1969 Book(s) Related to i know what you did last summer novel

"Before we start, I put a sleeping pill in the wife's milk,No matter how loud we get tonight, she won't wake up."

The mistress whispered with a cruel smile.

Nora Hearst lay hidden beneath the bed, listening to the ragged breathing of her husband and her so-called best friend on their marital bed.

They even found her wheelchair too much of an obstacle, casually dragging her fragile body onto the freezing floor.

The man who had pursued her for four years

a man who once claimed he would die for her——was now whispering to that woman:

"Nora can't satisfy me, but you... you're wild enough."

Her hand tightened around the voice recorder hidden in her sleeve.

Memories flooded back: the car accident where she sacrificed her legs to save his life, and the precious surprise growing inside her womb that he had been so eagerly awaiting.

Kennedy Frederick , she vowed silently, in sixty-six days, I will make you kneel and listen to every second of this recording.

I will destroy you at the very moment you think your life is perfect.

I watched my boyfriend down on one knee proposing to another woman.
Turns out that he was cheating on me with her for two years.
Our five years together meant nothing to him. He claimed that he needed her money –connections and that I should be the one to play the role of a mistress. I refused.
I didn’t stick around. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I wanted something strong to numb my pain— and yes, I ended up in the loudest club.
Then I met him, Adrian Foster. The wealthiest and powerful CEO.
The moment I lost my balance, he caught me and pulled me straight in to his chest.
Fate? I didn’t believe in it.
But may be …. He did.

The night they came for my sister, I cut my own palm and offered the Devil a better bride.

I did it in front of the whole city. I thought I was just a substitute, a disposable girl thrown into the fog to save the sister I loved. But when the Devil appeared—tall, dressed in black that drank the light, with eyes like pale, cold coins—everything changed.

He didn't kill me. He reached out and closed his freezing hand around my bleeding wrist. That was when he saw it. The old silver mark I had carried since birth, hidden under my skin. The moment his thumb pressed against it, the mark woke, blooming with blinding silver light. His stillness wasn't that of a monster choosing his next meal. It was the shock of a man who had just found the one thing he prayed never to see.

"You are not the one they chose," he said, his voice carrying into every frozen corner of the square. The cold rushed out of the air. He turned my hand toward the dying light, his face cracking open to reveal something far worse than cruelty.

"You were never meant to be mine," he whispered softly, his grip tightening like a vise. "And now I cannot give you back."

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.

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?

Six years ago, Evelyn White caught her husband Arthur Collins cheating, then left his mansion—pregnant and unseen. Now she’s back as Eve, a top artist, with two genius twins. At her exhibition, the kids yell “Mommy”… and Arthur’s world breaks. He’s obsessed with dragging her (and the kids he never knew) back. She just wants to paint and protect her family. But as their past’s lies unravel, escaping him means fighting for more than just freedom.

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.

Bryson POV
Blackridge University was already a nightmare before I dumped hot coffee all over Julian Hayes.
He's tall, built, with this perfect smirk that makes me want to punch him. Captain of the hockey team and the biggest asshole I've ever met.
He destroyed me in front of everyone. Made sure I knew exactly where I stood.
But then I joined the hockey team to make my mom happy, and suddenly everything changed. I could actually play. And Julian? He started looking at me like he wanted to destroy me in a whole different way.
Now every practice feels like war. Every time we're alone in the locker room, I can barely breathe.
I hate him.
I want him.
And I'm pretty sure he knows it.

Julian's POV
I run Blackridge University. Team captain, golden boy, everyone wants to be me or be with me. Then some transfer kid crashes into me and ruins my shirt.
Bryson Miller.
Smart mouth, cheap clothes, and eyes that look at me like he's not impressed.
I should've crushed him and moved on. But the little shit joined my hockey team and turned out to be good. Really good.
Now I can't get him out of my head. Every practice, every fight we have feels like something else entirely. Something I don't want to think about.
I thought that was complicated enough.
Then I walk into my house tonight and find Bryson unpacking boxes in my living room..

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.

