The Broken Ballerina's Secret Paris Escape
I traced the floral patterns on the silver candlestick, my fingertips numb from the cold of the penthouse. It was our fifth anniversary, and the Wellington steak I’d spent four hours preparing sat soggy and defeated under the dim chandelier.
Fielding finally walked in at 1:00 AM, smelling of scotch and tuberose—a scent I didn't own. When I tried to touch him, he recoiled as if my fingers were acid, then disappeared into the bathroom where I heard him moan his ex-girlfriend's name with a desperate, guttural longing.
The betrayal didn't end there. The next day, I found him at a luxury restaurant, watching him slide a massive pink diamond onto Corinna’s finger—the same ring he’d told me was a "business investment."
I stood hidden behind a frosted glass partition as his friends laughed, calling me a "lame duck" and a "depressed millstone" around his neck. Fielding didn't defend me; he calmly told them our marriage was just a "debt" he had to pay because I’d saved his life in the crash that ended my ballet career.
"She's a millstone, Fielding. How long are you going to play nursemaid?"
"I owe her. It's a debt. I pay my debts."
When I finally confronted him, he didn't show remorse. Instead, he threatened to use his power to declare me mentally unstable and freeze my grandmother’s trust fund so I’d be left "crippled and penniless" on the street.
I realized then that Fielding didn't want a wife; he wanted a martyr to ease his survivor's guilt, as long as I stayed broken and dependent. He thought he’d clipped my wings for good, but he didn't know I’d been secretly studying for the Sorbonne while he was out with his mistress.
As I put on my designer gown for the charity gala, I wasn't preparing for a party. I was liquidating my jewelry for untraceable cash and planning the ultimate exit.
He thinks I’m his prisoner, but the countdown to my final act has already begun.
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Chapter 2
The morning sun was cruel. It sliced through the gaps in the blackout curtains, hitting Ariel's face with the precision of a laser.
She blinked, her eyelids swollen and heavy, like sandpaper rubbing against her corneas.
The space beside her was empty. The sheets were cold.
Fielding was gone.
She sat up, the movement triggering the morning stiffness in her knee. She rubbed the scar tissue automatically-a habit ingrained over five years of rehabilitation.
There was something on the nightstand.
A black American Express Centurion card. Beside it, a yellow sticky note.
Rough night. Buy yourself something nice. Sorry about dinner.
Ariel picked up the card. It was heavy, made of titanium. It felt cold and impersonal, just like the man who left it.
This was his currency. Not affection, not time, not loyalty. Just credit limits.
She looked at the note again. Rough night.
A bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, choking her. A rough night was dreaming about the car crash. A rough night was waking up screaming because you could smell burning gasoline.
A rough night was not jerking off in the shower while fantasizing about your ex-girlfriend while your wife lay in the next room.
She crushed the sticky note in her fist and threw it at the trash can. It missed, landing on the pristine white rug.
Ariel swung her legs out of bed. Her gaze fell on the long, jagged scar running down her right leg.
Five years ago.
The rain had been a wall of water. The screech of tires. The Ferrari spinning.
She remembered the heat. The flames licking at the twisted metal. She had been thrown clear-she could have walked away. She had been "Ariella Vane" to the world then, a rising Principal Dancer at the ABT, dancing under her mother's maiden name to avoid the scrutiny of her father's debts. Her legs were her life, her fortune, her secret identity.
But Fielding didn't know that. He had never cared to ask about "Ariella Vane." To him, she was just Ariel, the girl he met at a charity mixer, a "dropout" who quit college to pursue a hobby that never went anywhere. Corinna had reinforced that narrative over the years, feeding Fielding lies about Ariel's lack of education and "unskilled" background, and his arrogance had prevented him from ever fact-checking.
She remembered dragging him out. The smell of searing flesh. And then the groan of metal giving way above her.
The beam had crushed her leg. It had crushed The Nutcracker. It had crushed Swan Lake.
She closed her eyes, forcing the memory back into its box.
There was a soft knock at the door.
"Mrs. Gardner?"
It was Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper. Her grey hair was pulled back in a severe bun, but her eyes were soft, filled with a pity that Ariel had grown to detest.
"Mr. Gardner called," Mrs. Higgins said, wringing her hands on her apron. "He said he has a business dinner tonight. He won't be home."
Ariel stared at the housekeeper. "Business dinner."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did he say who the business was with?"
Mrs. Higgins looked down at her shoes. "He didn't say, ma'am."
He didn't have to.
"I'm not hungry, Mrs. Higgins. Thank you."
