The Jilted Heiress In Blood Red
Harlene was locked out of her own family's estate in a freezing blizzard, still trembling from a severe panic attack.
Her mother delivered a cold ultimatum through a security screen: attend her golden-child sister Estella's award gala, or lose her medical funds.
To make it worse, her ex-fiancé, Dennis, had chimed in to call her embarrassing and pathetic.
At the gala, Harlene was treated like a diseased outcast.
Dennis fiercely protected his new lover, Jailyn—the very woman who had stolen Harlene's designs.
But the ultimate betrayal came when Estella flaunted a silver-embroidered antique dress.
It was Harlene's grandmother's dress, her only pure memory of love, handed over to the enemy as a trophy.
When Harlene demanded answers, her own father slapped her across the face in front of the press, just to protect their pristine image.
They had stolen her career, her fiancé, and her inheritance, all while branding her the crazy, unstable daughter.
The sheer hypocrisy and cruelty finally severed the last thread of her sanity.
Why should she play the silent victim while they played the perfect family?
Instead of crying, Harlene smiled.
She drew a hidden dagger, slashed the antique dress to ribbons, and dragged Estella and Jailyn to the center stage.
Standing under the blinding spotlight with a bloody blade, she looked out at the terrified crowd.
"The Beaumont family is done hiding," she declared into the microphone. "Tonight, the curtain falls."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 1
The black sedan skidded on the ice, the tires letting out a sharp shriek that cut through the howling wind. The car jerked to a stop just inches from the wrought-iron gates of the Beaumont estate.
Harlene was curled into a tight ball in the backseat, her fingers digging into the leather of her coat so hard her knuckles were white. Her chest heaved, each breath a shallow, painful gasp that rattled in her throat. The panic attack had subsided, but the aftershocks still trembled through her body, leaving her feeling hollowed out and bruised from the inside.
Mitch, the driver, hesitated. He glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes full of pity. "Miss Harlene, are you sure-"
A burst of static from the gate interphase cut him off. The cold, mechanical voice of the gate security crackled through the car. "Vehicle denied entry. Protocol lockdown."
Harlene closed her eyes, fighting down the bile rising in her throat. The nausea was a physical weight pressing against her ribs. "I'll handle it," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
She pushed the car door open. The Washington D.C. blizzard hit her like a physical blow. The freezing wind and sleet slammed into her, soaking through her thin coat instantly. She shivered violently, her teeth chattering as she stepped onto the slush-covered driveway.
Her heel caught on a patch of black ice. Her ankle twisted, a sharp pain shooting up her leg, but she bit down on her lip until she tasted copper and forced herself to stand straight.
Agnes stepped out of the gatehouse. She wore a perfectly tailored cashmere coat and held an umbrella over her head, looking at Harlene the way one might look at a stray dog that had tracked mud onto a Persian rug.
"Miss Harlene," Agnes said, her voice dripping with condescension. "Your mother has a message. You are required to attend Miss Estella's celebration dinner tomorrow night."
Harlene let out a short, hollow laugh that the wind snatched away. "Required? I'm not going to that circus."
Agnes shifted her body, blocking the access panel with her shoulder. Her eyes were like flint. "You don't have a choice. Right now, you don't even have the right to walk through that gate."
Agnes pulled a tablet from her coat and held it out. The screen glowed to life, showing the face of Genevieve Beaumont. She looked impeccable, her makeup flawless, her expression radiating cold annoyance.
Harlene took the tablet. She didn't speak. She just stared at the woman who had given her life, her bloodshot eyes unblinking.
Genevieve didn't even look at Harlene's face. She tapped her manicured nails against her desk, the sound clicking through the speaker. "Just agree, Harlene. Stop making everything so difficult."
"I'm sick," Harlene said, her voice raspy like sandpaper dragging across stone. "I need rest."
Genevieve scoffed, a cruel twist to her lips. "Your 'sickness' is just an excuse to avoid your responsibilities. We all know that."
Harlene's grip on the tablet tightened. Her fingers pressed so hard against the glass she thought it might shatter beneath her fingertips.
"If you don't show up tomorrow," Genevieve said, her tone dropping to a lethal whisper, "I will freeze every medical account. I will cut off your trust fund. You will have nothing."
A wave of dizziness washed over Harlene. Not the dizziness of panic, but the sickening vertigo of absolute clarity. She was worth less than the dirt on their shoes.
Genevieve leaned closer to the camera. "And Dennis called. He's very... concerned about your behavior."
