Fonz Nadherny

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

The crystal chandeliers of the Plaza Hotel screamed money, framing the wedding of Chelsea Grimes and Julian Davidson as the ultimate corporate merger. But as the officiant prepared to unite two of the city's most powerful dynasties, the heavy double doors didn't just open-they exploded inward. Gideon Combs stood in the wreckage, a man in a frayed trench coat and grime-caked boots, looking like a stain on a pristine canvas. He wasn't there to object; he was there to enforce a "Legacy Pact," coldly informing the bride that her debt to a dead man hadn't been fulfilled and she didn't get to walk away. In seconds, the ballroom turned into a butchery as Gideon dismantled elite bodyguards with nothing but a broken wine bottle, eventually sending the groom flying into a tower of shattering champagne glass. When the military arrived, the room expected a firing squad, but instead, a four-star General snapped a sharp salute to the "vagrant," calling him a national asset. My family, the Singletons, saw this as a threat rather than a salvation; when I chose to stand by Gideon, my own grandmother stripped me of my keys, my cards, and my inheritance, casting me out into the pouring rain. I couldn't wrap my head around why the world's most powerful men trembled at the mention of Gideon's mentor, or what secret was etched into the black iron ring on his finger. I had traded my billionaire lifestyle for a man who looked like a drifter but fought like a god, and I had no idea if he was my protector or my ultimate ruin. As we stood on the sidewalk with nothing but twelve dollars and the clothes on our backs, Gideon's phone buzzed with a half-million-dollar bounty already active on the dark web. He didn't flinch; he just looked at the shadows closing in and whispered. "Game on."

I lay on the freezing bathroom floor, my life slipping away in crimson rivulets as I lost the baby Harrison claimed he wanted more than breath itself. In the next room, my husband was laughing into his phone, discussing party decorations with his mistress. When I finally dragged myself to the door to beg for help, he just stepped over me. "Call a doctor," he sighed, annoyed. "I have to go. Brooke's flight lands in an hour." Three days later, during a bank robbery, the gunmen held pistols to both our heads and gave Harrison a choice: save me, or save his mistress. Harrison didn't even blink. "Let the blonde go," he said, his voice void of emotion. "She's vital. Keep the wife. She's just insurance." I took a bullet because of him. But the true kill shot came when I woke up in the hospital. The family lawyer looked at me with pity and revealed the truth: Harrison never filed our marriage license. For three years, I wasn't his wife. I was just a prop. A clean face to front his estate while he laundered money. Harrison thought he had won when he drugged me and put me on a rigged boat to ship me away to an asylum. He watched from the dock as the vessel exploded into a fireball, believing his problem was incinerated. He thinks I'm dead. He thinks he's free to rule his empire with the woman who destroyed my life. But he forgot one thing: you can't kill a ghost. And I'm coming back to burn his world to ash.

My husband, the most feared mob boss in Chicago, told me it wasn't the right time for an heir. Then I found the invitation to his secret son's baptism—a child he had with a woman from our rival family. His betrayal climaxed when he shoved me so hard I miscarried our baby, and his mistress left me for dead at the bottom of a cliff. But I survived, and after watching me accept the world's highest honor for architecture on TV, he's now kneeling outside my hotel, begging the ghost he created to come home.

My adoptive family, the Millers, were titans of industry, and I, Ethan Miller, built their tech empire from the ground up. But when my adoptive brother, Liam Stone, embezzled millions, they didn't hesitate to throw me under the bus. "Ethan, you're the face of the company. You're the strong one. You can handle this." My adoptive parents, wife, and even my daughter, Mia, pressured me to take the fall. They made me sign over my company control, publicly shamed me, and watched as my health failed under the crushing stress. When I was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, they arrived not with concern, but with a monstrous request: "You have to save him. It's the only way you can make up for what you've done." They wanted my kidney for Liam, who faked terminal cancer, seeing me only as a spare part. I stared at them, the sheer, monstrous selfishness of it beyond anger, settling into chilling calm. They wanted to harvest my organs after pushing me to the brink of death. But the Ethan Miller they tried to destroy was gone. With Eleanor Vance's help, I faked my death, reborn as Elias Vance. They celebrated my demise, unaware I was watching. "Ethan Miller is already dead, Eleanor. They killed him. Now it's time for the vultures to have their feast, only to find the carcass is poisoned."

