7743 Book(s) Related to the lady's dark secret

My name is Lucas Moretti.

I was a demon abandoned by my own parents from the moment I was born because of the horns growing from my head.

Fortunately, my grandfather loved me. I spent eighteen years living with him in the countryside, where he raised me as his own.

People often whispered behind my back, calling me a demon. But I never truly cared, because my grandfather always told me that I wasn’t one.

Until the day my grandfather mysteriously died in Harmony City.

The villagers claimed I was the source of evil—that I was the reason my grandfather died.

That was when I lost my temper.

The power of Pan hidden within my bloodline erupted in an instant. If it hadn’t been for Michael Jenkins holding me back, I might have slaughtered everyone in the village.

After I finally regained control, I set out for Harmony City to confront my parents and uncover the truth behind my grandfather’s death.

But on the very first day I returned home, I felt nothing but disgust.

I always knew my parents were cold-blooded.

But I never imagined they could be this cruel...

Bullied, abused and dumped for a crush. Rejected by the coven for her sexuality. Seph and Dextra have a lot to over come when they arrive in Ireland. Can they survive on their own? Seph is only 18 and Dextra isn’t much help, an errant familiar with a tendency for setting things on fire.

Kayla had never known anything but a supportive loving family no matter what she found out about herself. Her twin Theo would always have her back, just as she had his. It didn’t matter what they were arguing over, they were twins. The one thing they couldn’t do was share anything.

The three of them together face a new challenge when both Kayla and Theo feel a mate bond snap into place. Can they deal with everything that fate has in store for them? Witches, spells, jealously, a prophecy, and a grumpy old man who isn’t really a man?

She has lived hundreds of lives and each one ended horribly.
He, once her companion, cannot forget her beyond time.
She, kidnapped into a world unknown to her, tries everything to get back home. But what are these dreams?

[…] Stones are thrown at dirty mutts… Rats are burned… […]

Immerse yourself in the world of Athaerion.

She was betrayed, she rejected him. The reason? She resulted a BARREN women whom Ace can't accept.
After three years of arrange marriage, Ace and Rica had found themselves in a bed—betraying Selene. She was mad but he show no love, however, when she signed up the divorce papers, things had been stumbling across her paths. She was PREGNANT! How come if she's infertile?
Is she going to tell Ace that she's pregnant with his child? Absolutely no! But what if Ace will know that she is? And decided to chase her? Will everything be alright? Do Selene were ready to forgive him? How are they going to make things work out this time?

It's about Avery Williams, who is special as she is not just a wolf/witch, but she got two sides: her wolf- Angelstar, and her Veela-Anglica.
She is a nerd, loser, and whom everyone made fun of, even her friends called her Wallflower.

Usually, when the Moon Goddess finds you your other half, one or two mates the most there will be for you. But Avery is a different werewolf, she does not have one or two mates but four mates.

She fated to the four most dangerous, most popular, and most arrogant boys in school, the four horsemen Alphas: Elijah Woods, Jake Stone, Andrew Bradford, and Matthew Steele.

The four bad boys knew the whole time that she is their mate but doesn't want anyone to know, instead they hide their feelings about Avery. Avery finally finds out her mates are her bullies and torturer, but when she turns 19 on her birthday, that is when it all changes. That is when she finds out she is a Veela.

Will Avery forgive them about they make a bet to see how to get her to fall in love with them? What if someone in her family's past wants her too and they kidnap her right at the dance.?

What if the guys find her in time but she is married off the Vampire Prince: The Duke Conway...? Will the Quads break everything in their path to get to Avery including the walls she has built around her heart? It all remains to be seen in The Wallflower And The Alphas.

It's about Avery Williams, who is special as she is not just a wolf/witch, but she got two sides: her wolf- Angelstar, and her Veela-Anglica.
She is a nerd, loser, and whom everyone made fun of, even her friends called her Wallflower.
Usually, when the Moon Goddess finds you your other half, one or two mates the most there will be for you. But Avery is a different werewolf, she does not have one or two mates but four mates.
She fated to the four most dangerous, most popular, and most arrogant boys in school, the four horsemen Alphas: Elijah Woods, Jake Stone, Andrew Bradford, and Matthew Steele.
The four bad boys knew the whole time that she is their mate but doesn't want anyone to know, instead they hide their feelings about Avery. Avery finally finds out her mates are her bullies and torturer, but when she turns 19 on her birthday, that is when it all changes. That is when she finds out she is a Veela.
Will Avery forgive them about they make a bet to see how to get her to fall in love with them? What if someone in her family's past wants her too and they kidnap her right at the dance.?What if the guys find her in time but she is married off the Vampire Prince: The Duke Conway...? Will the Quads break everything in their path to get to Avery including the walls she has built around her heart? It all remains to be seen in The Wallflower And The Alphas.

