Hua Luoluo

Ayleen Avery was just a struggling hotel worker trying to survive her shift. But during a sudden blackout, she accidentally stumbled into the pitch-black VIP suite of a ruthless billionaire driven mad by chronic insomnia. Calmed only by her unique natural scent of roses and rain, the terrifying man attacked her from the shadows and forced himself on her. Terrified and broken, Ayleen fled at dawn, unknowingly leaving behind her late mother's antique rose necklace in his bed. Her greedy coworker found the necklace, claimed to be the woman from that night, and was instantly swept into a life of luxury. Meanwhile, Ayleen was blackmailed into a forced marriage with her attacker—Cassius Doyle—to save her adoptive father from prison. Deceived by the stolen necklace, Cassius believed Ayleen was a manipulative spy. He brought the coworker into their home and paraded her around the master bedroom. "In this house, you are lower than the dirt on my shoes." He choked Ayleen, forced her to sleep in a damp storage room, and treated her with violent disgust while pampering the thief. Ayleen was suffocating in absolute despair. She had lost her innocence, her freedom, and her mother's only relic to a vicious liar. She couldn't understand how this all-powerful man could be so completely blind. Why couldn't he recognize the very scent that had cured his agonizing madness? Staring at the dark bruises he had just left on her neck, Ayleen wiped the blood from her lip. She would endure this three-month marriage to secure her family's safety, but once the contract ended, she would expose the truth and tear down the fake savior he cherished so much.

I was a New York photographer, but I woke up under the brutal sun of the African savanna. Worse, I wasn't human. I was trapped in the body of a male cheetah, with two starving cubs clinging to my fur, telepathically calling me "Mom." But I am a real man! To keep my adopted sons alive, I had to fight hyenas and dodge rogue lions. But the real nightmare was my bizarre survival mechanism. Under extreme threat, I would uncontrollably shift back into my human form—stark, undeniably naked. I was forced to sprint across the plains with my bare skin exposed, carrying two cubs while escaping furious lionesses. I became a freak, the most confusing and humiliating legend of the animal kingdom. Covered in bloody scratches and mud, I was pushed to the brink of despair. Why was I thrown into this beast's body? Why did my only defense mechanism involve profound social death? Just when I barely survived a cliff dive to escape the lions, my path was blocked by two massive, highly intelligent prime male cheetahs. But the alpha, Bradley, didn't want to kill me for my territory. His intense gaze raked over my naked, bleeding human body with a dark, possessive hunger. "You are full of surprises." He purred smoothly, teaching me to magically summon a fur skirt before demanding I join his coalition. "Oh, you'll come to me. I guarantee it." Looking into his predatory eyes, I realized I was no longer just surviving the wild; I was the prey of a completely different kind of beast.

When I discovered my husband's safe combination was my stepsister's birthday, my world tilted. Inside, I found the blueprint for how he planned to erase me. He would claim my unborn child for his true love. The postnup was cold and calculated: billions in assets, all designated for Kaleigh. Not a penny for me, his wife of ten years. He tore up the divorce papers I offered, threatening to use his power to take my baby. Kaleigh showed up at my door, taunting me, calling me a "convenient placeholder." She wanted to raise my child as her own. I realized I wasn't just a wife. I was a surrogate. A fertile womb he married because his true love was barren. Our entire marriage was a grotesque lie designed to produce an heir for them. Then, an anonymous email landed in my inbox. It contained a recording of my husband calling me his "incubator." That's when I knew I couldn't just leave. I had to die.

My fiancé, Griffin Cooper, was turning me from a wild heiress into his perfect trophy wife. My father approved, eager to tame the rebellious spirit I' d inherited from my mother. A near-fatal car crash was my wake-up call. But the real horror began when Griffin punished me for defending myself at a gala by throwing me into an icy fountain. As I shivered, bleeding from my period into the freezing water, his orders were chilling. "Let her bleed," he told his guards. "Perhaps it will teach her a lesson." That was before he scalded me with boiling water and locked me in a panic room, where my venomous stepsister tasered me until I passed out. I finally understood. He didn't want a partner; he wanted a prisoner to break. So on his wedding day, I arranged a little surprise. I sent my stepsister down the aisle in my place, blew our family mansion to smithereens, and boarded the first flight to freedom. My revenge had just begun.

