My Sweet Super Wife

I was working three exhausting jobs a day just to save fifty thousand dollars for my grandmother's life-saving heart surgery. But during a late-night food delivery to a luxury hotel suite, I caught my boyfriend of three years wrapped in a silk robe, intimately holding the university's wealthy queen bee. I threw the expensive steak in his face and dumped him, but they didn't let it go. The queen bee posted a maliciously edited video of me online, framing me as a hysterical, desperate gold digger. Using her powerful family's influence, she systematically got me fired from every single job I had, leaving me completely penniless. Just as I hit absolute rock bottom, the hospital called to tell me my grandmother's heart was failing. If I didn't pay the fifty thousand dollars by next week, she would die. I was suffocating in despair, wondering why these wealthy elites could crush my life like an ant without a second thought. Left with no other choice to save my family, I signed a five-million-dollar agreement with my ex-boyfriend's terrifying grandfather. The deal? I had to marry his comatose, legendary heir, Kaelen Beaumont. But to keep the dark truth from my fragile grandmother, the grandfather issued a twisted command. He forced my cheating ex-boyfriend to pretend to be my new, healthy, and deeply devoted husband. Looking at the pale, terrified man who had just betrayed me, I stepped back and coldly laid down the rules. "From now on, you are Kaelen Beaumont, and you will make her believe you love me more than anything in the world."

I used to be the proud "Frostfang Gamma," but after my family was slaughtered and my inner wolf fell silent, I became a broken orphan taken in by the Serrano family. But they didn't adopt me out of kindness. They drugged me with a potent aphrodisiac and locked me in a room, planning to sell me to a bloated, vile official to be ruined. My cousin Carlee had stolen my title and my family's honor. She claimed my loyal father and brothers were traitors, parading herself as the sole surviving hero. Now, she and the family matriarch wanted me completely disgraced so I could never expose her sickening lies. They sent that pig into my room to violate me, while the entire castle turned a blind eye, eagerly waiting for my destruction. "She is just a wolfless piece of trash now. Let him have his fun." I lay there, my body burning from the drug, filled with agonizing rage. Why should my loyal family die as traitors while this imposter bathed in stolen glory? Why should I be sacrificed for their greed? I refused to be a lamb waiting for the slaughter. Instead of submitting to my fate, I scaled the castle walls, dropping into the forbidden North Wing to make a desperate deal with the mythical "Ancient One." Now, returning to their grand banquet with the most terrifying Lycan in the kingdom standing behind me, it was time to collect my blood debt.

Averie Francis slipped into the VIP hospital ward to surprise her devoted husband, Julian, hoping to share the news of her persistent morning sickness. But through the cracked door, she heard Julian talking to her frail cousin, Stella. Stella whined about her body rejecting the kidney, complaining about Julian having to marry "that disgusting woman" just for her sake. Julian's venomous reply froze Averie's blood. "I wouldn't have touched her if it wasn't the only way to get her to willingly 'donate' her mother's kidney." He proudly confessed to forging her mother's signature on the organ donation forms, effectively murdering her by proxy. To make matters worse, Julian fired Averie from her own multi-million-dollar tech project just to build Stella's resume. When Averie refused to submit to his mistress, he violently shoved her against a doorframe, leaving her bleeding on the floor while he rushed to comfort a "dizzy" Stella. Averie's world completely collapsed. Her perfect three-year marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, her mother’s death was a calculated murder, and she was six weeks pregnant with the child of the monster who orchestrated it all. But instead of crumbling, the shattered pieces of her soul knitted back together into something cold and unbreakable. She quietly secured the forged medical records, burned every designer gift and fake memory in a backyard fire pit, and walked away into the night to destroy his empire.

