Chapter 86
College New by in what felt like five minutes.
I graduated with a perfect CPA and got fast tracked into the PhD program under this legendary physics professor
Research was where I absolutely thrived publishing papers, winning grants, basically killing it in every way possible.
Gabriel and I just naturally evolved from lab partners to something more over countless all nighters and shared takeout containers
When he finally made it official, it wasn’t some grand romantic gesture.
We’d just pulled a 48–hour straight session debugging some experiment, both of us looking like zombies.
He handed me my third energy drink of the day and said: “So… want to be exclusive? I’ll take care of all your statistical analysis from now on p>
I looked at his tired but genuine smile and said yes.
We worked together like a machine efficient, direct, but somehow it just clicked perfectly.
After graduation, he passed up offers from Google and Tesla to launch his own startup instead.
I joined as his CTO and co–founder.
Everything was finally coming together exactly how I’d envisioned.
Then this letter showed up at my apartment.
Prison envelope, return address I recognized immediately.
Blake.
Seven years since they’d been sentenced.
I held that letter for like an hour, debating whether to even open it.
When I finally did, his handwriting looked nothing like the cocky student government president I remembered – it was shaky and desperate.
Blake claimed they’d spent years in prison finally understanding what had actually gone down.
According to him, Charlotte had orchestrated the entire thing as revenge. This update is available on.net
She’d never been some innocent girl with crushes on them.
She’d been planning their destruction from the beginning.
Turns out in eighth grade, Charlotte was obsessed with this popular kid – star student, everyone’s golden boy.
But he lost some big regional math competition to Kai, who was basically nobody at the time,
That loss completely destroyed the guy’s reputation while my brothers started getting all the spotlight.
The humiliation apparently drove him to suicide their sophomore year.
Charlotte held my brothers responsible for his death.
She spent an entire year infiltrating their social circle, playing the perfect admirer, slowly manipulating them into her trap.
The birthday party was her kill shot.
She’d spiked their drinks, seduced them while secretly recording everything, then used the footage to obliterate their futures.
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I Cold
During Them Down
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Chapter 7
“We destroyed you with our own hands, and destroyed our selves too, all for some vengeful bitch p>
That’s how Blake ended his letter.
“It took us seven years to see the truth, and to realize how fucking stupid we were p>
“Madison, we messed up. We’re sorry p>
I finished reading and felt… nothing.
Whatever the truth was didn’t matter anymore.
Charlotte’s motivations couldn’t change what they’d done to me in my past life.
I fed the letter into my paper shredder and watched it turn into confetti.
Gabriel came home from work and could tell something was off with my mood.
He didn’t interrogate me about it, just wrapped his arms around me from behind and said: “It’s clear tonight – want to go stargazing p>
He drove us up to this overlook in the hills outside the city.
The sky was absolutely incredible – like someone had scattered diamonds across black velvet.
All those memories from my previous life that had been churning in my head finally started to settle.
“It’s all behind me now,” I said, as much to him as to myself.
He squeezed my hand and quietly replied: “Yeah. And I’ve got your back going forward p>
He was right – it was all in the past.
But I’d forgotten one crucial detail about my brothers.
They were three genuinely unhinged psychopaths.
Chapter
Chapter 8
Sara Lili
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.