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Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Muted Wife’s Return: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

21 Kabanata

PROLOGUE

|| Ava' POV ||The fact that my life was far from perfect was a fact I had to live with and of course make myself embrace ever since I was a young girl.I had a father who gambled away everything he touched…and a brother who treated me like something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe…and a condition that made the whole world see me as less than human.I had long stopped expecting things to go smoothly. Until I met and fell in love with Xander three years ago. He had been the one person who just made it enough to keep going regardless of what the whole world thought of me.Never in a million years did I think or imagine that a day would come where I would watch my entire life as I knew it fall apart before my very own eyes.But that was what was happening now….that was what I was seeing as I looked at Xander from across the table at the restaurant he had chosen for our Valentine's Day dinner.The candles between us flickered. Couples at nearby tables laughed and fed each other desse

CHAPTER ONE

Ava’s POV~~~"I hate you to the bone, do you know that?"His voice hit me before I even had a chance to fully process what was happening. I had been standing by the living room entrance when Adrian came in, and I had made the mistake — the same mistake I made every single day — of hoping that today would be different."You are nothing but a malicious, manipulative bitch who ruined my life, and you dare to stand there looking at me like I owe you something. Like I should feel sorry for you."I raised my hands quickly, shaking my head, trying to sign that he had it wrong. “No, that is not it. All I wanted was…” "Get out of my sight." His voice dropped to something quieter and far more dangerous than the yelling. "I mean it, Ava. I am tired of seeing your stupid face every single day. Just get out of my sight."He brushed past me so hard that my shoulder jerked backward, and then he was gone — storming out of the living room, his footsteps heavy on the marble floor until the sound of th

CHAPTER TWO

Ava’s POVI had no idea how long I had been unconscious.The last thing I remembered was the doctors barking instructions at each other across the room, Mrs. Chen frantically trying to reach Adrian on the phone while the call went straight to voicemail, and me trying too — several times, my fingers shaking against the screen — before the pain had swallowed everything whole and the world went dark.Somewhere between all of that and pushing my daughter into the world, I had passed out.The steady beeping of the machines was what pulled me back. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking against the pale hospital light, and found a nurse moving quietly around the room beside me. I reached out and touched her arm, and she turned with a warm smile that immediately softened the sharp edges of my disorientation."Oh, you are finally awake! We are so glad." She placed a gentle hand briefly over mine. "You have been out for twelve hours, Mrs. Cole."Twelve hours.I sat up slightly and raised my hands. M

CHAPTER THREE

{Adrian's POV}Guilt was not an emotion I was particularly familiar with. I had spent most of my adult life making decisions with clarity and conviction, and I rarely looked back at them long enough to second-guess myself. But for the past several hours, it had been sitting in the center of my chest like something heavy and immovable, and no amount of reasoning had managed to shift it.It had started the moment I picked up my phone.Missed calls from Mrs. Chen. Fourteen of them. Then a string of messages, each one more urgent than the last, and finally the one that made my stomach drop completely — the notification that my wife had gone into labor and delivered our child while I was asleep in a hotel room across the city.I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time after reading that last message, staring at the screen.Vivian had suggested I put my phone away the previous evening to avoid distractions while we worked. We had been locked in preparation for the Sterling Group investme

CHAPTER FOUR

{Ava's POV}I watched Adrian step out of the room to take his call and felt my shoulders sink under the weight of something I was too tired to name. The nerve of him — walking in here with that blank, impenetrable expression, as though I was the one who had done something wrong. As though I was the one who owed an explanation.Movement at the edge of my vision pulled my attention away from the door.Vivian stepped closer to the bed, and the smile she wore was the kind that never quite reached the eyes — polished and deliberate, the smile of a woman who had decided exactly what she wanted to say before she opened her mouth."Congratulations on the baby," she said warmly, as though she meant it. Then she tilted her head slightly. "But I hope you understand, Ava, that a child does not change anything. If anything, it might speed things along. Adrian despises you — everyone around him knows it — and now that you have delivered, there is very little reason for him to keep this arrangement g

