On my way to pick up my son, I was scrolling through Instagram when a post caught my eye.

It was a popular Q&A challenge: "What's the boldest thing you've ever done in your life?"

The replies were wild.

Some confessed to cheating, others to streaking in public.

The discussion was lively.

I wasn't particularly interested and casually scrolled past.

Until a familiar profile picture stopped me in my tracks.

She said she had destroyed a socialite's life with just a few words.

"She was my boss's fiancée, a young and gorgeous Upper East Side princess."

"On the eve of her wedding, she was kidnapped, and my boss asked me to handle the ransom."

"I suggested we delay for a few days, let her suffer a bit, so she'd learn her place."

"But she turned out to be too fragile. The kidnappers tortured her until she had a mental breakdown, and she was sent to a psychiatric hospital."

"This is the third year she's been locked away."

"And me? I finally married my boss."

That word, "finally," dripped with the satisfaction and cruelty of a long-premeditated plan.

Like a public taunt, delivered three years too late.

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1

A screenshot of Sabrina's reply went viral.

In no time, it became the top comment.

She also posted a photo.

It showed two hands, fingers intertwined.

The rings on their fingers were the ones I had designed myself—the ones I never got to wear.

"I don't think I did anything wrong."

"Even if I had to do it a hundred times over, I would make the same choice."

"After all, the only person in this world worthy of him is me."

"Not some spoiled princess who only knows how to cry."

She recounted the hardships of her journey with Caleb Hawthorne as they clawed their way up on Wall Street.

She told of how they’d built a startup from nothing, of the nights they’d fought side by side, leaning on each other for support.

But she didn't mention a single word about where Caleb's startup capital had come from.

It wasn't time to pick Finn up from school yet.

While I waited at a red light, dozens of new comments flooded the post.

Some called her shameless, saying she’d get what was coming to her for hurting people.

Some said I was too fragile and that it wasn't her fault.

Even worse, someone had managed to dig up my identity and unearth the photo of me that went viral back then.

Looking at that blurry photo, my breath caught in my throat.

It was like being pulled back through a crack in time.

I saw myself three years ago, lost and helpless.

Disheveled, thrown under the glare of flashbulbs.

A pathetic figure, stumbling into the media spotlight.

It was a stark, painful contrast to the glamorous Sabrina Page standing beside Caleb Hawthorne in the background.

Although Caleb later went to great lengths to suppress the news, that humiliating past remained forever etched in the internet's memory.

Lost in thought, I didn't notice the light turn green until a car honked behind me.

I sighed and pressed the accelerator.

By the time I reached the next intersection, the post had been deleted.

Instead, a new text pinged on my phone, sent five minutes ago.

"Evelyn, are you okay?"

The number was unfamiliar, with no name attached.

But I knew who it was. Only one person would call me that.

I hesitated for a moment, then deleted the message.

This greeting came far too late.

Three years had passed.

Whether I was okay or not had long since stopped being any of his business.

I drove on, refusing to look back.

Only occasionally, the sight of autumn leaves in Central Park would pull me back to that distant past.

Before I turned 25, my life had been perfect.

I was the most cherished daughter of the Van Doren family.

I lived in the finest penthouse in Manhattan, and my life was carefree.

My fiancé, Caleb Hawthorne, was the most envied man in our social circle.

Back then, everyone would say,

"Evelyn Van Doren is the diamond of New York, the most dazzling presence in all of high society."

Until the eve of my wedding, when I was kidnapped.

They demanded a sky-high ransom from my family.

It was fifty million dollars.

But I wasn't worried at all.

My parents loved me more than life itself, and Caleb had sworn he would marry no one but me.

They would surely save me, even if it meant bankrupting themselves.

At first, the kidnappers were reasonably polite to me.

Until the seventh day, when a cruel dose of reality shattered my naive fantasy.

A kidnapper grabbed me by the hair and kicked me to the ground.

"Didn't your family say they couldn't afford the ransom? Then what the hell is this?"

I looked up.

On the television, Caleb's triumphant face stared back at me.

He was standing with Sabrina, ringing the opening bell for his new company at the New York Stock Exchange.

The ticker behind him proudly displayed a bold line of text:

"Congratulations to Mr. Hawthorne on another great success, injecting fifty million dollars into his new project."

Fifty million.

Not a dollar more, not a dollar less.

The kidnappers let me make one last call to Caleb.

When the call connected, it was Sabrina's voice on the other end.

"Oh, Evelyn. Caleb can't talk right now."

"Oh, Caleb, stop it. The celebration party is about to start. You've wrinkled my dress, how am I supposed to meet the investors now?"

The line went dead, and the suggestive laughter and clinking champagne glasses in the background fell silent.

It was Caleb's silent way of telling me.

Between love and career, he had chosen career.

Between me and Sabrina, he had chosen Sabrina.

I stood there in stunned disbelief.

I didn't notice that the way the kidnappers were looking at me had changed.

On the eighth day, the ransom didn't arrive.

Caleb didn't respond, didn't compromise.

On the ninth day, the ransom still hadn't arrived.

The kidnappers broke my finger as a warning.

The kidnappers filmed a video of me being violated, threatening to ruin my reputation.

Caleb still didn't respond, only releasing a statement in the afternoon in the company's name.

"The Hawthorne Group will never compromise with criminals."

