On my wedding day, my sister Summer—who had a severe stutter and crippling anxiety—challenged me to a debate. "I love Ryan too, Sadie. I’m sorry," she whispered, her voice trembling. Before I could even open my mouth, my parents answered for me. I looked at them, then turned my gaze to the man I had loved for eight years. My fiancé. "Do you really think I should do this?" I asked him. Ryan frowned, nodding as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "She overcame her anxiety just to stand here and ask for this, Sadie. I can’t let her down." Of course. It was always Summer who won. Since we were children, our parents had drilled one rule into us: "We treat you both exactly the same. If you want something, you have to win it in a debate." And I had believed them. But Summer had anxiety. The moment her eyes welled with tears, the debate was over, and I was the loser. When we were small, it was the strawberry candies my parents brought home—I lost, so I got none. When we grew older, it was our college applications. Because I lost, my parents forced me to attend the same state school as Summer, even though my SAT scores were hundreds of points higher than hers. And now, they were putting my fiancé on the block. But true love isn't something you should have to fight to win. They just didn't want me to have it. So, I gave up. 1 "I concede," I said, a bitter smile tugging at my lips. "Let's call it a round hundred times you've beaten me. Happy wedding. I hope you two are very happy." Summer immediately burst into tears, her chest heaving. "Are you blaming me, Sadie? I was just... I was just fighting for what I wanted." My mother stepped in front of her like a protective hen shielding her chick, glaring at me as if I were a hawk. "What is that look on your face? I have always been fair to both of you. You will debate her. Whoever wins gets today's ceremony." I looked around the room. Every guest, every relative, had a look of solemn agreement on their faces. It was absurd. My own wedding was being turned into a forensic match to decide if I deserved to be the bride. "Is there any point?" I asked, my voice cracking. "With her condition, have I ever won a single debate since we were kids? What is the point of a rigged game?" My mother’s hand slashed across my cheek. Slap. "You owe her this," she hissed. Right. I owed her. When we were eight, our family went to an amusement park. My parents found me after we got separated in the crowd, but Summer was snatched by a stranger. Though she was found and returned safely a few hours later, she was traumatized, left with severe anxiety and a stutter. From that day on, the "fair debate" system was born. Only the winner got their desires fulfilled. And I was never allowed to win. My father’s face darkened, and he stepped in to smooth things over. "That's enough. Don't make a scene. It's embarrassing. We'll let the guests act as the jury this time. How about that?" Ryan looked irritated, whispering in my ear, "Sadie, please. Be good. I’m obviously going to choose you anyway. Don't make this look cheap." But no one was actually giving me a choice. Summer wiped her eyes and, buoyed by the crowd's encouraging nods, spoke into the microphone with a shaky voice. "Sadie, Ryan and I already went on our honeymoon. All I want is the ceremony to make my dream complete. Once the novelty wears off, I'll help convince Ryan to marry you again. I'll even be your maid of honor, okay?" She pulled out her phone and opened her social media. There was a photo of her and Ryan standing at the continental rift in Thingvellir National Park, Iceland. The caption read: Caught between two worlds, with the whole earth as our witness. Iceland. Ryan and I had traveled to many places, but we had never gone to Iceland. Because he had told me, "Sadie, we'll go there for our wedding. I want the whole world to witness how much I love you." Now, he had taken someone else. My eyes drifted down to the timestamp on the post: June 10th. That was the day I had met with a client's husband's mistress. As a relationship interventionist, my job was to dissolve affairs, but that mistress had tried to bribe me to convince the wife to sign the divorce papers. When I refused, she had her hired goons break two of my ribs. I had called Ryan a dozen times from the hospital. Every call went straight to voicemail. Now I knew why. He was on a honeymoon. My parents, my best friend, my closest colleagues—none of them had answered my calls that day either. And there they were in the comment section of her post. "This is so beautiful. Why does Summer have to love him so deeply without a happy ending?" "At least she got a honeymoon, or I’d be crying my eyes out. Wholesome!" They had all kept me in the dark. Summer gently touched my face, trying to wipe away my tears. "I'm sorry, Sadie. But Ryan used all of my design suggestions for this wedding anyway. Just let me have it, okay?" The tears stopped. A cold numbness washed over me. I spun around and kicked open the heavy doors to the ballroom. The elegant, icy-blue floral arrangements I had spent months planning were gone. In their place were cascading arches of jasmine—Summer’s absolute favorite. I walked over to the catering tables, my hands trembling as I lifted the silver cloches one by one. Every dish was heavily spiced, loaded with chili peppers and heat. But I had a severe stomach ulcer. I had spent years on a strict, bland diet. Summer was the one who ate spicy food with every meal. My chest rose and fell violently. A sharp, hollow laugh tore from my throat. I grabbed the edge of the nearest tablecloth and yanked it with all my strength. Plates, crystal glasses, and silver platters crashed to the floor, shattering in a chaotic, greasy mess. "Is this even my wedding anymore?" I screamed. No. It never was. This wasn't a debate. It was a public execution, designed to show me exactly where I stood. 