“Nobody told me,” I answered through the wooden door. “I heard you and your friends with my own ears.”
Brendan took a long pause before responding, “Chloe, you are completely exaggerating as usual.”
“Exaggerating?” I shouted back. “You made me donate blood for a fake accident!”
“It was just a harmless joke,” he scoffed.
“A harmless joke?” I repeated in disbelief.
“Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to donate,” he snapped back dismissively.
That single phrase permanently extinguished whatever remaining affection I had for him.
“You’re right, Brendan. Nobody forced me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We are completely finished.”
Brendan let out a dry, condescending laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous over a small prank.”
“We are done,” I repeated with absolute finality.
“You’re ending us over this?” he yelled, his tone turning angry. “After everything I’ve ever done for you?”
“What exactly did you ever do for me?” I asked back softly.
His response came without a second of hesitation: “I gave you a prominent place in my social life.”
In the past, hearing those words would have made me feel immensely grateful, but that night I finally realized how accustomed I had become to surviving on his scraps.
“You never gave me a place, Brendan,” I said coldly. “You simply turned me into an emotional punching bag to avenge another woman.”
He banged his fist against the door and warned, “Do not bring Scarlett into this conversation.”
It was always about Scarlett.
I unclasped the silver necklace Brendan had bought me for our first anniversary and slid it through the mail slot at the bottom of the door.
“Just leave, Brendan,” I said quietly.
“You are going to deeply regret this decision, Chloe!” he threatened before his footsteps faded down the hall.
My parents arrived early the next morning to help me load the remaining boxes into their truck. My father immediately noticed the dark bruise on my arm.
“Did Brendan cause that?” he asked softly, his eyes filled with worry.
I nodded silently, and he didn’t ask any further questions.
My mother found the silver dance shoes sitting on top of the trash bin outside my room.
“Aren’t you going to pack these away?” she asked gently.
“I never want to see them again,” I admitted.
She closed the shoe box and handed it to me anyway, saying, “Then we will buy new ones someday, but next time you will dance purely for yourself.”
We stayed at a hotel near the airport that night because I couldn’t bear staying in Pasadena alone. At ten thirty, my phone buzzed with a call from an unfamiliar number.
“Chloe, please don’t hang up,” a woman’s voice pleaded as soon as I answered.
It was Scarlett.
I was about to end the call, but she rushed to speak, “I knew Brendan held a grudge, and I knew about some of his petty tricks, but I swear I had no idea about the fake blood donation.”
“How comforting,” I replied sarcastically. “So you only approved of the minor humiliations.”
Scarlett remained silent for a long moment before whispering, “You have every right to hate me.”
“You aren’t important enough for me to waste my energy hating you,” I answered honestly.
Her breath hitched as if my words struck a raw nerve.
“Brendan never actually did any of this for my sake,” she revealed suddenly.
I sat up straight in bed and asked, “What do you mean by that?”
“When I lost that competition four years ago, I cried for one night and moved on with my life, but Brendan couldn’t let it go,” she explained.
“Then why did he do it?” I demanded.
“Because you won,” Scarlett answered with a heavy sigh. “Brendan was obsessed with the idea that someone like you should never beat me.”
A cold chill ran down my spine. “Someone like me?”
“You had no wealthy family name, no high-society connections, and no elite tutors,” Scarlett clarified. “You came from a humble background, yet you danced better and forced the people he considered superior into second place.”
The heavy silence on the line felt almost unbearable.
“So it was never about defending your honor,” I whispered.
“No,” Scarlett confirmed quietly. “It was entirely about Brendan’s fragile ego. And Chloe, there’s something much worse you need to know.”
“What is it?” I asked, my heart racing.
“The ninety-nine acts of revenge were not just verbal jokes among his friends,” she warned. “Brendan has been meticulously documenting every single one for years.”
“Documenting them how?” I asked, feeling my throat tighten.
“He keeps a secured digital folder filled with exact dates, hidden photographs, screenshots, and videos,” Scarlett revealed.
“Why would he keep all of that?” I asked in horror.
“Because they planned to unveil the entire file to you tomorrow night,” Scarlett admitted. “Number ninety-nine was showing you the whole archive in front of everyone at a party, telling you that your entire three-year relationship was just an experiment to see how much humiliation you would tolerate for love.”
I looked over at my parents sleeping peacefully in the adjacent room. I finally understood that Brendan didn’t just want to dump me; he wanted to utterly destroy my soul.
“Chloe,” Scarlett whispered nervously before hanging up, “you need to know who helped Brendan organize this nightmare from the very start.”
PART 3
“It was Liam,” Scarlett confessed right before the line went completely dead.
I stared blankly at the hotel wall in absolute shock. Liam was Brendan’s cousin, but he was also the very first person who made me feel welcomed when I began dating Brendan.
He had attended my birthday dinners, shared holiday meals with my family, and even sat with my mother in the hospital waiting room when she had surgery because Brendan was too busy.
A moment later, Scarlett forwarded a flood of text messages to my phone.
“Liam managed the master log,” her message read. “Brendan came up with the ideas, and Liam executed the details while the others joined in for entertainment.”
My hands shook as I opened the incoming screenshots:
Revenge 14: Convince her that Brendan forgot her birthday.
Revenge 31: Hide her presentation slides right before her job interview.
Revenge 47: Make her wait two hours alone at the restaurant, then claim she got the date wrong.
Revenge 81: Laugh at her handmade gift in front of everyone.
There were hidden photos of me crying in my car and secret videos recorded from across the street, accompanied by audio clips of my tearful apologies forwarded with laughing emojis.
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