Xiao Wang

The rain in Detroit was slick with grime when my family finally came to fetch me. They didn't want a reunion; they wanted a sacrificial lamb to marry into the Kaufman empire to save their failing business. I thought I was just being sold off, but the limo ride ended under a dark overpass where six hired thugs were waiting with chains. My own sister had ordered them to "break my spirit" so I’d be a shaking, pathetic mess by the time I reached the altar. They called me "Detroit trash" and sprayed air freshener when I sat on their leather seats. My stepmother wanted a video of me begging for my life, and my father was ready to trade me like a used car to a man everyone called a "vegetable." They expected a submissive country girl, unaware that I was a high-level "cleaner" who could snap a radius bone before they could even scream. When I finally reached the Kaufman estate, I found my fiancé, Barron, slumped in a wheelchair, drooling and silent. But as soon as the doors closed, the "invalid" grabbed my wrist with a grip of iron and whispered a command that changed everything. I didn't understand why my own blood was so desperate to see me destroyed. What had I ever done to deserve a hit squad and a forced marriage to a man they thought was a corpse? But Barron isn't a vegetable, and I'm not a victim. We just touched down at the Moon family gala in a matte-black helicopter, and as the doors slide open, the "broken" bride is about to show them exactly what happens when you throw away the wrong daughter. "If we're going to crash a party," Barron whispered, his eyes burning with lethal clarity, "we should make an entrance."

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

Seraphina had loved Damien through three years of marriage, yet she could never outshine the first love Bianca he had cherished in his heart for a full decade. On the very day she was diagnosed with gastric cancer, he was by Bianca's side, accompanying their son for a medical checkup. She made no scene, no fuss, simply took the divorce papers and left quietly — only to be met with far crueler retaliation. She finally learned the truth: he had married her solely to avenge his sister. While she was wasting away from her fatal illness, he gripped her chin cold-heartedly and sneered, "This is what your father owes me." Before long, her family was utterly destroyed. Her father was left a vegetative state. With nothing left to live for, Seraphina jumped from a high building. "The life my father owed you... I've paid it back in full." The always poised, arrogant Damien dropped to his knees, his eyes bloodshot and frantic. Over and over again, he begged brokenly for her to come back to him.

It was my birthday, but instead of celebrating, I was bleeding on the floor of my own bedroom. My sister Serena had just smashed a champagne bottle over my legs, her eyes filled with a dark madness because our father allowed me to wear the family diamonds. To escape her, I bolted into a pitch-black guest suite, only to be grabbed by a man who felt like a wall of solid muscle. He was drugged, unstable, and pinned me against the wall, his teeth sinking into my neck in a primal claim that left a permanent mark. I managed to flee, but the nightmare was just beginning. My father didn't care about my injuries; he only cared that I had "insulted" the man in that room—Delos French, the most powerful CEO in New York. He threatened to stop paying for my mother’s critical care facility unless I went to Delos and begged for his forgiveness. My brother Julian was even worse, intentionally pouring scalding coffee over my bandaged wounds just to see me flinch. They forced me into a revealing gold dress, treating me like a high-priced commodity to be sold to the highest bidder to save their failing company. I didn't understand how the people who were supposed to love me could be more predatory than the monster in the dark. I had spent my life fixing their scandals, yet they were ready to throw me to the wolves the moment I became useful as a pawn. But when I stood before Delos French at his gala, he didn't see a trophy. He recognized my scent, my touch, and the fire in my eyes. He trapped me in his private lounge, kneeling to clean the blood from my injured feet. "Marry me," he whispered, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "And I will give you the power to burn your family to the ground." I looked into the eyes of the man who had hunted me and realized he was the only one offering me a weapon to destroy the people who had broken me. "Okay," I whispered.