Years after ghosting my online boyfriend, I returned to the U.S. as a successful journalist, completely transformed. My first big assignment was a documentary on his world-champion esports team. He was Emmett Burke, the team captain, and he didn't recognize me at all. Instead of recognition, I was met with pure hatred. During our first interview, he publicly called our past relationship a "deception," a lesson that taught him to only trust what's real. The man who once loved my online persona, "Aria," now looked at me with cold contempt. To make matters worse, my social-climbing mother-now his stepmother-had lied to him years ago, painting me as a cruel catfish just to get me out of the way. He believed her, and his bitterness was a constant, painful reminder of the past I couldn't escape. It hurt knowing I'd caused his pain by disappearing, but his utter dismissal of what we had felt like a fresh betrayal every day. I thought there was no hope, that he would hate "Aria" forever. Until one night, he found a box of my old things my mother tried to throw away. Inside was a photo of my old self with "Aria" written on the back, and a medal he had sent me all those years ago.

I returned to Veridia City to avenge my mother, a brilliant scientist framed for medical fraud and driven to her grave. But my biological father, who had abandoned us years ago, suddenly brought me back to his luxurious mansion. I thought he finally felt a shred of guilt. Instead, he just needed a disposable pawn to sell off in an arranged marriage to the wealthy Duncan family to save his failing business. His new wife and son looked at me like I was trash from the slums. When I went to enroll at the city's most elite academy, a snobby teacher deliberately sabotaged me with an impossible placement test, wanting to humiliate me in front of everyone. "If you fail, you will get on your knees, apologize, and get out of this city forever!" Everyone waited to watch the uneducated country bumpkin make a total fool of herself. They thought I was just a helpless, pathetic girl they could easily manipulate and crush. They had no idea that beneath this fragile disguise, I was actually "The Surgeon," the underground medical miracle, and "King," the world's most feared hacker. Forty minutes later, I tossed the perfectly scored exams onto the desk, forcing the arrogant teacher into a public apology. As I walked out the gates, the city's most ruthless tycoon—and my supposed fiancé's uncle—leaned out of his Bentley and locked eyes with me. "Found you." They thought they had trapped a weak pawn in their gilded cage, but they had just invited the grim reaper right to their front door.

Elsie stood completely alone in the pouring rain at her father's freshly dug grave. Before she could even mourn, a black SUV pulled up, and Roland Cantu shoved a marriage contract into her hands. He claimed her father had embezzled three billion dollars from the Carlisle group, leaving her with a massive debt. "Sign the marriage contract, and the debt is forgiven." When Elsie refused to marry a dying man, Roland threatened to instantly cut off her mother's life support and her own vital heart medication. Forced to sign, she was dragged to the Carlisle fortress, stripped of her clothes, scrubbed with harsh chemicals, and locked in a glass medical cage. Inside, she was guarded by Axel Stone, a ruthless proxy who treated her like a corporate assassin. When Elsie simply tried to give her dying husband a sip of water, Axel slapped the cup away and accused her of poisoning it. "Get on your knees and drink it." He violently forced her head toward the puddle on the cold floor, triggering a massive, near-fatal cardiac event. Even after she survived and proved her innocence, Axel still ordered her only warm meal thrown into the garbage disposal. Elsie didn't understand why her father was framed, or why she was trapped in this paranoid nightmare with a sadistic madman. But as she stared at the empty kitchen counter, her fear finally turned into burning anger. Since they desperately needed her alive to produce an heir and secure their trust fund, she would use their own leverage against them. She was going to demand a child through IVF, survive this prison, and tear this twisted family apart to clear her father's name.

