Xiang Si

My love. My ruin. Ashton Hampton saved me from my mother's scandal. I gave him my whole heart. Then he told me he was marrying another woman for business. My role? His hidden mistress. At our engagement party, his new fiancée accused me of ruining her brooch. Ashton didn't question it. He demanded I apologize. The crowd attacked. He watched. I climbed onto a helicopter and disappeared. Eighteen years later, I saw him on a park bench—broken, hollow, begging for one more word. I gave him two: “No comment.”

I was a wolfless Omega who married the most powerful Alpha, but I was slowly dying of Bond-Rejection Sickness because my fated mate despised me. Instead of caring about my failing health, Dallas flaunted his mistress and treated my agony as a pathetic tantrum. When I handed him a sacred rejection letter just to save my own life, he ruthlessly shredded it and used his Alpha Command to force me to stay. He locked me in his suite, watched me violently throw up from the sickness, and threatened to cut off my grandfather's life-saving medical funds if I didn't play the perfect Luna for his public image. To him and his Pack, I was just a useless burden, a piece of property they could abuse and control at will. I couldn't understand why I had to suffer and die for a man who didn't even know his entire empire was built on the secret defense algorithms I had written. Why should my absolute loyalty be repaid with such suffocating cruelty? "I, Gemma Hart, reject you, Dallas Blackwood, as my mate." I slammed a new rejection document right onto his table in front of his smug mistress. Before his furious roar could even echo through the restaurant, I legally revoked the patents to my algorithms, completely paralyzing his Pack's security grid, and walked away. Let the arrogant Alpha see what happens when his property declares war.

My life's work was stolen by Dallas Mueller. She built an empire on my research, becoming a tech celebrity while I was framed for fraud and left with nothing. I decided to crash her biggest product launch to get my life back. But instead of justice, I was met with violence. Dallas and her followers beat me in front of everyone, tearing my clothes and humiliating me. They dragged me outside, vandalized my car, and set my personal journal on fire. The ultimate betrayal, however, was seeing my own fiancé, Elias, standing by, his face cold. He believed her lies over me. He watched them destroy me and did nothing to help. Just as I was about to break, a voice cut through the chaos. My mentor, the powerful billionaire Clifton Kramer, had arrived. He exposed Dallas as a fraud on the spot and revealed he had surveillance footage of the entire attack. Cradling me in his arms, he promised, "I promise you, darling, they will pay."

My fifth anniversary card from Liam was on the counter, perfectly depicting the happy DINK life we' d built. That evening, the picture shattered when he confessed another woman, Chloe Davis, was pregnant with his child. He swore it wasn' t an affair, claiming she' d stolen his sperm, but his family, desperate for an heir, forced him to accept the child, disown me, and sacrifice our life. I was left to absorb his shocking betrayal, the grotesque lie, and the cold reality that my husband, the man who once vowed I was enough despite my infertility from saving his life, was letting his family destroy me for a baby. Forced to witness him doting on Chloe, my every memory with him twisted into an instrument of torture, I agreed to his "temporary" divorce, booking a one-way ticket to Canada instead of the resort he thought I was recovering at.

My mother, Karen, a high school principal, enforced a chillingly twisted version of "fairness." It demanded that if I, Sarah, her academically gifted twin, received anything, my less-inclined sister, Emily, had to get the exact same. This rigid, oppressive equality dictated every aspect of our lives, from grades to family trips. When my SAT score of 1550 dwarfed Emily' s 950, Mom's response was swift and brutal: we would both attend a local community college. My mental health, my severe depression diagnosis-all dismissed. When I finally dared to protest, begging her to consider what a gap year or an ill-suited college might do, her facade cracked. With a terrifying burst of rage, she grabbed the hot coffee pot and hurled it. Scalding liquid seared my arm, the sudden agony echoing years of insidious abuse: forced underperformance, hidden self-harm scars, and moments of utter abandonment, all justified by her twisted "fairness." My sister, Emily, merely smirked, validating the cruelty. This wasn't simply unfair; it was a profound, suffocating sickness, a delusion my mother wielded as a weapon, and one my sister benefited from with chilling indifference. How could a parent inflict such systematic psychological and physical torment, all while proclaiming "good intentions" and "fairness"? The lie consumed me, pushing me to the brink. Shattered, terrified, and with my arm throbbing uncontrollably, I fled instinctively to the apartment building rooftop, the familiar precipice of my despair. But this time, amidst the piercing cold and the overwhelming sense of abandonment, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't touched in years: my estranged father. It was my only hope for escape.

