Xiao Hong Mao

I drove into my driveway, expecting a peaceful Christmas homecoming, but instead, a woman I' d never seen before was screaming at me. "Who the hell do you think you are? This is my truck!" she shrieked, yanking on the door of the Ford F-150 I' d bought with my bonus to help my brother Tom start his landscaping business. Then Tom emerged, a panicked look on his face, trying to soothe his "serious" new girlfriend, Brittany, as she claimed my property was hers. He just stood there, letting this stranger insult me, my property, and our family, seemingly oblivious to the predatory glint in her eyes or the audacious demand for a $26,000 "engagement fee" they levied on my widowed mother. The brother I had tirelessly supported and protected his entire life, the one I had sacrificed everything for, was gone, replaced by a spineless puppet. A cold, hard resolve settled in my heart. "Get out of my house," I told them, my voice low and clear. They just scoffed, but they had made a critical mistake. They had underestimated me, Sarah Miller. "You want to play this game?" I said, a humorless smile touching my lips. "Fine. Let' s play. But be warned, I' m going to take back every single thing I ever gave him, starting with that truck." They thought they could walk all over me, but they were about to learn that some lines, once crossed, unleash a force they never saw coming.

After three years in prison for a murder I didn't commit, my husband, Alexander, was waiting for me at the gates. He was the perfect, devoted spouse who stood by me through everything, promising me a new beginning. But when he opened the door to our home, my new beginning ended. Standing in the foyer was Katerina, the mistress I was convicted of killing. "She lives here now, Aubrey," he said, not even looking at me. He confessed everything. The three years I spent in hell weren't a mistake; they were a "lesson" to teach me not to question him. He had let me rot in a cage while he built a life with the woman who put me there. Then, he threw me out of the house I helped design. The man I loved hadn't just cheated. He had sacrificed my freedom, my sanity, and my life just to put me in my place. The betrayal was so absolute it broke something deep inside me. The woman who walked out of prison that morning was already dead. In a cheap motel room, I whispered to the other person my mind had created to survive the trauma, "I can't do this anymore. You can have this life. Just... make them pay." When I looked in the mirror again, the reflection that stared back was not me. "Don't worry," a new voice said. "My name is Aja."

At 3:12 AM, a call from the NYPD shattered the silence of my dorm. My childhood sweetheart and the city’s golden heir, Liam Sterling, was in custody and needed me to bail him out. I rushed to the precinct, trembling as I swiped my father’s emergency credit card for five thousand dollars, only to watch Liam walk out and head straight for another woman. He had landed in a cell because he’d started a brawl to protect Jade—a girl with pink hair and a jagged attitude—while I was just the "best friend" he called to clean up his mess. In the backseat of the cab I paid for, I watched the man I loved pull her into his lap, treating me like an invisible chauffeur. When I finally demanded the truth, he didn't apologize; he reminded me that our families were tied by a multi-million dollar merger and that I was "like a sister" to him. My own mother echoed his coldness, telling me to stop being dramatic because our family was secretly bankrupt and we needed the Sterling money to survive. I spent years being his "good girl," even recording a fake video for the press claiming he was a hero who fought to defend my honor. But the illusion shattered when I saw the photos of him with Jade on my birthday—the same night he told me he was working late to secure our future. "I love you, Zoe. Like I love my dog. You’re loyal, but you’re boring." I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was his shield. He used the trauma of the day he "saved" my life to keep me in his debt, never realizing that the chains of gratitude had finally snapped. As the Sterling empire began to crumble under a sudden leak of scandals, I didn't run back to Liam. Instead, I looked at the encrypted message from his dangerous, outcast brother, Julian, who had been waiting in the shadows. He didn't just offer me a way out; he offered to buy my family's debt and claim me as the collateral.

Bennett introduced Elia as our "angel," the surrogate who would carry the heir his genetic condition supposedly prevented us from having. But as he guided her to the sofa, fluffing a pillow behind her back while ignoring me standing in the cold draft, I realized the danger wasn't medical. My suspicions were confirmed at the anniversary gala. I overheard Elia bragging in the restroom—she wasn't a clinical third party. She was his lover of fifteen years. I was just the "safe" wife on paper, the placeholder used to secure his inheritance until the time was right. When Elia staged a fake fall near the champagne tower, Bennett didn't hesitate. He roared at me, scooping her up to rush to the hospital for a "shock," leaving me standing alone in the foyer, blood dripping from a shard of glass embedded in my arm. He didn't look back. Not for a second. Sitting in the ambulance alone, I didn't cry. I didn't panic. I realized I wasn't fighting for his attention anymore. I was calculating the cost of my freedom. While he was holding her hand at the hospital, I returned to the empty house. I walked straight to his study and unlocked the filing cabinet containing the illegal financial records he thought I never checked. He thought he was building a family. He didn't realize he was handing me the weapon to dismantle his entire life.

