1966 Book(s) Related to daisy darker: a novel book review

Minutes before the Stanford Hackathon began, my childhood friend decided to bail to help his girlfriend shoot a TikTok video.

I was just about to stop him when his inner voice suddenly exploded in my head: 'I actually got reborn?'

'Last time, I listened to Maeve and stayed for the competition, securing my spot at Stanford. But Sloane went to Malibu alone to shoot her video and fell off a cliff!"

'Even though I pushed Maeve off a roof to avenge her, I still lost the love of my life.'

'This time, I'm not losing Sloane. If Maeve dares to stop me again, I'll make her pay with her life all over again!'

My blood ran cold, and the words of persuasion died in my throat.

If he wanted his tragic romance so badly, he could have it.

A year ago, during the yacht shipwreck, Carter let go of his mistress Valerie's hand in the crushing waves, risking his own life to shove me onto the lifeboat.   Later, weeping by my hospital bed, he swore that staring death in the face had finally made him realize who the only indispensable woman in his life truly was.   I believed him. I wiped the slate clean of his infidelity, utterly convinced that a marriage forged in life and death would be indestructible.   Until tonight. The night of our third wedding anniversary.   Staring at the new notification lighting up his screen—【I'm in the suite downstairs waiting for you. Come fuck me like you did last night, or I'm jumping off the balcony. —V】—the truth finally hit me.

The so-called true love proven at death's door couldn't even survive the cheap lust of ordinary days.   My entire marriage was nothing but a grotesque joke.

For seven whole years, I believed I was suffering from severe amnesia.

I was grateful to my fiancé Vance for never leaving my side, and felt guilty for my sister Daphne's endless tolerance.

Until the eve of the wedding, when I opened a private group chat on Vance's computer named "Remaking Nora."

The over three hundred pages of chat logs were a cruel game that ate me alive:

"That idiot Nora 'forgot' her Stanford acceptance letter again today. Daphne, the spot is yours."
"Hide her wedding ring at the bachelorette party tomorrow night. Watching her frantically look for it like a dog will be absolutely hilarious."

Messages kept popping up in the group. They couldn't wait to see me break down in tears and self-loathing again because of my "amnesia."

I calmly took off the ring on my ring finger, preparing to pack my bags.

Since they wanted a Nora who couldn't remember anything so badly, I would grant their wish—

I would forget this wedding, along with the two of them, completely, and permanently clear them out of my life.

Last lifetime, my mate, Kael, had faked his own death just to openly sleep with his sister-in-law without judgment.

I screamed until my throat bled, pointing at the man pretending to be his dead twin brother.

For telling the truth, he dragged me to the sacred altar and burned my mark off my skin, while our four-year-old son was thrown into a pitch-black cell for crying out for her father.

We were banished, torn apart by rogues.

But the Moon Goddess is fair. She woke me up on the exact day of the funeral.

As the pack howls in mourning for their "dead" Alpha, I look at the man hiding in his brother's skin.

I won't expose him this time.

If Kael wants to play a dead man just to play house with his whore, I'll make sure he stays dead forever.

I was a broke scholarship student. Chloe was an old-money heiress and the untouchable cheer captain.

She paraded me through her elite world and even generously shoved me at her ultimate crush—Aston, the ruthless son of the school board director.

But when Aston and I actually got together, the princess bared her fangs.

She staged a severe fall to drain my meager savings, then framed me for stealing her family's heirloom necklace. And Aston? He dumped me immediately, sneering that I was just a cheap prop desperate to climb the social ladder.

Ostracized and cyberbullied by the entire school, I was locked on the rooftop during the Winter Formal and left to freeze to death in the snow.

But when I opened my eyes...

I was back at that deafening party. Right at the moment Chloe first introduced me to Aston.

My fiancé, a ruthless mafia Capo, always had a convenient excuse for his betrayals.

Any trace of another woman was scrubbed clean.

Exhausted by the gaslighting, I planted a lipstick in his car just to see how deep the deception went.

When I confronted him, he put his phone on speaker.

The whole family stepped up to cover his tracks.

My brother claimed it was misplaced by my best friend. My best friend scoffed, scolding me for my paranoid delusions. Everyone swore Kaelen's loyalty to me was absolute.

What they didn't know was that I had already tracked his encrypted GPS. While they spun their seamless web of lies, I was standing outside the villa.

Through the glass, I watched Kaelen pull his mistress into a deep, possessive kiss amid a celebration for their newborn heir.

The very people who had just fed me alibis were inside, raising glasses to his new family.

Standing there in the cold, I realized how utterly easily I had been replaced.

Let them keep their lies. I am done.

