Her Toxic Love, My Masterpiece

The university library hummed with the quiet hum of panic on the last day for college applications. My finger hovered over the 'Submit' button for Caltech, my dream school, when I heard him. Liam, my best friend since childhood, was laughing with his friends, his voice cutting through the silence. "Chloe' s going there. She' s an art major, and she' s kind of nervous about being in the city alone. Someone' s got to look out for her." Then the words that shattered everything: "Ava? It' s fine. She has my account password. When she sees I' ve changed my mind, she' ll follow suit. She can' t live without me anyway." My breath caught. He hadn' t just broken our decade-long promise of attending Caltech together; he expected me to abandon my own future, my father' s legacy, like a pet. He truly saw me as an extension of himself, not a person with my own dreams. The casual cruelty stung, deeper than any physical pain. How could he so easily dismiss everything we' d planned, everything I was, for a new girl he barely knew? Had our shared dream, the very foundation of my future, been nothing but a fleeting whim to him? The betrayal was absolute, the humiliation searing. I had built my world around a promise that, for him, was apparently disposable. But then, a cold anger washed over me, stronger than any hurt. He thought I couldn' t live without him? He had no idea. With a steady hand, I clicked 'Submit' on my Caltech application, forging my own path, free from his shadow.

My life was a meticulously crafted blueprint, or so I thought. A successful architect, adored by my community, with a childhood sweetheart, Liam Hayes, by my side. Our marriage was the fairy tale I' d dreamt of, until it shattered with the news of his death. Ten years later, I found him alive, living a picturesque life with my best friend, Sophia Chen. His "death" was a lie, a calculated escape from a life, and a wife, he didn' t want. The final twist? He died saving me in a real car crash, his last words confessing his enduring love for Sophia, not me. I woke up, gasping, the scent of birthday cake and lilies filling the air. I was twenty-two again, on the day I first chose Liam. But not this time. Liam' s betrayal carved a raw wound, his dying words now a command ringing in my ears. This time, I wouldn' t make the same mistake. I chose Ethan Stone, my former rival, a man who consistently challenged me, whose aloofness I\'d once mistaken for disdain. My grandfather looked at me, bewildered, as I rejected the expected. Then, at my birthday party, the public humiliation began. Liam, ever the schemer, beat me to the punch, announcing his love for Sophia first, making it seem like he had rejected me. Sophia, a flawless actress, played the role of the innocent, heartbroken friend. As I stepped forward, the black box in my hand, declaring my choice of Ethan, Sophia lunged at me. Liam, defending her, shoved me. My head hit the marble floor, and the world went dark. But not before I saw a flash of black leather, a furious green gaze, and Ethan running towards me.

My perfect life, a meticulously crafted facade, shattered the moment I walked into my lawyer' s office, signing a new will to kill the man everyone thought I was. That night, at my pre-wedding dinner, I saw it: my fiancée, Olivia, laughing with my half-brother, Liam, his hand possessively on her back, their betrayal so blatant it stole my breath. The pain intensified as Olivia, with a perfectly fake smile, kissed my cheek, reeking of Liam' s cologne, then dismissed the custom-made key to our dream home as "just a key," leaving me standing alone with my rejected love. As I saw them kiss the next morning, followed by a voice recording of Olivia' s cruel laughter describing me as "poor, sad Ethan" and her "ticket" to Liam and wealth, a terrifying clarity pierced through me. They thought I was weak, a fool to be manipulated, but the man they knew died that day; I would rise from the ashes, a new man ready to enact a revenge they would never see coming.