For seven years, I was the perfect, silent wife to Dante De Luca, the Don of the Chicago Outfit. Our marriage was a contract, signed only because his true love, Isabella, left him at the altar. Then, she came back. He made me watch as he chose her, again and again. He took her into a dark closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven, emerging with a fresh love bite on her neck. Then, she framed me for stealing her diamond necklace. "She's a thief, Dante, just like her mother!" Isabella wailed. My husband didn't hesitate. He shoved me against a table and had his men throw me into the family's private holding cell. He knew it was a setup, but he still called me trash, not fit to clean her shoes. I finally understood. I was never his wife. I was just a "low-cost placeholder," a body in his bed until Isabella returned. I was disposable. So when I was finally released, I walked away. His biggest rival was waiting for me with a job offer: Chief Design Director. I would compete against Dante for the city's biggest contract, using the very architectural designs he stole from me and gave to his mistress. I would build an empire on the ashes of his pride.

On my wedding night, the woman I had loved for ten years, Olivia Stone, told me our marriage was a mere convenience. Standing by the window, her back to me, she declared her lack of desire for me, her words colder than our untouched bed. The next morning, I overheard her telling her assistant, Alex Miller, how disgusted she was by me, even referring to me as "a sick, dying man who can' t even give me a child." My hopeful decade crumbled. Heartbreak was physical, a searing pain. I signed divorce papers without hesitation. Later, I saw her laughing with Alex, and she signed the agreement, not even bothering to read its terms. Just annoyance flickered in her eyes. It was clear then: I was an intruder in my own home, a long-suffering fool. She' d never seen me, only what I could give her. The pain of her indifference was immense, a drowning sensation. My meticulously built world, centered on her love, was obliterated in twenty-four hours. I sold our house, severed ties, and prepared for aggressive treatment for my genetic illness abroad. But Olivia, consumed by greed, followed me, threatening to expose my infertility to the world if I didn't acknowledge her child with Alex as my heir. "I' m pregnant, Ethan," she said, her voice clear. "And Alex is the father." She believed she had me trapped, that I, the pathetic, dying man, would succumb to her manipulation. She was wrong.

For ten years, I lived a lie, pretending to be part of the wealthy Peterson family who took me in after my parents died. I, Scarlett Hayes, the orphan they graciously adopted, secretly cherished a forbidden love for their son, Brandon. My carefully guarded world shattered on my eighteenth birthday when I finally confessed my feelings. "I… I love you. Not like a sister," I stammered, only to be met with his cold, dismissive laugh. "Scarlett, don' t be ridiculous. You' re my sister. That' s all you' ll ever be." His words clipped my wings, but my foolish heart clung to hope for four more years, enduring his casual cruelties. The final blow came when his new girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, publicly humiliated me at his birthday party, accusing me of something I didn' t do. Instead of defending me, Brandon slapped me across the face in front of everyone, his act a brutal testament to his indifference. The pain, both physical and emotional, was a constant throb. How could the boy who once promised to protect me become my tormentor? How could I have been so blind, so foolishly devoted to someone who saw me as nothing more than a burden, a "guest" in his perfect life? And why did he give away the last piece of my dead parents to her, the music box, as if I simply didn't exist? But that slap, that utter dismissal, became my turning point. I had to choose myself. With a full scholarship to London for art, my true passion, I packed my single suitcase. I was done loving him. I was leaving, a one-way ticket to a new life where I would finally be free.

