The Name of Yesterday Is Long Forgotten

This was the ninth time I was locked away for supposedly terrifying Erichs fragile first love.

Inside the ward, I realized his delicate porcelain doll was actually a powerhouse butcher who could hoist a half carcass of pork with one hand.

She wore a four million dollar Tibetan Dzi bead bracelet Erich had just won at auction, yet screamed herself red at the logistics manager over a one dollar invoice error.

I walked over and asked if a single dollar was worth all that.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and nodded with absolute conviction. Every cent paid for her terminally ill husbands treatment. Without even drinking water, she hopped onto her delivery tricycle and rushed to her next client.

Erich, who had just promised me a future, gave no explanation. He simply signaled the orderlies to drag me into isolation for forced electroconvulsive therapy.

You swore not to go near her and scare her again, he said coldly.

After three sunless months, Erich returned.

Say it, he ordered.

I nodded numbly and recited the lines. I did not know Erich Sterling. He was the sick husband of Maya Evans. I did not eat pork and would never set foot near the meat market again.

Grimly satisfied, he signed my discharge papers.

On the way home, he told me Maya was pure and harmless. As long as I kept her secret, he would give me a child.

The blood drained from my face as I curled into the leather seat.

He had no idea the treatments had left me infertile, and that I no longer wanted a child with a man who belonged to someone else.

...

The moment we stepped inside our sprawling estate, Erich opened his arms, attempting to pull me into a hug.

My body violently, uncontrollably flinched, trembling in sheer panic.

Erich slowly lowered his arms, a satisfied smirk crossing his face.

"Excellent. You are finally cured of being so suffocatingly clingy."

From the very day we got married, Erich claimed he suffered from severe mysophobia. He stated he despised physical contact with other human beings.

But my memory was crystal clear.

On the day he ordered the orderlies to drag me away for electroshock therapy, he immediately changed his clothes to chase after his precious Maya.

Even when Maya was completely covered in raw animal blood and greasy pork fat, he had wrapped his arms around her with absolute desperation, burying his face deep into the crook of her neck, breathing her in like she was his lifeline.

Erich forced me to sit at the grand dining table. It was entirely covered with a lavish spread of my favorite dishes.

"I hired a Michelin-starred private chef. Cost a small fortune," he remarked casually.

He slid a heavy, metallic black card across the mahogany table.

"You suffered a bit over the last few months. Consider this your compensation."

This was his standard operating procedure.

When I was deathly ill and he was too busy to visit the hospital? He transferred money.

When tabloids plastered his face next to a rising actress? He transferred money.

When he forgot our wedding anniversary? He transferred money.

He always said: Where my money goes, my love follows.

Yet, when he dressed himself in cheap, twenty-dollar thrift store t-shirts to play a dying pauper for Maya, I saw a light in his eyes that he had never, ever shown to me.

Erich picked up a perfectly glazed piece of sweet and sour spare rib and placed it onto my porcelain plate.

"Taste it. This single piece of meat costs over four hundred dollars."

My stomach violently convulsed. I shoved my chair back, sprinting to the nearest trash can, vomiting until my throat bled and the world spun in dizzying circles.

The agonizing memories of being forcibly "corrected" in the hospital rushed back into my brain, suffocating me.

Erich stood over me, the curve of his smile growing even wider.

"Excellent. You finally cured your appetite for pork."

I gripped the marble wall, my entire body violently shaking. I could not force a single word out of my throat.

The previous times he had committed me to the asylum? I had simply been walking past the municipal meat market, wanting to buy a few pounds of ribs to cook him dinner.

But Erich became paranoid, convinced I was stalking Maya to expose his billionaire identity.

"Maya is easily frightened. You shouldn't do things like that," he had told me.

At that time, I didn't even know who Maya was.

Erich didn't bother checking on me as I collapsed on the cold tile, shaking violently.

He simply walked upstairs, changed into a set of ragged, faded clothes, grabbed a plastic tupperware container filled with a dish he had cooked himself, and walked out the front door with a light, cheerful step.

