Divorce Him, Then Dazzle novel Chapter 1

Who would believe it? Camilla Green had been married three years, and she was still a virgin.

Daniel White was drunk, crowding her back against the wall with a grip that felt viciously steady. He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him.

“Want a kiss from me?” Daniel’s voice was filled with mockery. “Forget it. Not in this lifetime. I will never touch you.”

Camilla had lost count of how many times she’d heard words like this.

“Camilla, you really are…” He leaned close to her ear, his voice dropping to a whisper as he spat out the words, “So pathetic. Even after everything I’ve done to you, you still love me like your life depends on it.”

She shut her eyes tight. Her eyelashes trembled. None of this was new. He had always found new ways to tear her down with his words. By now, she should have felt numb. Her heart should have been hardened to this. Still, deep inside, pain kept coming, each wave worse than the last.

People talked about pain like it came in sharp, clean blows, but with Daniel it was slower—death by a thousand small humiliations. It was like every cell inside her body knew that pain, and there was nowhere she could escape to.

It wasn’t only that he didn’t love her. It was the realization of her own mistakes that stung the most. She hated herself for clinging to false hope, for believing she could ever warm his heart.

“Camilla, what right do you have to cry? You owe me all of this.”

He finally let her go. He pulled off his tie and walked straight into the bathroom.

Camilla slid down to the cold floor, curling up against the wall with her knees hugged to her chest. She buried her face, and her tears dampened the thin fabric at her knees.

She’d been married to Daniel for three years, and the pain had lasted just as long. Once, he’d been warm and caring. That felt like a dream now, one she’d woken from long ago. All she had left was bitterness and heartache.

It felt like she was lost in a thick, endless fog, with no sign of solid ground and no way out.

She didn’t know how long she sat there before her phone rang. The sound snapped her back to reality. When she tried to move, her whole body was stiff, her legs numb. She took a moment before getting up, steadying herself against the wall to reach her phone.

She sniffed, took another deep breath, and texted Barbara Green.

Barbara was her sister, but they weren’t related by blood.

Camilla was an orphan. Lean and Adah had adopted her when she was just past two years old. She didn’t learn until later that Lean and Adah had already lost a daughter. Adah had nearly lost her will to go on, and that was when they adopted Camilla.

No one expected it, but when Camilla was six, their biological daughter, eight-year-old Barbara, was found. Suddenly, Lean and Adah had two daughters.

One was their own child, lost and finally brought home. The other was Camilla, adopted from an orphanage, not related by blood.

Lean and Adah saw the difference, even if they tried to pretend otherwise. They always acted like they treated both daughters the same, or at least, that’s what they wanted the world to see.