For three years, I played the perfect, submissive housewife to billionaire Julian Harrison. But right after an intimate night together, he coldly threw a divorce agreement onto the bed. "Scarlett landed an hour ago. I need my single status restored to welcome her back." That same night, I ended up in the emergency room and discovered I was pregnant with twins. When Julian found out, he didn't show a shred of joy. Instead, he stormed into my hospital room, threw a blank check directly at my face, and ordered me to get rid of them. He accused me of using the babies as a sick game to trap his assets. Then, his ruthless lawyer kicked me out of our penthouse, confiscating the jewelry he gifted me and tossing my worn-out notebook onto the floor like garbage. Standing in the freezing rain, my heart completely died. I had swallowed my pride, managed his life, and cooked his meals to his exact standards for three years, only to be thrown away the second his first love returned. But he didn't know that the notebook his lawyer discarded contained the secret formulas of Aura Beauty, a billion-dollar empire I built in the shadows. I tore his check into pieces, blocked his number, and left in a Maybach sent by my associate. Logging into my global CEO database, I looked at his company's fragile stock chart with a predatory smile. The docile Mrs. Harrison died in the rain. It was time to crush his empire.

I woke up strapped to a freezing operating table, a gaping hole crudely sutured over my heart. Joi Rocha, my supposed guardian, stood nearby holding a glowing vial that contained my freshly extracted Phoenix gene sequence. "Don't blame me, sweetheart. Gayla's body is just too weak. She needs this sequence more than you do." In my past life, I endured years of illegal biological harvests for this family. My fiancé Brennon watched with cold eyes as they ripped the gene from my chest, while the elite academy students filmed and mocked my bleeding, broken body. They stripped me of my status, drained every drop of my worth, and left me to die in a freezing tomb just so their precious fake daughter could thrive. Until my dying breath, I didn't understand. I had given them my absolute loyalty, so why was I treated like disposable medical waste? Why did my life mean absolutely nothing to them? But opening my eyes again, I realized I had returned to the exact day they stole my core. This time, I didn't cry or beg. I stared dead into Joi's eyes and smiled. I detonated the residual energy in my chest to incinerate Gayla's stolen sequence, faked my own flatline, and injected myself with a hidden dark matter drive to completely rewrite my DNA. If they wanted to play God with my life, I was going to burn their entire world to ash.

I was happily pregnant with my mate Ronan's child, ready to become the pack's future Beta female. But during a routine checkup, my sister Isolde maliciously exposed my blood test results to the clinic. The baby wasn't Ronan's. It was the consequence of a hazy, primal encounter with a mysterious Alpha during a Pack Run under lunar madness. Ronan ignored my desperate pleas. He dragged me into the pack square, publicly rejected me, and immediately claimed Isolde as his new mate. Exiled and spiritually shattered, I was attacked by rogues in the woods. I lost my inner wolf, and I lost my unborn baby. For five years, I lived as a crippled, Wolfless outcast, scrubbing floors and enduring daily humiliation while they ruled in luxury. My heart was completely dead. So when the terrifying Alpha King suddenly offered me his Luna crown just because I accidentally saved his son, I only felt a chilling disgust. He didn't want a mate. He wanted a convenient political pawn and a glorified nanny for his traumatized heir. "I refuse." I rejected the most powerful wolf on the continent and escaped his golden cage in the dead of night. I walked straight into the brutal Warrior Trials as a Wolfless human. This time, I wouldn't be anyone's prize. I would earn my own power and burn their world to the ground.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, my three-year-old daughter Kenisha' s rare illness led to a shocking discovery. A DNA test revealed she wasn't my biological child. That same day, I overheard my husband, Corbin, confessing the truth to his mistress. They had swapped their baby for mine in the delivery room, declaring my real daughter dead-all part of a long con to steal my family's fortune. When I confronted him, they turned the tables. They framed me for killing Kenisha's pet rabbit in a fit of rage, had a corrupt doctor declare me mentally unstable, and imprisoned me in our penthouse under the guise of "treatment." My husband, the man I loved, had not only stolen my child but was now trying to steal my sanity and freedom, all while turning the daughter I raised against me. But they made one mistake. They thought I was broken. With my father's secret help, I escaped that gilded cage. Now, I'm going to find my real daughter, and I'm going to make him pay for every single lie.

My boyfriend, Carter, chose a ski trip with his manipulative "best friend," Bridget, after I gave him an ultimatum. "If you go, we're over," I had warned. He just laughed and told me not to come crying to him when I got lonely. But while he was gone, the stress of his silence and Bridget's taunting Instagram posts sent me to the hospital with a bleeding stomach ulcer. Lying in an urgent care bed, hooked up to an IV, I saw him liking her posts-pictures of them looking like a happy couple, with captions mocking me. He wasn't just ignoring my pain; he was actively endorsing it. In that sterile room, something inside me didn't just break; it turned to ice. The years of begging for his affection, of fighting for his attention, simply evaporated. So when he came home expecting his favorite dinner, I had a surprise for him instead. "We broke up," I said, pointing to the moving boxes that held every last trace of him. He pulled out a Tiffany bracelet, claiming he was going to propose. But it was too late. I had already called the movers.

For five years, I was the cherished ward of Ambrose Aguilar, the man who saved me. I thought he loved me, until his pregnant first love, Katharine, returned. I was just her substitute. That same day, I was diagnosed with a fatal blood disease, my only hope a transplant from family I never had. Ambrose' s kindness turned to cruelty. He watched as Katharine tormented me, framed me, and finally ordered me killed. But the cruelest twist came from a DNA test: Katharine, the architect of my suffering, was my biological mother. She sacrificed her life to give me the transplant. Now I'm starting over, leaving the man who broke me to the ruins of his own making.

The two pink lines on the pregnancy test were a burst of pure joy, and I immediately called my husband, Ethan, a hero firefighter in our Cleveland hometown. His voice on the phone was full of such happiness it brought tears to my eyes as he promised to come straight home. But he never made it; a massive warehouse fire claimed his life, leaving me a pregnant widow, heartbroken and clinging to his identical twin brother' s comforting vow to take care of me. My grief turned into a living nightmare when the arsonist gang Ethan had put away began harassing and attacking me, spray-painting threats on my door and cornering me in dark alleyways. I nearly lost our baby, trapped in a relentless cycle of fear and isolation, with the man I believed was my brother-in-law "protecting" me. Then, fleeing another violent break-in, I overheard an earth-shattering conversation at the Clark family home that revealed the horrifying truth: Ethan was alive. He had faked his own death, letting me mourn him while he lived comfortably with his brother's widow, Molly, who was also pregnant with his child, coldly waiting for "a little more time" before returning to me. The man I loved and grieved watched me suffer, watched me nearly lose our baby, all while orchestrating my pain and prioritizing his other family. How could the hero I adored be such a monster, betraying me so cruelly for a woman he thought more "fragile" than his suffering wife and unborn child? With the image of his charred helmet now nothing but a symbol of his monstrous lie, I made a desperate call, accepting firefighter Andy Lester' s wild offer to marry him-for protection, for escape, for a chance to finally run.

The annual end-of-year meeting at Lester Properties was always a performance, and as their top broker, I was ready for my big commission payout-over $500,000. I was the firm's golden goose, the one who closed impossible deals, and my massive year-end bonus was my true salary. But this year, my boss, Matthew Lester, decided to turn my success into a public ambush. He announced there would be no bonuses due to a "tough market," then, with a predatory smile, suggested I "volunteer" my record-breaking commission to be distributed among the team. The room erupted, not with gratitude for me, but with greedy demands from my colleagues, led by the jealous Molly Chadwick. They piled on the pressure, painting me as selfish if I refused, celebrating as I made a forced "agreement." My hard-earned money was being stripped away, stolen by my boss and celebrated by my colleagues. How could my own company, the people I' d made millions for, do this to me? How could they, and Matthew, so casually demand a year of my life's work while my "teammates" cheered? They thought they had broken me. They thought I was a fool who would meekly surrender. Oh, no. They had no idea what they had just started.

