The Second Life of a Rejected Wife

Three years into our marriage, he accidentally took aphrodisiac drugs. I offered myself as the cure, only to be rejected.

Late that night, I caught him sneaking into his widowed sister-in-law's bedroom. The raw desire in his eyes—something I'd never seen directed at me—cut deeper than any knife. "Olivia, I want... you," he whispered hoarsely. "Why did you refuse me before? Now that my brother's gone, let me take care of you."

That's when I understood—Quinton's ambition to control both family branches had grown too strong to conceal.

Trembling with rage outside that door, I made a scene like a woman possessed. That very night, the widowed sister-in-law took her own life.

What followed was Quinton's vengeance—systematically destroying my family's fortune, driving my parents to their deaths, then selling me to a club where humiliation became my existence until death claimed me.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the beginning of the nightmare.

This time, I intercepted the drugged drink.

"Mr. Hurst, your Sunset Morning cocktail."

"Quinton, still obsessed with this drink? What's so special about it?"

Sunset Morning.

The cacophony around me screeched like distorted speakers. A sudden draft from an opened window cleared my fogged mind—I'd returned to our third anniversary, the night Quinton consumed that fateful drink, the catalyst for my family's destruction and my own unquiet death.

Quinton and I were bound by arranged marriage since birth. My entire upbringing prepared me for one purpose: becoming a Hurst wife.

I never had a choice but to love him.

Our marriage maintained surface-level courtesy, devoid of intimacy. Even casual touches earned his recoil. Friends urged me to seduce him—"You're his wife, claim his heart and body."

Looking back, I cringe at my desperate attempts—a pathetic spectacle. Once, I faked a bathroom fall to lure him in, standing naked before him. He didn't even glance my way, just flung a robe at me with icy disdain: "Don't degrade yourself like this again. You look cheap."

That word—cheap—branded my soul.