There had been a prophecy told
for generations. It was common knowledge among all supernatural beings, whether they were good or evil. This prophecy was also known among the gods, titans, and demigods.
A runt wolf would meet her beloved and start one of the worst wars the supernatural world would ever see. The runt wolf would need to do everything she could to defeat the titan, Atlas.
Will she be able to overcome the challenges and defeat Atlas?
Or will Atlas win and bring the gods to their knees, ruling over the world as he had desperately wanted to do for eons?

Shantel Leaster is twenty-five and, to put it simply, a mess. She’s clumsy, spoiled, and never on time. Her parents, tired of her careless ways, cut her off and force her to survive on her own. After hopping from one failed job to another, Shantel finds herself desperate, with nothing but her small car, a pile of rejection letters, and a growing sense that life is passing her by.

That’s when she crosses paths with Kelvin Zee. He is everything she’s not: disciplined, powerful, respected, and blind. At first, Shantel doesn’t know how to feel about him. He’s cold and intimidating, but there’s something magnetic about him, something that makes her want to stay. Kelvin offers her a job as his personal chef, and though she doubts herself, she takes it.

“You don’t know Adrian Kane,” the message read.

“And if you stay married to him… you might not survive long enough to find out. You haven't seen the worst of him yet.”

Sold into a marriage with the powerful and mysterious billionaire Adrian Kane to save her family's failing wealth, Evelyn is left to handle being a nobody at home and a decorative wife in public.

Behind Adrian façade, lies a darkness no one dares question… and secrets capable of destroying far more than Evelyn’s fragile freedom.

Just as she begins to accept her fate, the past she never truly let go of returns...her first love. The man who once promised her a future now stands before her again, offering the life she thought she had lost forever.

Caught between the dangerous husband she barely understands and the love she never stopped feeling, Evelyn is forced to choose.
But as Adrian’s secrets begin to surface, one terrifying truth becomes impossible to ignore...

Did she marry a billionaire…

or a criminal wearing his mask?

And when the truth finally comes out, will Evelyn stay with the man she married…

or run back to the man she once loved?

Adam Blake travelled into the future over two thousand years later in the era of great interstellar development and became a small, down-on-his-luck lord of a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. He activated the pirate system, and from then on became a pirate lord who made people scared. A certain Baron, ‘What! That madman came to my territory and looted the natural ingredients again!' A certain Viscount, ‘Bastard!...

Sophie Bennett is a ghost. A scholarship student at Crestview Academy, her only goal is to stay invisible and get close to Daniel Vale, the golden heir her family desperately needs her to befriend. Daniel is perfect, kind, and safe. But on her first day, a wrong turn puts her in the path of the "Wrong Brother."

Harrison Vale is the school’s shadow. He’s dangerous, silent, and feared. While the world sees Daniel’s light, Sophie is inexplicably drawn to Harrison’s darkness. As Serena Cole and the elite "Royals" of the school target Sophie for her low-income roots, Sophie finds herself caught between two brothers: the one who can save her future, and the one who might destroy her heart.

Lu Chen was supposed to die.
The empire remembers him as the cruel noble destined for execution. But now, a struggling writer has awakened in his body and the rules have changed.
[Sin System Activated.]
To survive, Lu Chen must feed on the envy, greed, lust, wrath, pride, sloth, and gluttony of those around him. Every sinful desire they feel fuels his power. But if he dares to be good… the system punishes him.
Now, Lu Chen doesn’t just play the villain he reinvents it. He manipulates, deceives, and dominates, turning the empire into a web of ambition and fear. Allies, enemies, even the heroine no one is safe from his calculated games.
Power is addictive, but Lucian is learning a terrifying truth: the system didn’t choose him to survive. It chose him to become the ultimate monster.
How far will he go when the villain refuses to die?

[From the Cold Blooded series]

In the city where shadows trade secrets and blood seals deals, Noah Bellion is a name whispered like a warning. They call him the Devil from Nowhere—a man of charm as sharp as the knife he hides beneath his tailored suit, a strategist who bleeds without flinching and smiles like sin itself.

Elodie, a quiet florist girl with secrets of her own, steps into his world searching for her missing brother. But Noah sees more than her desperation—he sees what she’s hiding. Something dangerous. Something he wants.

