The Man I Married Twice
To save her family's failing empire, Melissa Hartwood agrees to marry the heir of Kingsley Holdings, Liam Kingsley.
It was supposed to be a strategic alliance. She didn't expect to fall for her cold, calculating husband. Until he turns up dead. The only evidence left behind a bloodstained note that reads: Please forgive me.
Framed for his murder and betrayed by the family she married into, Melissa loses everything. Convicted after a corrupt trial and shot during her appeal, her story should have ended there. Instead, she wakes up the morning after her wedding. Liam is alive.
Fate has given her one impossible gift: a second chance to save the man she loves.
She has one year to save her husband.
One year to uncover who framed her.
One year to stop the man who destroys them both.
Because someone inside the Kingsley family is going to kill Liam.
But as Melissa races against time, she begins to see the cracks in the Kingsley dynasty - buried secrets, shifting loyalties, and a rival waiting in the shadows.
And this time, the man who protects her might be the very one who kills him. Because some love stories don't end once. They end twice.
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Chapter 2
A year earlier.
"You better be there by three." My father's voice cut through the phone so sharply that two assistants across the boutique looked up. "I know," I said quietly.
"This isn't optional, Melissa."
"When has it ever been?" There was a pause on the line. I could almost hear him rubbing his forehead the way he did whenever the company's problems started piling up.
"If the Kingsleys walk away," he said, lowering his voice, "Hartwood Global won't survive the quarter."
I closed my eyes briefly.
"I'll be there."
"Good. And Melissa-"
"Yes?"
"Just... cooperate today." The call ended.
That word lingered in my head. Cooperate.
I slipped my phone into my bag and glanced at my reflection again. For a brief second, my fingers brushed against the ring on my hand. A small smile almost formed. Daniel's voice echoed faintly in my head- "I know the timing isn't perfect... but I don't want to wait anymore."
I swallowed the memory down. Not now.
"More blush," my manager said behind me. The makeup artist immediately leaned in.
"You're going to blind the camera if you keep frowning," she joked.
"I'm not frowning."
"You absolutely are."
Under the bright studio lights, my skin glowed against the emerald silk gown hugging my waist. The fabric shimmered every time I moved.
For a second, I almost forgot about collapsing companies and emergency meetings.
"Melissa," the photographer called. "Full turn."
I stepped onto the platform and rotated slowly. "Perfect," he muttered.
My phone buzzed again.
My manager groaned from the corner. "Please tell me you're not answering that."
"I have to."
"How many shots do we have left?" I signaled the photographer. He grimaced. "At least twenty."
"And Jessica's book launch," my manager reminded me, tapping the planner on the wall. "You promised to be there.
I sighed. Jessica had been planning that launch for months. She'd probably already saved me a seat in the front row.
But right now my father's company was hanging by a thread.
"Tell her I'll make it up to her," I said, already stepping down from the set.
"Melissa-" my manager called.
"I really have to go."
Inside the dressing room, I fought with the ribbon ties at the back of the corset. "Who invented this torture device?" I muttered.
The bow refused to loosen. For a second, I considered ripping the dress open. But this was a D'Oleur Motier original. Probably worth more than my car.
When the dress finally slid off, I felt like I could breathe again. My keys were sitting still on the sofa, I grabbed my bag and rushed out the door.
The drive to Kingsley Manor took about twenty minutes. It was long enough for my mind to start spiraling. Kingsley Holdings didn't normally summon people to their house for business meetings. They had entire skyscrapers for that.
When the iron gates of Kingsley Manor opened, I could swear that I had reached the gates of heaven. The gates looked like something carved out of a dream. It was adorned with the most beautiful flowers I have ever laid my eyes on. The place looked less like a home and more like a private kingdom. Tall stone walls. Endless gardens. Security cameras everywhere.
The car stopped in front of the entrance.
A staff member opened my door immediately.
"Ms. Hartwood," he bowed politely. "They're waiting for you."
Inside, the manor was impossibly quiet. It felt old-fashioned in its bones: high ceilings with intricate crown moldings, heavy oak doors. The marble floors gleamed, warmed subtly beneath my heels.
