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For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

For twelve years, Cora lived in silent agony, loving her boss Bennett Hodges while serving as his perfect, invisible secretary. But after one night of drunken despair, she woke up in a stranger's penthouse. The man, an indie musician named Callum, showed her viral paparazzi photos of her ripping his shirt off and demanded a fake marriage to save his career. Cora immediately agreed, desperately needing a legal shield. Bennett had just ordered her to attend a gala as the personal date of a billionaire known for sending women to the ER. When Cora refused and showed Bennett her marriage certificate, he thought it was a pathetic bluff. To force her submission, Bennett froze her entire savings, permanently denied her hard-earned department transfer, and watched with a smug smile as his sister humiliated Cora for being the "maid's daughter." He wanted to completely destroy her life until she crawled back begging. Looking at her ruined design portfolio scattered on the floor, Cora felt her heart turn to ice. She had dedicated her entire youth to a man who saw her as nothing more than a piece of furniture that knew its place. How could she have blindly loved such a cruel, controlling monster for so long? The violent shaking in her hands stopped, replaced by a terrifying calm. "I have documented every single abusive directive from this office." She flashed the massive diamond her new fake husband had given her, threatened to burn Bennett's pristine reputation to the ground, and finally walked away.

I woke up to the screech of a megaphone and realized I had transmigrated into a YA novel called *Roses Under Thorns*. I wasn't the beloved heroine. I was Chloe Carrillo, a disposable scholarship student whose only purpose was to die in a tragic car crash to advance the plot. Desperate to survive, I tried to become invisible. But fate played a sick joke, making me the roommate of the female lead and drawing the suffocating, obsessive attention of her powerful brother, Dean Gibbs. While desperately avoiding Dean's controlling grasp, my nightmare worsened. An untraceable cyberstalker began hunting me. He called me "Little Lamb." He left a burner phone in my secret library hideout, sent photos of me taken from ceiling vents, and texted me the moment I stepped out of the dorm shower. "The water looks warm. Enjoy your shower." The police couldn't help, and asking Dean meant trading one terrifying cage for another. I didn't understand why this was happening. I was supposed to be a nobody, yet I was trapped in an invisible web, monitored every second of my life. Refusing to be a victim, I tracked down the university's legendary phantom hacker, Ashton Bridges. I handed him my devices, begging him to trace the stalker, thinking I had finally found a safe ally. I didn't know that as soon as the lab door closed behind me, he pulled up a live camera feed of my bedroom, his lips curving into a predatory smile. "Little Lamb, you walked right into my arms."

He hated my gut! I detested his arrogance! I was supposed to be his ex-stepmother,but I hated pack politics and returned to the human community after Alpha Holt's death. I was forced back to heal the wounds of the one that hated me the most, my stepson Adrian. To the world he was the famous NHL golden boy of hockey and to the Frostfang pack, their feared Alpha. But the moon goddess had another plan. On the night he was crowned as Alpha, his father's mark faded from my neck and Adrian's mate bond burnt harshly on my skin. But fate wasn't done yet. We were expected to team up to fight a common foe when we could barely stand each other. Was our fate strong enough to overcome physical hatred?

I opened the door to my penthouse, only to see my stepsister's limited-edition Louboutins discarded on the foyer rug. Walking into the master bedroom, I caught my fiancé and my stepsister tangled naked in my bed. When I went back to the family estate to settle the score, my father didn't even care. Instead, he and my stepmother demanded I take my stepsister's place to save the family's reputation. "You will marry the seventy-year-old billionaire next month. We can't ruin your sister's life," my father ordered. Looking at their hypocritical faces, the last shred of my family affection died completely. They really thought I would just accept being their sacrificial pawn while they stole my mother's legacy. So, I pinned them down with a blackmail video of the affair, extorted my father for my shares, and walked out into the freezing night. To numb the betrayal, I went to an underground club, slept with a terrifyingly powerful stranger, and left a red lipstick note on his forehead. "Your technique sucks. Keep the change." Then, I vanished abroad without a trace. Five years later, I returned to New York with my three children, ready to take back everything that was mine. But I didn't expect that the "cheap gigolo" from that night was actually Kendall James, the most ruthless corporate titan in the city. And he had just spotted my five-year-old son—his exact miniature replica—standing right beside me.

