4771 Book(s) Related to ruby bridges goes to school: my true story

"Your credit code has been wiped to zero. You are worse than a cyber-dog now."

I fought bloody battles in the Abyss for the Federation for three years, only for my wife to be framed by my adjutant, her left arm shattered, and kicked into a wasteland scavenger town like a dead dog.

Three years later, I returned from the bloodbath. What awaited me was not a medal of honor, but the megacorp's indiscriminate bombing order aimed at my wife.

High up in Cloud City, the megacorp executives raised their wine glasses and sneered: "Burn it all to ashes, along with that crippled woman!"

They seemed to have forgotten that I am the Grand Marshal of the Federation, and an absolute war maniac.

Since the law means nothing, I will use the purest firepower to drag their massive fleet and the entire megacorp straight down to hell!

When my boyfriend was a child, a maid sacrificed herself to save him from a fire. Afterward, his wealthy family adopted her daughter. Ever since, he tied himself to this adopted sister, giving her everything she demanded to repay that debt of gratitude.
Jealous of me, she framed and sabotaged me time and time again. And out of guilt, he always took her side.
Until one day, just to make her happy, he abandoned me in a freezing blizzard deep in the mountains.
Hunted by a hitman, I called him for help in desperation. Instead, I heard them laughing and clinking wine glasses over the phone.
"Stop faking your death," he scoffed. "And pick up some pizza on your way back." Then, he hung up.
He didn't know that the hitman hunting me down was hired by her for $50,000.
And he definitely didn't know that the "debt" he worshipped for years was built on a horrifying lie. During that fire years ago, the maid could have escaped. It was his precious adopted sister who deliberately locked the door, burning her own mother alive just so she could be taken in by his rich family.
At my birthday banquet, he planned to publicly humiliate me with a prank video, then step in to propose with a diamond ring like a "savior."
But when the giant screen lit up, it didn't show my humiliation. It broadcasted the ironclad proof of his sister hiring my killer and murdering her own mother!
Meanwhile, I was already sitting in first class on a flight to Paris.
Amidst the wailing police sirens, that was when he finally realized what a massive, unforgivable mistake he had made.

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

Six months into our marriage, Adrian still wouldn’t touch me.
Every time I reached for him, he pulled away at the last moment. I thought he didn’t love me. I thought he’d only married me because my sister had run away to Paris.
So I drafted our divorce papers.
But just as I was preparing to leave, I discovered his secret. He had stolen my lingerie, tattooed my name on his body, and turned to the internet for advice under an anonymous account:
“I’ve loved her for years. How do I make her see it?”

I am Catherine Holloway, CEO of a tech company in Seattle.
It was just an ordinary rainy night. I was driving my Porsche Cayenne toward the airport when a beat-up Ford pickup rear-ended me on the off-ramp.
I never imagined that this seemingly routine accident would drag me into a serial murder case — turning me from a witness into the police's prime suspect.

I'm the youngest lead surgeon in our hospital's cardiothoracic department. My fiancé, Adrian Wexford, runs the whole department.

His first love, Bella Hartley, is a mediocre surgeon, but she wants to take over the surgery that should be mine before her promotion review.

In my last life, I fought for it. I told them she didn't have the skill to handle it alone, that it was gambling with a patient's life. I threatened to quit and saved the patient.

But Bella couldn't handle the gossip going around the department. She got depressed and jumped off the hospital roof.

Adrian never said a word about it. He kept treating me the same, picked out wedding rings with me, smiled and told me we'd go on our honeymoon right after the wedding.

I thought he'd let it go.

Then on our wedding day, one glass of wine in, I woke up in a freezing basement, strapped down to an operating table.

He held a scalpel and cut into me, inch by inch, his eyes bloodshot.

"If you hadn't fought so hard for that surgery, Bella wouldn't have jumped. You owe her. Pay with your life."

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the afternoon he first suggested giving Bella the surgery.

This time, I didn't argue. I just smiled. "Sure. Let Bella take the lead on this one."

They have no idea that next Tuesday, the Chief of Surgery is bringing the board and a visiting specialist to observe, unannounced.

We'll see how they explain this one.

When Catherine Meyers started a new school in New York all she wanted was to be invincible. She was okay with being in the background. She planned to finish high school with a good GPA and go to Harvard. She wanted to be a neurosurgeon.

But her hopes were shattered when a force from the past which she couldn't remember barged into her life again.
And this time he promised to ruin her.

