Chapter 3The Billion-Dollar Breakup: Confessions of a Former Doormat

Whoever ties the knot has to untie it. The System was bound to me because of Carter, and only through him could it be unbound.

I couldn't live my whole life carrying this System.

Fixing this was my top priority.

I did the math. To offset the $1 billion reward and reach the unbinding threshold, I needed to spend exactly $10 million on Carter.

But to spend $10 million on a man, I had to make $10 million first.

At my current salary, it would take me over a decade.

A decade...

My best years, wasted working like a dog just to fund Carter's life.

The thought alone suffocated me.

I went to see him.

I had looked into his situation. He wasn't doing well. He was a low-level manager at a tiny startup. He had lost his polish; the arrogant, high-flying elite aura was completely gone.

When he saw me, a flash of awe crossed his eyes, followed quickly by deep confusion and resentment.

I had reached the heights he used to dream of.

He had to be jealous.

We exchanged polite pleasantries, both of us pretending the psycho knife incident had never happened.

I was in a rush to make money and had no time to waste, so I cut to the chase and told him to speak his mind.

He gave me a playful smirk.

"You're lacking a good executive assistant, aren't you? What do you think about Chloe?"

Chloe again.

I laughed.

"Being an assistant is beneath her. Why don't you two just go to the courthouse right now? I'll even write you a massive wedding check."

His face fell, glaring at me angrily.

I leaned in, my voice provocative. "Spend money on you? Sure. Help her out? Not a chance in hell."

"You're still in love with me?" Carter raised an eyebrow, thinking he had the upper hand.

I didn't answer. I just stared at him in silence.

He laughed mockingly.

"Alright then. Let's see how much you're willing to spend on me."

From that day on, I became Carter's personal ATM.

He knew exactly what day my paychecks cleared.

Because of him, my bank account was usually empty by the second day of the month.

I also noticed that a lot of the designer goods Carter made me buy ended up on Chloe's Instagram feed.

Whenever Chloe saw me at work, her eyes were full of mockery and disdain.

But none of that stopped my relentless climb up the corporate ladder.

When I made VP of Operations, I took some of my money and hired a male sugar baby.

He was a smooth-talker who called me "boss lady" and knew exactly how to create drama.

Whenever he was off the clock with me, he’d mysteriously show up to pick up Chloe, taking her to wild, exclusive VIP parties.

Aside from having no money of his own, he was perfect.

Soon, to support her new lavish lifestyle, Chloe started selling off her designer bags on Poshmark.

I took the photos my sugar baby secretly sent me and forwarded them straight to Carter.

I asked him: Is this what they call an open relationship? You love her, she loves him... are we all just funding a charity here?

Carter aggressively texted back: "You bitch!"

The next day, Chloe showed up to work with a bruised face and handed in her resignation.

I happily signed off on it immediately.

She glared at me, her eyes brimming with pure hatred.

"Harper, do you even know that the money you kill yourself to make is actually being spent on me? You sponsor Carter, and Carter sponsors me. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?"

I laughed.

"Oh, I know! I also know you're fencing all that stuff on Poshmark. How's that going? Getting hit with bad reviews yet?"

"You bought fake stuff?! Impossible. They all had authenticated receipts!"

"The receipts were real. The bags weren't. Grow up, sweetheart. Learn how the game is played before you try to survive in the real world."

Right then, Chloe's phone buzzed.

She answered it, and a deafening voice screamed through the speaker: "You scamming bitch, selling fake trash!"

She panicked, running out of the office looking like a complete mess.

Later, Carter called me.

"Harper, you are ruthless. You bought me knockoffs?"

I replied sweetly, "The men's stuff was real. The women's stuff was fake. Go get it appraised if you don't believe me."

Why would I ever fund Chloe Jenkins's life through Carter?

There’s an art to spending money.

I needed Carter to burn through my cash, leaving him with absolutely nothing to show for it—no real assets, no leverage, no savings.

After that, Carter ignored me for a solid month.

Word on the street was Chloe had scratched his face up pretty bad, and the two had a spectacularly messy breakup.

But that month was pure hell for me.

The System's mission deadlines were relentless. I got shocked so badly I almost ended up paralyzed.

Waking up in the hospital, I realized I couldn't play hardball with Carter anymore.

I had to play nice. I had to make him utterly dependent on me.

Making more money to break this curse as fast as possible—that was the only way to win.

From then on, I became his ultimate doormat.

As long as his demands weren't completely insane, I agreed to all of them.

And Carter, perhaps traumatized by Chloe, or just wanting to trigger me, completely let himself go.

He swapped girlfriends so fast I couldn't match faces to names.

Thankfully, he knew he was garbage, and he was terrified of meeting another "psycho" like me.

So the girls he dated were just as shallow and messy as he was.

He loved showing off my blind devotion in front of his new flings, treating my dignity like a welcome mat.

Many times, walking away from him, I questioned everything.

Why did the System choose a guy like him?

I was perfectly average; he was complete trash.

What did either of us do to get chosen by this cosmic joke?

It kept me up at night.

But looking at it from another angle...

Carter was genuinely handsome. Even at rock bottom, girls threw themselves at him.

He had expensive taste; all his girlfriends were gorgeous in their own ways.

If I hadn't destroyed his career early on, a guy like him might have climbed to the top, stolen corporate resources, started his own firm, and turned into one of those arrogant billionaire playboys you read about in romance novels.

And me?

I had some looks; otherwise, Carter wouldn't have kept me around this long.

I was highly competent; otherwise, I wouldn't have climbed the ranks so fast.

If I had been foolish enough to fall in love, wouldn't I just be the tragic heroine in a romance novel, using my pure love to redeem the bad boy?

Thinking about it that way, it all made a sick kind of sense.

But that was just a theory.

I was just thankful I wasn't actually in love with Carter.

I loved the cash-back balance ticking up on the System interface. It was already past $900 million.

Just a little longer, and it would all be over.

Three years had passed.

Carter was entirely used to my existence.

Because I funded his life and asked for absolutely nothing in return, his ego had inflated to the size of a blimp.

He had quit his job ages ago. He lived in a drunken stupor, bouncing between clubs, VIP lounges, luxury spas, and high-end resorts.

He got addicted to mobile games, dropping ten grand at a time on micro-transactions.

He even became obsessed with Twitch streamers, sending massive donations and constantly sliding into their DMs to hook up.

His Instagram was a nauseating feed of VIP access and exotic vacations, every caption practically screaming: "Rich and reckless."

He had hollowed himself out with booze and women. He had devolved into pure, unadulterated trash.