Xi Yue

I was accused of pushing my sister down the stairs, facing a highly publicized second-degree murder charge. My billionaire husband, Lachlan, insisted on a private psychiatric evaluation. I thought he was trying to build a medical defense to save me. But through a cracked door, I overheard the psychiatrist talking to Lachlan's crisis PR team. Lachlan had bribed the doctor to officially diagnose me with severe paranoid schizophrenia. The plan was flawless. They were going to involuntarily lock me in an asylum and strip me of my voting rights to steal my trust fund. Worse, Lachlan's team leaked my clinic photos to the press, using my "violent mental breakdown" to perfectly cover up his midnight hotel rendezvous with a Hollywood starlet. I was forced to swallow heavy sedatives while the entire world labeled me a crazy, toxic wife. As the chemical fog dragged me into terrifying nightmares, I realized this family had always used me as their scapegoat, just like my adoptive mother did when I was a child. They thought the drugs, the public ruin, and the isolation would break me into quiet submission. But I secretly recorded the doctor's corrupt phone call. I went home, uploaded my million-dollar custom wedding dress to an auction site for exactly one dollar, and prepared to expose the Langley family's deadliest, bloodiest secret.

I took the fall for my sister and endured three years of torment in prison. My knee was shattered, my body covered in scars, and I almost lost my life in that "accident". On the day I was released, clinging to the last shred of hope, I ran toward my fiancé Ford’s Maybach—only to hear his cold voice: "Your existence is just a nuisance."​ It turned out that the beatings and cigarette burns in prison were all arranged by him, paid for with his money. It turned out that the sister I had protected with all my heart had long been switching my medicine behind my back, hoping I would be completely crippled.​ At the family gala, they joined hands to strip me bare in front of the flashing camera lights. My father slapped me hard across the face and roared: "Why didn’t you just die in prison?"​ I smiled and tore apart my tattered dress, then dialed the number I had hidden in my heart for three years—the man who only understood blood for blood, his voice hoarse and alluring: "Turn around."​ This time, I will no longer be a toy to be manipulated. I will tear off their masks and burn the Willis family to the ground.​ By the way, I will take back everything that belongs to me—including him, the one hiding in the shadows.

My father didn’t look at me like a daughter; he looked at me like a bad loan he needed to settle. After five years of being nothing but a monthly expense on his ledger, I was shoved back into the Quinn mansion, smelling the expensive lavender that masked the rot beneath the floorboards. He slammed a prenuptial agreement onto the mahogany table and gave me a heartless ultimatum. "Sign it and marry Harrison Sterling, or I call the care facility in ten minutes and tell them to pull the plug on your mother's life support." My stepmother Lydia told me I should be grateful for this "future," while my stepsister Tiffany kicked a bag with her old, hideous wedding dress at my feet. They told me I was born for nothing but to pay off their debts. I was shipped off in the rain to the Sterling estate, a stone fortress where the housekeeper treated me like a servant and locked me in a pitch-black room. Inside, my new husband—a man rumored to be a blind, unstable monster—hurled a crystal glass at my head and tried to strangle me with his bare hands. I could feel the tremors in his grip and the sickly-sweet smell of neurotoxins on his breath. I realized then that Harrison wasn't the master of this house; he was a specimen in a jar, being systematically poisoned by his own family while cameras watched his every move. My own father had sold me into a death trap, thinking I was just a desperate girl with nowhere else to go. But they didn't know I had been living a double life as a medical prodigy who graduated from Johns Hopkins at nineteen. I pinned my "monster" husband to the floor, pulled a set of silver acupuncture needles from the hem of my dress, and made him a deal. "I’ll give you your eyes back, and in exchange, you help me burn both our families to the ground."

I stood in the shadows of the hospital, watching my wife kiss another man while my grandmother lay dying upstairs. Just minutes ago, Erlene had snapped at me over the phone, calling me a "needy child" and claiming she was stuck at a business meeting across town. Now, she was stepping out of a red Porsche in a designer dress, wrapped in the arms of Andrew Hanson, the man who was supposed to be her "sick friend." "I'm not going up," Erlene said coldly when I confronted her in the rain. "I don't like watching people die. It's depressing. Tell her I came by." She looked at my soaked, cheap hoodie and my scuffed sneakers with pure disgust before turning her back on me to return to her lover’s side. I had to go back to the ICU alone and lie to my grandmother with her final breath, telling her Erlene was waiting just outside the door. As the heart monitor flatlined at 2:14 AM, my phone buzzed with a call from my mother-in-law, who screamed that I was a "worthless loser" and demanded I sign divorce papers immediately so her daughter could finally be with a "real man." For three years, I lived as a ghost, a poor driver who endured their insults and hid my true identity just to have a simple life with the woman I loved. I sacrificed my future for a family that treated me like a stray dog, only for them to spit on me while I held my grandmother’s cold hand. Why did I stay in the shadows for so long? Why did I let these people believe they could crush me under their expensive heels? I walked out of that hospital and threw my thick, black glasses onto the wet asphalt, watching a delivery truck grind them into dust. I didn't need the disguise anymore. I drove my rusted Honda to the towering iron gates of the George Estate, where the security team dropped their batons and snapped into a terrified salute. My father was waiting on the marble steps, but I wasn't there for a peaceful reunion. I was there to reclaim my inheritance and make sure Erlene realized exactly what she had thrown away.

