Before the System erased me for failing my mission, I asked it, “Can I tell him who I really am?” “You may.” I stood in front of Caleb Davenport and slowly peeled off my shirt. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” I said. “The truth is, I’m a girl.” Caleb’s eyes widened, his jaw slack. The poor guy. After years of locking horns with his fiercest rival, he was only now discovering that his sworn enemy wasn’t a guy at all. As his shock washed over me, I closed my eyes, ready for the sweet release of oblivion. But I didn’t die. I woke up, back in this world. The System’s voice was apologetic in my head. “After your death, your mission progress inexplicably shot to one hundred percent. As a compensation package, you have been granted a second chance at life.” A pause. “Your new identity is Ava Miller, the wife of a wealthy man who is never home and whose fortune is yours to spend.” I nodded slowly, processing. “Okay. Sounds good. My dream life, actually. So, what’s the name of this husband who’s never home?” “Caleb Davenport.” 1 “Who?!” I sat bolt upright. “Ahem,” the System cleared its throat, the audio file crackling with digital guilt. “In any case, we hope the host enjoys her new life. Goodbye!” It vanished faster than a guilty conscience. I was left reeling in the silence. “Ma’am, please, you have to calm down! Don’t do anything rash!” A voice beside me pulled me back to reality. I blinked, taking in the scene for the first time. Chaos. Utter chaos. The apartment was enormous, the kind of sprawling penthouse that screamed eight figures. But there was barely a place to stand. Everything from porcelain plates to the curated collectibles in the display cabinets had been smashed to pieces. “It’s one thing to break a few dishes when you’re upset, but this… ma’am, what if you’d cut your hand?” the assistant fretted, wringing his hands. His concern, I noted, was less for my well-being and more for the expensive shrapnel littering the floor. A cleaning lady knelt, cautiously starting to gather the larger pieces. She paused, her eyes fixed on a pile of shattered clay fragments. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “What is it?” the assistant asked. “I think… I think this was Mr. Finn’s.” The assistant sucked in a sharp breath. The air in the room, already thick with tension, solidified into a dreadful, silent dread that gripped the half-dozen staff members present. “Quickly, quickly, clean it up!” the assistant hissed, his voice trembling. “Forget everything else, get Finn’s… get that sculpture out of sight! Mr. Davenport must not see this!” He turned to me, his face pale with terror. “This is a disaster. Mr. Finn’s things are absolutely off-limits. No one is allowed to touch them! Ma’am, of all the things to smash, why this?” I raised an eyebrow. “Finn?” “Shh!” he panicked. “Don’t say his full name! The boss will lose his mind if he hears it!” As if on cue, a tall, lean figure stepped through the front door. “Whose name?” Caleb Davenport’s voice, low and cold, sliced through the silence and landed like a shard of ice in my ear. 2 I was eighteen when I died as Finn. Caleb was only seventeen then. A decade had passed. At twenty-seven, Caleb was taller, his boyish features sharpened into the hard, commanding lines of a man who was used to getting his way. He carried an oppressive aura of power. His gaze swept across the wreckage, finally landing on the pile of broken clay. His eyes turned dangerously cold. The assistant’s legs buckled, and he looked seconds away from dropping to his knees and begging for forgiveness. “Finn?” I spoke first, my voice clear and steady. “I broke it. It has nothing to do with them. The guy’s been dead for ten years. Having his stuff around felt… morbid. If you have a problem, take it up with me. Leave the hired help out of it.” Every head in the room bowed, every breath was held. Caleb’s gaze shifted slowly, deliberately, until it locked onto my face. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” he asked, a faint, chilling smile playing on his lips. It held no warmth. I spread my hands. “Finn. I know who he was. Your stepbrother, right? The one you weren’t related to by blood. Wait, don’t tell me you actually miss him? That’s hilarious. Everyone knew you two hated each other’s guts. You couldn’t wait to be rid of him.” “That’s true,” Caleb said, the curve of his lips deepening, his eyes crinkling in a parody of good humor. “So,” I pressed, my voice more confident than I felt, “you won’t be mad that I broke his last remaining keepsake, right?” I’d inherited this mess from the body’s previous owner, Ava. She’d thrown the tantrum that led to a fatal brain hemorrhage and heart attack, which was my cue to enter stage left. The mess wasn't my doing, but the consequences were all mine. “Mad? Of course not,” Caleb said, his tone surprisingly agreeable. “You’re right. He’s been dead ten years. It’s bad luck to keep it around.” The cleaning crew, taking this as their cue, scurried to clear the debris and then vanished. Just as I thought I was in the clear, Caleb’s hand shot out and clamped around my neck. “Ava,” he snarled, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. “I told you. You can throw any tantrum you want. You can break anything in this house. But you do not touch Finn’s things.” His eyes were like chips of frost, a deep, primal coldness in them that sent a shiver down my spine. His grip tightened, constricting, cutting off my air. I started to choke. “Today,” he breathed, his face inches from mine, “you and I are going to settle this score.” 