[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":10},["ShallowReactive",2],{"viewer-data-2603221FDDD1-84":3},{"id":4,"number":5,"name":6,"content":7,"isLocked":8,"price":9,"hasRead":8},84,16,"Chapter 16: Wearing the Jewelry One Last Time","\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">After the divorce from Everett Harrison was finalized, I wasn't in a hurry to leave the city. I stayed for another six months, long enough to sell off the house entirely, before finally booking my flight home.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">During those few months, the wedding between Everett and Hailey Silva took place. They had set the date within the first month of my divorce. It was a far more lavish affair than the wedding Everett and I had shared, but I understood why. After all, the Harrison and Silva families were perfectly matched in every way that mattered to them.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">I spent my final days there draped in the designer clothes, handbags, and jewelry I had acquired during my three years with Everett. That marriage taught me one cold, hard truth: being good to others is a waste of time compared to being good to yourself. And looking beautiful for someone else? It doesn't hold a candle to looking beautiful for your own sake. I didn't need to do anything anymore; I just needed to be happy.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">Before I left, news reached me that Hailey was pregnant. For a moment, I just stared into space, stunned.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">I remembered one of the conditions Victoria Harrison had forced upon me before she would consent to my marriage with her son: I was strictly forbidden from getting pregnant for the first three years.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">\"You aren't the daughter-in-law I wanted,\" she had told me, her voice cutting like glass. \"And any child you bring into this family won't be welcomed by me.\"\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">I didn't want to bring a child into a home where their own grandparents wouldn't love them. At the time, blinded by what I thought was love, I ignored the red flags. Even when Everett swore to me that we would be together forever, I had agreed to her terms without a second thought.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">Once I was back home, I bought a new house in my parents’ city. Fearing I was drowning in grief, they took me on a trip across the country for the better part of a year.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">Just like Victoria, my parents had never truly supported my marriage to Everett. They warned me that the gap between our family backgrounds was a chasm, one that would inevitably lead to endless, quiet indignities—the kind of grievances that Everett, in his arrogance, would never even notice.\u003C/p>\u003Cp class=\"chapter-paragraph\">They were right. For three years, I had shouldered the weight of those humiliations alone, and Everett hadn't seen a single one of them.\u003C/p>",false,0,1774272927959]