Erich's executive assistant approached me quietly, holding out a crisp, white medical document.

"Madam, Mr. Sterling has instructed you to report to the fertility clinic tomorrow for pre-operative preparations."

"He has arranged top-tier artificial insemination to grant you a child."

I stared at the medical requisition form, my voice dropping to a hollow whisper.

"Does Maya have children?"

The assistant froze, awkwardly lowering his head.

"Mr. Sterling believes that pregnancy takes too severe a toll on a woman's body and ruins her figure. He cannot bear to watch Maya endure that kind of physical suffering."

"So... Mr. Sterling underwent a vasectomy himself."

The medical form in my hand was instantly crushed into a tight, wrinkled ball.

So, as the principal dancer of a prestigious ballet company, I was the one expected to sacrifice my body and endure the physical destruction of pregnancy.

I didn't say another word.

I simply pulled out my phone and sent a secure text message to my grandmother.

"Nana, I finally secured enough funds. We are leaving the country in two days. We are never coming back."

The following morning, I walked into the private hospital.

I practically collided with Maya, who was wearing blue hospital scrubs, working as a private orderly.

I instinctively turned to flee.

She called out loudly, jogging over to stop me.

My body went completely rigid in pure terror, but she simply smiled warmly, holding out a paper bag filled with fresh peaches.

"Thank you so much for sending all that business my way! Several massive restaurant groups and supermarkets contacted me out of nowhere to supply their pork! My order book is full until next month!"

"I made enough money to cover half a year of my husband's medical bills in a single week!"

"It even freed up my schedule so I can work as an orderly here to make extra cash!"

Her laugh was bright and infectious. Her sun-kissed skin seemed to glow with genuine vitality.

She looked exactly like the worn, faded photograph of the little girl Erich kept hidden in his walletthe photograph he had rubbed so many times the edges were frayed.

I gripped the bag of peaches tightly, my fingernails digging so deep into my palms they nearly drew blood.

It was Erich.

He was addicted to the fantasy of her desperate, unconditional devotion, yet he couldn't actually bear to let her suffer the grinding reality of poverty.

So he operated from the shadows, meticulously paving her road with gold while pretending to be a dying pauper.

Yet, when I once asked Erich to simply purchase a specific ballet leotard for me while he was on a business trip in Europe?

He bought twenty of them and had his assistant distribute them to every single dancer in my company.

"These gifts are only being distributed out of Mr. Sterling's pity for his wife," the assistant had announced publicly.

From that day forward, not a single dancer in my company ever spoke to me again.

I stared at the cracked, bleeding calluses on Maya's hands, driven by a morbid curiosity I couldn't control.

"Is your husband really that incredible? Is he truly worth killing yourself over?"

The bright smile on her face instantly softened into profound, unconditional love.

"He is the best thing that ever happened to me. When it rains, even though his leg is crippled, he limps all the way to the market just to walk me home. In the winter, he knows my hands get frostbitten, so he tucks them inside his shirt against his bare chest and holds them there all night."

Every single memory she shared was a level of tenderness I had never, ever received from him.

It felt as though a massive, invisible hand reached into my chest and crushed my heart until I couldn't breathe.

Just then, Erich walked down the corridor.

The moment his eyes locked onto me, his face darkened into a terrifying scowl. His eyes screamed a lethal warning.

Completely oblivious, Maya beamed and ran over to grab his arm.

"Hubby, look! This is the amazing woman I told you about! The one who helped my business!"

Erich's icy gaze scraped across my face. The suffocating pressure radiating off him nearly made my knees buckle.

But he smoothly played along with Maya's fantasy, forcing a rigid, unnatural smile onto his face as he looked at me.

"Thank you."

Maya enthusiastically clapped her hands. "To show our appreciation, you absolutely have to come over to our place for dinner tonight!"

Like a prisoner marching to the gallows, I followed them into a dark, damp, subterranean basement apartment.

The moment they walked through the door, Erich pulled a small, colorful bouquet of cheap wildflowers from behind his back like a magic trick, pressing them into Maya's chest.