My life was a perfectly curated dream. Three years with Ethan, a diamond on my finger, and a wedding just a week away-timed perfectly with my family's groundbreaking AI launch that he was a key part of. I, Ava Riley, the brilliant architect, had given him everything-my heart, my connections, my family' s influence. Then, he walked into our penthouse, his face grim, and shattered it all. "It' s Chloe," he said, his ex-girlfriend. "Her mother is dying. Her last wish is to see Chloe get married. To me." My fiancé was going to marry his ex-girlfriend days before our wedding, and he told me with clinical detachment, as if discussing a logistical minor issue. He said it was "filial piety," just "a ceremony, a piece of paper." He expected me to accept this monstrous betrayal, to be "reasonable." My heart didn' t just break, it congealed into ice. I was not his partner; I was a business asset, a temporary stepping stone in his grand design. The humiliation thickened when he had the audacity to suggest using our pre-paid waterfront wedding venue for his impromptu ceremony with Chloe. And then, his true colors emerged. As I refused, his charm vanished, replaced by ugly entitlement, culminating in his fingers digging into my arm. "You have until Saturday to come to your senses," he snarled. "You can either accept this with grace, or you can fight it and lose everything." That physical threat, the raw intimidation, was the final severance. The man I loved was gone, if he ever existed. Only a calculating, abusive stranger remained. I wouldn' t be his victim, nor a footnote in his story. No, I would not cry. I would not scream. I calmly called my brother, Liam. "The wedding is still on for next Saturday," I stated. "Find me a different groom." There was only one man who could make a statement, someone Ethan feared, someone who held a grudge as deep as mine: Lucas Thorne, my family's fiercest rival, a ruthless tech mogul. My brother had one simple question: "Are you sure? He's ruthless." My answer was already forming: "So am I, now." I would play his game, but I would win.

The sterile white of the hospital waiting room was a grim backdrop to my sister Jessica' s desperate pleas; her son, Ethan, was dying, and my eight-year-old Lily was the only match for a kidney. I refused, unwilling to risk my daughter' s life, but my husband Mark, seemingly my protector, assured me he' d handle it, his words a comforting balm. The next day, Lily vanished from our secure backyard as if swallowed by thin air, plunging me into a suffocating panic that clawed at my chest. Mark, my supposed rock, mobilized his endless resources, fueling our desperate search with promises of justice. Days blurred into weeks of relentless searching, handing out flyers with Lily' s smiling face, each call a jolt of terrifying, empty hope, until the unspeakable happened: her small, broken body was found in a waste pit on the city' s outskirts. My world imploded, a black hole of grief and confusion, magnified by Mark' s seemingly shared devastation and vows to find the monster responsible, leaving me broken, wondering how such evil could touch our perfect lives. But the monster was closer than I imagined; five months pregnant with our "new hope," I stumbled upon a donor consent form for Lily' s kidney, signed by Mark the day before her disappearance, revealing a chilling truth: my husband orchestrated her death, and my unborn child was merely a spare part in his twisted scheme, igniting a cold fury that would fuel my terrifying path to justice.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, the Austin air thick with humidity, I stood before a newsstand. There, on the glossy cover of Austin Monthly, was Caleb Jones, a kid three years my junior, a junior aide from my wife' s campaign. "Caleb Jones: The Future is Now. A Star on the Rise." the headline screamed, words I knew Jennifer herself had written. Then, the gut punch: Caleb's Instagram post, "Making our private victories public. Thanks, Jen! This means the world!" I didn' t feel anger, not the hot, explosive kind. Instead, a deep, bone-chilling coldness settled in. The woman who was once my rock, who pulled me through crippling anxiety for years, the Jennifer I married, was gone. She was replaced by a stranger celebrating another man' s future on our anniversary, a stranger whose clothes carried the faint, hoppy scent of his beer. How could she so casually erase twelve years, seven years of marriage, with such calculated public celebration of another man, a boy she had known since he was an intern? Was this all a carefully orchestrated betrayal, a long-game strategy I was too blind to see? I looked at the generic cufflinks she'd given me, a last-minute thought, and remembered the dead cigarette flickering in my hand. The decision was made. I was done.

