The year of my SATs, I fell head over heels for Julian Ashford. My downfall came swiftly after my scores weren't good enough. He slapped my pregnancy test results down in front of my father. "Mr. Chen," he sneered, his voice dripping with venom, "that daughter you were so proud of? I knocked her up. Congratulations, you're going to be a grandfather." He paused, letting the words hang in the air like a death sentence. "But don't expect me to stick around." Then he was gone, off to study abroad, leaving nothing but ruin in his wake. I learned the truth then. He believed my father was indirectly responsible for the death of his first love, and to avenge her, he would drag me down into the abyss. My father suffered a massive heart attack and died. My mother, shattered by grief, had a psychotic break and drove her car into a tree, leaving her a paraplegic. And me? I lost my spot at a top university and became a teenage single mother, a pariah in everyone's eyes. Ten years later, I saw Julian Ashford again. He knelt before me, weeping, telling me he still loved me. 1 I had just tucked Chloe into bed when the text from Carter came through. It was blunt, as always: "The Onyx Lounge, 9 PM. Dress well, but not revealing. Important client." I set my phone down and kissed my daughter's forehead, whispering for her to go to sleep. Nine-year-old Chloe obediently closed her eyes, her small hand clutching the corner of my shirt, unwilling to let me go. When my patron gave an order, I obeyed. I quickly applied a light layer of makeup to hide the exhaustion etched onto my face. When I arrived at the lounge, I could hear voices from behind the private room door. "Carter, you old dog, your girl's got a reputation. Hottest thing in this city," a man boomed. "Heard she was a top student, too?" "You're giving her too much credit, Vance," Carter's voice, laced with a smug sort of self-deprecation, replied. "She's just got a high school diploma. Never went to college. If she had, I wouldn't be able to afford her." He chuckled. "But she is a looker, I'll give her that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have kept her around for eight years." "She’s just the right price," Vance added crudely. "A hot little thing you can keep on a short leash for a bit of cash." Carter's ego was fragile, and he loved to use me as a trophy to polish it. After eight years as his mistress, I was used to his public posturing. I was about to push the door open, my expression carefully neutral, when Vance's tone shifted, becoming a warning. "Hey, watch your mouth. Some of us brought family tonight. Aimee comes from a good family. Keep your sleazy talk to yourself. Don't want to scare the girl." I pushed the door open, and a different voice, a voice cold as ice, cut through the chatter, freezing me in place. "Aimee isn't feeling well tonight, so she won't be drinking. I'll have a glass on her behalf..." He looked up, and our eyes met. The words died on his lips, his hand, holding a glass mid-air, frozen in time. Ten whole years, and this is how Julian Ashford and I were reunited. 2 Every eye in the room landed on me. I saw it all: admiration, amusement, contempt. Carter’s tie was crooked. I glided to his side, my movements fluid and practiced, and straightened it with an affectionate smile before sinking into the seat beside him. Julian’s shock morphed into a cold distance. The moment he understood my role in this room, his eyes filled with an undisguised, cutting mockery. Ten years. He was here in a tailored suit, a successful man with his respectable fiancée, Aimee, by his side. And I was the mistress of 48-year-old Carter, a plaything to be summoned and dismissed at will. "Sweetheart, I told you nine. You're half an hour late," Carter chided, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "Think you're a big shot, keeping these gentlemen waiting? Apologize." I scanned the room. Besides Aimee, there was another young woman sitting beside Mr. Vance, clearly in the same position as me. Our purpose here was painfully obvious. I immediately plastered on a smile, offering a string of charming apologies and downing three glasses of wine as penance. "Carter, you're too soft on her," Vance jeered, his eyes raking over my body. "Just a few drinks for being this late? That’s not nearly enough." Carter was a self-made man with no powerful connections in this city. It was clear he was the lowest man on the totem pole at this dinner. He hesitated for a second, then gestured for me to pour drinks for the table. I understood. With a sweet smile and a string of apologies, I made my way around the table, filling each glass. When I got to Vance, his hand brushed my thigh, a little too deliberately. I instinctively glanced at Carter, relieved to see he hadn't noticed. If he had, it would be me, not Vance, who paid the price. I deftly sidestepped Vance’s leering gaze and moved on to the last person. Julian. He had watched the entire sordid display, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips. As I poured his drink, our eyes met again, and his were filled with nothing but ice. I returned