My family's tech company, ChenTech, was bleeding out, and Dad, ever the optimist, clung to an email from Stryker Innovations: an invitation to their "Next Generation Leaders Program." I was supposed to be our savior, a burnt-out junior software developer thrown into the corporate lion's den. I hated it, but Dad's desperate hope was a heavy chain around my neck. The orientation was chillingly efficient. Damien Stryker, the CEO, radiated an unnerving stillness. He immediately dismissed anyone who' d used clichéd motivational posters. My blood ran cold, but my minimalist presentation was safe. Then, a sharp, sarcastic thought cut through my anxiety: What a certifiable lunatic. His gaze snapped up, piercing the room, locking onto me. He knew. Instead of being dismissed, I was "promoted." Mr. Alistair Finch, Stryker' s chief of staff, informed me I was to be Damien's personal project assistant. My days became a bizarre loop of meticulously crafting his Colombian coffee (192 degrees, counter-clockwise stir) and organizing impossibly misfiled archives. Every mental groan, every cynical observation I made, he' d subtly echo or correct with a smirk I could almost feel. It felt less like a job, more like a cruel psychological experiment. How could he know? The mind-reading was infuriating, humiliating. This man, who saw right through my carefully constructed facade, seemed to deliberately play with my thoughts, making me feel like a trapped rat. Was he just an eccentric genius, or something far more sinister? Was I truly losing my mind? But then I started to notice: the companies he acquired often improved, employees thrived. The corporate wolf wasn't quite what he seemed. When his own stepmother, Eleanor, tried to weaponize me for corporate espionage, her veiled threats echoing his mind games, I realized the real danger wasn' t Damien. It was time to stop being a victim in this psychological maze and start fighting back.

My hands, once horrifically scarred, were healed by a cosmic bargain: save one struggling soul, Ethan Hayes, in another reality. For eight years, I poured my life into his, turning a broken man with crushing debt into a tech titan. We built an empire, married, and for a time, I truly loved him, believing our future was forged in shared dreams. But then, the architect of his redemption became the victim of his betrayal. His intern, Chloe Vance, slid into our lives and straight into his bed. Three years of his gaslighting, hidden affairs that became blatant, and the grinding neglect slowly extinguished the vibrant woman I once was. The final, brutal blow came when Chloe, smugly pregnant, revealed Ethan had "gifted" her our vineyard estate-my home. My heart, once shattered, had simply turned to ash. I meticulously liquidated a fortune I' d fought to earn, preparing for an escape he' d facilitated with every lie and condescending guilt-gift. He bought me diamond necklaces while Chloe flaunted her presence in our penthouse. On my birthday, he cornered me, enraged, accusing me of threatening his new family, blind to the fact that his actions had already killed everything between us. He was a stranger, a ghost clinging to a broken past. I was long past anger, past pain-only a chilling resolve remained. How could he not see? How could he not understand that the woman who healed him had been destroyed by him? So, as he lunged forward, his face contorted with a fury born of his own making, I didn't resist. Instead, I calmly whispered, "Happy birthday to me." And then, with a resolute step onto nothingness, I embraced my "death," not as an end, but as a long-overdue return to the life and self I was always meant to be.

My whole world revolved around Ethan Vanderbilt, the wealthy heir, and our shared dream of a life in Aspen. Our future, however, was conditional: he first had to secure his family's multi-billion dollar inheritance by having children with another woman, his childhood friend Brittany Hayes. I became his secret, patient mistress, waiting in the shadows for my turn. They had their first child, then another, and I was forced into the degrading role of nanny to his legitimate heirs, living under the Vanderbilt family's scorn. Then, the unthinkable happened: I became pregnant with Ethan's child. But a devastating fall during a desperate hike ended everything; I lost our baby. His powerful family, the Vanderbilts, saw my immense loss not with compassion, but as a convenient solution to their "problem." They coldly denied me anesthesia for the D&C, subjecting me to a brutal, agonizing procedure that left me not only physically and emotionally shattered but also likely infertile. Ethan, lost in his new "perfect family" facade, retreated, leaving me trapped in their lavish prison, enduring vile taunts from his children. How could the man I loved, who swore he'd choose me, allow such unspeakable barbarity, treating my body and my profound grief with such callous indifference? And how could his spoiled son, EJ, deliberately destroy my last precious link to my deceased mother—a treasured voice recorder—right under his father's passive gaze? As I lay bleeding, broken by that final act of cruelty, a rugged stranger, a man from the mountains, appeared at the door like a forgotten dream. He was my unlikely deliverer, walking into my nightmare, ready to pull me from the wreckage and finally help me reclaim a life I thought was lost forever.

