Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 86

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Chapter 86

Chapter 86

Margaret waited until she heard Marco’s office door close before she allowed herself to collapse. She sank onto the bottom step of the staircase, her expensive dress pooling around her like spilled blood.

Her hands shook as she poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle she had been carrying. The alcohol burned her throat, but it didn’t touch the cold emptiness spreading through her chest.

*You’re not our mother.*

The words echoed in her head, each repetition like a knife twist. She had tried so hard to make them accept her, to make them see her as a real parent. But no matter what she did, no matter how much she demanded, they would never submit.

Because she wasn’t their mother. She was the woman who had destroyed their mother,

Margaret closed her eyes, and suddenly she was eight years old again, standing in the doorway of her parents’ tiny apartment. Her mother was passed out on the couch, an empty beer bottle in her hand. Her father was nowhere to be found, probably at the warehouse, working his second shift of the day.

The refrigerator was empty except for a carton of milk that had gone sour. Margaret’s stomach growled, but she had learned not to complain. Complaining only made things worse.

“Mom?” she had whispered that night, shaking her mother’s shoulder gently. “Mom, I’m hungry.”

Her mother had opened bloodshot eyes and stared at Margaret like she was a stranger. “Figure it out yourself,” she had mumbled. “I’m tired.”

Margaret had made herself a peanut butter sandwich with the last of the bread, eating it alone at the kitchen table while her mother snored on the couch. She was always alone in that house, even when her parents were there.

They never asked where she was going when she left the house. They never cared who she was with or what she was doing. When she won the school spelling bee in fourth grade, she had run home to tell them, only to find her father drunk and her mother working a night shift. The certificate had sat on the kitchen counter for weeks before Margaret finally threw it away.

She had promised herself then that she would never be invisible again. She would never be the person everyone forgot about, the person no one cared about, the person who didn’t matter.

When she grew up, she would have a family that needed her. She would be important to someone. She would be the center of someone’s world, the person they couldn’t live without.

But these children. Marco’s children looked at her the same way her parents had. Like she was an inconvenience. Like she was something to be tolerated rather than loved.

Margaret took another drink, feeling the wine blur the edges of her pain. She had worked so hard to build the perfect life, the perfect family. She had chosen Marco carefully, seeing in him the wealth and status her own father had never achieved. She had imagined herself as the perfect wife, the perfect stepmother, the woman who could make everyone bow to her. Instead, she was the villain in their story. The woman who had ruined everything. The stranger who would never belong.

Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother, the first contact in months.

*Rent’s due next week. Could use some help if you can spare it.*

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Not “How are you?” Not “Miss you.” Just a request for money, as if Margaret existed only to solve other people’s problems.

Margaret stared at the message, remembering all the times she had sent money to her parents over the years. Trying to buy the love and attention they had never given her as a child. Trying to prove that she mattered, that she was valuable, that she deserved to be cared about.

But it never worked. Nothing ever worked.

She deleted the message without responding and finished her wine in one long swallow. The house was quiet around her, filled with expensive furniture and beautiful objects that meant nothing if you had no one to share them with.

Upstairs, she could hear Lucas and Monica talking quietly through their shared wall, their voices too low to make out words. But she could hear the comfort they took in each other, the way they supported each other through everything that was happening.

Margaret had never had that. She had never had anyone who cared enough to check on her, to listen to her fears, to hold

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her when she cried.

Maybe that was why she fought so hard to control these children. Maybe that was why she needed them to need her, to depend on her, to submit to her authority over the mother they had lost.

Chapter 86

Because if they didn’t need her, if they didn’t want her, then what was she?

The same invisible, unimportant girl she had always been. The daughter no one missed when she left home. The woman no one would remember when she was gone.

And Marco. She needed to control Marco too: Needed to clutch onto him with everything she had. Because without him, without his money, without his status, she would go back to being nothing. Back to being the poor girl in the cramped apartment with parents who worked double shifts and never noticed she existed.

Marco was her escape. Her proof that she had risen above her childhood. Her evidence that she mattered.

But Marco was slipping away. His company belonged to Lucia now. His money was threatened by the audit. His power had been stripped by his ex-wife. And Margaret could feel him becoming less useful, less valuable, less able to provide the life she had fought so hard to achieve.

That’s why she needed Harrison Blackwell. That’s why she was already positioning herself for the next move. Because she had learned long ago that survival meant always having a backup plan, always having someone to clutch onto, always having control over something.

She couldn’t go back to being invisible. Couldn’t go back to being the girl no one noticed. Couldn’t go back to hungry nights at empty kitchen tables while parents slept through her existence.

So she would control what she could. Marco’s guilt. The children’s insecurity. Her own image. Her connections with wealthy men who might provide what Marco no longer could.

Margaret stood up slowly, her legs unsteady from the wine and the emotional exhaustion. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, each step feeling heavier than the last.

Marco’s side of the bed was cold and empty. He was working late in his office, or at least that’s what he claimed. Margaret suspected he was avoiding her, avoiding the bedroom, avoiding the wife who was becoming more liability than asset.

She lay down fully clothed, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. Tomorrow, she would have to face Lucas and Monica again. She would have to see the hatred in their eyes, the rejection that reminded her of every time her own parents had looked through her instead of at her.

But tonight, she would just lie here and remember what it felt like to be eight years old and invisible, hungry and alone, promised nothing and given even less.

Tonight, she would admit to herself what she had never admitted before: that no matter how hard she fought, no matter how much she demanded, she would never be the mother these children wanted.

Because you couldn’t force belonging.

And without belonging, control was just another word for desperation.

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