Best Modern Novels
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Latest Modern Web Novels

7.4
To escape my psychopathic, controlling lover, I faked my death in a Syrian war zone.
Thirty-seven reconstructive surgeries later, the terrified girl he kept locked in a basement was gone. I returned to New York as an untouchable neurosurgeon, Dr. Alivia Clay.
I only came back to save his grandfather—the one man who helped me escape.
I thought my flawless new face was the perfect armor. But the moment Collis Duncan saw me, he cornered me against the hospital wall.
He didn't recognize my face, but he recognized my panic. He trapped me in his arms, inhaling the faint scent of vanilla and orange blossom on my skin.
"You smell exactly like a ghost I used to know," he whispered.
Worse, a traumatized, mute little boy with Collis's exact gray eyes stumbled into me in the hallway.
The boy clutched my white coat and handed me a flashcard with a crude drawing of a woman.
"Mama."
My blood turned to ice. Five years ago, I was told my newborn baby burned to ashes in that medical tent.
How could this boy be alive? Why did Collis have my son while I mourned a pile of dust?
Now, Collis is ordering a microscopic background check, desperate to tear my fake life to the ground and cage me again.
But I'm not running anymore. Once I finish this surgery, I'm taking my son back.

8.5
Synopsis
It still feels so unreal being dumped by my boyfriend at the courtyard on the day of our wedding.
David didn't show up and when I called him to know the reason why.
He told me right to my face that he had found love with another woman who happened to be my best friend.
My heart was shattered into a million tiny pieces.
I was wallowing in self-pity when I overheard Lucas talking on the phone about needing a replacement for the woman who has collected a part-payment to be his wife.
I agreed to be his wife without thinking twice wanting to get back at my Ex.
What would happen when two strangers' hearts intertwined?
And what started as an arrangement became a bedrock for something real?
Read to find out.

7.4
Cassidy Fox woke up in a freezing, luxurious penthouse that wasn't hers.
Before she could clear her spinning head, ruthless billionaire Jaret Taylor threw a phone onto the bed.
The screen showed an explicit photo of her boyfriend, Burt, tangled in sheets with Jaret's fiancée.
Burt had fled the moment things got complicated, leaving Cassidy behind as a scapegoat to face a monster.
Jaret demanded an eye for an eye.
He trapped her in the room, choked her until she nearly blacked out, and threatened to completely destroy her career if she refused to submit to him.
When she still fought back and escaped, Jaret's men captured Burt and lured her to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a hurricane.
Burt was tied to a rusted pillar, beaten and sobbing in terror.
He didn't care about what degrading acts Jaret would force her to perform to pay off his debt.
"Cassidy, please, just listen to them! We can figure this out, just don't let them hurt me!"
Cassidy felt a suffocating wave of despair and injustice.
She had risked her life driving through a deadly storm to save the man who had once saved her from drowning, only to realize she was sacrificing herself for a selfish coward who had already betrayed her.
Jaret sat at the poker table, looking at her rain-soaked body with a cruel smirk.
"Every hand I win, you do exactly what we ask. If you manage to win a hand, we cut off one of Burt's fingers."
Looking at the pathetic man begging for his life, Cassidy slowly picked up her cards.

9.6
I came home exhausted from an eighteen-hour hospital shift, just wanting to rest in the bed my husband of three years rarely shared with me.
Instead, I found his mistress sprawled on our bedroom floor in a pool of stage blood, holding a knife and screaming that I had pushed her and killed her baby.
My husband, Kian, rushed in. He didn't care that I was still in my wrinkled scrubs, nor did he look at the blatantly fake ultrasound she threw on the floor.
"Shut up, you vicious bitch."
He shoved me out of the way so hard that my head cracked open against the sharp marble fireplace. As real blood gushed down my face and blinded me, he simply scooped her up and walked out, leaving me bleeding on the floor while the house staff watched in disgust.
As I lay there gasping, my medical training cut through the haze. The chronic weakness and dizzy spells I'd suffered for months weren't from overwork. Kian had been slowly poisoning me. I had played the meek, invisible wife for three years, enduring his coldness and his cheating. I didn't understand how the man I married could not only frame me, but actively try to murder me just to clear the way for his secret lover.
I dragged myself up, stitched my own torn scalp without a single tear, and pulled out my hidden military-grade laptop. I signed the divorce papers to claim my guaranteed half of his ten-billion-dollar trust fund, and logged back into my old hacker alias. The meek wife was dead.