At his debut album party, I watched my boyfriend, Ethan White, on top of the world. His success, though, was built on my quiet sacrifices, my hidden connections as Amelia Sterling, heir to a Texas oil fortune. I'd given up everything to be "Amy," the girl who loved his music, not his money. But his slick new manager, Sophia Rivera, had other plans. She turned Ethan's triumph into my public execution. On the giant screen, my face flashed, doctored photos painting me as a manipulative, cheating schemer. "Gross Misconduct," read the bold red text next to my name as Ethan fired me, his eyes colder than I ever imagined. He accused me of using him, of having a "sugar daddy," pointing to a photo of me with my own father. Sophia smashed my phone and he locked me in our apartment, threatening to blacklist me from the industry, while she faked a pregnancy to solidify her place. My heart shattered into a million pieces. Every sacrifice, every hidden connection I pulled for him, twisted into a weapon. How could the man I loved, for whom I gave everything, betray me so cruelly, so publicly? Trapped and heartbroken, one last flicker of hope remained. A battered burner phone, tucked away, for emergencies. With trembling fingers, I called the only person strong enough to turn this nightmare around. "Dad," I choked out, revealing the truth of Amelia Sterling for the first time in years. Ethan White had just declared war on the wrong woman, and he had no idea what was coming.

Never in her wildest dreams did Nancy imagine she would wake up one day with superpowers. Having grown up wealthy and spoiled, she was used to a life of luxury. However, it all came crashing down when her family got into a car accident-- her father died immediately, but her mother suffered in the hospital. She lost her father, her riches, and she almost lost her life. Miraculously, she regained consciousness... with new superhuman abilities. Beating all the odds, she eventually established herself in the corporate world and became a corporate legend. There, she found love, winning the heart of Stefan-- the indifferent business tycoon of the city.

Chloe had just given birth to twins, lying exhausted in a cramped, bustling hospital ward. When she called her husband, Julian, he was busy partying with his actress mistress. He coldly hung up on her, having already drafted a brutal divorce agreement that would leave her with a pittance. Strangers in the next bed loudly mocked her pitiful state, gossiping about how Julian was dumping her. For years, Chloe had erased her own identity to fit into his elite world, only to be thrown away like garbage. She was completely alone, clutching her helpless babies, bracing herself to sign the cruel papers just to survive. She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion was met with such chilling indifference. Why did she have to suffer this ultimate humiliation while he celebrated with the woman who ruined her life? But then, a senior doctor noticed a unique mole on her wrist and ran a secret DNA test. The results were staggering: Chloe was the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Beaumont family. With her fiercely protective parents and three powerful brothers suddenly forming an impenetrable fortress around her, Chloe picked up her phone and texted her arrogant husband. "City Hall tomorrow at 10 AM. If you don't show up, my lawyer will handle everything. And trust me, you won't like their terms."

Five years ago, I stood in the freezing rain at my mother's funeral, waiting for my husband. Blake Knight, the billionaire NHL superstar, was two hours late. When he finally showed up, he brought his rumored girlfriend, the woman he had just rented a hotel rooftop for to celebrate her birthday. Watching him defend her fake tears, my heart completely died. I took off my diamond wedding ring, placed it on my mother's headstone, and walked away from my marriage forever. I fled to London, changed my name to Ava, and secretly raised the triplets he never knew existed. I thought I was finally safe from him. But today, my kids vandalized a silver Aston Martin in our apartment's parking garage, and the owner caught my youngest daughter. My phone rang. The voice on the other end was Blake's. He had moved into my building, and he was holding my little girl in his penthouse, demanding her mother come get her immediately. Panic suffocated me. If I walked through that door, my five years of hiding would be instantly destroyed. He would recognize me, realize I didn't get rid of our child like everyone thought, and he would use all his power to take my babies away. I couldn't let him ruin my life again. "I'm just her nanny," I lied through my teeth. I frantically begged my best friend to go upstairs and rescue my daughter in my place. He bought the disguise, but now, the King of the Ice is dangerously obsessed with investigating my new identity.

