The Scapegoat's Return: Watch Me Shine Now
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Reese family, living quietly in the shadow of their biological daughter, Asha.
After a charity gala, a drunk Asha insisted on driving her sports car, only to strike a pedestrian on a dark, wet road.
Before I could even call 911, my boyfriend Collins and the family lawyer arrived to control the scene. My adoptive father put a heavy hand on my shoulder, begging me to take the fall so their true bloodline wouldn't have a criminal record.
"I'll wait for you, Crys. I promise I'll take care of everything."
Collins whispered those words and squeezed my hand. I foolishly agreed, but in court, Collins personally submitted a fabricated statement detailing my history of severe binge drinking. The high-priced lawyer offered no defense, and I was sentenced to three years in a federal prison, completely abandoned by the family I loved.
For 1,095 days behind razor wire, I suffered the ultimate betrayal. They hadn't made a mistake; they had intentionally fed me to the wolves as a disposable sacrifice to keep their precious princess safe. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could destroy me without a single ounce of hesitation.
Upon my release, I fled to a new city with just twenty-seven dollars, deciding that surviving and living well would be my revenge. I finally found a safe haven working at a small diner. But as I drove my delivery truck downtown today, I locked eyes with Collins's best friend through the window of a luxury Bentley. The billionaires who ruined my life have found me, and the storm they tried to bury has officially arrived.
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Chapter 5
Three weeks passed.
The first two weeks had been a brutal adjustment. Crysta's hands developed callouses from carrying hot plates, but her mind had struggled to keep up with the chaotic pace. She had dropped silverware, mixed up table numbers, and frozen when too many voices demanded her attention at once. But she refused to quit. She learned the rhythm of the diner through sheer, punishing repetition. She arrived at 5:00 AM to start the coffee and sweep the floors. She stayed until 4:00 PM to mop the kitchen.
She spoke only when necessary. She kept her head down.
But Leo's suspicion hung in the air like thick smoke.
It happened on a Tuesday afternoon. Crysta was wiping down Booth 4.
"Where is it?" Leo's voice barked from the front counter.
Crysta turned. Leo was staring into the open cash register. His jaw was clenched tight.
"Where is what?" Margo asked, coming out of the kitchen.
"Twenty dollars," Leo said. He slammed the register drawer shut. The sound made Crysta flinch. He turned his head and locked eyes with Crysta. "The drawer is short twenty dollars."
The diner went dead silent. The two customers at the counter stopped chewing.
Crysta's blood turned to ice. Her stomach dropped into her shoes. She immediately reached for her left wrist, her thumb digging into the skin.
"Leo," Margo warned, wiping her hands on her apron.
"No, Mom," Leo said, stepping out from behind the counter. He walked toward Crysta. His arms were crossed over his chest. "I counted it this morning. It was perfect. She is the only one who has been working the register for the last hour."
"I didn't take it," Crysta said. Her voice was quiet, but her heart was beating so hard it hurt her ribs.
"Empty your pockets," Leo demanded.
Crysta's vision tunneled. The humiliation burned the back of her neck. She was back in the prison yard, being ordered to strip.
She reached into her black jeans. She pulled out her order pad, a pen, and three dollars in tips. She placed them on the table.
"Check her apron," Leo said.
Before Margo could stop him, the bell above the door chimed.
A man in a mechanic's uniform walked in. He held a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. "Hey, Leo. You gave me a ten instead of a twenty for my change this morning. I just noticed."
Leo froze. The color drained from his face. He looked at the mechanic, then down at the twenty-dollar bill.
He slowly turned his head to look at Crysta.
Crysta didn't wait for his apology. She picked up her order pad, turned her back to him, and walked into the kitchen. She grabbed a stack of dirty plates and shoved them into the industrial dishwasher. Her hands were shaking with rage and relief.
She survived the day.
The next morning, Crysta focused entirely on the customers. She forced her brain to catalog their faces and their habits. It was not perfect yet, but she was trying.
At 7:00 AM, the door opened. A tall man with broad shoulders and a graying mustache walked in.
Crysta grabbed a heavy ceramic mug, filled it with black coffee, and placed it on the counter at his usual spot. She set a blueberry muffin on a small plate next to it.
"Morning, Captain Mason," Crysta said.
Ridge Mason, the Cedarwood Fire Captain, looked at the coffee, then at Crysta. He smiled. "You are finally getting the hang of it, kid."
