He Faked Depression To Exploit My Grief Over My Dead Brother

My boyfriend was drowning in depression.

Between his prescription meds and private specialists, his treatment was costing thousands of dollars a month. To keep him afloat, I practically lived on caffeine, taking on endless freelance art commissions and delivering food day and night. My friends begged me to slow down, constantly warning me that I was going to work myself into an early grave.

Then came the afternoon I accepted a high-end delivery heading to an exclusive, gated neighborhood.

I stood at the entrance of a massive, sprawling estate, politely holding out a three-thousand-dollar luxury sushi order with both hands.

But when I looked up, my heart stopped.

Standing right there in the grand doorway, looking back at me in absolute shock, was my boyfriend. The exact same man who was supposed to be in a critical therapy session at that very moment.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the clinic, Stephen?"

I stared at the sprawling, ultra-modern mansion. The cardboard box of high-end sushi in my hands felt like ice, my fingers aching from how hard I gripped it.

Even though the summer heat was pushing a brutal hundred degrees, I shivered as if I had been dropped into an arctic winter. A place like this was something I had only ever seen in movies.

"Audrey, I'm sorry. Let me explain. Dr. Lewis had an emergency this afternoon..."

"I just came over to hang out with a friend."

Caught red-handed, Stephen lost his usual composure. He reached out, frantically grabbing my sleeve. It was his signature move whenever he apologized, a gesture that had worked a thousand times before.

But today, the magic was gone.

I coldly slapped his hand away.

The designer shirt he wore bore a logo I couldn't even name, but the irony was loud and clear. It fit him perfectly, highlighting the wealthy heir he actually was, far better than the cheap, faded hoodies he wore around me.

I looked down, opening the Silveridge Hospital portal on my phone to check Dr. Lewis's schedule. When I saw that the psychiatrist still had plenty of open slots for the day, I didn't even have the energy to call out his lie.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I forced my voice to stay level and cold.

"Is this fun for you, Stephen?"

"Playing the tragic, broke boy who couldn't even afford a five-dollar coffee... when in reality, you're a trust-fund prince who spends three thousand dollars on a single lunch?"

My lips trembled. I stared at him, barely realizing that my eyes were already swimming with tears.

"You really... you treated me like a complete idiot."

"Three thousand dollars. Do you have any idea how many deliveries that is? That is six hundred deliveries. That's two months of sleepless nights for me."

The ultimate joke was my lock screen. The last text I had sent him, barely thirty minutes ago, was still open.

I had told him I was going to make his favorite potato soup tonight to celebrate, because the customer in the wealthy gated community had been incredibly generous, leaving a fifteen-dollar tip.

I never could have guessed that the generous tipper was my own boyfriend.

Stephen used to hold me close in the middle of the night, whispering that I was the only person in the world whose love he never doubted. He said even his own parents didn't love him as purely as I did.

Back then, those whispered sweet nothings made me feel like the luckiest girl alive, happy to have found something real in a world full of superficiality.

But looking back, it was just pathetic. Of course nobody else would be stupid enough to ride a bicycle through a blinding heatwave for a measly two-dollar high-temperature bonus, desperately trying to scrape together enough cash for his monthly therapy bills.

"I haven't slept more than five hours a night in months. Every single day, I prayed for you to get better."

"You knew all of this, didn't you?"

My voice cracked, thick with tears.

The calm, apologetic mask on Stephen's face began to fracture. His eyes reddened, and he gave a slow, painful nod.

In that cramped, moldy studio apartment we shared, where we had to walk thirty minutes just to reach the nearest subway station, he had watched me struggle. He watched me pinch pennies, skipping meals to save a dollar. He watched me drown in exhaustion, working myself to the bone to pay for his imaginary treatment, all while he watched from above like a god playing a simulation.

"I'll transfer some money to your account," he muttered, looking down. "As compensation."

"I really am sorry, Audrey."

He stood there, head bowed, a mix of guilt and helplessness in his eyes. Realizing there was no lie left to save him, he gave up.

My fingers stiffened around the crumpled receipt in my pocket. It was nearly a foot long, detailing the rarest, most expensive cuts of wagyu and sashimi. I rolled it into a tight ball and threw it at his face with every ounce of strength I had left.