The music vibrated through the floor at Vance Architecture's biggest project win in a decade. My husband, Ethan Vance, CEO, stood in the center, smiling, but his gaze was fixed on Sophia Miller, so close they were almost touching. She was back, and I felt like the invisible woman in my own life. "To Sophia," he announced, his voice warm with a feeling he' d never shown me, "for coming back. The firm wasn't the same without you." Waves of applause crashed around me as I stood by the wall, my untouched juice a stark contrast to their champagne, the bitter truth settling in: it was all over. A quiet, mechanical voice echoed in my head, a secret only I could hear: [Host, your mission completion is at 99%. Are you certain you wish to terminate the task?] I didn' t need to say yes aloud. My thoughts were enough: Yes, I'm certain. He doesn't love me. He loves her. All this time, I was just a substitute – a ghost he loved through me. My five years of devotion, every effort, every believed promise, every step closer… it was all a lie. Then, just last night, I' d heard his confession, heard him admit I was just a "substitute." My world shattered. [Understood. Processing request for termination. A 30-day buffer period has been initiated.] I wasn' t Chloe Davis originally. I was a soul from another reality, with a mission: win 100% affection to go home, healthy and whole. I escaped an abusive adoptive family, only to be "saved" by Ethan Vance, who built my world, offered me everything, and then asked me to marry him. I genuinely believed he loved me for me, switching my mission target to him, and the progress bar leapt to 80%, slowly crawling to 99%… and stalling. Now I knew why. He wouldn' t even notice I was gone. I was done. I was ready to leave this world.

The cheap paint fumes were the last thing I smelled, trapped in my icy attic room, a constant reminder of the art that had become my death. My body, ravaged by a cough, lay on a lumpy mattress, my vibrant, unsold canvases mocking me from the walls. My phone, clutched in a trembling hand, was my only window to the life I should have had, glowing with a live stream from a grand art gala. And there she was: Evelyn Hayes. My adoptive mother. My mentor. My destroyer. She stood on a brightly lit stage, elegant and poised. Behind her, a painting. My style. The style she' d once called "immature." Now, the art world called it "revolutionary," as the chyron flashed: "Evelyn Hayes's Masterpiece Sells for Record-Breaking $10 Million." A bitter, silent scream trapped in my chest, the phone slipped from my fingers. The world went dark. Then, a gasp for air. My body shot up, but the air was clean, fresh. The crippling cough gone. My hands smooth, strong. This wasn't my dying attic. It was my high school bedroom, six years in the past. I was alive. I was healthy. I was back. The realization hit me like a tidal wave. Evelyn hadn't just stolen my art; she had built her career on my destruction, leaving me to die alone. The pain, the betrayal, the memory of her smiling face on that stage - it all ignited a fierce, burning resolve. "Never again," I whispered, my voice trembling with a power I hadn't felt in years. "You will not destroy me again, Evelyn. This time, I will expose you for the fraud you are." The game had begun.

My mother, Susan, taught public school for thirty years. She loved her students and her job. Two years ago, she died, and my wife, Olivia, was my rock. Then at a company "Day of Service," I saw Olivia spoon-feeding an elderly woman. Olivia, who told me she was flying to California for a "wellness retreat." She looked up, and asked, "I'm sorry, do I know you?" I was left stunned, publicly accused of harassment, and suspended from my new promotion. Olivia returned home with tearful excuses, claiming she was secretly caring for Mrs. Peterson because she reminded her of my mother. But small, unsettling details – a discount body wash, our forgotten anniversary, a malicious serving of cilantro – chipped away at her story. Was I going crazy, or was Olivia deliberately trying to obscure the truth of her life from me? My heart pounded with a sickening dread. This wasn't just a distraction; it was a calculated, devastating betrayal. The final straw was a booking confirmation on her tablet for The Cascade Inn, a luxury hotel, for that very night. Cold fury turned to icy resolution. I knew her supposed "retreat" was a lie. I had to know who she was meeting. I grabbed my keys.

They called my family's gift the "Midas touch," uncanny luck ensuring prosperity for those in our orbit. Julian Thorne, from a lineage cursed with men dying before thirty, desperately needed it for his survival. His mother, Victoria, proposed a lucrative partnership to save her son. In my first life, I accepted, pouring my essence into his success, helping him defy fate, celebrating his 30th birthday. But he paraded his new love, Isabelle, and publicly denounced me as a fraud, shattering my reputation. My assets frozen, my name disgraced, everything I had vanished by morning. He then abandoned me at a desolate, chemical waste site, where I died alone and terrified, my hometown withering under his cruel hand. The metallic tang of chemicals, the stench of decay – that memory seared into my soul, a cold reality of his ultimate betrayal. How could the man I saved condemn me to such a horrifying end? Then, I blinked. I was back. Reborn, on the very day Victoria Thorne first offered that cursed contract. My hands steady, I pushed it back. "No," I said, my voice quiet but cutting, shattering the chains of my past and forging a new destiny.

