8757 Book(s) Related to queen of the south true story

"You're adopted, you know. Mom and Dad got you out of foster care."

My sister said that to me during a fight when I was eight.

I ran to my parents in tears, needing them to tell me it wasn't true. Instead, they pulled her into their arms and nodded at me.

"It's true. Your real parents didn't want you."

For the next fifteen years, I lived like a package that could be returned to sender at any moment.

I never fought with my sister and never asked for anything. I rushed to finish every chore and came in first on every test, all so they'd feel like keeping me was worth it.

This October, I flew home a few days early so I could stay a little longer.

My hand had barely touched the doorknob when I heard my sister's voice coming from the living room. She was telling a room full of relatives a funny story.

"My sister is honestly hilarious. We got into a fight when we were kids, and I just said she was adopted. And she believed me."

"Still believes it, actually. Best part is, it turned her into our very own little maid."

"You never told her?" one of the relatives asked, stunned.

It was Mom who answered, as casually as if she were talking about the weather.

"Why would we? Ever since she bought it, she's been an angel. She jumps on every chore before anyone even has to ask."

"Honestly, best joke we ever made. It's paid off big time."

A chill ran through me, and I froze outside the door.

So fifteen years of walking on eggshells was just a punchline to them.

I didn't storm in and demand an explanation. I stood right where I was, pulled out my phone, and signed the contract for a five-year assignment in Sweden.

If they loved this joke so much, fine. I'd give them exactly what they wanted.

The "outsider" would walk out of their lives for good.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

The night of my coming-of-age ceremony, Elodie asked us to sit around the bonfire and talk.

Elodie was my adoptive parents' real daughter. They had brought her home three months ago.

She smiled at me across the fire. "Wren, which academy are you choosing?"

Before I could answer, the four boys I grew up with spoke first.

One by one, they held up acceptance receipts. All four said Silverhaven.

Silverhaven studied silver resistance, three thousand two hundred miles from our pack. I had refused it twice because I couldn't leave them.

Then Ronan Vale, our future Alpha, slid my enrollment form toward me.

"The elders said yes. Come with us, Wren. After graduation, you'll be my Luna."

I had loved him half my life. I signed.

Two days later, I went to find them with my enrollment letter in my hand. Their door wasn't fully shut.

"She signed?"

"Four fake receipts, and she's off our territory."

"Elodie finally gets her place."

"Ronan's got it worst. He has to play boyfriend until she leaves."

All four were staying. Only I was being sent away.

When Elodie came home, I'd thought about moving out. They swore nothing between us would change.

I let myself believe it.

What they didn't know was that I'd been offered early intake. The moment I crossed into Silverhaven territory, my bond to this pack would dissolve, and no one here could reach me again.

They had worked so hard to clear a space for Elodie.

They had no idea how empty it was about to become.

The day my mother succumbed to complications during childbirth, her younger sister, Vanessa, wed my father.

Fifteen years later, I beheld my husband accompanying Vanessa as she tried on seductive lingerie.

In that moment, I understood—what she truly coveted was never my father, but rather all that my mother and I shared.

My mother perished during childbirth, a casualty of an illicit affair.

I vowed not to repeat that tragic cycle.

Then I returned home, removed my wedding ring, and left behind the divorce papers.

A 250-pound girl stole my body.

Over the phone, she cackled triumphantly, "Your flawless face, your wealth... it's all mine now!"

I stood in front of the mirror, staring at the heavy layers of fat that used to be hers. I didn't scream. I didn't beg for it back.

Instead, I hung up the phone, let out a long breath of relief, and just started laughing.

She thought she had stolen the glamorous, perfect life of a Hollywood socialite.

But she had no idea that in just a few hours, the severe drug withdrawals in that body would hit. She didn’t know that my cold-blooded mother would soon be standing over her with a loaded syringe, and a greasy, powerful producer was waiting in a penthouse bed to pin her down.

Since she wanted my life so desperately...

Let her walk through the gates of hell herself.

In a sleek design world split between polished appearances and buried cruelty, Mara Ellison has spent years trapped behind a voice no one wanted to hear. While her family rewrites her illness and her fiancé speaks over her in the name of love, stolen records, public humiliation, and old betrayals force her to reclaim her life. Quiet but cutting, this is a story of emotional abuse, identity theft, and hard-won selfhood—framed by rain-soaked streets, hospital corridors, cold glass conference rooms, and a woman finally stepping into the light with her own voice.

