During Amber Lin's darkest year, campus tyrant Rex Shannon assaulted her and posted the video online. I stopped her from jumping off a campus rooftop. She spent five years devouring law books, becoming a brilliant attorney. At the peak of her success, she publicly proposed to me. The media called us the perfect couple. But at City Hall, Rex pulled up in a sports car, kissed her possessively, and smirked at me. "Thanks, buddy. Couldn't have gotten this top-tier girlfriend without you. You can be our wedding witness." My blood froze. Amber lowered her eyes—her silence said everything. In that moment, I understood. 1 Rex’s hand was still on Amber’s waist, a clear declaration of ownership. I stared at her, the last five years of my life flashing before my eyes, a dizzying montage that ended with the image of her pale, haunted face on that rooftop. “Leo,” she had whispered that day, “if I’m going to live, I’ll live only for you.” Now, she wouldn’t even give me the courtesy of a glance. Her attention was fixed on the hem of her dress, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle. It was the dress I had picked out for her. She’d said getting the license should still feel special. The irony was a physical blow. “Leo, don’t make a scene,” she finally said, her voice unnervingly calm. “Let’s just go inside and get this over with. Don’t give people a reason to talk.” Her words made Rex laugh. He reached into the pocket of his ridiculously flashy jacket, pulled out a stack of photographs, and fanned them into my face. They fluttered to the ground around my feet. Each one was a picture of them from the night before, in a hotel room. On the sprawling bed, Amber, wearing a scandalously flimsy slip dress, was kissing Rex with a raw, desperate passion I had never seen. A bomb went off in my head. I remembered last night. Amber, who rarely drank, had gotten completely wasted. She came home and kissed me with a wild, frantic energy, clinging to me as if she were drowning. “Leo, I love you, I only love you…” she’d repeated over and over, as if trying to convince me, or maybe herself. In the middle of it, her phone had buzzed. The moment she saw the caller ID, the color drained from her face. She shoved me away. I reached for her, my voice hoarse. “What’s wrong?” She avoided my eyes, her voice laced with panic. “We’re getting married tomorrow. I’m… I’m just a little nervous. I need to be alone for a bit.” She had fled our apartment and never came back. It wasn’t nerves. She was rushing to keep an appointment with another man. I bent down, my movements stiff, and picked up every single photograph. I walked over to Amber. She instinctively took a step back. A bitter laugh escaped me. I tore the photos into a thousand tiny pieces. Then, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small velvet box. Inside was the diamond ring I’d spent three months’ salary on. As Amber’s pupils contracted in shock, I took two steps back and tossed the box into a nearby storm drain. The soft splash was the final, definitive end to our five years. “Leo!” Amber’s face was now ashen. “What do you think you’re doing?” “What am I doing?” I repeated, the words choking me. “You’re asking me what I’m doing?” Rex stepped in front of her, jabbing a finger in my face. “Don’t push your luck, kid. If you ruin my day, you won’t be walking away from here.” I ignored him. My eyes were fixed on Amber, the girl I thought I had pulled back from hell itself. I was wrong. She’d never left. She’d just found a new way to live in it, in a gilded cage Rex had built for her. I turned, reached into my briefcase, and pulled out another file. This was the real wedding gift I had prepared for her. A comprehensive dossier detailing Rex Shannon’s history of campus bullying, business fraud, rape, and bribery. For five years, while I worked myself to the bone to pay for her education, I had been quietly gathering every scrap of evidence. I had thought that letting her be the one to put this monster behind bars would be the ultimate catharsis, the final act of her rebirth. But now, she was standing with the monster. I walked straight to a police officer who was handling a minor traffic dispute nearby. Under Amber and Rex’s stunned gazes, I handed him the heavy file. “Officer, I’d like to file a report.” I pointed first at Rex, then at Amber. “Against Rex Shannon. For bullying, rape…” Amber’s composure finally shattered. She rushed toward me, trying to snatch the file from my hands, but the officer blocked her way. She looked at me, her eyes void of guilt or remorse. There was only a cold, burning hatred. Then, without a backward glance, she got into Rex’s obscenely red sports car. The sound of sirens filled the air as I was escorted into the back of a police cruiser. Through the window, I watched the red car carrying my fiancée disappear down the street. My bride had run off with her rapist. And I, on my wedding day, was on my way to jail. 2 “The chain of evidence is weak, and too much time has passed. It’ll be very difficult to build a case.” In the sterile interrogation room, a young officer shook his head as he looked through the file I’d given him. I sat on the cold metal chair, the words not registering. My mind was a relentless loop of the last five years. To send Amber to the best law school overseas, I’d worked three jobs a day. Construction sites in the morning, washing dishes at a restaurant at night, and food delivery in the dead of morning. She suffered from severe PTSD. Nightmares would rip her from sleep, and she’d wake up screaming. I would hold her, night after night, whispering, “It’s okay, I’m here. You’re safe.” I thought I had pulled her from the abyss. I never imagined she would willingly jump back in. The door to the room creaked open. Amber walked in, flanked by a high-powered legal team. Her makeup was flawless, her expression unreadable. She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger. A ridiculous spark of hope ignited in my chest. Was she here to help me? Did she still care? My delusion was shattered a second later. She placed a crisp legal document on the table in front of me, her voice as cold as the steel table. “Leo, I am Mr. Rex Shannon’s legal counsel. I am formally requesting that you retract your baseless accusations and issue a public apology to my client. Your actions constitute