Abel Dean

My marriage ended at a charity gala I organized. One moment, I was the pregnant, happy wife of tech mogul Gabe Sullivan; the next, a reporter' s phone screen announced to the world that he and his childhood sweetheart, Harper, were expecting a child. Across the room, I saw them together, his hand resting on her stomach. This wasn't just an affair; it was a public declaration that erased me and our unborn baby. To protect his company's billion-dollar IPO, Gabe, his mother, and even my own adoptive parents conspired against me. They moved Harper into our home, into my bed, treating her like royalty while I became a prisoner. They painted me as unstable, a threat to the family's image. They accused me of cheating and claimed my child wasn't his. The final command was unthinkable: terminate my pregnancy. They locked me in a room and scheduled the procedure, promising to drag me there if I refused. But they made a mistake. They gave me back my phone to keep me quiet. Feigning surrender, I made one last, desperate call to a number I had kept hidden for years-a number belonging to my biological father, Antony Dean, the head of a family so powerful, they could make my husband's world burn.

My phone rang for the tenth time. It was Olivia. The woman I was supposed to marry in thirty minutes. "Liam needs me," she said, distant and thin. "He fell during a stunt on set. The doctor said it' s serious." This wasn' t new. It was always Liam. Two months ago, she left our engagement party for him. Last month, she skipped our final wedding planner meeting for him. Each time, I forgave her, telling myself her heart was too kind. "So that' s it?" My voice was dangerously calm. "You' re choosing him over me. On our wedding day." "You' re making me choose. It' s not fair," she accused. "I thought you loved me. I thought you would support me." She hung up before I could respond. Humiliation washed over me, hot and suffocating. My mother' s worried voice reached me, asking where I was. Something inside me snapped. With a roar of pure rage, I hurled my phone against the wall. It shattered like broken promises. I kicked over a table, sending white lilies crashing. Then, a reckless, insane idea formed. I pulled over, grabbed my spare phone, and dialed a number I knew by heart. "Chloe Adams," I said, my voice steady. "Marry me. Right now."

My world shattered when I found the text on my husband's phone, revealing his year-long affair. But the deepest cut came from my eight-year-old son. He defended the other woman, Kallie, telling me, "Kallie says you're being selfish and you don't understand Dad." When I confronted them, my husband called me a liar about the baby I was secretly carrying. He had me beaten and publicly shamed at a party while our son watched, screaming that I was ugly and that Kallie should be his new mom. They took everything from me-my home, my dignity, and the love of my child. I was nothing to them but an obstacle. So, with the secret help of my mother-in-law, I faked my death. For six years, I was a ghost. I built a new life, a new family, and found a peace I never thought possible. Until the day my ex-husband and the son who betrayed me walked into my bakery, determined to reclaim a family they had already destroyed.

For ten years, I was the family pariah, framed for a crime that destroyed my brother's career. My husband, Mark, never believed my innocence. Instead, he fell for the lies of my sister-in-law, Elsa-the woman who orchestrated my downfall. On our tenth anniversary, he stood me up to celebrate with her and our daughter. When I finally confronted him with divorce papers, he threw me out into a blizzard. My own daughter looked at me with cold, dismissive eyes. "Elsa said she should have been my mom." Left to freeze on the side of the road, my heart didn't just break; it turned to ash. The decade of abuse had finally killed every last bit of love I had. But I didn't die. A stranger saved me, and with his help, I found the one piece of evidence I needed to burn their world to the ground. Now, at the divorce settlement, I look at their smug faces and press play on a hidden recorder. "The world will soon know exactly who owes whom."

The world saw my husband, Kaden, as a tragic hero, honor-bound to me while his heart belonged to his childhood sweetheart, Cali. I believed it too, willing to endure the pain for his sake. On our anniversary, he came home with her. He didn't just ignore the special dinner I'd made; he grabbed the tablecloth and sent our entire anniversary meal crashing to the floor in a deafening shatter of crystal and porcelain. He pinned me against the wall, his kiss brutal, whispering that hurting me was how he tortured her. This became our life. He gave her a replica of my late mother's most precious gift. On the anniversary of our first baby's death, he left me grieving to comfort Cali because her cat had died. When he returned, he threw the tiny booties I had knitted for our son into the fire. I lost another pregnancy—twins this time. In the hospital, he abandoned me to go play tennis with her because she was bored. The final straw was when Cali scattered our twins' ashes to the wind. He saw my pain, heard my screams, and defended her. "Unintentional harm is not a crime, Joyce," he said. In that moment, the woman he knew as Joyce died. I took the pills that would erase her forever, allowing me—Iris—to take control.

