1 “Do you really think getting pregnant is enough to buy your way into the Lyndon family? Plenty of women would kill to carry my child.” The sneer was still half-formed on my lips when my alcohol-addled brain suddenly snapped awake. Looking at the positive pregnancy test in my hand, then at the tear-stained, heartbroken face of the strange woman sitting across from me, I fell into a stunned silence. Where the hell am I? A crisp, electronic voice chimed inside my head: [Welcome to the Scumbag Reformation Program. You have been selected as the ultimate good guy. Your mission: Rescue your girlfriend, Jacquelynn, prevent her suicide, and give her a warm, loving home.] A flood of memories that did not belong to me rushed into my brain. I desperately needed to sort through this mental library and figure out what the hell was going on. Staring at the utterly defeated woman in front of me, my chest tightened. “Wait for me here. I need to use the restroom.” I turned and walked away. I did not even catch the light dying in her eyes behind me. Of course, she thought she was being abandoned again. She thought her boyfriend did not care about her or their baby. I rushed to the restroom. The face reflecting in the mirror was identical to my old one, with sharp brows and deep-set eyes, strikingly handsome, except there was a lingering trace of cruelty in this body’s expression. I had transmigrated into a system-maintained world. The female protagonist’s death had caused a temporal glitch, and I was chosen to patch the timeline. I took a deep breath. They picked the right guy. I could not stand hurting women. As I dug deeper into the host’s memories, I could not help but curse out loud. This guy was an absolute scumbag. The host was also named Tristan. He was a notorious trust-fund playboy in high-society circles, the only heir to the Lyndon empire. His father had never played around or had illegitimate kids, so Tristan’s inheritance was set in stone. To make matters worse, his mother had passed away years ago. His father, who had loved his late wife dearly, spoiled his only son rotten. Under such relentless indulgence, Tristan had grown into a textbook rich brat. He could get anything he wanted. But Jacquelynn, the campus sweetheart of Hudson University, was a rare, untouchable beauty. After his initial pursuits failed, his competitive streak kicked in. It took a year of relentless pursuit to finally win her over. The first year was pure bliss. But after Jacquelynn graduated, Tristan pressured her into giving up her dreams of graduate school. He wanted her kept like a pet, a caged songbird in his penthouse. From then on, Jacquelynn’s world shrunk until it only spun around him. Her gentle, introverted nature morphed into a fragile, timid insecurity. But instead of cherishing her, the scumbag grew bored of her compliance and started looking for cheap thrills elsewhere. Jacquelynn was an orphan. The massive wealth gap between them had already made her deeply insecure. Sensitive and quiet, she would only hide away and weep silently, never raising her voice at him. Meanwhile, Tristan stayed out all night, subjected her to emotional abuse and gaslighting, and let the tabloids run wild with his flings. Piece by piece, she fell into deep depression. Yet, she clung to the promise he once made, that he would give her a real home. Every time she fell into despair, she would remember that promise and hope again. Until today, when she showed him the positive pregnancy test. He had spat out the most venomous words imaginable. “Do you really think getting pregnant is enough to buy your way into the Lyndon family?” “Who even knows if it is mine? But hey, if you want to keep it, the Lyndon family can afford a bastard child.” Those cruel words broke her completely. After getting a quiet abortion, she returned to her dingy rented room, saw a headline about the Lyndon heir entering a hotel with some actress, and hanged herself. It was only after her death that the scumbag felt a shred of regret. Realizing she was the only one he ever loved, he drowned his sorrows in alcohol, found a waitress who looked like her as a substitute, and dragged himself through another toxic relationship before dying lonely amidst his cold mountain of cash. What an absolute psycho. Fortunately, I had arrived just in time to cut off the rest of those horrible words. But before I could even catch my breath, the system sounded an alarm. [Warning, Host! Jacquelynn is heading to the hospital right now for an abortion!] “Why is she being so reckless? What if she hurts herself?” I bolted out of the restroom. Guided by the system’s GPS tracker, I found Jacquelynn just as she was standing at the clinic’s billing counter. “Jacquelynn!” The familiar voice made her stiffen. She turned around slowly, her eyes wide with disbelief. She seemed to catch a glimpse of genuine panic and sorrow in my eyes. She must be imagining things. Why would I ever worry about her? I snatched the consent form from her trembling hands. Seeing the scheduled surgical abortion, my eyes stung with sudden heat. “Do you really care so little about our baby? Do you even care about me at all?” “Are you really this desperate to get rid of our child just so you can run off with your precious college mentor?” My sudden attack of reverse-psychology left Jacquelynn completely dazed. “What… what are you talking about?” “I give up,” I said, my voice cracking as I pulled her fragile frame into my arms, burying my face in the crook of her neck. A wave of raw emotion hit my throat. “I admit it. Every girl I brought around, every rumor… it was all an act. I just wanted to see if you actually cared. But you never said a word. You never asked. I wanted you to scream at me, to throw a tantrum, just so I’d know you still loved me!” I held her tighter, letting my voice tremble. “I surrender. Even if you do not love me, just stay with me. Let’s get married. Please.” The system could not help but chime in: [Damn, Host. You are a natural at gaslighting.] I did not have a choice. The host had crossed too many lines. Jacquelynn was the type to bottle up her pain, drowning in her own insecurities. Only a fierce, overwhelming confession could shatter her walls and give her a sense of security. A single tear slipped down her hair, dampening her collarbone. The warmth of it seemed to seep straight into her chest, filling her with a heavy, aching confusion. If what I said was true, then what were all those cold nights she endured? And what was this about her mentor? Before she could process any of it, I took her by the hand, led her out of the hospital, and buckled her into the passenger seat of my car. Jacquelynn finally blinked back her confusion. “Where are we going?” “To the courthouse. We are getting married.” The dam finally broke. Tears poured down her face, washing away weeks of silent agony. “Tristan, if you are only doing this because of the baby, I can still go back. You do not have to trap yourself.” The sudden hope was too beautiful. She was terrified that if she reached out to grab it, she would only fall from a higher cliff. “Go back? So you can run straight to that mentor of yours?” I let out a bitter, jealous laugh, keeping up the act. “Do you really love him that much?” This was the second time she had heard me mention her college mentor, Nolan. It was absurd, but a powerful intuition bloomed in her chest: there was a massive misunderstanding between us. A misunderstanding that had poisoned their entire relationship. She opened her mouth, but the words tangled in her throat. She did not even know where to begin.

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1 Eight years studying manipulative victim-players left my dissertation stalled, missing a prime subject. So when my wealthy biological parents arrived with DNA proof, I saw opportunity. Father announced Beth, my frail younger sister, demanding I accommodate her. Perfect data. I entered their car without packing. Back at the estate, Beth offered homemade soup with a sweet smile. As I reached, she dropped the bowl. Porcelain shattered. She sobbed instantly, claiming I struck it away. Mother cradled her, citing burns. Brother Mark kicked shards, ordering me gone. Father demanded an apology. Beth wept dramatically over a faint red mark. I opened my research journal, pen ready. Smiling, I asked Beth for her contact details. I wished to credit her properly in my dissertation acknowledgments. … “Are you out of your mind? Contact info?” Mark slapped the journal out of my hand. It flipped through the air and landed right next to the broken porcelain. I looked at Mark’s face, flushed red with anger. He was panting like a rabid bulldog. “Beth’s hand is scalded, and you’re here making snide remarks?” He pointed a finger at my face. “Do you have any humanity left in you?” I ignored him, bent down to avoid the glass, picked up my journal, and dusted it off. Then I looked at Beth. “Scalded how badly?” I asked with genuine academic curiosity. “Are we talking dermal damage or subcutaneous tissue necrosis?” Beatrice’s eyes were filled with tears of anger. She blew on Beth’s hand while glaring at me. “How did I give birth to such a cold-blooded monster!” Beatrice hissed. “Growing up in the sticks for twenty years has turned you into a bitter, venomous creature. You aren’t worth a single hair on your sister’s head!” Beth snuggled closer to Beatrice, her shoulders trembling. “Mom, don’t blame Gwen. It was my fault. I didn’t hold it tightly. I’m just clumsy.” She wept, but her eyes darted toward me with unmistakable smugness. I shook my head, opening my journal. “Don’t sell yourself short.” I uncapped my pen. “According to basic physics, the bowl was exactly twelve inches above the table. The moment you released your grip, your wrist made a highly deliberate outward twist. This ensured the soup splashed entirely away from you and perfectly targeted my trousers.” I looked up, locking eyes with Beth, whose face instantly froze. “That’s not clumsiness, Beth. That’s precise parabolic calculation. You must have aced high school physics, right?” Beth’s crying stopped abruptly. The living room fell dead silent. Mark froze, then exploded. “What kind of garbage logic is that? Beth has always been terrified of hot things! She would never burn herself!” He kicked a nearby coffee table. “You’re not just cruel, you’re a liar! You’re not welcome in this house!” Richard, who had been silently drinking tea, slammed his cup down. “Enough.” His voice was heavy with authority. “You’ve barely stepped through the door and you’ve already turned this house upside down. It seems your unrefined upbringing is hard to wash away.” He dusted off his expensive suit. “Since you don’t know the rules, I’ll teach you.” Richard signaled the butler, who stepped forward with a thick document. “Miss Caldwell, this is a voluntary waiver for the family trust fund.” I looked at it, keeping my hands to myself. Richard leaned back. “Your sister is fragile and has a weak heart. She needs medical security. Now that you’re back with the Caldwells, we will provide for your basic needs. But you will sign this trust fund over to Beth. Consider it an apology for the soup.” A power play combined with financial exploitation. A classic wealthy family tactic for breaking in an unruly pet. Beatrice sneers. “Don’t think sharing our blood gives you free rein here. Beth is worth ten of you. I’d rather the money go to someone who deserves it.” Beth quickly struggled to stand up, pale and waving her hands. “Dad, Mom, please don’t. This belongs to Gwen. I can’t take it.” She shrank back, looking terrified, tears rolling down her cheeks. I watched her seamless performance with absolute delight. Beautiful. This “retreating to advance” maneuver was a textbook display of manipulative behavior. I snatched the document from the butler. “Beth, don’t be afraid.” I smiled. “Your performance is brilliant. You’ve earned this appearance fee.” I signed my name on the last page. Gwen. I slide the document back across the table. “Signed.” I looked at the stunned Richard. “Think of this fund as my research budget for observing Subject Number One.” I closed my journal. “Please keep up this high-purity favoritism and stupidity. Don’t disappoint me.” Silence. Richard’s face turned from red to purple. Beatrice gapes. Mark looked at me like I was insane. “Are you brain-damaged?” I grabbed my canvas duffel bag. “No need to thank me. Where is my room? Lead the way.” The butler, snapping out of his daze, wiped cold sweat from his forehead and quickly guided me upstairs. Behind me, Beatrice’s shrill screams and Beth’s quiet sniffling echoed. I pulled out my phone and logged the first entry: Day one. Subject is highly active. Excellent long-term observational value. 2 The butler took me to a room at the very end of the second-floor hallway. Cold, damp, and smelling of long-term neglect. It faced north, and the view was just a blank gray brick wall. Inside, there was only a single bed and an empty wardrobe. Not even a desk. The butler avoided my eyes. “We have guests staying over, so the proper guest rooms are occupied. Please bear with this for tonight. I’ll arrange for furniture tomorrow.” “It’s perfect. A natural quarantine zone.” I genuinely liked it. Isolated, few variables, great for data processing. The butler blinked, nodded quickly, and retreated. I drew the curtains, pulled out three micro-infrared cameras, and deployed them in the corners of the room within ten minutes. Prevention is key in academic research. At dinner time, a maid knocked to invite me down. I headed down with my notebook. The long mahogany dining table was laden with gourmet dishes. Richard sat at the head, Beatrice and Mark on the left, Beth beside Beatrice. On the right, there was a single empty seat. I pulled out the chair and sat down. I noticed a fascinating detail: the four of them had gold-rimmed bone china settings. In front of me sat a cheap stainless steel cafeteria tray and a pair of cheap, splintering disposable wooden chopsticks. Mark snickers. “What are you staring at? Be glad you’re even getting fed.” Beth stood up, carefully carrying a bowl of soup to me. “Don’t mind it, Gwen. Since you just came from the countryside, I was worried your stomach couldn’t handle the family’s regular dishes. We wouldn’t want any H. pylori or stomach bacteria spreading to Mom and Dad.” She placed the soup next to my metal tray. “I asked the kitchen to prepare this especially for you. It’s clean.” Beatrice nodded. “Beth is always so thoughtful. You should thank your sister.” I looked at the splintered chopsticks. Instead of picking them up, I pulled a clear plastic folder from my bag and dropped it onto the middle of the table. “Since we are being so hygienic, let’s follow scientific protocol.” I pointed to the folder. “This is a full-body medical report I got yesterday from Boston General Hospital. It covers blood work, metabolic panels, infectious diseases, and a C14 breath test for H. pylori. Negative across the board. Perfect health.” I leaned back, looking at Beth. “Now, your turn. Show me your medical report. Since you’ve been sickly since childhood, who knows what latent infections you’re carrying? For Mom and Dad’s safety, I suggest you switch to a disposable tray as well.” The air froze. Mark slammed the table. “Gwen! Are you trying to pick a fight? Beth was trying to help you, and you bring out some stupid medical report to show off? If you don’t want to eat, get the hell out!” I looked at him. Violent tendencies, high irritability, classic low-intelligence protective syndrome. I jotted it down. Beatrice trembled. “Richard, look at her! How are we supposed to eat?” Richard sneers. “Put those papers away. You don’t set the rules at this table.” Beth’s eyes welled up with tears. “Don’t blame Gwen, Mom. It’s my fault. I’ll go get a disposable tray for myself.” She turned toward the kitchen, looking incredibly fragile. Mark grabbed her arm. “You’re not changing anything! She’s the one who needs to get out!” He glared at me. “You don’t deserve this food!” With a loud crash, Mark swept my metal tray and its contents straight into the trash can. The maids shrunk back in terror. I watched the mess. No anger, no sadness. Just excitement. “Excellent stress response.” I stood up, sliding my medical report back into my bag. “Subject Number Two has a remarkably low emotional threshold, making him extremely easy to manipulate. You make a perfect control group.” I walked toward the stairs. At the landing, I stopped and look back. “By the way, a quick tip. That plate of drunken crab on the table? It was made with dead crabs. The histamine levels are off the charts. Eat up, if you don’t mind a night of severe food poisoning.” Mark yelled at my back, “Shut up! These are premium crabs flown in this morning!” I shrugged and went to my room, where I ordered delivery on my phone. Two hours later, chaos erupted downstairs. Sirens wailed. Mark was wheeled into an ambulance, clutching his stomach and screaming in agony. Standing behind my curtain, I recorded the flashing blue lights of the ambulance. Beautiful data collection. 3 The next morning, the tension in the Caldwell mansion was suffocating. Mark spent the night on an IV at the hospital. Beatrice, with bloodshot eyes, sat on the sofa sighing. When I walked downstairs, she glared at me. “You jinxed him! Ever since you came back, there hasn’t been a single day of peace!” I grabbed a glass of warm water. “I warned him about the dead crabs. If a dog insists on eating garbage, you can’t blame me for the diarrhea.” “You!” Beatrice threw a throw pillow at me. I tilted my head slightly, and it hit the water dispenser, falling to the floor. Beth came downstairs and immediately comforted Beatrice. “Mom, don’t get upset. It’s not worth ruining your health.” She looked at me with a sorrowful expression. “Gwen, even if Mark was rude to you, you shouldn’t have cursed him.” I pulled out my notebook. Concept switching, logical inversion. Distorting a factual warning into a malicious curse—a classic manipulative tactic to shift narrative focus. Richard walked in, scowling. “What’s all this noise?” He looked at me with disgust. “Tomorrow night, we are hosting a gala to officially introduce you to society. Beatrice, take them to buy some proper clothes today. I don’t want people thinking the Caldwells neglect our own.” Beatrice gave a reluctant nod. In the afternoon, the family driver dropped us off at Copley Place, Boston’s premier luxury shopping mall. Beatrice held Beth’s hand, completely ignoring me as I walked behind like a stray shadow. We entered a high-end designer boutique. The associate greeted them warmly. “Mrs. Caldwell, Miss Caldwell, we’ve reserved the latest seasonal arrivals for you.” Beth pointed to a rack of haute couture. “Mom, that starry-night gown is beautiful. I want to try it.” Beatrice beamed. “Try it, sweetheart. You look gorgeous in everything.” I walked to the other side and picked up a minimalist black evening gown. No flashy ornaments, but the cut and fabric were top-tier. As I prepared to ask for my size, a pale hand reached out and grabbed the fabric. “Gwen, this dress suits you so well,” Beth said, appearing beside me. Her eyes betrayed a flash of envy. “But it’s a bit dark. It might make you look a little too mature. Store associate, please pack this one for me instead. I think it would look better on me.” The associate looked between us, hesitant. Beatrice walked over. “If Beth wants it, let her have it! Why are you fighting over a plain black dress anyway?” She sneers at me. “Associate, find Gwen something cheaper. Just make sure she’s covered.” I let go of the fabric. “Sure.” I looked at Beth. “This dress is priced at thirty-eight thousand dollars. Since you love it so much, you can pay for it.” Beth froze. “Gwen… Mom is paying for this.” I smiled. “I signed the trust fund waiver last night. Technically, I’m just a penniless girl from the countryside. Since you’re the one snatching the dress I chose, you can’t expect me or the family trust to pay for you, an outsider. After all, that trust is for your medical care, not your wardrobe.” Beth’s face flushed crimson. The associate, being a seasoned professional in luxury retail, immediately read between the lines. Beatrice’s face darkened. “Gwen, stop causing trouble! The Caldwells can easily afford a dress!” I pulled out my phone and tapped the voice recorder. “Mrs. Caldwell, please confirm this. Are you currently diverting family funds allocated for Beth’s heart condition to purchase a thirty-eight thousand dollar luxury gown? If so, I will forward this audio recording directly to the Caldwell Group’s board of trustees.” Beatrice pulled her hand back as if she had touched hot iron. The auditing standards for family medical trusts were incredibly strict. Any violation would force her to face a grilling from the board. “You… you shameless brat!” Beatrice hisses. I tucked my phone away. “Complying with the law is hardly shameless. Associate, ring it up on Miss Beth’s personal credit card.” Beth bit her lip, tears welling in her eyes, as she reluctantly pulled out her black card. She looked at the dress as if it were a burning coal. Ignoring them, I walked next door to an independent designer boutique, used my own card, and purchased a sharp, structured white pantsuit. The welcome gala was about to begin, and the real show was just getting started. 4 The gala was held at the grand ballroom of the Grand Regent Hotel, owned by the Caldwell Group. As the evening began, Boston’s elite filled the room, a sea of diamonds and designer wear. I sat in a quiet corner of the lounge in my white pantsuit, sipping club soda and observing the room with cool detachment. Beth was the star of the night. Wearing her thirty-eight thousand dollar starry-night gown, she looked like a delicate porcelain doll, surrounded by a circle of wealthy socialites. “Beth, you’re far too kind. That wild girl from the country treats you so terribly, yet you’re still defending her,” a girl in a red dress said, raising her voice deliberately. Several disdainful glances shot in my direction. Beth looked down, playing the martyr. “Don’t say that. Gwen had a hard life before she came back. It’s only natural she has a difficult personality.” I open my phone’s notepad: Using group consensus to isolate the target. A textbook social bullying opening. Midway through the evening, Richard stood on the stage, delivering a hypocritical speech about finding his long-lost daughter. Amidst the polite applause, Beth approached me with a glass of red wine, blocking the overhead spotlight. “Gwen, everyone is looking at you. Aren’t you going to offer a toast?” Her smile was sweet, but her eyes were pure venom. “I’m not thirsty,” I said without looking up. Beth leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear. “Do you really think coming back means you can steal my life? In this family, I am the only one they love. Even if you share their blood, you’re nothing but a stray dog.” I stopped swirling my glass. “Heart rate 120, adrenaline spiking.” I looked at her slightly trembling shoulders. “Looks like you’re about to make your big move. Let’s get on with it, I’m on a schedule.” Beth froze for a fraction of a second. The next instant, she grabbed the lapel of my suit jacket. Simultaneously, her other hand ripped the ten-million-dollar emerald necklace from her own neck. The silver chain snapped, scattering emerald beads across the floor. Beth threw herself backward, letting out a blood-curdling shriek. “Ah! Gwen, what are you doing!” She crashed to the floor, her wrist scraping against the marble, drawing a thin line of blood. The entire ballroom fell dead silent. Every eye turned to our corner. Beatrice screamed, rushing over and pushing me aside. “Beth! Oh my god, Beth, are you alright?” Mark, who had just arrived from the hospital, saw this and went red with rage. He lunged forward, grabbing my collar. “You vicious bitch! You tried to steal Beth’s family heirloom!” Richard strode over, his face dark enough to summon a thunderstorm. “What happened here?” he bellows. The girl in the red dress steps forward to testify. “Mr. Caldwell, I saw it! Gwen tried to rip the necklace off Beth’s neck. When Beth wouldn’t let her, Gwen shoved her to the ground!” “Exactly! Some people just can’t shake their gutter habits!” whispers rippled through the crowd. Beth wept in Beatrice’s arms, gasping for breath. “Dad, don’t blame Gwen… maybe she just liked the necklace… I would have given it to her… why did she have to push me…” Richard’s chest heaved with fury. He pointed a shaking finger at my face. “Gwen! You have humiliated this family!” he roared. “Kneel down! Apologize to your sister right now, or I swear I will break your legs!” Mark pressed down on my shoulders, trying to force me to my knees. I stood firm, brushing his hands off my shoulders. I adjusted my collar. “There’s no need to kneel.” I looked at the self-righteous crowd. “Why don’t we all look up first?” I pulled a small remote from my pocket and pressed the red button. With a hum, the massive LED screen on the main stage flickered to life. The video quality was crystal clear, complete with crisp audio. The camera angle was a wide-angle view captured directly from the lapel of my suit. It showed everything.

