Flying Free

The piercing wail of an ambulance siren was the first thing I heard. I was lying on the living room carpet, the scent of dust and cheap air freshener in my nose. A few feet away, my younger sister, Chloe, clutched an empty bottle of pills, feigning unconsciousness. It was a pathetic performance, but it had destroyed my life once before. This was the day I received my acceptance letter and full scholarship to the nation' s most prestigious art school-the day my life was supposed to begin. Instead, guided by my mother' s frantic sobs and my father' s angry accusations- "Ava, how can you be so selfish? Your sister is trying to kill herself because of you!" -I buckled. My fiancé, Mark, whispered poison: "What' s a scholarship compared to your sister' s life?" I believed them. I gave it all up, watching as my scholarship was transferred to Chloe. The betrayal festered. A month later, I discovered Mark hadn' t failed his exams; he and Chloe had plotted to steal my future. When I confronted them, they locked me in my art studio and set it on fire. I survived, disfigured and broken, only to be forced into a brutal marriage where I eventually died. But now, I was back. Seventeen again. Whole. The future they stole, once again within my grasp. Chloe fluttered her eyelids, a flash of triumph in her eyes as they met mine. This time, the burning rage had cooled into something harder, sharper. They thought this was their victory. They had no idea it was just the beginning of my revenge.

I rushed home, excited for our anniversary, my mind full of plans for our perfect life, our growing family. Then the fall happened. The hospital confirmed the miscarriage. But the real blow came when I saw my husband, Ethan, not by my side, but tenderly looking at another woman, his ex, Liv, in the very same hospital. Worse, the anniversary ring he'd promised me shone brightly on her finger. He covered his tracks with casual lies about "late client meetings" and a fabricated "startup" with his friends, who all gleefully participated in his deception. His mother even called Liv his "honorary little sister," while telling me I was "too suspicious." He came home, oblivious, asking for snacks and telling me to rest because I was pregnant—the baby I'd just lost alone. How could the man I loved, the father of our lost child, be so utterly blind, so heartless? The truth settled in, cold and sharp. All their lies, the endless gaslighting, the twisted loyalty of his family and friends—it was an entire world built on my pain. I packed my bags. My new job in Austin was calling. I left him the divorce papers, the rings, and a voicemail revealing the truth: there was no baby for him to be a father to. Not anymore. I was free.

I am blind, but the darkness in my marriage was far worse than my lost vision. When my brother’s kidneys failed, I needed two hundred thousand dollars to save his life within forty-eight hours. But that same day, my wealthy husband’s mother and his childhood sweetheart, Kassidy, framed me for pushing the old woman down a flight of marble stairs. "Pack your trash and get out of my house." Chase didn't listen to my desperate pleas. He kicked me out without a single cent and demanded an immediate divorce. Driven to a dead end, I was tricked by Kassidy into signing a high-end escort contract and given a spiked drink. Drugged and terrified, I stumbled into Chase at a hotel. Seeing the transaction Kassidy had orchestrated, he believed I was actually selling my body for the surgery money. In a fit of possessive rage, he brutally took me, leaving me battered with a check on the nightstand the next morning as the ultimate insult. But the nightmare didn't end there. When I finally borrowed the money and rushed to the hospital, I found out Kassidy had already paid the bill anonymously, taking my brother's life hostage. She even found my torn clothes from that night, twisting the truth to convince Chase's family that I was a manipulative whore who deserved to die. I lost my dignity, my marriage, and my freedom to a web of perfectly orchestrated lies. Why did the man I loved always choose to believe their flawless acts over my real tears? Clutching his broken black onyx cufflink in my bleeding palm, my despair finally died, leaving only a cold, burning resolve.

My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning. The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning. When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project. "Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster. I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug. As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command. "Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday." I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground.

