1385 Book(s) Related to when i lie

For six years, I sold my body to underground clinics as a human lab rat to cure my son's heart failure and pay off my husband's debts.

Today, my biological brother kicked away the medicine I bought with half my life.

"Lucas was never sick. We faked the medical records to teach you a lesson for upsetting Virginia."

My husband coldly chimed in:

"I never went bankrupt either."

Even the son I bled to birth stabbed my arm, screaming, "A bloody monster like you doesn't deserve to be my mom!"

I finally realized my entire life was a meticulously crafted scam.

With my organs rapidly failing and only ten days left to live, I stepped onto the edge of the balcony.

"You're right," I smiled at my husband and brother, watching the color completely drain from their faces. "Six years of my life isn't enough to apologize to her."

"So I'll pay you with my corpse."

On our tenth anniversary, a doctor told me I had three months left.
I called Graham five times before he picked up. He was at a restaurant downtown, cutting the steak on his ex-girlfriend's plate, and he told me to stop acting like a paranoid wife.
So I never told him.
I folded the diagnosis into my coat pocket, went home, and rinsed the blood out of the sink before he walked in. Then I signed away the house, the cars, every share of the firm I helped him build. I left his ring on the coffee table, canceled the number I'd had for ten years, and checked into a hospice with nobody's name on my emergency contact line.
He thought I was throwing a tantrum. He thought I'd come crawling back the second the money ran out.
He didn't find the diagnosis until it was too late to matter.

This is a world where humans and fantasy races exist side by side. Werewolves move through city streets between glass towers, and every now and then, a pair of massive wings cuts through the clouds overhead. Twenty years ago, to secure the family's standing, the main house signed a contract with the Dragon Clan.

As the least favored daughter of a branch family, I was chosen to be the Dragon King's mate. The terms were spelled out plainly: if I couldn't get married within five years of coming of age, I'd have to go to Dragon territory and go through with the marriage.

For five years, every wedding I've planned has been blown up by my younger sister, Hannah.

This is year five. I'm finally in a wedding dress, about to marry Derek, the boy I grew up with.

What I didn't expect was that one hour before the ceremony, Hannah collapsed in the dressing room coughing up blood. She grabbed Derek's hand, crying, saying she wouldn't make it through the month.

And my parents are on either side of me, hands pressed down hard on my shoulders.

"Just let Hannah have the wedding. She's dying!"

What they don't know is that if I don't get married today, the Dragon envoys will come for me on the spot.

And I won't be coming back.

The day the Gryphon army marched home in victory, my sister's husband came back safe. My husband, Tobias, died on the ice.

Everyone pitied me, and I believed them. I mourned him for years, handed over every resource the Elven Realm had to offer to Crown Prince Nathaniel, and helped him lock down his claim to the throne.

It took me years to find out the man who came back wasn't Nathaniel at all. It was my "dead" husband, Tobias.

He killed his own brother, stole his face with forbidden magic, all so he could marry my sister Sabrina and make her his queen, official and out in the open.

"Sabrina and I are the real thing. Pretending to be my brother, that was for the good of the kingdom."

They framed me for treason and threw me into the Pit of Judgment. As I burned, I watched the two of them hold each other while the kingdom cheered.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the army came home.

My sister begged me to stop grieving, tears in her eyes. "Nathaniel" swore he'd give me a life of luxury. The old king stood in front of everyone and promised to grant me anything I wanted.

This time, I didn't cry. I chose to remarry without a second thought.

Tobias thought wearing his brother's face was all it took to sit on that throne. What he didn't know was that without me, he never stood a chance of getting there at all.

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

At the scene of the car accident, my parents frantically scooped up my sister—who only had a scraped knee—then kicked me aside as I lay there dying.
"Don't be a burden to your sister. Just wait by the roadside and croak!"
They drove off without a second thought. In that moment, my heart turned to stone.
What they didn't know was that I didn't die. Instead, I got adopted by a top-tier professor and became a math prodigy worth tens of millions.
Two years later, when my birth parents went bankrupt and got on their knees begging me for a handout, I smiled coldly and played the recording of their attempted murder...