CHAPTER FIVE

{Ava's POV}I stared at the message I had just sent and listened to my heart pound.Mr. Harold Bennett had been my father's closest friend and business partner for nearly two decades — the kind of man who had been a fixture at our dinner table when my mother was still alive, who had always spoken to me directly and without the particular brand of pity that most people defaulted to when they looked at me. I had not heard from him in years. Life had pulled us into separate orbits after my father's spiral deepened and the company began to deteriorate, and I had not had the courage or the reason to reach out.Until now.The reply came through a few minutes later: This is such a pleasant surprise, my dear. Let us meet tomorrow morning to talk properly. He included an address and a time, and I read it twice before setting my phone down on the nightstand.I looked across the room at my daughter sleeping in her crib.My mother had built that company. It had been her vision, her effort, her na

CHAPTER SIX

{Ava's POV}Adrian covered the distance between us in three long strides and grabbed my wrist before I had even fully processed that he was moving."What did you just say?" His voice was low and tight, the kind of quiet that was somehow louder than shouting.I wrenched my wrist free and signed again, slower this time, making sure every word was unmistakable. “I want a divorce.”His face flushed a deep, ugly red. "A divorce." He spat out the word. "You have the nerve — the absolute nerve — to stand in my house and demand a divorce? You?" He took another step toward me, close enough that I had to hold my ground deliberately. "You went to extraordinary lengths to trap yourself into this marriage, Ava. You ruined my life to get here. So let me make something very clear to you — you will leave when I decide you leave. Not a moment before. You do not get to walk in and out of my life on your own schedule."I raised my hands to respond but he was not finished."And put your hands down." His

CHAPTER SEVEN

{Ava's POV}He walked toward me like the years between us had not happened. Like he had not ended things the way he did, in a restaurant, on Valentine's Day, with words I had spent a long time trying to scrub out of my memory. He moved with the easy confidence of a man who had never once considered that he might not be welcome, and when he smiled, it was the same smile I had once thought was the safest thing in my world."Ava." He stopped a few feet away, his eyes moving over my face with something that looked genuinely warm. "It has been too long. Can we talk? Even just for a few minutes?"I looked at him.I thought about the last thing he had ever said to me — the real last thing, not the softened version I sometimes allowed myself to remember, but the actual words. Does being mute mean you are stupid too?” I thought about sitting alone at that table while couples celebrated around me, blinking back tears I refused to shed in public, walking four blocks home on shaking legs to find

CHAPTER EIGHT

{Ava's POV}Adrian was in the living room when I walked through the front door, and he turned the moment he heard me come in."Where the hell have you been?" His eyes moved over me with that familiar combination of suspicion and contempt. "You just gave birth a few days ago and you are barely home. What is this, Ava? You are not pregnant anymore so now it is time to start disappearing whenever you feel like it?"I set my bag down and signed. I went out."Out." He repeated it flatly. "Out where? With who? Because from where I am standing it looks like the moment that baby arrived you decided motherhood was optional and went right back to doing whatever it is women like you do when no one is watching."I went very still.I had let a lot of things go over the past ten months. I had swallowed insults about my intelligence, my character, my motives, my worth as a human being. I had absorbed every variation of the word useless until it had almost started to feel like background noise. But th

CHAPTER NINE

{Ava's POV}I let Margaret's words settle into the air around me and did nothing with them.I had learned a long time ago that there was a particular kind of person who fed on reaction — who sharpened their cruelty specifically against other people's pain — and that the most devastating thing you could do to someone like that was simply refuse to give them what they came for. So I kept my expression composed, my spine straight, and walked past her into the house as though she had said nothing more remarkable than good evening.The sitting room was full when we entered. Warm light, the low murmur of conversations already in progress, family members scattered across the furniture in small clusters. I recognized a handful of faces from previous dinners and moved through the space quietly, staying close enough to Adrian to appear present without actually being required to engage.Then I saw her.Vivian was standing near the fireplace in a deep green dress, a glass of wine in one hand, laug

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