Burned Memories, A Wife's Fiery Comeback

Burned Memories, A Wife's Fiery Comeback

Maui

3.5
Comment(s)
31.2K
View
21
Chapters

I was the architect of my husband's billion-dollar tech empire, but he repaid me by bringing his mistress to our son's funeral-the very woman whose negligence killed him. To protect her, he had me committed, tortured, and then burned every last memory of our son, systematically erasing our past. Then I discovered he'd secretly divorced me years ago, so I faked my own death and gave the source code to his rival, ready to watch his world burn to the ground.

Burned Memories, A Wife's Fiery Comeback Chapter 1

I was the architect of my husband's billion-dollar tech empire, but he repaid me by bringing his mistress to our son's funeral-the very woman whose negligence killed him.

To protect her, he had me committed, tortured, and then burned every last memory of our son, systematically erasing our past.

Then I discovered he'd secretly divorced me years ago, so I faked my own death and gave the source code to his rival, ready to watch his world burn to the ground.

Chapter 1

Aliana Gibson POV:

My husband, Dexter, taught me the true meaning of rock bottom the day we buried our son.

He did it by bringing his mistress to the funeral.

The air in the church was thick with the scent of white lilies and grief, so cloying it felt like I was breathing in sorrow itself. I stood woodenly beside the small, white casket, my hand resting on the polished wood, a barrier between my son, Leo, and the cold earth that waited. My mind was a blizzard of white noise, a merciful numbness until I saw her.

Bristol Schneider.

She slipped into a back pew, a vision in a tastefully somber black dress, her blonde hair pulled back in a sleek chignon. She looked like a grieving friend, a concerned colleague. But I knew what she was. She was the Head of PR for our company, the viper I'd warned Dexter about, and the last person to see our son alive.

A tremor started in my hand, traveling up my arm until my whole body shook. "What is she doing here?" The whisper was a raw tear in the fabric of the solemn quiet.

Dexter' s hand clamped down on my elbow, his grip painfully tight. "Aliana, don't," he hissed, his voice a low, dangerous command. "Not here. Not today."

His touch, once my comfort, now felt like a brand. I looked at him, at the chiseled jaw and the charismatic blue eyes that had once held a universe of love for me. The Dexter who had dropped to one knee in the middle of a torrential downpour, soaked to the skin, just because he couldn't wait another second to ask me to be his wife. The Dexter who, when a rival firm tried to poach me, bought their parent company and dismantled it just to make a point. That man was gone, replaced by this cold stranger whose only concern was public perception.

For six years, our marriage had been a whirlwind of creation. I was the architect, the one who built our company's revolutionary source code from scratch in the quiet hours of the night. He was the face, the brilliant CEO who sold my genius to the world. We were a perfect team. Then Leo was born, and the cracks began to show. My brilliant, beautiful boy, with his rare genetic condition that left him non-verbal, was a flaw in Dexter's perfect narrative.

"Get her out," I said, my voice rising, cracking. Heads were turning.

"She came to pay her respects," Dexter said, his jaw tight. He was pulling me back from the casket, away from our son. "You're making a scene, Aliana."

The injustice of it was a physical blow. I wrenched my arm free and stumbled toward the back of the church. My legs felt like they were moving through water. I stopped in front of Bristol' s pew. Up close, her performance was flawless. Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, her lower lip trembling.

"You have no right," I choked out.

She stood slowly, placing a gentle hand on my arm. "Aliana, I am so sorry. I can't imagine what you're going through."

Her touch was poison. I snatched my arm back as if burned. "He was in your care, Bristol. You were supposed to be watching him."

"It was an accident," she whispered, a tear finally escaping, tracing a perfect, shimmering path down her cheek.

"He had an allergy, a severe one. You knew that. It was on every medical form, every emergency contact sheet. But you gave him that snack anyway, didn't you?"

Dexter was there then, standing between us, a solid wall of protection. For her. "That's enough," he said, his voice like ice. "This is not the time or the place."

"I have the security footage from the house," I blurted out, my last desperate card to play. "It will show everything."

Dexter' s expression didn't flicker. "I've reviewed the footage, Aliana. The camera in the kitchen malfunctioned. There's nothing there."

The floor seemed to drop out from under me. Malfunctioned. Of course, it had. Just like the time Bristol "accidentally" deleted a multi-million-dollar presentation of mine, or "mistakenly" leaked a negative story about our company's reliance on a single "unseen" programmer to a tech blog. She was a master of plausible deniability, and Dexter always, always gave her the benefit of the doubt.

He destroyed it. The one piece of proof I had.

"Leo," I whispered, turning my gaze back to the small casket at the front of the church. "Dexter, please. Think about Leo. Our son is dead because of her negligence."

Bristol let out a soft sob. "I just wanted to help," she whimpered, leaning into Dexter's side. "I thought you could use a break. I never would have... if I had known..."

I saw red. I lunged, my hands outstretched, my nails meant for her duplicitous face. But Dexter caught me, spinning me around and shoving me back. It wasn't a hard shove, but it was enough to make me stumble.

Bristol, ever the actress, gasped and staggered backward, tripping over her own feet. She hit the stone floor with a pained cry, clutching her stomach.

"Bristol!" Dexter's concern was immediate, visceral. He was at her side in an instant, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering over her as if she were made of glass. "Are you alright? The baby..."

The baby.

The words hung in the air, sucking all the oxygen from the church.

"I'll go to the police," she sobbed, clutching Dexter's lapel. "I'll confess. Maybe... maybe then Aliana will feel better. It's all my fault."

"No," Dexter said, his voice firm. He helped her to her feet, his arm securely around her waist. He looked at me, and the cold fury in his eyes was something I had never seen before. "You will do no such thing. You did nothing wrong." He then turned his full attention to me. "But you, Aliana. You are out of control."

He scooped Bristol into his arms, cradling her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, and carried her out of the church, leaving me alone with the ghost of our son and the ruins of our life.

I don' t remember how I got home. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the cavernous, silent foyer of the house I had once loved. My phone buzzed on the hall table, a notification from a news site. A photo of Dexter, his face etched with concern, carrying a distraught Bristol Schneider from the church. The headline read: "Tech CEO Dexter Wolfe Consoles Colleague at Son's Tragic Funeral as Grieving Wife Lashes Out."

They were already spinning the narrative. I was the unstable, hysterical widow. She was the innocent victim.

A delivery person rang the doorbell. Numbly, I signed for a large, unmarked cardboard box. Inside, nestled in a bed of tissue paper, was a doll.

A life-sized, hyper-realistic doll, with Leo' s soft brown hair, his button nose, and the same impossibly blue eyes that were a perfect mix of mine and Dexter's. It was wearing a replica of the little sailor suit we had planned to bury him in. A cold, dead effigy of my son.

A wave of nausea washed over me. I stumbled back, my hand flying to my mouth.

"Do you like it?"

I spun around. Bristol was standing in the doorway, a triumphant smirk playing on her lips. She sauntered into the room, her hand resting protectively on her still-flat stomach.

"I thought you might be lonely," she said, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. "Dexter is so worried about you."

"Get out of my house," I hissed.

"Our house, soon," she corrected smoothly. "He's just waiting for the right time. He doesn't want a messy divorce to complicate the IPO. And this," she gestured to her stomach, "this baby is everything he ever wanted. A healthy heir. Not... defective."

The world went red. This time, there was no thought, only a primal scream of rage. I flew at her. She didn't even try to fake a fall this time. She simply sidestepped my attack, and as I crashed into the wall, she let out a piercing shriek.

Dexter burst through the door, his face a mask of fury. He saw me, wild and disheveled, and Bristol cowering by the doorway.

He didn't hesitate.

His hand connected with my cheek. The force of the blow sent me sprawling to the floor. My head hit the marble with a sickening crack.

"You're insane," he snarled, standing over me. "You're a danger to yourself and others." He pulled out his phone. "I'm calling Dr. Evans. He's had a room waiting for you at the psychiatric clinic. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this."

Through the ringing in my ears, I saw two men in white coats enter the house. They moved toward me with a calm, practiced efficiency.

Dexter knelt, not to help me, but to bring his face close to mine. His voice was a venomous whisper. "You will go to the clinic, Aliana. You will get 'help.' And you will not say another word about Bristol or what happened to Leo. Do you understand me?"

