2610 Book(s) Related to UNTIL I MET HIM

I caught my husband sleeping with my sister, so I burned it all down.
The fire burned fierce, swallowing that abandoned cabin in the woods, along with my shattered marriage.
With the stench of gasoline still lingering on my fingertips, I thought I had finally buried the man who betrayed me.
Until the next morning, when he walked through the front door without a single scratch.
My mind reeled.
If he was still alive... then who the hell did I burn to a crisp last night?

Elroy has severe OCD. In the ten years we've been together, he's never allowed me to eat in his car.
On our tenth anniversary, we made plans to watch the stars together.
But just as I reached the mountaintop, my phone rang—it was him.
"Something came up at work. I can't make it tonight. You go ahead and enjoy the view."
The moment he hung up, I saw his female classmate's post about returning to the country.
Catalina was sitting in his passenger seat, holding a half-eaten piece of cake in her hands.
【Someone was afraid I'd get hungry coming back so late, so he specially brought me this little cake～】
Another picture showed Catalina's shoes—still on—planted firmly on the passenger seat.
【He says I'm the only exception to his OCD～ I can do whatever I want in his car, hehe.】
I looked up at the twinkling stars above me, a bitter smile tugging at my lips.
This was the tenth time he'd abandoned me.
Every single anniversary without fail, this "female classmate" of his would show up.
I once tried to gently tell him: "I don't want to be interrupted like this every time."
Elroy looked at me with displeasure. "Interrupted? Catalina is my friend. Can you not be so petty?"
The cold wind howled across the mountaintop. Catalina's words stuck in my heart like a thorn, stinging until my eyes grew wet.
After ten years, I'm done with this relationship.

"Forty dollars. That's all the inhaler I needed to breathe cost. But in our house, nothing comes easy. 'Fairness first. Roll the dice — highest number wins.' I've rolled my whole life. I've never won. Not once. Tonight, lungs burning, vision blurring, I rolled for my medicine money against my sister. She got a six. I got a two. 'You lost, Hazel. Now go to the attic and think about your selfishness.' The door locked behind me. My chest is closing up. And no one is coming to check."

To fulfill my twin sister Chloe’s arranged marriage, I became Landon Moore’s stand-in bride.
For three years, I played the role of the gentle, obedient wife—cooking soup to warm his stomach, sharing his bed on lonely nights, and even taking care of his beloved ‘sister’, Shannon. When he was drunk and stumbled into my room, I endured it all in silence.
Everyone mocked me for being pathetic, a dog begging for scraps of affection. Even Landon sneered coldly, “I will never love you.”
Until the day he stabbed me three times—for Shannon. The world blurred into a sea of blood. I smiled as I closed my eyes, took the fifty million he transferred to me, and vanished without a trace.
Years later, he found me deep in the mountains, kneeling in the mud like a madman, begging me to come home. But by then, I had built schools, with my grandmother, lived a life that glowed with its own light.
His eyes were red as he whispered, “What will it take for you to forgive me?” I placed a trembling hand on the

Five years into our relationship, a floating panel appeared just above Julian’s head, visible only to me: the [Life Priority Meter].
For the longest time, my name securely held the number one spot. That is, until recently, when it plummeted to second place.
The person who knocked me down to claim first? Harper—my best friend of over a decade.
Staring at the stack of wedding invitations on the table, bearing both our names, I knew it was time to wake up from this five-year long dream.

I'm sixty years old. My husband Marcus just whipped me with his belt — for burning an egg. My face is bruised, my hair is gray, and I gave up a full ride to Stanford for this man over forty years ago.
Then the phone rings.
The voice on the other end is mine — my eighteen-year-old self, calling on her birthday, gushing about how Marcus is out buying her a cake, how they're running away to Nashville together tomorrow.
She asks if I'm happy.
I tell her the truth: her boyfriend is in a cheap motel right now, in bed with her best friend. And those pretty promises about Nashville? He's planning to use her up and throw her away.
She doesn't believe me. Of course she doesn't.
But I know the motel. I know the room number. And I know what's behind that door.
If she walks away from him tonight, everything changes — for both of us.

