Xia Luowei

For three years, Ellie Mills endured a loveless contract marriage and her mother-in-law's daily torment, all to pay for her sick mother's medical bills. But the moment her billionaire husband's first love returned, he coldly threw a divorce agreement on her vanity table. "This transaction is over." Ellie was cast out like disposable garbage. She signed the papers, left a one-dollar bill on the bed as a mocking tip for his services, and walked away. Soon after, she discovered she was pregnant with triplets. But during a difficult premature delivery in a foreign country, the doctor tragically informed her that her youngest son had died. The loss of her baby became a permanent, agonizing scar. She couldn't understand why fate was so cruel, taking her child away while the man who ruined her life prepared for his grand wedding. For six years, she transformed into a top Parisian designer, vowing never to return to the city that held her deepest grief. That was until her genius six-year-old twins secretly booked them a flight back to Miami. In a hotel hallway, Ellie suddenly bumped into a crying, wealthy little boy who had the exact same face as her son. The child she mourned for six years wasn't dead, and her twins were already executing a master plan to make their jerk dad pay.

To save her mother from her abusive stepfather, Jocelyn was forced to sign her life away and marry Houston Matthews, a ruthless and terrifyingly wealthy CEO. But shortly after moving into his sterile penthouse and playing the perfect, doting wife for his grandfather, she made a devastating mistake: she cooked him a plate of homemade dumplings. Instead of a thank you, Houston stared at the food with contracted pupils and pale cheeks, reacting with an inexplicable, cold fury as if she had served him pure poison. Things escalated when his meddling grandfather forced them into the same bedroom and slipped a powerful aphrodisiac into their nightly milk. Driven by a drugged, feverish haze, Houston pinned her to the bed, tearing through her inhibitions in a storm of desperate possession, but by morning, he reverted to an impassive stranger in a crisp suit, looking at her bruised body with nothing but regret. Jocelyn trembled with hot, acidic shame, completely unable to understand why a simple plate of dumplings triggered such violent trauma in this billionaire, nor how he could use her so thoroughly in the dark only to discard her like a cheap transaction in the daylight. The last shred of her naive hope shattered, and she picked up the priceless emerald matriarch bracelet his grandfather had given her, placing it onto the table with a sharp, final clink. "Our agreement did not include this."

Blaire's mother gave her a ruthless ultimatum: find a husband today, or never call her mother again. Desperate to escape the suffocating control and disastrous blind dates, Blaire agreed to a fake marriage with a stranger she met through an old woman. She thought she was marrying a dirt-poor salesman drowning in mortgage debt. They lived in a rundown Queens apartment and split the living expenses fifty-fifty. He drove a sputtering Toyota Camry, established extreme territorial rules, and treated her like a gold-digging biohazard. When she accidentally tripped and spilled hot soup on him, he didn't help her up, instead accusing her of using pathetic tricks to seduce him. Her own mother even crashed their apartment, ruthlessly mocking his pathetic financial state and calling him a total loser. Blaire endured his coldness and extreme germaphobia, genuinely pitying him for his stressful, low-paying job. She refunded his money and defended his dignity, refusing to take advantage of a struggling man. But she couldn't understand why this supposedly broke guy possessed such a lethal, commanding aura, or why an incredibly expensive cashmere blanket mysteriously appeared on her when she was freezing on the couch. Until her brother called with a shocking warning. "Blaire, the name on your marriage certificate belongs to the notoriously secretive billionaire CEO of New York's top financial syndicate!" Blaire laughed out loud, completely unaware that behind the bedroom door, her "broke" husband was frantically ordering his PR team to bury his true identity.

