Halloween Story

The nanny, Polly Jackson, pushes me down the stairs when I'm seven months pregnant. I suffer from major blood loss and go into premature labor. Before I can question her about it, Zachary Campbell brushes me off with a lame excuse. "Polly didn't mean it. You and the baby are fine, so don't be so petty about this." I get out of bed to move around. I'm at the bathroom door when I hear Zachary and Polly's conversation. "Are you sure that wretch can stay alive, Zachary? Switching it out won't be that easy if it dies." "Don't worry about whether Daisy Jameson's baby can live, Mom. Either way, mine and Danielle's child will be the Campbell family's sole heir." I pretend I've never heard this and raise my son for 18 years. During a banquet held in honor of a share ownership transfer, Polly suddenly shows up with my mentally impaired daughter. She cries, "Mason is my grandson! It's high time he's returned to his rightful place after being raised by the wrong family for so long!" I'm unfazed. I even laugh at her words. "Fine, then!"

After I brought in 300 million dollars in investment for his company, my fiance showed me the home we would share. I thought we would finally get married after eight years together, but instead, he turned on a building game. “I laid every brick here. Once the company is listed, I’ll build you a house just like this one.” I found him and his secretary showing off their love. He had bought her an expensive villa as a gift. I sent the photo to my fiance. “You can afford to buy someone a villa as a gift, but not our home?” Displeased, he said, “Alyssa is the company’s backbone. I’m only giving her a villa to encourage the other staff to do better!” But in the background, I heard Alyssa’s pleased laughter. “Some people should really be more self-aware. Does she think getting some investment makes her the boss of this company?” I did my best to suppress my anger. I wanted to see just how long the company would survive if not for the investments I found!

The new project was short on staff. Over everyone's objections, I pulled three former colleagues out of an overlooked department where they'd been warming the bench for years. The four of us became the project's core team. The bonus was generous, the workload light. They all said I was their lucky charm. Three months later, with delivery just around the corner, I passed the break room and overheard them talking. "The biggest credit for this project belongs to the three of us. Why should Chloe get an equal share of the bonus just because she recommended us? She barely did any real work." "Exactly. Let's talk to the director. We'll say all the core work was done by us, that she's not up to the task. We'll apply to have her removed from the contributors list." "Just thinking about not having to split those tens of thousands with her—it feels amazing." I pushed the door open. They stared at me, stunned. I smiled. They wanted to kick me out? Too bad. I was the director who parachuted in to evaluate them.

When I visit my girlfriend's house during the Christmas holidays, her cousin, Antonio Esposito, humiliates me in front of everyone because of a scar on the back of my hand. "This scar looks like a remnant of the crossfire with the mafia! Bianca, why did you think that bringing an ex-convict home was a good idea?" The entire Romano family stares at me in a mixture of horror and shock. My girlfriend, Bianco Romano, even shakes my hand off while staring at me in disgust. Not only does Antonio flip the table, but he also calls over a few hooligans in an attempt to take me to the local police station. "We must teach scumbags like him a lesson!" he declares. After that, Antonio and the hooligans strip off my jacket and strap me to the tree in the courtyard. They then attempt to force me to admit that I'm working for the mafia. I can only gnash my teeth together stubbornly, refusing to yield no matter what. What they don't know is that the scar is a medal from my time in a peacekeeping war as a soldier!

Late one night, as I scrolled through social media, I came across a relationship influencer with over a hundred thousand followers, teaching men how to "control" their wives. "She actually tried to talk to me about privacy?" he scoffed. "I ignored her for three days, and she handed over all her passwords, crying and begging me not to leave her." The comments exploded almost instantly. The chat went wild. [Take me under your wing, man!] I felt sick to my stomach. Then, without warning, he lifted his phone and pressed a kiss to the screen. A face appeared in the reflection. Mine. Smiling, he turned back to his audience of thousands. "See this? This is the perfect wife I spent three years training." A chill ran through me. I clicked into his profile and scrolled all the way back to his first post. The upload date was the same day we got married. He claimed he was filming prank videos and that it was all just for the livestream—no wonder he got increasingly out of hand. That was when it hit me: he had been lying to me all along. From the moment I stepped into that marriage, I had been nothing more than his experiment, his content, his source of money. Fine. If that was the case, then I would turn his livestream into his worst nightmare. I picked up my phone and sat directly beneath the camera he had installed, then sent a deliberately suggestive message to another man. Three seconds later, the bedroom door burst open. Matthias stormed in and snatched my phone. After reading the message, his lips pressed into a tight line. However, he did not explode. He did not even look at me. Instead, he turned, opened his livestream, and faced the camera. "Send something through, and I'll show you exactly how to put a cheating woman in her place."