I was twenty years old and dying of ALS, my body wasting away into a pile of twitching muscles and lead-heavy limbs. With only a month left to live, I took my parents' entire fifty-thousand-dollar inheritance to a rain-slicked alley and gambled it all on a single vial of "unregistered" blood. The liquid tasted like battery acid and stopped my heart cold, but when I woke up, the paralysis was gone. My skin was pale, my eyes had turned into glowing molten silver, and the only thing that could satisfy my agonizing hunger was the sound of silver jewelry shattering between my teeth. But the cure came with a terrifying new vision: I could see the blue, parasitic shadows living inside everyone around me. My neighbors, my teachers, and even the little girl next door were being hollowed out by monsters with needle-teeth and lashing tentacles that no one else could see. When the school went into lockdown and the halls filled with the scent of rotting fish, I realized an invisible invasion had already claimed the city. The military didn't come to rescue us; they came to "sanitize" the zone, turning their miniguns on the terrified students to bury the evidence of the outbreak. I was trapped on a roof with a handful of survivors and a mysterious girl named Elise who looked at me like I was a genetic mistake. "No one is coming to save us," I whispered, watching the helicopters circle like vultures. I grabbed Elise’s enchanted silver dagger, ignored her warnings, and crunched the blade into a savory paste. As a wave of dark, forbidden power turned my skin into a Vantablack void, I stopped being a dying kid and became the only thing the monsters were afraid of.

I kept a ledger to track my marriage to the most feared man in Chicago. Loyalty started at one hundred. Every time Dante looked through me to stare at his mistress, Isabella, I subtracted one. Every time he left our bed to answer her calls, I subtracted five. The day the score hit zero, I was lying in a secret clinic, bleeding out. I had been in a severe accident. I was pregnant, and the hemorrhage was critical. But the nurse, eyes red with weeping, told me they couldn't give me the blood transfusion I needed. Dante had ordered the clinic's entire supply of O-negative blood to be reserved for Isabella. She had a bruised knee and was "in shock." He prioritized her comfort over his unborn child's life. I lost the baby. I left the ledger on his desk with a final note: *You bought her comfort with your heir’s blood. Score: 0.* Then, I vanished. Two years later, Dante found me at a gala in Seattle. The ruthless Capo dei Capi, a man who never bowed to anyone, fell to his knees in front of hundreds of people. He begged, tears streaming down his face, claiming he had made a mistake, that I was his only true love. I looked at him, then at Julian, the man standing beside me who treated me like a queen. I pulled my hand away from Dante’s grip and smiled coldly. "Apologies don't fix dead things, Mr. Moretti. Go back to your grave."

My boyfriend, Finn, and my best friend, Carly, were my entire world. After a childhood drifting through foster homes, they were the family I' d always craved, my anchors in a stormy sea. I thought I was the luckiest girl alive. Then, on the morning of my 23rd birthday, I stumbled upon a private video on Finn' s laptop. It was titled "My Confession." He wasn't confessing his love for me. He was crying, his voice cracking as he admitted he was in love with Carly. He called her a vibrant supernova, an electric current. He described our relationship as a comfort, and me as a fragile burden he couldn't bear to hurt. My found family had found each other, and I was the inconvenient truth standing in their way. The two people who had pulled me from the shadows were now the ones casting me back into them. They had given me so much; this was the one thing I could give back. Their freedom. So while they planned my surprise party, I quietly accepted a multi-year research contract at the ends of the earth. I was going to the Arctic to disappear.

Tonight was our tenth wedding anniversary. My husband, tech mogul Damon Ayers, booked the city's most expensive hotel for a lavish party. He pulled me close for the cameras, whispering how much he loved me. A moment later, I watched him use the private code we developed together to flirt with his mistress, Kandy, right in front of me. He left our party, lying about a work emergency, to meet her. The anniversary fireworks he set off? They were for her. The next day, she showed up at our house, pregnant. I watched through the window as a slow smile spread across his face. A few hours later, she sent me a photo of him on one knee, proposing to her. He had always told me he wasn't ready for a child with me. For ten years, I was the perfect, supportive wife. I was also the cybersecurity expert who built the architecture that saved his company. He seemed to have forgotten that part. As my car headed to the airport for my planned disappearance, we stopped at a red light. Next to us was a Rolls-Royce, decorated for a wedding. Inside were Damon and Kandy, in a tuxedo and a white dress. Our eyes met through the glass. His face went pale with shock. I simply threw my phone out the window and told the driver to go.