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1 I kept my eyes locked on the tie clip resting on my husband’s collar. Even though the color and cut were nearly identical, I knew in a heartbeat. It wasn’t the one he put on this morning. “That clip is a limited edition. George won the only one in New York at that auction just for you!” Brooke stirred her coffee with agonizing slowness, completely brushing off my concerns. “You are just so madly in love with the guy that you’re getting paranoid.” I shook my head slightly. “It just feels different.” “Look, princess, everyone knows George worships the ground you walk on. That clip was an anniversary gift. The man literally has your socks custom-made. He would never let someone else own the exact same thing as you.” Brooke rolled her eyes, a hint of playful jealousy in her expression. “Honestly, I think you’re just rubbing your perfect marriage in my perpetually single face.” I froze for a second, then let out a sudden, genuine laugh at her dramatic pout. “I am not.” Right on cue, my phone began to ring. “Sweetheart, is your coffee date over yet?” George’s deep, velvety voice drifted through the speaker. “Not yet,” I replied softly. Just hearing the gentle cadence of his voice made my eyes unconsciously soften. “Well, give me a call right before you wrap up. I’ll come pick you up. Traffic is a nightmare right now, and I hate the idea of you driving alone.” Every word was wrapped in heavy, undeniable devotion. Brooke shook her head across the table, muttering under her breath. “Lord. You are the only woman on earth who gets to see the ruthless George Kensington act like a golden retriever.” She wasn’t wrong. In the corporate world, George was cold ice. He was decisive, aggressive, and entirely merciless. I was the only person who got to see this fiercely attentive side of him. He knew every microscopic detail of my existence, as if I were carved into his very bones. He knew my favorite bakery, the niche designers I adored, the subtle twitch in my brow when I was upset, and the way I tapped my fingers when I was happy. He knew I loved the smell of wet grass right before a thunderstorm, and how I loved watching the sun shatter across the surface of a lake. He remembered things about me that I didn’t even notice myself. A few years ago, we took a road trip through the Pacific Northwest. A massive storm hit, trapping us on a winding mountain pass. Lightning struck close, and the earth gave way. A tidal wave of mud and crushed rock came hurtling down the ridge straight toward our car. In that split second between life and death, George threw his entire body over mine. He took the full force of the shattered windshield, wrapping me in his arms and burying my head against his chest as the car was swept off the road. He didn’t let go. Not once. When the rescue teams finally dug us out of the freezing mud, George only allowed his eyes to close after he saw me securely lifted onto the ambulance stretcher. He collapsed from pure exhaustion, his back torn open by glass and jagged rock, leaving a permanent, jagged scar down his spine. When he finally woke up in the hospital, he looked at my red, swollen eyes and offered a faint, exhausted smile. “It’s just proof that George Kensington would die for Hazel.” Because of that day, I never questioned his love. I loved him just as fiercely. But it was exactly because I loved him so deeply that a single, minuscule flaw in a tie clip was enough to trigger alarms in my head. It was an exclusive piece, bought at a high-end charity auction just last week. Maybe Brooke was right. Maybe there wasn’t a second one in the entire city, and I was just losing my mind. But then why did my stomach feel like it was full of crushed glass? After agonizing over it for another ten minutes, I decided to go to Kensington Holdings. I needed to look him in the eye and clear my head. Sitting in the back of an Uber, I watched the city blur past the window, my mind a tangled mess. What was I even going to say when I saw him? Would throwing a baseless accusation in his face break his heart? We were one block away. I called Nina to let her know I was coming. When the car pulled up to the glass skyscraper, she was already waiting by the revolving doors. Seeing her bright, welcoming smile eased the knot in my chest. Nina used to be the janitor at my yoga studio. Once, I accidentally left my phone in the locker room, and she literally tripped down a flight of concrete stairs trying to run after me to return it. After learning she was struggling to support her family, I pulled some strings and got her a cushy front-desk job at George’s company. Dressed in a sharp, tailored skirt suit, Nina practically bounded over to me. “Hazel! You’re finally here!” I offered a polite smile. “Is something wrong? Did something happen at the office?” Nina leaned in, her eyes wide with dramatic secrecy. “Huge news. Absolutely massive.” My heart stopped. “What happened?” Was George hurt? Seeing the sheer panic on my face, Nina giggled and bumped my shoulder. “Mr. Kensington misses his wife so much he’s taking it out on us corporate drones. The negative energy is suffocating. I’d call that a massive crisis, wouldn’t you?” I let out a long, shaky breath and shot her a playful glare. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.” Nina laughed, escorting me to the private executive elevator and swiping her keycard for the penthouse floor. When the metal doors slid open, I was met with the sight of several stunningly gorgeous young women clustered in the corridor. I couldn’t help the intrusive thought that clawed at my brain. Was George involved with one of them? The moment the thought materialized, I felt physically sick. How could I even think that? When George became the youngest billionaire in Manhattan, endless parades of supermodels and heiresses threw themselves at his feet, and he never gave them a second glance. He wouldn’t throw our life away for a random temp. Seeing me frowning and biting my lip, Nina quickly clarified the situation. “Those are the new hires for the PR department. Mr. Kensington specifically ordered HR to handle the final interviews so he wouldn’t have to stay late and miss dinner with you.” She playfully poked my waist. “Don’t tell me the CEO’s wife is actually getting jealous?” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “Yeah, yeah. You caught me.” Nina dropped me off in front of George’s double oak doors and headed back downstairs. I looked inside. The massive office was entirely empty. A cup of black coffee was still steaming on his desk. He couldn’t have gone far. I sat on the plush leather sofa for twenty minutes, but he never showed up. Restless, I stepped back out into the hallway and pushed open the door to the secretary’s office. The heavy blackout blinds were completely drawn, leaving only thin slivers of gray light slicing through the dark room. A woman was sitting behind the massive mahogany desk, her head bowed, entirely oblivious to me standing in the doorway. I knocked twice on the glass pane. The woman jumped, her head snapping up. When our eyes met, I froze dead in my tracks. Daisy. I remembered the day perfectly. I was sitting on the living room sofa, mindlessly flipping through a fashion magazine. The front door clicked open, and I looked up to see George walk in, his face looking like a thunderstorm. The sheer darkness rolling off his shoulders made my pulse spike. I walked over, gently running my fingers through his damp hair. “What’s wrong, baby?” He didn’t say a word. He just buried his face in my neck, holding me so tight it hurt. After a suffocating silence, his voice cracked. “I saw Daisy today.” My hand froze in his hair. The darkest, bloodiest memory I possessed came rushing back, drowning me. Years ago, George and I were expecting our first child. I was six months pregnant. He was driving me to a routine ultrasound, and he pulled the car over to run into a pharmacy for some bottled water. I was sitting in the passenger seat, resting my hand on my swollen belly, watching him walk through the glass doors. The next second, a massive commercial delivery truck smashed into the back of our sedan at highway speeds. The truck driver died on impact. I was crushed into the mangled metal of the dashboard, barely breathing, watching a river of my own blood pool around my legs. We lost the baby. I spent a week in a coma in the ICU before I even woke up. Daisy was the truck driver’s daughter. She was fourteen at the time. I could still remember her standing behind a police officer in the hospital hallway, her face stained with tears, looking like a terrified animal. George never personally handled low-level hires. So when he ran into Daisy at Kensington Holdings, she was already a fully contracted employee. Standing in our living room that night, George’s eyes were entirely bloodshot. He wiped a tear from my cheek, his face twisting in genuine agony. He held me fiercely. “I know, sweetheart. I know. It’s in the past. I’m going to fire her tomorrow. I promise you will never have to look at her face.” George grew up in a broken home. I knew better than anyone how desperately he wanted that baby. When I first opened my eyes in the hospital, he was on his knees beside my bed, pale as a ghost, weeping like a lost child. His grief was just as deep, just as violent as mine. A few weeks after he told me about Daisy, I asked him if she was gone. He hesitated, his eyes flashing with deep guilt. “She… she’s pregnant. Labor laws state we can’t terminate her contract until her maternity period ends.” He panicked, quickly grabbing my hands. “But I transferred her to the logistics warehouse on the edge of the city. I swear to god, she will never cross your path!” He hadn’t lied. The few times I visited the company after that, I never saw her. Until today. Sitting directly in the executive secretary’s office. I stared at her, my voice dropping to a freezing temperature. “Why are you here?” A highly unnatural flush painted Daisy’s pale cheeks. She scrambled out of the leather chair, bowing her head nervously. “Sarah is on a business trip, so the logistics staff are rotating to cover her desk. It was my turn this week.” She was petite, almost frail, with thick bangs hiding her eyes. Her heavily pregnant stomach protruded sharply against her frame. Logic screamed at me that she was an innocent girl paying for her father’s sins. But looking at her pregnant belly, the phantom pain of my dead child twisted a knife into my ribs. I swallowed the bile in my throat. “Where is George?” “The city just released a batch of project funds. Mr. Kensington took the finance director downstairs to sign the clearance papers.” She gestured toward the door. “You can wait in his office. He should be back at any moment.” Before she even finished her sentence, her entire body gave a violent, uncontrollable shudder. I frowned, taking a step forward. “Are you okay?” Daisy took a ragged breath and forced a painfully tight smile. “I just stood up too fast. A little dizzy, that’s all. Thank you for asking.” I walked back to George’s office and sat in his chair. The entire surface of his desk was covered in framed photos of me. He had handwritten the exact time, date, and location on the back of every single one. I leaned back, a bitter taste in my mouth. Maybe Brooke was right. Maybe I really was a paranoid lunatic. A man who loved me this loudly, this shamelessly, would never betray me. Just as I let out a sigh, George walked in. He leaned gracefully against the doorframe, his eyes curving into half-moons, a soft, teasing smile playing on his lips. “Miss me?” I stood up, crossing the room to wrap my arms around his waist, burying my face in his chest. “Are you mad I crashed your day?” George let out a low chuckle. He tilted my chin up with two fingers and leaned down, pressing a deep, lingering kiss to my lips. “I am thrilled. You made my whole week.” His embrace was warm, solid. But something felt incredibly wrong. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Looking closer, there was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. And beneath the sharp scent of his cologne, there was a faint, sour smell. I opened my mouth to ask if he was feeling sick, but the digital calendar on the wall screen flashed red. An automated message from the secretary’s desk popped up. Meeting with the Sinclair Group in five minutes. George subtly shifted his weight, his eyes darkening as he read the notification. “Sweetheart, can you hang out here for a bit?” I pushed gently out of his arms. “No, it’s fine. I don’t want to distract you. I’ll wait for you at home.” I stood on my toes, kissed his forehead, and walked out the door. As the elevator doors slid shut, the frantic, pounding rhythm of George’s heart echoed in my ears. I couldn’t shake it. Something was horribly wrong. I pressed the button for the penthouse floor again. When I stepped back into the hallway, the door to the secretary’s office was cracked open. Through the narrow slit, I saw Daisy slumped back in the leather chair. Her knuckles were bone-white as she gripped the armrests, taking deep, desperate gasps of air. I told myself it was just pregnancy complications. Back in my third trimester, I used to get dizzy spells and shortness of breath out of nowhere. I didn’t want to invade her privacy, so I turned around and headed for the stairs. But as I walked past George’s office, the door was wide open. It was completely empty. When did he leave? Where did he go? And then it hit me like a physical blow. The desk in the secretary’s office. It was massive. Easily large enough to comfortably conceal a fully grown man underneath it. After work hours, I sat in my car and watched Daisy walk down the block. I tailed her on foot until she pushed through the gold-trimmed revolving doors of the Plaza Hotel. She walked quickly, never once looking over her shoulder. I watched the digital numbers above the elevator stop dead on the 37th floor. A chill crawled up my spine. This was the most exclusive, hyper-luxurious hotel in the city. Any floor above the 36th was reserved exclusively for long-term residential VIP suites. One suite per floor. How in the hell could a warehouse temp afford to live here? I sat in a velvet chair in the lobby lounge, my brain short-circuiting. What was I doing? Why was I stalking this pregnant girl? Because she looked a little flushed? Because my husband’s heart was beating fast? A wave of crushing humiliation washed over me. This was pathetic. I was the wife of a billionaire, hiding behind a potted plant because of a completely fabricated delusion. I grabbed my purse, ready to go home and apologize to George. But just as I stood up, a familiar figure walked through the front doors. George.