After eighteen years, I finally returned to the billionaire Warren family, only to be treated like uneducated, rust-belt trash. My stepmother shoved me into a freezing, windowless room, and my half-sister Kelly bought me an $89 plastic dress to humiliate me at the family's high-society gala. When her petty bullying failed, Kelly took it a step further. Standing at the top of the grand marble staircase, she grabbed my wrist, screamed, and intentionally threw herself down the steps in front of hundreds of elite guests. Lying in a pool of her own blood, she pointed a trembling finger at me. "She pushed me! Corrie tried to kill me!" The entire ballroom erupted in disgust. The guests called me a psychopath. My biological father, purple with rage, raised his hand to strike me, while my stepmother hid a victorious smirk behind her fake tears. They thought they had perfectly framed the feral country bumpkin. But they had no idea who they were dealing with. They didn't know I was "Night God," the dark web's most legendary underground surgeon and hacker, currently being hunted by New York's most ruthless billionaire. I didn't panic. I didn't cry. I calmly pulled out my heavily encrypted phone and projected a crystal-clear, un-hackable security feed onto the ballroom's massive LED screen. "Let's see the replay," I said. Watching the color drain from their faces was just the beginning. I was going to tear this entire toxic family apart to find out who really burned my mother alive.

The clerk at the Registry couldn't look me in the eye when she turned the screen around. My status didn't say "Luna" anymore. It said "Rogue." My mate, Alpha Jackson, had secretly replaced me on the official paperwork three years ago with his mistress, Candida. When I returned to the Pack House, Jackson didn't just bring Candida home; he brought a five-year-old boy he claimed was an orphan. "This is Joey," he announced, his eyes cold and glazed over. "Since you are barren, he will be the future Alpha." I tried to accept my fate as a servant in my own home, but they wanted me dead. The boy, looking like an angel, brought me a bowl of soup. "For you, Mama," he smiled. But as I reached for it, he splashed the scalding liquid over my hands. It wasn't just hot soup. It was laced with concentrated Wolfsbane. As my skin sizzled and peeled, the boy threw himself on the floor, screaming that I had attacked him. Jackson didn't check my burns. He didn't listen to my pleas. "Submit!" he roared, using the Alpha Command to force me to my knees. He made me apologize to the child who had just poisoned me. That night, listening to Jackson mate with Candida in the room next to mine, the bond finally snapped. They wanted the Luna gone? Fine. I dialed a number I hadn't used in years. "Hamilton," I whispered to the Lycan King. "I need a plane. And I need it to crash."

I placed the divorce papers on the mahogany desk, ending five years of being the perfect, silent wife to the most ruthless Don in Chicago. He didn't sign them. Instead, Kaden Barnes looked at me with cold, reptilian eyes and named his price for my freedom. "Thirty lashes," he said. "The discipline of a traitor." I accepted. I let his enforcer shred my back until I was dragging myself across the gravel driveway in a pool of my own crimson. But as I crawled toward the exit, I heard him laughing with his mistress, Brittaney. "Harlow isn't my wife," he sneered. "The certificate is a forgery. She owns nothing." My loyalty had been a lie. And when Brittaney faked an injury to frame me, Kaden didn't check on my bleeding wounds. He tied my wrists and ankles to the tow hitch of his SUV. He drove forward until my hip popped and my shoulder dislocated, leaving me broken in the dirt while his mistress smiled. He thought he had destroyed me. He didn't know his mother would smuggle me onto a private jet to London that very night. Three years later, the Barnes empire collapsed. Kaden was rotting in a Supermax prison, betrayed by the very mistress he had tortured me to protect. Now, a letter sits on my desk in Kensington. The monster is dying of cancer, and he has left me his entire fortune. I packed my bag for one last trip. It was time to see if the King had finally learned that he threw away a diamond to chase after cheap glass.

For eight years, I endured seven miscarriages, clinging to the hope of starting a family with my husband, Joshua. Then I overheard the truth. He and my adoptive sister, Harlow, had orchestrated every loss. They needed the unique stem cells from my miscarriages to cure their own secret child. My body was just an incubator for their twisted plan. After the eighth miscarriage, they left me barren, my womb removed to save my life. They stole my children, my future, and my ability to ever be a mother. They thought I was a broken, naive princess. They had no idea they had just created a queen bent on revenge. Now, I'm back. And I will burn their empire to the ground, leaving them with nothing but the ashes of their betrayal.

