Mu Xiaoai

Days before my picture-perfect wedding to Kevin Davenport, a man as beloved in our tight-knit town as his prominent family, my life stretched before me, an unblemished canvas. But a late-night stroll turned into a nightmare when I was savagely attacked, leaving me battered, disfigured, and my future hanging by a thread. Waking in the sterile hospital room, amidst the beeping machines, the true horror unfolded: my own father and brother, the very men who vowed to protect me, were the architects of my suffering. I overheard them celebrating, their voices chillingly calm, about how my "unfortunate accident" cleared the path for Dad's ambitious intern, Jessica Evans, to become a Davenport in my stead. They deliberately stalled my reconstructive surgery, allowing my severe injuries to worsen, while simultaneously unleashing a venomous smear campaign across social media, painting me as the villain. And then came the doctor's quiet confession: the brutal assault and subsequent neglect meant I might never be able to have children. The ultimate blow landed when Jessica herself glided into my room in my wedding dress, her triumphant smile twisting as she leaned in to whisper that she'd paid the attackers extra to ensure my visible "unforgettable" disfigurement. My father and brother watched, their faces hard with approval, ready to silence my pain. How could the family I loved, the people who should have protected me, orchestrate such a monstrous betrayal, sacrificing my body, my future, and my very identity for their ambition? The physical agony paled in comparison to the searing rage and profound despair that ignited within me, consuming every last shred of my old life. They thought they had broken me irrevocably, that I was a defeated, silenced doll in their cruel game. But as they celebrated their victory, I reached for a hidden burner phone, dialing the number of a woman they had underestimated for years: my formidable, estranged mother, Eleanor Vance, a corporate lawyer in New York. Let them think I was sedated and compliant. My real fight had just begun.

After seven years of being together, I was finally going to try on my custom wedding dress and become Judd's Luna. But he showed up late to the boutique, reeking of another Omega's sweet gardenia perfume. When I canceled the ceremony, he thought I was just throwing a childish tantrum. He even brought his mistress, Corine, back to the shop and let her put on my six-figure wedding gown. "You look beautiful," Judd told her, looking at me with disappointment. Later, when my grandmother was on her deathbed, I desperately called him, needing my Alpha by my side for our sacred pack duty. "Judd can't come to the phone right now," Corine answered sweetly. My grandmother passed away without him there, and my seven years of devotion were treated like absolute garbage. He thought I was just a docile Omega who couldn't survive without him, assuming I would eventually come begging for his forgiveness. He didn't know I had already dumped hot coffee all over that white dress and slapped him across the face. And he certainly didn't know I had just signed the asset division accord, ready to liquidate every single penny we shared and leave him with nothing.

I thought I had married the perfect man and stepped into a dream life in a Manhattan penthouse. But on our wedding night, after a single sip of wine my husband Caleb insisted I drink, I blacked out. When I woke up, I found a tiny, fresh needle puncture mark on my arm. I secretly installed hidden cameras and captured the horrifying truth. Caleb was drugging my wine and letting a strange man into our bedroom to drain my blood while I was unconscious. My health rapidly deteriorated into severe anemia. When I went to a neutral hospital for a checkup, the doctor revealed an even more absurd truth. "Ms. Emerson, medically speaking, there are no indications of sexual intercourse. You are still a virgin." Despite being married for weeks, my husband had never even touched me. I didn't understand. If he didn't want a real marriage, why marry me? What was the purpose of draining my blood every week? And why did I catch that very same hospital doctor secretly meeting with my husband and a mysterious blonde woman who hissed about "leaving no trace"? What kind of sick, twisted conspiracy had I been dragged into? Looking at my pale, ghost-like reflection in the mirror, a cold certainty settled in my heart. Since my perfect marriage was just a bloody transaction, I was going to expose every last lie and burn their world to the ground.

My Alpha mate and I survived a deadly rogue attack years ago. He held my bleeding body and swore to the moon that I would be his only Luna. But today, his cold voice echoed through the pack mind-link, officially announcing his mating ceremony with another high-ranking woman. When I returned to the pack manor, his mother humiliated me by using her aura to press my Omega nature into the floor. His new fiancée mocked my low status and flaunted her custom-made diamond ring—the very ring I had designed for my own coronation. To keep me around as a hidden pet, Kael even arranged for me to marry a cheap, low-ranking lookalike of himself. When I resisted, he used his Alpha Command to crush my shoulders, warning me not to ruin his pack's reputation. I didn't understand why the man who once loved me could throw me away like garbage. It wasn't until I accidentally found his diary that I learned his dying mother had used a forbidden blood oath to force his betrayal. She traded her life for mine, and Kael chose his political duty over my soul, playing god with my life and expecting me to quietly bear the agony. My heart completely died. I threw his moonstone ring into the mud, leaving him on his knees desperately digging in the rain. Then, I calmly called the rival Nightfall Alpha. "Meet me at the Priestess temple tomorrow. We are severing the bond."

Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline. But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry. Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die. Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie. Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity. "Consider it a dowry." He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.

I borrowed my wealthy best friend's identity to seduce Colonel Ethan Christensen. He was the powerful uncle of my ex-boyfriend, Kayden, who had brutally dumped me for a rich heiress. My revenge plan worked too well. Ethan fell deeply in love with my fake persona and proposed. But then he handed me a thick envelope: a top-secret military background check requiring fingerprints and ten years of history. My fake identity was about to be shattered. I faced federal fraud charges and prison time. More than that, the guilt was eating me alive. Ethan wasn't a pawn; he was a genuinely honorable man who promised to protect me. Terrified and exhausted by the lies, I typed out a full confession, ready to tell him everything and walk away. But right before I hit send, Kayden's new fiancée called to gloat about their engagement. Through the phone, I heard Kayden's voice, lazily mocking my low status. "Tell her to stay home. Tell her to find someone on her own level in the gutter." The rage burned away all my guilt. Why should I be the bigger person while they destroyed my life without a second thought? I deleted the confession and called my friend to hire a black-market hacker. I needed a flawless, forged background in forty-eight hours. I am going to marry Ethan Christensen, and I am going to smile when Kayden is forced to call me "Aunt."

I thought marrying into the Barrett dynasty would be my fairy tale, but my wedding day felt more like a business merger. My husband, Jarret, didn't even look at me as he checked his watch at the altar, treating our marriage like a political chore. Two months later, the world shattered when Jarret's diplomatic convoy was bombed. The news reported him dead, with his twin brother Jayden as the sole survivor. When "Jayden" returned to the estate limping on a cane, the house became a tomb. My mother-in-law and our cousin Cristine immediately moved to freeze my bank accounts and strip me of my rights, calling me a "greedy climber." I was a widow in a house of wolves, but the real nightmare started when I saw "Jayden" drop his cane and passionately kiss Jarret's mistress in the dark. I crept to the study and heard the bone-chilling truth: Jarret wasn't the one who died. He had murdered his own brother in the blast to steal his identity and become a "surviving hero." Even worse, he was already planning my "accidental" overdose once I signed over the family trust. My blood ran cold as I realized the gentle, calloused hands that touched me on my wedding night hadn't belonged to my husband at all. I had fallen in love with Jayden, the man Jarret had just vaporized for a promotion. I tried to escape, but they caught me and forced a sedative into my arm. When I woke up, the family doctor was standing over me with a predatory smile. "Congratulations, Elise. You're ten weeks pregnant." Jarret leaned over my bed, his eyes cold and victorious. They aren't going to kill me anymore. They've turned me into an incubator for an heir, trapped in a golden cage with the monster who murdered the father of my child.

I stood in the center of the ballroom, watching my husband accept credit for the massacre I had meticulously planned. To the underworld, Craig Snyder was the King, a strategic genius who had crippled the Russian mafia. To me, he was the man who had just re-gifted my anniversary present—a Patek Philippe watch—to match the diamond bracelet dangling from his mistress’s wrist. The Senator’s daughter, Chanel, laughed at a joke only he could hear, wearing a red dress and a look of naive adoration that used to be mine. When I confronted him, expecting an apology, Craig didn't just dismiss me. He slapped me across the face in front of the city's elite, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He yanked the wedding ring off my finger, drawing blood, and placed it into Chanel’s palm, calling me a hysterical, barren relic. Later, I found the forged documents. He had signed my name to transfer every asset we built together into his sole possession, leaving me with nothing but a hush-money check. He thought I was just a scorned wife. He forgot that I was the architect of his empire. So, I drove my car off a bridge. I let the world believe I was dead. I let him mourn the woman he destroyed while I watched from the shadows, erasing his existence from my accounts. Six months later, at the Global Crime Summit, Craig stood up with a diamond ring, ready to beg my memory for forgiveness. But the doors opened, and I didn't walk in alone. I walked onto the stage holding the hand of his deadliest rival, Felix Tyson. I wasn't there to take him back. I was there to take his kingdom.

