Beyond Betrayal: Finding Her Own Path

Beyond Betrayal: Finding Her Own Path

Finley Steele

5.0
Comment(s)
192
View
24
Chapters

"I want the foreign correspondent position in the S-Region." My voice was steady, cutting through the quiet. It was a death wish, my editor said. But I needed out. My husband, Mark Johnson, had become a stranger. His world revolved around Sarah Hayes, the widow of his fallen partner. I cooked his favorite meal, waited for hours, only for him to say, "Sarah was feeling down. I took her to that Italian place she likes." My life with Mark was a slow, painful erosion. One night, I clutched my stomach, a sharp pain seizing me. "Something's wrong," I choked out, "Mark, help me." He sighed, exasperated. "Can't this wait? Sarah is upset." I left the apartment and drove myself to the hospital. "You're about seven weeks pregnant," the doctor said, adding that the pregnancy was unstable and risky. My mind reeled back to my previous miscarriage, two years ago, when Mark had been too busy. I looked at Mark, sitting cozily with Sarah on our couch, a portrait of domestic bliss. "The doctor said it was just a stomach bug," I lied, unable to bear their false concern. He then asked me to help Sarah cook dinner. I looked at my hands, raw from cleaning and work, and hurled a plate against the wall. "No," I said, "I will not." Sarah offered me an expensive hand cream Mark had bought her. A hot, sharp anger flared. This was my life; this was my home. I would not be buried.

Introduction

"I want the foreign correspondent position in the S-Region." My voice was steady, cutting through the quiet. It was a death wish, my editor said. But I needed out.

My husband, Mark Johnson, had become a stranger. His world revolved around Sarah Hayes, the widow of his fallen partner. I cooked his favorite meal, waited for hours, only for him to say, "Sarah was feeling down. I took her to that Italian place she likes."

My life with Mark was a slow, painful erosion. One night, I clutched my stomach, a sharp pain seizing me. "Something's wrong," I choked out, "Mark, help me." He sighed, exasperated. "Can't this wait? Sarah is upset." I left the apartment and drove myself to the hospital.

"You're about seven weeks pregnant," the doctor said, adding that the pregnancy was unstable and risky. My mind reeled back to my previous miscarriage, two years ago, when Mark had been too busy.

I looked at Mark, sitting cozily with Sarah on our couch, a portrait of domestic bliss. "The doctor said it was just a stomach bug," I lied, unable to bear their false concern. He then asked me to help Sarah cook dinner.

I looked at my hands, raw from cleaning and work, and hurled a plate against the wall. "No," I said, "I will not." Sarah offered me an expensive hand cream Mark had bought her. A hot, sharp anger flared. This was my life; this was my home. I would not be buried.

Continue Reading

Other books by Finley Steele

More
The Divorce That Changed Everything

The Divorce That Changed Everything

Romance

5.0

The "Brewery of the Year" award felt like a cold stone in my hand, heavy with the unspoken weight of my wife, Jenny's, silence. She was the General Manager, the face on stage, thanking everyone but me, the head brewer, the one who actually crafted the award-winning beer. I was used to being invisible, just "Ethan Clark, the technician," a replaceable employee in her eyes, despite being the silent 65% owner of the brewery I started with my college roommate. At the party, a sales rep asked when Jenny and I would start a "brewing dynasty," and she laughed a sharp, dismissive laugh. "I'm not putting my career on hold to have a baby for any man. It's not worth it." Her words hung in the air, a public declaration that numbed me. Back home, I found a package from a fertility clinic addressed to her. My heart pounded as I opened it. Inside, a detailed IVF statement confirmed she was one month pregnant. Then, my blood ran cold: the donor was listed as "Wesley Todd." Wes, her "gay best friend," the man with the pitying, contemptuous gaze. The pieces slammed into place. She stormed in an hour later with Wes, scoffing at my divorce demand. "It's not about the joke, Jenny," I said, voice flat. She brazenly explained her twisted plan: "Wes's family is very conservative... I agreed to be a surrogate for him. We did IVF. We're going to have a modern family together." The audacity, the gaslighting, the sheer arrogance of their betrayal left me with a wave of pure disgust. "The divorce is final," I told them. "And I'm selling the house. You have twenty-four hours." The next morning, they tried to fire me from my own brewery, strutting in with fake authority. That' s when my CEO, Matthew, finally revealed the truth to a stunned Jenny: "He was never just an employee, Jenny. He's the boss. He's always been the boss." Why did she, the woman who claimed "visionary leadership," never bother to check who truly owned the company she flaunted? And what dark secrets about her and Wes were about to spill out?

