The Butcher's Heart, A Boy's Hope

The Butcher's Heart, A Boy's Hope

Gavin

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The acrid smell of disinfectant and old wax assaulted my seventy-year-old nose. One moment, I was Butcher Betty, cleaver in hand, surrounded by the familiar scent of my shop. The next, I was a stranger in a sterile, enormous kitchen, wearing a stiff uniform, feather duster in my hand. Then, a cold, mechanical voice boomed directly inside my head: "Transmigration successful. Welcome, Host 734." My new identity: Betty, the cruel and sycophantic housekeeper of the Anderson family, tasked with following a novel' s plot. My first directive: lock eight-year-old Liam, the biological son, in the dark, damp basement without dinner to solidify my loyalty to the adopted son, Kevin. I looked at the small, terrified boy cowering in the corner, his eyes wide with a wariness that shouldn' t be in a child. This wasn' t a character. This was a scared, hungry kid. The system blared warnings, demanding I adhere to the script, that I become the villain. But I was a butcher. I fed people. I didn't starve them. "The plot can go to hell," I muttered, grabbing a saucepan. "This boy is getting a hot meal."

Introduction

The acrid smell of disinfectant and old wax assaulted my seventy-year-old nose.

One moment, I was Butcher Betty, cleaver in hand, surrounded by the familiar scent of my shop.

The next, I was a stranger in a sterile, enormous kitchen, wearing a stiff uniform, feather duster in my hand.

Then, a cold, mechanical voice boomed directly inside my head: "Transmigration successful. Welcome, Host 734."

My new identity: Betty, the cruel and sycophantic housekeeper of the Anderson family, tasked with following a novel' s plot.

My first directive: lock eight-year-old Liam, the biological son, in the dark, damp basement without dinner to solidify my loyalty to the adopted son, Kevin.

I looked at the small, terrified boy cowering in the corner, his eyes wide with a wariness that shouldn' t be in a child.

This wasn' t a character. This was a scared, hungry kid.

The system blared warnings, demanding I adhere to the script, that I become the villain.

But I was a butcher. I fed people. I didn't starve them.

"The plot can go to hell," I muttered, grabbing a saucepan. "This boy is getting a hot meal."

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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