Maya gasped in delight, wrapping her arms around the flowers and standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

Erich smiled warmly, rolling up his sleeves and stepping into the cramped, greasy kitchen. He began prepping dinner with practiced, effortless skill.

Halfway through cooking, he walked out holding a small plate of sliced apples. He picked up a piece with a toothpick and gently fed it directly into Maya's mouth.

They acted completely alone in the world, radiating pure, undeniable love.

I sat rigidly on a broken folding chair, feeling like the punchline of a sick, cosmic joke.

When I once ran a fever of a hundred and four degrees in the middle of the night, I had begged him to pour me a simple glass of water.

He had physically shoved me into the master bathroom.

"My time is worth thousands of dollars a minute. I am not wasting it playing nursemaid to you."

When dinner was finally served, Maya enthusiastically piled food onto my chipped plate.

"You have to try this! This is my husband's absolute specialty!"

Stir-fried shiitake mushrooms.

I am severely allergic to shiitake mushrooms. Ingesting them causes aggressive hives, triggering an itch so bone-deep it feels like insects crawling under my skin.

Yet Erich had ordered our private chefs at the estate to cook this exact dish every single day. I finally understood why. It was Maya's favorite food.

I picked up my chopsticks, intending to push the mushrooms aside.

Clack.

Erich tapped his chopsticks sharply against the rim of his bowl.

I looked up and met his dead, reptilian eyes.

I had no choice. I forced myself to chew and swallow the mushrooms whole. Within seconds, a burning, aggressive itch began spreading across my neck and arms.

I barely survived the agonizing dinner. The exact second I walked through the doors of the grand estate, my phone buzzed.

A text from Erich.

[Bring a box of condoms to the basement.]

I returned to the damp, peeling door of the subterranean apartment.

Through the thin wood, the unmistakable sounds of passionate intimacy leaked out into the hallway.

The door to the adjacent unit suddenly cracked open. An elderly woman poked her head out, clicking her tongue.

"Tsk. That husband of hers looks like he's at death's door, but he's got the stamina of a bull. Four or five times a day, they never leave that bed."

I froze in the dim hallway, the blood freezing in my veins.

When I first married into the Sterling family, Erich slept alone in his private study on our wedding night.

Months later, at a massive family banquet, his mother had pointed her finger directly at my face in front of dozens of wealthy relatives.

"Did the Sterling family pay millions just to marry a piece of dead wood? You can't even figure out how to satisfy your own husband in bed!"

Erich sat right beside her, sipping his wine, remaining completely silent as I was brutally humiliated for an entire hour.

I had naively assumed he suffered from some unspoken medical trauma or performance anxiety.

Now I finally understood the truth.

I was the one he found repulsive.

But it wasn't always like this. In the beginning, Erich and I weren't enemies.

When he first pursued me, the entire city of Seattle knew that the heir to the Sterling empire was throwing millions at the principal dancer of the ballet company.

I was completely honest with him. I told him I needed a massive amount of liquid cash to support my family.

Erich didn't even blink. "Your grandmother is severely ill. It is your duty to take care of her."

But on the day of our wedding, he saw my grandmother walking around, entirely healthy and robust.

From that exact moment, his entire demeanor flipped. In his eyes, I morphed into a ruthless, gold-digging parasite who fabricated a dying relative to drain his bank accounts.

I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't tell him that the millions of dollars were being funneled to an elite private military contractor to fund the search for my missing parents.

Years ago, my parents and his father had vanished together while traveling in South America.

Erich was completely convinced that the "disappearance" was just a cowardly cover storythat his father had abandoned his family to start a new life with stolen corporate funds.

But my grandmother's only dying wish was to locate my parents' remains and bring them home.

I had no other options.

But thankfully, the final payment had finally been secured.

I could finally take my grandmother and escape this living hell.

Erich vanished for several days.

The next time I saw him was outside the ballet company headquarters.

Maya came sprinting up to me, her face glowing with pure joy, shoving a grant application into my hands.

