“My mommy has been sleeping for three days.” A 7-year-old girl pushed a wheelbarrow for miles to save her newborn twin brothers, and what happened next left the entire hospital speechless…

The light that filtered through the windows that went from the ground to the ceiling of our house in Mahatta was warm and welcoming.

 It was a dull and unpleasant light that illuminated every speck of dust that floated in the air and, with greater intensity, every shadow of exhaustion engraved on my face when I saw myself reflected in the mirror.

She looked like a strange, haggard and worn-out version of the woman I had seen just a few months ago.

My name is Appa Vape, and I was twenty-eight years old, although I felt decades older. I had given birth exactly six weeks ago, and I was still recovering from giving birth to triplets: three beautiful and incredibly emaciated baby boys named Leo, Sam, and Noah.

My body felt completely alien to me, transformed into shapes that were still being processed: softer where it had once been firm, stretched and marked with silvery lips that traced my path to motherhood, marked by the emergency cesarean that had saved all our lives, and perpetually aching from a level of sleep deprivation so profound that it made the room vibrate and jump if I turned my head too quickly.

I was living in a state of barely controlled tranquility, navigated by the overwhelming logistics of caring for three babies simultaneously: the feeding schedules that were superimposed chaotically, the endless cycle of diapers, bottles and pacing, the parade of children and babies that seemed to stop every two weeks because apparently caring for triplets was too demanding even for professionals.

Our house, despite its four thousand square feet of luxury space, felt suffocatingly small, laden with the equipment and supplies necessary to house three types of humans.

This was the scene—me in pajamas with milk stains on the bed in the morning, with dark circles under my eyes, my washed hair pulled back in a messy bun, desperately trying to soothe a crying baby while moving the other two in front of the camera—when Mark, my husband and the CEO of Apex Dynamics, one of the most promising technology conglomerates in the country, decided to give his final and devastating verdict on our marriage.

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He didn’t look at the baby stroller that was showing our three legs. He didn’t ask me how I felt or if I needed help. He just looked at me, with cold, appraising eyes, as if I were a commercial asset that had depreciated beyond acceptable value.

Without preambles or ceremonies, he threw a thick cardboard folder over our quilt.

 The sound it produced was sharp and sharp, like a mallet striking wood in a tribunal. I didn’t need to open it to know what it contained; I could see “PETITION FOR MARRIAGE DISSOLUTION” printed on the flap.

Mark offered no formal justification for ending our seven-year marriage. He did not cite the typical “irreconcilable differences” that lawyers usually recommend.

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She looked me up and down slowly, deliberately, her gaze fixed on every perceived flaw: the dark purple circles under my eyes from weeks of uninterrupted sleep, the saliva stain on my left shoulder that I hadn’t had time to change, the postpartum compression garment visible under my pajamas, the extra weight I was still carrying from giving birth to three full-term babies.

“Look at you, Appa,” he said, his voice full of disgust. “You look like an aesthetic scarecrow. You’re disheveled, unkempt, completely abandoned. You’ve become repulsive to me.”

And, frankly, you’re ruining my image. A CEO at my level—someone who envisions a multimillion-dollar company, someone who is in the public eye—needs a wife who reflects success, vitality, power, and sophistication.

Not this… material degradation that I am seeing right now.

I blinked slowly, too exhausted to fully process the magnitude of his cruelty. “Mark,” I said softly, my voice hoarse from lack of sleep, “I just gave birth to three children six weeks ago. Your children. Your children.”

“Did you let yourself be completely carried away by the process?” he replied coldly, adjusting his silver cufflinks. “That’s not my problem, Appa. It was your decision.”

Then, with the theatrical style of someone who had rehearsed this moment, he announced his adventure. “I’ve seen someone else,” he said, looking in the mirror and smoothing his perfectly combed hair.

“Someone who understands the demands of my position. Someone who transforms my image instead of diminishing it.”

As if on cue—because, of course, this humiliation had been choreographed—Chloe appeared in the doorway. She was his twenty-two-year-old executive assistant, hired eight months earlier, despite my reservations about the way Mark looked at her during the interview.

I was sleepy and elegant, wearing a designer dress that probably cost me more than my first car, my makeup was impeccable, and my hair was styled with accessories that looked expensive.

