Returning To Ruin My Cheating NHL Husband

I lay on a mildewed mattress in a run-down motel, my body trembling from withdrawal. Once the most feared "Gossip Queen" in Hollywood, I was now a forty-three-year-old ghost staring at a cracked mirror, waiting for the end. The door clicked open, and Brittany Potts stepped in, looking immaculate in a beige trench coat that cost more than my life. She didn't come to help; she tossed a waiver of marital assets onto my bed and handed me a cup of coffee laced with something that smelled like bitter almonds. She laughed, telling me my husband, Bennet, was already in the Bahamas celebrating my death. I froze when I saw the sapphire pendant around her neck—my mother’s necklace, which had vanished the day she died. As the poison began to burn through my chest, Brittany leaned in and whispered her final secret: she was the one who cut the brake lines on the car that killed my father when we were teenagers. My entire life had been a lie. The pills, the scandal, the bankruptcy—it was all a masterpiece of betrayal orchestrated by the two people I trusted most. I died on that filthy floor, suffocating on my own rage and the taste of chemicals, praying for a single chance to make them pay. But when I opened my eyes, the pain was gone. I was sitting in my old bedroom, the morning sun shining on a calendar that read September 15, 2024. My mother’s voice, warm and alive, called me for breakfast from downstairs. I was eighteen again, back in my senior year at Crestview Academy, and the monsters who destroyed me were still pretending to be my friends. This time, I’m the one who holds the shears.

Sloane Sinclair-Carlisle died in a fiery car crash, only to wake up in the weak, broken body of a girl named Nina White. Before she could process her rebirth, a torrent of tragic memories flooded her mind. Nina had written the genius code that saved her husband Doug's tech company from bankruptcy. But instead of gratitude, Doug stole her life's work, presented the billion-dollar algorithm as his own, and drove the desperate girl to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills. "Nina, I swear to God, if you don't open this door in one minute, I'm kicking it down! I don't have time for your drama!" Doug was pounding on the door, aggressively demanding she sign the divorce papers so he could marry his high-school sweetheart. Downstairs, his mother and sister casually sipped tea, mocking Nina as a worthless beggar who was finally being thrown out. They were celebrating their impending wealth, fully believing they could just erase her and leave her with absolutely nothing. They thought they had completely crushed a timid, helpless victim. They had no idea the soul now inhabiting this body belonged to a cold, unforgiving predator. Sloane threw away the suicide note, put on a bold red dress, and decisively signed the net-zero divorce agreement. She slapped the papers in front of her arrogant ex-husband and walked out into the night, ready to build her own empire and watch his stolen company burn to the ground.

When the Syndicate Elders issued a blood decree, my Underboss fiancé had seventy-two hours to marry me or lose his territory. But instead of securing our alliance, Pietro slid my four-carat blood-diamond engagement ring onto the finger of Mia, the nineteen-year-old protégé I had rescued from the gutters. He let her leak confidential intel that cost our Family over a million dollars, yet he fiercely protected her while blaming me. He publicly stripped me of my rank as Consigliere, relocating my desk to the entry-level floor. Then, he demanded I forfeit my controlling shares directly into Mia's name. "Stop making a scene before you ruin your chances of ever becoming my wife," he warned me patronizingly. I looked at the man I had dodged bullets with for four years to build this legitimate empire from nothing. He was so poisoned by power and ego that he truly believed I would accept being his powerless trophy wife while he paraded his mistress around. He thought I was just a submissive woman who desperately needed him to survive. Without a second of hesitation, I picked up the pen and signed my power away. What Pietro didn't know was that I had already secretly transferred my true holdings to the daughter of the city's most feared Don. I left him holding a worthless piece of paper, packed my bags, and went back to my old territory to build a new fortress.

Minutes before announcing her grand engagement, Darla caught her fiancé sleeping with her stepsister. She publicly exposed them and canceled the wedding on the spot. Furious, her adoptive mother demanded Darla marry a fifty-five-year-old predator to save their broken business deal. "If you don't do exactly what I say, I'll let your father rot in prison for the rest of his life." Desperate to escape her family's control, Darla grabbed a massive, intimidating hotel security guard she bumped into in the hallway. She shoved all the cash in her purse at him—eight hundred dollars—and begged him to fake-marry her. They signed the papers at City Hall that same day. But the nightmare didn't end. That evening, Darla received a cold phone call from the state penitentiary. Her father had been found dead in his cell, and her company, owned by her ex-fiancé's family, fired her immediately. They had taken everything from her, leaving her completely broken and sobbing on the floor of her tiny apartment. She thought she had nothing left but a broke, fake husband to keep her company. She had no idea that the "poor security guard" holding her in his arms was actually Anson Prince, a ruthless billionaire CEO. And he was already making the calls to tear her abusers' empires to the ground.

I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash. Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive. Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes. "The Ruiz family sends their regards." Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated. My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends. The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood. Until her last breath, she didn't understand. Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her? Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference. I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel. Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust. Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in. Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.

I stood over the fresh dirt of my four-year-old son's grave. My husband, the Don of the Stark family, didn't hold my hand for comfort. He only adjusted his cuffs and checked that the diamond necklace he forced on me looked good for the cameras. "Stop crying," he whispered into my hair. "You're making a scene." Two days later, I woke up to the sound of shattering glass in the nursery. A strange boy stood there, smiling over the broken remains of my son's favorite snow globe. "This is Cody," my mother-in-law said coldly. "He's family. He stays." When I demanded he leave, Eli looked at me with dead eyes. "Material things can be replaced, Harper. The boy stays." Suspicion led me to the library door, where I heard the impossible truth. Cody wasn't a distant cousin. He was Eli's illegitimate son. And worse—while my son was drowning alone in the pool, Eli hadn't been at a business meeting. He had been in bed with his mistress. I realized then that the silver bracelet he had gifted me wasn't jewelry. I pried it open and found the blinking red light of a tracker. I was a prisoner in a cage of gold. So, I decided to die. I staged my suicide at the bridge, vanished into the night, and paid a shadow doctor to wipe my memories clean. I became Avery. I was happy. I was free. Until six months later, when a man in a black suit walked into my small-town cafe and looked at me with the eyes of a wolf. "Harper," he growled. "Come home."