A Father's Betrayal: The Marrow

After years of marriage, Adrian Foster still only spoke to me in bed. The moment he got out of it, the warmth vanished, replaced by cold indifference. I, Nora Bennett, had endured it all in silence, hoping that if I stayed obedient, he might show our daughter, Nina Foster, a little more care. Yet in his eyes, Sophia Graham was his one and only-the woman he put on a pedestal, shielding and indulging her at every turn. For her child, he had even taken my daughter's bone marrow. In that moment, I finally understood. I was nothing more than a pawn in his battle with the woman he truly loved. So I stopped holding on. I took my daughter and left without hesitation.

Chapters

Chapter 4

Adrian stayed at the hospital, taking care of Mia the entire night. It wasn't until dawn that the child finally fell into a deep sleep.

He let out a breath of relief and calmed Sophia down.

Only when he was about to leave did he take out his phone and see my message.

"Divorce?"

Adrian repeated the word to himself, convinced I must have lost my mind.

Without him, without the title of "Mrs. Foster," who else could possibly give me such a life of luxury?

And Nina's illness—how could I possibly find a matching bone marrow within two years on my own?

At that thought, it finally dawned on Adrian—the bone marrow that had taken so long to find had been reassigned by his own decision… to Sophia's daughter, Mia.

The car quickly filled with smoke.

Adrian slowly finished two or three cigarettes before getting out and heading back into the hospital, straight to the doctor's office.

The doctor in charge of both Nina and Mia was clearly surprised to see him.

"If my wife and I start trying for a baby now, and have one within a year, would the newborn's cord blood be guaranteed to help Nina?"

A fine layer of cold sweat formed on the doctor's forehead.

He had assumed Adrian came to reconsider—perhaps to return the bone marrow to his own daughter. Instead, it was something else entirely.

After careful consideration, the doctor answered cautiously, "We can only say the chances are relatively high. There are always risks. We also need to consider both your and your wife's physical condition, as well as possible complications during pregnancy—such as miscarriage due to excessive stress. None of this can be guaranteed."

"And besides…" The doctor adjusted his glasses, hesitating before continuing, "your wife had a very difficult delivery with Nina. Having another child could very likely mean going through all that suffering again."

Adrian froze slightly, only then recalling, in a haze, what I had gone through during childbirth.

The eczema had been so unbearable that I scratched until the skin on my stomach was left in a terrible state.

During delivery, it turned from a natural birth into an emergency C-section, and an amniotic fluid embolism nearly took my life.

The postpartum depression that followed, along with dealing with stretch marks and surgical scars, drained me completely.

"I understand." Leaning back against the sofa, Adrian picked up the coffee and drained it in one go. "Don't tell her about this."

The doctor nodded solemnly and respectfully saw him out.

When he returned to his desk, he couldn't help but sigh to himself—if Adrian's wife ever found out that her husband had given away their own daughter's life-saving bone marrow to someone else, she would never let it go.

The moment Adrian parked the car at home, he headed straight for the garden.

At this hour, I would usually be in the garden with Nina, tending to the plants and getting her to move around a bit.

But today, only a few scattered servants remained in the garden.

"Where are my wife and daughter?"

"Mrs. Foster left early this morning with luggage, along with Nina."

Adrian frowned slightly and went straight inside, heading to Nina's room.

Every time he came here, Nina would call out "Dad" loudly and drop everything to run into his arms.

But now, even her favorite toys were gone from the room.

He took out his phone and made several calls in a row, but none were answered.

Irritation surged through him.

"Before she left, did she say or do anything unusual?"

The sudden question left the butler puzzled.

Wasn't Adrian the one who never cared about what his wife did at home?

Still, he replied respectfully, "The maid who was cleaning noticed Mrs. Foster threw away quite a lot of things and asked about it. Mrs. Foster said something rather strange… that things which don't belong to her are meaningless to keep."

Adrian dismissed him with a wave. When he returned to the room, he found that all my clothes were gone from the walk-in closet.

On the vanity, only a few pieces of expensive jewelry remained—the ones he had given me to keep up appearances.

A sudden tightness gripped Adrian's chest. He loosened his tie and turned to issue an order to his assistant.

"Within ten minutes, get me all the transaction records for my secondary card this month."

Continue to next part

In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters. I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone. Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate. They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run. As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance. "She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed. "Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back. I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood. Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money. Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start. Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies? Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room. Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever. I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me. This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.

Action Horror Modern Sci-Fi

8.0

Our Marriage: A Twisted Revenge

8.0

My husband, Aiden, brought his mistress to a gala. She was carrying my clutch bag, a gift from him. He was laughing, daring me to make a scene. But the ultimate cruelty wasn't the affair. It was when he brought up my kidnapping from ten years ago, using my deepest trauma as a weapon to publicly shame me. His mistress, Ember, piled on, her voice dripping with false pity. "Oh, Julia, I just can't imagine what you went through. Aiden told me everything. How you were… so damaged." I suddenly realized who she was: the daughter of the man who had orchestrated my kidnapping. This wasn't just an affair; it was a long-con revenge plot to destroy the company I had sacrificed everything to save. Aiden, the man who once swore to protect me, was her willing pawn. His cruelty had already cost me our unborn child years ago. In that moment, the last bit of love I had for him turned to ice. He thought he was breaking me. He had no idea he was just handing me the keys to his destruction.