Stephen didn't flinch. His expression was a heavy, suffocating mix of sorrow and regret.

The cool draft from the air-conditioned mansion drifted out into the summer air. Under the loud hum of the cicadas, light footsteps approached the grand entrance.

Then, a girl's whiny, pampered voice cut through the silence.

"Stephen? Where's the food? I'm literally starving in here!"

The silence between Stephen and me shattered. His expression tightened.

We both turned toward the door just as a young girl in a silk slip dress walked out.

Stephen panicked, stepping in front of her to block her path. "Why did you come out? Go back inside. I'll be right in, babe."

But the girl had no intention of going back. She sidestepped him, her gaze landing on me. Her eyes, beautiful but sharp, carried a chillingly familiar look of condescension.

"Who is this?" she asked.

Neither of us answered.

Seeing our silence, a slow, malicious smile spread across her lips. She casually wrapped her arm around Stephen's, pulling her low-cut pastel slip dress slightly lower, exposing the faint red marks on her collarbone and the soft curves beneath the silk.

She leaned her entire weight against him, completely relaxed.

Stephen's anxious gaze darted to me, terrified of my reaction.

I turned my head away, closing my eyes. My sweat-soaked hair clung to my cheeks, and a sharp, throbbing headache pulsed behind my temples.

I didn't need to be a genius to know exactly what had happened in that house.

I had thought I was just the unlucky victim of a rich boy's poverty simulation. But it turned out I was also the entertainment in a wealthy couple's twisted love story.

It was sickening.

I didn't want to waste another second here. I turned around to grab my delivery bag, ready to leave.

But the girl called out to me, her voice dripping with amusement.

"Wait. Are you that charity-case girlfriend Stephen's been playing with off-campus?"

"I didn't recognize you in that delivery uniform. You're Audrey from the literature department, aren't you?"

I stopped and turned back to look at her.

After a long, agonizing thirty seconds, the pieces clicked.

Sienna. She was a senior, a wealthy, popular girl who was always surrounded by a crowd of sycophants.

But we had history.

The year before, she had used her family's influence to steal my financial aid scholarship and give it to one of her friends. Because of that, I had never bowed down to her like everyone else did.

Seeing the dark, silent anger in my eyes, Sienna tightened her grip on Stephen's arm. She let out a delighted, high-pitched giggle.

"Stephen, I can't believe you actually did it. Last year, I casually complained to you about how much I hated this self-righteous girl in my department."

"You asked a few questions, and then you actually went out and broke her. I have to hand it to you, babe. This is brilliant."

Sienna looked up at me, her eyes gleaming with malice.

"You managed to turn the department's star student into a literal dog, running around at your beck and call."

I slowly clenched my fists. The cold air from the doorway washed over my sweaty skin, but it brought no relief.

To people like them, the dreams, the sweat, the tears, and the very lives of ordinary people were just weeds on the side of the road. Not only did they ignore us, but they also took pleasure in stepping on us and spitting on our misery.

Sienna leaned in and kissed Stephen's cheek, treating me like the punchline of a joke, her eyes flashing with pure triumph.

Then, as if remembering something even more delicious, her expression turned manic.

"Audrey, sweetie, let me guess. Did Stephen tell you he had severe depression?"

My brow furrowed, but I couldn't deny it.

Sienna burst into a fit of laughter, clutching her stomach. But the words that tumbled from her mouth next made my entire world shatter.

"That's because I told him your little brother took his own life because of depression."

"We knew that if Stephen pretended to be depressed, you'd fall for it hook, line, and sinker."

"And look at you. You actually did."

The air went entirely still, the heavy silence broken only by the deafening buzz of the cicadas.

My mind snapped. All logic and restraint evaporated. I bit my lower lip until it bled, ripped off my heavy delivery helmet, and swung it with everything I had straight at Stephen's face.

If I let this slide, I might as well give up on living.

My chest heaved violently as I screamed at him.

"Depression, right? Playing poor, right? You like using my dead brother as a joke?"

"You absolute piece of trash! No wonder your parents don't love you! No wonder your father beats your mother right in front of you! Why didn't he just beat you to death instead?"

"I'll do him a favor and kill you myself today!"

