Sibeal Sallese

I was the orphaned "parasite" of the Tyler family, taken in only to be abused for fifteen years after my parents died in a tragic car crash. To finally escape their control, I sold my first time to my ruthless billionaire boss, Ellsworth Mosley, for one million dollars. I thought it was a clean transaction. But the next morning, covered in severe bruises he left on me, I was handed a brutal contract with a fifty-million-dollar penalty. He didn't just buy my silence; he bought me. My nightmare only worsened when my adoptive family found out about my connection to the billionaire. Instead of disgust, they invited me to a hypocritical family dinner. "Talk to Mosley, convince him to invest in our failing business," my adoptive father demanded shamelessly. His son, who had tormented me for years, even grabbed my hand. "Do this, and we can be officially engaged. You'll finally be a real Tyler." They wanted me to whore myself out to save the family that had treated me like a stray dog. I shattered my wine glass, cursed them to go bankrupt, and walked out into the rain. As I reached the door, my phone vibrated with a terrifying summons from Ellsworth. But it was the panicked whisper behind me that froze my blood. "She knows about the brakes on her parents' car. If anyone finds out what we did, we'll go to prison." They murdered my parents. I gripped my phone, accepting the devil's call. Since I was already bound to a monster, I would use his power to drag them all to hell.

I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive. Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice. "It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison." She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole. I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath. Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him. "I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."

For seven years, I drank the bitter tonic my fiancé, Alpha Adrian, gave me, believing it would cure my "wolfless" defect. I was wrong. It was poison. He wasn't trying to heal me; he was keeping me weak so he could replace me with my foster sister, Ariel. When the fire consumed the Alpha's Wing, I was trapped under a burning beam, my legs crushed. Adrian kicked down the door. I reached out to him, screaming for help. But he didn't look at me. He looked at Ariel, who was lying on the floor in a silk nightgown. He scooped her up, cradling her like she was the only thing that mattered. I begged him not to leave me. Instead of helping, he used his Alpha Command on me, his voice booming with supernatural weight. "Stay put! I'll be back for you!" It was a lie. He used his power to freeze me in the inferno and left me to burn alive. I survived, only to watch him publicly reject me for her the next day, with my own father's blessing. They called me a "genetic dead end." They thought I would crawl away and die in shame. I didn't. I limped up the mountain to the Neutral Lands to find the one man everyone fears-the exiled Alpha, Garth Morgan. "I have the Gamma Bloodline Scroll," I told the massive figure emerging from the shadows. "I don't want your gratitude," Garth growled, his eyes like storm clouds. "I'm not here for gratitude," I replied, staring him down. "I'm here to make a deal with the devil."

In the previous life, I was framed for cheating in the college entrance examination and was banned from taking the exam for three years. My future was completely ruined. My twin sister, on the other hand, successfully got into the USC School of Cinematic Arts and became a top female star in the entertainment industry, while I worked in a factory screwing screws. After work, I was robbed and killed in the outskirts with no one to claim my body. After being reborn, I kept my sister's admission ticket. I reported the human traffickers' parents to the police.

I was the adopted, "wolfless" orphan of the Hayes family, treated as nothing more than an unpaid servant to my stepsister, Yasmine. When the legendary Sinclair Pack demanded a bride for their comatose Alpha King, Yasmine smashed a vase in disgust. "I'm meant to be a queen, not a nursemaid to a vegetable!" she screamed. So, my stepmother forced me to sign the marriage papers, treating me like a worthless substitute to secure a ten million dollar dowry. They sent me to the Sinclair estate in rags, thinking they had disposed of me for good. Later, they even ambushed me in public, loudly mocking my "corpse" of a husband and trying to humiliate me into paying for their luxury shopping spree with a Sinclair black card. They laughed at my fake tears, treating me like a pathetic, genetic dead-end destined to rot in isolation. To them, I was just a naive, terrified pawn, a disposable shield meant to suffer while they reaped the rewards of my misery. They thought I would just swallow the abuse and fade into the shadows forever. But they didn't know I was secretly a ruthless financial mastermind who had just shorted their entire company. And they definitely didn't know that my "comatose" Alpha husband was actually wide awake, and we had just formed a deadly alliance to destroy them all.

