A Second Chance With Mr. Blackwood
In the roaring flames of the abandoned warehouse, my skin blistered and peeled.
Through the crackling fire, my sister Elara's malicious voice echoed. She told me my husband, Damien, was dead, and it was all my fault.
For years, I had treated Damien like a monster. I fought him, threw tantrums, and desperately tried to escape our marriage, all because I blindly followed Elara's advice.
"Remember, the harder you fight, the more disgusted he'll get."
She texted me things like that, telling me to smash vases over his head and run away, claiming she was protecting me.
In reality, she was poisoning my mind, stealing my valedictorian spot at university, and plotting to crawl into my billionaire husband's bed.
My foolish rebellion cost me everything, ultimately leading to Damien's tragic death and my own fiery end.
As the massive explosion tore my consciousness to shreds, I finally understood who truly loved me and who the real monster was.
I died suffocating on my own agonizing regret, wishing I could tear Elara apart.
Then, a rush of freezing air punched into my lungs.
I opened my eyes to the crisp scent of cedar and mint. I was back seven years ago, on the very night our marriage was supposed to go to hell.
This time, looking at Damien's flawless, unscarred face, I didn't push him away.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and made a silent vow: I would make every single person who ever hurt him bleed.
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Chapter 5
The dining room fell dead silent.
The security chief stood frozen by the door. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Elara Vang was a frequent guest, and the Vang family had deep ties. Throwing her out like trash was a massive escalation.
His eyes darted past Giovanna, landing directly on Damien. He needed the real boss to give the green light.
Elara saw the hesitation. A spark of hope ignited in her chest. She kept clutching her heart, but her tear-filled eyes locked onto Damien, silently begging for mercy.
Giovanna didn't yell at the guard. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head to look at Damien. She waited. This was a test.
Damien slowly stood up from the table. His long fingers reached down, methodically buttoning the center button of his suit jacket.
He walked around the table until he stood right behind Giovanna. He wrapped his heavy arm around her waist, pulling her back flush against his chest. It was a blatant, physical claim of ownership.
Damien stared at the security chief. His eyes were completely dead. His voice dropped to a terrifying, sub-zero register.
"Did you not hear my wife's order?"
The security chief flinched as if he had been struck. He snapped his spine straight. "Yes, Boss! Right away!"
"And from now on," Damien added, his voice echoing in the large room, "my wife's orders are my orders. Disobeying her is disobeying me. The consequences will be exactly the same."
The words hit the room like a bomb. It was a complete transfer of power. Giovanna wasn't just a wife on paper anymore; she was the absolute ruler of the Blackwood empire.
Two massive bodyguards stepped forward. They grabbed Elara by her upper arms, hauling her off the floor.
Elara panicked. The fake heart attack vanished. She kicked her legs, her expensive heels scraping against the floorboards. "Let me go! Damien, you can't do this! I'm a Vang!"
The guards ignored her screams. They dragged her backward out of the dining room, down the long hallway, and out the front doors.
Giovanna leaned back against Damien's solid chest. She watched through the large windows as the guards hauled Elara down the long driveway and literally tossed her out the wrought-iron gates.
Elara hit the cold asphalt hard. Her pristine white skirt was covered in dirt.
A few luxury cars driving past the estate slowed down. The wealthy occupants rolled down their windows, pointing and whispering at the disgraced socialite sitting in the dirt.
Elara bit her lip so hard it bled. The humiliation burned her skin.
Inside the dining room, the maids rushed to clean the spot where Elara had been sitting, scrubbing the floor as if removing a toxic spill.
Damien looked down at the top of Giovanna's head. His chest rose and fell heavily.
He reached up, his thick fingers gripping her chin. He tilted her head back, forcing her to look up into his dark, searching eyes.
"Are you satisfied now?" Damien asked, his voice a low rumble. "You used me to get rid of her. What exactly are you planning?"
He gave her the power, but his deeply ingrained paranoia wouldn't let him believe this was real.
Giovanna didn't pull away from his grip. She looked straight into the storm in his eyes and rose onto her toes.
She pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I plan," she whispered against his skin, "to only be a problem for you from now on."
Damien's heart physically skipped a beat. The heavy walls in his mind cracked a little more.
Giovanna stepped back, breaking the tension. She glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner.
"Oh, no," she gasped, her eyes widening. "I have to go to Oakhaven University for the freshman orientation today!"
The word 'university'. The concept of 'leaving the estate'.
The air around Damien instantly froze. The warmth vanished from his eyes, replaced by a terrifying, suffocating darkness.
