I found the letter while I was packing away my wife’s life. The letter said: Be careful of your daughter! … 1 Madeline had been an author, writing popular historical non-fiction, and her study was her sanctuary. She had never been one for organization; her creative process was a sprawling, chaotic mess. Her publisher had called earlier that week. Before she died, Madeline had been working on a new manuscript. They were hoping I could gather her notes, piece the drafts together, and allow them to publish it posthumously as her final work. Even in an age ruled by screens and keyboards, Madeline had fiercely clung to the habit of writing by hand. I spent hours drowning in the quiet dust of her study, sifting through loose pages scattered across her desk, trying to compile the fragments of her mind. I was nearly finished when I found it. Tucked behind the massive wall of bookshelves was a small, false panel. A hidden compartment. And inside, resting in the dark, was a single envelope. The recipient’s name was scrawled across the front. It was Madeline’s name. But the handwriting was jarring. It was frantic, jagged, radiating a kind of feral, manic energy. The pen had been pressed so hard into the paper that the nib had sliced right through the fibers, sharp as a knife blade. It was the kind of handwriting that burned itself into your retinas after a single glance. And over the ten years of our marriage, I had accidentally seen it more than once. Because it was her handwriting. Or, more accurately, it was the other her. Shortly after we were married, Madeline was diagnosed with severe Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her mind was a pendulum swinging between extremes—sometimes she was the gentle, deeply intelligent woman I married; other times, she was a chaotic, violent storm. What baffled her psychiatrists was the power dynamic of her psyche. Unlike most DID patients, Madeline’s “secondary” personality occupied her body for the vast majority of her life. She was emotionally stable, grounded, and entirely functional. She was the one who fell in love with me. She was the one who lived. Conversely, her “primary” personality—the original owner of her mind—was an absolute madwoman whenever she managed to claw her way to the surface. She was paranoid, aggressively neurotic, and harbored a terrifyingly strong drive for self-destruction. When the doctors finally explained the architecture of her mind, a cold horror washed over me. I realized that the woman I loved with all my heart, the tender and brilliant writer, was, in a clinical sense, a symptom. She was the secondary construct. Essentially, I was deeply in love with a psychological anomaly that wasn’t supposed to exist. The revelation terrified me. For a long time, I could barely look at her without a shiver of existential dread. But eventually, love won out. My devotion to her smothered my darkest doubts. Besides, I almost never saw her primary personality. Madeline was sick, yes, but she was also the strongest woman I had ever known. Even during her pregnancy, when her body and mind were pushed to the absolute breaking point, she kept the madwoman firmly locked away in the basement of her psyche. Until last month. When, without any warning, she opened the window of this very study, twenty-four stories above the city streets, and jumped. 2 Holding that strange, violent letter in my hands, I hesitated. The twisted handwriting belonged to the primary personality—the madwoman. It felt like a venomous curse, radiating a darkness that told my instincts to throw it away unread. Right then, my phone alarm buzzed. Five o’clock. Time to pick up our daughter, Hazel, from school. Ever since Madeline’s sudden death, our usually vibrant, sun-soaked seven-year-old had retreated into a chilling, hollow silence. Sometimes she would just sit there, staring at me for agonizingly long stretches without blinking. There were moments when I looked at her and genuinely wondered if she had become entirely unstuck from time. She no longer looked at the world with a child’s sprawling curiosity. Instead, she wore an armor of profound apathy. It made her look terribly out of place among the loud, messy joy of the other second graders. I told myself it was grief. A child’s mind short-circuiting under the crushing weight of a mother’s sudden absence. But today, Hazel was even more alarming. Her teacher pulled me aside at pickup, her face pale. Hazel had gotten into a physical altercation with a little boy in her class. The trigger? He had opened her pencil case without permission. In the principal’s office, the boy’s mother was holding her sobbing son. I glanced over. The boy’s face was bandaged. A bite wound. The mother was furious, screaming threats of lawsuits. Ultimately, with the principal playing referee, I paid her a substantial sum to settle the matter quietly. Throughout the entire screaming match, Hazel sat in the corner of the office like a discarded marionette. She didn’t cry. She didn’t throw a tantrum. She didn’t even flinch when the other mother shrieked. It was as if her soul had simply left the room, leaving behind an empty, breathing shell. Her doctors had warned me. Psychiatric conditions carry a heavy genetic weight. But I stubbornly clung to the narrative of grief. She was just a little girl who missed her mom. I just needed to be there for her. I needed to try harder. Later that night, after Hazel finally fell asleep, I sat at Madeline’s desk and stared at the envelope. I am not a man who can easily live with mysteries. That chaotic, aggressive handwriting had a vice grip on my chest. Madeline’s death had been so violently abrupt. That morning, we had been casually arguing over whether to sign Hazel up for ballet or piano. By that afternoon, the police were handing me her wedding ring in a plastic evidence bag. Ever since she died, I carried this suffocating sense of unreality. A part of me still felt like she hadn’t truly left. I needed to know what had happened to her in those final, desperate days. I lit a cigarette in the study—a habit she used to hate—and, with trembling fingers, tore the letter open. The manic handwriting was incredibly difficult to decipher, but I forced myself to read every word. By the time I finished, the shock had paralyzed me so completely that I didn’t move until the burning ash of the cigarette fell directly onto my bare hand. 3 The letter read: I finally understand it all! You are a coward! You couldn’t face your own fate as a human being, so you locked me away in my own mind! But running is useless. Even if you refuse to admit it, destiny is going to deliver a fatal blow when the hour strikes! You cannot hide. You cannot fight it! The further you run now, the more agonizing it will be when the day of reckoning arrives! Do you still want to run? Fine. Let me jog your memory. Let me remind you exactly what kind of fate you are so terrified of! The year you hijacked my body, I was barely thirteen years old. My poor mother was already driven completely insane by you. Just to survive, without a single ounce of pity, you institutionalized her. You are terrified of anyone getting close to you. What are you so afraid of? You’re afraid your filthy secret will be exposed! You knew how many people in this world loved me, so you destroyed them all to isolate yourself. My family, my friends, the boy I had a crush on—you hurt them, one by one, until everyone who cared for me was gone. Only then were you satisfied. Only then could you sleep at night. I finally know what you are! You are a dog, sprinting blindly with your tail between your legs! You are a demon crawling out from the bowels of hell! With so much blood on your hands, so many corpses piled beneath your feet, how dare you dream of a peaceful night’s sleep?! Did you think I would break like my mother? Did you think that because you’ve driven so many others mad, everyone will eventually bow to your will? Never! Not with me. You will never get what you want. You stole my life, my world, everything I ever owned, and now you want to kill me? I won’t let you have it! I know what you are now. I know how you exist. Which means you are going to die by my hands. I will end your endless running. My hands are shaking. I can feel you fighting me. You are fighting my presence so hard—are you finally scared? After driving so many minds to the brink, you’ve finally met a madwoman willing to drag you to hell with her. I know the bloodline has already been passed down. So there is only one way to kill you permanently. You hid your little secret in your daughter’s pencil case. That candle… I can barely hold the pen. Or is it you who is shaking? Are you terrified? I found your greatest secret. I can end you at any second. I can’t grip the pen anymore. This is my body, but you, you monster, have occupied it for far too long. You coward! You goddamn coward! My limbs felt like lead. It wasn’t until the searing sting of the cigarette ash hit my skin that the blood trapped in my chest finally flushed back into my veins. The letter was undated, but looking at the fading ink and the wear on the paper, it was years old. The madwoman inside my wife’s head had written a death threat. To my wife. A suffocating unease began to slither through my gut, like a rusted nail driven deep into my flesh, stopping the circulation. Moved by an entirely irrational terror, I walked down the hall to Hazel’s room. The soft glow of her nightlight spilled over the foot of her bed. She was clutching her stuffed bear, the tracks of dried tears still visible on her cheeks. But she was breathing evenly. Deeply asleep. On the desk beside her bed was her backpack. Inside was the pencil case—the one the boy had tried to open today. The madwoman’s letter claimed my wife’s deepest secret was hidden inside. A candle… Madeline had bought that pencil case for Hazel’s first day of school. She had lovingly covered it in cartoon stickers of Hazel’s favorite characters. As I pulled it from the bag, confronting this terrifying unknown, my hands shook violently. I unzipped it. Lying there quietly, buried under a pile of glitter pens and erasers, was a single candle. At first glance, it looked ordinary, but a closer look revealed something unsettling. It was impossibly old. The wax was heavily carved with intricate, esoteric patterns, but the material was severely dehydrated and cracked, resembling the deeply lined, ancient skin of a mummified face. It was the color of decaying parchment. It seemed like just a piece of antique wax. Its only crime was looking entirely out of place in a child’s school box. Needing to understand, I pulled my lighter from my pocket, intending to light the wick to see what would happen. But the moment the metallic clack of the lighter echoed in the quiet room, Hazel’s eyes snapped open. She let out a blood-curdling shriek, launching herself across the bed and violently snatching the candle out of my hands. She scrambled backward, wrapping her blankets tightly around herself, pressing into the far corner of her bed. She cradled the candle against her chest like a lifeline. I stepped forward, holding my hands up, trying to soothe her. But she bared her teeth and pressed further into the wall. When I looked into her eyes, a cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck. Her eyes were entirely bloodshot. And she was glaring at me with the pure, unadulterated malice of a cornered predator, looking as though she was calculating the exact moment to lunge and tear my throat out. Is she really my daughter?

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The wine stain bloomed across Gavin’s crisp white dress shirt like a fresh, jagged wound. It happened in slow motion—the stumble, the splash, the collective gasp of the entire marketing department. Gavin excused himself to the restroom to clean up, leaving a vacuum of silence that was instantly filled with frantic whispering. Everyone was placing bets on whether he’d explode. “I bet three rounds of shots he loses it,” one colleague hissed, leaning over the table. “Remember the intern who spilled coffee on his files? She was packing her box the next morning.” “I wouldn’t be so sure,” another chimed in, eyebrows raised. “Didn’t you hear? That’s Felicity. She’s the boss’s one that got away.” A sharp intake of breath swept through the group. The gossip continued, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “They say they only broke up because she moved to Paris after graduation. But look who’s back. And look where Gavin is now. Why do you think he took this job?” “Exactly. He’s been waiting for her. Give it a week, and they’ll be the power couple of the year.” Beside me, a coworker nudged my elbow, nearly knocking over my water. “Norah, didn’t you go to the same university as them? Come on, spill the tea. Was their love story really as epic as everyone says?” “Yeah, tell us! Why did they break up?” I sat there, my hand in my pocket, fingers curling around the cold, hard metal of a wedding band I had taken off five minutes ago. I’ve been secretly married to Gavin for a year. 1 The excitement in their eyes was palpable, a spotlight I didn’t want. They were waiting for me to narrate the legendary romance between the icy genius and the campus queen. I sat in the darkest corner of the private booth, usually content to be part of the wallpaper. But now, with a dozen pairs of eyes on me, the air felt thin. Just as I opened my mouth to deflect, the door swung open. Felicity breezed in, Gavin’s suit jacket draped casually over her arm like a trophy. “Gavin said not to wait for him,” she announced, her smile dazzling enough to light up the dim room. “He wants us to keep the party going.” She hadn’t changed a bit since college. The moment she entered a room, she owned it. My colleagues exchanged looks that screamed I told you so. The intimacy of using his first name, the jacket—it was all the confirmation they needed. Gavin and Felicity. Even their names sounded like a title on a bestseller list. One of the bolder guys, fueled by liquid courage, called out, “So, Felicity, give us the scoop. Is there still a spark between you and the boss?” Felicity didn’t look surprised. She blinked playfully, a practiced gesture. “Oh, that’s ancient history. Gavin forbid me from talking about it.” The table erupted in knowing “Ooooohs.” She feigned shyness, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. ” seriously, don’t bring it up in front of him. He’s got thin skin about these things. I don’t want him getting mad at me later.” The teasing grew louder. She hadn’t confirmed anything, yet she’d confirmed everything. When Gavin finally returned, the wine stain faded but still visible, the conversation died down. No one dared question him directly, but the atmosphere was charged. Eyes darted between him and Felicity like spectators at a tennis match. People kept dropping buzzwords into the conversation—”first love,” “regret,” “youth.” The ring in my pocket had a sharp edge. It dug into my thigh through the thin fabric of my dress, a physical anchor to a reality that felt increasingly like a dream. My gaze drifted to Gavin’s left hand. It was bare. On the day we picked up our marriage license, his mother had given us matching bands. Gavin had looked at it, polite but distant, and said he wasn’t in the habit of wearing jewelry. His ring was currently gathering dust in a drawer in his study. I regretted coming tonight. Gavin sat there, a statue of ice, radiating his usual “do not approach” aura. He only spoke once, when Felicity, flushed with wine, started to sway in her seat. “Let’s call it a night,” he said. His voice was low, final. When the boss speaks, people move. Chairs scraped against the floor as everyone scrambled to organize rides. Someone pushed Felicity slightly toward Gavin. “Boss, Felicity’s pretty wasted. It’s not safe for her to take a cab alone. Can you drop her off?” Gavin’s eyes lifted, locking onto mine across the room. Before I could breathe, Felicity stumbled, her heels giving way, and she collapsed softly into his chest. I turned around and walked out the door. I practically ran. Behind me, I heard his voice, muffled by the distance. “Give me her address.” I hailed a cab alone. The city lights blurred as we drove, rain streaking the windows. Back at the apartment—our apartment—I filled the bathtub until the water was scalding. I submerged myself, letting the heat seep into my bones, and finally, the tears I’d been holding back all night broke free. Pathetic, I told myself. What right do you have to be aggrieved? He was the moon—distant, cold, beautiful. I was lucky enough to have claimed the moon for a short while, even if I couldn’t keep it. We had barely spoken in college. Our only interaction was the time he asked me to turn in a group project for him because he was too busy bringing Felicity an umbrella in a storm. It was pure chance that I ended up as an intern in his department after grad school. It was pure fate that his mother turned out to be my eccentric older friend from the dog park. Under her pressure, he had approached me one afternoon. “Norah,” he’d said, looking at a spreadsheet rather than me. “Would you consider marrying me?” No dating. No proposal. Just a business merger of lives. We signed the papers that afternoon and went to work the next day. Except for moving in together, nothing changed. He never told a soul. To the world, Gavin was a highly eligible bachelor. Now, the leading lady had returned to the stage. It was time for the extra to exit. When I came out of the bathroom, dried and dressed in old pajamas, Gavin was home. He was sitting on the sofa, reading a file. The lamp cast sharp shadows across his face. I gathered every ounce of courage I had. I walked up to him. “Gavin, I…” His phone rang, cutting through the silence like a knife. He answered, listened for two seconds, and his expression darkened. He grabbed his coat. “I’m sorry. It’s an emergency. We’ll talk when I get back, okay?” He never went out late. Never. Thirty minutes later, the emergency updated her social media. Thanks to a certain someone for the late-night hangover soup. The photo showed a bowl of soup and, in the corner, the distinctive cuff of a man’s shirt. My colleagues were already flooding the comments, speculating about wedding bells, gushing over how the icy boss had melted for his true love. I looked at the screen. My moon was returning to the sky, where he belonged. 2 My period arrived with a vengeance that night. I spent hours curled in a fetal position, drifting in and out of pain-filled sleep. When I finally woke up, the other side of the bed was cold. Gavin had already left. He liked to be at the office by 7:30. I was a “slide in at 8:59” kind of person. We lived together, but we commuted separately. When I walked into the office, the air smelled of roasted beans. Felicity was standing in the center of the aisle, looking fresh and vibrant, handing out coffees from a cardboard carrier. “Treat for the team!” she chirped. “Since I’m the new girl.” Colleagues were fawning over her, praising the “Princess” for her kindness, promising to work double-time today. She stopped at my desk and handed me a large iced Americano. “Sorry, Norah,” she said, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. “You came in a bit late, so this is the only one left.” My cramps were sending shockwaves through my lower back. Ice was the last thing I needed. But politeness is a reflex. “Thanks,” I muttered, taking the cup. I planned to dump it in the planter the moment she turned around. Partly because of the cramps. Mostly because it was from her. But Felicity didn’t leave. She stood there, her gaze drifting over me. “Norah, you’ve changed so much,” she said. “I almost didn’t recognize you last night.” “You’re thinner than you were in college. Prettier, too. I was surprised to find you working under Gavin.” In college, Gavin and I were in Class 3. She was in Class 1. We didn’t even share lecture halls. The fact that she remembered me was unsettling. She leaned against my partition, still smiling, but her eyes were scanning me like a barcode reader. It made my skin crawl. “I actually never thanked you for turning in that group project for Gavin back then,” she said breezily. “If you hadn’t, I would have been soaked waiting for him.” Then, the pivot. “Why did you choose this company, anyway? Did you know Gavin was here?” On the surface, it was casual small talk. But in an office full of sharks, it was blood in the water. It painted me as a stalker. I pressed my lips together, ready to retort, when the office door swung open. “Felicity. My office,” Gavin called out. She had been appointed directly by HQ as his executive secretary. “Coming!” She replied cheerfully, her heels clicking a rhythm of victory as she walked toward him. As the door clicked shut, the office buzzed again. I stared at the small framed photo on my desk. It was just me, taken on my birthday last year. The same day Gavin had asked me to marry him. I reached out and slid the back off the frame. Hidden behind the print was another photo. Younger, grainier. It was my college graduation. I was standing in front of the old humanities building, making a peace sign, looking goofy. My roommate had complained about the background. Why the ugly brick wall, Norah? Why not the fountain? I had told her the lighting was better. I lied. In the photo, five meters behind me, blurred but unmistakable, stood Gavin. At the exact moment the shutter clicked, he had looked up. He was looking right at the camera. Right at me. It was our first—and only—photo together. “Norah, meeting in the small conference room. Now.” I jumped, hastily shoving the photo into a folder on my desk. “Coming.” The “brief update” turned into a two-hour marathon. Cold sweat was trickling down my spine from the pain in my abdomen. When I finally stumbled out of the conference room, dizzy and nauseous, I saw a cluster of people around my desk. They were giggling. I walked closer, and my blood ran cold. Felicity was holding the photo. “So…” she drawled, flipping the picture over. She read the handwriting on the back, her voice loud and theatrical. “You are my moon.” She looked at me, her expression a mix of pity and amusement. “So I was right. You did stay here because of Gavin.” 