My wife and my best friend had been sleeping together behind my back for a long time. Once the apocalypse hit, they completely dropped the act. While I was still stressing over how we would survive, they threw me straight into a zombie horde—just to buy themselves a few seconds to escape.
Given a second chance at life, I chose to report the impending zombie outbreak to the government, securing my place as a top-tier protected asset for the nation.
But what I didn't expect was... my wife and best friend were reborn too.

I was falsely accused of killing my sister. My husband personally sent me to prison. Three years later, he picked me up, and that very night he stripped off my clothes and fucked me brutally.

He said, "The child your sister and I had together has a heart condition. You have to give birth to a baby to save him. This is what you owe your sister!"

Scarlett Taylor looked at the test report saying she had a last-stage cancer, and the news of her husband, Everett Robinson, and his ex-girlfriend Amelia Martin getting married soon, and her world crumbled.
At that moment, she realized that her three years of marriage and love for Everett were nothing more than a joke.
Clenching the test reports in her hand, Scarlett decided to give up on this loveless marriage and live the remaining days of her life for herself.
At the gate of the divorce office, Everett sneered, "Scarlett Taylor, I am waiting for the day when you regret this!"
Scarlett looked at him and smiled mockingly, "The only thing I will regret is marrying you!" and left.
Two months later when Scarlett came back, Everett kneel in front of him, begging, "Scarlett, I regret it, Please forgive me and let's get back together."
Scarlett looked at him and sneered, "Get lost! I don't know you!"

I watched my boyfriend down on one knee proposing to another woman.
Turns out that he was cheating on me with her for two years.
Our five years together meant nothing to him. He claimed that he needed her money –connections and that I should be the one to play the role of a mistress. I refused.
I didn’t stick around. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I wanted something strong to numb my pain— and yes, I ended up in the loudest club.
Then I met him, Adrian Foster. The wealthiest and powerful CEO.
The moment I lost my balance, he caught me and pulled me straight in to his chest.
Fate? I didn’t believe in it.
But may be …. He did.

He married me because I look like her.
For three years, I played the role. I cooked his meals. I warmed his bed. I smiled when he forgot my birthday. I stayed quiet when he left in the middle of the night to hold her hand.
I told myself it was enough. I told myself I didn't need his love.
Then I got pregnant.
He said he hated children. So I didn't tell him. I was going to keep it. Our baby. The only thing that was truly mine.
But my body had other plans.
When I called him from the hospital floor, bleeding out, begging for help—he didn't come. He said I was lying. He was too busy with her.
That night, I lost everything.
The baby. The hope. The lie I'd been living.
Now he's calling me. Again and again.
But the substitute wife? She's not picking up.

What would a woman do if one day she is waiting for her husband to tell him the news of her pregnancy but he comes home with another woman who is pregnant with his child?
........

Ariadne had a perfect life until her mother died in a car accident and her father remarried, bringing a stepmother and stepsister into her life. Once adored by all, Ariadne became an eyesore to everyone, including her father. Her stepmother and stepsister took everything from her.

However, she lost it when their eyes fell on Xander, the sole heir of the richest family in the country and her childhood love. When rumors of Crystal, her step sister and Xander's dating spread, Ariadne used her everything to force Xander into marrying her.

Despite pouring her heart and soul into the marriage, Ariadne failed to make Xander reciprocate her feelings. Their loveless marriage came to an end when Crystal returned in their lives.

With a broken heart, Ariadne left the city with a secret and rebuilt her life.

Five years later, she returned as a successful interior designer to design her ex-husband's new mansion. But this time, what she saw in Xander's eyes for herself was not hatred. It was something else.

She came face to face with the same people who had wronged her in the past. They still held resentment towards her. But this time Ariadne vowed to strike back at her bullies.

Many secrets were revealed in the process that made Xander regret his past actions. He was determined to win Ariadne back.

BUT Will Ariadne be able to forget their past and get back together with Xander or She will choose someone else?

The night they came for my sister, I cut my own palm and offered the Devil a better bride.

I did it in front of the whole city. I thought I was just a substitute, a disposable girl thrown into the fog to save the sister I loved. But when the Devil appeared—tall, dressed in black that drank the light, with eyes like pale, cold coins—everything changed.

He didn't kill me. He reached out and closed his freezing hand around my bleeding wrist. That was when he saw it. The old silver mark I had carried since birth, hidden under my skin. The moment his thumb pressed against it, the mark woke, blooming with blinding silver light. His stillness wasn't that of a monster choosing his next meal. It was the shock of a man who had just found the one thing he prayed never to see.

"You are not the one they chose," he said, his voice carrying into every frozen corner of the square. The cold rushed out of the air. He turned my hand toward the dying light, his face cracking open to reveal something far worse than cruelty.

"You were never meant to be mine," he whispered softly, his grip tightening like a vise. "And now I cannot give you back."

"Only one woman leaves alive. Choose, Jared."

My husband didn't even hesitate. He rushed past me, untying his weeping mistress, Natalie. "I choose her! Take Danika!" he screamed, refusing to look at me as I sat bound to the chair. He walked away, leaving me alone with the man paid to rape me. The monster laughed, unzipping his pants, thinking I was a broken doll. But he forgot I had nothing left to lose. As he forced himself on me, my hand found a pen in his pocket. I didn't beg for mercy. I plunged it straight into his eye socket.

Danika, the perfect wife of upcoming businessman Jared Fox is known to the world as a naive, beautiful wife who loves her husband to the core, however, no one knows just how dark her life is.

Enter Lysander Laurent-Ashworth, cold, disciplined, and feared across the business world for his ruthless precision. To everyone else, he is untouchable. To Danika, he is the stranger who saved her, and the man who seems determined to shield her, even from the truths she can’t remember.

Bound by a dangerous agreement neither of them fully understands, Danika finds herself drawn into Lysander's world but Lysander might just do anything to protect her. Absolutely, anything.

[From the Cold Blooded series]

In the city where shadows trade secrets and blood seals deals, Noah Bellion is a name whispered like a warning. They call him the Devil from Nowhere—a man of charm as sharp as the knife he hides beneath his tailored suit, a strategist who bleeds without flinching and smiles like sin itself.

Elodie, a quiet florist girl with secrets of her own, steps into his world searching for her missing brother. But Noah sees more than her desperation—he sees what she’s hiding. Something dangerous. Something he wants.

Their attraction is undeniable, but so is the quiet war between them—desire twisted with mistrust, fear tangled with fascination. Because Noah isn’t just the man who could save her. He’s also the man who could ruin her—and make her love him for it.

“You're afraid of me, Elodie… but not enough to stay away.”

"No, I still want to run. I'm afraid of you."

"Good. Fear means you know exactly what I can do to you."

When humanity’s last survivors are forced to fight for a place on the new world, love becomes the most dangerous weapon of all.
Red Harts never asked to be chosen for Savage Glory, a brutal arena designed by AIs to decide who deserves to live on Planet Minerva.
But when she meets Aamon everything changes.
They were never meant to love each other.
She’s the Tank; the shield of humanity.
He’s the Assassin; the blade designed to end her.
Thrown into Savage Glory, a survival arena ruled by machines, Red and Aamon must fight side by side... or against each other. Every heartbeat between them defies the code written in their blood and metal.
But in a world where only one can survive, love becomes a rebellion.
And sometimes, surviving means breaking the system that built you.
Two hearts. One arena.
To love... is to risk everything.

For six years I kept the books nobody wanted to touch.
They called me the help. My husband signed my name to a loan I never saw. His mother told the whole family I was the reason there were no grandchildren.
At the anniversary gala, they planned to retire me quietly — and hand my desk to the woman my husband had been paying out of company accounts.
They forgot one thing.
Before I married into this family, I spent six years catching men who move money the way they do. I never stopped keeping a second set of books.
I let them think the game was already over.
It was — for them.

In my past life, I was tricked into a trap by my neighbor, my leg broken, and thrown into acid rain to die. Reborn, I returned to nine months before the acid rain apocalypse. Meteorites struck, radiation contaminated, water sources dried up, and civilization collapsed. I still had one last chance to save myself and reverse the future. When I mortgaged my house, borrowed heavily from loan sharks, and finally found the water purification engineer whom everyone considered crazy, I was met with merciless ridicule. Faced with humiliation, I simply smiled faintly—"Do you know when water is more precious than gold?"

When I woke up, there was a stranger beside me. He said his name was Kieran, took care of me gently, answered every question with patience. My wolf was dormant, but my heart raced every time I saw him.

"Are you my mate?" I asked.

He was silent for a long time. Finally: "Just rest for now."

The days that followed felt like a dream. He made breakfast, walked with me, kissed me under moonlight. We marked each other. I thought I'd found where I belonged.

Until I saw a black wolf emblem.

Memory struck like lightning—

Kieran Valens. My mortal enemy. Son of the man who killed my parents twenty years ago.

And I'd just spent three weeks in his bed.

Worse—when I pretended the amnesia continued and secretly fed intel to my pack...I found I couldn't betray him.

When he took a silver bullet on the battlefield, I ran to him faster than logic could stop me.

"Why save me?" he asked, eyes full of pain.

Because I love you. Because you're my fated wolf.

Because even though you're the one person I should hate most, my body moves toward you on instinct.

But this love was built on lies...

Ten years ago, Heaven's War God Kevin fought an earth-shattering battle against the Demon King. Kevin was ambushed and gravely wounded, falling from Heaven to the mortal realm.

A young girl named Alice found the blood-soaked Kevin by the river while gathering herbs and treated him with medicinal plants.

Moved by her kindness, Kevin decided to stay in the mortal world to repay her debt, but he discovered that using his power would attract the Demon King and bring destruction to the human realm.

Kevin voluntarily sealed ninety-nine percent of his power and stayed by Alice's side, helping her gather herbs and heal people.

Two years later, Kevin confessed his love to Alice and they became husband and wife, opening a clinic in a small town where they saved countless lives and were known as the "Holy Couple."

My husband Dante's best friend Luigi died three months ago, and with his last breath, he made Dante promise to take care of his pregnant widow, Maggie. From that moment, Maggie invaded our lives, and I was only four months pregnant at the time.

Then Maggie got caught in a gang shootout. She needed an emergency blood transfusion, and she had this rare blood type—Rhnull. Turns out, I'm Rhnull too.

To save Maggie and her baby, Dante forced me to abort mine.

To give my twelve-year-old daughter a peaceful and ordinary childhood, I sealed away the "Eagle" badge that represented the highest military authority in the Federation, willingly becoming a repairman with an oily phone in a remote town.
I suppressed my murderous intent, swallowed my humiliation, and even remained silent about the injustice of the referee.
But my concessions to the powerful and wealthy resulted in the richest man leading a group of professional thugs to smash my home to ruins.
to fight in front of my daughter , until his reckless son smashed my "Eagle Badge," hidden deep inside.
They had no idea that the instant the badge broke—
the SSS-level emergency beacon hidden at its core—had been triggered !

He was the gentlest male nurse in the hospital, and it took him three years to fall in love with a woman of exceptional talent.

She was the most dazzling female director of the cardiothoracic surgery department, and she was used to his humble flattery and took his efforts for granted.

Three years of companionship couldn't outweigh a single word: "Get lost."

When he finally left, heartbroken, she realized—

The "little nurse" she used to dislike had long since become the most important person in her life.

Some loves, once lost, are lost forever.

Some missed opportunities are regrets that can never be undone.

In my last life, I shoved my wife Sarah out of the path of an oncoming car and ended up critically injured myself.
My mother-in-law, determined to get her hands on my savings, secretly switched my medication with cheap knockoffs and left me permanently infertile.
Then she showed up at my office and made a huge scene, pressuring me to quit my job and become a full-time househusband.
As for her and Sarah? They had the nerve to move in some so-called lover who could "carry on the family line," then used my hard-earned money to support him under my own roof.
When the apocalypse hit, they locked me in a room and fed me to that infected homewrecker.
Now that I've been given a second chance, I look at the three parasites standing in front of me—mocking me, acting self-righteous...
I feel no anger. Only amusement.
Fourteen days until the zombie outbreak, and they're still dreaming about how to bleed me dry.
This time, I'm taking back every cent they stole from me—with interest.
And when the end finally comes, I'll be sitting inside my impenetrable safe house, watching with ice in my veins as they turn on each other in despair.

"Kiss it for me, sister…"
I had no idea the milk I drank every night was handmade by my foster brother, Luciano.
After I turned down his confession yet again, I stared at the milk he’d brought me so eagerly and knocked it to the floor in disgust.
The boy who’d always been quiet and obedient suddenly snapped.
He pinned me flat to the ground, his face inches from mine, his breath brushing my ear:"I get it. You want to drink fresher milk, don’t you?"
I never imagined the boy I’d raised all these years could spiral this far out of control with his twisted feelings for me.
So the very next day, I put him behind bars with my own two hands, determined to put an end to this messed-up obsession for good.