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To save the girl he had been mentoring, the man I loved handed me over to my worst enemy. “If you just spend one night with Sebastian, Ruby will be saved.” Everyone in New York knew Sebastian hated my guts. During the years I was studying abroad, he turned the entire city upside down just to find me. Yet Hugo still pushed me directly into his territory. “Is your dignity really more important than her life?” Inside the dark, sprawling mansion. Sebastian lit a cigarette, the ember glowing faintly in the pitch black room. “You finally came back to me.” But. Who was the hunter, and who was the prey. Who could really tell. 1 Hugo was the boy I grew up with. After my mother passed away, Hugo was the one who paid for my tuition abroad. He pulled me out of my darkest depression and walked beside me every step of the way until we reached where we are today. We founded a company together. We fought for our careers together. He was the only light in my life, and falling in love with him felt like the most natural thing in the world. Even though we never had an official proposal or a public announcement, everyone in our circle knew we were together. He promised me that the second our company went public, he would put a ring on my finger. He would tell the whole world that I was the love of his life. He used to hold my hands and make promises to me. “Shelly, we are the closest people in the world to each other.” “We can never abandon each other.” But in the end, he was the first one to let go. It was almost laughable. When I found out Ruby had made a catastrophic mistake at work, my first instinct was to find Hugo. I wanted to discuss how we could minimize the fallout for the company and figure out a way to give Ruby a second chance. Instead, I stood frozen outside his office door, listening to him use his softest, most gentle tone to comfort her. “This is not your fault.” “You just graduated. Shelly should never have dumped so much responsibility on you. At the end of the day, this is her management error.” “Don’t be scared. No matter how angry she gets, I will protect you.” A massive wave of agony hit me like a sledgehammer. In that split second, my entire reality shattered. I shoved the door open and stared at the two of them standing intimately close together. “Hugo, what the hell is this?” 2 Ruby, whose face was stained with beautiful, delicate tears, had been leaning against Hugo’s chest. My sudden entrance made her tremble like a frightened bird. Hugo instinctively reached out to soothe her, gently rubbing her shoulder. The sight of his hand on her burned my eyes. I fought desperately to hold back my tears, but my vision still blurred. Ruby was a junior from my high school. Ever since she joined our university, she had followed me around like a shadow, always calling me her beloved senior. Back then, people used to whisper that I was just a brainless, arrogant rich kid who only knew how to throw tantrums and spend money. Ruby was the only one who stood up and defended me. She came from a completely average family but worked incredibly hard. Remembering our old friendship, I hired her the second she graduated. To help her build her career quickly, I personally guided her through several of our biggest accounts. Hugo used to joke about it. “Your little protege is a shark. Even our most difficult clients absolutely adore her.” At the time, I thought Hugo was just being a little cynical. If the clients loved her, it just meant her professional skills were solid. I never expected her to be so skilled that she would make Hugo fall for her too. But this time, the ever clever Ruby had leaked highly classified company documents, completely enraging our biggest investor. I forced my emotions down. I forced myself to look away from the sickening pity on Hugo’s face. “Ruby, leaking a project proposal is a massive breach. The fallout is severe.” “We are all adults here. You cannot run away from the consequences of your actions.” “I will go with you to apologize to the investors.” Ruby stood up nervously. She looked at Hugo, then looked at me. “Shelly… the representative from Apex Capital said they will only speak to you…” Apex Capital had invested in our startup two years ago. Back then, we were just getting off the ground. Every single investment firm in the city laughed us out of their offices. To our absolute shock, the biggest venture capital firm in the country reached out to us directly, injecting a massive amount of funding into our accounts. Because of that money, our company skyrocketed in just two years. But I could not fathom how Hugo could possibly believe that Ruby’s catastrophic failure should fall on my shoulders. I stared at his face, suddenly realizing how incredibly foreign this man looked to me. Was he always this shameless? “Take the fall for me? Do you think I own this company by myself?” Hugo remained completely indifferent to my anger. “You were the one who secured the Apex investment. It is naturally your responsibility to handle them.” Ruby dropped to her knees right in front of me, shaking violently, looking up at me like a pathetic, abandoned puppy. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Shelly, I swear I didn’t mean to do it. Please, just save me this one time…” Hugo grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her feet, glaring at me with pure frustration. “Shelly! Ruby offended the investors while working on your project! You should be the one going there to beg for forgiveness!” “You are the one who should be on your knees.” “Do you really not know? The man behind Apex Capital is Sebastian. He specifically demanded that you go see him.” Hugo’s words hit me so hard the room began to spin. Sebastian? The sole heir to the most powerful family in New York. The untouchable prince of the city. But Hugo wasn’t finished. He had something far more cruel waiting for me. “Sebastian said that if you just spend one night with him, he will let the company off the hook.” The last thread of my sanity snapped. It felt like my heart had been ripped in half and thrown bleeding onto the floor. “Hugo, what exactly am I to you?” Hugo furrowed his brows, looking at me like I was an unreasonable child throwing a tantrum. “It is literally just one night.” Did he really not understand what one night meant? No. He was just playing stupid because he was a coward trying to escape reality. When I didn’t speak, Hugo finally lost his temper. “Is your pride really worth more than Ruby’s entire future?” “If you don’t fix this, Ruby will be blacklisted. She will never be able to work in this city again!” I was entirely sick of his voice. I grabbed the door handle and dropped my words like ice. “Then you can both go straight to hell.” 3 I severely underestimated how utterly disgusting Ruby could be. When I refused to go see Sebastian, she resorted to playing dirty. When I finally opened my eyes, I was lying on a plush sofa in a completely unfamiliar mansion. My head was splitting open. My entire body felt weak and numb. The last memory I had was Ruby’s twisted face and the ropes in her hands. I pushed myself up from the leather cushions, clutching my pounding head, looking completely disheveled. The sound of a heavy door unlocking echoed through the room. A shadow I had not seen in years stepped into the entryway. Sebastian walked in wearing a dark tailored suit. He brought the cold night air in with him. He barely even glanced in my direction. He shrugged off his heavy wool trench coat and handed it to a man standing behind him. The man took the coat and immediately melted back into the shadows of the hallway, vanishing completely. Highly trained. Sebastian slowly unbuckled his luxury watch. The rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt revealed faint, intricate tattoos wrapping around his forearms. I couldn’t make out the design. As soon as he noticed me staring, he casually rolled his sleeves down, hiding the ink. He looked entirely uninterested in acknowledging my existence. The mansion fell into a suffocating, dead silence. I knew exactly how pathetic I looked right now. Sweat was dripping down my neck. My hair was a tangled mess. The collar of my silk blouse had been violently ripped open. I had no idea how Ruby managed to get me delivered here. I knew Sebastian hated me. After all, I was the reason his life fell apart back then. When I fled New York, Sebastian put a terrifying bounty on my head. He told the underground that whoever found me could name their price. His hatred for me was probably far deeper and far more toxic than I could ever imagine. But right now, if I wanted to survive. I had to play nice. An unnatural, scorching heat began rolling through my veins, wave after wave, melting my rational thoughts away. It only took a second for me to realize exactly what Ruby had done to me. She was utterly ruthless. I dug my nails fiercely into my own thigh, using the sharp pain to force myself awake. I stood up from the sofa and walked slowly toward Sebastian. The man actually froze. His thin lips pressed into a hard line before his emotionless voice finally broke the silence. “What are you doing…” Before he could finish his sentence, I shut him up. I stood on my toes and pressed my lips directly against the corner of his mouth. His scent completely enveloped me. There was no alcohol on his breath. He smelled incredible, far better than I remembered. I could see his Adam’s apple bob slightly, but he did not speak. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted…” My hot breath brushed against his skin. It seemed to burn right through his dark eyes, igniting a dangerous, heavy lust. I thought he would pull me into his arms, but instead, he let out a dark, mocking laugh. “Shelly, what gives you the confidence to think I would ever take you back?” The drug was turning my brain to absolute mush. Like a person dying of thirst in the desert, I completely abandoned my pride, desperately seeking anything cool to the touch. I pressed my burning cheek against his jaw. “I promise I’ll be a good girl this time, Oliver…” That name triggered something violent inside him. His freezing fingers suddenly grabbed my jaw in a bruising grip. “You really have a death wish, don’t you.” My arms draped weakly over his broad shoulders. My eyes were completely glazed over. “If you really don’t want me, then push me away.” Those words worked like magic. A second later, he crashed his lips into mine, devouring me completely. 4 I had no idea how much time passed. My consciousness had completely fractured. I could not tell if I was living in the real world or trapped in a fever dream. My body felt like it was sinking into a bed of warm, heavy feathers. I felt entirely weightless. Somewhere in the background, a phone began to ring, only to be instantly silenced by a heavy hand. “She is with me.” “Let them deal with the fallout themselves.” “Keep the company intact. I still have a use for it.” The mattress dipped beside me. A scorching heat enveloped my body. A soft touch pressed against my forehead, sounding somewhere between a sigh and a desperate whisper. “You finally came back to me.” 5 I couldn’t stop dreaming. My head was incredibly heavy as I plummeted into an endless, bottomless nightmare. I saw myself sitting in my childhood living room. My mother was telling me that she and my father had gone to an orphanage and adopted an older brother for me. Standing right behind her was a twelve year old boy. Back then, he was introduced to me as Oliver. Silent and cold. That was my very first impression of him. Rumor had it he was found wandering the streets. He had lost all of his memories. He didn’t know his real name, and he had no idea where his home was. After spending six months in the orphanage, my mother brought him home. I had been a sickly child since the day I was born. When I turned ten, some spiritual advisor told my parents that they needed to adopt a perfectly healthy child to absorb my bad luck and keep me safe. And just like that, there was a stranger living in my house. My mother told me my new brother would play with me and keep me company. But I absolutely despised him. I hated how smart he was. I hated how perfect he was. I hated how mature he acted. And most of all, I hated how he completely ignored me every time I tried to bully him. “Shelly, you need to play nice with your brother.” My mother said those exact words to me constantly. “No! Now that he’s here, you guys are going to stop loving me!” I screamed at her and locked myself in my bedroom. But secretly, I sat on my bed waiting for them to come upstairs and comfort me. It was the only way I could prove they still loved me. I needed them to indulge my tantrums. At first, my parents would come upstairs and coax me out. But as time went on, they realized I was just insecure and completely unwilling to accept Oliver. So eventually, the person sent to comfort me changed. My parents thought sending Oliver to my room would help us bond. They had no idea that every time Oliver walked into my bedroom, he would simply sit in the corner chair and read a book. He completely ignored my existence. He wasn’t afraid of me complaining to my parents at all. I only dared to throw tantrums at my parents because I knew they cared about me. But when I was trapped in a room alone with Oliver, I couldn’t even raise my voice. He carried a natural, suffocating aura of authority that terrified me. But when I was sixteen, after another massive fight with my mother, I ran to my room and finally snapped. His invasion of my personal space had become entirely too aggressive. “Hey! What gives you the right to just sit in my room?! Get out!” I screamed at him, my face still wet with angry tears. Oliver slowly lifted his eyes from his book. He gave me a cold, dead stare. He closed the book and walked directly toward me. His overwhelming presence made me instantly regret my outburst. I cowardly shrank back against my pillows. He leaned down over my bed, resting his hands on his knees, bringing his face dangerously close to mine. His cool breath brushed across my skin. His freezing finger reached out and tapped a teardrop resting on my cheek. “Dirty little kitten.” 6 When I woke up, I was completely alone in the massive bed. The balcony doors were cracked open. The sea breeze caught the sheer curtains, revealing a tall silhouette standing outside. I could hear fragments of a low, aggressive conversation. He was on the phone. “You all know damn well I am the one running this family now.” “No one on this earth can stop me from getting what I want.” “If you can’t even handle a mess this simple, you have absolutely no reason to stay in my company.” The dark, menacing voice suddenly stopped. The man on the balcony had noticed me trying to silently sneak out of the bedroom. Sebastian hung up the phone instantly and walked toward me. I backed away in panic, but he cornered me against the wall. His eyes dragged slowly down my body. A dark possessiveness flashed in his gaze. He grabbed my wrist violently and yanked me flush against his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?” “Are you trying to abandon me again?” “Shelly, do you honestly believe I will ever let you walk away from me again?” Faced with his sudden, erratic explosion of emotion, I tried desperately to break his grip, feeling entirely helpless. “You have to at least let me go wash my face!” Sebastian’s brow furrowed even deeper. His deep, intense eyes locked onto my face, as if he was trying to dissect my soul to see if I was lying to him again. After all, the old me used to lie to him constantly. And back then, he swallowed every single lie willingly, completely blinded by his obsession with me. I was currently wearing a men’s bathrobe I had found on the floor. It hung loosely off my shoulders, doing absolutely nothing to hide the violent red marks covering my collarbones. Under his aggressive, predatory stare, my face burned bright red. He finally let go of my wrist. “Do not even think about playing games with me.” He dropped the warning like a heavy stone and shoved me toward the master bathroom. “Wash up and come downstairs. Breakfast is ready.” 7 The massive, sunlit dining room was entirely silent, save for the faint clinking of silverware against porcelain. I kept my head down, focusing entirely on the food on my plate. I didn’t even need to look up to feel Sebastian’s burning, obsessive stare drilling into the side of my head. The exact second I finished a piece of food, he would smoothly and accurately place another piece of whatever I was craving directly onto my plate. It was like he could read my mind. “I’m full.” As soon as the words left my mouth, Sebastian picked up a linen napkin and naturally reached over to wipe the corner of my mouth. I turned my head sharply, dodging his hand. “I can do it myself.” But when I reached for the napkin, the man refused to let go. A freezing smile locked onto his lips. His eyes cut into me like blades, carrying a faint, terrifying undercurrent of hatred. “Weren’t you crying in my bed last night, promising you would be a good girl for me…” My face instantly caught fire again. After a few years apart, his mouth had become absolutely toxic. He always knew exactly how to humiliate me. Seeing that I had no response, Sebastian’s long, elegant fingers pressed the napkin firmly against the corner of my lips. The scorching heat of his palm bled through the fabric, burning my skin. “If you actually behave, I might consider going easy on that pathetic boyfriend of yours.” The whispered threat brushed against my ear like a lover’s sweet confession. Dark, sticky, and completely suffocating. But we were not lovers. And we could never be lovers. 8 When I was sixteen, I was brilliant, beautiful, and the center of attention. I was a little princess worshipped by everyone around me. My parents spoiled me rotten. The entire world revolved around me. They never raised their voices at me, let alone yelled at me. But one day, my elegant, rational mother turned into a complete stranger. She stormed into my bedroom, grabbed my backpack, and violently dumped everything onto the floor. Textbooks, pens, and a few light envelopes scattered across the carpet. She snatched up the envelopes. I had absolutely no idea when they were slipped into my bag. Her face twisted into a mask of pure rage as she screamed at me. “You are a child! Why are you entertaining love letters?! Why can’t you be mature and responsible like Oliver?! You spend two hours in the mirror every morning trying to seduce boys! If I ever catch you acting like a cheap tramp again, I will throw you out of this house!” Slam. My bedroom door was violently shut. The wind from the door hit my face like a physical slap. Tears instantly spilled from my eyes. A terrifying, indescribable sense of terror and injustice crushed my chest. I could not understand why my mother had suddenly turned into a monster. I cried alone in my room until the sun completely set. Normally, my mother would have knocked on my door hours ago, using her softest voice to coax me down for dinner. But that night, she never came. Instead, Oliver walked into my room carrying a dinner tray. “Go wash your face, then eat your food.” His tone was completely flat and calm. He acted as if I wasn’t sitting on my bed sobbing hysterically. He acted as if I was just quietly doing my homework. “Get out!” I screamed at him with zero hesitation. Crying for hours had completely ruined my voice. It sounded like sandpaper. The boy walked over to my desk, picked up a glass pitcher, poured a cup of warm water, and held it out to me. “Drink this. It will soothe your throat. Otherwise, you won’t be able to speak tomorrow.” Crash. I slapped the glass out of his hand. It shattered into a hundred pieces across the hardwood floor. “I don’t need your fake pity!” I glared at him with absolute venom. Ever since he moved into our house, my perfect, happy family had been slowly falling apart. “You’re the one who told on me, aren’t you?!” Who else could it be? We went to the same high school. Even though we were in different classes, he always knew exactly what I was doing, exactly who I was talking to. Sometimes I genuinely wondered if he had planted a tracking device on my clothes. “You need to focus entirely on your studies right now.” He neither confirmed nor denied my accusation. He just sat on the edge of my bed, looking down at me from above. The room was lit only by a dim floor lamp. The weak light traced the outline of his tall, lean, athletic body. He wasn’t just a genius. He was a machine. He kept the highest grades in the entire school while simultaneously breaking the scoring records for the varsity team. Compared to him, my intelligence was honestly a joke. But so what! I was the only biological daughter of this family! That alone meant I had already won! I pushed myself up on the bed, glaring at him with swollen red eyes. “Don’t get cocky! My mom only yelled at me tonight because she’s stressed! I am their only real child!” “I have never, ever considered you my brother!” Faced with my vicious insults and fury, Oliver remained just as cold and apathetic as always. “Good.” His pale eyelids lifted. His amber eyes locked onto mine, filled with an endless, dangerous darkness. “I don’t want to be your brother either.” 9 Oliver and I had a massive falling out that night. Even though I never saw him as family, hearing him actually say it out loud infuriated me. What an ungrateful bastard! My family gave him everything. I had the right to reject him, but he was obligated to be grateful to us! What gave him the right to reject me?! That was how completely unreasonable and arrogant I was at sixteen. I wanted to find a chance to tell my mother what he said, hoping she would stop caring about him so much and spend more time with me. But after that night, my mother became incredibly busy. I barely ever saw her at the house. And she grew colder and colder toward me. When I tried to act cute and seek her attention, she no longer looked at me with that gentle, loving gaze. She didn’t hug me or pinch my cheeks to make me laugh. Instead, she looked at me with pure exhaustion and impatience. “Shelly, you are almost seventeen years old. Start acting like it.” “Look at Oliver. He is the exact same age as you, but he is incredibly mature and reliable.” Not only that, her blatant favoritism toward Oliver became impossible to ignore. She was constantly checking on his health. The private chefs were ordered to cook strictly according to Oliver’s dietary preferences. Whenever the luxury brands sent their seasonal catalogs to the house, Oliver was given the books first to pick out whatever he wanted. Even our family vacations were planned entirely around what Oliver enjoyed doing. During parent teacher conferences, my mother would go to Oliver’s classroom first, and then eventually make her way to mine. “Well, he is a boy. Boys are just more reliable. Unlike Shelly. She is almost seventeen and all she cares about is partying and wasting time.” I stood holding my notebooks outside the teacher’s office, listening to my own mother say those exact words to Oliver’s homeroom teacher. He is a boy. So my mother believed that because I wasn’t a boy, I was completely useless compared to him? I squeezed the notebooks in my hands so hard the sharp cardboard edges cut into my palms, leaving deep red lines. I absolutely refused to lose to Oliver. I refused to let him steal the love that belonged exclusively to me.

