Gavin

For three years, I documented the slow death of my marriage in a black journal. It was my 100-point divorce plan: for every time my husband, Blake, chose his first love, Ariana, over me, I deducted points. When the score hit zero, I would leave. The final points vanished the night he left me bleeding out from a car crash. I was eight weeks pregnant with the child we had prayed for. In the ER, the nurses frantically called him-the star surgeon of the very hospital I was dying in. "Dr. Santos, we have a Jane Doe, O-negative, bleeding out. She's pregnant, and we're about to lose them both. We need you to authorize an emergency blood transfer." His voice came over the speaker, cold and impatient. "I can't. My priority is Miss Whitfield. Do what you can for the patient, but I can't divert anything right now." He hung up. He condemned his own child to death to ensure his ex-girlfriend had resources on standby after a minor procedure.

The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave. At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety. As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers. "Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in. That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission. Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away.

A suggestive iMessage on the family iPad was the first crack in my perfect life. I thought my teenage son was in trouble, but anonymous Reddit users pointed out the chilling truth. The message wasn't for him. It was for my husband of twenty years, Anthony. The betrayal became a conspiracy when I overheard them talking. They were laughing about his affair with my son's "cool" school counselor. "She's just so... boring, Dad," my son said. "Why don't you just leave Mom and be with her?" My son didn't just know; he was rooting for my replacement. My perfect family was a lie, and I was the punchline. Then, a message from a lawyer on Reddit lit a fire in the wreckage of my heart. "Gather proof. Then burn his entire world to the ground." My fingers were steady as I typed back. "Tell me how."

My world revolved around Jax Harding, my older brother's captivating rockstar friend. From sixteen, I adored him; at eighteen, I clung to his casual promise: "When you're 22, maybe I'll settle down." That offhand comment became my life's beacon, guiding every choice, meticulously planning my twenty-second birthday as our destiny. But on that pivotal day in a Lower East Side bar, clutching my gift, my dream exploded. I overheard Jax' s cold voice: "Can't believe Savvy's showing up. She' s still hung up on that stupid thing I said." Then the crushing plot: "We' re gonna tell Savvy I' m engaged to Chloe, maybe even hint she' s pregnant. That should scare her off." My gift, my future, slipped from my numb fingers. I fled into the cold New York rain, devastated by betrayal. Later, Jax introduced Chloe as his "fiancée" while his bandmates mocked my "adorable crush"-he did nothing. As an art installation fell, he saved Chloe, abandoning me to severe injury. In the hospital, he came for "damage control," then shockingly shoved me into a fountain, leaving me to bleed, calling me a "jealous psycho." How could the man I loved, who once saved me, become this cruel and publicly humiliate me? Why was my devotion seen as an annoyance to be brutally extinguished with lies and assault? Was I just a problem, my loyalty met with hatred? I would not be his victim. Injured and betrayed, I made an unshakeable vow: I was done. I blocked his number and everyone connected to him, severing ties. This was not an escape; this was my rebirth. Florence awaited, a new life on my terms, unburdened by broken promises.

When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god. Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires. He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family. In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet. Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it. That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed. I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property. After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash. So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good. A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

Five years ago, I saved my fiancé' s life on a mountain in Aspen. The fall left me with a permanent vision impairment-a constant, shimmering reminder of the day I chose him over my own perfect sight. He repaid me by secretly changing our Aspen wedding to Miami because his best friend, Annmarie, complained it was too cold. I overheard him call my sacrifice "sentimental crap" and watched him buy her a fifty-thousand-dollar dress while scoffing at mine. On our wedding day, he left me waiting at the altar to rush to Annmarie' s side for a conveniently timed "panic attack." He was so sure I' d forgive him. He always was. He saw my sacrifice not as a gift, but as a contract that guaranteed my submission. So when he finally called the empty Miami venue, I let him hear the mountain wind and the chapel bells before I spoke. "My wedding is about to start," I told him. "But it' s not with you."