Staring at the stunningly beautiful woman in front of him, Brandon thought she would take advantage of him just like many women he had met before who asked for money and power. Instead, Daisy let out a warm, breathtaking smile. However, one thing led to another and Daisy saw a murderous look flash within Brandon’s eyes. She now realized how dangerous the man she had entangled with. One step out of line could cost her her life. Fleeing for her safety, she thought this was the last time she would hear of him. But little did she know, their story has just begun.

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he’d dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family’s land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell—the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I’ve suspended Hugh’s executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I’m just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out. I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm: "In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling." Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped. When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself." Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son. The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne. I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie." I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.

When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married. His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing-no money, no identity, no hope. But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test-and twenty-three years of relentless search. "Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars."

Ashley gave Nicolas ten years of love and five years of loyalty as his perfect housewife, only to be repaid with betrayal, humiliation, and death at the hands of him and his mistress. After being reborn, she vowed to make them pay. She tore apart the mistress, kicked her useless husband aside, and returned as the heiress of a top-tier family. Surrounded by billions, luxury, and a parade of elite bachelors, Ashley became the woman everyone wanted-including a cold, powerful tycoon. When Nicolas came begging for forgiveness, she smiled coldly. "Fuck off! My man is worth a hundred of you."

I lived as the "scarred ghost" of the Stephens penthouse, a wife kept in the shadows because my facial burns offended my billionaire husband's aesthetic. For years, I endured Kason's coldness and my family's abuse, a submissive puppet who believed she had nowhere else to go. The end came with a blue folder tossed onto my silk sheets. Kason's mistress was back, and he wanted me out by sunset, offering a five-million-dollar "silence fee" to go hide my face in the countryside. The betrayal cut deep when I discovered my father had already traded my divorce for a corporate bailout. My step-sister mocked my "trashy" appearance at a high-end boutique, while the sales staff treated me like a common thief. At home, my father threatened to cut off my mother's life-saving medicine unless I crawled back to Kason to beg for a better deal. I was the girl who took the blame for a fire she didn't start, the wife who worshipped a man who never looked her in the eye, and the daughter used as a human bargaining chip. I was supposed to be broken, penniless, and desperate. But the woman who stood up wasn't the weak Elease Finch anymore; she was Phoenix, a tactical predator with a $500 million secret. I signed the divorce papers without a single tear, walked past my stunned husband, and wiped the Finch family's bank accounts clean with a few taps on my phone. "Your money is dirty," I told Kason with a cold smile. "I prefer clean hands." The cage is open, the hunt has begun, and I'm starting with the people who thought a scar made me weak.

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"

Elliana, the unfavored "ugly duckling" of her family, was humiliated by her stepsister, Paige, who everyone admired. Paige, engaged to the CEO Cole, was the perfect woman-until Cole married Elliana on the day of the wedding. Shocked, everyone wondered why he chose the "ugly" woman. As they waited for her to be cast aside, Elliana stunned everyone by revealing her true identity: a miracle healer, financial mogul, appraisal prodigy, and AI genius. When her mistreatment became known, Cole revealed Elliana's stunning, makeup-free photo, sending shockwaves through the media. "My wife doesn't need anyone's approval."

"Let's get a divorce. She's pregnant and deserves a place in my life." He once promised to protect Claire forever, yet when his first love returned, he cast her aside. For three years, Claire dimmed her brilliance, living quietly as the obedient wife behind him. When he handed her divorce papers to give his pregnant mistress a place, Claire no longer hid her talents. The woman he had overlooked was a legendary healer, racing prodigy, and a genius designer. After the divorce, she reclaimed her glory. When he pleaded, "Honey, let's remarry," another man pulled her close. "She's my wife now. As for you... Someone, take him out and give him what he deserves!"