My Hero Husband, My Monster

My husband, Blake Wallace, was a hero who saved my life by sacrificing his motocross career. His vow, "I can't lose Ellen Strong once", was known to every one in the city, as the cornerstone of our marriage.

Then a charlatan mystic named Celesta broke down our peaceful and sweet life. The man I loved was replaced by a monster who worshipped her, and even forced me to become her servant in my own house.

He sat on the sidelines as she humiliated my father to death on our marble floor.

What's more, he forced me to become her living organ bank, so he had my kidney removed without my consent while I was unconscious.

He even let her desecrate my father's grave, and poured his ashes on the ground, eaten by her new puppy.

The love I had for him gone with my father, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. The hero who once saved me was gone, leaving a monster who would threaten me with my father's grave to keep me in line.

So when Celesta handed me a plane ticket for a "pilgrimage," I saw my chance. I decide to make a faked death to escape smoothly. As I wished, the whole world believed Ellen Strong died in a plane crash. Five years later, my billionaire ex-husband, consumed by guilt, finally discovered the truth. And then, He found me for forgiveness...

Chapter 1

Blake Wallace was a hero in New York.

Everyone knew his name, not only because he was the only heir to the Wallace real estate empire, but because he had been a motocross star, a daredevil who seemed to fly.

He gave all he had for me, Ellen Strong.

During his final race, a piece of equipment malfunctioned on the track, sending a metal shard flying toward the stands where I sat. Blake saw it. Without a thought, he swerved his bike, taking the impact himself.

The crash was brutal, which ended his motocross career and left him a permanent injury in his right hand.

When reporters swarmed his hospital bed, asking if he regretted sacrificing his championship for a woman, he looked straight into the camera.

His voice was weak, but his words echoed across the city.

"I can lose a hundred championships," he said. "But I can't lose Ellen Strong once."

That declaration became the cornerstone of our marriage.

My family is a simple working-class family. My father, Douglas Strong, was a retired factory worker, a kind and devout man who couldn' t believe his daughter had married into such a world. So did I. But Blake's love made me feel like I deserved. For years, I believed that his love was indestructible, as solid as the skyscrapers his family built.

Until Celesta Norman entered into our lives.

She was introduced at a charity gala, a woman with captivating eyes and a serene smile who claimed to be the last descendant of a forgotten European mystical lineage. She spoke of energies, auras, and purification. To me, and to everyone else, she sounded like a charlatan. A fraud.

But Blake was mesmerized.

His athletic career was gone, leaving a void that his business success could never fill. He was powerful and wealth, but he felt purposeless. Celesta saw that void and filled it with her nonsense. She told him he had a tarnished soul from the violence of his sport and that only she could cleanse him.

However, Blake believed her ; he even worshipped her.

Celesta moved into our house, our lives, and our marriage. Blake gave her the master suite. I was forcibly moved to a guest room. He said it was necessary for his spiritual journey. Celesta became the queen of the Wallace mansion, and I, the real mistress, became her servant.

Her demands were absurd. Her food had to be prepared with water imported from a specific Swiss spring. Her bedsheets had to be hand-washed with soap made from olive oil blessed by moonlight. Her meditation chambers had to be kept at a precise temperature, and I was the one who had to monitor the thermostat day and night.

Blake forced me to comply. He told me serving Celesta was part of my own "purification." He said my humble origins made my soul heavy and that by catering to Celesta's enlightened needs, I could elevate myself.

I endured it because I loved him. I thought it was a phase, a strange obsession he would eventually get over. I clung to the memory of the man who had thrown away his future for me.

The illusion shattered thoroughly when my father came to visit.

My father Douglas was a simple man. On that day, he brought a homemade apple pie to me with joyful smile on face. When he saw Celesta, he offered her a warm and simple greeting as usual.

Celesta recoiled as if he were diseased.

"The aura of the common man is suffocating," she declared, her voice ringing with disgust. "It contaminates my sacred space."

She claimed my father' s presence had desecrated the mansion and demanded a "cleansing." Blake, my husband, the man who had once saved my life, did not defend my father at all. Instead, He even ridiculously agreed with the jerk woman's words.

He sat on the sidelines and watched as Celesta humiliated Douglas. She made my father get on his hands and knees, ordering him to apologize to the "spirits of the house" for his "intrusion". My father, a man of quiet dignity and deep faith, was confused and hurt. He looked at me, with his eyes pleading for help.

I begged Blake to stop it. I screamed, I cried, I reminded him that the man was my father.