In my past life, I drugged the Imperium's most powerful Marshal, hoping to force a marriage to save my royal family from ruin. But the cheap pheromone inducer triggered his catastrophic beast-form rampage, and my stepsister intentionally led the press to our hotel room to catch me in the act. I became the empire's biggest joke overnight. The Marshal's family crushed what was left of my reputation, and my own mother, the Queen, immediately stripped me of my royal title to save her own skin. I was locked away in a mental institution for years, drowning in millions of debt, while my stepsister took my place and everything I owned. I died alone, ridiculed and completely abandoned. Until my dying breath, I couldn't understand why my own family set me up to take the fall, or why my desperate sacrifices only earned me their absolute disgust. Opening my eyes again, I was back in that hotel room, the beastly Marshal growling in the bathroom. This time, instead of crawling to him begging for love, I grabbed a military-grade suppressant and stabbed it into his neck. Then, I sat amidst the wreckage and calmly waited for my stepsister and the reporters to burst through the door. "I am not your prey, and I am not your cure." This time, I would sever my ties with the royal family myself and use my future knowledge to make them all pay.

Chloe lay paralyzed on the cold hospital gurney, feeling the steady drain of her blood into an IV bag meant to save her stepsister. Then, through the cracked door, she heard the chilling voice of her fiancé, Arthur. He wasn't just draining her blood; he was waiting to cut out her heart. "It's an honor for her to trade her life for Kaitlyn's health," her adoptive father sneered. Arthur casually added that once Chloe was dead, her mother's trust fund and the family company shares would finally be theirs. To her absolute horror, they even bragged about how they had orchestrated her mother's death, laughing as they called it a perfect accident. The family she had trusted and the man she had loved for years had murdered her mother and were now butchering her for her fortune. A desperate, primal rage flooded her veins. She wanted to scream, to tear them apart, but the drugs kept her trapped in her dying body. With her last ounce of strength, she bit down hard on her own tongue and died. When she opened her eyes again, the smell of blood was gone. She was sitting in the lavish penthouse of New York's most ruthless billionaire, Julian Sterling. It was exactly five years ago, the day before her doomed wedding to Arthur. She had been reborn, and this time, she was going to drag them all to hell.

When my mafia boss husband claimed his empire was crumbling, I worked grueling cleaning jobs just to keep our rundown safehouse afloat. I had once taken a bullet for him, and I was willing to scrub toilets to save him. But hiding behind a hotel linen cart, I overheard him whispering to his mistress. "Make sure the wife keeps working," he murmured. "I want to see the precise measure of humiliation required to break her." His bankruptcy was a lie, a sadistic game to test my blind loyalty. He moved his mistress into our home and threw my belongings in the trash. When I tried to leave, he threatened to cut off my dying father's life support. His men shattered my ankle while he coddled his mistress, and he ignored my desperate calls as my father took his last breath alone. He even orchestrated a cruel prank that shocked me into miscarrying our child, leaving me bleeding in a bathtub while he walked away in disgust. I had given him three years of my youth and bled for him, only to realize the teenage boy who once promised me the world was dead. He was a monster who enjoyed tearing my soul apart just because he was bored. Waking up in the sterile hospital room, I felt no more tears, only the quiet relief of a severed chain. His mistress walked in, dropped her sweet smile, and bowed her head to me with absolute respect. "Boss, I have successfully sold all his routes," she said. I looked at my horrified husband standing at the door, and calmly handed his financial ledgers to the FBI.

