My marriage to Ethan Cole, a man revered as a titan of industry, felt less like a partnership and more like a never-ending siege. After years of fighting for even a sliver of his attention, I found him on the floor of his study, fixated on a small, wooden box. Inside, nestled on velvet, were forbidden relics: a child's drawing, a pressed flower, and a faded photo of Olivia Vance, the girl he'd been raised with. The raw, yearning expression on his face, a look he had never once given me, confirmed the crushing truth: his emotional unavailability was solely reserved for her. Our sterile, business-transaction marriage was a smokescreen for his lifelong obsession, culminating in him abandoning me in a skyscraper fire as he pulled Olivia to safety. He then brushed off my concussion from Olivia's attack, prioritized her minor burn for a top surgeon, and offered obscene diamonds to buy my silence, while she moved into our home to subtly torture me. His blindness to Olivia's manipulation, his monumental arrogance, and his consistent disregard for my pain made me realize the devastating reality: he didn't just not feel for me, he chose to torment me instead. But as I saved myself from those flames, a cold, hard resolve replaced the agony. My love for him, long dead, was now replaced by a fierce determination: I would reclaim my life, expose his deceit, and make him truly understand the cost of his choices.
My marriage to Ethan Cole, a man revered as a titan of industry, felt less like a partnership and more like a never-ending siege.
After years of fighting for even a sliver of his attention, I found him on the floor of his study, fixated on a small, wooden box.
Inside, nestled on velvet, were forbidden relics: a child's drawing, a pressed flower, and a faded photo of Olivia Vance, the girl he'd been raised with.
The raw, yearning expression on his face, a look he had never once given me, confirmed the crushing truth: his emotional unavailability was solely reserved for her.
Our sterile, business-transaction marriage was a smokescreen for his lifelong obsession, culminating in him abandoning me in a skyscraper fire as he pulled Olivia to safety.
He then brushed off my concussion from Olivia's attack, prioritized her minor burn for a top surgeon, and offered obscene diamonds to buy my silence, while she moved into our home to subtly torture me.
His blindness to Olivia's manipulation, his monumental arrogance, and his consistent disregard for my pain made me realize the devastating reality: he didn't just not feel for me, he chose to torment me instead.
But as I saved myself from those flames, a cold, hard resolve replaced the agony.
My love for him, long dead, was now replaced by a fierce determination: I would reclaim my life, expose his deceit, and make him truly understand the cost of his choices.
Chapter 1
The phone felt heavy in my hand.
"Marcus, I'm filing for divorce."
My voice was flat, a stranger's.
Silence on the London line, then his sigh, familiar and weary.
"Mia, I always said, Ethan Cole is a monument. You can't make a monument feel."
I knew. God, I knew.
For years, 999 attempts. That's what it felt like. Each one a small death.
He was a fortress, Ethan Cole, revered in New York, a titan of industry, a pillar of stoic perfection.
My husband.
I hung up, the click echoing in the too-quiet penthouse.
His study door was ajar.
Not unusual. He often retreated there.
But tonight, the third time this month, the sight inside twisted something cold in my gut.
Ethan wasn't at his massive mahogany desk.
He wasn't reviewing reports or on a late-night call.
He was on the floor, cross-legged, like a child.
Before him, a small, intricately carved wooden box. Open.
His "prayer book," as I'd sarcastically dubbed his obsessive need for solitary reflection.
Only it wasn't a prayer book.
Inside, nestled on velvet, were not scriptures, but relics.
Olivia Vance's relics.
A child's clumsy drawing of two stick figures holding hands, labeled "E + O."
A single, pressed gardenia, brown and fragile.
A faded photograph of a teenage Olivia, laughing, her arm slung possessively around a younger, less guarded Ethan.
His fingers, long and elegant, traced the outline of her face in the photo.
His expression. It wasn't stoic. It was... yearning. Raw.
A look he'd never once given me.
This was it. The final, crushing confirmation. His emotional unavailability wasn't a general state; it was specific to me. Because all his emotions were already mortgaged to her. Olivia. The girl raised like his sister.
My breath hitched. He didn't look up. Lost.
Flashback. I was twenty-two. A charity gala, glittering and obscene with New York wealth.
Ethan Cole. Impeccable in a custom tux, polite, a cool, steady presence amidst the brash Wall Street wolves.
Marcus, ever the pragmatist, had leaned in, his voice a low warning in my ear.
"He's all form, Mia. No substance where it counts. Be careful."
But I was an optimist then. Full of fire. I saw a challenge, a man to be reached, a heart to be won.
I believed I could be the one.
So, I tried. For years.
I learned about his obscure passions – seventeenth-century maritime history, the migratory patterns of arctic terns.
I tried to draw him into my world, my art, my vibrancy.
I muted my bright wardrobe for the subdued greys and navies he seemed to approve of for a "corporate wife."
His proposal was a business transaction. Abrupt. Devoid of romance. Delivered over a sterile dinner after a board meeting.
"Mia, marriage would be a mutually beneficial arrangement for us both. It would solidify my image, and you, well, you'd be Mrs. Cole."
No bended knee. No whispered words of love.
A strategic move. Perhaps to appease his family, with their stringent, almost puritanical moral code. Or perhaps, I saw now with sickening clarity, to build another wall against Olivia.
Our wedding night. He'd kissed my forehead, a chaste, dismissive peck.
Then, "I have some urgent work, Mia. Please, make yourself comfortable."
He retreated to his study.
I was left alone in a vast, cold bedroom, the silk sheets a mockery.
Now, watching him with Olivia's box, the pieces clicked into a horrifying mosaic.
The coldness. The distance. The years of trying to animate a statue.
It wasn't that he couldn't feel. He just didn't feel for me.
He looked up, startled, his eyes clearing slowly, that brief flicker of raw emotion shuttered away.
"Mia. I didn't hear you come in."
His voice, as always, calm, controlled. Untouched.
I managed a small, brittle smile.
"Just admiring your devotion, Ethan."
He frowned, not understanding. He never understood.
"I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
I turned, walking away from him, from the box, from the ghost of Olivia that had haunted my marriage from its first, lonely night.
He wouldn't know until the papers arrived.
The monument wouldn't notice the cracks until the ground beneath him crumbled.
"Ethan, this is unethical. It's criminal. She hasn't consented." Those chilling words, whispered in the sterile hum of an operating room, were the first thing I heard as consciousness flickered back. My heart pounded, cold dread snaking through my veins. Dr. Ben Carter, Ethan's old friend, was arguing with him. "She's my girlfriend, Ben. Practically my wife," Ethan scoffed, his voice laced with a terrifying casualness. "Chloe needs this kidney. Ava is a perfect match." Kidney. Chloe. My blood ran cold. The beautiful, fragile Chloe Vahn, who had always haunted our relationship, was now taking a piece of me, quite literally. I tried to scream, to move, but my body felt like lead, my throat raw. I felt a sharp tug, a searing line of fire on my side-the scalpel. Ten years of love, of sacrifice, building Ethan Reed and his company back from nothing, all for this. To be carved up like an animal for the woman he truly loved. When I finally regained full awareness, Ethan was by my bedside, a practiced look of concern on his face, spinning a lie about a ruptured ovarian cyst. But then, the overheard nurse's whispered conversation confirmed my nightmare: "Chloe's kidney transplant... he barely left her side." The pieces slammed into place. My despair solidified into a cold, hard resolve. No more. I grabbed my phone, scrolling to one contact I hadn't dared to call. Noah Hayes, Ethan's rival, a man of integrity. My finger trembled as I typed. "Noah," I managed, my voice raspy. "Are you still looking for a COO who knows Reed Innovate's strategies... and perhaps, a wife?" The silence stretched, then his voice, calm and serious, cut through the noise of my crumbling world. "My jet, seven days. LaGuardia."
My parents died when I was seventeen, leaving me heartbroken and orphaned. Mr. Julian Vance, my father's charismatic former mentee and a Silicon Valley titan, unexpectedly stepped in as my guardian. He moved me into his lavish Atherton mansion, offering a bewildering new life of privilege. Confused by teenage feelings, I tragically developed a crush on him, confessing my yearning in a clumsy letter. Julian found it, and his kind facade shattered into a mask of pure fury. He denounced me as an "ungrateful, perverse child" and promptly sent me away to ClearPath Academy, a mysterious institution that promised to "fix" me. ClearPath was a nightmare. I endured forced medication, sleep deprivation, and brutal re-education, emerging months later a broken shell of my former self. Upon my return, Julian introduced his icy fiancée, Eleanor, who immediately launched a campaign of insidious manipulation and abuse against me. Julian, inexplicably blind to Eleanor's malice, repeatedly believed her lies over my pleas, dismissing my visible ClearPath scars as theatrics and ultimately abandoning me to violent thugs. Why was the man who once seemed to care so willing to believe such falsehoods and inflict such profound pain? How could he be so utterly deceived? The crushing weight of betrayal and abandonment pushed me to one final, desperate act beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. My shattered death finally tore away Julian's blinders. Consumed by agonizing guilt, he now confronts the horrifying truth about ClearPath and Eleanor's monstrous deception. He vows bloody retribution and embarks on a chilling penance, willing to endure my every torment in a desperate, last-ditch effort to redeem his tormented soul and reclaim my spirit.
