Mistress

Today is my wedding day. When we reach the ring-swapping ceremony, my wife, Ariana Holmes, suspends the ceremony for three minutes, simply because a man has barged into the venue. He glares at Ariana darkly. "Ariana Holmes, you've tattooed my heart on your chest, yet now you're marrying another man? Are you forcing me to carve my heart out of your body?" As soon as his words fall, he lifted the blade in his hand. Realization dawns on me. It turns out that the heart tattooed on Ariana's chest isn't mine, but rather, her first love's. At that moment, Ariana, who was all docile and quiet earlier, shudders violently. She slides the ring onto my finger haphazardly before rushing toward Ivan Hatfield. "What the hell do you want from me, Ivan?"

I've been dating my enemy, Sean Thompson, for four years. At first, I intended to lurk by his side and find an opportunity to get my revenge. But little do I know that a medical report with my cancer diagnosis is capable of shattering my life's plans in an instant. Since then, I've quit my job and broken up with Sean. Now that I no longer give a damn about everything, I lash out at everyone who dares approach me. Everyone is weirded out by my behavior. They all wonder what made my personality go through such a huge change to the point that I'm easily triggered by the slightest inconvenience. My family is already ruined to begin with. My parents are dead, my family has gone bankrupt, and now I'm on the verge of death. My only wish is that I can screw Sean over so that my older brother, Adrian Price, can get released from prison as soon as possible. But I can't do anything about my wish at all. At that moment, my childhood friend stands by my side, consequences be damned. He takes good care of me and cares for me as he always does. When Sean finds out that I have terminal cancer, he actually agrees to help fulfill my wish. Half a year later, Adrian is released from prison. Sean also returns the company to my family. My wish is fulfilled. Everyone wants me to keep fighting for my life and continue receiving treatment for my cancer. I know that I need to keep going for their sake, even if it means extending my life for a day or even a month longer.

My husband's first love, Annie Quinn, suffers from a nosebleed. He decides to stuff me into the fridge and make me write a letter of apology in order to punish me. "Tie up the entire fridge with a coil of rope and leave it in the wine cellar. Let her atone for her sins there quietly." I keep pounding against the fridge door with all my might, even as it makes me bleed all over the place. I hope Nathan Grayson, my husband, can let me out. Instead, Nathan takes Annie on a trip to Arci where they have fun skiing and watching the penguins waddle about. One week later, Nathan opens the fridge after returning from his trip. The moment he lays eyes on my rotten corpse, he loses his mind on the spot.

I helped my wife, Kim Carey, rise from obscurity into stardom, only to discover that she was having an affair with a rising young actor who looked like me. When I asked for a divorce, she cried and begged me not to leave. In the end, I caved in. I gave her three chances. The first time, she stayed up all night to post a public statement clarifying all the rumors between her and Emmett Stone. She canceled all her work and stayed with me for an entire week. The second time, on my birthday, she publicly announced that Emmett was her soulmate. She even released intimate photos of the two of them. She buried herself in my arms and said righteously, "Emmett is depressed. I'm only doing this to comfort him. You're the only one in my heart. This is the last time. Please believe me." Then, she abandoned me in the wilderness, just because Emmett had suffered a minor injury on his hand. The final time, my father was critically ill and urgently needed a huge sum of money for surgery. She refused to even transfer a single cent to me. "All the money has been invested in Emmett's new drama," she said coldly. "Your father won't die that quickly." That night, my father missed the best window for treatment and died on the operating table. My heart was completely shattered. When Kim finally returned home late that night, I asked for a divorce once more.

I spent five years by Casey Fusco's side, turning him from a beggar in the slums to a mafia Don. On the second day he put on the family ring, his first love came knocking on our door with an ultrasound report. Casey pushed the divorce papers toward me with a sorry look on his face. "She's pregnant. I have to give her the position of Donna." My brethren tried to talk me out of doing something foolish, since I had nearly lost my life while trying to help him climb up the ranks. But contrary to their expectations, all I did was sign the papers calmly without making a fuss. "Congratulations on having your wish come true, Don Fusco."

