Addicted To His Fake Sugar Baby

Prove it.

The words were an ultimatum. Dereck Campos wasn't a man who accepted excuses. He wanted evidence. Text messages were useless. He would see through them in a second.

Giselle's eyes darted around the room, searching for a weapon, a tool, anything. They landed on her desk. A bottle of DayQuil, still sealed in its plastic and cardboard prison. She had bought it last week, preparing for the New York winter.

A plan formed. It was desperate, but it was all she had.

She grabbed the phone and opened the voice memo app. She took a deep breath, trying to channel the weakness she felt in her bones. She let the fever do the work. She started to cough, forcing it deep from her chest until it hacked through her vocal cords.

"I really am sick... My head is spinning, and I feel so weak..." she rasped into the microphone, her voice raw and thin.

She stopped the recording and played it back. It sounded fake. Too performative. She deleted it and tried again. And again. On the fourteenth take, she didn't act. She just let the exhaustion and the terror wash over her. The resulting voice was a frail, trembling whisper that sounded like a ghost.

Good. Now for the visual.

She picked up the bottle of DayQuil. The safety seal was intact. She placed the bottle in her right hand and gripped the cap. Instead of using her palm to apply pressure, she pinched the cap between her thumb and her index finger, determined to forge undeniable proof of her vulnerability.

She fumbled with the cap, her fingers slipping, her knuckles scraping against the plastic until the skin was an angry red. It was a visible testament to her struggle, her hand looking precisely like one too weak to open its own medicine.

She held the phone over her hand, framing the shot carefully. The background was just a blur of white sheets, completely anonymous. She snapped the photo.

She attached the voice memo and the photo to the chat.

"I'm sick and alone, and now you're saying weird things. I can't even open my medicine bottle... Did I make you angry by cancelling our date? I'm sorry... I'm really sorry..." she typed, her thumbs flying across the screen.

She hit send before she could second-guess herself. She dropped the phone on the bed and slid down to the floor, her back against the frame. She pressed her injured hand against her forehead, the coolness of her skin a relief against the fever.

A minute passed. Two. Five.

Then, a chime. Not a text message notification. An email.

Giselle crawled onto the bed and opened her laptop. The email was from a generic banking address. Wire Transfer Notification.

She opened it. The number on the screen made her vision blur. $150,000. A transfer of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been initiated to the linked account.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Oero.

Find the best doctor in New York. I don't care what it costs. Consider this a down payment on your recovery. Don't refuse it. And I'm sending my driver to your building to deliver whatever you need.

The room tilted. The money was a trap. The driver was an inescapable consequence. If she accepted the money, her part in the deception would be confirmed. If she let the driver in, he would see her face, see that she wasn't Carleigh, and report back to his boss.

She had to refuse. She had to reject the money from the most powerful man in New York. She logged into the linked bank account on her laptop, her hands shaking, and clicked the bold red button: DECLINE TRANSFER.

Then she picked up the encrypted phone. She couldn't let his driver or any doctor near her apartment.

"No! Absolutely not! I appreciate you caring about me, but I don't need a doctor or your driver! I can't accept all this. It makes me feel... overwhelmed."

She was framing it as a moral objection. It was the only angle she had.

"Please, I'm a big girl. I have my medicine now. Just let me rest. If you send anyone, I won't open the door. Please understand."

She hit send. She grabbed her own phone, the one with the cracked screen, and opened the CVS app. She ordered a bottle of NyQuil and a pack of Gatorade for delivery to her building. She paid the extra fee for one-hour delivery. She needed a real transaction to back up her story.

The silence from Oero's phone was deafening. She could feel him thinking, analyzing, calculating. She had just told a predator no.

Finally, the screen lit up.

Fine. Rest. We'll talk tomorrow.

Giselle let out a sob. She collapsed onto the floor, her body going limp. The cold sweat on her back soaked through her t-shirt. She had survived. For now.

She looked at her laptop screen, still showing the wire transfer. The money was a ghost-a massive sum she couldn't touch without revealing herself. The account itself, drained by her ex, was still functionally empty. The money wasn't gone; it was a trap waiting to be sprung. The debt, however, was very real.

She opened a new spreadsheet. She titled it Project Repayment. She had no money, no connections, and a million-dollar debt to a ruthless man. But she had her brain. And she was going to use it to buy her life back.