The Woman I Didn't Marry

The Woman I Didn't Marry

Gavin

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The last thing I remembered was the hospice ceiling, stark and cracked, as I lay paralyzed, trapped, regretting forty years wasted on a woman who betrayed me and a daughter who wasn't even mine. My wife, Nicole, was probably with Matthew, as she always had been. Then, a sudden, jarring jolt. My eyes snapped open, and I was eighteen again, back in my Cleveland bedroom, the phone buzzing with Nicole's vivacious voice inviting me to a party. This was the night it all began-the night I intervened, thinking I was saving her, only to become the consolation prize she resented for a lifetime. A life where I' d put her first, sacrificed my dreams, and eventually died alone, a fool betrayed by the very person I' d sworn to protect. The pain of that forty-year sentence, the revelation that Gabrielle, the child I loved more than anything, was Matthew's, flooded me. How could I have been so blind, so stupid? How could she have built our entire relationship on such a cruel, intricate lie? The humiliation, the rage, and the profound sorrow felt like a physical blow. Not this time. This time, I hung up the phone, the sound a chime of liberation. I was alive, I was free, and Nicole Anderson would be nothing but a stranger.

Introduction

The last thing I remembered was the hospice ceiling, stark and cracked, as I lay paralyzed, trapped, regretting forty years wasted on a woman who betrayed me and a daughter who wasn't even mine.

My wife, Nicole, was probably with Matthew, as she always had been.

Then, a sudden, jarring jolt. My eyes snapped open, and I was eighteen again, back in my Cleveland bedroom, the phone buzzing with Nicole's vivacious voice inviting me to a party.

This was the night it all began-the night I intervened, thinking I was saving her, only to become the consolation prize she resented for a lifetime.

A life where I' d put her first, sacrificed my dreams, and eventually died alone, a fool betrayed by the very person I' d sworn to protect.

The pain of that forty-year sentence, the revelation that Gabrielle, the child I loved more than anything, was Matthew's, flooded me.

How could I have been so blind, so stupid?

How could she have built our entire relationship on such a cruel, intricate lie?

The humiliation, the rage, and the profound sorrow felt like a physical blow.

Not this time. This time, I hung up the phone, the sound a chime of liberation.

I was alive, I was free, and Nicole Anderson would be nothing but a stranger.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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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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