The day college decisions came out, my parents bought my twin sister a Porsche.
It was my eighteenth birthday too. Nobody brought it up. I stood in the doorway in my diner uniform while the whole room sang her name.
That night the four of them went out to dinner to celebrate her. The car only sat four, so my father handed me a hundred dollars and told me to order myself something at home.
Four days later, six thousand four hundred dollars vanished from my account. Two years of washing dishes, gone to her sorority dues. My mother's name was on the account, so it wasn't even illegal.
I didn't scream and I didn't beg. I went upstairs and clicked Accept on the full ride to MIT that had been sitting in my inbox for three days.
Nobody in that house ever wanted me. So I booked a one-way ticket, cut myself out of the family photo, and left my key on the shoe rack.
I wasn't coming back. Not for graduation. Not for any of them.

A horrific car crash left me paralyzed.
The doctors said I'd never walk again. With no family left, my Aunt Martha and Uncle Thomas took me to their isolated farmhouse.
They cared for me, promising their treatments would help me walk again. After everything I'd been through, I thought I'd finally found safety.
Until today, when the feeling in my legs suddenly came back—but something told me not to tell them.

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear from upstairs was their laughter celebrating Leila. Even Justin—the boy I'd loved since we were kids—texted calling me a fucking psycho.

As I drew my last breath, I heard Leila's soft voice outside the door: "Rest in peace, sister."

Now I'm a ghost, watching them lose their minds when the truth comes out.

When I was rushed to the ER with food poisoning, I heard the doctor shout, "We need to pump her stomach, now!"
But my mother, Catherine, calmly stopped the doctor's hand.
"No hurry," she said coldly. "Give her a sedative first."
My brother Austin panicked. "Mom! If you don't detox her, she could die!"
But my mother's voice was ruthless, low and sharp:
"If she dies, she dies. As long as her uterus is still warm, that's all that matters."
"Did you forget our plan? Sarah's transplant surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. If Elena wakes up now, what if she runs away?"
"Our priority is keeping her uterus safe for Sarah—not saving her life."
In that moment, the burn in my stomach was nothing compared to the chill in my heart.
I forced my eyes open and saw my brother—the one who'd always protected me—hesitate for a moment, then slowly let go of my hand.
"...Okay. You're right, Mom. Saving Sarah comes first."
The moment I closed my eyes, I made a decision: If I survived, this life would never belong to this family again.

My parents and twin sister faked their own deaths so she could steal my college acceptance.

I believed it. Sobbed until I couldn't breathe when the cops showed me photos of the burnt yacht. Thought my words—"I hope you all die"—had somehow made it happen.

Two weeks later, I found my sister's backup Instagram: "Finally ditched the boring sister! Bahamas is paradise 🏖"

Something inside me snapped.

Wanna play dead? Stay dead.

I took their death certificates. Canceled their social security numbers. Drained every joint account—every last cent. Sold the house to John, the kind of guy even cops don't mess with.

One month later, they came home tanned and loaded with designer bags, expecting to find me broken on the streets.

What greeted them instead were cold gun barrels pointed at their heads.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

BLURB

My breath hitched, my chest heaving as Salvatore's finger thrust into my pussy. I clenched my teeth, my fingers squeezing the bedsheets as I shamelessly parted my legs even wider.

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice was a low growl.

“No,” I breathed. “Faster…please,” I moaned loudly.

I knew Salvatore's and my attraction to each other was forbidden; he was the heir to a wealthy family, and I was just a maid in his house. But I have had an attraction to him since I met him and couldn't control it.

We both couldn't.


Lyra Whitman is from a poor home and has faced constant bullying in school. She and her mother finally moved away to a new city, where they her mother works as a maid for the Sinclair's, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the county.

Lyra cannot help but fall for their son, and she is surprised to see that he feels the same. Knowing the dangers of being together due to their different backgrounds, they are forced to navigate their relationship in secret.

For the three years since I returned to the Hart family, I had always been the wildly out-of-place “burden.”

Vivienne, the family’s beloved fake heiress, broke a contract on her own and provoked a local gang. She was taken hostage and tortured in an abandoned auto repair shop.

To save his precious sister, my brother, Ryan, did not hesitate to trade me to the gang in exchange for Vivienne.
“She’s a movie star, and you’re just a useless nobody. It’s only natural for you to take her place and suffer a little.”
He looked coldly at the gang members who were eyeing me like hungry wolves, and violently shoved me toward them.
“Tonight, she belongs to you.”