Ariel waited for the door to click shut before she stood up. She walked to the study-the one room in the house Fielding rarely entered because it smelled of old paper and turpentine, scents he found 'dusty'.
She sat at the mahogany desk and opened her laptop.
Her fingers hovered over the trackpad.
There, in her inbox, was the email she had been staring at for three days.
Subject: Admission Decision – Sorbonne University, Master of Art History.
She had applied on a whim. A desperate, midnight attempt to prove to herself that her brain hadn't atrophied along with her calf muscles.
She clicked it open.
We are pleased to inform you...
Paris.
A city where no one knew she was Mrs. Fielding Gardner. A city where she was just a student with a limp, not a failed ballerina and a trophy wife who had lost her shine.
Yesterday, she had hesitated. She had thought about Fielding. About his 'trauma'. About how he needed her.
She thought about the shower. Corinna.
Fielding didn't need her. He needed a martyr to assuage his survivor's guilt. As long as she was here, broken and dependent, he could pay his penance with black cards and distance.
Her phone buzzed on the desk.
A text from Fielding.
Corinna is back in town. She's going through a hard time. Just going to check on her as a friend. Don't wait up.
The audacity was breathtaking. He wasn't even trying to hide it anymore. He was just rewriting the narrative in real-time.
Ariel looked at the black card on the nightstand. Then back at the screen.
Accept Offer.
She clicked the button.
A burst of digital confetti exploded on the screen.
Her heart gave a strange, violent kick. It wasn't fear. It was the adrenaline of a prisoner finding a loose bar in the cell window.
She immediately opened a new tab. Apartments for rent, Latin Quarter, Paris.
The phone rang again. This time, it was Fielding's personal assistant, Jessica.
Ariel picked up, her voice steady. "Hello, Jessica."
"Mrs. Gardner, good morning," Jessica sounded stressed. "Mr. Gardner asked me to remind you about the schedule. We have the Charity Gala in the city tomorrow night, and then the helicopter will take everyone directly to the Hamptons estate for the rest of the weekend."
Ariel frowned. "The Hamptons? It's barely spring. It's freezing."
"Yes, well, Mr. Gardner feels he needs a break after the Gala. He's invited a few friends to join."
Ariel's grip on the phone tightened. "Which friends, Jessica?"
Silence on the other end.
"Jessica?"
"Mr. Vance... and Ms. Merrill."
Corinna.
He was bringing his wife and his 'soulmate' to the same house for the weekend, parading them first at the Gala like prize ponies. It was a power play. Or maybe he was so delusional he thought they could all be one big, happy, dysfunctional family.
Ariel looked at her reflection in the dark computer screen. Her eyes looked hollow, but her jaw was set.
"Tell him I'll be ready," Ariel said.
"Oh. Okay. Great." Jessica sounded relieved.
Ariel hung up.
She wasn't going to the Hamptons to play house.
She stood up and walked to the small safe hidden behind a row of art history textbooks. She punched in the code-her grandmother's birthday.
Inside lay her passport, her birth certificate, and the paperwork for the trust fund her grandmother had left her. Fielding knew about the fund, but he thought it was a pittance. He didn't know about the portfolio growth. He didn't know she had access to liquid cash he couldn't touch.
She pulled out the documents.
Then she walked to the full-length mirror in the corner. She lifted her chin, extending her arms in a port de bras. Her leg wouldn't allow her to go en pointe, but the line of her neck was still graceful, still defiant.
"The Hamptons," she whispered to the glass.
It was the perfect stage for a final act.
"Countdown starts now."
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8.4
For three years, she was the gentle, obedient wife to a man whose heart never thawed.
Their marriage was a lopsided bargain, sealed by her brother's injury.
Millie clung to hope that her devotion would win him over, only to discover someone else already held his heart.
On their anniversary, she waited alone in the freezing mountains, while he celebrated with another woman.
Without complaint, she packed up and signed the divorce papers.
Everyone believed Darren never loved her, so divorce was certain.
But time passed, and instead, he pleaded, "Sweetheart, can we not get divorced?"
8.4
After her eleventh miscarriage, Clara Fulton became pregnant again. To protect the pregnancy, she lay in a hospital bed day after day, enduring injection after injection, waiting for the special drug meant to save her child.
Then she discovered the truth. Her husband of eight years, Ethan Grayson, had already given that one dose of the special drug to his newly pregnant mistress.
Clara wiped the tears from her face and made a ruthless decision, ending the pregnancy she had fought so desperately to keep.
She no longer wanted a man who wavered between women. But anyone who betrayed sincerity would have to pay a price.