For three years, I was the perfect trophy wife to billionaire Hunt Brennan, a silent fixture in his mahogany-rowed estate. I traded my medical career for a designer wardrobe and the hope that he might one day see me as more than a contract. But on our third anniversary, the dream died. Hunt came home reeking of scotch and threw grainy photos of a charity gala handshake in my face, calling me a gold-digging parasite. He didn't just accuse me; he broke me. He shattered glass against the wall, bruised my jaw with his grip, and dragged me upstairs to "punish" me, all while whispering his ex-girlfriend’s name in the dark. By morning, his mother had called to evict me to the guest cottage because his true love, Chasity, was back and needed the master suite. I left with nothing but a dusty suitcase and a secret: two pink lines on a pregnancy test. When my Uber broke down in a freezing downpour, Hunt drove past me in his Maybach, rolling down the window just to tell me to enjoy the rain. He left me stranded, never knowing he was leaving his own child behind. I didn't understand how a man could be so cruel to the woman who gave up everything for him. Did he really think I was just a doll he could discard the moment his "angel" returned? Four years later, the "submissive" Mrs. Brennan was dead. In her place stood Dr. Dianna Campbell, the top cardiothoracic surgeon in Europe. I stepped off the helicopter at Mount Sinai to save his sister’s life, and Hunt was there, desperate and broken. "Dianna?" He whispered my name like a prayer, but I didn't even blink. "Dr. Campbell. Refrain from touching the staff, Mr. Brennan." He thought he could shred our divorce papers to keep me trapped, but he was about to learn that the woman he abandoned in the rain didn't need his permission to exist—and she certainly didn't need him.

I woke up in a sterile hospital room with no memory of the lethal-looking man pacing outside the glass. My friend told me he was Dante Moretti, the Underboss of Chicago, and the fiancé I had supposedly worshipped for seven years. But the truth shattered me faster than the crash did. When our convoy was ambushed and the car caught fire, Dante didn't pull me out. He chose to save Valeria—the widow of a soldier he felt guilty about—leaving me to burn in the backseat. He called it a "tactical decision." I called it a death sentence. I thought losing my memory was a curse, but it was a gift. It stripped away the delusion of love. I saw a man who treated me like a useful piece of furniture. I saw a rival in Valeria who smirked while taking my job and my place. When she set a room on fire to frame me, Dante saved her again, leaving me to choke on the smoke. He even branded me a thief in front of the entire Commission to protect her lies. He thought I would always be there, the obedient statue waiting for his scraps. He was wrong. I fled to New York and walked straight into the arms of his sworn enemy, Enzo Falcone. A man who didn't just promise to protect me, but walked through fire to do it. Months later, when Dante finally realized the truth and crawled back to me in the rain, begging for a second chance, I looked him dead in the eye. "Forgetting you was the only peace I ever knew." I took Enzo’s hand, letting Dante see exactly what he had lost. "Remembering you just confirmed that you are a mistake I will never make again."

I sacrificed five years of my life for my comatose mother. When she finally woke up, she looked right through me. She embraced my estranged stepfather and a strange girl, calling her daughter. I was cast aside like trash, forced into the servant's quarters and left to eat from the garbage. My new "sister" even set her dog on me. As the dog tore at my arm, I locked eyes with my mother. She watched for a moment, then slowly pulled the curtains shut. In that moment, my hope shattered. I was nothing to her. A problem to be ignored. But as a social worker led me away to foster care, a black car screeched to a halt. My grandfather stumbled out, clutching a DNA report, his face ghost-white. His eyes, wide with shock, locked onto mine. "My God," he gasped. "Aisha... you're my son's real daughter. My granddaughter."

My mother was killed in a hit-and-run. My husband, Haywood, told me to drop the investigation. Then my father died because Haywood froze my assets, refusing to pay for his life-saving surgery. "My mother was murdered!" I screamed at him. "You want me to just... forget that?" He told me he knew who the driver was and threatened to ruin me if I didn't stop. He used his power to destroy my career, publicly shame me, and even had me thrown into a cellar full of venomous spiders, leaving me for dead. The final blow came when he forced me to lie on a live stream at my mother's grave, confessing to crimes I didn't commit. As I collapsed, he had his men scatter her ashes into the mud. I lost everything. My family, my dignity, my truth. They thought they had broken me. They were wrong. As I boarded a flight out of New York, I hit 'Go Live' on a global stream. "My name is Celina Alvarado," I began, my voice steady. "And I'm here to tell you everything."

For five years, I believed I had a perfect life. I was the chief scientist of a clean energy company I co-founded with my husband, the CEO. My only regret was the lab fire that killed my mentor, a death I felt responsible for. That perfect world shattered at a farmers' market. I saw my husband with a secret family-a woman and a little boy who called him "Daddy." Then the scene became a nightmare. My mentor, Abel, the man I'd mourned for five years, was standing there with them, alive and well. That night, I uncovered the full, five-year conspiracy. They faked his death to steal my next-generation technology. But their plan was even more monstrous. I found a recording of them plotting to have me declared mentally incompetent, using my "grief" as proof. A conservatorship would give them legal control of my mind and all my intellectual property. They weren't just stealing my work. They were planning to bury me alive. The next morning, I walked into the office of the city's most ruthless lawyer and laid the evidence on her desk. She asked me what I wanted. "I don't want their money," I told her. "I want to burn their empire to the ground."

