My husband, Cole, went bankrupt. To keep from dragging me down with him, he tried to kill himself, over and over again. For five years, I gutted fish at the market by day and scavenged for recyclables by night, pregnant and trying to pay off his debts. One evening, as I was resting on a curb after clearing out a wealthy neighborhood’s recycling bins, I heard a baby’s cry from within my own womb. 【Mommy, stop picking up trash to support Daddy. He’s a huge liar! The mansion right behind you is his house. He’s the heir to the richest family in the city!】 【After you give birth, he’s going to say you failed his ‘poverty test.’ He’ll take me and have you thrown out of the hospital to freeze to death on the street!】 I sat there for a long time, my hand on my belly. Then I took out my phone and searched for the city’s wealthiest family. Under the “Family” section, a familiar face stared back at me. Cole’s. Son of the city’s richest man. He had been playing me for a fool for five long years. But what he didn’t know was that I was born with a unique gift. A blood curse. Any lie he told would come true within a month. 1 When I got back to our rundown apartment, Cole opened the door from the inside. He looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot, as if he were carrying the weight of the world. Seeing my blank expression, he pulled me into a tight hug, burying his face in my neck. “Honey, you’ve worked so hard.” “I managed to get some day labor at a construction site today. Made eighty bucks.” His gentle expression seemed so real, but I heard my baby’s indignant voice in my head. 【That jerk just climbed out of someone else’s bed, and now he’s pretending he was working!】 Instead of comforting him like I usually did, I found myself asking, “Did you go to a public bath? You smell… nice.” He smelled of a crisp, expensive cologne, not the sweat of a man who’d been hauling bricks all day. I had been so stupid, I’d never noticed before. Now, the scent just made my stomach churn. Cole’s body tensed. He looked up, his eyes welling with tears. “Honey, I’m so tired. Sometimes I just want to end it all. But I can’t bear to leave you and the baby.” Every time he said that, my heart would break. I would have done anything to earn more money to pay off his debts. I did the laundry. I cooked the meals. I paid the bills. When he complained that condoms were too expensive, I offered to get an IUD. He was probably laughing at how pathetic I was, even then. When he proposed, he had gotten down on one knee and promised me, “Stella, I will cherish you for the rest of my life. I’ll work hard so you’ll never have to suffer.” Not a single word of it had been true. Cole. All you’ve ever given me is pain and betrayal. I looked at his face, at his carefully crafted expression of devotion, and said calmly, “Then let’s just stop. We owe so much, we’ll never pay it back in a lifetime.” “The three of us can just die together. At least we’ll have each other on the other side.” Cole froze, a flicker of panic in his eyes. “Honey, what are you talking about? I have to live, for you and the baby!” He had no intention of dying. This whole charade was just a way to manipulate me into working myself to the bone for him. I fought back the nausea and reached out, patting his back reassuringly. My fingers brushed against his shirt. The fabric was soft and fine, definitely not something from a discount store. Cole, thinking he had fooled me again, let out a sigh of relief and was about to launch into another sentimental speech. The flimsy door was kicked open. A glamorous woman with a group of burly men stormed in. “Cole, I know you got paid today. Stop playing dead!” This was Melissa, the “debt collector” Cole had told me about. 【Mommy, that’s Daddy’s adopted sister. They’re both in on it, playing you for a fool!】 A sharp pain lanced through my chest. I watched as the men ransacked our tiny apartment, grabbing the few hundred dollars I had earned that day from the market and from collecting cans. The woman wrinkled her nose in disgust and threw the money on the floor. “It stinks of fish. Your wife is disgusting.” She pointed the toe of her expensive high-heeled shoe at me. “Fishmonger. Lick my shoe clean. If you do a good job, I might let you off the hook for a little bit.” Cole sighed. “Honey, I’m so sorry you have to go through this.” When I didn’t move, one of the men grabbed my hair and slammed my face to the ground. Tears streamed down my face, not from weakness, but from the searing pain of pure hatred. Melissa seemed to lose interest. “Forget it,” she scoffed. “You’ll just get my shoe dirty.” Cole quickly pushed me into the bedroom and locked the door. “Honey, it’s my fault you’re in this mess. Let me deal with them.” It was quiet for a moment, and then I heard a woman’s voice, deliberately lowered. It was Melissa, her voice a seductive purr. “If Stella finds out we’ve