “Chloe, this is just a standard formality to protect the company’s interests—” “Brenda, I’m protecting my own interests.” I pushed the document back across the desk. “I’m not signing it.” She grabbed the papers and stormed off. Her footsteps were significantly heavier than when she arrived. That night, my mom called me. “Chloe, did you quit your job?” I froze. “Who told you that?” “That HR woman from your company called me. She said you’ve been under a lot of stress at work, that you’re emotionally unstable, and asked the family to talk some sense into you.” Brenda called my mother. I gripped my phone, my nails biting painfully into my palm. “Mom, I am not emotionally unstable.” “Then why did you quit?! It’s a good, stable job. Do you have any idea how bad the economy is right now?!” “Mom—” “Can’t you just endure it a little longer?” Endure it. Just like Brenda’s take the high road. The two phrases that had haunted my entire adult life. “Mom, don’t worry. I have a plan.” After hanging up, I stood on my apartment balcony for a long time. Looking down, I could see the company parking lot. Robert Vance’s black Mercedes E300 was parked in the premium reserved spot at the very back. Liam’s white Honda Accord was parked in the spot next to it—the spot that used to be mine. Last month, Admin revoked my parking pass under the guise of “Supervisor privileges.” I commute on an e-bike now. My phone lit up again. A text from Amanda. “Hey Chloe, I heard you’re leaving?! Mr. Harrison wanted me to ask if you’re free for a private lunch this week?” I stared at the message. I typed back one word: “Absolutely.” The lunch with Harrison Corp was set for Thursday. But on Wednesday afternoon, disaster struck. My work computer wouldn’t turn on. The IT guy came over, took one look, and said the hard drive was corrupted and needed to be sent out for repair. “Chloe, did you back up the files on your desktop?” I stared at the black screen, saying nothing. Five years of project files, communication logs, and strategy drafts. All of it was on that machine.

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I was seven months pregnant. After my prenatal checkup, I dozed off in the passenger seat on the ride home. But when I woke up, the baby in my belly was gone. I instantly freaked out, but my husband just smiled at me with absolute adoration. “Still half-asleep? You were never pregnant, honey. What baby?” I thought it was a sick joke and forced him to turn the car around and speed back to the hospital. But the nurses said I was there for a routine physical, not a prenatal exam. The OB-GYN shook her head and swore she had never seen me in her life. Even my own mother called me, her voice red and teary. “Sweetheart, is the stress of trying to conceive getting to you? Why don’t we go see a psychiatrist?” But just two hours ago, I had literally watched the tiny, beating heart of my child on the ultrasound monitor. How could a seven-month pregnancy just vanish into thin air like a magic trick? I refused to believe I was crazy. I called the cops, demanded security footage, and tore through the clinic’s records. There was absolutely zero trace of my pregnancy or my checkups. Everyone was convinced I had lost my mind. In a haze of heavy sedatives and utter despair, I slipped and fell from the hospital roof. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the morning of my prenatal checkup. 1 “Harper, time to get up. We can’t be late for your checkup today.” Liam’s voice floated through the bedroom door, as gentle and loving as always. I groggily opened my eyes, my hand instinctively dropping to my stomach. I froze for two seconds, then shot up in bed and yanked up my pajama shirt. It was round and heavy. The little one inside seemed to be startled by my sudden movement and gave me a sharp kick. My eyes instantly welled up with tears. In my previous life, today was the exact day Liam accompanied me to the Women’s Clinic for my seven-month checkup. After it was over, I felt incredibly drowsy and dozed off in the passenger seat. When I opened my eyes again, my stomach was completely flat. The baby was gone. My husband claimed I had never been pregnant. The nurses said I was there for a basic physical. Even my own mother told me my anxiety over getting pregnant had caused me to hallucinate. I refused to accept it. I caused a massive scene at the hospital, and eventually, security dragged me away and admitted me to a psych ward. But even as I fell from that rooftop to my death, I couldn’t understand it. How could a seven-month-old fetus, a baby I had felt moving inside me, just vanish without a trace? They all said she was a figment of my imagination. But right now, she was unequivocally resting inside my belly. I stroked my stomach, the tears silently falling down my cheeks. “What’s wrong, honey? Did you have a nightmare?” Liam leaned halfway into the room, pausing when he saw my red, teary eyes. I looked at him, my emotions an absolute tangled mess. In my previous life, he was exactly like this—gentle, considerate, the absolute best husband in the world. But after the baby disappeared, he was the one who swore I had never been pregnant, and he was the one who followed the doctor’s advice to lock me in a psychiatric facility. In this life, I didn’t know if I could trust him at all. But no matter what, until I uncovered the truth, I couldn’t tip my hand. “I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well,” I forced a tight smile. “I don’t feel like going out today. Let’s reschedule the checkup.” Liam paused, walking over to feel my forehead. “Are you feeling sick?” “Just really exhausted.” “Alright then. I’ll call the clinic and push it back three days,” he said, looking down at his phone. “That specialist is in the office on Wednesday anyway.” Watching his profile, my mind raced. In this life, if I just hid at home and refused to go to the clinic, would my baby be safe? But how long could I hide? I had to figure out exactly what happened in my previous life. Why did every single person swear I was never pregnant? I closed my eyes, pressing my palm against my skin, feeling the subtle movements of the little life inside me. It’s not a hallucination. I had three days to uncover the truth. The first day, I found nothing out of the ordinary. All I could do was take photos of every single prenatal medical record I had accumulated over the past seven months and back them up to a secure cloud drive. I remembered that in my past life, when I frantically searched the house for my old ultrasound printouts, they were all gone. Even the hospital’s security cameras magically had no record of me. But I still felt paranoid, so I booked a last-minute maternity photoshoot at a local portrait studio. During the shoot, I paid the assistants extra to take a ton of behind-the-scenes videos on my phone, clearly documenting me walking around with a massive baby bump. Only then did my anxiety ease slightly. Next, I called my mom. “Mom, I’m really craving your homemade lasagna.” “Of course, sweetie! I’ll make a huge batch and bring it over. You’re eating for two now, you need the calories.” “Mom, do you remember how many months pregnant I am right now?” “Seven months, Harper. How could your own mother forget that?” I recorded that entire conversation. In my past life, my mother had looked a police officer dead in the eye and told him I was never pregnant. In this life, no matter what crazy tricks they pulled, these audio files weren’t going to just vanish. The day of the rescheduled checkup arrived. Liam went to the billing counter to handle the copay, leaving me sitting on a bench in the waiting area. A nurse in standard pink scrubs walked over. Seeing my belly, she offered a warm smile. “Carrying high and pointy like that, I’d bet money it’s a boy.” Liam returned just in time to hear her and chimed in smoothly. “Boy or girl, I don’t care. If it’s a boy, we’ll protect his mom together. If it’s a girl, I’ll protect both my girls.” The nurse covered her mouth and giggled. “Oh my, your husband is so sweet.” I couldn’t bring myself to smile. I remembered this nurse. In my past life, she had said those exact same words: Carrying high and pointy, I’d bet money it’s a boy. But later, when I tore through the hospital looking for her, she had stared at me with wide, innocent eyes. “Ma’am, are you confused? You were here for a routine physical, not a prenatal exam.” This time, I had quietly opened the voice memo app on my phone and recorded her every word. The examination room was on the third floor. The OB-GYN doing my ultrasound was a middle-aged woman in her early forties with a gentle demeanor. Dr. Evans. In my past life, she was the one who examined me too. When the baby disappeared and I charged into her office demanding answers, she had looked completely bewildered. “Ma’am, I have never seen you before in my life. Are you sure you have the right doctor?” But my memory was crystal clear. It was her. I stared at her face. She was looking down, adjusting the monitor, completely oblivious to my intense glare. “Alright, go ahead and lay back. Lift your shirt for me.” I lay down. The cold gel hit my skin, and the probe slid across my stomach. The familiar, tiny silhouette appeared on the screen. “Developing beautifully,” Dr. Evans said. “The head circumference is slightly above average. Just keep an eye on your sugar intake so the baby doesn’t get too big for delivery.” I stared at the monitor, my eyes tearing up again. “Dr. Evans, could I take a quick picture with you?” She paused, surprised. I quickly added, “First-time mom. I just really want to document the journey.” She smiled warmly. “Of course. Go ahead.” I pulled out my phone, switched to the front camera, and leaned in close. Click. I looked down at the photo. Dr. Evans’s face, my face, and the ultrasound monitor clearly showing the baby in the background. It was all there. Crystal clear. Let’s see you try to deny this in this life, I thought fiercely. Walking out of the exam room, I purposely tracked down that nurse. “Nurse Rachel, could we grab a quick picture?” I held up my phone. “I’m making a pregnancy vlog for the baby.” Rachel was incredibly accommodating. “Where’s your husband? Let’s have him take a full-body shot of us.” Liam was pulled over, and he snapped several photos of Rachel and me. In every single photo, my massive baby bump was front and center. “Why are you so hyper today?” Liam asked with a chuckle. I put my phone in my purse. “First pregnancy, remember? I just want to make a lot of memories.” In reality, I wanted to make a lot of evidence. This time, I had photos, videos, audio recordings, and multiple witnesses. I refused to believe they could pull off whatever they did last time. Walking out of the hospital, Liam helped me into the passenger seat. “Tired? Take a quick nap. I’ll wake you when we get home.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to go home. I want to go to that famous brunch spot downtown.” He paused, then smiled. “Alright. Whatever the queen wants.” In my past life, I had fallen asleep in the car on the way home. When I woke up, my child was gone. This time, I absolutely refused to sleep. And I needed to be somewhere packed with people! The diner wasn’t far from the hospital. We got there in twenty minutes. But there was a massive crowd waiting outside. “Want to go somewhere else?” Liam asked. “No. I want this place.” I waddled over to the crowded waiting area and sat down. Liam offered a helpless smile and went to the host stand to put our name in. The waiting area was packed. A waitress carrying a tray walked over. “Ma’am, please have some crackers while you wait. We can’t have our expecting mothers going hungry.” She handed me a small bag of artisan crackers. I thanked her, feeling a wave of relief wash over me. With so many people watching, nothing could possibly happen to me here, right? I leaned back against the bench, watching the bustling crowd, but my eyelids started to feel incredibly heavy. I had barely slept the night before. Now, sitting in the warm, cozy waiting area, waves of unnatural exhaustion began crashing over me. I fought desperately to keep my eyes open, but my vision rapidly blurred into darkness. … “Harper?” Someone was shaking my shoulder. I jolted awake. My very first instinct was to grab my stomach. It was flat. I froze, and frantically felt it again. Flat. I violently yanked up my sweater. My stomach was completely smooth and flat. “What’s wrong?” Liam crouched in front of me, looking deeply confused. I opened my mouth, my voice trembling violently. “The baby is gone…” “What?” “The baby is gone!” I pointed at my stomach, screaming. “My seven-month-old baby is gone!” Liam froze for a second, then let out a soft chuckle. “Harper, are you still half-asleep? Since when were you ever pregnant?” I stared at him, my eyes wide with terror, and shrieked: “What do you mean?! We literally just left the prenatal clinic!” Liam frowned slightly, looking genuinely concerned. “Honey, we did go to the hospital today, but it wasn’t for a prenatal exam. You had a routine physical.” Those exact words again. My entire body began to shake. I stumbled out of my chair and lunged at the waitress who had given me the crackers, grabbing her arm. “Earlier! You said I was an expecting mother and gave me crackers so I wouldn’t go hungry! Do you remember?!” The waitress looked terrified. “Ma’am, what are you talking about? We don’t even serve crackers here.” I stood there, paralyzed. Then I frantically dug into my purse, pulled out my phone, and opened my photo gallery. The selfies with Dr. Evans and Nurse Rachel… they were all gone. Refusing to give up, I opened Facebook. Yesterday, after the maternity shoot, I had posted the behind-the-scenes videos. Dozens of friends and coworkers had liked and commented on it. But that post had vanished completely from my timeline. “Impossible…” My trembling fingers kept scrolling. Liam walked over and gently squeezed my shoulders. “Harper, you’ve been under so much stress trying to conceive. You’re having hallucinations.” I violently slapped his hands away and sprinted out of the diner. I had to go back to the hospital. I had to find that doctor, and that nurse. They had to remember me. When I burst through the clinic doors, Nurse Rachel was taking a pregnant woman’s blood pressure. I grabbed her arm. “Nurse Rachel! Do you remember me?!” Rachel jumped, looking at me in utter bewilderment. “Ma’am, do you have the wrong person?” “How could I have the wrong person?! You literally took photos with me this morning!” Rachel thought for a second, then shook her head, cutting me off. “I’ve been working the inpatient ward all morning. I wasn’t even in the outpatient clinic. Were you here for a prenatal exam?” I froze. “Then what about the female doctor who did my ultrasound?!” Rachel flipped through the clipboard on the desk. “All the attending ultrasound technicians on duty today are male. There are no female doctors on shift.” My brain exploded with a deafening ringing sound. A pregnant woman sitting nearby muttered to her husband, “Is she mentally ill?” “Probably drove herself crazy trying to get pregnant. My cousin did the same thing. Tried for three years, ended up having phantom pregnancies and hallucinating babies…” “Seriously, look at her stomach. It’s completely flat. Who is she trying to fool…” I ran into the hospital bathroom like a madwoman, lifted my shirt in front of the mirror, and stared at my stomach. Smooth. Flat. As if I had never been pregnant a day in my life. I slid down the wall of the bathroom stall, collapsing onto the tile floor. My mind was completely blank. No. This is wrong. I must have missed something. My phone rang. It was my mom. I scrambled to answer it. “Harper, did you get the lasagna I dropped off?” I opened my mouth, a desperate spark of hope igniting in my chest. “Mom… do you remember that I’m pregnant?” The line was silent for two seconds. Her voice came back laced with pure confusion. “Pregnant? Haven’t you and Liam been trying for over a year with no luck?” My hand gripping the phone began to shake violently. “Mom, I literally sent you my maternity photoshoot videos yesterday. Did you forget?!” My mom sounded even more confused. “No you didn’t, sweetie. You just called me saying you were craving lasagna. That’s all.” I opened my text messages. The videos in our chat history were gone. My mom’s voice filled with deep concern. “Harper, are you overworking yourself? Don’t put so much pressure on yourself, honey. A baby will come when the time is right…” Sitting on the cold bathroom floor, an icy chill seeped into my bones. Was I doomed to repeat this nightmare? Was I trapped in this impossible loop forever? No. I refuse to be a sitting duck! I splashed cold water on my face and marched out of the bathroom. I immediately heard a commotion down the hall. “That’s her. She’s the one harassing the staff…” “Call security. She’s clearly having a psychotic break…” I looked down the corridor. A crowd had formed outside the OB-GYN clinic. In the center, Liam was explaining something to a nurse. When he saw me, he rushed over. “Harper, where did you go? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” I stared at him. This man. We had been married for five years, and he had always been loving and perfect. Right now, his eyes were filled with nothing but profound worry and heartbreak. I stared dead into his pupils. “Liam, do you really not remember taking me for my prenatal checkup today?” Liam sighed heavily, reaching out to hold my hand. “Honey, let’s go home first. You need to rest, okay?” “Answer the question!” He paused, his eyes darting away for a fraction of a second. “Harper. You were never pregnant.” I closed my eyes. There it is. “Ma’am, please stop disrupting hospital operations.” Two security guards approached me. “We received a complaint that you are harassing medical staff. Please cooperate and leave the premises.” I took a step back. The hallway was full of people staring at me, whispering loudly. “What a shame. She’s so pretty, but completely out of her mind…” “I’ve seen cases like this. They all end up in a straightjacket…” “Her poor husband…” Liam stepped in front of me, speaking to the guards. “I am so sorry. My wife has been under extreme psychological stress lately. I’ll take her home right now.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the exit. I followed mechanically, my brain totally numb. But right at that moment, I caught a glimpse of the digital calendar hanging on the lobby wall. I stopped dead in my tracks, grabbed the arm of a passing nurse, and asked, my voice trembling violently: “Is… is the date on that clock correct?” The nurse was startled by my intensity but answered anyway. “Yeah, it’s correct. Why?” So that was it! I finally understood why my baby was gone, and why there was absolutely zero trace of my pregnancy!