She married him out of desperation, becoming the perfect docile wife while he treated her like dirt beneath his shoes. But everything shattered the night she overheard him mocking her with his friends-and discovered the necklace she'd cherished, her only link to the boy who once saved her life, didn't even belong to him. It was all a lie. No longer the doormat he married, she discards her fake identity and reclaims her birthright as the hidden heiress of Salvadore City. Now she's on a mission: find the necklace's true owner among his circle of friends, no matter how many hearts she has to break along the way. But her husband isn't ready to let go. Convinced she's playing games to make him jealous, he's blindsided when divorce papers land in his hands. By the time he realizes the woman he dismissed was never who he thought she was, she's already moved on-living her truth, chasing her destiny, and leaving him choking on regret. Some cages, once opened, can never be closed again.

My stepmother’s bodyguards were seconds away from dragging me back to a life that was essentially a prison cell wrapped in silk. I couldn't even scream for help because the words always died in my throat—a clinical condition called selective mutism that felt like drowning on dry land. I had just discovered the sickening truth: my father was planning to sell me to a sleazy investor named Sterling to cover his company’s bankruptcy. They were going to drug me, ship me off to a private island, and strip away the only thing I had left—my late mother’s multimillion-dollar art trust. When I arrived at the manor, my stepmother Lydia handed me a glass of wine laced with bitter sedatives, her smile sharp as a razor. "Drink up, darling. It’ll make the transition to Mr. Sterling much easier." My stepsister Harper stood in the corner, wearing a dress bought with my mother’s stolen money, mocking my inability to speak. My father didn't even look me in the eye as he calculated my price tag, treating his own daughter like a piece of damaged, mute inventory. They thought because I didn't speak, I didn't hear them laughing about the "accident" that killed my mother or how they planned to burn her final restoration work. They assumed my silence was a sign of surrender, a white flag waved by a broken girl who would never fight back. How could the people who were supposed to be my family treat me like a commodity to be traded? Did they really think my silence meant I was weak, or that I didn't know every dirty secret they were hiding in their ledgers? I didn't drink the wine. Instead, I burst into the VIP suite of Carlisle Pierce, the most cold-blooded billionaire in New York, and slammed a crumpled napkin on his table with a desperate, last-second gambit. "MARRY ME. NOW. $1 MILLION."

My sister-in-law didn't want me to marry for love. She wanted me to marry rich-so she could turn my husband into her personal ATM. So I did the one thing guaranteed to ruin all her plans. I got myself a broke hockey player. At least, that's what everyone was supposed to believe. Beckett Hayes needed a girlfriend badly. The Chicago hockey star had a reputation problem, angry sponsors, and too many headlines painting him as arrogant, reckless, and impossible to settle down. I needed a man convincing enough to stop my family from arranging my future for me. Our solution was simple: fake date. His rules were even simpler. Live in his shabby apartment. Help sell the struggling-player act. Smile for the cameras. No real feelings. Easy. Until my family showed up to mock the "loser" I'd chosen-and Beckett stepped between us like they had insulted something that belonged to him. Until he put a no-limit black card in my hand and told me to stop sacrificing my dream of becoming an artist just because I was afraid to spend money. Until our fake dinners started feeling domestic, his hand started finding mine under the table, and I began forgetting that every protective look and possessive touch was supposed to be part of the contract. Then Beckett's grandfather arrived at our tiny apartment wearing cashmere, flanked by bodyguards, carrying a priceless Hayes family heirloom for me. Apparently, pretending to be broke was the easy part. Pretending I wasn't falling for my fake boyfriend was becoming impossible. Especially when his grandfather took our only bedroom and left Beckett and me with one pullout sofa, one night, and absolutely nowhere left to hide.