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1 Camera flashes blinded me as I lifted the microphone. There he was. The man I had been married to for five years, standing right in front of me, though he only saw another nameless entertainment reporter. I stared at the script glowing on my phone screen and forced myself to ask the cruelest question imaginable. “How are things progressing with your new leading lady, William?” He took his girlfriend’s hand, lifting it high for the sea of flashing lenses to catch the sparkle of their rings. “Everything is perfect. Is that the headline you wanted?” A sick joke. He had to remember the truth. The custom band catching the light wasn’t just set with crushed diamonds. It was set with my ashes. My fingers trembled so violently I nearly dropped the microphone. It had only been ten days since the old “me” died. My body hadn’t even gone completely cold before the ring holding my cremated remains was slipped onto another woman’s finger. Yes, I came back. I woke up in the body of a journalist I had never met in my life. A girl who had drowned, only to breathe again with my soul trapped inside her ribs. We shared nothing in common, except perhaps the shape of our eyes. I looked at my former husband, Hollywood’s current golden boy, William. Then I looked at the flawlessly styled actress glowing beside him, Serena. My stomach pitched into a violent roll. Sickening. It was enough to make me want to vomit right on the red carpet. Serena’s face was the picture of pure, unfiltered bliss. She probably had absolutely no idea she was wearing a dead woman’s remains like a shiny little trophy. I could not even finish the questions on my phone. My vision blurred. The glitz and glamour around me suddenly smelled like rotting flowers. Ignoring the weird looks from the camera crews, I shoved my way through the crowd and sprinted to the restroom. I gripped the edge of the porcelain sink, gasping for air. The cold water splashing against my face was a sharp reminder that I was actually alive. I was no longer the dying woman from my past life. I wasn’t trapped in a sterile clinic halfway across the world, staring blankly at the ceiling with my head shaved, completely numb from the painkillers, waiting to become a lifeless shell. That was when I finally understood. William’s frozen heart would never beat for me again. I was just fixing my makeup when the restroom door swung open. I recognized her instantly. Serena. The exact catalyst that finally pushed me to sign those divorce papers. I still remembered my last birthday. The first notification that popped up on my phone wasn’t a sweet message from my husband. It was a trending gossip alert. William and Serena officially confirm their relationship. That was the exact day I planned to tell him I was leaving the country to get treatment for stomach cancer. He never came home that night. “Are you okay? You looked really pale out there.” Serena tilted her head, her big eyes swimming with fake concern. I wasn’t used to this polite version of her. Then again, I was no longer the annoying wife standing in her way. I wasn’t the woman she once sneered at, telling me the unloved one was the real homewrecker. I shook my head, pretending to casually admire her hand. “That is a gorgeous ring. Custom pieces like that must take forever to make, right?” Of course it was gorgeous. I designed it myself. “Oh, I know! William said it took him ages to get it perfect. He gave it to me the day before yesterday and just held my hand, staring at it for the longest time.” Serena giggled, radiating sugary sweetness. I almost laughed out loud. I shouldn’t have asked. Knowing the truth just made the nausea worse. So William hired a jeweler to forge my ashes into a ring on the exact day of my memorial service, and then gifted it to his mistress the very next morning. I really wanted to crack his skull open and see what kind of twisted garbage was rotting inside his brain. Giving your dead ex-wife’s ashes to your new girlfriend. Talk about out with the old, in with the new. I blew the red carpet assignment. My boss cornered me in the office, threatening to fire me if I messed up the next exclusive. And of course, the folder he tossed on my desk had William’s face on it. It was supposed to be an intimate lifestyle feature, so the interview was scheduled at his private estate. The house that used to be my home. I stood on the porch, feeling completely hollow. It had only been a couple of weeks, yet I was standing at my own front door as an absolute stranger. Before I could even knock, the door swung open. It wasn’t the Hollywood star greeting the press. It was Serena. “Oh, it’s you! The reporter from the premiere. William didn’t even tell me he had a press junket today. I’ll just head out and leave you guys to it.” Her casual ownership of the space snapped me back to reality. I was not the lady of the house anymore. I had absolutely zero connection to this property. William jogged into the foyer holding a whisk. For years I had begged him to learn how to cook with me, and he always refused. Turns out, he just needed a different woman to ask him. I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth, lowered my head, and followed my camera crew inside. Nothing had changed. The decor was exactly the same. Some of my old trinkets were still sitting on the shelves. I honestly thought he would have burned everything. He burned all the handwritten letters and gifts I left him on the day of my funeral, after all. The interview was a disaster. William kept staring directly at me, but his eyes were completely out of focus. He was looking through me. By the eighth time I had to fake a cough to snap him out of his trance, I lost my patience. “William, if you could just cooperate with the questions, we can wrap this up and get out of your hair.” He blinked hard, like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, and rubbed the back of his neck. He always did that when he felt awkward. “Sorry. It is just… you look a lot like someone I used to know, Miss…” He trailed off. Right. My new name. “Cici,” I supplied smoothly. “My colleagues say I look a bit like Serena from certain angles. You must be missing your girlfriend already. Let’s speed this up so you can get back to her.” The lighting guys chuckled. She had only been gone for an hour. I expected him to laugh it off and play the part of the smitten boyfriend, but he just stared at me again until the silence in the room became painfully loud. Did his brain cells die in the last ten days? Seeing him jump right back to filming movies on day four after my death, and doing couple reality shows by day five, I genuinely thought the man was a sociopath. The final segment was a rapid-fire Q&A. A real struggle for someone who spent her entire past life as a jewelry designer, not a journalist. “Fans notice you keep a lot of vintage decor. Would you say you are someone who holds onto the past?” William shook his head without missing a beat. “No. Dwelling on the past is a waste of time. You get tired of looking at old things eventually. I just haven’t gotten around to throwing them out.” So that was why he burned the memory box I left him. He was making room for his bright new future. After we signed the divorce papers, I immediately booked a one-way ticket to a clinic in Switzerland. Not because they had better doctors, but because I just wanted to run as far away as possible. My private nurse was a sweet older lady who read too many romance novels. She used to hold my hand and tell me that men in books always realized their true feelings once they saw the tragic final letters their wives left behind. I was stupid enough to believe her. I thought I could weaponize my own death, wrapping it in a thick layer of guilt to serve as my ultimate revenge. During my final days, I forced my decaying body to sit up. I wrote exactly one hundred letters. I printed hundreds of photos. I drained my savings to craft a dozen pieces of custom jewelry. I packed it all into a heavy wooden trunk and shipped it back to Los Angeles. I thought he would break down. I thought he would sob over our ruined history. It was the most pathetic thing I ever did. When my soul was untethered from my body, I immediately drifted back to William. I waited for the devastation. Instead, he answered the phone call from the clinic with a chillingly flat, “Got it.” Over a thousand days of marriage. I thought my death would hit him like a hurricane, but his eyes didn’t even ripple. Romance novels are built on lies. Why would a man who spent months sleeping in another woman’s bed feel any guilt at all? I haunted him for seven days. His routine was so mind-numbingly normal it felt like a sick prank. Day one. William received my death certificate in the mail. He skimmed it, shoved it into a drawer, and booked a first-class flight to Switzerland. Day two. He signed the hospital release forms, picked out a generic headstone, and flew back with my urn. Day three. He hosted the funeral. Barely anyone showed up. Day four. He went straight back to the film set. That night, he hit a VIP club, got trashed, and held Serena in his lap, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Day five. He filmed a cheesy couples’ challenge for a reality show. My urn sat completely ignored behind the locked door of my old bedroom. Day six. The heavy wooden trunk I shipped arrived at his gate. He spent exactly thirty minutes flipping through my life’s final work. He did not shed a single tear. Day seven. He hired a private jeweler to crack open the urn and set my ashes into a pair of rings. And that wooden trunk? He dragged it out to Malibu. He lit a bonfire on the beach and watched my final, desperate fragments of love burn to cinders. I would have preferred him laughing at my pathetic attempt at closure. Anything would have been better than that terrifying, blank apathy. He looked at those letters like they belonged to a stranger he couldn’t wait to forget. Maybe he was just tired. He acted for a living, and he could not even be bothered to fake a sad face for a dead woman. As a weightless spirit, I could not even cry. I just hovered over the flames, watching the agonizing effort of my final dying weeks turn into dirty gray smoke. The crackling fire mocked my ridiculous delusions. I actually thought a man who stopped loving me years ago would suddenly magically care. That was the day Vivian, the celebrated jewelry designer and Hollywood’s best-kept secret wife, truly ceased to exist. And that was the day Cici’s life began. The sun was starting to set when the interview finally wrapped. I stood up and stretched my stiff shoulders. I never realized holding a basic conversation with him was this exhausting. I had a secondary motive for coming here today. I needed to steal back my old design sketches. Back when I thought I was dying, I abandoned all my portfolios in his study. Now that I was alive and broke, I needed my intellectual property back. During the B-roll house tour, I spotted them shoved into a dusty corner of his office, crumpled and neglected like actual trash. Thank god they survived the Malibu bonfire. “I noticed a stack of design sketches in your study,” I casually mentioned as the crew packed up. “I actually have a friend in the industry looking for vintage concepts. Would you be willing to sell them?” Since I was less than nothing to him, the papers had to be worthless. “Those?” William replied, his voice terrifyingly soft. “They are not for sale.” A punch straight to the gut. Why would an A-list actor hoard crumpled jewelry sketches? He had zero use for them. While my brain scrambled for a counteroffer, William stepped closer. “Do you really want them?” I nodded quickly, putting on my most innocent, eager expression. William closed the distance between us. He leaned in, his dark eyes tracing the lines of my face with a disturbing intensity. He looked like a man making a very dangerous gamble. “I will give them to you for free. Under one condition.” He paused, his gaze dropping to my lips. “I want you to stay by my side. As a body double.” A body double? For who? My feet glued themselves to the hardwood floor. My eyes went wide with sheer panic. Before I could even process the absurdity, his hand clamped down on my wrist. He dragged me down the hallway and stopped dead in front of a very familiar door. My old bedroom. The one he had kept locked. William shoved the door open. He pointed a shaking finger at a massive portrait of me hanging over the bed. The next words out of his mouth made me seriously question my own sanity. “Play her. Pretend to be her, and I will give you whatever you want.” He wanted me to play the role of my dead self, just so I could get my own sketches back?

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Ten days after I lost the baby, my mother somehow found out. She packed her bags overnight and endured a grueling forty hour bus ride across the country, traveling over a thousand miles from the Blue Ridge Mountains all the way to New York City. Thunder rumbled outside the penthouse windows. A violent storm was swallowing the Northeast. After the doctor noted my severe depressive tendencies, Alistair grounded me inside our home. I was completely forbidden from leaving the apartment. I had no choice but to ask him to pick up my mother from the station. A few moments after I sent the text, a single, lonely “.” popped up on my screen. I could not remember when it started, but our text thread had devolved into my one sided paragraphs met with his single punctuation marks. A period meant agreement. He would do it. A question mark meant opposition. A flat rejection. Although he was icy and distant, Alistair was always a man of his word. He handled things efficiently. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, practicing my smile, praying my mother would not notice the hollow look in my eyes. I just wanted our family to be together. But right before lunch, Alistair walked through the front door. Alone. 1 “Where is my mother?” I gripped the edge of the dining table. A sharp cramp twisted through my lower abdomen. I had overestimated my own emotional resilience and entirely underestimated the physical toll of losing a child. I did not even have the energy to be angry. He froze, genuinely startled by my question. As if suddenly remembering something trivial, he pulled his phone from his tailored slacks and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I apologize. I will have Harry go pick her up right now.” “I had a highly classified board meeting today. I asked Valerie to handle my personal errands.” “She was the one replying to your messages. There must have been a miscommunication in the schedule.” It was impossible to describe how I felt in that exact second. Beneath the swirling hurricane of emotions, only one word remained. Humiliation. I always believed that the cracks in a marriage should be handled privately between a husband and wife. Now, my desperate, ignored pleas for affection were being managed by his secretary. The shame magnified a hundred times over, making me want to scream and sob. I could not even focus on the fact that he casually referred to picking up my mother as a “personal errand.” “You are my husband. She is just your assistant. How could you let her text your wife on your behalf?” “This is our family business. She is an outsider. I do not want her involved in our…” I could not finish the sentence. Because Alistair looked right at me and said, “Since when is she an outsider?” “Were you not thrilled with the flowers and gifts she picked out for our anniversary?” His words made my ears ring with a deafening screech. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to the back of my skull. My vision fractured into sharp flashes of black and white. So for the past two years, every ounce of romance and tenderness I thought came from my husband was actually orchestrated by another woman. “Alistair, if I had known those gifts were not from you, I never would have accepted them.” “What is the difference? The flowers were bought. The gifts were delivered.” “Of course there is a difference! I thought you actually cared about me.” My voice trembled uncontrollably. My fingernails dug deep into my palms, but the pain felt muted, like it belonged to someone else. “Of course I care about you.” His tone was laced with heavy exhaustion. “You are my wife. I want to spend my days with you too.” He stepped forward and pulled me into his chest. His large hand gently rubbed circles into my spine. Through the thin fabric of my loungewear, his body heat bled into my skin. My body surrendered before my logic could stop it. My shoulders sagged, and I melted into his embrace. It felt exactly like a person falling off a cliff finally being caught. He pressed a kiss to my forehead. His warm breath brushed against the shell of my ear. “But if I asked you to be my executive assistant, would you even understand the financial reports?” The room plunged into a suffocating silence. He was right. I would not understand them. Compared to Valerie, a woman groomed from birth with an elite Ivy League education, my background was a joke. I was a high school dropout. A girl who gutted fish at the docks. I could never sit at his polished mahogany tables. Realizing his words had cut too deep, his brow furrowed. He opened his mouth to fix it. He was usually a man of impeccable manners and restraint. He hated making people uncomfortable. Pursuing a working class girl like me was probably the only reckless, out of character thing he had ever done in his entire life. Before he could speak, the heavy oak door was pushed open. A vicious gust of wind and rain howled into the foyer. My mother stood dripping wet on the marble floor. 2 “Gem, what is going on here?” Her silver hair was plastered to her skull by the freezing rain. Her thin, worn jacket was splattered with street mud, clinging tightly to her frail frame. Her hearing was not great. Years of working near loud factory machinery had taken its toll. She must not have heard him. I prayed she did not hear him. Forcing back the burning tears threatening to spill, I rushed over and pulled her inside. “Mom, I told you I wanted to go with Alistair to pick you up. He refused to let me out of the house.” She stared deeply into my eyes for a long time before letting out a breath of relief, a soft smile touching her lips. “He is just worried about your health, sweetie. You should listen to him.” “I know, Mom. We are doing great.” “We really are.” Alistair reached out and gently supported her arm. “Lunch is already prepared. I will have Martha show you to a guest room so you can freshen up. My mother is on her way as well. We will all eat together.” He deflected the tension perfectly, sealing the cracks without missing a beat. Just like nothing had ever happened. I had spent the entire morning preparing lunch. I made a batch of savory, rustic meat pies from scratch. Before we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains, my mother lived in a gritty Pennsylvania steel town for thirty years. It was her favorite comfort food. When Alistair’s mother arrived, Valerie was trailing right behind her, carrying her designer coat and pulling out her chair with natural, practiced intimacy. I swallowed the bitter taste of disgust in my mouth, turned around, and walked to the kitchen to grab the meat pies. The moment I stepped back into the dining room, a chorus of elegant laughter echoed off the walls. “Oh, my goodness! Why are you drinking the finger bowl water? That is so dirty!” My mother froze. The rim of the porcelain bowl clinked sharply against the glass table. Alistair’s mother casually swirled the floating lemon slices in her own crystal bowl. “It is water for washing your hands after the meal.” “But country folks do not know about these little etiquette rules. We cannot blame you.” Valerie smiled sweetly, her eyes curving into crescents as she waved for the housekeeper to take the bowl away. “Please do not take it to heart. One of my colleagues told me a story about her rural relatives visiting the city. They drank the mouthwash thinking it was a cocktail, and they started foaming at the mouth while talking! They terrified themselves to tears. We laughed about it in the office for days.” “I will print out a dining etiquette guide for you later. You will get the hang of it if you study hard.” My mother kept her head bowed. Her narrow shoulders trembled slightly. A few drops of the lemon water had splashed onto her faded trousers. She tried to discreetly wipe it away with her thumb, but it only made the dark stain spread. I walked straight to her chair, picked up the porcelain finger bowl in front of her, and drank the remaining lemon water in one single gulp. My mother’s head snapped up. She grabbed my wrist. “Gem!” Her calloused, ice cold fingers shook against my skin. I squeezed her hand reassuringly and locked eyes with Valerie. “What exactly do you want my mother to study? Care to teach me right now?” Valerie’s smile shattered. She shot a nervous glance at Alistair’s mother before forcing another bright, plastic laugh. “Gemma, sweetie. I was just trying to lighten the mood. I wanted to make her smile.” “Is that so? Why don’t you make me smile, then?” My mother tugged frantically at the hem of my shirt under the table. She abruptly stood up, forcing a wide, apologetic smile at Alistair’s mother. “Please forgive her. Gem has not been feeling well these past few days. She is just a little snappy.” “She gets that temper from me. Please do not hold it against her.” She pulled me gently behind her back. She used her slightly hunched, fragile body as a human shield to protect me from their judgment. 