My perfectly curated life as a marketing student and flourishing YouTube creator felt entirely on track, especially with my ambitious pre-law boyfriend, Ethan, as we diligently built our joint “Dream Fund” for a shared future. Then, one devastating phone call changed everything: Ethan was in a severe car accident, and at the hospital, a tearful "cousin" named Chloe immediately cornered me, accusing me of cold-heartedly withholding his crucial life savings from our fund for his mounting medical bills. Overnight, I became campus pariah number one, bombarded by a relentless online smear campaign that branded me a manipulative "gold digger," ostracized by my sorority sisters, subjected to vandalism, and even interrogated by the stern Dean of Student Conduct who threatened my entire academic career. The sheer, burning injustice of it all was suffocating, my hard-earned reputation shredded by malicious rumors that painted Ethan as a self-sacrificing martyr while portraying me as a heartless thief, leaving me utterly bewildered by this sudden, public crucifixion. How could the truth be so twisted, and why did everyone, including Ethan’s own family and closest friends, so eagerly embrace a narrative of my betrayal without ever questioning it or hearing my side of the story? But as Ethan, from his hospital bed, dramatically broke up with me and defiantly demanded "his half" of the fund back, claiming it was for his recovery, I finally reached my absolute breaking point, deciding that enough was truly enough, and my stacks of incontrovertible evidence would finally expose the real perpetrators behind this elaborate scheme.

Five years later, he came back and took away her only hope. She didn't want to give in, but he cornered her again and again. "What on earth do you want?" "I want you to marry me and have a baby for me." "You wish!" However, after they got married and she gave birth to a baby for him, he refused her when she wanted to give him a daughter.

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."

"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."

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!"

After five years of playing the perfect daughter, Rylie was exposed as a stand-in. Her fiancé bolted, friends scattered, and her adoptive brothers shoved her out, telling her to grovel back to her real family. Done with humiliation, she swore to claw back what was hers. Shock followed: her birth family ruled the town's wealth. Overnight, she became their precious girl. The boardroom brother canceled meetings, the genius brother ditched his lab, the musician brother postponed a tour. As those who spurned her begged forgiveness, Admiral Brad Morgan calmly declared, "She's already taken."

Sunlit hours found their affection glimmering, while moonlit nights ignited reckless desire. But when Brandon learned his beloved might last only half a year, he coolly handed Millie divorce papers, murmuring, "This is all for appearances; we'll get married again once she's calmed down." Millie, spine straight and cheeks dry, felt her pulse go hollow. The sham split grew permanent; she quietly ended their unborn child and stepped into a new beginning. Brandon unraveled, his car tearing down the street, unwilling to let go of the woman he'd discarded, pleading for her to look back just once.

Linsey was stood up by her groom to run off with another woman. Furious, she grabbed a random stranger and declared, "Let's get married!" She had acted on impulse, realizing too late that her new husband was the notorious rascal, Collin. The public laughed at her, and even her runaway ex offered to reconcile. But Linsey scoffed at him. "My husband and I are very much in love!" Everyone thought she was delusional. Then Collin was revealed to be the richest man in the world. In front of everyone, he got down on one knee and held up a stunning diamond ring. "I look forward to our forever, honey."

In their previous lives, Gracie married Theo. Outwardly, they were the perfect academic couple, but privately, she became nothing more than a stepping stone for his ambition, and met a tragic end. Her younger sister Ellie wed Brayden, only to be abandoned for his true love, left alone and disgraced. This time, both sisters were reborn. Ellie rushed to marry Theo, chasing the success Gracie once had-unaware she was repeating the same heartbreak. Gracie instead entered a contract marriage with Brayden. But when danger struck, he defended her fiercely. Could fate finally rewrite their tragic endings?

Maia grew up a pampered heiress-until the real daughter returned and framed her, sending Maia to prison with help from her fiancé and family. Four years later, free and married to Chris, a notorious outcast, everyone assumed Maia was finished. They soon discovered she was secretly a famed jeweler, elite hacker, celebrity chef, and top game designer. As her former family begged for help, Chris smiled calmly. "Honey, let's go home." Only then did Maia realize her "useless" husband was a legendary tycoon who'd adored her from the start.

The whispers said that out of bitter jealousy, Hadley shoved Eric's beloved down the stairs, robbing the unborn child of life. To avenge, Eric forced Hadley abroad and completely cut her off. Years later, she reemerged, and they felt like strangers. When they met again, she was the nightclub's star, with men ready to pay fortunes just to glimpse her elusive performance. Unable to contain himself, Eric blocked her path, asking, "Is this truly how you earn a living now? Why not come back to me?" Hadley's lips curved faintly. "If you’re eager to see me, you’d better join the queue, darling."

Blinded in a crash, Cary was rejected by every socialite—except Evelina, who married him without hesitation. Three years later, he regained his sight and ended their marriage. "We’ve already lost so many years. I won’t let her waste another one on me." Evelina signed the divorce papers without a word. Everyone mocked her fall—until they discovered that the miracle doctor, jewelry mogul, stock genius, top hacker, and the President's true daughter… were all her. When Cary came crawling back, a ruthless tycoon had him kicked out. "She's my wife now. Get lost."