Drowning In Betrayal: Watch Me Shine Now
I was lying in the emergency room with acute gastroenteritis on my birthday, but my mother ordered me to rip out my IV needle.
She threatened to freeze all my accounts if I didn't show up to my adopted sister's high-society matchmaking party.
When I arrived, dragging my weak body, I caught my fiancé Julio protecting his mistress.
Worse, my adopted sister Billie framed me for stealing my own grandmother's heirloom earrings just to play the victim in front of New York's elite.
I refused to be their stepping stone and projected the evidence of Julio's affair on the massive ballroom screen.
In a rage, my father cursed me, and my mother slapped me across the face so hard my mouth bled.
During the ensuing physical struggle, my adopted sister, the mistress, and I all plunged into the freezing outdoor swimming pool.
My fiancé desperately swam to save his mistress, while my own brother rushed to pull my adopted sister above the water.
I stopped kicking and let my heavy, soaked clothes pull me down to the bottom of the black pool.
Why did my own flesh and blood treat me like garbage?
After a mysterious bodyguard pulled me from the water, I watched my family frantically wrap the other two women in warm blankets.
I didn't shed a single tear.
"I am no longer a part of this family. I never want to see any of you again."
I publicly canceled the engagement, turned my back on the wealthy estate, and walked away into the freezing winter night.
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Chapter 3
Amanda stood on the concrete steps and watched the rear window of the Maybach roll down. Julio's face appeared in the gap. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were full of irritation.
The driver hurried out and pulled the rear door open. Amanda walked down the steps. Her face was a mask of ice. She slid into the leather seat and pulled her coat around her legs.
The door slammed shut. Instantly, a thick, suffocating smell filled Amanda's nose. It was a cheap, heavy rose perfume.
Her stomach violently rejected the scent. Acid rushed up her throat. She slapped her hand over her mouth and nose. She reached for the door panel and slammed her finger on the window button. The glass slid down, letting the freezing winter air blast into the cabin.
Julio flinched as the cold wind hit his face. He reached over and pulled the master switch, forcing the window back up.
"Are you insane?" Julio snapped. "You claim you are sick, and now you want to freeze us both to death. Stop throwing tantrums."
Amanda dropped her hand from her mouth. She let out a short, cold laugh. Her eyes locked onto the lapel of his dark suit. A single, long strand of blonde hair was stuck to the fabric. Amanda's hair was pitch black.
"Your car smells like a cheap brothel," Amanda said. "Did you lose track of time at the club?"
Julio's eyes widened for a fraction of a second. His hand shot up to his tie, tugging at the knot. It was his tell. He only did that when he was cornered.
He dropped his hand and glared at her. "Are you having me followed? You are invading my privacy."
Amanda pulled her phone from her pocket. She opened the photo Jeanette had sent her. She shoved the screen directly into Julio's face. The bright backlight illuminated the sweat forming on his upper lip.
Julio stared at the picture of his hand wrapped around Seraphina's waist. He swallowed hard. He pushed the phone away.
"It is a business dinner," Julio said. His voice was louder now, defensive. "I was entertaining clients. Seraphina was there to assist."
The smell of the rose perfume mixed with his lies. Amanda felt physically sick.
"Fire her," Amanda said. Her voice was completely steady. "Fire Seraphina Vance tomorrow morning, and never speak to her again."
Julio stiffened. He squared his shoulders and looked down at her.
"No," Julio said. "Seraphina is a crucial part of the acquisitions team. I am not firing a key employee just because you are feeling insecure."
Amanda stared at him. "She is an intern who cannot even read a basic profit and loss statement. Do not insult my intelligence."
Julio's face turned red. He slammed his open palm against the leather center console. The loud smack echoed in the small space.
"Stop acting like a jealous shrew!" Julio yelled. "You are always so cold. You never smile. You never support me. Seraphina actually looks up to me. She knows how to treat a man."
Amanda stopped breathing. The air in her lungs turned to ice. The last tiny ember of hope she had for this three-year relationship went out. It did not fade. It was crushed.
She leaned back against the headrest. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest to keep her hands from shaking.
"It is her or me," Amanda said. The words tasted like ash in her mouth.
Julio let out a loud, mocking scoff. He leaned closer to her.