I jumped into the freezing Hudson River. Not to kill myself, but to save the only thing I had left—my father's Medal of Valor, which Krystal had thrown into the water like a stick for a dog. I clawed my way up the muddy bank, lungs burning, shivering violently. I looked up at the villa balcony, hoping my Fated Mate, Jaxon, would be looking for me. He wasn't. He was wrapping his arms around Krystal, watching the artificial meteor shower he had arranged just for her. "Anything for you, my love," he said, completely forgetting I was drowning in the dark below. For three years, I believed I had "Wolf Sickness." I took the pills he sent, grateful for his care. But the pills were poison. Wolfsbane. Designed to keep me weak, docile, and unable to shift, just so he could replace me with a more powerful Luna. He called me a liability. He watched his mistress run me over with her Porsche, ordered his guards to silence me, and let her dogs tear my skin. Now, clutching the cold medal, the final thread of our bond snapped. I didn't go back to the pack house. I dragged my broken body to the airport and sent one final text. "I, Alina Phillips, reject you, Jaxon Francis." I mailed him the medical report proving he had been poisoning his own mate, and then I disappeared. By the time he realizes what he's done, the Alina he knew will be dead.

I was just the decoration at the gala, the dutiful wife of Chicago's Underboss, Dante Moretti. Then my phone buzzed with a photo of his hand on another woman's thigh, taken inside the venue just minutes ago. I finally snapped, leaking the photo to the press to shame him. Dante dragged me home, pinned me to the sofa, and carved a thin line into my collarbone with a switchblade. "You don't get to leave until I say you're done," he warned. But the real devastation came later. An anonymous video file revealed the truth about my mother's "suicide" ten years ago. She didn't jump. My sister, Sofia, pushed her. And Dante? He didn't marry me for power. He brokered a deal with my father to cover up the murder and took me as hush money. I crashed Sofia's birthday party to expose them, but my father slapped me in front of everyone. Dante grabbed my fresh wound and forced me to my knees. "Apologize to your sister," he threatened, "or I bulldoze your mother's grave right now." I swallowed my pride, bowed my head, and apologized. But Sofia just laughed, pulled out a detonator, and pressed the button anyway. "Oops," she giggled as the explosion rocked the ground. "Happy birthday to me." Watching the smoke rise from my mother's destroyed mausoleum, the old Elena died. I vanished into the night, leaving behind signed divorce papers and my bloodied dress. When Dante finally tracked me down, I wasn't hiding in fear. I was standing next to his mortal enemy, Luca Rossi, wearing a massive diamond ring. I handed Dante a cream-colored envelope. "What is this?" he asked, his hands trembling. "An invitation," I said, my voice ice-cold. "To the wedding of Don Luca Rossi and Elena Vitiello."

Three years after I buried an empty casket for my husband, I found him alive in a grocery store parking lot. He was rubbing a stranger's pregnant belly, smiling a soft smile I had never seen in our years of marriage. My husband, the ruthless Don of Chicago, had become "Arthur," a gentle man with no memory of the empire he ruled or the wife he left behind. To protect his happiness, I swallowed my agony and lied. "I am his cousin," I told his pregnant fiancée, Mia. I brought them home to his estate, enduring the torture of watching him give her the tenderness that used to belong to me. But my mercy was rewarded with cruelty. Dante looked at me with cold, unfamiliar eyes and slapped divorce papers onto the table. "Sign them," he demanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to marry Mia before the baby comes. I want a fresh start." He didn't know I was dying of a heart defect caused by the stress of grieving him. He didn't know I stalled for two weeks not for money, but because I wanted to be buried with his name. I died the morning the deadline arrived, taking the secret of my love to the grave. Ironically, that very night, a bullet grazed his temple during an ambush, unlocking the memories he had lost. He remembered the peach orchard. He remembered our blood oath. He remembered that I was his soulmate. He ran to my brother’s gates, screaming my name, blood pouring down his face, desperate to beg for forgiveness. But my brother just stood there, blocking the entrance to the cemetery with a cruel smile. "She waited for you every single day," he spat. "And you killed her."

My fiancé thought he was manipulating a naive heiress, unaware I had video proof of him plotting to commit me to an asylum. He planned to steal my inheritance with my cousin, but tonight, I' m not signing a marriage license. I' m signing his death warrant. For years, I played the role of the docile, grateful orphan while Holden and Dianne mocked me behind my back. They called me mentally incompetent, laughing as they planned to strip me of my father' s legacy and lock me away. I watched them parade around my birthday gala, smug in their victory, treating me like a fragile doll on the verge of a breakdown. They expected tears. They expected submission. Instead, they got a cold-blooded execution. In front of the entire New York elite, I didn't hand my voting rights to the golden boy who promised to love me. I walked past him and handed the charter to the one man the entire family feared. Hazen Ingram. The scarred, silent "monster" of the dynasty. As Holden screamed and was dragged away by security, I realized something terrifyingly beautiful. I didn't just choose revenge. I chose the only man who ever truly protected me.