My mate, Rhys, brought his dead brother's pregnant widow into our house.
He swore up and down I'd never have to lift a finger for her.
The next morning he stood by the door with a packed bag and a grin.
"Babe. Big news. The pack called me up. Border post out east, two years. I ship out tonight."
He looked at me like he was waiting for me to promise I'd take good care of his brother's widow.
So I pulled my own bag out of the closet, right there in front of him and the woman in the back room.
"Funny. The alliance called me up too. Medic rotation. Two years."
"We can leave together. Lock up on the way out. Colette can rest easy with the whole house to herself."

At sixteen, I took a fatal blow for him. As my wolf soul shattered, he swore with blood-red eyes: "When I become Alpha, I will make you my Luna."
But two years later, when he led the pack to migrate to new territory, he told the butler before departure: "Her broken wolf soul will only drag the group down."
With my bundle, I slipped out. Fate played a cruel joke: I boarded the wrong carriage, replacing a weeping bride, and was delivered to the wedding chamber of Alaric Argent, Alpha of the Sterling Pack.
The tall, steady figure before me sparked an odd sense of calm. The fog of memory wouldn’t let me be sure. Was this mistaken arrival a new beginning… or the continuation of an old shadow?

I gave him three years of silent devotion behind a mask I never wanted to wear. I made a wager for our bond—he paid me off like a mistress.
"Chloe's back," Zane said coldly. "It's over."
I laughed, poured wine on his face, and walked away from the only love I'd ever known.
"What now?" my best friend asked.
I smiled. "The real me returns."
But fate wasn't finished yet.
That same night, Caesar Conrad—the Alpha every wolf feared—opened his car door and whispered, "Get in."
Our gazes collided. The bond awakened. No games. No pretending. Just raw, unstoppable power.
"Don't regret this," he warned, lips brushing mine.
But I didn't.
Because the mate I'd been chasing never saw me.
And the one who did?
He's ready to burn the world for me.

Three years of marriage. Harper gave up her career, cut off her friends, and made herself invisible for Evan.
Then on her birthday, the blow came. Claire showed up pregnant: "Mrs. Morgan's spot will be mine eventually. What's the point of you holding onto it?"
Harper finally woke up. She filed for divorce without looking back.
The day she signed the papers, she smiled calmly at the reporters waiting outside: "The reason for the divorce? Mr. Morgan was simply never able to satisfy me. In that department."
The untouchable CEO became a punchline overnight.
Evan assumed she was getting back at him. He had no idea Harper was no longer the caged bird he remembered.
Her design talent shook the industry. His own business rivals fell for her.
By the time he realized the partner he had been desperately chasing was his ex-wife, it was already too late.
"Harper, can we start over?"
"Mr. Morgan, if something's wrong with you, go see a doctor. Do you need me to pay for the appointment?"

They say revenge is a dish best served cold.
Mine's been chilling for five years.
The night James Reed kicked me out of his life, I was pregnant, penniless, and naive enough to believe love mattered more than money.
He taught me better. When you're bleeding out in the rain, clutching your stomach while your best friend laughs from his doorway, you learn exactly what you're worth to people like them.
Zero.
But the woman who nearly died that night? She stayed dead. The one who came back is someone else entirely.
Anna Quinn. Lost daughter of California's most powerful family. CEO of her own pharmaceutical empire. And the silent majority shareholder in James Reed's failing company.
He's about to learn what happens when you build an empire on stolen foundations. His marriage has cracks he doesn't see. And the investors keeping him afloat? They answer to me now.
He thinks he's untouchable. That my formula made him invincible.
But success built on stolen work has a way of crumbling when the original genius decides to pull the rug out.
I don't want him back.
I want him ruined.
And this time, I'm the one holding all the cards.

Emery’s undying love for her late mother drove her to do things only a desperate person could understand. To save her mother’s company, she agreed to marry a man twice her age. There’s no way she could escape the miserable truth, but on the day of the wedding, she married the wrong groom who turned out to be the wealthiest man in the country.
It’s like the Heavens gave her another chance and she won’t let the chance slip away. However, can she withstand the tension whenever her fake husband is near her? What if she falls for him? Will he catch her? Or she’d fall into a more complicated situation?