The child I brought into this world through sheer determination now calls my husband's mistress "mother"; the youth who slew my father for my sake and was imprisoned, now confines me beyond the threshold, forcing me to hear his carnal symphony with his stepmother. Only then did I comprehend: the sixteen-year-old boy who committed patricide for me had long perished within the prison walls.

After my mother abandoned me, I did everything to be the perfect "good pup" so I wouldn't be thrown away again.
I smiled as I drank the burning pepper-water my brothers tricked me with. I held out my bleeding hands to take my father's cruel beatings. Even when they locked me in a pitch-black basement to die of a blistering fever, I thought that if I was just 'obedient enough', they would finally love me.
But as I lay dying on that cold concrete floor, something inside me broke forever.
When I finally woke up, I couldn't speak. I couldn't smile. I couldn't even stomach the sight of them. I no longer wanted their affection, their toys, or their love.
And ironically, the exact moment I stopped caring if I existed to them at all... was the moment my cold-blooded father and ruthless brothers fell to their knees in tears, desperately ready to give me the world just to hear me call them family one more time.

In my past life, my Mafia Don husband left me and our unborn baby to burn just to save my half-sister.

Reborn, I watched him crush my fingers in a door to protect her once again.

"Hurt her, and we get a divorce," he sneered.

He thought the threat would break me. He didn't know his signature was already on the divorce papers hidden in my bag.

On the day of their lavish wedding, I took the hand of his deadliest rival, looked down from a helicopter, and pressed the detonator to his estate.

Draven Hale had always loved me like drowning — total, breathless, nothing held back.
But the day Lenora Veyra's oncologist stamped terminal across her diagnostic dossier, that devotion changed direction.
He reached into his coat pocket and pressed a capsule into my palm.
A targeted memory-suppressant serum.
"Three days, Vesper," he said. "Lenora's dying. Let me give her a wedding. That's all she wants."
It wouldn't hurt, he promised.
Afterwards I'd take the counteragent, the last three days would dissolve like smoke, and we'd walk back into the registry office and put the ring back where it belonged.
I stared at him in silence, and I swallowed the capsule dry.
What Draven didn't know was that the compound was mine — I'd built it. And I knew that there was no counteragent.
In seventy-two hours, he'd be nothing to me but a stranger with a familiar face.

My Mafia boss husband brought his late brother's widow and child back to our estate and demanded I move into the nanny's quarters..

This time, I didn't pull a gun and fight with him like I did in my past life. Instead, I brought out my suitcase to pack and make room.

Later, for our daughter's birthday, Julian gifted her a foal.

Beatrice's son cried and threw a tantrum, demanding it.

My five-year-old daughter calmly handed over the lead rope. "Daddy said Leo doesn't have a papa anymore, so from now on, my papa is his papa."

"I should learn to be generous."

At first, Julian was extremely gratified by our tolerance and maturity. But gradually, he panicked as he realized—

There was no more love in my eyes, and our daughter no longer opened her arms to ask for his hugs.

Little did he know, in our previous life, in order to protect that mother and son, he banished us to the subterranean water dungeon.

While my daughter and I contracted the plague, dying in despair amidst the stench and the gnawing of rats, he was holding that woman's hand in a brightly lit banquet hall, announcing to the entire Family that she would be under his lifelong protection.

Reborn into this life, my daughter and I no longer fought, no longer made a fuss.

But we also never needed Julian again.

"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 bed is so thrilling, much better than at my apartment."

"That little girl Lily cooperates perfectly, always managing to lead Sarah away."

In that moment, my world completely shattered.

I thought I was only being betrayed by my husband, but discovered that even the daughter I carried for ten months was their carefully orchestrated pawn.

The child I raised with my own hands was actually helping her father's mistress occupy my home and sleep in my bed.

When a mother discovers she's been deceived by those she loves most, her revenge will make everyone pay a devastating price.

Two years later, when I saw that once-successful man wearing a shabby suit, accompanied by his malnourished daughter at my charity auction, I only said coldly:

"She can come with me, but you—never deserve it."

When my husband pushed the divorce papers in front of me for the hundredth time, demanding I sacrifice myself for my sister, I didn't cry or make a scene. I simply signed my name, willingly giving up the man I'd loved for eight years to Ivy.

A few days later, Ivy got drunk and drove into a state senator's only son during a street race, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Once again, I stepped forward to take the blame and bear all the consequences.
When they later suggested I donate my kidney to Ivy, I readily agreed.

Mom and Dad said I'd finally grown into a mature and responsible sister.

Even my cold husband stood by my hospital bed and, for the first time in so long, gently stroked my cheek. He whispered, "Don't be afraid. The surgery will be a success. When you recover, we'll go traveling."