For five years, I was the fated mate of Alpha Alan, the Luna of the Bloodmoon Pack. But for all five of those years, his heart belonged to another woman—Fiona. On our shared birthday, the final thread of my hope snapped. I watched as she descended the grand staircase in a magnificent silver gown, a dress he had promised was a surprise for me. In front of the entire pack, she walked to him and kissed his cheek. He always claimed Fiona was a fragile, broken wolf who needed his protection. For years, I believed his lies. I endured his indifference while he gave my dreams to her, celebrating her birthday in secret while leaving me with the hollow title of Luna. When I confronted him, he dismissed my pain. "She just doesn't get it," he complained to Fiona, his voice seeping into my mind through our broken bond. "Thinking a mate title can chain me. It's suffocating." He thought he was suffocating? I was the one drowning in his neglect. He wasn't my mate; he was a coward, and I was just a cage he was forced into by the Goddess. So I walked out of the hall, and later, out of his life. I formally rejected him. As the bond shattered between us, he finally panicked, begging me to reconsider. But it was too late. I was done being his cage.

My company, Innovate, was my life' s work, built from the ground up with my boyfriend, Caleb, over ten years. We were college sweethearts, a golden couple, and our biggest deal, a $50 million contract with Apex Ventures, was finally closing. Then, a sudden wave of nausea hit me, and I fainted, only to wake up in a hospital. When I returned to the office, my keycard was denied, my access revoked, and my photo, defaced with an "X," was in the trash. Krystal Schroeder, a young intern Caleb had hired, was sitting at my desk, acting like the new Chief of Operations. She announced loudly that "non-essential personnel" were to stay clear, looking directly at me. Caleb, the man who had promised me the world, stood by, his face cold and indifferent. He dismissed my pregnancy, calling it a distraction, and put me on mandatory leave. I saw a tube of Krystal' s bright red lipstick on Caleb' s desk, the same shade I' d seen on his collar. The pieces clicked: the late nights, the "business dinners," his sudden obsession with his phone-it was all a lie. They had been planning this for months. The man I loved was gone, replaced by a stranger. But I wouldn' t let them take everything. I told Caleb I was leaving, but not without my full share of the company, valued at the post-Apex funding price. I also reminded him that the core algorithm, the one Apex was investing in, was patented in my name alone. I walked out, pulling out my phone to call the one person I never thought I would: Easton Jensen, my fiercest rival.

The air in Demian Oliver' s apartment was thick and hot, our bodies slick with sweat. This was it, the secret celebration of our graduation, the moment I had waited for. Then, in the peak of his passion, he whispered a name: "Finley." Not my name. My name is Finley Brooks. Finley is my younger twin sister. My whole body went cold. I found his phone, and a group chat called "The Conquest" revealed a picture of me sleeping in his bed, my back exposed. Messages confirmed my worst fears: "Consider this a warm-up. Gotta get familiar with the family before I go for the main prize." Two years of secret dates, stolen kisses, and whispered promises were all a lie. I was just a conquest, an appetizer for my own sister. The humiliation continued at the graduation party. My sister, Finley, publicly exposed the hickeys Demian had left on my neck, mocking me. Demian, the man I thought loved me, stood by and watched, his expression unreadable. Later, during a game of Truth or Dare, he publicly disowned me, forcing me to drink an entire bottle of vodka. I didn't understand. Why was I always the target? Why did my own family, and the man I loved, choose to humiliate me so cruelly? That night, I received an email: early admission to Crestwood Institute for Advanced Research, a secluded university thousands of miles away. It was my chance to escape, to become a ghost.

For seven years, I, Liam Davies, built a life loving pop star Serena Vance, accepting her "Winter" persona as a quirky brand, a harmless aesthetic. Then, on our wedding day, a mysterious gift arrived, shattering her public smile and revealing a name: Donovan Thorne. Her face drained, her hands trembled, and as she lifted the lid, a single preserved white rose under glass mocked our seven years with its presence, proving her "Winter" was not a season, but a person-a dead person. She whispered, "I can't do this," and ran, leaving me at the altar, realizing I was just a placeholder for a ghost, a humiliating truth that twisted my stomach. When she tried to buy my silence and cooperation by threatening my sister Chloe' s life-saving medical treatment, a cold, hard resolve set in: she wouldn' t just lose a fiancé, she' d lose everything.

