My Escape: A Marriage of Convenience

For five years, I was the perfect girlfriend. I stood by Adler when his family lost everything, helping him build a tech empire from scratch. I thought our love was real.

But one night, I heard him moaning another woman's name in his sleep-Annika, the ex who abandoned him the second his money was gone. I realized with horrifying clarity that I wasn't his love. I was his placeholder.

The cruelty was a slow burn that became an inferno. When a chandelier fell at a party, he instinctively saved her, leaving me to be crushed. He left me bleeding on the side of the road after a car crash to go comfort her.

He chose her. Every single time. He told me he loved me, but his actions screamed that I was disposable. His love wasn't a home; it was a cage built of comfortable lies.

After he abandoned me on a yacht to save Annika from her own staged drama, I was finally done. So when his sister begged me to help her escape an arranged marriage to a monstrous, disfigured recluse, I saw my escape. I texted her back, "Don't worry. I'll marry him."