I Am Not Your Pawn Anymore

Chapter 5 No.5

Word Count: 769 | Released on: 30/01/2026

ront door of the row house in Astoria. Stale

're

he was painting her toenails on the coffee table. "Di

scrolling on her phone. She eyed Anaya's Balenciaga

heels clicking on the linole

liner. The TV was blaring a horse racing ch

tethered to this sinking ship for a decade. Pity was why she had almost been

back to the

ess card. "Tony said if you go to dinner with him, he might wai

he looked at it. Tony'

d Tony's hands under the table. She reme

Then in quarters. She let the

reeched. "You un

nto the coffee table. Th

ugh the room like a knife. "I am signing over my half of the ho

nstantly replaced anger. "You.

and Severance of Familial Ties. It wasn't a standard legal form, but it w

sneered. "We can just take the h

ne. She tapped the scree

l's signature on the insurance policy. If he dr

face we

uture. But in this timeline, she knew exactly where Brenda kept her diary deta

bluffing with the truth of the future. "Sign the paper. Or

oom. "Anaya? Is that my gir

ward his voice. That

Her hands were shaking.

checked the signature,

njoy the house. The bank is for

alked

Brenda scream

o the sidewalk. The Q

taxi. "New Jersey," she told t

e, her phone buzzed. A notif

rd ending in 4490 has been froz

her money. He thought that w

ulled out the black Amex Centurion c

ind whipped her hair. Below, the

ater. He thinks this is his power over me, she thought with cold satisfaction. He has no idea about the cry

e knowledge of the next three years o

ed to di

Chapter End

Claim Your Bonus at the APP

Open

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."”