บททั้งหมดของ FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET: บทที่ 101 - บทที่ 110

The manuscript grew, a quiet stack of pages on the corner of my desk. It was my secret, my meditation. I wrote of fear and fury, of courtrooms and quiet compromises, but always, the through-line was the steady, humming constant of Arthur’s presence. Writing it felt like weaving a final, strong thread through the tapestry of our lives, securing all the loose and frayed ends.Winter arrived, bringing short, brilliant days and long, cozy nights. One such evening, LJ and Clara came for dinner, their cheeks rosy from the cold. After the dishes were cleared, Clara turned to me, her expression thoughtful.“Gwen, LJ told me you’ve been writing. About your life.”I felt a flicker of surprise, then a protective urge. I hadn’t shared it with anyone but Arthur. “I am,” I said cautiously.“I was wondering,” she began, hesitant but earnest. “For my senior history class… we’re studying local narratives, the stories that don’t make the textbooks. Would you… would you consider letting them read a part

The quiet that settled after the book’s release was a balm, a deep, resonant silence that felt earned. The story was out. It belonged to the world now, and in giving it away, Arthur and I had found a new, profound privacy within our little house by the sea. My days were no longer structured by the frantic energy of writing. The completed manuscript of The Sanctuary sat on my desk, a neat, physical testament to a journey ended. I spent my mornings in the garden, my afternoons lost in novels, simply a consumer of stories, not a creator.Arthur, however, had been thoroughly bitten by the bug. His clandestine scribbling in the black moleskine notebook became a daily ritual. He’d sit by the window, frowning in concentration before chuckling to himself and scratching out a line.“The postmistress is now a former MI6 agent,” he announced one afternoon, a gleam in his eye. “It explains her encyclopedic knowledge of everyone’s business.”“Does the grumpy retired surgeon figure it out?” I asked

The word “retreat” seemed to hang in the airless room, expanding to fill every molecule of space. A step backward. Not a lunge. Not a threat. A retreat. The foundation of my life, the story I had told myself, my husband, my son, the courts—the story that had allowed me to live with myself for forty-five years—crumbled into dust in the span of a single, shattering sentence.I felt the blood drain from my face. My hands, clasped tightly in my lap, were ice. I couldn’t look at Arthur. I couldn’t bear to see the dawning horror in his eyes. For forty-five years, he had believed my lie. He had built his love for me, his protection of me, on the bedrock of my heroism. And it was all a lie.Eleanor’s voice cut through the static in my head, sharp and clear as a diamond-tipped drill. “Detective, this is a deathbe

The letters felt like live wires in my hands, humming with a truth I hadn't dared to hope for. Salvatore Bianchi wasn't the villain. He was a casualty of the same rigid social forces that had constrained my mother. The narrative of a vengeful daughter collapsed under the weight of his own heartbreaking decency. I wasn't fighting for my innocence—I knew what I had done—but I was fighting against a grotesque caricature of my motives.I descended from the attic, the dust of the past clinging to my clothes, a new resolve solidifying inside me. The guest room door was still closed. I didn't knock. Instead, I went to the kitchen and began making his favorite breakfast: fluffy scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, toast with the particular jam he liked. It was a small, domestic act of war. A declaration that our life, our routines, would not be so easily surrendered.I set

The week after the DA’s announcement unfolded with a surreal, gentle slowness, like convalescence. The world didn't change. The sun still rose, the coffee still brewed, the waves still crashed. But the quality of the air in our little house was different. Lighter. The silence between Arthur and I was no longer fraught with unsaid perils, but had returned to its old, comfortable nature—a shared space, not a minefield.We were on the deck, a week after "the call," as we’d come to refer to it. Arthur was frowning at his moleskine, chewing on the end of his pen. I was attempting to sketch the gnarled cypress tree, my results looking less like Elena’s tortured masterpiece and more like a child’s drawing of a broccoli floret.“The gardener did it with the fertilizer,” Arthur muttered, not looking up. “It’s too obvious. What if… what if it was the compost? More poetic. A metaphor for how the town’s secrets had been festering for years.”I smirked, adding a particularly lopsided branch to my