3 I lunged for it. “Give that back!” She sidestepped me easily. “Norah, are you in love with him?” she asked, her voice dripping with faux innocence. Around us, the whispers turned into sneers. “She looks so quiet, but turns out she’s a creep,” someone muttered. ” ‘You are my moon’? God, I think I’m going to puke.” “Exactly. Felicity went abroad, sure, but Gavin waited three years for her. Hiding a photo like that? She’s trying to be a homewrecker.” “No wonder she worked so hard to pass the internship assessment. Talk about punching above her weight.” The air conditioning vent above me blasted freezing air. I was shaking. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them I am his wife. I wanted to tell them that when we reconnected, they were already broken up. But I knew it wouldn’t matter. Because Gavin had never claimed me. Tears welled in my eyes, hot and stinging. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, refusing to let them fall. If I cried, I lost the last shred of my dignity. I snatched the photo from Felicity’s hand, ripping it in the process. I didn’t look at it. I tore it into shreds and dropped it into the trash can. “Happy?” I choked out. Felicity opened her mouth to twist the knife further, but the office door opened. “What is going on out here? Do you not have work to do?” Gavin’s voice cracked like a whip. The crowd scattered like cockroaches when the lights turn on. Gavin walked over to me. He looked at my pale face, then down at the trash can. He saw the fragments of the photo. “Why did you…” he started, his brow furrowing. I didn’t let him finish. I pushed past him, head down, and ran for the bathroom. I couldn’t look at him. Not now. I was terrified that if he knew—if he realized I had harbored feelings for him long before our arrangement—he would look at me with the same disgust as everyone else. I survived the rest of the day in a fugue state. When I walked out of the building at 5:00 PM, Felicity was waiting. “Norah. We need to talk.” We went to a coffee shop nearby. The smell of caramel usually comforted me; today it smelled like burnt sugar and judgment. “I called Gavin before I came back to the States,” Felicity said, not bothering to touch her drink. “He told me he was married. To you.” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “I asked him if he loved you. Do you want to know what he said?” Her manicured fingernails tapped against the wooden table. Tap. Tap. Tap. I didn’t need to ask. The answer was obvious. If he loved me, she wouldn’t be sitting here. “Mrs. Gavin,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “If he wants a divorce, he needs to tell me himself.” Felicity looked surprised by my backbone, but her smirk returned quickly. “Oh, the divorce is happening. Now that I’m back, it’s just a matter of paperwork. But…” She leaned in, lowering her voice. “Do you really think Gavin didn’t know about your little crush back in college? Do you think nobody noticed you hoarding his graded papers?” My stomach dropped. “Do you know what he said when he found out?” She paused for effect. “He said, ‘That’s disgusting.’” It was true. Once, when he asked me to hand in an assignment, the graded papers were returned to me to distribute. I had kept his. I had kept it because his handwriting was beautiful, and it was the only thing of his I could own. To have that secret, that silly schoolgirl moment, dragged out and weaponized… the shame was blinding. I stood up and left her there. When I got home, Gavin was already there. On the coffee table in front of him lay a file folder. Only one word was visible on the cover: DIVORCE. Gavin took off his wire-rimmed glasses and looked at me. “Norah, there’s something I need to discuss with you.” 4 Gavin was, above all things, a decent man. Even in divorce, he wanted to “discuss.” What was there to discuss? Was he afraid I’d demand alimony? Was he afraid I’d cling to his leg and beg him to stay? I sniffed, fighting the congestion in my nose, and forced a smile. It felt like stretching calm over a screaming void. “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” “You can tell your mom. I’ll make it easy.” “Also… when do you need me to move out?” Gavin froze. For a second, genuine confusion clouded his eyes. I widened my smile until my face hurt. “Give it to me. You need a signature, right?” “Are you misunder—” The doorbell rang. Gavin stood up and opened the door. Felicity collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “Gavin! Someone was following me! I’m so scared…” She was wearing a lace slip dress—a stark contrast to the power suit from this morning, but equally calculated. She looked fragile. Beautiful. Maybe because I was standing right there, Gavin frowned and peeled her off him. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice tight. He glanced back at me, a flicker of panic in his eyes. I didn’t want to watch this. I waved my hand dismissively. “You guys talk. I’m going to the bedroom.” Gavin had given me enough respect during our marriage. I wasn’t going to be the pathetic wife lurking in the corner while the true loves reunited. I closed the bedroom door and leaned against it. My face, frozen in that rictus of a smile, finally collapsed. I buried myself in the duvet, biting down on the corner of the pillow to muffle the sound. The dam broke. I cried until my chest ached, until my eyes were swollen shut. When I finally emerged, the apartment was silent. Gavin was gone. Felicity was gone. I picked up my phone, intending to text him about the timeline for the filing. Instead, I saw Felicity’s new post. Two words: Conquered him. The photo was a selfie. On her pale neck, a fresh, dark hickey was prominently displayed. My phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a clatter. I picked it up, forcing my brain to shut down. Don’t imagine it. Don’t imagine them. I moved like a robot. Suitcase. Clothes. Toiletries. Laptop. I walked into the living room. The file on the table—the one that said DIVORCE—was gone. He must have taken it. I opened my laptop, downloaded a standard divorce agreement template, and filled in our details. I signed it. I left it in the center of the coffee table. Gavin, I thought. We are officially over. Gavin had spent three hours dealing with Felicity. He had dragged her to the police station to file a report for the “stalker,” and then he had driven to the office to submit his immediate resignation to Headquarters. It was nearly midnight when he unlocked his front door. He was exhausted. The apartment was dark. Norah must be asleep. He felt a knot of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t know if she would agree to leave the city with him. He wanted to move to Seattle, start fresh, away from this toxic office culture. He flipped on the lights. His eyes locked onto the white paper sitting on the coffee table. DIVORCE AGREEMENT. 5 Gavin’s heart rate spiked so hard he felt it in his throat. He didn’t even take off his shoes. He stumbled over the edge of the rug in his haste to reach the table.

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Margo told me I was crazy to sink my savings into a sprawling mid-century modern for a wedding gift to ourselves. She hummed and hawed about interest rates and the volatile market, begging me to wait. But I couldn’t wait. I was turning thirty. In my head, signing the deed was the only way to anchor the drifting ship of my relationship before we could finally say “I do.” The day I wired the earnest money, I sat in our living room, the purchase agreement in hand, vibrating with excitement. I was waiting for Gary to come home so I could drop the surprise. When he walked in, he didn’t smile. He looked grim, like a man walking to the gallows. “Nora,” he said, his voice heavy. “The house money… I need to use it to get Sasha a lease on a place downtown.” I froze. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “She just got back to the States. She has no credit history, no family here. She’s fragile, Nora. We can wait on the house. We can squeeze into a smaller apartment for a while, can’t we?” My phone buzzed in my lap. A text from Margo: Nora, I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore. I was at the leasing office at The Kensington today. I saw Gary and Sasha. They were looking at the penthouses. Pretty sure he put down a deposit. Don’t let him play you. I looked at the screen, blinking as the text blurred, then looked up at Gary’s face. He looked so self-righteous. So sure of his moral high ground. The contract in my hand suddenly felt like a joke. A paper prop in a bad play. I nodded slowly. “Okay.” Then, right in front of him, I dialed the realtor. “Hi, David. Yeah, it’s Nora. Cancel the contract.” David, the realtor, sputtered on the other end. “Nora, you know if you walk away now, you lose the earnest money. That’s fifty grand.” “Oh,” I said, my voice flat, devoid of any tremor. “That’s fine. I don’t want it anymore.” I hung up. The silence in the room was deafening. 1 Gary’s face was a study in confusion. He looked as if I’d just spoken in a dead language. He clearly hadn’t expected the nuclear option. He stepped closer, reaching out to hug me. “Nora, don’t be dramatic. I know you’re disappointed. But we have a lifetime to buy a house, right?” I didn’t hug him back. I stood there wondering: Do we really have a lifetime? I walked past him into the living room and sat on the hardwood floor. The space where I had planned to put a new Italian leather sofa was currently covered in a drop cloth. Spread out across it were my tools: bone folders, Japanese tissue, wheat starch paste. The air smelled of old paper—a scent of vanilla and decay—and the sharp, vinegary tang of the reversible glue I used. Gary wrinkled his nose. He hated that smell. “Nora, stop it,” he said, his tone shifting into that authoritative register he used when he wanted to close a deal. “What are we doing for dinner?” I didn’t look up from the foxed page I was treating. I just pointed a finger at the dining table. Sitting there, lonely and pathetic, was a single cup of instant noodles. He walked over and loomed above me. “The apartment for Sasha is just a rental, Nora. It’s not like I bought it. She’s alone, her health is a mess…” He started the speech. The one I knew by heart. The one about responsibility. About how Sasha’s brother had died serving in the same unit as him, and how looking after her was a sacred blood oath. I didn’t argue. I didn’t look at him. I picked up a hake brush, soft as a whisper, and gently swept the dust from the spine of the book. “Okay,” I said softly. One word. It choked off the rest of his monologue. He must have thought I was just sulking. He sighed, reached into his briefcase, and pulled out a velvet-wrapped box. “Nora, look. I won this at an auction for you. It’s a Song Dynasty inkstone. For the new study.” He opened the box. The stone was dark, cool, and undeniably expensive. I finally looked up. I glanced at the inkstone, then at him. “Keep it,” I said. “Or send me the invoice from the auction house, and I’ll wire you the cost.” The expectation on Gary’s face cracked, fracturing like cheap glass. “What… what is that supposed to mean?” I didn’t answer. I looked down and opened a camphor wood chest. From inside, I reverently lifted a set of brass finishing tools wrapped in silk. They were antique French gilding instruments I had inherited from my mentor. I never took them out of the house. Now, I was packing them. One by one. Panic, real and sudden, finally hit him. He lunged forward, grabbing my wrist. His grip was too tight. “Nora! What the hell are you doing?” It hurt, but I didn’t wince. I just calmly pulled my hand from his grasp. “I’m going to the studio. Overtime. We have a deadline on a restoration.” He stood frozen, watching me pack my life away with terrifying efficiency. He finally realized this wasn’t a tantrum. 2 I pulled an all-nighter at the studio, stabilizing a crumbling 18th-century map. I didn’t go home the next day. Instead, I met Margo at a gallery opening in Chelsea. Gary hated my job. He called my studio “a dusty recycling center for things that should be thrown away.” He hated my friends even more, calling them “pretentious bohemians with empty pockets.” The opening was loud, a sea of expensive perfume and clinking glass. Margo raised her champagne flute against mine. “Finally seeing the light?” I smiled, a small, sad thing, and downed my drink. We stayed until the gallery closed. I posted a photo of the toast on Instagram. No caption. Just the image. When I got home, it was 2:00 AM. The apartment was dark, save for the cherry-red ember of a cigarette glowing by the sofa. I flipped the switch. Gary was sitting there, scowling. The ashtray was overflowing. He crushed the cigarette out, adopting the tone of a disappointed father. “Where have you been? Staying out late just to punish me? That’s childish, Nora.” I hadn’t slept in thirty hours. I had champagne in my system. My bones felt heavy. I didn’t have the energy to fight. I looked him in the eye and said, “Gary, your rules don’t apply to me anymore.” I didn’t go to the master bedroom. I walked straight to the guest room—the one he’d made me turn into a storage closet for his off-season suits and golf clubs. I pushed the door open, ignoring his stunned expression, and stepped inside. Click. I locked it. I waited for the pounding on the door. The shouting. But there was only silence. The next morning, the Cold War began. I showered and dressed. He sat at the kitchen island reading the Wall Street Journal, pretending I didn’t exist. I ignored him right back. I made coffee, leaned against the counter, and dialed Dr. Thorne, the director of the National Archives. “Dr. Thorne, hello. It’s Nora Jinx.” “Regarding the ‘Blackwood Abbey’ manuscript project… I’ve thought it over. I accept.” Dr. Thorne was ecstatic on the other end of the line. Behind me, the rustling of the newspaper stopped. The project was a three-year residency. Closed campus. Deep in the Adirondack Mountains, restoring a library of theological texts damaged by water and time. I had turned it down months ago because Gary threw a fit about long-distance relationships. I hung up the phone and walked back to the guest room without glancing at him. That evening, I came back from the studio to grab some reference books. I walked in to find Gary on the phone, a soft, tender look on his face that I hadn’t seen in years. “Just listen to me, don’t be stubborn. I hired a nutritionist for you; she starts tomorrow.” “I know the food here upsets your stomach. I had the housekeeper make that bird’s nest soup you like. I’ll bring it over soon.” He saw me, and the smile vanished. He hung up abruptly. I assumed it was Sasha. He braced himself, expecting me to scream or cry. But I just walked past him. I spread a large topographic map on the living room rug—part of the dossier Dr. Thorne had sent over. I took a red marker and started circling routes, planning the drive into the mountains. He was arranging a private chef for his “fragile bird,” worrying about her digestion. And I sat in front of him, mapping out a life that didn’t include him. 3 In the middle of the night, a knock on the guest room door jolted me awake. I opened it to find Gary swaying in the hallway, smelling of scotch. He blinked, seeming surprised that I was actually sleeping in the storage room. “Why haven’t you texted me all day? Not a single update?” I leaned against the doorframe, the question striking me as absurd. He started rambling. “You know, at dinner tonight, Cole and the guys… their wives were calling every hour. Checking in. Asking when they’d be home.” “And me? I sat there like an idiot with a silent phone. Like nobody gave a damn about me.” His voice was thick with self-pity. My head was pounding. I stared at him, my patience evaporating. “You hate it when I check in,” I said. “You told me it was suffocating. You said it was an ‘invasion of your privacy’ and showed a lack of trust.” “I’m trusting you now. Isn’t that what you wanted?” He choked on his own words, his face flushing. Maybe because I didn’t sound angry, just tired, he misread the situation. He stepped closer, his voice softening into a slur. “Nora, I know you’re still mad about the house.” “Me and Sasha… it’s just brother and sister stuff. Her brother died for me. I can’t just leave her to rot.” “Stop overthinking it. I’ll bring you around more. You’ll see. It’s just you. It’s always been you.” I could barely keep my eyes open. I just wanted him to leave. I nodded, waving a hand dismissively. “Okay. Sure. Just let me sleep.” He took my exhaustion for surrender. He tried to push into the room, his hand reaching for my waist. “Come on, Nora. Don’t sleep in here. Let’s go back to bed…” The touch felt like a brand. I recoiled, stepping back so fast I nearly tripped. The sleep vanished instantly. “Get out.” My voice was ice. His hand hovered in mid-air. In the dim light, his face contorted—confusion, then embarrassment, then anger. “Nora, don’t be a bitch.” I looked him dead in the eye. “Get. Out.” He glared at me, chest heaving, before spinning around and storming off. The door to the master bedroom slammed hard enough to shake the walls. Finally. Silence. I locked the door and lay back down. Strangely, I didn’t feel like crying. My heart rate slowed almost immediately. I fell asleep within seconds. The next morning, while organizing my files, I scrolled through Instagram. There it was. Sasha’s new post. She was wearing an oversized white dress shirt—a man’s shirt—standing barefoot in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the skyline. Caption: Finally feels like I can breathe. Thank you for giving me a home, big brother. beneath it, Gary’s business partner, Cole, had commented: @NoraJinx You should be proud. Gary is a stand-up guy. Most men wouldn’t step up like that. I laughed. A dry, hollow sound. I replied with a single emoji – “Thanks”. Then I blocked Cole. 4 When my team at the studio found out I was taking the lead on the Blackwood Abbey project, they insisted on a celebration. We went to a high-end bistro near the flatiron. Everyone chipped in. The atmosphere was warm, genuine. These were people who respected the craft. This was an honor I had earned with my own hands. Midway through the meal, the door to our private room creaked open. One of my junior restorers poked her head back in, looking awkward. “Nora… um, Gary is in the room next door.” Before I could process that, Gary walked in. His entourage trailed behind him. And there was Sasha, clinging to his arm, beaming like she was the hostess of the event. She spotted me instantly. A flicker of triumph crossed her face before she masked it with a sweet smile. She raised her wine glass and walked over. “Nora! What a coincidence. We’re celebrating a closed deal. Gary was just talking about you. He said you’ve been so busy he barely sees you.” Her voice was soft, but pitched perfectly so everyone could hear. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t look at Gary. I gave a tight, polite nod to the air between them, said absolutely nothing, and turned my back to return to my table. My phone started buzzing in my purse. I glanced at it. A barrage of texts from Gary. Nora, don’t make a scene. It’s a team dinner. Sasha just wanted to thank everyone. I didn’t know you were here. When are you done? I’ll wait. I’ll drive you home. I silenced the phone and dropped it back into my bag. Towards the end of the night, Professor Halloway arrived. He was a legend in the field of conservation, frail now, but his presence commanded the room. He had come specifically for me. He raised a shaking glass, his voice booming with unexpected power. “Tonight, we are not here for just any dinner. We are here for Nora Jinx!” “We celebrate the preservation of history! We celebrate that our art will not die with us!” “To Nora. May your three years at Blackwood be filled with discovery. Go save history for us!” Applause erupted. Everyone stood up, raising their glasses to me. I felt tears prick my eyes. I stood up to respond. BANG. The door to our room was shoved open. Gary stood there, his face drained of blood. He must have come to find me when I didn’t text back, just in time to hear the toast. Behind him, Sasha looked furious, her eyes narrowing as if I had stolen something from her. Gary ignored the room full of shocked faces. He ignored Sasha. He stared at me, his eyes wide and unblinking, walking toward me like a sleepwalker. His voice trembled, distorted by shock and rising anger. “Three years?” “Where are you going?” It was almost funny. In five years, he had never once asked what book I was working on. Now, he wanted to know where I was going.

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“When is he finally going to get the hint and leave?” The voice coming from the breakroom wasn’t loud, but in the sterile silence of the hallway, every syllable landed with the weight of a stone. I stood frozen near the doorway, my ceramic mug tight in my hand. I didn’t breathe. “Soon, surely. It’s been three months.” “I’ll bet you a steak dinner he’s gone by Friday.” “You’re on.” I turned on my heel and walked back to my desk. My desk was situated directly next to the men’s restroom. The air there always carried a faint, chemical tang of industrial cleaner and stale plumbing, twenty-four hours a day. I sat down, woke my computer, and continued working on my spreadsheets. No one knew what I had been documenting every single day for the past three months. And no one knew how long the list of names was that I would be reading aloud at the Holiday Gala. 1. My name is Gavin Calloway. I am thirty-two years old. Three months ago, I was transferred to this branch office with the nebulous title of “Specialist.” I had no specific job description, no clear line of reporting, and not even a permanent ID badge. HR’s explanation was smooth and practiced: “It’s a transition period, Gavin. Just take some time to settle in.” I didn’t ask what “transition period” meant. I didn’t ask what I was supposed to be settling into. I just clocked in at nine sharp, sat at my desk, and built spreadsheets that nobody asked for. The first week, a few people offered tentative hellos. By the second week, the greetings evaporated. By the third week, the entire department—over twenty people—acted as if I were a ghost haunting the cubicles. If I walked down the aisle, they parted. If I sat in the breakroom, voices dropped to a hush. If I entered the kitchen, the laughter died instantly. I’m not stupid. I knew exactly what was happening. But I didn’t say a word. I just came in, did the work, and went home. On a Monday morning, I found my belongings in a box. My desk had been moved. Originally, I had a view of the parking lot; now, I was wedged against the wall sharing a partition with the restroom. “Mr. Calloway,” the administrative assistant said, her smile brittle and overly sweet. “It’s much quieter over here. We thought it would suit you better.” I looked at her. I didn’t say a thing. Fine. Move me. I carried my monitor over, arranged my binders, and went back to work. The restroom door opened and closed all day, wafting drafts of air freshener and dampness. People walked by, covering their noses and snickering. I pretended I was deaf and blind. At noon, the department had a team lunch. I was the last to know. Correction: I didn’t “know.” I discovered it. At twelve-thirty, the bullpen was a ghost town. I went to refill my water and heard the faint ding of the elevator and the echo of raucous laughter fading down the shaft. Back at my desk, I checked the group chat on my phone. A photo had just been posted. “Lunch on Director Hanes! Bottoms up!” The picture showed a table groaning under plates of appetizers, twenty-odd people raising wine glasses, beaming at the camera. I scrolled up. No one had tagged me. No one had typed, Hey Gavin, are you coming? It was a total erasure of my existence. They returned at two o’clock. Brett Cavallari, the Marketing Manager, led the pack. His face was flushed with expensive Cabernet. He paused as he passed my exile by the bathroom. “Oh! Gavin! You didn’t come to lunch?” I looked up from my screen. “Nobody invited me.” He blinked, a theatrical performance of surprise, before a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Ah, damn. Slipped my mind. Next time, buddy.” He walked away. I lowered my head and resumed typing. A colleague in the next cubicle whispered, “God, stop acting like a victim. Waiting for an engraved invitation?” Another voice giggled. “He’s got thick skin. Let him rot.” I didn’t turn around. Instead, I opened a fresh, blank document. On the first line, I typed: December 3rd. Department Lunch. Expense Account Misuse. Exclusionary Tactics. Then I listed their names, one by one. Save. Close. Return to the spreadsheets. At four o’clock, I finished a comprehensive market analysis report. This was work I had found for myself; nobody had assigned it, nobody expected it. But I did it, and I did it with precision. I emailed the PDF to Brett Cavallari and cc’d Director Hanes. “Brett, attached is the Q4 market data analysis for your review.” Five minutes later, Brett replied. “Received.” One word. The next day, I saw the report on Director Hanes’s LinkedIn feed. The caption read: “Incredible work by the Cavallari Team! This depth of analysis is world-class!” The comments section was a chorus of praise. “Brett is a machine!” “Great leadership, Brett!” “Detailed and sharp. Kudos to the team!” I opened the PDF attached to the post. On the title page, my name was gone. It now read: Author: The Cavallari Team. I stared at those words for a long time. The screen blurred slightly, then sharpened again. I opened my private document. New line. December 4th. Intellectual Property Theft. Plagiarism. Brett Cavallari. Save. Close. The pattern repeated itself over the next few days. My slide deck became Lisa’s presentation. My data cleanup became Ryan’s “initiative.” My strategic proposal became “Departmental Collective Wisdom.” Every single time, I wrote it down. Date. Content. Personnel involved. Item by item. Crystal clear. On Friday afternoon, Brett called me into his office. “Gavin.” He was leaning back in his leather chair, ankle resting on his knee, looking every inch the king of his little kingdom. “How long have you been with us?” “Three weeks.” “How’s it feeling?” “It’s fine.” He smiled, but the warmth didn’t reach his eyes. It was a shark’s smile. “Fine? You think your performance is ‘fine’?” I stayed silent. “Gavin, let me be level with you.” He leaned forward, dropping the casual facade. “You don’t fit in here. The culture… it’s not for you.” “Oh.” “Look at you. You’re antisocial. You’re passive. You sit there alone all day like a piece of furniture.” “Okay.” “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” I looked him in the eye, keeping my voice flat. “Brett, what would you like me to say?” He scoffed, a short, sharp sound. “I want you to have some self-awareness. If you were smart, you’d draft a resignation letter today. The company will give you a severance package. Walk away with some dignity.” “And if I don’t?” “If you don’t?” He leaned back again, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Then don’t blame me for what happens next. I won’t be polite about it.” I stood up. “Okay. I understand.” “Understand what?” “That you won’t be polite.” I walked out and closed the door softly behind me. Back at my desk, I opened the document. December 8th. Verbal intimidation. Coercion to resign. Threat of retaliation. Brett Cavallari. Save. Close. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. Three months. It was enough time. 2. By the fourth week, the isolation mutated into active hostility. It wasn’t just ignoring me anymore. Meetings happened without me. My reimbursement requests were “accidentally” lost. The printer jammed every time I sent a document, and miraculously fixed itself when Lisa walked up. When I requested basic office supplies, the system rejected me. I bought my own stapler. My own pens. I even brought in a ream of paper from home. One afternoon, I went to the admin desk to ask for a notebook. The assistant, Becca, gave me that plastic smile again. “Mr. Calloway, I don’t see a request in the portal.” “I submitted it last week.” She shrugged. “Glitch in the system, maybe? Try again.” I submitted it again. A week later, still nothing. I stopped asking. I went to the CVS downstairs, bought a three-pack of spiral notebooks, and used those. On Wednesday afternoon, I overheard the betting pool in the breakroom. “I bet he quits this week.” “I say next week.” “What’s the wager?” “Ruth’s Chris. Steak and martinis. Winner takes all.” “Deal.” I stood outside the door, holding my empty mug, motionless. They hadn’t seen me. “Why doesn’t he just leave? It’s pathetic. He’s got no pride.” “Probably holding out for the severance.” “Severance? Who does he think he is? He’s a nobody.” Laughter. Sharp and jagged. I turned around, making my footsteps soft on the carpet. Back at my desk, I opened the document. December 11th. Hostile work environment. Betting pool on employee termination. Harassment. Save. I looked at the screen and felt a small, cold smile touch my lips. Steak dinner. Sounds nice. I’ll be treating you all soon enough. That afternoon, Brett made his move. The Monthly Department All-Hands meeting. Mandatory for everyone. Ten minutes before the hour, the office began to stir. People were grabbing notepads and laptops. I turned to Ryan in the next cubicle. “Is there a meeting?” He glanced at me, eyes sliding away, and grabbed his coffee. Didn’t say a word. Just walked off. I stood up and caught Lisa in the hallway. “Lisa, what time is the meeting? Which conference room?” Lisa didn’t even break stride. “I don’t know.” I stood there in the aisle, watching them file out, one by one, disappearing around the corner like a receding tide. The office fell silent. Just me. I checked my email. No invite. I checked the Slack channel. Nothing. I sat back down. December 12th. Exclusion from mandatory all-hands meeting. deliberate obstruction of information. I thought for a moment, then typed: Meeting agenda: TBD. Thirty minutes later, they flooded back. Brett was at the front, looking annoyed about something. He stopped when he saw me. “Gavin. Why weren’t you at the meeting?” I looked up. “I wasn’t invited.” “We sent the invite,” he said, frowning with exaggerated confusion. “It was on the group calendar.” “I checked. It wasn’t.” “Well, maybe you just missed it.” His tone dripped with condescension. “Pay closer attention next time.” I didn’t argue. He walked away. I pulled out my phone and took a screenshot of the group calendar. Empty. I took a screenshot of my inbox. Empty. I dragged the images into a secure folder. Evidence +1. Friday was my birthday. No one knew. No one asked. I sat by the restroom, eating a cold turkey sandwich from the vending machine, staring out the window. The sky was the color of wet concrete, matching the endless sprawl of office parks. I was thirty-two. Ten years ago, I was fresh out of college, hungry and ambitious. Five years ago, I was in middle management, feeling like I owned the world. One year ago, I was transferred here to start over. Now, I was the guy by the toilet eating a vending machine sandwich on his birthday. My phone pinged. An email. Sender: HR Subject: [Action Required] Exit Interview Schedule I clicked it open. Mr. Calloway, please report to HR on December 15th at 3:00 PM for your exit interview. I stared at the screen. An exit interview. They hadn’t even fired me yet. They hadn’t even spoken to me. They just sent the invite, assuming I would break. I didn’t reply. I opened my document. December 13th. Preemptive termination procedure. Constructive discharge attempt. I closed the laptop. I stood up, grabbed my coat, and walked out. The elevator was empty. I caught my reflection in the polished steel doors. I looked tired, but my eyes were clear. Three weeks down. They didn’t know who I was. They didn’t know why I was here. And they certainly didn’t know what was going to happen at the Holiday Gala in three months. I pressed the button for the lobby. No rush. Let them dig the hole a little deeper. 3. I arrived at the exit interview exactly on time. The HR Manager, Pamela, was in her early thirties, rimless glasses, soft cardigan. She looked harmless. But her opening line told me everything I needed to know. “Gavin, sit.” I sat. She shuffled a file folder, then looked up with a practiced grimace. “Gavin, you’ve been with the branch for almost a month.” “Yes.” “How are you finding it?” “It’s fine.” She smiled, a tight, corporate expression. “Gavin, I’ll be direct. The company isn’t satisfied with your performance.” “Specifically?” “Across the board.” She gestured vaguely. “You don’t integrate with the team. You’re passive. Your output is low…” I cut her off. “The Q4 Market Analysis that Director Hanes posted on LinkedIn? I wrote that.” She paused, blinking rapidly. “That… I believe that was a Cavallari Team effort.” “The byline said Cavallari Team. The author was me.” She frowned. “Do you have proof?” I laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. “Pamela, I’m here to listen to you, not argue. Please, continue.” She looked unsettled but quickly recovered her script. “Regardless, the consensus is that it would be best if you initiated your resignation. We can offer you a severance package—two weeks’ pay—to help with the transition.” “And if I don’t?” “If you don’t?” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Then it gets messy. You know how these things go. Performance improvement plans, documentation…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but the threat was loud and clear. Leave, or we will make your life hell until you break. I stood up. “Okay. I understand.” “Think it over. Let me know by tomorrow.” “I don’t need to think it over.” “Excuse me?”

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I am the protagonist of a torture-porn tragedy. The rules are simple: once my Misery Index hits 100, I get to wake up. I get to go back to the real world. My wife, Elena, had me strapped to a sterile surgical table in a private clinic. The scalpel in her hand was steady, cold against my skin. “Jonah was burned, Gavin. He needs a skin graft.” Her voice was devoid of emotion, clinical and detached. “He has a low tolerance for pain. He can’t handle the harvest. It has to be yours.” Without waiting for a response, she pushed the plunger, sending the anesthetic burning through my veins. When I woke up, the room was empty. My phone, resting on the bedside table, buzzed incessantly. It was a text from Jonah. Elena is incredible. You really fed her well before I got here. I stared at the taunt. A bitter, self-deprecating laugh bubbled up in my throat, pulling painfully at the fresh stitches across my chest. The pain bloomed like a dark flower. [Current Misery Index: 90/100] 1 Elena didn’t show up until the dead of night. By then, the anesthesia had worn off, leaving me thrashing in a sweat-soaked haze of raw nerve endings. “Still awake?” She placed a hand on my forehead. Cool, soft. A lie. As she leaned over to check my temperature, the neckline of her silk blouse shifted. I saw it—the fresh, bruising mark of a hickey on her collarbone. “Good. No fever,” she murmured, pulling up a chair. “I’ll stay with you tonight.” She sat down, eyes cast downward. I searched her face for a flicker of guilt, a trace of the infidelity I knew was there. There was nothing. Just a smooth, marble mask. The silence in the VIP suite was suffocating. Eventually, Elena couldn’t handle the quiet. “Jonah has a coagulation disorder,” she said, her voice tight. “Taking skin from his own body wasn’t an option.” She stared at me, waiting. Waiting for the explosion. The jealousy. The screaming match. I just stared at the ceiling. “Mm.” My indifference seemed to irritate her more than my anger ever did. “Gavin, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she snapped. “I know you hate him. I know you’re jealous. But you owe him this.” Her eyes narrowed. “Heal up. And don’t even think about retaliation.” I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat and gave a small nod. I owe him? I was the one bleeding. I was always the one bleeding. Jonah was a scholarship student Elena’s family foundation supported. For years, I couldn’t understand why the entire world seemed to bend to his will, why logic dissolved whenever he was in the room. Then I realized the truth. I was a character in a book. A “sacrificial husband” archetype in a dark romance novel. The plot demanded I suffer. Only through my destruction could Elena and her true love, Jonah, achieve their twisted happy ending. Halfway through the night, a single phone call from Jonah summoned Elena away. She didn’t hesitate. The next day, I discharged myself. I pulled into the driveway of our estate, stitches pulling tight, only to find Jonah standing on the front porch. He was holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums—flowers for the dead. “Gavin,” he smiled, a sickly sweet expression. “Thanks for the skin. It fits perfectly.” He waved his right arm. I walked past him, too exhausted to engage. Suddenly, a shriek tore through the air. Elena rushed out of the house, my parents close behind her. They found Jonah sprawled on the pavement, clutching his arm. Blood was seeping through his bandages. He bit his lip, offering Elena a brave, teary smile. “I… I tripped. It’s my fault. The wound opened up. It has nothing to do with Gavin.” “Gavin!” Elena screamed, turning on me like a viper. “How can you be so vindictive?” “Don’t blame him,” Jonah whimpered, shrinking back as if terrified of me. “You don’t need to protect him,” Elena cooed, cradling his injured arm. My mother stepped forward, her face a mask of disappointment. “Gavin. When are you going to learn?” I looked at them. I offered no defense. I knew the script. Anything I said would be twisted into an admission of guilt. My father grabbed me by the collar. He dragged me to the “Quiet Room”—a soundproofed space in the basement they claimed was for my rehabilitation. It was built to “correct” my jealousy. When the electricity hit me, I heard my teeth chatter. It was a mechanical sound, like dice rattling in a cup. My jaw clamped shut so hard I thought the bone would snap. The cattle prod dug into my side. Muscles seized. Heat flooded my lap. I had lost control of my bladder. The humiliating warmth soaked my trousers, the scent of urine mixing with the damp, moldy air of the basement. Jonah stood in the doorway, hand covering his nose, eyes dancing with amusement. “Gavin peed himself,” he said, his voice dripping with faux concern. “Maybe stop? He needs a change of clothes.” Elena lowered the prod, looking at the puddle with sheer disgust. “Apologize to Jonah. Now. Have you no dignity?” “Still playing dead?” My father sneered. “Look at Jonah! You frame him, you hurt him, and he still defends you. Do you have any remorse inside that sick head of yours?” He kicked me in the ribs. I didn’t flinch. I felt something crack—a rib, maybe puncturing the spleen. “Mom, Dad, Elena… please,” Jonah said softly. “Stop. Gavin is just… he cares about Elena too much. That’s why he hates me. I’ll move out tomorrow. I don’t want to break up this family.” It was always the same routine. When I was half-dead, he would call for mercy. When I was locked in the freezer, he would “sneak” me food. When Elena ignored me, he would “accidentally” remind her of my past failures. And every time, I was beaten harder for being ungrateful. My mother stormed over, her manicured finger jabbing the air inches from my face. “He’s still defending you! Gavin, is your heart made of stone?” “We’ve told you a thousand times,” she whispered, her voice trembling with fatigue. “Jonah is a guest. A charity case. Why can’t you just get along?” I looked at her. Before today, I loved her. I loved them all. I used to tell myself they were just puppets controlled by a sadistic author. When Jonah claimed I pushed him into the pool and Elena locked me in the industrial freezer, resulting in severe frostbite and surgery to remove part of my intestine, I didn’t blame her. But the cycle never ended. Jonah escalated. I defended myself. They ignored the truth. I watched Elena dial up the voltage on the stun baton, her eyes colder with every shock. Jonah reached for Elena’s hand, then pulled back as if remembering his place. His eyes welled up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accepted the scholarship. I’ll leave…” 2 “No!” My mother screamed. “Jonah, you aren’t going anywhere! The only one leaving is this monster!” I slowly pushed myself up from the concrete floor. My legs were shaking uncontrollably, urine dripping down my pant leg. Elena looked away. Jonah couldn’t hide the smirk in his eyes. I looked at the corner of the room. There was an old, exposed fuse box from when the house was rewired. The casing was off, copper wires naked and lethal, connected to the old industrial grid. “Okay,” I said. My voice sounded like sandpaper dragged over stone. “My fault.” The room went still. For the first time in a year, I had admitted guilt. Relief washed over my parents. Jonah narrowed his eyes. Elena frowned, sensing a shift in the atmosphere. “I know I was wrong,” I continued, swaying as I stood. “I shouldn’t have been jealous. I shouldn’t have framed him. I shouldn’t be alive.” I summoned every ounce of adrenaline left in my broken body and lunged for the fuse box. “Gavin!” Elena realized it first, panic finally cracking her voice. Too late. My hand closed around the rusted lever. I looked back at them one last time. Elena’s eyes were wide. For the first time, she wasn’t looking through me; she was looking at me—at the filth, the blood, the ruin she had made. I yanked the lever down. ZZZT—! The short circuit was immediate. Sparks showered onto a pile of old drop cloths nearby. The fire moved like a living thing, a hungry snake coiling up my arm, consuming me. The smell of burning meat overpowered the smell of urine. “Ah—!” My mother’s scream pierced the air. “Help him! Do something!” My father roared, but his feet were nailed to the floor. My skin was melting. Fat was rendering. But I held onto the lever. I didn’t let go. As the flames licked my face, I saw Elena. She stood frozen, trembling, her face as white as paper. I woke up in a hospital room. Again. The door opened. Elena walked in first, the click of her heels sharp against the tile. Jonah and my father trailed behind her. “You’re awake? The doctor said you can speak.” Elena looked at me—swathed in bandages like a mummy—with pure annoyance. I didn’t answer. I just watched the ceiling. My father walked to the bedside, his tone softer than usual, but still carrying that lecture-hall cadence. “We’ve decided not to punish you for this stunt. Just recover.” “Don’t be stupid again.” Elena chimed in. “As long as you behave and get along with Jonah, we can go back to how things were.” I forced air through my ravaged throat. “Okay.” Elena looked startled. She searched my eyes for the usual defiance. She glanced at Jonah. Taking the cue, Jonah leaned in and placed a hand on Elena’s chest—intimate, possessive, yet disguised as comfort. Elena didn’t flinch. She let him touch her, her eyes locked on mine, daring me to react. In the past, I would have broken his nose. This time, I turned my head away. “Gavin,” Jonah said, his voice dripping with faux sincerity. “Let’s start over. No more fighting.” He wanted me to snap. I gave him nothing. Elena’s patience evaporated. “What is this attitude? Jonah is talking to you. Are you mute now?” I turned my head back stiffly. The movement tore at the scabs on my neck. Blood seeped through the gauze. I bit down on my tongue. Hard. I clamped my jaw until I felt the muscle sever. I spat the piece of flesh onto the pristine white sheet in front of Elena. Elena screamed, stumbling back in horror. I closed my eyes. 3 “The patient is unstable. No more agitation.” I was wheeled out of surgery. They had reattached my tongue. My parents rushed in. My mother grabbed Elena’s shoulders. “Why is he in the ICU? What happened?” Elena looked at me, the words caught in her throat. “It’s my fault,” Jonah sobbed, wiping tears from his cheeks. “I said something wrong. I upset Gavin, and he… he hurt himself to punish me.” “I should just leave.” He turned to go. Elena grabbed his wrist. “He’s just petty. It has nothing to do with you.” “Gavin,” she hissed at my unconscious form. “I thought you changed. But you just learned new tricks. The pity card? Really?” I stared at her, awake now, unable to smile. “Elena, he almost died,” my mother whispered, teary-eyed. “He wouldn’t go that far just to frame Jonah.” “Mom, this isn’t the first time!” Elena shouted. “Remember the glass in his water? He hates Jonah!” My mother hesitated. Jonah seized the moment, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the bandages from the skin graft. “Don’t yell at Elena, Mrs. Landers. I’ll apologize to Gavin.” Jonah dropped to his knees by my bed. My mother and Elena immediately rushed to pull him up. “Gavin,” my father sighed, heavy with disappointment. “Why do you hate him so much? Why destroy yourself just to hurt him?” I lay there, numb. I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to spend another second in this wretched world. “I had the kitchen make some soup. Your favorite.” Elena walked in with a thermos. She had been coming every day, playing the role of the dutiful wife. Her eyes were calm, her voice soft. For a second, it felt like the old days, before Jonah. She cranked the bed up and sat beside me. “Jonah made this stock for you. Look how much he cares.” “Why can’t you just let go of the prejudice?” The spoon pressed against my lips. Steam hit my face. I smelled the ocean. Clams. Elena kept talking about Jonah’s kindness, preaching forgiveness. She seemed to have forgotten that I was deathly allergic to shellfish. I didn’t refuse. I opened my mouth. Elena smiled, relieved. She fed me, spoonful by spoonful. I felt my throat tighten, my blood vessels dilate. By the time Elena realized I was turning blue, I could no longer breathe. 4 I woke up to blinding white light. Voices argued in the distance. “Elena, I’m so sorry! I forgot Gavin was allergic to seafood!” “I just wanted to make him something rich, to help him heal… I didn’t mean to…” “It was an accident, Jonah. Don’t blame yourself. I should have reminded you.” “Stop crying, Jonah.” A few minutes later, Jonah pushed the door open. Elena and my parents followed. “Gavin, I’m so sorry.” His eyes were red, his voice thick with tears. He cried so hard you’d think I had beaten him. I didn’t react. “Gavin,” Elena sighed, impatient. “It was a mistake. He apologized. Just forgive him.” I opened my eyes heavily. It was comical. Jonah almost killed me, and a simple “oops” was enough. Yet when I once swore at Jonah, they forced me to drink acid because I “needed discipline.” My throat burned. I was curled in agony. But they couldn’t see it. They swarmed around Jonah, comforting him. I rolled my eyes toward him. Every bone in my body ached. Jonah leaned in close, whispering so only I could hear. “Gavin, you’re like a cockroach. You just won’t die.” Looking at his smug face, I summoned the last of my strength and slapped him. It was weak, but it connected. Jonah clutched his face. “If hitting me makes you feel better, Gavin… go ahead.” He leaned his face forward. The next second, my father rushed forward and yanked me off the bed. My healing skin tore open. “You have the energy to hit people? You’re definitely faking it.” I didn’t fight. He dragged me across the floor, leaving a streak of blood. He dragged me to the janitor’s sink in the hallway. He turned on the faucet, grabbed the hose, and aimed it at my face. Ice-cold water blasted into my nose and mouth. I gagged, choking as water filled my lungs. “Still acting? Still framing Jonah?” “I raised a monster!” I coughed, unable to speak. Elena stood there, watching. A flicker of hesitation crossed her face, but she didn’t move. Finally, he pulled me out of the sink. “Did you learn your lesson?” I looked at him. And I smiled. Bloody water dripped from the corners of my mouth. His eyes went cold. “Unrepentant.” He shoved my head back into the bloody water. I didn’t struggle. The cold liquid filled me. My body temperature plummeted. This vessel was done. Ding— [Misery Index: 100/100] [Host is cleared for extraction. Initiating Protocol: Hundredfold Reflection.]

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My boyfriend always had this habit of whispering sweet nothings into my ear after he thought I’d fallen asleep. Little things. Baby. Wifey. I love you so much. I had caught him doing it a few times before, but I was always too exhausted to keep my eyes open, letting the exhaustion pull me under. Tonight, though, I wanted to tease him. I kept my breathing even, feigning sleep. Right on cue, his voice dropped into that low, soulful register. “Sweetheart. I love you the most…” My heart melted into a puddle. I cracked my eyes open, throwing my arms wide to pull him into a massive, suffocating hug. Only to find him staring at the glowing screen of his phone, his thumb holding down the voice memo button on iMessage. 01 My arms hung suspended in the dark. To hug, or not to hug. Time seemed to freeze in our dimly lit bedroom. It would have stayed frozen, too, if Tyler hadn’t suddenly looked up, his eyes going wide with sheer panic. He shoved the phone behind his back so fast I heard his elbow crack against the headboard. His mouth opened and closed, but no actual words came out. Slowly, I retracted my awkward, hovering arms. I shoved down the sudden, violent spike of adrenaline in my chest and forced a painfully calm smile. “Who are you sending voice notes to?” Tyler scooted backward, pressing himself against the wall. “Harper… it’s not what you think…” “Give me the phone.” He let out a hollow, synthetic laugh. “Haha, come on, I was just messing around with the boys!” “I said, give me the phone.” What happened next genuinely blew my mind. In the span of three seconds, Tyler’s expression underwent a masterclass in manipulation. When he looked back up at me, his face was a perfectly calibrated mix of thirty percent innocent, forty percent pathetic, and thirty percent deeply offended. His voice actually trembled when he spoke. “Harper! It’s for my work! Is this really the kind of person you think I am?” I didn’t quite understand the sheer audacity of it, but I was spectacularly awestruck. “Tyler, let’s get one thing straight. You’re the one sexting someone else in our bed. Who exactly gave you the audacity to point the finger at me?” I was so furiously angry that a laugh tore out of my throat. I actually started clapping, offering a slow ovation for his performance. I had to admit, the way the corners of his eyes flushed pink, the way his unshed tears caught the bedside light—he looked beautiful. If he didn’t, I never would have given him the time of day to begin with. He was a D-list TikTok thirst-trap, a guy who built an audience by flexing his abs and looking pretty for the camera. He had slid into my DMs claiming he was “obsessed” with the menswear I designed, asking to borrow a few pieces for a shoot. He borrowed the clothes, and eventually, he borrowed his way into my apartment. I was not a woman who believed in love. But Tyler… Tyler was relentless. He was the Good morning, the Did you eat?, the Goodnight texts. He was the one who always had to send the last message. He remembered Valentine’s Day, our anniversaries, the little mundane milestones, slowly, painstakingly building a glittering illusion of romance around me. And now, with his own hands, he had shattered it. My chest felt like it had been carved out with a rusted spoon, but I have always been fiercely proud. I never believed in it anyway, I told myself. Tyler just slipped up and let the mask drop. He was nothing but a harsh lesson, a cosmic reminder that I was right to never expect anything from love. He was an empty, vacuous thing wrapped in attractive packaging. He was a songbird I kept in a gilded cage, and if the bird couldn’t stay loyal, I simply wouldn’t keep him. I am the one throwing him away. I repeated the mantra in my head, desperately trying to convince myself, but the tears blurred my vision anyway, hot and entirely out of my control. “Harper, please…” Tyler leaned in, trying to use his usual boyish charm to coax me down. Except this time, I took a step back. I dodged him. “I messed up. I swear on my life I’ll never do it again, okay?” I crossed my arms defensively over my chest, staring at him. I let the silence stretch out, heavy and suffocating. Tyler abruptly grabbed the water glass from the nightstand and hurled it onto the hardwood floor. It shattered into a hundred pieces. “Fine! Then let’s break up!” “Done.” My immediate, icy response must have stung his fragile ego. He looked stunned, and then, like a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum, he screamed, “Get the hell out! I never want to see you again!” I rolled my eyes, turned on my heel, and marched out to the living room to pack my bags. As a freelance fashion designer hustling from the ground up, I was constantly flying between coasts, living out of suitcases. I barely spent any time at home. If the post-pandemic industry slowdown hadn’t forced me to take a breather, I never would have been home long enough to discover my boyfriend’s little secret. I didn’t have much unpacked anyway. It took me exactly ten minutes to zip up my duffel bag. But right as my hand hit the front doorknob, I froze. Wait a damn minute. I pay the rent on this apartment! The realization hit me like a freight train, followed instantly by a wave of pure rage. I dropped my bag with a heavy thud and marched right back into the bedroom. When Tyler saw me walk back in, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a smug little smirk. He fully believed I’d changed my mind, that I couldn’t bear to leave him. Once upon a time, I thought his boyish arrogance was somewhat endearing. Now, I just wondered how someone so young could be so utterly repulsive. I mirrored his smile, drew in a deep breath from my diaphragm, and said, “Get the hell out.” 02 The more I compromised, the more I felt like a fool. Standing in the center of my apartment, everywhere I looked, I saw traces of Tyler. Worse, the intrusive thoughts began to spiral: What if, while I was traveling for work, he brought other women back here? Into this bed? I physically recoiled from the mattress. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Ugh! I was so angry. I shouldn’t have just kicked him out; I should have cursed him to hell and back and slapped that smug look off his face! And so, at two in the morning, I found myself rage-cleaning. I was crying, violently scrubbing the counters, and tossing all my bedsheets into the washing machine on the hottest cycle. Work had been practically stagnant lately. Life was already hard enough. Why the hell was I volunteering to suffer over love? “Smart women don’t catch feelings, they catch flights. Single, thriving, and building an empire!” Chanting this newly adopted life motto, I threw a couple of clean sweatshirts over my bare mattress and finally cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I was violently jolted awake by a FaceTime call from my best friend. I had texted her in the middle of the night to tell her I got cheated on. The second she woke up at ten a.m. and saw the message, she called. That’s the thing about true best friends; they show up when your world falls apart. “Hey,” I croaked, my eyes swollen to the size of golf balls. Even through the blur, I could see Blair looking at her screen like she’d just seen a ghost. “Holy shit! Harper, did you get jumped?” “Shut up. I’m mourning the death of my love life, do you mind?” She scoffed. “No, you’re looking at this all wrong. Ending a toxic relationship is a cause for celebration! I told you from day one that Tyler was a walking red flag…” She caught the bleak look on my face and quickly pivoted. “Okay, fine, fine, we can mourn. But I’m taking you to a much better place to do it!” An hour later, standing on the edge of a literal cliff with the wind violently whipping my hair across my face, I realized I didn’t know my best friend at all. When she said she was taking me out for a “plunge,” I assumed she meant that new subterranean speakeasy downtown. Bars. Cocktails. Dim lighting. Because of this assumption, I had spent an hour doing a full beat of makeup and poured myself into a custom-designed, emerald-green silk playsuit. It hugged every curve, the deep v-neck toeing the line between elegant and dangerous. Instead, Blair drove us two hours upstate to a gorge. To go bungee jumping. Cocktails and cliffs. Vastly different dress codes. Blair spent a solid minute looking me up and down. “Well. Thank God you wore shorts.” I knew what she meant—you can’t exactly strap into a harness in a miniskirt—but a few guys in the line next to us still let out low, sleazy chuckles. Instinctively, I whipped my head around to glare at whichever creep was laughing, but my eyes instantly locked onto someone else. He was taller than the rest of the guys in line. The kind of tall that commands a room without trying. He was wearing casual clothes, but as a designer, I understood the architecture of fabric; from the way his shirt draped across his shoulders and chest, I could tell he was built like a god. He had the natural, effortless proportions of a runway model, possessing more raw magnetism than any professional I’d ever dressed. It’s an occupational hazard. When I see a perfect canvas, I stare. Sensing my eyes on him, he looked right back at me. Suddenly, the tips of his ears twitched—the smallest, most imperceptible movement, like a golden retriever spotting its owner. The tiny detail delighted me. The corner of my mouth hooked up into a brazen smirk. He immediately brought a large, long-fingered hand up to cover his right ear, ducking his head slightly as a dark, dusty pink began to spread across his cheekbones. Blair aggressively elbowed my ribs, grinning like a menace. “Oh, he’s a ten. Let me wingman this for you.” Her eyes were practically stripping the poor guy naked. I quickly grabbed her arm and dragged her forward before she could embarrass me further. Unfortunately, the universe has a sick sense of humor. We had paid for a tandem jump because Blair claimed she was too scared to go alone. But the second we stepped onto the metal grating of the platform and she looked down into the gaping chasm below, she dug her heels in. She refused to jump. Almost everyone else was paired up. If I didn’t find a partner, I’d have to take off the harness and do the walk of shame back to the car. The instructor asked the crowd three times if anyone wanted to tandem jump with me. I saw a few of the sleazy guys eyeing me, thankfully held back by their glaring girlfriends. Just as I accepted that I had driven two hours upstate for nothing, the gorgeous guy stepped out of the crowd. “I’ll jump with her.” His voice was a deep, gravelly timbre that went straight to my knees. “Step closer to him!” the instructor barked. “Hold on tight!” 03 The instructor kept yelling at us, but we were standing so rigidly apart you could have driven a Honda Civic between us. Suddenly, Blair planted her hands on my lower back and shoved me forward. I collided hard against his chest. Maybe it was his solid muscle, or maybe it was my own momentum, but we actually bounced off each other for a second before his arms came up. It was a strange, electric sensation. My cheeks felt like they were on fire. Despite being with Tyler for a long time, our physical intimacy had been incredibly sparse. It stemmed from trauma. My mother had gotten pregnant with me out of wedlock before marrying my father, and she spent my entire childhood enduring the subtle, biting contempt of his family. Because of that environment, I grew up with a deep-seated, psychological aversion to letting men touch me. Tyler had tried, of course. He would put on the tacky lingerie sets he modeled online and parade around the bedroom. But all I could ever think about was how the stitching was uneven, how the structural integrity of the garment failed to support the torso, and how the fabric choice was cheap. I had worried about frustrating him. I had even quietly resolved to finally sleep with him next month for his birthday, and then… Thinking about it now, a bitter laugh bubbled up in my throat. Tyler wasn’t exactly suffering in my absence. He clearly had plenty of other girls keeping his bed warm. Suddenly, two massive hands gripped my waist. He pulled me flush against his body. He’s so hot. Literally. He felt like a furnace. Before I could process it, gravity vanished. We plummeted. I always thought I wasn’t afraid of dying. I thought I was cynical enough to accept the end. But as the wind ripped the air from my lungs, every biological instinct screamed, Survive! Fueled by sheer terror, I locked my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest, clinging to him like if I pressed hard enough, I could fuse my skeleton with his and somehow be safer. A bungee jump only lasts a few seconds, but when you’re in freefall, time dilates into a terrifying eternity. Every time the cord snapped taut and we rebounded, I felt the heavy thud of his chest and heard a low, muffled groan rumble in his throat. I was mortified, but I was way too terrified to let go. Realizing he was making noise, he bit down hard on his lower lip to stifle it. Seeing his lips bruised to a dark, flush red made my face burn even hotter. When we were finally hauled back up, I had to sit on a nearby bench for ten minutes just to stop my legs from shaking. My jumping partner had vanished the second our boots touched solid ground. Damn. I should have asked for his Instagram, I thought, a wave of disappointment washing over me. I slapped both hands against my cheeks. Pull it together, Harper. What the hell is wrong with you today? A cold bottle of water suddenly appeared in my line of sight. I traced the arm holding it all the way up to his perfectly sculpted face. “Thank you,” I said softly. I took the water, noticing the cap had already been cracked open for me. I took a small sip, then pressed the condensation-covered plastic against my burning cheek. It was too hot out here. “Let me get your Venmo. I’ll pay you back for this,” I said, mustering my courage. “Everything at these tourist traps is a rip-off.” He froze, looking at me like a deer in headlights, before frantically waving his hands. “No, no, it’s not expensive! I can afford it.” His panicked desperation to assure me he wasn’t broke was equally endearing and frustrating. I blinked, then let out a soft laugh. Sometimes, men used awkwardness as a shield. He clearly knew I was trying to get his contact info and was politely shutting me down. He probably had a girlfriend and didn’t want the drama. Thinking about that, my crush on him deepened a little, even as my heart sank. There were genuinely good men in the world; my mother and I just had the rotten luck of never running into them. Blair finally came bounding over, looking entirely too pleased with herself as she unzipped her massive backpack. It was packed with craft beers and heavy snacks. No wonder she had complained about it weighing a ton when I offered to carry it earlier. “Are we having a picnic, Blair? Seriously?” I asked through gritted teeth. She ignored my murderous glare and immediately turned her aggressive friendliness onto the guy. “It’s way too heavy to hike back down with! Harper, you know how kind I am, I’m just forcing us to drink it to save your back. Come on, handsome, sit with us!” I fully expected him to make an excuse and leave. Instead, he stood there, genuinely contemplating it, before nodding seriously. “It is too heavy to carry back.” I’m usually a happy drunk. The only problem is that alcohol destroys my verbal filter. Three beers in, I completely forgot there was a stranger sitting with us. The fresh memory of Tyler’s betrayal came crashing down, and the floodgates opened. I ended up burying my face in Blair’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. “Blair, is this karma? Did I reject too many guys in college? Was I too mean? Is that why the universe cursed me with a walking red flag the second I graduated?” Blair patted my back, looking at me with a mix of pity and exasperation. “I told you to be nicer. You could have just strung a few along for the ego boost, like everyone else does! College is supposed to be fun, but you chose to be a nun. Who are you blaming now?” “Wait. You didn’t have a boyfriend in college?” A deep, quiet voice cut through my tears. I sniffled, pulling back to look at his face. Through my blurry, tear-filled vision, I gave him a deeply serious answer. “No!” 04 A sudden, striking light flared in his eyes. “You didn’t?” he murmured to himself. “Wait a minute,” Blair interjected, zeroing in on him. “Why would you assume she had a boyfriend in college?” He stared at me for a long time. His eyes were dark, unreadable, and intensely focused. I tilted my head, waiting for his answer. Finally, a slow, devastating smile broke across his face. “Just a guess.” Oh, God. My heart skipped a violent beat. It was a genuine, unguarded smile. It transformed his already perfect face, making the sharp angles softer. The slight curve of his eyes made him look boyish and incredibly warm. It felt like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Staring at beautiful men was clearly good for the soul. I felt spiritually cleansed. Halfway through the afternoon, Blair wandered off to find a bathroom. When ten minutes passed and she hadn’t returned, I got anxious and decided to go look for her. My face was still warm from the alcohol, but I wasn’t drunk anymore. I was lingering in that pleasant, hazy space between tipsy and entirely lucid. “Do you want me to come with you?” He started to stand up, concern etching his brow. I was fast. Before he could fully rise, I planted a hand firmly on his shoulder, pressing him back onto the picnic blanket. I told him to stay and guard the bags. It was weird. This was the first time we’d ever met, but there was an inexplicable familiarity to him. I didn’t even know his name yet, but my intuition screamed that he was the safest person on this mountain. I shook my head, marveling at how strange human connection was. You can see someone every day for years and feel miles apart, or you can meet a stranger and feel like you’ve known them for a lifetime. It was a shame I hadn’t met him sooner. The dirt trails leading into the woods were uneven and rocky. I slipped my expensive heels off, carrying them by the straps, and walked barefoot against the cool earth. I swayed slightly, taking deep breaths of the pine-scented air. With every exhale, it felt like the heavy knot of grief in my chest was loosening. Cell service in the mountains was practically nonexistent. I walked for ten minutes and couldn’t find the bathrooms. When I realized the path was getting narrower and the crowds had completely disappeared, a spike of anxiety hit me. I had wandered off the main trail. I spun around to head back. But as I rounded a bend, three men stepped out from the trees, blocking my path. The leader had bleached blonde hair and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the deep cut of my silk playsuit. “You lost, sweetheart? Want us to escort you back?” He reached a hand out toward my arm. I took a sharp step back, forcing my voice to stay level. “No. Thank you.” I kept my eyes pinned to the dirt, trying to sidestep them, but they shifted, forming a wall. “Hahaha! Did you hear that, boys? She’s got manners!” “Since you already thanked us, it’d be rude not to show you a good time, right?” The greasy, predatory grins on their faces made my stomach violently turn. Bile rose in my throat. Stay calm. Stay calm. Without breaking eye contact, I slid my hand behind my back and rapidly pressed the emergency SOS button on my iPhone. Then, I held out my phone and the gold watch on my wrist. I prayed this was just a mugging. I forced a tight, placating smile. “Take this. Consider it a gift. I won’t go to the cops, just let me walk past. Please.” The two guys in the back looked at the watch, hesitating, but the blonde leader’s eyes never left my chest. He spat his cigarette onto the dirt. “I have never seen a girl built like this in my life. I wouldn’t care if I died tomorrow, I’m taking this today.” The pure malice in his voice stripped away any illusion of safety. The hesitation in the other men vanished, replaced by the same sick, hungry look in their leader’s eyes. The situation was critical. I instantly changed tactics. I dropped my hands, adopting a shy, submissive posture, and softly suggested that just the blonde guy take me into the denser trees. His ego was massive. He genuinely believed his raw magnetism had won me over. He grinned ear to ear, waving off the grumbles of his friends. I picked him for two reasons: he was the most distracted by his own lust, and he was the skinniest and shortest of the three. Against him, I actually had a fighting chance. We walked deeper into the woods. At first, he was patient. But soon, his hands started reaching for me. I pushed his chest back. “I have HIV!” I blurted out, praying it would kill the mood. Instead, the adrenaline seemed to make him crazier. He laughed, a high, unhinged sound. “HIV? Let me give you an exam, then!” He lunged forward to rip my playsuit. In a split second, I swung the heel of my shoe with everything I had, smashing it squarely into the bridge of his nose, and bolted. “Fuck! You dead bitch! I’m going to kill you!” The sound of his screaming alerted the other two. Heavy footsteps crashed through the brush behind me. I ran like I had never run in my life. Sharp rocks and dead branches slashed at my bare feet, but I didn’t feel it. My brain shut down every system except one: Run! The wind roared in my ears, but the heavy thud of their boots was gaining on me. Suddenly, through the trees, I heard voices! The main trail was right above the embankment! Just make it up the hill. Just make it up the hill and you’re safe! My hand reached out for the dirt ledge— And a heavy hand locked around my ankle. “Help—!”

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The company was selling for two million dollars, and I was the absolute last person to find out. That morning, I went to work just like any other day. But when I pushed open the glass door to the conference room, it was packed. Carter Prescott sat at the head of the long mahogany table, flanked by three strangers in impeccably tailored suits. When he saw me, a micro-expression flickered across his eyes. A sudden, nervous shifting of the tectonic plates beneath his polished exterior. “Tessa, could you hold off on whatever you’re doing? We won’t be needing you in here.” I froze in the doorway. Splayed open on the center of the table was a thick legal document. I was only close enough to make out the bolded header at the top of the page. Letter of Intent for Equity Acquisition. 1. My name is Tessa Gallagher, and I am twenty-nine years old. Three years ago, I was a junior accountant at a no-name firm, pulling in maybe four thousand dollars a month. I rented a cramped, drafty apartment and spent two hours every day staring at the bleak tunnel walls of the L train commute. Carter Prescott was an older guy from my college. He had graduated four years ahead of me—a former frat president, the charismatic golden boy everyone assumed was destined to conquer the corporate world. We weren’t close. After graduation, we occasionally exchanged pleasantries in the alumni Facebook group. Nothing more. Until one night, three years ago, when he asked me out to dinner out of the blue. “Tessa, I’m launching a startup. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce,” he said, casually swirling his bourbon. The ice clinked against the glass, a sharp, confident sound. “You’re a numbers girl. You want in?” I blinked, taken aback. “Carter, I… I don’t know the first thing about e-commerce.” “You don’t need to.” He offered a brilliant, disarming smile. “You manage the money, I manage the business. We go fifty-fifty.” Fifty-fifty. Those two words dropped like heavy stones into the stagnant pond of my life. I was in a dark place back then. I had just gone through a brutal breakup, my job was a dead-end spreadsheet nightmare, and I was walking through my days in a gray, numbing fog, wondering if this was all life had to offer. Carter’s words felt like a lifeline. A blinding beam of light. “I don’t have much capital, Carter,” I admitted, my voice small. “How much do you have?” “In savings? Maybe… fifteen grand.” He nodded slowly. “Not enough. Seed capital needs to be at least two hundred thousand.” My heart plummeted into my stomach. “But—” He leaned across the table, his eyes locked on mine. “I’ll put up a hundred, and you put up a hundred. Whatever you’re short, maybe you can borrow from your folks.” Borrow from my folks. My parents were blue-collar workers. They had spent their entire lives scraping by, clipping coupons, putting away whatever meager dollars they could. And yet, my heart was racing. Fifty-fifty. My own boss. A chance to completely rewrite the trajectory of my life. Those phrases echoed in my skull all night, keeping me wide awake. The next morning, I called my mother. “Mom, I want to start a business.” The line was quiet for a long, agonizing stretch. “How much do you need?” “…A hundred thousand.” She didn’t yell. She didn’t interrogate me. A week later, the funds cleared into my checking account. Only much later did I learn the anatomy of that money. It was their entire retirement fund. It was loans begged from skeptical aunts and uncles. It was a second mortgage taken out on the small, vinyl-sided house I grew up in. A hundred thousand dollars. My parents had never seen that much money in their entire lives. They placed it in my hands. And I placed it in Carter’s. The day we signed the paperwork, Carter took me to an upscale steakhouse to celebrate. “Come on, Tessa. Drink up! To our partnership!” I was a lightweight, but I was riding such a high that night. Every time he raised his glass to me, I drank. One glass. Two. Three. The rest of the evening blurred at the edges, smudged like wet ink. I only remember him sliding a stack of stapled papers across the white tablecloth. “Just sign here. It’s just a formality.” I squinted at the pages. The dense, microscopic legalese swam before my eyes under the dim, moody restaurant lighting. “What is this exactly…?” “The equity agreement.” He practically placed the heavy, gold-trimmed pen into my fingers. “See right there? Your hundred grand buys fifty percent. It’s all spelled out in black and white.” I took the pen. I signed my name. He smiled, a wide, triumphant thing, slipping the papers back into his leather briefcase before clapping a warm hand on my shoulder. “From today on, Tessa, we’re partners.” Partners. I believed that word with my whole soul for three years. Getting the company off the ground was a nightmare. We leased a tiny, windowless six-hundred-square-foot office that baked in the July heat and felt like a meat locker in January. Carter handled the sourcing and client relations; I ran the finances, the payroll, the inventory logs. Along with two part-time customer service reps, we were the entire operation. I arrived at eight in the morning and rarely saw the outside of the building before midnight. My salary? Zero. Carter had told me, “We’re in the trenches right now. We shouldn’t pull salaries until we’re safely in the black.” It made sense to me. It was my company, too. The exhaustion would pay off. The blood and sweat were investments. In our first year, we bled thirty thousand dollars. Carter was a wreck, pacing the floor, pulling his hair out, fueled by black coffee and sheer panic. “Tessa, how much runway do we have left?” “Less than forty grand in the operating account.” He lit a cigarette right there in the office, staring at me through the blue smoke. “Do you have any personal cash left?” I hesitated. “I… I have a little.” It was a downpayment I had been secretly saving for a modest condo. Thirty thousand dollars. “Could you float it to the company?” He stubbed the cigarette out violently. “Just as a bridge loan. Once we bounce back, I’ll pay you back double.” I didn’t answer right away. “Tessa, I know I have no right to ask this.” He sighed, running a hand over his face, looking older, broken. “But we are partners. If this ship sinks, we both drown.” Partners. There was that word again. The next morning, I wired thirty thousand dollars into the corporate account. Carter texted me: “Thank you. I owe you. I won’t forget this.” I won’t forget this. I believed him. In year two, we finally hit profitability. In year three, our revenue tripled. At the beginning of this year, Carter pulled me aside and mentioned, offhand, that a larger conglomerate was sniffing around, looking to acquire us. “How much are they offering?” I asked, my pulse quickening. “Still hashing out the details.” He gave me a sly, conspiratorial grin. “But it won’t be a small number, I promise you that.” I thought the golden days had finally arrived. I thought three years of relentless, grinding sacrifice were about to bear fruit. I thought— Until today. Standing in the doorway of the conference room, staring at the letter of intent. Two million dollars. The company was worth two million. I put in a hundred thousand for fifty percent. My cut should be one million dollars. Plus the thirty thousand bridge loan. One million, thirty thousand dollars. I could finally pay my parents back. I could clear their mortgage. I could buy that condo. I could breathe. But the way Carter was looking at me—his eyes cold, flat, devoid of the warmth he usually weaponized—made the hairs on my arms stand up. “Tessa, wait outside,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had the sharp, unforgiving edge of a guillotine. I stood rooted to the carpet. I didn’t move. “Outside.” I looked at him. I looked at the three men in suits. I looked at the papers on the table. “Carter, I’m a shareholder. Why am I being excluded from this meeting?” The room went dead silent for one agonizing second. Carter laughed. It was a strange, hollow sound. The kind of laugh you’d give a toddler who just said something absurdly naive. “A shareholder?” He pushed his chair back and stood up, walking slowly toward me. “Tessa, since when were you a shareholder?” 2. The words didn’t compute. My brain refused to process the syllables. “Carter, what did you just say?” He sighed, a heavy, performative exhalation of patience, like he was dealing with a difficult child. “The boardroom isn’t the place for this. My office. Now.” He turned, offered a slick apology to the suits, and practically herded me down the hallway. My mind was a violent storm of static. Since when were you a shareholder? Three years ago, he said it to my face. Fifty-fifty. I put up the cash. I signed the contract. I— “Sit.” Carter’s corner office was ten times the size of our original freezing room. Genuine leather sofas. A massive oak desk. Floor-to-ceiling windows framing the jagged, beautiful Chicago skyline. Half of this belonged to me. Didn’t it? I sat down, my knees shaking slightly, and looked up at him. “Carter, the company is being acquired. Why was I kept in the dark?” “It’s strictly confidential business information.” “I am an equity partner.” Carter opened a sleek mahogany drawer and pulled out a manila folder, dropping it onto the desk in front of me. “Read it yourself.” My fingers trembled as I flipped the cover open. Inside was a contract. My name. My signature. But the title at the top of the page— “A Promissory Note?” My voice cracked, fragile and thin in the vast, quiet room. The black ink was damning. It clearly stated: Tessa Gallagher loans Carter Prescott the sum of $100,000, at an annual interest rate of 6%, for a term of three years. What loan? I signed an equity agreement! “Carter, this is wrong. I signed an operating agreement. One hundred thousand for fifty percent equity—” “Read it again. Carefully,” he said, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. I stared at the paper, reading word by agonizing word. Borrower: Carter Prescott. Lender: Tessa Gallagher. Principal Amount: $100,000. Term: 36 Months. Interest: 6% APR. Repayment: Lump sum of principal and accrued interest at maturity. At the very bottom, my signature. It was my handwriting. Unmistakable. But I remembered… The memory crashed into me like a physical blow. The steakhouse. The clinking glasses. The toasts. The alcohol softening the edges of the room. He had pushed the papers toward me. Just sign here. It’s just a formality. I had squinted at the dense text, the letters swaying under the dim lights… “Coming back to you?” Carter’s voice pulled me out of the flashback. I looked up at him, my vision blurring with hot, furious tears. “You set me up.” “What do you mean, set you up?” He leaned back in his plush executive chair, crossing his legs casually. “It’s right there in black and white. You signed it yourself. How is that a setup?” “You got me drunk—” “I bought you dinner. You drank of your own free will. Is that my fault?” “You told me it was an equity agreement—” “It doesn’t matter what I said, Tessa. It matters what’s in the contract.” He smiled, a tight, patronizing smirk, like a professor lecturing a freshman who had failed an open-book exam. “You’re an accountant, Tessa. You work in finance. You of all people should know to read a contract before you put your name on it. That’s just basic common sense, isn’t it?” Ice flooded my veins. Three years. Three entire years of my youth. I thought I was an owner. I was just a creditor. I thought we were partners. I was just unpaid labor. I thought… “You—” I opened my mouth, but the words withered in my throat. A massive, suffocating lump formed, choking off my air. Carter picked up a silver pen from his desk and twirled it between his fingers. “Alright, glad we cleared that up. A hundred grand principal, plus three years of six percent interest. That comes out to $118,000. I’ll cut you a check for every last cent.” A hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. I gave him a hundred grand, poured three years of my blood and sanity into this place, and I was walking away with eighteen thousand dollars in “profit.” While he was pocketing two million dollars. And keeping all of it. “What about the thirty thousand?” My voice sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “What thirty thousand?” “Our first year. We almost went under. I gave the company thirty thousand dollars.” “Ah, right. That thirty grand.” He nodded slowly. “I remember. I drafted a note for that one, too.” He opened another drawer and pulled out a second sheet of paper. Borrower: The Company. Lender: Tessa Gallagher. Principal: $30,000. Term: 12 Months. Interest: 5%. Twelve months? That had expired two years ago. “The company already paid that back.” “What? No, I never received—” “It was wired to your personal account. Check your bank app.” With trembling, clumsy fingers, I pulled out my phone. I opened my banking app, scrolling furiously back through the digital archives to two years ago. There it was. Incoming Transfer: $31,500. Memo: Loan Repayment. I had absolutely no memory of seeing it. Back then, I was managing hundreds of incoming and outgoing transactions a day for the business. I was so exhausted I was practically sleepwalking. I never even checked my personal balances… “See?” Carter stood up, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning his back to me. “Tessa, because we go way back, because we’re alumni, I calculated the interest perfectly. Down to the penny. If you were anyone else, I would have found a way to bleed you dry.” He turned back to face me, his silhouette framed by the blinding city sky. “What more do you want?” I sat there, my entire body vibrating. It wasn’t the cold. It was pure, unadulterated rage. Three years. I hadn’t taken a single vacation day. I hadn’t received a single paycheck. I had bet my parents’ retirement, the kindness of my relatives, and my childhood home on this company. And him? He was walking away with two million dollars, without tossing me a single crumb. He called me a creditor. He said black and white. He said— “Carter.” My voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. “Where is my salary for the last three years?” “What salary?” “I worked here for three years. Full-time. I never took a dime.” “You agreed to that. You said we shouldn’t pull salaries until we were established.” “Did you pull a salary?” Carter flinched. Just barely. “I’m the CEO—” “How much did you pay yourself?” “That’s confidential corporate—” “I did the books, Carter. You cut yourself five thousand dollars a month.” I stood up, locking eyes with him. “Three years. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars. And that’s not counting your ‘business expenses,’ the luxury dinners, the consulting fees, the mileage.” “You—” “If I wasn’t an owner, if I wasn’t a partner, why the hell did you get a salary and I didn’t?” Carter’s face hardened, the charming mask finally slipping to reveal the ugliness underneath. “Don’t push your luck, Tessa.” “I’m pushing my luck?” I took a step toward him. “You trick me into signing a loan, you steal my equity, you work me like a dog for free for three years, and I’m pushing my luck?” “Trick you? Where’s your proof?” He closed the distance between us, towering over me, looking down his nose. “Let me teach you a lesson about the real world, Tessa. Without proof, it never happened.” “You said fifty-fifty—” “Hearsay.” “You said we were partners—” “Not on the paper.” “You handed it to me and called it an equity agreement—” “You didn’t read it. Whose fault is that?” With every word, an icy anchor dragged my heart deeper into the abyss. He was right. I had no proof. I didn’t record him. I had no text messages confirming the split. I had no witnesses. All I had was a legally binding promissory note with my signature on it. And a shattered, foolish heart. “Get out.” Carter walked over and pulled the heavy oak door open. “I’ll wire the $118,000 next week. Take the money, and don’t ever come back here.” I stood frozen in the center of the room. “Unless—” He let out a dark, mocking chuckle. “You want to sue me?” Sue him. Could I win? He had the contracts. He had the bank statements. He had the “black and white.” What did I have? “Tessa, because you did me a solid in the early days, I’ll give you one last piece of advice.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a harsh, condescending whisper. “You were a community college transfer. If I hadn’t dragged you up with me, do you really think you’d be sitting in a high-rise right now? Know your place. Take the cash and walk away. It’s better for everyone.” Community college transfer. Dragged you up. Know your place. The words slid into my ribs like a switchblade. I turned on my heel and walked out of his office. I didn’t look back. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But I knew one thing with absolute, terrifying clarity. This wasn’t over. 3. It was nine o’clock at night by the time I unlocked the door to my apartment. I didn’t turn on the lights. I just collapsed onto the sofa, staring blankly up at the popcorn ceiling, letting the silence press against my eardrums. One image kept playing in my head on a torturous loop. Carter pushing that contract across the white tablecloth, his pearly smile glinting. “Black and white.” I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to mentally rewind to that night three years ago. The restaurant. The private booth. The low, amber lighting. He kept pouring the wine. “Come on, Tessa, to our partnership. Drink up.” “Carter, I really shouldn’t have more…” “Nonsense, we’re celebrating! Just a sip.” One glass. Two glasses. Three. My memory was hazy, fractured. He slid the papers across the table. “Just sign here. It’s just a formality.” “What is this…?” “The equity agreement. Look, a hundred grand gets you fifty percent.” I had taken the pen. But had I actually read it? The letters had been a blurry swarm of black ants. All I registered were the numbers “$100,000” and “50%”… My eyes snapped open in the dark. Wait. He had said the words “equity agreement.” He had said “50%.” But what was actually printed on that specific piece of paper I signed? I scrambled off the couch, tearing into my bedroom closet, pulling out the fireproof lockbox where I kept my copies of the paperwork. I found the file. Promissory Note. Black and white. But if the paper in my hand was a promissory note, what happened to the “equity agreement” he kept talking about? Staring at the crisp legal document, a sickening realization washed over me. What if there never was an equity agreement? What if he had planned to defraud me from the very first dinner? My phone buzzed on the nightstand, jarring me. Mom. I stared at the glowing screen, my throat constricting. I didn’t know how to speak to her. “Hey, Mom,” I managed to croak. “Did you eat?” “How are things at the office?” she chirped, completely bypassing the small talk. “Carter told me the company is getting acquired! Does that mean you get a big payout?” The blood drained from my face. “Mom… how do you know about the acquisition?” “Carter told me! He called me a couple of days ago to thank me again for supporting your startup.” Carter called my mother? “What… what exactly did he say?” “He said the business is doing incredible, and it’s all thanks to your hard work. He told me not to worry about a thing. He said once the sale goes through, you’re going to get a massive payday, and we can finally pay off the mortgage on the house.” My hand gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. He called my mother to tell her I was getting a payout. While planning to look me dead in the eye and tell me I was nothing but a creditor. What the hell was he playing at? “Tessa? Honey, are you there?” “I’m here… Mom, I have to go. Something came up at work.” I hung up the phone and sank to the floor, my back against the bedframe. Why would he call my mother?

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “391767”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When the adopted golden boy discovered I was the actual biological heir, he left a cynical little memoir titled The Stand-In’s Guide to High Society on my bed and caught the next flight to Europe. He claimed he needed to “find the meaning of life.” What he really meant was that he was leaving me to fulfill his contractual obligation—marrying into the Sinclair dynasty. My biological parents, too terrified to discipline the boy they’d raised as their own, simply yanked me out of the working-class diner I’d grown up in. They spent an exorbitant amount of money on etiquette coaches to scrub the blue-collar off me in a month, just in time to hand me over as the sacrificial lamb for the Sinclair corporate merger. Ten years later, having bled the world dry of its thrills, the golden boy returned. He was just as reckless and radiant as he was a decade ago. He walked right up to thirty-two-year-old Valerie Sinclair and handed her a glass jar filled with sand. “Every grain in here is a moment I spent missing you,” he whispered. I watched Valerie’s spine turn to steel, her entire body rigid. Then, Tristan turned his blinding, confident smile toward me. “I’m back. You can clock out now, understudy.” When Tristan left ten years ago, twenty-two-year-old Valerie Sinclair had lost half her soul. I couldn’t help but wonder. How would the cold, ruthless, notoriously bloodthirsty CEO of Sinclair Enterprises react to him now? 1 Valerie tossed the jar of sand onto the passenger seat without a second glance. Taking the cue, I opened the rear door and slid into the back. Valerie froze, her hand hovering over the door handle. “What are you doing?” I knew exactly what she was asking. It was a silent language we had forged over ten years of surviving the trenches together. “We had an agreement when we got married,” I said evenly, looking out the tinted window. “I told you I would never delude myself into thinking I could take Tristan’s place.” A decade ago, Tristan vanished on the eve of the engagement. Panicked, my biological parents dragged me out of obscurity, hastily introduced me to society, and shoved me down the aisle to save the merger. On our wedding night, Valerie drank herself into oblivion. She spent the entire night curled on the bathroom floor, sobbing Tristan’s name into the tiles. Over the next ten years, while Tristan was dancing at luaus in Hawaii, I was swallowing my pride, playing the submissive husband to appease her wicked stepmother. While Tristan was taking selfies with penguins in Antarctica, I was drinking myself into a bleeding ulcer at corporate dinners to secure the first major contract for her new subsidiary. He chased the Northern Lights. He watched sunsets over the Serengeti. I, meanwhile, navigated the lethal crossfire of the Sinclair family succession wars. In the process, I lost our first unborn child. Then our second. I even had a kidnapper’s blade pressed so hard against my throat it left a silver scar. Tristan got ten years of unbridled freedom, and now he had the audacity to waltz back in and tell me to pack my bags. He always wanted the fruit without planting the tree. What gave him the right? Valerie’s lips parted at my words. “Cole, actually, we…” Before she could finish the sentence, her phone rang. Tristan’s name lit up the dashboard console. The Bluetooth was connected. Valerie tapped the screen to answer. “Val,” Tristan’s voice filled the quiet of the luxury sedan, breathless and practically vibrating with shy excitement. “Mom and Dad said you guys still don’t have kids.” A pause. “Is it… is it because you were waiting for me?” “Tristan, what on earth are you talking about!” My mother’s voice panicked in the background, trying to snatch the phone. The topic of children was a graveyard in my mind. A permanent, suffocating taboo. When Valerie was twenty-five, she got pregnant for the first time. Her stepmother had her prenatal vitamins swapped with abortifacients. At twenty-eight, she got pregnant again. I was paranoid. I guarded her like a hawk, keeping her isolated and safe until the six-month mark. But somehow, a slow-acting toxin made its way into her system. The baby’s heart simply stopped beating. The day they induced labor to deliver our stillborn, I collapsed in the sterile hospital room, screaming until my vocal cords tore. Valerie had held me on that linoleum floor, her tears soaking my hospital gown, swearing on her life that she would never let anyone hurt us again. And she kept her word. In three years, she orchestrated a corporate massacre, exiling her stepmother and half-sister, seizing total control of the Sinclair empire. This year, at thirty-two, she was named the country’s top CEO. In her first major broadcast interview, she looked right into the camera and offered a polite, sanitized expression of gratitude for my “unwavering support.” A week after that interview aired, Tristan came home. In the rearview mirror, Valerie saw the color drain from my face. She jammed her finger against the screen, killing the call. “Cole,” she started, her voice tight. “Tristan doesn’t know what happened during those ten years. Don’t take it to heart.” “He’s always been sheltered,” she continued, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “He speaks without thinking. He’s just impulsive…” “Enough,” I snapped, the exhaustion settling deep into my bones. “Since when does the ruthless Valerie Sinclair stumble over her words?” I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Look at you… bending over backward to make excuses for a grown man.” Valerie’s jaw clenched. She swerved the car violently, throwing it into park on the shoulder of the road. “Cole. Are you still punishing me for what happened back then?” 2 During our first year of marriage, Valerie’s half-sister suddenly broke out in severe hives. Diane, Valerie’s stepmother, immediately pointed the finger at me, claiming I had snuck peanut oil into the kitchen’s baking supplies. Diane’s private security detail dragged me into the foyer. They forced me to my knees on the cold marble floor. I looked up at Valerie. I pleaded with my eyes. She had been with me the entire afternoon; she knew with absolute certainty that I was innocent. But Valerie just stood there, staring at the floor, absolutely silent. That day, two overgrown thugs slapped me across the face twenty times. By the time they were done, my mouth was pooling with blood, my vision swimming, my cheeks swollen and bruised purple. When we finally returned to our bedroom, Valerie handed me two ice packs, her eyes brimming with guilt. “The timing isn’t right yet to strike back. I hope you can understand.” Understand. That single word forced me to swallow a mouthful of blood and humiliation. Later that night, the throbbing pain woke me. I padded downstairs to the kitchen for more ice. That’s when I heard Valerie on the phone in the study. “Thank God it wasn’t Tristan… he wouldn’t have been able to handle it.” I froze in the dark hallway. The idea that love could be cultivated, that shared trauma forged an unbreakable bond—what a pathetic, laughable delusion. To this day, Valerie had no idea I heard her say that. Now, stinging from my sarcasm in the car, she stepped out onto the asphalt, running a frustrated hand through her hair. Right on cue, Tristan called again. She answered, but in her flustered state, she forgot to switch off the Bluetooth. Trapped in the backseat, I was forced to listen to Tristan’s sickeningly sweet voice in surround sound. “Val… can you come over and keep me company tonight?” She scrambled to kill the audio. Through the tinted glass, I watched Valerie pacing on the shoulder of the road, phone pressed to her ear, kicking at loose gravel. That nervous, frantic energy—she looked exactly like the lovesick twenty-two-year-old girl I met a decade ago. So this was the power of the ghost of her first love. It reduced a titan of industry to a blushing teenager. Ten minutes later, she climbed back into the driver’s seat, looking drained. “Cole, I’m going to drop you off at the house first.” “Tonight, I might need to…” “Save it,” I cut her off, my voice like ice. I really didn’t want to hear whatever garbage excuse she was about to invent to go see him. Realizing my tone was slipping, I took a breath and forced a mask of indifference. “You’re the CEO, Valerie. You don’t have to report to your subordinates.” The cold, corporate distance in my voice wasn’t lost on her. She slammed the palm of her hand against the steering wheel. “Cole, you have spent ten years building walls against me. Are you really that desperate to draw a line in the sand the second things get complicated?” It was comical, really. She was the one dancing on the borders of our marriage, yet she was casting me as the villain. I turned my head toward the window, fiercely swallowing the lump of emotion rising in my throat. If there was one thing ten years in this viper’s nest had taught me, it was that you can lose the battle, but you never lose your dignity. While the silence in the car thickened, my mother called. “Cole, sweetheart,” Helen’s voice was cloying. “Your father and I aren’t very good with words, so we had to ask Valerie to come over and help talk Tristan off the ledge.” “Can you just give your brother a little grace? He’s still young. He’ll understand eventually.” I scoffed. It was genuinely absurd. Thirty years old, and he’s still a child? Then why, ten years ago, when they were shoving me into this arranged marriage, did they tell me: “You’re a grown man now, Cole. It’s time you learned to shoulder the family’s burdens.” When I spoke, my voice was dead. “Mom. It’s comforting to know that you and Dad haven’t changed a bit. Still bending over backward to wipe Tristan’s messes.” “Though, I have to admit, your tone is a lot gentler than it used to be.” I was eighteen when they tracked me down and brought me back to the Prescott estate. But Tristan couldn’t tolerate my existence. He framed me, repeatedly. His tactics were sloppy, almost childish, but my biological parents chose to believe him every single time. The final straw was when he threw himself down a flight of stairs and claimed I pushed him. My father didn’t ask a single question before he backhanded me across the face. My mother wept, calling me vicious, screaming that they never should have brought the trash out of the gutters. Without asking what I wanted, they packed my bags and exiled me back to my adoptive mother’s diner. It wasn’t until their precious Tristan ran away from his wedding that they remembered their real son was available for emergency use. Looking back, my actual time living as a member of their family amounted to little more than a year. “Cole, do you really hate us that much?” my mother asked, sounding genuinely shocked. Her question stunned me. I thought my utter apathy toward them was glaringly obvious. Had a decade of peace without Tristan really caused them to forget who did what to whom? 3 Valerie didn’t come home that night. I wasn’t surprised. My head throbbed relentlessly until dawn as I sat in the dark, drafting a divorce agreement that finally felt fair. Switched at birth, dragged into high society, discarded like trash, then blackmailed into marriage… I never had a choice in my own life. At the very least, checking out of this marriage could be my decision. At 9:00 AM, Valerie called. “About last night…” “Val, come eat! I made your eggs exactly how you like them.” Tristan’s voice drifted through the receiver, close enough to make my stomach turn. “I’m not interested,” I interrupted, my tone flat. I had imagined a hundred different scenarios of what their “last night” entailed, and I didn’t want to hear a single one confirmed. “Cole, do you have to be this cold?” I stayed silent, letting the dead air hang. Through the line, I heard Tristan step closer to the phone. “Val, don’t fight with him.” “If my brother really can’t stand the sight of me, I can just leave for another ten years.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Valerie said softly, her voice laced with comfort. Then, directing her words back to the phone: “There’s a Prescott family dinner in a few hours. I want you there.” “You have to come, Cole!” Tristan shouted in the background, his voice practically singing with triumph. I hung up. My grip on the phone was tight enough to crack the screen. Go? Of course I’m going. They were my parents, my wife. What the hell did I have to be afraid of? Two hours later, draped in bespoke Tom Ford, I walked into the Prescott family estate like I owned it. I found Tristan sitting cross-legged on the plush sofa, barefoot, wearing silk pajamas with his hair perfectly tousled. He was holding a stack of glossy photographs, animatedly describing his worldly adventures to the three people hanging onto his every word. When Tristan saw me, he paused. Then, he covered his mouth and let out a bright, mocking laugh. “Cole, it’s just a family lunch. Why are you dressed in full battle armor?” “Don’t tell me you’re so insecure you feel the need to compete with me over Sunday brunch?” I stopped in my tracks. My fingers twitched, curling into fists at my sides. But I forced the corners of my mouth up into a condescending smirk. “Well, seeing as you spent at least forty minutes blending your tinted moisturizer this morning, someone is clearly competing.” “I’m not like you, Tristan. If a paparazzo snaps a photo of me looking like I just rolled out of a frat house, Sinclair Enterprises’ stock takes a hit.” “You—!” Tristan shot up from the sofa. His eyes instantly went red, tears welling up with practiced precision. “You’re nothing but a thief who stole my life while I was gone! How dare you stand there and flaunt it?” Hearing the word thief fall from the lips of the fake son was the height of black comedy. I glanced at my biological parents, who looked utterly paralyzed, and let out a genuine, booming laugh. “A thief? Let’s get the record straight on who stole what.” “When it suited you, you paraded around as the Prescott heir, claiming the trust fund and the legacy belonged to you.” “But when things got tough, suddenly you were ‘just Tristan,’ a free spirit who needed to find his own path.” “You bolted, leaving me to clean up your mess and marry into a goddamn warzone! You think I wanted any of this?” “Cole!” Valerie’s voice cut through the room like a whip. She had been silent until now. “Do you have to be so vicious about your regrets?” Her eyes were bloodshot. She stormed across the rug, closing the distance between us, and raised her right hand high in the air. I tilted my chin up, locking eyes with her, refusing to back down an inch. Do it, I thought. One slap to wake me up from a ten-year nightmare. “Val, don’t!” Tristan threw himself at Valerie from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist, his voice choking with sobs. “We cleared the air about our feelings last night. That’s enough for me.” “If you fight with my brother because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.” Our feelings? My brain short-circuited. Why didn’t she step away from his touch? The words bypassed my brain and tore out of my throat. “You’re real tough when it comes to me, Val.” “But the second Tristan whimpers, you roll over like a well-trained dog!” SMACK. The sound echoed through the high ceilings of the living room. The sting blossomed hot and sharp across my cheek. From behind Valerie’s shoulder, Tristan peeked out. The corner of his mouth twitched into a victorious smirk. “Cole,” my mother gasped, rushing forward, her trembling hands reaching for my bruised face. “Don’t touch me!” I roared, stepping back so violently I nearly tipped over. I put ten feet of distance between me and the rest of them. I locked eyes with Valerie, articulating every word with venomous clarity. “I want a divorce, Valerie. Ten years of my life. Two hundred million dollars. I think that’s a bargain.” Valerie’s pupils blew wide. She froze in place, staring at me as if the ground had just opened up and swallowed her. 4 “Two hundred million! Are you out of your mind?!” Tristan was the first to recover. “Valerie made that money. With Dad’s help. What did you ever do?” “You got to play billionaire playboy for a decade. You’ve taken enough. You have no right to ask for a dime!” I didn’t even acknowledge Tristan’s existence. My eyes were fixed on Valerie. “Two hundred million, Val. It buys you a clean slate, total control of your empire, and the freedom to marry the love of your life. It’s the perfect ending. You’re getting a steal.” “Cole…” Valerie took a step toward me, her movements frantic but hesitant, like she was approaching a wild animal. I steadied my breathing and held up a hand, stopping her in her tracks. “Let’s just rip the band-aid off.” “This was a transaction from day one. Now, the contract is up. We go our separate ways.” Before I turned toward the grand mahogany doors, I looked at the four of them one last time. “The greatest tragedy of my life wasn’t growing up poor. It was being found by the Prescotts.” If I had never been given this cursed last name, I would have stayed in that small town. I would have helped my adoptive mother run her diner. Maybe she wouldn’t have been working the late shift alone. Maybe the carbon monoxide leak wouldn’t have taken her. If I hadn’t been dragged into this gilded cage, the one person in the world who actually loved me would still be alive. When I woke up in my hotel room the next morning, my phone was bricked with notifications. 99+ missed calls. 99+ texts. “Cole, honey, I know you were just speaking out of anger.” — Helen. “Cole. I am not agreeing to a divorce. This is not a unilateral decision.” — Valerie. “Son, about the past… your mother and I are deeply sorry.” — Arthur. I scoffed at the ceiling. A slap rings loud enough to shatter glass, but they think a text message can sweep up the shards. I kept scrolling until I hit a message from Tristan. “You think walking away makes you the bigger person? Playing the tragic victim just to get her attention? Pathetic.” “If you actually think ten years of a fake marriage means you own her heart, you’re delusional.” “She told me everything last night. She only married you to use you as a human shield until it was safe for me to come back.” “You were never going to win, Cole.” I stopped breathing. She said that? Tristan’s text was a serrated blade, cutting away the last scraps of my dignity. To soothe her fragile first love, she had completely obliterated me. Everything I did yesterday, my desperate attempt to leave with my head held high—in Tristan’s eyes, I was just a dancing clown in a circus he owned. I forced my hands to stop shaking. I opened my email and forwarded the finalized divorce agreement and power of attorney to my legal team. Then, I booked the first international flight out of JFK. When I was done, I took a screenshot of Tristan’s text and sent it to Valerie. “Your taste in men is slipping, Val. And so is your subtlety.” Block. Power off. I was in the back of a black car heading to the airport when my oldest friend called me on a burner line. “Cole. Look at Twitter. Right now.” 5 I clicked the link. A high-res photo of Tristan wrapping his arms around Valerie from behind was plastered across the front page of every gossip site. #TrueLoveReturns: Heir Cole Prescott Replaced? was trending at number one. The comments were a bloodbath. “I mean, what powerful woman wouldn’t want to go back to her high school sweetheart?” “Rumor has it she slapped Cole right in front of Tristan yesterday. Tell me who the real alpha is.” “Tristan was her first love. I bet Cole orchestrated some dark twisted shit to run him out of town ten years ago.” The photo was too crisp, the angle too perfect to be a paparazzo hiding in the bushes. Someone inside that house had leaked it. I switched over to a local news livestream. A swarm of reporters had barricaded the gates of the Prescott estate. “Tristan! Why did you leave ten years ago?” “Are you back to reclaim Valerie Sinclair?” On screen, Valerie emerged from the gates. One hand firmly shielded Tristan’s face, while the other physically pushed a microphone away. She personally escorted him into the back of her Maybach, guarding him like he was made of spun glass, terrified the world might crack him. I locked my phone and threw it onto the leather seat. Breathe in. Breathe out. Do not cry. Crying just gives the vultures better lighting. The second I stepped out at the departures curb, I made a beeline for the VIP security checkpoint. But a voice pierced the chaos. “There he is! That’s Cole Prescott!” It was an ambush. A tidal wave of bodies, cameras, and microphones crashed over me. “Mr. Prescott! How does it feel to be publicly discarded?” “Is it true Tristan is the real heir and you’re the fraud?” “Are you running away because you’re scared of a fight?” Without Valerie’s private security to shield me, the press turned feral. “Back off!” I yelled, pushing my suitcase forward like a battering ram. They didn’t budge. “Mr. Prescott, sources say you used blackmail to force Tristan out ten years ago so you could marry into the Sinclair fortune. Care to comment?” My eyes went wild. I glared at the reporter holding a mic to my chin. “That is defamatory garbage, and I will sue you for everything you own!” “Touched a nerve, Mr. Prescott? Is the guilt getting to you?” another shouted, fanning the flames. “What’s your strategy now that the real golden boy is back?” A hundred mouths. A hundred knives plunging straight into my chest. The flashes strobed, blinding me, waiting for me to crack, waiting for the money shot. I didn’t know how to fight this. The family that was supposed to protect me was currently playing bodyguard for the man who ruined my life. I gritted my teeth, shoving blindly toward the sliding glass doors, shouting for airport security. Travelers stopped, pulling out their phones, pointing and whispering. “Is that the guy whose billionaire wife is cheating on him with his brother?” “Look at him run. You marry for money, you get thrown out with the trash. What did he expect?” Suddenly, someone in the crush shoved me hard from behind. My ankle gave out. I lost my center of gravity and went down hard. My palms hit the concrete, ripping the skin, and I landed squarely on my knees in front of thirty rolling cameras. In that split second, a decade of degradation, grief, and unadulterated rage clawed up my throat. I knew exactly what the headlines would say in an hour. Trophy Husband Begs on His Knees. A single, heavy tear broke free, splashing onto the gray pavement. I swiped it away instantly. I pushed myself up, brushing off my suit with agonizing slowness, acting as if I had just tripped over my own shoelaces. They had their photo. The mob backed off slightly. My ankle screamed with every step, but I lifted my chin, squared my shoulders, and walked through the terminal doors like absolute royalty. “May we never cross paths again, Valerie Sinclair.”

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While ordering late-night snacks for my boyfriend, I followed a popular internet joke and messaged the delivery driver to check up on him. He quickly sent a photo: “Your boyfriend seems to be cheating; a woman opened the door.” I was furious and immediately took a taxi to catch him in the act. But on the way, I encountered a thug, was dragged into an alley, and brutally raped to death. My boyfriend was devastated and arranged my funeral. He never married and showed no signs of cheating. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the night I ordered takeout for my boyfriend. I immediately blocked that delivery driver and had a new one deliver the food. But I still received a call: “Miss, your boyfriend seems to be living with another woman…” … Hearing the delivery driver’s voice through the receiver, a violent shudder ripped through my body. In my past life, it was this exact phone call that sent me spiraling. I had hailed a cab in the dead of night, desperately rushing across state lines to the city where my boyfriend, Miles, was stationed for a work project. But I never made it to his apartment. Just steps away from his building, I was dragged into a blind alley by a group of men. I was brutalized. I was murdered. The killers left almost no evidence behind, and the case quickly grew cold. It was Miles who refused to let it go. He hired the country’s most elite private investigators, liquidating every asset he had to fund a relentless manhunt. “Claire, if I hadn’t taken that out-of-town project, you wouldn’t have missed me. You wouldn’t have come looking for me,”he had wept at my funeral, his voice shattered. “It’s my fault. I killed you.” “Even if I have to sell my house, even if I have to sell my own kidney, I will find the bastards who did this to you.” He was entirely consumed. By the time he was barely thirty, his hair had turned entirely white from the agonizing, sleepless years on the road. When the perpetrators were finally caught, Miles buried me in his family’s private estate, claiming me as his wife in death. He lived the rest of his days utterly alone, guarding my memory. There was never another woman. Never a whisper of infidelity. Remembering all of this, a heavy, suffocating ache bloomed in my chest. Miles had loved me with a devotion that transcended death, and yet, here I was, having dared to doubt him. I abruptly hung up the phone. I didn’t know why this new delivery driver—a completely different person from my past life, since I had purposely requested a change on the app—was still trying to smear Miles’s name. But in this life, I didn’t care what anyone said. I would never doubt him again. After washing my face, I curled up on the living room sofa, letting the quiet dark of the apartment wash over me as I sifted through the fragmented memories of my past life. Suddenly, the front door clicked open. My best friend, Blair, stepped inside, shaking out her umbrella. She froze when she saw me in the dim light, her eyes widening. “Claire? Why are you still just lying around?” “Should I be doing something else?” Meeting my confused gaze, Blair bit off the rest of her sentence. Her eyes darted to the side—a fleeting, almost imperceptible shift. Then, she forced a bright smile. “I just meant, with the thunderstorm outside… you know how terrified you are of lightning. I figured you’d be pacing a hole in the floor, not lounging like a cat.” Her tone was warm, dripping with that familiar, protective sincerity. But my heart turned to lead. She was lying. Blair, Miles, and I had been inseparable since our freshman year of college. We were the quintessential trio, bound by promises of lifelong loyalty. I knew Blair just as intimately as I knew Miles. That split-second eye dart? That was her tell. I opened my mouth to press her, but a piercing ring shattered the silence. My phone. It was the delivery driver again. I moved to decline it, but Blair was faster. She snatched the phone from the coffee table, swiped accept, and instantly hit the speaker button. A gruff, gravelly voice echoed through the room. “Look, lady, I’m only speaking up because I saw the ‘Happy Birthday, Hubby’ note on the cake box. The guy who took this order? He had his arms wrapped around some other girl. It wasn’t exactly friendly. Don’t let some trash guy play you for a fool.” Before I could process the words, a notification chimed. A video file from the driver in my app messages. The footage was shaky, shot from the hallway. A door opened just a crack. A man reached out to grab the takeout bags, and a woman was clinging to his bicep, pressing herself against him in a cloying, intimate way. When the man lifted his chin to thank the driver, the hallway light caught his face perfectly. It was Miles. My brow furrowed. The air in the room felt suddenly very thin. What the hell was going on? The delivery app assigned drivers at random. There was no conceivable way this stranger was in on a prank. Was Miles actually cheating on me? While my mind spun, Blair slammed her palm onto the glass coffee table, her face twisting in fury. “That son of a bitch! How dare he do this to you!” She grabbed my wrist, pulling me up. “Come on, Claire. We are driving over there right now. We are going to catch that cheating bastard and his little tramp dead to rights in that bed. He is going to look you in the eye and give you an explanation!” She was practically dragging me toward the door. I was still numb, stumbling in her wake, when Blair suddenly doubled over with a sharp gasp. “Oh my god, it hurts!” she cried out, dropping to her knees, her face draining of color. A chilling wave of déjà vu washed over me. This was exactly how it happened in my past life. Blair had been absolutely enraged by the infidelity, insisting I go confront him, promising to drive me herself. But right as we reached the front door, she was struck by a sudden, agonizing bout of stomach cramps. She couldn’t stop throwing up. So, I went alone. And I died screaming on the asphalt outside Miles’s apartment complex. A terrifying, pitch-black theory began to take root in my mind. In my previous life, the detectives eventually concluded that my murder wasn’t a random mugging gone wrong. It was a premeditated hit. I had been lured to that specific location. But the most maddening part was that the police never caught the mastermind. The thugs they arrested had taken a vow of silence to protect whoever hired them. “We did it on our own! It has nothing to do with anyone else!” they had spit at the judge. “Give us the chair, we don’t care!” So, who was the puppet master? I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the nausea rising in my throat. I didn’t want to follow this thought to its logical, devastating conclusion. Blair was still groaning on the floor, clutching her stomach, but between her winces, she was looking up at me. Urging me. Pushing me out the door. Beneath the feigned pain, her eyes glittered with a dark, impatient anticipation. Every word of outrage she had spoken on my behalf suddenly echoed in my ears not as support, but as a death warrant. I slowly looked down at her. I forced my breathing to slow, keeping my voice utterly level. “Blair, why are you so desperate for me to leave the apartment tonight?” I watched her face carefully. “Why are you so absolutely certain there’s no misunderstanding? Why jump straight to the conclusion that Miles has betrayed me?” The color vanished from Blair’s lips. She stared at me, her mouth slightly open, entirely speechless. My heart dropped another agonizing inch. A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room. Ring! My phone lit up again. A FaceTime call. From Miles. I answered. His face filled the screen, handsome and glowing with that soft, familiar affection. He offered me a gentle, teasing smile. “Hey, babe. Did you order me midnight snacks? Miss me that much?” He leaned closer to the camera. “I saw the weather app. It’s pouring back home, isn’t it? You hate the thunder, so I figured I’d stay on video with you. Keep you company.” Looking at his tender expression, hearing the soothing cadence of his voice… it had only been a few minutes since I woke up in this timeline, but it felt like an eternity had passed. Tears prickled the corners of my eyes. I wanted to spill everything to him. But before I could even form a syllable, a woman’s breathy, teasing giggle drifted from the background of his end. “Babe, let’s do Iceland next month, okay?” I stared at the screen, every muscle in my body locking up. In the corner of the frame, just for a fraction of a second, I saw a cascade of long, golden-blonde hair. The next second, Miles’s eyes widened in sheer panic. The camera jerked wildly as he practically sprinted out of the room, slamming a door behind him. Bang! It felt like a bomb had detonated inside my skull. The ambient noise of the apartment faded into a high-pitched ringing. Through the phone, Miles’s voice dripped with manufactured concern. “Claire? Honey, your face just went completely pale. Are you okay?” Blair had crawled up beside me. She saw the whole thing. Her face flushed crimson with rage. Without asking, she snatched the phone from my hand, hung up on Miles, and began pacing the room, hurling every curse word in the English language at him. When she finally ran out of breath, she looked at me with hesitant, pitying eyes. She pulled out her own phone and let out a long, heavy sigh. “Claire… do you understand now why I wanted you to catch him with your own eyes? I… I wasn’t going to tell you this.” She unlocked her phone and pulled up her private message thread with Miles. She held the screen out to me. My eyes widened in absolute horror. The screen was filled with paragraphs of sickeningly sweet, obsessive texts. All from Miles. To Blair. [Blair, that night at the freshman mixer? You were the one I wanted to ask out. But you started talking to that guy from the football team, so I settled for Claire instead.] [I haven’t felt anything for her in years. Honestly, touching her makes my skin crawl. If it weren’t for the fact that you pulled away, and the only way I could see you was by staying close to her, I would have dumped that frumpy bore ages ago.] The timestamps were damning. Even just moments ago, while he was supposedly comforting me about the thunderstorm, he was texting his devotion to my best friend. [Blair, I’m just playing a part with her. You’re the only one I love. When I get back from this trip, I’m ending things with Claire. I’m coming for you.] My hands shook uncontrollably as I tapped on Miles’s profile picture in her phone. I checked his number, his handle, his linked social accounts. It was him. No fake accounts. No hacks. The man who shared my bed, the man who claimed to love me, had been telling my best friend I disgusted him. Thick, hot tears spilled over my eyelashes and splashed onto the screen. We had been together for almost a decade. How had I been so completely, utterly blind to the monster hiding behind his smile? But the math still didn’t make sense. If he despised me, why did he sacrifice his youth, his sanity, and his wealth to avenge my murder in the past life? Was it the butterfly effect? Did my decision to stay home tonight change his feelings? Or was he always cheating, and the tragic, devoted widower routine was nothing but an elaborate, calculated cover-up? Blair sighed, wrapping her arms around me in a tight, suffocating hug. “Claire, I didn’t know how to tell you. Stuff like this… it destroys friendships. Once the truth is out, things are never the same.” “That’s why I wanted you to see it for yourself. But if you don’t want to go confront him now… we don’t have to. Just know that whatever you decide, I am here. I will always support you.” I offered a hollow nod, murmuring something noncommittal. I pulled away from her, walked into my bedroom, and collapsed onto the mattress. I felt like every drop of blood had been drained from my veins. Too many puzzle pieces were scattered in my mind, and none of them fit. Was Miles cheating? Why did Blair lie about expecting me to be awake? Who was I supposed to trust? And the most terrifying question of all: Who was the mastermind who paid to have me butchered in the dark? Suddenly, a loud, urgent knocking echoed from the front door. Helen, Miles’s mother, bustled into the apartment, her face glowing with breathless excitement. She hoisted a massive, velvet-wrapped jewelry box in the air. “Claire, sweetheart! Look what just arrived. The custom bridal suite is finally ready. Come see!” She set it on the table, practically vibrating with pride. “Miles said the engagement ring he gave you last year wasn’t enough. He knows you grew up in the foster system, that you never had a real family to spoil you. So, he wanted to make sure you felt like a queen.” “He picked every stone himself. It’s top-tier platinum and flawless diamonds. He liquidated his entire stock portfolio to pay for this.” The box popped open. A blinding array of diamonds caught the light—a breathtaking necklace, cascading earrings, a tennis bracelet, and a massive, custom-cut ring. The craftsmanship was so exquisite it felt unreal. Miles and I had been together for eight years. He had proposed three times. But because I grew up moving between group homes, lacking any blueprint for a healthy marriage, I had always been terrified of taking the final step. I kept stalling. Before he left for this trip, he had held me tight and laughed gently. “Take all the time you need, Claire. I’m not going anywhere. But I’m buying the wedding jewelry now, and I’m getting you the best in the world. You deserve it.” In my past life, even though I died before we could say our vows, he had placed this exact, impossibly expensive jewelry suite inside my casket. Later, to fund the private investigators tracking my killers, he had sold his own home. That unwavering financial sacrifice was the anchor of my trust in him. If a man was truly betraying you, why would he willingly bankrupt himself for your memory? Seeing my resolve waver, Blair frantically grabbed my arm. “Claire, wake up! You cannot marry this man! Did you already forget what he was doing behind your back ten minutes ago?” Helen’s face drained of its joy. Insulted and determined to prove Blair wrong, she whipped out her phone and dialed Miles on FaceTime. When the video connected, the background noise was chaotic—loud music, clinking glasses. Helen’s voice turned icy. “Miles, what exactly are you doing right now?” Miles’s exhausted but cheerful face appeared. “Mom! Hey. The project wrapped up early, so we’re celebrating. I threw a little party for the team at the rental.” He panned the camera around the room. There were about seven or eight people in business casual attire holding drinks. In the corner, the blonde woman from the earlier video was draped over another male coworker, posing for a selfie. Miles rolled his eyes at the camera and lowered his voice. “She’s the new intern. Terrible at her job, completely lacks boundaries with the guys. Mom, please don’t tell Claire she’s here. You know how Claire hates girls who act like that. I don’t want her getting upset over nothing.” Hearing the explanation, Helen let out a massive sigh of relief. She hung up the phone and studied my face carefully, choosing her words. “Claire… has there been some sort of misunderstanding between you two lately?” “My son treats you like you hang the moon. He would never do anything to hurt you.” Then, her gaze snapped to Blair, hardening into a glare. “Unlike some people, who threw themselves at my son in college, got rejected, and never quite got over it. People who use the title of ‘best friend’ just to try and poison my daughter-in-law’s marriage!” I followed Helen’s piercing glare. I saw Blair’s face turn completely white. I saw the flash of raw, naked panic in her eyes. In that fleeting second, the fragments of my past life and the bizarre events of tonight slammed together in my mind. A bolt of lightning illuminated the dark. I finally understood. I knew exactly what was happening. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, who had ordered my murder. It was the one person I had never, ever suspected.