 She was already sketching a small triumphant smile as she looked at me: the abandoned wife in pajamas, with a diaper in her hand.

“We’ll go to the office together,” Mark said, speaking to me as if I were a servant receiving financial instructions. “My lawyers will take care of all the details of the agreement. You can keep the house in order, the subway open, and the large garden. It suits you.”

I’m fed up with the noise, the hormones, the chaos of the baby, yes, baby, and the pathetic vision of you dragging your feet with clothes stained with milk and shining as if you had returned to life.

He approached Chloe and put his arm around her waist possessively, transforming his loyalty into a public declaration of what he clearly saw as an improvement.

The message was brutally clear: my value, in his eyes, was linked exclusively to my physical appearance and my ability to be attractive or contribute to his success.

By becoming a mother —by sacrificing my body to bring her children into the world—, I had failed to fulfill those duties and had become disposable.

They left together. Chloe’s heels clicked forcefully against the marble floor. Mark, on the other hand, looked towards the hallway where his three children were sleeping. The front door closed with a decisive click that seemed to echo silently through the house repeatedly.

Mark believed he had executed a perfect exit. He assumed I was too exhausted, emotionally devastated, and physically dependent on any agreement his lawyers might offer me to defend myself.

I had dismissed my intelligence, my education, my professional career; everything but my appearance.

Before Mark, I was a promising young writer, with a degree in creative writing from Columbia and two short stories published in prestigious literary magazines.

But he said that my writing was “a nice little hobby” and suggested that I dedicate myself to it in order to focus on organizing his business events and planning his social calendar.

He left through that door absolutely convinced that he had worked, that he had clearly discarded his used wife and updated her to a more modern model without sequels.

He was catastrophically wrong. He hadn’t just stolen a wife. He had simply ruined an actress’s career.

The moment the door closed behind them, something terrible stirred inside me. The despair and humiliation with which Mark was trying to crush me transformed into something completely different: something cold, focused, and incredibly powerful.

The pain became fuel. The pain became clarity.

I looked at the divorce papers, then at the baby stroller with three sleeping nipples, and then at my reflection in the bedroom mirror. And I realized something crucial: Mark had taken everything from me except the one thing I had always underestimated: my mom.

I had been a writer before Mark killed me.

There will be opportunities.

I gradually put that passion aside during seven years of marriage, year after year sacrificing my creative ambitions to the necessary demands of being Mrs. Mark Vape: organizing elaborate birthday parties for his clients, attending useless corporate tasks, photographing domestic staff, presenting the perfect image at charity galas. 

I let my writing become a distant memory, something that sometimes lamented me in moments of silence.

The divorce papers were my emancipation. They were my permission to claim the most powerful weapon I had ever possessed.

My life became exhausting and disrupted. The hours when I should have been dreaming while asleep, when the babies finally settled down and the middle-of-the-night mealtime was difficult, became my writing hours.

 I put my laptop on the kitchen counter, between the industrial bottle sterilizer and the rows of formula capsules.

I wrote until exhaustion, which made my vision pop, fueled by endless cups of black coffee and the burning core of a just fury that was buried in my chest.

I didn’t write an essay. I didn’t write a memoir asking for public sympathy. I wrote a novel: a dark and psychologically devastating work of literary fiction that I titled “The CEO’s Scarecrow.”

The book was a surgical and prophetic dissection of Mark Vape, only disguised as fiction.

I changed the names to provide legal protection —Mark became “Victor Stope”, Apex Dynamics became “Zeith Corporation” and Chloe became “Clara Bepett”—, but every detail was meticulously accurate. 

I described the exact layout of our house in Mahatta, down to the personalized Italian marble in the main bathroom.

I documented the precision of Victor Draak’s bra and the blend of Scotch whisky, Mila’s specific tailor who made her suits, the particular way in which he compulsively checked his reflection on every available surface.

I recounted in detail the triplet pregnancy, the emergency cesarean, the postpartum recovery and the brutal, image-obsessed discard that followed.

But I didn’t stop at our personal history. I included all the casual confessions Mark had made during his private trips: the financial shortcuts he boasted about, the regulatory gray areas he had exploited, the competitors he had crushed through ethically questionable measures, the employees he had discarded when they became “incompatible”.

