After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law-Chapter 204: To My Darling Hubby

Aria stood in front of the mirror in the living room, holding her new phone at arm’s length.

She stared at the digital display, her perfectly shaped eyebrows pulling together into a deep, highly critical frown.

"Why?" Aria whispered to her phone. "Why on earth do I need to see my own pores in ultra-high definition? This isn’t innovation. It’s a hate crime against women."

The camera quality was absolutely, ruthlessly unforgiving.

Her period was slated to start tomorrow, which meant her hormones were raging and her body was currently holding onto water weight like a sponge. As she twisted her hips to inspect her reflection, her insecurities flared to life with a vengeance.

She pinched the slight, soft curve of her lower stomach.

"I look bloated," she muttered, turning to the side and popping a knee. "And is that... cellulite? I definitely need to go to the gym. Tomorrow. Or next week." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Despite the fact that her three-hour moisturizing routine had left her pale skin literally glowing like a glazed donut in the afternoon light, she hated every angle she tried. She attempted a sultry over-the-shoulder glare. She looked like she had a stiff neck. She tried sticking one leg out to elongate her silhouette. She looked like a flamingo with a cramp.

She snapped three photos and immediately deleted all of them in disgust.

"I am significantly hotter in my head," Aria sighed, dropping her arms. "Standing up is entirely too awkward. I look like a Sim whose player went AFK."

She needed props.

Aria retreated to the master suite.

She climbed onto the massive bed, sinking into the plush, pristine white silk sheets. The stark white fabric provided the absolute perfect, high-contrast backdrop for her flushed, oiled skin.

"Okay," Aria murmured, feeling her confidence instantly returning. "Let’s direct this masterpiece."

She grabbed a decorative velvet pillow and propped her phone against it, angling the front-facing camera downward to capture the length of the mattress. She reached up and unfastened her messy braid, shaking her head until her rose-gold hair tumbled down around her shoulders in thick, voluminous, bouncy waves.

She didn’t want to bother with a timer and poses. She tapped the camera app into ’Video’ mode, making sure the setting was locked at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.

She hit the red record button.

Aria fell back against the pillows.

She brought her bare knees up, parting her thighs just slightly, the white silk sheets pooling around her hips. She arched her spine, lifting her chest to catch the natural sunlight pouring in through the window.

She brought her hands up, her glossy oxblood-red nails tracing the delicate line of her collarbones, drawing the viewer’s eye slowly, agonizingly down the center of her torso.

She looked directly into the camera lens. She didn’t just stare; she imagined Damien’s golden, obsessive eyes watching her from the other side of the glass. She let her eyelids drop into a heavy, sultry, dark bedroom gaze that basically radiated sin.

With a slow, graceful sweep of her hand, she pushed the heavy curtain of her rose-gold hair entirely over her right shoulder.

The movement deliberately exposed the smooth column of her neck and the cluster of faint, purplish bruises Damien had sucked into her skin.

She bit her lower lip, holding the pose for three seconds of pure, cinematic perfection, before reaching forward and stopping the recording.

Aria sat up, grabbed the phone, and hit play.

She watched the playback. Her jaw slowly dropped.

"Okay, wait," Aria whispered, her eyes wide. "That belongs in the Louvre. I am a literal goddess."

She paused the video right at the hair-sweep moment. She pressed the side buttons to take a screenshot.

She opened the photo. She immediately groaned.

"Ugh, motion blur," Aria complained, zooming in on her slightly fuzzy hand.

"I need an AI extractor," she decided.

She quickly opened the App Store, searched for a highly-rated frame-extraction app, and downloaded it. A few seconds later, the app icon popped onto her home screen. The instructions were simple: Share the video directly from your Gallery to the App to extract ultra-HD frames.

Aria opened her Photos app. She selected the thirty-second video.

She tapped the square icon with the upward arrow in the bottom left corner to open the iOS Share Sheet.

The menu slid up from the bottom of the screen.

Aria brought her thumb down, aiming for the second row of app icons where her newly downloaded AI tool was sitting.

But Apple’s user interface had a fatal, universally despised flaw.

Just a fraction of a millisecond before her thumb made contact with the glass, the phone’s internal processor finally loaded the top row of ’Suggested Contacts’, violently shifting the entire menu downward.

Her thumb completely missed the app row.

Instead, it landed dead-center on the very first, largest bubble in the ’Suggested Contacts’ row.

My darling hubby

Aria’s heart completely stopped beating.

A tiny, blue circular progress bar appeared in the center of the bubble, filling up with terrifying, lightning-fast speed.

Swoosh.

The cheerful, bright ding of a successfully sent iMessage echoed through the quiet bedroom.

"Shit! Shit! SHIT!" Aria shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Her fingers fumbled wildly, slipping against the privacy screen as she aggressively swiped out of the Photos app and launched the Messages app.

Aria smashed her finger onto his contact thread.

There it was. A high-definition video bubble sitting at the bottom of the chat.

Aria pressed and held her finger against the blue bubble, her chest heaving as she waited for the sub-menu to pop up so she could hit ’Undo Send’.

"Come on, come on, come on!" she begged the phone.

The menu popped up. Her thumb instantly darted toward the ’Undo Send’ option.

But her thumb froze in mid-air.

Right beneath the highly explicit video of her writhing naked on the white silk sheets, the tiny, faint grey text updated in real-time.

The word Delivered vanished.

It was replaced by a single, horrifyingly final word.

Read.