Spring After A Cold Winter

Spring After A Cold Winter

Gavin

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The termination notice arrived, cold and impersonal, ending my three-year stint as the "unofficial queen" of Hayes Tech and Nathan Hayes' s girlfriend. Just like that, I was collateral damage for the return of Chloe Davis, his high school sweetheart and "white knight." But then, a strange relief washed over me. This corporate execution was a stark contrast to the messy life I lived, a life already tangled in Nathan' s possessive grip. My desk, the one Nathan himself had moved so he could "see me whenever he looked out his office window," now faced a tightly shut blind. Outside, his sleek black car pulled up, and he opened the door for Chloe, a practiced gesture of chivalry he' d never once shown me. His adoration for her was a look he reserved only for her. He was giving her the world, and I was just the discarded memory, a piece of sidewalk furniture he walked past without a glance. My phone, once buzzing with his messages, now remained dark, a testament to his new home with Chloe. Then came the calls from unknown numbers, the news reports of their perfect reunion. During this silent abandonment, I made several trips to the hospital, clutching papers that spelled out a truth I wasn' t ready to face. He stayed home that night, pressing my hand to his cheek. "I' ve been so busy, I didn' t even notice you were sick." His tenderness, a poison I' d willingly consumed, was so easily mistaken for genuine affection. "Ava," he whispered after a night of desperate passion, "you' re not mad I fired you, are you?" How could I be? He was my salvation, the one who paid off my mother' s debts, the possessive voice that rumbled, "Ava, you' re my golden cage bird. The one who can never leave me." But everything had already changed. I just didn't realize how much until Brenda, Chloe's best friend, showed up, displaying my pathetic devotion for scorn. "Homewrecker," she spat, then lunged, slapping me across the face before slamming my head against the tabletop. Waking in a hospital bed, Nathan was there, but his concern was for Chloe' s reputation, not my pain. "Ava, Chloe is different. She's not like you. Just be good, okay?" He didn' t wipe away the single, hot tear that rolled down my temple. To him, I was a nuisance, an inconvenience. So, I had to die for him to let me go? The words were torn from my throat, raw and desperate. He laughed, a strange, humorless sound. He couldn't see it, but I was done. It was time to settle my own accounts. I would give him a spring he would never forget.

Introduction

The termination notice arrived, cold and impersonal, ending my three-year stint as the "unofficial queen" of Hayes Tech and Nathan Hayes' s girlfriend. Just like that, I was collateral damage for the return of Chloe Davis, his high school sweetheart and "white knight."

But then, a strange relief washed over me. This corporate execution was a stark contrast to the messy life I lived, a life already tangled in Nathan' s possessive grip.

My desk, the one Nathan himself had moved so he could "see me whenever he looked out his office window," now faced a tightly shut blind. Outside, his sleek black car pulled up, and he opened the door for Chloe, a practiced gesture of chivalry he' d never once shown me. His adoration for her was a look he reserved only for her.

He was giving her the world, and I was just the discarded memory, a piece of sidewalk furniture he walked past without a glance. My phone, once buzzing with his messages, now remained dark, a testament to his new home with Chloe.

Then came the calls from unknown numbers, the news reports of their perfect reunion. During this silent abandonment, I made several trips to the hospital, clutching papers that spelled out a truth I wasn' t ready to face.

He stayed home that night, pressing my hand to his cheek. "I' ve been so busy, I didn' t even notice you were sick." His tenderness, a poison I' d willingly consumed, was so easily mistaken for genuine affection. "Ava," he whispered after a night of desperate passion, "you' re not mad I fired you, are you?" How could I be? He was my salvation, the one who paid off my mother' s debts, the possessive voice that rumbled, "Ava, you' re my golden cage bird. The one who can never leave me."

But everything had already changed. I just didn't realize how much until Brenda, Chloe's best friend, showed up, displaying my pathetic devotion for scorn. "Homewrecker," she spat, then lunged, slapping me across the face before slamming my head against the tabletop.

Waking in a hospital bed, Nathan was there, but his concern was for Chloe' s reputation, not my pain. "Ava, Chloe is different. She's not like you. Just be good, okay?" He didn' t wipe away the single, hot tear that rolled down my temple. To him, I was a nuisance, an inconvenience.

So, I had to die for him to let me go? The words were torn from my throat, raw and desperate. He laughed, a strange, humorless sound. He couldn't see it, but I was done. It was time to settle my own accounts.

I would give him a spring he would never forget.

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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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