The Three-Year Lie: Her Sweet Revenge

The Three-Year Lie: Her Sweet Revenge

Catherine

3.5
Comment(s)
116.3K
View
25
Chapters

The day I found out I was pregnant was the same day I learned my three-year relationship was a meticulously crafted lie. I rushed to surprise my perfect fiancé, Anthony Holden, only to overhear him talking to his twin brother. "I've endured three years of this farce," he said, his voice cold. "Not once did I touch the woman." My entire life was a revenge plot for his childhood friend, a woman who bullied me relentlessly in college. They left me to grieve my grandmother's death alone, subjected me to tortures designed from my deepest fears, and left me for dead-twice. The man who swore to protect me became my villain, convinced I deserved every moment of pain. On our wedding day, he stood at the altar, ready to deliver his final, humiliating blow. He had no idea I was miles away, about to live-stream his confession to the entire world. My revenge was just beginning.

Chapter 1

The day I found out I was pregnant was the same day I learned my three-year relationship was a meticulously crafted lie.

I rushed to surprise my perfect fiancé, Anthony Holden, only to overhear him talking to his twin brother.

"I've endured three years of this farce," he said, his voice cold. "Not once did I touch the woman."

My entire life was a revenge plot for his childhood friend, a woman who bullied me relentlessly in college.

They left me to grieve my grandmother's death alone, subjected me to tortures designed from my deepest fears, and left me for dead-twice.

The man who swore to protect me became my villain, convinced I deserved every moment of pain.

On our wedding day, he stood at the altar, ready to deliver his final, humiliating blow.

He had no idea I was miles away, about to live-stream his confession to the entire world.

My revenge was just beginning.

Chapter 1

Erica POV:

The day I found out I was pregnant was the same day I learned my three-year relationship was a meticulously crafted lie.

The rain hammered against the sterile window of the hospital bathroom, a frantic, angry rhythm that matched the frantic, joyous drumming in my chest. My hand trembled, not from the chill seeping through the glass, but from the two stark pink lines staring back at me from the plastic stick on the counter.

Pregnant.

A wave of dizziness washed over me, so potent I had to grip the edge of the sink to steady myself. A baby. Our baby. Mine and Anthony's.

A laugh, watery and breathless, escaped my lips. I pressed a hand to my still-flat stomach, a fierce, protective love already blooming, so powerful it threatened to consume me. For three years, Anthony Holden had been my everything. He was the sun that had burned away the shadows of my past, the solid ground beneath my feet after a lifetime of instability. He, the heir to the Holden corporate empire, had chosen me, a working-class ER nurse with more trauma than savings. He' d loved me, cherished me, and just last month, he' d slipped a diamond onto my finger that was worth more than my parents' house.

I had to tell him. Not over the phone. I wanted to see his face, to witness the moment his perfect, stoic features broke into that rare, breathtaking smile he reserved only for me.

My shift was over. An idea, sparkling and brilliant, took hold. Anthony had mentioned a meeting at "The Obsidian," one of those obscenely exclusive NYC clubs where deals were brokered over hundred-dollar cocktails. I would surprise him.

The drive through the storm-lashed city was a blur of slick streets and neon reflections. My heart thrummed with a nervous energy that had nothing to do with the caffeine I' d mainlined during my twelve-hour shift. I pictured his reaction, the way his cool gray eyes would warm, the way he' d pull me into his arms, his hand instinctively going to my belly.

I gave the doorman Anthony' s name and was ushered into the club's hushed, opulent interior. It was all dark wood, supple leather, and the low murmur of powerful men. A hostess pointed me toward a private lounge in the back. "Mr. Holden is in the Astor Suite, ma' am."

As I approached the heavy oak door, I heard voices from within. Anthony' s, smooth and cultured. And another, so uncannily similar it sent a shiver down my spine. His twin, Emmanuel. I paused, a smile on my lips, ready to make my grand entrance.

"The wedding is in three weeks, Anthony. Are you sure you can stomach it?" That was Emmanuel, his tone laced with a familiar, mocking amusement.

My hand froze on the doorknob.

A cool, detached voice replied. Anthony' s. "It' s the final act, Manny. I' ve endured three years of this farce. I can handle one more day."

My smile faltered. Farce? What did he mean?