been lying to her this whole time, you know how stubborn she is. Do you think she’ll try to get revenge?” Cole’s voice was laced with contempt. “She wouldn’t dare. She’s madly in love with me. She’d do anything for me. We made a bet to see how long she’d last, and it’s been almost five years. She’s still gutting fish and picking up trash like a fool.” Melissa giggled. “It was just a stupid game, a bet to see if you could pretend to be poor with the first person you met until they figured it out.” “You’re a master, Cole. You’ve played the part so well. You’ve got Stella trained like a dog.” “Remember that time we went to the Maldives? You pretended you’d been kidnapped by debt collectors, and she went crazy looking for you. She spent days at a temple, praying for your safety.” We met when Cole saved me from being harassed at a restaurant. But from the very beginning, it was all a lie. I had prayed so hard for him, my forehead bruised from bowing, begging the heavens to keep him safe. And it was all just a game to him. “So what’s the plan? Are you really going to let her pay off your ‘debt’? I’m getting tired of this act.” Cole’s voice was sickeningly sweet. “You have trouble conceiving, you know that. We’ll wait until she has the baby, I’ll have it legally registered under your name, and then I’ll find a way to get rid of her.” My baby’s tearful voice echoed in my mind. 【Mommy, I’ll be a good baby. I don’t want that bad woman to raise me!】 My heart felt like it had been plunged into a vat of ice. Tears streamed down my face, but I was smiling, a silent, mirthless smile. Cole didn't know it, but his good days were numbered. Three days. That's all I needed. Three days by his side, and my blood curse would make his lies a reality. I was going to watch him lose everything. The next morning, Cole saw that I wasn’t getting ready for the market. “Honey, are you too tired?” he asked, his voice filled with fake concern. “Don’t go in today. Just rest.” I dodged his outstretched hand. “I’m going to the hospital to see Mrs. Gable.” After my parents died in a car crash, I was sent to an orphanage. Mrs. Gable, the director, had taken care of me, especially when I was sick. She was the only family I had left. For five years, I had been so consumed with paying Cole’s debts that I hadn’t even visited her once. Yesterday, one of the staff members had called. Mrs. Gable had a massive heart attack and needed emergency surgery. Cole took the earliest bus with me to the hospital, playing the part of the perfect, caring husband. Mrs. Gable took my hand and slipped a jade bracelet onto my wrist. “Stella, my dear, you’re so thin! What have you been doing to yourself?” “This bracelet has been in my family for generations. You’re like a granddaughter to me. If I don’t make it, I want you to have this to remember me by.” Before I could even say a few words, a doctor called me out of the room. The surgery was going to cost fifty thousand dollars. My hands trembling, I grabbed Cole’s arm. “The bank card I gave you—that’s for next month’s payment. Give it to me. I’ll earn it back, I promise!” Cole’s expression froze. “Honey… they took the card yesterday…” Tears welled in his eyes. “It’s all my fault. I’m so useless. I can’t save her.” 【Mommy, he’s lying! He gave the money to Melissa to buy a new handbag!】 I pulled my hand away from his. The last shred of hope I had been clinging to vanished. Even now, he was still acting. The doctor looked at my malnourished frame and sighed. “We need to have blood on standby for the surgery. If you have a rare blood type, we can waive some of the fees. You can figure out the rest later.” I grabbed onto that lifeline. Without a second thought, I was on the gurney, a needle in my arm. 200cc, 600cc… By the time they pulled the needle out, I was too weak to move. In a semi-conscious haze, I thought I heard Melissa’s high-pitched giggle. I must be hallucinating from the blood loss. I forced my eyes open and saw Cole and Melissa in the room across the hall. On the table between them were several bags of blood. My name, and Mrs. Gable’s, were written on the labels. Melissa pouted. “Cole, it’s such a waste to give this rare blood to that old woman. Why don’t we feed it to my pet snake?” They had stolen the blood that was meant to save Mrs. Gable’s life… to feed a snake. I wanted to storm in there and tear them apart, but my body wouldn’t move. Tears were the only thing I could manage. This was the man I had loved for five years. He was treating my life, and Mrs. Gable’s, like a joke. Melissa threw her arms around Cole. “Oh, Cole, you’re so good to me.” “It’s a good thing this hospital is owned by your family. You can do whatever you want here.” Cole smiled indulgently. “Anything for you, my dear. Without this blood, that old woman won’t make it off the operating table. It’s just her bad luck.”
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