Qing Cha

My life was a fairy tale. At twenty-five, I had it all: a loving husband, Liam, my childhood sweetheart, a beautiful home, massive success, and our two perfect children, Leo and Lily. They were our everything. The night before their third birthday, I tucked them in, their excited giggles filling the room. Just half an hour past bedtime. But when Liam walked in, his face was a mask of cold fury. He dragged Leo and Lily from their beds, out into the raging blizzard, for the sin of staying up late. "They need to be punished," he said, his voice flat, his eyes empty. I screamed, pleaded, grabbed his arm, but he flung me away, locking me in the basement while my babies wailed outside. Darkness enveloped me, and their terrified screams were swallowed by the storm. I pounded on the door, begging, promising anything, until his icy voice pierced the wood: "This isn' t about you, Ava. It' s about your parents." He unleashed a horrifying tale of my family supposedly destroying his, a twisted vendetta culminating in my children' s lives for his father' s death. It was a lie, a monstrous fabrication, but the next morning, as I pushed past his mother and burst outside, the silence was deafening. On the porch, curled together, lay Leo and Lily, pristine and still under a thin dusting of snow, their faces blue, their lips purple, like two broken dolls. They were gone. The world went black.

I was gasping for air on the cold marble floor of the Syndicate Ball, my lungs seizing in a familiar, lethal rhythm. My inhaler was just five feet away, but it might as well have been miles. Dante Moretti, the man who bought my life with his blood eight years ago, looked right at me. He saw my panic. He saw the weakness he despised. Then, he turned his back on me to continue waltzing with his mistress. That betrayal was just the beginning. When the elevator trapped us days later, the lights flickering and the air growing thin, Dante didn't hesitate. He pried the doors open and carried Sofia out like a fragile bride. He left me—his wife with a diagnosed respiratory condition—alone in the suffocating dark to die. He missed my birthday dinner to comfort her on a Ferris Wheel, leaving me to celebrate with a single candle on a slice of toast. I finally realized that to him, I wasn't a wife to be cherished. I was just property to be owned. Something inside me didn't just break; it clicked into place. I stopped waiting for him to come home. I left my wedding ring on the table, blocked his number, and walked out into the night. Now, Dante is tearing the city apart to find me, claiming he realizes his mistake. But he's too late. Because the man standing beside me now isn't offering me a diamond ring or empty promises. He just handed me a loaded Glock and asked if I wanted to be his Queen.

I gave my fiancée my kidney to save her father's life. Two days later, she dumped me in my hospital bed, calling me a "convenient organ donor" before running back to her wealthy ex. But their cruelty was just beginning. After her ex hit my sister in a hit-and-run, my fiancée launched a vicious online smear campaign to protect him. Her lies inspired a stranger to walk into my sister's hospital room and murder her. The woman I had sacrificed a part of my body for had taken everything from me. Now, I will take everything from them.

I thought my five-year marriage to tech CEO Emilio was perfect. I was the architect of our beautiful life, putting my own prestigious career on hold to support his rise to the top. That illusion shattered when an email flashed on his screen: an invitation to the christening of his son. A son I never knew existed, with a social media influencer as the mother. The affair became public at a gala thrown in my honor. The little boy ran to Emilio, calling him "Daddy" and accusing me of trying to steal him away. To protect his son, Emilio shoved me. I fell, hit my head, and woke up in a hospital bed to the news that I had miscarried the baby I had just discovered I was carrying. He never came. He left me bleeding on the floor to comfort his son and mistress, abandoning me, our marriage, and the child we lost without a second glance. Days later, his mistress sent men to finish the job. They pushed me from a cliff into the churning water below. But I survived. I let the world believe I was dead as I accepted a prestigious architectural fellowship in Zurich. It was time for Elana Thomas to die, so I could finally live.

My 22nd birthday was supposed to be perfect, the night I finally confessed my love to Ethan Vance, my guardian and the only family I had left. I found him in his study, surrounded by the familiar scent of old books and leather, but his smile vanished as I told him, "I want you, Ethan. Not as a guardian. Not as a father figure. I'm in love with you." His words, sharp and dismissive, cut me deeper than any knife: "Don't be ridiculous, Ava. You're my ward. You're a child. I raised you! To even think of me that way is… inappropriate. It's wrong." He then called in his fiancée, Brittany, a woman who seemed to glide in on a cloud of malice, and announced their engagement, telling me, "Brittany's room has the best morning light. I'm sure Ava won't mind moving to one of the guest suites." My sanctuary, my home where I poured my dreams into jewelry designs, was being given away, just like that. How could the man who promised to protect me, who cheered my every success, betray me so cruelly? Left with nothing but the echoes of his rejection, fueled by humiliation and a desperate need for escape, I pulled out my phone and texted a man I barely knew: "Mr. Hayes, is your offer for a contract marriage still on the table? I'm ready."