At the sound of his name, Harlene's pupils contracted. Her heart seized, squeezed by an invisible fist so tight she couldn't breathe.
"He thinks you're embarrassing yourself," Genevieve continued, a sadistic smile playing on her lips. "He thinks you're pathetic."
The memory of Dennis's disgusted glare flashed in Harlene's mind. The exhaustion that had weighed her down evaporated, replaced by a sick, burning rage that tasted like iron in her mouth.
Slowly, a smile crept across Harlene's face. It wasn't a smile of joy. It was a grotesque, terrifying stretching of lips that made her look like a wolf bearing its teeth.
"Okay," she said, her voice steady and cold. "I'll go."
Genevieve blinked, clearly thrown off by the immediate surrender. She hesitated, then the screen went black.
The tablet's dark screen reflected Harlene's face. The twisted, manic grin staring back at her didn't look like her own.
Agnes snatched the tablet back. "Dress appropriately tomorrow. Don't embarrass the family."
Harlene didn't even look at her. She turned and walked back to the car, her steps no longer unsteady. They were heavy, deliberate, carrying the weight of impending destruction.
She slid into the backseat and slammed the door shut, sealing out the storm.
Mitch stared at her in the mirror, wide-eyed.
Harlene looked up, her eyes burning with a fierce, unholy light. "Mitch," she said, her voice vibrating with intensity. "Go buy me a red dress. The most garish, eye-catching one you can find."
You may also like
9.0
Adaline Poole thought she had escaped her family's toxic corporate grip by moving to London and adopting a stray cat named Monty.
But when she returns to her empty apartment, her father delivers a chilling ultimatum: he has kidnapped the cat and will euthanize it by morning unless she accepts an arranged marriage with Barron Cooke, a notoriously elusive billionaire.
Her entire family becomes complicit in her sale. Her mother demands she secure their elite status, and her brother secretly spies on her social media to feed Barron her every move. Horrified to discover Barron is a thirty-three-year-old "fossil" twelve years her senior, Adaline resorts to sabotage. She goes to a Soho club, takes a scandalous photo with a frat boy, and sends it to the old billionaire to disgust him into canceling their upcoming dinner.
But her rebellion backfires horribly when the frat boy spikes her drink with a powerful narcotic. As her body burns with a terrifying, feverish heat, she collapses in a dark corridor. Stripped of her phone and betrayed by her bloodline, she is left utterly defenseless as a predator approaches to drag her away.
Suddenly, the heavy fire door is kicked open by a towering, terrifyingly handsome stranger who effortlessly neutralizes her attacker.
"Please... help me," Adaline begs, deliriously throwing her burning body into his arms.
She has absolutely no idea that the handsome savior she is clinging to is Barron Cooke himself.
8.0
Abigayle was the proud heir to the Pena Group, living a perfect life and engaged to Jeffery Sullivan.
But the morning after a charity gala, she woke up drugged in a hotel room, blinded by paparazzi cameras. Her fiancé and her best friend stood at the foot of the bed, throwing a forged pregnancy report at her face to publicly frame her for cheating.
The betrayal was only the beginning of the slaughter. Before she could even clear her name, the Sullivan family ruthlessly bankrupted her family's company overnight. Her father was rushed to the ICU with a heart attack, her brother was run off the road into a coma, and violent repo men raided her penthouse. Just as she was thrown out into the freezing rain, Jeffery's terrifying uncle, Donovan Sullivan—the very mastermind who engineered her family's ruin—stepped in. He offered to cover the life-saving medical bills, but only if she agreed to become his personal plaything.
Abigayle's blood turned to ice. She couldn't understand how the people she trusted most could plot such a vicious, coordinated destruction just to break an engagement. How dared the man who destroyed her entire family stand there playing the savior, trying to buy her body with her own stolen wealth?
Facing a $100,000 hospital deadline and abandoned by everyone she knew, she didn't shed another tear.
"I will never beg him."
Clutching her last diamond bracelet, she hailed a cab straight to the biggest pawnshop in the Diamond District. The Sullivans thought they had buried her, but her counterattack was just beginning.
7.4
My mother was dying and desperately needed a half-million-dollar deposit for an experimental heart surgery by tomorrow.
I swallowed my pride and begged my wealthy husband, Garrick, to save her life.
Instead of helping, he laughed coldly and threw a thick stack of divorce papers right in my face.
"A hen that can't lay eggs gets slaughtered," he sneered, ruthlessly poking my flat stomach.
He revealed that his secretary, my supposed friend Lacey, was already pregnant with his heir.