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While eating dinner, I was scrolling through Reddit and stumbled upon a trending post in a relationship advice forum: [Help! It’s our second year of marriage, and my wife is demanding we spend Christmas at her parents’ house this year. I don’t want to go, but I can’t flat-out refuse. How do I make her drop the idea?] The top comment read: [That’s easy, man. Pick a fight with her over something stupid, then give her the silent treatment. Ignore her completely. Once the holidays are over, break the ice, apologize, and it’s all water under the bridge. Trust me, once you initiate the cold war, not only do you get out of the dreaded in-law visit, but you also get a few weeks of sweet, bachelor-like freedom. It’s glorious!] The original poster expressed some doubt: [Does that actually work? What if she gets so mad she asks for a divorce?] The top commenter replied, practically dripping with smugness: [You’re overthinking it! I’ve been married for ten years, and I do this every single year. My wife still takes it like a champ. Hang on, let me show you how it’s done. My wife just brought up the whole ‘going home for Christmas’ thing a couple of days ago. I’m going to go pick a fight right now!] I was thoroughly disgusted by these two toxic, arrogant jerks and was just about to type out a scathing reply. When suddenly, my husband, sitting right across the table from me, violently slammed his bowl down. 1. Ryan’s sudden outburst startled me and terrified our three-year-old daughter, Lily, who was quietly eating her dinner. I frowned at him. “What is your problem? Why are you slamming dishes?” “What is my problem?!” Ryan suddenly raised his voice, glaring at me. “You’re asking me what my problem is?!” He pointed a harsh finger at the plate of shrimp scampi on the table, then poked me hard in the forehead. “How many times have I told you I don’t eat garlic?! Are you completely brain-dead? What the hell did you put in the scampi?!” I looked at him like he had lost his mind. Was he sick? I used shallots. What did that have to do with garlic? Without thinking, I slapped his hand away and shoved the plate of scampi right in front of his face. “Can you open your damn eyes and look? Where in this dish do you see garlic???” “No garlic?!” Ryan reached in and pulled out a small, translucent slice of shallot. “Then tell me, what the hell is this?!” “That’s a shallot! You’ve eaten it a million times before! Why are you picking a fight over nothing…” Suddenly, the Reddit post I had just read flashed into my mind. My voice abruptly cut off. Married for ten years… If I remembered correctly, today was exactly my ten-year anniversary with Ryan. It couldn’t be… that much of a coincidence, right? Seeing me go quiet, Ryan acted even more self-righteous. “Have I or have I not told you that shallots and garlic are in the same family?! They both reek! I am a person who hates garlic, and just looking at a shallot makes me lose my appetite! Do you ever actually care about my preferences?! “And did you forget what day it is? It’s our ten-year anniversary, and you just threw together two pathetic dishes to humor me? God, you’re so lazy it’s a miracle you’re still breathing!” The more he spoke, the more fired up he got. With a loud crash, he dumped the entire plate of shrimp scampi straight into the trash can. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I swear I saw a flicker of provocation in his eyes. No matter how good my temper was, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I slammed my hands on the table and stood up. “Ryan, are you out of your mind?! I’ve made this exact scampi recipe dozens of times! You never made a peep before, and now you’re bitching about it?! “You’re just looking for a reason to start a fight!” 2. Perhaps because I hit the nail on the head, a flash of guilt crossed Ryan’s face. Then, he stiffened his neck and yelled back. “I’m not picking a fight! Before, I just held it in because I didn’t want to ruin our relationship! But everyone has a breaking point! You putting shallots in the food over and over again is just you trying to disgust me! You don’t want me to enjoy a single meal in peace!” I stared at Ryan’s twisted, defensive face, my chest aching with fury. Three-year-old Lily looked at me, then at Ryan. Sensing the hostile atmosphere, her little lips trembled, and she burst into loud wails. Hearing her cry, I lost all desire to argue with Ryan. I swallowed my rage, turned around, and picked up my daughter, gently patting her back. “Shh, baby, don’t cry. Mommy’s right here.” But Ryan didn’t care. He kept rambling and complaining, even directing his anger at Lily. “Cry, cry, cry! All she knows how to do is cry! She’s like a bad omen, crying away all the good luck in this house!” Lily, who had just started to calm down, wailed even louder at his harsh words. I could no longer suppress the inferno of my anger. I grabbed the edge of the tablecloth and violently yanked it, sending the rest of the dinner crashing to the floor. “Ryan, if you want to act like a lunatic, go do it outside! Don’t you dare take it out on my child! “If you hate my cooking so much, then don’t eat! Get the hell out of my house right now!” Perhaps he didn’t expect me—usually so mild-mannered—to react so fiercely. Ryan froze for a few seconds before his face turned red with humiliation and rage. “Fine! You’ve got guts! I’m done eating! And don’t even think about me going to your parents’ house for Christmas this year!” The moment that last sentence left his mouth, I was almost certain. The top commenter on that Reddit post was Ryan. I looked at him with a cold sneer. “Ryan, that was your real goal all along, wasn’t it?” Caught off guard, a trace of panic flashed across his face. He muttered “Psycho,” before fleeing down the hall and slamming the bedroom door shut. That deafening slam made my heart tremble. My daughter cried even harder in my arms. I held her tightly, whispering soothing words, but my own tears uncontrollably spilled down my cheeks. Half an hour later, Lily finally cried herself to sleep. I gently laid her on her bed and leaned exhaustedly against the headboard. From the room next door, I heard the distinct, upbeat chime of his PlayStation booting up. Driven by a morbid curiosity, I pulled out my phone and reopened that Reddit thread. 3. The top commenter, whose username was R_Mitch88, had posted several updates just ten minutes ago. [Alright man, mission accomplished. How are you doing?] The OP replied instantly: [Whoa, that was fast! Bro, what excuse did you use? Teach me! I’ve been thinking for an hour and I still don’t know how to start a fake fight…] R_Mitch88: [Bro, you’re clearly too much of a nice guy. Starting a fight is easy! Just grab onto any random excuse and go off!] [After reading your post, I remembered today is actually our 10-year anniversary. I usually don’t care about these pointless holidays, but to pick a fight, I purposely nitpicked the dinner she cooked. I threw a fit, smashed some dishes, dumped the food in the trash, and ripped into her.] [Now she’s successfully enraged. I used the excuse to lock myself in the guest room, and I’m about to hop into a Warzone lobby with the boys. Happy holidays to me!] [Knowing how women work, she’s definitely in her room crying her eyes out right now, just waiting for me to apologize. But that’s exactly what we want! I’ll just give her the cold shoulder until Christmas is over. Hehehe. Use this trick, bro. I swear by it. Successfully dodged another miserable Christmas with her family. I’m thrilled!] The OP replied with a thumbs-up emoji. But as I read it, my heart turned entirely to ice. R_Mitch88. Ryan Mitchell. My husband. The man I had shared a bed with for ten years! My brain buzzed, and memories of the past ten years suddenly flooded my mind. 4. The first year we were married, still in our honeymoon phase, I brought up wanting to take him to my parents’ house for Christmas. Without a second thought, he smiled and agreed. He even said all the right things: “It’s your first Christmas away from home since we got married. Your parents will miss you, so it’s only right we go back to celebrate with them. Let’s get some sleep, and we’ll pack our bags and head out tomorrow.” But the next morning, right before we were supposed to leave, he discovered I had accidentally washed his white dress shirt with my red sweater, turning his shirt pink. He suddenly flew into a terrifying rage, calling me as stupid as a pig, screaming that I didn’t even know basic laundry logic, and ruined his favorite shirt. It was the first time he had ever yelled at me like that. I was so hurt I locked myself in the bedroom and cried. I thought he would come comfort me quickly, but to my shock, he gave me the silent treatment. He didn’t speak a single word to me. Let alone going to my parents’ house for Christmas. I was too angry to apologize, and I was afraid of going home alone and having to explain things to my parents, so I didn’t go back either. I spent that holiday consumed by anxiety and misery. I even contemplated divorce. But right after New Year’s, when my thoughts of divorce were at their peak and I was ready to confront him, Ryan acted like nothing had happened. He came over, hugged me, and took my hand to slap his own face. “Baby, I was so wrong. I woke up that morning and saw my principal chewing me out in the faculty group chat. I was in a terrible mood, and I couldn’t help but snap at you over something so small. “You don’t know this, but the second I yelled at you, I regretted it. I’ve been consumed by guilt. I haven’t slept in days, terrified you were still mad at me.” I asked him why, if he was so guilty, he didn’t just apologize. His eyes grew red and teary. “I… I was too scared. I was afraid you wouldn’t forgive me, that you’d say something that would break my heart. Baby, you know I’d die without you! But after holding it in for so long, I was in so much pain. Today I finally found the courage to apologize. I was wrong, I was so wrong! “Hit me! I promise I will never bring my work stress home again. Please forgive me, okay?” Moved by his speech, not only did I forgive him easily, but I also felt guilty for not noticing his work stress sooner. The second year, having learned my lesson, I brought up the holiday plans two months in advance. He laughed and brushed it off. As Christmas approached, I brought it up again. This time, he claimed the school had assigned him to write a massive research paper over the break. He said he was spinning like a top, completely overwhelmed, and instead of helping him, I was nagging him with this trivial bullshit. He accused me of being inconsiderate and lazy. We entered another cold war. The third year, I got “smart.” I brought it up even earlier, and much more gently. Again, he promised we could go. But the night before we were supposed to leave, we got into a massive fight because I bought him a leather jacket. He accused me of wasting money, saying leather jackets were for thugs and that as a respected high school teacher, he couldn’t be seen wearing something like that. It ended with him slamming the door and leaving. Fourth year, fifth year… Every single year played out like a script. The triggers were endlessly creative: My cooking was too salty, my phone wasn’t on silent while scrolling TikTok, I talked on the phone with my mom for too long, I switched our daughter’s formula brand… But the destination was always the same: A long, agonizing cold war. Sometimes two weeks, sometimes a month or two. And the pathetic, brainwashed idiot that I was would always forgive him without hesitation the moment he finally lowered his head and apologized. Ten years. A full ten years. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t taken him to my parents’ house for Christmas in ten entire years! My parents had gone from eager anticipation to quiet resignation. I always thought it was just the exhaustion of marriage making us lose our patience for communication. I thought the trivial annoyances of life were eroding our warmth. I even ridiculously reflected on myself, wondering if I was truly doing something wrong to make him so angry. But it turned out, it was all a meticulously crafted performance. I had been played for a fool by the exact same cheap trick for ten consecutive years! But I couldn’t figure it out. Why was he so fiercely resistant to visiting my family? It was as if… there was something there that terrified him. With that thought, I created a burner account and replied to his comment: [Bro, I don’t get it. It’s just going to the in-laws for Christmas. Is it really worth fighting tooth and nail over? You’ve been married ten years and you purposely do this every single year? That’s insane! What, does your father-in-law’s house have some dark secret that you absolutely can’t be around?] 5. Shortly after I sent the message, I heard the sound of the PlayStation in the next room pause. Immediately after, I received his reply. [Who the hell are you? Asking so many questions, is it any of your business? Do I need to explain myself to you? Heh, there’s no deep, dark reason. I just don’t want to go, so I don’t go!] Ryan replied quickly, and his tone was aggressive. I stared at the text, the knot of suspicion in my chest growing larger. No, this was too weird. Knowing Ryan, he loved to put on a show for an audience. Especially when browsing the internet, he loved to brag and show off. But right now, his slightly rushed reply and defensive tone screamed of a guilty conscience. I refused to give up and pushed further: [Ah, don’t get mad, man! I’m just genuinely super curious! Seeing how experienced you are, you must be a master at the game. Care to give a rookie some pointers? The fact that your wife has put up with you for ten years means you have her completely under your thumb. It’s enviable!] Swallowing my disgust, I hit send. Flattered by the praise, Ryan got swept up in his own ego again: [Damn right! Let me tell you, when dealing with women, you have to be firm. If you show weakness, they’ll walk all over you!] I gritted my teeth and kept feeding his ego: [You’re so right, bro! But I still don’t get it. Going to the in-laws is just a holiday visit, why treat it like you’re going to war? Let me guess… is your father-in-law’s house in some rundown trailer park? Is the house falling apart, dirt roads, smells like farm animals, and you just find it gross?] [Stop talking out of your ass!] Ryan replied instantly. [What kind of person do you think I am? To tell you the truth, my in-laws are loaded! They’re way richer than my family! They live in a massive estate by the lake, have three or four cars, and the cheapest one is a Mercedes E-Class!] My heart skipped a beat. What he said was a fact. My parents had built a business from scratch years ago, which my older brother, Liam, had now taken over. While we weren’t billionaires, my family was definitely wealthy. My parents always had the idea of returning to their roots, so once they made their money, they built a massive custom estate in the affluent suburb they grew up in. Now that they were semi-retired, they spent their days enjoying life at the estate. Ryan, on the other hand, lost his father young. His mother was a struggling, uneducated woman who worked grueling manual labor jobs just to put him through the State College. After graduating, he took up the respectable, stable job of a high school chemistry teacher. Logically, given my family’s background, it wouldn’t have been hard for me to find a partner of equal status. But back then, Ryan pursued me relentlessly. He was articulate, well-mannered, and incredibly handsome. Being a bit shallow, I couldn’t resist the temptation and agreed to date him. My parents always respected my choices, and they had a deep respect for the teaching profession, so they didn’t object. We got married smoothly. I don’t know if I was overthinking it, but the way Ryan replied made me feel like he harbored a deep, greedy covetousness toward my family’s wealth. I shook my head and replied: [That’s even weirder then. If they’re loaded, going there is basically a luxury vacation, right? Great food, drinks, getting waited on—why wouldn’t you want to go?] [You don’t know shit! Do you think I like hiding every year? I don’t want to go because there is something I absolutely cannot let my wife find out. Otherwise, why would I go to all this trouble? Whatever, talking to you is a waste of time. I’m dropping into Warzone. Stop replying, you’re messing up my focus.]