"What is this, Liam?" My voice trembled, my hands shaking as I held up my phone, a text exchange between my fiancé, Liam, and a nurse flashing on the screen. It screamed, "Proceed with the 400cc draw. Chloe\'s vitals can handle it. Ethan needs it." My stomach lurched. Ethan, my beloved, sat there pale, while Liam, his best friend, dismissed my terror. "Chloe, you\'re overreacting," Liam\'s smooth voice oozed, "Ethan\'s condition is fragile. It\'s better to be safe than sorry." Safe for who? Not for me. Suddenly, years of quiet sacrifice became a crushing weight. The dizzy spells, the constant fatigue I' d blamed on stress – it wasn' t from wedding planning. It was them. My life had been systematically drained, not by love, but by parasitic manipulation. Then, a new text from Liam, meant for Ethan\'s mother, buzzed on my phone. "Don\'t worry, I\'ll make sure Chloe provides enough blood for the pre-wedding \'health buffer.\' We can\'t have Ethan looking anything less than perfect on his big day." A health buffer. My blood, my very essence, reduced to a cosmetic accessory for his wedding photos. I was a walking blood bag, not a fiancée. Just as the humiliation burned, Ethan texted from the other room, unaffected: "Liam just told me I\'m feeling faint again... One more small donation before the wedding... Can you come to the hospital tomorrow?" The audacity was breathtaking. The room spun. Black spots danced. My phone slipped, clattering to the floor. The last thing I heard was my name being called as darkness swallowed me whole. I woke to sterile white walls, a nurse informing me I was severely anemic. "You can\'t donate blood again for a very long time, if ever." It was a death sentence for my old life. And a declaration of war for a new one. I picked up my phone, ignored their frantic calls, and dialed my friend. "I'm going to find a new boyfriend."

The divorce papers felt heavy in my hands, a final weight after three years. I had sacrificed everything to be the perfect wife to Liam Hayes, a genius in game design but a recluse crippled by anxiety. I was his shield, his planner, his entire support system, ensuring every detail of his life was seamless so he could create. But at the launch party for his groundbreaking new game, "Aethelgard's Echo," he took the stage and thanked his "muse," Olivia, the graphic designer. He beamed at her, she blew him a kiss, and I, his wife, stood frozen in the wings, my name never mentioned. Three years of sleepless nights, managing his panic attacks, and organizing his entire life were erased in that single spotlight. He didn't just forget me; he publicly replaced me, reducing me to nothing more than hired help. My face burned with a fresh wave of humiliation as whispers and pitying glances followed me. I walked out, and no one, especially not Liam, even noticed I was gone. I had become Eleanor Hayes, the wife of a genius, but I had lost Eleanor Vance, the architect, the person I was supposed to be. My decision was made: I needed to be free. Yet, when I presented Liam with the divorce papers, expecting relief, he refused to sign. He looked at me with raw, pure panic, not love or affection, but the desperate fear of losing his unpaid, live-in assistant, his "system." My anger snapped, but even as he violently punched a wall, breaking his hand, my conditioned reflex was to care for him. The final, brutal blow came later when I saw him treat Olivia's tiny paper cut with more care and tenderness than he had ever shown my own shattered heart. That was it. The last chord of hope, the final flicker of duty, snapped. No longer would I be his punching bag; no longer would I be invisible. I packed the single, worn suitcase I had arrived with three years ago. I was leaving, and this time, I wasn't coming back.

My wedding day. The music swelled at the Boston Yacht Club. I stood at the altar, eyes fixed on the aisle, waiting for Sarah, my fiancée. The woman I' d built my tech career around. The doors opened. There she was, beautiful, but her face was a hard mask I didn' t recognize. She took the microphone from the officiant. "Ethan," she announced, her voice amplified for everyone to hear. "I can' t marry you today." The silence was physical. "I' m pregnant," she continued, a small, triumphant smile on her lips. "And the baby isn' t yours, Ethan. It' s Mark' s." Mark. Her high-school boyfriend. A collective gasp swept through the crowd. "But don' t worry," she added, her voice dropping intimatel, yet still heard by all. "You' re a good man. I need that for my child. So, you wait for me. I' ll have the baby, Mark and I will get this out of our systems, and then, once my child has a stable home-your home-I' ll marry you." She was using my love as a weapon, demanding I be her reliable wallet after she was done playing house with the man she actually wanted. She was humiliating me in front of everyone, assuming I was that weak. That I was that devoted. The all-consuming fire of my love was extinguished, replaced by a profound, chilling emptiness. I turned, walked past the shocked faces, and didn' t look back. Hours later, a powerful man and his brilliant daughter made me an insane offer. Marry her. A cold, calculated business transaction to erase my public disgrace. It was exactly what I needed.