For ten years, I built a wall of mediocrity around myself. After my sister Sarah vanished, an alleged suicide linked to the sinister "Blackwood Tech Curse," my parents pulled me from advanced STEM, scrubbed my online presence, and moved two states over. "Just be average, Ashley," my father pleaded, "Average is safe." I became an insurance analyst, safe and boring, believing I had outsmarted fate, that Sarah was a random tragedy. Until today, when an encrypted email landed in my inbox: "Congratulations, Ashley Miller. You've been accepted." The Blackwood curse, a digital ghost from a defunct institute, promised death wrapped in an acceptance letter, just like Sarah's. When I tried to expose it, the FBI agent who' d dismissed my fears showed me security footage-me, at the scene of a Blackwood victim's death, then a fabricated psych evaluation painting me as delusional. My own laptop was framed as the source of a federal hack, isolating me further. Even my parents, panicked by the lies, asked, "Ashley, honey… Did you… have you been seeing someone?" The one person I thought I could trust, Davies, believed the frame job. "The hack came from your laptop," he said, his voice flat. But then, my own hand clenched, tried to strike me, until Davies, who' d burst in, saw it wasn' t me. "You' re not suicidal," he whispered. "Something else was controlling you." He set up a livestream, making my forced stay at a "safe house" public, only for a chilling message to appear on my screen, "WE CAN GET TO YOU ANYWHERE." Then, a porcelain doll-Sarah' s childhood doll, supposedly lost for years-appeared at my window, its face frozen in a scream. The lights went out, and in the darkness, my mother, her eyes wide and blank, attacked me with a shard of glass, whispering, "The signal is the vessel." The next morning, the doctors diagnosed me with "severe schizoaffective disorder, with acute paranoid delusions." My parents finally broke, signing the commitment papers when a psychiatrist presented a photo altered to show me with a different sister, Eva, claiming Sarah was just my cousin, that their decade of lies was to "protect" me. I realized then, in the sterile silence of the psychiatric facility, that this wasn' t a ghost story, but a controlled experiment. And I heard a name whispered in the halls: Marcus Thorne, the vanished founder of Blackwood Tech, now a VIP patient on the top floor. They thought they had trapped me, broken me. But they had just given me a new purpose, a new identity, and a clear target.

Tonight was supposed to be perfect, our fifth wedding anniversary, and I, Ava Monroe, was glowing, a secret smile playing on my lips for the news I planned to share with my loving husband, Liam. But then, a strange, unlocked phone in his study revealed a picture: Liam with another woman, Sophia Chen, whose hand clung to his with an intimacy that made my blood run cold. Hidden, I heard his voice, tender and intimate, confirming my worst fears about Sophia and a chilling dismissiveness towards me: "Ava doesn\'t suspect a thing. She\'s probably in the kitchen, playing the perfect wife, just like always." He then spoke of a "real, legally binding" marriage that wasn\'t ours, calling our five years "a beautiful placeholder," a "five-year arrangement that\'s about to end." My perfect life shattered, exposing his carefully constructed deceit. My heart hammered with a terrifying realization: I was pregnant with his child, a child conceived in a lie, while he was secretly married to another woman. Then, at a charity gala, with my arm still bruised from Sophia\'s staged fall and Liam\'s furious accusations, I saw them. Under the table, while he held my hand for the cameras, his other hand stroked hers-a secret, intimate gesture meant for me. The sheer audacity, the cold, calculated performance, didn\'t even hurt anymore; it simply filled me with a profound, soul-crushing boredom. I just wanted out. Suddenly, a searing pain ripped through my body, as I collapsed, instinctively knowing Sophia had poisoned me, and Liam, blinded by his own narrative, walked away, leaving me to my fate. Waking up alone in a sterile hospital room, no longer pregnant, I learned the truth: Sophia had tried to kill me, and Liam' s betrayal went deeper than I ever imagined. I would disappear, but not before leaving behind the unedited truth of his monstrous betrayal.

The Starlight, a vintage car, coughed and died, mirroring the decade-long marriage of Chloe and Mark. What was supposed to be their ten-year anniversary took a dark turn when a lawyer' s call shattered Chloe' s world: her marriage was a sham, and Mark had been legally wed to her sister, Brittany, all along. The revelation of Mark' s bigamy and Brittany' s hidden role as his true wife left Chloe reeling, compounded by the horrifying realization of their brazen deceit under her own roof. As Chloe' s mother suffered a heart attack, Mark callously prioritized Brittany's fake pregnancy, letting Chloe' s mother die while ordering security to remove a pleading Chloe, leaving her bruised and heartbroken. But from the depths of her despair, Chloe made a silent vow: she would sever every tie to her past, embrace a new chance at family with an unexpected adoption, and rise from the ashes of betrayal, leaving Mark and Brittany to face the true cost of their lies.

