Don't Cry Now, My Heartless Ex-Husband

“The smell of leaking gasoline burned my nostrils, but the cold look in my husband's eyes hurt worse. Trapped in the overturned car, I watched Jacob reach in. He didn't reach for me, his wife. He unbuckled his mistress, Cassandra, shielding her head with a tenderness he never showed me. He walked away, leaving me to burn. I survived, but at a brutal cost. My right hand-the hand that played Chopin-was crushed into a useless claw. Jacob didn't apologize. Instead, he moved Cassandra into our home. He let her wear my diamonds, mock my injuries, and burn my sheet music. When I tried to expose her embezzlement, he called me unstable. To punish me for "betraying the family," he dug up my mother's grave and threw her ashes into the sea. That was the moment the wife died, and something else was born. He thought he had buried me under the weight of his cruelty. He didn't realize he had planted a seed. I staged my death and vanished into the snowy streets of Vienna. Five years later, I am a world-renowned composer, and Jacob is a ruined man in a wheelchair, begging for a forgiveness I no longer have the energy to give.”