"Thank you so much! Erich told me you personally fought the board of directors to secure this charitable foundation grant for us!"

I looked up, locking eyes with Erich's lethal, warning glare. Without a word, I signed the authorization forms.

That night, I checked my banking app. Every single dollar I had bled for, every penny I had hoarded in my private account, had been entirely drained.

I kicked open the door to his private study.

"The money you transferred out of my accountyou funneled it through that fake charity grant and gave it directly to Maya!"

My entire body shook with violent rage. "That money was my compensation! You promised me that money!"

He finally looked up from his mahogany desk, staring at me with absolute zero empathy.

"You just admitted I was the one who gave it to you. Which means I can take it back whenever I please."

At that exact moment, my phone rang. It was my grandmother, her frail voice shaking with desperate hope.

"Sweetheart? Can we leave a few days early? Nana just can't wait anymore."

I gripped the phone against my ear, unable to force a single syllable past the suffocating lump in my throat.

I couldn't tell her that the hope she had clung to for ten agonizing years had just been effortlessly crushed by the man sitting across from me.

I hung up the phone. I walked back to my dressing room and pulled out a provocative, skin-tight evening dress I had sworn never to wear.

I dug through a drawer of old business cards and dialed a number I had ignored for years.

Inside the pulsing, neon-lit VIP room of a luxury nightclub, a greasy executive named Mr. Vance rested his sweaty hand heavily on my bare thigh.

Through the blinding strobe lights, I spotted a woman wearing a blue janitorial uniform. It was Maya.

She stared at me in absolute, horrified shock.

When Mr. Vance waddled away to the restroom, she rushed over to the leather sofa.

"If you are being forced into this, just tell me! I will help you escape!"

I glanced at her wrist. She was wearing a flawless, imperial green jade bangle. It was the Sterling family's most sacred heirloom.

The expensive liquor in my mouth suddenly tasted like battery acid. "Nobody forced me. I am doing this willingly."

When the networking event concluded, Mr. Vance wrapped a thick arm around my waist, demanding I accompany him to his hotel suite.

At the exit, Erich, who had driven his beat-up sedan to pick up Maya from her janitorial shift, witnessed the entire scene.

Maya clung to his arm, whispering frantically into his ear with deep concern.

Erich merely cast a look of pure, unadulterated disgust in my direction.

"She is a parasite who will spread her legs for anyone with a checkbook. It is none of our business."

I lowered my eyes and followed Mr. Vance toward his luxury vehicle.

But before I could open the passenger door, Vance pinned me against the chassis, his greasy face contorting into a vile, drunken leer.

"You know what? Let's just do it right here against the hood. I like the thrill."

He lunged forward, violently grabbing the hem of my dress to rip it upward.

SMACK.

A heavy wooden broom handle swung through the air, cracking brutally across his forearm and knocking his hand away.

Maya stepped forward, shoving me behind her back defensively.

Vance squinted his drunken eyes. When he registered Maya's face, a sick grin spread across his face.

"Well, well. This one is even feistier. I haven't tasted this flavor before."

Before his hand could even graze Maya's uniform, Erich exploded forward, driving his fist directly into Vance's jaw and dropping him to the concrete.

The always cold, always calculated billionaire lost his mind. He mounted the executive, raining down savage, merciless blows upon the bleeding man's face.

I instinctively lunged forward to pull Erich off him, but he threw a blind backhand, striking me across the chest and sending me crashing hard into the asphalt.

Maya took one step forward. "Stop hitting him."

Erich froze instantly. The demonic, bloodthirsty rage evaporated from his eyes, returning to total clarity.

Maya knelt down, helped me off the ground, and pressed a worn debit card into my palm.

"I had no idea things were this desperate for you. Please, take this money."

This time, Erich did not intervene.

But as I limped a few steps away, Erich chased after me, violently hurling a thick legal binder against my chest.

"Sign the divorce papers. You get absolutely nothing."

"Since you accepted Maya's charity, you must trade something of equal value."