Action Modern Romance

9.6

Revenge Marriage: The Jilted Ballerina's Comeback

9.6

I stood in the ballroom of the Pierre Hotel, holding a champagne flute that felt like a fragile anchor against a rising tide of anxiety. Across the room, the crowd of New York's elite parted as my fiancé, Campbell Brock, stepped onto the stage to announce a historic merger-and a shocking engagement to someone else. "I am proud to announce my engagement to Kandice Rose," he said, pulling the "real" daughter of the family into his arms while looking right through me as if I were a ghost. I dropped my glass, the crystal shattering at my feet, but the public humiliation was only the beginning. By the next morning, I was a viral meme dubbed the "Meltdown Girl," and the American Ballet Theatre had suspended me from my position as principal dancer for "moral turpitude." My bank accounts were frozen, my reputation was in tatters, and Kandice was on a livestream tearfully claiming I was a jealous foster girl who had tried to seduce Campbell behind her back. I had spent four years building a life with this man, only to be discarded like a piece of old wallpaper the moment a better business deal came along. How could the man who promised me a future turn me into a national joke overnight, and why was the world so eager to believe I was the villain in my own tragedy? When my high school best friend, the notorious billionaire playboy Charlton Bernard, found me drinking tequila in a dive bar, he didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on. He slid a marriage contract across the table and pressed a black titanium credit card into my hand. "Marry me for a year, Daphne," he said, his eyes burning with a dark, protective intensity that made my heart race. "We'll join their reality show as newlyweds and show the world exactly who the real winner is." I looked at the card, then at the man who had always been my shadow, and realized that being sensible had only gotten me dumped on a stage. "Let's go get married."

Action Modern Romance

7.5

Stepbrother's Dangerous Obsession

7.5

I didn't fall for him. I crashed. Liam Cage wasn't supposed to matter. He was just the arrogant stranger with a dangerous smile and eyes that undressed me in a single glance. Just a man passing through my life. Until our parents got married. Now he's everywhere, in the kitchen at midnight, leaning against doorframes like he owns the air I breathe. In the hallway, too close. Always too close. Every look between us feels like a secret. Every argument feels like foreplay. Every silence feels loaded. We don't talk about it. We don't have to. Because the truth is there in the way my pulse stutters when he says my name. In the way he watches me like he's trying to decide whether to ruin me - or save me. He's wrong. For me. For my family. For my sanity. But when he touches me, the world narrows down to skin and heat and the terrifying realization that some mistakes don't feel like mistakes at all. They feel inevitable. This story is about craving what you shouldn't, crossing lines you swore you wouldn't, and discovering that sometimes the most dangerous love is the one that feels the most real.

Action Mafia Romance

7.0

Stolen Heart, A Mother's Revenge

7.0

My five-year-old daughter, Lily, was dying. I used my entire tech fortune to secure a donor heart, a last-ditch effort to save her. The only surgeon I trusted to perform the transplant was her father, my husband, Graham. But on the day of the surgery, he vanished. He diverted the heart I bought to another child-the daughter of his mistress, Bella Savage. Lily died. As her heart monitor flatlined, Graham called not to console me, but to celebrate the successful surgery for his lover's child. He blocked my number as I screamed for him. He didn't even come to the funeral. He called me selfish. He said I didn't deserve to be a mother. He stood at our daughter's grave and asked her to forgive the little girl who now had her heart. My love for him died with our daughter, replaced by a cold, surgical rage. He thought he had destroyed me. He had no idea he had just created the monster who would incinerate his entire world.

Action Mystery Romance

8.0

The Empress Who Buries Her Past

8.0

I sacrificed my womb and my youth to build Alec' s architectural empire from the shadows. He repaid me by bringing his mistress, Billie, to frame me for plagiarism and destroy my reputation. When my father suffered a massive heart attack, Billie used her influence to block his life-saving surgery. Alec held my dying father' s life hostage, forcing me to my knees in front of the woman who ruined me. "Apologize to her, Cydney," he commanded, "or I pull the plug." I begged. I scraped my dignity off the floor. But they let my father die anyway. Discarded and humiliated, I vanished in a plane crash, leaving only a wedding ring in a landfill. Years later, at a global summit, Alec watched his company crumble under the attacks of a ruthless new rival. He grabbed the woman in the emerald dress, his hands trembling as he recognized the eyes he thought were gone forever. "Cydney? You're alive?" I smiled, cold as ice. "Ms. Frazier is dead, Alec. I' m the one who' s going to bury you."

Action Billionaire Modern

A Father's Betrayal: The Marrow

Chapter 4

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