For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big. On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe." Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero." Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends. "She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy." Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder. I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number. "Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

On the first anniversary of our reconciliation, I thought my tech mogul husband and I had finally turned a corner. Then I discovered our entire marriage was a spectator sport. It was a cruel, year-long revenge game orchestrated by him and his lover, and I was the punchline. For their amusement, I was poisoned with food contaminated with dog feces, publicly humiliated with a twenty-million-dollar auction scam, and beaten until my ribs broke by his family's private security. I endured it all, playing the part of the clueless, loving wife while they laughed about it in a group chat called "The Jillian Andrews Comedy Hour." But their grand finale was a step too far. I overheard him calmly planning to leave me to die in a remote cabin during a blizzard, a "tragic accident" that would finally set him free to be with his mistress. He thought he was writing the final chapter of my life. He didn't know I was about to use his murder plot as my own perfect escape. I faked my death, vanished into thin air, and left him to explain to the world how his beloved wife disappeared off the face of the earth.

I spent a year scrubbing floors in my fiancé’s club, hiding my identity as the daughter of the Capo dei Capi. I needed to know if Connor Bishop was a King worth merging empires with, or just a puppet. The answer came walking in wearing a neon pink dress. Jaden Juarez, a civilian he was infatuated with, didn't just treat me like a servant; she deliberately poured scalding espresso over my hand because I refused to be her valet. The pain was blinding, my skin blistering instantly. I video-called Connor, showing him the burn, expecting him to enforce the code of our world. Instead, seeing his investors watching, he panicked. He chose to sacrifice me to save face. "Get on your knees," he roared through the speaker. "Beg her pardon. Show her the respect she deserves." He wanted the daughter of the most dangerous man on the East Coast to kneel to his mistress. He thought he was showing strength. He didn't realize he was looking at a woman who could burn his entire world to ash with a single phone call. I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I simply hung up the phone and locked the kitchen doors. Then, I dialed the one number everyone in the underworld feared. "Dad," I said, my voice cold as steel. "Code Black. Bring the papers." "And send the wolves."

My mate, Alpha Santino, brought another woman into our home. She was a pregnant Omega, the widow of his fallen Beta, and he swore to protect her above all others. He gave her my seat of honor, left our bed cold each night to soothe her feigned nightmares, and ignored me completely. I was the Luna of the Blackstone Pack, but I was becoming a ghost in my own life. The final betrayal happened in my own bedroom. She stood over my vanity and deliberately shattered my mother’s sacred moonstone necklace, the last piece of my family I had left. When Santino burst in, he didn’t see my heartbreak. He saw only her fake tears. “What did you do to her?!” he roared, his voice laced with the Alpha’s Command, a sacred power he used to crush my will. Then, for her, he did the unforgivable. He raised his hand and struck me, his mate. In that instant, the love I had desperately clung to turned to ice. The man I had sworn my life to had not only betrayed me but had defiled the sacred bond the Goddess herself had blessed. As the pain of his betrayal ripped through me, something ancient and powerful awakened in my blood. I rose to my feet and spoke the words that would destroy his world and begin mine. “I, Alessia Bianchi, reject you, Santino Moretti, as my mate.”

For five years, I was Jameson Blair's fiancée. For five years, my brothers finally treated me like a sister they loved. Then my twin, Haleigh-the one who left him at the altar-returned with a fake cancer story. In five minutes, he married her. They believed her every lie. When she tried to poison me with a venomous spider, they called me dramatic. When she framed me for ruining her party, my brothers whipped me until I bled. They called me a worthless substitute, a placeholder with her face. The final straw came when they tied me to a rope and left me dangling over a cliff to die. But I didn't die. I climbed back up, faked my death, and disappeared. They wanted a ghost. I decided to give them one.

My little brother’s heart monitor was screaming its final warning. I called my husband, Dante Volkov, the ruthless underworld king whose life I’d saved years ago. He had promised to send his elite medical team. “I’m handling an emergency,” he snapped, then hung up. An hour later, my brother was dead. I found out what Dante’s “emergency” was from his mistress’s social media. He had sent his team of world-class surgeons to deliver her cat’s kittens. My brother died for a litter of cats. When Dante finally called, he didn't even apologize. I could hear her voice in the background, asking him to come back to bed. He even forgot my brother was dead, offering to buy him a new toy to replace the one his mistress deliberately crushed. This was the man who had promised to protect me, to make my high school tormentors pay. Now, he was holding that very tormentor, Seraphina, in his arms. Then came the final blow: a call from the clerk's office revealed our seven-year marriage was a sham. The certificate was a forgery. I was never his wife. I was just a possession he was tired of. After he left me to die in a car crash for Seraphina, I made one call. I texted a rival mob heir I hadn't spoken to in years: "I need to disappear. I'm calling it in."

