Sarah's Desperate Choice

I went to the City Clerk’s office for a routine copy of my marriage license to finalize a trust fund audit. I expected a simple piece of paper, but the clerk’s pitying look told me my entire life was a lie. "The license was never finalized, Ms. Oliver. In the eyes of the state, you are single." The three-hundred-guest wedding at the Plaza and the Vogue features meant nothing. My husband, Gray Cooley, had intentionally filed the documents with a "procedural defect" so he could discard me without a legal divorce. Moments later, an iCloud invite titled "Our Little Secret" popped up on my screen. It was a photo of my best friend, Brylee, holding a positive pregnancy test at our Hamptons estate. Gray’s text to her was the final blow: "Happy anniversary, babe. This baby is the best gift. Once the trust unlocks today, we’re done with the charade." I soon discovered they were even stealing my career, reassigning my architectural masterpiece to Brylee while preparing my eviction notice. Gray's mother called me a "barren mule" in a leaked recording, mocking the infertility I suffered after saving Gray’s life in a construction accident. I wasn't a wife; I was a three-year placeholder used to secure his inheritance. How could the man I bled for treat me like a disposable prop? How could my best friend carry his child while pretending to comfort me through my darkest moments? The betrayal burned until it turned into a cold, hard stone of fury. I didn't cry. Instead, I walked into the penthouse of the Barretts, the Cooleys' most powerful rivals. I signed a marriage contract with Kane Barrett, the man the tabloids called the "Beast of Wall Street." "I want a wedding," I told his father, my voice steady and lethal. "Bigger than the one I had with Gray." If they wanted me gone, they would have to watch me become the woman who owns their world.

I returned to New York with a broken suitcase and exactly three hundred and forty-two dollars in my bank account. My mother was dying in a public hospital, and the only treatment that could save her required a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit I didn't have. While I was pleading with the billing department, I ran into my billionaire ex, Gannon Sharpe, and his cruel fiancée, Aleta. Without a second thought, Aleta slapped me so hard my lip split, kicking my belongings across the floor and calling me a gold-digging thief in front of the entire staff. I looked at Gannon, the man I once loved more than my own life, hoping for a shred of mercy. Instead, he looked at me with pure revulsion and told me I belonged in the gutter. He believed the lies his grandfather told him—that I had abandoned him after his car crash and vanished with millions. He had no idea I was the one who actually pulled him from that burning wreckage, or that I was currently skipping meals in a moldy motel just so our secret son could have formula. He called me "disgusting" and walked away, leaving me to rot. I wanted to scream that I was the genius scientist who wrote his company’s core algorithms, and that the child he didn’t know existed was shivering with a fever only blocks away. But the ironclad NDA I signed to save my family kept me silent, even as Gannon looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in. Desperate for health insurance to save my mother and son, I took a bottom-tier data entry job in the basement of Gannon’s own tower, intending to stay invisible. But when a billion-dollar error threatened to bankrupt his empire, I couldn't stop myself from hacking the system to fix the code. Now, the man who hates me is standing in my cubicle, demanding to know how a "dropout" knows his most guarded secrets. Gannon is finally digging into my past, and he’s about to find out exactly what—and who—I’ve been hiding for the last four years.

I was four months pregnant with the Alpha's heir, and I had given up everything for Michael. I hid my identity as the daughter of the powerful Alpha Hayes, stripped away my inheritance, and poured my personal fortune into building his pack. I thought we were the golden couple. But one rainy night, Michael came home smelling of vanilla and deception. Exhausted, his mental barriers slipped, and I heard his thoughts project through our Mind-Link to his mistress, Serena. "She is just a vessel," his internal voice sneered. "Once the pup is born, we take the child and reject her. I only need the Hayes money a little longer." My world shattered. I wasn't his mate; I was a bank account with a pulse. The cruelty escalated when a waiter tripped at dinner, sending boiling soup flying toward our table. Michael didn't reach for me or his unborn child. He lunged to shield Serena, leaving me to take the scalding liquid full force on my pregnant belly. While I lay in the hospital with burns, he told the doctors to prioritize Serena's "shock" over my injuries. He thought I was broken. He thought I was trapped. He was wrong. I bribed the nurse to write two words on my chart: "Spontaneous Abortion." Then I froze every asset in the pack, signed the divorce papers, and vanished. Michael wanted a future without me? He’s about to find out exactly what that costs.

For three years, I gave up my life as "Nemesis," the undefeated lawyer, to be the perfect wife for LA's star prosecutor, Keith Sampson. I traded my legal briefs for cookbooks, believing I could heal the man I loved. On our anniversary, he came home drunk, kissed me desperately, and whispered another woman's name. "Holly," he breathed. "I knew you'd come back to me." But the final verdict on our marriage came at a restaurant. When a waiter spilled a pot of scalding coffee, Keith didn't hesitate. He lunged to shield his ex-girlfriend, Holly, from a few drops. The rest of the pot splashed onto my arm, causing second-degree burns. He panicked over the minor red marks on Holly's hand, rushing her to a private clinic. He never even looked at my blistering skin. He just handed me his credit card. "Take a cab to urgent care," he said. "I'll call you later." That was the moment the devoted wife died. I walked out and never looked back. Three months later, I stood across from him in a courtroom, representing the man he was prosecuting in the biggest case of his career. He had no idea the quiet housewife he'd discarded was the legal legend known as Nemesis. And I was about to destroy his perfect, undefeated record.

After seven years of marriage and a heartbreaking miscarriage, the two pink lines on the pregnancy test felt like a miracle. I couldn't wait to tell my husband, Drake, the man who had held me through every painful infertility treatment. On my way to find him, I saw him in a park with a woman and a little boy. The boy, who looked just like him, ran up and shouted, "Daddy." The woman was Kiana, the crazy stalker who'd "accidentally" pushed me down the stairs five years ago, causing my first miscarriage. The son was four years old. My entire marriage, all the nights he held me while I cried over our lost child—it was all a lie. He had a secret family with the very woman who caused our pain. I couldn't understand. Why put me through seven years of hell trying for a baby he already had? He called me "stupidly in love," a fool he could easily deceive while he lived his double life. But the truth was far worse. When his mistress staged her own kidnapping and blamed me, he had me abducted and beaten, thinking I was a stranger. As I lay bound on a warehouse floor, he kicked me in the stomach, killing our unborn child. He had no idea it was me.

My world shattered when Liam, the boy I' d loved my entire life, brought home a vapid social media influencer as his girlfriend. His parents, who always treated me like a daughter, saw my heartbreak and offered to adopt me, to cut the cord of hope that was strangling me. I agreed to be adopted, planning to start a new life in London. But Liam, convinced I was just playing hard to get, staged a humiliating public proposal to his new girlfriend, Brittany, specifically to get a reaction out of me. At the party, he flaunted Brittany, showered her with affection, and even tried to provoke me by giving her the bouquet meant for me. Instead of crumbling, I clapped, then calmly announced to everyone that I was about to become Liam's sister. His fury was immediate. He forced me into his car, subjected me to a degrading display of intimacy with Brittany, and then abandoned me on a deserted road. Just hours later, Liam was severely injured in a car crash, ironically while protecting Brittany, and his parents asked me to stay with him at the hospital. When I found out he had been fed doctored chat logs, twisting my words to paint me as cold and manipulative, I realized his cruel game was all based on a lie. He believed it without question, destroying our 20 years of trust. He then tried to violently force me to marry him, resulting in another car crash that left him with severe, irreversible brain damage, forever trapping him in the mind of a child. But out of that darkness, I found light. In London, I met Ethan, a kind and sincere architect. We fell in love, built a life, and shared a beautiful, uncomplicated future that was more real than any dream Liam had ever promised.