"You will never leave me," Julio said. His voice dripped with pity. "Without the Mathews family name protecting you, your parents will eat you alive. You need me."
He reached into his jacket pocket.
"If you behave tonight and play the perfect fiancée," Julio said, "I will buy you that diamond necklace you looked at last month."
Amanda turned her head away from him. The proximity of his breath made her skin crawl.
"Disgusting," Amanda whispered.
Julio's jaw tightened. His pride was hit. He sat back in his seat and pressed a button on the ceiling console. The thick, soundproof glass partition rolled up, separating them from the driver.
The back seat fell into a dead, suffocating silence. The only sound was the heavy thud of the tires rolling over the asphalt.
Amanda turned her face to the window. The yellow glow of the streetlights flashed across her pale skin in a rhythmic, hypnotic pattern. Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching her teeth.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julio pull out his phone. He angled the screen away from her, but she could see the soft, affectionate smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He was texting her.
A sharp, physical pain pierced Amanda's chest. It felt like a hand had reached through her ribs and squeezed her heart until it bruised.
She forced her eyes away from him. She opened her phone and tapped on her notes app. The screen was filled with a long, numbered list. Dates. Times. Lies. Canceled dinners. Smudged lipstick on his collars.
She scrolled to the very bottom. She typed the current date.
Defended his mistress. Tried to buy my silence with jewelry.
She looked at the number at the top of the screen. It was 98.
She locked her phone. The car merged onto the Long Island Expressway. The distant, glowing lights of the massive estates appeared on the horizon. The slaughterhouse was waiting.
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8.3
Imogen Montgomery was the perfect billionaire heiress, deeply in love and ready to marry her fiancé, Clark Ellis.
That all ended the night her cousin Kathleen ripped the sapphire pendant from her neck and pushed her into a pool of toxic chemicals to die.
Two years later, Imogen's eyes snapped open. But she didn't wake up in a hospital. She woke up tied to a stained mattress, trapped in the battered body of Briana, a teenage girl from the slums who had just been sold to a local trafficker.
After violently fighting her way out of a cheap motel, she discovered the horrifying truth. Kathleen had taken over the Montgomery Group. She had locked Imogen's grieving parents away in a psychiatric facility as prisoners.
And worst of all, Kathleen was now flaunting her stolen wealth online, preparing to marry Clark.
A wave of pure, white-hot rage boiled in her blood. Kathleen had murdered her, stolen her family, and was playing the perfect grieving cousin. How was she supposed to fight back? She was just a runaway nobody now. If she tried to expose the truth, Kathleen's security would shoot her dead in the street.
She needed a weapon. She needed a shield. She needed the one man Kathleen feared.
Covered in mud and blood, Briana intercepted Clark's car in the freezing rain. She was going to infiltrate his home as his vulgar, unhinged fake mistress, and she would drag Kathleen straight down to hell.
7.3
"This... this is wrong," she stuttered, trying not to meet his eyes. "You're my stepfather. Let's forget it ever happened."
"How can I forget it happened, Nicole?" He questioned, gripping her chin. "When the image of you whimpering for more replays in my head every fucking night?"
When one night of desperation turns into Nicole ending up in bed with a nameless stranger, she's almost shocked to death when she moves in with her mother's new husband to see that the nameless stranger is her new stepfather.
Tristan Michelson has always been in control of his emotions, but he can barely control himself when he realizes the masked stripper is his new stepdaughter.
8.3
⚠️ Warning: This book contains explicit scenes, strong language, mature content, sexual kinks and dark themes that may not be suitable for some readers. Read at your own risk.
Trevor Matai had already made himself an enemy of half the school just by being the smartest person in the class. So when he won the student body presidency, they just found newer and louder reasons to come for him.
What he was not prepared for was jerking awake from a nightmare in the middle of class, calling out Sean Pierre's name in front of everyone, and having a very visible and undeniable 'boner' to go along with it. Does that mean he got 'bricked up' for Sean.
That was quite unbelievable because Sean Pierre, who is a star quarterback and the school's golden boy, happens to be the most aggressively straight guy Trevor had ever been forced to share oxygen with. So, Sean was the absolute last person his subconscious should have chosen.
And now the whole school knew.
What followed was supposed to be punishment as a result of the two clashing over school activity funds. Instead, something neither of them planned for started building because the closer Sean kept him, the harder it became to pretend that none of it meant anything.
