The Unwilling Wife

The Unwilling Wife

Gavin

5.0
Comment(s)
125
View
11
Chapters

The organ music swelled, painting my white wedding dress in shades of blood red. I was marrying Julian Thorne, a man who despised me, believing the lies that had ruined my reputation. This wasn't a marriage; it was a sentence, orchestrated perfectly by my stepsister, Sophia, who had always wanted Julian for herself. Everyone saw Eleanor Vance, the brilliant architect, as the luckiest woman alive, but my heart was a cold stone. As the word "I do" escaped my lips-a whispered surrender-a blinding white light engulfed me. I woke up in my old bedroom, the floral wallpaper still on the walls. My phone read October 12, 2014-ten years ago, the day of my first wedding, the one that never happened. Relief surged through me; I wasn't Julian Thorne's wife. But then dread set in as Sophia's text buzzed on my smaller, older phone: "Julian's family is coming for dinner tonight, you have to make a good impression!" It was all starting tonight, the very dinner where Sophia would introduce me to the Thornes, setting off the chain of events that would lead to my forced marriage. The contempt in Julian's eyes was already there, seeing me as a social climber, exactly the image Sophia had carefully crafted. I was trapped again, a ghost in my own life, burdened by a future I knew was coming: the Thorne family's imminent financial ruin, and my own career sacrificed to support them. But this time, I wasn't the naive girl to be manipulated. I knew all their secrets, and I would not spend another ten years as Eleanor Thorne. I would fight.

Introduction

The organ music swelled, painting my white wedding dress in shades of blood red.

I was marrying Julian Thorne, a man who despised me, believing the lies that had ruined my reputation.

This wasn't a marriage; it was a sentence, orchestrated perfectly by my stepsister, Sophia, who had always wanted Julian for herself.

Everyone saw Eleanor Vance, the brilliant architect, as the luckiest woman alive, but my heart was a cold stone.

As the word "I do" escaped my lips-a whispered surrender-a blinding white light engulfed me.

I woke up in my old bedroom, the floral wallpaper still on the walls.

My phone read October 12, 2014-ten years ago, the day of my first wedding, the one that never happened.

Relief surged through me; I wasn't Julian Thorne's wife.

But then dread set in as Sophia's text buzzed on my smaller, older phone: "Julian's family is coming for dinner tonight, you have to make a good impression!"

It was all starting tonight, the very dinner where Sophia would introduce me to the Thornes, setting off the chain of events that would lead to my forced marriage.

The contempt in Julian's eyes was already there, seeing me as a social climber, exactly the image Sophia had carefully crafted.

I was trapped again, a ghost in my own life, burdened by a future I knew was coming: the Thorne family's imminent financial ruin, and my own career sacrificed to support them.

But this time, I wasn't the naive girl to be manipulated.

I knew all their secrets, and I would not spend another ten years as Eleanor Thorne.

I would fight.

Continue Reading

Other books by Gavin

More
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Mafia

4.5

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.

You'll also like

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book