No True Heart Can Be Found in Lies

After the company went under.

Sid Gilbert fell into a deep depression, and after he was saved from slitting his wrists a second time,

he broke down crying and said to me: Cassie, I dragged you down, made you carry this debt with me! Please, just let me die!

I looked at Sid, and the ache in my chest was so heavy I could barely breathe.

To help Sid get back on his feet.

I brought out a magic lamp and told him it could grant three wishes, and any wish he made would come true.

Sid half believed it. "First wish. I want the company brought back from the dead!"

And later, the company really did come back, its resources even stronger than before.

Sid's whole face lit up. "Second wish. I want the old Gilbert estate back!"

And later, the old estate really did come back into our hands.

Sid held the lamp and said to me, "Cassie, the third wish, I have to think it through carefully! I can't let myself have a single regret!"

I was so glad to see him changed that I got ready to tell him the truth about the lamp.

But I walked in on Sid on a video call with his first love.

"Cassandra Dudley isn't worthy of my status anymore."

"So," he laughed, "the third wish. I want power, wealth, and a new wife."

"Sid."

On the screen.

Sid's first love, Mavis Fox, leaned close to the camera, her voice soft and coy.

"Isn't this kind of wrong, though?"

She blinked, looking at Sid.

"Your wife stayed with you in that basement, stayed with you while you clawed your way back up. Yes, it was your own luck, your own ability that carried it, but she really was the one who walked through it with you. At a time like this, if you ask her for a divorce, won't it hurt your career?"

Every word came out of Mavis in that innocent, unknowing tone, all of it framed as concern for Sid, only making him more certain.

"I'll admit these past few years weren't easy for her, following me, carrying millions in debt, staying while I rebuilt everything. During the worst of my illness, she was the only one who'd care for me without ever leaving my side. But that's exactly the problem. Every time I look at my wife, I see my own weakness, my own worthlessness."

"Every time I get close to her, I think of how I tried to escape by hurting myself, by cutting myself, when in truth I wasn't meant to die at all. I was meant to get help from the gods. I was meant to get the lamp."

"Now." Sid leaned back against his chair.

"I have wealth, reputation, and standing. I have only one wish left, my one and only wish. I don't want to open my eyes and see my wife. Seeing her is like seeing the filthy version of myself, the coward, the failure."

Sid sighed.

"Do you understand what I mean?"

In the study.

A few seconds of silence.

I watched Mavis's eyes go red, as if she was fighting hard to hold it in and still couldn't stop the tears, calling to him: "Sid, you still have me."

Her eyes reddened.

"Back then, if I'd been by your side, I would have gladly stayed with you through those days too. Sid, you deserve the best."

Back then.

Sid signed that gambling contract, lost everything down to the last cent, got chased by debt collectors to the end of an alley and nearly lost his life. I was the one who ran into that alley with a kitchen knife, swinging at anyone in my way like a madwoman, and traded my life to save his.

Back then.

Sid looked at me, covered in wounds, and cried as he crushed me against him.

"Cassandra!"

"As long as I live! I will never wrong you!"

And later.

Sid was diagnosed with depression, and he learned to hurt himself, learned to slit his wrists, learned to attempt suicide, learned to beg me through his tears to let him die.

"Cassie, I really can't take it anymore!"

"I can't take waking up every day to debt collectors screaming at me, being treated like a rat everyone wants dead!"

"I'm begging you!"

"Please, just let me go!"

"Let me have some peace!"

The ache pushed me all the way to despair, and I finally reached out to my grandmother, whom I hadn't seen in years, and begged her to give Sid a chance.

Grandma Abbott always said men were no good, that my own mother had lost her life to a man's lies, and still she loved me.

Grandma brought out that lamp and said to me: "This magic lamp grants three wishes. If he can pass the test, if all three wishes are spent on you, then I'll accept this grandson-in-law! I'll announce that you're the sole heir of the Dudley family! And you can bring him home to us!"

"Until then," Grandma added, "you are not to tell him your real identity!"

I promised her with everything I had.

Sid was no faithless man. He would never let me down.

Now my face burned, and faster than any slap came the truth: my heart had been trampled by the man I loved.

"I'll leave my wife a way out. I'll give her enough wealth to live out the rest of her life, and I'll leave her the old estate, so she'll never want for anything as long as she lives," Sid said, his voice unhurried. "That way, I won't really owe her anything."

Cold spread through my chest. The way I'd been preparing to confess the truth to Sid now felt like a joke. I found Grandma's messages and told her.

Grandma.

I lost.

I'm willing to take back everything from Sid.

I hadn't slept all night.

Sid, on the other hand, looked like a man on top of the world.

"Sweetheart."