But Sean was the star quarterback and there were rules that came with that title. And wanting Trevor wasn't something the world around them was going to quietly allow.
Two boys with two different dreams that couldn't both survive this situation, which seemed like a rivalry that had already drawn blood and a romantic feeling between them that refused to take note of that.
Society had already written the rules, but they were about to break those rules and rewrite them.
Because when someone is willing to burn everything down for you... the only question left is whether you are brave enough to let them and decide what you are willing to risk for love.
7.2
For ten years, Aurora was abandoned by her wealthy family to rot in the countryside.
When she finally returned, there was no warm welcome. The Lott family only brought her back to replace her adopted sister in an arranged marriage with Damian Yates, a notoriously violent, crippled billionaire, just to save their bankrupt company.
Her grandmother mocked her as uneducated trash. Her fake sister feigned disgust at her very presence.
When her biological father desperately tried to stop them from sending his daughter to her death, the family turned on him.
Her grandmother struck her father across the face, kicked the three of them out of the manor into the freezing rain, and arrogantly declared they would starve on the streets by nightfall.
They thought Aurora was just a helpless, pathetic hillbilly who would quietly accept being sold as livestock.
They had no idea that over the past decade, she had survived the darkest corners of the world, becoming a lethal operative with unimaginable power.
Standing in the cold rain, Aurora didn't shed a single tear.
She calmly pulled out her encrypted phone, personally canceled the billionaire's marriage contract, and ordered her hacker to completely freeze the Lott family's accounts.
"Total financial annihilation. Burn them to the ground."
But as she watched her abusers' legacy crumble, a classified file arrived on her phone, revealing that the very billionaire she just rejected was tied to her mother's unsolved murder.
The real hunt was just beginning.
8.6
For two years, I was trapped behind my own eyes, a prisoner in my own skull.
A crazed fan had hijacked my body after a brutal car crash, wearing my skin like a cheap suit.
When my soul finally locked back into my flesh in a cramped hospital room, I realized she had destroyed everything I built.
This parasitic stalker had drained my massive fortune to zero, buying luxury gifts for a mediocre actor and turning me into the internet's most hated woman.
My phone was flooded with death threats, and the hashtag demanding I go to hell was trending at number one.
Even the hospital nurses despised me. One marched into my room, raising her hand to violently slap my pale cheek.
"You psychotic bitch, you make me sick!"
Worse, my sprawling Beverly Hills estate had been foreclosed and sold to a mysterious billionaire named Kasey Dominguez.
I had absolutely nothing left. No money. No reputation. No home.
The sheer violation of watching a psychotic stranger ruin my life while I was locked in the passenger seat of my own mind made my blood boil.
I refused to let her destroy my legacy.
As the nurse's hand descended, my atrophied muscles snapped into action.
I twisted her wrist until the joint popped, grabbed the keys to my freedom, and slipped out into the cold Los Angeles night.
I was going to take my life back, starting with the billionaire who thought he owned my house.
9.0
Seventeen years after going missing, Brooklyn was finally brought back to her ultra-wealthy biological family.
But instead of a tearful reunion, her parents and sisters treated her like infectious garbage, mocking her cheap clothes and calling her a country bumpkin.
They dumped her into a remedial class to hide her away, cut off her allowance, and threatened to lock down her trust fund to force her into absolute submission.
One night, Brooklyn stood in the shadows of the estate and overheard a conversation that shattered everything.
She hadn't wandered off as a child.
Her parents had deliberately thrown her away because a fake fortune teller claimed her birth chart was a jinx to the family's wealth.
They felt zero remorse, only plotting to banish her again the moment she turned eighteen.
Her biological father thought he was putting a leash on a helpless, uneducated girl by cutting off her pocket change.
He had no idea that Brooklyn was the anonymous VIP who casually dropped sixty million dollars on an emerald at the city's most exclusive auction.
He didn't know she was the elusive medical genius that the world's most powerful billionaires were currently tearing the city apart to find.
The last microscopic shred of hope for a family withered into cold ash in her chest.
"Lock down my trust fund?"
She pulled out her encrypted phone and activated her shadow networks, severing herself entirely from their pathetic surveillance.
Since they believed she was a jinx, she was going to show them exactly what a real curse looked like.