Scheming

I thought I was the happiest woman in the world... until I clicked on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my entire world came crashing down.

The woman on the bed was Calista - that girl who grew up with us since we were kids. And that hand caressing her skin was wearing the wedding ring I had personally put on Matteo's finger.

"I've missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

T...

Eight years after Lucan Altieri left Chicago, he finally came home as the new Don—and to get married.
That same day, I received my final verdict. After eight years of endless dialysis and a rejected kidney, my doctor took my mother aside and told her there was nothing left to try. All the hospital could do now was buy me a little more time.
Mom was helping me out of a cab and into my wheelchair wh...

I thought the orchestrated assault was the most profound betrayal of my life. Then, from the shadows of the wine cellar, I heard my husband and his brothers toasting to their success.
"The slow-motion capture of her climax, paired with those broken whimpers... it was cinematic perfection."
"She played her part beautifully. After all, she’s just a Valenti."
I learned the devastating truth: my agony...

Due to his grandmother's dying wish, Leonard, the hospital's most eligible cardiac surgeon, was forced to marry the nurse who secretly loved him—me. Through six years of hidden marriage, we pretended to be mere colleagues at the hospital while he remained utterly cold toward me and our daughter Vera. When his first love returned, I watched him reignite his passion for another woman and my heart di...

Everyone thinks I'm the wild child of the family, the one who won't fall in line.

Blake's the young king of the business world—rational, cold, always in those perfectly cut suits.

But every night, he's got me pinned underneath him, breathing my name.

He said I was his, but never let me see daylight. Until she came back—my father's mistress's daughter, in her white dress, smiling like an angel.
...

My attempts to marry Ethan Ward had been derailed exactly seven times.
The first time, Peyton threw him a "surprise" party, and he was too hungover to make our City Hall appointment. 
The second time, she got into a minor fender bender and hysterically convinced him her neck was broken. He rode with her in the ambulance. 
The third time, right as we were signing the papers, she swallowed a bottle ...

Dear readers! If you love this story, check out my other book: His Regret，My Ex Wants Me Back

A month before my wedding, I burned the dress I'd spent a year making with my own hands.
My fiancé stood there with his pregnant mistress wrapped in his arms, sneering at me. "Without me, you're nothing."
I turned around and knocked on the richest man in the city's door. "Mr. Locke, interested in a marri...

When my parents and my fiancé Gilbert asked me once again to donate my kidney to my cousin Yvonne, who was hospitalized with kidney failure, I didn't cry or scream.

I simply said one word: "Okay."

My parents and Gilbert were stunned. They rushed to have me sign the voluntary donation form, afraid I’d change my mind.

Some days later, they sent me to the operating room.

Dad said, "Yvonne will fi...

"Priest, I'm requesting to transfer my registry to the Forbidden Lands. And I need the materials to forge a Moonshadow Puppet. In three days, it will stand in my place at the mating altar."

I spoke into the communication rune in my palm.

From the other end, the Moon Priest's voice spiked with warning. "Aria, do you have any idea what you're saying? The Forbidden Lands is an abyss of no ret...

To celebrate his startup's funding, my boyfriend Liam forced me to eat a cake baked by his female best friend, Mia.

I immediately smelled peanuts. He knew I was deathly allergic, but he pressured me to take a bite anyway.

When the reaction hit—my throat closing, hives burning my skin—I reached for my EpiPen.

Mia snatched it first.

She turned my only lifeline into a party trick, tossing it in t...

I dropped out of Harvard and took on massive debt to save my dying brother.

For five years, I starved. I worked five jobs a day. I let debt collectors break my ribs just so I could afford his "life-saving" meds.

Until I saw him at a VIP club.
No wheelchair. No illness. Just a bespoke suit and a glass of expensive whiskey.

"You've faked this terminal illness for five years," his friend laughe...

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home...

Lunar Depletion Syndrome. Seven days.
That was my death countdown. And my Alpha mate Kael was still threatening me, demanding I use the last of my life force to save my sister.
On our third anniversary, he had given me a surgical consent form and dissolution papers as gifts.
How laughable.
Three years ago he had said my eyes sparkled like stars. Three years later he wanted me to close them forever...

After being reborn, my cousin and I swapped mates.
Last life, she married Kaelen Thornfield — the coldest Alpha in the West. Fifty years together and he never marked her. Not once. His childhood "friend," an Omega with a PhD in crying on command, made sure of that. My cousin faded into nothing. Unmarked. Unloved. Invisible.
Me? I married a man who couldn't stand the sound of my voice. Eleven month...

On our seventh anniversary, my fiancé left me standing outside the courthouse so he could drive another woman to the hospital. It was the ninety-ninth time he'd called off our wedding for her.
That night, he booked the restaurant where we'd had our first date. He wore the tie I'd given him. For a few minutes, I let myself believe he finally understood.
Then he asked me to eat faster. She wanted de...

"Mom, I only want to go to Paris with you, not Dad."

When my ten-year-old daughter said this with tears in her eyes, I thought she was expressing her love for me.

I was wrong.

In our Paris hotel, I accidentally overheard the phone call that changed everything—

"Don't worry, Lily will find a way to extend the trip. I promised to buy her that concert-grade piano."

"Having sex in your marital be...

Everyone said I killed my mother.

So Dad and Carter hated me from the start. They only had love for Vivian.

On my eighteenth birthday, Vivian drugged me and I was nearly raped. That's when Nolan Blake showed up—business tycoon, my savior. He claimed me as his in front of everyone and warned anyone who dared mess with me would pay the price.

After that, Vivian bullied me? He made her apologize. ...

We’ve been married for almost a month, yet my Alpha keeps hiding in the study to avoid me.
He would rather give me a cheap vial of synthetic bonding pheromones than bare his fangs at me.
I thought I was just the unwanted substitute for my runaway sister, that he felt absolutely nothing for me.
I slammed the door and left, heading to the Moon Well to confide. But the moment my blood dripped in, ...

Abandoned by her adoptive family, she saw through false affection and cut off all past ties without hesitation.
She is the long-lost heiress of the top wealthy family, with countless mysterious hidden identities.
The most powerful man falls in love with her at first sight, and offers endless love and exclusive favor.

I was reborn one year before my husband fell in love with another woman. This time, I successfully took her place and became the idealized figure, the one admired and longed for by my husband and her other suitors.