Chapter 1

1.

The procedure is in an hour.

I’m in a private hospital in Manhattan, the air a sick mix of antiseptic and expensive perfume. I sit alone in the waiting room, my fingers numbly scrolling through my phone, trying to distract myself.

A hot post from r/AskReddit pops up on my feed:

What does "Main Character Energy" mean to you?

The top comment has a shocking number of upvotes.

[I’m the expert on this. I'm the spoiled "fake heiress" of my family.]

[While the idiot with the real bloodline suffered for eighteen years, I enjoyed the best private schools and all my parents' love. The irony? Her precious husband used to be my lapdog, a toy I got tired of and tossed aside.]

[The moment she was found and brought back, I faked an anxiety attack. To avoid upsetting me, my parents never even officially added her to the family trust. They just told everyone she was a distant cousin, their "goddaughter."]

[She worked her ass off to become Director of Operations, but all I had to do was whine, "I want to try that," and her husband―our client―made her life a living hell on the project. In the end, Mom and Dad had to step in and give me the position.]

[But the best part? The night before their wedding, I texted him saying I was sad. He spent the entire night with me, in the bed they were supposed to share in their new home.]

Every word oozed a nauseating pride and arrogance.

The comments section was a warzone. People were calling her a "classic narcissist" and a "psychopath." But she didn't back down. Instead, she got even cockier and posted a photo.

It was a screenshot of a few first-class plane tickets.

[Go ahead, be jealous. All I had to say was "I don't want to see her have another baby," and her husband forced her to get the procedure.]

[What's even funnier is that she's lying outside the operating room all alone right now. Meanwhile, her parents and her husband are about to fly me to Miami to cheer me up.]

[Some people are just born to be the main character. What does she have to compete with me?]

I stared at the screen, my knuckles turning white.

The flight number and time in that photo were identical to the ones in Cassandra Sterling's latest Instagram story.

And her so-called "husband," my husband, Julian Vance, told me yesterday he had a business trip to Miami.

The hospital hallway was empty. It was just me. The air conditioning felt like it was freezing my bones.

It turns out the idiot the entire internet was laughing at… that was me, Nora.