I poured my soul into his tech startup, sacrificing law school and working tirelessly. Years later, as Innovatech became a multi-million-dollar empire, I found myself battered by endless, agonizing IVF failures. Then, the truth shattered my world: my beloved husband, Ethan, had been having a secret seven-year affair with his young assistant, Chloe. He'd rented her a luxury downtown apartment and showered her with designer gifts, all while I was injecting hormones, praying for 'our' baby. When confronted, Ethan showed no remorse, blaming my 'stress' and 'obsession with IVF' for his infidelity, claiming Chloe was 'easier' and 'the future.' Chloe, emboldened, moved into our home, flaunting her affair, even subtly attempting to poison me with my severe allergies. Ethan consistently sided with her, excusing her malice, eventually proclaiming his joy over Chloe' s pregnancy while cruelly using my infertility as a weapon against me. His contempt reached its peak when he blamed me after Chloe's hired thugs brutally assaulted me in a parking lot, leaving me bleeding and collapsing. How could the ambitious, loving man who once promised a lifetime of happiness transform into such a heartless monster, completely discarding me for a manipulative mistress? My deepest pain, my very being, had been weaponized against me. But as the Austin sun set on my shattered life, a cold, unshakeable resolve dawned. I had lost our baby, lost my marriage, lost my sense of self. Now, the charade was over. It was time to dismantle his world, piece by agonizing piece, and reclaim everything he'd stolen. My Manhattan sunrise would be a brutal awakening for him, and a brilliant new beginning for me.

As Ava Vanderbilt, an heiress with everything, my biggest obsession was Ethan Blackwood. He was my father's most brilliant protégé, incredibly cold and distant. I saw his indifference not as dislike, but as a mysterious depth, a challenge only I could conquer. I convinced myself his passion was reserved, waiting for me alone. Then came the night I peered into the conservatory. Ethan wasn’t just talking to Lily, his "innocent younger sister." He was kissing her, devouring her with a raw, possessive hunger I’d only dreamed of receiving. This wasn't brotherly love; it was undeniable passion. The truth hit like a physical blow: his coldness to me wasn't a facade, it was pure disinterest. But it got worse. I overheard the unthinkable: all my father's proteges, including Ethan, despised me. Every compliment was a lie, every gesture a calculated act to use my marriage to fund Lily’s exorbitant dreams. The final sting came when Ethan, to "teach me a lesson," deliberately tampered with my horse's saddle, breaking my leg. Then he publicly sabotaged my credit cards at an auction, humiliating me before New York society to buy Lily a dazzling necklace. My heart, once foolishly infatuated, now felt nothing but ice. How could these men, given everything by my benevolent father, conspire to so cruelly orchestrate my downfall? The betrayal was absolute, the humiliation soul-crushing. Was I truly so pathetic, so blind, that I was just a pawn in their twisted game for Lily? The naive Ava Vanderbilt died that day. In her place, a woman forged in fire and betrayal emerged. My upcoming engagement party, meant to announce my future with honest Carter Sterling, would now be their public reckoning. I would not be a victim. I would reclaim my destiny, and they would all pay.

When love turned real, it was destined to be guarded for life. The first time Bella met Charles, she was young and innocent. She was a nobody when she fell for him. However, when she finally plucked up the courage to confess her feelings, an unexpected misunderstanding ripped them apart. She would have endured the thorns just to hug him, but in the end, she only got scarred. Exhaustion released her from this delusion, but he was unwilling to let her go...

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.

For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence. When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside. Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer. Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius. Late one night, he called, begging for another chance. Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?" Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer."

After six years together, Joslyn was abandoned before her wedding when her boyfriend chose his first love over her. Then came an unexpected proposal-from Connor, her ex-boyfriend's adoptive father. "Marry me. You'll get everything you want-and you can get back at him." The deal came with its perks: a lavish monthly allowance, abundant resources at her fingertips, a husband who was practically never home, and the sheer pleasure of rubbing her new status in her ex-boyfriend's face. But the distant husband she expected turned possessive instead. While her ex begged publicly for another chance, Connor pulled her into his arms. "Say that again, and you'll be out of the family forever." Only later did Joslyn discover the truth-Connor had spent six years planning to make her his. Believing it was only a beneficial deal, Joslyn agreed. Constant traveling? A complete lie. And the promise that they'd each live their own lives? Another carefully spun deception. On their wedding night, he had her pinned beneath him, his kisses stealing her breath. And night after night, he kept coming home-utterly fixated on her.

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.

Diana slipped on the penthouse stairs, her body emptying out as she miscarried her first baby. Gasping in a pool of her own blood, she called her husband, Curtis, begging for an ambulance. "Stop being dramatic and call the house doctor. I don't have time for your tantrums right now." He coldly hung up, and later forced her to put on a diamond necklace and attend a high-society dinner while she was actively losing their child. At the party, his mother and sister publicly mocked her pale face, while Curtis watched with absolute disgust. When she finally collapsed, he dragged her to his car, only to kick her out and abandon her on a freezing, dark highway in the middle of the night. His mistress, Carla, had faked a panic attack and claimed she was bleeding too, so he rushed to the hospital to comfort his lover, leaving his wife to bleed out on the asphalt. For three years, Diana had endured this hell, believing she had trapped him into marriage to save her father's dying company. She couldn't understand how Curtis could worship a manipulative fraud who stole the credit for saving his life years ago, while treating his real wife like garbage. But after surviving the night, Diana discovered the devastating truth: her father had willingly gone to federal prison just to buy her the protection of the Alston family name. Stripped of her illusions, Diana signed the divorce papers, giving up every single penny. She was done being their silent victim. It was time to remind them exactly who Diana Wilcox was.

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."