For ten years, I secretly loved my guardian, Ethan Hayes. After my family fell apart, he took me in and raised me. He was my entire world. On my eighteenth birthday, I gathered all my courage to confess my love to him. But his reaction was a fury I had never seen before. He swept my birthday cake to the floor and roared, "Are you insane? I am your GUARDIAN!" He then mercilessly tore the painting I had spent a year on-my confession-to shreds. Just days later, he brought home his fiancée, Chloe. The man who had promised to wait for me to grow up, who called me his brightest star, had vanished. My decade of desperate, burning love had only managed to burn myself. The person who was supposed to protect me had become the one who hurt me the most. I looked down at the NYU acceptance letter in my hand. I had to leave. I had to pull him out of my heart, no matter how much it hurt. I picked up the phone and dialed my father's number. "Dad," I said, my voice hoarse, "I've decided. I want to come be with you in New York."

My fiancé, Jameson Blair, married my twin sister today. For five years, I was a placeholder, a substitute for the woman he truly wanted, and I pretended not to know. Today, she came back with a story of terminal cancer and a dying wish to marry him. It was a perfect lie, and he chose to believe it, shattering my world with three simple words: "She's Haleigh." They left me on the sidewalk, an outcast from my own blood. My brothers, who once promised to protect me, celebrated the woman who broke me. They moved my things to a guest room, making space for their prodigal sister. That night, Haleigh gave me a "welcome home" gift—a box with a brown recluse spider inside. As the venom coursed through me, my family rushed to her side, calling my agony "a little spider bite." They left me convulsing on the floor. Later, they whipped me for a crime I didn't commit, hung me off a cliff, and left me for dead. My body is a roadmap of their love. Each scar, each broken bone, is a testament to their betrayal. They believed her lies, but their real crime was never truly seeing me. As I clung to that cliff, bleeding and broken, a single thought consumed me: Isabella Douglas died here tonight. Now, Isabella Hale would be born from the ashes.

Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift—a way to protect me from a worse fate. Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes." My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life. They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous. They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word. It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash. That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."

My fiancé, Archer, left me at the altar 98 times for the same woman, Kennedy. Each time, she'd orchestrate a new disaster, and he'd rush to her side, leaving me in a wedding dress to face the humiliation alone. But I always forgave him. Years ago, when I was a bullied college student on the verge of jumping off a bridge, he saved me. He became my hero, my protector, the man I owed my life to. Tonight, I overheard the truth. "You used her," Kennedy said. "You orchestrated her father's 'accident' to get me his liver." Archer's reply shattered my world. "She was just a means to an end. It was always you." He didn't just use me; he murdered my father for her. Then, to appease Kennedy's jealousy, he tried to kill me with a seafood allergy, kicked me off a cliff, and left me for dead. But I survived. Rescued by my former mentor, I erased my identity and became a top scientist on a deep-space mission. Four years later, I'm back, and this time, I won't be a pawn in their game. I'll be the one who ends it.

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.

For seven years, I funded my husband Gonzalo's PhD. I paid for everything. A week after our wedding, his young "mentee," Kloe, moved in with us, claiming a rare autoimmune disorder made her "fragile." On our Aspen ski trip, he used my money to buy her an $8,000 handbag. Then, he demanded I give Kloe my high-performance ski jacket because her flimsy one wasn't warm enough. When I refused, he ripped it off my body. I slipped on the ice, hitting my head as he walked away with her, leaving me injured and freezing in the snow. Later that night, he abandoned me again while I was sick in our hotel room, to get a separate room with Kloe. He said they needed to "discuss his academic paper." But he forgot one crucial detail. I'm not just a wife. I'm Captain Amy Payne, U.S. Army Reserve. I called my best friend, a manager at the hotel chain. "I need a master key," I told her. "We're about to crash a very important academic discussion."

I was the architect of my husband's billion-dollar tech empire, but he repaid me by bringing his mistress to our son's funeral-the very woman whose negligence killed him. To protect her, he had me committed, tortured, and then burned every last memory of our son, systematically erasing our past. Then I discovered he'd secretly divorced me years ago, so I faked my own death and gave the source code to his rival, ready to watch his world burn to the ground.

Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley. Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart.