I go to the boutique my son has invested in to pick up the gown I've ordered for a banquet. Just as I'm about to leave, the manager, Wendy Reed, stops me and says that I still owe them money. She pulls out the bill. I look down at it and see that the boutique is charging me 300 thousand dollars for their creativity, 500 thousand dollars for fabric therapy, and one million dollars for their chief designer's mental wellness. On top of other expenses, the price totals up to two million dollars. I laugh incredulously and send a message to my secretary. "Withdraw our funding from my son's company and this boutique!"

Mom has extreme mania. Dad was murdered when I was eight, and I went blind while trying to save Mom. I became her only family and weakness. Anyone who makes fun of me for being blind has their eyes gouged out; anyone who disrespects me is sliced and diced before being fed to the dogs. Later, Mom turns into a she-devil with a hundred-billion-dollar net worth. Everyone in Gristport fears her, but she treats me like a princess. The whole city knows not to offend Eleanor Heinrich's daughter. She scours the world for the best optometrists to treat my eyes. On the day I regain my vision, I hear about Mom finding her birth daughter. She says, "You'll soon have a sister who loves you very much, Sienna." I hear that my sister has been through a lot since childhood and is introverted. I prepare many gifts for her, even wanting to give her the pendant Dad gave me. Yet she instructs her people to take me to a deserted roof. "You're nothing but a faker who stole my place in life! I'm going to slice your tongue—let's see how you can continue lying to Mom when you can't speak!" She shatters the pendant, gouges my eyeballs out, slashes my tongue, and has several men torment me to death. Lastly, she includes my eyeballs as decorations in a bouquet and brings it to Mom. "This is a gift I've prepared for your birthday, Mom. Do you like it?"

The fifth year of my marriage to Silas marked a turning point I would never forget. Our son, Yael, was kidnapped. The ransom was set at ten million dollars, an insignificant amount for Silas, yet his response chilled me to the core. “No rush. A Gardner needs to experience some hardships to grow.” Ten million meant nothing to him, but Yael’s life meant everything to me. I dropped to my knees, tears streaming down my face, and begged him relentlessly, pleading for Yael to be brought home as soon as possible. Silas, however, remained unmoved. Three days later, Yael was returned to us, but the cheerful boy I knew was gone. He had been so traumatized that he could not speak. Far from showing concern, Silas coldly remarked, “Yuna said Yael keeps telling everyone at school she’s a fatherless child. Let’s see how he spreads lies now.” His words cut through me like a knife. I picked Yael up in my arms and whispered softly in his ear, “Don’t be afraid, Yael. Mommy will take you away from here.”

On my birthday, Jake handed me two bucks and took me to a gas station to buy a lottery ticket. Then he dashed off, claiming he had an urgent work meeting. As I sat alone in the restaurant celebrating my birthday, I spotted my boyfriend, who claimed he had no time for me, having dinner with another woman. Without a second thought, I sent him a breakup text right then and there. Two days later, that lying jerk had the nerve to demand I return the lottery ticket. That's when I discovered it was worth $5 million. I cashed in the ticket and told him to get lost.

On the day of Lucas' engagement, he managed to get a few lackeys to keep me occupied, and by the time I stepped out the police station, done with questioning, it was already dark outside. Arriving home, I stood there on the doorstep and eavesdropped on Lucas and his friends talking about me. "I was afraid she'd cause trouble, so I got her to spend the whole day at the police station. I made sure that everything would be set in stone by the time she got out." Shaking my head with a bitter laugh, I blocked all of Lucas' contacts and went overseas without any hesitation. That night, Lucas lost all his composure, kicking over a table and smashing a bottle of liquor, sending glass shards flying all over the floor. "She's just throwing a tantrum because she's jealous… She'll come back once she gets over it…" What he didn't realize, then, was that this wasn't just a fit of anger or a petty tantrum. This time, I truly didn't want him anymore.