My life with Liam Goldstein was a fairytale, a perfect love story plastered across every magazine and TV screen in Manhattan. He'd even unveiled the "Maya's Horizon" necklace, a multi-million-dollar cascade of sapphires, celebrating our perfect devotion. But fairytales are just that – tales. Then came the burner phone, the hushed calls, the screenshots, and hotel receipts that screamed 'affair'. I watched him live-stream gifts to his young mistress, Ava Sinclair, calling her his "queen," only to later find her visibly pregnant in a hospital, flaunting our engagement necklace and talking about a "situation" with me. His friends, the same ones who toasted our "perfect love," smirked as he publicly kissed Ava and joked about his "side action," assuring her I'd "never find out." Every grand gesture he'd made, from donating a kidney to cultivating a white rose garden, flashed before my eyes, revealing themselves as calculated performances. How could the man who saved my life, the one I vowed to, betray me with such grotesque audacity, in front of the world and his complicit inner circle? It felt like a sick cosmic joke, a public humiliation disguised as love. But I had given him a warning on our wedding day: "If you ever lie to me, truly lie, I will vanish from your life as if I never existed." Now, it was time to activate the Phoenix Initiative, erase Maya Goldstein, and leave Liam with nothing but ghost of a promise he had shattered.
My life revolved around Ethan, the secret husband I loved fiercely, despite the feud between our families. Then, Chloe Vance, his ex-girlfriend and now stepmother, cornered me in a powder room with a cruel bet: ten chances to make Ethan publicly claim me, or I'd sign divorce papers and disappear. Each attempt to win his affection ended in public humiliation. He remained cold, his attention always on Chloe, who openly delighted in my torment. He looked at me with disgust when I tried to bridge the distance, abandoned me in a fire, and watched me suffer an acid attack – his only concern for her. Despite my agony, he later tried to make me take the fall for her sordid scandals. How could the man I loved treat me with such brutal indifference, repeatedly choosing his ex-girlfriend while I withered? Was I merely a convenient shield, a secret to be hidden, while his true devotion remained with another woman? The casual cruelty, the dismissive betrayal, chipped away at everything I believed. Watching him side with her after that horrific attack, something inside me irrevocably shattered. My foolish, stubborn love for Ethan Gold finally, completely died. I decided then that I wouldn't just leave; I would reclaim my life and dignity, severing every last tie to the man who never truly saw me. And he would finally understand what he had lost.
For three years, I lived a lie as Ava Cole, wife to Ethan, whose devotion was reserved not for me, but his college sweetheart, Chloe Vance. I meticulously tracked his escalating betrayals in my secret "Breaking Point Ledger," knowing 100 points meant freedom. The ledger filled quickly, fueled by his unapologetic neglect and public displays of obsession. Then, disaster struck: caught in a violent car crash, I lay bleeding, my world shattering around me. Doctors, grim-faced, revealed I was eight weeks pregnant, desperately needing help. But when the hospital reached Ethan, his urgent command echoed chillingly: prioritize Chloe, who had a mere allergic reaction. My baby, our baby, was lost. "We couldn't save the baby," the nurse later confirmed, her voice laced with a silent fury that mirrored my own. The ledger, once a quiet tally, now screamed past its limit, leaving a brutal, undeniable score of his final, ultimate betrayal. There was no going back; only forward. With a soul-deep resolve, I signed my divorce papers, reclaiming Ava Miller and leaving behind the shattered remnants of a life that was never truly mine. My bags were already packed for Austin, ready for a new chapter where I would rebuild, reclaim, and rise from the ashes.