The Grand Hyatt ballroom glittered with the success of SmithTech's IPO, a company I, Alex Chase, had secretly poured three years of my life into, building its unbreachable cybersecurity. As my wife, Sarah Smith, the celebrated CEO, took the stage, her eyes met mine, chillingly. Then, the hammer fell. "It' s also a night for new beginnings. For cutting away dead weight," she announced, her gaze fixed on me, the "live-in husband." Sarah's assistant, Mark Johnson, smugly presented my termination letter. My "courtesy position" in IT was revoked, my performance "lacking." The cameras, once focused on her triumph, now devoured my public humiliation. Sarah then ordered the destruction of my simple black laptop, calling it "junk," an "eyesore." I watched in silent horror as Mark gleefully smashed it to pieces, scattering the "true core of SmithTech' s security"-my life's work-across the marble floor. They didn't see the truth. They only saw a pathetic husband, discarded. How could they be so blind? This wasn't just a laptop; it was the master key, the quantum core that authenticated their entire system. Without it, SmithTech isn't just vulnerable; it's doomed. Their billions mean nothing. The system I built, the fortress they so carelessly destroyed, will now turn against them. As I walked out into the cool night, leaving behind the laughter and the wreckage, I smiled. My name online wasn't Alex Chase; it was Hades. And their public debut? It just became their public execution. The clock was ticking.

The last thing I remembered was the cold night air and the unbearable pain as my body hit the pavement. My husband, Mark, and his boss, Ms. Jenkins, had pushed me from the thirty-second-floor office window. "She's just a trophy wife," Mark had sneered. Ms. Jenkins had laughed, her arm wrapped around his waist. I had walked in on them, entwined on his office desk, the contract he so desperately needed forgotten on the floor. My heart shattered, my screams turned to accusations, and they, to protect their careers and their despicable affair, silenced me forever. My last thought was regret for loving him, for trusting him, for giving him my entire world. Then, a sudden jolt. My eyes flew open. I was standing in the quiet, carpeted hallway outside Mark' s office, the thermos of soup still warm in my hands. My phone read 9:00 PM. An hour earlier. I was back. Driven by a force I didn't understand, I crept closer to the door, peering through the narrow gap. And there they were, just as before, Mark and Ms. Jenkins, mouths locked in a passionate kiss. This time, there was no scream, just a cold, hard stone of rage in my chest. This was a second chance. I wouldn't waste it on tears.

The lights of the Tech Innovators\' Gala blinded me as my adoptive father, Mr. Davis, prepared to announce the next big thing for Davis Tech-my innovation. Suddenly, a hidden truth struck me: it wasn't our shared future, but my fiancé Liam\'s and my stepsister Bethany\'s. They didn\'t know that every "brilliant" idea Bethany claimed as her own was stolen directly from my mind. But deep down, a terrifying realization festered. It wasn' t just intellectual theft. After witnessing Bethany effortlessly "replicate" my most private thoughts and memories, I understood the insidious nature of the "mind-sync" tech she used to violate my very consciousness. Having been publicly humiliated, stripped of my dignity, and confined to a mental institution in a past life that ended in fire. But I didn\'t wake up in hell; I woke up here, with a second chance, and a burning desire for revenge.

