No Longer A Victim, Now I Rise
The fluorescent hum of the DMV was the soundtrack to my boring life, until I tried to replace my lost driver's license.
"Your marital status. It says you're divorced," the clerk said, shattering my five-year marriage to Jackson Parks with a single, flat sentence.
My husband, Jackson, the man who swore he loved me, had secretly divorced me three years ago. Not only that, he had remarried the very next day to Candida Camacho, the woman who had tried to murder me on my wedding day and left me infertile. And they had a two-year-old son, Joey.
I stumbled home, my world a blur, only to find Jackson and Candida in our living room, arguing. "I hate having to pretend for that pathetic woman!" Candida shrieked. Jackson, my husband, pleaded, "I love you. I've always loved you."
The man I sacrificed everything for, who swore to destroy her, was now playing house with my attempted murderer, and I was the fool living in his house, sleeping in his bed, believing his lies.
The pain in my abdomen, a phantom ache from five years ago, flared to life, mirroring the gaping wound in my soul. I would not be his victim anymore.
"Hamilton," I said into the phone, my voice clear and steady. "I need your help. I need you to help me die."
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Chapter 2
"I want to disappear," I said into the phone, my voice a dead monotone. "Completely. I want the world, and especially Jackson Parks, to believe I'm dead."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Hamilton's voice, when it came, was low and serious. "Elena, what happened?"
"He lied," I said. "Everything was a lie."
I didn't need to say more. Hamilton knew what Jackson meant to me. He also knew what Jackson was capable of.
"Tell me what you need," he said, no judgment in his tone, only steel.
"A plane crash," I said, the words tasting like poison. "As soon as possible. Can you arrange that?"
"Consider it done," he said. "I'll handle everything. Where will you go?"
"I don't know yet," I admitted. "Just... away from here."
"I have a place in Provence," he offered. "It's quiet. No one will find you. I'll send the details. Just get yourself to the private airfield in Van Nuys tomorrow night. A jet will be waiting."
"Thank you, Hamilton."
"Always, Elena."
I hung up, a fresh wave of pain washing over me. Making that call made it real. The life I knew was over. The man I loved was a monster who had systematically destroyed me while pretending to cherish me.
He had cheated on me. He had lied to me. He had married another woman while I still wore his ring.
He deserved to be cheated. He deserved to be lied to.
He wanted me gone? Fine. I would vanish from his world so completely it would be as if I never existed.
A soft knock on my door made me jump.
"Mrs. Parks?" It was Maria, our housekeeper. "Mr. Parks is home. He's asking for you."
I took a deep breath, schooling my features into a mask of calm. I opened the door.
Jackson was standing in the hallway. When he saw me, a flicker of panic crossed his face before it was replaced by his usual, charming smile. It was a performance I now saw with horrifying clarity.
"Elena, darling," he said, striding toward me and wrapping his arms around my waist. He tried to kiss me, but I turned my head slightly, and his lips brushed my cheek. "I was worried. You were out for so long."
His concern felt like acid on my skin. I could smell Candida's perfume on his shirt.
"I just had some errands to run," I said, my voice carefully neutral. I pulled away from his embrace.
My eyes fell on the woman and child standing behind him. Candida and Joey.
"Who are they?" I asked, my voice flat, as if I didn't know.
Jackson visibly relaxed, a small sigh of relief escaping his lips. He thought I didn't know. He thought he could keep lying.
"Oh, this is a wonderful surprise," he said, his voice full of fake enthusiasm. "Elena, remember how we talked about wanting a child? How much we wanted to fill this big house with laughter?"
He gestured to the boy. "This is Joey. He's an orphan. I thought... I thought we could adopt him. Give him a home. A family."
He was using my infertility, the very wound he and his secret wife had caused, as a tool for his deception. The cruelty of it was breathtaking.
"And this," he said, indicating Candida, "is Miss Camacho. She's a caretaker from the orphanage who has grown very attached to Joey. I've hired her to be his nanny, to help him adjust."
He put his hand on Joey's head. "Joey, say hello to your new mommy."
My heart felt like a block of ice. New mommy. The irony was a bitter pill.
The boy, Joey, looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. But there was something cold in them, something that didn't match his cherubic face.
"Hello... Mommy," he said, his voice small and hesitant.
Jackson beamed, a proud father. "Isn't he wonderful, Elena?"
Candida stood silently, her eyes downcast, playing the part of a humble nanny perfectly. But I could see the faint smirk playing on her lips. She was enjoying this. She was enjoying my humiliation.
"He's a lovely boy," I said, my voice hollow. I looked at Jackson, my gaze steady. "I'm a little tired. I think I'll go lie down."
Jackson's smile tightened. He saw something in my eyes, a coldness that wasn't there before.
"Are you feeling alright, darling?" he asked, his brow furrowed with fake concern. "You look pale."
"Just a headache," I lied. I turned and walked toward our bedroom, my back straight.
"Let me get you some soup," Jackson called after me, his voice dripping with the false tenderness that now made my stomach turn. "Maria makes the best chicken soup. It will make you feel better."
I didn't answer. I closed the bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, the facade of calm crumbling. I was shaking again, a deep, violent tremor that started in my soul.
Later, Joey brought the soup to my room, pushed by a smiling Jackson.
"Be a good boy and take care of your mommy," Jackson cooed, patting his head.