"The only thing of value you possess is the title of Mrs. Sterlinga title you conned out of me in the first place."

I looked at him and asked one single question.

"If I sign it, do I get to keep the money on this debit card?"

Erich let out a dark, mocking laugh.

"You truly have no bottom line. To secure a few pennies, you sell your body to old men, and you sell your marriage."

I didn't defend myself. I pulled a pen from my purse and signed my name on the dotted line.

Then, I slid the diamond wedding band off my finger and held it out to him.

Erich took the multi-million-dollar ring without a second glance and casually tossed it directly into the nearest storm drain.

"I will never allow Maya to wear discarded trash."

The market value of that diamond was exactly identical to the amount of money he had drained from my account.

Erich didn't care about the financial loss.

He simply wanted to prove that I was worthless.

The freezing night wind whipped across my face, and the tears I swore I wouldn't shed finally spilled over.

When I returned to the Sterling estate, my belongings were piled in a heap outside the front gates.

My customized ballet slippers, my international championship trophies, the hand-knit sweaters I had made for my grandmotherall of it had been thrown directly into the muddy gutters.

My phone rang. It was the director of the ballet company, his voice dripping with absolute contempt.

"Our company is far too small to house a disgraced, talentless parasite like you. Don't bother coming back."

Erich couldn't even wait a single hour. He immediately utilized his corporate power to strip away every single asset, connection, and benefit he believed I had leeched from his empire.

But finally, I was free.

I calmly walked to the cheap motel where my grandmother was staying.

Three months later, my expedited visa and the finalized divorce decree arrived in the mail on the same day.

I booked two seats on the earliest international flight out of the country.

Just when I believed the nightmare was permanently over, the door to our motel room was violently kicked open, splintering the frame.

Erich lunged across the room, wrapping his massive hand around my throat and pinning me against the wall.

"What the hell did you say to Maya?! She's gone!"

He slammed a crumpled piece of medical paper against my face. It was a positive pregnancy test result.

"Did you find out about this and threaten her?!"

My reproductive system had been destroyed by his electroshock treatments months ago. I could never get pregnant.

But with his fingers crushing my windpipe, I couldn't force a single word out.

He stared at me, the pure, unhinged madness in his eyes threatening to consume me alive.

"Sienna, you brought this entirely upon yourself."

I woke up in the familiar, terrifying white room, blinded by surgical lights.

Erich stood in the corner, his face an emotionless mask, watching as the psychiatric doctor applied the conductive gel pads directly to my temples.

They turned the voltage dial to the absolute maximum. The current was so violent it burned the skin on my forehead black and blue.

When my body finally gave out, Erich ordered his men to throw my unconscious body into an abandoned industrial meat freezer on the docks.

"If my men don't find Maya, you can freeze to death in here and rot as her sacrifice."

Using the absolute last reserve of adrenaline in my frozen body, I managed to pry open a rusted ventilation grate and crawled bleeding through the narrow exhaust shaft to freedom.

I pushed through the agony, retrieved my grandmother, and dragged us both onto the international flight. It wasn't until the heavy cabin doors sealed shut that I finally allowed myself to breathe.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A secure message from the military contractor.

[We have successfully located the skeletal remains of your parents. They are waiting for your identification at the arrival terminal.]

The dam broke. The tears flowed uncontrollably.

Thousands of miles away, Erich finally tracked Maya down to a run-down roadside motel.

When she saw him, her eyes immediately welled with tears. "I'm pregnant... I was terrified you would think the baby was a financial burden on your medical bills, so I ran away."

Erich stared at her in total shock. He had personally undergone a vasectomy.

But he quickly rationalized itthis child must be an absolute miracle, a divine gift from the universe.

But that meant Sienna...

He fabricated a quick excuse, stepped out into the motel parking lot, and immediately dialed his assistant. "Get to the docks and pull Sienna out of the freezer right now!"

On the other end of the line, the assistant's voice was shaking violently.

"Sir... the docks are completely surrounded by SWAT units and police tape."

"They... they said they discovered the frozen corpse of a woman inside the unit."