281 Book(s) Related to holiday haters

Three years after returning to the Duke's estate, I finally admit the truth: the phoenix I poured my heart into raising doesn't love me. He only spreads his brilliant tail feathers for the replacement.

I was six when traffickers took me, stuck in the slums for twenty years. A year after losing me, the Duke and Duchess adopted an infant from the church.

That girl became the new daughter, enjoying everything that should have been mine.

When they found me at twenty-six, my parents looked at me with guilt, yes, but mostly like I was a stranger. They loved the daughter they raised more.

I don't blame them.

Twenty years in the slums taught me: don't count on anyone's love. Only power and gold won't betray you.

So when he refused me for the third time, I went to the black market auction and bought a battered wolf slave.

The phoenix finally panicked, feathers flaring, voice shaking:

"Master, you promised you'd only keep one magical beast..."

Ethan and I grew up together. We were supposed to exchange rings at the altar, make our vows. But on our wedding day, he left me standing there to go save his so-called suicidal ex. Almost killed my parents from the shame.

Four years later, I'm back in Portland with my husband. The city isn't that big, and of course fate decides to throw him in my path again.

He has the nerve to ask me to be his mistress.

I hold up my left hand, the ring catching the light. "Are you blind?"

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home to tell them.

The moment I push open the door, I see my parents in the kitchen, the ones who supposedly died in the fire. My brother, who was supposed to be in a wheelchair, stands there raising a glass, laughing with my husband.

My brother shrugs like it's nothing. "The broken leg was fake the whole time. You were the only one hurt in the fire. We just wanted to teach you a lesson, make you appreciate things."

"We were going to tell you eventually." My husband pats my shoulder. "Go apologize to Vanessa. Stop giving her a hard time."

"All the money you gave us went to Vanessa," Dad says. "That's what you get for throwing your bio-daughter status in her face."

I touch the diagnosis in my pocket. Everything was a lie. The only truth is that I'm dying.

The first thing I do with my second chance is sell off my perfect fiancé for ten million dollars.

The first time around, I became someone else for Julian Whitmore.

He likes nude-toned dresses. Hates when I wear anything with color. He won't let me have more than one glass of champagne in public. Won't let me laugh too loud. Won't let me initiate anything in bed.

His voice is always so calm, like he's correcting a disobedient pet.

I spend three years turning myself into what he wants: docile, proper, flawless. Until depression drags me under. Until that night I lay in the bathtub and watched the water turn red.

When I die, he's still downstairs in his study, editing my speech for tomorrow's charity gala.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in the Winters' living room with that unsigned arrangement in front of me.

This time? Fuck perfect.

But when he lifts that veil at the wedding and realizes the bride isn't me, this man who's spent his whole life in control completely loses it.

It's supposed to be our last class trip before graduation. The bus loses control on a mountain road and goes over the edge.

I think we're all going to die.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in a classroom that looks like it's been rotting for decades.

A system alert blares through my skull:

【Welcome to Ravenwood High. Unnameable creatures roam the campus. Survive 7 days. Uncover the truth behind the campus Boss's death. Every player who dies adds $800,000 to the prize pool. Make it out, and the money is yours.】

Everyone loses it. Screaming, crying, total chaos. The first thing Brett does is shove me toward the door to check the hallway. Because of course he does. I'm the class punching bag. The girl nobody would miss.

Everyone assumes I'll be the first to die.

What nobody sees is the smile pulling at the corner of my mouth as I stand at that door, staring at whatever is writhing in the shadows of the hallway.

The club is planning a team retreat, and sophomore Ashley suddenly raises her hand at the meeting.

"Doesn't Clara's family own a hotel? Cresthaven, right?"

"Since it's your family's place, we could each just chip in fifty bucks for the venue, like you're supporting your own business or something."

Cresthaven is the hotel my grandfather gave me on my eighteenth birthday.

Because it never advertises, outsiders assume it's just some bed and breakfast out in the countryside. In reality, the basic suites run eighty-eight hundred dollars a night, private dining rooms have a hundred-thousand-dollar minimum, and the ingredients get flown in fresh from around the world every single day.

She wants to hand me fifty dollars and get a free two-day retreat for fifty people.

I turn her down on the spot. Next week is already fully booked.

But that night at ten, Ashley posts in the group chat anyway:

[Good news! Thanks to Clara's generous support, the whole club is heading to Cresthaven next week for a two-day retreat, completely free!]

The replies underneath are wall-to-wall flattery.

She wants to use my hotel to buy herself goodwill and build her own reputation.

But that's up to me, not her.

The night the team wins again, the roar inside the arena could raise the roof.

On the ice, the captain has his arm around the new cheer captain, spinning her under the lights. His skates cut clean lines across the ice. Teammates whistle and shout, someone yells "ask her out!", someone else films on their phone. Everyone waits for me to show up and make a scene. Cry, stumble onto the ice, drop to my knees and beg him to come back. Pathetic, like every time before.

But no one knows I'm in the back of the locker room right now, pressed against a cold metal locker.

The quiet backup player has his hand on the back of my neck, his voice barely steady. "You sure about this?"

I push up on my toes and kiss him first.

Three months ago, I was kidnapped. When Alexander rescued me, I woke up in a hospital bed with my clothes disheveled and bruises covering my body. What happened during those hours? I don't remember any of it.

A week ago, I found out I was pregnant. He held me as I shook and told me that it wasn't my fault. That he failed to protect me. Even if the baby wasn't his, he'd raise it. He'd still give me the perfect wedding.

But the guilt ate me alive until depression took hold.

Every night, sleep stays out of reach. Nightmares find me the moment I close my eyes. I've tried to end it. Three times now. Each time, someone found me just in time.

After the third failed attempt, I make tea and head toward his study to apologize. Voices drift through the door before I reach it.

"Are you out of your mind? Evelyn's your fiancée!" His friend sounds disbelieving. "You actually hired someone to kidnap her? Made her think she was assaulted? Just so Lily could take her place? Do you know how messed up that is? What that does to someone?"

Alexander's voice comes out calm. "Lily got sick because of me. Her dying wish is to marry me once before she goes. If I didn't push Evelyn out of the picture, her father would never let Lily take her place."

All those nights. All those nightmares. All those times I scrubbed my hands raw until they bled. It was all a lie. A setup.

For another woman.

I pull out my phone and call my father.

"Dad. I'll agree to the arrangement."

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

Three years ago, I took a bullet for Damon Kingsley. It came within half an inch of my heart.

He looked me in the eyes, his own red, and swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. So I married into this century-old Italian-American Mafia dynasty.

But on our wedding night, the moment he touched me, he convulsed, coughed up blood, and collapsed.

The second time, an old condition flared up and kept him flat on his back for a month.

The third time, he nearly bled out.

Every time after that, the same thing.

The whole family called me a curse. Marked. Bad luck. The kind of woman who brings death to whoever gets close.

The Godmother gave me an ultimatum: get pregnant within a month, or sign the divorce papers and be shipped off to Chicago to marry the devil himself.

I was carrying a fertility tonic to his study, ready to beg him one more time, when I heard voices through the door.

"Mr. Kingsley, please, you gotta stop. Every time you don't wanna go near her, you shoot yourself up with that stuff. You're gonna kill yourself."

Damon was quiet for a long moment. Then, calm and flat: "Aurora is the only woman I love. I'd take the pain any day over touching her."

All this time, while the whole family called me a curse, the one who actually put it on me was the man I almost died for.

Damon Kingsley. After today, we're done. In this life or the next, don't ever cross my path again.

A hundred years ago, I was the strongest Delta the Silver Moon Pack had ever produced.

Born with the God Bone, unmatched in power, I had Royal Guard recruiters showing up at my door three times, waiting for me to say yes. The whole pack assumed I'd lead them to glory.

Then came that night. My own family dragged me to the altar in the frozen vault.

My mother cried and said, "Lacey was born broken. Without the God Bone, she'll die."

"You're the older sister. You're strong. You'll survive without it."

I refused.

Grant, my fiancé, pulled the knife on me. Brandon, my brother, pinned down my arms and legs. My parents watched from the shadows, saying nothing.

"Don't be so selfish."

They carved the God Bone out of my body, drained every drop of my heart's blood, and threw me into a vault fifty degrees below zero.

My sister took everything that was mine and became the golden girl everyone adored.

A hundred years passed. I became the Supreme Commander of the Royal Guard.

This year, during recruitment, my adjutant handed me the candidate list. I saw a familiar name and smiled. I picked up my pen and crossed it out.

"Doesn't meet the requirements. Denied."