The last thing I remembered from that life was the metallic taste of blood. Mark' s fists felt like concrete blocks, crushing my ribs with every blow. Through the haze of pain, I saw Sarah by the warehouse door, holding her son. She watched me die, her beautiful face blank, her eyes cold and empty. She had chosen him, the gangster, the man now beating me to death, over me. After twenty years of trying to save her, sacrificing everything, her betrayal was the final, most painful blow. Then, nothing, until a phone started ringing. I snapped awake in my childhood bedroom not aching, not broken. My old flip phone flashed a familiar name: Sarah' s Mom. I knew this call. This was the night Sarah got into trouble with Mark. The night her parents begged me to use my college savings to bail her out. Last time, I' d said yes, draining my account and giving up my dream school. This time, I took a steadying breath. "No." The line went silent. "What? Alex, what do you mean, no? This is Sarah we' re talking about." "She made her choices. She needs to face the consequences. I' m not getting involved." A weight I didn' t know I was carrying for two decades lifted. "I have my own life to think about. I' m sorry." I hung up, staring at my unbroken hands, the hands of an eighteen-year-old with a future I was taking back.

The crystal chandeliers of the Grand Ballroom reflected in the champagne, but the light felt cold. My husband, Mark, was across the room, his eyes fixed on Lily, the young intern who had become his entire world. I walked towards them, the whispers of the crowd following me. He handed me a pre-prepared divorce settlement. "I\'m going to marry Lily," he said, loud enough for those nearby to hear. Then, with a cruel twist of his lips, he added, "Consider our partnership terminated. Effective immediately." In the weeks that followed, Mark systematically dismantled my family' s business. He orchestrated a public scandal, leaking fabricated documents that implicated my father in fraud. My father had a heart attack. My mother aged a decade overnight. I sat by my father' s hospital bed, watching the news report on Mark and Lily' s engagement. That' s when I truly broke. Then, a blinding flash of light. A gut-wrenching pull. I gasped, my eyes flying open. The date on my phone was October 12th. The day I found Lily' s photo on his computer. The day the nightmare began. I was back. The memory of my parents' ruined faces, of my father in that hospital bed, was burned into my mind. It was not a dream. It was a warning. I had a second chance. Not for revenge. Not to win him back. For survival.

The searing pain was the last thing I knew. A sharp, cold metal plunging into my belly, again and again. My best friend, Tara, was screaming, a twisted rage on her face I' d never seen before, "Why couldn't it have been you? You have everything!" Her husband, Brian, held the knife, his eyes empty. I watched my own blood pool on my marble floor as they staged a home invasion, taking over my life, my home, my wealth. I watched my husband, shattered by grief, take his own life. My baby, my husband, me – all of it, gone. I died, clutching to the injustice of it all, wondering how the people I loved most could betray me so absolutely. Why did they hate me so much just for having what they wanted? Then I woke up, alive, in my Silicon Valley home, my hand resting on my still-pregnant belly. And the front door opened, revealing Tara and Brian, suitcases in hand, their smiles dripping with false sweetness.

I had just closed a nine-figure deal, the kind that sets your family up for generations. But when I got home, exhausted and suffering a heart attack, my wife and daughter were too busy recording TikToks and live streams to even notice. As I collapsed, gasping for breath, my wife told me my "negative energy was messing with her aura." I had to dial 911 myself, my family completely oblivious, leaving me to die on the floor. Waking up alone in the hospital, I found not concerned calls, but credit card alerts for lavish shopping sprees. They weren't worried; they were celebrating. Then, at Malibu, I saw my wife with her "life coach" lover as she handed me divorce papers, and my daughter told me he was more of a father than I ever was. My world shattered, I saw the truth: every sacrifice for them had been a lie. I had given my life, my fortune, all of it, to people who only saw me as an ATM. But the real shock came with a sealed envelope: 0.00% paternity. The daughter I had raised for seventeen years wasn't mine. The pain burned away the old me, leaving behind a cold, calculating resolve. I froze their accounts, repossessed their luxuries, and hired a PI to expose the "life coach" as a low-level con artist with massive gambling debts. When they came begging, I showed them the paternity test and his criminal record, then I called 911 on him for kidnapping them-his desperate attempt for ransom money. I set up a small trust for Molly, enough only for community college, sealing off my past. Then, I sold my company, bought a muscle car, and drove cross-country, ready to finally live for myself. I didn't seek revenge; I orchestrated justice.

