1 After my mother slapped me twice across the face for ruining her only wool coat—the one presentable thing she had left in the world—I made a vow: I would never, under any circumstances, be poor again. So when I managed to tether myself to Harrison Kane, I used every trick in my arsenal to run off every gilded songbird that fluttered into his orbit. Over five years, everyone in our circle began to assume I would eventually become the future Mrs. Kane. At private lounge parties, his friends would smirk and tease us across low-lit booths: "Word is, Harrison threw down an ungodly blanket bid at Christie’s last night for a rare pink-flame diamond." A second later, that very ring—heavy, brilliant, and blinding under the recessed lighting—was slipped gently into my palm by Harrison’s long, manicured fingers. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Just as I thought the long, grueling marathon was finally over, Harrison spoke. His voice was smooth, quiet, and devastatingly level. "A parting gift. Do you like it?" My breath hitched. I froze, looking up just as the heavy oak door swung open. A young girl stepped timidly into the room. Harrison set his cigar onto the crystal ashtray, letting a slow coil of smoke drift upward. "I’m getting married, Gia. Tell me what else you want—a penthouse, a car, a trust fund. Let’s make this a clean, amicable split." I studied the girl standing by the threshold. A white linen sundress, dewy skin, eyes wide with rehearsed vulnerability. But beneath that "bare-faced" look, the tightlining along her inner lids was executed with the precision of a seasoned predator. I swallowed the demands that had rushed to my tongue—the suburban estate, the Porsche, the wire transfer with too many zeros to count. Instead, I squeezed out a single, fragile tear that caught the light, carefully removed the diamond ring from my palm, and laid it softly on the marble table between us. "Only a bride should wear a diamond like this," I said, keeping my voice faint, almost trembling. "Keep it for her." I caught the brief flicker of hesitation in his eyes, and I offered him a sad, generous smile. "Congratulations on the wedding, Harrison." What is deadlier than a wide-eyed innocent? A gold-digger’s apparent broken heart. *** The room fell into dead silence. No one had anticipated this reaction from me—not his friends, and certainly not Harrison. Harrison lit a fresh cigarette, his gaze narrowing through the gray haze, his tone suddenly detached. "Gia. I always thought money was the only thing you cared about." Through the drifting smoke, my mind drifted back to the year I first met him. I had just escaped my family’s house, clutching a battered canvas bag, unable to scrape together the five thousand dollars I needed for university tuition. I had been sitting on the curb outside the campus gates, weeping into my knees. Harrison had been invited as a guest lecturer that afternoon. As he passed by in his tailored overcoat, he extended a steady hand and pulled me up. When I looked up, I met eyes that were sharp, amused, and impossibly wealthy. I didn't tell him about my father’s gambling debts, my mother’s spineless cruelty, or my younger brother’s bottomless greed. That script was too cheap, too common. I had simply looked into his face and said three words: "I need money." He had laughed then, just as he did now. "Well. Money is the one thing I have in abundance." A cashier’s check had been slipped into my purse that night. Now, in the private lounge, Harrison waved a hand toward the door. "Rory. Come sit next to me." I watched the girl walk over, my stomach souring with a sudden, sharp ache. In five years, Harrison had always called me by my full name—Gia. But for Rory Sutton, he already had an affectionate diminutive. The men around the table quickly caught the shift in the air and began to banter. "First time meeting the real thing! Shouldn't we raise a glass to the future Mrs. Kane?" Rory kept her head down, her voice small and delicate. "Mr. Kane... I don't really drink." She glanced shyly across the table at me. "I heard Gia has an incredible tolerance. Could she maybe... drink this for me?" She held the crystal tumbler with clumsy, exaggerated innocence. For a single second, I almost wondered if I had misjudged her. But the moment those words left her mouth, my doubts vanished. A trick that petty wouldn't have even made the top ten among the women I had systematically dismantled over the last five years. Harrison didn't answer her. He simply tilted his chin toward me. He knew perfectly well that only three weeks ago, I had been discharged from the hospital after a severe flare-up of erosive gastritis. In that private suite, Harrison had sounded deeply annoyed, though his eyes had held a rare, fleeting warmth: *You think you’re invincible? From now on, you don't drink for me at business dinners.