I barely had time to admire any of it before someone escorted me into a large sitting room. That's when I realized that something was wrong. This wasn't just a normal meeting. My parents were already there. So was little sister, Diana. She looked like she had just seen a ghost. And across the room sat Jacob Kingsley and his wife Margaret.
The atmosphere felt heavy with unspoken tension.
"Melissa," my father said quickly. "You made it."
"Of course I did. What's going on?"No one answered immediately.
Jacob Kingsley folded his hands calmly. "You must be Melissa Hartwood."
"I am."
His eyes studied me briefly. Then he nodded once.
"Your father speaks highly of you."
My father forced a laugh that sounded painfully fake.
The conversation started with the usual corporate discussions. Investments, market stability... But halfway through, Jacob Kingsley brought up something that made the entire room go quiet.
"Kingsley Holdings is prepared to secure Hartwood Global's future."
My father leaned forward immediately. "That's excellent news."
Jacob continued calmly.
"However, we prefer long-term partnerships to be secured through family alliances."
I frowned. Family alliances?
Margaret Kingsley spoke next, her voice smooth and measured. "Our son will be getting married soon."
My brain lagged for a moment, "Oh. Congratulations." I laughed softly but no one laughed with me. The silence was choking.
Something in the room shifted. A strange awareness crept into my chest. I didn't know why-but suddenly, I was thinking about the man I had seen once or twice in business magazines.
Ethan Kingsley. The charming one. The one everyone talked about. It made sense, didn't it? He handled the public. The deals. The appearances. Of course it would be him.
Jacob's eyes moved between Diana and me, thoughtful. Then he spoke. "We would like the bride to come from the Hartwood family."
A chill slowly spread through my stomach. Beside me, Diana's fingers curled tightly around the edge of her chair. Her face had gone pale. For a moment, no one spoke.
My father cleared his throat, breaking the heavy silence.
"We are honored by the proposal."
Wait. What? I turned toward him. "You're not serious."
But he avoided my eyes.
Margaret Kingsley asked calmly, "Which daughter will accept the honor?"
Everyone looked at Diana. Diana looked like she might faint. Then my mother spoke. "Our eldest daughter will fulfill the role."
The room tilted slightly. I stared at her. "Mom!" She met my eyes calmly. "Please give us a minute", she dragged me out of the room.
"You are the eldest." A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. "Since when?"
Of course. I was the eldest. But I was also the adopted one. Diana was their real daughter.
"Melissa," my father said quietly, "this alliance will save the company."
"I can't," I said, more firmly. My father frowned. "Melissa-"
"I'm already engaged."
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8.2
To save my brother's life, I married a dead billionaire.
My new home was a freezing, high-tech mausoleum where I was ordered to hold a year-long vigil beside Byron Hyde's cryogenic pod.
But I wasn't alone in the dark.
Every night, a terrifying shadow smelling of whiskey and sandalwood pinned me to my narrow bed.
It tore my clothes and brutally claimed my body, leaving me bruised and trembling until dawn.
When I begged the housekeeper for help, showing her my torn skin, she just smiled cruelly.
"It seems the master's spirit has accepted you."
I thought I was being haunted by a vengeful ghost, until Byron's arrogant nephew broke into the tomb to assault me.
His tampering triggered the life-support system, and the heavy lid of the pod hissed open.
Byron Hyde sat up, his eyes lethal and his skin shockingly warm.
He was alive.
Looking at his broad shoulders, I caught the faint scent of whiskey and sandalwood.
The horrific truth hit me like a physical blow.
My nightly tormentor wasn't a ghost. It was my living, breathing husband.
When I confronted him, his eyes were cold and clinical.
"That was a necessary test. I had to know if my wife would break."
A white-hot rage choked me, but I didn't scream or run.
He slipped the priceless, heavy sapphire of the family matriarch onto my finger, offering me absolute power over the treacherous relatives who wanted us both dead.
To fight a monster, you can't be a victim.
I looked into his deep, dangerous eyes and accepted the ring.
If this was a cage, allying with the keeper was the only way to find the key.
9.8
I was an arrogant, canceled reality TV star, trying to salvage my ruined reputation on a live broadcast.
But after I lost my temper and assaulted a cameraman, my furious grandfather chased me into our family's forbidden gallery, where I accidentally crashed into an ancient, sealed portrait.