Ace Hampton was the King of Riverside highschool and Catherine Meyers is the rose he vowed to remove her petals one after the other until she is gone.

Her father killed his father, how dare she act like she doesn't know him?

He remembers her but she couldn't remember him and he would make her pay.

★★★
WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS SEXUAL SCENES AND BEHAVIORS THAT MIGHT SEEM WEIRD TO OTHER PEOPLE SO IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED PLEASE AVOID THIS BOOK.
BE WARNED THIS IS A DARK ROMANCE BOOK.

I was breathtakingly beautiful.

When I turned eighteen, I became linked to a system that let me share my beauty.

My younger sister, Chloe Bennett, spent an entire night crying under her covers because everyone in her class had a cruel nickname for her. Without telling her, I gave her seventy percent.

By the end of summer, she was the prettiest girl at school. I was someone nobody noticed.

Mom squeezed Chloe’s cheeks and beamed. “Look at you, all grown up. You get those looks from me.”

Then she looked at me and curled her lip. “You get uglier every year. If I’d known, I would’ve left you at the hospital.”

Later, Chloe said she wanted to be a star. I raised her share to ninety percent.

My family sold whatever they could to put her through a televised talent competition. Dad pointed at me.

“With that face, you can be your sister’s maid. Bring her drinks and stay out of sight.”

Chloe made it all the way to the finals and won the lead spot in the new girl group.

That night, she was trending.

[CHLOE BENNETT’S JEALOUS SISTER GETS PLASTIC SURGERY]

She wiped away tears for the camera. “My sister had surgery, and it went wrong. Now she yells at me every day, saying I stole her face. I’m scared she’ll cut me in my sleep.”

The comments called me a hideous freak. Someone posted our address, and red paint was splashed across our front door.

That evening, Chloe went live to thank her fans, the camera close to her radiant face.

“All natural. I got this face from my parents.”

Mom and Dad sat on the couch, grinning from ear to ear.

I opened the system panel.

[CURRENT BEAUTY SHARE: 90%]

Fine. If her parents had given her that face, she wouldn’t need mine.

I was taking it back.

“Chen Lu Xian,” a brilliant surgeon, meets his end—
only to awaken as “Chen Lu,” a disfigured and worthless noble son.
When fate takes a dramatic turn,
his new goal becomes clear: vengeance
and rising again as a miracle physician of unmatched skill.
Lu Xian uses a restaurant as a front…
while secretly operating a hidden clinic behind the scenes.
He trains handmaidens in the healing arts,
alongside their practice in martial cultivation.
Fate entangles Lu Xian with the Fourth Prince,
a war-torn man bearing wounds from the battlefield.
That one act of healing… alters his life forever—
when he is forced into marriage!
From celestial physician to imperial consort of the Fourth Prince,
how will Chen Lu use his wits to survive the treacherous tides of court intrigue?
A path lined with schemes, love, and fierce battles lies ahead…

“Your fate hasn’t changed,” he says, stepping closer. “What you saw will come to pass—unless you break the curse.”

“How?” My voice trembles. “Please, tell me. Anything to stop that horror.”

His gaze darkens. “Your death… by the hands of your mate.”

My world stops. And when I turn to Bion, his face is pale—like he already knows.

~

On her eighteenth birthday, Melanie Spane’s life shatters. Meeting her destined mate, Bion Anaxagoras—the most powerful and untouchable boy in school—should have been a dream. Instead, it becomes the beginning of her curse.

Memories of another life begin to surface. A hidden truth starts to crack: Melanie is no ordinary girl—she’s the lost princess of the supernatural world.

The same princess cursed by an ancient witch.
The same princess destined to destroy everything and everyone.

And the only way to stop her—is for her mate to kill her.

But Bion is no hero. He’s darkness wrapped in one—loyal only to her.

He would burn the world to see her breathe.

A fated love.

A deadly curse.

A choice between love and the end of the world.

Brynlee Walker has always loved hockey. She has played since middle school and has worked hard to become one of the best players in her school.
When she gets accepted into a 90-day elite hockey program, filled with experienced players and newbies, she sees it as her chance to finally get noticed and take her hockey career to another level.
But she never expected Nolan Hayes to be there.
Nolan is her older brother, Brian's best friend, handsome, wealthy and talented who have known each other for years, but Nolan and Brynlee have never really been close. She used to have a little crush on him, but she gave up on it a long time ago because she never thought he would see her in that light.
Now they are living in the same house and training together for the next 90 days.
Brynlee wants to focus on hockey and prove that she deserves to be there.
Nolan doesn't seem interested in getting close to her either. But as the days go by, things between them slowly start to change.
With competition, new friendships and unexpected feelings getting in the way, Brynlee soon realizes that these 90 days might change more than just her hockey career.

