For three years, I loved Sheldon Woodward, the heir to a New York tech giant.

I had just discovered I was pregnant and was about to share the happy news when I overheard a conversation between him and his fiancée, Anastasia Lancaster—my college bully, whose family was a key strategic partner for his.

That was when I learned his deep affection for me was a sham. It was all part of a cruel bet with Anastasia to “humiliate me 100 times”—a game designed to secure their families’ business alliance and solidify his position as heir.

The truth was devastating: he had turned my love against me and destroyed my career, all for his own gain. I was nothing but a pawn in his cruel game.

After my faked death in a plane crash, Sheldon found a custom USB drive I had planted in the wreckage. It was engraved with the logo for our first game, and on the back, the words: [Challenge 100: I bet you love me].

The truth finally crashed down on him. Consumed by regret, he turned on everyone who had taken part in the bet, unleashing his fury.

Meanwhile, I began a new life in Europe. By faking my death, I had exacted my revenge on the arrogant man who had treated my heart like a toy.

————————

1

Just a wall away.

Anastasia's voice was laced with triumph. "Sheldon, humiliation challenge number ninety-six: complete!"

Sheldon's voice dripped with a sarcasm I'd never heard from him before. "Anastasia, are you having fun with this?"

"Of course! It serves her right for always showing you up in college, whether it was scholarships or design competitions."

Sheldon's friend, Nate Archer, chimed in. "Just four more to go, and our boy Sheldon can finally propose!"

My blood ran cold.

"But Sheldon's idea was the cruelest—pretending to be in love with Ariel just to completely crush her."

"Oh, the best one was that time Sheldon lied about getting jumped by a gang at a bar."

Nate burst out laughing. "The way Ariel frantically rushed to the bar only to find nothing, crying while she tried to explain to her investor over the phone—priceless. I recorded the whole thing."

I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasting blood.

That day, I had abandoned a crucial investor meeting—one I had prepared for six months—to race to Sheldon's side, losing an invaluable opportunity.

Anastasia chuckled softly. "And that time we turned the concept designs she stayed up three nights drawing into a meme. The look in her red-rimmed eyes when she saw it in the group chat... she looked like a pathetic stray dog."

Sheldon's laugh came right on cue. "So, what's the plan for this time?"

"Tell her a major investor is interested and wants to meet at Per Se. We'll go see a show and leave her waiting there all night. How about it?"

My phone buzzed immediately. A text from Sheldon:

[Per Se, 7 PM, don't be late.]

Terrified of being discovered, I spun on my heel and fled.

But two minutes later, Sheldon unsent the message, as if struck by a pang of regret.

I pretended I hadn't seen a thing and didn't reply.

The truth was, I’d suspected something for a while.

It was while Sheldon was in the shower that I found it: a locked photo album on his phone simply titled “Challenge.”

It contained 96 videos, one for every humiliation.

The password was Anastasia’s birthday: 1224. He’d once told me that was the day we first met. A lie.

On that day last year, I had waited for him in the heavy snow for three hours, just to spend Christmas Eve together.

But he was at Anastasia's family party, placing a birthday crown on her head, only showing up well after midnight.

Sheldon had carefully wrapped his scarf around my neck. The memory of his tenderness was now a bitter, cutting irony.

A dull ache throbbed in my chest as I opened the encrypted messaging app.

In his pinned conversation with Anastasia, he reported his progress on humiliating me daily, a dense, sickeningly detailed log:

[Told her there was a work emergency today, but actually took you to the Hamptons. She waited until 3 AM.]

[Intentionally told her the investor meeting was two hours later than it was. Watching her sprint through the streets in her pajamas was hilarious.]

The last message was from the day of the gallery opening.

When Anastasia "accidentally" spilled scalding coffee, Sheldon had instinctively shielded me.

But in his chat with Anastasia, he had written:

[Touching her felt disgusting. I had to spray myself with disinfectant three times when I got home.]

I called my dad in Switzerland and told him I wanted to move in with him.

After my mom passed away five years ago, my dad had been living a secluded life in the small Swiss town where they had fallen in love, surrounded by her memory.

As for me, I had stayed in New York for Sheldon, turning down every career opportunity in Europe, barely seeing my dad more than once a year.

I once thought I could melt Sheldon’s icy exterior, forgetting that melted ice is just bone-chilling water.

My all-consuming love had been nothing but a wager, and I was just the pawn in a game for his fiancée's amusement.

Hearing my decision, my dad was overjoyed. "My dear daughter, you've finally come to your senses!"

I held back my tears and managed a soft, "Mm-hmm."

"Dad, I need you to help me stage a plane crash."

Though he didn't understand, he agreed without question.

A plane crash was my final gift to Sheldon.

The name Ariel Reid—I would make it a scar on his memory for the rest of his life.

I deleted all our photos together from my phone. While packing at home, an encrypted folder on Sheldon's computer caught my eye.

The folder's icon was the first logo I ever designed for the game Echoes of Eternity—a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Sheldon had set it as the icon. Inside were screenshots of all my game design prototypes from over the years, which he had meticulously collected, claiming he would help me realize my dreams.

I froze when I got to the seventh screenshot. Next to a photo of me in my glasses, debugging code, was a digital sticky note:

[The way she cursed at her computer over a bug today was like an angry kitten. And her revised code was ten times more efficient. How can someone so brilliant be so fiercely adorable?]

I remembered how every time I pulled an all-nighter to meet a deadline, Sheldon would stay with me, giving me massages and ordering takeout.

Because of a single offhand comment I made, he once scoured all of Manhattan in the middle of the night to buy me a cheesecake. When I was on my period, he always had hot chocolate and a hot water bottle ready.

Was this all just a game? It seemed the lead actor had started believing his own lines.