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Inside the exclusive Parisian couture bridal boutique on Fifth Avenue, the custom wedding gown I had waited six months for was currently being worn by the A-list actress, Savannah Sterling. The boutique manager stood trembling, breaking out in a cold sweat as she looked at Tristan Thorne sitting on the velvet sofa. Tristan stood up and personally adjusted the train of Savannah’s dress. His tone was casual. “She’s missing a finale gown for her red carpet event next week. What’s the big deal if she borrows it? Just pick out an off-the-rack dress to make do for our wedding. Don’t make a scene.” Under the boutique’s spotlights, Savannah smiled brilliantly into the mirror. I looked at my own reflection. I was wearing simple street clothes, looking completely out of place in this opulent room. Suddenly, the wedding I had spent an entire year planning felt like a ridiculous joke. I didn’t yell. I didn’t throw a fit. I simply slid the diamond engagement ring off my finger and set it gently on the glass coffee table. “You’re right, Tristan. Off-the-rack dresses are perfectly fine. So, I’ll just find a groom who’s willing to marry me in an off-the-rack dress.” …… The air in the bridal boutique instantly grew heavy. Tristan’s hands froze on Savannah’s train. He slowly turned around, his eyes narrowing behind his gold-rimmed glasses, subjecting me to a cold, calculating gaze. “Victoria, what did you just say?” His voice was heavy with dark warning. I looked at his handsome face, and my stomach churned with nausea. “I said, the wedding is off.” My voice was dead calm. “Pfft—” Standing in front of the mirror, Savannah suddenly covered her mouth and giggled. She lifted the diamond-encrusted train of the gown that was supposed to be mine and walked over to me. “Victoria, don’t be so petty,” Savannah blinked, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Tristan is just worried because I don’t have a show-stopping dress for the film festival next week. This gown will reach its maximum commercial value when I wear it on the red carpet.” “You’re usually so supportive and understanding. Why are you being so unreasonable at a critical time like this?” She called him by his first name with an intimate familiarity that made my skin crawl. I glared at her icily. “Take it off.” Savannah acted terrified, shrinking behind Tristan with tears welling in her eyes. “Tristan, Victoria is so mean. She’s scaring me.” Tristan immediately shielded Savannah behind him, his brows knitting together in a deep frown. He took a long stride toward me, his eyes filled with impatience. “Victoria, are you done throwing your little tantrum?” He used that uniquely condescending tone of his, spitting words meant to cut deep. “Savannah is my company’s cash cow. Giving her the best resources is for the sake of our future home. You’re a housewife who doesn’t even work. Who exactly are you trying to show off to in a $3 million dress?” His entitled tone felt like a slap to the face. Five years of silent sacrifice, and in his eyes, it all boiled down to: Who are you trying to show off to? I took a deep breath, my hands clenching into fists. “Tristan, this is a custom-made gown I waited six months for. You decided to lend it out without even asking for my opinion?” Tristan sneered, thoroughly unbothered. “Ask your opinion?” He closed the distance between us, his towering figure casting a shadow over me. “I paid $3 million for this dress! The clothes on your back, the things you use every day—what haven’t I, Tristan Thorne, provided for you?” “And now you want to talk to me about your opinions?” He poked my shoulder hard with his index finger. “Victoria, learn to be grateful. Don’t think that just because I indulge you, you can act like a brat in front of me.” Looking at the arrogant, narcissistic man standing before me, he suddenly felt like a complete stranger. He genuinely didn’t think there was anything wrong with giving away his fiancée’s wedding dress. To him, I was just an accessory that depended on him to survive. I was too exhausted to argue with him anymore. I turned on my heel and headed for the boutique’s exit. “Stop right there!” Tristan barked. He lunged forward and grabbed my wrist in a vice grip. “Tristan, let go!” I gasped, a sharp pain shooting up my arm. Instead of letting go, he yanked me violently against his chest. He lowered his head, his voice dropping into a menacing whisper by my ear. “Victoria, don’t push your luck.” “Be a good girl. Go pick out an off-the-rack dress, and the wedding happens next week as planned. As long as you behave, after Savannah walks the red carpet, I’ll rent out a private island and throw you an even bigger wedding to make up for it.” “But if you dare walk out that door today…” He paused, his eyes turning vicious. “I promise you, not a single bridal boutique in New York City will sell you a single thread.” Enduring the throbbing pain in my wrist, I looked up and stared dead into his eyes. “Tristan, you absolutely disgust me.” Using every ounce of strength I had, I ripped my hand out of his grasp. A harsh red bruise had already formed around my wrist. Without giving him another glance, I turned and walked away. Behind me, I heard Tristan’s arrogant scoff, followed by the heavy mechanical click of the boutique’s double doors locking. Click. I turned around. Tristan stood inside, casually tossing the electronic key fob he had just taken from the terrified manager. He looked at me through the thick glass, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. “Victoria, I told you. Without my permission, you aren’t going anywhere.” I banged my fist against the glass. “Tristan! This is illegal confinement! Open the door!” “Confinement?” Tristan strolled back to the velvet sofa and sat down, elegantly crossing his legs. “I’m just teaching my fiancée some manners.” Savannah leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder, and shot me a triumphant, mocking smile. “Victoria, just stop fighting it. Tristan is doing this for your own good. A massive storm is rolling in, and you won’t even be able to get an Uber out there.” Right on cue, Tristan pulled out his phone and dialed a number right in front of me. “Freeze all of Victoria Vance’s authorized credit cards.” “Revoke all her VIP hotel privileges.” “Notify every black car service and rideshare platform in the city. If anyone dares to pick up Victoria Vance, they are making an enemy out of Thorne Industries.” Hanging up the phone, he tapped his knuckles against the glass door. “Victoria, your pride is completely worthless.” “Without me, you couldn’t even find a place to sleep in this city. I’m giving you two hours to reflect on your behavior.” “When you figure it out, you can kneel outside the door and beg me.” The sky quickly darkened. Gale-force winds whipped down the avenue, and a torrential downpour soon followed. The freezing rain soaked right through my thin clothes, chilling me to the bone. I stood shivering under the narrow awning outside the boutique. I pulled out my phone. My lock screen was flooded with notifications. [Dear Customer, your credit card has been frozen by the primary account holder…] [Sorry Ms. Vance, your rideshare request has been forcefully cancelled by the system…] Tristan wasn’t bluffing. He was leveraging his corporate power to completely isolate me. He wanted to force me into a corner so I would remember my place as his property. I ground my teeth together, scrolling through my contacts. I refused to surrender. I dialed my best friend, Chloe Carmichael. “Chloe, come pick me up. I’m outside the bridal boutique on Fifth Avenue.” On the other end of the line, Chloe’s voice was choked with sobs. “Victoria… I’m so sorry…” “Tristan just called my dad. He threatened to cut off Carmichael Enterprises’ supply chain if I came to get you. My dad locked me in my room… Victoria, please, just apologize to him! Tristan has lost his mind!” My heart sank into my stomach. Tristan had ruthlessly severed my very last lifeline. Through the rain-streaked glass, I watched Tristan sipping a glass of expensive red wine. He swirled the crimson liquid, looking thoroughly entertained as he watched me shivering in the storm. Savannah was kneeling at his feet, playfully massaging his legs. The scene burned my eyes, but it also incinerated whatever lingering affection I had left for him. I finally realized my mistake: you don’t go looking for treasure in a dumpster. Tainted trash is only meant to be thrown away. I took a deep, freezing breath and shoved my numb hands into my pockets. If no one was coming for me, I would walk back. I turned around and stepped directly into the freezing downpour. SCREECH! Before I could take three steps, a black Maybach slammed on its brakes right in front of me, splashing a wave of muddy water onto my legs. The window rolled down, and Tristan’s executive assistant stepped out holding a black umbrella. He looked at my drenched, pathetic state with utter disdain, and threw a plastic garment bag right at my feet. Through the half-open zipper, I saw a cheap, poorly-stitched white bridesmaid dress. The assistant stared at me coldly, his tone dripping with fake charity. “Ms. Vance, Mr. Thorne is feeling merciful tonight.” “Savannah needs an assistant to hold her train on the red carpet at the film festival tonight. Mr. Thorne said that as long as you put on this dress and assist Savannah, your credit cards will be unfrozen tomorrow, and he’ll still save a spot for you at the wedding.” He wanted me to carry the train for the woman who stole my wedding dress? And he expected me to wear this cheap rag to do it? It was a blatant, calculated humiliation. I stared at the garment bag in the mud. My body was convulsing from the cold, but my spine remained ramrod straight. “Go back and tell Tristan Thorne…” “Tell him to go straight to hell.” The assistant’s face flushed with anger, and he pointed a finger right at my nose. “Victoria Vance, don’t be a fool!” “Do you think you’re still the future Mrs. Thorne? You are nothing! Without Mr. Thorne, you’d be starving in the streets!” He waved his hand, and the rear doors of the Maybach swung open. Two massive bodyguards jumped out, pinning my arms behind my back. “Let me go! What are you doing?!” I struggled wildly, but my freezing muscles were no match for them. The assistant snatched the muddy bridesmaid dress from the puddle and shoved it forcefully into my chest. “Mr. Thorne gave the order. If you want to do this the hard way, we drag you there!” I was violently shoved into the back of the car, and the doors slammed shut. The Maybach sped through the stormy streets, heading straight for the film festival’s red carpet event. The AC in the car was blasting. Wearing soaked clothes, my lips turned a bruised purple, and my teeth chattered uncontrollably. The assistant sat in the passenger seat, sneering at me through the rearview mirror. “Ms. Vance, if you had just behaved, we wouldn’t be here.” “You’re a woman. Just lower your head, act soft, and you get whatever you want. Why insist on fighting Mr. Thorne? You’re the only one suffering.” I closed my eyes, tuning out his pathetic monologue. Half an hour later, the car pulled up to the backstage VIP area of the red carpet. I was roughly yanked out of the vehicle by the bodyguards. In a brightly lit VIP lounge nearby, Savannah was wearing the custom bridal gown that was meant for me, surrounded by a swarm of reporters. Tristan stood impeccably dressed by her side, looking at her with fawning adoration. Catching sight of me being manhandled toward them, Tristan excused himself from the press and strode over. He glanced at the mud-stained bridesmaid dress in my trembling hands, his brow furrowing. “Why do you look like such a mess?” He took off his tailored suit jacket and tried to drape it over my shoulders, sliding effortlessly back into his fake, affectionate persona. “Victoria, you’re just too stubborn. If you had just been a good girl, do you really think I’d have the heart to make you suffer like this?” My stomach heaved with revulsion. I twisted my body, dodging his touch. The expensive jacket fell into a muddy puddle on the floor. Tristan’s expression darkened instantly, his eyes turning lethal. “Victoria, my patience has a limit.” He pinched my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “Go to the bathroom and put that dress on right now. When Savannah steps onto the red carpet, you will walk behind her and hold her train. If you dare ruin this for her…” He let out a dark chuckle, reaching into his pocket and pulling out an emerald bangle. It was the only heirloom my late grandmother had left me! “Tristan! Give that back!” I panicked, lunging forward to grab it. He held it high above his head, his eyes devoid of mercy. “Hold the train, and I’ll give it back.” “Otherwise, I’ll smash it into pieces right now.” My grandmother had placed that emerald on my wrist on her deathbed. It was the last piece of my family I had left in this world. Tristan’s fingers tightened slightly around the jade ring. One slip, and it would shatter against the concrete floor. “I’ll count to three.” Tristan looked down at me like a god judging a mortal. “Three.” “Two.” My whole body shook. My nails dug so deeply into my palms that they drew blood. “One.” “I’ll do it!” The words ripped through my throat, my eyes stinging with unshed tears. Tristan smiled in satisfaction. He slipped the bracelet back into his pocket and patted my cheek mockingly. “Good girl. Go on. Savannah is up next.” Clutching the mud-stained bridesmaid dress, I walked into the venue’s restroom. Staring at my miserable, drenched reflection in the mirror, my eyes grew colder than ice. For the past five years, to protect his fragile male ego, I had hidden my true identity as the ruthless founder of a top-tier venture capital firm. I willingly stayed at home, playing the quiet, supportive woman behind his success. I thought I had fallen in love with an ambitious, driven man. I didn’t realize I was just feeding a selfish, rabid dog. Tristan Thorne, for every ounce of humiliation you forced on me today… Tomorrow, I will make you pay for it with the entirety of Thorne Industries. I didn’t put on the bridesmaid dress. I shoved it directly into the trash can. Pushing open the restroom doors, I walked straight toward the red carpet staging area. Savannah had her arm linked through Tristan’s, preparing to step out to the cameras. Seeing me walk out in my soaked, muddy street clothes, Tristan’s face turned livid. “Victoria Vance! Are you deaf?!” he hissed furiously. Savannah immediately put on a distressed pout. “Victoria, how could you do this? Without you holding the train, the visual impact of this gown is going to be ruined.” I stared at them with dead, empty eyes. The camera flashes from the red carpet were already blindingly bright. The announcer’s voice echoed, calling Savannah’s name. Ignoring Tristan completely, I turned and walked toward the exit. “Grab her!” Tristan ordered, abandoning all pretense of public decency. The two bodyguards lunged at me, one of them kicking me hard behind my knees. Thud! Caught off guard, I crashed down onto the unforgiving concrete. A sharp, blinding pain shot through my kneecaps. Staff members and journalists nearby turned their heads. Several cameras flashed in my direction. Tristan marched over to me, his eyes merciless. Right in front of the press, he pointed his finger at my face. “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I deeply apologize,” he announced, his voice carrying clearly over the chatter. “This woman is a low-level assistant at my company who has been harboring delusional, inappropriate fantasies about me. She broke into the backstage area today to cause a scene and try to sabotage Savannah’s red carpet walk.” “Security, drag this lunatic out of here. Don’t let her pollute the venue any longer!” The crowd gasped. Countless cameras documented me kneeling in the dirt. He was trying to completely annihilate my dignity. The bodyguards violently hoisted me up by my arms and dragged me toward the exit, hauling me out into the torrential storm. Tristan wrapped his arm around Savannah’s waist, looking at me one last time. “Victoria, this is what happens when you disobey me.” “Sleep on the streets tonight and think about what you’ve done.”