For years, I was the perfect, quiet wife to Dante Moretti, the most feared Mafia Don in New York. I mistook his lavish gifts for affection and his cold protection for care. The ninety-ninth time I asked for a divorce, he laughed. An hour later, his mistress, Isabella, called him. "Get out," he ordered, leaving me on a dark street corner in the pouring rain so he could rush to her side. As I watched his armored car vanish, I finally understood the truth. Our marriage was a transaction, a pact made to settle my father's debts. I was just a placeholder, a substitute living a life designed for Isabella. Every gift, every gesture, was an echo of her tastes. He never saw me. To him, I wasn't his wife; I was a possession. An obligation he could discard at will. He thought I was too weak, too dependent to ever fight back. He believed I couldn't survive without him. He thought I would just run and hide. He was wrong. You don't escape a man like Dante Moretti. He would hunt you to the ends of the earth, not out of love, but out of pride. To break a pact with a Don, you can't just run. You have to be prepared for war. And standing there, drenched and abandoned, I made a new vow: I wouldn't just leave him. I would burn his entire world to ash.

The system overload alarm shrieked, sparks flying, monitors flickering. My own algorithm, my miracle cure, was dying, and it was taking me with it. Liam Thorne, facing me, declared, "Bring her back, Ava! You said your algorithm could heal anything!" His face a mask of cold fury over his lost love, Chloe. "It can fix systems, Liam, not resurrect data that's been corrupted for a year!" I cried, tears streaming, a sharp pain shooting through my chest. His voice, a low growl devoid of warmth, accused, "You ruined everything. If it weren't for you, Chloe would have finished her AI, and we would have built an empire. You owe me this." He' d forced me to push my healing algorithm past its limits for a ghost project of Chloe' s, a project she had sabotaged out of jealousy due to an archaic Thorne family tradition: whoever fixed Liam's paralyzed system had to marry him. I had fixed it, naive, desperate for validation, eager to prove my genius. It became my prison. The final alarm blared, screens went black, and darkness consumed me as the pain in my chest exploded. Then, I gasped. My eyes shot open. I wasn' t in my lab. I was in a lavish room, all white leather and chrome, sunlight streaming through a floor-to-ceiling window. Liam Thorne sat in a high-tech wheelchair, younger, but still etched with frustration. I knew this day. This was the day it all began. The day the Thorne family brought me here, the brilliant reclusive tech genius, to fix Liam\'s critically damaged mobility system. In my past life, I would have felt a thrill of challenge. This time, I looked at Liam, the man who would watch me die without remorse, and a faint, knowing smile touched my lips. "Your system is beyond repair," I stated, my voice clear and steady.

My world shattered the day Liam Sterling, the man I'd loved since childhood, turned into my fiercest accuser. His father, my beloved mentor, was dead, and Liam, blinded by grief, believed my own innocent father was a criminal, the cause of his despair. He looked at me, not with love, but with chilling hatred. He threw the engagement ring—our symbol of forever—onto the marble floor, its clatter echoing the definitive punctuation mark on our shared history. He cast me out, suffering from bone cancer I hadn't revealed, believing it yet another one of my family's lies. Now homeless and destitute, my father, falsely imprisoned for embezzlement, suffered a heart attack behind bars. Liam, despite my desperate pleas, denied him bail, sealing his fate. Soon after, the brutal news came: my father died in prison. The cruelty escalated. Liam paraded me at a gala, forcing a grotesque performance of the dutiful fiancée, only to publicly destroy a cherished gift—my bronzed ballet slippers—a relic of my mother and my dreams. When I begged him to believe my terminal diagnosis, he scoffed, accusing me of faking illness. Then his assistant, Chloe Davis, fabricated a monstrous lie: a miscarriage, claiming I was responsible. Liam believed her, swearing vengeance on me for killing a child that never existed. How could he be so blind? How could the man who promised to protect me become this cruel stranger, actively destroying my life? I was accused of harassment and threats, my cancer dismissed as an elaborate trick, and finally, condemned to a psychiatric facility. My mother, consumed by grief and shock over my father's death and my arrest, died shortly after. Alone, broken, and dying, I found myself trapped, unable to prove my innocence, questioning if the love we shared was ever real. But deep down, a flicker of defiance remained—a silent promise that the truth, however brutal, would eventually surface.

