At two in the morning, my brother called me in a panic, asking me to cover for him with his wife. "I'm on a business trip, there was a huge pile-up on the highway," he said, his voice rushed. "The whole road's blocked. I told Jessica I'm crashing at your place so she doesn't worry. Just don't blow my cover." The location he sent me was, in fact, in my city, right near the downtown bus station. I was about to agree when a series of comments popped up in my vision, scrolling like a live feed. > 【LOL, he's with a hooker. Using his sis for an alibi. What a scumbag.】 > > 【Yeah, and his wife is 6 months pregnant with their second kid.】 > > 【This is the night he gets HIV. Infects the baby and everything.】 > > 【His wife, Jessica, ends up hating Lily's guts for this. She was already on her way to check on him but Lily convinces her to go back.】 > > 【No wonder she gets stabbed to death.】 1 I blinked, my blood running cold. *Stabbed to death? Me?* On the other end of the line, my brother, Mike, was getting impatient. "Lily, did you hear me?" he snapped. "If Jessica calls, you just play along." Maybe it was the pop-ups, but I could have sworn I heard a woman's muffled voice in the background, asking him if he was done. Mike's voice became urgent. "Look, just handle it. Jessica's six months along. If she gets stressed out and something happens, you'll be the villain of the family! You think Mom will ever forgive you?" He was about to hang up. On instinct, I nudged the cat sleeping next to my pillow. Mochi let out a loud "Mrrow!" Mike paused. "Lily?" he asked, a flicker of uncertainty in his voice. "Lily! Say something!" I poked Mochi again. He meowed, louder this time. My brother exploded. "Damn it! That stupid cat! Useless piece of crap that just gets in the way!" 2 The line went dead. I sat there, hugging Mochi, my head spinning but my heart pounding like a drum. I’d been half asleep when I answered, so I hadn't said a single word. I'd brought Mochi home for Christmas once; Mike knew he had a habit of messing with my phone. He must have thought the cat answered the call, which is why he felt free to curse like that. I looked around the dark room. The pop-up comments were gone, as if they'd never been there. It felt like a bizarre dream. Real or not, I had one rule: I don't get involved in my brother's drama. Ever. I fell back onto the bed, clutching Mochi, and forced myself to breathe. I had less than five hours before my alarm went off. I needed to sleep. *THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!* *BANG-BANG-BANG!* The sound of someone hammering on my front door jolted me awake. I grabbed my phone, my thumb already hovering over the 911 button. "Lily! I know you're in there! Open this door! Open up!" It was my sister-in-law, Jessica. What the hell was she doing here? I crept to the door and peered through the peephole. Jessica, her belly swollen under her coat, was slamming her fist against the door over and over. The clock on my phone read 3:00 AM. 3 We were separated by a thin sheet of wood, but seeing her face, twisted with rage, terrified me. My phone buzzed with notifications from my building's group chat—neighbors were already complaining about the noise. Suddenly, Jessica clutched her chest, gasping for air. Pregnant women can get short of breath easily. Worried she was having a medical emergency, I quickly unlocked and opened the door. The second it was open, she stood up straight, her breathing perfectly normal. She shot me a nasty look. "So, you *were* home," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Just gonna let a pregnant woman stand out here and knock until she collapses, huh?" She faked it. Just to get me to open the door. Her face was a hard mask as she shoved past me, slammed the door shut, and locked it from the inside. Then she started storming through my apartment. The kitchen. The bathroom. The bedroom. She threw open each door, letting them bang against the walls. "Jessica, what are you doing? My neighbors are going to file a complaint." She completely ignored me. Holding her belly with one hand, she ripped open my closet, threw open cabinets, and tore back the shower curtain. Then it hit me. She was looking for someone. I blurted out, "Mike's not here! Stop looking!" She froze. Her head snapped around, and her eyes locked onto mine. "How did you know I was looking for your brother?" 4 I stumbled for a second, then recovered. "Jessica, we're not exactly besties. You show up at my door at 3 AM—you think you're here to check on my social life?" She let out a short, bitter laugh. Maybe she was done searching, or maybe she was just tired. She sank onto my couch. "Your brother told me he was staying here tonight. So why isn't he here?" That liar. He couldn't even get ahold of me and he was still using me as an alibi? I was done with their marital problems. I decided to just tell her the truth. "Look, Mike called me around two. He said he was stuck in a pile-up after a car crash and told me to lie for him if you called, because he didn't want you to worry. I was half asleep and never actually agreed to anything. You can check my call log." I pulled out my phone, but I realized it proved nothing. The call was only thirty seconds long. I hadn't thought to record it. And the location screenshot he'd sent me? He'd already unsent it. All I could prove was that we’d been in contact. Jessica looked at me with a smirk that was anything but amused. She pulled out her own phone. "Funny," she said. "Because your brother sent me a live location share twenty minutes ago. It pinned him right here. In your apartment complex." 