to Carter's side, playing the part of the devoted lover, practically feeding him every bite. That's when Carter's wife walked in. 3 She was a vision of power, dressed in a designer suit, impeccably maintained. Lorraine. Carter's wife. Her sudden appearance sucked the air out of the room. The men exchanged furtive, gleeful glances, anticipating a spectacle. I saw the color drain from Carter's face, his body going rigid. I expected a scene straight out of a movie—screaming, accusations, a slap across my face. But she did none of that. She didn't even spare me a glance, ignoring me completely, as if I were a piece of furniture, unworthy of notice. Lorraine sat down with practiced elegance, a polite smile fixed on her face as she greeted the men at the table. Her composure was absolute as she took command. "Darling, what are you gaping at?" she said to Carter, her voice smooth as silk. "We owe these gentlemen an apology." She turned to the table. "It's all my fault we're late. Carter insisted on taking my car to see my parents yesterday, and the foolish thing broke down on him. Can you believe it?" Carter, snapping out of his stupor, quickly agreed, eagerly pouring drinks for everyone. Lorraine took a glass from him. "My sincerest apologies. My husband here is a bit of a softie, you see. Completely wrapped around my finger," she said with a self-deprecating laugh. She paused, her tone sharpening slightly. "But when it comes to business, you can trust him completely. And from now on, for anything he can't handle, you can all contact me directly." With that, she raised her glass and drained it. Then another, and another. Three full glasses of hard liquor, and her expression never changed. "Bravo, Lorraine! A true powerhouse!" Vance exclaimed, leading a round of applause. "With a wife like you, Carter, you've hit the jackpot!" The other men chimed in, a chorus of praise for the brilliant, formidable woman who had just masterfully asserted her dominance. I felt nothing. Not even a flicker of shame. I was the mistress. I didn't deserve to feel anything. Throughout the entire ordeal, Lorraine granted me a single, sideways glance, and in it, I read her message loud and clear: You are nothing. 4 "I'm going to the ladies' room." Aimee suddenly stood up and, with a subtle nod, indicated for me to join her. I obeyed, following her out of the suffocating room. In the bathroom, her voice echoed off the cold tiles, her reflection meeting mine in the mirror. "You're so young and beautiful," she said, her tone gentle. "Why do this? Why sell yourself for... dirty money?" I was grateful for her kindness, for the escape she'd provided, but all I could manage was a bitter smile. "Because I have no skills and no education. This is the best way I know how to survive." Aimee sighed. "That's no excuse to debase yourself." I studied Julian’s fiancée. She was serene, elegant, her every gesture radiating a lifetime of privilege. A person like her could never understand why someone with two hands and two feet would sell her body for a few thousand dollars a month. How could I explain it to her? How could I explain that I was a failure, that my mother's exorbitant medical bills couldn't be paid by delivering pizzas or waiting tables? After the dinner party dissolved, the room emptied until only Carter, Lorraine, and I remained. Only then did Lorraine drop her mask. A cold smile spread across her face as she slapped me, hard. "You filthy whore," she hissed, her voice low and vicious. "Good for nothing but spreading your legs for men. Shameless bitch!" She screamed, kicking and punching me, a torrent of vile insults pouring from her lips. "Trash with no one to teach you manners." I wanted to tell her that my father was dead and my mother was a paralyzed invalid, that yes, there was indeed no one left to teach me how to be a person. But the words wouldn't come. I curled into myself, shielding my face as she beat me. Carter tried to intervene, but Lorraine stopped him with a single sentence. "You dare protect her? I'll file for divorce tomorrow!" He hesitated, his attempts to hold her back becoming half-hearted and theatrical. Lorraine's rage escalated. She snatched a heavy glass ashtray from the table and raised it, ready to bring it down on my head. Suddenly, an arm shot out, grabbing her wrist. "This is a public place," a cold voice said. "Settle your personal affairs in private. I don't want this turning into a scandal that affects our business." Julian had returned. His face was a thundercloud as he held Lorraine back. 5 Carter shot Julian a grateful look, asked him to take me to a doctor, and then quickly escorted his raging wife out of the room. The car ride was suffocatingly silent. Julian’s jaw was clenched, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he stared straight ahead. I sat in the back, only speaking when I realized we weren't heading towards my apartment. "I don't need a hospital. You can just drop me at the next corner, Mr. Ashford." "I never realized you were this pathetic, Claire," Julian suddenly bit out, his voice like shards of glass. "So you