Shelby Helliwell

Ten years together, three years of marriage. I thought we were the perfect couple, especially after our IVF finally worked and I became pregnant. But an anonymous text shattered everything. It was a photo of my husband, Jereme, passionately kissing my stepsister, Ericka. Through a cracked bedroom door, I heard them laughing. Ericka was pregnant too. Jereme promised her he would divorce me as soon as I delivered "our" baby. Then came the most chilling part. Jereme bragged that he had bribed the clinic to swap his sperm with a "discarded" sample. He called me a mere incubator, refusing to let his precious bloodline run through my body. When I coldly handed him the divorce papers, his fragile ego snapped. In a fit of rage, he shoved me hard against his office wall. As blood pooled around my legs and I begged for help, he just sneered. "Stop faking a miscarriage to get my attention. It's pathetic." Then, he ran off to comfort a crying Ericka, leaving me and my unborn baby to die on the cold floor. Lying in my own blood, my ten years of love turned into pure, icy hatred. I didn't understand how the man I trusted could be so monstrously cruel. But Jereme made one fatal mistake. That "discarded" sperm didn't belong to a nobody. It belonged to Blace Salinas, the most powerful and ruthless billionaire in the city. And when I woke up in the hospital, Blace was standing by my bed, ready to make them pay.

I woke up in the body of a despised "wolfless Omega" in a vicious werewolf pack. Before I could even process my transmigration, I was tied to a rough wooden post, framed for poisoning the Alpha's brother. The crowd roared for me to burn. "Burn the witch! She tried to kill the Alpha's brother!" Alpha Donovan, my fated mate, looked at me with cold, merciless judgment, ready to execute me without a single question. When the terrified maid who framed me was brought forward, Donovan executed her on the spot for changing her story, instantly destroying my only lead. Even after I risked everything, using my modern medical knowledge and a secret interdimensional system to bring his brother back from the brink of death, I was slapped by his mother and locked away as a dangerous witch. I was an innocent 21st-century doctor thrown into a brutal, lethal conspiracy. Why was I chosen as the perfect scapegoat? Who was the real mastermind desperately trying to silence me? I refused to die for someone else's crime. I bargained with the Alpha for exactly three days to prove my innocence. To survive, I must fully unlock my medical system. And the only way to charge it is to steal a rare metal belt buckle right off the waist of the ruthless Alpha who wants me dead.

Today was supposed to be the day I bonded with Donn Carlisle, the heir of the Silver Moon Pack. For a Wolfless girl like me, it was supposed to be salvation. A name. A place. A future no one could take away. Then, minutes before the ceremony, I heard my stepsister giggle behind the altar. I found Donn with Brianda pressed against the ancient oak table where our vows were meant to be sealed. Her dress was hiked to her waist. His hands were on her body. And when Brianda saw me, she smiled, placed a hand on her swollen belly, and let me understand exactly how long they had been betraying me. Donn did not beg. He did not even look ashamed. He only adjusted his clothes and sneered, “You’re Wolfless. You can’t complete a true bonding anyway. This was only ever a formality.” So I burned the ceremonial veil. When the whole pack rushed in, I expected outrage. Instead, Donn’s mother blamed me for failing to keep my own man. Brianda sobbed that they were fated mates. My own family looked ready to drag me home and bury the scandal before it stained their precious golden daughter. They thought I would cry. They thought I would disappear. They forgot that a cornered woman has nothing left to lose. That night, I walked into the empty chambers of Ansel Carlisle, the legendary Alpha everyone believed dead. I took his silver-pommeled dagger, entered the family council, and cut open my palm before them all. “I pledge myself to the true Alpha,” I said. If they wanted to make me a discarded bride, I would make myself untouchable. I bound myself to a dead man and became Ansel Carlisle’s widow. Only Ansel was not dead. He came back from the northern border broken, unconscious, and trapped in a soul coma no healer could cure. The family called it a miracle. I called it a disaster. Because now I am not the widow of a fallen hero. I am the Luna of a living Alpha. And according to the healers, I may be the only one who can wake his wolf.