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In my fifth year of trying to win over the Male Lead, Carter Sterling forgot my birthday. Again. Instead, it was the “Villainess” who texted me right on time. “So what if it’s your birthday? I wiggle my finger and he still comes running to me, doesn’t he?” This time, I didn’t throw a crying fit like the System recommended. Instead, I typed back: “Thank you. You’re the only person who remembered my birthday today.” A second later, she replied with a single: ? Then, my phone started buzzing non-stop. “Wait, did you text the wrong person?” “Are you serious? You’re actually that pathetic?” “What do you even want for your birthday?” “Forget it, whatever, I’m coming over. You’re allergic to mangoes, right? I’ll order a strawberry cake.” “Ugh, you are so annoying!” …… The moment the doorbell rang, I smiled faintly at the empty air. “You only told me to conquer the main character of this world,” I whispered to the System. “You never explicitly said it had to be the Male Lead, did you?” …… The usually obnoxious System fell silent for a fleeting second. Then, it started stammering incoherently. “What… what do you mean?! The target is obviously the Male Lead! You and Carter Sterling are destined to have a beautiful happily-ever-after!” I couldn’t help but let out a self-deprecating laugh. Ever since I was brought into the Sterling estate five years ago, the System had been feeding me empty promises. It told me the cold shoulders and the humiliations were just “tests of true love.” It promised that Carter and I would eventually reach our grand finale. It’s a shame that now, I didn’t really want that ending anymore. I ignored the System’s frantic buzzing and got up to open the door. Instead of the Villainess, I was met with Carter’s deeply impatient face. He glared at me coldly. “Even if I forgot our plans, you didn’t have to resort to cheap tricks. Using Stella to force me to come see you? Riley, I never knew you were this manipulative.” I froze. Just so he would spend this one birthday with me, I had worked myself to the bone for three months. I spent countless sleepless nights in the lab to achieve a breakthrough for Sterling Corp’s new neural microchip. Carter had been thrilled. He asked me what I wanted as a reward. I carefully, practically begging, asked him to save just one evening for me. He agreed without hesitation. I was ecstatic. I thought our relationship was finally taking a step forward. I never expected to be left waiting in an empty room, only to be met with a dismissive, “I forgot.” The sharp clack of high heels echoed from the hallway behind him. Stella Vance, carrying a massive bakery box, walked up, slightly out of breath. She stood awkwardly between Carter and me, looking back and forth. “Wait. So you didn’t bail on her to keep me company. You literally just forgot it was Riley’s birthday?” Carter frowned, looking entirely unapologetic. “Why would I remember her birthday?” Stella turned to look at me, her expression a complicated mix of pity and disbelief. After a moment of suffocating silence, Carter looked down at me like a king offering scraps to a beggar. “Considering you’ve been somewhat useful to Sterling Corp lately… tell me what you want. I’ll grant you one wish.” I looked up and met his eyes. “Anything?” Carter paused, instinctively rubbing the bridge of his nose as he looked away. “Of course.” The System shrieked in my head. “Ahhhhh! He’s blushing! Did you see that?! Hurry, tell him you don’t want anything but him! Tell him to take you to the amusement park! Fireworks! His affection meter is going to skyrocket! Ahhhh!” I just stared at him quietly for two seconds. I took a deep breath. “Then give me some cash.” Carter’s arrogant smile completely froze. “What?” I looked at him, my eyes dead. “Give me some cash. My rent is due.” His face instantly turned as black as thunder. He gritted his teeth. “So your true colors finally show. And here you were playing the saint who didn’t care about money.” He cracked his knuckles, letting out a dark, mocking laugh. “It’s too late, Riley. Didn’t you want to be Mrs. Sterling? Well, you’re going to spend the rest of your life slaving away for Sterling Corp.” With that, he turned on his heel and stormed off. He left Stella standing there, looking incredibly conflicted as she handed me the cake box. “Um… Happy birthday.” I forced the best smile I could muster. “I know you originally just came here to watch me make a fool of myself, but… thank you.” I closed the door, and the System started wailing again. “Oh my god, what are you doing?! He forgot your birthday, he was actually feeling guilty! Why didn’t you leverage that instead of asking for money?!” I looked down at the aggressive eviction warning texts from my landlord. “What else was I supposed to do? I still have to survive, don’t I?” Because Carter despised me, my official title at Sterling Corp was Chief Engineer, but the salary he paid me was less than what the janitors made. The System paused. “But that’s just the Male Lead testing you! He loves you, he just doesn’t realize it yet! Once you get married, won’t everything he owns belong to you anyway?” The doorbell rang again. A delivery driver peeked his head in, holding a small cake box. “Ordered by Mr. Sterling.” The System sounded smug. “See! I told you he cares! He even ordered you a cake. You pushed him away! Hurry up and call him, apologize and coax him back!” I stared at the cake. It was completely covered in fresh mangoes. I stood in total silence. Suddenly, I looked up at the ceiling. “Do you remember my first day here, five years ago?” I invited Stella to the cafe downstairs from the Sterling building. The System was running in frantic circles inside my head. “Host, have you really thought this through?! You’re really going to defect to Vance Enterprises?! Stella is only taking you in to keep you away from the Male Lead! Once your relationship with him improves, she’ll destroy you!” I slipped on my coat, replying carelessly in my mind. “But at least she’ll pay me a fair wage. I won’t starve to death on the streets. Plus, Stella beat out all her siblings to secure the Vance family inheritance. She’s not some brainless, spoiled heiress. Besides…” I didn’t finish the sentence. Five years ago, I arrived in Silicon Valley all alone, looking for my estranged father’s family. The security guards at the Sterling estate had sneered at me and ruthlessly shoved me into the rain. Carter had descended like a god, reprimanded the guards, and brought a terrified, shivering me inside. Because of that, for five years, no matter how coldly he treated me, I clung to that initial ray of light. But I never forgot that on that rainy day five years ago, the person standing next to Carter, the one who actually held the umbrella over my head and draped a warm coat over my shoulders… was Stella. If it weren’t for the absurd roles the System forced us into, the three of us wouldn’t be in this miserable dynamic. Sitting across from me, Stella slowly stirred her latte. “You’re really coming to Vance Enterprises? Why? I thought Sterling Corp was your entire life. You basically nailed yourself to the floor of their R&D lab for years. You came whenever Carter called, more obedient than a stray dog.” I looked down and took a sip of my coffee. “Because I don’t want to be a dog anymore.” Stella froze. After a long moment, her expression complex, she slid a sleek employment contract across the table. “Riley, I genuinely hate you sometimes, but… I also kind of admire you.” “I like to keep business and personal matters separate. As a fellow woman, I won’t make things difficult for you at work. But emotionally, we are still rivals.” She stood up and extended her hand. “Welcome to Vance Enterprises.” I looked up, gave her a soft smile, and shook her hand. Before I appeared, Stella and Carter were undeniably the main characters of this world. They were childhood sweethearts, coming from equally powerful tech dynasties. Until five years ago. The old Mr. Sterling was attacked by corporate rivals. His driver took the fatal bullet for him. On his deathbed, the driver begged the Sterling family to look after his only daughter. Me. And so, the old CEO announced in front of high society that Carter would marry me and take care of me for the rest of my life. Carter’s face had turned ashen. The man who had gently comforted me the night before now looked at me with nothing but pure, unadulterated disgust. When I returned to the Sterling offices, my assistant Emma started winking at me frantically. I was confused. I pushed open my office door, only to find Carter sitting in my chair, his face like ice. “Abandoning your post during work hours. Is this your professional attitude, Riley? Your salary for this month is forfeit.” I pressed my lips together and didn’t say a word. He continued his mocking sneer. “Oh, I forgot. Without a salary, you can’t pay your rent. What, are you planning to shamelessly crawl back to the Sterling estate and beg for a room?” The System suddenly shrieked. “When has he EVER visited the R&D department?! He’s giving you an opening! He brought up your rent because he wants you to move back in with him! It’s just a stubborn CEO’s excuse to see you!” But all I felt was a crushing wave of exhaustion. It had been five years. I didn’t want to live like this anymore. “Forget it.” Both the System and Carter froze. “Forget it. Since I violated company policy, I resign.” Carter violently shot up from the chair, his jaw clenched tight. “Do you think playing hard to get is going to make my heart soften? Who do you think you are? You want to quit? If you walk out that door, don’t you ever dream of coming back.” He swept everything off my desk with a violent crash, slammed the door, and stormed out. I silently crouched down to pick up the scattered blueprints. My phone vibrated with a text from Stella. [Monday onboarding, no issues right? I bought you a few outfits and had them sent to your apartment. Dress decently for work. Don’t embarrass me!] Looking at that message, I suddenly lowered my head and laughed. On Monday morning, I stood in front of the towering Vance Enterprises headquarters. The System was still blabbering. “Host, are you sure about this?! This is Stella’s territory! According to the original plot, she’s going to…” As I walked through the revolving doors, I asked casually, “Going to what?” “She’s going to… prepare a full set of luxury office supplies for you on your first day, set up a corner office, and have her assistant buy you breakfast… Wait. Looking at it this way, she doesn’t seem very evil, does she…?” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I knew five years ago that Stella was never some tyrannical, cartoonish villain. If the System hadn’t arbitrarily forced us into these opposing roles, maybe none of this would have happened. The elevator doors chimed open. Before I could even step out, Stella was already waiting in the lobby. She looked me up and down, her brows furrowing. “Didn’t I buy you clothes? Why are you still wearing that cheap white button-down?” I looked down at myself. “The clothes you sent were too expensive, I…” She cut me off. “If I tell you to wear it, you wear it. Cut the nonsense. Follow me, your office is on the 18th floor.” I was stunned. “An office? I’m just an engineer, I don’t need…” Stella didn’t even look back. “If I say you need it, you need it. Vance Enterprises isn’t Sterling Corp. We don’t stick our Chief Engineer in a cubicle. Also, your payroll card…” She turned and handed me a sleek black debit card. “I advanced you three months’ salary. Pay off your rent first. Don’t get evicted and embarrass me.” I stared down at the card, my fingers trembling slightly. The System whispered nervously. “Host… why do I feel like something is wrong? Isn’t this supposed to be the Male Lead’s dialogue?” As I sat dazed at my new desk, Stella’s assistant popped her head in. “Ms. Thorne, Ms. Vance wanted me to ask if you’d like to join her for lunch. The chef in our executive cafeteria makes incredibly authentic Mexican food.” My head snapped up. The Sterling family preferred bland, organic diets, and Carter had severe stomach issues. I grew up eating spicy food, but for the last five years, I hadn’t touched a single drop of hot sauce. At lunch, I sat across from Stella. Her assistant happily set down a massive, steaming bowl of spicy carnitas. Stella frowned. “I forgot to mention, no cilantro.” I looked at her, surprised. “How did you know I don’t eat cilantro?” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “What kind of dumb question is that? I have eyes. I pay attention.” I let out a bitter laugh. My phone suddenly vibrated. It was a call from Carter. I let it ring until it automatically disconnected. Immediately after, Stella’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen, let out a short laugh, and hit decline. “He probably saw our press release announcing our new Chief Engineer. I never thought I’d see the great, arrogant Carter Sterling throw a tantrum like this.” I kept my chopsticks in my mouth, silent for a moment. “I thought you were deeply in love with him.” She raised an eyebrow. “In our social circle, he was the only one who matched my status. At first, I was just furious that someone like you ‘stole’ him from me. But honestly? Getting to ruthlessly crush Sterling Corp in the tech sector? You have no idea how much joy that brings me.” Carter called again. I still didn’t answer. The System asked timidly, “Host, are you really not going to answer? Seeing you actually leave… he’s starting to panic.” I stared at the glowing screen, remembering the countless nights I had spent waiting over the last five years. Waiting for his calls, waiting for his texts, waiting for him to just look me in the eye. I waited for five years. He never knew which apartment I rented. He didn’t know what time I went to sleep. He didn’t know I went to the hospital alone to get my appendix removed. He didn’t know I worried about making rent every single month. He didn’t know I hated cilantro. He didn’t know I was allergic to mangoes. He didn’t know I was terrified of the dark and had to sleep with a bedside lamp on. There were so many things he didn’t know. But Stella knew all of them. I let out a long, heavy breath, popped the tab on my Diet Coke, and raised my can toward her. “Here’s to a great partnership, Boss.” Then, I blocked Carter’s number. During my first three months at Vance Enterprises, Carter didn’t try to find me again. Stella gave me the best R&D team in the industry and absolute executive clearance. I threw myself entirely into the work, pulling all-nighters, completely consumed by the project. Whenever I heard news about Carter, it was usually through a colleague’s social media. If someone purposely brought him up in front of me, I just smiled and brushed it off. Gradually, even the System seemed to give up, falling silent. I ran into Carter once by chance at a major Silicon Valley tech summit. I was on stage, confidently pitching our new core neural processor technology. Carter sat in the audience, staring at me, looking somewhat dazed. As we crossed paths in the lobby afterward, he suddenly called my name. “If you choose to come back now, I can pretend none of this ever happened.” I looked at his familiar face, but suddenly felt like I was looking at a complete stranger. I took a half-step back, my posture cold and distant. Carter’s expression froze, then hardened into ice. “Fine. I hope you don’t regret this.” From that day forward, Sterling Corp launched a ruthless, aggressive assault on Vance Enterprises. The corporate warfare was brutal, dominating the financial news headlines for three days straight. Stella tried to contact him several times, but her calls were blocked. Her face was grim. “These AI microchips are the absolute priority for Vance Enterprises for the next five years. I am not backing down. I’m flying to New York to secure venture capital funding.” She glared at me, grinding her teeth. “Riley, if you dare run back to Carter Sterling right now, I will literally kill you.” I looked at her bloodshot, exhausted eyes, and smiled softly. “There’s a massive investor roadshow at the end of the month. I’ll handle the pitch. Don’t worry, I have absolute faith in our R&D.” Stella let out a long exhale, all the tension leaving her body as she leaned heavily against my shoulder. “Thank you.” I stayed silent for a moment. “I’m the one who should be saying thank you.” Both for the umbrella five years ago, and for the lifeline today.

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I took a private chef gig that paid an obscene four thousand dollars an hour. The client was a young girl, fresh-faced and flush with someone else’s cash. Her only requirement was that the meal had to look and taste like elevated, soulful home cooking. “My boyfriend teased me for not knowing my way around a kitchen. I absolutely have to prove him wrong!” she had chirped over the phone. “But honestly, I’m a disaster. I nearly set the kitchen on fire just trying to boil pasta. Thank God I’m spending his money, so it doesn’t hurt. You have to save me, Chef Harper!” My boyfriend, Carter, was a regular corporate drone. He worked brutal hours and had a notoriously sensitive stomach. Over the years, to help him heal his gut, I had meticulously studied and perfected gut-friendly, holistic recipes. When it came to cooking, I knew exactly what I was doing. I had just plated the first dish when the sound of the front door unlocking echoed through the penthouse. The girl spun around, panic flashing in her eyes as a man stepped into the foyer. “Hey! You’re home early, you didn’t even text me!” The man’s voice was dripping with a rich, lazy indulgence. “Little fool. I knew you’d try to cheat and hire a private chef. Caught you red-handed, didn’t I?” He chuckled, a sound that sent a phantom shiver down my spine. “Besides, I’m the CEO of Kensington Holdings. You really think I’d let my baby exhaust herself slaving away over a hot stove? Though… whatever she’s making smells incredible. Where did you find this chef?” Hearing that painfully familiar voice, my blood turned to ice. I turned around slowly. The man standing there, casually unbuttoning a bespoke Tom Ford suit jacket. It was my boyfriend of five years. The man who supposedly made barely two thousand dollars a month. Carter. … A drop of searing hot oil spat out from the pan, landing squarely on the back of my hand. I didn’t flinch. I felt as if I had been stripped of all nerve endings, just staring blankly at the two people in front of me. Mia pouted, leaning into him. “Sweet-talking me won’t save you. This chef costs four grand an hour. Say goodbye to your wallet!” Carter still hadn’t noticed me. He just reached out, tenderly smoothing a stray lock of hair behind Mia’s ear. “You underestimate your man, baby. I’m worth billions. What’s a few grand to me?” His thumb traced her jawline. “Even if she charged four million an hour, if it makes my Mia happy, it’s worth every damn penny.” Thoroughly placated, Mia tilted her chin up and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Smart answer. She just finished the first course. Want to taste it?” “Anything for you.” Carter turned toward the kitchen with a soft, lingering smile. The second his eyes met mine, the smile vanished. He froze, as if the air had been violently sucked from the room. Assuming he was just mesmerized by the aroma of the food, Mia beamed with pride. “I found a good one, right? Chef Harper makes the most incredible food. She’s even got a certified holistic nutrition diploma!” Six months ago, Carter had been rushed to the ER with acute gastroenteritis. His face had been pale and contorted in agony, yet he had weakly squeezed my hand, telling me not to worry. I had cried until my eyes were swollen shut. The very next day, I enrolled in an expensive culinary nutrition program. I spent months perfecting restorative broths and anti-inflammatory meals, blistering my hands on hot pots so badly that I still carried the faded white scars across my knuckles. Noticing Carter’s deathly silence, Mia shot me a curious look. “What is it? Do you two know each other?” Carter snapped back to reality. He blinked, then lightly tapped Mia on the forehead with a forced chuckle. “What are you talking about? She just… makes great food. Some of the executives at the firm have hired her before.” Mia burst into a bright, tinkling laugh. “Makes sense! You’re the CEO of Kensington. As if you’d be casually fraternizing with the help.” She waved a manicured hand toward the dining room. “Harper, you can bring the plates out to the table now.” Carter didn’t look at me again. He dismissed me with the chilling apathy one reserves for a nameless servant. There