My name is Elara Vance, and I've been dead for five years. I'm a ghost, trapped in the dilapidated lakeside cabin where I was murdered. For half a decade, I' ve been forced to witness the world remember me as 'the psycho foster kid' who died of an overdose, 'the monster,' 'the ungrateful charity case.' This is the false narrative my adoptive family, the Vances, spun to cover their tracks. Tonight, a famous YouTuber, Chad Logan, aka 'The Exterminator,' announces his next spectacle: a live exorcism-right here, in my cabin. He' s coming to 'confront the evil spirit of Elara Vance.' On his livestream, a river of hate scrolls by: 'Get that demon!' 'She was a monster!' My adoptive parents, who orchestrated my demise, watch with cold disgust. My 'perfect' sister, Seraphina, likely fakes a single tear for her followers, while my adoptive brother, Ethan-my one-time protector-is probably consumed by guilt, having believed their meticulously crafted lies and abandoned me in my darkest hour. The injustice burns, a powerless knot of nothing within me. They painted me as a delinquent, a charity case gone wrong, suppressing the horrifying truth of what they did. But buried beneath the floorboards of this rotten cabin lies my only hope: a journal and an SD card. They hold the undeniable truth. Tomorrow, the very man intent on solidifying my monstrous legacy might be the unwilling key to my salvation. I just need to find the strength to make him see.

I had one dream, one path: the U.S. Naval Academy. Every study session, every athletic drill, built towards Annapolis. It was my future, bright and clear. Then, my childhood friend, Ethan, handed me a drink, "Just something to help you relax, Maya." It was drugged. I failed the medical exam, my dream crumbling to dust. While he soared to Ivy League success, I ended up packing boxes in a dead-end job, my spirit as empty as the containers I filled. Years later, at our high school reunion, Ethan's girlfriend, Jessica Hayes, saw him glance at me. That night, she smiled triumphantly, "You don't fit into the script," before pushing me off a balcony to my death. As I fell, a chilling truth struck me: Jessica knew. She was reborn too. This wasn't merely fate; it was a sinister, orchestrated setup, spanning two lifetimes. The scale of their malice left me utterly enraged. I gasped awake, seventeen again, in my old bedroom. Three months before the SATs, before the Annapolis medical evaluations. A cold fire ignited within me. Rebirth. Another chance. Not just to reclaim my dream, but for revenge. This time, I knew their script, and I was going to rewrite it into their downfall.

Halloween night in the mortal world. The Rift, our fleeting portal between the Shadowlands and their realm, was closing fast. Spirits around me scrambled, desperate to return. But not Chloe. She stood at its edge, Ectoplasmic Flames – her rare, ghostly green power – roaring from her palms, forcing it open. She was buying time. For him. Liam. My gut twisted. Not with worry, but with a chilling sense of déjà vu. This was precisely how it all unfurled in my previous life, my destiny intertwined with her misguided devotion to him. A devotion that led directly to my destruction. I remembered every horrifying detail. Chloe, then my girlfriend, screaming accusations, blaming me for Liam's end, as she led the Enforcers straight to me. Right when I was on the brink of ascending to Arch-Spirit. The Enforcers didn't care for truth; they simply tore me apart. To be annihilated, merely a scapegoat for her idolized fool. The betrayal, the agony, burned as fresh as ever. Why did she always choose him? Why did I have to suffer for their toxic dance, not once, but twice? But now, I was back. Reborn to this exact crossroads, this critical choice. To everyone else, I was just a low-ranking Patroller. Good. Let them underestimate me. Because I understood one thing perfectly: I had a new plan. A painful, meticulous plan. This time, they would both pay.

I was the President's Old Lady - and the only reason his MC was still breathing. For three years, I ran every legal business the Serpents of Redemption owned. While Craig chased road glory across state lines, I turned a failing auto shop and a tattoo parlor into the money that kept the brothers fed, the bikes fueled, and the clubhouse lights on. Then he rode home from a two-month run with a sweetbutt on the back of his Harley - and her son. Ginger, he said, had saved his life on the road. So he put her in the main residence, in the room directly across from our bed. He handed her my ledgers and called it repayment. When her son dumped a cup of scalding coffee over my hand, Craig never checked my burns. He scooped up the boy and blamed me. His grandmother - the club's Matriarch - stood before every patched brother and accused me of hurting "family." That night, Craig told me Ginger held a place in his heart I could never reach. A debt of blood he'd honor above me. Three years. My family's fortune. My scarred hand. All of it - worthless next to his roadside savior. So I did the one thing a President never expects his Old Lady to do. I gave back his patch. Now they can keep their empty ledgers. They can play happy family in a clubhouse I built. And when this motorcycle club burns - I'll be the one holding the match.