Blake's face was cold, a mask of indifference.

"Ellen, it's for his own good," he said. "Celesta is cleansing his soul of its ignorance."

Celesta then delivered her final, cruelest blow. She looked at the simple cross my father always wore around his neck, a gift from my late mother.

"That trinket represents a false, powerless god," she sneered. "It is an insult to the true cosmic order."

She ordered a bodyguard to rip it from his neck.

That was when my father collapsed.

His heart, already weak, gave out under the emotional brutality. He died on the cold marble floor of that mansion, clutching his chest, and his last breath was gasp of pain and disbelief.

The love I had for Blake died with my father.

In its place grew a cold, hard resolve. Blake offered me money-a vast sum-as compensation for my father's life. I knew then that the man I married was gone, replaced by a monster. The abuse didn't stop. It escalated. When Celesta was diagnosed with a kidney condition, Blake forced me to become her designated donor, keeping me on call like a living organ bank.

He allowed her to perform a "cleansing rite" where she burned all of my father's cherished possessions-his books, his worn-out armchair, the photos of my mother. I watched the smoke carry away the last physical traces of the man I loved most.

The final straw came during a fire alarm. The sirens blared, and the house filled with smoke. I was trapped on the second floor, my ankle twisted in the chaos. Blake ran past my room. Our eyes met. For a second, I saw a flicker of the old Blake. But then Celesta screamed from down the hall.

"Blake! The Celestial Orb! It will be destroyed!"

He didn't hesitate. He ran toward her room to save one of her worthless "sacred artifacts" and left me to die in the fire.

The funeral for Douglas Strong was a quiet, somber affair held under a gray, drizzling sky.

The small church in my old neighborhood was filled with the scent of rain and lilies. Friends and family from my past life, people with hardworking hands and honest faces, came to pay their respects. They offered me hugs that felt real and condolences that were sincere.

Blake was not there.

Instead, a black car, sleek and silent as a predator, had pulled up to the curb earlier that morning. A man in a tailored suit, Blake's personal assistant, stepped out. He didn' t offer a word of sympathy. He simply handed me a thick envelope.

Inside was a check with enough zeros to make my head spin.

A note was clipped to it, written in Blake' s sharp, decisive handwriting. "This should cover all expenses and provide for your future comfort. Let me know if you require more."

He had bought my father' s life. Or at least, he thought he had.

Now, standing at the graveside, I held the check in my pocket. The paper felt slick and dirty against my fingers. I listened to the pastor say his final words, the rain mingling with the tears on my cheeks. After everyone had left, I stayed, staring at the freshly turned earth.

I pulled out the check and a lighter I' d bought at a convenience store.

The flame sputtered in the damp air before catching. I watched the corner of the check blacken, curl, and turn to ash. The fire consumed Blake' s name, then the obscene number of zeros. A bitter, bone-deep laugh escaped my lips. It sounded harsh and ugly in the quiet cemetery.

"You think this fixes it?" I whispered to the empty air, to the ghost of my husband. "You think you can just pay for it?"

The ash floated away on the wet breeze, disappearing into the gray sky.

My decision was as clear as the hatred in my heart. I went to see a lawyer the next day. The office was stark and professional, a world away from the emotional chaos of my life.

I sat across from a calm, middle-aged woman named Ms. Davies.

"I want a divorce," I said. My voice was steady. All the tears had been burned out of me.

Ms. Davies looked at me with practiced neutrality. "Have you discussed this with your husband, Mrs. Wallace?"

"His name is Blake Wallace," I corrected her. "And no. There's nothing to discuss."

I told her everything. I left out no detail of the humiliation, the cruelty, the emotional torture. I told her about my father, about his simple goodness and his brutal end on our marble floor. I told her about Blake' s coldness, his obsession, his complete abdication of his role as my husband.

As I spoke, Ms. Davies' professional mask slipped. I saw pity in her eyes, then anger. By the time I finished, she was looking at me with a quiet, fierce solidarity.

"I see," she said, her voice soft but firm. "We will file immediately."

She drew up the papers. They were cold, legal documents, but to me, they were a declaration of independence. I signed my name-Ellen Strong-with a hand that did not tremble.

"Mr. Wallace will need to sign as well," Ms. Davies said gently. "Or we will have to serve him."

"He won't see me," I said. "He won't take my calls. He's with her."

"We can have the papers delivered to his office."

I shook my head. A formal serving would cause a scandal, and somehow, I knew Blake would find a way to twist it, to delay it. Celesta would convince him it was a spiritual test.