was a suffocating weight expanding in my chest, heavy and bruised. As I set the dishes on the table, muscle memory took over. Without thinking, I picked up a spoon and began carefully skimming the finely chopped cilantro off the top of the soup. By the time I realized what I was doing, Mia’s delighted voice sliced through the tension. “Wait, how did you know I hate cilantro?” I stiffened. Mia’s eyes lit up as she playfully swatted Carter’s arm. “I get it! You totally told her beforehand. No wonder you guys were acting so weird a minute ago!” She looked at Carter with an expression of helpless adoration. “My boyfriend knows I absolutely despise cilantro, so he always picks it out for me. He knows I can’t even stand the smell of it, so he refuses to eat it himself. The great CEO of Kensington Holdings, strictly instructing Michelin-starred chefs to hold the cilantro at his high-stakes business dinners!” A year ago, Carter—who had never been a picky eater—suddenly declared he could no longer tolerate cilantro. I had assumed his fragile stomach was acting up again. From that day on, I had been painstakingly careful to never let a single leaf touch his food. It had never been about his stomach. It was entirely about accommodating Mia’s palate. “Now all the guys in his inner circle tease him for being totally whipped!” Mia complained, though her face was radiant with victory. I stood rooted to the hardwood floor, the blood draining from my extremities until I felt nothing but a hollow, biting cold. Oblivious to my shattering reality, Mia took a bite and sighed in contentment. “This is genuinely amazing. Leave your card before you go. I’m definitely booking you again.” Carter’s brow darkened. His voice dropped to a low, warning timbre. “You’re just a hired cook. Don’t overstep your boundaries.” Hearing the blatant threat in his voice, a violent wave of indignation crashed over me. I had been with Carter for five years. Five years of building a life from the ground up. Why was I the one being treated like the dirty little secret? My chest heaved. I opened my mouth, the urge to rip the facade away and scream the truth tearing at my throat. But before a sound could escape, Carter pulled Mia flush against his chest. Over her shoulder, he glared at me. The sheer, venomous hostility in his eyes was so entirely foreign that it strangled the words right out of my mouth. Mia’s face was buried in his designer lapel. “Carter? What’s wrong?” The picture of them, so completely entwined, burned my eyes like acid. I choked out an excuse about an emergency, grabbed my bag, and practically fled the penthouse. The moment I hit the street, my phone buzzed. A text from Carter: [Wait for me at home tonight. We need to talk.] What was left to talk about? When we first started dating, I used to tease him. “Your last name is Kensington, and you just happen to work at Kensington Holdings? What are you, the secret billionaire heir?” I blamed my own blind devotion. I never read the financial Times. I never questioned him. I swallowed every lie he spoon-fed me because I loved him. Wikipedia could have told me that Carter Kensington was the sole heir to a massive corporate empire, a ruthless prodigy who held the keys to the kingdom before he hit thirty. But when I met him five years ago, waiting tables at a dingy downtown coffee shop, he played the part of the struggling entry-level guy to perfection. Looking back, the breadcrumbs were everywhere. He claimed his clothes were cheap vintage finds, yet the fabrics and tailoring put luxury brands to shame. He complained endlessly about his tyrannical boss exploiting his labor, yet his hands were manicured, soft, untouched by true exhaustion. I had lived on instant ramen and skipped meals for six months to save up for a mid-tier designer watch for his birthday. He had never worn it. Not once. When I asked him about it, he had pinched my cheek with a fond, apologetic smile. “My baby worked so hard for it. It’s too precious. I couldn’t bear to scratch it.” Now I understood. It wasn’t precious to him. It was a cheap, embarrassing piece of metal that didn’t belong on the wrist of a CEO. The tears finally broke, blurring the neon streetlights. I practically sobbed the entire walk back to our cramped apartment. Late that night, the rattle of a key turning in the lock echoed in the dark. Carter stepped in, taking in my tear-streaked face and the devastating silence. A flash of genuine pain crossed his features. He stepped forward, pulling my rigid body into his chest, and let out a long, heavy sigh. “Harper… don’t look at me like that.” “Mia is still in college. She’s just… innocent. Spontaneous.” “And you… lately, you’re just so consumed by work and money. You can’t even go out for our anniversary without using a discount code…” Lightning struck my spine. Six months ago, Carter had told me he got a small raise. Thrilled, I had scoured the internet and bought two Restaurant Week prix-fixe vouchers for a high-end steakhouse to celebrate. When I presented them to him, beaming with pride, his face had turned to stone. He had stormed out that night, leaving me sitting at the kitchen table alone. I had just scrolled through Mia’s Instagram an hour ago. Now I knew that on that exact night, he had been on a multi-million dollar yacht, throwing her an extravagant birthday bash. The price of a single bottle of champagne on that boat could have bought a hundred of my pathetic little dinner vouchers. A hysterical, broken laugh escaped my lips. He was keeping Mia like a hot-house orchid, showering her in gold, while standing by and watching the brutal grind of poverty strip me down to the bone—only to turn around and punish me for being “too obsessed with money”? A sudden, violent cramp seized my stomach. I doubled over, dry-heaving violently. Panic broke through his composed facade. He grabbed my shoulders. “Harper? What’s wrong? Are you sick?” “Don’t touch me!” I used every ounce of strength I had left to violently shove his hands away. I forced myself to stand tall, though my legs were trembling. The tears hung precariously on my lashes. “We are done. This is the end of us.” “Leave. And don’t ever come back.” Carter stared at me, his eyes wide and wounded. I turned my back on him. I couldn’t bear to look at his face for another second. A heavy silence lingered before he sighed, a sound laced with cold authority. “Harper, no matter what’s going through your head right now, I have never once considered leaving you.” “If you’re going to blow this out of proportion, then we both need some space to cool off.” The chill in his voice was absolute. I squeezed my eyes shut, letting the tears fall freely in the dark. Only when the heavy click of the front door shutting echoed through the apartment did the adrenaline fade. My knees buckled. I collapsed onto the cheap linoleum floor, clutching my stomach as the sharp, stabbing pain threatened to rip me in half. In the dead of night, my phone rang. Exhausted, hollowed out, I answered without checking the caller ID. “I told you to leave me alone. We are—” Mia’s voice, thick with tears, choked out from the speaker. “Chef Harper? I… I think my boyfriend is cheating on me. I don’t know what to do!” “He just left the apartment out of nowhere, and he hasn’t come back…” “What else could he be doing besides sneaking off to see some other woman? He used to tell me exactly where he was going!” I didn’t answer her. Honestly, I didn’t even know where to begin. What was I supposed to say? The billionaire who treats you like a princess is actually my boyfriend, the man I’ve been supporting for five years? Listening to her frantic, heartbroken sobbing, I simply pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed end. I didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning, running on fumes and sporting deep, bruised bags under my eyes, I left for my shift. When I dragged myself back to my apartment building that afternoon, Mia was sitting on the front steps. The second she saw me, she practically threw herself at me. “Harper! Please, can I stay with you?” I bit the inside of my cheek, feigning ignorance. “Doesn’t your boyfriend have a lot of money? Did you guys have a fight?” Mia’s eyes welled up with fresh tears. “He’s cheating on me. I refuse to spend another dime of his money!” “I’m still just a student. Honestly, the girls at school are so jealous of me, they hate me. I don’t have anywhere else to go…” She looked so pathetically small, crying her eyes out on the concrete. Despite everything, I couldn’t find the cruelty in me to turn her away into the streets. I silently unlocked my door and let her in. The atmosphere inside my shoebox apartment was suffocating. Mia sniffled, wiping her nose with a tissue. “Honestly? I don’t really think he’s cheating. I just have trust issues. I wanted to throw a little tantrum so he’d realize how much he needs me.” “Carter doesn’t know you, so he’d never think to look for me here.” There was a smug, self-satisfied lilt to her voice now. I stood by the kitchenette, entirely mute. Unbothered by my silence, Mia began snooping around my apartment with the casual entitlement of a tourist. “So, Harper… things between you and your guy must be pretty dead, huh?” I blinked, turning around to see her pointing at the open drawer of my nightstand. In it sat a box of premium ultra-thin condoms. She looked at me with a sly, knowing smirk. “If the spark was still there, this box wouldn’t be collecting dust.” A blush crept up her neck as she giggled. “My boyfriend is obsessed with me. He literally can’t keep his hands off me. I swear we run out of these every other week.” “It’s so funny, I love the mint ones too! I make him buy this exact brand every time.” A loud, piercing ring shattered my thoughts. My brain completely short-circuited. Ground down by the relentless exhaustion of working multiple jobs, my intimate moments with Carter had become rare over the past year. Two months ago, he came home late, and that exact box of mint condoms had fallen out of his coat pocket. I had blushed, touched that he had remembered my favorite scent, thinking he was trying to romance me again. He bought them to use with Mia. The humiliation was a bucket of ice water down my spine. Mia was still chattering away, completely oblivious to the massacre she was leaving in her wake. “Honestly, it doesn’t seem like your guy loves you that much anyway. Why else would he let you live in a dump like this?” “My boyfriend always says—where a man puts his money, that’s where his heart is. That’s why he insists on giving me the absolute best of everything.” Her naivety was the cruelest weapon of all. Every bright, chirpy syllable was a scalpel, filleting me alive. I forced a bitter, hollow smile. It wasn’t that Carter didn’t understand the value of money. He just absolutely refused to spend it on me. To hear the extent of his devotion to her—a devotion I had never tasted in five years—was a slow, agonizing execution. I couldn’t breathe. I bolted for the cramped bathroom, locking the door behind me. When I finally managed to splash cold water on my face and step back into the living room, Mia was holding my phone. She was staring at the screen, paralyzed. My heart slammed against my ribs. In my rush to escape, I hadn’t locked my screen. Mia’s voice was barely a whisper. “That’s crazy… your boyfriend’s name is Carter, too?” My hands went numb. Before I could string a sentence together, the front door violently rattled and swung open. “Harper, I bought that velvet cake you like from the bakery on 5th…” Carter froze in the doorway, the pink pastry box dropping from his hands as his eyes locked onto Mia, sitting on my faded sofa. “You absolute bastard!” Mia hurled my phone at the wall, slapped Carter squarely across the jaw, and ran out the door sobbing. Panic, absolute and unhinged, seized Carter’s face. He whipped his head toward me, his eyes blazing with a feral, terrifying rage I had never seen before. “I told you I wasn’t leaving you! Why the hell would you do this to Mia?!” “Did you honestly think cornering her like this would scare her away? You’re delusional! The more you try to hurt her, the more I’m going to protect her!” Desperate to catch Mia, he violently swatted away my hand as I tried to step forward to explain. The force of his swing knocked me into the entryway table. The heavy glass mason jar I kept there tipped over and crashed to the floor. Shards of thick glass exploded across the tiles, taking hundreds of coins down with them in a deafening metallic clatter. I didn’t even register the sharp sting of glass slicing into my ankle. I just stared blankly at the sea of dirty coins scattered across the floor. During my first few years in the city, I worked odd jobs that tipped in change. Carter had bought me that jar. He told me to drop my spare change in it every day. He used to hold me in this very entryway, laughing into my hair, promising that one day, this jar would pay the down payment on our brownstone. Eventually, he forgot the joke. But I never did. I kept feeding that jar. Sometimes I’d even go to the bodega just to break bills into coins. I truly believed that the moment the jar was full, Carter and I would finally have a home. Slowly, I sank to my knees. My fingers traced the cold metal. Pennies. Nickels. Dimes. Barely any quarters. It wasn’t a lot of money. But it was just enough to buy a one-way ticket out of this city. I don’t know what lies Carter spun to win Mia back that afternoon. But by that evening, a post was trending on Reddit and TikTok. Mia had weaponized her tears, posting a multi-part video exposing me as a homewrecker. She claimed I was a grifter who used my “private chef” gig to prey on wealthy clients and seduce their boyfriends. She sobbed gorgeously for the camera: “I just had a silly argument with my boyfriend, and I never thought I’d run into a predator like her! If my boyfriend didn’t love me so fiercely, she would have completely destroyed my life!” With calculated innocence, she leaked my phone number, my full name, and my apartment address. Within the hour, my phone was a brick of notifications, inundated with hundreds of grotesque, violent messages. A loud smash jolted me. I ran to the door. Someone had thrown a bucket of bright red paint against my door. The words “WHORE” and “HOMEWRECKER” were sprayed across the hallway walls. Trembling with blinding rage, I grabbed my coat, ready to march down to Kensington Holdings and drag Carter out by his collar. But the second I stepped out of the building, a heavy stone struck the side of my head. A blinding, agonizing pain erupted at my temple. As the pavement rushed up to meet me, the last thing I heard was a disgusted sneer: “Dirty homewrecking bitch! You deserve to die!” When I opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. A nurse adjusted my IV, her eyes full of pity. “Don’t lose hope, sweetheart. You’re young. You can always try for another baby.” I stared at the ceiling. Slowly, my hand drifted down to rest flat against my lower abdomen. The sudden cramps. The exhaustion. The nausea. It all slammed into focus. The physical pain was nothing compared to the monstrous, suffocating irony of it all. You killed your own child, Carter. Is this what you wanted? The next morning, I dragged my battered, hollowed-out body back to the apartment, only to find my landlord standing in front of my vandalized door, arms crossed. “Get your trash and get the hell out! I don’t rent to sluts who ruin other people’s families!” She refused to return my security deposit, tossing my duffel bag into the hallway. As I limped down the stairs with my meager belongings, she spat at my feet. “Disgusting.” My phone buzzed. It was Carter. His voice was a low, commanding hum. “Harper, I said I didn’t want to lose you. But you crossed a line with Mia. You had to learn your lesson.” “She’s calmed down now. You can come work at Kensington. I’ll set you up with an apartment. I really do want to take care of you, Harper.” A wave of pure, unadulterated nausea hit me so hard I had to lean against the brick wall to gag. I hung up the phone. He honestly believed I was broken. That I was a desperate, homeless stray with nowhere to turn but back to her master. He had no idea I was already walking away. I hailed a cab to O’Hare. In the backseat, I opened the drafts folder on my phone. Mia wasn’t the only one who knew how to use the internet. I had drafted a meticulously curated timeline. Receipts. Dates. Photos. The undeniable, forensic proof that Mia was the mistress. I hit publish. I turned off my phone, looking out the window at the city skyline I had bled into for seven years. Then, I walked into the terminal and boarded a one-way flight out of the country. Back in Chicago, a panicked executive assistant burst into the CEO’s office. “Mr. Kensington! Harper just posted a massive thread online with the entire timeline of your relationship!” “She brought the receipts, sir. Everyone knows Mia is the other woman!”

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Ten years into the collapse of the world, after surviving death more times than I could count, I finally found my long-lost best friend. She had managed to get herself a capable boyfriend—a man with real power—and they were practically attached at the hip. But that was also the exact moment I saw the floating text. [Oh thank god, the high-maintenance drama queen is finally getting killed off! She’s been clinging to the Male Lead forever and stalling the main romance. I’m so sick of her!] [Good riddance! She’s lazy and entitled. People like her don’t deserve to survive the apocalypse.] [Is anyone else still mad about the time she forced the Male Lead to go out at night just to find her a sheet mask? I wanted to punch the screen…] [And now that her redshirt best friend has shown up, the drama queen keeps fighting with the Male Lead over her. She almost got him killed. He’s completely out of patience with her.] [Can the Female Lead just show up already? I’m here for the apocalypse power couple!] The “drama queen” these bizarre, glowing comments were talking about was my best friend, Cassie. And according to them… Cassie was destined to be abandoned by her boyfriend, left behind to become nothing more than rations for the infected. But I couldn’t help but think they had gotten one crucial detail wrong. I was the number one ranked Awakened on the continent. It didn’t matter how high-maintenance my best friend was. I had enough power to maintain her. 1 I had been surrounded by a swarm of the dead, hovering on the precipice of my own end. To make matters worse, some girl had decided to take advantage of my bleeding out. She was going to cut the bio-core out of me and steal my abilities for herself. I played dead. The second the girl leaned in, her hand reaching for my chest, a blinding arc of lightning erupted from my palm. It took exactly one second. Then, she stopped breathing. I shoved her off, tossed her smoking corpse down the stairwell to distract the screeching infected, and dragged my battered body out the fire escape. … I ran for half a month before I finally reached another quarantine zone. My abilities were completely drained. My physical endurance had hit absolute zero. I collapsed in the dirt on the side of the road. Through the haze of unconsciousness, a familiar voice cut through the static in my brain. “Cole, look! There’s someone over there!” “Go help her. Please, Cole, you have to!” I know that voice… “Are you trying to get Cole killed, Cassie? We’re just scavenging the perimeter. There’s a swarm coming. If we don’t move right now, we’re all dead meat!” “Yeah, seriously Cassie, read the goddamn room before you throw a tantrum!” “Cole, you’re not actually going out there, are you? Man… that girl looks dead anyway.” The people with them were furious, their voices thick with contempt. Listening to the commotion, I fought the heavy pull of exhaustion and forced my eyes open. Because I had heard a name that anchored me to the earth. Cassie. My best friend. Scraping together the very last dregs of my strength, I rolled over and pushed myself up on my elbows, lifting my heavy head. Across the ruined overpass, a group of five or six people stared down at me, weapons drawn. The man at the front was built like a tank, radiating an oppressive, heavy energy. One look and you knew he was an Awakened. But I didn’t waste a single second looking at him. My eyes locked entirely on the woman shrinking against his side. Compared to the girl I used to know, she was darker from the sun. Thinner. But she wasn’t bleeding. She was alive. A tidal wave of absolute, terrifying joy crashed through my chest. I opened my mouth to call out to her, but the world tilted, and I slammed hard into the asphalt. My body had finally quit. Right before the dark took me, I heard her scream, her voice tearing at the seams. “Bella!!” 