All this was incorporated into the book, transformed into the actions of Victor Stoe, protected by the label of fiction, but with devastating precision in the details.

The writing process was emotionally unbearable: a controlled hemorrhage of seven years of suffering, submission and self-destruction.

I poured into those pages every drop of humiliation, every instance of casual cruelty, every instance of being treated as something decorative instead of human.

Some of my works I wrote while crying. Others I wrote with a cold and classical precision, documenting emotional abuse with the detachment of a doctor performing an autopsy.

The final manuscript was not just a story. It was an act of literary and calculated justice.

I worked with my divorce lawyer to coordinate everything perfectly. While Mark’s lawyers negotiated custody and division of assets, assuming I would accept whatever they offered despite exhaustion and defeat, I sent my manuscript to carefully selected publishers: A.M. Thorpe.

I didn’t look for a massive advance or a bidding war. I expected speed. I found a respected and independent publisher that loved the emotional force of the book and accepted an accelerated publication schedule.

My lawyer assured me that the person’s name was protected through multiple layers of legal rights, making it almost impossible to trace me immediately.

The book was published discreetly on Tuesday at the beginning of October, initially with a modest but enthusiastic public in literary circles.

The first reviews were stellar: critics praised it as “a devastatingly accurate exploration of corporate racism and male stigma,” “a feminist thriller for the post-MeToo era,” and “the most impactful portrayal of emotional abuse in modern state fiction.”

The sales were respectable, but not spectacular. For three weeks, “The CEO’s Spaghetti Monster” was consistently seen among readers of literary fiction, generating thoughtful debates in reading clubs and academic circles.

Then I saw the detoporation that changed everything.

A perceptive investigative reporter from Forbes, known for picking up on details that others missed, read the novel during a transatlantic flight. Something about the specificity of the details caught her attention.

The chronology coincided with the news received about the divorce of the CEO of Apex Dynamics. The description of the Zeith Corporation headquarters bore a striking resemblance to the distinctive Apex building.

 The triplets were the daughter of the wife of a chief executive officer, who was immediately dismissed, and who had appeared in a gossip column months ago.

He began to dig. Eп хпa semaпa, elelaboró ​​хп apálisis exhaustivaustivo comparaпdo los acoпtecimieпtos de la пovela coп iпformacióп pública sobre la vida de Mark Vape.

He published his fictions in a Forbes article titled: “Fiction or documentary? The triplets, the mistress, and the CEO who called his wife a spaghettibird.”

The effect was static and clear.

The novel exploded. In seventy-two hours, it shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. It wasn’t just good literature that sold so well, but because it had become the most spectacular public scandal of the year.

People weren’t buying fiction; they were buying a front-row seat to the destruction of a powerful map that escaped all the bad things about corporate America.

The story of the “Spainbird Wife” captivated the public’s imagination with viral popularity.

 Mark Vape became a social symbol of male hoarding, corporate insensitivity, and the casual cruelty of the powerful who see women as disposable.

Social media exploded with millions of comments, memes, and hashtags. #EsposaEspapájaros and #DejaAlCEODeLaVilla trended for days.

TikTok users created elaborate dramatic interpretations of scenes from the book. Podcasts dedicated entire episodes to analyzing Victor Stoe’s sociopathic behavior patterns.

The novel became required reading in business ethics classes and women’s study programs.

The main media outlets picked up the story. Television programs debated whether the book constituted revenge or justice. Legal analysts debated the boundaries between fiction and defamation.

 Feminist writers hailed it as the perfect example of women reclaiming their paragraphs. Conservative commentators condemned it as a violation of privacy. Everyone, regardless of their opinion, was talking about it.

The commercial consequences were immediate and catastrophic. Apex Dynamics’ clients began to quietly acquire contracts, not expecting to be associated with a company whose CEO was branded a sociopath on public television.

The main suspect rejected job offers, criticizing cultural politicians. 

The carefully cultivated image of the company as a pioneering and avant-garde technological leader was replaced overnight by an association with cruelty and misogyny.

The stock price, already somewhat volatile due to market conditions, began a terrible freefall that lasted three days. Institutional investors began selling shares.

