Huang Xiaohuai

I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage. But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death. As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket. Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her. Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved. I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies. They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die. I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred. Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me? Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm. I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12. It was exactly three days before the world ended. When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly. "Just tell me where to send the money, Mom." This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.

I am the true-blooded eldest daughter of the Burks Pack, but because I was born wolfless, my stepmother exiled me to a remote estate to rot. In my past life, I was brutally murdered and spent eighteen years wandering as a helpless ghost. During those eighteen years, I watched my stepmother and her beloved adopted daughter, Kalia, take over my home. I learned the filthy truth: my stepmother had been having an affair with a black-market smuggler. My arrogant brother and the sweet, adored Kalia were actually his bastard children with rogue blood. Yet, my father praised them, while I was treated like a stray dog and killed just to pave the way for a bastard to inherit the pack. For eighteen years, I watched these fakes taint our Alpha bloodline and steal everything that was rightfully mine. I couldn't accept why the true heir had to die in the mud while the vile impostors thrived in luxury. Opening my eyes again, I was back on the freezing carriage ride home. But this time, I ordered the driver to stop. "I am not going back to the territory." Instead of walking into my stepmother's trap, I went straight to the royal palace with a prophecy about a deadly blizzard. I am going to win the Queen Mother's protection, make a deal with the terrifying Prince Regent, and tear my fake family apart piece by piece.

Cailin was just a struggling temp worker trying to survive, until a simple delivery to a hotel suite turned into a nightmare. Inside the dark room, she was brutally attacked by Graham Shepherd, a ruthless billionaire in a drugged frenzy. He suffered from a severe phobia of human touch, but to his dark obsession, Cailin was the only woman his body didn't reject. To secure a healthy heir, Graham's powerful grandfather targeted Cailin. He paid off her greedy foster family with ten million dollars to legally buy her. "Marrying into the Shepherd family is an honor! It's time you paid us back!" her foster father sneered. Cailin was kidnapped and locked inside a massive estate. She was forced to sign a marriage certificate with the very monster who had assaulted her. Desperate, she offered Graham a cold contract to give him an heir in exchange for a secret divorce, but her desire to leave only enraged his possessive madness. When he tried to force himself on her again, she screamed for the servants to stop him. "Lock this door. No one brings her any food or water," Graham commanded coldly. Cailin was starved in the dark room for days, her body withering away. She was filled with despair and hatred. Why did she have to be the sacrificial lamb for this billionaire's sickness? Why did the family she trusted sell her out to a monster? Dragged down to the dining room, weak and starving, Graham forcefully held a piece of meat to her lips. "Eat." But as Cailin looked at the cruel men who had ruined her life, she turned her head away, her eyes burning with a silent vow to survive and escape this gilded hell.

For four years, Kasie Carlisle played the flawless wife to the wealthy Byrd family heir. Then, a notification on their shared tablet shattered everything: a photo of her husband, Harris, naked in bed with her college friend. Before Kasie could confront him, her mother-in-law called. She'd known about the affair for months. She'd already prepared divorce papers. One million dollars to disappear quietly. "For a girl from your background, that's more than you could earn in a lifetime." Kasie smiled. Cold. Sharp. Terrifying. "My price is ten billion. And half of everything." She had the evidence. She had the leverage. And Margo had no choice but to sign. So Kasie played the oblivious wife while Harris, blind to the trap closing around him, paraded his mistress through their home, laughed as his friends mocked her in public, and dragged her across a ballroom floor when she finally fought back. Then came the black SUV, deliberately ramming her car off the highway. Bleeding and concussed in the hospital, she watched Harris storm in—not to comfort her, but to accuse her of staging a suicide attempt for attention. He threw her blood-stained anniversary dress in the trash. He whispered sweet nothings to his mistress on the phone while she lay in the next room. He never suspected a thing. Lying in the dark, Kasie felt the last ember of her love turn to ash. She had almost died, and he only cared about how it made him look. So she stopped fighting. Feigning complete defeat, she resigned from the family business, told Harris she was emotionally broken, and asked for a solo trip to Italy to clear her head. As Harris smugly booked her flight, believing he had finally tamed his disobedient wife, Kasie picked up her phone and texted her lawyer. "The fish is on the hook. Initiate phase two." He never saw it coming.