On our third anniversary, my husband canceled our dinner, claiming a sudden work emergency. I tracked his phone to an exclusive French restaurant, only to find him tenderly fastening a blessed bracelet—one I had flown across the world to get for him—onto his college ex-girlfriend's wrist. The sheer shock triggered a violent placental abruption. Bleeding out in my car just across the street, I frantically called his number. Through the window, I watched him glance at his screen, frown in annoyance, and press decline to focus on his lover. While I was wheeled into a freezing operating room for an emergency C-section utterly alone, he took his mistress back to our marital bed. He didn't even bother to check if I was alive, completely oblivious that our premature daughter was fighting for her life in the NICU. I soon discovered our entire marriage was a sham. He had used my family's wealth to save his company, and now he was trading me to secure a massive business deal with his ex's father. The man I loved didn't exist; he only saw me as a disposable asset. "I'm going to make him wish he had never been born." After secretly securing my baby in a private retreat, I ordered a medical-grade silicone pregnancy belly to hide my flat stomach. I stepped back into our penthouse, ready to burn his precious empire to the ground.

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing. During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me. I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst. She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side. "Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house." I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip. My heart went completely dead. So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate. I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table. "I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."

I was carefully folding a new silk nightgown, ready to fly to New York and surprise my fiancé of several years, Donald. Then my phone pinged with a photo from my stepsister, Cindy. It was a high-resolution image of her and Donald, tangled together naked on messy bedsheets. On his arm was the one-of-a-kind silver bracelet I had custom-designed for his birthday last month. Cindy was staring right at the camera with a triumphant, provocative smile. A second message popped up: "Omg, sis, so sorry! Sent that by accident!" It was a blatant, mocking slap in the face. Later, I even intercepted a call where Donald laughed with his mother about how my declining family was just a worthless stepping stone for them. He called me a "boring, good girl" who was easy to manage, bragging that he would just go back to having his fun with Cindy right after our wedding. They really thought I was just a naive fool who would either come crying to him or quietly swallow this humiliating betrayal. They thought my silence meant I was weak and defeated. But I didn't shed a single tear, nor did I scream. A cold, sharp anger shot up my spine, extinguishing every last ember of heartbreak. I threw the silk nightgown into the trash, opened my laptop, and used my MIT computer science background to hack straight into their luxury hotel suite's smart system. I wasn't going to New York to cry. I was going to broadcast their filthy affair to the entire city at the most prestigious charity gala of the year.

I gave up my college dreams and spent every penny I had to support my boyfriend Boyce's NHL ambitions. But as I lay dying in a damp hospital room, I called him begging for treatment money, only to hear his new girlfriend laughing on the line. Boyce coldly called me a useless "Puck Bunny" and a convenient ATM before hanging up. Moments later, his new girl Beryl called back to deliver a truth that shattered my reality. "Do you know how you got sick? It wasn't an accident." Boyce had deliberately arranged for me to be infected with HIV. He thought I was too clingy, and this was the easiest way to get rid of me so he could chase his hockey dreams without baggage. Just before I took my last breath, a man arrived to save me, sent by Case Hoover-a wealthy fiancé from an old family arrangement I had completely forgotten. The irony was crushing. I had destroyed my life serving a monster who murdered me, while my actual fiancé tried to protect me. I died in excruciating agony, my soul held together by nothing but pure, bottomless hatred. Why was I so blind? Why did I give everything to a man with a heart blacker than a starless night? Opening my eyes, I gasped for air, finding myself staring at my healthy, eighteen-year-old reflection in the mirror. I was reborn in my senior year of high school. This time, I wouldn't be his stepping stone; I was going to make him pay the ultimate price.