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I Am Not Your Pawn Anymore

Chapter 2 No.2

Word Count: 824 | Released on: 30/01/2026

ive king-sized bed. Her throat was parched, her lips cr

he muffled sounds coming from the living roo

mpa

probably out there, clinking glasses with Barrett, her perfectly manicured

k. It was physical. Her heart, weakened by days of stress, dehyd

fingernails scratched against the hard

e, she thought.

nt of her eyes, merging until the room was sw

Light flooded i

doorway. He held a

annoyed, not concerned. "Ge

heavy. She saw him step closer, his shadow

she t

into her sleeve. She had hidden a broken piece of a plast

mpty air. Her body convu

voice changed. Pani

kness t

gs sucking in air with a viol

against her ribs like a trapped bird. Thump.

pajamas were soaked,

ed aroun

window was small, covered by cheap plastic blinds that let in slices of bri

Her old apartme

g so hard she knocked over a glass of water. It sh

home button. T

it was thr

ne, locked it, and unlocked it again. She pinc

ybe the last three years

nd buzzed, vibratin

flashed a

y. Pavlovian conditioning. Barrett calls, Anaya answers. For

in screamed. Apolog

der her cheek returned. The sound of Adele's lau

ed as if the phone

screen as it rang.

to voi

s deafening. It was the loud

e turned on the faucet, splashing freezing cold

ne. There was life in her skin. But the eyes... the eyes were different. Th

ered today

to Adele Townsend. He was going to ask Anaya to coordinate t

l smile touc

she whispered t

zed again. A

ring the Townsend files.

t. He thought he owned her. He thought she was just a piec

ingers moved steadily, w

a: I

hit

power button. She watc

the bed and pulled her s

Chapter End

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I Am Not Your Pawn Anymore

Ting Er Xiao Ling Modern

“Barrett handed me a Montblanc pen and a legal document, his voice as cold as the rain lashing against his Tribeca penthouse. He told me to sign an admission of guilt for an SEC violation I never committed. "Eighteen months in prison, Anaya," he said, adjusting his cufflinks without looking at me. "The trust fund is set up. You'll get twenty million dollars the moment you step out." I was being sold. The man I had loved for ten years, the man whose secrets I had kept, was trading my freedom to save his merger with Adele Townsend. He had scrubbed the digital logs of Adele's illegal trades and pinned everything on me. When I refused, he didn't see my heartbreak; he only saw a malfunction in a business transaction. "Do not speak her name," he hissed when I mentioned Adele's fraud. "This merger is bigger than you." He forced the pen into my hand, calling me dramatic while his security guards dragged me to a locked bedroom to "cool down." I spent three days parched and starving, listening to the muffled sound of champagne corks popping down the hall. They were celebrating my destruction. My heart finally gave out in that luxury cage, the darkness swallowing me as I realized I was nothing more than a disposable asset to him. I died in that room, alone and betrayed by the person I trusted most. How could he do this? How could a decade of loyalty be worth less than a stock price? Why did I let him treat me like a sacrificial lamb for so long? GASP. I shot up in bed, my lungs burning, but I wasn't in the penthouse. I was in my old, peeling Brooklyn apartment, and the date on my phone was May 12th-three years ago. My phone buzzed with a text from Barrett: "Where are you? Bring the Townsend files. Now." A cold, cruel smile touched my lips as I typed the reply that would start his nightmare. "I quit."”