Every man's dream was to watch their bride walk down the aisle towards them, however, the beautiful dream turned into a nightmare when Terrence found a different woman under the veil. His bride ran away and he was forced to marry a stranger. To make everything more complicated, he just got appointed as the company President and he needs to maintain a good reputation.
Keeping his fake bride by his side is the only choice left to him. However, how can he deal with his self-control when the woman he mistakenly married is a total goddess of temptation?

"You took my wedding dress for my stepsister?"
My voice was ice as I stared at the man I had loved for six years—the man I had saved with my own blood, drop by drop, through years of his illness.
Atlas Brooks couldn't meet my eyes.
"She's dying, Mandy. Susie's last wish is to marry me."
Six years of devotion. Endless blood donations. And this is what I get in return?
The man I saved wants to trade me for the sister who destroyed my family.
Let him. I'm done fighting for someone who never fought for me.
But when I tried to walk away, Atlas caught my wrist.
"After she's gone," he whispered, "we can still be together. Just... let her have this."
The dress. The wedding. The man. Let her have everything.
I'm not waiting around as anyone's second choice. Not anymore.
I'm ready to say goodbye to everything.
I thought I was leaving love behind forever.
I didn't know that at my stolen wedding, I was about to find it.

Jade was Lucian's secretary by day and his mistress by night.
It wasn't until she became his woman that Jade discovered just how ruthless and promiscuous Lucian could be. When she realized she might be pregnant, the man simply laughed and tossed the pregnancy test into the trash.
"Trying to trap me with a baby? Keep taking your pills."
On the eve of Lucian's engagement, Jade resigned from her job and ended their relationship.
But Lucian assumed she was merely throwing a tantrum. He waited for her to apologize and come crawling back to him, just as she always had before.
Days passed.
Instead of Jade, Lucian got the news that she had a new boyfriend.
His twin brother.
The man who shared his face and happened to be his sworn rival.
Overnight, Jade became his sister-in-law.
Lucian completely lost control. He searched desperately for Jade, determined to bring her back.
But Jade, who was pregnant, had vanished without a trace.

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.

The night my husband George took our five-year-old son to celebrate his mistress winning Best Actress, I found a video on his laptop that shattered everything.
On our seventh anniversary, after waiting hours for a husband who never came home, I made a decision that would destroy him forever.
I didn't confront him. I didn't file for divorce. I didn't beg him to choose me.
Instead, I chose to disappear.
When George came home with exotic wines and a designer dress, trying to cover his lies with expensive gifts, he had no idea he only had six days left with me.
Six days before my car would plunge off Riverside Bridge.
Six days before Brenda Taylor would cease to exist.

For seven years, I'd been the perfect wife. I'd survived the pain of childbirth, the changes to my body he could no longer love, and the slow death of our marriage while he built a new life with actress Candice Black and took our son along for the ride.
He thought I was too devoted to leave. Too broken to fight back. Too in love to see the truth.
But he was wrong.
I didn't leave him. I vanished.

And when my car goes over that bridge, when he realizes what he's lost, that will be the beginning of his end.
Because some betrayals don't deserve confrontation.
They deserve ghosts.

I thought the scariest thing in school was the jock who harassed me. But then he vanished without a trace, and everyone blamed me.

There is no strong evidence to lock me away, so I walk the school hallways trapped in a living hell. The police watch my every move, the town hates me, and my adoptive parents treat me like an unwanted curse in their home.

Desperate to clear my name, I didn't realize the real danger was living right next door.

Xavi Moreau is the quiet, haunting boy who looks right through me. He doesn't live with his family; he lives alone in his own place. To the world, he is a handsome party guy who drinks, smiles, and blends into the crowd.

But I noticed the truth. His smiles are fake. His laughter never reaches his cold eyes. He is just copying the emotions of others to hide a dark, hollow soul.

When he notices my stares, his obsession shifts entirely to me.

Every single time he approaches me, I push him away. I deny him. I fight his terrifying presence with every ounce of strength I have left. But Xavi doesn't back down. He offers me the one thing I desperately need: a promise to find the truth and clear my name.

I wanted to find a killer to save myself, but the killer has already found me, and he has no intention of letting me go.

I thought telling Alpha Kane I was pregnant would be the hardest part of my day.

That was before I found my step-sister naked on his mahogany desk.
I remained committed to my role of Luna for three years while I suffered through his distant behavior because I viewed our mate bond as a holy connection. The moment he wiped her lipstick from his mouth, the bond that connected us to each other shattered in my heart because he had treated me as someone who lacked excitement.

He wanted me to weep while I accepted my lower-status position. I used my mother’s billion-dollar tech patents to lock him out, then I denied him on the pack intercom, before I entered the advanced security facilities of his most dangerous competitor.

Alpha Kaelen, the Lycan King, doesn't function as an uncontrollable animal. He possesses dangerous charisma which combines with his exceptional intelligence. I didn't request his protection; I established the terms for it. I presented him with the blueprints which would lead to our shared enemy's financial ruin. We are currently dismantling Kane's business empire together. Our formal agreement starts to dissolve into an irresistible attraction which develops during our nighttime strategy meetings and our executive boardroom business takeovers.

Kaelen discovers my hidden pregnancy secret, but he does not exile me from his presence. He displays a wicked grin while making his intention to take ownership of his opponent's offspring permanent. Kane will initiate a violent conflict to reclaim me as his possessions disappear and his remorse transforms into a primal fixation.

Will my charming, deadly protector permit me to handle my own conflicts or will we destroy everything my ex left behind?

I was a herbalist, a healer who saved lives, but I was falsely accused of spreading plague and hanged on the gallows, awaiting the flames. Then I heard them—a swarm of rats emerging from the earth, gnawing through the noose and dragging me back to the world of the living. But this was not salvation, but the beginning of a curse. Plague swept across the land, the church peddled counterfeit medicines, and lords squeezed every last grain from the farmers. The rats looked at me and whispered to me — the end has come, and you will become the calamity.

I am the chief architect of a quantum computing system valued at hundreds of billions in the real world.
For an AI test subject that I wrote myself, I was willing to conceal my identity as the creator and become her unseen, low-level assistant, even at the cost of taking a fatal blow for her.
Just as she was about to go public and reach the top of the conglomerate pyramid, she unhesitatingly pushed an "Organ Donation Agreement" in front of me, forcing me to remove a kidney to save the newly spawned "old money" NPC new love.
She thought that as long as I died on the operating table, she could kick me aside, this useless stepping stone, without any moral burden, and embrace the perfect capitalist marriage.
But she didn't know—
The entire world she exists in is just a sandbox test server on my desk.

Seven days before the doomsday outbreak, the wild weeds by the road spoke to me: The zombies are coming.
I rushed home, intending to take my fiancée and flee for our lives.
But outside the door, I overheard her plotting with her boss on the sofa, scheming to drain all my wealth.
"He’s just an orphan with no family or connections. No one would care even if he dies."
I didn’t push the door open.
Instead, I quietly cashed out all my assets overnight and built an impenetrable island fortress without delay.
Seven days later, the zombie hordes surrounded the city.
She and her entire family were chased by the monsters, covered in blood and mangled.
They knelt frantically kowtowing and begging for help right outside my explosion-proof gate.
I coldly locked the door tight.
"You were right," I said. "No one really cares if you die. Just go in peace."

I am the top algorithm genius on Wall Street.
When my wife's first love got into serious trouble, she didn't hesitate to cut off my daughter's medical expenses and force me to go to jail for that scumbag.
But she didn't know that without me, her multi-billion dollar empire was just an empty shell that could explode at any moment.
She could never have known that the little girl she cursed as a "bastard" and who was driven to her death by her own hands was actually her own flesh and blood, whom she thought had died at birth.
When, a few days later, I, who should have been dying in prison, suddenly arrived with short-selling capital and a top-secret paternity test... I wonder if this high and mighty queen will still be able to laugh.