* I had foolishly mistaken that irritation for unspoken tenderness. Now, looking at the decanter of high-proof whiskey on the table, I knew one glass wouldn't kill me. The silence dragged on. Just as everyone thought I was about to defy Harrison and publicly humiliate him, I smiled. "I'll drink it for her," I said smoothly. "Consider it my toast of gratitude for how well Mr. Kane has looked after me these past few years." Before anyone could speak, I reached out, grabbed the decanter itself, and tipped it back, swallowing the burning liquid in long, steady gulps right in front of Harrison’s stunned gaze. The fire tore through my throat and hit my empty stomach like liquid glass. Before I could set it down, Harrison lunged forward, wrenching the decanter from my grip. His face had gone pale, his voice laced with an urgent anger I had never heard from him before. "Are you out of your mind? Go to the bathroom and throw it up! Gia, would you throw your life away for a check?" I smiled faintly and pushed his hand off my wrist. Reaching into my designer handbag, I pulled out the severance check he had handed me earlier. *Rip.* *Rip.* A six-figure draft torn into halves, then quarters, then eighths, fluttering like dead confetti onto the Persian rug. "Harrison, after five years with you, I’ve made plenty," I said softly, looking straight into his eyes. "If I stayed until tonight... it was never about the money." *If not for the money, then for what?* The room was suffocatingly quiet. No one dared to breathe. Even Harrison pressed his lips into a tight, white line. Everyone in the city’s upper crust knew how mercenary Gia Morgan was. Harrison used to pinch my cheek with an amused smirk: *Gia, you’re like a black hole. Everything goes in, nothing comes out.* Yet he had also indulged me relentlessly. Designer trunks delivered to my door on rotation. The deed to the luxury downtown penthouse overlooking the river transferred entirely into my name. No one had ever treated me that well in my life, and in my desperate, starved ignorance, I had believed that indulgence was love. Now I understood. To a man of his stature, those luxury items were nothing more than handfuls of grain tossed absentmindedly to a caged bird. Just as Harrison opened his mouth to speak, Rory’s eyes welled with tears beside him. "Mr. Kane... it’s so stuffy in here. Could you walk me outside for some fresh air? My chest feels tight." The hesitation in Harrison’s expression fractured instantly. Without a second thought, he scooped Rory up into his arms and carried her toward the exit. I stood watching his broad, retreating back, the acidic burn in my chest rising to my throat. *** The midnight wind off the Chicago streets was bitter. Sitting in the back of a taxi, I pulled out my phone and sent the details of the penthouse and my car to an upscale real estate broker. When they noticed I requested an immediate, distressed-price sale, they asked for the reason. I didn't reply right away, because a mobile notification flashed across my screen: a direct wire from Harrison. No message attached. Just double the amount of the shredded check. I accepted the deposit without hesitation. If the illusion of love was gone, I would damn well keep every cent of the cash. When I pushed open the penthouse door half an hour later, my steps were light. The two people tangled on the leather sectional in the living room didn't hear me come in. Harrison’s face was slack with unmasked desire, leaning down to murmur something low and gentle against the girl’s ear. He had grown up surrounded by sycophants; in bed, he had never been the type to accommodate a partner’s hesitation. He took what he wanted, when he wanted. I had never possessed the right to say no. Yet when Rory whimpered and pushed lightly against his chest, he merely furrowed his brow with restrained patience, stroking her hair and coaxing her with hushed, tender murmurs. I stood in the shadows of the foyer, letting out a self-mocking, silent breath, and quietly backed out the front door. Leaning against the cool drywall of the hallway, the muffled sounds of intimacy drifted through the frame, stabbing into my chest like tiny, dull needles. I stood there counting the seconds, calculating how