8342 Book(s) Related to red riding the alpha

“This has to be a sick joke,” Killian muttered, his hungry gaze raked over me like a predator sizing up its prey. “You did this intentionally, didn’t you?”

“N-No, I didn't." He backed me into a wall, and my breath seized—his face was impossibly close to mine. “I didn’t know this was your house.”

“You should quit, now that you still can,” he warned.

“I’m sorry that you hate me, but you’re just going to have to live with it.” I found my voice. “I’m not doing this because of you; I need this job.”

He chuckled darkly, the type to make your stomach churn.

“That’s where you’re getting it wrong. You’re doing this for me now, Jordan.” His fingers brushed a loose strand of hair away from my face. “You’re here to do my laundry, cook my meals, and scrub the floors, and when I tell you to kneel, you’ll do it with a smile.”

His thumb stopped at the base of my lips.

“Welcome home, Jordan.”


Jordan Carter needs a job and a place far away from her uncle’s family, but getting hired as the live-in maid of the school's most ruthless, arrogant star quarterback, who hates her guts, wasn’t on the list.

Now she has just one goal: surviving Killian Maddox for the next three months.

“Where did you hide the body?”

That was the first thing he asked me. Not my name. Not why I was kneeling in the snow beside the grave.

Two years ago, I falsified a DNA report to protect my father. The mistake buried a woman’s justice—and raised a man’s revenge.

Vale Creed, the billionaire who built his empire on truth, doesn’t believe in forgiveness. He believes in leverage.

Now, he knows what I did.

His sister’s death, my father’s secret, one impossible lie.

And his proposal? Not love.

A contract. A punishment. A marriage.

Christmas is coming, and I’m trapped in his glass mansion—where every room hides a memory, every kiss feels like evidence, and every heartbeat sounds like a confession.

But the deeper I fall, the closer the truth gets to killing us both.

Having an accident after catching her lover cheating and waking up in a strange place filled with robots. Alexa Ivvona never expected to become a hero in a war in the robot world, and fall in love with a robot troop commander. However, can Alexa return to her world or is she trapped there with all the secrets of why Alexa is in the robot world?

“Fifty million dollars. Who dares to raise the bid?” The crippled man’s voice boomed through the auction hall, silencing everyone.

I froze on the stage, the blinding lights burning my skin. I was Item 344, a slave, a toy to be sold to the highest bidder. My father had sold me, and now, I was being fought over like a piece of meat.

“Sold!” The auctioneer screamed, trembling with excitement.

I looked at my buyer. He sat in a wheelchair, his legs covered by a blanket, his face handsome but cold as ice. A cripple? I scoffed inwardly. I was a hybrid—half vampire, half werewolf. Even without an inner wolf, I had powers. I could control minds. I would wipe his memory, steal his money, and escape before the night was over.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I hissed as his guards approached me. I pulled out a hidden knife, ready to slit throats. But a sudden, overpowering dizziness hit me. My body went weak, my vision blurred.

When I woke up, I was in a luxurious car, bound by cuffs. The cripple was sitting next to me, watching me with predator eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Your new master,” he replied calmly.
“You wish.” I muttered.

In a flash, his hand wrapped around my throat. He moved faster than any human, faster than any cripple should be able to. His grip was steel.

“You seem to forget that I own you now,” he whispered dangerously, his face inches from mine. “Act as my mate for the Alpha selection, and I let you live. Refuse, and I’ll kill you myself.”

I tried to slip into his mind, to control him, to make him let me go. I pushed against his mental barriers, expecting them to crumble like everyone else’s.
But I hit a wall.
Shock paralyzed me. I couldn't read him.

He smirked, as if he knew exactly what I was trying to do. “We’re home, Jaslyn. Welcome to hell.”

"You think I'm just a human, don't you?"

I laughed, unaware of the danger lurking beside me.

"I'm more than what you see," he whispered, his eyes gleaming in the dark.

I'm Evelyn, and I never believed in monsters. But when I met Bryson Wilder, the mysterious stranger with piercing eyes, I stumbled into a world of forbidden love.

"You're mine now," he growled, his voice sending shivers down my spine.

As an alpha werewolf, Bryson's world is hidden from humans, but our connection is undeniable. Yet, I'm drawn to more than just him – his beta, Axel, ignite a passion that threatens to consume us all.

"You'll never be just mine," Bryson whispers, his eyes burning with possession and desire.

As we navigate the secrets of our past and the dangers that surround us, our forbidden love becomes the only truth that matters. But will our bond be enough to overcome the shadows of his world, or will it be the very thing that tears us apart?"

Stealing from rich men was never personal…It was how Maya survived.

For years, she has lived by three simple rules: never use her real name, never get attached, and always disappear before sunrise. It's the only way she's managed to keep a roof over her head while raising her fifteen-year-old sister after escaping the family that abandoned them.

Then one reckless night changes everything….
After a one-night stand with a captivating stranger, Maya slips out of his luxury suite with a wallet full of cash and a designer watch, convinced she'll never see him again.

She's wrong.

The man she robbed is Xavier Lockwood, the feared heir to one of America's most powerful mafia families…a man who never forgets a face and never lets anyone walk away owing him.
Within hours, Maya is dragged into Xavier's world. Escape becomes impossible and every attempt to outsmart him only pulls her deeper into a life she never wanted, while the man determined to make her pay slowly becomes the one person capable of lowering every wall she's spent years building.

Just as Maya begins to believe there might be something real between them, Xavier's father arrives with the woman chosen to become the future Mrs. Lockwood.

Maya knows her. She could recognize that smile anywhere….the voice, the cruelty hidden behind perfect manners.
The woman chosen to become his wife is the very stepsister Maya swore she would never see again…the same family she swore she'd never go back to.

Now she's trapped under the same roof as the man she's falling for, the people who shattered her childhood, and a future that was never meant to include her.

Will Xavier choose the woman his family promised him...Or the thief who stole far more than his money?

She is Lara, the epitome of evil, the sign of destruction. She is worst than the devil. She is the wind that can destroy you or the wind that can keep you chilly.
She has been attached to her since birth, she is connected to her. She is her savior.
The devil is my savior

Arianna Deeds world is turned upside down when she goes the angel academy. In a world with vampire, werwolves, and fallen angels are the least of her concerns, when demons try to take over earth. A thousand year treaty broken and a vampire virus running wild. Angels are becoming extinct. She must learn her powers or die. Will Arianna discover what's happening to the angel's or will she be next?

My locker door swings open and the hate mail tumbles out like confetti from hell. Murderer's daughter. Your dad killed kids. Die like them.
Three weeks since the news broke, and they just keep coming.
I'm on my hands and knees, frantically shoving the notes into my backpack while the hallway erupts in laughter. Sarah steps over me like I'm roadkill.
The first time I drowned, I thought it was an accident. The second time, I thought I was losing my mind. But by the third time—watching Blake's lifeless body sink next to mine in that chlorine-burning water—I finally got it. Time isn't moving forward. It's stuck, like a broken record, spinning back to the day Blake could still dive like an Olympic champion, before the accident stole everything from him.
This time, I won't let him jump in after me.
I have to save Blake from me. But I'm drowning in more than just pool water, and I don't know how to surface. I don't know how to stop this endless loop of death and guilt and love that's killing us both, over and over again.
How do you break a curse when you're the one who cast it?

I was once the most exquisite rose in New York's underworld.
Leander Castello's wife. The mafia godfather's treasured queen. The woman everyone envied.
I thought he would be my salvation, my forever.
Until he snapped me in half with his own hands and threw me into the filthiest pit like trash.
He said he needed to teach me what betrayal costs.
So I was handed over to the Mexican cartel boss, Carlos.
Six months later, when he kicked down that iron door, I was on my knees in a pool of blood, crawling toward his feet like a beaten dog.
I thought he was just another client.
I opened my mouth, revealing my shattered teeth, forcing sounds like grinding metal through vocal cords destroyed by industrial acid.
I mechanically unbuttoned my shirt, displaying the crisscrossing cigarette burns and brands covering my skin.
I knocked my forehead against his shoe, silently begging him not to use the hose on me today.
He stared at my mutilated right leg, at my vacant eyes, and finally understood—
That rose had rotted away on the cartel's operating table, along with our child.
What's left now is just a living corpse.

A month before my boyfriend Samuel and I were supposed to get married, he asked me to let another woman wear my wedding dress and move into my house.

It all started three months ago when his "old friend" Dahlia returned from overseas, supposedly with less than a year to live. A week ago, Samuel told me that Dahlia's dying wish was to become a bride before she passed away, and he was the chosen groom.

I kept saying no. But he brought it up every single day, insisting he had to help Dahlia because she had helped him when his company was in crisis three years ago, and he needed to fulfill her wish.

I was furious.

But in the end, I gave up the house and left him.

After the catastrophic war between the four great races ended in ceasefire, the Supernatural Council established an ironclad law—the Pact of Heirs.
Every hundred years, a Mating Season would open, where eligible heirs would compete to determine who would rule the world for the next century.
In my previous life, I chose to marry the wolf prince Darius, desperate to escape my status as a black-feathered orphan in the eagle clan.
The wolf clan's rule was brutally simple: whoever bore the first child carrying the matrilineal eagle-eye bloodline would claim dominion over all. I gave Darius that child. My son secured his throne and granted him absolute power.
My sister Cecily—the chieftain's true daughter—had set her sights on the vampire heir, drawn by their ancient nobility and dark allure. She married into their clan willingly.
But vampire bonds were cold as death itself. Her human-adjacent body couldn't sustain their offspring. She lost her fertility and became a cautionary tale whispered at every gathering.
Twisted by jealousy and shame, she decided I was to blame for her failures. She drugged my wine at a feast, then hurled me off Storm Cliff while I was too weak to spread my wings.
As I plummeted toward the rocks, someone tried to catch me—Kade, the exiled wingless dragon, his dark-scaled hand reaching desperately from a ledge.
But above us, Cecily stood at the cliff's edge, smiling as she cut through the safety rope he'd thrown. I hit the stones and everything went black.
When I opened my eyes again, I could still feel the phantom warmth of Kade's hand and the venom in Cecily's smile.
But somehow, impossibly, I was back—returned to the very day the Mating Season began.
Through the one-way scrying glass at the Observation Altar, I looked down at the moonlit sacrificial platform below. Cecily was already there. And she wasn't alone.
She'd been reborn too. I was certain of it.
But she didn't know what I knew—that Darius was a monster to his lovers.
During the full moon, when the wolf took over completely, he'd killed more than one partner in his bed.

"You drive me crazy, Lilith. Just one night... I’ll give you whatever you want. Please let me taste you," my billionaire CEO whimpered, pinning me against the wall, his hot breath brushing my ear.

He is obsessed with my new face, my body, and my ruthless attitude. He is willing to abandon everything just to get into my bed.

If only he knew that the flawless skin he’s kissing right now used to be covered in the acid his mistress poured on me.
If only he knew that I am his dead, naive wife—the one he threw into an ice cellar to die along with our unborn child, just to steal my family's inheritance.

"Anything I want?" I trace his jawline, smiling sweetly as my nail digs into his skin. "Then give me your empire, William. And your life."

I rose from the ashes with a new face and a hidden will. He wants to ruin my lipstick, but I came back to ruin his life.

My fiancé, Liam Miller, slapped me more than a dozen times in front of everyone over his childhood sweetheart.
Then he shoved me down a spiral staircase.
Both my legs were shattered. My skull cracked open. I spent an entire month in the ICU.
He never came to see me.
Not once.
He was too busy staying by Sophia’s side, planning her birthday party, and getting down on one knee in front of everyone to propose to her.
As for me, I couldn’t even get through the doors of his headquarters anymore. My access had been revoked. My position had been taken. Every trace of my place in his world had been erased.
Nine years.
From nineteen to twenty-eight, I gave him the best years of my life.
In the end, I had given them to the wrong man.
On the day I was discharged, I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cling to him and beg for answers.
I simply called my mother.
“Mom,” I said calmly, “that overseas mafia empire you wanted me to inherit? I’m ready to take it.”
There was a brief silence on the other end.
Then my mother said, “I’ve waited ten years for this day.”
The night before my flight, Liam’s messages flooded my phone.
“Emma, I was wrong. Don’t go.”
What do you think?
Would I ever look back?

Ice slammed through my veins.
My throat locked up, crushed by an invisible fist. My body convulsed violently, mouth gaping open and shut, but no air came.
Through blurring vision, I saw my polished stepbrother Damien standing there, watching his watch—counting down the seconds I had left.
And Sophie—that scholarship kid who used to sob over dead ants—stood holding the empty syringe, her smile twisted and ugly. "Don't worry, Charlotte. I'll take real good care of your Ivy spot and your boyfriend."
The darkness swallowed me whole.