I'd just reached the living room when he came out of the kitchen carrying breakfast.

"I made porridge today, and the scallion egg pancakes you like."

He smiled and poured me a glass of soy milk.

"The IPO date's locked in too."

"The advisor said," he steadied me into my chair and sat down across from me, "your birthday timing was perfect, so we set it for next month."

"Once the company goes public," he picked up a fried cruller and set it in my bowl, "things will only get better."

All these years.

Sid had taken over every part of my daily life, down to preparing my three meals himself.

Our friends all joked that he was hopelessly henpecked, tamed and obedient under my thumb.

Sid only wore it with pride.

"Getting to look after my wife is my good fortune."

And now.

The cruller sat right in front of me.

From that place in South End I loved, the porridge simmered soft and thick until my eyes stung. I listened to his voice, watched the habits worn into his bones, and called his name.

"Sid."

"What is it?"

He kept his head down, playing with his phone.

"The third wish."

His fingers froze.

"Have you decided?"

"Half a year ago, I told you to make the third wish," I watched something unnatural flicker across his face, "and you said you had to be careful, that the last wish carried too much meaning, that it had to be for the most important thing."

"Sid," a small hope stirred in me anyway, "why not wish for a sweet little ba"

"Sweetheart," he cut me off, "we're still young, our careers are still on the line. It's not the right time for a baby."

Sid always put his career first. It was how he put off the wedding I wanted, how he brushed aside the child I truly longed for.

And whenever I ended up disappointed, hurt, aching over it.

He'd buy a ten-million-dollar diamond, rent an LED billboard in Harbor City to cheer me up, willing to spend the time and the money just to win one smile out of me, and then tell me.

"Sweetheart, you'll always be the one love I treasure most. Once we're stable, I'll make up for everything I owe you."

And I believed him.

So when I heard him give the exact same excuse now, the last bit of warmth in my heart went out for good.

"Okay."

I listened to his phone buzzing again and again, insistent.

"Maybe it's something important."

I pointed at the screen still lighting up.

"Go on, take it."

He grabbed the phone in a flustered rush and stepped out to the balcony. I watched him stand there frowning, and only a few seconds later he hung up.

"Something's come up at the company."

He didn't even look at me.

"I'm heading out."

He picked up his car keys and walked to the entryway.

"Sweetheart," as if he'd finally remembered me, he turned back before the door closed, "don't overthink things. I do love you."

"Okay."

The door shut.

I sat at the table and got Grandma's reply, a single short word: Fine.

Then.

I opened the surveillance feed, tapped the balcony camera, and listened to Sid's voice.

Once the company goes public and everything's stable, I'll bring you out into the open.

Don't push yourself.

Sid's voice was frantic.

Don't do anything stupid.

I'm coming.

I'm coming right now.

I watched him on the screen. That panic on his face was something he'd never once shown me. And I remembered the few, scattered times Sid had ever mentioned Mavis.

Materialistic.

Practical.

Loyal to money, not to feeling.

He'd said Mavis dumped him for being poor and went off with someone richer.

He'd said she'd be thrown away herself, sooner or later.

I opened my messages, found the assistant Grandma had assigned me, sent over the study and balcony camera feeds, and told her.

Dig up everything between Sid and Mavis for me.

The money side especially.

And, my fingertip tapped against the desk, : what Mavis has been doing overseas these past few years.

The assistant was fast. The files came back almost at once.

I opened them and read the whole thing: how Mavis and Sid had sat in front of and behind each other since high school; how, at graduation, Sid had taken half a year's saved-up wages to buy her ninety-nine roses and set off fireworks, confessing to her in front of the entire school.

In the middle of that grand, blazing confession, Mavis said yes.

Four years of college, Sid studied hard, saved money, planned surprises for her, carved out time every single day to be with her, took her to get her nails done, her hair done, her face done, took her to high-end restaurants, on trips, bought her makeup and skincare, right up until the day his parents died in the car crash.

That was when Mavis suddenly broke up with him.

It was all in the file.

The hospital footage from that day had been captured clearly.

Sid on his knees on the floor, crying, begging her not to go, and Mavis not even turning her head, tossing back one line.

Sid.

The way you are now, you're not good enough for me.

Mavis vanished.

Sid drank himself blind all day, every day, until the night I saw him being mugged in an alley, pulled him out of it, and got to know him. All the way to today.

Sid told me he'd stopped loving Mavis a long time ago.

Miss Dudley.

The assistant sent a video.

The reason Gilbert Corp collapsed back then, that betting agreement Sid told you about, it wasn't because of you.

She produced a document.

It was because of Mavis.

