His Fake Sister Destroyed Our Marriage

By the time Bella Chase had been stabbed eighty-eight times by the kidnappers, her husband, Xavier Donovan, was busy celebrating the birthday of yet another one of Sophia Lester's pet snakes, her hundred-and-eighth. Xavier's voice came through the phone, cold and impatient. "Bella, you've pulled this stunt one too many times. Next time, at least try something original. I told you I'd come see you after I finished celebrating with Sophia." Right before the line went dead, Bella heard Sophia's cheerful voice in the background. "Xavier, come blow out the candles." A tear slid down Bella's cheek, and she knew Xavier would not come to save her. Xavier was the Donovan family's only heir, the kind of golden boy everyone envied, but his obsession with snakes had scared off more than a few socialites. Even so, he had once killed his favorite snake for Bella. Three years earlier, Xavier had knelt outside Chase Manor for hours to convince Bella's parents to approve the marriage. He had promised to love Bella and protect her for the rest of his life. For the first two years of their marriage, Bella had been the woman every girl in San Francisco envied. In the third year of their marriage, Sophia returned from abroad. At first, Xavier said Sophia was his mother's goddaughter and that he saw her as a little sister. Bella believed him, and when Sophia complained of a cough in the middle of the night, Bella drove out herself to get her medicine. When Sophia decided she wanted Bella's designer bag and Bella's bedroom, Bella moved out of the master suite with Xavier and gave the room to her. When Sophia ran into trouble at work, Bella asked Xavier to hire her as his assistant. And whenever Sophia was upset, the wedding Bella and Xavier had already postponed again and again would somehow get called off again and again, until, despite being legally married for three years, they had canceled it nine times. After that, Bella walked into Xavier's office and found Sophia's stockings and lingerie. By then, Bella had been stabbed eighty-eight times, and her clothes were already soaked through with blood. Her wrist hung limp, and just as the eighty-ninth blow was about to fall, the warehouse doors burst open, and her parents stormed in with the police. In the ambulance, her mother, Harper Chase, gripped Bella's hand tightly. "Bella, let's go. We can't fight the Donovan family, but we can leave the country. Your father and I bought a house in Switzerland years ago." Pain and bitterness twisted across Bella's face. "Okay. I'll get a divorce, and then we'll go to Switzerland." She was taken to the hospital, where she remained bedridden for three days. On the third day, just when she was finally able to get out of bed, Xavier showed up. He sat down beside her bed, his expression cold, and tapped his knuckles against the bedside table. "Bella, have you really sunk so low that you're hurting yourself now? You seriously think this is worth it?" Bella stared at him in shock. "What?" A mocking smile tugged at Xavier's lips. "You got Donovan security to help you stage this whole thing, and that's the best performance you could give me?" Then he tapped the table again. "I already told you, Sophia is like a sister to me. She's never going to take your place. I gave you my heart and everything. What I owe her is something different." Bella didn't know a single person on the Donovan family's security team, and Xavier had clearly forgotten something else too. As his wife, she had never truly been accepted, and she rarely even set foot in Donovan Manor. She had never had that kind of pull. Maybe the sight of her lying there so pale and broken stirred something in him, because Xavier finally said one more thing, "Didn't you want a wedding? Fine. We'll have one in two weeks." Bella said nothing. The second Xavier left, she pulled out her phone and called Sophia. "I sent over the divorce papers. Have him sign them." Sophia sounded amused. "And why would I do that?" Bella's voice went flat. "Because if he doesn't divorce me, then you're not just the other woman. You're the woman sleeping with her own brother." Bella then hung up, and a tear slid down her cheek.