In the kingdom of the Alpha King, Janelle, a trusted servant, conceals a burning desire for revenge against her parents' killers. When she discovers her true mate is the prince, her world is thrown into turmoil. Torn between love and vengeance, Janelle's quest for justice takes a dangerous turn as secrets unravel and betrayal lurks at every corner. Will she choose love or succumb to the darkness of her past?

A Hollywood producer pays stunt performer Mara Keene half a million dollars to move in with her movie-star son. She'll get another half million if she can keep Theo Mercer away from the actress who's been taking advantage of him.

Theo opens the door, learns what his mother has done, and tells Mara to get out. Mara is ready to return the money—until his mother offers the second payment. She turns back with her suitcase. Theo can hate the arrangement all he wants; Mara isn't leaving. But sharing a house with a man who refuses to be managed may prove harder than taking the job.

My husband locked me in a suitcase to punish me for frightening his childhood sweetheart. He said I could come out when I apologized. By the time his assistant warned him about the smell, our baby and I were already dead. But Adrian still expected me to crawl out and beg for forgiveness—and I was trapped beside him, watching.

She didn't like them. She'd have stayed away from them if she could but her past hold her captive.

He's always wanted a mate and he's finally found her.... but why isn't he with her yet?

After an attempt on her life revealed she had been betrayed by her lover; Harper, the most powerful of witches, seeks revenge on his entire kingdom. Set on thwarting his attempt to gain the lands of both the Warlocks and the Vampires, Harper utilizes her powers as a Scarlet Witch to torment his entire parliament. It is not good enough to just kill him, she wants to enjoy watching him suffer and fail. Brayden will rue the day he betrayed her; as will his entire kingdom. There is no stopping the most powerful Scarlet Witch.

Dan Belinni Series — Book Three

Rebecca Windsor was born a mafia princess and raised to obey.

At eighteen, her future is already decided. She has a respectable fiancé, a powerful family, and a marriage arranged for convenience. She should be grateful.

Then she meets the one man she was never supposed to want.

William Belinni is the heir to the Chicago Outfit—a ruthless, unpredictable man preparing to inherit his father's empire. He doesn't want love. He doesn't want marriage. He certainly doesn't want a woman already promised to someone else.

But when he finds Rebecca crying alone in the darkness of his private garden, something changes.

She doesn't know who he is.

He doesn't tell her.

One conversation becomes an obsession. One stolen moment becomes a temptation neither can escape.

Rebecca has spent her entire life believing her destiny belongs to her family.

William has spent his life taking whatever he wants.

And now he wants her.

But in the mafia, broken engagements are more than scandals. They are threats to power, loyalty, and blood.

If William claims the woman promised to another man, he could ignite a war between their families.

And Rebecca may finally have to decide whether she will continue living the life chosen for her...

or risk everything for the man who makes her want to choose for herself.

My name is Charlotte. I'm the daughter of the senator of Seaside. I have grown up around the ocean my whole life. I have maids and servants who help me dress, and who cook for me. Im trying to escape an arranged marriage to an old, ugly senator. Mr Waterford. I tried to go to a witch in the woods, and somehow someone found out about it. They hanged her. I knew that the King of Pirates would visit her often, and some believed that he was a witch as well. I did not know. I have never meant the king of pirates. I had heard that he had died, and now his son was the king. On the night of my arranged wedding, I decided to run away. I ran to the nearest pub, where I met a mysterious stranger.
" What is a girl like you doing here?"
" Shhh, please don't say anything."
I try to get by him, and he stops and grabs me by the hand and drags me toward the docks. I recognize the pirate ship. I try to pull away from him, and he won't let me go.
" What are you doing?"
" Im taking you with me."
Little did I know that would seal my destiny. My view on what is wrong and right would change. I would be thrust into the world of witches ,pirates and mermaids.

I had escaped my arranged marriage after discovering my fiancé was cheating on me, and I had never imagined that I would end up pregnant from a one-night stand with a mysterious muscleman...

