I Married My Father’s Friend to Take My RevengeChapter 1

I got married when I was twenty to my dad’s friend, Dominic Faviano.

He was eighteen years older. The kind of man people called dangerous when they thought I couldn’t hear. Cold. Ruthless. Always in control. But when it came to me, he acted like I was glass.

If I said I liked something, he’d buy it before I could even finish the sentence. If I said my stomach hurt, he’d cancel meetings, make ginger tea, and feed it to me like I was some fragile thing.

Sometimes at night, when he kissed me, his voice would go low and rough. “Be good, baby,” he’d whisper, like loving me was something that broke him a little.

All his passwords, usernames, accounts... they all had one name: “Loriana”

I thought it was because of ‘My Loriana’, the song I was playing when we met. I thought it was romantic.

But then one night, I was cleaning his study and opened one of his old photo albums.

There she was. A girl who looked like me, but prettier. Softer. Smiling beside a piano. On the back of every photo were the same words:

“My dearest Loriana.”

That night, something inside me cracked.

I don’t remember falling, only the sharp pain blooming low in my belly, and the wetness spreading down my thighs.

“Call 911,” I whispered to the maid. “Now! Please. And don't ever... call Dominic.”

When I woke up in the hospital, the world felt too white, too still. A nurse with soft eyes said, “I’m sorry… The baby didn’t make it.”

Then she asked if I wanted to see the child.

I turned my face away. My whole body was trembling.

“No,” I whispered. “Please, no.”

I had been five months along. The baby was gone.

When they discharged me, I went home to an empty house. I sat at the dining table and wrote out the divorce papers by hand. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but I finished.

Then I called Dominic.

He usually picked up fast. Always saying something like, “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” with that fake warmth in his voice.

But that night, he didn’t answer.

I called again. And again. Twenty-three times.

When he finally picked up, there was music in the background. Laughter. Glasses clinking.

“Man, you really left your pregnant wife for your old flame?” someone said, laughing.

“She’s just a stand-in. Everyone knows he’s been obsessed with Loriana for years,” another voice said.

Then someone else joined in, “That wife of his though... I’d keep her quiet and sweet like that.”