Their attraction is undeniable, but so is the quiet war between them—desire twisted with mistrust, fear tangled with fascination. Because Noah isn’t just the man who could save her. He’s also the man who could ruin her—and make her love him for it.

“You're afraid of me, Elodie… but not enough to stay away.”

"No, I still want to run. I'm afraid of you."

"Good. Fear means you know exactly what I can do to you."

I loved Callum Crane for five years. He said I didn't fit. Then he proposed — to my sister.
The same night, his brother called me with the most insane idea I've ever heard: marry him instead. Same day. Same venue. Right across the hall from my ex and my sister's ceremony.
I said yes. Not because I loved Emrys Crane. Because I'd rather set the whole thing on fire than sit in a pew and watch.
Here's the thing about revenge marriages, though. They're supposed to be fake.
Nobody told Emrys.
The man had a wrench set in his truck that only fit my grandmother's machine — bought years before I ever spoke to him. He'd been sneaking looks through my workshop window so often the stone wore down. He fixed my motorcycle three times and never mentioned it. He remembered that I stared at a piece of almond brittle for ten seconds once, and bought it for me weeks later.
Seven years. He'd been in love with me for seven years. Said nothing. Did everything.
And Callum? The man who told me I didn't fit?
He showed up at my orchard with an apology and a folder full of evidence against my sister, begging for a second chance.
I looked him in the eye and said: "Too late. Wrong harvest."
He tried five more times. It only got worse for him.

They put the calm ones on graveyard. I'm calmer than calm - I can't read a face to save my life, but give me a voice and I'll tell you what you ate for dinner and what you're lying about.

3:07 a.m. A woman calls. A struggle. The line dies.

By sunrise there's no body, no report, and the call I logged has wiped itself clean - like it never rang. The whole city is asleep on it.

But I've never trusted the system. I keep my own copy of every call.

He erased her. I kept the tape. Now he just has to find out the night guy nobody looks at has been listening the whole time.

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.

Ten years ago, Heaven's War God Kevin fought an earth-shattering battle against the Demon King. Kevin was ambushed and gravely wounded, falling from Heaven to the mortal realm.

A young girl named Alice found the blood-soaked Kevin by the river while gathering herbs and treated him with medicinal plants.

Moved by her kindness, Kevin decided to stay in the mortal world to repay her debt, but he discovered that using his power would attract the Demon King and bring destruction to the human realm.

Kevin voluntarily sealed ninety-nine percent of his power and stayed by Alice's side, helping her gather herbs and heal people.

Two years later, Kevin confessed his love to Alice and they became husband and wife, opening a clinic in a small town where they saved countless lives and were known as the "Holy Couple."

"I'm six weeks pregnant with Asher's baby," my husband's mistress texted me, attaching a photo of a torn condom wrapper on my husband’s desk.
"If he really loved you, what am I?"
I just called a secret number.
"Are you sure you want to activate the Ghost Protocol?" my brother asked over the encrypted line.
"Once done, your identity is erased. You will cease to exist."
"Do it," I replied coldly.
My billionaire husband thinks he can keep his perfect marriage and his wild mistress.
He has no idea that his gentle, low-profile wife is actually the most dangerous princess of the New York Mafia.
I gave him a 15-day countdown.
On the final day, he opened his "anniversary gift"—only to find his cheating evidence and a house completely emptied of my existence.
He tore the city apart looking for me, going insane.
But how do you find a woman who never legally existed?

I died the day I caught my fiancé cheating.

I had walked in on my cousin and my fiancé, completely naked in the backseat of a brand-new Porsche. It was a car bought with stolen money—embezzled from the estate of my recently deceased grandmother, Margaret.

Panic had set in the moment I discovered them. To stop me from calling the cops, he slammed his foot on the gas.

As a pool of warm blood spread beneath my head, I heard him lying to the first responders: "She’s mentally unstable. She threw herself right in front of the car."

I died exactly like that—labeled a hysterical, suicidal woman.

But just when I thought it was all over, my eyes snapped open.

The hot blood that had just blurred my vision, the shattering agony in my bones—it was all gone.

My husband Eric couldn't speak after a car accident three years ago. Three years of silence. Not one word.