I am the pampered Princess of the Carpenter crime family, a girl whose three fiancés once leveled a city block just to retrieve her lost diamond.

But next to Avery—a battle-hardened medic who showed up with her kid and could dig out bullets without blinking—my "spoiled nature" suddenly became such an exhausting joke that Jackson and Rhys simply walked out on me.

Gabriel was the only one who didn't. He was my safe haven, kissing my forehead and promising, "They’re fools. They don't appreciate you."

I believed him. Until I looked out the window.

My proud, untouchable Gabriel was down on one knee in the dirt, humbly wiping the mud off Avery’s high heels.

I didn't scream. I didn't throw a fit. I just turned around, walked straight into my father's study, and looked the Godfather in the eye.

"Dad," I said. "That marriage alliance with the West Coast 'Butcher' family next month. I'll do it."

On Christmas Eve, a mysterious virus swept the globe, and my own father mutated into a bloodthirsty monster right before my eyes.

Retreating to a Texas ranch, I thought it would be a desperate fight for survival—until a monster tore my arm open during a brutal melee. There was no high fever, no mutation. Instead, the moment those frenzied infected caught the scent of my blood, they trembled and backed away, as if encountering their natural predator.

Before I could even catch my breath, an armored convoy bearing a cryptic insignia surrounded the ranch, using sonic weapons to herd the infected horde.

From a distance, a red laser locked precisely between my eyes. The memories forcibly erased during my military service two years ago came crashing back: this apocalypse was never a natural disaster, and I was the "perfect specimen" they were absolutely determined to claim.

Want to turn me into a lab rat? Then let's see how many of you this modified body can drag down to hell with me!

In my past life, my Mafia Don husband left me and our unborn baby to burn just to save my half-sister.

Reborn, I watched him crush my fingers in a door to protect her once again.

"Hurt her, and we get a divorce," he sneered.

He thought the threat would break me. He didn't know his signature was already on the divorce papers hidden in my bag.

On the day of their lavish wedding, I took the hand of his deadliest rival, looked down from a helicopter, and pressed the detonator to his estate.

I’m Scarlett, the last true revival tattoo artist, capable of defying death with my cursed ink—for a brutal price. I lost everything saving my fiancé Hunter in my past life, only to be betrayed and killed by him .

Reborn when Hunter dies again, I refuse to sacrifice myself for my murderers. In an unthinkable twist, the powerless fraud Wendy resurrects Hunter, winning universal praise while I’m branded cold. Only I know the truth: he is not alive. He is a decaying, cursed corpse. I gamble everything for revenge and resurrect the only man who once saved me.

But tampering with death twice stirs a fatal, unspoken curse.

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.
"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."
"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.
"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."
He tossed the phone onto the nightstand, his focus entirely on the woman beneath him.
Then my body was pushed into the incinerator.
When I was nothing but ashes, the funeral home called him again.
Selena pouted, trailing a nail down his chest.
"Is Cecilia acting up again?"
"I'll go end this farce," Victor sneered, getting out of bed.

On my daughter’s 100-day celebration, I found explicit messages between my husband and his secretary.
During our fight, he “accidentally” pushed me off the second floor, trapping me in a wheelchair forever.
He fired the secretary and cared for me personally, winning everyone’s praise and pity.
Only I knew he took secret late-night calls, his eyes full of disgust when he looked at me.
Until his mistress moved in, and my daughter screamed at me: “Just die.”
I smiled and pulled out a hidden voice recorder from my wheelchair.
Three years of silence, all for this moment.
James, your karma has come.