For seven years, I was the dutiful wife of the city's most ruthless Mafia Don, enduring his coldness and his family's constant disdain. Until a text from his new protégé lit up my phone during a syndicate dinner. She was moving her exotic pet into my dead child's locked nursery. When I confronted him, Dante didn't care. He publicly shattered a crystal glass just because my fingers had brushed it, treating my touch like a contagion. His mother mocked my inferior bloodline in front of the hardened Capos, threatening to destroy my mother's diner if I didn't submit to the protégé. Even worse, I soon discovered the devastating truth. This very protégé had tampered with my pregnancy medication three years ago, causing my agonizing miscarriage. And when faced with the undeniable evidence, Dante still chose to protect her over our dead heir. He thought I was just a powerless, barren civilian who would swallow her grief and bow to his mafia empire forever. He didn't know I was actually the Boss of the Haven Syndicate—the untouchable shadow board that controlled the lifelines of his entire operation. I stared at the man who had reduced our child's memory to an inconvenience, and calmly pulled out my phone. "Initiate the formal severing of my marriage," I ordered my men. "We are burning his whole operation to the ground."

For ten years, I was the invisible backbone of the Silver Creek Pack. I cooked the books to hide Alpha Ethan's gambling debts. I ghostwrote the peace treaties that kept our borders safe. I warmed his bed every night, waiting for the bite that would mark me as his Luna. On the night of our tenth anniversary, I didn't get a ring. I got replaced. Ethan walked into the gala with Ashley, a wealthy heiress dripping in gold, clinging to his arm. When I tried to speak to him, he didn't just ignore me. He used an Alpha Command—a biological weapon that hijacked my free will. "Go to the kitchen," he ordered, forcing my knees to hit the floor in front of the entire pack. "Ashley is sensitive to the smell of stress. You're ruining her night." He humiliated me in the house I helped build. He wore the crown I polished for him, thinking I was nothing more than a glorified housekeeper he could discard at will. He forgot that while he held the title, I held the passwords. I didn't go to the kitchen. I went to the office. I initiated a permanent wipe of the cloud backups, reformatted the local servers, and deleted ten years of financial strategies. Then, I snapped the mate bond and walked out into the rain. Three days later, I walked back into the conference room. Ethan laughed, thinking I was there to beg for my job back. I threw a foreclosure contract onto the table. "I'm not here to serve drinks, Ethan. I'm the new owner of your debt. Get out of my chair."

My husband stood over our son's cold, blue body, his eyes filled with pure hatred. "You killed him," Eli growled, using his Alpha tone to force me into submission. "You were too busy with your research to watch our heir." I broke. I accepted the punishment. I let them drag me to the water cells where the silver burned my skin. I let his "cousin" Kasey pour my son’s ashes into a filthy sewer grate while Eli stood by and watched, stone-faced. He stripped me of my title, my clothes, and threw me into the Rogue lands to rot. But in the ruins of the old temple, the Moon Goddess showed me the truth. I wasn't the only one distracted that day. While our three-year-old screamed for his daddy from the water, Eli heard him. He heard him, but he didn't come. Because he was in the boathouse, entangled in the sheets with Kasey. He ignored our son's dying cries to satisfy his lust. The pain was too much. To survive the agony, I chose the Ritual of Oblivion. I paid the ultimate price: I erased my memories of them. All of them. Years later, as the revered White Wolf Luna, I walked down the grand staircase of the Lycan palace. A man I didn't recognize fell to his knees in front of the crowd, weeping, clutching at the hem of my silver dress. "Harper, please! It’s me, Eli! Remember our baby!" I tilted my head, looking at him with polite indifference. "I'm sorry, sir." "I have no mate named Eli."

For seven years, my husband, Dwight, was a saint for publicly forgiving me for letting his mother die. Today, he let my father die. And I learned his forgiveness was just a seven-year-long lie. He refused to send a medical helicopter, choosing instead to listen to his new, twenty-two-year-old lover, Charity, preach about the universe's plan. At my father's funeral, she crashed the service in a wedding dress, drew a clown smile on my father's face with lipstick, and announced she was pregnant. "You're a barren wasteland," she sneered. "A broken woman he can't stand the sight of." That's when I understood. His forgiveness was never real. It was a slow-burning revenge for a crime his own mother had orchestrated against me-a crime that left me unable to ever have children. He thought he had taken everything from me. He was wrong. He left me one thing: revenge. And I was about to burn his entire world to the ground.