"Is it possible," I asked, my voice low, "for me to sign for him? If I have his verbal consent?"

Ms. Davies hesitated. "That's highly irregular, Ellen. It could be contested."

"He'll agree," I said, a bitter certainty in my gut. "He'll give me anything I want, as long as it's money or property. He just doesn't want to be bothered."

I left her office and stepped back out into the city. The noise and the crowds felt alien. I went back to the mansion, the place I once called home, which now felt like a beautifully decorated prison.

I found my phone and dialed his number.

It rang for a long time. I could hear the faint sound of music and laughter in the background before he picked up. Celesta' s high-pitched giggle was unmistakable.

"Ellen," Blake's voice was impatient, distracted. "Is the money not enough? I told my assistant to give you whatever you needed."

He didn't ask how I was. He didn't mention my father.

"It's not about the money, Blake," I said, my voice tight.

"Then what is it? Celesta and I are in the middle of a very important energy alignment session. She' s channeling a particularly powerful cosmic frequency today." I could hear Celesta whisper something to him, followed by another tinkling laugh.

The sheer absurdity of it, the callousness, was breathtaking. My father was dead. Our marriage was over. And he was talking about cosmic frequencies.

I took a deep breath, forcing the rage down. "I've filed for divorce, Blake."

There was a pause on the other end. Not of shock, or sadness, but of annoyance.

"A divorce? Ellen, that's so... dramatic. We can talk about this later. I'll have my lawyers draw up a settlement. Just name your price. A house in the Hamptons? A few apartment buildings downtown? Whatever you want. Just don't interrupt me right now."

He was trying to buy my silence, to buy his freedom without an ounce of emotional effort.

"I don't want your money," I said, my voice cracking despite myself. "I just want out."

"Fine, fine, you're out," he said dismissively. "Consider it done. I'll take care of it. Now, I really have to go."

He hung up.

The dial tone buzzed in my ear, a final, definitive sound of severance.

I stood there, phone in hand, and a single, desolate laugh escaped me. He had agreed. Just like that. Our vows, our history, the man who said he couldn't lose me-all of it dismissed in a brief, irritated phone call.

I called Ms. Davies back.

"He agreed," I told her, my voice hollow. "He said, 'Consider it done.'"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"Alright, Ellen," Ms. Davies said finally, her voice full of a sympathy that Blake would never offer. "Come in tomorrow. We'll get it signed. There's a mandatory cooling-off period, but the process has begun."

The process had begun.

I went to my room-the guest room-and started to pack. I took only the things that were mine before I met him: old books, clothes from my college days, a small photograph of my parents. Everything he had ever given me-the jewelry, the designer clothes, the expensive trinkets-I left behind. I piled them on the bed, a monument to a love that had rotted from the inside out.

For a week, the house was quiet. Blake and Celesta were away on what the staff whispered was a "spiritual retreat" in the Caribbean. I moved through the empty rooms like a ghost, the silence a welcome reprieve from the constant pressure of Celesta' s presence.

The day they returned, I was walking down the grand staircase when the front door opened. Celesta swept in, tanned and glowing, draped in white linen. Blake followed, carrying her bags, his face a picture of adoration.

I tried to slip past them, to disappear back into the shadows of the house.

But Celesta saw me. Her serene smile was a mask for a sharp, cruel intelligence.

"Ellen, there you are," she said, her voice smooth as silk. "I was just thinking about you."

I didn't answer. I just wanted to get away.

"Your father," she continued, her eyes fixed on mine with a look of mock sympathy. "His passing was tragic. His soul was so... cluttered. It must have been a relief for him to be released from his earthly vessel."

My blood ran cold.

"Don't talk about him," I whispered, my voice shaking with fury.

She ignored me. "To honor his memory, and to continue your own purification, I believe it's time for a more intensive ritual. You will wash my feet every evening. It will teach you humility and help you scrub away the grime of your lineage."

Something inside me snapped. The grief, the humiliation, the years of swallowing my anger-it all erupted.

"No," I said, the word clear and loud in the cavernous hall. "I will not."

Celesta' s smile vanished. Her face hardened, the mask of spirituality falling away to reveal the ugly narcissism beneath.

"You dare refuse me?" she hissed.

"I dare," I said, looking her straight in the eye.

"Insolent creature!" she shrieked, her voice losing its melodic quality and becoming shrill. She turned to the two bodyguards standing by the door. "Teach her a lesson. Remind her of her place."