My wife, Olivia, and I had what I thought was the perfect life, a vibrant canvas of shared dreams and artistic ambition. But beneath the surface, a shadow lingered: her unexplained infertility, a result of an accident years ago-my fault-that filled me with a guilt I carried like a stone. I watched her endless cycles of hope, the IVF treatments we endured, believing we were fighting for our miracle baby together. Then, a single photograph arrived, shattering my world: Olivia, glowing with maternal pride, kneeling before a three-year-old boy who was undeniably hers. On the back, two words scrawled in messy handwriting: Our son. The fertility struggles, my guilt-it was all a monstrous, suffocating lie, a performance designed to keep me blind. I couldn' t breathe, trapped in her beautiful deception, so I planned my escape, a desperate attempt to vanish from a life that was never truly mine. After I "disappeared," a new life began, quiet and anonymous, painted in the solitude of the Oregon coast. But the past refused to stay buried, returning with the salt on the wind, a ghost with haunted eyes and the cruel truth of consequences. Now, she stands before me, broken and desperate, having lost everything-her child, her lover-in the wake of my strategic vanishing act. She believes my "death" was her fault, the ultimate price for her lies, unaware that the real architect of her downfall was closer than she ever imagined. I am not the man she married. I am a stranger forged in betrayal, ready to confront the wreckage she created.

The private jet' s hum was supposed to drown out the silence, but it only amplified the heavy dread in the cabin. Across the table, my husband, Ethan Vance, watched me with cold, unblinking eyes, his once-loved face a mask of cruelty. "Sign it, Chloe." His low, calm voice cut through the air. The document lay between us, a single sheet of paper that would transfer my half of our billion-dollar company to him-and to her, Scarlett Hayes, his long-lost ex, the ghost haunting my marriage. My hands trembled, but it wasn't just the document. Through the open jet door, his bodyguards held my sixteen-year-old sister, Lily, her face pale with terror, thousands of feet in the air. "Scarlett needs this," he' d said when I begged, "You were just holding her place, Chloe. It's time to give it back." His words were a physical blow, shattering illusions of the life we'd built. My love, my security, my entire world-all just a temporary placeholder. Watching Lily' s silent tears stream down her face, I knew he was using my deepest love as a weapon. My signature was a shaky scrawl, a testament to my broken spirit. "There. It's done. Now let her go." A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. Then, the guards tightened their grip, and with a brutal shove, pushed my sister out the open door. Her scream tore away with the wind, leaving only a horror too profound to process. He had promised to let her go, and he had murdered her instead. In the ensuing darkness, as my world fractured, a terrible clarity sliced through the pain: I was never the love of his life; I was just the bandage for a wound he never wanted to heal. But as the jet descended, a defiant spark ignited in the ashes of my heart. I would survive. I would escape. And he would pay.

My life was a perfectly tailored garment, every seam in place, my marriage to tech mogul Ethan Vance the central, flawless stitch. Then, at my triumphant New York Fashion Week debut, I found him with a woman I didn' t know, his arm around her, her hand clutching his. She was Willow Vance, his long-lost cousin, a fragile waif who, he explained, had nowhere else to go. She moved into our penthouse, a subtle manipulator who turned every minor mishap into a dramatic performance of victimhood, always with Ethan as her loyal defender. I watched, helpless, as my husband dismissed my concerns, publicly shamed me, and defended her manipulative acts, making me the villain in my own home. When a package of provocative lingerie arrived, addressed to me but with a note clearly meant for Ethan, I knew it was Willow' s ultimate power play to shatter our trust. I confronted her, exposing her performance, and for a moment, Ethan finally saw through her act. But nothing truly changed. My family, my life' s work, everything I held dear was weaponized against me, twisted and contorted until I was left with nothing but emptiness. I finally walked away, choosing freedom over a life built on lies and betrayal. Little did I know, the fight was far from over.

My world was finally clicking back into place. After three agonizing years, my fiancé, Chris Vance, the ex-CIA operative I adored, was finally back from his top-secret mission. Our dream wedding at my Wyoming ranch was set, a perfect life ahead. Until I stumbled upon his old satellite phone. A hidden audio file revealed a woman's voice, and then *his*, casually discussing a 'New York heiress' and a two-year-old son named Leo. That three-year 'mission'? A perfectly crafted lie. He'd been playing happy families, while I counted the days. The ultimate betrayal? His paramour, Maria, soon arrived with their son, Leo, and shamelessly framed me for poisoning the child with an allergy, casting me as the jealous villain right in front of him. His eyes, once filled with love, now held doubt. How could he betray me so utterly, then watch it happen again? The man I loved was a stranger, and I was left with a shattered dream and a public accusation. I took off my engagement ring, left it, and fled. My godfather offered an escape: San Francisco, and a quiet stranger named Noah Chen. Was it a lifeline or another cage? Could I ever trust again after such a devastating lie?

