He Chose The Mistress, She Signed Her Own Death Certificate
Eight years of devotion crumbled under one calculated betrayal.
Diagnosed with a terminal illness and given only a year, Olivia faced heartbreak when her husband cheated with a student she had sponsored and asked for divorce.
"She only has a year to live... can't you let her have this?" he pleaded, unaware Olivia hid the same fate.
Without protest, she signed and returned to science, determined to leave something behind.
Believing they'd reunite, he waited-never knowing she was running out of time.
During a clinical trial, she burned through her final days.
Only after her death did he learn the truth, collapsing in regret. "Olivia... I was wrong."
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Chapter 3
Callum brushed the concern aside without a second thought.
He convinced himself that Olivia was just exhausted and moody from a bad night's sleep.
In his mind, Olivia was the picture of health, while Kaylee was the one who actually needed his protection and medical care.
Callum looked down, his jaw tightening in the silence before he stepped out of the vehicle.
"It's time," he said shortly.
He figured Olivia's resentment was only temporary. Once they remarried in a year, he planned to settle the score and give her whatever she wanted to make things right.
They walked into the courthouse in single file. Using his influence, Callum had arranged for them to skip the lines and receive immediate attention.
The moment they were seated, Olivia pulled a prepared divorce agreement from her bag and passed it across to the official.
Callum's face clouded with irritation, his palm slamming down on the documents to stop them. "What do you think you're doing?"
Olivia turned her head, meeting his gaze directly.
He looked every bit the aristocrat, carrying himself with a polished, distant grace that always made him stand out.
Even now, his looks were a weapon. She couldn't stop the involuntary skip of her heart; he was still the most handsome man she had ever seen.
She had walked down the aisle with a heart full of hope, believing they were building a life together. Now, she realized it had all been a shimmering, heartless lie.
A ghost of a smile appeared on her face. "This is how it works, Callum. We sign the papers, and the marriage ends. I'm just following the legal steps."
She acted as if a sudden thought had struck her. "Oh, that's right. You haven't added your signature yet."
She nudged his hand off the paper, flipped to the final page, and held out a pen. "I'm not asking for a settlement. I'm leaving with exactly what I brought in."
The atmosphere turned suffocating as Callum's temper began to flare, his eyes burning with a dark intensity.
Nothing infuriated him more than losing his grip on a situation. He ignored the pen, his voice dropping to a frigid tone. "If this is a play for more money or assets, stop hiding behind fine print and just name your price."
Her eyes were hollow, reflecting the quiet desperation of someone who had been pushed past their breaking point.
The constant agony had finally burned itself out, leaving behind a flat, manageable numbness where her heart used to be.
After a lifetime of devotion and giving him every part of herself, she was staggered to realize he still viewed her as nothing more than a gold-digger chasing the Jackson family's fortune.
The irony was bitter.
She pulled her hand away, her face a mask of calm. "There's no rush. Please, read every word so there are no misunderstandings."
The division of assets remained unchanged—she was walking away with zero. She had even inserted a new clause. "Every gift, every luxury, and even the wedding ring was to be returned to Callum Jackson's possession immediately."
A sudden, inexplicable jolt of panic hit Callum's chest. For a split second, he had the terrifying realization that she wasn't bluffing; she actually wanted out.
The mention of the ring was the hardest blow.
He knew she cherished it above everything else, and seeing her discard it so easily felt wrong.
But the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a familiar wave of annoyance.
He rationalized it all. The moodiness, the ready-made contract, the pressure to sign—he saw it as a desperate, calculated move of hers to see if he would cave.
He was convinced she was incapable of leaving him. In his eyes, this was just an elaborate performance designed to make him stay.
But he refused to play her game.
The memory of Kaylee's fragile, pleading face flashed in his mind, fueling his resolve. With a sharp ache of sympathy for Kaylee, he gripped the pen and scrawled his signature across the line.
His handwriting was bold and authoritative, a reflection of his need to dominate every situation.
Callum shoved the papers back toward her, his eyes burning with a dark, suppressed fury. "You played your hand too aggressively this time. Just make sure you can live with the consequences."
The bureaucracy moved with chilling efficiency. The clock began ticking on the mandatory waiting period before the marriage officially dissolved.
Without a word, Olivia rose and made her way toward the exit.
The absurdity of it hit her. She was literally dying, yet she was spending her remaining hours checking off legal boxes for a divorce.
She let out a dry, hollow laugh. The harsh midday sun sent a wave of vertigo through her, draining the last of the color from her skin as she raised a hand to block out the light.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over her. Callum stepped into her line of sight, his broad frame shielding her from the sun and providing a fleeting, accidental moment of relief.
Olivia felt a crushing weight in her chest, like a hammer blow to the heart, while a sharp sting of unshed tears burned behind her eyelids.
However, the painful reality remained... The man standing in front of her was no longer the sanctuary he once was.
She moved out of his way, her lips curving into a ghost of a smile. "Goodbye, Callum," she said softly.
A sudden memory flashed through Callum's mind. He could clearly see the day they got married, and Olivia's beaming face as she teased, "Hello, Callum! I'm your wife, Olivia!"
At that moment, their shared happiness had been absolute.
He felt a strange tug in his chest, a fleeting sensation that perhaps their bond was still intact.
Callum convinced himself that they would be remarried within the year anyway, so this separation was nothing more than a temporary shift.
"Since the paperwork is finished, you should go home," he said, turning his back to walk away.
Olivia gave a slow shake of her head. "I'm not going back there."
