“Thanks for the plot of my best-selling novel,” I wrote; “you were right, it was a scarecrow, but this scarecrow just burned down your field while you looked the other way.”
Months later, I publicly revealed that I was the author behind the pseudonym; I appeared on magazine covers, not as a perfect wife, but as a writer who turned pain into power.
I spoke about emotional abuse, invisible postpartum, and women treated like scenery; my story became a megaphone for thousands of messages from women who recognized their own reflection in my book.
The film rights were sold for a fortune, securing my children’s education and the financial independence he always believed I would never achieve without his last name.
I returned to writing pure fiction, in a bright office overlooking the garden where Leo, Sam, and Noah played, knowing that they saw me as more than just « the CEO’s ex. »
I would think of Mark sometimes when I read new news about his legal troubles, but sympathy never came; he chose every step of the road to his own downfall.
I too finally chose mine: to tell the truth with the tool it always underestimated, my written voice, and to become the protagonist of my story, not its footnote.
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