During our year together, whether it was a game to him or a real connection to me, we had shared our deepest vulnerabilities. I knew his darkest secret: the cold neglect of his parents, the abuse he had witnessed, and the hollow ache of never knowing what a real family felt like.

And now, those secrets became the weapons I used to rip him apart.

Before either of them could react, I swung the helmet again, heavy plastic slamming into his face over and over. I was hyperventilating, my head spinning from weeks of sleep deprivation and pure, unadulterated rage.

The second Sienna mentioned my brother, Felix, the fragile wall of sanity I had built shattered into dust.

He was the one person in this world no one was allowed to touch.

Stephen didn't even try to defend himself. He just stood there, taking the blows, until Sienna finally screamed and tried to pull me off him. He stumbled back, his hands covered in the blood pouring from his nose and mouth.

"Are you okay, Stephen? I'm calling the police!" Sienna cried, her voice shaking with panic. "This crazy bitch is out of her mind! I'll have my dad destroy her..."

Stephen grabbed her wrist, shaking his head weakly.

"No. Don't."

"I... I owe her this."

He wiped the blood from his lip, smoothed back his messy hair, and stepped back toward me. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a sleek gold credit card, and held it out to me.

"The PIN is your birthday. I know there's no fixing this, but... just take it. I'm sorry."

I let out a cold, hollow laugh, staring at him with nothing but pure hatred.

"Go die."

I snatched the card from his fingers, turned on my heel, and walked away.

There was over a hundred thousand dollars on the card.

I called my delivery manager, demanded my final paycheck, and quit on the spot.

My tiny, cheap studio apartment felt smaller than ever, easily taken in with a single glance. I had moved out of the dorms with Stephen because he claimed his physical symptoms of depression were getting worse, and he needed me by his side every day.

I hadn't been entirely defenseless when he first entered my life, but seeing him suffer from the exact same illness that had taken my brother made my heart soft. It made me foolish.

In my desperation to save him, the lines between my love for him and my crippling guilt over my brother had blurred. I had thrown myself into saving Stephen as if it could somehow rewrite the past and cure my nightmares.

I spent hours packing. We had accumulated a lot of things over the year, but looking at the matching mugs, the couple's watches, and the cheap souvenirs we bought, they only felt like acid in my eyes. I threw them all into the trash.

I lay down on the mattress, listening to the loud, rattling hum of the old air conditioner. Free from the endless cycle of delivery shifts, I finally fell into a deep, heavy sleep.

In my dreams, I was back in that bathroom.

Felix lay in the bathtub, completely pale, surrounded by water stained dark red. He looked like a fragile porcelain doll, cold and silent.

An empty pill bottle lay near his limp fingers. His long eyelashes were closed, looking exactly the way they did when he used to doze off while waiting for me to finish studying.

Only this time, he would never wake up. He would never open his eyes and ask me when we were going to bed.

On his phone, he had deleted every single message and chat history, leaving only a final text to me: "I'm sorry, sis," along with a bank transfer of five hundred dollars.

Everything he had to his name.

He had left during the peak of spring, a brilliant boy taken in his prime.

And I had been trapped in that spring ever since.

The rustling of a plastic trash bag by the door woke me up.

A figure in a black shirt was crouching by my garbage can, frantically digging through the trash.

"Who's there?"

The figure froze, then slowly turned around.

It was Stephen. He was wearing a black face mask, with several white bandages taped over his face where I had hit him.

I rubbed my aching temples, realizing I had forgotten he still had a spare key.

He had pulled out all the matching rings, cups, and mementos I had thrown away, neatly lining them up on the floor.

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked, my voice flat.

Stephen looked down, hiding his eyes.

"I just came to pack up some of my things."

"They're just cheap trash, Stephen. I didn't think a billionaire would care."

I sat up on the bed, scanning the room to see if I had left anything important. Once I was done packing, I was planning to move back into the dorms and cancel the lease on this apartment.

Stephen held the cheap silver matching ring in his palm, his thumb gently rubbing the band. His voice sounded hollow and distant.

"I know you don't believe me, Audrey. But I really did love you. You were the only person in the world I trusted."

"Nobody has ever loved me the way you did. I didn't want to lose you."

