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CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FOUR

Author: Authoresstreasure
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-12-04 00:15:00

CLARISSA.

The car felt smaller with every mile I put behind us; shrinking, folding inward, and turning into a pressurized container for emotions none of us were ready to unpack. My hands clung to the steering wheel, my knuckles aching, my pulse thudding loud enough to drown out the sound of the road as I sped down. The heat coming off Bruce was impossible to ignore. He sat slouched, fighting his injuries with the same stubbornness he fought everything else. Sweat clung to his brow, and every breath he took sounded so ragged, but he wouldn’t let himself collapse. Bruce never collapsed.

And behind us sat Freda, the woman he had chosen over me, the woman who had sliced me open in ways I still didn’t have the words for. The woman who now looked like I had climbed out of hell barefoot.

I caught glimpses of her in the rear-view mirror: fingers twitching, her eyes glassy, her hair matted with soot. Dried blood stained the side of her neck. Her lips trembled

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  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO

    CLARISSA.The first breath of open air hit me like a slap, too sharp and too cold after the burning metal stench of the collapsing tunnels. It tasted wrong on my tongue, and it made my lungs ache. I doubled forward, coughing until spots of light burst behind my eyelids. Dust still clung everywhere: in my throat, along my eyelashes, in the cracks of my chapped lips. It felt as though the underground was still inside me, refusing to let go.We stumbled into an open field, or what used to be one. The moonlight showed long patches of dead grass, and the ground cracked from years of neglect. Behind us, the earth trembled again, releasing a groan so deep it vibrated through my ribs. The entire lair was sinking, folding into itself, disappearing like a dying beast trying to swallow its own bones.I blinked through the blur and counted the silhouettes around me. Devan. Freda. Bruce. Marcus, slumped heavily between them. Four. Just four. My chest tightened.I turn

  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-ONE

    BRUCE. My instincts didn’t just rise the moment the ground convulsed under my feet, it detonated. The tremor shot up my legs, rattling through my bones, and before thought could even form, I lunged.Antonio barely had time to turn. I tackled him with the full weight of a man's hours of unresolved fury. We slammed into the metal flooring, dust exploding around us in a choking cloud. The ceiling screamed overhead, sheets of steel peeling away like paper. But I didn’t hear any of it. All I heard was Antonio’s breath hitching beneath me, the small, sharp sounds of a man losing control for the first time.I drove my elbow into Antonio’s ribs, pinning him by sheer force, my teeth gritted so hard that pain shot up my jaw. This wasn't me trying to be strategic; it was something that lived deeper than words, the impulse to end the threat before it could rise again.Antonio writhed, grabbing for leverage, but I slammed him back down, our bodies rolling through debris that cut into my skin.“St

  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY

    CLARISSA.The world narrowed to a single blinding point the moment I saw my father tied to that chair. He sat beneath a stark overhead light that carved every line of strain into his face, his wrists bound so tightly the ropes buried themselves into the skin. The others shouted my name, but their voices sounded like they were coming from somewhere far behind thick glass.I didn’t care. I ran.My knees hit the concrete as I skidded to a halt beside him. “Dad—Dad, look at me,” I whispered, grabbing his face as if I could anchor him back into reality. His eyes fluttered open, raw with pain but still trying, always trying, to protect me.“Clarissa—don’t—” he rasped, tugging weakly against the ropes. “It’s not safe—”But I already had my hands on the knots, tugging, clawing, and shaking them with urgency. “I’m not leaving you,” I muttered, my teeth clenched.

  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-NINE

    ANTONIO.I hadn’t tied Marcus to the chair for the sake of a spectacle. Making a spectacle was for amateurs, for sadists, for people who confused brutality for brilliance. I did not need to spill blood to orchestrate a collapse. Pain was messy.But removal?Removal was elegant.Everyone else and everything centered at Marcus, the quiet axis they spun around without ever acknowledging it. Clarissa looked to him for moral grounding. Bruce deferred to him without realizing it, and so was the case with everyone else in their individual ways. Removing Marcus was like removing the center pole of a tent, and I wanted to watch how fast it collapsed.The spotlight overhead buzzed faintly, turning Marcus into a silhouette of stillness and restraint. His head hung slightly, his wrists tied but not painfully, his ankles secured in a way that prevented movement but allowed circulation. He could breathe. He could think. He could speak if he chose to.

  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT

    ANTONIO.I stood silently behind the reinforced glass of the observation chamber, invisible as I watched the group assemble beneath the failing lights like moths drawn to a dying flame. Clarissa reached Marcus first, her breath sharp, frantic, hitching in her throat the way they always did when fear and responsibility tangled inside her. Bruce hovered a few feet behind, every muscle locked, his jaw grinding, his shoulders squared in a desperate attempt to look unshaken. It didn’t fool me. Nothing about Bruce ever fooled me. Freda trembled like a rattled wire. Devan’s eyes darted everywhere, trying to stitch meaning together from a puzzle with half the pieces missing. Isabella on her own part masked panic with sheer force of will, her spine straight but her fingertips subtly trembling.Perfect. They moved exactly the way I expected them to, exactly where the system predicted they would stand, and exactly how it predicted they would react.I folded my

  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN

    CLARISSA.I hurried towards Devan first. My knees hit the cracked concrete before I even realized I had fallen. My hands, shaking, filthy, and scraped raw from digging, went straight to his face. Dirt crumbled beneath my palms as I swept it away, revealing bruises, a gash near his brow, and eyes still fogged with the disorientation of someone dragged too close to death.“Hey,” I whispered, my thumb brushing his cheek. “Hey, look at me.”Devan’s breathing came ragged, ripped from deep inside his chest, but he lifted his head anyway. When his gaze met mine, something inside me cinched tight, the way it used to whenever I saw him looking so weak and helpless. His body wavered, sway­ing toward collapse, and I slid an arm around him instantly.He leaned into me, not fully but enough to remind me that we had both stood for each other, even when everything else fell apart.Behind us, Bruce paced like an animal just releas

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