I went to the bank to set up a surprise trust fund for my twins' sixth birthday. For six years, I’d been the loving wife of tech mogul Gavyn Dunlap, and I believed my life was a perfect dream. But my application was rejected. The manager informed me that according to the official birth certificates, I wasn't their legal mother. Their mother was Iliana Dudley—my husband’s first love. I raced to his office, only to overhear the devastating truth from behind his door. My entire marriage was a sham. I was chosen because I resembled Iliana, hired as a surrogate to carry her biological children. For six years, I had been nothing more than a free nanny and a "comfortable placeholder" until she decided to return. That night, my children saw my heartbroken state and their faces twisted in disgust. "You look awful," my daughter sneered, before giving me a shove. I tumbled down the stairs, my head cracking against the post. As I lay there bleeding, they simply laughed. My husband walked in with Iliana, glanced at me on the floor, and then promised to take the kids for ice cream with their "real mom." "I wish Iliana was our real mom," my daughter said loudly as they left. Lying alone in a pool of my own blood, I finally understood. The six years of love I had poured into this family meant nothing to them. Fine. Their wish was granted.

My husband's pregnant mistress disappeared, and he accused me of kidnapping her. To force a confession, he dragged a writhing burlap sack into the living room, threatening to beat the "stray dog" inside if I didn't tell him where she was. I screamed that our son, Jalen, was inside. He just laughed, calling me a liar as he raised an iron poker. I watched, helpless, as he brought it down again and again, ignoring my pleas. Through the blood-soaked fabric, I heard our son's last, faint whisper: "Daddy…" As if that wasn't enough, he then had his men drag me to a back room to punish me for his mistress’s supposed miscarriage. They left me broken on the floor, my son dead and my soul shattered. With nothing left to live for, I threw myself into the ocean. But I was saved. And when I opened my eyes, I made a vow. I would return, and I would drag them both down to the hell they built for me.

The new house smelled of fresh paint, a fresh start for Ava Miller, a successful tech entrepreneur, her loving husband Liam, and their two-year-old son, Leo. Her peaceful suburban dream shattered when a car pulled up, and out stepped her aunt and cousin-faces she hadn't seen since she left her old life behind. "Ava! We heard you moved into the neighborhood! What a surprise!" her aunt chirped, her voice dripping with forced sweetness. Her cousin' s sly glance past Ava signaled trouble: "We ran into Ethan Hayes's mother... She was saying how much Ethan still misses you." The name hung in the air, a poisonous cloud. Ethan Hayes, her college sweetheart, the man who publicly humiliated her by announcing his engagement to another woman at their supposed engagement party. They twisted the knife, claiming Ethan still pined for her, ignoring her cold silence, daring to suggest reconciliation. Then came the final insult, "His mother said he' s not happy with Chloe. He' s still waiting for you, Ava." A strange calm settled over Ava. The heartbroken girl they knew was dead. "I appreciate your concern," Ava said, a polite, chilling smile on her face. "But I think there's been a misunderstanding." She pulled Liam forward, her husband of two years, and gestured to Leo, playing happily in the yard. "This is my husband, Liam. And that's our son, Leo." Their smiles shattered, replaced by stunned silence. The image they held of her-the pining, discarded lover-crumbled before the woman she had become. After all this time, after all she had endured, did they truly believe she was still the same person, waiting for the man who broke her? Her past, once a painful scar, became her shield. The calm in her voice held a dangerous promise: Her life with Liam was not a misunderstanding, but a meticulously built fortress against the ghosts she had outrun.