My mother was killed in a hit-and-run. My husband, Haywood, told me to drop the investigation. Then my father died because Haywood froze my assets, refusing to pay for his life-saving surgery. "My mother was murdered!" I screamed at him. "You want me to just... forget that?" He told me he knew who the driver was and threatened to ruin me if I didn't stop. He used his power to destroy my career, publicly shame me, and even had me thrown into a cellar full of venomous spiders, leaving me for dead. The final blow came when he forced me to lie on a live stream at my mother's grave, confessing to crimes I didn't commit. As I collapsed, he had his men scatter her ashes into the mud. I lost everything. My family, my dignity, my truth. They thought they had broken me. They were wrong. As I boarded a flight out of New York, I hit 'Go Live' on a global stream. "My name is Celina Alvarado," I began, my voice steady. "And I'm here to tell you everything."

For three years, I believed I had the perfect marriage with my husband, Grant, and an unbreakable bond with my best friend, Chelsey. That illusion shattered when I found a hidden video on our shared laptop, tucked away in a folder labeled "Memories." It showed them together in a hotel room, kissing, their bodies intertwined. I heard my husband promise my best friend he would never truly love me, that I was just a responsibility he had to bear. He was the man who swore he'd never cheat. She was the woman who once saved my life. Their entire relationship, their fake animosity-it was all an elaborate performance to hide their affair right under my nose. But when he left me sobbing on the floor to rush to her side after a faked car accident, something inside me finally broke. I found them wrapped in each other's arms, and with the sound of my hand cracking across his stunned face, I made a new promise. "We're getting a divorce."

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.

The day I found out I was pregnant was the same day I learned my three-year relationship was a meticulously crafted lie. I rushed to surprise my perfect fiancé, Anthony Holden, only to overhear him talking to his twin brother. "I've endured three years of this farce," he said, his voice cold. "Not once did I touch the woman." My entire life was a revenge plot for his childhood friend, a woman who bullied me relentlessly in college. They left me to grieve my grandmother's death alone, subjected me to tortures designed from my deepest fears, and left me for dead-twice. The man who swore to protect me became my villain, convinced I deserved every moment of pain. On our wedding day, he stood at the altar, ready to deliver his final, humiliating blow. He had no idea I was miles away, about to live-stream his confession to the entire world. My revenge was just beginning.

I gave up my twenty-billion-dollar inheritance and cut ties with my family, all for my boyfriend of five years, Ignatz. But just as I was about to tell him I was pregnant with our child, he dropped a bombshell. He needed me to take the fall for his childhood sweetheart, Everleigh. She'd been in a hit-and-run, and her career couldn't handle the scandal. When I refused and told him about our baby, his face went cold. He told me to terminate the pregnancy immediately. "Everleigh is the woman I love," he said. "Finding out you're pregnant with my child would destroy her." He had his assistant schedule the appointment and sent me to the clinic alone. There, the nurse told me the procedure carried a high risk of permanent infertility. He knew. And he still sent me. I walked out of that clinic, choosing to keep my child. At that exact moment, a news alert lit up my phone. It was a glowing article announcing that Ignatz and Everleigh were expecting their first child, complete with a photo of his hand resting protectively on her stomach. My world shattered. Wiping away a tear, I found the number I hadn't called in five years. "Dad," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I'm ready to come home."

At my ten-week ultrasound, I was supposed to be celebrating the future of the Falcone family. I was Isabella Falcone, wife to the most powerful Don in the south. But when the nurse called my name, the man who stood up beside his pregnant mistress was my husband. In the sterile silence of that waiting room, he chose her. He later confessed he was being blackmailed by her family—a weakness that was a death sentence in our world. That night, he moved his mistress into our home, into my bedroom, and locked me away like a prisoner in the staff quarters. He wasn't imprisoning his wife; he was guarding an asset. He needed the legitimate heir I carried to save his crumbling empire. His betrayal was absolute when his own mother and my adoptive parents arrived while he was away. They forced me to sign divorce papers, then told me they were taking me to a clinic. His mother pulled out a gun and pointed not at my head, but at my stomach. "We're terminating this complication," she said coldly. As they dragged me from the house, my world went dark. But through the haze, I saw a fleet of black cars blocking the gate. An army of men poured out, led by a face I had only ever seen in a photograph. Days earlier, locked in my room, I made a single phone call to the only man more powerful than my husband: my biological father, the head of the Chicago Outfit. And he had come to collect his daughter.

