The Villainess Wants a Divorce

I found out I was the villainess of a romance novel called Sunshine Donna when I was already pregnant.

For twenty-two years, I'd chased Renato Gatti without a shred of shame. Then came three years of marriage, just the two of us, wrapped up in each other. I'd thought it was everything.

Then his true love showed up.

According to the story, I was supposed to fall apart. I'd torment the girl, sabotage their relationship, and in the process, destroy myself. A bullet through the forehead. That was how it ended for Gianna Milano.

I looked up. Renato was across the room, phone in hand, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

He'd met her.

Fine.

This time, I'd step aside.

But when I asked for a divorce—

He cried. He begged me to stay. He threw the entire East Coast at the problem, just to keep me from walking out the door.

Three days before I woke up to all of this, Renato stopped eating my breakfasts.

His excuse: running late.

I didn't think much of it. I kept making them anyway. Three years of marriage had made it reflex.

Now I knew why he was in such a hurry. He was saving time to have breakfast with Noemi.

Noemi Vessi, the heroine of Sunshine Donna.

She was the kind of woman who lit up a room: vivid, warm, bursting with life at every seam.

The morning I first understood, I walked Renato to the door and watched his car pull out of the drive. I took a step forward, cupped my hands around my mouth, and called out:

"Renato, I love you!"

He waved without looking back and hit the gas.

Nothing.

The wind from his tires scattered dead leaves across the pavement, as if echoing an unspoken thought.

He'd changed.

I stood there in the sunlight, hollowed out.

I was three years old when I first saw him. It felt like lightning. I followed him home that day and made a scene, and the family laughed about it for years. I spent my entire childhood trailing after him like a second shadow.

When I was ten, I spent three thousand dollars at a charity lunch auction just to sit across from him for an hour.

At thirteen, I asked him to the spring dance. He said yes. I didn't sleep for a week.

At eighteen, the night of prom, after enough persistence that even I was embarrassed by myself, I finally kissed him.

At twenty-five, we stood before God and made our vows.

Everyone said we were a perfect match, a union of the Gatti family and the Milano family, two of the most powerful names on the East Coast.

I believed that. I believed it until the moment I woke up inside this story and understood the truth: it had always been one-sided. Whatever Renato felt for me was habit. Duty. The kind of feeling that grows in the space where real love never bothered