In my past life, I kindly took in my girlfriend and brother, only to be pushed into a torrent of acid rain and melted alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back a month before the apocalypse, only to find that my girlfriend had also been reborn! She was secretly plotting on the balcony to drain my assets to build her and her best male friend's post-apocalyptic love nest? I scoffed, decisively sold all my possessions, and bought a private island in the Pacific to build a top-tier fortress. When the mutated red rain descended and zombies swept the globe, I sipped iced whiskey in a temperature-controlled greenhouse, quietly watching that despicable couple starve and die in their Los Angeles penthouse, tearing each other apart like wild dogs for survival…

On the night my grandmother died, my husband Kael came home trailing blood.
His leather motorcycle jacket was soaked dark red, yet he flashed a savage grin: "I wiped the floor with those bastards tonight!"
For three years, he had treated our home as nothing more than a pit stop between reckless street races.
I’d finally had enough. "After the funeral, we're getting a divorce."
Before the words fully left my mouth, my phone rang. It was his riding partner, Lunn, his voice choking with sobs: "Sera... Kael drove off the cliff tonight. They only recovered bloody pieces of his helmet!"
But the "dead man" was standing right in front of me...

My husband often made me suffer for the sake of my younger sister, even divorcing me because of her.
My parents gave all their love to my sister and neglected me.
My husband and parents even had my sister perform surgery on me.
But they didn't know that my sister had no idea how to perform surgery.
It didn't matter though, because I no longer cared.
On Christmas Day, when they were celebrating, they finally remembered me.
But I was already dead.

On college application day, my two childhood sweethearts, Blaise and Kieran, were completely bewitched by Mari. The manipulative girl talked them into abandoning their prestigious university spots to attend a small community college with her. I tried desperately to stop them, even contacting their parents to prevent them from ruining their futures.
Yet when Mari ended up dead months later, the blind boys blamed everything on me. They tricked me to the cliff and shoved me down brutally, making me pay for a crime I never committed.
Miraculously, I am reborn on this exact day. This time, I will not interfere. I will watch silently and let them bear the consequences of their own foolish choices.

Thirty thousand feet in the air, inside the sealed cabin of a commercial airliner, my five-year-old daughter vanished into thin air while I took a thirty-minute nap.
I tore through the lavatories, the galleys, and every overhead bin. The only thing I found was her stuffed bunny, the one she never let out of her sight.
What was even more terrifying was the crew and the passengers. As if perfectly rehearsed, they all insisted I had boarded the plane alone. They even gaslit me in front of everyone, claiming I was mentally unstable and had hallucinated a daughter.
They took turns pushing me, trying to force me into self-doubt and submission. Not a single person offered to help me look. The entire plane was covering up a sinister crime.
If this plane was going to hide my child and protect the guilty, then I would tear this hypocritical aircraft apart with my bare hands.

All I wanted was a quiet place to live. I drained my savings and paid eighty thousand extra for the one unit on the row with a private backyard.
On my very first day, I found my neighbor's son beating my new hydrangeas with a stick while his mother stood there filming him and laughing.
Bianca says the yard belongs to everybody. Her husband is vice president of the HOA board, so around here, whatever he says is the law.
I showed them my deed. I called the police. I sent a certified letter. Every single time the answer came back the same. This is a civil matter, ma'am. Maybe try being a better neighbor.
Then her son put a rock through my living room window, and the HOA fined me two hundred and fifty dollars for putting a lock on my own gate.
Fine. They want that gate open? It stays open.
I just made one phone call. A truck is already on its way.

For three years, I genuinely believed I was the luckiest woman in the world.

Until I hit play on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my perfect reality shattered into a million jagged pieces.

The woman writhing on the bed was Amanda—the sweet, innocent girl we had both grown up with.

And the hand tracing the curve of her bare skin? It wore the platinum wedding band I had personally slipped onto Louis’s finger.

"I missed you so much..."

"You drive me fucking crazy, baby..."

Hearing my own husband's signature sweet nothings whispered to my childhood best friend gutted me completely.

Our entire social circle constantly praised us as the golden couple. But beneath the glossy surface, who could have guessed this flawless marriage was built on a mountain of sick lies?

Well, if Louis was such a brilliant actor, I figured it was time to give him a show of my own.

I was going to rip off his mask and show the entire world exactly what kind of monster my "perfect husband" truly was.

I was forced by my father to fulfill an arranged engagement I'd never met face-to-face.

Pushing open the private room door, I found my fiancé Tristan celebrating his secretary Clara's birthday.

"Security! Get this beggar out of here!" Clara screamed, pointing at me.

When I revealed my identity, Tristan sneered coldly: "What bullshit engagement? I would never marry a woman like you."

Clara poured red wine over my head: "Kneel down and lick it clean!"

