All Chapters of HIS MISTRESS, MY REVENGE: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The candles are still burning.Two little flames sitting in the center of the dining table. I have been watching them for a while now. Not because they are beautiful, but because watching them gives me something to do other than check the door.The food went cold an hour ago. The wine I opened at six has been sitting there so long it has stopped trying. Both plates still set. Both chairs still pushed in. The whole table exactly as I arranged it at five this afternoon when I was still the kind of woman who believed tonight was going to go the way I planned.I called him at seven. Five rings. Voicemail. I told myself traffic. A late meeting. Normal things. I called again at nine. Voicemail again. I told myself his phone is on silent, he is in a room full of people, he will walk through that door any minute and feel terrible about it and I will pretend I am not hurt because that is what I do. I make it easy. I make it fine.I smooth the front of the blue dress and reach for my phone one

It had barely been an hour. Vanessa was already on the sofa, one hand resting on her stomach, completely at ease, like she had been sitting in that spot for years. And that was when I heard her voice carry in from the sitting room, warm and unhurried, the tone of someone who had already decided this was her home.“Claire, could you take my bags up to the master bedroom? Just set them inside the door, thank you.”I put the glass down.I walked to the kitchen doorway. Vanessa was at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the banister, already turning to go up. Claire, our housekeeper, was reaching for the bags. Damien was standing right there. Right there, three feet away, and he was looking at his phone.“Damien,” I said.He looked up.I held his gaze for a moment. Waiting. Giving him the chance to say something, anything, to tell Claire to leave the bags, to tell Vanessa that was not how things worked here, to remember, just for one second, that I existed in this house.He looked back do

Sophia arrived within the hour of me calling her, walked through the curtain still in her work clothes, sat down beside me and took my hand and did not say I told you so even though she had every right to.Damien did not come back.Not that afternoon. Not that evening. Sophia was the one who stayed while the doctor came back and went over everything again. She was the one who asked the questions I could not find. She collected the discharge folder and the supplements and tucked them into her bag like she had been sent there specifically to do that.When it was time to leave she put her arm through mine and walked me out.She came home with me. Straight to the guest room, no discussion about it. She found blankets in the wardrobe and made herself a spot on the floor and when I told her to take the bed she looked at me like I had said something ridiculous and lay down and closed her eyes. I got into the bed and I lay there listening to her breathing slow into sleep and I thought about t