didn't get into an Ivy League school. You still had a place at a top-tier state university. And you threw it all away for this? To degrade yourself like this? Didn't your father, the great moral compass, teach you better? Or is he happily spending the money you earn on your back? I heard he was fired from the school, after all." He spat out the words "Mr. Chen" with a mouthful of scorn. If I told him that, thanks to him, my father had been dead for ten years, would he laugh? "Mr. Ashford, I'm not going to the hospital. Please stop the car." He ignored me, his taunts continuing. "What's wrong? Too ashamed to tell the doctors your wounds are from your lover's wife? So you do feel shame." He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You've been a mistress for eight years. Why pretend to have dignity now?" I was exhausted, physically and mentally. I ignored his words, my only thought on getting home to Chloe. "Mr. Ashford, let me out." His eyes, a furious, mocking glare in the rearview mirror, met mine. "You didn't fight back when she was hitting you, but you've got plenty of nerve with me." He sneered. "I'm your patron's biggest client. I suggest you put on that same ass-kissing smile you had at dinner." I nodded, seeing his point. I forced a smile onto my bruised face. "You're right, Mr. Ashford. I should know my place. When the wife wants to let off steam, I let her. But I made sure to protect my face. It would be harder to find a new client if I were scarred." The car screeched to a halt as Julian slammed on the brakes. He whipped around, his eyes blazing with a terrifying intensity. "Get out," he snarPEG. "Don't dirty my car." I opened the door without a word and stepped out, just as he'd commanded. It wasn’t that I had become numb, a person who felt nothing. It was that after ten years of being ground down by the sheer effort of survival, even feeling an emotion was exhausting. The time it would take to wallow in self-pity was better spent earning money. 6 When I got home, the scene that greeted me stole the breath from my lungs. Chloe's small body was curled on the floor, her face a terrifying shade of blue. A choked gasp escaped her lips as her tiny hand reached helplessly towards the cabinet where I kept her asthma inhaler. Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. My daughter was the only thing that could shatter my composure. With trembling hands, I administered the medicine, holding her, rocking her, until her breathing finally evened out. Only then did I let the sobs wrack my body. Chloe, now cradled in my arms, patted my back with her small hand. "Don't cry, Mommy," she whispered. "I'm sorry... I'm being a bother." She was comforting me, like I was the child. She was always so considerate. After she fell back asleep, I stared at my own wrecked reflection in the mirror and slapped myself, twice. The sting of Lorraine's slaps was on my skin; the sting of my own was in my soul. In my rush to attend that humiliating dinner, I had carelessly left my daughter's life-saving medicine just out of her reach. I returned to her side, the sight of her peaceful, sleeping face finally calming the storm inside me. If my father hadn't been snatched away ten years ago, if my mother hadn't been so broken by grief that she'd crashed her car in a daze… then Chloe would be nestled in her loving grandmother’s arms right now, eating fruit peeled for her by a grandfather who would have spoiled her rotten. But now, all she had was a disgraced mother and a grandmother who was a mad, paralyzed amputee. When our world fell apart ten years ago, Chloe was only three months in my womb. I was too consumed by grief and chaos to even think about an abortion. By the time I remembered I was pregnant, selling off our assets to pay for my mother's treatment, my belly had already begun to swell. I fainted from exhaustion countless times while caring for my incontinent mother, yet the child inside me clung to life. The first time I felt her faint, determined heartbeat, I abandoned any thought of ending the pregnancy. I was young and foolish, thinking that life couldn't possibly get any worse. If we had to die, I thought, we would all die together. My mother hated Julian, she hated me, and by extension, she hated our child. She refused to see Chloe, forcing me to split my time, my very soul, between caring for them both in two different places. The thought of not wanting to live became a concrete plan when Chloe was two. My mother's mental state had deteriorated. In her madness, she saw me as the murderer of her husband, cursing me with the foulest language, striking me whenever I came near. She tried to kill herself in a dozen different ways. I was at the end of my rope. I brought my mother home, fed both her and Chloe milk laced with sleeping pills, and prepared to end it all with charcoal fumes. Perhaps it was a miracle. Through the thick smoke, it was Chloe who woke up first. She stumbled to my side and, mimicking something she'd seen on TV, began to press on my chest with clumsy, desperate hands. Her cries of "Mommy!" alerted a neighbor, and we were