You'll also like

Revealing My Secret Identities! My Bros Are Speechless!

Revealing My Secret Identities! My Bros Are Speechless!

Zhen Xiang
5.0

For seventeen years, I was the crown jewel of the Kensington empire, the perfect daughter groomed for a royal future. Then, a cream-colored envelope landed in my lap, bearing a gold crest and a truth that turned my world into ice. The DNA test result was a cold, hard zero percent-I wasn't a Kensington. Before the ink could even dry, my parents invited my replacement, a girl named Alleen, into the drawing room and treated me like a trespasser in my own home. My mother, who once hosted galas in my honor, wouldn't even look me in the eye as she stroked Alleen's arm, whispering that she was finally "safe." My father handed me a one-million-dollar check-a mere tip for a billionaire-and told me to leave immediately to avoid tanking the company's stock price. "You're a thief! You lived my life, you spent my money, and you don't get to keep the loot!" Alleen shrieked, trying to claw the designer jacket off my shoulders while my "parents" watched with clinical detachment. I was dumped on a gritty sidewalk in Queens with nothing but three trunks and the address of a struggling laborer I was now supposed to call "Dad." I traded a marble mansion for a crumbling walk-up where the air smelled of exhaust and my new bedroom was a literal storage closet. My biological family thought I was a broken princess, and the Kensingtons thought they had successfully erased me with a payoff and a non-disclosure agreement. They had no idea that while I was hauling trunks up four flights of stairs, my secret media empire was already preparing to move against them. As I sat on a thin mattress in the dark, I opened my encrypted laptop and sent a single command that would cost my former father ten million dollars by breakfast. They thought they were throwing me to the wolves, but they forgot one thing: I'm the one who leads the pack.

Jilted Bride's Revenge: The Valkyrie Awakens

Jilted Bride's Revenge: The Valkyrie Awakens

Gujian Qitan
5.0

I had been a wife for exactly six hours when I woke up to the sound of my husband’s heavy breathing. In the dim moonlight of our bridal suite, I watched Hardin, the man I had adored for years, intertwined with my sister Carissa on the chaise lounge. The betrayal didn't come with an apology. Hardin stood up, unashamed, and sneered at me. "You're awake? Get out, you frumpy mute." Carissa huddled under a throw, her fake tears already welling up as she played the victim. They didn't just want me gone; they wanted me erased to protect their reputations. When I refused to move, my world collapsed. My father didn't offer a shoulder to cry on; he threatened to have me committed to a mental asylum to save his business merger. "You're a disgrace," he bellowed, while the guards stood ready to drag me away. They had spent my life treating me like a stuttering, submissive pawn, and now they were done with me. I felt a blinding pain in my skull, a fracture that should have broken me. But instead of tears, something dormant and lethal flickered to life. The terrified girl who walked down the aisle earlier that day simply ceased to exist. In her place, a clinical system—the Valkyrie Protocol—booted up. My racing heart plummeted to a steady sixty beats per minute. I didn't scream. I stood up, my spine straightening for the first time in twenty years, and looked at Hardin with the detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor. "Correction," I said, my voice stripped of its stutter. "You're in my light." By dawn, I had drained my father's accounts, vanished into a storm, and found a bleeding Crown Prince in a hidden safehouse. They thought they had broken a mute girl. They didn't realize they had just activated their own destruction.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book