The Bride's Dark Secret

The Bride's Dark Secret

Gavin

5.0
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Our wedding, live-streamed to millions, was meant to be my perfect future with the radiant Veronica. She was my salvation, helping me move past my "psycho ex," Clara Evans, who had supposedly clung to me pathologically. But then, from inside the grand piano, Clara's worn journal slipped to the floor. "What trash is that doing here?" I spat, kicking it away, reinforcing the narrative Veronica had perfected. The Event MC, David, picked it up, announcing the first entry: lyrics to Veronica's signature song, "Faded Embers," dated years before she claimed it. Veronica's tinkling laugh felt suddenly hollow. I stepped in, defending her, pointing out a prep school melody only "we" would know, further solidifying Clara's image as a delusional liar online. But David turned the page, reading Clara's secret high school entries about me. "I think 'Faded Embers' is almost finished. It's for him." Dated years before Veronica and I even met, before I "officially" knew Clara. My certainty wavered. This wasn't the Clara Veronica had painted; this was a girl who admired me from afar, a pure unrequited love. The words continued, detailing Veronica's open cruelty: discarded gifts, her chilling taunt "You don't belong here, street rat," and the unimaginable horror of Clara's 19th birthday. "He never believed me. He never asked," Clara had written. I swayed, remembering my cold judgmental rage, Veronica's calculated comfort. A knot of sickening realization tightened in my gut. The lights flickered, a crystal glass cracked, an ominous sign. This wasn't a wedding anymore; it was a reckoning. And I, Ethan Cole, was just beginning to realize the monstrous truth about the woman I was marrying, and the horrific injustice I had enabled.

Introduction

Our wedding, live-streamed to millions, was meant to be my perfect future with the radiant Veronica.

She was my salvation, helping me move past my "psycho ex," Clara Evans, who had supposedly clung to me pathologically.

But then, from inside the grand piano, Clara's worn journal slipped to the floor.

"What trash is that doing here?" I spat, kicking it away, reinforcing the narrative Veronica had perfected.

The Event MC, David, picked it up, announcing the first entry: lyrics to Veronica's signature song, "Faded Embers," dated years before she claimed it.

Veronica's tinkling laugh felt suddenly hollow.

I stepped in, defending her, pointing out a prep school melody only "we" would know, further solidifying Clara's image as a delusional liar online.

But David turned the page, reading Clara's secret high school entries about me.

"I think 'Faded Embers' is almost finished. It's for him."

Dated years before Veronica and I even met, before I "officially" knew Clara.

My certainty wavered.

This wasn't the Clara Veronica had painted; this was a girl who admired me from afar, a pure unrequited love.

The words continued, detailing Veronica's open cruelty: discarded gifts, her chilling taunt "You don't belong here, street rat," and the unimaginable horror of Clara's 19th birthday.

"He never believed me. He never asked," Clara had written.

I swayed, remembering my cold judgmental rage, Veronica's calculated comfort.

A knot of sickening realization tightened in my gut.

The lights flickered, a crystal glass cracked, an ominous sign.

This wasn't a wedding anymore; it was a reckoning.

And I, Ethan Cole, was just beginning to realize the monstrous truth about the woman I was marrying, and the horrific injustice I had enabled.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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4.3

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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