saved. After that day, no matter how hard life became, I never dared to entertain the thought of suicide again. Chloe and my mother had to live, and they had to outlive me. 7 To cover my mother's thousands in monthly nursing home fees and Chloe's expenses, I started working in a seedy karaoke bar, pouring drinks for men. Many times, I teetered on the edge of full-blown sex work; it paid so much more than just being a hostess. Then, when I was twenty, I met Carter, a man twenty years my senior. He was the first benefactor in my wretched life. He stopped me from being passed around, telling me I only needed to be with him. He took care of my mother's nursing and medical bills. The relief was immense. Eight years ago, he started by giving me three hundred dollars a month. Now, it was a thousand. When I found out he was married, I tried to break it off. He just showed me a video of his wife with some young stud in a swimming pool and pulled me into an embrace. "Our finances are too entangled, Claire. We can't divorce," he'd said. "Besides, she can't have children. We've had an understanding for years—we both do our own thing. You just stick with me. I'll take care of you." When survival itself is a luxury, dignity and morality become worthless. So I settled into my role as his mistress. I wasn't afraid of retribution. My retribution had already begun the day I met Julian Ashford at sixteen, and it had never stopped, flaying me alive, piece by piece, for ten long years. 8 My tragedy began in my first year of high school, with a case of love at first sight for Julian Ashford. Back then, he had a shadow, a girl named Sylvia who followed him everywhere. The whole school assumed she was his girlfriend. I was the other star of our school—proud, confident, and secretly nursing a crush from afar. In our senior year, Sylvia transferred, and they broke up. My grades had never dropped from the top of our class; I was on track to be a top scholar in the state. That's when Julian made his move, approaching me under the guise of needing help with his studies. My heart, already primed for love, was ecstatic. I fell headfirst into the web of affection he spun, believing it was real. We began a secret, whirlwind romance. Then, just before the final exams, I discovered I was pregnant. The panic and fear shattered my focus. My scores were a disaster, only good enough for a decent state university, not the Ivy League I had dreamed of. The night before the truth came out, he held me, promising we'd get married after a graduation trip. The next day, he threw my pregnancy test and my disappointing exam results in my father's face. "Mr. Chen," he'd snarled, "that daughter you were so proud of? I knocked her up. Congratulations, you're going to be a grandfather." He revealed everything, leaving no room for mercy, and was on a plane out of the country that same day. Only then did I understand the cruel joke of our "love," built entirely on a foundation of revenge. My father had been Julian and Sylvia's homeroom teacher their senior year. Sylvia had also been a brilliant student, but in the final, crucial year, her grades plummeted as she started showing up late and leaving early. My father blamed it on teenage romance, believing it was poisoning the academic atmosphere of the honors class. For an entire week, during morning assemblies, he made Sylvia and Julian stand in front of the entire school, publicly shaming them. The combination of public humiliation and private torment was too much. Sylvia, who was already struggling, developed severe depression and took her own life. The school, desperate to avoid a scandal, paid off Sylvia's guardians and covered up the suicide, claiming she had simply transferred. Julian channeled all his hatred onto my father. It was from Julian's venomous tirade that we learned the full story. Sylvia's parents were dead, and she lived with her uncle, who resented her, and an aunt who made her life hell. After she started high school, her uncle became a gambling alcoholic, beating her and even threatening to pull her out of school to sell her body. Her tardiness, her absences—that was the reality of her desperate struggle. Julian had been her only lifeline. My father's public punishments were the final straw that broke her. "Now I've knocked up your daughter," Julian had spat at my father. "Don't forget your principles now, you sanctimonious 'educator.' Make sure you punish her properly. And you'll have to take your precious, proud daughter to some back-alley clinic for an abortion. Can't have anyone knowing, can we? It would tarnish your spotless reputation." "If anyone finds out Mr. Chen's daughter got pregnant out of wedlock, you won't be able to rest in your grave." That night, my father hit me for the first time in my life. Then he held me, sobbing, an old man on the verge of retirement, apologizing over and over. "It's my fault... I've ruined you..." Then he collapsed from a heart attack. He died in the hospital. My mother, lost in a fog of grief, got into a car accident that severed her spine.
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