8.2
She was the sacrifice-married off to the city's most ruthless billionaire to save a family that never loved her. But when she discovered his betrayal with her own sister, everything shattered.
Pregnant, penniless, and abandoned, Bella Hart disappeared into the night, vowing never to be powerless again.
Few years later, she returns as the CEO of an international empire, more powerful than anyone imagined possible. Her secret weapon? The little boy with piercing grey eyes who calls her "Mommy, he is the son of the man who destroyed her.
Caleb Black spent years drowning in regret, searching for the wife he threw away. Now she's back, untouchable and unforgiving. He'll do anything to reclaim what he lost his wife, his son, his chance at redemption.
But Bella didn't return to forgive, she returned to conquer.
With enemies circling, old wounds bleeding, and a passion that refuses to die, Bella must decide: Will she let the man who broke her back into her heart? Or will she destroy him the way he once destroyed her? In a world of billion-dollar deals and deadly secrets, love is the most dangerous gamble of all.

9.7
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.

9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.

7.9
For years, Elara Park endured being called "half-breed" and "weak blood" at pack meetings. Because she was a hybrid wolf, she trusted Zack Blackwood's sweet promises.
Then he rejected their fated mate bond moments after claiming her body.
Before she could even breathe through the soul-crushing agony, the news was already celebrating his engagement to her vindictive stepsister, Selina. The headlines gushed about their "perfect pureblooded union."
Her mother's call came like a final blow: "Elara, you're twenty-three now. It's time you contributed to the family."
Marry the worthless second son of a prominent Alpha family or lose her father's empire forever. They had her trapped, ready to steal her birthright and leave her powerless.
But as the heartbreak bled out, ice-cold determination took its place.
Elara went to the arranged meeting at the city's most exclusive club, determined to turn her mother's matchmaking scheme to her advantage. She would agree to marriage-but on her own terms.
When she found who she believed was Damian Sterling in the private suite, she cut straight to business: a contract marriage with clear boundaries, separate lives, and a guaranteed escape route.
What she didn't know? The devastatingly dangerous man who'd just signed her contract with a predator's smile wasn't the pathetic playboy she expected.
He was Dominic Wolfe-the Alpha King who'd been relentlessly hunting her for years.
And now, she'd just signed herself over to him completely.

9.2
My husband, a ruthless mafia Capo, brought his pregnant mistress to our anniversary party. He then ordered me to give her a blood transfusion, knowing my heart condition could kill me. As my life drained away, I knew my nine-year marriage was finally over.
It was my ninth wedding anniversary, and I stood in an expensive gown, watching Dominick Reyes, a feared mafia Capo, celebrate with our guests. But the celebration wasn't for us; Dominick had brought Chastity, his pregnant mistress, and then publicly ordered me out of our master suite. Chastity, who had faked her pregnancy, then framed me for an attack. Dominick forced me to give a blood transfusion to Chastity, knowing my heart condition made it potentially fatal. As my blood drained from my veins, sustaining the woman who had stolen my life, I felt my consciousness fading, hoping I would not wake up.
When I woke, Dominick had already paraded Chastity to a gala. He had drained me, used me, and then abandoned me in a hospital bed, breaking his promise of a divorce. I was nothing more than a debt payment, a pawn in his brutal game. Knowing he would never truly let me go, I calmly called a trusted contact. I would disappear from his world, become someone new, and this time, Dominick Reyes would pay.

8.9
Velvet Devil
8.9
It's the first look on my wedding day.
I turn... but my husband isn't there.
Instead, I see the stranger who ruined my life.
Here's the story:
Six years ago, I was on the worst first date in history.
A blind date with some jerk who wouldn't take no for an answer.
The handsome stranger swooped in.
Saved me.
And sat down to finish the date.
I thought it was crazy.
But we had insane chemistry.
We got to talking, one thing led to another, we ended up in the restaurant bathroom, and...
You know.
I got pregnant.
He disappeared.
Life: ruined.
I tried to move on.
For six years, I thought I succeeded.
But now, out of nowhere, he's back--on my wedding day, of all days.
Saying things that don't make any sense.
"Your fiancé isn't who you thought he was...
I'm not letting you marry him..."
And, worst of all...
"You're marrying me instead."