Five years after fleeing Manhattan, Evelyn Valentine has survived things that would break most people — and become something that would frighten them. Now her husband is dead, and his funeral has drawn her back to the city she once escaped, back into a life she thought she had sealed shut behind her.

But the past refuses to stay buried.

Adrian Winthrop — her late husband's son, the man whose forbidden devotion once drove her out of the only home she had known — has come back. Every stolen glance between stepmother and stepson is a betrayal. Every moment of proximity crosses a line that could unravel them both. He offers her something she has no right to want: a future built on more than grief and silence.

At the funeral, she encounters Julian Russell — mercenary king and beautiful predator — who sees straight through her widow's composure to everything she has spent years trying to hide. He doesn't want to save her. He wants to own her, and he has never once failed to take what he decides is his.

Torn between the forbidden love she was never supposed to feel and the dangerous obsession closing in around her, Evelyn must choose: grieve the life she lost and disappear, or risk the one thing she never learned to protect — her own heart.

Will she find a way to want something worth living for, or will the past finally collect what it is owed?

Holly Leefe has seen it all. Being a medium keeps life interesting. Not that it needed any help. She already had a psychic for a husband and a clairsentient teenage daughter. Data analyst by day, ghost hunter by night. Unless it was football season. She did live in Texas after all.
This fall Holly and her husband Jesse are trying to help a widower and his fiancé discover why suddenly stilettos are being thrown through their TV. Plus a few other nuisance cases. As if helping the dead and raising a teenager wasn’t enough, the ghost of her grandmother won’t rest until the family home is returned to its 1980’s glory.

I’ve seen the living; I’ve seen the dead. I’ve seen angels and I’ve seen demons. No matter how many malevolent or benevolent beings I interacted with, none could terrify me as much as the spirit that walked through the door into the kitchen where I was cooking dinner. Mentally bracing myself, I stirred in chili powder to the ground beef on the stove before I acknowledged the woman that was now looking over my shoulder.
“That’s too much seasoning. It’s going to be too spicy.” I turned to face the food police. “You need to call your mother.” It was an order, not a request. I raised an eyebrow, inviting her to explain. “She won’t listen to reason.”
“Are you two still feuding?” She had been fighting with my mother for the last two and a half years. I’d inherited the “gift” from my mother who had gotten it from my grandmother and so on and so forth. They didn’t need me to pass messages back and forth. She seemed to have forgotten that I had refused to get involved.

The plan was just to replace her best friend on her blind date. Could she have ever imagined this decision to become a new life begining of hers?

Escaping from this arrogant CEO who turned out to be her Boss seems to be impossible.

You lied to him, and he can send you to prison right away, The only way to get out of this mess is to accept his proposal.

A contract Marriage with A Baby involved and No feelings attached. How long until the feelings becomes unquenchable?

She called him a shameless con man. She didn't know he was a killer the whole underworld feared.

Elizabeth Williams doesn't trust charming men—especially ones who show up out of nowhere claiming to be her savior. Caesar doesn't care what she thinks. He's not here to charm her. He's here to keep her alive, one way or another.

She sees an arrogant fraud chasing her money.
He sees a woman too stubborn to admit she needs him.

Neither one is ready for what happens when the mask finally comes off.

"Why are you avoiding me, Riley?"

Theo gently touched my face, his voice as warm as ever.

Before I could answer, Eliot caught my wrist.

"Because he's afraid you'll discover who he really belongs to."

Then Julian smiled.

"The only question is… which one of us he'll choose."

—

I'm Riley.

A perfectly ordinary Beta—or so everyone believes.

After returning to Saint Vira Academy, my quiet life falls apart overnight.

The man who raised me watches me with eyes that no father should have.

The vampire ancestor who rejected my feelings suddenly refuses to let me go.

The cold Hunter Association president looks at me like I've always belonged to him.

The more I uncover the truth about my strange pheromones and hidden bloodline, the more dangerous they become.

But the greatest secret isn't who I am.

It's why three of the most powerful Alpha men would risk everything...

Just to keep me.

"I want to go back to London."
"No," he says simply, his voice low and commanding. "You're not going anywhere."
"Why not?"
"Because, unlike that worthless nephew of mine, I actually care about you."
Lyla Rose thought she had it all—love, power, a secure future. But a single medical report changes everything: she's infertile, and her ruthless husband, Vincent Ricci, discards her without hesitation.
He replaces her with another woman and locks Lyla away, believing he's done with her. But Carter Ricci, Vincent's cold and calculating uncle, rescues her. He offers protection, passion, and promises he's nothing like the man who destroyed her.
Yet Carter's care is suffocating. Locked doors, watching eyes, and a hunger that feels more like possession than love. When the truth about her infertility surfaces, Lyla realizes she may have traded one prison for another.
Caught between the husband who shattered her and the man who claimed her, Lyla must decide: can she ever be free when love itself has become a cage?

All nobles mocked me for rejecting the talented common mage and picking a brutal gladiator with no magic as my escort. They called him a filthy hound unworthy of serving an Oberlin lady. But only I remember—this scarred man died twice for me in my past life. Reborn before my family’s ruin, I swear bloody vengeance on Cedric and Liliana, who poisoned my father and stripped my skin. I endure searing magic backlash, fight bloody death matches, and burn all traitors alive. The shadow they sneer at will become the indestructible shield of my reign.

"Time's up, sir. That's enough."
I've said it so many times I've gone numb to it. In this brothel, I'm nothing but a body with a price tag.
Then an old man froze in the doorway, his eyes reddening. "My God... Miss Isabella, what happened to you?"
Isabella. Somewhere in my shattered memory, that name still carries a weight I can't explain.
"I'm Antonio," he wept. "Alessandro sent me to find you."
A name both familiar and foreign. Salvation—or just the door to a darker room?

The first birthday after we finally made up.

Shen Linze sent me a menu and told me to cook everything myself.

He invited all his close friends, plus the girl he was chasing, saying it was a birthday party for me.

On the long dining table were the stir-fried dishes I’d spent three hours rushing to make.

Shen Linze picked up a piece of sweet and sour spareribs and carefully held it to the girl’s mouth.

“Yaoyao, have a taste. I asked Su Qingyan to make them specially—they’re all your favorite dishes.”

The girl sitting in the main seat didn’t react at all.

Shen Linze put down his chopsticks and told the servants to wheel out a custom-made multi-layer cake.

“Do you like it? I designed this just for you. It has the place where we first met, your prettiest smile,
your favorite flowers, your favorite color purple, the wedding you’ve always wanted, and the initials of your name: ZY…”

Three months ago, I’d seen that exact cake design in Shen Linze’s office.

After he finished the design, he brought in several top pastry chefs from abroad and spent three months making it.

My birthday was coming soon, and I’d thought the “ZY” on the cake stood for the last characters of both our names.

I never knew it was just my own foolish wishful thinking.

On the day I received my late-stage gastric cancer diagnosis, the business proposal I’d pulled three all-nighters to finish was being fed straight into a paper shredder by my husband, Lu Ting.

Amid the deafening roar of the machine, his voice was cold and unapologetic: “Put Yingying’s name on this plan. She just got permanent employment and needs this achievement to get a firm foothold.”

I said nothing. My fingers crumpled the diagnosis report in my pocket. I turned around, opened the ticket-booking app, and booked a seven-day, six-night ultra-luxury customized honeymoon package for Lu Ting and his mistress Zhou Yingying—an overwater villa in the Maldives, with first-class flights for the entire trip.

When Lu Ting saw the order, he curled the corner of his mouth at me for once, speaking in a patronizing tone: “Finally being sensible. I’ll bring you a bag when I get back.”

I said quietly, “No need.”

You two will never come back.

A childhood engagement, two decades in the making. I crossed an ocean for the sole purpose of marrying the heir to the Russell family.

But they led me to an abandoned construction site—where a blood-soaked man was swinging a steel pipe, fighting off ten attackers at once. This, they told me, was "my fiancé."

Bankrupt. Drowning in debt. Scraping by in underground fighting pits. They said he was living like a dog.

Meanwhile, the real heir had his arm around another woman, sneering at me from across the room. "Some gold-digging country girl thinks she deserves me? Find a nobody with the same last name—that's the best she'll ever get."

They made us into a joke—the washed-up loser paired with the clueless village hick.

What they didn't know was that I held several championship belts.

What they also didn't know was that this little "con" of theirs had already begun to unravel the moment I set foot in this city.

He said, "I don't know you. Mind your own business."

Too bad. I'd already made it mine.

This marriage? I was locking it down.

The day our company successfully went public.

Gu Yun and I slipped away from the staff to celebrate privately in the office.

Just as he unfastened my camisole, a voice sounded from the phone.

“Do you think Sister Su will still be the Sales Director?”

I froze for a second, then smiled and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

“The company’s announcement was already released—how could there be such a ridiculous guess?”

Gu Yun’s breathing grew heavier as he kissed my lips.

“I forgot to tell you—the announcement’s been retracted.”

“Xu Na said the Sales Director position is quite challenging, and she wants to give it a try.”

"You're the one who deserves to die, you bitch!"

I couldn't control myself anymore. I slapped Olivia across the face—hard. She had forced her sapphire necklace into my bag, then accused me of stealing it to pay for my dying dog's surgery. "You and that pathetic dog of yours—you both deserve to die," she whispered in my ear, her voice dripping with venom.

Before I could strike her again, a brutal force slammed into my stomach. Ethan kicked me. I crashed to the floor, gasping for air. "You're beyond saving," he spat, looking at me like I was garbage. He scooped Olivia into his arms, checking her face with infinite tenderness.

I lay on the cold hospital floor, gaunt and skeletal from late-stage leukemia, bleeding from my nose. My husband was cradling the woman who framed me, while my dog lay dead in the next room. "Stay home and think about what you've done," he commanded. He didn't know I would never go home again.

I was in the middle of an affair in the master bedroom when Gu Jingran and his secretary burst in and caught me red-handed.
A thunderous roar ripped through the room.
"Ruan Qinghe!"
I shoved the trembling young man off my body, lowered my eyes, and let out a low, mocking laugh.
"Well, well. My husband rolls up with his side piece to catch his lawfully wedded wife cheating? This has got to be the most unhinged thing I've ever seen in my life."
The secretary, Bai Weiwei, paled instantly, scrambling to defend herself. "Sister Qinghe, you've got this all wrong! Today is your seventh wedding anniversary with Mr. Gu, he only asked me to come help!"
"Whatever was between us ended ages ago! We're just friends now! Don't you dare project your own filthy behavior onto everyone else just because you're acting out!"
I gave her a cool, cursory glance, smiled and said nothing, before finally fixing my gaze on Gu Jingran.
He snapped like a rabid wild beast, slamming and smashing every last thing he'd painstakingly prepared to pieces.
"You did this on purpose, didn't you?" His voice was raw and hoarse, trembling with rage. "You're trying to get back at me?"
"I was just curious."
I lifted an eyebrow slightly.
"Curious about what cheating feels like. What kind of thrill, what kind of rush, could make you addicted to it over and over again."

"Turn on the livestream, let everyone see how wet and slutty my wife's pussy gets when she's ruined." My husband sneered, ruthlessly spreading my trembling legs on the tattoo bed.

I sobbed and thrashed, but his strong hands pinned my wrists. The buzzing needle pierced the sensitive flesh of my private area, vibrating against my clitoris as he forced a succubus mark onto me. I let out a sharp, pathetic moan, my body involuntarily slicking with a mix of blood and arousal under the agonizing pain.

By the time the needle carved the eighteenth humiliating word into my bare, heaving breasts, my mind was completely broken. He just wiped the blood from my nipples and left to fuck his pregnant mistress.

He thought I was just a toy. At his wedding banquet, he threw me to a pack of hungry men. "Do whatever you want with her holes. Even if it's a gangbang, I take no responsibility." Disgusting hands immediately groped my bare thighs, brutally ripping my dress apart to expose my tattooed chest. Rough fingers pinched my nipples and shoved into my dripping core, making me scream in despair.

But I didn't die there. I tanked his company and fell into the arms of his biggest rival.

When my ex-husband finally realized the mistress's baby wasn't his, he called me, sobbing and begging. I just pressed the phone to my ear, gasping loudly as Tristan's thick, hard cock thrust deep into my tight, wet pussy.

"Ah... fuck, Tristan, deeper..." I moaned shamelessly into the receiver, hearing my ex-husband's breathless silence on the other end. "Henry," I panted, riding my new lover hard, "Your empire is dead, and so are we."

After my eighth trip to the psychiatric ward, I finally became the perfect, obedient wife my husband always wanted—even when I caught his childhood friend giving him a handjob in our living room.

"Ever heard of knocking?" Eric snapped, his eyes dark with irritation. "If those hands are useless, might as well chop them off." Without a word, I grabbed a kitchen knife and raised it toward my wrist. He kicked it away, screaming at me to stop being dramatic. So, I turned and charged headfirst toward the floor-to-ceiling window.

When I woke up, I heard him laughing with her. "She's fine. Just another attention stunt." He didn't know that the "treatment" he authorized had broken my mind into a million jagged pieces. He didn't know about the shock collars, the waterboarding, the dark cells. He thought I was finally "cured" of my jealousy.

It wasn't until a rafting trip, when his friend pushed me into the rapids and my prosthetic eye popped out and rolled across the deck, that his world shattered. As he stared at the empty black socket where my left eye used to be, he finally realized what those facilities had done to me. He dropped to his knees, screaming my name, but the woman who loved him was already dead.

Will his tears be enough to bring back the wife he destroyed, or is this just the beginning of his hell?

At the auction, when Anna’s painting was sold for the highest price of the night, I died in a dim underground studio.

No one knew that the painting had stolen my inspiration.

I was the most talented painter in the Hale family, yet I lived forever in my sister’s shadow — only because our paintings always ended up strangely similar.

At first, people said it was the bond between sisters.
Later, after my sister stole my paintings and exhibited them first, I became the so-called thief who plagiarized her works, while Anna turned into a celebrated, sought-after painter.

“Hard work really is more reliable than talent.” That was what people loved to say.

Before the auction, my family locked me away in the studio.
“Don’t ruin Anna’s big night.”

My sister Anna handed me a piece of bread.
“Little sister, have something to eat. When the auction’s over, we’ll go celebrate with a nice meal.”

“Look how kind your sister is — she still worries you’re hungry.”
Mother kicked me hard.

But she never knew Anna had poisoned the bread.
After just one bite, my skin broke out in rashes, I could barely breathe, and pain tore through every part of me.

Before I suffocated, I called my boyfriend Edd.
All I got was his cold scold:
“Lily, stop playing these cheap tricks!”

To the busy beep of the phone, I took my last breath.

When they came home triumphantly, thinking I was just being moody and refusing to join the celebration, they never knew I had stayed forever in that dark, quiet studio.

He knelt in the dirt, begging to see the daughter he abandoned, but I pointed to the man beside me: "She calls him Daddy now."

Ryan looked like a ghost. Stomach cancer had eaten away his arrogance, leaving only skin and bones. He stared at Grace—the baby he thought was dead, the baby he tried to replace with an orphan. "Zoey... I'm her biological father. Please."

I held Chris's hand, feeling his warmth, so different from Ryan's cold betrayal. "Biological?" I scoffed. "You're just a sperm donor who chose his sister over his wife."

Grace hid behind Chris's leg, looking at Ryan with fear. That look broke him more than the cancer ever could.

"You have Lucy," I said, turning away. "And her child. Go enjoy the family you destroyed us for." I watched him vomit blood into the grass, realizing too late that he had traded a diamond for a stone. He would die alone, while we lived happily ever after.

My roommate acted strangely—an eye peeking through the door crack, a lingering stench, and the shadow of a serial murder closing in. I struggled to find the truth, only to discover her rotting corpse in the wardrobe. It turned out, she was the first to die, and the fear had only just begun.

My marriage to Matthew was a transaction, a substitute—everything except love. When his white moonlight came back, I was abandoned, diagnosed with gastric cancer, and carrying his child. His late regret could never bring back my life, nor could it keep our unborn baby.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, I received a bouquet of red roses from my husband, Gabriel.

The problem was, I was severely allergic to roses — something I'd told him countless times.

"Same order number, two deliveries," the delivery man said casually, glancing at his clipboard.

My blood ran cold.

The man who'd claimed he had to work late — who couldn't even spare me a simple "Happy anniversary" — was at that very moment holding another woman in his arms. Nine hundred and ninety-nine roses. A designer handbag. Diamond jewelry. And on his face, a tender smile I hadn't seen once in five years of marriage.

For him, I had given up everything. I'd gone from being the pampered darling of the Rivers family to a wife crammed into a tiny apartment, comparing prices across three different grocery stores just to stretch every dollar. I'd filed down every sharp edge I had. Swallowed every last ounce of my pride.

And yet here he was — while I was still carrying his child — lavishing the very best of everything on someone else.

Gabriel, you dare betray me?

Then that CEO seat? Consider it gone.

A once-formidable heiress, dulled and diminished by love, was about to reclaim everything she'd lost. The masks were coming off.

And the reckoning was just beginning.

Every July, my husband left for a business trip to France—so for seven full years of marriage, we never once got to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
This time, I flew all the way to France to surprise him, and mid-flight, I stumbled across a social media post.
My dream girl finally agreed to be with me. How do I make the frumpy, worn-out wife back home file for divorce on her own?
The OP poured out his grievances in the comment section:
When my dream girl suddenly moved abroad, I married her former best friend to keep me company through the hard times, just so I wouldn’t lose touch with her completely.
Now she’s finally said yes to being with me, and I’ve made enough to give her the lavish, privileged life she deserves.
I want my wife to find out about my affair herself so I can get a clean divorce without a fight, but she’s so painfully oblivious. I’ve come home reeking of my dream girl’s perfume on purpose, and every single July I fly here to France for our private time together, watching the lavender bloom in Provence with her. She never noticed a thing.
Perfume. July. France.
Those matching details made my fingers go numb. A deafening buzz exploded in my skull. A bone-deep chill washed over me, and I prayed with everything I had that it was all just a terrible coincidence.
Until I read the final line.
Just got a spending alert from her supplementary credit card—she bought a flight to France. I’m heading to pick up my dream girl now, might as well keep an eye out for her, just in case.
The plane touched down. When I stepped into the arrivals hall, I lifted my head almost instinctively.
There stood Shen Sinian, the man I hadn’t seen in two weeks, in a crisp, tailored suit, a bouquet of roses in his hand, locked in a passionate kiss with a woman with a stunning, willowy figure, her back to me.
He opened his eyes by chance, and through the crowd of travelers, his gaze locked directly with mine.

"Starting price for my wife—one dollar!" James announced, pointing at the dog cage where I lay curled up like a dying animal.

The crowd at the wedding erupted in laughter. "Five dollars!" "Ten!" They threw bids like trash, mocking the woman who used to be Mrs. Windsor. Lillian, wearing my stolen necklace, poked me through the bars with a metal rod. "Look at you, Aurora. You're nothing but filth." I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. My husband had sold me. My dignity was gone.

Suddenly, a cold, authoritative voice cut through the noise.

"Two hundred million."

Silence fell over the hall. Every head turned. Walking through the doors was a man radiating power—Louis Smith, the newly found heir to the Smith empire. The man I had pushed away ten years ago. James turned pale. "Mr. Smith... this is a joke..."

Louis didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the cage, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of rage and tenderness. He ripped the lock off with his bare hands and pulled me into his arms. James tried to block him. "She's my wife! You can't just take her!"

Louis smirked, his voice dripping with ice. "Your wife? I just bought her. She's mine now."

He once saw her as nothing but a cheap plaything. Four years of closeness was nothing more than “practice before marriage.”
Cast out on a snowy night, publicly humiliated, her career destroyed… She licked her wounds in silence and dialed her family’s satellite phone.
When they met again, she was the largest shareholder of the Corporation. He was forced to bend his pride and call her “Auntie” in a trembling voice.
You took away all my dignity once. Now I make you too low to reach me.

Jonathan’s way of loving was always paying in silence. After we broke up, he cleared my shopping cart, stocked up enough makeup remover to last me three years, trying his best to make up for it. But during those three years when I willingly waited for him to propose, he never said a word. Until one day, he found a small note I’d written in pencil three years ago in that wedding planning book: “It’s okay, I can wait.” He cried all night staring at that line, and the next day, he bought 17 copies of the same book. On the title page of each one, he wrote neatly: “Wait for me.” It turns out, the stupidest person takes three years just to learn to say “I love you.”

For the sake of the so-called family heir, my husband Killian is prepared to kill my child!
That day, Killian locked me in an underground cold storage at ten degrees below zero, all because there is an ironclad rule in the Vittorio family.
The first-born son shall inherit the family’s Mafia empire.
My eldest brother’s wife Ira and I got pregnant at the same time.
To ensure his elder brother’s child is born first, Killian made this insane decision.
"My brother and Ira’s child has to be born first. This is what you owe them!"
He ignored my pleas and forcibly injected me with labor-delaying medicine.
"Allowing this child to be born at all is already the greatest mercy I can grant you."
Killian said to me with undisguised disgust.
I curled up in agony on the icy concrete floor, feeling the little life in my womb fading away bit by bit, shedding tears of utter despair.
"My baby… Mommy is so sorry for you…"

Xie Yijin hated me more than anyone in this world.

He called me vicious as a scorpion, said I schemed about everything, stole all that belonged to Lin Wanwan, and destroyed the one he held dearest.

Xie Yijin shielded Lin Wanwan tightly behind him.
The eyes that once looked at me with such tenderness were now frozen over with unmelting ice.
He pointed straight at me, every word cutting like a blade:

"Shen Zhiyi, why don’t you just die?!"

I froze in place, my fingertips ice-cold.
Unconsciously, I still clutched that crumpled, yellowed candy wrapper.

He had given it to me when he was seven years old,
saying that when I grew up, he would marry me
and buy me candies for the rest of my life.

But now…
he only wanted me dead.

"Jump, Stella. No one wants an ugly monster like you," my mother said coldly, blocking my escape route.

Behind me was the freezing, raging river; in front of me were the people I loved most, now forcing me to die. Jennifer smirked, clutching the trophy that belonged to me. "I'll take good care of Ethan for you," she whispered. I looked at their faces—twisted, cruel, triumphant. I didn't jump to die; I jumped to be reborn. As the icy water filled my lungs, I made a pact with the devil. I will crawl back from hell, and I will drag you all down with me.

During the senior executive meeting, an intern slapped a 15-yuan McDonald's receipt right in my face.
"Vice President Xu has been embezzling company funds for personal meals! A parasite like her, who’s been fleecing the company, must be fired!"
My boyfriend of eight years looked at me with a feigned, agonized expression. "This incident has caused an abysmally bad impact. You will be suspended pending an internal investigation."
I stared at his hand wrapped around the intern's waist, then calmly removed my employee ID badge.
I turned to my assistant and ordered, "Freeze the five million yuan in the company's account. That's just the pocket money I casually deposited there last week."

"Mommy's just a housewife! I don't want Mommy anymore—I want Aunt Jessica!"

Those words from my eight-year-old son, Jimmy, hit harder than any physical blow. I stood frozen in our living room, surrounded by the shards of the vase I’d just smashed. My husband, Robert, didn't even flinch. He just pulled Jessica closer, his hand resting possessively on her waist.

"Stop being dramatic, Scarlett," Robert sneered, his eyes cold. "Jessica is my soulmate. She understands my work. You? You just clean."

Eight years of devotion. Eight years of sacrificing my career to build this home. And now, my husband and son were looking at a stranger with the love that belonged to me.

I tried to reach for Jimmy, but he pushed me away with his small, angry fists. "Bad Mommy! Aunt Jessica buys me candy! You're just an ugly hag!"

My heart twisted until it snapped. I watched them leave for Jessica's award party—an award for a paper I practically wrote but couldn't claim. I was left alone in the silence of the house I paid for, bleeding from the glass cuts on my hands.

Later that night, at the hospital, after I’d been injured by Robert’s own hand, the nurse asked Jimmy who I was. He looked me dead in the eye and said, "I don't know her. Jessica is my mom."

That was the moment the old Scarlett died. I wiped the blood from my face, picked up my phone, and dialed my lawyer.

"Mr. Owens," I whispered, my voice trembling but resolute. "Let's redraft the agreement. I don't want custody. They can have each other."

He broke down the morgue door, his guttural scream echoing off the cold tiles as he yanked open drawer after drawer.

"Emily!"

Ethan's hands shook violently as he pulled it open. She lay inside, a white sheet draped over her face. With trembling fingers, he peeled back the fabric. Her face was paper-white, lips bloodless, her eyelashes casting faint shadows. So still.

This wasn't the Emily he knew. The Emily he knew could smile, could cry, could clumsily try to warm his frozen heart. But now, she was just a corpse. A corpse because of him.

"Cancer... stage four..." he whispered, drowning in a tidal wave of panic.

He remembered all those times she had clutched her stomach in agony, and he had mocked her. He remembered demanding she give her heart to his lover. He remembered her final silent words through the surgical glass: "I hate you."

"AHHH—!!" A raw scream tore from his throat. He slammed his fist into the metal drawer, blood blooming across his knuckles.

He collapsed beside her, pulling her stiff, freezing body into his arms. She was so light. Like holding air.

"Emily, I was wrong. I was so wrong," he choked out, crying for the first time in years. "Wake up. Hit me. Hate me. I'm begging you..."

But death is the most absolute silence of all. How far will a man go when he realizes he murdered his only salvation?

Five years together in that basement, and she thought she was his only light.

When she was eight months pregnant, he ran a red light to rush to his first love's side—and nearly killed her in the crash.

"Your sister hurt her leg. I'm marrying her next week so she can have some peace of mind."

A childhood betrothal. Five years of standing by each other through the worst. And none of it could outweigh a single tear from his first love.

He wanted her to be the bridesmaid—to hand him over to another woman with her own two hands.

"Don't worry, it's just a ceremony," he said.

But when she lay in a hospital bed barely clinging to life, all he could see was the scrape on his first love's leg.

The moment she booked the plane ticket, she rested a hand on her belly and whispered, "Let's go, little one."

On the day of the wedding, when he finds the bridesmaid's seat empty—what expression will cross his face?

Some people, once lost, are lost for a lifetime.

As the last stroke of the New Year bell rang,
I suddenly received a message from eight years ago:

“This is my first New Year with Zhou Guming!”
“I want to be with Zhou Guming forever!”
“I will play the piano for my whole life!”

At the same time, the news on TV was reporting:
On New Year’s Day,
my husband Zhou Guming was attending my best friend’s piano recital.

I looked down at my deformed fingers, bound by chains.
After cutting my wrist with a piece of iron I’d hidden for a long time,
I struggled to type one line:

“Lili, keep going forward. Don’t look back.”

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.

When the screen lit up, my heart stopped beating.
The woman twisting on the bed, breathless and flushed, was Rachel. The innocent girl we grew up with. The adopted sister I had fiercely loved and protected for over a decade.

And the hands claiming her body?
They belonged to my childhood sweetheart, Sebastian. On his finger glinted the very wedding band I had lovingly slipped onto his hand.

"I missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

His hoarse moans coming through the speaker were agonizingly familiar. Those exact sweet whispers, the ones that used to make my heart flutter, now completely destroyed me.

To the outside world, we were the ultimate power couple. I ran his empire, exhausted myself to build his perfect life, while he bathed in everyone's envy. But who knew my flawless marriage was nothing but a sick, twisted lie?

Tears blurred my vision, but as the video ended, my sorrow morphed into something cold and lethal.

Sebastian thinks he is a master manipulator. He thinks he can have my loyalty while drowning in my sister’s bed.

Well, since he loves acting so much... I think it’s time I gave him a taste of my own performance.

Playtime is over. I am going to tear down his 'perfect husband' facade piece by piece, and I won't stop until I witness his total ruin.

My fiancé's "innocent" sister posted a photo wearing the sheer lingerie I bought for him, standing in the master bedroom of my new house. The caption read: "Finally have a place to take shelter. Thanks Lucas for the security." In the corner of her photo, my carefully chosen wedding portrait was thrown face-down on the hardwood floor.

I didn't scream or cry. I just quietly took a screenshot and dialed the number of my billionaire boss. "Mr. Allen, I'll take that overseas transfer." Since Lucas wanted to give another woman a home, I didn't want this wedding anymore.

The next day, I went to our new house. The passcode had been changed to her birthday. When I finally got in, she was sprawling on my leather sofa, demanding I leave because Lucas "owned half." I laughed, throwing the property deed right in her pale face. "Look closely at the name. You have ten minutes to pack your trash and get out, or I'm calling the cops for trespassing."

She ran away crying. I called a cleaning crew and threw out the bed, the sofa, and every single thing they had touched. Because you don't keep dead things, and in my heart, this eight-year relationship was already rotting in the grave. Will Lucas realize what he lost before it's too late?

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.

On my wedding day, instead of the romantic photo montage, I played a live video feed from the bridal suite.

The guests gasped. The screen didn't show our childhood photos. It showed my fiancé, Benjamin, pressing a woman in a white dress against the vanity.
It was my bridesmaid. My cousin. Mia.

"Benjamin, tell me," Mia giggled, wrapping her legs around his waist. "Do I look better in this white dress, or does your boring, frigid fiancée look better in her gown?"

The audio boomed through the silent ballroom.
Benjamin's voice was thick with lust. "She's a mannequin. You're my addiction. Why don't we do it right here? While she waits for me at the altar?"

My mother-in-law screamed. My father threw a glass.
But I stood there, calm. Cold.
I watched as Benjamin on the screen frantically unzipped Mia's dress, his hands roaming over her body, completely forgetting the woman waiting for him outside.

Benjamin rushed into the ballroom, realizing the silence was too heavy. He looked up at the giant screen, his face draining of color.
"Amelia! No! Turn it off! It's not what it looks like!"

I picked up the microphone.
"You're right, Benjamin. It's not what it looks like. It's exactly what it is."
I threw a folder of evidence—bank transfers, hotel receipts, printed texts—into his face.
"Mia graduated this year. You've been funding her for four. We've been together for five."

I tore off my veil and dropped it on the floor.
"The wedding is off. You two deserve each other."

Here is an adaptation crafted in the style of a bestselling contemporary Western psychological thriller or domestic drama hook, using fast-paced, high-tension American English:

For three years, I was the envy of Manhattan’s elite—the untouchable heiress with the flawless life.

My husband? The media constantly fawned over him, dubbing him "God’s gift to women" and the absolute epitome of a perfect gentleman.

Then came the video. The damn video that shattered it all.

Kneeling on the floor, wearing a thick leather collar like a pathetic stray, was the man I had loved deeply for years.

At the other end of the leash stood another woman, the stiletto of her red-soled Louboutin pressing ruthlessly into his cheek.

"Tell me, what are you?" she demanded.

"I'm Mistress Elena's dog," he whimpered. "I just want to get away from Sienna... I'm so sick of that suffocating bitch."

Every vow, every promise we ever made, instantly dissolved into a sick, twisted joke.

But instead of breaking down, I just smiled. And I hit save.

If he wanted to act like a dog so badly, I’d be more than happy to oblige. I was going to make sure he choked on that damn leash.

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.

Lucia was destined to spend her life with Kaden; everyone knew it as a fact. Yet, on the day of the mating ritual, he chose another woman to be his Luna, instead of his predestined mate.

Feeling rejected and humiliated, Lucia resolved to leave. The only problem was that despite not wanting her, Kaden refused to let her go. He claimed he would rather die than watch her walk away.

A mysterious man who has entered her life became her second-chance mate, will he be strong enough to protect her from Kaden's irrational behavior? Is he truly a better option? Will Lucia find acceptance in her new home?