The Marriage Built on Lies

The Marriage Built on Lies

Gavin

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The day my parents told me I was transferring schools, my world ended for the first time. "Leo is a bad influence. A musician with no future, and he's too old for you," my mother stated, her lips a thin, unforgiving line. Two weeks later, I was adrift in the sterile halls of Northgate Prep, an art portfolio heavy in my hand, feeling like a ghost. Then I met Ethan. He seemed to light up the gray afternoon, a kind, talented musician who understood my dreams of New York and the Ashton Conservatory. Our pact to conquer the city together felt like a promise of a masterpiece. But the night before our audition, he handed me a "herbal supplement" that made the world tilt. I remember his whispered "I'm sorry, Chloe" just before he left me disoriented and helpless in a dark, grimy alley. I woke up to a pounding head, a filthy, torn dress, and a missed audition. A video of me, vulnerable and incoherent in that alley, had gone viral. My mother disowned me, her rage shaking the very foundations of my life. My quiet father, broken, showed me a text from an unknown number: "How does it feel to see your daughter's future ruined?" Five years passed in a haze of medication and therapists, the vibrant artist replaced by a frightened woman. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD-a living ghost of the girl I once was. Why me? What had really happened that night? Then, Ethan reappeared. He found me in my squalid apartment, filled with profound sadness, and took me in, promising to fix everything. He cared for me, he loved me, or so I thought, as he meticulously rebuilt the gilded cage around my shattered life.

Introduction

The day my parents told me I was transferring schools, my world ended for the first time.

"Leo is a bad influence. A musician with no future, and he's too old for you," my mother stated, her lips a thin, unforgiving line.

Two weeks later, I was adrift in the sterile halls of Northgate Prep, an art portfolio heavy in my hand, feeling like a ghost.

Then I met Ethan.

He seemed to light up the gray afternoon, a kind, talented musician who understood my dreams of New York and the Ashton Conservatory.

Our pact to conquer the city together felt like a promise of a masterpiece.

But the night before our audition, he handed me a "herbal supplement" that made the world tilt.

I remember his whispered "I'm sorry, Chloe" just before he left me disoriented and helpless in a dark, grimy alley.

I woke up to a pounding head, a filthy, torn dress, and a missed audition.

A video of me, vulnerable and incoherent in that alley, had gone viral.

My mother disowned me, her rage shaking the very foundations of my life.

My quiet father, broken, showed me a text from an unknown number: "How does it feel to see your daughter's future ruined?"

Five years passed in a haze of medication and therapists, the vibrant artist replaced by a frightened woman.

I was diagnosed with severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD-a living ghost of the girl I once was.

Why me? What had really happened that night?

Then, Ethan reappeared. He found me in my squalid apartment, filled with profound sadness, and took me in, promising to fix everything.

He cared for me, he loved me, or so I thought, as he meticulously rebuilt the gilded cage around my shattered life.

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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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