The last thing I remembered was the grinding sound of machinery, a symphony of six years in our small town, now a city death knell. My children, Lily and Tom, were so excited to visit their father Michael' s new, successful factory. "They've missed Michael so much, Ava. Let them go see him. He's just inside." Sarah, Michael's brother's widow, whispered, her arm around my shoulder, her voice a sweet poison. I watched them run ahead, their small figures disappearing through the massive doorway, believing their father was building a better life for us. They didn' t know the truth: Michael had left us for Sarah, taking our factory severance pay to build his new life with her and her children. Then I saw Sarah' s real smile-sharp, cold. She pushed an unsecured metal cart. A klaxon blared. Two screams, cut short by a sickening crunch, a spray of red. My world ended. Michael stood over me, his face filled with chilling annoyance, not grief. "Well, that's that, then," he said, flatly. "Saves me the trouble and expense of a divorce, I guess." He glanced at the machinery. "They were just baggage anyway, Ava. Holding me back." His words annihilated my soul, a physical force squeezing the breath from me. The world turned gray, then black. I died on that cold, greasy floor. And then, I gasped. I was in my cramped bedroom, sunlight filtering through the grimy window. A calendar on the wall marked the day the factory closed. Lily and Tom sat on the rug, whole and alive. "Mommy?" Lily asked, her big brown eyes filled with concern. "Are you okay?" Tears streamed down my face. I clung to them, inhaling their scent. I was back. The memory of their deaths, of Michael's monstrous words, was burned into my mind. Grief remained, a hot knot of agony, but something cold, hard, and sharp solidified beside it. Revenge. Michael. Sarah. You will pay. I will tear down your world, piece by piece, and I will make you feel every ounce of the agony you gave me. This was not a second chance at happiness. It was a second chance at justice.

"InnovateHer," my tech company, just hit a billion-dollar valuation. I built it from nothing, fueled by ramen noodles and 18-hour days, while my husband, David, coasted in a mid-level job. He watched me struggle, then offered to join; to take the "boring stuff," the finances, the HR. I, the visionary, the CEO, happily handed him the reins. "I just want to support you," he' d said, and I believed him. Then my debit card, linked to my multi-million-dollar earnings, was declined buying my son a birthday Lego set. "Insufficient funds?" panic clawed at me. David's voice on the phone was cold, dismissive. "I moved the money… This is what you wanted." He granted me an allowance-a paltry $5,000 credit limit on a card in his name-for the company I built. Soon, my own employee, his mousy executive assistant Maya, was openly challenging my authority, claiming "David's orders." My mother-in-law, Brenda, a woman who never approved of my career, declared it was time for me to "step back," to take a "mommy track" position in my own company. David, my husband, the man who once whispered he was the proudest husband in the world, nodded in agreement. "You're too emotional to run a company this big," he sneered. Then, Brenda brought Maya into my home, to "help" with dinner. My son, Leo, just six, stared at me with coached resentment. "I hate you! You' re a bad mommy! I want to live with Daddy and Maya!" he screamed, his words tearing a hole through my soul. I finally understood: This wasn't just betrayal. This was a calculated coup. And in the silence of my terror, a new, cold clarity dawned. They thought they had broken me. They were wrong. They had just woken me up.

The letter in my hand promised a dream-a master seamstress position at a prestigious fashion house, a chance to reclaim the skill I' d spent a lifetime perfecting. But when I shared the news with my son, David, and his wife, Sarah, in the house I' d bought for them with my retirement savings, their response wasn't joy, but a chilling demand: "Since you' ll have your own income now, it' s only fair that you start paying rent." The words hit me like a physical blow. Rent. In my own home, where I' d cooked, cleaned, and cared for their child for years without asking for a dime. They dismissed my sacrifices, claiming they were merely "my duty as a mother," an "investment" that now required repayment. Their greed escalated, demanding all of Leo' s care, then escalating into vicious accusations and threats of divorce, of taking my grandson away, all to force me into submission. My son, David, sat by silently, a coward, choosing his manipulative wife over his own mother. My heart shattered, but a cold resolve settled over me. There was no family left to save. I gathered the few things that mattered and walked out, leaving behind the shattered remnants of a love that had become a cage.