Here’s the translation of the text into English: --- Mother is a fairy from the heavens. For the sake of Father, she stayed in the mortal world, creating a beautiful tale. But only I know that Mother was stripped of her feathered robe, the source of all her powers, and was forced to remain in the human realm. At the age of seven, I knocked on Mother’s door in the dead of night. She was barely clothed, her body limp, lying in the arms of Emperor Father, biting her lip in humiliation. She held me and said, "Ali, go quickly, and never come back." Later, she lay in my arms, covered in blood, laughing with wild abandon. "Ali, Mother can only help you this far." "The rest of the journey, you must walk on your own." I held Mother’s lifeless body, gripping the small knife tightly in my hand. "Mother, don’t worry." "I will soon send them down to accompany you." --- Let me know if you need any further assistance!

I went to the City Clerk's office for a routine copy of my marriage license to finalize a trust fund audit. I expected a simple piece of paper, but the clerk's pitying look told me my entire life was a lie. "The license was never finalized, Ms. Oliver. In the eyes of the state, you are single." The three-hundred-guest wedding at the Plaza and the Vogue features meant nothing. My husband, Gray Cooley, had intentionally filed the documents with a "procedural defect" so he could discard me without a legal divorce. Moments later, an iCloud invite titled "Our Little Secret" popped up on my screen. It was a photo of my best friend, Brylee, holding a positive pregnancy test at our Hamptons estate. Gray's text to her was the final blow: "Happy anniversary, babe. This baby is the best gift. Once the trust unlocks today, we're done with the charade." I soon discovered they were even stealing my career, reassigning my architectural masterpiece to Brylee while preparing my eviction notice. Gray's mother called me a "barren mule" in a leaked recording, mocking the infertility I suffered after saving Gray's life in a construction accident. I wasn't a wife; I was a three-year placeholder used to secure his inheritance. How could the man I bled for treat me like a disposable prop? How could my best friend carry his child while pretending to comfort me through my darkest moments? The betrayal burned until it turned into a cold, hard stone of fury. I didn't cry. Instead, I walked into the penthouse of the Barretts, the Cooleys' most powerful rivals. I signed a marriage contract with Kane Barrett, the man the tabloids called the "Beast of Wall Street." "I want a wedding," I told his father, my voice steady and lethal. "Bigger than the one I had with Gray." If they wanted me gone, they would have to watch me become the woman who owns their world.

My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out. I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm: "In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling." Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped. When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself." Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son. The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne. I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie." I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.

I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate. The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed. The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent. He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to. I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire? As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time. "Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival. "But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head." I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground.

For two years, I was the invisible force behind tech billionaire Kieran Douglas, convinced that our "private" romance was his way of protecting us from the tabloid spotlight. I managed his mergers, warmed his bed, and waited for a future that didn't exist. The illusion shattered at 6:00 AM when a Page Six alert debuted Kieran's "real" romance with socialite Aspen Schneider. Before I could even process the betrayal, Kieran sent me a cold, professional text: "Order flowers for Aspen. Pink peonies. Her favorite." When I tried to walk away, my own mother called me a disgrace and threatened to lock my inheritance forever unless I married a sixty-year-old businessman to save her failing estate. At a high-society gala that same night, Aspen intentionally crushed my burned hand in front of the cameras, while Kieran stood by and dismissed me as a "mediocre assistant" who had overstayed her welcome. I stood in the cold New York rain, drenched in champagne and humiliation, realizing that every sacrifice I made for Kieran was a joke. I was a ghost in a penthouse that was never mine, discarded the moment his "soulmate" returned. To the world, I was just a placeholder whose time had run out. But Kieran forgot one thing: my father's multi-million dollar trust fund unlocks the moment I legally marry. I didn't need love; I needed a signature and a shield. I walked into a discreet law firm and signed a marriage contract with a man I believed was the city's most notorious, scandal-ridden playboy. I thought I was marrying a degenerate "beard" to buy my freedom and secure my revenge. I didn't realize the man who signed that paper wasn't a playboy at all, but Gaston Collins-the most powerful and dangerous man on Wall Street-and he had no intention of letting our fake marriage stay fake.