many more zeros I could extract from this wreckage before I vanished. Nearly an hour later, the door clicked open. Harrison stepped out in loose lounge pants, fresh, angry red scratch marks stark against his toned abdomen. "Did I interrupt something?" I asked mildly. Hearing my completely composed tone, Harrison’s brow knit together. For five years, I had been the woman who threw theatrical tantrums and clung to his lapels whenever another woman dared glance his way. "Rory has a fragile constitution," he said, not looking me in the eye. "This place is three blocks from Northwestern Memorial. Move your things out. Let her stay here." My fingers curled tightly into my palms. Years ago, half-jokingly, I had let slip a few details about my biological family. Harrison had cut me off with casual indifference: *Gia, I don’t like people playing the victim in front of me.* Yet on my twenty-third birthday, he had handed me the title deed to this very apartment in a velvet box. *Just because you weren't born with a home,* he had told me then, *doesn't mean you can't build one for yourself.* And now, he was handing that home to another woman. I forced a smooth, compliant smile. "All right." Rory emerged behind him, swathed in Harrison’s oversized cashmere blazer, her cheeks flushed. "I’m so sorry, Gia... I really had no idea this was your place." I glanced at the custom shoe rack holding dozens of pairs of my Louboutins, and then at the framed, blown-up photograph hanging in the gallery hallway showing Harrison and me in Aspen. "Miss Sutton’s eyesight must be remarkably poor," I said evenly. Rory’s lower lip quivered, and tears instantly flooded her eyes. Harrison pulled her protectively against his side, his voice dropping into a harsh, warning register. "She’s just a young girl who made a mistake. Do you really have to be so venomous? Gia, remember who you are." He paused, his eyes cold. "Apologize to her." For five years, backed by his favor, I had ruled his social circle like an untouchable queen. This was the first time he had ever used that tone to demand my submission for another woman. I took a deep breath, letting the tension dissolve behind a polished, practiced grin. "My apologies, Miss Sutton. I’ll pack my bags right now so I don't get in your way." Unprepared for how easily I surrendered, Harrison’s gaze flickered with an unreadable conflict. "Gia. I didn't tell you to leave." My heart gave an involuntary, pathetic jolt. Then he added, "Rory needs to recover here for the next couple of days. You know the layout. You stay and look after her." A tiny, triumphant smirk darted across Rory’s face. "Thank you, Gia. It’ll be a lot of trouble for you." I said nothing. Instead, I lifted my hand and reached toward her face. Rory flinched violently, shrinking back as if expecting a slap. Harrison’s hand shot out to intercept me, but I deftly bypassed him, lightly touching the diamond stud in Rory’s left earlobe. "These studs cost twelve thousand dollars," I whispered gently. "The most expensive pair sitting on my vanity. You have exquisite taste, Miss Sutton." *If you’re going to play the impoverished, unworldly virgin,* I thought, *at least remember to hide your claws.* The color drained from Rory’s face, her fake smile freezing solid. Harrison frowned, his gaze shifting toward Rory with the very first hairline fracture of suspicion. "I... I’m sorry, Gia," Rory stammered. "I just grabbed them without looking..." I didn't give her room to spin the narrative. I walked briskly into the master bedroom, swept my personal toiletries and clothes into two suitcases, and stripped the bed. "The master suite is yours," I called out, tossing fresh Egyptian cotton sheets onto the mattress. "Clean linens are on. Though looking at your hands—so soft and pristine—I doubt you know how to make a bed anyway." Harrison leaned against the doorframe, tapping his index finger rhythmically against his crossed arms. It was his tell—the habit he fell into whenever he was recalculating a business risk. Apart from me, he had never known a truly poor person in his life. Perhaps it was finally dawning on him: a truly destitute, hardworking girl fighting for survival doesn't have skin like unblemished porcelain, completely devoid of calluses. He used to run his thumb over the rough pads of my fingers with theatrical disgust: *Gia, your hands are rougher than my grandmother’s.