8208 Book(s) Related to The fire inside HER the OMEGA

On our wedding night, James moaned my sister's name while inside me.

I shoved him off in fury. He looked down me with contempt.

"You're just a replacement for Raina. Don't expect too much."

Later, a fake surveillance video pinned Raina's death on me.

I couldn't prove my innocence. James had me thrown into prison.

For three whole years, I endured abuse behind bars.

The day James picked me up, he tore off my clothes and forced himself inside me.

Afterward, he tossed a document at me. "Sign it."

Turns out David—his and Raina's son—had leukemia.

He wanted me to bear a child—only to sacrifice it to save the one he had with Raina?

I couldn't accept it.

A cold smirk crossed his handsome face. "Refuse? Then your mother's medical funding ends now."

"Your only value lies in your womb. Learn to obey."

From then on, he came to my room nightly. There was no tenderness, only brutal taking.

Then fate played its cruelest joke.

I discovered a paternity test—it proved I was David's biological mother.

Which meant... David was my son? Mine and James's?

Evelyn Vale plans weddings, memorials, and private family ceremonies for people who care too much about how grief looks on camera. She knows lighting, timing, guest flow, and the hidden machinery behind a perfect public moment.

Then one night, while sitting beside the husband who kisses her goodnight, she sees a livestream event scheduled for tomorrow: her own memorial service.

The cover uses her mourning portrait. Grant, her husband, is posed as the devastated widower. Serena, her half sister, stands beside him like a woman already rehearsing the role of replacement wife.

At first Evelyn wants it to be a mistake. Then the invoices appear. The funeral campaign is paid for. The backend record existed. Someone with internal clearance created it, deleted it, and expected Evelyn to die before the broadcast.

Julian Cross, a former livestream safety investigator disgraced by an old death case, is the first person who treats Evelyn's fear as evidence. Together they follow the countdown through funeral contracts, planted comments, medical manipulation, board pressure, platform corruption, and a hidden operator using public grief as a business model.

But Evelyn is not waiting to be rescued. She knows how to build an event. She knows where witnesses should stand, when a microphone should stay open, and how a lie collapses when the room sees the right proof at the right time.

Grant scheduled the funeral.

Evelyn hosts it better.

"Siblings don't do this," he murmured, his thumb tracing my jaw. "So tell me, Nyra... does he know you the way I do? Does he know what you're capable of?"
Three years ago, I escaped the empire that raised me.
I left behind my father's world of blood, violence, and impossible choices, determined to become someone else.
Someone ordinary.
For three years, I believed I had succeeded.
Until my father was murdered.
One phone call drags me back to the compound I swore I would never see again. But grief quickly gives way to betrayal.
The man I planned to marry isn't who he claimed to be.
Old enemies are hiding in plain sight.
And everyone wants something my father left behind.
Everyone has lied to me.
Everyone... except Raze.
He was my first mistake.
My greatest weakness.
The one man I could never truly forget.
Three years ago, I walked away from him.
He waited 1,095 days.
Now, he's done waiting.
As secrets buried for years begin to surface, I'm forced to face the woman I once was, the weapon my father spent years creating.
I came back wanting answers.
Instead, I found blood, betrayal, and a man who still knows exactly how to unravel me.
Now I have only two choices:
Become the weapon I was raised to be...Or die pretending I was ever meant for a peaceful life.

I was four months pregnant when the truck hit my car.
I woke up on a gurney outside the OR, bleeding, half-conscious, thinking my husband was saving my life. Then I heard him through the door.
"The baby's gone. Her right hand is finished—her career's over either way. Just take her kidney now and put it in Mia."
My mother agreed. My father told him to switch my architectural draft to Mia's name before Friday.
Mia. The sister they'd raised for twenty years while I was missing. The sister whose body was failing. The sister my husband had apparently been in love with the whole time I was married to him.
I was supposed to die on that table. I wasn't supposed to hear anything.
But my phone was in my coat pocket, and the voice memo app had never stopped recording.
And now I had a choice to make.

On the day of my prenatal checkup, I found out my husband, Caleb, was sleeping with his student.
That night, I spiked his Pinot Noir with poison. I watched him collapse, convulse, and take his agonizing last breath. Then, I dragged his body into the basement and sealed it inside an oak wine barrel.
For five years, I raised our daughter, Nora, on my own. I thought the secret would rot in the dark forever.
Until she told me: Daddy speaks to her from under the floorboards every night. His voice sounds muffled, like he’s talking through a thick blanket...

In order to rush to comfort his assistant whose apartment was leaking, Richard signed his name hastily without even glancing at the documents on the table.
I put away the divorce agreement with a wry smile.
When he and my son completely disappeared, he finally panicked.
Three months later .
He knelt down on the streets of Chicago in despair, begging me to remarry him.
My six-year-old son looked coldly at his biological father and said, "Get lost, you bad uncle! You don't deserve to be my dad!"

Maya froze when the man who drew every eye in the room walked in. Her ex-boyfriend, who‘d vanished five years ago, was now one of Boston’s richest tycoons. Back then, he’d never hinted at his identity—then he’d disappeared without a trace. Seeing his cold gaze now, she could only assume he’d hidden the truth to test her, decided she was vain, and left in disappointment.

Outside the ballroom, she went to him as he smoked by the door, wanting to at least explain herself.

“Are you still angry with me?”

He flicked the cigarette away and looked at her with open contempt. “Angry? You think I’m angry? Let me guess—Maya finally finds out who I am and now she wants to ‘reconnect.’ Another chance now that she knows my last name comes with money.”

When she tried to deny it, he cut in. “You were a blip. A footnote. If you hadn’t shown up tonight, I wouldn’t have remembered you.”

Tears stung her eyes. She almost told him about his daughter, but stopped. He’d only think she was using the child to trap him and get his money.

Maya swallowed everything back and left, certain they would never cross paths again—only for him to keep appearing in her life, until he was the one lowering himself, humbly begging her to take him back.

Will a man learn to love me if I’m good to him long enough?

I tried for seven years to warm his heart.
I thought if I just held on a little longer, he’d finally see me.
Because I loved him so deeply.

But what did I get in return?
His endless tenderness for another woman.
I pretended I didn’t care, until pneumonia landed me in the hospital.

On the day I was discharged, I found him standing there with our daughter, his whole world focused on caring for that woman.
Even my daughter, whom I’d raised with everything I had, wished that woman was her mother.

In that moment, my heart died completely.

I left the divorce papers, gave up custody, and walked back into the chemical industry.
So what if seven years of marriage had worn me down?
I was still the top genius in my field.

But the divorce I’d wanted so badly never went through.
The man who once couldn’t have been colder to me now held on to me tighter than ever.
Our daughter refused to leave my side.

When he found my divorce papers,
the always cold and arrogant man pushed me against the wall and growled:

“Divorce? You’re mine. For life.”

"Abort her mutt. Liora is carrying my true pureblood heir."
My Alpha husband’s voice was ice-cold as I bled out on the delivery bed.
The woman he was protecting? My fiercely loyal best friend.
While I was screaming in pain, biting my lips bloody to birth his child, he was in the next room, making her moan.
He killed our baby.
When I returned from burying my grandmother in the freezing rain, his guards threw holy water in my face.
"Wash her," Lachlan ordered coldly. "The stench of death on her will harm Liora's pup."
I stared at the man who once took nine lashes of a barbed whip just to marry me.
He aborted my baby to save hers. He let my only family die.
He tossed me a bag of gold like a beggar and told me to stop causing drama.
So, I packed my bags, and vanished into his world.

“Smile, Natalie,” Callum whispered before he walked onstage.

So I smiled while he thanked another woman for the crisis plan I had written. I smiled when he pinned my grandmother’s sapphire brooch to her dress. I even smiled when his message came in, canceling our nineteenth appointment at the county clerk’s office.

Then I walked out with our unsigned marriage license papers in my purse and called the one CEO he hated most.

By the time Callum realized I wasn’t waiting anymore, I had already taken my name, my work, and my future back.

I lent my Bugatti to my secret boyfriend for clout. He repaid my trust by gifting my car to a scheming cheerleader, letting her publicly humiliate and frame me. The whole school mocked me as a poor garage keeper’s daughter, unaware I’m the hidden billionaire heiress behind the supercar. Now I’ll destroy his fake rich life and avenge every insult.

Eighty-eight times.
That was how many times I had put on a white dress, or packed my ID, heading to the registry office to marry Harrison Churchill. And eighty-eight times, I ended up in an ambulance.
The first time, it was a street drive-by. A bullet tore through my shoulder just two blocks from City Hall.
The fifteenth time, a car bomb shattered three of my ribs.
The forty-second time, a steel frame plummeted from a construction site, cracking my skull.
......And this time?
The eighty-eighth time. A massive cargo container "accidentally" slipped from a crane at the docks, crushing my car.
Maybe, it’s time to say goodbye.

"Where is my son?"
My husband wouldn't look at me.
I had just come out of anesthesia. The bassinet next to my hospital bed was empty — except for a stack of cash, a christening card, and a ring pinned to the corner of the card.
The card had another woman's name in the godmother box.
That woman walked in behind my husband. She picked up the ring and slid it onto her own finger.
"He's safe, sweetheart. We've been talking about this for months."
My husband is Damiano Marchetti. He runs the family that runs this city. The woman wearing the ring is his father's young widow.
The baby on that card is my son.
For four years now I have been the woman this house pretends not to see. The wife told to use the servants' entrance. The mother of a boy who calls another woman Mommy.
Last night I asked my husband for a divorce.
He laughed in my face.
He has no idea how much that's going to cost him.

Violet loses her parents as a young child and is brought up by an elderly aunt. As she approaches her 17th birthday her life is turned upside down when her Aunt tells her that the life she has built with her must end - she has to go and learn about the background of her father. Secrets have been kept and those secrets turn Violet's life on it's head!

Not only does she have to accept that her father wasn't who she thought he was, but she too, is something she didn't even realise existed! It seems a whole plan had been in place for if something happened to her parents, including learning of her heritage and all it means.
So, Violet is sent to Autumn Moon Pack, where an elderly relative of her father's still lives to give Violet chance to be surrounded by others like her. In truth, she plans to learn what she needs to learn what she needs to and leave to live alone like her father before her.
But will meeting the handsome Beta, who seems quite taken with her, change her mind? And could there be yet more secrets to be revealed?

I die a miserable death in the dungeon, drained of three hundred years of pure blood. I owe it all to Elena and my ridiculously biased clan.

In my previous life, I am the Chief Executioner of the Night Abyss clan. During our hunt for the Alpha Wolf, she drops her weapon and throws herself into Lucas's arms, playing the helpless victim.

I take the beast's attack head-on and suffer severe injuries. The other knights just shield her, turning around to accuse me of being petty and jealous.

Prince Marcus blatantly favors his illegitimate daughter, Elena. He snatches my magic core, constantly puts me down, and even rips the core out of my loyal wolf familiar, Fenrir. In the end, he drains my blood dry just to feed her.

Now that I am reborn, I return to the exact night we hunt the high-tier Alpha Wolf.

When my husband's eight-year-old "nephew" Noah was diagnosed with acute leukemia, the whole family begged for my help.

They needed my six-year-old daughter, Molly—the only perfect match.

Against my instincts as a head nurse, I agreed.

But the second Molly's stem cells were harvested, their gratitude vanished.

To avoid paying for my daughter’s mandatory sterile recovery room, Noah's mother live-streamed a crying fit in my lobby, accusing me of medical extortion. My husband, Grant, stood by in utter silence.

Without the isolation bed, my baby girl contracted a severe infection and died. My mother-in-law simply sneered outside the ICU, "Dead is dead. Better than wasting more money."

Three months later, Noah relapses.

Now, my phone is blowing up. The same people who watched my daughter suffocate in her own fluids are desperately begging me to use my hospital registry access to save him again.

Standing by Molly’s tiny headstone, I look down at the confidential DNA report I pulled from the hospital database.

They think I don’t know Noah is actually Grant's illegitimate son. They think I'll just hang up and cry.

Instead, I swipe to answer the call. It's time to make them pay.

My boyfriend pulled off a drone-sky proposal that lit up the entire city.
Crowds cheered, “Congratulations to Mr. Gunson and Mrs. Gunson—at last, true lovers become family.”
But the woman curled in his arms was his secretary.
The “me” in their mouths had long since turned to white bones beneath a mound of earth.

I almost died giving birth to my daughter. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of survival — and I took it, because I thought a child might finally make my husband choose home over her.

I was wrong.

I stood in the hallway and listened to Kael tell his mother that I was "more resilient" — that the risks of childbirth were too serious for the woman he truly loved, so it had to be me. I was not his wife. I was a vessel.

Then my daughter, the child I had bled for, looked me in the eyes and said she wished Ivy were her mother instead.

That was the night I stopped waiting.

I filed for divorce. I walked out. I reclaimed the research career I had abandoned for a man who never saw me. And I told myself I was done.

What I didn't expect was the little boy I pulled back from the edge of suffocation — a child with no parents, a face I couldn't stop feeling I recognized, and a medical robot I had designed with my own hands tucked inside his coat.

Who is he? And why does finding him feel like the beginning of something I'm not ready for?

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

Five months pregnant, I clung to the faint hope that my unborn baby and loving husband Liam would bring me warmth. But strapped to an operating table, I heard his cold order as the blade sliced my belly: cut out the fetus and discard it as medical waste—don’t delay Chloe’s kidney transplant.
My stepmother cheered next door, thrilled her daughter would get my kidney. They planned to drain me dry and leave me to die quietly. Little did they know, their brutal cruelty burned itself into my bones. When I crawl back from hell, I will break every last one of them.

For seventeen years, Chloe was the Whitmores’ hidden spare daughter. They harvested her marrow, liver and cornea, then plotted to take her heart for their beloved adopted daughter. Fleeing death through a storm, she is rescued by ruthless power broker Victoria Kane. A faint crescent scar unearths a secret: Chloe is Victoria’s long-lost birth daughter. Together, they will destroy the greedy family that fed on her

I’m Wren, hidden sole heir of Ravenwood Pack, living as a regular lone wolf at wolf academy. My roommate Brielle steals my exclusive pine pheromone, copies my relics, steals my elite quota and tricks my betrothed Alpha Kane with a fake royal identity. I challenge her to present the unforgeable Lunar Pearl at the ball. When my father, the pack Alpha, exposes her family’s theft, I reject the misled Kane and reclaim everything the imposter stole from me.

After seven sleepless nights, I started seeing the exact probability of someone killing me.
At my birthday banquet, my stepmother smiled warmly, linking her arm through mine. Hovering above her head was 70%.
I had just overheard her plotting to swallow every cent of the inheritance my father left me.
My half-brother leaned in to hand me a drink. Above his head was 55%.
He was planning to sell me to a creep willing to drop seven figures on a woman.
Terrified out of my mind, I threw myself into the arms of my fiancé, Soren.
Above his head was a reassuring 0%, pure and bright as white light.
Then, with the whole room watching, he got down on one knee and pulled out a massive emerald ring.
"Marry me, Greer."
Crying tears of relief, I said yes and offered him my trembling left hand.
But the very second the ring slipped onto my ring finger, his 0% suddenly shattered into a blood-red 100%.

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

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

I made 17 calls for help. My sister answered every one—and hung up.

For 48 hours, I lay dying in Pine Ridge Forest, texting desperate pleas to my family. They thought I ran away. The truth? My sister deleted every message while I begged for my life.

Three months dead. Zero funeral. My family didn't even notice I was gone.

Now the police have recovered my phone. Every deleted text. Every ignored call. Every lie my sister told to cover up what she did.

"Please. I can't feel my legs. I'm sorry I exist. Just don't let me die here."

They wanted me invisible. I gave them what they wanted.

Now they'll spend the rest of their lives wishing they'd answered when I called.

After sleeping for a thousand years, I returned to the ancestral castle that was supposed to be mine.
Only to find my throne torn down and turned into an auction block for the black market, my territory carved up clean by traitors.
And my only pureblood descendant in this world was actually being auctioned off like livestock—covered in blood, chained up with a cheap dog collar around his neck.
The entire room of nobles and elites mistook me for the lowest kind of half-blood trash, mocking me as a rat too stupid to know when he was dead.
The usurper, eager to curry favor with the Abyss, shouted that he would drain me dry and offer my blood as a tribute to the three pureblood princes deep within the Abyss.
Then the void split open, and those three supreme princes—the untouchable monsters the world worshiped—truly descended.
Under the horrified gaze of more than a thousand nobles and elites, those three ancient monsters threw themselves at my feet, scrambling and crawling, wailing in terror without even daring to raise their heads:
"Your unworthy descendants... welcome the Ancestor's return!!!"

On Day 100 of the global heat collapse, surface temperature climbed to a hopeless 70°C.

To keep my girlfriend from being roasted alive, I drove my ice ability past the limit and became her personal human air conditioner.

But when my ability core was on the verge of shattering and I collapsed coughing blood, she stole the last two bottles of water from my pack and climbed into someone else’s temperature-controlled car without looking back.

Before she left, she tossed the life-saving lump of ice I’d condensed with half my life onto the blistering asphalt like garbage.

“Jack, I’m sick of your cooling cutting out any second. I’m not staying here to die with you.”

She didn’t know—

The moment that ice turned into white vapor, the broken ability core in my chest—the one ruined because of her—evolved in the abyss.

They thought he was dead.

They were wrong.

After years of war, bloodshed, and survival, Ares McKay returns to Chicago only to find his sister buried in the ground.

The people responsible are untouchable.

Political dynasties.

Billionaire families.

Criminal empires hidden behind luxury and power.

But Ares has spent five years becoming something far more dangerous than they could imagine.

One wedding turns into a massacre.

One city is pushed to the edge of chaos.

And one man begins a campaign of vengeance that will shake the foundations of every powerful family in Chicago.

Because when they murdered his sister...

They declared war on the wrong man.

When Leo Ross came home, his daughter was dying.

His wife was gone.

And every door to the truth was guarded by armed men.

Most people would call the police.

Leo declared war.

A former Delta Force legend, Leo tears through gangs, mercenaries, and criminal empires in a desperate race to save his family.

But the deeper he digs, the darker the truth becomes.

Someone has been planning this for years.

Someone powerful.

Someone who wants him dead.

They stole his wife.

Now he's coming for everything they own.

I gave up MIT for them in my last life.
They paid me back by stealing my lab notes, framing me for misconduct, and choosing her over me when I drowned.
I watched them choose her over me a hundred times
Now I’m 17 again. I block all three and fly to MIT.
They think I’m throwing a tantrum.
Wait till they find out who saved them out of that cave—

I got dragged online by one of my lead devs.

He claimed my "Incubation Project" was a gilded cage—a trap to exploit the team and steal their personal IPs.

The truth?

I funded it out of my own pocket.

Selected candidates would get a $50,000 no-strings-attached seed fund, plus full Ivy League tuition reimbursement. It was 100% voluntary, with zero penalties for opting out.

Since the internet decided I was a toxic capitalist monopolizing their creativity, I gave him exactly what he wanted. I fired off a company-wide memo:

[To protect your creative freedom from capitalist exploitation, the $50,000 Incubation Fund is permanently abolished, effective immediately.]

[As an alternative, the monthly education allowance for all employees is now a $15 reimbursement for basic coding courses.]

The moment the memo dropped, the employees who were counting on that $50k to pay off student loans or change their lives completely lost it.

Now, they're swarming right outside my glass office door, eyes red, begging me to reinstate the program.

To protect my older sister's piano championship, my own brother crushed all ten of my fingers.
To win my sister's favor, my fiancé hired someone to kick the baby out of me.
After surviving a fire that nearly killed me, I finally woke up.
And when I returned, I blasted the hard proof of their affair and their schemes all over the internet. As I watched them lose their minds, lose everything, and drop to their knees begging for mercy, I let out a cold laugh, turned around, and claimed the top of the world!

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and first.
Because I'm already dead.

I begged my mom for ten dollars, but she smashed my head with a frying pan instead.

The next day, my mother posted on a forum asking:
"Hi everyone. My eldest son lied about the end of the world just to get ten dollars. I want to ask, how can I sell him on the underground black market to pay off his younger brother's $20,000 debt?"

The moment I saw that post, any remaining love I had for them died instantly. I snapped my phone's SIM card in half.

What she didn’t know was that a world-ending acid flood would descend upon New York tomorrow.

I had begged so bitterly for that ten dollars just to trigger the Ten-Million-Fold Return System to build a three-billion-dollar Doomsday Ark.

Since she didn’t want it, I gave the throne of the Ark Queen to the female classmate who casually tossed me some charity.

I took the blame for my wife and went to jail, thinking I was protecting our family.

Five years later, when I was released from prison, my mansion was confiscated, my company fell into the hands of my younger brother, and the woman I loved with all my heart was nestled in my brother's arms, mocking my misfortune.

They had been having an affair for a long time, and even my imprisonment was a conspiracy meticulously planned by this despicable couple! What makes me even more furious is that my precious daughter was abandoned on the street like a stray dog, and subjected to beatings and bullying by their illegitimate son .

They thought that by draining my blood, they could forever condemn me to oblivion.

But they forgot that I was once an unparalleled genius in the business world.

Nora Vale was never supposed to be seen.

For three years, she rebuilt hockey captain Callum Pierce after the injury that nearly ended his career. She tracked his tremors, rewrote his recovery protocol, and carried the private marriage his family refused to make public.

Then he won the championship.

Under the arena lights, Callum lifted the cup and thanked Sloane Mercer, the beautiful sports host the cameras already loved. Backstage, Nora watched her own medical system appear under Sloane's name.

That night, Nora left with the evidence and the child Callum never knew existed.

Three years later, Nora is no longer hiding in the tunnel. She is the chief medical consultant for the rival team, the one woman the league needs when old concussion records begin to surface. Callum wants answers. His father wants control. Sloane wants the public story to stay clean.

Nora wants her name back.

But the fight is no longer only about a stolen system. It is about a son whose medical records could shift a franchise, a trust that could break the Pierce family, and a championship myth built on the woman they erased.

Callum thanked the wrong woman on the night he won.

Now the whole league is about to learn who made him a champion.

My husband Eric couldn't speak after a car accident three years ago. Three years of silence. Not one word.

To pay for his rehab, I worked four jobs at once—worked until I was coughing up blood, until I collapsed. Winter nights, Leo and I huddled under one threadbare blanket. When my son spiked a fever and I had no money for medicine, I stayed up all night pressing wet rags to his burning forehead.

Eric? His only communication was cold texts, ordering me around. When Leo reached for a hug, he'd push him away like our son didn't exist.

I endured it all. Because deep down, I believed the accident was my fault.

Until that night.

I was hauling equipment at Selena's concert—Selena, the pop star everyone knew—when a mystery guest in a mask stepped on stage. They sang together, voices blending like they'd done this a thousand times.

That voice. That lightning-shaped scar on his elbow.

My "mute" husband of three years.

I followed him backstage. Through the door, I heard Selena's laugh: "Congrats, Eric. Your mute act is almost over—you won the bet."

Three years of sacrifice.

All of it just a game. A bet with his first love.

Everyone in this city knows that the king of the underworld, my husband Vincent, is crazy about me.

Three years ago, when that bullet tore through my abdomen, it took away my chance of ever being a mother. He held my blood-soaked body and swore to God he'd make the shooter's entire family pay. A month later, that family was wiped off the map in this city. No one dares speak their name anymore.

He sat by my hospital bed, holding my hand. "I don't need kids. I only need you."

I believed him.

Until six months ago, when his brother died in an accident, leaving behind his wife Serena. The family pressure came like a tidal wave. An heir. A bloodline. That's all they cared about. And that woman became everyone's golden ticket to keeping the Caruso name alive.

That's when my husband stopped coming home at night. Every night, I hear them through the wall. Sounds that used to be mine.

But today, the doctor told me my body is healing. The chances are slim, but there's hope.

I clutch the medical report and rush home, imagining Vincent's face when he sees the results. Maybe everything can go back to how it was. Maybe he'll realize he doesn't need her.

Until I stand outside our mansion and hear laughter pouring out.

"Serena's pregnant! Can you believe it? The family finally has an heir!"

"Finally. The family's saved."

The biggest mistake of my life was falling in love with my childhood best friend, Cole Blackwood.

I grew up with Cole. He was my childhood best friend. When my mom died in a car accident in high school, his mother Lillian, my mom's best friend, saw that my stepmother didn't like me and took me in. She arranged our engagement. Cole protected me from bullies in high school. I fell for him. We secretly married at eighteen.

Shortly after the wedding, he was kidnapped. That's when everything fell apart. I threw myself off a cliff to draw the kidnappers away and save him. I was in a coma for three months. But when I came back to him, weak and broken, he thought some woman named Sophia Vanderbilt had saved him instead. He started hating me for "abandoning him" and grew cold. I tried to explain. He only believed what Sophia told him. My words meant nothing. 

Cole wanted to divorce me, but his parents refused to allow it. I refused too. Sophia drugged him to get pregnant and trap him into marriage, but he stumbled into the wrong room. He slept with me instead. I got pregnant. She faked videos to make him think they'd been together. She forged evidence that I'd cheated. He wouldn't listen to a word I said. 

Then we were both kidnapped and held hostage on a rooftop. Cole chose to save Sophia. I fell. I lost the baby. After Sophia was rescued, she went to the hospital for a checkup. They found leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. I was the only match, but after everything, my body was too weak. Cole used the "debt" I owed his family to force me to donate. 

I refused. Sophia "died." Cole locked me in a psychiatric hospital and tortured me until I died. 

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he demanded my bone marrow. This time, looking at his desperate eyes, I said yes and decided to divorce him and leave him for good.

When they shoved me into the flames, I fought through the blinding pain to call my brother, Ethan Bennett. Fire licked at my skin, twisting my vision, but the call finally went through.

"What is it now?" He sounded distracted, like he was checking off a guest list.

"Ethan, please, help—" My voice was shattered, choked by the searing heat.

"Can't you just give it a rest for one single day?" he snapped, cutting me off. "Selina and I are getting married this weekend. If you pull another stunt, I swear I'll—"

The call died right as the flames swallowed me whole.

Agony consumed every nerve before my eyes closed for good, his unfinished threat still echoing in my ears.

But the good news is, Ethan... you don't have to swear anymore. Because I was dead.

Three years ago, my pairs skating partner and I had a beautiful wedding surrounded by friends and family—but we never actually got around to signing the legal papers.
Over those three years, he has stood me up at City Hall exactly twenty-eight times.
One time, he stole my cab while I was burning up with a fever, leaving me shivering on the curb because his new, pampered protégée had a stomachache from drinking too much champagne.
Another time, he blew off our anniversary to rush to her side for a minor sprain.
Every single time we were supposed to finally make our marriage official, his precious junior skater somehow had a devastating emergency.
After twenty-eight broken promises, I finally stopped waiting. I dropped our partnership, shredded our application, and boarded a one-way flight to Milan.
But the moment I completely vanished from his life, the man who couldn't spare an hour to marry me suddenly lost his mind—chasing me across the globe to a city he swore he’d never return to, begging on his knees outside my door for a twenty-ninth chance.

I got off work two hours early, hoping to surprise my boyfriend whom I had just bailed out for $30,000.
I pushed the bedroom door open. The surprise was on me—my stepsister Chloe was straddling Dorian. The same man who, just three days ago, sat crying on the police station floor swearing "I only have you," now slowly lit a cigarette and asked if I wanted to join them.
I thought that was the worst moment of my life.
I was wrong.
When the hand that had just been caressing Chloe gripped my throat and hoisted me into the air, I finally saw the truth. Dorian Vane, the guy who humiliated me at our high school prom ten years ago, hadn't changed at all.

"You have two months to live." The doctor's death sentence was still ringing in my ears when I found the receipt in his pocket.

[Four Seasons Hotel. Romance Suite. Check-in: 3:00 PM.]

3:00 PM. The exact moment I was begging the doctor for painkillers, Alexander was in a hotel bed with another woman.

I looked at him, sleeping soundly beside me. I had loved this man for five years, sold everything to help him succeed. Now, in the final countdown of my life, he gave me the most fatal blow.

"I'm exhausted from meetings," he had lied, smelling of Santal 33 and another woman's sex.

I clenched the receipt until my nails dug into my flesh. I wouldn't tell him about the cancer.

I would use whatever time I had left to make him regret ever being born.

On our wedding day, Declan sent me out to Long Island. We'd been together seven years.

He said he'd left his grandmother's lucky cufflinks at the family house.

But when my car died in the storm, I opened my bridesmaid's Instagram live.

Declan was sliding my custom diamond ring onto Phoebe's finger—my adopted sister, the one with the bad heart.

My own parents were crying in the front row. My bridesmaids were cheering.

They'd turned my wedding into a dying wish ceremony for Phoebe.

Hours later, alone in the ER, I called forty-seven times.

No one picked up.

Not until after I lost the baby and disappeared from Manhattan.

That's when Declan finally came apart.

Five years. That's what I gave Vaelor, Crown Prince of the Dark Elves.
I was already dressed for the betrothal ceremony when I caught his voice through the gap in the council hall door.
"You're really going through with it? The human?"
"Of course. The Alliance has kept a blade at our throats for years. Their leader's apprentice, given to us in marriage—that puts it away."
"But if she suspects—"
"She won't."
"And Lyseth—"
"Lyseth is who matters. The human is manageable."
I didn't make it out of the courtyard. A blade came from the darkness before I could summon a defense.
When I woke up, I remembered everything. Aldric. Isara. The Alliance. Five years of roads, every step.
Just not his face.
Aldric's messenger stone was on the nightstand. Short, direct: Return to the Alliance. Political marriage. Orc Royal House.
I wrote back: Seven days.

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very murderer who killed me.
I had been dead for exactly three days. No one cared. My body was rotting back in a moldy storage room.
Through it all, my soul was trapped in the manor, forced to witness this absurd farce.
But what they didn't expect was that when they finally learned of my death—
Everyone went completely insane.

Fresh off the operating table after barely surviving a miscarriage, I received a $50,000 bill—every cent spent on a waterbed and aphrodisiac aromatherapy on a yacht.
 
I called my husband, the only other person who knew about that account.

Over the phone, he sounded gentle yet aggrieved: "Honey, how could I afford a luxury yacht? It must be a banking error. You just lost our baby; please rest well. My flight to New York is taking off soon, and I'll be right by your side the moment I get back!"
 
I didn't expose the deafening sounds of the wild party in his background. I simply hung up.
 
He thought his lie was flawless. He had no idea that as the hidden heiress of the Windsor Consortium, that priceless yacht, the Poseidon, was actually a coming-of-age gift from my grandmother.
 
I ripped the IV out of my arm and dialed a number I hadn't called in years since marrying beneath my station.
 
"Grandma, you were right. He doesn't deserve me. I'm going to the ship to catch him red-handed."