He Broke My Spirit, I Soared
I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history.
But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me.
He swam past me.
He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water.
When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl.
"You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home."
Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her.
I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife."
He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps.
He was wrong.
While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room.
I was packing his ring into a cardboard box.
I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead.
By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.
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Chapter 3
Eliana Carter POV
Tyler's estate party was less of a social gathering and more of a mandatory summons for the junior circle. If you were under twenty-five and your last name carried weight in the Outfit, you were there.
Technically, I shouldn't have gone. My knee was heavily wrapped in an ACE bandage, hidden beneath the fabric of my wide-leg trousers. I was limping slightly, favoring the injury with every step.
But staying home would look like defeat. And I wasn't defeated. For the first time in years, I was liberated.
I stood by the bar, nursing a club soda while the whispers followed me like a cloud of gnats. Everyone knew about the pool. Everyone knew about the stairs.
"Eliana."
Mason Riley nodded at me as he approached. He was Jax's best friend, a Consigliere in training, and right now, he looked at me with unbearable pity. "You look... good."
"I am good, Mason," I said, keeping my voice even.
Then, the room went dead quiet.
Jax walked in. Catalina was draped on his arm. She was wearing a dress that cost more than my car-a gift from him, no doubt.
He scanned the room, hunting for me. When his eyes locked onto mine, he lifted his chin. A challenge.
He expected me to run. He expected me to cry.
Instead, I took a slow sip of my soda and turned back to Mason. "So, tell me about the new shipment."
Mason blinked, surprised by my dismissal. "Uh, yeah. Well..."
Jax didn't like that. He steered Catalina toward us, carving a violent path through the crowd.
"Enjoying the night?" Jax asked, stopping right behind me. His presence was a heavy weight against my back.
I turned slowly. "It's fine. A bit crowded."
"I heard you went to the hospital," he said. His tone wasn't concerned; it was probing. He was searching for cracks, wanting to know how much damage he had done.
"Just a sprain," I said breezily. "Nothing permanent."
"Unlike some things," Catalina chimed in, snuggling closer to him.
I looked at her, letting my gaze drag over her outfit. "Enjoy the jersey, Catalina. It's polyester. It doesn't breathe."
The circle around us stifled a laugh. Jax's eyes narrowed into slits.
"Let's play a game," someone shouted from the back. "Truth or Dare!"
It was a childish tradition, but in our world, the dares were dangerous, and the truths were ammunition.
We moved to the sunken living room. Jax sat directly across from me, with Catalina perched on his lap.
The bottle spun. It landed on Catalina.
"Truth or Dare?" Tyler asked.
"Dare," she purred.
Tyler grinned. He was drunk and messy. "I dare you to kiss the King of the night."
It was obvious who he meant. Jax was the highest-ranking male there.
Catalina pretended to be shy. She looked at me through her lashes. "Oh, I couldn't. It might upset Eliana."
The room went silent. They waited for my reaction. They waited for the jealousy, the rage, the tears.
I checked my watch, feigning boredom. "Why would I care?" I asked, my voice steady. "He's not my concern."
Jax stiffened. His ego took the hit like a physical blow. He was used to my adoration, my desperate need for his approval. Indifference was a language he didn't speak.
He seized Catalina's face.
Then, he kissed her.
It wasn't romantic. It was brutal. It was a display of ownership and dominance, meant to mark her and humiliate me. He ground his mouth against hers, making a show of it, his eyes open, staring right at me.
He was daring me to look away.
I didn't. I watched with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing a lab rat.
When he finally pulled away, Catalina was breathless and smeared with lipstick. Jax looked triumphant.
"She's a better fit anyway," Jax announced to the room, his voice loud. "A real woman knows how to please her man."
The insult hung in the air. It was a direct attack on my honor, implying I was inadequate.
Mason looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight. "Jax, maybe take it easy."
"Why?" Jax sneered. "Eliana doesn't mind. Do you, Ellie?"
He used the nickname only he was allowed to use.
I stood up. My knee throbbed, but I put all my weight on it, refusing to flinch.
"You're right, Jax," I said. "I don't mind. Because to be offended, I would have to value your opinion."
I grabbed my purse.
"And frankly," I added, looking him dead in the eye, "I don't think about you at all."
I walked away.
I felt his rage burning into my back, hotter than the kiss he had just shared. He had tried to break me publicly.
Instead, he had only proven that he was already broken.
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9.2
At the absolute summit of her pop-star career, the stage collapsed beneath Catherine's feet, plunging her into a mechanical black hole.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn't in a hospital, but a savage, primitive forest.
Before a fire-breathing beast could tear her apart, a massive black snake crushed it with a single strike.
The terrifying serpent then transformed into Amon, a towering, heavily scarred man with golden slitted eyes, who swore his life to protect her.
He brought her to his tribe, but instead of safety, they were met with ravenous hunger and disgust.
The tribe's males stared at Catherine's fragile human body like a rare breeding prize, while treating Amon like garbage.
"He's a cursed, cold-blooded freak! His rut will tear you to pieces!"
The Chief sneered, pointing a thick, accusing finger at Amon.
