The Villainess's Last Laugh

My mom is the villainess of this story. By the time I was old enough to remember, the whole city had already watched her lose everything. And laughed. She used to be an heiress.

Old money, the kind of family that burned through cash like tap water. Then the family went bankrupt, and the whole city put a heel on her neck and spat.

My dad, the male lead, betrayed her without blinking. Champagne and caviar one year. Nothing at all the next. Everyone lined up to watch the spoiled little rich girl finally crack.

She didn't crack. She set her teeth and held on to me. For me, she swallowed every last drop of it. She wiped the pride right off her own face.

And she started over from zero, clawing her way up out of the mud. Chapter 1 My mom didn't even know she was pregnant with me. Not until the day she went bankrupt.

The nurse told me the rest of it later. She'd just thought she was gaining weight. Then the call came. Every card she owned, frozen.

When she checked what was left, it came to twenty thousand dollars. It was old holiday cash, the kind a distant relative presses into a kid's hand and forgets about.

She'd always figured it was too small to bother with. So she'd never touched it.

She sat there staring at that twenty grand, and her stomach cramped so hard they drove her to the hospital. That's where I showed up. Even then, she demanded the private suite.

Said she was not delivering in a regular ward like everybody else. And just like that, her balance dropped a zero. Twenty thousand became two thousand. I came out of nowhere.

The first time she held me, she looked like she'd lost the plot completely. That's how stunned she was. She had never once pictured herself with a baby.

Not even back when she loved my dad most. Because she needed so much love. And only he could give it to her. Only her. They'd sworn it as kids. "Theodore belongs to Cordelia.

Only ever to her." And when they were young, that was exactly how it went. His whole heart went to one person. At eighteen, my dad looked her in the eye and said, "I like you.

Just you." He kept the promise he'd made as a boy. Everyone knew it. Theodore was Cordelia's, full stop.

Whenever she reined him in, the people around them liked to tease her about it. The heiress and her death grip. At eighteen, her jealousy tasted sweet to him.

Like a greenapple lollipop melting slow on his tongue. He'd go red in the face, wave his friends off, and bolt straight back to her. Straight back to being happy.

At twentyfour, the same jealousy just sat in his mouth. Sour. Something he couldn't swallow and couldn't spit out. His friends started calling him whipped.

Every time his phone went off, too sharp, too sudden, something in his chest dropped. So he let himself want somebody new. He knew he was wronging her. That's why he hid it.

At first the guilt weighed enough to keep things level. Then the fun of the lie kept stacking up on the other side, and the scale tipped.

When the lies finally came apart, it got ugly. They screamed. They tore into each other. They made the house stop feeling like a house.

They swore they'd never lay eyes on each other again. They'd signed the papers just last month. The thing about my mom, the villainess, is that she ran obsessive.

The second my dad seemed even a little less in love, she started seeing ghosts. Three calls a day, every day, like clockwork. The clothes on his back, all picked by her.

Home by seven, no exceptions. She guarded him around the clock. And he still slipped through her fingers like a fistful of sand, blown straight into another woman's arms.

First it was the chestnut hair on his coat. Then the perfume on his collar, a scent she didn't own. She said it to his face, early on. "You smell." It was cheap.

Sweet in a way that made her head swim. My dad peeled the coat off to cover himself, easy as anything. "I swung by the mall.

Must've brushed against someone." Chapter 2 Then it was a woman's scarf. The housekeeper turned it up going through his pockets. Silk.

She brought it over, and my mom knew in a heartbeat it wasn't hers. After that came the small things. The way he started sleeping with his back to her.

The way his eyes wandered off somewhere else when he held her. She couldn't unsee any of it. So she hired people. Investigators, sent out to follow him. The photos came back.

She looked at them until her hands went cold. He'd cheated with the one person she hated most in the world. Call it a villainess's instinct.

The very first time they'd met, something in her had curled up in disgust at the sight of the woman. A face that was the exact opposite of her own.

And there she was in the pictures. The good husband. The man who used to love her more than anything on earth.

Holding this woman's hand in broad daylight, on the clock, like there was nobody else alive. The two of them looked easy together. Familiar.

Like years had already gone by between them. A year ago, my dad had lain in the dark beside my mom at midnight, trashing this exact woman.

They'd agreed, the two of them, that she was a worldclass twoface. Now, in some sick turn of the plot, the twoface was his mistress. The other woman. Her name was Camilla.

My mom tried to sit down with her, woman to woman, to save what was left. Camilla shot her down flat. So the second time, my mom staked out his office.

Waited forever for her to come down. She came down on my dad's arm. He spotted my mom, and the first thing he did was step in front of Camilla. Put his own body between them.

That actually made my mom laugh. "Theodore," she said. "You're really not going to explain?" He didn't answer her. He turned, murmured something to Camilla, and sent her on ahead.

Once the girl was gone, he reached for my mom's hand. He didn't argue. He didn't try to spin it. He just kept saying it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Slapping his own face while the word came out. Then he dropped to his knees and begged her not to leave him. My mom went quiet for a long time.

Then she turned and walked into the bedroom. He was sure she'd file first thing in the morning. She didn't. She forgave him. Fine, she told him. We stay married.

But you cut that girl off. Completely. And then the whole thing flipped. Camilla came looking for her.

My mom turned her away, over and over, right up until the day Camilla showed up at our house to corner my dad in person.

He took one look at the girl standing there, wrecked, and couldn't take it. He left with her. He didn't come back for a month.

The sky had gone gray and cracked open into a hard rain the day he finally shoved the door in, soaked to the bone. For one second she let herself think it.

That her cheating husband had finally worked out what he'd thrown away. That he'd come home. Then a stack of photos hit her in the face.

A sharp corner caught her cheek and split it open. That was when it landed. He hadn't come to make up. He'd come to put her on trial. "Cordelia.

You get more disgusting by the day." "I look at your face now and my stomach turns. How are you this vicious?" "You knew what that gala meant to Camilla.

You knew, and you still had her frozen out. You have any idea how many nights she went without sleep for it?" "Are you even human?

You just can't stand to watch somebody else be happy." And my mom stood there. Frozen. The man who'd slept beside her for years, coming apart at the seams. Screaming at her.

For a stranger. Chapter 3 Her hurt went off like a struck match. "Yes. I can't stand to see her happy." "Why does a woman who wrecks other people's homes get to just keep winning?

Why her?" "Why do you never once ask about me? How many nights I cried over you? How many I stayed up for your career?" "What makes her so special? Say it.

What?" She screamed until her voice tore. Then, all at once, she folded like a balloon with the air let out. Doubled over, fists in her own hair, sobbing.

The cold rain on his clothes ran down the back of her collar. It put out whatever warmth she had left. My dad just looked at her. Cold. He'd stood right here before.

She used to cry like this, and it would gut him. Now all he wanted was out. So he said it. "Let's get divorced." Her mind went blank. Her hand cracked across his left cheek