My own mother, Brenda, killed my infant daughter using a hot dog. What followed was unthinkable: my father, my brother, and Brenda herself spun a tale, blaming me. They labeled me hysterical, a drama queen, an overprotective new mom with 'new-fangled nonsense.' Brenda sobbed to the police, playing the role of a grieving grandmother, and the world swallowed her lies. I lost my career, my life was shattered, and my husband' s desperate pleas for truth were ignored. Drowning in despair, I sought an escape from the pain they inflicted, a final, desperate act. How could my own family turn on me so completely? How could their twisted 'love' and suffocating control culminate in such monstrous injustice, leaving me utterly broken and voiceless? The betrayal was suffocating, the blame unbearable. But then, I woke up. Lily' s piercing cry from the baby monitor was a miracle. She was alive, and the calendar had reset, weeks before the DUI, months before the hot dog incident. This wasn't a replay of my nightmare; it was a terrifying, second chance. They destroyed me once by their rules. Now, I remember every manipulative word, every insidious act of 'care' that reeked of control. This time, I' m playing by my rules. And I' m coming for justice they' ll never see coming.

Our wedding was just days away, and the $50,000 down payment for our dream home, a generous gift from my parents, was safely secured for our future. But that tranquil vision shattered the moment I found my fiancé, Mike, in our Vegas hotel suite, his raw voice mumbling the unthinkable: "The money, Sarah. It's gone." Every cent, wiped out in a rigged poker game set up by Rick, Mike’s own best man. Mike was a broken man, convinced he’d ruined everything, ready to call off our wedding indefinitely. Yet, the anger I expected never came; instead, a cold, hard resolve settled deep within me. This wasn't just about lost money; it was a calculated betrayal, a predatory scheme against our trust and future, by someone who was supposed to be family. How could Mike’s best friend so cruelly fleece him, seemingly out of nowhere? He didn't know the woman now staring down her desperate groom, pulling out her high-limit emergency credit card. I looked him dead in the eye and declared, "It's our mess now, Mike, and I'm going to deal with Rick." Tonight, he would witness a dangerous side of me he never imagined, as a deeper, long-suppressed past resurfaced to reclaim what was ours.

Years later, Nelson became the big name in the city. However, Doris, who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, was betrayed by her fiance and her best friend in her life. When she was lost in despair, she had a car accident and he was the one who saved her. Not only did he offer her a place to live in when she was homeless, but he also helped her to carry out her revenge. He realized that she was still the one he loved, but she still refused him. Despite that, he didn’t give up but try his best to win her heart.

My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through. That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister. But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library. They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien. Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve. I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen. This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over. "No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."

The cold steel of a knife slid between my ribs, and the last thing I remember was the shock on my best friend Wendy' s face – not that I was dying, but that she needed the perfect angle for her livestream. She narrated my demise, blaming me for trying to sleep with a trucker, her voice sickly excited as notifications pinged with hateful comments like "Serves her right" and "Stupid slut." I died on the dirty floor of a truck cabin, my blood pooling around me, smeared as a whore, utterly betrayed by the person I trusted most. My last breath was a gasp of disbelief, wondering how I could have been so blind to her jealousy and malice. Then, I gasped again, only this time the air was clean, not thick with diesel and blood, and I was back in my law firm's breakroom, staring at a saccharine-smiling Wendy, who was about to propose the very trip that led to my murder.