The first sign I was going to die wasn't the blizzard. It wasn't the bone-deep cold. It was the look in my fiancé's eyes when he told me he had given my life's work-our only guarantee of survival-to another woman. "Kelsi was freezing," he said, as if I were being unreasonable. "You're the expert, you can handle it." He then took my satellite phone, shoved me into a hastily dug snow pit, and left me to die. His new girlfriend, Kelsi, appeared, wrapped snugly in my shimmering smart blanket. She smiled as she used my own ice axe to slash my suit, my last layer of protection against the storm. "Stop being so dramatic," he told me, his voice full of contempt as I lay there freezing to death. They thought they had taken everything. They thought they had won. But they didn't know about the secret emergency beacon I had stitched into my sleeve. And with my last ounce of strength, I activated it.

My husband was in the shower, the sound of water a familiar rhythm to our mornings. I was just placing a cup of coffee on his desk, a small ritual in our five years of what I thought was a perfect marriage. Then, an email notification flashed on his laptop: "You're invited to the Christening of Leo Thomas." Our last name. The sender: Hayden Cleveland, a social media influencer. An icy dread settled in. It was an invitation for his son, a son I didn't know existed. I went to the church, hidden in the shadows, and saw him holding a baby, a little boy with his dark hair and eyes. Hayden Cleveland, the mother, leaned on his shoulder, a picture of domestic bliss. They looked like a family. A perfect, happy family. My world crumbled. I remembered him refusing to have a baby with me, citing work pressure. All his business trips, the late nights-were they spent with them? The lie was so easy for him. How could I have been so blind? I called the Zurich Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious program I had deferred for him. "I' d like to accept the fellowship," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I can leave immediately."

My husband stood me up on the biggest night of my career—my first solo art exhibition. I found him on the news, shielding another woman from a storm of cameras while the entire gallery watched my world collapse. His text was a final, cold slap in the face: "Kacie needs me. You'll be fine." For years, he'd called my art a "hobby," forgetting it was the foundation of his billion-dollar company. He had made me invisible. So I called my lawyer with a plan to use his arrogance against him. "Make the divorce papers look like a boring IP release form," I told her. "He'll sign anything to get me out of his office."

A magazine cover celebrated me as "The Architect Who Built an Empire." It was supposed to be a triumph for me and my husband, Axel. Instead, it was the beginning of our end. His adoration turned to ice overnight. He demanded I hand over my life's work-my museum project-to Bryn, a young intern he had suddenly taken under his wing. He stole my project, publicly shamed me, and threatened to destroy my career. He sided with her lies, even as I lay bleeding on the floor of a gala while he chose to save her from a falling chandelier. The final blow came when I miscarried our child. He dragged me from my hospital bed, accused me of faking it for sympathy, and abandoned me in a cold, derelict warehouse. This was the man who once swore he'd always champion my dreams. He had become a monster, and I was left with nothing but the ashes of the life we built. But as I fled the city with nothing but a single bag, a new resolve hardened within me. They thought they had broken me. They had no idea what they had just unleashed.

I gave up my art scholarship to put my boyfriend, Armand, through law school. I worked three jobs and even took a knife for him, believing his promise that we would build an empire together. But the day he became a star lawyer, I found him kissing his client, Cassandra, in the snow. The shock caused a miscarriage. When I tried to end my life, he brought his mistress to my hospital bed to call me a lunatic. He then used my family to blackmail me, forcing me to play the perfect wife while he flaunted his affair. For years, I was his broken trophy, a testament to his power. He had the career I funded, the woman he chose, and complete control over my life. But on the night his mistress held me at knifepoint on a skyscraper rooftop, she didn't kill me. She turned and plunged the knife into Armand's chest instead. And as his legal wife, I inherited everything.

For fifteen years, my husband Dustin and I were the fairytale. The high school sweethearts who made it, the tech CEO and his devoted wife. Our life was perfect. Then a text message arrived from an unknown number. It was a picture of his assistant's hand on his thigh in the suit pants I bought him. The texts from his mistress kept coming after that, a relentless barrage of poison. She sent photos of them in our bed and a video of him promising to leave me. She bragged that she was pregnant with his child. He’d come home and kiss me, call me his anchor, all while smelling of her perfume. He was buying her a condo and planning their future while I pretended to have morning sickness from bad scallops. The final straw came on my birthday. She sent a picture of him on one knee, giving her a diamond promise ring. So I didn’t cry. I secretly changed my name to Hope, converted our entire fortune into untraceable bearer bonds, and told a charity to empty our house of everything. The next day, as he headed to the airport for a "business trip" to Paris with her, I flew to Portugal. When he came home, he found an empty mansion, divorce papers, and our wedding rings melted into a single, shapeless lump of gold.

