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 7
The emerald earring gleamed in Amanda's palm. The whispers of the crowd turned into a loud, buzzing roar of judgment directed at the woman hanging from the guards' hands.
Seraphina's makeup ran down her face in dark streaks. She shook her head violently from side to side.
"I didn't steal it!" Seraphina sobbed. She twisted her neck and locked her eyes on Julio. She bit down hard on her lower lip, her chest heaving. "Julio, please! Tell them!"
Julio's face was rigid. He looked at the earring in Amanda's hand, then down at Seraphina's tear-stained face. The muscle in his jaw ticked.
He shoved his way past a group of shocked investors. He threw his shoulder into the chest of the security guard holding Seraphina's right arm.
"Get your hands off her," Julio growled.
The crowd gasped again. The heir to the Mathews family was physically fighting security for a thief.
Julio ripped off his custom suit jacket. He wrapped it tightly around Seraphina's shaking shoulders and pulled her flush against his chest. He glared at the room, daring anyone to step forward.
Amanda watched his hands pull the fabric around the other woman. A block of solid ice formed in her chest. Her lungs felt paralyzed.
"Are you insane?" Amanda asked. Her voice cracked. She pressed her free hand hard against her stomach to stop the cramping. "She is wearing stolen jewelry. You are protecting a thief."
Julio snapped his head toward Amanda. The look in his eyes was pure, unadulterated hatred.
"She is not a thief," Julio yelled. He pointed a finger directly at Amanda's face. "You are a liar. You planted that earring on her."
The ballroom went dead silent again.
Amanda's eyes widened. She looked at the heavy emerald in her hand. She looked back at Julio. "What?"
"You are jealous of her," Julio said. His voice echoed off the high ceiling. "Seraphina is brilliant at work. You are nothing but a cold, paranoid shrew. You brought that earring down here and dropped it to frame her, just to ruin this party."
The crowd inhaled sharply. The socialites who had mocked Seraphina earlier were now looking at Amanda with deep disgust.
Amanda's hand began to shake. She held the earring up higher. "This is physical proof! I found it on the floor after she ran out of the hallway!"
Julio scoffed loudly. He pulled Seraphina closer. "You are having a psychotic break, Amanda. You have been acting crazy for months. You make up lies to get attention because you know I am tired of you."
Seraphina buried her face in Julio's chest. She let out a loud, pathetic sob. Her fingers clutched the fabric of his shirt, playing the helpless victim perfectly.
On the stage, Billie leaned into the microphone.
"Amanda, please," Billie said. Her voice was soft and full of pity. "Do not use grandmother's memory to bully someone. It is cruel."
The crowd turned entirely against Amanda. The whispers grew louder, filled with words like "crazy," "jealous," and "pathetic."
Amanda stood alone in the center of the spotlight. The physical weight of the stares pressed down on her shoulders. The room started to spin. Her vision blurred at the edges.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted fresh blood. The sharp pain forced her brain to focus. She locked her knees to keep from falling.
She stared directly into Julio's eyes.
"You are throwing away basic facts and human dignity for her?" Amanda asked. Her voice was a raspy whisper, but the room was so quiet everyone heard it.
"The fact is you are a liar," Julio said coldly. "Apologize to Seraphina right now, or I am calling off the wedding."
The threat hung in the air.
Meredith broke through the crowd. She lunged at Amanda. Her manicured hands clamped down on Amanda's wrist. Meredith dug her nails into Amanda's skin and violently ripped the emerald earring out of her palm.
"Shut your mouth!" Meredith hissed in Amanda's ear. "You are destroying this family. Apologize to him immediately."
Amanda looked at her mother's furious face. She looked at the empty space in her palm where the earring had been.
The last thread holding her heart together snapped. It did not hurt anymore. The ice in her chest expanded, freezing everything inside her.
Amanda stood up perfectly straight. She looked at Julio. She looked at Seraphina. She looked at Meredith.
The corners of Amanda's mouth twitched. She smiled. It was a cold, dead, terrifying smile.
She turned her gaze back to Billie on the stage. "Before I apologize," Amanda said, her voice piercing the silence, "tell me, Billie. Does the earring you claim to have lost have my grandmother's initials, 'AR', engraved on the back of the gold setting? Because the one in my mother's hand does. Let us see yours."
Billie's fake tears instantly stopped. The color drained from her face. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The crowd shifted, murmuring in confusion as they noticed Billie's sudden panic.
Julio saw the smile fade from Billie's face, but he was too arrogant to understand the trap. He still thought he had won. He let out a breath and turned to lead Seraphina away.
The heavy wooden doors at the back of the ballroom slammed open.
Rosa, the housekeeper, ran into the room. She was panting heavily. In her hands, she held a silver serving tray high above her head.
"Wait!" Rosa yelled.
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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.