The sterile white ceiling of the hospital room was the first thing I saw when I woke up, a dull ache throbbing at the back of my head. The kind nurse told me I' d fainted at the clinic, and that my son, Leo, was in the pediatric ICU. My son. Leo. The name alone brought back a flood of terrifying memories: his pale, sweaty face, his eyes wide with a terror that seemed to swallow the light. And Jake' s voice, cold and hard: "My son shouldn' t be weak and afraid of the dark! His bad habits need to be cured." I, no, Ava Miller, as I had been for the last five years, had clawed at the locked therapy room door. "Leo is terrified of the dark, and extreme fright can be fatal. If you need to punish someone, punish me…" Jake just laughed, his arm around Chloe Davis, the woman he claimed was the "real" Ava Miller, the one who needed a kidney. A news report on a private island wedding flashed on the hospital TV: "Billionaire heir Jake Hayes is celebrating his wedding to Chloe Davis." Chloe Davis. My name. The name I hadn't heard in five years. Memories crashed down, violent and agonizing: a rainy night, a car accident, my mother' s terrified face, and then Jake, whispering "You' re Ava Miller. You were in an accident. You need a kidney. You feel so guilty, don't you?" He had twisted everything. He wanted my kidney for the real Ava Miller. He stole my identity, my health, my memories. And now, he had stolen my son. Leo. "Mom… if I overcome my fear… will Dad love me?" His voice message, garbled and frantic, echoed in my mind. Rage pulsed through me. I was Chloe Davis. The woman on that island, wearing my name, had my kidney. And they were trying to steal my son. I ripped the IV from my arm. I had to get to Leo. When I found him, his chest wasn't moving. His eyes were wide open, fixed in terror. My mother-in-law, Eleanor, who had once pitied me, was sobbing. "Mom," I said, my voice flat, holding back tears. "I remember everything. I am Chloe Davis. It' s time for me to leave." His eyes finally, slowly, drifted shut as I whispered, "Mommy's here, Leo. Mommy will take you away from here. We'll go somewhere far away, and we'll be together forever." The nurse in the hallway sighed, envying Jake Hayes's "love." If only they knew that his real wife and son, lying dead in a hospital bed, couldn' t earn a fraction of that look. Not even in death. Later, in the house I had shared with Jake, I held Leo's urn tightly. Jake and Ava Miller were on the sofa. "Did you leave Leo with my mom again?" he asked, a condescending edge to his voice. "Bring him back to apologize to his aunt immediately." I turned to him, my eyes direct. I articulated each word with chilling clarity. "Leo is dead."

I just won the dream scholarship: a full ride to Stanford. The National Innovators Scholarship. Everything I worked for, finally within reach. But instead of cheers, my family' s faces twisted into pure horror. "You think you' re better than us? Better than Sophie?" my mother hissed. My father's grip was like steel, my grandmother approached with a syringe. They drugged me, beat me, and screamed that the scholarship was for my twin sister, Sophie. I woke up freezing, abandoned in our remote, unheated mountain cabin, left to die. Then, I bolted upright in my bed, back on the very morning the nightmare began. My family, polished and serene, began to gaslight me, spinning tales of an "unwell" Sophie and my own deteriorating mental state. They destroyed my scholarship letter and prepared to send me away, or back to that cabin. Was I going crazy? Did I have a sister I couldn' t remember, one I' d supposedly harmed? The sheer betrayal and their twisted lies made me question my own reality. How could the people who raised me be such monsters? Just as doubt threatened to consume me, a desperate knock at the door broke through the fog. My friend Liam, seeing something was wrong, helped me piece together the truth: I wasn't crazy; I was being systematically poisoned and manipulated. Now, armed with newfound clarity and a burning rage, I' m ready to expose their sinister plan and reclaim my life.

I woke up cold, Thanksgiving Eve all over again, the phantom pressure of water in my lungs, a chilling memory of how my wife Ashley had ended my last life. Ashley was already humming, getting ready to leave-not for her aging parents, but for Brandon, her toxic lover, sealing her family' s fate with lies and then locking me in our bedroom to prevent me from interfering. After a desperate escape, I raced to her parents' apartment, only to find the building engulfed in flames, while Ashley, through cunning phone calls, dismissed my desperate pleas to rescuers, painting me as an erratic husband and leading to my arrest as her parents perished inside. My heart shattered by her shocking betrayal and Brandon's calculated cruelty, I was consumed by a cold, burning rage, realizing the terrifying depth of her obsession that led to such an unthinkable tragedy. At the funeral, I publicly exposed Ashley's cold deceptions, and as Brandon shamelessly proposed to her amidst the fresh grief, his true monstrousness was revealed, finally breaking her twisted delusion and setting me free to forge a life unbound by their dark past.

Havenwood, Maine, was a town owned by the Thorne family, but their ancient mansion held an even darker grip through a chilling tradition. Each new Thorne bride spent her wedding night alone in the windowless Founder's Study, a tradition that consistently ended in death, just like my sister Sarah's eight years ago. Police ruled Sarah's brutal throat-slitting a "suicide," a convenient lie swiftly followed by seven more inexplicable deaths of Julian Thorne's brides in the very same room. No one believed Sarah could do that, nor could the champion swimmer who supposedly drowned herself in a tiny basin, yet my father succumbed to the narrative, claiming we couldn't fight the powerful Thornes. But I refused to let it go, spending eight years mastering forensic psychology, and now I'm back in Havenwood, declaring to a stunned town and a resigned Julian: "I will be his ninth bride."