Three years. Three years of marriage to Olivia Reed, the woman who redefined my world. On our anniversary, I went to sign the final papers for our joint asset trust, a mere formality. But the city clerk told me words that shattered my reality: "According to our records, you are not legally married to Olivia Reed." My laughter died in my throat when she added, "There is a record of a marriage for Ms. Olivia Reed... to Alex Thorne. It was filed two years ago." Alex Thorne. My protégé. The talented young architect I'd mentored, the man I trusted after our ceremony. The wedding certificate, the grand gestures, the vows-all lies. Every single one. I pieced it together: Olivia's sad eyes, her whispers of a "replacement" while I was overseas, her tears and apologies for being "paranoid" about Alex when I returned. Now, I heard her cooing to him on the phone, "To him, I'm his devoted wife. To the world, you' re my husband. It' s a perfect arrangement. I have his love and your legal status. I have everything." Everything. And I had nothing. I was a sham. A joke. The love I felt, a towering structure, crumbled to dust. There was no rage. Just a cold, empty void. Then, the sculpture crashed. Olivia chose him, shielding him, letting the heavy steel frame slam into me, crushing bones. Lying broken in the hospital, I watched her dote on him while ignoring me. I realized she had intended to erase me. This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't an accident. This was a brutal choice, a calculated punishment. Ethan Miller, the trusting fool, was dead. I decided then. I wasn' t confronting her. I was disappearing. And then, when she least expected it, I would take it all away.

For three torturous years, I lived as a ghost in my own life. Haunted by the car crash I believed killed my sister, Savannah, and crippled her boyfriend, Ethan, I dedicated myself to his care. He was my tormentor, using my guilt as his chain. Then, one stormy night, I walked into a honky-tonk bar and heard the laughter. It was Ethan, boasting to his friends: "Three whole years she's bought it. Wiping my ass, feeding me like a baby, all because she thinks she crippled me." My world didn't just crack; it shattered when I saw him stand and dance. His paralysis was a lie. My three years of devotion, his meticulous act of revenge. He didn't stop there. He moved me to a dusty tack room, forced me to watch him replace my sister, and then, in a sadistic climax, lured me to a hunting cabin. There, he and his friends humiliated me, filming my terror. Broken, I faked my own death, escaping to Oregon, shedding my identity to become Anna. I found love and a future, finally breathing again. But fate has a cruel sense of irony. Ethan, now truly paralyzed by psychosomatic trauma triggered by my "death," was sent to a clinic in my new city. Our eyes met across a busy street, and his desperate cry, "Sarah!" tore through my new life. He tried to control me again, but I was no longer the girl he broke. Standing tall with the man I loved, I unleashed three years of silenced truth. "You killed Savannah," I declared, exposing his role in her desperation. "And the hunting cabin? You filmed that for amusement!" He stared, utterly defeated, as the truth of his monstrous acts finally consumed him. This time, I didn't run. I stood defiant, free, ready to marry the man who showed me what true love was. My past was behind me, and my own future, filled with quiet happiness, had just begun.

Eight months pregnant with twins, I lived a dream on the vast Montana ranch with my loving husband, Ethan. That dream shattered when Pastor Davies and Ethan' s "friend" Brenda Hayes poisoned Ethan' s mind, twisting my pregnancy into a "bad omen" and my babies into "another man' s." Believing them, Ethan turned monstrous. He forced a C-section, ripping our twins from me, burying them in unmarked graves. Weak and heartbroken, I endured public humiliation, snakebites, forced confessions, and his chilling contempt, until my last breath in a freezing cellar. He believed Brenda's every cruel, manipulative lie. How could the man I loved, my twins' father, believe such monstrous fabrications? This brutal betrayal, driven by pure malice, burned with an unbearable injustice. But my death was only release. My spirit watched as Ethan, finally shown Brenda' s horrific deceit, plummeted into unbearable regret. He unleashed brutal revenge on those who destroyed us. While his sanity fractured and his world dissolved, I, Sarah, found peace, reunited with my beloved twins in a new beginning, leaving his tormented soul to eternity's judgment.