slander and false accusation.” I stared at the document. The words “legal counsel” burned into my retinas. I looked up at the face I had loved for five years, my voice trembling. “Amber, have you forgotten what you said to me on that rooftop? You said you would make monsters like Rex pay. You said you would use the law to protect people like you. Have you forgotten all of it?” Her expression didn’t flicker. A small, mocking smile touched her lips. “You have to look forward, Leo.” She sat across from me, crossing her legs elegantly. “I just want to survive. To live a better life. You can’t hold my future hostage with your cheap pity and our so-called past.” She paused, her face softening into a look of condescending pity. “Rex’s father has promised to invest thirty million dollars into my new law firm if I make this go away. Do you know what that means? It means I’ll be instantly catapulted to the top of my field.” I felt the blood in my veins turn to ice. “So, your idea of success is being his dog?” SLAP! The sound cracked through the quiet room. A fiery sting spread across my cheek. Amber’s hand was shaking, her chest heaving. My words had clearly struck a nerve. “What do you know?” she hissed. “This is a shortcut! A shortcut you, who will spend your entire life crawling in the dirt, could never understand!” She pulled a black credit card from her Hermès bag and threw it on the table. “There’s half a million dollars on this. Consider it repayment for the last five years. As of today, we’re even.” Half a million. She was buying my five years of devotion, of sacrifice, of love, for half a million dollars. I looked at the cold, plastic card and started to laugh. I laughed until tears pricked my eyes. I picked up the card between two fingers. As Amber watched, stunned, I snapped it in two. The pieces clattered onto the floor, a perfect metaphor for my shattered heart. I stood up, my voice low and steady. “Amber. We’re not even. You are in my debt. And I will make you pay it back. With interest.” Just then, the officer returned. “We’ve accepted your report,” he said. “As for the counter-accusation of slander against you, there’s currently insufficient evidence. You’re free to go. We’ll be in touch.” I pushed my chair back and walked out of the station without looking back. The moment I was outside, I deleted every trace of her from my phone. In my world, there was no more Amber Lin. There was only a debt, written in blood. 3 I went back to our “home”—the apartment I had renovated with my own blood and sweat, the place I thought would be our marital home. All of Amber’s things were gone. All that remained was the mess she’d left behind and the echoing emptiness of the rooms, mocking me. On the wall, our favorite photo was still hanging. In it, she was smiling, nestled in my arms, looking like she had the whole world. I took it down and threw it, along with every other memory of her, into the dumpster outside. My father was a respected judge, a man of unwavering integrity who had worked himself into an early grave. I had planned to visit his grave today, to show him our marriage certificate. I bought a bouquet of white chrysanthemums and went to the cemetery. From a distance, I saw a group of people clustered around my father’s headstone. As I got closer, my feet froze. It was Rex and Amber. Rex was slowly pouring a bottle of expensive red wine over my father’s tombstone. The dark liquid snaked down the cold stone, staining it. “You old bastard,” he sneered. “You just had to go after my dad for that little issue, didn’t you? Cost our family a fortune. And look what happened. The star student you were so proud of ended up in my bed anyway.” He continued his vile tirade, and Amber… Amber just stood there. She held a file in her hands, her expression blank, her eyes empty, completely unmoved as my father’s final resting place was desecrated. Rage, pure and white-hot, flooded my senses. “Rex! I’ll kill you!” I shoved past his bodyguards and slammed my fist into his face. He staggered back, spitting blood. I lunged at him again, but his two massive bodyguards grabbed me, pinning me to the ground. The taste of dirt and grass filled my mouth. I struggled, my eyes locked on Amber. “Amber! Look at him! He’s insulting my father! The man who helped you! He’s insulting everything you once believed in! You said you wanted to be like him!” Amber finally moved. She walked over and crouched down in front of me, showing me the file in her hands. It was a collection of withdrawal applications. A list of names, all victims in the same case—a business fraud case against Rex’s father from years ago. My father had been the presiding judge, the one who had pushed for a full investigation against immense pressure. Now, Amber had used her legal prowess to intimidate or bribe every single victim into dropping their claims. It meant the case my father had died fighting for would be buried forever. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her voice was a whisper. “You have to look forward, Leo. Reopening old wounds doesn’t help anyone.” Rex wiped the blood from his lip and swaggered over. “Hahaha!” He wrapped an arm around Amber’s waist, his eyes glinting with triumph. “You hear that? Your old man was a stubborn fool. And now, your girlfriend has used everything he taught her to plug every legal hole for my family.” He leaned down, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper only I could hear. “You know, last night, she used that same clever mouth to please me. I wonder what your dad would think if he knew. Would he crawl out of his grave?” “I’ll kill you!” I lost control, lunging again. My fist never connected. His bodyguards slammed me back onto the ground. Rex placed his foot on my right hand and slowly, deliberately, began to grind his heel into it. “Aaargh!” The sound of my own bones cracking echoed through the cemetery, followed by my agonized scream. Pain exploded through my hand, radiating up my arm. My body convulsed, a cold sweat drenching my shirt. Just before I blacked out, I forced my head up to look at Amber. She just stood there, watching, a cold, indifferent spectator. The last thing I heard before the world went dark was her voice, speaking to Rex. “Don’t kill him. Keep him alive. He’s still useful.”
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