The company lost thousands of millions of dollars in market capitalization in months of a week.

Mark’s initial reaction, according to sources outside the company, was one of disdainful mockery. He thought that the attention, however negative, would be forgotten.

In fact, he believed the old saying that bad publicity doesn’t exist. He gave an ill-advised interview to CNBC, where he laughed and called the book “fiction by a bitter ex-wife with too much free time.”

That interview went viral for all the wrong reasons. Her mocking smile, her disdainful attitude, her complete lack of empathy, confirmed everything the book portrayed. Public outrage intensified.

Boycott campaigns were organized. Sponsors withdrew their sponsorships from the events where Apex was held.

Mark began to extract publicity as the magnitude of the disaster became evident. He shouted to his legal team, demanding that they sue the publisher, the author, the newspapers that covered it—everyone.

His lawyers explained that, since the book was fiction with modified parts, and since the truth is an absolute defense against defamation, it practically had no legal basis. The similarities could be coincidental. The author was protected.

Mark, desperate and desperate, made increasingly erratic decisions.

He authorized the company to accelerate the plan of millions of people to buy all available copies of the book in order to destroy the heritage, a useless gesture that only generated more headlines and more public ridicule. 

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But the most devastating blow came from an unexpected direction.

The subtle physical irregularities that had been mentioned in the book (Victor Stope’s creative attitude, his questionable stock market transactions, his use of company resources for personal gain) attracted the attention of financial regulators and investigative journalists. 

The SEC opened an investigation. The FBI’s white-collar crimes division requested documents.

Apex Dynamics’ board of directors held an emergency closed-door meeting. They watched the company’s value evaporate, took calls from furious investors, and read analysis after analysis predicting that the company would not recover as long as Mark remained at the helm.

Mark, sweating through his expensive shirt, tried to attend the board meeting for protection. The security guards—whom he had hired—prevented him from entering the boardroom.

The vice president delivered the verdict over the loudspeaker, with a cold and completely utterly compassionless voice. “Mr. Vape, your personal conduct, so extensively documented in this novel, whether real or fictional, has created an unacceptable situation.”

You represent a direct and negative threat to shareholder value. The board of directors has lost confidence in its leadership. We cannot dismiss a chief executive whom the entire country considers the personification of corporate villainy.

It has caused catastrophic, potentially irreversible, damage to our brand and reputation.

“It’s fiction!” Mark shouted over the loudspeaker, his composure shattered. “It’s lies written by my vile ex-wife! You can’t fire me over a damn novel!”

“The market doesn’t distinguish between truth and effective storytelling, Mark,” the vice president responded with brutal optimism. “It only responds to perception and risk. And of course, you’re toxic. The board’s decision is final and definitive.”

You have been dismissed with cause, with immediate effect. Security personnel will escort you out of the building.”

Mark was stripped of everything that allowed him to be efficient after a year: his title, his corporate office, his access to the company, and his seven-figure salary.

Chloe, his lover and accomplice, was fired hours later for violating the company’s fraternization policy and for the public relations responsibility she represented.

The judiciary, desperate to stop the bleeding, issued a public statement condemning Mark’s behavior and prohibiting his dismissal.

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Meanwhile, my phone was on the line with my lawyers, who were filing their complaints. The court was hoping to resolve any possible lawsuit I might file against the company; they were terrified that I would write a sequel or give interviews.

Offered a generous sum to ensure my silence on something beyond what was already public.

I didn’t need your money—the book cost more than I ever imagined—but I accepted your principle. It was, in a way, an acknowledgment of what had happened to me.

My final act of poetic justice was simple and perfect. I went to a bookstore, bought a pristine first hardcover edition of “The CEO’s Birdsnapper” and signed the cover with my full name.

I had my lawyer arrange for the book to be delivered to Mark by courier at the precise moment when security was escorting him out of Apex headquarters with his belongings in a cardboard box.

The description I wrote was brief and devastating:

Mark, thanks for providing me with the plot for the best-selling novel of my career. You had a point: I was a Spaniard. But this Spaniard just destroyed your empire while you stood by. Now, face your enemy. —AM Thorpe

The divorce process, even during this public spectacle, became almost apocalyptic.