The bodyguards, massive men hired for their muscle, hesitated. They looked from Celesta to me, a flicker of uncertainty in their eyes. They had seen what she was.

"Are you deaf?" Celesta screamed. "Or do you want to lose your jobs?"

That was enough. With reluctant faces, they moved toward me. I braced myself, my heart hammering against my ribs. They grabbed my arms, their grips like iron.

I was helpless.

Celesta walked toward me, a sadistic pleasure dancing in her eyes. She drew back her hand, and the sound of her palm connecting with my cheek echoed in the hall.

The sting was sharp, electric. My head snapped to the side.

She hit me again. And again. The blows were hard, deliberate. My face burned, my lip split, and the salty taste of blood filled my mouth. The world blurred, the opulent hall dissolving into a swirl of light and pain.

Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear her venomous words.

"You are nothing. A common girl Blake picked up out of pity. Your only purpose is to serve."

She stopped, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling. She grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at her.

"Now," she said, her voice a low, menacing growl. "Go and fetch the water."

In that moment, I wanted to die. Or I wanted her to die. A murderous rage, cold and pure, filled me. I imagined lunging forward, my hands around her throat, squeezing until the life left her smug, beautiful face.

Just as that dark thought consumed me, I heard Blake' s voice from the doorway.

"What's going on here?"

He had come back inside to get something he' d forgotten in the car. He stood there, taking in the scene: me, held by his men, my face bruised and bleeding; Celesta, panting with exertion, her hand still raised.

A sliver of hope, a stupid, stubborn flicker, ignited in my chest. He would see. He would finally see what she was.

He walked over, his eyes scanning my face. For a brief second, I saw something in their depths-a flash of pain, of the old Blake who would have killed anyone who laid a hand on me.

"Blake," I choked out, tears of pain and relief streaming down my face. "She hit me."

He looked from me to Celesta.

Celesta' s face immediately crumpled. Tears, perfect and crystalline, welled in her eyes. "Blake, darling," she whimpered, her voice trembling. "She was disrespectful. She refused to perform the purification ritual. She spoke ill of her own father's spirit! I was only trying to guide her, to bring her back to the path of light, and she... she raised her hand to me first!"

It was such an obvious, pathetic lie.

Blake looked at Celesta' s tear-streaked face. He looked at my swollen, bleeding one. He was silent for a long moment, the air thick with tension.

Then he turned to me. The flicker of pain in his eyes was gone, replaced by a cold, weary disappointment.

"Ellen," he said, his voice flat. "Just do as she says. Is a little dignity really more important than Celesta' s peace of mind?"

The words hit me harder than any of her slaps. A little dignity. He had reduced my humanity, my pain, my grief, to a matter of inconvenience.

"Blake," I whispered, my voice trembling with disbelief. "Do you remember what you said at the hospital? After the crash? You said you couldn't lose me."

His face hardened. The mention of the past was an annoyance to him now.

"I remember," he said, his voice dropping, becoming dangerously quiet. "And you should remember that your father is buried in a cemetery on Wallace property. It would be a shame if his eternal rest were... disturbed. Do you understand?"

The threat was unmistakable. Vile. Unthinkable. He was using my dead father, the man he had helped kill, as leverage to control me. He was threatening to desecrate his grave.

The last, foolish flicker of hope inside me didn't just die. It was violently extinguished, leaving behind nothing but black, empty ash.

A sound tore from my throat.

It wasn't a scream or a sob. It was a raw, broken laugh, laced with hysteria and utter despair. Tears streamed down my face, but I was laughing. Laughing at the monster my husband had become. Laughing at my own stupidity for ever believing in his love.

"You would do that?" I asked, my voice a ragged whisper. "You would really do that?"

Blake' s eyes were cold stones. He didn' t need to answer. I saw it on his face. He would do it, and he would feel nothing.

The fight went out of me. The rage, the hate, the will to resist-it all drained away, leaving a hollow shell.

"Alright," I said, my voice numb and detached. "I'll do it. I'll wash her feet."

I pulled away from the bodyguards, who released me with looks of pity. I walked, stumbling like a drunk, toward the kitchen. I felt nothing. It was as if I were watching a movie about some other poor, pathetic woman.

I filled a porcelain basin with warm water, my hands moving automatically. I carried it back to the living room. Celesta was now seated on a plush velvet armchair, looking every bit the triumphant queen. Blake stood beside her, his hand resting protectively on her shoulder.

"Kneel," Celesta commanded, her voice dripping with satisfaction.

