Chapter 3

"Holy crap, this woman is next level! She actually offered to walk away with nothing?!"

"If I were a man, I'd probably fall for it too!"

"Yara, you're a lifesaver! Hunter's whole empire would've been picked clean by this snake!"

"This is high-tier emotional manipulation," Yara explains, sipping her latte.

"But men aren't stupid."

"He'll figure it out eventually."

"And when he does, every dollar she squeezed out of him will come back to bite her."

"My students would never stoop this low."

"But we still need to learn to spot it, so we can save our men when they're being played."

"That's how you keep a snake out of your relationship."

Her "Spot the Snake" course sells out again. Combined with round one, Yara's now cleared close to a million dollars off my life.

The chat's a party:

"This is SO satisfying! Take that, snake!"

"Bet she thought she'd hit the jackpot. What now, Hunter actually signed it, LOL!"

"Am I the only one shipping Yara and Hunter?"

"OMG YES. He literally built her whole platform! His PR team ran her launch!"

"And the two cases that made her famous? Both from Hunter!"

"Girl. That's love made visible."

Yara giggles behind her hand. "Okay, okay, don't get ahead of yourselves. Hunter and I are strictly business partners."

"Business partners become power couples!"

"Way better than the fake sob-story wife at home!"

"I found the snake's info!! Y'all know what to do!"

"Oh no!" Yara gasps like she just noticed. She scrambles to blur my name and address on screen. "Please don't do that! My fault! I got careless!"

"Yara is TOO pure for this world."

"Nope. Yara can forgive her. We won't. Let's ride for Yara!"

Yara looks down. A tiny smile curves her mouth.

Then a link pops into her chat.

The chat freezes. Then explodes with question marks:

"Wait… is that YARA poisoning the woman's soup??"

"OH MY GOD. She really did make her lose the baby! The girl wasn't faking!!"

"Is this real??"

Yara's face goes white.

"Sorry, sweeties, someone's spreading fake stuff in my chat!" She scrambles to delete my link.

But it's too late. The post already has hundreds of thousands of views.

On my end, I smile — sharp and cold.

Hunter always told me not to worry about Yara. She was just a lonely old classmate. He was helping her out of pity.

But I put cameras in the house anyway.

And every second of her dumping something into my soup? Crystal clear on tape.

The front door slams open.

Hunter marches in, dragging a sobbing Yara behind him.

"Did you post that?"

---