He laid me on the sheets, climbed over me, caged me with his arms. "Last chance to run," he said, voice low."I need the money," I whispered, feeling so tiny in his arms."You're soaking," he muttered. "Virgin or not, your pussy wants this."I moaned, looking away, couldn't help it,"Eyes on me, sweetheart," he pushed his tip in slowly."Fuck," he groaned. "So tight."He fucked me like he was claiming something. "Come for me," he whispered in my ears, moving faster."Damien," I cried out his name as I came."That's it," he growled. After a long minute he pulled out slowly. "One night," he said again, almost like a reminder....weeks later, I walked through the quiet hall of my school. A massive portrait stared back at me.Damien BlackwoodPrincipal Benefactor and OwnerColumbia University.Same man who'd just taken my virginity for money. My stomach dropped. "Oh fuck... what have I done?"

For two years, I hid my lethal past as a top-tier Delta Force operator to play the perfect, submissive wife to Kason. But on the eve of the absolute deadline to claim my parents' ashes, he forced me out of our car into a freezing rainstorm. He had received a frantic call from his mistress crying over her missing dog. "Are you seriously using dead people to compete for my attention?" Kason sneered. He slapped my phone away, hurled my bag with my classified military ID into a muddy ditch, and left me stranded on the highway. I knelt in the freezing mud as his luxury car sped away. I had swallowed his mother's insults and secretly saved his company from bankruptcy three times. Yet, to him, my parents' remains were just a box of dust compared to his mistress's pet. The suffocating pain in my chest suddenly evaporated, replaced by a terrifying, absolute zero coldness. The pathetic, submissive wife he thought he owned died on that highway. I walked to a dingy motel, washed the gritty mud from my face, and traced the jagged scar on my collarbone. I picked up the landline and dialed a twelve-digit encrypted number to the Pentagon. It was time to wake up the ghost operator and burn Kason's world to the ground.

Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family. In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding. When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life. She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely. Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves? Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala. Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces. What she saw made her blood run cold. Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond. They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair. Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home. The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance. But this time, she refused to be their victim. Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom. "Game on, Mother."