2 I didn't care about the wedding anymore. I walked out, hailed a cab, and left. On the ride back, I pulled out my phone and began deleting photos. My family. My lover. My friends. It took only a few swipes to erase ten years of my life. By the time I finished, the phone felt lighter in my hand. I went back to the apartment Ryan and I shared and began to pack. My eyes swept over the living room. Summer’s pink slippers by the door. Her plush pillows on our sofa. Her favorite mug on the counter. Her silk pajama set hanging in the bathroom. She had already moved into my life, piece by piece, while I wasn't looking. I opened the closet to pack my clothes. My hand caught on an old, worn leather belt. I remembered my first day of college. I had stood by the campus lake, sobbing, refusing to unpack, begging to go home and study for another year so I could retake the exams. I couldn't accept that my hard work had been discarded just to keep Summer company. Ryan had found me there. Thinking I was going to jump, he had lunged forward and literally tied me to him with his belt. "Hey, don't do anything reckless," he had gasped, holding me tight. "As long as you're alive, we can get through whatever is hurting you." That was how he had entered my world. On the birthdays my family conveniently forgot, he was always there with a small cake and a single candle. At twenty-two, when I secured our startup's first major contract and my parents demanded I hand the credit to Summer, Ryan had stood his ground. "This belongs to Sadie, and Sadie alone," he had argued. At twenty-four, when our apartment building caught fire during the holidays and my parents left me behind in their rush to get Summer out, Ryan had run back into the smoke to drag me out. He had sat by my hospital bed afterward, crying like a child. "Sadie, don't go back to them. Move in with me. Just wait a little longer. Once the company is on its feet, we'll get married." But in the end, he gave my wedding to Summer. The doorbell rang. Ryan and Summer pushed past the door. Summer grabbed my arm, her manicured nails digging deep into my skin. She sobbed, hyperventilating. "Sadie, I'll give Ryan back to you, I swear! Just please... please tell the people online to stop calling me a homewrecker!" The sharp pain in my arm made me react instinctively. I shoved her away. She fell back, tumbling to the floor with practiced grace. Ryan immediately lunged forward, shoving me hard. I lost my footing and crashed backward. "I thought you were finally showing some maturity by leaving, but you went online to smear Summer?" Ryan hissed, his eyes full of disgust. "You know how fragile her mental state is! If anything happens to her, you won't survive the guilt!" "I was going to take you to the courthouse tomorrow to get registered anyway," he continued, looking down at me. "But look at you. You don't deserve it. If you love calling people homewreckers so much, I'll make sure you have a reason." A dull, hot pain throbbing at the back of my head told me I was bleeding, the white tile floor staining red. But Ryan didn't notice. He was already kneeling, cradling Summer with a tenderness he had never shown me. I pulled out my phone. Social media was flooded with posts exposing Summer as a homewrecker. But as I watched, the algorithm shifted. A heavily edited video of our confrontation in the ballroom went viral. It was cut to make it look like I was the bitter intruder trying to ruin my sister's wedding. Then came a video of my parents. They stood before a wall of reporters, tears streaming down their faces. "Sadie has always been envious," my mother sobbed into a microphone. "She always wanted whatever her sister had. Summer just asked her to help plan her special day, and Sadie convinced herself the groom belonged to her." Next was my best friend. She was still wearing the slate-blue bridesmaid dress I had handpicked and paid for. She looked directly into the camera with absolute disdain. "Sadie?" she sneered. "Oh, she’s a habitual homewrecker. She does this all the time." I stared at the screen, my throat closing up. Years ago, her family had tried to pull her out of college to marry her off for a dowry to buy her brother an apartment. I was the one who hid her in my dorm, paid her tuition out of my savings, and stood between her and her parents. She had held my hand and sworn: "Sadie, I will never, ever betray you." And now, this. Then, Ryan’s official company account posted a photo of his fresh marriage certificate with Summer. The caption: My one and only. To a certain someone: stop clinging. It's pathetic. I had already given him up. Why were they doing this to me? I needed an answer. I stumbled out of the apartment, got into my