The acrid smell of smoke choked Sarah Miller, her leg a searing agony as flames licked at her home. Just moments ago, her husband, Rick, had shoved her down the stairs, breaking her leg, then watched calmly as the faulty wiring he ignored ignited their house. Trapped and engulfed by the roaring fire, Sarah screamed his name, but no answer came. He was gone, abandoning her for worthless papers, leaving her for dead in the inferno stoked by his own negligence and rage. Twenty years of selfless support, of being his scapegoat and bankroll, all culminated in this cruel, final act. The betrayal burned hotter than the flames. How could the man she sacrificed everything for simply leave her to die, blaming her even in her last moments? The injustice, the monumental waste of her life, consumed her. Her bitter last thought: "I wish I' d never met Rick Peterson. I wish I could do it all over again, without him." Then, darkness. She awoke, not in a choking inferno, but in her childhood bedroom, sunlight streaming through familiar windows. It was 1995. She was eighteen again, at the cusp of meeting the man who would ruin her. Her wish had come true. This time, things would be different. This time, Rick Peterson would feel the full force of a woman who finally chose herself.

I was on top of the world. Fresh off winning the National Design Award, my future as an architect in D.C. was limitless. Seraphina, the dazzling daughter of a Senator, was on my arm. That night, I planned to propose. But then came Marcus, her war-hero cousin, and everything shattered. In front of the city's elite, Sera chose him, declaring her new path, and publicly humiliated me with a stinging slap across my face. The next day, Senator Vance "informally" rescinded our engagement and canceled my project. My promising D.C. career was over, replaced by an exile to a grueling, isolated project in rural West Virginia. Broken and alone, I fell desperately ill, clinging to life in a rundown cabin. While fighting for survival, I received their wedding announcement-a seemingly cruel final blow, a double happiness symbol that felt like a twisted joke. I couldn't comprehend how the woman who had promised me forever could discard me so utterly, so publicly, then send a joyous wedding invitation while I lay dying. Was I truly so worthless that I deserved this utter destruction, this banishment where no one cared if I lived or died? But fate had other plans. A local herbalist, Clara, found me, nursed me back to health, and saved my life. We built a quiet, real life together, found true happiness, and started a family. Now, five years later, a husband and father, I' m back in D.C., and the ghost of my past, Seraphina, is demanding answers.

I woke up disoriented, the harsh hospital lights blinding me. My parents, faces pale and strained, sat by my bedside. They said I' d had a breakdown, a public humiliation at the Spring Fling. My boyfriend, Ethan. He had betrayed me. But as they spoke, a chilling truth settled over me: I remembered the facts, but the feelings were gone. The doctors explained it as dissociative amnesia – specifically, all emotional connection to Ethan had vanished. He visited, demanding I "remember us," utterly confused, even arrogant, when I offered only polite detachment. His parents tried too, bringing mementos of our past. I felt nothing but a quiet void where love, or even anger, should have been. Everyone around me was frantic for the 'old Ava,' heartbroken and distraught. But I wasn't. There was just this calm, unsettling emptiness, like reading a sad story about a character I barely knew. Why was everyone else more upset about my memory loss than I was? Was I broken? Who was I without the girl who'd loved him so fiercely, only to be shattered? Feeling like a disconnected observer in my own life, a fraudulent smile plastered on my face, I knew I couldn't pretend anymore. I needed to find out who Ava Miller was, now. Desperate for answers, I sought professional help. And that' s when destiny, or perhaps just a very small town, intervened. My new psychologist was Liam Walker: my kind, long-lost childhood friend, whose presence felt strangely, comfortingly like home.

I flew back to New York on my twenty-fifth birthday, carrying vintage gold cufflinks I spent weeks finding for my billionaire husband, Declan. But when I walked into our townhouse, I found him throwing a massive victory party with Sloane, a glamorous socialite, standing by his side as the proud hostess. "Don't cause a scene. Go upstairs." Declan coldly dismissed me in front of his guests. Even Poppy, the rookie player whose shattered ankle I had painstakingly rebuilt, rolled her eyes and ignored me to suck up to Sloane. Hiding in the shadows, I heard the maids gossiping that everyone thought Sloane was the future Mrs. Hartford. To make matters worse, I discovered Sloane had stolen my anonymous, groundbreaking medical algorithm and was planning to present it as her own. First my husband, then the girl I mentored like family, and now the scientific foundation I had built with my own hands. Declan even texted me to cancel our birthday breakfast without a single apology, treating me like an annoying afterthought. My tears vanished, replaced by a freezing clarity. I signed the divorce papers, leaving them on his desk with zero demands for his money. Then I packed my bags, booked a one-way ticket to Boston, and prepared to destroy them on the global stage.