Plot. Synopsis. Liora could never belong. The daughter of an extramarital affair, she had lived in the shadows, cut off from the rest of the family, and learned to fend for herself while surviving. Stripping gave her life now, but everything changed one wild night. Two days before his wedding, Darius entered her club, craving for the last taste of bachelorhood, he pays Liora for a special dance which led to a one-night stand. Neither of them expected to see each other again or that Liora's long lost sister, Selene, was the bride waiting at the altar. The one-night stand becomes a dangerous truth that must be hidden. Lies never remain hidden, however, and when Liora learns she is pregnant with Darius's child, silence may be not be an option for her. Exposition. Liora, a daughter born as a result of her father's infidelity with a maid, which resulted in the divorce that separates her from her big sister. Due to the family's financial difficulties faced while growing up and the consequent death of her father, Liora eventually becomes a stripper to put food on her table. Unknown to her at the time, she carried the hidden omega bloodline from her father's alpha lineage, suppressed by years away from the pack. Inciting incident. One night, she is hired by a man who is getting married in just two days and wants to enjoy his last moments of bachelorhood. She ends up having a one-night stand with him. The moment they touched, an undeniable mate spark ignited between them-raw, electric, and impossible to ignore-but neither understood its full power yet. When Liora returns home that same night, she encounters an old man who introduces himself as the butler of the Blackwood family, tells her she has been invited to the wedding of her sister. This comes as a shock-Liora grew up knowing she had a sister, but Harlan never allowed them to meet. He carried that secret to his grave, and after his death, Liora stopped thinking about it. Despite her hesitation and doubts as to if they got the wrong person, she agrees to attend. Rising action. She arrives the night before the wedding , finds out she has been a daughter of the well known Blackwood family all along and learns the truth: it was her stepmother, not Harlan, who had always been against their meeting. The stepmother is currently serving time in jail for a minor business-related crime and her elder sister, Selene had her research done to find her because she wanted to reconcile with her younger sister and what better opportunity than a wedding. Liora also discovers that Selene is a sweetheart who had longed to meet her, but had been forced to stay away because of Ravenna's influence. But then, another huge blow hits-Liora finds out that the man she was with last night, the one she slept with, is the man Selene is set to marry, Darius. She holds this secret to herself, haunted by the mate pull that now torments her every thought. The marriage happens, and it all goes well. After that, Selene gives Liora a new path, far from her old job. She brings her into her home and starts to look after her. But soon, Liora finds out she is going to have a baby. With fear and shame, she hides this news. Climax. When Ravenna is released from prison, she is furious to find Liora living with her family. She makes it clear that she does not accept her, resenting her existence as a reminder of Harlan's infidelity. A few days later, Selene announces that she is pregnant too. Ravenna immediately becomes protective of her "real" daughter, which only deepens Liora's insecurities. She considers leaving before her secret is exposed. But fate intervenes. An accident happens, and they find out Liora was pregnant. Since she was once a stripper, no one talks about the dad. But Darius, who knows they share risky secret, sets up a secret meeting for them to talk. He wants to know if he is the dad, and Liora says yes-but she will keep it quiet and plans to leave soon. In their tense exchange, the mate bond flares again, confirming what they both sensed that first night. Ravenna,who happens to be at the wrong side at the right time ,overheard part of their talk. With doubts in her mind, she quietly does a DNA test between Darius and Liora's unborn baby. The results confirm he is the father. Seeing her chance to drive a wedge between the sisters, she keeps the secret until the gender reveal party for both daughters. There, in front of everyone, she exposes the truth. The revelation makes headlines. Selene feels utterly betrayed-by both her husband and her sister. She leaves Darius's house with Ravenna and sends divorce papers days later. Liora feels destroyed, her betrayal now public, and her pain is doubled when she learns Selene has lost her baby and is battling ovarian cancer, which requires an urgent bone marrow transplant. Through her best friend, Dr. Thorne, Liora learns this. She gets tested and finds out she is a match , but her unborn baby stops her. Darius knows she got test

I opened my eyes to a tearing pain and an unfamiliar ceiling, lying next to the most powerful man in the capital. Foreign memories crashed into my mind. I had transmigrated into the body of Irena Frost, a woman who had just drugged and trapped the cold, ruthless heir Evertt Barton into a scandalous marriage. The original owner did it to escape being sold to a murderous old merchant by her own cruel father. But Evertt didn't know that. When he woke up, his eyes were full of absolute disgust. He threw a prenuptial agreement at my face, demanding a quiet divorce in two years and warning me not to use a pregnancy to blackmail his family. Everyone in the estate treated me like a greedy, pathetic joke, just waiting for the day I would be thrown out onto the streets. The original Irena had died in despair, terrified and hated by the man she chose as her only shield. I felt a deep ache for the girl who had to ruin her own reputation just to survive. I absolutely refused to let this second chance be dictated by a man who despised me. I looked right into Evertt's icy eyes and demanded an astronomical divorce settlement to play his perfect wife. "Deal. I consider it a job." With millions wired to my account and a magical spatial ring from my past life suddenly awakening on my finger, I stopped crying. I was going to use his money to build a massive commercial empire in secret, and when the two years were up, I would leave without looking back.

I thought my life was over when my sister died, leaving me to raise her two babies in a world that wanted to swallow us whole. Then I made the mistake of a lifetime: I left a bold, humiliating voicemail for the one man I should have feared most. Anton Oryolov. The ruthless king of the Oryolov Bratva. A billionaire monster who rules the city with ice in his veins and blood on his hands. I expected him to fire me. I expected him to destroy me. Instead, he gave me a choice that felt like a death sentence: sign a contract and become his. The rules were simple. I belong to him. I live in his shadows. In exchange, he protects the children. But as the doors of his mansion locked behind me, I realized the "forced proximity" wasn't just a business arrangement. It was a cage. He thinks he can use me as a pawn in his dark mafia games. He thinks the children are just leverage to keep me in line. But he's starting to look at me with a hunger that isn't in the contract, and I'm seeing a man beneath the monster that I never expected to find. In the Cruel Paradise of the Bratva, loyalty is a lie and love is a weakness. Our deal is signed in ink, but it's going to end in blood. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now, he wants my soul.

