Revenge is a Sweet Apple

My husband, Emit Arnold, only touches me when he's too drunk to remember he hates my guts. For three years, he's blamed me for the death of his true love, Everleigh.

Yesterday, he brought a woman home who had plastic surgery to look exactly like her.

Then my own twin children stood before me and told me to get out.

"Daddy brought our new mommy home," they said. "You have to leave now."

The woman, my adoptive sister Gigi, then deliberately cut her own leg with a knife and blamed me for it.

When Emit saw her bleeding, he didn't hesitate. He shoved me to the floor.

Later, his sister Isadora slapped me, her eyes burning with hate. "I'm the one who told everyone you killed Everleigh," she hissed. "And I'll keep telling them."

My children, my husband, my in-laws—they all chose the woman wearing a dead person's face over me. The love I had held onto for so long was finally gone.

That night, he cornered me in my room, ripped the dress from my body, and called me filthy.

He thought I would break.

Instead, I walked back into the living room, picked up the divorce papers I had already prepared, and threw them right in his face.

Chapter 1

I woke up to the familiar ache in my body. It was a dull throb, a reminder of the night before.

For a moment, I let myself believe it was a dream.

But the man sleeping beside me, Emit Arnold, was very real. His breathing was even, his handsome face peaceful in the morning light. He looked nothing like the man who had accused me of drugging him three years ago.

That night was the start of everything. A secret affair between an eighteen-year-old girl and the man she' d loved her whole life. He' d woken up furious, calling me shameless, convinced I' d trapped him.

Then I found out I was pregnant.

Our families forced us to marry. On our wedding day, his true love, his childhood sweetheart Everleigh Mathews, died in a fiery car crash on her way to stop the ceremony.

He blamed me for that, too.

For three years, he treated me like I was invisible, a ghost in his house. The only time he touched me was in the dead of night, when he was too drunk or too lonely to remember he hated me.

Last night had been one of those nights.

A tear slipped from my eye and soaked into the pillow. I thought I could spend my whole life like this, loving him from a distance, accepting the scraps of attention he gave me. I thought my devotion would eventually wear down his grief and anger.

I was a fool.

Yesterday, he brought a woman home. She looked exactly like Everleigh. A perfect, walking copy of the ghost that haunted our marriage.

Then my twin children, my son and daughter, stood in front of me and told me to get out.

"Daddy brought our new mommy home," they said. "You have to leave now."

That was when I knew. The love I' d held onto for so long was finally dead. It couldn't survive this.

I spent the rest of the day meticulously erasing myself from the Arnold family' s life, packing away every photo, every gift, every trace that I had ever existed here.