Being born a Moretti daughter means one thing: the family owns you.

In my past life, Vivian thought she had what it took. She promised Dad she could handle it, swore up and down she'd make him proud. Six months later, she'd burned through three generations of work and left us with nothing but an empty shell. Our enemies found her eventually. Broke both her legs.

And me? I married Marco Rossi.

Everyone envied me for marrying into one of the most powerful families in the city. What they didn't know was that I was his prisoner. He used me, turned my family's connections into stepping stones for himself, spent my money on his mistresses, used my body as a bargaining chip at his deals.

In the end, Vivian killed me. Jealous of my "perfect life," she dragged herself over on those broken legs and put a bullet in me.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in Dad's study.

The door slams open. Vivian bursts in, cutting me off before I can speak. "Dad! I'm marrying Marco Rossi! Give the family to Sienna!"

I look at her and smile.

This time, I'm going to survive. And I'm going to do a hell of a lot better than just survive.

Everyone says I'm the woman Jasper loves most.

But only I know that in his heart, I've always come second to Sadie.

Seven years ago, I shoved him out from under a collapsing rig and shattered my right ankle. I never skated competitively again.

He held me and swore that the day he won the Grand Slam, he'd marry me in front of the whole world.

I believed him. So I learned to be his support crew. I sharpened his blades, hand-sewed his costumes, dragged my bad leg around everywhere he went. I turned myself into the shadow that followed him.

Then Sadie came along. Young, healthy, able to do things I could never do again.

Tonight, Jasper wins the Grand Slam. The cameras circle him, the whole arena chanting for him to propose.

But he looks down at Sadie in his arms and smiles.

"Out of everyone, she's the one I want to thank most for this medal. I wouldn't have made it here without her."

That's the moment I stop wanting to stay.

In my past life, we were camping in the wilderness area of a state park when my best friend handed out "lucky charms" to the whole group. Charms she'd secretly packed full of wildlife attractant.

A wild boar knocked me to the ground outside the cabin door. Its tusks tore into my stomach. I pounded on the wood with both fists, screaming. "Help! Open the door!"

Inside were my boyfriend of two years and the best friend I'd been quietly supporting for just as long. Autumn Warren.

"I'm so sorry, Brynn." Autumn's voice broke into sobs, but her weight stayed pressed hard against the door. "There are boars everywhere. We open that door, we're all dead."

"Just hold on! I'm calling 911!" Wyatt Fletcher's voice rang out with the kind of conviction that cost him absolutely nothing.

I paid for that trip. I'd fallen behind because I'd stopped to pull Autumn along.

And they stood on the other side of that door, my blood soaking into the dirt, and locked me out.

I open my eyes. I'm back. It's the day we left.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

The club is dragging everyone out to a tomb Blair Whitmore's family dug up in Egypt, and nobody asked if this was a good idea.

She even brings some so-called expert along. Everyone crowds around the dark opening, practically shaking with excitement.

I'm the only one who tries to stop it.

"There's a mechanism in there. It's dangerous. We shouldn't go in. We need to report it to the antiquities authority first."

They just laugh at me.

"God, Blair, you're unbelievable. Untouched site like this and you just land it."

"Right, and some people never say two words all semester and now they want in on the action."

My palms are sweating. They don't know I come from a family of manuscript conservators. I grew up surrounded by dead languages and schematics for ancient mechanisms. What nobody else can read, I read clearly.

The stele at the entrance is carved with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the warning is not subtle:

Whoever enters here will lose their soul to the void, and their bones will turn to dust.

For the top university in the North American wolf packs, transfer students aren't exactly breaking news. But this one sets the entire forum on fire.

It starts with a photo. A girl standing next to a tall, imposing man. Both faces are deliberately blurred, but that build, that presence... every wolf in North America recognizes it. The Alpha King. The caption reads: "Dad why'd you send me this 😭 I'm not ready to go public yet."

Minutes later, the post vanishes. But screenshots flood the forum.

"Moon Goddess above! Is that really the Alpha King?"

"The girl in the photo... could she be the royal princess no one's ever seen?"

The comments explode. Compliments flood in. Even my aloof boyfriend joins in.

Something feels off. I type out a comment: "The Alpha King keeps a low profile. His daughter should do the same. Posting photos like this... doesn't seem right."

Less than a minute later, the replies come.

"Who do you think you are to question her?"

"Can't stand seeing someone else do well, huh?"

My boyfriend chimes in too: "Quit it. You're embarrassing yourself."

I pick up my phone and dial a number. "Dad, since when do you have another daughter?"

Beau and I have been together for three years. I paid for the entire yacht charter out of my own pocket, and he shows up with his childhood best friend Sadie in tow, then goes around telling everyone it was his idea, his grand gesture.

Out on the water, Sadie spots a small octopus drifting near the surface and decides she has to have it. The thing pulses with glowing blue rings.

I'm a certified expert diver. I know exactly what it is the second I see it. I try to stop her.

She bursts into tears and tells Beau I'm going after her.

So Beau, ever the hero where Sadie's concerned, jumps in himself and fishes the thing out.

Sadie plays with it. It bites her. She's on the deck before she even knows what hit her.

Beau grabs me, screaming at me to suck out the venom. I refuse. He calls me a cold, heartless bitch, and in the chaos, shoves me overboard into shark-infested water.

I die out there. Nothing left of me.

They use my phone to fake a suicide note. Depression, they say. Jumped on her own. Then they take my company, my assets, everything.

They post online hinting I tried to push Sadie in and slipped.

My parents, worn down by the online harassment and the grief of losing me, both die of heart attacks.

Then I open my eyes. And I'm back. The morning of the trip.

The day I came home carrying the Royal Pack's highest honor, the one that names its strongest warrior, I pictured Irene's proud smile waiting for me, and Chase's arms wrapping around me.

Then I cross into Crescent Moon Pack territory and the smell hits me. Blood, thick enough to make me gag.

I claw through the scorched wreckage like something possessed, not even noticing my nails tearing, blood running down my fingers.

And then I find her. Irene, the one person who'd ever shown me real kindness, lying in the ash. Not breathing. Gone.

Three scents linger in the air, all of them familiar: Garrett. Ivy. And Chase.

I follow the scent to the lakeside lodge, and that's when I hear Chase, his voice dripping with that same gentle warmth I used to love. "Who cares about Irene, as long as you're happy."

Something in my head just snaps.

"Traitors don't get to live."

Tonight, they're all going to join Irene in death.

Preston Ashford and I made a promise to get into UCLA together.

I held onto that promise through all of senior year, surviving on four hours of sleep a night. Then results day came, and I found out someone had logged into my application and changed it.

I only ever gave Preston my password.

I storm over to confront him and catch Vanessa Ashby, the daughter of an old family friend, the one everyone tiptoed around because of her depression, laughing. "Preston, what do you think Elise looked like when she found out?"

Preston lets out a lazy laugh. "She'll freak out, obviously. Girl's wound so tight, might as well get some use out of her."

Vanessa has depression, and I'm the one who's supposed to make her laugh.

I'm the one who ate dirt at track meets. I'm the one who got laughed at for singing off-key. I'm the one everyone pointed and laughed at. And every time she doubled over laughing, Preston told me I was a good girl.

I turned myself into a joke, just to get a little scrap of kindness thrown my way.

But not this time. I'm done playing the clown.

The moment I gave up wasn't when I found out my husband was cheating. It was when I heard my ten-year-old daughter laugh into the phone and say, "Mom's so clueless. She has no idea about Dad and Summer."

Ten years ago, I was a top biomedical researcher, making six figures. I gave it all up for his promotion and our newborn daughter. Ten years later, the perfect marriage I traded my career and youth for turned out to be nothing but an elaborate lie.

He called me his safe haven, then got in our bed with his mistress and discussed how to keep me in the dark.

This time, I'm not going to cry or make a scene. I'm going to quietly gather my evidence and call the lab director I've turned down seven times.

It's fall break, and Mom and my sister Della Sinclair are visiting me at St. Julian's Academy.

The South Campus Arctic Biome is a landmark the Sinclair family funded years ago. It's filled with the rare arctic flowers Mom and Della have always loved. Every single time they visit, they have to go in.

That's when Kiley Croft, the girl Fletcher Waverly grew up with, pulls what she calls "a little prank." While no one's paying attention, she locks the door from the outside panel and pushes the temperature controls to maximum.

The people inside are trapped. They burn to death.

Kiley runs to Fletcher in tears, and instead of calling 911, he pulls her close and tells her:

"Hey. It's okay. It was an accident. This isn't on you."