Callum's brow furrowed as he turned to look at her in confusion.
Olivia faced him with a level of composure he had never witnessed before. "I've already packed my essentials, so there's no reason to return. You can just toss the rest of my things. Now that the divorce is filed, we need to live separate lives. I'm not going to hang around and be an obstacle for you."
Callum dismissed her words, assuming this was just another one of her dramatic moods, so he didn't bother arguing.
He simply gave her a long, intense look. "Have it your way," he said.
In his mind, he and Olivia had decades of time ahead, whereas Kaylee was facing a terminal illness with only a year left; he believed Kaylee simply had the more urgent need for his presence.
They both turned away simultaneously, their paths finally diverging as they walked in completely different directions.
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7.3
"This... this is wrong," she stuttered, trying not to meet his eyes. "You're my stepfather. Let's forget it ever happened."
"How can I forget it happened, Nicole?" He questioned, gripping her chin. "When the image of you whimpering for more replays in my head every fucking night?"
When one night of desperation turns into Nicole ending up in bed with a nameless stranger, she's almost shocked to death when she moves in with her mother's new husband to see that the nameless stranger is her new stepfather.
Tristan Michelson has always been in control of his emotions, but he can barely control himself when he realizes the masked stripper is his new stepdaughter.
9.5
Jennifer, a fiercely independent entrepreneur, never imagined that running her company would put her in the orbit of Joseph, a reclusive billionaire with a dangerous agenda. Their professional clashes ignite a forbidden attraction, drawing them into a passionate affair that threatens to unravel everything Jennifer has built. As corporate sabotage, hidden heirs, and dark secrets from Joseph's past begin to surface, Jennifer's world spirals into a web of betrayal, desire, and moral peril. In a story where power and love collide, nothing is as it seems and every choice could be lethal.
7.5
I was tied to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the heavy stench of gasoline suffocating me.
Ten steps away, a masked kidnapper slammed a loaded Glock onto a metal barrel and forced my husband, Alvie, to make a sick choice.
"The wife or the mistress. You only get to walk out of here with one."
Alvie didn't even blink.
He walked straight toward the dark corner where his mistress, Gail, was crying. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her, and guided her toward the exit.
He never looked back. He didn't cast a single glance over his shoulder. To him, I was already a corpse, just trash left on the pavement.
The kidnapper laughed and tossed a lighter onto the soaked concrete floor.
A wall of ghostly blue fire erupted instantly, swallowing me whole. The absolute agony of my skin blistering and melting shattered my sanity.
In my last moments, consumed by the inferno, I couldn't understand how the man I had loved and served so submissively could leave me to burn alive. My heartbreak quickly morphed into a hatred far deeper than the flames.
Then, I violently jerked awake.
I shot up from the bed, gasping for cold air, my hands frantically checking my perfectly smooth, unburned skin.
I looked at the desk clock. I had returned to exactly four years ago, the morning of the annual Gallagher family gathering.
The fragile, naive wife died in that warehouse. This time, I am going to destroy them both.
8.1
On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes.
She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia."
Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours.
He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity.
But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture."
I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her.
And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm.
Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite.
He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet.
He is wrong.
I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door.
And I changed the groom.
As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears.
The Reaper.
8.1
I skipped my final lab review in Geneva and endured a fourteen-hour flight to surprise my husband for our fourth wedding anniversary.
Instead, looking through the window of our beachfront estate, I saw him playing the perfect, loving father to a "tragic widow's" daughter, kissing the widow with practiced, casual intimacy.
Fleeing in pure panic, I got into a horrific car crash.
Waking up in the VIP hospital room, I kept my eyes shut and heard my husband talking to his best friend right beside my bed.
"She's just a party girl who knows how to swipe a black card. I only play the part because I need her father's proxy vote for the IPO."
"Every time I have to touch her in bed, it feels like a corporate obligation. It makes me sick."
Later, even my own father demanded I step down from my company role and publicly welcome the mistress, just to protect the family's investment in the upcoming ten-billion-dollar IPO.
Four years of marriage and quiet humiliations, all reduced to a calculated lie. They all thought I was just a brainless, hysterical socialite who could be easily manipulated and discarded.
They didn't know that the core anti-aging algorithm his entire empire relied on was secretly built by me.
I calmly pulled out my phone and texted my divorce lawyer.
"I want him bankrupt. On the day his company rings the bell, I am going to burn his entire life to the ground."
8.8
My little boy died on the operating table during a minor, routine surgery.
That exact same night, my billionaire husband bought out the Hudson River for a massive, million-dollar fireworks show.
It wasn't to mourn our child. It was to celebrate his first love's son being discharged from the hospital.
When I confronted him with our son's death certificate, he sneered and accused me of hiding the boy to get his attention.
He held his mistress in our home, watched her fake a panic attack, and threatened to bankrupt my family if I didn't get on my knees and apologize to her.
But the most horrifying truth came from a terrified hospital nurse.
My son's anesthesia was deliberately kept low during the procedure to keep his tissue viable to save the mistress's child.
He was awake and in agonizing pain while his own father planned a grand celebration for another man's son.
I couldn't understand how a father could be so completely heartless.
How could he sacrifice his own flesh and blood just to please a woman who constantly manipulated him?
Looking at the ashes on my son's favorite toy, my paralyzing grief evaporated, replaced by a cold, unyielding rage.
I arranged my little boy's funeral alone in the freezing rain, left my wedding ring on the counter, and walked straight into the private hotel suite of my husband's most ruthless business rival.
"Let's take him down," I said.