After six years away, I returned to my hometown with a single suitcase and a picture of my fiancé tangled up with my stepsister. I thought it was just a simple, disgusting betrayal, but when I planted a bug in their private suite to get a confession, I heard a truth that froze my blood. My fiancé, Leo, laughed about how my own father had already signed over my mother's legacy—The Nightingale Ranch—as collateral to his powerful family. "Once this is all done, Claire will have nothing. And the woman you marry will be me," my stepsister Jenna cheered. Leo cooed back, calling me a stray dog he'd kick to the curb once he was bored, a worthless woman who couldn't even hold onto her family's land. My family had sold me out, and the man I loved was planning to leave me with absolutely nothing. I didn't cry. The pain burned away into a cold, hard hate. How could my own father conspire with them to destroy the only thing I had left of my mother? I crashed their prestigious charity auction and played their filthy recording over the speakers for the entire town to hear. But when Leo charged at me in a murderous rage, a wall of leather and muscle stepped in front of me. Kade "Chaos" Peterson, the terrifying President of the rival motorcycle club, crushed Leo's wrist and announced to the stunned room, "She's with me now."

Chloe had just given birth to twins, lying exhausted in a cramped, bustling hospital ward. When she called her husband, Julian, he was busy partying with his actress mistress. He coldly hung up on her, having already drafted a brutal divorce agreement that would leave her with a pittance. Strangers in the next bed loudly mocked her pitiful state, gossiping about how Julian was dumping her. For years, Chloe had erased her own identity to fit into his elite world, only to be thrown away like garbage. She was completely alone, clutching her helpless babies, bracing herself to sign the cruel papers just to survive. She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion was met with such chilling indifference. Why did she have to suffer this ultimate humiliation while he celebrated with the woman who ruined her life? But then, a senior doctor noticed a unique mole on her wrist and ran a secret DNA test. The results were staggering: Chloe was the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Beaumont family. With her fiercely protective parents and three powerful brothers suddenly forming an impenetrable fortress around her, Chloe picked up her phone and texted her arrogant husband. "City Hall tomorrow at 10 AM. If you don't show up, my lawyer will handle everything. And trust me, you won't like their terms."

Five years ago, I stood in the freezing rain at my mother's funeral, waiting for my husband. Blake Knight, the billionaire NHL superstar, was two hours late. When he finally showed up, he brought his rumored girlfriend, the woman he had just rented a hotel rooftop for to celebrate her birthday. Watching him defend her fake tears, my heart completely died. I took off my diamond wedding ring, placed it on my mother's headstone, and walked away from my marriage forever. I fled to London, changed my name to Ava, and secretly raised the triplets he never knew existed. I thought I was finally safe from him. But today, my kids vandalized a silver Aston Martin in our apartment's parking garage, and the owner caught my youngest daughter. My phone rang. The voice on the other end was Blake's. He had moved into my building, and he was holding my little girl in his penthouse, demanding her mother come get her immediately. Panic suffocated me. If I walked through that door, my five years of hiding would be instantly destroyed. He would recognize me, realize I didn't get rid of our child like everyone thought, and he would use all his power to take my babies away. I couldn't let him ruin my life again. "I'm just her nanny," I lied through my teeth. I frantically begged my best friend to go upstairs and rescue my daughter in my place. He bought the disguise, but now, the King of the Ice is dangerously obsessed with investigating my new identity.

I woke up married to a stranger. Not just any stranger. Garrick Sinclair-the cold, ruthless captain of the Chicago Mustangs, the man every woman in Chicago dreamed of and every sensible woman stayed away from. I didn't remember marrying him. I didn't even remember sleeping with him. Yet there was a diamond ring on my finger, a marriage certificate beside the bed, and Garrick looking at me like I was nothing more than another gold digger trying to get her hands on his money. He offered me cash to disappear. I wanted nothing from him except the truth. But then his adoptive father died, leaving behind a shocking condition for Garrick's inheritance: He had to be married. Suddenly, the marriage neither of us remembered became the only thing protecting his family's billion-dollar empire. Then my mother was murdered. I came home to find her dead among the roses she loved, only to wake up in a police station as the prime suspect. My home was a crime scene. My mother was gone. And I had nowhere left to turn. Except the husband who had once wanted me gone. Garrick got me out of jail and pulled me into his world. But the closer we became, the stranger everything felt. Whenever he touched me, he remembered things he had forgotten. A locked room. A terrified little boy. A girl in a pink dress. And a promise made in the dark. I thought my marriage to Garrick was the worst mistake of my life. Now I'm starting to wonder if it was the one thing that was never a mistake at all. Because I may not be a stranger to Garrick Sinclair. I may be the missing piece of his darkest memory. And someone has already killed once to make sure we never remember the truth.

