Torn Check, Secret Baby: My Spectacular Comeback

But the day he took the throne, his first official decree was my absolute ruin. He stripped me of my name and threw me barefoot into a brutal winter storm. The men who used to bow to me ripped my coat from my shoulders. My own aunt rolled up her car window as I dragged my bleeding feet through the slush. His ambitious new queen smiled down at me as the heavy iron gates slammed shut. "If she doesn't survive the night, it will save the syndicate a great deal of trouble." Hunted by my own bloodline, I was forced into hiding, washing dishes in a greasy diner just to survive. For years, I told myself he did it to protect me from the traitors who massacred my father's crew. I thought he was playing a long game. But the truth was far more monstrous. He knew my father was still alive, chained and tortured in a flooded subterranean cell. He heard his screams and chose his gilded crown over my father's life. When his elite enforcers finally kicked down the diner doors to silence me for good, I didn't run. I wiped the grease from my hands, grabbed a blade, and prepared to tear their entire empire to the ground.

For three years, my family's merchant wealth filled the empty vaults of the Obsidian Pack. I was their Luna, bleeding to keep them afloat. But my Alpha mate, Xander, spent my gold on his childhood friend Serena, while his mother secretly fed me Wolfsbane mixed with silver dust to destroy my fertility. They drained my private dowry to buy Serena a mansion and plotted to kill me so she could take my place. When I suffered a severe hemorrhage from their poison, Xander's mother locked my door and priced a cheap pine coffin for me. Even when I risked my life to save a royal pup and got crushed by a burning silver beam, Xander only rushed to comfort Serena's fake tears. "Look what you are doing! You are cruel, Wynne." He used his Alpha Command to force me to my knees, accusing me of bullying a sick orphan while my own flesh was melting from the silver. I didn't marry up; I bought him. I gave them everything, but they treated my life like worthless dirt to make room for his true love. I finally realized that this mate bond was nothing but a rotting chain around my neck. When the Supreme Luna asked what royal grace I desired for saving the pup, I dragged my bleeding, ruined body to the center of the hall. "I ask for permission to reject my Alpha, Xander." I spoke calmly, ready to tear down his pack brick by brick.

When the kidnapper pressed a tactical knife to Falon's throat and demanded a one-million-dollar ransom, she was certain her fiancé would pay. Instead, Jerod's annoyed voice echoed through the speaker. He was busy cutting a cake with his fragile, manipulative mistress, Abby. "Do whatever you want with her," Jerod told the thug. "I am done." The call disconnected. Left to die, Falon was injected with a lethal black-market aphrodisiac. She fought her way out, escaping into the freezing rain, and threw herself at the mercy of a stranger in a black Maybach. That stranger was Bell Farrell, a ruthless billionaire and Jerod's biggest corporate rival. To survive the burning drug and shatter the memories of her fiancé's betrayal, she gave herself to the devil that night. The next morning, Falon woke up in a stranger's bed, staring at her bruised skin. For four years, she had endured her abusive family's cruelty, watching them treat her fake, adopted sister like a princess while using Falon as a corporate pawn. She had compromised everything for Jerod, only to be thrown away like garbage. Why did she have to suffer while the people who destroyed her played the victims? Falon took off her five-carat engagement ring and threw it in the trash. She put on a sharp black suit and crashed her family's elite ballroom gala, ready to burn their high-society facade to the ground.

I woke up with a splitting headache and a pinstriped lawyer shoving a contract in my face, demanding I sign away my rights to the Sterling estate. My husband, the billionaire Arthur Sterling, had been missing for three months after a plane crash, and everyone assumed he was dead. The lawyer sneered, threatening to leak compromising photos of my "shopping trips" if I didn't accept a measly fifty-thousand-dollar settlement. That was when the horrifying reality hit me: I had transmigrated into the body of Gloria Peck, the gold-digging villainess of the novel *The Sterling Legacy*. In the original story, I signed the papers, abandoned Arthur's children, and ended up frozen to death on a park bench after the family's eldest son, Jones, grew up to destroy me. But my current reality was even more desperate-I discovered I had five million dollars in gambling debts and debt collectors who didn't take "no" for an answer. Signing that paper wasn't a fresh start; it was a death sentence. Jones, Arthur's fourteen-year-old son, sat in the corner of the office, watching me with a hatred so cold it felt like a physical weight on my skin. I realized that if I followed the script, I would die. If I played the victim, I would die. I was trapped between a predatory legal team, a vengeful stepson, and a mountain of debt that fifty thousand dollars couldn't even begin to touch. How could I survive in a world where I was the most hated woman in the city, with a bank account that held exactly five hundred dollars and a target on my back? I didn't pick up the pen to sign. Instead, I slammed it into the mahogany table, piercing the heart of the agreement. "This contract is garbage," I told the stunned lawyer. Just as I prepared to fight for my life, the office door swung open, and Arthur Sterling-the man the world thought was dead-walked back into his empire, his eyes locking onto mine with terrifying intensity. The script was officially broken, and I was just getting started.

I was the secret girlfriend of rising political star Kellen Jefferson, and the sacrifice he made thirty-eight times to appease his manipulative sister, Cherrelle. Her cruelty escalated from ruining my career to pushing me off a stage, breaking my wrist. Kellen covered it up. He chose her again when she pushed me down a flight of stairs, covering up the attempted murder. He chose her when he publicly kissed her after she framed me for stalking. But the moment that truly killed my love was when I was abducted. I called him, begging for help. He never answered. Later, I saw the video: he watched my call come in and, at his sister' s urging, let it go to voicemail. He abandoned me to die. After escaping with my life, I disappeared. Two years later, he saw my face on the cover of a magazine-a celebrated artist with a new life and a new love. And he finally understood what he had lost.

He broke my heart ninety-nine times, but it was the last one that finally killed my love for him. At his family's party, his new girl theatrically stumbled, pulling us both into the pool. My heavy gown dragged me down, and I gasped for air, reaching for him. But he shoved right past me. He saved her. Through the chlorinated water, I heard his voice, sharp and clear for everyone to hear. "Your life is no longer my problem." The world went silent. My love for him died in that pool. But the final humiliation came a week later, at a high-stakes poker game. He kissed her in front of everyone, a brutal, public execution of my worth. Then he looked straight at me, his voice booming across the silent room. "She's a much better kisser than you ever were." Later that night, I overheard him talking to his second-in-command. "I'll keep her around long enough to make Ellie jealous. Give it a few weeks. She'll come crawling back, begging me to take her back. She always does." My love, my pain, my heartbreak—it was all just a game to him. So I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I went home, opened my laptop, and applied to a university in New York. This wasn't a threat. This was a burial.