On the tenth day, my parents announced they were moving to Europe.

I had become a completely abandoned pawn, having lost my final value.

The kidnappers were furious.

In their fury, they used every means possible to torture and humiliate me.

At that time, both the kidnappers and I still clung to a final sliver of hope.

The hope that someone would come to save me.

But no one did.

During my captivity, Caleb and Sabrina's relationship flourished in the public eye.

News reports about them were endless.

They attended various events together, held grand victory celebrations.

Clinking glasses, laughing and talking, they were on top of the world.

Every financial news channel was reporting on him.

Caleb's latest investment was a massive success, and he was poised to become Wall Street's youngest tech tycoon.

Before him lay a golden road to success.

Behind me, however, was a pack of demons.

They vented all their fury and resentment on me.

Whips, daggers, branding irons, and steel needles.

Trapping me in a living hell where I could neither live nor die.

On the fifteenth day, I finally found a chance to escape.

The details of my escape are a blur of hardship and danger.

I only remember that I kept running, running without stopping.

Running until my feet were numb, until my wounds split open, until I had only a single breath left.

Just as I was on the verge of collapse, about to give up in despair, the sound of classical music gave me a direction.

I didn't care about my ragged clothes.

Forgetting all dignity and decorum, my mind screamed a single word: Survive.

But when I followed the sound to the scene, what I saw was Caleb hosting a charity gala with Sabrina at The Plaza Hotel.

The event was grand, and the place was crawling with reporters.

How ridiculous.

He had money to invest, money for charity, but no money to ransom his own fiancée.

He had time for press conferences, for interviews, but no time to save his own fiancée.

He was here, basking in praise and applause, while I was left to suffer all the humiliation and torture at the hands of demons.

I stood there, covered in scars, like a clown who didn't belong.

Forcing everyone present to stare at the fresh wounds covering my body.

In that moment, all the spotlights turned on me.

The warmth vanished from Caleb's face.

He didn't ask if I was in pain, nor did he care what I had been through.

He only said one thing.

"Evelyn, what are you throwing a fit about now?"

A fit?

So all the pain and torture I had endured… in his eyes, it was just me being unreasonable, trying to get attention.

So all the blood and scars on my body… to him, they meant less than a speck of dust on the floor.

I rushed over in tears, demanding to know why he hadn't saved me.

"Why? Why?"

"I'm your fiancée! We promised to spend our lives together!"

"I'm carrying your—"

Before I could finish, Caleb cut me off heartlessly.

Under everyone's gaze, he pushed my hand away.

His gaze was a heavy, complicated mix of emotions I couldn't begin to untangle.

"Evelyn, why can't you just be sensible!"

"I had Sabrina handle it the moment I got the news. Once this busy period is over, the money will be sent in full."

"You were never going to be in any real danger, so why put on such a pathetic act here?"

How could anyone use their own dignity and life to put on an act?!

I stood there, staring in disbelief at the man I had once loved so deeply.

But even as tears streamed down my face, Caleb's expression remained unmoved.

He just seemed to be quietly blaming me for disrupting his charity event.

In the end, I was wrapped in a blanket and led away.

Sabrina came over, feigning concern.

But she deliberately loosened her scarf, revealing the fresh hickeys on her neck.

"Aren't you curious why your parents didn't come to save you?"

"Isn't it strange how Caleb's attitude towards you changed so drastically?"

"Because you're not a Van Doren at all!"

Sabrina told me that on the day they received the ransom note, my parents were frantic.

They claimed they would spare no expense, even if it meant bankrupting the company, to save me.

But Caleb stopped them.

He produced a DNA report.

It said I was an imposter, switched at birth by a vengeful nanny.

The real Van Doren daughter had died long ago from the nanny's abuse and torture.

These words stopped my parents in their tracks.

The cherished jewel of the Van Doren family... turned out to be an imposter.

The years of love they had given me made it impossible for them to abandon me completely.

But their hatred for the woman who had killed their real daughter left them unsure how to face me.

After much hesitation.

They left me a fifty-million-dollar trust fund and entrusted me to Caleb's care.

In truth, they had done all they could for me.

They just never expected Caleb to be so heartless.

He took that fifty million dollars, the money that was supposed to save my life.

And invested it in his new project.

With it, he skyrocketed to new heights, his future limitless.

But he left me to be tortured until I was barely breathing.

That day, I cried until I had no tears left.

When I looked up, Caleb was standing before me.

He was silhouetted against the light.

I couldn't see his expression, but I saw the necklace around his neck, identical to Sabrina's.

He looked down at me, his voice low.

"Evelyn, I won't abandon you because of your past."

"But I want you to remember, you no longer have the Van Doren family to rely on."

"If you want to marry me, to become Mrs. Hawthorne, you need to be sensible."

Everyone tried to convince me that this was Caleb's way of extending an olive branch.

That he knew of my proud nature, knew of my unbearable ordeal.

Yet he was still willing to tolerate, accept, and forgive me.

This was proof that he loved me.

But this so-called love sounded more like a threat.

The old Evelyn Van Doren would have been angry, furious, would have raised hell.

But after everything I'd been through, I was scared.

I realized my fate rested entirely on Caleb's whim.

My life, my future, my everything.

It was all up to him.

So, I did as he wished.

I became sensible.