But the last file in the folder documented his seventy-second challenge for Anastasia. He had tricked me into waiting for him at the studio all night to polish a demo, while he took Anastasia on a vacation to the Hamptons.

Raindrops pattered against the window.

Any affection he felt was built on self-deception. He might have had feelings for me, but he loved his empire and his title more. I was just a means to an end.

With trembling hands, I took out my phone and scheduled an abortion.

Late that night, I was lying in bed when I heard Sheldon come home, bringing the night's chill in with him. I pretended to be asleep.

A long moment passed without a sound. I heard him stop just inside the door.

Strange. I hadn't fallen for his prank, which must have made him lose face with Anastasia and their friends. Was he just going to let it go?

The mattress behind me dipped, and a pair of strong arms wrapped around my waist.

Sheldon buried his head in the crook of my neck, like a weary bird returning to its nest. His warm breath was laced with an unexpected joy. "We're having a baby, my Ariel."

Ariel. He always called me that, saying the name was as bright as a star, shining only for him.

But I knew that behind my back, he told Anastasia he only called me that for fun, that I was just an oblivious bookworm.

All to watch me transform from a promising designer into a fool blinded by love.

I remained silent. He didn't know I had already decided not to keep the baby.

Sheldon didn't seem to notice my mood. He took out my pregnancy test and drew three little hearts on it with a fountain pen.

It was the Montblanc I had bought him with my first-ever paycheck. He had carried it with him ever since.

I didn't respond. Sheldon held me tighter, whispering endless words of love, but my heart felt like a stone at the bottom of a frozen lake.

"I'm tired. Let's sleep."

He immediately fell silent. "We'll go to Anastasia's birthday party together tomorrow," he said, and then he was asleep.

And I lay awake all night.

Sheldon had staged a game of feigned love, and I had wagered three years of my real heart.

Fine. I would stage my own death and make him carry that regret for the rest of his life.

At Anastasia's birthday party, Sheldon's friends surrounded me, pushing a specially mixed cocktail in front of me. "Ariel, Sheldon says he loves watching you drink. He says it gives you a certain allure."

Sheldon looked away, pretending not to see.

The moment the alcohol touched my lips, a bitter taste filled my mouth, and a wave of nausea washed over me.

But Anastasia held me down, forcing another glass to my lips. "Ariel, it's my birthday. Don't be such a buzzkill. Don't tell me you're disgusted by me!"

A sharp cramp tore through my lower abdomen, the pain so intense it stole my breath.

Sheldon's friends were jeering from the sidelines, treating me like a spectacle.

After a few drinks, I rushed to the restroom and threw up violently. A wave of triumphant laughter erupted from the private room; their prank had worked.

"Stomach still upset?" Sheldon handed me a glass of warm water with mint leaves, a little trick he’d taught me for settling an upset stomach when we first met.

I couldn't respond to his hollow affection, because the pain in my abdomen felt like a thousand needles stabbing me from the inside.

I looked down. A shocking trail of red snaked down my inner thigh.

I gripped Sheldon's arm, my voice a desperate plea. "Take me to the hospital..."

But Anastasia blocked the doorway, a smirk on her face. "It's just an irregular period. It happens to girls all the time. Sheldon, don't overreact."

"Get out of the way!" Sheldon roared.

It was the first time he had ever defied Anastasia for my sake.

When I woke up, I heard Anastasia's petulant voice complaining to Sheldon's friends outside the examination room. "Did you add too much? We were just supposed to embarrass her, not actually hurt her."

Nate, however, just chuckled. "Getting rid of a little problem is a good thing, isn't it? Sheldon should be thanking me."

"Yeah, it's been three years. If she'd had a kid, Sheldon would have been stuck with her for good."

Sheldon was silent for a long time before he finally spoke. "Humiliate her, fine. But none of you were to lay a hand on her."

Anastasia was stunned for a moment, then her voice filled with rage. "Who was it that said, 'I want to knock that bookworm off her high horse' to get back at her for me?"

"Publicly humiliating her for my birthday—wasn't that your idea? Sheldon, have you fallen in love with her?"

Sheldon recoiled as if the very idea was poison. "How could that be possible? Of course, it's you I love."

The room outside immediately filled with laughter and cheerful voices again.

They celebrated the end of the ninety-eighth humiliation and started planning the ninety-ninth.

I touched my flat stomach, a dull ache still lingering there.

My baby and I were just another part of their game, a birthday surprise for Anastasia.

I wiped away my tears and, with trembling fingers, canceled the abortion appointment. There was no need. The baby's own father had already signed its death warrant.

My fingers were hovering over my dad's contact number when the door creaked open. Sheldon. I snapped my eyes shut, my breathing instantly shallow as I feigned sleep.

I heard his hoarse voice, thick with guilt. "Ariel, I'm so sorry..."

The reason for his apology was obvious.

After I recovered and was discharged, Sheldon told me that Nate, the others, and Anastasia wanted to apologize. They had arranged for us to go to a new VR game experience event together, to help me "clear my head" over the loss of my child.

I knew this was almost certainly another humiliation, but the thought of my lost baby twisted my heart into a knot of grief.

After this, I would be leaving for Berlin. I would treat it as a final farewell.

On the way there, they all crowded around Anastasia, laughing and fawning over her, completely ignoring me.

When we passed a souvenir shop, Sheldon bought a custom USB drive shaped like a game controller. He insisted we engrave a blessing for our child on it together.

Anastasia stood by, smiling gently. "Ariel, you're such a good mother."

I ignored her hypocrisy.

Inside the VR experience center, I was suspended on a platform mid-air, immersed in the virtual world, when I suddenly felt the safety buckle behind me come loose. Someone had unfastened it.