But he didn't know that whether the surgery succeeded or not, I wouldn't be going anywhere with him.

Because I was already terminally ill, with little time left.

The night Julian went public with the new cheer captain, everyone expected me to crash the party and completely lose my mind.

But the confession ended, and I never showed up.

What Julian didn't know was that at that exact moment, I was wearing his cousin's oversized shirt, sitting on the edge of his mattress, asking with perfect innocence:

"I just got your sheets wet. Where are we supposed to sleep tonight?"

A siren's tears turn to gemstones.

Mine were funding my boyfriend's entire career—but ordinary stones weren't enough anymore.

Deep-sea sapphires. That's what he was after.

So he brought a whip.

"Almost there, babe. Cry for me and it's over."

"Once I'm in, I'll marry you."

My vision blurred with tears—then something else flooded in.

Bright, scrolling, impossible words:

[LOL, by the time he gets his Council seat, he'll have wrung her dry and married the Arcane Princess instead.]

[Sandra, check out the vampire prince next door—he heard you screaming and thinks you two are having sex. He's crying under his blankets right now.]

[When you're literally dying in the finale, the prince is the one who carries you to the Eastern Sea. That's the only reason you survive.]

[Oh, and the prince is a purebred incubus hybrid. Eight-pack abs. Naturally compatible with desire-driven sirens. Stop suffering for this loser and go live your best life!]

My eyes lit up. I kicked the man in front of me straight into the wall.

Hopped next door, pushed open the door: "Kaelen, I hear you've got a nice body—prove it?"

My son was killed in a horrific car bomb assassination.

At his rain-drenched funeral, my husband, Enzo—a Mafia Don—held an umbrella over my head, only to suddenly state with icy indifference:

"Gianna is pregnant. It's my blood."

Gianna. The illegitimate daughter of the Lucchese family boss.

I stiffened, looking up in sheer disbelief.

"What the hell does that mean?"

He cast a careless glance at me, completely unbothered.

"To end the war between the Corsican and Lucchese families, I've been with her in secret for a while now. Now that she carries the Corsican bloodline, I must give her a proper title. She will be moving into the estate tonight. You will not only accept this, but you will also give her the respect she deserves as the mother of my child."

Forty-eight hours before my wedding, I was kidnapped and gang-raped, surviving by only a thread in the depths of despair.   When my mafia boss fiancé and my police detective best friend stood guard by my hospital bed with bloodshot eyes, I heard him suddenly switch to Navajo and ask her, "The death row inmates from the dark web—were they dealt with cleanly?"   My best friend chuckled, replying in the same language. "Don't worry. The guys who put their hands on Maya have been wiped out. Dead men tell no tales."   "Sacrificing Maya alone gave you the perfect excuse to wipe out the rival family and swallow the southern smuggling network, while earning me a high-level promotion. It was a damn good deal."   Amidst tearing, agonizing pain, it felt as if I had been plunged into an ice cliff.   They thought I could never understand this obscure tribal language, so they brazenly feasted on the spoils of victory built upon my very flesh and blood. But what they didn't know was that, to surprise my fiancé during our wedding vows... I had been secretly studying Navajo for an entire year.

At eighteen, I gave my virginity to Hunter in his bed.

I swallowed all the pain and hesitation, naively believing that three years of a pathetic crush had finally earned my way into his heart.

Until the next morning, when I heard his teammates' unabashed mockery:

"Damn, you finally bagged the nerd? How was it?"

Hunter scoffed, his tone dripping with utter contempt.

"Just messing around. If I'm bringing a real girlfriend out, it's gotta be someone on Serena's level—head cheerleader."

I wordlessly opened my college application portal, deleted the garbage local state school I had picked just to stay with him, and changed it back to Yale.

He confidently thought I would follow him blindly, until he video-called me on opening day and completely lost his mind seeing who was beside me: his own stepbrother.

After hearing about my peanut allergy, my boyfriend's newly crowned campus queen added peanut extract to my signature cocktail.

Just one sip in, and my skin immediately erupted in hives. My throat started to close up rapidly.

I stumbled toward my canvas tote, pulled out my life-saving EpiPen, and yanked off the cap.

But the next second, my blood ran cold.

The emergency EpiPen had been swapped out for a tube of lipstick by my boyfriend.

Seeing my face turn purple as I collapsed onto the floor, the campus queen suddenly burst into laughter:

"Surprise! I specifically told Julian to swap it out!"

"You are such a fake. Anaphylactic shock from a single sip?"

I desperately gripped my boyfriend's cuff, letting out strained, wheezing gasps like a broken bellows:

"Julian... if you don't give me the real one... I'm really going to die!"

