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CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND TWO

Author: Authoresstreasure
last update Last Updated: 2025-10-18 21:44:56

ISABELLA.

The photographs haunted me. The images… grainy shots of me with the cloaked figure refused to fade from my memory, hours after I had slipped out of Bruce’s mansion. Every picture looked detailed: my head bowed as I exchanged something with the cloaked figure, the faint tremor in my stance, and the unmistakable evidence that someone had been there, watching.

I sat in the dim glow of my apartment, a glass of whiskey in my hand. The photographs lay hidden in a folder in my bag, but I could still feel them, like a heartbeat against my ribs.

I took a sip of my whiskey and closed my eyes, inhaling slowly. Fear is weakness. That was what my father used to say. And Bruce had fed on fear. He had once told me with that infuriating calm of his, that panic was just a public confession of defeat.

Well, I wasn't defeated, at least not yet.

I drained the contents of my glass and rose slowly, slipping into my coat. My reflection caught briefly in the mirror opposite me. The perfect outlook
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  • Divorced: Ex-wife Heiress Strikes Back   CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE

    CLARISSA.We stumbled out of the collapsing building like a procession of half-formed ghosts, moving on instinct rather than strength. It felt as if we had been spit out rather than rescued, thrown from the darkness into a world too bright, too open. Smoke clung to my clothes like a second skin, filling my lungs even as I gasped for fresh air. Dust coated my tongue, turning every swallow into a scrape as my ears rang with the echo of crumbling steel and snapping concrete.My legs wobbled beneath me, rubbery and trembling, but I forced myself to turn back toward the grotesque pile that used to be a building; a structure that had swallowed hours of our lives little by little and then, in its final act, tried to swallow us whole. My eyes darted from slab to slab, searching, refusing to accept the truth forming at the edges of her mind.Antonio wasn’t there. There was no single silhouette of him, not even a shadow pinned beneath the ruin. All I could see was j

  • 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

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