I looked into the eyes of the man I had loved, the father of my dead child, and saw nothing but a void.

He wasn't sending me to get help. He was erasing me.

Continue Reading

Other books by Maui

More
The Son Who Chose A Stranger

The Son Who Chose A Stranger

Modern

5.0

Three weeks after Mark informed me his "ideal woman" Sarah was moving in, forcing me out, I returned to our house for one thing: the divorce papers his lawyer drafted. As I fumbled for keys I no longer had, heavy, uneven footsteps sounded behind me, a low, slurred muttering growing closer. I pounded on the door, screaming for Mark and our son, Ethan, but through the peephole, Ethan' s shadow moved, then his voice came, muffled and cold: "Go away. You're scaring Sarah." My blood ran cold as my own son chose a stranger' s comfort over my safety, a drunken attacker' s hand clamped down on my shoulder. I screamed, fought, and tumbled onto the lawn, only to hear Ethan tell Mark on the phone, "Mom is making a scene… she's scaring Sarah!" Mark rushed past me, shivering and disheveled, to comfort Sarah, who stood draped in my robe, her face buried in Ethan' s shoulder. He then rounded on me, disgusted: "Look at you, Ava. Making a scene in the middle of the night. You woke Sarah up. She was terrified." They stood united, demanding I apologize to the woman who replaced me, for the crime of being assaulted on my own doorstep, as I realized my phone was dead, useless to call for help. When Sarah offered me peanut butter cookies, knowing about my life-threatening allergy, and Mark merely stared, impatient, without a flicker of recognition, the quiet truth dawned: he didn't remember, or worse, he didn't care. The man who once promised to always be my protector was gone, replaced by a cold stranger, eager for me to sign away our life so he could care for his new love. In that moment of profound betrayal, something shifted inside me. I signed the papers, then looked at Ethan: "I'm going to need to make a statement to the police. I'll need to use your phone." No longer fighting for a husband who despised me or a son who saw me as an inconvenience, I spoke to the police, then blocked Mark and Ethan' s numbers, cutting the last ties.

The Secret Butler: Capturing The Heartless Billionaire

The Secret Butler: Capturing The Heartless Billionaire

Modern

5.0

I spent a year hiding my lethal skills behind the stiff polyester uniform of a hotel butler. To the world, I’m just Betsey Madden, a "charity case" scrubbing floors at The Elysium to solve the mystery of my mother’s suspicious death. On the anniversary of her passing, my manager decided to humiliate me by assigning me to the Penthouse to serve Celestino Franklin, a billionaire known as the "Butcher of Wall Street" who supposedly eats staff for breakfast. When I stepped into the suite, I found the pristine white carpet stained with fresh blood and a wounded man lunging at me from the shadows. I didn't scream; I instinctively dropped into a combat stance I hadn't used since my days as a shadow operative in Vienna, pinning the billionaire before he could even blink. I had to choose between letting him bleed out or revealing that I was far more than a girl who folds napkins for minimum wage. I chose to save him, stitching his gunshot wound with a surgical precision that no ordinary servant should ever possess. As he gripped my wrist, the air turned cold. He didn't smell like a typical CEO; he carried the sharp scent of sandalwood and expensive scotch—the exact, intoxicating aroma of the man from the nightmares I’ve had since the night my mother died. "You have good hands," he rasped, his storm-gray eyes seeing right through my pale foundation and fake exhaustion. "You're wasting them on silver polish." I realized then that my cover wasn't just blown; it was the bait that had finally caught the monster I was looking for. I came to this hotel to find a killer, but I never expected my prime suspect to be the man now demanding I become his personal shadow. The hunt for the truth just turned into a deadly dance with a predator who knows exactly who I am, and I’m not leaving until I find out if he’s my savior or my mother's murderer.