Mavis got into an underground gambling den, ran up debts, and came to Sid. He took them on for her, put the company up as the stake, and that's what set off everything that came after.

The blood drained from my face. My nails dug hard into my flesh, breaking the skin, and I didn't even feel the blood well up. I thought back to what Sid had told me then.

They humiliated you!

Said you were an orphan with no father, no mother, that you only got this far by using your body!

I couldn't stand it!

They can call me a sewer rat, a frog at the bottom of a well, but they will never talk about the person I love most!

I couldn't stand it!

Sid had been shaking all over, as if I really mattered, mattered so much no one could be allowed to defile me, mattered so much that just looking at me made his whole life feel worth it. So I'd held him tight.

I'll gamble with you!

We lost until we had nothing, until we were drinking tap water to fill our stomachs, until we were nothing but rats scurrying across the street.

And none of it had ever been for me.

Miss Dudley.

The assistant sent another video.

Sid is at a private hospital the Dudleys invested in. He's with Mavis.

In the video.

Mavis leaned against his chest, crying like some pitiful little rabbit.

I just don't want to keep hiding anymore. I know it's ugly of me to want us back together, I know I'm in the wrong, but I can't help it, I just love you

Sid pulled her in and held her tight.

Just wait a little longer.

Wait for Cassandra's birthday.

Wait for the company to go public.

Then it'll all be settled.

Once the company goes public, I said to the screen, in the exact same tone he'd used, : it'll all be settled.

Tell Grandma.

There's no rush.

Since Sid enjoys his star-crossed romance with Mavis so much.

I smiled.

Then I'll play along until the show is over.

Sid sent me a message.

Babe, work's crazy right now with a project on a deadline. I have to fly out for it, last minute.

To make me believe him,

Sid sent the flight details.

If you miss me, just come find me.

Then he sent the hotel address.

For your husband, there's always time for his wife.

There was a time when I'd watch Sid account for everything, down to what he ate and drank each day and who he'd seen, all of it laid out for me. I used to laugh at him for it, like a kid who'd never grown up, the head of Gilbert Corp and still this clingy.

Sid never minded. He'd only tell me,

"Making my wife feel safe is my job." He corrected me, serious about it. "Besides, being a foolish little kid in front of the person you love is its own kind of blessing."

Now.

Sid was certain I wouldn't come and interrupt his little date with Mavis.

But what he didn't know.

I was standing right at the hotel entrance, watching him wrap his arm around Mavis's waist, listening to Mavis needle him. "Babe this, babe that. Why do you love your wife so much~"

"If you love her that much," Mavis pried his hand loose from her, "then why come out here with me~"

The second Mavis let go,

Sid caught her again and pulled her into his arms.

"The flower at home never smells as sweet as the wild one."

"Plain rice never measures up to the one who got away."

"So which is it," Sid leaned in close to Mavis. "The stain you can't scrub off, or the mark that stays under the skin?"

The two of them flirting and bickering, every second of it filmed.

The assistant couldn't stand it.

"What we have now is enough to leave Sid with nothing in the divorce."

"Not enough yet."

My voice was flat as I told her,

"Sid's always believed everything we have now came from the magic lamp, that heaven took pity on him, that this fortune was fated to be his. Not because of me."

"So." I remembered Grandma's words. "A man never remembers the woman who stood by him through the hard years. He only remembers the one who walked out on him when he had nothing."

"Men are base by nature. It's all about the conquest for them."

Now.

I checked the time.

"Just three days."

"I can wait."

For those three days, I trailed Sid and Mavis on their dates, watching Mavis drop hundreds of thousands on a handbag without a blink, watching her ring up a necklace worth over a million, then turn to Sid and say,

"This freebie they throw in, give it to your wife as a trip souvenir."

"No buying her anything new."

Mavis pouted.

"What's yours is mine."

Sid just laughed.

"Fine. Whatever you want."

There was a time Sid said he'd be my knight, that he'd never let me suffer a moment's hurt.

Now Sid held the umbrella over Mavis instead, and let me suffer every bit of it.

I called Sid, listening to him walk off to an empty patch of ground and lower his voice.

"Babe."

"Sid." I reminded him. "You've got an hour and a half left."

"There's time."

His tone was impatient.

"Stop nagging me."

"I already sent you my flight."

"I'll be there. I promise."

I hung up and looked at the countdown to the IPO bell-ringing, at the birthday party Sid had once arranged for me, and at Grandma seated in the place of honor. Through the surveillance feed, I heard Sid warning her.

"Don't say anything out of line."

Mavis followed along, reluctant.

"I got it~"

Sid laughed and gave her cheek a pinch, walked to the ballroom doors, smoothed himself over one more time, and the instant he pushed them open, the color drained from his face.