Too Late, Ethan: The Comeback Queen

I was standing in the center of the gallery, holding a glass of expensive champagne, when the screens behind me flickered and my life ended. It was supposed to be an art unveiling, but the monitors shifted to fake footage of me handing evidence to the FBI. My fiancé, Ethan, looked at me like I was a sick dog that needed to be put down. My father slapped me across the face in front of everyone, disowning me to save his own skin. That was when Luca Vitti, the city’s most dangerous man, stepped in. He cleared the room and took my hand. I thought he was saving me. I didn't realize he was just collecting a new pet. I was locked in his estate, isolated and terrified. Then, my healthy mother suddenly "died" of pneumonia in a Vitti clinic. Days later, I saw Luca’s frail stepsister, Clara, breathing easily for the first time in her life. She had my mother’s lungs. I became nothing more than a breeding vessel. When I fell pregnant, I overheard Luca and Ethan planning my death. "Once the kid is cut out, she's a loose end," Luca had said. They were going to kill me and give my son to the woman who stole my mother's breath. I couldn't let that happen. So, I staged a tragedy. I induced labor in secret, hid my living son, and placed a fake corpse in the crib with a note: The Vitti Legacy. I escaped while they mourned. Five years later, Luca finally found the doctor’s confession. He learned that Clara had orchestrated everything. He opened the velvet box I left behind and realized it was empty. Now, he knows I didn't kill his son. I saved him from becoming a monster like his father.

I returned to Boston after three years, not for forgiveness, but to die. My family, who blamed me for my mother's death, had cast me out, replacing me with a quiet, grateful orphan named Gabriela. She stole my father's love, my brother's affection, and my childhood sweetheart, Corey. Now, terminally ill, my only wish was to reclaim my mother's wedding dress, a final piece of her to hold onto. But Gabriela was wearing it to marry Corey. When I confronted her, she destroyed my mother's locket and cursed me to drop dead. In a blind rage, I slapped her. She shrieked, stabbed her own arm, and framed me for the attack. As my family and Corey looked on with disgust, calling me a maniac, my body gave out. I collapsed, coughing up blood, my secret illness revealed in the most brutal way possible. "You always blame me," I gasped, the words bubbling out with blood. "But I was just... dying." Their faces filled with dawning horror, but it was too late. I was already gone. Until I opened my eyes again, and my mother, who had been waiting for me all along, took my hand. "We'll be reborn," she promised, her eyes blazing with fury at the family who had destroyed me. "Together. As mother and daughter, again."

While I was fighting for my life in the delivery room, my husband was on the front page of every tabloid, caught in a scandalous affair. He never came to see me or our newborn son. Instead, he whisked his actress mistress away to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps, dismissing his betrayal as a mere "business arrangement." When his mistress brazenly appeared in my home, she taunted me, claiming my husband wished I had died in childbirth. Then, she revealed a paternity test claiming my son wasn't his. My husband believed her. He believed the lies of the woman who secretly snuck into our nursery to pinch and bruise our helpless, sleeping baby. He took her side, shielded her from me, and even tried to take my son away to raise with her. I had lost my parents and my brother, and now I was losing everything else. I was an orphan, a betrayed wife, and they were trying to take the only thing I had left: my child. But they underestimated me. They thought Kane Powell was the most powerful person I knew. They were wrong.

The first time my husband tried to have me killed, he used our eight-year-old daughter as the bait. After I discovered his affair with a woman whose college tuition I was paying, he staged our daughter's kidnapping to lure me into a trap. I woke up in a hospital, my legs amputated, my womb removed, a permanent cripple. My husband, Eugene, played the part of the grieving spouse perfectly, promising police he' d find the monsters responsible. But I overheard him whispering to our daughter in the hallway. "You were so brave," he praised her. "You made Mommy believe you were in danger. It was the only way to stop her from leaving us." Her reply destroyed what was left of my soul. "I like Brenna better anyway. She's prettier than Mommy." They thought they had broken me, leaving me a shattered shell of a woman. So I let them believe it. I faked my own suicide and vanished. Now, three years later, I've returned. Standing on two legs of polished steel, I'm the CEO of a robotics empire, and I'm here to burn their world to the ground.

The last thing I remembered was the freezing cold of a lonely alley, the bitter taste of cheap whiskey, and the image of a newspaper: a glossy photo of my ex-wife, Sarah, and her new husband, Mark Thompson, cradling their perfect baby. My final breath fogged in the winter air as I died with the brutal truth ringing in my mind. I had failed them-my son, Leo, and my mother, Susan, both lying in fresh graves, victims of Sarah' s abandonment and my naive loyalty. For four years, I toiled, clinging to her empty promises, while they withered away from neglect and poverty in our crumbling home. I' d even sold a kidney to save them, but the money came too late; my mother starved, and Leo succumbed to a preventable fever. At their funeral, Sarah returned not to mourn, but to accuse, to divorce, and to flaunt her new life with Mark-a life built on our ruins. Then, a sharp, ragged gasp tore through me. I wasn' t in an alley, but on the cold, splintered floorboards of my own bedroom, the air thick with the scent of sickness. My heart hammered as I saw them: my mother, Susan, frail but breathing, and Leo, flushed with fever but alive, nestled in his crib. A quick glance at the calendar confirmed it: three days before their deaths. The raw grief, fused with a cold, hard rage, ignited a fire in my gut. No more silence. No more waiting. "Mom," I declared, my voice steady, "We' re leaving. We' re going to find Sarah." I had a second chance, and this time, I wouldn' t just survive; I would make them pay.

I gave up my music journalism career, piece by piece, to build Nathaniel Roberts' country music empire. He was my college sweetheart, my golden boy, the man I poured my soul into making a star. Then, his new pop-country princess co-star, Gabrielle, called me, her voice sickeningly sweet, telling me Nathaniel' s credit card was maxed out. She was in our bed, and I heard the rustle of our expensive sheets, the ones I picked out. I didn' t scream, I didn' t cry. I simply packed everything he ever bought me into garbage bags and told him to get out. He laughed, calling me dramatic, but agreed to a divorce, assuming I was after a final payday. He gave me a massive settlement and an iron-clad NDA, smugly believing he' d bought my silence and dignity. Months later, his manager called, oozing fake sympathy, inviting me to a reality show, "Second Takes," for "closure." I knew their true plan: to make me look pathetic, clinging to him so he could gently reject me, cleaning up his image after the cheating scandal. They wanted me to be his public doormat, boosting his new duet with Gabrielle. I sobbed into the phone, playing my part perfectly, swearing I missed him, begging to get him back. But their elaborate scheme was about to backfire spectacularly. They thought I wanted his heart, but I was about to go for his wallet, his freedom, and his entire career.