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?"

Bethany's daughter needed blood after a car accident, but her husband gave the city's entire supply to his secretary for mild anemia. Bethany begged a mysterious man for help and promised to marry him if he saved her child. Although blood and specialists arrived, her daughter died. So did her heart. Keeping her word, Bethany married the man. At their wedding, her remorseful ex fell to his knees and begged her to return. "Bring my daughter back first," she demanded. The powerful tycoon kicked him aside, and pulled his pregnant wife into his protective embrace. "Leave my wife alone, unless you want your company ruined."

For eighteen years, I was the Tucker family's adopted punching bag, while their biological daughter, Jessica, was treated like royalty. The moment I graduated college, they kicked me out. Brenda Tucker sneered, calling me a jinx who was bankrupting their company. But I knew the truth. They were erasing me to ensure I wouldn't ruin Jessica's chances of seducing Beckett Sinclair, a billionaire hockey heir, at an upcoming high-society banquet. She threw a fifty-thousand-dollar check at my feet like I was a beggar, ordering me to never claim I knew them. My adoptive father, who had ruined his own company with terrible investments, actually grabbed my arm and demanded I beg the Sinclairs for a bailout on my way out. When I refused, they cursed me, screaming that I was destined to rot in some backwater town forever. I walked into the cold New York night with my two scuffed suitcases, feeling completely hollow. I thought I was just a discarded orphan, thrown away by the only family I had ever known. But then, an older man pulled up to the corner. He handed me a faded photograph of a woman who looked exactly like me. "Miss Chloe, I am here to take you home." That was how I found out I wasn't an abandoned orphan. I was maliciously switched at birth, and my real parents-the billionaire owners of the New York Monarchs-had been searching for me for twenty-two years.

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.

For five years, Clara loved a penniless amnesiac, only to learn he was a wealthy heir who had recovered his memory long ago-and kept lying while protecting the wrong "savior." Desperate to pay her adoptive mother's medical bills, she entered a fake marriage with a blind, sharp-tongued man. What began as a deal turned dangerously real when Clara restored his sight and fell into his arms. Then her ex discovered the truth and came begging with red-rimmed eyes. Her husband only pulled her closer, his voice icy. "You healed my eyes and stole my heart. Now you want to leave? You're mine now."

Everyone believed Travis had only three months left after falling into a vegetative state. Sent by her family to marry him, Kendra unexpectedly saved his life instead. From then on, he spoiled her without restraint, paying for her gemstones, protecting her from trouble, and publicly declaring their marriage when rumors spread. But Kendra soon realized something was off. When she finally confronted him, Travis pulled her close and confessed the truth. He had been pretending to be sick all along, because it was the only way he could make her stay by his side.

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."

On our third engagement anniversary, I bought my fiancé the watch he had wanted for months. But my phone's location tracker led me to a secluded overlook, where I caught him rocking his car with another woman. The woman in the passenger seat was my stepsister, Sienna. When I exposed their affair, my adoptive parents didn't comfort me. Instead, they called to scream at me for ruining the family's reputation. They even rewrote history, claiming Sienna was the one who saved my fiancé from drowning six years ago, and I had stolen her credit. Carter shamelessly agreed with their lies. "She's been quietly supporting me all this time... I misunderstood." I was disowned, thrown out into the freezing rain, and my adoptive father threatened to use his corporate empire to crush my small bakery. I finally understood that to them, I was just a temporary placeholder, a stepping stone for Sienna to take everything I cherished whenever she pleased. I refused to let them destroy me. To protect my bakery and tear down their hypocritical lives, I walked into the penthouse of New York's most ruthless billionaire to propose a fake PR relationship. But he slid a two-year marriage contract across the table instead. Before I could fully process marrying a man I barely knew, a little blonde girl ran into the room and tugged at my dress. "Are you my new mommy?"

Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone. Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat. "Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison." "You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are." When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice. Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters. They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff. To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance. Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie. The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage. Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family. But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil.