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 3
Jackson and Candida burst into the room at the sound of the boy's screams. Their faces were masks of alarm.
Jackson immediately rushed to Joey's side, scooping him up into his arms. He didn't even glance at me.
"What's wrong, Joey? What happened?" he asked, his voice frantic.
"She burned me!" the boy sobbed, pointing a trembling, uninjured finger at me. "She did it on purpose! She hates me!"
Jackson's head snapped toward me. His eyes, moments ago filled with fake concern for me, were now blazing with cold fury.
"Elena, what is the meaning of this?" he demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "He's just a child. How could you?"
"I didn't-" I started, but he cut me off.
"He's our son now," Jackson snarled. "I brought him here for you, to give you a family, and this is how you treat him? Because you can't have one of your own, you're going to hurt an innocent boy?"
The words were a slap in the face. He was using my pain, the sacrifice I made for him, as a weapon against me.
He turned his back on me, his attention focused solely on the crying child. "It's okay, Joey. Daddy's here. I'll get the doctor. We'll take care of you."
He carried the boy out of the room, Candida following close behind. Before she left, she shot me a look over her shoulder. It was a look of pure, triumphant hatred.
I was left alone in the room, the smell of chicken soup thick in the air. The broken bowl lay on the floor, a symbol of my shattered life. My hand throbbed with a searing pain.
Jackson had never even looked at my burn.
I laughed, a bitter, broken sound that echoed in the empty room. What a fool I had been.
I went into the bathroom and ran cold water over my hand. The skin was blistering. I found the first-aid kit and clumsily wrapped the burn, the pain a sharp, physical reminder of the deeper, invisible wounds he had inflicted.
I remembered a time, years ago, when I had cut my finger while cooking. It was a tiny cut, barely bleeding. Jackson had rushed me to the emergency room, his face pale with worry. He had held my hand the entire time, whispering that he couldn't bear to see me in any pain.
That man was gone. Or maybe he had never existed at all.
Love, I realized with a chilling certainty, was not eternal. It could die. It could be killed.
The door opened, and Jackson walked in. He saw my bandaged hand and had the decency to look guilty.
"Elena, I..." he began. "I'm sorry for what I said. I was just worried about Joey."
He came closer, his voice softening. "He's just a little boy. He didn't mean to cause trouble. Can you find it in your heart to forgive him?"
I stared at him, my heart a frozen lump in my chest. He was asking me to forgive the child who had deliberately hurt me, while he had accused me of malice.
I said nothing.
He sighed, a sound of weary patience. "Look, Joey is very shaken. I'm going to sleep in his room tonight, to make sure he's okay."
It was another excuse to be with her. I knew it. But I no longer cared.
"Fine," I said, my voice flat.
He seemed surprised by my easy agreement. He had expected a fight, tears, accusations. He didn't know that the woman who would have done those things was already dead.
He leaned in and kissed my forehead, a brief, cool touch. "Get some rest."
Then he was gone.
I lay in our massive, empty bed, staring into the darkness. I was an outsider in my own home, a stranger in my own life.
Later, I heard it.
The sound came from the room next door, the one Jackson was supposedly sharing with the child. It was a soft sound at first, a muffled cry.
Then, a low moan. Jackson's voice, thick with a pleasure I knew so well.
And then another sound. A woman's gasp, a mix of pain and ecstasy. Candida.
"You animal," she whimpered. "I hate you."
"You love it," Jackson growled back, his voice a low thrum of passion. "Say my name, Candida. Say it."
"Never," she sobbed.
His response was a low laugh, followed by the rhythmic, unmistakable sounds of two bodies moving together.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my hands balling into fists. I pressed my face into the pillow to stifle the scream that rose in my throat.
He was in the next room, with the woman who had stabbed me, who had taken my future from me. He was making love to her, while I lay here, broken and alone.
My mind flashed back to a time when his parents had objected to our marriage because of my family's lower social standing. Jackson had stood up to them, his voice ringing with conviction. "I love Elena," he had declared. "I will marry her, with or without your blessing. She is the only one I will ever love."
He had been so fierce, so loyal. My rock. My protector.
That loyalty was now a joke. His love, a lie.
I lay there for hours, listening to the sounds of his betrayal, until the house finally fell silent. I didn't sleep. I just stared into the darkness, my heart completely and utterly dead.
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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.