Five years ago, my parents, philanthropists who lost everything in a financial crisis, were framed for fraud and died with their names destroyed. My fiancé, Jaydan Beasley, was my only light, my savior, defying everyone to stand by me. Today, I spent my last twenty dollars on roses for him, celebrating our love, unaware that the man I adored was systematically stealing my life's work-a social impact project meant to redeem my family's name-and funneling it to his old flame, Cuba Dawson. I overheard him, his voice chillingly unfamiliar, confessing his deceit to his best friend. He called me "fragile," "trusting," a "charity case," and revealed our entire marriage was a calculated strategy to pave the way for Cuba's success. The roses slipped from my hand, my world shattering. He had meticulously planned to discard me once Cuba's company went public, leaving me with nothing, again. The man I thought was my protector was, in fact, my destroyer, turning my milestones into markers of his betrayal. The love I felt curdled into a cold, hard rage. He had taken everything-my family's name, my work, my love. But he had no idea who he was dealing with. I would make them pay. I would take it all back.

I married Mark Davis to escape the predetermined life of a tech heiress, seeking something simple and real with a man I believed gentle and devoted. For three years, he was the perfect stay-at-home husband, and I thought I' d found my quiet happiness. Then the doorbell rang. Standing on my porch was Mark' s mother, Brenda, and a gaggle of women, their eyes greedy as they demanded I wash Brenda' s feet as a "sign of respect" and to learn "how to be a proper wife." When I refused, she slapped me, triggering an onslaught of physical and verbal abuse, accusing me of being barren, ungrateful, and a "freeloader" while touting Mark as a self-made millionaire. They attempted to force-feed me a live toad as a fertility cure. The humiliation deepened when Mark, on speakerphone, not only confirmed their delusions of his success but called me a "gold-digging leech" and a "pathetic, desperate woman," telling his family not to "go easy on her." His betrayal snapped something inside me, igniting a cold fury as I realized the depths of his calculated deception. Just as they were about to inflict more violence, my father, Mr. Thompson, burst through the door, bodyguards in tow.

We moved into a new house in August, a fresh start my dad called the American dream. Bigger house, two-car garage-everything seemed perfect, a step up for our family. Then, the shelf in the garage collapsed, crushing Grandma' s precious altar, the one she' d used for protection for years. Soon after, my uncle Bob died in a freak car accident, and then I fell violently ill with a fever no doctor could break. I was lucid enough to hear my parents whisper about something wrong, something unnatural. Lying there, burning up, I heard voices, saw things no one else could, arguing with an invisible presence that seemed to cling to me. Mom desperately sought out a strange old woman, Mrs. Albright, who claimed to understand what was happening. She told us it wasn't me that was sick; it was our new house. She said we had broken an ancient pact, angered a hungry entity by discarding Grandma's altar and a carved wooden box. My pragmatic father, who believed only in logic and reason, was forced to confront the impossible: Mrs. Albright knew everything, details we hadn' t shared, about the altar, the box, and the feeling that something was watching us. How could she know? What ancient bargain had my family made, and why was it now demanding payment? There was no denying it now; the world had shifted, and we were trapped in a nightmare of our own making. "Find the box," she rasped, her unsettling pale eyes fixed on me, "and make an offering, or it will take another one of you."

The phone buzzed, a relentless vibration I tried to ignore, but Sarah' s furious face on the video call told me I couldn' t. My artist husband, Ethan, had unveiled his new exhibition, "Raw Truths," a brutal public dissection of our dead marriage. The centerpiece? A twenty-foot-tall projection of me sleeping, mouth open, drooling. The internet exploded, half calling him a monster, half calling me a willing muse. Then I scrolled to the next piece: a distorted loop of my voice, crying after a fight, packaged and sold as art. My phone buzzed again, Ethan' s name on the caller ID. Sarah, my lawyer, ordered me not to answer, but a primal urge to understand the "why" gripped me. He told me he' d made art, groundbreaking art. I screamed that he was selling my tears, my private grief, for fame. His response? This backlash was hurting his career. Then came the real dagger: he' d bring my devout grandmother into this, expose our secret marriage, destroy her if I didn' t release a public apology calling myself a willing collaborator. My world shattered. How could he? How could he use my deepest fear against me? Before I could even process his threat, my aunt called, sobbing. Grandma had collapsed, she' d seen something on the news. It was too late. He had already destroyed the last innocent part of my life. Lying in the hospital, my grandmother gone, I watched Ethan on TV, publicly mourning, accepting accolades. He had taken everything. My peace, my privacy, my family. A cold, hard resolve settled in my chest. If the world wanted a tragic muse, I' d give them a tragedy they' d never forget. I would erase myself from his world completely.

