8094 Book(s) Related to the summer i turned pretty order

He may have been her number one fan, but he wasn't just annoying; he was a piece of shit she couldn't stop thinking about...

Bukunmi, a struggling writer, takes her mother's advice and goes in search of a better job, which she immediately regrets after coming in contact with the ever daring, seductive and extravagant Tade, whom she detests being fully aware of his past.

Tade Wellington, a sexy lucrative billionaire that beds anything in skirts, gets to meet the writer he has been following up, but asides being her fan, he knows she's the only witness to a crime he was involved in many years ago.

He will do anything to silence her,

She will do everything to get justice;

But will she really do what is right when love stands in the way???

FROM THE AUTHOR OF "THE CHILD'S FATHER" AND "FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY."

After I found out about the secret admirer he’s been talking to for the past two months the, he throws divorce papers at my face after being married for six months. He claims that his admirer would give him half of the Williamson cooperation. He thinks I’m the naive middle class woman he married but what he doesn’t know is I’m the owner of the Williamson Cooperation, the company I inherited from my father’s as his only child just before he died. Throws out of the house, I decided to reclaim my power and move back to my estate. I hosted a convention where the secret admirer would be handing him the properties and I put everyone in shock when I show up and they find out it’s me. Richard begs at my feet for mercy but I totally ignore him and choose his personal assistant who has always been good to me from the very day I stepped into Richard’s mansion as his wife

I thought I was the happiest woman in the city.

My husband would gently help me into my shoes, rest his hand on my belly and whisper to our baby. My father would tie on an apron and cook dinner just for me.

Then a video from an unknown number shattered everything.

Inside a chapel, the four of them stood side by side.

My husband holding the hand of my father's mistress's daughter. My father arm in arm with the woman who once knelt before my mother begging for mercy.

And my wedding — the one the whole city had witnessed — had been nothing but a lie from the very beginning.

That evening.

He picked the bones from my fish, tucked a cushion behind my back, kissed my forehead — same as always.

I didn't confront him. I simply handed him a document to sign.

He thought I was still the naive little lamb he'd been deceiving all along. What he didn't realize was that he had just signed away his last card.

Ten years ago, Heaven's War God Kevin fought an earth-shattering battle against the Demon King. Kevin was ambushed and gravely wounded, falling from Heaven to the mortal realm.

A young girl named Alice found the blood-soaked Kevin by the river while gathering herbs and treated him with medicinal plants.

Moved by her kindness, Kevin decided to stay in the mortal world to repay her debt, but he discovered that using his power would attract the Demon King and bring destruction to the human realm.

Kevin voluntarily sealed ninety-nine percent of his power and stayed by Alice's side, helping her gather herbs and heal people.

Two years later, Kevin confessed his love to Alice and they became husband and wife, opening a clinic in a small town where they saved countless lives and were known as the "Holy Couple."

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the hospital, the first thing he said? Accused me of faking it. Said I just wanted attention.

In that moment, my heart died too.

Later, I found out Vivian wasn't even sick.

She said "I don't feel well"—that's all it took. And he left my mother and me to die.

Called me a lunatic. In front of everyone. All for her.

I was ready to leave. For good. Then someone shattered my mother's ashes.

To give my twelve-year-old daughter a peaceful and ordinary childhood, I sealed away the "Eagle" badge that represented the highest military authority in the Federation, willingly becoming a repairman with an oily phone in a remote town.
I suppressed my murderous intent, swallowed my humiliation, and even remained silent about the injustice of the referee.
But my concessions to the powerful and wealthy resulted in the richest man leading a group of professional thugs to smash my home to ruins.
to fight in front of my daughter , until his reckless son smashed my "Eagle Badge," hidden deep inside.
They had no idea that the instant the badge broke—
the SSS-level emergency beacon hidden at its core—had been triggered !

He was the gentlest male nurse in the hospital, and it took him three years to fall in love with a woman of exceptional talent.

She was the most dazzling female director of the cardiothoracic surgery department, and she was used to his humble flattery and took his efforts for granted.

Three years of companionship couldn't outweigh a single word: "Get lost."

When he finally left, heartbroken, she realized—

The "little nurse" she used to dislike had long since become the most important person in her life.

Some loves, once lost, are lost forever.

Some missed opportunities are regrets that can never be undone.

I died on the second Sunday of May.
Mother’s Day.
My biological mother, the top neurologist in the United States, was standing in front of my corpse.
She looked at the bedsores all over my body, at the ribs that had been stomped broken, and explained coldly to hundreds of cameras:
“Trash from the bottom of society, covered in needle marks like this, doesn’t deserve to dirty my dissection table.”
She didn’t know that the “social garbage” she called a pill-seeking self-harmer was the son she had abandoned ten years ago.
When the cold scalpel cut open my chest, an old photograph stained with black blood slipped out.
The moment she saw it, the woman who had stood above everyone else—
went completely insane…

I once believed his oath wholeheartedly. I sacrificed all my power to lift him onto the Alpha King’s throne. What a cruel twist: the man who swore to die for me became my executioner.
He cast me aside for another female, and my past life ended in endless sorrow and destruction.
Now I am reborn, and I am no longer the naive girl who loved blindly.
I shatter the token of our blood oath in public, ending our bond forever.
To the shock of all onlookers, I do not seek another chance with him. I turn and pledge myself to the new Alpha King.

I am the pampered Princess of the Carpenter crime family, a girl whose three fiancés once leveled a city block just to retrieve her lost diamond.

But next to Avery—a battle-hardened medic who showed up with her kid and could dig out bullets without blinking—my "spoiled nature" suddenly became such an exhausting joke that Jackson and Rhys simply walked out on me.

Gabriel was the only one who didn't. He was my safe haven, kissing my forehead and promising, "They’re fools. They don't appreciate you."

I believed him. Until I looked out the window.

My proud, untouchable Gabriel was down on one knee in the dirt, humbly wiping the mud off Avery’s high heels.

I didn't scream. I didn't throw a fit. I just turned around, walked straight into my father's study, and looked the Godfather in the eye.

"Dad," I said. "That marriage alliance with the West Coast 'Butcher' family next month. I'll do it."

My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.

His words pierced through, "Five years, the punishment she earned."

The bankruptcy was fiction. The illness, theater.

All orchestrated because his stepdaughter suffered from depression, and I was her entertainment.

When the doctor finally spoke to me, "Days. You have only days."

I laughed.

The dying one had never been my father.

It had always been me.

On my daughter’s 100-day celebration, I found explicit messages between my husband and his secretary.
During our fight, he “accidentally” pushed me off the second floor, trapping me in a wheelchair forever.
He fired the secretary and cared for me personally, winning everyone’s praise and pity.
Only I knew he took secret late-night calls, his eyes full of disgust when he looked at me.
Until his mistress moved in, and my daughter screamed at me: “Just die.”
I smiled and pulled out a hidden voice recorder from my wheelchair.
Three years of silence, all for this moment.
James, your karma has come.

Selene thought she'd found true love with Alexander Morrison. She was WRONG—she was just a stand-in for Jessa, the woman he really wanted.

When Alexander and his twin brother Adrian's yacht exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Alexander came home with Adrian's ashes, claiming to BE Adrian. His goal? To steal Adrian's wife Jessa—the woman he'd always loved.

Selene knew instantly he was lying, but when she told everyone, no one believed her. Alexander called her "crazy from trauma" and locked her away in a mental facility. She was PREGNANT.

They drugged her daily. After she gave birth, Alexander told her the baby died. She broke completely.

Three years later, dying in that white hell, Selene heard Alexander's final confession:

"I always loved Jessa. Adrian just got to her first. YOU? You were just her replacement."

"The kid's alive. I gave him to Jessa. He calls her Mom now."

Selene died full of rage—then woke up reborn, back to the moment Alexander walked in with that urn.

This time, she'd expose his lies and make him PAY.

Lysander’s ex-girlfriend, Evangeline, suggested a hiking trip. Out of obligation to me as his fiancée, he brought me along.
We got lost in the woods and trespassed onto the territory of his half-brother, Orion.
When Orion pointed a gun at us and forced him to choose—
In my past life, he chose me.
As a result, Evangeline was sold to a rival, Matthias, and was tortured to death. I spent the rest of my life bearing the full weight of Lysander’s hatred.
In the third year of our marriage, I lay in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. He stood coldly beside me and said, "Now you know how it feels to lose the love of your life."
Reborn into this life, as Orion’s gun points at me and Evangeline once again, I make the choice for him.
I’m leaving the chance to survive to his true love.

On the eve of our Blood Pact ceremony, Caius suddenly postponed our binding ritual—all for his human sweetheart.

He unilaterally cut off the blood supply and froze all assets to the entire Vance family.

When my father went to confront him, Caius had him detained on the spot.

Desperate to save my father, I went to beg him. He gripped my jaw so hard it ached, his thumb roughly wiping away the tears forced out by the pain.

"Sera, delaying the ceremony is just a little lesson for you," he said, his tone gentle yet dripping with arrogance.

"As long as you agree to let Elara move into the manor after the wedding, and promise not to hurt her, everything stays the same."

"Otherwise, you can just go marry Alaric, that powerless tyrant of the Dark Realm. Be smart. Choose the path that keeps you alive."

I stared at him dead in the eye, not saying a word.

Thinking I had resigned myself to my fate, a satisfied smirk curled on his lips.

"Be a good girl. Wait for me to pick you up on the day of the Blood Pact."

What he didn't know was that on the day of the Blood Pact, I would step directly into the car Alaric sent, brushing right past his wedding convoy at the intersection.

Eventually, Caius would drop to his knees outside the gates of the night manor like a stray dog, begging for my forgiveness.

For six years, I wore Pack silver. I sold my blood. I scrubbed silver out of Pack den floors. I slept on a basement floor — all to pay off my mate's Pack debt and buy my brother's wolfsbane antidote.
Today, with the receipt finally signed, my brother looked at me and said:
"Seren, I was never poisoned. Our parents aren't dead either. The Rogue raid six years ago — I arranged it. The only wolf hurt that night was you."
My mate stepped up behind him: "I never lost my Pack rank either. I've been at the estate the whole time."
Then my parents — the ones I'd buried seven years ago — walked through the door.
The Pack physician had given me forty-eight hours left to live.
They were going to remember every single one.

Thirty thousand feet in the air, inside the sealed cabin of a commercial airliner, my five-year-old daughter vanished into thin air while I took a thirty-minute nap.
I tore through the lavatories, the galleys, and every overhead bin. The only thing I found was her stuffed bunny, the one she never let out of her sight.
What was even more terrifying was the crew and the passengers. As if perfectly rehearsed, they all insisted I had boarded the plane alone. They even gaslit me in front of everyone, claiming I was mentally unstable and had hallucinated a daughter.
They took turns pushing me, trying to force me into self-doubt and submission. Not a single person offered to help me look. The entire plane was covering up a sinister crime.
If this plane was going to hide my child and protect the guilty, then I would tear this hypocritical aircraft apart with my bare hands.

My daughter was murdered on her eleventh birthday during a brutal snuff livestream on the dark web.

The chat was flooded with the sick revelry and obscene tips of twisted buyers.

"Break her legs a little more."
"I want to hear her cry out."

Lying in a pool of blood, my daughter cried out in sheer despair: "Mom... save me... it hurts so much..."

Watching my daughter take her last breath amid violent convulsions, I clawed at my own fingers until they were torn and bloody.

The police told me it was her elegant ballet instructor, Serena, who had sent her to hell. And the one who helped Serena cover her tracks was my husband, David.

In my utter despair, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been thrown back to the very day I was supposed to take my daughter to her ballet class.

Sitting in the passenger seat, dressed in her ballet tutu, my daughter looked at me with eyes full of anticipation.

"Hurry up, Mom. Ms. Serena said we're rehearsing the solo for Swan Lake today."

The blood in my veins instantly ran cold.

For three years, I genuinely believed I was the luckiest woman in the world.

Until I hit play on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my perfect reality shattered into a million jagged pieces.

The woman writhing on the bed was Amanda—the sweet, innocent girl we had both grown up with.

And the hand tracing the curve of her bare skin? It wore the platinum wedding band I had personally slipped onto Louis’s finger.

"I missed you so much..."

"You drive me fucking crazy, baby..."

Hearing my own husband's signature sweet nothings whispered to my childhood best friend gutted me completely.

Our entire social circle constantly praised us as the golden couple. But beneath the glossy surface, who could have guessed this flawless marriage was built on a mountain of sick lies?

Well, if Louis was such a brilliant actor, I figured it was time to give him a show of my own.

I was going to rip off his mask and show the entire world exactly what kind of monster my "perfect husband" truly was.

I was forced by my father to fulfill an arranged engagement I'd never met face-to-face.

Pushing open the private room door, I found my fiancé Tristan celebrating his secretary Clara's birthday.

"Security! Get this beggar out of here!" Clara screamed, pointing at me.

When I revealed my identity, Tristan sneered coldly: "What bullshit engagement? I would never marry a woman like you."

Clara poured red wine over my head: "Kneel down and lick it clean!"

When I fought back, Tristan exploded in rage: "How dare you touch my woman? Hold her down!"

Four bodyguards pinned me down as Clara started a live stream: "Let everyone see this delusional bitch who doesn't know her place!"

They tore at my clothes while Tristan watched coldly, even urging them on: "Hurry up, let everyone see her true face."

Just as I was about to be completely humiliated, the door suddenly burst open—

"Do you have any idea whose daughter you're humiliating?

My best friend Tiffany was obsessed with those novels where a mafia don spoils his woman rotten.

She was convinced she was the type of girl who could make a ruthless boss go soft, so she went after Vincent, the heir of a crime family, and got him.

His bodyguards, his dirty money, even the way he told her not to ask questions and just sit tight. She read all of it as devotion. And of course she had to drag me into it too, always with the same excuse: it was for my own good.

Last time around, her mess got me killed. Vincent's enemies mistook me for one of his people, and I died in a shootout that had nothing to do with me.

The second the blade opened my throat, all I could think about was her holding up a bloody knife, grinning, showing it off to me like a trophy.

"Margot, look. He gave me this. It means we're official now."

I remember feeling disgusted. I never thought that same knife would end up slitting my throat.

Blood pooled across the street while she hid in Vincent's arms, screaming, hands over her eyes. Later I heard her crying to someone, saying it wasn't her fault, that I just had bad luck.

I died inside her little romance fantasy. A nobody side character, wiped off the page without a second thought.

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back. Back to the afternoon it all started.

Five years in hell, my beloved and best friend joined hands to push me into the abyss. The savior I trusted was actually a deadly fraud. Reborn from despair, Vito came through the light. I tore apart the scumbag and the evil woman, settled all debts, broke free from the shadow, stepped into the light, and lived the rest of my life only for myself.

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought I was just going to suffer some physical hardship, that after enduring these two weeks, everything would be happily resolved.
But they didn't know I had already been poisoned by my brother. I was dying.
I died in agony on the cold operating table. As my body was being gnawed and rotted by rats, they were happily vacationing by the sea.
Only when the lies were exposed did my wife kick down the hidden door. Holding my maggot-infested, decaying flesh, she wept until she vomited blood, then went mad and swallowed a bullet. My parents watched their family shattered and wept on their knees.

One of my employees went online and dragged me, claiming I'm making them sacrifice their health for a paycheck and forcing everyone to work over Thanksgiving.

Here's what actually happened. My company gives nine days off for Thanksgiving. Volunteer to work overtime, get triple pay, with a $500 daily meal stipend and a $5,000 bonus. No one gets penalized for not working.

The whole internet's tearing into me for making employees sell their lives for cash. So I give her exactly what she wants and send out a company-wide notice:

To protect employee mental health, the building gets locked and the power gets cut over Thanksgiving. No one is allowed to work for any reason. Anyone who does gets fired.

The minute that email goes out, the employees who were counting on overtime to pay their mortgages lose it. Now they're all crowded outside the building, begging me to open the doors.

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch Soren skate.
They didn't come home until Sunday night. By then, I'd been dead for over a day.
I called her. Again and again. She had her phone on airplane mode.
Now I'm a ghost, drifting behind their car on the highway home. They're laughing, complaining I didn't even text Soren a congratulations.
I wonder what their faces will look like when they walk through that door.

My daughter died on her fifth birthday.
Her first real wish—the first one she was old enough to make herself—was to go to the beach with Daddy.
Gideon promised he would take her.
She waited for him all day. She was still asking for him when she took her last breath.
He never came.
I brought her ashes to the beach she'd always dreamed of. Let her finally see the ocean.
That's when I heard it—a woman's moan, low and breathy, coming from behind the rocks.
Then his voice. Then his name on her lips.
"Between me and Lily, who do you love more?"
"You. Obviously."
He was fucking his mistress on our daughter's dream beach—while I stood there holding her ashes.
When I finally confronted them, I didn't get an apology. I got a slap across the face.
And when his mistress caught my eye and smiled, I realized something.
She knew exactly when my daughter would die.

Leon Sterling — the cold, calculating heir to a powerful corporate empire — doesn’t believe in love, nor does he care for marriage. In a world where everything can be measured, traded, or bought, he chooses a different path: fatherhood through science, with no strings attached.

Anna Monroe — a gentle, ordinary woman — unexpectedly becomes the surrogate chosen for Leon’s child. But beneath the layers of a sterile contract, what begins as a purely transactional relationship slowly unravels into something far more fragile… and dangerously real.

An old accident.
A handkerchief once dropped.
A forgotten memory that refuses to stay buried.

As fate tightens its grip, they find themselves caught in a game of heart and consequence — where emotions grow in the most unexpected places, and nothing goes according to plan.

When the contract ends and the lines blur, will Leon still choose solitude… or will he fight to keep Anna — not as a surrogate, but as the one woman he can’t let go?

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.

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.

"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.

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 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 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.

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.

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."

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?"

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.