2 They saved me. By the time I woke up, the sun had set. Cassie had her arms locked around my neck, sobbing so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. “You’re alive, oh my god, you’re alive! You’re really here!” I patted her back, my throat tight. I was just about to tell her it was okay, when suddenly, those bizarre, glowing comments began to materialize in the air above us. I read them. Over and over again, the neon letters scrolling through the dark room, until the horrifying truth clicked into place. We were living inside a dystopian romance novel. Cassie was the character they loathed—the spoiled, toxic side-piece. Lazy, demanding, brainless. And my sudden appearance? I was just the catalyst. The doomed redshirt whose sole narrative purpose was to die and trigger Cassie’s inevitable, fatal downward spiral. According to the floating text, the Male Lead would only feel a twinge of guilt after Cassie was torn apart. It would leave a poetic little scar on his heart. A scar that the Female Lead was meant to heal. The comments were still rolling by. [I’m a sucker for a power couple. The Female Lead and Male Lead are endgame! He manipulates water, she controls lightning. When they team up, it’s game over for the zombies!] [Right?! And the angst is delicious. The Female Lead accidentally kills some random redshirt and gets PTSD, and then she and the Male Lead grow together and heal each other. It’s peak romance!] [Hurry up and introduce the Female Lead, author. I can’t stand another chapter of this whiny ex.] Lightning abilities? I furrowed my brow in the dark. Just like mine? 3 “Bella, why aren’t you saying anything?” Cassie noticed my rigid silence and reached out, pinching my cheek gently. “Are you scared?” I snapped out of it, focusing on her face. She was looking at me, smiling through her tears. It was the same bright, painfully earnest smile from a lifetime ago… My eyes stung. I reached up and pulled her tightly against my chest. “No,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m just… really happy.” … Cassie had flaws. I had always known that. Before the world ended, she came from old money. Her parents had wrapped her in velvet and treated her like royalty. So naturally, she was a perfectionist. She liked her meals plated perfectly, her dresses immaculate, and she expected the world to be her friend. In the beginning, I couldn’t stand her. Because I was a bitter, jagged thing, and I envied her. I envied her glowing skin, her sprawling house, her effortless existence. But one afternoon, she walked right up to my desk. I looked up, defensive and guarded, and she held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Cassie. Do you want to be friends? I think you’re incredibly cool.” Half an hour earlier, I had been forced to stand in the hallway for the entire period because I’d talked back to a teacher. She leaned in, lowering her voice like we were co-conspirators. “Actually, I hate Mr. Davis too.” I was too cynical to admit out loud that I agreed. I just sat there, staring at her. Cassie took my silence as a resounding yes. She clapped her hands together. “Perfect! We’re best friends now.” I thought she was too fragile. The kind of girl who would get a papercut and immediately well up with tears. I found her exhausting. If something had the slightest flaw, she tossed it. I thought she had absolutely no sense of boundaries, buzzing around my ear every single day with her endless chatter. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew girls like her didn’t keep girls like me around as real friends. Until the spring semester of eighth grade, when I got hit by a car. I was an orphan, bouncing between my aunt and uncle’s house. When the doctors told them I might never walk again, my relatives deliberated for a few days before deciding I was too much of a burden. They packed my bags for a rural group home. I had completely given up. I was entirely hollowed out. But the light that forced its way back into my dark little room wasn’t the sun. It was Cassie. She came to the hospital. She chattered endlessly by my bedside. And when visiting hours were over, she promised she’d be back the next day. She never broke that promise. For the next three months, she didn’t miss a single day. It wasn’t until much later that I found out she had emptied the trust fund her grandparents had set up for her, just to cover the surgical bills my aunt had refused to pay. She stood in the hospital hallway and screamed at my aunt and uncle. She told them I was a human being, and you don’t just throw human beings in the trash. She was so incredibly self-righteous… But lying in that bed, I realized that her entitlement and her stubborn perfectionism were actually sort of beautiful. 4 We became real friends. Honestly, if Cassie was high-maintenance and spoiled, my unconditional enabling was the root cause. People who knew us would always say, “Keep indulging her like that, Bella. What are you gonna do if she never finds a guy who can put up with her? Keep her as a pet for the rest of your life?” I’d be staring down at a college business plan, not even bothering to look up. “I wouldn’t mind.” Cassie would just laugh, clutching her stomach. “You guys really think you can drive a wedge between me and Bella? Keep dreaming!” … My startup was just getting off the ground, barely finding its footing, when the apocalypse tore the world apart. We got separated during the initial evacuation panic. I looked for her. I spent years turning over the ashes of dead cities looking for her. I never imagined that when I finally found her, ten years would have slipped through our fingers. And the glowing text hovering in the room was telling me that I was about to lose her permanently. 5 I watched the text scroll by, keeping my expression entirely blank. I slipped into the role of an exhausted, unawakened survivor, quietly integrating into their safe zone. And slowly, the reality of Cassie’s life came into sharp focus. She genuinely loved Cole, and for his part, Cole was willing to indulge her. He accommodated her moods. But her complete lack of survival skills and demanding nature rubbed everyone else in the compound the wrong way. I had no doubt in my mind: the second Cole got hurt, or the second he stopped loving her, Cassie would be thrown to the wolves. I was lost in thought when I heard her voice drifting from the hallway. “Cole, please, can’t you spare one extra ration for Bella? She’s practically skin and bones. She’s been out there starving all these years.” Her voice dropped to a plea. “You know I’ve been looking for her.” Cole sounded irritated, put upon. “We’ve already given her twice the standard allowance. If I show her more favoritism, the other guys are going to riot.” The comments flared up, practically vibrating with excitement. [Yes! Keep whining, drama queen. Dig your own grave.] [The Male Lead is getting so sick of her shit.] [I cannot wait for the chapter where she finally gets eaten!] [+1] [+1] My jaw clenched. I deliberately kicked a chair leg, making a loud scraping noise. Cole instantly went rigid, his hand dropping to his weapon as he peered into the room. Cassie’s face lit up. “Bella!” “Why are you out of bed?” She rushed over, looking me up and down. “Are you feeling better?” I forced a smile. “I’m fine.” Standing in the doorway, Cole gave me a flat, dead-eyed nod, then turned and walked away. He was arrogant. Ten years into the nightmare, men like him had stopped seeing the Unawakened as actual people. Even as his girlfriend’s best friend, to him, I was just dead weight. A useless mouth to feed. Once he was gone, Cassie squeezed my hand. “Don’t be mad at him. He’s just stressed. I’ll yell at him for you later.” She dragged me around the safe zone, pointing out the meager gardens and the reinforced walls. She told me about the last few years. What she’d seen. Who she’d lost. And then she asked about me, pressing for every detail. We sat on her cramped bed talking deep into the night, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. She slumped against my shoulder, breathing softly, fast asleep. The floating text was instantly mocking. [Does this high-maintenance brat not realize her only value is warming the Male Lead’s bed? Now she’s not even going back to his room? Just hanging out with the redshirt?] [She’s literally asking to be abandoned.] [I’m so ready for the Female Lead to make her grand entrance!] [Here, sharing some fanart of our badass Female Lead to cleanse your eyes from this boring friendship.] I stared at the empty space in the room, my eyes narrowing. Two illustrations popped up in the glowing chat. It was a sharp-featured girl with a tough, pragmatic look. But… she looked terribly familiar. 6 Right before I drifted off, I bolted upright in bed. I remembered where I had seen that face… Half a month ago. The girl who had tried to cut out my bio-core while I was bleeding out. The one I had fried to a crisp. That was the Female Lead? But I had already killed her… Before I could fully process the implication, a piercing siren shattered the silence of the night. Someone was sprinting through the halls, screaming at the top of their lungs: “Swarm! The dead are at the gates! All Awakened to the perimeter! Non-combatants to the bunkers!” Cassie jolted awake, instantly gripping my hand tight enough to cut off circulation. “Don’t be scared, Bella.” “Stay right behind me. We’ll find Cole. He’ll keep us safe.” She yanked my arm to pull me off the bed… but I didn’t move. Instead, I reversed our grip, my fingers wrapping firmly around her wrist. Cassie looked back at me, confused and trembling. I looked her dead in the eye. “You stay behind me. I’ll keep you safe.” She blinked, stunned. But there was no time to argue. She swallowed hard. “We need to get to the mineshaft.” The infected swarm was a tidal wave of rot. Some of the evolved ones could bypass the electric fences and infiltrate the compound itself. They were smart enough to hide in the shadows, meaning the Awakened would have to clear the zone street by street even after the main horde was repelled. During the chaos, the Unawakened were herded into an old subterranean mine. We ran through the dark compound, sprinting toward the heavy steel doors of the shaft. We were surrounded by people just like Cassie. Unawakened. Families clutching children, looking stressed but not completely terrified. This happened every few weeks. They had complete faith in their powerful leaders to handle it. But as I watched them, a cold knot formed in my stomach. These people were completely, dangerously dependent. I glanced at Cassie, my brow furrowing. I had been watching her and Cole closely over the last few days. Her “spoiled” behavior, her demands—they were all within the parameters Cole implicitly allowed. Some of it, he deliberately encouraged. He spoiled her in front of everyone. And by extension, he ensured the Unawakened in the camp got slightly better rations and treatment, pulling resources away from the Awakened fighters. His men resented it, but they didn’t aim their anger at Cole. They aimed it at Cassie. She was the scapegoat. And the Unawakened didn’t thank Cassie for the extra food. They thanked Cole. It made them fiercely loyal to him. It made them work the greenhouses until their hands bled, happily providing for the very man pulling the strings. Cole was weaponizing Cassie’s reputation to solidify his absolute control. Did… did she realize that? My grip on her wrist tightened. In that split second of distraction, the world exploded. Just as we reached the heavy doors of the bunker, a shadow peeled itself off the wall. An infected, rotting and fast, launched itself straight at Cassie’s throat. She froze, completely paralyzed by terror. I yanked her arm backward with brutal force, swapping our positions in a fraction of a second. “Bella!” Cassie shrieked, but before the sound even left her mouth, I had already driven a hunting knife upward, burying it straight through the creature’s eye socket and scrambling its brain. 7 Down in the damp, crowded mine, Cassie couldn’t stop staring at me. Her eyes were shining in the dark. It was getting ridiculous. “Stop looking at me like that,” I whispered. “I’ve been surviving out there by myself for ten years. You think I don’t know how to handle a knife?” Cassie threw her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder. “You’re so brave. You’re so amazing, Bella… You must have suffered so much all these years.” My chest tightened. I reached up and stroked her hair. I still hadn’t revealed my abilities. I knew exactly how men like Cole operated. If he found out I was a top-tier Awakened, he wouldn’t let me leave without a war. And I needed to get Cassie out of here. Soon. Above us, the muffled sounds of gunfire and screaming echoed through the earth. Sitting in the dark, I watched the floating comments scrolling rapidly across the ceiling, my mind racing. [Wait, what is happening? The swarm is almost cleared, why hasn’t the Female Lead shown up yet?] [I’ve been waiting for the epic ‘badass girl saves the Male Lead’ scene for fifty chapters! Where the hell is she?] [Are you guys not looking at the drama queen’s POV? Her redshirt best friend didn’t die!] [What? If the best friend doesn’t die, the drama queen isn’t going to have her mental breakdown and fight with the Male Lead! The entire plot is ruined!] … Listening to their frantic digital chatter, the final puzzle piece fell into place. In the original timeline, the Female Lead managed to rip out my bio-core, leaving me a crippled, ordinary human. I barely made it to this camp, reunited with Cassie, and then died a pathetic death during this exact swarm. The Female Lead, now wielding my stolen lightning, would swoop in, save Cole from a fatal ambush, and get recruited into his inner circle. The perfect power couple is born. Meanwhile, my death would cause Cassie to spiral. She would blame Cole, throwing a massive tantrum and running off into the wasteland just to make him chase her. But Cole, fed up with her antics, wouldn’t go after her immediately. And by the time he did, there would be nothing left of her to find. The annoying side-piece is removed from the board. And me? Just a stepping stone. But now… [The story is completely off the rails! What is going on?] [HOLY SHIT! The author just posted an update. They said the narrative has collapsed, the characters have gained sentience, and they can’t control the story anymore!] [You’re burying the lede! The author confirmed the Female Lead is DEAD! SHE’S DEAD!] [I’m losing my mind. What kind of trash ending is this?] [Are you kidding? This is amazing. We’re in totally uncharted territory now. It’s like a blind box. I am strapped in for the ride!] My heart slammed against my ribs. I looked at Cassie, who was dozing off against my shoulder, exhausted by the adrenaline crash. If I was understanding this text correctly… Our fates weren’t set in stone anymore. We had already broken the mold.

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When I was thrown out of high school, someone else packed my bags and took my place at college. For three years, I was a ghost, buried alive on an assembly line at a Texas electronics plant, bleeding myself dry twelve hours a day just to keep a roof over my parents’ heads. That was my life. Right up until the police kicked the door down. You’re under arrest for a murder in an Oakmont University dorm room. I sat in the interrogation room, the metal cuffs biting into my wrists, and I actually laughed. I looked at the detectives, then laid out my phantom existence. “Officers, I don’t even have a high school diploma,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “For the last three years, I’ve been clocking twelve-hour shifts at a motherboard factory. This university you’re talking about? I couldn’t even tell you what state it’s in.” 1 Buzz—click—buzz. The fluorescent bulb in the interrogation room flickered, a rhythmic, maddening strobe that made my eyes heavy. But I didn’t dare sleep. Across the metal table sat three people—two men, one woman—each wearing an expression colder than the last. “Cole,” the lead detective, a heavy-set guy in his forties, slid a stack of glossy photographs across the table. “Do you recognize this man?” I looked down. It was a young guy, sprawled on his back in a widening pool of dark blood. His eyes were half-open, staring blankly at the ceiling. He was young. About my age. He was wearing a winter parka, and the background looked like the drab linoleum hallway of a college dorm. I felt nothing. Just the numb detachment of looking at a stranger. “Never seen him,” I said, shaking my head. “Never seen him?” The younger detective to my left scoffed, leaning in. “Look closer, kid. That’s your roommate, Daniel Porter. You’ve lived in Room 408 of Oakmont University’s North Hall for three years, and you’re sitting there telling us you don’t know him?” I froze. Oakmont University? I looked up, my eyes darting between the three of them, trying to bridge the massive canyon between their reality and mine. I had spent the last three years in a sprawling concrete plant in Texas, standing until my knees gave out, begging for a single day off. When the hell did I go to college? “Officer,” I said, fighting to keep the panic out of my throat. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I never went to college.” “Never went?” The younger cop slammed a thick manila folder onto the table. “Read it yourself. Here’s a copy of your acceptance letter. Here’s your academic transcript. Here’s your student ID. Cole Miller, male, Social Security ending in 4921, enrolled in Oakmont’s mechanical engineering program in September 2019. You’re telling me this isn’t you?” My hands trembled as I picked up the file. The acceptance letter boldly declared the name Cole Miller. There was a photo on the student ID, too. It was a young man who shared my coloring, maybe even the shape of my jaw, but the eyes were entirely wrong. It was the face of a boy who had never known what it meant to go hungry. It wasn’t me. I flipped to the back of the file. Tucked behind a forged health record was an old, standard-issue high school portrait. That face was mine. But I had never set foot on that campus. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to the back of my head. A high, thin ringing filled my ears. And suddenly, fragments of a memory I had spent three years burying clawed their way to the surface. Three years ago. The chill of the afternoon air. The heavy thud of the school doors locking behind me. Three years of swallowing my pride, of resigning myself to the dirt. I had never, not for one single second, imagined there was a second act to that day. “Officer,” I said, gently setting the file down and locking eyes with the lead detective. “I’m going to say this one more time. I did not go to college. I was expelled before I could even graduate high school. I’ve been working the line at an electronics plant ever since. I eat, sleep, and shit at that factory. I don’t know who this dead kid is, but I sure as hell didn’t kill him.” “Didn’t kill him?” The young cop shot up from his chair. “Time of death: December 17th, 7:30 PM. Location: Oakmont North Hall, Room 408. The victim took three stab wounds to the abdomen, one piercing the heart. We pulled your fingerprints from the room. We pulled your DNA. Are you still going to sit there and lie?” Fingerprints? DNA? I looked down at my hands. They were ruined. Three years of twisting screws and soldering wires had left them covered in thick, yellowish calluses, grease burns, and jagged little scars. Now, these people were telling me these hands had taken a life. “What do fingerprints and DNA prove?