One cool night three months later...
I teased myself, my fingers soaked with excitement.
I was almost there - so close. A little more, a little harder...
Something made me open my eyes, some sixth sense that I was not alone. Just outside the door, a man's silhouette was visible.
I didn't shy away, nor did I cover myself, but stared into the man's amber eyes.
With a cry that was half pleasure, half humiliation, tears welled up in my eyes -
"Oh, God," I gasped, my body still convulsing in the aftershocks. "Oh, fuck. Who the hell are you?"

He walked closer to me, letting me see him clearly. How did my one-night stand get in my house?
"Come home with me, my pregnant runaway bride..."
What on earth is he talking about? My one-night stand is my cheating ex-fiancé?
Fuck! When his business rival Lucas launched a fierce pursuit of me, I found that he cheated on me again!
Let's see the billionaire's journey of chasing his wife.

“You seem to have forgotten that you’re not marrying a commoner, Alina. You’re marrying the prince of all vampires, so look alive and get me some coffee.”
Alina Deluca lives a normal life up in the Californian north. At least that’s what she makes the world believe. Locked within her hypnotizing emerald eyes are horrors she could never speak of, even if it killed her.
Erick Stayton, the vampire prince, is her nightmare. To her, he was no more than a cold, savage predator that lusted for her blood and took away everything she had during that one traumatizing night four years ago. Problem is, she is bound to be his bride.
Mustering every strength to set things right in her awry life, she gets embroiled in an ages-old feud and a struggle for power of mind-boggling proportions. Strangely enough, she finds herself connecting with Erick in ways she never knew she could. Suddenly, everything is not what it seems.
Is Erick the heartless monster Alina makes him out to be? Will a vampire law made eons ago be the undoing of the whole vampire race? Will heated passion bloom in these bloodiest of times?

Everyone knew Kieran Blackwood was the most dangerous man in this city—mafia boss, hands stained with blood.

And I, Aurelia Fairmont, the rebellious heiress, was his dirty little secret.

Every night, he'd pin me beneath him, claiming me with that rough whisper against my ear: "You're mine. Always." That possessive hunger made me believe I meant something to him.

Until she came back.

When danger struck, he didn't hesitate for a second. He dove for her, shielding her body with his own.

I was just his plaything while he waited for her return. A toy that could moan.

When she stole my mother's heirloom, he didn't just refuse to help—he locked me in his basement and tortured me for seven days and nights. That's when I finally saw the truth.

The day I left, I didn't look back.

What I didn't know was that after I left, the man went insane...

In a suburban election season lit by police strobes and viral outrage, assistant district attorney Karen Hale is cast as the perfect villain when a little girl is found dead beside a swing set. As edited videos, staged grief, and buried secrets close in, Karen uncovers a chilling web of paternity, manipulation, and murder—where playgrounds, rain-slick streets, surveillance logs, and a child’s empty swing become the battleground of a dark domestic thriller.

For seven years, Claire Sutton played the perfect daughter, sister, and fiancée—because a voice in her head promised her $100 million and a ticket home if she could make her family love her.
She cooked. She apologized. She sanded down every edge they hated. She got all three of them to 99%.
Then Vanessa—the girl the Suttons raised in her place—came home. Three days later, every score was zero.
So Claire took the only other way out: die in this world, wake up in her own.
Simple. Except now that she's done begging for their love, her mother, her brother, and her fiancé suddenly can't let her go. They lock the windows. They cry at her bedside. They swear they'll do better.
Claire doesn't want better. She wants out.
And they're about to learn that some apologies arrive too late to matter.

When he was alive, Owen loved me so much he’d give his life for me. Yet, as for his death, I was as cold as a mere bystander.
At the funeral, his family slapped me, clawed at my throat, called me a man-eating black widow. Every last one of them turned on me, eyes red, demanding the same thing: Who killed Owen?
I didn't say a word.
My ten-year-old son went into cardiac arrest right there and was rushed to the ER — and still I said nothing.
Not until that voice cut through the crowd.
"I killed Owen."
I slowly raised my eyes.
After staying silent for so long… maybe it was finally time to tell the truth.

Growing up, my parents and brother favored only me, treating my sister Della like a burden. They locked her in the basement and fled overnight with me to Aldermere.
Twenty years later, for the sake of my upcoming wedding, they brought me back to that old house to erase the last traces of her existence.
But none of us expected that Della wasn't dead. Decades had passed, yet she still looked exactly as she did back then. She even followed us to our new home—and right now, she’s sitting quietly on our living room sofa, slowly turning her head to smile at us...

I tricked my billionaire husband into signing divorce papers—he had no idea.

"Exam documents," I lied.

His ex-wife laughed. "Boring paperwork. Don't bother reading it."

He signed without even looking.

Three years of marriage. I thought he'd learn to love me. Ever since she came back, my dinners grew cold while I reheated them alone. I waited in our bed, night after night. I watched him drop everything and run to her with every phone call.

Then I found out I was pregnant.

That same day, I saw him at the hospital—holding her hand, asking about her baby.

I finally stopped waiting.

I left the estate at dawn. Left behind the jewelry, the designer clothes, the empty promises.

Then he showed up at my door.

"I know about the baby," his voice was raw. "I know about the accident. I know everything."

He looked at me like I was his entire world.

Three years too late? Or just in time?

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.
I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.
After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.
Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.
But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.
The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.
Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—
I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

When my roommate Sutton woke up from a wet dream, she was literally glowing. She claimed it was the most mind-blowing romantic experience of her life—the man’s silhouette, his scent, his body heat felt impossibly real.
Even crazier? When she checked her phone, there was a strange new number saved in her contacts. It belonged to the man from her dream.
While the rest of us shrieked about destiny, our moody roommate Jessamine just stared at the screen and dropped a chilling warning: "Things that come looking for you in dreams should stay buried."
We all wrote her off as a jealous freak.
That is, until I started noticing Sutton’s face growing more haggard by the day—and the fact that her "perfect boyfriend" refused to speak a single word to her.

For six years, my mother Isolde believed I had committed an unforgivable sin. Under the guise of "reforming my character," she continuously injected me with neurotoxic antibiotics, confining me to a wheelchair to act as a crippled companion to my sister, Alondra.
My entire family silently condoned this punishment, favoring my sister who was merely faking her paralysis. I had long since surrendered all my dignity, numbly enduring every injustice.
On my nineteenth birthday, I humbly begged her to stop the injections for just one day. I didn't want to look pathetic in front of my childhood sweetheart, Joren.
Moments later, I uncovered the cruel truth on the balcony: my sister’s legs had healed long ago. Six years of agony had been nothing but a staged performance.
The long-accumulated drug toxicity suddenly erupted inside my body. I tumbled to the floor together with my wheelchair. Summoning the last ounce of my strength, I managed to reach a bottle of pills meant to alleviate the toxicity.
As my consciousness faded, a faint, hopeless wish lingered in my heart: I thought that if I just fell asleep, I might regain feeling in my legs when I woke up.
When I opened my eyes again, I realized with horror—I was already dead.

I died on the day I was supposed to marry Grayson.
Because my sister Delilah had her heart "broken," my family decided to bring her to our farm in Ashwood to heal through horseback riding. The wedding was postponed.
I lay in the stable at the Clarke family farm, dialing my mother's number with blood-covered fingers.
All she said was: "What kind of game are you playing now? You think if you act pitiful we'll come running? Vivienne, enough!"
My fiancé Grayson was even more brutal: "It's just a postponement, not a cancellation. If you can't handle that, then let's just call the whole thing off—I'll marry Delilah instead."
This was the last time they would disappoint me.
And the last time I would call for help.
I lay in my own pool of blood, already without breath. They thought I was just throwing a tantrum, hiding somewhere to sulk. They thought if they ignored me long enough, I'd come crawling back to apologize.
But they didn't know.
I was already dead.

The night my sister, Quinn, got her registered nurse license was supposed to be Jude's big moment—down on one knee, proposing.
Instead, Garrett showed up. The same animal who assaulted Quinn in the redwood forest six years ago and drove our mother to her death in the ocean.
Her future mother-in-law took back the ring on the spot, and her fiancé trailed after her like a kicked puppy.
The entire town of Hawkins went from pity to disgust when they looked at us.
Seven days later, the deputy sheriff stood in my kitchen, staring at the twenty-second batch of bubbling meat sauce...

During routine rounds, I never gave Linus Crewe a second thought. Nineteen years old, diagnosed with persistent hallucinatory disorder, just another trust fund kid tossed into the psych ward like garbage by his own family.
But that day, he locked eyes with me and claimed that the moment his skin touched someone else's, he could see their deepest, darkest secrets.
I scoffed. As a female doctor who married into money, harbored a thirst for revenge, and kept a secret lover on the side, someone seeing through my facade was my ultimate nightmare.
I thought he was just playing mind games.
Until he recounted, word for word, things even my husband didn't know. He just smiled and said: Then tell me, Dr. Hollister... why is your heart racing when you look at me?

Lysander’s ex-girlfriend, Evangeline, suggested a hiking trip. Out of obligation to me as his fiancée, he brought me along.
We got lost in the woods and trespassed onto the territory of his half-brother, Orion.
When Orion pointed a gun at us and forced him to choose—
In my past life, he chose me.
As a result, Evangeline was sold to a rival, Matthias, and was tortured to death. I spent the rest of my life bearing the full weight of Lysander’s hatred.
In the third year of our marriage, I lay in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. He stood coldly beside me and said, "Now you know how it feels to lose the love of your life."
Reborn into this life, as Orion’s gun points at me and Evangeline once again, I make the choice for him.
I’m leaving the chance to survive to his true love.

In bed, he gripped my hips, whispering, "Principessa." In public, he was Cosimo—the ruthless mafia don who dismissed me with an icy, "Piccola."
For three years after he bought me, he never touched me. But a year ago, when Caterina returned, everything changed. He became a man possessed, tearing my dresses to shreds in the dead of night, claiming me with wild fury. He even promised to marry me in seven days.
On a storm-drenched afternoon, clutching my positive pregnancy test, I rushed to his private club to surprise him.
But as my hand touched the doorknob, Cosimo’s cold warning drifted through the door.
"Marcellino, know your place as a double. My things—especially Serenella—are strictly off-limits."
My blood ran cold. I peeked through the gap.
Cosimo sat on the sofa, completely indifferent. And by the pool table stood a man with a face identical to his.

They pulled my husband Beckett’s car out of the Avery River at four in the morning.
I was sitting in the reception area of the Ardenvale police station, having waited all night. Everyone thought I was just the pathetic wife—the one who had been humiliated at her mother-in-law’s birthday banquet, went home early, and panicked when her husband never returned.
No one knew that from the moment I dialed 911, this was exactly the news I had been waiting for.
He was dead. And I was the one who made it happen.

On the night my grandmother died, my husband Kael came home trailing blood.
His leather motorcycle jacket was soaked dark red, yet he flashed a savage grin: "I wiped the floor with those bastards tonight!"
For three years, he had treated our home as nothing more than a pit stop between reckless street races.
I’d finally had enough. "After the funeral, we're getting a divorce."
Before the words fully left my mouth, my phone rang. It was his riding partner, Lunn, his voice choking with sobs: "Sera... Kael drove off the cliff tonight. They only recovered bloody pieces of his helmet!"
But the "dead man" was standing right in front of me...

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very murderer who killed me.
I had been dead for exactly three days. No one cared. My body was rotting back in a moldy storage room.
Through it all, my soul was trapped in the manor, forced to witness this absurd farce.
But what they didn't expect was that when they finally learned of my death—
Everyone went completely insane.

My five-year-old son, Emrys, was poisoned by the deadly "Silver Eclipse." The only cure, Moonbloom Serum, had been seized entirely by my husband, Corvin, to save it for his nine-month-pregnant mistress, Melisande.
He froze all my bank accounts, forcing me to pawn the ring that symbolized my status as Luna and brave the dangerous black market just to secure the antidote.
But by the time I rushed back to the hospital, covered in blood, my child’s organs had already failed. He was gone.
When I threw the death certificate and divorce papers in Corvin’s face in despair, he just looked at me with mockery, accusing me of using our own flesh and blood to put on an act for his attention.
At that moment, all my love for him died completely. I took my son’s ashes, left the Ashmere pack, and decisively severed a mate bond that had tied us together for years...

The morning of our wedding, Dante Russo led the hit that wiped out my family.
Branded a traitor, stripped of my name, I spent three years scrubbing blood from dog kennels at the docks. I lost my hands, my music, and three babies I never got to hold.
Then I learned the truth: there was no hit. My parents and the man I loved staged it all—to teach me a lesson, because my adopted sister Isabella cried that I’d hurt her.
Now Dante is marrying Isabella. And he wants me there on my knees, pouring her champagne.
I said yes.
But I bled out on the concrete the night before.
They think I’m sulking. They smash everything I ever gave them to punish me for not showing up.
And when my body is finally wheeled into their wedding in a black bag, the most dangerous men in Gotham City will learn what they’ve done.
Too late.