To pay for his rehab, I worked four jobs at once—worked until I was coughing up blood, until I collapsed. Winter nights, Leo and I huddled under one threadbare blanket. When my son spiked a fever and I had no money for medicine, I stayed up all night pressing wet rags to his burning forehead.

Eric? His only communication was cold texts, ordering me around. When Leo reached for a hug, he'd push him away like our son didn't exist.

I endured it all. Because deep down, I believed the accident was my fault.

Until that night.

I was hauling equipment at Selena's concert—Selena, the pop star everyone knew—when a mystery guest in a mask stepped on stage. They sang together, voices blending like they'd done this a thousand times.

That voice. That lightning-shaped scar on his elbow.

My "mute" husband of three years.

I followed him backstage. Through the door, I heard Selena's laugh: "Congrats, Eric. Your mute act is almost over—you won the bet."

Three years of sacrifice.

All of it just a game. A bet with his first love.

He was the gentlest male nurse in the hospital, and it took him three years to fall in love with a woman of exceptional talent.

She was the most dazzling female director of the cardiothoracic surgery department, and she was used to his humble flattery and took his efforts for granted.

Three years of companionship couldn't outweigh a single word: "Get lost."

When he finally left, heartbroken, she realized—

The "little nurse" she used to dislike had long since become the most important person in her life.

Some loves, once lost, are lost forever.

Some missed opportunities are regrets that can never be undone.

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—

In a modern city of flights, glass hotels, and surveillance footage, Nora—an artist still recovering from surgery—watches her marriage rot behind polished excuses. As she traces her husband’s affair through airport selfies, joint-account charges, voice recordings, and a staged fall on the stairs, humiliation hardens into precision. Cold, sharp, and deeply satisfying, this is a divorce reckoning lit by rain, evidence files, airport confrontations, and the moment a woman stops begging to be chosen.

The biggest mistake of my life was falling in love with my childhood best friend, Cole Blackwood.

I grew up with Cole. He was my childhood best friend. When my mom died in a car accident in high school, his mother Lillian, my mom's best friend, saw that my stepmother didn't like me and took me in. She arranged our engagement. Cole protected me from bullies in high school. I fell for him. We secretly married at eighteen.

Shortly after the wedding, he was kidnapped. That's when everything fell apart. I threw myself off a cliff to draw the kidnappers away and save him. I was in a coma for three months. But when I came back to him, weak and broken, he thought some woman named Sophia Vanderbilt had saved him instead. He started hating me for "abandoning him" and grew cold. I tried to explain. He only believed what Sophia told him. My words meant nothing. 

Cole wanted to divorce me, but his parents refused to allow it. I refused too. Sophia drugged him to get pregnant and trap him into marriage, but he stumbled into the wrong room. He slept with me instead. I got pregnant. She faked videos to make him think they'd been together. She forged evidence that I'd cheated. He wouldn't listen to a word I said. 

Then we were both kidnapped and held hostage on a rooftop. Cole chose to save Sophia. I fell. I lost the baby. After Sophia was rescued, she went to the hospital for a checkup. They found leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. I was the only match, but after everything, my body was too weak. Cole used the "debt" I owed his family to force me to donate. 

I refused. Sophia "died." Cole locked me in a psychiatric hospital and tortured me until I died. 

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he demanded my bone marrow. This time, looking at his desperate eyes, I said yes and decided to divorce him and leave him for good.

In the apocalyptic freeze, temperatures plummeted to seventy below zero. The earth was encased in ice, and ice beasts roamed everywhere.

I risked my life to scavenge for food, covered in wounds, enduring cold and hunger, leaving all our meager supplies for my parents and brother.

I thought blood was thicker than water, that all the suffering and hardship was worth it.

But I never imagined that when our resources ran out, the family I'd protected with my life would reveal their true beastly nature. They ambushed and knocked me unconscious, tied me to an ice pillar, planning to use me as food rations—to eat me alive.

At the moment of near death, the ice jade my grandfather left me suddenly shattered. I awakened top-tier ice abilities, commanding frost and snow, controlling the extreme cold.

My kindness had been frozen to death by the bitter cold. Family meant nothing.

Those who betrayed me, deceived me, and tried to eat me—I wouldn't spare a single one.

