Chapter 2

Several humiliating intimate photos appeared in the chat one after another.

The photos showed me huddled in the corner of a dim girls' restroom stall after Jack's fangirls had forcibly stripped off my top. I was covering my chest and sobbing helplessly.

Blood rushed to my head. My fingers shook with rage as I typed, "Jack! Delete those photos right now!"

Jack sent a voice message. "Sophie, delete them? Why? Let everyone take a good look. How are you still this insecure after all these years?

"To be fair, there was one good thing about you back then. You had one hell of a rack.

"We were young. We were just messing around. It was so long ago. You're not petty enough to still hold it against us, are you?"

Did he really think "we were young" could erase the inhuman torment they had put me through?

A few people in the chat piled on. "All that flab spilling out, and it doesn't gross you out, Jack?"

Behind me, my assistant Anna caught sight of the screen and turned livid with rage.

"What is this? This is outright cyber harassment and bullying! They've lost their minds!

"I'm having Legal send cease-and-desist letters right now. They'll take everything down and apologize immediately!"

I raised a hand and held Anna's trembling wrist. "It's all right. The harder they laugh now, the more humiliated they'll be when the time comes."

Anna looked at me, her eyes reddening.

She had been at my side for five years and knew better than anyone the hell I had endured.

High-intensity fasted cardio at five every morning.

Oil-free meals weighed to the gram.

Countless times, I collapsed from exhaustion in the weight room, got back up, and kept deadlifting.

It took me seven full years to take off ninety pounds.

I went from a self-conscious two-hundred-pound girl to a professional fitness influencer with fifteen percent body fat.

On social media, my fitness account had six million genuine followers.

The screen went dark, and my reflection stared back at me.

A defined jawline. A sharp gaze. Not a trace of my former timidity remained.

Ella. Jack.

At your wedding at the manor in two days, I would give you both a gift you'd remember for the rest of your lives.

That morning, just after my workout, my social media notifications showed 99+.

When I unlocked my phone, the old video Ella had posted the night before had become the top trending topic in the city.

Ella had perfected the art of turning the truth on its head. Posing as the righteous victim, she wrote in the most-liked comment, "She copied my work back then and refused to admit it. She even tried to come between Jack and me!

"Our classmates were just angry on my behalf. Maybe they went a little too far, but please don't attack them. They're good people."

Her followers erupted. Within seconds, vicious abuse flooded the comment section:

"A disgusting plagiarist who's fat, nasty, and trying to steal another woman's man? She deserved to be shoved into that mud pit!"

The hateful comments kept pouring in, broken only by a few tentative questions.

"Wait, the girl they shoved into the mud is named Sophie? Doesn't she look a little like Sophie Aubert, the fitness influencer with six million followers?"

Ella replied with a string of smirking emojis.

"Don't be ridiculous. She's a fat girl from a farm in the middle of nowhere. How could she be a top influencer living in a New York penthouse?"

Jack quickly replied, "Exactly. A fat pig who does nothing but plagiarize is probably still on some run-down farm!"