Right before they dragged me away, I managed to call my husband, Alex, begging for help. But he rejected me ruthlessly, acting as if my plea was some cheap scam:
“Stop playing the victim. Why would they ever hurt you? Hurry up and clean up this mess. Don't let a girl like Vivienne face those thugs all by herself.”

Bang.
The heavy iron doors of the gang’s hideout slammed shut.
There were no negotiations. What greeted me was a merciless rain of fists, my clothes brutally torn to shreds, and the blinding flashes of cameras.
Amidst the ultimate degradation, they took photos of me, pinched my jaw, and violated my dignity over and over again.

At 4:00 AM, I was tossed out onto the street in front of my own house like a piece of discarded trash.
Upon dragging myself inside, Vivienne immediately began dropping hints to the family, implying that I was the one who tricked her into signing the illegal gang contract.
My family cursed me, telling me to drop dead.
My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss of darkness. Numbly swallowing the bloody foam pooling in my mouth, I let out a hoarse, broken laugh.

“Since my return was a mistake from the very beginning…”
“Then why didn’t they just let me die?”

At 17, I saved William from the black market.
At 22, he crossed half the globe to marry me with two million dollars.
I built his empire for him, turning him into the biggest arms dealer in the Americas.
Then Karen appeared, and our seven years turned to ashes.
I finally saw the truth:
The roses he gave me were the ones Karen had rejected.
His so-called love was nothing but a hypocritical act for money.
To him, I was just a prop for show, a tool for his business, and a machine for sex.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

My family ignored my calls while I was dying in our basement. They thought I was trying to ruin my younger sister's graduation.
That night, my brother finally came looking for me. My sister wanted the cookies I used to bake for her.
I was right beside him when he demanded that I come home.
He couldn't hear me. My body was still downstairs.

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned equipment room and used my last breath to call my boyfriend while lying in a pool of blood, all I heard was: "Grace, quit the drama! Bella's accepting her award on stage!"

On stage, thunderous applause erupted as Bella lifted the "Young Gymnast of the Year" trophy.

And I drew my final breath.

When they returned home triumphant, thinking I had run away in a tantrum, they had no idea I was already dead right under their noses.

There are no unmated males in our pack.
Every she-wolf in Hollowfen is promised to someone when she turns eighteen. We just don't get to know who until we walk into the Choosing Hall.
Girls go in wearing white. They come out flushed, shaking, barely able to stand. Some laugh. Some cry. None of them talk about what happens inside.
My sister Thessaly turned eighteen this spring. Gran told her she couldn't attend the Choosing.
She went anyway. She came back on shaking legs, with blood between her thighs and a smile she couldn't wipe off her face.

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the book. And me? Left alone on that cold floor, bleeding out, half my body already soaked in blood.
I clutched at her pants, begging her to save me. But she kicked my hand away and looked at me with pure disgust.
"Lily, are you really so desperate for a man's attention that you'd pull a cheap stunt like this? Your sister's foot is swollen—and you have the nerve to fake your death here?"
In the end, I died alone in a corner of that ignored ER.
But when they wheeled my cold body out of the morgue—and they finally learned about my clotting disorder—
That mother who claimed to hate me completely lost her mind.

I’m a convenience store owner.

When the acid rain apocalypse hit, it ate through metal, wrecked power, and turned clean food and water into currency.

Last time, I made one mistake: I opened my door to my ex, Claire Voss, and her lover, Derek Hale. They didn’t come for shelter—they came for my stash. The blade in my abdomen taught me what mercy buys in a broken world. I killed them, but as my vision faded, the radio crackled with one final update: the disaster was ending.

Day thirty. I didn’t live to see morning.

Then I woke up—one week before it began.

This time I do only one thing: lock myself in my underground storage room with exactly thirty days of food and water, and wait for the rain to stop.

But Claire is hoarding again, louder than ever—embezzling money, emptying my shelves, trying to starve me in the first week so I’ll crawl back begging.

That’s when it hits me:

She thinks the apocalypse lasts forever.

She has no idea it only lasts thirty days.