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “If this guy stole my identity to get into school, of course the room is full of files with my fingerprints on them. But how could my DNA be at a crime scene I’ve never been to?” “Bullshit,” the young cop spat. “You think we didn’t do our homework? You enrolled in 2019. You lived in general housing freshman year, moved to 408 as a sophomore. Your roommate, your classmates, your academic advisor—they can all place you there.” “Then bring them here,” I challenged, the fire finally sparking in my chest. “Put me in a lineup. Let them look me in the eye and tell you if I’m the Cole Miller they spent three years with.” The younger cop opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. The lead detective finally leaned forward, interlacing his fingers. “Cole, playing hardball isn’t going to save you. We have a mountain of evidence. If you cooperate, if you confess, we can talk to the DA about manslaughter. You’re young. You’d do a few years, tops. But if you drag this out and we go for Murder One, your life is over.” I just stared at him. “Are you in trouble?” he pressed, his voice softening, attempting a sympathetic angle. “Is someone threatening you? You can tell us. We can protect you.” Looking at him, a strange, breathless bubble of hysteria rose in my chest. I started to smile. And then, I started to laugh. I laughed until hot, bitter tears spilled over my eyelashes. “Detective,” I said, turning my palms up to the harsh light, exposing the map of scars and thick, dead skin. “Do these look like the hands of a college boy? I don’t know where Oakmont University is. The only geography I know is the B3 assembly line at SunTech Electronics. Twelve hours a day. Standing. You’re not even allowed a stool.” “Listen, kid—” “For three years,” I cut him off, my voice echoing off the concrete walls. “I haven’t missed a single shift. I haven’t taken a single sick day. You said the murder happened December 17th at 7:30 PM? I was on the factory floor. My line manager can prove it. My coworkers can prove it. The biometric time clock can prove it.” The young cop moved to interrupt, but the lead detective held up a hand, silencing him. He stared at me for a long, quiet minute. “What’s the name of this factory?” “SunTech Electronics. The Austin campus.” He nodded slowly. He stood up, turning to the woman taking notes in the corner. “Put him in a holding cell. We’ll resume tomorrow.” As the uniformed officer hauled me up to my feet, I looked back over my shoulder. The lead detective was still watching me, and for the first time, the absolute certainty in his eyes was gone. 2 I didn’t start out on an assembly line. Three years ago, I was a senior at Belleville High, a rusty, dead-end town in the Midwest. I wasn’t a genius, but I held my own. My test scores were solid; I was tracking perfectly for a decent state college. My dad ruined his back hauling rebar on construction sites, and my mom spent her life up to her elbows in greasy dishwater at a local diner. Their entire universe revolved around one dream: getting me into college so I wouldn’t have to break my body for a paycheck like they did. But I was a stupid kid. My fatal flaw was that I couldn’t stay awake. Especially during seventh-period Calculus. The radiators in that old building ran way too hot, the teacher’s monotone voice was like a sedative, and my eyelids would turn to lead. I tried everything. I pinched my thighs until they bruised, rubbed peppermint oil under my eyes. Nothing worked. When the exhaustion hit, it was a tidal wave. One Tuesday afternoon, I went under. I slept so hard I didn’t even hear the final bell. When I finally blinked awake, the classroom was empty. Groggy, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked out into the hall, nearly colliding with the Vice Principal. Everyone called him “Bulldog” Benson. He was fifty-something, balding, with a face like a bulldog, and he lived to terrorize students for minor infractions. Tardiness, dress codes, sleeping in class. “Cole Miller,” he barked, grabbing my arm. “My office. Now.” I figured I was in for detention. Maybe a call home. But when I walked into the office, my homeroom teacher was there, shifting uncomfortably. Sitting across from them were two strangers: a wealthy-looking man in a tailored suit, and a boy about my age. The boy looked a little like me—same height, dark hair—but he had the soft, unblemished glow of a kid who had never worried about money. He was wearing a North Face jacket that cost more than my dad made in a week. “Cole,” my homeroom teacher said, pushing a sheet of paper across the desk, refusing to meet my eyes. “This is your notice of expulsion. Sign it.” The air rushed out of my lungs. “Expulsion? Mr. Harris, I fell asleep. It’s just a detention, isn’t it?” “Just a detention?” Bulldog Benson sneered. “How many times have you slept through class this semester, Miller? How many warnings? You think this school is a motel?” “I’ll fix it! I swear to God, I’ll never sleep in class again—” “Too late,” my teacher interrupted, his voice hollow. “The Principal has made his decision. With your attitude, giving you a college recommendation is a waste of a slot. Sign the paper. Clean out your locker. You’re off the premises immediately.” Panic, raw and blinding, seized me. I begged. I actually dropped to my knees in front of that desk. They finally let me call my mom. She sobbed through the receiver, begging Benson for mercy. He hung up on her mid-sentence. The two strangers in the corner just watched. They didn’t say a single word. Twenty minutes later, two security guards grabbed me by the arms and physically threw me out the back doors of the school. My textbooks and notebooks were tossed out after me, scattering across the wet pavement. I sat on the curb outside the school gates until midnight, waiting for the Principal to leave. I thought if I could just look him in the eye, I could change his mind. He slipped out a side exit. The guards threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave. I tried to appeal to the school board, but I was just a broke kid from the wrong side of the tracks. The doors were shut. It was only much later that I put the pieces together. That afternoon, Richard Miller—the head of the City Zoning and Planning Board, a man with the kind of money that made problems disappear—was sitting in that office with his son, Connor. Connor Miller. The boy who watched me beg. Connor was failing out. He couldn’t get into a community college, let alone a university, and he couldn’t pass a military physical. His father needed a clean, unblemished academic record. Why me? Because of the name. Miller. We shared a last name, making the paperwork seamlessly easy to fudge. Because my dad was a broken construction worker and my mom washed dishes; we had no money for lawyers. Because I fell asleep in class, giving them the perfect excuse. And because my grades were good, but not so good that my sudden disappearance would raise red flags. Three days after I was thrown out like trash, Connor Miller took my Social Security number, my transcripts, and my identity, and walked into a testing center. And I? After lying in bed for three days staring at the ceiling, I packed a duffel bag, followed a neighbor down to Texas, and walked onto the factory floor. 3 The SunTech plant was an hour’s bus ride from Austin proper. It was its own dystopian city. A dozen sprawling concrete dormitories housing ten thousand workers. I was assigned to the B3 assembly line, building internal components for cell phone chargers. My entire existence shrank down to two wires. I had to solder two wires onto a green motherboard. It sounds easy, until you have to do it four thousand times a shift. Within a month, my hands didn’t belong to me anymore. Working the graveyard shift was an exercise in psychological torture. You’d be so bone-tired you were hallucinating, but if your hand slipped even a millimeter, the soldering iron would sear through your skin. Half the scars on my hands were from the iron. The other half from slipping screwdrivers. There were no chairs on the line. Twelve hours of standing. My legs swelled until my boots felt like vices. The soles of my feet turned to stone. If you needed to piss, you ran. We got exactly thirty minutes to shovel food into our mouths. The line never stopped. If it stalled for a second, the floor manager was screaming down your neck. His name was Davis. A massive, red-faced guy who liked to spit when he yelled. His favorite catchphrase was, “You wanna quit? There’s a thousand illegals at the gate begging for your spot!” I made about $2,400 a month. With mandatory overtime, sometimes $3,000. I kept a few hundred to survive and wired the rest to my mom. Every time she called, she cried, apologizing for failing me. I’d force a laugh and tell her it was fine, that college was just a scam to get a job anyway, and I was already making money. I told her once I got bumped up to line technician, the pay would double. But beneath the bravado, it was killing me. Sometimes, lying in my bunk in a room packed with eight snoring, grinding men, staring at the rusted springs of the mattress above me, the ‘what-ifs’ would creep in. What if I had just stayed awake that day? What if I hadn’t been expelled?

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To keep from being buried alive in the fallout of a dying dynasty, I decided to steal a child from a man who supposedly couldn’t even stand. To make sure the plan was foolproof, I doubled the dose of “Midnight Silk”—a cocktail of chemistry and desperation designed to make a man forget his own name. That night, the man who came to me was anything but the invalid the rumors described. He was a force of nature, primal and unrelenting, far more savage than any dying billionaire had a right to be. I told myself the drugs were just that good. I let my tears hit the pillow and endured every grueling hour until dawn. When the sun finally crept through the heavy velvet curtains, I pulled on a silk robe, my lower back aching with a dull, throbbing heat. I pushed open the double doors of the suite, ready to secure my future by announcing my “devotion” to the old man. Instead, I found a massacre. The marble floors were slick with it—a river of crimson reflecting the morning light. Bodies lay scattered like discarded dolls. And right in the center of the carnage stood the man I had spent the night with. He was holding a tactical blade that still dripped onto the expensive rug, his boot firmly planted on the throat of the man I was supposed to have seduced. He turned to look at me, his eyes bloodshot and dark with a lingering, predatory satisfaction. “So, Sadie,” he rasped, his voice a low, terrifying vibration. “Did you get what you wanted last night?” I was ruined. I hadn’t seduced the dying king. I had seduced the man who just murdered him. 1 The biggest mistake of my life wasn’t marrying into the Montgomery family. It was believing that a hit of “Midnight Silk” could buy me a way out. In this world, there was a dark, unspoken rule: when the Patriarch falls, the loose ends are cut. No heirs, no protection. And for a trophy wife like me—a girl with no pedigree and even less influence—I wasn’t just a loose end. I was a liability meant to be discarded. Harrison Montgomery was dying. He was a shell of a man, barely clinging to life in the east wing of the estate. The vultures were already circling. For someone like me, “discarded” usually meant a one-way trip to a shallow grave or a life-shattering scandal that would leave me on the streets. I wanted to live. So, I burned through my hidden savings to bribe the head of security. I needed him to steer Harrison into my suite for one last “reconciliation.” I prepped the room, lit the incense, and doubled the dose of the stimulant. I even downed half a bottle of expensive bourbon myself; if I had to sleep with a man who smelled like mothballs and impending death, I needed to be numb enough not to vomit. But I missed one crucial detail: the coup was scheduled for that very night. I was hiding behind the canopy curtains when I heard the heavy thud of boots and the metallic clatter of gear. My brain was a fog of bourbon and adrenaline. I thought it was Harrison, maybe wearing some kind of experimental medical brace to help him stay upright. The moment the doors swung open, I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t dare. I lunged. If I got pregnant tonight, it wouldn’t matter who sat on the throne tomorrow. A Montgomery heir was a golden ticket. The man froze. He smelled of cold rain, gunpowder, and the metallic tang of fresh blood—the scent of a man who had just finished a harvest. In my drunken haze, I convinced myself it was just a strange, expensive cologne. I didn’t just embrace him. I wrapped myself around him like a vine, dragging him toward the bed with a desperation that should have been a warning. His body was like granite. He was still holding something cold and hard in his hand—a weapon, surely—but I didn’t give him the chance to use it. I pressed my lips to his, forcing the drugged wine into his mouth. “I’ve been waiting for you, darling,” I whispered, reciting the lines of a loyal, grieving wife. I felt the killing intent in him falter for a split second. Then, the drug hit. That suppressed, violent energy was ignited by the chemical fire I’d sparked. He flipped me over, his hands gripping my waist with enough force to bruise. At the time, I only felt a surge of triumph: The rumors were wrong. The old man still has plenty of fight left in him! The night was a blur of survival. I thought I was performing a grim duty, a “calculated transaction.” Instead, it was a total eclipse. This man was a predator, ruthless and agonizingly thorough. He didn’t move like a man who needed help walking; he moved like a man who destroyed things for a living. Somewhere in the middle of the fever dream, I wondered if the “Midnight Silk” was some kind of fountain of youth. He seemed to be venting years of repressed rage, his movements bordering on destructive, yet he stopped himself from truly hurting me in moments of strange, terrifying restraint. In a moment of sheer, drug-induced stupidity, I actually panted into his ear, “You’ve been holding out on me, haven’t you? You’re quite the dark horse. If I’d known you were this… capable… I wouldn’t have used the double dose.” He stilled for a heartbeat. Then he redoubled his efforts, and I was lost again. I was a small boat in the middle of a hurricane, clinging to my only hope of survival. I don’t remember falling asleep. I only remember whispering that I was exhausted, crying into his neck. He let out a low, raspy chuckle—a sound so deep and resonant it couldn’t have come from Harrison’s frail chest. But I was too far gone to care about the logic of it. I just knew the seed was planted. My life was safe. Until I woke up the next morning and saw his face. 2 My head was pounding when I drifted back to consciousness. The man was standing by the window, his back to me as he pulled on his tactical shirt. Broad shoulders, a tapered waist, and a back marked with the red scratches I’d left there during the night. There was no way in hell this was a sixty-year-old man. My eyes drifted to the floor, where a combat blade lay discarded. The blood on the edge hadn’t fully dried; dark droplets were still seeping into my cream-colored rug with a rhythmic plink, plink, plink. The hangover vanished instantly, replaced by cold, paralyzing terror. I looked up just as he turned around. It was a face I recognized from the “Avoid at All Costs” briefings: Roman Blackwood. The “Butcher” of the corporate underworld, the mercenary kingpin who had been rumored to be planning a takeover for months. I hadn’t slept with the King. I had slept with the man who had just decapitated the kingdom. I scrambled off the bed, not even stopping to find a robe, and dropped to my knees, trembling so hard my teeth chattered. “You’re awake,” he said. His voice was sandpaper and velvet, a terrifyingly magnetic sound. He didn’t kill me immediately. Instead, he took his time tightening his belt, his eyes tracing the line of my bare shoulder with a look that was half-amused, half-starved. “You were quite… enthusiastic last night, Sadie.” This was it. The moment I died. My mind raced. If I admitted I mistook him for the old man, I was calling him a substitute. Dead. If I said I intended to sleep with him, I was a traitor and a whore. Dead. If I was going to die anyway, I might as well play the most dangerous hand in the deck. I took a sharp breath, looked up, and let the tears flow on command. I channeled every ounce of “doomed heroine” energy I had. “Roman! I… I’ve waited so long for this night!” His hand paused on his belt. He arched a dark eyebrow. “Oh?” I had to commit. I had to believe my own lie so hard it became his reality. “You have no idea. I’ve watched you from the sidelines for years. Marrying Harrison… it was a prison sentence. I was a captive in this house, but my heart? My heart has always belonged to you. I’ve been praying for the day you’d finally come and burn this place down.” He walked toward me, each step echoing like a heartbeat. He used the bloody tip of his scabbard to tilt my chin up. “You’ve been pining for me?” He let out a cold, cynical whistle. “Then why did you keep calling out for ‘the Master’ last night?” My heart skipped. Shit. I had used the formal title I usually used for Harrison. But I, Sadie Moore, have a face made of brass. “Because to me, you are the Master!” I cried, leaning into the blade. “In my heart, you’ve always been the one in charge. Harrison was just a ghost I had to endure until you arrived!” It was treasonous, but to a man who had just successfully staged a coup, it was exactly the kind of ego-stroke he needed. The murderous glint in Roman’s eyes softened—not into kindness, but into a dark, intrigued curiosity. “Pretty words,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “But you’re a hell of an actress, Sadie. You should be in Hollywood, not a billionaire’s bedroom.” “It’s not an act!” I reached under the pillow and pulled out a small, silk handkerchief I’d been embroidering. It was supposed to be a floral pattern, but my needlework was so atrocious that the ‘M’ for Montgomery looked more like a jagged ‘B’. I held it up with trembling hands. “Look! I made this for you! ‘B’ for Blackwood! I’ve been keeping it hidden for months, waiting for the right moment!” Roman took the scrap of silk, staring at the messy, distorted letter. “This is a ‘B’?” “It’s… it’s abstract!” I insisted. “It represents my chaotic, wild devotion to you!” Roman was silent. He had likely never encountered a woman this shameless in his entire life. Finally, he let out a low, jagged laugh. It was a terrifying sound, but it wasn’t the sound of a man about to kill me. “Since you’re so devoted to me…” He tossed the handkerchief back onto the bed and turned toward the door. “Put some clothes on. You’re coming with me to watch the board members surrender.” I collapsed onto the floor the moment he turned his back, my skin drenched in cold sweat. I was alive. But the road ahead was going to be a hell of a lot harder than dying. 3 The Grand Ballroom smelled like ozone and expensive scotch. The board of directors—the men who had treated me like a decorative houseplant for a year—were now huddled on the floor, terrified. And there I was, standing right at Roman’s side, feeling their stares burning into me like I was some kind of ghost. Harrison—or what was left of him—was seated in a chair in the center of the room, bound and broken. Roman sat on the marble desk, one arm draped possessively, almost bruisingly, around my waist. The intimacy of it made my skin crawl, but I leaned into him, playing the part of the devoted consort. “Harrison, do you recognize her?” Roman asked, his voice dripping with sadistic mockery. The old man looked up. When his eyes landed on me, they nearly bulged out of his head. “Sadie? You… you traitorous little bitch! How could you?” I felt a twinge of guilt, but it was quickly drowned out by self-preservation. If I showed a second of weakness, Roman would toss me to the wolves. I hardened my heart and pointed a finger right at my “husband.” “Shut up! I was never yours! I’ve always been Roman’s!” The room went dead silent. Even Roman shifted slightly, surprised by how far I was willing to go. “You useless old fossil,” I continued, the words pouring out like venom. “Did you really think I enjoyed our ‘quiet evenings’? You couldn’t hold a candle to a man like Roman. He’s a god; you’re just a relic.” “I was waiting for him! I was keeping myself ready for the man who actually knows how to lead!” The more I talked, the more I channeled all the frustration of the last year. Harrison started shaking, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. He tried to speak, but he just sputtered, a thin line of foam appearing at the corner of his mouth before he slumped over, unconscious from the sheer shock. “A bit fragile, isn’t he?” I muttered, turning back to Roman with my best adoring smile. “How was that, darling?” Roman looked at me, his gaze deep and unreadable. My heart hammered against my ribs. Had I overplayed it? Did I look too much like a psychopath? Suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed. “Perfect! A ‘devoted’ heart indeed!” He pulled me flush against his side, announcing to the room, “From this moment on, Sadie stays with me. She’s my personal assistant, my shadow. She goes where I go.” I exhaled, but the relief was short-lived. “Personal assistant”? That meant being under his thumb twenty-four hours a day. This wasn’t a reward. This was Roman Blackwood keeping his favorite new toy on a very short leash.