Renea was trying the wedding dress, when suddenly the man rushed in the dressing room and held her neck tightly... “Bitch! Are you still trying to pretend innocent!” Jasper said as he tightened his grip on her neck and choked her harder. Then he used his other hand and took out the phone from his suit pocket and played the video of two people having sex in front of Renea… However, what was even more shocking, was that the woman in the video was, Renea Morris, however, the man in the video was not Jasper. Renea struggled to take a phone away from Jasper’s hand and tried to explain, “Jasper, it was not what you think… I… I can…” Jasper looked at Renea with his eyes full of disgust, as he said, “Let’s call of the wedding. I can’t marry a woman like you.” After saying that Jasper walked out of the shop Renea chase after Jasper... But then she sees Jasper passionately kissing her sister Kailey. And she hears everything, that her sleeping with strange men was all a plan of the vipers of the last two days, and that their goal was to get out of this stupid marriage. Even her adopted parents were also involved in this matter... They all do this with her because of the inheritance left by her grandfather... Renea heart was filled with anger and she wanted to expose their true colors to the public... However before she could do anything, Kailey had pushed her in front of the car and she got killed... However, when Renea open her eyes, she found herself sitting in the car with Kailey... She realized that she was reborn and went at the time when everything started... Renea looked at the people who had hurt her in her previous life and her lips curled up in a cold smile... She was back... However, this time... she was back for revenge...

"End her, and burn her body." Those words rolled off cruelly from the tongue of my destined one-MY MATE. He stole my innocence, rejected me, stabbed me, and ordered me to be killed on our wedding night. I lost my wolf, left in a cruel realm to bear the pain alone... But my life took a twist that night-a twist that dragged me into the worst hell possible. One moment, I was the heir to my pack, and the next-I was a slave to the ruthless Lycan King, who was on the brink of losing his mind... Cold. Deadly. Unforgiving. His presence was hell itself. His name a whisper of terror. _He swore I was his, craved by his beast; to satisfy even if it breaks me_ Now, trapped in his dominant world, I must survive the dark clutches of the King who had me wrapped around his finger. However, within these dark reality, lies a primal fate....

"You make me want to risk it all," Lenora confessed nervously to her boss. "Then risk it all, cos I already have." The ever enigmatic billionaire CEO-Astor Parker, assured her with a kiss to her forehead. -- All Lenora Albert did in her past life was love the wrong man completely, blindly, and to her own destruction. She overlooked Lucian's constant disrespect, convinced that one day, he'd soften toward her. But Lucian never changed. Instead, he got her best friend pregnant, and together, they laughed at her. As if the betrayal wasn't cruel enough, her best friend ended it all by murdering her. But fate isn't done with Lenora. She's brought back in time, given a second life to rewrite her story. When she's wrongfully fired at work after being implicated in a scandal, Lenora lands an unexpected role at a billion-dollar fashion firm as the personal secretary to its powerful CEO, Astor Parker. Cold, brilliant, and dangerously alluring Astor falls for her fast. One that he reveals with actions rather with words. But Lenora no longer believes in love. All she seeks is revenge. Then comes the cruel twist-Astor is Lucian's brother. Astor is willing to burn the world to keep her safe. But beyond Lucian, beyond her traitorous best friend, lurks a darker force. A stalker, who tends to be a greater threat to her life and won't stop until she's dead again. Will she survive again in this second life?

Being second best is practically in my DNA. My sister got the love, the attention, the spotlight. And now, even her damn fiancé. Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now-billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn't mind. I'd crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one? Wrong. One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That's when it hit me-he didn't love me. He didn't even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn't even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup. So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster-my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise. Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol. Enter him. Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I'd met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised. But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life. And, as it turned out, the best decision I'd ever made. Because my one-night stand isn't just some random guy. He's richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with. And now, he's not letting me go.

Hazel Queen had loved her husband with all her heart for three years. But the one thing she never saw coming was the cold, shocking truth: he wanted a divorce because his mistress was pregnant. Heartbroken and betrayed, Hazel decides to move on and returns to Queen Corp, where she steps into her true role as the powerful female president, worth hundreds of millions. This revelation shocks her ex-husband, Damon Price, who never knew that the woman he left behind was the mastermind behind the famous Queen Corp-the Heiress of the Queen family, who had supposedly died in a fire three years ago.

Rumors said that Lucas married an unattractive woman with no background. In the three years they were together, he remained cold and distant to Belinda, who endured in silence. Her love for him forced her to sacrifice her self-worth and her dreams. When Lucas' true love reappeared, Belinda realized that their marriage was a sham from the start, a ploy to save another woman's life. She signed the divorce papers and left. Three years later, Belinda returned as a surgical prodigy and a maestro of the piano. Lost in regret, Lucas chased her in the rain and held her tightly. "You are mine, Belinda."