The System went silent.
Then:
[Reward accepted.]
My phone rang.
Mom.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Her voice came through.
“Why haven’t you visited me this week?”
I couldn’t speak.
She laughed.
“Ethan?”
I closed my eyes.
“I’m coming tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
I smiled through tears.
“I’m better than okay.”
Five years later, I stood in front of a crowd of several hundred employees.
Our company had grown into something I once would have thought impossible.
But I wasn’t thinking about money.
I was thinking about that Tuesday night.
The office.
The rain.
The phone.
The photograph.
The heart attack.
The System.
The second chance.
After the ceremony, I walked outside.
My mother was waiting for me.
She was older, but she was smiling.
Beside her stood Marcus.
And beside Marcus was my wife.
Not Chloe.
Her name was Emma.
I had met Emma two years after my rebirth.
She had never asked me for money.
Never asked me to prove my love by destroying myself.
The first time I told her I was working late, she had looked at me and said:
“Then stop.”
I laughed.
She frowned.
“I’m serious.”
“No one has ever told me that.”
“Then everyone around you was wrong.”