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The guy I used to blow up dog shit with when we were kids got a new girlfriend. This new girlfriend called me a “Pick-Me.” She said I was just pretending to be “one of the guys” so I could steal her man, and that my entire childhood friend group was trash. I didn’t say a word. I just squeezed my girlfriend’s hand a little tighter. She froze. “You… you have a girlfriend?” 1 I, Harper, the unapologetic architect of the Great Dog Crap Explosion of 2005, had returned. My first day back in the States, after my parents forcibly repatriated me from Europe for college, happened to coincide with a welcome-home dinner thrown by my oldest friend, Connor. Connor was one of the kids I grew up in the dirt with. Our little cul-de-sac crew consisted of six people: four guys, two girls. I was one of the girls. The other girl, Natalie, is currently at Harvard, perpetually stressed and entirely too busy for our nonsense. She is the only respectable human being to emerge from our circle. The remaining four were the guys: Connor, Mack, Coop, and Miles. How did we all become friends? It’s incredibly simple. We grew up in the same suburban neighborhood. One sticky summer afternoon, after a torrential downpour, a massive puddle formed in the dirt lot at the end of our street. Some neighborhood dog had left a massive pile of shit right in the center of the depression. By the next afternoon, the sun had baked the water, rehydrating the turd until the entire puddle transformed into a bubbling, natural biological weapon. Mack, who was five at the time and an absolute idiot, pointed at the murky water and said, “It looks like a big bowl of soup.” Connor, four and a half and an even bigger idiot, asked, “Can we drink it?” I was five years and two months old. I answered his question with direct action. I grabbed a heavy tree branch, took aim, and slammed it right into the center of the hazard zone. Splat. Foul, brown water erupted into the air. We spent the rest of that golden afternoon chasing each other around the street, dipping sticks into the biohazard and launching it at one another until the entire neighborhood smelled like a landfill. Eventually, our respective mothers dragged us home by our collars. I got the lecture of a lifetime from my parents, my mother shouting, “Harper! Are you a young lady or a feral animal?!” I was a young lady. But I was a young lady who knew how to make a bomb out of dog crap. So, three years later, when I finally sat down at the table with Connor and the boys again, Mack’s very first sentence to me was: “Harper, do you still think about the soup?” “I do,” I deadpanned. “I also remember that you licked the water that splashed on your cheek and your mom had to take you to the clinic for three days of preventative rabies shots.” The private dining room erupted into laughter. This was our dynamic. We survived each other’s ugliest, loudest, most unpolished phases. We kept each other humble through mutually assured destruction. Anyone with a fragile ego would have been exiled from our circle back in kindergarten. Connor poured me a beer. “Harper, listen. My girlfriend is coming tonight. Do me a solid and maybe let’s not talk about feces?” I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You locked someone down?” Mack leaned over, rolling his eyes. “Two months now. Treats her like she’s made of spun glass. He wouldn’t even let us meet her until today. We’re only getting the privilege because of you.” Coop twisted the knife. “Yeah, he said he had to introduce her to his ‘most important childhood friend.’ We were wondering who that was. Turns out, it’s you, Harper. The rest of us are basically dogs to him.” Connor kicked Coop under the table. “Can you guys just be normal for ten minutes?” I nodded solemnly. “Alright, alright. I’ll play the part. Perfect Southern belle. I got you.” Five minutes later, the door to the dining room opened. A girl walked in. White sundress, long flowing hair, wide doe eyes, and skin that looked like it had never seen a harsh ray of sunlight. The way her skirt swished when she walked made it look like she was floating on a cloud. Someone was floating right behind her. No, it wasn’t a person. It was Connor’s soul, tethered to her wrist. Connor stood up, wearing the kind of dopey, worthless grin that only belongs to a man who has entirely lost his mind. “Guys, let me introduce you. This is my girlfriend, Paige.” Paige. She kept her chin tucked, looking up at us through her lashes. The angle, the wide-eyed apprehension—she looked like a startled fawn that had just wandered onto a busy highway. “Hi everyone. I’m Paige.” Her voice was soft. Like cotton candy dissolving in hot water. Mack and the guys immediately dropped their degenerate personas, sitting up terrifyingly straight and doing their absolute best impressions of civilized society. I stood up too, ready to go through the standard American social pleasantries. But as Paige’s eyes scanned the room and landed on me, she faltered. She physically shrank back, hiding slightly behind Connor’s shoulder. Connor quickly stepped in. “Harper, tone it down, you’re scaring her. She’s shy.” Me? I hadn’t even opened my mouth. I just stood up. Alright then. I sat back down. Connor pulled out the chair next to me for her, making the introductions. “Paige, this is the Harper I told you about. We grew up together. Ride-or-die. She just got back from studying abroad.” Paige offered me a smile. It was so tight, so constrained, so… forced. I brushed it off. I reached into my jacket pocket. Crap. I’d been in such a rush to get here, I forgot to buy a welcome gift. I usually wouldn’t care, but meeting a friend’s new girlfriend empty-handed felt like bad form. I glanced down at my wrist. A diamond tennis bracelet. Cartier. I’d bought it for myself literally that morning. Without a second thought, I unclasped it and gently slid it across the table toward Paige. “Hey, I didn’t have time to prep a proper gift, but take this. Nice to meet you.” Paige froze, staring down at the glittering diamonds. Connor froze, too. The air in the room suddenly turned very heavy. Assuming she was grossed out because it was already worn, I scratched the back of my neck. “Look, if you mind that I had it on, just hold onto it for now and I’ll buy you a fresh one in a box tomorrow.” The moment the words left my mouth, Paige’s eyes welled with tears. What? She pushed the bracelet back toward me with trembling fingers. When she spoke, her voice was thick with a sob. “Harper, I know you’re Connor’s best friend… but you don’t have to do this.” Do what? I was genuinely baffled. “I think you’re misunderstanding me. I literally just forgot to bring a gift—” “It’s fine.” She cut me off, the tears now actively pooling. “I know. I know the kind of money your circle comes from. I know I don’t fit in with Connor’s world. But I’m not with him for his money. I work hard for what I have. I don’t need your charity.” I stared at her. Then I turned my head slowly to look at Connor. Connor grimaced, leaning in to whisper furiously in my ear. “Harper, Paige didn’t grow up with a lot. She’s fiercely independent and she hates feeling like a charity case. You tossing a Cartier bracelet at her makes her feel like you’re mocking her.” My brain short-circuited. Mocking? I tried to course-correct. “I swear I didn’t mean anything by it, I just thought—” “Harper.” Paige spoke up again. This time, she stood up. The tears were actively rolling down her cheeks now, but her spine was rigid, playing the part of the tragic, unyielding heroine to absolute perfection. “I know you meant well. But I might not have money, but I have my pride. I don’t want your handouts.” You could hear a pin drop in that dining room. Mack and the guys exchanged panicked glances. A familiar spark of temper flared hot in my chest. But I swallowed it down. I remembered the very last thing my mother said to me at the airport before shipping me back to the States: Harper, if you start drama the minute you land, I am donating your entire sneaker collection to Goodwill. I took a deep breath. Then another. I forced the most pleasant, customer-service smile I could muster onto my face. “Okay. You don’t want the bracelet. That’s fine. Give me your Venmo. Name a number. I’ll just send you the cash.” Paige went entirely pale. Connor went entirely dark. “Harper!” His voice snapped like a whip. I was officially out of patience. “What?! She doesn’t want the jewelry, so I offered cash. I’ve bought gifts for everyone else’s girlfriends in this room! Why is this so difficult?” “Paige isn’t that kind of girl!” “Then what kind of girl is she?” I threw my hands up. “I give her jewelry, she says I’m mocking her. I offer her cash, she says… I don’t even know what she’s saying! I’m literally just trying to say ‘welcome to the group,’ why is this a federal offense?” Mack hastily stood up to play peacekeeper. “Alright, alright, let’s dial it back. Harper didn’t mean anything by it, Paige. She’s just got no filter. She’s a blunt instrument. Don’t take it personally.” It was the wrong move. The second Mack tried to smooth things over, Paige’s crying escalated from a tragic weep to a full-on breakdown. She looked at Connor. Then at me. Then at Mack. Her lips trembled. “I see. I get it now. You guys grew up together. You’re the real circle.” “I’m nothing. I’m just an outsider.” She looked right at me, her chest heaving. “You didn’t have to do this, Harper. If you want me gone, just say it. You don’t have to use your money to make me feel small.” Excuse me? I used my money to make you feel small? Giving you diamonds was an insult? Venmoing you was an insult? What did she want me to do? Get down on one knee and pledge fealty? “Connor.” Paige turned to my childhood best friend, her voice breaking on his name. “I clearly don’t belong in your world. We should just break up.” With that, she turned on her heel and sprinted out of the restaurant. Connor looked at me. There was a lot in that look. Exhaustion, blame, and a little bit of… something else I couldn’t quite place. Then he ran out after her. The door clicked shut. Silence hung in the room for three agonizing seconds. Coop was the first to speak. “Bro. What the actual hell just happened?” Mack scratched his head. “Harper, you were… a little intense.” I sat back in my chair, staring at the glittering Cartier bracelet still sitting innocuously next to my plate. Miles, the slowest processor among us, finally spoke up, his words dragging out. “Hey… does that Paige girl seem a little… you know?” “A little what?” I asked. Miles searched for the word for a solid ten seconds before finally finding it. “Like… a professional victim?” The four of us exchanged looks. We sank into a deep, collective silence. After a minute, I asked the room, “Does Connor realize?” Mack shook his head. “If he did, he wouldn’t have chased her.” Coop sighed heavily. “It’s over. Connor’s an idiot. He’s going down with the ship.” I rolled my eyes. “Let him drown. He picked her. Now he gets to sleep in the bed he made.” What I didn’t know at the time was that Paige wasn’t just my best friend’s exhausting girlfriend. She was about to become the inescapable shadow of my college existence. To be precise, she was about to become my roommate. 2 Later that night, my phone buzzed with a text from Connor. [Connor]: Harper, don’t sweat what happened tonight. Paige is just really sensitive. I talked her down. We’re good. [Connor]: I’ll buy you dinner to make up for it. I texted back an “OK” emoji and left it at that. I’d known Connor for twenty years. I knew exactly how he operated. When he locked onto an idea, a team of wild horses couldn’t drag him away from it. In middle school, he liked a girl in the grade above us, chased her for three years, and she ended up dating the captain of the track team. In high school, he fell for another girl, chased her for two years, and she moved across the country for college. Now, there was Paige. Two months in. The absolute peak of the honeymoon phase delusion. Anything I said right now would be used against me. It was better to say nothing at all. But the universe has a remarkably twisted sense of humor. On the first day of the semester, I dragged my suitcase into the dorms, pushed open the door to Room 408, and saw someone sitting on the bed near the window. White dress. Long hair. Doe eyes. She looked up. I looked straight ahead. The air in the room instantly turned to concrete. The sweet smile froze on Paige’s face. The textbook in her hands slipped and hit the floor with a loud smack. “…Hi,” I said. “…Harper?” she whispered. I took a slow, deep breath, dragged my suitcase inside, and located my assigned bed. It was the top bunk. Directly above hers. Karma is a sick joke. Fine. I started unpacking. She stayed frozen on her bed. About five minutes of excruciating silence later, she finally spoke. “Harper… about what happened the other night. I misunderstood your intentions. I’m sorry.” I paused folding my shirts and looked down at her. She had her face tilted up toward me, eyes wide and glistening, the absolute picture of earnest, vulnerable apology. I gave a single nod. “Don’t worry about it. Water under the bridge.” She smiled. It was so sweet it made my teeth ache. “Thank you, Harper.” I smiled back, turned around, and kept unpacking. My internal monologue, however, was crystal clear: If I can’t beat her, I’m just going to avoid her like the plague. For the next two weeks, I executed this strategy flawlessly. When her alarm went off in the morning, I was already out the door. When she went to sleep at night, I was just walking in. Library, dining hall, the bleachers by the athletic fields—I didn’t care where I was, as long as it wasn’t Room 408. There were four of us in the suite. Besides Paige and me, there was Dakota, a golden retriever of a girl from the Midwest who loved everyone, and Lauren, a brutally silent premed student whose only form of communication was aggressively turning pages of her biology textbook. Dakota, true to her nature, hated tension. By the third day of classes, she cornered me. “Harper, do you have beef with Paige? Why are you always avoiding her?” I waved a hand dismissively. “No beef. I just have a heavy course load. I leave early and come back late so I don’t wake her up.” Dakota bought it. Paige, however, did not. She decided to go on the offensive. 3 During the second week of the semester, the humanities department hosted a mandatory storytelling showcase for freshmen. “The Moth” style. I had absolutely zero desire to participate, but my advisor mandated that every seminar class had to send two representatives. We drew straws. I lost. Paige had volunteered. On the day of the showcase, I walked up to the mic and delivered a wildly inappropriate five-minute stand-up routine about almost burning down a flat in London while trying to boil pasta. It was pure filler. When the results were posted, I ranked second to last. Paige ranked third. Walking back to the dorms, I was actually in a fantastic mood. Obligation fulfilled, no expectations to advance to the finals. I could go back to coasting. I pushed open the door to Room 408. Someone was sobbing. Dakota was sitting on the edge of Paige’s bed, rubbing her back. “Paige, please don’t cry… third place is incredible…” “But it’s not fair,” Paige sniffled, her voice trembling. “I prepared for weeks. I rewrote that speech a dozen times. I know I should have gotten first…” Dakota patted her shoulder sympathetically. “I know, but the judges are subjective. You still placed!” “It’s not that.” Paige lifted her tear-streaked face, looking at Dakota with tragic intensity. “Dakota… I need to tell you a secret. But you can’t tell anyone.” Dakota leaned in. “What is it?” Paige lowered her voice to a fragile whisper. “I have it on good authority that someone… stole my draft.” Dakota gasped. “Who?!” Paige didn’t answer. She just wept softly. I was standing perfectly still in the doorway, caught in the awkward limbo of whether to walk in or back out slowly. Paige suddenly looked up and locked eyes with me. She flinched, then violently ducked her head, shrinking into herself. It was the look. The specific, calculated look of a victim terrified of her abuser. My brain stuttered to a halt. She… she isn’t implying what I think she’s implying, is she? Dakota slowly turned around. The look she gave me was incredibly complicated. I crossed my arms. “Spit it out.” Paige shook her head frantically. “Harper, it’s nothing! I know it wasn’t you.” I exhaled, feeling the tension drain out of me, and stepped fully into the room. But before I even reached my desk, Paige whispered, “It was probably just a coincidence… great minds think alike, right?” I stopped dead in my tracks. Think alike? My speech was titled: How to Make Microwave Ramen Taste Like a Michelin Star Meal While Drunk. I hadn’t read Paige’s draft, but I had been sitting in the auditorium when she delivered it. I remembered her topic vividly. It was titled: The Unseen Struggles of First-Generation College Students. How, in God’s name, did those two concepts “think alike”? I turned slowly to look at her. She immediately curled her shoulders inward, casting her eyes down in terror, looking every bit the bullied innocent. Dakota was now staring at me like I was a villain in a Lifetime movie. I let out a harsh laugh. “…I got second to last.” Paige blinked, looking up. “What?” “I said, I ranked second to last. If I had stolen your brilliantly crafted emotional masterpiece, don’t you think I would have placed higher than the girl who talked about her cat for six minutes? I was second to last.” Paige froze. A slow, hot flush crept up her neck. Dakota blinked, the gears finally turning in her head. “Oh wait, yeah. Harper talked about ramen. Paige, your speech was about first-gen students. Those have literally nothing in common.” Paige looked down at her hands, her voice dropping to a microscopic whisper. “I was just… thinking out loud. I never said Harper stole it…” I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my own skull. I ignored her entirely, climbed up the ladder to my bunk, put on my noise-canceling headphones, and booted up my Switch.

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