My boyfriend, a chess prodigy, planned to publicly humiliate me at our graduation. He'd spent three years faking our relationship, even secretly filming us, all to get revenge for a lie he believed about my father. I overheard his entire twisted plan just before it was set to happen. So I fled to Paris, leaving him with the wreckage of his prized antique chess set and a video of me smashing it to pieces. I built a new life, found real love with a kind man named Kolton, and my art began to flourish. I was finally healing, finally safe. Then, one morning, my ex shattered my apartment door, holding a black rose, his eyes burning with a terrifying declaration: "I was wrong. I love you. And I'm not leaving until you're mine again."

My voice was a pathetic whisper. I was on my knees, hands clutching the hem of her dress. My vision was blurry, the room swaying. "Get off me, Ethan," she said, her voice flat. "You' re pathetic." She kicked my hands away. The love I used to see in her eyes was gone, replaced by contempt. Then I heard Liam, my own half-brother, gloating. "Pixel Legacy is ours now, Sophia. And with his signature on that transfer document, there' s nothing he can do." My game. My life' s work. Stolen. And Sophia, my girlfriend, was his willing accomplice. The drug Liam gave me hit hard. I was in agony, slamming my raw knuckles against the carpet. I heard their laughter from the living room. She re-entered, ordered me to stop making noise, and when I begged for a doctor, she locked me in. Later, she and Liam forced more of the poison down my throat, leaving me to dissolve into a black void. When I woke, I was in a hospital. A new intern, Noah, told me he found me unconscious in the bathroom, bleeding. My phone buzzed with an email from Sophia: an "Agreement" to erase me from my own life, stealing everything, leaving me with nothing but a few thousand dollars as a consolation prize. How could she? How could three years of shared dreams crumble into this cruel reality? Was it always a lie? As I lay there, helpless and broken, a cold resolve settled in my gut. I would not die here. I would leave. I would survive this. I would get my own back.

I had given ten years of my life to Scott & Associates, a law firm I built from the ground up, making myself indispensable as their senior paralegal and handling everything from client intake to IT. My boss, Mr. Scott, had promised me a partnership for years, a dream I clung to, along with my significant five-figure Christmas bonus that barely acknowledged my worth. Then, his newly-graduated niece, Madisyn, arrived as "Operations Manager" and immediately announced a drastic, public pay cut, effective immediately. The harassment began almost instantly-forced to clean toilets, fix jammed copiers, and endure petty humiliations while Mr. Scott watched and approved. But the real blow came when I learned Madisyn had slashed my bonus from five figures to a mere thousand dollars, falsely accusing me of laziness to justify her actions. Every shred of loyalty I had withered, replaced by a cold fury at their betrayal and utter disregard for my dedication. They had no idea what they had just unleashed. I didn't just quit; I walked out, knowing my meticulous records would soon expose their financial crimes and tear their entire empire down.

For two years, falling for Andrew Morris was my escape-an immortal like me, I just wanted a simple, mortal love, a normal life. But two days after he promised me a home in the Appalachians, his warm voice turned to ice: "She's the one. Take her." Suddenly, I was on my knees, wrists bound, watching Andrew hold another woman, Jennifer, as the entire town looked on. They had lured me here to be a human sacrifice for their "Forest Spirit," a desperate plea to save their crops. Imprisoned and drugged with a truth root, I watched Andrew try to steal my fortune, only for Jennifer to swoop in, expose their mutual deceit, and brutally slash my face. Pain and betrayal consumed me, an agony amplified by the bizarre echo of my ancient past, and a desperate, drug-addled whisper escaped my lips: "Caleb will know." Hours later, beaten and abandoned on a moss-covered altar, I was ready for death, until the true "Forest Spirit" appeared-not a monster, but the powerful, terrifying being I had spent centuries running from, the very one who had "cursed" me with endless life: Caleb.

