LOGINAfter three years of marriage, Athena believed she had a happy life, until the night she caught her husband in bed with the one person she trusted the most. Her sister. Humiliated and betrayed, Athena signs the divorce papers and walks away with nothing but her shattered pride. But fate has other plans. Just when everyone thinks she has been discarded, a shocking proposal changes everything. The man standing before her is powerful, cold, and completely unexpected, her ex-husband’s father. Their marriage begins as a contract, a simple arrangement meant to protect her dignity and teach his disgraceful son a lesson. But the moment Athena steps into that mansion as the new Mrs. Whitmore, the rules change. Her ex-husband must now bow his head and call the woman he betrayed Mother. Her sister, who once mocked her, is forced to watch as Athena rises to the most powerful position in the family. What started as revenge soon turns into something far more dangerous. Because the man she married to settle a score is no longer pretending. And neither is she. What Athena doesn’t know yet is that she didn’t leave her old life completely behind. A secret is already growing inside her… one that belongs to the man who betrayed her.
View MoreAthena
I left my phone on the vanity table. I realized it halfway through my meeting with Diane, my designer, when I reached into my bag to show her a reference image I had saved. The Whitmore family gala was three weeks away and there was still so much to finalize. It was the biggest event in the family’s social calendar, the kind of evening that got talked about in the city for months after. Crystal chandeliers, guest lists that read like a who’s who, everything polished to perfection. And as always, I was the one behind it. Not officially. There was no title, no credit, no acknowledgment at the dinner table. Just Athena, quietly making sure everything ran beautifully while the Whitmore name got the applause. Diane spread her sketches across the table and waited while I searched my bag a second time. “I have to run back home quickly,” I told her, reaching for my coat. “I left my phone. I won’t be long.” I stepped outside and called my driver. “Take me back to the estate please, Mr. Field.” He nodded, pulled into traffic and I leaned back in my seat, my mind already returning to the floral arrangements, the seating chart, and whether the caterers had confirmed the revised menu. Everything needed to be perfect. If anything went wrong, Callum would remind me of how clumsy and incompetent I had become at running the household. These days, he seized every little opportunity to remind me of how worthless I was to him. I was doing my best as his wife and as a daughter-in-law to the Whitmore family, but nothing I did was ever enough for my husband. The estate was quiet when we pulled through the gates. It was always quiet at this hour. I had lived here for three years and I still couldn’t call it home without feeling like I was lying to myself. I thanked Mr. Field, went inside, and made my way up to the east wing. My mind was still on the gala. The floral arrangements. Whether Diane could get the revised sketches to me before the weekend. The bedroom door was cracked open. I heard her first. “Oh God, Callum… yes… right there, baby… harder…” My stomach dropped. That voice. My baby sister’s voice. I pushed the door open. And the world ended. Callum had Petra bent over our bed, pounding into her like an animal while she moaned and clawed at the sheets like a whore in heat. I stood frozen, not believing what I was seeing. He was never like that with me. Matter of fact, I couldn’t remember the last time he touched me like he meant it and when I complained about the lack of intimacy he always said it was stress from work. And here he was, passionately with not just any woman but my sister, in a way I never got to experience with him. On our matrimonial bed. The same bed I cried in alone after every miscarriage. The same bed where I used to wait for him to touch me like he actually wanted me. They saw me. Petra gasped and yanked the sheet over her naked body. Callum pulled back, breathing hard, and grabbed his boxers like it was nothing. “Athena,” he said, his voice flat. “You weren’t supposed to be home.” I couldn’t move. My legs felt like water. “Explain.” He actually sighed. Like I was being dramatic. “There’s nothing to explain.” He fastened his waistband. “You’ve seen us. I guess there’s no point hiding it anymore.” “She’s my sister!” My voice cracked so hard it hurt. “My little sister…” “I know exactly who she is,” he cut in. “And this marriage didn’t just fall apart today, Athena. It’s been over for a long time.” His eyes moved over me, quick and dismissive. “You’re not the woman I married anymore. You’ve lost your spark and I don’t want you.” “Oh wow…” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “I’ve lost my spark?” My laugh came out brittle and hollow. “I gave up my career for you, Callum. I run this house, plan every event, carry every responsibility you dump on me. I lost pieces of myself just to be your wife. And this body you’re mocking,” my voice cracked, “it carried your children. Three times. And you weren’t there for a single one. Not once did you hold me while I bled, while I cried over what we lost.” Something flickered across his face. Not remorse. Not anger. Just ice. “That’s the point,” he said quietly, almost bored. “Three pregnancies and nothing to show for it. What kind of woman keeps losing her husband’s child over and over?” My stomach dropped. My hands shook. My knees threatened to buckle. My breath caught and the room spun. “The woman carrying my child,” he continued, his voice steady, his eyes locked on mine, “is a real woman.” I turned to Petra. She placed a hand over her flat stomach and met my eyes for the first time since this nightmare began. Calm. Almost pitying. Almost proud. It hit me like a punch straight to the chest. “Six weeks,” she said softly. “Athena, I didn’t plan this. We fell in love. I know it hurts but that’s just what happened.” She tilted her head, those familiar eyes looking at me with something close to pity. “No hard feelings, yeah? We’re still sisters.” Still sisters. I looked at her hand on her stomach. Six weeks. While I buried three pregnancies alone in this house, while I cried in hospital bathrooms and came home to a husband who made me feel like a failure, my little sister had been here the whole time. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw anything. I turned around and walked out. The hallway stretched longer than usual. My legs gave out and I pressed my back against the wall. Then I realized I wasn’t alone. I looked up and saw my father-in-law. Stellan Whitmore stood at the far end of the hallway. He didn’t move or step closer. He just watched quietly, giving me the space I clearly needed. His expression didn’t give anything away but there was a softness there, subtle, like he understood the storm I had just walked through. We held each other’s gaze for a brief moment without a word. I straightened, lifted my chin, and walked the other way even though my body trembled. I found a guest bathroom at the end of the south corridor, locked the door, and slid down against it until I was sitting on the cold floor. Then I let it out in an ugly cry. The kind that happens when something inside you actually breaks. I called Tracey. She picked up on the second ring. “Athena? Why do you sound like… are you crying?” “He was with Petra.” My voice trembled and broke. “She’s six weeks pregnant, Tracey.” Silence. Heavy. Like the world had paused. Then quietly, “I’m putting on my shoes.” “You don’t have to—” “Don’t. Move. I’ll be there in five minutes.” I hung up and dropped my head back against the door, staring at the ceiling. Three years. Three pregnancies. Every version of myself I had to give. Gone. I closed my eyes and felt the weight of everything I had lost. When I opened them again one thing became crystal clear. I swore on my life that I was not going to let Callum and Petra get away with what they had done to me without consequences.AthenaThe restaurant was the kind of place where the lighting was deliberately soft and the menus had no prices. The staff moved quietly between tables like they had been trained never to exist too visibly. Stellan had chosen a table by the window overlooking the city, and I sat across from him trying to remember the last time someone had taken me to lunch that was not a business meeting.I could not remember.That said something.“The Meridian restructuring proposal,” Stellan said as he set his glass down. “You turned that around in forty eight hours.”“The framework was already there. It just needed someone to see it properly.”“Three senior analysts looked at it before you.” He held my gaze. “None of them saw what you saw.”Something warm moved through my chest that I refused to examine too closely.“Gerald Osei called me this morning,” he continued. “He said, and I quote, whoever put together the Meridian brief needs to be kept very far away from Callum’s department bef
AthenaI was halfway through the Meridian files when my office door opened without a knock.I looked up ready to redirect whoever it was back to Clara.Then I dropped my pen.Tracey stood in the doorway with her mouth open and her eyes moving around the office like she was trying to confirm she had the right room. Then her eyes landed on me and stayed there.“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”“Tracey…”“Do not speak.” She stepped inside and closed the door and walked toward me slowly, looking me up and down with an expression caught somewhere between shock and pure delight. “What happened to you.”I laughed. “Sit down.”“I am looking at you.” She stopped in front of the desk and stared. “The hair. The suit. The office with your name on the door.” She pressed her hand flat against the desk like she needed something solid. “Athena. I have not seen you since the wedding and you have become a completely different woman.”“The same woman,” I said. “Just in better shoes.”“Those s
AthenaThe silence after the slap sat heavy over the table.Not awkward. Not stunned.Heavy.Like the entire dining room had shifted under everyone’s feet and nobody quite knew how to stand in it anymore.Callum slowly turned his face forward. A faint red mark spread across his cheekbone. His breathing had changed — sharper now, controlled too carefully, the kind of controlled that meant something was boiling just underneath it.Petra looked horrified.Not because Stellan had slapped him.Because Stellan had slapped him for me.I took a long sip of my coffee. Calm enough to make it worse.Across the table Stellan turned another page of his newspaper like none of this had disrupted his morning in the slightest. That was the thing about him. Nothing he did ever looked emotional. It looked decided.Callum swallowed once. Then laughed quietly under his breath. It wasn’t amusement. It was humiliation with nowhere to go.“Fine,” he said, staring at the table. “Let’s talk about t
AthenaBreakfast at the Whitmore table had always been a performance.Stellan sat at the head with his coffee and newspaper, quiet and unreadable in the way only he could be. Callum sat to his left, already scrolling through his phone with the restless irritation of someone looking for somewhere to put his bad mood. I took my seat while Mrs. Delgado moved around the table with the calm efficiency I had genuinely missed.Petra arrived last. She walked in wearing silk, glanced over the breakfast spread, and stopped.“I requested apple pie.”Mrs. Delgado carefully set the juice down beside her. “It isn’t on the breakfast menu, ma’am. Apple pie is usually served later in the day. I can have it ready for lunch.”“I didn’t ask what time you planned on making it.” Petra’s expression hardened. “I asked for apple pie this morning. Or is your hearing failing with the rest of you?”The air shifted.I set my fork down gently.“Petra.” My voice stayed even. “You will not speak to my sta






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