7.9
Estrella Ward gave five years of her life to her husband, draining her trust fund to save him from bankruptcy and raising his son as her own.
But one night, she woke up in a freezing hotel room, drugged, with a stranger's bite marks on her skin.
Her husband burst through the door with cameras, his vicious family, and her ten-year-old stepson, publicly framing her as a cheating whore.
The horrifying truth soon surfaced: her husband had drugged her himself, selling her body to his Wall Street boss to secure a senior partnership.
Estrella fought back with hidden security footage, blackmailing him into submission after discovering she was pregnant with his boss's child.
But fate dealt a cruel blow. She was diagnosed with aggressive, terminal breast cancer.
She refused to abort the baby to keep her leverage, but the cancer spread too fast.
She died alone in a cold hospital room, her vengeance unfinished, while her husband and his cruel family celebrated.
They thought they had successfully buried her and her secrets forever, escaping unpunished for destroying her life.
But when she gasped for air and opened her eyes again, she wasn't in a cold grave.
She was in a sterile hospital bed, looking at the perfectly manicured hands of Brooklyn Thompson—the notorious, empty-headed socialite everyone despised.
Estrella's soul had survived the abyss.
"You're going to pay for every drop of blood."
She clenched her new fists, the fire of her vengeance burning brighter than ever.

7.2
Six years ago, Seraphina's billionaire husband slapped a fake infertility report onto the marble table.
"Sign the divorce papers and get out," Julian commanded, looking at his wife of three years with pure, icy disgust.
Kicked out into the freezing rain while heavily pregnant, her own family abandoned her like garbage thanks to her sister's vicious lies.
She nearly died in a sterile operating room that night, giving birth to quadruplets, only for the grim-faced doctor to tell her two babies didn't survive.
She spent six agonizing years rebuilding her shattered identity in London, raising her surviving genius twins.
Meanwhile, her ex-husband paraded around New York with Livia, the very woman who orchestrated her ruin.
But when a medical emergency forced Seraphina back to the city, her twins accidentally crossed paths with two identical children at JFK airport.
Why did Julian's severely traumatized, mute daughter look exactly like her own little girl?
And why did her genius son just hack into his father's private server, only to find her delivery records locked behind military-grade encryption?
Staring at a faded ultrasound printout of four tiny shapes, a cold smile broke across Seraphina's face.
Tomorrow night, the discarded wife they thought they broke was going to crash the Astor-Vance charity gala, and she was going to burn their empire to the ground.

7.8
Alexis signed the divorce papers, leaving her with no assets, no alimony, and just the clothes on her back.
To forget her abusive husband Carlos, she got drunk and bought a high-end gigolo for the night with her last 800 dollars.
But the man she slept with wasn't an escort. He was Jarrett Hughes, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And while she was gone, her ex-husband was busy destroying her entire life.
Carlos framed her with fake photos of her cheating to justify the penniless divorce.
Then came the real nightmare.
Carlos and her own aunt secretly drained her family's corporate accounts, driving her father to jump off a building.
At the hospital, her grieving mother blamed her for the tragedy, violently attacking her in the ER.
To top it off, her cousin Josie—who was secretly sleeping with Carlos—held her father's ashes hostage.
"Crawl on your knees and pick it up, or the ashes go in the river," Josie sneered, throwing cash into the freezing slush.
Stripped of her marriage, her father, and her dignity, Alexis sat bleeding in the snow.
She couldn't understand why the people she loved most had coordinated such a brutal slaughter against her.
But Carlos and Josie made one fatal mistake.
They didn't know the "gigolo" Alexis had accidentally bought was the most powerful man in New York.
Alexis looked at the towering billionaire standing behind her, a vengeful fire burning in her eyes.
"I need you to get my father's ashes back," she said, pulling him into a kiss right in front of her ex-husband. "I don't care what it takes."

9.6
On Valentine's Day, love is in the air-but so is danger.
At 30,000 feet, trainee captain Jane Harley proves she's more than just a rising pilot when she navigates a terrifying turbulence that leaves passengers shaken and lives hanging by a thread. Calm under pressurej and fiercely capable, Jane becomes the unexpected hero of Flight 423.
But while she's saving lives in the sky, fate is already setting something far more complicated in motion.
Among the passengers is the powerful and ambitious mother of Jayden-Aurelia Air's largest shareholder-whose midair health crisis is only the beginning of a chain of events. Grateful and intrigued, she sets her sights on Jane... not just as a hero, but as a future daughter-in-law.
Jayden, a grounded pilot with a sharp mind and guarded heart, has no interest in his mother's schemes-until one unexpected name changes everything.
In a world of wealth, expectations, and high-altitude emotions, two lives are about to collide.
Love, ambition, and fate take flight in Falling at 30,000 Feet.