At 8:30 AM, Mrs. Gable, the retired school teacher, sat in Booth 2. Crysta brought her a glass of iced tea, though she had to run back to the kitchen when she realized she forgot the woman's two extra slices of lemon. It was a process, but she was adapting.
At noon, a businessman in a rush paid for his sandwich and sprinted out the door.
Crysta went to clear his table. Underneath the chair, a thick leather wallet lay on the floor.
She picked it up. It was heavy. She could see the edge of a stack of hundred-dollar bills inside.
Leo was watching her from the grill. His spatula paused in mid-air.
Crysta didn't hesitate. She grabbed the wallet, ran to the front door, and pushed it open. She sprinted down the sidewalk.
"Sir!" she yelled.
The businessman was unlocking his car. He turned.
Crysta handed him the wallet, gasping for breath. "You dropped this."
The man checked his pocket, his eyes widening. He opened the wallet, saw the cash was untouched, and let out a massive breath. "Thank you. God, thank you." He pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. "Here."
"No," Crysta said, stepping back. "I don't want your money."
She turned and walked back to the diner.
When she walked through the door, Leo was standing by the register. He looked at her. He didn't cross his arms. His jaw was relaxed.
That night, after the diner closed, Crysta was taking the heavy trash bags out to the alley.
Leo was leaning against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette.
Crysta threw the bags into the dumpster. She turned to go back inside.
"What did you do?" Leo asked.
Crysta stopped. She looked at him.
"Before," Leo clarified, taking a drag of his cigarette. "What did you do to end up in that place?"
Crysta felt a familiar tightness in her chest. She looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette.
"I trusted the wrong people," Crysta said flatly. "And I paid for it."
She didn't offer details. She didn't want his pity.
Leo stared at her face for a long time. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot.
"Tomorrow morning," Leo said, his voice gruff. "I am making the marinara sauce. It takes two people to lift the tomato pots. Be downstairs at six."
It was an invitation. It was an olive branch.
Crysta nodded. "I will be there."
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7.8
Alayna was working a grueling catering shift in worn-out heels to support her broke college boyfriend, Caiden, who claimed to be studying at the library.
But through the crack of a VIP suite door, she saw him wearing a bespoke suit and a Patek Philippe watch, sipping expensive liquor.
"It's a little poverty role-play. Keeps things interesting."
He was laughing with his rich friends, mocking her as his clueless "charity case."
To make matters worse, she was forced into a humiliating mascot costume just in time to watch him passionately kiss his wealthy ex-girlfriend.
That same night, Alayna's mother collapsed with gastric cancer, requiring a half-million-dollar surgery.
When a desperate Alayna begged Caiden for help, he refused.
"Why don't you just apply for Medicaid? That's the path for people like you."
For two years, she had starved herself to buy his textbooks, his tickets, and his shoes.
He had stolen her sweat and her sacrifices, all for a cruel game.
The sheer audacity of his betrayal made her blood run cold.
When a billionaire stranger stepped in to pay her mother's medical bills in exchange for a one-year fake marriage, Alayna didn't hesitate to sign the contract.
She slipped the flawless diamond ring onto her finger, opened a spreadsheet, and sent Caiden an invoice for every single cent.
This time, she was going to dismantle his entire life.
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.5
Alexandrea woke up with a splitting headache in a strange hotel bed, terrified to find a brutally handsome, half-naked stranger beside her.
Before she could even scream, the door burst open. Her adoptive mother, Ivette, stormed in with a swarm of reporters and flashing cameras.
"How could you disgrace our family name like this?"
Ivette sobbed, putting on a theatrical performance of a heartbroken mother. It was a setup to completely ruin Alexandrea's reputation in front of New York's elite.
For ten years, Alexandrea had lived in a house of horrors. Her back and arms were covered in silvery scars and puckered cigarette burns left by Ivette's vicious abuse.
Yet to the public, Ivette had carefully crafted Alexandrea's image as a wild, ungrateful, and manipulative liar.
Trapped under the duvet, Alexandrea was drowning in shame, her voice lost in the storm of accusations.
She didn't understand why her adoptive family hated her so much, treating her worse than a stray dog while using her brother's future to keep her chained.
But what she understood even less was the stranger beside her.
