Chapter 3

The only response I could offer her was a trembling hand and a barely audible refusal.

"Ethan Blackwell, you've grown a lot more cowardly."

Dinner was over. I politely declined Olivia and Lucas's offer to walk me out.

Halfway down the block, I realized I'd dropped my keys. I turned around in a panic.

It wasn't the keys themselves that mattered. It was the pendant attached to them—the tiny gray rabbit she gave me years ago.

When I found them, I exhaled in relief.

But as I stood up and looked toward the second-floor window, I saw two shadows slowly overlapping in the light.

I lit a cigarette with shaking hands. My fingers trembled so badly that I couldn't control the lighter. It clattered to the ground.

I sank down, burying my face in my arms.

Lately, I didn't know what was happening to me. My hands were getting weaker by the day.

Earlier, while clearing weeds with a sickle, I nearly sliced into my own leg. When Dr. Jenkins saw it, his face turned pale. He insisted I get checked out at the hospital.

I nodded, but didn't take it seriously.

Poor people can't afford hospitals. That's why, back then, it only took a single threat from me to make Olivia agree.

Someone like me couldn't afford illness.

I was already frustrated by my failing hands, but that day, all my part-time gigs—long-term and short-term—fired me. Every last one, all at once.

As if that wasn't enough, when I returned to the institute, a storm hit.

Several of my old classmates—now investors—had banded together, pressuring the institute to cut me from the project.

They claimed I was morally bankrupt. If I remained on the team, they'd pull funding from every future project.

Dr. Jenkins and Ryan Kowalski exchanged troubled glances. They knew me.

One investor even demanded that I kneel and apologize for what I'd done back in college. Only then would he consider forgiving me.

I knelt without hesitation.

They were stunned. One of them sneered, "Well, look at that. Tables do turn, don't they? You deserve this."

Later, Dr. Jenkins asked me to meet with Olivia. She waited alone in a conference room.

"Are you willing now?" she asked.

"Do I even have a choice?" I replied.

Truthfully, I didn't mind that Olivia wanted revenge by making me a kept man. What I couldn't handle was being the third wheel in someone else's relationship.

But she started taking me everywhere, flaunting me on her arm. People around us assumed I was her boytoy, the homewrecker ruining a marriage. They came at me with open disdain.

"You ghosted her and disappeared without a word," one of our old classmates spat. "Now that she's rich and successful, you come crawling back?"

They looked at me with disgust.

They said when I left, Olivia couldn't find me anywhere. Her world collapsed. Her grandmother passed away around the same time. She spiraled into depression and nearly took her own life. Only after the university intervened and got her into therapy did she slowly recover over six months.

During that time, Lucas never left her side. He poured money into her care, supported her, and followed her abroad to continue their studies.

"They nurtured something real, and now you just show up, shameless, to harvest what you didn't sow?"

But hadn't she called me disgusting back then? If so, why would she fall apart enough to consider suicide?

Where had things gone so wrong?

Suddenly, I stood up and stormed toward her place. I needed answers.

At the penthouse, she was already in loungewear, as if expecting me. Calmly, she poured me a glass of water.

I downed it in one gulp. "Olivia, I need to ask you something—"

But before I could finish, a wave of dizziness hit me. The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor.

I tried to speak—an apology, maybe—but my knees gave out. I collapsed, shards of porcelain slicing into my palm.

Before I could even feel the pain, the world went black.

When I woke up, I was tied to a chair.

Olivia sat nearby, her long fingers idly stroking the fur on the gray rabbit pendant.

On her laptop screen, data was being transferred.

I turned my head just enough to see. It was research data—ours.