You Chose Her: Now Watch Me Reign

For seven years, I was his eyes. But the moment he regained his sight, he decided to marry someone else. Seven years of devotion couldn't buy his heart. I gave him back his dignity. Now that he was restored as the Godfather of the New York Mafia, he laughed with others, degrading me to the status of a mere "mistress." He thought I didn't understand Italian, but I heard him loud and clear: he was going to marry his first love. He arrogantly believed I would always love him, willing to stay in his penthouse like a caged bird. But he was wrong. I boarded a one-way flight to Australia. Dante, I don't want you anymore. By the time he returned home, he would have lost me forever. But a sore loser refuses to concede. Even if he had to burn the world to the ground, he would search for me and beg for my forgiveness.

I was dying from a terminal illness, but my husband, Broderick, thought it was just another one of my games to get his attention. He hated me, convinced I had betrayed him years ago for money. As I collapsed in agony, begging him to take me to the hospital, he grabbed my chin and whispered the words that shattered my world. "I will never forgive you. I hope you just… die." He then left me on the cold floor and rushed to the hospital to be with his true love, Kacey-my best friend. She was the one he worried about, the one whose own heart was failing. He never knew that the "betrayal" he despised was actually my sacrifice to save his family from ruin. He never knew the depth of my love, a love so absolute that even his cruelty couldn't extinguish it. So, when the doctors told me I was a perfect match, I made my final choice. I would grant his wish and give my heart to the woman he loved.

I was reviewing the laundering accounts when my husband asked for a hundred thousand dollars for the nanny. It took three seconds for me to realize the woman he was trying to pay off was wearing my missing vintage Chanel earrings. Damian looked me in the eye, using his best doctor's voice. "She is struggling, Ainsley. She has five boys to feed." When Casey walked in, she wasn't wearing a uniform. She was wearing my jewelry and looking at my husband with intimate familiarity. Instead of apologizing when I confronted them, Damian protected her. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. "She is a good mother," he sneered. "Something you wouldn't understand." He used the infertility I had spent millions trying to cure as a weapon against me. He didn't know that I had just received the investigator's file. The file that proved those five boys were his. The file that proved he had gotten a secret vasectomy six months before we started trying for a baby. He had let me endure years of painful procedures, hormones, and shame, all while funding his secret family with my father's money. I looked at the man I had shielded from the violence of my world so he could play god in a white coat. I didn't scream. I am a Pierce. We execute. I picked up my phone and dialed my enforcer. "I want him ruined. I want him to have nothing. I want him to wish he was dead."

For three years, I was Keagan Steele's passionate secret, the "Wild Rose of Beverly Hills" who finally tamed the city's coldest billionaire. I thought our love was real, a quiet world built away from the glitz. Then I overheard him call me a "placeholder," a three-year experiment until his true love returned. That true love? My vicious stepsister, Alba. He abandoned me after a car crash, choosing to save her while I bled in the wreckage. He watched as my stepmother beat me with a horsewhip, even suggesting she use it to break my spirit. He even broke my wrist to give Alba a locket that belonged to my dead mother. When a falling light fixture threatened Alba, he dove to save her, taking the hit himself. His body, shielding hers, was the final, brutal proof: I was nothing. But as I lay broken, a chilling thought took root. If I was going to be the villain of their story, I might as well play the part. And this time, I would burn their world to the ground.

For ten years, I gave up everything for my boyfriend, Damien. After a family scandal left him ostracized and broken, I worked two jobs to send him to a prestigious university, believing in the genius everyone else had abandoned. But the moment he became the tech innovator I always knew he could be, he fell for someone else—a wealthy, brilliant colleague named Carson Wall. Suddenly, I was an embarrassment. His new friends whispered about the "waitress" dragging him down. He started forgetting me, too. He forgot my birthday. He forgot my favorite food. During a fire alarm at a restaurant, he ran right past me to save her, leaving me to fall in the panicked crowd. I was the one who pulled him off a rooftop when he wanted to die. I sacrificed my own dreams so he could have his. I thought he loved me, but I was just a debt he felt obligated to repay. After he left me in that fire, I finally gave up. I booked a one-way ticket home, ready to disappear from his life. Then, I received a video from Carson—her tearful love confession to him. I took a deep breath, sent him one last message telling him we were over, and blocked his number forever.

The call from the police station was a splash of ice water in the face: an accident, they said. My daughter, Lily, was gone. The words "We did everything we could" shattered my world, made worse by the cold, clinical police report: the other driver, Olivia Hayes, my ex-husband Ethan's new girlfriend, was intoxicated. Ethan Vance, perfect as always in his tailored suit, smooth and controlled, called it a "terrible tragedy." Days later, his lawyers offered a settlement with too many zeros. When I refused, Ethan himself came, effortlessly opening my door with his old key. He threatened my frail grandmother, Rose, the only family I had left, with a "little fall," forcing me to sign the papers. He was erasing all trace of me from his life. Just two hours after I signed, the phone rang again: Grandma Rose had fallen, critically injured. At the hospital, the same one where I'd lost Lily, she pressed a key into my hand, her last act of protection. My grandmother was gone. I stood over her grave, her words, "Live," echoing in my head. Then Olivia Hayes, pristine in white, walked in, dripping false sympathy. "You must be cursed," she sneered. Rage, raw and pure, surged through me. Ethan, who had once been my knight, pulled me back, commanding me to apologize to the woman who had already stolen everything. His face, once filled with love, was now cold, cruel, and unforgiving.