You'll also like

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
5.0

I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

He Thought I Was A Doormat, Until I Ruined Him

He Thought I Was A Doormat, Until I Ruined Him

SHANA GRAY
4.5

The sterile white of the operating room blurred, then sharpened, as Skye Sterling felt the cold clawing its way up her body. The heart monitor flatlined, a steady, high-pitched whine announcing her end. Her uterus had been removed, a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, but the blood wouldn't clot. It just kept flowing, warm and sticky, pooling beneath her. Through heavy eyes, she saw a trembling nurse holding a phone on speaker. "Mr. Kensington," the nurse's voice cracked, "your wife... she's critical." A pause, then a sweet, poisonous giggle. Seraphina Miller. "Liam is in the shower," Seraphina's voice purred. "Stop calling, Skye. It's pathetic. Faking a medical emergency on our anniversary? Even for you, that's low." Then, Liam's bored voice: "If she dies, call the funeral home. I have a meeting in the morning." Click. The line went dead. A second later, so did Skye. The darkness that followed was absolute, suffocating, a black ocean crushing her lungs. She screamed into the void, a silent, agonizing wail of regret for loving a man who saw her as a nuisance, for dying without ever truly living. Until she died, she didn't understand. Why was her life so tragically wasted? Why did her husband, the man she loved, abandon her so cruelly? The injustice of it all burned hotter than the fever in her body. Then, the air rushed back in. Skye gasped, her body convulsing violently on the mattress. Her eyes flew open, wide and terrified, staring blindly into the darkness. Her trembling hand reached for her phone. May 12th. Five years ago. She was back.

My Alpha's Heartless Contract Wife

My Alpha's Heartless Contract Wife

Rabbit
5.0

"Anya, a 'wolfless' in a world of powerful werewolves, was invisible, drowning her sorrows and desperately lonely. One drunken text, a desperate cry for attention, accidentally reached the Alpha, pulling her into his terrifying orbit. Now, she's trapped, a pawn in his game, forced to warm his bed while he waits for his true mate, her heart breaking with every stolen moment. As a 'wolfless' in the Blackwood Pack, Anya felt like an outsider, always yearning for a connection. One night, in a drunken haze, a misdirected text meant for her best friend landed in Alpha Declan Blackwood's inbox: ""Send me something hot."" Minutes later, the most powerful, terrifying man in the Pack stood at her door, claiming her with a possessive kiss that ignited a dangerous, unwanted fire. The next morning, his cold indifference shattered her world. Publicly humiliated and instantly fired, Anya became a pariah. Her dying mother's urgent need for a million-dollar heart transplant left her with an impossible choice: accept the Alpha's cold, transactional marriage proposal or watch her mother die. She became his ""placeholder"" wife, a contract, not a partner, all while battling a confusing attraction to the man who treated her as property. Why did he demand her, only to remind her constantly of her worthlessness, especially when everyone knew he waited for his true mate? Her world crumbled when she overheard Declan tell his returning ""true mate,"" Kristin Larsen, that Anya was ""just a substitute."" Despite the crushing betrayal and a strange, unyielding pull, Anya, fueled by her mother's desperate need, vowed to survive this gilded cage and reclaim her life before she lost herself completely."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
Burned Memories, A Wife's Fiery Comeback Burned Memories, A Wife's Fiery Comeback Maui Billionaires
“I was the architect of my husband's billion-dollar tech empire, but he repaid me by bringing his mistress to our son's funeral-the very woman whose negligence killed him. To protect her, he had me committed, tortured, and then burned every last memory of our son, systematically erasing our past. Then I discovered he'd secretly divorced me years ago, so I faked my own death and gave the source code to his rival, ready to watch his world burn to the ground.”
1

Chapter 1

30/09/2025

2

Chapter 2

30/09/2025

3

Chapter 3

30/09/2025

4

Chapter 4

30/09/2025

5

Chapter 5

30/09/2025

6

Chapter 6

30/09/2025

7

Chapter 7

30/09/2025

8

Chapter 8

30/09/2025

9

Chapter 9

30/09/2025

10

Chapter 10

30/09/2025

11

Chapter 11

30/09/2025

12

Chapter 12

30/09/2025

13

Chapter 13

30/09/2025

14

Chapter 14

30/09/2025

15

Chapter 15

30/09/2025

16

Chapter 16

30/09/2025

17

Chapter 17

30/09/2025

18

Chapter 18

30/09/2025

19

Chapter 19

30/09/2025

20

Chapter 20

30/09/2025

21

Chapter 21

30/09/2025