8.5
Diana slipped on the penthouse stairs, her body emptying out as she miscarried her first baby.
Gasping in a pool of her own blood, she called her husband, Curtis, begging for an ambulance.
"Stop being dramatic and call the house doctor. I don't have time for your tantrums right now."
He coldly hung up, and later forced her to put on a diamond necklace and attend a high-society dinner while she was actively losing their child.
At the party, his mother and sister publicly mocked her pale face, while Curtis watched with absolute disgust.
When she finally collapsed, he dragged her to his car, only to kick her out and abandon her on a freezing, dark highway in the middle of the night.
His mistress, Carla, had faked a panic attack and claimed she was bleeding too, so he rushed to the hospital to comfort his lover, leaving his wife to bleed out on the asphalt.
For three years, Diana had endured this hell, believing she had trapped him into marriage to save her father's dying company.
She couldn't understand how Curtis could worship a manipulative fraud who stole the credit for saving his life years ago, while treating his real wife like garbage.
But after surviving the night, Diana discovered the devastating truth: her father had willingly gone to federal prison just to buy her the protection of the Alston family name.
Stripped of her illusions, Diana signed the divorce papers, giving up every single penny.
She was done being their silent victim. It was time to remind them exactly who Diana Wilcox was.

7.5
My biological mother finally came to the rundown trailer park to take me to her wealthy new family in New York.
But instead of the good life she promised, I was treated worse than a stray dog.
My stepbrother broke my legs with a golf club just for fun, while my perfect stepsister smiled and watched.
My mother didn't even try to stop them. She let them lock me in a car and set it on fire.
I was burned alive, the smell of gasoline and toxic smoke filling my lungs as they walked away with my life.
Until my last agonizing breath, I couldn't understand why my own flesh and blood hated me so much.
Why did I have to die just so her new family could thrive?
Opening my eyes again, the smell of smoke vanished, replaced by the cheap coffee of the diner I worked at.
I was seventeen again, on the exact day the black Bentley pulled up to take me away.
This time, I wasn't going to be their victim.
I deliberately stalled our departure, saving us from the massive highway pileup that was supposed to be my grave.
And when my stepbrother threw a metal dart at my face on my first day back, I didn't just dodge.
I let New York's most ruthless billionaire step in, ruining his ten-million-dollar watch in the process.
"Since that hand likes to throw things, I will take the hand as payment."
Watching my arrogant stepfamily fall to their knees and beg for mercy, I knew my revenge had just begun.

7.1
For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big.
On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe."
Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero."
Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends.
"She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy."
Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder.
I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number.
"Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."

8.9
I died in the apocalypse, only to wake up as Kenzie Banks, a bankrupt high-society monster in an interstellar beast-world.
But before I could even process my new reality, a cold AI voice informed me of my impending death.
"Your contract beast-husbands possess the legal right to execute you at the end of the two-month trial period."
I rushed to the basement and saw the horrific truth. The original Kenzie had starved them, whipped them with thermal blades, sent their brothers to die as cannon fodder, and framed the youngest to rot in a maximum-security prison.
Now, these lethal, broken men were methodically planning to rip my organs out the second the contract dissolved. To make matters worse, she had squandered her fortune on a man who despised her, leaving me two million credits in debt and facing imminent exile to the deadly wastelands.
I had survived rotting zombies on Earth, only to be trapped in a weak, universally hated body, doomed to be butchered by the very people I was supposed to call family. Why did I have to pay the ultimate price for a psychotic woman's deadly sins?
I refused to just sit around and wait for my execution.
Tapping into my apocalyptic subspace inventory, I hauled out military-grade rations, healed their bleeding wounds, and slammed a legally binding divorce contract on the table.
If I wanted to survive this sixty-day countdown, I had to turn my executioners into my loyal allies—starting with breaking the husband she framed out of prison.