I was murdered. My body was dumped on the riverbank.
The detective leading the case is Brennan Carter — my husband. He has sworn to find the killer of this "unidentified female." He doesn't know the victim is me.
I've been missing for seven days. My colleagues and supervisors keep calling Brennan to ask where I am. Dismissing it as a tantrum, he's spent the week doing one thing: celebrating his mistress Tessa's birthday.
It wasn't until my phone turned up at the crime scene that it finally hit him — the wife he'd wished would disappear might actually be gone.

The night before the gala where my rich family would finally claim me as their real daughter, I sent an email to my future self.
Have Mom and Dad really accepted me?
Does Spencer still hate me?
Julian and I are married by now, right?
A second later, my inbox exploded.
Dozens of photos, one after another, loading faster than I could scroll. Every single one was Julian—my Julian—wrapped around Camille. Kissing her. Cradling her face like she was something precious.
The blood drained out of me.
Then the voice messages started. And the voice was mine—older, hoarse, recorded somewhere I didn't recognize, and raw with panic.
"They're going to kill you—"
"Mom and Dad want to make it up to Camille, so tomorrow at the gala they're going to stage an accident. A fire. They burn your legs on purpose—you'll be crippled, Cora. In a wheelchair for the rest of your life—"
"Spencer leaks the videos. He says the only way Camille gets to be an Ashcroft again is if you're destroyed—"
"And Julian—he's so terrified you'll expose the truth and hurt her that he's the one who has you committed. He signs the papers himself."
The last message was barely a voice at all. Just breath, thin and failing.
"Cora. Don't go back."

The night I collapsed at my desk from acute appendicitis, my husband’s phone rang thirty-seven times. He didn't answer a single one.
When he finally strolled into my hospital room the next day, his excuse was that he had been entertaining clients all night and his phone was on silent.
"A multi-million dollar contract versus a minor surgery—which do you think is more important?" Nathan asked, adjusting his cuffs. "As the CEO's wife, I’d expect you to have some sense of the bigger picture."
I didn't say a word. I just nodded.
Not because I agreed with him, but because the first thing I saw when I woke up from anesthesia was his secretary's latest social media post: a sky ablaze with green aurora, and Nathan with his arm around her shoulders, his back to the camera.
Thinking I had finally learned my place, my husband looked thoroughly satisfied. He casually mentioned that once things settled down, he would officially hand over my position as Project Director to her, "so you can relax a bit."
But he didn't know.
He didn't need to wait for things to settle down.
I didn't want the position anymore. I didn't want his company. And him? I didn't want him, either.

My mother-in-law, Dorothy, sneered that I dressed like a janitor. My husband, Adrian, called my design sketches "a waste of fabric." Even the son I carried for nine months called me an embarrassment, saying he wished his dad’s secretary, Madison, was his mother.
For eight long years, I was nothing but an unpaid maid in this house.
Until today, when the doctor told me severe exhaustion was causing my heart to fail. And my eight-year-old son just pointed at the bag of medicine in my hand, shrieking, "You just have a headache! Why are you wasting money on medicine?"
I didn't argue. I didn't cry. I went home, opened the bottom drawer of Adrian’s desk, and signed the divorce papers he had been secretly preparing.
In their wildest dreams, they could never imagine that the sole trigger condition for my late mother's $50 million trust fund was for me to leave this man.

I thought Auden was the most devoted husband in the world—until the day I regained my sight and recognized him on the front page: a serial killer who had murdered eight blonde women.
I had to play blind. I swallowed the liquid the maid brought me—a brew soaked in dead people's eyeballs. I chewed on a human molar in my dinner. I sat perfectly still as I watched him fuck our maid right in front of me, not daring to let a single expression slip.
Because the exact second my vision returned, an anonymous text had popped up on my phone: Don't let Auden know you can see.

In my past life, I died in a freezing, damp basement.
The person who destroyed me was Evelina, the daughter of my father’s mistress. She set a trap at a charity gala, dragged my reputation through the mud, and forced me into a hellish marriage—all so she could strip away everything that rightfully belonged to me.
When I opened my eyes again, I was twenty-two. The gala that sealed my fate was happening tonight.
Before the banquet officially began, I seamlessly swapped two champagne flutes, handing her meticulously woven trap right back to her. When the scandal detonated, sending shockwaves through the ballroom, my eyes landed on Killian—the Vance family's notoriously cold-blooded illegitimate son.
The trust fund my mother left me was still firmly under my control. I walked straight up to him and laid my chips on the table.
My enemies had retreated to the shadows, waiting to strike back. But I was going to use their own conspiracies as stepping stones, clawing back everything I owned, one piece at a time.