The opening bell rang, deafeningly loud. Confetti rained down on the NASDAQ trading floor as our company, Innovatech, went public. My arm was around my wife, Sarah, smiling for the cameras. Millions of dollars, years of coding in my garage, all of it had paid off. I was on top of the world. Just two hours later, an antiseptic smell filled Dr. Chen' s sterile office. The smile was gone. "It's pancreatic cancer, Ethan," he said softly. "Stage four. It's...aggressive." The words hung heavy. IPO day. The best day of my life. And now this. The irony was a physical blow. I drove home in a daze, the city lights blurring. I needed to tell Sarah. We' d face this together. She was waiting when I walked into our large, empty house. Not smiling. Dressed in a sharp business suit, a leather briefcase on the coffee table. "Sarah," I started, my voice cracking, "I just came from the doctor's office. It's bad news." She held up a hand. "I know." Her voice was cold, completely devoid of emotion. "You know?" "I called Dr. Chen's office. The receptionist said he had an urgent appointment with you. I figured it was serious." She slid a thick stack of papers across the table. "These are divorce papers, Ethan." I stared at the documents, then back at her face. "Divorce? Now? Sarah, I have cancer." A small, ugly smirk played on her lips. "Exactly. My lawyer has already transferred the liquid assets. The IPO provided a lot of liquidity. It's better this way." "Better this way? I'm sick, Sarah! I'm dying!" "Don't be so dramatic," she scoffed, standing up. "Treatment would be a waste of money. Money that is now mine. You should just take whatever is left and enjoy your last few days. Don't waste it on doctors." She walked to the door. Her heels clicked loudly. She didn't look back once. The door closed, a soft, final click. I was alone. The divorce papers sat on the table, a testament to a decade. The confetti felt like a distant, faded memory. When Chloe, my childhood friend, inexplicably appeared at my doorstep, worry etched on her face, everything changed. She dropped her lucrative career for me. As I looked at her, then at the divorce papers, a dangerous plan began to solidify in my mind.

The tiny plus sign on my pregnancy test was supposed to be the culmination of six years of IVF, a symbol of hope. But then, a notification flashed across my phone screen: Chloe Bishop, my husband Mark' s executive assistant. Her Instagram story showed Mark, my husband of almost six years, tenderly cutting steak for her. Her caption: "My boss is the sweetest... I'd do anything for him! 😉 #BestBoss" The date stamp? Last night, celebrating "3 Years!" Three years. We'd been married for almost six. The nausea intensified, but it wasn't just morning sickness; it was pure disgust. Mark' s call, dismissive, praising Chloe and her "lifesaving" efficiency, sealed it. He called me "dramatic." He was praising his mistress to his wife, who just found out she was pregnant with his child after years of heartbreaking treatments. The baby I' d fought so hard for, his baby, was conceived in a life built on his lie. His betrayal was blatant, then aggressive. Chloe slid into my apartment with a key during a blizzard, cozying up to him. She sent me a suggestive photo, then faked a frantic call about a "boyfriend" and a "private suite." On our sixth wedding anniversary, Mark abandoned me in my black dress for Chloe' s manufactured crisis, her fake pregnancy and suicide threat. How could he be so blind? So utterly, completely heartless? My quiet life had become a very loud, very ugly lie. It wasn't surprising anymore; it was just… final. But I wasn't just Ellie anymore. I was Eleanor Hayes. I signed the divorce papers, got the abortion, and left him a note with a rejected diamond ring. Then, I boarded a flight back to Port City, ready to unleash the true power he never knew I possessed.

