The Path Less Traveled

The heavy champagne glass felt wrong in my hand; I was thirty-six, not sixteen, moments from my life imploding.

But here I was, back at my sweet sixteen party, the terrifying start of two decades of hell.

My step-sister, Chloe, just offered me a spiked drink, the same one that had once drugged me, leading to a staged scandal that branded me a gold-digger and forced me into a loveless marriage with Liam, my cold, manipulative fiancé.

I remembered every agonizing detail: the public humiliation, Liam' s family discarding me like trash after I' d bled myself dry saving their failing business, and my eventual lonely death in a hospital bed.

I clutched my glass, a spark igniting in the darkness of my memories-I knew the script this time, and I was going to burn it to the ground.