5 What? There was no way Mike had a change of heart and decided to come to my place, only to then decide not to wake me up. But the idea that he drove all the way to my complex just to send a fake location pin seemed insane, too. The bus station he'd screenshotted for me was a good thirty-minute drive away, meaning an hour round trip. Mike couldn't predict the future. In his mind, his six-months-pregnant wife should have been a hundred miles away, asleep in their bed. And the pop-ups said this "check-up" was a spur-of-the-moment decision. While my brain was trying to process this, there was a loud *CRACK* on the coffee table. I jumped. Jessica had slammed her phone down. Her face was a terrifying mask of fury. "You know what, Lily? I'm starting to think you and your brother are the same kind of trash!" she spat. "This isn't the first time he's been out all night. Every single week, he tells me he's coming here to 'drop something off for you' and stays over. I never suspected a thing! I just thought you two were close." Her eyes filled with tears, her voice cracking. "But last week, he came home with a scratch down his back. A nail mark. That's when I knew something was wrong. So when he said he was coming to see you again tonight, I decided to check. And what do I find? You're both in on it, lying to my face." She was sobbing now, a raw, desperate sound. "He sent me a location from here, but he's not in your apartment! That means *you* logged into his account and sent it for him!" Holy crap. I never would have made that leap in logic. So she didn't come here to confirm he *was* here. She came to prove he *wasn't*. 6 Jessica was staring at me like I was the enemy. As if *I* was the one who had cheated on her, not my brother. And the idea of Mike bringing me things every week was laughable. The only thing I’d gotten from him in the last six months was two bags of protein powder he was trying to get rid of. The gas to drive it over cost more than the powder itself. How could she possibly believe that? > 【This poor girl has no idea, does she? Her brother rented an apartment in her name. In this very complex.】 > > 【Every time he wants to see a hooker, he brings her there. He sends the location to his wife and says he's dropping stuff off for Lily. The perfect cover.】 > > 【The mom set it all up. She stole Lily's ID and co-signed the lease. That way, Jessica can't trace the payments back to Mike.】 > > 【Yeah, she swiped the ID when they were all home for Christmas.】 I froze. Even with the pop-ups, I couldn't remember when my mom might have taken my ID. You never think about it until you need it. At home, I just toss it in a drawer. And with modern security, it's hard for someone to use your ID to take your money. But to *give* money away? That's a different story. All my mom would need is my ID and a copy of my birth certificate to prove our relationship. She could easily walk into a leasing office and say she was helping her daughter rent a place. Who would ever suspect a mother of using her daughter's identity to create a secret love nest for her son? 7 A chilling cold spread through my chest. The pop-up comments were still scrolling, full of pity. > 【That mom is something else. Golden child son wants to cheat, so she helps him and throws her own daughter under the bus.】 > > 【Lily is the real victim here. She's been set up from the start. After she convinces Jessica to go home, Jessica eventually finds out about the apartment in Lily's name. She hates Lily even more than Mike and just snaps. Stabs her.】 > > 【The worst part is, Lily dies without ever knowing why.】 > > 【From her perspective, she just told a small white lie to keep her pregnant sister-in-law from worrying.】 > > 【But Lily didn't agree to lie this time, did she?】 > > 【Doesn't matter. Jessica's already here. Mike has used Lily as an excuse so many times that Jessica sees them as a team. She won't believe a word Lily says now.】 > > 【This was Mike's plan all along. Keep his sister and wife from talking, create misunderstandings, and shift all the blame.】 > > 【Look at it now. To Jessica, Lily is the accomplice. To Lily, Jessica is a psycho who showed up in the middle of the night.】 The comments hit me like a splash of cold water. They were right. From the moment she walked in, I'd seen Jessica as an unhinged lunatic. We had no personal issues, yet we were screaming at each other, and I was seconds away from slapping her. > 【Meanwhile, Mike is off having a good time, completely invisible. And when he gets sick, his sister will be the one to pay for it with her life. The nerve of this family is off the charts.】 I couldn't wrap my head around it. Why would my brother go to such lengths to drag me into his mess? Why would he risk getting a disease that could kill him and his own child? HIV is a death sentence. What was he possibly gaining from this? Someone in the pop-up feed asked the same question. > 【Let's look at the timeline.】 > > 【The mom and Mike set this plan in motion over six months ago. Him getting HIV is an accident that happens tonight. The affair itself was the plan.】 > > 【So, in the original plan, why does all the hatred get directed at the sister? Why does the sister-in-law, who barely knows her, come straight to her apartment?】 Goosebumps broke out on my arms. The answer was sickeningly clear. > 【Because from the very beginning, her family wanted her dead.】 8 My mother and brother wanting me dead… it had to be about the condo. I’d just bought this place. Over Christmas, my mom kept dropping hints about how hard life was for Mike and Jessica, how my niece was about to start elementary school, and how my new condo just happened to be in a fantastic school district. She kept talking about them needing to have another baby, how they'd never be able to afford a bigger house. At the time, I didn't know they were already expecting again. I just told her they should focus on their finances before having more kids, that in today's economy, children were a luxury. Was that enough to make them hate me so much they wanted me gone? And what about Jessica? Even if she killed me, she’d go to prison. Would Mike really gamble with the future of his own child's mother? Jessica slammed her hand on the table again. "Where is your brother?" she screamed. "Is he leaving us? Is he with someone else?" A single thought cut through my panic. I seized on it. "The baby," I asked, my voice steady. "It's another girl, isn't it?"
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