I used my ten-million-dollar dowry and exhausted my health to keep my mate's bankrupt pack afloat and buy life-saving elixirs for his dying mother. However, when Alpha Justin finally returned from the war, he not only reeked of another she-wolf's scent, but also slapped a Royal Decree on the table, coldly announcing that Gamma Brenna would be his "Co-Luna." His parasitic family, who had survived entirely on my blood and wealth, immediately turned on me, mocking me as a "wolfless orphan" whose family was slaughtered. "Brenna is a warrior; she doesn't have the time to raise children," Justin told me arrogantly. "So, you will act as their unpaid nanny. If you behave, I'll sleep with you just once to give you a pup as a 'consolation prize.' But my heart and body belong entirely to Brenna." They demanded I swallow this ultimate humiliation, step aside, and continue funding their luxurious lifestyle. They thought I was a pathetic, wolfless victim who would obediently act as their personal ATM just to avoid being cast out into the woods as a Rogue. They didn't know that my "wolfless" body harbored a rare, ancient White Wolf. They didn't know that Justin's so-called "heroic glory" was stolen-built on the slaughtered corpses of my family to cover up his own cowardice. And they certainly didn't know I had already visited the Alpha King. Keep your consolation prize, Justin. I'm packing up every last cent of my ten million dollars and securing my Royal Severance Decree. With the entire Royal Army standing behind me, I'm going to sit back and watch your arrogant pack starve to death.

I walked into my apartment dripping wet from the rain, only to hear a guttural moan coming from the bedroom. I told myself it was just the TV, but my shaking hands could barely fit the key into the lock. When the door swung open, I saw a pair of red stilettos on the floor and my fiancé's favorite silk tie discarded like trash. I pushed the bedroom door open to find Javon in our bed with another woman, the sheets I had just washed two days ago tangled around them. Instead of apologizing, Javon looked at me with a sneer and barked, "You don't know how to knock?" He claimed he paid the bills, even though I worked double shifts just to keep the lights on while he chased a promotion he'd never get. When I slapped him, he didn't show remorse-he called me a "stupid bitch" and lunged at me with a look of pure malice. My life was a total wreck; my fiancé was a cheater, and my grandmother was about to be kicked out of her nursing home because I was forty dollars short of the payment. I felt like I was falling off a cliff with no one to catch me. Why was the man I loved treating me like a cockroach in my own home? Just as Javon moved to strike me, a shadow fell over the room. A man in an expensive black trench coat stood in the doorway, his presence sucking the oxygen out of the room. It was Carmine Wilkinson, a man I had never met but whose terrifying calm made my heart stop. He didn't look at the trash on the bed; he only looked at me. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief and asked one simple, brutal question. "Do you want revenge?" I nodded, desperate for any lifeline in the middle of my imploding world. He didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on; he looked me in the eye and gave me an ultimatum that would change my life forever. "Good. Get your ID. We're going to City Hall."

My name is Sarah Miller, and I built an empire for the man I loved. AuraTech, David Chen' s tech company, was on the brink of collapse until I rescued it by writing the core algorithm that became its foundation. He promised me the world in return. Now, he' s a tech titan, and I' m a prisoner, framed for corporate espionage-the very crime he committed against my family. He had me locked away in a remote, high-tech detention facility while he and his new fiancée, Chloe Davis, flaunted the smart-fabric made from my stolen family designs. Chloe, David' s fiancée, arrived to mock me, wearing a dress made from my stolen code. She reveled in telling me how David not only stole my family' s unique textile archives but then crushed their business, turning their legacy into marketable assets for AuraTech. Everything they treasured was gone, destroyed by the man I loved. The pain intensified when I recalled the truth I discovered just before my arrest: I was pregnant with David' s child. The stress of his betrayal and my imprisonment led to a miscarriage. Yet, in front of me, David coolly ordered the deletion of my family' s digital archives, knowing they contained the ultrasound scans and heartbeat recording of our baby. He erased our child. He believed he had broken my spirit, but he was wrong. Fuelled by unimaginable grief and rage, I activated the fail-safe I had hidden in AuraTech' s core code. The digital curse, woven through every system and product built on my stolen work, would turn his triumph into a torment, making all who celebrated his fraud into living antennas for my pain.