On our third wedding anniversary, I left my restaurant early, the scent of success clinging to my whites, a silver locket meant for my wife, Jocelyn, burning a hole in my pocket. But when I found her at her Silicon Valley office, she wasn't waiting for me; she was laughing, head tilted back, with Caleb Blakely, her old flame. My blood ran cold when she introduced me, her husband of three years, as merely a "friend who collaborates on catering events," right after I watched her sign the divorce papers I' d cunningly hidden within a fake contract. Over the next weeks, I watched her prioritize his manufactured crises, accept his cronuts while ignoring our vanishing past, and heard her speak to him with the intimate warmth she hadn't shown me in years. I lay in a hospital bed, shattered from a car crash, while the woman who vowed to be my life partner, was busy celebrating Caleb' s birthday, completely oblivious to my situation. That same evening, standing in the quiet, empty apartment I' d secretly moved my life into, I looked out at the city lights and finally calmly said, "It's over, Jocelyn. We' re over."

My wedding night was supposed to be a dream. I stood there, stiff in my white lace dress, looking forward to forever with Ethan. He was the man I'd loved since girlhood, our families and friends had just celebrated our union. But the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. In our honeymoon suite, he coldly declared, "This was a mistake. I don't love you." He spoke of annulment, "false pretenses," and just tossed me aside like yesterday's trash. Five years passed in the shadow of that brutal humiliation. I rebuilt my life, slowly, finding quiet happiness as the secretly married wife of US Senator Alex Sterling. But fate, or perhaps cruelty, intervened. A chance encounter in a bookstore brought Ethan and his current fiancée, Brittany – my former intern – back into my life. They relentlessly mocked me, scorned my simple life, then falsely accused me of theft. The public spectacle escalated into physical violence as Ethan dragged me into a back room, intent on disfiguring me with a letter opener, all while Brittany smirked. Trapped, bruised, and bleeding, I faced the man who had shattered my world once before, now determined to destroy me completely. How could he still hold such power, such venom? Why did he refuse to believe my truth, even when my dignity lay shattered on the floor for all to see? Just as despair threatened to consume me and the sharp point of the letter opener hovered inches from my face, a commanding voice split the chaos: "Get your hands off my wife!" My husband, Senator Alex Sterling, strode in, a force of nature, ready to reclaim his Sarah and exact a righteous fury.

As Ava Moreno, a Queens girl with a mountain of medical bills, my sustainable design for the Phoenix Tower was my magnum opus, ready to redefine NYC's skyline. This was the breakthrough I'd poured my soul into, my chance to save my ailing mother whose MS was relentlessly worsening. Suddenly, in a packed boardroom, Julian Sterling’s aide, Liam Astor, launched a vicious public attack. He stripped me from the project, twisting my past into insidious rumors of "ethical ambiguities" and "gold-digging" from my college days. My career, my reputation—everything I’d built—imploded in an instant. The fallout was brutal. My former colleague, Veronica Bell, shamelessly took over, later sabotaging my design, while my old boss, Marcus Finch, tried to blackmail me. Forced into desperate measures, I faced humiliating propositions from powerful men like Councilman Thompson, revealing the city's predatory underbelly. All the while, my mother's experimental treatments demanded astronomical sums, plunging me deeper into a financial abyss. Why did this keep happening? Was I destined to be a victim, my talent overshadowed by relentless slander? Every act of "help" from Julian Sterling, the enigmatic billionaire I’d known since college, felt like a transactional noose, further cementing my public image as his "kept woman." But as I faltered under the weight of it all, a fierce resolve ignited. I would not break. For my mother, I would accept this "blood money," navigate this gilded cage, and fight. My journey into the cutthroat world of power and compromise had only just begun.

Daria had been promoted to the role of the CEO's secretary but it left her feeling confused. She was so happy that her career was taking off but what she didn't know was that she had unwittingly stepped into a romantic trap. On her first day in her new role, she encountered a challenging situation. She walked into her boss's office to find him tussling with a woman. While trying to help him, she ended up accidentally stabbing him with a cactus. She couldn't understand why an average girl like her was chosen for this important role in the first place and now she was terrified that she would lose her new job on the first day itself. What would happen when she learned the truth? Where would their story go?