The canvas shattered, and a terrifying woman with glowing golden eyes stepped out of the wall.
She was Cecil, the First Matriarch of the Marshall family. She caught a lightning bolt with her bare hands and crushed me to my knees with an invisible, suffocating pressure.
My grandfather, instead of saving me, groveled on the floor and abandoned me to her mercy.
"You are the disgrace that will end this family."
She hijacked my entire life, forcing me to act as her submissive baggage handler on my own survival reality show, broadcasting my humiliation to millions.
I didn't understand why this ancient monster was tormenting me. Why did she strip away my pride, treat me like a broken tool, and force me to endure the mockery of the very ex-girlfriend who had ruined my life?
But when those same cast members tried to corner me in the dark woods, Cecil stepped in front of me, her eyes locking onto the silver ring of the man mocking me.
"To catch the wolf, one must sometimes walk with the sheep."
That was when I realized she wasn't here to destroy me—she was here to hunt the parasites who had been secretly siphoning away my life force.
9.5
Xander Savage plays with footballs.
Freya Woods plays with hearts.
The other plays to win, one plays for fun.
Xander is the campus football champion, gentle, gorgeous, misunderstood. Everyone thinks he's a player, but he's actually the only good boy in school.
Freya is the campus play girl, bold, wild.
When fate throws them together, sparks fly...Neither knows their souls have met before...long ago, in another life, where they loved passionately and broke disastrously. But this time? They're destined to rewrite their ending...can they actually re write the stars?
LOVE ME LIKE A CHAMPION is a reincarnation campus romance about a boy who loves too deeply and a girl who's terrified to be loved.
9.1
I woke up strapped to a freezing operating table, a gaping hole crudely sutured over my heart.
Joi Rocha, my supposed guardian, stood nearby holding a glowing vial that contained my freshly extracted Phoenix gene sequence.
"Don't blame me, sweetheart. Gayla's body is just too weak. She needs this sequence more than you do."
In my past life, I endured years of illegal biological harvests for this family. My fiancé Brennon watched with cold eyes as they ripped the gene from my chest, while the elite academy students filmed and mocked my bleeding, broken body. They stripped me of my status, drained every drop of my worth, and left me to die in a freezing tomb just so their precious fake daughter could thrive.
Until my dying breath, I didn't understand. I had given them my absolute loyalty, so why was I treated like disposable medical waste? Why did my life mean absolutely nothing to them?
But opening my eyes again, I realized I had returned to the exact day they stole my core.
This time, I didn't cry or beg. I stared dead into Joi's eyes and smiled.
I detonated the residual energy in my chest to incinerate Gayla's stolen sequence, faked my own flatline, and injected myself with a hidden dark matter drive to completely rewrite my DNA.
If they wanted to play God with my life, I was going to burn their entire world to ash.
8.0
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."
8.6
Alia bought her four-million-dollar Manhattan townhouse in cash the day before she married Jerel.
For three years, she worked eighty-hour weeks as a top architect to build their life, until an anonymous text shattered her reality.
It was a high-definition photo of her husband kissing his junior partner, followed by an eight-week ultrasound.
Alia didn't scream. She went home, only to find her mother-in-law throwing IVF brochures at her, screaming that she was a selfish, barren workaholic for not giving the family an heir.
Jerel played the perfect, gentle husband, wrapping his arms around her and urging her to rest.
But later that night, Alia caught them on a secret call with a lawyer.
They were plotting to blindside her with a divorce, claiming his minor financial contributions entitled him to the property, aiming to kick her out with a measly fifty-thousand-dollar settlement.
They wanted to steal her hard-earned home to raise his pregnant mistress's child.
Alia's jaw tightened until her teeth ached. She had paid for every single inch of that estate.
Did they really think her dedication to her career made her blind, weak, and easy to destroy?
She didn't shed a single tear.
Instead, she walked into the office of the city's most ruthless private equity billionaire and struck a dangerous deal to lock away all her assets in an irrevocable trust.
Days later, when Jerel handed her the settlement with a fake, sympathetic smile, Alia poured cold black coffee directly over the ink.
"Tell Tiffany she is never stepping foot inside my house," Alia said smoothly. "I'll see you in court."