I let out a soft, mocking chuckle, the scene at the mansion flashing through my mind like a cruel joke.

"Love? Is that what you call it? Was it love when you had me deliver a three-thousand-dollar meal to the house where you had just slept with another girl? Should I thank you for the tip?"

"Sienna is a mistake! I can explain! Nothing happened between us. I only agreed to date her in the past because she wouldn't stop asking."

"I wanted to break up with her a long time ago. I finally realized that the only person I truly love is..."

"It doesn't matter anymore," I cut him off, my voice ice-cold.

The bathroom faucet dripped loudly into the plastic bucket below. The plumbing had been leaking for months, and to save on the water bill, I had kept a bucket there to catch the drops. Every penny had mattered to me, and to hear him talk about love now was simply insulting.

The moment his lie was exposed, a chasm opened between us, one that no amount of explanations could ever bridge.

"Stephen, when you used my dead brother to get close to me, did you ever consider that karma would find you?"

"What do you mean?"

I didn't answer. I simply stood up, walked to the door, and opened it, signaling for him to leave.

He saw the finality in my eyes, his face falling as he gathered the cheap trinkets into his bag and stood up.

"Stop pretending to be depressed," I said as he reached the door.

"Because every time someone like you uses it as a game, the stigma gets worse, and the people who are actually suffering are left in the dark."

People like Felix.

Stephen stood silent for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

Before he stepped out, he pulled a bag of groceries from behind his back, containing pork ribs and lotus root. He had seen the message I sent him about making his favorite soup.

"Can you make me the soup one last time?"

"No. Your family's chef can make it much better."

"I only like yours." He looked at me, his eyes rimmed with red. "Audrey, why won't you give me one more chance?"

His voice cracked, thick with tears.

I never expected the arrogant heir of Silveridge's wealthiest family to look so pathetic, begging for my forgiveness. The simulation was over, yet he was still playing the part.

I met his gaze with absolute silence.

He knew it was over. The hand he had reached out to grab mine slowly fell to his side. At the doorway, he looked back at me, his eyes swimming with unshed tears.

"Do you still love me?"

"No."

"Could you ever love me again?"

"Never."

After Stephen left, I spent the rest of the night packing the remaining boxes. I was scheduled to move back to the campus dorms next week.

Around three in the morning, I sat on the sofa, exhausted. My eyes fell on a small, locked metal box in the corner of the closet.

My brother's things.

Felix and I were twins. Our parents had divorced when we were young, and both had quickly started new families. We were treated like a costly mistake of their youth, an inconvenience they both wanted to forget. So, from middle school onward, Felix and I survived on the bare minimum child support they sent, keeping each other alive.

My heart ached at the memory. I reached into my bag and pulled out a small jewelry box. It was the last birthday gift Felix had given me, a delicate silver necklace with a star pendant.

He had been smiling so brightly when he placed it around my neck.

"I saved up to buy this for you, Audrey. Do you like it? It looks so beautiful on you, better than on the model!"

"I know it's not expensive, but I'm going to work hard. One day, I'll buy you the most beautiful gems in the world."

I had smiled, poking the single dimple on his cheek. "I believe you, Felix. I'll be waiting."

As I held the jewelry box, I felt something rattling beneath the velvet padding. I pulled it back and found a small key hidden inside. Felix hadn't given me this key when he first gave me the necklace. He must have slipped it in later.

I took the key, walked over to the locked box in the closet, and turned the lock. It clicked open.

Inside, there were only four things.

A canvas painting of withered sunflowers, a vinyl record from his favorite indie band, a black notebook, and a small slip of paper with a username and password written on it.

I picked up the black notebook, resting it on my lap.

I turned the pages. The early entries were just ordinary things, complaining about exams or mentioning a girl who had tried to hand him a love letter. It made sense. Felix had always been handsome, with soft features and a quiet, mysterious charm that drew people in.

But because we had grown up abandoned, he had always been deeply sensitive and guarded, which was why he kept a journal.

When he started college at Silveridge University, his incredible vocals quickly made him the lead singer of the campus band, and he was always surrounded by fans.

My heart ached as I read through his memories, but my fingers froze on a page halfway through. Sienna's name had appeared in the journal.

And as I turned the pages, her name appeared more and more frequently.