"Three years of watching you play the doting fiancé while I did all the heavy lifting," Emmanuel snorted. "You owe me. Big time."

Heavy lifting? My mind went blank. I leaned closer, my ear pressed against the cold wood, my breath caught in my throat.

"You got what you wanted," Anthony said dismissively. "You had your fun with her. I, on the other hand, remained a saint for Bianca. Not once did I touch the woman."

The air was sucked from my lungs. The room began to spin, the hushed sounds of the club fading into a deafening roar in my ears. Not once... did I touch her?

Then who... who had I been sleeping with for three years? Whose hands had traced my body in the dark? Whose lips had whispered my name?

"Some saint," Emmanuel scoffed. "You just masterminded the whole damn thing. I was just the actor. And a damn good one, if I do say so myself. She never suspected a thing. Not once."

"She' s not the brightest, is she?" Anthony' s voice was laced with contempt. A cold, hard stone of it that I had never heard before. "Just a gullible little nurse, desperate for a fairy tale. It was almost too easy."

"Still, the big day is going to be epic," Emmanuel said, his voice dripping with anticipation. "The look on her face when you leave her at the altar and propose to Bianca instead... priceless. A wedding gift she' ll never forget."

My blood ran cold. The floor fell away from my feet.

The wedding wasn' t the beginning of my life. It was the end of it.

"It' s what she deserves," Anthony' s voice was venom. "For what she did to Bianca in college. For every tear Bianca shed because of that bitch. This is justice."

Bianca. Bianca House.

The name was a ghost, a nightmare from a past I thought I had buried. The beautiful, popular girl who had made my college years a living hell. The one Anthony had told me was just a troubled childhood friend he felt sorry for.

"You' re sure Bianca' s ready?" Emmanuel asked.

"She' s been ready for years," Anthony replied, and I could hear the shift in his tone, the coldness melting into a warmth I had foolishly believed was reserved for me. "She' s the only one I' ve ever wanted. This whole thing... it was always for her."

I stumbled back from the door, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle a sob. My legs gave out, and I crumpled against the plush hallway carpet, the positive pregnancy test feeling like a lead weight in my pocket.

It was all a lie.

Every "I love you." Every tender touch. Every promise of forever.

A long-con revenge plot.

The door to the suite swung open, and they stepped out, laughing. Two men, identical in face and form. Anthony, in his impeccably tailored suit, his expression cold and arrogant. And Emmanuel, his tie slightly loosened, a hedonistic smirk on his face. The man I had shared my bed with. The man who was the father of my child.

They froze when they saw me. For a split second, I saw panic in Emmanuel' s eyes before it was masked by a cruel swagger. Anthony' s face, however, was a mask of pure, unadulterated contempt.

"Well, well," Emmanuel drawled, leaning against the doorframe. "Look what the cat dragged in. Eavesdropping, Erica? That' s not very ladylike."

I couldn' t speak. I could only stare, my gaze flicking between the two of them, the subtle differences I' d never noticed before now screamingly obvious. The glint in Emmanuel' s eye that was just a shade too reckless. The rigid set of Anthony' s jaw.

"I... I don' t understand," I whispered, the words tearing at my throat.

Anthony let out a sigh of theatrical exasperation. "Of course you don' t. We' ve already established that you' re not the sharpest tool in the shed. Let me spell it out for you. You hurt Bianca. You made her life miserable. And for that, you had to pay."

My mind reeled, trying to grasp the monstrous reality of his words. The man who had held me while I cried about the bullying, who had promised me no one would ever hurt me again... had orchestrated a new, more elaborate torture, all for the very person who had tormented me in the first place.

"But... you said you loved me," I choked out, the words tasting like ash.

Emmanuel laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "Oh, I said it. And I fucked you. Pretty well, too, if I remember correctly. But love? Sweetheart, that was never part of the deal. It was a performance. And you were the perfect, adoring audience."

My vision blurred with tears. The faces of the two men who had systematically destroyed my life swam before me. The mastermind and the actor. The cold architect of my pain and the willing vessel of my humiliation.

Anthony pulled out his wallet, extracting a platinum credit card. He tossed it onto the floor in front of me.

"Here," he said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. "Consider it a severance package. For your time. Now, if you' ll excuse us, we have a real wedding to plan."