I went to my stepsister's birthday party, foolishly hoping for a family truce. Instead, she drugged my drink and had me shoved into a dark hotel suite, where a stranger took my innocence. When I sneaked back home the next morning, battered and humiliated, I overheard my stepsister and stepmother laughing in the hallway. They had orchestrated the whole trap to destroy my reputation so I would be forced to marry a thrice-divorced, abusive butcher. "And don't forget the little extras we've been putting in her food," my stepmother gloated. "She'll never lose the weight. That fat Miss Piggy is meant to be your backdrop." The revelation chilled me to the bone. My years of punishing diets, the brutal exercise, the deep self-hatred—none of it was my fault. It was poison, fed to me daily by the family I trusted. I packed a single bag, took the commemorative coin I had stolen from the stranger's nightstand as a reminder of my lowest point, and vanished into the city. One year later, having lost ninety pounds and transformed into a completely different woman, I agreed to attend the blind date with the butcher they arranged. But because of a flipped brass table number, I sat down in front of the wrong man. It was Julian Sinclair, the billionaire stranger from that dark room, and he looked at me and proposed a contract marriage.

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

Two years ago, a tragic accident shattered two families. Emma was behind the wheel the day fate upended Damien's world. She lost her parents; he lost his wife. And little Luca, Damien's son, lost something irreplaceable: his voice. Since that fateful day, Damien had built a fortress of cold indifference, vowing to never forgive the people he held responsible. What he didn't anticipate was that fate would place one of them directly under his roof. Driven by desperation to save her sister, who was gravely ill, Emma was forced to accept an exploitative employment contract. As Luca's nanny, she must live in the mansion of the man who had every reason to despise her. What began as a contract signed under duress quickly morphed into a dangerous web. Damien desired Emma with an intensity that defied reason, unaware that she was the cause of the past tragedy. And when the truth came to light, Damien must make a choice: cling to the hatred that fueled him... or accept that love might rise from the ruins of devastation.

I was in the hospital, enduring the agonizing pain of labor, while my husband, a famous hockey captain, refused to show up. When I called him for the twelfth time, begging for him, he lost his patience. "Giving birth is a woman's job, don't bother me with this stuff." Then, I heard my stepsister's sweet voice offering him a drink, and he immediately softened before hanging up on me. I gave birth to twins all by myself. The nurses treated me with cold indifference, and the family in the next bed loudly mocked me as a pathetic "Puck Bunny" who was just an adopted orphan about to be dumped. They were right. A month ago, my husband had thrown divorce papers at me, demanding I make way because my stepsister was pregnant with his child. I thought my life was a joke. I was just a discarded prop he married to satisfy his grandfather, a fake daughter my adoptive parents only used to elevate my stepsister. I was completely alone, ready to sign the papers just to protect my two babies. But then, the head of the hospital rushed in, transferred me to the top-floor VIP suite, and handed me a DNA test. It turned out I wasn't an unwanted orphan, but the long-lost daughter of the ultra-wealthy Sinclair family who had been searching for me for twenty years. Looking at my billionaire parents and three powerful brothers who just flew in on their private jets to protect me, I picked up my phone to call my arrogant husband. This time, I was going to make him leave with nothing.

Ivanna had everything: a stable marriage, a promising career, and the love of the man she had fought for, even against his own family. But when she finally managed to conceive, fate tore her happiness away in the most heart-wrenching way imaginable. Her husband had wanted a child... just not with her. She made the hardest decision of her life: signing a divorce agreement that left her with nothing. She left without looking back, her heart shattered, carrying a silent promise never to return. Until now. Four years have passed, and she's back in Boston, the city where her dreams were once shattered-with a new life, newfound strength... and a secret that will change everything. She is no longer the same woman who left in silence. And her ex-husband isn't prepared to uncover what she's been hiding. What will happen when the ex-wife returns with the one secret that might ruin him... or redeem him?