I was rushing to perform an emergency surgery when a woman and her mother charged at me, slapping me to the ground. They accused me of being a corrupt, crooked doctor who prescribed fake drugs for kickbacks.
I begged for mercy, pleading that I needed to go perform surgery on my mother, but they beat me black and blue.
"A quack like you deserves to perform surgery?"
When my husband finally arrived, I thought he would stand up for me. To my absolute horror, he was already having an affair with that woman. He called me an embarrassment and sneered, "If your mother dies, it’s exactly what she deserves!"
I froze.
But, darling... the person dying on the operating table right now is your mother.

When the apocalypse came, I became one of the military's failed experiments—defective, useless, a waste of space who only knew how to fix machines.
My so-called brother Kane used the camp leader access I got for him to trade away the comms gear I nearly died to secure for a bottle of whiskey. He drained my bone marrow dry to keep me in the dark, then dumped me out in the wasteland to die.
After that, he pinned every bit of luxury and waste on me—
while my little sister didn't even have the medicine she needed to stay alive.
That night, dragging my crippled body behind me, I reached into the substation.
Kane, do you remember what kind of genes were in those five hundred milliliters of bone marrow?

My boyfriend pulled off a drone-sky proposal that lit up the entire city.
Crowds cheered, “Congratulations to Mr. Gunson and Mrs. Gunson—at last, true lovers become family.”
But the woman curled in his arms was his secretary.
The “me” in their mouths had long since turned to white bones beneath a mound of earth.

I’m Aurora. I died at the hands of my family.
“You were born a walking curse to this Pack. Taking Nora’s place and marrying Liam is what you owe us!” My mother, Patricia, bound my arms and legs with a rope dusted in silver powder. My sister Nora raised a silver-laced dagger and drove it straight into my heart. “Your name, your mate, everything belonged to you is mine!” Then she used a face-shaping spell to transform into my appearance, took over Black Moon manor, and waited for my Alpha mate, Liam, to come home.
I became a ghost and was pinned to her side by a soul-sealing array, forced to watch her clumsy imitation. “Liam, I made your favorite wild-berry oatmeal.” But a wolf’s nose never lies. Liam frowned and stepped away. “That artificial perfume on you… that isn’t her.” I watched him spend sleepless nights after his Wolf-Soul Stone shattered. I watched him uncover the truth that my old injury on my left foot was gone, and “I” was no longer allergic to silver-scale fish. Only then did I understand: the Alpha who looked cold had already carved me into his heart.
Not until he dug up what was left of my body, two undeveloped twin pups still hidden inside me, did Liam finally break. With eyes burning red, he roared, “What you owe me… what you owe Aurora… you’ll pay with your lives!” When dawn rose, my soul dissolved into the morning light. All I wished for, in the next life, was to meet him somewhere without betrayal, to be two ordinary wolves who could protect our children, together.

In my previous life, my wife was addicted to black market gambling on football, which caused us to lose everything.
To make matters worse, a zombie horde then broke out.
We had no shelter and were quickly torn apart by a horde of frenzied zombies.
After being reborn, she planned to run off with all the money, then dump me and elope with her lover.
What she didn't know was that I had awakened the ability to read minds and knew all her plans.

I got dragged online by one of my lead devs.

He claimed my "Incubation Project" was a gilded cage—a trap to exploit the team and steal their personal IPs.

The truth?

I funded it out of my own pocket.

Selected candidates would get a $50,000 no-strings-attached seed fund, plus full Ivy League tuition reimbursement. It was 100% voluntary, with zero penalties for opting out.

Since the internet decided I was a toxic capitalist monopolizing their creativity, I gave him exactly what he wanted. I fired off a company-wide memo:

[To protect your creative freedom from capitalist exploitation, the $50,000 Incubation Fund is permanently abolished, effective immediately.]

[As an alternative, the monthly education allowance for all employees is now a $15 reimbursement for basic coding courses.]

The moment the memo dropped, the employees who were counting on that $50k to pay off student loans or change their lives completely lost it.

Now, they're swarming right outside my glass office door, eyes red, begging me to reinstate the program.

I had spent ten years rescuing girls sacrificed to the river god.
Then, on the morning of my wedding, my parents drugged me, tied stones to my feet, and placed me on the offering raft.
My brother needed a bride, they said. Her life mattered more than mine.
But the eighteen women I had saved were waiting beneath the water.
This time, they saved me.
And together, we decided to give the county exactly what it claimed to worship:
a river god who demanded sons.