He turned to leave, but Emmanuel lingered, a strange, possessive glint in his eyes as he looked down at me.

"Don' t look so broken, darling," he murmured, his voice a low caress that now made my skin crawl. "It was a hell of a ride, wasn' t it?"

He winked, a final, brutal twist of the knife, before turning and following his brother down the hall, leaving me shattered on the floor in a symphony of lies.

Continue Reading

Other books by Catherine

More
From Discarded Wife To The Don's Successor

From Discarded Wife To The Don's Successor

Mafia

5.0

I was tightening my husband’s tie for the photographers at the gala when my phone buzzed against my thigh. A single notification stopped my heart dead. Julius had just wired five million dollars—capital I had secretly stolen from my father to build his company—to an account named 'K. Drake'. When I confronted him later that night, he didn't apologize. Instead, he lured me to an empty warehouse and detonated a rigged gas line. I woke up in a hospital bed, my body broken and my mind racing. Julius stood over me, checking his watch, looking terrifyingly calm. "The baby is gone," he said dismissively, referring to the pregnancy I hadn't even told him about yet. "But Kenzie needs a bone marrow transplant. You're a match." He was holding our daughter, Ava, hostage. He told me if I didn't give his mistress my marrow, I’d never see my child again. He looked at me with total contempt. To him, I was just a boring, civilian housewife. A prop he had used and was now ready to discard. He had no idea who I really was. He didn't know that the "bank loans" I secured for him were actually laundered syndicate money. He didn't know that the father I "didn't talk to" was Horacio Horton, the most feared Don on the East Coast. I let them take the marrow. I let them believe they had broken me. Then, as soon as Julius left the room, I reached for the phone and dialed a number I hadn't used in ten years. "Papa," I whispered into the receiver. "Send the army." The civilian Florence died in that bed. The Mob Princess had just returned to take her throne.

Jilted Ex-Wife? Billionaire Heiress!

Jilted Ex-Wife? Billionaire Heiress!

Modern

5.0

My mother-in-law, Diane Thompson' s relentless Facebook posts, mocking my inability to conceive and celebrating "real grandchildren," had chipped away at my self-worth for two agonizing years, each jab a sharp reminder of my perceived failure, amplified by my husband, Mark' s, deafening silence as he merely dismissed her cruelty as "old-fashioned." Then, a thick envelope arrived, containing divorce papers already signed by Mark, offering a pittance of a settlement that barely covered a security deposit on a tiny apartment, followed by his chilling phone call casually confirming his colleague Brittany Evans was pregnant and demanding I sign the papers "quickly, no fuss." His cold dismissal, pushing me out of our home for an insulting pittance and a supposed "miracle," left me reeling from years of unacknowledged sacrifice and devotion, as I had quietly carried the heavy secret of his congenital azoospermia, enduring his mother' s endless interrogations about my fertility to salvage his pride. A simmering knot of suspicion tightened, confirmed when I followed his car one night, only to find him lovingly embracing a visibly pregnant Brittany Evans outside a women' s health clinic, proving their orchestrated ploy to utterly discard me for a faked pregnancy. But just as total defeat threatened to consume me, a strange calm descended, ignited by an unexpected phone call from a private investigator revealing my true identity as a wealthy lost heiress, and the shocking discovery of my adoptive mother's sealed envelope containing the undeniable proof: Mark's original medical report, detailing his infertility-the ultimate weapon against their meticulously constructed web of lies.

The Scars Behind My Golden Dress

The Scars Behind My Golden Dress

Modern

5.0

I spent four hours preparing a five-course meal for our fifth anniversary. When Jackson finally walked into the penthouse an hour late, he didn't even look at the table. He just dropped a thick Manila envelope in front of me and told me he was done. He said his stepsister, Davida, was getting worse and needed "stability." I wasn't his wife; I was a placeholder, a temporary fix he used until the woman he actually loved was ready to take my place. Jackson didn't just want a divorce; he wanted to erase me. He called me a "proprietary asset," claiming that every design I had created to save his empire belonged to him. He froze my bank accounts, cut off my phone, and told me I’d be nothing without his name. Davida even called me from her hospital bed to flaunt the family heirloom ring Jackson claimed was lost, mocking me for being "baggage" that was finally being cleared out. I stood in our empty home, realizing I had spent five years being a martyr for a man who saw me as a transaction. I couldn't understand how he could be so blind to the monster he was protecting, or how he could discard me so coldly after I had given him everything. I grabbed my hidden sketchbook, shredded our wedding portrait, and walked out into the rain. I dialed a number I hadn't touched in years—a dangerous man known as The Surgeon who dealt in debts and shadows. I told him I was ready to pay his price. Jackson and Davida wanted to steal my identity, but I was about to show the world the literal scars they had left behind.

