One Hundred Pranks, One True End

For two years, I lived a fairy tale with Liam Hayes, the tech mogul. He' d lost his memory in a terrible accident, but he remembered me, or so he said. I, a struggling artist, bought into his relentless passion. We were building a life, a family even. I held a positive pregnancy test, ready to share our news.

Then, I heard my college rival, Chloe Jenkins, speak from his office, her voice like sugar-coated poison. "Two whole years. Ninety-nine times. You promised." My blood ran cold as Liam's sharp, cynical laugh filled the room. This wasn't the gentle man I knew. He confirmed it. My entire relationship had been a cruel game, a "prank" designed to make me look like a fool.

They mocked my ruined artworks, my canceled shows, every humiliation I' d endured. Liam had been there each time, comforting me with fake sympathy, while secretly logging his "pranks." Chloe purred, "One hundred pranks, one hundred proofs of your love for me." Liam' s reply, dripping with adoration, shattered me: "She was just a means to an end. A pawn."

The pregnancy test in my pocket felt like a block of ice. My love, our life, our future baby-all a sick joke. My fairy tale was a cage, my prince a monster. He wanted one hundred pranks, a century of my pain.

When I found his hidden sketchbook, full of intimate drawings of me and a receipt for an engagement ring, a dangerous hope flickered. Had he felt something real? But that hope died when I called a women's clinic. This child was conceived in deceit, an extension of his game. I refused to bring a child into this twisted world.

At a yacht party, after my procedure, Liam's friends, at Chloe's urging, forced me to eat poisoned oysters, designed to induce a miscarriage. They knew. "He didn't want a child with her tying him down," Chloe hissed. "He was just waiting for the right moment for the problem to go away. I just provided the opportunity." I bled, the pain excruciating, as Liam, seeing me, yelled for a helicopter. Chloe, cold and final, drilled into my fading consciousness: "Don't you dare forget who you're doing all this for. You love me. Remember?" Liam' s strained reply: "I know, Chloe. I... I know."

How could he? How could the man who held me at night, whispering endearments, be the same man who orchestrated my destruction? Why him? Why me?

Ava Miller died that day. But Elise Vance was born, and she was coming for them.

For two years, I believed I was the luckiest woman alive.

I was living with Liam Hayes, the tech mogul whose face was on every business magazine. After a terrible car accident, he' d lost his memory. He didn' t remember his company, his friends, or his past. But he remembered me. Or so he said.

He' d claimed he saw my face in his fractured memories, a beacon in the fog. He pursued me with a relentless, dizzying passion that swept me off my feet. I, a struggling artist barely making rent, found myself in a fairy tale.

I played along. I became the girlfriend he thought I was. I filled in the blanks of his "lost" memories with stories of a love that had never existed before the crash. It started as a game, a kindness to a man who seemed so lost. But somewhere along the way, I fell for him. Deeply.

Today, the two-year anniversary of his accident, was supposed to be special. I held a positive pregnancy test in my trembling hand. My heart hammered against my ribs. I was going to tell him. We were going to be a real family.

I walked towards his home office, the little plastic stick hidden in my pocket. I wanted to see the look on his face. I stopped outside the door, hearing voices. He was on a video call. I smiled, deciding to wait a moment.

Then I heard her voice, a voice I hadn't heard in years but could never forget. Chloe Jenkins. My rival from college, the one who always saw me as a threat.

"Liam, are you almost done?" Chloe's voice was like sugar-coated poison. "It' s been two whole years. Ninety-nine times. You promised."

My blood ran cold. I pressed my ear against the wood of the door.

Liam' s rich, familiar laugh filled the room. It wasn't the gentle laugh I knew. This was sharp, cynical. "Patience, my love. One more to go. We need to hit the century mark. It' s more poetic that way."

"I can' t believe you actually kept it up for so long," Chloe said, a hint of admiration in her tone. "Faking amnesia. It's brilliantly cruel. Especially for Ava Miller."

"Ninety-nine pranks, Chloe. Ninety-nine times we've made her look like a fool," Liam said. "Remember when we replaced her gallery submission with a child' s drawing? Or when we convinced her that her favorite, very-much-alive painter had died and I 'bought' her his last, forged painting?"

