The Wife He Couldn't Afford

The Wife He Couldn't Afford

Gavin

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The organ music swelled, a majestic sound meant to signal joy, but all I felt was a cold dread seeping into my bones. Amidst Savannah' s elite, I, Annabel Anderson, stood in my custom-made wedding gown, a perfect Southern belle about to secure a vital political alliance. My fiancé, Wesley Scott, was arrogant and entitled, and I didn't love him, but this was my path. Just as the wedding march was about to begin, a bridesmaid burst in, gasping, "Annabel, it' s Gabrielle! They found her in her room. Pills." My younger half-sister, the constant reminder of my father' s scandal, had attempted suicide. The wedding halted. At the hospital, Gabrielle, frail and tearful, clutched Wesley' s hand. "I couldn' t bear seeing you marry her," she whispered, then delivered her masterstroke: a fabricated story of sacrificing her fertility to save him, twisting his misguided honor. Wesley, his arrogance gone, turned to me, "Annabel, she is your sister. We can make it work. She can be my wife, and you... you can be her sister-wife." The suggestion hung in the air, a scandalous, barbaric insult to my family' s honor. How could he ask the Senator' s daughter to share a husband, to become a party to public disgrace? Was he truly this manipulated, this blind? Standing in the chaos, I looked at Gabrielle's triumphant eyes. She thought she had won. I took a deep breath. There would be no accommodation. This was my chance not just to escape, but to rewrite the narrative.

Introduction

The organ music swelled, a majestic sound meant to signal joy, but all I felt was a cold dread seeping into my bones.

Amidst Savannah' s elite, I, Annabel Anderson, stood in my custom-made wedding gown, a perfect Southern belle about to secure a vital political alliance.

My fiancé, Wesley Scott, was arrogant and entitled, and I didn't love him, but this was my path.

Just as the wedding march was about to begin, a bridesmaid burst in, gasping, "Annabel, it' s Gabrielle! They found her in her room. Pills." My younger half-sister, the constant reminder of my father' s scandal, had attempted suicide. The wedding halted.

At the hospital, Gabrielle, frail and tearful, clutched Wesley' s hand. "I couldn' t bear seeing you marry her," she whispered, then delivered her masterstroke: a fabricated story of sacrificing her fertility to save him, twisting his misguided honor. Wesley, his arrogance gone, turned to me, "Annabel, she is your sister. We can make it work. She can be my wife, and you... you can be her sister-wife."

The suggestion hung in the air, a scandalous, barbaric insult to my family' s honor. How could he ask the Senator' s daughter to share a husband, to become a party to public disgrace?

Was he truly this manipulated, this blind?

Standing in the chaos, I looked at Gabrielle's triumphant eyes. She thought she had won. I took a deep breath. There would be no accommodation. This was my chance not just to escape, but to rewrite the narrative.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Mafia

4.3

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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