* Yet every month, he had standing orders placed with French skincare houses to deliver restorative hand creams to my vanity. "I’ll buy the penthouse from you at double the fair market value," Harrison announced abruptly. "The funds will clear your account within the hour. Gia, stop causing a scene." I checked my banking app a moment later. The string of zeros was breathtaking. I offered him a faint smile, though inside, the satisfaction felt utterly hollow. After clearing out my remaining items, I went into the kitchen to prepare a pot of honeyed hangover tea. The distant hum of the shower started in the master bathroom. A shadow fell over the granite counter. Rory was standing in the doorway, her demure expression entirely replaced by a smug, venomous sneer. "Gia, you really think you’re something special, don't you?" I didn't look at her. My eyes casually drifted toward the upper corner of the crown molding, where a pinhole security camera sat nestled behind a decorative ceramic plate. She was too young. She didn't understand that in my line of work, preserving hard evidence was the first rule of survival. The day after Harrison put the title deed in my name, I had fitted every inch of this apartment—outside of the private bathrooms—with high-definition, audio-enabled cameras. Seeing that I didn't take the bait, Rory leaned closer, her voice dripping with malice. "I know all about how you ran off every single one of his playthings. But look who’s wearing his coat now. At the end of the day, I’m the one becoming Mrs. Kane. You must hate me so much you could scream." I calmly turned off the gas flame on the stove. "Yes. I do." Rory blinked, momentarily thrown off by my total lack of resistance. I raised my voice slightly, ensuring crisp audio pickup for the ceiling mic: "He can’t stand anything sour when he’s hungover, so always double the raw honey. In bed, he only uses ultra-thin strawberry latex, and his favorite position is—" "Shut up!" Rory hissed, her complexion turning sickly green. I modulated my tone, layering it with a masterclass in quiet, tragic heartbreak. "Mrs. Kane... please take good care of him from now on." Hearing the bathroom pipes shut off down the hall, I poured the steaming tea into a porcelain bowl and held it out toward her. At that exact second, Rory’s expression morphed into pure terror. She lunged forward, grabbed my wrists with surprising force, and threw her entire body backward onto the hardwood floor with a theatrical, piercing shriek! In the violent struggle, she deliberately yanked my hands downward. The boiling-hot tea overturned completely, splashing in a scalding, torrential wave straight across my bare forearm and wrist. Heavy footsteps thundered down the corridor. Harrison burst into the kitchen, his face dark with fury. The liquid was searing; my skin instantly blossomed into an agonizing, blistered sheet of raw crimson. In that split second, a morbid curiosity gripped me. Five years of loyalty, devotion, and shared breath—against a girl he had known for less than eight weeks. *Who would he choose?* Without a second of hesitation, Harrison dropped to his knees, swept Rory tenderly into his arms, and cradled her against his chest with unvarnished terror in his eyes. When he looked up at me, his gaze was colder than absolute zero. "Gia. Have I spoiled you so much over these years that you’ve completely forgotten your place?" Rory hadn't even uttered a single accusation yet. All the elaborate scenarios I had imagined—pulling the camera footage, playing it back on the 4K screen, stripping her lies bare—evaporated into thin air. She didn't need to speak. She didn't need to explain. Because Harrison had already chosen to believe her. A bizarre, bitter laugh bubbled up in my throat. I actually smiled, even as hot tears betrayed me, spilling silently down my cheeks. "You’re right," I whispered. "I forgot my place. It won't happen again." Because after tonight, there would never be an *again*. A flicker of strange, unsettled emotion crossed Harrison’s features. But he said nothing. He lifted Rory and carried her out to treat her ankle—an area that was barely showing a faint, microscopic pink smudge—while walking right past my horrifically scalded arm without a single glance. I let out a long, quiet sigh. Young girls were always sloppy when they set traps. At least I had turned off the flame a minute prior, or the liquid would have taken my skin off entirely. Still, I couldn't understand why a bowl of hot water felt like it had been poured directly over my exposed heart. It burned. It ached. After scrubbing the kitchen floor clean, there was a knock at the front door. It was Harrison’s personal assistant, carrying a medical kit