Read The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins novel by Artemis Z.Y. Updated 2025 -26 - The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 517

The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 517

I didn’t know then that the dream would take seventeen years to come true.

But here I am. Standing in front of this mirror. Waiting.

The door doesn’t so much open as it surrenders.

“I told you—left at the third hallway, not the second—”

“The second hallway had better lighting—”

“Lighting is irrelevant when you’re going the wrong direction—”

Scarlett and Sophie tumble into the room mid-argument, their voices tangled together like cats fighting in a bag.

“We’re here,” Scarlett announces, as if that isn’t already obvious. “We got lost. Twice. This castle has too many rooms. Who needs this many rooms?”

“It’s a historic estate,” Sophie says. “It has exactly the right number of rooms.”

“It has seventeen bathrooms. I counted.”

“Why were you counting bathrooms?”

“Because I got lost trying to find one!”

“If Kyle is still in here, I swear to God—”

“He left.” I’m still staring at the mirror, still seeing the ghost of him standing behind me. “Five minutes ago.”

“Good. Because I brought champagne, and I refuse to share it with men.” Scarlett sweeps in, a bottle of Dom Pérignon in one hand, her heels in the other.

Barefoot. Of course. Scarlett has never met a pair of shoes she couldn’t abandon within an hour. Her emerald dress is already slightly wrinkled, her red hair escaping whatever elaborate style she attempted.

She looks perfect. She always looks perfect—even when she’s falling apart.

And then the arguing stops.

Because my mother appears in the doorway behind them.

She stops there. Just stops. Her hand grips the doorframe like she needs it to stay upright. She’s wearing lavender, and in her other hand is a small velvet box I recognize from somewhere deep in my childhood.

“Oh,” she says. Just that. Just oh.

“Mom?” My voice sounds strange. Too small for this room.

“Give me a minute,” she says. Her voice is steady. Her eyes are not. “Just—give me a minute to look at you.”

“Oh, honey.” She stops three feet away. Her hand rises to her mouth. “Oh, Mia.”

“Don’t.” I lift a hand. “Don’t cry yet. If you cry, I’ll cry, and then Scarlett will have to redo my makeup, and she’s already threatened to murder me twice today.”

“Three times,” Scarlett corrects. “But who’s counting?”

“I’m not crying.” My mother is absolutely crying—tears streaming down her face, ruining the makeup she spent an hour on. “I’m just… looking at you. My baby. My beautiful girl.”

“Mom—”

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?” She steps closer, her hands cupping my cheeks the way they did when I was little. “Not the wedding. I don’t care about the wedding. I’ve waited to see you happy. Really happy. The kind that comes from the inside.”

I think about all the years she missed. The coma. Waking up to a daughter divorced, alone, pregnant.

“I’m happy, Mom.” My voice cracks. “I’m really, really happy.”

“I know.” She kisses my forehead. “I can see it.”

“Okay.” Scarlett claps her hands, all business. “We’re on a schedule, people. Emotional breakdowns are allotted exactly three minutes, and we’ve already used two. Sarah, do you have it?”

My mother pulls back. Wipes her eyes. Squares her shoulders the way she always does—the posture that says I’ve survived worse, and I’ll survive this too.

“I have it.” She opens the velvet box.

Inside, nestled against cream silk, is a pair of pearl earrings.

They’re old. I can tell by the slightly yellowed luster, the softened gold settings. Small. Simple. Elegant. Jewelry that whispers instead of shouting.

“These were your grandmother’s,” Mom says. “She wore them on her wedding day. And her mother wore them before that. Four generations of Williams women, walking down the aisle in these.”

“Mom—”

“Something old.” She lifts one earring from the box. “For the past we carry with us. For the women who came before. For all the love that brought you here.”

I stand still as she puts them in my ears. The weight is barely there—just a gentle pressure, a reminder. Her fingers brush my hair back, and for a moment I’m five again, sitting at her vanity, watching her in the mirror and thinking she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

“Perfect,” she whispers. “You look perfect.”

Scarlett steps forward.

“My turn.” She’s holding a delicate bracelet, thin as a whisper, studded with small diamonds that catch the light. “This is the bracelet I wore when I married Morton. The first time. And the second time. It’s survived two weddings and a divorce and somehow stayed in one piece.”

“Like you,” I say.

“Like me.” She grins. “Something borrowed. For all the times I held your hair back while you cried over the idiot you’re about to marry.”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“Romance is overrated. I’m offering you something better.”

I look down at the bracelet—how it rests against my skin, delicate and strong at the same time.

“Thank you,” I say. It doesn’t feel like enough. “Scarlett, I—”

“Don’t.” She lifts a hand. “If you say something nice, I’ll cry. And I’m not allowed to cry until the ceremony. Sophie has it in writing.”

“I do not have it in writing,” Sophie says from near the window. “I have it in understanding. Which is far more binding.”

She crosses the room with that unhurried elegance of hers, as if time itself should wait for her. In her hands is a small silk pouch, pale blue, almost the same shade as her dress.

“Something blue,” she says. “From Paris. Because I am French, and everything meaningful must come from France. It is simply the law.”

She opens the pouch and pulls out a ribbon.

A thin strip of exquisite silk, the blue of a summer sky just before sunset. Sewn onto one end is a tiny silver star.

“This,” Sophie says, “is not valuable. Not the way your mother’s pearls are valuable, or Scarlett’s bracelet. It cost perhaps thirty euros. Maybe less.”

“Sophie—”

“But,” she says, holding up a finger, “it is meaningful. Because I had it made for you. The star is for the pendant you gave Kyle when you were children. The blue is for tradition. And the ribbon is for tying things together.”

She pauses. “You and Kyle. Your past and your future. All the broken pieces, finally whole.”

She kneels—Sophie Field, billionaire heiress, kneeling on the floor of a bridal suite—and lifts the hem of my dress.

“What are you doing?”

“Sewing it into your gown. Here, along the inside seam.” Her fingers move quickly, precisely. “No one will see it. But you’ll know it’s there. And every step you take today—down the aisle, across the dance floor, into the rest of your life—you’ll feel it against your skin. A reminder.”

“Of what?”

She looks up at me, those sharp eyes softened now.

“That you are loved,” she says simply. “By Kyle. By your children. By all of us. And that love, ma chère, is the only thing worth walking toward.”

I don’t cry.

But it’s close.

So close that I have to look at the ceiling, blinking hard, thinking about tax returns and grocery lists.

“Okay.” My voice is shaky. Not even close to steady. “Okay. I think we’re ready.”

“Almost.” My mother steps back, studying me with the same critical eye she once used on my homework, now focused on something far more important. “There’s just one more thing.”

“What?”

“Something new.” She smiles. “But that’s not ours to give.”

I look at the dress. The silk that fits like a second skin. The way it catches the light, transforms it, turns me into someone I almost don’t recognize.

The dress is new. Everything about today is new.

A new chance. A new beginning. A new story, built on the ruins of the old one.

“Are you ready?” Scarlett asks.

I look at myself in the mirror one last time.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”