My life was perfect, or so I thought. I was Ethan, a former architect, now a devoted stay-at-home dad, happily supporting my ambitious wife, Nicole, a rising city councilwoman, as she chased her mayoral dreams. Our beautiful daughter, Lily, was celebrating her sixth birthday at what was deceptively also a high-stakes political fundraiser in the dream home I designed. Then, the world shattered. A deafening explosion ripped through our home, and in an instant, the smoke and flames consumed everything, including my little Lily. Days later, I woke up in a hospital, horrifically burned, only to hear Nicole, my wife, coldly order the surgeon to perform a vasectomy during my skin graft surgery, not for medical reasons, but to ensure "my real son, Caleb" was the sole heir. As I lay there, paralyzed and helpless, slipping in and out of consciousness, I overheard the monstrous truth. Nicole hadn't just allowed Lily to die; she meticulously planned the "gas leak" explosion with a hitman. Our daughter, her own child, was a "political liability," an "obstacle" to Caleb's inheritance. Lily was merely a "tragic story" to secure her election. My physical pain was a dull ache compared to the pure, hellish agony ripping through my soul. How could the woman I loved, the mother of my child, be such a cold-blooded monster? What kind of twisted ambition sacrifices an innocent life for power? But my shattered world was not the end; it was the beginning. In the silent, agonizing nights, the architect's mind that built structures began to deconstruct, to plan, to plot. I swallowed my screams, feigned unconsciousness, and made a silent vow: she had taken everything from me, and now, I would take everything from her. Justice for Lily, no matter the cost.

The black SUV pulled up to my childhood D.C. estate after ten years away. I stepped out, expecting a quiet, perhaps strained, family dinner. Instead, a lavish party was in full swing, music and laughter spilling from the open doors. Then I saw her: my cousin, Chloe, wearing my dress, laughing with Julian Vance-my fiancé from a decade ago. My research. My fellowship. She was claiming it all as her own, right in front of me. Just as confusion ripped through me, my mother, Eleanor, appeared, her face hardening into an icy mask. "Ava," she said, her voice a chilling whisper. "What are you doing here?" Before I could demand an explanation, she cut me off, announcing Chloe' s engagement and achievements as if I didn't exist. When I protested, claiming my stolen life, my own mother publicly declared me "unwell" and "confused," a danger under medical care. My father, David, stood silent, then sided with her, allowing security to drag me away and lock me in a secluded wing of my own home. Betrayal ripped through me, a suffocating blanket of disbelief. How could my family do this? Erase me, steal my entire existence, and frame me as insane? But then, my father returned, a tray with sedatives in hand, and a flicker in his eyes-a silent warning, a hidden promise. This wasn't abandonment. This was a staged escape. I took the pills, publicly "dying" as Ava, knowing I was about to be reborn.

The pills sealed my fate, but death wasn't freedom. My spirit lingered, unseen, tethered to a world where my husband, Ethan, flaunted Jessie – the woman who'd driven me to my grave. Three years of silent purgatory passed. Then, Jessie's ambition required my 'skills,' subtly manipulating Ethan to desperately search for 'me.' Ethan found my brother Mike, and his own mother, Eleanor, a woman I'd rescued. But Jessie's lies-claiming I faked my death-twisted his mind. I watched, helpless, as his rage exploded: he ordered my grave exhumed, shoved Eleanor to her death, then coldly ordered Mike shot. My family annihilated, my grave desecrated-all fueled by a woman's ambition and a man's blind rage. How could a son not recognize his own mother? How could Jessie steal my heroism? The injustice was a silent scream in my ethereal throat. Yet, fragments of truth-a locket, my bones, a seashell-shattered Ethan' s delusion, exposing Jessie' s monstrous deceit and his complicity. Consumed by cold fury, Ethan transformed into an avenger. He plotted a fiery reckoning at his father's abandoned factory, luring them all to a final, cleansing inferno. In that blaze, my tether would finally break.

My world revolved around Brittany, so when her ex-boyfriend Chad messed up, I sacrificed everything, even my reputation, to take the fall for his hit-and-run. Then came the call that fractured my reality: Brittany was pregnant, but she wanted to tell the world the baby was Chad's, and for his career, she wanted me to agree to a horrifying abortion. I watched, numb and helpless, as she openly embraced Chad, planning a fake future with our unborn child while orchestrating my public humiliation, costing me my job and turning me into a national pariah. I endured public assaults and relentless smears, branded a "cowardly drunk driver" and an "unstable stalker," while the woman I loved actively helped destroy everything I had. How could the woman I'd built my simple life around so cruelly extinguish our future, betray our child, and conspire with the very man I covered for, all to ensure my utter ruin? The love I clung to turned to ash, leaving me stripped bare of everything I knew, an empty shell staring at the indifferent Austin sky. But reaching the absolute bottom ignited a forgotten flame. With nothing left to lose, I dialed a number I hadn't touched in years, summoning Scarlett, the fierce heiress to a vast Texas oil fortune, ready to unleash the sleeping giant of my family's power. It was time for the Walkers to remind everyone exactly who they were.

