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1 I flew back to Chicago in secret, wanting to give my boyfriend, Hayden, a birthday surprise. Instead, at his VIP lounge party, I found him with his arm wrapped around another girl while the crowd cheered for them to kiss. The second their lips locked, I raised my phone, turned on the video and flash. "Keep going, don't stop on my account―I'm recording!" "Come on, give her a real kiss!" Days before his birthday, Hayden had texted me. 【I know our busy Miss Holloway is swamped with work. J

When Alistair Lockwood found out I was pregnant, he spared no expense to hire a world-renowned specialist to oversee my prenatal care. A man who never believed in a higher power, he spent hours kneeling in the cathedral, praying for a safe delivery. "Sweetheart, you've worked so hard for our family. Once the baby is born, I promise to make it all up to you," he whispered. That same day, I happened to pick up his phone while he was in the shower. "Mr. Lockwood, as per your instructions, the m

1. "Stop... please... it's too full..." Tears streamed down my face as I kneeled before the man in the pure black Armani suit. His voice was gentle, but his movements were savage. "Baby, we're only halfway there." After my rebirth, I spent five million dollars to hire the most expensive Italian model from New York's underground scene. Money really does buy perfection. He showed me things I had never experienced before. But the next morning, while I was riding him for our morning exercise

I had proposed seven times, yet I still couldn't bring Vivienne Lane home as my wife. According to the Lane family's ancient tradition, a suitor had to stay in a room with his fiancée after being drugged. To pass, he had to remain a complete gentleman until the effects wore off. I had tried seven times, and every single time I woke up, I found Vivienne lying beside me with her clothes in disarray. She would throw herself into my arms, sobbing. "It is okay, Sean. We will try again. I believe i

I was born with a constitution blessed by nature, designed to conceive and bear life with ease. Yet, on the day I married into the Commander's estate, my husband deemed me too full-figured for his delicate, refined tastes. He threw me into a drafty side room. Meanwhile, my coy, scheming stepsister managed to crawl into his bed. To take her as his equal wife, they plundered my dowry and buried me alive in the barren hills. I died with vengeance burning in my heart. When I opened my eyes aga

On my wife's birthday, I spent the entire day making her a custom cake from scratch. My wife looked at it with pure disgust. "A grown man spending his day baking? How embarrassing can you get?" she snapped. "If you have this much free time, you should be out making more money for me!" But when her first love handed her a store-bought cake, her face lit up with emotion. "Jasper, this is the best gift I've received today," she whispered. Hearing the stark difference in her voice, I didn't exp

The day I was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, my wife was hosting a pool party for her high school sweetheart. In the shimmering blue water, the two of them were locked in a tight embrace, kissing like the world was ending. She had captioned the photo, "Forever and always." My finger slipped and I accidentally liked the post. Within seconds, it was deleted, and my wife was calling to scream at me. "Caden, will you literally die if you stop stalking people for one second?" "Hudson ju

I was scheduled for a partial stomach resection, and my wife, Lyra, had promised to stay by my side the entire time. Yet, when I was wheeled out, she was nowhere to be seen. The surgeon looked behind me in surprise. "Didn't Dr. Vance come to be with you?" I dialed Lyra's number, only to hear her ex-boyfriend's voice coming through the speaker. "Lyra, baby, could you grab my boxers for me?" Lyra's voice rushed over the line in a flustered hurry. "Curtis injured his leg, Rowan. I'm his doctor,

1. From the gap in the passenger seat of my husband Vincent's Audi Q7, I pulled out a limited-edition Funko Pop keychain. A glow-in-the-dark Eleven―the same one his department intern, Sloane, had hanging from her backpack every day. Vincent glanced over, casually saying, "The surgery was completed too late last night, and I took two interns home along the way. It might have been dropped by someone." I tossed the keychain into the center console storage, not even looking up. "Fine." I’d met

The upper crust of the city knew that Preston Pierce and I were childhood sweethearts turned bitter enemies. He called me a viper, a woman who sacrificed his true love for the sake of profit. I hated him for his cold heart. For twenty-five years, he only had eyes for Bianca. But when a kidnapper came for my life, he was the one who threw himself in front of me. Blood soaked through my silk dress. He collapsed into my arms, clutching my hand with a grip that bruised. "I'm giving you my life.

1 After Simeon and I were reborn, we both knew what to do. Without saying a word, we silently agreed to go our separate ways. He went to the big city to chase after his first love, while I stayed in our small hometown. Five years passed in the blink of an eye. Using his knowledge from our past life, Simeon quickly became a rising star in his industry and won the heart of the prom queen. Meanwhile, I stayed by my parents' side, living a quiet and stable life. When we met again, he had his

Every single month, I handed over my entire paycheck to my wife. Yet, when my mother needed urgent spinal surgery, there wasn’t a single penny left in our bank account. I gently asked her where all the money had gone. She just squared her shoulders and sneered at my incompetence. “You barely bring home a few hundred bucks every month! How much savings were you actually expecting?” I truly thought it was my own fault. Until I saw her buying an expensive imported watch for her first love’s y

Chapter 1 After five years of marriage, despite all the social stigma and the fact that he was her stepbrother, Everly realized he was cheating on her. He was seeing a girl who was her polar opposite. The young girl was radiant, daring, and spoiled. If she even scratched a finger, she would pout and demand he comfort her. Everly, on the other hand, had lived under the Bennett family's roof for years, knowing all too well that she was nothing more than an unwanted burden. She had learned to s

1. The fifth year of my engagement to Preston Vanderbilt. That’s when he threw a secret “commitment ceremony” for a recent college grad. By the time I got to his Hamptons beach house, they were in the middle of a passionate kiss in front of all their guests. Preston saw me and just raised an eyebrow, swirling the champagne in his glass. "Relax, Caroline. It's just a party. It's not like we went to City Hall." I didn’t say a word. I just turned around and left. He probably thought I was jus

1 Three days before our wedding, Elias Thorne's ex-girlfriend, who claimed to have severe claustrophobia, blocked my car at the edge of a cliffside highway. She slammed her car into mine twelve times at sixty miles per hour. By the time Elias arrived with the police, firefighters were prying me out of the crushed driver's seat. But he didn't look at me. He ran straight toward the limited-edition sports car that had barely lost any paint. He pulled a trembling Lila Vance into his arms. "Mr.

1. I sat on the fifty-thousand-dollar Italian leather sofa in my Upper East Side penthouse, my fingertips ice-cold. The bespoke gift box from a high-end stationer in my hands, meant to hold my ten-year dream, now felt as heavy as a tombstone. It held our wedding invitations. I'd spent three months picking the perfect paper texture for this. I remember Spencer glancing at the samples, barely interested. "Just get the most expensive one, Chloe. We need everyone to know the Whitman wedding is fl

On my twenty-ninth birthday, the world-renowned composer unveiled his latest masterpiece at the annual music awards. My boyfriend, Carter Hayes, named the piece "Endless Melody" on stage. He told the audience it represented his enduring devotion to the love of his life. I foolishly assumed it was his birthday gift to me. Hours later, at a concert across the Atlantic in Paris, the prodigy pianist Melody Scott performed the piece. Tearfully, she thanked the crowd. "I want to thank Carter. He g

1 At my mother's funeral, my fiancé and my adopted sister walked in hand-in-hand. They had the audacity to announce their engagement right there, in front of everyone. I became the laughingstock of the city. Everyone whispered that the biological daughter wasn't even worth as much as a stray they'd picked up. In my moment of fury, my fiancé's cousin, Caleb Rhodes, appeared. He stepped up and kicked the two of them out of the memorial service. He reached out his hand to me that day. He promis

While waiting in the hospital lounge for my vasectomy, I stumbled across a trending thread on an anonymous forum. "What is the ultimate revenge against another man?" The top upvoted response instantly caught my eye. "Simple. You act as his absolute best friend while quietly taking away everything he holds dear." "To be completely honest, that is exactly what I am doing to my childhood buddy right now." "Before he even realized it, his wealthy parents began treating me like their own son, gi

In the three years we dated, Linnea Croft never let me touch her. She claimed her family was deeply traditional and that intimacy had to wait until marriage. Yet, at her childhood best friend's solo exhibition, dozens of explicit nude portraits of her were put on display for the world to see. From the age of eighteen to twenty-five, every single year of her youth had been captured on canvas. Rage boiled inside me, and I almost tore the paintings right off the wall. Linnea grabbed my arm and