While You Chose Her, I Claimed Everything

Tara Elise Valmont had always believed her marriage wasn’t perfect—but it was enough to hold on to. Enough to endure. Until a single document shattered everything.

Her name had never been registered as his wife.

Behind the five years she had lived through—loved through—was a lie far crueler than she could have imagined. Adrian Lucien Ashbourne, the man she called her husband, had already been legally married to another woman.

Kara Evangeline Valmont. Her own twin sister. And the child she had cared for with all her heart… had never been hers to begin with.

Betrayed by the man she loved and the blood she trusted, Tara finally understood the truth she had been blind to for so long—she had never truly owned anything in her life.

Not her marriage.

Not her place.

Not even the love she thought she had been given.

But this time… She wouldn’t walk away empty-handed. With pain that sharpened rather than broke her, Tara began to plan. Slowly. Quietly. Lethally.

Because this time, she wouldn’t just survive. She would take everything back.

[1]

“Mm… slow down, Adrian.”

The voice stopped Tara in her tracks just as she reached the door to her husband’s study. It was familiar—far too familiar. For a moment, she wondered if she had misheard.

“…There’s no way I can go slow when it’s you.”

Tara’s heart seemed to stop. That voice… Adrian?

She didn’t notice when her breathing turned shallow, uneven. Her hand moved instinctively, searching for something to steady herself. Her fingertips brushed the edge of a small table near the door, gripping it tightly—as if letting go would make her collapse right there.

She stepped closer, almost soundlessly, though every inch felt unbearably heavy. Her legs trembled, her head buzzed—but the voices beyond the door were too clear to ignore.

A soft gasp slipped through the air, followed by a quiet laugh that made Tara’s blood run cold.

“Adrian…” the woman murmured, her tone soft, indulgent—intimately familiar. “You really can’t control yourself, can you?”

Tara squeezed her eyes shut.

No. No, that wasn’t possible.

“You think I’d ever take it easy when I’m with you, my Kara?” Adrian chuckled.

Kara.

The name struck her like a blow. Tara’s grip on the table tightened, her knuckles paling as her nails dug into the wood. She felt nothing. No pain.

Her whole body had gone numb.

“What if Tara finds out?” Kara let out a soft, amused laugh, as though savoring something far beyond the conversation itself. “What do you think her face would look like?”

Adrian laughed with her—carefree, unbothered. “She won’t find out. She trusts me too much… believes I love her,” he said lightly. “That just makes everything easier.”

The air left Tara’s lungs.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Kara continued, her voice laced with quiet mockery, “how she’s managed not to notice anything. Even after everything we’ve done.” A soft moan slipped from her lips again.

“Because she never really looks,” Adrian replied. “She just accepts whatever we