To save my mother's life and pay for her experimental cancer treatment, I had to take a night shift at an exclusive private club.
That night, Elias Sinclair had been drugged. He grabbed my wrist, his eyes wild and burning, and whispered, 'Don't go.
Two months later, a constant, sickening wave of nausea confirmed my worst fear: I was pregnant.
The Sinclair family didn’t waste any time. Within days, a contract was shoved in my face. The house and millions of dollars would be mine, but the child would belong to them. The price? I could never see my baby again.
I signed the paper, took the money, and fled the country, thinking our paths would never cross again.
Five years later, I returned to Koren City, wanting nothing more than to quietly care for my ailing mother.
But the one man I swore to avoid blocked my path, smelling of whiskey and dark intent.
"Are you avoiding me, June?"

Seven years ago, I was Velmoor City’s youngest surgeon. A bloodied nursing assistant knelt at my feet, weeping that her thug boyfriend was going to beat her to death. I gave her my guest room.
On her chemo bed, my mother gripped my hand, begging me to kick that woman out. I said she had nowhere else to go.
Later, I caught her wearing my pajamas in my own home. Then, I caught her and my husband naked in his office. Immediately after, a fatal medical error was pinned on me, and my medical license was revoked.
My husband looked at me arrogantly and said: I can liquidate everything I own to settle this for you. On one condition—divorce.
What he didn’t know was that I was pregnant. On the day of the divorce, the judge read out the division of assets: $26.30.
Seven years later, I took a catering gig at a billionaire’s mansion. Less than half an hour into the banquet, his seven-year-old daughter pointed at my seven-year-old daughter. “She stole my ten-million-dollar diamond necklace!”
I looked up and finally recognized him. The billionaire was my "bankrupt" ex-husband. And the woman clinging to his arm, dripping in diamonds, was the nursing assistant who had once knelt at my feet.

I was Alessandro Romano's wife in name only—the mafia godfather of Belluno City.
We had the most extravagant wedding this city had ever seen: three thousand guests, flowers lining every street. Everything except a legal marriage certificate.
Over three years, he promised to sign the papers twenty-two times. He canceled every single one.
He would buy two identical necklaces, hanging one around my neck and the other around his mistress's, trading a night spent comforting her for a dismissive apology to me.
After the twenty-one broken promise, I stopped waiting.
I packed my bags and left for the one city he vowed never to enter.
What I didn't know: after I left, the man who ruled the underworld completely lost control.

Alexandra Moretti has not taken a single step down the aisle when the cathedral doors open behind her.
A nurse comes in with a newborn and a birth record. The mother is in surgery. The father, she says, is the groom.
Vincent DeLuca does not deny it. Neither does his family. They offer ten minutes in the priest's office and a simple arrangement: the boy will be provided for quietly, and Alexandra will still be Mrs. DeLuca.
They have misjudged her.
This was never a wedding. It was a merger, and Alexandra is the only person in the room who read every clause. She sets the ring on a pew, orders her security chief to recover the signed papers, and walks out of St. Patrick's before the ink is dry.
Her father does not stop her.
By tonight, the DeLucas will find out how much of their empire was only ever borrowed.

Married for five years, I always trusted my husband Jasper's excuses.
He had been stationed at our branch hospital for two years without returning home, claiming his administrative duties were simply too overwhelming.
That was until a whistleblower’s letter exposed the tip of an iceberg: a major patient privacy breach in the maternity ward—a scandal he had casually pinned on an intern nurse.
Facing my father’s suspicions, I decided to head to the branch hospital to investigate for myself, keeping the trip a secret from Jasper.
The moment I stepped into the hospital, I collided head-on with absurdity.
Jasper’s mistress, Zayda, was wearing a custom-tailored lab coat despite having zero medical credentials. She was making fun of a pregnant woman's ultrasound and waltzing in and out of clinical areas as she pleased.
Any staff member who dared to step in faced immediate retaliation. The culprit held all the power, while the innocent took the fall.
Intimidated by the hospital president's authority, everyone suffered in silence. But as the tension finally boiled over and Zayda's arrogance peaked, my husband was racing back from a meeting just to back up his mistress.
I stood my ground, waiting for the inevitable confrontation.