My billionaire husband suffered from chronic insomnia for years. Only the sleep balm I made could help him sleep. On the night of our seventh wedding anniversary, his childhood sweetheart poured a basin of scalding water over the old camphor tree in our garden. I wept and tried to save the tree as she apologized, “I didn’t know you used its leaves to make the sleep balm.” My husband gently comforted her and ordered his men to tie me to the tree trunk instead. “What a precious tree. You’ll spend the rest of your days with it!” With my wrist fractured as a result, I filed for divorce immediately. A month later, my husband was unable to sleep late one night. He stood in the garden and stared at the withered camphor tree.

At the afterparty, my daughter, Mia Volpe, suffers from a sudden asthma attack. She collapses to the carpeted floor and goes through a seizure on the spot. But my Capo husband, Lorenzo Volpe, wraps an arm around his secretary, Sophia Bianchi, while watching Mia suffer before his eyes. Sophia had once shown him a forged paternity test of Mia and him. As such, he firmly believes that Mia is the bastard child of me and a Soldato. When Mia tries to reach out for Lorenzo, her complexion already bluish-purple from suffocation, he merely averts his gaze with a disgusted look on his face. "Daddy… S-Save… me…" I look everywhere for Mia's inhaler like a madwoman, only to realize that it's already empty. Sophia covers her mouth while tittering softly. "Dear me, Mia sure has an affinity for acting! Elena, I can't believe you and your daughter are willing to go to such lengths just to get Lorenzo to pay attention to you! "Since Mia likes acting that much, she might as well make the performance perfect." She lifts a high-heeled foot before crushing Mia's fingers, which were attempting to curl around Lorenzo's pant leg. Poor Mia was in so much pain, yet she couldn't let out a single sound. All she could do was scream silently into the void with her mouth wide open. I kneeled on the floor, my forehead already bleeding from smashing it against the floor repeatedly. "Lorenzo Volpe, Mia is your flesh and blood! Please, I'm begging you! Give me some medicine or call a doctor!" But Lorenzo just looks at me coldly, as though he's looking at trash. "A bastard like her is better off dead. Elena Corleone, stop using such underhanded methods to spoil everyone's mood." At that moment, what little love I still harbor for this man completely dissipates as I feel Mia's heartbeat gradually weaken. I no longer beg him for help. With trembling hands, I press the button on the emergency transmitter that I've sworn I'd never touch. That transmitter is the direct line to the highest authority in Smeraldia—my father, Don Vito Corleone.

I manage to drag Jared Sheppard from death's door. Since then, I've accompanied him from his poorest times all the way to the current moment, when he's now worth tens of millions of dollars. On the day his company goes public, he gets engaged to another woman. "Gabrielle, she's different from you. She's an actual princess of the elite. I need to give her an official title, so I can't fool around with you anymore." I never bothered defending myself. It's time for this farce to end, anyway. After all, there's still a man waiting for me at home, who's been calling me his princess since I was a little girl.

On the day I was diagnosed with uremia, my husband asked me to donate a kidney to his one true love. I turned him down, claiming I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t expect him, my own husband, who was a doctor, to drag me to trial. The charge? Ingratitude. If found guilty, I would be executed on the spot, my kidney forcibly harvested, my soul condemned for eternity. But if the charges were dismissed, my husband would face immediate execution. His love would fall into ruin, plagued by illness and poverty. Everyone pressured me to confess. After all, when I nearly died in a car crash years ago, it was her blood transfusion that had pulled me back from the brink of death. But what they didn’t know was… I had been reborn. In my past life, I died never knowing my husband and his lover had orchestrated the car crash that nearly killed me. Now that I had returned, I would tear off their masks and expose their malice for all to see.

During the holiday, my six-year-old son received his cleft-lip surgery. He wore a mask and sat quietly in our family bookstore, engrossed in a picture book. A young man came in, pinching his nose dramatically as he swaggered up to the manager. "Why did you let someone with an infectious disease in here?" he demanded loudly. "Get them out!" The manager winced. "Sir, I'm sorry, but I don't have the authority to remove other customers." Undeterred, the man marched up to me. "Be wise and get out of here. My girlfriend is Imogen Slater, CEO of the Slater Group. You don't want to mess with me." I froze in stunned silence. Imogen despised all men except me, and this guy claimed she was his girlfriend.