More Than a Mistress, Less Than a Wife

More Than a Mistress, Less Than a Wife

Natala O'neal

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Olivia Holloway was once NYC's golden girl, an architect married to the powerful Ethan Cartwright. Our penthouse offered glittering city views, a testament to the life I'd built-or rather, the life I'd put my own dreams on hold for. We were the epitome of success. Then the Hamptons retreat happened. Ethan was found with a junior analyst, Chloe Vance. His smooth, too-smooth explanation about being drugged dissolved months later when Chloe reappeared, pregnant, claiming the baby was his. It was a slap in the face. His mother, Eleanor, insisted I accept the situation for the "Cartwright heir." My grandmother's cherished sapphire heirloom was casually given to Chloe. Ethan left me to drown after a yacht accident, prioritizing Chloe, then demanded I, injured, donate blood to her. Each betrayal was a fresh wound, yet he expected me to act as if nothing happened. The public humiliation was unending, climaxing when Chloe accused me of harming her at a charity gala, and Eleanor physically slapped me. My entire life, identity, and very humanity had been consumed by their schemes. How could the man I loved destroy me so thoroughly, yet remain so oblivious to my suffering? In that moment, something inside me shattered irrevocably, but it also awakened. I smashed Eleanor's treasured porcelain heirloom, signaling a definitive end to their control. I filed for divorce, packed a bag, and disappeared, ready to reclaim my life, my freedom, and rediscover Olivia Holloway.

Introduction

Olivia Holloway was once NYC's golden girl, an architect married to the powerful Ethan Cartwright. Our penthouse offered glittering city views, a testament to the life I'd built-or rather, the life I'd put my own dreams on hold for. We were the epitome of success.

Then the Hamptons retreat happened. Ethan was found with a junior analyst, Chloe Vance. His smooth, too-smooth explanation about being drugged dissolved months later when Chloe reappeared, pregnant, claiming the baby was his. It was a slap in the face.

His mother, Eleanor, insisted I accept the situation for the "Cartwright heir." My grandmother's cherished sapphire heirloom was casually given to Chloe. Ethan left me to drown after a yacht accident, prioritizing Chloe, then demanded I, injured, donate blood to her. Each betrayal was a fresh wound, yet he expected me to act as if nothing happened.

The public humiliation was unending, climaxing when Chloe accused me of harming her at a charity gala, and Eleanor physically slapped me. My entire life, identity, and very humanity had been consumed by their schemes. How could the man I loved destroy me so thoroughly, yet remain so oblivious to my suffering?

In that moment, something inside me shattered irrevocably, but it also awakened. I smashed Eleanor's treasured porcelain heirloom, signaling a definitive end to their control. I filed for divorce, packed a bag, and disappeared, ready to reclaim my life, my freedom, and rediscover Olivia Holloway.

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I left my old-money New England family, who thought my last name opened every door, to find something real. I found it in a new city, working a simple coffee shop job, and falling head-over-heels for a struggling musician named Ethan. He sang me love songs, and I poured my whole heart into him, convinced he was my escape, my true home. Then one night, at a crowded warehouse party, I overheard him. "The Aston Martin DB5 is practically mine," he laughed to his friends. "Did she really fall for the struggling musician bit? So naive it hurt." My world shattered. This "Ethan" was Ace Sterling, heir to a tech fortune, and I was just a bet, a "lost puppy" to him. My family, who had warned me, hung up when I called, leaving me utterly alone. Fired from my job, facing eviction, I even slept on a park bench, actively sabotaged by a smug cousin. Every door slammed shut, my life spiraling out of control. The humiliation was a burning sickness, but a cold anger started to replace the pain. He hadn't even flinched when I threw the vintage guitar pick – something I' d saved for weeks to buy for his dreams – at his face. He just watched me break. Years later, he found me serving drinks at a high-society gala, and condescendingly offered me a "discreet arrangement" to make me "comfortable" again. He thought I was still that broken girl, easy to buy and silence. He had no idea what he had just started. That night, Ava Monroe, the naive girl, vanished. Because a new Ava, one forged from the ashes of betrayal and humiliation, was about to rise, and she was coming for him.

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I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

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