The ER waiting room hummed with a familiar, sickly glow. But tonight, I wasn't the paramedic on call. I was just Andrew, a guy in a hoodie, staring at my phone. My fiancée, Jennifer, lay supposedly critical after a hit-and-run. They said she needed emergency brain surgery. The nurse demanded payment upfront. With a cold, practiced mask, I showed them my banking app. "$17.42." That's all I had left, I claimed. It was after a "sophisticated online scam" wiped me out. Jennifer' s "parents" - two actors she' d hired - wailed. They begged me to save her. They even proposed a monstrous deal. Their son' s heart for my sick mother' s life. The world watched as a good Samaritan nurse started a GoFundMe. She was painting me as a heartless monster who' d let his fiancée die. The video went viral. Donations poured in, "saving" Jennifer. Meanwhile, my career and reputation crumbled. Every phone call from my chief was a stab. Every hateful comment online was a stab. But I didn't care. They called me a sociopath, a villain. How could I let them believe such a lie? How could I be so callous, so indifferent to the woman I was supposed to marry? My mother's fragile heart. My ruined career. It all felt like a twisted nightmare. But this wasn't my first time living this nightmare. In another life, I was the fool who fell for it all. I watched my mother die because of Jennifer' s cruel "loyalty test." This time, I knew the game. This time, I was ready to play my own hand.

The stench of stale beer and sweat hung heavy at the post-game party, a ghost from a life I thought was behind me. I stood in a quiet corner, trying to disappear as the music vibrated through the floor. My ex-boyfriend Liam' s best friend, Kevin, suddenly plowed through the crowd, his face stark with raw panic. "Ava! You have to help. They took him!" he screamed, his words a horrifying echo of a past I' d desperately tried to escape. He begged me to rescue Liam from the black van, reminding me of all the "stuff" my dad taught me. But in my first life, answering that call plunged me into a thirty-year nightmare: a soul-crushing marriage to a man who resented me, a daughter who mirrored his coldness, and ultimately, a lonely death while they escaped. This time, I just told him to call the police. Liam' s heroic football career ended that night with a shattered leg and a lost scholarship, and I became the town's despised "ice queen." When he, also reborn, confronted me, his fury was absolute – blaming me for every consequence of my choice to save myself. And his toxic girlfriend, Jess, ensured his family's utter ruin, leading to his mother's heart attack. How could I be the villain for choosing to live, for refusing to be dragged back into a miserable existence by the very man who once condemned me to a lonely death? The sheer entitlement of his blame, even after he remembered our shared, horrible future, made my blood run cold. Was I truly bound to others' expectations, forever a cage to myself? But when a broken, desperate Liam finally appeared on my doorstep, not asking for himself, but tearfully begging me to save his innocent parents from Jess' s destructive spiral, I knew my past wouldn't fully release me until I severed the deepest, most toxic ties – even if it meant one last, dangerous confrontation to finally claim my own peace and freedom.

My whole life had been a meticulous climb. Every blueprint, every award, every late night was for one person. Isabelle Vance, the golden daughter of a political dynasty, my childhood sweetheart I swore to marry. Winning the prestigious Thornton Prize was supposed to be our moment, the culmination of years, the validation I needed to finally propose. But at the gala celebrating my success, she arrived on her cousin Spence' s arm. Her eyes barely met mine, and when I confronted her, she delivered a chilling public dismissal. "That was just a silly, youthful understanding, Ethan," she declared, her voice cold and clear, echoing through the hushed ballroom. My world shattered publicly. Confused and heartbroken, I tried to cling to hope, but she pulled further away, always with Spence. Then, her engagement party-not to me, but to him. When I begged for an explanation, she slapped me, hissing, "Leave and never contact me again." Her powerful father orchestrated my exile to a remote, struggling region, burying me professionally. There, fighting pneumonia and despair after a life-threatening accident, Spence sent me a cruel wedding album of him and Izzy, beaming, meant as a final taunt. I lay there, convinced I was dying, wondering: how could the woman I dedicated my life to betray me so utterly? Why was I tossed aside like trash, my achievements meaningless, my love a joke? Was I just a "project" to them, unworthy of their world? The injustice burned deeper than any fever. But from the brink of death, a park ranger named Clara found me. She didn't care about my past, my ambition, or the Vances. She taught me what genuine love was, healing my body and soul. Now, years later, I'm back in Boston, not as a broken man, but with a family forged in resilience. And it's time to finally put the past, and Isabelle, to rest.

