My sister and I used to be drowning in our own toxicity, hell-bent on chasing men who didn't want us. I was obsessed with the older one—a cold, ruthlessly disciplined, older corporate executive. My sister, meanwhile, was desperately in love with his younger brother—a frail, soft-spoken, wheelchair-bound boy with a shy smile. After an entire year of throwing ourselves at them and getting absolutely nowhere, we reached a point of pathetic desperation. We actually planned to drug them. It was a reckless, absurd idea. But right before we crossed that unforgivable line, a glitching stream of glowing text appeared out of thin air, hovering right in front of our eyes. The floating words screamed at us. The text berated my sister and me for our twisted, obsessive minds, begging us to spare these two men. The comments insisted that they belonged to the "rightful heroine" of the story. More terrifyingly, the floating text warned us of exactly what would happen if we went through with the drugging: our family would go bankrupt, our faces would be ruined, and we would be violently thrown out into the streets, left to rot. Seeing those warnings felt like taking a bucket of ice water to the chest. My sister and I snapped out of our fever dream. From that moment on, we stopped suffocating them. We stopped forcing our feelings down their throats. We decided to focus on ourselves, to pull our lives together, and to actually open our eyes to the other decent guys in the world. Yet, the universe has a sick sense of humor. The older brother—the man who had spent a year looking through me as if I were made of glass—suddenly cornered me in the hallway. Before I could process what was happening, he closed the distance and kissed me, hard. His breathing was ragged. He practically shook as he demanded to know why I had just given up on him so easily. He asked, his voice dripping with a dark, bitter insecurity, if I suddenly thought he was too old, too boring for me. The more he spoke, the more he lost control. The kiss turned desperate. Punishing. Panicking, I managed to shove him back just enough to hit speed-dial for my sister. When the call connected, I didn't hear her voice. I heard her muffled, terrified crying. And then, crackling through the receiver, came the voice of the younger brother. The shy, gentle boy was gone. His voice was thick, dark, and sickly sweet. "Be a good girl," he whispered through the phone. "Let's do that again." A chill violently clawed its way down my spine. 1 It was right after my ninth failed confession to my older stepbrother, Devin. I decided I was going to force his hand. My twin sister, Serena, didn't approve at first. "You can't force a flower to bloom," she told me, lounging on my bed. "Matters of the heart require patience. We have to play the long game. Slowly reel them in." Exactly one week later, Serena experienced her tenth brutal rejection from the younger brother, Kieran. She was devastated. She cried until her eyes were swollen shut. "You can't force a flower to bloom," she sniffled, wiping mascara from her cheeks, "but at least you can rip off the petals." "Exactly." "If I can't have his heart, I'll take his body." "Damn right!" Serena initiated the raid; I immediately fell into formation. One look between us, and the plan was set. Sunday was our mother's birthday gala. For the sake of convenience and showing off, it was hosted right here at our sprawling estate. Because it was the first birthday since our families had merged into one messy, wealthy blended household, our stepdad, Richard, had his two sons in attendance. I had acquired the goods. Serena stared at the five tiny green vials in the palm of my hand, her expression entirely skeptical. "Are you absolutely sure this sketchy powder you bought off a dark-web pop-up ad for ten bucks actually works?" I was brimming with misguided confidence. "The forums swore by it. It’s foolproof." The party downstairs was a blur of designer dresses, clinking champagne flutes, and polite corporate laughter. Devin, whom I hadn't seen in weeks, was dressed in a razor-sharp bespoke suit, looking like he owned the room. He stood near the grand piano, nursing a scotch and making small talk with the investors. He caught sight of me. His gaze lingered on me for less than three seconds before he abruptly looked away, his jaw tightening. He looked so painfully stiff and awkward that a stranger would have thought he was the one who had been rejected nine times. Kieran, confined to his wheelchair, sat quietly in the shadowed corner of the sunken living room. When Serena took a seat on the velvet sofa near him, he didn't even dare to lift his head. They really were brothers. Their avoidance tactics were identical. Serena had been wavering slightly, but seeing Kieran shrink away from her solidified her resolve. "I'm going to find out if his body is as stubborn as his mouth," she muttered. We divided the labor. Serena poured the drinks; I twisted the caps