3 I sat back down next to my mother. The housekeeper placed the warm meat pies in front of me. “Why are these filled with vegetables? I specifically made the heavy pork ones.” Alistair’s mother dabbed her lips with a linen napkin. “That heavy grease and salt from the country is a terrible way to nourish the body. It completely violates our family’s dietary standards. I had the private chef prepare organic truffle and scallop tarts instead.” My fingers curled into tight fists. I opened my mouth to fight back. My mother quickly patted the back of my hand. “Sitting on a bumpy bus for forty hours really turns your stomach. Heavy pork would have been too greasy anyway. A light meal is exactly what I needed.” She picked up a small piece of the pale, bland tart with her fork and shoved it into her mouth, chewing with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Delicious. Absolutely delicious.” The rest of the meal tasted like pure ash in my mouth. My father died when I was young. The year he passed, a wealthy local businessman knocked on our door. He offered to support us financially, but only if my mother agreed to become his secret mistress. My mother beat him out of the yard with a broomstick. After that, the local gossip made it impossible for us to stay in town. She packed all our belongings into a single duffel bag and took me from Pennsylvania all the way down to the rural mountains of North Carolina. She begged a local coffee farm owner to let her work the fields. She begged distant relatives to let us sleep in their drafty shed. She begged the high school principal not to expel me when I broke the nose of a bully who insulted our poverty. The year I was supposed to take my college entrance exams, she worked herself into a hospital bed. I juggled studying with taking care of her. When my test scores came back exceptionally high, she tried to drag her sick body out of bed to pick up extra shifts to pay my tuition. The day my university acceptance letter arrived in the mail, I tore it perfectly in half and threw it into the woodstove. The very next morning, I walked down to the local fish market and got a job gutting fish. When she came home from the clinic and saw the burnt corners of the thick envelope in the ashes, she crouched on the kitchen floor and stared at it for a very long time. When Alistair proposed to me, she was terrified his elite family would look down on me. She sold our tiny, worn down house just to scrape together fifty thousand dollars for my dowry. Even though that money could not even buy a single wheel on one of Alistair’s luxury sports cars, she sold her home anyway. The moment my wedding reception ended, she immediately grabbed her bags and headed to the bus station to travel back south. She claimed the farm needed her for the harvest season. But I knew the truth. She was terrified that if the Kensington family saw her rough, calloused hands and heard her thick country accent, they would despise me for my lowborn roots. She was terrified that staying even one extra day would ruin my perfect fairytale. Before she boarded that bus, she shoved her entire life savings into my hands. “Gem, keep this money. Do not let his family treat you like you are worthless.” “I am a useless mother. I could not even afford to send you to college.” “But seeing you this happy… I can finally rest.” And now, she had endured forty hours of pure agony on a rattling bus to make sure I was okay. And I could not even let her eat a slice of her favorite pie. 4 After lunch, Alistair’s mother stood up and left. The suffocating tension in the living room finally eased. The housekeeper walked up to Alistair carrying a plastic bucket. “Sir, how should I dispose of this?” Valerie was walking down the sweeping staircase. She took one look at the bucket and pinched her nose in disgust. “What smells like rotting garbage? Martha, throw that out immediately.” Forty hours sitting upright on a rattling bus was brutal. Despite my mother’s careful protection, a few of the farm fresh eggs she brought had cracked. The yolk had soaked into the protective rice husks, brewing a faint, sour stench in the humid summer heat. My mother panicked and desperately reached into the bucket, trying to salvage the unbroken eggs. She looked terrified and entirely consumed by guilt. “The roads were just too bumpy. I wanted you to have some real, organic farm eggs to help your body heal.” She kept her head down, refusing to meet my eyes. “I didn’t mean to make a mess.” She hurriedly pulled a plastic grocery bag from her worn backpack. “Alistair, I know your work requires a lot of brainpower. I foraged these wild black walnuts from the mountain myself. They are incredibly fresh and sweet. Please, have some.” Valerie laughed brightly. “Walnuts do not actually boost brain function. That is a total myth.” “Besides, this is New York City. We have absolutely everything. We are not lacking anything here.” Wild black walnuts were delicious, but foraging them by hand meant the natural juices stained your skin pitch black. The stains were impossible to wash off for weeks. Alistair glanced at the stained plastic bag, frowned slightly, and subtly stepped backward to avoid her. My mother’s hands froze in midair. The desperate hope in her eyes slowly shattered, fading into a dull, empty gray. She slowly pulled her hands back and nervously wiped her palms against her thighs. “Right. Of course. This is the big city.” “You have everything here. You have everything.” Valerie kept smiling. “Your country accent is so incredibly thick. You really need to speak slower, or Alistair will not understand a word you are saying.” Having delivered her final insult, Valerie hugged a stack of legal folders to her chest and marched upstairs. The living room descended into dead silence. Alistair checked his platinum watch. “It is getting late. I will have the driver take you to your hotel now.” “I had Valerie book a premium hot spring suite for you. You should relax and enjoy yourself.” I snatched the plastic bag of walnuts from my mother’s hands and glared at him. “Why does she have to stay at a hotel? We have empty guest rooms right here.” He looked down at me, his expression perfectly calm and rational. “You just suffered a miscarriage. Are you going to take care of her, or is she going to take care of you?” “Besides, Valerie’s guest room cannot be moved.” “And why exactly is her room off limits?” My mother quickly intervened, waving her hands with a forced, breathless laugh. “A hotel is perfect! I can sleep anywhere. And I have never been to a real hot spring before.” She grabbed her backpack and practically sprinted toward the front door, slipping quickly into the backseat of the waiting luxury car. “Gem.” “I am completely fine. You just take care of yourself.” She forced her spine to stay perfectly rigid as she sat in the car. It was a desperate attempt to prove she was strong. I closed my eyes and fought every instinct screaming at me to get in that car and leave with her. Instead, I stayed behind and carefully picked the unbroken eggs out of the trash. By the time I remembered the bag of wild walnuts, someone had already tossed them into the garbage bin. I knelt on the cold kitchen floor and dug the plastic bag out of the trash. The handles were tied together in a frantic, impossibly tight knot. Terrified that the bumpy roads would ruin them, my mother had tied four dead knots to keep them safe. My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was my mother. “Gem, do not throw a tantrum at Alistair. I am really okay.” “If he does not want to eat the walnuts, do not force him. Please, do not start a fight with your husband because of me.” I wiped the coffee grounds off the outside of the plastic bag, ripped it open, grabbed a handful of the crushed walnuts, and shoved them into my mouth. Tears streamed down my face like a broken dam. 5 The salty tears mixed with the earthy walnuts, creating a bitter, suffocating paste in my mouth. It was not even walnut season. How long did she spend wandering the mountains to find these? How many hours did she spend smashing the hard shells open with a hammer? How long did it take to peel the bitter skin off every single piece? I forced my throat to open, pitching my voice an octave higher so she would not hear the violent sobs wrecking my chest. “Mom, he loved them. He just ate a whole handful.” “Oh, thank god. That is wonderful.” “I am just getting old and useless. My brain does not work right anymore. You need Alistair to protect you now.” “Do not fight with him. Do not make me worry about you, okay?” “I know, Mom. Get some sleep. I will come pick you up first thing in the morning.” After hanging up the phone, I grabbed the plastic bag and slowly walked upstairs. In the study, Alistair was leaning over a desk, reviewing documents with Valerie. Catching sight of my bloodshot, swollen eyes, Alistair frowned. He held up a hand, signaling Valerie to stop talking. He walked over and pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, offering it to me. “I know Valerie’s scheduling had a slight hiccup today, but you finally got to see your mother. There is no reason to keep throwing a temper tantrum.” He actually thought I was crying because I was jealous of Valerie. He could not even comprehend that I was weeping for my mother’s shattered dignity. Alistair was a man who lived his entire life saying ‘no’ to people. He had no concept of what it felt like to have your entire heart ripped out and casually tossed into the garbage. Or maybe he just did not care. “Gemma, sweetie. I admit I made a mistake today, and I hope you will not hold a grudge against my boss.” “I promise I will go to the hotel first thing tomorrow and personally apologize to your mother. Can you forgive me?” I shook my head. “No. I do not forgive you.” Alistair’s face instantly darkened. He stared at me critically for a few seconds before gesturing for Valerie to leave the room. “I understand your emotions are unstable right now.” “But you have no right to humiliate Valerie like that.” “You are Mrs. Kensington now. You are no longer that…” I heard the unspoken words echoing loudly in the silence. “I should no longer act like a petty, uneducated fishmonger. Is that what you mean?” He stiffened, but he did not deny it. After a long, agonizing silence, looking at the towering man standing in front of me, I finally asked the question burning a hole in my chest. “Alistair. Do you regret marrying me?” 6 The story of Alistair and I was painfully simple. It was the classic tale of Cinderella finding a cursed frog prince. I did not care that he was temporarily paralyzed in a wheelchair. He did not care that I constantly smelled like gutted fish. We met. We understood each other’s pain. We fell madly in love. We truly believed we were two halves of a whole soul. But then the frog turned back into a prince. He reclaimed his rightful place as the heir to the Kensington empire. His legs fully healed. Ignoring the vicious objections of his entire aristocratic family, he married me. In fairy tales, the wedding is the final page. It is the happily ever after. But outside of the fairy tale, real life kept moving. The flawless, impenetrable mask Alistair always wore finally cracked. He reached out and gripped my shoulders tightly. Before he could speak, his phone rang. The moment he saw the caller ID, a flash of genuine panic crossed his eyes. A woman’s voice spilled through the speaker. She was speaking rapid French, her tone slurred and dripping with intoxication. “Alistair… I made a mistake. I really made a mistake. I regret running away from the wedding.” Alistair’s voice immediately softened into a puddle of absolute devotion. “I do not blame you.” “Can you please come see me?” Valerie had grown up in the exact same elite circles as Alistair. Using French to communicate was their little secret code. He covered the microphone and looked at me. “There is a massive corporate emergency. We will finish this conversation when I get back, alright?” He had no idea his lie was completely transparent. He also had no idea that for the past two years, in a desperate attempt to become worthy of his world, I had secretly taught myself French. I looked at him and said, “Alright.” I walked back to our master bedroom alone. I sat on the edge of the mattress and swallowed the wild walnuts my mother had brought, one by one. If Cinderella realized she was completely miserable after moving into the castle, would she regret putting on the glass slipper? I did not know the answer to that. But I tossed and turned until dawn, completely unable to sleep. My mother sacrificed everything she had just to see me happy. Was I actually happy? 7 At four in the morning, the heavy rain finally stopped. The streets of Manhattan smelled like wet asphalt and ozone. Since I could not sleep, I went down to the kitchen and cooked a fresh batch of meat pies. A drop of boiling water splashed onto the back of my hand. The sharp, stinging pain briefly snapped my wandering mind back to reality. I packed the pies and a thermos of hot soup into a bag, hailed a yellow cab, and headed straight to the luxury hotel. When I walked through the revolving doors of the grand lobby, I noticed a small crowd of employees gathered near the entrance. My mother stood in the center of the circle, her back facing me. She was bowing so deeply her spine was almost parallel to the floor. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I will leave right now.” “Leave? Who said you could just walk away? We were nice enough not to call the cops on you, and we let you sleep on the patio in the freezing rain all night.” Alistair specifically told me Valerie booked a premium hot spring suite. It poured rain in New York City all night long. Did my mother really sleep on the cold concrete outside? It felt like someone reached into my chest and crushed my heart with their bare hands. “Look what you did! You tracked mud all over our custom carpets. We have VIP clients arriving any minute. Can a beggar like you afford to pay for this damage?” Panic consumed my mother. She frantically dug through her pockets and pulled out a faded cloth handkerchief. She bent down to scrub the mud stains out of the carpet. Her knees were ruined by severe arthritis. She could not even squat properly, so her legs shook violently as she hovered over the floor. “I will clean it. I promise I will clean it up.” She dropped to her knees and scrubbed the expensive fabric with her cheap handkerchief. After a few frantic swipes, the cloth was so filthy you could not even tell what color it used to be. I was suffocating. I dropped my thermos and prepared to sprint across the lobby. Before I could move, a sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb outside. Alistair stepped out first. Valerie followed closely behind him. The hotel manager’s sneer instantly morphed into a glowing, sycophantic smile. He rushed toward the sliding glass doors. “Mr. Kensington! Welcome, sir. Please, right this way. We will have this mess cleaned up immediately.” Before he could finish his sentence, my mother looked up from the floor. The moment she recognized the man in the tailored suit, she grabbed her aching knees and dragged herself to her feet. “Alistair! Alistair!” “I accidentally got some dirt on their rug. Please tell them not to be mad at me.” The hotel manager stared at Alistair in shock. “Mr. Kensington, do you know this woman?” Valerie gracefully brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Do we look like the kind of people who would associate with someone like that?” “It is pathetic how these hillbillies will claim to be related to anyone with money just to get a handout. How embarrassing.” Alistair acted like he did not hear a single word. He walked right past my mother without even glancing in her direction. My mother froze like a statue. Under the hotel manager’s disgusted, mocking glare, she crushed the filthy handkerchief in her fist and bowed her head in total submission. “I apologize. I apologize… I had the wrong person.” “Harry! Clear the lobby immediately! Our investors are going to be here any second.” “Do not make me question your professional competence.” The manager nodded furiously and signaled for the security guards to swarm forward. A burly guard shoved my mother backward. She lost her footing, and her arthritic knees slammed brutally against the sharp marble steps. I lost my mind. I sprinted forward and violently shoved the guards away. “Mom!” When she saw my face, she panicked, desperately trying to hide the mud soaked handkerchief behind her back. “Gem, what are you doing here? I was just about to come see you…” “Mom, stop talking. I saw everything.” She forced a broken, agonizing smile that looked more painful than crying. “I am just getting old. My eyes do not work right anymore. I thought I saw someone else. I embarrassed you.” My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of burning coals. The heavy metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. “Mom, what are you talking about?” “You are the strongest, most amazing mother in the world.” Her eyes instantly flooded with tears. A heavy drop rolled down her cheek and splashed onto the back of my hand. “Gem…” She could not finish her sentence. The weight of her body suddenly collapsed against my shoulder. She went completely limp, sliding toward the marble floor. “Mom!” “Call an ambulance! Somebody call a fucking ambulance!” 8 I stood in the agonizingly long line at the hospital billing counter. My palms were drenched in cold sweat, crushing the admission papers in my grip. The elderly man at the front of the line was counting out crumpled dollar bills one by one. Time stretched into an unbearable eternity. The emergency room doctor told me she collapsed from severe hypoglycemia. If I had arrived even ten minutes later, she could have died. Due to years of brutal physical labor, her body was a minefield of underlying health issues. Treating her was not impossible, but the long term recovery would cost an astronomical amount of money. My hands shook violently as I dialed Alistair’s number. It rang three times before the call was rejected. My heart crashed into my stomach. I dialed again. It went straight to voicemail. I opened my texts and typed: My mother is in the hospital. A second later, a single “.” popped up on my screen. Staring at that tiny dot, which looked exactly like a speck of useless dust, the blood in my veins boiled until I saw red. Logically, I knew Alistair was probably in the middle of a massive corporate negotiation. That text was probably sent by Valerie. But I still hated him with every fiber of my being. I hated Alistair. But more than anything, I hated myself. After paying the emergency room deposit, my bank account was completely empty. When we got married, Alistair handed me a black card with no limit and told me to buy whatever I wanted. I refused to take it. My mother always told me that being poor did not mean you had to surrender your pride. Our family was already completely outmatched by the Kensington dynasty. We could not give them another reason to look down on us. That was her pride. And it was mine, too. But I only had a high school diploma. If I went out to find a job, I would just be working a cash register or stocking shelves. Alistair could not bear the thought of his wife doing manual labor, so I never brought up finding a job again. He paid for my food, my clothes, my entire existence. Whenever he traveled to Europe for business, he would bring back expensive trinkets he thought I might like. Over the last two years, I had written a few web novels online for pocket change. I barely had a few thousand dollars saved up. I forced my mother to take the entire fifty thousand dollar dowry back to North Carolina with her. When a woman walks down the aisle brimming with hope and dreams of a beautiful future, she never imagines she will end up this completely pathetic. I stared at my bloodshot, tear stained reflection in the hospital glass. I raised my hand and slapped myself across the face as hard as I could. Gemma, how did you become such a useless piece of trash? I pulled up Alistair’s mother’s phone number and hit dial. “Mrs. Kensington, my mother is in the hospital. I need money right now…” Her mocking sneer was completely unfiltered. “I was wondering how long you would last. You finally found a convenient excuse to beg for a handout, didn’t you?” “Speak up. How much do you want? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? A million?” “This time your mother is sick. What pathetic excuse are you going to invent next time?” “I knew the second that woman showed up at my door, nothing good would come of it.” I gripped the phone so hard the plastic cracked. My fingernails dug deeply into the flesh of my palm. “Three million.” “Excuse me? Do you honestly think you are worth that much?” “I will divorce Alistair.” I still did not know if Alistair actually regretted marrying me. But standing here today, I absolutely regretted putting on that glass slipper. It was freezing cold. It was suffocatingly tight. It had crushed every single one of my foolish, romantic delusions into dust. Love is not omnipotent. And it certainly does not last forever, despite what the diamond commercials try to sell you. 9 Saying those words out loud was not nearly as painful as I imagined it would be. The woman on the other end of the line went dead silent. It was clearly not the answer she was expecting. “Are you actually willing to let him go? I thought you were so desperately in love with Alistair you would rather die than leave him.” “I do love him. But I am not the only woman in the world who loves him. If you do not trust my word, we can draft a legally binding contract.” “You voluntarily wire the funds. I voluntarily sign the divorce papers.”

