From Fake Love to True Bliss

From Fake Love to True Bliss

WILONA COOK

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For six years, our life together with Ashley was a perfectly curated social media feed: beautiful, aspirational, and utterly fake. I, Ethan Miller, the indie filmmaker, thought we were finally building something real, meticulously picking out wedding invitations with my social media influencer fiancée. Then, a bombshell. "I need to postpone the wedding," Ashley announced, tears welling up in a performance worthy of an Oscar. Her childhood friend Liam' s dying mother, she claimed, had one last wish: to see Ashley marry her son. Not only did she steal the wedding rings I designed for us to marry Liam, but Ashley-the woman I was supposed to spend my life with-also callously mocked my own dying mother for being too desperate to get married. The betrayal clawed at me, but the horror deepened when I returned home to find Liam and Ashley cozy on our couch, with my belongings being boxed up by her bodyguards. I was a prisoner in my own home, a "harmless" man she could discard at will. When I tried to leave, Liam's hired thugs abducted me in my own lobby, while Ashley' s bodyguards stood by, watching. I woke up to Ashley and Liam staging a sick charade, falsely accusing me of assaulting Liam' s "dying" mother. "You monster! How could you?" Ashley screamed, before violently slapping me. Then, with a chillingly calm expression, she grabbed my wrist and twisted. I screamed as I heard the sickening crack. My wrist was broken. "Don't ever get in my way again," she hissed, leaving me broken and alone. She even tried to buy my silence, threatening to ruin my career if I ever spoke the truth. But her theatrical sorrow, the stolen rings, the staged kidnapping, the deliberate injury-it all solidified into a cold, hard resolve within me. I was done playing her game. "Can you find me a new bride?" I asked my sister, and then, a name from my past surfaced: Chloe Peterson.

Introduction

For six years, our life together with Ashley was a perfectly curated social media feed: beautiful, aspirational, and utterly fake.

I, Ethan Miller, the indie filmmaker, thought we were finally building something real, meticulously picking out wedding invitations with my social media influencer fiancée.

Then, a bombshell. "I need to postpone the wedding," Ashley announced, tears welling up in a performance worthy of an Oscar.

Her childhood friend Liam' s dying mother, she claimed, had one last wish: to see Ashley marry her son.

Not only did she steal the wedding rings I designed for us to marry Liam, but Ashley-the woman I was supposed to spend my life with-also callously mocked my own dying mother for being too desperate to get married.

The betrayal clawed at me, but the horror deepened when I returned home to find Liam and Ashley cozy on our couch, with my belongings being boxed up by her bodyguards.

I was a prisoner in my own home, a "harmless" man she could discard at will.

When I tried to leave, Liam's hired thugs abducted me in my own lobby, while Ashley' s bodyguards stood by, watching.

I woke up to Ashley and Liam staging a sick charade, falsely accusing me of assaulting Liam' s "dying" mother.

"You monster! How could you?" Ashley screamed, before violently slapping me.

Then, with a chillingly calm expression, she grabbed my wrist and twisted. I screamed as I heard the sickening crack. My wrist was broken.

"Don't ever get in my way again," she hissed, leaving me broken and alone.

She even tried to buy my silence, threatening to ruin my career if I ever spoke the truth.

But her theatrical sorrow, the stolen rings, the staged kidnapping, the deliberate injury-it all solidified into a cold, hard resolve within me.

I was done playing her game. "Can you find me a new bride?" I asked my sister, and then, a name from my past surfaced: Chloe Peterson.

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