The Skydiving Betrayal: His Steep Fall

Serena woke up tied to a rusted iron chair in an abandoned warehouse, her mind completely wiped clean except for her name. A foul-smelling thug walked in with a bloodstained baseball bat, ready to torture her and the kidnapped five-year-old boy strapped to the chair next to hers. But before his blow could land, a terrifying muscle memory hijacked her body. She effortlessly dislocated her own wrist to escape the military-grade knots, broke his nose, and crushed his windpipe with textbook tactical precision. When the boy's father, the ruthless Wall Street tyrant Silas Sterling, stormed in with his mercenaries, he threw a background check in her face. He accused her of being the mastermind—an eighteen-year-old trailer park delinquent with a history of petty vandalism. He sneered at her cheap clothes and smeared makeup, certain she was just greedy street trash. But a cheap delinquent wouldn't know Pentagon-level psychological de-escalation protocols to calm his traumatized son. And a street rat certainly wouldn't possess the alien medical technology and surgical skills to bring his grandmother back from a flatline brain death. Every instinct in Serena's body screamed that this identity was a hastily forged trap, but she had no memory of her past. She tossed the fake file back onto his mahogany desk and signed his hundred-million-dollar contract. "Enroll me in the prep school from this fake file. I am going to find out who I actually am."

I was the poor girl from Appalachia the wealthy Copeland family adopted out of "charity," bringing me to a life of New York luxury I could never have imagined. But it was all a lie. I wasn't their daughter. I was a living, breathing blood bank for their precious child, Bridgette, whose life had been secretly saved by my bone marrow. Once I was no longer useful, they decided to throw me away. On the night of Bridgette's lavish engagement party, she and her fiancé framed me. They drugged my water, lured me to a hotel suite, and tore my designer gown to stage a scene. Her fiancé stood over me, his face twisted in disgust. "Did you really think spreading your legs would make me forget where you came from? You're just a trashy hillbilly." Outside on Fifth Avenue, my adoptive parents screamed at me in front of the press, calling me a disgrace. My sister wept, accusing me of trying to destroy her perfect life out of jealousy. They expected me to crumble, to become the pathetic scandal they could discard like garbage. They thought they were dealing with a scared, helpless girl from the mountains. But they made a fatal mistake. The soul of that poor girl was already gone. And I, the top-tier operative known as Glacier, had just woken up in her body.

After eight years in a cold marriage, I watched my husband, Damian, run past me during a raging fire. He ignored my screams, his only focus on saving another woman. That night, he coldly admitted he never loved me. Our entire marriage was just a business deal he was forced into. But his betrayal didn't end there. His mistress, Aida, framed my innocent younger brother for a crime he didn't commit. Damian believed her lies without question. He stood by as she had my brother murdered in his hospital bed. He even forced me to crawl over broken glass to apologize for "upsetting" her. The final blow came when he threatened me with my mother' s heirloom box, not knowing it held my brother' s ashes. He had taken everything from me-my love, my family, my dignity. He thought he had broken me. But he only forged me into a weapon. Now, I'm back. And as the new majority shareholder of his company, I'm here to make him pay for every last sin.

My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck. "Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety." He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her. I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper. When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect. He raised the whip. "Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach. "Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down. I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner. He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden. I finally fled, vanishing into the night. It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted. He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man. The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently. "Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even." I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt. "You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."

My husband's secret life walked into my office on my first day as Chief Resident: a four-year-old boy with his father's eyes and a rare hereditary allergy that I knew all too well. Emilio, the man I married, the brilliant rival who swore he couldn't live without me, had another family. At his company's anniversary gala, his son publicly called me a bad woman trying to steal his daddy. When I took a step toward the child, Emilio shoved me to the ground to protect him. I hit my head, and as the life of our unborn child bled out of me, he walked away without a second glance. He never visited me in the hospital. He left me to deal with the loss of our baby alone. That's when I knew the man I loved was truly gone, and our five years of marriage had been a lie. His mistress tried to finish the job, pushing me off a cliff into the sea. But I survived. And as the world mourned the death of Elana Thomas, I boarded a plane to Zurich, ready to begin my new life.

I spent five years in a rehabilitation center for a crime I didn't commit. When I was finally released, my husband, Courtland, was the one waiting for me. He was the one who put me there. He brought me back to our mansion not as his wife, but as a prisoner. I was to serve as a living penance for the death of his true love-my stepsister, Kinsley. I scrubbed floors on my hands and knees while his mother and the staff watched with contempt. I was a ghost in my own home, a constant, breathing sacrifice to his grief. Then one day, the woman I had supposedly killed walked into the living room. Kinsley was alive. She shrank back in fake terror, and Courtland rushed to her side, shielding her from me. "You're frightening her," he snarled. That night, Kinsley brought me a cup of tea, her eyes glittering with triumphant hatred. It was the same poison that had made me barren in my first life. I knew their perfect, diabolical plan. They would break me completely, then get rid of me. But they didn't know that this time, I remembered everything. In my first life, their cruel games led to the death of my innocent little brother, Aspen. I took the cup from her hands and drank every last drop. I would endure their torture. I would play their game. And when they least expected it, I would escape and save the only person who ever mattered.