Dr. Evelyn Reed had finally done it. Three years of relentless work, the neural interface cure for her paralyzed husband, Ethan, was a success. A triumphant smile touched her lips as she reached for her phone to share the life-changing news. But an email caught her eye, a cheerful invitation that turned her world to ice. "Dr. Ethan Vance and Miss Tiffany Reed request the pleasure of your company at the celebration of their marriage." Ethan. Her husband. Tiffany. Her own niece. It was a sick joke, a complete error, yet the high-end Parisian wedding agency confirmed its legitimacy. Her joy evaporated, replaced by a cold dread as she drove through the night, a ghost to a celebration she was never meant to see. She saw him there, standing, whole, laughing, with Tiffany tucked into his arm, radiant in white. He kissed her, a tender kiss meant for the world to see, and Evelyn' s world tilted off its axis. Then she heard them talking, overheard their cruel confessions: he had always loved Tiffany, while Evelyn was merely "a necessary step," "a convenient solution." The man she had sacrificed everything for, the man who had promised his undying love, had been betraying her for two years with her own blood. The pain of betrayal, the hollowness of her sacrifice, the absolute injustice of it all, left her hollowed out, empty of tears. She watched him walk away from her in the hospital, choosing Tiffany, right after a fire, right after she found out a bomb, orchestrated by Tiffany, nearly killed her. This wasn't a love triangle; it was a war, and she was losing. Driven by a quiet, ice-cold resolve, Evelyn began to fight back.

The whistle blew, but the hit came a second later-a sickening crunch that echoed across the field. I watched my son, Caleb, collapse, his dreams of a football scholarship shattering with his knee. Ryan Blakely, the star linebacker from the town' s wealthiest, most powerful family, stood over him, flexing, a sneer on his face. Then his father, Mr. Blakely, offered me a paltry sum to sign an NDA, dismissing the career-ending injury as an "in-game accident," outright threatening my livelihood if I didn't comply, all while the corrupt sheriff and coach turned a blind eye. I saw my son's spirit break as he was mocked on crutches, and I realized nobody would help; the system was rigged. But then, I remembered a promise, a fading beacon in the dark: a general, Maria' s commanding officer, who once told me, "We don't leave our own behind," after handing me my Medal of Honor wife' s medal. With nothing left to lose, I clutched that medal and drove toward a military base, hoping a general's word still meant something.

The first thing I remembered from my last life was the smell. Stale beer, blood, and the cheap, cloying perfume Jenna always wore. I was on the cold concrete floor of my brewery, my head bleeding, watching my fiancé, Liam, kiss my best friend, Jenna. They had just pushed me. 'Is she dead?' Jenna asked, pulling away. 'Doesn' t matter,' Liam said, his voice cold. 'With her gone, the brewery is ours. Her parents will be lost.' They left me there to die. In that life, their betrayal led to my family' s ruin and my own demise, bled dry by their endless demands for 'business expenses' that were really just lavish trips and gifts. I perished, feeling the bitter sting of ultimate betrayal and injustice. But then, I somehow returned. I was staring at that same man, my fiancé Liam, very much alive, standing in my parents' living room. He was giving me the exact same ultimatum, demanding my family' s money for his 'Master Brewer program' and Jenna' s living expenses. This was the moment I chose him over my family last time. The moment I signed their death warrant and my own. Not this time. This time, the memory of my own blood on the brewery floor was a burning clarity. This time, Liam and Jenna would pay. This time, I' m strong enough to fight back.

