Chapter 3

A week later, a message blinked onto my encrypted phone, bypassing the layers of security Mark had installed to monitor me.

`They're treating you like a prisoner. I can get you out.`

It was from Leo Vance. My childhood friend. My first crush. The brilliant cybersecurity expert my family had sponsored when he was just a teenager with a genius IQ and no resources. He was fiercely loyal, and he was the one person Mark didn't know about, a loose thread in his perfectly woven trap.

I typed back, my fingers trembling slightly.

`I'm not leaving. Not yet.`

`Ava, what are you doing? He humiliated you.`

`I'm waiting,` I replied. `I have a plan.`

Leo didn't know about my ability. No one did, except Mark. But I told him enough. I told him Mark needed me for something, something that required me to stay.

The truth was far darker. In the days after Mark's betrayal, locked in the penthouse, I had done more than just cry. I had researched. My family's old library, the one accessible only through a private digital archive, held secrets about my bloodline. About my gift.

I found what I was looking for: forbidden techniques, dangerous modifications to my power. It was possible, the ancient texts said, to corrupt the wish-making process. To invert it.

I had been practicing. Turning my Midas Touch into a reverse Midas Touch.

It was a painful process. Instead of channeling love or joy, I had to focus on my deepest pain, my most bitter hatred. When I touched things now, they still turned to gold, but the gold felt different. Colder. Hungrier. And the wish it powered would be twisted. A good wish would curdle and fail in the most spectacular way possible. A bad one... a bad one would come true with terrifying precision.

I was playing the long game. Mark thought he had a "good luck charm." I was forging myself into a curse.

To Mark, I played the part of the broken wife perfectly. I cried when he expected me to cry. I was silent and submissive when he brought Emily to our home for dinner, forcing me to sit at the same table and watch them act like the happy couple.

"Ava has been so understanding," Emily said once, her voice full of fake sympathy, her eyes full of triumph. "It must be so hard for her."

"She knows her place," Mark replied, smiling at Emily as he placed a hand over hers.

I just lowered my head, letting a single tear roll down my cheek, a perfect performance of heartbreak. Inside, a cold, hard rage was solidifying.

The days bled into one another, a blur of luxurious confinement. Then, one evening, Mark came to me with a new proposal. A few months had passed, and Emily was pregnant. The news was everywhere, another PR victory for the happy couple. But there was a problem.

"The doctors," Mark said, his voice strained, "they've diagnosed a rare condition. The baby... it might not survive past six months."

He looked at me, and I saw the old desperation in his eyes, the same look he'd had when he wanted the CEO position. He needed another wish.

And he had a monstrous plan to get it.

He began drugging my evening tea. Just enough to make me disoriented, to blur the edges of reality. Then, the "security personnel" started to change. Every day, a different man would be assigned to my floor. Handsome men. Men who were told to visit my penthouse, to talk to me, to touch my arm, to trigger my emotions.

He wanted to speed up the process. He needed 500 transformations, and he was willing to force them by any means necessary.

"Ava, I love you," he would say to me in my drugged haze, his words slurring in my ears. "Even if you're with others, I won't despise you. This is for a greater good. For an innocent child."

One night, I fought the drug's effects, clarity breaking through the fog. I looked at him, my eyes bloodshot and raw from forced tears and sleepless nights.

He knelt before me, taking my hands. They felt cold and foreign to me.

"Just a few more, Ava," he cooed, his voice gentle, like he was soothing a frightened animal. "We're almost there. Wish for Emily's child to be healthy and prosperous, and I'll make you the face of our new charitable foundation. You'll have a purpose again. Everyone will praise your generosity. Okay?"

I looked at his earnest, pleading face. The face of a man orchestrating my daily violation for his own gain.

A slow smile spread across my lips. It must have looked broken and compliant to him.

Inside, I was sharpening my weapon.

"Okay, Mark," I said, my voice hoarse. "For the child."

He didn't know that every touch, every forced tear, every moment of humiliation was another drop of poison I was pouring into the wish. He was asking me to pray for a miracle. He had no idea I was preparing a curse.