My life was a fairy tale. At twenty-five, I had it all: a loving husband, Liam, my childhood sweetheart, a beautiful home, massive success, and our two perfect children, Leo and Lily. They were our everything. The night before their third birthday, I tucked them in, their excited giggles filling the room. Just half an hour past bedtime. But when Liam walked in, his face was a mask of cold fury. He dragged Leo and Lily from their beds, out into the raging blizzard, for the sin of staying up late. "They need to be punished," he said, his voice flat, his eyes empty. I screamed, pleaded, grabbed his arm, but he flung me away, locking me in the basement while my babies wailed outside. Darkness enveloped me, and their terrified screams were swallowed by the storm. I pounded on the door, begging, promising anything, until his icy voice pierced the wood: "This isn' t about you, Ava. It' s about your parents." He unleashed a horrifying tale of my family supposedly destroying his, a twisted vendetta culminating in my children' s lives for his father' s death. It was a lie, a monstrous fabrication, but the next morning, as I pushed past his mother and burst outside, the silence was deafening. On the porch, curled together, lay Leo and Lily, pristine and still under a thin dusting of snow, their faces blue, their lips purple, like two broken dolls. They were gone. The world went black.

Laura was a bold, courageous, gorgeous, intelligent young lady who always stood out for herself. She always fought for her right and never allowed anyone to look down on her , her family nor her friends. She was known as the most brilliant and talented student in her class. This irritated some of her mates and led to the plot of her attack to tame her. " Hold her, let's see how her intelligence works this time...", Ben exclaimed, landing a huge slap on her cheek. Patrick and Fred held her tightly, chuckling and teasing. They molested and bullied her until she passed out. " Wait, Ben, I think we killed her....", Fred cried " Shut up, what do you know? She's just doing that to scare us...." " No, Ben...I think he's right...we killed her..." " Oh, my God...what should we do..." Join me on this journey while we find out what they did to her body and the outcome of their action. ENRAGED SOUL;The revenge of a traumatized girl

It started on the one-year anniversary of my return, a day meant for joy. Instead, my family, devout and God-fearing, brutally murdered me. My brother, my protector, became a "defiler" screaming monster, my father, a man of God, cut off my hand with a rusty saw, and my mother, once overjoyed, called me an "abomination." They threw my bleeding body into a silo, sealing the hatch, and as I died, I only had one question: Why? It was the locket. The small, carved wooden locket my sister, Esther, had given me moments before, a "welcome home" gift that instantly turned my loving family into rabid killers. Somehow, I woke up. It' s the same day, the same anniversary. Esther is coming up the stairs, the locket in her hand, about to give me the gift that will trigger their bloodlust again. This time, I refuse. But Esther is cunning, and soon, I'm dodging my family's crazed attacks, desperately trying to expose their dark beliefs to the authorities. They look at me like I' m simply a troubled girl with an overzealous family. Knowing the law won't stop their fanaticism, I have no choice but to use their own twisted faith against them, no matter the cost, to finally break free.

The last thing I saw was Thunder’s bloodied jaws, closing in on me. My daughter, Sophia, lay broken a few feet away, already gone. Pain, then darkness. Then, with a gasp, I bolted upright, my heart hammering like a drum. I was back on the same rough porch, facing the same smug smirk of Old John. At the end of his chain was Thunder, the Australian Cattle Dog who had butchered my child and me. “Heard you were back in town, Isabella,” Old John rasped, his voice a cruel mockery of a welcome. “Brought you a little housewarming gift,” he added, pulling the chain as Thunder whined, straining to reach me, just like that first time. The memory crashed over me: Thunder’s lunge, the searing agony as his teeth tore my thigh, the hot gush of blood, and then, Sophia’s petrified screams followed by chilling silence as he turned to her. Old John had known my paralyzing fear of dogs, yet he had specifically brought this hulking beast to torment me. He had laughed when I pleaded, ignoring the danger, using the dog as his personal weapon. Every horrifying detail, every agonizing moment of Sophia’s brutal death and my own demise, flooded my mind with chilling clarity. But this time, as Thunder lunged forward once more, I forced my trembling legs to stop. No. Not again. This time, things would be different.