I was at that awful class reunion, the air thick with fake smiles and bitter memories. Jessica' s sneering laughter echoed in my ears, and then, a crushing pain in my chest. Darkness. I was dead. Not a peaceful passing, but a final, bitter end to a life they' d stolen. Mike Johnson, my childhood friend, and his toxic girlfriend, Jessica Smith, had meticulously orchestrated my downfall years ago. They framed me for hacking, shattered my dreams of a Stanford scholarship, and left me with dead-end jobs and a broken spirit. My death at that reunion was just the cruel crescendo of their lifelong amusement at my expense. The injustice burned hotter than any physical pain. Why did I have to suffer for their venomous games? Why was my future stolen, and they got away scot-free? The sheer, unfair waste of it all. Then, sunlight streamed through my bedroom window. My old room, exactly as it was before everything went wrong. My hands, seventeen again. I wasn't just back in time, I was back, a second chance. But a chilling notification on my phone confirmed my worst fear. "Did you see it? Mike and Jessica at the game last night!" They were back too. And they remembered. They thought they had a cheat code to life. They were wrong. This time, I was ready.

Our anniversary was supposed to be a night of celebration, a quiet evening in our Brooklyn brownstone, cementing the perfect life my husband Ethan and I had built. But a sudden fall down our dimly lit stairs ripped that perfect facade apart, plunging me into darkness and pain. In the sterile blur of the Manhattan hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, I heard my husband' s voice, clear and cold, talking to a doctor: "The increased sedative dose is my directive... She won't feel it... The fetus is viable, but proceed with the induction... It's critical for Liam's formal introduction to the Miller Family Foundation." Our baby, gone. My legs, paralyzed. Ethan' s sorrow felt too practiced, too deep. As I lay 'unconscious,' I overheard him tell his lawyer something monstrous: the fall wasn' t an accident; it was orchestrated. My baby' s death, planned. My paralysis, a consequence he accepted. All for a child named Liam, and a debt to a woman named Olivia. My entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, my life a pawn in his ruthless game. How could the man who promised me forever shatter my world so utterly, all for a 'debt' and a hidden son, ensuring I could never have children again? But beneath the feigned despair, a steel resolve took root. They thought I was broken and gone. They were about to learn that Sarah Miller doesn' t break, she rebuilds – and she comes back for everything they took.

As a successful surgeon, I, Michael, dedicated my life to my chosen sister, Chloe, whose critical lung condition required a transplant. My biological sister, Sarah, however, remained nothing but a painful, inconvenient burden, ignored and resented for years. Terminally ill and near death, Sarah made a final, desperate call from her hospital bed, her voice weak as she tried to say goodbye. My only response? A chilling, impatient "If you're not dead, stop bothering me!" before I hung up. I dismissed every subsequent plea from her university, every warning about her rapidly deteriorating health, convinced she was just a "drama queen" faking for attention. Even when her name appeared on the critical admissions list at the very hospital where Chloe was scheduled for her life-saving surgery, I coldly scoffed, "She's doing this to ruin my day." How could I, a healer, allow such a festering hatred to consume me, built on a lie I blindly believed for years? The sheer, crushing weight of Sarah's silent suffering and my monstrous indifference hangs over me, a chilling testament to my unforgivable cruelty. But then, the unimaginable truth was slammed into my reality: the anonymous donor who saved Chloe's life was none other than Sarah. In a single, devastating moment, her ultimate sacrifice exposed the agonizing depths of my abandonment, shattering my carefully constructed world and setting me on a course of inescapable, public ruin.

If she could go back to her previous life, Olivia would not divorce Geoffrey and would heed his pleas to not abort their child. Because of her foolish decisions, the man she loved hooked up with her best friend, and even conspired to arrange her car accident. It was only then that she realized Geoffrey's goodness. When she was reborn and woke up in their bridal room, she promised herself that she would not choose the same path as before. All she wanted now was to live a good life with Geoffrey.