His arm clamped around her waist, tightening like a vice, pulling her so hard against him it knocked the breath out of her lungs. His eyes turned feral.
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7.8
Helen was finally brought back to the luxurious Gallagher estate as their long-lost blood relative.
But her new family didn't welcome her; they looked at her with undisguised disgust.
The matriarch mocked her stench of poverty, while her step-sister Candice treated her like a feral animal. The patriarch, Fredy—who had built his empire by betraying Helen's mother—tried to break her spirit. He blackmailed Helen into attending a high-society gala by threatening to cut off her grandmother's medical funds.
At the gala, Candice squeezed into a diamond-encrusted gown, desperate to seduce the guest of honor, Damian Montgomery. Damian was the most powerful man in New York, and he was currently tearing the city apart looking for a mysterious woman named Jane.
Overhearing this, a sick, greedy smile spread across Candice's face. She planned to impersonate Jane to claim Damian's wealth and completely crush Helen under her heel.
"Hide in the corner tonight. Don't you dare try to speak to anyone important!"
They all thought Helen was just a helpless, uncultured country girl they could easily manipulate and step on to secure their stolen legacy.
What they didn't know was that Helen was the real Jane. She was the lethal shadow who had saved Damian in the woods, shattered his grip, and robbed his highly guarded vault just the night before.
Helen calmly adjusted her simple black dress and stepped into the ballroom, ready to tear their stolen world apart.
7.2
Blaire woke up in a Manhattan penthouse, her body covered in bruises and her innocence stolen.
Before she could process the terror, her adoptive sister Danita burst in, acting heartbroken and accusing Blaire of shamelessly seducing the powerful Kamryn Lane. Kamryn threw a one-million-dollar check at Blaire's bleeding face, calling her a calculating gold digger.
That night, Blaire overheard a conversation in the family study that shattered her entire reality.
"Once she gives birth to the Lane family's seed, we'll stage an accident, drain her blood, and transplant her healthy heart into your chest."
Her adoptive mother and Danita were celebrating the success of their trap. She wasn't an adopted daughter; she was a living organ bank and a disposable surrogate. Even her adoptive brother, Calhoun, knew everything, trapping her in the dark hallways with a sick, possessive obsession to ensure she never escaped.
The horrific truth suffocated her. The family that had taken her in had raised her like livestock for slaughter. How could they smile at her every day while planning to carve out her heart?
Terrified but burning with a desperate will to survive, Blaire swallowed a Plan B pill to ruin their surrogate plot and fled the estate. To get the money and power she needed to crush her adoptive family, she pulled out Kamryn Lane's business card. This time, she would make a deal with the devil.
8.1
Desperate for a way out of rejection and poverty, Pearl Augustine accepts a nanny job with an outrageous salary-working for billionaire Ace Warren. What she doesn't expect is his daughter.
Mia Warren is spoiled, sharp-tongued, and feared by everyone in the mansion. Behind her cruelty is a lonely child longing for a mother. As Pearl becomes the only one who can reach her, walls begin to fall-especially those around Ace, a grieving man hiding behind wealth and control.
What started as "just a job" quickly turns into something dangerous: attachment.
Sometimes, healing begins where you least expect it.
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
8.8
Clara supported her boyfriend Leo for four years, paying his rent and buying his headshots while working dead-end extra gigs.
On his twenty-sixth birthday, she caught him in their bed with Veronica, a wealthy producer's daughter who constantly stole Clara's roles.
Leo mocked Clara as a "pathetic, poor stepping stone" who was just there until he got his foot in the door.
Veronica threatened to ruin Clara's career forever.
Clara dumped him, packed her bags, and impulsively entered a contract marriage with a cold stranger she met at City Hall.
But her nightmare wasn't over.
When her mother suddenly needed a $200,000 emergency brain surgery, Clara was forced to take a demeaning extra gig to survive.
There, Veronica and her starlet friend cornered Clara.
They mocked her cheap clothes, ridiculed her new wedding ring as fake glass, and intentionally poured scalding coffee on her feet.
"Well, maid, you better clean that up."
Veronica laughed, forcing Clara to her knees to wipe up the burning liquid while snapping photos.
Clara swallowed her burning humiliation, secretly recording their abuse on her phone.
She endured the pain, desperate for the $300 day rate to save her mother's life, feeling entirely crushed by their overwhelming wealth and power.
What she didn't know was that outside the soundstage, her new contract husband—the man she thought was just a struggling, broke tech worker—was sitting in a sleek black Maybach.
He watched his wife kneeling on the floor, and his dark eyes filled with a lethal, terrifying rage.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.