I stood at my mother's open grave in the freezing rain, my heels sinking into the mud. The space beside me was empty. My husband, Hilliard Holloway, had promised to cherish me in bad times, but apparently, burying my mother didn't fit into his busy schedule. While the priest's voice droned on, a news alert lit up my phone. It was a livestream of the Metropolitan Charity Gala. There was Hilliard, looking impeccable in a custom tuxedo, with his ex-girlfriend Charla English draped over his arm. The headline read: "Holloway & English: A Power Couple Reunited?" When he finally returned to our penthouse at 2 AM, he didn't come alone-he brought Charla with him. He claimed she'd had a "medical emergency" at the gala and couldn't be left alone. I found a Tiffany diamond necklace on our coffee table meant for her birthday, and a smudge of her signature red lipstick on his collar. When I confronted him, he simply told me to stop being "hysterical" and "acting like a child." He had no idea I was seven months pregnant with his child. He thought so little of my grief that he didn't even bother to craft a convincing lie, laughing with his mistress in our home while I sat in the dark with a shattered heart and a secret life growing inside me. "He doesn't deserve us," I whispered to the darkness. I didn't scream or beg. I simply left a folder on his desk containing signed divorce papers and a forged medical report for a terminated pregnancy. I disappeared into the night, letting him believe he had successfully killed his own legacy through his neglect. Five years later, Hilliard walked into "The Vault," the city's most exclusive underground auction, looking for a broker to manage his estate. He didn't recognize me behind my Venetian mask, but he couldn't ignore the neon pink graffiti on his armored Maybach that read "DEADBEAT." He had no clue that the three brilliant triplets currently hacking his security system were the very children he thought had been erased years ago. This time, I wasn't just a wife in the way; I was the one holding all the cards.

My husband of three years, Arthur Vanderbilt, came home smelling of his mistress's perfume and threw divorce papers on our marble kitchen island. He demanded I sign away all rights to our assets for a five-million-dollar "severance," calling me a leech his family picked up from the suburbs to solve a temporary PR crisis. When I refused and demanded my four percent equity in the Vanderbilt Group, he and his mistress, Serena, launched a vicious smear campaign. They planted false stories on Wall Street forums, accusing me of laundering money for an Eastern European crime syndicate. They tried to force my hand with a check for five hundred million, which I tore up and threw in his face. To them, I was just a trophy wife they could easily discard. They had no idea that the "leech" they so despised was the anonymous investor who had secretly bailed out their entire company three years ago, saving them from bankruptcy. Their final move was to hire an actress to publicly accuse me of fraud in the lobby of the most powerful law firm in Manhattan. They didn't realize I was there to retain the firm's most ruthless lawyer. After security threw them out, I looked my replacement in the eye and made her a promise. "Prepare for an FBI probe into perjury and corporate defamation."

"Stella once savored Marc's devotion, yet his covert cruelty cut deep. She torched their wedding portrait at his feet while he sent flirty messages to his mistress. With her chest tight and eyes blazing, Stella delivered a sharp slap. Then she deleted her identity, signed onto a classified research mission, vanished without a trace, and left him a hidden bombshell. On launch day she vanished; that same dawn Marc's empire crumbled. All he unearthed was her death certificate, and he shattered. When they met again, a gala spotlighted Stella beside a tycoon. Marc begged. With a smirk, she said, ""Out of your league, darling."

"Let's get a divorce. She's pregnant and deserves a place in my life." He once promised to protect Claire forever, yet when his first love returned, he cast her aside. For three years, Claire dimmed her brilliance, living quietly as the obedient wife behind him. When he handed her divorce papers to give his pregnant mistress a place, Claire no longer hid her talents. The woman he had overlooked was a legendary healer, racing prodigy, and a genius designer. After the divorce, she reclaimed her glory. When he pleaded, "Honey, let's remarry," another man pulled her close. "She's my wife now. As for you... Someone, take him out and give him what he deserves!"

Everyone knew Kristine loved Colton. Still, his heart clung to a woman overseas-someone he spent most days with, now pregnant with his baby-and Kristine still asked him to marry her. On their registration day, however, he never came; his "true love" had flown back. Seven years of loyalty later, Kristine walked away, blocked him, and left his city. Colton didn't blink-until he saw her at the courthouse, arm-in-arm with another man, and the proud CEO went pale. He went after her, desperation overtaking him. "I'm sorry. Please give me another chance." She snapped, "Could you stop? I'm already married."

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"