Ashes of Our Vows: My Ex-Husband's Bitter Regret
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."
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Chapter 1
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my explicit photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my explicit photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing.
"She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded.
"Don't worry, this will never happen again."
......
"Claire, are you ever going to stop?"
Daniel followed the nurse into the ward, his anger barely held in check.
I had just been wheeled out of surgery, tubes still attached to my body, and even breathing felt painfully tight.
Yet he could not even be bothered to look at me.
"Why are you putting on this act? Every time, you agree so easily, then turn around and go after Emily again."
I did hate Daniel for cheating on me, but I had never once gone after Emily.
Daniel, however, had already decided that I must have been bullying her.
Every single time, without asking what had actually happened, he would snap, "Claire, are you ever going to stop? Emily is timid and gentle. She isn't a shrew like you."
I pressed a hand against my still-aching waist and forced the words out with difficulty.
"Can you get the facts straight for once? Your mistress was the one who hit me with her car. You never ask anything. You just decide I'm the one making trouble for her."
Daniel frowned. "Do you have to make it sound so ugly? Emily didn't do it on purpose. She had a child in the car. Of course she might panic a little behind the wheel. That's normal. You're the one making this into a big deal. What do you gain from clinging to one small mistake and blowing it up?"
My throat tightened before I could say a word.
Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to him, he said cruelly, "No wonder you couldn't keep any of your babies. This is your karma."
A sharp ringing filled my ears. I grabbed the cup on the table and hurled it at his head.
"Daniel, do you really not know whose fault it is that we lost our babies?"
The hospital room fell silent in an instant.
Daniel gave an awkward cough.
When Daniel and I had first gotten married, we had once been sweet together for a while.
I had once dreamed of having a child that belonged to both of us.
The first time I got pregnant was when his company had been cornered by its business rivals.
I felt sorry for him, so I helped him handle the tedious work and coordinate with people for him.
It was not until I collapsed from exhaustion at the company and was taken to the hospital that I learned I had been pregnant.
But the baby did not survive.
The second time I got pregnant was when I first found out about Emily, his mistress.
Daniel and I had a terrible fight.
The emotional shock caused me to miscarry.
I looked at Daniel, my voice growing hoarser with every word. "Tell me, which of those two times had nothing to do with you?"
Daniel seemed to remember those things too, and guilt flickered briefly across his face.
"Yes. I admit I was partly responsible."
He paused, but the next words out of his mouth cut deeper than any blade.
"But are you saying you did nothing wrong? You knew you were pregnant, yet you still failed to control your emotions and worked yourself until you passed out. Claire, the person you should blame most is yourself."
It felt as though my heart had been struck by a blunt weapon. His self-righteous accusations were so absurd they were almost laughable.
He was clearly the one who had done wrong, yet to escape responsibility, he blamed me for not staying calm after discovering my husband's affair.
I tugged at the corner of my mouth. "So what are you going to blame me for this time? For not dodging fast enough with an eight-month pregnant belly when your mistress drove straight at me? Or should I apologize because my blood scared her?"
Daniel was enraged by my sarcasm, but when he saw how lifeless I looked, he stopped short.
"Claire, that's not what I meant." He turned his head away guiltily. "It was just an accident. From now on, you can raise Emily's child as your own. Consider it a form of compensation."
I stared at him in disbelief. He actually thought letting me raise his illegitimate child was compensation?
At that moment, I finally saw him for who he was. He had never cared about me, and he had never cared about my children either.
"I don't need your so-called compensation!" I nearly screamed.
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7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
8.2
When our family empire crumbled, my sister and I were sold off as collateral to the Chicago Outfit.
My fierce sister Frankie was forced to marry Damien Moretti, the terrifying Don. I was shackled to his brother Leo, a notorious, degenerate playboy.
I thought my life was over, but the real nightmare began on our wedding night. A terrified maid handed me the wrong room key. Exhausted and numb, I crawled into a dark honeymoon suite, praying my new husband would be too drunk to find me.
Instead, the heavy door opened, and a man fueled by a drug-laced drink stepped in. He was ruthless, punishing, and entirely stripped away my dignity in the pitch black.
When the morning light finally broke, I turned my head, expecting to see Leo's boyish face. Instead, I saw a profile carved from ice.
Damien Moretti. The Don. My sister's husband.
The very man who had previously called me a "liability" and ruined my life. When he realized who I was, his eyes filled with absolute, chilling disgust. He dragged me out of the ruined sheets, threw me onto the floor of a freezing shower, and demanded to know why I had sneaked into his suite.
"You ruined me. How am I supposed to look at Frankie? You should have just killed me. Kill me now, Damien. It would be a mercy compared to this."
I sobbed, the freezing water mingling with my tears. He just stared down at me with cold, unreadable intent. I was now trapped in a house of monsters, carrying the Don's darkest secret, and I had to figure out how to survive without destroying my sister.
8.7
My new boss is gorgeous, arrogant, and filthy rich.
The only problem?
He doesn't know he's also the father of my baby.
Six years ago, I was supposed to get married.
But the night before the wedding, my groom-to-be showed me sides of himself I'd never seen before.
I might've died in that hotel room...
If Mikhail Novikov hadn't burst in to save me.
Handsome, strong, capable knight in shining armor-sign me up, right?
WRONG.
Because Mikhail wasn't just the hero I never knew I needed...
He was also way more dangerous than I ever could've known.
But for one night, I let myself do something I never should've done.
It was worth it-several times over, if you catch my drift.
In the morning, though, I did the reasonable
I RAN.
For six years, I keep running.
Until I walk into work one day, and find my new boss waiting in my office.
Guess who?
And guess what he does when finds out about our baby?
7.6
Top DEA agent Kaitlynn Bruce woke up to a heavy, chemical lethargy, only to realize she was trapped in the body of a weak, abused war widow.
Before she could even process her new reality, she heard her sister-in-law counting cash, selling her unconscious body to a local thug for a measly two hundred dollars.
The thug dragged her new seven-year-old son, Cason, into the bedroom.
"Mommy!"
When the boy reached out, the man brutally kicked his small body into a wooden doorframe, leaving him gasping and bleeding on the floor.
Memories flooded Kaitlynn's mind. Her predecessor was a pathetic doormat whose husband's military pension had been bled dry by these greedy in-laws, leaving her children to starve and suffer endless abuse.
But as Kaitlynn looked at the bleeding boy's dark, unnervingly alert eyes, a chilling piece of DEA intelligence clicked in her mind.
Cason Richmond.
The name, the town, the abusive aunt—it all matched the classified files of the "Director of the Hive," the most ruthless and feared cartel puppet master in the criminal underworld.
How could this battered, starving child be destined to become the ultimate monster she used to hunt?
The original widow's tragic death was supposed to be the catalyst that pushed this boy into total darkness.
But Kaitlynn Bruce was not a victim.
Adrenaline burning through the drugs, she cracked the thug's neck with a brass lamp and choked the sister-in-law against the wall.
Looking down at the boy who was supposed to become a global nightmare, she made a vow. She was going to rewrite his script, even if she had to burn the whole world down to do it.
7.0
I thought running from the mate who used me as a pawn and rejected me would be the end of my cruel fate.
I was wrong.
I ran straight into a pack that didn't just hate me, but also wanted me dead.
My alpha stepbrothers: Quin, Rio, and Hunter.
They're called the Three Devils: dangerous, wild, and untamed.
Quin wants to claim my rut. Rio wants to mark me. And Hunter? He's ready to burn the world just to make me his.
But the Moon Goddess doesn't play fair. Pack laws don't bend...not even for Alphas.
And now we're trapped in a web of fate that will either bind us together or tear us apart completely.
This is a dangerous game, and I dread who the winner will be: the feral alpha, the biker president, or the sex god?
7.4
I was only fifteen when my venomous family orchestrated my doom by forcing me into an arranged marriage with mafia heir Javier Velasquez.
On our wedding night, Javier paraded strippers into our suite to show his absolute contempt, turning me into the ultimate joke of the underworld overnight.
But being a joke was a luxury compared to what came next.
Three years later, Javier needed to be a widower to marry into a heavily armed family and secure their backing for a coup.
He didn't grant me the mercy of a bullet.
Instead, he dragged me to an abandoned underground safehouse, locked me in the damp, rotting dark, and told the world I had been assassinated.
For six months, I starved in that dungeon, surviving only on the desperate hope that my family was safe.
Then, on the day of his lavish new wedding, a cruel maid kicked a plate of spoiled food onto my floor and delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Annabel is dead. Pined away and died of a broken heart two weeks ago."
My gentle mother was dead, all because she actually believed his lie about my tragic murder.
Driven by pure agony and an all-consuming hatred, I shattered crates of smuggled chemical solvents and struck a match, letting the roaring inferno turn their bloody wedding into my funeral pyre.
I thought the fire was the end.
But when I opened my eyes, the suffocating smoke vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a Long Island winter.
I was standing in the snow, back on the exact day my descent into hell began.
This time, the terrified girl was dead, and I would use their own ruthless rules to tear their empire apart.