My body trembled. Every instinct screamed at me to throw the basin in her face, to run, to fight. But the image of my father's grave, of his final resting place being torn apart, paralyzed me.

I closed my eyes, took a ragged breath, and sank to my knees on the cold marble floor. The humiliation was a physical weight, crushing the air from my lungs.

My hands shook as I reached for her feet. They were soft and perfectly pedicured. I submerged them in the warm water. My tears fell silently into the basin, mingling with the water I was using to wash the feet of my tormentor.

Just as I began to gently scrub, Celesta kicked out.

The basin flew from my hands, crashing against the floor. Water and porcelain shards scattered everywhere. A wave of warm water drenched the front of my clothes.

"Useless!" she shrieked, her face contorted with rage. "You can't even perform a simple task! The water is too hot! Are you trying to scald me? You did that on purpose!"

The water was barely lukewarm. It was just another excuse to torment me.

"She deserves a real punishment, Blake," Celesta said, turning to him with a pout. "Something to make her remember her place." She leaned in and whispered something in his ear.

Blake nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on me with a chilling lack of emotion.

"Celesta is right," he said. "Your disobedience is becoming a problem. You need a lesson in discipline." He turned to the guards. "Take her outside. She will kneel in the courtyard until dawn. And she will repeat, out loud, 'I am unworthy. I am here to serve.'"

My blood ran cold. It was the middle of autumn. The nights were freezing.

"Blake, please," I whispered, the words catching in my throat. "It's cold. I..."

"Then perhaps you'll think twice before upsetting Celesta again," he said, his voice utterly devoid of warmth.

The hate that had been extinguished flared back to life, a desperate, burning fire. I looked at him, at the man I had once loved with all my heart, and I saw nothing left to save. His soul was gone, eaten away by this woman and his own weakness.

My eyes, I'm sure, reflected that hate. I saw him flinch, just for a second.

He hardened his expression immediately. "If you refuse," he said, his voice low and menacing, "I'll make that call about the cemetery. Right now."

The fire died again. The light in my eyes went out, leaving only a dead, gray emptiness.

I didn't say another word. I let the guards pull me to my feet and drag me outside. The courtyard was paved with stone, already slick with evening dew. They forced me to my knees. The cold seeped through my thin clothes instantly, a sharp, biting pain.

The sky was a dark, starless canvas. A fine, misty rain began to fall, cold and relentless.

I closed my eyes and began to chant, my voice a robotic monotone.

"I am unworthy. I am here to serve."

The words were meaningless. They were just sounds I was forced to make while my spirit retreated to a place deep inside where they couldn't touch it.

I knelt all night. The rain soaked through my clothes, plastering my hair to my skin. The cold settled deep in my bones, a painful, numbing ache. My knees were raw and bleeding against the rough stone. My voice grew hoarse, then cracked, until it was just a rasping whisper.

"I am unworthy. I am here to serve."

Over and over. The hours bled together. The world narrowed to the cold stone, the freezing rain, and the humiliating words. My body shivered uncontrollably. My teeth chattered. A fever began to creep through me, making my head feel light and my thoughts drift.

Sometime before dawn, the world went black. I pitched forward, my face hitting the cold, wet stone, and knew nothing more.

I woke up to the clanging of a metal door.

For a moment, I was disoriented. I was lying on a cold concrete floor in a small, dark space. The air smelled of damp and dust. As my eyes adjusted, I saw bars.

I was in a cage.

It was a large dog kennel, set up in a storage room in the basement of the mansion. A thin blanket had been thrown in with me. My body ached with a deep, consuming chill, and my head throbbed with fever.

A housemaid, a young woman named Sarah who had always been kind to me, appeared at the bars. Her face was pale, her eyes filled with pity.

"Mrs. Wallace," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Miss Norman said... she said you had a fever and needed to be quarantined so you wouldn't infect her."

Quarantined. Like a sick animal.

Sarah pushed a plastic bottle of water and two white pills through the bars. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, tears in her eyes, before scurrying away, afraid of being seen.

I curled up on the cold floor, pulling the thin blanket around my shivering body. I looked at the pills and the water. It would be so easy to just give up. To let the fever consume me. To just... stop.

But then I thought of my father. I thought of his dignity, his quiet strength. He would not want me to surrender.

With a shaking hand, I reached for the pills. I swallowed them with the cold water, the action a small, desperate act of survival.

Then, I wrapped my arms around myself, closed my eyes, and let the darkness take me again, a silent, tearless laugh echoing in the hollows of my broken heart.