The house was a living inferno, the heat devouring the air in my lungs as I clutched my five-year-old daughter to my chest. Emily was dead weight, her skin already cooling even as the room turned into a furnace of orange and black. Through the stinging smoke, I saw my husband, Kenney, crawling toward the door with a wet handkerchief pressed to his face. He didn't look back at the crib, and he didn't call my name; he was simply leaving us to burn. I lunged forward and grabbed his ankle, my nightgown catching fire, but he didn't reach down to save me. He recoiled in horror at the sight of my burning hair and our dead child, kicking me back with a panicked shriek. "Let go!" he shrieked. I died as a massive, flaming timber snapped from the ceiling and crushed us both into silence. I couldn't believe that the man I loved would leave his family to die just to save his own skin, but the rage I felt was colder than the death that followed. But then the burning stopped instantly, replaced by a cold so sharp it made my teeth ache. I gasped, jerking upright in my bed to find the velvet duvet cool under my palms and the nursery quiet, with Emily still breathing softly in her crib. I had returned to the winter morning two years before the fire, the exact day Kenney finalized the deal to sell me to the King for a promotion. As Kenney stepped into the room with a practiced mask of concern, I realized I was no longer the victim of this story. "A nightmare, my love?" he asked, reaching out to touch my shoulder. I flinched away, my eyes burning with a hatred he couldn't yet understand. Tonight was the Winter Masquerade, the night he planned to offer me to the King as a prize, but this time, I was going to turn his social ladder into a gallows.

Darcie Miller survives elite St. Jude's Academy on sarcasm and invisibility, steering clear of golden quarterback Charles Sterling-her most ruthless tormentor. But when her father's bankruptcy hands everything to the Sterling family, Darcie faces a humiliating ultimatum: move into Charles's mansion as his live-in "academic handler" to keep him eligible for graduation. Now the girl who despises him holds his future in her hands, and the boy who shattered her reputation might be the only one who truly sees her. In a world of cold marble and buried secrets, hate is about to catch fire-and obsession could burn them both.

She sells flowers. He spills blood. And he will stop at nothing to make her his. Elena Rossi has always lived quietly among roses and lilies, dreaming of love as gentle as the petals she arranges. She thought she found it in Daniel, the man she planned to marry. Until her wedding day when a dangerous stranger walked into the church and shattered everything. Adrian Volkov is a king in the underworld, a man feared for his ruthlessness and power. But to him, Elena is not just a prize. She is an obsession. A storm he cannot live without. And he will burn the world and anyone in it, to claim her. Torn from the life she knew, Elena resists him, manipulates him, and even runs from him. But Adrian is relentless. His love is dark, his touch both punishing and tender, and his obsession inescapable. When betrayal and bloodshed close in, Elena must face the truth: She doesn't just fear him. She doesn't just hate him. She loves him. Petals and Blood is a haunting, passionate tale of obsession, betrayal, and the dangerous kind of love that blooms in shadows.

For ten years, I played the safe, "wolfless" emotional support animal for my werewolf best friend, Finn, secretly loving him while he chased his toxic ex. When she got engaged to a rival Alpha, he dragged me across the country to crash the mating ceremony, only to abandon me at the airport. His terrifying older brother, Alpha Knox, picked me up instead and shattered my world with one sentence: Finn had always known how I felt, and he intentionally weaponized my devotion. To prove how little I meant to him, Knox orchestrated a cruel test at a seedy Rogue club. While I sat right next to Finn in a sticky booth, Knox sent over a stripper. "You don't mind, right, Sloane? It's just a gift," Finn slurred. Without hesitating, he let the stripper straddle him right in front of me, burying his face in her neck to chase away the pain of his ex. A decade of my blind loyalty turned to ash in that smoke-filled room. I hated my defective, wolfless biology, but I hated him more for treating me like a stray dog begging for scraps. Why did I waste my entire youth protecting a male who didn't even see me as a woman? Suffocating on shame and fury, I fled to the cramped club bathroom to hide. *Click.* The deadbolt slid into place, and the intoxicating scent of a violent thunderstorm and spent gunpowder swallowed me whole. Alpha Knox Crawford stood against the locked door, his merciless eyes pinning me to the sink.