Their laughter echoed through the door, a physical force that made me stumble back.

My mind reeled, flashing through the endless small humiliations, the "unfortunate accidents" and "silly misunderstandings" of the past two years. The ruined artworks. The canceled shows. The public embarrassments. Each time, Liam had been there to comfort me, to hold me, his eyes full of fake sympathy.

"Just one more, Liam," Chloe purred. "Then you're mine. You get back at her for me, and I' ll finally agree to date you. One hundred pranks, one hundred proofs of your love for me."

"Anything for you, Chloe," Liam replied, his voice dripping with an adoration I'd once believed was for me. "She was just a means to an end. A pawn."

A pawn.

The word slammed into me. The pregnancy test in my pocket felt like a block of ice. My love, our life, our future baby-it was all just the punchline to a very long, very sick joke. I was a game piece in his twisted quest to win back his long-lost love.

I backed away from the door, my hand clamped over my mouth to stifle a sob. My fairy tale had been a cage. My prince was a monster.

He wanted one hundred pranks. A century of my pain.

A slow, cold smile spread across my face. It felt alien. He was right. It did need to hit one hundred.

But the final prank would be mine.

He would find me in the wreckage of a boating accident. He would search frantically, his heart breaking for the woman he' d tormented. And in the debris, he' d find a single locket.

Inside, an inscription: "100th prank: I bet you love me."

He would collapse. He would be hospitalized. He would be broken.

And I, from a secluded cabin in some snowy, forgotten mountain range, would watch his world burn to the ground. He faked amnesia to play with my heart.

I would fake my death to teach him what it truly means to lose everything.

I remembered the early days of the "prank." A few months in, Liam threw a lavish party. He invited all his wealthy, entitled friends. They all knew about his "amnesia." They all came to watch the show.

That night, my portfolio, which I had spent months preparing for a major grant application, was "accidentally" destroyed. A server, one of his friends in disguise, spilled an entire tray of red wine over it. Liam had rushed to my side, his face a mask of concern.

"Ava, I'm so sorry! This is horrible!" he'd said, wrapping his arms around me as his friends snickered behind their hands.

I had cried in his arms, believing his comfort was real. Now, the memory made my stomach turn. I saw it for what it was: a performance for an audience of vipers.

Just last month, he' d found one of my old sketchbooks. He' d flipped through it, his eyes wide with what I thought was admiration. "You're so talented, Ava. It's incredible."

I later found that sketchbook in the trash, pages torn out, with notes scribbled in the margins in Liam's handwriting. "Prank #92: Compliment her mediocre scribbles. Reaction: blushed, almost cried. Pathetic."

He kept a log. A detailed, numbered list of my every humiliation.

He would hold me at night, whispering about how I was his anchor, the only thing that felt real in his confusing world. He' d kiss the paint stains on my fingers and call them stardust.

And then he would meet with Chloe and his friends and laugh about how gullible I was. How easily I believed the lies.

The contrast was sickening. The man who made me breakfast in bed was the same man who plotted to ruin my career. The man who nursed me through a fever was the same man who numbered my heartbreaks like trophies. The sickness of it all rose in my throat, hot and bitter.

The first person I called was my father.

He picked up on the second ring. "Ava, sweetheart. Is everything alright?"

I couldn't speak. A choked, ragged sound came out of my throat. The dam of my composure, so carefully constructed in the hallway, finally broke.

"Dad," I whispered, the word cracking.

"I'm on my way," he said immediately. No questions asked. That was my father, Richard Miller. A quiet, unassuming history professor who would go to war for me without a moment's hesitation.

While I waited, I walked through the opulent penthouse that had been my gilded cage. Every object was a lie. The abstract sculpture in the foyer he' d bought me for my birthday? A gift to celebrate "Prank #56." The silk scarf draped over a chair? A replacement for the one Chloe had "accidentally" snagged and ruined at a cafe.

I had given this man two years of my life. I had cooked for him, cared for him, sketched his face from memory a thousand times. I had poured my genuine, unfiltered love into the empty vessel of his feigned amnesia.