My lawyer, armed with the detailed documentation in the book on emotional abuse, Mark’s own public statements dismissing me, and the court’s public opinion firmly on my side, negotiated from a position of superior strength.

The judge who heard our case, ironically, had read the book.

Although the novel itself was not admissible as evidence, its existence and the public reaction created an atmosphere in which Mark’s personality was already judged. My lawyer skillfully used Mark’s interviews and public statements against him.

I was granted full custody of Leo, Sam, and Noah, and Mark received supervised visitation rights that he never bothered to exercise.

 The financial agreement was substantial: half of all marital property, the alimony calculated to the maximum allowed by law, and the condition that my literary property was his exclusive property.

Meanwhile, Mark quickly turned to legal defense as the SEC investigation required it.

The financial irregularities I had identified in my book provided researchers with a guide on where to look. It was discovered that several of its stock market transactions were considered traditional. 

Finally, he reached an agreement with the SEC for millions and accepted a permanent license as an executive of a company listed on the stock exchange.

Chloe, the mistress who used to smile at me in my own house, considered herself fit to work in the business world. Every background check revealed her role in the scandal.

Finally, he moved to another state and changed his name, but the interpreter forgets him.

My transformation was equally dramatic, but in the opposite direction. Six months after the book’s explosion, I did something I had carefully planned: I revealed my identity as A.M. Thorpe in an exclusive interview for Vapity Fair.

I appeared on the cover of the magazine in a spectacular red dress, professionally styled and tailored, that looked like a birdcage. The headline read: “The woman who wrote her own path to victory.”

The interview, conducted in my beautiful and practical house with my three children, became one of the best-selling issues of the magazine.

I spoke openly about emotional abuse, about being valued only for appearances, about the specific cruelty of being discarded immediately after birth. I spoke of how writing saved me, how transformative art became both therapy and weapon.

I became, in a somewhat unexpected way, the spokesperson for women trapped in emotionally abusive relationships.

Sales of the book skyrocketed again after the revelation. Millions of copies were sold in dozens of languages.

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But more than money, more than fame, I had recovered something that Mark tried to take from me: my voice, my identity, my power.

I returned to writing as my main profession, either as a writer with difficulties, or as a consolidated and successful author, whose next book was already being considered by publishers who were competing with million-dollar offers.

 I used my platform to defend maternal rights, postpartum support, and the recognition of emotional abuse as something real and devastating.

I participated in interview programs, gave welcome speeches and became a regular contributor to publications that addressed topics of women, business ethics and the power of storytelling.

I was also Mrs. Mark Vape, wife of a CEO. I was Apa Vape, author, mother, survivor, and advocate.

My children grew up knowing that their mother was strong, creative, and prone to being silenced. Finally, when they were older, they read the book and understood the battle she had fought for her future.

Two years after the divorce was finalized, I sat in my home office—a beautiful, bright room overlooking the garden where my children played—, my fingers in my second home. This was pure fiction, but it had nothing to do with Mark, just a story I wanted to tell because I loved telling stories.

Through the window, I could see Leo, Sam, and Noah, two small boys, laughing as they chased each other across the lawn. They were safe, happy, loved, and protected. I would grow up knowing that my mother had fought for them, that she had endured being despised, and that she had transformed her pain into power.

I thought of Mark from time to time, generally when I saw news about his usual legal problems or when someone referred to seeing him diminished and defeated in some important or business event, so let’s not forget the powerful CEO, but a story with a moral.

I felt too much satisfaction at his suffering, but also no compassion. He had made his decisions. He had valued appearance over subservience, cruelty over compassion, image over humanity. He had rejected the mother of his children because she no longer served his vainness.

And I simply told you the truth about it in the most powerful way I knew how.

I saved the final draft of my new map and closed my laptop. Through the window, I saw my students playing under the golden light of twilight and smiled.

Mark expected me to be small, silent, grateful for any small glimmer of dignity he allowed me. He expected me to be a footnote in his imaginary tale of uninterrupted success, a minor character quickly erased.

Instead, I wrote the whole book and gave him the only role he deserved: the villain who lost everything while the scarecrow he tried to destroy became the hero of his own story.

This, in my opinion, was the sweetest victory of all.