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 5
A swarm of reporters jostled for position, shouting over one another to get a comment.
"Miss Taylor!" one reporter called out. "Rumor has it you played a major role in a new Jackson Group drug. Can you tell us what it is?"
The claim that Kaylee had developed a breakthrough for the Jackson Group caught Olivia completely off guard.
Stunned by the news, Olivia froze and turned her attention toward the broadcast.
On the screen, Kaylee beamed a perfect, sugary smile directly into the lens.
"I'm afraid that's a corporate secret," Kaylee replied. "I can't share any details at this stage."
Out of nowhere, a reporter raised their voice and asked, "Miss Taylor, there are claims that the research behind this new drug was highly dangerous. It's being said that you've sustained permanent damage to your body and are now facing a terminal illness, with just one year left to live. Can you confirm if that's true?"
Kaylee's expression shifted instantly at the mention of her health.
After a brief pause, she lifted her gaze toward the camera. The smile remained, though now it carried a trace of bitterness.
"That's correct. But I refuse to let it defeat me. With the time I have left, I'll commit myself to one final research endeavor and give everything I have to see it through before I'm gone. Whatever remains of my life will be devoted entirely to the pursuit of science."
Her staged performance of selfless sacrifice immediately won over the entire crowd.
The reporters was suddenly buzzing with intense sympathy and admiration for her.
"And what about Mr. Jackson?" a reporter pressed. "People saw him carrying you home and buying you roses. Is there a romance blooming?"
Kaylee let a visible blush creep across her face. "Mr. Jackson and I are just colleagues. He's only looking after me because of my work for the company."
Despite her denial, her coy act and blushing face made everyone in the room certain that there was something more between them.
The crowd of journalists immediately devolved into frantic, low-voiced gossiping.
"What a tragedy! It's so obvious that Miss Taylor is head-over-heels for Mr. Jackson."
"And Mr. Jackson clearly feels the same way. Honestly, they look like a perfect match."
As the whispers intensified, Kaylee looked down, a spark of triumph dancing in her eyes. When she looked back up, her face was once again a mask of wide-eyed innocence as she rushed to explain. "Please, don't spread rumors. Mr. Jackson is married to my mentor, Olivia. She funded my entire college education and even secured my position at Jackson Group. It is only because of her kindness that I could join this new drug research team."
While speaking, she shot an apologetic glance at Callum, acting as though she had accidentally let a devastating secret slip.
"I would never be a home wrecker," she continued. "Knowing Mr. Jackson is a blessing. Whatever I have sacrificed for this project, I did so out of my own free will."
Her defense to the rumors was a calculated strike, dragging Olivia directly into the center of a public firestorm.
A reporter quickly picked up on the crucial detail and pressed, "So, it was Olivia who arranged for you to join Jackson Group for this research? If I may ask, before sending you to work on the new drug project, did she make you aware of the risks involved?"
The question set the crowd on fire as everyone suddenly connected the dots.
"Wait, didn't Olivia retire to be a housewife? She set this whole thing up before she left?"
"Isn't Olivia's behavior downright ruthless? She put on a facade of kindness, using minor acts of generosity to lure Kaylee into working for her, all while she stepped away to enjoy an easy life. As a professor, how could she possibly have been unaware of the risks involved in that research?"
Before the cameras, Kaylee's eyes turned red, as though the weight of the truth had only just hit her. She wavered, nearly losing her footing, and then managed to steady herself long enough to speak one last time. "Creating this new drug has always been Mr. Jackson's greatest ambition. Even though I've only now come to understand that the risks in its development led to my terminal condition, I have no regrets."
The live comment section became a toxic storm of hatred and vitriol.
"So Olivia kept her in the dark!"
"Olivia is a monster!"
"She needs to pay for what she did!"
Kaylee made a theatrical exit, claiming she was too weak to continue.
Throughout the entire character assassination, Callum remained perfectly, hauntingly silent, never once defending his wife.
Olivia stared at the screen, a suffocating tightness crushing her chest as the reality of the betrayal hit home.
She was stunned by the staggering coincidence. Kaylee, mirroring Olivia's own tragic history, had developed a terminal condition while working on pharmaceutical research for the Jackson Group.
Despite the lack of specific details regarding the project Kaylee had been assigned to, Olivia's thoughts immediately drifted toward the proprietary formula she herself had submitted to the company.
A dark, unsettling suspicion began to take root in her mind.
Driven by a need for clarity, she drafted a message and hit send. "Investigate the specific drug Kaylee was developing. I need the exact details."
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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.