To him, our three years of marriage was just a business transaction, and now that my family was bankrupt, I was nothing but damaged goods.
He flicked a humiliating five-thousand-dollar check at me as his final act of charity, then locked me out of our townhouse into the freezing, pouring rain.
I had spent years enduring agonizing hormone treatments for a fertility issue that wasn't even my fault, only to be discarded like trash when I needed him the most.
Was my dignity, my absolute devotion, and my mother's life really worth nothing to him?
Driven by pure, reckless desperation, I threw myself directly into the path of a moving Rolls-Royce Phantom on Fifth Avenue.
It belonged to Holden Tillman, the ruthless patriarch of the Tillman empire—and the uncle Garrick lived in absolute terror of.
I thought I was walking into my death, but instead, I became his fiancée, ready to make Garrick and Lacey pay for every tear I shed.
9.1
Isabella thought she had the perfect life as the wealthy Conrad family heiress, complete with a loving childhood sweetheart.
Until she woke up drugged in a hotel bed, blinded by paparazzi flashes, as her fiancé pointed a shaking finger at her, screaming that she had drugged and seduced him.
"She threatened to ruin Kaylie if I didn't sleep with her!" he yelled to the cameras.
Kaylie, the newly discovered biological daughter, stood in the doorway weeping perfectly.
Within hours, Isabella's adoptive father publicly severed all ties, froze her assets, and kicked her out into a violent thunderstorm.
Fleeing the city, her car's brakes suddenly failed.
As Isabella lay dying in the crushed metal of her Porsche, Kaylie strolled up with a pristine umbrella and a genuine smile.
"The mechanic was quite expensive, but cutting the brake lines was worth every penny," Kaylie laughed.
Isabella coughed up blood, her heart turning to ice. Her twenty years of family, love, and loyalty had been nothing but a cruel joke, destroyed by a calculated frame-up.
She died suffocating on absolute betrayal and unadulterated hatred.
Then, she gasped for air.
She wasn't dead. She was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, staring at her flawless reflection in the rearview mirror.
It was exactly four years ago—the day the real heiress first arrived.
A chilling smirk curled the corner of Isabella's mouth. This time, she was going to rip their lives apart from the inside out.
7.1
For six years, I played the pathetic, wolfless Omega to honor the dying wish of the late Alpha who protected me.
But on our sixth anniversary, my fated mate, Alpha Kian, was photographed looking tenderly at his mistress.
When he finally stormed into our penthouse, he didn't apologize. Instead, he threw a fifty-million-dollar check onto the bed.
"Take the money and accept my rejection obediently, or I'll show you what happens when you defy an Alpha."
To force my compliance, he terminated all trade agreements with my best friend's pack, pushing them to the brink of bankruptcy. He accused me of blackmailing his grandfather into our marriage, entirely blind to the fact that his beloved mistress was actually a banished, feral Rogue.
I had spent six years swallowing my pride, drinking toxic herbs to suppress my true White Wolf scent, and enduring his absolute disgust just to keep his pack safe.
Why did I bleed for a man who despised my very existence?
I looked at the blood money, and the suffocating sorrow in my chest was instantly replaced by white-hot fury.
I didn't take a single cent. Instead, I submitted the rejection papers myself, dropped my pathetic disguise, and walked out into the freezing rain.
A towering warrior with a black umbrella dropped to one knee before me in the mud.
It was time to stop hiding and return home as the billionaire heir of the legendary Silvermoon Pack.
8.2
Ashley was tied to a rusted iron pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the noxious fumes of gasoline soaking her clothes.
Her fiancé Devon and her stepsister Brittany stood before her, revealing a horrifying truth. Devon never saved her from that fatal car crash three years ago; he merely stole the credit.
Worse, Brittany smirked and confessed that Ashley's own father had orchestrated her mother's murder. Before Ashley could process the betrayal, Devon callously tossed a lighter. A wall of blistering heat instantly consumed her. Even when Bennett Hawkins, the cold and untouchable billionaire, rushed into the inferno to shield her with his body, they were both swallowed by the explosion.
As the fire melted her skin, Ashley died with agonizing hatred. Why did her own flesh and blood want her dead? What dark secret were they hiding about her mother's tragic death?
Opening her eyes again, freezing saltwater violently flooded her lungs.
She was back at her twentieth birthday yacht party, right after Brittany had secretly pushed her into the freezing Hudson River.
Staring at the hypocritical faces of her family pretending it was an accident, Ashley didn't cry or beg. She calmly snatched a phone and dialed 911.
"Yes. I need to report an attempted murder."