Instead of panicking, the man slowly sat up, his presence alone silencing the frantic room. He was Ace Griffith, the billionaire heir who owned half of Manhattan.
He wrapped his suit jacket around her trembling shoulders, looked Ivette dead in the eye, and dropped a bomb.
"I will be marrying her."
Then, he carried Alexandrea away from her ten-year prison, ordering his men to dig up the Terry family's darkest secrets and her true identity.
8.2
My ex-boyfriend of three years, Axel, married a perfect wealthy heiress.
I attended his wedding, not to mourn our relationship, but because he had spent the last three years bleeding me dry.
He left me with absolutely nothing but a final notice from the hospital for my dying brother's life support.
Instead of feeling guilty, Axel cornered me in the church hallway, crushing my wrist.
"I'll set you up with an apartment. You won't have to work another day in your life."
He thought he could buy my silence with spare change, while leaving my seventeen-year-old brother, Julian, to die when his treatments were cut off the very next day.
When I refused to be his dirty little secret, Axel used his power to utterly destroy my acting career.
He had my talent agency terminate my contract under a fake morals clause, publicly humiliated me on set, and blacklisted me across the entire industry.
I was shoved out into the freezing rain, left with a torn dress and absolutely no way to pay the five hundred thousand dollar medical bill.
He actually believed he could step on my brother's dying body to build his own fake empire.
He thought I was just a weak, pathetic victim who would eventually crawl back to him on my knees.
But he forgot about the one monster he was absolutely terrified of: his legitimate, ruthless billionaire half-brother, Jace Bauer.
Looking at the three positive pregnancy tests hidden in my drawer, I stepped right in front of Jace's armored Maybach.
"Marry me, and I'll give you the heir you need to secure your empire."
7.9
Fiona spent three years in a concrete cell, taking the fall for a hit-and-run accident caused by her billionaire husband's mistress.
When she finally got out and returned home, she found him throwing a lavish party, with the mistress on his arm wearing a gown Fiona had designed. Even worse, her own seven-year-old son pointed at her in disgust.
"Go away, bad woman!"
Her husband Cecil threw her out like a stray dog. To force her into submission, he trashed her belongings and cut off the life-saving medical funding for her mentor. Driven to desperation, Fiona snuck back into the mansion to retrieve her late mother's sapphire necklace. But the mistress caught her, ripped her own clothes, and screamed that Fiona was trying to kill her. Cecil didn't even hesitate. He violently shoved Fiona backward. Her head smashed against the sharp edge of a mahogany desk, and blood immediately poured into her eyes.
Lying in a pool of her own blood, Fiona watched the man she had sacrificed her freedom for wrap his arms protectively around the woman who ruined her life. He looked at her with pure, murderous disgust, as if she were the monster.
But Fiona didn't cry. Instead, a cold smile crept onto her face as her bloody thumb secretly pressed the emergency SOS button on her phone, snapping a clear photo of him standing over her shattered body.
"My husband just violently attacked me. I am bleeding from the head. I need help."
The police were already on their way. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.
7.5
Julianna was drowning in a corporate warzone, fighting a massive department deficit while fending off her mother’s relentless matchmaking.
Then, a ghost from her past returned to shatter her reality.
Eight years ago, Aidan Caldwell walked out of her life without a word. Now, he was back in New York as a ruthless billionaire, and a pitch-black Maybach started stalking her in the dim underground garage.
She had no idea the driver hiding behind the obsidian-tinted glass was Aidan.
She didn't know he had just choked a confession out of an executive, discovering that her "betrayal" eight years ago was a complete lie.
"Stay away from her. The rules are mine now."
Aidan had warned his rivals, his sanity tearing at the seams as he watched from the shadows while a creepy coworker put an arm around her shoulder.
He shattered glasses and crushed her favorite white flowers in his penthouse, driven by a lethal, obsessive jealousy seeing other men touch what belonged to him.
Julianna was completely in the dark, feeling only a heavy, predatory stare pinning her to the cold concrete.
When a sudden, heartbreaking scent of cedarwood rolled out of the cracked car window, her brain short-circuited.
Why was this terrifying stranger stalking her in the shadows?
Desperate to save her career, Julianna recklessly agreed to fake an engagement with a wealthy heir this weekend.
But she had no idea Aidan had already rigged her company's crisis, and the predator was about to tear her world apart to claim her back.