For five years, I abandoned my status as the heiress of the powerful Montgomery family to play the role of a poor, submissive housewife for Barrett. Then, a bank notification popped up on my phone. Barrett had forged my digital signature and transferred our entire $50 million joint trust fund to a woman named Crista Reid. When I called his boardroom to confront him, he humiliated me in front of a dozen Wall Street executives. "Stop acting like a hysterical housewife. You're living in a penthouse I pay for, so don't embarrass yourself." I broke into his encrypted laptop and uncovered the sickening truth. Crista was his mistress, and they had a five-year-old son together. Barrett hadn't just stolen my money; he had spent years painting me as a helpless charity case he rescued, completely erasing the fact that my financial models built his entire company. He thought I was just a discarded peasant he could manipulate, cheat on, and replace. He truly believed he held absolute power over my life. He had no idea that I still possessed the highest security clearance of the Montgomery empire. I pulled an old BlackBerry from a hidden wall compartment, plugged it in, and dialed my family's lawyer. "Draft the prenup for Commodore Clayton IV," I ordered, choosing to marry Wall Street's most ruthless predator. "I'm done playing the peasant."

For four years, Ellyn was the scarred, despised wife of billionaire Baron Hudson, enduring his cruelty with silent devotion. But one night, after brutally forcing himself on her, he threw divorce papers at her bruised chest. "Did you really think I could ever stomach looking at that hideous face of yours for the rest of my life?" He kicked her out into the freezing rain because his flawless true love, Christine, was finally coming home. To ensure Ellyn suffered, Baron froze all her bank accounts, wanting her to starve on the streets until she begged for his mercy. Penniless and shivering in a rundown apartment, Ellyn discovered she was pregnant with his child, right as the news broadcasted him lovingly welcoming Christine at the airport. Her heart died completely. She had given him ten years of her life, only to be thrown away like garbage. But a shocking miracle happened: the intimate trauma had somehow triggered a biological cure, completely peeling away the ugly scar that had ruined her face for twenty years. If the ruthless Hudson family found out she was healed and carrying the heir, they would steal her baby and destroy her. Instead of taking his five-million-dollar hush money, Ellyn tore the contract to pieces, hid her newly flawless face, and vanished to Paris. Four years later, the Hudson family's grand banquet was brought to a dead halt by a stunning, untouchable woman in a red trench coat and her genius three-year-old son. Ellyn was back, and she wasn't the ugly duckling anymore.

For ten years, I was the perfect, obedient wife to my wealthy husband, managing his severe OCD and hosting flawless high-society parties. But on our tenth anniversary, when I brought him his special hangover soup, I caught him sleeping with my younger sister in our master bedroom. Instead of panicking, he coldly handed me divorce papers with zero assets. He told me I was just a "placeholder" until my sister finished her degree and was ready to take my spot. Desperate, I called my mother for help, only to find out she had known about their affair for years. "You don't have Jana's drive or her looks. You clean house and you cook. That's not a wife, that's a domestic." My own mother sneered at me, telling me to walk away quietly because our family needed his financial support. They kicked me out of the penthouse with nothing but a suitcase, laughing that a woman who hadn't worked in a decade would end up begging on the streets. I bled for this family for ten years, only to be thrown away like garbage when my sister wanted my life. But they didn't know that while I was playing the boring housewife, I had secretly earned a Cordon Bleu diploma, a Cornell nutrition certification, and a Columbia master's degree. Using a hidden photo to blackmail a property out of him, I packed my elite credentials and landed a $300,000-a-year job managing a billionaire's estate. When my ex-husband drunkenly called days later demanding I come back to serve him, I calmly hit block.

Scarlett Hayes thought marrying James Whitmore would finally make her family see her as more than a burden. Instead, it destroyed her life. Framed for crimes she didn't commit, betrayed by the people she trusted most, and sentenced to prison while pregnant, Scarlett lost everything in a single night. Then came the cruelest blow of all. After giving birth in chains, she was told her baby had died. The people responsible believed she would spend the rest of her life rotting behind bars. They were wrong. Five years later, Scarlett returns. No longer the discarded daughter of the Hayes family. No longer the broken woman they left behind. Now she is Commander Scarlett Hayes-a decorated war hero, the unseen force behind a global intelligence empire, and a woman powerful enough to make governments tremble. She comes back for one reason only: revenge. Her ex-husband, the stepsister who stole her life, and the family who buried her alive are about to learn exactly what happens when a woman with nothing left to lose takes back everything they stole. But as Scarlett tears through the secrets of her past, one truth threatens to change everything- the child she mourned for years may not be dead. And the mysterious man connected to the night that changed her life has been watching from the shadows all along.