I served seven years in a black-site prison for a crime my sister committed. Today, my betrothed—the man who chose her over me—finally came to collect his property. But he didn't come to save me. He came to collect me like a debt, watching with cold eyes as I was shoved into a filthy shed, a disgrace to be kept out of sight. Minutes later, his phone rang. It was my sister. Without a word, he left me standing in the dirt to rush to her side. Abandoned. Again. Through the thin walls of my new prison, I heard my own mother's voice. She was arranging to have me sent to a remote convent, to be buried for good this time. They hadn't just locked me away to protect their perfect, adopted daughter. They planned to erase me completely. But as I sat in the dark, a cheap burner phone buzzed in my pocket. A single message glowed on the screen. "Northern Syndicate. We can get you out. You have ten days."

For my entire life, I was the secret architect of my stepbrother Hector' s perfect world. As the CEO of our family's empire, I funded his every whim, letting him play the prince while I quietly ran the kingdom. That all ended the night his girlfriend-a bar manager I once hired-had me beaten in the cellar of my own hotel. She called me a charity case, a pathetic leech trying to mooch off his money. Then she and her guards cracked three of my ribs and demanded half a million dollars to let me go. All while Hector, the brother I had sacrificed everything for, ignored my desperate calls. He was too busy partying in the penthouse I paid for. When he finally learned what happened, he took her side. He called me a bitter old hag, a monster trying to ruin his happiness. The physical pain was nothing compared to the chilling realization that the man I had protected for decades was a parasite. Lying on that cold concrete floor, I understood. I wasn't just going to cut him off. I was going to burn his entire world to the ground, starting with the thirty-year-old secret of his birth that I had sworn to protect.

I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history. But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me. He swam past me. He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water. When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl. "You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home." Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her. I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife." He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps. He was wrong. While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room. I was packing his ring into a cardboard box. I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead. By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.

The first clue my life was a lie was a moan from the guest room. My husband of seven years wasn't in our bed. He was with my intern. I discovered my husband, Brendan, was having a four-year affair with Kiya-the talented girl I was mentoring and personally paying tuition for. The next morning, she sat at our breakfast table in his shirt while he made us pancakes. He lied to my face, promising he'd never love another, just before I learned she was pregnant with his child-a child he'd always refused to have with me. The two people I trusted most in the world had conspired to destroy me. The pain wasn't something I could live with; it was an annihilation of my entire world. So I made a call to a neuroscientist about his experimental, irreversible procedure. I didn't want revenge. I wanted to erase every memory of my husband and become his first test subject.

To help my fiancé's tech startup, I poured my entire inheritance into his dream and even underwent ninety-nine humiliating hymen reconstruction surgeries to satisfy his bizarre fetish. But just one procedure away from our wedding, I overheard the truth. He called me his "cash cow" and the surgeries were just "pure theater" to lure in investors with a virgin fetish. He never loved me. He never even touched me. Instead, he drugged me with "protein shakes" to keep me compliant and paraded me in front of old perverts. His plan was to publicly humiliate me at the altar, expose my most private medical secrets, and then marry his childhood sweetheart, Kimberli. He was going to destroy me, dance on the ashes of my dignity, and leave me with nothing. But if he wanted a show, he was going to get one. Just not the one he planned. I picked up my phone and texted the one man I had blacklisted, the ruthless East Coast magnate Constantine Russell: "Crash my wedding. I need you."

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary. It's also the day my husband, Ethan, asked me for a divorce for the 38th time. He does this for Ilene, his childhood friend. The woman who crashed her car on our wedding day, leaving her unable to have children. Ever since, he's been repaying a debt of guilt, and I've been the price. For five years, I endured the cycle of divorce and remarriage. But this time was different. Ilene pushed me down a flight of stairs. Ethan found me bleeding and promised me justice. He swore he would make her pay. But days later, the police called. The security footage of the incident had been mysteriously erased. There was no evidence, no case. That night, Ilene had me kidnapped. As her men tore at my clothes in the back of a van, I managed to call Ethan. He rejected my call. I jumped from the moving van. And as I ran for my life, bleeding on the cold asphalt, I made a vow. This time, there would be no 39th remarriage. This time, I would disappear.