He doesn't call me until the fire trucks show up.

"Blythe, the biome caught fire. Your mom and your sister are trapped inside."

I spin around.

Della is right next to me, sniffling and complaining about her cold. Mom is passing her tissues.

They're both completely fine.

Then who the hell is in there?

In my past life, I went into labor and they wheeled me into surgery. When I woke up, my stomach was flat. My baby was gone.

My husband held my hand, his eyes rimmed red, and told me I'd never been pregnant at all. He said the thing growing in me was a ten-pound tumor.

My own mother held me and cried, saying I'd wanted a baby so badly that I'd started imagining things.

The doctor pulled out my entire medical file. Even the head nurse, the one who'd felt my belly the night before and told me how healthy my pup was, looked at me with pity and swore she'd never seen me before in her life.

But I felt him kick. I heard his heartbeat. I'm sure of it.

I ran through that hospital barefoot, screaming, tearing through every room, grabbing every person who walked past me, until the enforcers dragged me off like I was some lunatic.

They chained me up and threw me in the deepest cell in the Abyss.

I rotted down there alone, half out of my mind, until I died.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back in the car, contractions ripping through me, on my way to Silverleaf Medical Center.

The baby is still kicking.

Just because I got a B+ in physics, my father slapped me across the face and kicked me while I was down.

"If you worked even half as hard at school as we do at our jobs, you'd have straight A's!"

"Your mom and I kill ourselves every single day, and this is how you repay us?"

To make sure I couldn't argue anymore, they spent a fortune getting their hands on some kind of devil's contract.

Dad sneered: "Once this thing is signed, every hour we work, you have to study. Now that's what I call fair."

Mom nodded along: "No more complaining that we don't understand what you go through."

Looking at their smug, satisfied faces, I didn't argue. I just bit my finger and signed.

Because I knew better than anyone what their "killing ourselves" actually amounted to.

By the time the contract came due, they were on their knees begging me to cancel it.

A hormonal condition pushed my weight to two hundred pounds, and for three years, this boarding school made sure I never forgot it.

The ringleader was the guy every girl worshipped.

And beside him stood his girlfriend, the one who always stepped in at my worst moments with a soft voice and a sympathetic look, like she was doing me a favor.

Everyone called her an angel. Only I knew the truth: every time she "helped," things got worse.

One day, she handed me a candy in front of everyone. "Here. Something sweet always helps."

I didn't feel like I had a choice.

That night, a demon showed up at the foot of my bed.

"Congratulations. You ate the pact candy. I'll grant you three wishes — money, beauty, lifespan. You name it, I'll make it happen."

My whole body shook. Three years of humiliation, and finally there was a way out. Wealth, beauty, revenge. All I had to do was ask.

Then the demon's expression shifted, eyes full of cruel amusement.

"There's a catch, though. The real pact-holder is someone else. Whatever you wish for, the one who gave you that candy gets double."

The words I was about to say died in my throat.

Then, slowly, I smiled.

Double?

That's way more interesting than three wishes.

The fake heiress and I died twice fighting over the same thing—which of us would get adopted by that wealthy couple.

The first time, I got the necklace. I became their daughter. I thought I'd finally have everything I'd ever wanted. Three months later, they drowned me in the bathtub.

William's voice still echoes in my head. "This is your fault! If we'd taken Chloe instead, she'd still be alive!"

The second time, I gave Chloe the necklace. Let her have the good life. I thought that would keep me safe.

Five years later, Chloe turned up dead in their mansion. The Harringtons called the cops on me. They said I broke in and killed her out of jealousy. I died in prison, broken and tortured. The last thing I heard was Catherine's voice through the visiting room glass, cold as ice. "You belong in the gutter."

The third time, I open my eyes again.

I watch the couple smile at us, all warmth and kindness, and one question burns in my mind. Which daughter do they actually want?

Marlowe Crane is my best friend, and she's also a succubus.

She was born with this power that makes men lose their minds, but she always told me she only wanted to use her "gift" to protect me.

So every time I dated someone, she'd volunteer to "test" him.

Without fail, every single man fell at her feet.

She'd send me photos of them in bed together. "See, Rosie? They're all trash. Lucky I caught them for you."

After breaking up more times than I can count, I had a breakdown and moved from Boston to Los Angeles.

That's where I met Holden Kingsley. I thought the nightmare was finally over.