He peeled my fingers off him one by one and swatted my hand away in disgust, frowning slightly:

"Do you really think you're some delicate princess? It's just a drink. Are you seriously doing this?"

"Madison is right. You're just a drama queen making a scene!"

I gave up pleading for him to understand. Instead, I pressed the custom fountain pen in my pocket, triggering my old-money family's highest-tier SOS signal.

In this world, there exists a place called the Life Pawnshop.

As long as you possess enough Love Value—the genuine affection held for you by your family or spouse—you can trade it there for any miracle.

My biological brother, Noah, died in a car crash. My parents, my husband—everyone was forcing me to go to the pawnshop and use my Love Value to bring him back.

The pawnshop's laws were absolute and unforgiving: a sacrifice of a life for a life required the pawner to be of the exact same generation as the deceased, bound by deep ties of blood or fate.

That meant in this entire family, only I and the adopted daughter, Chloe, were eligible to make the trade.

But what my family didn't know was that I had already exhausted every last drop of my Love Value for this very family.

If someone with zero Love Value forcibly stepped onto the altar, the pawnshop's punishment mechanism would crush the sacrificer alive, skin and bone.

I severed our Mate Bond with my own hands.

In that moment, I lay unconscious, bleeding under the silvery moonlight, while he knelt some distance away, clutching his chest as if he had been hollowed out.

Once, he shielded me from nine silver stakes, only to crown another woman; he placed my protective pendant around her neck, then cast me into a water prison. He professed, “I love only you,” yet stood outside my hospital room, nursing her child as if it were his own.

I loathed him, resolved to leave.

I believed this was the end.

Little did I know, as I thought I had finally gained my freedom, he would chase after the debts of blood and regret, intruding upon the new life I was rebuilding—

To redeem a love that no longer sought redemption.

My husband, the terrifying Mafia Don, dropped fifteen million dollars on a luxury yacht just to throw a lavish, high-profile birthday celebration for his precious first love.

And today marks exactly seven days since I died of an infection in a Detroit slum, simply because I couldn't scrape together a few cents for antibiotics.

At the banquet, an oblivious guest tactlessly brought up my name.

Alessandro dialed my number for the first time in five years.

"Genevieve, if you've suffered enough, crawl back here and beg Elena for forgiveness."

That is, until the estate doors were violently shoved open.

A scavenger walked in, leading a little boy whose face was an eighty-percent match to Alessandro's.

The scholarship understudy in our ballet company was a notorious "clumsy sweetheart."

Right before the Principal Audition, she secretly laced the pain-relief cream she gave me with a high concentration of banned substances.

It led to me being reported for doping. I was expelled from the company on the spot, my reputation was ruined, and my ballet career was completely destroyed.

When I confronted her, she hid in my fiancé's arms, crying so hard she almost passed out.

"Eve, I really just wanted to help you perform perfectly... I'm so stupid, I can't even tell the difference between muscle rub and banned drugs."

My fiancé held her, comforting her, and then yelled at me instead:

"She was just trying to be nice! Why do you have to be so cruel to a young girl?!"

Later, as I spiraled into severe depression, they tricked me into going to the river under the guise of "getting some fresh air."

While my fiancé went to park the car, she took the opportunity to shove me hard off the icy steps, leaving me to drown alive in the freezing river.

When questioned by the police, my fiancé didn't hesitate to commit perjury to clear her name, insisting I had jumped because I couldn't handle the scandal.

I opened my eyes again. I was back to the day before the Principal Audition.

When the armored car had room for only one passenger, Damian Russo chose me.

I was saved, but Lilia Brown didn't make it. She bled out in the crossfire, her body left in the rubble. Damian pretended he didn't care and married me as planned.

For three years, he made me pay for her death—beating me, starving me, blaming me for the fact that she was gone.

In the end, he drove us both off a cliff instead.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the docks on the night of the ambush. This time, I stepped aside and let him save the woman he truly loved.

In my third year of marriage to Cassius, I saw his childhood sweetheart Serena post a photo on a luxury yacht with the caption: "My man always knows what I want."

That yacht was supposed to be my birthday gift.

I called the dealer. "Mr. Vitale transferred it to Miss Monte."

Cassius called immediately. "Stop checking up on me. I owed her this. Why are you so insecure?"

That night, he kicked my medication across the floor. "Stop reminding everyone I owe you my life."

Three years ago, I gave him my gas mask during a shootout. The toxins destroyed my lungs.

When he burned my face with an iron, he drove me to the hospital—until Serena called crying about a burst pipe.

He shoved me out into the pouring rain. "You're not going to die. She needs me more."

For the first time in three years, I realized I should stop saving a man who'd already chosen someone else.

Three years ago, I devoted my family's entire fortune to rescue my husband from the mire of impending bankruptcy. I once believed this was a mutual journey of love, until that day revealed the chilling truth — I had merely been nurturing a self-consuming wolf.
The metallic scent of blood still hung in the air of the delivery room when he signed the document relinquishing life support, trading our newly born child for a flicker of hope for his beloved.
As I lay in a pool of blood, dialing his number, I could hear the heavy breaths of him and his mistress on the other end.
The explosion of the yacht cast flames upon the sea, and in that life-or-death moment, he unhesitatingly let go of my hand.
They all believed I had perished beneath the waves.
Very well.
Now, my wedding invitation lies within his reach.

My twin sister was revered as the sun of our pack. I was the dark moon, condemned as an omen of disaster.

At my mate-binding ceremony, our parents stormed the altar. Claiming her wolf spirit was dying, they forced me to surrender my fated mate to her.

They seemed to have forgotten that today was my coming-of-age. An un-mated Daughter of the Dark Moon would be offered as a sacrifice to the ruthless Alpha of the Winter Pack.

With red, tear-filled eyes, I begged my mate, Kayden, not to abandon me. Instead, he slowly withdrew his hand.

"Maeve, she's your blood sister. I have to bond with her to save her life."

"As for being sacrificed to the Winter Tyrant, that's just a myth the elders made up to scare you."

My father stood by, reprimanding me with sheer impatience:

"What sacrifice? It's nothing but folklore! Can't you suffer a little grievance for your sister's life?"

To prevent me from ruining the ceremony, they dragged me into the damp, dark dungeon.

Up on the altar, my family joyfully continued the celebration.

But they didn't know the Grand Elder had come to me three days ago.

The moment my binding failed today, the emissaries of Winter would come to collect their due.

From today on, I would plunge into the frigid deadlands of the far North, bound to remain by that bloodthirsty tyrant's side until the day I die.

My pre-wedding party was in full swing.

 

Yet, the center of attention wasn't me, but Julian's childhood sweetheart, Blair. She had just announced she was auctioning off her "first kiss."

 

My fiancé, Julian, bought that kiss without a second thought.

 

Amidst the roaring cheers of the crowd, they locked lips. They looked like the perfect match, made in heaven.

 

In that moment, I didn't cry. I didn't make a scene.

 

I casually pulled out my phone and replied to the email from the Paris headquarters: "I accept. I am ready to start immediately."

I was dragged to the stand of the MRI Memory Court by my own flesh and blood.

Their demand? To forcibly extract my kidney to keep their uremic adopted daughter alive.

A guilty verdict meant losing not just my bodily autonomy, but my freedom for the rest of my life.

Bathed in the global spotlight, my parents performed as tragic heroes, while their adopted saint cried a river of deceit.

They thought they had cornered the perfect victim, waiting for the world to send me to the slaughter.

But the moment the memory holograms ignited and reality bled through, the hunters instantly became the hunted.

Six days after Alexander lost all contact, I navigated my way alone to the Nightfall Gala to find him.

The guard's expression twisted into something peculiar when he heard my purpose.

"You're saying you are looking for your mate, Prince Alexander? And what is your name?"

"I am Cecilia."

The guard let out a harsh, mocking snort. "Stop causing a scene! A blind beggar trying to pull a scam? Don't think you can just impersonate her just because you know the name of the Prince's mate."

"Everyone knows the Prince just gifted Cecilia the millennia-old Abyssal Night Crystal to celebrate her pregnancy! What the hell are you?"

Just then, the giant LED screen cut to the Gala's live broadcast.

"Allow me to formally introduce my partner, Cecilia. Furthermore, she is expecting. Our family is about to welcome a new heir." It was Alexander's voice.

"Thank you all. This is the greatest gift Alexander and I could ever receive."

The moment that sweet, timid voice echoed through the hall, a string violently snapped in my brain. A sharp ringing pierced my eardrums.

—It was the voice of my twin sister, Elena.

In my boyfriend Arthur's world, everyone could be labeled with an ER triage tag: green for minor, yellow for observation, red for critical.   As the emotionally stable one, I was forever the green tag in his life.   But my best friend, who cried and threw tantrums, was the red tag he never left the side of.   Two years ago, with my mother on the verge of death from heart failure on one side, and my best friend threatening suicide while drunk over a bad breakup on the other—he chose the latter without hesitation.   Until tonight. Separated by a single door, I watched him pull my best friend into his arms, kissing her with a greedy, desperate loss of control.

Three weeks after my son's death, I found the blood-stained cloth doll meant to "ward off disaster" with his name stitched on it.

Right there, in the hands of my husband's mistress, who was giggling as she idly toyed with it.
 
"The psychic said my life force was too weak to keep the baby, and that I needed a substitute to take the curse."
 
"I only sewed Leo's name into the doll. I never imagined... he would actually get sick and die."
 
"Declan, do you think Leo traded his life for our baby's?"
 
Through the crack in the door, the same man who had sobbed until he passed out at the funeral was gently stroking his lover's belly. "He was just unlucky. As long as our baby is safe, that's all that matters."
 
I turned away, pulled up the invitation for Chief Medical Examiner from the International Criminal Court in The Hague that I had shelved for a month, and hit accept.

From a young age, I understood that my asthma was a shackle for my entire family. My parents took turns caring for me, their hearts gripped by the fear of any sign of respiratory distress. In their fervent concern for my health, they even compelled my sister, Sophie, freshly accepted into university, to postpone her studies and return home to assist in my care.
At Sophie's eighteenth birthday celebration, I lingered at the edge of the crowd, my chest constricted, and my throat felt as if it were ensnared by invisible hands. I gently tugged at my mother's sleeve, my voice barely a whisper: "Mom, I... can't breathe. I want to go back to my room..."
In an instant, my mother whirled around, her eyes ablaze with fury, as though she had awaited this moment of eruption. She seized my inhaler and hurled it into the farthest corner of the room.
"If it's this painful, then go die!" she shrieked, her words cutting like a knife. "Stop using your illness to hold us hostage!"
The inhaler tumbled to the floor, rolling away like a forgotten piece of trash. I stared at it blankly, a sudden laugh escaping my lips.
And then, I truly died. Yet, in the wake of my passing, those who once found me a burden descended into madness.

On our third wedding anniversary, a catastrophic car accident plunged me into a state of life-threatening hemorrhage. Yet, before the medical staff, my husband roared: "Draw my wife's blood first; save Serena."

Serena—his first love.

It became apparent that he had never married me out of love; I was but a living blood bank, intended solely to sustain his cherished first love. It was only when I discovered I was pregnant that I realized he would not even spare the life within me.

That incarceration, cloaked in the guise of love, had nearly claimed my life. When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer the Clara who could be so easily sacrificed. This time, I shall ensure he pays for his blood debt, with no chance of redemption.

In my past life, when I eagerly handed my ultrasound to my gentle doctor husband, I didn't get a warm embrace. I got a scalpel. Without anesthesia.

The man I loved dragged me into a pitch-black basement to butcher me alive. My once-doting mother called me a filthy whore, treating me like a sickening stain on the family. My fiercely protective brother pinned me to a metal workbench, offering me up as a living sacrifice.

I died in utter agony, left to rot and be eaten alive by rats in the dark. Up until my last breath, I couldn't understand:

Why did a single piece of paper—a sonogram of a perfectly healthy baby—instantly turn my entire family into bloodthirsty monsters?

For a century, Carlos and I were the most envied lovers of the Dawn Court—yet our story ended in a cage of mutual, agonizing torment.

He loathed me for shattering a forbidden spell to forcefully awaken his memories, a desperate act that drove his precious half-elf, Lilia, to plunge to her death from the Astral Tower.

And I resented him for completely erasing our sacred vows. The very man who had once taken a lethal dragon's breath to save my life had awakened only to draw his blade against my throat—and offer his heart to my closest friend.

For the dark centuries that followed, he chained me in a sunless dungeon, using every conceivable cruelty to break my spirit.

Right up until my mana withered and I drew my last, agonizing breath, the venom he had spat through gritted teeth still echoed in the darkness: "Cecilia, you disgust me. I would rather have never remembered you at all."

In the cold embrace of death, clarity finally pierced my obsession. I understood then that I never should have used the ashes of our past to chain a man whose heart had already moved on.

I opened my eyes and found myself thrust back to the exact day Carlos returned hand-in-hand with Lilia, his memories entirely wiped clean...

My husband's mistress sent me a video to rub it in, claiming she had just beaten my "pathetic, begging mother" bloody and kicked her down the stairs.
I froze, glancing up at my actual mother sitting right across from me, quietly sipping her coffee.
Bewildered, I zoomed in on the video.
When I made out the scar on the wrist of the woman lying in the pool of blood, a cold sweat broke out over my body. I frantically called my husband.
But he interrupted my plea with extreme impatience: "Shut up! Roxy was right to teach her a lesson. She was just taking out the trash for me!"
Since he insisted on indulging his precious mistress's death wish...
I wonder if he'll still be able to say she was right to teach her a lesson when he sees his own grandmother's corpse.