Two years. Two years of agony, grueling surgeries, and relentless recovery after I shielded my fiancé, Chad, from a fiery explosion. My back, once a roadmap of searing pain, was finally flawless, perfectly healed – a precious secret and a symbol of our new beginning. I was finally home in our penthouse, overflowing with joyful anticipation to surprise Chad before our engagement party next week. But the excitement curdled into an icy dread the moment I stepped inside. Peels of a woman' s unfamiliar laughter echoed from our master suite, followed by Chad' s low, impossibly intimate voice. "The doctor said it' s fine, the baby will be okay." Then, Izzy, my own assistant, giggled, "You haven't used this king-sized bed with her, right? You said seeing her scars made you sick." Sick. My scars. The ones I got saving his life, the constant reminder of my sacrifice. In that instant, his whispers of eternal love, his tender care during my recovery – every single lie – shattered as unmistakable sounds of intimacy spilled from our bed. The man I loved, the man I had nearly died for, a man who saw my selflessness as something repulsive, mocking my "snake-skin" behind my back. He had drugged me for months, not for my true recovery, but to keep me docile while he continued his sordid affair, all while plotting to exploit my family' s immense influence to usurp his own brother's corporate empire. How could the supposed angel I saved transform into such a monstrous, calculating deceiver? From the depths of devastation, a chilling, diamond-hard clarity emerged, sharpening my resolve. I clutched my phone, my shaking fingers composing a message that wasn't just a threat, but a meticulously planned declaration of war. Chad Baxter Jr. was poised to lose absolutely everything. He was about to discover that the "fragile" girl he thought he could break was meticulously preparing to demolish his entire world, piece by agonizing piece.

I was a successful Silicon Valley mogul, a man of immense wealth and, as it turned out, even greater naivety, deeply in love with my beautiful fiancée, Ava. Our meticulously planned future seemed perfect until tragedy allegedly struck: Ava "died" in a devastating rock-climbing accident, leaving my world utterly shattered and adrift. For years, in my grief, I poured millions of dollars into commemorative foundations and generously supported her "grieving sisters," Chloe and Zoe, genuinely mourning a love I believed was tragically lost. Then came the crushing blow: I stumbled upon her in Monaco – radiant, laughing, and shockingly alive on Liam Knight’s arm, their children by their side, oblivious to my existence. They were living a lavish life, funded entirely by the immense fortune I had unknowingly gifted them through her fabricated death, a calculated deception that bled me dry for years. The sheer shock of this colossal betrayal, the agonizing realization of decades of meticulously planned deceit perpetrated by those I trusted most, was so profound it literally stopped my heart. My previous life, built on a foundation of love and trust, crumbled to ash as I felt the ultimate sting of idiocy and a crushing, all-consuming fury that burned hotter than any pain. But death wasn't the end for me; it was merely a reset. I snapped awake in the familiar luxury of my sprawling Silicon Valley mansion, the annoying beep of my alarm no longer a nuisance, but a powerful clarion call. It was the precise morning Ava was supposed to 'die,' the very day that had marked the agonizing origin of all my past life's misery and betrayal. This time, however, I wasn't the heartbroken, unsuspecting fiancé anymore. I was reborn, armed with every single painful memory and a cold, unyielding resolve, and my objective was terrifyingly clear: meticulously reclaim everything they stole, and ruthlessly expose every single viper who dared to prey on my trust.

On my wedding day, my father sold me to the Chicago Outfit to pay his debts. I was supposed to marry Alex Moreno, the heir to the city's most powerful crime family. But he couldn't even be bothered to show up. As I stood alone at the altar, humiliated, my best friend delivered the final blow. Alex hadn't just stood me up; he had run off to California with his mistress. The whispers in the cathedral turned me into a joke. I was damaged goods, the rejected bride. His family knew the whole time and let me take the public fall, offering me his cousins as pathetic replacements-a brute who hated me or a coward who couldn't protect me. The humiliation burned away my fear, leaving only cold rage. My life was already over, so I decided to set the whole game on fire myself. The marriage pact only said a Carlson had to marry a Moreno; it never said which one. With nothing left to lose, I looked past the pathetic boys they offered. I chose the one man they never expected. I chose his father, the Don himself.

My marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine. Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family. To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset. They both thought I was a broken doll they could control. I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice. She sang it, and now her career is over. Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground.

At my boyfriend's poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him. Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary. Everyone said he loved me to the bone. But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me. I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses. He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, "Why aren't you jealous?" He didn't know I was sick. Dying. While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.

Tomorrow was my wedding day to Jason Brennan, the heir to a powerful Mafia family. My family, the Falcones, had even taken in an orphaned girl, Elena, treating her like my own sister. But in my nightmare of a past life, I choked on my own blood, poisoned by the arsenic Elena slipped into my food every day. As I lay agonizingly close to death, Jason stood over me with a cold laugh, holding Elena in his arms. "We just needed the Falcone wealth, Bella. And the docks." Then came the gunfire. I was forced to watch them slaughter my father and my brother, tearing my family out by the roots. After my death, Elena even spread vicious rumors that I was a barren spinster, twisting their foul betrayal into a tragic tale of noble sacrifice to completely destroy my legacy. The metallic tang of my own blood was so real I could still taste the ash. I didn't understand why the girl my family sheltered for eight years would repay our charity with such venom. And I understood even less how the man who swore to love me could orchestrate my brutal murder without a shred of hesitation. Bolting upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat, I realized I had returned to the night before my wedding. This time, I wouldn't just cancel the engagement. I would hand their treason directly to the Mafia's most terrifying Enforcer, and watch them burn.

My adoptive family, the Castillos, treated their biological children like royalty, but used me as a disposable pawn. To secure a mafia alliance, they forced me to take my beautiful sister's place and marry Don Damien Moretti, a man rumored to be a ruthless, bloodthirsty monster. They thought they were sending me to my execution. At our engagement banquet, my mother and sister deliberately gifted me a cheap, counterfeit gown to humiliate me in front of New York's elite. When I publicly exposed their lie, my father demanded I apologize. My mother even raised her hand to slap me in front of everyone. "You are a vicious curse! You ruin everything!" They eagerly waited for the Don to execute me on the spot for embarrassing them. I had spent years secretly saving their company from bankruptcy and supplying the underground experimental drugs that kept my brother's mafia career alive. Yet, they threw me to the wolves without a second thought, disgusted by my very existence. But they didn't know that just an hour before the banquet, I had saved a bleeding, masked stranger in a dark alley-who turned out to be Damien Moretti himself.

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

When Jimena, a young single mother with a dark past and a violent ex she's desperate to forget, crosses paths with Alessio Fanucci, a dangerous mafia heir, her world is turned upside down. All she wanted was to get by working as a maid at the Fanucci mansion and to keep her distance from the three infamous Fanucci brothers as much as possible. Things take a turn when the oldest brother and heir, Alessio, breaks off his arranged engagement with his ex and urgently needs a new one. Alessio, cold, ruthless, dominant, and not someone anyone talks back to, sees the quiet Jimena as nothing more than his pawn. Meanwhile, she sees Alessio as nothing more than another monster she needs to escape. As they spend more time together, the lines between fake and reality begin to blur, and they discover they have more in common than they initially thought. Tensions rise when Jimena's ex returns, threatening her new comfortable life and the secrets she’s been withholding. He is out for revenge and is determined to go to any length for it, even if that means forming an alliance with the Fanuccis' enemy, who happens to be the family of Alessio’s ex. With a war, untold truths, and feelings at stake, will Jimena’s newly formed bonds keep standing, or will everything around her crumble?

Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate. I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo. The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives. My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked. To her, I was finally being disposed of. She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left. She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex. "She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter. They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back. But they made a fatal mistake. With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon. I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him. And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner. He will be my vengeance.

Becoming a bride to settle a debt was never part of my dreams. Yet, my stepbrother's betrayal and a trap party turned my life upside down, shattering my illusions of a joyful marriage. Now, I'm faced with the harsh reality of being married to a ruthless Mafia boss, Alessio Marino. Can I trust his promises, or will my situation be worse than the abuse I endured from my stepbrother? With love stripped from my wedding vows, all I can do is cling to hope for God's mercy and summon the strength to navigate this perilous new life.

I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood. For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe. On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident. Donovan didn't hesitate. He forced me to drain my blood to save her life. Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean. He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her. He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella. He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night. When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth. He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman. Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man. He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy. I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing. "It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."