I was an Omega married off to the powerful Gamma Ryker Blackwood to save my dwindling pack. But on our wedding night, he threw me into the spare room, declaring our bond a mere political alliance. He refused to mark me, leaving me to suffer through my agonizing heats with nothing but toxic suppressants. I soon discovered his heart belonged to a powerful Alpha warrior named Jessa. They openly humiliated me at pack events, mocking my unmarked status and telling me to initiate a rejection. When I finally found the courage to leave, his mother threatened my family's survival if I didn't produce an heir. That night, a drunken Ryker came home and used the forbidden Alpha Command on me. "Kneel." My knees crashed onto the cold marble floor, the dark magic breaking my will and tearing our sacred bond apart. I was trapped in a gilded cage, abused by my fated mate, and forced to bear his cruelty for the sake of my people. How could the Moon Goddess shackle me to a monster who would profane our bond just to show his dominance? The next morning, a terrified Ryker woke up realizing he could be ruined by the council for using the Command. I didn't scream or report him to the Alpha King. Instead, I wiped away my tears, gave him a gentle smile, and pretended to forgive him. He gave me a crumb of remorse, and I will use it to bake a loaf of revenge.

Kathern was forced out of her sister's home by her abusive brother-in-law, who violently demanded she pay half the rent or get out. To protect her sister from his rage, Kathern agreed to a six-month paper marriage with a stranger—an old woman's grandson, Bronson—in exchange for a simple apartment. But her new husband treated her like a scheming gold digger from the very first second. He showed up to City Hall in a cheap suit, shoved a brutal prenup in her face, and dumped her in a completely empty, dust-filled apartment. "Just don't cause any trouble," he warned coldly, before leaving her alone. When Kathern politely texted him to ask if he was coming home for dinner, he immediately blocked her number. Kathern was furious and baffled. She didn't want a dime of his money, nor did she care about his boring middle-management job. She had only agreed to this marriage for a place to sleep, yet this arrogant man treated her like absolute garbage. Refusing to swallow the insult, Kathern immediately dialed his grandmother to expose his behavior. She was going to build her own independent life, completely unaware that her "cheap corporate loser" of a husband was actually the ruthless billionaire CEO of the Vaughan empire.

My love. My ruin. Ashton Hampton saved me from my mother's scandal. I gave him my whole heart. Then he told me he was marrying another woman for business. My role? His hidden mistress. At our engagement party, his new fiancée accused me of ruining her brooch. Ashton didn't question it. He demanded I apologize. The crowd attacked. He watched. I climbed onto a helicopter and disappeared. Eighteen years later, I saw him on a park bench—broken, hollow, begging for one more word. I gave him two: “No comment.”

"Fuck...please..." He risks a nibble, sending shockwaves to my core. My back arches off the wall with a sharp moan. His hand slides between my legs, cupping my soaking panties. "Look how wet you are," he whispers, "...shaking, and I haven't even fucked you yet." He strokes my clit gently first, then harder. My toes curl, hair spilling into my sweaty face. He's breaking me, ruining me with just his tongue and fingers. I can't speak. I can't think. I just tremble in his arms. ********* The night I caught my fiancé cheating, something in me broke. I cried. I screamed. I drove - into the rain, into nowhere, into him. Cassian Cross. A stranger with gray eyes, a sinful mouth, and hands that made me forget my name. One night was all it took. One reckless mistake to burn away my heartbreak. Until he showed up at my mom's wedding... As my new stepbrother. Now, Cassian won't stop. He corners me in hallways, whispers filth at the altar, and looks at me like he still owns my body. But there's one thing he didn't tell me- He already belongs to someone else. A fiancée bound to him by a contract... and a secret that could destroy us both. He's dangerous. He's forbidden. He's promised to another. And God help me, I still can't stop wanting him.

