The Sister Who Stole My Life

The Sister Who Stole My Life

Marmaduke Ryder

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My hand trembled, clutching the medical report: pregnant, early stages. My husband, Ethan, believed I was just at the clinic for stress migraines, a convenient lie I'd told him. But as his black SUV pulled up, my childhood best friend, Chloe, sat in the front passenger seat, already claiming her spot. Her bright smile didn't reach her eyes, and the car reeked of her sharp, new perfume – a scent that soon permeated my home. Ethan, without a word to me, announced Chloe was moving in, effectively turning my penthouse into their private domain. At the gala, Chloe subtly paraded her bond with Ethan, publicly deriding my "paleness" while he dismissed my obvious discomfort, pushing me deeper into the familiar isolation of our college days. I finally confronted him, the raw pain of years of gaslighting and feeling secondary erupting as I slapped him across the face. His shocked expression, followed by Chloe's feigned concern, solidified the bitter truth: I was an unwanted accessory in my own marriage. How could I have been so blind, so naive, to willingly endure a life where I constantly felt like an outsider looking in? No more. That night, I knew I couldn't bring a child into this charade, choosing to reclaim my freedom and shatter the illusions they had so carefully constructed. I was about to lay bare every ugly secret, every calculated betrayal, and dismantle their world, piece by painful piece.

Introduction

My hand trembled, clutching the medical report: pregnant, early stages.

My husband, Ethan, believed I was just at the clinic for stress migraines, a convenient lie I'd told him.

But as his black SUV pulled up, my childhood best friend, Chloe, sat in the front passenger seat, already claiming her spot.

Her bright smile didn't reach her eyes, and the car reeked of her sharp, new perfume – a scent that soon permeated my home.

Ethan, without a word to me, announced Chloe was moving in, effectively turning my penthouse into their private domain.

At the gala, Chloe subtly paraded her bond with Ethan, publicly deriding my "paleness" while he dismissed my obvious discomfort, pushing me deeper into the familiar isolation of our college days.

I finally confronted him, the raw pain of years of gaslighting and feeling secondary erupting as I slapped him across the face.

His shocked expression, followed by Chloe's feigned concern, solidified the bitter truth: I was an unwanted accessory in my own marriage.

How could I have been so blind, so naive, to willingly endure a life where I constantly felt like an outsider looking in?

No more.

That night, I knew I couldn't bring a child into this charade, choosing to reclaim my freedom and shatter the illusions they had so carefully constructed.

I was about to lay bare every ugly secret, every calculated betrayal, and dismantle their world, piece by painful piece.

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Ellyn woke to a news alert of her husband, billionaire Hardy Burnett, picking up his "mystery blonde" ex at a private terminal. Just hours earlier, he had been raw and consuming in their shared bed, but by morning, he was a cold stranger tossing a birth control pill at her. He reminded her with mechanical indifference that their marriage was a mere contract, and the Burnett family tolerated no accidental risks. The mystery woman was Izabella Macdonald, the one who got away. While Ellyn spent her mornings dabbing heavy concealer over the purple bruises Hardy left on her neck, the rest of the world was celebrating the return of the "rightful" Mrs. Burnett. To Hardy, Ellyn was a liability; to his family, she was a placeholder with a bankrupt bloodline. The humiliation peaked at a high-society gala when Hardy walked in with Izabella on his arm, leaving Ellyn to navigate the vultures alone. His mother mocked her as "cheap polyester," and socialites whispered about the penthouse Hardy was secretly buying for his mistress. Even as Hardy's jealousy flared when he saw Ellyn with his brother, his loyalty remained divided, his heart seemingly anchored to the woman in the white silk dress. The breaking point came in the pouring rain outside the venue. Hardy ordered Ellyn into the backseat of the car like common cargo so that Izabella could take the passenger seat-the seat of the partner. He expected Ellyn to sit in the shadows and watch his ex-girlfriend play wife in the front, treating her presence as a domestic inconvenience he could simply command. I stared at the man who owned my nights but despised my existence. The heavy thud of the pill I swallowed every morning felt like a lead weight, a bitter reminder that I was nothing more than a paid commodity in his eyes. He thought he knew everything about his destitute, dependent wife, from the temperature I needed the room to the way I took my tea. But Hardy didn't know about the encrypted ledgers or the offshore accounts. He didn't know that the "destitute" woman he relegated to the backseat was the secret mastermind behind Skim, the global fashion empire currently worth more than his latest merger. "I'm not getting in," I said, my voice eerily calm against the thunder. I slammed the door, turned my back on his roar of fury, and walked into the dark. It was time to stop being a ghost in his house and start being the woman who could buy his entire world.

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The Price of Family, The Cost of Love

The Price of Family, The Cost of Love

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The university acceptance letter, a full scholarship, felt like my ticket out of our forgotten town. I was Chloe Davis, and for eighteen years, I' d studied, dreamed of this escape. But when I showed it to my father, Robert, his eyes didn' t gleam with pride, but with a calculating hunger I knew too well. He announced a "celebration," but it was no party-it was a twisted auction. Middle-aged men, reeking of stale beer, assessed me like livestock, stuffing cash into my father' s pockets as he paraded me around. A churning dread solidified in my gut: I was the prize. My mother, Susan, stood by, a ghost of a smile plastered on her face, turning away when my eyes pleaded for help. When I tried to escape Frank Miller' s sweaty grip, my father' s fury erupted. "Smile, Chloe," he hissed. "Don't you dare embarrass me." Later, for a piece of pie, he backhanded me across the face, leaving me bleeding and dizzy on the kitchen floor. My mother' s only reaction was a sigh of annoyance before she followed him, leaving me in the dark. Lying there, the truth hit me: their "love" was a lie; I was merely a commodity. Then, from their bedroom, I heard it-the monstrous plot. "Frank wants to marry her… a fifty-thousand-dollar 'dowry.' Enough for Kevin's wedding." "She's a good girl, deep down. She just needs to understand that this is for the good of the family. It's her duty." My entire life, my body, my future, sold to an old man to pay for my cousin' s wedding and my father' s gambling debts. But the final dagger was my mother' s next whisper, my father' s rough affirmation: Kevin wasn't my cousin. He was my half-brother, my father' s illegitimate son with his sister-in-law, the golden boy for whom I had always been second, always sacrificed. Every childhood slight, every dismissal, every manipulation clicked sickeningly into place. They hadn't wanted me to succeed; they had kept me small, easy to sell. The girl who craved their love died on that cold kitchen floor. A cold, hard resolve took root: they had a plan for my future, a prison disguised as a marriage. But I had a plan too. They thought I was a compliant girl. They were about to find out how wrong they were.

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