The day of my SATs, my first step toward freedom, began with a slap. Our Texas ranch was a river of mud, and the testing center was twenty miles away. My father, a self-made oil tycoon, didn' t even look up as I begged for fifty dollars. "Fifty dollars? Do you think money grows on trees, Gabrielle?" he sneered. Then came the slap, hard and fast, echoing through our cavernous living room. "Lazy and entitled," he spat, stealing the seventeen dollars I' d painstakingly saved. He kicked me out into the storm, telling me not to return until I'd learned the value of a dollar. My brother, Andrew, stood by, his face a mask of indifference. My mother was upstairs, oblivious, probably admiring a new diamond. As I trudged through the mud, a news report on our giant billboard flashed. It showed my family smiling on a stage, celebrating a one-million-dollar donation to an arts program in honor of my adopted sister, Molly. Her achievement? A C+ in art. They had just slapped me and thrown me out for a fifty-dollar ride to the most important exam of my life. The image of their smiling faces burned into my mind, washing away the tears I didn' t even realize I was crying. Defeated, I reached the testing center, only to find the doors locked. I tore my soggy admission ticket into tiny pieces, letting the rain carry them away. Something inside me broke. Or maybe, it finally healed.

Ethan Miller always felt like a ghost, invisible in his own home. He yearned for his biological parents' love, but their affection, their very sight, was reserved for his adopted brother, Kyle – the golden boy who perfectly filled the void Ethan had left. Then, terror struck. He was kidnapped, brutally tormented. A desperate call reached his FBI profiler father, who, in Ethan' s darkest hour, dismissed him as a mere nuisance: "Your brother's debate is what matters today!" Days later, Ethan's body was found, brutally murdered. His own parents-an FBI agent and a medical examiner-worked the scene, professionally examining the unrecognizable remains. They handled his personal effects, his ruined clothing, utterly blind to the son they held in their hands, prioritizing another' s success over his very life. How could they not see him? How could he be so utterly erased, dismissed even in death, by the people who gave him life? The gut-wrenching irony was an agony even for a ghost. But the truth couldn't stay buried forever. A small receipt and security footage would shatter their denial, forcing them to confront the unrecognizable horror. And when the kidnapper' s chilling confession revealed Kyle' s calculated betrayal as the mastermind, their perfect family would finally, explosively, unravel before the world.

It was Valentine's Day, also my daughter Lily's fifth birthday, and our San Francisco house buzzed with her party. Her innocent wish, spoken in perfect French, shattered my world: "I wish Mommy and Daddy would divorce, and Uncle Julian could be my new daddy." My wife Izzy confirmed her chilling desire, and the subsequent divorce papers, the mere fifty-million-dollar check, and pervasive public humiliation felt like the final blows. Every person I cared for-my wife, my daughter, my very own parents-echoed the same brutal sentiment: I was nothing but a convenience, easily discarded. Years of devotion, of caring for Izzy during her coma and raising Lily, yielded only cold dismissals and public scorn. My heart, already weakened by a secret chronic illness, shattered repeatedly, leaving me hollowed out and completely unvalued. Was my loyalty a curse? Had I truly been nothing but a 'placeholder'? With nothing left but bitter pain, a mysterious entity offered an 'exit'-a chance to leave this life behind. But death, it seemed, was merely a new beginning. I awoke to a reality where I was reborn, the highly respected screenwriter Ethan Cole, cured of my past ailments. Until a ghost from my previous life, my ex-wife and daughter, appeared, ready to 'reconquer' me. This time, the game was on my terms.

Molly's marriage with Eric was not made out of love—it was merely an arrangement. It all stemmed from her beauty that held an uncanny resemblance to his late sister. He never gave much thought to her until she found out that she was seducing his brother. Enraged, he made it a point to make her everyday life miserable. However, something he was not prepared for happened—he fell head over heels in love with her. The once domineering CEO became vulnerable, dedicating his time to adoring her, spoiling her, and loving her.

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.

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."

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.

"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!"