Violet loses her parents as a young child and is brought up by an elderly aunt. As she approaches her 17th birthday her life is turned upside down when her Aunt tells her that the life she has built with her must end - she has to go and learn about the background of her father. Secrets have been kept and those secrets turn Violet's life on it's head!

Not only does she have to accept that her father wasn't who she thought he was, but she too, is something she didn't even realise existed! It seems a whole plan had been in place for if something happened to her parents, including learning of her heritage and all it means.
So, Violet is sent to Autumn Moon Pack, where an elderly relative of her father's still lives to give Violet chance to be surrounded by others like her. In truth, she plans to learn what she needs to learn what she needs to and leave to live alone like her father before her.
But will meeting the handsome Beta, who seems quite taken with her, change her mind? And could there be yet more secrets to be revealed?

“Go find one of those perfect little she-wolves lined up to mate you. Play your Alpha card on them. I’m sure they’ll beg to be marked..maybe they’ll even let you f—”

“Seliene!” he snapped, his voice a roar as he grabbed my wrist.

“Stop touching me!” I shoved at his chest, voice rising despite the sting in my throat. “Stop acting like you care when all you've ever done is hate me!”

Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “There are plenty of men who would take me to bed without second-guessing it. Maybe I should let them. Maybe I should—”

His hand tangled in my hair so fast I gasped, and the next thing I knew, my back was against the wall.

Ronan’s eyes were glowing now—not just anger, but something else. Something deeper. His wolf was there, right under the surface, growling low and dangerous.

“Oh?” I taunted, my body betraying me with a subtle tremble of arousal. “What is this? You don’t want me, but no one else should touch me either?”

His growl deepened, vibrating between us, and then his mouth crashed down on mine.

I moaned before I could stop myself, and that only seemed to provoke him further. He pressed harder, his body pinning mine, every inch of him demanding, claiming.

He groaned into my mouth, his thigh sliding between mine and pressing upward. I gasped, my head hitting the wall as pleasure sparked through me.

“Don’t want to touch you?” he growled against my lips. “I want you with every damn breath.”


Seliene, a fierce half-breed hiding heartbreak behind a defiant tongue, and Ronan, the brooding Alpha who once rejected her, ignite in a moment of raw passion and buried longing. Bound by a mate bond they both try to resist, their chemistry is undeniable, dangerous, explosive, and edged with the pain of a love neither dares to admit.

I die a miserable death in the dungeon, drained of three hundred years of pure blood. I owe it all to Elena and my ridiculously biased clan.

In my previous life, I am the Chief Executioner of the Night Abyss clan. During our hunt for the Alpha Wolf, she drops her weapon and throws herself into Lucas's arms, playing the helpless victim.

I take the beast's attack head-on and suffer severe injuries. The other knights just shield her, turning around to accuse me of being petty and jealous.

Prince Marcus blatantly favors his illegitimate daughter, Elena. He snatches my magic core, constantly puts me down, and even rips the core out of my loyal wolf familiar, Fenrir. In the end, he drains my blood dry just to feed her.

Now that I am reborn, I return to the exact night we hunt the high-tier Alpha Wolf.

For seventeen years, Chloe was the Whitmores’ hidden spare daughter. They harvested her marrow, liver and cornea, then plotted to take her heart for their beloved adopted daughter. Fleeing death through a storm, she is rescued by ruthless power broker Victoria Kane. A faint crescent scar unearths a secret: Chloe is Victoria’s long-lost birth daughter. Together, they will destroy the greedy family that fed on her

I’m Wren, hidden sole heir of Ravenwood Pack, living as a regular lone wolf at wolf academy. My roommate Brielle steals my exclusive pine pheromone, copies my relics, steals my elite quota and tricks my betrothed Alpha Kane with a fake royal identity. I challenge her to present the unforgeable Lunar Pearl at the ball. When my father, the pack Alpha, exposes her family’s theft, I reject the misled Kane and reclaim everything the imposter stole from me.

After seven sleepless nights, I started seeing the exact probability of someone killing me.
At my birthday banquet, my stepmother smiled warmly, linking her arm through mine. Hovering above her head was 70%.
I had just overheard her plotting to swallow every cent of the inheritance my father left me.
My half-brother leaned in to hand me a drink. Above his head was 55%.
He was planning to sell me to a creep willing to drop seven figures on a woman.
Terrified out of my mind, I threw myself into the arms of my fiancé, Soren.
Above his head was a reassuring 0%, pure and bright as white light.
Then, with the whole room watching, he got down on one knee and pulled out a massive emerald ring.
"Marry me, Greer."
Crying tears of relief, I said yes and offered him my trembling left hand.
But the very second the ring slipped onto my ring finger, his 0% suddenly shattered into a blood-red 100%.