9.4
I was lying in a sterile hospital room, dying of cancer, with only a fake infertility report to keep me company.
Right before my heart monitor flatlined, a stranger walked in and handed me a medical file.
He told me that my fiancé, Garret, had zero sperm viability. The baby my adoptive sister, Beryl, was carrying wasn't his.
When Beryl got pregnant years ago, my adoptive parents forced me to break my engagement and take the blame for being barren.
I was discarded by Garret, mocked by Beryl's triumphant smiles, and kicked out of the house.
I was left to rot alone in a hospital bed while they lived the perfect life stolen from me.
My entire existence had been a cage built on a single, disgusting lie.
The anger burned away my despair. Why was I the only one who didn't know?
Why did I let them use me as a maid and a shield for their filthy secrets?
As the darkness swallowed me, I prayed for just one more chance.
I opened my eyes to the sound of my adoptive mother yelling my name.
The calendar on the wall read March 15, 2019—the exact day they forced me to give up Garret.
This time, I didn't cry or beg.
"You want Beryl to have Garret? Fine," I told my shocked adoptive parents. "But I want a cash buyout, and we are legally severing this adoption."
Then, I set my sights on Douglass Ward—the stranger from the hospital room.

8.2
My wedding to Ethan Reed was just weeks away.
After seven years, I was certain of our perfect future.
Then, Ethan claimed "selective amnesia" from a head injury, forgetting only me.
I tried to make him remember, until I overheard his video call.
"Total genius move," he boasted to friends.
His amnesia was a fake "hall pass" to pursue influencer Chloe Vance before our wedding.
Heartbroken, I feigned belief.
I endured his open flirting with Chloe and their taunting selfies.
He mocked my distress, prioritizing Chloe's fake emergency.
After an accident he caused, he abandoned me, injured, choosing to send Chloe to the hospital first.
He even tried to cut me off financially.
How could my fiancé be this cruel, calculating monster?
His betrayal poisoned every memory.
I felt like a fool for trusting such boundless cruelty.
His audacity left me reeling.
But I wouldn’t be his victim.
Instead of breaking, a cold plan formed.
I would shed my identity, become Olivia Carter.
I would disappear, leaving him, my past, and his engagement ring behind forever, claiming my freedom.

7.5
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.

8.6
To escape an abusive ex who blacklisted her from every job in the city, Annabelle fled to New York with nothing but her late grandfather's secret marriage token.
Destitute, she was unexpectedly taken in by the ultra-wealthy Barrera family.
Meeting their sweet, handsome nephew, Davion, she naturally assumed he was her arranged fiancé.
Seeing that Davion already had a girlfriend he loved, Annabelle felt a deep sense of guilt about the secret contract.
Sitting in his passenger seat one morning, she confessed her true identity and offered to help him secretly break the marriage alliance.
But Davion just looked at her in sheer panic.
"What engagement?"
Before Annabelle could explain, his phone accidentally went on speaker.
A low, terrifyingly calm voice echoed through the car.
It was Jasper Barrera—the ruthless, cold-blooded head of the family, and the terrifying tyrant Annabelle had accidentally offended in the estate's greenhouse just days ago.
He had heard every single word of her plan to break the sacred family trust.
Davion's face went completely ashen as he hastily pulled the car over, his hands shaking violently on the steering wheel.
"Anna," he whispered, looking like he had just seen a ghost. "Who do you think you are engaged to?"
That was when the horrifying realization crushed the air out of her lungs.
She wasn't engaged to the sweet nephew. She was engaged to the monster.

9.4
When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married.
His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing-no money, no identity, no hope.
But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test-and twenty-three years of relentless search.
"Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars."

8.1
I spent three years working as my fiancé Cam's shadow analyst, writing his reports and securing his corporate bonuses.
But at a company banquet, I opened a lounge door and found him pinning my stepsister Kiley against a sofa.
"I'll cancel the engagement," Cam murmured against her neck. "She's just a boring machine."
Instead of crying, I dug into his accounts and found he had embezzled five million dollars to buy Kiley a luxury penthouse.
When I presented the irrefutable photos and bank statements to my adoptive family, my mother slapped me across the face.
She accused me of fabricating the evidence out of jealousy, fiercely protecting her biological daughter while throwing me out into the cold.
Cam even tracked me down on the street, raising his fist to beat me just for making his mistress cry.
Three years of my devotion were treated like absolute garbage, discarded for a fragile hypocrite.
They all thought I was an orphaned nobody who would swallow the humiliation and walk away empty-handed.
They didn't know that right after catching them, I had crashed into the chest of the most dangerous man in the room.
Hayes Cooper, the King of Wall Street, and Cam's ruthless uncle.
Sitting in the back of an Uber, I emailed Hayes a hidden file containing all of Cam's federal crimes.
I didn't just want the penthouse back. I wanted my ex in prison, and his Director's chair for myself.