47 deaths.
48 iterations.
He sold his brother a death trap and called it a farm.
When the dead rose, the experiment began—and the only way out was through.

Kael ruined my life, drained my divine blood, and framed me for murder in my past life. Given a second chance, I reject his fake tenderness and tear down every lie he built. The almighty Dark Duke who once played with my life now craves only my mercy. He abandons his army, destroys his status, and begs for my punishment. I end his tyranny, chain him with my golden blood, and turn my worst tormentor into my most obedient hound.

My brother gave away our family restaurant to his adopted sister for her birthday. The worst part? She’s the daughter of the man who murdered our parents.
For ten years, Cole played the saintly savior. He gave her my bedroom, watched her destroy my mother's photos, and let the whole town run me onto the streets. He thought ruining my name and leaving me homeless would force me to crawl back and beg.
He forgot one thing about me. I have absolutely nothing left to lose.
Tomorrow is the town's biggest Harvest Festival. When I step onto that stage in front of two thousand people with a microphone and a box of buried police reports, my 'perfect' brother is finally going to learn what happens when you back the real heir into a corner...

Five years ago, on our wedding day, my fiancée Vivian was in the bridal suite fucking my best man.
Five years later, I returned to New York with my wife—the most powerful Mafia matriarch in Naples. At Atelier Milano, Brandon, the same "best man" who betrayed me, fawned over my custom-tailored suit, groveling to the staff about how desperately he wanted to meet the legendary Mr. Salvatore.
He had no idea...
The man he'd once written off as a pathetic loser was the very person he was now begging to impress.

Married for years, I caught my husband in bed with another woman.
He had nothing at all once; it was only after being with me that he became the CEO of a company and made his fortune.
I asked for a divorce, and he flew into a rage and locked me in a dog cage.
But what he never saw coming was that I had long been ready to take my revenge.

To save my dying brother, I signed a million-dollar contract: sleep with a comatose billionaire to secure an heir. My boyfriend swore it was just a harmless formality. One night. One permanently locked door. But as I nervously approached the mattress, the paralyzed heir suddenly opened his eyes. And he whispered a terrifying warning...

On our one-year anniversary, my husband Julian gifted me an antique ring.
Putting it on cost me everything.
I miscarried, grew paralyzed, and rapidly withered into a husk. And Julian? He convinced everyone that the trauma had simply driven a grieving mother insane.
Eventually, even I believed him.
It wasn’t until the moment of my murder that the truth finally clicked.
The ring wasn't a blessing; it was a parasitic siphon.
Then, I opened my eyes—
I was back at the anniversary dinner.

The adoptive brother I'd been secretly in love with for a decade took my virginity on the night of my twentieth birthday, fueled by alcohol.

I thought I had finally found love.

Until I stood outside his half-open apartment door and heard his teammates mocking me.

"Damn, Dax, you actually slept with Elara? That boring good girl?"

My hand froze mid-air above the doorknob.

Dax's tone was dripping with contempt. "Look closely at her face. It's exactly like Cassandra's, isn't it?"

"It's no big deal. She revolves around me every single day. All it took was crooking a finger."

"With Cassandra gone, she's the perfect stand-in to kill time."

The room instantly erupted into a fit of unbridled, mocking laughter.

I dug my nails fiercely into my palms, opened my phone, and found the email I had deliberately ignored for a month.

[Florence Academy of Fine Arts — Exchange Program Confirmation]

Three years ago, my best friend Juliana Pierce was raped and jumped from a twelve-story building. I was there. I saw everything. I know exactly who did it.

Alexander Knight—Juliana's boyfriend, brilliant scientist, the man I've secretly loved for seven years—has spent every moment since hunting for answers. He believes I'm shielding a predator. He's dedicated his life to making mine hell.

Now I'm dying of ALS, and Alexander's dragged my broken body onto his "Memory Judgment Stage" for the world to see. His new technology can rip memories straight from my brain and broadcast them as holograms.

"Tell them who killed Juliana," he shouted.

I refuse. So he cranks up the machine, letting the neural probes tear through my dying brain. My hand shatters. My body convulses. But I won't break.

Until the memories start bleeding out anyway.

And when Alexander sees the rapist's face—Completely loses his mind.

Everyone said I was the happiest woman of the Northern Plains Clan, blessed with the purest love from Eric, the Wolf King.
Then my wolf let out a tormented howl.
Through the soul bond of fated mates, I felt it clearly—
my husband held my maid in his arms, drowning in desperate lust.
That nourishing tonic I’d drunk for three years, which I’d believed was filled with his affection, had only been brewed to keep me barren all along.
"Eric, I want you..."
"All of me is yours, my love. Bear our cub soon."
Those sweet whispers I once held dear shattered me to pieces in an instant.
The whole clan praised us as the perfect pair.
Yet who could have imagined this marriage had been built entirely on lies from the very start?
Since he is such a master of pretense, I suppose it’s time I put on a show of my own.
I will expose the true face of this flawless husband for everyone to see.

"They said I was just a piece of trash, only fit to be a substitute bride for the lunatic Abyssal Dragon Duke." I smirked, twisting the bone bracelet that sealed my venomous power. My fake sister wept pitifully, "Visenya, at worst, I'll bear the Duke's wrath myself." Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea. When the bloodthirsty Duke finally cornered me, he didn't tear me apart. Instead, he kissed my fingertips and chuckled. "So, my little bride, shall we slaughter the Emperor and take the throne for fun?" "Deal," I smiled. "But if you drag me down, I'll kill you too."

My fiancé was going to humiliate me at our own wedding.

I know because I heard him think it.

I'm Isabella Rossi — mafia heiress, future bride to Lorenzo Falcone, the golden boy of New York's underworld. Our marriage was supposed to unite two empires.

I also have a secret. I can read minds. But only when people want to use me, hurt me, or destroy me.

Lorenzo's thoughts had been silent for three years. I thought that meant he loved me.

The night before the wedding, I finally heard him. The mistress he'd planted in the crowd. The fake pregnancy reveal. The plan to humiliate me at the altar so he could play the victim — and steal my family's power in the chaos.

I was born able to see threads tying certain people to one another. A thin red thread stretched right above Mom and Dad’s heads.
I hurried over to Mom at once. “Mom, why is there a red thread connecting you and Dad?”
Mom laughed when she heard me, booping my nose fondly.
“That’s proof that Daddy loves me.”
Later, at our family gathering, Aunt Celia brought me a present just like she always did.
“Luna? Come see what Auntie brought you.”
I trotted over and found a cloth doll.
Just then, Dad walked up, knelt down beside me, and stroked my head.
“Luna, what do you say?”
I glanced up at Dad, then turned to look at Aunt Celia.
Little me was filled with huge confusion.
“It’s weird. Why is there such a thick red thread connecting Dad and Celia?”

Landon Rhodes and I grew up together, both dreaming of becoming top chefs. But I knew he was the one with a palate kissed by God.

So when Rowan Stone, this street-rat punk, got her claws into him, I took the drinks, the smoke, the slaps for him. When he wanted to skip the National Young Chefs Competition to stay with her drunk ass, I dragged him back to the culinary lab.

He won the championship, got recruited by a three-star Michelin restaurant, graduated and made millions. I became the most invisible prep cook in his kitchen.

Until Rowan wrapped her car around a pole during one of her episodes, and he lured me into a basement.

"This is all your fault! If you'd minded your own damn business, she'd still be alive!"

His foot came down on my right hand. Bones cracking. My fingers ground to pulp.

All those 5 AM trips to the fish market for him. All those nights watching stock simmer for forty-eight hours straight. All the praise he soaked up at final practicals. My sacrifices, and all I got in return was his hatred.

"These worthless hands that can only cut vegetables deserve to rot in the ground with her."

The pain swallowed me whole.

When I wake up again, I'm back to that afternoon when he said he was going to the bar to find her.

This time, I won't stop him.

At seven years old, he pulled me from the rapids—and for the eleven years that followed, I loved this man I called "Uncle."

Then Sophia appeared. She accused me of pushing her down the stairs, and Michael didn't spare me so much as a glance before throwing me out into the storm. I knocked until my hands were raw and bleeding. He never opened the door.

Three years later, he showed up at my workplace, demanding I "come home" with him. His pregnant girlfriend flaunted a twelve-week ultrasound, cooing about how the baby already "looked just like him"—then staged yet another fall, told yet another lie, let out yet another shriek, casting me once more as the heartless monster.

But this time, I won't beg.

This time, I know secrets they don't.

Because that miscarriage three years ago? That baby? That ultrasound?

None of it was real.

The question is—how much has Michael already lost, and can he see the truth before the one person who ever truly loved him is gone for good?

That was supposed to be one of the most anticipated days of my life—the wedding of my best friend, Sarah.
But when I put on my bridesmaid dress, she called me a bitch.
"Get out." Sarah looked at me like I was trash.
"I don't want to see you at my wedding."
I stood frozen in place, staring down at the broken Cartier bracelet she had given me, now lying scattered on the floor.

I'm a blind girl, and I've always been close with the old lady living next door.
One day, I caught the smell of blood coming from her apartment.
Worried something had happened to her, I pushed her door open—and instantly realized my mistake.
I had walked right into a murder scene.
The killer was still there.
I had to take a chance.
Betting that my pale, sightless eyes could fool those blood-crazed ones.
I stepped into the blood-soaked room, smiled toward where the body lay, and called out,
"Ma'am, the store has oranges on sale—I brought some over for you..."

I'm a forensic audio specialist. I make a living digging up the truths people deliberately erase from static and noise.
My 19-year-old brother was accused of pushing a billionaire's bride to her death at her wedding.
The police presented their "smoking gun" recording. I heard exactly twelve seconds missing from it.
Those twelve seconds hold the truth about how the bride really died—and the billionaire family's dark secret that will get both me and my brother killed.
They smashed my equipment, threatened my life, bribed the cops, and tried to bury the truth forever.
But what they don't know is—
Some voices refuse to stay silent. Even when they're cut out.

I chased after my first love, Joe, for years and finally worked up the courage to confess—only to overhear him plotting to get me drunk as a plaything.
Just when I was in utter despair, his mafia brother, David, showed up and saved me from deep sorrow. He treated me gently like I was made of glass, gifted me a private estate, got down on one knee and proposed, saying he'd had a crush on me for years.
I thought I'd finally escaped hell and found my one true love—until his “lover” Ann came back with a boy who looked exactly like him and stole every bit of his attention.
David swore Ann was just my stand-in, but he kept leaving me for her again and again, even throwing himself in front of bullets for her in a shootout, saying, “For you, I can risk my life.”

“Do I really deserve this?”
Dr. Xavier Brown asked the void after the woman he loved smiled and shoved him off a rooftop.

He died a brilliant, betrayed genius… only to wake up as the worthless secondary character in a trashy web novel.

The pathetic live-in son-in-law.
The disposable husband.
The man scripted to be humiliated, divorced, and killed so the protagonists could shine.

Died once.
Refused to die again.

Armed with every humiliating page of his own doom, Xavier signs the divorce papers with a smirk, takes the money, and kicks the first death flag into the dirt.

But the story doesn’t let go so easily.

When he saves the mother of Isabella Voss, the novel’s ice-cold villainess, using medicine this world has never seen, she doesn’t destroy him.
She builds him a kingdom: a hospital with top-notch facilities, an empire of shadows, and a love that feels dangerously real.

Then the truth rips the script apart.

He isn’t Alexander Rodriguez.
He is Alexander Winchester, erased heir to a hidden mafia family, legendary assassin king, memory wiped and chained as a live-in dog by the very people who now call themselves heroes.

Six deadly sisters descend to reclaim him.
A ruthless CEO. A ghost hacker, an assassin trainer, a pharmaceutical prodigy, a public opinion goddess, and the youngest who sees what’s coming before it breathes.

With a system that evolves from cold machine to snarky partner in crime, Xavier walks two paths at once:

The Healer who rewrites life, and the Ruler who burns false fates to ash.

But Karma never dies, Damien and Sophie met with their consequences

Every betrayal returns.
Every death flag screams.

“Do I really deserve this?”

Xavier smiles, scalpel in one hand, shadow in the other.

This time the answer is yes.

In my past life, I died in a freezing, damp basement.
The person who destroyed me was Evelina, the daughter of my father’s mistress. She set a trap at a charity gala, dragged my reputation through the mud, and forced me into a hellish marriage—all so she could strip away everything that rightfully belonged to me.
When I opened my eyes again, I was twenty-two. The gala that sealed my fate was happening tonight.
Before the banquet officially began, I seamlessly swapped two champagne flutes, handing her meticulously woven trap right back to her. When the scandal detonated, sending shockwaves through the ballroom, my eyes landed on Killian—the Vance family's notoriously cold-blooded illegitimate son.
The trust fund my mother left me was still firmly under my control. I walked straight up to him and laid my chips on the table.
My enemies had retreated to the shadows, waiting to strike back. But I was going to use their own conspiracies as stepping stones, clawing back everything I owned, one piece at a time.

My brother chose my enemy, and the man I loved joined forces with her to sell me into a club.
Pregnancy, miscarriage, imprisonment, beatings—every cry for help I made was dismissed as "just an act."
It wasn't until I was truly dead that they lost their minds, dropping to their knees at my grave and sobbing that they were sorry.
But by then, I could no longer hear them.

At the family dinner, a Wall Street rising star flaunted his power in front of me, boasting that he was the chief agent of the "Godfather of the Underworld."
My ex-wife's family fawned over me like dogs, pointing their fingers at me and taunting, "You spineless, gigolo trash, you're not even worthy to carry Mr. Victor's shoes!"
Victor, even more smug, turned on speakerphone, trying to use my privileges to curry favor with my wife.
I stood silently in the corner, coldly pressing a blood-red command: [Permanently Delete Account].
The next second, the system's cold pronouncement came through his phone: "Warning, you have overstepped your authority and have been banned across the entire network!"
The room fell silent instantly.
They had no idea that I was the true Godfather, the one who controlled a multi-billion dollar empire and ruled the Western underworld!

I loved Finley for two years.
Until 1:00 AM on a Tuesday, when his best friend, Orion, sent me a half-naked photo and a jarring voice note."
If I actually bag her, don't go flipping out on me. A deal's a deal."
I booked the first flight out to confront him, only to catch the boy I loved naked and thrusting into another woman.
But that wasn't even the part that broke me.
When my roommate bypassed the hockey team's private Discord server, I found a channel named: #locker-room-bets.
There was my boyfriend, typing the words that shattered my world: "She's boring... She's like a lost puppy, you can't shake her... Play with her all you want."
My loyalty and two years of my life were nothing but a sick joke.
The entire hockey team had put money down on when I would willingly spread my legs for his best friend.

I used to believe the most beautiful sound in the world was a baby's first cry.

Until I watched my three children die, one by one, at the hands of a woman with the sweetest smile.

Her name was Isabella, my husband's cousin. She would tenderly offer tissues after my miscarriages, frantically call for help when I fell down the stairs, thoughtfully make soup to comfort me after I lost each child.

She was such a talented actress. So convincing that even my mafia don husband said, "Isabella is more suited to be the lady of this house than you are."

But they didn't know—

A docile sheep, once it learns the wolf's rules, becomes far more dangerous than any real wolf.

When Dominick smashed Antonio's skull with the holy chalice, when Isabella screamed through her miscarriage in the basement, when blood splattered across the Virgin Mary's face...

In my past life, when the apocalypse broke out, I braved the pressure and opened the fortress gates to take in my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, who had nowhere else to go.
They shoved my wife and me straight into a horde of zombies.
My wife and I were reborn seven days before the apocalypse. I turned my head and saw the same fear and coldness surging in her eyes as mine:
"This time, don't open the door."
"Never." I smiled coldly.
Not only would I keep the door shut—I would watch with my own eyes as those bloodsucking ingrates, who had drained me dry in my past life, were slowly devoured by hunger and despair right outside the gate.

On the execution platform, my noble and beautiful wife used her dagger to carve open my chest.
My nominal adopted son pressed a red-hot iron into my skin, branding me with the "F"-class mark of the lowest outcast, draining my transcendent bloodline dry.
"The Storm Kingdom has no use for a cripple with zero beast-spirit affinity. You belong rotting in the abyss!"
They cut the chains and kicked me into the Black Abyss—a place from which no one returns—then turned to carve up my throne.
They thought I was as good as dead.
They had no idea that the deepest darkness of that abyss harbored the most terrifying ancient demon in existence.
Two weeks later, as they raised their glasses to toast the new king's coronation, I kicked down the castle gates, wielding the ember-fire of annihilation and a tide of ten thousand beasts.
Looking down at the woman who once stood so high above me, now groveling in the mud and begging for mercy, I tossed the bloodstained broken blade onto the hem of her dress:
"Remember this forever—it was you who took a nobody you crushed beneath your feet and turned him into a king you'll kneel before and never win back. Now, hand over your lives."