Never Again: A Wife's Resolve

I stood at the airport in a worn wool coat, shivering as I waited for the husband I hadn’t seen in seven years. My dented 2014 Camry sat idling nearby, a pathetic contrast to the sleek private jets lining the tarmac of Teterboro. When the Gulfstream finally landed, Julian Sterling didn’t emerge alone. He stepped off the plane holding the hand of Serena Pembrooke, the flawless socialite who had been his "business partner" in Zurich for nearly a decade. He looked at me with the cold assessment of a stranger, his eyes bypassing the luxury SUVs to lock onto my fading paint and cracked phone screen. Julian forced me to drive them, letting Serena claim the front seat while he watched me from the back like a hired chauffeur. When a minor traffic accident left me trembling in the middle of the FDR Drive, he didn't offer comfort; he took the wheel with a look of pure disappointment, treating me like an incompetent child. "A quiet place for a mind like yours to rot," he whispered, mocking the simple life I had built in Queens. The humiliation peaked at a high-society gala where Serena framed me for corporate espionage, accusing me of stealing code from Nebula—the very company I had built in secret. Julian stood by and watched as my reputation was shredded, his silence a deadlier weapon than Serena’s lies. He even went ring shopping for the Sterling family heirloom while I was being investigated by the police. I couldn't understand how he could be so blind. He didn't know I was the lead architect of the AI firm he just invested in. Most importantly, he didn't know I was hiding his son—a six-year-old genius with Julian’s eyes and a lethal talent for hacking. To settle the debt for the car, I sold my mother’s last pearls and threw the check at his feet, finally ready to disappear from his world forever. But as I walked away into the rain, Julian’s phone buzzed with a digitized threat from an anonymous source that stopped him cold. "Stay away from my mother," the voice warned. My son had just declared war on his father, and the secrets of the Aspen Scandal were finally about to explode, forcing Julian to realize that the wife he abandoned was the only person who could save his empire.

I was given three months to live. My fiancé, however, decided that was far too long. I overheard him with my stepsister, Krista, calling our three-year relationship a "charade" he was tired of. The bone marrow I donated to him after a car crash-the very act that triggered my fatal illness-wasn't a sacrifice. It was a transaction. He had manipulated my guilt to use me as a placeholder while he waited for his true love, Krista. He abandoned me bleeding at our engagement party to tend to her fake injury, then gave her power of attorney over my critically ill brother, forcing me to agree to her cruel demands. My love was a lie. My sacrifice was a punchline. The man I thought was my savior had orchestrated my death sentence and then buried me with his betrayal. So on my wedding day, as he waited at the altar for Krista, I faked my own death. I left him with one final wedding gift: my terminal diagnosis and the truth of his deception. It was time for my revenge.

For three years, I was Bradley Porter's bodyguard. And his substitute. Tonight, I took a bullet for him, the wound in my shoulder still fresh. But he didn't care. His assistant pulled me out of the hospital, my wound infected and feverish, because the woman I was a substitute for, Kylie Tyson, was back. At the private airport, he embraced her with a love I had never seen. Kylie looked me up and down with disdain. "Bradley, make her carry my luggage." He saw my pale face, the bandage peeking from my collar, but his voice was sharp. "What are you waiting for? Get the luggage." There were five large suitcases. Just moments before, Kylie had faked a sprained wrist, and he had examined it with panicked concern. When I took a bullet for him, he just glanced at me and told his men to "clean up the mess." That night, I went home and added another black stone to the glass jar on my dresser. I made a promise to myself: for every time he hurt me, I would add a stone. When the jar was full, I would leave him forever. Tonight was stone number three hundred and sixty-eight. The jar was almost half full.

The promotion came with a dream office, a Seattle skyline view, and a salary that made my eyes water. But it also came with Mrs. Jenkins, my personal assistant of five years, and the difficult conversation I had to have with her. When I told her I was relocating and she' d have three months' severance, her warm smile froze. "A recommendation and severance won' t be enough, Sarah," she declared, her voice flat, demanding a lifetime pension or my multi-million dollar condo. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but her dead-serious expression sent a chill down my spine. She then morphed into a full-blown manipulator, blaming me for "ruining" her life and threatening to spread rumors in our tight-knit community. The fight escalated from extortion to outright betrayal when her daughter, Emily, aided by a supposedly incarcerated ex-cop, illegally occupied my condo with a forged lease. The police, thanks to the corrupt officer' s connections, shockingly classified it as a civil matter. I felt outrage and disbelief that I was being targeted and dismissed, my property snatched by a family I had once trusted. The unsettling truth hit me when I saw the "jailed" ex-cop, Kevin, laughing with Mrs. Jenkins and Emily in front of a real estate office, overhearing their plot to forge documents and steal my condo outright. My rage turned to icy resolve; they had underestimated me. I immediately contacted the FBI' s Public Corruption Unit, armed with concrete proof of their conspiracy, knowing this was no longer a petty dispute but a federal crime. My decision to fight back was made.

For a decade, I played the role of Eleanor Vance, Senator Alistair Hayes' s wife. I endured his icy indifference and his stepdaughter Brittany' s cruelties, clinging to the hope of a stable home for my daughter, Clara. But at the annual charity gala, the illusion violently shattered. Brittany, with a triumph in her eyes, forced me into her deceased mother' s gown, then publicly humiliated me by crushing a cherished locket I' d made for her with my own hands. Alistair, far from defending me, stood by, his cold gaze stripping me bare, blaming me. He had dangled Clara' s return as bait for my compliance, and now his lie was exposed, alongside my public shame. My world, built on fragile hopes, crumbled. I was nothing but an outsider, always second best to a ghost. The raw injustice, the betrayal, and the horrifying truth of their manipulation ignited a quiet, chilling rage within me. My efforts, my sacrifices, all for nothing. So when Alistair, eager to control the narrative, suggested I 'disappear' for a 'break' at the remote family cabin, I agreed. He thought I'd break and crawl back. He didn't know Eleanor Hayes was already gone.

I woke up in 1983, miraculously young again, clinging to the hope that Mark, my husband of thirty years and partner in our theater supply business, would also be here, ready for our second chance together. But the moment I found him at the community center dance, my world shattered: he looked at me like a complete stranger, then walked past, straight to Brattleboro's "golden girl," Tiffany Hayes, as if our intertwined history never existed. He wasn't just indifferent; he had spent two years cultivating a new, ambitious life, actively pursuing Tiffany, then brazenly claimed my deepest creative work-an intricate theatrical gown concept-as his own in a public design competition. His cruelty escalated when he publicly shamed me over a piece of chocolate in our local bakery and later tried to legally trap me in our small Vermont town with a fabricated non-compete clause, his malice a chilling contrast to the man I thought I knew. How could the man I' d loved for three decades, the one I had mourned and hoped to rebuild a life with, so utterly forget, betray, and aggressively try to destroy me, turning our sacred past into a weapon of bitter cruelty? From that profound agony, a new, fiery determination ignited: I would reclaim my talent, prove my worth, and independently forge an extraordinary New York life, establishing my own success story far from his toxic shadow.