Completely drunk, she entered the wrong room. Since then, her life had changed drastically. He helped her avenge herself. Not only did he fight back the shame and humiliation thrown at her by her stepmother, but he also protected her from her stepsister’s dirty tricks. "Sign this contract and be my wife. I'll give you the whole world," he promised. But promises were made to be broken. When the contract was due, he didn't allow her to leave. "You stole my heart. How could I set you free?" No matter where she went, she couldn't escape from his hands and his heart.

I flew cross-country for my birthday, hoping for just one night of warmth with my husband and five-year-old daughter. But when I opened the door, I found my famous hockey star husband and my daughter acting like the perfect family with Dayna, a glamorous sports commentator. My daughter shrank away from my open arms. "Mama's boring. She never plays with me. Don't go, Auntie Dayna!" My husband didn't even look up from his phone to wish me a happy birthday. He coldly canceled our dinner plans, claiming he had an urgent, last-minute strategy meeting for his team. Hours later, a TMZ article popped up on my phone, featuring a brutal photo of the three of them sharing a steak at an upscale Manhattan restaurant. The headline praised Blake's "family dinner with rumored flame Dayna Nixon" and openly wondered where the current Mrs. Carlisle was. My daughter lied for this, and my husband publicly humiliated me, treating my five years of silent sacrifice like a pathetic, disposable joke. I didn't cry, and I didn't throw a desperate fit. Instead, I calmly walked into his study, signed the pre-nuptial divorce agreement he had prepared years ago, and booked a one-way ticket back to Boston. From now on, I am no longer Mrs. Carlisle. I am Corinne Sargent, and I am taking my life back.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

When Natalie's hearing returned, betrayal was the devastating truth waiting for her. She repaid the cheating pair with sharp slaps, then took her sister's place in an arranged marriage. Her groom, Nathan, was rumored to be frail, vicious, and unable to satisfy a woman. Their wedding night, however, demolished every warning when he pinned her against the glass and challenged the rumor himself. Three relentless days proved the gossip laughably wrong. Later, her groveling ex begged her back. Nathan asked for a knife to deal with the "pest." Everyone saw a monster. Natalie alone knew his madness hid a love that burned only for her.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

During the car accident, Katherine's fiancé shoved her toward danger just to save the servant's daughter. Waking up in the ICU shattered every illusion she had left. She called off the engagement, cut ties with her family, and stopped sacrificing herself for people who never valued her. Her brothers mocked her decision, certain she would return begging within days. Instead, their worlds collapsed one after another. Her eldest brother was baffled. "Why is the company's cash flow a complete mess?" Because Katherine had pulled her investment. Her second brother was livid. "Why is mymasterpiece being called plagiarism?" Because Katherine wasn't letting him steal her work anymore. Her youngest brother was panicked. "Why is the whole racing community shutting me out?" Because Katherine had walked away from the team. By the time they realized everything she had done behind the scenes, it was too late. Standing beside her powerful new fiancé, Katherine smiled coldly. "Your chance to fix this expired long ago."

For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.

Framed by her stepsister and husband, Emma was cast aside by her family and sent to prison to protect their precious name. Behind bars, she endured hell and gave birth to a daughter. Released with nothing, the once-famous celebrity lawyer swore never to see her ex again, only to end up cleaning for a living while he relentlessly tormented her. Then her daughter's identity exploded across high society. Emma ran, rebuilt her life, and drew a crowd of admirers. Her ex finally panicked. "Please, look at me again! Our daughter needs her father!" Emma pointed to the suitors behind her. "Get in line!"

After six years together, Joslyn was abandoned before her wedding when her boyfriend chose his first love over her. Then came an unexpected proposal-from Connor, her ex-boyfriend's adoptive father. "Marry me. You'll get everything you want-and you can get back at him." The deal came with its perks: a lavish monthly allowance, abundant resources at her fingertips, a husband who was practically never home, and the sheer pleasure of rubbing her new status in her ex-boyfriend's face. But the distant husband she expected turned possessive instead. While her ex begged publicly for another chance, Connor pulled her into his arms. "Say that again, and you'll be out of the family forever." Only later did Joslyn discover the truth-Connor had spent six years planning to make her his. Believing it was only a beneficial deal, Joslyn agreed. Constant traveling? A complete lie. And the promise that they'd each live their own lives? Another carefully spun deception. On their wedding night, he had her pinned beneath him, his kisses stealing her breath. And night after night, he kept coming home-utterly fixated on her.

For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence. When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside. Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer. Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius. Late one night, he called, begging for another chance. Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?" Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer."