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The Final Goodbye to the Past

The Final Goodbye to the Past

Gavin

5.0
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It was Valentine's Day, also my daughter Lily's fifth birthday, and our San Francisco house buzzed with her party. Her innocent wish, spoken in perfect French, shattered my world: "I wish Mommy and Daddy would divorce, and Uncle Julian could be my new daddy." My wife Izzy confirmed her chilling desire, and the subsequent divorce papers, the mere fifty-million-dollar check, and pervasive public humiliation felt like the final blows. Every person I cared for-my wife, my daughter, my very own parents-echoed the same brutal sentiment: I was nothing but a convenience, easily discarded. Years of devotion, of caring for Izzy during her coma and raising Lily, yielded only cold dismissals and public scorn. My heart, already weakened by a secret chronic illness, shattered repeatedly, leaving me hollowed out and completely unvalued. Was my loyalty a curse? Had I truly been nothing but a 'placeholder'? With nothing left but bitter pain, a mysterious entity offered an 'exit'-a chance to leave this life behind. But death, it seemed, was merely a new beginning. I awoke to a reality where I was reborn, the highly respected screenwriter Ethan Cole, cured of my past ailments. Until a ghost from my previous life, my ex-wife and daughter, appeared, ready to 'reconquer' me. This time, the game was on my terms.

Introduction

It was Valentine's Day, also my daughter Lily's fifth birthday, and our San Francisco house buzzed with her party.

Her innocent wish, spoken in perfect French, shattered my world: "I wish Mommy and Daddy would divorce, and Uncle Julian could be my new daddy."

My wife Izzy confirmed her chilling desire, and the subsequent divorce papers, the mere fifty-million-dollar check, and pervasive public humiliation felt like the final blows.

Every person I cared for-my wife, my daughter, my very own parents-echoed the same brutal sentiment: I was nothing but a convenience, easily discarded.

Years of devotion, of caring for Izzy during her coma and raising Lily, yielded only cold dismissals and public scorn.

My heart, already weakened by a secret chronic illness, shattered repeatedly, leaving me hollowed out and completely unvalued.

Was my loyalty a curse?

Had I truly been nothing but a 'placeholder'?

With nothing left but bitter pain, a mysterious entity offered an 'exit'-a chance to leave this life behind.

But death, it seemed, was merely a new beginning.

I awoke to a reality where I was reborn, the highly respected screenwriter Ethan Cole, cured of my past ailments.

Until a ghost from my previous life, my ex-wife and daughter, appeared, ready to 'reconquer' me.

This time, the game was on my terms.

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The Unwilling Wife

The Unwilling Wife

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5.0

The organ music swelled, painting my white wedding dress in shades of blood red. I was marrying Julian Thorne, a man who despised me, believing the lies that had ruined my reputation. This wasn't a marriage; it was a sentence, orchestrated perfectly by my stepsister, Sophia, who had always wanted Julian for herself. Everyone saw Eleanor Vance, the brilliant architect, as the luckiest woman alive, but my heart was a cold stone. As the word "I do" escaped my lips-a whispered surrender-a blinding white light engulfed me. I woke up in my old bedroom, the floral wallpaper still on the walls. My phone read October 12, 2014-ten years ago, the day of my first wedding, the one that never happened. Relief surged through me; I wasn't Julian Thorne's wife. But then dread set in as Sophia's text buzzed on my smaller, older phone: "Julian's family is coming for dinner tonight, you have to make a good impression!" It was all starting tonight, the very dinner where Sophia would introduce me to the Thornes, setting off the chain of events that would lead to my forced marriage. The contempt in Julian's eyes was already there, seeing me as a social climber, exactly the image Sophia had carefully crafted. I was trapped again, a ghost in my own life, burdened by a future I knew was coming: the Thorne family's imminent financial ruin, and my own career sacrificed to support them. But this time, I wasn't the naive girl to be manipulated. I knew all their secrets, and I would not spend another ten years as Eleanor Thorne. I would fight.

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