car, and slammed my foot on the gas. When I reached my parents' house, I reached for the doorknob, but the door was slightly ajar. My parents' voices carried through the gap. "The little brat should have never been born," my mother was saying, her voice dripping with venom. "She stole Summer's spot as our only child." "Remember that day at the park?" my father replied, his voice chillingly casual. "We thought we finally got rid of her. Who knew she’d find her way back and nearly ruin Summer? Thank god we had Summer play up her anxiety all these years. It kept Sadie right where she belonged—under our thumbs." "And Ryan," my mother hummed happily. "Such a successful young man. He was always meant for our Summer." "Now that Sadie is branded a homewrecker, she won't dare try to claw her way back..." My hands shook as I pulled out my phone, pressed record on the voice memo app, and set it to automatically sync to my cloud backup. 3 Before I could turn around, a shadow fell over me. Ryan and Summer were standing right behind me. Without a word, Ryan snatched the phone from my hand. "What are you trying to do to Summer now?" he demanded, his voice thick with unearned anger. The door flung open. My father, hearing the commotion, grabbed the phone from Ryan and slammed it onto the concrete floor, stomping on it until the screen shattered into a million black shards. "You were eavesdropping so you could edit more videos to ruin your sister, weren't you?" my father roared. "You malicious little viper!" I let out a raw, broken laugh, my eyes burning red as I looked at them. "Malicious?" I whispered. "I could live a thousand lives and never match what you've done." I bent down to reach for the broken pieces of my phone, but Summer’s heel came down hard on my fingers. She looked down at me, her eyes brimming with beautiful, theatrical tears. "Are you going to try and clear your name, Sadie?" she whimpered, her voice trembling. "If you do, everyone will hate me. They'll call me a mistress. What will I do?" She turned to Ryan, clutching his lapels. "Ryan, your company's stock is already dropping because of the rumors. If they find out... maybe it's better if I just end it all. If I die, everyone will be happy." My mother’s face twisted in maternal agony. She grabbed my arm, her nails sinking into my flesh as she shook me. "You are going to hold a press conference tomorrow," my mother ordered, her voice cold and unyielding. "You will tell them you were the homewrecker. You will tell them you lied." "And if I don't?" I spat. My mother smiled, a slow, terrifying curve of her lips. "If you don't... well, your dear grandmother is quite old. I have plenty of ways to make sure she doesn't see another sunrise." She pulled out her own phone and showed me a live video feed. My grandmother, who was suffering from advanced dementia, was tied to a wooden chair in a dark, unfamiliar room. Her lips were moving, whispering over and over: "Sadie... where is my little Sadie...?" After the amusement park incident, my parents had abandoned me at home every summer and winter break because I "lost" the family debates. It was Nana—my father's stepmother—who had fed me, kept me warm, and loved me when no one else would. She was the only reason I had survived my childhood. I couldn't let them hurt her. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and looked at Ryan. He avoided my eyes, staring at the floor. "You brought this on yourself, Sadie," he muttered. "You need to fix the mess you made. Instead of dragging things out, just do what they say. It's your company too; you don't want to see it go bankrupt. Just do this, and... I might still find a place for you. Nearby." I looked at him, realizing the boy who had saved me from the lake was long gone. The day of the press conference, the lights were blinding. Summer stood on the stage first, presenting my clients and my past successful cases as her own, looking radiant under the flashing cameras. I stood in the wings, waiting to be paraded out as the cheap thief who had tried to steal her life. My mother stood behind me, pinching the soft flesh of my waist. "Your turn," she whispered, her voice sweet for the cameras but sharp as a needle. "Don't you dare try anything." My father gave me a warning glare from the front row. I walked up to the podium, my fingers clutching the typed confession they had prepared for me. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to tear the paper to shreds. But as I raised my hands, a commotion broke out at the back of the room. Nana. Somehow, she had wandered out or been brought to the venue. She was disoriented, crying out my name. Before I could move, my parents’ security guards rushed her, shoving her roughly to keep her away from the cameras. She fell, her fragile, ninety-year-old body hitting the hard marble floor with a sickening thud. "Nana!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my chest. "Get out of the way! She’s hurt!" I tried to run to her, but two heavy hands clamped onto my shoulders, pinning me to the podium. "You want to help the old bag?" my mother’s voice hissed through my earpiece. "Read the script. Now. Or she doesn't leave this building alive." Through the gaps between the security guards, I could see Nana lying on the floor. She wasn't moving. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard the taste of copper flooded my mouth. With a hollow, robotic voice, I spoke into the microphone. "I... I am the homewrecker," I whispered, the words like ash in my mouth. "I tried to steal my sister's husband. It was all my fault. I was greedy..." When I finished, my legs gave out. I collapsed onto the stage. I saw a flash of regret in Ryan's eyes. He took a half-step toward me, his hand reaching out. "Ryan," Summer’s soft, warning voice echoed from behind him. "Are you going to ruin everything now?" He froze, then slowly pulled his hand back, turning his face away. I dragged myself up, using the wall for support, and stumbled toward the back of the room where Nana lay. But as the crowd parted, all I saw was a dark, spreading pool of crimson on the white floor. 4 The reporters didn't care about the dying elderly woman. They swarmed me, their flashing cameras reflecting off the blood on my hands. "Miss Foster, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Did she teach you how to steal other women's husbands?" "Is this her karma for raising a homewrecker?" "Get away from me! Get away!" I screamed, holding Nana’s frail, cold body against my chest. I pressed my trembling fingers against her neck. Her pulse was a faint, dying flutter. I reached into my pockets for my phone, only to remember it had been crushed to dust the night before. My parents had made sure I had no way to call for help. I fell to my knees, bowing my head until my forehead touched the blood-stained floor. "Please," I sobbed, begging the circle of reporters. "Please, someone call an ambulance. Please..." They only took more photos. No one moved. Just as the darkness began to close in on me, Ryan stepped forward, pulling out his phone with a deep scowl. "This is Ryan Mitch. We have a medical emergency at the corporate headquarters. Send an ambulance immediately." My father gripped his shoulder, his face contorted in anger. "What are you doing? Why are you getting involved with her again? You'll ruin our reputation!" "This is my company," Ryan said, his voice cold. "And there are limits to what I will tolerate." Summer stood beside them, a sweet, small smile playing on her lips, though her eyes remained entirely vacant. At the hospital, I begged the receptionist to let me pay for Nana’s emergency surgery. I handed her the card Ryan and I shared—the one we had both deposited our savings into for the wedding. The machine beeped. Declined. Insufficient funds. I tried again. Declined. With trembling fingers, I borrowed the receptionist's phone and dialed Ryan’s number. My hands shook so violently it took me three tries to get the digits right. "Ryan, please," I sobbed into the receiver the moment it connected. "The account is empty. I need to pay for Nana's surgery..." "Sadie," a sweet, mocking voice answered. "This card belongs to my husband now. As his wife, this is marital property. Why should we let you use it?" "My money is in that account!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "My savings!" "The company accounts are under my name now," Summer replied smoothly. "And since I am the lead consultant, your old salary belongs to me. Goodbye, Sadie." The line went dead. I called everyone I knew. My friends hung up the moment they heard my voice. My colleagues didn't even answer. Desperate, I dialed Valerie—the client I had helped weeks ago. She didn't ask a single question. Within two minutes, she wired fifty thousand dollars directly to the hospital's account. I grabbed the receipt and ran toward the operating room, my heart hammering against my ribs. But before I could reach the doors, the surgeon stepped out. He looked at me, then slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "She was deprived of oxygen for too long before she arrived. We did everything we could." The paper receipt slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the floor like a mocking joke. She was gone. The only person who had ever loved me was gone. I didn't cry. I felt as if my tear ducts had dried up, leaving nothing but a vast, hollow desert inside my chest. I held Nana’s cold hand as the orderly wheeled her gurney toward the basement service elevator that led to the morgue. We entered the narrow, concrete corridor connecting the emergency wing to the basement. Suddenly, the orderly stopped the gurney. He turned around, his face twisted in a look of pure disgust. Before I could react, he shoved the gurney hard, sending Nana’s body crashing onto the dirty floor. "I hate homewreckers," he spat, pulling a canister from his jacket. "People like you deserve to burn in hell." He splashed liquid across the floor. The sharp, choking smell of gasoline filled the air. A spark flew, and within seconds, a wall of orange fire erupted, blocking both ends of the corridor. Thick, black smoke filled my lungs. I fell to my knees, trying to drag Nana's body toward the exit, but my limbs felt like lead. My vision began to blur. Is this how it ends? I thought, my eyes closing. Just before the darkness took me completely, the heavy fire doors at the end of the hall crashed open. A silhouette burst through the smoke. "Don't close your eyes!" a deep, steady voice called out. "Hold on! I've got you..."
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