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1 I turned back toward the mirror to touch up my lipstick, but the loud click of the camera shutter made me freeze. In the reflection, my fiancé Carter and my twin sister Lily were pressed together, perfectly framed in the photographer’s lens. When I walked back onto the set, the entire studio fell dead silent. Carter finally realized what had happened. His smile stiffened for a fraction of a second before he shrugged it off. “You guys look practically identical anyway. Let’s just use this shot.” My throat tightened until it ached. Just because we were twins, Carter had treated her like me more times than I could count. She was the one in our family portraits. She was the one in our couple’s photoshoot. And now, she was the one in my wedding photos. I stared at the two of them. They looked exactly like a happy set of newlyweds. Reaching up, I ripped the veil out of my hair and roughly wiped the expensive makeup off my face. “Why don’t you let her marry you, too.” I turned on my heel and walked out. Carter closed the distance in three long strides, grabbing my arm. “We’re supposed to be taking our wedding photos. Why do you always have to ruin the mood?” My eyes burned with unshed tears as I forced the corners of my mouth up. In the hallway mirror, my smeared makeup made me look completely pathetic. He had no idea. Just to fit into this designer gown, I had essentially given myself an eating disorder, throwing up every meal I forced down. I had tortured myself to squeeze into the suffocating tulle and lace. And I didn’t even get the chance to step in front of the camera. Lily hurriedly stepped off the backdrop, her face a mask of perfect, innocent guilt. “Lucia is definitely jealous. I was just joking around to see if Carter could tell us apart. I guess I took the prank too far.” She tried to playfully push me toward the center of the set. Carter shifted his weight, physically blocking the spot. His voice dropped into a heavy, warning tone. “It’s just a picture. She’s your sister. Just let her have this.” There it was again. That heavy, suffocating concept. Let her have it. The plus-one ticket for the European cruise. I had to let her have it. The front seat on the rollercoaster. I had to let her have it. Carter pulled us both to stand side-by-side in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “Look at you two. Nose, ears, eyes, it’s all the same. Why go through the hassle of reshooting? It’s just a waste of film.” Looking at the two nearly identical faces in the glass, I managed a smile that felt worse than crying. Carter used to trace the small beauty mark under my left eye, telling me it was the most unique thing about me. I guess I wasn’t that unique to him after all. It felt like his choice to propose to me was just a random flip of a coin. Before I could process the thought, Carter reached down and twisted the engagement ring off my finger. “Since Lily loves being in front of the camera, let her stand in for you. Go sit down and take a breather.” He slid my ring onto Lily’s finger. It was a flawless fit. Whenever I wore that ring, it squeezed my finger until the circulation stopped. A cold realization washed over me. Back in college, Carter had accidentally kissed Lily. Since that day, their dynamic had shifted into something far too close for comfort. Maybe that kiss wasn’t an accident. Maybe every time he ‘mixed us up’, he knew exactly what he was doing. Walking out into the glaring sunlight, I pulled out my phone and dialed my wedding planner. “Hi. I need to cancel my entire wedding package.” The planner gasped loudly into the receiver. “Lucia? You’ve been putting this together for six months.” “Is there something you’re unhappy with? We can always tweak the details.” I had tweaked the three-hour ceremony a million times. Carter vetoed every single idea I had. He called my choices tacky, exhausting, or too cheap. The final aesthetic we settled on was a pastel pink fairy-tale theme. It was Lily’s dream aesthetic. The guest list was stacked with Lily’s sorority sisters and friends. The vows I was supposed to read were practically written by Lily. Even the mermaid-style gown I was wearing right now was the exact cut Lily had been obsessing over on Pinterest. I was just so tired of fighting for my own life. Glancing back through the glass doors, I watched them strike goofy, intimate poses to use up the rest of the studio time. I spoke softly into the phone. “No need.” “Cancel it. I’ll cover whatever cancellation fees we owe.” “Cancel what?” Carter’s confused voice echoed right behind me. I hung up the phone without missing a beat and shook my head. Remembering the two VIP concert tickets I had found in his jacket pocket that morning, I used them as my cover. “I meant we should cancel the trip for the music festival.” Carter froze. A flash of panic crossed his eyes. “How did you know Lily and I were going to that concert?” I stared at him, completely numb. “I figured you wouldn’t want to go, so I didn’t get you a ticket.” “But since you know, you can help us pack. Put together some cool outfits for us. Lily has been begging to see this band live for months.” The bridge of my nose stung. I was the one who had been begging to see them. I was the one who stayed up until 3 AM trying to secure tickets in the queue and failed three times. Noticing the absolute deadness in my eyes, Carter awkwardly tried to backpedal. “Look, I can FaceTime you during the best songs. You know how crazy those crowds get. It’s not safe for Lily to be in a mosh pit alone. You’d be worried sick about her.” I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper, and then I laughed. The only person worried about her was him. After the shoot wrapped, Carter’s mom, Eleanor, called and told us to come check out the newly renovated house Carter bought for us. When we pulled into the driveway, she was already waiting on the porch. “Mom! I missed you so much!” Lily practically vaulted out of the car and threw her arms around Eleanor. Eleanor pinched her cheek, her face lighting up with genuine warmth. “Look at my girl, getting prettier every day!” I stood a few feet away, feeling like a trespasser who had stumbled onto their private family reunion. I had tried calling her ‘Mom’ so many times over the years. Eleanor always shot me down with a cold stare, telling me to save it for the altar. I guess Lily had beaten me to the punch. I swallowed the ‘Mrs. Bennett’ that was resting on my tongue. As we walked up to the door, Lily casually pressed her thumb to the biometric lock. It clicked open instantly. She walked in like she owned the place. Carter didn’t blink. He just watched her with a fond, indulgent smile. Sensing my rigid posture, Eleanor let out a dry, awkward chuckle. “You’re always working, Lucia. Lily was the one who helped me pick out the tiles and the paint. Whose fingerprint was I supposed to register?” But Carter had explicitly told me his mom didn’t want ‘outsiders’ meddling in the renovation. So I had stayed out of it. Turns out, I was the outsider. Stepping into the hallway, I reached for the handle of the master bedroom. Carter’s hand clamped over my wrist, pulling it back. His tone left no room for argument. “Lily is still interning downtown. Living here is way closer to her office than her crappy apartment. My mom agreed.” I forced the corners of my mouth up, slowly pulling my arm out of his grip. “Then where are we sleeping?” Carter pointed toward a cramped guest room in the corner. It was half the size of the master. “That’s plenty of space for us.” “The master has an en-suite bathroom. You’re always paranoid about me mixing you two up, right? This way, we avoid any awkward run-ins. Win-win.” Lily leaned against the doorframe, a sly smirk playing on her lips. “Oh please, it’s not like you’d actually mix us up. Lucia doesn’t exactly have my curves. I’m way out of her league.” Carter’s gaze instinctively dropped to Lily’s chest, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. He suppressed a grin. “Stop messing around.” Watching the two of them flirt right in front of me made my stomach churn with violent nausea. Without a word, I turned and walked into the tiny guest room. Through the thin drywall, I could hear them wrestling and laughing in the hallway, accompanied by Eleanor’s fond, enabling chuckles. I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth and texted my Aunt Valerie overseas. “That guy you wanted to set me up with. I’ll meet him.” The next evening, Carter drove Lily to the neighboring state for the concert. My phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. Lily had posted a photo. The stage lights illuminated their faces in the dark crowd. Surrounded by cheering fans, they were making out. Deeply. The caption read. [Someone’s kissing skills haven’t improved at all. I’ll give him a C-minus.] Carter had commented publicly, entirely shameless. [You’re the gross one. I had to use three bottles of mouthwash after.] Their flirty banter filled up my entire screen. I sat on the edge of the guest bed, zipping up my suitcase. I opened my browser and booked a one-way flight for the following morning. At 2 AM, a phone call shattered the silence of the room. “Is this Lucia? Are you related to Lily? She and Carter are down at the precinct. They were picked up during a vice raid at a downtown motel. Come bail them out.” It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. When I rushed into the glaring fluorescent lights of the police station, Lily was sitting on a metal bench. She was wearing nothing but Carter’s oversized white button-down. Her bare legs were pale and exposed. She was sobbing into her hands, looking like a total victim. Carter was hovering over her, rubbing her shoulders. He didn’t even look at me when he started talking. “The show ended late. I didn’t want to drive all the way back in the dark, so we booked a room.” “But I wasn’t going to let a girl stay in a sketchy motel alone. So I stayed in the room with her.” He paused, adding defensively. “We slept in separate beds.” The sheer audacity of his lie made my vision blur. I fought to keep my voice from shaking. “If you were in separate beds, why did vice squad haul you in for suspected solicitation?” Lily looked up, her face stained with perfect, glistening tears. She stood up, trying to grab my hand. “Lucia, I broke out in hives. Carter was just helping me put ointment on my back. I couldn’t wear my clothes, so…” Carter immediately backed her up. “She’s my sister too. Stop being paranoid.” They always hid behind that ‘brother-sister’ excuse to justify crossing every single boundary. Carter did her laundry. He even bought her tampons. Lily would regularly walk into his bathroom wearing practically nothing to ‘hand him a towel’, always making sure to compliment his abs. Now, they were dragged into a police station half-naked, and they were still playing the sibling card. I took a deep breath. Hours of suffocating grief and betrayal crystallized into a single, sharp sentence. “We’re done, Carter.” The man’s face froze. He stared at me like I had grown a second head. His shock quickly morphed into disgust. “Are you insane? You’re breaking up with me over this?” “What the hell is wrong with your brain, Lucia? We’re family! We aren’t sick freaks like you think we are!” Lily blinked her wide, watery eyes, her voice trembling. “Lucia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a fight. I’m sorry…” “You don’t need to apologize to her!” Carter barked, his glare piercing right through me. “We’ve let her get away with this jealous crap for way too long. She just wants to drag your name through the mud. God knows what kind of toxic garbage she’d pull once we’re actually married.” “Let’s go.” He shot me one last hateful look, wrapped his jacket around Lily, and walked out to his car. He left me stranded at a police station in a city I barely knew. He never called to check on me. Carter didn’t come home that night. But I didn’t call him to ask where he was. I didn’t need to. Lily posted a story on her Instagram. Carter was asleep in her bed, dead to the world. The comments were flooded with their mutual friends typing [Happy Honeymoon]. He didn’t explain. I didn’t ask. Until 3 AM, when the front door nearly came off its hinges. I opened the door to find Carter standing there, completely unhinged. He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the hallway. “She is your own flesh and blood! Are you seriously spreading rumors that she’s a whore? Defamation is a crime, Lucia!” A cold knot formed in my stomach. “Tell me the truth. Did you leak those photos online?” He shoved his phone directly into my face. On the screen, a viral post showed blurry photos of Carter and Lily being escorted out of the motel by the cops. The angles were vicious. It made them look exactly like a john and an escort. From the master bedroom, Lily was wailing hysterically. Her voice was totally blown out. “I don’t know who took those! I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m not a slut!” I pushed his phone away, staring dead into his eyes. “I didn’t post anything.” “You think I did this?” The rage in Carter’s eyes didn’t flicker. He looked at me with pure venom. “Guilty people always play dumb.” “Do you realize this is going to ruin her graduation? She’s going to be a laughingstock at her firm!” “How could you destroy your own sister’s life like this?” I dug my nails into my palms and threw his own logic back at him. “Karma never misses.” “You bitch!” Carter’s face went dangerously dark. His patience evaporated. He pulled out his phone and dialed 911. “You can tell your lies to the cops.” When the sirens wailed down the street, he literally shoved me out the front door. I pounded on the wood, begging him to open up. He knew I was up for a massive promotion at work. He knew a police inquiry would destroy my background check. But he didn’t care. As the neighbors peeked through their blinds, the officers put me in the back of the cruiser. At the station, I explained everything. The officers checked my phone, realized it was a domestic dispute, and cleared me of any cyberbullying charges. As the officer walked me to the lobby, my phone buzzed. It was an email from my department director. “Are you out of your mind? I was about to name you Head of Operations, and now HR is dealing with police inquiries about you!” “Clean out your desk. You’re done.” An automated termination letter popped up right after. Everything I had bled for over the last decade vanished into thin air. I clutched my phone to my chest, sank to the dirty linoleum floor, and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe. Lily’s graduation was right around the corner. Carter agreed to be the model for her final photography portfolio. The guy who used to complain about wearing shorts in public was now posing half-naked in front of Lily’s lens. The ‘bonus content’ of her project featured deeply intimate, boudoir-style shots of the two of them ‘sacrificing for art’. Carter didn’t even bother blocking me from seeing the posts. He fully expected me to do what I always did. Beg, cry, apologize, and claw my way back to him. But this time, I went ghost. Carter kept bombarding my phone with texts. [Take some time to reflect on your toxic behavior.] [Lily is handling the rest of the wedding prep. You just have to show up. Be grateful she’s saving you the headache.] [I expect you to be perfectly behaved on the wedding day.] But by the time he sent that last text, I was already at cruising altitude, flying across the Atlantic. Next day. The wedding venue. Dressed in a sharp black tuxedo, Carter stood at the altar. Looking around at the pastel pink floral arrangements, he felt a smug sense of victory. Lucia had finally compromised. But the dead silence on his phone left a heavy, gnawing anxiety in his gut. The officiant’s voice echoed through the microphone. “And now, let us welcome our stunning bride!” The heavy oak doors swung open to thunderous applause. The bride, face obscured by a thick veil, glided down the aisle. Carter’s heart hammered violently against his ribs. When she finally reached him, he reached out and lifted the veil. The blood drained from his face. His entire body locked up. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

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1It was the first day of preschool, but my daughter was nowhere to be found. My phone buzzed with a text from Patrick, my wife’s high school sweetheart. He asked if I could guess where she was. This was the fourth time he had pulled one of his twisted pranks on me. When Megan and I started dating, he made me believe she died in a car crash. I ran three miles down an icy road in tears. On our wedding day, they disappeared for twenty-four hours, leaving me humiliated before a hundred guests. When Sophie was born, he brought a fake DNA test to the hospital. I only got the truth after collapsing from a panic attack. Megan always defended him. She would cradle his face and scold me for being too sensitive. But this time, he was messing with our four-year-old. Shaking, I called Megan. She picked up sounding annoyed and said Patrick was just playing hide-and-seek. Then she hung up. I stared at my screen. The GPS tracker on my daughter’s profile glowed a steady red. The location was right in the middle of Blackwood River. The September river water was bone-chilling. I didn’t even bother kicking off my shoes. Following the red dot on my screen, I threw myself directly into the rapids. The freezing current instantly swallowed my chest, sending violent tremors down my spine. The mud at the riverbed was incredibly soft and slick. My foot slipped, and my entire head went under the murky, freezing water. “Sophie! Sophie, where are you!” I choked on a mouthful of dirty water, fighting desperately to stand up. My throat was so tight I could barely breathe. Up on the banks, people were shouting about a man jumping into the river. I could see the flashes of phone cameras pointing at me. I didn’t care about any of it. My mind was consumed by the image of Sophie’s bright smile when we left the house this morning. She was terrified of water. I usually had to spend half an hour just coaxing her into the bathtub. There was no way in hell she would willingly go near a rushing river. I bent over, plunging my bare hands into the freezing current, dragging my fingers through the rotting sludge. My fingernails tore against sharp rocks, but I couldn’t feel the pain. The blood welling from my fingers was instantly washed away by the current. Suddenly, my fingertips brushed against something soft. My heart violently contracted. I gripped the object with both hands and tore it out of the heavy mud. It was Sophie’s pink strawberry backpack. The fabric was completely waterlogged, making it as heavy as a brick. My hands shook uncontrollably as I ripped the zipper open. My daughter wasn’t inside. There was only a soggy, ruined coloring book. “Sophie!” I screamed at the top of my lungs at the empty river. My vocal cords tore, making me sound like a dying animal. There was nothing on the surface but floating dead leaves and garbage. Fear wrapped its icy fingers around my throat, squeezing tighter and tighter. I pulled my soaking wet phone from my pocket and dialed Patrick’s number. It rang for nearly a full minute before he finally picked up. “Patrick! Where is my daughter! Where the hell is she?!” The line went dead silent for a second. Then, a lazy, arrogant chuckle filtered through the speaker. “It’s hide-and-seek, man. You have to find a good hiding spot.” “Are you out of your psychotic mind! You don’t play games with a child’s life!” My entire body was convulsing. I couldn’t tell if it was from the freezing water or the blinding rage. “Stop yelling. I’ll text you the address. Come find us yourself.” My phone chimed. A location pin for a luxury downtown hotel popped up on the screen. My knuckles turned completely white as I gripped the steering wheel, pressing the gas pedal straight to the floor. Twenty minutes later, I kicked open the door to Room 8012. “Sophie!” I charged into the room with bloodshot eyes. The main lights were off, the blackout curtains drawn tight. The only illumination came from a dim, amber bedside lamp. Clothes were scattered across the carpet. A man’s dress shirt was heavily tangled in a woman’s silk slip dress. On the bed, Megan was frantically pulling the heavy duvet up to cover her bare chest. Patrick was leaning against the headboard, completely shirtless. There were fresh, faint red scratch marks trailing down his neck. When Megan saw me standing there, dripping muddy river water onto the expensive carpet, raw panic flashed across her face. But it only lasted a second. She quickly pulled a plush bathrobe over her shoulders, got out of bed, and pointed a manicured finger right in my face. “What the hell is wrong with you, Declan! Who told you to come here!” “Today is Sophie’s first day of preschool! Instead of staying with her, you’re tracking me down? Are you completely insane!” The absolute humiliation of her betrayal mixed with the boiling anger of being played. My temples throbbed so hard my vision blurred. But I didn’t have time to waste on her garbage. I didn’t even look at her. I locked my eyes onto Patrick, who was still lounging on the mattress, and forced the words out through gritted teeth. “I am going to ask you one last time. Where is Sophie.” Patrick instantly put on his signature innocent, victimized expression, shrinking back slightly behind Megan’s silhouette. “Whoa, Declan, calm down. The game ended hours ago.” “Sophie got tired, so I dropped her back off at the preschool.” I raised my arm and hurled the soaking wet strawberry backpack across the room. It hit the floor with a heavy, wet thud. “You dropped her off?” I pointed a trembling finger at the ruined bag. “I pulled that out of the deep mud at the bottom of the river! You expect me to believe you took her back?!” A brief flicker of guilt crossed Patrick’s eyes, but he quickly recovered, throwing his hands up in a casual shrug. “Well, maybe she dropped it in the water while she was playing. It’s just a cheap backpack. Buy her a new one. Do you really need to act like a psycho over this?” I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I lunged across the room, grabbed Patrick by the hair, and dragged him off the mattress, slamming him hard onto the floor. “Where the fuck did you leave her! That river has a deadly undercurrent! She is four years old!” Before I could land a punch, Megan threw herself at me. Her acrylic nails dug deep into my forearm, tearing off a strip of skin. “Declan, you are out of your mind! Let him go right now!” She shoved me backward with all her strength, immediately dropping to her knees to cradle Patrick’s head, checking his face for bruises. Then she looked up at me. Her eyes were so cold they felt completely alien to me. “Are you just using this as an excuse to throw a tantrum, Declan?” “You just said it yourself, the only thing in the river was her bag. Patrick was nice enough to take her out for some fresh air. So what if they lost a stupid backpack?” “Sophie is probably sitting in her classroom perfectly fine right now, and here you are, biting people like a rabid dog!” I stared at the woman kneeling on the floor. The biological mother of my child. I was standing in front of her, soaked in freezing mud, telling her I found our daughter’s belongings at the bottom of a rapid river. She didn’t show a single ounce of fear or concern for her child. Her only instinct was to protect the man she had just been sleeping with. A bone-deep chill washed over me. It was so cold that even the fire of my rage was extinguished. I turned around and walked out. Looking at her for one more second made me physically sick. Driving toward the preschool, I gripped the wheel so hard my hands went numb. My brain kept flashing back to the image of Sophie leaving the house. She was wearing her brand-new pale yellow autumn sweater, her hair tied in two little braids. She had wrapped her tiny arms around my neck and whispered, “Daddy, I’m going to be so good today. You have to be the first one to pick me up, okay?” I had kissed her soft cheek and promised I would. When I pulled up to the preschool gates, I didn’t even turn the engine off. I threw the door open and sprinted into the courtyard. “Sophie! Is Sophie Wright in her classroom!” Ms. Davis, the head teacher, jumped back in shock. “Mr. Wright? What happened to