I flew back to New York on my twenty-fifth birthday, carrying vintage gold cufflinks I spent weeks finding for my billionaire husband, Declan. But when I walked into our townhouse, I found him throwing a massive victory party with Sloane, a glamorous socialite, standing by his side as the proud hostess. "Don't cause a scene. Go upstairs." Declan coldly dismissed me in front of his guests. Even Poppy, the rookie player whose shattered ankle I had painstakingly rebuilt, rolled her eyes and ignored me to suck up to Sloane. Hiding in the shadows, I heard the maids gossiping that everyone thought Sloane was the future Mrs. Hartford. To make matters worse, I discovered Sloane had stolen my anonymous, groundbreaking medical algorithm and was planning to present it as her own. First my husband, then the girl I mentored like family, and now the scientific foundation I had built with my own hands. Declan even texted me to cancel our birthday breakfast without a single apology, treating me like an annoying afterthought. My tears vanished, replaced by a freezing clarity. I signed the divorce papers, leaving them on his desk with zero demands for his money. Then I packed my bags, booked a one-way ticket to Boston, and prepared to destroy them on the global stage.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

For eighteen years, I was the Tucker family's adopted punching bag, while their biological daughter, Jessica, was treated like royalty. The moment I graduated college, they kicked me out. Brenda Tucker sneered, calling me a jinx who was bankrupting their company. But I knew the truth. They were erasing me to ensure I wouldn't ruin Jessica's chances of seducing Beckett Sinclair, a billionaire hockey heir, at an upcoming high-society banquet. She threw a fifty-thousand-dollar check at my feet like I was a beggar, ordering me to never claim I knew them. My adoptive father, who had ruined his own company with terrible investments, actually grabbed my arm and demanded I beg the Sinclairs for a bailout on my way out. When I refused, they cursed me, screaming that I was destined to rot in some backwater town forever. I walked into the cold New York night with my two scuffed suitcases, feeling completely hollow. I thought I was just a discarded orphan, thrown away by the only family I had ever known. But then, an older man pulled up to the corner. He handed me a faded photograph of a woman who looked exactly like me. "Miss Chloe, I am here to take you home." That was how I found out I wasn't an abandoned orphan. I was maliciously switched at birth, and my real parents-the billionaire owners of the New York Monarchs-had been searching for me for twenty-two years.

"I'm badly injured. Get over here right now!" Fresh off a grueling twelve-hour open-heart surgery, I received a frantic call from my boyfriend, Derik. Without even changing my scrubs, I rushed through Boston's freezing autumn rain to the bar. But the moment I pushed open the VIP room door, my blood ran completely cold. Derik was sitting perfectly unharmed on the sofa, with a scantily clad, third-rate model straddling his lap. Seeing me soaked to the bone and looking like a mess, the model didn't get off him. Instead, she leaned into his chest with fake innocence: "Sorry to bother you, sis. I just twisted my ankle, but Derik was so worried he insisted a top doctor like you come take a look." The cold rain dripped from my hair. Swallowing the sharp pain in my chest, my voice trembled: "I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon. I can't treat an ankle." "If you can't even look at a twisted ankle, what use are you?" Derik interrupted impatiently, looking at me like I was a cheap object. "Don't forget, my family funded your medical degree. You're nothing but a free maid we took in out of charity! As long as you behave, I might still let you keep the title of my girlfriend." In that instant, my four years of walking on eggshells and compromising felt like a massive joke. Instead of crying and begging like he expected, I looked at him coldly. "You're right, I can't treat it. So I'm officially giving up the position of your girlfriend to her." Leaving Derik staring in shock, I turned around, walked out of the room, and rushed straight into a restroom stall. Just as I was about to let out a sob, the door was violently kicked open. A towering, blood-soaked man forced his way in, pinning me hard against the wall. The overwhelming scent of fresh blood and dangerous masculinity instantly enveloped me. "Keep your mouth shut if you want to live." Hearing the assassins' footsteps approaching outside, my doctor's instinct kicked in. I yanked his belt loose, grabbed his collar, and kissed him fiercely. I thought I had just saved a stranger, until a few days later when Derik's grandmother suffered a severe heart attack. Her life was hanging by a thread, and the surgery required the signature of the family's ultimate patriarch. Outside the ER, Derik arrogantly showed up with his arms around that model. "She's already carrying my child! Once my grandmother wakes up, I'm kicking you out of this hospital!" he yelled at me. Suddenly, the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop below freezing. Flanked by two rows of bodyguards, a terrifyingly powerful man strode out. Derik, who was acting so high and mighty a second ago, instantly turned pale. He shrank like a frightened mouse, trembling as he bowed his head: "U-Uncle..." My mind completely short-circuited, my heart hammering wildly against my ribs. The dangerously lethal man I had fiercely kissed and stripped to bandage in that dirty restroom late that night... was actually Derik's most feared and revered billionaire uncle?!

