All Chapters of Three Ways to Break Me: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

The next morning, nothing unusual happened, yet the strange unease from the previous day still clung to my thoughts like smoke trapped inside a room. I had hoped the night with Derrick would calm me down, smooth away the tension that had settled inside my chest, but it hadn’t helped at all. If anything, waking up only made the feeling sharper. When I opened my eyes, Derrick was already gone. That wasn’t surprising. Derrick treated discipline like religion itself. By six in the morning he would already be dressed, fed, and halfway through his plans for the day while the rest of the world still struggled to leave their beds—that includes me. I stared at the empty side beside me for a moment before stretching lazily beneath the sheets. Sunlight slipped through the curtains, touching the expensive furniture in warm gold. The apartment was silent except for the faint hum of traffic outside. Unlike Derrick, my mornings had no urgency attached to them. I wasn’t one of those miserable em

I didn’t leave anywhere after I carried out the order.The idea of going out—even for another cup of coffee—felt more like an imposter’s advice, like it was trying to lure me into meeting him again.Adrian Vale.That wasn’t even his real name. I was sure of it. I might have lied about myself to him, but I had made sure to dig into everything about him—so much that there was nothing left for him to hide.His name was Romane Antonio—the last son of a wealthy Mafia family I had crossed paths with long ago. Seven years ago, to be precise. We were both young then, and he was too naive. I took my chances to survive around him.But that was a long time ago. It wasn’t supposed to happen again. Yet now, it clearly felt like this meeting wasn’t an accident.He had found me.Not Melinda Adams—the woman I had carefully built over the years with polite smiles, quiet dresses, and an ordinary life. He had found Catt Amber. The girl who lied, stole, survived, and disappeared before the Mafia world co

My marriage had already started rotting long before I admitted it to myself—but not in the way people usually imagine. It wasn’t because I was some careless, promiscuous wife looking for excitement outside her vows.No.Everything I did was for survival.For Derrick.For us.Being with Laney wasn’t something I dreamed about at night or fantasized over like some guilty romance novel. It was something I had to do because bills never stopped arriving, rent never waited, and love alone certainly didn’t keep the lights on.Derrick worked hard—harder than most men I knew. He was a logistics supervisor for a small distribution company, constantly traveling from one warehouse project to another. Some assignments kept him away for weeks. Others dragged into months. The pay was decent enough to keep us from drowning, but not enough to give us the kind of life we were living.Yet somehow, everyone around us believed we were comfortable.A beautiful apartment downtown.A clean black SUV Derrick p