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My family and I sacrificed everything, our entire lives and savings, for my fiancée Isabelle, who lay in a coma for a year after a seemingly minor car accident. We moved mountains, sold our home, and poured every penny into her recovery, believing in a love that demanded ultimate devotion. But the day she "woke up"-healthy, laughing, and throwing cash at my feet after her luxury SUV clipped my leg-she revealed it was all a cruel "loyalty test." Her "test" had already cost me everything: my mother, who skipped vital heart medication to save for Isabelle and died; my father, overworked to death at an unsafe Vance Corporation construction site; and my little sister, trafficked and murdered for trying to earn money for Isabelle' s fictional medical bills. While I stood numb, having just identified my sister's body hours before, she, surrounded by her aristocratic circle, merely laughed, celebrating her "recovery" and my "loyalty" as her casual cruelty sliced through what little I had left. The half-million dollars she and her manipulative ex-husband then offered me as "compensation" felt like blood money for my lost family. I took my mother, father, and sister with me-their ashes in a small suitcase-left everything else behind, and walked away from her gilded cage forever, seeking a quiet peace far from the monsters who devoured my world.