For twenty years, I was kept in a gilded cage as the Daugherty family's most valuable political bargaining chip. But on the day of my arranged marriage, my corrupt father gave my fiancé to my cruel younger sister, Brinley. Instead, I was shipped off to the badlands to marry Erik "Grim" Marshall, the brutal President of an outlaw biker club, who was reportedly paralyzed and dying from a shattered spine. Brinley flaunted her designer wedding gown in my face, boasting about how she stole my life and ordered bulldozers to destroy my late mother's rose garden. "Get in the car and crawl off to that biker compound to die." My father coldly threw me to the wolves to save his own skin. When I arrived at the heavily guarded biker compound, the gang members treated me like disposable trash. They tried to extort my dowry and locked me in a dark, rotting quarantine basement to wait for my new husband to die. They all thought I was just a weak, discarded princess, meant to spend my miserable life cleaning bedpans for a crippled warlord before being torn apart by his violent gang. What they didn't know was that I was a lethal combat surgeon and toxicologist. Before I left, I planted a specialized neurotoxin in Brinley's dress that would turn her wedding night into a humiliating, public bloodbath. And as I looked down at the "dying" biker king on the steel table, I pulled out my scalpel. I wasn't here to rot in the dirt; I was going to cure this monster and use him to carve out an empire of my own.

During the car accident, Katherine's fiancé shoved her toward danger just to save the servant's daughter. Waking up in the ICU shattered every illusion she had left. She called off the engagement, cut ties with her family, and stopped sacrificing herself for people who never valued her. Her brothers mocked her decision, certain she would return begging within days. Instead, their worlds collapsed one after another. Her eldest brother was baffled. "Why is the company's cash flow a complete mess?" Because Katherine had pulled her investment. Her second brother was livid. "Why is mymasterpiece being called plagiarism?" Because Katherine wasn't letting him steal her work anymore. Her youngest brother was panicked. "Why is the whole racing community shutting me out?" Because Katherine had walked away from the team. By the time they realized everything she had done behind the scenes, it was too late. Standing beside her powerful new fiancé, Katherine smiled coldly. "Your chance to fix this expired long ago."

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Three years of marriage, and Jayson Mccormick never once looked at me the way he looks at my sister. I told myself he was just cold. That if I loved him hard enough, he'd eventually love me back. Then I crashed his secret wedding. The bride was Kate-the daughter my parents kept while I was lost. The guests? My entire family. They all knew. They all helped. "She's dying," Jayson said. "Let her have this." So I let her have it all. The husband. The family. The life they built around her. I walked away with nothing-because I knew I could make it all back. After years of silence, the legendary perfumer and the financial genius have returned. They think I have nothing. They don't know that, where they never bothered to look, I've already built an empire of my own. It's time to bury the obedient wife.

Bethany's daughter needed blood after a car accident, but her husband gave the city's entire supply to his secretary for mild anemia. Bethany begged a mysterious man for help and promised to marry him if he saved her child. Although blood and specialists arrived, her daughter died. So did her heart. Keeping her word, Bethany married the man. At their wedding, her remorseful ex fell to his knees and begged her to return. "Bring my daughter back first," she demanded. The powerful tycoon kicked him aside, and pulled his pregnant wife into his protective embrace. "Leave my wife alone, unless you want your company ruined."

For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence. When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside. Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer. Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius. Late one night, he called, begging for another chance. Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?" Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer."