I didn't hear Valerie come up behind me. One light push on the chair.

“Ah——”

I hit the floor hard. My ankle buckled under me on the way down, and the pain locked my whole body in place.

Valerie heard the front door open. She rushed over, all concern, reaching down to help me up. I swung at her face. Missed.

Jim walked in right at that moment.

“Mia! What the hell are you doing!”

He pulled Valerie into his arms, checking her over.

He didn't glance at me once. Not once. I was crumpled on the floor, in too much pain to speak or move.

Tears soaked into my clothes, the fabric washed so many times it had gone white.

Three years. I'd hauled bricks on construction sites in the summer heat until I passed out. In winter I couldn't bring myself to buy a decent pair of boots, and my feet were covered in chilblains.

Every dirty, backbreaking job I could find, I grabbed. I never let Jim lift a finger at home—terrified this little prince who'd dropped out of the sky might have to rough it even once.

And him? He'd tossed a black card to his mistress without thinking twice, while faking poverty and letting me grind through three years of misery for nothing.

And now, right in front of me, the difference in how he treated us couldn't have been more obvious.

The second Jim's back was turned, Valerie stamped down hard on my injured ankle.

“Ah——”

I screamed. Before Jim could even turn toward me, Valerie let out a whine at the exact same moment.

“Jim, my face hurts so so much. What if it scars? What am I gonna do?”

That was all it took. His attention locked onto Valerie, eyes full of worry, and he scooped her up in his arms.

“Valerie, I'm taking you to the hospital.”

His voice went cold：

“You—stay right here. You don't move, you don't leave. Sit and think about what you did.”

So I lay there in pain all afternoon.

I couldn't get to a hospital on my own. The tears kept coming, hopeless and unending.

Then the hospital called.

“Ms. Fox, your father's surgery was unsuccessful. He doesn't have long. Please come to the hospital immediately if you want to see him one last time.”

Lightning through my skull. I grabbed the broom handle beside me and hauled myself upright.

I dragged myself to the door. The bodyguards stepped into my path.

“My father is dying! Please, let me go!”

“Sorry, ma'am. No order from CEO Gilbert, you're not going anywhere.”

I called Jim. Over and over, frantic, I don't know how many times before he finally picked up.

“Ah——Jim, slower——”

None of that mattered. I opened my mouth to scream his name, but he hung up.

Just as despair swallowed me whole, the hospital called again.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Fox. Your father has passed. Our condolences.”

The phone slipped from my hand. The room tilted and spun. I didn't know where I was anymore.

My mother died when I was three. My father was the only family I had left.

Now he was gone too. I didn't see the point of still being alive.

The old fruit knife on the coffee table caught my eye.

A flash of the blade. Blood everywhere.

I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes I was in a hospital bed. Jim sat beside me, haggard, but I felt nothing, as if my soul had been pulled clean out of my body.

He held my hand：

“I'm sorry, Mia. I'll give your father the most lavish funeral money can buy.”

After that, Jim started spending more time with me.

He washed my feet himself, ran ten blocks to buy me candied hawthorn sticks, showered me with over a hundred designer bags, and gave me a black card just like Valerie's.

Everything I'd never dared dream of, he handed to me now. I didn't want any of it.

After I was discharged, I went back to working. Day shifts and night shifts, back to back, so exhausted I'd fall asleep on the bus.

It wasn't that I liked suffering. It was that only when my body hurt badly enough could it drown out what was happening in my head.

Still working as a hotel reviewer. The last person I expected to walk into was Jim Gilbert—with Valerie right beside him.

Valerie's voice dripped with mock sweetness：

“What's this, sis? Did you follow us here?”

Jim frowned, his gaze dropping to the fresh calluses on my hands. Something darkened behind his eyes.

“I gave you my card. Why aren't you using it?”

“Oh, Jim—why would she touch your money? She'd never be able to walk away from you then, would she?”

Jim drew a deep breath：

“Mia, I'm never breaking up with you.”

He turned to leave.

Valerie slapped herself hard across the face, then clutched her cheek and burst into tears.

She dropped to her knees in front of me with a thud：

“I'm sorry, sis. I'll leave Jim right now. Please stop hitting me.”

Jim whipped around, instantly furious：

“Mia! What the hell did you do!”

He stared at me, fists clenched, barely holding himself back.

“Your father just died. I'm giving you a chance because of that. Apologize to Valerie, and I'll let it go.”

I snapped：

“In your dreams! Jim, I didn't even touch……”

“Jim, I'm so scared. Look at her face—she's terrifying, like she's going to eat me alive……”

Valerie kept pouring it on, and my refusal to apologize did exactly what she wanted. Jim's anger ignited.

He seized my wrist and dragged me into his hotel suite.

He got a rope from somewhere, tied me to a chair facing the master bed.

I tried to explain. He gagged me.

He sent a bodyguard to check, but the answer came back cold：

“Sorry, sir. Ms. Summers is not an employee of this hotel.”

Jim was livid：

“Mia, you lied to me?”

He ripped the love lock from his neck, his voice cracking with fury：

“Remember what the master said? The one who lies first—they never get to spend their life with the other. Never!”

I laughed. Cold, bitter.

You lied to me first, Jim.

The angrier he got, the worse it became：

“You wanted to watch, Mia? Then keep your eyes open. Learn how a woman is supposed to please a man.”

Tied to that chair, I went numb. Valerie's breathy moans filled the room while I invented a thousand ways to die.

Every single one of them was for Jim Gilbert.

“Tomorrow's my wedding with Valerie. You'll be the bridesmaid.”

“Hey! Did you hear me!”

My legs had gone dead. I stumbled upright, unable to tell where I was.

Back home, I ran a bath, desperate to wash the day off my skin.

The bathroom door slammed open. Valerie.

Her face still carried the flush of what she'd just done with him. She smiled and tossed a hair dryer into the tub.

“Ahhh——”

I screamed. Valerie laughed harder.

“Idiot. It's not even plugged in.”

I was shaking, barely conscious, but Valerie's face drained white in an instant.

Jim walked in, drawn by the noise, brow tight.

“Mia, why are you bleeding?”

I looked down. Red everywhere—blooming through the bathwater, swallowing everything in sight.

A miscarriage. The fright had killed it.

I doubled over the edge of the tub, hands clutching my lower belly, the pain bleaching my face and wrenching through me in waves.

Jim's expression froze for just a second.

“Mia, you don't need to put on an act to keep me.”

Right then, Valerie let out a shriek：

“Jim! I got electrocuted!”

The hands he'd reached out to pick me up pulled back. He turned and scooped Valerie into his arms instead.

“Wait there. I'll call an ambulance for you!”

He carried Valerie out without looking back.

It turns out that when heartbreak hits its peak, you can't feel anything at all.

Pain and rage, both at once, until I blacked out and fell into a dream.

……

“When the mountains crumble flat and heaven crashes into earth, only then would I dare leave you. Mia, I will love you until the world itself ends.”

Cherry blossom petals fell like rain over the two of us, young and certain of forever.

The vow still echoed in my ears. But that childhood devotion was gone, and it was never coming back.

I woke in the hospital, steadied my breathing, and Valerie walked in.

“Boss, are you okay? Jim bought it completely. I already sold his company secrets to his biggest competitor.”

It was Valerie Summers.

Outside the ward, Jim stood frozen, disbelief carved into every line of his face. He couldn't process what he'd just heard.

His secretary came running down the corridor, drenched in sweat：

“Sir, it's bad! Our company secrets have been leaked. We went bankrupt this morning!”

Dead silence outside the ward.

Jim stood there like lightning had struck him.

The secretary was still rattling off the damage：

“CEO Gilbert, the bank has already frozen our accounts. Every partner is terminating their contract. The media can't be contained anymore……”

But Jim heard none of it. One sentence looping in his skull.

“Boss, are you okay?”

Boss.

Valerie had called her *boss*.

So for the past three months, the woman who'd clung to him, pouting and cooing and calling him her darling, had been Mia's plant from the very start.

Inside the ward.

I slowly lifted my head, saw that rigid silhouette standing beyond the door, and smiled.

When Jim pushed the door open and stepped in, his face was white as a corpse.

“Mia……”

His voice shook.

“What you two just said……what did that mean?”

I leaned against the hospital bed, pale but perfectly composed.

“Exactly what it sounded like.”

Valerie dropped the act too, lazily flicking her hair back：

“You really thought you were so charming that someone like me would throw herself at you?”

“The day you claimed bankruptcy, our boss started digging into you.”

Jim's eyes locked onto me：

“So you knew the whole time?”

“Knew I wasn't bankrupt? Knew I was lying to you?”

I looked at him calmly.

“By the second month.”

The air went solid.

Jim's breathing came apart：

“Then why didn't you call me out?”

Why?

I thought of myself hauling bricks on a construction site in hundred-degree heat.

I thought of my feet, cracked and bleeding through the winter cold.

I thought of my father on his deathbed, his bodyguards blocking the door while I knelt outside, begging them to let him take my call.

I smiled, just barely.

“I was waiting to see if you'd ever show a shred of conscience.”

“What a pity. I never did.”

Jim stumbled back a step, like someone had finally ripped the mask off him with bare hands.

So all these years, it wasn't that he didn't know I loved him.

He'd simply used the fact that I did.

So he could do whatever he wanted.

So he could feel untouchable.

So he could grind my heart into the dirt.

The secretary's phone rang again. He answered, and the color drained from his face：

“CEO Gilbert, it's worse! The files Ms. Summers leaked were only the first batch. A second wave just hit online. Evidence of years of cooked books, hostile acquisitions, competitors you drove into the ground!”

“The board is demanding your immediate removal!”

Jim's head snapped toward me.

“You dug up all of that too?”

I looked at him steadily.

“Jim Gilbert.”

“Did you really think all I did for three years was work for you?”

I pulled a file from my bag.

Set it gently on the edge of the bed.

Copies of every crime Gilbert Group had ever committed.