When they shoved me into the flames, I fought through the blinding pain to call my brother, Ethan Bennett. Fire licked at my skin, twisting my vision, but the call finally went through.

"What is it now?" He sounded distracted, like he was checking off a guest list.

"Ethan, please, help—" My voice was shattered, choked by the searing heat.

"Can't you just give it a rest for one single day?" he snapped, cutting me off. "Selina and I are getting married this weekend. If you pull another stunt, I swear I'll—"

The call died right as the flames swallowed me whole.

Agony consumed every nerve before my eyes closed for good, his unfinished threat still echoing in my ears.

But the good news is, Ethan... you don't have to swear anymore. Because I was dead.

Tricked onto a wilderness survival reality show, I was forced to act as my fake sister’s backdrop to protect the elderly woman who raised me. My fake sister constantly staged tricks for clout, and my blood brother threatened me with fatal consequences to sweep the family’s skeletons under the rug. I stopped surrendering and uncovered scam after scam during the live broadcast. The Hart family sought to erase my past. Instead, I laid all their shameful secrets bare for the world to see.

I live twenty-four honest years, and fate hands me a terminal stomach cancer diagnosis as a reward. Less than a month left on the clock.

Right when I'm ready to flip off this godawful fate, the floor under me goes black, and I drop straight into an SSS-rank horror game.

The Midnight Bloodred Theater. Dried-out eyeballs for chandeliers, crusted blood for decoration.

The boss is some deranged silver-haired god with blood-red eyes, and he blows people into a bloody mist the second something doesn't go his way.

Everyone else is crying, begging for their lives.

Not me. I'm dying either way.

I walk right up onto that stage, plant my hand on his abs, and grin up at him.

"Hey, gorgeous. Before you kill me, how about a kiss?"

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.
"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."
"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.
"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."
He tossed the phone onto the nightstand, his focus entirely on the woman beneath him.
Then my body was pushed into the incinerator.
When I was nothing but ashes, the funeral home called him again.
Selena pouted, trailing a nail down his chest.
"Is Cecilia acting up again?"
"I'll go end this farce," Victor sneered, getting out of bed.

On my daughter’s 100-day celebration, I found explicit messages between my husband and his secretary.
During our fight, he “accidentally” pushed me off the second floor, trapping me in a wheelchair forever.
He fired the secretary and cared for me personally, winning everyone’s praise and pity.
Only I knew he took secret late-night calls, his eyes full of disgust when he looked at me.
Until his mistress moved in, and my daughter screamed at me: “Just die.”
I smiled and pulled out a hidden voice recorder from my wheelchair.
Three years of silence, all for this moment.
James, your karma has come.

When the car crashed, I took the brunt of the deadly, mangled steel for my brother, Damon, letting half of my face be sheared off and my spine destroyed.

When I woke up in the intensive care unit, he mercilessly tossed an Engagement Termination Agreement onto my hospital bed.

"You're disfigured now, practically a paralyzed cripple. Give Julian up to Lily."

"She's beautiful, healthy, and she's always been in love with him. Having her take your place at the wedding is the best option right now."

The hospital room door wasn't fully closed. I could clearly hear him and our adopted sister, Lily, whispering out in the hallway.

"Damon, you deliberately caused that crash just so I could replace her in the marriage alliance. What if she finds out?"

Damon's tone was indifferent. "She grew up stealing the spotlight as the family heir. Giving Julian to you is the least she can do. Once she signs the papers, I'll put her in the best private nursing home. Consider it compensation."

I bit down hard on my cracked lips. Tears smashed against the deep, bone-exposing lacerations on my face, burning so intensely it made me want to carve the flesh right off.

Lily's sweet voice drifted in: "I'll make sure to compensate her in the future, too."

But Damon, even if I don't sign, you'll both get exactly what you want very soon.

Because the doctor just told me that my body has gone into multiple organ failure due to the severe trauma. I only have a few days left to live.

I woke up to the truth that I had somehow ended up inside a mafia novel, cast as Richard’s “burdensome little sister.”
The day I was disfigured saving him, Richard held my hand and swore I was his only weakness.
He said even if the fire had turned me into a monster, I would still be his.
But I knew the truth. I wasn’t his weakness but the curse he could never escape.