off the vials. Right as I was tipping the powder over the rim of the crystal tumbler, a blinding white light flashed across my vision. Neon text began scrolling through the empty air in front of me. [God, I am so sick of these two desperately horny sisters. Begging the author to let our two male leads go.] [The premise of this book is a love triangle where both brothers fall for the sunshine female lead! Even if these toxic twins drug them, it won't work.] [This is so gross! Why can't they just be normal stepsiblings?!] [In the original novel, these two evil stepsisters end up with the most gruesome fates just because they tried this stunt.] [Help, stop digging your own graves! Just be background characters!] [I eternally reject the 'harassment as romance' trope. Someone delete these side characters.] [When is the real heroine showing up? I'm dying waiting.] [Go ahead and drop the powder, girls. Enjoy your VIP package of bankruptcy, facial disfigurement, and getting thrown into the gutter.] "Bankrupt?" I whispered. "Disfigured?" Serena gasped. Another flash of white light. Suddenly, a vivid, horrifying montage played in my mind: Serena and I weeping, begging on our knees, being spat on, humiliated, stripped of everything, our faces scarred, our bank accounts drained to zero. I love money more than life itself. Serena worships her own beauty. We slowly turned to look at each other, the color draining from our faces. We spoke in unison. "You saw that too?" "..." 2 Serena and I are identical twins. We share the exact same face. We share absolutely none of the same personality traits. Serena reads obscure French poetry; I devour double cheeseburgers. Serena is the picture of poise; I’m a walking hurricane. We only have one thing in common. We are both incredibly pretentious. To prove how "different" and deep we were, Serena and I would camp out at the local artisanal coffee shop with our MacBooks, looking brooding and intellectual for ten hours straight. Because we thought adopting a dog or a cat was too basic, I bought a ball python, and she bought an iguana. Beyond that, our daily routine consisted of viciously competing with one another. We competed over who could eat more, who could fail an exam more spectacularly, who had a better metabolism, and who could curse someone out more creatively. Our mother, trapped between us, had a miserable time trying to keep the peace. Finally, after one too many nights of being forced to choose whether the snake or the iguana was "cuter" before we went to bed, our mother snapped. She decided she wasn't going to suffer alone anymore. She was going to find a husband to draw some of our fire. Enter Richard. Richard was a widower of many years, dragging along two grown sons. In the high-society dating market, he was considered damaged goods. Our mother took one look at his bank accounts and zeroed in on him. Serena and I took one look at him and zeroed in on... his sons. Devin was twenty-seven. Kieran was twenty-five. Devin was ice-cold, impossibly arrogant, and ruled by logic. He was the quintessential, untouchable CEO from a romance novel. Kieran was the gentle aristocrat. Soft-spoken, warm, yet shadowed by the tragedy of his paralyzed legs, which gave him an air of fragile melancholy. I stared at Devin, practically salivating. "I want to see that ice-king lose his mind. It would be intoxicating." Serena stared at Kieran, her eyes dark. "I want to pin him down and make him cry." Like I said, Serena and I are family. We have the exact same twisted DNA running through our veins. We were creatures of impulse. If we wanted something, we took it. I was the action-taker. I immediately drafted a battle plan to conquer the older brother. I bought him absurdly expensive watches, sent him texts, ambushed him for lunches and movies. I studied his coffee orders, his habits, trying to dismantle his defenses brick by brick. After a year of this, my progress was exactly zero. Serena believed in the slow burn. She thought love should seep in like water into soil. Whenever she had a free moment, she was pushing Kieran’s wheelchair through the gardens. She talked to him about art, the moon, life, and philosophy. She listened to him talk about the trauma of losing his mother and the agonizing pain of losing his legs. But Kieran’s heart was apparently made of Kevlar. "Kieran said I'm too young, and that I'm just confusing pity for love," Serena complained to me once. "Devin said my constant presence is a sign of deep-seated attachment issues," I grumbled back. "Kieran said legally, it's frowned upon." "Devin said he has a corporate image to maintain and won't involve himself in a scandal." We both sighed heavily. This was the first time either of us had seriously pursued anyone. We just assumed we hadn't tried hard enough, hadn't dug deep enough into their souls. The more we failed, the harder we pushed. The more they pushed us away, the more obsessed we became. It grew into a sickness. A total