Workplace

When we moved to the estate on the hill, all the bedrooms had already been assigned.
My parents had the primary suite.
My brother, Adrian, had the east wing.
The south suite, with its view of the Hudson—the nicest room in the house—was marked Grace's Room.
There was no room with my name on it.
In the hall, a worker was fastening brass plaques to the bedroom doors.
Not one of them read Claire.
Ten ...

At 2:17 a.m., I woke up five hours before my wife was supposed to die.
In my first life, my mother told me the two million dollars I had entrusted to her was gone. By the time I found enough money for my wife’s emergency surgery, I had lost her and our unborn child.
This time, I froze every account before my family could take another cent.
Then my mother called.
She needed $180,000 by morning—and ...

They said we were perfect for each other.
I believed them until I clicked on a video that shattered everything.
My husband and his adopted sister was sleeping on our bed.
Eight years later.
My ex came to me.
He wants to prove he's changed.
I don't need his redemption.
The manuscript between us reveals the truth he tried to bury.
Every lie, every cancellation, and every moment I diminished myself ...

When I was eight, my older sister pointed a finger in my face and told me I'd been adopted out of foster care.

I went crying to our parents. With their arms around her, they nodded.

“Yes. Your real parents didn't want you.”

After that, I stopped competing with her for affection. I didn't dare ask for new clothes. I took over the housework and fought for the highest grades in my class, terrified...

Three days after I lost our baby, my husband finally remembered to call.

I was packing when Adrian Whitmore's name appeared on my screen.

"Vanessa told me you caused another scene over the medical bills," he said, sounding irritated. "I've authorized the payment. Can we please move on?"

I stared at the tiny knitted sweater lying in my suitcase.

I'd bought it the day I learned I was pregnant.

...

My son needed $500,000 to survive the night. My husband is a billionaire. The money never came.
Kieran Hale never signed off on our son's treatment. That call belonged to his chief of staff. Liora wanted forms, signatures, a second opinion. When I phoned Kieran from the hospital hallway, begging, he told me to do what Liora said.
Caspian died while I was still filling out paperwork.
I buried him w...

The night I graduated from college, Bianca Moretti asked what I was going to do next. My Mafia family had only recently brought their biological daughter home.
I didn't get a chance to answer. The four men I'd grown up with answered first, each taking his turn.
They all had paperwork showing that they were moving to California.
Then Dante Romano, the future head of one of Chicago's most powerful c...

My boyfriend of five years was actually Gideon Pryce, Vale City's wealthiest heir—and our entire relationship was just a gold-digger test.
Then he handed me the receipts. Every dollar he’d spent on me in five years. He wanted it back.
He didn’t know about the ultrasound in my purse. Eleven weeks. A rare complication. One surgery that afternoon was my baby’s only chance, and I’d scraped together ev...

My boyfriend came from a family with more money than they could ever spend. In seven years together, he'd never given me a gift. After proposing, he'd asked for the diamond ring back so he could return it. When we were supposed to get married at the courthouse, he decided even the license fee was a waste of money.

Then he married the girl he'd grown up with and booked the city's most expensive h...

My water broke in the middle of my family’s tiny clinic.
Thirty-six weeks pregnant, breech baby, emergency C-section. I only had one request: not City Center Hospital.
Because the man I had been hiding from for eight months worked in a hospital.
I told myself there were hundreds of doctors in the city. It would not be him.
Then the operating room door opened.
My ex-boyfriend walked in wearing scru...

The five of us had an unwritten rule: we never discussed plans. We guessed.

What to eat, where to go, who was paying—everything was a guessing game.

They called it the kind of connection you developed after ten years together.

Somehow, I was always the only one who got it wrong.

Two weeks before our fall vacation, I asked the group chat, “Where are we going?”

All four of them gave the same an...

When I took my late brother's four kids to dinner at the restaurant my grandmother left me, and seven-year-old Leo asked for a refill of the bottomless garlic knots, I didn't expect the new manager to tell him to go eat out of a dumpster.
"I'm the owner's wife," she sneered, and called her husband to come deal with us.
The contact photo on her screen was Adrian. I knew, because I took it on our ho...

I chose the cheapest flowers in the shop because I thought my boyfriend was drowning in debt.
Hours later, I discovered he had sent his fiancée roses worth one hundred times more.
Julian Hart wasn't a struggling intern. He was the heir to Hart Group—and our entire relationship had been an experiment designed to test whether I was worthy of his fortune.
He expected me to forgive the lies.
He expect...

After her boyfriend cheated on her seven years into their relationship, my best friend, Vanessa Reed, stopped trusting men.

When I introduced her to Ethan Cole, she folded her arms.

“He'll cheat on you, too. Give him time.”

Ethan took my hand.

“Then watch me, Ms. Reed.”

She slapped the table.

“I will.”

For seven years, she sent me updates whenever I wasn't with him.

Every year, she found n...

I thought I had a husband, an unborn child, and a best friend I could trust.

But my husband, Adrian, and my best friend, Celeste, had secretly built a family of their own. Her six-year-old son—the boy I had helped raise—was actually Adrian’s.

When I filed for divorce at seven months pregnant, Celeste revealed an even crueler truth: the baby I was carrying wasn’t Adrian’s.

My marriage, my pregn...

At eleven o'clock on a hurricane night, the new intern posted in the company Slack channel asking for help.
Her apartment was flooding, she said. Could my brother drive over and take her to a hotel?
In my last life, I felt sorry for her, and I let him go.
The next morning, Brielle Hart held up a torn lace slip
and sobbed that my brother had assaulted her.
He was eighteen, a college freshman, and n...

On the night Adrian Vale proposed, he said another woman’s name. When the room mistook Selene for the bride, he chose the Vale family’s reputation over the woman who had loved him for three years. Mara ElliOn the night Adrian Vale got down on one knee, he looked at me and said another woman’s name. In front of his family, his guests, and every camera in the room, he chose to protect his reputation...

Brent Hale gave me one night to save the company’s worst-performing livestream—or lose my job with everyone else in Studio Three.
I wanted the severance package.
So I ignored the script, exposed every product flaw, and told viewers exactly what not to buy.
By the time my boss tried to cut the feed, the chat was threatening to riot—and half our inventory was already gone.

Only after I lost the promotion did I find out that my broke boyfriend secretly owned the company I worked for.

He'd voted against me.

One of his friends asked him, “Aren't you worried Nora Bennett will find out you've been lying to her and raise hell?”

Blake Whitmore gave a casual laugh.

“Why would I be? It doesn't take much to make her happy again.”

“Chloe's different. She's been a princess...

When my best friend’s biological father found her, she became the heiress to a crime family.

I was the extra baggage she insisted on bringing home. My greatest talent? Making one penny do the work of eight.

She handed me $450 million and put me in charge of the family’s new project.

I couldn’t bear to spend it. I paid out just $7,500.

Then the project collapsed. The family’s captains turned ag...