you? Why are you wet?” I grabbed her shoulders. “Where is she? Is she inside?” Ms. Davis froze, a look of pure confusion and rising panic crossing her face. “Mr. Wright… A man named Patrick came with your emergency pickup code. He took her home two hours ago.” A bomb went off in my skull. My legs completely gave out. I dropped straight to my knees on the playground asphalt. Patrick was lying. Megan was covering for him. My daughter was gone. “Call the police… please call the police…” I collapsed onto my hands, my freezing fingers fumbling frantically to pull out my phone. I couldn’t hit the right numbers on the screen. Ms. Davis had to dial 911 for me. Leaning heavily against the iron gates of the school, I dialed Patrick’s number one more time. “The school said she never came back. I just called the cops.” “Patrick, the police are on their way. Tell me exactly where you left her.” The line was dead silent for a long moment. When Patrick finally spoke, his voice was still infuriatingly lazy, but now he added a gross layer of fake victimization. “Why are you trying to frame me, Declan? I walked her right up to the front gates. If she ran off because she wanted to play, how is that my fault?” The phone was abruptly snatched away. Megan’s shrill voice pierced my ear. “Declan, I have had enough of your drama! Patrick said he brought her back, which means he brought her back.” “Why would he lie to you? Honestly, I think you hid her yourself just to get back at us.” “You actually called the cops? Stop embarrassing yourself and go home!” I hung up the phone. She was beyond saving. The patrol cars arrived in ten minutes. I rode with them straight to the precinct to pull the city security footage. The timeline rewound to two and a half hours ago. Patrick was holding Sophie’s hand as they walked out of the preschool gates. Sophie was wearing her pink strawberry backpack, skipping happily to keep up with his long strides, looking up at him and chatting. There was no audio on the cameras, but just looking at the footage, I could tell my daughter was smiling so sweetly. It felt like someone was twisting a jagged knife into my heart. The cameras tracked them down the river walk. They walked into a dense cluster of willow trees. That specific stretch of the riverbank was a blind spot for the cameras. There was only one distant camera that caught blurry shadows. Fifteen minutes later, Patrick walked out of the trees alone. His hands were completely empty. He stood on the curb, casually lighting a cigarette, before hailing a cab. I pressed my face against the glowing monitor, my eyes burning with dry heat, desperately praying to see what happened in those trees. But there was nothing. No footage of her falling in. No shadows of a struggle. He had just walked away, leaving a four-year-old girl alone on the edge of a deadly river. I sat completely frozen in the surveillance room for four hours. Every ticking second felt like someone was scraping the flesh off my bones. The muddy water had dried onto my clothes, turning them into a stiff, freezing shell. But the cold in my chest was infinitely worse. Just as the sun began to set, the lead detective pushed the door open. His police radio was buzzing with static. His face was incredibly grim. He looked at me, his lips pressing into a thin line. His eyes were full of absolute pity. “Mr. Wright… A local fisherman just called in from the lower basin, about six miles downstream…” “They found a little girl in the reeds. She matches the description.” The surveillance room fell dead silent. Nobody breathed. A loud, deafening ringing filled my ears, blocking out all other sound. I tried to stand up, but my legs were completely numb. I crashed hard onto the tile floor, then scrambled desperately to get back on my feet. “Take me to her.” My voice was so broken it didn’t even make a sound. “Take me… I need to see her.” The cruiser sirens wailed all the way to the lower riverbanks. It was pitch black outside. Yellow police tape blocked off the marsh. Red and blue emergency lights pulsed against the dark water. A few crime scene investigators were crouching around a small, white tarp. I don’t know how I walked over there. My legs felt like solid lead. With every step I took, I felt a piece of my soul die. The medical examiner looked up at me, let out a heavy sigh, and gently lifted the corner of the white plastic. Under the tarp was the pale yellow autumn sweater I had dressed her in that very morning. The beautiful fabric had been soaked into a repulsive grayish-brown. Her tiny face was bloated and paper-white. Her lips were a deep, bruised purple. Her eyebrows were furrowed tight. It looked like she had been so incredibly terrified in the water. I dropped to my knees. Reaching out, I gently wrapped my hand around her tiny fingers. They were so cold my heart practically stopped. There was thick black sludge packed under her fingernails. Strands of river weed were tangled around her knuckles. She must have been fighting the current, desperately trying to grab onto anything she could. But she caught nothing. The detectives were saying something to me. They were explaining that the current was too aggressive, that there was a hidden undertow, that once she fell in, she was swept away instantly. Because the cameras didn’t catch the fall, they had to classify it as an accidental drowning for now. I couldn’t hear any of it. I just kept my head bowed, using the cuff of my shirt to gently wipe the mud off her cold cheeks. I would wipe a spot, stain my sleeve, and use a clean patch of fabric to wipe again. “Don’t be scared, baby. Daddy is here.” There was a massive, suffocating lump in my throat. My voice shook violently. “Daddy is going to take you home. We’ll turn on the fireplace. You love sitting by the fire. Daddy will make you some hot pastries.” She didn’t move. From that exact second, my entire world stopped spinning. After they finished processing the scene, the coroner told me she had to be taken to the morgue’s cold storage while they waited for the investigation to close. I held onto Sophie and refused to let go. “No cold storage,” I shook my head frantically. “My daughter hates the cold. She’s terrified of the dark. It’s too freezing in there. She’ll be so scared.” I begged them for hours. Maybe they just took pity on a broken man. Eventually, the captain signed a special release form, allowing me to take her directly to the crematorium. The hallway was completely empty. I sat alone on a metal bench, staring blankly at the heavy iron doors. The phone in my pocket wouldn’t stop vibrating. I pulled it out. It was Megan. There were dozens of missed calls from the afternoon stretching into the night. She had finally realized her daughter hadn’t come home. Looking at the word ‘Wife’ flashing on the screen, it felt like I was looking at a complete stranger’s name. The heavy iron doors finally pushed open. The attendant handed me a wooden urn. It was still warm to the touch. That sickening warmth seeping through the wood was the absolute last trace of heat my daughter would ever leave in this world. I clutched the urn tightly to my chest and answered the phone. Megan’s voice immediately exploded through the speaker, high-pitched and frantic. “Declan! Where the hell did you take our daughter?!” “The preschool said you never brought her back yesterday! Are you out of your mind? Are you seriously using our child to scare me?!” The crematorium hallway was dead quiet, making her shrill voice echo off the tiles in a way that sounded utterly pathetic. I lowered my head, using my sleeve to gently dust off a speck of ash on the wooden box. “You don’t need to look for her anymore,” I said softly. Megan paused. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” “Sophie is dead.” I pressed my cheek against the warm wood and closed my eyes. “I am holding her ashes right now.”

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1 On our seventh anniversary, Mike knelt with a velvet box. The proposal I’d waited seven years for was happening. But when he tried to slide the ring on, it caught painfully on my knuckle. I bit my lip, forcing a smile as the metal bit into my skin. Paige leaned in, tilting her head playfully. “Let me try?” she offered. The ring slipped down her slender finger, fitting as if tailor-made. She froze, eyes wide, tugging at it. Mike caught her wrist gently. “Don’t force it,” he murmured, tender. “Keep it—it fits perfectly.” Only then did he glance at me, sheepish. “Sorry, Nina. Must’ve used Paige’s size by mistake. Thought you two were similar.” Paige put her hands on her hips, scolding him. “Unbelievable! Take her tomorrow, upgrade it!” Watching them, a heavy ache bloomed in my chest. I knew his allergies, his shoe size, every milestone of seven years. He didn’t know my ring size. I withdrew my hand. “Don’t bother,” I said quietly. “The wedding’s off.” The laughter in the room died instantly. Mike’s face darkened, a sigh escaping his lips as he looked at me with weary exasperation. “Nina, you literally just said yes to my proposal. Now you’re calling off the wedding just because of a ring size?” “I know I messed up, and you have every right to be upset,” he continued, taking a step toward me. “But marriage isn’t a game. Stop throwing a tantrum, okay?” Paige quickly took my hand, her expression turning urgent and pleading. “She’s right, Nina. You two have been together for seven years. You can’t let a silly little mistake end everything.” One was my childhood sweetheart, the other my closest friend. They both belonged to the city’s wealthy social circles. In the early days, they had disliked each other thoroughly, Paige calling him an arrogant snob, and Mike dismissing her as shallow. But then came a college camping trip where I got lost in the woods late at night. They had split up to search for me, crossing paths in the dark forest and spending the entire night shouting my name together under the beam of their flashlights. After that night, they gradually grew closer. Eventually, whenever the three of us walked together, they would fall into step beside each other, leaving me a few paces behind. Sometimes they would look back, laughing as they called out, “Hurry up, slowpoke!” Seeing my silence, Paige grew visibly anxious. She shot Mike a harsh look, then turned to me, the playful demeanor completely gone. “Are you mad at me for being careless and putting the ring on? I’ll take it off right now.” She began to violently yank the ring from her finger. Because of the tight fit, the rough friction scraped her skin, drawing a thin line of blood. She let out a sharp gasp of pain but didn’t stop until the ring popped free. She held it out to me, her eyes brimming with tears. “Please don’t let me get in the way of your happiness. If you call off the wedding because of this, I’ll never forgive myself.” Mike’s brows furrowed deeply, his voice turning cold. “Nina, when did you become so petty? You are seriously throwing a fit over your best friend?” Looking at his face, a sudden wave of unfamiliarity washed over me. Because his mother preferred quiet, traditional women, I had spent years molding myself into a gentle, reserved version of myself. To marry him sooner, I had turned down graduate school and started working early, saving every penny, never even allowing myself the luxury of a five-dollar latte. Everyone in our circle assumed we would walk down the aisle. I had dreamed of his proposal a thousand times. But I never imagined that when the day finally arrived, I wouldn’t even be able to wear the ring. The humiliation and hurt pricked at my chest like a thousand tiny needles, making it hard to draw a full breath. Seeing the tears finally spill over my cheeks, Mike’s irritation melted into panic. He stepped forward to wipe my tears, then slowly pulled a small, beautifully wrapped box from his jacket pocket. Inside was a designer necklace I had admired for months but could never justify buying. “Nina, I was wrong,” he murmured, his eyes filled with sincere regret. “Please forgive me.” Looking at the apology in his eyes, my heart softened. For seven years, his kindness had always outnumbered his oversights. A crowd had gathered around us in the restaurant, and seeing my hesitation, they began to chant, “Say yes! Say yes!” In the end, my resolve crumbled, and I forgave him. Perhaps out of guilt, Mike became exceptionally attentive over the next few weeks. Slowly, the bitterness of that night faded, and I began to let myself look forward to our wedding day. Soon, our families arranged a dinner to finalize the wedding plans. My parents took a grueling nine-hour bus ride from our quiet upstate hometown, not even stopping for a drink of water before heading straight to the city. I was held up by an emergency at work and couldn’t leave, so I called Paige, begging her to pick up my parents and take them to the private dining room I had reserved. When I finally rushed into the restaurant, the scene inside made me freeze at the threshold. Paige was sitting right next to Mike and his mother, Mrs. Harrington. The four of them were laughing and talking, the atmosphere as warm and familiar as a holiday gathering. Meanwhile, my parents were squeezed into the far corner of the table. They sat stiffly, their hands resting awkwardly on their knees, offering hesitant, polite smiles. When the door opened and they saw me, their eyes lit up with instant relief. Before I could speak, Mrs. Harrington’s face darkened, her voice dripping with condescension. “Late to her own engagement dinner, and she couldn’t even bother to pick up her own parents? How incredibly irresponsible. I suppose this shows just how much she values family.” Mike frowned slightly. “Mom, Nina had a genuine emergency at work today.” His mother let out a dismissive scoff, rolling her eyes. “No work emergency is more important than family on a night like this.” She then turned, taking Paige’s hand in her own, her face instantly melting into a warm, affectionate smile. “You know, Paige, from the moment I met you, I knew we were kindred spirits. You are so sweet, well-mannered, and articulate. I only wish I were welcoming you into the family instead.” Paige waved her hands in modest embarrassment, offering a polite laugh. “Oh, Mrs. Harrington, please don’t say that. Nina was always top of our class, and she has a wonderful career. She is much more accomplished than I am.” Though she spoke highly of me, she made no move to shift out of the seat reserved for the bride-to-be, remaining nestled comfortably between Mike and his mother. My mother, missing the venom in the older woman’s words, leaned forward. She carefully reached into a canvas bag by her feet and pulled out a container of fresh peaches, presenting them with both hands in a gesture of eager accommodation. “Our Nina has always been a hard worker, Mrs. Harrington. She’s helped around the house since she was a little girl. These are fresh peaches from our tree back home, incredibly sweet. Please, try some.” Mrs. Harrington didn’t even look up, her tone entirely flat. “Oh, peaches. I nearly forgot, the supermarket down the block is running a sale on those, three pounds for two dollars.” My mother’s hands froze in mid-air. The peaches were plump and pristine. She had hand-picked them from our yard and carried them carefully on her lap through the entire bus ride to keep them from bruising. But to these people, they were just cheap, discounted produce. Seeing my mother slowly retract her hands, a fierce protective anger flared up in my chest. As I opened my mouth to speak, my father gently caught my wrist under the table, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s alright, sweetheart,” he whispered, his voice quiet and gentle. “They come from a different world. It’s natural for them to be discerning. As long as he treats you well, a little slight to us is nothing. Our only worry is that if you face trouble in the future, we won’t be strong enough to stand behind you.” Looking at my parents’ weathered, kind faces, the urge to fight for this marriage suddenly evaporated. I looked back at the main table. I saw Paige sitting in my rightful spot, and Mike quietly sipping his tea without raising his voice to defend my family. In that moment, a cold clarity washed over me. It wasn’t just the ring. Some things simply do not fit, and they never will. The dinner ended awkwardly, the conversation drifting aimlessly without any actual wedding dates being set. Since my apartment was too small, I had booked a hotel room for my parents, planning to take them sightseeing the next morning. As we prepared to leave, Paige grabbed my hand, her eyes filled with concern. “Nina, you looked so pale during dinner. Are you alright?” Before I could answer, Mike cut in. “Paige, stop blaming yourself for everything. This isn’t your fault. My mother has always been particular, and she was just trying to see if Nina has the grace to handle it.” He then looked at me, his voice entirely casual. “Don’t take it to heart, Nina. My mother is all bark and no bite. If she really disliked you, she wouldn’t have shown up tonight at all.” I simply nodded, keeping my thoughts to myself. If Mike truly cared about me, how could he have remained silent while his mother humiliated my parents? By the time I settled my parents in their room and returned to our shared apartment, it was past nine in the evening. As I reached for my keys, I heard Mike’s voice carrying through the door. He was on the phone with his mother. “Out of all the women in the city, why do you have to throw your life away on Nina?” Mrs. Harrington’s sharp voice was audible even through the wood. “I thought you were just having fun, but you actually want to marry her! What do you see in her? Her impoverished background? Her unsophisticated parents?” “Mom, you can complain to me all you want, but please don’t say those things to her face,” Mike replied, his tone weary but yielding. “I love her, and I want to make this work.” He sounded as though he were defending me, but his words offered no real shield. He was merely managing his mother’s anger while reinforcing the narrative that he was a martyr for loving me. The final ember of hope in my heart went cold. I didn’t open the door. Instead, I walked back to the subway, returned to my parents’ hotel, and knocked on their door. “Mom, Dad,” I said when they opened it. “I’m going to take you around the city for a few days. And then, I’m coming home upstate with you.” “I am not marrying him.” That night, Mike sent dozens of text messages and tried calling me repeatedly. Even though I had resolved to leave, my heart still gave a involuntary flutter at the sight of his name on my screen. The first few messages were demanding to know where I was. But as I scrolled down, the tone shifted drastically. “Paige saw that you weren’t replying and didn’t come home. She was terrified something happened to you and went out to search. There’s been an accident!” My mind went completely blank. Driven by sheer instinct, I rushed out of the hotel, hailed a cab, and sped toward the hospital. Paige lay silently on the emergency room bed, her forehead wrapped in thick white gauze, her face pale. My knees buckled, and I let out a choked sob. Mike bolted up from his chair, his eyes bloodshot as he glared at me. “How do you have the nerve to cry?” he hissed, his voice trembling with rage. “If it weren’t for your childish stunt, Paige wouldn’t have gone out alone in the middle of the night to look for you. She ran into some drunks in an alley. When she tried to run, they threw a bottle at her head!” He clenched his fists, his knuckles white. “How old are you, Nina? Running away and ignoring messages over a minor disagreement? How can you be so incredibly selfish?” A heavy weight of guilt pressed down on my chest, but looking at his furious, accusatory gaze, the injustice of it all burned through me. “I am deeply sorry about Paige, and I will take full responsibility for her medical care,” I said, my voice steady despite the trembling in my hands. “But you have no right to lecture me.” “I’ve spent the night thinking things through. The wedding is off, Mike. We are done.” Mike’s jaw dropped, his expression turning to utter disbelief. “Are you seriously still playing games at a time like this?” “You think I’m playing games?” I whispered, my teeth clenched. “At dinner yesterday, my parents and I were treated like garbage, and you didn’t say a single word to protect us. Your mother openly wished Paige was her daughter-in-law while you sat there staring at your teacup. To anyone else in that room, she looked like your fiancée, not me!” Mike opened his mouth to argue, but before he could speak, a weak voice drifted from the hospital bed. “Nina…” Paige had opened her eyes, her gaze trembling and filled with tears. “I heard everything you just said.” “All this time, you’ve resented me. You think I’m the obstacle between you and Mike, don’t you?” I froze, caught off guard. Before I could explain, the tears began to stream down her face. “I always thought of you as my sister, Nina. I’ve done nothing but support you. Even after getting hurt tonight, I didn’t blame you for a second. I can’t believe you think so poorly of me.” “Maybe it’s better this way. At least now I see where I stand. We shouldn’t see each other anymore.” Right then, my phone began to vibrate violently in my hand. Before I could process Paige’s words, my mother’s sobbing voice came through the receiver, freezing the blood in my veins. “Nina… I went downstairs to grab some food, but as soon as I stepped out of the hotel, a group of people surrounded us. They were pointing and filming us with their phones, calling us grifters…” “Your father tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t listen. Someone pushed him, Nina. He fell and hit his head on the concrete steps. We’re in the emergency room…” A cold dread washed over me. I opened my social media feed. Sitting at the top of the local trending page was my photo, accompanied by a scathing article accusing my family of attempting to extort a wealthy dynasty through a forced marriage. In an attached video clip, Mrs. Harrington sat gracefully in front of a camera, subtly but clearly exposing my parents’ names and our hometown address. The comment section was a toxic swamp of vitriol directed entirely at us. Slowly, I raised my phone, turning the screen toward Mike and Paige. “So, this is your idea of a compromise?” Mike glanced at the screen, then looked away, his expression hardening into defensive pride. “Don’t look at me like that. If you hadn’t behaved so terribly, my mother wouldn’t have felt the need to protect our family’s reputation.” “You brought this public scrutiny on yourself by hurting the people who cared about you.” Looking at him, he felt like a complete stranger. He hadn’t raised a finger to stop his mother. He had allowed it to happen. In that single moment, the very last trace of my love for him died. I turned toward the door. “Nina, this is your last chance,” Mike called out, his voice suddenly sharp. “If you walk out that door, we are finished.” I didn’t stop. My silence seemed to snap his restraint. “My mother was right! I spoiled you too much! Do you honestly believe you got that high-paying corporate job on your own merit? That company is a subsidiary of the Harrington Group! Do you think you could afford that beautiful downtown apartment on your salary? I was paying the landlord an extra three hundred dollars a month out of my own pocket!” “Everything you have is because of me! Without me, you are absolutely nothing!” His words washed over me, leaving me entirely cold. He spoke as if I should be deeply moved by his charity. But he didn’t understand. I never wanted a benefactor to secretly smooth my path only to use it as a leash to keep me subservient. Without looking back, I walked out of the hospital and ran to my parents. Fortunately, my father’s injury was minor. The next morning, I submitted my resignation, booked the earliest flight home, packed our belongings, and left the city behind. I transferred the full amount of Paige’s medical bills to her account, left a final message, and blocked Mike’s number permanently. But Mike, entirely unaware of what he had lost, remained convinced of his own power. He assumed I was simply throwing another tantrum and would eventually crawl back to him once my bank account ran dry. He even expected to find a warm dinner waiting for him when he returned to the apartment that evening. Instead, when he pushed open the front door, he froze.