On my wedding day, Marlowe showed up in my dressing room with a glass of drugged water.

In my past life, I drank it and passed out. She stripped off my wedding dress, put it on herself, and climbed into Holden's bed.

Someone threw cold water on my face to wake me up. When I walked in with the bridesmaids, I caught them tangled up together.

I lost it. Screamed and cried and called the police right there.

And what happened?

Holden didn't feel guilty at all. He acted like I was the bad guy, like I'd ruined Marlowe's life.

Under Marlowe's succubus influence, he believed she was innocent, that I forced her into it.

After that, my marriage became a living hell.

Now I'm back, standing in front of the mirror, staring at that drugged glass of water in my hand.

This time, they're the ones going to hell.

Everyone knew Ethan Blackwood and I were Professor Richard Hartwell's two proudest students. From childhood easels to Columbia studios, inseparable for over a decade.

Everyone assumed we'd get married, stand together on the Pritzker stage someday. Until he fell in love with Sophia Crane, daughter of our mentor's academic rival.

I let him go. Love isn't something I can design.

But I never thought he'd destroy our mentor's entire life for her.

Five years later, he's back in New York riding high on his success, excited to "make amends" with Professor Hartwell.

I laugh.

Go ahead, Ethan Blackwood. You'll spend the rest of your life searching.

At a late-night party, when the bottle spins to my boyfriend Tyler, he picks dare.

"Kiss anyone here except your girlfriend," the host announces with a smirk.

Tyler barely hesitates. He walks straight to my best friend Sienna and kisses her for a full seven seconds in front of everyone.

When he comes back, he leans close to my ear. "Don't sweat it, we'll have fun when we get home."

When it's my turn, I choose truth. "Tell us a secret nobody knows."

I look around at all these drunk college kids, then say calmly, "I killed someone."

I'm a figure skating prodigy from one of the wealthiest families in the country. I'm also an idiot.

I believed that if I was kind enough, people would be kind in return. So I sponsored Haley Dunning, a scholarship skater on our team, and treated her like my own little sister.

The day before the NCAA qualifier, she came up to me with a sports drink, said she wanted to help keep my energy up.

I drank it. Went down on the ice with a broken leg. Drug test came back positive for banned stimulants.

Overnight, I went from the queen of the rink to the face of a scandal no one could stop talking about.

Expelled from school. Torn apart on social media. Calloway Corporation's stock in freefall.

Haley stood in front of the cameras, tears in her eyes: "Piper just wanted to win so badly. I never thought she'd go this far..."

I fell into a depression. Couldn't sleep without medication.

Then one day, she showed up at my hospital room with my boyfriend, bearing "comfort": a cup of water and a few pills: "Piper, take your meds, okay? This is all my fault for being so stupid..."

Three minutes later, I'm coughing up blood, convulsing on the floor.

Right before I died, I caught the look on her face. That sweet, innocent face. A slow, vicious smile spreading across it.

She knocked over the pill bottle and started screaming: "I grabbed the wrong ones! I mixed up her antidepressants with some old person's heart meds! I'm so stupid!"

My boyfriend pulled her into his arms. Didn't even glance at me dying on the floor: "She meant well. Piper just had bad luck."

I was poisoned to death in that hospital room.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the day before the qualifier.

Three years ago, I was in a car crash that killed both my parents and shattered my legs beyond repair. The doctors said I'd never walk again.

When I had nothing left, he appeared like some kind of savior. He paid for everything, brought me to his private research facility, took care of me.

He told me he loved me, broken body and all. We got married. He was perfect to me.

There was just one catch. His sister. Not even blood related, just some girl he grew up with. She had some rare blood disease, and turns out I had the exact blood type she needed. So I gave blood. Bone marrow too. Over and over.

I thought I owed him my life. For three years, I let them stick needles in me, drain whatever they needed. I thought that was love.

Until today, when I found a video on his phone from three years ago.

In the footage, one of his men reports back: "The crash was clean. Her parents are dead. Her legs are destroyed, just like you wanted."

His voice, cold as ice: "Good. As long as her blood keeps Cora alive, that's all that matters. She's got no one and nowhere to go. She'll have to stay."

The accident that killed my parents and destroyed my legs wasn't an accident at all. He planned it.

So I planned my own death. And when he saw my body, the man who dragged me into hell finally lost his mind.