I was Elara Vance, a reclusive artist who found her only solace in the vast VR world of Aethelgard, playing as my plain, unnoticeable avatar, Nightshade. For three loyal years, I was Soulbound to ApexKing, the game's golden boy and a real-life CEO, faithfully by his side despite the brutal forum mockery of our mismatched appearance. But then, a new star, SugarRush, burst onto the scene, brazenly stealing my old, anonymous art identity, "HoneyDew." On our three-year anniversary, in a public spectacle before the entire server, ApexKing shamelessly gave the rare "Twinflame" set I'd painstakingly crafted for him to her, before callously dissolving our bond and calling me a "placeholder." The humiliation intensified as he branded me a guild thief, placing a massive real-money bounty on my head, turning every player against me. My carefully guarded anonymity shattered when Tiffany Bellwether, SugarRush herself, doxxed my real identity and sent thugs to threaten me. Hunted relentlessly in-game and stalked in reality, my world imploded. How could the man who' d once sworn "against the world" with me believe every calculated lie from a gold-digging impersonator, dismissing three years of unwavering loyalty? The injustice boiled, leaving a raw, festering wound, and a single, burning question: why me? But rock bottom ignited a cold, dangerous fury. I refused to be a victim any longer. When a powerful, enigmatic rogue, RiverWraith, mysteriously offered his protection, I knew it was time to step out of the shadows. I would expose Tiffany' s fraud, clear Nightshade' s name, and reclaim every piece of my stolen life.

Here is the translation of the text into English: "My boyfriend Zhao Wei'an had a huge argument with me over my childhood friend. Three months later, he came knocking on my door. 'Weiwei, it’s been three months. Do you realize your mistake? This time I’ll forgive you, but next time you can’t do that again...' Me? Behind the door, I was passionately kissing his cousin. After three days of cold war, I had already taken it as a breakup. You can’t say Scorpio men aren’t patient, right? The reason I agreed to be with Zhao Wei'an in the first place was because he looked like his cousin. Now that the white moonlight has returned, who still remembers the stand-in?"

Being second best is practically in my DNA. My sister got the love, the attention, the spotlight. And now, even her damn fiancé. Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now-billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn't mind. I'd crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one? Wrong. One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That's when it hit me-he didn't love me. He didn't even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn't even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup. So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster-my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise. Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol. Enter him. Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I'd met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised. But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life. And, as it turned out, the best decision I'd ever made. Because my one-night stand isn't just some random guy. He's richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with. And now, he's not letting me go.

She spent ten years chasing after the right brother, only to fall for the wrong one in one weekend. ~~~ Sloane Mercer has been hopelessly in love with her best friend, Finn Hartley, since college. For ten long years, she's stood by him, stitching him back together every time Delilah Crestfield-his toxic on-and-off girlfriend-shattered his heart. But when Delilah gets engaged to another man, Sloane thinks this might finally be her chance to have Finn for herself. She couldn't be more wrong. Heartbroken and desperate, Finn decides to crash Delilah's wedding and fight for her one last time. And he wants Sloane by his side. Reluctantly, Sloane follows him to Asheville, hoping that being close to Finn will somehow make him see her the way she's always seen him. Everything changes when she meets Knox Hartley, Finn's older brother-a man who couldn't be more different from Finn. He's dangerously magnetic. Knox sees right through Sloane and makes it his mission to pull her into his world. What starts as a game-a twisted bet between them-soon turns into something deeper. Sloane is trapped between two brothers: one who's always broken her heart and another who seems hell-bent on claiming it... no matter the cost. CONTENT WARNING: This story is strongly 18+. It delves into dark romance themes such as obsession and lust with morally complex characters. While this is a love story, reader discretion is advised.  

Camille Lewis was the forgotten daughter, the unloved wife, the woman discarded like yesterday's news. Betrayed by her husband, cast aside by her own family, and left for dead by the sister who stole everything, she vanished without a trace. But the weak, naive Camille died the night her car was forced off that bridge. A year later, she returns as Camille Kane, richer, colder, and more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Armed with wealth, intelligence, and a hunger for vengeance, she is no longer the woman they once trampled on. She is the storm that will tear their world apart. Her ex-husband begs for forgiveness. Her sister's perfect life crumbles. Her parents regret the daughter they cast aside. But Camille didn't come back for apologies, she came back to watch them burn. But as her enemies fall at her feet, one question remains: when the revenge is over, what's left? A mysterious trillionaire Alexander Pierce steps into her path, offering something she thought she lost forever, a future. But can a woman built on ashes learn to love again? She rose from the fire to destroy those who betrayed her. Now, she must decide if she'll rule alone... or let someone melt the ice in her heart.

The rain in Detroit was slick with grime when my family finally came to fetch me. They didn't want a reunion; they wanted a sacrificial lamb to marry into the Kaufman empire to save their failing business. I thought I was just being sold off, but the limo ride ended under a dark overpass where six hired thugs were waiting with chains. My own sister had ordered them to "break my spirit" so I’d be a shaking, pathetic mess by the time I reached the altar. They called me "Detroit trash" and sprayed air freshener when I sat on their leather seats. My stepmother wanted a video of me begging for my life, and my father was ready to trade me like a used car to a man everyone called a "vegetable." They expected a submissive country girl, unaware that I was a high-level "cleaner" who could snap a radius bone before they could even scream. When I finally reached the Kaufman estate, I found my fiancé, Barron, slumped in a wheelchair, drooling and silent. But as soon as the doors closed, the "invalid" grabbed my wrist with a grip of iron and whispered a command that changed everything. I didn't understand why my own blood was so desperate to see me destroyed. What had I ever done to deserve a hit squad and a forced marriage to a man they thought was a corpse? But Barron isn't a vegetable, and I'm not a victim. We just touched down at the Moon family gala in a matte-black helicopter, and as the doors slide open, the "broken" bride is about to show them exactly what happens when you throw away the wrong daughter. "If we're going to crash a party," Barron whispered, his eyes burning with lethal clarity, "we should make an entrance."

She hides behind ugly suits and fake names. He's done trusting women. When they meet in a masked sex club, neither realizes they've been fighting each other across boardroom tables for eighteen months. At Taylor Industries, she's Joy Smith-the frumpy CFO who drowns her curves in shapeless polyester and wearing a wig. At home, she's the forgotten wife of a cheating lawyer who hasn't touched her in so long she's starting to wonder if she's broken. When she finds hot pink lace panties stuffed in her couch cushions...definitely not hers, it's not heartbreak she feels. It's freedom. Grayson Taylor doesn't do relationships anymore. Not after walking in on his actress fiancée with another woman. Now he channels everything into hostile takeovers and board meetings, especially the ones where his overcautious CFO fights him on every goddamn acquisition. Joy Smith is brilliant, infuriating, and funny when he pushes all her buttons. But Honey is tired of being invisible. Tired of never having felt real pleasure. So, when her best friend gives her the details of The Velvet Room-Manhattan's most exclusive masked club-she promises herself just one night. One night to find out if her husband's right, if she really is frigid, or if she's just never been touched by the right hands. She doesn't expect the masked stranger who claims her the second she walks in. Doesn't expect the chemistry that ignites between them, the way he makes her body sing, or the orgasms that leave her shaking. Doesn't expect him to hand her an email address with one command: "Only me. No one else touches you."

I was at my own engagement party at the Sterling estate when the world started tilting. Victoria Sterling, my future mother-in-law, smiled coldly as she watched me struggle with a cup of tea that had been drugged to ruin me. Before I could find my fiancé, Ryan, a waiter dragged me into the forbidden West Wing and locked me in a room with Julian Sterling, the family’s "fallen titan" who had been confined to a wheelchair for years. The door burst open to a frenzy of camera flashes and theatrical screams. Victoria framed me as a seductress caught in the act, and Ryan didn't even try to listen to my pleas, calling me "cheap leftovers" before walking away with his pregnant mistress. When I turned to my own family for help, my father signed a document severing our relationship for a five-million-dollar payout from Julian. They traded me like a commodity without a second thought. I didn't understand why my own parents were so eager to sell me, or how Ryan could look at me with such disgust after promising me forever. I was a sacrifice, a pawn used to protect the family's offshore accounts, and I couldn't fathom how every person I loved had a price tag for my destruction. With nowhere left to go, I married Julian in a bleak ceremony at City Hall. He slid a heavy diamond onto my finger and whispered, "We have a war to start." That night, inside his secret penthouse, I watched the paralyzed man stand up from his wheelchair and activate a screen filled with the Sterling family's darkest secrets. The execution had officially begun.