packed with high-grade burn ointments. I reflexively reached out to take a tube, but the assistant stepped back awkwardly, pulling the kit away. "I’m sorry, Miss Morgan. These are all for Miss Sutton. Mr. Kane said Miss Sutton was splashed by the broth and requires preventative care against scarring." I pulled my blistered hand back, feeling foolish. "Right. Go on in." I retreated into the guest bedroom, pulled out my phone, and sent a final confirmation to the real estate agency. House sold. Car liquidated. There was nothing left in this city to hold me. I opened an old chat thread with an international academic consulting agency I had contacted months ago. With an unlimited budget, their response was instantaneous: my enrollment and visa paperwork for a master's program in New York were fully expedited. During my entire undergraduate career, I had spent every waking hour clawing for money and fighting off Harrison’s suitors. I had never tasted the simple, unburdened freedom of being a normal student. I had almost forgotten that I was only twenty-four. I still had a whole life ahead of me. *** The next morning, I was violently yanked awake by an agonizing tearing sensation at my scalp. My eyes snapped open. Leaning over the bed was a face that had haunted every nightmare of my childhood—a face more grotesque than any demon. My biological father. He wrenched my hair, dragging me bodily off the mattress. "You little whore! I wondered where you crawled off to all these years! Out here selling yourself as a rich man’s side piece?! You disgusting slut!" Terror seized my lungs. The ancient, suffocating panic of almost being sold off to an abusive creditor in my hometown rushed back in an overwhelming tidal wave. "Let go of me!" I screamed, thrashing against his grip. As my vision cleared, I saw a familiar silhouette leaning casually against the bedroom doorframe. Harrison was flicking a silver lighter, sparking a cigarette. "Harrison!" I cried out desperately. "Help me... please!" Harrison took a slow drag, his face shrouded in smoke. "You made Rory cry half the night, Gia. You needed a reminder of where you came from." My father’s face contorted with greedy malice. "You worthless bitch, you think I couldn't track you down? Look at you—used up and dirty! I couldn't even sell you off for a decent bride price now!" Through the haze, Harrison’s expression was an illegible blur. I couldn't tell if the subtle twitch in his jaw was regret, or if I was merely hallucinating mercy where none existed. Rory poked her head out from behind Harrison’s broad shoulder, her voice dripping with faux-concern. "Gia, no matter what happens, a person shouldn't abandon their own father. I went through so much trouble to track him down and bring him here to reunite with you." *Click.* The bedroom door was pulled shut from the outside. In the sudden silence of the room, as the specter of total annihilation closed in, I didn't cry. Instead, my right hand slipped beneath the guest pillow. My fingers closed around the cold, familiar grip of an eight-inch hunting knife I had kept hidden there since the day I moved in. With the speed born of surviving a thousand midnight horrors, I whipped the blade out and slammed the edge flush against the fat, pulsing artery of my father’s throat. The man’s bloodshot eyes went wide with terror. His body, eroded by decades of cheap liquor and gambling, possessed none of the leverage needed to fight against the muscle memory I had spent five years honing in private self-defense classes. When the police arrived to haul him away in zip-ties twenty minutes later, an eerie stillness settled over my soul. The "home" I had chased for half a decade, the crumbs of affection I had clung to, the childhood monsters I had spent my youth fleeing... None of it could touch me anymore. That very evening, I boarded an express red-eye flight out of O’Hare to New York. Before I left, I left Harrison Kane one final, parting gift. I linked the penthouse’s hidden cloud-storage feed directly to the 85-inch smart TV in the living room, setting the kitchen footage on an infinite loop. Beside the remote on the glass coffee table, I laid a thick manila folder containing the background dossier on Rory Sutton that I had hired private investigators to compile weeks ago. When Harrison walked into the penthouse that night and saw the paused screen, he froze, his thumb instinctively reaching for the play button. Beside him, Rory let out a bloodcurdling shriek: "Don't touch it—!"
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