A New Beginning After Divorce
My sister came to visit, and my grandson clung to her youthful hand, pleading, "Aunt Julieta, when are you and Grandpa going to take me to the amusement park again?"
My daughter-in-law quickly tried to silence him, while my son insisted I must have misheard. My husband looked apologetic, but it was directed toward my sister, who was dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Reflecting on my life, I have served my in-laws, raised children, and looked after my grandchildren. Fifty-five years of dedicated efforts seem to have been in vain. ==============================
"Mom, are you sure you heard that right?" my son laughed nervously. At that moment, I was still holding the coffee I'd made for Julieta, and the porcelain mug slipped from my hands, shattering on the floor. I looked up at Derek, whose eyes, blurred behind his reading glasses, were focused elsewhere. Julieta covered her face, her voice carrying an almost childlike tone that someone our age shouldn’t have. "Sis, don’t take the kids too seriously. Really, it's my fault.
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Chapter 3
Years later, when I had become a stylish older woman myself, I finally understood that these video diary-like recordings are what people now call vlogs.
Julieta’s vlog was titled “The Runaway Princess Returns Home,” stylishly embellished with pink neon subtitles. Derek was holding Mathew when he went to pick her up, but she refused to get in the car until he said, “Princess, please get in the car.”
She asked Mathew, who was happily enjoying a chocolate waffle cone, if she could have a taste. After swallowing a whole scoop, the child began to cry, and she playfully ran after him, trying to make it up to him. She even added a clip of herself directing Mathew in a video. In his sweet, childlike voice, he counted, “Three, two, one,” capturing the moment Julieta rested her head on Derek’s shoulder, smiling with the innocence of a young girl.
The comments section was filled with praise:
“What a fabulously youthful grandma!”
“This is the childhood I dream about—both grandpa and grandma are so delightful!”
“Look how grandpa just keeps grinning at grandma in the background. The kid fell while running, and he didn’t even notice, haha. Definitely, his wife is his number one, the grandchild must be adopted.”
Everyone assumed it was a day out with grandparents and their grandchild. The video replayed over and over, each loop piercing my heart.
So this is the Disneyland the child was so excited to visit.
Turns out my hearing isn’t as bad as I thought.
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8.8
I woke from a five-year coma not to the faces of my family, but to my own death certificate.
It was signed by my parents and my fiancé, Dante Moretti, the most ruthless Don in our world. He had sworn on his father's grave to wait for me. Instead, he replaced me with Sienna—the very woman who put me in that hospital bed.
My own son, Luca, looked at me with cold, unfamiliar eyes.
"You're not my mother," he sneered, hiding behind the woman who wore my face.
My parents rushed to shield her, not me. "You must understand the bigger picture," my father said. "We did what was necessary for the Famiglia."
But the final betrayal came after Sienna pushed me off a bridge and needed a blood transfusion. My own parents signed the consent form to use my blood, and my fiancé gave the order. "Save her," he snarled.
The nurse told me they were ordered to "discard the blood bag after use." As if I were trash.
I walked out of that hospital, a ghost in my own life. I took the new identity my old professor offered and vanished. This time, I wouldn't be Elara Bianchi, the tragic fiancée. I would build an empire of my own.
8.8
I was dying from a terminal illness, but my husband, Broderick, thought it was just another one of my games to get his attention. He hated me, convinced I had betrayed him years ago for money.
As I collapsed in agony, begging him to take me to the hospital, he grabbed my chin and whispered the words that shattered my world.
"I will never forgive you. I hope you just… die."
He then left me on the cold floor and rushed to the hospital to be with his true love, Kacey-my best friend. She was the one he worried about, the one whose own heart was failing.
He never knew that the "betrayal" he despised was actually my sacrifice to save his family from ruin. He never knew the depth of my love, a love so absolute that even his cruelty couldn't extinguish it.
So, when the doctors told me I was a perfect match, I made my final choice. I would grant his wish and give my heart to the woman he loved.
7.9
I was naked in the bed of the most dangerous Capo in New York when I heard his mind whisper the name of the woman he actually wanted.
It wasn't me.
My husband, Dante, moved over me with cold precision, but his thoughts were screaming for Sofia, a soldier's widow he claimed to protect out of "honor."
I possess a secret that makes me a freak: I can hear the thoughts of men.
And Dante’s mind was a torture chamber of devotion to another woman.
I found the deed to a luxury penthouse he bought for her.
I watched her parade around in a dress he bought for me, hearing her mental triumph as she thought about rubbing her scent all over it.
Refusing to be a placeholder in my own marriage, I left my wedding ring on his desk and fled to Las Vegas to build my own empire.
I thought I had escaped.
Until the divorce papers arrived in the mail, signed by him.
I stood in my shop, heartbroken, believing he had finally discarded me to be with his true love.
But then the phone rang.
"Dante didn't sign those papers, Elena. He’s in the ICU."
My blood ran cold.
"He took two bullets to the chest. He started a war to distract the enemy from finding you."
He hadn't chosen her. He was dying for me.
I tore up the papers and booked a private jet.
If the Grim Reaper wanted my husband, he would have to get through me first.
9.5
I clutched the vintage fountain pen in my sweaty palm, running my thumb over its smooth surface for the hundredth time. The weight of it was reassuring—a perfect gift for Nathan's big moment. Ten years of friendship had taught me his preferences: nothing flashy, something with history, something meaningful. Just like us. The launch venue gleamed with that particular San Francisco tech-wealth sheen—all glass and steel and important people in understated expensive clothes. I adjusted my glasses, pushing them up the bridge of my nose as I scanned the crowd for a familiar face. My heart hammered against my ribs, a steady percussion accompanying the ambient electronic music and the tinkling of champagne flutes. "Tonight's the night," I whispered to myself, recalling Nathan's text from this morning: *Important news to share. Be there tonight. Wouldn't be the same without you.*
I'd spent years decoding Nathan's messages, searching for hidden meanings, for some acknowledgment of what we both must know was inevitable.
9.5
Indra Aharon, a young executive who had just graduated from college, never expected that he, who had just been appointed by his father as the number one person in the company, would be involved in a marriage with a woman who was much older than him.
In fact, he could rightly call that woman an "Auntie."
It started from their meeting at a nightclub.
Making their relationship even more chaotic when photos of them sleeping together in a hotel room were spread everywhere.
So the parents, require them to get married.
Yana Ilone initially strongly rejected the marriage. Because the man she was going to marry was very young.
Will the marriage be able to unite the age differences, which are very far between them?
Or will they have to separate and choose their own paths?
9.0
The boardroom at Woods Corp—my father's Porter Holdings, though no one seemed to remember that anymore—smelled like expensive cologne and stale ambition. I'd left early, citing a headache that wasn't entirely fabricated. The veteran board members had spent two hours mansplaining quarterly projections to me, the heiress who'd grown up reading financial statements at the breakfast table. My heels clicked against the marble foyer of our Tribeca penthouse, the sound swallowed by thirty-foot ceilings and the kind of silence that costs millions to architect. I was reaching for my phone when I heard it—Adrian's voice, low and warm in a way it hadn't been with me in months. Laughter. Feminine, bright, achingly familiar. I froze halfway to the living room, my Hermès bag sliding down my shoulder. "She actually cried when I told her the oncologist said six months." Adrian's voice drifted from the study, muffled but unmistakable. "I thought she was going to faint right there in the hospital parking lot."
Katie's giggle made my stomach turn.