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1 At the very bottom of his leather gym bag, buried beneath the dirty towels, I found a strip of pink lace. I held the thin string, which was embellished with cheap pink sequins, and let it dangle right in front of Conrad’s face. “Care to explain what this is?” He didn’t even blink. “It’s a promotional giveaway from the tennis club. I must have grabbed the wrong bag by mistake. Stop being so paranoid.” A second later, his phone rang from an unknown number. I pressed the speaker button before he could reach it. A woman’s voice filtered through the line, dripping with mockery. “Echo, darling, your husband tells me your taste in lingerie is about as exciting as a discount rack at a local flea market. I’m sending you one of my gently worn pairs, just so you can take notes and learn how to please him.” Conrad snatched the phone, stabbing the screen to cut the call, his face turning an angry shade of crimson. The woman on the line was Kate, the head tennis coach at the elite Skyline Club. She was also the trophy wife of the billionaire who owned the entire establishment. Conrad shoved the phone back into his pocket, tugging at the collar of his tight shirt. “Don’t listen to her, she’s just joking around. She’s an important client, Echo. She’s just a bit wild and unfiltered.” I stared at the compression shirt he wore, which was meticulously designed to show off his sculpted chest and shoulders. “A client? A client who somehow knows my exact underwear size? A client who leaves her personal belongings in your gym bag?” “Echo, must you be so incredibly narrow-minded?” Conrad pushed past me with an irritated sigh, heading toward the foyer to put on his shoes. “I spend every single day networking, trying to please these wealthy socialites just to keep my head above water. If I don’t embed myself in their circle, are you going to help me hit my sales quotas next quarter?” I looked down at the limited-edition tennis shoes he had recently purchased. “So your idea of high-society networking is wearing skin-tight gear to play private matches with other men’s wives?” “What do you know about it?” Conrad let out a cold sneer, his voice laced with condescension. “It’s called elite socializing. You spend your entire life cooped up in that dusty architectural design firm, with nothing in your head but blueprints and grocery lists. We don’t even have a single thing in common anymore.” He pulled the front door open, stepping halfway out into the corridor. “I won’t be back this weekend. The club is hosting a private, closed-door training retreat at the Crestview Resort upstate.” I rushed after him, grabbing the heavy strap of his tennis bag. “Conrad, we haven’t been intimate in three months. I can count the number of times you’ve actually slept in our bed on one hand.” He spun around, looking at my hand on his bag with sheer disgust. “Echo, can you please learn to control your basic physical urges? I am absolutely exhausted from playing tennis all day. I simply do not have the energy to satisfy you.” He pointed a finger at the calendar hanging on the refrigerator. Several small circles were scattered sparsely across the grid. “We agreed on the rules: once a month, maximum. You already used up your turn last week. Stop clawing at me like a starved animal.” The heavy security door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the empty apartment. I stood in the silence, the rough texture of the bag strap still burning in the palm of my hand. Five years ago, when we first married, he wasn’t like this. Back then, he had run through a freezing rainstorm across the city just to bring me hot pastries from a bakery I had casually mentioned. I didn’t know exactly when the tennis racket had replaced me, or when those wealthy women in their short skirts had become the vital connections he claimed to despise yet chased so relentlessly. The coldness at home began to bleed into my professional life. By Friday evening, our design team was hosting a celebratory dinner. We had just secured a massive contract with Vanguard Holdings, the industry giant, and everyone was in high spirits. As the drinks flowed, the atmosphere in the private dining room grew rowdy. A few of the younger interns insisted on playing a game of Truth or Dare. The empty wine bottle spun rapidly on the marble tabletop, finally slowing down to point directly at me. “Echo, truth or dare?” Hailey, one of the junior assistants, gave me a mischievous nudge. Even Dominic, the reclusive billionaire owner of our design firm, was present tonight. He sat at the head of the table, silently swirling a glass of deep red wine, his expression unreadable. “Truth,” I replied, rubbing my temples to ward off a headache. “You and Conrad have been married for several years now, right?” Hailey asked, leaning in with a grin. “How many times a week are you guys actually getting it on?” The moment the question was uttered, several married male colleagues began to chuckle and cheer. “Hailey, that’s a silly question. Echo’s husband is practically a gym rat, look at his physique. They must be doing it daily!” “Exactly! No wonder Echo always looks so focused, she must be very well taken care of at home.” Under the table, my fingers gripped the fabric of my dress so tightly my knuckles turned white. How many times a week? I couldn’t even remember the last time I had seen him walk around our bedroom without a shirt on. “He’s been very busy with a major project lately,” I replied, keeping my voice neutral. “We’re both just exhausted.” Camille, the deputy director who had always viewed me as a threat, let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Busy? Busy working late, or busy serving someone else?” “Echo, you really need to keep a tighter leash on him,” she continued, her eyes glittering with malice. “Young girls these days love fit, handsome men like your husband. You wouldn’t want him getting fed so well outside that he has nothing left for you at home.” “Watch your mouth, Camille,” I said, my voice dropping to a cold whisper. “Oh, come on, it was just a joke! Why are you getting so defensive? Unless, of course, I hit a nerve?” She covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking with laughter. At the head of the table, Dominic set his glass down. The heavy crystal clacked against the marble, the sharp sound instantly silencing the room. “That is enough,” Dominic said, his voice quiet but carrying an immense weight. “Echo’s architectural drafts for the Vanguard project were flawless. If you have so much free time to analyze her marriage, perhaps you should spend the weekend re-evaluating next week’s budget sheets.” The dining room went completely still. Camille’s face flushed red, and she quickly looked down, not daring to utter another syllable. I picked up the shot glass of neat tequila in front of me and swallowed it in one gulp, letting the burning liquid scorch its way down to my stomach. By the time the dinner ended, the alcohol had settled heavily in my limbs. The cool night air hit me, making the world spin. I leaned against a cold lamppost, retching until there was nothing left but bile. A hand appeared in my line of sight, holding a cool, wet wipe. “Thank you,” I muttered, wiping my mouth before looking up. Dominic stood beside me, his dark coat draped over his shoulders as he opened the door of his sleek black sedan. “Get in. I’m driving you home.” His tone was quiet, leaving no room for argument. I sat stiffly in the passenger seat, the cabin filled with the faint, soothing scent of rich agarwood, a welcome relief from the stale cigarette smoke of the restaurant. “Mr. Dominic, I’m sorry for the trouble,” I whispered, shrinking back into the leather seat. Dominic started the engine, the luxury watch on his wrist catching the dim glow of the dashboard. “Does your husband play tennis at the Skyline Club?” he asked suddenly. I blinked, staring at his sharp profile. “How did you know?” “Because I own it,” Dominic replied, a faint, cynical smile touching his lips. “And Kate is my wife.” The revelation felt like a physical blow to my chest, instantly burning away the lingering fog of the alcohol. “Mr. Dominic, I…” “What are you going to say? That they are just a dedicated coach and an enthusiastic member?” Dominic pulled the car over to the curb, turning his head to look at me. “Your husband spent two hours in my wife’s private locker room last week. When the housekeeping staff went in to deliver fresh towels, they found the door unlocked.” I gripped my seatbelt, my knuckles turning white. “Since you knew, why didn’t you stop them?” “Because I need bulletproof evidence,” Dominic said, his voice dropping to a low, chilling whisper. “Evidence that will allow my lawyers to strip her of every single penny of my fortune in the divorce.” He leaned closer, his warm breath brushing against my ear. “So, Echo, do you want to play the part of the humiliated, silent wife, or do you want to partner with me and leave them both with absolutely nothing?” I looked into his dark eyes. There was no anger there, only the cold, calculated precision of a businessman. “What do you need me to do?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Dominic smiled, his finger gently brushing against my cheek before lingering on my lower lip. “A great many things. To start, you will accompany me to the resort retreat this weekend.” When I finally entered my apartment, the lights were off. I stepped out of my shoes, preparing to wash up, when I heard low, muffled voices coming from the balcony of the master bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, the only illumination coming from the blue glow of a phone screen reflecting off Conrad’s face. He was wearing nothing but gym shorts, leaning back in his chair with an excited, breathless grin. “She found the lace thong you left,” Conrad whispered into the phone, letting out a soft chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, I made up a quick excuse and she bought it. That stupid woman doesn’t know any better.” “Is the private pool villa booked for the weekend? Perfect. Make sure to bring those short tennis skirts, babe. I love the way they look on you.” “Alright, I have to go, she’ll be back soon. Love you, bye.” He hung up, humming a cheerful tune as he stood up to head toward the bathroom. I stood in the shadows, staring at his broad, muscular back. The anger that had simmered in my chest for months suddenly went cold, replaced by a deep, hollow indifference. I stepped into the room, flipping the light switch. Conrad jumped, startled, clutching his chest as he stared at me from the bathroom doorway. “Do you have to sneak around like a ghost? You nearly gave me a heart attack!” “Who were you talking to?” I asked, my voice entirely flat. “A client, they were asking about project deadlines. I told you I’m incredibly busy.” He avoided my gaze, turning to walk into the bathroom. “Does your client usually call you ‘babe’?” I followed him, blocking the doorway. Conrad’s face darkened instantly. “Echo, are you losing your mind? That was Mr. Harrison, the director of the club. He’s fifty years old and calls everyone ‘babe’ as a joke. Are you really going to interrogate me over this?” “And the perfume on your shirt? Chanel Chance. Does Mr. Harrison wear that too?” I pointed to the dirty shirt sitting in the hamper. Conrad snatched the shirt, tossing it violently into the washing machine. “That’s Coach Kate’s perfume. We play close matches, a little scent rub-off is completely normal. You are acting like a paranoid lunatic. I can’t stand being in this house for another second!” He slammed the bathroom door shut, the sound rattling the frame. I looked at the closed door, a dry laugh escaping my throat. How had I ever convinced myself that this man was reliable and ambitious? He was nothing more than a cheap opportunist, willing to discard every ounce of his dignity to climb into a world where he didn’t belong. On Saturday morning, Conrad woke up early. He stood before the mirror, meticulously styling his hair and dousing himself in a heavy musk cologne. “Where exactly is this closed-door retreat being held?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe. “Crestview Resort. The club booked the entire estate,” he replied, not even bothering to look at me as he adjusted his collar. “I’ll go with you. It’s been a while since I had a weekend getaway.” Conrad’s hands froze on his collar. He turned around, his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. “What would you even do there? This is an exclusive event for members of high social standing. You don’t even know how to hold a tennis racket, Echo. You’d only embarrass me.” I walked over, reaching up to smooth his lapel. “Really? Because I heard spouses and partners were invited to this one.” “Who told you that? Spouses are absolutely not allowed. Stop listening to idle gossip.” He pushed my hands away impatiently, grabbing his heavy gym bag. “I’m leaving. I’ll go straight to the office on Monday, so don’t bother calling me.” I watched the front door swing shut, then pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Dominic. “He’s on his way.” Two minutes later, the reply came. “My car is downstairs. Come down.” When I stepped out of the building, a sleek black Maybach was idling at the curb. Dominic sat in the spacious backseat, reviewing a printed spreadsheet. “Have you made up your mind?” he asked, closing the folder and looking at me. “Yes, Mr. Dominic. Tell me what you need me to do.” I slid into the leather seat, buckling my seatbelt. “Once we arrive at the resort, you only need to play your part,” Dominic said, looking out the tinted window with a cold, predatory gaze. “Leave the rest to me.” The drive to Crestview Resort took a little over two hours. By the time we arrived, the club’s activities were already in full swing. From a distance, I could easily spot two familiar figures on the pristine grass court. Conrad, dressed in crisp white tennis whites, was moving dynamically across the court, his gaze locked on Kate. Kate was wearing a short, pleated pink skirt. With every leap and strike, her skirt fluttered high, revealing the matching tight shorts beneath. A small crowd of wealthy spectators gathered around the court, cheering after every volley. “Your husband certainly has remarkable stamina,” Dominic remarked, standing beside me with an unreadable expression. “My wife is usually exceptionally selective, but it seems she found someone who can keep up with her pace.” I watched Conrad on the court, his face adorned with a fawning, attentive smile as he carefully unscrewed a bottle of water and handed it to Kate. “Mr. Dominic, when do we begin?” I asked. “Why the rush? A good show requires the audience to be fully seated first.” Dominic turned, walking toward the resort’s private VIP lounge. “Come with me. Let’s go meet the spectators of our little play.” Inside the luxurious VIP suite, several middle-aged men were lounging on leather sofas. These were the major shareholders of Vanguard Holdings, close personal associates of Dominic, and regular guests at the country club. “Dominic! What brings you out here today?” a stout, wealthy executive called out, his gaze lingering on me for a moment. “Just bringing a friend out to enjoy the fresh air,” Dominic replied smoothly, gesturing toward me. “This is Echo, the lead architect in charge of the new Vanguard development project.” The men exchanged polite greetings, but the conversation quickly drifted back to the tennis club. “Dominic, your lovely young wife has been making quite a splash at the club lately. I hear she’s been spending an awful lot of time with one of the newer members?” one shareholder remarked, his tone half-joking but laced with meaning. Dominic’s expression remained perfectly calm as he took a sip of his tea. “Young people enjoy the sport. Kate is simply doing her job as a coach.” “Is that so? I heard the fellow even has the keys to your private townhouse.” The shareholders exchanged knowing, amused glances. I sat quietly on the sofa, my palms slick with cold sweat. I had assumed Dominic merely wanted to catch them in the act privately, but he had invited the most powerful board members of his conglomerate to watch. He didn’t just want to divorce Kate, he wanted to completely obliterate her, and crush Conrad under his heel in the process. Kate glanced over her shoulder, catching Conrad’s eye, and the two of them walked toward the private villa suites, one after the other.

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