Ten years ago, on the night of the fire, I stepped into an ocean of flames for him. In return, I got burns across sixty-three percent of my body and ten years locked inside his guilt.
Stella, the mafia heiress who loved Richard so desperately it bordered on madness, once stood beside my hospital bed, crying as she begged me to let him go.
“You’re his only weakness,” she said, her voice shaking. “The Miller Family already has their eyes on him… Please. Just set him free.”

So I put on a veil and married the man Richard hated most, Frank of the Miller Family.
At the wedding, Richard’s eyes were bloodshot as he grabbed my arm.
“Tell me the truth,” he demanded hoarsely. “Are you doing this willingly?”
Through the cheap veil covering my ruined face, I smiled at him. “Yes. I’m tired. I don’t want to be your burden anymore.”

But on our wedding night, Frank tore the veil from my head. He stared at my twisted, scarred face and sneered. “Jesus… you’re fucking ugly.”
When Frank pinned me down, my fingers brushed against the gun Richard had secretly slipped into my wedding dress.
Along with it was a bloodstained note. His handwriting was frantic, almost insane.
Just one word—Live.

And right now, my adoptive father was waiting at the North Dock with men from the Miller Family, ready to silence me for good.
Because the fire ten years ago, the one that burned my adoptive mother to death, was started by him.
Now everyone wants me dead.
But Richard…This time, for you, I’m going to stay alive, even if I have to crawl all the way to the gates of hell.

On the eve of our Blood Pact ceremony, Caius suddenly postponed our binding ritual—all for his human sweetheart.

He unilaterally cut off the blood supply and froze all assets to the entire Vance family.

When my father went to confront him, Caius had him detained on the spot.

Desperate to save my father, I went to beg him. He gripped my jaw so hard it ached, his thumb roughly wiping away the tears forced out by the pain.

"Sera, delaying the ceremony is just a little lesson for you," he said, his tone gentle yet dripping with arrogance.

"As long as you agree to let Elara move into the manor after the wedding, and promise not to hurt her, everything stays the same."

"Otherwise, you can just go marry Alaric, that powerless tyrant of the Dark Realm. Be smart. Choose the path that keeps you alive."

I stared at him dead in the eye, not saying a word.

Thinking I had resigned myself to my fate, a satisfied smirk curled on his lips.

"Be a good girl. Wait for me to pick you up on the day of the Blood Pact."

What he didn't know was that on the day of the Blood Pact, I would step directly into the car Alaric sent, brushing right past his wedding convoy at the intersection.

Eventually, Caius would drop to his knees outside the gates of the night manor like a stray dog, begging for my forgiveness.

At my mother's funeral, I stopped outside the lounge.

Through the door, I heard Julian—my fiancé—delivering a cold warning to my father:

"You can stop obsessing over Harper, Richard. She's with me now. Don't bother her anymore."

My father immediately tried to use me to suppress him. "Don't forget you're marrying Sloane next week! If she finds out you're screwing the orphan her mother took in..."

Julian cut him off. "She'll never know. Just like she'll never know her mother didn't actually die of depression. She killed herself because she caught you two together."

Father's counterattack threw me straight into hell:

"What right do you have to judge me?! When Sloane was frantic, calling you for help, what were you doing? If you hadn't been rolling around in a hotel bed with Harper, if you hadn't lied to Sloane that you were 'on your way,' her mother would never have died!"

A violent ringing filled my ears.

I slammed the door open, stormed in, and slapped Julian across the face with every ounce of strength I had left.

The man I was supposed to marry in seven days merely turned his head. It took him exactly one second to suppress his shock.

"Since you heard everything, good. Better to accept reality now, so you don't break down later."

"For the sake of the Vance family heir you're carrying, the wedding next week proceeds as planned."

"But I have responsibilities to Harper, too. That tie won't be severed."

"Sorry, boss's strict orders. No one is to disturb the top floor tonight."
The bodyguards blocked my way, their guns aimed right at me. I was Dante's wife, standing there holding the soup I'd made for his stomach, yet I was being treated like a trespasser.
I ignored them and forced my way in anyway. Through the crack in the door, I saw everything perfectly clear. Dante didn't draw his gun on the woman who had once kidnapped me. Instead, the notoriously cold-blooded crime boss was using his personal handkerchief to patiently bandage her bleeding palm.