I died—not in the way you'd expect, but slowly, painfully, while he was entangled with her.

He called her his savior, the woman who sold everything to rescue his failing empire. Little did he know, it was my money, my life's work, that he squandered.

The betrayal burned hotter than any flame, and I vowed he'd pay.

Now, he's gone—a leap from the heights he once ruled, his fall as swift as his rise.

I was blown up by my business partner and fiancée working together, only to wake up in an apocalyptic game where only one person can survive. They drew S-rank abilities and mocked my "worthless" wealth card. But they forgot—in a world with physical rules, money can buy sky cities, EMP bombs, and orbital weapons. Now they're kneeling in ruins begging me to open the door, while I stand atop Avalon City at 30,000 meters, finger hovering over the detonation button.

On the eve of the apocalypse, I awakened a survival system: send me $5,000, and the sender can unlock a safehouse and awaken a life-saving ability.
The first person I told was Chloe, my girlfriend of three years. In return, she humiliated me in public and cheated on me without a shred of remorse.
That was the moment I finally gave up. The "nice guy" she had drained dry was dead for good.
One month later, the zombie horde arrived right on schedule. For old times' sake, I saved her one last time. And she repaid me by shoving me straight into the jaws of the mutated dead so she could save herself.
What she didn't know... was that I wasn't the only one who had awakened powers.

I died on the operating table—my heart cut out, my unborn child destroyed, my identity stolen by the woman who replaced me.
Now I'm back. At the exact moment they're celebrating my replacement's victory, I step out of the shadows and into the light of my own funeral.
Tonight, I will not beg. I will not cry. I will not give them the satisfaction of watching me break.
Tonight, I become the nightmare they've been running from. For twenty years, they treated me like I was invisible. Let me show them what happens when you ignore the one person who could destroy everything you built.
I am Serena Astor.
The rightful heir.
And I will have my revenge.

In my past life, I was framed by my girlfriend and her unrequited lover, losing my job and being silenced! Reborn a week earlier, I've decided to retaliate! On the surface, I'm still the devoted boyfriend, but secretly, I've laid a trap. When the scumbag thought he'd succeeded, he found himself surrounded by the FBI; when the scheming woman thought she'd risen to power, she became a pariah. And I, not only did I successfully avenge myself, but I also built a multi-billion dollar business empire! In this life, I'll make everyone who betrayed me understand—if you mess with Marcus Sterling, you'll pay the price!

The child I brought into this world through sheer determination now calls my husband's mistress "mother"; the youth who slew my father for my sake and was imprisoned, now confines me beyond the threshold, forcing me to hear his carnal symphony with his stepmother. Only then did I comprehend: the sixteen-year-old boy who committed patricide for me had long perished within the prison walls.

For three years, the whole school thought I loved privileged golden boy Sebastian Grayson. I covered his mistakes, took his punishments, and single-handedly turned his rebellious self into a Harvard admit, enduring endless mockery for my one-sided devotion.
Yet every obedient act was never love — only a contract deal.
When we reunite at a Harvard banquet two years later, Sebastian craves a second chance.
But he is too late. I will never return.

Six hundred years into our marriage, I found out my husband had a son.

I had ended my border patrol three days early, wanting to surprise Valerius.

Not far away, Valerius was channeling his exclusive magic, teaching a boy how to weave the darkness.

"Dad! I did it!" The boy looked up. His bright eyes were a near-perfect reflection of Valerius's.

My mind instantly went blank.

Dad?

A woman walked over.

She draped a small cloak over the boy's shoulders, her hand brushing against Valerius's chest with practiced familiarity. "Valeri, the wind is picking up. He'll catch a cold now that he's sweating."

Valerius naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "My fault."

The image of them huddled together like a picture-perfect family was an ice-tipped needle driven straight into my eyes.

The sharp sting made my breath hitch in my throat.

The man who had sworn before the Senate to love me for all eternity—the man bound to me by a Soul Blood Pact—had already betrayed me!

A sudden, agonizing cramp seized my lower abdomen.

It was an old wound from six centuries ago.

When the Sunfire Curse nearly reduced Valerius to ashes, I had offered my high-born pure blood and my womb as a sacrifice to forcibly block the hex for him.

The price was permanent infertility, along with an excruciating backlash of pain I had to endure every single month.

Back then, Valerius had held me, his eyes red and tear-filled. "I don't want any children! I would rather lose my seat in the Senate than ever betray you!"

Yet the scene before me crushed those words into fine dust.

I stumbled backward, my chest feeling as though it had been ripped open by bare hands.

I was terrified I'd lose control and rush over to scream at him.

Worse yet, in the face of this cozy, happy family of three, I was afraid I'd look like a pathetic, unwanted outsider.

Suffocation gripped my throat. I turned and fled.

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.

"What is the ultimate favoritism your partner gives you?"
On the third day after the IVF procedure, I came across this trending question on a werewolf forum.
Just as I was about to scroll past, a highly upvoted answer pierced straight through my eyes.
"I'm newly pregnant with the Alpha's cub, so I can answer this question."
"The favoritism is this: even though I’m not his official mate, he lied to the one at home—claiming she’s infertile due to health issues—just so I could conceive."
"He said: 'A human body is like a broken vessel. Only a strong she-wolf like me deserves to carry his cubs.'"
In the photo, the ruby necklace that belonged exclusively to me was hanging around her neck.
Trembling, I finished reading every word.
So this was his idea of a beautiful future—sowing his seeds in his lieutenant's bed.
So the agony of egg retrieval I endured was, in his eyes, nothing but the useless struggle of a broken vessel.
I laughed until tears fell.
Back then, I defied my father and even cut ties with my family just to marry this stray wolf.
"Ella, sooner or later, you’ll come crying back, begging for our forgiveness."
Now, it turns out I really have failed.
I pulled the IV needle from the back of my hand and dialed the number I’d blocked five years ago.
"In three days, I will return to the Hunters' Legion."

Everyone says I'm the woman Jasper loves most.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's the moment I stop wanting to stay.

I am the sole heir to the Hartwell fortune.
But this birthday dinner — the one meant to sign the family trust into my hands on my twenty-second year — was being ruined by the housekeeper's daughter.
Brianna had done it on purpose. She'd stolen the archival couture gown my late mother left behind, then thrown herself into the champagne tower and pinned it on me.
"Oh God, Audrey, why did you push me?" She was already crying, her voice pitched for the crowd. "I know you hate seeing me in this dress, but your father was the one who insisted I wear it. Please don't make me leave."
In my last life, I'd stood there sobbing, waving my hands, trying to explain.
For that, I'd been stripped of my inheritance on the spot, committed to a psychiatric ward, and in the end, every fingernail torn out one by one, I'd died in agony.
But I'd been reborn.
Now I looked down at Brianna crumpled among the shattered crystal, playing the victim, and I didn't waste a word.
I crossed the floor, stood over her, drew my arm back, and slapped her across the face as hard as I could.
"Shut your mouth."

They thought that by forcing me to my death, they could devour everything.

My father jumped off a building, and I became a destitute young master whom everyone could bully. To pay off debts, I married into the Hawthorne family and became their sharpest knife.

After my father-in-law died suddenly, my wife immediately brought her childhood sweetheart into the house and forced me to divorce him.

My resistance resulted in a murder plotted by 928 × 213.

When I opened my eyes again, Chloe, who had been watching over me for three days and three nights, was beside me.

She said, "I'll take you away."

Three years later, I returned as a mysterious investor. The first thing I did was to buy the family's bankrupt old factory for 1.5 billion.

My ex-wife and I bumped into each other on the street; it was like seeing a ghost.

I smiled and stuck a 30 million yuan check on her forehead: "This is to repay the divorce fee you gave me back then. Keep the change."

The real revenge has only just begun.

We'd agreed to spend summer break in the Hamptons. Right before break started, my boyfriend suggested we hit the water park out in the suburbs first, just to blow off some steam.

I thought it was a date. Just the two of us. But when I get to the gate, my best friend Sienna is standing there in a string bikini.

I tell her that's not safe to swim in. Her face goes cold and she tells me to mind my own business.

Colton frowns too and dumps his phone, a towel, and Sienna's makeup bag into my arms. "Vivienne, do you have to kill the mood? Sienna's scared to go alone. What's the big deal if I keep her company?"

In the wave pool, he holds her against his chest and the two of them roll around in the spray, laughing.

When they come out, Sienna takes the ice water I haven't even opened and takes a big swig, then hands it to Colton, and he drinks half the bottle right from where her lips were.

I stand there feeling like the hired help.

Two years of killing myself to be the understanding, easygoing girlfriend, and all it got me was a boyfriend who walks all over me without thinking twice.

If he's that close with my best friend, he can't blame me for calling up his best friend since they were kids.

"Julian, can you come get me?"

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

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

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

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

Every time my husband’s adopted sister, Avey, had a tennis match, he would force a dark green concoction down my throat. As soon as it kicked in, my entire body would turn weak and aching.
He claimed it was a folk remedy, and I believed him.
In half a year, I lost twenty pounds, half my hair fell out, and I lost our four-month-old baby.
Until the night I overheard them whispering behind a cracked door—they had sought out a witch and cast a dark curse.
My forced standstill was the price for her endless stamina. All her fatigue and sports injuries were being directly transferred to me.
Late that night, listening to them plot to drain the life out of me, I made a choice. On the very night Avey won her championship, I climbed into a deep hibernation pod. I traded thirty days of absolute physical stasis to ensure she could never stop.

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

My ten-year-old begged me to take her to a summer camp in Italy. My husband looked at her like she hung the moon. Booked the tickets right there.

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

There he was, fucking my daughter's riding instructor on our couch.

But what really killed me? What he said, "Don't worry. Nina wants that horse bad enough, she'll keep her mom in Europe as long as we need."

Back home, my husband dropped a receipt. Two identical limited edition watches.

He froze. My sweet daughter didn't miss a beat, "Dad used the other one to bribe someone so I could get my horse!"

They lied in perfect sync. That's when something in me broke.

They thought I was still that stupid, trusting wife.

What they didn't know?

I'd already signed a contract. Going back to my art career in New York.

My younger sister, Freya, was preparing for her advanced training in New York the following week, so she dragged me to the dance studio to help her correct her movements. I put on my dance shoes as usual and stood in the center of the floor, ready to demonstrate a turn.

The moment my foot slipped, I didn't even have time to react.

My body hit the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the back of my head nearly made me lose consciousness. I lay on the cold floor, my throat tight, unable to even cry out for help.

When Mother rushed in, she didn't spare me a glance.

She immediately helped Freya up and took her to the hospital. I missed the critical window for treatment and died on the way to the hospital.

Nineteen times. That's how many times Lucas promised to marry me, only to leave me standing alone because of her.
Today was supposed to be our day. But as I stood in the biting cold outside the restaurant, watching him carefully help Selena into his Maybach, the marriage application still tucked in my purse, I finally understood—that "someday" would never come.
"Let's reschedule the registration, okay?" he'd said without even looking at me.
I walked straight to HR and submitted my resignation. Then I accepted the offer from the Morinetti family—his sworn enemies.
As I boarded my flight to the West Coast, my phone exploded with messages.
"We agreed to go to City Hall today. Where are you?"
I glanced at the screen one last time, then powered it off.
"We're done."

The man I marry will become the future leader of the company.
In my previous life, without a second thought, I chose to marry the eldest son
whom I had always liked.
But shortly after our wedding, he came stepsister,
and even took out his frustration of not getting her on me,
going so far as to poison and kill me.
This time around,
I chose his younger brother.
I'll see for myself
if he can spend his life with my sister without me standing in their way. me.
This time around,
I chose his younger brother.
I'll see for myself
if he can spend his life with my sister without me standing in their way.