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Everyone in Miami knows that Roman’s wife is terrified of the dark, sickened by the sight of blood, and wouldn’t survive three days without him. Even Roman himself believed it. After we got married, he stepped out on me dozens of times, never once worried that I might actually leave. Just like right now. I had just found a pair of bloody lace panties tucked into the passenger side of his Mercedes. Roman barely glanced at them. He gave a careless, easy laugh. “The new girl at the club just lost her cherry. We played a little rough. Don’t sweat it.” This time, I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw a hysterical fit like I used to. Instead, I simply nodded, my face a mask of calm. “Understood.” His hand suddenly shot out, his fingers locking around my wrist like a vice. His voice dropped, thick with suppressed tension. “Something’s wrong with you, Diana. Why aren’t you mad?” I looked at him and smiled. We had been married for three years. He had no idea that I had already taken a lover of my own—a wild, obedient boy who actually listened to me. He just didn’t know it yet. … Don’t come over tonight. Roman’s back. A second later, the screen lit up with a GIF of a cartoon dog crying its eyes out. I couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth. But when I looked up, I collided straight into Roman’s dark, brooding stare. Only then did I realize how suffocatingly quiet the car had become. I locked my phone and slipped it away, my tone entirely indifferent. “Did you need something?” “You’ve been… off lately,” he said, his eyes drilling into me. I paused. This wasn’t the first time one of his girls had left a calling card. The last one had stuffed a pair of shredded stockings into the breast pocket of Roman’s bespoke suit. Back then, I had lost my mind. I tore through the house, shattering every piece of glass and porcelain I could get my hands on, sobbing and screaming at him until my throat bled. All it earned me was a cold, disdainful look. Have some goddamn dignity, Diana, he had sneered. You’re the First Lady of this syndicate. Stop acting like a rabid dog. Now, I could finally do exactly what he asked. I could sit here, perfectly serene, in the face of his endless rotation of women. I offered him a thin smile. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” Roman’s face hardened, a sudden chill rolling off him. His words came out sharp and barbed. “Lexi is uninhibited. She’s wild, and she gets creative in bed. It’s fun.” He raised an eyebrow, looking down at me with a patronizing smirk. “You could learn a thing or two from her, babe. Stop being so damn rigid all the time. Who knows? If you loosen up, maybe I’ll feel like spending a few more nights at home.” “Don’t do me any favors,” I said, leaning my head against the cool glass of the window and closing my eyes. Roman hadn’t stepped foot in our Coral Gables mansion in a month. He had taken Lexi to the Swiss Alps, calling it a much-needed “mental health break.” They had been excruciatingly loud about it. His lieutenants had practically tripped over themselves to circulate photos of the happy couple on yachts and ski lifts, making sure the images made their rounds through our social circles. I had become the brightest, most pathetic punchline in Miami. Now, he stood in the doorway of our master bedroom, his brow furrowed as he took in the completely overhauled space. The heavy, dark silk sheets he loved were gone. The custom gold-plated Colt he kept on the nightstand to mark his territory was missing. There wasn’t a single trace of his existence left in the room. “Where is my stuff?” “Cleared out.” Roman whipped his head around. “What did you say?” He stared at me, then suddenly let out a soft chuckle, his tone dropping into something coaxing and sweet. “Diana, look, I know I crossed a line this time. You’re pissed, right?” “Come on, I’m home now, aren’t I? I came back to keep you company.” “I even brought you a gift.” He tossed a velvet box onto the glass coffee table and turned to head into the master bath. When he walked back out, roughly towel-drying his hair, he paused. “That cologne I always use… when did you change it?” I blinked, taking a moment to remember. Nico had changed it. The little wolf hated the heavy, suffocating stench of gunpowder and stale cigars that always lingered in the bathroom. He had taken it upon himself to swap it out for something crisp, sharp, and smelling of winter cedar. The scent of that cedar washed over me as Roman stepped up from behind, wrapping his arms around my waist and intentionally burying his face in the crook of my neck. “God, I missed you, babe…” My heart slammed against my ribs. The bruises Nico had left on my collarbone last night hadn’t faded yet. If Roman’s lips trailed down just an inch, he would see them. I twisted hard, shoving him away. “I’m not Lexi. If you need to get your rocks off, go back to the club and find her.” Roman stumbled back a step. When he caught his balance, his face was absolutely livid. His voice hissed through his teeth. “You’re never going to let this go, are you?” “So I took her on a trip for a few days. Have I never taken you anywhere? Is this really necessary?” I looked him dead in the eyes, my voice flat and dead. “It is, Roman. Because I think you’re filthy.” The veins in his neck popped. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He snatched his suit jacket off the armchair. “I try to give you an inch, and you throw it in my face! Don’t you dare come begging me to come back!” The front door slammed with enough force to shake the walls. I walked over to the coffee table and picked up the velvet box. Only then did it register—today was our three-year anniversary. Inside was a miniature, diamond-studded derringer. The grip was engraved with a unique serial number. One of only five in the world. My lips curled into a bitter line. How thoughtful of him. Taking his mistress on a luxury vacation, but still remembering to toss a shiny toy my way to keep my mouth shut. My phone lit up. A picture from Lexi. She was leaning heavily against a slot machine in a neon-drenched casino in Nassau, her dress slipping off her shoulder. Roman’s hand was firmly planted on her waist. You just don’t know how to keep your man, do you, Mrs. Reyes? she wrote. I practically had to beg the Boss to go home and check on you. Late that night, the shrill ring of my phone sliced through the dark. I answered, greeted by Roman’s heavily slurred voice. “Babe… babe… come get me…” I was about to hang up when a stranger’s voice cut in. “Mrs. Reyes? The Boss got way too hammered at our place, and we’re closing up. Could you…” I rattled off a phone number from memory. “Call Lexi. I’m busy.” This wasn’t the first time this had happened. There was a night years ago when I was burning up with a 102-degree fever. I had driven myself across the city to drag him out of a club he was running. But when I got there, he had shoved me away. Blind drunk, he had demanded Lexi. I don’t want you, he had slurred. I want Lexi. He had told me to stop getting in his way. I had stumbled backward, my hand catching the sharp edge of the car door. The blood had welled up instantly, dripping onto the asphalt. But the sting on my hand was nothing compared to the sensation of my chest being hollowed out with a blunt knife. Pulling myself back to the present, I glanced down at the faint, silver scar on the back of my hand. Flesh heals. And eventually, so does the heart. It just stops hurting altogether. I must have drifted off, because I was jolted awake again by the phone. This time, it was a woman. She sounded frantic. “Are you the wife of this drunk lunatic? Your husband has been pounding on my front door for twenty minutes! Come get him right now, or I’m calling the cops!” “What?” She gave me an address, and I sat in bed, frozen for a long moment. Roman, blackout drunk, had somehow stumbled his way back to the rotting apartment complex in Overtown. It was the hellhole we used to live in back when we had absolutely nothing. I had to apologize profusely to the terrified woman before I could finally haul Roman’s dead weight out of the peeling hallway. He reeked of cheap whiskey and sweat, completely delirious. “Diana…” he mumbled into my shoulder. “Did the boys give you a hard time collecting the books today…? You must be so tired…” It had been years since I heard him speak to me like that. With a jarring ache, I realized he was so drunk he thought we were still kids, just starting out in the syndicate. Back then, we were desperately poor. We squeezed into a sweltering, roach-infested room, counting every single penny. I would sit up late at the back of the underground casinos, cooking the books until my eyes blurred. And no matter how late it was, even if he had just finished breaking someone’s legs and was covered in blood, he would always walk the long way around the block just to walk me home. He used to hold me, his eyes red and exhausted, pressing his forehead to mine. He swore up and down that one day, he’d put me in a mansion on the water. That he would make me the most respected woman in the city. A sudden, sharp sting hit the back of my nose. I ducked my head, quickly trying to wipe my eyes, but a hand reached up before I could. Roman lifted his hand and clumsily brushed his thumb beneath my eye. His voice cracked, sounding like a wounded little boy. “Babe, why aren’t you mad at me anymore…? Why did you wash my scent away…?” “Why don’t you fight with Lexi…?” “You’ve changed…” I looked down at the man who was completely out of his mind, and for the first time in a long time, I felt a strange, detached peace. “Because I’m tired, Roman.” He didn’t seem to hear me. He suddenly pushed out of my grip and fumbled in his coat pocket, pulling something out and guarding it against his chest like a treasure. Under the sickly yellow glow of the streetlamp, I saw what it was. A crushed, battered cardboard pastry box. Inside was a slice of devil’s food cake. It was from the crumbling old bakery on the corner. My favorite. I thought he had forgotten. Truth be told, the very first time I realized something was wrong with our marriage, it was over a pastry, too. Lexi wasn’t his first. The first time I discovered he was cheating was on the anniversary of my father’s death. In our world, the Coalition strictly observes these days of respect. As the Boss and his wife, we were supposed to light the incense and honor the altar together. I had set up the memorial room, dressing in a solemn black dress, and waited for him to come home. I waited from the afternoon until the dead of night. When he finally walked through the door and saw the candles burning, he froze. He had completely forgotten what day it was. A flash of guilt crossed his face. Desperate to cover it up, he shoved a bakery box into my hands—a peace offering he had just picked up from whichever woman’s bed he had crawled out of. He didn’t even read the label on the box. It was a strawberry tart. I am deathly allergic to strawberries. One bite could send me into anaphylactic shock. In that moment, a woman’s intuition is sharper than any blade. I stood up slowly and reached out, hooking my finger around the top buttons of his dress shirt and ripping them open. Right below his collarbone, glaring up at me in the dim light, was a fresh, deep purple bruise. It had teeth marks. It felt like a bomb went off in my skull. The entire world just gave way beneath my feet. I destroyed the altar. I smashed the porcelain plates, the glasses, everything I could lift. I screamed at him, tears blinding me. I asked him how he could face my dead father. How he could face the years I spent cooking his ledgers, the bullets I took meant for him. I slapped him. Again and again, until my palms were bruised. And what did Roman do? He dropped to his knees in front of my father’s portrait and begged me to forgive him. After that, I became a paranoid wreck. I checked every phone call. I smelled the collar of every jacket he owned. He grew increasingly annoyed, increasingly suffocated, until he just stopped coming home altogether. Then came Lexi. It was the same cycle. The screaming, the crying, the shattered glass. But the difference was, this time, Roman didn’t drop to his knees. He stood there, slowly crushing his cigar into the crystal ashtray, his eyes devoid of any warmth. “Let me make this perfectly clear, Diana. I’m not cutting Lexi off. I like her. She knows her place.” “You sit here and play the good First Lady. You get the status, you get the bank accounts, you get everything you’re entitled to. Nothing changes.” My chest felt like it was being ripped open with a crowbar. I couldn’t breathe. Through a broken, gravelly voice, I whispered, “Roman… let’s just get a divorce.” His head snapped up, his eyes suddenly burning with a toxic, violent light. “Divorce? You’re out of your goddamn mind.” “You married into this life. You swore the oath in blood. The only way you leave this family is in a body bag. There’s no walking away. Don’t even entertain the thought.” “Your little brother is still running product for me down at the docks, isn’t he? Unless you want him feeding the fishes in the bay, you will shut your mouth and endure it.” My little brother had just started working for him. His life was entirely in Roman’s hands. All the contacts and leverage my father had left me had been systematically swallowed up by Roman’s empire years ago. I had built the cage he was using to lock me in. Every day after that was pure purgatory. I watched him parade Lexi around the VIP rooms and the underground casinos, letting his enforcers call her “Mrs. Reyes.” I watched them walk in and out of rooms like husband and wife, while I was relegated to the shadows, a dirty secret in my own home. I started swallowing handfuls of sleeping pills just to get a few hours of dead air, only to spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling until the sun came up. Until one afternoon, during a bloody dispute at the shipyards, I purposefully let my focus slip. A rival swung a blade, tearing a deep, jagged gash down my forearm. When Roman found out, he didn’t pull me into his arms. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He backhanded me across the face and screamed at me for being careless and trying to get myself killed. That slap finally woke me up. I thought, Why? He was the one who broke us. Why was I paying for it with my blood? If Roman wouldn’t give me a clean exit, I would carve one out myself. It was right around that time that I used a ghost channel in our weapons supply line and made contact with Nico. The kid was smarter than Roman. Sweeter. And most importantly, whatever I said, he did. Now, Roman and I were truly equals. We both had our little playthings on the side. I left Roman to sleep on the freezing concrete floor of that rotting apartment in Overtown. The next morning, he cornered me in the narrow stairwell, his face thunderous. “Why didn’t you pick me up last night? Why did you make Lexi do it?” “Why not?” I said, deadpan. “You love her, don’t you?” The words struck a match to a powder keg. He lunged, grabbing my jaw and kissing me—hard, bruising, desperate. He tasted like stale liquor and violent rage. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, Diana,” he growled against my mouth, his teeth grazing my lip. “You’re not supposed to look at me like I’m dead!” “Why aren’t you fighting me anymore?!” I bit down, hard. The sharp, metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth. “Roman,” I laughed, breathless and mocking. “You are so pathetic.” He stared at me, a dark, murderous shadow crossing his face. Before he turned to leave, he threw a warning over his shoulder: “You’re going to regret this, Diana.” The look in his eye made my stomach drop. But I never could have predicted how fast his retaliation would come. Two days later, my phone buzzed. A text from Lexi. Attached was a photo. It was taken inside my father’s memorial room. Roman said it’s especially thrilling to do it in here, the text read. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears. The world tilted on its axis, black spots dancing in my vision. My knees nearly buckled. Pure, unadulterated fury obliterated whatever was left of my sanity. That was my father’s sanctuary! How could he! How dare he bring that trash into that room, and do that… I drove back to the Coral Gables estate like a madwoman, my tires screeching as I tore up the driveway. I sprinted through the halls and shoved open the heavy oak doors of the memorial room. The scene in front of me turned my blood to ice. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted copper. The gold silk cloth on the altar had been dragged down. Lexi was practically naked, draped across the mahogany table, and Roman was right behind her. The brass incense burner had been knocked to the floor, white ash scattered over the Persian rug. Seeing me standing in the doorway, Roman casually pushed Lexi away and pulled his clothes straight. A cruel, mocking smirk twisted his lips. “What’s the matter? Is this too much for you?” My nails dug so hard into my palms that the pain was the only thing keeping me upright. My voice was a ragged whisper, dragged over broken glass. “Get. Out.” Lexi slid off the altar, taking her sweet time. As she moved, her fingers purposefully trailed over my father’s urn. Suddenly, she snatched up the antique gold pocket watch resting beside it—the only piece of my father I had left—and hurled it onto the marble floor! The glass shattered, the metal casing crunching violently. “Oops,” she giggled, looking up at me with a sickeningly sweet smile. “Butterfingers. Looks like it’s broken.” “You dead bitch!” Every thread of my restraint snapped. I vaulted forward, burying my hands into her bleached blonde hair. She shrieked, but I didn’t stop. I swung, slapping her across the face with every ounce of strength I had in my body. “Are you insane, Diana?!” A blinding pain exploded in my ribs. Roman had kicked me. The force sent me flying backward, my spine colliding sickeningly with the sharp edge of a heavy rosewood chair. I crumpled to the floor, gasping for air, unable to push myself up. Roman didn’t even look at me. He rushed to Lexi, wrapping his arms around her, his face a portrait of tender concern. Then he turned his head and glared at me, his eyes blazing with fury. “You are out of your goddamn mind! It’s just a cheap piece of metal! Are you kidding me?” “I’ve let you get away with too much lately!” My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I clamped my jaw shut, refusing to let them fall, even as my entire body shook uncontrollably. Roman marched over, grabbed me by the collar, and began dragging me toward the back of the basement—toward the steel, windowless vault they used to break rats and traitors. “What are you doing! Let me go!” A primal terror clawed at my throat. I thrashed wildly. When he threw me inside and the heavy steel door slammed shut with a definitive clang, cutting off the last sliver of light, absolute, paralyzing panic seized my chest. I am terrified of the dark. Years ago, a rival cartel had kidnapped me. They locked me in a shipping container at the bottom of the docks for three days and three nights. It left me permanently scarred. When Roman finally found me back then, he held my violently shaking body and swore to God that he would never, ever let me be alone in the dark again. Now, he was using it to break me. “Take some time in there and think about what you did,” his muffled, icy voice bled through the steel door. “When you’re ready to apologize, I’ll let you out.” My screams and my fists pounding against the metal were entirely swallowed by the suffocating black void. I pressed my back against the freezing steel and slowly slid to the floor, my body seizing with violent tremors. Fat tears hit the dusty floor. I slammed my fists against the door, my voice shattering into pathetic, ragged gasps. “Roman… please… open the door…” “Let me out…” “I’m sorry…” I weakly banged my head against the metal. The skin on my forehead split, and warm blood trickled down my temple, sticky and sickening. From the other side of the door, I could hear Lexi’s simpering voice, and Roman’s low, amused chuckle. “Boss, you aren’t going to go soft on her, are you?” Roman’s tone was ice-cold. “No. I’ve spoiled her too much lately.” “It’s about time she learned her place.” I dug my fingertips into the microscopic gap at the bottom of the door, tearing my nails until they splintered and bled. With violently trembling hands, I reached into the lining of my skirt and pulled out the micro-transmitter I kept sewn in. I pressed the single emergency button. Nico. Save me. I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe lifetimes. The heavy steel door was suddenly violently ripped open from the outside. A blinding flashlight beam cut through the black. I threw my bloody hands up to shield my eyes. Roman stood in the doorway, back-lit, staring down at me like a god examining a crushed insect. “Diana. Do you know what you did wrong now?” The harsh light forced involuntary tears down my cheeks. I slowly lowered my hands. I looked up at him, my voice so hoarse and broken it didn’t even sound like me. “Roman. I want a divorce.” Roman’s brow furrowed in irritation. “I told you, that’s not…” “I’m sleeping with someone else,” I cut him off. The words died in Roman’s throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently. The veins at his temples began to pulse. It was the look he got right before he murdered someone. “Say that to me again,” he whispered. The quietness of his voice was terrifying.

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