I was sitting in the Presidential Suite of The Pierre, wearing a Vera Wang gown worth more than most people earn in a decade. It was supposed to be the wedding of the century, the final move to merge two of Manhattan's most powerful empires. Then my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram Story from my fiancé, Jameson. He was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris with a caption that read: "Fuck the chains. Chasing freedom." He hadn't just gotten cold feet; he had abandoned me at the altar to run across the world. My father didn't come in to comfort me. He burst through the door roaring about a lost acquisition deal, telling me the Holland Group would strip our family for parts if the ceremony didn't happen by noon. My stepmother wailed about us becoming the laughingstock of the Upper East Side. The Holland PR director even suggested I fake a "panic attack" to make myself look weak and sympathetic to save their stock price. Then Jameson’s sleazy cousin, Pierce, walked in with a lopsided grin, offering to "step in" and marry me just to get his hands on my assets. I looked at them and realized I wasn't a daughter or a bride to anyone in that room. I was a failed asset, a bouncing check, a girl whose own father told her to go to Paris and "beg" the man who had just publicly humiliated her. The girl who wanted to be loved died in that mirror. I realized that if I was going to be sold to save a merger, I was going to sell myself to the one who actually controlled the money. I marched past my parents and walked straight into the VIP holding room. I looked the most powerful man in the room—Jameson’s cold, ruthless uncle, Fletcher Holland—dead in the eye and threw the iPad on the table. "Jameson is gone," I said, my voice as hard as stone. "Marry me instead."

"I will marry you. Wait for me!" Mabel woke up. She had that dream again. In her dream, a man said he would marry her. Just a dream. Five years ago, she was set up by her stepsister and became pregnant out of wedlock. She lost everything, including her baby. Five years later, she was forced to marry her stepsister's fiance, Jayden, who was sick and going to pass away. Having no choice, Mabel decided to marry Jayden, not expecting that Jayden was the man...

I received a pornographic video. "Do you like this?" The man speaking in the video is my husband, Mark, whom I haven't seen for several months. He is naked, his shirt and pants scattered on the ground, thrusting forcefully on a woman whose face I can't see, her plump and round breasts bouncing vigorously. I can clearly hear the slapping sounds in the video, mixed with lustful moans and grunts. "Yes, yes, fuck me hard, baby," the woman screams ecstatically in response. "You naughty girl!" Mark stands up and flips her over, slapping her buttocks as he speaks. "Stick your ass up!" The woman giggles, turns around, sways her buttocks, and kneels on the bed. I feel like someone has poured a bucket of ice water on my head. It's bad enough that my husband is having an affair, but what's worse is that the other woman is my own sister, Bella. ************************************************************************************************************************ "I want to get a divorce, Mark," I repeated myself in case he didn't hear me the first time-even though I knew he'd heard me clearly. He stared at me with a frown before answering coldly, "It's not up to you! I'm very busy, don't waste my time with such boring topics, or try to attract my attention!" The last thing I was going to do was argue or bicker with him. "I will have the lawyer send you the divorce agreement," was all I said, as calmly as I could muster. He didn't even say another word after that and just went through the door he'd been standing in front of, slamming it harshly behind him. My eyes lingered on the knob of the door a bit absentmindedly before I pulled the wedding ring off my finger and placed it on the table. I grabbed my suitcase, which I'd already had my things packed in and headed out of the house.

I just got my billionaire husband to sign our divorce papers. He thinks it's another business document. Our marriage was a business transaction. I was his secretary by day, his invisible wife by night. He got a CEO title and a rebellion against his mother; I got the money to save mine. The only rule? Don't fall in love. I broke it. He didn't. So I'm cashing out. Thirty days from now, I'm gone. But now he's noticing me. Touching me. Claiming me. The same man who flaunts his mistresses is suddenly burning down a nightclub because another man insulted me. He says he'll never let me go. But he has no idea I'm already halfway out the door. How far will a billionaire go to keep a wife he never wanted until she tried to leave?