When I fought back, Tristan exploded in rage: "How dare you touch my woman? Hold her down!"

Four bodyguards pinned me down as Clara started a live stream: "Let everyone see this delusional bitch who doesn't know her place!"

They tore at my clothes while Tristan watched coldly, even urging them on: "Hurry up, let everyone see her true face."

Just as I was about to be completely humiliated, the door suddenly burst open—

"Do you have any idea whose daughter you're humiliating?

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

My best friend Tiffany was obsessed with those novels where a mafia don spoils his woman rotten.

She was convinced she was the type of girl who could make a ruthless boss go soft, so she went after Vincent, the heir of a crime family, and got him.

His bodyguards, his dirty money, even the way he told her not to ask questions and just sit tight. She read all of it as devotion. And of course she had to drag me into it too, always with the same excuse: it was for my own good.

Last time around, her mess got me killed. Vincent's enemies mistook me for one of his people, and I died in a shootout that had nothing to do with me.

The second the blade opened my throat, all I could think about was her holding up a bloody knife, grinning, showing it off to me like a trophy.

"Margot, look. He gave me this. It means we're official now."

I remember feeling disgusted. I never thought that same knife would end up slitting my throat.

Blood pooled across the street while she hid in Vincent's arms, screaming, hands over her eyes. Later I heard her crying to someone, saying it wasn't her fault, that I just had bad luck.

I died inside her little romance fantasy. A nobody side character, wiped off the page without a second thought.

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back. Back to the afternoon it all started.

Five years in hell, my beloved and best friend joined hands to push me into the abyss. The savior I trusted was actually a deadly fraud. Reborn from despair, Vito came through the light. I tore apart the scumbag and the evil woman, settled all debts, broke free from the shadow, stepped into the light, and lived the rest of my life only for myself.

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought I was just going to suffer some physical hardship, that after enduring these two weeks, everything would be happily resolved.
But they didn't know I had already been poisoned by my brother. I was dying.
I died in agony on the cold operating table. As my body was being gnawed and rotted by rats, they were happily vacationing by the sea.
Only when the lies were exposed did my wife kick down the hidden door. Holding my maggot-infested, decaying flesh, she wept until she vomited blood, then went mad and swallowed a bullet. My parents watched their family shattered and wept on their knees.

One of my employees went online and dragged me, claiming I'm making them sacrifice their health for a paycheck and forcing everyone to work over Thanksgiving.

Here's what actually happened. My company gives nine days off for Thanksgiving. Volunteer to work overtime, get triple pay, with a $500 daily meal stipend and a $5,000 bonus. No one gets penalized for not working.

The whole internet's tearing into me for making employees sell their lives for cash. So I give her exactly what she wants and send out a company-wide notice:

To protect employee mental health, the building gets locked and the power gets cut over Thanksgiving. No one is allowed to work for any reason. Anyone who does gets fired.

The minute that email goes out, the employees who were counting on overtime to pay their mortgages lose it. Now they're all crowded outside the building, begging me to open the doors.

In my last life, my boyfriend's childhood best friend handed out jars of homemade sunscreen on the boat ride to the island. I'm a marine bio major — one sniff and I knew the mix had something in it that could drive the island's feral hogs into a frenzy. I told everyone to throw them out.
They did. But Brynn didn't look at the group. She looked at me. Eyes red, jaw tight. "You just can't stand seeing people appreciate anything I do, can you?" She turned and ran into the woods alone.
We searched for her all night in a storm. By morning we found her body at the bottom of the cliffs.
A week later, at her memorial bonfire on the beach, every person who'd gotten hurt during the search turned on me. My boyfriend ripped off his bandage and showed his stitches. "If you hadn't humiliated Brynn in front of everyone, she'd still be alive."
Someone said I should burn for what I did to her.
Then hands on my back. The fire. I burned alive on the sand while seventeen people watched.
I opened my eyes. Salt air. Engine noise. I was back on the boat — the morning of the trip.

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch Soren skate.
They didn't come home until Sunday night. By then, I'd been dead for over a day.
I called her. Again and again. She had her phone on airplane mode.
Now I'm a ghost, drifting behind their car on the highway home. They're laughing, complaining I didn't even text Soren a congratulations.
I wonder what their faces will look like when they walk through that door.