Chapter 1
Kimberly’s POV
I ended our relationship and walked away, the year Cedric Royce, my boyfriend, was at his poorest
Years later, after he’d built his empire, he pulled every string until I wore his ring. Everyone whispered I was the woman he’d never gotten over, his
treasured wife.
Then came the parade of women through our bedroom door. Night after night, different faces, different perfumes. My heart broke silently while I became the joke of our social circle – poor Kimberley, so blind to her husband’s affairs.
I didn’t scream or throw things. I just moved my things to the study giving him the space to continue his affairs
This calm acceptance drove him mad. One night, he burst into my sanctuary, pinned me against the bookshelf and crushed his mouth against mine. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he growled, fingers digging into my shoulders. “Don’t you even care?”
He never noticed the pill bottles I kept hidden.
Every morning, as he slept off another night of revenge, I crossed another day off my calendar – counting down what little time I had left.
In our third year of marriage, Cedric Royce took a young, beautiful college student as his mistress.
Her name was Katie Miller. Fresh–faced with an air of innocence–exactly his type.
Cedric kept her around for over six months.
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Besides me, Katie was the woman he’d kept in his life the longest.
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My friends whispered warnings over coffee. “Be careful, Kim,” they’d say, eyes filled with concern. “It looks like Cedric actually has feelings for this
one.”
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I first met Katie on my birthday. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I’d been having nosebleeds since morning–not just the occasional drop, but the kind that left me light–headed and staining tissues crimson. At the hospital, the doctor’s face had that careful blankness that only comes with delivering bad news. “Mrs. Horwich, I’m afraid you’ll likely only live until next spring.”
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I nodded quietly, my throat tight. “That’s alright,” I whispered, though everything inside me was screaming. How do you process an expiration date on your life?
I wasn’t afraid of dying–that strange, final darkness. But the pain terrified me. The slow deterioration, the dignity stripped away piece by piece.
There was a medication that could ease my journey out of this world–expensive, but worth every penny for a gentler goodbye.
When my bank account couldn’t cover it, I went to Cedric’s office. I hated asking him for anything, but desperation has a way of eroding pride.
Katie was there, of course. Fresh from graduation and installed as Cedric’s personal secretary–a title that fooled no one.
Cedric was in a meeting, so I sat in the waiting area, feeling the weight of stares.
Katie kept glancing my way, whispering behind manicured fingers to her colleagues: “That’s the boss’s wife? God, she’s so plain–all washed out and skeletal, like she’s already got one foot in the grave.”
“You all say I look like her,” she continued with a smirk, “but I don’t see it. I’m so much prettier.”
My reflection caught in the polished glass confirmed her assessment–bare–faced and drowning in layers meant to hide my shrinking frame. The disease was eating me from the inside out, leaving hollows where fullness used to be.
She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t look good. And I was dying–a fact I was still struggling to accept myself.
A colleague yanked Katie’s arm, hissing warnings: “That’s just because she isn’t done up. If Kimberley wore makeup, she’d outshine ten of you combined.”
Chapter 1
“And don’t get cocky just because the boss is infatuated with you. Don’t provoke her.”
“You have no idea how much he loves his wife. If you upset Kimberley, Cedric will destroy you without a second thought.”
As I sat there, a strange calm washed over me. Six months to live, and here I was, still entangled in Cedric’s web of deceit and misplaced loyalty. Part
of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all–worrying about a husband’s mistress when death was already marking my calendar.
Ch