My love was just another game to him. My heart was the playing field. And I had lost spectacularly.

When my father arrived, his face was etched with worry. I didn't cry. I told him everything, my voice flat and empty. I told him about Liam, about Chloe, about the ninety-nine pranks. I told him about the pregnancy test still in my pocket.

He listened, his expression hardening from concern to a cold, controlled fury I had rarely seen. When I was finished, he simply said, "What do you need me to do?"

"I need to disappear," I said. The words felt heavy, but right. "I want him to think I'm dead."

My father's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't argue. He saw the gaping wound in me, the part of my soul that had been methodically tortured. He understood this wasn't about running away. This was about justice.

"It will be my final prank," I told him, a bitter smile touching my lips. "The hundredth. The one he wanted so badly. A grand finale."

I started packing a small bag, my movements robotic. I cleared my art supplies, my clothes, anything that was truly mine. As I emptied a drawer of my sketchbooks, I found one I didn't recognize. It was a small, leather-bound Moleskine, not my usual brand.

Curiosity got the better of me. I opened it.

It was Liam's handwriting. But it wasn't a list of pranks. It was full of sketches of me. Me sleeping, me painting, me laughing at something he'd said. The drawings were detailed, intimate.

Under one sketch of me concentrating on a canvas, he had written: Her brow furrows when she' s focused. She bites her lower lip. It' s distracting.

Under another, a drawing of my hand: She has paint under her nails almost all the time. She says it' s messy, I think it' s beautiful.

My breath hitched. What was this? Was this part of the game, too? A prop left for me to find, to sow more confusion?

Tucked into the back pocket of the sketchbook was a folded receipt. A jewelry store. Dated six months ago. The item: a custom-designed engagement ring. The description matched a design I had idly sketched myself once, a unique, asymmetrical band that I' d told him represented two orbits colliding. He had been watching me draw it.

My heart twisted in a new kind of agony. Did he love me? Was it possible that in the midst of his cruel game, some part of him had developed real feelings?

The thought was a dangerous poison. It offered a sliver of hope, and hope was a luxury I could no longer afford. Because even if he did love me, it was a love built on a foundation of lies and cruelty. It was a love that coexisted with his willingness to destroy me for another woman. That wasn't love. It was a sickness.

I tossed the sketchbook and the receipt into my bag. They were evidence. Not of his love, but of the depth of his deception.

The final piece of my past I had to deal with was the most painful. I took the pregnancy test from my pocket and looked at the two blue lines. This baby was conceived in love on my side, but in deceit on his. It was a living, breathing part of his game.

I couldn't bring a child into this world as an extension of his sick joke. I couldn't look at my child every day and be reminded of the man who broke me.

With a shaking hand, I called the women' s clinic my friend had recommended months ago. I made an appointment for the next morning. It was a brutal, gut-wrenching decision, but it was mine. It was the first step in taking my life back.

That evening, Liam came home. He was beaming, oblivious. He wrapped his arms around me from behind as I stood staring out the window.

"Thinking about our future?" he murmured into my hair, kissing my neck.

I didn't flinch. I felt nothing. Just a cold, empty space where my heart used to be.

"I was thinking we should get a dog," he said. "Maybe a golden retriever. The kids would love it."

The casual mention of "kids" was a new kind of torture. He was painting a beautiful picture of a life he had no intention of living with me.

"Ava, my love," he whispered, using the pet name that now sounded like an insult. In his prank journal, he' d written: #74: Call her 'my love.' She melts every time. Easy.

I remained silent, a statue in his arms.

He turned me around, his brow furrowed with fake concern. "Is everything okay? You seem distant tonight."

He placed a hand on my stomach, a gesture that would have thrilled me just this morning. Now, it felt like a violation. "Did you eat? You feel thin."

"I'm fine," I said, my voice a monotone. "Just tired."

"Let's go to bed," he said, his voice soft. "I'll hold you. You always sleep better when I hold you."

That night, I lay awake in his arms, his steady breathing a mockery of the storm inside me. He was a monster who thought he was a prince, and I was the fool who had believed him. But the fool was about to burn the whole kingdom down.