Death Of A Marriage, Birth Of Revenge
My husband watched as my skin melted, scalded by boiling soup, yet his hands were busy comforting my attacker. Five years of marriage, built on a foundation of my family's power, crumbled with a single, brutal act of betrayal. He bought me off with a penthouse and a trust fund, but I tore out my IV and threw his charity back in his face.
It was our fifth anniversary, but my husband, Ethan, remained distant, avoiding any talk of Chicago or the mafia protection my family once offered him. He then pushed a black velvet box across the table.
Inside was a Separation and Property Division Agreement, not a diamond. He told me to sign for Ilene's security, offering millions. When I refused, Ilene hurled boiling soup. Ethan shielded her, not me, as the scalding liquid melted my dress.
With second-degree burns, he blamed me, ordering me from our home for Ilene’s comfort. My family saved him, yet he sacrificed my body and marriage for another woman.
The love I felt turned to ash. What kind of debt demanded my flesh and marriage?
I ripped the IV from my arm, hurling his "charity" keys back. My diamond ring placed on the agreement, I walked away. From today on, Ethan, you and I are dead to each other.
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Chapter 2
Aurora POV:
Ilene didn't wait for a response. She charged into the room in her stilettos, making a direct line for me.
Ethan reacted instantly. He took a wide step forward, using his massive frame to physically block the space between Ilene and me.
Ilene didn't stop. She threw herself directly into Ethan's arms, her hands gripping his suit lapels in a death hold as tears immediately flooded her face.
I stood frozen in place. I watched my husband embrace another woman on our fifth anniversary. The spasms in my stomach twisted into a sickening knot.
Ethan's large hand moved to Ilene's back, rubbing it in soothing circles. His voice dropped to a level of softness I had never heard him use with me. He asked her why she wasn't resting in the hospital.
It was his subconscious double standard. To him, Ilene was fragile glass that needed protecting, while I was an unbreakable warrior who needed nothing.
Ilene turned her head slightly from his chest. With red-rimmed eyes, she pointed a shaking finger at me and shrilly accused me of occupying a position that didn't belong to me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. A mocking smirk tugged at the corner of my lips. I coldly reminded her that I was his legal wife.
The moment Ilene heard the words "legal wife," she acted as if she had been struck by lightning. She began to hyperventilate violently, pressing both hands over her ears.
Ethan whipped his head around and glared at me. He growled a harsh command, telling me to shut up and stop triggering her condition.
My heart sank completely to the bottom of my chest. I realized then that the truth meant absolutely nothing to this man.
Outside the open doors, a terrified waiter pushed a second serving cart to the threshold, too afraid to step inside.
Resting on top of the cart was a ceramic tureen of French lobster bisque, brought straight from the kitchen. It was still boiling.
Ilene's peripheral vision caught the cart. A flash of pure, calculated madness flickered in her eyes.
She had clawed her way up from the bottom of the underworld. She knew exactly how to use environmental chaos to her advantage.
Ilene suddenly shoved Ethan away. Feigning a complete emotional breakdown, she acted as if she were trying to flee the room and bolted toward the door.
Ethan immediately spun around to chase her, turning his back to me completely.
I frowned. My instincts flared, acutely aware that Ilene's trajectory wasn't aimed at the hallway. She was aiming directly for the cart.
Ilene crashed hard into the silver cart. The metal lid clattered to the floor, and a thick cloud of scalding steam instantly billowed into the air.
The waiter stumbled backward in horror, desperately trying to keep the cart from tipping over.
Ilene spun around. With her bare hands, she grabbed the sides of the ceramic tureen filled with boiling soup.
The extreme heat instantly turned her fingers a bright, angry red, but she gritted her teeth and refused to let go.
I registered the danger a second too late. I instinctively stepped backward, but the heel of my shoe caught on the thick edge of the rug.
Ethan reached Ilene's side. He stretched out his hands, trying to pry the burning tureen from her grip.
Ilene dodged his hands with surprising agility, her eyes locked dead onto mine.
She screamed at the top of her lungs that because I existed, Ethan refused to marry her.
I steadied my footing. I stared at her with ice in my veins and warned her to put the soup down, or she would face the consequences.
It was a mafia heiress's final ultimatum, dripping with the promise of blood.
Ilene didn't stop. Instead, an eerie smile stretched across her face, as if my threat was exactly what she had been waiting for.
She hoisted the heavy tureen and violently hurled the boiling lobster bisque straight at me.
The orange-red liquid formed a deadly arc in the air, radiating a pungent seafood aroma and a wave of searing heat.
My pupils shrank to pinpricks. I threw my left arm up to shield my face.
Ethan's eyes tracked the flying liquid, and his brain made a split-second, instinctual choice.
"Go to hell, you thief occupying his side!"
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8.6
In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters.
I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone.
Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate.
They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run.
As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance.
"She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed.
"Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back.
I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood.
Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start.
Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room.
Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever.
I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me.
This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.
8.6
"What do you think people would say if they found out you don't have a dick?" Christian asked, his voice low and dripping with seduction. His hand pressed firmly against my crotch, fingers exploring the flat, unfamiliar emptiness there. A devilish smirk curved his lips. "Or if they discovered these voluptuous breasts you've been hiding so well?"
A strangled moan slipped from my throat as his hand slid under my shirt, his fingers brushing over my hardened nipples, teasing them with slow, deliberate strokes.
"Which do you think they'd call you?" he murmured, eyes gleaming. "A boy with tits... or a dickless little fraud?"
I stared into his hungry blue eyes, words failing me.
"The term you're looking for is 'girl,'" came Xavier's smooth voice from the bathroom doorway. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click, his gaze raking over me with open interest. "So tell me, little girl... what the hell is someone like you doing in an all-boys dorm?"
Christian's smirk widened. "She wants to be devoured by boys like us." His fingers gave my nipple one last firm pinch before he leaned in closer, breath hot against my ear. "And I'll be more than happy to give her a taste."
8.2
For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room.
Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her.
At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister.
When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death.
Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop.
Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused."
She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear.
"My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened."
As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.
9.2
She loved him until she lost herself.
Now, behind locked doors and shattered glass, she must learn to breathe again.
When she first met Lloyd, he was magnetic and intoxicating. The kind of man who turned every head when he entered a room, who spoke in promises sweet enough to taste. With him, she felt chosen, cherished, and safe.
But safety was an illusion, and love became a weapon.
And slowly, piece by piece, he dismantled her until nothing of the woman she once was remained.
Now institutionalized after a breakdown, she begins to piece together the brutal truth of what really happened in the shadows of their love story. Memories sting like open wounds: the manipulation disguised as tenderness, the apologies that blurred into threats, the desperate hope that tomorrow he'd be the man she fell for again.
Yet beneath the grief and the shame, a quiet rebellion stirs, a vow to reclaim her voice, her freedom, and her life. Because this is not just a story of how she fell apart. It is a story of how she rises.
Haunting, raw, and achingly intimate, Boys like him peels back the glittering mask of a toxic love affair to reveal the kind of darkness that hides in plain sight, and the unbreakable strength it takes to escape it.
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.
7.4
Clara Davis was trained to seduce, deceive, and destroy.
Her mission is simple: infiltrate billionaire Jeffery Rothwell's life, gain his trust, and help seize his empire in exchange for the freedom she has always craved.
But the deeper she slips into his dangerous world, the more the lines between mission and desire begin to blur. Falling for him was never part of the plan and neither was discovering that the man she was sent to manipulate may not be the real Jeffery at all.
Now trapped in a deadly web of obsession, power, and hidden identities. Clara is caught between the organization that owns her, the monster who remade her, and a love that has turned into vengeance. Clara must survive a man who sees everything, controls everything, and may be far more dangerous than the organization that created her.
Because in this game of seduction and revenge, love might be the deadliest trap of all.