Reunited, I became the “perfect wife” Julian had always dreamed of.
I didn’t ask where he was when he didn’t come home.
When his “one that got away” came to our door to provoke me, I greeted her with a polite smile.
I even caught them in the act, and instead of screaming, I thoughtfully closed the door for them.
The Elara who used to break down in hysterics over his infidelity was dead.

The woman standing here now was nothing more than a shell, existing solely for her daughter.
Finally, Julian began to panic. He knelt in the pouring rain, begging me to curse him, begging me to still love him—or even hate him.
But as I looked down at him, I didn’t just feel nothing. I felt sick.
"Julian, I don't hate you."
I just find every second spent with you utterly disgusting.

On college application day, my two childhood sweethearts, Blaise and Kieran, were completely bewitched by Mari. The manipulative girl talked them into abandoning their prestigious university spots to attend a small community college with her. I tried desperately to stop them, even contacting their parents to prevent them from ruining their futures.
Yet when Mari ended up dead months later, the blind boys blamed everything on me. They tricked me to the cliff and shoved me down brutally, making me pay for a crime I never committed.
Miraculously, I am reborn on this exact day. This time, I will not interfere. I will watch silently and let them bear the consequences of their own foolish choices.

"You have two months to live." The doctor's death sentence was still ringing in my ears when I found the receipt in his pocket.

[Four Seasons Hotel. Romance Suite. Check-in: 3:00 PM.]

3:00 PM. The exact moment I was begging the doctor for painkillers, Alexander was in a hotel bed with another woman.

I looked at him, sleeping soundly beside me. I had loved this man for five years, sold everything to help him succeed. Now, in the final countdown of my life, he gave me the most fatal blow.

"I'm exhausted from meetings," he had lied, smelling of Santal 33 and another woman's sex.

I clenched the receipt until my nails dug into my flesh. I wouldn't tell him about the cancer.

I would use whatever time I had left to make him regret ever being born.

Everyone knows my husband is obsessed with me.

He's gone against the board for me, walked away from billion-dollar deals, dropped millions at charity galas. Everyone said I'd married into a fairytale. I believed it too.

Until the anonymous email.

In the photo, he was kissing a little girl's forehead—three years old, maybe four. He looked at her the way fathers do.

Three years of marriage. Countless failed IVF attempts. Then finally—I was pregnant.

I was about to tell him when his phone buzzed. He left immediately—for another woman and her child.

I was the only one who didn't know.

If the love was fake, if the marriage was fake—then I could disappear too.

In two days, the typhoon hits. My car will go off the cliff into the ocean. No one survives that.

I'll disappear from his world forever—me and the baby he doesn't know about.

I was forced by my father to fulfill an arranged engagement I'd never met face-to-face.

Pushing open the private room door, I found my fiancé Tristan celebrating his secretary Clara's birthday.

"Security! Get this beggar out of here!" Clara screamed, pointing at me.

When I revealed my identity, Tristan sneered coldly: "What bullshit engagement? I would never marry a woman like you."

Clara poured red wine over my head: "Kneel down and lick it clean!"

When I fought back, Tristan exploded in rage: "How dare you touch my woman? Hold her down!"

Four bodyguards pinned me down as Clara started a live stream: "Let everyone see this delusional bitch who doesn't know her place!"

They tore at my clothes while Tristan watched coldly, even urging them on: "Hurry up, let everyone see her true face."

Just as I was about to be completely humiliated, the door suddenly burst open—

"Do you have any idea whose daughter you're humiliating?

Just because I got a B+ in physics, my father slapped me across the face and kicked me while I was down.

"If you worked even half as hard at school as we do at our jobs, you'd have straight A's!"

"Your mom and I kill ourselves every single day, and this is how you repay us?"

To make sure I couldn't argue anymore, they spent a fortune getting their hands on some kind of devil's contract.

Dad sneered: "Once this thing is signed, every hour we work, you have to study. Now that's what I call fair."

Mom nodded along: "No more complaining that we don't understand what you go through."

Looking at their smug, satisfied faces, I didn't argue. I just bit my finger and signed.

Because I knew better than anyone what their "killing ourselves" actually amounted to.

By the time the contract came due, they were on their knees begging me to cancel it.

I've run a pet rescue shop for five years. I've lost count of the animals I've saved. Around the neighborhood, people call me the good Samaritan of Main Street. My husband, Adam Carter, and I have been married five years, and he's always been gentle and attentive.

It's a rainy night in late fall, and I come across an injured starling in the alley on my way home, its wing broken.

The second I scoop it into my arms, a man's voice cuts through the dark.

"Tomorrow night, eight o'clock. Whatever you do, don't go home. Your husband's going to sneak out with your best friend, and on the road, they're going to hit someone and kill them. Then they're going to run, and they're going to pin it on you."

I look down into the starling's eyes, and the color drains out of my face.

Five years of what I thought was love, and it was just a trap waiting to close in.

A talking bird. Nobody's going to believe that if I go to the cops.

I don't even think twice. I just take the bird and head downtown.

After accidentally traveling to the post-apocalyptic wasteland, I treated the human leader as a brother, continuously supplying him with modern resources.

Who knew he would conspire with the beastman chieftain to kill me, just to prevent me from rescuing others.

But what he didn't know was that I could travel back to the modern world.

While those two leaders of the wasteland thought themselves invincible...

I healed my wounds, and returned to the wasteland with military hardware and food, storming back to their base!

You want my life?

Then pay for it with your own!

My best friend Lily was brutally assaulted and tragically took her own life.
But I fiercely protected the monster who did it.
Lily’s mom knelt down and begged me, but I just closed the door coldly.
When the villagers came with torches to smash my home, I didn't hesitate to unleash my dog to drive them away.
"Ivy, you cold-blooded monster! We treated you like family, and you protected the beast who drove Lily to her death for a whole decade!"
"Today, I’m going to show the whole world who this man is—the one you’d rather be cursed by everyone than expose!"
But when my deepest memories were violently torn open and the culprit's face appeared clearly on the giant holographic screen...
The high and mighty Emma instantly drained of all color and collapsed to the floor.

After dreaming of making love with Anthony for the 99th time, I finally decided to confess my feelings to him.
But just as I reached the bodyguards' private lounge, I saw him under the moonlight, reverently kissing a photo of my sister Seraphina.
After he released his desires, a werewolf quietly appeared:
"Alpha Anthony, if Thea knew your true identity as the king of the Thunder Tribe, she’d probably be shocked."
Anthony smirked disdainfully:
"What does it matter? I came here only to get close to Seraphina. As for the others, I don’t care whether they live or die."
His words sent me fleeing in despair. My heart felt as if it were being crushed by a massive wolf’s claw, the pain so intense that tears streamed down my face.
So it was all just my own wishful thinking.
Resigned, I walked into my father’s room and said:
"Father, I am willing to enter a political marriage with Alpha Caleb."
On the Moon Goddess Festival three days later, I would marry the brutal Alpha Caleb.
And as for Anthony—I would personally deliver him to Seraphina.

My daughter died on her fifth birthday.
Her first real wish—the first one she was old enough to make herself—was to go to the beach with Daddy.
Gideon promised he would take her.
She waited for him all day. She was still asking for him when she took her last breath.
He never came.
I brought her ashes to the beach she'd always dreamed of. Let her finally see the ocean.
That's when I heard it—a woman's moan, low and breathy, coming from behind the rocks.
Then his voice. Then his name on her lips.
"Between me and Lily, who do you love more?"
"You. Obviously."
He was fucking his mistress on our daughter's dream beach—while I stood there holding her ashes.
When I finally confronted them, I didn't get an apology. I got a slap across the face.
And when his mistress caught my eye and smiled, I realized something.
She knew exactly when my daughter would die.

My husband had been traveling a lot lately. Intuition told me he was cheating.
I kept quiet. For his birthday, I gifted him AirPods—secretly linked to my backup Apple ID.
At 10:00 p.m., his "Find My" location wasn't heading to the airport. It had stopped at a decade-abandoned lumber yard.
I floored it, obsessed with catching them in bed.
But when I arrived, I only found a corpse.