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, mine didn't. I came back with a marriage certificate bearing a stranger's name, a ring worth more than my parents' love ever was, and a son whose father I've never seen, never known, never remembered. I went to Vegas for a racing competition. I won. I celebrated. And somewhere between the victory and the sunrise, my life changed forever. For six years, I've lived with the consequences of one reckless night. I built an empire. I raised my son. And I searched for the man who changed my life without even knowing it. Then fate laughed in my face. My sister married my ex-fiancé-the man I was promised to since childhood. The man I was supposed to become Mrs. Windsor for. The man who now wears my family name... and looks far too much like my child. Every time I'm near him, the past presses closer. Every glance feels like a question I'm terrified to ask. I shouldn't notice him. I shouldn't feel anything. He is my sister's husband. But some secrets refuse to stay buried. Because the truth about Vegas isn't just in the ring on my finger or the child in my arms. It's standing right in front of me. And when it finally comes out, it won't just destroy a marriage, it will burn an empire to the ground.

On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call. He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar. In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave. But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund. They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime. I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets. Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess. The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow. Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door. This time, I didn't shed a single tear. I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street. "The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."

My four-year-old daughter was dying of leukemia, waiting desperately for a bone marrow transplant. I begged my billionaire husband to just call the registry or visit her, but he claimed he was too busy with board meetings to care. Until the hospital informed me that my daughter's life-saving bone marrow had been suddenly reallocated to another patient. When I walked down the VIP hallway, I found my husband. He wasn't at a board meeting. He was gently peeling an apple, playing the loving father to his widowed mistress's daughter. When my pale, sick daughter called out for him, he instinctively stepped back in disgust. I later discovered the mistress had bribed the hospital to swap the registry numbers, stealing my daughter's marrow for her own child. When I demanded a divorce, my husband laughed in my face. "You haven't worked a day in four years. You're a purchased asset. You don't get to walk away." He threatened to freeze my accounts, assuming I would be starving on the streets and begging to come back. His family and the mistress publicly mocked my background, waiting for me to be utterly humiliated. They thought I was just a useless, penniless housewife who relied entirely on his last name to survive. They didn't know I never needed a single cent of his money. I packed my bags, took my daughter, and made a single phone call. Three days later, at his family's elite banquet, my husband waited to see me beg. Instead, the most powerful corporate magnate in North America walked right past him, bowed to me at a perfect ninety-degree angle, and spoke. "Welcome back to the throne, Madam."

Being second best is practically in my DNA. My sister got the love, the attention, the spotlight. And now, even her damn fiancé. Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now-billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn't mind. I'd crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one? Wrong. One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That's when it hit me-he didn't love me. He didn't even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn't even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup. So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster-my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise. Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol. Enter him. Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I'd met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised. But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life. And, as it turned out, the best decision I'd ever made. Because my one-night stand isn't just some random guy. He's richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with. And now, he's not letting me go.

To revenge herself on her unfaithful fiancé Kevin, Isidora hides her striking beauty behind a plain disguise, and targets his uncle - the most formidable man Kevin fears. After one reckless night, Isidora leaves cash as payment and says lightly, "You were good last night." She tries to leave quietly, but is pulled into his arms. "You think you can walk away after this?" he says, his tone low and possessive. Cedrick is a feared, untouchable titan on Wall Street - elegant, aloof, and completely uninterested in women. Not even the most beautiful socialites in the city can catch his eye. When gossip spreads that he was seen pressing a woman against a wall and kissing her fiercely, no one believes it. When the rumors name Isidora, the crowd scoffs. He rejects even the most beautiful women, so why would he notice a plain girl like her? All doubt disappears when they see the dignified Cedrick drop to one knee to help Isidora with her shoe, pleading softly for just one kiss. When Kevin finally sees Isidora's true beauty and begs for forgiveness. But Cedrick kicks him out at once, slams a marriage certificate on the table, and says sharply. "Call her Aunt."

On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband. Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid. She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills. Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger. When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans. He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing. "Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door. Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle? Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night. But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.