She took out a phone she had never once used and dialed the only number saved on it.
"You wanted me to acknowledge you as my father, didn't you? Come pick me up in a week. I'll take your seat."
She had no idea that after she left, Ethan would kneel before every god he could think of, praying for nothing but her return.
8.4
I was drugged and sent to a hotel room to be compromised, but I ended up in the presidential suite with a stranger.
I didn't know the man I clung to in my hallucinogenic haze was my own husband, Devaughn Winters, a man I hadn't spoken to in a year.
When I woke up the next morning, the terror of what I’d done hit me like a physical blow. I fled, leaving behind nothing but a shredded dress and a lingering sense of dread.
I thought I’d finally escaped the cold, suffocating contract of our marriage when I signed the divorce papers, but I was wrong.
My mother-in-law arrived at my apartment, freezing my sick mother’s medical funds and threatening to ruin me for the "infidelity" she claimed I’d committed.
She dragged my secrets into the light, leaving me with no choice but to fight back with a knife in my hand and a 911 call on speaker.
But just as I thought I was free, the man I’d spent the night with—the man who was supposed to be my stranger—tore up our divorce papers and declared that I was his to keep.
I was a pawn in a game I didn't understand, trapped between a ruthless father who wanted to sell me for corporate secrets and a husband who demanded I belong to him in life and in death.
How did he not know who I was that night, and why is he suddenly claiming me as his own?
I’m done being a victim, and if he thinks he can own me, he’s about to find out exactly what happens when a cornered woman decides to burn it all down.
7.9
I woke up in a burning warehouse, twelve years after my supposed death. My body had been reset to its physical prime, the deep burn scar on my wrist completely gone.
Through the smoke, my eldest son, Kennard, rushed blindly into the flames. He was screaming the name of the very woman who had orchestrated this trap—Brittnie.
When I tackled him out of the way of a falling steel beam, he didn't recognize my youthful face. Instead, he pinned me to the concrete and nearly crushed my windpipe.
"How much did she pay you to carve up your face to look like a dead woman?"
He hissed the words at me, treating me like a sick corporate spy. For a decade, a bizarre narrative "script" had brainwashed my son, forcing him into pathetic devotion to Brittnie. She had drained his wealth, turned my daughter against him, and hollowed out our family empire.
Whenever Kennard tried to resist her, the mind control punished him with agonizing migraines, driving him to smash his own hands against the wall just to cope with the pain.
Hearing him quietly sobbing outside my locked door, my heart shattered. How could this invisible force torture my brilliant son and turn my family into puppets for a D-list actress?
I dragged him to the hospital for a DNA test.
When the results confirmed my maternity at 99.999%, the cold billionaire collapsed to the floor, weeping in my arms like a lost child.
I wiped his tears and smiled ruthlessly. It was time to take back my empire and burn Brittnie's life to the ground.
7.7
Remi Puth had been married to Lacy Web for seven years, and raising their five-years son, Ian, with all her heart.
But despite everything, Ian choses another woman as his new mother, and Lacy was also having an affair with the same woman behind her back.
Remi had never imagined both Lacy and Ian would chose another woman over her one day. She asked for a divorce and even gave up custody of Ian before walking away with grace.
Years later, she has transformed into a confident woman. Now, both Lacy and Ian are drowning in regret, desperately chasing after her-but by that time, it's already too late.
7.9
Emily Parker has a simple life plan: write her steamy romance novels, collect her royalties, sleep whenever she wants, and avoid anything that sounds like responsibility.
Marriage? Absolutely not.
But when her aunt threatens to drag her back to the countryside and marry her off the traditional way, Emily makes a desperate promise-she'll find a husband in three months.
There's just one problem.
She's single. She hates dating. And she's far too lazy to fall in love.
So she does what any rational, comfort-loving woman would do-she signs up for a contract marriage. Temporary husband. Minimal effort. Clean divorce. Peace restored.
Except the man who accepts her proposal isn't just some convenient stranger.
He's Adrian Vale. Thirty-one. Devastatingly calm. CEO of a global empire.
And he remembers her.
Emily may have lost her childhood memories in the accident that killed their parents-but Adrian never forgot a single detail. Not the night that changed everything. Not the little girl who once held his hand. Not the name she would one day unknowingly choose as her pen name: Vale.
To her, it was just a contract.
To him, it was fate.
As secrets from the past begin to surface and the truth behind their shared tragedy threatens to tear them apart, Emily must decide whether to keep running from responsibility... or finally choose the man who has loved her long before she could remember him.
She wanted a temporary husband.
He's been waiting for her his entire life.