When my husband's eight-year-old "nephew" Noah was diagnosed with acute leukemia, the whole family begged for my help.

They needed my six-year-old daughter, Molly—the only perfect match.

Against my instincts as a head nurse, I agreed.

But the second Molly's stem cells were harvested, their gratitude vanished.

To avoid paying for my daughter’s mandatory sterile recovery room, Noah's mother live-streamed a crying fit in my lobby, accusing me of medical extortion. My husband, Grant, stood by in utter silence.

Without the isolation bed, my baby girl contracted a severe infection and died. My mother-in-law simply sneered outside the ICU, "Dead is dead. Better than wasting more money."

Three months later, Noah relapses.

Now, my phone is blowing up. The same people who watched my daughter suffocate in her own fluids are desperately begging me to use my hospital registry access to save him again.

Standing by Molly’s tiny headstone, I look down at the confidential DNA report I pulled from the hospital database.

They think I don’t know Noah is actually Grant's illegitimate son. They think I'll just hang up and cry.

Instead, I swipe to answer the call. It's time to make them pay.

To protect my older sister's piano championship, my own brother crushed all ten of my fingers.
To win my sister's favor, my fiancé hired someone to kick the baby out of me.
After surviving a fire that nearly killed me, I finally woke up.
And when I returned, I blasted the hard proof of their affair and their schemes all over the internet. As I watched them lose their minds, lose everything, and drop to their knees begging for mercy, I let out a cold laugh, turned around, and claimed the top of the world!

All I wanted was a quiet place to live. I drained my savings and paid eighty thousand extra for the one unit on the row with a private backyard.
On my very first day, I found my neighbor's son beating my new hydrangeas with a stick while his mother stood there filming him and laughing.
Bianca says the yard belongs to everybody. Her husband is vice president of the HOA board, so around here, whatever he says is the law.
I showed them my deed. I called the police. I sent a certified letter. Every single time the answer came back the same. This is a civil matter, ma'am. Maybe try being a better neighbor.
Then her son put a rock through my living room window, and the HOA fined me two hundred and fifty dollars for putting a lock on my own gate.
Fine. They want that gate open? It stays open.
I just made one phone call. A truck is already on its way.

I made 17 calls for help. My sister answered every one—and hung up.

For 48 hours, I lay dying in Pine Ridge Forest, texting desperate pleas to my family. They thought I ran away. The truth? My sister deleted every message while I begged for my life.

Three months dead. Zero funeral. My family didn't even notice I was gone.

Now the police have recovered my phone. Every deleted text. Every ignored call. Every lie my sister told to cover up what she did.

"Please. I can't feel my legs. I'm sorry I exist. Just don't let me die here."

They wanted me invisible. I gave them what they wanted.

Now they'll spend the rest of their lives wishing they'd answered when I called.

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and first.
Because I'm already dead.

After giving birth to my son Finn, crippling postpartum depression and searing nerve pain left by my difficult labor reduced me to nothing more than a walking corpse.
My husband Preston had once sworn to stay by my side “in sickness and in health”, yet every bit of his patience had long since burned away.
At the Thanksgiving feast, my hands shook and spasmed. I knocked over the scalding gravy, drawing the judging stares of every guest at the table.
Instead of comfort, I only got Preston's undisguised revulsion.
He handed over my seat as the lady of the house to Rosalie, our young live-in nanny, ordering me to go upstairs and stop disgracing myself in front of others.
What broke my heart most was that my own son flinched from my outstretched arms and fled straight into Rosalie's embrace.
Staring at the harmonious trio before my eyes, they looked far more like a real family.
I might as well die.

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

I almost died giving birth to my daughter. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of survival — and I took it, because I thought a child might finally make my husband choose home over her.

I was wrong.

I stood in the hallway and listened to Kael tell his mother that I was "more resilient" — that the risks of childbirth were too serious for the woman he truly loved, so it had to be me. I was not his wife. I was a vessel.

Then my daughter, the child I had bled for, looked me in the eyes and said she wished Ivy were her mother instead.

That was the night I stopped waiting.