fixation. But it turned out, we were just living inside the pages of a novel. Serena and I were the cannon fodder. The evil stepsisters. Devin and Kieran were the male leads. Their entire universe was meant to revolve around the heroine. Serena and I were just the pathetic catalysts meant to push the main characters closer together. We were flat, one-dimensional tools. We were never, ever going to get a text back. Under the invisible hand of the plot, we had slowly been driven insane, pushed toward making unforgivable choices, destined to die penniless and ruined. I looked down at the powder dusted across my knuckles. A cold sweat broke out over my entire body. 3 [Why is the evil stepsister just standing there spacing out? Is she plotting something worse?] The text was still hovering in the air. I quickly pulled out my phone and checked my banking app. I counted the zeroes. They were still there. Serena whipped out her compact mirror. Her flawless face was untouched. We both let out massive, shaky breaths. We looked at each other, communicating entirely through our eyes. Actually, when you really think about it, Devin always has a stick up his ass. He's not even fun. Men age like milk anyway. He's twenty-seven, which in club years is basically sixty-two. He's too old for me. Kieran is so fragile. If I actually got him into bed, he’d probably break. Love is great, but my face is worth millions. If I have to choose between a man and my trust fund, the man has to go. Serena always knew exactly what to say. I decisively dumped the remaining powder straight into the nearest potted plant. But I couldn't just leave the drinks sitting there. It felt too suspicious. I grabbed a pitcher of tap water and topped off both glasses of scotch until they were thoroughly diluted. [Wait, why did the villain back out?] [The plot is totally shifting. Am I reading a pirated version of the book?] [Oh no! The first encounter between the heroine and the male leads is totally ruined! How are they going to have their romantic, drug-fueled one-night stand now?!] First encounter? One-night stand? Romantic? Now that I was pulled out of my obsessive haze, reading those words made me want to gag. What a load of toxic bullshit. Serena saw the text too. She frowned, looking visibly nauseated. "Thank God we stopped," she whispered. "We didn't ruin our own lives, and we didn't accidentally traffic them to some random girl." Devin stepped up to the bar. Seeing the glass in my hand, he assumed it was for him. He reached out to take it. After seeing those floating comments, looking at him made my chest feel tight and complicated. Maybe it started out as physical attraction. A shallow crush. But over the last year of trying to break through his walls, I had actually given him pieces of my real heart. But if this was a story, and I was the villain, there was no point in bleeding out for him anymore. "This isn't for you," I said coldly, pulling the glass away. "..." Devin’s dark eyes narrowed. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. I lifted the glass, intending to take a sip just to prove my point. His hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist. He pulled the glass down. "Did you forget you're allergic to alcohol?" I actually had forgotten. I let him take the glass. He brought it to his lips and took a slow sip. Serena watched him, opening her mouth to say something, then shutting it. I knew firsthand how terrifyingly observant Devin was. Once, I had accidentally left a single strand of hair on his office chair. The next day, he presented it to me, noting the length and the curl pattern, and told me to learn the definition of boundaries. There was no way he didn't taste the tap water I had just dumped into his Macallan. But before I could dwell on it, our mother clinked her glass to announce the cake cutting. Serena and I linked arms and walked up to the front to stand with her. I accidentally glanced up. I met Devin's eyes across the room. I didn't give him my usual desperate, glowing smile. I just looked at him blankly, and then shifted my gaze to the wall. Around ten o'clock, the party wound down. I headed upstairs to my bedroom. Devin was leaning against the mahogany railing at the top of the stairs. He called my name, stopping me in my tracks. The light from the crystal chandelier hit the sharp angles of his jaw. Usually, his features were entirely composed, practically monastic. But tonight, there was a faint flush to his cheeks. He was holding a small, dark red velvet box. He looked at me. I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "Last week was your birthday. I was out of town on business and missed it. This is your gift." I took the box and offered a polite, distant smile. "Thank you, Devin." Devin’s eyes widened, a sudden, jarring clarity cutting through his buzzed state. His voice hitched with a strange tension. "What did you just... call me?"
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