3 I thought he was going to kill me. But he didn’t. Tears of asphyxiation welled in my eyes. I managed to squeeze a sound from my crushed throat. “Hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts!” Caleb’s grip vanished instantly. He stared at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Who told you to say it like that?” I coughed violently, dragging air into my starving lungs. “Say what like what? What the hell is wrong with you?” “Seven times. Exactly seven. ‘Hurts’… When did you pick up that habit?” “What habit? That’s just… a thing people say!” “I’ve never heard anyone say it like that,” he said, his eyes scanning my face, searching. “Except for Finn.” “Then you haven’t met enough people.” He studied me for a long moment, his gaze intense and unnervingly perceptive. Finally, as if confirming to himself that I was, in fact, still just Ava, a wave of profound weariness washed over his expression. “This sham marriage is over,” he said, his voice flat. “I’ll have my assistant draw up the divorce papers and send them to you.” Without another glance at my coughing, sputtering form, he turned and left. Ten years, and Caleb hadn’t changed a bit. I cursed the System a thousand times over. I knew it was unreliable from the start. Back when it first recruited me, it took weeks to realize it had mistaken me, a girl, for the “villainous male supporting character” it was supposed to bind to. I spent the next six years of my life pretending to be a boy. Going to the bathroom felt like a covert spy operation. The missions it gave me were absurd. “The male protagonist has deviated from his destined path. Your job is to guide him back to becoming the exceptional man he’s meant to be, while maintaining your persona as his evil arch-nemesis.” Seriously? It was a miracle that thing was a System and not a paperweight. Still, I had a strategic advantage. After Caleb’s parents divorced, his father remarried. My mother. She was a gold-digger who saw her new stepson as a threat to her inheritance, and she’d abuse him whenever her husband wasn’t looking. I was the son she brought with her. To make my backstory seamless, the System concocted a premise: my mother, obsessed with having a son, couldn’t accept that she’d given birth to a daughter, and so she raised me, her child Finn, as a boy. What could I say? I leaned into the role. When Caleb skipped school, I’d sneer, “Can’t even handle a classroom? You’ll end up a drain on society.” When his grades improved, I’d scoff, “Is that it? No wonder your parents don’t give a damn about you. You’re pathetic.” When he rode his bike to school, I’d slash his tires. “Why are you riding? Run! You’re built like a damn string bean!” Caleb hated me. He had to. No one could endure six years of relentless torment without developing a deep-seated loathing. One time, a group of local thugs cornered me in an alley, trying to shake me down for cash. Caleb saw it happen. He met my eyes, then turned and walked away without breaking stride. When I got home, I asked him, “Why’d you just walk away like you didn’t know me?” He looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes. “Didn’t you tell me never to acknowledge you in public? Bro?” He rarely called me that. Only when the sarcasm was meant to sting. In the end, I failed my mission anyway. As the six-year deadline approached, Caleb suddenly dropped out of high school. He had no intention of taking the SATs or going to college. Panic set in. I went to confront him (i.e., start a fight). We fought. Caleb won, of course. No matter how convincing my disguise, I was still a girl underneath, and I was no match for his strength. The System’s voice was already announcing my failure in my head, a cold, robotic countdown to my demise. But I had to know. “Why did you quit?” “Because of you.” “What the hell does that have to do with me?” “My dad said you’re a genius,” he said, a bitter, mocking smile twisting his lips. “He said that after you get into a good college, I have to apply to the same one next year. And if I don’t get in, he’ll beat my ass.” He let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “But he doesn’t know that there is no one on this planet I hate more than you. I’d rather not go to college at all than go to the same one as you.” I sighed. It was over. After getting the System’s permission, I showed Caleb the truth. The bruises blooming on my skin were fresh from his fists. I gave him a small, sad smile as he stared, speechless and utterly bewildered. “You get to be yourself, Caleb. How great is that?” The next day, I left that world. The System staged a fatal car accident. I never expected that my death would be the catalyst. With me gone, Caleb went into overdrive. He threw himself into his studies and, against all odds, got into the very university I had always dreamed of attending. The one he was destined for all along. And so, I was revived, granted a life of freedom I had inadvertently earned. Except I’d almost died again within the first five minutes. Damn you, Caleb Davenport. This rich-wife gig was more dangerous than it looked. Divorce was the only way to guarantee my survival. 