Love's Bitter Truth

Love's Bitter Truth

Gavin

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For ten years, I was the picture of a devoted husband, building a life with Chloe in our comfortable Bellevue home. My life felt stable, successful, exactly what her image-conscious parents approved of for their daughter. Then came the news: Leo, Chloe' s tumultuous musician ex, had died. A drug overdose, labeled suicide. Days later, my wife, my Chloe, drove her car straight off the Deception Pass Bridge. Grief-stricken, clearing out her laptop, I stumbled upon a password-protected blog. "Leo1998." Inside, ten years of her raw thoughts: "I married Ethan today... They just gave me a life sentence with his shadow." Another entry: "I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming... I felt so disgusted afterward I scrubbed my skin raw." My heart, already broken, shattered into a million pieces. The woman I adored had spent a decade despising my every touch, every act of love, pretending I was another man. My entire existence was a lie. The words burned through me: disgust, resentment, pity. My world collapsed beneath the weight of her betrayal. How could my decade of unwavering dedication, my honest love, have been nothing more than a painful charade for her? The sheer, pointless waste of it all. Then, darkness. But instead of an ending, I jolted awake to the smell of stale coffee, in my old college dorm. My phone buzzed: a text from Chloe. The date: September 15, 2014. Ten years in the past. The day of our first official date. This time, I knew the cost of playing her fool. This time, I would write my own story.

Introduction

For ten years, I was the picture of a devoted husband, building a life with Chloe in our comfortable Bellevue home.

My life felt stable, successful, exactly what her image-conscious parents approved of for their daughter.

Then came the news: Leo, Chloe' s tumultuous musician ex, had died.

A drug overdose, labeled suicide.

Days later, my wife, my Chloe, drove her car straight off the Deception Pass Bridge.

Grief-stricken, clearing out her laptop, I stumbled upon a password-protected blog.

"Leo1998."

Inside, ten years of her raw thoughts: "I married Ethan today... They just gave me a life sentence with his shadow."

Another entry: "I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming... I felt so disgusted afterward I scrubbed my skin raw."

My heart, already broken, shattered into a million pieces.

The woman I adored had spent a decade despising my every touch, every act of love, pretending I was another man.

My entire existence was a lie.

The words burned through me: disgust, resentment, pity.

My world collapsed beneath the weight of her betrayal.

How could my decade of unwavering dedication, my honest love, have been nothing more than a painful charade for her?

The sheer, pointless waste of it all.

Then, darkness.

But instead of an ending, I jolted awake to the smell of stale coffee, in my old college dorm.

My phone buzzed: a text from Chloe.

The date: September 15, 2014.

Ten years in the past.

The day of our first official date.

This time, I knew the cost of playing her fool.

This time, I would write my own story.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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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