On our wedding day, my fiancé, Preston Vale, didn't come to walk me down the aisle. Instead, he brought Silas Rowan—the "unstable" son of his family's former driver.
"Walk through the ceremony with him," Preston demanded, wrapping his arm around his secretary, Lydia. "Consider it your apology for upsetting her."
Lydia smiled with practiced delicacy. "It's just a little joke, Maren. Don't be so dramatic. I'll be keeping Mr. Vale company today."
Preston looked down at me with arrogant certainty. "It's a prank. Why are you getting so hysterical?"
Seeing the smugness in his eyes, the love I had protected for five years finally shattered. I calmly turned to the quiet man standing in the borrowed suit.
"He came dressed as a groom to take his bride. How is this a game?" I stepped away from Preston and held my hand out to the supposed lunatic. "If we are going to do this, we make it real. Silas, will you marry me?"

Spring is the season I dread the most.

Because every spring, my mere existence becomes a lethal weapon against my own son.

Theron told me he suffers from a highly rare condition: Maternal Stress Rejection Syndrome.

If I so much as get near Flynn during the spring months, it triggers severe asthma attacks and terrifying asphyxiation.

To keep our boy alive, Theron takes him away to an isolated treatment center for three months, every single year.

And I stay behind, swallowing antidepressants by the handful just to survive the crushing guilt.

That is, until I found a photo hidden in Theron's burner phone.

In the picture, my husband and my son are tightly embracing another woman.

The so-called Maternal Stress Rejection Syndrome was nothing but a sick lie—a meticulously crafted excuse so my husband could spend the season playing "happy family" with his first love.

......

I begged my detective husband to save our kidnapped son.

Instead, he hung up on my desperate calls, too busy comforting his terrified first love.

The kidnappers wanted half a million dollars—the exact amount he had just drained from our joint account to spoil her.

When I sobbed that his own flesh and blood was hanging by a thread, he scoffed and dismissed me as a jealous liar.

In the end, the kidnappers sent back my seven-year-old's severed head.

Even in the bloody aftermath, my husband fought tooth and nail for his first love—the true mastermind behind our child's death.

It wasn't until I dragged him before that tiny, headless body and made him identify his son that his mind finally snapped.

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of the dark midnight shadows.
He offered me hellish training and a sharp blade of revenge.
I buried my soft heart, handed over my soul, and vowed to make every traitor pay.

“Aren't you a hooker that anyone could on top of you with money?”
When they met, he became her guest in room...

Exiled to the wasteland by wife and children? No problem, I'll open an arms factory there.
Everything stolen by a rival? No worries, his technology is garbage I discarded seven years ago.
My ex-wife throws me a repairman's business card and demands my knees? Fine, see you at the military academy ceremony tomorrow.
Her son, dressed in his rival's "super armor," goes around showing off, only to be exposed in public by my ten-year-old son: "With a 0.7-second delay, an S-class mutant could kill you three times."
My rival brings his private army to capture me?
My wife leads a regular army, smashing the dome and descending from the sky: "Try touching my husband!"
My rival, cornered, releases the Abyss Mother Beast?
I pilot Zero Mech, one-shotting her.
My ex-wife kneels in the ruins, crying. I don't even glance at her.
Betrayed me? You don't deserve it.

My wife, the most ruthless godmother in New York's underworld, wants a divorce.
The reason? Her male subordinate's old wound has flared up, and he only has three months to live. She wants to accompany him on his final journey as his wife.
To make room for her new lover, she not only doesn't go home, but even allows him to frame me for a fabricated death sentence.
In the dimly lit underground interrogation room, the backlash from deviating from the proper procedures caused my organs to rapidly fail, and I developed a persistent high fever.
Through the iron bars, she looked at my disfigured body, not recognizing me, but coldly raising her gun and giving the order to execute me herself.
She proudly believed that by clearing the way, she could go back and have a grand wedding with the man who was feigning illness.
Until the last shot, when my breathing stopped completely, she saw the old scar on the back of my left hand—the scar from the severed finger I had left for her.
That once arrogant godmother instantly broke down in tears beside my corpse.

Seven years ago, betrayed by my closest friend and my fiancée, I was thrown into the lightless Black Sea Death Prison and tortured mercilessly.

Seven years later, I returned through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, only to find my crippled little sister being trampled in the mud by my former "brother," forcing her to sign a humiliating organ extraction contract.

"A worthless ghost who just crawled out of death row—what makes you think you can fight a billionaire tycoon like me?"

At a grand banquet at the Peninsula Hotel, the treacherous couple threw a bloody dog bone at my feet. They mobilized hundreds of heavily armed SWAT officers to surround me, demanding I kneel, kowtow, and call them master.

They thought their wealth and power made them untouchable on the West Coast, assuming I was still the same spineless weakling from years ago.

That was until an EMP tore through the night sky. Three military stealth fighter jets hovered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and hundreds of laser sights from the nation's most classified special forces locked dead center on the foreheads of every elite in the room.

Under the horrified gazes of the city's high society, a four-star general crashed through the window and gave me the highest military salute:

"Tier Zero Task Force assembled! Supreme Commander, please give the order to purge!"

At that moment, the high-and-mighty tycoons finally remembered the terror of being dominated by the abyss.

In the wasteland era, the soil is dead. Whoever can grow food is king.
In my last life, my brother gave me the spore we had nearly died to get, and the two of us awakened plant-growing powers together.
But every grain he grew was full and perfect, and the leader placed him on a pedestal; everything I grew was poisonous, and I was mercilessly cast out as worthless.
It wasn't until I died that I learned the truth: his power was never plant-growing, but transfer.
As long as he had eaten the spore, he could transfer away all the crops I grew.
When I got a second chance, I returned to the very day my so-called brother tried to shove the spore into my mouth.
This time, I slammed into him, knocked the spore to the ground, and crushed it under my foot.

I used to be Henry’s adopted daughter. He taught me manners, and kept repeating one rule: “Stay away from humans.”
But I still betrayed him for a human named Avery.
I thought it was love… until the day I started hemorrhaging before giving birth.
Avery dumped me at Henry’s feet in front of everyone, sneering as he asked:
“Didn’t you say humans are low creatures? Well, your unbonded daughter got knocked up by me, filthier than a whore. Are you still going to save her?”
In that moment, Henry didn’t shove me away.
He lowered his head, pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, sank his teeth into my skin and branded me with a mate mark.
That’s when I finally understood I wasn’t his daughter.
I was his fated mate.
And still, we were expelled from the Pack.
Ten years later, Avery had become Eric Jones, a powerful man everyone scrambled to flatter and I was Rory, the underground casino’s whore up for auction.
This time, I was going to make Avery pay.

They gave me to a Mafia family because their real daughter was too precious to sacrifice.

My husband was supposed to be a crippled, impotent psychopath nobody wanted.

But on my wedding night, I found out that the man in the wheelchair could walk. And he wasn't crazy.

He was dangerous.

And worse, he already knew me.

Years ago, I saved the life of a wounded stranger and never saw him again.

I never imagined that the stranger would become my husband, or that the most feared Mafia heir in New York would make me the one thing his enemies could use against him.

My family thought they had sent me to my death.

They didn't realize they had handed me to the Mafia King.

“Do I really deserve this?”
Dr. Xavier Brown asked the void after the woman he loved smiled and shoved him off a rooftop.

He died a brilliant, betrayed genius… only to wake up as the worthless secondary character in a trashy web novel.

The pathetic live-in son-in-law.
The disposable husband.
The man scripted to be humiliated, divorced, and killed so the protagonists could shine.

Died once.
Refused to die again.

Armed with every humiliating page of his own doom, Xavier signs the divorce papers with a smirk, takes the money, and kicks the first death flag into the dirt.

But the story doesn’t let go so easily.

When he saves the mother of Isabella Voss, the novel’s ice-cold villainess, using medicine this world has never seen, she doesn’t destroy him.
She builds him a kingdom: a hospital with top-notch facilities, an empire of shadows, and a love that feels dangerously real.

Then the truth rips the script apart.

He isn’t Alexander Rodriguez.
He is Alexander Winchester, erased heir to a hidden mafia family, legendary assassin king, memory wiped and chained as a live-in dog by the very people who now call themselves heroes.

Six deadly sisters descend to reclaim him.
A ruthless CEO. A ghost hacker, an assassin trainer, a pharmaceutical prodigy, a public opinion goddess, and the youngest who sees what’s coming before it breathes.

With a system that evolves from cold machine to snarky partner in crime, Xavier walks two paths at once:

The Healer who rewrites life, and the Ruler who burns false fates to ash.

But Karma never dies, Damien and Sophie met with their consequences

Every betrayal returns.
Every death flag screams.

“Do I really deserve this?”

Xavier smiles, scalpel in one hand, shadow in the other.

This time the answer is yes.

I am a hero. The saint's husband.
A country boy chosen by the temple.
I fight, I fight, I fight.
All for the saint, for the temple.
But it wasn't until I was drained of blood and dying on the altar that I finally heard clearly what the saint and her childhood sweetheart were saying:
"If you become a hero and marry the saint, you'll have to surrender your soul to the temple. I don't want you to lose your soul."
"Then let's just find some country boy to be the hero. It won't matter if he dies."
Oh, so that's how it is.
You should have said so earlier.
I can defeat the Demon Lord just fine without the saint.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the wedding ceremony.
This time, someone else should be on the altar.