356 Book(s) Related to tillie cole hades hangmen

Five years ago, I woke up after surgery with my mind completely blank. The doctor said I had been in a training accident, and I was lucky just to be alive. Due to my injuries, after being discharged from the military, I was assigned to the mess hall at Fort Kiernan. Every day, I stood behind the same serving window, dishing out the same beef and potato stew to the same group of new recruits. I thought my life would always be like this. Then one day, a female journalist from the detention cell was escorted over by military police to get her meal. She slid her tray toward me and spoke a word I had never heard before. The ladle slipped right out of my left hand. My right arm dropped to my side, and my fingers curled instinctively into the shape of a gun grip. Who on earth am I?

At my boss's mother's funeral, I couldn't hold back my laughter, and as a result, I was treated as a lunatic, stuffed into a garbage cannon, and launched naked into an apocalyptic forest full of zombies. Everyone thought I was doomed, but they didn't know—I had been reborn 1,001 times. Unarmed and surrounded by the zombie horde, about to be torn to shreds, in desperation I clung to the last clue... When I finally uncovered the truth that could overturn everything, I laughed from the bottom of my heart. This time, I would personally end this greatest lie.

Manhattan City Hall, ten minutes before the marriage certificate is issued.
I looked at the prenuptial agreement, what flashed through my mind was not a sweet future, but the tragic ending of my past life—prison bars, fabricated evidence, and my wife Selena's cold face in court.
me to hell without hesitation .
Having been reborn, this time I will not be anyone's stepping stone again.
The real game only began the moment the agreement was torn up.

"Why did you marry me?"

"Because I had no other choice."

The day my grandfather fell critically ill, I was abandoned by my boyfriend of seven years and lost my last pillar of support.

To fulfill my grandfather's dying wish, I married Charles William, a man I had never met.

Cold, arrogant, dangerous—that was my entire impression of this new husband.

It wasn't until after my grandfather's death that I discovered the William family harbored a shocking secret.

They weren't ordinary people at all.

And Charles was actually the future leader of the werewolf clan.

Facing my father's greed for the inheritance, my shattered family, and one crisis after another, I could only fight back step by step on my own.

Yet that man who had despised me from the start always appeared by my side whenever danger struck.

I thought this marriage was merely a transaction.

Until one late night, when Charles trapped me in his arms, his golden beast eyes locked tightly onto me.

"Daisy, you're already my wife."

"Isn't it too late to think about running now?"

"Why are you avoiding me, Riley?"

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

Before I could answer, Eliot caught my wrist.

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

Then Julian smiled.

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

—

I'm Riley.

A perfectly ordinary Beta—or so everyone believes.

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

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

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

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

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

But the greatest secret isn't who I am.

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

Just to keep me.

"Why do you need money this badly?"

Lorenzo gripped my chin, his gaze arrogant and dangerous.

"For money, are you really willing to do anything?"

I bit my lip and didn't answer.

Because if my two daughters couldn't survive, self-respect was worthless.

——

My name is Scarlett O'Brien.

To pay for my twin daughters' heart surgery, I signed a humiliating contract and sold myself to the most dangerous man in New York.

Lorenzo Vittori.

Young, handsome, arrogant, and the most feared heir to a mafia family.

He was cruel and sharp-tongued, humiliating me until I had nothing left, yet time and again he reached out his hand when I had nowhere else to turn.

And I told myself there was only a transaction between us.

As soon as I saved enough for the surgery, I would take my daughters and leave his world completely.

But I gradually discovered that this cold-blooded and vicious man seemed to hide even more scars than I did.

When the contract was about to end, true feelings began to spiral out of control.

I didn't know whether what awaited me would be redemption...

or a mafia storm destructive enough to destroy everything.

Accidental Pups×Contract Marriage × Multiple Identity × Drama × Vengeance & Betrayal × One-Night Stand × Billionaire/CEO × Brave Heroine × True & Fake Heiress

Warning: This is a slow-burn romance. The love story develops gradually through trust, healing, family, and shared secrets.

“He doesn’t trust anyone.”

“I know.”

“Then why does he trust you?”

I don’t have an answer.

I only know that when I found little Cassian bound and abandoned, I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t know then that he was the son of Alistair Voss—the cold, powerful billionaire who trusted no one.

But Cassian trusted me.

And that changed everything.

When Alistair asks me to stay for his son, I refuse. Until he makes an even more shocking offer: marriage.

What begins as an arranged marriage slowly becomes something neither of us expected. Beneath the same roof, Cassian becomes the family I never knew I needed, while Alistair begins to see the woman behind my guarded heart.

But I didn’t return to Verona simply for a new life.

Five years ago, I lost my memory. My identity was stolen. Someone betrayed me, and someone wanted me gone.

Now the past is catching up with us.

And when it finally does, I may discover that Cassian chose me for a reason no one ever expected.

Some loves take time. Some truths take even longer to uncover.

"Will you come with me?"

I stood before Mother's grave, extending my hand to that silent, withdrawn boy.

At that moment, I didn't yet know this decision would change my entire life.

—

After Mother died, I lost my home.

My stepmother and stepsisters saw me as a thorn in their side, while Father watched my suffering with cold indifference, as if I had never been his daughter.

Everyone hurt me.

Everyone except Alden.

He was withdrawn, mysterious, never one for words, always standing apart from the crowd. Everyone called him a freak, yet whenever I was bullied, humiliated, pushed to the brink, the person standing beside me was always him.

He would light torches for me in the darkness.

Would silently repair Mother's vandalized tombstone.

Would hold me when I broke down, whispering, "Mia, I'm here."

Later I discovered that Alden harbored secrets that didn't belong to this world.

And I, too, possessed powers I couldn't understand.

As the door to the magical world slowly opened, truth after truth began to surface. Yet more than those unknown dangers, what concerned me most was—that boy who had always protected me.

Why could he always find me first?

Why did his gaze toward me always carry emotions I couldn't read?

And why was I becoming more and more dependent on him?

Until one day, I discovered Alden's deepest hidden secret.

Only then did I finally understand.

That from a very long time ago, he had been running toward me all along.

What I didn't know was, when the day of destiny arrived—

Would I lose him,

Or fall in love with him.

On her twenty-first birthday, Ivy Hayes discovers two life-changing truths, her boyfriend Carter Blake is her fated mate, and he's rejecting her for her perfect twin sister, Isla.
Heartbroken and humiliated at Isla's Luna ceremony, Ivy agrees to a desperate bargain, marry Damon Crescent, the exiled Rogue King everyone calls "The Butcher." Damon needs a mate from the Hayes bloodline to reclaim his stolen throne. Ivy needs to escape the pack that's treated her as the "broken twin" her entire life.
Now she must decide. Can she love the man who destroyed her past while he builds their future? Or will the secrets between them burn their bond to ashes before they ever have a chance?

“I was never supposed to fall for him.”

I was only the invisible boy at the ice arena—the one nobody noticed, the one who hid behind a camera and wrote anonymous stories about the hockey captain I could never reach.

Curtis Glass was everything I wasn’t. Powerful. Admired. Untouchable.

When he discovered my secret, I thought he would destroy me. Instead, he stepped closer, protected me, and made me believe I finally mattered.

But I didn’t know the truth.

Before I became the person he cared about, I was only a bet he made with his teammates.

A challenge.

A game.

And I was foolish enough to fall in love with the man who planned to break my heart.

Now Curtis says he never meant to hurt me.

But how can I trust the person who made me feel special… when I was only his secret from the beginning?

“Don’t worry, Selena. Everyone will forgive you if you fail.”

Those were the words my stepmother whispered before she pushed me into the biggest humiliation of my life.

In my past life, I was the foolish Windsor heiress who lost everything. My family abandoned me, my reputation was destroyed, and the people I trusted buried me alive in a nightmare I could never escape.

But fate gave me a second chance.

Now, I am no longer the weak girl they controlled. I remember every lie, every betrayal, and every trap waiting for me. I will reclaim my mother’s jewelry empire, expose those who stole my life, and make every enemy pay.

But when the coldest lawyer in New York, Damian Cross, steps into my revenge plan, he sees the woman I have become—not the girl everyone despised.

The only question is…

Will he help me destroy my enemies, or will he uncover the darkest secret behind my rebirth?

"I didn't kill your father."

The man sat behind the desk, the dagger I'd personally driven into his chest still lodged there, blood staining his shirt, yet he didn't even furrow his brow.

"If I were the killer, you'd already be dead."

—

My name is Serena Belmont.

A week ago, I was the family heir. A week later, my father died mysteriously, my stepmother took control of everything, and my fiancé abandoned me without hesitation.

All evidence pointed to Carlo Morandi—the most dangerous man on Valdoro Island, the feared Mafia godfather.

For revenge, I broke into his estate.

But what he gave me was evidence my father had left behind.

Missing eight million euros, a mysterious university professor, secrets my stepmother had hidden for years... As the investigation deepened, I realized I'd never truly understood the truth behind my father's death.

And Carlo always stood behind me, clearing obstacles for me, blocking danger for me, yet never explaining why he did this.

Until later, when I discovered an old photograph taken secretly for six full years.

The person in the photo was me.

In that moment I finally understood—some people approach you to use you, some to destroy you, and some have kept you in their hearts since before you even knew.

But when the truth surfaces, I don't know whether I should fear the conspiracy behind my father's death...

Or the real reason Carlo protects me.

“I have waited five years to find you. Do you really think I will let you disappear again?”

Five years ago, I saved a dying stranger in the darkness.

I never knew that one act of kindness would change my destiny forever.

Now my company is falling apart, my fiancé betrays me, and I am forced into a contract with Callum Mercer—the most powerful billionaire in the city.

He is arrogant. Controlling. Impossible to understand.

Yet somehow, he knows things about me no one else could know.

Why does he look at me like he has lost me before?

Why does my heart react to him like we have known each other forever?

When his secret finally comes to light, I discover Callum is not just a billionaire.

He is an Alpha wolf.

And according to his world…

I am his destined mate.

But loving a wolf means entering a war I was never prepared to fight.

“My sister escaped this marriage. Now you will take her place.”

My family thought they were sending a useless Omega to die beside a cursed Alpha.

They were wrong.

I arrived at Silvermoon Pack as a replacement bride, expecting cruelty from Kyle—the infamous Alpha who lost his wolf, his power, and half his face after a betrayal.

Instead, I discovered a powerful man trapped inside a broken body. A man who protected me from his own pack, gave me his trust little by little, and awakened a bond neither of us could deny.

While I fight to heal his poisoned body, I uncover a conspiracy hidden inside Silvermoon’s walls. Someone wants Kyle dead. Someone fears the power growing inside me.

Because I am not the worthless Omega they believed me to be.

And when my true identity is revealed, the entire werewolf world will have to bow before the bride they underestimated.

The day my daughter was declared brain dead, my billionaire wife was busy making soup for her first love, who was suffering from heart failure.
To fund a heart transplant for her first love , she made a phone call and injected our biological daughter with a large dose of nerve-blocking agents, taking her life .
The night before the burial, I begged her like a dog to come and see our daughter off one last time, but she impatiently scolded me on the phone: "Don't bother me with dead people all the time; the dead can't be brought back to life."
Later, on our sixth wedding anniversary, in front of all the wealthy and powerful in New York, she offered me a top-quality frozen fertilized egg as compensation, promising to give me a "new child."
However, when she opened the high-end gift box I gave her with a smile—
there was no so-called "new life" inside, only a completely drained bankruptcy liquidation document for a conglomerate, a waste receipt for the fertilized egg that had been flushed down the drain, and a high-definition video of her first love laughing at her in a club, saying she was "so easy to fool."

I was reborn. My younger brother stole the woman who had lost her leg and was blind, thinking he had seized the throne of the apocalypse.
He didn't know that her power in her past life stemmed from the pendant on my chest—which contained a fountain of life.
This time, I'm not a savior. I'm handing the spring over to the nation.
The Pentagon has given me a new designation: National Assets.
While the younger brother was being beaten up by his neighbor for a half-empty can of cola, the National Guard's superhumans had already begun clearing out the infected.
He called, his voice hoarse: "Her superpower is only enough to chill a glass of cola... You tricked me?"
I hung up the phone and went into the lab.
"What's the extraction rate of the spiritual spring water today?"

An epic cold snap struck, causing temperatures to plummet to minus eighty degrees Celsius.
My fiancée and best friend occupied my hillside villa, laughing hysterically as they watched a video of me nearly freezing to death.
In their eyes, once I turned into a solid block of ice, they could rightfully inherit my vast fortune and live in this warm, doomsday Noah's Ark.
But what they didn't know was that the video was n't real at all .
I stood in the temperature-controlled bunker twenty meters below them and cut off their main power.
The hunt was about to begin.

I was cursed, trapped in a "Trial of Sincerity"—I could only regain my freedom if she spoke the words "I love you" from the bottom of her heart.
For five years, I’ve taken bullets for her, gone to prison for her, and stood on the brink of death four times. She would only call me "my best friend" or say "I need you," but she never uttered those three words.
Four times, she abandoned me as I lay dying, rushing instead to the side of another man.
The fifth time, with a bullet in my abdomen and my insides exposed, I lay on the operating table. She finally wept, screaming "I love you"—once, twice... twelve times in total.
Too bad. After waking up from that fourth brush with death, I had already signed a Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order.
This time, my heart has stopped beating. Not because of my wounds, but because I’ve made my choice: I won't let her save me.

My fiancée and best friend, whom I risked my life to protect, sold me to the brutal "Blood Blade Gang . "
They laughed as they watched me being kicked into a pool of radioactive waste like a dog, waiting for me to turn into a pile of bones.
But they didn't know that the deadly radiation not only failed to melt me, but also forcibly ruptured my genetic lock, awakening the [Nuclear Fury].
I rode back to the old camp in her heavily armored vehicle.
Those two scoundrels were still arrogantly bullying me: "I have the Blood Blade Gang backing me! The big shots are coming soon, you're dead!"
I sneered and slapped them away.
Idiots, look back! Your so-called powerful backer is kneeling in the vehicle, lighting my cigarette.

They all thought I was just a rogue soldier who had crawled back from the border, covered in gunpowder and looking for revenge for my family's old debts.
Everyone was guessing which building I would blow up next. Julian, as I expected, panicked.
He recalled all his elite personnel to the Vientiane Building, activated top-level security, practically turning the entire office building into an impenetrable fortress, and sealed off assets globally to prevent my "illegal theft."
But he made a mistake.
When he personally pressed the reset lock, attempting to regain control of the system through manual verification, he didn't hear the prompt of command execution, but rather the hydraulic hum emanating from the building's load-bearing walls—it was the "self-destruct program" he had personally signed, running as scheduled under the guise of my privileges.

After ten years of being a "consumable," I performed my final maintenance on the very day Vivian handed my life's work over to someone else. I didn’t argue or resist; I just signed the paperwork with a smile. When the Thorne Tower began to collapse floor by floor due to my final permission error, she finally realized that all the brilliance she boasted of was nothing more than the residual warmth I had fed her. Now, she kneels in the ruins, begging me to turn back time. I only find her voice… annoying.

I thought I was the luckiest person in the apocalypse.
My brother, a former special forces soldier, brought me supplies so I wouldn't have to face the horrors above ground.
My girlfriend comforted me over the radio, saying she'd cry in my arms once we could finally get out.
I lived underground for three years, grateful like a domesticated dog.
Until that day, when I pushed open the door, smelled fresh grass, and saw the swimming pool in the sunlight—that's when I understood that the so-called apocalypse was never outside, but behind the door they had locked me in.

We’ve been married for five years. Then, she got pregnant with someone else's child.
In front of everyone, she said: "Ethan doesn't want this baby. You've always wanted one, right? Fine, take it and raise it."
In that moment, I finally understood: she wasn’t incapable of loving someone—she simply never saw me as a human being.
I took off my wedding ring, left it on the tray, and bought a one-way ticket to the North. My family said I wouldn't survive in the frozen North; she said that without her, I was nothing.
Three years later, she tracked me down using the GPS hidden inside that ring. She pushed open the door to my attic room, finding only a note I’d left: "Don't look for me. We're square."

To fulfill a dying comrade's final request, I spent twelve years living in the shadows to protect his daughter. I took bullets for her, laundered her black-market assets, and eventually handed over my entire stake in the security empire. In her eyes, I am her father’s murderer; in mine, she is a mission—the only flicker of light left in my life. Until that fateful banquet, when she personally shoved me into the sights of mercenaries. Watching my blood bloom across her dress, she hooked her arm around my nemesis and ordered coldly, "Clean it up." In that moment, twelve years of devotion collapsed, and a heart that beat only for her finally learned to freeze. This time, I’ve decided to personally destroy the monster I raised.

The global freeze descended, and the apocalypse arrived right on cue. I seized all the critical supplies and evacuated first, leaving "the perfect base" behind for the two traitors who backstabbed me. They thought it was heaven, but little did they know that the entire fortress was a precision trap constructed of deception, scarcity, and despair. As the outdoor temperature plummeted to minus eighty degrees, I sat by the window, roasting venison and watching them through high-definition infrared, coldly observing as they lost their humanity in the desperate fight for a single bowl of sawdust.

In my past life, I personally dug up two alien meteorites, handing the blue one that granted "Frost Mastery" to my childhood friend, Mike. He repaid me by sealing me inside an ice wall, cursing me to "die like a piece of trash" in the minus 70-degree blizzard.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the initial blast site.
This time, I didn't even spare him a glance; I stuffed both meteorites into my pocket.
I transformed a missile silo into a doomsday bunker, brought my parents inside, and stockpiled ten years' worth of supplies.
When Mike arrived with a gang of thugs to smash my door down, I stood in the warm command center, watching half his face rot with frostbite on the monitor.
I didn't open the door.
This time, I am sending back the despair of my past life tenfold.

"Tasha..."
She turned. He was right behind her and they stood so close that she could smell him. It was intoxicating. She hadn't realized how much she had loved the smell of him until having gone without it for so long.
"We can't be here for long, people will start to wonder-"
"You have no idea how much I missed you." He stepped even closer to her. "I thought about you every day. You're even more beautiful than I remember." He reached up and ran his hand through the hair that framed her face, her eyes closing involuntarily at his touch.
"Calder, you know we can't."
"I spent five years with nothing to keep me going through the hardest trials of my life but the thought of seeing you again," his hand touched her cheek. "holding you in my arms, kissing you." His thumb trailed across her lips and every fiber of her being felt like it would burst into flame. His eyes, like the ocean, looked into her soul, his body standing over her, so close she could feel the heat of him, and it made her yearn for more.
"Please, it's forbidden." Her voice was barely a whisper.
He looked at her for a moment, his eyes searching over her lips that were slightly open, her eyes that danced with flames of desire. "I don't care."


The young sorceress Astasha only wanted a simple life. Now, however, she finds herself in the service of the King as his Royal Fire Witch, and in love with the one true heir to the throne, his son, Calder. But their love is forbidden and when a demon threatens to destroy everything she holds dear, she must use the fire within to save the man she loves and his kingdom.

"What if I want to escape?"

I looked at the man before me.

He was Alexei Cardis, vampire prince, and the one who would sacrifice me with his own hands at the Eclipse Ritual.

"Then escape," he said, lowering his gaze to meet mine, his tone calm. "Just don't get caught."

—

At seven years old, I was brought into this vampire castle.

From that day on, I had the best teachers, and the most dangerous guardian.

Alexei taught me to read, taught me to calculate, taught me how to survive amid lies and conspiracies.

But he never told me—that the meaning of my existence was to become the offering on the altar.

As the Eclipse Ritual drew closer, I began searching for a way to survive.

Forging evidence, sowing discord among nobles, stealing weapons, planning my escape.

Everyone wanted to use me.

Everyone wanted me dead.

Only Alexei was different.

He stopped others from getting close to me again and again, yet pushed me toward my destined fate with his own hands.

I could no longer understand him.

Until later, when I discovered a secret hidden in a wooden box.

It turned out that behind all these years of what I thought was captivity and exploitation, there was another, more dangerous emotion.

But if he truly cared about me—

Why would he raise me only to personally send me to the altar?

And when the night of sacrifice arrives,

Will I kill him and escape to freedom,

Or will he, for the sake of the entire vampire race, kill me with his own hands?

"Do you remember me?"

I didn't.

But my husband did.

Everyone believed our marriage was a business arrangement.

Even I believed it.

Until I noticed the way Reginald watched me.

Like a starving man finally finding home.

Like he'd already loved me for years.

Every gentle touch...

Every protective embrace...

Every jealous glance...

None of it was fake.

Then one full moon, I saw his eyes become those of a wolf.

My husband wasn't human.

And neither was the family that had welcomed me so warmly.

They called me something I had never heard before.

His fated mate.

But if destiny truly brought us together...

Why does everyone keep saying I was never supposed to survive?

“You have no wolf, Sera. How can you possibly be Bloodmoon’s Luna?”
I have heard those words for three years.
I married Damien, Bloodmoon’s powerful Alpha, knowing his heart belonged to my sister, Seraphina.
Everyone believes my sister died in enemy territory.
I know she didn’t.
She is alive—and she is the Luna of Ironridge.
I became her replacement.
For three years, I endured Damien’s coldness, the Pack Council’s contempt, and endless whispers that I was a useless Luna because I could not Shift or connect with the Pack.
I stayed silent. I did my duty. I protected the Pack that never truly accepted me.
Until they pushed me too far.
I decided to leave.
Then Dorian, the man I once loved, returned as a rebel and offered me something Damien never had.
A choice.
So I chose to leave.
But Damien refused to let me go.
And for the first time, the Alpha who had spent three years looking at me as a replacement finally looked at me.
“Sera… don’t leave me.”

“You think you can use me and walk away?”
His voice was ice, his hand around her throat.
“You signed the contract, sweetheart. That makes you mine.”

Camila agreed to marry billionaire Asher Reyes to save her dying mother — one year, no strings attached.
But behind his perfect smile lies the truth about her father’s death.
Now she’s trapped in a marriage built on secrets and vengeance, where every kiss feels like a lie.
When love starts to blur the line between victim and enemy…who will destroy whom first?

"Why won't you ask me for help?"

Vincent pinned me against the wall, his green eyes cold and dangerous.

"Because I want to destroy them myself."

I smiled anyway.

—

My name is Irene Perot.

Ever since my mother married into wealth, I've been the outsider no one wanted. My stepsister Johanna treated me like a stain on her perfect life. My fiancé betrayed me. Rumors spread through school like wildfire, and everyone waited for me to break.

But I've never been the helpless girl they imagined.

When they tried to ruin my reputation, I exposed every lie. When they tried to bury me, I climbed higher.

Then there was Vincent Green.

The most powerful man in the Green family. My ex-fiancé's uncle. Dangerous. Untouchable. A man who always appeared when my world was falling apart.

He wanted me to rely on him.

I refused.

Yet the deeper I dug into the secrets surrounding my family, the closer I was drawn to him—and to a truth neither of us could escape.

Because what began as a battle of wills soon became something far more dangerous.

And when Vincent finally offered me his protection, I had to decide:

Would I become the woman standing beside his throne...

Or the one who burns his empire to the ground?

“Lucy stole my fiancé.”

My best friend stared at me.

“So?”

I smiled.

“So I'm going to marry her uncle.”

I never planned to become Manhattan's biggest scandal.

But after my fiancé, Kyle, cheated on me with Lucy—and I discovered that I was drugged, left in a stranger's bed, and pregnant with a baby whose father I couldn't remember—I was done being the woman everyone could betray.

Lucy stole my man?

Fine.

I'd become her family.

I walked into billionaire Adrian Wells's office, claimed he was the father of my unborn baby, and proposed a contract marriage.

One year. One billionaire husband. One unborn heir.

It was supposed to be the perfect revenge.

Then Kyle wanted me back. Lucy tried to destroy me. My coworkers came after my career.

And Adrian—the ruthless man I thought I could use—turned out to be the most dangerous temptation of all.

I married him to punish the people who betrayed me. But what will happen when they expose the one lie that could make my husband betray me too?

Victoria discovered that I hadn't submitted any supplemental medical expense claims for two weeks.
She assumed I had finally been disciplined and had given up what she called "the exploitative nature of the lower class."
Little did she know, my backpack held the signed divorce papers and my mother's death certificate.
As I turned to leave, I was still wearing the discounted trench coat she'd casually given me three years ago when we got married.
What she didn't know was that I, a deep-sea geology genius from MIT, willingly endured three years of her humiliation and ridiculous rules, just so my mother could stay in her conglomerate's private hospital to prolong her life.
Now, my mother has died because of unpaid bills , and even her ashes are carried by me in a cheap canvas bag.
Now that my loved one is dead, there's no need for me to continue being her obstructive dog on Wall Street. The lives she owed with those approval forms, I will settle with the collapse of her entire conglomerate empire.

On our wedding day, she vanished wearing the gown I had bought for her.
I didn’t chase her. Instead, I went back to the operating table.
For three years, I had paid off her debts and filled the holes she left behind—enough for her to live a second life. My heart couldn't take it anymore; I had a stent implanted, though she never knew.
Three days later, I died in the hospital corridor. My ECG flatlined.
She didn’t know. She was still at a cocktail party in another city, clinking glasses with someone else.
A month later, she came back, kneeling before my tombstone in tears.
But it was all too late.

In this apocalyptic world of extreme heat, I fight for water in the underground black market, and I risk my life to hoard supplies.
My internet-famous roommate enjoyed my efforts while hiding in the air-conditioned room, panting softly in front of three fill lights: "We need to slow down and reconcile with nature."
Later, she stole my supplies and sold them to drug lords, causing me to be roasted alive on the riverbed.
After being reborn, I turned and left.
"Don't you like a slow-paced life? Stay here and enjoy it."
The end times have only just begun.

Betrayed by my wife on the eve of the apocalypse, they stole the shelter keys and locked me in the heart of the zombie outbreak to die.
I felt no anger.
Three minutes to blast open the blast door, ten minutes to drain the billions from that despicable couple's overseas accounts,
and then I'd buy machine guns and artillery from the black market! The couple speeding down the highway had no idea that the "top-secret key" they were protecting was actually a bomb designed to detonate the defense system.
The real wasteland survival game had only just begun.

For three whole years, as the "partner" of the bourgeois empress Victoria, I remained the most docile shadow of her business empire. Everyone thought I was a beautifully kept ornament, but only I knew that beneath this glittering facade, every shadow was a chaotic situation I had quelled with my own blood and flesh. It wasn't
until she used her daughter's final resting place as leverage to appease her lover that I realized that marriage was nothing more than a deceptive hunt.
Now, I'm going to recoup the costs.

For half a box of rations, my former comrade put a bullet in my back. As I gasped my last, the world reset—three days before the apocalypse. I didn't go after him for revenge. I floored the accelerator, racing toward the Texas borderlands where my grandfather—a Vietnam veteran—had spent forty years hoarding "junk" that everyone mocked. When the heat turned the earth into a furnace and Drake’s war-party smashed into the fence, they were met with a wall of diesel fire. My grandfather had spent three years digging a secret tunnel that bypassed the perimeter, and half a ton of fertilizer sent their entire encampment into the sky. They laughed at his junk pile. I laughed at their graves.

They kept me shackled before the Gates of the Abyss, force-feeding me toxic sludge and draining my final drop of blood, all to maintain their hypocritical "order." They called me the "Ultimate Anchor," unaware that the moment a watchdog decides it’s done playing the dog, the beast in the cage finally wakes up. From the very second I seized the laws of physics, this entire headquarters of the Defense Bureau became my private mausoleum. Your high-and-mighty Director? He’s currently kneeling in my cycle, begging for the sweet release of death. As for that Void Rift that makes the world tremble? Sorry, I just ate it for dinner.

The day manager Gregg shoved me into the freight elevator shaft, the nuclear winter outside had only just begun. As he slammed the gate shut, he said, "No one will find you dead down there; the insurance payout is enough to cover the shortfall." I died in the darkness at thirty degrees below zero. Then, I woke up. I was back on the afternoon he threw the contract in my face. This time, I didn't sign. I shoved the contract into the paper shredder, snatched the brass key ring from Supervisor Miller, locked every exit of the warehouse, and re-routed the entire building's heating system into my own command bunker. As Gregg licked ice off the frozen floor on the security monitor, I was sitting in the guard room, heating up a can of pork. Outside, the first snowflake fell. And this time, the ones who would be freezing to death were them.

"I was bonded with an alien system that issued nothing but 'benevolence' missions.
Supply food to violent thugs, shelter the mutants, embrace the Zombie King, and share our planetary defense technology with the entire world.
It claimed that as long as we were merciful, the civilization could survive.
I nodded, then promptly tweaked the task annotations.
I laced the food with neuro-suppressants, turned the shelter into a bio-sample bank, and activated kinetic overload when I 'embraced' the monster king.
Sharing the tech? Sure—though every defensive line I shared came with a backdoor that I could trigger remotely.
When the system eventually tried to purge me, Professor Sarah retaliated by locking it inside the national supercomputer.
I rewrote its underlying code, replacing 'mercy' with 'absolute order.'
Earth remains a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but the global satellite network is entirely in my hands.
The system’s most crushing defeat wasn't being destroyed; it was staying alive, only to become my tool."

In the extreme cold of the apocalypse, I was bound to the Seraphim's Flame, gaining access to the tycoon's bunker.
My good brother Luke was so jealous he went mad and killed me with a single blow.
Reborn, Luke stole the "Seraphic Flame" and, like throwing away trash, kicked another dark, ugly stone to my feet.
He didn't know—Redstone was a blood-sucking evil, while Blackstone was the true god-level talent.
When the deathly gale of minus seventy degrees swept across the world, I activated the [Dimensional Fortress] of infinite space.
Tons of munitions, mountains of supplies, overwhelming heavy firepower…
I will stand on the frozen wasteland and watch that bastard, step by step, become the human battery I need.

In my previous life, I gave away all my resources to save people, but my godfather broke my legs and fed me to the zombies.
Reincarnated 30 days before the apocalypse, I borrowed millions to build a nuclear-proof bunker and bought twelve retired, violent, and rabid dogs.
Extreme cold descends. With nowhere else to turn and in a desperate attempt to survive, the priest forces a space-age ability user to pinpoint the coordinates of the area inside the bunker with the "highest concentration of heat," and then forcibly teleports to steal the bunker.
He landed laughing wildly, feeling the scorching heat wave hitting him, thinking he had taken over my generator room and greenhouse.
I sneered and remained silent through the bulletproof glass.
This idiot has no idea that the hottest place in my shelter... has never been the generator.

In my previous life, an endless polar night and frost-laden corpse tide swept through the entire city.
My wife and I took in her mother and younger brother out of familial obligation,
But when monsters attacked, they locked us outside the shelter and we were torn apart alive.
Opening my eyes again, there are only seven days until doomsday arrives.
My wife and I have reached a consensus—to hell with blood being thicker than water!
This time, we will build an icy tomb for them with our own hands at the highest point of this city.

In my past life, I was cheated on.
My wife is having an affair with my fitness coach, and even our five-year-old daughter isn't my child.
I filed for divorce, and she left with nothing. I thought my life couldn't get any worse—but then the apocalypse came, and I was bitten to death by zombies.
In her last moments before she died, I saw her family of three nestled in her lover's secluded mountain cabin, with plenty of food and drink, passing away peacefully in their old age.
God gave me a second chance.
Back on the day we signed the divorce papers, I smiled and said to my ex-wife, "You can have the villa, but I want Julian's dilapidated cabin."

A horde of 100,000 mutated beasts besieged the city, and a ten-meter-tall abyssal wolf pressed its claws against my throat.
My enemy, riding on the wolf's back, laughed maniacally, threw down the chains, and ordered me to kneel and surrender immediately.
The fortress garrison closed their eyes in despair. But looking at that gaping maw so close to my face, I let out a long sigh of relief, even laughing aloud.
"What are you laughing at, facing certain death?!" she shrieked.
"I'm laughing at your pathetic stupidity." I gently crushed a poison capsule in my sleeve. "You really think I threw down all my weapons and walked out of the city gates to face this 100,000-strong army to surrender?"
"That's because if the distance exceeds three meters, my genetic virus can't be precisely injected into this beast's lungs."

They call me a parasite.
An outdated piece of trash. A fraudster hiding in the clouds, sucking the blood of the empire.
They spat at my shadow, threw stones at my door, and made my daughter bind my wrists with spirit-binding silver.
Then they asked me if I had any last words.
I said, "The void is coming."
They burst into laughter.
Now, the sky has cracked open.
Those who once cursed my name are now kneeling in the ashes, begging me for help.
I sat on a cold rock on Greystone Ridge, gazing at the distant firelight.
I could have stopped it all.
But I choose—
To stand idly by.

My teammates viewed me as a mobile food supply and planned to butcher me before they ran out of rations.
They thought that as long as I died, they would win this "survival game."
However, they would never know that what I brought back from the depths of the ruins wasn't fear, but the highest-level administrative privileges of the entire logistics system. While they killed each other for a bag of expired biscuits, I had already locked the exit to this hell. Sorry, but in this settling of accounts, you aren't even qualified to be treated as bargaining chips.