You'll also like

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

Alma
5.0

I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

THE SPITEFUL BRIDE: MARRY TO RIVAL'S SON

THE SPITEFUL BRIDE: MARRY TO RIVAL'S SON

Ray Nhedicta
4.7

"Let's get married," Mia declares, her voice trembling despite her defiant gaze into Stefan's guarded brown eyes. She needs this, even if he seems untouchable. Stefan raises a skeptical brow. "And why would I do that?" His voice was low, like a warning, and it made her shiver even though she tried not to show it. "We both have one thing in common," Mia continues, her gaze unwavering. "Shitty fathers. They want to take what's ours and give it to who they think deserves it." A pointed pause hangs in the air. "The only difference between us is that you're an illegitimate child, and I'm not." Stefan studies her, the heiress in her designer armor, the fire in her eyes that matches the burn of his own rage. "That's your solution? A wedding band as a weapon?" He said ignoring the part where she just referred to him as an illegitimate child. "The only weapon they won't see coming." She steps closer, close enough for him to catch the scent of her perfume, gunpowder and jasmine. "Our fathers stole our birthrights. The sole reason they betrayed us. We join forces, create our own empire that'll bring down theirs." A beat of silence. Then, Stefan's mouth curves into something sharp. "One condition," he murmurs, closing the distance. "No divorces. No surrenders. If we're doing this, it's for life" "Deal" Mia said without missing a beat. Her father wants to destroy her life. She wouldn't give him the pleasure, she would destroy her life as she seems fit. ................ Two shattered heirs. One deadly vow. A marriage built on revenge. Mia Meyers was born to rule her father's empire (so she thought), until he named his bastard son heir instead. Stefan Sterling knows the sting of betrayal too. His father discarded him like trash. Now the rivals' disgraced children have a poisonous proposal: Marry for vengeance. Crush their fathers' legacies. Never speak of divorce. Whoever cracks first loses everything. Can these two rivals, united by their vengeful hearts, pull off a marriage of convenience to reclaim what they believe is rightfully theirs? Or will their fathers' animosity, and their own complicated pasts tear their fragile alliance apart?

Rejected Heiress: My Heartless Family's Regret

Rejected Heiress: My Heartless Family's Regret

Cassandra
5.0

For seventeen years, I was the pride of the Carlisle family, the perfect daughter destined to inherit an empire. But that life ended the moment a DNA report slid across my father’s mahogany desk. The paper proved I was a stranger. Vanessa, the girl sobbing in the corner, was the real biological daughter they had been searching for. "You need to leave. Tonight. Before the press gets wind of this. Before the stock prices dip." My father’s voice was as cold as flint. My mother wouldn't even look at me, staring out the window at the gardens as if I were already a ghost. Just like that, I was erased. I left behind the Birkin bags and the diamonds, throwing my Centurion Card into a crystal bowl with a clatter that echoed like a gunshot. I walked out into the cold night and climbed into a rusted Ford Taurus driven by a man I had never met—my biological father. I went from a mansion to a fourth-floor walk-up in Queens that smelled of laundry detergent and struggle. My new siblings looked at me with a mix of fear and disgust, waiting for the "fallen princess" to break. They expected me to beg for my old life back, to crumble without the luxury I’d known since birth. But they didn't know the truth. I had spent years training in a shark tank, honing survival skills they couldn't imagine. While Richard Carlisle froze my trust funds to starve me out, my net worth was climbing by millions on an encrypted trading app. They thought they were throwing me to the wolves. They didn't realize they were just letting me off my leash. As the Carlisles prepared to debut Vanessa at the Manhattan Arts Gala, I was already making my move. "Get dressed. We're going to a party."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book