Ivy is the last heir of the fallen Highmoor Pack. At sixteen, she entered Silvercrest Pack by a blood contract and became the partner of Alpha heir Julian. For three years, she was loyal and silent, but never loved. In a crisis, Julian abandoned her and chose Selena. Heartbroken, Ivy insisted on ending the contract. She refused Julian's gifts and threats, determined to regain freedom. When Ivy was attacked, silver-eyed Silas Blackwood saved her. He is the powerful Lycan King, above all Alphas. Ivy's wolf awakened and recognized Silas as her real fated mate. Escaping Julian's control, Ivy broke free from her painful past. Protected by the Lycan King, she regained dignity and strength. The abandoned Luna finally rises, embracing her true destiny and love.

Julianna was drowning in a corporate warzone, fighting a massive department deficit while fending off her mother’s relentless matchmaking. Then, a ghost from her past returned to shatter her reality. Eight years ago, Aidan Caldwell walked out of her life without a word. Now, he was back in New York as a ruthless billionaire, and a pitch-black Maybach started stalking her in the dim underground garage. She had no idea the driver hiding behind the obsidian-tinted glass was Aidan. She didn't know he had just choked a confession out of an executive, discovering that her "betrayal" eight years ago was a complete lie. "Stay away from her. The rules are mine now." Aidan had warned his rivals, his sanity tearing at the seams as he watched from the shadows while a creepy coworker put an arm around her shoulder. He shattered glasses and crushed her favorite white flowers in his penthouse, driven by a lethal, obsessive jealousy seeing other men touch what belonged to him. Julianna was completely in the dark, feeling only a heavy, predatory stare pinning her to the cold concrete. When a sudden, heartbreaking scent of cedarwood rolled out of the cracked car window, her brain short-circuited. Why was this terrifying stranger stalking her in the shadows? Desperate to save her career, Julianna recklessly agreed to fake an engagement with a wealthy heir this weekend. But she had no idea Aidan had already rigged her company's crisis, and the predator was about to tear her world apart to claim her back.

I handed my terminal brain cancer diagnosis to my billionaire husband, hoping for a shred of comfort. Instead, he sneered, accused me of faking it for a better divorce settlement, and told me to die quickly. Heartbroken, I turned to my sister, a top surgeon, who promised to save my life. But on the operating table, my soul was ripped from my body as I watched her inject me with a lethal drug. She didn't just murder me. She harvested my organs, forged my medical records to claim I was a hysterical liar who ran away, and went straight to my penthouse to take my place. She looked at my blank organ donation consent form and smiled. "Don't worry, he'll sign." And he did. My husband welcomed her into our bed and announced their grand wedding, while my own mother celebrated my disappearance as a chance to secure his wealth. I hovered in the air, screaming silently. Why did my own flesh and blood slaughter me to steal my life? Why did the man I loved hate me so much that he'd happily marry my killer? As my husband stood by the window, daring my runaway self to show up at their wedding, my spectral heart turned to stone. I decided not to fade away. I would stay right here as a ghost, and watch their monstrous charade burn to the ground.

For three years, Alyson endured a suffocating marriage, while her biological family treated her like a stray dog compared to her sister, Chelsea. She thought her husband Kenton would at least show her basic human decency. But during a horrific car crash in a freezing storm, Kenton used his own body to shield Chelsea. Meanwhile, a massive, out-of-control truck slammed into Alyson, throwing her broken body into a muddy ditch. With shattered ribs and blood blurring her vision, she reached out a trembling hand to him for help. Kenton just stared at her coldly through the rain. "Stop faking it. It's just a scrape." Without another glance, he wrapped his arm around the completely uninjured Chelsea and drove away, leaving Alyson to bleed out in the mud. Hours later, after being saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, her phone rang. It was Kenton, furiously demanding she bring Chelsea's anxiety medication to the hospital. He didn't even care to ask where she was, let alone realize she was severely injured. Alyson couldn't understand how the man she loved could be so blindly cruel, or why her own parents constantly orchestrated her destruction. The pathetic hope she had clung to for three years finally shattered into dust. She dragged her battered body back to their penthouse, hiding a divorce settlement inside a stack of tedious charity documents. When Kenton arrogantly signed his name without reading a single line, Alyson turned her back on the toxic family for good.

The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave. At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety. As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers. "Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in. That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission. Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away.