My life with Mark was perfect, a picture of happy marriage. He and his identical twin, David, ran a thriving brewery, and together with my sister Jess, we were an unbreakable foursome. Then, a shattering phone call. David, always so full of life, had collapsed and died. Weeks of agonizing grief followed, but the true nightmare began at a solemn family dinner. Mark's mother, Brenda, demanded the unthinkable: I was to carry David's child for my sister, a vessel for the "Thompson legacy." My own mother, always favoring Jess, twisted the knife, urging me to "be understanding." I stood paralyzed, while Mark, my supposed anchor, vehemently defended me. But that defense was a cruel facade. One night, I found him in my guest room, not comforting my grieving sister Jess, but kissing her. And then I heard it: "I want your baby, Mark. Openly. Not... not David's ghost." Jess was pregnant with his child. The man who swore to protect me was betraying me with my own sister, all while their desperate family tried to force me into a truly monstrous act. Every loving gesture, every word of trust, twisted into a grotesque lie. Was I truly so blind? So easily manipulated? Why me? Why this profound and sickening betrayal? That night, the naive wife died. A cold, hard rage ignited. I demanded a divorce, packed my bags, and moved halfway across the country. But Mark, Jess, and their twisted family thought they could sweep me aside. They were wrong. I wasn't running; I was retreating to draw the battle lines. This wasn't just about escape anymore. It was about meticulously crafting the perfect retribution, a revenge so complete, they'd wish they never crossed me.
Aria Wilson agrees to her step- sister offers to have a one night stand with an old man interchange for large amounts. It will be use for his brother's operation. What they don't know is the man she had sex with is turned out to be Jake Thomson! The most powerful man in Golden City, a multi-billionaire. Her step- sister Ayah, pretended that she is the one he was with that night so she is the on who gained wealth. Aria got pregnant and walked away but after five years she came back and her children...
Vanessa and James have been married for almost two years. So far their marriage has been fine, although they have not been blessed with children. But one day, Vanessa found out the bitter truth, that her husband was having an affair with Vera, Vanessa's own sister. Vanessa became even more depressed when she discovered that the family that had raised her all this time was not her biological family. Vanessa decided to get a divorce and leave that 'hell'. But Vanessa's fate made Vanessa have a contractual marriage with her own boss. How could this happen?
"There will be no falling in love, we will only act as a loving couple when we are in public, we will share a room to make it believable, but no intimacy, touching is off-limits. We'll only have sex once a month, and that's solely to produce an heir. You won't interfere in my business, and I won't interfere in yours. You will be my wife in every sense and you will not be involved with any other man," he said, arrogance seeping from every word. I watch his mouth move, I'm not ready to fall in love with any man, especially not one as arrogant and egoistic as him. I can handle acting as a loving couple, and as for intimacy once a month. I can agree to that just to satisfy my sexual cravings with no strings attached. "Where can I sign?" I asked since I had nothing to lose. *** Nadine's wedding dreams turned to nightmares when she caught her sister and fiancé cheating! With a secret recording, she's ready for revenge. But then mysterious billionaire Logan West offers a deal: A Contract Marriage to take down her ex's empire. But what Nadine doesn't know is her life is getting complicated as she takes her chance to get revenge or risks everything for a chance at love?"
How hard could it be? That was the question swirling through Rain Dzer's mind the moment billionaire football star Damon Savage asked her to be his fake girlfriend, for just one night. Simple. Harmless. Temporary. At least, that's what Rain thought before she heard his deep, intoxicating laugh. Before she learned about Kylie Cruz, his gymnast girlfriend across the country. And definitely before she saw the football god shirtless under the golden lights of his penthouse suite. Now, caught in a dazzling world of luxury, secrets, and unexpected passion, Rain finds herself falling for the one man she was never supposed to want. Damon Savage isn't used to complications and scandals, until Rain stepped in with her paint-stained fingers. Only one HIM. And Rain is about to learn just how hard it is to let go.
Rachel used to think that her devotion would win Brian over one day, but she was proven wrong when his true love returned. Rachel had endured it all—from standing alone at the altar to dragging herself to the hospital for an emergency treatment. Everyone thought she was crazy to give up so much of herself for someone who didn’t return her feelings. But when Brian received news of Rachel’s terminal illness and realized she didn’t have long to live, he completely broke down. "I forbid you to die!" Rachel just smiled. She no longer needed him. "I will finally be free."
In her previous life, Kimberly endured the betrayal of her husband, the cruel machinations of an evil woman, and the endless tyranny of her in-laws. It culminated in the bankruptcy of her family, and ultimately, her death. After being reborn, she resolved to seek retribution against those who had wronged her, and ensure her family's prosperity. To her shock, the most unattainable man from her past suddenly set his sights on her. "You may have overlooked me before, but I shall capture your heart this time around."