The boy carried the tray carefully. He set it on the nightstand, his small face serious. "I'll help you, Mommy."
For a moment, I felt a pang of something other than hatred. He was just a child, a pawn in his mother's sick game. I reached out to take the bowl from him.
As my fingers closed around the warm ceramic, he let go. Deliberately.
The bowl tipped, and scalding hot soup spilled all over my hand and wrist. I cried out, pulling my hand back. The skin was already turning an angry red.
Joey's eyes widened. He let out a piercing wail, clutching his own hand.
"Ow! My hand! You burned me!" he screamed, tears streaming down his face. "You did it on purpose! You hate me!"
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7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
8.7
My little brother's heart monitor was screaming its final warning. I called my husband, Dante Volkov, the ruthless underworld king whose life I'd saved years ago. He had promised to send his elite medical team.
"I'm handling an emergency," he snapped, then hung up. An hour later, my brother was dead.
I found out what Dante's "emergency" was from his mistress's social media. He had sent his team of world-class surgeons to deliver her cat's kittens. My brother died for a litter of cats.
When Dante finally called, he didn't even apologize. I could hear her voice in the background, asking him to come back to bed. He even forgot my brother was dead, offering to buy him a new toy to replace the one his mistress deliberately crushed.
This was the man who had promised to protect me, to make my high school tormentors pay. Now, he was holding that very tormentor, Seraphina, in his arms. Then came the final blow: a call from the clerk's office revealed our seven-year marriage was a sham. The certificate was a forgery.
I was never his wife. I was just a possession he was tired of. After he left me to die in a car crash for Seraphina, I made one call. I texted a rival mob heir I hadn't spoken to in years: "I need to disappear. I'm calling it in."
7.6
For three years, I played the perfect, docile wife to Brendon Jimenez, desperate for the real family I never had as an orphan.
But during a high-society gala, I peeked through a cracked door and caught him sleeping with my best friend.
When I packed my cheap canvas bag to leave the penthouse, my mother-in-law blocked the door.
She dumped my clothes on the marble floor, called me a stray dog, and slapped me so hard my mouth bled.
Brendon just stood there, watching his mother humiliate me.
To keep me trapped as his perfect public prop, he even faked his mother's heart attack in a VIP hospital suite.
"Get on your knees. Kneel down right now and beg my mother for forgiveness until she decides to accept it."
I gave them my youth and unconditional loyalty, only to realize this prestigious old-money family was nothing but a rotting corpse built on dirty secrets.
I didn't cry, and I certainly didn't drop to my knees.
Instead, I pulled out my phone right in front of him and called my lawyer.
"File for an at-fault divorce. I have proof of his infidelity with Kaelynn Hudson. I want him ruined."
Then, I touched the matte black card hidden deep in my clutch.
It belonged to Kile Barrett, the ruthless billionaire shark my husband feared most, and I was going to use him to tear the Jimenez family apart.
9.0
For a whole year, April believed her billionaire husband, Bartholomew, abandoned her in Europe the day after their arranged wedding. She hated him so much she drunkenly prayed for his death at a club.
But he suddenly returned that very night, catching her red-handed. Instead of a divorce, he trapped her, threatening to bankrupt her bloodsucking family unless she moved into his penthouse to play the devoted wife.
Forced to comply, she attended a dinner with her toxic family. Her stepmother deliberately served her lobster—knowing April had a fatal allergy.
"Eat up, darling. I know hospital food is dreadful."
When April refused and exposed their massive gambling debts, her furious father raised his hand to strike her across the face.
But it was Bartholomew, the ruthless tyrant she despised, who caught her father's arm and snapped his wrist.
"If you ever try to touch my wife again, I will erase your family by sunrise."
April was completely stunned. Why was he defending her with such murderous rage? And why did he keep a cheap paper airplane she had made at age six preserved under a glass dome in his study?
The answer came that night. When Bartholomew stepped out of the shower, April saw the massive, jagged surgical scar sliced directly over his heart. He hadn't run away; he had been fighting for his life on an operating table. Staring at the man who had silently survived just to come back to her, April made her choice. She was going to uncover the truth behind his surgery and their past.
7.8
For five years, I was the flawless wife to the heir of the De Luca empire, securing billion-dollar acquisitions to prove my worth.
But my husband, Alessandro, still paraded his mistress in our home, publicly humiliating me as a "cold spreadsheet" while she sneered in triumph.
It didn't stop at infidelity. When I dared to cut off her credit cards, Alessandro decided to teach me a lesson.
He allowed his mistress to secretly file down the metal clasp on my horse's saddle right before a massive public equestrian event.
My leg was completely shattered in a horrific, agonizing fall in front of hundreds of elite guests.
While I lay bleeding in the dirt, my husband didn't even glance my way. Instead, he rushed to hold his mistress, shielding her eyes from the gruesome sight.
Later, pretending to be unconscious in the infirmary, I overheard him ordering his guards.
"Get rid of the saddle. It was just a lesson to remind her who's in charge."
He didn't just want me humiliated; he wanted me crippled and broken.
As the sterile smell of the hospital hit me, a horrifying realization set in—I was two weeks late. I was pregnant with his child.
The thought of my baby growing up in this ruthless, toxic family made my blood run cold, and the last spark of my love turned into absolute hatred.
The obedient wife died on that dirt track.
I quietly contacted his family's biggest rival and activated my secret scorched-earth protocol. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.