4 The marriage between Ava and Caleb was a sham from the start. A contract signed for mutual benefit. But Ava, the original, had broken the terms, catching feelings along the way. I couldn’t blame her. With Caleb’s face and physique, few could resist. She wanted a real marriage. Caleb, however, wouldn’t even give her the time of day. He’d even staged a PR stunt with another woman just to piss her off. The day I arrived, Ava’s rage had been triggered by a paparazzi photo of Caleb with that woman. None of this was my problem. Until that afternoon, when my—or rather, Ava’s—assistant burst in, frantic. “Ma’am, it’s terrible news! Mr. Davenport, he’s—!” “Dead?” I asked, hopeful. “No, not that.” “Then why are you yelling?” I rolled over on the couch and went back to my nap. “He’s been set up! Ma’am, you wanted to make this marriage real, right? This is your chance!” He practically dragged me out the door and into a car. On the way, he gave me the rundown. A few days ago, to infuriate Ava, Caleb had arranged a photo op with a B-list actress. The deal was simple: one photo, which the actress would then “leak” to Ava to provoke her. The plan had worked perfectly. Too perfectly. Today, the actress had backstabbed him. She was holding a press conference, sobbing to the media that Caleb had cheated on his wife with her, then callously dumped her. When I arrived, the scene was a zoo. Caleb was surrounded by a swarm of reporters. “Sources claim you’ve been cheating on your wife and seeing multiple other women!” “Mr. Davenport, do you have a comment?” Caleb’s face was a mask of cold fury. “If you believe lies that transparent, you should all get your heads checked.” Classic Caleb. Maximum condescension. But that attitude would only feed the sharks. The flashing of cameras was blinding, a storm of light with him at its center. He stood alone, an island in a sea of vultures. Dammit. The big brother in me couldn’t just stand by and watch. I pushed my way through the crowd. Before Caleb could say another word, I curled my index finger and gave him a sharp rap on the back of his head. “Be nice!” I snapped. “Stop acting like a spoiled brat!” 5 Caleb froze. The cacophony of reporters died down, replaced by a stunned silence as they all stared at us. I put a hand on Caleb’s back and pushed, forcing him into a slight bow. “I apologize on his behalf,” I announced to the press. “That was rude. But let me be clear: we will not stand for baseless slander. The burden of proof lies with the accuser. If you have questions, go find the person who made the claim and ask for evidence.” I planted my hands on my hips, standing in front of him like a shield. “But if you’re going to try and convict him without a shred of proof, then you don’t need your heads checked… you need to see a proctologist, and see if you can find your heads up your own asses!” I railed at them for a solid five minutes. Out-argued and out-shouted, the reporters finally began to retreat. When I turned back to Caleb, expecting a thank you, I found him just staring at me, a strange, dazed look on his face. “Finn…” he whispered. “What?” “Nothing.” He lowered his eyes, his expression a complex storm of emotions I couldn’t begin to decipher. The woman standing before him was Ava. Not anyone else. I clapped him on the shoulder. “Alright, I know you’re grateful. You can show me by buying me dinner.” He didn’t refuse. He asked what I wanted, lobster or caviar. “BBQ,” I said without hesitation. I gave the driver an address, an old haunt of mine. It used to be a roadside shack. Now, ten years later, it was a proper restaurant, bright and clean, but the air was still thick with the same glorious smell of woodsmoke and charred meat. The moment we walked in, the owner recognized him. “Hey, kid! Haven’t seen you in a long time.” I was surprised. “He comes here often?” In my memory, Caleb despised the smell of BBQ. He hated everything I loved. The owner nodded. “Used to. Right after his brother passed, he’d come in a lot. Wouldn’t eat anything. Just sat at that table by the window for hours. On his way out, he’d leave me five hundred bucks and say it was for taking up the space…” “Let’s go in,” Caleb cut him off abruptly. The owner slapped his own forehead. “Right, listen to me rambling. This way, please.” When we ordered, I rattled off all the old classics I remembered. But I deliberately skipped the gristly rib tips. “The rib tips get great reviews here,” Caleb noted. “No thanks. Too much work to eat.” He glanced up at me, a flicker of something in his eyes, but said nothing more. I had been dreaming of this for a decade. Cold beer, smoky ribs—this was happiness. Caleb, as usual, barely touched his food. Dressed in a pristine suit, he looked completely out of place. I hadn’t counted on how little tolerance this new body had for alcohol. My consciousness started to fray at the edges pretty quickly. Caleb frowned, a look of distaste on his face. “We should go.” “Nooo, I can still drink more.” “Ava, you reek of beer.” “Tch. Why do you always use my full name? It’s so formal.” “What should I call you, then?” he asked, his voice flat and detached. I grinned, my inhibitions washed away by the alcohol. “Attaboy,” I slurred, a ghost of an old smirk on my face. “Call me ‘bro.’”
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