"By tribal law, you must mate with our strongest tiger and bear shifters to give us powerful cubs!"
Humiliated, Amon's broad shoulders slumped, his fists trembling in suffocating shame as he prepared to back away.
Catherine's heart pounded with fierce, burning anger.
When she was about to be eaten, Amon was the only one who bled for her.
Where were these arrogant bullies then? Why should she let them treat her savior like a monster?
As the tribe's strongest warriors swarmed forward to claim her, Catherine stepped directly in front of Amon's lethal claws.
"I don't need any of you," she declared, her voice cutting through the chaos.
"I will mate with Amon and take his beast mark today!"
8.5
"And that is the reason why I said those words. I like your fear, not because it is a normal thing. I love it because deep down you are a monster like me, schiava. You fear me on a primal level, you can feel my power and dominance, and you know you aren't the strongest here. So you don't fear Renzo Valentino the human, you fear the monster that lurks inside."
My life changed the night of my birthday. What started as a funny dare ended with blood and having a price on my head.
I thought Renzo was the hero who saved me that night, but he was the devil who owned me forever.
I, Misha Yakov, princess of the Russian mafia became Renzo Valentino's slave.
He broke me, tortured me, and molded me into something new, something I hated and craved at the same time.
I, Misha Yakov became my master's pet.
9.0
Allegra woke up in a sterile alien hospital with no memory, no ID chip, and a terrifying snow leopard General claiming responsibility for her crash.
But a routine ID scan at a local boutique shattered her fragile cover.
The machine shrieked, flashing a fatal red warning: NO NEURAL LINK DETECTED.
She was a "Ghost"—an illegal, unregistered biological entity in a ruthless Hybrid Empire.
The boutique locked down instantly. Heavily armed police swarmed the plaza, laser sights painting her chest red.
She was dragged into a subterranean military black site, where a manic geneticist tested her blood and discovered the impossible truth.
She wasn't a Hybrid. She was a pure Homo Sapiens—an extinct race whose mere presence could cure the Hybrids' fatal Psyche collapse.
To keep her all to himself, the scientist lied to the General, branding her a toxic, mutating bio-weapon.
Forced by Imperial law, the General abandoned her to the scientist's cruel custody.
Allegra was locked inside a reinforced glass cage in the deepest isolation ward, waiting to be dissected.
She huddled on the floor, trembling in absolute despair.
She didn't belong in this nightmare world. Why was she being treated like a monster? Why did this madman look at her like a prize to be torn apart?
Watching the scientist's fox ears twitch in manic stress outside the glass, her human empathy momentarily overrode her terror.
She stood up and pressed her palm against the glass, perfectly aligning it with his.
"Don't be so nervous, Mr. Fox."
Instantly, an invisible wave of human resonance flooded his core, shattering his genetic madness.
The terrifying predator was reduced to a whimpering, devoted puppy, pressing himself against the window in absolute submission.
Allegra slowly pulled her hand back, her heart skipping a beat.
Well, she thought, that changes things.
9.3
She thought their love could survive anything. She was wrong.
For five years, Amara Hayes was the perfect wife - loyal, gentle, and endlessly forgiving. She believed her husband, Ethan Blackwell, when he said his late nights were for business. She trusted him when he swore his heart was hers.
Until the night she walked into his office and saw him making love to another woman.
Humiliated, heartbroken, and betrayed, Amara left without a word - leaving behind her wedding ring, her identity, and the man who destroyed her faith in love.
Three years later, she returns to New York as a powerful businesswoman with a new name and a cold smile. She's no longer the naive wife he controlled - she's his rival, his downfall, and his punishment.
But Ethan isn't the same man either. He's haunted by the woman he lost and desperate for redemption. And when fate throws them together again, old flames reignite amid a storm of revenge, pain, and forbidden desire.
He once broke her heart. Now, she'll make him wish he never did.
7.4
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.
7.5
I thought my best friend Mila and my lover Preston were my only salvation from Essex Langley, the ruthless billionaire who kept me caged in his estate.
I trusted them blindly when they planned my grand escape.
But it was all a cruel setup.
Mila deliberately leaked the plan to Essex's guards to win his favor, and Preston only wanted my family's shares to pay off his massive debts.
When we were caught in the rose garden, Preston shoved me toward the guards and ran for his life.
"You're insane if you think I actually loved a freak like you!"
I was dragged back into the manor, my ribs cracking under heavy boots.
I bled out on the freezing marble floor, staring into Essex’s unhinged, mad eyes as I took my last agonizing breath.
Until the moment I died, I couldn't accept it.
I had ruined my own life, adopting a hideous punk look with fake tattoos and piercings just to make Essex hate me, all for two people who saw me as nothing but a sacrificial lamb.
Why was my blind rebellion rewarded with such a brutal betrayal?
Opening my eyes again, the white-hot pain was gone.
I was back in the freezing bedroom on my eighteenth birthday, the very night Mila would come to orchestrate my ruin.
I looked at the rebellious, smudged stranger in the mirror.
This time, I calmly washed off the black makeup, took out my lip ring, and put on a pristine white dress.
If fighting the devil got me killed, then in this life, I would tame him and make them all pay.