I filed for divorce. I walked out. I reclaimed the research career I had abandoned for a man who never saw me. And I told myself I was done.

What I didn't expect was the little boy I pulled back from the edge of suffocation — a child with no parents, a face I couldn't stop feeling I recognized, and a medical robot I had designed with my own hands tucked inside his coat.

Who is he? And why does finding him feel like the beginning of something I'm not ready for?

They thought he was dead.

They were wrong.

After years of war, bloodshed, and survival, Ares McKay returns to Chicago only to find his sister buried in the ground.

The people responsible are untouchable.

Political dynasties.

Billionaire families.

Criminal empires hidden behind luxury and power.

But Ares has spent five years becoming something far more dangerous than they could imagine.

One wedding turns into a massacre.

One city is pushed to the edge of chaos.

And one man begins a campaign of vengeance that will shake the foundations of every powerful family in Chicago.

Because when they murdered his sister...

They declared war on the wrong man.

When Leo Ross came home, his daughter was dying.

His wife was gone.

And every door to the truth was guarded by armed men.

Most people would call the police.

Leo declared war.

A former Delta Force legend, Leo tears through gangs, mercenaries, and criminal empires in a desperate race to save his family.

But the deeper he digs, the darker the truth becomes.

Someone has been planning this for years.

Someone powerful.

Someone who wants him dead.

They stole his wife.

Now he's coming for everything they own.

For six years I kept the books nobody wanted to touch.
They called me the help. My husband signed my name to a loan I never saw. His mother told the whole family I was the reason there were no grandchildren.
At the anniversary gala, they planned to retire me quietly — and hand my desk to the woman my husband had been paying out of company accounts.
They forgot one thing.
Before I married into this family, I spent six years catching men who move money the way they do. I never stopped keeping a second set of books.
I let them think the game was already over.
It was — for them.

Five months pregnant, I clung to the faint hope that my unborn baby and loving husband Liam would bring me warmth. But strapped to an operating table, I heard his cold order as the blade sliced my belly: cut out the fetus and discard it as medical waste—don’t delay Chloe’s kidney transplant.
My stepmother cheered next door, thrilled her daughter would get my kidney. They planned to drain me dry and leave me to die quietly. Little did they know, their brutal cruelty burned itself into my bones. When I crawl back from hell, I will break every last one of them.

Ten years into my assignment with the Unforgettable Love System, all my progress fell apart.

The original novel's heroine had been around for just three months.

The brooding boy I'd grown up with—the one I'd spent ten years winning over—put on a sunny, easygoing act for her and left me behind.

My fiancé's affection had only reached 80 percent after years of checking on him and taking care of him. One look at her, and he reset me to zero.

Even my own brother, who'd always treated me like the most precious person in his life, stopped being gentle and told me to grow up.

With my entire assignment about to go under, I decided on one last gamble.

There was a rule in novels: the woman nobody could forget always went abroad and stayed away for years.

Fine. Time to test the theory.

I packed that night and booked a flight out of the country.

BluePeak flew forty-seven employees to Miami for its company retreat.
I was the forty-eighth employee—and the only one not invited.
Then my team lead posted a photo of my empty seat with the caption:
Shame some people just aren’t team players.
So I turned off my phone and went to sleep.
Thirteen hours later, I woke to 164 missed calls and a text from my boss:
I screwed up. Please, for the love of God, call me.
Apparently, while I slept, the company discovered exactly how much of it depended on the employee they had left behind.

I spent ten years following Ashton around like it was my job. He said jump, I jumped. He said he was hungry, I went and made him a sandwich. His homework, his fights, his messes — I handled all of it. I thought that's what being close to someone meant.
Then at the fall pep rally, in front of two thousand people, he strapped me to a platform, blasted me with paint, and let his girlfriend laugh at me through a megaphone.
I was the punchline. I threw up on camera. The video went viral before I even hit the ground.
So I did the one thing nobody expected — I vanished. New school, new city, new number. Every trace of him, gone.
I thought that was the end of it.
But Ashton doesn't let go of what he thinks is his. And what he's willing to do to drag me back? I wasn't even close to ready for that.

I gave up MIT for them in my last life.
They paid me back by stealing my lab notes, framing me for misconduct, and choosing her over me when I drowned.
I watched them choose her over me a hundred times
Now I’m 17 again. I block all three and fly to MIT.
They think I’m throwing a tantrum.
Wait till they find out who saved them out of that cave—