My husband Julian Hawthorne was supposed to be dead, a casualty of the corporate wars. But as the victory news echoed, a chilling memory resurfaced: he wasn't dead. He was a liar, a manipulator, and he' d returned, impersonating his twin, Damian. Just as I remembered his brutal betrayal-how he' d orchestrated my ruin while publicly adoring my stepsister Cassie-his mother, Isabelle, announced my fate: five years of deep mourning, social seclusion, and no remarriage. This was the same trap from my first life. When I defied her, Julian, playing the grieving brother, and Cassie, the picture of tearful devastation, tried to paint me as unhinged. Then, 'Damian' fastened a diamond pendant around Cassie' s neck-a design I' d created, a cruel symbol of their shared deception. The true horror wasn't just Julian's monstrous fraud, but Cassie's chilling confession: she knew. My own stepsister, complicit in plunging me into this gilded cage of despair. Stripped of everything, publicly shamed, I was adrift in a sea of their lies. But I refused to be a victim again. When facing utter disgrace, I demanded: "Is there any man here willing to marry me today?" Silence met my plea. Then, from the shadows, a calm voice cut through: "I am willing." Noah Kincaid. My unexpected salvation, or simply another pawn in the Hawthorne game? This time, I' d reclaim my destiny.

A phone number got Laura into the romantic trap of that devil, Harrison, who enjoyed pushing people from the peak of happiness to the depths of hell. Since she used that number, she had to face the consequences. She thought she could win all of his gentlenesses, but what greeted her was unbearable devastation. Running away to in a panic, his cold voice sent a chill down her spine. “You have no way to escape, my girl. Come back to me now, or you will regret it.

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

For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Imagine this. Your husband carries another woman out of a burning building. He doesn't recognize you. You're just the doctor. You're nobody. Same night, you find out you're not nobody. You're a secret billionaire heiress. Your real family has been searching for you for twenty-five years. You sign the divorce papers. He thinks you'll come back. One week later, you show up to the biggest gala of the year. White dress. Diamond earrings. On the arm of a man richer, hotter, and ten times more powerful than your ex. Your ex-husband's face when he sees you? Priceless. His mistress's face when she gets escorted out by security? Even better. And the new man? He's been waiting for you his entire life. He doesn't play games. He doesn't have a mistress. He just looks at you like you're the only woman in the room. This is not a love story about a girl waiting for a boy to choose her. This is a love story about a girl who chose herself. And then got everything she ever deserved.

Isabel returned to her penthouse after a grueling seventeen-hour flight, only to be greeted by the cloying scent of another woman's perfume. Her husband of three years, Darius, sat waiting with divorce papers. He wanted to marry his mistress, Dove, and offered Isabel a measly one million dollars, treating her like a greedy charity case from the Rust Belt who should just take the payout and vanish. But Isabel didn't want his pity. She demanded the four percent equity stake in his family's company that she rightfully owned—a stake worth 1.5 billion dollars. When she revealed this, the wealthy family turned vicious. They refused to acknowledge that she had secretly saved their empire from bankruptcy years ago. Instead, Darius and Dove orchestrated a brutal public execution. They ambushed her at a top law firm, spreading malicious lies that her investment money was stolen from a Ponzi scheme. They even hired a fake victim to scream at her in the lobby, successfully terrifying Isabel's lawyer into dropping her case on the spot. She had quietly rescued their entire legacy, yet they were willing to frame her as a criminal and destroy her life just to keep her rightful billions. As Darius and his mistress gloated over her absolute ruin, the most ruthless and feared lawyer in New York suddenly stepped in front of Isabel, his voice cutting through the dead silence. "Your case, I'll take it."

"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!"

Elliana, the unfavored "ugly duckling" of her family, was humiliated by her stepsister, Paige, who everyone admired. Paige, engaged to the CEO Cole, was the perfect woman-until Cole married Elliana on the day of the wedding. Shocked, everyone wondered why he chose the "ugly" woman. As they waited for her to be cast aside, Elliana stunned everyone by revealing her true identity: a miracle healer, financial mogul, appraisal prodigy, and AI genius. When her mistreatment became known, Cole revealed Elliana's stunning, makeup-free photo, sending shockwaves through the media. "My wife doesn't need anyone's approval."

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!"